Business End

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

What was San Francisco like in 1880? The Economy

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Publetariat Editor’s Note: in this post, historical fiction author M. Louisa Locke shares some of the wealth of information she found while doing research for her novels. It’s worth a close read for anyone working in the historical fiction genre, as it reveals the levels of depth and detail required when doing this type of research.

This is the first in a multi-part series describing San Francisco in 1880. For those of you who have read either Maids of Misfortune or Uneasy Spirits, or my short stories, this will provide you with some deeper understanding of the city where my main characters, Annie Fuller and Nate Dawson, lived as children in the 1860s and returned to as adults in the 1870s. If you are not familiar with my Victorian San Francisco mystery series, I hope these historical pieces will pique your interest––although I promise my fiction is much livelier reading. All the material quoted below is from my thesis, “Like a Machine or an Animal: Working Women of the Far West in the Late Nineteenth Century,” University of California: San Diego dissertation, 1982 pp. 60-69.”  I must say, it is much more entertaining to convey historical information through fiction than heavily footnoted fact!

Part One: The San Francisco Economy

“In 1880 San Francisco, with a population of 233,959 residents, was the ninth largest city in the United States. Located at the end of the peninsula that separates the Bay of San Francisco from the Pacific Ocean, this city of hills, sand dunes, fogs, and mild temperatures had been only a small village called Yerba Buena less than forty years earlier.  This small village was one of the chief beneficiaries of the incredible influx of people into the region after the discovery of gold to the north in the winter of 1847-48.”

[For those of you who have read Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits––Annie Fuller, her parents, her Aunt and Uncle, and her housekeeper, Beatrice O’Rourke, were among those who traveled west and settled in San Francisco in those first years.]

“Commerce dominated San Francisco’s economic structure through out the nineteenth century. Its fine natural harbor and its location near both ocean shipping lanes and interior river routes stimulated much of the city’s early economic growth. The city served as the port of entry for the massive flow of people and goods into the region during the Gold Rush, and once agriculture developed in the interior in the 1860′s San Francisco also became the major port to handle goods shipped out of the region. The disruption in trade resulting from the Civil War further promoted the development of agriculture in the Far West, and San Francisco merchants worked hard in the 1850s and 1860s to ensure that all goods entering or leaving the region passed through their hands. By and large they were successful, and their control of the region’s trade remained firm until the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. As late as 1875, San Francisco still handled at least ninety percent of all the goods leaving the state and a major share of the trade leaving the Northwest.”

“As a commercial port city, San Francisco first developed manufacturing that centered around supplying shipping needs and processing the raw materials that constituted the bulk of the city’s trade. By the late 1850s a few firms also began to manufacture a significant amount of the heavy equipment used in hydraulic mining.  In the 1860s…the Civil War and the completion of the transcontinental railroad fostered the development of a new kind of industry within San Francisco––the manufacturing of light consumer items for regional markets. The dislocation of Eastern trade during the Civil War not only aided the development of agricultural lands in the Far West but also encouraged San Francisco’s manufacturing sector by diverting capital investment from the cities of the East to the Far west and by forcing the latter region to look to San Francisco to supply its consumer needs.”

“The high shipping rates of the Central Pacific Railroad acted as a protective tariff for the city, and the railroad gave San Francisco easier access to raw materials and to regional markets for its manufactured goods. The construction of the railroad also attracted great numbers of Chinese and European immigrants who flocked to San Francisco once their job with the railroad ended. This new abundance of labor, in turn, drove down wages in the city and encouraged the creation of the first large-scale manufacturing establishments in the city. As a result, by 1880 San Francisco had a mature, broadly based manufacturing sector that completely dominated the Far West. San Francisco ranked ninth among cities in the nation in value of products…most important industries in 1880 were meat packing and processing, sugar refining, boot and shoe making, heavy metal and machine making, men’s clothing, and tobacco and cigar making. San Francisco’s continued vitality as a commercial center and its growing manufacturing capabilities also insured that the city acted as the financial capital of the region. The headquarters of almost all of the California banking institutions were located in San Francisco, and banks in other cities were often dependent on San Francisco capital.”

“Despite this relatively favorable working climate, San Francisco was not in any way protected from the economic cycles that affected the rest of the nation, nor were the laboring classes immune form exploitation by their employers. In fact, the high wages of the 1850s and 1860s and the popular myth that fortunes were easily made in the Far West promoted unrealistic expectations that were dealt a particularly harsh blow when hard times hit the city in the 1870s. With the completion of the railroad in 1869, the chronic labor shortage that had kept wages high vanished, and for the first time there was severe unemployment throughout the state. The national depression sparked by the Panic of 1873 reinforced the local downturn in business, and in 1875 the collapse of the Bank of California and the decline in the output of the Comstock Lode (in which much of the city’s capital had been invested) added to the city’s difficulties.”

“Even though a visitor to the city in 1880′…was much struck by the depressed air of the tradesmen,’ and a Norwegian pastor implored his countrymen living in the Midwest not to come to San Francisco expecting to find jobs easily, by 1880 San Francisco’s economy shared in the recovery that was sweeping the nation. The development of manufacturing in the city, which had in part been fostered by the very economic difficulties of the 1870s (because it lowered wages), meant that the city entered the new decade with an economy that was more diverse and stronger than ever.”

[It was the Panic of 1873 and the subsequent national depression that had played a key role in Annie Fuller’s late husband’s financial ruin back east and it is the improvement in San Francisco’s economy that Annie takes advantage of as the clairvoyant, Madam Sibyl, when she offers business advice to local businessmen like Mr. Matthew Voss in Maids of Misfortune.]

 

This is a reprint from M. Louisa Locke‘s site.

How To Make Yourself Completely Insane in Three Easy Steps

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Okay so there are no real steps here. That’s just the title. I have a special talent for making myself bug-shagging crazy. I am not good at moderation. (Well, except with alcohol. Seriously 3-4 ounces of wine and I’m done. Thank GOD I have an ability to moderate drinking otherwise I’d be in a rehab center somewhere.)

Anyway… too much of almost anything makes me really depressed and anxious and neurotic. Lately I’ve been driving myself crazy trying to be more productive, largely because I feel this huge pressure to get enough work out there to maintain a living and to have a book “break out” because I have this completely neurotic and overwhelming fear of just “disappearing” and everything drifting so far to the bottom of sales rankings that nobody even finds it anymore. (even though this probably is NOT how it works.)

[Publetariat Editor’s note: strong language after the jump]

I’m not saying it has to make me famous or get me on some kind of “list”, I’d be happy at this point for a book to get into the top 1,000 in the Kindle store and stay there for a few weeks, just enough to bump me up all across the boards enough that I can relax and fucking breathe.

And I know you can’t “plan” for a book to break out. A book either catches fire or it doesn’t. You can’t plan it, you can’t know what will make people sit up and take notice in large enough numbers for it to matter. But the more books you write and the stronger/bigger your backlist, the higher the odds raise just from a pure numbers perspective of something breaking out. The other factor is the learning curve. The more you write, the more you learn either overtly or sort of humming in the background, what works with books and your style and what doesn’t. What you excel at and what you’re not so great at. So each book (hopefully), gets stronger, and while it gets stronger, you’re putting out more books which keep raising your odds. (But when you’re in the trenches, believe me, it does not feel like that. It feels like a treadmill that will never reap the benefits you want.)

I rarely do whine fest posts like this, so bear with me. I put SO much pressure on myself. I’m not sure Olympic hopefuls put this much pressure on themselves. It’s a serious character flaw and it causes me more angst than I want to deal with, but I can’t help pushing. If things aren’t going great sales-wise, I push harder (i.e. work more, write more, publish more). If things are going great… I push harder… to capitalize on it more… because I know from experience that it won’t always be like that.

I’m not sure what magic or luck came together to get Mated so close to the top 100 in the Kindle store when it first came out (105), but at the time it seemed EASY. People were making a big deal about all three of my novellas being in the top three spots repeatedly of the Gothic romance section and high in the top 10 of other related sections and in my head it just wasn’t a big deal. Because it came too easy. It came so easy I didn’t know how hard it was and couldn’t appreciate what I’d accomplished until something happened to put me and my work in a more realistic place.

NOW I know how hard that is. NOW I know why people were going: “Holy crap, look where Zoe’s books all are on that list?” Gee, it would have been nice to be able to have truly appreciated it, THEN. Probably some people thought I was being modest, and certainly I wouldn’t have run around tooting my horn like I was the shit, because that is supremely obnoxious and as hard as it is to make a go of it in such a competitive industry in a crappy economy where people have a billion distractions and too many things to do to crack a book open in the first place… you just don’t gloat when you “get there” wherever “there” is. Because it’s fucking hard, and you can feel the pain of every other writer around you desperately wanting to be even where you are that you just don’t shit on people like that when you’re successful.

Jumping tracks…

I don’t understand how to back the fuck off and take a break, and it’s making me certifiably crazy.

