Business End

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

FiledByAuthor – An Easy, New, Free Web Presence Option For Authors

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Filedbyauthor is a new, free web service that promises to connect authors with readers and readers with books.

From the site’s About Us page:

 

FiledBy, Inc is a digital marketing company providing membership sites, web tools and community building solutions to content Creators – authors, writers, illustrators and photographers – and their fans. The Company, based in Nashville, TN, has launched its flagship site, filedbyauthor, the most comprehensive online marketing platform and directory of published author web pages on the Internet.

Filedbyauthor is now in Beta. Any author with a book published in the U.S. or Canada can join for free, claim their page, check for accuracy, provide corrections and enhance their pages.

Mike Shatzkin. co-founder of filedbyauthor, was not quick to jump on the author web presence bandwagon.  On February 22 of this year, he wrote about his gradual conversion:

 

When Joe Esposito first told me about blogs in about 2001 or so, there were very few. Michael Cader had PublishersLunch, but if Michael knew that it was an emailed blog, he didn’t tell me. And then blogs “happened”, as things do: gradually, then suddenly. And now I’m late to have one of my own. Really late.

I’ll admit that I fiddled with this a couple of times before. I started up at least twice, maybe it was three times. I decided I’d try it for a while, see if I could get into the pattern of writing regularly, and then reveal it to the world when I’d piled up a month or two of posts. But I never GOT to a month or two of posts. And because I was keeping what I was doing a secret, I had no traffic, no comments, and none of the rewards of interaction which provide the motivation to keep going. So I didn’t keep going…

But I’ve been getting some signs that “now’s the time.”

One follows from having been on Peter Brantley’s mailing list for a couple of years. Twenty, thirty times a week, Peter sends us a link to something he’s found about publishing and digital change and invites comment. The posts and comments have increasingly sparked a response from me that amounts to a blog post. Once in a while Peter would ask me to extend a comment as a post to one of his blogs, PubFrontier. Then last week David Rothman flattered me by turning another Brantley list comment into a post on his Teleread.

And then two weeks ago I started using Twitter. I was a bit slow to get it, but Tools of Change accelerated the process for me. The complementarity of Twitter and a blog seem pretty apparent.

On top of that, I’m involved with a large number of exciting new initiatives even in these troubling times. Filedbyauthor, a new venture I’m co-founder of being headed by my longtime friend and colleague, Peter Clifton, will be live with a web page for every author with an active ISBN in another month or so.

 

Here we are, a month or so later, and FiledByAuthor is live (in beta).  PersonaNonData shared the announcement on 3/25/09:

 

FiledBy, Inc. today announced the Beta launch of filedbyauthor. The site is the first large-scale author-centric promotional platform to provide every author that has been published in the U.S. or Canada a free, hosted, ecommerce enabled web page ready to be claimed and enhanced. With more than 1.8 million pre-assembled author web pages and over 7 million book titles, filedbyauthor is the most complete site for finding and engaging with authors and their work.

“All authors, regardless of publishing category are encouraged to visit the site, claim their page, make corrections, and enrich them in a variety of ways," says Founder, President & C.E.O. Peter Clifton.

Any published author or co-author can easily and immediately update their author page which is linked to individual work pages. In addition to the free level, FiledBy announced two new membership levels designed to make additional web marketing tools available at low cost. These additional levels include blog tools, additional linking and media postings, event listings, online press kits and banner customization.

And, any reader can join the filedbyauthor community and start connecting with authors. Readers can fill in their own pages, collect favorite authors and books, write reviews, rate works and authors, and comment through wall postings.

“We hope to level the web marketing playing field for all authors, eliminate some of the challenges authors face when designing their online presence, and help every author become more easily discoverable through a highly optimized site,” added Clifton.

 

If you have a book with an ISBN that was published in the U.S. or Canada, you can claim your filedbyauthor page now.

Borders Continues To Struggle

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This article, by Greta Guest, originally appeared on the Detroit Free Press site.

Borders Group Inc. shares languish below the price of a candy bar, its new CEO is closing stores and slashing payroll and turnaround experts differ on its fate.

 

(Click on picture above to view larger)

The Ann Arbor bookseller reports fourth-quarter results next week. And the expectation is for more multimillion-dollar losses, turnaround experts say. Borders said its holiday sales at stores open at least a year fell 14.4%.

 

Shareholders will hear more about the company’s strategy next Wednesday when CEO Ron Marshall hosts a conference call with analysts and investors.

What they know already is that the retailer is in danger of being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. Its shares closed Tuesday at 64 cents, down 60% in the four months since it announced it was no longer for sale.

Meanwhile, chief competitors have seen huge gains in share prices. Amazon is up 71% to $72.70 and Barnes & Noble, thought to be Borders’ most likely suitor, has risen 53% to $23.01.

Borders has been cutting costs in the past year while spending big on an e-commerce site. It has announced some store closings including the downtown Detroit and Chicago’s Michigan Avenue stores and cut 1,152 jobs. The company employs 27,000 at more than 1,000 stores.

 

Ken Dalto, a Farmington Hills-based turnaround expert, said Borders’ strategy seems to be one of buying time and hoping economic recovery is just around the corner.

"They are figuring their brand name is going to carry them," Dalto said. "Brand names mean less with the inroads of technology. The brand name is Amazon."

Dalto said staffing cuts and dropping small things like free bookmarks could hurt the in-store experience.

"It is a self-liquidation," he said.

Jim McTevia, managing partner of Bingham Farms-based McTevia Associations LLC, a turnaround firm, said he thinks Borders could seek Chapter 11 protection, but it wouldn’t solve the bookseller’s business problems.

"Depending on their ability to get debtor-in-possession financing, they could easily file for Chapter 11," he said. "It is much easier to facilitate the sale of a troubled company under bankruptcy protection."

Read the rest of the article on the Detroit Free Press site.

The Three Great Myths of Writing

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This article, by Joan Marie Verba, originally appeared on SFF.net.

For a long time, many people thought that they could get warts from handling frogs. Now we know that this was a myth–something "everyone" thought was true, but which had no basis in fact.

Writing, too, has its own mythology.

In writing, as in everything else, mythology is perpetuated for a reason. People use myths to explain phenomena they do not understand, or to deal with realities they do not wish to face, or to avoid confronting the fact that events are often random and unfair. Because myths have such powerful uses, myths are seldom questioned, and people become very upset when their cherished myths are challenged. But myths, because they are untrue, can cause people who believe in them to feel hurt or lost or confused when they rely on these myths to guide their actions.

That is why I believe that writers should become aware of the myths that exist in our profession. In my experience, I have discovered three myths which I believe are particularly misleading, and are worth further discussion.

Myth #1: If your writing is good, you will have no trouble selling your stories; if you are not selling your writing, it means your stories are no good.

This myth has a factual basis. A lot of writing does get rejected because it is poor. But the myth, as repeated by many experienced writers, is that good writing guarantees acceptance and, conversely, non-acceptance surely means that the writing is poor. To debunk this myth, researchers have recently taken classic novels–The Yearling comes to mind as an example–and submitted them as manuscripts to publishers. These were seldom recognized by the publishers, and almost universally rejected.

The reason is that publishers nowadays are less interested in the quality of writing than they are in the commercial potential of the writing. If the publisher thinks the writing will sell, even if the manuscript is flawed, the publisher may be inclined to buy it. If the publisher thinks the manuscript will not sell, the publisher may not take it no matter how well it is written. This, for instance, explains rejection slips which say, "good writing, we just don’t want to publish it."

Myth #2: Once you sell a book, or several short stories, you will not have any trouble getting an agent, and you will not have any trouble selling any more of your own writing.

