Month: March 2009

Affordable Advertising

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From the Publetariat Editor’s Desk: 

A major challenge facing indie authors, small imprints and freelance author services professionals is promotion. 

Advertising on heavily-trafficked sites is typically too expensive for indies and freelancers, but the more affordable ads on smaller sites may not get the traffic needed to make the investment worthwhile. 

This week, Publetariat is rolling out its paid advertising program.  Now, you can get your ad in front of the thousands of people who visit Publetariat each day for just US$32 – $75 per week when you book for a whole month, and US$50 – $100 per week when you book one week at a time. Even if you want to go crazy and book the most premium ad slot, right beneath the login block on the front page of the site, for a whole month, it’ll only set you back US$300. Ad space can be reserved weeks or even months in advance, to synchronize your ad’s timing with your book, site, product or service launch.

But that’s the pricing for just anyone off the street, we can do better for our friends.  Registered members are entitled to a 15% discount off regular rates. 

Since its launch on 2/11/09, Publetariat has quickly gone viral and already has an Alexa traffic rank in the top 3.66% of all websites worldwide.  But Alexa ranks are based on a 3 month average; since Publetariat has only been open to the public for 25 days, its adjusted rank is actually in the top 1.33%.  Publetariat is already averaging 5,000 hits per day, our RSS feed has received over 4,500 hits in the past 25 days, and average time spent on the site per visitor is 8 minutes.

To view Publetariat’s full ad rate card with booking information, click here.

Choosing Strength

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"The economy is down. You can be up.

Times are tough. You’re tougher.

The recession is depressing. You don’t have to be."

 

I received this in an email from  www.NancyDSolomon.com, a motivation coaching service, and thought it makes a good mantra. Here’s the other part :

"It’s our choice to be powerful or powerless. We need support and encouragement right now. We need to remember how strong we are, how capable we are, how invincible we are."

I’ve had a real struggle this week with depression. I’ve decided to quit watching the news. I don’t need to hear any more crap. I know I’m now going to have to work at my day job/career for as long as I breathe, that quite a lot of what I’ve saved as a small business owner has evaporated. Oh well. It wasn’t really there to begin with!

As an independent publisher, i want to put my new book out there. I wanted to get it out last fall – when the economy tanked, I felt I needed to wait.

Well, I don’t want to wait much longer. I’m determined to find a way, even if I have to go through Booksurge. As long as it gets out there!

Think Resources List – sites that have some good ideas about indie authorship

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The Indie Author Blog – forging a career in authorship outside the establishment

Indie Publishing Revolution – dispelling myths and providing information about what it means, and what it’s like, to go indie

Mick Rooney – POD, Self Publishing and Independent Publishing

Nathan Bransford – literary agent/literary blogger; yes, he works in the mainstream, but he’s very positive on self-pub

The Populist Publisher – promoting equal opportunity for authors whose books are self published or published by small, independent publishers 

Publishing Renaissance – all things indie

The Self-Published American – from self-published author R.W. Ridley, this blog provides news, insight and commentary on topics of interest to indies

Self-Publish And Be Doomed? UK Author Norman Giller Regrets Censoring His Book To Please Booksellers

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This article, by Norman Giller, originally appeared on the Sports Journalists Association (SJA) site on 2/27/09.

I sold my journalistic soul this week, and I am ashamed of myself. As a self-publisher, I over-ruled myself as the writer and agreed to allow my book, The Lane of Dreams, to be censored.

Before they would consider stocking the book, a history of White Hart Lane, Tottenham asked to see a copy. Back came the response: “In view of some of the content, we are unable to sanction it.”

I tracked down John Fennelly, their Head of Publications, who told me politely but firmly: “We do not consider it appropriate to offer for sale in our store a book that is critical of our chairman.”

Here’s just a little taster of what Tottenham objected to:

If in 2007 you were a reader of London’s only paid-for evening paper, the Standard, you would have discovered that the depth of feeling against the Daniel Levy-style of leadership could be measured in fathoms. It reached the point when the newspaper and all its reporters and photographers were banned from White Hart Lane after a series of searing columns by confessed Spurs fan Matthew Norman.

Armed with a lacerating vocabulary that would have led to many challenges back in the duelling days, Norman wrote in one Levy-levelling column: “He can act like an imbecile of a very rare order indeed.”

Now that is going for the jugular, and the sort of crippling criticism I dare not put my tongue or pen to. You must weigh for yourself if the criticism was justified, but one thing for certain is that Tottenham showed poor judgment in banning the newspaper.

For this old hack with traditional Fleet Street principles, freedom of speech and freedom of the press is much more important and vital to our society than anything that happens on a football field.

I think I deserve your applause and appreciation for being such a principled and noble defender of our hard-earned freedoms.

But you won’t find a word of it in the book.

The Norman Giller I used to be would have told Tottenham that there was no way in a million years that I would alter a single syllable. I would rather have faced a Dave Mackay tackle.

But I called a meeting with myself, and the publisher in me told the writer: “It will make no economic sense for us to have the book banned by Tottenham. We need the sales that the club shop will give us. Easing out about 100 of the 85,000 words will not devalue the book in any way.”

Weakly, meekly the writer in me gave in, and the book – the censored book – will go on sale in the Spurs store. Humble apologies to Voltaire (“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”). Don’t blame me. Blame my publisher.

Publish and be damned? (Duke of Wellington). Publish and be doomed, more like.

The Lane Of Dreams has become part of a great adventure that includes a head-to-head sales war with the redoubtable Harry Harris.

I have known, liked and respected Harry since his local newspaper days, before he developed into arguably the greatest football news gatherer of his generation. I was chief football reporter on the Daily Express when he first came into the business, and I am glad I had got out before he started shovelling scoops by the lorry load.

We have come out with identically themed books, and Harry launched his Down Memory Lane at a Mayfair bash on Wednesday. His Green Umbrella Publishers are orchestrating a vigorous promotion campaign, but I am going to try to hang on to their coat tails.

