Ebooks

It seems that every week brings a new development in the world of digital publishing and indie authors have varied opinions on what’s happening. In this interview I discuss some of the latest events and also debate what 2012 holds.

 

Steven Lewis is an author, podcaster and at Taleist he helps writers become published authors. He has just posted Self Publishing and Ebook Predictions 2012 on his blog which we discuss today. [Video and podcast at the bottom of the text]

• One of the comments in the article is ” 2012 is the year things get bad for traditional publishing industry”. My thoughts are more that there’s a split between publishers going digital and those that are not. Steven comments that for publishers going digital the problem is pricing and customers think the price has to be low. 99c – $4.99 which in some cases still doesn’t cover the costs of all the editing, design etc. People won’t pay print prices, that’s a given but where is the limit. Publishers will find it tough to run the publishing machine with less income.

• Publishers will be trying new things in 2012. Penguin opening up to ‘self-publishing’ is actually more like vanity publishing. None of us want to see the end of publishers and bookstores but things will continue to shift.

• Steve thinks Amazon has to start doing something about the crap that is being published in 2012. The spam, the hardcore pornography and the things that come up in searches. They have to clean it up but there have been problems with Amazon trying to get rid of what some people think is wrong e.g. gay/lesbian writers. We have to balance free speech with what is genuinely awful. I prefer to think of the customer as the gatekeeper as I am browsing by categories, ranking etc. The new stigma will be ‘not selling’ as opposed to self-publishing.

• What else will Amazon do in 2012? We discuss Kindle Select. It’s basically a way for self-publishers to put their book into the Kindle Prime lending program where members can borrow books. Amazon has put $500,000 in a pot and that is shared pro-rata depending on how many books & how many borrowed. You have to commit to 90 days exclusivity, so you can’t publish it elsewhere. It’s not an income strategy really. But what is interesting is that you can put your book for free for 5 days so you can control your timing on using free as a marketing tactic. Steven isn’t happy about this as he says we’re training readers that books should be free. I disagree and point to CJ Lyons’ article here as she uses free as a teaser to boost the sales of her other books. Steven has a full article here on KDP Select  if you want to read the long version. Amazon’s job is to make an offer and it’s up to the author to decide what’s best for their book. We’ll also re-examine this after at least a month’s worth of data.
   
• Check out David Gaughran’s article on KDP Select: How much do you want to be paid tomorrow?
  

• Steven gets upset at my comparison of KDP Select to a library. My point is that it’s more about marketing and getting your books in front of more people. Personally, I will probably put one book into KDP Select but keep most of them out.

• Will there be better tools for authors in 2012? Steven says it’s unlikely we will get much further than the basic formatting for mainstream books. I mention the FutureBook conference where I met publishers doing some really interesting work with transmedia and apps. This is something that we as self-publishers can’t do ourselves so if you have these ideas for cross-media ideas it would be better to work with a publisher. Authors also underestimate the amount of time to do all the things you can do and focusing on what will work for you. It’s a triathlon – you write, publish and promote but promotion also goes on forever. The cost is often in the time.

• If we’re basically seeing an expansion of mainstream print books, we have to get better at marketing. Reading works as it is, there doesn’t have to be a change. You really still only have to write books. You don’t have to do apps and all that multi-media. I’m interested in doing audiobooks. Steven has some experience of this and doesn’t find it a huge market but it’s definitely something that we are keen on taking further. It’s not about the money, more about the marketing.

• Amazon moving into international markets. I specifically want India to come online as a huge English speaking market. We note how Amazon keeps surprising us. There are no rumours, they just do it. They can move into these countries very easily and will do as soon as they are ready. Steven & I get annoyed about all the differences in pricing and sales tax.

• Advertising in ebooks. Authors will do it and Amazon is also putting ads on the Kindle. Steven even likes the advertising on his Kindle as it offers things the reader wants. Seth Godin with the Domino Project did get companies to sponsor the book and give it away for free. It’s not radically different to what we are used to now. Authors will also be able to advertise in each others books. Bloggers can join in an advertising network, so why not authors? Join in an advertising campaign and see what happens with it. You definitely need to use your Kindle book to advertise your own books. Make sure you hyperlink to Buy Now for each of the books you have available. Think about linking up with other authors and advertise each others but be careful.

