Ebooks

Articles specific to writing and publishing ebooks.

Creative Commons: What Every Self-Publisher Ought to Know

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Licensing of rights is at the center of the publishing business. Publishing contracts are rights licenses, nothing more or less. People who work in publishing, and who supply the publishing industry with its raw materials—the authors—become used to dealing with the expressions of creativity as valuable products with inherent rights.

Opposed to the whole rights-as-property side of the equation is the public domain. This abstract territory is where we keep the fruits of the creators of earlier eras. The best or most durable works of our time will, in turn, join the great trove of works that forms the underpinning of our culture. Because this material is owned by the public, it is freely available to all.
 
Each of these opposing forces—strict licenses of intellectual property to enable monetezation, and the need for culture to have the fruits of its history available to build upon—has a role to play. The trick is in getting the balance right.
 
 
A New Idea in Rights for the Twenty-First Century
In 2002 Duke University founded its Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Here’s a statement from their website:
Both the incentives provided by intellectual property and the freedom provided by the public domain are crucial to the balance. But most contemporary attention has gone to the realm of the protected.
Through the support of Duke’s Center, Creative Commons was formed soon thereafter. What exactly is Creative Commons?
Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. We provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.
Creative Commons is run as a collaborative non-profit with a large board and an evolving series of rights licenses that they describe and make available for content creators.
 
Explosive Growth
It’s obvious there was a real need for a more flexible way to deal with licensing creative works in the everything-is-reachable-by-a-Google-search era. Rights had been very cumbersome to negotiate and police. What Creative Commons aimed to do was put the control of the rights back in the hands of the people originating the works.
At the same time, it made it much easier for publishers to get access to content because the artist could state which version of the Creative Commons license they choose to apply to their work. It both stimulates commerce and protects the artists.
 
The growth of Creative Commons-licensed works has exploded. For the last year I’ve seen statistice for, 2008, over 130 million individual works were covered by Creative Commons licenses, and I’m sure the number is much higher now. Wikipedia, for example, uses Creative Commons licenses for all of its content.
 
And Flickr.com can search its collection of millions of images based on their Creative Commons licensing, a real boon to web-based publishers (like bloggers).
 
Creative Commons isn’t perfect, and some people have made reasonable arguments against its system. However, it still seems the most balanced, easiest to use approach generally accepted in the market, and it does leave the artist in control of deciding which rights to hold and which rights to grant. This seems far better than the “all rights reserved” method in which contracts have to be drawn for each case, dividing rights and licensing them.
 
Understanding Creative Commons Licenses

Under the current 3.0 version of Creative Commons, there are four conditions from which creators can choose. This is how they are explained, with their corresponding symbols

 

creative commons, self-publishing

(Click to enlarge)
 
By combining these conditions, you arrive at the six Creative Commons licenses:
  1. Creative Commons Attribution  Attribution (cc by)
    This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered, in terms of what others can do with your works licensed under Attribution.
     
  2. Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike  Attribution Share-Alike (cc by-sa)
    This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.
     
  3. Creative Commons  Attribution No Derivatives (cc by-nd)
    This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.
     
  4. Creative Commons book design, publish a book  Attribution Non-Commercial (cc by-nc)
    This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
     
  5. book design, self-publish a book  Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike (cc by-nc-sa)
    This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. Others can download and redistribute your work just like the by-nc-nd license, but they can also translate, make remixes, and produce new stories based on your work. All new work based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also be non-commercial in nature.
     
  6. creative commons, book design, publish a book  Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (cc by-nc-nd)
    This license is the most restrictive of the six main licenses, allowing redistribution. This license is often called the “free advertising” license because it allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.
3 Things to Remember About Your Rights
Remember, in the United States,
  1. Your copyright in your creation is effective as soon as you fix your creative expression in a form. Although there are various mechanisms to register your copyright, it exists when your original work is created.
  2. It’s often wise to list a copyright in your work to eliminate the ambiguity caused by not having any notice at all of rights ownership
  3. Creative Commons gives you a way to share works you’ve created in a flexible way, but it is optional. Your rights are assumed to be “all rights reserved” unless you state otherwise.
Takeaway: Creative Commons rights licenses are a flexible way for artists to share some rights while choosing which ones to withhold. It can spur creativity while allowing artists to maintain control of their work.

 

This is a cross-posting from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

Top 8 Cover Design Tips For Self-Publishers

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We’ve all seen them. The train wrecks. The art class projects. The cringe-inducing artwork. It’s the world of do-it-yourself book cover design.

 
Somewhere between the quirky “cover design generators” on author-service company websites, and the All-American view that everyone should get a ribbon because, after all, they participated, the cover design is suffering at the hands of self-publishers.
 
And no, I’m not saying that self-published books aren’t getting better—there are a lot of great-looking indie books out there. But I am saying that you don’t have to go far to find the ones that went wrong.
 
Book cover design, at its height, is an amazing commercial art. The best book designers continue to amaze and surprise us with their graphic design prowess.
 
But anyone who can write and publish a book ought to be able to avoid at least the worst mistakes in cover design.

So, here without further ado, are my

 
Top 8 Cover Design Tips for Self-Publishers
  1. Establish a principal focus for the cover—Nothing is more important. Your book is about something, and the cover ought to reflect that one idea clearly.
    One element that takes control, that commands the overwhelming majority of attention, of space, of emphasis on the cover. Don’t fall into the trap of loading up your cover with too many elements, 3 or 4 photos, illustrations, maps, “floating” ticket stubs.
    You could think of your book cover like a billboard, trying to catch the attention of browsers as they speed by. Billboards usually have 6 words or less. You have to “get it” at 60 miles per hour, in 3 to 5 seconds.
    A book cover ought to do the same thing. At a glance your prospect ought to know;
    • the genre of your book,
    • the general subject matter or focus, and
    • some idea of the tone or “ambiance” of the book.
    Is it a thriller? A software manual? A memoir of your time in Fiji? Your ideas on reform of the monetary system? Each of these books needs a cover that tells at a glance what the book is about.

     

  2. Make everything count—If you are going to introduce a graphic element, make sure it helps you communicate with the reader.
     
  3. Use the background—Avoid white backgrounds, which will disappear on retailer’s white screens. Use a color, a texture, or a background illustration instead.
     
  4. Make your title large—Reduce your cover design on screen to the size of a thumbnail on Amazon and see if you can read it. Can you make out what it’s about? If not, simplify.
     
  5. Use a font that’s easy to read—See above. There’s no sense using a font that’s unreadable when it’s radically reduced. Particularly watch out for script typefaces, the kind that look lacy and elegant at full size. They often disappear when small.
     
  6. Find images that clarify—Try not to be too literal. Look for something that expresses the mood, historical period, or overall tone of the book; provide a context.
     
  7. Stay with a few colors—If you don’t feel comfortable picking colors, look at some of the color palettes available online to get a selection of colors that will work well together.
     
  8. Look at lots of great book covers—You may not be able to mimic all their techniques, but the best book covers are tremendous sources of inspiration and fresh ideas.
Resources
  • You can always send your book over to the Self-Published Book Design group at Self-Publishing Review. Get a Design Review of your book, inside and out.
     
  • There is lots of stock photography online to explore, and ways to find images you can use for free
     
  • Sites with color palettes can be helpful and just plain fun. Make up your own color palettes too.
Takeaway: Taking a little care with a book cover you’re designing yourself can produce big results. Look at lots of book covers for inspiration.

 

This is a cross-posting from Joel Friedlander’s The Book Designer.

