Ebooks

Articles specific to writing and publishing ebooks.

The Ebook Marketplace Could Definitely Confuse The Average Consumer

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This article, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on his The Shatzkin Files blog on The Idea Logical Company site on 9/17/11.

There are no links in this post. I refer to searches done in several ebookstores, but the pages reporting results would be dynamic, so creating a link wouldn’t assure you’d see the same results as I saw. You can replicate the searches and you may or may not see the same thing because the facts might change.

Here’s what the ebook marketplace looks like without agency pricing.

 

Having just polished off Phil Pepe’s “61″ about Roger Maris’s great home run season of 50 years ago, I was ready for my next read. No book has gotten more press on my radar over the past week than the new memoir from Jacqueline Kennedy, transcriptions of interviews she did with historian Arthur Schlesinger just a few months after JFK’s assassination. That looked like a good next choice for me.

(I have learned through the exercise described herein that the book is actually billed as “by Caroline Kennedy”, who controlled the property, edited it, and contracted for its publication and also “by Michael Beschloss”, the historian who wrote the introduction.)

Although I have several readers loaded on my ereading device (the iPhone), I have found myself recently defaulting to the Kindle store because it is the best place for me to browse. It allows me to search very granularly by category and sub-category (which the others don’t) and to array the choices in inverse order of publication (which the others don’t, or if they do, they don’t make it obvious enough how). That’s how I found “61″ and “The House That Ruth Built”, my two most recent reads in baseball history (my favorite subject.)

However, when you know you want a very specific book, all the ebook services are pretty much equivalent. They all let you search by title or author and deliver what you’re looking for. Since I like to spread my reading around to keep up with what the various experiences are like, I decided to search Nook first for “Jacqueline Kennedy”.

And the search engine found 22 items matching my search, the first two of which were what I was looking for.

Sort of.

 

Read the rest of the post on Mike Shatzkin‘s The Shatzkin Files.

I Am Creative. I Am An Author. From Affirmation To Reality.

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**Warning: personal post*

Back in 2007, I was very unhappy in my day job.

In fact, I’ve never been happy in my day job but it paid the bills, enabled me to travel and I met a lot of great people. It was a mixed blessing. I fell into it to repay my student loan and just never escaped. I worked for big companies on computer systems and the work killed any creativity I had in me.

 

yes, that’s really me! Great fun adventures…
 

In 2000, I resigned, left London for the Australian outback and swore never to do it again. My adventures were fantastic but eventually I ran out of money and went back. This cycle repeated itself a number of times… then in 2007, I was really, seriously over it. So I began investigating what else I could do with my life that would be helpful to other people and also enable me to escape the day job.

At the time, I read two books that made a huge impact on me. The Success Principles by Jack Canfield and The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. They talked about following your dreams and also using affirmations to set your intentions. The problem with changing your life is often knowing what you want instead of the status quo. When I looked at what I had always wanted, it was only ever to be a writer.

So I came up with my affirmation “I am creative. I am an author”.

At the time, I was not creative and I was not an author. Sure, I wrote diaries and letters but I couldn’t ever associate the word creative with me. I couldn’t even say this phrase out loud at first. I wrote it down and then started whispering it on the commute home (when no one was around!) I also moved to four days a week at the day job to give myself head-space to write my first book.

In April 2008, I self-published How To Enjoy Your Job…Or Find A New One. I was so happy and proud of myself. I thought I was going to change the world and free millions of IT consultants from their miserable lives. I spent money on printing physical books and did some old-style PR with press releases, radio and even national TV.

But I only sold a few books. Literally, a few. Even with national TV. I was devastated, but wasn’t intending to give up (as the affirmations were really kicking in now!) I also discovered that the book you write will change your life. It really did change mine as I understood what writing a book was like and I had found my purpose.

But I realized that I didn’t actually have a clue about marketing online. I had focused on traditional PR but what about the internet? So I started researching and buying online programs to learn about blogging and podcasting and other things.

 

 

After a couple of other attempts at blogging, I started this site in December 2008 in order to share what I had learned with the failure of my first book. For example, I had spent thousands of dollars on printing books and then discovered print on demand and selling on Amazon. I was determined that no one else would pay the price I did and I wanted to save people time, money and emotional energy on their own journey. I had also started feeling and becoming creative and the name ‘The Creative Penn’ came to me on the commute one day. I claimed the word for myself and have grown into it over time!

Since then, this site has grown and I have personally grown as a writer. Many of you have been here to see the changes over time. Thank you for sharing the journey with me so far. I have also continued to invest in my education as an online marketer and I absolutely love our online author community. In February this year, I published Pentecost, my first novel, which has now sold over 11,000 copies and remains an Amazon bestseller. The sequel, Prophecy is on its way.

So in August 2011, I decided that my affirmation has been fulfilled. I am creative and I am an author. I wanted to share this with you as encouragement as I know the fears that come with writing and the doubts that plague us. I’m an introvert too and have been crushed and hurt along the way. But I am also truly excited about the years to come as we are part of an incredible change in the industry.

So, all this background is to prepare you for my big news.

I have resigned my day job as an IT consultant in order to focus on my fiction writing and also on The Creative Penn community of writers and authors.

This is not a decision taken lightly (and yes, I have been saving for a while so there is a cushion). This has been coming since that day in 2007 when I just couldn’t take any more but it has taken this long to make a change that my risk-averse nature can bear. I can see the way forward as an indie author and also as someone who can contribute to the creative community. I’m ready to make the leap!

What does this mean for you?