I tried to spike the launch by almost giving away my book as a £2.99 try-before-you-buy download, with everybody purchasing it getting my £18.95 book in electronic form before it’s traditional paper-and-ink publication at the start of next season.

Fighting dirty, I leaked gossip of the “book war” to another of the outstanding newsmen, Charles Sale at the Daily Mail. I was following the dictum of old boxing promoter Jack Solomons: “All publicity is good publicity, provided they get your name right.”

But Harry has got off to a flier, and his book is already showing in the best seller lists while I am still in the starting blocks.

For anybody out there interested in going down the self-publishing road, be careful, be diligent and plan every step well in advance of publication.

Read the rest of the article at SJA.

Indie Groundbreaking Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

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This piece, by Jim Barnes, originally appeared on Independent Publisher.

50 days. An offset-printed book, from concept to the street in 50 days. Unheard of, right?

Yes, it’s unheard of, but it happened. San Francisco-based Berrett-Koehler published Agenda for a New Economy, by David Korten, in just seven weeks and two days — just in time for the inauguration of President Obama.

The book questions the Wall Street bailout and argues that our hope lies not with Wall Street but with Main Street, creating real wealth from real resources to meet real needs, and returning to an economy firmly rooted in the long-term health of people and the planet.

How the Berrett-Koehler team accomplished this feat is a tribute to the energy and resourcefulness of a dedicated independent publisher, the expertise of a brilliant author, and the technical abilities of a cutting-edge book printer.

It all began back in the fall of 2008, when best-selling author Korten, whose previous books, When Corporations Rule the World and The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community are considered must-reads for understanding our global economy, was asked by YES! magazine to write an article about the big Wall Street bailout. The piece argues that the bailout was a mistake, and calls out to President Obama for a “basic redesign of our economic institutions.”

Meanwhile, Steve Piersanti, president and publisher at Berrett-Koehler, found himself awaiting jury duty in his Contra Costa County, California courthouse, and having brought along some reading material, read Korten’s article. It must have had a big impact. By the next evening Piersanti and Korten had brokered an agreement — with one important stipulation – books had to be ready in time for a major presentation by Korten on January 23 at the Trinity Institute on Wall Street.
Agenda For A New Economy
“Here is one of the most important, most timely, and most exciting books on which I have worked during my 27-year career as a book editor,” Piersanti recalls thinking. "Would such a timeframe even be a possibility?"

In order to get the book from concept to finished product as quickly as possible, Piersanti knew he would need an extraordinarily fast printing schedule. Enter Malloy Incorporated, the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based, family-owned printer that offers a new express offset printing service for this kind of "rush job."

“We understand the value to Berrett-Koehler of getting this time sensitive book out when the new administration takes office” said Bill Upton, president of Malloy. “We saw this last year with a biography of Sarah Palin when she was picked by John McCain, and the overnight success last June of the memoir by former White House Press Secretary, Scott McClellan.”

“Publishers need to capitalize on sales opportunities that suddenly materialize due to events beyond their control. We introduced Express Service for the publisher who needs more than a few hundred books right away. They come out ahead going with offset printing at Malloy versus a digital printing solution.” [Publetariat editor’s note: POD is a digital solution]
 

Read the rest of the article at Independent Publisher.

Review of Review Sites

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I came across this site today: Club Reading. It’s a list of review sites and provides "reviews" of each site.  The site itself is a division of Bards and Sages Publishing.  Heard of them? Me neither.  While their list is thorough and fun to read, I think they accuse too many sites of "trying too hard to sell the book."  Ummm….last time I looked we were reviewing books, weren’t we?  While thorough, the POD section is quite lacking, listing only 3 review sites as I write this.

Read an eBook Week

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Next week is the fifth annual Read an eBook Week.

This great promotion is being supported by a large number of companies and authors, all of whom want to see eBooks succeed and become part of the public consciousness. Some of my own clients have given me permission to offer their books as free downloads next week (http://kindleformatting.com/ebookweek.php). Do you know of any other free downloads or great eBook promotions connected to the event? Let’s create a master list here (in addition to the ones listed on the official site). Post your links in the comments.

Joshua Tallent offers eBook formatting and related services to authors and publishers, with specific emphasis on the Kindle and Mobipocket formats. Visit his website, KindleFormatting.com, for useful information and Kindle conversion assistance.

The Kindle Revolution

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This article, by Marion Maneker, originally appeared on The Big Money on 3/4/09.

Digital readers will save writers and publishing, even if they destroy the book business.

Amazon announced the second iteration of its Kindle electronic reading device last month. The next day, HarperCollins announced that it would close its Collins division to substantially reduce head count and limit the number of books it acquires to publish. It was almost as if Harper was acting out a ritual dismemberment upon hearing the news.

There was, in fact, no cause and effect between the two events—but there ought to have been. The Kindle may be little more than a novelty device today. With each passing day, though, it begins to have the potential to change the business model for writers of all types and stripes. As for Harper, the layoffs were the caboose in a long train of publishing industry firings that began last fall. Think of the causal chain here as the beginning of the beginning for digital delivery of written works and the beginning of the end for the corporate publishing conglomerate.

Why are the publishers cutting back? Sales aren’t exactly down across the board. Look at Simon and Schuster, one of the first to cut jobs: Its sales were up 1 percent in the fourth quarter (though profits were down). Nor is S&S on the defensive. In her year-end letter to employees, S&S head Carolyn Reidy exhorted her employees not to turn tail and run: "This is precisely the moment—when established routines do not yield the customary results—that we must take chances and embrace risk."

The risky part of the business—best-sellers—isn’t really the problem. Though how to manage that risk has become a serious problem for several houses. What’s eating into publishers’ profits is the slowing of backlist sales. Penguin CEO David Shanks told the industry’s news hub, Publisher’s Marketplace, that backlist sales—where they get most of their profits—were slow in October and November. In December they were back to normal based on the success of a series of vampire books, which is really backlist selling as frontlist.

