Business End

Articles about the business aspects of publishing and self-publishing.

Handling Writer’s Block the Piers Anthony Way

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How fortuitous it was that a copy of Piers Anthony’s second autobiography, How Precious Was That While, came to me shortly after I had blogged about Writers Block. It was published by Tor in 2002 in mass market paperback with an ISBN 9780812575439. If you’re a fan, you’ll love this curmudgeon fantasy author talk about his self, his books, and the industry. He devotes a whole chapter to the writing process, to include avoiding writers block in Chapter 4: Ironies. I’m taking the priviledge of encouraging you to find a copy and reading this book. I’m going to list some of his observations and tips as a way of explaining why this is such a worthwhile book:

Writing a novel is like running a marathon. It takes steady endurance.

Writers block may be an excuse not to do what people don’t want to do–write.

Always have a variety of projects to work on (like my writing both a mystery and a fantasy every other day).

Use a bracket system so that when you come to a stumbling block, use a bracket and [write a short note to yourself as to what you think should go there and that you should come back to it later]. Then keep on going. I review these every day and write notes in a journal to myself before quitting for the day.

Keep a daily Work Record and track your progress. (He writes 3,000 words of text, 1,000 words of novel notes, and 1,000 of Personal file every day for a total of 5,000 words a day.) He’s 77 YO and still writing. When he wrote this autobiography he had written over 125 novels. Writers block? I don’t think so.

A real writer should generate his inspiration as a tool, ready whenever he needs it.

Have a working spouse to take off the stress of supporting a family, freeing you up to write. (Try it for a trial year like he did).

He goes on with many other writing realities in this chapter, which is why you should try to get a copy of this book. He has a blog at http://piersanthonyblog.blogspot.com/ His Twitter address is PiersAnthony.

Finally

These are Piers’ thoughts, not mine. Don’t shoot the messenger! On the other hand, take these suggestions seriously. Piers is one of the most successful genre writers in the past 50 years or so.

 

This is a reprint from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends blog.

The Long (and Sometimes Broken) Road to Publishing

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This post, by Liliana Hart, originally appeared on her site on 7/19/11.

As of this blog post, I’ve been self-published for exactly fifty days. We’ll get back to what this means a little later, because I want you to see the journey before the results (unless you’re one of those people who reads the back of the book first. You guys should just skip to the bottom).

I’m all about being open and honest about my career, because I wouldn’t be where I am if it weren’t for other authors who did this for me. Hopefully, my story will encourage those of you who’ve had a similar journey. Now don’t get too excited, my career isn’t cause for fireworks and explosions. Not yet. But I have hope that it will get there if I stay the course and keep writing books. This business is about consistency and perseverance. And writing books your fans will love.

I wrote my first book during Spring Break of 2005. I’d started books a million times before (this number is a slight exageration meant for impact), only to stop halfway through and toss it in the trash. I’m talking a lot of books here. I’d been trying to write a book since my freshman year of college, but I NEVER FINISHED. This is key. The finishing.

I was still teaching in 2005, and I’d declared Spring Break to be just for me. I was going to sit down and write. I didn’t want to go out with friends. I didn’t want to take a trip. Quite frankly, I didn’t even want to have a conversation. I wanted to write. So I did.

By June of that same year, my book was finished. It was a 120,000-word thriller about a virgin assassin who’d been raised by the CIA to kill (Stop Laughing-I know it sounds ridiculous). This was actually a very high concept book (I won’t tell you the high concept part right now because I’m actually rewriting it to publish-Don’t worry, she’s no longer a virgin). But as several agents and publishing houses said at the time, the concept was higher than the execution. I needed to hone my craft. But the rejections I got from this book didn’t discourage me, they only pushed me to keep writing. And to write better.


Read the rest of the post on Liliana Hart‘s site.

As Borders Lies Dying…

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There’s analysis, punditry and post-mortems aplenty where the failure of Borders is concerned.

This Slate piece asserts Borders died primarily of self-inflicted wounds its competitors have avoided. From the article:

Other companies have adapted to the e-reader revolution, and even benefited from it. Other companies have changed to fit the new bookselling paradigm. And other companies are dealing with the drawn-out aftereffects of the recession. The better reason for its demise is that Borders had long lost its competitive edge on many fronts, from corporate strategy to coffee. It died by a thousand—OK, maybe just four or five—self-inflicted paper cuts.

The Wall Street Journal quotes numerous customers of the chain’s "#1 Store" in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and while all of those customers are disappointed, none are surprised.

The Atlantic takes a broader view in its article, Books, Borders and Beyond: How Digital Tech Is Changing Retail:

"But if there’s one thing the Internet takes away from stores, it’s foot traffic. The Web is a shopping mall. So who needs the shopping mall? It’s more convenient for buyers — and cheaper for merchants — to play with a virtual storefront and bypass the high fixed costs of real estate.

"All retailing is vulnerable," says Joel Kurtzman, senior fellow at the Milken Institute and former editor-in-chief of the Harvard Business Review. "I’ve spoken with executives at many major big box retailers, and they’re all very worried about how the digital world is changing their business."

Forbes wonders, Does a Failed Borders Presage a Doomed Bookstore Business?

“As Borders expires, new enterprises will evolve to take book retailing’s place,” wrote Gene Hoffman, one-time president of The Kroger Co. and former chairman and president of Supervalu. “Those new enterprises won’t be conventional book retailers but companies that are on the leading edge of what current customers are responding to.”

