Ebooks

Articles specific to writing and publishing ebooks.

The Beginning of the End?

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This post, by JA Konrath, originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog on 8/6/10.

Dorchester just announced it is cutting its mass market paperback line and focusing on ebooks.

A few months ago, Medallion announced the same thing.

I’ve heard, through sources who asked not to be named, that sell-through for paperbacks is as bad as 20%. In other words, out of ten printed, only two sell.

Now what’s going to happen if more publishers follow this business model?

Here’s a possible scenario.

1. Fewer paperbacks are published. Publishers either eliminate their paperback lines, or begin publishing more selectively, in smaller numbers, to cut costs and losses.

2. Bookstores have fewer books on their shelves, and sell fewer books as a result. Which means less money to the publishers.

3. Publishers downsize, since the ebook market, though growing, doesn’t bring in the same money as print does. In order to maintain positive cash flow, they bill their accounts to pay up.

4. Their accounts–bookstores and distributors–can’t pay up. They don’t have the money to pay for the books they’ve sold–which they bought on credit. So they begin returning other books on the shelves to get credit for those.

5. Now there are far fewer books on the shelves, which means far fewer sales.

So when publishers stop printing as many books as they are now, the delicate balance will shift.

What does this mean to you, the author?

The main reason we need publishers is for distribution. We can’t get into Wal-Mart or Borders on own own. They can. So we accept 8% royalties in order to sell a lot of books. But if publishers are no longer printing books, there is ZERO reason to sign with them, because they no longer have that advantage. Especially when we can earn 70% royalties on our own.

If you do sign with a publisher, make sure it contains a clause that states they MUST release it in print, or revert the rights back to you. Make sure there is specific wording for "out of print" that doesn’t include ebook sales.

But, if you do sign with a publisher, do you think you’ll ever get your rights back?

Let’s say I’m running a publishing company. I see ebooks are the future, and I’ve got three new authors coming out in print. I gave these authors healthy advances, and there’s no way they’ll earn out these advances with print sales.
 

Read the rest of the post on JA Konrath‘s A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog.

Author Fay Risner To Speak At Athena Club Nov. 8, 2010

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Nov. 8, 2010, the Belle Plaine, Iowa Athena Club has invited me to speak about my Civil War book – Ella Mayfield’s Pawpaw Militia – A Civil War Saga In Vernon County Missouri. ISBN 1438235461. Sold on Amazon, ebay and http://www.booksbyfaybookstore.weebly.com It seems only fitting that today’s members in a club that was founded in the 1800’s would be interested in history from that era.

Awhile back, I signed up on a website for Iowa authors. Iowa Center for the Book – http://www.iowacenterforthebook.org This is the site the Athena Club looked on to find an author. They found my name and list of books.

　

I’m getting prepared for the Athena Club meeting. I kept my bulletin board from the book sale at a Civil War reenactment last year. A hand drawn map of Missouri points out Vernon County’s location. The map is covered with statistics like how many battles and scrimmages were fought in Missouri. Across the top of the map is the definition for bushwhacker and jayhawker, plus pictures of a bushwhacker and two Union soldiers stones which are my great grandfathers buried in the Montevallo Cemetery and a picture of a woman’s grave who was a slave before the war and lived to be almost 100. Montevallo’s only black citizen after the war, Isabel Taylor was my parents neighbor in the 1930’s. In plastic covers, I have a copy of my great grandfather’s discharge paper, a picture and a story about Isabel Taylor from the Nevada Daily News. I’ll set out a stack of business cards so the club members know how to contact me later for future sales and a box of my other books to go through for those that like my different genres (Amish, mystery, western or Alzheimer’s themes) while I talk.

Bushwhacker Ella Mayfield’s story was an easy one to write. History provided me with details and dates of battles and towns burned by Union soldiers. The 1887 Vernon County History book supplied information about the Mayfield family. The authors point of view about the Civil War others wouldn’t know that didn’t live in that area until I wrote this book and talked about the era. My book is considered fact based fiction. The conversations and some of the details I added were my imagination because I wasn’t there.

An added plus for me, my parents grew up near Montevallo. We went there to visit family and friends often when I was a child so I know the landscape well. For many years, I’ve revisited that area, traveling in the same places that my parents and Ella lived.

Women, who homesteaded with their husbands, were sturdy, hardworking individuals. They could shoot a squirrel rifle, ride a horse, wield an ax and hold on to the reins of work horses or mules struggling to pull a small plow across unbroken sod. All the while, they had just delivered a baby or were expecting another one. It’s no wonder, these same women were able to hold their own among men in Ozark bushwhacker bands. The Mayfield family were considered heroes in Vernon County during the war. They suffered as much as any other family. Ella lost two husbands, two brothers and two brother-in-laws to Union soldiers and in the end was burned out of the timbers that hid her and her band so well.

Homesteaders weren’t interested in slavery. They had large families to help farm the 160 acres they signed up for. To keep that land, they had to build a cabin and plant crops for five years then the farm belonged to them. When the war started, family members, women, children and elderly were left behind to protect their homes and land. They fought to stay on the land they had put so much sweat into making their home. Years later, bushwhackers that come to mind are the James brothers and Younger brothers. Living in a land completely destroyed by fire and battles, these men chose to be outlaws rather than make an honest living. That was not how the bushwhackers of Vernon County began. Early on, the men came home from battles, disillusioned by battle losses, death of friends and relatives. The battles they were sent to fight were too far from home to protect their families. These men chose to become bushwhackers and fight at home to try to keep the Kansas Jayhawkers and the Union soldiers from burning their homes and killing their families. Angered by raids made on what belonged to them, the bushwhackers raided in Kansas, burning and killing. Ft. Scott Union soldiers tracked them back into Vernon County. Hit and run fighting was easy for the bushwhackers with vast timbers to disappear into, caves to hold up in and creeks to ford to hide their tracks. By the end of the war, the few women, children and old men left in their homes ran out of food to give the bushwhackers. The Union soldiers saw to that by destroying extra food, gardens and taking away milk cows to keep starving settlers from giving aide to the militias. The sympathizers had to move away from the areas to survive. That didn’t stop the bushwhackers. They were afraid to shoot what little game was left for fear the soldier patrols would hear a shot. Instead, they lived on berries, nuts, persimmons and pawpaws. Finally, the Union General, Thomas Ewing, in Kansas City issued Order No. 11. Burn Cass, Jackson, Bates and most of Vernon county south of Kansas City to run off all the southern sympathizers and what was left of the bushwhackers. That did it. In the smoky haze of spreading fire, Vernon County citizens and the last of Confederate solders fled to Arkansas.

