Ebooks

Articles specific to writing and publishing ebooks.

A New Freedom of the Press: How Does Publishing Underwrite Revolutions?

by

This is a guest post from Thomas Doane.

The Arab Spring continues, and this month we celebrate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible’s publication. 

The question I’d like to briefly reflect on here is: What do the Reformation and the Arab Spring have in common?
The answer that I’d like to advance is that—among other things— what these two historical epiphenomena have in common is that they were both catalyzed by evolutionary leaps between publishing platforms. 

The fortunes of the parties involved in the conflict in the Arab world sway this way and that. Plucking more or less randomly from meta descriptions below the Google News results this morning we read that “NATO is considering intensifying bombings in Libya… Israel is very nervous about how Palestinians are spinning the Arab Spring…The ICC seeks to prosecute Gaddafi…  Syria denies mass grave allegations…” Etc. etc.  Another headline from the Gulf News this morning, May 18th, 2011: “Social Media played a role in facilitating the Arab Spring.” The first line of this article reads: Whether social media led to the Arab Spring or facilitated it, it played a major role in mobilizing Arab streets as they rose against their ruling regimes, said panelists at an Arab Media Forum session on the role of social media.
This has been a mantra since January, when—after Mohamed Bouazizi immolated himself on the streets of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia in December—a cascading domino effect of uprisings started to roll across North Africa and into the Middle East. In a now classic article in the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell wrote, “The world, we are told, is in the midst of a revolution. The new tools of social media have reinvented social activism. With Facebook and Twitter, and the like, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coordinate, and give voice to their concerns.” Obviously, there is a difference between correlation and causation, and much digital ink has been spilled to assign social media’s role in the Arab Spring to one category or another.
Meanwhile, this month Harper’s cover story is the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. While nothing about the KJV seems subversive to most of us today (quite the opposite for most of us), historically it can be seen as one of the literary climaxes of a sequence of revolutions that rocked the geopolitical make-up of the Western world in the 16th and 17th centuries—namely, ‘The Reformation.’ 
About 90 years before the KJV first ‘hit the stands in bookstalls’ all over England, becoming ‘the bestseller of all time’ over the next 400 years, a man named Martin Luther sat down and translated the Bible out of Latin and into German. While this sounds rather innocuous from our 21st century point of view, it could be argued that this act—amplified and disseminated across Europe by means of the recently invented printing press—ignited the 16th century’s version of a World War, completely and permanently transforming the global geopolitical landscape for all succeeding centuries.
What changed is that the ‘information’ contained in scripture—the actual words written in the Bible—became widely accessible to the public for the first time ever. There was a massive explosion of literacy. But a streamlining of the publication and dissemination of the printing press was a pre-condition for creating this kind of change. As the European masses (rather than just the priesthood) got hold of this information for the first time, they developed counter-narratives that diverged from the Church’s reading. The King James evolved out of one of these counter-narratives. 
Arguably, the epic shift from print to digital, and from AP journalism to crowd sourced social media communication is the biggest evolutionary leap between publishing platforms that we’ve seen since the invention of the printing press. And while the Arab Spring may not have been caused by social media, I think most people would argue that the social media revolution was a necessary pre-condition to launching the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle-East at the level of well-documented, contagious efficiency that we’ve seen this spring. And it was almost certainly a pre-condition to keeping the body count as low as it has been. 
So I propose a toast to two strange bedfellows: Johannes Gutenberg & Mark Zuckerberg.
Hail old fellows, well met!

And to each, thanks for the merry old  messaging platform they did invent!

Smartphone e-Reader App Reviews: Stanza by Lexcycle

by

As e-books become more popular, they are inevitably merging with the largest platform for e-book readers, the smartphone. Google’s Android operating system is now powering more phones than Apple’s iOs, but both continue to surge ahead in terms of market penetration and new users.

All told, the top 5 smartphone manufacturers sold 140 million phones in 2010. That’s a lot more than all the iPads, Kindles, Nooks, Sony Readers and Kobo tablets put together.

It makes sense to think about whether your book are suitable for the smallest screen. Will the story still make sense on those little pages? Will the formatting of your nonfiction book survive the reader’s desire to see the type at the largest available size?

Time to find out.

I decided to take the top e-Book reader apps for smartphones out for a virtual test drive. Although I don’t claim to be encyclopedic in these reviews, I’m looking at them both from the point of view of someone who doesn’t mind reading on the phone, as well as a publisher looking to find readers where they want to be reading. If that’s for a few minutes while standing waiting for the bus, so be it. That’s up to the reader.

StanzaI decided to start with Stanza, a free e-reader originally developed by Lexcycle, a company that was later acquired by Amazon. It’s unclear at this point whether Amazon intends to keep the program alive or not, since the website seems to have gone dormant some months ago.

However, Stanza, which was the most popular e-Reader at one time, and one of the top free apps in Apple’s app store, is such an unusual e-book reader, it’s well worth a look.

For Readers, You Need Books

One of the things that distinguishes Stanza is the sources for its e-books. Unlike Kindle, iBooks, Google and Nook, the app is not linked to one store for its purchases. Instead, Stanza has access to a lot of diverse libraries of e-books. This is both a strength and a weakness, since you may not find the same coverage or quantity in the different collections as you might with the Kindle app, for example.

