There are some who say you should give away "all" your ebooks for free to make money on the backend from your scarce goods, but I disagree. Giving everything you write away for free in digital monetarily devalues your work and makes it appear that the only true monetary value is in the production costs.
I keep saying "monetary value" instead of just "value" because too many people want to shift the argument to "intrinsic value" you know like sunshine and puppies and love. But in business we’re rarely discussing love and sunshine when we talk about value.
When you give all digital versions of your work away for free you are training customers to NOT pay you, which is not a good idea. People will take advantage of you to the degree that you allow them to take advantage of you. Some people will "still" try to take advantage of you, but that’s a reality of life. You don’t have to invite it by giving "everything" away.
If you walk down the street and come across someone who looks shady, do you pull out your wallet and hand it to him to avoid the "possibility" that he might mug you? No? Then why should you give all digital away to avoid piracy?
Many advocates of the freemium model state that piracy helps both consumers (to get what they want out of companies, which is kind of like saying hostage situations help criminals to get what they want, or guns make rape easier) and the companies/artists themselves by boosting their exposure and increasing the sale of scarce goods. On the surface this sounds okay. But the problem with this is… when you start shouting from the rooftops how great piracy is for everybody then it trains consumers to see piracy as "okay" and to not buy things, just steal them.
While some sales from piracy are due to someone wanting a "scarce good" related to it, I would guess that a lot of it is just from more people hearing about it and the honest people buying it. I know I know, there are those studies that the people who buy the most music also pirate the most music, so? Does that make it okay? I don’t think it does.
Whether or not it helps or hurts everybody isn’t the issue of whether it’s right or wrong, but appealing to consumer morality is about as effective as a woman walking naked through a men’s prison saying "rape is wrong." Either a consumer is honest or they are not. If they are, they don’t need a sermon from you. If they aren’t, your sermon will fall on deaf ears.
Not every pirated copy is a "lost sale" since chances are good the pirate wouldn’t have paid for it anyway. However, when we train a whole generation of consumers to expect everything for free, to not value the time and effort that goes into these types of products, to think "piracy helps" so they can steal and somehow "help the artist," then we’re basically taking someone who otherwise WOULD have paid for something, and giving them permission to sin so they don’t have to feel guilty about it.
Most people have at one point or another participated in file sharing. But at the very least, you should feel guilty about it. You should know it’s wrong, you’re wrong, it’s not okay, and you should have waited until you could pay for it.
The issues of piracy and voluntary free content are not the same thing. Piracy is an unfortunate reality of life. However, when you show you don’t consider your writing of monetary value by giving it all away, you’re just hurting yourself.
Also, if/when E becomes the primary delivery method and print is just a subsidiary right, people will need to charge for E to make money. If you’ve been giving it all away, you can’t really switch gears like that without pissing off your consumer.
I think limited amounts of free is okay, even beneficial. My free plan is: KEPT (full novella, first story in the Preternaturals Series), Free excerpts of all future books, and Free podcasts (because audio is such a different experience.) That’s it with the exception of "limited" freebies. Like "two weeks only, get this book free here" sorts of deals. A reader who expects even more free than this, is never going to pay for your work; they’re just going to mooch off you forever. (Unless they are poverty stricken and can’t afford to pay for any entertainment, in which case they might buy your work later if their situation improves, but why would they if they don’t have to?)
Over the weekend, a certain woman who shall remain semi-nameless—I’ll call her May—was confronted with the choice between committing piracy and…well, going without. While her story centers on a couple of music files, the larger issues it raises are equally applicable to ebooks. So hang in there, this really does have some bearing on matters of authorship and publishing.
May has been waiting for two specific, favorite old music tracks to become available for sale in digital format for many years. Both songs are from British artists, and the albums on which the tracks were originally included have been out of production for years. Kind of like a book the publisher has allowed to go out of print.
May started by checking iTunes, Amazon’s mp3 store, eMusic, and every other legitimate digital music vendor site she knows of to see if the tracks were available for sale. They weren’t, so she used each site’s contact form to request them. Months and years passed, and the tracks remained unavailable on vendor sites.
So she did periodic internet searches, just in case some new vendor might show up with the tracks on offer. She also checked the artists’ websites for any updated information from time to time. Every time she did these things, she’d spend half an hour or more on the necessary research; she really wanted those tracks, and she wanted to get them legitimately. And every time, she’d come up empty-handed. Except for the many links to pirated mp3s of the files she wanted, of course.
Those links were always there, right at the top of any search results, putting the tracks tantalizingly close. And sometimes, she’d follow one of those links to see if the tracks were really there, in their entirety, and in a high-quality file. They were. And on most of the web pages she found, the tracks were downloadable with a simple right-click/Download As command combo. No need to be a semi-hacker, or subscribe to a bit torrent service, or sign herself up for a file sharing network. Just two mouseclicks, and she’d have those songs she’s wanted so badly for so long. But every time she went on this reconnaissance mission, she’d resist the temptation of those two mouseclicks. Until this past weekend, that is.
This past weekend, she decided she was finished wasting her time and energy on the search. In frustration, she joined the ranks of the many consumers who eventually come to feel it’s the publisher’s or producer’s own fault if she downloads pirated copies, because they failed to offer her a reasonable, legal alternative.
She might’ve gone to a reseller site, like eBay, to purchase the CDs upon which the desired tracks originally appeared, this is true. But is it reasonable to expect her to spend somewhere around $10 each for the CDs, plus shipping costs, when she only wanted one track off of each? And while it may be a simple case of guilty rationalization, was she wrong to conclude that since purchasing a used copy would not benefit the artists or producers of the tracks, doing so was no better for the artists and producers than downloading pirated copies?
Now, imagine if May had been on the hunt for an ebook instead of these two music tracks. Imagine further that the book in question is out of print—though not yet in the public domain—, and neither the publisher nor the author has elected to make it available in electronic formats. May could purchase a used copy of the book from any of a number of resellers, but this won’t put any additional royalties in the author’s pocket, or send any money the publisher’s way. And May really prefers ebooks to hard copy books; she’s bought a Kindle or Sony Reader, and intends to make the most of her investment by limiting her book purchases to e whenever possible. If you were in May’s place and found yourself two clicks away from obtaining the desired book in e format, what reason would you have to resist those two clicks? What reason has the publisher or author (in a case where rights have reverted) given you to resist those two clicks?
Taking this a step further, let’s imagine the book in question is still in print, but only in a hardcover edition. May faces the choice between paying $25-30 for a ‘dead trees’ version, or two mouse clicks to get the book in the format she wants for free. May doesn’t want to cheat the publisher or author out of their due, but she can’t afford to spend that much money on a book. So she simply crosses that book off her wishlist, and while she has every intention of keeping an eye out for an electronic edition, life goes on and in a matter of days she’s forgotten all about the book. In the end, she never buys a copy at all.
In yet another scenario, imagine the ebook is made available, but only at a pricetag of $14.99, and with DRM that will prevent May from moving the ebook among her various devices. Furthermore, if May “purchases” the $14.99 ebook, she won’t really own a copy of the book at all. She’ll own a limited license to view the book’s content on one specific device, only in the format specified by the publisher, and that license is subject to recall under numerous circumstances. If the publisher becomes aware of any copyright irregularities, or if May gets into a dispute with the ebook vendor site on an unrelated matter, for example. Alternatively, she can buy the paperback for $13.99 and have a physical copy that she keeps in perpetuity, or can lend to others, or resell when she’s finished with it.
Or she can click her mouse two times and get the ecopy she wants, with DRM stripped, for free. Could you blame her for feeling the publishers’ excessive pricing and limitations on the ebook edition justify a decision to go the two-clicks route?
Observe and learn: this is how well-meaning, otherwise honest consumers are lured—some might say pushed—into piracy. Most consumers want to do the right thing. They want authors to be rewarded for their hard work. They want publishers to earn a fair profit on their products. But they also want reasonable prices, and the same flexibility and functionality they’d get with a hard copy book.
Publishers and authors who think raising the prices and restrictions on ebooks will work because readers will have no other choice are forgetting about those two mouseclicks. And the many justifications they’re giving consumers for making those two mouseclicks.
No publisher or author would have much to worry about with respect to ebook piracy if they would just give readers what they want, within reason. The criminal element that cares nothing for compensating content creators is a small group that will always find a way to steal content no matter what you do. But that group’s ranks are being joined by guilty, reluctant ‘pirates’ every day. This new type of pirate isn’t out to hurt authors, and in fact would probably be very happy to “pay” a reasonable price for pirated copies through the use of a donation button on authors’ websites. But of course, this would still be illegal and would likely put the author in hot water with his or her publisher.
Publishers: other than complaining about how wrong and unfair it is, what are you doing to address this situation? To make a legitimate, legal option both available, and more attractive, to consumers than a free ebook that’s just two clicks away? Because at the point where your choices with respect to ebook pricing and restrictions look more unethical to the consumer than their own choice to download a free, pirated copy does, you’ve lost the sale.
