Month: May 2010

The Erosion of Price Due to the Pervasiveness of “Free”

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When it comes to any product, there are costs involved in its creation.  For things such as cars or waffles or underpants, part of that cost is purely in raw materials.  Each of these items is a physical good, requiring actual matter to create.  The same is the case for items like DVDs, books, CDs and videogames. The difference in these verus the formerly mentioned physical goods, however, is that the vast majority of their primary value (the reason that someone actually wants them) can be replicated digitally, without raw materials other than those that are typically already possessed by people, such as free space on a hard drive. Their primary value is information, and as such it can be broken down into simple bits and bytes and easily distributed for minimal cost.

The other portion of the cost that both of these types of items have is the cost of actual manpower to create.  There’s someone designing the underpants, just like there’s someone writing and performing the music. This even includes if a waffle was made by some sort of automatic waffle maker – that automatic waffle maker was created by manpower (or the robots that created it were created by people who programmed the robots). Or, if the music is completely computer-generated, someone created the computer program that allowed the music to be created. If a person’s time or talent has value, then creation has a cost.
 
The point I’m trying to make here is that everything has some sort of cost involved in creating it. Nothing is free to create.
 
With this cost come questions for creators. Do I pass any of that cost on to the consumer? What is my purpose for creating?  What is the price of my creation?
 
If any of the reason for the creator is monetary, then there must be some price to be paid by someone for some aspect (no matter how vaguely connected) to your creation.  If it’s not monetary, then what did you create it for?  Was it simply to better the human race?  Perhaps it was to strengthen the acceptance of a cause you feel strongly about. In both of those cases you’re at least charging the cost of a person’s time to consume your creation. There are plenty of creations out there that fall into all of these camps, and a lot more.  As such, there’s a lot of competition out there.
 
The easiest way to compete in business is by offering a lower price. If you are okay with assuming your time, knowledge, talent and effort are worth nothing monetarily, then it’s easy to offer your content for free.  With millions of people creating content today, a percentage of them are willing to offer their creations for free, and that percentage of a lot of people turns out to still be a lot of people. So what we have is a lot of content for free, competing with some content with a price. How does one compete with free?
 
Again, the easiest way to compete is by offering a lower price – and there’s no lower price than free – so instead, many individuals compete with free by offering free, plus something else for free (in an example of an e-book, think of an e-book but with a free bonus podcast).  So what ends up happening is that free competes with free in an effort to increase consumption. To what end that consumption is encouraged is up to the creator or distributor, but the battle right now lies ultimately in consumption.
 
If we back up to the cost of a creative work, however, the vast majority of that cost really is in time, effort, talent, skill and knowledge. Costs exist, but in our previous world where bits and bytes were not free (or nearly free), they cost raw materials to reproduce.  People actually paid for a physical object.  The fact is, however, that what they paid for was much more than the cost of the raw materials – it was the cost of the raw materials, plus all those skills, efforts, hours and smarts (put into an equation of expected sales volume, marketing costs, etc) that made up the price the consumer paid.  The consumer, however, placed their value on the physical product that they paid for, rather than the information or aesthetics that were portrayed via those physical media. When someone paid $15 for a CD, they said they paid $15 for a CD … not $15 for the music that Nirvana recorded and distributed to individual listeners for a cost that was below the actual cost of recording the music but was hopefully made up for (with little left over to pay for food) via volume.
 
Due to this idea of paying for the physical product rather than the creation within, it was easy for us to start viewing the actual media itself as the item with a price.  Therefore, when the media was no longer required and the new distribution options had little cost (I’m already paying for Internet access, why should I pay to access things via my Internet access) it was also easy for us to feel that the creations really weren’t something we should start having to pay for.  We didn’t pay for books before; we paid for the paper they were printed on and the shipping and the store shelf space.
 
The price was nothing. In the world of music, the new digital price actually started as nothing. The music industry wasn’t first to start offering their music online, but instead it was people – people who had been trained to think that the music itself really wasn’t what one paid for. After all, one doesn’t pay for the radio. So what happened was that by distributing music for free from the beginning, an anchor point was set for music to be worth nothing.  The fact that the music industry was very slow to respond with any sort of model on their own only reemphasized this idea.  The price at which music was available online was zero. There was no alternative – or if there was, people didn’t know about it.
 
A really simple explanation of the way pricing works is as follows: Costs are determined and volume is estimated. A profit goal is set. The minimum price should be equal to your total cost + your total profit goal, divided by volume (or units). Or, as a mathematical equation:
 
(Total Cost + Total Profit Goal) / Units = Price Per Unit
 
In today’s world of a digital economy, however, one can easily be led to believe that volume is potentially unlimited. Since the costs are only up-front for a creation that is distributed digitally (that is, the only costs are those costs to create the work in the first place – replication has no cost), and volume is unlimited, price can be set almost to zero and the profit goal can still be met, even as the profit goal reaches infinity. But if the profit goal is zero, and a lot of people have no profit goal (or if they do, they are assuming they can make a profit through another channel, perhaps through speaking engagements, branded automatic waffle makers, etc.), they can easily set their price to zero.
 
So when the monetary costs of raw materials are virtually zero, and one is willing to value their own time and work monetarily at zero, we end up with creations that are priced at zero. With a small percentage of a lot of people doing this, we end up with a lot of people pricing their content at zero.  There are also a lot of people pricing their content at prices much higher than zero. But regular people (consumers) are seeing a lot of stuff priced at zero. They then ask, “what’s with these people asking for monetary compensation?”
 
What happens is a product or service is set at a price, and if enough items are priced at that level for a long enough time, people accept that price as the price of the item. For example, if a pair of pants typically costs $70 at Banana Republic, one then assumes that a pair of pants at Banana Republic is worth $70. When the pants are on clearance for just $40, it’s a great deal – even though a pair of pants at JC Penny might only cost $40 normally.  By JC Penny setting their price at $40 normally they’ve set the value of their pants at $40 – so for their pants to be a great deal, even if they’re exactly the same as the ones at Banana Republic (in this example let’s just pretend they’re the same), they need to drop the price considerably. 
 
The same was the case with CDs – when they cost $18 at Sam Goody and Best Buy started offering them for $12, Best Buy had the better deal. Suddenly $12 was a great deal – but over time, $12 started to become normal (the anchor point) and $18 seemed overpriced.
 
When music was offered for free online, an anchor was set. Other media, such as books or movies, was also susceptible, but didn’t catch on at the speed music did.  By the time the music industry was ready to compete they had to deal with this anchor, as well as the anchors they had set via the physical model.  A digital download of a song had some value, they argued, but that value was also less than the cost of a CD divided by the number of songs on it, since a CD also had physical raw material costs involved. As such, $.99 sounded like a fair price.
 
Still, more and more music is being offered for free – but this time it’s being offered for free by the bands, labels, etc. This is because, as I stated earlier, the easiest way to compete is by setting your price to free. By doing so you have set no barrier to entry other than the time it takes the user to download, the time it takes the user to listen (if they even do is another question) and the tiny bit of space it might take up on their hard drive if they save the song (which nowadays they don’t, since streaming is ubiquitous).
 
