Publetariat

E-books and the Ever-Decreasing Circlets of Hardback Books

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Yesterday we looked at Amazon’s latest move in their stand-off with Penguin (Pearson Group) over negotiations on the implementation of the agent model on e-books by the major publishing houses. Amazon have reduced some new penguin titles in hardback to $9.99 to telegraph to their customers that they want control and flexibility on retail pricing rather than be under constraints imposed by the agreements they have with publishers.

Amazon know publishers are deeply uneasy about the future for hardback books as the lead format release for a new title, and while Amazon are taking the hit on a $9.99 discount, they are send a very clear signal out to their customers—we’re on the side of the of the customer and just look at what these publisher guys are trying to do to us.

I questioned the real resolve major publishers have to get behind the development and promotion of their e-book strategy, and while this year’s London Book Fair came and went in a whisper, last year’s Fair underlined for me the first inkling I had that UK publishers were just not willing to embrace e-books in the way they needed to. My feeling now is this reluctance may actually extend to many US publishers, who may like to be seen to be actively behind the steady rise in e-book sales, but secretly they are hoping the market levels and bottoms in the next couple of years so they can revert back to their tried, trusted and sacred printed book. I commented yesterday on the resolve of publishers to seeing e-books take off. 

“I have one overriding feeling about the agency model adopted by the major publishers in their agreements reached so far with Amazon – whose executives have spent many an hour locked away behind polished doors – and it is the belief that publishers are still not wholeheartedly behind the growth and development of e-books. What I see is the battle for control rather than any innovation and prosperity for e-books.”

Judith Rosen, of Publishers Weekly, on Friday, highlighted the approach of Circlet Publishing in the USA, a small press run by Cecelia Tan and her husband, Corwin, since 1992. Three years ago they had to stop publishing print editions of their titles due to a financial downturn, and instead, in an effort to revitalise the business, they focussed on e-books for their science fiction erotica lists. Tan never saw the move as a means to become an e-book publisher, but an effort to rescue Circlet Press. She told Rosen in the Publishers Weekly article:
 

"There’s still no replacement for the ‘real’ book. Three years ago Circlet was essentially dead in the water. Bookstores weren’t ordering in the quantity they used to. There’s been a real shrinkage of the erotica shelf. [In 2008] That’s when I taught myself to format for the Kindle.”

Through a mix of fundraising campaigns on www.circlet.com, Tan hopes to raise $5,000 for Circlet Press’ first printed book in three years by creating a CD compendium edition of twenty of their best e-books. It was interesting that Angela Hoy of Booklocker.com commented of the article on Publishers Weekly. Booklocker were a pioneer of selling e-books online way back in 1998. In fact, Booklocker did not sell their first printed edition until a year later.

So, the bigger question remains…
 
Why are publishers secretly terrified of e-books and what it will mean for the publishing industry?
 
Publishers are correct to point out that taking a book from submission to print ready file costs the same amount whether it is intended for print or e-book format. Beyond this stage is where publishers incur their biggest expense—on printing, marketing and distribution. The marketing expense will always focus on the sector where the largest sales are, and up till now it has been through media and in-store promotion. It is print runs and distribution discounts which eat away at publisher budgets. In an ideal e-book dominant market, print-runs are reduced and if we are to use the agency model as a future business template, then 30% is what the retailer gets, less than what is negotiated for many print book discounts.
 
For a $10 paperback, an e-book should not cost to the customer any more than $6.99 as an e-book, and its hardback counterpart has not place costing any more than that whether it is being released for the first time or not. Where publishers can be innovative is offering a hardback edition for the retail and library market bundled with an enhanced e-book edition. Attempting more than that from the buying customer is extracting more than the publishing centre will hold.
 
It is time for publishers to access the true value of books in whatever format or medium they are published. The real battle for the survival of the hardback—something publishers seemed desperate to hand on to—is not in their hands, but rather entirely dependent on how slowly or quickly universities, libraries and book clubs move to embracing digitalisation, and something tells me, in these financial times, it will come a lot sooner than later.
 
 
Circlet Press is a Cambridge, Massachusetts publishing house founded and managed by Cecilia Tan. It specializes in science fiction erotica, a once uncommon genre, and its publications often feature BDSM themes.

Tan founded the house in 1992 after researching the markets for publication of her own stories, which combined science fiction plotlines with explicitly sexual themes. At the time, science fiction publications turned away such material as unsuitable for their audience, and most publishers of erotic material were hard-core pornographers and uninterested in any material whose plotlines extended beyond the simple formula encounter story (in which two people meet and sex ensues).

The ground-breaking combination of sex-positive, woman-centered erotica with science fiction and fantasy themes came as a result of Tan’s editorial vision that rather than combine the worst clichés of both genres, the mixture could instead expand the boundaries of what was possible in each. Science fiction had developed a somewhat deserved reputation for being dismissive or neglectful of human character development issues like love, lust, attraction, and family issues, while erotica was definitely ripe for something beyond the encounter formula. Placing stories into a science fictional or magical context allowed writers for Circlet Press to remove their stories from their contemporary political context and sidestep issues such as feminism, AIDS, and sexual identity politics.

 

This is a reprint from Mick Rooney‘s POD, Self Publishing and Independent Publishing.

5 Self-Publishing Lessons I Learned From My Toddler

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It’s amazing, being a mother of a toddler, how much this little girl has taught me in just the 1 1/2 years she’s been with us. What’s even more amazing is that many of those lessons can be applied to self-publishing.

Lesson #1: Anything worth doing takes time. My daughter has been a little slow in using “big people” words, until recently. In fact, up until a few days ago, she would refuse to say words we knew she knew how to say. I can only guess the reason behind it was she wanted to be sure she could say it right before putting it out there for everyone to hear. In self-publishing,  throwing your work out to the general public before you’ve refined it to its best is a very bad decision. It’s bad for sales, bad for your reputation and bad for other self-publishers’ reputations. If you think it’s worth publishing, then take the time to do it well.

Lesson #2: Learn to have patience, with yourself and those around you. Tiny Tot, as we affectionately call her, can throw some of the best tantrums when she loses patience with a toy that isn’t doing exactly what she wants. She’s actually lost patience with herself, not the toy. Thankfully, Grandma has helped her cope with those moments by teaching her to tell herself that it’s okay, with a little patience she’ll be able to do what she is trying to do. (We now hear her repeating “okay” to herself on those occasions.) As a self-publisher, you want to make it all happen right now, but that’s not the way it works. It takes time to build a fan base, time to connect through social media. Everything takes time and that’s okay.

Lesson #3: Sometimes it helps to explain what you’re doing. Refilling a sippy cup of milk used to cause a melt-down. She was getting what she wanted, more milk, but she didn’t understand what had to happen to get it. Since we began explaining each step as we do it we’ve managed to avoid those tantrums. I’ve found gathering support for my self-publishing venture easier to gain when I explain exactly what it is I’m doing along the way.

