Publetariat

Establishing A Brand

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I have been working my way through the Platform/Promo Lessons in Publetariat’s Vault University curriculum  by April Hamilton and Zoe Winters (I was fortunate enough to win access to Vault University as a winner of Publetariat’s First Anniversary Contest.) While I don’t plan on revealing any detail on the excellent material presented in this curriculum (if you are interested, the fee is just $5 a month for monthly lessons, and I would highly recommend signing up and/or purchasing a copy of April Hamilton’s Indie Author Guide), I am using the subject headings of the sixteen “lessons” in the curriculum to evaluate my own attempts at promotion of my historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery. As someone who has been teaching (and therefore evaluating students) for 35 years I figure it will be a humbling experience to see how well I have learned my lessons!

 
Over five years ago, in one of my last attempts to get an earlier version of my book published through traditional means, I went to a local writers convention where numerous speakers talked about the need to establish a brand. At the time, I remember being discouraged by the news that marketing departments of traditional publishers seemed to have achieved the ascendency in publishing, and that only those authors who could demonstrate a sure-fire market for their “brand” had a hope of getting published.  Nevertheless, I had to admit as a reader I responded to the visual cues book covers and posters offered me when I browsed bookstores, looking for the latest work by a favorite author, or looking for new authors to try out. If this is what was meant by a “brand,” well, that I could understand!
 
Consequently, a year ago as I began to rewrite my manuscript, I also began to think about how I would establish those visual clues for my future readership. The most obvious information I needed to convey about my book was that it was an historical mystery set in the Victorian era. The book was also to be the first in a series of mysteries with the same protagonists, set in San Francisco, emphasizing different female occupations of the era. Ultimately the choices I would make for the title of the book, the name I used as author, and the cover of the book would all be part of providing the visual clues that would “establish my brand.”
 
Title:
I had already decided on Maids of Misfortune as my primary title, (it sounded dramatic, domestic servants play key roles in the mystery, and no other books by that title seemed to exist), but now I had to decide on the subtitle, which I would carry through the subsequent books in the series. I had done enough reading about the increasingly important role the internet plays in modern book marketing to know the title of the book could play a crucial role in determining whether or not a potential reader could find my book. Using “late Nineteenth Century” sounded too academic, and I eliminated the two most obvious alternative terms used for the late Victorian period, “Gaslight” and “Gilded Age” because a google search revealed too many other authors with multiple books had already expropriated those tag lines. So I decided simply to make my subtitle as descriptive as possible, referring to both the time period and the setting, and the sub-title A Victorian San Francisco Mystery has certainly done the trick.
 
If you do a search in Amazon books and use the term “historical mystery,” over 7000 titles pop up, but when you put in “victorian mystery,” the list narrows to 323. In addition, after being out for 6 months, Maids Of Misfortune is second on that list. If you put in another term that is popular for series with female protagonists “women sleuths” you get over 11,000 titles, but when you put in the term “San Francisco mystery” you get 589 titles (who knew there were so many mysteries set in San Francisco!) and I am pleased to say that currently Maids of Misfortune comes up first on that list. My intention is to use this subtitle on the rest of the books in the series, which should cement it as part of my “brand.”
 
Author’s Name:
My birth certificate says Mary Louisa Locke, but growing up I was always called Mary Lou, a hokey 1950s sort of name (for those of you out there of the baby boom generation-all I need to say is Ricky Nelson).  I never wanted to be called Mary (my grandmother’s and oldest Aunt’s names), and Mary Louisa sounded so old-fashioned-so Mary Lou it stayed. When I married in 1972 (not coincidentally the year Ms Magazine started) I decided to keep my own name, so I remained Mary Lou Locke. When I got my doctorate and started teaching, I shifted to Dr. Locke as the way I introduced myself because it was easier than correcting people when they called me either Mrs. or Miss, since nobody seemed willing to use Ms. Besides, as part of a small number of women with doctorates in history, I was proud of the honorific. Meanwhile, my husband and close friends got in the habit of calling me Lou.

 

So, what variation of my name should I use as an author? I find it amusing to realize I never spent any time as a girl wondering what my “married name” would be, but I have spent a good deal of time over the years wondering what my pen name would be. In part this was because when I started writing a novel, I was at the beginning of my academic career, had written several articles as Dr. Mary Lou Locke, and thought that it might be useful to keep my fiction and non-fiction personas separate. But fast forward thirty some years, and I was now at the end of my academic and teaching career, and this motivation was gone. I tried different iterations of my name (including adding my husband’s last name in the mix) but the one that sounded the most Victorian to me was M. Louisa Locke. In fact when I said it out loud, it always reminded me of the name “Louisa May Alcott,” and what could sound more Victorian to potential readers than that?  So M. Louisa Locke became my pen name, and not a few people have mentioned how very “nineteenth century” it sounds.
 
I also decided to use that name as my domain name for the website I established, for all social networks, and my email address. It was a name that didn’t show up when I first searched for it, so I knew that by using it consistently it would also start establishing a high web presence. Now when you google M. Louisa Locke it is the only link you find in the first page of listings.
 
