TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘self-publishing’ Category

By Joanna

I posted some earlier comments from Patricia Ryan (pictured at the left), who is part of a wave of emerging self-publishers who are releasing not new books, but rather, their own print backlists. Patricia was kind enough to answer some further questions on how she went from published category romance author to self-publishing indie e-author. Enjoy!

THE EXPERIENCE OF PRINT PUBLISHING

Patricia began writing category romances in the early 90′s. As she explains: “I had read a bunch of category romances that didn’t do much for me, a few that were really pretty good, and one–The Black Sheep, a Silhouette Desire by Laura Leone (Laura Resnick)–that was terrific–witty, sophisticated, character-driven, well-crafted. It made me realize that some really excellent writers were working in that sub-genre, inspired me to write at the top of my game, and gave me a sincere appreciation for that kind of book”

The one frustration she has involved the series books. Many publishers would declare a book out of print as soon as sales slowed, which meant that readers who discovered a series with a later book could often not find the earlier ones in print so they could go back and read the whole thing. One of her primary motivations for getting back control of the backlist was to satisfy these readers and make sure that someone who wanted to real the whole series from the beginning could do so.

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By a TeleRead Contributor

In writing the following article for Teleread, I followed the example of others; providing facts and figures, links and information that fellow writers might find useful or interesting. When I started researching the subject, reliable data was scarce or obscured by misinformation. Throughout the journey, I will reveal what works and what does not – what I do right and what I screw up. It is all about eBooks but its focus might surprise you.

I have a ridiculous dream. I’m an unknown author, homeless, almost penniless and I want millions of people to read my novels. Before you feel sorry for me you should know that, although the homelessness is real and occasionally tough, it is also a self-inflicted writing adventure – a strategy that I embrace for however long it takes. I can afford to live like others only if I give up the dream. I’m not going to do that. In making such a choice, it concentrates the mind. I am free to write, free to take risks and free to fail.

Laggan – Inspiration for Creggan Cottage in Dreamwords

So, what to do with that freedom? How do you even start getting people to read your work? The new electronic landscape will change everything but we’re at that awkward, transitional phase. Here, in the UK, we are a year or two behind our US cousins. I ordered my Kindle on day-one, and saw my first UK Kindle ad on TV yesterday. The rate of change is accelerating as fabulous new devices fight for your money but it will take time to build. Right now, print is king and so I decided to find my future eBook readers by using the only universal format guaranteed to work in every UK household – paper.

The irony is inescapable and it would be easy to mistake this move as a step back to the old. It is not. I was keen to use the lessons the Net has taught us about social networking, trust, word-of-mouth, fear of theft vs obscurity and to find out if these ideas would translate into the real world with 10,000 trade paperbacks. To fully explain what I’m doing and why, I should put it into context:

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By Chris Meadows

The Bookseller has a post looking at decisions by a number of “stranded” established children’s authors to follow in the footsteps of writers like J.A. Konrath and Seth Godin to publish on their own or through smaller presses rather than the traditional publishing houses that had previously published them.

"A number of established authors are not being published who would have been published five years ago and are looking at different ways to market,” [children’s author Lucy Daniel Raby] said.

Raby has bought back the rights to her Nickolai of the North series, which she now publishes herself through Tinkerbell Books.

The article refers to the traditional publishing houses as “risk-averse” but does not really go into any level of detail as to why these “stranded” authors are not being published through them anymore. It would have been interesting to have that information as background for the rest of the piece.

Children’s books seem to be in a bit of an odd position, given that about the only time these books seem to impinge upon adult consciousness is when they become runaway bestsellers like the Harry Potter or Twilight books, or are made into movies like Percy Jackson. I’m not sure I could name more than one or two other children’s book series, and that’s only because I’ve seen them in bookstore displays.

I wonder if that has something to do with why publishers are so “risk averse” right now? It must be tricky marketing books to kids when adults are the ones who for the most part hold the purse strings.

By Chris Meadows

Paul Carr’s current “NSFW” column (which is entirely safe for work; NSFW is just the column name) focuses on the recent announcements by authors such as Seth Godin that they are leaving traditional publishing to go it alone. Carr, who is very happy with his publishers (though it’s possible one of his publishers might not be happy with him), devotes a quite lengthy article to rebutting point by point the arguments in favor of ditching publishers.

The article is quite long even to summarize, but a few of the points Carr covers include the issues of quality and editing, the added credibility that comes with having had books issued by professional publishers, support for things like marketing and copyright enforcement, and the differences in relative market size.