• We talk about Scrivener and exporting to Kindle formats. The pros and cons. Check out David Hewson’s book “Writing a book on Scrivener“

• Amazon continues to dominate but we discuss Kobo which has great statistics, like when people stop reading your book & people can interact socially about it. Nook Color vs Kindle Fire. What’s happening with the other players in the market? It’s very hard to challenge Amazon’s place in the market now, they are so entrenched. They are also selling their devices at less than cost. It would be great to see some decent challenge to Amazon as with great power comes great responsibility and with all our eggs in one basket, they could turn around and change royalty rates later.

• As indies getting on everything other than Amazon KDP, our options are Smashwords and BookBaby, that’s about it. Will there be other options for us? or will Smashwords expand their offering. We love Smashwords but recognise the immense amount of work it is for Mark Coker to manage the company now it’s really taken off.

• Steven reckons Amazon will play hardball with the other players in 2012, e.g. asking for exclusivity. They also might move to a verification method for self-publishing e.g. paying $50 instead of free. It’s Amazon’s reputation at risk with the crap that is flooding the store. Serialization may also become available as a new model. Exciting times overall!

You can find Steven at Taleist.com and also on Twitter @Rule17

What do you think will happen in publishing in 2012?

 

Podcast: Download (Duration: 43:16 — 25.5MB)

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

When Google launched Google Plus (Google+) a few months ago in their latest attempt to gain a foothold in the social media world, a lot of people weren’t sure whether to applaud the move or bemoan the fact that we had another place to try to build a community.

After all, the world of social media isn’t exactly lacking in things to keep authors who want to market their books occupied. You can work on building a tribe on Facebook, promote and connect with people in your niche on Twitter, keep track of colleagues and discussions on LinkedIn, and maintain relations with readers on Goodreads. Isn’t that enough?

 

The New Kid Has Some New Tricks

And yet Google+ quickly grew to millions of members and is now the fastest-growing social media site in history. Faster than Facebook, faster than Twitter, faster than LinkedIn. Right now, by recent estimates, there are already more than 40 million people using the service.

There are really good reasons it’s become so popular so quickly. Some of these reasons make Google+ a great location for authors. Let’s take a look at three features that distinguish Google+ from the other networks we’ve come to know, and see where these features present opportunities for self-published authors.

Circling

Before talking about the features, take a moment to enjoy the look and feel of Google+. I don’t know about you, but I find the Facebook interface—at least the last time I looked—to be quite busy and distracting. Twitter, of course, isn’t encumbered with much of an interface, since it’s mostly a stream of short text messages.

Contrast that to Google+, which bears the mark of most Google designs. Simple, spare, blue and white, and lots of “negative” space make it seem clean and functional, focusing your attention on the content that’s being shared rather than the accoutrements of the interface.

On Google+ there are no “followers.” Instead you can “circle” people and they can circle you. But you don’t just add people to a circle; you can have many circles if you like, and each can have its own uses. For instance, you can sort people you circle into different areas, like high school friends, colleagues, friends you like to play music with, or bloggers who review books. People can be in more than one circle, too.

When it becomes time to share something, you decide which circles will receive it, or if it’s available to the public (that is, anyone at all on Google+).

This solves the ongoing problem I have with Facebook, and I suspect a lot of you have too: mixing personal and professional contacts. With Google+, the ability to segment your interests is built into the program, an intrinsic part of its functioning.

One thing that this makes immediately obvious is that you can craft messages, shares and announcements for specific groups. Authors can easily maintain lists of book reviewers, readers, media contacts, editors, designers, and other authors.Segmentation is the foundation of direct marketing, so this ability alone gives you the opportunity to market in new ways.

You can also follow the circles other people have put together, which is a quick way to gain access to the updates and information being published by leaders in your field.

Hangouts

One of the amazing features Google+ incorporated from the beginning is Hangouts, the ability to have quick video chats with other Google+ users.

If you’ve ever wrestled with videoconferencing software or services, this is an amazing feature. With no more effort than just clicking the “start a hangout” button and inviting others to join you, you can instantly have a real-time video conference right inside Google+.