This past week I decided I was going to write a book in a week. The book had been percolating for awhile, so why not. I’ll tell you why not? Because it’s INSANE. I wrote 30,000 words in 3 days. I don’t recommend it. I don’t think I ever want to do another 10k day. Unless I’m just in such a white hot writing heat and so excited about the book I can’t stop or slow down. But to say: “Okay, this is my quota today” and do these crazy, draining, grueling days. No. Never again.

I have to bring some sanity back into my life. So yeah, it’s cool and awesome that I wrote 10k words 3 days in a row. I’ve never done that before, and unless it’s at gun point, I’m never doing it again. I’m going back to my normal 2,500 word days that don’t feel like they are sucking the life right out of me when I do them. I may write more if I feel like it, but it surely won’t be the quota. Know how many words I’m writing today? 2,500. Unless I just feel wildly inspired. Because otherwise it’s too much stress and pressure. And if I’m not in the right place emotionally, I’m going to write a truckload of shit anyway.

I believe strongly that the muse doesn’t show up unless you do, but at the same time, you can’t just grind out huge huge word counts (unless you’re some kind of prolific writing savant), without there being a strong psychic cost for that.

And speaking of breaking out… (Sort of jumping back onto the first track) Judging from what my betas are saying, Life Cycle has a strong potential to break out… BUT… there’s a hurdle… there are 3 books before it in the series. New people have a giant hurdle of time commitment with me and my books to jump before they get to the magical potentially break out book (and when I say break out, again, I don’t mean riches and fame. I mean a book that really catches on strongly and gets me back into the top 1k again and bringing my backlist with it.)

So Life Cycle HAS to be able to stand alone. Which is what I’ll be working on in edits. The problem with this series is that I have basically done everything I can think of to KEEP it from breaking out. (Not on purpose.) Book 1 (Blood Lust) is a series of 3 novellas which in itself is problematic because it’s confusing to people. People who hate novellas aren’t going to want to read what is basically a novella anthology as the first book to bring them into a series. People who love novellas and hate novels won’t stick around for book 2.

Book 2 (Save My Soul) is problematic in its own way because at times it feels like a totally different series. Things don’t really start coming together for the whole world until book 3. Plus some people may be turned off by some of the Catholicism (even though I am far from promoting traditional religion in my work) that forms part of the backbone of the world. And those who ARE Catholic or Christian might be turned off because again… I’m not promoting it… I’m twisting it in my world (not in a malicious way, but hardcore religious people probably wouldn’t see it like that). Others may feel the title “Save My Soul” implies the book is in first person. Which it’s not.

Book 3 (The Catalyst) is much stronger than the first two books (not that I think the first two are bad… it’s just that writers grow the more they write, generally). But, it doesn’t exactly “stand alone”. I tried, but there’s too much backstory to give it all to you in the book. And it’s too much backstory that’s necessary to the front story.

That brings us to book 4 (Life Cycle). I think it’s a really strong book. The strongest in the series. And I know fans of the series have been WAITING for Cain and Tam. If it can stand alone, I think it’s a strong enough hook to bring in a lot of new readers and hook them back into the first 3 books. But if it’s not, I feel like the series is pretty much dead in the water. I’ll finish it, of course, if for no other reason than *I* love it, but after Life Cycle, I can’t bring myself to keep hoping it will break out in a bigger way.

Which is why it’s very good that I’m going to start a new series. I’ve learned a lot about what to do and what not to do when writing a series, plus my writing has grown stronger. (And lest anybody think I’m an egomaniac here, this is the judgment and commentary of OTHER people… not me sitting around going: “Oh look, I just get more and more awesome each day.”) So the solution is simple, start a new series. I think the concept for the new series is strong, but I have some details left to fill in before I start.

But of course ALL of this stresses me out. As hard as it is, I have to stop caring how well a book does. The one drawback to self-publishing (even though I love what I do, don’t misinterpret this.)… is that it’s extremely hard (unless you have MPD), to be those two TOTALLY different people… the business person who has to care about sales and numbers and promotion. And the writer… the person who CAN’T care too much about that or the work will suffer and they’ll go insane.

You can probably put two and two together at this point and realize why so many writers have substance abuse problems. If writing and publishing fiction won’t drive you to drink… nothing will. At least I win that one consolation prize. I just have to bring the alcohol moderation into the rest of my life and I’ll be golden… at least from a mental health perspective. And maybe from a general career perspective as well, since it’s usually when you stop clinging and fighting so hard that things open up and flow. I should at least try to test that theory. The first step is going back to a reasonable word count and chilling the fuck out.
 

This is a reprint from The Weblog of Zoe Winters.

Why The Deepest Lessons Take Time To Absorb

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This post, by John Caddell, originally appeared on the 99%: Insights On Making Ideas Happen site. While the article takes business ventures as its subject, the advice in it can be helpful to those dealing with failed books and other creative projects, as well.

As the expression goes, "hindsight is always 20/20." But how long does it take to get that 20/20 perspective? Here’s what Jerome Chazen, the co-founder of fashion house Liz Claiborne, told Knowledge@Wharton about the biggest mistake of his long career at the company:
 
With the benefit of hindsight, I would have worked harder to moderate our growth. I think we allowed the growth potential to overtake the company instead of us being in charge of it. It’s a hard thing to explain. But you know, it was so exciting, for me anyway, to report better and better numbers, especially after we went public. I mean I loved it. I loved those quarterly [numbers] that were up 20% or 40%, whatever. I think, looking back now, that I got carried away, that we should have done things more moderately.

 
Liz Claiborne went public in 1981. Thirty years later, Chazen had learned the lesson that his excitement over making quarterly numbers was not in the long-term best interests of the company.
This kind of time lag in learning from a mistake is not unusual. For the deepest lessons an individual can learn, it’s required. Only with the passing of time can the intense emotions (positive or negative) of an event fall away and allow us to recognize mistakes and our contribution to them.
Not every mistake takes 30 years to absorb. Small oversights, process errors, results of projects or experiments can be evaluated hours, days or weeks after completion. Failures of these types result from lack of knowledge, routine human error, or poor assumptions.

But with another class of mistakes the stakes are much higher – the setbacks and failures that derail your future plans or call into question your self-image. These are the ones that occur because of your deepest weaknesses and flaws. For this reason, we prefer to avoid thinking about these mistakes, or to attribute them to circumstances out of our control.
 

I’ll share a personal example. I started my own consulting business in 2006. I expected that all the people who’d benefited from my expertise in my 20-year career would come calling as soon as I hung out my shingle.
Yet it took me seven months to land my first client. A little while later I got a second, who sustained the business for two more years. When that project ended, I couldn’t replace the lost revenue. I realized I couldn’t make a go of it, and took a corporate job. I spent my first year as a salaried employee in complete denial. Any incoming call or email tempted me to jump right back into consulting. I blamed the failure on any reasonable factor – the poor economy, the structural changes in my industry, a dispute with my former company.
All those factors contributed to the situation, but dwelling on them was beside the point. It wouldn’t change anything going forward. I had to understand what I could have done differently, what I should do differently next time.

 

Read the rest of the article on 99%.

How Can We Get Artists Paid On The Internet? A Chat With David Lowery

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This article, by Maria Bustillos, originally appeared on The Awl on 6/21/12. Note that while it focuses on digital music piracy, the issues in it, of perceived value, piracy, intellectual property rights and the need for artists to earn a living, are equally applicable to ebooks.

Little did I realize, when I popped over to the Urth Cafe on Beverly a few days ago to talk with the musician David Lowery about artist compensation in the music business, that within the week he would be at the center of one of those "Media Firestorms." Founder of the bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, Lowery is a big, charming, voluble, bearded ginger who natters as fast as I do; he also has a mathematics and programming background and knows a lot about amateur radio, and is a big dork. We had a marvelous talk about the above-named topics over coffee. I’d become interested in his recent work and activism after reading a post on his blog, Trichordist, "Meet the New Boss, Worse Than The Old Boss," about the failed promise of "disintermediation" and Internet distribution in the music business: "I was like all of you. I believed in the promise of the Internet to liberate, empower and even enrich artists. I still do but I’m less sure of it than I once was. I come here because I want to start a dialogue. I feel that what we artists were promised has not really panned out."

Just days after our talk, though, came a blog post by NPR intern Emily White, in which she admitted that, though she has a music library of over 11,000 songs, she has only ever bought like 15 CDs, and Lowery’s incandescent response. So much for my sobersides examination of intellectual property issues! The whole internet is still on fire with this story. When I wrote Lowery to exclaim over the fallout, he responded, "We usually get a few thousand reads a day on our blog. And I mean a few, like 3k is a good day. Sometimes we will get these crazy viral things for a few days, the way ‘New Boss’ did. But this Letter to Emily is totally off the charts. Like half a million reads in 24 hours."

Dear Media, what a dog’s breakfast you have made of this Firestorm. The dialogue between White and Lowery is not a fight. These alleged adversaries are in agreement with respect to the only significant point at issue—that musicians should be able to make a living, and they can’t in the current circumstances. Let’s extend the conversation from there.