Of course, this phenomenon is not unique to music, but has expanded into all realms of content that can be recreated and distributed digitally. What’s happening though is that with more and more creations being set to a price of zero, the anchors are moving as well. Over time, the expected price for most creations will be zero.  This is the issue that the newspaper industry is battling now – and it’s the reason that Rupert Murdoch is setting up a pay wall for the Wall Street Journal. He has decided that his content has value – the work his journalists do has a cost – and their knowledge and expertise is actually worth something. This is why he’s charging – he’s attempting to reset the placement of the anchor.
 
Where anchors are set is purely subjective. Anchors are a battle of what creators want to be compensated versus what other creators are willing to sacrifice for their work. They’re a battle of what goals the creators are attempting to accomplish – is it to make money or to make a difference? Where they end up being set is ultimately a choice left to those who create, and what their goals are.
 
Whether consumers are willing to pay the prices asked is really a question of whether or not they have a cheaper alternative with a perceived value higher than the cost they paid.
 
But remember: the easiest way to compete is by offering a lower price. It doesn’t mean you’ll win the competition.
For further reading on the topic, check out this article by Monica Valentinelli. 

This is a cross-posting from William F. Aicher‘s site.

Comments on a Garrison Keillor Column

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The master storyteller, Garrison Keillor, wrote a column that appeared in yesterday’s Kansas City Star entitled The End of an Era  Looms for Book Publishing: Going the Way of the Typewriter. He begins by mentioning many popular authors he met at a BEA  party. These were accompanied by agents, editors, and elegant young ladies dressed in black and sipping white wine. He went  on to say how much he admired elites such as these and that there was a ground swell of anti-elitism throughout the country. He lamented that traditional publishing with all its gates and barriers seemed to be slipping into the ocean. It was going the way of the typewriter, overcome by technology and total writing freedom.

His description of the self-publishing movement boiled down to: “And if you want to write a book, you just write it, send it to Lulu.com or BookSurge at Amazon or PubIt or ExLibris and you’ve got yourself an e-book. And that is the future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75″ He then goes on to describe the outmoded painful process of getting accepted in the traditional way, spoken like a true English major.  

Finally he explains how self-publishing is a two-edged sword. “The upside of self-publishing is that you can write whatever you wish, utter freedom, and that also is the downside. You can write whatever you wish and everyone in the world can exercise their right to read the first three sentences and delete the rest.” This hooks back into a comment he makes about today’s readers: “…and it’s all free, and you read freely, you’re not committed to anything the way you are when you shell out $30 for a book, you’re like a humming bird in an endless meadow of flowers.” That is a very apt illustration, and that is really the launching point for the rest of the story. I realize he sees this as a bad thing. Whether it is or not, it is a “real” thing.
 
The era of publishing as it always has been done is dying. Some say slowly and some say quickly, but its time is over. The rapid rise of technology coupled to the interconnectivity of the internet provides that endless meadow of flowers. Yes, a lot of free sampling is taking place, but there still are many passionate readers out there who know what they like. Writers who commit the most heinous sin of all are quickly ignored and even informally blacklisted. What is that sin? “Thou shalt not waste my time and attention!”
 
The endless meadow of flowers is a way of describing the phenomenon of long tail marketing. Here is an example of a chart signifying this:
 
 
The large curve is for the bestsellers desired by the masses. The long tail is to the right. This represents related areas of interest desired by small groups of readers. In other words, small niches. This is where small presses and self-publishers rule. The small presses can’t hope to compete for the best-selling territory, which requires massive marketing budgets and expensive overhead. Why even bother? There’s gold in that thar long tail.
 
Once you identify a niche, it becomes far more efficient and less expensive to focus on that market. Since the big publishers don’t feel it’s worthwhile to go after these small niche markets, the field is white and ready to harvest with very little if any competition. As long as your quality is good and you don’t commit the great sin, you’ll do fine.
 
This is what Garrison is missing. He sees literature devolving into chaos and anarchy, and in some ways, he’s right; however, the marketplace is one of the most efficient arbiters of what is considered good or bad, needful or unnecessary. All is not humming birds in an endless meadow. The interconnectivity of social media quickly spreads the word of mouth that creates trends and tipping points.The order that emerges out of modern chaos is viral. That moves way too quickly for the traditional publishing model to be able to take advantage of it. This is why the rules had to change and new, smaller publishing entities have emerged to satisfy the long tail niches.
 
Keillor is a wonderful storyteller and his comments were right on as far as they went; however, he has not yet caught on to what is really happening and where it’s going. The new publishing model is still being defined; however, its major components are quick reactions, speed, small is better, detecting and filling niches that are too small for large publishing houses but are quite lucrative for individuals and small presses who have the ability to respond to the realities of today’s market place. Quality is determined by the marketplace and not by the literati elite in their ivory towers. 

This is a cross-posting from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends blog.

Happy Memorial Day

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Publetariat is taking the day off on Monday, May 31st in observance of Memorial Day. But never you fear, indie authors, small imprints and bookish types in all walks: we’ll be back with new content as per usual on Tuesday, June 1st.  (no need to click through, this is the end of this post)    – Editor

Books on the iPad’s iBookstore

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Last month, Joanna Penn put together a useful blog post on How To Publish Your Book On The iPad. In the article she points out the various ways you can get a book onto the iPad, including:

  • Smashwords by creating a Word file that conforms with their requirements (spelled out in the 37-page guide, by the way)
  • Kindle which is a kind of back door onto the iPad through the Kindle for iPad app
  • Lulu the author-services company that is, like Smashwords, an Apple Aggregator for the iBookstore.
  • Aggregators beside the ones mentioned above. At last count there were eight, and there’s a handy list in the article The Apple iBookstore and You put together by Scott Flora, executive director of SPANnet.com.
What Happens at the iBookstore
Over the very few days I’ve owned an iPad I’ve become accustomed to the somewhat “sealed” environment that Apple presents you with. The iPad uses the same operating system as the iPhone, so it’s very familiar.
Enlarged to the size of the iPad, it becomes more obvious that Apple is providing a seamless, regulated and safe environment for its customers. This is one of the chief elements that will—in my opinion—make the iPad successful. It is a major step toward making computing—at least a robust type of “accessory” computing—accessible and attractive to a large audience. More on that later in the week.
 
But having gone to all the trouble to get your book onto the iPad, what can you expect? How do the books translate into the ebooks that buyers will see when they go iBook shopping?

I had a look at several possibilities. iBooks use the ePub format, similar to the Barnes & Noble Nook, the Sony Reader and many other eReaders.

 
First I downloaded a free sample of Lisa Alpine’s Exotic Life which I designed, and which was featured on my blog recently. Here’s what the chapter opening pages in the printed book looked like [click on any image in this piece to enlarge]:
thebookdesinger.com lisa alpine exotic life   
I knew the graphic probably wouldn’t survive the trip through Smashword’s famous “meatgrinder,” the engine that chews up your formatted Word file and spits out eBook formats left and right. But I was surprised at just how much damage had been done to the book. It was unrecognizable:
ibookstore apple ipad fonts self-publishing 
Exotic Life ($9.99) is the first book I know of that I designed that’s on the iPad. I’m not jumping up and down in joy, since nothing of the design remains. At least the cover artist gets a nice little jpeg to represent his work. You can see here all the hallmarks of the iBooks typography we saw in the first look at this platform. Lack of hyphenation, very restricted list of iPad fonts, awkward typesetting and big “rivers” of space running through the body of the type.
 
