Business End

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

The Author’s Platform ~ Community of Interest

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Every day, over 2,000 books are published.

There’s no way around it. Authors need a platform–a place to stand above the crowd and get peoples’ attention.

If you self-publish and don’t already have a congregation of admirers, there is no other way to sell books than to build a platform.

Well, I suppose, if you had the money and the time, you could have a boat-load of books printed, pack ‘em in a van, and drive all over the place meeting people and convincing them they need to buy your book. Technically, that’s still building a platform, even if it means erecting it in one place, preaching to the masses, packing it up, and moving it to another place 🙂

Even respected agents like Rachelle Gardner can make a case for traditionally published authors needing to build their own platform. Here’s a quote from her post, The Dreaded Author Platform :

“…I almost wanted to announce that I’d no longer accept queries from anyone who doesn’t already have a good solid head start on a platform. (I won’t draw such a clear line in the sand, but consider yourself informed.)”

The consensus opinion about when to start building a platform is well before the book is written.

Obviously, if you don’t have books already published, all you’ve got for building materials is yourself.

So, assume for a moment you have a great idea for a book, you think you can write it, and you want to build a platform.

The most rational opinion I’ve found for how to do it is to start a blog. Write about yourself. Write your opinions about writing, itself. Offer to interview published authors on the blog. Offer to interview authors who have yet to be published. You may want to guest post on others’ blogs and have them guest post on yours.

Study how to increase traffic to a blog.

After that, you may want to (many people say you must) begin linking to your blog on Facebook and Twitter. Many folks point out that being genuinely helpful in these social media spaces is critical–you can’t just go running around and constantly shouting about how great your book is. I agree, but it takes time to find the people who really matter to you.

Facebook and Twitter are, to me, two varieties of wild parties. You arrive and start talking to people. Most of them want to promote their own project. Sometimes you find people you can establish a mutually beneficial relationship with. Still, there a a ton of people and, again, it takes time to find the right ones.

There are other ways to build an author platform. Personally, I have no time for anything but what I’ve just indicated as a well-respected way to build a platform.

Well, no time except for my giving away as many copies of the manuscript of my book as I can. If this sounds completely ridiculous, check out the link to Cory Doctorow’s ideas in my last post…

If you’re a budding author and decide to blog a platform for yourself, I can’t recommend a better site for learning how to shape a blog for maximum effect than Copyblogger!

Show what’s with that phrase in the title of this post: Community of Interest?

Well, one of the principles I try to follow in my life is: to achieve anything of lasting value, a person needs to work with a community of like-minded people. Whether they’re called friends, followers, fans, or associates, they are the key to establishing a project on solid ground.

To me, building an author platform and building a community of interest are the same thing.

Earlier, I said I have no time for anything but blogging and giving away copies of my manuscript. Actually, I was ignoring the time I use from the “extra” hours I have each day, those hours called free-time, when I venture into the virtual world, Second, Life, and participate in my community of interest on Book Island…

I would love to hear your opinions/experiences/questions on this topic in our comments section 🙂
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Questions For Your Beta Readers

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This post, by Jodie Renner, originally appeared on the Crime Fiction Collective blog on 4/25/11.

Since I’m a freelance fiction editor, most of my posts here will be advice, tips and resources for aspiring novelists, with an emphasis on thrillers, romantic suspense and mysteries.

So you’ve written your first draft? Congratulations! What’s next? A future post of mine will go over the revision process, but for now, let’s skip ahead to after you’ve revised your first draft once or twice. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by sending it off to an agent too soon, or self-publishing it yet. That’s the biggest mistake of unsuccessful novelists – being in too much of a hurry to get their book out when it still needs significant revisions and final polishing. To start, get some input from volunteer readers familiar with your genre, then do some revisions based on the feedback, and finally, get a thorough copyedit, preferably by a professional freelance editor.

First, get some trusted colleagues or acquaintances to read your story through (or even the first few chapters) and tell you what they think of it so far. But don’t ask your parent, child, sibling, bff or significant other to do this “beta” reading, as they probably won’t want to tell you what they really think, for fear of jeopardizing your relationship. So how do you find your beta readers? Perhaps through a critique group, writing class, workshop, book club, or online networking such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.