Backlist is slowing because traffic at the bookstore chains is slowing. Barnes & Noble’s holiday sales were down nearly 8 percent as measured by same-store comps. Retail was bad everywhere in the fourth quarter, but for the year, those comps were down more than 5 percent. Ironically, the book chains are falling victim to the same disease that killed the independent bookstore. High-margin sales—big best-sellers that come in the back of the store in a shipping box and leave through the front with a customer in the space of a few hours or days—have migrated to other outlets. When a book is running hot, most sales don’t take place in bookstores at all. They’re at Costco and newsstands and grocery stores and dozens of other nonbook book outlets. Meanwhile, back at the Barnes & Noble, the low-margin books—those worthy backlist titles for which the store must pay a lot to store on the shelves for weeks or years just so they’ll be waiting for you when you finally come looking for them—are clogging up the system.

Think of it this way: Borders and Barnes & Noble pay lots of rent on large stores filled with backlist books in the hope that the cornucopia of titles will attract you to them. But, in truth, you go there to read magazines, drink coffee, and loaf. You’re not buying many of those backlist books when you’re there.

Forget all the myths about the book business: the parties, the poring over manuscripts, and passionate arguments. The book business is a distribution business, pure and simple. It’s about getting the words and ideas of a writer into the hands of a reader.

In the old days, publishers had to get the books piled in the bookstore so readers would notice them when they came in to buy. They also needed to get them reviewed because that’s where book buyers learned about books. Book publishers made nice profits by proving their mastery of everything from getting the cheapest printing and most efficient trucking to having clout with bookstores and reviewers.

Few readers buy books based upon reviews anymore. Listen to Farrar Straus and Giroux’s editor in chief, Eric Chinski: "Reviews don’t have the same impact that they used to. The one thing that really horrifies me and that seems to have happened within the last few years is that you can get a first novel on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, a long review in The New Yorker, a big profile somewhere, and it still doesn’t translate into sales."

What does translate into sales? A direct connection to the reader. That comes from publicity or word of mouth. What publishers pay for when they pursue the high-risk strategy is access to publicity—fame in one of its many forms or something sensational—or their sense that a book will tap into a kind of social currency. That’s everything from the next hot idea to the next book club must-read.

Continue reading this article on The Big Money.

Are Authors As Much To Blame For Publishing's Current Malaise As Publishers?

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This piece originally appeared on the Caffeine Nights Publishing blog on 2/14/09.

This may be difficult to read especially if you are an aspiring author, but are authors as much to blame for falling profits, closing bookstores and the current failure of the publishing world to embrace new digital media platforms?

Reading many forums, blogs and articles on various sites it becomes clear than many, many authors (aspiring or otherwise) wish to continue living in a cloud cuckoo land where the age old business model of paying advances and expecting a living wage on the basis of absolutely no sales exists.

The global economic crisis has led to a massive downturn in profits across the board which is striking the very foundations of companies that have been established for decades and in some cases hundreds of years.

The publishing industry has the reactive qualities of a dinosaur on diazepam and sadly it has instilled a culture of acceptance in generation after generation of authors that the only business model is one that was adopted by publishers in the 1900’s. Namely, large upfront advances based on nothing more than a hunch and a publisher’s marketing machine. Well, the world has moved on buddy and it is no longer the case that publishers can afford to continue going down this rocky road.

The Internet now exposes how authors expect this model to continue no matter what the economic climate says. I have read countless threads where authors appear to be viewing the world of publishing through rose coloured glasses. For example comments such as, “Well if they are not going to pay an advance they are just crooks, or they’re POD with no established route to bookstores.”

Yes, what a great idea, let’s just fill every bookstore across the country with hundreds of copies of books regardless of the demand and then see those books return in six months to be shipped off once more to a remainder shop or back to the printers for pulping. How environmentally sound and what a great business plan…not.

Let’s examine how well the world of publishing is coping with the current situation. Bookstores are closing, profits are shrinking, publishers refuse to look at new delivery platforms, and sales are in decline. Yet still I see unpublished authors bleating on about how a publisher is not a real publisher if he is not putting his hand into his own pocket and paying the author hundreds or thousands or even hundreds of thousands of pounds before a solitary sale has been made. Cuckoo!

Business cannot run this way any longer. In fact I don’t know of many other businesses which allow such a model to operate. Do you think Tesco or Wal-Mart would let you walk away with all their stock on the basis that one day you may be able to pay the bill?

Until we see a paradigm shift in thinking in both authors and publishers it may be that we have to face the fact that many established companies are going to collapse, never to rise. Authors, I appreciate you think your work is the best thing since sliced bread, that’s what I think with every novel I complete, but the truth is you are only as good as your sales and that is all the reward you deserve. It is the only sustainable business model, like it or not. Yes, there will always be exceptions and bidding wars. Good luck to the companies which want to get involved in that particular strand of madness.

BelleBooks, Inc.: Ringing Them Bells

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This profile of BelleBooks, by Joyce Dixon, originally appeared on the Southern Scribe site in 1999.  Now that BelleBooks is an established and successful independent press, this backward glance provides valuable insight into the beginnings of a winning start-up.

Sharing stories of their southern roots was the dream of six veteran authors, and last year that dream became reality with the partnership of BelleBooks, Inc.

The authors, each successful in her own right, include: Debra Dixon, Sandra Chastain, Deborah Smith, Virginia Ellis, Donna Ball and Nancy Knight.

One of the nice surprises since forming BelleBooks, says Virginia Ellis, “… has been the response of people to six women sticking their necks out and forming a small press. Everyone is so excited for us and that has translated into sales. I got the feeling that we were out doing something that many people dream about–starting our own company and writing what we love.”

The idea of publishing was born in Donna Ball’s Tennessee cabin, which has become a writers retreat for the group. Debra Dixon explains, "As we began discussing exactly what type of project our first title would be, we found ourselves trailing off into stories of growing up Southern. We had tears in our eyes from laughing and lumps in our throat from emotion. After that particular brainstorming session, there wasn’t much question as to what kind of project the launch would be."

"In the process," adds Virginia Ellis, "we discovered our ability to work together. This ability naturally found a creative outlet in planning a book in which we could all participate–separately but together."