That’s when Ella and her second husband gave up the fight. A few months after they arrived in Arkansas, Ella’s husband was killed. I tried to find out what happened but so far don’t know the answer. Ella came back to Vernon County, married a man farming not far from where her family’s farm had been. She used her first name, Amanda, which as time passed helped others forget her involvement in the war. After so many hardships, Ella had a normal life. She farmed with her husband, moved to Oklahoma later in life and is buried there beside her husband.

Now thoughts about summers -Yesterday and Today

Last Thursday was my husband’s birthday. I brought his 89 year old mother out for the day. In he afternoon, one of his sisters brought her two grandchildren that think coming to our place is like visiting a zoo. Our son joined us after he got off work. It was a super day with low humidity and warm sunshine that made our ash trees shade feel good. This was a day reminiscent of days in the Ozarks when I was small. In those days, my family spent many hot afternoons under a large maple tree, sipping real lemonade and Kool Aid. Our fan, compliments of a feed store, was a small piece of cardboard with a tongue depressor like handle. Many weekends when relatives came to visit, the grownups sat in the shade while the kids played. Dad bought a 50 pound block of ice which he busted up in a gunny sack, and everyone including the kids took turns cranking on the ice cream maker. We didn’t seem to mind the heat in those days. Maybe because we didn’t have air conditioning, we were acclimated to Missouri’s humid heat.

Many a summer evening, my family sat outside until bedtime. We had a porch swing. When my younger brother and I were small, my parents sat in it with us while Dad told us stories about what it was like when he was a kid or the Civil War stories his father told him about his grandfather. When we outgrew the swing, we sat on an old quilt in the grass. Dad bought a telescope. He pointed out stars and constellations, told us the names and let us look at them. The moving star that traveled from North to South was Russia’s Sputnik.

The house stayed hot through the night. We slept on the floor in front of the front porch screen door with a small, old fan stirring the air some. I was agile enough in those days not to mind the hard floor. The only reason I’ve thought twice about those days was Mom’s story about the large black snake that crawled under the screen door and slithered across the floor. The creature was looking for a cool place, too. At night for a summer or two, we slept sideways on an old iron bed out in the yard. Summers tended to be hot and dry so my parents didn’t worry about the old mattress getting wet. If a shower came up and passed through, the sun came out. The mattress was baked dry by bedtime. We lived on a blacktop road, but no one came by after ten o’clock to see us sleeping outside. That was the whole neighborhood’s bedtime so traffic was nonexistent until morning. My parents woke up at daybreak to milk cows. When passerbys drove by during the day, they probably thought the bed was a trampoline for the kids.

Now it’s summer in Iowa. The heat index of 104 one Wednesday was enough to drive my husband and I out of our un-air conditioned house that evening until the sun set. Not much of a view from our yard these days with ten feet tall corn plants all around us. One night, we watched four hot air balloons float near our house, turn and go back the way they came, but that Wednesday night and since then it has been too hot or stormy for balloons.

Another evening, my husband made the mistake of digging out a dandelion near my clematis vine which housed a minature nest of baby red headed finches. The frightened birds flew out into the lawn and bushes. After the surprise wore off, they decided they weren’t ready to leave home just yet. From several directions, the young birds made a clicking sound, trying to talk their mother into coming for them. Finally, my sympathetic husband hunted each baby up and put them back in the nest so their mother could find them. That quieted them down.

Most summer afternoon and evenings, we’re content to watch panting sparrows and warbling jenny wrens. How do those tiny birds muster up such a loud song? As you can see if my husband and I have any kind of breeze, plenty of shade, a refillable glass of tea and song birds entertaining us, we’re easy to please. Maybe it’s because we know what winter will bring.

　

　

　

E-books and the Ever-Decreasing Circlets of Hardback Books

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Yesterday we looked at Amazon’s latest move in their stand-off with Penguin (Pearson Group) over negotiations on the implementation of the agent model on e-books by the major publishing houses. Amazon have reduced some new penguin titles in hardback to $9.99 to telegraph to their customers that they want control and flexibility on retail pricing rather than be under constraints imposed by the agreements they have with publishers.

Amazon know publishers are deeply uneasy about the future for hardback books as the lead format release for a new title, and while Amazon are taking the hit on a $9.99 discount, they are send a very clear signal out to their customers—we’re on the side of the of the customer and just look at what these publisher guys are trying to do to us.

I questioned the real resolve major publishers have to get behind the development and promotion of their e-book strategy, and while this year’s London Book Fair came and went in a whisper, last year’s Fair underlined for me the first inkling I had that UK publishers were just not willing to embrace e-books in the way they needed to. My feeling now is this reluctance may actually extend to many US publishers, who may like to be seen to be actively behind the steady rise in e-book sales, but secretly they are hoping the market levels and bottoms in the next couple of years so they can revert back to their tried, trusted and sacred printed book. I commented yesterday on the resolve of publishers to seeing e-books take off. 

“I have one overriding feeling about the agency model adopted by the major publishers in their agreements reached so far with Amazon – whose executives have spent many an hour locked away behind polished doors – and it is the belief that publishers are still not wholeheartedly behind the growth and development of e-books. What I see is the battle for control rather than any innovation and prosperity for e-books.”

Judith Rosen, of Publishers Weekly, on Friday, highlighted the approach of Circlet Publishing in the USA, a small press run by Cecelia Tan and her husband, Corwin, since 1992. Three years ago they had to stop publishing print editions of their titles due to a financial downturn, and instead, in an effort to revitalise the business, they focussed on e-books for their science fiction erotica lists. Tan never saw the move as a means to become an e-book publisher, but an effort to rescue Circlet Press. She told Rosen in the Publishers Weekly article:
 

"There’s still no replacement for the ‘real’ book. Three years ago Circlet was essentially dead in the water. Bookstores weren’t ordering in the quantity they used to. There’s been a real shrinkage of the erotica shelf. [In 2008] That’s when I taught myself to format for the Kindle.”

Through a mix of fundraising campaigns on www.circlet.com, Tan hopes to raise $5,000 for Circlet Press’ first printed book in three years by creating a CD compendium edition of twenty of their best e-books. It was interesting that Angela Hoy of Booklocker.com commented of the article on Publishers Weekly. Booklocker were a pioneer of selling e-books online way back in 1998. In fact, Booklocker did not sell their first printed edition until a year later.