National Public Radio raises a question about other possible consequences of the Borders failure in its article, When Borders Closes, Do Doors Slam Shut In Classical Music?

Borders’ buying patterns also made for fan frustrations, Goiffon asserts. "For years," he notes, "we pushed in vain to get them to target buying geographically: Instead of sending most of their stock to the biggest markets for classical music, such as New York, they’d send four or five copies of each title to every single store they had — so New York would sell out and be stuck, while all those other copies languished in other stores around the country."

So if you were in one of the main U.S. classical music markets, like Manhattan or San Francisco, you might never see a label’s biggest releases as you flipped through the bins. For many classical music listeners, browsing is still an important pathway to musical discovery, one that many online sellers haven’t managed to duplicate. And lots of people still prefer physical CDs to downloads. (And classical music metadata is still the beast to be tamed.) The Borders experience left a lot to be desired, for sure, but you could walk into one of their stores and know that you’d see classical music there.

Finally, and most depressingly, The Detroit News looks at the effects Borders’ failure will have on local and national economies and unemployment rates:

Borders workers will be hurt because retail employment has stalled and it could be difficult to find a new job, says John Challenger, chief executive at Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago job outplacement consulting firm.

Borders will lose its 10,700 employees nationwide, which represent just less than 0.1 percent of the country’s roughly 14.5 million retail workers, Challenger said.

"That’s a big loss of jobs," Challenger said. "We haven’t seen five-figure mega-layoffs in a while."

It takes a retail worker three to four months on average to find another job in the sector, he said.

 

Borders Liquidation

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It’s official: Borders is liquidating all of its remaining inventory and equipment and closing its doors. What follows is a reprint of Borders’ press release, dated 7/18/11.

Borders Group to Submit Hilco and Gordon Brothers Proposal to Court for Approval

Hilco and Gordon Brothers to purchase store assets of the business and administer liquidation process
Borders extends gratitude to dedicated employees and loyal customers

ANN ARBOR, Mich., July 18, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ —

Borders Group reported today that, in accordance with the terms of its financing agreement, the Company will submit to the Court for approval the previously-announced proposal from Hilco and Gordon Brothers to purchase the store assets of the business and administer the liquidation process. Borders said that, in the absence of a formal proposal from a going concern bidder, it did not require an auction prior to presenting the proposal to the Court at a scheduled hearing on Thursday, July 21, 2011.

"Following the best efforts of all parties, we are saddened by this development," said Borders Group President Mike Edwards. "We were all working hard towards a different outcome, but the headwinds we have been facing for quite some time, including the rapidly changing book industry, eReader revolution, and turbulent economy, have brought us to where we are now," he added.

"For decades, Borders stores have been destinations within our communities, places where people have sought knowledge, entertainment, and enlightenment and connected with others who share their passion. Everyone at Borders has helped millions of people discover new books, music, and movies, and we all take pride in the role Borders has played in our customers’ lives," Edwards continued, "I extend a heartfelt thanks to all of our dedicated employees and our loyal customers."

Borders currently operates 399 stores and employs approximately 10,700 employees. Subject to the Court’s approval, under the proposal, liquidation is expected to commence for some stores and facilities as soon as Friday, July 22, with a phased rollout of the program which is expected to conclude by the end of September. Borders intends to liquidate under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code and, as a result, Borders expects to be able to pay vendors in the ordinary course for all expenses incurred during the bankruptcy cases.

About Borders Group, Inc.

Headquartered in Ann Arbor, Mich., Borders Group, Inc. is a leading specialty retailer of books as well as other educational and entertainment items. Online shopping is offered through borders.com. Find author interviews and vibrant discussions of the products we and our customers are passionate about online at facebook.com/borders, twitter.com/borders and youtube.com/bordersmedia. For more information about the Company, visit borders.com/media.
 
 

Use Autoresponders And Emails To Promote Your Book

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Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, it’s important to have an opt-in form on your website to capture email addresses of visitors, so that you can contact them now and in the future. Keeping in touch through email helps to build relationships, reinforce your expertise, and keep potential customers from forgetting about you.

You can send "broadcast emails" to your list at any time and use "autoresponders" to automatically send out one or more pre-written emails at specified intervals after someone joins the list. Here’s an example of an autoresponder: when you submit an online form to get a free ebook from someone, you might get an email with a link to the ebook immediately, and then get a follow up message seven days later, and another message ten days after that.

Here are just a few of the ways that authors can promote through autoresponders and broadcast emails:

  • Offer a sample chapter, short story, prequel, ebook, report, or instructional video to people who sign up for your mailing list. This free bonus should be designed to promote your book or other products.
  • Send a newsletter to subscribers with educational or entertainment value.
  • Send your list an announcement of new books or products, and new editions and formats of your book.
  • Offer free or paid mini-courses, online training, or teleseminars, and use the autoresponder to deliver information to the registrants on an automated basis.

In my latest newsletter, I published a more in-depth article that explains how autoresponders work, explores ways that fiction and nonfiction authors can use autoresponders to promote books, and offers tips on choosing a service provider. If you’re not already a subscriber, sign up today to get access to the archive of in-depth newsletter articles and get three free ebooks on book marketing.

This is a reprint from Dana Lynn Smith‘s The Savvy Book Marketer.

Who is going to Capture the Various Library Worlds?

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This post, by Martyn Daniels, originally appeared on his Brave New World blog on 6/20/11.

