Publetariat

Free And The Future Of Publishing

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This post, from William Landay, originally appeared on his site on 7/27/09.

I had an interesting conversation on Saturday with Bruce Spector, the founder and CEO of a new web service called LifeIO. (See the end of this article [Publetariat editor’s note: follow the ‘read the rest’ link at the end of this excerpt] for an explanation of what LifeIO is all about.) Bruce was part of the team that developed WebCal, which Yahoo! acquired in 1998 to form the core of its own calendar service, so he has been watching the web with an entrepreneur’s eye for some time now and he had an interesting take on the whole “free” debate and how it might apply to book publishing.

If you somehow missed the recent back-and-forth about Chris Anderson’s book Free, read the pro-”free” comments by Anderson, Seth Godin and especially Fred Wilson, and the anti-”free” perspective by Malcolm Gladwell and Mark Cuban, among many others. This piece by Kevin Kelly, not directly about “free,” is very good, too.

For the uninitiated, the issue boils down to this: The marginal cost of delivering a bit of information over the web — a song, a video, a bit of text like this one — is approaching zero. As a result, information is increasingly available, and consumers increasingly expect to get it, for free. So traditional “legacy” information-sellers like musicians or movie studios or newspapers, whose actual costs are very far from zero, have to figure out how to turn free-riders into paying customers — and fast, before they go out of business. Fred Wilson’s answer is “freemium“: you lure the customer in with a free basic service, then up-sell the heaviest users to a premium version of your product. As Wilson puts it, “Free gets you to a place where you can ask to get paid. But if you don’t start with free on the Internet, most companies will never get paid.”

How does all this apply to book publishing?

Here are some of Bruce Spector’s ideas. He is a great talker, though, and a summary like this doesn’t do him justice. Also, this was a private conversation, but Bruce kindly gave me permission to repeat some of his comments here.

First, book publishers are no less vulnerable than other old-line media industries to the tendency of information to squirt around the web for free. E-books will be passed around as promiscuously as MP3’s. You can bet on it. So book publishers should expect their customers to demand that e-books be, if not free, then radically less expensive than traditional dead-tree books have been.

That means the current approach publishers are taking is precisely the wrong one. Locking up your content with DRM and enforcing higher prices will not work for books any more than it has for CD’s or movies. You cannot resist the downward price pressure of the web merely by refusing to acknowledge it. The old business model simply won’t work anymore.

How, then, will Random House — and novelists like me — make a profit? After all, in a world where iTunes sells songs for 99 cents, even successful musicians can’t make ends meet by selling recorded music anymore. They have to tour relentlessly. But a novelist like me can’t cash in by touring. I can’t play nightclubs performing my work live. For a novel, the book is the performance; the reader performs it in her head. So how do I survive in a world of, say, five-dollar e-books?

The answer is right in front of our noses, says Bruce. The business model is long established and proved to work.

Read the rest of the post to learn Bruce’s suggested solution on William Landay’s site.

Why Responsible Aggregation Is Not Only NOT Evil, But A GOOD Thing

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

There’s a lot of hue and cry against online aggregation circulating around the interwebs these days, and I really don’t get it.

Aggregator sites reprint excerpts from other sites’ articles and blog posts, along with a ‘keep reading’ or ‘read the rest’ link to the source article/blog post. The more responsible aggregators also include the name of the author, and the most considerate ones also include links to the author’s website or blog and a link to the home page of the site where the article or post originally appeared.

If an aggregator site prints an entire article or blog post, or 50% or greater of the article/post without the author’s permission, well that’s just theft. If the ‘read the rest’ link opens the source web page in a window controlled by the aggregator, that’s tantamount to theft since it appears to the viewer as if he or she hasn’t left the aggregator site; worse yet, most such windowing systems don’t make it easy for the viewer to escape from the aggregator’s window. They may click links on the source site, but the linked pages still open up in the aggregator’s window. As a web consumer, I find those aggregator windows incredibly annoying and have come to avoid following links provided by such aggregators.

If an aggregator fails to credit the author when printing an excerpt and ‘read the rest’ link, it’s depriving the author of his or her due and that’s wrong, too. If an aggregator surrounds aggregated material with lots of paid advertising, particularly advertising with which the authors of aggregated material might take issue, that’s also an abuse of the authors’ material. But if the excerpt is brief, the author is credited, a ‘read the rest’ link is provided back to the source article without wrapping it in the aggregator’s window, links are provided to the author’s website (where available) and the home page of the site where the aggregated material originally appeared, and advertising surrounding aggregated material is minimal and non-offensive, with very few exceptions (e.g., aggregation of material the author is offering for sale) I really don’t understand why authors or anyone else should have a problem with it.

Publetariat, a site I founded and for which I’m Editor in Chief, has a mix of both original and aggregated material. The site focuses on content for indie authors and small imprints, and operates on a ‘we scour the web for relevant articles so you don’t have to’ sort of paradigm while also providing a discussion board area and member profiles with blogging capability. Every weekday at about 11am PST, I tweet a link to the site with the titles of articles posted to the site for that day. My tweet is often retweeted by my Twitter followers, but I’ve noticed another phenomenon going on: some people retweet, but only after changing the link to point directly to the source article. They seem to be making a pointed, if somewhat passive, statement against Publetariat’s aggregation, but I don’t know why they feel the need to do so since Publetariat is providing a service to both the author and readers.

Publetariat is a heavily-trafficked and well-respected site in the publishing world, and it gets several thousand unique visitors every week. It also gets thousands of RSS feed hits every month. The site has a traffic rank in the top 2% of all sites worldwide, and a Technorati blog rank in the top .2%. In other words, getting your material on the front page of the Publetariat site gets you a LOT of exposure to a highly targeted audience of authors and publishers. Let’s look at a specific example.

My blog post entitled “Self-Publishing: Future Prerequisite” was published on my blog on 9/22/09 and cross-posted to the Publetariat site the same day. To date, the post on my blog has received 221 hits. Not too shabby. But the same post on Publetariat has received 709 hits: over three times as many reads. In the current climate, in which authors are supposed to be doing everything they can to attract readership and attention, why wouldn’t they want three times as many readers for their content? And if you’re an author services provider, such as an editor, book doctor or promotional consultant, why wouldn’t you want three times as many authors to know about you and your site?

To date, there have only been two authors/webmasters who’ve asked to have their aggregated material removed from the Publetariat site, and both times, Publetariat has complied with the request. But I will never understand why those authors/webmasters are turning down an opportunity for such highly-targeted, free exposure from a responsible aggregator.

When Publetariat aggregates, we credit the author, provide a ‘read the rest’ link that isn’t wrapped in a Publetariat window, provide a link to the author’s own website where available, provide a link to the home page of the site on which the aggregated material originally appeared, and sometimes even provide links to buy the author’s books or other merchandise—and these are not affiliate links, Publetariat isn’t making any money on those click-throughs. We do everything we can to ensure both the author and the site where the article originally appeared will benefit from being aggregated on Publetariat.

What about advertising? Isn’t Publetariat profiting from aggregation through its site advertising, and not sharing that profit with the bloggers and authors who’ve made it possible? While Publetariat does carry paid advertising, from the day the site launched to today, despite our impressive traffic stats we’ve received a grand total of about US$65 in ad revenue. All the rest of the advertising on the site consists of public service announcements and traded links. Advertising revenue isn’t even enough to cover our hosting expense.

So, it’s clear that Publetariat is a responsible aggregator. You can also see what Publetariat has to offer an author of aggregated material, and that Publetariat isn’t profiting financially from aggregation. But there’s one more facet to explore here: why it’s better for a reader to discover a given blog post or article aggregated on Publetariat instead of on the source site or blog.

When a reader visits my blog, they’re getting my content only. That’s great for me, but somewhat limiting for them. If they come across my blog posts on Publetariat, they’re also getting exposure to lots of articles and blog posts from my fellow authors, author service providers, publishers and more. Sometimes, they’re seeing material relevant to writers that originated from a site they weren’t at all likely to discover on their own because it’s not a site geared specifically to writers. It’s like going to a great party that’s filled with fascinating people and discussions, any of which you’d love to know more about, and having introductions to those people and discussions made on your behalf by the host of the party.

People who retweet links to Publetariat’s aggregated material only after editing the link to point directly to the source site are leading their Twitter followers away from the party, and depriving them of everything else Publetariat has to offer.