Cover:
There are numerous articles on why the cover design is one of your most important marketing tools, and I decided that this was one area of self-publishing my book that I did not want to do myself. However, one of the benefits of publishing my own book was that I could have full control over the final design of the book cover. After doing some comparative shopping on the web, looking at book covers of historical mysteries, and asking everyone if they knew any professional designers, I came up with someone who met my needs perfectly. I wanted someone who was not only a professional designer, but someone who might actually read and enjoy the kind of light, romantic mystery I had written.
 
Michelle Huffaker, who designed the cover of Maids of Misfortune, was local, so I could actually talk face to face with her and lend her books I had accumulated on Victorian fashion, interior design, architecture; she was both an artist and a professional web-designer, so she knew how to present for the web and prepare images for electronic books and print on demand; and she was a reader of light fiction (and didn’t begin her design until she had read the completed manuscript.)
 
I knew what elements I wanted on the cover. I wanted the background of the cover to represent Victorian wallpaper, which was characterized by linear patterns and I wanted a deep red, which is a signature color of the Victorian period. In the center of the front cover I wanted an illustration of a mistress and servant I had found in a late Victorian magazine.
Michelle Huffaker gave me that and more (and at a very reasonable price).
 

 
If you look closely at the cover you will see that she manipulated the classic Victorian pattern she found for the cover so that the edges were darker than the center, and, as a result, it really looks like the kind of fading you would find in old wallpaper. She researched Victorian fonts, finding fonts that not only stand out, even in small thumbnails pictures, but also evoke the nineteenth century. And she placed the black and white illustration into an ornate frame, again very historically accurate, so that it looks like you are seeing a reflection in a mirror. I have gotten nothing but compliments on the cover, including how professional it looks (a real plus for an independently published book.)
 
I couldn’t be happier, and I feel that the cover design, along with the title, and my name, provide the strong visual clues I was looking for. I don’t think that anyone who sees the book would think they are looking at a contemporary mystery, or a hard-boiled detective novel, so I feel confident I am on my way to establishing my “brand” as the writer of cozy-style, historical mysteries that are set in Victorian San Francisco.
What do you think? Comments are welcome.

 

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

Ebook Formats and the Unnecessary Fuss

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There’s an awful lot of confusion and kerfuffle going on at the moment around ebooks. It’s not new, as the kerfuffle has been kerfuffling for a while now. And I’m sure it will continue. The primary concern seems to be people panicking about getting their books (be they author, indie author, publisher or whatever) out in as many selling venues as possible.

There’s the iPhone and the iPad, the Kindle and the Kobo, the Sony Reader and a million other options. Then there are all the various ebook formats.

ebook readers Ebook formats and the unnecessary fussWell, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a fuss about nothing. Supply and demand is a great leveller. People that produce a product, the successful people at least, are keen to remove customer confusion. Often they let the customers do it for themselves. That’s happening with the retailers.
At its most basic, an ebook is not very different to a print book. When you produce a dead tree book you have to get all your content correctly laid out in your chosen program.
 
The real pros use InDesign or something like that, but you honestly can produce professional looking books with MS Word and Adobe Acrobat these days. You make sure you set your styles right, you get your layout and font the way you want it, you add in your page numbers and headers by section and so on. I’m not here to explain all that stuff right now – it’s pretty easy to learn.
 
Once you’ve made yourself a text block for a print book, you’ve already got an ebook. You take your print edition text block and you remove all the page numbers, headers, sections and everything else. There are numerous other options open to you, like embedded images and videos, hyperlink references, a hyperlinked Table Of Contents and a variety of font styles, but essentially all you need is the print file with all the page-relevant data removed. Again, there are numerous “How To” files and sites out there to help you with that stuff. [Editor’s note: here’s Publetariat Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton’s free, downloadable pdf guide to DIY publishing for the Kindle] But that’s not really the primary cause of concern. It seems to me that a lot of people are stressed about getting their ebook available on all the popular devices and in all the popular formats.
 
Ladies and gents, don’t stress about it. All those product makers out there would have you believe you need to jump through hoops for them. Not true. Jump through a couple of well chosen hoops and all the rest will fall into place.
Let’s start with the big names and the current poster children: Amazon, Kindle, iPhone and iPad. Very easy.
 
Go to Amazon’s Digital Text Platform or DTP. Here it is. Sign up and follow the instructions to upload your text block. Wait for approval. Now your book is available directly from Amazon wirelessly to anyone with a Kindle reader. And an iPhone or iPad, because those people can get the Kindle app for their device. Bloody gold, these app developers. (If you think of something and the thought, “There should be an app for that!” goes through your head, then there almost certainly is one already. If not, you might have just had a million dollar idea.)
iphone ipad Ebook formats and the unnecessary fuss
 
So you don’t need to be a web developer to make an iPad app of your book. You don’t need to pay other people hundreds or thousands of dollars to do it for you. Sure, it would be great to have an iPad app built specifically for each of your books, but you don’t need them. People will still read your book if you make them aware of it, catch their interest and then direct them to a place to buy it from, be it a standalone app or a file for their Stanza or Kindle app.
 
You don’t want to use Amazon? No problem. I’ve extolled the virtues of Smashwords.com here before. They are a truly great ebook publisher and retailer. You can upload your book to them as a Word document (as long as you follow their Style Guide to the letter, which isn’t hard) and they’ll make your ebook for you in every format you’ll ever need. Including .mobi, which people with Kindles can read. And epub, for the iPhone and iPad. And they’ll distribute out to numerous well respected ebook retailers around the world. It’s bloody child’s play.
 
