Business End

Articles about the business aspects of publishing and self-publishing.

The Truth About CreateSpace's Free ISBNs

by
If you’ve heard about dire consequences of accepting the free ISBN offered by CreateSpace, or that those free ISBNs aren’t "real" ISBNs, you’re just hearing misinformation perpetuated by people who don’t understand what ISBNs are all about, who’ve never used CS’s services, and/or who have an axe to grind against CS.

 
The ISBN: A Mainstream Tracking Tool
 
The ISBN system was developed in 1966 to facilitate the creation of a single, standardized method publishers, booksellers and libraries could all use to track books.
 
Prior to the advent of the ISBN system, each publisher, bookseller and library had its own, internal tracking system, and none of those systems could easily share information with one another. This didn’t pose much of a problem until the mass-market paperback was introduced by PocketBooks in 1939. Prior to that time, only hardcover books were available to buy and they were very expensive; booksellers didn’t tend to move a lot of copies per month, and it wasn’t too difficult to track those sales or report them back to publishers.  
 
Despite the huge popularity of the paperback book, bookstores snobbishly refused to stock them until the 1950’s, seeing them as somehow inferior to the hardcovers on their store shelves. Nevertheless, millions of copies were flying off the racks at bus stations, drug stores and markets, and the need for some kind of standardized tracking system soon became apparent. 
 
From Wikipedia:
The International Standard Book Number, or ISBN , is a unique, numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966.
 
An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation (except reprintings) of a book. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned after January 1, 2007, and 10 digits long if assigned before 2007.
 
Generally, a book publisher is not required to assign an ISBN, nor is it necessary for a book to display its number [except in China]. However, most book stores only handle ISBN-bearing merchandise.
 
How Important Are ISBNs, Really?
 
Over time, the ISBN has come to be associated with legitimacy in book publishing, since all mainstream-published, hard copy books have ISBNs and the ISBN system has been adopted industry-wide. The claim that a book without an ISBN cannot be stocked by any library or retailer is a myth, however. The fact that an ISBN makes it easier for them to keep track of their books makes them reluctant to work with books lacking ISBNs, but this is a matter of choice on the part of the retailer or library, not a rule backed by law or regulation. This is why indie booksellers are able to stock chapbooks and other books lacking ISBNs.
 
ISBNs are only important to the extent publishers, libraries and retailers rely upon them. For example, since the ISBN system hasn’t been uniformly applied nor enforced where ebooks and audiobooks are concerned—probably because publishers have never believed ebooks or audiobooks will ever comprise a significant piece of the publishing pie—, ISBNs are considered entirely optional for books in those formats.  
 
Are CreateSpace’s Free ISBNs "Real"?
 
R.R. Bowker is the official U.S. ISBN Agency; all ISBNs in the U.S. originate from Bowker, though they can be re-sold once purchased from Bowker.
 
The free ISBNs issued by CS are real ISBNs which CS purchases from Bowker in blocks just like any other publisher. However, when you accept the free ISBN from CS, CS remains the registered owner of that ISBN—ISBN ownership is not transferred to you.
 
Registered ISBN Ownership – Why Does It Matter? 
 
All the false claims I hear about CS books (that they can only be sold on Amazon, that they can’t be listed in Bowker’s or other bookseller catalogs, etc.) stem from the fact that CS remains the registered owner of the free ISBNs it provides. This isn’t as big a deal as it’s made out to be for most individual indie authors, and any author or small publisher who prefers to register her ISBNs in her own name can purchase her own ISBN and barcode block direct from Bowker (as of this writing, it costs US$150) rather than accept the free ISBN from CS.  It’s also worth noting, mainstream authors aren’t the registered owners of their ISBNs either: their publishers are. 
 
Registered ownership of an ISBN only becomes a pertinent issue in three cases: 1) when the book changes publishers/printers, 2) when the publisher or author wants the book added to catalog listings, and 3) in litigation over copyright, publication rights or proceeds from sales.
 
1) ISBNs, Once Registered, Are Non-Transferable
 
Since CS is the registered owner of the free ISBNs it provides, if the author chooses to withdraw his book from CS and publish it elsewhere he must acquire a new ISBN—but this is true of mainstream books as well. 
 
It’s not too likely to happen thanks to contractual obligations, but if Neil Gaiman somehow wrests control of his The Graveyard Book away from Harper and gets a different publisher to put it back into print,  the existing ISBN on the book will remain the property of Harper and the new publisher will have to purchase and assign a new ISBN for their printing of the book. And if that should happen, the old ISBN floating around in the system will cause confusion for people trying to purchase the book; a lookup on the title may point to the old ISBN, and the book published under that ISBN will turn up as "out of print".
 
Even if you elect to withdraw your book from CS and publish it elsewhere for some reason—and let’s face it, once the book is in print and listed for sale, this isn’t a great idea—you didn’t pay anything for CS ISBN so you’re not losing anything by letting go of that ISBN. You’re introducing the possibility of ISBN confusion, but that’s your fault, not CS’s.
 
Some people will protest that a new ISBN must also be acquired if you want to release an updated or revised edition of your CS book, but that’s true for any book within the ISBN system: each edition of any book being offered for mass-market, retail sale in the U.S. must be assigned its own, unique ISBN, regardless of who published it or how. 
 
2) Only The Registered Owner of the ISBN Can Create Catalog Listings
 
Only the registered owner of an ISBN can list the associated book with the Library of Congress, Bowker’s Books In Print (catalog for U.S./Canadian libraries and booksellers), Ingram (another U.S. catalog), or the Nielsen’s catalog (for UK/European libraries and booksellers), and CS elects not to create those listings for any of its ISBNs.
 
Most authors have been told these listings are crucial to their books’ success because libraries and book retailers generally rely on catalogs for all their book orders; if your book isn’t in the catalogs they won’t know it exists, and even if you tell them it exists, they won’t usually order it.
 
They could order direct from CS, but they’re not likely to do so since their entire system of ordering and tracking inventory is based on catalog orders.  Also, orders placed directly with CS aren’t returnable in the same way as books ordered in bulk through catalogs. As a rule, CS books are only returnable if the book is defective or was damaged in transit.
 
However, in my opinion this is a non-issue for the great majority of indie books because libraries and mainstream book retailers aren’t likely to stock our books anyway.
 
It’s true that if your book is listed in the catalogs you can tell potential buyers that your book can be ordered through any bookseller, but if the buyer must place an order for the book (as opposed to picking a copy up off a bookseller shelf), why wouldn’t he place that order on Amazon, where he’ll get it at a lower price and may be able to get free shipping as well?
 
I’m also fairly confident the big, chain bookstore is an endangered species (I blogged about it: Big Chain Bookstore Death Watch), so in my opinion there’s little point in spending much time, money or effort on courting them.
 
There’s one important caveat here. When you publish through CS, an Amazon listing is automatically included as part of the publishing process for free, though you can choose to opt out of the listing. Listings on Amazon’s international sites are not included. In order to get your book listed on any of those sites you must register your book with the Nielsen’s catalog (it’s free), and in order to register with Nielsen’s, you must be the registered owner of your book’s ISBN. 
 
3) ISBNs Are Important In Court
 
Being the registered owner of the ISBNs affords you certain legal protections as a publisher, and helps to establish copyright in the U.S. in cases where copyright hasn’t been registered separately. That’s why the one case where even I think it’s definitely worthwhile to buy your own ISBN/bar code blocks direct from Bowker is if you’re running, or forming, your own small imprint. 
 
Does CS Recycle ISBNs?
 
With respect to the hysteria surrounding CS’s recycling of its ISBNs, that’s all it is: hysteria. So long as your book remains with CS, the assigned ISBN remains with your book. It’s true that when an author withdraws his book from CS after the ISBN has been assigned, CS may re-assign the ISBN to a new book. However, this isn’t the nefarious practice so many naysayers make it out to be.
 
5/4/09 Correction: According to Amanda Wilson, CreateSpace’s Public Relations Manager, CreateSpace does not, and never has, re-assigned its ISBNs. If an author accepts the free ISBN and subsequently removes her book from CreateSpace, the ISBN assigned to her book will go out of circulation.
 
ISBN re-use would definitely be a problem for books listed in any of the mainstream catalogs, because anyone looking up a book by ISBN might get the book to which the ISBN was originally assigned, or the book to which the ISBN was re-assigned. In fact, re-use of ISBNs is strictly prohibited in those listings. I also previously discussed the issue of ISBN confusion on out-of-print books.  
 
Even so, this is not an issue for authors who accept the free CS ISBN because only the registered owner of the ISBN can list the associated book with any catalog services, and CS chooses not to do so. Remember, if those listings are important to an author he can purchase his own ISBN and barcode block direct from Bowker. 
 
Mainstream Concerns Aren’t Always Shared By Indies
 
Most of the worries about CS’s ISBN practices are based on mainstream publishing and book distribution models, which are largely inapplicable to individual indie authors.
 
Since I only publish my own books and wish to remain "out and proud" about my indie status, I elected not to form my own imprint, and I also elected to leave CS listed as the publisher for my books. I have no plans to withdraw my books from CS, and can’t really think of any reason why I might want to do so in the future. I don’t care about getting my books listed in the mainstream catalogs, since I find it’s much easier (and less expensive) to drive buyers to my Amazon listings than it would be to drive them into brick-and-mortar stores.
 
7/27/10 Update: After I published my books with them, Createspace instituted a strict policy whereby Createspace is not to be listed as the publisher anywhere in or on Createspace-produced books; either the author or company/imprint name (if applicable) is to be listed as the publisher of record.
 
True, my books aren’t visible to book buyers outside the U.S., but since I never planned any big international marketing push, nor to release my books in foreign language translations, international listings haven’t been a priority for me to date. Mainstream booksellers will often hold back on international releases of first editions from all but their most popular and bestselling authors as well, so I’m not alone in taking the conservative approach.  I may elect to purchase my own ISBN/bar code blocks when publishing future editions, but on my first editions there was no reason for me to refuse CS’s free ISBNs and I suspect the same is true of most indie authors. 
 