A last objection that’s sometimes raised is the matter of click-throughs. Some will argue that the click-through rate on ‘read the rest’ links is low, that many visitors to the aggregator site will only read the posted excerpt. This is true, but every reader who does click through is a reader you didn’t have before your piece was aggregated.

So if Publetariat or any other site wants to aggregate your material, so long as the aggregator site is higher-profile than your own site/blog and they intend to aggregate responsibly (with proper credit and links, no wrapper window, no offensive advertising), it’s not evil. It’s the easiest free promotion you can get.

And if you’d like your site or blog to be on Publetariat’s list of available sources for aggregated or reprinted material, post your name and a link in the comments section, below, along with your preference for having your material merely excerpted with a ‘read the rest’ link, or reprinted in full on the site.

A Forest Full Of Trees

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This post, from Devon Monk, originally appeared on the Deadline Dames site on 7/20/09.

You’ve got an idea for a novel. You’ve worked on it in stops and starts ferverishly for a few years months, and the first draft is finally done! Congratulations, you’re a novelist! During your moments of deep depression coffee breaks on the veranda, you also researched agents and editors, and cruised web sites and blogs to scream in despair perfect your cover letter, synopsis, and outline skills.

But the thing that’s stopped you dead is getting the novel draft cleaned up for submission. Yes, I’m talking about the dreaded rewrite.

Some writers don’t like to rewrite. Some writers don’t like to stop rewriting. Neither affliction is beneficial to a lasting career in this biz.

I see rewriting (or revising, if you prefer the term) as a very important tool in the writer’s tool box. When you are under contracted deadline and are asked to cut ten thousand words, or get rid of a character, or add more action, or slow down the scene, ore completely change a plot line, and it has to be fixed and beautiful and back in your editor’s hand in two weeks, baby, you’re gonna want a toolbox bristling with every rewriting trick in the book.

But how do you know what needs rewriting? You bled your soul into wrote the thing. You know all the back story, you know what the setting looks like, you know where the characters are running to and from and why.

But you may not have put any of that on the page in a way the reader can clearly see and experience it. Since you’re the author, your mind automatically fills in the missing bits with the info only you have. That’s a problem.

One way to address that problem is to shove your ego in a carpet bag and look at what you’ve written through the eyes of a reader.

Yes, you, the writer, stop being a writer for a second and look at your book as a reader. Print it out and sit down and read your book as if you just pulled it off the shelf. Read it out loud. If you trip over the sentences, likely the reader will too.

Another way to spot what needs rewriting is to critique other people’s work. Over on her blog, Ilona Andrews did a terrific series of line-by-line edits (and suggested rewrites) for opening scenes. Check it out. Read through what she thought should be changed, and why. Then look at your story and see if you can apply any of those principals to it.

Read the rest of the post, which includes an excellent 21-point revision checklist, on Deadline Dames.

Why I Am Not Afraid To Take Your Money

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This post, from Amanda Palmer, originally appeared on her blog on 9/29/09. Amanda Palmer is known primarily as a musician and cabaret artist, but what she has to say here is something authors need to hear, too.

aie!

i had two conversations within the last 24 hours which made me feel like blogging about this.

one was with jason webley, who i’ve been living with for the past week in the Middle of Nowhere.

i was writing a press release and in it disclosed how much money i made from the recent london webcast (about 10k).
i gave a copy of the text to jason to proofread over a cup of tea (that’s what rock stars do for each other nowadays instead of leaving lines of blow on the backs of bathroom toilets).
he suggested taking the money part out. he gently advised; he’s heard people gossiping about me and my shameless revelations about my webcast/twitter income etc.

right around the same time i got an email from beth, regarding the future of my webcasting.
she suggested we do something totally free and not ask people for any money.
she’s been picking up on heat from people that the ask-the-fans-for-money thing has gotten out of control.

listen.

artists need to make money to eat and to continue to make art.

artists used to rely on middlemen to collect their money on their behalf, thereby rendering themselves innocent of cash-handling in the public eye.

artists will now be coming straight to you (yes YOU, you who want their music, their films, their books) for their paychecks.
please welcome them. please help them. please do not make them feel badly about asking you directly for money.
dead serious: this is the way shit is going to work from now on and it will work best if we all embrace it and don’t fight it.

unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve surely noticed that artists ALL over the place are reaching out directly to their fans for money.
how you do it is a different matter.
maybe i should be more tasteful.
maybe i should not stop my concerts and auction off art.
i do not claim to have figured out the perfect system, not by a long shot.

BUT … i’d rather get the system right gradually and learn from the mistakes and break new ground (with the help of an incredibly responsive and positive fanbase) for other artists who i assume are going to cautiously follow in our footsteps. we are creating the protocol, people, right here and now.

i don’t care if we fuck up. i care THAT we’re doing it.

in fact, i ENJOY being the slightly crass, outspoken, crazy-(naked?)-chick-on-a-soapbox holding out a ukulele case of crumpled dollars asking for your money so that someone else a few steps behind me, perhaps some artist of shy and understated temperament, can feel better and maybe a little less nervous when they quietly step up and hold out their hat, fully clothed.

i am shameless, and fearless, when it comes to money and art.

Read the rest of the post on Amanda Palmer’s blog, and if you like what she’s saying and doing, buy something from her.

Creative Commons: What Is It And How Can It Benefit You?

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This is a cross-posting from The Creative Penn site, where it appeared on 9/13/09.

I went to a fantastic workshop this weekend at the Brisbane Writers Festival on Creative Commons. It was presented by Elliott Bledsoe, who is Project Officer at Creative Industries and Innovation in Australia and a wealth of information in this area. (You can find him on Twitter @elliotbledsoe). All the detailed information is at: http://creativecommons.org/

This is such important information for authors online so please read and share!

What is Creative Commons?

  • It is a version of copyright licensing, and it relates to your creative works. The basic Copyright law says that no one can copy or distribute your work, or use it, remix it or profit from it. This law becomes impractical in the digital environment where sharing, remixing, distribution and marketing are so important. Creative Commons licensing is a license you can put on your work to allow some of these things and make Copyright work for you and your creativity. Read this for the full lowdown on Creative Commons.
  • You can license your work for different purposes. The main aspects are Attribution (you let others use/distribute your work but you must be attributed as the creator), Share Alike (you can use my work but you must share your own work too), Noncommercial (you can use my work but you can’t profit from it), No Derivative Works (you can use my work verbatim but you can’t remix it or change it). For more on the different licenses, read this. People can approach you for options beyond the license e.g. you have a novel released under Creative Commons which is Noncommercial but someone approaches you with a movie idea based on it that will be sold. You can still allow them permission.

How can it benefit you as an author?

  • On Piracy vs Obscurity. You need to make your own decision as to whether you want your ideas to be out there and used (and potentially pirated), or whether you want to keep them in a drawer where no one will discover them. If you want to be a successful author who sells books, you need to be known and the internet is the place to build your global presence. The risk of piracyis nothing compared to being unknown. Cory Doctorow addresses this in “Giving it away”, a Forbes.com article where he describes giving the ebook versions of his books away for free under a Creative Commons license. His sales increased but his books were also translated by fans and his ideas spun into new creativity.
  • “Share your creative wealth and accomplish great things”. This is a quote from the video at the bottom of the page which explains Creative Commons in a great way. The internet has changed the way we produce and consume information. We all find ideas everywhere now. We put our thoughts and text online in the hope of building an author platform, or selling our books/products or finding an audience. Other people may get ideas from our work, and Creative Commons enables a legal way for them to re-use or remix it. This has started in mainstream books now with the success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a remix of Jane Austen. Is it fan-fic or a remix of a Public Domain book?
  • Collaboration and Creativity. Expanding the theme of fan-fic and remixes, licensing under Creative Commons gives people the ability to take your work and recreate it in different ways based on your ideas. This could spread your work much farther than you could do on your own and may lead to some extraordinary ideas you can take and reuse in your turn. Is your idea your own? or can you release it and see what happens to it out there in the big wild?

How can you license your work as Creative Commons?

  • Advice from Elliott was: Have a really good think before you do license as Creative Commons. Are you really happy for people to use your work? Can they make money from it? Can they remix it? Only license once you are sure.

How do I find other authors and creatives using Creative Commons?