Lesson #4: If you’re having a hard time making anything do what you want, take a nap (or at least a break). When my little girl starts throwing tantrums over the smallest things, a piece of paper she can’t fit into a bottle or the opening of the freezer instead of the refrigerator (she’s still working on how to make her wants known), I know it’s time for some downtime be it a nap or just a drink and some quiet rocking time with Mama. I understand where she’s coming from because when I get tired and/or frustrated with a project I know it’s time for a break — or to go to bed when I’m burning the midnight oil. Coming back to a project refreshed means being able to look at it from other angles and maybe finding a solution I didn’t see before.

Lesson #5: You can do anything you set your mind to so long as you don’t believe you can’t. Tiny Tot has done some things I didn’t think she’d be able to. For example, at eleven months old she said her first (and only to date) complete sentence. She asked her Grandma, “Can I do that?”, meaning she wanted to help Grandma re-load the dishwasher. If her Grandma and one of her aunt’s hadn’t also heard her say it, I would have believed my mind was playing tricks on me. She didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to be able to do that, but she did it. Self-publishing can be like that. There are a lot of experts who say you can’t do better than break even by self-publishing; however there are people doing just that. In fact, it’s said that self-published fiction books (especially in eBook form) are the least likely to be purchased and yet Independent Authors like Joe Konrath are doing quite well. These people have been told they “can’t” do what they’re doing. They just don’t accept that they “can’t.”

I’m glad I’ve taken the time to get to know my little girl because she’s given me some wonderful tips. Listening to what my toddler teaches has made my life, and my self-publishing career, a richer experience on The Road to Writing.

 

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

Screenplay Writing Interview III with Shannon L. Arrant

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Here is the final segment of my interview with screenwriter and independent filmmaker Shannon L. Arrant. She provides some critical information and links for your consideration.

A writer just finished her screenplay. What should her next steps be?

Registering [the] script should be [the] first priority. It can be registered with either the WGA (www.wga.org) or the Library of Congress (www.copyright.gov). Each offers different prices and different benefits for registering so choose whichever one appeals to you the most.

Once your script is registered, give it to anyone and everyone who is willing to give you an honest critique of it. Websites like Zoetrope (www.zoetrope.com) are filled with screenwriters who will review your work in exchange for you reviewing theirs.

Don’t give it to just fellow screenwriters, though. Give it to your family, friends, coworkers; pretty much anyone you can think of. If people that aren’t associated directly with the film industry find it entertaining to read, they should find it entertaining to watch, too.

Once you get their reviews, don’t feel like you need to make all of the changes suggested to you but don’t flat out ignore their comments, either. Use the suggestions that will ultimately improve your script and discard the rest.
How do you know which ones those are? This is where getting as many reviews as possible comes into play. If there’s an area that a lot of people are having problems with, then work on fixing it. The rest of the suggestions you receive can be included or not, depending on whether or not you feel they’ll improve your screenplay.
A great side benefit of giving your screenplay to as many people as possible to review is it will also help you network. Networking is vital in the film industry. Even if someone isn’t directly a part of a production company, you never know who they know that is.

What are the best ways a screenwriter can network?
Aside from telling anyone and everyone you’re now a screenwriter, attending screenwriting conventions (if you can afford it), being active on websites geared towards screenwriters and production companies like IMDb pro (www.proimdb.com), entering screenwriting contests, and interning with local production companies are all great ways for a screenwriter to network.

How does someone go about locating production companies to intern with?
The best place I’ve found is your local Cragislist page. Independent production companies are always looking for people to help with their latest film. Be sure to check ‘tv/film/video’ under the jobs section and the ‘creative’, ‘crew’ and ‘talent’ sections under gigs. Because Craigslist has started charging to post job openings in certain cities, a lot of production companies are now using the gigs section to place their open calls for talent and crew.

What screenwriting contests do you recommend?
The Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting Competition sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (www.oscars.org/awards/nicholl/index.html) is by far the most prestigious screenwriting competition in the United States. If you do well in this contest, you stand a great chance of having your screenplay optioned.
 

The PAGE International Screenwriting Awards (www.pageawards.com) is another excellent contest to enter. It’s another of the more popular screenwriting contests out there and offers some great prizes. For an extra fee, you can also receive the judge’s notes and feedback they left while reading your screenplay. Considering the judges for the PAGE International Screenwriting Awards actively work in the film industry for production companies, this can give you invaluable insight into what other production companies think about your script.

The biggest problem with the previous two contests is that they only happen once a year. What do you do if you finish your screenplay but miss the deadline? That’s where Script Savvy (www.scriptsavvy.net) comes in! Script Savvy has a new contest each month, making it convenient to enter whenever you’re ready. The entry fee is reasonable and they offer two different levels of feedback on your screenplay. Every entrant also receives a PDF of over 400 agents and managers that are accepting new screenwriters. That alone can be well worth the cost of the entry fee.

Does a screenwriter need an agent?
No. Although, as with writing a novel, having an agent can make some things easier. They can submit your screenplay to more production companies and generally should know which companies are looking for your type of script.

How can he go about finding an agent?
Aside from getting the free PDF from Script Savvy of agents and managers if you enter their contest, IMDb Pro, other screenwriters, and a good ol’ Google search are some good ways to get that information.

What are some ways a writer can publicize her screenplay on her own?
In the internet age we live in, having a website is a must. It doesn’t have to be a website dedicated solely to your screenplay. All you really need is a place to post a synopsis, your contact info, and anything else you feel is important. Take your time to make this website as professional looking as you can. Always remember, you are selling not only your screenplay but yourself as a screenwriter. The more polished and together you are, the more likely you are to find someone interested in buying you both.
 

If you can afford it, film a trailer and upload it to every video hosting site you can think of. Even though you may not have any intention of producing your screenplay on your own, it’s easier for someone to invest money into producing your work if they can get a good idea of the potential of the finished product first. It could also get a lot of people interested in watching a completed film of your screenplay. The number of views alone could get someone interested in producing it for you. Whatever you do, if you go this route, don’t forget to link the video to your website!

How do you write a good query letter?
Read a lot of query letters. You can find examples of both good and bad ones through a Google search. Once you have a query letter written, give it to anyone who is willing to read it to get their reaction from it. If, after reading your query letter, they are intrigued enough to want to learn more, then you know you’re on the right track.

How does someone find production companies to send her screenplay to?
Remember how you can find an agent? It’s pretty much the same, except without the nifty PDF of information from Script Savvy.
 

As with novels, there is a proper etiquette to submitting your screenplay to production companies. First and foremost, do your research to see if they are accepting submissions in general and whether or not they are even interested in screenplays like yours. If the production company accepts unsolicited submissions, always send a query letter first. Don’t even think about sending your screenplay unless they ask for it or the submission policy on their website says it’s okay to do so. Failing to abide by proper etiquette will only wind up annoying the very people you want to option your script.

What should someone do if he receives an offer on his screenplay?
Before accepting any deal on your script, do some research first. Check out the company, see what (if anything) they’ve been producing lately and what they have queued for production.
 

Find out when they anticipate production will begin on your screenplay. If they don’t have the cash to produce it immediately, get them to give you a business plan that specifically states how they plan on getting that money and how long they expect it to take.

Always get a date listed in your contract of when the production company loses their rights to make the film and it reverts back to you, especially if they don’t have the money up front to produce your film. Otherwise, you wind up with a production company holding all the rights to a screenplay you poured your blood, sweat, and tears into that isn’t filming it, ultimately costing you the chance to get it produced by someone else.

