Business End

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

New Initiative at the Met Makes Thousands of Digital Images Freely Accessible

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This article by Chelsea Matiash originally appeared on The Wall Street Journal on 5/30/14. It’s excellent news for indie authors and freelance cover and web designers: thousands of new images licensed under creative commons.

This month, the Metropolitan Museum of Art released for download about 400,000 digital images of works that are in the public domain. The images, which are free to use for non-commercial use without permission or fees, may now be downloaded from the museum’s website. The museum will continue to add images to the collection as they digitize files as part of the initiative Open Access for Scholarly Content (OASC). 

When asked about the impact of the initiative, Sree Sreenivasan, Chief Digital Officer, said the new program would provide increased access and streamline the process of obtaining these images. “In keeping with the Museum’s mission, we hope the new image policy will stimulate new scholarship in a variety of media, provide greater access to our vast collection, and broaden the reach of the Museum to researchers world-wide. By providing open access, museums and scholars will no longer have to request permission to use our public domain images, they can download the images directly from our website.”

 

Click here to read the full post on The Wall Street Journal.

 

Try Harder or Walk Away: The Decision.

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This post by Rebecca Lammersen originally appeared on elephant on 6/23/12. While it has a spiritual (though non-religious) bent, those who are struggling with the decision between continuing on their current path toward success in authorship and changing course may find it offers some helpful food for thought.

“One of the hardest decisions you will ever face in life, is choosing whether to try harder or walk away.”
~ Anonymous

Try harder or walk away—this is the only choice we make in every moment of life. We either try harder or we walk away from being present, loving ourselves, loving another, pursuing our passions or completing a task. We choose to continue doing, thinking, saying, listening, eating and being what we are, or we break up with it.

There is only one way to do everything, completely or not at all. If we half-ass life, we cheat our truth, stop growing, we suffer.

Imagine if an architect half-assed plans for a building, or an aerospace engineer half-assed the construction of an airplane. The building couldn’t stand on its own and the plane couldn’t fly. We are the architects of our lives. We have to devote entirely to our project or walk away from the drawing pad until we are willing to do the work.

The choice to stay or leave, determines whether we free ourselves or we suffer. How do we make the “right” decision?

We learn how to discern between the doubt of the mind and the surety of the spirit.

The discernment is in the volume. The mind is loud and the spirit is quiet.

 

Click here to read the full post on elephant.

 

Do You Make These Online Marketing Mistakes?

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This post by Jason Kong originally appeared as a guest post on The Book Designer on 6/4/14.

Imagine you’re making an appearance at a bookstore to promote your latest novel.

Someone approaches you to chat. This person gushes that she’s read all your books and is excited to read the latest one. She holds the newly purchased book in her hands, hoping that you’ll sign it.

Immediately you launch into an elevator pitch, explaining the genre you write in and a quick summary of your storytelling style. You conclude with the various places your books can be purchased, and that you hope she’ll give your books a try.

Clearly, a longtime fan doesn’t need an introduction to how you write and the stories you’ve written. Having the right person pay attention does little good if the wrong message is shared.

Maybe you don’t make this kind of mistake when you’re face-to-face. Can you say that’s also true when you communicate over the internet?

 

The downside of using online media

We all know about the promise.

A platform in cyberspace meant you had a stage to project your voice. Your digital words could travel far and wide, attracting and corralling those who care about what you do. With one click, you could reach just about everyone.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Book Designer.

 

The Case Against Beta Readers

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This post originally appeared on Popular Soda on 6/3/14.

Beta readers are treated like a necessary step in the self-publishing process. But are they worth it? Essentially, you’re turning over the development of your story to a total stranger. That is, if you can even find a beta reader who actually finishes your work and provides useful feedback.

Here are some of the most common problems with using beta readers:

 

You don’t know who they are

Anyone can claim to be an experienced editor offering beta reading for free. They’re not all lying, but they’re not all telling the truth, either. Personally, I’ve encountered several people who claimed to be professional editors in one thread, then admitted their lack of experience in another. Don’t count on the qualifications of someone hiding behind a screenname.

 

They don’t know what you’re capable of

Beta readers can’t push you to be your best, because they don’t know what your best looks like. I have a small group of close writer-friends who serve as my beta readers. If they find something they don’t like, they just write “Really?” and I go back and rework it. You simply can’t have that level of familiarity and understanding with someone who’s never read your work, barely knows your name, doesn’t understand your style, and has no idea of your goals.

