Month: May 2009

The Long Goodbye?

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This article, by Elisabeth Sifton, originally appeared on The Nation website on 5/20/09.

Humanity has read, hoarded, discarded and demanded books for centuries; for centuries books have been intimately woven into our sense of ourselves, into the means by which we find out who we are and who we want to be.

They have never been mere physical objects–paper pages of a certain size and weight printed with text and sometimes images, bound together on the left–never just cherished or reviled reminders of school-day torments, or mementos treasured as expressions of bourgeois achievement, or icons of aristocratic culture. They have been all these things and more. They have been instruments of enlightenment.

Once the invention of movable type and various commercial advances in the early modern era enabled printers to sell books to anyone who could and would pay for them (no longer reserving them for priests and kings), they became irresistibly popular: their relatively sturdy bindings gave them some permanence; the small-format ones were portable and could be read anywhere; and they transmitted sensory pleasures to eye, hand and brain. Children learned to read with them; adolescents used them, sometimes furtively, to discover the secrets of grown-up life; adults loved them for the pleasure, learning and joy they conveyed. Books have had a kind of spooky power, embedded as they are in the very structures of learning, commerce and culture by which we have absorbed, stored and transmitted information, opinion, art and wisdom. No wonder, then, that the book business, although a very small part of the American economy, has attracted disproportionate attention.

 

But does it still merit this attention? Do books still have their power? Over the past twenty years, as we’ve thrown ourselves eagerly into a joy ride on the Information Superhighway, we’ve been learning to read, and been reading, differently; and books aren’t necessarily where we start or end our education. The unprofitable chaos of the book business today indicates, among other things, that slow, almost invisible transformations as well as rapid helter-skelter ones have wrecked old reading habits (bad and good) and created new ones (ditto). In the cacophony of modern American commerce, we hear incoherent squeals of dying life-forms along with the triumphant braying and twittering of new human expression.

People in the book business, like the readers they seek out (a minute fraction of the literate population), hate to think that books might be moribund, and signs of vigorous life in some quarters belie the grim 2009 forecasts. Also, publishers have always mournfully predicted that the end was nigh–they must share either a melancholy temperament or sensitivity to the fragility of culture–so today’s dire predictions aren’t in themselves news. (I’m speaking here not of technical books or textbooks, which are facing their own crises, but of what are called general trade books–literature, politics, history, biography and memoir, science, poetry, art–written for the general public.) When I first got a publishing job almost half a century ago, my elders and betters in the trade regularly worried about The Future of Books, even though manuscripts continued to pour onto our desks. They worried, too, when firms changed ownership. The eponymous boss of the house where I first typed rejection letters and checked proofs sold his company to Encyclopedia Britannica in 1966; The Viking Press, which I joined in 1968, was sold by Thomas Guinzburg, son of its founder, to Pearson in 1975 and went through many permutations of a merger with Penguin Books, also owned by Pearson; Alfred A. Knopf, where I worked from 1987 to 1992, was a jewel of a firm that in 1960 had become a dépendance of Random House, in turn owned by RCA, then sold to the Newhouse brothers in 1980 and sold by them to Bertelsmann in 1998; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, which I joined in 1993, lost some of its independence when Roger Straus sold the company to Holtzbrinck in 1994, and more after his death in 2004.

All told, I’ve worked in only four firms, yet for seven different owners and in eight or nine different publishing arrangements designed and redesigned to accommodate varying corporate intentions. I have seen up close how feckless management activity can change things. Of course, now we all are acquainted with truly vast corporate fecklessness, which has brought us a world-historical economic meltdown that dwarfs everything. For publishers, it comes on top of systemic difficulties they have long struggled to resolve, mitigate or ignore–difficulties only compounded by changes that the digital realm has been making in our reading culture.

As we know, all retail businesses collapsed in September, failed to recover during the Christmas season and have been weak ever since. Book sales continued to drop in the spring, but then, they’ve been stagnant for years. It was in 2001, when the dot-com bubble was beginning to burst but before the shock of 9/11, that I first heard a morose sales director use the catch-phrase "flat is the new up." Book publishers and sellers were overextended and had grown careless, like everyone else, in the go-go years, while the digital reading revolution continued and business worsened. In the past six months, layoffs and shutterings have become commonplace.

A key element in the dissemination of books, independent of publishers and booksellers but essential to both, is the press. The simultaneous collapse of the business model for newspapers and magazines is a gruesome fact of life, and we book people keenly feel the pain of a sister print-on-paper industry, to put it mildly. All citizens should be alarmed by the loss of such a vital necessity to a democracy. But the hard numbers and socioeconomic exigencies of journalism’s huge crisis differ greatly from those of book publishing’s smaller one (though they are often conflated). Here I want only to stress that the loss of so many book-review pages nationwide is crippling all aspects of our literary life. And I mean all. Book news and criticism were fundamental to the old model of book publishing and to the education of writers; Internet coverage of books, much of it witty and interesting, does not begin to compensate for their loss.

It is taking time for the obsolescence and decay in the book world to show, given the energy and talent of so many writers, their continued devotion to book genres, the resourceful bravery of some publishers, the continuing plausibility of many aspects of their business, the pleasure and profit taken in reinforcing familiar reading habits and the astonishing biodiversity of book publishing. Not to mention the usual quotient of laziness. European publishers are happy right now because things seemed to go well at the winter book fairs in Leipzig and Paris; the London Book Fair, in April, was hopeful if meager, with strenuous, incoherent efforts made to engage with the digitized word. In America, pubescent vampire novels are selling like crazy to readers of all ages, also memoirs about cats and puppies; classics are still in demand, as are cookbooks about cupcakes, of which there are an amazing number. Books by brand-name writers continue to populate the bestseller lists (though not racking up the numbers they used to). Every week the trade bulletins report hundreds of new books being signed up, sometimes for absurd amounts of money, by dozens of publishers.

Read the rest of the article on The Nation.

Last Impressions

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This article, by Mike Resnick, originally appeared in the April 2009 issue of Jim Baen’s Universe.