Be sure to choose your pre-readers from people who already read and enjoy your genre. In the case of a YA novel or children’s book, look around for be age-appropriate relatives, neighborhood kids, or the children of your friends – or perhaps you know a teacher or librarian who would be willing to read some or all of it aloud and collect feedback.

To avoid generic (and generally useless) responses like “I liked it,” “It was good,” or “It was okay,” it’s best to guide your readers with specific questions. I recently polled some author clients and friends about this, and here are their lists of useful questions for your “beta” readers or critique group.

Read the rest of the post on the Crime Fiction Collective blog.

Strategic Tweeting For Authors

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This post, by Alan Rinzler, originally appeared on his The Book Deal on 3/20/11.

If you’re an author who isn’t active on Twitter, you’re making a huge mistake, say savvy book-marketing gurus.

You’re missing out on a megaphone that can help blast out your message and attract new readers.

Your readers are wondering: Where are you?

“There’s a conversation going on right now on Twitter about your book, about your topic, about your area of expertise. And if you’re not there, your readers are wondering why you’re not participating in the conversation.”

That’s the gospel according to Cindy Ratzlaff, a 20-year publishing veteran who designed the campaigns of more than 150 New York Times bestsellers and pioneered a strategy of treating authors and books as brands. I listened to Ratzlaff the other day on a webinar about Twitter for authors and publishers, sponsored by BookExpo.

Readers are brand evangelists

“Twitter has trained readers to expect instant access to their literary heroes,” Ratzlaff said. “They want to be your partners in promoting your book.” Authors who understand that communicate directly with their followers on Twitter, allowing them to experience a personal connection and behind-the-curtains look at the author’s life – and that creates brand evangelists, Ratzlaff said.

And speaking of brand evangelists, check out these numbers, which underscore why Twitter is now an essential venue for every author with a book to sell:

Read the rest of the post on Alan Rinzler‘s The Book Deal.

How Amazon Recommendation Algorithms Help Sell Your Book

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A few weeks ago my friend Joel Friedlander sent me an email …that he had been sent by Amazon which recommended my novel Pentecost next to John Connolly whose supernatural mysteries I really love to read myself.

I was absolutely overjoyed by the news! I put it on Twitter and also received the tweet below showing that Pentecost is being shown in the list of books that other people have bought. Subsequently I have seen it come up myself when I’ve gone in to look at other fiction books of a similar type.

This is evidence that the Amazon algorithms are kicking in and they are starting to market Pentecost themselves. These algorithms are top secret and no one knows for sure how to ensure this type of thing happens, but here’s what we can infer.

  • Rankings get you noticed. Pentecost has been in the Religious Fiction rankings since Feb 7th when it launched. It goes up and down but basically has been in the Top 40 or so for that bestseller category and around 2500 overall in the Kindle store. It has also been in the Top 100 of the same ranking in the UK but that site seems to run entirely separately from the US store.
  • Ratings and Reviews make a difference. Pentecost has 32 reviews as I am writing this with 4.5 star rating on Amazon.com. This is more than a whole lot of big name authors and clearly Amazon pays attention when readers are enthusiastic about a book. (THANK YOU so much if you have left a review – it makes such a difference! If you love a book, the author will be very grateful for a review!)

Why is this important?

Amazon have an amazing amount of information on readers. They target you with offers that you often find irresistable! They know the types of books you read and offer you similar ones. This is gold for authors as it means that Amazon can reach people with your book who would never have heard of it otherwise.

Why do Amazon do this?

Clearly it’s not for your benefit! They are a business and want to make more money so their algorithms look for the books that are selling in specific genres and they try to sell more of them. It’s an entirely business point of view but it benefits authors who are selling well – regardless of the publisher! That is a very key point because I can’t hope to get into a bookstore near you with my novel, but I can hope that you’ll get an email from Amazon recommending my book (if you currently buy books in this genre anyway).

As an author, have you seen evidence of this recommendation algorithm and do you have any ideas on how it works? As a reader, do you pay attention to Amazon’s recommendation emails?

 

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

Produce High Quality Articles And Make Them Easy To Read

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This is the second part in my series: Top 5 Ways to Get Your Articles Found and Read Online.

To get maximum readership, it’s important to provide high quality information or entertainment and to make your articles visually appealing. When writing articles and blog posts, first write a strong headline and lead paragraph that conveys the purpose of the article and draws readers in.