So, the bigger question remains…
 
Why are publishers secretly terrified of e-books and what it will mean for the publishing industry?
 
Publishers are correct to point out that taking a book from submission to print ready file costs the same amount whether it is intended for print or e-book format. Beyond this stage is where publishers incur their biggest expense—on printing, marketing and distribution. The marketing expense will always focus on the sector where the largest sales are, and up till now it has been through media and in-store promotion. It is print runs and distribution discounts which eat away at publisher budgets. In an ideal e-book dominant market, print-runs are reduced and if we are to use the agency model as a future business template, then 30% is what the retailer gets, less than what is negotiated for many print book discounts.
 
For a $10 paperback, an e-book should not cost to the customer any more than $6.99 as an e-book, and its hardback counterpart has not place costing any more than that whether it is being released for the first time or not. Where publishers can be innovative is offering a hardback edition for the retail and library market bundled with an enhanced e-book edition. Attempting more than that from the buying customer is extracting more than the publishing centre will hold.
 
It is time for publishers to access the true value of books in whatever format or medium they are published. The real battle for the survival of the hardback—something publishers seemed desperate to hand on to—is not in their hands, but rather entirely dependent on how slowly or quickly universities, libraries and book clubs move to embracing digitalisation, and something tells me, in these financial times, it will come a lot sooner than later.
 
 
Circlet Press is a Cambridge, Massachusetts publishing house founded and managed by Cecilia Tan. It specializes in science fiction erotica, a once uncommon genre, and its publications often feature BDSM themes.

Tan founded the house in 1992 after researching the markets for publication of her own stories, which combined science fiction plotlines with explicitly sexual themes. At the time, science fiction publications turned away such material as unsuitable for their audience, and most publishers of erotic material were hard-core pornographers and uninterested in any material whose plotlines extended beyond the simple formula encounter story (in which two people meet and sex ensues).

The ground-breaking combination of sex-positive, woman-centered erotica with science fiction and fantasy themes came as a result of Tan’s editorial vision that rather than combine the worst clichés of both genres, the mixture could instead expand the boundaries of what was possible in each. Science fiction had developed a somewhat deserved reputation for being dismissive or neglectful of human character development issues like love, lust, attraction, and family issues, while erotica was definitely ripe for something beyond the encounter formula. Placing stories into a science fictional or magical context allowed writers for Circlet Press to remove their stories from their contemporary political context and sidestep issues such as feminism, AIDS, and sexual identity politics.

 

This is a reprint from Mick Rooney‘s POD, Self Publishing and Independent Publishing.

5 Self-Publishing Lessons I Learned From My Toddler

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It’s amazing, being a mother of a toddler, how much this little girl has taught me in just the 1 1/2 years she’s been with us. What’s even more amazing is that many of those lessons can be applied to self-publishing.

Lesson #1: Anything worth doing takes time. My daughter has been a little slow in using “big people” words, until recently. In fact, up until a few days ago, she would refuse to say words we knew she knew how to say. I can only guess the reason behind it was she wanted to be sure she could say it right before putting it out there for everyone to hear. In self-publishing,  throwing your work out to the general public before you’ve refined it to its best is a very bad decision. It’s bad for sales, bad for your reputation and bad for other self-publishers’ reputations. If you think it’s worth publishing, then take the time to do it well.

Lesson #2: Learn to have patience, with yourself and those around you. Tiny Tot, as we affectionately call her, can throw some of the best tantrums when she loses patience with a toy that isn’t doing exactly what she wants. She’s actually lost patience with herself, not the toy. Thankfully, Grandma has helped her cope with those moments by teaching her to tell herself that it’s okay, with a little patience she’ll be able to do what she is trying to do. (We now hear her repeating “okay” to herself on those occasions.) As a self-publisher, you want to make it all happen right now, but that’s not the way it works. It takes time to build a fan base, time to connect through social media. Everything takes time and that’s okay.

Lesson #3: Sometimes it helps to explain what you’re doing. Refilling a sippy cup of milk used to cause a melt-down. She was getting what she wanted, more milk, but she didn’t understand what had to happen to get it. Since we began explaining each step as we do it we’ve managed to avoid those tantrums. I’ve found gathering support for my self-publishing venture easier to gain when I explain exactly what it is I’m doing along the way.

Lesson #4: If you’re having a hard time making anything do what you want, take a nap (or at least a break). When my little girl starts throwing tantrums over the smallest things, a piece of paper she can’t fit into a bottle or the opening of the freezer instead of the refrigerator (she’s still working on how to make her wants known), I know it’s time for some downtime be it a nap or just a drink and some quiet rocking time with Mama. I understand where she’s coming from because when I get tired and/or frustrated with a project I know it’s time for a break — or to go to bed when I’m burning the midnight oil. Coming back to a project refreshed means being able to look at it from other angles and maybe finding a solution I didn’t see before.

Lesson #5: You can do anything you set your mind to so long as you don’t believe you can’t. Tiny Tot has done some things I didn’t think she’d be able to. For example, at eleven months old she said her first (and only to date) complete sentence. She asked her Grandma, “Can I do that?”, meaning she wanted to help Grandma re-load the dishwasher. If her Grandma and one of her aunt’s hadn’t also heard her say it, I would have believed my mind was playing tricks on me. She didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to be able to do that, but she did it. Self-publishing can be like that. There are a lot of experts who say you can’t do better than break even by self-publishing; however there are people doing just that. In fact, it’s said that self-published fiction books (especially in eBook form) are the least likely to be purchased and yet Independent Authors like Joe Konrath are doing quite well. These people have been told they “can’t” do what they’re doing. They just don’t accept that they “can’t.”

I’m glad I’ve taken the time to get to know my little girl because she’s given me some wonderful tips. Listening to what my toddler teaches has made my life, and my self-publishing career, a richer experience on The Road to Writing.

 

This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s The Road to Writing blog.

Some Words of Advice to Dorchester Authors

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I went on line late this afternoon and was bombarded by the swirl of news and commentary about Dorchester Publishing’s decision to switch to an e-book/POD approach to publishing. At first I simply felt a wave of sympathy for those authors who found their familiar world swept away, particularly those authors who had books that were supposed to come out this fall and were in the middle of marketing campaigns designed around traditional trade paperbacks and brick and mortar stores. See for example the discussion on the Smart Bitches website.