I met a young man at a recent convention. He had submitted a story he thought was wonderful to Jim Baen’s Universe, and it had been turned down. Never got as far as Eric or me.

Okay, these things happen. Lots. For every would-be writer who can sell a story, there are dozens who never will. He decided he was one of them, and told me he’d wiped the story from his computer. Well, maybe he should have.

But let me give you a little hint: if you don’t have faith in your story, why should anyone else—like, for example, an editor? First impressions are important . . . but it’s last impressions that count. I’m not saying that every rejected story is a misunderstood gem, but a story that remains in a desk drawer or a computer file (or gets wiped) never has a chance of being understood or misunderstood.

Ever hear of a novel called Up the Down Staircase? It spent a year on the New York Times bestseller list, and was a major motion picture starring Sandy Dennis, back in the bygone days when she was a major motion picture actress.

That was a last impression. You know how many times the book was turned down?

88.

You know how it finally sold? The author, Bel Kaufman, showed it to her minister’s wife, whose brother happened to be peripherally connected to the publishing industry, and one thing led to another, and suddenly the 88-times-rejected manuscript was the Number One seller in the country. I guess it’s lucky that the author didn’t burn the damned thing after the 50th or 75th turndown after all.

You think that just happens in other fields?

Read the rest of the article on Jim Baen’s Universe, and if you like it, consider making a donation or signing up for a subscription.

Self-publishing Finds Commercial Niche In Digital Age

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This article, by Kelly Jane Torrance, originally appeared in The Washington Times on 5/22/09.

Headlines bring news every week of another industry failing. One, though, is doing better than ever — self-publishing.

On Tuesday, the bibliographic information company Bowker released statistics showing that last year, for the first time, more books were released by on-demand publishers than by traditional ones.

Traditional publishers released fewer books in 2008 than in 2007 — 275,232 new books, a drop of 3.2 percent. However, on-demand publishers, the route many writers take to self-publish, released an astounding 132 percent more — 285,394 in 2008.

Self-publishing used to be derided as "vanity publishing." No longer. Self-published books finally are getting more respect, thanks to two things — belt-tightening in the publishing industry and technology that makes it easier to publish and promote books electronically.

The big publishers have laid off scores of employees since last year’s financial meltdown, and at least one, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, has announced a freeze on buying new manuscripts.

"Publishers are going into hibernation right now," said Jason Boog, an editor at the publishing blog GalleyCat, to The Washington Times a few months ago. "While they hibernate, a lot of writers aren’t going to have a place to publish."

Some already are looking elsewhere. Wil Wheaton declares, "The incredible ease of distribution online and the fact that more authors — and actually, all creative people — can reach their audience and their customers more easily and more directly than at any other time in history, I think makes self-publishing an option that can be considered in the first round of choices rather than the last resort it’s been perceived as up until, let’s say, 1998 to 2001."

The writer and actor — best known as Wesley Crusher on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" — has self-published all but one of his books, which include the memoir "Just a Geek." Mr. Wheaton, who made a new name for himself as one of the earliest bloggers, researched the industry after deciding to publish eight years ago. "What I saw repeated was the truism that books sell as well as their authors promote them," he says, "whether you’re publishing yourself and receiving the lion’s share of the profits or published by a big publisher and receiving a tiny portion of them."

He thought his renown as an actor actually would hurt his chances of being taken seriously as a writer by a big publisher, so he decided to go it alone.

"The first book was an overwhelming success," he says. "If you combine ‘the long tail’ with what Kevin Kelly calls ‘the 1,000 true fans model,’ it’s really realistic and reasonable for creative people who are willing to work really hard to be successful via self-publishing, whether that’s books or music or movies." In other words, an artist can make a living selling his or her niche product to a small but devoted group of people.

Read the rest of the article, which includes some quotes from Publetariat founder April L. Hamilton, on The Washington Times site.

Why A Pre-Publication Web Presence Is Important.

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This post, from Yen Cheong, originally appeared on The Book Publicity Blog on 5/11/09.

At this point, pretty much everyone is convinced of the value of an author’s web presence.  Yay.  But I’ve seen too many authors shoot for the book’s publication date (or a couple weeks before) as the launch date for their website.

This is about four months too late.

Typically, four to six months before the hardcover publication of a book, the publicity department sends out galleys to magazine and newspaper book editors as well as to some broadcast producers and online journalists. 

[Publetariat Editor’s Note: since ‘galleys’ aren’t always applicable to the world of indie authorship, you may want to substitute ‘author copies’ for the term in this article.]

When I follow up with galley recipients, I’ll include some information about the book in the text of my email message, but it’s helpful for me to be able to link to more information online — links are an extremely effective and unobtrusive way for book publicists to provide the media with the additional details that could sell a writer or editor on a book.  They are also vital tools for bloggers whose posts are lent credibility by links that direct readers to further information.

I’m not saying the complete author website needs to be up and ready six months before the book’s publication date.  I’m not even saying the author has to have a web site at all.  But I am saying it’s a really, really good idea for *something* — a website, a social networking profile, a blog — to be accessible when galleys are mailed out.  An author without a web presence is a bit like the proverbial tree falling in a forest with no one around.

The more information a website has the better, of course, but it’s also okay also to add to the site in stages.  Realistically, busy authors may simply not have the time or the money to create beautiful websites at this stage in the game (or ever).  Here are a few quick and cheap suggestions for getting online fast:

Read the rest of the post on The Book Publicity Blog, and also see What Not To Have On Your Book Website on the same blog.

Writing 911! 5 Tips to Breathe New Life into Your Writing

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This post, by Karen Swim, originally appeared as a guest post on the Confident Writing site on 5/15/09.

Whether you write as part of your profession, or as a hobby there may come a time when your writing feels flat and lifeless.

You put the words on the page and they seem dead on arrival.

You are all out of ideas and procrastinating because you are bored and certain your readers will be too. For those “must do” writing tasks, you may get it done and the mechanics are all there but the magic is decidedly missing.

Don’t worry, you can rescue your writing from the valley of dry bones with these 5 tips guaranteed to breathe new life into your writing.