I recently read an interview with an award-winning author who said that she was not able to get an agent until after she sold her fourth novel. Another author, a friend of mine, also worked out her fourth book contract without an agent, though she was able to get an agent for her fifth. I know a third author who has had five novels published, but for the past three years has not been able to find anyone interested in the two novels she has written since then. And I recently read an account from a writer whose first book sold tens of thousands of copies who reported that she did not have an agent for her first book, and has had trouble finding an agent for her second.

With so many counter-examples cropping up, this myth is beginning to lose its hold, though it still persists. My guess is that those who perpetuate this myth are the lucky authors who were able to find an agent after (or even before) their first book came out, and had no trouble finding a publisher for any novel they wrote thereafter. Such authors do exist, but I suspect they are not as numerous as mythology would have it.

Myth #3: If you follow the advice of experienced authors, you are certain to get published.

I recall the advice that the late science fiction author Robert Heinlein had for writers: write, finish what you write, and keep sending the manuscript to publishers until it sells. Experienced authors tend to add other advice: study the markets, improve your skills, and so forth. This third myth is very seductive because the advice is sound. But the fact is that novices can read and follow every word of advice that experienced writers print and still not get published.

The problem is not simply that no method works for everyone, and to say that writers must find a method that works for their particular situation is too superficial. The problem is that many writers who give advice imply–if they do not say it outright–that any writer who follows their advice will absolutely, positively, get published….now, if not sooner.

This leaves novices who follow such advice beating their heads against the wall in frustration. ("But I did everything J. Doe said in the article ‘How to Get Your Story Published’ and I still have not placed my story.") Novices will be helped, instead, if they are told that writing is a complex task involving a lot of intangibles and random variables (or, in other words, luck). Authors need to be told that no one piece of advice will guarantee acceptance; at best, following good advice merely increases the probability of publication.

Writing, as a profession, is tough enough without well-intentioned authors passing along useless myths. A writer who has a stack of unpaid bills on one hand and a stack of rejection slips on the other is not helped by being told that if the writing is good, it will sell; or that once the first story is sold, there will be no problem selling the next one; or that if the writer just follows J. Doe’s advice, the acceptances will start rolling in.

Encouragement and reassurance need to be based on a realistic appraisal of the obstacles writers inevitably face. Writers can and do sell stories. Good writers can and do get rejected. Writers with track records can and do have problems placing succeeding stories. Advisors can and do fail to give suggestions that work.

I suspect there are other myths making the rounds, but either I have not yet come across them, or I have not yet found out that certain statements I have heard are myths. I am interested in hearing from anyone who has other myths to report (that is, myths that writers tell other writers, as opposed to myths that the public has about writers). Myths about writing may never disappear, even if exposed as falsehoods, but at least those of us who love frogs should be able to handle them without fearing that we will get warts.

Copyright 1994 Joan Marie Verba.

Interview With Doyce Testerman – Twitter As A New Medium In Authorship, Pt. 2

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Doyce Testerman is an author who’s writing experimental fiction on Twitter, the micro-blogging web application which allows a maximum length of 140 characters (including spaces).  Instead of just ‘tweeting’ a novel one line at a time however, Doyce tweets in the character of Finnras, the protagonist of his story.  In this interview series, Doyce talks about the project. You can read part one in the series here.

P: How do you feel the @finnras project has informed or influenced your more traditional prose, if at all?

DT: One of the things I really, truly appreciate about writing Adrift (what I call the larger ‘Finnras story’) has been the constraint I have to work under to get meaningful prose delivered in 140 characters. I can be wordy when I want to be (as you might have noticed), and writing via Twitter has really helped me work on concise, specific language. There’s a lot of precision required, and some verbal gymnastics. I love that challenge.

It’s also relaxing. So much of what we write is "so many hundred pages"; "so many thousand words" – having that daily, miniature project to work on is like a kind of meditation. I compared it to working on a bonsai before, and that’s a fair comparison — I can step back from whatever huge landscaping job is my current ‘main project’ and just sit quietly and work on a tiny thing.

It’s a little more fun than a bonsai, though; sometimes it tells me jokes.

P: Will the @finnras project continue indefinitely, or do you have a specific endpoint in mind?

DT: I have specific things I really hope I get to see. If pressed, I could even describe the progress from the beginning to end as a series of ‘books’, starting with Adrift, but it’s not a perpetual story — there’s a very definite end point off in the future. That isn’t to say that I know what’s going to happen… but I do know where.

P: What would you say is the greatest benefit you’ve seen from the project?

Every day, it reminds me why I write. It makes me laugh, makes me happy, sometimes makes me sad. That sounds corny as hell, but it is what it is.

I think that you can sometimes lose track of why you’re writing in the middle a big first draft – you can easily lose track of why you’re writing when you’re in the middle of second or third or mumble-teenth revision of a story you’ve been living with for a couple years. Doing this project is worth it, just for the daily reminder ‘why’.

It’s also become a good warm-up for me — once I finish up with Finn for the day, I’m ready to get back into the bigger projects.

Ugh. I sound like an advertisement for a writer’s workshop.

You know, it’s a Radio Flyer’s worth of fun, and I’m going to keep doing it until it isn’t. There.
 

The series concludes on Friday, 3/27, with a survey of writing projects undertaken on social media such as Twitter and Facebook.

Interview with Shelley Lieber on the Bright Future for Self Publishing

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The other week, publishing industry veteran Shelley Lieber, the subject of today’s interview, posted a thought-provoking comment on the Smashwords blog in response to my interview with Smashwords author Norman Savage.


She expressed concern Norman wasn’t pricing his book high enough given the quality of his novel. Her comment sparked an email thread between Shelley and myself, which led to a phone conversation, which led to today’s interview.
 

Shelley is the author of 4Ps to Publishing Success, now available at Smashwords, a book that educates authors about the art of writing and business of publishing.

In our exclusive interview, Lieber hints at a coming renaissance in self-publishing as authors and publishers alike begin to shed previously held misconceptions about the quality and potential of self-published books. As Lieber notes, the secrets to writing a great book remain the same, but the path to publishing and marketing a book are forever changed thanks to new publishing tools.

[Mark Coker] – Your experience in the publishing industry goes back 30 years, both as an author and as a book editor at Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Macmillan and McGraw-Hill. How has the industry changed in this time, and how have these changes impacted authors?

[Shelley Lieber] – The industry has probably changed more in the past two years than it has in the previous 50 to 75 years. Of all the creative industries, publishing is the most conservative and slowest to change. As technology advanced and became more readily available and affordable, individual artists in every creative field began to take on more responsibility for all areas of their craft. Authors were no exception; however, at first authors did not get the favorable response that film artists or musicians got from their respective industries or from the general public.

Everyone is probably familiar with the term “vanity press” and the accompanying insinuation that if one couldn’t get a traditional publisher’s stamp of approval, the work was unworthy so it had to be self-published. With the advent of print on demand (POD) printing and the easy accessibility of digital publishing in the form of ebooks on the Internet and now on ereaders such as Kindle, iPhone and more, everything has changed.

Faced with the prospect of spending years trying to get an agent, who then may take yet another year or more trying to find a publisher, who may take another 18 months to produce the book, which may not earn back the advance, ambitious authors looked for other avenues—and found them. People are publishing their own work, and getting their message out to their audiences using the new methods because it’s faster, easier and more effective than the traditional way.

A loose translation of Victor Hugo’s famous quote is, “An invasion of ideas cannot be resisted.” And while the majority of the old school publishing community dug in its heels and refused to budge, the rest of the world began to incorporate those new ideas. What we are witnessing in publishing today is the result of “an idea whose time has come.” The budget cutbacks, acquisitions freeze, restructuring and layoffs rampant in the publishing may have been hastened by the current economic situation, but were not caused by the recession. The old system wasn’t working, and the recession became a convenient label or excuse to explain it. Or, perhaps it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Either way, the changes are good for authors. I believe this is the beginning of a new era in publishing. In January of this year I declared 2009 as “The Year of The Author,” because there are more opportunities for publication today than ever before and it’s going to get even better.