An Opposing Viewpoint
 
In the interests of fair play and full disclosure, I’m providing a link to Walt Shiel’s discussion of ISBNs on his View From The Publishing Trenches blog. Mr. Shiel is adamant in his belief that ISBNs should only be registered to the author or an imprint, and that ISBNs should never be re-used.
 
Note that Mr. Shiel comes from a background in mainstream publishing however. In my estimation, all the arguments he offers are either based on assumptions or realities that are only applicable to the mainstream publishing/bookseller world, or warn against potential problems that are no more likely to crop up for an indie book with the free CS ISBN than for a mainstream-published book with an ISBN registered to the publisher. For example, Mr. Shiel talks about how the author must return to whomever is the registered ISBN owner for subsequent print runs of his book—but the concept of print runs isn’t applicable to POD books, ebooks or digital audiobooks.
 

Click here to share this on Twitter!

April L. Hamilton is an author and the founder of Publetariat. 

Why The Lack Of A Jeff Bezos Dooms Mainstream Publishing

by

This piece originally appeared on the Dear Author blog on 4/8/09.

Alternatively, I suppose you could title this piece How Jeff Bezos Pawned Publishing. 

A few weeks ago, a number of mainstream publishers attended SXSW, a festival of music and media culture.  SXSW is peopled with macbooks and iphones and music fans.  SXSW started out as a musical festival and has grown to include seminars on new media.  SXSW held a publishing panel called New Think for Old Publishers.  The publishing panel did not go well as the panelists were idea-bereft and turned the seminar into a mini focus group.

What struck me most out of the controversy that erupted wasn’t the lack of new think for old publishers but that the publishers were seeking new ideas outside [their] corporate structure. In other words, it doesn’t seem that there are forward thinking individuals at the helm of mainstream publishing.  Jeff Bezos, on the other hand, is a long range, innovative planner. Say what you want about Amazon being an evil empire (and they are and can be) but Bezos is a visionary and he has created an internet retail empire in just over 15 years. 

The following is the Bezos timeline (edited to exclude some acquisitions). 

  • 1994: Amazon opens its doors.
  • May 15, 1997: Amazon goes public.
  • 1997: Amazon submits patent application entitled “A Method and System for Placing a Purchase Order Via a Communications Network.”
  • April 1998: Bookpages.com. Largest online bookseller in Great Britain.  Telebooks.com. Largest online bookseller in Germany.  Internet Movie Database. Largest online resource for movies.
  • August 4, 1998: Planet All: a web-based address book, calendar and reminder service and Junglee Corp, a web-based database technology that assists shoppers to find products for sale on the internet.
  • April 1999: Bibliofind.com, Online servicing for finding used, rare and out of print books.
  • September 28, 1999: Amazon granted “1-Click” patent, which “describes an online system allowing customers to enter their credit card number and address information just once so that on follow up visits to the website all it takes is a single mouse-click to make a purchase from their website.”
  • Fourth quarter 2001: Amazon shows first net profit.
  • August 19, 2004: joyo.com.At the time of its acquisition, Joyo.com was the largest online retailer of books, music and videos in China. It became known as amazon.cn.
  • Feb 2005: 43 Things. A website funded by Amazon that gathers information about consumers. Secretly (well, not so secretly as it is all over the Internet that Amazon funds this site).
  • April 4, 2005: BookSurge LLC. Amazon buys a print on demand fulfillment company. Later, Amazon would prevent other POD books [from being] sold through Amazon’s online retail store. Booklocker has sued.

Publetariat editor’s note: Amazon didn’t actually prevent other POD books from being sold through its retail store. Amazon took away the ‘buy’ buttons on POD books not produced by its own publishing interests, BookSurge and CreateSpace, but those ‘outsider’ books could still be sold on Amazon via an Amazon Store. Amazon Store is a service Amazon provides to allow small businesses to sell their wares through Amazon’s website; Amazon lists the items for sale and processes the payments, while the small businesses handle their own order fulfillment.

It’s worth mentioning that there are seller fees associated with running an Amazon Store, and books listed in an Amazon Store are not eligible for all the same promotional perks as those with ‘regular’ Amazon listings (i.e., Amazon discounts, free shipping on orders over $25, Amazon Prime, etc.), so those books are at a sales disadvantage compared to books with ‘regular’ Amazon listings. 

Alternatively, authors and publishers could elect to re-publish their books through BookSurge or CreateSpace (at their own expense) to get their regular Amazon listings back. Also, some POD providers made special arrangements with Amazon to retain their authors’ ‘buy’ buttons and keep their ‘regular’ Amazon listings, typically in exchange for a fee to be paid by the author. 

  • April 16, 2005: Mobipocket. Mobipocket was (and might still be) one of the leading ebook formats out there. Amazon would later use the Mobipocket format as the platform for its own Kindle format, to be used with its Kindle eink reading device.
  • July 6, 2005: CustomFlix. Customflix is a DVD on demand production company.

Publetariat editor’s note: CustomFlix is also a CD on demand and print on demand service provider; its name has since changed to CreateSpace.

  • Fall 2006: Unbox. Amazon unveils its own movie/tv download center.  Later partners with TIVO so TIVO users can download Amazon purchases using TIVO recorders.
  • May 14, 2007:  DPReview. The largest and most trusted review site for digital cameras.
  • August 6, 2007: Amie Street:  Amazon invests in small independent social music retailer.
  • September 2007: Amazon MP3. Amazon opens its digital music store.
  • October 16, 2007: TextPayMe. TextPayMe becomes Amazon payments. It was originally designed to allow payments to be sent and received through your mobile phone.
  • December 7, 2007: Wikia. A wiki service for individuals, Wikia was created by wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales. (Probably designed, like 43 Things, to obtain consumer information).
  • January 17, 2008: Withoutabox: Indie film site for Amazon-owned IMBD.com.
  • February 4, 2008: LoveiFilm. Amazon becomes major shareholder in one of Europe’s largest online rental service for DVDs.
  • June 24, 2008: Twitter. Bezos personally invests in Twitter.
  • June 9, 2008: Fabric.com. (Crafty getting bigger? Amazon becomes one stop shopping for fabric, yarn, and other textiles)
  • July 2008: A Social Gaming Network. Bezos invests in a company that produces casual games for social networking platforms like Facebook. (He has also invested in Atomic Moguls, another startup company designed to bring casual gaming programs to social networks).
  • October 21, 2008: Reflexive Entertainment. Reflexive is a “casusal games developer”
  • January 31, 2008: Audible.com. Largest online retailer of digital audio books.
  • August 24, 2008: Shelfari.com. Social networking for book readers.
  • October 24, 2008: Oprah endorses the Kindle.
  • December 2, 2008: AbeBooks.com. Largest online bookseller of used books. Also a 40% stakeholder in LibraryThing.com.
  • Fiscal Year 2008:  Amazon outsells all other major retailers in the books, music, DVDs area, doing $5.35 billion for North America and $5.73 billion internationally.

In the 10 years since Amazon has gone public, it has become a retailing powerhouse in the publishing industry. Piece by piece, it has bought into or bought up companies that will advance its position primarily by buying people. It seems clear that Amazon believes in buying platforms where the people are.

Mainstream publishing is focused more on creating the market through one hit wonders. Mainstream publishing spends millions on trying to find the next Brown, Rowling, Meyer, or Roberts where as Amazon spends millions on getting the consumers to its webstore. This isn’t to say that I think that publishers should have acquired Fabric.com but it does make sense for them to have acquired companies and technologies for more vertical integration. To have invested in a company like Goodreads.com or a Librarything.com; to have invested in a the secondary book market; to have bought an ereading platform.

Read the rest of this article at Dear Author.

Where's The Bailout For Publishing?

by

In a recent article posted on the Daily Beast, Stephen L. Carter says:

Like a lot of writers, I am wondering when Congress and the administration will propose a bailout for the publishing industry.

Carnage is everywhere. Advances slashed, editors fired, publicity at subsistence levels, entire imprints vanished into thin air. Moreover, unlike some of the industries that the government, in its wisdom, has decided to subsidize, the publishing of books is crucial to the American way of life.

Seriously.

Books are essential to democracy. Not literacy, although literacy is important. Not reading, although reading is wonderful. But books themselves, the actual physical volumes on the shelves of libraries and stores and homes, send a message through their very existence. In a world in which most things seem ephemeral, books imply permanence: that there exist ideas and thoughts of sufficient weight that they are worth preserving in a physical form that is expensive to produce and takes up space.

He goes on to say:

In a library, you can stand beside the shelf and run your finger along the spines. You can feel the book-ness of what has been written. It is a very unsophisticated reader indeed who conceptualizes the library principally as a place to obtain information. A library is a shrine to the book. When we eliminate the name “library,” as some universities and communities have done, creating such vulgarities as “information resource centers,” we are, implicitly, denigrating the very object that the library is intended to preserve. The book, we are saying, is not important; only its information content matters.

You can read the rest of the article at The Daily Beast. 

Mr. Carter’s bibliophilia is not all that different from the lust-for-vinyl that keeps purists shopping for LP records rather than making the switch to digital music. Digital music hasn’t killed music, and digital content will not kill literature. In fact, digital music has ushered in a new era of choice and freedom for both artists and their audiences, and the same is now happening with books. If that revolution results in the death of some businesses, some unsustainable business models, and some delivery systems, so be it. Progress inevitably sacrifices some of the old in order to usher in the new.

Where once we had music megaconglomerates dictating what music would be made available to the public, fixing the prices and formats of the music they released such that their span of control reached as far as our very headphones and speakers, thanks to digital music and the web, now we have individual artists and music fans calling the shots for themselves.

Indie bands are offering their songs individually on their own web sites. Consumers can create their own, customized streaming web radio stations online, and even create and download their own ‘mixes’ directly from the source music files of such forward-thinking artists as Beck, Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead—with the artists’ full approval and involvement. Musicians have the means to reach out to their fans as never before, and those fans have unprecedented access to their favorite musicians. Music has become as much about building community as the music itself, and both artists and consumers are the beneficiaries.

Priorities have at last been appropriately re-shuffled: the artists, their music, and the community are the only things that matter now, the delivery system (CD, LP, MP3, etc.) has become irrelevant. Of course the music megaconglomerates are unhappy about this, because the delivery system was the piece that used to be their bailiwick and primary profit center. When you cut out the middleman, the middleman is never happy about it.