1. Adopt the tone of a character from a novel, television or even your own family (we all have “characters” in our family).

I love writing following a Grey’s Anatomy episode. The writing has a fast pace and upbeat rhythm. That rhythm extends to the writers blog, which is updated weekly by the lead writer of the episode.

I mirror their lead and write “in character” following an episode. The technique allows me to uncover a lighter tone, stretch my writing muscles in a different way, and inject my business writing with new life.

2. The mind is a wondrous thing, and engaging another part of the brain seems to allow just enough breathing room to unlock your creativity.

If you have to write a report, write a haiku instead.

Try writing the opposite of what you need to do or challenge your brain with a non-writing task such as a computer game, or puzzle.

Even 15 minutes of a different activity can be just enough to allow your mind to shift and release a fresh perspective.

Read the rest of the post, including tips 3 – 5, at Confident Writing.

Bowker Reports U.S. Book Production Declines 3% in 2008, But "On Demand" Publishing More Than Doubles

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Traditional publishing faces pivotal year of retrenching, while emergence of new technologies leads to soaring growth in short-run book publishing

New Providence, NJ – May 19, 2009 – Bowker, the global leader in bibliographic information management solutions, today released statistics on U.S. book publishing for 2008, compiled from its Books In Print® database.  Based on preliminary figures from U.S. publishers, Bowker is projecting that U.S. title output in 2008 decreased by 3.2%, with 275,232 new titles and editions, down from the 284,370 that were published in 2007.

Despite this decline in traditional book publishing, there was another extraordinary year of growth in the reported number of “On Demand” and short-run books produced in 2008.  Bowker projects that 285, 394 On Demand books were produced last year, a staggering 132% increase over last year’s final total of 123,276 titles.  This is the second consecutive year of triple-digit growth in the On Demand segment, which in 2008 was 462% above levels seen as recently as 2006.

“Our statistics for 2008 benchmark an historic development in the U.S. book publishing industry as we crossed a point last year in which On Demand and short-run books exceeded the number of traditional books entering the marketplace,” said Kelly Gallagher, vice president of publisher services for New Providence, N.J.-based Bowker.  “It remains to be seen how this trend will unfold in the coming years before we know if we just experienced a watershed year in the book publishing industry, fueled by the changing dynamics of the marketplace and the proliferation of sophisticated publishing technologies, or an anomaly that caused the major industry trade publishers to retrench.”

(Editor’s Note: Members of the news media who are interested in obtaining statistics from Bowker for specific industry categories are invited to email Daryn Teague, Bowker’s public relations consultant, at dteague@teaguecommunications.com.

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“The statistics from last year are not just an indicator that the industry had a decline in new titles coming to the market, but they’re also a reflection of how publishers are getting smarter and more strategic about the specific kinds of books they’re choosing to publish,” explained Gallagher.  “If you look beyond the numbers, you begin to see that 2008 was a pivotal year that benchmarks the changing face of publishing.”

Among the major publishing categories, the big winners last year were Education and Business, two categories that might suggest publishers were seeking to give consumers more resources for success amidst a very tough job environment.  There were 9,510 new education titles introduced in the U.S. in 2008, up 33% from the prior year, and 8,838 new business titles, an increase of 14% over 2007 levels.

By contrast, the big category losers in 2008 were Travel and Fiction, two categories in which publishers clearly saw less demand during a deep recession in the U.S.  There were 4,817 new travel books introduced last year, down 15% from the year before, and 47,541 new fiction titles, a drop of 11% from 2007.  Moreover, the Religion category dropped again last year, with 14% fewer titles introduced in the U.S., and that once reliable engine of growth for publishers is now well off its peak year of 2004.

According to Gallagher, the Bowker data reveals that the top five categories for U.S. book production in 2008 were:

1.    Fiction (47,541 new titles)
2.    Juveniles (29,438)
3.    Sociology/Economics (24,423)
4.    Religion (16,847)
5.    Science (13,555)

DOWNLOAD THE FULL STATISTICS REPORT HERE (PDF, 12KB)

Methodology
The book production figures in this news release are based on year-to-date data from U.S. publishers and include traditional print as well as on demand titles.  Audiobooks and E-books are excluded.  If changes in industry estimates occur, they will be reflected in a later published report. Books In Print data represents input from more than 75,000 publishers in the U.S. The data is sent to Bowker in electronic files, and via BowkerLink, Bowker’s password protected Web-based tool, which enables publishers to update and add their own data.

Books In Print is the only bibliographic database with more than 8 million U.S. book, audiobook and video titles.  It is widely regarded throughout the publishing industry as the most authoritative and comprehensive source of bibliographic data available worldwide, and has been a trusted source of data in North America for more than 50 years.

About Bowker
Bowker is the world’s leading source for bibliographic information. The company provides searching, analytical, promotional, and ordering services to publishers, booksellers, libraries, and patrons through national and international brands, including: Books In Print®, Global Books In Print®, Syndetic Solutions™, Pubnet®, PubEasy®, PubTrack™, AquaBrowser®, and more. In the U.S., Australia and Puerto Rico, Bowker is also the exclusive ISBN and SAN Agency and a DOI registration agency for the publishing industry. Bowker is headquartered in New Providence, New Jersey, with operations in East Grinstead, England, and Melbourne, Australia. For more company details, please visit www.Bowker.com.

Publetariat Editor’s Note: this story is a reprint of a Bowker press release.

And You Thought Royalty Involved A Crown

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This post, from Editorial Ass, appeared on that site on 5/20/09.

My mother has read and loved a particular book I edited. Last week, she called me and asked, out of curiosity, how much money that favorite author of hers might make off the book. Well, I said, there’s an advance, I said, but really what matters is royalties, but you can’t just assume those are rolling in every six months, since there’s a reserve against returns, but then there’s rights sales that are straight pocket change, but there’s a fee for the…

As I spoke, her eyebrows came down into her nose and her mouth pursed fretfully as she tried to follow me. Watching these changes come over her face, I started listening to myself and the malarkey I spoke. I realized that royalty accounting must be SO mysterious to anyone unpublished. Or published. Or anyone. I realized even I didn’t really know what I was talking about.