 

Click here to read the full post on Popular Soda.

 

Is Amazon Good For Books? and other dumb questions

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This post by Robert Kroese originally appeared on his site on 6/10/14.

I finally got around to reading George Packer’s article in the New Yorker entitled “Cheap Words: Amazon is good for customers. But is it good for books?” yesterday. Spoiler alert, in case you haven’t read the article: Packer doesn’t answer the question. In fact, he doesn’t even really address the question. Most of the article is taken up with head-shaking reminiscences of Amazon’s ruthless business practices, its treatment of books as “widgets” rather than the lovingly birthed children of the tortured souls of artists, and a few anecdotes about poor working conditions in warehouses (another spoiler: warehouses, by and large, are not fun places to work). Finally, in the concluding paragraphs, Packer gets around to the question at hand:

Several editors, agents, and authors told me that the money for serious fiction and nonfiction has eroded dramatically in recent years…. These are the kinds of book that particularly benefit from the attention of editors and marketers, and that attract gifted people to publishing, despite the pitiful salaries. Without sufficient advances, many writers will not be able to undertake long, difficult, risky projects.When consumers are overwhelmed with choices, some experts argue, they all tend to buy the same well-known thing….

These trends point toward what the literary agent called “the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer.” A few brand names at the top, a mass of unwashed titles down below, the middle hollowed out: the book business in the age of Amazon mirrors the widening inequality of the broader economy….

 

Click here to read the full post on Robert Kroese’s site.

 

Amazon vs Hachette and the Erosion of Author Solidarity

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This post by Mary W. Walters originally appeared on her The Militant Writer site on 6/7/14.

Writers need to remember that both sides are making more money from our talent than we ever can.

Like many other writers, I am caught in a sticky predicament when it comes to the battle between Amazon and the publisher Hachette, in that supporting what is growing into a cause célèbre for many traditionally published authors means diminishing our own work and reducing our (mostly paltry) incomes.

For those who have missed this story, Amazon has begun to delay the delivery of books by Hachette authors significantly, and to create impediments on searches for Hachette books on the Amazon site: apparently due to a dispute between the two companies over ebook pricing. (See the LA Times for details.) No less a celebrity than Stephen Colbert is now urging all of us to boycott Amazon in support of Hachette authors, of which he is one. The New York Times is outraged. So are many noted writers (Martin Gladwell and James Patterson are two, both also published by Hachette) and several writers’ organizations.

Those of us who are caught in the middle of this firestorm are primarily established writers who have chosen to go the self-published route for some or all of our new or out-of-print titles, and to use Amazon as our publishing partner. Typically, we ourselves have had books published with traditional presses in the past, and as a result we have strong connections (e.g., through membership in writers’ organizations) and even long-term friendships with other authors who are still published only by established presses. These presses include not only Hachette but all publishers who could receive similar treatment from Amazon in future, which is most of them. Solidarity is at stake here, and in a pre-self-publishing world, we would have easily and strongly stood together. Now, over this issue and several others related to it, such strength in unity is impossible.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Militant Writer.

 

3 Strategies For Repurposing Content

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This post by Alyssa Kritsch originally appeared on the Hootsuite blog.

One of the biggest challenges for marketers today is how to create great content. Quality content is not only an effective tool to acquire new customers, but increase brand awareness and position your organization as a thought leader in your industry.

To develop valuable content means having a content strategy that leverages your brand’s core ideas and the ability to repurpose content allows marketers to produce more collateral with less research.

Here are a few quick strategies to think about when repurposing content:

 

Create Longevity

The goal of evergreen content is to create something thats lifetime extends beyond the time taken to write it. This means, the time you spend writing will be made up in months of content value.

 

Start With an Idea

Start with a core idea, usually as a solution to either a common customer question or a vertical target audience. As an example, let’s say the core idea is data and metrics analysis.

Visualize a mind map of all the possible mediums and audiences the idea could be written for. When you create content with the specific purpose of repurposing it, you allow yourself to effortlessly add value each time you re-work the piece.

 

Leave Room to Build

 

Click here to read the full post, which includes more on the Create Longevity bullet point as well as two additional content repurposing strategies, on the Hootsuite blog.