There are ways to make all kinds of versions for all kinds of readers and have a really swanky looking selection of ebooks. But people that are keen to read your book will read your book. If they have a certain reader and you direct them to the correct file type, that’s it. With Amazon and Smashwords, you’ve got all you need.
 
Of course, if you’re all protective and believe in DRM (Digital Rights Management) then you won’t want to use Smashwords, but you can enable DRM on the Amazon DTP and still have Kindle editions available to all Kindle owners and anyone else with a Kindle app. For nothing. In no time. And you can set your price and make a royalty.
 
See. It’s bloody easy. Chill out.

 

This is a cross-posting from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.

E-Book Formats

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I will be publishing my cold war espionage memior, ROOFMAN: Nail-Banger, Librarian & Spy, as an ebook. It contains graphics and mp3 files.

I am confused as to what formats to use. Is Adobe Acrobat readable across all devices? I don’t much like the idea of submitting my book to the Amazon store where they will format it to be readable on the Kindle, because they will take 65% of the list price ($7.95), plus they’ll have a emailing list of all my buyers.

Can anyone help me, please?

Thank you,

John Pansini

 

 

Writing Q&A: Finding Time, Finishing Work, Short Story Markets And What To Do After A First Draft

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Here are some questions that have been sent in by readers.

How does one find the time between work, family, and other commitments to write the book one wants to write?
This is one of the most common questions asked, and basically there is only one answer.

There is not enough time to do everything, so what are you going to give up in order to write your book?
I personally went down to working 4 days per week, plus gave up TV ( I do download shows from iTunes but it cuts out watching crap!). I also have very little social life, but am a happy hermit! Here are some more ideas for finding time. Here is a free audio on Beating Procrastination.
 
What is your inspiration that keeps you moving towards finishing your book? I’ve got lots of “chunks” of text that i need to assemble into a coherent title (or series of titles).
The only thing that can keep you moving is wanting to achieve the goal of writing your book. Much of the ‘assembly’ can be boring but you have to push through that. Persistence and discipline have to be the hallmarks of anyone successful at anything. Here is some more help:
I’ve almost finished my 1st draft, what do I do next?
“Writing a book is rewriting”, I think Michael Crichton said that, but many other writers will say the same thing. The first draft is just the very start, but at least it gives you the rough material to work with. From here, you need to think about the following:
  • Rewriting, editing, proof-reading and rewriting cycle – here is a great post on different types of editing from Self Publishing Review. Whether you are going to submit to an agent, or going down the self-publishing route, you need to go through editing and rewriting to make the book as good as it can be. Yes, you will be sick of it, but it will be a better product. I have hired editors before to get a professional viewpoint.
Short Story markets. For question #–I’m a short story writer and would be interested in doing an anthology.

 

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

9 Ways For Self-Publishers to Get Unstuck

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Publishing a book can take quite a bit of time. Sometimes you finish a manuscript after months or years of work, and you feel like you’re ready to go.

But then you realize you need to hire an editor, and it’s back to “hurry up and wait” while another editorial process takes place.
 
Or your book might be done, but you’re not sure what to do next, so you spend all your time researching. You’ve got 120 blogs on your feed reader, you know the names of all the print on demand companies, but you have no book.
And then sometimes you’ve already finished the manuscript, printed your book, and now you realize you need a plan—or something—to know what to do next.

 
Never fear, there are always a few ways to get off the dime and back on track.
 
So no matter where you are in the process, here are some ideas to help out.
 
 
9 Things You Can Do Right Now to Get Unstuck
  • If you haven’t finished your book
    1. Get some other opinions, circulate parts of the manuscript to friends or sympathetic readers. Whether you agree with their assessment or not, you’ll have a new perspective on your material.
       
    2. Think about hiring an editor to help put your manuscript in order. Editors can be incredibly skillful at helping authors shape their manuscripts. More experienced authors know this and use editors to help their process.
       
    3. Visit writer forums for referrals, advice, community of others in the same situation. Hey, you’re online anyway, join a couple of active writer’s forums and you’ll find a sympathetic community of other writers.
       
  • If your manuscript’s done, but you’re not sure what to do next
    1. Sit down and decide how to self-publish to meet your goals. Will it be private, just circulated to friends and family, or for a fundraiser? On sale? Or will you try to compete actively in the marketplace? Each path has its own requirements that will help orient you.
       
    2. Look into hiring a publishing consultant, a book shepherd or a book designer to help you establish schedules, budgets and priorities. Use their experience to move you to the next step.
       
    3. Go back and make sure you have the infrastructure in place to establish your publishing enterprise. Have you acquired your ISBNs? Filled out directory listings for your publishing company? These details can be overlooked in the beginning.
       
  • If your book’s been published, now what?
    1. If you haven’t done so, register the domain of your book’s name. Get a blog attached to the domain and start writing about the topic of your book. Don’t try to sell the book, just work on finding an audience with common interests.
       
    2. Go over and set up a Facebook Fan page for your book. It only takes a few minutes, and you can let all your friends and followers know about it right away.
       