But Stanza has other tricks up its sleeve. Let’s look at the main components. Compared to most e-book readers, Stanza has a vast control system that allows you to customize your reading experience in ways no other e-reader can match.

Here are the main elements of the app, with some notes.

  • Reading screen—Stanza gives you unparalleled control over the display, far surpassing what other e-book readers allow. Here the reading screen is shown in Georgia with a beige background, and with the type fully justified and hyphenated, something that’s simply impossible on other e-readers.
    Stanza reading screen

    Click to enlarge

Control screen—This is the screen you get when you tap once, and it gives you access to a huge variety of tools to control the app. From here you can navigate using the buttons along the bottom of the screen, to:

 

 

Stanza control screen

Click to enlarge

Stanza settings

Click to enlarge

Note that in the settings screen there’s a sample at the top showing you instantly the effect of the changes you’re making.

 

 

  • Table of Contents, bookmarks and annotations
  • Settings screens with controls for general items, layout, appearance, and app control.
  • Layout tools like Justify, Left, right or center,
  • Hyphenation with dictionaries in many languages
  • Margins, Line spacing, Paragraph spacing and Paragraph indent. These controls use adjustment sliders.
  • Appearance tools like switching to the Night Theme
  • Choice of 42 fonts, and font size selection with sliders
  • Background and text colors
  • Background image and opacity
  • Even more software controls like lock rotation, use page turn effects and more.
     
  • Library screen—Here is where you store your books, and you can sort on Books, Authors, or Groups.
  • Bookstore screen—You can see right away the difference between Stanza and the proprietary apps that only allow you to shop in one store. The app includes access to these retailers:

     

    And these free and sample e-book sources:

    Stanza bookstores

    Click to enlarge

    You’ll notice even more control icons at the bottom of the screen, including an invert button to switch between black on white or white on black, a search tool and access to yet another screen of controls, this one called Actions, which includes

    • Books on Board eBook Shop
    • O’Reilly Ebooks
    • All Romance eBooks
    • SmashWords
    • Fictionwise
    • Feedbooks
    • Project Gutenberg
    • Random House Free Library
    • Try Harlequin
    • Books from Munseys
    • Books from BookGlutton
    • Pan Macmillan Tasters
    • the command to delete a book
    • a dictionary
    • access to your downloads
    • another set of font size controls
    • and a sharing menu for Facebook, Twitter or via email

Just for fun, I changed a lot of the display parameters and loaded a more heavily formatted nonfiction book. Here it is with a white background, no hyphenation or justification, and typeset in American Typewriter:

Stanza

Click to enlarge

Overall, Stanza is easy to use and gives you terrific control of the reading experience in far more detail than any other e-reader. Although the choice of new trade books may not be as wide as other, proprietary apps, the ability of Stanza to also handle PDFs and other formats is even more reason to add this app to your smartphone.

Next up: Apple’s iBooks app.

Stanza in the iTunes App Store
Also available as an app for Macintosh, for iPad and for Windows.

 

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

Self-Publishing: How You Can Reduce Costs

by

The price of a book is what really matters to readers. It’s where self-published authors can compete with traditional publishers, as the examples of Amanda Hocking or J.A. Konrath show.

Many Kindle Store writers choose $0.99 price tag. They can afford it, as the cost of publishing an e-book is close to zero. E-bookstores equip the authors with the online tool – the dashboard – where they can publish a book in a few steps, and it usually takes a couple of minutes.

I’ve been testing many e-book platforms and their publishing dashboards. My favorite ones are Amazon (Kindle Direct Publishing), Smashwords, Feedbooks and Narcissus.

At a basic level the only thing you’ll need to prepare is a perfectly edited and formatted text of a book, in a proper file format (mostly required are doc, rtf, txt, html and epub). You don’t even need a cover of the book. Some platforms, like Feedbooks, display a default book cover with a title and author, if the cover file was not uploaded by the author.

Most authors do want book covers, though – and they are perfectly right. But if you can’t afford to hire a professional cover artist, you can always check what technology has to offer. One thing to remember: if you are not planning to print a book, the size of a cover doesn’t have to be high and it will have a screen resolution anyway. It’s where possibilities are.

First, you can download and use Gimp, a free and simple to use image editing program. But what if you’re not very much into design? There are still some solutions. You can, for example, use one of data visualization tools – they can do a design work for you. Some time ago I described how to use Wordle, a tag cloud generator, to prepare a book cover. A good thing about such a cover is that it’s at the same time a tag description of your book (see example, below right).

Another idea for a cover design – use photo applications on your smartphone. You can make a picture and apply one of cool filters, which will bring a tonality and feel you want. Applications I recommend for iPhone and iPod Touch are PictureShow, Camera+, PhotoStudio and Hipstamatic. PictureShow has also an option to insert a text, so you can in fact design a cover completely on your cellphone. 

And here comes the technology again. Formats like epub or mobi allow text to be adjusted by the user of a specific device or application. That means that if you read in a Kindle application on your Android tablet, every book will look the same – according to preferences you selected.

In other words: you don’t need a specific page layout design, unless you really want it.

Next thing, most important one – editing. The most popular way is to ask for help a fellow writer, but there are also very interesting tools, which can help you go through this process for free.