The same kinds of changes are now in their infancy where publishing is concerned, but to my mind as both an author and a reader, they can’t come soon enough. Indie authors are following the lead of their musician brethren, bypassing publishing conglomerates and other gatekeepers to reach out directly to a readership. None of this would be possible without the digital revolution in print and Web 2.0.

And just as record industry executives before them, the titans of mainstream publishing are doing all in their power to stop—or at least slow—the technological and cultural progress that spells their doom, rather than embrace the new opportunities available to them. I’m afraid that they, and Mr. Carter, are part of a dying breed.

Ask anyone under 30 if they mourn the loss of chain record stores like Tower, The Wherehouse and Licorice Pizza. With the exception of those vinyl purists, the answer will be either, "No," or, "What’s a chain record store?" Give it maybe 20 years, then ask someone under 30 if they mourn the loss of chain bookstores. Give it 20 more and ask if they mourn the loss of paper-pulp books.

A long time ago we learned that The Medium Is The Message, but we also learned the message is typically manipulated to suit corporate needs. Where the mass media are controlled by profit-driven corporations, the message is forced to the back of the bus: behind profit, corporate vision, marketing concerns, political concerns, and even packaging concerns.

Mr. Carter, while you and others fret over the cultural impact of a change in semantics that may one day see libraries referred to as “information resource centers”, the rest of us celebrate the improved reach and accessibility technology can bring to literature. Free the message from its corporate-imposed shackles and it will proliferate seemingly of its own accord.

Fear not, Mr. Carter. First we had the stone tablet. Then we had the parchment scroll. Next came the codex. And when Gutenberg came along, I have little doubt he faced the outcry of people like yourself who found the printing press a poor and vulgar substitute for the hand-copied texts of the day, but progress prevailed, to society’s benefit.

If the written word is worth reading, worth knowing and sharing, how can making it more widely and readily accessible ever be a bad thing?
 

The Twitterization of Santos Dumont Numero 8

by

Claudio Soares, a Brazilian author and literary blogger, has launched an intriguing multimedia online publishing experiment involving Twitter, CommentPress, videos, music and ultimately, Smashwords.

A couple years back, Soares published his novel, Santos Dumont Numero 8. The story revolves around an aircraft inventor who numbers each of his inventions with "Santos-Dumont number 1" through "Santos-Dumont number 22." Mysteriously, for some superstitious reason, the inventor refuses to use the number 8.

 The book follows eight main characters, seven of whom are intent upon unlocking the truth behind the mystery, and one of whom, I assume, is intent on keeping the reason a secret.

 Soares has broken the novel into pieces, and is serializing it from the unique perspectives of each of the characters, each of whom has their own Twitter account. In an interesting twist, the characters will interact with their Twitter followers. This has the potential to create an immersive experience, not just for the community of readers that congregates around the book and its characters as the story unfolds, but for the author as well.

At the same time, Soares is serializing the the novel in its entirety from http://www.twiter.com/sd8. Readers can view the twitterstreams of all characters simultaneously at Crowdstatus, an online app that allows you to aggregate the Twitterstreams of multiple people.

There’s a bookish twist to the novel, because it’s also a book about books and readers. The narrator of the story is reading from a book. As Soares explained to me, "The main character, Abayomi, reads and it seems as if the story he reads is really happening." Soares says in writing the book, he found inspiration from by some ideas of the Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges, who once said words to the effect that, "the reading of a book makes us experience parallel worlds, which often, superstitiously, invade our reality."

Does Soares believe his experiment presages the future of reading? Not at all. He recognizes Twitter has numerous flaws in terms of its ability to convey a story. Twitterstreams, for example, are like ongoing conversations, and the participants pop in and out of them as if pedestrians passing in the street, so it’s difficult to follow a narrative. People also tend to read Twitterstreams in reverse chronological order, which is also not terribly conducive to an immersive reading experience. And finally, for those who want to follow a story from start to beginning, Twitter doesn’t make it easy to locate the start of a stream, or follow complex conversations that occur within the stream.

According to Soares, discovering the inherent limitations of these social reading tools is part of his experiment. He plans to document his experiences on his blog, and he’ll publish the complete Twitterized version of the novel on Smashwords after the completion of the experiment.

The book is written in Brazilian Portuguese, though you don’t need to understand the language to appreciate the experiment. For additional details on the experiment, check out this imprecise English translation of the project description, visit his blog at http://www.pontolit.com/br, view an online presentation of the project at http://prezi.com/25890/view/#104, or follow his personal Twitterstream at twitter.com/pontolit

No matter how you look at it, we’ve come a long way since papyrus scrolls, stone tablets and Gutenberg.

This post originally appeared on the Smashwords Blog.

50 Benefits of Ebooks – Reviewed

by

This is a cross-posting of a review which originally appeared on The Creative Penn website.

50 Benefits of Ebooks: A thinking person’s introduction to the digital reading revolution where ebooks are low-cost or free. This is definitely a must read for anyone who is remotely interested in where the publishing industry is heading.

 

50 Benefits of Ebooks - click to enlarge

 It is also great to read if you are a fan of ebooks, because you will learn more about them, where to find them and where the industry is heading. Equally, if you are not a fan of ebooks, you need to read it for your education! It is not a technical book – it is packed with literary references and is hugely readable.

Why is it so great?

Firstly, it is only $1 so immediately demonstrates its core argument – you can get the book in PDF or ePub format here. It is a fast, fun read for what some might consider a dry subject. I laughed out loud at points (whilst reading it on my iPhone on the train!)

It does indeed include 50 benefits of ebooks, each one well thought out with literary quotes peppering the text and examples. Did you know that Paulo Coelho published a hardback book in Russia which no one was buying? He “leaked” the ebook as a free download and suddenly the print book started selling. Cory Doctorow also does this, providing ebooks for free to boost print sales.

Some other examples:

· Ebooks keep literature alive – they cannot be burnt or destroyed.

· Ebooks are good for the environment. No dead trees, no pulping of leftover copies, no warehousing or distribution, no landfills full of old books.

· Ebooks defy time – they can be delivered instantly and you can read right now. This allows for faster, news related books to be published and available. No need to wait!

· Ebooks will revive reading and literature. It will no longer just be for the people who can afford a print book. Did you know that in Australia a trade paperback can cost $30 or more? That is hugely expensive for even someone on a good salary. Free or cheap ebooks mean people can read and devour the books they want without worrying about the money.

(I could go on, but you can get the whole book for $1!)

There are also sections on:

· How to read ebooks and where to find free ones

· What the various formats are (very useful!)

· DRM – what it means and why we don’t want it

· Publishing ebooks: 10 tremendous trends in 2009 “Print publishing has one foot in the grave and the other foot on a banana peel”

· Ten Trends To Nourish a Revolution in Reading and Publishing

· Reflections on the importance of reading

Michael Pastore is extremely well read as demonstrated by the breadth of the quotes he includes. He is obviously a great reader, and he makes convincing arguments throughout. The book is also packed with resources and there is also a companion website here.

Ebooks liberate authorsFrom my perspective, ebooks liberate the author and the artist and allow far greater freedom of expression than traditional publishing. They also allow for “the long tail” of niche market books that large publishers would never touch. It levels the playing field and allows the individual author or indie publisher the ability to promote their book alongside the big names.

I do not need convincing of ebooks. I currently read them on my iPhone on Stanza and as PDFs on the phone and the laptop. I would buy a Kindle if they were available in Australia! I publish my own books as ebooks on Smashwords, Lulu and the Kindle. However, I also love print books and I still buy them too. I love to browse a bookshop in real life and on Amazon. I shipped over 1000 books from England to New Zealand and then on to Australia (I must love them!)

This book helped me feel that my experience is actually typical. Most people who read ebooks also read print books. We would like to consume them both ways. There are some books I even have in 3 formats – print, ebook and audio because I believe in the power of the message. However, some books I only want to read in ebook format now. I will not pay $30 for a fiction novel that I will read over a few hours in the hammock, but I will pay $1, or perhaps even $4.99. This book has also convinced me to change my pricing for my ebooks – post on that to come!

These are exciting times for authors and readers. This book just makes me grin and jump up and down with glee!

(so go buy it now and join me in gleefulness!)

Related posts from The Creative Penn:

The future of the book – it’s already here

author 2.0 – how to publish your book, sell and promote it with web 2.0 tools

Joanna Penn is an author, speaker and business consultant based in Australia.

The Authors Guild And Big Publishers Are Working Hard To Reduce Your Readership

by

This column is sparked by an article on Teleread, in which The Center For Accessible Publishing argues in favor of the Author’s Guild and publishers who are trying to force Amazon to remove the default Text To Speech (TTS) capability on the Kindle 2. TTS is a technology that allows the print-disabled to hear their Kindle books read to them by the device. 

The AG and publishers argue that individual authors and publishers should have the right to decide on a case-by-case basis which books will have TTS enabled.  You might think that since indie authors aren’t beholden to big publishers and aren’t members of the AG this is a non-issue for us, but if the AG and publishers win this battle authors everywhere—indie and mainstream alike—will see their readership reduced. 

As an author with multiple Kindle books ‘in print’, I can tell you that I am not in favor of disabling TTS. As an avid listener of audiobooks, I can also tell you that not every book made available in print is also made available in audiobook form.

If publishers and the AG only wanted to get TTS disabled on books they are already planning to release in audiobook form that would be fine, but whether they realize it or not they’re working toward having TTS disabled on ALL ebook content, on ALL devices.

Which Is More Likely: Controlled TTS, Or No TTS?

Publishers’ and the AG’s claim that all they want is the right to disable TTS on a book-by-book basis is specious, because it’s a lot cheaper and easier for hardware and software developers to disable TTS entirely than it would be to invest the time and money in developing and administering a tracking mechanism to distinguish TTS-disabled books from TTS-enabled books. Simply disabling TTS altogether carries the added benefit of pre-empting any future legal battles over the issue as well. In this economy, I could hardly blame tech companies for taking the less costly route.

Does TTS Cannibalize Audiobook Sales, As They Claim?

The argument that TTS cannibalizes book sales is also specious, for two reasons.