This blog makes me happy :) I don’t mean to sound cheesy but I love to be useful and sharing what works (and what doesn’t), as well as lessons learned, is very satisfying. I love getting emails from you and I love the comments. I hope you continue to find the site useful.

So you will still be getting the same quality of free information in terms of articles, audios and videos – nothing changes with the baseline of what you already get on this site. I love sharing and interviewing people and this is a great community, so stick around.

But this change gives me 40-50 extra hours per week (wow!) and so the following will also become available:

  • More fiction. If you enjoyed Pentecost, you will love Prophecy and now I will have more time to write! I’m going to be spending every morning writing fiction and every afternoon on this business, so expect the fiction back-list to be growing. Yes, I still want to be a Kindle millionaire :) Also, I will be starting a new blog for my fiction readers who are a different audience to this one.
  • Webinars – I will be doing 1 free tele-seminar a month on a specific topic. It will relate to my Author 2.0 mini-courses and there will be offers at the end but the webinar itself will be free so you’ll get 60 mins quality info and get to ask your questions. Recordings will be available to those who sign up. The first one is on Blogging for Authors but it is now full-up so if you missed this one, be ready for next month which I notify to my email list first.

There will also be Paid webinars. 90 mins of outstanding content with the recording and material available afterwards as well as Q&A and writing critiques. These will be paid for events that you can attend live or receive the recordings later. The first one will be on Writing A Fight Scene with awesome martial artist and author Alan Baxter – You can listen to a 40 min audio & video with Alan here as a taster of what’s to come but the webinar will be so much more. Click here to register your interest and we’ll let you know when it is scheduled. The cost will be US$20 and places are limited.

  • Multi-media courses. You can already buy Blogging for Authors and Writers and Ebook Publishing as multi-media courses and I will be developing other offerings in this space. I will be bringing out How to launch your book online and also a product on writing your first book. I will also be revamping and re-releasing my full Author 2.0 program. (Anyone who has already bought it at the existing price will continue to get all the revamped modules and extra bonus material – it’s a lifetime membership but the price will be going up).
  • Services. Every day I am asked to recommend people for ebook formatting, cover design, editing, blog building or marketing. In order to expand The Creative Penn, I will be partnering with special people to offer packages that give you value with people I can personally vouch for. To kick-start this, you can now get Kindle formatting for your book packages – click here for more information.

I hope you can see The Creative Penn becoming a resource hub for writers and authors, a community where we can help each other and learn together.

I’m looking forward to the next step (which is just slightly outside my comfort zone!).

Please let me know your thoughts about these changes. Are there any other ways I can help you?

 

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

Writing a One-Page Business Plan: 5 Questions A Self-Publisher Must Ask

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Whether you are about to self-publish your first book, or start a micro-niche publishing company, you need to have a business plan in place. A business plan will give you a basic road map for your new business. An easy and quick way to do this is to create a one-page business plan. This will let you quickly clarify your own thinking about your new business. This short, one-page plan can also be used as an outline for a longer more in-depth plan. With some research, you should be able to complete this one-page plan in under one week. Here is a list of five questions that you must include in your simplified, one-page business plan.

1. WHY do you want to self-publish?
Your answer cannot be only about the money. It needs something more than that. It also needs to be short, very specific, and very personal.

Examples:
a. “I want to write a book that will help new nurses be more productive, more effective, and more marketable in today’s tight job market.”

b. “I want to write small-business management books so that I can share my knowledge and expertise with others that would like to start their own small-business. I gained this knowledge and experience over the last 35 years while starting and managing my own successful small-business.”

c. “I want to write and self-publish a book to give myself more credibility in the eyes of my peers.”

2. WHAT will you write about?
Explain it in one sentence, in very specific detail. You must understand what your writing niche, or specialty, will be.

Examples:
a. “I will write and publish books about all aspects of self-publishing for people who have not written a book before.”

b. “I will write a how-to book for experienced nurses who want to advance to become part of nursing management in a hospital.”

c. “I will write a how-to guide for new parents who are raising a deaf child.”

3. WHO is your market?
You must narrow this down to a very specific group of people. Your answer cannot be “everybody and anybody”. You must know exactly who buys your type of book. You only have a limited amount of time and money for marketing and promotion. You must target your best efforts at those who are most likely to buy your book. Keep your answer down to a few tight sentences.

a. “The market for my book is American nursing students that are in nursing school, or have just graduated as RN’s with an AS or BS degree in nursing and are searching for their first job. They are generally females between 20 and 26 years of age. Half of them like to read a hard-copy of a book; the other half like to read the ebook version. They are very worried about getting a job after graduation, because the nursing shortage has ended.”

4. HOW do you define success?
You might spend the next twelve months writing your first book. And then a year later you are selling less than 8 copies a month on Amazon. Therefore, you must come to terms with what success means to you. Does success mean seeing your name on the cover of a book? Does it mean being able to give each of your customers a copy of your book so that they will have more admiration and respect for you? Does success mean getting letters and emails from people who read your book – telling you that your book has helped them in some positive way? We all can agree that making a lot of money is great – and is possible as a self-publisher – but it cannot be your only motivation for writing a book. Therefore, you should write a paragraph here about how you define success for your book.

5. HOW hard are you willing to work at it?
How much time and hard work are you willing to put into your self-publishing venture? This is probably the step that you must put the most honest thinking and most thought into. Are you willing to spend most of your time marketing and selling your book? Your book might take 6 to 12 months to write. But you will spend the next several years marketing and promoting it. Are you willing to put yourself out there and market and promote yourself, your name, and your book, the for next several years?  Are you willing to keep writing and building your next book? The more time and effort that you put into your self-publishing venture, the more success you will have. It will be much easier to go the distance if you love your subject matter. And the more you love your subject matter, the more successful you will be at self-publishing. It is as simple as that.