    3. If you know other people with websites or blogs in your field, offer to write free articles for them. It will introduce you to groups of new readers every time.
There’s No Substitute for a Plan
All of these suggestions will get you moving again, and that’s a good thing. But what self-publishers really need in order to stay on track is a realistic and orderly plan. Your plan should include all three of these phases of publication, finishing your manuscript, planning for publication, and long-term marketing.
 
With a plan in hand, you know where you are, and you know where you have to go. Without a plan it’s just too easy to get bogged down in detail and lose sight of the larger picture.
 
Book publishing can require lots of decisions and lots of different actions over a period of months. Be a smart publisher: get your plan together first.
 
And did you notice what all these actions have in common?
 
Takeaway: When self-publishers plan their book, their publication and their marketing, they rarely get stuck. But when they do, here are some suggestions on how to get unstuck and back on track.

 

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

Lightning Source – Reviewed

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Lightning Source (LSI 268.40) has become synonymous with authors pursuing what is described as ‘true self-publishing—whereby an author sets up their own imprint, purchases a block of ISBN’s and uses Lightning Source’s global print and fulfilment services to publish and make their books available for distribution.

 

“Lightning Source, an Ingram Content Group company, is the leader in providing a comprehensive suite of inventory-free on-demand print and distribution services for books to the publishing industry. Lightning Source gives the publishing community options to print books in any quantity, one to 10,000 (POD or offset print runs), and provides its customers access to the most comprehensive bookselling channel in the industry in both the United States and the United Kingdom.”

Founded in 1997, with its headquarters in La Vergne, Tennessee, Lightning Source is a subsidiary of Ingram Industries Inc., and a sister company of U.S. book wholesaler, Ingram Book Group. Lightning Source quickly established itself as the global leader for print-on-demand book printing and fulfilment services with massive operations in their La Vergne base and their plant in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. The Lightning Source digital library database holds over 750,000 books and has built lasting partnerships with Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and Gardners. LSI’s strength is the flexibility to print and ship a single copy of a print-on-demand book or several thousand copies.

LSI has become so synonymous with POD (print-on-demand) that authors often lump the global print solutions provider in with so-called self-publishing companies like Lulu and CreateSpace. LSI is neither a POD publisher nor an author solutions service. They are a global digital printer for the publishing industry, but due to the explosion in self-publishing, they now deal directly with authors wishing to utilize their services. However, dealing with LSI directly requires a new account holder to verify that they have registered blocks of ISBN’s under a publishing imprint name and they provide an accessible bank account and sign a commercial contract with them.

Working with LSI as a publisher or author does require a reasonable hands-on knowledge of book creation software and the proficiency to provide and load-up print ready files to industry print standards directly to their website. This is not a service that should be used by the faint-hearted or novice author and I would strongly suggest that previous experience in self-publishing and book design is required, or contracted out to a professional prior to attempting to submit a book file to LSI’s database. My own experience with LSI reveals a company laden with online tutorials and guidance, a strong commercial customer focus, but a professionalism that means they are not available for hand-holding. This is one of the reasons their website is packed with the necessary information an author might need; from technical book specifications, a spine width calculator, and a step-by-step manual. The actual process of loading up a book file to LSI can be mastered with a degree of study, patience and attention to detail—by no means beyond any computer-savvy author.

https://www.lightningsource.com/covergenerator.aspx
https://www.lightningsource.com/spinecalc.aspx
https://www.lightningsource.com/tutorials/tutorials_title_set_up.aspx
https://www.lightningsource.com/ops/files/pod/LSI_FileCreationGuide.pdf
 

“Thank you for your interest in Lightning Source.

If you are a publisher…

… and want to become a customer please proceed to our New Account page.

Please note that Lightning Source does not provide design, file work, editorial, promotional or marketing services. These are solely the responsibility of the publisher.


If you are not a publisher…

… and require publisher services, like design, editorial and marketing services, please contact an author services company.”

 
Lightning Source, in the following benefit section, explain the Print to Order and Print to Publish programs they offer – meaning the author or small press operator has the option to utilize LSI’s print and distribution services or simply use their print facilities.

Print to Order

With this service the publisher sets the retail price, wholesale discount and return policy.

We send the data out to our Distribution partners (including leading distributors such as Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com and others).

They capture the demand from booksellers, libraries and consumers and we print to fill the order.

We collect the wholesale price, deduct the print cost and pay the publisher the balance.

The price for this service is $12.00 a year per title. Just one dollar a month.

B&N purchases through Ingram Book Group.

As you know Lightning Source titles are listed in the Print-to-Order program – an exclusive service that allows Ingram to display 100 copies on hand at all times. As part of this arrangement, and to avoid book buyers from having to backorder, we at Lightning Source guarantee books ordered by Ingram will be printed and returned to their shipping dock within 8 – 12 hours, generally in time to be included in the book buyer’s regular order.

Print to Publisher
 
With this program we fill orders placed by the publisher and ship them in any quantity to any location. That can be one book to a reviewer or 5,000 to a warehouse.

As part of that service we offer Offset printing on paperback quantities of over 2,000 or hardback quantities of over 750.

Turn around time on digital printing is days, turn around time of offset is about 7-10 days depending on the books specifics.

Offset printing
 
Offset printing isn’t a component of Print to Order.
 
We also offer traditional printing services for titles that require large print orders.