  • You can find works licensed under Creative Commons by including it as a Search term on sites like Google and Flickr. Many of the images I use on this site are Flickr Creative Commons and I add Attribution to each one. Use the Advanced Search option. You can also use http://search.creativecommons.org/
  • I have now licensed this site under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License, you can see this on the sidebar under my books. This license applies to the blog content and does not currently apply to my workbooks, Author 2.0 material and published books. This means that you can use my posts on your own websites, books and projects as long as you attribute me and this site as the original creator, share the work derived from it and don’t make income on it. Start with this one and spread the word about Creative Commons! You can see all the international licenses here. 

 

Publetariat Presents: The First Indie Author Stem-to-Stern Workshop Cruise!

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In this exclusive, weeklong, all-workshop cruise aboard the Carnival "Fun Ship" Splendor (the one with the big waterslide you’ve seen on Carnival’s TV commercials!), just 24 UPDATED: 30 attendees will have the opportunity to learn everything they need to succeed with self-publishing, ebook publishing, podcasting, author platform and book promotion from Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief / self-publishing expert April L. Hamilton, ebook publishing expert Joshua Tallent, authors and podcasting experts Seth Harwood and Scott Sigler, and author platform / social media experts Kirk Biglione and Kassia Krozser—all while enjoying a wonderful cruise vacation on the Mexican Riviera from March 7-14, 2010 UPDATED: October 10-17, 2010!

In addition to attending four, 3-hour workshop sessions on POD Publishing, Ebook Publishing, Author Platform/Social Media and Podcasting/Author Platform, each attendee will also receive a private, one-on-one, 45-minute coaching/consulting session with the speaker of his or her choice. This private consulting session alone is a $300 value. Add to this the opening night Meet and Greet, mid-week mixer and farewell mixer, and you’ve got a whole lot of face time with workshop speakers to get your questions answered and issues addressed as part of a very small group.

Also, we’ve scheduled all our workshops for "at sea" days, so attendees will be free for sightseeing and shore excursions on the three in-port days at Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas. If you’re already thinking about taking a vacation and attending a writers’ retreat or conference next year, why not do both in this one trip?

For full details on pricing, the workshops, cruise itinerary, presenter bios, travel agent contact and more, check out the Indie Author Stem to Stern Workshop Cruise page, and if you’re interested, register and get your deposit for the cruise in right away; there are only 24 UPDATED: 30 slots available, and once they’re gone, they’re gone!

Building On The Momentum

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Promoting doesn’t and shouldn’t end with the book sale. I live in the middle of farm country where book sale events are hard to find. Harvest is about ready to start. Winter is coming soon. The internet is my best method for promoting. I’ve just had a successful book sale. Now I can build on that and find ways to promote the fact that I am an author with books for sale until the next event.  Do I know everything about promoting?  I’ll be the first to admit that I’m still learning. 

I took my camera to the last book sale and snapped a lot of pictures. The first pictures I had my son take of me in my pioneer dress and bonnet and of my table after it was set up with stacks of books and the two posters. With these pictures I made an album on Facebook and other web sites complete with captions.

On twitter, I submitted messages about my book sale and later wrote to take a look at my album on Facebook. By the way, I am developing a following. I have at least two authors following me now – Stephanie Cowell and Steve Weber the author of Plug Your Book – online book marketing for authors (which I have).

Every time I find a website for writer/authors I’ve signed up. In fact, I am on so many that I had to log them in a book with login name and password. I wanted to stick to one login name.  My choice of names should describe me and what I do so I picked booksbyfay. I don’t want to miss an opportunity to reach internet users. Having a list helps me keep track so I don’t forget to make entries on one of those web sites about a new book, a book sale or press release. Several of these websites have links to other websites which I happened to registered on so I can link what I do to be announced on those sites.

I’ve put a link to Publetariat where I could. Hopefully, internet surfers will come across my blog post on the front page. I appreciate the opportunity to help other authors. On Biblioscribe, I wrote two news articles. One article was about the success of my book sale. The other article was about my blog entry "Preparing For A Book Sale" posted on the front page of Publetariat. That should get people to take a look at Publetariat and perhaps become interested in my blog.

So don’t stop promoting after a book sale event. Keep finding ways to get your name out there until the next event.  Then work on that event and build on the momentum.

Reviews, Word Of Mouth And Super Users

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This is a cross-posting from Alan Baxter’s alanbaxteronline site, from 9/28/09.

Today I’m pleased to present a guest post by MCM. This post explores the difficulties in building a fan base through word of mouth, and talks about how reviewers can help us with that.

Recently, I’ve had some conversations with very smart people about the future of publishing, specifically about how readers and writers can connect directly and make old-style functions like reviewers obsolete. It’s a great notion with dangerous consequences, and if you’re game, I’ll explain why.

Here’s the thing: the internet breaks down barriers and actively enhances communication between people. In the old days, it was impractical for an author to chat with their fans; today, it’s downright pedestrian. The old notion of “word of mouth” expanded beyond your neighbourhood and now covers the globe. Tell your five best friends about your new book, and they’ll tell their five best friends, and eventually you take over the world. It is, theoretically, pure unbridled exponential growth (at least until you run out of people to tell). This is the way of the future.

Except it’s not as easy as it seems. Just because you tell your five best friends, it doesn’t mean all of them will like your writing enough to tell anyone else. There are lots of factors that play into the “infection rate”, but the end result is you may only get one of your friends to follow through. And then only one of their friends. And so on. It’s still exponential, just working on a lesser scale.

Word of Mouth (WOM) depends less on the potential pool of converts, and more on the accessible pool. There are billions of people on the planet, but you probably only know 0.000002% of them. Add in decay (meaning your WOM is not eternal… eventually, the lag in reading will affect the infection rate) and your growth is severely capped. If you have 135 friends at the start, in most cases you’ll end up with a total audience of 621 (note: all numbers are based on a rough systems model and are probably too high).

135 Reviews, word of mouth and Super Users Guest post by MCM

Next time around, you’ll have a base pool of 600 to work from, which helps a lot. But unless you’re willing to spend years and years building up an audience, straight WOM is not going to cut it.

This is where Super Users come in. They are, very simply, people with a lot of friends and influence. If they say “this book is awesome!” a larger percentage of their network will act on the promotion. You get a 1% infection rate, but they’ll score 10% or higher. Add that to their larger pool, and your growth will have much more potential. Switch from a gentle curve to a steep one, and you see the difference.

The other benefit of a steep curve is that the decay is postponed… someone, somewhere will always be finishing your book and telling their friends about it. It creates a constant state of critical mass, which also ups the infection rate. Think of it this way: nobody likes to be dancing alone, but if you’ve got a large pool of people all dancing together (even if some of them cycle out after every song), it looks like a party. You’re more likely to dance if that’s what everyone else is doing. Super users can find enough people to throw that party.

Super Users can take many forms online, but one important role to weblit is the reviewer. People are looking for advice on what to read, and reviewers read a lot of material. As a reviewer proves their merit, their social network grows, and so does their influence. Writers can expand their network with every new title, but reviewers can expand with every new posting.

135and1000 Reviews, word of mouth and Super Users Guest post by MCM

The value for authors is that a single positive review by an established reviewer can give them access to thousands of eyeballs, not just hundreds. If you have no social network, a reviewer can give you one. If you already have a solid base, a reviewer can help you tap a different set of people, or at least add to your own influence.

To compare: if your book is reviewed by someone with a social network of 1,000, your total audience potential increases from 621 to 4,937. If their social network is 10,000, you’re looking at just shy of 82,350. Imagine someone with a million Twitter followers reviewing your book… you’re looking at 8,242,224 converts.

1000and2influence Reviews, word of mouth and Super Users Guest post by MCM

The trick for weblit reviewers is that, right now, very few of them have large followings. That’s something authors can help change, by supporting and promoting them. It may seem unappealing to put reviewers on a pedestal (especially since it reeks of gate keeping), but if you look at it objectively, a healthy weblit community depends on a healthy reviewer class.

The question of how to build a SMART reviewer class is something I’ll cover in a guest post on Novelr tomorrow. And yes, it’ll have more graphs. Yay!

MCM is the creator of the animated series RollBots as well as the author of several picture books for kids. His grown-up work includes the sci fi thriller “The Vector” and a crowdsourced mystery novel called “Fission Chips”. He has a background in programming and systems thinking, which is how he learned to make graphs. He lives in Victoria, BC, Canada with his wife and kids, and may be at least partially insane.