Long, dense blocks of copy are hard to read, especially online. When people glance at the article, you want it to look inviting and easy to read.

Tips for Making Your Articles More Appealing

• Don’t get too long-winded. If a blog post is more than 500 words, consider breaking it apart into a series. For other online articles, 600 to 800 words is a good range.

• Use short paragraphs and insert subheads to organize the information and make it easy to scan.

• Bullet points and numbered lists create both visual appeal and interest from readers.

• Use examples and stories to illustrate your points, when possible.

• Add photos or images to draw attention to your articles. You can find free photos and illustrations online or purchase images for about a dollar at sites such as iStockphoto [and] Wordle.

Finally, be sure to spell check and proofread your article. I do that first in Word, then proofread the draft of the article online before I click the Post button. It’s amazing how many times I find another error on my second review.

Read the rest of this series here:

Part 1: Top 5 Ways to Get Your Articles Found and Read Online
 

 

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

The Website Platform Advantage

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While writing my Platform Evolution post I gave some thought to commenting on an excellent Infographic about content farms. No sooner did I decide against it than I ran across this excellent post on Publishing Trends about content farms. Then, a day later, a good friend sent me an unbidden and timely link to a post on Making Light, which, among other things, talks about — wait for it! — content farms.

If you’re not familiar with content farms you can get a quick overview here. As a writer, what concerns me most about content farms is that they are to writing and publishing what Ebola is to the human body. If I was an astrophysicist I would also add that content farms are to information and knowledge what solar storms are to communications. And if I was a logician I would say that content farms are to accuracy and reliability what tsunamis are to fishing villages.

Which is to say that everything about content farms is bad, but not equally bad. The worst aspect of content farms is not that they’re the new frontier for spammers and swindlers, it’s that producing so much crap at such an incredible rate renders every single aggregating and filtering mechanism useless.

Google as a search engine for retail products and reviews has been beyond broken for years. (Try searching for “best _____”, where the blank is any product you’re interested in.) Amazon is currently the default search for products, but it’s starting to fall apart as well. (Am I looking at the latest version of the CD/DVD/book I want to order? Is it new or used? Does it ship free or for a fee? Is it shipping from Amazon or some fly-by-night third-party reseller?) And of course the idea that all that ballyhooed user-generated social-media content is pretty much crap is also nothing new.

What content farms do that’s new is automate the production of internet crap by exploiting free labor and making liberal use of other people’s content in a plausibly deniable way. For independent writers trying to attract attention, fighting through the noise pollution generated by content farms may seem impossible, and all the more so as content farms begin to pollute e-book retailers like Amazon. The antidote to this virulent hemorrhage of obfuscating web text may seem to be a gated social networking community, but I think the opposite is true.  

The Best Offense
When you own your own website you establish a perimeter you can actively defend. Whatever else might be happening on the wild and wooly web — whatever newfangled social-networking site or app might be setting the masses atwitter, and whatever predatory forces are conspiring to mute your voice — you can control the integrity of your brand and web presence from behind your server firewall.

As the web disintegrates and segregates more and more, and as sites like Facebook and Amazon fight to lock you in to their communities, denying portability to the relationships you establish on those sites, your isolated, solitary website will remain unsullied. As such it will help you accomplish what fewer and fewer netizens are able to do these day: authenticate yourself. Nobody will be confused about who you are because on your own site you control the message and the medium.

Rather than having to fight through other sites or networks, an independent website also allows readers to find you using almost any basic search engine. Yes, people will need to know something about you — your name, the title of your book(s), etc. — but that will be true no matter how you attempt to integrate your platform into the web.

Content farms, by their very nature, and designed to obscure and deceive through sheer volume. Should content farms progress to the level of writing useless articles about every name in the phone book, then yes, that could pose problems for independent authors. But those problems will still be significantly less if you have your own dedicated site.

Why? Because most search engines take the quality of posts into account. In less than a year and a half I’ve managed to turn the keywords ‘mark, barrett, writer‘ into multiple first-page search hits that allow people to find me. If readers learn or remember the word Ditchwalk they can find me even more quickly, either by typing in that word as a URL or searching for it.

In an age when more and more individuals and businesses are determined to exploit and corrupt information, the ability to validate and authenticate your own presence on the web carries a premium. As an independent author you are and must be your own brand, and I believe it’s less important in a platform context to distribute that brand than it is to make yourself easily identifiable and accessible. (You don’t have to join Facebook or Twitter or anything else in order to find and access Ditchwalk.)