KIDS SAY THE DARNEDEST THINGS

White’s original post opened with a response to an NPR colleague, Bob Boilen, who’d just consigned his music collection to the cloud; 25,000 songs, 200GB of reclaimed space on his hard drive. Big deal, said White; because she didn’t live through the transition between physical and digital music, storing music in the cloud seemed to her like a small step, rather than a large one. Fair enough. Then the surprises began. She wrote:

As I’ve grown up, I’ve come to realize the gravity of what file-sharing means to the musicians I love. I can’t support them with concert tickets and T-shirts alone. But I honestly don’t think my peers and I will ever pay for albums. I do think we will pay for convenience.

What I want is one massive Spotify-like catalog of music that will sync to my phone and various home entertainment devices. With this new universal database, everyone would have convenient access to everything that has ever been recorded, and performance royalties would be distributed based on play counts (hopefully with more money going back to the artist than the present model). All I require is the ability to listen to what I want, when I want and how I want it. Is that too much to ask?

Lowery’s response was both exasperated and gentle, teacherly (in fact he is a teacher, in the Music Business program at UGA). He is over twice White’s age and had no compunction about assuming all the authority of maturity and experience. He pointed out that the same kids who pay uncomplainingly through the nose for iPods and bandwidth on which to play music suddenly get all dodgy about paying for the music itself.

The existential questions that your generation gets to answer are these:

Why do we value the network and hardware that delivers music but not the music itself?

Why are we willing to pay for computers, iPods, smartphones, data plans, and high speed internet access but not the music itself?

Why do we gladly give our money to some of the largest richest corporations in the world but not the companies and individuals who create and sell music?

This is a bit of hyperbole to emphasize the point. But it’s as if:

Networks: Giant mega corporations. Cool! have some money!
Hardware: Giant mega corporations. Cool! have some money!
Artists: 99.9 % lower middle class. Screw you, you greedy bastards!

Congratulations, your generation is the first generation in history to rebel by unsticking it to the man and instead sticking it to the weirdo freak musicians!

I am genuinely stunned by this. Since you appear to love first generation Indie Rock, and as a founding member of a first generation Indie Rock band I am now legally obligated to issue this order: kids, lawn, vacate.

You are doing it wrong.

It is a bit surprising to hear a 20 year old say so blithely what "my peers and I" will or will not pay for, as if they weren’t already obediently paying without objection for what they’ve been told to pay for, which is iPhones. In fact, White’s generation in general has raised more or less zero opposition to their corpocratic bondage. But it’s also quite plain that Emily White has finally figured out (as she’s "grown up," she says) that she wants musicians to make more money. David Lowery wants the same thing!

 

Read the rest of the article on The Awl.

Book Dedications To Spur Your Imagination

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I was always fascinated by book dedications. Unfortunately, most books don’t have them. And many of the books that do have one, the dedication is usually too simple and cryptic to understand. But luckily, some dedications will give you a peek into the life of the author. They will give us a slight hint at a personal story or relationship that we will probably never get to learn more about.

Despite that, I always enjoyed finding a book dedication that made an effort to honor someone that had an impact on the author’s life. But, at the same time, it is especially nice to find a dedication that can also reach out to me and make an emotional connection. Here are a variety of book dedications that will help you to start to formulate your own.

Dedication (appreciation, hope)

We dedicate this book to healthcare professionals everywhere who have dedicated their life to helping those in need; and,

To healthcare students who do not yet realize the potential and importance of the career they have chosen; and,

To our students all over Long Island and New York City (and those that have spread out over the 50 states), and our readers all over the world, that work every day at making their career a success and our world a much better place in which to live; and,

Finally, we dedicate this book to you all with our love, appreciation, and thanks for allowing us to be a part of your lives.

Dedication (honor, reverence)

We dedicate this book to those who lost their life on 9/11/01;

and also to those who have given their life in the Global War Against Terrorism.

Publisher’s Dedication (hope, encouragement)

This book is dedicated to every person, young and old, employed and unemployed, educated and uneducated, that dreams of becoming financially independent and building a happy, successful, and rewarding life, but is too intimidated to take that first step.  It is the hope and dream of the Dickson Keanaghan family that this book might be that first step.

The Dickson Keanaghan Family

Long Island, New York, 2010

Dedication (predictable, sentimental)

I dedicate this book to my wife, Michele, who has been my partner in life and business, since 1984.

Dedication (sentimental)

To my wife Michele – it’s a privilege to share my business, life, and love with you.

To my children Eric and Erin – your growth provides a constant source of joy and pride.

Dedication (explanation, friendship)

To Mom, who pushed me to “do”;

To Dad, who loved me even when I didn’t;

And to Mary, who after 35 years has given me unconditional friendship and love.

Dedication (general, simple)

This book is dedicated to the mentors, friends, and family of Dickson Keanaghan:

John Doe, Jane Smith, Bob Squarepants, Jennifer Johnson, and Peter Pickles.

Dedication (hope)

To my children Eric and Erin, who will inherit this world and make it a much better place.

Dedication (predictable, simple)

To the reader . . .

I hope that you have at least half as much fun in the reading of this book as I’ve had in the writing.

Dedicated To (name dropping)

Capote, Talese, and Wolfe: They had the courage to break away and report the world to us in words more vivid, more dramatic, and more accurate.

Dedication (friendship, respect)

For Oliver Wendell Holmesian, Jr.: My law partner and cherished friend – an attorney of superb skill and perfect integrity, a trusted confidant, and a real mensch without whose encouragement, emotional support, good advice, and good cheer, none of my books would have been written.

Dedication (humorous)

To Evelyn Woodwind, whose suggestions made this a much better book than it might otherwise have been; And to Roberto Boscoe, who taught me most of what I’m now teaching, with apologies for beating him to the punch with this book.

This article was written by Joseph C. Kunz, Jr. and originally posted on KunzOnPublishing.com

Book Review: "The Public Domain Bible" by Andras Nagy

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Great insightful advice for the novice publisher.

I really enjoyed reading Nagy’s book. It is an easy to read and comprehensive guide on how to republish public domain books as a way to get started as a self-publisher. There is a heavy emphasis on starting and running a self-publishing company on a very tight budget. There is plenty of practical advice and resources for doing this. It was very helpful to read about how, what, and why Nagy republished books that are in the public domain. This is a practical how-to book that will appeal to every budding entrepreneur looking for a way to enter the world of publishing. I wish that I had found this book before I got started as a publisher of public domain books. I had to discover all of this information on my own by doing a lot of research over a long period of time.

One of my favorite pieces of advice appears early in Nagy’s book when he recommends that a novice publisher should choose a genre that they know something about. It should be a subject that you already love and can easily see yourself devoting time and money to. Nagy suggests, “If you wish to publish classical literary works, you should be reading and studying your genre. If you like poetry, perhaps that genre is to be tried first.”

Nagy gives us another great piece of advice when he stresses that we should consider adding original content to the out-of-copyright book. This will add value to the final book. This added content, such as “editorials, footnotes, and illustrations,” will help make it easier for your readers to understand the content of the original book. It will also help the buyer choose your “value added” edition over all the others that are available for sale that do not have the additional content.

In Nagy’s Foreword, he explains that “The cornerstone of using public domain information is to creatively build upon existing ideas and works of art.” “With some fresh ideas, and using this book, anyone can do what I have done on a shoestring. There are many aspiring authors who find it comforting to run a publishing company while working on their own creative literary urges.”

As a publisher of public domain titles, I can personally testify that Nagy’s information and advice can work. My wife Michele and I own and manage a medical training company here in New York. Most of our students are nurses. We realized that many of them, especially the younger ones, had never heard of, or read the works of, Florence Nightingale. So we decided to republish Nightingale’s most famous book, Notes on Nursing. We added quite a lot of new content to make the book much easier to understand and use. We like to say that we made the book “student friendly and teacher friendly”. We added a foreword, section headings, focus questions for each chapter, a glossary, Nightingale quotes, an index, footnotes, and a list of additional sources. The book was well received and has become mandatory reading in many colleges throughout America. We like to think that our book played a small part in the tidal wave of renewed interest in Nightingale.

This article was written by Joseph C. Kunz, Jr. and originally posted on KunzOnPublishing.com

Kindle Nation Daily’s Letter to the Department of Justice in the DOJ eBook Price-Fixing Lawsuit Against Apple and Five Publishers

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This is a reprint of a post written by Stephen Windwalker, from the Kindle Nation Daily site, and is reposted here in its entirety with his permission.

([Kindle Nation Daily] Editor’s Note: As we have mentioned before the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a major antitrust lawsuit against Apple and the five original “agency model” publishers charging them with a massive price-fixing conspiracy in violation of federal law. The DOJ Antitrust Division and the court wants to hear from members of the public during a 60-day comment period on the lawsuit which expires June 25, and what follows is my letter to the court. Please see this post for instructions on how to submit your comments. –Stephen Windwalker.)

June 18, 2012

Via Priority Mail

John Read, Chief
Litigation III Section
Antitrust Division
U.S. Department of Justice
450 5th Street, NW, Suite 4000 Washington, DC 20530

 

Dear Mr. Read,

I am writing to you both as an individual citizen, reader, author, and former independent bookstore owner, and also as the founder of  the Kindle Nation Daily website, one of the largest active communities of ebook readers and enthusiasts. Along with tens of thousands of other avid readers and thousands of other authors who are associated with the Kindle Nation Daily community, I am keenly interested in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) civil antitrust action (United States v. Apple, Inc. et. al., Civil Action No. 12-CIV-2826) against Apple, Inc., and five of the largest U.S. book publishers (defendants). My purpose in writing this letter is to share and underline several points that I believe should be central points of emphasis for the DOJ and the courts as this case proceeds and legal remedies are considered.