The most known and successful one is Bite-Size Edits. It’s a crowdsourcing platform where other writers can edit the text you submit, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. This service is both fun and useful and what’s even more important – it’s a smart way to connect writers and readers.

Bite-Size Edits

Edit box at Bite-Size Edits

 

This is a reprint from Piotr Kowalczyk‘s Password Incorrect.

Publishers Be Crazy…Or Desperate

by

I just read this article about Bookish.com, a new joint venture being launched later this summer by Hachette Book Group, Penguin USA and Simon & Schuster. Per the article:

The site intends to provide information for all things literary: suggestions on what books to buy, reviews of books, excerpts from books and news about authors. Visitors will also be able to buy books directly from the site or from other retailers and write recommendations and reviews for other readers.

The publishers — Simon & Schuster, Penguin Group USA and Hachette Book Group — hope the site will become a catch-all destination for readers in the way that music lovers visit Pitchfork.com for reviews and information.  

A couple of sentences further down, you’ll read:

“There’s a frustration with book consumers that there’s no one-stop shopping when it comes to information about books and authors,” said Carolyn Reidy, the president and chief executive of Simon & Schuster. “We need to try to recreate the discovery of new books that currently happens in the physical environment, but which we don’t believe is currently happening online.”

There are three problems with Ms. Reidy’s statements.

First, there is NOT "a frustration with book consumers that there’s no one-stop shopping when it comes to information about books and authors," because in fact, there are several sites that offer one-stop shopping for author/book information. Perhaps Ms. Reidy just hasn’t heard of such obscure, underground sites as Amazon.com, Goodreads.com, Shelfari.com, and LibraryThing.com.

Second, nobody needs to "recreate the discovery of new books that currently happens in the physical environment," because for the average consumer, discovery of new books NO LONGER HAPPENS IN THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT. Once again, it’s Amazon, Goodreads, Shelfari and LibraryThing to the rescue here, not to mention genre-specific online communities like Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and format- and device- specific online communities like Kindle Nation Daily.

Third, Ms. Reidy and her compatriots don’t "believe [this is] currently happening online." Why not?! How is it possible that publishers are THAT FAR out of touch with book buyers? I’ll tell you how: traditionally, publishers have viewed booksellers as their customers, and book-buyers as the customers of booksellers. They have little to no idea what’s bouncing around in the head and life of the typical consumer, because they haven’t had to know those things to run their business at any time in the past—past being the operative word there.

So these three major publishers are sinking massive amounts of time, effort and money into a huge new initiative that I think just about any typical book-buying consumer on the street could tell you today is destined to fail. And how do you suppose they’ll be financing this new initiative? Certainly not by reducing the prices of their books, or signing more new, unproven authors, or keeping books on physical shelves longer to give them a better chance of catching on, or giving individual authors more marketing money.

I’m sure the publishers would say this initiative is all about supporting their authors and marketing books in a cost-effective way, so kudos to them for good intentions. But while they may know book and author marketing today is all about author platform, they clearly don’t understand that author platform is all about community, and community is about making personal connections and feeling like you’re part of a movement. Which do you think a fan of Stephen King would rather visit: Stephen King’s personal site and online community of fans, or the obviously corporate umbrella site, Bookish.com?

Bookish.com content will necessarily be vetted and vanilla, so as not to hurt the corporate images and reputations of its backers and to avoid offending any site visitors. Anyone who wants the raw, unfiltered version of musings from their favorite authors and opinions of others in those authors’ communities won’t bother with Bookish.com when they can get the straight scoop right from the horses’ mouths elsewhere.

I hate to sound so negative and dump all over publishers like this, because it’s a good thing that they’re finally willing to try something new. But at this point, they face the same problem Microsoft did with its Zune MP3 player: Apple got there first with the iPod, and they did it very well. If you’re going to enter the marketplace with a new product for which the demand has already been fulfilled by someone else (or several someone elses), then your product has to be so incredibly, amazingly compelling that consumers will feel they’re missing out by not switching to it. Microsoft tried it with the Zune; I think by now we can all agree they failed to capture enough of the MP3 player market to even make Apple break a sweat. And Microsoft has decades of experience with technology and marketing direct to consumers.

So Bookish.com gets an A for effort, but a goose egg for vision and sustainability.

Publishers: maybe you’re looking at this all wrong. Maybe instead of trying to supplant the Amazons, Goodreads and Shelfaris of the world, you should be looking for ways to leverage what those sites and communities are already doing, and doing very well: crowdsourcing.

Let them tell you what the readers want to see in print and ebook forms. Listen to consumer complaints about ebook release windows and pricing, and respond accordingly. Switch to POD book production so you can offer a much wider variety of titles at a much lower cost; grousing about the lack of variety and fresh, new voices from mainstream pub is so common as to be a pastime in reader communities. Stop chasing after blockbusters and start tuning into the pre-existing discovery network to locate your new literary stars. Keep your ears to the ground for breakout indie authors, and sign them, knowing they’re already proven commodities. Get and keep a bead on technologies consumers are excited about (color ebooks, interactive book apps, etc.) and invest in those technologies.