[Mark Coker] – In our phone chat, you mentioned that just a couple years ago, you might not have recommended self-publishing to authors, yet now you do. What changed your opinion?

[Shelley Lieber] – I think what I said was that I would not have recommend self-publishing with the specific intention of attracting a traditional publisher and contract, because back then, self-publishing served more as a mark against you than for you, unless you had sold thousands of books. Today is a whole new market, however. Two things are working for the self-published author: one, is that there’s much more help available to make sure you put out a good book and the quality of self-publishing as a whole is rising. Second, with the limitations acquisition editors are facing—smaller budgets, celebrity authors not being guaranteed successes and memoir writers turning out to be liars and frauds—a “safe” bet is the self-published author who has sold 5,000 to 10,000 books on her own. Suddenly agents and editors are trolling the Internet in search of these self-published authors. Ironically, now successful indie authors are finding themselves being approached by the very publishers wouldn’t even return the SASE two years ago.

[Mark Coker] – In your view, what’s driving the rapid growth in self-publishing?

[Shelley Lieber] – More than anything else, technology is driving the rapid growth. People are doing it themselves because they can. It’s empowering to have artistic control over your work. And serious writers are taking the steps to do it in a professional manner. The stigma of “vanity” press is diminishing because the product is improving. Yes, there’s still tons of bad stuff being put out. But that will change. The cream always rises to the top. The poorly executed projects won’t sell and the fun of doing it won’t sustain. But, the books put out by authors who took the time and money to do it right will sell, make money and make a difference.

Plus, right now the DIY trend is huge. More and more, the focus is on favoring the little guy (or gal) making it, and it’s especially appealing to the public when it’s done in the face of the big, mean corporate machine. People are really tired of the demands and restrictions of bureaucracy and ever more ready to root for the underdog who triumphs in the face of obstacles. It’s sooo American dream. And if a book is good, it’s good. Most people don’t give a hoot who the publisher is if they like the book. The snobbery associated with traditional publishing is much less appealing and powerful than it was before.

[Mark Coker] – In the 4Ps to Publishing Success, you argue that authors need to treat their writing as a business. What do you mean by this?

[Shelley Lieber] – I encourage everyone to write; it’s a wonderful form of self-expression and helps individuals explore and examine their inner selves. Writing is a passion, a soul-driven activity. However, publishing is a business, and successful (VIP) authors know the difference. For some reason, perhaps because there’s no heavy machinery involved, people think all they need is a computer and printer and that makes them an author and publisher. Yet, these same people wouldn’t enter any other business on a whim. They would take classes, work in the field and perhaps seek the services of a coach or mentor. It must be the same for publishing.

The truth is that most mistakes first-time authors make are the result of one BIG error: not getting educated about the publishing process. So many people jump right in without knowing what they are doing. The result is they spend way too much time and money (or too little, thinking they can do it all themselves), and end up with inferior products because they didn’t know enough to make informed decisions.

I’m working with an author right now who came to me for marketing help just before she was going to press with her book. I asked her to wait until I saw her final file before going ahead with the printing. This is what I saw in her proof copy: an inferior photograph and uninspired graphic presentation on the front cover with poorly crafted back cover copy. The inside the pages were not designed well, either. The pagination was incorrect, and the title and copyright pages were not formatted correctly. The layout was amateurish. The header style changed from page to page, the paragraph indents were too wide and the inside margin was too narrow. The page layouts were dull without use of any graphic features, and it needed a good copyedit for style consistency and language use. That was on the first thumb-through.

Once I spot read a few chapters, I saw the book was a well-written, interesting and compelling read on a topic that would have broad appeal in the marketplace. But if she had gone ahead with that original file, she never would have garnered any attention or positive response because everything about it said unprofessional presentation. Even if you don’t have my professional eye, you would know just by looking at it that it was self-published.

I titled my book the 4Ps to Publishing Successbecause publishing is a four-part process: plan, produce, publish and promote. There is a right way and a wrong way. Just because you are self-publishing doesn’t mean you want to throw out all the conventional wisdom of how to do it. Education is the key. You don’t necessarily need to become a publishing professional to put out a good book on your own. You have to know enough, though, to know how to hire the right people to provide the right services without getting ripped off.

[Mark Coker] – In your comment on Norman’s interview, you wrote, "Writers do a disservice to the craft (and other writers) when they give away their work." Do you think authors are too quick to discount the value of their works, and too quick to embrace FREE as a marketing tool? And if so, how do you recommend authors compete against the growing number of free and low-cost alternatives to their books?

[Shelley Lieber] – I absolutely think that authors are too ready to give away their work. In the magazine industry, it’s not uncommon for publishers pay writers in copies of the magazine or as little a one or two cents per word. New writers are so eager to get their name in print, they often will give away their work. However, when writers undervalue their own work, it sends a message out that writing is not valuable. Typically, writers are underpaid for the amount of time and effort they put out, especially compared to other services such as design, illustration and photography—and that’s across all industries: publishing, advertising, public relations, etc.

This is not to be confused with writing free articles for ezine directories as a marketing strategy. Writers can employ “free” as a method that will serve to promote themselves and their work. For example, it makes sense to me to give away a chapter of a book via a free download on Smashwords. Or, offering a lower-cost ebook version of a book may lead to the reader purchasing the print version later on. Authors need to be creative using their writing talents: blogs, commenting on other people’s blogs, press releases, letters to the editor, etc are all ways to get make your name visible to the public and offer an opportunity to advertise your website or blog. Authors can give free tele-seminars, offer podcasts, create short videos for YouTube…there’s no end to what you can do for yourself. Create demand for your work, create value…and then you can charge what you’re worth.

[Mark Coker] – Thanks Shelley!

***

Shelley Lieber’s 4Ps to Publishing Success at is available as a multi-format ebook at Smashwords for $5.99 by clicking this link: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1321

To learn more about Shelley, visit her Smashwords author page or visit her web site at http://wordywoman.com.

For authors interested in Shelley’s author mentoring services, check out the VIP Author’s Mentorship Program, where she offers a newsletter, weekly group teleconferences, and one-on-one consulting.

This interview was published the same day at the Smashwords Blog.

Show, Don’t Tell 2.0: The “Wook”

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In this year of revolution in the publishing industry, or rather, swirling around outside of the publishing industry, author Patrick Carman is taking the old admonition to “show, don’t tell” quite literally. Only half of the story he’s written,Skeleton Creek, is set down between the covers of the Scholastic book of the same name. The other half takes place online, in the form of videos, blog entries and a discussion group.

The Blair Witch Project The producers of the 1999 film, The Blair Witch Project, were the first to blaze a successful trail in utilizing online supplemental material to increase awareness of, and interest in, an offline product. The film tells the story of some college kids who set out to make a documentary about The Blair Witch, a mysterious and frightening figure in New England lore whose spirit is believed by locals to live on in the burnt-out wreck of her former home in the woods. The students never return from their filmmaking junket, but an investigation into their disappearance turns up their personal effects, including the video camera they were using and all the footage they shot. 
Tantalizing bits of that footage showed up on a Blair Witch website, and the teaser/whisper campaign about the mystery which followed was likely the first instance of true online viral marketing. By the time the film came out, there was a fevered level of interest in the legend of The Blair Witch, and the low-budget, independent film which followed opened to sold out crowds, going on to smash box office records wherever it played. Perhaps the most amazing thing about this story is the fact that the legend of the Blair Witch is entirely fictional, as is the story of the disappearing, documentarian college students.
 