So here is my imperfect attempt to describe to you an author’s possibilities for making money with her/his books. I don’t claim the final word, and I welcome amendments. But I think everyone deserves to know how they might profit from their work, because it might help them make good decisions about their writing and publication processes.

Let’s try to go in rough chronological order.

The Advance
What does "advance" mean: It’s money "advanced" to you against royalties, meaning it’s a loan the publisher gives you in a lump sum under the assumption that your book will make enough money for said publisher that the advance will be recouped. This means that you will start earning royalties when and only if your book makes enough money that your publisher’s advance to you it paid back, using your negotiated royalty percentage as a marker. If your advance is $10,000, your royalty is 10%, and your cover price is $25.00, you will need to sell 4,000 copies of your book before you start making additional royalties. This is called earnout.

How the advance is divided: Either in half of thirds–usually. If it’s a smaller advance (or your agent manages to force them to agree to this), your publisher might agree to pay it in two lumps, often half on signing, half on delivery and acceptance of your final manuscript. If it’s larger advance, you’ll probably get a third on signing, a third on delivery and acceptance (or d&a), a third on publication.

The Royalties:
What are typical royalty percentages: Standard royalties for new books are as follows: 10% for hardcover, 7% (or sometimes 7.5%) for trade paperback, and 5% for mass market. Often, publishers will agree to incentive escalators (usually only on hardcovers). Here’s a very typical hardcover example:

10% on the first 5,000 copies sold
12.5% on the next 5,000 copies sold
15% thereafter

When royalties are paid: As we mentioned above, you’ll only start earning additional royalties when your advance has earned out. Supposing your book has earned out, royalties are (at most companies) paid every 6 months, in statements that go directly to agents.
 

Read the rest of the post, which includes information about ‘reserves against returns’, rights sales and some what-if scenarios, on the Editorial Ass blog.

Books Born Digital: The emerging phenomenon of books published first in digital format

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This article, from Lance Eaton, originally appeared on the Library Journal site on 5/15/09. 

It used to be that a book was published first as a hardcover, then as a lower-cost paperback. With increasingly tech-savvy consumers demanding instantaneous access to content in various formats, that publishing protocol has in the last decade changed to one in which the book in codex form often remains the focus, but digital “extras” like audio excerpts and e-chapters act as enticements toward the purchase of the hard copy. More recently, a new phenomenon has emerged, one in which a title comes first in digital form and then—if at all—in physical form.

It’s not so much a buffet-style approach to content as it is a dishing out of select content at select times and, often, at discounted prices. Though it’s still too early to assess the upshot of “digital firsts”/digital exclusives for authors, publishers, distributors, librarians, retailers, and—most important—consumers, three popular approaches dominate for serving up digital content in this manner.

Digital appetizers 

To promote the simultaneous September 2008 release of Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded in print, audio, and ebook formats, Macmillan Audio offered listeners a 40-minute downloadable audio preview along with a free audio download of his 2005 book, The World Is Flat. These prepublication digital giveaways, says Macmillan Audio publicist Liz Noland, “allowed us to save costs on printing and also focus our marketing and distribution of the free download on a more targeted audience.”

Similarly, in May 2008, Random House and Del Rey copromoted the concurrent print/audio/ebook release of the final entry in the nine-part “Star Wars: The Legacy of the Force” series, making available the first series entry as free audiobook and ebook downloads.

And building up to the November 2008 release of Stephen King’s Just After Sunset, Scribner partnered with Marvel Comics, CBS Mobile, and Simon & Schuster Audio to adapt “N.,” a previously unpublished story from the anthology, into a series of animated “webisodes” that viewers could purchase through iTunes and Amazon or download onto their cell phones.

In addition to helping to promote multiformat hardcopy releases, digital firsts can also help to bridge the gap between a book’s hardcover print and audiobook CD publications. In 2007, for example, Griffin: St. Martin’s published simultaneous hardcover print and ebook editions of Tatiana de Rosnay’s Sarah’s Key. When the book made the New York Times best sellers list, that certainly spelled a boon for any of its future iterations, but momentum was bound to be lost in the eight-month lag between the September 2008 publication of the paperback and the May 2009 release of the audiobook CD by Macmillan Audio. So, before putting out the audiobook on CD, Macmillan Audio released Sarah’s Key as a digital audiobook, in December 2008. According to Noland, that helped the publisher to capitalize on the book’s original hardcopy sales and ride the wave of its critical success.

Digital sides

Another approach publishers are taking with digital releases is bundling multiple formats together at reduced cost. Thomas Nelson recently launched its NelsonFree program, wherein consumers can purchase a title as a physical book, a digital audiobook, and an ebook—all for the combined price of a hardcover. The first two NelsonFree titles—Scott McKain’s Collapse of Distinction and Michael Franzese’s I’ll Make You an Offer You Can’t Refuse—were released in late March; another ten will follow through the end of 2009 (check news.thomasnelson.com for updates). As Joel Miller, publisher of Thomas Nelson’s business and culture division, explained in announcing the launch, “The book is, in a sense, trapped by its format. And so is the consumer—locked into choosing one format over another or shelling out scarce funds for the same book in different wrappers.”

Since 2008, Tantor Media has been offering free PDF ebooks with its MP3-CD audiobooks as part of its Audio & eBook Classics line, and Disney has been packaging standard DVDs and Blu-ray discs together with digital copies. (According to Variety, Fox, MGM, and Lionsgate will shortly also be selling these DVD/Blu-ray/digital combo packs.)

Perhaps their thinking is influenced by the nearly doubled sales of vinyl LPs in 2007 after independent music labels like Sub Pop and Matador packaged LPs with MP3 download codes, proving that bundled digital content could help spur sales of older formats.

Read the rest of the article on the Library Journal site.