And Authors: if the only thing standing between you and giving your readers what they want is a publisher, have you considered the possibility of retaining your e-rights and releasing ebook editions of your work yourself? I’ve provided a free guide for publishing to the Kindle on my website, and there are many for-hire services that can do it for you. This is impossible for works already under contract, but is it a move that might make a whole lot of sense for your unpublished works, or works for which rights have reverted back to you?
April L. Hamilton is the founder and Editor in Chief of Publetariat. This is a cross-posting from her Indie Author blog.
This post was written by Michael A. Stackpole. It originally appeared on his Stormwolf website on 2/3/10, is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission, and is the first in a series we’ll be reprinting in the coming days.
I’m not going to name any names, but as we move into the digital era, there is a spurious argument that gets brought up from time to time by authors who really ought to know better. It pretty much points out that a) most of us are not good dollars & cents kinds of folks and b) why publishers have been able to convince a lot of authors that the digital age will be an apocalypse that will destroy them and their standard of living.
The discussion centers around epub, the ebook format that all major readers, including the forthcoming iPad, use (the exception being the Kindle). Supporters of epub and publishing in it maintain that if they buy a book once, they should be allowed to transfer it onto any new devices they get. So, a story purchased now, will still be readable on a device manufactured twenty years from now, assuming epub survives that long.
A number of authors have stood up and announced that having an eternal format is a bad thing. Their rationale runs like this: if a reader buys a physical book he loves so much that he reads it until it falls apart, and buys another, they get paid again. With epub books, it’s buy once and never have to rebuy. Therefore, epub sales are going to cut into their income. And they get lots of other authors nodding in agreement.
So let’s break this little myth down.
1) While some authors do have books that does get read so many times that they fall apart, this is not a common phenomenon. We’d all love to think it is, and we cherish readers who tell us they had to buy another copy of a book because they read the previous to death, but the ratio of repurchase to one-shot readings is pretty darned low as nearly as I can tell.
2) A repurchased book, right now, nets the author 10% of the cover price. Let’s say that’s 80 cents on an $8.00 paperback.
3) Under the current agency model, that same $8 epub book will net the author $5.60. (And even with the publishers taking half the electronic money if they’re selling the book, It’s still $2.80 due the author.)
4) Now, since I wasn’t a math major, someone might want to check my ciphering here, but it looks like the purchase of any epub would cover 3.5 to 7 purchases of a physical book. So epub and digital publication, even though it’s only going to be a one-shot, will make the author substantially more money unless this author is someone who, with everything he turns out, has people buying four or more copies of each book. (Doesn’t happen, unless you have a PAC that purchases your books in bulk for contributors.)
Some folks, who want to get absurd, could point out that if we forced repurchase of ebooks (through proprietary software choices and device-linked DRM) we could make that huge cut each time an ebook is bought. But this is assuming your book is worth repurchasing. Since most books are read-once and shelved, loaned, discarded or resold, this just isn’t a realistic argument by any stretch of the imagination.
Authors can, when hoping they have a winning lottery ticket, miss the fact that there’s plenty of money right at their feet. They’d do better to scoop it up steadily, than waiting for that jackpot that just ain’t going to come their way.
Michael A. Stackpole is a New York times Bestselling author with over forty novels published including I, Jedi and rogue Squadron. He was the first author to have work available in Apple’s Appstore. He has lectured extensively on writing careers in the Post-paper Era and is working on strategies for authors to profit during the trying time of transition.
The recent e-book dispute between Amazon and Macmillan is far from over.
Macmillan books, both e-book and traditional paper, are still unavailable at time of this writing on Amazon.com, except through Amazon’s third-party sellers. And Macmillan e-books, and the iPad, are not yet available for sale from Apple, Inc.
Who will prevail? Will e-book prices go up? Will book pricing be controlled by a few publishers? Will consumers buy fewer e-books? Will this help authors? Is this even legal?
First, some e-books background
I’ve been watching the media coverage, blog postings, and comments over the past week, and it seems there’s a lot of noise and confusion among the facts of this issue. Even before the problem blew up and Amazon pulled Macmillan books from its inventory, authors and readers were weighing in on the question of fairness with recent e-book pricing and availability.
I’m just trying to write good books, earn a living and support my family like everyone else in this crazy world. Please give me a break.
Preston later posted a mocking take on the “shrill, angry posts by Kindle users here and elsewhere”:
I am the American consumer. I am entitled. I want it now. I want it at the cheapest possible price. And if I don’t get it I’m going to lash out in protest and I don’t care who I hurt just as long as those greedy publishers and authors take notice!
Perhaps some were shrill, but most seemed quite polite, while making their point:
Mr Preston,
I feel you are missing the point here. You are losing many more sales of your book because of your publishers decision to delay the Kindle version release date than because of a negative customer review on amazon.com.
These complaints and negative reviews and discussions stemmed from several publishers’ decisions late in 2009 to delay the release of the e-book by one or more months, as the Guardian reported:
HarperCollins is not the only publisher delaying release of its ebooks. Last year, leading publishers Simon & Schuster and Hachette Book Group both told the Wall Street Journal that they would delay ebook editions – which are generally priced significantly lower than the hardback – by up to four months for some titles in 2010. “We believe some people will be disappointed. But with new [electronic] readers coming and sales booming, we need to do this now, before the installed base of ebook reading devices gets to a size where doing it would be impossible,” Simon & Schuster chief executive Carolyn Reidy told the WSJ.
Amazon.com pointed out at the time that “authors get the most publicity at launch and need to strike while the iron is hot. If readers can’t get their preferred format at that moment, they may buy a different book or just not buy a book at all.”
Impact’s Kindle version was delayed by 4 months. While paperback readers are used to waiting for a smaller, economical version of the hard cover book, for the past 2 years most e-book releases have been simultaneous with the hardcover version. And many e-books have been priced by Amazon at $9.99, while discounted hardcovers sell for about $15 at Amazon, Costco, and Walmart. In December, several new hardcover releases were even sold for $9.00. So Kindle owners have been used to being able to read their favorite author’s new book at release time for under $10. Many refuse to pay more, and say that their alternative is the library or a used bookstore. When e-books are priced close to the price of a paper book, they can’t comprehend the logic:
The $9.99 price point made it so – for the first time EVER – I bought new releases with some regularity. I won’t spend more than that on ANY book, let alone one that I can’t re-sell/trade/donate for secondary benefit.
Raising the e-book price to $13 or $15, as reportedly contemplated in Apple’s discussions with publishers, isn’t the way to embrace the digital future. A price of $15, for instance, is close to the hardcover book price charged by discounters like Costco.
Publishers not happy
It seems the publishers have not been happy with this. In 2009, the “publisher’s list price” or “cover price” of e-books generally rose to match that of the hardcover, squeezing Amazon’s profit margins on e-books. Some speculate that Amazon is losing money on some e-book sales. But in retail, loss leaders are a competitive strategy, and price adjustments help move inventory and generate profits. Under a traditional contract, publishers still receive an average of 50% of the cover price. So increased sales should be a boon to publishers.
But publishers seem to be concerned with a loss of “apparent value” in their product. And they seem to have convinced authors that retail discounting will be the beginning of the end. Some have resorted to accusing Amazon of bullying:
This isn’t good for those who care about books. Without a healthy ecosystem in publishing, one in which authors and publishers are fairly compensated for their work, the quality and variety of books available to readers will inevitably suffer.
[…]
Amazon, it appears, overreached. Macmillan was a bit too big a foe, and Amazon’s bullying tactics were a bit too blatant.
True – but what is “healthy”? And who bullied who?
Some authors claim that publishers are not the good guys. They state that authors receive a small fraction of the selling price of a new book, publishers need to change their business practices, and that book authors should remember that the publisher is only trying to maximize their own profits, and not those of authors.
I’ll earn almost as much on a $2.99 download than I earn on a $24.95 hardcover.
Konrath has the e-book rights to some of his back-list titles, and sells them directly, without a publisher.
Writer Carolyn Jewel puts the pricing logic in further perspective:
There are several things wrong with this. The first is the assumption that but for the availability of the Kindle version, book buyers would buy the hardback. This appears to be an egregiously wrong assumption. There is, to my knowledge, no evidence that a Kindle owner would be a hardback buyer if she didn’t own a Kindle.
I think it’s much more likely that a Kindle owner, if she didn’t have the device, would wait for the MMP rather than buy the hardback. The MMP would be priced at $7-8. But the Kindle owner, instead of waiting for the MMP, pays a bit more for the book right now. Instead of waiting. By the time the MMP comes out, she’s not going to want to pay $9.99. So what’s actually happening is the Kindle buyers represent BRAND NEW customers with respect to this release. MORE people buy this brand new book because there are two formats. And the cheaper one comes with some well known and much hated limitations.