Skeleton Creek Ten years after the Blair Witch phenomenon, along comes Skeleton Creek to blaze a new, multimedia trail for books. In this book aimed at tweens, Ryan and best friend Sarah investigate a ghostly mystery in their town: Ryan, through a journal which comprises the Skeleton Creek book, and Sarah, with videotaped footage of her detective work, which she posts online. Unlike Blair Witch however, the online footage is not merely videotaped excerpts of content from the story, nor supplementary material. 
Ryan’s journal contains periodic links and passwords the reader must use to go online and view Sarah’s videos, and the reader must read the journal and watch the videos to follow the investigation. The two elements are halves of a narrative whole, and in that sense, the “book” encompasses both the written content and the web content: a “wook”, if you will. When speakers at this year’s O’Reilly Tools of Change conference exhorted publishers to rethink their definition of the book, focusing on content instead of delivery system, this is exactly the kind of thing they were talking about.
While the multimedia, online approach isn’t right for every type of book, it’s probably right for many of them, fiction and nonfiction alike. Technical books have long provided online supplemental material, but Carman may be the first mainstream fiction author to dip a toe in the online pool, and the first to treat online material as an integral part of the narrative instead of an adjunct or mere promotional material. It’s working: Skeleton Creek is currently the #1 bestseller in the Children’s Books category on Amazon, and a sequel is scheduled for release in September. 
The multimedia presentation speaks to teens and young adults, who themselves spend considerable time online, texting, tweeting and blogging. Characters in their same age group who engage in these activities are much more ‘real’ and relatable to the target audience. If you’ve got a contemporary or futuristic manuscript aimed at a YA or collegiate audience, particularly if the story has a strong visual feel, you can easily follow in Carman’s footsteps to create a multimedia wook of your own. 
Instead of transcribing your character’s journal or blog entries into your manuscript, create a blog in the character’s name and direct readers to a first-hand experience of reading the blog. Populate your character’s profile with information to flesh that character out into a real person. Would one or more of your characters have a Twitter, Flickr, Facebook or MySpace account? Give them those accounts, and let their respective parts in the story unfold on those sites. 
It’s easy enough to shoot videos and upload them to a blog, website or YouTube using a Flip Mino camera, and so long as your characters are not supposed to be professional filmmakers, the low-budget feel of those videos will only add to the realism of your story. If crucial clues or character background lie in a given character’s artwork, photos or original music, put that art or music online for the reader to discover and interpret for himself when the story takes him off the printed page. 
Be careful, though; any such material you post online must be original or licensed from its creator, and you must have a signed release form from any person who appears in your character’s photos. Only stock photos can be used without individual, signed releases.
Just remember that a wook is not the same thing as a book with supplemental, online material. A wook is a multimedia presentation that encompasses both printed and digital material, and engages the reader to interact with the online material in real life. With a wook, the consumer isn’t reading a story, she experiences an adventure right alongside your characters. She takes an active role in piecing the story together herself. 
Now that’s what I call rethinking your definition of the book! 

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

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AMAZON CONNECT SYNDICATION

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Everyday I spend a few minutes catching up on posts in the Amazon Daily Blog section of the Amazon.com home page.  I noticed a lot of authors that I follow on Amazon always had posts there that were syndicated from their own personal blog.  Only recently did I discover how to do this myself, and I love it!  After updating my blog, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, my Amazon Blog often got skipped over.

 

While I still find the blogging system on Amazon to be a bit archaic, I still believe in it’s purpose and I’m glad that thanks to the syndication option, I don’t have to worry about updating it now.

 

I’d love some feedback from other authors who are part of the Amazon Connect program on new ideas or ways to use it to your advantage.  What’s working for you?

 

Any thoughts?

 

-Shannon Yarbrough

www.shannonyarbrough.com

Putting The Fun Back Into Writing

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This piece, by Jesse Hines, originally appeared on his Robust Writing blog on 1/29/09.

Be honest: do you still have fun when you write?

It wouldn’t surprise me if many of you don’t derive much pure, raw enjoyment from writing anymore, given so much of the writing advice we constantly read in the blogosphere.

You know: post after post on how to improve your writing skills, how to write in a way that attracts more blog subscribers, how to write such that you provoke powerful calls to action, how to write to increase your sales, how to write posts on Twitter to gain more followers, how to write with flawless grammar and punctuation so that people respect you, how to write for the way people actually read on the Web, etc.

I’ve done a few posts like that myself…

But it’s all so much work, isn’t it? We know that all work and no play makes us dull bloggers.

Absolutely, there are plenty of reasons to learn how to write “better”; who wants to read bad, stale writing? And if you’re making money (or trying to) from your writing, it’s wise to improve your writing skills whenever possible.

I’m Bringin’ Fun Back

I majored in English, and I got to read fascinating stories by fascinating authors. Chaucer. Milton. Shakespeare. William Carlos Williams. Flaubert. Dostoevsky. To name but a few. That was fun. And writing papers analyzing those authors and their stories was also fun.

The power, creativity, and enjoyment of story-telling came barreling back to me this past weekend as I watched the new (and superb) film, The Wrestler. I’m not a wrestling fan, but the movie’s themes of haunting loneliness and fleeting redemption powerfully affected me. It was sad but inspirational, evoking real emotion. And Marisa Tomei…what can I say?

The Wrestler is a powerful story that displays the consequences of a life lived in almost exclusionary devotion to one’s passion, while neglecting the important people in one’s life. Sometimes, it really is too late to change–both who we are and the results we’ve brought on ourselves. That’s real life, and a good story conveys that.

My point is, writing, for any true writer, at its core, is fun, and an opportunity to be creatively unique, expressing happy or sad or humorous or grandiose ideas. As I alluded to earlier, writing effective sales copy (or learning how to) is important if you’re trying to sale something. But, sometimes, writers just want to have fun–it’s why we started writing in the first place, right?

Try this Fun and Creative Writing Exercise. Hemingway Did

In that spirit, I’ll be introducing you to some cool writing exercises over the next few posts–fun and creative ways to both express yourself and improve your ability to write concisely and effectively. It’s about putting the fun and creativity back into writing.

Read the rest of this article, which includes Jesse’s first suggested exercise, Six Word Stories, on his Robust Writing blog.  And check back in over there from time to time for more exercises to put the fun back in your writing.

Interview With Doyce Testerman – Twitter As A New Medium In Authorship, Pt. 1

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Doyce Testerman is an author who’s writing experimental fiction on Twitter, the micro-blogging web application which allows a maximum length of 140 characters (including spaces).  Instead of just ‘tweeting’ a novel one line at a time however, Doyce tweets in the character of Finnras, the protagonist of his story.  In this interview series, Doyce talks about the project.

P: Describe your serialized, flash fiction Twitter project. Are you building a novel one tweet at a time, or do you view the project as more experimental in nature, without a specific outcome in mind?

DT: Well, the story itself is a kind of sci-fi yarn – it has those trappings – the spaceships and the eerie, emotionless pre-teen pilot and the multilegged aliens and all that; that’s the window dressing, and it’s fun stuff to play with. That said, the heart of the story is really about the captain – Finnras (or @finnras, if you like) – and his search for his daughter and what he’s going to sacrifice to get back to her. All my stories are eventually about people; I don’t think I’m particularly unique in that regard.

Am I writing a novel one tweet at a time? No, I don’t think that’s what I’m doing. Now, for the sake of folks who don’t do Twitter but who still want to follow the story, I’m compiling the tweets on a blog, which I set up so that you can read each month’s posts top-to-bottom, but even when they’re read that way, it’s still not like reading a traditional novel.

First, the format of the story is something like a first-person private journal, so the language itself is terse, but it’s more than that: the constraints of the Twitter format (140 characters, and my own desire not to use any abbreviations or truncated words) require that you encapsulate far more action into a single post than you ever would in 140 characters using the typical style of storytelling found in a novel.