The Best Defense
The biggest fear most writers have about not being on Facebook or Twitter — apart from missing out on the markets themselves — is that somebody will poach their name or brand. The fear of brandjacking is actually stoked by social networking site because it drives a considerable amount of registrations: sign up now or someone will steal your identity! (Some websites make this threat part of their business plan, driving registrations by implicit extortion.)

Back in the day it was possible for a sole-proprietor to maintain a presence on one or two social networking sites to make sure nobody was poaching. Anyone visiting those pages could be redirected in some fashion to the brand’s home page. Today that’s not only not realistic, but social networking sites have gotten better at making it hard for people to leave the compound. Trying to integrate with every site that has a market/community — let alone maximize those relationships — could easily leave the independent author with no time to work.

From your perspective as an author, establishing the prominence of your own name probably seems critical, but it’s not. There are a lot of Mark Barretts in the world, but because of my investment in Ditchwalk I don’t have to compete with any of them. Merely by writing a few blog posts using words central to my work I’ve been able to differentiate myself from others who are fortunate enough to have the same great name.

In the same way that I’m not going to play defense in order to protect myself against brandjacking, I’m not going to play defense against namejacking. Even if I thought parents were naming their kids “Mark Barrett” in order to dilute my brand, I wouldn’t bow to that kind of extortion because it’s too easy to get around the problem. (I might consider suing them for trademark infringement however. Or blasphemy. Or something.)

There’s a bit of equity in all this, too. If you’ve got a really common name it’s going to be a little harder to differentiate yourself from everyone else, but you’ll benefit because most people will be able to guess the spelling. If your name is less common it may be harder to spell, but it will be much easier for you to differentiate yourself.

It’s possible that someone somewhere may at some point put up a fan page using your name. It’s also possible some weasel might try to steal your identity by brandjacking. It’s useful to do web searches from time to time to see when and where your name appears, and in what context, but I don’t think there’s any reason to be paranoid. If you do find somebody ripping you off you can probably get the offending account or web page taken down by contacting the relevant admins.

The Signal-to-Noise Test
If you’ve been using the web for a decade or more you’ve experienced the decay. Searching for even simple things has become a chore, in part because of the nefarious practices of a dedicated and growing subculture of spammers and exploiters, but also in part because of a social-networking mindset that says the open web is a threat.

When you’re building your own platform and considering how different applications or sites might benefit you, consider the signal-to-noise ratio. I stopped using Twitter because the ratio of signal to noise kept getting worse no matter what I did. I stopped using Facebook because Facebook constantly abused and confused its own users, while at the same time encouraging a nearly endless stream of meaningless updates and postings.

When you base your platform on your own website, the signal to noise ratio is under your control. Nothing and nobody can get in the way of your message because there is no noise unless you allow it. As a result, the clarity of your site stands apart from the muck spewed forth by content farms and networking sites. And there will only be more muck.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk.

Adopting a Device-Neutral Approach to Electronic Publishing: A Q&A With Springer's Timothy Griswold

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This article, by Janet Spavlik, originally appeared on Book Business on 4/14/11 and is reprinted here in its entirety with the site’s permission.

Digital publishing was, of course, top of mind for many of the attendees at last week’s Publishing Business Conference & Expo, as the event kicked off with a panel of book industry leaders in print-digital integration. Moderated by THA Consulting President Ted Hill , the session, entitled "The Cross-Platform Book Publisher: Reinvent Your Company," featured panelists Timothy Griswold , vice president, sales, trade and special licensing, Springer; Adam Lerner , president/publisher, Lerner Publishing Group; Deborah Forte , president, Scholastic Media; and Mike Rosiak , lead content architect, Wolters Kluwer Health—all of whom shared their experiences and insights into successfully bringing products to market in multiple formats.

Book Business Extra spoke with Griswold after the conference to expand on some of the themes discussed amongst the panel. Here, he advises book publishers on publishing electronically across multiple devices and discusses the next big opportunity Springer is exploring.

Book Business Extra: During the panel, you stressed Springer’s device-neutral approach in regard to publishing content electronically—the company publishes across as many devices as possible. How has Springer adapted to so many different devices and formats, and what advice would you give to other publishers that want to adopt a device-neutral approach?