Your role as arbiters of taste and gatekeepers is a thing of the past, and the position of Reader Community Leader has already been filled. Own it. Restructure your businesses and legacy thought patterns to embrace this new reality. Now, your role is to find out what consumers want in print books, ebooks and emerging media technologies, and give it to them. Period.
 

This is a cross-posting from April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author Blog.

My Reasons For Self-Publishing (Again)

by

This post, by Melissa Conway, originally appeared on her Whimsilly blog on 5/15/11.

Back in 1999, after a decade of starts and stops, I finished my first novel, Uncommon Sense. To say I was naïve about what came next, about the way the publishing industry worked, would be a vast, echoing understatement. I began searching for information, and was appalled when I learned how long the process took. Months waiting on agent query responses, partial responses, full responses. Assuming you snag an agent, you wait several more months on editor submissions. Assuming the book is eventually accepted, you then wait up to two years for the publisher to release it. Yikes! I wasn’t getting any younger. How long was I willing to languish in pre-publication purgatory before I saw the fruits (recognition, if not outright acclaim) of my labor?

My search yielded an alternative: self-publishing. Because I was clueless to any repercussions, the concept appealed to me. I had no one to advise me against it. As a working mom, I didn’t have time to attend writer’s group meetings, and back then, if online groups existed, I didn’t know about them. The information I’d gotten on traditional publishing was highly discouraging. The odds alone gave me serious pause; there are millions of writers out there competing for a select few spots on the bookstore shelves. Getting published is akin to winning multiple lotteries—first you win an agent, then you win a publisher, then you win fans…or not.

So I hope it’s not too hard for you to understand how I was swayed by the promises of my first self-publisher, iUniverse. They had a (paid) program where one of their reviewers would read my manuscript and if it was good enough, it would get a ‘special’ designation as an Editor’s Choice novel. When Uncommon Sense passed muster, I was over the moon. They like me! They really like me! The reviewer had wonderful things to say about the novel.

It felt like a tremendous victory, but I realize now the thing that made me happiest was that someone other than my family and friends read it and approved. I gratefully bought a ticket and boarded the iUniverse train, despite the fact that I had to accept whatever lame cover their amateurish artists threw together. In no time my baby was in print – with a $12.95 cover price, a cost much higher than the average paperback. Marketing, as a basic concept, never occurred to me.

It was before ebooks hit the scene, so of course sales were less than dismal. I can only fall back on the excuse that I really do suffer from a pervasive naivete. This explains why I chose to self-publish my next two novels, The Dragon Diary and Dessert Island. I simply hadn’t learned my lesson. The truth is that I was still caught in the gravity pull of planet Instant Gratification. The gratification in my case had more to do with putting my manuscripts in motion, launching them as it were, rather than jumping through agent submission hoops before inevitably abandoning my books to languish on my hard drive. Certainly I wasn’t gratified by my royalties!

My rude awakening occurred at the first writer’s conference I attended. At the Southern California Writer’s Conference in San Diego in the early 2000’s, I went to lectures and workshops and generally enjoyed myself…until a small-press editor got behind the pulpit and smashed my confidence to smithereens. She had palpable contempt for those who self-published and even went so far as to say that anyone who did would ruin their chances of getting accepted by a “real” publisher because their debut status would be forever gone.

I slunk away, ashamed of myself and my three books. It didn’t take long for me to come up with a plan: I would start over using my married name and hope that no one discovered what I had done.

Thank goodness the stigma of self-publishing is fading!
 

Read the rest of the post on Melissa Conway‘s Whimsilly.

100 Stories For Queensland: Please Buy It [To Aid The Relief Effort]

by

When something drops out of the news cycle it’s easy to forget about it. But just because the purveyors of sensationalised pictures have got bored with an event, it doesn’t mean people aren’t still suffering. The devastating floods in Queensland might seem like a long time ago to most of us, but they’re still very real to lots of people. People that have lost everything and are suffering. eMergent Publishing put the call out to collect 100 stories, donated from writers around the world, and publish them in an anthology to raise money to directly help those people. Jodi Cleghorn, editor and owner of eMergent, has done an incredible job with her team getting this book together and I’m really proud to be one of the 100 authors included. Now it’s time to buy the book.

In order to raise awareness about the book’s existence, therefore sell more copies and therefore get more money to the people in need, the paperback edition is being promoted with a Chart Rush. What is a chart rush? Readers are invited to purchase a book on Amazon, in a nominated 24-hour period, with the intent to capitalise on the volume of sales to move the book up the Amazon best seller list. The higher up the chart it is (we’re aiming for a spot in the top 100) the more visible it becomes to other readers who may go on to purchase it. It’s all about exposure and the more people who come across 100 Stories for Queensland, the more books we sell and the more money we raise. If you can’t buy on the day, you can add it to your wishlist. Every little bit counts.

100 Stories for Queensland is listed at Amazon and Amazon UK.

You can join the Amazon Chart Rush Facebook event or official fan page for updates on our progress up the charts. Also tweets at @100stories4qld and 100 Stories for Queensland is listed at Goodreads.

This is a fantastic book, full of stories from some great authors, that will directly help the survivors of the floods, with all proceeds going to the Queensland Premier’s Flood Appeal. Please buy the book tomorrow, Tuesday 17th May (but late if you’re in Australia to stay tight to the 24 hour window), and do your bit to help. You’ll get a sweet book out of it.

