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Filedbyauthor: Q&A with cofounders Peter Clifton and Mike Shatzkin
March 30, 2009 | 11:02 am
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By David Rothman
Complete with listings for F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, Filedbyauthor has started up with 1.8 million name-related pages waiting to be claimed.
So far the most viewed writers are Stephanie Meyer, J.K. Rowling, former PW editor Sara Nelson (claimed page), Sylvia Day (claimed) and Sharon Lee (claimed, albeit not enthusiastically). More than 1,600 writers have "filed."
We’ve already shared basic impression of the site. Now, from Fileby CEO Peter Clifton and his cofounder, Mike Shatzkin, here are replies to TeleRead’s e-mailed questions. Peter is a former executive at such companies as Ingram and Wiley, while Mike—he of the Einsteinian hair—runs the Idea Logical consulting firm. Mike’s also the author of baseball books. 
Written late last week, questions and answers are slightly edited.
DR: What are Filedby’s main benefits to readers and writers, as you see them?
PC: To writers: First, discoverability through a single location. Second, a pre-assembled, search engine-optimized web platform that can be easily expanded. Third, an easy way to manage author activities that many times are fragmented across the Web. Fourth, a mechanism to let people know that they are the person who wrote a work vs. perhaps another person with a similar or even sometimes the same name but the author of another work.
To readers: First, a site that encourages connectivity with authors. Second, an author centric site the provides the means to interact with other readers across all subject categories. Third, a central place to discover authors and their work and activities in many many categories. Fourth, a way to discover links to other sites that authors think are meaningful or that we’ve added to Classic Author pages. Fifth, we’ve organized our pages around the people who create content vs. the content itself. I think that’s unique and meaningful to discovery of people and what they want to say about themselves. Sixth, some pretty interesting pages for more than 900 Classic Authors—these are worth browsing.
DR: Exactly when did Filedby start up?
PC: The company was formed mid 2008. We launched a Private authors only Beta on December 12th.
DR: What are the service’s main successes so far in recruiting authors and publishers; and are these people paying for the full upgrade? Best-selling writers involved? Any direct benefits to writers even now, in terms of sales or other opportunities?
PC: We are just starting out, so perhaps I’ll have more of substance to tell you later this year. So far we feel very good about putting the site up, given its scale. We’re pleased that we went live with more than 650 authors who came in early and joined while the site was in private beta, and we are grateful to the publishers who saw the value of what we are doing and supported us early. Liza Murphy at Cambridge University Press, Peter Costanzo at Perseus and Lori Sayde at Wiley are several forward thinking industry executives we are grateful to.
We’re pretty sure there will be many direct benefits to participating authors, but, again, we are only several days live now.
DR: How quickly can you grow traffic?
PC: Of course, we hope to build traffic as quickly as possible. My theory about your question is this. Unless an author has a high profile and plenty of money to build, maintain and enhance a Web site, this is an expensive proposition and even then the sites are not necessarily as discoverable as you would think. Our membership tiers are very low cost. Even the free level would typically cost more than $2K to build, and they are easily located on the Web through our search engine.
MS: I don’t know for sure about their plans, but Amazon has historically been very reluctant to link off their site. You absolutely cannot build a proper author presence on the net without doing that. And we’re neutral; that’s also important.
DR: What’s the free plan, and how about the upgrades? Can you blog under any of them?
PC: You can blog under the Premium membership level. The free plan has lots of very useful tools; however, blogging is a Premium level tool together with the events listing tool.
DR: Are you sure that the prices are low enough for typical writers–which is important since you need volume?
PC: We think so, but generalizing is hard to do. Our pricing is based on thorough research, and we feel it is very low considering the features and tool sets we make available. Of course our free functionality is as low as you can go, there is no cheaper price than free.
MS: And the two paid levels, $99 a year and $399 a year, are also damn cheap. We know lots of authors who are paying $25 or $50 a month to maintain their web presences. One author who is a publishing exec told me she’d give up her old site; what was the point with Filedby now available?
DR: What about market positioning? I’m promoting my Washington newspaper novel now, begun 30 years ago when I didn’t know a bit from a byte, and I don’t want people distracted by my computer books aimed at an entirely different market. I can’t edit out distractions.
PC: At the moment you can select the order of your titles. Our goal is to be comprehensive in our listings/catalog so deleting titles isn’t encouraged.
DR: How much can readers trust the listings? I saw at least two incorrectly listed works, Doing Good and Dominion of Shadows, neither of which I wrote. Is there a way to zap them? Meanwhile when I get around to it, I might submit missing works.
PC: And, in time, because we have author participation, I’d expect us to gain in accuracy compared to other industry databases that don’t have those inputs.
DR: Will the sites by reachable not just within Filedby also via a current system of author branding–author-specific domains? I do see an opportunity to buy "vanity URLs." You mean freestanding URLs or subdomainswithin the Filedby site?