Twisted facts
But for every Joe Konrath, there seem to be dozens of authors with a contrasting viewpoint. Fast Company, a magazine I subscribe to and generally love, surprised me with this blog post by writer/author Kit Eaton titled Amazon Revealed: It Hates You, and It Hates Publishers that sticks up for authors and publishers while revealing scant business sense:
Amazon, of course, operates something like a supermarket giant does in the food industry–leveraging its huge size to force suppliers to sell to it at wholesale prices. This tactic has caused issues in the food market, and now its doing the same in the books market: Amazon refused, and without warning pulled all Macmillan books from its store.
Mr Eaton must have stayed with the J-school curriculum and missed the econ 101 class where kids learn that retailers indeed do buy stuff from wholesalers at wholesale prices, and then set their own retail prices. He confirms it with this gem:
Firstly it refused to see eye to eye with a key publisher–one of its major suppliers–and preferred to stick to its bullying tactic that eats into the revenue of the publisher, and subsequently authors themselves, by basically insisting that it decide how much to pay them for their product. (emphasis mine)
Wow! Such blatant disregard for basic business sense in a business magazine. Reading both Macmillan and Amazon’s public statements, Amazon never “insisted that it decide how much to pay” publishers. What seems to have happened was, Macmillan told Amazon, a retailer with a huge investment in online and warehouse infrastructure, customer base, and staff to keep it running, that it should act as a cashier, and leave the pricing to Macmillan.
I gave them our proposal for new terms of sale for e books under the agency model which will become effective in early March. In addition, I told them they could stay with their old terms of sale, but that this would involve extensive and deep windowing of titles.
[…]
Under the agency model, we will sell the digital editions of our books to consumers through our retailers. Our retailers will act as our agents and will take a 30% commission (the standard split today for many digtal media businesses). The price will be set for each book individually. Our plan is to price the digital edition of most adult trade books in a price range from $14.99 to $5.99. At first release, concurrent with a hardcover, most titles will be priced between $14.99 and $12.99. E books will almost always appear day on date with the physical edition. Pricing will be dynamic over time.
Agency means retailers simply sell the products as an agent of the publisher, with no say on pricing, discounts, etc.
Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.
We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books.
Perhaps worst of all, Amazon clearly doesn’t care what its customers think (despite thanking them in the blog post) because it acted to axe Macmillan’s texts without explaining why or giving any warning. And though it tries to portray itself as championing customer rights, what its actually doing is trying to manipulate an entire industry to working how it wants everything to work, squeezing everybody from authors to other booksellers.
And the final, most fascinating twist of all this, is that there’s likely to be one main beneficiary of Amazon’s shenanigans, and it’s one Amazon will deeply resent over the next year or so: Apple, with its new iPad.
I’m glad he mentioned Apple, because I was about to. But first, what DO Amazon’s customers think? Fortunately, Amazon’s discussion threads shed some light, with thousands of posts in the past few days:
J.P. = Reader: To me the issue is the Publishers price controlling across the board at the expense of the consumer. I will also vote with my dollars in protest of their tactics. Sadly, I have to believe the other Publishers probably aren’t far behind.
nabrum: So let’s say the list price of the print edition is $26. Under the old model Amazon paid the publisher $13 and sold the ebook for $9.99. Amazon takes a loss of $3.01. Under the new model the publisher sets the price of the ebook at $15 and gives Amazon a 30% commission. 30% of $15 is $4.50. So the publisher gets $10.50 and Amazon gets $4.50. Under the old model the publisher/author et. al. get $13 to split between them. Under the new model they get $10.50, or $2.50 less. How does the new model allow the publisher and author to profit more from their work than the old model did?
What got this started?
Interestingly, the mention of Apple and the $12.99 to $14.99 prices remind me of Apple’s iPad launch, where Apple announced iBooks would sell for – you got it – $12.99 to $14.99. And that was just a few days before all this kerfuffle.
Some speculate that there’s no coincidence here. And a telling video exchange between Apple CEO Steven P. Jobs and Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberger suggests Jobs knew something about this before it happened.
Walt asks Steve, “Why should she buy a book for $14.99 on your device when she can buy one for $9.99 from Amazon or Barnes & Noble?”
Steve responds somewhat knowingly, “That won’t be the case.”
Walt says, “You won’t be $14.99 or they won’t be $9.99?”
Steve says knowingly, “The prices will be the same.”
Then the video cuts, then Steve says, “Publishers are actually withholding their books from Amazon because they’re not happy.”
How can Steve Jobs know something that’s happening between Amazon and publishers?
Apparently the agency concept was developed in discussions that Apple had with a number of publishers in January. And Macmillan seems to like it so much, they are asking Amazon to follow suit.
But if publishers control the retail price of e-books, is it legal? Under US laws, such as the Sherman Antitrust Act, some forms of retail price fixing, or collusion to fix or control prices, is illegal. This issue hasn’t been raised in reporting, but perhaps it should be explored.*
In fact, what the FTC should be looking into is the potential collusion among all the publishers to “set” the price of e-books at $15. They didn’t get in a room and collude but they colluded through their new “agent”, Apple, with one following the lead of the other. It’s an old story that we’ve seen many times over the years in many industries. But at the least the FTC should put these folks on notice that any attempt to fix the retail price (as opposed to setting a standard agency percentage fee) would be suspect if it appeared they were acting in concert.
Between them, it looks like Apple and the big publishers are keen to screw as much money out of the reading public as they can, even while they’re driving their own costs down by switching to electronic rather than paper books.
I’d bet that little, if any, of their increased profit will be going to authors; I know from one friend that he gets 5% extra royalties on an eBook that costs 20% more than the paperback.
And finally (although this isn’t anywhere near over yet) an apt prediction from the Washington Post:
My guess is that in the not-so-distant future, best-selling authors such as John Grisham and Malcolm Gladwell — along with unknown authors peddling their first books — will publish their own works, contracting with independent editors and marketers and selling directly to consumers as much as possible.
Other authors will turn to smaller, more specialized publishing houses that will offer smaller advances but bigger royalties and will be built, as they once were, around great editors.
In the short term, though, it looks like consumers are being asked to pay more, and Macmillan’s authors are seeing their sales plummet. It will be interesting to see how this falls out.
A good way to sell more books on Amazon is to increase your book’s visibility in the Amazon.com search results.
Amazon customers typically search for books by author, title, or keyword. Like search engines, Amazon uses several criteria in deciding which products to display on the search results page and in what order to display them. Popularity (the number of books already sold on Amazon) and how well the book matches the keywords are major factors in determining the results of keyword searches.
The more books you sell on Amazon, the more books you will sell in the future, because your book will appear higher in the search results. In addition, many customers assume that the best-selling book must be the best one on the topic.
One way to increase your book’s popularity, and therefore its search results placement, is to direct all of your online book orders to Amazon.com rather than offering links to several online bookstores or selling directly to consumers.
It’s also important to make sure your book matches popular search terms entered by customers. If your book is not yet published, you can add important keywords to the book’s title and subtitle. Some publishers use long subtitles in order to pack in as many keywords as possible.
To capitalize on searches for keywords not contained in your title and subtitle, enter important keywords into Amazon’s Search Tag feature. About halfway down your book’s page on Amazon, look for " Tags Customers Associate with This Product." You can add a check mark next to existing tags and add new tags by entering keywords in the little box below.
You can’t use keywords that already appear in Amazon’s search function, such as the book title or author name. Word order matters, so create different search tags with variations on your most important keywords. After you enter a keyword, you must to tell Amazon why you think the book should be indexed under that particular term.
Amazon staff members approve Search Tags, so make sure your tag and your explanation are relevant and don’t sound like a sales pitch. It’s best to use the keyword phrase within your explanation. You can personally submit up to ten search terms for you book. If you have additional search terms to enter, ask a colleague to enter some for you.
Another way to increase your popularity on Amazon.com is do a virtual book tour or an "Amazon best-seller campaign," designed to push up your Amazon sales rank by generating a large number of orders on a single day.
There are a number of other ways to sell more books on Amazon, including getting lots of good book reviews on Amazon, writing reviews of other related books, participating in the Look Inside program, enhancing your book description, participating in Amazon forums for your book’s topic, and creating Listmania lists and So You’d Like To guides.
For a more in-depth look at how to sell more books on Amazon, I recommend reading Aiming at Amazon, by Aaron Shepard.
The Premise
A month ago I engaged in an interesting conversation with Luke Bergeron on his blog, mispeled.net, about copyright law. My interest was prompted in large part by Luke’s incisive generational examination of the question of piracy.
Here’s how Luke initially framed the issue:
The real issue goes beyond digital piracy to copyright itself. Now, I don’t believe that digital file sharing, even of copyrighted materials, is theft. That’s probably a generational thing, but we’re gonna do our best to suss out as much meaning as possible. Keep in mind, this entry is a fluid conversation, so comment if you wanna participate.
So, theft seems to me like it is inherently defined by the taking of something from someone else, depriving them of it. Theft is a physical concept, based on a starvation economy, that there is a finite amount of resources to go around, and possessing resources means someone else will not possess them.