My single most important point is one that I am sure the DOJ and the court understands well, but which appears to be a matter of confusion for many others: the major parties in this case are the six defendants (Apple and the five publisher defendants) and the DOJ, which is empowered here to act on behalf of consumers. While it ought to be obvious that this is so, and that the alleged collusion has robbed tens of millions of dollars from American consumers and denied them the opportunity to read millions of other books that they deemed they could not afford, many who have commented on this case have tried to shift the focus, from this irreparable harm to consumers, to the consequences of judicial action for other interested entities who are not parties to the case, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and countless other booksellers, authors, literary agents, and other intermediaries and players in the book business. As recently as today the headline in the New Yorker’s coverage of the case demonstrates this confusion: “Paper Trail: Did publishers and Apple collude against Amazon?” Of course it would be naive not to recognize the importance of the case to these players, but to seat them at the table as parties is to miss the point of the irreparable harm to consumers.

In an effort to place the primary focus where it belongs, I would like to offer the following points and perspectives:

 

1. By colluding to raise new-release ebook prices by 30 to 100 percent, the defendants have caused irreparable harm to millions of readers of all ages, including public school and college students and other children, families, and people of limited means who bought ebook readers or downloaded free Kindle apps based on the affordability of ebooks before the defendants imposed the agency model. Prior to the launch of the Kindle it was widely believed that reading was on the decline in the U.S., as noted by the late Steve Jobs when he declared early in 2008 that the Kindle was a flawed concept “because nobody reads any more.” Among the reasons for the decline of long-form reading were rising prices for new hardcovers and paperbacks, the closing of many public library branches and bookstores, and the diminishing selection of physical books offered to the American public through existing distribution channels. The launch of the Kindle in 2007 and the fact that Amazon made Kindle apps free for anyone with a smartphone, a computer, or a Kindle meant that any reader could have a well-stocked bookstore at their fingertips just about anywhere in the U.S. and beyond. The Kindle platform succeeded because of its catalog, convenience, competitive pricing, and Amazon’s customer base and unflinching commitment to the platform, and its success has helped to fuel a resurgence in reading that is bridging the digital divide across class and age lines. The Kindle store pricing that some of the defendants and other Amazon critics demonize as “predatory” has had a wonderfully positive effect on this resurgence in reading, and has social, economic, and cultural value far beyond anything that would be achieved, for instance, by propping up the defendant publishers or another player like Barnes & Noble.

 

2. Illegal collusive behavior must not be separated from the consequences of that behavior, either in the punishment of the behavior or in the remedies proposed. Many of the more thoughtful critics of the DOJ action have taken pains to state that they have no knowledge or legal expertise about the collusive behavior alleged by the DOJ, but such behavior and its objectives are and must remain at the center of this case: the DOJ alleges with an impressive recitation of evidence that the defendants participated in an unprecedented conspiracy to force retailers to raise their new-release ebook prices by 30 to 100 percent. If that’s what happened, the defendants must be punished and retailers must be allowed to restore competitive pricing. For the publisher defendants to claim no wrongdoing after they kept their corporate counsel out of the rooms in which the collusion allegedly occurred is, if the defendants acted as alleged by DOJ, an insult to the court and to all interested parties. When companies collude or conspire to raise prices to the detriment of consumers, they know full well that they are on thin ice. In this case, because of the defendants’ collusion, consumers paid tens of millions more than they would otherwise have had to pay for ebooks. In countless other cases they had to refrain from buying ebooks they hungered to read. Because of what the defendants did, they should not only have to stop doing it, but they should remain under close regulatory scrutiny (as spelled out in the proposed settlement) for years, and they should be required to pay tens of millions, and ultimately perhaps hundreds of millions, in actual and punitive restitution to consumers.

 

3. The U.S. publishing industry is fond of saying that “the DOJ doesn’t understand the book business.” However, the defendant publishers and their associated intermediaries and gatekeepers arrived in the 21st century very poorly prepared for the future either in their fundamental economic cost structure or in their commitment to invest in innovation. The industry’s major players do not deserve any fate other than that which a collusion-free marketplace holds for them. On the other hand, over the past decade, increasing numbers of authors, booksellers, publishers and others have combined innovation, the use of new technologies, and some risk-taking to circumvent what many feel has become a rather calcified literary-industrial complex and instead established new and profitable models for making more direct connections between authors and readers. In spite of the fact that readers are paying less for ebooks than they have paid in the past for print books, most of the authors of distinction who are taking a direct route to publishing are earning greater royalties than they would ever have received from traditional publishers. They have shortened the publishing timetables from years (or in some cases decades) to months or weeks. While traditional publishing players lament the costs, for themselves, of disintermediation, tens of thousands of others are clear winners in a world where intermediaries are no longer sheltered from the need to prove their worth. The defendants and their apologists have attempted to lock in the wastefulness and flawed economic decision-making of the industry and its intermediaries by passing their costs on to consumers in the form of the 30 to 100% price increases imposed by the agency model, but claims that DOJ should protect the intermediaries in the publishing world have neither a legal basis nor any value for the culture or the country. It would be more accurate for publishers to say that the DOJ “doesn’t understand our book business the way that we understand our book business.” That would be fair in a certain sense, but the truth is the publisher defendants’ focus on their own understanding of how the publishing business used to work has kept them from evolving and understanding how the publishing business works now, and how it may work for at least a few years in the future.

 

4. The U.S. book publishing and bookselling business has been undergoing enormous change and disruption for decades, but the book trades are not a public utility. It is not the role of government or the courts to prop up the industry or any of its players. It would be especially inappropriate for the government or the courts to manage the aforementioned change and disruption so as to punish innovators, provide life support for second- and third-movers or protect industry players whose demise may be imminent due to their lack of innovation or financial discipline. The number of independent booksellers has been in steady decline for decades and will almost definitely continue to decline for the next several years, regardless of the DOJ action. Over the 20-plus years since I owned an independent bookstore and was a member of the American Booksellers Association in the 1980s, there have been many bogeymen blamed for the demise of independent brick-and-mortar bookselling, including of course Barnes & Noble itself. Like Borders before it, Barnes & Noble may well go out of business in the next few years because of poor management of real estate costs and its late, second-mover entry into the two major growth markets for bookselling in the past 15 years, online bookselling and ebooks.  But the idea that the DOJ should be in the business of propping up Barnes & Noble by reframing the remedies in this case is as odious as it would be if we were to substitute the name of WalMart in the equation, particularly after Barnes & Noble has played as great — and some would say as “predatory” — a role as any other company in hastening the demise of independent retail brick-and-mortar bookstores over the past few decades. Nor should DOJ prop up independent booksellers, as much as we may lament their demise. Sadly, the focus on the various bogeymen blamed for these developments, and booksellers’ ideological opposition to the Amazons and others, has too often taken those booksellers’ focus away from the kinds of innovation and entrepreneurial thinking that have saved some bookstores and might, if in greater evidence, have saved far more. Nor is it true that even a single independent bookstore would be saved were the DOJ or the court to reframe its proposed remedies so as to save Barnes & Noble or to soften the impact for the defendant publishers.

 

5. The widely promulgated notion that the agency model has created a lush garden of innovation in the ebook business is patently untrue. The initial Barnes & Noble Nook was widely seen as a second-mover product that was very nearly dead on arrival when it was launched several months before the advent of the agency model. It began to gain traction only when the agency model guaranteed Barnes & Noble a 30% gross margin and freed it of any need to compete with Kindle Store pricing. By Barnes & Noble’s own public admission, the Nook might well have failed in free-market competition if it had not been for the agency model conspiracy. The primary Nook “innovation” advanced to date is the relatively minor enhancement of a front-lit glowing screen, and other elements of the Nook infrastructure such as the Pub-it authorship platform are barely distinguishable from previously existing elements of the Kindle infrastructure. Much and perhaps most ebook reading on the iPad and iPhone occurs in the Kindle environment, and Apple’s claim that the iPad and its search-unfriendly, thinly populated iBookstore are successful innovations is a fantasy: the primary success of the iBookstore has been that it made the agency model price-fixing scheme possible in the minds of the defendant publishers.

 

6. Many of the arguments against the DOJ’s action and proposed remedies are based on intense fear and loathing of Amazon, none of which is surprising in an industry which is both change-averse and especially well-connected to the chattering classes in the national news media. It is absolutely appropriate for the DOJ and other government agencies to continue to scrutinize Amazon’s behavior as a corporate taxpayer, as a direct or indirect corporate employer, as a gatherer of customers’ private information, or as a competitor in the national and global business marketplace. DOJ may well be justified in taking future action on one or more of these issues, but there is no basis for penalizing Amazon now because it is big, because it is an aggressive innovator whose success is based on disrupting existing business models, because it has shown a creative capacity to reduce consumer prices while still paying full wholesale prices itself, or because smart disintermediation allows it to pay an author a higher royalty for a $5 ebook sale than a traditional publisher would pay an author for a $25 hardcover sale. If at some point in the future Amazon uses its growing marketplace clout to squeeze authors or publishers, for instance, DOJ should not hesitate to haul the company into court, but such behavior cannot be presupposed, and indeed it would require such a radical change in Amazon’s business model that it would be immediately obvious to all.