Carr suggests that leaving publishers in favor of self-publishing makes sense for only two sorts of people: those who are already skilled marketers, like Godin, and those who fear they’re about to be dumped by their publishers anyway and want to save face by claiming to be “innovating”.

I suspect that, as with most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. In any event, the next few years should reveal just how much sense self-publishing makes for most people.

Related:

• Is the Open Content Alliance too corporate?
• Paul Carr slams Amazon one-star protest reviews
• Writer Paul Carr says the iPad will kill the Kindle – and reading too

By Jason Davis



1. Smashwords

Smashwords continues to kick goals in self-publishing. In an increasingly crowded market, I just don’t think you can beat Smashwords for ease of use, price (you can’t do better than free), and distribution. Fling your words to Smashwords, and you’ll quickly end up with an ebook in multiple formats, playable on all devices, and distributed to iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and the Diesel eBook Store. Soon they’ll be adding Amazon to the already impressive list.

The website could use prettying up, but this offering is the best one-stop-shop free solution out there.

Other services include Lulu, Scribd, iUniverse and Amazon Digital Text Platform, but none of these has the reach, ease of use, low price, and cross-platform openness of Smashwords.

NB: As an experiment, soon I’ll be self-publishing something I have up my sleeve, and monitoring both what distribution channel sells how much, and whether ebook beats pbook. More on that soon.

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By Chris Meadows

The Bookseller’s FuturEBook blog has an interesting look by Chris Meade at how today’s authors have more power to promote themselves and build relationships with fans than ever before, leading to a new viability for self-publishing.

The Amplified Author of 2010 (term coined for authors engaged in the social web) can sit at her desk and speak directly to her readership through a blog, can expand that circle of readers gradually by using Twitter and other social networks, can find an active readership interested in offering criticism and ideas, can publish work through print on demand and put it on the global bookshelf of the web, can set out her stall of publications and services on a website where she can also offer to run workshops, teach, write reviews, perform; she can take her work to publishers and broadcasters able to give detailed evidence of who her readership is and what they think of her work. Once she makes it into print, she can use her own energies and laptop to promote her masterpiece.

Of course, we have already heard much of this sort of thing, especially in the wake of established authors such as J.A. Konrath or Seth Godin deciding to go it alone and move away from traditional publishing. But the FutureEBook piece explains that thinktank if:book (The Institute for the Future of the Book) is creating “a new kind of hub for writing in the community".

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By Chris Meadows

As I mentioned back in July, I’ve posted a couple of stories to Scribd just by way of trying out the service to see how well it worked. I’ve since ended up with a number of Scribd subscribers (including Slate writer Farhad Manjoo; I’m not sure entirely why), and my stories have been read a little over 70 times each.

Now I’m wondering whether I should try writing another story—the idea for which came to me in a dream the night before last—and posting it there, for sale for $1. Would anybody buy it? How effective would promotion of it be through social networking and blogging? Would anybody care enough to check it out?

It would be an interesting experiment. And to be honest, the idea of making money from it is probably the only way the story would actually end up getting written. At the moment, I have so many demands on my time it is hard to find any excuse for leisure—and certainly writing a story would feel like a leisure activity otherwise.

And if Greg Stolze was able to get away with charging $1 for a 3,000 word story, perhaps I could get away with charging that much for one that will almost certainly be longer. (Perhaps I could get fancy and do a Storyteller’s Bowl/Ransom Model sort of thing, and say that if I sold 100 copies I’d make it free to everyone. If only 70-some people read my free stories, it doesn’t seem likely I would make that many sales.)

Maybe this weekend I’ll write it down and give it a shot.

By Chris Meadows

A couple of days ago I mentioned Seth Godin’s departure from traditional publishing, and talked about whether “anyone” could do it. Certainly, from recent reports, Joe Konrath has been doing well with self-publishing through Amazon.

Publishing industry consultant Mike Shatzkin has also taken a look at Godin’s announcement, and whether in fact “anyone” can make that same transition, and has some interesting conclusions.

Shatzkin notes that self-publishing does have some significant advantages, for authors who can make it work. Earning a larger percentage of the sale price, for one; the additional flexibility in how to market and reach an audience for another. But he also points out that publishers may actually be reaping what they have sown.