In truth, I think it is clear that morally, the act of pirating a product is, in fact, the moral equivalent of stealing… although that nagging question of what the person who has been stolen from is missing still lingers.
Two days ago I read a post from Marian Schembari on Digital Book World, called A Gen Y Reaction to Macmillan’s Piracy Plan. In her comprehensive rant, Marian had this to say about piracy:
I’m not condoning piracy (sort of), but if major publishers are only going to look at the “legal” side of things and spend precious time and money fighting the inevitable, they are going to crash and burn.
I’m poor, I understand technology, and I guarantee I can find any book online, for free, in 10 minutes or less. You can delete and sue all you want, but at the end of the day the internet is a wide and limitless place, meaning it’s a waste of time, money and energy to fight it.
In response to Marian’s post, Debbie Stier of HarperStudio/HarperCollins wrote a post on her company blog, congratulating Marian for stating her overall case regarding Macmillan, and for giving insight into the Gen Y perspective.
Here’s the bottom line for me — whether you agree or not with Marian Schembari’s views on piracy, she has given us a glimpse into the psyche of a Gen Y reader. I appreciate her honesty. I believe this is a gift. I think we should listen.
I agree with Debbie. We should listen. But then we should reply.
The Response
To do any less is to treat Marian and Gen Y and Luke and anyone else who shares their views about piracy and content theft with condescension. We don’t pat seasoned peers on the head for showing us that they can put sentences together. We read those sentences, unpack them, take them apart — even hack them to bloody pieces — to see if they hold up.
Debbie’s right that it took courage for Marian to express her opinion, but the fact that Marian can express an opinion is not what’s important. It’s the resulting process of engagement — the conversation that takes place following the assertion of that opinion — that matters. And here I mean to single out not Gen Y but Gen X and the Baby Boom generation. Replacing wisdom and knowledge with the measuring of intelligence and facts may facilitate competition, but we lose something in that egocentric trade. While it’s true that some lessons have to be learned by each individual in each generation, it’s not true of all lessons. More importantly, it’s not true of the process of critical thinking itself, where critical thought can compound over time to produce generational benefits. (See also: penicillin; democracy.)
I also don’t think anyone should capitulate to generational opinion simply because a certain percentage of any generation has its fingers in its ears. If that was the right course of action we’d still have segregation in this country. It’s true that a certain percentage of every generation really does want to steal simply for the sake of stealing, but that doesn’t mean we should throw Marian and Luke or anyone else out with the Gen Y bathwater. What we should do is engage in a conversation so we can pass on the benefit of whatever meager wisdom we’ve accrued, while also testing our own assumptions. What’s happening with digital content is new in a very real way, which means we all need to talk this through.
I’ve stated my views on the question of piracy and content theft here and here. I’ve made the case that stealing is stealing: if it’s not yours, and it’s not being given away free, and you end up with it, then you stole it — and that’s true whether it’s a physical object, a digital file, or an idea.
But I also understand that it’s hard to make this case to Gen Y when massive corporations like Google are attempting to steal copyright authority from millions of authors covered by existing law. If Google can simply make a deal with another group (the Authors Guild) which obligates all authors under copyright to opt out of that deal, why can’t Marian make a deal with Luke to borrow his entire CD collection — and implicitly require the recording artists to opt out by imposing effective DRM? More to the point, is Google actually stealing anything when they scan a book and make it available online? Shouldn’t we actually applaud Sergey Brin for preserving the cultural history of Earth from fire and flood?
And speaking of the Amazon/Macmillan knife fight this past weekend, wasn’t Amazon actually stealing control of Macmillan’s products by selling those products at a price lower than Macmillan wanted? And even if they were, wasn’t that good for consumers? Didn’t it make books cheap?
The Conversation
My point here is that making Marian and Luke and Gen Y feel great about themselves because they can walk and chew gum at the same time congratulates them for meeting an absurdly low bar. These are serious people expression serious ideas and opinions. What they want is to be taken seriously, and to demonstrate the ability to think things through, and we should want that for them as well.
Look again at the conversation I had with Luke on his site. Look at the seriousness with which he engaged on the issues. That’s somebody who wants to know, and that’s someone who should be part of this conversation because in ten years Luke may be writing the books our grandchildren read. Or he may be setting public policy. Or leading a fight against a critical erosion of civil rights.
Why should Boomers and Gen Xer’s take the time to do this? Well, if you’re a consumer or consumer advocate, you can help Marian and Luke see that there are useful arguments against DRM that do not excuse theft or piracy as a cultural or generational right. Likewise, if you’re in publishing you can help Marian and Luke see that even though someone like Cory Doctorow is passionate about anti-DRM politics, his reasoning is a fraud*.
All of which would mean we could get on with the more important matter of finding a workable solution to the problems of piracy and DRM, as well as address the massive generational transition that is currently clouding both of those issues. I want Marian and Luke not simply to be assertive and confident, I want them to be smart and right and to prove to me that they’re right. I want them, in ten or twenty years, to be able to take apart the charlatans they run across, for their own benefit, for my benefit, and for their benefit of society. But they’re not going to be able to do that if we refuse to engage them on the merits of their ideas.
The Question
In the DRM debate the obvious point we need to engage on is the premise stated throughout the above quotes: that copying digital content is not stealing. If Gen Y is wrong, it needs to be proven through argument. If they’re right, the same requirement holds. It’s not enough to just say that theft is inevitable or that it can’t be stopped any more than it’s enough to say that it’s immoral and wrong. Both sides have to argue the case on the merits.
The reason this is important is precisely because these issues have never been dealt with before. Ownership questions regarding digital content and theft are so new as to be without precedent. While applicable laws have been added to the books, those laws, like all new laws, are an opening salvo in what will probably be a long-running legal debate. As with laws that used to exploit or abuse members of minority groups, new laws covering digital content may simply be an attempt by established forces to stop right from trumping wrong. Then again, they may actually protect individual rights and be good for society as a whole.
I think Marian and Luke are interested in being part of the answer to these questions. I don’t think they’re asking for a free pass. When they ask what is being stolen if someone takes possession of a copy of a digital file, they’re asking a serious question. And to their credit I think it’s exactly the right question to ask.
We all agree that stealing a can of beans from a grocery store is theft, for two reasons. First, there’s a can of bean missing from the store. Second, we have a can of beans in our hands that we didn’t pay for. On the other hand, when we copy a digital file the original file is still there, and we don’t actually have a new object in our possession. So what’s actually being stolen?
The problem here is that asking what is being stolen almost compels a response that describes a physical object. It’s the same problem you run into if you try to define right and wrong by asking if anyone got hurt. It implies physical injury or physical loss, yet I think we all agree that PTSD or emotional trauma can be as damaging as a broken arm. Just as someone can be hurt emotionally, economically and in ways other than through physical injury to the body, the theft of digital content may involve stealing things that are not physical objects.
To see why, let’s look at two situations in which, as with digital content, we see no physical object being appropriated. Maybe by looking at non-digital examples we can gain some insight into what a person is being deprived of if we avail ourselves of a copy of their digital content.
First, let’s say you live in an apartment complex. Across the hall your retrograde neighbor still has the local newspaper delivered each morning. You also know that he sleeps until noon. If you get up each morning and take his paper into your house, read it, then carefully reassemble it and put it back in front of his door, was anything stolen?
Second, let’s say you’re a huge RHCP fan. You know they’re playing at a nearby venue, but you don’t have the money for tickets. You gripe to a friend, who says he knows how to sneak in without having to pay. The concert takes place as scheduled, nothing is different except that you and your friend are there. Was anything stolen?
The answer in the first example is that you stole a service you didn’t pay for. The people who made the newspaper and delivered it were paid by your neighbor to make the contents of that paper available to him on a certain schedule. Even though you didn’t disrupt that deal, you profited yourself by not having to pay for delivery. In doing so you not only saved yourself money, you also denied the creators of the paper the right to control their content in a way that they determined, and that’s true even if you would not otherwise have paid to read the paper yourself.
In the second example you stole an experience. Everyone around you had to pay for that experience, but you got it free. You didn’t alter the experience by stealing it, and you didn’t leave with anything in your hand, but in the same way that you denied the newspaper creators the right to control their product, you denied the band the right to control the experience it created.
Are these examples convincing? Maybe, but maybe not. If the assumption is, as Luke first stated, that only objects can be stolen, then neither of these examples holds any weight precisely because they don’t involve the theft of objects. But I think there might be another way to show that they do involve theft.
As is usually the case when downloading digital content, in neither of these instances did you ask anyone for permission first. You had the social approval of your friend when you sneaked into the venue — which is analogous to the social approval provided by content pirates themselves — but you didn’t call the manager of the venue or the band’s manager and ask permission to sneak in, just as you didn’t call your neighbor or the newspaper and ask if it was okay to read the paper without paying for it.