What are your experiences with word of mouth marketing? Do you trust all reviewers or no reviewers? Do you have particular places that you’ll go for reviews to help you decide on a purchase? Leave a comment.

Creating Agents

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This post, from Bob Spear, originally appeared on his Book Trends Blog on 9/25/09, and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

Once upon a time, there were many highly experienced, very capable editors working for the big publishers. It was possible to send queries and manuscripts directly to the publishing houses for consideration, thereby creating the infamous slush pile and the phrase, “Over the transom,” referring to a small window that opened out into the hallway and was located above the office door. Ah, but the bean counters came into power, and they were very smart at saving money for the bottom line.

The older, experienced, very expensive editors were let go with a pat on the back and a thank you. Young, intelligent, much cheaper editors were hired to fill some of the slots that had been vacated; however, they would do little actual editing. Rather, they were essentially book project managers. The preponderance of real editing would henceforth be done by freelance editors (many who had just lost their jobs) paid for by the authors smart enough to do so.

In addition, the publishers said, they no longer would accept contact from unrepresented authors. Suddenly, there was a need for knowledgeable agents to represent authors. Eureka, the recently laid off editors decided to become agents. They would receive the queries and manuscripts. They would decide who they were willing to represent. They would maintain contacts with their old publishing houses and determine what hot new directions they were wanting to go.

Those bean counters were so bright. Their laying off the editors saved money initially and also created a filtering system (the agents) who gave good service for free, as far as the publishers were concerned. The authors paid for that service out of their commissions on their royalties. And so, that is where we are today, and now you understand the system and how it came to be.

 

Crafting a Cover: A Do-It-Yourself Sermon in Two or Three Parts…

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We’ve all worked the keyboards till our fingertips are bruised getting our books into shape for readers to actually read and enjoy.  At some point, towards the end of the editing and rewrite drudgery, I need a break.  I’ll assume we all do, and that’s a good point to start thinking about your cover design, if you haven’t already been carrying the whole idea, or components of it around inside you head for months and months.  Putting together a hard hitting cover design will require a whole different set of tools from writing, although you’ll use some of your well-honed writing skills on the cover, you’ll need to put on a new cap – the graphics designer cap…

When I was fresh out of school, the guys who worked the Linotype machines setting hot metal for newspaper type galleys and the pressmen (very few presswomen at the time) wore hats they made by folding last nighty’s sports section, to protect their hair from ink, etc.  and give them a place to stick a couple of extra red pencils and/or grease pencils.

That’s not what I mean.  I mean, it’s time to start thinking about graphics for your book in a new way.  The way a craftsman thinks about an upcoming project: Who is this for? What will it be made of? What will it accomplish? The answers will help organize the tools and materials that will be used in completing the work.  There’s a bit of design philosophy and some scientific touchy-feely stuff, too, but I’ll hold it down. You can skip it if you want, but it will give you a better idea of why we’re doing what we’re doing.

Depending upon your book’s distribution channels, your book’s cover should be designed for:

1. The book seller
2. The book reader
3. The book’s content

Your book cover is packaging for a product you are going to be selling.  The way in which you will be marketing it will have major implications for the effectiveness of the design.  Let’s say, that you intend to use traditional distribution as your primary marketing focus. That means book stores.  The best place to start the design process is to visit a few, if you haven’t had the time lately.  I don’t expect you’ve had a lot of free time on your hands for quite a while, but take some now.

As you pass the front desk, note any Point of Purchase promotion going on, especially book posters and displays.  If you can, without being too obvious, jot down the titles, and the sizes of the books displayed on the counter for later reference. See if any of these are in a similar genre to your book.  Then, go to appropriate sections to your book, and see what’s in the stacks.  Are there books also displayed flat on tables for your genre.  If either a book spine in the stacks, or a cover on a table attract your eye more than others, pick it up, check out how the cover is put together and try to jot down the first three things about the cover that got your attention, including color, besides the title or author(which may be memorable from marketing and promotional exposure).

The point of this exercise is to begin training your eye to “see” book covers as product packaging, and as individual objects composed of several key elements. In good design, these elements are arranged in such a way that they motivate you to hold the book, open the cover and begin reading the book. Some work better than others. You’ll need to learn what these often subjective attributes are.  Whether you have the right terminology to label these attributes doesn’t matter – you will develop your eye to “see” what works – what attracts and hold your attention and what doesn’t.

Pick it up…

If a cover does the right thing, pick up the book and turn it over. Read and file away what about the cover, back blurb, images, Titling, etc. makes you want to open it up. Notice, especially how your eyes move over the cover. Where is your eye led? Does your eye re-visit certain areas of the cover?  There is an entire science of the study of reader eye movement that has been called into action in the graphic design field, especially in advertising and packaging design.  Most people’s eyes move in predictable ways. These ways can be exploited to create more effective design.

If you’re not motivated to open it, file that fact and ask yourself what distracted you or gave you the feeling not to bother to open it up.  These are important points, and will vary from book to book. Remember not all the covers that held your attention will continue to hold it once in hand. Be sure to remember especially the covers that you put down before opening.

You’ll will need to find as many examples of what works once your attention is held, and the book is picked up, as what doesn’t.  You’ll need to “see” a lot of covers and pick up a lot of books before you begin to notice the graphic elements of the designs as separate from the words set in type on them.  Learning to discern the fine point of manipulating graphic elements for best effect takes years, but getting used to seeing those elements in a book cover is something that will begin to take place after only a few visits to a few different book sellers. 

What we’ve learned…

You’ll come to some conclusions about the designs of covers.  You’ll need to be able to see through differences in size, as larger books (trim-size here, not thickness…yet) will attract and hold your eye longer, so sort out primarily any notes regarding similar sizes to your book.  Not all designs are as effective in every size.  There are a few element decisions which will be influenced a great deal by the finished size alone.

Images…

Color alone is a very important element, as is whether the cover is a photographic, illustrative or typographic design.  In my experience, speaking of novels and some non-fiction historic genres, I believe photographic cover designs can hold a reader’s attention longer than the other two types of covers.  It is a true fact in most product advertising design, that whether the ad is set up to feature the product, or a life-style associated “benefit” image; photos (and now, video) work in print and in broadcast media better, in most case that illustration or typographic only advertising.  The other two types, though have very effective uses in specific areas. I’ll deal with those types as well as additional color considerations, next week.

The ascendancy of photography is based in part upon scores of case and focus studies that have shown that it works.  The idea is to get the prospect’s eyes to linger on the cover image long enough to begin to associate familiar experiences, items, etc., from their own lives.  While this is going on, the “magic” takes over. Key graphic elements, ad copy and headlines have a chance to penetrate the often hard, shell of resistance.  If a tiny spark of familiarity and empathy can be kindled, most of the job of selling has been done. 

Bored to tears yet?  Let’s concentrate, right now, upon photographic images. Where can you find them? Should you go through all the shoe boxes of snapshots stored in your closet? Maybe.

Image Resources…

I recommend visiting online providers of stock photo images.  Do keyword searches for images from your book, your intended reader market, even place names and key phrases from your prose. Stock Photo houses, such as Comstock, Veer and Corbis have achieved their high ranking in advertising design circles because of the way their catalogues are organized to provide relevant images.  Each house will have a specialty. For your book, each will probably offer several images that will relate in some way, to creating interest in reading your book. They may show a feeling, a mood, or illustrate a setting, even items used by your Primary Characters. 

Whatever the glue is, stick with it.

If a substance, such as mud, or water is an underlying “glue” throughout your book, then that kind of image may be most appropriate.  Remember, in your cover image choices, you’re not trying to answer all the reader’s mental questions – you’re trying to establish the need to open the book and read it.  A mysterious setting, a dangerous image, all may contribute towards establishing the intended feeling in the viewer, motivating them to pick up your book, turn it over, study the back blurb, then open it up.  Later, they may receive a small, bonus gift in the form of an “Aha” moment as they understand why the image was chosen for the cover!

You may find a handful of appropriate images available from each site, or you may only find a few online across many searches, but the next step will be to consider each of them in turn as potential covers.  Most sites will allow you to download low resolution samples of the images you are interested in for “comping”, which is the term for creating full color mock-ups for presentation.  It can be useful to learn how to use a basic graphics program at this point, or you may have a friend or colleague who can give you assistance in this area.  Oh …also buy a bunch of high-grade glossy inkjet printer paper, as well (you did run out and buy that printer, didn’t you?). 