In effect, dealing directly with LSI, is simply cutting out the middle-man—or in this case the author solutions services who use LSI, like Lulu, Outskirts Press, Xulon, Xlibris, and hundreds of others. The difference is—the author will pay $75 for title set-up ($37.50 each for interior and cover files). You are also required to purchase a proof copy and you are charged $12 per year to keep the title in LSI’s database. One important detail authors should be wary of is the LSI submission load-up fee of $40. This does not apply to the first submission load-up, but does apply on any subsequent file revisions after the proof is delivered. This is why I believe LSI is really only for the seasoned self-publisher, familiar with working with print ready PDF files. Print charges for POD books are set out below, and taking our normal 200 page colour cover and black and white interior as an example, her is how it plays out:
 

PRINT CHARGE EXAMPLE

$0.90 per unit $0.90
+ 200 pages x $0.013 per page $2.60
Total print charge per unit $3.50
 
Authors buying copies of their book directly from LSI only pay for the book at print cost—there are no mark-ups or built in fees imposed by LSI. The author, when setting up a title, decides what retail discount should be given, but LSI advises not to go below 20%. However, some retailers may expect far more discount (up to 55% – Amazon) before they will even consider stocking your book.
 
In light of the above costs – pause for a moment – and just consider what fees other POD publishers/printers will try to charge authors. Yes, sometimes the fees charged by other author solutions services can be in the thousands, and often, the author is getting little more than a printed book made available online.
 
When it comes to royalties—LSI don’t do a ‘Mill City Press’. You really do get 100% profit following the subtraction of print cost and retailer discount.
Returns Program
The decision to make a book returnable lies with the author/publisher, and significantly, LSI do not charge a fee for this service. Why should they? Returned books will be subtracted off author/publisher payments. This is one area which should really highlight to authors using author solutions services, and paying anything up to $500 for a returns program, just how much authors can be gouged on profits when the POD publishing middle-men muscle in on the business of publishing.
 
Online Distribution and Availability
Provided an author ensures their book is listed with Nielsens Books in Print, using LSI, who are owned by Ingram in the US, you are, for the most part, getting exactly the same promised distribution that you get with Lulu, CreateSpace’s Pro-Plan or AuthorHouse (AUH 222.38), or most other POD author solutions services.
 
Yes, you will have to look after all the promotion and marketing of your book, but the reality is, many POD publishers actually use their affiliation with LSI/Ingram as if that in itself was the gateway to heaven. It is not—but it is no more or no less than you as an author are getting from most other author solutions services.
 
Lightning Source may be a bridge too far for some authors, unfamiliar with preparing book files for a printer, but for the charges and gouging practices engaged by some author solutions services, it may actually be worth the effort to pause and contemplate crossing that bridge.
 
Frankly, LSI’s reputation as a digital printer and fulfilment service is not in question—they are also used by the world’s leading mainstream publishers just as much by author solutions service providers. Bluntly, if you are not using a service like LSI, Lulu (LUL 244.75) or CreateSpace (CSP 256.21) for printing and making your book available—you must think beyond the production of your book—and ask what exactly it is any other company is providing you with, beyond what the above companies do economically.
 
RATING: 8.5/10
 

This is a cross-posting from Mick Rooney‘s POD, Self-Publishing and Independent Publishing.

Writing Grief

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For the past year or two I have been living with two impending deaths. One was natural, merciful and literal. The other was unnatural, tortured and figurative. Both have both come to pass.

I have been alive long enough to know that there is no way to anticipate or speed the grieving process. There is no way to shed grief but to endure it and to respect the truth of it. I am also aware that the trend these days is to encourage people to move on with their lives, or to otherwise ignore or distract themselves from grief — advice that is often proffered by friends and family who do not want to embrace the totality of loss, or the inevitability of mortality, in their own lives.
 
As I have watched myself move through this process in two instances, I have noticed that as a writer I do not have the tools to accurately describe what I am thinking and feeling. Were I authoring these events I would struggle greatly to communicate the totality of what I feel as a character. 
 
The lesson here — the fiction writing lesson — is that this cannot be done. The craft of the writer is as much about reconnecting readers with vistas already observed as it is about describing vistas that have never been seen. (And in this is the difficulty of writing about life for young readers. Because they have so little of life’s experience to draw on, there is little that can be evoked.)
 
If there is a common core to every writer’s work, it is found in the intersection between what the author wants to express and what the author can evoke. This is true of love, of loss, of madness and of resolve. It can only truly be communicated if the reader already speaks the language.
 
I don’t know if I will ever write about my grief. I don’t know if I ever want to, or if in doing so I would have anything more to communicate than adding my voice to the human scream.
 
What I do know is that I know how. As I tread water and look for landmarks by which to orient myself, I find my craft sustaining me in ways I did not anticipate.
 
Writing is inextricably a part of who I am. It has always been my way of seeing and being.
And it is a constant reminder to go to the truth not simply in my work, but in my life. Even if that truth is grief.

 

This is a cross-posting from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk.

My Kindle Books

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

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

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

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

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

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

This excerpt is a reprint from Fay Risner‘s Booksbyfay blog.

Penguin Group Declares War on Kindle Owners…

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…with Bizarre Array of Exorbitant and Nonsensical Kindle Store Prices; Some Are 200-300% Higher; Many Exceed Paperback Prices

The long-delayed march of the Penguins? It wasn’t worth the wait.