Is The Agency Model A Clear Case of Price Fixing?

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We learned this week that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has begun a preliminary investigation into Apple’s agency model price-fixing deal with five of the Big Six publishers. While I am sure that some of those players hope that Abbott’s inquiry is a fishing expedition that will amount to nothing more than some irksome legal bills, there is a significant chance that it or another inquiry could lead to a major legal battle and, ultimately, the possibility of legal remedies that might cause publishers to wish that they had never heard of the agency model. Let’s take a closer look.

For the past few months, in the course of reporting on the agency model, I have suggested at several points that it seemed likely that some of the issues involved would end up in court. After all, regardless of what else you might think about the agency model, there can’t really be any argument about two of its fundamental features:
 

  1. it is a manufacturers’ price-fixing arrangement intended to dictate and maintain certain price minimums at the retail level; and
     
  2. it developed out of collusion, either through direct communications or through communications that were brokered by Apple, between what one would expect to be competing publishing companies. (Collusion, I understand, is not a neutral word; if you are more comfortable using some other word, that’s fine, but, well, it is what it is.)

I have been criticized in a few quarters for suggesting, in earlier posts, a "conspiracy theory" and collusive behavior by some combination of Apple and the five big agency model publishers in bringing about the fundamental restructuring of ebook prices and business relationships earlier this year.

Guilty as charged: I did refer in my post to Penguin’s "agency price-fixing model co-conspirators," and I am sure that if I took a few moments I would find other instances of, well, calling things as I see them. There have been times when I have crossed the labeling line, and for instance I apologized just yesterday to Publisher’s Marketplace editor Michael Cader for referring to him and Mike Shatzkin as "publishing industry mouthpieces;" it was unfair and unnecessary of me.

But my point is unchanged: in all likelihood, the mass structural transformation of the ebook business that occurred earlier this year could not have occurred without the collective development of a pricing strategy by some or all of the key players. To suggest otherwise would be to imagine a process, something like the final round of Jeopardy, where all the participants write down the same answer to the question: "What can we do about these $9.99 ebook prices?"
Are we to believe that all of the agency model publishers independently thought up, and used their light pens to write down "We’ll throw out decades of wholesaler relationships and ‘manufacturers’ suggested retail prices’ and dictate that customers must pay 30 to 50 percent more for ebooks, and we’ll call it the ‘agency model’"?

Pardon me, but I’m not buying that.

Does that make it a conspiracy? I suppose it depends on your point of view. But if the major players got together across company lines to restructure their industry and fix prices at higher levels, and the result was a violation of the law, you don’t have to be sporting tin-foil headwear to call that a conspiracy. "Conspiracy" would be the word that a prosecutor would use, or a grand jury, or a judge, or a trial jury. I suppose you could call it a garden party, but the legal terms are conspiracy and collusion.

What law would they have been conspiring to violate?

The Sherman Antitrust Act, for starters, but there is a long history and legal tradition against such price-fixing collusion at the federal level, at the individual state level, and in a number of other nations where these business matters will be played out. Although the U.S. Supreme Court acted three years ago to narrow the circumstances under which businesses could be found in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, they left the teeth in the law for the courts to act when a manufacturer’s (the publishers) enforcement of minimum price maintenance on its distributors (Amazon and other ebook retailers) could be shown to have an "anticompetitive effect" that is "harmful to the consumer."

It is also worth keeping in mind that, although the agency model was initially rolled out in the U.S. ebook market, eventually these issues will be played out globally and may face even greater scrutiny in the U.K. or by the European Commission. In the U.K., the leading book trades observer, The Bookseller, has reported that some publishers have walked away from negotiations with Apple because "concerns over the legality of the agency model, first highlighted in The Bookseller, have still not been addressed for many."
I’ve been writing for the past few years in books and blogs and newsletters about the Kindle and various other ebook-related issues and news, and at times I have spoken out strongly with criticisms of Amazon, but one would not be wrong to say, as one would expect from its name, that Kindle Nation Daily is a pro-Kindle blog. Far more than it is pro-Kindle, however, Kindle Nation Daily advocates for the interests of Kindle owners, and it is clear from thousands of messages of feedback, emails, and comments that many Kindle owners see us as effective, informative, and reliable.

When the controversies of the agency model began to unfold, I even gave brief consideration to playing an organizing role in support of legal action against the ebook price-fixing collusion under the anti-trust act. While it seemed quite possible that a plaintiff class with legal standing could be organized and a serious and legally plausible action initiated, the resources necessary to pursue such a cause and do it justice seemed truly prohibitive for any volunteer effort.

While some speculated that legal action against agency model collusion might come from Amazon itself, or from the Department of Justice, or from other ebook owners, there are good reasons why such action hasn’t originated from these sources. Amazon, for one, is unlikely to pursue a strategy of litigation because such a strategy would be even more destructive to its business relationships with publishers, because it would require the company to make information public that it generally keeps very close to the vest, and because it could well be vulnerable to counterclaims about its own efforts to manage prices, regardless of whether such claims were considered legally actionable. I won’t be surprised if the Department of Justice becomes involved, but I’m also aware that it has plenty of more important issues on its plate.

Instead, we have heard this week, the Texas Attorney General’s office has begun an inquiry into the agency model that, according to DailyFinance.com publishing industry columnist Sarah Weinman  "appears to focus on pricing practices for e-books and Apple’s entrance into the [e-book] market in particular…. Though the investigation is still in preliminary stages, there’s a good case for legal action — and it’s all about the current state of antitrust legislation."

For those of us whose take on these issues lists toward a consumer’s point of view, such an investigation — and the possibility of antitrust litigation — has seemed inevitable. However, among publishing industry insiders, there seems to be genuine surprise, or at least puzzlement. Weinman herself questions why Texas would be interested, and suggests that the near-monopoly that Amazon held in the ebook content market prior to the launch of Apple’s iBooks store makes such scrutiny puzzling. (It is worth pointing out that a number of much smaller ebook retailers have also been disadvantaged by the agency model; some that tried to attract customers by offering coupons and special deals are no longer allowed to do so).

But Amazon was using its market power and deep pockets to lower prices, and while a strong argument can be made that the company’s goal was to use those lower prices to build and maintain dominant market share, there was no collusion or collective price-fixing involved. Supporters of the agency model may try to make the argument that Amazon’s strategy of aggressive price competition is itself anti-competitive in the long run, but such an argument would seem to conjure up a rather slippery slope of "small is beautiful" opposition to free market forces and competition. Many of Amazon’s other initiatives in support of independent publishing companies and authors over the past few months, as well as its significant history of "big tent" relationships with other retail partners large and small, may also help give the company cover against such charges.

Amazon relied on an individual corporate strategy to reduce and subsidize consumer prices, and went on paying publishers based on the retail list prices of their hardcover editions. Apple’s agency model play was demonstrably different: it relied on a collective price-fixing agreement among competitors, and the effect of that price-fixing, of course, was not to lower ebook prices but to raise them by 30 to 50 percent. The fact that Apple was a "fledgling" player in the ebook marketplace at the time of these actions would likely be offset both by the fact that it achieved more or less immediate success in brokering a collective price-fixing agreement with five of the six targeted players and by the size of its installed base of ebook-compatible devices: there are roughly 30 times as many iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches in the world as there are Kindles. And, of course, there is relevant history in the music industry’s experience with Apple and the iTunes store.