The decision to form a small press over submitting their anthology to established publishing houses could be summed up in one word — control. "Both artistic and marketing control." Debra Dixon continues, "We each have agents and New York publishers and editors, not to mention the marketing departments of the big houses. Book publishing at that level is about sales, about very commercial work.

"Big publishers are leery to let an author ‘out’ of her niche. They often fear disappointing readers by not publishing more of the same. The prevailing philosophy is, ‘Readers want what they want and don’t give them anything else.’ Creative people find that very limiting. Forming a publishing house gives us control over work that doesn’t mesh with the New York publishers’ views of our niche. Control of the work allows us to experiment with cover design, marketing and voice. The entire concept is very appealing. Producing the launch title only whet our appetite for the opportunities and possibilities that exist."

There is also the element of independent southern women and a dash of pioneer spirit within these authors. Virginia Ellis speaks to this nature. "Forming our own small press seemed to be the answer to our quest to write from our hearts, not by ‘house rules.’ Also, we, the six of us, write for different mainstream publishers and have different agents. The chances of selling an anthology or any other collaborative work with so many hands on the project are pretty slim."
 

Each partner in BelleBooks brings their own talents and business experience to the group. Yet forming a small press can be daunting for anyone. "It’s a fulltime job!" states Deborah Smith. "Even with six of us sharing the duties, there’s a tremendous amount of work involved in doing it well. The paperwork, the cover art, the book design, editing, marketing, warehousing the printed books—all these things take a lot of time and effort."

"We’ve had to step out of our comfortable offices and rush out into the world with our ‘baby book’ in our hands," adds Virginia Ellis. "Working the production side, I have to deal with the actual building of our ‘widget,’ an entirely different process from writing."

Former business consultant Debra Dixon keeps the group grounded. "As President of this rowdy bunch of creative souls, my task has been the difficult one of dragging feet back down to earth. There is a real tendency when reality exceeds your expectations to take on too much, too soon. It’s human nature. So, we’re learning how to reach for the stars while taking the tiny baby steps that build a secure foundation for the company."
 

Their debut anthology, Sweet Tea and Jesus Shoes, followed the normal editorial rules known so well by these authors. Debra Dixon describes the experience, "We had discussed the kinds of stories we wanted and the areas of growing up Southern that we felt should be included in the book. Authors who felt they had a story that fit volunteered. However, since BelleBooks–even for the company founders–has an editorial protocol to be followed, stories were submitted to the editor and each author worked the process much the same way one works with the big publishers. The editor had ultimate responsibility for guiding the collection once the concept and general story ideas where hashed out. Editorial and production worked on placement of stories, etc. to create a "read" of which we are very proud."

Sweet Tea and Jesus Shoes was published in May 2000, and in that short time these authors have discovered sweet memories. Deborah Smith is touched by "the depth of appreciation for nostalgic fiction. People appreciate the stories because they recreate childhood memories."
 

Debra Dixon is naturally impressed by the business success. "In just a few short months we’ve climbed more than 2/3’s of the way to our 12 month sales goal. Reviews have been staggeringly positive. Being selected for review in Today’s Librarian and having the collection mentioned in Publishers Weekly "Fiction Notes" were definite high points. We’ve met our distribution goals in the number of accounts opened.

"We’re delighted to be an open stocking vendor for Baker & Taylor, and to be selling well through bookstore special orders with Borders, Barnes & Noble, Amazon and B&N.com. Independents have been very supportive. Virtually Southern books sold over 130 copies of the book at our launch booksigning and I believe their sales now top 200 copies. The most amazing thing is that even with all of this ‘good’ news, we’ve barely scratched the surface of distribution and book placement."

"The readers of Sweet Tea and Jesus Shoes consistently said one thing, ‘We want more!’" beams Virginia Ellis. "So, we have come up with a town they can visit anytime when they want a vacation from work or just a smile to get them through the day."

The next BelleBooks offering will be a series of books set in Mossy Creek, Georgia. Deborah Smith describes the project, "We’re very excited about Mossy Creek. Fans of Mayberry, Lake Wobegone, and Jan Karon’s Mitford series should really love this warm-hearted series. The books are set in fictitious Mossy Creek, Georgia, a mountain town whose pioneer founders proudly proclaimed, ‘We ain’t going no where, and don’t want to.’ The first book will introduce wonderful characters such as the gun-cleaning mayor, Bob the back-luck chihuhua, the sexy town police chief and his overzealous female officer."

[Publetariat editor’s note: there are now six books available in the Mossy Creek series.]

"There is something immensely satisfying when you’re not only the creator of a product but also the publisher," explains Debra Dixon. "There is no agonizing wait to find out if an idea will be picked up for a series or if those secondary characters begging for more page space will ever be given it. As a publisher, you are in a position to evaluate the project immediately and give the writers the assurance that they can build all the richness into the stories that they would like without fear. There will be more Mossy Creek books.

"At our recent board meeting in Atlanta, the most important item on the agenda was setting the ‘drop dead dates’ for final editorial revisions, production and galleys. We are delighted to report that Mossy Creek will launch Spring 2001. The reason this date is so amazing is that we’re bringing out our second title less than a year after the launch of Sweet Tea & Jesus Shoes."

There are plans for BelleBooks to publish individual works from within the group of owners. Debra Dixon points to other contract obligations, "we have to find a way to shoehorn in the writing time for a full-novel. But we hope to see an individual title in the near future."

BelleBooks is not to be confused with self-publishing. The small press plans to accept queries from writers in 2001. The editorial guidelines can be found under "for writers" on the website,  www.BelleBooks.com. Debra Dixon advises, "While I hate to repeat that oft heard phrase from NY publishing, the best way to know the kinds of voices we are looking for is to read the short story collection. And to take a good look at Mossy Creek this spring. The editorial process on Mossy Creek was quite demanding, and is probably best representative of the kind of longer fiction we’d like to see. We are contemplating a ‘best new voices of the South’ collection, but that is in the very infant stages of concept development."