Timothy Griswold: … There is a learning curve involved. You take a risk, and some of them are good and some of them may not be so good. … When you’re any publisher, whether small, medium or large, during the negotiation with [online retailers, such as] the Apple iBookstore, Amazon Kindle, Blio, etc., you need to really do that trial run-through at the beginning during the contract negotiation [before the contract is signed]. … What we found is that, in some cases, the content and the format [in which] we delivered the content … the actual appearance on the e-reader, the quality was not good. And so, because of that, with the contract already signed, there were conversion costs, and, in some cases, considerable conversion costs that had to be incurred.

There was a discussion back and forth as far as who was responsible for those conversion costs, so that’s probably the most important thing. … I learned that I need to have the people in production that I can rely on and who are knowledgeable regarding the different formats of e-files and delivery and what has to be done, and I need that knowledge while I’m out there negotiating with Blio or whoever it happens to be in order to deliver the content and make it that seamless transition.

Publetariat Editor’s Note: also see this Storify page, on which Heather Fletcher shares tweets from the conference, many of which include links to blog posts in which attendees have recapped various sessions and commented on them.

 

Library Ebooks & The Indie Author Conundrum, Part 1

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This post, by William Van Winkle, originally appeared on his Behind the Lines blog on 3/28/11.

"Turbulence is life force. It is opportunity. Let’s love turbulence and use it for change."
–Ramsay Clark

In case I haven’t mentioned it in the last three or four minutes, I have a new book out, and like every independent, fledgling author, I’m trying to come up with different ways to find an audience — no small trick when your book is digital-only and digital still comprises less than 15% of the total book market.

I’m an avid library patron, and, as an audiobook nut, I’ve dabbled with OverDrive’s Library2Go service over the years. Library2Go (L2G) is my home state’s chosen conduit for making electronic media available to library patrons over the Internet. Most people to whom I mention the service have no idea that it even exists…perhaps for good reason. Historically, I’ve found L2G fairly underwhelming. I had trouble finding enough audiobooks that were in MP3 format, not DRM-constrained WMA, and the titles that interested me were few and far between. I went a year, perhaps two, without looking at the site 

And then something amazing happened. Library2Go hit puberty. We often forget that most librarians, like teachers, have the public’s welfare in their minds and hearts, and they work every day trying to help make the world better. I can only assume that it was librarians (and, behind them, a fleet of impatient patrons) responsible for not only a significant rise in the number of quality audiobooks available but also the recent appearance of ebooks.

The last time I touched OverDrive, I was listening to audiobooks on a 5G iPod. Today, all of my listening filters through a Motorola Droid. (For would-be audiobook listeners, I found my 2007/2008 BlackBerry and other "legacy" cell phones inferior to the iPod for this task. This is no longer the case. Media player apps have matured to the point that they’re at least as convenient for book enjoyment as traditional music devices.) OverDrive’s player app, called Media Console, is available for Windows, Mac, Android, BlackBerry, iPhone/iPad, and Windows Mobile.

Read the rest of the post on Behind the Lines, and also see Part 2.

Author Interview: Naderia by Julian Gallo

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 Author Interview – Julian Gallo’s Latest Novel, "Naderia"

written and conducted by Garry Crystal.  

Lulu vs. Createspace: One Indie Author's Perspective

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In 2010 I used Lulu to publish my first book, Fear Not! Discovering God’s Promises For Our Lives. Then, this year (2011), I decided to give CreateSpace a try when I published Simply Prayer. Although the two POD’s are similar, there are some differences I thought others might like to know about before choosing one or the other. Here’s the breakdown of the two.


Lulu

Cons:

  • Not very user-friendly. It took a lot of time to search through the FAQs and community answers to find out how to put Lulu’s free ISBN on my copyright page. By the time I was finished I had a major headache.
     
  • Difficult to add Lulu’s free ISBN to the copyright page. I first had to upload my .pdf to Lulu, then have them issue the ISBN (took only a minute or two), then add that to my copyright page and then re-upload the new .pdf.
     
  • Look Inside! not even an option. Let’s face it, even if you’re buying a book online you want to be able to see between the pages to get an idea if this book is right for you. I did find a work-around, but it’s not the same as having an Amazon Look Inside! right there with the buy button.