With all of this for state or federal attorneys general to chew upon, I’m frankly puzzled by the number of times in the past few days that I have read remarks by agency model supporters expressing puzzlement about the Texas investigation. Representative of many of these remarks was a post I read yesterday by publishing industry consultant Shatzkin, entitled "Agency seems (to me) to be working; I hope it’s legal." Shatzkin concludes the piece with a fair demonstration of just how colossally an industry insider can misjudge his own industry’s ultimate consumers — that’s you and me, the readers: "It would appear that the Agency model is good for just about everybody except the etailers that would use price to drive others out of the market," he says. (I’m sorry, Mr. Shatzkin, but if at this point you need someone to explain why that’s a colossal misjudgment, it may just be too late to make the effort.)

He then asks a question that baffles me just as much: "But will it ultimately be ruled legal? I don’t think we know yet."

Excuse me? Why does it sound like publishers are just considering this question for the first time? This is not the Wild West; it’s the once staid old New York publishing industry. Could they really have entered upon this total transformation of the way they are doing business without having it vetted not just by their corporate counsel but by the best antitrust lawyers available to them?

But maybe so. There have been signs, even in the last week, that the agency model publishers and Apple don’t seem to be acting as if they are getting regular and solid legal advice, including:
 

  • Instances such as the return of Penguin (or its new releases) to the Kindle store with a new wave of higher-than-ever prices, and several days during which Penguin’s bestselling titles were 30 to 40 percent cheaper in the iBooks store than other ebook stores.
  • The direct quotation in Shatzkin’s post of a publishing industry executive who rhapsodized about his ability, under the agency model, to "maximize revenue" with no mention of cost, appropriate margin, or "the value of the book."

Maybe I am overstating the importance of such words and deeds, but it just seems to me that any lawyer worth his billable hours would be telling publishers to behave very, very carefully just now.

It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. As I hinted at the outset, the remedies in a case like this might well amount to more than just doing away with the agency model.

I am sure that I will be criticized for this post, as I have been criticized for earlier posts, for not being "objective." But there has been a strange "opposite world" resonance to much of what publishing insiders have had to say about the agency model and ebook prices lately, and under such circumstances it is best to accept a little criticism if that is the cost of challenging notions like the idea that the agency model is working for consumers or that the publishers who brought us drugstore paperback spinners are now the champions of "the value of the book."

 

This is a reprint from Stephen Windwalker’s Kindle Nation Daily.

Ebook Formats and the Unnecessary Fuss

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There’s an awful lot of confusion and kerfuffle going on at the moment around ebooks. It’s not new, as the kerfuffle has been kerfuffling for a while now. And I’m sure it will continue. The primary concern seems to be people panicking about getting their books (be they author, indie author, publisher or whatever) out in as many selling venues as possible.

There’s the iPhone and the iPad, the Kindle and the Kobo, the Sony Reader and a million other options. Then there are all the various ebook formats.

ebook readers Ebook formats and the unnecessary fussWell, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a fuss about nothing. Supply and demand is a great leveller. People that produce a product, the successful people at least, are keen to remove customer confusion. Often they let the customers do it for themselves. That’s happening with the retailers.
At its most basic, an ebook is not very different to a print book. When you produce a dead tree book you have to get all your content correctly laid out in your chosen program.
 
The real pros use InDesign or something like that, but you honestly can produce professional looking books with MS Word and Adobe Acrobat these days. You make sure you set your styles right, you get your layout and font the way you want it, you add in your page numbers and headers by section and so on. I’m not here to explain all that stuff right now – it’s pretty easy to learn.
 
Once you’ve made yourself a text block for a print book, you’ve already got an ebook. You take your print edition text block and you remove all the page numbers, headers, sections and everything else. There are numerous other options open to you, like embedded images and videos, hyperlink references, a hyperlinked Table Of Contents and a variety of font styles, but essentially all you need is the print file with all the page-relevant data removed. Again, there are numerous “How To” files and sites out there to help you with that stuff. [Editor’s note: here’s Publetariat Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton’s free, downloadable pdf guide to DIY publishing for the Kindle] But that’s not really the primary cause of concern. It seems to me that a lot of people are stressed about getting their ebook available on all the popular devices and in all the popular formats.
 
Ladies and gents, don’t stress about it. All those product makers out there would have you believe you need to jump through hoops for them. Not true. Jump through a couple of well chosen hoops and all the rest will fall into place.
Let’s start with the big names and the current poster children: Amazon, Kindle, iPhone and iPad. Very easy.
 
Go to Amazon’s Digital Text Platform or DTP. Here it is. Sign up and follow the instructions to upload your text block. Wait for approval. Now your book is available directly from Amazon wirelessly to anyone with a Kindle reader. And an iPhone or iPad, because those people can get the Kindle app for their device. Bloody gold, these app developers. (If you think of something and the thought, “There should be an app for that!” goes through your head, then there almost certainly is one already. If not, you might have just had a million dollar idea.)
iphone ipad Ebook formats and the unnecessary fuss
 
So you don’t need to be a web developer to make an iPad app of your book. You don’t need to pay other people hundreds or thousands of dollars to do it for you. Sure, it would be great to have an iPad app built specifically for each of your books, but you don’t need them. People will still read your book if you make them aware of it, catch their interest and then direct them to a place to buy it from, be it a standalone app or a file for their Stanza or Kindle app.
 
You don’t want to use Amazon? No problem. I’ve extolled the virtues of Smashwords.com here before. They are a truly great ebook publisher and retailer. You can upload your book to them as a Word document (as long as you follow their Style Guide to the letter, which isn’t hard) and they’ll make your ebook for you in every format you’ll ever need. Including .mobi, which people with Kindles can read. And epub, for the iPhone and iPad. And they’ll distribute out to numerous well respected ebook retailers around the world. It’s bloody child’s play.
 
There are ways to make all kinds of versions for all kinds of readers and have a really swanky looking selection of ebooks. But people that are keen to read your book will read your book. If they have a certain reader and you direct them to the correct file type, that’s it. With Amazon and Smashwords, you’ve got all you need.
 
Of course, if you’re all protective and believe in DRM (Digital Rights Management) then you won’t want to use Smashwords, but you can enable DRM on the Amazon DTP and still have Kindle editions available to all Kindle owners and anyone else with a Kindle app. For nothing. In no time. And you can set your price and make a royalty.
 
See. It’s bloody easy. Chill out.

 

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

E-Book Formats

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I will be publishing my cold war espionage memior, ROOFMAN: Nail-Banger, Librarian & Spy, as an ebook. It contains graphics and mp3 files.

I am confused as to what formats to use. Is Adobe Acrobat readable across all devices? I don’t much like the idea of submitting my book to the Amazon store where they will format it to be readable on the Kindle, because they will take 65% of the list price ($7.95), plus they’ll have a emailing list of all my buyers.

Can anyone help me, please?

Thank you,

John Pansini

 

 

9 Ways For Self-Publishers to Get Unstuck

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Publishing a book can take quite a bit of time. Sometimes you finish a manuscript after months or years of work, and you feel like you’re ready to go.

But then you realize you need to hire an editor, and it’s back to “hurry up and wait” while another editorial process takes place.
 
Or your book might be done, but you’re not sure what to do next, so you spend all your time researching. You’ve got 120 blogs on your feed reader, you know the names of all the print on demand companies, but you have no book.
And then sometimes you’ve already finished the manuscript, printed your book, and now you realize you need a plan—or something—to know what to do next.

 
Never fear, there are always a few ways to get off the dime and back on track.
 
So no matter where you are in the process, here are some ideas to help out.
 