Authors could use this capability for face-to-face meetings with their editors, to have a chat with a designer, or to bring in virtual assistants and marketing people for a strategy session on a book launch. The ideas for hangouts are pretty endless, and that’s even before you start using them to connect to readers.

Shares

Some people have tried to explain Google+ as being somewhere between Twitter’s rapid-fire text updates and Facebook’s robust photo- and video-sharing abilities.

But Google+ is really different from both other services, and one reason is the flexibility of sharing. On Twitter, of course, you’re limited to 140 text-only characters, although updates are often used for links to other content.

On Facebook, the status updates are limited to 420 characters, enough to write a very, very short story perhaps (see Lou Beech for examples). On Google+, I don’t think there’s much of a limit. You can post a one sentence update, and it makes sense. Or you can post an entire article if you like, with photos, videos or other content as part of it. Darren Rowse, for instance, the author and professional blogger, uses Google+ this way to communicate with his vast tribe.

This flexibility combines really well with the ability to segment your lists, since not all communications with all communities can be made to conform to the same restrictions. For instance,

• you might want to send a 300-word article to your community similar to an email update.
• short messages to marketing partners like affiliates or other authors in a blog network are just as easy.
• personal messages with a photo gallery from a trip or celebration can easily be shared with friends and family.

Altogether, Google+ has made a big impression on the social media community. Many users report spending a lot less time on Facebook, as the clean, uncluttered, and easy-to-use interface attracts them. Others say they enjoy the longer communications possible and don’t market quite as much on Twitter. There are communities of authors, readers, and lots of other kinds of people forming on Google+.

All of these developments will become more and more important to you as an author as the service continues to grow. Google has just recently added the ability to create pages for businesses, brands, products and companies.

The more Google+ grows, the more Google will combine it with its search, video, and advertising streams, and that combination is potentially explosive. I think you should be on Google+, and it looks like it’s going to be a great destination for some time to come.

If you have a Google account, you can just go fill out your profile and spend some time checking it out. I think you’ll like what you see.

Google+ Resources for Writers

Debbie Ohi’s master list of literary people on Google+
The Mashable.com Guide to Google+
Book reviewer Natalie Luhrs’ site on Google+
Jason Boog’s GalleyCat roundup of writers on Google+

This article was originally published as “Is Google+ Good for Writers?” on CreateSpace.com on November 17, 2011

 

 

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

This post, by Steve Piacente, originally appeared on his site on 12/10/11 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

Mainstream newspapers – even struggling, mid-sized papers – seem to look at Indie authors the way the hot girls in high school looked at the manager of the football team. You’re nice, but you really don’t expect me to date you, do you?

This situation was different, I thought, because I had been the mainstream newspaper’s Washington correspondent for a decade. I didn’t want special treatment, only a look, and figured my time at the Charleston, S.C. paper would get my self-published novel into the hands of the book editor.

The book did reach editor Bill Thompson, who politely informed me that the newspaper:

–       Will not consider paperbacks, eBooks, self-published, textbooks, or children’s books.

–       Only publishes 325 reviews a year, and there are 60,000 hardcovers from “legitimate” publishers released in the U.S. alone each year, plus 250,000 paperbacks.

NO OFFENSE, BUT …

The paper’s reviewers are unpaid volunteers who “insist” on “legit” hardcovers. Thompson said this was no reflection on any individual book, “but rather on the totality of the self-publishing field, which, as a rule, has tended to produce books of grossly inferior literary quality.”

Ouch.

He added, ”To be candid, and meaning no offense, no book review editor I know (and I am a member of three different professional associations), will have anything to do with them.”

Double ouch. But Indies should know what they’re facing.

The only time mainstream papers seem interested is when a success story rises up and forces them to pay attention. This is one of the latest, from The Wall Street Journal.

Thompson says he gets 25-30 new hardcover books each day. Worse, book coverage has gone from one-half of his job to about one-sixth. That’s because the Post and Courier’s features team has shrunk from 17 people to four, and the workload hasn’t let up. “I’m getting 100 emails a day just from New York publishers. This doesn’t count the 47 local arts groups and 60 area writers I’m trying to cover.”

OLD WAYS HAVE GOTTEN RUSTY

I pushed back, saying that technology has changed the world, and newspapers clearly haven’t kept pace. The situation in Charleston is not unique. Newspapers everywhere are in trouble, which is why it strikes me as odd that execs would cling so hard to old ways that clearly aren’t working.