The reason you didn’t do this is because you knew that they would mind, even if you yourself are convinced that you’re not doing anything wrong. Free newspapers and free concerts are announced as such: that’s how you know they’re free. Things that have prices attached to them, whether you agree with those prices or not, are not free. You can steal them — meaning you acquire them at no cost — but you can’t take them and not pay for them and then say you didn’t steal them any more than you can walk into a store filled with physical objects and declare them all free.
And you know this. And you know you know this. And I know you know this.
My Answer
Which means we’re not only having a conversation about theft, we’re also having a conversation about power. And that’s maybe the most important part of Marian’s post. It’s her declaration that Gen Y can’t be stopped, and she may well be right. At least, I don’t think anyone outside Gen Y can convince Gen Y not to strip the countryside bare.
What I am hopeful of is that Gen Y itself may recognize that there is a long-term cost to redefining content theft as legal, ethical, or even socially acceptable behavior. I’m also hopeful that it will ultimately be members of Gen Y who make this case to their peers. But none of that is going to happen (or happen soon) if we don’t engage the issue first. Today, right now, the obligation is on those people who believe that copying digital files without permission is theft to make that case. To that end the most important thing that can be said about piracy is that it is theft. There can be no equivocation on this point, because equivocation amounts to permission.
What Gen Y needs to be thinking about now, while they have all this power — and they do have an incredible amount of power — is that they are not simply exercising that power today. They are establishing a set of rules that everyone is going to have to live with in the future, and that includes their children. One day, maybe not too far down the road, Marian or Luke will have kids of her own, and those children may decide to create something (and it’s all going to be digital at that point). Maybe they’ll even try to start a small collective of artists and make a go of it in business, but that’s not going to be economically possible if the cultural norm says that copying digital content is not stealing.
Great generations aren’t great because they get away with whatever they can get away with. They’re great because they aspire to more than the minimum standard the law requires. To each member of Gen Y, and to anyone who is wrestling with the question of content piracy, I would simply say that you need to answer this question yourself, and to think about the long-term consequences of the answer you choose.
Don’t pass the buck and let someone else do your thinking for you. Luke isn’t doing that. Marian isn’t. Even the mysterious pirate confessor isn’t. Be your own compass. When civilizations do break down — as we’re seeing now in Haiti — ethics may become relative. But making ethics relative when there is no emergency simply reverses the equation, engineering a breakdown that would otherwise not have taken place.
If a crime is inflicted on you in the forest and no one can hear you scream, it’s still a crime. Even if nobody will ever know that you stole an MP3 or a e-book by downloading it from a website, it should matter that you know. And you should want it to matter, because the only people it really doesn’t matter to are sociopaths and psychopaths.
Doing the right thing takes more guts than flexing your generational biceps or kicking a corrupt corporation in the groin. It’s easy to take something for nothing, and Marian’s right that you can almost certainly get away with it. The odds are long that anything directly punitive will ever happen to you as a result of content theft.
The problem, however, is that you’re not just stealing content and you’re not just stealing from someone else. You’re also stealing from yourself.
Herewith, I present an updated and amended cross-posting of my blog post on the Amazon v. Macmillan affair. Let me state up front, I do not agree with Amazon’s strongarm tactics, and it is not my intention to defend those actions in this post. Rather, I’m puzzled by authors’ nearly universal lack of criticism for Macmillan’s part in the matter. I can’t help wondering, if Amazon had quietly agreed to Macmillan’s requested terms, thereby depriving authors of an easy target and distraction, might they have reacted differently to Macmillan’s move?
This week, Amazon announced it will cave to Macmillan’s demand that it sell Macmillan Kindle books at up to $14.99 instead of the $9.99 pricetag that’s become standard for Kindle bestsellers. Per a report on Booksquare, Macmillan may have plans to price their Kindle books across a range, anywhere from $4.99-$14.99, and author royalties on those books may be based on an ‘agency model’ calculation which computes author royalty as a percentage of net, not a percentage of list price. See the linked Booksquare post for more information.
Macmillan authors are rejoicing, and I’m shaking my head. Would musicians cheer a decision on the part of their labels to raise the price of their music on iTunes by up to 43%? I think not. Yet despite the fact that their books may cost up to 43% more than other Kindle bestsellers, and their royalty on those sales won’t be even one cent higher, the Macmillan author “victory” dance continues apace on the interwebz. The Author’s Guild has come out on Macmillan’s side too, and I’m completely mystified by that stance since Macmillan’s change in terms with Amazon only stands to hurt authors and ebook readers alike.
The only reason I can think of for authors to be on the wrong side of this battle is that they don’t understand it. Let’s look at the facts.
1. Under pre-existing terms Amazon pays big publishers like Macmillan half the hardcover price on each Kindle book they sell: generally, that’s between $12-$17. This means Amazon is taking a loss on the sale of every such Kindle book, but the publisher is still getting its standard share, regardless.
2. Macmillan cut their standard author royalty on ebooks from 25% of the list price to 20% of the list price last October.
[UPDATE – THIS JUST IN, 2/4/10: According to E-Reads Macmillan is now saying that going forward, its standard ebook royalty in boilerplate contracts will be 25%, *not* the 20% it came out with last October.]
3. Amazon announced last week it will grant a royalty of 70% of the list price to U.S. authors and 75% to UK authors who sign Kindle book publication deals with Amazon directly. Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Stephen Covey are just a few of the authors who’ve already signed on. A data storage/transfer/processing fee of .15 per MB will be deducted from list price prior to the 70% royalty split’s calculation, but Amazon states that on average this fee only amounts to .06 per Kindle book sold.
4. The author’s royalty in either case is/was based on the list price of a given book, not the price at which the book is/was ultimately sold. This means Macmillan authors used to get the same royalty on every sale whether the customer paid $14.99 for it, or $9.99 due to Amazon discounts.
5. Last week Macmillan informed Amazon that if Amazon wanted to continue to sell Macmillan books in Kindle format, Amazon would have to raise [or lower] the prices on them to Macmillan’s stated prices.
Recent reports have said Macmillan essentially asked Amazon to match the ‘agency model’ deal it made with Apple’s iBook store, which dictates a 30/70 split (70% going to the publisher) and allows the publisher to set the price at which each ebook would be sold. If Amazon did not agree to these terms, Macmillan would allow Amazon to continue to sell Kindle editions of their books under existing terms, but wouldn’t allow Amazon to release the Kindle edition of a new book for sale until 7 months after its initial release in hardcover and several months following release in Apple’s iBook store. I have yet to hear or read any report as to whether these delays would also hold for books intially released in trade paperback or mass-market paperback editions.
6. Amazon didn’t agree to Macmillan’s terms, and childishly removed the Amazon ‘buy’ links for all Macmillan books from its site in response to Macmillan’s demand for new terms.
7. Macmillan authors stormed the internet, posting angry diatribes against Amazon and drumming up support among their fans and followers for Kindle and Amazon boycotts. Yes, that’s right: they took the side of the party who demanded that Amazon raise the price of their Kindle books, or delay their release by 7 months, or reduce the price of their ebooks below Amazon’s $9.99 standard and pay their royalties based on an agency (net profit) model instead of the percentage-of-list-price model they’ve had on their Kindle books to date.
It was Macmillan which set forces in motion that ultimately resulted in the removal of ‘buy’ links, not Amazon, and while Amazon’s actions in this seem excessive, I still see plenty of reasons for authors to be irked with Macmillan. If the report stating that Macmillan intended to withold Kindle editions of their books for a number of months after those books were released in the iBook store is true, is that a move that would’ve pleased the thousands of readers who own a Kindle, or who use the Kindle reader app on their computers or portable devices? Seems like a rather diabolical move to pressure ebook consumers to buy their ebooks from Apple (at higher prices) instead of Amazon, no? And isn’t it very likely that by the time Macmillan books were released in the Kindle store following this Macmillan-imposed delay, Kindle-reading consumers would have forgotten all about those titles and moved on to other, more readily-available ebooks?
I don’t own a Kindle, but release delays and pricing impact my book-buying decisions, too. I rarely buy hardcovers because they’re so expensive, and there’s many a book I intended to buy if/when it came out in softcover or e or audio, but either the book was never released in those formats or—salient in this case—by time it did, I’d forgotten all about it. This same phenomenon among ebook fans is well-documented, and ebook fans have always clamored to have their preferred format released at the same time as any print edition.
Also, recall that Macmillan may be planning to offer Kindle titles in a range from $4.99-$14.99. This isn’t good news for their authors either, since Kindle books priced higher than $9.99 will be a tough sell and those priced below $9.99 will net the author a lower royalty. None of Macmillan’s intended changes in its Kindle books deal with Amazon stand to benefit Macmillan authors or ebook readers. The intended changes only stand either scare off sales (in the case of Kindle books priced higher than $9.99 or those delayed by 7 months) or reduce author royalties (on Kindle books priced lower than $9.99).
So while I can understand Macmillan authors’ anger at Amazon for having their buy links removed, especially in the case of authors of books offered in print editions only (since they don’t even have a horse in this race), I still don’t understand why Macmillan authors haven’t been publicly objecting to Macmillan’s actions as well. Macmillan presented Amazon with an ultimatum in which either option hurts authors’ and ebook readers’ current situation.