Pros:

  • It’s free. This was super important since I’m just starting out and have a very small budget.
     
  • You’re book will be listed on Amazon. It can take a couple weeks, but it does show up pretty quick. Unfortunately, I’ve discovered those supposed listings with other booksellers often show the book as “out of stock.” Not exactly helpful for distribution.
     
  • Great cover designer. I was able to design the front and back, then import them as .jpgs into a basic template. Lulu even added spine text, though they did warn me about the possibility of the text wrapping to one side or the other based on the small page count. This was very important to me as I’ve donated my books to church libraries that will be including them on bookshelves.



CreateSpace

Cons:

  • Cover designer difficult to use. I like designing my own covers (though I hope someday to employ someone much better), but I found designing a full cover (front, back and spine) very difficult. The CreateSpace instructions for creating a full cover were a little hard to figure out. Also, CreateSpace refused to add spine text, even though the page count for Simply Prayer was a little larger than my first book.
     
  • Questioned about picture quality. What I was asked to do was change every picture to “300 dpi” or risk poor print quality. While that might not seem like a big thing, for someone who understands the nature of printing houses it was an irritation because it’s not the dpi that matters. What’s important is the ppi (pixels per inch), which I knew were perfectly fine.
     
  • Look Inside! feature can take up to 8 weeks. Sure, waiting 8 weeks is better than not having the feature at all, but it does wear on one’s patience.

Pros:

  • It’s free.
  • Very user-friendly. With step-by-step instructions and simple buttons, I didn’t need to read any FAQs or search the community pages to figure out how to upload my book.
  • Easy to add CreateSpace’s free ISBN to copyright page. I was able to get the ISBN before uploading a .pdf, so adding it to my copyright page meant only creating one .pdf for the entire process.
  • Listing on Amazon. Of course, that’s where free distribution ends. If you have the budget, then getting the larger distribution package might be the way to go.



Those are the biggest pros and cons I found between Lulu and CreateSpace. Everything else was similar, as far as I could tell. For those of you who have used either or both, or even someone else, what are your experiences?

 

This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s The Road To Writing.

4 Solutions To The Book Discount System

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I’m finding in talking to new self-publishers that many people don’t quite get how the discounting works in different parts of the book distribution system. This is vital to understand because it affects whether your publishing company will make a profit or not, whether it will be a viable business enterprise. Besides, you want to know how much you make for each book you sell, don’t you? Sure, and why not. So let’s step through it together.

As a publisher, you are a retail product manufacturer. You are supplying a unique product to the market and it’s up to you to set the terms on which you’ll sell your product.

Depending on how your book is produced, you may have more or less flexibility in how you deal with the rest of the chain of distribution. Here are some scenarios:

     

  • You ignore it completely

    You do this by not selling your book wholesale. In other words, you, as the manufacturer, sell direct to the end user. For example, John T. Reed who I’ve written about before, only sells his line of books from his website. He has no need for a discount schedule because he is outside the chain of distribution. This method has some advantages, too. You capture 100% of the sales price, since you don’t have to share it within wholesalers, distributors, jobbers, or retailers. You also can capture the names of everyone who buys a book, which can build an asset that’s very valuable when it comes time to offer other books or services to the same market. The disadvantage is that you have to do all the work yourself, or pay for fulfillment through a fulfillment service. Also, some people may be reluctant to buy from a self-publisher’s website, trusting big companies like Amazon to protect them and offer services like bundled shipping or free shipping, returns, and other amenities. In addition, you will have to do all the marketing for your book, and any interruption you have in your website hosting will cause a financial loss from lost sales.

     

  • You use a print on demand supplier

    Most print on demand suppliers restrict the size of your discount, demand minimum discounts, or don’t allow you any say at all in discounts. Other suppliers, like Lightning Source, allow you to set your own discount within limits, but offer just that one discount to every retailer or jobber who buys your book from Ingram, whom Lightning Source supplies. So if you set your discount to 20%—the minimum allowed—bookstores won’t buy the book because they need a minimum 40% discount. But if you set your discount at 40% to appeal to the bookstores, and then end up selling most of your books on Amazon or BN.com, you will have given up 20% and gotten nothing in return. (If you need a review on how to trace the flow of money through the print on demand system, see this link: Understanding Print on Demand: Follow the Money.)