First, who do they think would buy both an ebook edition and an audiobook edition of the same book? If you want to hear it (and it’s available) you buy the audiobook, if you want to read it you buy the print edition. In order to get the "free" TTS reading on a Kindle 2, print-disabled customers have to buy the Kindle book.

Secondly, as anyone who regularly listens to audiobooks knows, flat narration can ruin the listening experience. If you doubt it, check out some of the (many) reviews at Audible in which an audiobook was panned not for the content of the book, but the quality of the narration.

I have little doubt that given the choice, the print-disabled would much prefer to buy the professionally-produced audiobook that’s being performed by a professional actor. But if the book in question isn’t offered in audiobook format, TTS is a better alternative to refusing to sell them a ‘readable’ book at all, isn’t it?

Author and publisher objections based on TTS voice quality are ridiculous as well. If your book is offered in an audiobook edition, the print-impaired who want the book will buy that edition. And if your book isn’t offered in audiobook edition, it’s impossible for TTS to cannibalize your audiobook sales anyway. Nobody who opts to listen to a book via TTS expects a full audiobook experience, they know it’s a stopgap, but it’s better than nothing. None of my books have been released in audiobook format, and I’m glad TTS is there to make my work accessible to the print-impaired.

This Isn’t Really About TTS, It’s About DRM

All this brouhaha over audio rights is really just a curtain being drawn shut in front of what publishers and the AG are really driving at, and that’s Digital Rights Management (DRM). Their TTS demands are conveniently bundled up in a package that also includes DRM demands. As a group, they’re (needlessly) worried about the theft of digital copies, whether in audio or print form. It’s a pity the needs of the print-disabled are being sacrificed on the altar of bulletproof DRM, especially since bulletproof DRM will never exist so long as there’s one guy in the world with a lot of time, sharp hacking skills, and a desire to get free content.

Studies have shown that the illegal peer-to-peer music file sharing that was rampant a few years ago actually drove more sales of the legal files. Consumers are willing to pay for digital content, so long as it’s easy to do so and the digital content doesn’t place excessive demands or restrictions on them.

Authors, Not Publishers Or The AG, Will Be Left Holding The Bag

The AG and publishers don’t seem to realize it but they’re working very hard at cutting off their noses to spite ALL our faces—publishers, authors and readers alike—, the end result of which will surely be reduced sales and reader alienation. And despite the fact that the Guild and big publishers are driving these demands, when their demands are finally met, individual authors—indie and mainstream—will end up paying the price, and not just in terms of lost sales.

When consumers feel their rights to free use of content they’ve legitimately purchased are being denied, or severely limited, their attention naturally turns to the public face of that content: the author. When publishers and the Guild have succeeded in imposing Draconian DRM measures on digital books, they are not the ones who will end up looking greedy and insensitive to readers: authors will take that hit. The Reading Rights coalition addresses its ‘open letter’ of protest to authors, not publishers or the AG.

As an indie author, I strongly object to publishers and the AG taking a position that will almost certainly force developers to abandon TTS, because now they’re infringing on MY right as an free agent to make my work available to whomever I want in whatever form I want.

Part of my motivation for choosing the indie path was freeing myself from outside control over my work, but it seems that the gatekeepers of publishing are bound and determined to drag all authors everywhere down with them. With TTS disabled the potential audience for my books will instantly go down, and while I’d very much like to make audio versions available, I lack the time and skills to produce my own audiobooks or podcasts at present.

Way to go, AG and publishers. With mainstream publishing in crisis, I’d expect you to be focusing your energies on identifying ways to attract readers rather than piss them off. 

Check out the Reading Rights website to learn more about the TTS debate, to find out how you can join in the protest, and to sign a digital petition asking publishers and the AG to drop their fight against TTS. This Tuesday, April 7, Reading Rights will be picketing the Authors Guild office in New York from noon to 2pm. The group is also planning to protest at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at UCLA the weekend of April 25 – 26.

Most authors, indie authors in particular, aren’t well-informed about what the AG and publishers are up to in this battle, and haven’t thought about the negative impact on authors everywhere if publishers and the AG win. Please share this article far and wide, wherever authors are likely to see it: link to it, Digg it, tweet it, fave it, tag it…just get the word out however you can. Don’t let the AG and mainstream publishers—groups with which indies aren’t even affiliated—get away with claiming to speak on behalf of authors everywhere.

Click here to share this on Twitter!

April L. Hamilton is the author of The IndieAuthor Guide and the founder of Publetariat. Her latest book is From Concept to Community.

Easy Upgrade from 6.9 to 6.10 For People Who Don't Know PHP/Linux, Can't Use Shell Commands or Don't Have A Development Sandbox

by

Note: while this article may seem very long, it’s only because I’m making every effort to clearly detail every step of my process for people who, like me, don’t have the Linux or php skills to easily understand what the heck everyone is talking about in the 6.10 upgrade articles and posts on drupal.org. In actuality, the upgrade itself will probably require less time than it takes to read this article. But DO read it, all the way through to the end, BEFORE you begin your upgrade.

Also note, you must be able to login to your site with full admin privileges for these steps to work; the user account”1” is the first user account created in a drupal installation, and it’s usually the admin account.

Do I REALLY Have To Upgrade? So Soon?

I set up my Drupal site on 1/23/09, so when I started getting dire warnings about an urgent security upgrade a month later I was both annoyed and concerned. Annoyed at having to do what seemed like a total re-install when I’d just gotten my new site customized the way I wanted it, and concerned about the potential to totally screw up my site in the upgrade process. However, since the upgrade includes a critical security fix, I knew the upgrade was not optional.

But I Don’t Know Anything About Linux or php, And I Don’t Have A ‘Development Sandbox’, Whatever That Is!

Most of the info I found on drupal.org on simplifying the upgrade process requires the site admin to write scripts or run them, and this won’t work for me since I don’t know anything about Linux commands and don’t have easy access to run scripts against my server anyway. Well, I found a way we Linux-illiterate people can complete the 6.9 – 6.10 upgrade with minimal site impact and no need to do the complete uninstall/re-install described in the upgrade.txt instruction file.

If You Haven’t Followed Drupal Best Practices, I Can’t Help You

First things first: While my Drupal install has been customized with contributed modules, autoresponders, custom logo, etc., I have followed Drupal best practices from day one by not making any modifications to the core software and keeping my customizations in the ‘sites/all’ folder of my installation. If you haven’t done likewise, the process I followed won’t work for you.

All Sites Are Unique: Your Upgrade Won’t Be Exactly The Same As Mine

While the steps I’m about to describe worked perfectly for me, every install and every server setup is different, so your mileage may vary. Finally, while the process I came up with was very easy and safe, it was also a little tedious. For me, tedious was far preferable to risky, and completely uninstalling and re-installing my site software seemed like VERY risky overkill.

Do You Really Have To Uninstall 6.9 Completely, Then Do A Full 6.10 Install?

In a word, no. From all I’d read on drupal.org I knew the 6.10 upgrade would only affect certain files and folders, and I also knew all my site’s content is stored in my site database, NOT the files and folders to be upgraded. I decided to limit my upgrade to identifying changed files and folders, backing up my current versions of those files/folders, and copying the 6.10 versions to my live server while leaving everything else alone. Here we go.

ONE TO TWO WEEKS PRIOR TO UPGRADE

Schedule your upgrade for the day and hour when site traffic is lowest (just check your site stats to decide), and post a notice on the front page of your site alerting your site visitors that the site will be taken offline for maintenance on the appointed day and time at least one week before you plan to do the upgrade.

You can optionally send out a blanket email to all your registered members too, but you should still post a notice on the site to notify both registered members and anonymous site visitors. This is especially important for new sites, since you’re still trying to build traffic and don’t want any of your site ‘regulars’ to find the site unexpectedly down and assume you’re no longer in operation.

A FEW DAYS PRIOR TO SCHEDULED UPGRADE

1) Download the 6.10 install package to your local machine; the download link is available on the front page of www.drupal.org when you login.

2) Unpack the 6.10 install package on your local machine in a location completely apart from your site setup and leave the window with the files in it open.

In my case, while I don’t have a Linux development sandbox or development server installed locally, I still have a local directory for my site which I use for purposes of developing and storing custom HTML pages and uploading files to my live drupal site. I unpacked the 6.10 install package entirely outside that directory on my PC, to avoid any confusion between the 6.10 files and the 6.9 files.

3) Open the file manager for your live, drupal 6.9 site in a separate window, in whatever way you usually do. I can do this via my locally-installed FTP program or via /cpanel >File Manager on my host server (my site is hosted by HostGator).

4) With the two windows open side-by-side, compare the date and time stamps on every file in your main installation directory (the one with the following folders: includes, misc, modules, openx, profiles, scripts, sites and themes) and each subdirectory to identify which files have changed in 6.10—and which ones haven’t.

Any file in the 6.10 window that has a date and timestamp older than the 6.9 version of the file you’re already running has not changed in 6.10. Conversely, any 6.10 file that has a more recent date or timestamp than your corresponding 6.9 file HAS changed.

Sorting the 6.10 files in reverse order of date/timestamp will bring all the changed files to the top of the list. I also found that printing out screenshots of the two windows helped a lot with this. When I identified a file that needed to be upgraded, I marked it with a highlighter on my printed screenshots for future reference when doing the actual upgrade. Alternatively, you can make a written list of changed files. Just make sure that you have some kind of written or printed file list to work with during the upgrade.

In my comparison I found the following file/folder differences between 6.9 and 6.10, but again, since your install isn’t exactly the same as mine, don’t just rely on my findings here. To be absolutely sure you’re catching every file needed for YOUR upgrade, you must go through the comparison process on YOUR files.

/www
The only files that changed in the main, /www directory were CHANGELOG.txt and install.php

/includes
actions.inc, bootstrap.inc, common.inc, database.inc, form.inc., install.inc, language.inc, menu.inc, module.inc, theme.inc

/misc
No changes to files in this folder

/modules
All modules except locale, openid, throttle and translation.

Within the module folders it was typically just the .info file that had changed, but I decided I would plan to go ahead and replace all my 6.9 /module folders with 6.10 folders rather than go to all the trouble of replacing individual 6.9 files in each /module folder with the changed, 6.10 versions. This was a safe thing for me to do because I have not made any changes or customizations in the /modules directory.