8. Macmillan authors will not receive one penny more in royalties on their Kindle books if those books are priced up to 43% higher, because their royalties were always based on the list price for their books, not the price at which Amazon ultimately sold them, in the pre-existing arrangement. Now their royalties will be based on 70% of the ebook retail price, and it’s a safe bet their books will be netting fewer sales if prices go up to $12.99-$14.99.
9. The upshot is a lose-lose-lose. Consumers lose reasonably-priced Macmillan Kindle books, and reasonably-priced Apple iBooks too, since according to this NY Times article:
With Apple, under a formula that tethers the maximum e-book price to the print price on the same book, publishers will be able to charge $12.99 to $14.99 for most general fiction and nonfiction titles — higher than the common $9.99 price that Amazon had effectively set for new releases and best sellers. Apple will keep 30 percent of each sale, and publishers will take 70 percent.
So Macmillan earns the dubious distinction of being the first major publisher to make calculated moves to drive ebook prices higher across all platforms. Thanks to Macmillan’s "victory" over Amazon, Macmillan, authors and Amazon all stand to lose sales. Macmillan stands to lose market share. Authors stand to lose readership.
10. Prediction: emboldened by Macmillan’s so-called win, other major publishers will likely follow suit. More “lose” for everyone.
[UPDATE – THIS JUST IN 2/4/10: According to this report on the Wall Street Journal, Hachette is already attempting to renegotiate its Kindle book terms to match its deal with Apple, too. But why are publishers so anxious to get out from under the thumb of Jeff Bezos, only to wedge themselves beneath Steve Jobs’ opposable digit? I don’t know the answer, but what I do know is that in very short order, big trade publishers will get what they’ve wanted—and we ebook fans have feared—all along: a higher standard price point for mainstream ebooks. Still in Macmillan’s camp on this one?]
So tell me again: exactly why, and what, are we supposed to be celebrating here? I can already imagine the one objection I hear raised in discussions on this topic again and again: Macmillan is staving off devaluation of the ebook. There’s much hand-wringing over the notions that authors can’t possibly earn their due on low-priced ebooks, and that authors (like me) who sell their ebooks at prices significantly lower than the $9.99 Kindle store standard are somehow doing a great disservice to our fellow authors and trade publishing overall. This is so patently untrue, and such a pointless distraction from more important ebook issues, as to call to mind the Chewbacca Defense.
Under the pre-existing deal between Amazon and Macmillan, Macmillan authors earn a royalty of about $3.19 on their Kindle store standard-bestseller-priced books, whether those books are sold at $9.99 or $15.99. Under the new deal, which is the same in both Apple’s iBook store and the Kindle store, authors would earn a royalty of just $2.10 on an ebook priced at $14.99: 20% of 70% of the book’s $14.99 list price, and about $1 less in royalties per copy sold than what they have earned on their standard-priced Kindle books to date.
At a 70% royalty, I can earn $3.50 per copy sold of my self-published Kindle novels if I price them at just $4.99. The higher retail price does not add value for the author or the consumer, and at this point, it doesn’t even increase Macmillan’s profit since they’ve always gotten half the hardcover price on all their Kindle books from Amazon.
It’s quite clear that Macmillan’s take on each Kindle book sale under the new deal will be less than what they’ve received to date on those sales (since they used to get 1/2 the hardcover price and will now only get 70% of the ebook list price, which appears to have an upper limit of $14.99 for the foreseeable future), but I guess they decided they were willing to take that financial hit in exchange for the freedom to set their own ebook retail prices. Of course, Macmillan was under no legal obligation to include authors in their decision-making process, even though their decision stands to reduce their authors’ Kindle book royalties by up to 33%; I’m just saying it’s mind-boggling to me that Macmillan authors don’t seem to be the least bit peeved at this outcome. In fact, they don’t seem to have noticed it at all.
Publishers claim they need to wrest pricing control back from Amazon for the sake of what Amazon might do someday if it becomes too dominant in the ebook space. What if Amazon eventually decides to tell publishers it will no longer pay them half the hardcover price for their Kindle books, for example?
First of all, that’s a bridge to be crossed if, and when, someday arrives. Second, perhaps the correct answer in the event of that scenario is for publishers to lower their wholesale ebook prices. They claim it costs them just as much—or nearly so—to bring an ebook to market as it does to bring a hard copy, and they are therefore justified in their current pricing demands. But if it really takes a small platoon of publishing professionals and tens of thousands of dollars to bring a Kindle book to market, how is it possible that authors like me, JA Konrath, Piers Anthony, and countless others are doing it by ourselves, in our homes, from our consumer-grade computers, in a matter of hours?
“Your Kindle books lack the professional layout and design a publisher can bring to their Kindle books,” some of you are no doubt answering. This is true. But the thousands of readers who buy Kindle books from me, Konrath and the many other self-publishing Kindle book authors don’t seem to care all that much. I suspect that if you asked them, they would tell you they’d rather have a minimally-formatted Kindle book that costs $4.99 (or less) than an exquisitely-formatted Kindle book that costs $14.99.
As I’ve stated before, publishers arguing in favor of higher priced ebooks are ignoring the customer’s priorities in favor of their own, self-imposed priorities. This is because the ugly truth is this: the only parties being hurt by low-priced ebooks are big, mainstream publishers. Their overheads cannot be sustained by $4.99 ebooks, but that doesn’t mean their costs to bring ebooks to market should be forcibly subsidized by authors or consumers. To quote Konrath, “It would have really sucked to have been a buggy whip manufacturer when Henry Ford introduced the Model T. But technology changes things, and it isn’t always fair.”
In the end, all the arguments I’ve heard and read about the devaluation of the ebook are toothless. There seems to be this notion floating around that books must be expensive in order to inspire readers to value literature, but that’s ridiculous. If I’m earning more on my $4.99 Kindle books than a Macmillan author earns on a $15.99 Kindle book, both on a per-sale and volume basis, how is my book’s low pricetag hurting me, the author? And if low-priced ebooks bring more literature and ereaders within reach of more consumers, how are the books’ low prices hurting literature and literacy? If anything, low-priced ebooks stand to benefit authors and consumers alike, and advance the cause of literacy overall.
Hasn’t it been wonderful to find short fiction and poetry collections—species on the verge of extinction in trade publishing—coming back into their own in the Kindle store? It seems readers are only too happy to take a chance on these supposedly ‘fringe’ books if the price is reasonable. Midlist authors are earning new royalties and new readers by bringing their backlists back into print on the Kindle as well. Most importantly, in my view anyway, the current indie author movement wouldn’t be possible at all without Amazon’s equal treatment of indie and mainstream authors.
So authors, indie authors especially: if you’re backing Macmillan in this flap, why? Has Amazon’s overreaction distracted your attention from the long term ramifications of Macmillan’s move, and the likely damage to be done to you and your readership? To put it another way, see if you can answer this question: what part, if any, of Macmillan’s revised agreement with Amazon stands to benefit you?
The head of one of the big book publishers, MacMillan CEO John Sargent Jr., is out with an “open” letter about his dispute with Amazon over the pricing and timing of electronic books. It’s telling that this “open” ebook letter wasn’t released publicly and isn’t directed towards readers, book lovers and customers. It was placed as an ad in a small publishing industry trade rag and the message is for publishing industry insiders. Sargent’s message, despite a bunch of misleading surrounding verbiage, is simple: let’s strangle the growth of ebooks.
If you want to understand where Sargent and other major book publishers are coming from, I strongly recommend watching this online footage from a conference New York University hosted last September. Here you can see Sargent and a couple of fellow old media dinosaurs whine and complain about the digital world, dismiss Facebook, Craig’s List and Twitter as irrelevant non-businesses that will never make money and generally explain their plans to charge everyone for everything at every opportunity.
The real critical portions come towards the very end, in part three, as Sargent grows more animated about his opposition to giving away ebooks for free, even for promotional purposes. Despite being in charge of one of the largest publishing conglomerates in the world, he’s pretty pessimistic about the future of books. Challenged by Wired editor Chris Anderson to use digital distribution and new business models to attract new readers and expand the book market, Sargent is in full rejection mode:
“As the Internet grows, as all the other types of entertainment grow, it’s hard to imagine sitting here how we are going to convince everybody in this room to spend an extra six hours every week to consume another book. So in a way, if you look at the overall demand for books, it’s pretty hard to make that grow. We’ve tried. A whole bunch of people worked very hard to try and grow that. It’s pretty hard if you look at the demographics, how people read, to actually convince yourself that we have a growth business in books.”
In other words, what we have in books is a dying audience, a shrinking audience. And the way you extract the most revenue and profit from a shrinking audience isn’t with creative promotions and new ideas. It’s with ever higher prices. As Sargent says at a another point, in a barely veiled swipe at Amazon’s $9.99 ebook price:
“What we need is variable pricing. I think you guys would agree with this, variable pricing for content. You want a range of price points. You want to find a place — what you don’t want to do is give the consumer something for less than what they’re willing to pay for it in the rush to a new business model. Because once you get it out there it’s dangerous and hard to go back.”