 
9 Things You Can Do Right Now to Get Unstuck
  • If you haven’t finished your book
    1. Get some other opinions, circulate parts of the manuscript to friends or sympathetic readers. Whether you agree with their assessment or not, you’ll have a new perspective on your material.
       
    2. Think about hiring an editor to help put your manuscript in order. Editors can be incredibly skillful at helping authors shape their manuscripts. More experienced authors know this and use editors to help their process.
       
    3. Visit writer forums for referrals, advice, community of others in the same situation. Hey, you’re online anyway, join a couple of active writer’s forums and you’ll find a sympathetic community of other writers.
       
  • If your manuscript’s done, but you’re not sure what to do next
    1. Sit down and decide how to self-publish to meet your goals. Will it be private, just circulated to friends and family, or for a fundraiser? On sale? Or will you try to compete actively in the marketplace? Each path has its own requirements that will help orient you.
       
    2. Look into hiring a publishing consultant, a book shepherd or a book designer to help you establish schedules, budgets and priorities. Use their experience to move you to the next step.
       
    3. Go back and make sure you have the infrastructure in place to establish your publishing enterprise. Have you acquired your ISBNs? Filled out directory listings for your publishing company? These details can be overlooked in the beginning.
       
  • If your book’s been published, now what?
    1. If you haven’t done so, register the domain of your book’s name. Get a blog attached to the domain and start writing about the topic of your book. Don’t try to sell the book, just work on finding an audience with common interests.
       
    2. Go over and set up a Facebook Fan page for your book. It only takes a few minutes, and you can let all your friends and followers know about it right away.
       
    3. If you know other people with websites or blogs in your field, offer to write free articles for them. It will introduce you to groups of new readers every time.
There’s No Substitute for a Plan
All of these suggestions will get you moving again, and that’s a good thing. But what self-publishers really need in order to stay on track is a realistic and orderly plan. Your plan should include all three of these phases of publication, finishing your manuscript, planning for publication, and long-term marketing.
 
With a plan in hand, you know where you are, and you know where you have to go. Without a plan it’s just too easy to get bogged down in detail and lose sight of the larger picture.
 
Book publishing can require lots of decisions and lots of different actions over a period of months. Be a smart publisher: get your plan together first.
 
And did you notice what all these actions have in common?
 
Takeaway: When self-publishers plan their book, their publication and their marketing, they rarely get stuck. But when they do, here are some suggestions on how to get unstuck and back on track.

 

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

My Kindle Books

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I’ve decided to give Amazon’s Kindle book buyers a try with my Amish books. At first, I didn’t think I wanted to take less royalty. Admittedly, I usually take my time to think about a change. Finally, I decided the people that have a Kindle aren’t buying paperback books anyway so why not give this a try. After all it’s one more way to get people to see my name as an author. Once they try my books, readers usually want another one.

I’d already submitted to Kindle the first of my mystery series, Neighbor Watchers, awhile back. This time I added to the Kindle list my western The Dark Wind Howls Over Mary and two of my Amish books – Christmas Traditions-An Amish Love Story, and A Promise Is A Promise-Nurse Hal Among The Amish – book one.

Using the different communities on Amazon is a good way to advertise. I entered posts about my books being [available] in Kindle [format]. Even started new discussions to make sure my posts would be noticed since if the discussions are popular ones, a post can soon get buried. I checked the boxes to let me know if there was a response to my posts. Later in the afternoon, I found three responses. Seems I got in a hurry when I posted. Three people wanted to buy my kindle books already and the link only went to my paperback books. I had to reply to each post that it takes two days for Amazon to get the kindle entries ready so be patient and try again. If there seems to be interest in my books on Kindle I will have to enter one now and then and do the posts just to keep my name noticed.

This morning I was delighted to see I had more posts to answer. One was going to her local library to see if she could get my books. My thought is probably not, but I posted that she can ask. I’ve been told if someone is interested in a book and asks, the library will get it for the patron. Another post was a reader was a comment I’ve heard before. The poster didn’t like the writing style of one of the better known Amish authors because there isn’t enough in the story about the Amish farm life. The stories concentrate too much on the serious and often not a very complimentary problem concerning the Amish. So I left a post that was an excerpt from one of my books A Promise Is A Promise. Nurse Hal is trying to help the Lapp brothers catch some pigs that escaped from their pen. She caught one. The pig squealed. The cry got the attention of the protective sow. She rushed at Nurse Hal to protect her baby. The boys were yelling. The dog was barking. Can you picture the scene? Something similar happened to me once. One of those moments when I was running for the fence that I won’t forget.

What I have tried to do with my Nurse Hal books is concentrate on Nurse Hal’s human faults and her learning about what it takes to be Amish. Dealing with every day life on the farm is part of her experience. As I’ve said before farming experiences are something that’s easy for me to write about since I’ve lived it and still do with our few head of livestock. Writing the books with that in mind, I hope I don’t put the Amish in a bad light. The whole point of the stories for me are to be entertaining and fun with characters that the readers want to continue to get to know.

I joined a website called Book Marketing Network. It’s looks interesting as a helpful place to get author information with many groups to join. The site is used by publishers which might be a good thing. Other businesses are offering to do editing and ghostwriting among other services. Emails have already started so I will pick and choose which members I want to hear from and stop the other emails while I explore the site. I did find a person that does free book reviews by book or PDF. I can send a copy of my book and the review will be on Amazon and B&N. That is the reason that I’m sending one of my Amish books. None of the readers leave a review to let others know how they liked the books. I know they must like my books, because the second one in the Nurse Hal series came out in March and has been selling. I wager that the buyers of my other two Amish books came back for The Rainbow’s End.
 

This excerpt is a reprint from Fay Risner‘s Booksbyfay blog.

Penguin Group Declares War on Kindle Owners…

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…with Bizarre Array of Exorbitant and Nonsensical Kindle Store Prices; Some Are 200-300% Higher; Many Exceed Paperback Prices

The long-delayed march of the Penguins? It wasn’t worth the wait.

After its agency price-fixing model co-conspirators came quickly to agreements with Amazon so that their ebook titles would remain in the Kindle Store right through the April Fool’s Day transition date, the Penguin Publishing Group held readers hostage for about 8 weeks before finally reaching the end of the impasse, reported here moments before it was announced last week.

Penguin has a terrific backlist and plenty of popular bestselling authors, and Kindle owners were waiting impatiently for an opportunity to purchase and download various among about 150 of the company’s new releases that had been withheld from the Kindle Store since April 1. We knew that, as with other agency model publishers, Penguin’s new releases would likely be priced in the $12.99 to $14.99 range, at least temporarily, when released. But Kindle owners have proven that they are among the world’s greatest readers, and many have shown a willingness to pay those prices even while others have promoted the idea of a boycott of ebooks priced over $9.99.

That would have sorted itself out, but since being allowed back into the Kindle Store Penguin has taken the agency pricing model to new extremes. Not only does the company now sport the highest average prices for bestsellers and other frontlist titles in the Kindle Store, but it has also doubled and tripled its previous prices on backlist titles such Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead ($27.99 each) and numerous classics that are now priced at $12.99 and up, higher than their paperback editions. There are too many examples to start listing them here, and of course we have no interest in mentioning or linking to many of these high-priced titles lest we inadvertently drive traffic toward them.

But several things stand out and begin to suggest a pattern of collusion and favored treatment between Penguin and Apple, the company that made the agency price-fixing model possible in the first place by pandering to the Big Six publishers with its offer to turn its back on consumers and create a high-priced ebook outlet with the iBooks Store. To the extent that publishers believed the iBooks App could lure customers away from the Kindle Store, it provided them with an alternative to play off against Amazon in order to jack prices up. Only Random House, the largest of the Big Six, took a "thanks but no thanks" stance toward the price-fixing collusion, one that may have been both principled and profitable.