Visit BelleBooks to learn more about BelleBooks and buy BelleBooks titles.  Visit  Southern Scribe for more information about Southern Scribe and resources geared toward working writers in the southern region of the U.S.

Ebooks: Fear vs. Opportunity

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This post, by Noelle Skodzinsky, originally appeared on BookBusinessMag.com on 3/1/09.  Noelle Skodzinsky is the Editor In Chief of BookBusinessMag.

People fear the unknown. It’s a simple premise that creeps into our lives more than we realize. Change brings a great amount of uncertainty … and therefore, fear. The changes happening in the book publishing industry right now are enough to prompt even the bravest publishing souls to cover their eyes, cautiously peeking through the space between their fingers to see if it’s OK to look.

It has been a challenge for Book Business to provide you with enough information on digital content without scaring off or angering the print lovers among us. But the simple fact is that whether you love printed books or not, or whether you see them existing forever or not, there is a growing market for e-books and other digital content formats that cannot be ignored. It is going to impact the future of the entire industry. 

A panel at the recent Tools of Change for Publishing Conference confirmed that. The session, called “The Rise of E-books,” shared interesting statistics and trends, and explored why e-books previously failed to gain momentum after their initial launch. David Rothman, founder and editor-publisher at news and commentary Web site TeleRead.org, said he believes the reasons for the initial failure were: the price point was about the same as for printed books; there were not many e-books available to consumers; digital rights management issues; and lack of viewability of e-reader screens. 

Addressing advances in e-readers today, Russell Wilcox, president and CEO of E Ink (the company behind the e-ink technology used in the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle, among others), said, “Every 18 months, the speed of the ink is doubling.” Today, it takes just a quarter of a second for the ink to change (e.g., when you “turn” a page). This year, he said, will also see the launch of new sizes in e-ink screens, both larger and smaller; e-readers will launch in new countries; and we will begin to see touch and pen interfaces, enabling users to input as well as output content.  

“In 2010,” said Wilcox, “flexible displays will expand … and toward the end of the year, we will see the first full-color e-paper devices. In 8 to 10 years, color will get better and better,” he added, ultimately achieving a level suitable for viewing quality, full-color magazines. 

Digital rights management (DRM) continues to present an obstacle, agreed the panelists. “DRM has to go away,” said Joe Wikert, general manager of the O’Reilly Technology Exchange division of O’Reilly Media Inc. He added that the industry needs to stop thinking of digital content as print books in digital form. “As long as we’re focused on bringing print to a digital format,” he says, “[that will be] an artificial ceiling we’re always going to be dealing with.” Instead, publishers should focus on the “great opportunities in video, linkage, etc.” 

Read the rest of the article at BookBusinessMag.com. 

Why I'm Optimistic About The Future Of Books

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In which San Francisco-based literary agent Nathan Bransford gives us all a reason to feel a little less gloomy about the future of publishing.

For the second installment of positivity week: the future.

You don’t hear very much optimism about the future these days, what with the stock market looking like the Grand Canyon and the Bachelor breaking hearts on national television (except my heart — I loved every minute).

We’re just over the horizon from the digital age of books. It will be a major transition. It is going to cause some heartache and displacement and layoffs, as it is already. We’re seeing old models break and die. And right now in the world of books, the shrinking shelf space due to closing bookstores (not to mention closing wallets) isn’t yet being replenished by the new possibilities that are afforded by the digital marketplace. Right now there are still all sorts of bottlenecks in the system that are resulting in good books not being published (or under-published) and all sorts of stress. Plus, change is scary.

(And yes, I know that paragraph may violate the terms of positivity week. Don’t worry, I’m getting to the good stuff.)

Don’t fret over your beloved paper books: they will always be around in some form. But here’s why we, as lover of books, should embrace the coming eBook future: distribution will no longer hold writers back.

Writers from the beginning of time have been faced with one essential physical challenge: you had to get the books to the people. Thus, you either owned a printing press or you had to find a publisher (who owned you). Without the publishers: there was no way to reach an audience.

This physical barrier has already eroded somewhat with POD and self-publishing, but as anyone who has self-published knows: good luck getting your self-published book into a bookstore. You may be able to print your own book these days, but without a publisher’s backing or pre-existing fame it’s ridiculously hard to find an audience.

In sum: throughout the past two hundred years, someone could write a perfectly good book, but there was one big barrier standing in between the author and their readers: publishers. As much as I’d like to think the publishing industry is always right, well, it’s not.
 

But here’s what’s going to happen in the digital era: anyone will be able to publish their book, and there will be no distribution barrier. The same eBook stores that stock Stephenie Meyer and Dan Brown will stock, well, you. Readers will be the ones who decide what becomes popular. There will be no intermediary. It will be just as easy to buy a book by you as it will be to buy the HARRY POTTER of the future. Your book will be just a few keystrokes away from everyone with an internet connection (and their tablet/eReader/iPhone/gizmo/whatchamacallit of the future).

 

Read the rest of the post at Nathan Bransford’s blog.

National Consumer Protection Week during March 1 – 7, 2009

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When people in the USA are observing National Consumer Protection Week during March 1 – 7, 2009 and Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce has organised ‘National Consumer Fraud Week’ from March 02 – 08, 2009 in Australia, I trust this post should prove useful. Together, let us try to save as many vulnerable netizens as possible, as quickly as possible and in as many ways as possible.

 

You do not need any introductions to online crimes and e-SCAMs. “Losses being incurred as a result of cyber crime are increasing at an alarming rate and now we have reached a point where people are more fearful of being a victim of cyber crime than they are affected from physical crime”, according to blogs.  In the USA, FBI records indicate that there was an increase of 25% in the money lost during 2005 – 2007 due to online fraud. While Australians have been losing roughly half-a-million dollars a month in 2005, it has been reported that we lost about a million a month in 2006 and about 36 million a year in 2007. Over the last 12 months, the Australian law enforcing agencies have reportedly seen an alarming 60 per cent increase in the number of complaints and inquires about scams, with a 67 per cent increase in people reporting money lost. That increase is no accident and does not appear to be slowing anytime soon according to security analysts and press reports.