 

7. Although Barnes & Noble attorney David Boies indulges windy, sweeping prose on behalf of “the national economy and culture, the future of copyrighted expression and bookselling in general,” he does not provide any evidence or argument that cultural and business trends that are already well underway would be reversed if the DOJ action were not taken. The bottom line in Boies’ argument is the bottom line for Barnes & Noble, a failing company that is choking to death on its own expensive real estate leases and its lack of innovation during the decade when its former primary position in the U.S. retail book business was overtaken by a much more innovative upstart competitor. In service of that bottom line, Boies wants DOJ to frame its actions so as to prop up and protect Barnes & Noble so that, for as long as it is able to hang on, it can wring as much profit as possible from its second-mover status in the ebook marketplace. But the bottom line for consumers should take precedence over Boies’ desire to keep Barnes & Noble on life support. Consumers who purchase and read ebooks have lost tens of millions of dollars because the defendants conspired to raise the prices of bestselling ebook new releases. The defendants’ behavior described in the court documents has been reckless, avaricious, and destructive — perhaps even to “the national economy and culture, the future of copyrighted expression and bookselling in general” — and the DOJ should not rule out the possibility of criminal prosecutions if facts warrant as this action proceeds. Finally, it is somewhat surprising that we must take pains to correct some of the utterly inaccurate notions with which attorney Boies has burdened the record in this case. Among the country lawyer’s tricks with which Boies has attempted to dazzle us are his claims that the American public opposes the DOJ action because Manhattan Senator Charles Schumer opposes it, or that authors oppose the action because Boies has offered up a quotation from Scott Turow, president of the notoriously litigious Author’s Guild, which has been on record in the past as opposed to public library book borrowing.

 

8. The proposal by some that fairness could be achieved via a decision to allow publishers to mandate uniform retail prices would be catastrophic for readers. Such a mandatory price-setting scheme would reward the colluders and would do more to maintain the outmoded status quo in the publishing world than other step that has been proposed. Worst of all, of course, it would allow the defendants to continue to steal tens of millions of dollars each year from the pockets of consumers.

 

9. Instead of innovating to become leaner, faster, and more profitable in the new world of publishing, the defendants decided to try to stop time by breaking the law. Faced with the fears that motivated the agency model conspiracy, publishers might have taken a different, more innovative path. They could even have followed such a path collectively without fear of violating anti-trust laws. When Amazon launched its new, disruptive ebook business model, beginning ever so slowly in November of 2007, publishers might have reimagined and restructured the book business with new, innovative, more efficient, and profitable roles for themselves. They might have created their own online retail outlets to offer their titles in Kindle-compatible ebook form. They might have worked with brick-and-mortar booksellers to bundle ebook and digital formats at handy little kiosks in every bookstore. They might have turned ebooks into the 21st century reincarnation of Literary Guild and the Book-of-the-Month Club, those 20th century behemoths that managed to sell millions of hardcover books for 99 cents each without creating any significant scare over the erosion of “the value of the book.” They might have tried to strip away the excess weight of unsustainable corporate costs and their reckless addiction to gamble huge advances for bestsellers, to rework their economics at new, competitive price points. They might have said, “We’re no longer going to pay for intermediaries that add no value.” They might even have pursued one of the collective strategies that they considered and rejected back in 2009, called Project Z or Bookish, to create a joint venture that would establish a new ecommerce platform to sell ebooks wholesale to retailers, or retail to the ebook-buying public.

 

10. Although neither Amazon nor Barnes & Noble are full parties in this case, the DOJ and the court should impose one burden on both companies (and on defendant Apple Inc. and perhaps other ebook retailers) as part of the remedies associated with the actual and punitive restitution that defendants should be forced to pay to consumers. Specifically, the ebook retailers should be required to provide to all of their customers a detailed record of all ebooks that they ordered during the full period of the agency model from April 1, 2010 until the present date or beyond, in order for customers to qualify for the restitution payments due them.

I am grateful to the DOJ and to the court and all parties for your consideration of these matters, and I hope that all concerned will take these views into account in this case.

Sincerely,

Stephen Windwalker

Non-US Self-Publisher? Tax Issues Don’t Need to be Taxing

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This post, by Catherine Ryan Howard, originally appeared on her Catherine, Caffeinated blog on 2/24/12.

OH FOR THE LOVE OF FUDGE.

That’s what this whole tax-withholding-for-non-US-residents makes me want to scream. Out loud, and repeatedly. But as I’ve said before, self-publishing your e-book on the biggest online retailer in the world is so easy, there had to be something like this to balance it out.

If you haven’t been keeping up with this ongoing saga, here’s a quick recap. I spent eight months, give or take, trying to get my own Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN).

I relied on the experiences of two other self-publishers, Sally Clements and Roz Morris, to help me out; the information the IRS provides wouldn’t help you find your way out of a small paper bag, let alone anywhere near an ITIN. Luckily once I had the damn thing, getting my full royalty payments and the money withheld from me in the year to date was easy and quick. But then, in the last few weeks, people started telling me that I didn’t need an ITIN at all—an Employee Identification Number (EIN) would’ve done the job, and an EIN was much easier to get. I posted about this possibility, and fellow Irish self-publisher David Gaughran volunteered to be the guinea pig—and got his EIN within minutes, and over the phone. This was extremely useful information, especially since another commenter (thanks, Janet!) told us that new IRS rules mean that starting this year, monies withheld will only be available for refund through the IRS—and not refunded automatically by KDP and CreateSpace, as they have been up until now.

I feared that most people wouldn’t read through all the comments on the original post, so I asked David to write a guest post for us here about how he got his EIN. Take it away, David…

“As many of you will know, Amazon and Smashwords are required by law to withhold 30% of the royalties earned by non-US authors until they settle their tax status. The commonly accepted method of doing so was going through the laborious process of getting an International Tax Identification Number (ITIN), which necessitates arcane form-filling, notarized copies of passports, embassy trips, fees, and inexplicable rejection (writers should at least be used to the last part). And indeed, this was the path I was on myself, up until yesterday.

In the last few weeks, I had heard some mutterings that there was an easier, quicker way, but hadn’t had time to look into it. After Catherine’s post on Monday, suggesting that self-publishers might be able to get an Employer Identification Number (EIN) instead, which will also do the trick, I decided to give it a shot.

First things first: I’m no tax expert. In fact, the entire subject turns my brain to soup. And I know as much about the law as this guy. All I can explain is how I got my EIN in ten minutes and how you should be able to do the same.

One final caveat: this only applies to self-published authors who are publishing through their own company (and that company must be set up outside the US). While the IRS doesn’t appear to ask for proof that you have actually established your own publishing company, I’m sure there are all sorts of reasons why you shouldn’t commence this process until you actually have.

 

Read the rest of the post on Catherine, Caffeinated.

The Business Rusch: Hurry Up. Wait.

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This post, by Kathryn Rusch, originally appeared on her site on 6/13/12.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the differences between traditional publishing and indie publishing this week. Almost every day, some writer writes to me and asks if they should go traditional or indie on some new project.

Sometimes the writer has just finished his first novel, and wants to know what to do with it—go the traditional route or publish it himself.

Sometimes the writer is a long-time professional who has noticed indie publishing and wants to give it a go.

And sometimes the writer has done a little indie publishing and a lot of traditional publishing, and wants to know which is best for the current project.

Usually I can’t help them. It truly is a personal choice. For the most part, contract terms and confusing royalty statements make long-term earnings in traditional publishing dicey at best. But indie publishing has its own drawbacks, including a bit of financial outlay up front to make certain the book is the best it can be.

(Hire a copy editor, folks. Really. And a line editor. Or two truly anal friends who care nothing about plot and everything about commas and repetition. An editor or super reader would be nice to help you on the plot side. It would be nice if you managed a professional cover and interior design. And as a reader, I’d really like it if you have a print-on-demand version.)

I have no idea what another writer’s circumstances are. I don’t know if she has the time to upload her works on Kindle or if she barely scratches out enough time to write 1,000 words per day. All of those things matter.

But, for a minute, let’s forget the contract terms, the financial realities, the business decisions, and pretend all books are equal.

If we do that, if we get rid of the individual decisions, and look only at the way the two publishing systems work, we can see the differences in very stark terms.

Here’s what you’re choosing between:

Hurry up and wait

Or

Wait and hurry up

Seriously.

The industry has bifurcated. The two parts of book publishing are so drastically different in their approaches that they can barely talk to each other. Mostly, they fail to realize that they don’t even use the same language. As a result, they measure success differently because they measure everything differently. I’ve talked about this before, primarily in a post called “Bestseller Lists and Other Thoughts.”