Next I turned to a book from a major publisher who, presumably, would have far greater resources to bring to bear on file translation. I snagged a sample of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, $12.99 from Little, Brown. Here’s what it looks like:
malcolm gladwell outliers ibookstore applie ipad fonts 
 
Although this may be mediocre typesetting, and the same problems with the very limited palette and most inappropriate iPad fonts, this is a much better looking page. At least you can recognize that it’s a chapter opening.
 
The Kindle Game
Amazon, who boasts over 500,000 titles in its Kindle Store, quickly moved to release a Kindle app for the iPad. This neat ploy placed Kindle “behind enemy lines,” so to speak, to make use of the popularity of the iPad to sell Kindle books.
 
(And before your rush out to go subscribe to TheBookDesigner.com on your iPad, have a seat. All of the subscription products like newspapers, magazines or blog subscriptions are available only for the Kindle itself.)
I grabbed a copy of something called The Hunters by Jason Pinter ($0.00—love that Kindle store!). Here’s a chapter opener:
 
amazon kindle for apple ipad ipad font problems self-publishing 
 
I guess at least you could say it looks like a book. Notice how the Kindle pages have been greyed-out, perhaps to make it look more like the eInk pages of the Kindle itself. Of course, the Kindle for iPad app has none of the polish and sophistication of the iBooks. No sexy page turns, for instance. In fact, there is only a nod to “pages” at all. It looks like you are reading a continuous “roll” of paper with pages printed on it.
 
I want you to see, before I close this look at books in the iBookstore, what the “storefront” of the iBookstore looks like. This is the smooth and careful environment Apple has created for this ultimate experience of computing convenience:
ibookstore applie ipad fonts ebooks self-publishing 
This is slick, pared down to essentials, designed to invite your participation.
 
But overall, despite the beauty of the iPad itself, besodes its convenience, and despite all the dynamic possibilities it presents, when it comes to the iPad fonts and typography, when you tear off the wrapper, we are still in a very primitive phase of ebooks.
Under the polish, things are pretty crude. But will that slow down sales? Will the poor look of virtually all these ebooks deter the wide acceptance of eReaders that many people are predicting?
 
What do you think?
 
 
Takeaway: There are now many ways for self-publishers to get into the Apple iBookstore for the iPad. Unfortunately, the ebooks haven’t gotten any better.

 

This is a reprint from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

Promote Your Book by Commenting on Blog Posts

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Commenting on other people’s blogs is a great way to get visibility, build relationships with bloggers, subtly promote your book, and get links back to your site (if the site gives "do-follow" links). But you can hurt your credibility if you go about it the wrong way. Here are some tips for successful blog commenting:

Actively look for relevant blogs to comment on. Subscribe to the feed of the most important blogs in your area of interest, and use tools like Google Alerts to keep an eye out for relevant posts on other blogs. You can also use Google Blog Search or blog directories like My Blog Log to find blogs that are a good fit.

Contribute to the conversation. Don’t just drop by and say "great post."  Instead, make a thoughtful comment that contributes something. You might offer an additional tip or real-life example, or expand on a point the blogger made. If you’re commenting on a book review, explain why you enjoyed reading the book. Your comment doesn’t have to be long, but you do need to say something useful and relevant. Do not give the impression that you are just there to promote your book or leave a link to your site.

Don’t make inappropriate comments. There’s nothing wrong with disagreeing with a point that someone has made (and many bloggers encourage disparate views), but do so in a polite, respectful way. I’m amazed at some of the rude and tacky things people say on blogs and in online forums.

Don’t be overtly promotional. Commenting on someone else’s blog is not the place to blatantly promote your book or services.  However, there are subtle ways to convey that you are an expert on the topic being discussed and encourage people to click on your name to visit your website.

You might work in a reference to your book related to the comment you are making. Here are some examples:

"Twitter is such an important tool for authors that I devoted an entire chapter in my book to promoting through Twitter."

"In researching my book, Selling Your Book to Libraries, I discovered that . . ."

"Because I write mystery novels myself, I really appreciated the way that the author . . ."

Depending on the topic under discussion, I sometimes sign my name with a tag line such as "Dana Lynn Smith, The Savvy Book Marketer" or "Dana Lynn Smith, author of Facebook Guide for Authors."  Some people include their website address in their signature, but many bloggers frown on this. Creating a signature that’s several lines long and blatantly promotional is not appropriate. Some people think that including any type of signature or reference to your book is too promotional.

You will have to use your judgment to determine what is appropriate, but you might look at what other commenters on the blog are doing as a guideline. Just remember that you are a guest on someone else’s site and mind your manners. Comments, anyone?

Excerpted from The Savvy Book Marketer’s Guide to Blogging for Authors by book marketing coach Dana Lynn Smith. For more book marketing tips, follow @BookMarketer on Twitter, visit Dana’s Savvy Book Marketer blog, and get a copy of the Top Book Marketing Tips ebook when you sign up for her free newsletter.

Four Steps to Managing Your Ideas Constructively

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It is one of the hazards (and blessings) of being a writer that sometimes you find your imagination brimming with ideas. By brimming, of course, I mean overflowing the wee little cup you have. During the upturn of the typical "feast-or-famine"cycle, this could be great because you have a ready supply of concepts in hand to approach the markets. You surely must have something ideas that will be legitimate enough to catch the eye of some magazine or website. With so many ideas swimming around in those mental floodwaters, you may end up losing control. You may be wondering how you can manage your ideas constructively so a new project can be given the best chances of success.

How Does It Happen

1. Always write ideas down. You should never undervalue the importance of writing down your ideas so they can be references and [be] expanded. A stray idea without such recognition can join other unacknowledged thoughts and ideas. Both contribute to mental clutter – hardly a benefit to constructive management.

2. Organize them. Once you pour all of your thoughts and ideas onto paper or the computer screen, you should take some time to examine them and begin organizing them into categories. Once ideas have structure and potential contexts, they can be used more effectively. This also helps you separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. When you have a host of related ideas, it makes it easier to notice the ones that don’t belong.

3. Hatch a plan with your neatly arranged ideas. If you’ve taken the time to write them down and organize them, ideas offer you the chance to build a strong article, story, book, etc. You can save a lot of time, at least.  All of the relevant material is there in front of you, laid out in a reasonable fashion.

4. Pack them away. One of the most important steps to managing your ideas constructively is having the sense to put some of them away. When you’ve taken the time to write them down, organize them, even use some of them for projects, you’ll have material left over. You won’t always use it, but this doesn’t mean your ideas are great catalysts for future work. Save them. Refer to them at prearranged times or when something new but relevant comes up and you want to pursue it.

In Closing…

So what did you think? I know there are different opinions about this subject. In fact, there is much more that could be said. I wanted to skim the surface of the topic. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the issue of effective use of ideas. Leave a comment. Catch you later.

 

This is a cross-posting from Shaun C. Kilgore‘s site.

Agency Model or Be Damned

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I don’t how many times I started this piece today on the arrival of the iPad and the agency model. Frankly, by mid-morning, I gave up. There was just too many deals with Amazon to report by publishers, and too many comments like:

‘Oh, oh, it’s on-it’s off; our Amazon buy buttons are off – no, no, they’re back on again. Shit, no, we were wrong, they’re back off again. No, actually, we had it wrong all along; our print book buy buttons are on, but our ebook buttons are off.’