Coming Soon: The Publetariat Vault

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As mainstream publishers increasingly look to successful indie books for low-risk acquisitions, aspiring authors who are frustrated by the gatekeeper system of agents increasingly look to indie authorship as a means of proving themselves and their work worthy of a mainstream publishing contract. The only problem is, the most promising indie books are lost in a vast, undifferentiated sea of material. Plenty of indie books sell well and rack up great reader reviews, but only the biggest breakout hits register on publishers’ radar.

The Publetariat Vault is the answer.

Publishing Acquisitions Pros
If there were some way to identify the best-selling, best-reviewed self-published books in any category at any given time, and learn how effective a platform each of those books’ authors have assembled to date, would you want access to that information?

Your boss says she wants a Young Adult thriller, novella length, with supernatural and romance elements, a female protagonist and the option for a series. Finding indie books that fit all these criteria in the Publetariat Vault would be as easy as checking off a few boxes, entering a few keywords and clicking a Search button. Better yet, once you’ve found some likely candidates, you could view their sales ranks (where this information is reported by booksellers), their reader reviews, synopses, excerpts, author profiles, links to the authors’ websites and blogs, and more.

It would be like having a publishing crystal ball. There’s no need to guess at which books will appeal to readers, nor which authors will take an active role in promoting their books, when you’ve got actual sales data, reader reviews, links to author platform pieces and more at your fingertips.

Indie Authors
In an effort to attract publisher attention, you’ve got a fine-looking, well-reviewed, respectably-selling book in print, and you’ve put a lot of time, money and effort into your author platform as well. Unfortunately, publishers haven’t noticed.

If there were a service designed to facilitate publisher searches of indie books, making it easy for them to find books that meet their specific needs, are well-reviewed and selling in respectable numbers, would you want your book to be listed with that service?

Your YA thriller novella with supernatural and romance elements, a female protagonist and the option for a series may be the exact thing some acquisitions person is searching for—particularly in light of your reader reviews and sales figures—, but how will he ever find it? If he doesn’t already know your name or the title of your book, there’s no Amazon, Lulu, Smashwords, or even Google search that will point him to directly to you or your book.

In the Publetariat Vault, he can find your book based on genre, keywords, recommended reading level, protagonist gender, or numerous other specific criteria or combinations of specific criteria. And once he does find your book, he won’t have to scour the ‘net to find all the other pertinent information he needs before deciding whether to contact you to request a full copy of the book for acquisition consideration. He can view everything there is to know about both the book and you in a single location: sales rankings (where this information is reported by booksellers who carry your book), reader reviews, synopsis, excerpt, your author profile, links to your author platform pieces and more.

Any contact or publication offers resulting from your Publetariat Vault listing would be strictly between you and the publisher. It would be up to you to retain a literary agent or attorney for contract negotiations and future services related to your book, Publetariat would have no rights to your material and no stake in the deal. The Vault’s only function would be to bring commercially viable indie books to the attention of publishers who want them.

The Publetariat Vault is now in development, with an anticipated launch this summer. Watch Publetariat for more information and updates, and in the meantime, post your comments and questions about the Vault below.

Sailing The Ship

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This post, from R.J. Keller, originally appeared on Publishing Renaissance on 2/4/09.

There’s been much debate recently – here at Publishing Renaissance and elsewhere around the blogosphere – about the advisability of writers offering their work online for free. This post is not intended to add to that debate. My book is already out there for free, so that ship has sailed. No, today’s post is intended to help those who have already made the decision to offer their books for free to make the most of it.

First of all, you must decide how to put your book online. Many writers post them either in their entirety or one chapter at a time to a blog, or, as it’s sometimes referred to, a “blook.” There are advantages to this, chief among them is that it’s FREE for the author. Also, the built-in comments box makes it easy to get immediate feedback, to interact with readers. The drawback is that it can look a little unprofessional if you’re not careful.

If you go this route, be sure to choose a template that’s easy on the eyes. Your readers will – hopefully – be spending hours staring at your book on the screen. Be kind to their eyes. If you decide to serialize your blook by chapters weekly, monthly, or as you write it, be sure to offer your readers an option to subscribe to a feed, so they know when you’ve updated it.

If you’ve got a little cash to spend, you can post your book on a regular website. This gives you more control over the look and feel of your online book, but it requires at least a basic knowledge of HTML and/or CSS, and is a lot more work. If you like that kind of thing (I’m getting to that point) and don’t mind the work, this is a good way to go.

You can also post your book to an existing website or blog as a downloadable file, usually a PDF. (Although I know there are other formats available.) This can have the advantage of putting your book directly into the “hands” of your readers, but it also takes control of your book out of your hands. This is a huge deal to some authors, not so much to others. If you do opt to go this route, be sure to format your book as professionally as possible and to include links to your website and/or blog.

[Publetariat Editor’s Note: you can publish your work online and make it available for free, or at a price, at Scribd or Smashwords as well.]

Read the rest of the post on Publishing Renaissance.

Jacket Copy Sells Books, So Make It Good.

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This article originally appeared in the May 2009 issue of Publishing Trends.

Would you rather read a “splendid, funny, lyrical book about family, truth, memory, and the resilience of love” or a “powerful novel” about “the strength of love and loss, the searing ramifications of war, and the mysterious, almost magical bonds that unite and sustain us”?

A “poignant celebration of the potency of familial love” or “a luminous, provocative, and ultimately redemptive look at how even mothers and daughters with the best intentions can be blind to the harm they do to one another”? More importantly, which would you rather buy?

If any of the above sounds familiar, it’s probably not because you’ve read the book described, but rather because you’ve written more than a few pieces of jacket copy of your own. How important are those little paragraphs on the inside flap of the book’s jacket, and does it really matter what they say? We wanted to find out, so we did what anybody in our situation would do and commissioned a large nationwide study of book shoppers to answer our questions. Well, the Codex Group, whom we worked with on our author website study, were the ones who actually did the study, but CEO Peter Hildick-Smith generously allowed us to tag along and even include titles of our choosing in the survey.