After its agency price-fixing model co-conspirators came quickly to agreements with Amazon so that their ebook titles would remain in the Kindle Store right through the April Fool’s Day transition date, the Penguin Publishing Group held readers hostage for about 8 weeks before finally reaching the end of the impasse, reported here moments before it was announced last week.

Penguin has a terrific backlist and plenty of popular bestselling authors, and Kindle owners were waiting impatiently for an opportunity to purchase and download various among about 150 of the company’s new releases that had been withheld from the Kindle Store since April 1. We knew that, as with other agency model publishers, Penguin’s new releases would likely be priced in the $12.99 to $14.99 range, at least temporarily, when released. But Kindle owners have proven that they are among the world’s greatest readers, and many have shown a willingness to pay those prices even while others have promoted the idea of a boycott of ebooks priced over $9.99.

That would have sorted itself out, but since being allowed back into the Kindle Store Penguin has taken the agency pricing model to new extremes. Not only does the company now sport the highest average prices for bestsellers and other frontlist titles in the Kindle Store, but it has also doubled and tripled its previous prices on backlist titles such Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead ($27.99 each) and numerous classics that are now priced at $12.99 and up, higher than their paperback editions. There are too many examples to start listing them here, and of course we have no interest in mentioning or linking to many of these high-priced titles lest we inadvertently drive traffic toward them.

But several things stand out and begin to suggest a pattern of collusion and favored treatment between Penguin and Apple, the company that made the agency price-fixing model possible in the first place by pandering to the Big Six publishers with its offer to turn its back on consumers and create a high-priced ebook outlet with the iBooks Store. To the extent that publishers believed the iBooks App could lure customers away from the Kindle Store, it provided them with an alternative to play off against Amazon in order to jack prices up. Only Random House, the largest of the Big Six, took a "thanks but no thanks" stance toward the price-fixing collusion, one that may have been both principled and profitable.

It now seems likely that someone inside Penguin was responsible for the "anonymized information from an unknown number of large Agency publishers" that publisher mouthpieces  Michael Cader of the Publishers’ Lunch website and Michael Shatzkin to play pick-and-roll in spinning a mid-May "story" that April iBooks sales were already 12 to 15 percent of that same "unknown number of large Agency publishers" total ebook sales. While Apple’s iBooks store generally has the kind of ebook selection that one might associate with the book or music section at a WalMart or Target, and may be suffering from lackluster overall paid book sales, the one publisher that is sure to have done better at iBooks than Kindle in April was Penguin, since it was withholding its bestsellers from the Kindle Store. Surely Cader and Shatzkin know that using selective or slanted information to promote the idea that the iBooks Store is doing better than it is, or that it might have been challenging the Kindle Store’s ebook market share right out of the gate, could be a self-fulfilling prophecy that plays into the hands of the agency model publishers.

Now, Penguin is taking things one step further and standing on Apple’s shoulders to sabotage Amazon and attack Kindle Store customers by dictating that Amazon charge high prices for several of its bestselling titles while offering those same books through iBooks at $9.99 and below: 

  • Kathryn Stockett’s bestseller The Help, which for months did very well in the Kindle Store at price points below $9.99, is now priced (by Penguin imprint Putnam) at $12.99 in the Kindle Store, but it is still listed at only $9.99 at iBooks.
     
  • Similar pricing discrepancies exist for Eat Pray Love, although the best price for that book is $8.25 for the paperback in Amazon’s main store.
     
  • For Harlan Coben’s Caught, the discrepancy is even greater: it’s $14.95 in the Kindle Store, $8.98 in the iBooks Store, and $11.95 for the hardcover in Amazon’s main store.

We’ve never been told exactly what the controversy was that kept Penguin and Amazon at loggerheads for the past couple of months? Was it that Penguin wanted to give "most favored nation" status to the iBooks Store and deny it to the Kindle Store?

In any case, let’s be clear. This is not a case of Penguin declaring war on ebooks. What Penguin has done is declared war on Kindle owners, and on Amazon.

One wonders if Penguin’s strategies will succeed, or if the company even has a strategy. Amazon is by far the world’s largest bookseller of English-language books, and Kindle customers are Amazon’s most prolific book buyers. Past surveys of the citizens of Kindle Nation make it clear that, while Kindle owners may generally be well-heeled, we are also savvy and price-conscious. While Penguin’s pricing tactics are certainly tantamount to the kind of negative branding experienced recently by Toyota or BP, it would be surprising if they did not take a toll on the company’s book sales.

Nor are Penguin’s minders at Pearson PLC likely to be thrilled with Penguin’s bizarre behavior. Penguin Group is the world’s second largest book publisher (behind Random House) and Pearson also owns venerable media outlets such as The Economist and the Financial Times. But the UK company has lost about $2 billion in market capitalization (to $11.35 billion) as its PSO share price has fallen from $16.37 to under $14 since mid-May while Penguin has pursued its anti-reader tactics.

As one Kindle Nation citizen sized things up in a blog comment this week, "Wait until the contracts expire next April for all those publishers who happily crawled into bed with Apple…. By this time next year, I predict that heads will roll at the Agency 5."