 
If there was one saviour later today, it was Jason Boog over on GalleyCat. Boog did a great job of pulling together the multitude of reports this evening – long after I’d given up. Here is Jason’s summary piece for the day; by reading it, you will at least save me from posting up a mind-boggling list of links, and it will help to tighten some nuts on what I am about to say. Thanks Jason.
 
Before we begin, let’s get one thing out of the way; what is the agency model? Here is a pretty down-to-earth definition by The Idea Logical Blog:

"The ‘agency’ model is based on the idea that the publisher is selling to the consumer and, therefore, setting the price, and any ‘agent’, which would usually be a retailer but wouldn’t have to be, that creates that sale would get a ‘commission’ from the publisher for doing so. Since Apple’s normal ‘take’ at the App Store is 30% and discounts from publishers have normally been 50% off the established retail price, publishers can claw back margin even if they don’t get Apple to concede anything from the 30%.

So making this change, if it works, accomplishes three things for big publishers. The obvious two are that they gain a greater degree of control over ebook pricing than they ever had over print book pricing and they get to rewrite the supply chain splits of the consumer dollar.

 

But the third advantage for the big guys is the most devilish of all: they may gain a permanent edge over smaller players on ebook margins."

What we are seeing unfolding in the publishing world at the moment is deep-rooted in a failure by large publishing houses to take hold of their industry and direct its development more than twenty years ago when the largest fish in the publishing sea decided to eat up as many little fish as they could. The landscape of publishing that emerged when the tummies got fat was one wholly controlled by retailers – big mother-fucker retailers who had retailing and profit as their core objective – certainly, not books or literature. It stood to reason, and the view of man and woman in the street, that massive corporations like Google, Amazon and Apple where going to come out on top because they were the ones to hold the first cut-keys to the castle of digital content. They had the vested and commercial interest as well as the vision and means to realize the importance of controlling and managing digital content for profit.

It is comfortable to lampoon Google for their attempts to digitize written content not nailed down to the floor and protected by a ring of wolves wrapped in copyright legalese; blame Amazon for developing an online presence and fulfillment network capable of placing a book on your doormat or PC desktop quicker than most large publishing houses can; blame Apple’s developers for producing the two most domestically recognized devices of the past ten years – the iPhone and now the iPad. Yes, we could also try and blame Apple’s introduction of the iPad as the real reason why publishers were forced to introduce the agency model.

It wasn’t Apple, Amazon or Google’s fault, whatever nonsense you hear elsewhere.

What the introduction of the iPad did do was to drag publishers into the world of e-book jousting between Amazon’s Kindle and every other e-reader device. It’s just that the Apple iPad is the first real contender to the Kindle throne, as a device and utilising the more flexible epub format.

 
Publishers do not like their hand being forced, and this has been happening here. We could have gone on with the wholesale model of distribution and retail for years, ignoring the advent, development and accessibility of e-books for another five years, but sooner or later, we would have had to acknowledge that the wholesale model is just another set of terms set between publishers and their wholesalers and retailers. Once there was the mere mention of agency model, wholesalers and distributors knew they were going to be dealing in an industry hosting two different models.

There is an inherent and deliberate spin here in terminology by the publishing industry.

Actually, this has nothing got to do with models, but instead, it is a desperate attempt by publishers to arrest back control of the books they produce – whether the books are in digital or print edition. Books are books, and make no mistake, the so-called agency model will and should be rolled out across all books, whatever the format or channel of third-party sale.

 
What I do feel grievous and questionable is that now the penny has dropped with publishers (that they have been running toward the touchline without the ball)–what we have all known–is that they expect to climb aboard their newly created agency express train and expect wholesalers and distributors like Ingram Digital to have their own models ready to slot into place immediately and deal with accounts operating on different terms of contract. Outside of the large publishing houses, I actually don’t believe smaller publishers adopting the agency model have thought through the full implications. I sense a blind ‘better to be in than out until we figure out if this whole agency thing is actually going to work’. The agency model is in danger of becoming a bandwagon for large and mid-sized publishers, and like so many boom economies built on the ideals of easy profit and growth during the early part of this decade, it may ultimately prove to be built on a fragile deck of cards, underwritten by an accelerated expectation of e-book growth and an eventual standardization of e-reader formatting–both of which I am not convinced of the current projections and sales I have seen in the US and Europe.
 
I want to believe in the next five to ten years that we will be operating in an industry of 50/50, digital/paper sales, but I just don’t, certainly not for fiction. I can see a multitude of possibilities involving libraries and publishers working together to utilize digital content and marry it to profit for both.
 
I want to believe that the haste in the industry I am witnessing is for the good of books and readers alike, but right now, I don’t. I just see a bandwagon rolling down a hill, let loose from the rails for the first time in twenty years. I am amazed how many want a seat on the wagon without really thinking through what it will do for them and exactly where it is going to take them and their businesses.

Just some thoughts on a pretty hectic day…
…and judging by the links to the tales below, quite a few more…

PW on Penguin

GalleyCat on Hachette
 

 

This is a reprint (dated 4/2/10) from Mick Rooney‘s POD, Self-Publishing and Independent Publishing.

My Dialogue Sucks: Tips For Improving Dialogue In Your Novel

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I have just submitted the first few chapters of my thriller novel, Pentecost to my writing group for critique. The responses have been great on plot but truly, my dialogue sucks! (and I am using the English spelling before everyone starts sending me typo notices)

So here are some articles and links that I have been reading to try and improve my dialogue so hopefully they will help you too.
  • “Dialogue is not conversation” from Robert McKee ‘Story‘. Conversation is boring, repetitive and concerns inane things. Dialogue moves the plot along, reveals character and every word is necessary to advance the story. As Alfred Hitchcock said, ‘a good story is life with the boring bits taken out’.
  • Very few writers get away with writing in dialects, (think Irvine Welsh) but for most readers it is very annoying and disturbs the flow of reading so don’t do it.
  • Dialogue breaks up monotony of paragraphs of exposition/description and makes the story move faster (JA Konrath). It is better to reveal story elements in dialogue than exposition. It should be natural, but not too natural (as above, it is NOT real conversation). Avoid adverbs and dialogue tags where possible i.e. Jill said wryly. Reading it aloud helps.
  • On attribution and dialogue tags from Let The Words Flow. He said/she said is needed but not every line which can be distracting. But be careful of the opposite extreme so the reader loses sense of who is speaking.
  • Dialogue should reveal emotion through words, not through adverbs. Don’t say “angrily” when you can use angry words and describe the character/action portraying anger. (Show, don’t tell!). From Blood Red Pencil.
  • Don’t use dialogue to explain the back story, saying things like “As you know John, we have already navigated the lost world of Aurion and found the golden goblet…” . From Poewar, which also has some great exercises for dialogue.
  • For a brilliant chapter on dialogue, read “How not to write a novel” which parodies the author who is too good for the word ’said’, as well as examining misplaced exposition, random adverbs, failure to identify the speaker and more in a laugh-out-loud writing book.
  • My primary flaw seems to be that my readers don’t think my character would talk the way I have written, so my dialogue does not match the person created in the reader’s head. This is good in a way as I have evoked a specific character in their minds, but bad as I have clearly got the ‘voice’ wrong! Holly Lisle’s advice helps here, “writing good dialogue comes from being able to hear voices in your head that aren’t there“, and the voices have to belong to the specific characters. I am planning to read my chapters out loud and rectify the issues. I am still on first draft so I am not fretting too much but dialogue is one of the areas that has stopped me writing so I want to continue learning about it.
Do you have any tips for writing dialogue? Or any good examples in books I could read?