What should he do if he doesn’t receive an offer on his screenplay?
Whatever you do, don’t despair! If you are confident your screenplay isn’t in desperate need of a rewrite, there are plenty of reasons why an excellent screenplay might not get picked up right away. It might be written in a genre where it’s difficult to get produced period, such as is the case with historical dramas. Or, it could be something as simple as it’s just might not be getting into the right hands at the right time. You can keep trying or take a break and try again later. You could even produce it yourself.

With the invention of digital camcorders, video sharing sites, companies specializing in print-on-demand media, and widely accessible editing software, it’s easier than ever to make your own movies and it’s inexpensive to boot. While I wouldn’t recommend attempting to film your feature length screenplay masterpiece that you converted from the best novel you’ve ever read, don’t be afraid to get out there, shoot some short films, and experiment! You just might find you have talents that lie outside the realm of writing.

Shannon L. Arrant is both an author and a screenwriter who has been blessed enough to work in various roles both onscreen and off. She has several short stories and an anthology available for download for free on her website at www.ShannonLArrant.com. Anyone interested in more information about her completed screenplay that has been hailed as the female version of ‘Braveheart’, the historical drama inspired by true events entitled ‘Sisterhood of the Sword’, can receive it by contacting her through her website: www.ShannonLArrant.com

 

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

Some Words of Advice to Dorchester Authors

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I went on line late this afternoon and was bombarded by the swirl of news and commentary about Dorchester Publishing’s decision to switch to an e-book/POD approach to publishing. At first I simply felt a wave of sympathy for those authors who found their familiar world swept away, particularly those authors who had books that were supposed to come out this fall and were in the middle of marketing campaigns designed around traditional trade paperbacks and brick and mortar stores. See for example the discussion on the Smart Bitches website.

Next I thought about what advice I would give these authors from my experience this past year as an indie author whose book, Maids of Misfortune, is in both ebook and POD formats. Like many of the commentators on the Smart Bitches site, I would suggest that once they know for sure where and when their books will be available they take advantage of their social networks (facebook, myspace, twitter) and their author websites and blogs to get the word out.

If they haven’t yet developed those social networking tools or they don’t have their own website or blog-it was high time they did so anyway, so this will provide a powerful motivator for them to do something they had probably been saying to themselves (and to their agents) they should be doing for some time.

I would recommend Publetariat and the blogs Creative Penn and There are No Rules as good places to start.

But then, I suddenly thought, wait a minute! Many of the Dorchester authors have something that most indie authors would love to have, a backlist. As I scrolled down and looked at the long list of books that some of these authors had, I couldn’t help but notice how many of them were listed as “out of stock,” and I thought, OMG, these authors need to run–not walk to J.A Konrath’s blog, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing, and read every one of his posts for the past year. Because what Konrath has done for authors is show how they can turn their backlists and their previously unpublished works into a decent living.

First of all, it seems to me there should be no excuse from now on for Dorchester not to start making these out of stock books available in POD and/or ebook format, and if they don’t, the authors should be negotiating to get those rights back.

Second, if they do have the rights to any of their past books, once they have converted those books to electronic form (and there are lots of guidebooks and real people out there anxious to help authors do this for relatively modest prices), they can start to use those books if priced correctly (or offered for free) to drive a new audience to their published books with Dorchester.

Third, if they have any short stories, novellas, or books that they love but were never able to sell, these also can be offered for free or at low prices as a way to boost sales for their published books. I can’t stress too much how important reading Konrath is to understanding the effectiveness of this sort of strategy.

For example, even as a complete novice, who self-published her first historical mystery eight months ago, I have already gotten to the point where I am selling about 300 books a month, making about $2 a book (my ebooks sells for $2.99). Imagine what I could be doing if I had a more books to sell and an already established fan base?

So my advice to Dorchester authors is to begin to imagine this future where today might just be the day when they took control of their destinies and ended up making more money from their writing than they had ever hoped to do. I wish them all the luck in the world.

 

This is a cross-posting from M. Louisa Locke‘s The Front Parlor blog.

People Don’t Buy Books Based On The Publisher

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Most writers and authors also buy a lot of books. I’m certainly do, and you probably do too. So what makes you buy a book?

I buy books primarily based on the following:
  • Recommendations from others mostly found on blogs I read and twitter
  • Browsing Amazon Kindle store in the categories I read, as well as how Amazon uses suggestions on other books I have read. I download lots of samples and then buy the books that take my fancy.
  • Browsing physical book stores, although now I note down titles and then go buy them on my Kindle as they are 1/4 of the price of the physical book
I definitely do not buy books based on the publisher. In fact, most of the time I wouldn’t know who the publisher was anyway and in a brief survey of other book buyers they have a similar experience. This raises a couple of very important questions for authors and writers, and perhaps publishers as well.
  • If book buyers don’t care who the publisher is, why is there a stigma to being self-published? (it’s changing but it is still there). If you have a professionally edited and interesting book, with an eye-catching cover, buyers will not know the difference anyway. I have the same Amazon shelf-space as any other books. What do you think?
  • If book buyers don’t care who the publisher is, why do authors care so much? Do we all want a 10 book deal with Harper Collins because it means more physical distribution to bookstores, potentially world rights and more publicity budget? and is that scenario very likely for most authors. I don’t think so. The reason must be ego and I will freely admit to being one of those authors! I would love a 10 book deal with Harper Collins! But I know that I will still need to do my own publicity and marketing, and I may well make less money than  digital publishing. It is important to identify the why behind what you want for your book and your career as an author. Why do you care who publishes you?
  • If book buyers don’t care who the publisher is, whose brand is associated with the book? In a brilliant audio to the indie publishing industry a few weeks ago, Seth Godin challenged the audience on brand. He basically said that publishers should be aligning with audiences and brands and become the “go to” publisher for that audience e.g. be the publisher for civil war books, or for coeliac disease sufferers. I can think of a couple of publishers who have this right at the moment. O’Reilly Books is for tech books, and Harlequin is for romance, but do the readers go there to spend money? I find branding to be a fascinating topic for authors and the publishing industry and right now, you need to consider your branding in a very crowded marketplace.
[Update: This piece was written a week ago, but I just saw the interview with Mark Coker from Smashwords where he says the same thing:
“Readers typically don’t pay attention to the name of the publisher on the spine of the book. They pay attention to the author and the story.”
Do you buy books based on a publisher? and do you care who publishes your book?

 

This is a cross-posting from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

Who Needs A Publisher?

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This article, by Isia Jasiewicz, originally appeared on Newsweek.com on 7/30/10.

Boyd Morrison was finishing a Ph.D. in industrial engineering when he wrote his first novel. Five agents rejected it. Nine years later he tried again, and this time he did get an agent—after nearly three years and three novels. But that turned out to be some kind of cosmic tease, because 25 publishers turned down The Ark.

With nothing left to lose, Morrison uploaded The Ark and his two other unpublished novels to Amazon’s Kindle store in March 2009. Within three months, he was selling books at a rate of 4,000 a month—a number that attracted the attention of the same publishers who had rejected him. This May, when The Ark was released in hardcover from Simon & Schuster, it became the first self-published Kindle book to be picked up by a Big Six publisher. Morrison says that the phone call from his agent telling him he’d finally see his book in print was “one of the most amazing moments of my life.”