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By Chris Meadows

Galleycat has a tidbit from a forthcoming Mediabistro feature on marketing guru Seth Godin: Godin has pledged never again to publish books via traditional publishers. Godin said, in part:

I like the people, but I can’t abide the long wait, the filters, the big push at launch, the nudging to get people to go to a store they don’t usually visit to buy something they don’t usually buy, to get them to pay for an idea in a form that’s hard to spread

Godin is no stranger to direct-to-consumer e-publishing. In 2001, he released his book Unleashing the Ideavirus simultaneously with its print publication as a free PDF and Peanut Reader (eReader) e-book. Apt, since the book was all about the idea of harnessing the power of Internet memes in marketing. (It’s still available as a PDF, but alas, the book vanished from my shelf after Peanut Press stopped distributing it for Godin. Even Godin said he didn’t know what had happened to it when I emailed him. I wish I’d thought to archive a copy of it.)

More recently, Godin has said that what the e-book biz really needs is a $49 “paperback” Kindle. He may be right—and sooner or later, the prices will fall to that level regardless. Certainly, a $49 Kindle would provide a way for a lot more people to read the e-books Godin is going to publish in the future.

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By Paul Biba

The Self-Publishing Expo will be held on Saturday, October 2, in New York City. Among the panelists will be Mark Coker of Smashwords.

This year they have an interesting manuscript evaluation session:

How can you maximize your book’s sales potential and make it the best it can be? Get clear-eyed, objective feedback* from professionals who’ve evaluated thousands of manuscripts and queries over their careers. In focused one-on-one sessions, the pros of the Consulting Editors Alliance (www.consulting-editors.com)—a group of highly skilled editors, each with a minimum of 15 years’ New York publishing experience—will comment on the commercial appeal and marketability of your book’s plot or subject matter, identify potential strengths and weaknesses, and brainstorm market positioning and strategy. A good editor is there for you. Let us help your book take the giant step from worthy to absolutely compelling.
* NOTE: Participants will submit a 1- to 2-page synopsis and a 5-page sample in advance of the session.

Tickets are $100 prior to September 10 and $125 thereafter. You can find more information here.

By Paul Biba

The Vancouver Sun is reporting that Oscar’s Art Books has installed an Espresso Machine. They are the first private bookstore to own a Machine in Canada and it is one of only six machines across Canada.

For those who do not have a built-in market to sell their books but still want to give self-publishing a try, the Espresso Book Machine is a less expensive option. Printing a book at Oscar’s costs $3 plus three cents per page, and an initial setup fee of $99. A 100-page book costs $5.99 to print. …

Timing is another advantage of the new machine, which cost the bookstore $120,000. “We’re able to give someone a physical product in their hand in five minutes,” Bechta said. Traditional publishers can take much longer to deliver a book.

Production speed is what led Arsenal Pulp Press, a Vancouver-based independent publishing company, to use the machine at Oscar’s Art Books. The company uses the machine to print advance copies of books that will be released in the fall, Arsenal marketing director Janice Beley said.

“Our turnaround time was around three weeks for advances. Now I can get them within two to three days.”

By Chris Meadows

Intellectual property lawyer and scholar Mark Lemley has released a draft paper looking at the history of the content industry’s claims that disruptive new technologies were going to lead to the “death” of the industry. Starting with painters decrying photography, and moving on through recorded music, broadcast radio, cable TV, and beyond, Lemley highlights the industry’s repeated alarms that the sky was falling.

Lemley writes:

The content industry, it seems, has a Chicken Little problem.

It may, in fact, be the case that the sky is falling. But, if you claim that the sky is falling whenever a new technology threatens an existing business model, the rest of the world can be forgiven for not believing you when you claim that this time around it’s going to be different than all of the other times. Now, let’s be clear, each one of these technologies changed the business model of the industry. They caused certain revenue streams to decline. But they also opened up new ones.

He then offers a number of suggestions of ways the content industries could cope with their current disruptions (free websites vs. paid newspapers, the DVR, piracy, etc.). These include compulsory licensing, taking advantages of lowered production costs, giving consumers a reason to spend extra money (using the example of the 3D movie version of Avatar offering an experience consumers just couldn’t get at home), building a relationship with fans, and providing convenience to users.

One disruption Lemley doesn’t mention, but to which his tips could just as readily apply, is the e-book versus printed book uproar that has kicked into high gear over the last couple of years. A number of self-publishing authors are using some of Lemley’s very suggestions—pricing their books low to take advantage of lowered production costs, and building relationships with their fans to promote their sales.

It’s funny that the content industries seem locked into the same pattern that has played out over so many years. Will they ever get a clue and start trying to work with the tide rather than taking up arms against it? We can only hope.

(Found via Techdirt.)

By Chris Meadows

On GigaOm, self-described midlist author Simon Wood sets out his opinion on e-books. He notes seeing a number of authors being either pro-e-books at the expense of print, or vice versa, while to his mind e-books are simply another revenue stream. It makes sense to make them available for people who want them, just as it makes sense to do the same for printed books or audiobooks.