As Thompson struggles to do more with less, he says he’s “bombarded by self-publishing houses and their authors … That some writers of worthy books cannot get them published through conventional means is unfair and regrettable. But the fact remains our reviewers do not want them. Nor does management, for that matter.”

Declaring every Indie author unworthy seems unjust, especially when this sentiment comes from folks who are supposed to help separate worthy from unworthy, whether it’s books, politicians or pro athletes. Aren’t feature writers journalists? The Code of Ethics calls for journalists to: seek truth and report it; minimize harm; act independently, and to be accountable.

So to whom are reviewers accountable to when they won’t even consider Indie authors?

Thompson says he doesn’t have the time to separate the wheat from the chaff. “As a book review editor of 31 years, I have a critic’s mentality, and a critic’s belief in the importance of sustaining standards of excellence,” he says. “With few exceptions, self-publishing is the antithesis of this ethic.”

WHO STILL USES INK?

I see it this way: Back in the dark ages (like about five years ago), if you wanted to be an author, you’d write a book, scour the city for an agent, and, if the stars aligned, get one and sign with a big-time publisher. That’s how it worked – there was one key to the literary castle. If you didn’t get the key, and all you got to write were letters home.

If you did land an agent, he or she would need enough gumption to snag a publisher. If not, story over.

Technology has changed the game by providing a direct path to prospective readers. Screw the middleman. Tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have enabled writers to find cover artists, illustrators, trailers, editors, web designers, and, most importantly, readers. Sure, we’d like a newspaper review, but that’s just one of many avenues.

The trick is figuring out how to distinguish your work from the glut competing for people’s attention. It’s true that the good news is the same as the bad news – anyone can publish pretty much anything. My hope is that, as with any other product coming to market, the cream will rise.

As a former journalist, I like this. It’s got a democratic feel to it. There used to be a saying about not arguing with folks who bought ink by the barrel, meaning reporters always got the last word. Perhaps that day has passed. Is anyone still using ink?

 

Amazon today announced a new service offering for authors and publishers who upload to their KDP platform: KDP Select. Writer beware.

At first glance, the program looks enticing. Amazon has created a $500,000 monthly pool of cash they’ll distribute to participating authors based on the number of times your book is borrowed from their new lending library.

As they note in their FAQ, if your book accounts for 1.5% of the downloads during the monthly lending period, you’ll earn 1.5% of the pot, or in this case $7,500.

But there’s a catch. Actually, multiple catches, which are outlined in their Terms and Conditions:
 

1. For the time your book is enrolled in the program, you cannot distribute or sell your book anywhere else. Not Apple, not Barnes & Noble, not Smashwords, not Kobo, not Sony, not even your own personal blog or web site. Your title must be 100% exclusive to Amazon.
2. If you violate their exclusivity terms at any point during the three-month enrollment period, or you unpublish your book to remove it from the program so you can distribute your book elsewhere, you risk forfeited earnings, delayed payments, a lien on future earnings, or you may get kicked out of the Kindle Direct Publishing program altogether.
3. Your enrollment, and thus your liability to Amazon, automatically renews every three months if you neglect to opt out.

Amazon has also modified the Kindle Direct Platform’s user interface with the effect of making it almost difficult not to enroll your books. Where they once placed their pull down menu for managing your book’s settings, they’ve now placed the enrollment link. The pull down settings menu is moved to the bottom of their dashboard.

Let’s examine the implications for this new program, not only for authors but for the nascent ebook industry as well.

When authors enroll a title in the program, they’re contractually obligated to remove their books from all other distribution channels.

Wow. Most indie authors appreciate their independence. This rule is quite restrictive.

Impact on authors:

• Forces the author to remove the book from sale from the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Smashwords and others, thereby causing the author to lose out on sales from competing retailers.
   
• By unpublishing a title from any retailer, the author destroys any accrued sales rank, making their book less visible and less discoverable when and if they reactivate distribution to competing retailers
   
• Makes the author more dependent upon Amazon for sales. Do you want to become a tenant farmer, 100% dependent upon a single retailer? As some of you history buffs may know, tenant farming, and the abuses of power by landlords, was a primary contributor behind the great Irish potato famine.