The library digital world is starting to undergo some serious consolidation and establish interesting partnerships. The market itself is quite diverse with public, institutional, academic, corporate and educational libraries supporting different usage and content needs and straggling not just books but learned journals, journals, reference works and information resources.

Overdrive announced a partnership arrangement with Amazon to offer the giant’s digital content through their increasingly dominant public library offer. This coupled with Amazon’s new and limited loan service begs many questions as to the exclusivity of the partnership, the long term ambitions of Amazon and their intent to move in this direction. The public library arena could become crowded with many digital supply offers and we still have Ingram in the US and many localised offers emerging around the world.

Google appears to be stuck with their settlement offer and intent to cloud cover the library world but their intent to be the information index of the world and their continuation to scan libraries and now grow their bookstore clearly indicates that they aren’t going away. However they have just announced and arrangement with The British Library to access a huge volume of out-of-copyright works for free for the first time on the internet and mirrors deals Google already has in place with more than 40 libraries around the world. The British Library deal covers some 250,000 texts dating back to the 18th Century. Google covers the cost of digitisation, producing one copy for its own use, an one copy for the library.

Smiths News bought Dawson Holding earlier this month.


Read the rest of the post on Martyn Daniels‘ Brave New World.

Do you create a Facebook Profile or a Facebook Fan Page?

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This post, by Bill Walker, originally appeared on his site on 7/7/11 and was originally entitled "Businesses: Do you create a Facebook Profile or a Facebook Fan Page?" While the piece is targeted to small businesses, it contains information equally valuable to authors who use Facebook so we’re including it here.

Do you own a business and want to have a presence on Facebook? Everywhere I go I hear people talking about the importance of Facebook for businesses.  In fact, I am one of those people telling business owners that it is important to have a presence on Facebook.

When a business sends me a friend request, I applaud that business for wanting to create a presence on Facebook. However, I feel the creator(s) of that profile don’t really understand what they are doing or they wouldn’t have used a Personal Profile for their business.  At least that’s what I’m hoping, because I can’t imagine why anyone would knowingly use a Personal Profile as their business page as part of the internet strategy.

I’ll get off my soapbox so we can continue…

So, how does one promote a business on Facebook?  The first thing to do is to create a Personal Profile on Facebook. Once that is done then you as a person can create a Fan Page for your business.

There seems to be much confusion about this so let’s begin by going over the differences between a personal profile and a fan page:

Personal Profile vs. Fan Page 

First off there are some very important differences between a Personal Profile and a Fan Page.

The biggest difference is that Personal Profiles are for people.  Real people that put their face (i.e. personal photo) in the section for profile photo. Even if the primary reason you are joining Facebook is to gain visibility for your company, it is very important to keep your Personal Profile current. This allows you to build and maintain relationships with family, friends and potential clients.

Fan Pages are for businesses, organizations, places, brands or products, musicians, authors, speakers, public figures, etc. Facebook set up this ability to create a Fan Page for the express purpose of promoting your business, brand or product.

In fact, it is actually against Facebook terms and conditions to use a Personal Profile for a business. If Facebook finds your Personal Profile set up as a Business Profile, it’s possible that they may delete your profile. Any friends gathered, status updates, photos, events, games (i.e. farmville) will be lost.  All that hard work will have been wasted.


Read the rest of the post on Bill Walker‘s site.

Curation Nation

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In this new “Beyond the Book” podcast and transcript from Copyright Clearance Center, CCC’s Chris Kenneally discusses the activity of curation with Steven Rosenbaum, author of Curation Nation. Rosenbaum explains that "curation is theoretically the cure to what ails us, which is this pounding headache of data that is really… getting worse and there’s no signs of it easing up… There’s nobody that’s set the gold standard for curation. Huffington Post was a pretty good early model, because what Arianna figured out was that if she could aggregate traffic, which she did really well, that people that need content would come to her and that she could become the arbiter of what goes on the home page."

He goes onto clarify that when information is "organized by some kind of robot online, it’s not what you’re expecting, [or] what you want…. We’re all going to make content and so what we’re beginning to see is a Web in which everybody is a publisher and increasingly what I want to do is narrow the number of places that I go to listen to the world. "
 
To give an example of how Rosenbaum is taking curation head on, he previews that his company Magnify is now powering TEDx, the technology conference TED’s local event operation, because TED wanted a "video experience that felt curated." 

The podcast and transcript are available in the respective links blow:
 
http://beyondthebookcast.com/curation-nation/
 
http://beyondthebookcast.com/wp-images/RosenbaumTranscript.pdf  

AAP President Speaks Out On GSU Case

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In this Publisher’s Weekly Soapbox editorial (subscriber-only access), Tom Allen, President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers writes about Georgia State University being on trial for copyright infringement. Note that reprint permission was obtained from Publisher’s Weekly by the Copyright Clearance Center, which now provides this content to Publetariat’s audience.

 

Common Goals: AAP on the GSU e-reserve lawsuit　

Paul Courant’s recent Soapbox op-ed (“Adversary or Enemy?”) doesn’t address what motivated three academic publishers to sue, with great reluctance, Georgia State University for copyright infringement: GSU was, and is, systematically downloading and scanning substantial portions of books and posting them on e-reserve, semester after semester, for tens of thousands of students without paying a cent for royalties to the authors and publishers who created the materials.

Imagine the consequences if universities across the country adopted GSU’s policy of not paying anything for wholesale scanning and distribution of copyrighted materials, simply because the material was posted on e-reserves instead of packaged as a printed coursepack. Courant’s University of Michigan doesn’t follow GSU’s policy, nor do most other American universities.