Next I thought about what advice I would give these authors from my experience this past year as an indie author whose book, Maids of Misfortune, is in both ebook and POD formats. Like many of the commentators on the Smart Bitches site, I would suggest that once they know for sure where and when their books will be available they take advantage of their social networks (facebook, myspace, twitter) and their author websites and blogs to get the word out.

If they haven’t yet developed those social networking tools or they don’t have their own website or blog-it was high time they did so anyway, so this will provide a powerful motivator for them to do something they had probably been saying to themselves (and to their agents) they should be doing for some time.

I would recommend Publetariat and the blogs Creative Penn and There are No Rules as good places to start.

But then, I suddenly thought, wait a minute! Many of the Dorchester authors have something that most indie authors would love to have, a backlist. As I scrolled down and looked at the long list of books that some of these authors had, I couldn’t help but notice how many of them were listed as “out of stock,” and I thought, OMG, these authors need to run–not walk to J.A Konrath’s blog, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing, and read every one of his posts for the past year. Because what Konrath has done for authors is show how they can turn their backlists and their previously unpublished works into a decent living.

First of all, it seems to me there should be no excuse from now on for Dorchester not to start making these out of stock books available in POD and/or ebook format, and if they don’t, the authors should be negotiating to get those rights back.

Second, if they do have the rights to any of their past books, once they have converted those books to electronic form (and there are lots of guidebooks and real people out there anxious to help authors do this for relatively modest prices), they can start to use those books if priced correctly (or offered for free) to drive a new audience to their published books with Dorchester.

Third, if they have any short stories, novellas, or books that they love but were never able to sell, these also can be offered for free or at low prices as a way to boost sales for their published books. I can’t stress too much how important reading Konrath is to understanding the effectiveness of this sort of strategy.

For example, even as a complete novice, who self-published her first historical mystery eight months ago, I have already gotten to the point where I am selling about 300 books a month, making about $2 a book (my ebooks sells for $2.99). Imagine what I could be doing if I had a more books to sell and an already established fan base?

So my advice to Dorchester authors is to begin to imagine this future where today might just be the day when they took control of their destinies and ended up making more money from their writing than they had ever hoped to do. I wish them all the luck in the world.

 

This is a cross-posting from M. Louisa Locke‘s The Front Parlor blog.

People Don’t Buy Books Based On The Publisher

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Most writers and authors also buy a lot of books. I’m certainly do, and you probably do too. So what makes you buy a book?

I buy books primarily based on the following:
  • Recommendations from others mostly found on blogs I read and twitter
  • Browsing Amazon Kindle store in the categories I read, as well as how Amazon uses suggestions on other books I have read. I download lots of samples and then buy the books that take my fancy.
  • Browsing physical book stores, although now I note down titles and then go buy them on my Kindle as they are 1/4 of the price of the physical book
I definitely do not buy books based on the publisher. In fact, most of the time I wouldn’t know who the publisher was anyway and in a brief survey of other book buyers they have a similar experience. This raises a couple of very important questions for authors and writers, and perhaps publishers as well.
  • If book buyers don’t care who the publisher is, why is there a stigma to being self-published? (it’s changing but it is still there). If you have a professionally edited and interesting book, with an eye-catching cover, buyers will not know the difference anyway. I have the same Amazon shelf-space as any other books. What do you think?
  • If book buyers don’t care who the publisher is, why do authors care so much? Do we all want a 10 book deal with Harper Collins because it means more physical distribution to bookstores, potentially world rights and more publicity budget? and is that scenario very likely for most authors. I don’t think so. The reason must be ego and I will freely admit to being one of those authors! I would love a 10 book deal with Harper Collins! But I know that I will still need to do my own publicity and marketing, and I may well make less money than  digital publishing. It is important to identify the why behind what you want for your book and your career as an author. Why do you care who publishes you?
  • If book buyers don’t care who the publisher is, whose brand is associated with the book? In a brilliant audio to the indie publishing industry a few weeks ago, Seth Godin challenged the audience on brand. He basically said that publishers should be aligning with audiences and brands and become the “go to” publisher for that audience e.g. be the publisher for civil war books, or for coeliac disease sufferers. I can think of a couple of publishers who have this right at the moment. O’Reilly Books is for tech books, and Harlequin is for romance, but do the readers go there to spend money? I find branding to be a fascinating topic for authors and the publishing industry and right now, you need to consider your branding in a very crowded marketplace.
[Update: This piece was written a week ago, but I just saw the interview with Mark Coker from Smashwords where he says the same thing:
“Readers typically don’t pay attention to the name of the publisher on the spine of the book. They pay attention to the author and the story.”
Do you buy books based on a publisher? and do you care who publishes your book?

 

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

Who Needs A Publisher?

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This article, by Isia Jasiewicz, originally appeared on Newsweek.com on 7/30/10.

Boyd Morrison was finishing a Ph.D. in industrial engineering when he wrote his first novel. Five agents rejected it. Nine years later he tried again, and this time he did get an agent—after nearly three years and three novels. But that turned out to be some kind of cosmic tease, because 25 publishers turned down The Ark.

With nothing left to lose, Morrison uploaded The Ark and his two other unpublished novels to Amazon’s Kindle store in March 2009. Within three months, he was selling books at a rate of 4,000 a month—a number that attracted the attention of the same publishers who had rejected him. This May, when The Ark was released in hardcover from Simon & Schuster, it became the first self-published Kindle book to be picked up by a Big Six publisher. Morrison says that the phone call from his agent telling him he’d finally see his book in print was “one of the most amazing moments of my life.”

Until recently, reviewers and booksellers looked down on self-published authors the way Anna Wintour scorns Dress Barn. Now new writers and established authors alike are increasingly taking publishing into their own hands, and the publishing establishment is paying attention. According to a recent Bowker report, the market for “nontraditional books” in the United States grew by more than 750,000 new titles in 2009—a 181 percent increase over 2008. Five of the top 100 bestsellers in the Kindle store—which now produces more sales than Amazon’s hardcover list—are currently self-published.

Read the rest of the article on Newsweek.com.

Smashwords founder Mark Coker talks to Wetmachine About the Future of Publishing

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This interview, by John Sundman, originally appeared in his My Thoughts Exactly on Wetmachine on 8/4/10. 

Smashwords is a service for helping small and self-publishers format ebooks in diverse formats (for example: kindle, epub, PDF, Palm) and distribute them through diverse retail channels (for example Amazon, Apple, BN, Kobo, and Smashwords itself). A few weeks ago I sent Smashwords founder Mark Coker a note asking if I could interview him for Wetmachine & SelfPublishing Review. He said yes; I sent him some questions about the current & future state of book publishing, and he answered. His replies appear below the fold.