/openx
No changes to files in this folder

/profiles
No changes to files in this folder

/scripts
No changes to files in this folder

/sites
No changes to files in this folder

/themes
No changes to files in this folder

As you can see, the majority of 6.9 files are unaffected by the upgrade. When I saw this I felt more strongly than ever that I didn’t want to risk a complete uninstall/re-install of my site software.

AN HOUR OR MORE BEFORE SCHEDULED UPGRADE

1) Use your usual file manager or FTP client to download backup copies of all the 6.9 files you’ll be replacing with 6.10 files; store the backup copies in a new folder on your local hard drive, separate from your local 6.9 site directory (if you maintain a local 6.9 directory).

2) Familiarize yourself with the /admin/settings/site-maintenance page on your live 6.9 site. This is the page where you will take your site offline for the upgrade. You can go ahead and customize the ‘site offline’ message visitors will see during the upgrade now if you like, but DO NOT take the site offline yet.

UPGRADE TIME

1) Go back to /admin/settings/site-maintenance on your live site. If you haven’t already done so, customize the maintenance message site visitors will see while the site’s off-line. Take a deep breath and click the radio button that will change your site’s status from online to off-line, and save your changes.

2) Verify that your site is offline and your maintenance message is displaying to users. You can either open a window in a different browser program, in which you’re an anonymous site visitor, or you can logoff your live site and then re-load the home page of your site.

I have both Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers installed. I always login as site admin in one browser program, but remain an anonymous site visitor in the other. This saves me the trouble of logging out and back in every time I need to verify what anonymous site users will see. Besides, however unlikely it is, I can’t shake a nagging fear that once my site is off-line and I’m logged out as site admin, I may not be able to get back into the site’s admin account.

You may find, as I did, that the maintenance message only displays briefly before your site banner/logo loads on top of the message, making it unreadable. I elected not to bother with trying to fix this since I knew I’d scheduled my upgrade for the time when site traffic is lowest, and I didn’t plan to keep the site offline for long. I figured that fixing the problem probably would’ve taken longer than the entire upgrade.

3) Back up your site’s database, again, in a location separate from any local 6.9 install you may have. You may have to download a copy of the database via FTP, or your hosting company may provide backup tools. In the case of my host, HostGator, I can access backup tools via /cpanel and I’m given the option of backing up the entire site or just individual files, folders or databases.

Notice that unlike the 6.10 upgrade.txt instructions, I am not advising you to disable custom modules before proceeding. Since you’re not doing a full uninstall of 6.9 followed by a full install of 6.10, you’re keeping the site offline, and you’re leaving your browser window closed during the upgrade, it’s not necessary.

4) Close all other programs and windows on your local machine to free up system resources, including the browser window where you’re logged in to your site as admin, if it’s still open. Using your usual FTP client, upload the 6.10 folders and files you’ve previously identified as changed to your live, 6.9 installation, checking each one off your written list or screen shots as you go. If prompted to replace pre-existing files or folders on the server, answer “yes” to all.

IMPORTANT!! Don’t try to do this as a batch job: upload one folder or one file at a time! If the upload fails before everything is copied over, you will have a major chore to figure out which new files were copied over and which weren’t. You may find your site is irreparably broken and you’ll have to go through the full 6.9 uninstall followed by a full 6.10 install.

When you’re done, double-check the files and folders on your server to ensure you’ve uploaded all the files you previously identified as changed in 6.10.

5) Return to your live site and run update.php. You do this by entering the URL, http://www.yoursite.com/update.php, in which you’ve replaced “yoursite.com” with the name of your site.

6) You will be warned that it’s important for you to have backups of your site files and database before proceeding. If you’ve followed these directions, you have those backups and can safely proceed.

7) The update job doesn’t take long to run. When it’s finished, you’ll see status messages indicating updates have been applied.

8) If you don’t see any error messages following the update, your upgrade is complete and was successful. You can return to /admin/settings/site-maintenance to put your site back online and remove the maintenance announcement on the front page of your site. Finally, check the site as an anonymous user to verify everything is working as it should.

9) If you DO see error messages, I’m afraid I can’t help you debug them. However, I can tell you how to get your site back to where it was before the upgrade, and it’s easy.

Just copy your 6.9 backup files, folders and database back to your live server and run update.php again. Afterward, return to /admin/settings/site-maintenance to put your site back online, remove your maintenance announcement from the front page of your site, and check the site as an anonymous user as in step #8 above.

From there, your best bet is probably to schedule a new upgrade date and time, and follow the upgrade.txt instructions provided with the 6.10 package to the letter when you do that upgrade.

In my case, it only took about half an hour from the time I took the site offline to the time I was finished spot-checking the upgraded site.

Click here to read a related discussion thread on drupal.org.

Click here to share this article on Twitter!

 

April L. Hamilton is the founder of Publetariat and the author of From Concept To Community: How I Built An Online Community And Took It Viral In 25 Days With Little Money And No SEO. The book is available in trade paperback and Kindle editions on Amazon, and in various other ebook formats on Smashwords.

How Gary Vaynerchuk built a “platform” and attracted a 10 book deal with Harper Collins

by

 On HarperStudio’s blog yesterday was the news that they have offered Gary Vaynerchuk a 10 book deal. Maybe you haven’t heard of GaryV, but yesterday I discovered why authors need to know about him and how he got his book deal.  

 

So why did Harper Collins offer Gary a 10 book, 7 figure deal? 

One word answer: platform.

A platform is a way to reach people, it’s a following and from the publisher’s perspective, it’s people who will buy your books. And why does Gary V have a platform?

Passion creates a niche. Do what you love.

When you watch Gary in action, you know he is passionate! Check out one of his wine video blogs and be amazed. This guy is enthusiastic! You don’t have to copy his style, but you do need to follow your passion. In the above video, he says “stop doing stuff you hate”, and that is true for writers and creative types as much as anyone else. Identify what you hate doing, and stop it. (I hear you saying that you can’t but believe me, there is a way! Leave a comment if you need some help. )

He also says that if you do what you love, you can monetise it. Break out of the mindset that you just have to write a book, sell it to an agent/publisher and repeat in order to make a living. You can do so much more with your content it is amazing! (more on this author/entrepreneur idea in future posts)

Be authentic. Be transparent. Be real. Build brand equity.

Gary does not hide anything from what I have seen. He is so very real, it is probably scaring the introverted authors reading this! But his authenticity is what attracts people to him. He does video everywhere and seems to be openly honest. “The only way to succeed is to be completely transparent”. If you build a brand, you can build a business based on that – whether it is through your books, your speaking or other products. 

Connection and caring for your readers/viewers

Gary connects with his viewers and the people who follow him. He says he responds to all email personally, and he works ridiculous hours to make sure he is connecting. He also talks about the social networks – you need to be there and you need to connect with your readers, or potential readers. (Incidentally, he rates search.twitter.com as the most powerful website in the world right now – here’s more on twitter)

Persistence. Work hard. Don’t give up.

Gary took over his family’s wine business and built it up over 7 years. Then he gave it up to start Wine Library TV. He did it 5 days a week for 17 months before he started getting any attention. He is now on #652 of his videos (each are half hour of quality TV!) so he is not an overnight success. He works incredible hours and continues to post daily. He is not resting on his laurels. He suggests working at nights if you have a day job, stop watching TV and get on with it.

Freemium

The internet is all about free information now. You have to understand that your content needs to be free. This model is new and strange to authors (especially if you spend years writing your book). But you need to give and give in order for people to find you, and then they may want to spend money on the products you have available. You have a premium product on top of the free information. You don’t need to give away your book for free (although Cory Doctorow uses that model), but you can post chapters, excerpts, tips, information, downloads, audio, video on your blog for people to sample. Gary gives so much away for free but he also has a Wine Club as part of Wine Library TV (and many more monetisation strategies!)

It is important to note here that your free information has to be of great quality “If you pump out good shit, people will come”

Attraction. People attract people (attract book deals)

I LOVE the fact that Gary did not chase this book deal. Harper Collins went to him. They saw his popularity, his platform, his attraction and approached him. He did not ask for a book deal, he did not pursue publication. He did not do a book proposal, or a query letter, or receive rejections from agents or publishers. He just does what he loves and built his business, and attracted the opportunity. “The gatekeepers are no longer in control”. The internet frees all of us to be noticed. Mainstream media now follows the net so you can build your own platform.

I would love a 10 book deal. I’m sure you would too. I am going to learn my lessons from GaryV so I hope this has also helped you see a new model for authors to follow!

There is also a video version of this post here on how you can build your author platform. 

Original version of this posted at The Creative Penn. 

 

For Whom Do We Write?

by

This piece, by Aidan Moher, originally appeared on his A Dribble of Ink blog on 3/23/09.

David B. Coe, author of the Winds of the Foreland series, wrote an interesting piece for SF Novelists about the motivations of a writer and who they truly write for.

So my question is this: For whom do we write? And before you answer that you write for yourself, and that you’d write even if you knew you could never sell anything, think long and hard about whether that’s really true. It’s my knee-jerk response; it’s certainly the answer I want to give and want to believe. The truth is a bit more complicated. I write for myself because thus far I’ve been able to make something of a living at it.

There are easier ways to make a buck (at least there were; they seem to be disappearing) and I would never deny that I have chosen this career path because I love it, and because I have to write to be happy. But again reality rears its ugly head: If I couldn’t sell books I’m not sure that I could afford to write them. Oh, I’d write in my spare time, but I used to be an academic; my wife still is. I have friends who are lawyers and doctors and business people. I’ve seen how hectic their lives are. Once they’re done with work and family, they don’t have a whole lot of spare time or energy for creating worlds and writing novels.

I write for me because I can afford to, because I’m fortunate enough to do for a living what I love to do anyway. But if I’m to be completely honest, I write for myself and also for a whole host of other people. I write for my agent, because she has to believe in my books to sell them. I write for my editor, because he has to contract the book before it can be published. I write for my readers, because their purchases of my current novel make the next contract possible.