Until recently, reviewers and booksellers looked down on self-published authors the way Anna Wintour scorns Dress Barn. Now new writers and established authors alike are increasingly taking publishing into their own hands, and the publishing establishment is paying attention. According to a recent Bowker report, the market for “nontraditional books” in the United States grew by more than 750,000 new titles in 2009—a 181 percent increase over 2008. Five of the top 100 bestsellers in the Kindle store—which now produces more sales than Amazon’s hardcover list—are currently self-published.

Read the rest of the article on Newsweek.com.

Smashwords founder Mark Coker talks to Wetmachine About the Future of Publishing

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This interview, by John Sundman, originally appeared in his My Thoughts Exactly on Wetmachine on 8/4/10. 

Smashwords is a service for helping small and self-publishers format ebooks in diverse formats (for example: kindle, epub, PDF, Palm) and distribute them through diverse retail channels (for example Amazon, Apple, BN, Kobo, and Smashwords itself). A few weeks ago I sent Smashwords founder Mark Coker a note asking if I could interview him for Wetmachine & SelfPublishing Review. He said yes; I sent him some questions about the current & future state of book publishing, and he answered. His replies appear below the fold.

I found his answers interesting and direct, and I think you’ll enjoy reading what he had to say.
 

Q: When I told a list I’m on that I was going to be interviewing you and solicited questions, my friend Dirk replied: “Please ask him what the fuck is going on.” I think that’s a pretty good place to start. Can you summarize the important trends you see in publishing right now?

I can sum up this answer with one word: Change.

Now, more words… For the last century, publishers controlled the means of book production and book distribution. If authors wanted to reach readers, they had no choice but to kneel before the publishing oligopolists who had the power to determine who got published, and what readers read. The system worked fantastically well for the publishers, moderately well for readers, but less well for the authors they published, and even less well for the vast majority of authors who could never gain access to the cliquey club of the published. And like most clubs, the dream of the club often exceeds the reality of the club.  Most authors lucky enough to have their books accepted by this old system received little more than fleeting ego gratification and bragging rights.

Change is an exciting, terrifying thing. It represents both a threat and an opportunity to every author and publisher.

The other week I gave a presentation to group of students at NYU, and I just posted about it over at the Smashwords blog. I titled it, “How Indie Ebooks Will Transform the Future of Book Publishing.”  I started the presentation by quoting my favorite Tool song, Rosetta Stoned. It’s a song about a guy abducted by space aliens, and the aliens give him a message he’s supposed to deliver to his fellow humans, “a message of hope for those who will listen, and a warning for those who do not.” This is the message I shared. My message was that authors and publishers face greater opportunities today than ever before to reach readers with books. Yet authors and publishers who fail to adapt to the change, or who respond incorrectly to the change, will go suffer.

Q: You come from a background in “angel” and venture investing in Silicon Valley. You see all kinds of opportunities and could have chosen any one of dozens of technologies to get personally involved in. Why did you choose to form Smashwords and get into electronic publishing for independent authors?

Traditional publishing is a broken business on the precipice of major change. I perceived an opportunity create a business that can help facilitate this change in a constructive way that’s valuable for readers, authors, publishers and booksellers. 

My motivation for creating Smashwords really came down to a crazy desire to change the future of publishing by empowering authors to be their own publishers. I wanted to turn publishing upside down by shifting the power center of this business from publishers to authors and readers.

For the last century, book publishing was built on the backs of undercompensated, underappreciated authors. If you cherish books as much as I do, how can you not honor the authors who create them, or the readers who purchase them?

I’m not saying publishers don’t honor authors. I just think their businesses are not set up to serve them as they deserve to be served.

There’s a huge disconnect in publishing. Publishers publish books for reasons different that writers write. Publishers publish works based on perceived commercial merit. Most authors are shut out and denied any chance to reach readers.  Readers are denied the opportunity to discover the full diversity of great works. I think this commercial filter is not only myopic, it’s also dangerous to the future of books, especially if you believe, as I do, that books and authorship are essential to the future of mankind.

Publishers are unable to take a risk on every author, nor would they want to even if they could. They have businesses to run and Manhattan skyscraper rents to pay.

I created Smashwords so I could take a risk on every author.  I think every author has a right to publish, and I think the vast collective wisdom of readers will help the best works get read by the right readers.

Read the rest of the interview on Wet Machine.

Pass the Gestalt, Please

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This post, by Evan Schnittman, originally appeared on his Black Plastic Glasses blog on 7/15/10.

In the past two weeks I have heard forcefully stated pronouncements by agent Andrew Wylie and chair of the Society of Authors, Tom Holland, regarding ebook royalty rates.  A 50/50 share between author and publisher is the only possible outcome they can accept, citing the tired and somewhat old argument we have heard before:

The publisher has little or no incremental out of pocket cost to create ebooks, therefore the income should be split in the same manner as subsidiary rights, which is generally 50/50.

 The average person would be hard pressed to disagree—certainly in this day and age the digital file created to make a print book cannot cost much to convert to an ebook. Even the DRM, hosting, and file management costs must be de minimis when compared to the cost of paper, printing, binding, warehouse, and shipping. And ebooks have no returns!

But there is a huge flaw in this view, as it is built on the self-serving and reductive assumption that ebooks can and should be viewed as separate from the book’s overall economy. By attacking ebook royalties in this manner, a trap is set by those seeking to maximize short-term profits at the expense of all else. The object of this ploy is to dissect the intellectual property into as many different pieces as possible and negotiate them on the open market in order to maximize the “deal.”

The problem with that approach is that successful and coherent publishing is not the sum of individual publishing rights, but rather the gestalt work presented coherently to a global audience. Viewing the ebook out of the context of the rest of the work gets us nowhere. We must understand how ebooks fit into the publishing ecosphere and only then can we determine what the right royalty should be.

To begin, let’s establish what an ebook isn’t—a subsidiary right.

Read the rest of the post on Evan Schnittman’s Black Plastic Glasses.

Authentic Writing

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Self-publishers start out as writers, then become authors. Some people are natural writers, but the rest of us need help from time to time.

One of the best ways to connect with readers is when your writing is authentic, material that comes right out of your own experience. Although many of these resources are aimed at nonfiction writers, fiction writers need authenticity too.

It seems to me that as writers, we need to learn to draw on our deepest resources, the essential traits that define us. Writing is a creative expression that allows each of us to communicate from our unique vantage point our own view of the world. Whether we’re describing a scene from memory, the details of a scene in a historical romance, or explaining the way geology has formed the landscape, we need the skill to trust our own instincts and write our truth.

When writing is authentic, regardless of its subject matter, it communicates to the reader and draws them into the world the writer has to show them.

Although many of the articles on the blog relate more directly to books and publishing, I try to remember that it’s in the creative act that all our publishing begins. I hope you enjoy these articles.

The community at The Book Designer is an active and engaged one, so I hope you’ll participate by leaving a comment to expand, to reflect on, or to contest what you’ve read. Enjoy!