GSU implemented its policy in a way that invited disregard for basic copyright norms by delegating difficult copyright decisions to faculty without guidance, without meaningful review mechanisms, and without providing any funds to pay for permissions when necessary. The result poses a threat to the creative ecosystem in which copyright protection provides incentives for scholars and publishers to develop and distribute high-quality materials for students of all ages. Academic publishers, faculty, and librarians may have their differences. But they are tightly bound together in a common enterprise: education.

The transition to digital delivery holds great promise for quicker access to a broader range of materials through more channels, with greater flexibility for teaching faculty. And in some cases, lower costs. But the ecosystem is degraded by using digital formats as a rationale for the reproduction and distribution of significant amounts of copyrighted material for “free.”

Misconceptions about the GSU litigation are widespread in part because the fair use exception to copyright is not widely understood. An educational purpose is one factor in determining fair use, but it doesn’t stand alone. If all copying for educational purposes were fair use, the production of high-quality educational content would decline or disappear.

I won’t attempt in this space to explain how the plaintiff publishers’ proposed injunction, if approved by the court and properly administered by GSU officials, could simplify the task of making fair use determinations and obtaining permissions to use copyrighted material in an effective, timely manner.

But I do want to make a couple of important points. First, when academic copying and distribution of material clearly constitute fair use, permission is unnecessary. Second, when permission is needed, the path for any institution, including GSU, is inexpensive and has never been easier.

At trial, Tracey Armstrong, president and CEO of the Copyright Clearance Center, testified that anyone seeking to use copyrighted materials could obtain permissions on a case-by-case basis through CCC’s Web site or subscribe to a “blanket license.” [Editor’s note: CCC is underwriting half of the publishers’ legal costs in this suit.] When a university adopts CCC’s blanket license, called the Annual Academic Copyright License Service, it covers all faculty, students, and others attached to the institution, including distance learners. It provides access to approximately 2.5 million titles, including books and periodicals. Prices are based on the number of students attending the institution and the proportion of those in graduate study. In combination, these two licensing services and parallel efforts by publishers are making the process of obtaining permission quite efficient.

What would be the annual cost to Georgia State University if it subscribed to a blanket Annual Academic Copyright License? The answer is $114,000 in rights-holder royalties per year plus a one-time, first-year-only administrative charge of 20% of that amount.
With an estimated 30,400 students at GSU, $114,000 works out to about $3.75 per student. About the cost of one medium-sized Starbucks drink.

Paying the people who create and develop the materials we use in teaching is the right thing to do. Contrary to Dr. Courant’s claim of “enormous costs to academic performance” or another academic librarian’s alarm about a “nightmare scenario” for higher education, I believe the ecosystem that binds educators, librarians, and publishers is working and will survive this litigation over copyright infringement at one particular institution. I will bet them both a Starbucks on that. 

Can The Subscription Model Work For Trade Publishers?

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I recently read a Slate article about how the film industry is repeating the DRM and business model mistakes of the music industry, and of course saw many parallels with, and implications for, trade publishing in it. But unlike the film and music industries, Big Pub has plenty more market and cultural shifts to contend with these days than just the rising popularity and availability of digital media.

The once-mighty Borders has failed, proving once and for all that brick and mortar is no longer the ace in the hole it once seemed for trade publishers. Authors, established and aspiring alike, are seeing fewer and fewer reasons to partner with trade publishers now that it’s become clear they can get their work to a readership more quickly, keep control of their intellectual property rights, and earn higher royalties to boot by going indie. As if to add insult to injury, Amazon seems poised to eat whatever’s left of Big Publishing’s lunch after everyone else has had a go at the trough. But it occurred to me that there may yet be some unexplored and promising territory for Big Pub, if they’re willing to entertain an unorthodox idea: a subscription model of ebook content delivery.

Much like Gamefly and O’Reilly’s Safari Books Online, major publishers could offer a monthly, flat-fee subscription service for
book-at-a-time access to all their ebook titles in various ereader formats. Note that I said access, not ownership. It would be a rental-type paradigm, and like Gamefly and Netflix could be offered at various pricing tiers according to how many titles the consumer is allowed to have checked out at any given time. Such a plan would enable publishers to maintain steady, ongoing revenue streams in addition to their existing sales channels, and would allow publishers to do an end-run around Amazon, B&N’s Nook store, and Apple’s iBookstore, too.

Perhaps just as importantly, it would allow publishers to gracefully exit the ebook pricing, DRM and staged release debacles of the past, and finally be seen as offering a valuable service to consumers instead of being the big, greedy bad guys.

Gamefly charges the equivalent of the cost of one new game at retail prices for its basic subscription; trade publishers could do the same. At $10 – $15 per month I think plenty of avid ebook readers would be willing to sign up, because they’re probably already buying at least one ebook at retail prices each month.

There are only 5 major players left in trade publishing, so even if you had to ‘subscribe’ to all 5 of them individually (since it’s not likely they’d form some kind of collective service), you’re still only talking approximately the same monthly fee as what plenty of people are already paying for their Gamefly accounts.

While publishers would lose money on accounts signed to voracious readers who currently buy numerous ebooks every month at retail prices, those folks are outliers. Most people I know don’t buy ebooks at that rate, and most people I know don’t read more than one book a month, either. Also, there would surely be a large contingent of people who sign up fully intending to wring their money’s worth out of the subscription fee, but ultimately end up ‘checking out’ a book only every second or third month. Once you know the books are there for the taking any time, there’s no urgency.