 

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

Amazon to Drop Free Books From Kindle Bestseller List

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To mangle a snarky old line from my not-so-recent adolescence, I took a picture of the zero-priced books at the top of the Kindle Store’s Bestseller list (after the jump), because it will last longer.

Kindle Bestseller List

 

That’s right. Rachel Deahl of Publisher’s Weekly has reported today that an Amazon representative told her that, within “a few weeks,” Amazon "will be splitting its Kindle bestseller list, creating one list for paid books and another for free titles."

 

As of today, the top 10 titles on the Kindle bestseller list, and 33 of the top 50, are either currently free or achieved their lofty ranking due to being free until the past couple of days.

The prospect of a bifurcated list will certainly create a different look and feel for the Kindle Store sales rankings, and could conceivable reduce the incentive for publishers and authors to offer free promotional downloads of some of their Kindle-formatted books. But if Deahl’s report is true the new top 10 will soon include names like Larsson, Patterson, Turow, Stocket, Quindlen, Coben, Bush, Baldacci, Junger, and Rachman.

We’ll be back soon with some analysis of how this reported change will fit in with a number of major changes that are now in the process of occurring in the Kindle catalog.

 

 

 

 

This is a reprint (dated 5/12/10) from Stephen Windwalker’s Kindle Nation Daily.

My Kindle Books & Gone Fishing

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I’ve decided to give Amazon’s Kindle book buyers a try with my Amish books. At first, I didn’t think I wanted to take less royalty. Admittedly, I usually take my time to think about a change. Finally, I decided the people that have a Kindle aren’t buying paperback books anyway so why not give this a try. After all it’s one more way to get people to see my name as an author. Once they try my books, readers usually want another one.

I’d already submitted to Kindle the first of my mystery series, Neighbor Watchers, awhile back. This time I added to the Kindle list my western The Dark Wind Howls Over Mary and two of my Amish books – Christmas Traditions-An Amish Love Story and A Promise Is A Promise-Nurse Hal Among The Amish – book one.

Using the different communities on Amazon is a good way to advertise. I entered posts about my books being in Kindle. Even started new discussions to make sure my posts would be noticed since if the discussions are popular ones, a post can soon get buried. I checked the boxes to let me know if there was a response to my posts. Later in the afternoon, I found three responses. Seems I got in a hurry when I posted. Three people wanted to buy my kindle books already and the link only went to my paperback books. I had to reply to each post that it takes two days for Amazon to get the kindle entries ready so be patient and try again. If there seems to be interest in my books on Kindle I will have to enter one now and then and do the posts just to keep my name noticed.

This morning I was delighted to see I had more posts to answer. One was going to her local library to see if she could get my books. My thought is probably not, but I posted that she can ask. I’ve been told if someone is interested in a book and asks, the library will get it for the patron. Another post was a reader was a comment I’ve heard before. The poster didn’t like the writing style of one of the better known Amish authors because there isn’t enough in the story about the Amish farm life. The stories concentrate too much on the serious and often not a very complimentary problem concerning the Amish. So I left a post that was an excerpt from one of my books A Promise Is A Promise. Nurse Hal is trying to help the Lapp brothers catch some pigs that escaped from their pen. She caught one. The pig squealed. The cry got the attention of the protective sow. She rushed at Nurse Hal to protect her baby. The boys were yelling. The dog was barking. Can you picture the scene? Something similar happened to me once. One of those moments when I was running for the fence that I won’t forget.

What I have tried to do with my Nurse Hal books is concentrate on Nurse Hal’s human faults and her learning about what it takes to be Amish. Dealing with every day life on the farm is part of her experience. As I’ve said before farming experiences are something that’s easy for me to write about since I’ve lived it and still do with our few head of livestock. Writing the books with that in mind, I hope I don’t put the Amish in a bad light. The whole point of the stories for me are to be entertaining and fun with characters that the readers want to continue to get to know.

I joined a website called Book Marketing Network. It’s looks interesting as a helpful place to get author information with many groups to join. The site is used by publishers which might be a good thing. Other businesses are offering to do editing and ghostwriting among other services. Emails have already started so I will pick and choose which members I want to hear from and stop the other emails while I explore the site. I did find a person that does free book reviews by book or PDF. I can send a copy of my book and the review will be on Amazon and B&N. That is the reason that I’m sending one of my Amish books. None of the readers leave a review to let others know how they liked the books. I know they must like my books, because the second one in the Nurse Hal series came out in March and has been selling. I wager that the buyers of my other two Amish books came back for The Rainbow’s End.

Now for the second half of this post. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later but just not which day. My first clue was when my husband got up at the crack of dawn which he doesn’t usually do. I got up an hour later to find chores already done. My husband stuck his head in the door long enough to say I thought we’d go fishing today. The door shut, and he was on his way to hook the boat to the pickup. I hustled to fix a picnic lunch and the water cooler. The day was a quiet, sunny one and not too warm. Perfect for being on a lake. We both caught a blue gill right away, but then the fish stopped biting. We didn’t mind as we floated and enjoyed the day. The geese seemed to have had good hatches this spring. We saw several families enjoying a swim. Did you know that geese families swim in a line? The mother takes the lead, the babies come next and father is last. I suspect that is the way the parents protect the babies. It’s their version of like us holding a child’s hand as we cross the street.

The next day, my husband had a different lake in mind. No matter where we go the lakes are over an hour away. I like the drive, watching the beautiful Iowa countryside. The lake we’re were going to – not so much. If I rate all the lakes from 1 – 10 with 10 being the worse this lake would be a 15. First of all, there aren’t public restrooms. I suspect that’s because there’s not a conversation officer station on the grounds. At one time long before I went fishing at that lake, I’m told there were portapotties, but a conservation officer said the portapotties were all vandalized and trashed so they took the facilities away. Made for a long day and lead me to wonder why I bothered to take a water jug.

While my husband was disconnecting all the straps on the boat, I wandered into the tall grass to check out a bunch of wild flowers. The banks of this lake have some interesting native plants. Also, wildlife. I came within an inch of stepping on a three feet long, very healthy looking garter snake. That was the end of my nature study. The snake slithered one way, and I ran the other.

The East wind was probably 15 mph that morning which is doable for our boat. Just after we settled in the boat, my husband said when the wind’s from the East the fish bite the least. It went through my head that should have been enough to make him load the boat and go home. The lake is long, running east and west with alcoves off to the north side. We had to buck the strong ripples to go east to get to an alcove. According to the fish finder, lots of fish were swimming around our hooks. To know that should be encouraging, but none of those fish seemed hungry. I’ve decided the only thing the fish finder is good for is to tell my brother in law about the big one that got away. I don’t have to exaggerate the size of the fish that got off the hook. The fish finder shows fish lengths. A 23 inch fish swam by without a second look at my worm. As I told it, that was the big one that got away from me that day. I just didn’t say how.