I found his answers interesting and direct, and I think you’ll enjoy reading what he had to say.
 

Q: When I told a list I’m on that I was going to be interviewing you and solicited questions, my friend Dirk replied: “Please ask him what the fuck is going on.” I think that’s a pretty good place to start. Can you summarize the important trends you see in publishing right now?

I can sum up this answer with one word: Change.

Now, more words… For the last century, publishers controlled the means of book production and book distribution. If authors wanted to reach readers, they had no choice but to kneel before the publishing oligopolists who had the power to determine who got published, and what readers read. The system worked fantastically well for the publishers, moderately well for readers, but less well for the authors they published, and even less well for the vast majority of authors who could never gain access to the cliquey club of the published. And like most clubs, the dream of the club often exceeds the reality of the club.  Most authors lucky enough to have their books accepted by this old system received little more than fleeting ego gratification and bragging rights.

Change is an exciting, terrifying thing. It represents both a threat and an opportunity to every author and publisher.

The other week I gave a presentation to group of students at NYU, and I just posted about it over at the Smashwords blog. I titled it, “How Indie Ebooks Will Transform the Future of Book Publishing.”  I started the presentation by quoting my favorite Tool song, Rosetta Stoned. It’s a song about a guy abducted by space aliens, and the aliens give him a message he’s supposed to deliver to his fellow humans, “a message of hope for those who will listen, and a warning for those who do not.” This is the message I shared. My message was that authors and publishers face greater opportunities today than ever before to reach readers with books. Yet authors and publishers who fail to adapt to the change, or who respond incorrectly to the change, will go suffer.

Q: You come from a background in “angel” and venture investing in Silicon Valley. You see all kinds of opportunities and could have chosen any one of dozens of technologies to get personally involved in. Why did you choose to form Smashwords and get into electronic publishing for independent authors?

Traditional publishing is a broken business on the precipice of major change. I perceived an opportunity create a business that can help facilitate this change in a constructive way that’s valuable for readers, authors, publishers and booksellers. 

My motivation for creating Smashwords really came down to a crazy desire to change the future of publishing by empowering authors to be their own publishers. I wanted to turn publishing upside down by shifting the power center of this business from publishers to authors and readers.

For the last century, book publishing was built on the backs of undercompensated, underappreciated authors. If you cherish books as much as I do, how can you not honor the authors who create them, or the readers who purchase them?

I’m not saying publishers don’t honor authors. I just think their businesses are not set up to serve them as they deserve to be served.

There’s a huge disconnect in publishing. Publishers publish books for reasons different that writers write. Publishers publish works based on perceived commercial merit. Most authors are shut out and denied any chance to reach readers.  Readers are denied the opportunity to discover the full diversity of great works. I think this commercial filter is not only myopic, it’s also dangerous to the future of books, especially if you believe, as I do, that books and authorship are essential to the future of mankind.

Publishers are unable to take a risk on every author, nor would they want to even if they could. They have businesses to run and Manhattan skyscraper rents to pay.

I created Smashwords so I could take a risk on every author.  I think every author has a right to publish, and I think the vast collective wisdom of readers will help the best works get read by the right readers.

Read the rest of the interview on Wet Machine.

Pass the Gestalt, Please

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This post, by Evan Schnittman, originally appeared on his Black Plastic Glasses blog on 7/15/10.

In the past two weeks I have heard forcefully stated pronouncements by agent Andrew Wylie and chair of the Society of Authors, Tom Holland, regarding ebook royalty rates.  A 50/50 share between author and publisher is the only possible outcome they can accept, citing the tired and somewhat old argument we have heard before:

The publisher has little or no incremental out of pocket cost to create ebooks, therefore the income should be split in the same manner as subsidiary rights, which is generally 50/50.

 The average person would be hard pressed to disagree—certainly in this day and age the digital file created to make a print book cannot cost much to convert to an ebook. Even the DRM, hosting, and file management costs must be de minimis when compared to the cost of paper, printing, binding, warehouse, and shipping. And ebooks have no returns!

But there is a huge flaw in this view, as it is built on the self-serving and reductive assumption that ebooks can and should be viewed as separate from the book’s overall economy. By attacking ebook royalties in this manner, a trap is set by those seeking to maximize short-term profits at the expense of all else. The object of this ploy is to dissect the intellectual property into as many different pieces as possible and negotiate them on the open market in order to maximize the “deal.”

The problem with that approach is that successful and coherent publishing is not the sum of individual publishing rights, but rather the gestalt work presented coherently to a global audience. Viewing the ebook out of the context of the rest of the work gets us nowhere. We must understand how ebooks fit into the publishing ecosphere and only then can we determine what the right royalty should be.

To begin, let’s establish what an ebook isn’t—a subsidiary right.

Read the rest of the post on Evan Schnittman’s Black Plastic Glasses.

Authentic Writing

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Self-publishers start out as writers, then become authors. Some people are natural writers, but the rest of us need help from time to time.

One of the best ways to connect with readers is when your writing is authentic, material that comes right out of your own experience. Although many of these resources are aimed at nonfiction writers, fiction writers need authenticity too.

It seems to me that as writers, we need to learn to draw on our deepest resources, the essential traits that define us. Writing is a creative expression that allows each of us to communicate from our unique vantage point our own view of the world. Whether we’re describing a scene from memory, the details of a scene in a historical romance, or explaining the way geology has formed the landscape, we need the skill to trust our own instincts and write our truth.

When writing is authentic, regardless of its subject matter, it communicates to the reader and draws them into the world the writer has to show them.

Although many of the articles on the blog relate more directly to books and publishing, I try to remember that it’s in the creative act that all our publishing begins. I hope you enjoy these articles.

The community at The Book Designer is an active and engaged one, so I hope you’ll participate by leaving a comment to expand, to reflect on, or to contest what you’ve read. Enjoy!

Writing Technique and Inspiration

Unleash Your Creativity Now: How to Freewrite
How to Get Out of Your Own Way: Suzanne Murray on Freewriting
Car Writer
Creativity—The List of Lists
How Freewriting Saved My Life

Writing Books

Writing for your Life: Old Friend from Far Away by Natalie Goldberg
Writing For Your Life by Deena Metzger
Book Review: If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland

Writer’s Tools

A Google Toolbox for Writers

The next stop on your publishing journey is Getting Ready to Publish. When you’re ready, continue on.