 

It’s getting tough to borrow money too. With the credit crunch, small businesses and individuals have been turning to alternate lending sources for getting access to much needed funds for survival. And it is so easy to fall prey to the scammers who offer fake loans. The global financial crisis has significantly increased the chances of Australians falling victim to fraud during 2009, according to Mr Peter Kell, Chairman of the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce. The misery of anyone who loses job will often be compounded if his/her efforts to find a job make him/her fall to the scammers’ designs. The chain reaction so generated could end up costing our community a great extent. As unemployment rises, incomes shrink and the benefits of the government’s rebates and incentives under the economic rescue package(s) disappear, as responsible members of the community, we may automatically be inclined to claw back our spending, yet looking for more money from any source that one can find. That too in turn may make us more vulnerable to falling into the hands of scammers.

 

There are all sorts of e-mail SCAMs and they reach us under every conceivable pretext. Scammers lead their target(s) to believe that they have won millions from a non-existent lottery; landed a lucrative job but nothing more than collectors of money for the scammers; or secured a loan, grant, bursary, scholarship or financial assistance on unbelievably attractive terms despite without any paperwork until then.

 

The victims are generally believed to be naïve, technically illiterate or overly trusting. But this is not true. People from all walks of life fall victim to SCAMs. To make matters worse, most people still don’t think it will happen to them. People generally do not ‘care’ about either, until they or anyone they know, fall victim. It is sometimes difficult too, to convince a potential victim that what he/she was relying on was just a SCAM. So much has been built into the business of SCAMs globally and any inertia to recognise these facts and/or delay in creating sufficient awareness among our community through coordinated efforts could keep more people falling victim. So, the question is: As responsible members of our community what can we do to help our fellow netizens before criminals go to whatever lengths they can to trick the most vulnerable people amongst us?

 

We may refer them to umpteen advisories, blogs or web sites as usual. There are commercial products offering varying degrees of security too. However, the efficacy of those solutions depends on the ‘awareness’ of the user concerned, because you have to take the call ultimately on what is a real deal and what is a potentially fraudulent product or service. Our efforts to educate our community have not been very effective so far, if news reports are anything to go by. One can’t really prevent people falling victim to online SCAMs without adequately educating the community. It is also true that creating awareness alone won’t solve all incidents of people losing money from SCAMs. But adequate awareness when created among people, they will consciously seek the benefit of all other tools such as advisories and technology.

 

Please feel free to contact me for any further information and/or clarifications. Also please feel free to pass this message around.

 

Thank you.

K P Manikantan

Getting started in self-publishing: a few frequently asked questions

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While I’m new to the idea of independent self-publishing in this industry, I’ve done quite a bit of work in the indie roleplaying game industry as an editor and working with folk like the Indie Press Revolution (a bit like lulu.com for game designers).  The market’s quite a bit smaller, but unlike traditional publishing, ‘indie’ in that context actually carries a more positive cannotation — and they’ve been doing it very successfully for a decade or more.

 

In poking around and doing my research on this new (to me) industry, I’ve found that a lot of the questions that newcomers to the indie game publishing industry have about publishing and marketing their own work are similar to the sorts of questions that a newcomer to fiction/nonfiction self-publishing might have.

 

I’ve gone to some work to compile answers to some of the more frequently asked questions that a newcomer might have about how to "do this thing" — the resulting post is pretty long, but hopefully helpful to… well, someone.

 

Enjoy or ignore at your leisure, and if someone with specific experience in self-publishing as it pertains to fiction/nonfiction finds some of these compiled answers inaccurate, incomplete, or outdated, PLEASE FEEL FREE to add a post with your own expertise and input.

 

Finally, please don’t take too much offense with me for the opinions expressed in the answers below.  These answers are not ‘mine’ in any sense, other than the fact that I collected them from various people, as they provided answers.  Come to that, the questions aren’t mine, either.   I’m just providing some information that I think is valuable — and maybe starting a conversation or two.

 

Printing Books with traditional methods

 

1. I’ve heard there’s certain "price breaks" for printing books. (ie. printing 500 is cheaper, per book, than printing 5) Typically, where are the major price breaks?  When people have a print run done, how many do they normally have printed?

As a rule of thumb there really aren’t actual price breaks in the technology itself. It’s just that setting up the print run costs X dollars, paper costs Y dollars and printing that one page costs Z dollars. In a traditional set-up (off-set or the sort) X is high, Y is the same it is for everybody else and Z is minuscule. In a digital printing set-up X is low, Y is the same and Z is high. This means that if you plot the costs of printing a project into a graph with run length on the x-axis and cost on the y-axis, you’ll find that the traditional method starts higher (that set-up cost X is the same even if you print just one copy) but goes up slower (Z is very low, mostly it’s Y that increases the cost as your paper consumption increases), while the digital printer starts lower (X is smaller, and can be brought down further by smart preparation; some printers go so far as to include the set-up costs in the page costs, such as Lulu, which results in almost no price breaks with longer runs) and goes up faster (because Z is considerable, unlike in the traditional set-up).

 

"Price breaks" in this technical context are an artificial phenomenon that comes about with individual printers who simplify their costs structure for the customer. Lulu, for example, gives you a very slight discount for printing what, 25 copies of your book? It’s not that 25 is somehow cheaper to make than 24, they just decided to set up their pricing like this. Other printers have different systems, different work flow, different practices, different profit margins, different customers and different pricing.

 

The natural follow-up question is when a traditional print run should be chosen instead of a digital printer. The answer changes with time as both basic types of printing equipment is developed, and the state of the economy changes to favour different companies. But a very, very rough rule of thumb might be that the break-point between the two technologies might reside somewhere around 500 copies of whatever you’re printing. At those numbers you should definitely start including chosen traditional printers into your quote requests, while considerably under that it’s unlikely that they could match the prices of digital printers.

 

When putting that to practice the indie designer will find that he will do well to be very critical of the purported advantages of large print runs. The question of how much to print depends on your personal goals so much that we can’t go into it here, though.