First, let’s look at what the different attitudes are, and then let’s examine what those attitudes mean for writers.

 

Read the rest of the post on Kathryn Rusch’s site.

Grow Your Crazy-Dedicated Fanbase through Reader-Centered Book Marketing

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Publetariat Editor’s Note: Today we’re pleased to welcome Toni and Shannon, the self-publishing experts over at Duolit, to our roster of regular Contributors with this reprint from their site.

What are some of the biggest books in publishing today? Twilight, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games.

What do they have in common?

Well, yeah, the YA genre. And the fanbases transcending any one target market. Also the multi-billion dollar movie franchises. But what else?

Crazy, rabid fans.

These folks will fake engagements to try on Bella’s wedding gown, get a full back tattoo featuring Dumbledore and spend hours creating elaborate signs declaring their love for Peeta.

How would you like to have fans like that going nuts over your book?

 

Okay, maybe you could do without quite that level of craziness. Still, wouldn’t it be nice to have readers spreading the word far and wide about you and your book?

That’s what I thought.

Guess what: fans like that? You can have them.

Sure, without the backing of Scholastic or Bloomsbury it won’t happen overnight. You’ll have to dig in for the long haul and get your hands dirty.

But, you’re an indie author — you’re not scared of a little hard work, right?

Suffering from Book Marketing Apathy?

Much of what I’ve seen out there in indie-land, however, seems to indicate otherwise. What’s up with that?

I call it “book marketing apathy.”

Some indie authors think that readers will appear out of thin air, throwing dollars at them mere seconds after their book is published. Others see marketing as an afterthought, as some sort of unnecessary burden. And yet others appear to have given up altogether, sadly begging for book purchases on Facebook or Twitter.

Don’t let that be you.

The 4 Truths of Indie Book Marketing

  1. It takes time.
  2. It takes effort.
  3. It takes dedication.
  4. It is totally worth it.

Your readers ARE out there, but they’re not going to find you by accident.

For the next few weeks, we’ll teach you how to stand out above the crowd and earn those crazy-dedicated readers through reader-centered book marketing.

It sounds silly and obvious, but it’s actually quite rare to see — authors focused on not only promoting themselves, but also providing value to their readers.

Are you following the Golden Rule?

Honestly, it all boils down to this — let’s call it the Golden Rule of Reader-Centered Book Marketing – treat your readers as you’d like to be treated.

To implement this “Golden Rule” you must:

1. Have the Right Attitude

If you’re not enthusiastic, confident and passionate about your work, how can you expect to jazz up readers?

Remember, just a few years ago, authors’ publishing fates were solely in traditional publishers’ hands. Take pride in your indie author status  and the fact that you have self-published your book!

Although you’ve likely experienced doubts about your writing, if you’ve taken the time to write, edit, design and publish a book that you know is your best work, act like it!

Blog tour and guest post to get your name out there, then eagerly engage each commenter and new reader — provoke discussion, answer their questions and value their perspective.

2. Give More than You Take

A common mistake many authors make (most likely out of sales desperation) is to make their only “message” one of pressure; one focused on selling their work.

This is a *huge* turnoff to potential readers!

A better method to earn readers is to share something of value (instead of strictly selling). Once they experience your generosity (and get a taste of your crazy talent in the process), they’ll gladly become faithful readers.

Some ways for you to provide value to potential readers include:

  • Writing guest posts on blogs your readers frequent
  • Recommending other books you’ve enjoyed
  • Providing free excerpts of your work
  • Giving away free copies or other goodies

Give, share and give some more and finally, when the time is right, ask your readers to give a little something back.

3. Think The Avengers, not Survivor

If you’re a reality TV geek (like, sadly, I am), you’re familiar with the motto of Survivor: outwit, outplay, outlast. Players constantly backstab, use and abuse each other in an effort to win $1 million.

That go-it-alone mindset may work for the last Survivor standing, but it won’t help you and your book!

A better method is that of The Avengers: work together.

Establish relationships with other indie authors, but don’t go about it willy-nilly. Be genuine; only reach out if you actually like and respect the author and their work.

Once you’ve teamed up, leverage the power of your combined readerships by:

  • Cross-promoting each other’s work through social media
  • Introducing each other to blogger friends for guest posts and interviews
  • Brainstorming ideas for giveaways and promotions
  • Supporting and motivating each other with things get tough

4. Don’t Let Your Readers Down

Once the new readers start flowing in, you must continually work to keep them by:

  • Encouraging them to subscribe to your mailing list and send out an update at least once a month
  • Keeping a schedule for updating your blog
  • Providing value through exclusive rewards and promotions

Whatever you do, don’t forget about them!

Ensure, however, that you’re only passing along valuable information to your fans (never spamming or pressuring). Don’t let your new fans down!

Call it the Wild Wild West rule: how many successful July 4th Will Smith movies did we get after that flop (which, for the record, I enjoyed)?

Remember: without a fanbase, you’re just writing for yourself, your mom and the Twitter spammers. 

Go Forth and Earn Some Youphiles!

Ready for more reader-centered book marketing goodness?

Next week we’ll discuss how to uncover the identity of those crazy-dedicated readers (and show you a targeting tool even more specific than your target market), but the concepts above give you something to work on in the meantime.

At the conclusion of our series, we’re unveiling a super-special book marketing workshop exclusively for indie authors who receive (totally free) updates from us. So, if you’re not on that list, hop to it!

You’ll also receive Self-Publishing Basic Training, a rockin’ 35-page guide to the basics of self-publishing, as an added bonus.

Talk Back

I’m curious: how do you take care of your readers? Do you find reader-centered marketing practices work better than pressuring and groveling? Am I totally wrong about everything I said above? Let me know in the comments!

 

This is a reprint from Duolit.

 

Class Action Law Suit Filed in Maryland Against PublishAmerica

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This post, by Mick Rooney, originally appeared on The Independent Publishing Magazine on 6/13/12.

The breaking news this evening, via Victoria Strauss, is that a class action law suit has been filed against PublishAmerica in the state of Maryland. The action was filed yesterday by Darla Yoos, Edwin McCall and Kerri Levine and "others similarly situated" in a 55 page document.
 
From the opening pages of the law suit:

 
 

Defendant PublishAmerica is a book publisher that  portrays itself as "a traditional, royalty paying publisher." But unlike traditional publishers, which profit from the sale of books, defendant profits from its own clients, i.e., the authors who submit works for publication by defendant. Defendant lures these authors in by promising to publish their book at no cost, and it makes false and misleading representations that it will promote their books and support the authors’ efforts to sell their own books. But this is not the case. Instead, once the authors sign the contract, which gives defendant the rights to their book for seven to ten years, defendant does nothing constructive to promote their books, but instead offers various promotion packages on a fee-for-service basis….These services, which are either misrepresented or never carried out, are not reasonably designed to promote class members’ books…. Defendant provides very poor editing services, is slow to respond to book orders, and it routinely overprices the books it publishes. This is no accident. Defendant will only lower the price of its clients’ books to a competitive rate for a $399 fee. These practices make it difficult for even the most enterprising authors to promote their own books. Defendant is not responsive to inquiries from its clients, or worse it is dismissive or belligerent. Like plaintiffs, thousands of other aspiring authors who signed up with PublishAmerica have become demoralized because the publishing contract appears to be little more than a pretext for selling dubious services…These authors also feel trapped because PublishAmerica owns the rights to their books for seven to ten years. This presents a Hobson’s choice for the authors: either throw good money after bad for suspect promotional services or abandon the book that was a labor of love.


14 Ways To Ask For A Favour

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This post, by Jean Oram, originally appeared on her site on 6/8/12.

Have you ever been asked a favour by another writer? Chances are (if you are online), you have. It might have been critiquing a query or chapter, or helping them with heir marketing and publicity. Lately it seems that writers and authors are flooding social media with lots of favour requests that are unintentionally turning folks off.

I’m sure I’ve done it… how about you?

There is an art in “the ask” and many of us get it wrong. Dreadfully, horribly wrong.

But we can fix it! We writers are awesome at getting into the heads of others, being creative, and being general, all ’round nice people.

Two key things to keep in mind so you don’t abuse other writers. First of all, writers are busy people. Heck, all people are. But writers usually have a lot going on all the time–especially when we are trying to get our career off the ground, or heck, even pushed away from the terminal! Second, we are a very generous sort and love to help out other writers because one day (hopefully soon) we will be in their shoes looking for some friend lovin’ as well. It’s super easy to abuse that unintentionally. (We say yes because we fear we may never be given an opportunity again if we don’t.

A Good Ask

I love this ask that I got via a direct message on Twitter from the lovely and talented author Claire Cook (Must Love Dogs). After a few tweets and mutual follow on Twitter she said in a DM: “Please like my FB author page if you have an extra minute. And let me know if I can like yours! facebook.com/ClaireCookauth….” That is a good ask. I believe I liked her page. I did not ask her to like my pages back even though they are in need of some “like” love. Why? I believed that it wouldn’t fit her brand and it didn’t feel right. But liking her did.