 

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

Final USPS Udate, Twitter, Merchant Circle & More

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I’ve received another $55 check from the Postal Service. That brings the total repayment to $110. I’m going to stop with that amount though I’m still owed another $25. I feel lucky to have gotten this much back. For future reference if I ever lose something else in the mail I’ve insured, I now know to keep pushing for a fair payment and have the Washington D.C address to write first.

At last count, I have 40 following me on Twitter and 66 followers. It seems as though I see an increase in followers after I’ve blogged on Book Marketing Network, iFOGO and Publetariat. This last week I picked up Blog Expert, Rachel Karl, as a follower. She said I had a nice blog. I wondered which one she looked at since I blog on eight sites now. Rachel had checked my Twitter site out well enough to let me know that the link to my website under my name wasn’t working. I appreciated the FYI, immediately fixed the problem and tweeted Rachel back to let her know the link works now.

My twitter bio has lead different types of businesses and people with varied interest to follow me. I stated I like writing books, gardening, flowers, fishing and boating. Therefore boat businesses and boaters, flower businesses, gardeners and nature lovers follow me. I thought about not returning the follow or changing my bio if I might be misleading some tweeters, but what I wanted was to promote my books and online bookstore. Most followers must read books so after email notification from followers, I send them a thank you message from Author Fay Risner and mention one of my books or where to buy my books online and my online bookstore. I’ve picked up some authors including Steve Weber, author of Plug Your Book, a book about internet book promoting which has been helpful to me, and he didn’t even know at the time I’d bought his book.

Google Partner Program has decided to make ebooks out of the books in the program if the authors are agreeable. I’ve had my books in the program for awhile but I haven’t finished filling out the forms they needed. August 6 is when they will begin promoting ebooks. Once a month for some time now, I’ve received an email notice about how many of my books were viewed and how many pages looked at. This notice is a way for me to see what genres readers are interested in.

I accidentally came across Merchant Circle on the internet. There is one for every city in every state. If a you come from a small town that hasn’t started using Merchant Circle yet be the first one to start if you consider your book selling a business. Sign up is free. I didn’t think of myself as a business when I began this venture, but last year I published two books at Lightning Source, Inc. I had to fill out tax forms and send for a sales tax permit before Lightning Source would print my books. Since I was considered a business, that lead to me to starting my online bookstore.

The added features on Merchant Circle are from $249 to $39, but I signed up for the free site. Do I expect to sell more books in my area when my town has a population of 600, and everyone knows everyone else. The biggest businesses are the nursing home and the John Deere Implement dealer. Not really, but Google Crawler is working on the site. My blog is picked up by major search engines which extends my reach and will introduce my books to more customers that search the internet like I do. I felt it was worth the effort to sign up for the free package and give it a try.

I had to have a logo so I used a copy of my business card since I’m not good with graphics. An advertisement and a coupon can be made. My coupon states a free book for the sale of one book on the site and a review of my business or the book purchased. The advertisement states that my stories are clean; no curse words or sex scenes. Books written by a Midwestern author with wholesome values.

The results are in for July for my Kindle books sales. With the raise in price, sales went down to about half of what I sold in June, but the royalty went from 35% to 70% so the total royalty amount was about the same. Better news is I’m now selling my series of five mystery books which wasn’t getting noticed before. That gives me encouragement to write Amazing Gracie Mystery number six.

Amazon’s Author Central has sent out emails to authors with an author page to tell them they won’t be able to blog on site after August 15th. They will need to submit a link to another blog they write. I’ve tried linking to another blog before without success, but I’m working on it again.

And finally, I read a helpful article on Publetariat.com that I liked titled The Truth About Typos by Mark Barrett’s Ditchwalk. He said reread what you write at least once. Slow down and concentrate. Don’t publish when you’re tired. Just know that what you’ve written will never be perfect. Sooner or later a typo will survive. If you as a self published author worry about those typos like I do, this would be a good article to read. If nothing else the article made me feel a little better about those dreaded typos that did survive.

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

 

Screenplay Writing Interview II with Shannon L. Arrant

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I started reworking my 2nd mystery, Firebug, into a screenplay. Initially I am changing over to present tense and cutting out unnecessary verbiage. Once I do all that, then I’ll have to look at what’s left with an I to cutting or cutting back. Now, as promised, here is the second installment of my interview with Shannon.

What are some tips to help improve a writer’s screenwriting?
The first is to accept that novels and screenplays are two completely different things. Screenplays have a set format that is the standard industry wide. If you want to be taken seriously as a screenwriter and don’t want to film your script yourself, it is imperative that you use the proper formatting.

There are many different screenwriting programs out there that will handle the formatting for you. Final Draft (www.finaldraft.com) is the most popular however it’s expensive. I personally use Celtx (www.celtx.com). It can handle formatting for screenplays, stage plays, audio plays, and even comic books. It formats perfectly. If you decide to produce your screenplay yourself, it even allows you to track all aspects of a production from start to finish. Best of all, it’s free!
A word of caution, though: Just because you’re using a software, it doesn’t mean the onus isn’t on you to understand how to use the many screenwriting elements correctly. No amount of proper formatting will save you if you don’t know how to use Flashbacks, Voice Overs, Parentheticals, etc … correctly.

Perhaps the biggest tip I can give any screenwriter is to know where you’re going before you even begin. Take the time to create an outline of your main plot and all your subplots. The best way I’ve come across of doing this is to use scene cards. A scene card can be an index card, a piece of paper, or even a page in a notebook or Word document. These are such wonderful tools, I’ve even taken to using them in my novels as well as my screenplays.

This is what one of my scene cards for my screenplay ‘Sisterhood of the Sword’ looks like:

Location – Tavern
Time of Day – Night
Characters – Maria, Catarina, Nohemi, Villagers

Description/Goal of the Scene –
The Villagers have assembled to attempt to figure out what to do. Maria is adamant about standing and fighting. Catarina wants the women to pack up and run. Nohemi isn’t certain what to do but she knows they need to do something. Through a passionate speech, Maria manages to sway the Villagers and Nohemi to her point of view. Catarina leaves the meeting, upset that no one saw her point of view and worried about the women.

Important Dialogue (optional) –
Catarina-“Maria, you have nothing to lose.”

Maria-“I have nothing to lose? How can you say I have nothing to lose? I have everything to lose! My honor, my dignity, my life…I stand to lose it all, just like the rest of you. True, I am a widow and I have no children. But that doesn’t make me any less of a woman! My farm, my life is here, in this village…just like all of you. We all have everything to lose. And that, that is why we must stand and fight.”