It now seems likely that someone inside Penguin was responsible for the "anonymized information from an unknown number of large Agency publishers" that publisher mouthpieces  Michael Cader of the Publishers’ Lunch website and Michael Shatzkin to play pick-and-roll in spinning a mid-May "story" that April iBooks sales were already 12 to 15 percent of that same "unknown number of large Agency publishers" total ebook sales. While Apple’s iBooks store generally has the kind of ebook selection that one might associate with the book or music section at a WalMart or Target, and may be suffering from lackluster overall paid book sales, the one publisher that is sure to have done better at iBooks than Kindle in April was Penguin, since it was withholding its bestsellers from the Kindle Store. Surely Cader and Shatzkin know that using selective or slanted information to promote the idea that the iBooks Store is doing better than it is, or that it might have been challenging the Kindle Store’s ebook market share right out of the gate, could be a self-fulfilling prophecy that plays into the hands of the agency model publishers.

Now, Penguin is taking things one step further and standing on Apple’s shoulders to sabotage Amazon and attack Kindle Store customers by dictating that Amazon charge high prices for several of its bestselling titles while offering those same books through iBooks at $9.99 and below: 

  • Kathryn Stockett’s bestseller The Help, which for months did very well in the Kindle Store at price points below $9.99, is now priced (by Penguin imprint Putnam) at $12.99 in the Kindle Store, but it is still listed at only $9.99 at iBooks.
     
  • Similar pricing discrepancies exist for Eat Pray Love, although the best price for that book is $8.25 for the paperback in Amazon’s main store.
     
  • For Harlan Coben’s Caught, the discrepancy is even greater: it’s $14.95 in the Kindle Store, $8.98 in the iBooks Store, and $11.95 for the hardcover in Amazon’s main store.

We’ve never been told exactly what the controversy was that kept Penguin and Amazon at loggerheads for the past couple of months? Was it that Penguin wanted to give "most favored nation" status to the iBooks Store and deny it to the Kindle Store?

In any case, let’s be clear. This is not a case of Penguin declaring war on ebooks. What Penguin has done is declared war on Kindle owners, and on Amazon.

One wonders if Penguin’s strategies will succeed, or if the company even has a strategy. Amazon is by far the world’s largest bookseller of English-language books, and Kindle customers are Amazon’s most prolific book buyers. Past surveys of the citizens of Kindle Nation make it clear that, while Kindle owners may generally be well-heeled, we are also savvy and price-conscious. While Penguin’s pricing tactics are certainly tantamount to the kind of negative branding experienced recently by Toyota or BP, it would be surprising if they did not take a toll on the company’s book sales.

Nor are Penguin’s minders at Pearson PLC likely to be thrilled with Penguin’s bizarre behavior. Penguin Group is the world’s second largest book publisher (behind Random House) and Pearson also owns venerable media outlets such as The Economist and the Financial Times. But the UK company has lost about $2 billion in market capitalization (to $11.35 billion) as its PSO share price has fallen from $16.37 to under $14 since mid-May while Penguin has pursued its anti-reader tactics.

As one Kindle Nation citizen sized things up in a blog comment this week, "Wait until the contracts expire next April for all those publishers who happily crawled into bed with Apple…. By this time next year, I predict that heads will roll at the Agency 5."

I have too much respect and appreciation for the individual makeup of Kindle Nation citizens to suggest some sort of collective boycott here. We should all be free to read what we want to read. But I do hope that whenever possible we can all pay attention to the behavior of publishers as companies, and act with the empowering understanding that what we buy and the prices at which we buy it can send powerful economic signals to those doing the pricing.

Amazon is to be applauded for moving aggressively to expand the Kindle Store catalog in recent weeks, and about 80% of the added titles are now priced between $5 and $9.98, which gives Kindle customers more affordable prices than ever. In the coming weeks we will continue not only to alert you to free Kindle promotional titles but also to highlight other books of interest in the $2.99 to $4.99 range. We would also welcome a move by Amazon to do more to highlight non-agency model titles in its bestseller and store architecture.

For those who prefer to buy books from more reader-friendly sources, the following is a listing of Penguin Group imprints in the US:

* Ace   
* Alpha   
* Avery   
* Berkley   
* Dutton   
* Gotham   
* G. P. Putnam’s Sons   
* HP Books   
* Hudson Street Press   
* Jeremy P. Tarcher   
* Jove   
* NAL   
* Penguin   
* Penguin Press   
* Perigee   
* Plume   
* Portfolio   
* Prentice Hall Press   
* Riverhead   
* Sentinel   
* Viking  Children’s Division    
* Dial   
* Dutton   
* Firebird  
* Frederick Warne   
* G. P. Putnam’s Sons   
* Grosset & Dunlap   
* Philomel   
* Price Stern Sloan   
* Puffin Books   
* Razorbill   
* Speak   
* Viking

 

This is a cross-posting from Stephen Windwalker’s Kindle Nation Daily.

Books on the iPad’s iBookstore

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Last month, Joanna Penn put together a useful blog post on How To Publish Your Book On The iPad. In the article she points out the various ways you can get a book onto the iPad, including:

  • Smashwords by creating a Word file that conforms with their requirements (spelled out in the 37-page guide, by the way)
  • Kindle which is a kind of back door onto the iPad through the Kindle for iPad app
  • Lulu the author-services company that is, like Smashwords, an Apple Aggregator for the iBookstore.
  • Aggregators beside the ones mentioned above. At last count there were eight, and there’s a handy list in the article The Apple iBookstore and You put together by Scott Flora, executive director of SPANnet.com.
What Happens at the iBookstore
Over the very few days I’ve owned an iPad I’ve become accustomed to the somewhat “sealed” environment that Apple presents you with. The iPad uses the same operating system as the iPhone, so it’s very familiar.
Enlarged to the size of the iPad, it becomes more obvious that Apple is providing a seamless, regulated and safe environment for its customers. This is one of the chief elements that will—in my opinion—make the iPad successful. It is a major step toward making computing—at least a robust type of “accessory” computing—accessible and attractive to a large audience. More on that later in the week.
 
But having gone to all the trouble to get your book onto the iPad, what can you expect? How do the books translate into the ebooks that buyers will see when they go iBook shopping?

I had a look at several possibilities. iBooks use the ePub format, similar to the Barnes & Noble Nook, the Sony Reader and many other eReaders.

 
First I downloaded a free sample of Lisa Alpine’s Exotic Life which I designed, and which was featured on my blog recently. Here’s what the chapter opening pages in the printed book looked like [click on any image in this piece to enlarge]:
thebookdesinger.com lisa alpine exotic life   
I knew the graphic probably wouldn’t survive the trip through Smashword’s famous “meatgrinder,” the engine that chews up your formatted Word file and spits out eBook formats left and right. But I was surprised at just how much damage had been done to the book. It was unrecognizable:
ibookstore apple ipad fonts self-publishing 
Exotic Life ($9.99) is the first book I know of that I designed that’s on the iPad. I’m not jumping up and down in joy, since nothing of the design remains. At least the cover artist gets a nice little jpeg to represent his work. You can see here all the hallmarks of the iBooks typography we saw in the first look at this platform. Lack of hyphenation, very restricted list of iPad fonts, awkward typesetting and big “rivers” of space running through the body of the type.
 