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

Are Amazon Just A Vanity Press Of The Worst Kind – Or Are They Being Paid Off?

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This post, by Ali Cooper, orignally appeared on her site on 9/20/11.

When Amazon launched the kindle, they offered a great new publishing opportunity to independent authors and publishers. Individual authors and small presses alike could publish their books to kindle and reach the growing audience of ebook readers.

Previously, only the biggest publishers with a high financial turnover were able to market their books to more than a handful of the book-buying public. It is no secret that they controlled the market by buying display space in shops and reviews in the national press, pushing a small selection of books under the noses of readers and tempting them with cheap deals. Small presses, by contrast, could only afford more costly short print runs, only to have their books consigned to the shadowy back shelves of bookshops – if they were stocked at all.

So the opportunity offered by Amazon levelled the playing field for small and individual publishers, allowing them to compete at a price equal to or lower than most mainstream books, along with online forums where authors or their representatives could, within reason, tell readers about their books. This was made available, first in US, then extended to authors and publishers in other countries, and, as each market developed, Amazon tempted small publishers with a larger share of the revenue.

By Easter of this year, many authors and small publishers – especially of the more mass market books – were enjoying a generous and regular income from ebooks. Almost all made their books available in a variety of formats, distributed by different retailers, but, due to the success of the kindle, combined with the opportunity to interact with readers on the Amazon forum, most found that this provided by far the biggest portion of their income. Many authors were giving up their day jobs to write full time, in order to satisfy the demand from their fans for more books. And new small presses – essential for nurturing new talent and launching new authors into the mainstream – were beginning to flourish.

Then, suddenly, without warning, Amazon called time. Forum posters were forbidden to post links to their books or to promote them on amazon.com’s site apart from in a newly-created jumbled author area. Where previously they had been on virtual shelves in a bookshop, sorted according to subject and genre, they were all thrown in a heap into one bargain bin out the back.

 

Read the rest of the post on Ali Cooper‘s site.

The 10 Reasons That Convinced Me To Become A Self-Publisher

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Here I share my favorite reasons for becoming a self-publisher. Some reasons are much more important to me than they might be to you. But I am certain that on this list you will find a reason that is important or intriguing to you. I hope that you find one that gets your internal capitalist into gear, and gets you onto a new path too.

1. Retain Ownership: As a self-publisher you retain complete control and ownership of the book – forever. I’m sure that for all of you reading this article, this is a very important reason – as it was for me.

2. Instant Credibility: The book will instantly give you credibility – and help boost your career or business. We all want this. The more professional your book is, the more credibility you will have with your audience. With self-publishing you can easily and quickly make improvements to your book – especially with an ebook.

3. Control Fate of My Book: As a self-publisher you control the fate of your book – not some publisher that has no interest in your book or subject other than how much money they can make from you. Self-publishers are writing and publishing books because we love our subject, and want to share our knowledge with others.

4. Speed to Market: Traditional publishers take way too long to bring your book to the market. A big publisher would think that you are a silly fool to believe that you could get your book into a world-wide audience within a few weeks. But of course, we now all know that we can – and do.

5. Plenty of Help Available: As a self-publisher you can choose to be involved with as much, or as little, of the creative process. Self-publishing is where you, the author, bypass all the intermediaries that are involved in traditional publishing. These intermediaries do the editing, designing, illustrating, marketing, promotion, etc., of your book. As a self-publisher these functions will typically be your job. Although, you can easily hire people to do these functions for you and still be considered a self-publisher. As a self-publisher you get to choose which functions you want to do, and which ones you need to hire someone to help you with.

6. Keep All Profits: As a self-publisher you keep all of the profits. A traditional publisher will keep almost all of the profits. Then, after several months, when your book sales start to slow down, they will dump you for someone else that is more profitable for them. Even if your book makes you just a few hundred dollars a year, these profits will come to you year, after year, after year. The more effort you put into making your book look professional, and into your marketing and sales, the more profit you will make. You have complete control as to how much success your book will have.

7. Low Entry Cost: It is much less costly to produce a book now than it has ever been before. You can get an ebook online with a big-name website for free within minutes. You can also get your book accepted by a big-name print-on-demand company that will distribute your book to the entire market for about $112. Additional expenses like ISBN fees, and CIP fees, will add about $100. Hiring a professional cover designer can be anywhere from $250 to $750.

8. My Knowledge of The Market: With some effort and study, you can do a much better job promoting your book than a traditional publisher can. This is especially true when your book is directly related to your career or business. You know your market, your audience, your customers, and your readers, much better than anyone else does. This intimate knowledge of their needs is what will help make your book and career a success.

9. Niche for Success: Your book’s subject might fit into a very small niche – one that is too small for a traditional publisher to even bother with. Filling a small, tight niche is where the money is for many self-publishers.

10. Creative Outlet: Self-publishing is a great way to satisfy your need to be creative – writing, designing, and illustrating – as well as being creative with marketing, advertising, and promotion. Self-publishing will force you to be creative in many areas.

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

The 10 Commandments To Becoming A Financially Successful Self-Publisher

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1. Publish Ebook First: Start with an ebook (pdf and epub) first. This is the easiest and fastest way to get started. Creating an ebook first will also allow you to get some feed-back from your readers, and make adjustments to your book accordingly. After you get your ebook online and get all the kinks worked out, then add a print-on-demand paperback edition.