Impact on competing retailers:

• Harms other retailers by denying them access to your book.
   
• Many authors will permanently stop distributing to Amazon’s competitors once they become fully dependent upon Amazon for the lion’s share of their earnings
   
• Motivates more customers to purchase at Amazon since Amazon has this exclusive content.
   
• Discourages formation of new ebook retailers around the world

The new Amazon KDP Select program strikes me as a startling example of a predatory business practice Amazon has the opportunity to leverage their dominance as the world’s largest ebook retailer (and world’s largest payer to indie authors) to attain monopolistic advantage by effectively denying its competing retailers (Apple, B&N, Kobo, Sony, etc) access to the books from indie authors.

The move will also make it more difficult for new retailers operating outside the US to gain footholds in their respective markets if they lose fair access to the content readers want to read.

Amazon might argue that indie ebooks today only account for a fraction of overall book industry sales. True, but that fraction is growing quickly as indies scale all the best-seller charts. This trend will continue as more and more professional authors turn their back on traditional book publishers in favor of self-publishing. Amazon is smart. They understand indies are the future of book publishing.

European Commission and US Department of Justice Unwittingly Working to Create Amazon Monopoly

Amazon’s new service offering comes at a time when the European Commission and even the US Department of Justice

are scrutinizing the legality of agency ebook pricing. Agency ebook pricing, as you’ll recall (see my     blog post last year on our move to agency pricing) allows authors and publishers to set their own price and receive higher royalty rates. Amazon is a long time foe of agency, and as a result is probably enjoying a virtual wet dream as they savor the implications of potential restrictions against the agency model. 

If agency pricing is limited or overturned, it would allow Amazon to price ebooks at below cost and effectively eliminate the profitability of all its competing retailers. This would also discourage the formation of new competitors. It’s ironic that the EC and US DOJ are pursuing these ill-advised campaigns that could lead to less competition in the ebook market, not more.

What the EC and US DOJ fail to realize is that big publishers (the target of these investigations), which (I agree) price their books too high, are becoming less relevant to the future of book publishing as authors lose faith in the myth of big publishing. The problem of high prices from big publishers is not an agency issue, it’s big publishers pricing their books too high.

Agency Pricing Enables Indie Authors and Small Publishers to Lower Prices

Despite fears to the contrary, we see evidence at Smashwords that agency pricing might actually encourage lower book prices. Indies, which are enjoying great benefits from the agency model (Smashwords only distributes to agency retailers), are using agency to offer customers lower prices, not higher prices. The average ebook at Smashwords is priced under $5.00, and we have over 15,000 books priced at FREE. Why do indies price their books lower when they have the freedom to charge anything they want? The reason is that indies realize that consumers value fair prices, and as a result these lower prices give indies a competitive advantage over the large publishers. 

When an indie author can earn 60-70% of list with agency pricing, they can set a lower price yet still earn more per unit than if the book was sold under a wholesale pricing model (where the royalty would equal 43-50% of list). As an example, if an author wants to earn $2.00 from each book they sell, at a 70% agency rate they’d price the book at $2.85. Under the wholesale model (50% discount off list), they’d need to price the same book at $4.00. 

The agency model puts profits in the pockets of the author or publisher, where it belongs, while allowing the retailer to earn a fair profit. Agency pricing relieves retailers from the pressure of competing on price and instead forces them to compete on customer experience, such as developing discovery tools and recommendation systems that help match readers with the books they’d enjoy reading. 

How should indie authors respond? Horror might be a good start. Recognize that your long term interests are best served by enabling a vibrant and competitive global ebook retailing ecosystem to develop. Distribute your book to as many retailers as possible. A world of many ebook retailers, all working to attract readers to your books, is much preferable to a world where a single retailer dictates all the terms. 

Obviously, I have a horse in this game. Smashwords is probably the world’s largest distributor of indie ebooks. We publish and distribute over 90,000 ebooks from 33,000 indie authors and small presses around the world. We exist to serve our authors and publishers. We supply Amazon’s competitors. We’d love to supply Amazon as well, but they’re unwilling to provide us agency terms.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Coker‘s Smashwords blog. Also see Amazon Backlash Continues to Build, regarding Amazon’s price comparison app, on Publishers Weekly.