Again, challenged to charge less because producing ebooks cost less, Sargent obfuscates, fixating on just one bit of savings, the printing costs of books (ignoring distribution, returns, overage, lost sales from out of print etc):
“Guys I can walk you through this. How much do you think a hardcover book costs us? A buck sixty. What are we saving? Not enough for the price point to drop from $22.50 down to $8.”
Amazon has been saying that its Kindle customers buy more total books – electronic and print – than they bought previously. It’s certainly been true in our household. I don’t have the figures at my finger tips, but I’d imagine that the whole creation and growth of Amazon.com has enlarged the book market, as well. But that’s not really happening in John Sargent’s world of mega-best sellers.
So keep in mind what Sargent was saying a few months ago when you read passages like this in his letter:
“In the ink-on-paper world we sell books to retailers far and wide on a business model that provides a level playing field, and allows all retailers the possibility of selling books profitably. Looking to the future and to a growing digital business, we need to establish the same sort of business model, one that encourages new devices and new stores. One that encourages healthy competition. One that is stable and rational. It also needs to insure that intellectual property can be widely available digitally at a price that is both fair to the consumer and allows those who create it and publish it to be fairly compensated.”
Leave aside for a moment the completely dishonest portrait Sargent paints of the old print book-selling world, and remember that he doesn’t believe the there will be any growth in book sales in the future. He’s not interested in a fair price for anybody — he’s interested in making sure that he never gives the consumer something for less than what they’re willing to pay for it. He wants to extract the big bucks from the big sellers and move on.
The great danger to MacMillan is that it’s the authors of those big best-sellers who are becoming increasingly able to cut him out. If ebooks really take off, an author like Stephen King or Nora Roberts can sell a lot more of their books direct to their audience with no publisher at all. And that’s why Sargent’s real goal here is not to increase competition or create a level playing field. It’s to squeeze as much profit out of a dying industry as quickly as he can and hold off the digital future for as long as possible.
Did Steve Jobs seduce you with that temporary “charge-whatever-you-want” speech? Well, Steve has been known to seduce people from time to time. Just imagine what will happen once Steve has put the Kindle out of business and Steve owns the ebook platform instead of Jeff Bezos. That’s right: You’ll get held up even worse than Jeff’s holding you up today. Just ask the music industry. Careful what you wish for. So, bottom line, John, take your $15 ebooks and shove them. We’re with Amazon on this one.
Good work.
About the author: Aaron Pressman is a professional journalist but wrote this on his personal blog. He lives in the Boston area with his wife, three kids and four Macintoshes. You can find links to more of his published articles here.
This post, from James Melzer, originally appeared on his site on 2/1/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission. In it, he offers an author platform perspective on the Amazon vs. Macmillan fracas.
I don’t pretend to know a lot about the publishing world. Hell, we’re probably on an even playing field here. The fact that I have a book coming out in March of 2011 doesn’t make me some publishing guru or know it all. I’m a guy who writes books, sells them, and then does his best to promote them however he can. I’ve never been to NYC to visit Simon and Schuster, and I have no idea what goes on in those tall, ivory towers people seem to think they can’t break into. I write books. That’s about it.
Some of you may have heard that on Friday the shit hit the fan between Amazon and Macmillan. Macmillan wants to raise the price of their ebooks and Amazon said no, so they stopped selling all Macmillan titles in protest. Something like that, anyway.
Upon observing this pissing contest between two giants, I noticed something funny about the authors involved. I follow some of them on twitter, read their blogs from time to time, and I wanted to see their reaction to the whole thing, so my spidey senses were heightened during this whole kerfuffle (which still isn’t over yet, BTW), and I watched and read.
Here’s what I saw: Pretty much all of the authors that I know of who are involved were tweeting and facebooking and blogging about Amazon pulling their titles. They posted links to other authors and newspapers and bloggers who were talking about it, and how it’s all wrong.
For the record, I agree. It is wrong.
Pretend for a second that you’re average joe reader. You hear about a book, think it sounds good and want to buy it. You go to Amazon this past weekend and find that you can’t. It’s not there. WTF? You’re inclined enough to go check out the author’s website and find all this mumbo jumbo about Amazon pulling titles and not selling the author’s book. What a pity. The author has posted this big, long rant on how Amazon is the devil and blah blah blah.
Yet he doesn’t tell you where you CAN buy the book online.
Now, you just don’t care and go on to find an author whose book is listed and that you can get delivered to your home in a few days. Done and done.
The author that posted that big, long rant about how Amazon is the devil and blah blah blah just lost a customer. A reader.
My point to this whole thing is that most of the authors involved in this Amazon vs. Macmillan thing were bitching and complaining and linking here and there, but they weren’t telling their readers, their FANS, where they COULD buy their books. Amazon is not the only place online to buy books, yanna. There’s Powell’s, Barnes & Noble, Borders and if you’re Canadian like me, Indigo. Yes, people who are savvy enough know this and would have most likely gone over there to grab a title, but wouldn’t it be nice to hear it from the author who you’re giving your money to? No. Most of them just assumed that people knew.
A simple, “Hey, sorry you can’t buy my book on Amazon right now. Here’s where it can be found,” would have been nice.
Is that too much to ask of an author who wants his readers to find his books? More so, to attract new fans and readers? If someone who doesn’t know you or perhaps isn’t that web knowledgeable wants to buy your book but can’t find it on Amazon, then tell them where they can find it for goodness sake. The average joe reader doesn’t necessarily care about what Amazon or Macmillan are doing, they just want to read a damn book. Hopefully a good one. If they can’t find yours, they’ll go on to another author, and perhaps forget all about you.
The publishing world has experienced change over the past several decades as all industries have, but the next 10 years will be a cocoon altering it into a different species altogether. Many major print publishing houses have either merged, or acquired smaller houses, and the net result is that there are fewer traditional channels for getting your book published. However, this only means that the nature of the challenge of getting a book published has changed. It does not mean that the challenge has become insurmountable.
The traditional publishing path of the past has been described similarly by many sources. Write a book, send query letter and/or book proposal to agents, get picked up by an agent, get sold by agent to a small-to-medium-size publisher, pray that your book takes off and garners attention from a big publisher who pays you a six-figure advance in return for the rights to your book.
Nathan Bransford, a literary agent with Curtis Brown discusses going from small presses to big publishers. I agree with many of his points on the difficulties of being recognized by a big publisher. His advice is very similar to my premise, if your book is really good, well edited, designed, printed, distributed, and promoted, it will succeed.
Today, the traditional publishing path is in upheaval and turmoil. The economic downturn has caused many small publishers to shut their doors or, at best, significantly decrease their new release budgets. The emergence of the Kindle, Nook, and other Ebook readers has stirred things up. Publishers of all sizes are more carefully scrutinizing new authors, primarily seeking to invest in less-risky authors with established platforms. Gone are the days of a publisher investing marketing dollars to help an author develop their platform.
The new traditional publishing path is emerging as more of a partnership between author and publisher with the responsibility for marketing and publicity resting on the shoulders of authors. If you bring a viable manuscript to the table with a sound marketing plan and/or platform, the publisher will invest in editing, design, printing, and distribution, the rest is up to you.
The exciting game-changer for the unknown author is the advent of affordable self-publishing options. Self-Publishing should not be confused with the deplorable practice of Vanity Publishing where an author is charged seriously inflated prices for editing, design, printing, and/or marketing services while giving up 80% or more of profit and/or rights to their material. True self-publishing is where the author handles editing, design, printing, distribution, and marketing for their book or hires professionals to assist with the process while experiencing control, speed to market, ownership of rights, and max profitability.
I’m not preaching against the traditional publishing model. I cut my teeth in traditional publishing. My family was in the traditional publishing business for nearly 25 years. I started at the bottom in the warehouse of a traditional publisher picking and packing orders. I eventually worked my way up to running a subsidiary of this same publisher. Throughout my career, I kept seeing countless numbers of authors turned down because we simply didn’t have the budget to add them to our production schedule. When I was asked to take over the helm at Yorkshire Publishing, I studied the self-publishing industry in great detail. I became passionate about being a part of an author-empowering movement to publish and promote quality books that otherwise may have been unrecognized without modern advances in the self-publishing industry.
The old-school mindset that says to avoid the stigma of self-publishing is quickly becoming a whisper in the wind. More unknown authors are starting out self-published for the first time in history. I believe self-publishing is the democratization of the publishing industry. Any unknown author now has a chance.
In my seminars and workshops, I tell authors to treat their book like a business. If you want a real chance, you must treat your book like a big publisher would. When naysayers point to the statistics that say self-published books average less than 200 units sold, I can rebut with a missing link in the formula and Poytner’s list. Remember, if your book is really good, well edited, designed, printed, distributed, and promoted, it will succeed, regardless of the road taken in the yellow wood of publishing.