Next I turned to a book from a major publisher who, presumably, would have far greater resources to bring to bear on file translation. I snagged a sample of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, $12.99 from Little, Brown. Here’s what it looks like:
malcolm gladwell outliers ibookstore applie ipad fonts 
 
Although this may be mediocre typesetting, and the same problems with the very limited palette and most inappropriate iPad fonts, this is a much better looking page. At least you can recognize that it’s a chapter opening.
 
The Kindle Game
Amazon, who boasts over 500,000 titles in its Kindle Store, quickly moved to release a Kindle app for the iPad. This neat ploy placed Kindle “behind enemy lines,” so to speak, to make use of the popularity of the iPad to sell Kindle books.
 
(And before your rush out to go subscribe to TheBookDesigner.com on your iPad, have a seat. All of the subscription products like newspapers, magazines or blog subscriptions are available only for the Kindle itself.)
I grabbed a copy of something called The Hunters by Jason Pinter ($0.00—love that Kindle store!). Here’s a chapter opener:
 
amazon kindle for apple ipad ipad font problems self-publishing 
 
I guess at least you could say it looks like a book. Notice how the Kindle pages have been greyed-out, perhaps to make it look more like the eInk pages of the Kindle itself. Of course, the Kindle for iPad app has none of the polish and sophistication of the iBooks. No sexy page turns, for instance. In fact, there is only a nod to “pages” at all. It looks like you are reading a continuous “roll” of paper with pages printed on it.
 
I want you to see, before I close this look at books in the iBookstore, what the “storefront” of the iBookstore looks like. This is the smooth and careful environment Apple has created for this ultimate experience of computing convenience:
ibookstore applie ipad fonts ebooks self-publishing 
This is slick, pared down to essentials, designed to invite your participation.
 
But overall, despite the beauty of the iPad itself, besodes its convenience, and despite all the dynamic possibilities it presents, when it comes to the iPad fonts and typography, when you tear off the wrapper, we are still in a very primitive phase of ebooks.
Under the polish, things are pretty crude. But will that slow down sales? Will the poor look of virtually all these ebooks deter the wide acceptance of eReaders that many people are predicting?
 
What do you think?
 
 
Takeaway: There are now many ways for self-publishers to get into the Apple iBookstore for the iPad. Unfortunately, the ebooks haven’t gotten any better.

 

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

Promote Your Book by Commenting on Blog Posts

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Commenting on other people’s blogs is a great way to get visibility, build relationships with bloggers, subtly promote your book, and get links back to your site (if the site gives "do-follow" links). But you can hurt your credibility if you go about it the wrong way. Here are some tips for successful blog commenting:

Actively look for relevant blogs to comment on. Subscribe to the feed of the most important blogs in your area of interest, and use tools like Google Alerts to keep an eye out for relevant posts on other blogs. You can also use Google Blog Search or blog directories like My Blog Log to find blogs that are a good fit.

Contribute to the conversation. Don’t just drop by and say "great post."  Instead, make a thoughtful comment that contributes something. You might offer an additional tip or real-life example, or expand on a point the blogger made. If you’re commenting on a book review, explain why you enjoyed reading the book. Your comment doesn’t have to be long, but you do need to say something useful and relevant. Do not give the impression that you are just there to promote your book or leave a link to your site.

Don’t make inappropriate comments. There’s nothing wrong with disagreeing with a point that someone has made (and many bloggers encourage disparate views), but do so in a polite, respectful way. I’m amazed at some of the rude and tacky things people say on blogs and in online forums.

Don’t be overtly promotional. Commenting on someone else’s blog is not the place to blatantly promote your book or services.  However, there are subtle ways to convey that you are an expert on the topic being discussed and encourage people to click on your name to visit your website.

You might work in a reference to your book related to the comment you are making. Here are some examples:

"Twitter is such an important tool for authors that I devoted an entire chapter in my book to promoting through Twitter."

"In researching my book, Selling Your Book to Libraries, I discovered that . . ."

"Because I write mystery novels myself, I really appreciated the way that the author . . ."

Depending on the topic under discussion, I sometimes sign my name with a tag line such as "Dana Lynn Smith, The Savvy Book Marketer" or "Dana Lynn Smith, author of Facebook Guide for Authors."  Some people include their website address in their signature, but many bloggers frown on this. Creating a signature that’s several lines long and blatantly promotional is not appropriate. Some people think that including any type of signature or reference to your book is too promotional.

You will have to use your judgment to determine what is appropriate, but you might look at what other commenters on the blog are doing as a guideline. Just remember that you are a guest on someone else’s site and mind your manners. Comments, anyone?

Excerpted from The Savvy Book Marketer’s Guide to Blogging for Authors by book marketing coach Dana Lynn Smith. For more book marketing tips, follow @BookMarketer on Twitter, visit Dana’s Savvy Book Marketer blog, and get a copy of the Top Book Marketing Tips ebook when you sign up for her free newsletter.

Agency Model or Be Damned

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I don’t how many times I started this piece today on the arrival of the iPad and the agency model. Frankly, by mid-morning, I gave up. There was just too many deals with Amazon to report by publishers, and too many comments like:

‘Oh, oh, it’s on-it’s off; our Amazon buy buttons are off – no, no, they’re back on again. Shit, no, we were wrong, they’re back off again. No, actually, we had it wrong all along; our print book buy buttons are on, but our ebook buttons are off.’

 
If there was one saviour later today, it was Jason Boog over on GalleyCat. Boog did a great job of pulling together the multitude of reports this evening – long after I’d given up. Here is Jason’s summary piece for the day; by reading it, you will at least save me from posting up a mind-boggling list of links, and it will help to tighten some nuts on what I am about to say. Thanks Jason.
 
Before we begin, let’s get one thing out of the way; what is the agency model? Here is a pretty down-to-earth definition by The Idea Logical Blog:

"The ‘agency’ model is based on the idea that the publisher is selling to the consumer and, therefore, setting the price, and any ‘agent’, which would usually be a retailer but wouldn’t have to be, that creates that sale would get a ‘commission’ from the publisher for doing so. Since Apple’s normal ‘take’ at the App Store is 30% and discounts from publishers have normally been 50% off the established retail price, publishers can claw back margin even if they don’t get Apple to concede anything from the 30%.

So making this change, if it works, accomplishes three things for big publishers. The obvious two are that they gain a greater degree of control over ebook pricing than they ever had over print book pricing and they get to rewrite the supply chain splits of the consumer dollar.

 

But the third advantage for the big guys is the most devilish of all: they may gain a permanent edge over smaller players on ebook margins."

What we are seeing unfolding in the publishing world at the moment is deep-rooted in a failure by large publishing houses to take hold of their industry and direct its development more than twenty years ago when the largest fish in the publishing sea decided to eat up as many little fish as they could. The landscape of publishing that emerged when the tummies got fat was one wholly controlled by retailers – big mother-fucker retailers who had retailing and profit as their core objective – certainly, not books or literature. It stood to reason, and the view of man and woman in the street, that massive corporations like Google, Amazon and Apple where going to come out on top because they were the ones to hold the first cut-keys to the castle of digital content. They had the vested and commercial interest as well as the vision and means to realize the importance of controlling and managing digital content for profit.

It is comfortable to lampoon Google for their attempts to digitize written content not nailed down to the floor and protected by a ring of wolves wrapped in copyright legalese; blame Amazon for developing an online presence and fulfillment network capable of placing a book on your doormat or PC desktop quicker than most large publishing houses can; blame Apple’s developers for producing the two most domestically recognized devices of the past ten years – the iPhone and now the iPad. Yes, we could also try and blame Apple’s introduction of the iPad as the real reason why publishers were forced to introduce the agency model.