 

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

My Self-Publishing Journey

by

This post, by Erin Kern, originally appeared on her blog on 5/16/11.

My first release, Looking for Trouble, is currently #70 in the Kindle store. It’s #2 on the Kindle bargain books list, #5 on the kindle store contemporary romance list and #6 on the general fiction contemporary romance list. I’m selling an average of 300 books a day. If I can stay on that pace I’ll be shy of 10,000 copies sold for the month of May.

A year ago, I was reading one form rejection letter after another from every agent and publishing house in the country. So how did I go from being rejected to being a Kindle top seller? I’m so glad you asked. Let me tell you about it…

It started last summer when I’d been having a dialogue with an editor at a smaller publishing house. She’d requested the first five chapters, loved them and loved my writing style. However, she did have a few things she thought needed to be changed with the book. In addition to that, she informed me she wasn’t in a position to take on any new clients, then she wished me luck. So did I throw my book on Kindle the next day? No. I shut down my computer and sulked for a week. I cried, I was depressed and seriously thought about giving up writing (at that point I’d received close to 40 rejections from agents and publishers). Needless to say, I was feeling pretty kicked in the gut.

After a big, "you need to get your shit together" pep talk from my husband, I pulled up the word doc on my computer and started reworking the book again. I rewrote the first four chapters three different times. I deleted scenes because the book was way too long and reworked the ending. Then I did some more research on more publishing houses. I’d completely given up on agents. At least the editors took time to give me feedback/suggestions. Most agents didn’t even bother responding to me.

I still hadn’t considered self-publishing. I wanted a book deal. I wanted to see my book in print. I wanted to be able to smell the ink and flip the pages back and forth. I was unwilling to accept anything less than that.

Then after a few uneventful weeks, I started hearing whispers about authors who were self-publishing their rejected books onto the Kindle. So did I throw my book out there the next day? Not yet.

Shortly after that, Amazon announced it’s 70% royalty program. If you price your book at $2.99 or higher they give you 70% of the sales. I thought, okay even if I only sell 20 copies a month, that’s $40. Not bad considering it costs nothing to upload to Kindle. Even after that little incentive I was still a bit hesitant. I’d have to come up with my own cover, write my own blurb and do all my own marketing (which is a TON of work). That didn’t really sound appealing. But, then again, reading a rejection letter 6 months after the initial query isn’t that great either.

After a lot of pondering, research, praying and weighing the pros and cons, I took the leap of faith. I got my cover designed by a friend of mine, so not cost there. I had a ton of help with my blurb so that was pretty easy too. I priced the book at $2.99 because I wanted the 70% royalty and uploaded it to Kindle last October. I also uploaded the book to Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.

Read the rest of the post on Erin Kern‘s blog to learn how she got her sales into the thousands.

Ebooks And What Matters

by

This essay, from Charles Tan, originally appeared on his Bibliophile Stalker site on 5/15/11.

Context is very important. Last week, I came across two seemingly-contradictory articles, at least if we only read the headlines and the first few paragraphs: E-Readers Fail At Education and iPad Study Released by Oklahoma State University. To sum up both articles: one showcases how ineffective eBook readers are, while the other praises the iPad.

Over the past few months, I’ve migrated from reading eBooks on a computer to an iPod Touch to a cheap eBook reader to an iPad. While my conclusions is based on personal experience, I think it gives me leeway to extrapolate on the subject.

The Reader Matters

Whenever there is a discussion, I think it’s important to nail down who the reader is. It’s not simply about the demographic, classified by age or profession or degree, but who they are as individuals. Are they open to reading on a computer screen? LCD or e-Paper? How tech-savvy are they? Any medical handicaps that may impede (or in some cases, benefit) from using an eBook reader? (I also want to point out how these questions are framed from the assumption that paper is the default and theoretically best method.)

That’s not to say these details are easy to consolidate and present in a report, especially as a statistic, but when it comes to individual choices of whether to use an eBook reader or not, I think these are essential questions which can’t be covered by a generic recommendation.

The Book Matters

I’ve been in a reading slump as of late but there have usually been two motivators for me when it comes to reading books on an electronic device–and this element isn’t stated often.

The first is how badly do I want to read this book? I’m a genre reader from the Philippines so book scarcity–whether it’s a supply problem (not available here) or a finances problem (it’s available but it’s not within my budget)–is a genuine problem. If eBooks can overcome those problems, my desire to read a particular book can possibly overcome any anti-eBook bias I might have. I don’t think this is constant rule, but just as we make exceptions to various standard responses, I think a book that’s compelling enough to the reader might make us "put up" with eBook readers, no matter how sub-optimal it might be.

Read the rest of the essay, which includes three more things that matter about ebooks, on Charles Tan‘s Bibliophile Stalker.

Online Retailer Amazon Accused Of Trying To ‘Wreck The Publishing Trade’

by

This article originally appeared on the Daily Mail U.K.’s Mail Online site on 5/15/11.

Amazon has been accused of trying to ‘wreck’ the book trade by turning itself into one of the world’s leading publishers.

Critics claim the online retailer’s plans to produce its own titles will give it a stranglehold on the industry and drive traditional publishing houses and book shops out of business.