 2. Stick To Your Niche: Your book should be directly aligned with your market niche. For many self-publishers, success comes from focusing their book, and their marketing, at their particular niche. Part of sticking to your niche is that you must learn about and understand the subject of branding.

3. Design A Great Cover: Spend a lot of time developing and designing a great cover. Design many sample covers for your book. Especially look at books that have a similar topic as your does. If you are not creative, and have the money, pay a professional to do the cover design for you.

4. Perfect the Contents: Spend a lot of time perfecting and editing the contents of your book. Make improvements and corrections even after it is published.

5. Get Testimonials: Make great efforts to get testimonials and endorsements. You must never stop asking other guru’s in your industry and celebrities to write them for you. Keep adding them to your book and to your book’s blog. Convince one of these guru’s or celebrities to write your book’s foreword.

6. Set-up Blog: Set-up a blog to support your book. This is not difficult or expensive. By far the best way to do this is to set up a blog with a big company like WordPress. These blogs are specifically designed to be user friendly.  They are also designed to work very well with search engines like Google.

7. Max-Out Third-Party Websites: Max-out your use of every website that lists your book. Many websites, such as Amazon, allow you to add a large amount of information about yourself and your book. Doing this will be like giving your book another website devoted to you and your book. Take advantage of everything Amazon has to offer.

8. Avoid Bookstores: Do not put your book into the bookstores by using a wholesaler or distributor. This step is for much more advance publishers, and self-publishers with big bank accounts. Bookstores sell very few books – especially by self-publishers that are not big-name celebrities.

9. Use All Major Online Retailers: Get your book into every major outlet such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble online, Scribd, etc. – just to mention the major ones. Using services like SmashWords, BookBaby, and Lightning Source, will get you into the big-name ebook outlets. Also, some professional organizations allow their members to list their book in the organization’s catalog.

10. Market, Market, Market: Getting your book online is the easy part. Making your book financially successful is the time-consuming part. But now, because of the internet, it is not difficult. The more effort you put into marketing and promotion, the more financial success your book will have. Even if you are not a business-minded person, you will find that marketing and promotion is a very interesting process.

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

8 Reasons Self-Publishing is Entering a Golden Age

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Whenever a discussion about self-publishing gets heated, you can be sure someone will say, “If we let just anybody publish a book, soon we’ll be buried in bad, unedited books and all the good ones will be lost in a sea of crap!”

There were over 350,000 books published in the U.S. last year, more than ever. And that doesn’t include the hundreds of thousands of books moved to print-on-demand servers and assigned ISBNs, and therefore “published.”

I don’t feel buried, do you? Where are all those books? Apparently it’s not that easy to find them. You have to actually make an effort. You won’t get downed in some tsunami of badness, you have to go looking and jump in.

The Real Shame of It All

Writers who are waiting for the gatekeeper to come and open the gate may have a long wait ahead of them, and that’s too bad.

You know why? Because we’re about to enter a real golden age of self-publishing. There is no denying the fact that a whole lot of people have something to say and are busy writing their books. They want to publish, put their thoughts, their history, their research, their story into the arena, and why not?

It might seem overblown to call it a golden age, but I think it’s really happening, and here’s why:

8 Reasons We’re Entering a Golden Age of Self-Publishing

  1. The playing field is leveling—Net neutrality ensures the internet stays equally available to all. As far as online business is concerned, each book competes on its own. In this environment it’s your passion, persistence and pluck that will sell your book, and that’s within your power.
     
  2. There’s easy access to tools and professionals—In order to make top-quality books, you need people with top-quality skills. Part of the downsizing of the publishing industry has been the upsizing of the freelance marketplace, where every talent you need to build a superior book is available.
     
  3. Social media marketing—The person-to-person communication that typifies social media can be scaled through smart use of sites where your readers congregate. When you get involved in social media you can begin to build community based on your own personality and ability to communicate, not on huge advertising budgets. Social media, blogging, forums all drive traffic and can make your book a success outside normal promotional channels.
     
  4. Elimination of production risk—Digital printing and print-on-demand distribution have eliminated almost all of the production risk of publishing. Book printing, storage and fulfillment are the dominant costs in publishing and this new system makes it possible to get into print for almost nothing. It’s now cheaper to publish a book than to copy one at Kinko’s.
     
  5. Prejudices are starting to crack—More authors are moving to ebooks, and ebooks are even easier to self-publish than print books. The attraction of 70% royalties is strong, of course, but so is the ability to control your own publication, something that’s long been denied to authors. Publishers have given over more responsibility to authors to build their own platform, to do a lot of their own marketing. But this has also empowered authors to take the autonomy and exercise real choices over their own publications.
     
  6. The softening definition of books—We are in the beginning of a transition to ebooks, although print books look like they have plenty of life left in them. Book traditions of hundreds of years are still strong, and this may be one of the last times most people in the world will have learned to read from books printed on paper. Books are already beginning to stretch and change, and ebook markets are equally friendly to new forms and formats for textual content as they are to digital texts that are made to look like “books.” All kinds of writing and information products will find life in print that were simply uneconomical to produce before.
     
  7. The globalizing force of the internet—Ebooks and apps have opened the world market to books in electronic form without regard to national boundaries, an unprecedented development in publishing that will continue to have a greater and greater effect.
     
  8. Mobile technology—The spread of mobile computing technology has increased the amount of reading in the world. Now we read everywhere, and the digitization of books into ebooks and apps has opened the whole world of smart phones, tablets, MP3 players, and other devices to books, a phenomenon that has never existed before. The average smartphone user can now carry in her pocketbook a massive library that would have dwarfed entire home libraries just a few years ago. And there are over 50 million smartphones alone in use around the world.