A short digression, here, if you’ll prop up your eyelids a bit longer. I have been using CorelDraw graphics suite for many years, which is an image/bitmapped studio system for photo bitmapped images (resolution and size dependant) as well as vector graphics (for graphics elements including typography, which will not be resolution and size dependent: scale-able).  There are several other design and photo software suites from Adobe and Quark among others, but initially I purchased CorelDraw because it was hundreds of dollars cheaper than the others and provided the same capabilities as well as hundreds and hundreds of different type fonts. Of course, I soon learned that I really only use a few of these, but at the time, in 1985, it was exciting! I also couldn’t afford a Macintosh at the time, so my software choices were also limited by the PC platform – no longer much of a limit at all.

I usually create a composite cover image in the vector program using these steps:

1. Set up page layout and trim size, adding any folds or scoring (read: spine and back cover) as needed. Cover Templates can come in handy here, also page count, which will determine your spine thickness..
2. Import all the photographic bitmap elements,
3. Resample bitmaps if necessary (changing size and/or resolution),  and adjust contrast and color balance, using the photo-editing accessory. The final touch, if needed will be to apply unsharp masking at a reasonable level (too much gives image components ghost haklos and harsh edge definitions) after all image editing is complete.
4. Convert all bitmaps to CMYK (process printing color) format if proofing for print. Leave it RGB if proofing for online presentation. If RGB, look at the proof on your monitor, not a printed sample.
5. Add typography and other scale-able vector graphics elements in appropriately valued areas with little distracting texture,
6. Tweak until it looks the way you want it, make all elements align along pre-determined invisible lines, then exporting the whole thing to a jpg bitmapped format for reproduction as a proof on my trusty photo printer.

I always make up rough proofs for opinion gathering, using several different images, but always use the same simple typography (at first) to concentrate upon how effective the image alone is.  The book title and authors name are all I use to proof comps.  If there are nice, light areas in the right part of the image, I use darker, related-color type surprinted over the image. If there are nice, dark areas, I knock out the type (white on a dark background, for example).  I use the same type font on all examples, to make the image the most important single element in the overall design. The type weight, size and placement should be chosen to balance and enhance the natural eye movements that take place on a printed page. Composition is an art in itself, but we’ll suffice to say, work it til it’s right, and if it’s not broken, don’t fix it! Noodling a cover is the same as over-editing a book. You can fix it until all the life is gone from it. Now, back to the selection process…
                           
The Money Part…

At this point, you need to have reality intrude a bit.  Stock photos are sold two ways.  First, at a fixed price, Royalty Free, based upon the size of the finished reproduction.  The other way is to pay royalties for each use and published instance of the image, based upon what kind of use, what kind of media and the expected circulation potential.  If you have unlimited funds, this is the way to go, as usually the best (subjective word here) images are managed and sold this way. I’ve found a wealth of material is out there, Royalty Free, and this is probably the way you’ll want to go.

You always need to pay for the use of the cover image or images, unless you own a photograph that is perfect for your cover.  You may have taken it yourself (in which case, you own the photo rights completely, but if it is of another person or recognizable place or landmark, you may need to secure model and/or property release documents for the cover use. Stock photography is almost always fully released when sold. But not always. Be sure.  You will receive a rights receipt, which you should protect carefully when you have decided and paid for an image.  You will also need to understand that you are only apying for the rights you asked for when making your purchase – most stock images are licensed, when sold, for a single use. Be sure to read your licensing/release agreement very thoroughly before you pay up..

But you don’t need to pay for an image before working up several dummy covers using different photos. It’s a very useful step you should take.  Narrow your selection of potential photos down to three or four that you like equally well, and considering the price, subject, clarity and the purely mechanical ideas of tone and texture fields available for type titling and eye movement considerations.  These should be printed in color and show around to people whose opinions are important to your decision. They should all be readers, and they should all read in your genre.  Record all their comments. A bookseller or two would also be a good idea if they have the time to give you.  A nice technique for bookseller presentation involves finding two or three papervback books of the same trim size and page count as yours, then trimming out your proofs and using rubber cement to glue your cover and spine onto the books to show the bookseller. You can even put your books into the stacks this way, to see how they work spine only.  You want your cover to “pop” off the shelf for someone who has not seen it before.

Image Composition, again…

Most stock shots have been professionally composed, and are either basically a portrait (vertically composed) or a landscape (horizontally composed) image.  Here the orientation of your book trim will influence your image decision. Keep in mind, that in some case, it will work nicely to wrap the image around the spine and onto the back cover, especially if it presents lots of areas of minimal texture and either light value or dark value.  Too much texture underlying typography, even titles and headlines,  will distract the reader and create difficulty, so I would try to minimize texture in those areas where type will reside on your design.  Look for the right spots.

These areas are prime real estate for Title type and text, assuming all other considerations fall into place. Images can also be cropped, but bear in mind the final size of the image you’re paying for when thinking of cropping.  Cropping in “tight” and then having to enlarge a lot to fill the trim size is generally risky if the original resolution of the image is 300 dpi or less. It can create resolution issues in final reproduction and even nasty, fuzzy jaggies along the image areas of high contrast and detail. Keep the need for resolution equal to 300 dpi in it’s final form, hopefully achieved without having to enlarge an image or parts of the image.  Reducing to a smaller cropped size does not usually create issues, and is generally a safer way to go, but larger, high resolution images cost more, so you have to balance cost versus application when considering image costs.

One design that can make use of smaller, tighter cropped images, is a layout that makes use of more than one image along with the type on a color or textural background.  Depending upon how appropriate this may be considering the book’s content, and upon the length of the title, this may actually be a potential consideration and savings if smaller images with less resolution can be used successfully.  My only issue with this idea, is that the design aspects of the cover layout will need to be much more refined to pull all the elements together for maximum attention-holding, attracting value, especially in a trade paperback size. A multi-line title can also prove to be much too distracting. This kind of layout also requires a lot of refinement in image alignment and order.  I generally go for the easier path of a great single image, bled all around (no borders) and simple titling.

When designing for smaller sizes, the key is simplicity and readability.  If you have a smaller space to work your magic, it needs to be very arresting.  Use a very simple concept overall, to get the desired results. A larger scale cover gives you more latitude. Oversized books, especially, usually displayed on sellers tables, carry have a lot more space for your “presentation”.  While simplicity is usually the best approach, there might be certain types of books that need to involve the prospect more – a “how to” book for example.  Men – I’m one of those – tend to like to tinker, so appealing to the tinkerer in potential readers is smart design. In this case, additional image “situations” may pose some additional questions. This may lead to the prospect opening the cover up to look for specific answers. But enough theoretic blither…

Let me give you an example of a trade paperback book front cover design.  Below is the front cover of my first novel, The Red Gate:

View 1

It’s a very simple cover, but it has been effective, both flat and on bookstore shelves.  I’ve even had some feedback that the cover was the reason they bought the book!

In the next image, I’ve added a grid I like to work with, superimposed over the image. I call this the Rule of Fives. Catchy name, huh?  I divide a page space into thirds (two lines) vertically and fourths (three lines) horizontally. Five lines in all.  The intersections of these lines correspond, roughly to the places the average readers eye will stop, and are prime locations for informative elements such as title, authors name, and subheading, if one is used.  The choice of five lines is based upon which kind of space divisions most people seem visually comfortable with, given natural eye movements. I’ll cover the source of that design philosophy next week, meanwhile…

The idea is to set up natural alignments of necessary elements in your cover design. Some of the individual elements may also be parts of your photo image.  Look inside the photo.  Considering also the typical eye movements of the reader (clockwise, mid-left, around, then ending top right…). Finessing these into an effective cover is the goal.  Let me illustrate:

View 3

Here, I’ve added the small primary and secondary circles of eye movement to show how elements within the photograph help support the intended eye movement within the natural inclinations. My main focus is to never lead the eye off the side of the page, but to keep it circling and re-circling.  Try to choose well-composed photographic elements that do this – have clear central emphasis and focus – those whose internal elements won’t introduce lines that lead the eye where you don’t want it to go.

In addition, while in the example, the eye is gently guided to rest on the title and author’s name, the subject matter of the image – the wet, craggy Irish coastline – dangerous looking rocks and the arresting sunset coloring all are directly connected to important elements within my book.  The setting is an important Primary Character, influencing much more than movement of the people in the story.  The orange tones, overall display an arresting color, but only a little intimidating, mostly warm and inviting. 