By the way, I get a lot of DM’s asking for FB likes and her’s is the first that has received action. And, at first glance I thought her DM was unlike the others because it felt as though it was meant just for me. Later I realized that it could have been an autosend. But it didn’t feel like it. It felt personal.

KaBOOM!, a playground action group, contacted me via my It’s All Kid’s Play (.ca) website as we had done some tweeting back and forth. They contacted me to ask if I could help spread the word about an upcoming summer challenge. They provided all the information I needed about their challenge as well as a fantastically easy to follow through upon ask that included this tidbit I could copy and paste into Twitter: “My friends at @Kaboom want you to take their #playgroundchallenge! Visit playgrounds for a chance to win a trip to DC. http://bit.ly/K5GfQw”

Which I did. I also gave it a personal spin and off it went. Easy. Even though I believe 100% in their challenge, I may not have sent off this tweet if they hadn’t have made it so easy for me to do so. (In the end I also ended up being a beta tester for their Android app (it maps Playgrounds–is awesome and is available on the iPhone already) and next week will be posting an interview with them about their challenge on my It’s All Kid’s Play blog. Wow. They got a lot from a simple, well-done email, didn’t they?

So, how do we get favours granted?

Ask for a Favour? 14 Tips That Lead to a “Yes”:

  1. Be clear.
    What do you want me to do? Is it to buy your book? Share your coupon? Like your page? Follow you?
     
  2. Be specific and to the point.
    I don’t need the story of your life. Remember: You are taking up someone’s precious time.
     
  3. Why should I?
    What’s in it for me? Why should I help? If you make your ask about the giver, they are more likely to help out. Think of it this way. I tell you to buy my book because it is a bestseller and everyone thinks it’s funny. Uh, great? But what if I told you that this book will change the way you think about your neighbourhood, the way kids play, and give you more time to spend playing with your kids. Hmmm. Suddenly that feels a little more personal and intriguing. There might be some personal value in this.

 

Read the rest of the post on Jean Oram’s site.

Indie Authors Can Succeed: What Terri Did And How You Can Do It, Too – Part 1

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This post, by Novel Publicity President Emlyn Chand and author Terri Giuliano Long, originally appeared on Novel Publicity on 8/24/11.

What does it take to be successful as an author? How can one go from simply dreaming a dream to living its reality? Is there any hope for all of the starving wordsmiths of the world?

Why, yes. There most assuredly is.
 
Terri Giuliano Long: A Case Study

To prove this point to all of the starry-eyed optimists and cynical nay-sayers, allow me to present a case study. It’s no secret that Novel Publicity has been working with literary fiction author Terri Giuliano Long almost since we opened our web portal to business back in March 2011.

Terri published her first novel, In Leah’s Wake, in October 2010. She put in a lot of hard work and hard-earned cash to promote it, and by July 26th, 2011, she had sold her 1,000th copy. A milestone few authors ever reach, indie or not.

1,000 copies—that’s really exciting. But what’s even more exciting is what happened next. It took nine months to sell those 1,000 copies, and only another twenty-nine days to sell 1,000 more. Now Terri’s sales are above 100 per day and show no signs of sinking. Is it fair to say she’s made it?

I think so.

Now that we’ve laid the framework to show that, yes, an indie author can achieve at least a modicum of commercial success, let’s move forward and answer the more pertinent question and get to the real reason you’re reading this blog post anyway: how did she do it?

Perhaps more accurately phrased as: how can you do it?

Let’s explore this question chronologically. Along the way, we’ll discuss what Terri did that was right-on and what she could have done better to give you the chance to learn from both her mistakes and her triumphs.
Write the best book you can.

Not the best book in the entire history of humanity. Just the best one you can possibly write. Give it the time to take root and really grow. Don’t rush to meet a deadline. Don’t try to conform to what’s popular or what somebody else expects. Respect your artistic vision and respect the English language. That’s step one.

What Terri did…

I wrote the first draft as my graduate thesis – the entire first draft in three months. It was terrible, of course – awful writing, a lot of summary, lacking story development. I then spent about four years – while teaching and doing other writing- revising. I started from scratch, meaning I didn’t cut and paste; I started from a blank page and retyped the entire manuscript. This is important because it helps you see the novel with new eyes. I replaced summary with scene, created new scenes, developed characters. There is a lot of drug-related information in the novel. To get it right, I had to research. I also researched protocol on runaway teens, and I looked up information on construction practices, economics and so on. I then looked at thematic issues – this is a story about community and connection. Once I realized this, I worked to develop and pull the themes forward. I always read my work aloud, so tend to edit for style (vocabulary, syntax, etc.) as I write; while I did polish, I didn’t feel a need to style-edit the entire novel.

Package the book in a way that will appeal to readers.

This means, for the love of all that is holy, please PLEASE hire a professional editor. Yes, it’s expensive. Yes, readers will notice if your formatting or your punctuation is off. You can’t cut corners if you want to be taken seriously. And this goes beyond the editing.

You also need to present an attractive exterior—I’m talking about your book cover. Saying this goes against that cliché moral code of not judging a book by its cover, but people can and will judge your beloved novel in this way. Don’t give anyone the chance to discount your book for such a superficial reason. Cover your bases.

What Terri did…

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes four more strategies, on Novel Publicity. Also see Part 2, on the same site.

DOJ, Authors Guild, BEA, and Hypocritical Authors Backing Up Words With Action

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This post, by Bob Mayer, originally appeared on Write It Forward on 6/7/12.

I recently read the email where the Authors Guild is asking members to send to the DOJ to stop the legal action regarding the Agency Model.  I found it quite strange.  It felt as if the Authors Guild was defending bookstores, publishers, agents and others in the mistaken belief that in doing so they were helping authors.  I can’t ever remember the Authors Guild taking such strong action defending authors against bookstores, publishers and agents.  Demanding higher eBook royalty rates.

And even in the letter, the Guild admits publishers made a “mistake” in allowing Amazon to dominate the eBook market.  I’m not sure it was a mistake as much as it was arrogance.  I keep going back to one fact:  Amazon didn’t exist except in Bezos’ mind in 1994.  How much has publishing changed since then?

And then there are the authors.  Scott Turow and Richard Russo and Malcolm Gladwell key among them.  I love Richard Russo’s books, but I find his business stance quite hypocritical.  Ditto with Turow and Gladwell.  If Amazon is the evil empire as they quite clearly say, then why are their books still for sale on Amazon?  Hey guys, if you hate it so much, immediately demand your publishers pull your books from Amazon.  NOW!  You don’t get to have your sales and sneer at them too.  I’m sick of the top 5% of authors who get coddled by publishers defend[ing] a business that treats its other 95% of authors as replaceable parts that they can easily toss on the garbage pile and replace.  You show me a traditional author defending legacy publishing whose contract doesn’t get renewed, and I’ll show you an author whose tune changes very fast.

Publishers, agents, editors, bookstores, here’s something you basically need to wrap your brain around:  the physical book you hold so dear is NOT the product you are selling.  The story that writers create is the product.  That story can be bought by the consumer in the physical form of a book, but it can also be bought digitally to be read or listened to.  And the latter is going to become dominant sooner, rather than later.

I spent a day this week at BEA.  I did my first BEA about 10 years ago.  This one wasn’t much different.  I was walking the aisles with my business partner at Cool Gus, Jen Talty, and I told her:  “Half these people are going to be looking for jobs in three years.”  I’m not being mean, I’m being realistic.  It’s pretty much business as usual, like the band playing on the Titanic and the passengers swapping deck chairs to listen to them.  The ship is still going down people.  I saw nary a computer screen at any of the booths displaying digital books.  I saw not a single publisher giving away digital arcs (and wouldn’t it be so much cheaper and environmentally friendly to do so?).

 

Read the rest of the post on Write It Forward.

What I Love About Being An Indie Author: I Can Shift Course On A Dime!

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Despite the gloom and doom of some of the blog pundits, and despite the relatively weak effect of my last KDP Select promotion at the end of March, which came in the midst of Amazon’s shifting algorithms, I decided to put the two books in my Victorian San Francisco mystery series, Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits, up for another round of free promotions this month. While my goals have remained the same, my strategy changed in response to the changing algorithms, and, as a result, my outcomes this time around improved.

Goals:

As usual, the primary goal for my promotions was to push both of my novels up on the historical mystery bestseller list and to get them as high as possible on the historical mystery popularity list. I have written numerous times about my conviction that keeping my books visible on these lists is a significant factor in my success. (Maids of Misfortune has been on these lists continuously since July of 2010, and Uneasy Spirits has been on them since it was published in October 2011.)

If my books fell off the top of these lists I would be dependent on driving potential readers to Amazon to look for the book. As a relatively unknown author with only a modest social media presence this is a difficult proposition. Instead, when my books are near the top of the historical mystery lists then people who are browsing these lists get the chance to judge my books by their covers, excerpts, product descriptions, “also bought” lists and reviews). Conversely, I have heard how dramatically sales decrease for books by other authors when these books fall off the bestseller lists.