It wasn’t Apple, Amazon or Google’s fault, whatever nonsense you hear elsewhere.

What the introduction of the iPad did do was to drag publishers into the world of e-book jousting between Amazon’s Kindle and every other e-reader device. It’s just that the Apple iPad is the first real contender to the Kindle throne, as a device and utilising the more flexible epub format.

 
Publishers do not like their hand being forced, and this has been happening here. We could have gone on with the wholesale model of distribution and retail for years, ignoring the advent, development and accessibility of e-books for another five years, but sooner or later, we would have had to acknowledge that the wholesale model is just another set of terms set between publishers and their wholesalers and retailers. Once there was the mere mention of agency model, wholesalers and distributors knew they were going to be dealing in an industry hosting two different models.

There is an inherent and deliberate spin here in terminology by the publishing industry.

Actually, this has nothing got to do with models, but instead, it is a desperate attempt by publishers to arrest back control of the books they produce – whether the books are in digital or print edition. Books are books, and make no mistake, the so-called agency model will and should be rolled out across all books, whatever the format or channel of third-party sale.

 
What I do feel grievous and questionable is that now the penny has dropped with publishers (that they have been running toward the touchline without the ball)–what we have all known–is that they expect to climb aboard their newly created agency express train and expect wholesalers and distributors like Ingram Digital to have their own models ready to slot into place immediately and deal with accounts operating on different terms of contract. Outside of the large publishing houses, I actually don’t believe smaller publishers adopting the agency model have thought through the full implications. I sense a blind ‘better to be in than out until we figure out if this whole agency thing is actually going to work’. The agency model is in danger of becoming a bandwagon for large and mid-sized publishers, and like so many boom economies built on the ideals of easy profit and growth during the early part of this decade, it may ultimately prove to be built on a fragile deck of cards, underwritten by an accelerated expectation of e-book growth and an eventual standardization of e-reader formatting–both of which I am not convinced of the current projections and sales I have seen in the US and Europe.
 
I want to believe in the next five to ten years that we will be operating in an industry of 50/50, digital/paper sales, but I just don’t, certainly not for fiction. I can see a multitude of possibilities involving libraries and publishers working together to utilize digital content and marry it to profit for both.
 
I want to believe that the haste in the industry I am witnessing is for the good of books and readers alike, but right now, I don’t. I just see a bandwagon rolling down a hill, let loose from the rails for the first time in twenty years. I am amazed how many want a seat on the wagon without really thinking through what it will do for them and exactly where it is going to take them and their businesses.

Just some thoughts on a pretty hectic day…
…and judging by the links to the tales below, quite a few more…

PW on Penguin

GalleyCat on Hachette
 

 

This is a reprint (dated 4/2/10) from Mick Rooney‘s POD, Self-Publishing and Independent Publishing.

Amazon to Drop Free Books From Kindle Bestseller List

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To mangle a snarky old line from my not-so-recent adolescence, I took a picture of the zero-priced books at the top of the Kindle Store’s Bestseller list (after the jump), because it will last longer.

Kindle Bestseller List

 

That’s right. Rachel Deahl of Publisher’s Weekly has reported today that an Amazon representative told her that, within “a few weeks,” Amazon "will be splitting its Kindle bestseller list, creating one list for paid books and another for free titles."

 

As of today, the top 10 titles on the Kindle bestseller list, and 33 of the top 50, are either currently free or achieved their lofty ranking due to being free until the past couple of days.

The prospect of a bifurcated list will certainly create a different look and feel for the Kindle Store sales rankings, and could conceivable reduce the incentive for publishers and authors to offer free promotional downloads of some of their Kindle-formatted books. But if Deahl’s report is true the new top 10 will soon include names like Larsson, Patterson, Turow, Stocket, Quindlen, Coben, Bush, Baldacci, Junger, and Rachman.

We’ll be back soon with some analysis of how this reported change will fit in with a number of major changes that are now in the process of occurring in the Kindle catalog.

 

 

 

 

This is a reprint (dated 5/12/10) from Stephen Windwalker’s Kindle Nation Daily.

My Kindle Books & Gone Fishing

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I’ve decided to give Amazon’s Kindle book buyers a try with my Amish books. At first, I didn’t think I wanted to take less royalty. Admittedly, I usually take my time to think about a change. Finally, I decided the people that have a Kindle aren’t buying paperback books anyway so why not give this a try. After all it’s one more way to get people to see my name as an author. Once they try my books, readers usually want another one.

I’d already submitted to Kindle the first of my mystery series, Neighbor Watchers, awhile back. This time I added to the Kindle list my western The Dark Wind Howls Over Mary and two of my Amish books – Christmas Traditions-An Amish Love Story and A Promise Is A Promise-Nurse Hal Among The Amish – book one.

Using the different communities on Amazon is a good way to advertise. I entered posts about my books being in Kindle. Even started new discussions to make sure my posts would be noticed since if the discussions are popular ones, a post can soon get buried. I checked the boxes to let me know if there was a response to my posts. Later in the afternoon, I found three responses. Seems I got in a hurry when I posted. Three people wanted to buy my kindle books already and the link only went to my paperback books. I had to reply to each post that it takes two days for Amazon to get the kindle entries ready so be patient and try again. If there seems to be interest in my books on Kindle I will have to enter one now and then and do the posts just to keep my name noticed.

This morning I was delighted to see I had more posts to answer. One was going to her local library to see if she could get my books. My thought is probably not, but I posted that she can ask. I’ve been told if someone is interested in a book and asks, the library will get it for the patron. Another post was a reader was a comment I’ve heard before. The poster didn’t like the writing style of one of the better known Amish authors because there isn’t enough in the story about the Amish farm life. The stories concentrate too much on the serious and often not a very complimentary problem concerning the Amish. So I left a post that was an excerpt from one of my books A Promise Is A Promise. Nurse Hal is trying to help the Lapp brothers catch some pigs that escaped from their pen. She caught one. The pig squealed. The cry got the attention of the protective sow. She rushed at Nurse Hal to protect her baby. The boys were yelling. The dog was barking. Can you picture the scene? Something similar happened to me once. One of those moments when I was running for the fence that I won’t forget.

What I have tried to do with my Nurse Hal books is concentrate on Nurse Hal’s human faults and her learning about what it takes to be Amish. Dealing with every day life on the farm is part of her experience. As I’ve said before farming experiences are something that’s easy for me to write about since I’ve lived it and still do with our few head of livestock. Writing the books with that in mind, I hope I don’t put the Amish in a bad light. The whole point of the stories for me are to be entertaining and fun with characters that the readers want to continue to get to know.

I joined a website called Book Marketing Network. It’s looks interesting as a helpful place to get author information with many groups to join. The site is used by publishers which might be a good thing. Other businesses are offering to do editing and ghostwriting among other services. Emails have already started so I will pick and choose which members I want to hear from and stop the other emails while I explore the site. I did find a person that does free book reviews by book or PDF. I can send a copy of my book and the review will be on Amazon and B&N. That is the reason that I’m sending one of my Amish books. None of the readers leave a review to let others know how they liked the books. I know they must like my books, because the second one in the Nurse Hal series came out in March and has been selling. I wager that the buyers of my other two Amish books came back for The Rainbow’s End.