 

The War on Amazon is Big Publishing's 1% Moment. What About Other Writers?

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This post by Barry Eisler originally appeared on The Guardian on 6/4/14.

More people are buying more books than ever, and more people are making a living by writing them. Why do millionaire authors want to destroy the one company that’s made this all possible?

As an author of ten novels – legacy-published, self-published, and Amazon-published – I’m bewildered by the anti-Amazon animus among various establishment writers. James Patterson pays for full-page ads in the New York Times and Publishers Weekly, demanding that the US government intervene and do something (it’s never clear what) about Amazon. Richard Russo tries to frighten authors over Amazon’s “scorched-earth capitalism”. Scott Turow conjures images of the “nightmarish” future that Amazon, “the Darth Vader of the literary world”, has in store for us all. And “Authors Guild” president Roxana Robinson says Amazon is like “Tony Soprano” and “thuggish”.

These are strange things to say about a company that sells more books than anyone. That singlehandedly created a market for digital books, now the greatest source of the legacy publishing industry’s profitability (though of course legacy publishers are sharing little of that newfound wealth with their authors). That built the world’s first viable mass-market self-publishing platform, a platform that has enabled thousands of new authors to make a living from their writing for the first time in their lives. And that pays self-published authors something like five times as much in digital royalties as legacy publishers do.

I can think of at least several explanations for the strange phenomenon of authors – and an entity calling itself the calling itself the “Authors Guild” – railing against a company that sells so many books, that treats authors so well, and that has created so many new opportunities for writers. Basically: equating the various functions of publishing generally with the legacy industry specifically; blaming Jeff Bezos for technology; and experiencing judgment clouded by self-interest.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Guardian.

 

BREAKING NEWS: Media Still Sexist In Reporting of Romance Industry

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This post by Heidi Cullinan originally appeared on her Amazon Iowan blog on 5/2/14.

I write gay romance novels.

That statement contains three concepts: I write fiction. I write romantic stories. I write gay male protagonists. It is often assumed by my readership and my heterosexual peers that the greatest “shocker” in that list is that I’m a married female in the Midwest writing gay fiction. But the sad truth is that’s merely an eyebrow-raiser, usually begging the inquisitor to ask me more about why, and how that works. In fact, the “gay” factor in my declaration of what I do for a living is a buffer. Because when I say I’m an author, everyone gets excited. When I say I write gay fiction, everyone is intrigued.

When I say that I write love stories, noses wrinkle, and disdain is rampant.

The year is 2014, and we’ve come a long way, baby, but much as Cliven Bundy can tell you all about “the negro,” the international media and everyone at peace with our two-faced, condescending patriarchal culture, those romance novels are trashy bodice rippers. The men and women who read them write them, produce them, promote them, maintain a billion-dollar industry via them—they’re all silly, and sex-crazed, and if they aren’t fat spinsters in curlers eating ice cream in the middle of too many cats, they’re definitely that type of ridiculous person at heart.

Because today when it was announced that Harlequin Enterprises, who advertise themselves as “We Are Romance,” was sold to News Corp, we didn’t receive reporting on what such an unexpected, potentially industry-changing merger would mean, or what this did to the outstanding lawsuit against Harlequin. We didn’t get gravity and insight, or attempts at insight into what this might mean—not often, not overall.

 

Click here to read the full post on Amazon Iowan.

 

The Power of Not Enough

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This post by Nick Stephenson originally appeared on his site on 3/22/14.

I listened to an interesting podcast yesterday over at Rockingselfpublishing.com, featuring indie heavyweight Russell Blake. If you’ve got a spare 55 minutes, go have a listen – or check out the key points in the accompanying commentary – you’ll be glad you did. The podcast got me thinking:

How do we know when we have succeeded at something? How do we set realistic goals? More specifically, when it comes to selling books, how much is enough?

Russell cites James Lee Burke as a perfect example of getting exactly what you want out of this business. Burke writes in his own unique style, he doesn’t pander, and he has a solid, long-term sales record that most of us would give our right arms for. But, in Russell’s words, he’ll never sell like Dan Brown or James Patterson. But that’s okay. That’s not the point of what he’s trying to accomplish.