I’m pretty sure that my fellow professionals would join me in admitting that they don’t — can’t — write solely for themselves. And what about those of you who aren’t professionals? I’m sure that you take great pride in your creative accomplishments — as you should — and that you write to satisfy your passion for storytelling. But don’t you also write because you want to see your stories in print? I’m an amateur photographer, and I’m also a musician. I do these things “for myself.” Still, I was thrilled when I was able to display my photography in a gallery. I used to perform music in bars and restaurants and to this day I occasionally fantasize about doing so again.

I am a writer, which should come as no surprise. I expect almost every other blogger out there would consider call themselves writers and I also expect that many of my readers would consider themselves writers (or artists of another medium). I think it’s also safe to say that the vast majority of us are at a point where we practice our craft solely for ourselves, with little professional or monetary gain. I know I do.

As a blogger, I do this for free. I make no money off of it, in fact, it costs me money (in hosting fees, domain, etc…). I suppose one could consider the amount of free novels I get as a sort of reward for the work done, but in the end, A Dribble of Ink, like the majority of non-professional blogs, is a labour of love. The reward for me is to have a place where I can articulate my passion for Speculative Fiction and help spread that passion to other like-minded people.

Of course, like most writers, I have ambitions. I dream of the day when my Work-in-Progress (a contemporary Fantasy called Through Bended Grass) is a full fledged novel, lining the shelves of bookstores and climbing the charts on Amazon. Still, I know that I am just a drop in an ocean of aspiring writers, and my novel, no matter how good, will be one among many when it hits the slush piles. Does this discourage me from devoting endless hours to finishing it? Not at all. There’s always that burning desire to get the story out on paper, a feeling any artist can attest to, and the fun, the challenge and the reward is in the writing of it.

Coe touches on this honeymoon period, when aspiring writers can write for the sake of the craft and the pride they take in it:

What’s my point? Simply this: Nearly all of us who love art begin with that passion to create. We start by saying that we’re going to do it for ourselves, for the sheer pleasure of creating and celebrating that accomplishment. And we mean it. But I would argue that all art is inherently a performance. Painting, taking pictures, singing, acting, dancing, and yes, even writing — especially writing — it’s all done for an audience. When a child creates something that she thinks is beautiful her first thought is to show it to someone else — Mom, Dad, a teacher, a friend, a complete stranger if no one else is around. And I don’t think that impulse ever really goes away. Nor should it. Because art is inherently interactive. Art is about creation and appreciation, passion harnessed and passion evoked.

What’s most interesting to me is how the paradigm of being a writer shifts once it becomes a profession and how it’s not always so peachy keen as us wannabes think it is. A little Twitter conversation between Matt Staggs (Twitter: @deepeight) and Jay Lake (Twitter: @jay_lake) got me thinking about this:

Staggs
‘Turns out I’m way too busy to run a D&D game. Part of going from fan to working pro, I guess. Sad in some ways.’

Lake
‘@deepeight Dude, writing has really interfered with my reading career’

Staggs
‘@jay_lake Yeah, kind of sucks, huh? There are some good things about just being a fan.’

As a hobbyist/wannabe novelist, I’m perfectly happy to write with no other reward than the writing itself. It’s liberating and keeps my mind from gathering cobwebs. But is this what I have to look forward to, if Through Bended Grass does make it to store shelves? To join those downtrodden professional writers chained to their typewriters, forced to ignore all the great things that led to my original love affair with Speculative Fiction in the first place?

By Coe’s own admission, artists begin with a passion and curiousity for a medium, about what would happen if they applied their own touch to it. As soon as one becomes a professional, though, other factors enter the picture that determine the course of the artist and a modicum of freedom is stolen.

Tobias Buckell has been struggling with this, and recently wrote an article about how he is shelving his current Xenowealth series and trying shifting his focus to a new novel called Arctic Rising, in an attempt to broaden his audience.

Read the rest of the post on the A Dribble of Ink blog.

Why Google Book Search Is A GOOD Thing For Indies

by

You’ve probably been hearing a lot about Google Book Search lately. Mainstream publishers and authors are variously confused, angry or nervous about GBS, but for indie authors and small imprints, it’s all good.

What’s This All About, Then?

From Wikipedia:

Google Book Search is a tool from Google that searches the full text of books that Google scans, converts to text using optical character recognition, and stores in its digital database. The service was formerly known as Google Print when it was introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2004. When relevant to a user’s keyword search, up to three results from the Google Book Search index are displayed above search results in the Google Web Search service (google.com).

A user may also search just for books at the dedicated Google Book Search service. Clicking a result from Google Book Search opens an interface in which the user may view pages from the book as well as content-related advertisements and links to the publisher’s website and booksellers. Through a variety of access limitations and security measures, some based on user-tracking, Google limits the number of viewable pages and attempts to prevent page printing and text copying of material under copyright.

GBS Offers Benefits To Authors And Publishers

A Google Books Page

As shown above (click image to view larger), book search results served up by GBS include a cover image, table of contents, keywords from each chapter, excerpts from throughout the book, and where-to-buy links. GBS provides publishers and authors with a new avenue to help consumers find their books, read excerpts, and even buy those books.

In addition, authors and publishers who sign up to be a GBS Partner (required if you want to upload your own books) receive additional benefits.  Partners can view reports containing detailed information about when and how their GBS books have been accessed, as well as how frequently GBS users click on the where-to-buy links for their books. GBS book pages also contain Google AdSense ads which have been targeted based on the content of the book currently being viewed, and GBS Partners receive a portion of the ad revenue Google earns for click-throughs on those ads.

So What’s The Problem?

Exposure plus maybe enough ad revenue to buy yourself a fancy coffee once in a while…what’s not to love? If you’re an indie author or small imprint, nothing. But the mainstream has four major beefs with GBS: Google didn’t ask their permission, GBS muddies the question of when a book goes out of print, GBS introduces some level of copyright risk, and publishers and authors have no control over how GBS presents their books to the public.

Google Decided It’s Better To Beg Forgiveness Than Ask Permission

When Google came up with the idea for GBS they realized it would only work if the majority of published books are part of the GBS database, because the more complete the database, the more useful and trustworthy it becomes. Rather than go to all the publishers of the world and ask if GBS could please scan each publisher’s books into their database, Google simply issued a public statement of their intent to do so. GBS also included functionality that allows authors and publishers themselves to upload books directly to the database.

Legal wrangling eventually resulted in a settlement agreement that allows authors and publishers to opt their books out of GBS, but the default setting for all books is opt-in: unless you specifically take action to opt out per the terms of the agreement, your books are fair game to be scanned or uploaded to the GBS database. Though the agreement was hard-won, most major publishers are not choosing to exercise the opt-out option, and that’s making many mainstream authors very nervous.

This is a non-issue for indies, for two reasons. First, indie books are very low on GBS’ list of priorities where getting content for their database is concerned, and are therefore only likely to find their way into the GBS database if we upload them ourselves (effecting a post-facto ‘opt-in’). Secondly, if you don’t want your books in the database but find that someone else has scanned or uploaded them, GBS provides a simple means to have them removed. Since we retain all rights to our work, we don’t have to go along with a publisher’s decision to opt in or out of GBS.

When Does A Google Books Book Go Out Of Print?

Mainstream publishing contracts typically stipulate that when a publisher stops manufacturing or distributing a given book for sale, publication rights for that book revert to the author. The author is then free to re-publish the book himself, or through a different publisher. Mainstream authors are worried about the possibility that a book in the GBS database could be construed as “in print” indefinitely, though there have yet to be any court cases to settle the matter.

Indies don’t have to worry about it, because we retain all publication rights to our work from day one. Even if the courts eventually find GBS books meet some legal definition of the term “in print”, thereby allowing publishers to retain publishing rights so long as the books are in the GBS database, it won’t matter to us because we are our own publishers.

Does GBS Pose New Copyright Risks?

Publishers and authors are also worried about the risks of copyright infringement introduced by allowing an outside party to store the entire text of their books in a database, and by allowing excerpts of those books to be displayed online. While GBS provides excerpts, cover images and bibliographic data for every book in its database, it does not provide the full text of any book to GBS users, nor does it provide any easy means to download or even print any of the content shown onscreen.

Given enough time, a motivated, technically skilled pirate could theoretically steal the excerpts and cover images for re-use in some illegal fashion, but the same is possible for any book on a public library shelf. If anything, public libraries and book lending among friends pose a greater piracy threat, since anyone in possession of the entire book can scan or copy its pages for illegal re-use.

There’s also the omnipresent threat posed to any online system: that hackers may find a way to get into the database and download entire files—in this case, books—for nefarious purposes. Possible, yes. Likely, no. And unless you’re a well-known or best-selling author, the risk that a hacker might choose to copy and illegally redistribute your book is very, very small. If you’re worried about GBS security and find your book becoming so popular that piracy is a legitimate concern, you can always just pull it out of the GBS database.

Presentation And Advertising

GBS serves up book search results in their own, fixed format, and also includes Google AdSense text ads targeted according to the content of the book being displayed on the right-hand side of the page. Authors and publishers have no control over the book display format or content, nor over the advertising display or content.

Those who want to micromanage their book’s image and exclude outside advertising are not pleased, but they don’t seem to realize that so long as their books are available for sale through any online retailer, matters of display and advertising are out of their hands anyway.

Any book available online can be found using a simple Google search, and the results page for any Google search includes targeted Google AdSense advertising links on the far right-hand side. Authors and publishers have no control over the ads, nor do they receive any portion of the revenue earned on those ads.

Furthermore, once the searcher clicks through on a link to Amazon, Borders, B&N or wherever else, the book they’re looking for will be displayed in that store’s standard format, over which authors and publishers have no control. Book listings in online stores almost always include advertising in the form of cross-sell links to other books in which the searcher may be interested—typically, competing books from other authors.

Another complaint in this area is the revenue split on advertising displayed on GBS book pages. Recall that Google splits GBS ad revenue with GBS Partners, and in the case of a mainstream publisher, the publisher will be the GBS Partner, not the author. To me, this seems a matter to be settled between mainstream authors and their publishers rather than a GBS issue.

Yet again, indies have no need for concern here. We can sign up to become GBS Partners and keep all of the ad revenue split for ourselves.

Still Not Sure Whether To Upload Your Books?