As an aside, I don’t understand why some authors still argue that using free promotions devalues books. For example, the buyer can see a book’s fixed price (in my case my books are now $3.99––becaue like other indie authors I am feeling more confident about pushing my prices up from $2.99), so they know it is only temporarily free. I see the use of free promotions as the same as any promotion––for example, when traditional publishers pay (cut into their revenue) to get their print books onto the front tables of bookstores. I don’t recall anyone concluding “that they must not be very good books if their publishers don’t feel the books can sell themselves on their own!”

A secondary goal of doing another free promotion was to make the books visible on other categories besides historical mysteries, even if they didn’t stay there once the books went back to paid. The historical mystery category is a relatively small category (2,182 books), and I don’t usually sell enough books daily to show up in the top 100 of the larger categories like mystery–women sleuths (6,420 books), or historical romance (12,163 books), except during free promotions. In addition, I switched Uneasy Spirits from romantic suspense to historical fiction for its second category after the last promotion, and I hoped that this round of promotion would get it exposure for the first time in this fairly large category (22,000+ books). In short, this promotion would be another chance to expand my market beyond the historical mystery category.

Pre-promotion status: 

By the middle of May, before the promotions began, Maids of Misfortune had slipped into the 7,000′s overall and 40′s on the historical mystery bestseller list. Uneasy Spirits was in the 9,000s overall and 70s on the bestseller list. Uneasy Spirits was dangerously close to dropping off the top 100, and was averaging 11 book sales a day, versus 25 a day in April and 42 a day in March (all these figures are for the US Kindle store). I understand that for many authors, 11 books a day would be nothing to sneeze at, but, again, if I want to sustain visibility I didn’t want to let that daily average slip any lower.

Amazon changes:

In case you haven’t been keeping in touch, Amazon apparently started testing new algorithms for its popularity lists in the middle of March (see this post by David Gaughran.) While these algorithms are secret it was very clear that a free download was no longer counting as a full sale. The effect of these changes was a drastic decrease in the post promotion sales bump most authors had been experiencing and fair amount of consternation among indie authors.

I confess I was relatively sanguine about these changes. Even though my own promotion at the end of March was seriously disappointing in terms of over-all sales, it did prop up my books’ rankings for a brief time and then slowed their decline. In addition, what I was witnessing was a very similar pattern to my post holiday sales from the year before––when KDP Select didn’t exist. Last year and this year my sales in April were 27-28% less than they had been at their peak in the 3 months after Christmas. The difference was that due to KDP Select the peak this year was ever so much higher than the previous year.

While Amazon’s introduction of KDP Select and its free days had given many of us a great gift in increased sales this past holiday, it was creating very volatile popularity and bestseller lists, and traditionally published books were being pushed further and further down those lists. It made sense to me that, given the DofJ settlement, Amazon would have a vested interest in proving that it could still provide a competitive market for those traditional books. Frankly it never had seemed right to me that some of my favorite historical mystery authors were doing so much worse than I was––it wasn’t their fault their publishers kept making so many bad decisions (high prices, bad formatting, refusal to participate in the Kindle Lending Library, ect.)

Then in the beginning of May the popularity list settled down––for now, and there has been general agreement that for the last few weeks the popularity lists reflect a new ratio where free downloads are only counted for about 10% (some say 5%) of sales for the purposes of ranking (ie 1000 free downloads =100 sales). There is evidence that the list is also weighted more heavily by a book’s sales (maybe even its total revenue) over the previous 30 days––rather than in the immediate promotion days. As a result, the effect of the already diminished download count is further flattened by the previous 30 days of sales averages.  Edward Robertson has done a good job of summarizing the effects of these changes.

Changing Strategies:

When I read the posts about the changes in the algorithm I decided to deviate from my previous strategy for free promotions. I had been putting Maids of Misfortune up with Uneasy Spirits at the same time for one day, then continuing Uneasy for a second day. My logic had been that Maids was my most persistent seller (and usually got its largest downloads the first day) and that people would see the two up together and a percentage would decide to go ahead and get both of them, boosting Uneasy’s downloads. The one time I had put up Uneasy by itself it hadn’t done well (and this was before the algorithm changes), and I assumed that people might be giving it a pass because it was a sequel. So each time I have promoted I kept Uneasy up for a second day, thinking that it needed the extra day to achieve a significant number of downloads and that people might have started Maids of Misfortune and enjoyed it enough to go back and get Uneasy the second day.

But, with the new information about the greater importance of the sales of a book during the 30 days before the promotion, I decided that I needed to rethink this strategy.

I wasn’t too worried about Maids of Misfortune. It hadn’t slipped down the rankings as far as Uneasy Spirits, and, because it was uploaded in 2009 when you could choose 5 categories it has a better chance of attracting free downloads. It also had 98 reviews, and I knew that this would help. I did decide, however, to leave Maids free for two days this time since it was going to take more downloads to achieve any sort of bump in sales with the new ratio.

More importantly, I also decided to put up Maids of Misfortune for free a week before I put up Uneasy Spirits (something I had never tried before). My thought was that if the free promotion of Maids increased the sales of Uneasy at all (and the ripple effect of free on sequels has been well-documented), then this would mean that at least 7 days of that 30 day average would have the increased sales to figure into Uneasy’s rankings­­––improving the chances that it would experience some sort of sales bump after it came off its free promotion.

So far it appears that this new strategy is working.

Post Promotion:

Maids of Misfortune was free May 19-20, a Friday and Saturday. At the end of the two days the book had 3206 free downloads in the US Kindle store. If the rumors about the new algorithm were right, this would translate into approximately 320 sales over those two days. The previous 30 days my average sales for this book had been 20 books a day, so not surprisingly these 2 days, at about 150 a day, did push up the book’s popularity rankings, which in turn increased the books sales and ranking on the bestseller list. The fourth day after the promotion Maids of Misfortune was in the mid 3000′s on the paid list, versus the 7000s where it had been before, and #12 on the historical mystery bestseller list, versus in the 40s.

And, during the free promotion for Maids, the sales of Uneasy Spirits doubled. The bump didn’t last past the promotion, but it does mean that Uneasy was in a slightly better position going into its own promotion, and that it has a slightly better 30 day average to help it sustain the bump it got from that promotion.

Uneasy Spirits was free May 25-25 (Saturday and Sunday) and did much better than Maids in terms of giveaways. While Maids only made it to 109 in the free store the first day and lost ground the second, Uneasy made it to #33 in the Free list and remained in the top 100 for the second day. (I suspect the fact that this was the beginning of the memorial day weekend might have caused Uneasy’ greater success). This meant it had much more exposure and achieved over 3 times the number of free downloads as Maids of Misfortune did (10,142 in the US Kindle store).

This of course meant an even bigger bump upwards for Uneasy Spirits when it went back on the paid lists since these downloads would translate into 1000 sales for the two days.

In fact, doing the promotions sequentially has benefited the sales and rankings of both books because Maids of Misfortune averaged 98 book sales over the 2 days that Uneasy Spirits was free, nicely adding to its 30 day average and pushing it up the popularity rankings as a result.

To date, 5 days after Uneasy Spirits joined Maids of Misfortune back on the paid lists, my average sales for both books is double what they were before the promotions began. Maids of Misfortune is now ranked 2945 over all, and it is #11 in the historical mystery bestseller list and #10 in the historical mystery popularity list. Uneasy Spirits is currently ranked 5138 over all and #22 in the historical mystery bestseller list (although 3 days after the promotion it did hit the 3000′s and was #18 on the bestseller list), However, perhaps more importantly for its long run sales, Uneasy Spirits is currently #8 on the historical mystery popularity list.

If Edward Robertson is correct in his analysis of the new algorithm, as the older, poorer sales for both books at the start of May drop off, and the newer higher sales during and since the promotions begin to dominate the 30 day average, both books should continue to do well in the historical mystery popularity list, which in turn should continue to boost sales and help maintain these books’ position on the bestseller list. In short, they may not have risen as high in the rankings as after previous promotions, but neither will they drop as quickly. If this turns out to be true, Amazon will have achieved its greater stability in the lists, but KDP Select will still permit indie books to be competitive as well.

My final point is that I learned about the new 30-day aspect of the Amazon algorithms on May 7th when I read about Edward Robertson’s blog discussion of the changes that had been made, and I was able to immediately respond (in the words of the title––change course quickly.)  Four days after reading this blog post I had made my decision to give the free promotions another try, but this time sequentially, and I went onto my dashboard and scheduled both free promotions and began to make the arrangements to feature those free promotions on such sites as Kindle Nation Daily and Pixel of Ink. A week later the first of the promotions began.

I didn’t have to consult with anyone (like an agent or editor) or get the permission of a marketing committee to make this decision, the scheduling of the promotions took seconds, and the pre-promotional work I did took about an hour. As a result, I was able to move quickly to reverse the downward spiral of sales before my books dropped off the historical mystery lists and became invisible. I know that this is not how things would have happened in the world of traditional publishing where people keep using the analogy of how difficult it is to turn a big ship around to explain how slow the Big 6 have been to respond to the ebook revolution. And for that I once again give thanks for the power I have as an indie author to exert some control over the fate of my books, even when the winds of changing algorithms threaten to blow them off course.

 

This is a reprint from M. Louisa Locke’s blog.