I have too much respect and appreciation for the individual makeup of Kindle Nation citizens to suggest some sort of collective boycott here. We should all be free to read what we want to read. But I do hope that whenever possible we can all pay attention to the behavior of publishers as companies, and act with the empowering understanding that what we buy and the prices at which we buy it can send powerful economic signals to those doing the pricing.

Amazon is to be applauded for moving aggressively to expand the Kindle Store catalog in recent weeks, and about 80% of the added titles are now priced between $5 and $9.98, which gives Kindle customers more affordable prices than ever. In the coming weeks we will continue not only to alert you to free Kindle promotional titles but also to highlight other books of interest in the $2.99 to $4.99 range. We would also welcome a move by Amazon to do more to highlight non-agency model titles in its bestseller and store architecture.

For those who prefer to buy books from more reader-friendly sources, the following is a listing of Penguin Group imprints in the US:

* Ace   
* Alpha   
* Avery   
* Berkley   
* Dutton   
* Gotham   
* G. P. Putnam’s Sons   
* HP Books   
* Hudson Street Press   
* Jeremy P. Tarcher   
* Jove   
* NAL   
* Penguin   
* Penguin Press   
* Perigee   
* Plume   
* Portfolio   
* Prentice Hall Press   
* Riverhead   
* Sentinel   
* Viking  Children’s Division    
* Dial   
* Dutton   
* Firebird  
* Frederick Warne   
* G. P. Putnam’s Sons   
* Grosset & Dunlap   
* Philomel   
* Price Stern Sloan   
* Puffin Books   
* Razorbill   
* Speak   
* Viking

 

This is a cross-posting from Stephen Windwalker’s Kindle Nation Daily.

The Secret to Plot in Your Novel

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With this post, Publetariat welcomes indie author C. Patrick Shulze as a regular site Contributor.

Listen to a PODCAST of this article.
 
What makes for good fiction? Is it character, PLOT, story, setting, voice, dialogue or some other component of your novel? The answer is  PLOT; the story of what happens. Think of it this way: you can find millions of different characters, tens of thousands of settings and about a dozen stories. But as Jim Thompson says, “There is only one plot—things are not as they seem.” What makes your novel stand out is its plot, that series of causes and effects found within your story.of this article.

To create a meaningful plot, you need at least one main character who suffers some level of conflict, that inability to achieve what it is he wants. This conflict, his emotional reactions to the obstacles placed before him, is the crux of your plot. It is this inexorable series of obstacles your hero faces, and how he overcomes them, that hooks your readers.

The secret to plot is that it flows from your characters.

When you write a story, you create a sequence of events that move the hero toward what it is he wants. However, your greatest effort should be in your introduction of conflict, those ever-larger obstacles and the increasing resistance your hero experiences. You first give him a goal to surpass, then once he completes this task, deny him his desire. Then you have him master a more difficult challenge, then deny him yet again. Do this over, and over, and over again. Of course, the hero will at some point reach his goal, but you must keep it from him as long as the story, and your word count, allow. This constant battle between upheaval and triumph is what develops your plot and engrosses your readers.

Your character’s conflict, and thus the plot, may derive from either internal or external sources. Regardless, they thwart his progress until the very end of your novel. We all know external conflict can be exciting, but what can place your novel above others is your hero’s internal struggles. Consider this basic storyline: your hero has a burning desire to become a surgeon, but faints at the sight of blood. Which is the most moving aspect to the character’s goals? Is it the struggle to become a doctor or the sight of blood issue? His struggles to master his fear will have the most power with your readers.

In addition to plot, you have a wonderful tool you may employ called "SUBPLOT." That is, each major character is haunted by some minor conflict that further hinders him. This, too, can be internal or external in nature but if used effectively, can give a great deal of life to your novel.

The basis of this is your hero’s desire for something beyond all else that is kept from him. This ever-rising tension and conflict, or your character’s hardships, are what make up your plot.

Now for some quotes about plot from those famous among us.

"’The King died and the Queen died’ is a story. ‘The King died and the Queen died of grief’ is a plot." E.M. Forster

“Plots are what the writer sees with.” Eudora Welty

“Plot is structuring the events of the story.” Aristotle

“Character, of course, is the heart of fiction. Plot is there to give the characters something to do.” John Dufresne

“When a character does something, he becomes that character; and it’s the character’s act of doing that becomes your plot.” Henry James

Until we meet again, know I wish for you only best-sellers.

 

This is a reprint from C. Patrick Shulze‘s Author of Born to be Brothers blog.

1950's Decoration Day Memories

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 Last week, we drove seven miles from where we live to the cemetery. It didn’t take long to put flowers on the graves and come back home, but the doing of it once a year always brings back memories about when I was a kid. Perhaps the reminders are due to the fact that my mother bought their stone with a vase on either end and gave me instructions to put red roses on Dad’s side and any spring flowers on her side.

 
Decoration Day is now Memorial Day. The holiday started after the Civil War to remember fallen soldiers on both sides.  It’s still the day to pay amage to the brave military that give their lives to keep the rest of us free.  My family didn’t think of the day as the start of the summer holidays, because we seldom went far from home and never took vacations.  That day was just what the name implied.  A day to decorate the graves of family and friends which for my parents, my brother, John, and me was an all day process.
 