In part, that’s kind of encapsulation is necessary to keep the story moving at an enjoyable pace – it would take something like 25 twitter posts to get one page of a normal novel out, and each of those individual posts would be pretty boring… and people would hate you for spamming them like that – overall, not really the response I’m going for. So no: not a novel-via-twitter.

At some level, it’s obviously an experiment – to a degree, it feels like I’m writing one panel of a graphic novel every post, and in a lot of ways there’s a similarity between what I’m doing and any other kind of sequential story telling. I call it ‘serial micro-fiction’ for a reason: the old serial adventure stories always ended with a cliffhanger and I try to do something that with each post – leave the story on an "ooh, and then what happens?" note.

P: What motivated you to try Twitter flash fiction? Is it primarily about the creative challenges and rewards of working in a new medium, or leveraging social media to build awareness of, and interest in, your work?

DT: First off, let me give proper recognition to my two biggest inspirations. The first was @twitlit, which was probably the first thing I followed on Twitter, and the other is @othar.

Twitlit is this simple, genius little project that posts the first sentence from a book, and a link to where you can go find that book. I follow it for those sentences — they showed me how much story you can compress into one sentence.

Othar is – I believe – written at least in part by comic book genius Phil Foglio, and is essentially the diary of one of the minor characters from his Girl Genius comics — someone he basically didn’t have time to draw a whole book about, but who had some stories in him. I’d actually started writing Finnras’ story on twitter about a year or more ago and kind of let it fall off my to-do list, then I found Phil’s @othar twitter, and it really inspired me to get back to this project. Now, with those props given…

A big part of doing this is the challenge of working in a new medium. Not the biggest part – this will sound corny, but my biggest reason for doing this is just the joy of doing it; I am enjoying the hell out of every single post – I am flat-out having a great time with it, and I look forward to doing every new post.

But to go back, working this story out in a new medium is part of that fun, and definitely part of the reward. Composing each post is like putting together a haiku — the limitations force a tremendous amount of creativity and concise word choice — getting it right is a big reward, though sometimes it takes time to get there; I’ve spent what some might think is way too much time composing some of these 140 character posts.

And frankly, I think it’s long past time that writers look at new mediums for their work. Paper is just a medium (a sentiment I’m essentially reTweeting from this year’s Technology of Change conference), and as our world (and the smaller publishing world within it) changes, it makes sense for writers to take a look at the tools around us and see if there aren’t some that we overlooked. Artists and sculptors do this sort of thing all the time; "Maybe I can paint on this building, maybe I can make something out of this old car… wait, even better: maybe I can paint on this building with this old car! Genius!" Tom Waits likes to go into hardware stores with a mallet and see what kind of sounds he can find.

What do storytellers use? Spoken words… and paper. That’s it. Very recently, people have considered the still hotly-contested idea of taking the-thing-that’s-on-the-paper and reproducing that exact same thing electronically, and that’s good, but that isn’t storytelling intrinsically designed for the electronic medium – I mean so intrinsically designed for that medium that it doesn’t actually translate well back to paper or spoken words.

Maybe this story about Finnras is that kind of non-transferable thing – if so, I’m comfortable with that – it’s enough that it’s fun for me and for the people reading it.

Now, with all that said, I’d be lying if I claimed I wasn’t aware that people following and enjoying @finnras (or even @doycet) might buy a book I wrote or an anthology I’m in — obviously, that kind of stuff is important. Today, writers really need to either build or be part of a community in order to enjoy some success, but for me that doesn’t mean "Doyce, you have to get on Facebook and Twitter and ping.fm and post on a blog and get people following you so that you have an audience!", it means "People like other people (even authors) a little better if they feel like they’re connected to them. Go out and connect with people; don’t be a dick."

P: You have a background in the world of roleplaying games. At this year’s O’Reilly Tools Of Change conference, Jeff Jarvis remarked that people who subscribe to World Of Warcraft are essentially paying to participate in the creation of a group narrative. Do you agree?

DT: That’s an interesting statement, really, but I don’t know that I really agree with it. Perhaps for some players who are very into the meta storyline that’s unfolding through an online game (be it WoW, LotRO, City of Heroes or what have you), that’s part of the payoff, but even then I’d say what they’re paying for is the right to participate in Hamlet as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (or, far more often, as Spear Carrier #2 and #3).

You can view the unfolding narrative from a front row seat, but I don’t think that’s participation in any but the most rudimentary sense — when it comes to the Big Story (as opposed to your personal story) you have no influence or control over what is or isn’t going to happen. You might be participating in the narrative, but you’re not participating in the creation of the narrative. That’s nothing against any of those games; I enjoyed WoW for a couple good years, I still play a couple other games — heck, I met my wife online.

To me, to really have some level of participation in creation, the players need to have real say in what’s going to happen — if, for example, you were ‘playing’ Hamlet – playing some of the characters, you should have some influence over the outcome: maybe Hamlet doesn’t die… maybe he and Ophelia blow the whole murder drama off and elope while Laertes conducts an affair with Gertrude and they conspire to kill the King. Or something. The point being that I think the players should have influence over the story to be truly said to be participating in the creation of a group narrative.

Face to face, ‘old-school’ pen and paper RPGs have the advantage in this arena over online MMOs — I think only EVE Online really gives the reins entirely to the players of the game, with crazy and often fascinating results.
 

P: Is the @finnras project your first undertaking as an author, and if so, why did you choose that route over the more traditional approach to writing (i.e., write, revise and polish a manuscript)?

DT: Oh, definitely not. I’ve been writing pretty much my whole life. I’ve put some serious focus into it over the last five years or so, and since then I’ve sold a number of short stories to publishers’ anthologies and ezines — even won a couple awards. I’ve got a couple novels completed, and a couple more in progress.

With my second novel, Hidden Things, I’m going through the entire traditional publishing cycle — that includes a number of pretty serious rewrites, making submissions to agents, eventually finding a great agent who agreed to represent me, then submitting to editors, and so forth. That’s an ongoing project; right now, I’m working on some suggestions from an interested publisher that are pretty fun — I’m excited to see how it’ll turn out. I may think the publishing industry needs an overhaul (both from the publishing side, but also from the point of view of author expectations), but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a real pleasure to work with people who know how to make a story better and who like yours well enough to work on it with you. I’m getting a chance to do that right now with Hidden Things, and it’s taught me a lot.

Of course, at the same time, I’m doing Finnras’ story, and I’ve participated in close to a half-dozen ‘storyball’-type collaborative projects with some great people. I’m a tech geek and a pretty early adopter, and when I start playing with a new thing, one of the first things I ask myself is "What can I create with this? What would that look like? Would it be cool? Will it be fun?"

I asked the same thing when contemplating traditional publishing — bottom line, I like doing all of it; each different method and medium is fun and rewarding in different ways — they each teach you different things. Traditional publishing teaches you, above all, discipline and determination. Self-publishing – however you do it – teaches you about the nuts and bolts of publishing and self-reliance. Writing on Twitter teaches facility with language and how important small choices can be; it’s a little zen, really — like working on a bonsai.

But I think it’s all worth doing, even if you ‘fail’ (whatever failure looks like for you) – especially if you fail; failing teaches you a lot. You have to fall down a lot before you figure out how to stay on your feet.

"It’s all about falling down." Something I’ve been known to say on occasion.
 

This interview will continue with parts two and three next week.

A Self-Publishing Diary

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This diary, by The Lulu Book Review founder Shannon Yarbrough, traces Shannon’s process and experiences in self-publishing his book, Stealing Wishes, from manucript formatting through publishing with Lulu, making the book available for the Kindle, and beyond, including a look back at his expenditures and net profit in the first year. The diary is from The Lulu Book Review.