Now for the second half of this post. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later but just not which day. My first clue was when my husband got up at the crack of dawn which he doesn’t usually do. I got up an hour later to find chores already done. My husband stuck his head in the door long enough to say I thought we’d go fishing today. The door shut, and he was on his way to hook the boat to the pickup. I hustled to fix a picnic lunch and the water cooler. The day was a quiet, sunny one and not too warm. Perfect for being on a lake. We both caught a blue gill right away, but then the fish stopped biting. We didn’t mind as we floated and enjoyed the day. The geese seemed to have had good hatches this spring. We saw several families enjoying a swim. Did you know that geese families swim in a line? The mother takes the lead, the babies come next and father is last. I suspect that is the way the parents protect the babies. It’s their version of like us holding a child’s hand as we cross the street.

The next day, my husband had a different lake in mind. No matter where we go the lakes are over an hour away. I like the drive, watching the beautiful Iowa countryside. The lake we’re were going to – not so much. If I rate all the lakes from 1 – 10 with 10 being the worse this lake would be a 15. First of all, there aren’t public restrooms. I suspect that’s because there’s not a conversation officer station on the grounds. At one time long before I went fishing at that lake, I’m told there were portapotties, but a conservation officer said the portapotties were all vandalized and trashed so they took the facilities away. Made for a long day and lead me to wonder why I bothered to take a water jug.

While my husband was disconnecting all the straps on the boat, I wandered into the tall grass to check out a bunch of wild flowers. The banks of this lake have some interesting native plants. Also, wildlife. I came within an inch of stepping on a three feet long, very healthy looking garter snake. That was the end of my nature study. The snake slithered one way, and I ran the other.

The East wind was probably 15 mph that morning which is doable for our boat. Just after we settled in the boat, my husband said when the wind’s from the East the fish bite the least. It went through my head that should have been enough to make him load the boat and go home. The lake is long, running east and west with alcoves off to the north side. We had to buck the strong ripples to go east to get to an alcove. According to the fish finder, lots of fish were swimming around our hooks. To know that should be encouraging, but none of those fish seemed hungry. I’ve decided the only thing the fish finder is good for is to tell my brother in law about the big one that got away. I don’t have to exaggerate the size of the fish that got off the hook. The fish finder shows fish lengths. A 23 inch fish swam by without a second look at my worm. As I told it, that was the big one that got away from me that day. I just didn’t say how.

Finally later that afternoon after I worried that I might get sea sick, my husband had enough of the rocking boat and headed for the dock. Once we were back out in the main channel, we found the wind was more like 25 or 30 mph. Before my husband could get the boat turned toward the dock, waves splashed water over the side onto us. Once we got to the dock and tried to pull along side, a gust of wind and waves helped the nose of the boat land up on the dock. I fastened the rope and shoved the boat off the dock. My husband went for the pickup while I held the boat against the dock so it wouldn’t do a circle and end up on the dry landing. The waves splashed over the dock around my tennis shoes which aren’t water proof and slapped with a force against the boat, making a tight grip necessary.

That day wasn’t enough to do my fisherman in. The boat is still attached to the pickup, waiting for another go. So far I’ve been praying for rain, but as long as I’m on land, a strong wind will do. That’s an easy prayer to get answered. So far I don’t have to pray very hard for wind in Iowa.

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

Konrath Sieges the Castle

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This post, by Mary Anne Graham, originally appeared on her Quacking Alone blog on 5/23/10.

Joe Konrath,  author of the Jack Daniels thriller series and of the new resource for indie writers – The Newbies Guide to Publishing – has inked a deal that sieges the Publishing Royals’ Castle.  It also charts the course, showing the Royals, authors and agents where the future lies.  The deal itself and the fact that it is with the biggest, baddest ebookseller AND bookseller on the planet has traditional publishing Royals hunkering down in the castle in the futile hope that they can survive the coming indie siege.

Konrath signed a publishing deal with AmazonEncore for the newest JD thriller, Shaken. Under the deal, Shaken will be available in the Kindle store this October and will then be available in print about four months later, in February 2011.   The deal turns the traditional arrangements around 180 degrees and has the Kindle version released first with the print book following several months later.  Some of the Royals have been trying to kill the  upstart ebook industry by releasing their “big” books only in paper form for several months.  That would force loyal fans to buy the paper version and discourage the fans from investing in the future.  Or so the Royals thought and the Royals are used to deciding what we will read, when we will read it and how we will read it.  

The Castle Dwelling Royals, their Acceptable Authors, and many of the Chosen Intermediary literary agents have been particularly disgruntled by this deal.  Why?  Well, first of all, the deal was done with Konrath and his literary agent.  No doubt, the Royals were convinced that the agent should have known better.  See, Konrath had marketed the book to the Royals.  Between his efforts and those of his agent, even if the Royals were too good to bother to Google it for themselves, the Royals were surely advised of Konrath’s killer numbers on Kindle for sales of all of his ebooks.  But, as usual, the Royals knew more about what America wanted to read than Americans did, so they rejected the book.  Why would they encourage one of those  people anyway? 
 
But Amazon is not fettered by the Royal Superiority Complex.  The rebel company offers a platform for all authors to put their work out there and let readers decide for themselves whether or not to hit the buy button.  The Royals (and a few jealous indie competitors) might believe Konrath was inflating his numbers, but Amazon knew better.  And Amazon knows that the digital future is better served by getting it out there electronically first.  So, Konrath and his agent refused to take the Royal NO for an answer and signed on with a company sailing for the future, rather than with one mired in the past. 

Read the rest of the post on Mary Anne Graham‘s Quacking Alone blog.

How To Attract Subscribers to Your Author Blog

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Wouldn’t it be great if people in your target audiences automatically received your blog posts, rather than having to rely completely on new readers to find your blog and repeat visitors to remember to visit your blog periodically?

Set up an email subscription widgetThere’s an easy answer — RSS feeds allow your author blog posts to be automatically delivered to your readers’ email or feed reader, and even to other websites. All you need to do is provide a sign up mechanism for your visitors to subscribe.

In the right column of this blog, under the heading "Get Blog Updates," is an area where readers can sign up to receive my author blog posts. I’ve reproduced it here for illustration. My blog visitors can enter their email address in the box to receive blog posts by email or click the "subscribe in a reader" link to choose their favorite feed reader or have my blog feed delivered to the "RSS Feeds" folder in Outlook.

Some blog visitors may not be familiar with RSS feeds. I created a "learn more" link that takes readers to this page for a brief explanation of how feeds work and how to sign up. I also offer a free bonus report on that page, as an added incentive.

FeedBurner is the best tool for managing your author blog subscriptions. Your blogging platform may provide an easy widget or plug-in for creating feeds, but it’s best to set up your own account at FeedBurner. You will have more flexibility in the set up and be able to track the number of subscribers to your author blog.

FeedBurner is now owned by Google, so you will use your Google user name and password to set up your account. For step-by-step instructions on setting up your RSS Feed in FeedBurner, I highly recommend Just the FAQs: Feeds by MaAnna Stephenson. This ebook walks you through the process of using FeedBurner to set up, optimize and manage feeds. You’ll learn how to best format your feeds for delivery to mobile devices, how to republish feeds on another website, how to offer updates by email, and more. The non-techie language make it a snap for anyone to master RSS feeds.

If you aren’t yet offering feeds on your blog, get started right away and watch your readership soar! And be sure to subscribe to The Savvy Book Marketer blog using the tools in the right column, so you don’t miss any posts!
 

 

This is a reprint from Dana Lynn Smith‘s The Savvy Book Marketer.