So what does this mean for the average indie author? In my experience, “enough” is almost impossible to quantify without some very clear (and achievable) goals. I remember, just starting out, when I’d be overjoyed to see 50 book sales a month. Then 100. More recently, 1,000, or even more on a Bookbub month. And, every month, I think to myself “this could be better.”

But how much better? Will I be satisfied with 2,000 sales a month? 5,000? 10,000? I realised I didn’t know where the line was. Although I’ve been lucky enough to see my work being read in all over the world (mostly in the US – thanks, guys!) I came into this game not expecting much – and, as a result, had no “end game” in mind.

 

Click here to read the full post on Nick Stephenson’s site.

 

Jane Austen Read Her Reviews… and Kept Notes on Them

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This post by Sal Robinson originally appeared on the Melville House blog on 5/22/14.

Some authors refuse to read their reviews. And then there’s Jane Austen. Who not only, it turns out, listened to what her friends and acquaintances had to say about her books, both positive and negative, but also took notes on it.

Austen’s notes are part of a cache of 1,200 documents that the British Library have drawn out of their Victorian and Romantic collections and are now highlighting on their website with all kinds of supplementary bells and whistles—contextualizing essays, documentary films, and images of primary sources ranging from manuscripts to illustrations to advertisements, broadsides, and the occasional dancing manual.

Austen appears to have compiled the reactions of her readers from letters, hearsay, and direct conversations and recorded them on a set of closely written pages around 1815, before her death at the age of 41, two years later.

 

Click here to read the full post on the Melville House blog.

 

12 Most Fierce Ways to Protect Your Blogging Time

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This post by Linda Dessau originally appeared on 12Most on 5/20/14.

Blogging can easily fall off your to-do list when you’re faced with other pressing tasks in your business and life. Yet blogging only works if you do it consistently and you do it well.

Since achieving both those things requires time you don’t think you have, here are 12 ways to set and protect that time.

 

1. Put it first
While it seems counterintuitive, try working on your blogging tasks before client tasks or business development. This may be the only way to keep blogging from getting pushed behind your other priorities. Then, let the accomplishment of making progress on your blog fuel your confidence (and grow your business!) all day long.

 

2. Schedule it as an appointment
Simply setting the intention to blog will not make it happen. You need to clarify when you will blog, and get it onto your calendar. Treat this the same as you would any other important commitment.

 

3. Say no to yourself
If you feel so overloaded with tasks that you can’t imagine taking even 20 minutes at the start of each work day, there is too much on your plate and something has to give. This is a life issue, not a blogging issue, and the rest of your life will be ever so grateful to your blog if [you] stop taking on too much — and start delegating some of what’s already there.

 

Click here to read the full post on 12Most.

 

10 Things You Need To Know About Publishing FanFic on Amazon

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This post by Tara Maya originally appeared on her Tara Maya’s Tales site on 6/27/13.

Amazon is rocking the publishing world once again with a brand new kind of publishing: legal fan fic. Okay, there have been licensed novels before… Star Trek novels, Star Wars novels, movie novelizations… but this is far more accessible.

It’s called Kindle Worlds. Right now, there are only about twelve Worlds available to write in. Some biggies, like Harry Potter and Twilight, are not on the list. A few are television worlds, a few are author’s own worlds (such as Wool).

However, before you break out dancing and toss your Snape and Legolas slash romance/adventure into the ring, there are a few things you need to know about publishing fan fiction with Amazon.

 

1. This is not self-publishing, as with KDP.

Amazon’s self-publishing platform, KDP, allows authors to keep all rights to their own works. Amazon takes a cut of the royalties as a distributor, but Amazon is not the publisher. With Kindle Worlds, “All works accepted for Kindle Worlds will be published by Amazon Publishing.”

That said, this doesn’t seem intended to be as exclusive as the Singles program. Amazon wants your content, as long as it’s not something they will be sued over.

 

2. The steps seem pretty easy.

 

Click here to read the full post on Tara Maya’s Tales.

 

Neal Pollack on Rebounding From Massive Hype and Six-Figure Deals to Online Publishing

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This post by Nathan Rabin originally appeared on The A/V Club on 3/14/13.

In Money Matters, creative people discuss what they’re not supposed to: the intersection of entertainment and commerce, as well as moments in their lives and careers when they bottomed out financially and/or professionally. 