Well, that’s my list. I think we’ve only seen the beginning of the curve, and it’s heading up.

What do you see in the future of self-publishing?

 

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

Indie Author Guide Webinar Series Launches With Free, Monthly, Open Q&A Sessions

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I’ve been a guest speaker for numerous webinars and have found them to be an excellent way to deliver presentations. Now that my book, The Indie Author Guide: Self-Publishing Strategies Anyone Can Use, is coming up on its one year anniversary since release, many of you are hoping to get your books available for sale in Kindle format in time for the holidays, and thousands of folks will soon have completed NaNoWriMo manuscripts and will be looking for next steps, I’ve decided to launch a series of my own webinars.

The foundation of my new webinar series is a free, monthly, hourlong Q&A session.

This monthly webinar is intended to serve as a supplement to my book, and therefore questions based on specific content from the book will take precedence. However, anyone may attend to get answers to any questions they may have about self-publishing, ebooks, author platform and related topics. The first of these webinars is already scheduled for Sunday, October 2 from 6-7pm PST (9-10pm EST). Register for the free Oct. 2nd Q&A here.

I’m planning to continue this free, monthly Q&A webinar at the same time on the first Sunday of each month, and will promote each webinar in advance on Twitter, Facebook, on my Indie Author Blog and elsewhere. The webinars will be presented with a mix of presentation materials and live chat. No special equipment or phone-in will be required of attendees, and you don’t even have to download any software!

In addition to the free, monthly Q&A, I’ll be offering more in-depth, webinar training workshops on specific topics of interest to self-publishers.

First up, based on a high level of interest in the topic, will be a webinar workshop on Simplified Kindle Publishing: Step By Step. In this webinar you can get plain English instructions in: how to get your manuscript properly formatted to meet Amazon’s Kindle specifications, convert it to Kindle format using free conversion tools, preview the resulting Kindle book (with or without a Kindle) and what to do if there are problems in the file when you preview it.

NOTE: the instruction given in the Kindle Publishing webinar will be specific to Windows PC users, please do not register for it if you are a Mac or Linux user.

Additional, upcoming webinar workshop topics will include Leveraging Amazon, Getting Started With Author Platform, Getting Started With Social Media, and Low- and No-Cost Book Marketing Opportunites. Again, details to be posted in the locations listed above as they become available.

I’m very excited about this great opportunity to provide you with the tools and skills needed to self-publish and promote your books as effectively as possible, and hope to "meet" many of you in my webinars soon!


April L. Hamilton is the founder and Editor in Chief of Publetariat.

Former Random House Author Self-Publishes Thriller that Views 9/11 from New Perspective

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This post, by Kristen Tsetsi, originally appeared on her blog on 9/10/11.

As self-publishing becomes an increasingly popular option for writers of all kinds (the good and the not so good, those who have tried the agent route and those who haven’t), there are those who continue to cling – and probably will for some time – to the idea that self-publishing is an avenue for the author whose work just isn’t good enough for traditional publishers. No matter how many times or by how many reputable reviewers a quality self-published work has been vetted, there are reviewers who simply won’t look at it if it’s self-published, and there are readers (who usually also happen to be writers) who will snub it because it’s self-published.

 

But that obviously doesn’t stop quality self-published work from entering the marketplace, and from quality authors. In fact, more and more established authors (for example, NYT bestselling author James C. Moore, who self-published his Sci-Fi/Mystery novel In the Time of Man using Kindle’s DTP service) seem to be joining the masses of lesser-known authors who couldn’t find a home with a publisher because their work either didn’t fit into a genre mold or would be difficult to market.

David Raterman, who has written books for National Geographic and Knopf/Random House (and who also worked two years for CARE in ex-Soviet Tajikistan), is yet another writer who decided to self-publish after trying to do it the old fashioned way. He recently released his debut thriller novel, The River Panj, in an e-version for Kindle, Nook, Smashwords, and the Sony e-reader, and as a trade paperback through CreateSpace.

Here are excerpts from a couple of rejections he received from editors before finally deciding to release it himself (he shares these rejections on his website):

The vividness of Raterman’s descriptions are stunning and I can certainly see what it is that has you so enthusiastic about his work. However, I am concerned that the book’s subject—while timely—has fiction readers a bit weary and unless it is covered by an established name in the marketplace, will have a hard time breaking out commercially.

It’s an exciting, adrenaline-fueled read, and interest in and awareness of the area of the world at the heart of this story have never been higher. But, ultimately, as intriguing as Central Asia is, I think it makes for a tough setting.

I’m always up for a page-turner, and not only can David deliver the fun, but his writing possesses a certain level of political sophistication that’s rare in these types of novels. As promising as it is, though, I am going to pass. For me it’s really a question of positioning—while it has its strengths, I’m just not convinced it will break out beyond its core audience. Alas, something we need for our select number of fiction titles here.

I learned about David Raterman when I received an email newsletter announcing the release of The River Panj. I thought, “Who is this man and how did he get my email address?” So I visited his website.

The first author who surprised me by self-publishing was James C. Moore. One would think an Emmy Award-winning former news correspondent and co-author of a book like Bush’s Brain would have no problem selling his exceptional fiction. I figured it was a fluke. Bad luck. Bad timing.

But then I visited David Raterman’s website and saw that it was clearly happening again, to yet another writer one would assume would have no problem selling his work to a publisher. There were three things I wanted to know about: David Raterman, The River Panj, and why on earth he would have to self-publish it. So, I emailed a reply to his newsletter and asked if he would be willing to be interviewed.

Read the rest of the post on Kristen Tsetsi‘s blog.