From May to August of 2007, I wrote a novel and edited it twice then had no idea what to do with it because I was already thinking of a new project to write next. It was part romance, part comedy, and I didn’t know which market to shop it to. So, I let it sit.

In October, Amazon.com announced its ABNA contest to find the next breakthrough novel. I decided to polish my finished book and submit it as an entry. I made it into the contest, but was cut in the second round in January of this year.

So, there I sat with a finished novel. In December, I finished the second project I had started. Now…TWO finished novels! I got an idea on how to improve the first one, so I began rewriting and editing it again! I began shopping them to publishers and agents. I sent the first one out less because I thought the second one would appeal to a wider market. Rejections began to roll in. But I really wanted to publish that first novel, now entitled Stealing Wishes, because I had put so much time and effort into it. So, I have since decided to use Lulu to do it.

This page will serve as a diary of my publishing process to hopefully be a good resource for others who frequent this site often and may be looking for suggestions or advice. Feel free to ask questions or make comments, or share your own ideas if you have them.

Here’s where we are so far…

Three weeks ago: I began formatting my Word document manuscript to a 6×9 page size. I changed the margins and added page numbers. I added the blank pages at the beginning and end like you find in regular novels, and which Lulu requires for ISBN assignment. I added a copyright page (also required), a title page, and a dedication page..consulting other traditional books I own for alignment suggestions and for what the copyright page should say.

I added necessary pages so that my chapters always begin on the right side. I’ve noticed some traditional books do this and some don’t. Some more recent titles I looked at go straight through with no blank pages, chapters starting on the left or the right. But I did find some with blank pages so that the chapters always begin on the right. Any thoughts? I like the right side format so I went with that. I also “fully aligned” my words so I have that crisp straight line down the right page. I also added a picture to appear on my title page between the title and my name.

Two weeks ago: I started a new project on Lulu.com but kept it private. I uploaded my manuscript and examined the created PDF file to see if it was to my liking. It was, so I began working on a book cover.

The Book Cover: For the idea I had in mind, I grabbed a camera and set up a photo shoot using props I wanted on the cover. These were old photos, a cup of coffee, and some lose change. After several snapshots and different angles, I uploaded my photos to my computer and chose the best one. I played with color variation a bit, using Adobe Photoshop Manager, and finally had something I liked.

Using the Paint program on my computer, I created a 7×10 file which would serve as my cover. The reason for the slightly larger size is for the bleed over when you start creating your cover on Lulu. I chose a blue background for the entire cover, then I stretched my photo across the middle from the left edge to the right. After choosing a font and size, I typed my title across the top and centered it between the top of the book cover and the image, and then did the same with my name below the image. After a few adjustments, I had a nice cover. Well, I thought it looked nice. Keep reading.

I quickly uploaded it to Lulu and then used Lulu’s cover design to do the spine and the back cover. I chose a slightly different shade of blue for the spine. I put the title and my name in white, and chose not to print the Lulu logo on the spine. For the back cover, I used Lulu to color the back cover all black. Then in white, I typed in my blurb description of the book. I could not find a way to make it fully aligned down the right side for a nice crisp straight line. If anyone knows how to do this, let us know. I even tried typing my blurb in Word and doing a full alignment, and then copied and pasted it into the Lulu screen, but it didn’t work. Oh well, this would not be my final product anyway, so I left it as is for now.

The Sample Copy: After a few minor adjustments and some spell checking, I ordered a sample copy on Saturday, May 3rd. My cost for the book was $9.99. Shipping was $7.44 for Priority Mail. The book shipped from New York on Tuesday, the 6th, and arrived at my home in St. Louis, Missouri, on Thursday the 8th. Wow! Excellent shipping time! (Note: Media Mail would have been cheaper, but would have also taken a few days longer to receive. Also, Lulu does not offer any tracking for media mail, so if the package is lost in transit, you are out of luck.)

No, I didn’t have to buy a sample copy, but I believe it helps to have the book in hand to get a feel for it. How is it going to look to the reader? It really helps to step away from the monitor and spend time with the book during this process, so I highly recommend taking the time and money to do this. I spent $1.99 on some red ink pens so I could immediately begin revising the text which is what I am still doing at this time.

Click to view larger and in higher resolutionThe Book Cover: I hate it. The lettering on the cover is fuzzy. My photo looks great and the quality is excellent, except there is an orange shine in the top corner, which probably came from a vase which was sitting on the table where I photographed the image. There’s also a glare in the bottom right corner which I didn’t notice before, and the collage placement of my photographs is not very good on the top right side. Back to the drawing board.

The Interior: Wow! The inside looks great. The gutter, that space down the middle between the pages, is a little tight and I found myself having to open the book wider to be able to read it. So, I’ll have to fix that margin. Also, the page number at the bottom is too close to the text. I will bump it down. I also think the top margin is too wide, so it may need to be adjusted as well. I am still currently reading the text, but so far, my spelling and grammatical errors have not been too bad. My red ink pens are getting some use though!

Marketing Investments: Yay! My economic stimulus package arrived via direct deposit on May 6th. I’m using most of it to pay bills, but I decided to treat myself to a few helpful books I’ve been wanting. They are: Jeremy Robinson’s POD People and Janet Elaine Smith’s Promo Paks. I immediately began reading POD People and highlighting ideas in it. It has been a great motivator. I even posted about it in LLBR as being a valuable resource. Total investment: $25.93. I haven’t read Janet’s book yet, but I will post more about it when I do. By the way, just an aside that doesn’t really matter but Jeremy’s book contains spelling and grammar mistakes. See…no one is perfect! 

Read about the rest of Shannon’s experiences with Stealing Wishes at The Lulu Book Review.  

DRM on the Kindle – an update

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This is cross-posted at Teleread.org.

A few weeks back I posted on Teleread about Jew Bezos’ take on DRM on the Kindle. Bezos said that copyright holders can choose to include DRM in their Kindle books if they want it, but my contention was that anyone who uploads content to the Kindle through the Digital Text Platform (DTP) did not have this option. I made that assertion because there was no information on the DTP about how to add DRM to a book, and there is certainly no check-box on the upload interface that lets a user choose to DRM the content or not when Amazon prepares it for publication.

 

Well, it looks like the option is available after all — in a manner of speaking.

After some investigation I started to see that most of the books I downloaded that were published on the DTP did not have DRM. To figure this out, all you have to do is change the extension from .AZW to .PRC or .MOBI. Then the files will open in any Mobipocket Reader program or supported device if they are DRM-free.

 

So, I contacted Amazon to see what they would say about the issue officially. The response I received was enlightnening:

 

Using Amazon DTP, publishers have the ability to add or omit DRM from their submissions. If you use the DTP conversion, the default will be DRM-Free. You can, however submit a mobipocket file through DTP, which can have DRM when it was created. If this is the case, then DTP will honor the DRM.

 

That little bit of information is a game changer. I would venture to guess that the majority of individuals and companies using the DTP do not have any idea about DRM, and even fewer know how to effectively use Mobipocket Creator to make a decent eBook file.

 

I would encourage Amazon to make this option more prominent on the DTP and give users a front-and-center option for selecting DRM or not. A link to the Teleread DRM Primer would be a good addition, too.

 

Joshua Tallent is an eBook guru in Austin, Texas. He offers Kindle eBook formatting tips and tricks at his KindleFormatting.com website, as well as formatting assistance for authors and publishers.

Building and Curating Your Community, Part I

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With all of the negative news of late about the collapse of the publishing industry and the "death of print", combined with the report that Captain America, Chesley Sullenberger, "scored a $3.2 million two-book deal with HarperCollins’ William Morrow imprint" for a memoir and a book of inspirational poetry, one might understandably think that jumping into the publishing game right now would be like investing in Ruth Alpern’s new hedge fund based on the advice of Jim Cramer, no?

Actually, no; not at all.