Finally later that afternoon after I worried that I might get sea sick, my husband had enough of the rocking boat and headed for the dock. Once we were back out in the main channel, we found the wind was more like 25 or 30 mph. Before my husband could get the boat turned toward the dock, waves splashed water over the side onto us. Once we got to the dock and tried to pull along side, a gust of wind and waves helped the nose of the boat land up on the dock. I fastened the rope and shoved the boat off the dock. My husband went for the pickup while I held the boat against the dock so it wouldn’t do a circle and end up on the dry landing. The waves splashed over the dock around my tennis shoes which aren’t water proof and slapped with a force against the boat, making a tight grip necessary.

That day wasn’t enough to do my fisherman in. The boat is still attached to the pickup, waiting for another go. So far I’ve been praying for rain, but as long as I’m on land, a strong wind will do. That’s an easy prayer to get answered. So far I don’t have to pray very hard for wind in Iowa.

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

It's Not Who You Know

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We’ve all heard the old adage:

It’s not what you know but who you know that matters.  
 
Apart from being a conspiracy-theorist’s dream excuse, the adage does have a grain of truth in it. Relationships and networking may matter as much or more in business as your skill set.

 
I mention this because of a blog post put up by Debbie Stier, Senior V.P. and Associate Publisher at HarperStudio, and Director of Digital Marketing at HarperCollins. It’s a short personal piece about an epiphany in Debbie’s work life, but it also speaks volumes about the book business and how it actually works.
 
Like many would-be authors I used to think that writers wrote books in little cottages in the woods, bleeding truth onto pages already saturated with tears. When a book was done the author then agonized over query letters, blindly attempting to appease personal idiosyncrasies that each agent somehow believed to be an industry norm. If, against all odds, the author managed to land an agent for his book, the agent went through a similar process trying to generate interest in an editor at a publishing house. If, against these even-longer odds, an editor became interested, that editor then went through a similar process trying to get the support of the person or group that was responsible for pulling the trigger on an actual deal.
 
Read Debbie’s post about the five new books she’s excited to be working on and you’ll see none of that. In fact, there is no direct mention that Debbie read a single word by any of these authors as a means of discovering them:
I’d heard him speak at the Web 2.0 conference and I wanted desperately to work with him.
…
The next author to sign with HarperStudio was Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg.com. I’m a huge fan — have been following his blog, twitter, videos, etc. for some time…
…
Jill Kargman is a novelist. I saw her on Samantha Ettus’s show Obsessed TV six months ago and knew I wanted to work with her.
…
I’d been thinking a lot about merits and challenges of being a small company within a large corporation, and Bob suggested that there’s a book in that. Nick Bilton from the New York Times lead me to Ryan Tate at Gawker, and he is now writing a book for us called Skunkworks, which I can’t wait to read.
…
One more author who I want to mention who signed with HarperStudio, though it was slightly before that December epiphany, but still very much part of my process of realizing how much I love my job, is Melanie Notkin, the Savvy Auntie. She’s writing her Savvy Auntie’s Guide to Life.
Here’s what Debbie did not say: ‘I read Author X’s novel/manuscript and it knocked me out.’ And yet there’s nothing wrong with that. As noted above, this kind of book-production paradigm may actually be the norm these days.  
The point I want to make is that here you have someone in the business talking about five books she’s excited about, and none of them is a book that exists because of an author’s personal convictions. Rather, those five books came into being because Debbie Stier contacted five people and suggested a writer/publisher collaboration.
 
Again — and I really mean it — there’s nothing wrong with this. If it cuts against the romantic grain of the literary world, or your own authorial fantasies, it’s also the way most corporate entertainment works. In fact, if you really think about it, it couldn’t work any other way. Predicating the success of your business or industry on the speculative output of a bunch of writers would be like putting on a sporting event and hoping that some athletes show up. If you sell gas you can’t wait for someone to strike oil; if you sell food you can’t wait for the crops out back to mature. You’ve got to drive product yourself or partner with people who can deliver a steady supply.
 
In order to protect the bottom line, people in the book business (in any incarnation) cannot wait around for good books to find them. They have to be proactive in priming the pump and reconciling the content of a title with the objectives of their business. Again, who else other than publishers would be qualified to make such informed decisions? Agents? Writers?
 
Whether Debbie had the budgetary authority to make these projects happen herself or not, it’s clear that her personal interest in the people now working on the new HarperStudio titles short-circuited the much longer approval process facing a writer with a spec manuscript. It’s also clear that those five people did something that helped catch Debbie’s attention, and that that was critical to the book deals they signed. Debbie didn’t hike into the woods and knock on a door, or even plow through a slush pile: she looked at interesting people who made themselves visible to her in a variety of ways and asked herself if they might have a book in them that also fit HarperStudio’s goals.
 
This is another big reason why you constantly hear everyone talking about having a platform as a writer. It’s not simply that a manuscript you’ve written will gain more visibility, it’s that you as a writer will also come to the attention of the decision makers in the industry. Maybe a publishing house needs another writer for a series project. Maybe they’re looking to capitalize on a trend. Maybe they like your attitude and a blog post you wrote suddenly helps focus a hazy idea they’ve been wrestling with. Whatever the project, the chance that you’ll be working on it is pretty much zero if they don’t know you’re alive.
 
That’s why it doesn’t really matter who you know. On any given day you can call up your publishing contacts and pitch book ideas until you turn blue, but the majority of opportunities in your future are probably not ones you’ll be initiating. They’re ones the industry will create, and the simple truth is that you’re not going to have a shot at those opportunities if the industry doesn’t know who you are.
 
Does this mean that writing a book is a waste of time? Absolutely not. What it means is that when you write a book you’ve created two properties. One is the book, the other is you as a writer. Neither of them will see if nobody knows they exist. If you’re already committed to getting your manuscript some visibility, then you should be willing to do the same thing for yourself.
 
If you have the conviction of your own creative vision, and you’re willing to suffer and die for that cause, I’m not telling you to change your ways. I wouldn’t do that to myself on a project that I initiated. Having worked as a writer on collaborative projects in multiple industries, however, I can tell you that there’s a lot to recommend them. And not just the fact that you get paid.
 
First, there’s the implicit networking bonus that goes with any collaborative project. Assuming you don’t reveal yourself to be insane or abusive, and assuming you do what you say you’re going to do, you will, simply by demonstrating those two traits, successfully separate yourself from approximately 90% of potential competitors. (That’s a conservative estimate.)
 
How many people does Debbie Stier know? How many times a year does she sit down with a co-worker or a peer at another publishing house and talk about projects which can’t find the right writer, or projects where a writer pulled out and they need someone at the last minute? I have no idea, but I’m guessing the number of people that Debbie knows is not trivial, and that the percentage of her contacts who can approve projects is higher than most agents you’re likely to sign with.
 
Second, you might get to work with people who are actually happy to work with you. One read-through of Debbie’s post and you’ll see that she’s clearly good at marketing — almost instinctively, reflexively so. But I’ve also read enough of her tweets, posts and musings to believe that there’s a real person in there who had a genuine epiphany about the fact that she loves what she’s doing. And that in itself is rare.
 