Codex’s Early Read Book Preview measures book and author sales potential based on book shopper purchase interest. The company regularly conducts online polls of book consumers across major fiction and nonfiction book categories. The preview measures their spontaneous “shopping response” to 50 books equally divided between current New York Times bestsellers and titles in development. The jacket copy study took place from March 30 through April 4 and surveyed 7,065 book shoppers nationwide, including 2,362 literary fiction and 1,308 women’s fiction buyers.

The job of writing jacket copy shouldn’t be foisted off on editorial assistants—it is the second most important book purchase factor (after favorite author). “I was heartened to see how much emphasis readers seem to place on real information and details about the story itself,” says Mitch Hoffman, Executive Editor at Grand Central Publishing. Hoffman helped Hildick-Smith with this survey, and the jacket copy for Grand Central’s First Family by David Baldacci scored higher than any other title in the study. “Certainly all these other pieces of ephemera, reviews, bestsellers, endorsement information, they always find that helpful, but the story is the thing. That reinforces an idea I always wanted to believe, that even in the middle of everything else we do, the book is the thing.”

Flap copy is especially important for fiction. And title and cover impact are closely related to the impact of jacket copy. If the flap copy defies the expectation created by the cover and title—if, for instance, the cover of the book leads the reader to expect a thriller but the flap copy identifies it as horror—readers are less likely to buy it.

Read the rest of the article on Publishing Trends.

Interview With Lulu Book Review Founder Shannon Yarbrough

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Shannon Yarbrough is the founder and lead reviewer of The Lulu Book Review website. The Lulu Book Review site is dedicated to reviews of self-published books published via Lulu, but as Shannon reveals in this interview, changes are in the works to allow titles from Wordclay and CreateSpace as well.

P: When did you first become interested in self-publishing, and why?

SY: In 2000, I became an assistant manager for a bookstore.  My love of books spanned back to my childhood, but this was when I first began to formally learn about the book industry itself. 

A local author came in one day to introduce himself and to promote his book. I also had a love of writing and dreamed of being an author myself, so I spoke to him and asked if he’d be interested in doing a book signing. Since I was also in charge of a book club at the store, we ended up reading his book and having a nice long discussion between him and the group. He signed a copy of his book to me as follows: “This is the best feeling in the world and I owe it all to you.  I can’t wait till you’re signing copies of your own book one day and I’m eagerly standing in line for my copy.”

I asked the author more about the publishing process after the event, and he told me he self-published his book. He used Xlibris. I knew nothing about the world of self-publishing then, but I quickly learned. Three years later in 2003, I self-published my own first book with Xlibris. So, my knowledge of self-publishing grew from there.

P: You currently have three books in print with Lulu; what would you say are the pros and cons of publishing through Lulu?

SY: There are many pros to Lulu. I first discovered Lulu in 2006 and was immediately impressed with their speed and pricing. In one night, within a few hours, I had a 2nd edition of my Xlibris book for sale on Lulu with a new cover and at half the price of the original. I fell in love with their community forums where I connected with other authors like myself, and I spent hours perusing the online book store and reading new authors.

The first book I published originally with Lulu was a collection of my poetry which I put together with images as a gift to some family members. I thought the printing quality and time it took to print and ship was great. I also liked the ability to publish both a hardcover and paperback edition cheaply. The ability to make changes quickly with no financial investment was nice too. In 2008, I purchased an ISBN for my third book with Lulu for just $99.00. This was a big savings compared to the Xlibris investment I made in 2003, even though I had to do all the work myself when publishing with Lulu.

I think the cons vary by project and by author. Some that I have experienced were printing problems. Two orders of my 2008 book arrived with the same damages months apart, tears to the spine and glue smudges on the cover. Although Lulu sent replacements to me, I had problems getting a response from their customer service department the second time because by then, they had discontinued their online chat support. I’ve heard from other authors that response time via email has taken as long as 25 days. Cuts in their staff are probably the issue here. When they had chat support, it was hit or miss for me. Sometimes, they were very helpful and sometimes they were no help at all. The rise of shipping expenses has been a huge issue lately with many Lulu authors, especially international ones. 

I, myself, have also not been impressed with the “Published by Lulu” feature. This was free for a while and gave you an ISBN and listed Lulu as the publisher. It took months to get the book loaded to Amazon, only to have it listed as out of print. I think a lot of this had to do with the whole Booksurge ordeal that took place last year, and Lulu has not been completely forthright with information about how they were affected and how it affects these books.

The recent purchase of poetry.com has given them some bad press because of the stigma attached to the business that was running it before.  Lulu is also now offering expensive publishing packages like the other subsidy publishers, so they’ve lost a bit of their DIY appeal for me. 

P: You are the founder and administrator of The Lulu Book Review. Can you explain what the site is all about, and why you decided to launch it?

SY: The LLBR was created in Spring 2008 as a book review blog strictly for Lulu authors.  I had been querying agents and small publishing companies with my most recent book and casually documenting my experiences (and rejections) on my personal blog. 

In March, I decided to use Lulu to publish the book myself and wanted to document that experience as well. In searching the Lulu forums for information one day, I kept coming across pleas for reviews. When I clicked on those authors’ books though, no reviews had been posted on their pages. I thought that was so depressing that Lulu authors couldn’t even get their own peers to read their books. And so out of that thought, the Lulu Book Review was formed along with my POD Diary where I documented my own publishing experience as a reference for other authors.

Since then, three other reviewers have joined me.  The blog has been solely devoted to Lulu authors and to reviewing Lulu books, but has become a great reference for self-published authors in general.  We also cross-post our reviews to both Lulu.com and to Amazon.com for the author. 

P: Conventional wisdom states that the majority of self-published books are badly written and poorly formatted. Has this been your experience as a reviewer?

SY: I would honestly say it’s about 50/50. In the beginning, for the most part, books we chose to review were based solely on the opinion of what the reviewer wanted to read and if the preview on Lulu sparked their interest. Then, we started seeing recurring problems that kept turning us off as well. So last November, we posted a list of common mistakes that we often found in Lulu books and sort of adopted that as a set of rules for books we are considering for review.