The artist: Neal Pollack appeared in the national consciousness as part of the talented group of writers and editors that gravitated to McSweeney’s, Dave Eggers’ publishing empire. In 2000, The Neal Pollack Anthology Of American Literature—a collection of satirical pieces centering on the fictional “Neal Pollack” persona, a larger-than-life spoof of macho world-beaters like Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer—became the first book published by McSweeney’s publishing arm. (The book was later re-published by HarperCollins.) A satirical rock novel, Never Mind The Pollacks, followed in 2003, and was followed by 2007’s Alternadad, a memoir about his experiences raising his son. Alternadad generated tons of publicity and human-interest stories about hipster parenting, in addition to generating interest from the television and film industries. But the book’s sales failed to match its buzz, and television and film adaptations didn’t pan out.

Pollack published a yoga memoir, Stretch, in 2010, but over the past two years he has devoted much of his time and energy to writing mysteries for new publishing paradigms. In March of 2011, Pollack self-published the Kindle release JewBall, a period basketball mystery that attracted the attention of Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer mystery imprint, which reprinted it as a download and a paperback. Pollack followed it up with another mystery for Thomas & Mercer, in this case a yoga-themed book called Downward-Facing Death that Amazon released in serialized installments; it’s now available in its entirety as both a Kindle release and a paperback. Sequels to both mysteries are in the works.

The A.V. Club: What was your relationship to money as a child? 

Neal Pollack: When I was 7 years old, we moved to Paradise Valley, Arizona, which is a very wealthy suburb of Phoenix. In fact, I’d say it’s a very wealthy suburb of Scottsdale. And this wasn’t the Paradise Valley that was described in—this is a very dated movie reference—Pump Up The Volume, the Christian Slater movie. This was the town of Paradise Valley. In the movie it was called Paradise Hill. The town of Paradise Valley that attracted such exclusive real estate that there’s not commercial real estate in it to this day. It’s best known as where Camel Back Mountain is, and there may be a couple of boutiques on one of the streets and then there’s the Barry Goldwater Memorial. So that’s where I grew up. My father was a hotel executive and, at the time we moved there, there were no paved roads in the section where we lived. Every house had to have acres of desert land, and that’s still the case. Not our immediate next-door neighbors, but the family down the dirt road were the heirs to the Campbell’s Soup fortune. They were billionaires, multi-billionaires. My family wasn’t anything like that, but my dad had a very good corporate executive job.

Then, in 1979, he lost that job. We suddenly went very quickly from being upper-middle class to really struggling financially. And that had a big impact on me, because I watched my parents really struggle with having to pay bills and buy groceries and find work.

 

Click here to read the full post on The A/V Club.

 

Authors — Using Business Cards to Build Sales

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This post by Robert Bidinotto originally appeared on his blog on 5/24/14.

A common lament of authors is: How do I promote my books? I’ve tried to present a host of time-tested ideas in this blog.

Author business cards constitute one of the cheapest, easiest methods to build a readership and increase sales. I know that I’ve sold hundreds of books through the use of my HUNTER business card.

Before I begin, let me first give a tip of the hat to Robin Sullivan — wife and business partner of bestselling fantasy author Michael J. Sullivan — for providing 90% of the ideas and information in this post.

Robin used to maintain an invaluable website/blog, “Write To Publish,” which, sadly, has been defunct for some years. One of her most useful posts for me was “Author’s Business Cards…Get Them…Use Them.” Precisely because her information is so valuable, it deserves a new lease on life. So here I am, snitching it shamelessly yet publicly, giving full credit to Robin. If you read her article, then you won’t have to read this one.

Here, though, I want to indicate how I’ve adapted her methods for my own use.

In terms of bang-for-the-buck, I can’t think of many methods of advertising your books that generate a better return than business cards. For about an hour of time, plus the price of a restaurant meal, you can produce an advertising product that can generate thousands of dollars in sales and a host of fans.

First, like Robin, let me recommend as a source for inexpensive business cards GotPrint.com. Just today I designed and ordered 1,000 new cards for the forthcoming release of BAD DEEDS. These one thousand cards — two-sided, full-color, UV coated, on thick glossy stock — cost only $19.00. You read that correctly. I splurged for “rush” production, and spent $26.35. You have a variety of shipping options. Mine cost me an additional $14.63.  Grand total: $40.98. And the quality is fabulous.

 

Click here to read the full post on Robert Bidinotto’s blog.