 

One literary agent who asked not to be named said: ‘It is a crazy and ridiculous idea which will end up wrecking the publishing industry.’
 

Amazon has already come under fire for ‘ruthlessly’ undercutting traditional retailers on the price of books.

It has launched four publishing businesses: Amazon Encore, specialising in first-time writers; Amazon Crossing, which sells English language translations of foreign books; Montlake Romance; and non-fiction range Domino.

The move is part of a campaign to further boost demand for the company’s Kindle electronic reader, which is the biggest- selling product of its kind in the world. The ebooks published by Amazon will be available only through this device.

The strategy is already proving a success and several of the 65 titles the firm has published have made it on to best-seller lists.

But critics say the strategy will further undermine demand for traditional print books and will put increased pressure on small and independent publishers which are struggling to survive.

Read the rest of the article on Mail Online.

Self-Publishing Resource Roundup

by

Since Publetariat’s launch a bit over three years ago, the site has become a trusted resource and thriving community for indie authors and small imprints. For that, I thank each and every one of you. It’s also become a favorite haunt for writers who are considering going the self-pub route, but don’t feel quite ready to come out of the shadows and stake a claim to a readership independently. To them, I offer this roundup of particularly useful articles and resources for those just starting out.


Choosing A Self-Publishing Service Provider

Mick Rooney’s POD, Self-Publishing and Independent Publishing made its name on its analysis and reviews of various service providers, and continues to post service provider reviews and commentary about them on a regular basis.

Over on their Greene Ink blog, Stephen Wayne Greene and Meredith Greene offer the recent results of a survey they’ve taken among indie authors, asking which service provider the authors preferred and why.

Considering Lightning Source? See this case study over on the Foner Books blog.

Joel Friedlander explains what a subsidy publisher is, and why you shouldn’t work with one, on his The Book  Designer site.

This free, sample lesson I wrote for Publetariat Vault University will help you crunch the numbers when comparing service providers, and I’ve made these worksheets I designed for my book, The Indie Author Guide: Self-Publishing Strategies Anyone Can Use, available online as a free pdf download, too.


Getting Your Book Ready For Print—or Ebook—Publication

Editing – there are LOTS of articles and tips on editing right here on Publetariat. Whether you’re looking for DIY editing tips, guidance on when and how to work with a professional editor, or how to find and hire a freelance editor, you’re sure to find what you’re looking for.

Joel Friedlander offers a kind of crash course in self-publishing on his The Book Designer site, from Getting Ready to Publish, to Planning Your Book, Understanding Fonts & Typography, and Making Print Choices. 

Joel also offers this post on Ebooks &  Ebook Readers, and I’ve made my Indie Author Guide to Kindle Publishing and my Kindle Publishing Workshop (from the Writer’s Digest Business of Getting Published conference, 2010) available as free pdf downloads on this page of the Indie Author Guide companion website. 

Author Platform and Book Promotion

You’ll want to visit Dana Lynn Smith’s The Savvy Book Marketer site for lots of great articles on book and author promotion, with a particular focus on using new media and social media.

Also be sure to check out Joanna Penn’s The Creative Penn, where you’ll find excellent how-tos on subjects like podcasting and making your own book trailer, as well as plenty of insight and firsthand accounts from Joanna herself regarding her own experiences as an author and speaker.

Once again, Publetariat has you covered with its own treasure trove of articles on author platform and book promotion.

Indie Audio

So you wanna learn how to turn your manuscript into an audiobook, and maybe release that audiobook in podcast form and make it available online for free? Podiobooks is the place to start. They’ve got a large and helpful community, a mentoring program, and excellent tutorials, all for free.

So you wanna release your indie book on audio and sell it? Audible has just announced its ACX.com service, which will allow you to do just that. Hey, if it’s good enough for authors like Neil Gaiman and MJ Rose, and Random House, it might just work for you, too.

Community, Support, and Motivation

The Association of Independent Authors is there for you, with resources, online discussion forums, and news from around the globe that affects indie authors.

If you just need a good old fashioned kick in the pants to get you motivated and excited about the possibilities of going indie, or need to feel like you’re not all alone out there in the indie wilderness, there’s hardly a better source than Zoe Winter’s Weblog. Whether she’s talking about her own struggles and successes, her writing, publishing and book launch approaches, or commenting on the state of publishing in general, Zoe tells it like it is and pulls no punches.

Mark Barrett’s Ditchwalk is another excellent stop, where you’ll find a mix of commentary and reportage on Mark’s own adventures in the world of indie authorship.

Finally, Publetariat’s got an extensive library of articles on the topics of motivation, writer’s block and the writing life.

 

Now get out there and do it!

 

Your Brand Is NOT A Community

by

This post, by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez, originally appeared on his loudpoet blog on 9/7/2010.

Back in January, Shiv Singh gave a great keynote presentation, Engaging Readers in the Digital Age, at the inaugural Digital Book World Conference that, in retrospect, set the tone for what was to come in 2010.

“Build consumer brands,” Singh exhorted, “because your current value chain is breaking.”