While generally seen as a cheerful color, in this instance, in contrast with the jagged cliffs, it sets up an immediate conflict adding an air of mystery.  Just what I want the viewer to feel. It’s the way I first felt when viewing the image – and since I’m a reader, and have feelings, my opinion has some weight here., and so should yours. The color also relates directly to the title , adding questions which hopefully will guide the person holding the book to turn it over.  I will mention here, that the image was so good for cover use, I decided to carry it over the spine, leaving an arresting color and simple texture: a strong area for titling. It makes for an easy to spot spine in the booksellers’ stacks!  The wrap around image with the abrupt diagonal line formed by the sheer cliffs edge, encourages the reader to turn the book over to see the back, where my pitch awaits. The image was from Corbis, and my out of pocket was under US$100. 

Next week, we’ll continue thinking about color selection and we’ll decide how to pick a type font or face.  I’ll discuss my take on illustrative or typographical cover designs but I’ll minimize the philosophical and touchy-feely stuff in favor of more Nuts and Bolts – I promise. 

The Curmudgeon is also looking forward to your submission of your cover design preliminaries for comment. Email ’em in!

Running a Mile in Under Four Minutes

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On May 6, 1954 Roger Bannister became the first human in history to break the four minute barrier and run a mile in under four minutes.  Stick with me here folks, I really have a point.  He decided he was going to break this record and after several attempts he did it.  No one thought it was possible for any human being to run a mile in under four minutes.  It was too extraordinary to even comprehend.  But Roger Bannister decided in his head that he could and would do it, and then he trained accordingly.  

 

In the two years following his achievement, 37 additional people ran a mile in under four minutes.  Why?  No human in history had done it, suddenly Roger Bannister does it, and then 37 other people can do it too?  It’s because Bannister proved it was possible.  Once something is proven as a possible human achievement, other people gain the belief in themselves to make their dreams a reality.  And then other people achieve as well.

 

Tony Robbins is one of my heroes, and not just because he has those awesome big teeth.  This video is 38 minutes long, but if THIS doesn’t change how you view your dreams and go after it, then probably nothing will. I believe this video could be the best 38 minutes of your time you’ve ever invested. tonyrobbinstraining.com/320/interview-with-frank-kern-and-john-reese/

 

Tony explains it far better than I do, but the bottom line here as it relates to us is… self-publishing is really filled with a lot of underachievers, and I believe there is a reason for this. The reason is that self-publishing has been poo poo’d for SO long, that nearly every person who goes into it has a dream, but it’s a pipe dream.  They don’t REALLY believe they can do it and so they don’t take the required actions to make it happen.

 

In the past 10 months since I released my novella, KEPT, I’ve had over 10,000 readers.  over 2,000 of those readers bought the Amazon Kindle version, so they actually paid money to read it.  The rest got the free PDF.  (And just so no one jumps on me, the Amazon Kindle Version is a dollar, they won’t let little indies like me give it away.  So when you get it on Kindle, you’re paying for the format and convenience of having it delivered to your Kindle.  I have no control over that issue if I want to be on Amazon.)

 

And yet… there is a giant gap between free and $1.  Because free is a no-brainer, and $1 is a "buying decision" even if a little one.  Candy Bars are under a dollar but people don’t always buy those just because they are in their face at the check out line.  In this economy especially, something being cheap, doesn’t equal massive sales necessarily.

 

My "over 10,000" number doesn’t impress me. (Many people are doing far better than I am.  And I take full responsibility for the fact that I haven’t done even better.  I know how much (or little) I’ve worked at times, and the results are the fruit of that.) I see it as progress, and that’s great but it doesn’t just knock me over with "OMG I’m so awesome."  And that’s because I have big goals and even bigger dreams.  Meanwhile I’ve seen many self publishing authors who have moved under 300 copies in a full calendar year.  For free or pay.

 

Why?

 

There could be many reasons… maybe the book isn’t good. Maybe the cover is lousy.  Maybe the book isn’t being marketed; the author thought they could print it and it would magically sell itself.  Or maybe… the author doesn’t believe in himself.

 

Belief in what you can accomplish creates your reality.  You can’t just believe and not take action… that’s just a pipe dream.  And you can’t just take action without belief because then you’ll put less effort into it.  The force of your belief in yourself will drive you.  You have to get to the point of absolute certainty.

 

Absolute certainty that you are a good writer and people will want to read your work. (Get there however you have to get there.  Test market, get crit and beta readers, see if any agents show any interest in your writing at all, even if they don’t think they can sell it.  They don’t have to sell it. You will.)

 

Absolute certainty that you can create a GOOD and well-put together book that illustrates your competence.  i.e. you’re going to do what you have to do to have proper editing, layout, cover design.

 

Absolute certainty that you can market and sell this book and move a certain number of copies in a certain amount of time.

 

 

Self-publishing is one of the hardest things to do successfully, well except for maybe brain surgery.  Many people I’ve seen publishing their own work just aren’t displaying a high level of savvy.  They aren’t bringing much to the table.  Their covers look homemade, their editing is shoddy, they’ve sold 150 copies in a year.  I mean come on guys.  You have got to BELIEVE you can do this.  And then you have to bring the competence to the table.

 

Some of the people self-publishing have high-powered jobs, that require a level of savvy they aren’t bringing to the publishing table.  WHY?  Take this seriously.  If you don’t take it seriously, you’re not going to succeed.  If you don’t believe in yourself with absolute certainty you’re not going to succeed.  If you take a million shortcuts and don’t take the time to educate yourself about publishing and marketing and how to create a great book and get it in the hands of readers, you’re not going to succeed.

 

Here is the feedback loop many self-publishing authors are stuck in:

 

Critic:  You’ll never succeed. Do you know how RARE it is to succeed self-publishing?  Most self-publishing authors sell 150 copies or less.  You’ll never make any money at this.  Most self-published books suck.  They are poorly edited, have crappy covers, and don’t sell well.  You can’t get in bookstores, so obviously you can’t sell books unless you sell out of the trunk of your car.

 

When the self-publishing author hears this, unless they’re just really stubborn and determined, they’re likely to believe it and internalize these thoughts.  If the odds are so bad then they think of what they’re doing as a lottery.  They put minimal effort into it.  They don’t get the book well-edited or the cover properly produced because what’s the point?  They don’t learn what they need to about marketing or how they’re going to move books outside the bookstore environment, because there’s no point right? 

Because they’ve been infused with the belief, and bought into it, that their odds are really really bad and it’s probably just a silly dream, they don’t take themselves seriously and do the things that they need to do to succeed.  Instead they self-sabotage.  They design their own cover, and it looks it.  They don’t get proper editing.  They don’t do the proper market research, and when the book comes out, they don’t work that hard to sell it because they’re afraid of failure and being mocked. Or failure and losing money and being mocked.

 

If you’re going to do it, you may as well do it properly and take the time to learn HOW to do it properly.  Because some people do succeed self-publishing, and there are more of those stories than you think.  But you won’t, as long as you live into what your critics have said.  You have to rise above it.

 

Some of your critics and naysayers are trying to save you from yourself… bless their hearts.  What they don’t understand is… if a person truly has a dream they feel compelled to follow, they’re going to do it anyway.  And if a critic/naysayer really has their best interest at heart and just doesn’t want them to get hurt, then they’ll be supportive and help them problem solve, not try to talk them out of it.  Once the decision to do it has been made, the naysaying becomes pointless and cruel.  I’ve noticed that many many many people like to spend hours naysaying but they won’t spend five minutes trying to help problem solve.  Says more about them than it does about you, huh?  Keep it in mind so you can determine who is really on your side and who wants you to follow their path so they can feel better about their own choices.

 

There are also too many self-publishing authors who aren’t treating this like a business.  And it’s fine if you want to hobby publish.  But if you want to publish as a hobby then you need to understand that you are going to lose money.  Hobbies don’t generally make a profit.  You aren’t going to sell many books because it’s hard to be motivated to do a lot of work without any financial payout or promise of one at all.  If you just want to publish for love and not money, then give it away.  Save yourself the time and stress and money of getting it into print.

 

If you want to look at it as a business then you must become aquainted with the concept of the profit and loss statement.  Simple as that.  You have to have a business plan and a marketing plan.  You have to know where you’re selling and how.  You have to test market to see if people respond to your work.  You have to bring in more money than your sending out.