     

  • You print offset

    If your book has to be printed offset (and examples might include color books printed overseas, odd-sized books, and books that can’t be produced by print on demand methods) you will have to be your own distributor, unless you sign with a distributor (see the next option). That means that you’ll have to come up with a discount schedule that applies to retailers, maybe a separate one for libraries, and other terms for special sales or direct sales. In addition, some retailers will demand steep discounts, up to 55% off your retail price, and you’ll have to agree to take returns of unsold merchandise. In addition you’ll be responsible for shipping books to retailers, effectively reducing your profit margin even farther. And, as it should be clear by now, you will spend a lot more of your time handling all the details of wholesale selling, including paperwork, invoicing, tracking payments, packing and shipping books, and all the other minutia of doing your own fulfillment and distribution.

    book discount schedules

    Typical Discount Schedule – Click to enlarge

     

  • You sign with a distributor

    In this scenario your book is of wide enough interest and large enough potential or proven sales that you can get a distributor to take over supplying your book to retailers. Distributors will put your book in their catalog, their sales reps may help promote the book to booksellers, and they will deal with the bookstore bookkeeping, returns, shipping, warehousing and may even offer fulfillment services for single copy sales. The downside to having a distributor is what you have to give up: usually 65% or more of the cover price. Let’s say your book costs $10. You will receive $3.50 for each book sold after giving up 65%. If the book cost you $2.00 to produce, your gross profit is 15%. This is not significantly better than the royalty offered by most trade publishers, and it’s taking you a lot of work and risk to earn it. The only way this option makes sense to me is if you genuinely have a book that you think you can promote nationally, and for which you realistically can expect to have sales of 5,000 or more copies per year. Distribution also becomes a more viable option when you start to have more books in your line. If you have 5 books, you might find distribution an advantage, because if any one of them sells well it will help the others get a foot in the door.

When you plan your publishing project, think about the eventual buyers you plan to market to. Where do they buy their books? Knowing this can help you make smart decisions about how you approach dealing with retailers and, consequently, how you choose to discount your books.

 

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

The Adman Cometh

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It’s no surprise…that ads have come to the Kindle. The good news — relatively speaking — is that you can save a few bucks by purchasing an ad-enabled machine:

Although the hardware is identical to the standard $139 Kindle, the new Kindle with “Special Offers” will feature advertisements and deals as its screen saver and on the bottom of its home screen. But for that added distraction, the company will take $25 off the price—dropping it to $114.

If ads on the Kindle are inevitable — and they are, as are ads on every imaginable surface and device — I think this is a smart way to introduce them. Rather than inject ads into every Kindle, thereby infuriating all those nice people who helped make the Kindle a success, Amazon is giving the customer a choice and motivating that choice with savings.

As a result of this innovation I assume the people who buy and sell things in the publishing world (agents, editors, publishers, advertisers) are having yet another breathless conversation about what this means, where it might lead, and whether or not ads might be injected directly into the content of books as a means of making lots of money. So far Amazon seems to be holding the line:

The screen saver and home screen bar are the only places customers will see ads and offers, according to Russ Grandinetti, vice president of Kindle content. “We are not interested in doing anything that interrupts the reading experience,” he said.

If Amazon was facing more competition or in need of revenue I’m confident the reader’s experience would be the first thing on the auction block. Then again, it’s not like these things haven’t happened before, and some have actually failed. While advertisers would be happy to have ads on every page of a book — and would still complain bitterly about that limitation — consumers have shown that there is a limit to what they will tolerate.

On a related note, for a while now I’ve been seeing an odd announcement when I use my Gmail account: “Coming soon: Better ads in Gmail.” Now, I don’t know about you, but not only am I not interested in better ads in Gmail, I’m pretty sure Google’s idea of ‘better’ and my idea of ‘better’ are wildly divergent if not mutually exclusive.

So how is Google making my Gmail ads better? By mining my personal data, of course:

Google says that the system uses signals similar to those utilized by Priority Inbox, the automated system launched last August that attempts to highlight which of your incoming email is most important. These signals include things like who sent the message, whether or not you read it, and keywords that appear in the message.

(What I like most about this opt-out change is that Google has introduced the abstracted word ‘signals’ to replace the easily recognized term ‘personal information’.)