If you have concerns about the risks and possible ramifications of allowing your books to be listed on GBS, carefully review the GBS Program Policies and the settlement agreement with an attorney versed in matters of copyright and publishing law before making any decisions. You might also want to read this Authorweb piece on GBS.

One more thing – if you’re self-publishing in the hopes of attracting a mainstream publisher, it’s probably best to err on the side of caution and leave your books out of GBS since you can’t predict how a future publisher with which you may have dealings will feel about GBS.

My Experience With GBS

I’ve had my novels, Adelaide Einstein and Snow Ball, listed on GBS since May of 2008.  Joining the Partner program was very easy and GBS dovetails seamlessly with other Google services I already use like gmail, AdSense and the like.

From the time I uploaded the books it took about three months for them to show up in GBS searches, but the process is probably bit speedier now that the settlement agreement has again freed GBS to focus the bulk of their energies on scanning and uploading content.

My Partner reports show I’m getting a smattering of page views, but if viewers are subsequently buying my books, they’re not using the GBS where-to-buy links to do so. I’ve also yet to see any ad revenue from GBS. I suspect this meager traffic is due in large part to the fact that while GBS is widely known and discussed in author and publisher circles, the general public is largely unaware of its existence.Go ahead, ask a non-bookish friend or family member if they know about Google Book Search.

As the GBS database grows, and given Google’s track record of success in rolling out new products and services, GBS will probably become as ubiquitous as Google search and gmail eventually.

I have no regrets about listing with GBS. I subscribe to the Just Get It Out There In Front Of As Many Eyeballs As Possible school where my books are concerned, and GBS is poised to deliver quite a few eyeballs indeed.

April L. Hamilton is the author of The IndieAuthor Guide and the founder of Publetariat. Her latest book is From Concept to Community.

read this b4 u publish :-)

by

This article, by Max Leone, originally appeared on the Publisher’s Weekly site on 11/10/08.

A 13-year-old boy tells the industry what teens want.

I am of that population segment that is constantly derided as “not reading anymore,” and is therefore treated by publishing companies as a vast, mysterious demographic that’s seemingly impossible to please. Kind of like the way teenage boys think of girls.

The reason we read so little in our free time is partially because of the literary choices available to teenagers these days. The selection of teen literature is even more barren now that the two great dynasties, Harry Potter and Artemis Fowl, have released their final installments. Those two massive successes blended great characters, humor and action in a way that few other books manage. When they went for laughs, they were genuinely funny, and their dramatic scenes were still heart-poundingly tense, even after I’d read them dozens of times. 

And so, after weeks of brainstorming and careful consideration (three months of procrastinating and two hours of furious typing), I will now attempt to end this dark age of adolescent prose. I will start by stating the main problem with books aimed at teenage boys. Then I will give some examples of what teenage boys actually want to read.

The first problem with many books for teens is archaic language. Seriously. It is the kiss of death for teenage boy literature. Any book infested by it is destined to become an eternal object of derision around the cafeteria lunch table. It is a problem that applies not only to the “classics” (yes, I will use quotations whenever I use that word. Live with it.), but also modern teenage literature. “Methinks”? “Doth”? Really? So we are constantly ridiculed for “lol,” while these offenses go unnoticed? To all writers of books aimed at teenage boys, I beg you: please use only modern language, no matter what time period or universe your book takes place in.

Another giant, oily blemish on the face of teenage literature (that was entirely intentional) is whatever urge compels writers to clumsily smash morals about fairness or honor or other cornball crap onto otherwise fine stories. Do you not think we get enough of that in our parents’ and teachers’ constant attempts to shove the importance of justice and integrity down our throats? We get it. I assure you, it makes no difference in our behavior at all. And we will not become ax murderers because volume 120 of Otherworld: The Generica Chronicles didn’t smother us in morals that would make a Care Bear cringe.

And then there are the vampires and other supernatural creature that appear in many contemporary teen novels. Vampires, simply put, are awesome. However, today’s vampire stories are 100 pages of florid descriptions of romance and 100 pages of various people being emo. However much I mock the literature of yesteryear, it definitely had it right when it came to vampires. The vampire was always depicted as a menacing badass. That is the kind of book teenage boys want to read. Also good: books with videogame-style plots involving zombie attacks, alien attacks, robot attacks or any excuse to shoot something.

Finally, here is what I consider the cardinal rule of writing for young adults: Do Not Underestimate Your Audience. They actually know a lot about what’s going on in politics. They will get most of the jokes you expect them not to. They have a much higher tolerance for horror and action than most adults. Most of the books I read actually don’t fall under the “young adult” category. I can understand the humor in Jon Stewart’s or Stephen Colbert’s books as well as any adult.

Publishers can stop panicking and worrying that the teenage boy market is impossible to crack, that teenagers hardly ever read anymore, and that they have only a few years before books become obsolete and are replaced by holograms or information beamed straight into people’s minds. Okay, they probably do have to worry about that last one. But if they follow the simple rules I outlined above, they’ll be able to cash in on the four or five minutes each day that teenagers aren’t already spending on school, homework, videogames, eating, band practice and sports.

P.S. I have very good lawyers, so don’t bother trying to sue me if none of these suggestions work and your company goes out of business.

Author Information: Max Leone attends eighth grade in New Jersey.

What Twitter Can Do For Your Pitch

by

This blog post, by Angela James, executive editor for Samhain Publishing, originally appeared on her Nice Mommy – Evil Editor blog on 3/26/09. In it, she discusses how Twitter’s 140-character limit presents authors with an opportunity to hone a book pitch.

ETA: The first thing to say is that a pitch isn’t necessarily about selling your book to an agent/editor. Time to move out of that mindset! Read on…

Here’s another one to file under conversations from Twitter. This came up this past weekend in a conversation about Blood and Chocolate by Annette Kurtis Clause. It’s a great book and I highly recommend it. Someone (@lihsa, follow the link for her article on it) on Twitter asked for a review/description and the challenge was on. 140 character review for a book? It’s the “elevator pitch” at its most refined!

Now, it’s been a few years since I read Blood and Chocolate so even though it’s one of the books I recommend often when someone asks for paranormal YA, I still had to stop and think how to refine it in an interesting way. Years after I’d read it. Hard!

I came up with: teenage female werewolf struggles to find acceptance in a world that doesn’t know about the supernatural. Moody, dark and emotional.

I don’t think it’s the best review/pitch but it does start to refine the ideas. I could make it punchier, ramp up the hook, really get someone interested. Let’s see…

Rebelling against her society. Searching for love. Desperate for a chance. Can this teen wolf reconcile what she is with who she wants to be?

Hmm, I’m not sure. I’m actually over by one character but I figure if I delete a space, I’ll be okay. What do you think? Better? It took me 15 minutes of fiddling to come up with that versus the first one, which I just popped off the top of my head.

But what I’m getting at is that it’s important to be able for authors to refine your book to its purest hook. The conflict, the angst, the info that’s going to make a reader, editor or agent want to pick it up to read, go find an excerpt, request a full or keep reading your query letter.

TV does this with what they call log lines. A one sentence hook meant to engage the viewer and get them to watch the show. Something that will easily fit in the TV guide or, for many of us now, on the guide channel. There’s no second chances when the viewer has only that guide to look at and base their decision off of. So the log line has to be good enough to convince the viewer to turn the channel right then and there, without a bunch of extranneous detail or someone saying “oh wait, that didn’t quite hook you? Well let me tell you just a little more”. The log line is it. The same should be considered true of the elevator pitch or, for purposes of my blog post, the Twitch (Twitter pitch. Ha! I’m funny).

At Samhain, we do something similar with each of our books’ blurbs, but we call it a tagline. If you go over to the website, the tagline is what you see on this page. Something to pique the interest of readers browsing our website, to entice them to click through to the book’s blurb and then excerpt.

I remember being at a conference a few years back and someone at our lunch table asking another author there about the book she wrote. I remember it was a historical but that’s all I remember because she spent the next 15 minutes talking, in depth, about the plot of her book and all the details. Ouch. Those are the times that I have to really struggle to pay attention.

It’s harder if it happens during a pitch session because, let’s be honest, it’s hard for any of us to be talked to for 8 to 10 minutes without drifting off and thinking about lunch (unless you’re at lunch, in which case you’re thinking about your post-lunch nap and how much you’d like one). But I can be hooked by a plot refined down to its most interesting conflicts and ideas. Something that either makes me want to ask questions and find out more, or go buy the book and find out more.

Read the rest of the post on Nice Mommy – Evil Editor.

The Future of Publishing, As Seen From The Future of Publishing

by

This piece originally appeared on The Bookish Dilettante on 2/23/09.

Today – the Bookish Dilettante happily yields the floor to a new voice – Mr. Aaron Hierholzer. Aaron, a young gun in the publishing world, attended this year’s TOC conference, and has graciously offered up his observations. With no futher ado, Mr. Aaron Hierholzer…

Last November, former Collins publisher Steve Ross said, “It’d be absolutely terrifying to be starting out now, to be young and to not have the benefit of years, if not decades, of perspective . . . I would have seriously considered leaving book publishing." Days later, literary agent Esther Newburg said, “I would hate to be starting out in the [book] business.”

What’s a person with a passion for bringing books to readers to do when the old guard implies that running for the hills might be best? What’s one to do when you find out that neither MGMT, Diplo, nor a good chunk of your acquaintances even read books? What’s one to do when one could compile a lengthy volume of humorless “end of publishing” articles from the past four months, alone?

Attending "O’Reilly’s Tools of Change" conference isn’t a bad place to start. I got to go earlier this month, and the enthusiasm for the future of books both p- and e- was truly infectious, and helped dispel some of the gloominess I was feeling about Bookland.

Overall, TOC’s gloom-dispelling ability was directly proportional to its specificity: anyone who’s been paying attention knows that reading is increasingly a social act, that one can instantly access almost any fact on a mobile phone, and that Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century. These harped-upon broad strokes grew tiresome, and when news that HarperCollins terminated its Collins division spread through the conference on Tuesday, it seemed there were more pressing questions to address. Questions like, "where’s the money going to come from when most of the knowledge of mankind can be found for free via Google?" Questions like, "should I run for the hills after all?"