 

But in order to do all of this you have to take yourself seriously and believe in yourself.  Stop listening to the naysayers.  I’m going to let you in on a little secret of life… 90% of the naysayers out there are too gutless to follow their own dreams so they have to pick at yours.  And I gotta tell ya, I’m not that impressed with a mediocre cubicle monkey who can’t even THINK big, let alone act big. Don’t let them impress you either.

 

Grab your dreams and go for them.  If you’ve truly done your research and then you have someone coming to you with a million excuses of why your dream won’t work… then you know that you know more than they do.  Because you’ve spent months researching it, and in all likelihood, they just spent about 30 minutes to an hour reading other naysayer’s views and then parroting those back.  It doesn’t take guts or knowledge or savvy, or really anything impressive to follow the naysaying herd.  But it does take guts and knowledge, and savvy, to step out and follow your dream in your own way.  It takes guts and knowledge and savvy to self-publish successfully.

 

Weak-minded people concern themselves with everybody’s business but their own.  The strong-minded find what they want and stay the course.  In order for self-publishing to turn a corner and start breaking the stigma and stereotype, self-publishing authors must have the courage and strength to ignore all the negative mental crap being thrown at them and what their doing, and rise above it to follow their dream.  It’s the only way we’ll run that mile in under four minutes, and give others the courage to do the same.

 

 

A Clean Well-Lighted Place For Books

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This post, from Bob Stein, originally appeared on the if:book blog on 9/24/09.

The following started out as a set of notes to various colleagues suggesting that successful digital publishing involves much much more than coming up with a viable form for networked books. rather unexpectedly this led to the question of how bookstores might evolve to give publishers a way to reassert their brands and strengthen their position vis a vis Amazon (as well as Google and Apple). This is very much a work in progress but i thought i’d post it and bring others into the discussion along the way.

 

The idea that "a book is a place (where readers, sometimes with authors, congregate)" arose out of a series of experiments investigating what happens when the act of reading moves from the printed page to an online space designed for social interaction. as we expanded the notion of a work to include the activity in the margin, in effect we re-defined "content" to include the conversation that a text engenders. Put another way, locating a text in a dynamic network brings the social aspects of reading to the fore. (see Without Gods, Gamer Theory, Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and The Golden Notebook projects)

In an earlier set of notes ("A Unified Field Theory of Publishing in the Networked Era") I suggested that as discourse moves off the page onto networked screens, the roles of authors, readers, editors, publishers will shift in significant ways. For example, the author’s traditional commitment to engage with a subject matter on behalf of future readers will shift to a commitment to engage with readers in the context of a subject. Successful publishers, i posited, will distinguish themselves by their ability to build and nurture vibrant communities of interest, often with authors at the center, but not necessarily always.

The purpose of this new set of notes is to expand the thinking beyond how a specific text is presented or interacted with. Reading (and writing) do not happen only at the level of the individual work. There is a broad ecology of behaviors, activities and micro-environments that surround each work and our relationship to it — how things come to be written, how we choose what to read, how we make the purchase, how we share our experience with others. Currently (i.e. toward the end of age of print), that ecology is defined by agent/editor mechanisms of acquisition, sharp delineation between authors and readers, top-down marketing, heavy reliance on big mainstream media to get the word out, the bookshelves that make our books part of our daily life, bookstores and — yes — Amazon. Much more than not, Amazon is a product of the same DNA that underlies the still-dominant mode of the print-book read by the solitary reader. Everything about the Kindle, from its interaction design to its draconian DRM provisions, underlines its conservative role in preserving the ecologies of print.

The current e-book business (the buying/selling bits) was designed (or at least evolved) to minimize friction with the legacy business; pricing, release schedules and DRM all structured so as not to challenge print, which is still the predominant source of revenues.

To succeed at publishing in the networked era, it won’t be enough just to re-conceive the work as a "networked book." If we accept that social interaction will be paramount, not just at the level of the individual work but throughout the ecology of networked reading and writing, then it’s important also to ask the question "if a book is a place, what is the place for books? (or, more accurately but less forceful, "what are the places for books?")

Currently the predominant place(s) for books are bookstores, libraries, classrooms, cafes (as a stand-in for the general category of informal brick-and-mortar gathering places), living-room reading groups, and the infoweb (mainstream media + internet) where books are reviewed, promoted, and on sites like LibraryThing and Shelfari, discussed. Each of these places has its own culture, its own social fabric that determines how people relate to each other, what their transactions are like, how you meet "new" people, how you come to trust them or not, and how you manage ongoing connections/relationships.

The bookstore, The Library and The Cafe
Brick and mortar bookstores are much better for (un-directed) browsing than online stores. This is probably mostly a function of bandwidth, i.e. I can see so much more in a bookstore than I can on my 2D screen. This will change as the web and its attendant hardware/software develops over time, but my guess is that a satisfying browsing experience of the order i can get in a great bookstore is many, many years away from practical. On the other hand if you know what you’re looking for, online shopping excels at simplifying the process of making the transaction. In fact, in every sense except immediate transfer to the buyer of the object they’ve purchased, online buying is vastly more efficient. When the bulk of our book purchases are in electronic form, and therefore delivered instantly, the significant advantages left to the bookstore will be the superior browsing experience, the help desk and the cafe.

[And before you say "oh, it will be years before the bulk of what we’re buying is in electronic form," think about how many iPhone apps or iTunes purchases you or your friends have made in the past few months (including the books you’ve been reading on your phone or Kindle) compared to how many print books you/they bought. This part of the future seems to be near-now.]

Read the rest of the post on if:book.

Just Another Warning Un-heeded…

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Every author that sells books on Amazon has got to come to terms with a couple of things.  First, you’ll have to promote until you’re blue-in-the-face, everywhere possible, leading necessarily (no matter if you’re a private person down deep) to lots of emails in your in-box(es).  Second, you’ll need some reviews. Most of these, you’ll have to ask for.  Here are a couple of recent tips I fell into…the hard way, of course.

1. If you swap reviews with another writer, be sure to read excerpts of their work first.

Not every Independently Published author is as serious about the quality of their finsihed work as you are.  Some are in a hurry to publish, others’ stories are terribly derivative, others never passed their fourth grade English class, etc., etc. 

2. Don’t read from manuscript, read from the actual book — even if you have to buy it.

You can’t review a book from a page of type online.  Not possible. Really.

I recently made an agreement.  The other writer purchased my book ($11.95 on Amazon), read it, and left me a really good review.  He writes very good reviews. 

Now, I’m 5 chapters into his novel( more expensive than mine, but I digress…).  It’s not terribly thick (good) and it’s in 12 point type (also good), but within the first four chapters, the POV changed four times with no warning, characters’ dialog appeared out of thin air, and the puctuation/capitalization is horrendous! And I’m a guy with the comma disease!

To add insult to injury, it’s typeset (shudder) justified instead of Rag Right, so every page is filled with rivers and streams of vertical white space making reading near impossible.  Here’s one way that mainstream publishers usually creat a better product: They can afford to have a book professionally typeset.  Using the best of the newest typesetting softwarte and fonts, it is possible to set a page with justifed margins, that doesn’t also have terribly inconsistent word spacing, rivers and streams of whitespace running vertically on every page.  It’s very difficult to do this with the level of softwarte and fonts most Indie Authors utilize.  Better to set your book flush left, ragged right, to speed reading and prevent holes in your prose, but I digress…

I promised the guy a review, but it’s going to be difficult.  What I’m going to have to do is give him a free edit and make up "notes".  A deal is a deal.  It’s a good thing that with POD, a published book can be easily edited, because if his sales were slow, up to this point, a few changes may make a world of difference.

The real shame of it is that the story is a good one, and the pacing and characters would normally make it a fast, fun read!  So…

Don’t get caught in this situation yourself, and never, never, never put another writer in this situation.  Do your homework, make your book as good as it can be, first…before you publish. That way, when agents and publishers start to go on and on about the garbage that self-publishing and POD foist upon the public, you can beg to differ honestly.

And be sure to read a book before offering to review it.