Writing Technique and Inspiration

Unleash Your Creativity Now: How to Freewrite
How to Get Out of Your Own Way: Suzanne Murray on Freewriting
Car Writer
Creativity—The List of Lists
How Freewriting Saved My Life

Writing Books

Writing for your Life: Old Friend from Far Away by Natalie Goldberg
Writing For Your Life by Deena Metzger
Book Review: If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland

Writer’s Tools

A Google Toolbox for Writers

The next stop on your publishing journey is Getting Ready to Publish. When you’re ready, continue on.

 

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

Final USPS Udate, Twitter, Merchant Circle & More

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I’ve received another $55 check from the Postal Service. That brings the total repayment to $110. I’m going to stop with that amount though I’m still owed another $25. I feel lucky to have gotten this much back. For future reference if I ever lose something else in the mail I’ve insured, I now know to keep pushing for a fair payment and have the Washington D.C address to write first.

At last count, I have 40 following me on Twitter and 66 followers. It seems as though I see an increase in followers after I’ve blogged on Book Marketing Network, iFOGO and Publetariat. This last week I picked up Blog Expert, Rachel Karl, as a follower. She said I had a nice blog. I wondered which one she looked at since I blog on eight sites now. Rachel had checked my Twitter site out well enough to let me know that the link to my website under my name wasn’t working. I appreciated the FYI, immediately fixed the problem and tweeted Rachel back to let her know the link works now.

My twitter bio has lead different types of businesses and people with varied interest to follow me. I stated I like writing books, gardening, flowers, fishing and boating. Therefore boat businesses and boaters, flower businesses, gardeners and nature lovers follow me. I thought about not returning the follow or changing my bio if I might be misleading some tweeters, but what I wanted was to promote my books and online bookstore. Most followers must read books so after email notification from followers, I send them a thank you message from Author Fay Risner and mention one of my books or where to buy my books online and my online bookstore. I’ve picked up some authors including Steve Weber, author of Plug Your Book, a book about internet book promoting which has been helpful to me, and he didn’t even know at the time I’d bought his book.

Google Partner Program has decided to make ebooks out of the books in the program if the authors are agreeable. I’ve had my books in the program for awhile but I haven’t finished filling out the forms they needed. August 6 is when they will begin promoting ebooks. Once a month for some time now, I’ve received an email notice about how many of my books were viewed and how many pages looked at. This notice is a way for me to see what genres readers are interested in.

I accidentally came across Merchant Circle on the internet. There is one for every city in every state. If a you come from a small town that hasn’t started using Merchant Circle yet be the first one to start if you consider your book selling a business. Sign up is free. I didn’t think of myself as a business when I began this venture, but last year I published two books at Lightning Source, Inc. I had to fill out tax forms and send for a sales tax permit before Lightning Source would print my books. Since I was considered a business, that lead to me to starting my online bookstore.

The added features on Merchant Circle are from $249 to $39, but I signed up for the free site. Do I expect to sell more books in my area when my town has a population of 600, and everyone knows everyone else. The biggest businesses are the nursing home and the John Deere Implement dealer. Not really, but Google Crawler is working on the site. My blog is picked up by major search engines which extends my reach and will introduce my books to more customers that search the internet like I do. I felt it was worth the effort to sign up for the free package and give it a try.

I had to have a logo so I used a copy of my business card since I’m not good with graphics. An advertisement and a coupon can be made. My coupon states a free book for the sale of one book on the site and a review of my business or the book purchased. The advertisement states that my stories are clean; no curse words or sex scenes. Books written by a Midwestern author with wholesome values.

The results are in for July for my Kindle books sales. With the raise in price, sales went down to about half of what I sold in June, but the royalty went from 35% to 70% so the total royalty amount was about the same. Better news is I’m now selling my series of five mystery books which wasn’t getting noticed before. That gives me encouragement to write Amazing Gracie Mystery number six.

Amazon’s Author Central has sent out emails to authors with an author page to tell them they won’t be able to blog on site after August 15th. They will need to submit a link to another blog they write. I’ve tried linking to another blog before without success, but I’m working on it again.

And finally, I read a helpful article on Publetariat.com that I liked titled The Truth About Typos by Mark Barrett’s Ditchwalk. He said reread what you write at least once. Slow down and concentrate. Don’t publish when you’re tired. Just know that what you’ve written will never be perfect. Sooner or later a typo will survive. If you as a self published author worry about those typos like I do, this would be a good article to read. If nothing else the article made me feel a little better about those dreaded typos that did survive.

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

 

Fear of Success?

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Dude, what the f*** does that mean?

That’s what I keep thinking when I hear people drop that line. “Oh, so and so is just scared of success, so they self-jeopardize, yadda yadda.”

I don’t understand what that means.

Or at least I didn’t think I understood what that meant until a few minutes ago.

The Yankee game is on a rain delay so I thought I would sketch out a plan of action to tackle the various projects I have jumbling around in my head. Prioritize, make a timeline, create an outline, do some research, that kind of thing. And then I realized that I have a novel I am about to release any minute now.

What am I doing working on other projects — juggling several of them, in fact — when I have a life-sucking day job, two toddlers, a commute from hell, and Back(stabbed) In Brooklyn to release? Since my last book’s promotion was brought to a screeching halt due to circumstances beyond my control, I owe it to myself to push Back(stabbed). So then I thought, am I that scattered, or am I really just trying to escape what could be a disappointing, anticlimactic release? Or is it the other thing — that fear of success thing?

For those of you who know what my last book was about (the young me), you’ll recall that it was a series of goals that I set which I met, and became disoriented after having met the goal. It’s kind of disappointing when you set out to reach what you tell yourself is a lofty expectation, and then you get there and it’s not so fabulous.

So perhaps it’s not a fear of “success,” in its immeasurable form, but a fear of continued disillusionment. Or, worse, (and this is where you say, babes, go see a shrink), an inability to feel satisfied not just with my own work but with its acceptance in the world.

So what does this all have to do with writing? Because it is a tremendous emotional and personal investment in our work and while we rely on external validation to a certain extent, much of how we feel about our work is measured on an internal scale. I write because I like to tell stories. I feel personal satisfaction once I’ve read the story I’ve written. I am proud of a lot of the stories I’ve written. But I cannot help but to put my work on a larger scale with the hopes that I’ll find gold at the end of the rainbow. Part of that desperation is due to the fact that the gold is simply unattainable.  It is like asking to live in bliss, to be able to support my family and writing.

Well, girlie, this life doesn’t work that way (for me, at least). My fear of success isn’t the problem so much as my expectations to win over fans and readers, adulation, demand, and my overwhelming desire to have the freedom to start any project I want. In order to really hit the next level as I want, I have to take some serious risks and just focus. I realize that I probably am not willing to risk what I have now (lame) in order to pursue what I really want. I did that. 29 times. And failed.

Projects I would like to get off the ground:

  • Sports Blog – http://TheIntentionalWalk.wordpress.com (this is live, but sucks a little bit. need graphics.)
     