If you subscribe to Netflix, Gamefly or even a health club, you’re probably personally acquainted with this phenomenon. I say this while gazing ruefully at the Netflix DVD I’ve had checked out for nearly four months now. Yep, I’ve paid the monthly fee for that movie three times over, and in fact could’ve bought the DVD for less than I’ve paid for this rental by now. But I still have no intention of cancelling my Netflix subscription because it’s a convenience I’m willing to pay for. And maybe someday I really will end up checking out a new movie every few days, like I imagined I’d be doing when I first signed up.

Yes, there are technological hurdles to be overcome. And yes, there will be some considerable startup effort and investment. But those things are true of any new business model trade publishers might try to adopt. And heaven knows, the model they’ve currently got is no longer working so they’re going to have to try something.  

 

This is a cross-posting from April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author Blog.

No Man Is An Island…Unless He Has A Facebook Fan Page

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Today I made the permanent and irreversible decision (I wanted to phrase it that way because it sounds more dramatic), to convert my Facebook profile into a page. Basically today was the last straw.

I got one too many friend requests from people who don’t know me but who immediately upon my accepting their request started trying to “network” with me. What, to many, this ends up meaning is that they asked me to join their group or like their book page or something that no one is going to do with someone they don’t know. Basically I felt “advertised to”.

In addition to that kind of thing, I’ve gotten spam messages, game and app invites, being added into people’s groups without my permission, etc. Facebook has been ONE obnoxious thing after another. Also, the more friends you get on Facebook, the more you have to “manage” everything. Like if I was away for a day or two I’d have 32 friend requests to approve. Oh, and event invitations I couldn’t freaking opt out of!

For me, I’m SO happy to be done with that. But your mileage may vary.

Facebook now has a conversion tool where you can turn your Facebook profile into a fan page. There are pros and cons to doing this.

First I’ll say that it’s a violation of Facebook’s TOS to use your personal profile to sell anything. Authors, that means you, too. I know we all like to network and socialize, but if you’re selling things from a profile and don’t convert to a fan page, you could later be in deep dookie. Or maybe not. It may be a slim risk for you, but there it is. I just learned that today, actually. And it had nothing to do with my choice to convert. My choice to convert was because of all the obnoxious shit mentioned earlier.

So if you convert… there are some pros and cons.

PROS:

With the conversion tool on Facebook (and you can find this by going to Facebook Help and typing “converting to fan page” in the search box), all of your friends automatically become fans. So you don’t have to “start over from scratch” in your platform building.

You will not have to deal with ANYTHING super obnoxious like unauthorized group adds, spam, advertising from your fellow authors (sorry, but this happens a LOT and it’s annoying. Please please stop doing it. We are not your target demographic. We are your competition.), and really all the crap I listed above. you don’t get event invitations or friend requests or game invitations or basically any of the crap that makes Facebook crappy.

You get analytic tools that let you see the demographic that is visiting and liking and interacting on your page.

You can create Facebook ads conveniently and directly from your page account to help promote your page and get people to “like you”

You don’t have to worry about the dreaded 5,000 friends limit.

Everyone can see your page. It may be more search-engine friendly for that reason. You can allow people to post comments on the wall as well as photos and video. If anyone abuses this privilege, you have the ability to block them from making posts.

You can make status updates just like before and your fans will see them and can make comments.

CONS:

While the conversion process lets you keep all your friends as “fans”, you pretty much lose everything else. Photos, videos, posts, comments. This wasn’t a big issue for me. I enjoy the idea of a fresh start, and I never post anything on Facebook that is so important I don’t have it in fifty other places anyway.

You will suddenly become an island. You won’t get other people’s status updates anymore. (If you were busy like me and didn’t get to see them a lot anyway, you might not miss this. If you were actively social and interfacing with other people’s walls and comments, you might.)

People will have to come to you because you will no longer be able to post on their walls or send them private messages or whatever. (I think actually you can message “all” your fans at once, though this is not a feature I intend to use because I don’t believe Facebook is or should be a newsletter. I have a newsletter for that.)

CONCLUSION:

For me, someone who often hates Facebook, this full conversion is a good thing. (Or potentially so. It remains to be seen.) For others, this may be too extreme. However, it’s still true that if you are selling something you need a fan page and even if you didn’t know about the TOS issue, you probably have had this idea lurking in the back of your mind that you should probably get around to creating that fan page. What stopped you was likely having to “start all over”.

This is especially daunting if you had over 2,000 Facebook friends like I did.

A good compromise might be to have a personal profile for personal engagement with those you talk to a lot in a social capacity and to have a fan page for readers. If you have a small following right now, you might just want to go ahead and create a page and keep your profile and just start segregating your content more.

If you have a huge friend list and it’s WAY too much drama to do it the other way, you might convert your profile to a page like I did. You DO have access to the list of people following you, even though you can’t post on their walls or comment to their posts. You could simply create a second account for personal use and re-add those friends who are actually friends that you talk to a lot.

For me, for now, I’ve chosen to just have the fan page. I get enough social interaction with online friends via Twitter, IM, and email, that I’m not sure I really need more on Facebook. What I can get through a fan page is about what I was doing on Facebook anyway.

 

This is a reprint from Zoe Winters‘ weblog.