There are a lot of people out there in positions of power and authority who are really not happy. They don’t like their life, they don’t like their work, they don’t like the people they work with. The only thing they like is spreading unhappiness around like shrapnel. You might even run into a writer killer or a writer hater who loathes you for the very skills that brought you to their attention. Does that sound like fun?
 
Take a moment and think about what it would be like to work on a book with someone who wasn’t jaded. Not someone who’s in your grill every minute, telling you how to write each paragraph, but someone who is interested in you, in your skills, and in the project you’re both working on. Writing is lonely, and there are times when it’s satisfying to have someone other than you cat say they’re excited about a project or thrilled with your last chapter.
Finally, as much as any author believes they know it all, they don’t. As I said in a previous post, there are good editors and bad editors. A good editor knows craft. A good editor listens.
 
I have no experience working with Debbie, but in reading her post she says the right things. She talks about kicking ideas around and finding something that works for both parties, and that’s what you want. You want someone who actually listens, instead of just smiling and saying nice things. You may not always get your way, and the project may have other masters (including time and money), but when you work with someone who takes your concerns seriously you get to take a break from the exhaustion of being your own biggest fan and your own worst critic.
 
There’s no way you can plan for this kind of synergy, of course. If you actively try to impress the Debbie Stiers of the world you inevitably end up making an idiot or nuisance of yourself. The goal is not getting attention, but being who you are and doing what you already do in a way that is visible — whether than means blogging or attending conferences or speaking or giving readings or something else. Even if you can’t make anyone open a door for the book you wrote or the writer you are, and you probably can’t, you can be there when they open the door.
It’s not who you know. It’s who knows you.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk.

Writing and Reading Books Are Stress Relievers

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Authors have always been lucky enough to have a built in stress reliever whether they know it or not. It’s called writing a book. Once I’m working on my characters and their lives for a new book I’m so absorbed that nothing [and] no one in today’s stress-filled world bothers me.

I like getting lost in a developing story and putting the main idea whirling around in my head down. It’s a challenge adding to the skeleton story I’ve created to fill in and build a book. That takes all my concentration. I get excited every time I’m working on a scene, and when something new pops into my head for the character to say or do that fits into the story.

Humor is important to me. It should be to everyone. The more we laugh the better we feel. Humor is a stress reliever. Being able to laugh can make you feel more relaxed. You smile at someone, and they’ll smile at you. You laugh and someone laughs with you. The scenes in my book I’m working on that make me giggle while I’m writing them are the moments I’m told by readers that make them laugh out loud when they read my books. What a delightful feel-good moment for me to hear this from readers.

Sometimes, the comments are that my characters draw the readers into the story. In my mystery series of five books, the characters are so colorful that once the readers have finished the first book, they have to read the other four to see what happens next to everyone in the book. The same is happening now that I’ve written two books in my Amish series. Readers like the characters Nurse Hal and her Amish family. They want to know what will happen to all of them next. The readers are so deeply absorbed in the characters lives to the point that they try to read my books in just one sitting. While reading my books doesn’t leave any room for thinking about something stressful. It’s simply a time to relax. I know all this because I hear it from my book readers.

Not everyone has the inclination to write a book just to find a stress free time but if writing interests a person keeping a journal might be helpful. I’ve written daily journal logs over the years. Now it’s fun to look back and read about something that I had long ago forgotten. One journal was about the ten years I helped care for my father while he was battling Alzheimer’s disease. Talk about feeling stressed. In those days, I’d come home from my parents home and plop down exhausted emotionally and physically. I’d pick up my journal and write about that day with my father, entering my thoughts, emotions, fears and dreads. Though I hadn’t thought about writing a book at the time, that journal later became my book Hello Alzheimer’s Good Bye Dad. I’ve hoped that the story might be of some help to others. There are many similar books on the market about a family coping with Alzheimer’s. To make my book an educational tool rather than just a story, I added helpful tips throughout the book and in the story. Perhaps, reading that book would be a stress reliever for caregivers. They learn ways to help their family member while they become educated about what the disease will do to their loved one next.

I know for a fact that books help readers relieve stress. When I don’t like the programs on television in the evening, I tune out by reading a book while my husband watches a program. Then there is maybe the extreme when one buyer wrote me that she read one of my books (A Promise Is A Promise) six times while she’s been going through a tough spot in her life. Wow! I as an author am helping myself and helping others at the same time just by being creative. So if you’re a writer, relax and work on that story. If you’re a reader get you a good book (of course I’d like it if you bought one of mine at ebay, amazon or www.booksbyfaybookstore.weebly.com), set down in a quiet place with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and go with the flow.

 

This is a reprint from Fay Risner’s Booksbyfay blog.

Konrath Sieges the Castle

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This post, by Mary Anne Graham, originally appeared on her Quacking Alone blog on 5/23/10.

Joe Konrath,  author of the Jack Daniels thriller series and of the new resource for indie writers – The Newbies Guide to Publishing – has inked a deal that sieges the Publishing Royals’ Castle.  It also charts the course, showing the Royals, authors and agents where the future lies.  The deal itself and the fact that it is with the biggest, baddest ebookseller AND bookseller on the planet has traditional publishing Royals hunkering down in the castle in the futile hope that they can survive the coming indie siege.

Konrath signed a publishing deal with AmazonEncore for the newest JD thriller, Shaken. Under the deal, Shaken will be available in the Kindle store this October and will then be available in print about four months later, in February 2011.   The deal turns the traditional arrangements around 180 degrees and has the Kindle version released first with the print book following several months later.  Some of the Royals have been trying to kill the  upstart ebook industry by releasing their “big” books only in paper form for several months.  That would force loyal fans to buy the paper version and discourage the fans from investing in the future.  Or so the Royals thought and the Royals are used to deciding what we will read, when we will read it and how we will read it.  

The Castle Dwelling Royals, their Acceptable Authors, and many of the Chosen Intermediary literary agents have been particularly disgruntled by this deal.  Why?  Well, first of all, the deal was done with Konrath and his literary agent.  No doubt, the Royals were convinced that the agent should have known better.  See, Konrath had marketed the book to the Royals.  Between his efforts and those of his agent, even if the Royals were too good to bother to Google it for themselves, the Royals were surely advised of Konrath’s killer numbers on Kindle for sales of all of his ebooks.  But, as usual, the Royals knew more about what America wanted to read than Americans did, so they rejected the book.  Why would they encourage one of those  people anyway? 
 
But Amazon is not fettered by the Royal Superiority Complex.  The rebel company offers a platform for all authors to put their work out there and let readers decide for themselves whether or not to hit the buy button.  The Royals (and a few jealous indie competitors) might believe Konrath was inflating his numbers, but Amazon knew better.  And Amazon knows that the digital future is better served by getting it out there electronically first.  So, Konrath and his agent refused to take the Royal NO for an answer and signed on with a company sailing for the future, rather than with one mired in the past. 

Read the rest of the post on Mary Anne Graham‘s Quacking Alone blog.

Finding and Filling Book Marketing Niches

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I have been a niche marketer all my adult life. For me, niche filling and creativity go hand in hand.
 