  • Freelance articles and interviews with sports figures
     
  • Maggie & May full length novel (4 chapters done)
     
  • Jean-Baptiste Foulon is a Brilliant Liar full length novel (3 chapters done)
     
  • Screenplay for Back(stabbed) In Brooklyn and set up some major meetings to get it produced
     
  • Find an excellent food photographer and publish Intuitive Cooking cookbook (manuscript is complete)
     
  • Biography of Jay-Z (alternatively, a story or novella about a fictional character attempting to write a biography of Jay-Z.) Not started yet.
     
  • Launch Back(stabbed) In Brooklyn with more readings and appearances (1 appearance scheduled, here on August 22 for Katelan Foisy’s book release party)

Can I do it all? Check back to measure my progress. Nudge me, will ya? Thanks.

 

This is a reprint from Lenox Parker’s Eat My Book.

My Fiction Workshop Fortunes

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The capacity to tell stories is an accident of birth for me. I was born thinking this way. There was no point in my life when I did not think about stories and causal events, about humorous and dramatic ways in which events could be told, and about how a blank page could be filled with wonder. If I have wandered far and wide, and been driven, seduced or called away from writing in my life, I have always returned to a string of authorial stepping stones that connects my past with the future before me.

Actually becoming a writer — by which I do not mean a professional, but rather a practicing writer — is a combination of accident and intent. The more things go in your favor, the easier it is to harness gifts and put words to a page. The more things go against you, the more you must overcome. Whatever obstacles I’ve faced in life, I was born with a number of storytelling gifts. I also happened to be born and raised in a town that is home to a school that values fiction writing. That I neither new nor cared about these things until I went to college is yet more evidence that the fates were being kind.

My Home Town School
By nature I am not a particularly adventurous person. I have tended most of my life to look before I leap, even when others have counseled that he who hesitates is lost. So it should not come as a surprise that when I finally decided to go to college, after considerable academic carnage in my high school career, I had no thought of going anywhere except to the school in my home town. It wouldn’t have mattered what college it was, or what town I had been born in: that’s what I would have done at that point in my life, and probably for a decade after. (It’s true that my grandmother, father, mother, aunt and uncle also went to the same university, but that’s not why I went. I went because it was familiar and close.)

That I was born in and grew up in Iowa City, Iowa, is an accident. That Iowa City is the home of the University of Iowa, which is the home of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is also an accident. I planned none of it, yet when I finally decided to wade into storytelling, after more academic carnage in college, the Workshop was there.  

Now, if you remember nothing else about this post, please remember this: I do not have an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. I have a Bachelors’ degree from Iowa, and all of the following relates to my undergraduate experience. That the process I went through, and even the level of instruction I received, was commensurate with the graduate workshop, is a blessing, not a license. Whatever an MFA is worth or means, I don’t have one.

My Fiction Workshops
When I went to Iowa the undergraduate offerings were pretty much as they are now. The first class I took, Fiction Writing, was a class you simply registered for. After that I submitted stories to the Undergraduate Writers’ Workshop each semester, and was fortunate to be accepted each time I did so.

Here are the people who taught the six workshops I attended over three years:

  • Leigh Allison Wilson — MFA student and Flannery O’Conner freak, who would go on to win the Flannery O’Connor Award for short fiction the following year.
  • Jack Leggett — the director of the Workshop at that time.
  • Hilma Wolitzer — an award-winning novelist who just recently dipped her toe in the cyber sea. (Stop by and say hi!)
  • Bob Shacochis — a writer’s writer, and at that time the most recent winner of the National Book Award for first fiction.
  • Rust Hills — long-time fiction editor of Esquire magazine, and a person about whom I will have more to say in an upcoming post.
  • Jack Leggett

Looking back, that’s an absurd list of extremely talented people. To me at the time, however, they were almost ancillary to the process — by which I mean the nightmarish process of risking my ego, identity and life in order to determine whether I had any capacity to tell stories. Because somewhere along the line that became more important to me than anything else.

The Workshop Environment
With all that literary firepower floating around, and with the Workshop’s storied history as a backdrop, you might imagine that I was exposed to all kinds of secret handshakes and rare literary knowledge. You might also imagine that the environs of the Workshop were teeming with publishers and agents looking to scoop up the next award-winning breakout star, and I’m sure there was some of that. At the undergraduate level, however, and even at the graduate level, almost all of the conversations I was privy to were about craft.

And I’m not just talking about the students. Of all the workshop leaders listed above, I cannot remember any of them talking about literary trends or publishing deals or bullet-pointed solutions. There were no classes on pitching ideas or writing query letters or figuring out how to please the gatekeepers of the day. There weren’t even discussions about how hard it is to write, because every single person there — at every level — took that as a given. (There’s no point grousing about the emotional trauma of writing when everyone in the room is going through the same hell.)

So what did all these people talk about? They talked about craft. They talked about the stories that were being workshopped on their own merits, not relative to what anybody else was doing at the time. They talked about whether or not each author hit what they were aiming at, and why that was the case. They talked about how some of what a writer writes comes from a place that no one can control, but once it’s on the page it’s the writer’s responsibility to shape it and make it work harmoniously.

We all wanted to be effortlessly great, but those teachers never talked about writers who were effortlessly great or profound or genius. They talked about editing and cutting and tightening and focusing and killing darlings, because they knew that there never has been, and never will be, a writer who is effortlessly great.

My Father
I had a difficult relationship with my father, for reasons I think anyone would understand — chief among them abandonment. After I had been writing in college for several years, and had been in the Undergraduate Workshop for a year or so, I happened to talk with my father about the Workshop and about my interest in fiction writing.

Now, my father had his own history with the University of Iowa, some of which I knew about second-hand through my mother or family friends, but nothing I knew about directly from him. So when he told me that he had been in the Writer’s Workshop himself, back in its early days, I was neither surprised by the fact nor surprised that I had not previously heard about that part of his life.

As we talked it turned out that not only had he been in the workshop, but one of the people in the workshop with him was Flannery O’Connor. It also turned out that Flannery O’Connor was incredibly shy and could not bring herself to read her stories aloud when she put them up — as was then the practice.

My father had been a musician and band leader, and because he had a pretty good voice even then (which only got better with age, and alcohol), it turned out that he was one of the people who read Flannery O’Connor’s stories out loud for her. (I later told this to Leigh Allison Wilson, and I still have an image of her rapt and excited face in my mind. That my father’s story made its way to her — to the one person on the face of the Earth who wanted to hear it more than any other — amazes me to this day.)

Now, interesting as that all is, that’s not the happy accident I wanted to tell you about. The happy accident is the fact that I didn’t learn about any of this until I had already invested myself and tested myself in a number of workshops. Because when I say I didn’t have a good relationship with my father at that time, what I mean is that I didn’t like him and I didn’t want to be like him.

Had I known about his fiction-writing past I almost certainly would have decided not to pursue my own interest. So I will be forever grateful that I knew nothing about my father’s history until I had made storytelling and writing at Iowa my own.

The Limits of Luck
In the end, I feel I took full advantage of the fortunes that befell me. I don’t talk about these experiences much because I didn’t work to put myself in that position. I know a lot of writers — both in spirit and by profession — who never had such advantages, but who would have given anything to take my place, and who would have worked like dogs to get there.

I got lucky, and I know it. What luck didn’t and couldn’t do was write a single word I wrote. And I wrote a lot of words.