Formatting and spelling are the usual mistakes we see. Those things don’t necessarily mean the story itself is bad, but it’s hard to devote time to a book when the author hasn’t done their homework when it comes to presentation. Typically, we might give something a chance from the start if we like the preview, despite the basic problems we see, but we usually take into consideration that if we’d give the book anything less than three out of five stars on an Amazon.com review, then we bow out and choose not to review it at all. After all, we want the feel of our reviews to be a positive experience for not just the author, but for our readers as well. Self-publishing gets enough bad reviews on its own as an industry so we don’t want to add to that. 

P: Some authors, indie and mainstream alike, are reluctant to post negative book reviews, either out of professional courtesy or fear of retaliation. As an indie author yourself and a booster of the movement, when wearing your "reviewer’s hat," do you ever feel compelled to soften your criticisms when reviewing other indie authors’ work? Have you ever opted not to post a negative review?

SY: We never soften the blows because we don’t really have to. Like I said, when reviewing our policy is that if we start reading a book that has too many grammatical or spelling errors, or is poorly formatted, or we feel that we’d rate it three stars or less out of five, then we don’t review it at all.  This is not because we fear retaliation or are worried about the response we might get.  It’s simply because, like most indie reviewers on the web, our goal is to promote reading and to promote authors who have put serious effort into making their book the best possible.

So, we always opt not to post a negative review because we don’t write them, and we are honest with the author when we tell them why we’re choosing not to review them.  Our reviewers have also been willing to give some helpful tips and suggestions to the author when time allows.

P: The Lulu Book Review offers reviews of Lulu-published books only; do you have any plans to launch any similar sites to review other self-published books?

SY: There are no plans to launch additional sites, but as of June 1st we are branching out to include CreateSpace and WordClay authors. The site, domain, and our name will also be getting a face lift. This was a group decision because all of our reviewers share the same opinions and philosophies about self-publishing. We like what we are doing and we want to reach out to more indie authors.

P: How can authors of Lulu-published books submit their works to you for review?

SY: Authors should visit the blog and post a query on our Pick Me! Tab. They should link to their book and tell us a little about it and tell us why we should review it. We also accept email queries currently at lulubookreview@gmail.com. 

Shannon Yarbrough is the author of two self-published books, The Other Side of What published with Xlibris in 2003, and Stealing Wishes published with Lulu in 2008. He is also the creator and lead reviewer of The Lulu Book Review.

 

The Financial Sanity of Self-Publishing

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I would like to point out one very important benefit self publishing has over trad publishing.  I have a NY pubbed friend who has had over 20 books published, but currently only a very few of them are in print.  Unless you are famous, your entire backllist doesn’t stay in print, and that is continual lost money. 

When you have 20 books under your belt, and less than 5 of them are currently earning you money, that’s not fiscally sound.  In fact, it keeps you on an endless treadmill, especially if you don’t break out of the midlist.

Whereas you might have had a repeat customer multiplied many times over . . . with trad publishing, the only option is for many of  your books to be read via used bookstore or library, where you the author, doesn’t see a penny.  So who is writing for free here?

Whlie a publishing house has the option of bringing a book back into trade paperback with print-on-demand technology, or ebook, many publishers simply can’t be arsed to do it, because they’re focused on the big dogs making them money.  If you simply insist on trad publishing, it would behoove you to get something in your contract that insists your books will remain available in print-on-demand format and ebook, and that you’ll be compensated fairly for those sales.  Otherwise your average publisher is going to sit on your rights for about seven years while you’re not making money.

By contrast, say you’re an indie author and you put out one book a year.  In ten years of hard work writing, producing, and marketing your work, you have not just a couple of books in print, but 10 books in print.  If you do it the most fiscally sound way (i.e. Lightning Source for your POD, not Lulu or Authorhouse), then you are making 4-5 times per book what you would from a trad publisher (minus expenses, which you’ll hopefully have learned to streamline in a halfway savvy way.)

What this means is…  If I had ten books out, and was selling several hundred copies a month of each of them, I would be making six figures in a year.  Now is it reasonable to expect most self published authors can do this?  No.  Many writers just are not very savvy and never will be.  But is it unreasonable to think this is possible for any self-pubbed author who is both business/marketing savvy and talented?  I don’t think it is.

Either way though, I’d rather make a bet on myself and building something that truly belongs to me, rather than make a bet on a publishing house, who could tie up my rights for a very long time, while giving me precious little for it.

When trad publishers rarely have the resources to put a lot of marketing push behind most books, I have to ask myself…in the days of social networking and the internet, is the ego-gratification of being "traditionally vetted",having  a NY editor, and a NY designer really financially worth the expense to me, of losing that much per-book revenue?

For me, the price is too high to trad publish.  Would I change my tune if a big publisher offered me a big contract?  Possibly so, but then the game would be very much changed, wouldn’t it?  Your average trad published author isn’t "getting" big contracts., nor are many of them getting big contracts over time.  There is a reason seasoned writers lament being stuck on the midlist and keep dreaming of "breaking out."  It’s not because big contracts down the road are standard procedure for most authors.

I hear all the time from trad published authors when explaining their pittance of an advance that a writer’s career is built over several books.  Yet many of these same writers turn around and attack self-publishing because of what they see as short term cost/benefits.  Why does it make sense to say a trad published author’s career is built over several books, but a self-pubbed author’s career isn’t?

Further, there is nothing in the publishing rulebook that says you can’t self-publish some books while seeking trad publication for others.  I believe trad publishing is scared on every level of us.  They’ll deny it up and down.  They’ll mock us and make jokes…   But this is the author indie movement, much like what has swept through filmmaking and music already.

Be proud of what you are and what you’re creating. You’ll learn as you go, you’ll get better as you go, and you’re building equity a trad published author can’t hope to touch unless they’re famous.

And who wants to lay odds on that one?  Talk about unrealistic expectations.

Debunking Myths About Blogging

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This post, from Jan Felt, originally appeared on his Cyber Footprint site on 4/29/09.