Nothing Happens Over 4th of July Weekend, Except This Year

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This post, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on his The Shatzkin Files blog on the Idea Logical Company site on 7/4/11.

Monday, July 4, was supposed to be a quiet day in the publishing business. It turns out it wasn’t. Three developments reported as special holiday bulletins by Publishers Lunch have strategic implications worth pondering that will have trade publishing people all over the world conferring with their friends and colleagues as soon as they shake the sand off their shoes and settle in to read the weekend email.

First of all: Amazon.com bought The Book Depository. What? You’ve never heard of The Book Depository? Well, then you’re almost certainly one of my US-based readers (about 60-70 percent of you.) The Book Depository is really the other global bookstore. They don’t do ebooks, but they’ve bult their global book business to more than $150 million. No, that’s not as big as BN.com, but they have built a sophisticated many-to-many supply chain (they don’t do it holding stock in distributed warehouses like Amazon), have been growing by something like 30-40% per year for several years, and might even make money.

They’ve even invested heavily in untangling the metadata challenges of global book sales, with a large team in the Middle East tackling the problem.

If anybody were going to mount a global challenge to Amazon as a single consolidated book (and content) distribution business worldwide, The Book Depository was the platform to do it from.

This move by Amazon reminds me of when they acquired Mobi-pocket early in the last decade. In the dawn of the ebook-on-devices era, there were two formats competing as pawns of a hardware competition. Microsoft pushed MS Reader, Palm pushed their own format. Mobi had the clever idea of being able to play on either.

So Amazon acquired Mobi. That meant that they owned the only single-file solution; any other retailer trying to serve the market would have to offer both Microsoft and Palm as a choice to reach all the devices. Palm quickly took that option off the table by insisting it would serve all its files itself. That’s when B&N went out of the ebook business, not to return in a serious way until after Kindle launched in late 2007.

It sure looks to me like The Book Depository would have been a great launch platform for Barnes & Noble to go global.

Second: Pearson, owner of Penguin, became a book and ebook retailer by the purchase of the relevant assets from the bankrupt REDGroup. It appears they will run the business, web sites under the Borders and Angus & Robertson brands, with a minimal staff.

Read the rest of the post on Mike Shatzkin‘s The Shatzkin Files blog on the Idea Logical Company site. 

Will Children’s Book Self-Publishers Survive CPSIA?

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Do you know about the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008? No? Do you think you ought to?

It’s absolutely critical that you know about this law if you—or your clients—produce books or other products for children.

I found out about the implications of this law only today. Jacqueline Simonds, who I interviewed here last year about indie book distribution, sent an email to a group of people concerned with indie publishing explaining her experiences learning about this law. She’s posting about it on her blog.

When I realized the impact this law can have on self-publishers, I knew I had to get you this information right away, and Jacqueline was kind enough to take time out of her day to do an interview with me.

Here’s some background on this law:

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 is a United States law signed on August 14, 2008 by President George W. Bush . . . The law . . . increases the budget of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), imposes new testing and documentation requirements, and sets new acceptable levels of several substances. It imposes new requirements on manufacturers of apparel, shoes, personal care products, accessories and jewelry, home furnishings, bedding, toys, electronics and video games, books, school supplies, educational materials and science kits. The Act also increases fines and specifies jail time for some violations . . . Because of the wide-sweeping nature of the law, many small resellers will be forced to discontinue the sale of children’s products.—Wikipedia

Just to reinforce the possible effects on indie children’s book publishing that this law could have, here’s a response to Jacqueline’s email from Dan Poynter, author of The Self-Publishing Manual and many other books on writing and publishing:

“The future of four-color children’s books is the iPad (and whatever comes next.) This is because of the cost of four-color printing, ship and truck transportation, carrying inventory, processing orders and Postal expenses. CPSIA will only accelerate the migration.”—Dan Poynter, ParaPub.com

You need to know about this. Here’s the interview with Jacqueline.

TheBookDesigner: What is CPSIA?

Jacqueline: The Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) was developed to make sure testing was done on products intended for children under the age of 12. Specifically, it is aimed at toys and bedding that a child might put in their mouth. Books somehow got swept into it, possibly because of board books for toddlers.

How did you get involved with this subject?

I first heard about the CPSIA via the Self-Publishers Discussion Group. One of the members, who makes toys as well as books, picked up on it in the early stages. Since we are distributors, my first reaction was simply not to take on children’s books.

However, a new client approached me with one of the most extraordinary projects I’ve seen in a long time. I couldn’t turn it down. Well, yes I could.

The first thing I asked him is, “Is it CPSIA compliant?” Um, what? he replied. And that’s when he told me that the book files were in Southeast Asia about to print. I had him hold the print run until we could get certification lined up. It’s not inexpensive!

Can you tell us what a publisher has to do to comply with CPSIA?

A publisher must:

  • Place the name of the printer, their city and country and “batch number” (work order number) on the Copyright Page.

     

  • You must have a lab report (or a statement from the printer in lieu of a lab report) stating that the book contains lead that is not in excess of 300 part per million.

     

  • The printer or print broker must fill out a Certificate of Conformity (a sample is here: http://www.cpsc.gov/about/cpsia/faq/elecertfaq.pdf). For Question #2, which asks under what sector of the CPSIA the printer/broker is certifying, the answer seems to be “Section 101” which covers lead content.

     

  • You must submit the lab results and certification to your distributor (if you use one) or wholesaler when you enter a new children’s book into the book databases.

Wow, that sounds like a lot of complicated requirements. Are they for real?