So whether the fates are smiling on you on any given day, or throwing obstacles in front of you like a tornado tossing trees, remember that you can always write. Even when you think you can’t write, put a few words down. It will give you a new stepping stone to stand on, and bring another within reach. And you won’t have to lean on luck.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk.

Screenplay Writing Interview II with Shannon L. Arrant

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I started reworking my 2nd mystery, Firebug, into a screenplay. Initially I am changing over to present tense and cutting out unnecessary verbiage. Once I do all that, then I’ll have to look at what’s left with an I to cutting or cutting back. Now, as promised, here is the second installment of my interview with Shannon.

What are some tips to help improve a writer’s screenwriting?
The first is to accept that novels and screenplays are two completely different things. Screenplays have a set format that is the standard industry wide. If you want to be taken seriously as a screenwriter and don’t want to film your script yourself, it is imperative that you use the proper formatting.

There are many different screenwriting programs out there that will handle the formatting for you. Final Draft (www.finaldraft.com) is the most popular however it’s expensive. I personally use Celtx (www.celtx.com). It can handle formatting for screenplays, stage plays, audio plays, and even comic books. It formats perfectly. If you decide to produce your screenplay yourself, it even allows you to track all aspects of a production from start to finish. Best of all, it’s free!
A word of caution, though: Just because you’re using a software, it doesn’t mean the onus isn’t on you to understand how to use the many screenwriting elements correctly. No amount of proper formatting will save you if you don’t know how to use Flashbacks, Voice Overs, Parentheticals, etc … correctly.

Perhaps the biggest tip I can give any screenwriter is to know where you’re going before you even begin. Take the time to create an outline of your main plot and all your subplots. The best way I’ve come across of doing this is to use scene cards. A scene card can be an index card, a piece of paper, or even a page in a notebook or Word document. These are such wonderful tools, I’ve even taken to using them in my novels as well as my screenplays.

This is what one of my scene cards for my screenplay ‘Sisterhood of the Sword’ looks like:

Location – Tavern
Time of Day – Night
Characters – Maria, Catarina, Nohemi, Villagers

Description/Goal of the Scene –
The Villagers have assembled to attempt to figure out what to do. Maria is adamant about standing and fighting. Catarina wants the women to pack up and run. Nohemi isn’t certain what to do but she knows they need to do something. Through a passionate speech, Maria manages to sway the Villagers and Nohemi to her point of view. Catarina leaves the meeting, upset that no one saw her point of view and worried about the women.

Important Dialogue (optional) –
Catarina-“Maria, you have nothing to lose.”

Maria-“I have nothing to lose? How can you say I have nothing to lose? I have everything to lose! My honor, my dignity, my life…I stand to lose it all, just like the rest of you. True, I am a widow and I have no children. But that doesn’t make me any less of a woman! My farm, my life is here, in this village…just like all of you. We all have everything to lose. And that, that is why we must stand and fight.”

Villagers: *mutter amongst themselves, nodding, agreeing with Maria*

Nohemi: “She’s right. Maria is right. We have to stay and fight.”

Catarina: “Nohemi, how can you say that? What do you know of war?”

Nohemi: “I know the day after I was wed my husband was called off to fight in one. I know one is coming to me. That is really all I need to know. Whether I like it or not, whether I know anything about it or not, war is coming for me…and the rest of us. I know I need to do something. I know that I am choosing to fight because I believe what little I have is worth fighting for.”

Catarina-“You are all crazy. None of you have any idea what you are getting yourselves into.”

Here’s the actual scene I wrote based off the above scene card:

INT. TAVERN – NIGHT

The tavern is small and homey looking. A bar is at the back
of the room. Mismatched tables and chairs are spaced
throughout the room.

The Villagers are crowded into the small space. Every chair
is filled. Women stand against the walls. THE TAVERN
KEEPER’S WIFE moves through the crowd, filling up mugs from
a pitcher.

The air is tense. The Villagers mutter amongst
themselves. Maria sits at the bar, looking
morose. Catarina comforts Nohemi as best as she can at a
table in the corner.

INEZ stands up from her seat. Inez is a young woman, in her
mid 20s. She has a fair complexion with blond hair and
brown eyes.

INEZ
What are we going to do?

Inez’s question causes some of the other Villagers to speak
up, asking the same thing. Maria turns from the bar to face
the rest of the room.

TAVERN KEEPER’S WIFE
What can we do? Our husbands are
gone.

The Villagers mutter nervously amongst themselves.

INEZ
I’ll tell you what we can do. We
can run, that’s what.

Some of the Villagers nod and mumble in agreement.

Maria speaks from where she sits at the bar. Her voice is
quiet, but it cuts through the room, silencing it.

MARIA
We can fight.

Catarina looks up in alarm.

CATARINA
What? Are you mad?

Maria stands up.

MARIA
Hell yes, I’m mad! My sister was
brutally murdered!

CATARINA
That’s not what I meant.

MARIA
I know what you meant,
Catarina. My answer is still the
same. We need to fight.

Catarina stands. The Villagers watch the two uneasily.

CATARINA
We need to run. Pack up what we
can, burn the rest, and run. We
can head to the coast; to our
husbands. From there we can tell
the King what’s going on.

Some of the Villagers nod their approval. Others look
uncertain.

MARIA
What if these men pursue us? What
then? Your father said they were
coming for revenge. We know what
they’ve been doing to villages they
have no real grudge
against. There’s no telling what
they will do to us. We have to
make a stand. We have to
fight. It’s the only choice we
have.

CATARINA
Maria, you have nothing to lose.

MARIA
How can you say that? I have
everything to lose! My honor, my
dignity, my life… I stand to lose
it all, just like the rest of
you. I may be a childless widow
but that doesn’t make me any less
of a woman! My farm, my life is
here, in this village… just like
all of you. We all have everything
to lose. And that, that is why we
must stand and fight.

The Villagers mutter amongst themselves. They nod in
agreement with Maria.

Nohemi speaks up quietly from where she’s seated near
Catarina.

NOHEMI
She’s right. Maria is right. We
have to stay and fight.

CATARINA
Nohemi, how can you say that? What
do you know of war?

Nohemi stands. She looks Catarina in the eye.

NOHEMI
I know the day after I was wed my
husband was called off to fight in
one. I know one is coming for
me. That is all I really need to
know. Whether I like it or not,
whether I know anything about it or
not, war is coming for me… and
for the rest of us. I know I need
to do something. I know that I’m
choosing to fight because I believe
what little I have is worth
fighting for.

More and more of the Villagers nod in agreement with Maria
and Nohemi. Catarina looks around the room in complete
disbelief.

CATARINA
You are all crazy. None of you
have any idea what you are getting
yourselves into.

MARIA
Be that as it may. We still
believe we need to make a stand and
we shall.

Catarina casts one more look around the room before simply
shaking her head. Pushing through the crowd, she heads for
the door to the tavern.

From this you can see how the scene card gave me an excellent starting off point. I knew what I needed to accomplish in the scene before I even began it and was able to flesh it out from there as I wrote.

The average – screenplay will have anywhere from 45 to 55 scene cards. I find it’s best to start with around 50, just in case you think of any scenes as you’re writing that need to be added or moved around to make the plot and pacing of the screenplay flow better.