I bet you have thought about running a blog at least once; then you decided against it citing at least one (or more) of the reasons below.

Myth #1: “No one will read it anyways.”

You might have given your readership a lot of thought. Or not. Then, in a better case, you might have tried running your own blog for a while and finding out you were right – no one actually read it.

Ask yourself these questions and try to answer truthfully.

  • Did I provide an incentive for the readers to visit my blog?
  • Did I tell my readers something they are interested in / don’t know about?
  • Did the readers feel good after they have read my blog?

If you answered no to at least one question, you know why the readers didn’t come to your blog – your content was not relevant enough to them. To get people to read your weblog you must provide high quality content.

It doesn’t matter whether you are blogging about fashion or market analysis. What matters is when the reader wants to know something about the hottest clothes to wear to a party she turns to your blog, because you provide her with ideas so good she can’t resist trying them.

Morale of the story: write well and learn to market yourself online.

Myth #2: “I don’t get anything out of blogging.”

Yes, we humans living in the 21st century are materialistic beings. If I have nothing to gain, why would I bother to put out some content on the Internet?

Actually, you can make money from your blog. Try looking at AdSense, Text link ads, or Amazon’s affiliate program. These programs provide you with a steady stream of income depending only on how many visitors click on the ads. The best part of this scheme? It works without your presence, so you may be partying and still making money.

In the first 6 months, you will hardly make any profit, but if you won’t give up, chances are that you will be able to make a decent income out of your blogging efforts.

The list above is not at all exhaustive. There are many other ways to make money from the blog and it’s not that difficult to discover them. When your blog starts being influential, I recommend to look at our ethics section.

Myth #3: “I suck at technology, so I can’t blog.”

There is a widespread opinion that in order to blog, the author must understand the technical aspect of the Internet. That’s not entirely true. Check out content management systems like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. They are easy to use and require very little technical capability to master. And did I mention they are free?

However, to do things justice, there are some knowledge requirements you ought to meet before plunging into blogosphere. You should be at least knowledgeable about what a server, domain and hosting services are and how they work. That might not be easy for a beginner, but in case you get into a trouble, feel free to tell me about it. I will do whatever I can to help you out.

Myth #4: “I don’t have time to blog.”

Being busy studying during the day and working during the night (hope I got the order right) is a hassle. Add some parties, friends and general life to that, and there is a mayhem into which blogging simply does not fit.

That is one of the lamest excuses anyone can come up with. It demonstrates a lack of discipline, which is a rather unfavourable trait nowadays. If you feel that dedicating 20 – 60 minutes per day to self-promotion online is a waste of time, then you are losing a major competitive advantage. Those who care about their online presence will network more easily. Later on, blogging and networking online may transcend even to job offers.

Myth #5: “I don’t have anything to say.”

Are you sure about that one? If you are a university student, young professional or an experienced ‘tiger’ of the corporate jungle, there is definitely something that you are interested in. Do not be afraid to turn your hobby into a focus for your self-promotional, money-generating weblog. Besides, if you are really passionate about your focus, chances are that you will do well.

As you can see now, the discussed myths are not as crucial hindrances to blogging as they seemed to be in the beginning. In conclusion, blogging is easy and the resources you put in are tiny compared to the enormous benefits you get out of this activity. It is certainly worth a try.

 

On the Demise of Publishing, Reading, and Everything Else

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This article, from the editors of The Quarterly Conversation, originally appeared on that site in their issue #15.

Books are commodities, and as we head into the sharpest economic downturn since 1982—indeed, quite possibly since 1932—publishers are feeling the pain.

The reactions of many of the industry leaders do not instill confidence: in just one example, albeit a flagrant one, Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt declared an acquisition freeze, only to make an abrupt 180 degree turn when the move resulted in widespread shock. (In a much less publicized but arguably worse move, HMH also unceremoniously showed the door to legendary 79-year-old editor Drenka Willen, who oversaw the acquisition of an almost impossibly good backlist, the likes of Calvino, Grass, Eco, and Saramago; the publisher has since allowed her back, presumably so that she can resign with a measure of dignity.)

The troubles of the big houses are making headlines, but it’s unclear whether their answer isn’t, like the 36 head-sanded Senate Republicans who voted to scrap Barack Obama’s stimulus bill for one made entirely of tax cuts, more of the same. In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Anita Elberse, who previously proclaimed that Chris Anderson’s “long tail” theory was so much backwash in the wake of blockbuster books, argued that tough economic times will make the blockbuster publishing model even more alluring and successful than ever. She stated that in the past the blockbuster strategy has “worked wonders,” and that it makes more economic sense to make a few high-stakes bets than to spread money among a number of low-payoff books.

Of course, one might point to the many large advances paid out to authors who have flopped, as well as the glut of celebrity memoirs finding a second life as home insulation, and conclude that Elberse is speaking from the decks of the Titanic. As opined Richard Nash, the editorial director of plucky independent press Soft Skull, “she’s only looked at the corporate model and developed theories about what works on their system. Which is self-fulfilling, since their system is designed to work that model. It’s really quite dense. Almost hare-brained.”

Nash might be onto something. Amid chaos and layoffs among the large New York publishing houses, Nash reported that 2008 was a banner year for his press. So have numerous other indie and small publishers, including Margo Baldwin, whose Chelsea Green Publishing specializes in sustainable living titles, just the thing for hard times. In a recent interview Baldwin predicted large-scale changes for the publishing, nothing short of a general reinvention of the industry, and she isn’t alone.

Beyond indie publishers, who might be seen to have a vested interest in predicting the demise of corporate publishing at large, Gideon Lewis-Krause, who was sent off by Harper’s magazine to report on the Frankfurt Book Fair, intimated in the resulting essay that the kind of ego-ridden system that recently gave Richard Ford $3 million for 3 books is on the way out. Although Lewis-Krause was somewhat coy in his critique of corporate publishing, it didn’t take the closest of readers to sense his disdain for the publishing houses that have been agglomerated into billionaires’ media empires, and his eagerness to see their business model disintegrate.

Read the rest of the article on The Quarterly Conversation.