Since then, we’ve seen the introduction of the iPad, the Agency Model, and ugly public standoffs between Amazon and several publishers over ebook pricing; notable authors like J.A. Konrath and Seth Godin have made a fuss about eschewing “traditional” publishing channels; and uber-agent Andrew Wylie challenged Random House to a stare-down over ebook royalties, launching his own ill-fated ebook imprint, Odyssey Editions.

Underscoring all of these dust-ups is one recurring theme: publishers’ lack of a direct relationship with readers leaves them vulnerable to disruption and disintermediation.

While Singh and others, myself included, have noted the need for publishers to move from a business-to-business model to a business-to-consumer model, some arguments have mistaken “brand” for “community”, using them interchangeably.

Geoff Livingston, author of Now Is Gone – A Primer on New Media for Executives and Entrepreneurs, illuminated the difference by contrasting two well-known consumer brands: Madonna and Lady Gaga.

Madonna is an unmatched branding genius. She is able to transform and reinvent herself decade after decade and stay relevant. Her 2008 album Hard Candy was a #1 bestseller, the seventh of her 27 year career.

Yet Madonna is not a huge social media success. The branding doesn’t translate. Why? I think you need go no further than her community page, which reads: “Please note that posting Madonna unreleased material (including photos, audio and video) to your profile is not allowed. Doing so could result in the immediate termination of your membership with Icon.”

Madonna is in control, Madonna is messaging at you. And her image is complete, her content quality secure. And no one really wants to talk about her in conversational media forms, and given how she has controlled her community, is it any wonder?

–“From Branded Content Publishing to Networks (Madonna vs. Lady Gaga)”

Livingston contrasts Madonna’s approach to community vs. the artist most often compared to her, Lady Gaga, noting the latter “has transcended 20th century marketing to become the ultimate brand of the 21st century.” Her 15.3 million digital download sales in 2009 made her the best-selling artist, even beating Michael Jackson, whose death led to backlist sales skyrocketing.

“Gaga is dedicated to her fans,” notes Jackie Huba, co-author of Citizen Marketers: When People are the Message, “and clearly knows the elements of cultivating a community of evangelistic fans.”
 

Read the rest of the post on loudpoet.

28 Out Of 100 Top Kindle E-Books Are Self-Published

by

After a February excitement about Amanda Hocking earning millions of dollars from Kindle Store, I wanted to check how self-published authors are doing a couple of weeks later. From a Kindle Store list of top 100 e-books I’ve selected those which were published by the authors themselves.

It was not an easy task, as some of the titles were given a publisher label. I Googled the companies behind the names. If they were clearly associated with the author, for example published only that author’s books, I included them in the list.

The list is based on yesterday’s Kindle Store ranking (US localization). You can check it at Ebook Friendly (where I plan to post such lists frequently): Top Self-Published Books In Kindle Store – April 21st, 2011.

Interesting numbers:

– 28 out of 100 top e-books in Kindle Store are self-published; 11 are in top 50,

– all of those publications are priced $3.99 or less; that means 28% of top Kindle e-books cost less than $4,

– 18 of the titles are given the lowest possible price tag: $0.99,

– the shining star is John Locke with 8 titles (7 of them in top 50); Vegas Moon is the best self-published book – ranked #4,

– Amanda Hocking is sliding down; her best selling book, Ascend, is #64 (a result of signing a contract with a publisher?),

– authors to watch: Heather Killough-Walden, Julie Ortolon, J.R. Rain and Debbi Mack – with 2 or more titles in top 100.

This is a reprint from Piotr Kowalczyk‘s Password Incorrect.

Why I Sell My Novel For 99 Cents

by

There’s a lot of talk about the 99 cent ebook at the moment, so I thought I would just throw in my own 99 cents worth. Pentecost is currently 99 cents on the US Kindle store, although it started out at $2.99. It’s rank as I write this is shown above.

Here are the reasons I am leaving it at 99 cents.These are all my own reasons and may not be applicable to you, so I am not saying everyone should do this, merely why I am.

Pentecost sales ranks

  • 99 cents is an impulse buy for anyone. My husband and I are Kindle converts and spend a lot of time reading. He isn’t an author and doesn’t keep up with the industry like I do so watching his behavior is fascinating. He buys a lot of 99 cent ebooks after downloading samples. He has tried a whole stack of indie authors based on 99 cent books and has told other people about them. It is a low risk buy and if someone enjoys the sample, they don’t even need to think about clicking when the price is under $1. I want those readers to try me as well.
  • Number of books sold is more important than income for me right now. I have a well paid day job so I am not writing for income just yet. I hope to in the future but right now, I want readers and fans. I want people signing up for Prophecy (which they do every day) and I want to build a large number of people who want to read more of my books. I am writing a series so I want to build fans now who I can sell to in the future. Hocking and others have made the first book in the series cheap (or some have made it free) and then upped the price on the subsequent books to $2.99. I may well follow suit with others in the series but for now, 99 cents is a great price for the first one.
  • The example of John Locke. Locke is rocking the Amazon charts with his 99 cent ebooks and this article is what convinced me to follow his example. He writes good thrillers with the brilliant Donovan Creed character. For 99 cents they are great value and you just buy all of them if you like what he writes. 6 books for the price of half a mainstream published book – fantastic! I’ve spent an afternoon in the hammock with Donovan Creed and it was very enjoyable! The quote below is from the interview with him.