How I Sold 100 eBooks in 13 Days

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This post, by M.E. Patterson, originally appeared on his blog on 9/17/11.

On August 1st, I officially launched my debut supernatural thriller, Devil’s Hand, on Kindle, Nook, and in paperback. First month sales were consistent, but small, maybe 1 or 2 a day, sometimes 3 on a good day. That was before I really did any serious promoting outside of an email sent to my mailing list of friends and interested folk, and some Facebook-ing.

In the month of September, I have now sold well over 100 copies of the e-book this month alone. I crossed the 100 mark on the 13th. For the month of September, Devil’s Hand’s worst Amazon rank was #20,910 for one day…it’s been better than 20k for every other day, and it cracked #10,000 for 3 days, once reaching #38 in Horror/Occult. All with a book that’s less than 2 full months on the market.

I know a lot of you are probably asking, “How?”

I’m writing this because, two months ago, I was asking that question too (really, I still am, for months 3, 4, and beyond). But when I went Googling around for other people’s experiences, I was surprised that I couldn’t really find anyone sharing their early experiences.

Sure, you get the heavyweights like John Locke (who has a lot of great insights) and Amanda Hocking and Michael R. Hicks (who also has a great book on the subject). I highly encourage you to read their blogs and their books… they have a lot to teach. Also check out folks like Joanna Penn and Ania Ahlborn and numerous others who have been doing well and blogging about their findings. Reading their experiences is a great start.

In talking to other self-pubbed authors, I’m hearing that many people struggle to hit 100 books sold total. Some have had their books on sale for months and haven’t cracked 100. So I figured, for whatever it’s worth, I’ll share my early self-pubbing experiences because I like the idea of being open and contributing to the greater community of writers. And for the folks not having huge success, but would like to hear about how they might be able to bump 1 – 2 sales a day up to 5 – 6, maybe this will help.

Note that I’m not saying that doing any of this is guaranteed to work for you nor am I saying that it will continue to work for me, even. These are just my experiences in the first 2 months of selling Devil’s Hand, what has worked well and not so well, and what has gotten me to a pretty solid sales clip for a debut book by an unknown author.

So, here’s what I’ve found:

 

Read the rest of the post on M.E. Patterson’s blog.

Has Amazon Declared War On The Indies?

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This post, by Dan Holloway, originally appeared on his The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes blog on 6/15/11.

(And could that be the best thing that ever happened to us?)

So – hands up who calls themselves an indie? Hands up if you’ve enjoyed selling on Kindle? And hands up if you think you’ve got less lazy since you started selling on Kindle? I don’t mean time lazy, I mean idea lazy.

Still with me?

OK, I’ll start. Today sees the end of Amazon’s Sunshine Deals summer reading extravaganza, and for many indie authors it can’t come a day too soon. The effect on those of us tenuously in the top 100 has been devastating. Sales have tanked (from around 120 a day to 40 a day in my case) as ultra-cheap books by established authors have demonstrated that readers’ love of all things indie actually referred to price not content. And they’ll be with us for a while to come now they’ve worked into the recommendation algorithm.

But that’s not the most worrying development. The US forum moderators kicked all promotion threads into a “Meet Our Authors” forum, and today it seems at least two global changes have kicked in. The “insert product link” button no longer lists books, so you have to manually type in/paste a live link to a book, and the brackets many of us used after our book titles have all disappeared.

Those were two of the indies’ biggest marketing tools – the former offering readers simplicity, the latter being an attention grabber. These changes affect everyone in theory, but in practice impact the indies most.

So this is war on the indies, right? Well, quite possibly. Almost certainly Amazon is clearing the way for its own publishing programme.

But so what? I’m an indie. I’ve been saying for a whileI think we’ve seen a change in what that means as more and more people with mainstream genre books have “gone indie”, meaning they’ve self-published, usually through Kindle. Heck, I’ve had a genre book in the top 100 bestsellers for almost 3 weeks. But for me whilst that’s great, and it’s been a financial lifeline at an incredibly difficult time on a personal level, it has nothing to do with REALLY being indie. I argued in April that the real winners on Kindle would be prolific midlisters who built a fanbase and didn’t rely on market vagaries – they would successfully replace the modest-income-addition they’d lost as publishers dropped their modest-income-addition-generating midlist.

 

Read the rest of the post on Dan Holloway‘s The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes blog.

What Smaller Publishers, Agents, And Authors Need To Know About Ebook Publishing

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This post, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on The Shatzkin Files blog on the Idea Logical Company site on 9/5/11.

As the shift from a print-centric book world to a digital one accelerates, more and more digital publishers are creating themselves.

The biggest publishers, with the resources of sophisticated IT departments to guide them, have been in the game for years now and paying serious attention since the Kindle was launched by Amazon late in 2007. But as the market has grown, so has the ecosystem. And while three years ago it was possible to reach the lion’s share of the ebook market through one retailer, Amazon, on a device that really could only handle books of straight narrative text, we now have a dizzying array of options to reach the consumer on a variety of devices and with product packages that are as complicated as you want to make them.

 

Free or very inexpensive service offerings through web interfaces suggest to every publisher of any size, every literary agent, and every aspiring author “you can do this” and, the implication is, “effectively and without too much help”. Indeed, services like Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) service, Barnes & Noble’s PubIt!, and service providers Smashwords and BookBaby, offer the possibility of creating an ebook from your document and distributing it through most ebook retailers, enabled for almost all devices, for almost no cash commitment.