It seems pretty ridiculous, doesn’t it? There’s a point at which well-intentioned laws go feral, and this is one of those moments. We all know that there have been several incidents of children’s toys imported from Asia that have been tainted. However, books are another matter.

When does all this take effect?

The law was supposed to go into effect August 2009 – and did for children’s toys. For books, the official date has been moved to December 2011.

So, no one is demanding this yet, right?

Unfortunately, the big wholesalers have taken this law very much to heart, and are demanding CPSIA certification NOW for new children’s book titles, even though the law doesn’t officially take effect until December. This makes some sense if you consider that a book being sold now will most likely still be in the system when the law goes into effect.

Is there any chance this will be overturned or delayed?

The Association of American Publishers has been riding herd on this since the beginning. They are hoping they can get Congress to modify the legislation so that it only covers books with toys or trinkets attached. The chances of this Congress doing anything in a timely fashion before the law takes effect in December is vanishingly small.

What do you think the response of the book manufacturers is going to be to this new requirement? Will they provide the materials and testing so individual publishers don’t have to do this all themselves?

I have discovered that American printers are taking on the responsibility of testing their inks, paper, glues and cardboard themselves, for all the materials they use in all books (that way they don’t have to do separate testing for individual books). For instance, Lightning Source International has testing on-file and has a standard letter of compliance. They also print their name, state and batch number on the back of the book.

However, foreign book printers don’t have any such program. I have a client who is being charged $600 to prove his book is in compliance.

I would recommend that people contact printers for their RFQ (request for quote) and require that the lab test be paid for by the printer. What will likely happen is that the price of your books will probably have a hidden testing fee attached.

Where can people find out more?

You can go to the main website http://www.cpsc.gov/about/cpsia/cpsia.html Pack a lunch. It takes a while to sift through all this.

Can I hire you as a CPSIA consultant?

Jacqueline Simonds Beagle Bay Books self-publishingYes. I’m available for consultation on this, as well as many other questions about publishing. You can e-mail me at jcsimonds@beaglebay.com or call me at 775.827.8654 (please take into account that I am on Pacific time). I’ll quote rates depending on how much work you need.

Jacqueline Simonds is a book shepherd/publishing consultant, publisher, author and book distributor. She is available for consultations and presentations on many aspects of publishing.

 

 

Data

Jacqueline Church Simonds
Beagle Bay, Inc.
Books That Enlighten and Inform
http://www.beaglebay.com
Follow Jacqueline on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jcsimonds

 

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

Copyright Agency Limited Releases Results From Digital Publishing Trends Survey

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The full article is here but I thought I’d pick out the key points and comment on them as it makes for interesting reading. And you know how I like to comment on stuff. CAL conducted a survey of members to learn more about their views of, and experiences with digital publishing in Australia. Over 2,000 CAL members responded, making this survey the largest of its kind in the Australian publishing environment. The survey was sent to all CAL members, ranging from international publishers to self-published authors, asking about their digital experiences and thoughts on the future.

Here are the key findings, in bold, with my comments after:

Both authors and publishers think the benefits of digital publishing far outweigh any of the downsides

I think this is a given now. There are very few people left, I think, who see digital publishing as a problem.

Around half of all authors and publishers create digital products

This surprised me – I thought it would be more by now. But more on that lower down.

The majority of publishers are still developing their digital strategies

This is not really a problem, but I see it more as a reaction to a rapidly changing environment. I think publishers will be constantly developing their digital strategies to keep up. It’s not something that will settle for a long time yet.

Only 15% of publishers have a competitively differentiating digital strategy

This is a problem. Digital needs to be seen as something different to the standard, existing print model of publishing and has to be treated differently. Publishers are already being left behind due to a resistance to accept this change and the longer they prevaricate, the harder it will be to catch up. Which they will inevitably have to do.

To date, 26% of publishers have no digital strategy at all

This is astounding! Just over a quarter? This is fiddling while Rome burns. It’s playing bowls while the Spanish Armada hoves into view. It’s foolish in the extreme to simply ignore the digital publishing revolution. Whether you like it or not, it is happening. It’s going to continue happening. It’s not a passing fad. There will be paper books and traditional publishing for a long time yet, but e-publishing is racing to catch up and will be rolling alongside as completely mainstream very soon.

To digress slightly, there seems to be a large proprotion of people that ask: Are you into paper books or ebooks? It’s not an either/or situation. I regularly buy both. I enjoy both. The vast majority of readers will be the same. But there are a lot of things now that I’ll buy as an ebook that I would never have bothered with in print – for cost, storage and ease of reading reasons – which makes the combination of print and digital far better than simply one or the other. Videos didn’t kill cinema, television didn’t kill radio. Ebooks won’t kill print publishing. But to completely ignore the rise of digital and have no strategy for it as a publisher is idiotic.

Digital publishing currently contributes less than 5% to the income of most authors and publishers – however, around 10% of authors and 14% of publishers currently make more than half their income from digital publishing

These are slightly rubber stats, but interesting nonetheless. Overall, the 5% figure stands, but that will be growing and will continue to grow until it is a much larger number. I’d say the authors and publishers making more than half their income from digital are the self-published, indie publishers and small press. And they will continue to grow in number as well. The digital options now make self-, indie- and small press publishing far more viable options than they ever were before and that’s very exciting.

Lower costs and improved access to markets are the greatest benefits for authors and publishers alike

See above.