2. How much, per book, does it cost?  How much more do color books cost?  How much more do hardcover books cost?

 

If you’re printing just one copy of your book (POD) and it’s a typical book, expect it to cost something like 5-10 dollars depending on its size. Quadruple or quintuple that for full color, roughly. Add something like 5 dollars for hard covers or otherwise special binding. When printing in quantity, these prices go down considerably. When printing a couple of hundred copies of your book with a digital printer, expect to pay considerably under five dollars per copy if it’s one-color and perfect bound. When printing the same book in the thousands, expect the cost to be even lower.

 

The costs savings you get for a larger print run have diminishing returns because the "savings" we see in per-copy cost are really that set-up factor X distributed to more copies of the book, and you can’t really spread it out forever – at some point you’re just looking at the real variable costs of producing the book when you’re doing such a large print run that the X factor fades into irrelevancy in the cost structure. If setting up the printer costs $500 and printing one book costs $1, then we’re going to say that printing that one book costs $501 even when in reality you just paid for setting up the printer for the most part. If you printed a hundred copies at once from that printer, you’d get a per-copy cost of $6, out of which $5 is set-up cost. If you printed a thousand copies, your cost per copy would be $1.5, out of which $.5 would be set-up cost and the majority would in fact come as variable costs. This is why the cost of one book goes down when you print larger runs – but you can never get below those variable costs.

3. What’s the process of, finding a printer, negotiating a print run and arranging delivery, like?

The normal method for finding a printer for your work is to go comb the internet for the sort of printer you want – POD, digital, traditional – write down their contact information and then send a bunch of email with the heading "Quote Request" or similar. In this email message you then describe your project in terms of printing practice – ideally you’ll already know what information to give, but presumably the printer will help you by asking clarifying questions if they want your business. You send many of these messages, at least a dozen, and then compare the responses, perhaps by setting up a table out of them. This allows you to cross out the companies that are asking highly inflated prices compared to the competition, as well as those that gave suspiciously low quotes. Out of the rest you then pick the printer that gave a reasonably low quote and seems professional, responsive and trustworthy.

 

You can make the above process a bit easier by using a printer mailing list to send you quote. The Internet is full of mailing list services where printers list themselves and where you can go and give your project details – they’ll automatically mail the data to hundreds of printers, out of which the ones who think they can service your needs will send you their quotes

 

Another thing that might help you are the quote request forms many printers have on their web pages. These are useful if you don’t know much about printing and therefore don’t know what your request should include. I don’t use forms myself because they limit the sort of information I can give, and it’s slow to type out the same information in the slightly different forms of many different printers when I could just be mass-sending one email message to many different printers. But if you know that you won’t be asking for quotes from many places, then using the form might be a time-saver.

 

To do this printer-finding correctly you’ll need to know the sort of printers you’re interested in technology-wise and otherwise as well: you know how many copies of the book you want, so based on that you’ll choose either POD, digital print or traditional printers in your search, or perhaps two of the categories if your project might work with either. (The difference between the first two is that a POD printer is specialized in printing just one copy of the book at a time and also provides a fulfillment service, while a digital printer just does small print runs in the dozens or low hundreds using digital printing equipment – the equipment is often very similar in these companies, their business models just differ.) You might also have recommendations or warnings from other publishers with similar needs, which might help you specifically target some printers with your quote requests. Most of the time the printer websites won’t give you any solid data about whether they can or can’t print or bind the work you want, so in general you’ll have to just send them your quote request (a form letter, essentially – no need to personalize it) and see what they think themselves. The printer is the foremost authority on what they can or can’t do for you.

 

When you get responses, you’ll get to see why the general opinion of online printers is somewhat low. Many printers won’t answer you at all because they lost your mail or are not interested in the project – those are fine, you won’t be missing them. Some printers will send you quotes that are very high; this might be because their set-up is simply inefficient for the sort of project you’re proposing, or it might be because their "expertise" lies in doing over-priced print jobs for amateurs who don’t realize that they should ask around before committing to a printer.

 

Some printers will ask you bad questions, some will act like you made a binding contract with them just by asking for their prices, some will contact you a half year after you sent the request, some will be obviously incompetent, and so on – it’s a jungle out there and your job is to find a printer that actually can do the work for you. I recommend that you favour printers with intelligible, prompt customer service highly, even over a slightly cheaper alternative. It’ll be invaluable during the printing process if you have chosen a printer that actually reads emails and answers questions. A traditional warning sign is if you write a message with several questions and they only answer the first one.

 

Digital printers especially have very widely varying conceptions of quality and professionalism. You might find that after you’ve chosen a printer, you will return to the quotes in a couple of weeks after it’s become obvious that the printer you chose either can’t stick to the schedule they promised or can’t print the quality of work you require. Always demand a proof on paper from a printer you’re working with for the first time! It’s literally possible that a printer can’t print your work because they don’t know how to change the raster setting of their machine to print acceptable greyscale images, for example.

 

You will find very, very few POD operations still around that will do the work on credit. The ones that did before have all gone out of business.

 

With a traditional printer, working on a half down, half net 30, the half down largely covers a printers up front investment. If they never saw the other net 30, they would be close to break even on the project, less their profit margin and maybe taking a hit on some of the labor. And if an account goes past due, you are usually talking about an amount large enough to go after, legally, in some fashion.

 

With print on demand, the amounts we talking about are typically in the hundreds and for many smaller orders, under $100. When an account as such goes unpaid, its such a small amount it doesn’t make any sense to chase after it legally, as the cost to get that recovery outstrips the amount to be recovered. And if the POD took nothing up front, they are out not just the labor, but the cost of the paper, printing and shipping too. This is the quick road to business failure for a POD.

 

One thing a POD (or any digital printer) should be able to offer is a proof or a small enough order that it can serve as a proof. If you are unsure about the quality of a POD, leave yourself time to do a small test order first, so you can see what you are getting before committing to a somewhat larger order.

 

As for delivery, the normal procedure is for you to include the rough target area of the delivery in your initial quote request. Then the printers (or at least the marginally competent fraction therein) know to include the costs of their chosen courier into their quote.