While the major publishing houses continue their suicidal death spiral, and being a mid-list author or aspiring newbie at one of them is less appealing than it’s ever been, this is arguably the proverbial moment of opportunity in a time of crisis for indie authors and publishers.

As I’ve noted previously, self-publishing is becoming an increasingly viable option for non-fiction writers and poets, as well as for ambitious genre fiction writers who understand that, no matter who their publisher is, they’re going to have to bust their ass to market their book and hand-sell it to as many people as possible, one copy at a time, in person and online. These savvy authors know that they have to build a platform for themselves over time — something almost every major publisher requires these days — and know how to use it, attracting a loyal tribe and continually nurturing it.

This exact same opportunity exists for indie publishers who can identify an under-served genre or topic of interest, carve themselves a niche and build a platform around it, and produce quality content that attracts a following that they can then nurture into a passionate community, or tribe.

Back in the late-90s, I founded a poetry reading series here in New York City called "a little bit louder" (now known as louderARTS) that you can read about in Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz’ definitive history Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam, published by Soft Skull Press last year, themselves about as interesting a case study in indie publishing as you could ask for. In the four years I ran the series — as curator, host, accountant, and occasionally even poet — I learned a lot about community organizing, and most of that experience is directly transferable to indie publishers looking to build their own community.

Here are four fundamental tips for curating a thriving community, or tribe, that every indie publisher (and author) needs to keep in mind:

1) It’s not about YOU, it’s about the tribe. Probably the most simple and straightforward point, and yet one that is completely missed more often than not. The strongest tribes share something in common, and it’s rarely the glorification of a specific individual, brand or distribution model. Barack Obama made his Presidential campaign about our hopes for America, while Hillary Clinton’s was all about her until it was too late. Avoid the vanity of a ReganBooks and choose a name that means something to the community you’re looking to become an integral part of.

2) Professionalism is important, but the tribe must have an equal voice. Social media and user-generated content are all the rage right now, and getting the balance right is tricky, but crucial.  It’s what the major publishers have failed miserably at, positioning themselves as unfallible arbiters of taste and opening the doors to the indie revolution. Don’t stumble lazily through those doors; take the best of what they do (editing and design), jettison the worst (high advances, minimal marketing support, no interaction), embrace new distribution models, and add real value to the process by plugging in directly to the community you’re looking to serve and becoming a valued member.

3) "Location, location, location"…isn’t nearly as important as it used to be. Thanks to the internet and digital technology, New York City is no longer the home of the publishing industry, major industry events like BookExpo America are less important than ever, major retailers have less control over distribution, and elite reviewers have less authority than ever before. The only "location" that counts these days is your position within the tribe, and there is no middleman standing in the way of your positioning yourself properly and, more importantly, authentically.

4) Be authentic. Any community worth being a part of is one that is bound by a common interest, cause or goal. In the age of the internet, there are no hiding places and fakers will eventually be exposed. Seriously. A friend of mine, a young woman in her early 20s, recently tweeted the following instructive bit of advice: "to all you marketers on twitter trying to follow us 18-24 yr olds to see what is hip. F*** you.You’re all blocked"

While building and curating a community is incredibly important, the single most critical step comes at the beginning of the process: understanding the reason you’re doing it and managing your expectations on how it will play out.

"Community leads to sales, not necessarily vice versa."

In part 2 of this series, I’ll look at the community=revenue mindset that’s driving a lot of new initiatives in the publishing world these days, and explore the right way to go about turning a loyal community into paying customers.

 

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Spindle Magazine. He’s won some poetry slams, founded a reading series, co-authored a book of poetry, and still writes when the mood hits him and he has the time. Follow him on Twitter: @glecharles

Should You Create a Kindle Book? An Author's Guide

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March 8 -14 is Read an E-Book Week. In keeping with the spirit of the event, I thought I’d try to summarize what an author should know about Kindle, the e-reader from Amazon.

I’m going to assume that you’ve heard about the Kindle but you don’t really know too much about it. My aim with this post is to provide enough information for you to evaluate the market and figure out if it’s worth pursuing. So let’s get started. 

 

What Is the Kindle?

  • The Kindle is a dedicated e-book reading device, meaning it reads e-books, along with some newspapers and magazines, but not much else. Version 2 of the Kindle was released in February of this year.
  • It uses E ink technology for the display. E ink is very different from a computer screen or the screen on, say, an iPhone. It is not backlit and so the experience of reading on a Kindle is very much like that of reading off paper. There’s no eye strain and it can be comfortably used for long periods of reading.
  • The Kindle is relatively small and lightweight. It weighs just 10.2 ounces and has a 6″ screen on the diagonal. It’s very convenient for carrying, and many users appreciate its portability over heavy books.
  • The Kindle 2 can hold about 1,500 books at a time.
  • The device currently sells for $359 USD.

There are many video reviews online that will give you a more detailed look at the Kindle and its features. Here are a few good videos I have found:

Who Uses a Kindle?

  • Amazon will not release any sales data about the Kindle devices so no one really knows how many they have sold or who is buying them. Guesses from industry watchers range from 300,000 units sold to as high as 500,000.
  • Contrary to what you might intuitively guess — that the biggest users are kids of the ‘Net generation — anecdotal evidence points to users 40 years of age and up as the primary market. This older audience appreciates the resizable type, the light weight and portability, and the convenience of instant access to content. Typically, they also have more money and are able to afford the $359 ticket price.
  • Oprah Winfrey endorsed the Kindle on her show in October 2008, raising the device’s profile with the public in a big way. Demi Moore twitters about how much she loves her Kindle.
  • Right now, the Kindle is only available in the United States. There is some speculation that version 3 will be available in other countries, but Amazon has yet to confirm that this is true.

What About the Content?

  • There are about 245,000 book titles currently available in the Kindle format, including 102 of 111 current New York Times bestsellers.
  • Amazon reports that Kindle books have been selling briskly, now accounting for about 10% of sales for titles where both print and Kindle editions are available.
  • Kindle books are proprietary files. The files are wrapped in DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology, meaning they are encrypted. They can only be read on a Kindle or on the Kindle app for the iPhone. There is a great deal of debate and criticism in the publishing industry over Amazon’s choice to encrypt its files. Many publishers are pushing to standardize e-books around an open file format called ePub. (More on that in a later post.)
  • The typical price for a Kindle book is about $9.95. Amazon keeps a 65% commission on each sale. This is higher than the 55% commission they keep on print book sales.

What’s the Upshot?
While Amazon has taken its share of criticism over the Kindle for a variety of reasons — some of it well deserved — it can’t be denied that the device is helping bring e-books to the mainstream and creating new opportunities for book sales.

If you are an author with an existing print book, or one in production, publishing a companion Kindle version is pretty easy and inexpensive. For a small additional investment, you can make your book available to an audience that craves new content and wants it quickly. This audience is relatively small right now but will continue to grow over time. It’s almost certainly a good investment to make.

Jennifer Tribe is a principal at Highspot Inc. where she helps business owners publish their non-fiction books.

Getting Out of The NY Mindset

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A challenge I’ve had in going indie, is to get out of the "NY Mindset." There is an assumption I think many people have about indie authors that basically starts with: "Secretly they really want NY."

 

Well, maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But as I’ve been exposed to more and more indie authors as well as small press and e-published authors, I’ve started to learn that every writer has a different dream. We aren’t a homogenous blob of one desire.

 

Not every author wants to be a bestseller. I know that sounds insane, but nevertheless. Not everybody wants to be president of the United States either. There are drawbacks to everything, no matter how amazing it looks on the surface.

 

Not every author wants another publisher, whether it’s a small press or a big major NY publisher, to take control of their work. It’s easy sometimes for one author to look at their personal wants and desires and decide that must be what all authors want. It’s easy for human beings in all areas to do the same thing.