 

 

 

 

One Thing Leads To Another For Book Promotions

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When I signed up for the internet a few years ago, I researched about author promotions on the internet. I still do search for new ideas. One thing I learned right away was that authors need a website. This was before I had a book published but dreamed that it might happen some day. So I hunted for a free website. I tried several and couldn’t figure out how to submit to them. Finally, I found tripod and understood the easy instructions. I haven’t had problems submitting to my website, but I hear that people have trouble finding it. Perhaps that’s because it’s free. http://www.booksbyfay.tripod.com

Every site I’ve registered on, I use booksbyfay to log in. I wanted a name that clued people into what I do. Now thanks to google search, I get about four pages when I put my name Fay Risner in the search box because of all the websites I’ve advertised my books on. Google uses a small portions of the websites announcing my books or events.

Now I have four blogs. I copy and paste the same entry on each one, but hopefully, I attract the attention of many different readers. Awhile back a woman emailed me she had linked one of my blogs to a website she belongs to because she likes what she read and wanted others to read my blog. Good Reads website put the bookshelf containing my books I entered there next to my blog on blogger. Amazon decided to give each author a page and blog.

A woman approached me at Civil War Days to ask if I would like to be a guest blogger on her blog. She asks people who are writers or illustrators. I told her I’d be delighted.

Another woman asked me to be a guest speaker for her church group "Golden Girls" to talk about my books.

　

 

Sometimes I hear things and think I should remember that for future reference. About five years ago I was told a successful business man from Texas came back for a high school reunion in Belle Plaine. A former classmate said he brought each of them a signed copy of his new book. So the 8th of August I had a high school reunion. I gave out 21 copies of my latest book "A Promise Is A Promise". Since then I have sold 11 other books to the classmates and one teacher.

This particular teacher wasn’t but a few years old than me when she taught high school home economics and girls gym. She took a liking for my whole class of 32 students and has been our cheering section ever since. She comes to all our high school reunions and keeps in touch with many of us. Always, she gives us encouragement and praises our successes. While I was at my book sale on Saturday no one could have been more surprised than me when she came walking across the park toward me. I asked how she happened to be there. She said because she heard I would be selling books. I thought she was teasing but turns out a former classmate passed on my news about going to Civil War Days. Do teachers today still have that commitment to students so many years after they are out of school? I think not. Oh, maybe they take an interest in one or two, but not 32.

I let you know how my guest blogging and book presentation for the women’s group turns out.

 

　

　

　

　

What Makes A Great Author Website?

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This post, from Thad McIllroy, originally appeared on his Future of Publishing blog on 9/19/09, and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.  

A colleague of mine who is a noted Canadian historian, and a prolific writer, asked today what makes a great web site for an author. So I began an exploration:

Most publisher websites for authors are pathetic, placeholders with short bios and links to books. A case in point is Canada’s “most venerable” old publisher, McClelland & Stewart. I wrote:
M&S is pointless:
http://www.mcclelland.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=31934

With their partners in crime (Random House, Doubleday, etc.) they have created BookLounge.ca, which makes the first mistake of forcing you to register (I never did succeed in completing my registration).

I try without success to find any content from M.G. Vassanji (who was well-featured on M&S). Odd.

So I check out my old friend, Lucinda Vardey, and find that her listing is no better than if it appeared on the M&S site:
http://www.booklounge.ca/author/results.pperl?authorid=31912

Then I turn my search to well-known (i.e. bestselling) historians:

Niall Ferguson has what I would call an “adequate” website.

http://www.niallferguson.com/site/FERG/Templates/Home.aspx?pageid=1

There’s some substance to it, but many flaws. He doesn’t offer a blog per se, but rather a blog-like “thing” labeled “journalism”. The entries are often short and blog-like…it appears they were published elsewhere, but we can’t find out where.

There’s a listing of the two spring courses he taught at Harvard, but no listing of what he’s teaching this fall.

There are three videos offered with no indication of their content or length or why we might want to watch them.

You can sign up for a newsletter, but have no method to view a sample and no idea how frequently it might arrive.

NONE of his publications has a live link (including his books), so you have to expend extra effort to find out more about them.

Well, enough of Prof. Ferguson

* As an aside, I do not like E.L. Doctorow’s site: http://www.eldoctorow.com/ for essentially the same reasons. There’s a professional design and lots of content, but none of it is particularly engaging.

Jared Diamond does not appear to have a website.

Gary Wills does not appear to have an independent website

Bob Woodward has a surprisingly uninteresting website: http://bobwoodward.com/

Thomas L. Friedman, has a pretty good site because it’s packed with relevant, current stuff. There’s no interaction, per se, other than the usual “subscribe to my newsletter”.

But, for example, on the page for his latest book: http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/bookshelf/hot-flat-and-crowded-2
…you can download a sample, hear an audio preview and download a discussion guide. These are useful and show some generosity and thoughtfulness on the part of the author (or his publisher or publicists or whatever). Foolishly he offers no blog nor a way to contact him directly (although if you go to his page on the New York Times you can contact him directly there).

You’ll see he’s now on LinkedIn, which is the best professional social networking site (as vs. the child’s FaceBook). I recommend LinkedIn— basic membership is free. Plaxo is roughly 65% as good as LinkedIn and also free for basic service.

Malcolm Gladwell has a very simple site: http://www.gladwell.com/index.html

There’s always something to be said for simplicity. He also offers a genuine direct way to email him and a COMPLETE and accessible archive of all his great articles from the New Yorker. He’s generous with his excerpts from each book, and has a good Q&A for each. The blog is badly out of date. Not bad overall.

Back to the Yankees:

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s site rates about 5 out of 10. http://www.doriskearnsgoodwin.com/

The good is the personal stuff in the right-hand column on the home page. Also there’s a way to email her directly. The material available on her books is pathetic.

So here’s a Geist author with a beautifully-designed site:
http://www.sheilaheti.net/

Would this be “the right site” for you? Probably not. By the nature of your profession, more formal approaches are called for. But that doesn’t mean your site shouldn’t be fun also.

To me the keys to a great author web site are:

  1. The short answer is ENGAGEMENT: your site should make the reader feel that they’ve been inited into your living room for a chat.
     
  2. The same keys as apply to all great web sites: good design, clear navigation, lack of clutter, etc.
     
  3. A distinct personality to the site, which, god-willing, mirrors the personality of the author.
     
  4. More good stuff stuffed into the site than a child could pray for on Christmas.
     
  5. Backgrounders, audio-podcasts, videos from YouTube, discussion points. etc.
     
  6. Your blog should be hosted on you key site: your author site. Comments must be allowed, but moderated. The blog MUST be current.
     
  7. Generous links to other material you’ve produced that’s available online.
     
  8. Generous (AND APPROPRIATE) links to colleagues and other sites of interest. In return, they should agree to offer a link to your site.
     
  9. A direct way to email the author.
     
  10. Do not favor a single online bookseller as a source to get obtain books. Let your reader decide.
     
  11. Free previews of work-in-progress.
     
  12. Friendly personal info on you and your family and friends with lots of cute photos.

    [Publetariat Editor’s note: let your comfort level, as well as the comfort levels of your family members and friends, be your guide here, but we do recommend at least including the same quantity and type of personal information one typically sees in the author bios printed on book jackets.]
     

  13. A “Resources” section for those who want to explore BEYOND your work.
     
  14. You must establish your authority. This can be done in subtle ways (which I think comes naturally to good authors), but also requires a link to “Reviews,” and wherever possible links to live online reviews.
     

So there it is…one of several viewpoints about the ideal author’s online site. To overlook the effort is to overlook your career. 

September 21 update. Forgot ito include:

15. Don’t be shy about using ALL of the social networking tools available to you, at the very least Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace…

Thad McIllroy has authored or edited a dozen books on technology and marketing issues surrounding electronic publishing, color imaging, PDF, workflow, publishing automation, and the Internet. He’s also written some 200 articles and delivered innumerable seminars on a broad range of industry-related topics. He acted as Program Director at Seybold Seminars for five years, and in 1990 co-founded (with Miles Southworth) The Color Resource, a publishing and distribution company devoted to books and training materials on color design, imaging and prepress.

More recently he wrote the Composition, Design, and Graphics chapter (with contributions from Frank Romano) for the Columbia Guide to Digital Publishing (Columbia University Press, January, 2003). He’s a contributing editor to PrintAction magazine, a columnist for XMLPitstop.com, and a member of the Technical Association of the Graphic Arts, the Association for Computing Machinery and the Content Management Professionals. For three consecutive years he was named one of Canada’s 50 most influential people in graphic communications.