How much space does 1,000 books take up?

Space requirements will very much depend on the size of the book. For 2000 copies of a 100 page digest book, the whole print run would come in about 16 boxes, each about the size of a 5,000 sheet case of copy paper. Space wise, that could all be stored packing boxes under and on top of a decent sized office desk, though stacked 3-4 boxes high.

 

Now, by comparison, a similarl sized "case" of a few of larger hard covers have about 20-25 books in them. These would be 200-300 page 8.5" x 11" soft or hard cover books. So a print run of 1000 of those, at 25 per case, would take up about 40-50 cases. This is still very much able to be fit into 1 stall of a two car garage.

 

Honestly, if you were to invest in some heavy duty, multi shelf wooden shelving that would let you partition your 1 car stall into multiple storage slots (recommended that the lowest shelf be at least 6" off the cement floor to avoid small floods or even just moisture from the cement transfering to the boxes and books), my bet is that you would have storage room for up to 6 to 8 such print runs, especially assuming a sell down in on hand inventory on the previous ones printed over time.

Now, that said, a 1,000 print run in todays environment is some long, hard work to sell. Doable, but not easy. You might be better served starting a bit smaller. Its always tempting to print larger to get a better per book price, however, an important accounting principle that MANY new indie writer/publishers fail to grasp is that you ony get the write off the cost of a product once it is sold and you only get to write off its "cost of goods sold". The important part there is cost of goods "SOLD". Example.

 

You print 500 books at $4.00 per book. Cost $2,000 to print. You sell all 500 books, so your cost per book "sold" works out to be the same $4.00 per book you paid to have printed.

 

Or you print 1,000 books at $3.00 a book. Cost you $3,000 to print. You sell 650 of them. In this case, your cost of goods sold is NOT $3.00, its that $3,000 you spent on printing divided by the 650 units you sold. Basically $4.62 per book sold.

 

So, printing "more" to chase after the better price per book is not necessarily actually cheaper. Depends on how many you can ultimately sell. The difference between those two scenarios also has tax implications and the second scenario will end up costing you more still.

5. Should you have a distributor handle receiving and storing the books, or self distribute?

 

A distributor wouldn’t be what you’d want for the purpose of initially storing your books, most likely. Rather, you’d want a storage and fulfillment service.

 

The reasonable limits of a "garage operation" start to overflow when you’re talking of a thousand-copy print run. A couple hundred copies of a book you’ll still store comfortably at your home, but more than that might require some sort of semi-professional arrangement.

6. Is there a lot of specialized experience I’d need to not be totally in over my head?

 

The part you’ll need knowledge about is the layout and printing process, because you’ll need to be able to make the correct choices for your project when it comes to printer services. You can get somewhere by getting a responsive printer that cares enough to explain things to you, but probably your best bet is to work closely with somebody who’s done it before and ask them to help you with drafting your quote request and other such technical details.

PDF Distribution

 

How expensive is it to run a server where people can download and redownload a PDF they’ve purchased, yourself?  How much does a site like SmashWords charge to sell your PDFs?

The cost of having a basic web site is pretty small – tens of dollars annually. Having a specific domain increases the costs somewhat. Setting up PDF delivery is technically intensive, but not expensive. So you could pay somebody to set it up for you, or you could learn the technology yourself, or you could use an existing service to manage your pdf downloads for you – using an external service can be very cheap, a minor expense. So overall I’d say that expense is not something you should worry about when it comes to selling pdf files. Heck, if your sales are low-intensity, you could just email the pdf files yourself to your customers.

 

I haven’t used any of the sites like SmashWords, so I’ll leave someone with more experience to answer that; I can’t tell you offhand what their cut is.

What About The Readers?

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This article, by Hugh McGuire, originally appeared on The Huffington Post on 2/25/09.

To get the right answers, you have to ask the right questions.

Book publishing has many conundrums to solve in the coming decade, and not a week goes by without a long, thoughtful article in some major magazine about the impending collapse of the industry and its myriad causes: ebooks, Youtube, greed, television, gaming, big advances, returns, amazon, pirates, the Decline and Fall of Civilization.

The articles all revolve around this central and troubling question: "How can publishing maintain its financial viability when fewer people are reading books? Especially when everyone wants everything for free?"

This is going to be a tough question for publishers to answer, but it misses a more fundamental question, which is: "What do readers want, and how can we best provide it?"

I don’t mean: "What books do they want to read," but rather, "What can we do to help people read more books?"

Tools of Change … for Readers?

I recently attended O’Reilly’s Tools for Change in Publishing conference, a yearly gathering of publishers, technology providers, developers, thinkers, visionaries. The TOC conference is built around technology, with an objective to help "decipher the tools of change in this industry and help cut through the hype for a more profitable future in publishing." In 2009 the focus was decidedly philosophical, not technological: what is the future of the book, and how might publishers build successful business models around the coming changes?

No firm answers came from the conference, but there were many glimmers of possible futures, with highlights from Peter Brantley, who examined books in the network, Jeff Jarvis who postulated about the Googly book, Cory Doctorow who skewered DRM as bad for readers, bad for business, and Sara Lloyd, who brings a reasoned and forward-looking publisher’s perspective on digital.

Still, one thing that worried and puzzled me was how rarely the reader was mentioned at TOC. There was talk of the future of the book, the network, Google, and self-publishing models. And of course DRM. But the reader was largely absent.

Tools of Change … for Readers?

One of the problems for publishers is that they have never had much to do with their readers. Their clients, traditionally, have been book stores, who in turn managed the relationships with readers. In a time of limited media choices and abundant readers that probably works. But now that book reading is competing against so many other information-based leisure activities (the web and the Wii, to name two), the makers of books need to have a more intimate understanding of what readers want. Outsourcing your relationships with the people who are your reason for existence is probably a bad idea when your business is in turmoil.

What kind of business runs without constantly questioning how it can best serve it’s clientele? The answer, especially when consumer choice has never been so great, is probably: a business that’s going to have trouble surviving.

Read the rest of the article on The Huffington Post.