Technical expertise, market dominance of multinationals and piracy are the three concerns shared by authors and publishers

This is no real surprise and is always going to be the case. Keeping up with technology and feeling the pressure from the “big guys” is a concern in all forms of business. From the corner store threatened by the massive super mall, to the indie music label threatened by the big labels, to the cottage industry threatened by the conglomerates. It’s always a battle in a capitalist environment. And piracy is something that affects all creative industries – film, music, television and publishing. Hell, I remember borrowing my friend’s Dungeons & Dragons rule books and spending hours photocopying them in the school library, because I couldn’t afford to buy my own.

But remember – the only thing worse than piracy is obscurity. It’s not going anywhere and we have to accept it as part of the digital landscape.

Low-level technical skills are the most significant barrier to market entry

I think this is more a fear than a reality. Anyone who suggested this has probably not tried to publish digitally because they think they won’t be able to. It’s actually bloody easy, and getting easier all the time.

Authors and publishers share some common views in relation to e-book royalties

Well, that’s good. We need to see the explanation to understand this point. So, from the original article:

Even in the contentious area of e-book royalties, authors and publishers shared some common views. No doubt there was some divergence of opinion, but the differences were by no means extreme. Similar numbers of authors and publishers (16.9 and 17.8%, respectively) thought e-book royalties should be set in the range of 11-20% of net receipts. Another 16% of authors and 13% of publishers thought that range should be 21-30%. Unsurprisingly a large cluster of authors (16.3%) felt the range should be 41-50% (whereas only 4% of publishers agreed). Interestingly, only 14.3% of authors felt the royalty should be 51% or greater. It should also be noted that when asked about the topic of ebook royalties, there was a significant proportion of both authors (24.3%) and publishers (38.8%) who chose not to express an opinion.

I think you’ll also find that a lot of authors are seriously considering retaining their e-rights and self-publishing their digital catalogue, so the percentage of royalties to a publisher becomes moot. But, speaking personally, if my publisher will cover all the technical aspects of design, layout, editing and so on, and leave me to write, I’m happy to split the royalties, just like regular publishing. Percentages will vary a lot, as they already do with print.

2/3 of CAL members believe that digital sales will eventually overtake print for the Australian publishing industry as a whole

And I agree with them. As I’ve said many times before, print will not die, but it will become boutique to some degree. Plus, does Print On Demand count as digital or print? Because the vast majority of paperback sales are likely to be POD before too long, in my opinion.

Of all the 2,090 CAL members surveyed, almost 19% own an iPad and over 12% own a Kindle

Given the supposed resistance to the rise of digital publishing, these are very revealing figures. There are also a lot of other ways to read ebooks and I don’t know if those were covered. It’s happening and only a handful of grumpy old bastards are really complaining.

These are exciting times and we should be enjoying the greatest change in publishing since the invention of the Gutenberg press!

Go to the original article on the CAL site and have a read. Especially check out the italicised comments at the end. So, what do you think?

 

This is a reprint from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.

The Future of Book Publishing

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Last week I was invited to attend a fascinating presentation about technology trends, delivered to a group of hospitality industry technology professionals by Peter Leyden, who is the former managing editor of Wired magazine and author of The Long Boom, a History of the Future 1980-2020. As an author and publisher, two main themes stood out to me:

1.    The tablet computer changes everything.

2.    The use of video will continue to grow rapidly.

During his presentation, Leyden cited the huge growth in sales of ebooks and the next big trends in book publishing: apps and multi-media ebooks with images, audio, and video integrated into the text. 

I have been writing a lot about ebooks lately, with good reason. Consider these recent developments:

  • Publisher’s Weekly just reported yet another month of falling sales of printed books and surging sales of ebooks.
  • In January of 2011, Forrester Research predicted that by 2015, 82 million U.S. consumers (one-third of U.S. online consumers) will be using a tablet computer. Some analysts say that projection is too conservative.
  • Right now, the Apple iPad owns the tablet market, but a number of new competitors will soon appear. Last week, CNET reported that Amazon is planning to release its own Android-based tablet PC by the Fall of 2011. Think about what a game changer that could be.
  • Here’s a quote from a recent press release from Barnes & Noble. Notice how they refer to NOOK Color as a "tablet" and mention apps before books.

"Barnes & Noble continues to make its bestselling, critically acclaimed NOOK Color Reader’s Tablet even better, delivering customers a wide array of high-quality apps, books, interactive children’s books, magazines and more. The company announced it doubled its number of NOOK Apps since recently introducing a broad collection of popular apps."

  • Ebook publisher Smashwords recently announced that their ebooks are now available to the app marketplace through ScrollMotion, which is developing applications for mobile platforms including Apple iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7 and WebOS.

As authors and publishers, we need to capitalize on these trends by making our books available on tablets like the iPad and looking for ways to integrate multi-media features and create apps. The future is here!

Related Articles

Sales of Ebooks and Reading Devices Soar 

6 Reasons Why You Need to Publish Ebooks

How to Publish an Ebook for Multiple Platforms

Quick Start Guide to Marketing Your Kindle eBooks Like a Pro!


About the Author

Dana Lynn Smith, The Savvy Book Marketer, helps authors and indie publishers learn how to sell more books through her how-to guides, blog, newsletter, and private coaching. For more book marketing tips, get her free Top Book Marketing Tips ebooks, subscribe to her blog, follow BookMarketer on Twitter, and connect on Facebook.

 

This is a reprint from Dana Lynn Smith‘s The Savvy Book Marketer.