Why is Google improving its Terminator-like ability to target specific ads at specific keywords and the people who use them? Well, it might be because Google is facing increasing pressure on the search front:

Bing is expanding its reach as a search engine, according to new data from Experian Hitwise. In March, Bing powered nearly a third (30.01 percent) of U.S. searches.

The amount of Bing-powered searches has been steadily increasing. In February, they accounted for 28.48 percent of traffic, meaning the March figures are a 5 percent increase.

I don’t know anyone who clicks on Google ads. I don’t know anyone except SEO consultants who talks about AdSense anymore. If Google’s dominance in search erodes it’s going to have to make up that revenue somewhere, and since its main business is advertising it’s a given that Google is going to be bringing more ads to more surfaces and devices in the future. Like the Kindle.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk.

Arab Spring Update: Are Social Media Being Given Too Much Credit For Recent Changes In The Middle East?

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In this podcast and transcript, from the Copyright Clearance Center’s Beyond the Book site, the CCC’s Chris Kenneally interviews Egyptian-born journalist Mona Eltahawy about recent events in the Middle East and the role social media have (or have not) played in those events. The podcast and transcript are provided here in their entirety with the CCC’s Beyond the Book site’s permission.

As popular uprisings have spread across the Middle East and North Africa, media pundits have credited Twitter and Facebook. But one Egyptian-born journalist based in New York says the acclaim for social media is misplaced, even though she admits to a Twitter addiction herself.

“It was a revolution of courage, rather than a revolution of Twitter or Facebook,” says Mona Eltahawy. “Social media connected real-life activists with online activists, and with ordinary Egyptians whose only exposure to politics came through Facebook and through tweets that they read. And through that connection, [Twitter] brought people out on the ground. But it was a tool. It was a weapon.”

An acclaimed freelance journalist, Mona Eltahawy is also a lecturer and researcher on the growing importance of social media in the Arab world. She spoke with CCC’s Chris Kenneally at the We Media NYC conference about her work and her insights on the Arab Spring.

 Arab Spring Update [12:15m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download

 

Author Blogs – Use Categories To Organize Your Posts

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Many blog platforms have a default setting that places certain items (often called widgets) in the sidebar (the narrow column on the side). Two common default widgets are Archives and Categories. 

The Archives widget displays a list the months of the year, with the most recent month listed first. Usually there’s a number next to each month indicating how many blog posts were made that month. Clicking on the month brings up the blog posts made during that month. I recommend deleting the Archive widget from your blog. It doesn’t serve a useful purpose, it takes up valuable space in the sidebar, and if you don’t post very often, the small number of posts listed for each month looks bad.

Having a list of blog post Categories in the sidebar is much more useful to visitors, especially for nonfiction author blogs. If someone has an interest in a particular topic, they can quickly and easily find more articles on that topic using the Categories list.

Each time you publish a blog post, you have the option of assigning a category to that post. The Categories widget displays a list of the categories you have used. Clicking on a category name takes the blog visitor to a page containing the articles in that category.

You may have the option of presenting your categories in cloud format. The cloud displays the category names in a cluster, rather than an alphabetical list, and the names of the most frequently used categories are shown in larger type. The cloud may be harder to read if you have very many categories, but it is more eye-catching than a list.

Another option is include category names in a navigation menu across the top of your blog. This works best if you have a small number of categories. You can use the menu in addition to or instead of the Categories widget in the sidebar.

On my own blog, I deleted the Categories widget and created a custom widget called “Book Marketing Resources,” which you can see it in the lower right column of this page. Most of these category links go to a page listing all the blog posts in that category, but several of them go to special resource pages that also list additional resources related to the category. For a sample resource page, see the Library & Educational Sales page. 

Another way to use the categories feature is to link to a category page at the end of some of your blog posts.  For example:  See more articles about Blogs & Websites.

See this post to learn how to avoid common mistakes in using categories on author blogs.

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

Allowable Home Office Tax Deductions

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Publetariat Contributor Julian Block shares this helpful tax information for writers and other freelancers:

The National Association of Realtors has a Web site for the general public, houselogic.com. At the site, [you will find a slideshow entitled] "Home Office Tax Deductions: Tips to Get It Right". The slides pair attention-getting images with brief explanations of what expenses are allowable for freelance writers and others who operate businesses from their homes. The explanations alert [viewers] to opportunities to save taxes this year and get a head start for next year. Here is a direct link to the slide show.