  • JA Konrath and the impact of staying in the Amazon bestseller rank. Konrath writes the best blog for ebook authors, definitely subscribe and be inspired! He changes prices all the time and experiments with things but this got my attention “when I lowered the price of The List from $2.99 to 99 cents, I started selling 20x as many copies” (from the same Locke article). When I first launched Pentecost, I made the Amazon rankings in launch week based on my platform and my marketing activities but then I dropped out of the charts. Of course, I freaked out because I cannot sustain the effort it takes to maintain those rankings on my own. So after reading a lot of Konrath, I dropped my price to 99 cents and I haven’t left the charts since. I have been in Religious Fiction for 10 weeks now and have started ranking in Action/Adventure (which I believe in my true home!) I have definitely seen the evidence that lowering the price affected my ranking. Perhaps I should change the price back to $2.99 and see if it has an impact but for all the other reasons listed, I’m leaving it as is for now.
  • Fast-paced action-adventure thrillers won’t change your life. Pentecost will entertain you for a few hours but it won’t give you actionable tips for your business and won’t inspire you to give everything to charity or work for world peace. It is fiction and is there to take you out of your world for a time. I pay far more money for non-fiction books that will help me in a tangible manner than I will for fiction which I read once and then (often) forget. It’s not that I don’t value fiction writing, but the price you pay for entertainment has to be representative vs the price you pay for actionable content. I sell my e-courses for $39.99 and up to $297, and my workshops are also more expensive. I am definitely happy charging more when I believe you get more benefit, but with a thriller I am competing with free TV or a movie so want to price it attractively.

What do you think about the 99 cent ebook? What price do you sell for? Do you buy 99 cent ebooks?

 

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

Writers’ Renaissance

by

In this week’s news, the last company in the world manufacturing typewriters shut down its production plant. Then Time magazine listed four writers in its Top 100 people list, up from zero last year. Are these events connected? I believe so. The ability to write and distribute information electronically changed the world a few decades ago, but the recent rise of e-readers and the ability to access novels and information instantly, no matter where you are, has taken writers to a new level.

News is a self-perpetuating cycle, but for the publishing industry it has become cataclysmic. The more that people buy e-readers, the more they get discussed, and the more they become mainstream. People like Amanda Hocking, a digitally self-published novelist, get write-ups in the Wall Street Journal. Polls show people are reading more and reading more widely… because of e-books. The ability to download and read book samples has exposed readers to more writers than they ever imagined possible. The ability to buy novels for less than three dollars has connected thousands of authors and readers who would have never found each other in the past.

Equally important, access to digital content is shaping our social discussions. Books like Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother generated a huge discussion about parenting, and thousands of readers were able to buy and read the book, then participate. A couple of years ago that would have required a trip to the bookstore and an outlay of around $25, thus limiting the readers who could be part of that discussion.

All of this adds up to great news for writers. We matter more than ever. Thus, the inclusion of writers on Time’s list, and the ability of novelists like me to make a living for the first time. In the past, there seemed to be a dichotomy. People who loved to read admired and valued writers, but the rest of the world either considered us unnecessary or untrustworthy. It’s exciting to see this fundamental shift toward valuing those who craft words.

 

This is a reprint from LJ Sellers‘ blog.

Self-Publish — Understanding ISBN’s, SAN’s, LCCN’s Or PCN’s

by

This post, by James  C. Tanner, originally appeared on his site on 1/17/11.

If you choose to self-publish your book, there are some custodial duties required before your book is ready to go to press.  These duties pertain to:

a.) the obtaining of an INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER ( ISBN );

b.) the obtaining of a STANDARD ADDRESS NUMBER ( SAN );

c.) the obtaining of a LIBRARY OF CONGRESS NUMBER ( LCCN or PCN ).

 

INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER ( ISBN )

The ISBN is often incorrectly referred to as “just a bar code” used for inventory control purposes.  It is a number and not a bar code.

Since the late 1960′s the ISBN has been in existence as a global identification system.  To help avoid errors in receiving orders, shipping,  etc. publishers and self-publishers have come to rely upon the ISBN number as each new edition of a book, and each particular style of publication (hard cover, soft cover, paperback, audio book, downloadable eBook, or CD) receives it’s own unique number.

ISBN numbers are obtained through the ISBN Agency which you can find at http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/index.asp .

You will be required to assign each of your new titles an ISBN suffix number (this will be explained on the ISBN site).  The important detail new users need to remember is that you will need to assign a different ISBN to each edition of your book.  If this is the first time your book is going to market, then a standard practice among writers and publishers is to start your ISBN off with a “0″ (zero).  Most people in the book industry, upon seeing a zero as the first digit in an ISBN will immediately realize this is a new publication and not a re-release, or a new-edition of an older version.

self publish,publish,write a book

 

The above is an example of an ISBN combined with a Bar Code as it appears on the back of a paperback novel from Louis L’Amour’s book, Lonely On The Mountain published by Bantam Books.

The bar code as we see above communicates several key bits of information.  The bar code:

a.) identifies the ISBN;

b.) identifies the publisher (or self-publisher);

c.) identifies the title;

d.) identifies the author;

e.) identifies the edition.

Read the rest of the post on James C. Tanner‘s site.