 

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

How Publishers Can Prosper When Books Go Digital: Seth Godin’s Vision

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This article, by Doug Toft, originally appeared on his Posterous blog on 7/29/20. It is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

Seth Godin gave a mind-blowing talk to independent book publishers in May 2010. Following is a summary for you.

Five traditional functions

Traditionally, says Godin, book publishers have done 5 things:

  • Curate by picking books to publish.
  • Produce by editing manuscripts and manufacturing physical books.
  • Take financial risks by acting as venture capitalists for ideas and hoping that the books with those ideas will catch on.
  • Distribute books and compete for scarce shelf space.
  • Promote by publicizing, advertising, blogging, spamming, and otherwise getting the world to notice their books.

 How not to respond

The presence of ebooks and digital distribution upends that business model. How can book publishers respond?

For a path to avoid, Godin says, look at the record industry. It is essentially dead.

Record companies used to have a perfect business. Radio stations and MTV promoted their products for free. Record stores existed on only to sell their products. Vinyl albums wore out and needed to be replaced. If I lent you an LP and never got it back, I bought a replacement.

Then CDs and iTunes changed the rules of the game. And how did the record companies respond? By suing their biggest fans.

Right now, the big book publishers are preparing to respond in a similar way.

How the traditional publishing model changes

Consider what happens when book publishing goes digital:

  • Production and distribution of physical products is no longer needed. Books exist as bits and bytes that you download.
  • Publishers reduce their financial risk. They don’t have to buy paper, print books, put them in trucks, ship them to stores, and accept returns.
  • Shelf space is no issue. Amazon has infinite room for ebooks.
  • Promotion via traditional publicity and advertising fails. There’s already too much competition for consumers’ attention across too many channels.

So, of the 5 traditional functions of book publishers, only 1 remains. That is curation—picking manuscripts to publish.

Lead a tribe

In addition to curating, smart book publishers will also:

  • Create a tribe.
  • Lead that tribe.
  • Connect the members of the tribe.

For example, suppose that your specialty is publishing books about the American Civil War. Think of your readers as a tribe of people who share a passionate interest in that topic.

These people read your blog. They download free content from your website. They come to your conferences to meet each other. They give you their contact information through your website, and they subscribe to your email newsletter. You have permission to market to them.

As the leader of this tribe, you can call up the leading historians of the Civil War and tell them that you want to publish their next books. And they would fools to say no.

In addition, you don’t have to hunt so hard for new authors. They emerge spontaneously from the ranks of your tribe.

The new model in action

The above is a hypothetical example. Yet there are real people putting these ideas into action.

One is Scott Adams, cartoonist and creator of Dilbert. Early on, Adams published his email address on his cartoons. He built a list of readers and started sending them a newsletter.

Now, whenever Adams publishes a new book, he lets his tribe know. And he hits the best-seller lists.

Curvebender Publishing also leads a tribe. It publishes a $100 deluxe edition of Recording the Beatles: The Studio Equipment and Techniques Used to Create Their Classic Albums. The first printing of 3000 copies sold out after one week.

Turning it all around

In summary, as a book publisher you are no longer in the business of finding readers for your writers. Instead, you find writers for your readers.

The bottom line: Treat readers as an asset. Find out who they are. Work for them. 

So, what do you think? Is Godin’s vision on target?

 

 

The 70 Per Cent Solution

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By now you’ve probably heard all about Amazon’s new 70% royalty option for authors and publishers who release Kindle books through the Amazon Digital Text Platform (DTP), and many of you who have Kindle books in release may have already opted in for the higher royalty. But there’s a major gotcha here no one seems to be talking about.


No, I’m not talking about the ‘delivery price’ factor, which dictates the fee Amazon will hold back on your 70% royalty Kindle book based on the book’s file size. Despite all the panic-mongering on that point, and all the worry about whether Amazon may choose to increase that fee at some point in the future, I think it’s really no big deal. What I’m talking about is this little nugget from the terms of the 70% offer:

"Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices."

What this means is that if your book is being offered anywhere else, in any format, at a lower price than the price you’ve listed for your Kindle book on Amazon, Amazon will reduce your Kindle book’s list price on Amazon to match the lowest price at which your book is being sold elsewhere. You’ll still get your 70% royalty, but it will be on that lowest price. It’s kind of hard to extrapolate all that from this one-liner in their terms, but I’ve learned it the hard way.

When I opted in for the 70% royalty and raised my Kindle book prices to $2.99 on Amazon to qualify for the program, I didn’t remember my ebooks were being offered on Smashwords and Scribd in non-Kindle formats for $.99. I didn’t realize my error until I was reviewing a sales report a couple of weeks later. So I immediately changed the prices on my Smashwords and Scribd editions to $2.99, and waited for Amazon to catch up. And waited. And waited some more, as every single day, I lost royalty money on every copy sold.

After a week I contacted DTP support, and it took another week to get their conclusive response: that my ebooks were still listed on Barnes and Noble’s website at a price of $.99. See, B&N is among the expanded distribution resellers which carry Smashwords books when the author of the book in question has opted in for expanded distribution on the Smashwords site—which I had. Even though I changed the prices of my books on Smashwords, it can take weeks, many weeks, for those changes to propagate out to all the expanded distribution resellers. This isn’t Smashwords’ fault or doing, it’s just the reality of waiting for outside companies to make database changes according to whatever processes they have in place. And like most things in mainstream publishing and bookselling, it’s a very, very slow process.

So it actually would’ve been wiser for me to stay out of the 70% royalty option until after I’d raised my book prices outside Amazon and waited for those changes to propagate across all distribution channels. Since I didn’t, all I can do is either stay with the 70% on a $.99 pricetag while I wait however long it takes for B&N to catch up, or change back to the 35% royalty option so Amazon will only base my royalties on my Amazon prices.

I chose the latter, but it’s still going to cost me. You see, every time you change the price on your DTP Kindle book, or your royalty option, or pretty much anything else about it, you are forced to "re-publish" that book before your changes will be applied. Re-publishing makes the book unavailable for purchase for a minimum of two business days, and sometimes when you re-publish, the book gets stuck in a ‘pending’ status. When that happens you have to contact DTP support to resolve the issue, all of which means more days your book is not available for sale. When I re-published to opt in for the 70% royalty, my books all got stuck in the ‘pending’ status; one of them was unavailable for purchase on Amazon for seven calendar days.

Today I started that clock all over again, and I am again running the risk of my Kindle books getting stuck in ‘pending’ status—all just so I can get back to the 35% royalty option.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying this is all Amazon’s fault, nor that any of it is Smashwords’ or B&N’s fault. All of my lost royalties in this are ultimately the result of my original oversight.

However, I DO think Amazon should be a little clearer about the full implications of their "price parity" policy, and the importance of matching your Kindle book’s price across all resellers—including expanded distribution partners—before opting in for the 70% royalty. I also think the DTP should not require re-publication of a Kindle book when the author/publisher wants to make changes only to its price or royalty option. Why is it necessary to take the book off the virtual sales shelf for these things?

Here’s hoping I don’t get stuck in ‘pending’ again.

 

This is a cross-posting from April L. Hamiton‘s Indie Author blog.