Villagers: *mutter amongst themselves, nodding, agreeing with Maria*

Nohemi: “She’s right. Maria is right. We have to stay and fight.”

Catarina: “Nohemi, how can you say that? What do you know of war?”

Nohemi: “I know the day after I was wed my husband was called off to fight in one. I know one is coming to me. That is really all I need to know. Whether I like it or not, whether I know anything about it or not, war is coming for me…and the rest of us. I know I need to do something. I know that I am choosing to fight because I believe what little I have is worth fighting for.”

Catarina-“You are all crazy. None of you have any idea what you are getting yourselves into.”

Here’s the actual scene I wrote based off the above scene card:

INT. TAVERN – NIGHT

The tavern is small and homey looking. A bar is at the back
of the room. Mismatched tables and chairs are spaced
throughout the room.

The Villagers are crowded into the small space. Every chair
is filled. Women stand against the walls. THE TAVERN
KEEPER’S WIFE moves through the crowd, filling up mugs from
a pitcher.

The air is tense. The Villagers mutter amongst
themselves. Maria sits at the bar, looking
morose. Catarina comforts Nohemi as best as she can at a
table in the corner.

INEZ stands up from her seat. Inez is a young woman, in her
mid 20s. She has a fair complexion with blond hair and
brown eyes.

INEZ
What are we going to do?

Inez’s question causes some of the other Villagers to speak
up, asking the same thing. Maria turns from the bar to face
the rest of the room.

TAVERN KEEPER’S WIFE
What can we do? Our husbands are
gone.

The Villagers mutter nervously amongst themselves.

INEZ
I’ll tell you what we can do. We
can run, that’s what.

Some of the Villagers nod and mumble in agreement.

Maria speaks from where she sits at the bar. Her voice is
quiet, but it cuts through the room, silencing it.

MARIA
We can fight.

Catarina looks up in alarm.

CATARINA
What? Are you mad?

Maria stands up.

MARIA
Hell yes, I’m mad! My sister was
brutally murdered!

CATARINA
That’s not what I meant.

MARIA
I know what you meant,
Catarina. My answer is still the
same. We need to fight.

Catarina stands. The Villagers watch the two uneasily.

CATARINA
We need to run. Pack up what we
can, burn the rest, and run. We
can head to the coast; to our
husbands. From there we can tell
the King what’s going on.

Some of the Villagers nod their approval. Others look
uncertain.

MARIA
What if these men pursue us? What
then? Your father said they were
coming for revenge. We know what
they’ve been doing to villages they
have no real grudge
against. There’s no telling what
they will do to us. We have to
make a stand. We have to
fight. It’s the only choice we
have.

CATARINA
Maria, you have nothing to lose.

MARIA
How can you say that? I have
everything to lose! My honor, my
dignity, my life… I stand to lose
it all, just like the rest of
you. I may be a childless widow
but that doesn’t make me any less
of a woman! My farm, my life is
here, in this village… just like
all of you. We all have everything
to lose. And that, that is why we
must stand and fight.

The Villagers mutter amongst themselves. They nod in
agreement with Maria.

Nohemi speaks up quietly from where she’s seated near
Catarina.

NOHEMI
She’s right. Maria is right. We
have to stay and fight.

CATARINA
Nohemi, how can you say that? What
do you know of war?

Nohemi stands. She looks Catarina in the eye.

NOHEMI
I know the day after I was wed my
husband was called off to fight in
one. I know one is coming for
me. That is all I really need to
know. Whether I like it or not,
whether I know anything about it or
not, war is coming for me… and
for the rest of us. I know I need
to do something. I know that I’m
choosing to fight because I believe
what little I have is worth
fighting for.

More and more of the Villagers nod in agreement with Maria
and Nohemi. Catarina looks around the room in complete
disbelief.

CATARINA
You are all crazy. None of you
have any idea what you are getting
yourselves into.

MARIA
Be that as it may. We still
believe we need to make a stand and
we shall.

Catarina casts one more look around the room before simply
shaking her head. Pushing through the crowd, she heads for
the door to the tavern.

From this you can see how the scene card gave me an excellent starting off point. I knew what I needed to accomplish in the scene before I even began it and was able to flesh it out from there as I wrote.

The average – screenplay will have anywhere from 45 to 55 scene cards. I find it’s best to start with around 50, just in case you think of any scenes as you’re writing that need to be added or moved around to make the plot and pacing of the screenplay flow better.

 

This is a cross-posting from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends blog.

How Publishers Can Prosper When Books Go Digital: Seth Godin’s Vision

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This article, by Doug Toft, originally appeared on his Posterous blog on 7/29/20. It is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

Seth Godin gave a mind-blowing talk to independent book publishers in May 2010. Following is a summary for you.

Five traditional functions

Traditionally, says Godin, book publishers have done 5 things:

  • Curate by picking books to publish.
  • Produce by editing manuscripts and manufacturing physical books.
  • Take financial risks by acting as venture capitalists for ideas and hoping that the books with those ideas will catch on.
  • Distribute books and compete for scarce shelf space.
  • Promote by publicizing, advertising, blogging, spamming, and otherwise getting the world to notice their books.

 How not to respond

The presence of ebooks and digital distribution upends that business model. How can book publishers respond?

For a path to avoid, Godin says, look at the record industry. It is essentially dead.

Record companies used to have a perfect business. Radio stations and MTV promoted their products for free. Record stores existed on only to sell their products. Vinyl albums wore out and needed to be replaced. If I lent you an LP and never got it back, I bought a replacement.

Then CDs and iTunes changed the rules of the game. And how did the record companies respond? By suing their biggest fans.

Right now, the big book publishers are preparing to respond in a similar way.

How the traditional publishing model changes

Consider what happens when book publishing goes digital:

  • Production and distribution of physical products is no longer needed. Books exist as bits and bytes that you download.
  • Publishers reduce their financial risk. They don’t have to buy paper, print books, put them in trucks, ship them to stores, and accept returns.
  • Shelf space is no issue. Amazon has infinite room for ebooks.
  • Promotion via traditional publicity and advertising fails. There’s already too much competition for consumers’ attention across too many channels.

So, of the 5 traditional functions of book publishers, only 1 remains. That is curation—picking manuscripts to publish.

Lead a tribe

In addition to curating, smart book publishers will also:

  • Create a tribe.
  • Lead that tribe.
  • Connect the members of the tribe.