Thankfully, many presenters did get to the nitty-gritty and the applicable, talking about things like how we’re going to get readers to value (and therefore be willing to pay for) digital content. I wish the “Success Stories and Failures in Digital Publishing” panel could have lasted all day—the skipped slides by rushed presenters were heartbreaking. Hachette’s Stephanie van Duin, Macmillan’s Sara Lloyd, and Lexcycle’s Neelan Choksi all talked knowledgably about the pricing and profitability of digital content, and about the fearlessness it will take to find a workable solution.

In nerve-wracking times such as these, staying focused on why we publish books in the first place is a good alternative to worrying about the end times of reading. And the point that kept striking me over and over was simple: readers come first. Publishers have got to treat the reader, the end user, with utmost respect. That can take any number of forms—not publishing absolute dreck; not treating the purchaser like a potential thief by imposing draconian DRM; not making digital offerings confusing, and frustrating, and messy, and overly expensive.

Read the rest of the article on The Bookish Dilettante.

Copyrighting Your Work 101

by

This post, from the Open Publishing Lab at New York’s Rochester Institute of Technology, originally appeared on the OPL’s Open Publishing Guide site on 1/25/09.

Something we get asked about a lot is copyright.  As creators, we want to make sure our work is protected from intellectual property theft, and ensure that we control the publication, distribution and adaptation of what we’ve created. The problem is that copyright can be confusing and there are a lot of misconceptions about it.

Hopefully, I can help clear some things up and give you some resources for more information on copyright if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
 

Please note that this information is focused on copyright in the United States. For more information on International copyrights, please check out the links at the bottom of the post.
 

What is Copyright?
To begin with, I’m going to get the easy stuff out of the way. With a quick Google search, you can find the basics of what copyright is as well as in-depth discussion and even some analysis. As such, I am going to keep this as simple as possible. Copyright protects the rights of creators of literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works. Specifically, it gives the owner of the copyright the exclusive right to, and to authorize others the right to, reproduce, distribute, perform, or display the work. It is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the law to copyright holders.

For more information on what copyright entails, check out the US Copyright Office’s Copyright Basics.
 

How Do I Protect My Work?
The good news is that a work is considered copyrighted as soon as you create it. So, as I’m typing these words, they are simultaneously copyrighted under the law. As a result, you don’t have to do anything beyond creating your work (which, sadly, is the hard part). However, holding a registered copyright is extremely helpful if you find yourself in litigation if you have to deal with a copyright violation. With a registered certification you will be given a certificate of registration, will be eligible for statutory damages and attorney’s fees in successful litigation, and if the registration occurs within 5 years of publication, then it is considered prima facie evidence

The US Copyright Office now allows online registration of copyright, making the process even easier. Of course, you can still register using paper forms, but doing so is a little more expensive, and can take longer to process. Filing for registration online is $35, and you can get started here. If you choose to file online, then you can upload your work to the copyright office or mail copies to them.
 

Some people claim you can create a “poor man’s copyright” by mailing a copy of your work to yourself via certified mail (or another trackable system). However, copyright law does not cover this type of protection, and as a result does not confer the same protections as registering your copyright.
 

What Other Options Are There?
If you are interested in protecting your work in some ways, but want to allow others to build upon and share your work, then you may be interested in using a Creative Commons license in place of a standard copyright. Creative Commons works alongside copyright, and allows you to apply a series of free attributes to your work, which you can choose whether or not to use. The license options are Attribution, Share Alike, Noncommercial, and No Derivative Works.
 

By assigning Attribution to your work, you give others the right to copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work as long as they give credit the way you request. Share Alike allows others to distribute derivative works, but only under the same license you have assigned to your work.

Noncommercial allows others to copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work as long as it is for noncommercial purposes. Finally, No

Derivative Works allows others to copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work, but not derivative works. These licenses can be combined into six licenses, which are covered on the Creative Commons site.
 

There you have it, the basics of copyright. I hope this was helpful. If you are looking for more information on the subject, these links are a good place to start:
Where to Copyright – Global Copyright resources
10 Myths About Copyright by Brad Templeton (Chairman of the Board of the EFF)
Copyright Essentials For Writers By Holly Jahangiri

Visit the Open Publishing Guide for a wealth of additional resources related to self-publishing.

Interview With Doyce Testerman – Twitter As A New Medium In Authorship, Pt. 3

by

Parts one and two of this series offered an interview with Doyce Testerman, an author who’s writing experimental fiction on Twitter, the micro-blogging web application which allows a maximum length of 140 characters (including spaces).  Today the series concludes with a survey of Twitter projects in authorship and books.

Twitter has become a force to be reckoned with in authorship, publishing and media. Here’s a sampling of some of the more interesting projects and developments happening on Twitter.

FICTION:

We’ve already discussed Doyce Testerman’s @finnras project, but you may not be aware of these others.

@smallplaces – The Christian Science Monitor reported on this project from author Nick Belardes in October, 2008.

Earlier this year, Belardes was cleaning out his desk drawer when he came across an unfinished manuscript for a workplace novel called “Small Places.” He briefly considered shipping the thing off to publishers for consideration. Instead, he decided to serialize “Small Places” on Twitter, a popular microblogging site.

“It was a natural fit,” he remembers. “So many people are sitting in their gray cubicles, reading Twitter. They’re looking for something easy to digest. I thought I could put a smile on their face.”

Slowly, in fits and starts, he adapted the manuscript to terse, comedic tweets, frequently digressing into colorful observations. “I’ve grown to like small places,” runs the first post. “I like bugs, bug homes, walking stick bugs, blades of grass, ladybug Ferris wheels made out of dandelions.”

As the narrative spooled out over some 400-plus tweets, “Small Places” began to attract a sizable audience…Belardes has become a figurehead of sorts for a decidedly micromedia movement: the novel by tweet. Although exact numbers are hard to come by – many projects have been abandoned and more crop up every week – the idea appears to have real ballast among the millions of Twitter fanatics, who crave rapid bursts of overshare.

Twiller – Also in October of ’08, Media In The New Millenium reported on this project from NY Times reporter Matt Richtel.

Boulder native, New York Times reporter and Rudy Park co-creator Matt Richtel has launched his latest creative project: a novel on Twitter.

Called Twiller, it’s a thriller delivered one 140-character slice at a time. Catch it at  http://twitter.com/mrichtel.  You might want to check the plot summary first before jumping into tweets like this:

Interogators of 10days past asked: how do U no bout China&The hookers? Says I: huh? BAM; Face-punched. again: huh? again: SMACK. blackness about 22 hours ago from web

and this:

any1 no how 2 stop internl bleedin? must avoid hosptls. 11:18 AM Oct 11th from web

Richtel tweets from his PC because, he notes, “im just 2 old 2 create-n-write on a gadget smaller than a hamstr.”

@joymotel – The Phoenix reported on this project from John Kewley, as well as a few other Twitter fiction projects, in January of 2009.

Toronto ad man John Kewley — he writes concisely for a living — likens Twitter, teeming with constant updates, to a global "brainstream" where users can submerge themselves in others’ thoughts, feelings, and existential particulars. So he’s co-writing a language-dense, James Joyce– and Philip K. Dick–inspired Twitter sci-fi narrative, Joy Motel, the plot of which plugs the reader into the protagonist’s stream of consciousness.

Kewley’s writing partner, Wayne Allen Sallee, is someone he’s never met. ("We’ve never even spoken on the telephone.") Nonetheless, they correspond online, and "share a wavelength," and one day, when Sallee tweeted Kewley with "a snippet of a film noir–sounding sentence," Kewley replied in kind. "I sent him one back, to sort of build on his, and we did about 20 of those."

The pair banged on back and forth, braced by the brevity and immediacy mandated by the medium. "You can just jump on there because you have half a thought, and then an hour later, Wayne will respond," says Kewley. "We don’t know where this is going. It’s real-time writing on Twitter."

BOOK REVIEWS:

The Christian Science Monitor posts its book reviews on Twitter under the username csmonitoronline.

Flashlight Worthy Books posts lists of books deemed so good that they’re worthy of reading under the covers with a flashlight.

You may want to consider sending review copies of your books to these Twitter members; the subsequent review will be seen by all the reviewer’s ‘followers’.

The BookGeeks are a group of book reviewers operating out of London.

Mystery Books News – Information for and reviews of mystery books, television, movies, games, and more.

Chrisbookarama – Reviews from a reader in Nova Scotia.

BOOK CLUBS:

Twitter book clubs are a relatively new phenomenon, but a very good idea.  Essentially, a group of Twitter members all agree to read the same book and comment on it via Twitter.  Some book clubs have a dedicated Twitter account, but this is very limiting since only people with sign-in access to the club account can post tweets there.

Another approach, which allows literally any Twitter member in the world to join in the discussion, is to set a "hashtag" for a given book or book club.  When a reader wants to comment on the current book or discussion, she tweets as usual but includes the specified hashtag. Club members then follow the discussion by doing a search on Twitter for the specified hashtag.

A hashtag is simply a word with a pound sign (#) appended to the front, i.e., #authors.

On 3/24/09, Galleycat reported that Picador has launched a new book club on Twitter:

Picador formed a new book club on Twitter today, and at two o’clock this (Tuesday) afternoon, they will give away free copies of the inaugural book.

The club begins with Yoko Ogawa‘s "The Housekeeper and the Professor," which will be discussed on April 10, 2009 in pithy Twitter posts. Upcoming book club titles include: "A Wolf at the Table" by Augusten Burroughs, "The Story of a Marriage" by Andrew Sean Greer and "Last Last Chance" by Fiona Maazel.

The book club has its own webpage, with information about sign-up and today’s giveaway: "[Sign up for Twitter] then ‘follow’ Picador here so you can hear about the upcoming announcements and discussions. We’ll create special hash tags (#) to append to your tweets during the discussion. This way, you can simply search here with the hash tag to see what people are saying! It’s open to all and ongoing – if you missed a recent discussion day, you can still contribute."

The Canada Book Club tweets here.

You can follow the discussions of the Prose Hos book club by searching Twitter for the #prosehos hashtag, and join in by posting your own tweets with the same hashtag.

 

Try searching wefollow and TweetGrid to find more book clubs, twitter novels and Twitter book reviews.