(As if to prove his point, an advertising box in the middle of the article included links to two of his e-books on Amazon, for 99 cents or $1.99 respectively. Oddly, it also included a link to a $9.99 e-book by John Shirley. Presumably it was auto-generated by the article’s context, not created specifically because Wood was writing the story.)

Wood likes the lack of barriers to entry for publishing e-books, and the ability to self-publish rather than having to find a publisher. He also points out that it is a great thing to do with the backlist of books whose rights have reverted to him, or which did not have the electronic rights sold to begin with.

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By Joanna

Cory Doctorow and Joe Konrath are not the only e-pushing authors with already-planted stakes in the dead tree world! A growing cohort of Smashwords authors established writers who have regained rights to some or all of their backlist titles and have chosen to e-issue it themselves. A recent encounter I had with Patricia Ryan, who is one of them, first alerted me to this growing trend.

THE BEAUTY OF THE INTERNET, PART 1: AS A MATCHMAKER

Ryan found her way to me through a recommendation a Mobile Read user made to me when I was looking for some new titles. I had some Paypal balance to burn and did not want to incur transfer fees, so I wanted some Smashwords recommendations. I was especially interested in books that were either part of a series (so that I could have more than one to read if I liked it) or were non-fiction or historical-based so that I might get immersed in a world and maybe learn something. Patricia Ryan’s mystery novels, set in the 19th century, fit the bill perfectly.

THE BEAUTY OF THE INTERNET, PART 2: AS A PR TOOL

Now, here is where the true beauty of the internet kicks in: Ryan had apparently set up a Google Alert on herself, and when her name came up at Mobile Read, she found out we were talking about her and came on over. She personally thanked each person who mentioned buying one of her books, addressed some concerns about formatting and sought feedback on what readers wanted to see next. Well-played, Patricia Ryan! This is the first time I have heard of someone using Google Alerts to run their own self-PR!

We had a fascinating exchange on ebook publishing, both from the reader and writer standpoints. Some highlights of our discussion (note: this is posted with her permission!) below:

MY OPENING SALVO: I really appreciate authors, especially established ones, who embrace the digital age and do not put up barriers to people getting the books. I had some issues recently…now I try to buy more often from places like Smashwords that treat paying customers like me more fairly.

PATRCIA, ON EMBRACING THE DIGITAL AGE: I, for one, have no problem embracing the digital age, which, in the two weeks since my books went up on Smashwords and Kindle, has been very, very good to me. I’m delighted to be able to offer these books at a price guaranteed to expand my readership. I’m pretty sure that when other authors realize how smart it is to self-publish their backlist for reasonable prices, there will be lots more great ebooks to choose from.

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By Chris Meadows

The Guardian has an interview with Penguin chief executive John Makinson, who also runs a small independent bookstore with his brother. Makinson is a newly converted iPad reader, carrying an iPad loaded with a number of books on a trip to India. He has a number of things to say about the iPad, and about e-books in general.

"It does redefine what we do as publishers and I feel, compared with most of my counterparts, more optimistic about what this means for us," [Makinson] says. "Of course there are issues around copyright protection and there are worries around pricing and around piracy, royalty rates and so on, but there is also this huge opportunity to do more as publishers."

He talks about wanting to make sure that e-books have additional, iPad-compatible content (such as author interviews and other multimedia). One example might be the recent iPad version of The Pillars of the Earth which included scenes and music from a TV adaptation.

Makinson is also very clear that he feels windowing—the practice of delaying an e-book release until some time after the printed release—is “a very bad idea. If the consumer wants to buy a book in an electronic format now, you should let the consumer have it."

And he also talks about disintermediation in self-publishing—authors taking their own books directly to the public—a model he says that the late Douglas Adams predicted and supported. Makinson thinks that it will not end up being very successful overall since editors are still needed to edit, publicize, and push books out to bookstores.

An interesting article, very much worth reading.

(Found via The Bookseller.)

By Chris Meadows

Reaching into the world of video games again for another point that could apply equally to e-books. (At least it’s not about Valve this time.)

Jeff Vogel is the developer behind a number of independent games (perhaps the equivalent of self-published e-books in the video game world) including the Avernum series and Nethergate: Resurrection. And, though he’s nervous about speaking up about it (because he relies on his games to feed his family, after all), he has blogged about three relatively rare cases where he’s more or less all right with people pirating his games.

Though the blog post is about Vogel’s video games, these points could apply equally to music, movies…or, indeed, e-books, if their creators felt the same way. (Though, of course, Vogel does not claim to speak for anyone but himself and his own games in his post.)

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