I think I’ve probably told you some of this before but here goes again.  When I was a kid we lived on an 80 farm in southern Missouri.  Times were economically tough for farmers. Mom and Dad were always trying to think of ways to supplement their income. They sold flower baskets to take to cemeteries.  So several months before Decoration Day while we listened to The Lone Ranger and Cisco Kid on the radio in the evening, John and I put together pink, blue and white carnations from Puff tissues. That’s when Puffs were perfumed. Mom put together various colors of crape paper roses. Help the roses last longer in the elements, Mom melted paraffin wax in a pan and dunked the roses to coat them.  This was before plastic and then silk flowers.  While we worked on flowers, Dad gathered sticks, dried them and constructed log cabin baskets in different sizes and wreaths. Mom did the flower arrangements.  After all the customers had bought theirs, we were left with assortment of baskets left hanging from the nails on the back porch wall. If what was left wasn’t enough, we made up more for our use.
 
Decoration day dawned sticky hot. John and I had baskets wedged between us in the seat and around our feet on floor of our 1935 Chevy. The red country roads to all the cemeteries consisted of natural rock and potholes. We didn’t have to look at the rising red cloud behind our car to know the road was dusty. We watched the dust settle on everything in the car, because we had the windows cranked down. The car didn’t have air.
 
Since we would be gone all day, Mom fixed a picnic lunch of bologna sandwiches, cookies, a jar of coffee for Dad and Mom and a jar of cool aide for my brother and me.  The bologna was the good kind. The grocery store sliced the meat off a large roll in a red wrapper. We just needed enough food for lunch, because we had to be home in time for my parents to milk cows at night.
 
Some of the old cemeteries were not well care for so my parents spent a little time at each place, cleaning around the graves.  John and I made a pass around the cemetery, looking at the old tombstones. Dad always cautioned us not to step on the graves. Out of respect sure, but since the wooden coffins deteriorated long ago, we might find ourselves sinking along with collapsing soil in the middle of the graves. Mom’s worry was the poisonous snakes lurking in the shaggy grass – copperheads and timber rattlers. "Watch where you step," she admonished at each cemetery.
 
Each year, my brother and I were given a history lesson about relatives that died before we were born.  We saw them through the eyes of our parents. We had to walk a quarter mile to get to Montevallo Cemetery. The timber lined path led down a steep embankment and through a shallow creek. Dad stopped the car.  We waded the creek, stepping on rocks as much as possible, walked through a pasture to the cemetery gate where amid Confederate soldiers and bushwhackers my father’s two grandfathers were laid to rest, both Union soldiers buried with wives and offspring. One grandfather was a farmer and the other a druggist back in the day when plants gathered from the timber were turned into potions and compounds. This civic minded grandfather was a justice of the peace and on the school board.
 
His son, my grandfather, was, on the other hand, a partier. He became a druggist after his schooling to become a doctor was cut short by the death of Great Grandfather at 54 in the 1800’s. He took over the family drugstore from his mother who kept the business going until he came home. Grandpa only made it to 50. In all fairness, a hereditary heart condition was the cause of death but this fun loving, good natured man’s life style may have hastened his demise. He didn’t miss a town celebration and most towns had them in those days complete with parades and games.  This was our musically talented Grandpa. He played the trumpet for a Woodsman band in the parades.
 
Not far down the road, we visited Mom’s two baby sisters graves at Olive Branch Cemetery.  One baby was stillborn in 1919. The other died from measles in 1929. In the early 1900’s, Mom was born the oldest in a family of eleven in times when babies had a tough time surviving, and all but those two lived long lives.
 
In Virgil City Cemetery is the graves of Mom’s great grandparents on her father’s side  She was sent to live with them when she was 16 and stayed two years to care for them. Great Grandma passed away, and Great Grandpa moved in with Mom’s grandparents, ending Mom’s responsibilities. Everyone took care of their elderly relatives in those days until they died. Mom remembered her Great Grandfather as a gentle soul. Great Grandma had the title Blind Grandma tacked on her for future generations to differentiate her from others. Grandma went blind when she stepped out of the outhouse one day you know which toped my list of why I preferred not to use outhouses as a kid.
 
Mom’s grandmother was known as Indian Grandma within the family. This was not a matter for discussion with other people. Not even us kids. She was young when Grandpa Luther brought her home from Kansas. They became a well respected couple. Though people suspected Indian Grandma’s lineage no one pried. This grandma I knew well. When we’d go visit her after Grandpa died, she’d come spend a couple days with us. Grandma slept with me.  During the day, her salt and pepper braided hair crowned her head.  Before she went to bed, she’d unbraid her hair and brush it.
 
About ten years ago and a couple years before she passed away, we took my mother back to Missouri. It was a going back in time trip as we traveled all those dusty roads again. We took plenty of flowers so Mom could decorate all the graves just like in the fifties. Mom enjoyed herself on that trip. After ten long years of taking care of my father who had Alzheimer’s, she needed to go home and connect with the past which held pleasant memories for our whole family. Hopefully, this last journey home was a comfort to her after so many difficult years taking care of Dad.  Also, she had the peace of mind that she taught her daughter well a life lesson years ago.  Remember and honor those that came and went before you, because they had a hand in shaping who you are.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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

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

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

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

Books on the iPad’s iBookstore

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

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

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

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

 

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

Promote Your Book by Commenting on Blog Posts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Agency Model or Be Damned

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PW on Penguin

GalleyCat on Hachette
 

 

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