For example, suppose that your specialty is publishing books about the American Civil War. Think of your readers as a tribe of people who share a passionate interest in that topic.

These people read your blog. They download free content from your website. They come to your conferences to meet each other. They give you their contact information through your website, and they subscribe to your email newsletter. You have permission to market to them.

As the leader of this tribe, you can call up the leading historians of the Civil War and tell them that you want to publish their next books. And they would fools to say no.

In addition, you don’t have to hunt so hard for new authors. They emerge spontaneously from the ranks of your tribe.

The new model in action

The above is a hypothetical example. Yet there are real people putting these ideas into action.

One is Scott Adams, cartoonist and creator of Dilbert. Early on, Adams published his email address on his cartoons. He built a list of readers and started sending them a newsletter.

Now, whenever Adams publishes a new book, he lets his tribe know. And he hits the best-seller lists.

Curvebender Publishing also leads a tribe. It publishes a $100 deluxe edition of Recording the Beatles: The Studio Equipment and Techniques Used to Create Their Classic Albums. The first printing of 3000 copies sold out after one week.

Turning it all around

In summary, as a book publisher you are no longer in the business of finding readers for your writers. Instead, you find writers for your readers.

The bottom line: Treat readers as an asset. Find out who they are. Work for them. 

So, what do you think? Is Godin’s vision on target?

 

 

The 70 Per Cent Solution

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By now you’ve probably heard all about Amazon’s new 70% royalty option for authors and publishers who release Kindle books through the Amazon Digital Text Platform (DTP), and many of you who have Kindle books in release may have already opted in for the higher royalty. But there’s a major gotcha here no one seems to be talking about.


No, I’m not talking about the ‘delivery price’ factor, which dictates the fee Amazon will hold back on your 70% royalty Kindle book based on the book’s file size. Despite all the panic-mongering on that point, and all the worry about whether Amazon may choose to increase that fee at some point in the future, I think it’s really no big deal. What I’m talking about is this little nugget from the terms of the 70% offer:

"Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices."

What this means is that if your book is being offered anywhere else, in any format, at a lower price than the price you’ve listed for your Kindle book on Amazon, Amazon will reduce your Kindle book’s list price on Amazon to match the lowest price at which your book is being sold elsewhere. You’ll still get your 70% royalty, but it will be on that lowest price. It’s kind of hard to extrapolate all that from this one-liner in their terms, but I’ve learned it the hard way.

When I opted in for the 70% royalty and raised my Kindle book prices to $2.99 on Amazon to qualify for the program, I didn’t remember my ebooks were being offered on Smashwords and Scribd in non-Kindle formats for $.99. I didn’t realize my error until I was reviewing a sales report a couple of weeks later. So I immediately changed the prices on my Smashwords and Scribd editions to $2.99, and waited for Amazon to catch up. And waited. And waited some more, as every single day, I lost royalty money on every copy sold.

After a week I contacted DTP support, and it took another week to get their conclusive response: that my ebooks were still listed on Barnes and Noble’s website at a price of $.99. See, B&N is among the expanded distribution resellers which carry Smashwords books when the author of the book in question has opted in for expanded distribution on the Smashwords site—which I had. Even though I changed the prices of my books on Smashwords, it can take weeks, many weeks, for those changes to propagate out to all the expanded distribution resellers. This isn’t Smashwords’ fault or doing, it’s just the reality of waiting for outside companies to make database changes according to whatever processes they have in place. And like most things in mainstream publishing and bookselling, it’s a very, very slow process.

So it actually would’ve been wiser for me to stay out of the 70% royalty option until after I’d raised my book prices outside Amazon and waited for those changes to propagate across all distribution channels. Since I didn’t, all I can do is either stay with the 70% on a $.99 pricetag while I wait however long it takes for B&N to catch up, or change back to the 35% royalty option so Amazon will only base my royalties on my Amazon prices.

I chose the latter, but it’s still going to cost me. You see, every time you change the price on your DTP Kindle book, or your royalty option, or pretty much anything else about it, you are forced to "re-publish" that book before your changes will be applied. Re-publishing makes the book unavailable for purchase for a minimum of two business days, and sometimes when you re-publish, the book gets stuck in a ‘pending’ status. When that happens you have to contact DTP support to resolve the issue, all of which means more days your book is not available for sale. When I re-published to opt in for the 70% royalty, my books all got stuck in the ‘pending’ status; one of them was unavailable for purchase on Amazon for seven calendar days.

Today I started that clock all over again, and I am again running the risk of my Kindle books getting stuck in ‘pending’ status—all just so I can get back to the 35% royalty option.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying this is all Amazon’s fault, nor that any of it is Smashwords’ or B&N’s fault. All of my lost royalties in this are ultimately the result of my original oversight.

However, I DO think Amazon should be a little clearer about the full implications of their "price parity" policy, and the importance of matching your Kindle book’s price across all resellers—including expanded distribution partners—before opting in for the 70% royalty. I also think the DTP should not require re-publication of a Kindle book when the author/publisher wants to make changes only to its price or royalty option. Why is it necessary to take the book off the virtual sales shelf for these things?

Here’s hoping I don’t get stuck in ‘pending’ again.

 

This is a cross-posting from April L. Hamiton‘s Indie Author blog.

The New & Improved The Creative Penn: Resources Galore, Now Easier to Find!

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New Resource Pages: Writing, Publishing, Book Marketing

Amazingly, [The Creative Penn] now has nearly 400 posts and nearly 3000 comments and I get emails every day with questions, so I thought it was time to add some better navigation options. I want this to be a really useful site for all who visit!

So, I have added a new Resources page that has links to my main content. It includes:

Writing – including FAQ like ‘How do I find the time to write?’ as well as creativity ideas, tips on how to write your book if you are just starting out, the psychology of writing and genres.

If you are writing a novel, you might like the page I have done tracking my own progress through my first novel, Pentecost.

Publishing – includes the publishing quadrant of traditional publishing, self-publishing, print-on-demand and digital publishing with ebooks.

Book Marketing and Promotion – includes author branding and platform building, blogging, social networking, podcasting, video, speaking, and other strategies including press releases, TV, radio and more.

Basically, I have found the best posts from the blog including top podcasts and included them on one easy page for reference per topic. I appreciate any comments on other questions you might have that are not answered there, and I will keep adding more info for you.

If you do enjoy the articles and podcasts on this site, please click here to sign up for free updates by email whenever a new post is published.

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