 
In college, I created the only rock and roll band with multiple horns on the Indiana University campus. In the 1980s, I created a society orchestra with a sound similar to “Big Bad Voodoo Daddy,” before they ever came on the scene and played all the formal dances at Ft. Leavenworth and later on the Bavarian Fest Circuit out of Munich, Germany for three years. From 1987 to 1997, I became the go-to- author for military self-defense and personal security books. Now, my wife and I are doing it again at our bookstore, The Book Barn, and with my publishing company, Spear’s Mint Editions Publishing. For me, finding a niche and filling it is as natural as breathing. I have always had an instinct for it. I’m not rich, but I’ve had a lot of fun along the way. I would like to use my store and writing/publishing efforts over the past ten years or so to explain what and how we do what we do.

 
Heads Up—Look Around
It’s important to be aware—sensitive to patterns in life and the day-to-day routines. What do people like, want, and need? Are they being satisfied? Are any fads becoming trends (a genuine turning point)? What excites and interests you and the people you service? Listen to what people say. Watch the news. Talk; get opinions. Watch and experience life. Here is how all that works:
 
The American Girls product line came out. What a great idea—hooking American history to female characters representing different periods and producing common formats to each one. We decided that was a good idea and began to organize events around single characters at a time. Instead of holding tea and doll admiration parties, we created a full context experience. We would pick a character and invite customers with girls 6-11 years old for an hour-long experience. I would quickly explain the historical period for the chosen character. I would play and sing a couple of songs from that time and culture. We would play a game from that time. Then came a short craft or art project centered on the time, after which we served a typical snack from the time. The little girls loved it and the parents could be heard commenting in the background, “I didn’t know that.” These events helped us receive a win in a national level competition amongst many other Independent bookstores.
 
Leavenworth was the first city in Kansas and has a rich historical background. We have always had a good regional selection of books. In 2000, I decided to add music to that by creating a CD album of ten songs—5 were original songs I wrote to tell fun stories about our area and 5 were traditional folk songs that had connectivity to our area. It has sold slowly but steadily ever since.
 
Next we noticed we had no attractive book below $15 for the tourists about our community. There were some excellent histories, but they were hardbacks in the $50 to $60 price range. They were fine for interested locals, but not for casual tourist shoppers. I asked several area historians if they would be interested in writing such a book ,and they weren’t. So, I took it on and spent six months researching and writing in 2005 to produce Leavenworth: First City of Kansas. This book won three marketing awards for its cover and interior design and has sold steadily with lots of favorable feedback. Four area museums and several gift shops sell it and the CD, as well as our store.
 
Don’t Be Surprised if You Earn A Reputation As A Reliable Resource—That’s What You Want to Happen
An interesting phenomenon has occurred. People are now introducing me as an area historian. My choosing to expand my storytelling programs into the next higher level called historical performing, where I become the famous Leavenworth favorite son, William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody. I tell his stories in the first person, as if I really was him. I try to make him come alive for the listeners. Now, my college degrees are in music and business. I’ve had one American history course and four music history courses in my time. That does not make me a professional historian; however, the research I have done to put together credible projects and events provide me with enough knowledge to be interesting.
 
Now I am taking this Leavenworth/Midwestern history niche and adding something something that has been missing—a body of literature that provides a clear picture of pop culture of our area’s frontier times. My last post was a review of a wonderful book that explained how to find and re-publish public domain materials. What a Godsend that was! I have been able to locate a number of nonfiction and fiction books of the 1800s to early 1900s that opens wonderful windows of the exciting era. How much have I had to invest? Mostly my time and skills and very little money. I have downloaded text or htm files, pasted them into Word format, and then used InDesign to lay out the books with an old-timey look. The covers are simple black ink printed on colored card stock.
 
Now I have a unique offering in our niche. Could competitors do this? It’s doubtful; it’s too skill dependent and too small of a market segment for the big box stores, and there are no Indy stores in the area with the ability to pull it off. This is the ultimate example of “Long-Tail” marketing—find little niches that need filling but are too small for the big guys. Next week I will have ten copies of each of these digitally printed to provide enough for the store and to show the other outlets. See what I mean about not having to make a large investment. I will then use just in time inventory control to drive future print runs. Since I don’t have to use middlemen for these books, I can afford the higher pod costs. So, what are these long-lost tomes that will catapult our store’s image several notches upward? They are a good mix of nonfiction and fiction and an amalgamation of the two:
 
The Prairie Traveler— In 1859 an Army Captain who spent 25 years guiding settlers across the plains safely write the ultimate how-to book on doing this. He addresses the animals you’d need and why, the equipment, the supplies, and the skills. He also provides the day by day mileposts along all the major trails. This is an absolutely fascinating book, even providing information on the major Indian tribes you might encounter and what to expect.
 
Twin Hells— Leavenworth has a prison industry—7 of them in the area. This 1800s book was written by a man who founded one of our banks and was also president of an insurance company in Atchison. Political competitors managed to railroad him into an 18-month sentence on a trumped up fraud charge to the Kansas State Penitentiary, working in its very dangerous coal mine. After serving his time, he is hired as an investigator of Missouri’s penitentiary, which he finds to be just as bad. He takes his notes in shorthand so the guards won’t know what he’s writing about. There will be a lot of interest in this book in our unique community.
 
Adventures of Buffalo Bill From Boyhood to Manhood— Deeds of Daring, Scenes of Thrilling Peril, and Romantic Incidents in the Early Life of W.F. Cody, the Monarch of Bordermen. By Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, who was a master of pulp fiction. The subtitle is straight off the book’s title page. Buffalo Bill is of huge interest here.
There are several, but I think you’ll get the idea by these illustrations.
 
Emerging Pop Book Trends
Next, I noticed that novels of “place” had become popular. Setting is important to people. My wife also noticed the trend of adults buying Young Adult books for their own reading pleasure because they want entertaining, easy and quick to read books. That combination of factors is what prompted me to write and publish a series of five simple mysteries set in Leavenworth with easy-to-recognize settings and arch-typical Leavenworth characters. People love them.
 
Niche-Filling Creates Credibility and Trust
Notice all these projects and events are supportive of our community. We continue to raise the public’s awareness of our store and ourselves as a trustworthy source of information and entertainment based on the community past and present. This brings in more foot traffic of people interested in the niche and all our other offerings. They simply cannot get this kind of support at a major chain. We know the area; we know our books; we know the authors (many of them personally), and we know how to fit it all together with an additional service of fast, reliable special ordering of book not on our shelves. By approaching our niche from several different directions with different product types. I hope this gives you an idea of the mind set that you should find useful in this essential marketing attitude in today’s marketplace.

 

This is a cross-posting from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends Blog.

The Write Music for the Write Mood

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Here’s the scenario: It’s late at night and after a long day of doing what you have to do (i.e. working, cooking, cleaning, etc.) you finally get a moment to do what you want to do: write. You sit down in your personal writing space, put your fingers on the keyboard (or wrap them around a pen) and wait for the words to come to you.

And wait.

And wait some more.

And then pass out face down on your desk for an uncomfortable (and unproductive) nap.

We’ve talked a lot about how hard it is to find time to write, but even when you do find the time, how do you also find the inspiration? 

My answer is music.

Not only can music stir up your brain waves, the right music can get you in the right mood for the exact subject matter you need to write about. Music can be a geographical reference (jazz, latin, hip-hop, western, etc.), an association with a particular time period (big band, disco, grunge, etc.) or specifically associated with certain emotions.

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