Is it really that simple? One suspects not, since literary agencies are creating ebook publishers (for example: The Scott Waxman Agency’s Diversion) and baskets of services (for example: The Knight Agency in Atlanta) and consulting to help their authors. And a bit further upstream, ebook distribution companies (for example: MintRight) and ebook-first publishers (for examples: Open Road, Rosetta, and the granddaddy of them all, Richard Curtis’s e-Reads) are creating more alternatives, sometimes propositions explicitly addressed to the agents. If publishing ebooks to all channels were really a simple matter of uploading a file, it would hardly seem necessary to build all this infrastructure.

We know that small publishers, literary agents, and authors are becoming publishers at an astounding rate. Two years ago when I was trying to organize a panel of literary agents to talk about working with authors on a charge-for-services basis instead of a share-the-royalties basis, it was hard to get volunteers to discuss new models. Two weeks ago, a major agent outside New York said to me, “we all have to think about it now; we have no choice.”

In short, it isn’t just the big publishers who are compelled to develop a digital strategy to adjust their businesses to changing times. Their smaller competitors, the agents they depend on to deliver their content, and even the authors that have always just depended on the publishers to handle the business of getting a book from a manuscript to a purchase, are all assessing the new landscape. They are considering what new approaches might reduce or eliminate their need for a publisher, or at least reduce the publisher’s share of the take.

 

Read the rest of the post on The Shatzkin Files blog.

5 Ways to Publish a Book for iPad, iPhone, and iPod

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This post, by Dana Lynn Smith, originally appeared on the BookBuzzr Blog on 4/22/11.

There’s no doubt that ebooks are hot. Although Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader is the most popular ebook reading device, many readers also enjoy books on Apple devices. Here are five ways of publishing a book for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.

1. Publish to the Amazon Kindle store.

It may seem strange to talk about Kindle in a discussion on publishing a book for iPad and other Apple devices, but Amazon offers a free Kindle reading app for iPad and for iPhone and iPod Touch. The apps allow readers to purchase and read Kindle books on these Apple devices.

 

The Los Angeles Times reported that 31 percent of iPad owners consume ebooks using the Kindle app rather than Apple’s own iBooks app, so having your ebook in the Kindle store certainly makes it available to iPad users. Among avid readers who go through 25 books or more a year, 44 percent prefer using the Kindle app on the iPad. And according to a study by JPMorgan, 40 percent of iPad owners also own a Kindle.

To learn more about publishing ebooks for the Amazon Kindle store, read April Hamilton’s free guide. Go to http://indieauthorguide.com/?page_id=24 and click on “Indie Author Guide To Kindle Publishing.”

2. Use an ebook publishing service.

Another way of publishing a book for iPad is to use an ebook publishing service that will
get your book listed in the ebookstores for Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony and more. My favorite ebook publishing service is Smashwords. There’s no upfront cost and you receive a hefty percentage of the sales price as a royalty. Get general information on Smashwords here and learn more about publishing a book for iPad on this page. Be sure to download and read the Smashwords Style Guide.

Note that both Apple and Sony require ebooks listed in their stores to have a unique ISBN (different from the print version of the book). Smashwords can provide a free or low cost ISBN, or you can buy ISBNs from your country’s ISBN registrar (Bowker in the United States) .

Smashwords works well for novels and other books that are made up of plain text with some subheads. If your book needs special formatting, you may need to hire an ebook formatting service and publish directly to the various ebookstores.

3. Publish an ebook directly to Apple’s iBookstore.

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes three more ebook publishing options, on the BookBuzzr Blog.

Yet Another Reason To Die As An Indie Author

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This post, by Passive Guy, originally appeared on his The Passive Voice blog.

Another good comment to the What Happens When an Author Dies post, this one from author Christopher John Chater:

My grandmother died in 2004 and had 22 published romance novels. We are now in the process of getting back her rights from Richard Curtis so the family trust can publish the work as ebooks and POD.

The contract for ereads ran out after seven years, but guess what, I asked for copies of the contracts and, now more than a month later, have yet to find them in my mail box. My aunt had an old copy of a contract and now the heirs are going to write a letter to ereads asking for the rights back.

An author has more clout with his/her agent or publisher than any of the author’s heirs who are not terrifying attorneys. Even a downtrodden and mistreated author has ways of pitching a fit that will gain some notice.

One of the many strange aspects of the publishing world is that, almost uniquely among reputable 21st century business enterprises, publishers and agents feel no need to respond to emails, calls and/or letters. Think about it. If you send an email to a large pharmaceutical company asking for product information, you’ll receive some sort of response. Ditto for Ford Motor Company, Costco and the National Guard.

Other than publishers and agents, who doesn’t promptly respond to reasonable communications these days? Al Qaeda and Mexican drug cartels come to mind.

But PG digresses.

One of the lessons we learn from Christopher’s comment is to make certain you retain copies of publishing and agency contracts old and new. Ditto for every royalty statement you receive. Remember, you’re dealing with copyrights to your books that last for 70 years after you die. These days (shamefully) publishing/agency contracts also tend to last that long.


Read the rest of the post on The Passive Voice.

How To Write Fight Scenes With Alan Baxter

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In today’s interview I get very enthusiastic about writing fight scenes with the brilliant Alan Baxter who combines his martial arts life with writing.

Alan Baxter is the author of Realmshift and Magesign, speculative fiction novels published by Gryphonwood Press as well as a podcaster with Thrillercast, on writing and reading thriller novels. Alan is also a martial arts instructor with 25 years experience and has published “Write the Fight Right” in order to help authors write more effective fight scenes.  **warning – there are a few mild swear-words in the interview**Video interview is below the text.