 

If you want a house with a white picket fence, a dog, and 2.5 children, then that must be what everyone wants. If you want to run your own business, that must be what everyone wants. Intellectually we all know this isn’t true, but emotionally sometimes it’s easy to forget that our goals are not everyone else’s goals.

 

As writers we’ve been conditioned to believe that only bad writers won’t give up control of their own work. While I agree that editing is one of the single most important facets of a book, whether self published or not, I don’t agree that in the end the author shouldn’t have the final say over what happens to his/her work. After all, it is his/her work. And the goals of the author might not be to fatten the bank accounts of a major NY publisher. Wacky idea, I know.

 

I have several NY published author friends, and I think they’re awesome. And I have several friends who are on that NY publishing track, which is great too. But I often find it hard to relate with this group of writers because their perception of what success is, and what we should want, and what is real or fake, or acceptable or unacceptable, flies in the face of what I’ve learned about myself.

 

The economy is creating a funny dichotomy. On the one hand, more people seem to be open to the idea of self publishing. It’s as if we only needed the economy to really go bad for people to feel like they had permission to publish, because the odds suddenly got so awful that it’s almost "legitimate" now. On the other hand, some are getting more loud in their arguments against self publishing.

 

I’m not sure why self publishing is of interest to someone who has no intention of doing it, but the biggest argument that is brought forth is how "bad" most self published books are. Well, yeah, that’s true.

 

The unfortunate side effect of lowered entry barriers is that anyone who wants to play can play, even if they aren’t any good. But that’s been the case for all other types of business forever. If you open a bad restaurant, you fail. But anyone can open a restaurant. You don’t have to be vetted by another restaurant owner first.

 

If you sell wilted flowers from a stand on the side of the road, you fail. But anyone can sell flowers without a vetting process.

 

I’ve seen my fair share of really bad NY published books as well. In fact, of the 41 novels I read last year, about half of them were bad enough that I couldn’t write a review for them without it sounding like sour grapes. So I abstained from comment.

 

But the one thought running through my head with regards to most self published books being bad is: who cares? There are lots of bad books, but one of the primary forces that drives sales besides just getting your book out there somehow, is word of mouth.

 

When people love your work they tell others. And if those new readers love your work, they tell others. The statistical percentage of bad self published work is entirely irrelevant to your book and your personal success, however you choose to measure it.

 

But I got to thinking more about those "bad self published books" and wondering about the goals and dreams of the person who wrote them. Does that person want to be a bestselling author with a NY house? Maybe. That’s the stereotype. But what if they have a different view?

What if they aren’t on the author career path at all. Maybe they wrote a book because it was inside them and they needed to get it out. Maybe they wanted to see their name on a book and hold that book in their hands. (Why this is wrong and ‘vain’ when everyone chases after things that make them feel good, I have no idea.) Or they wanted to give it to family and friends. Or they wanted to sell it just to see what happened.

 

Some people really are okay with creating their art for whatever audience they have without having to have a dollar or prestige goal attached to it.

 

Yes, a lot of self published books are bad. So are a lot of NY published books. While there is a lot of chaff, indie authors can produce whatever they want, and in that artistic freedom we sometimes find something really great.

 

Writing Tips For The Reluctant Writer

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This piece, by Lisa Barone, originally appeared on Outspoken Media on 3/9/09.

It’s Monday morning. Okay, it’s actually more like Monday afternoon now. And that simple fact means that I spent a big chunk of today reading and commenting on different blogs (and re-breaking my foot…). It’s part of my Monday morning Getting Caught Up process, the one that prepares me for the week ahead. Impressive considering that my brain on Mondays is still usually half dead from whatever transpired over the weekend.  But that doesn’t matter. Because it’s Monday, dammit. And now my head is filled with half-written blog posts on SEO and social media and blogging and search and everything in between.  And they’re all fighting for their proper attention.  Because Monday means writing.

Monday also means one more thing: My head. Is going. To explode. 

This is my life. And if you’ve ever been in the position of having to write content, it’s probably something you’ve experienced as well. It’s hard, that whole ‘getting it out’ thing. The ideas are there, your mind is racing, but trying to get them down…well, that’s a whole other story.

On Friday, my friend and kickass Web designer Zane DeFazio tweeted this bat signal:

"I need writing tips!"

He was trying to knock out a few awesome blog entries but couldn’t get them out of his head. He was stuck and needed some writing tips. Vince Blackham suggested we blog about it.

I get their struggles because I have them daily. Just because I’m a writer doesn’t mean it always comes easy. It doesn’t. It’s a process. But here’s what I do when I’m having a hard time getting my writing juices flowing, maybe it’ll help you as well.

Close down the distraction sites.

If you were to look over my shoulder during the day, you’d find that I’m staring at 18 different browser windows (all tabbed for her pleasure). My eyes are bouncing back and forth between information groups and my brain is about to explode. I like it that way. That’s how I take in information. I’m ADD and I jump around, always looking for more, clicking further into a Web site. Until it’s time to write.

When I’m writing, the noise has to stop.

Here’s the thing, it’s really easy to spend 5 hours writing a 400 word blog post. If I leave all my screens open, it means I’m going to notice when my Twitter Search updates. It means I’m going notice when another piece of email rolls in and I’ll have to check it immediately. I’m going to keep an eye on the Celtic game that is updating in the background. And the second my brain hits a lull, I’m going to go straight to one of my social media sites to check in there. It’s too easy to give in to the temptation and what’s easy. [Hey look, as we speak Rae is Skyping me.  I should have turned that off as well.]

These tics not only rob you of time, they also affect the quality of what you’re writing and disrupt your flow. When you’ve hit a groove and then you look away because your BlackBerry just lit up, you break your train of thought. You take yourself out of what you were doing and away from your current thought. You’ve set yourself up to come back feeling scattered and disconnected. That means more editing time.

Close it down, folks. Commit to your writing time and write. Unless Google buys it and feedburners it, Twitter will still be there when you’re done.

Start with a short sentence.

I know, this sounds stupid but I swear to God it works. I write a lot of content. Blog entries, longer articles, guest posts, comments, guides, social media stuff, etc. And if you’ve noticed, most of my posts start off with a short sentence. A quick three or four words. And I do it that way for a reason.

I love blogging. I love my job. But it can also carry a lot of pressure. The act of having to produce something daily. To constantly be funny or smart or to get a point across. It’s daunting. And there’s nothing more daunting than the sight of that blank screen with that stupid cursor flashing in your face reminding you that you’re only at the beginning of the race. Honest to God, I think that’s why we kick letters off with a simple “hi”. Anything to get you quickly get over that awkward hump and get you into the flow of writing. Because once you make it passed that, you’re in the zone. It’s like sex. Once you get passed that initial awkwardness, everything just fits together the way it’s supposed to. You remember why you’re here, what you’re doing and what your audience is waiting for.

Beginnings are scary but you can tackle them. Just say hi and get it over with.

Write without reading.

For the love of God and all things holy, writing and editing are two different tasks. Stop trying to do them at the same time.

The reason you can’t write is because you keep breaking your flow to fix that typo, to use a different word, to clean something up, to say something else, to make yourself sound smarter etc. Of course you can’t get anything down, you’re using the different sides of your brain against one another.

When you’re writing, just write. The first draft is all about getting it out. It’s about getting out all your ideas, putting it all down and losing those restraints. And that’s really the best piece of advice anyone can give you. If you’re having trouble writing, just start typing. Don’t look at the screen, don’t edit yourself, don’t read it aloud yet, don’t even pay attention to what you’re saying, just type. You can fix everything else later. But writing and editing need to be two different processes. Accept that from the beginning and stop trying to combine them.

Lisa Barone is the Chief Branding Officer of Outspoken Media.  Read the rest of Lisa’s terrific tips at Outspoken Media.