We’re working on improving this opportunity within filedbyauthor, but in the short term, if an author wants their name/domain on filedbyauthor, they can contact us directly. Otherwise purchasing your name through Go Daddy, Yahoo or others is always an option; authors can redirect those to their filedby page.
(Updated at about 1:30 p.m. to include link to Sharon Lee’s complaint—called to my attention by Chris Meadows.)
Technorati Tags: Filedbyauthor,Peter Clifton,Mike Shatzkin,Ingram Digital,Idea Logical,authors,writers,book publicity,book pr,startups
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Comments:
There’s at least one author who finds FiledByAuthor highly annoying. Sharon Lee doesn’t like the imposition of a page being created for her without her being consulted. She says,
Follow-up discussion under that entry characterizes FiledByAuthor as akin to “cybersquatting” or “blackmail.” I wonder what the FBA people would say to that?
This site is a good deal for authors. There is no risk, and — with a free Basic level membership — there is nothing at all to lose.
There are many not-so-good ways for authors, hungry for fame and fortune, to be parted with their money. At the other end of the spectrum, there are a handful of good sites, and Filedbyauthor seems to be one of the good ones — along with Authonomy, also, whose terms of service are 100% author friendly.
If you want to get me more enthusiastic about the site, then give the “Basic” level authors more control over their pages. One of my book pages says that the book has 204 pages, but it actually has 320 pages: and there’s no way for me to correct this error. (It is correct in Bowker’s ISBN database: Filedbyauthor must have used an earlier version of this database.)
If you would like my passionate endorsement, then scrap the “levels” of membership, and give all authors an equal footing. What the publishing industry needs most is the growth of Independent publishers and individual authors who self-publish — not more of the same corporate publishing of formula fiction. Give everyone an equal chance and you will be more than entrepreneurs, you will be visionaries and heroes. … It seems to me that you could do well enough by collecting referral fees from links on purchased books.
Thanks very much for the space on your site, and good luck with it.
Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks
I’d side with Michael. Authors could use a lot more “predators” like FiledBy. In a DRM context–different from this one–people have said that the real threat to writers is obscurity. FiledBy’s publicity can help, even if people stick to the free version. Not every author has the money or knowledge to do even a basic Web site on his or her own. – David
Then perhaps it should be opt-in instead of “we made a page to represent you, whether you want to join us or not”? Lee seemed to feel as though there were an implied threat that someone else could impersonate her on the site if she didn’t get in and claim her page first. (And the readers who followed up to her post seem to be unanimous in their agreement, and distaste for FiledBy.)
But, Chris, if impersonations happens, authors can complain. Let’s see if it’s a problem. Furthermore, Filedby is interested in the verification issue. At any rate, without a proactive approach, I don’t see how the concept could become reality. Meanwhile I think it’ll be great if Filedby can join the dialog with Lee and readers and see if the two sides can work out their differences.
Thanks,
David
The fact that the site includes information about existing authors would not seem to encourage impersonators. If anything, it discourages people from impersonating an author site and feeding it incorrect or harmful information.
Might as well get mad at Amazon for including information about the author or the telephone book for “squatting” on my telephone number.
The funny part is that Sharon Lee has become the most-viewed author on the site. This free site of “vultures” capitalizing on public information has probably resulted in more publicity than anything else she has ever done. Of course, that publicity springs from her outrage, but still…
Logan: The ‘threat’ is not present with either Amazon or the phone book, neither of them say “register your number with us in case someone else grabs it”. It may be a problem with wording, I don’t think that it was intended that way (I’m not that into conspiracy theories) but it is the way it comes across.
I don’t think that the site does discourage people from feeding it incorrect information. Look at the problems Wikipedia has had with that, with people impersonating someone ‘famous’, there are plenty who will do it just for the thrill as well as malicious ones.
I do wonder how many of Sharon’s visitors to the page only went there because of her blog about it, I know that I did, so she may have given the site as a whole some free publicity…
I did not have to do *anything* to prove to FiledBy that I was the Sharon Lee who writes the Liaden Universe(R) novels. All I had to do was sign up, pick a password, verify an email address, and “claim” books from a list of pre-packaged titles.
“Sharon Lee” isn’t exactly an exotic name, and there are a lot of Sharon Lees who are writers. I could easily have “claimed” five or six lists of Sharon Lee titles.
(I will say that there was only one book by another Sharon Lee in the pre-packaged lists I “claimed,” and an error I assume glitch original in the purchased database from Bowker Global. The author service at FiledBy people removed the book that wasn’t mine promptly.)
However. I do not, as I said in my initial comments, think that FiledBy is a needed or necessary service *for authors*. In fact, I find the sudden necessity to “claim” my name and my work at a website I had no intention of patronizing to be an imposition, and the existence of an “unclaimed” page to be a vulnerability imposed by an outside agency.