  

Podcast: Download (Duration: 43:12 — 25.7MB)

 

If you want to improve your own fight scene writing, you can join our Fight Scene MasterClass – click here to register your interest.

In this interview, you will learn:

  • Constant improvement in both martial arts and writing. You never finish becoming a better writer or better at martial arts. There is discipline in both. Alan has always done both and the book has sprung from a workshop he does for writers which combines both of his loves.
  • I went to a Krav Maga class last weekend and got my ass kicked and we talk about this and how I was completely out of my comfort zone. There was a lot of adrenalin and I’m covered in bruises but it was good experience.
  • What is it like when a non-fighter is in a fight? What does it feel like when you don’t have the experience of fighting? From a character’s perspective, you need to understand responses. There is  the classic fight, flight or freeze. If you have no experience and are not aggressive, you will react differently. It is also surprising how people react when threatened. From a writer’s point of view, take the character’s personality and how they would react in other situations e.g. being upset, angry – would they just run away? The situation also makes a difference e.g. defense of a child vs. self-defense.
  • What does a professional see and feel? It’s important to relax which is very difficult when under stress. The more relaxed you are, the more control you have over yourself. Constant training for peripheral vision is important. It happens in normal life but when threatened, there is tunnel vision and you lose peripheral vision. A good fighter will see a punch or a kick coming which comes from practice of watching how the body moves. You can see from other signals how they will move. This will give more time in the fight which untrained people don’t have.
  • The attraction of violence for writers and ‘normal’ people. It is partly escapism as most people haven’t had a fight. Fighting is awful and the first defense is run away. When you are writing action, it is good fun and adrenalin on a fun level whereas if we were actually in that situation it would be awful. It’s also the natural extension of conflict in stories. You don’t need to write what you know. You can write what you find out about. Research is one of the most fun things about writing, especially in thrillers as you can go rent a fast car, or go shooting (and it could be tax deductible!)
  • Movie fight scenes vs writing a proper fight scene. The movies are a visual genre and the fight scenes are awful. They are choreographed for 2 dimensions and so are a turn-based arrangement. People never take turns in fights. People regularly punch each other at the same time. It is chaos, not choreographed. In writing, we don’t have a 2D environment. We can be in the heads of the people, we can explore sounds and smells as well as visceral contact. Fighting is barely controlled chaos.
  • Fight scenes should also not be blow by blow physical description, a bit like sex scenes – don’t make it too clinical. It should be fast and furious and chaotic. It’s good to have a bit of experience through classes or something. Have the writing match the pace e.g. shorter sentences, less detail. When you’re fighting, you don’t have that detail. If you saw the punch coming, you would move or block. The writing cannot be slow.
  • Is there an internal sense when writing fight scenes? There is no dialogue while fighting. It never goes like that. You don’t have time, although there may be a few sharp words but no conversation. An experienced fighter will have a bit more time for internal dialogue but all a novice will do is not think or panic thoughts. There is very little coherence.
  • Training is about knowing how it feels. Something happens, we react without thinking. By practicing, you can understand how adrenalin feels and how to react but most people don’t have this.
  • Gender differences in fight scenes. Alan’s wife is a martial arts instructor as well. In books, women are often beaten on and defended by guys but I have a female protagonist who kicks ass. Can women beat a guy? Yes and no. It depends on training but there is always an advantage in big, heavy and strong. That’s why there are weight differences in pro fights. Skill and training, speed and footwork, learning the right targets to hit – these can all balance out the difference. More vulnerable targets are smaller, harder to find but women would maybe have to hit there. Women can defeat big guys but they are at a disadvantage. Women also take longer to get used to hitting anything, even pads in class. It is more confronting for girls to be violent but once they get into it, they are usually enthusiastic! So give your female protagonist some training and they will have a better chance!
  • Creating a setting that will make a fight more interesting in your writing. Whatever environment you are in, you need to use and make it real. In a bar, you need to have lots of chairs, other people, bottles, glass – use the environment. When writing, you can set up a good place to fight that is more interesting e.g. restaurant means you can move into kitchen with knives, hot water etc vs/ a field with nothing interesting to use.
  • What is the role of bystanders in a fight? How do people react? In this day and age, the first reaction is to pull out a phone and start filming for YouTube. Then some people will have nothing to do with it, they will leave or ignore it. Or the people who will call the police or try to stop it. It depends on the person and also their experience. If you do get involved, it may be dangerous. There are gender differences in reactions as well.
  • What happens after the fight? I was shocked by how exhausted I was and bruised just from a class. How do our characters feel afterwards? (in a fist fight, not a gun or knife) Chinese saying – When two tigers fight, one limps away horribly wounded, the other is dead. If you fight, you will get hurt. You will absolutely have physical results and many movies show people carrying on fine, even after concussion. You need to have a realistic recovery period. Adrenalin also has a long lasting effect on the body. That happens with real fighting too but the adrenalin will always be there. If you even get in the one punch that finishes it, you will likely hurt your hand. Being hit in the face means you can’t chew or eat. The first time a person gets hit, it is a shocking experience and many people break down. It’s unsettling. There are always effects.
  • On writing fight scene cliches. When you write the scene, go back and check whether you have transcribed a movie fight scene and rewrite. Get more chaotic and less removed from the fight. Engage emotion. Some of the cliches are true e.g. tunnel vision – so it’s more about how you deal with them. Keep the writing fast.

You can find “Write the Fight Right” on Amazon and other online bookstores. You can find Alan and his other books and short stories at AlanBaxterOnline.com and on twitter @alanbaxter

If you want to improve your own fight scene writing, you can join our Fight Scene MasterClass – click here to register your interest.

 

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