Yorkshire Publishing offers ghostwriting, writing coaching, editing, design, printing, distribution and marketing services.
What happens when procrastination wins and you find yourself staring at all the unfinished tasks or projects that you have to perform? What do you do? It can be frustrating. You may even be suffering from anxiety due to putting things off.
Nowhere is this truer than when you are working at home and you alone are responsible for your work schedule. You are the one who has to manage your time in constructive ways. There is no one to tell you what to do. It can be liberating at first. Then you may realize that the loss of structure created by having a boss or supervisor and the set time frame of your work hours actually sends you spinning out of control.
I’ve always struggled with procrastination. It is a struggle to keep things focused and on target. My freelance writing business is no exception. I’ve been a writer for the past four years. I’m self-employed. While the venue has changed some, I’m still the one who is ultimately responsible for how successful or unsuccessful my business is.
Procrastination does put me in some tight binds from time to time. Depending on your view of the causes of procrastination, you may think I need to think more positively about my abilities, get busy working and stop dwelling on the past, or get an appointment with a psychological professional. (It could be a little bit of all three.)
Why Am I Writing About Procrastination?
It’s been a recurring issue with me lately. That’s the short answer. Why am I procrastinating and putting off my work or at least not spending all the time I could on it? Well, I have other ambitions or creative endeavors that are distracting me from the bare bones work I have to do. For instance, I’m starting a publishing company. This has taken a great deal of mental energy and time and diverted it to something not related to freelance writing. I’m thinking about the upcoming release of the first book. I’m speculating about future books and future authors we could have in our business.
Another reason I’m procrastinating is that I’m more interested in building this blog up and exploring my brand as a writer and creator rather than being the pen behind somebody else. Ghostwriting does have financial incentives, but I’m at the point where my name on a blog post has more power to arrest my attention.
Perhaps, some of you are dealing with similar circumstances. Heck, maybe some of you are dealing with the same issues in a more constructive way. I applaud you for that. If you have some tips, I would appreciate them. I do have a few things to say that might help you (and maybe me as well.)
Productive Again
1. Be positive. I’ve got to stop dwelling on negative thoughts. (So do you.) Starting doing what you can to build your confidence about the tasks that you’ve been stuck on. If you accomplish a series of daily goals, you will not only increase you confidence about the whole project but also increase your sense of satisfaction.
2. Break things up. This is accomplished by setting your mind on accomplishing a set number of daily goals and making them something you can accomplish easily. Once a task is complete, you will feel better about the whole situation. The funny question comes to mind: How do you eat an elephant? Answer: One bite at a time. With this strategy comes the ability to start planning ahead more. It may also give you a way to be more organized as well. It’s important that you really take the time to separated those big tasks into smaller, manageable components.
3. Start immediately! Don’t let yourself procrastinate about dealing with your procrastination. You must determine within yourself to start dealing with the problem now. Right now, while you are reading this. (Even, while I’m writing this.) You have to do something about it because no one else can. When you start to tell yourself that you’ll start on this tomorrow, stop yourself. That’s procrastination talking. Every day is precious and once you’ve spent it, you cannot get it back. Remember: If you want to break a bad habit, then break it already!
4. Make priorities. You’ve got to do this one too. When you have a whole host of things to do, there may be a tendency to start with the easy things. In fact, the whole dynamic of your procrastination may run on this first assumption. When you choose to start with easy things, you may end up putting it off since it’s so easy. That’s a mistake. You must organize all of your daily tasks in order of legitimate importance or based on their overall practical value. As a freelance writer, the priority should be the paying gigs that get money in your coffers. Everything else should come after that. Yes, develop those other businesses and potential projects, but don’t neglect what helps you stay afloat.
The Power Of Choice
I want to summarize all of this by way of an analysis of how you deal with the choices you make. Everyone has the power of choice. But not everyone knows how to use choice to their advantage.
The first thing you should do when given an assignment or taking on a project is to pay attention to how you first respond and your attitude. You should be conscious of your choices – the ones that you make right away. Your awareness of these choices will help you fight the urge to avoid the work. Pay attention to how you feel when you choose to tackle those tasks and get things done. Make sure you keep a list of clear responsibilities. This will help you set realistic and relevant goals. Also, make sure you can be realistic about how long each of these tasks is going to take. Being conscious and maintaining a focus on the power of your choices should give a way to be confident and help spur you on to more actions.
In Closing
I’m ready to defeat procrastination in my writing life so I can find the balance I need to expand my businesses and become successful at what I enjoy doing. I’m lucky to be a writer, working from home. Not everyone gets that option. I cannot let procrastination rule the day. Neither should you. There is too much to do and you only have so much time in this life to do it.
If you have anything you want to add, please contact me or post your comments [at the original post]. I’d love to hear from you. Until next time, keep fighting the good fight. And keep writing.
Shaun Kilgore is a freelance writer and co-founder of Founders House Publishing, a new small press. If you’d like to read more of what Shaun has written please check out his blog at www.shaunkilgore.com.
Many book authors set up a profile on Facebook, but they fail to take full advantage of this powerful networking tool. Below are six strategies for promoting books and authors on Facebook:
1. Take full advantage of the promotional opportunities on your Facebook Profile. For example, just below your photo is a small box where you can enter a concise description of what you do, including the title of your book and a link to your book sales page.
The About Me box (under Personal Information) is a good place to describe your book and your business. In the Contact Information section you can enter multiple website addresses. Post your book cover in your photo album or another application and display it in the left column of your profile.
Mention your book in your status updates, without being too promotional. For example, announce your book launch, mention reviews and awards the book has received, talk your own book promotion activities.
Remember, your Facebook profile must be registered in your real name. If you create a profile for your book or business, you risk having your account cancelled.
2. Facebook Pages are similar to personal profiles, but they are created for business use and they are an ideal place for promoting books. You can create a page for your book, your business, or even one of the characters in your novel. People join a page by becoming a fan.
You may want to offer an incentive to join (or at least visit) your page, such as a free download or a coupon for one of your products. Another way to attract fans is to set your page up as an information hub, offering links and resources. You can also send messages to your fan base, which will show up in their Facebook newsfeeds.
3. Groups are a great place for book authors to meet people who share their interests and find new friends, while subtly promoting books. Search for groups by entering keywords in the Search box at the top of the page and then clicking on the Groups tab. You can gain visibility on a group page by introducing yourself on the wall, participating in disucssions, and posting your book cover, photos or videos.
Forming your own group can also be beneficial. Be sure to encourage discussions and offer valuable information such as free downloads and links to resources. You can send direct message the entire group.
4. Hosting an event is another way of promoting books. Set up a Facebook Event and invite others to live or virtual events such as book signings, teleseminars book launches, speaking engagements or virtual book tours. Joining other people’s events is a good way to get visibility because you can write on the event wall and post photos.
5. Facebook displays pay-per-click ads on most pages on the site, and ads can be targeted by age, gender, location, education level, relationship status, or keywords in people’s profiles. Consider advertising if you have a very specific target market that can be targeted by more than one of the above criteria. For example, if you have written an exercise book for women over 50, you can target that demographic on Facebook and you can even target the keyword "exercise" in people’s profiles.
6. The Facebook Marketplace is a classified advertising area where you can post a free listing promoting your books. It’s worth an experiment if the topic of your book is something that might be searched for on a classified site. For example, if you have a book about collecting costume jewelry, people searching for costume jewelry will see your listing. (Don’t forget to use this strategy on Craig’s List and eBay as well).
There are a number of ways of promoting books and authors on Facebook, but remember to be subtle when using profiles, pages, groups and events. If you are too promotional or make promoting books your main focus, you will turn people off.
One of the most common questions I get from new self-publishers is, “What do I put on the copyright page?” For some reason, the copyright page has the power to intimidate some people, with its small print and legalistic language, not to mention all those mysterious numbers.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are a few necessary items on the copyright page, and others that publishers add for various reasons. I’ve treated the copyright page in some detail in other posts, so if you want background please check here: Self-Publishing Basics: The Copyright Page. In a guest post, Joanne Bolton supplied some useful information for books that are printed overseas, and you can find her post here: Copyright Page Requirements for Books Printed Overseas.
And some statement giving notice that the rights to reproduce the work are reserved to the copyright holder.
All Rights Reserved.
Next you’ll see two versions of the copyright page, one long page with a CIP data block and a short version. Feel free to copy and paste these into your book file. Just remember to put your own information in.
Sample of a Long Copyright Page with CIP Data Block
Here’s an example of a copyright page that has the necessary elements, then adds ordering information, web address, CIP Data block (I’ve put this in blue so you can identify what is included; replace this with your own or delete it if you’re not obtaining CIP), edition information, and printing numbers (the string at the bottom) and dates for future editions.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
Imaginary Press
1233 Pennsylvania Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94909
www.imaginarypress.com
Ordering Information:
Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address above.
Orders by U.S. trade bookstores and wholesalers. Please contact Big Distribution: Tel: (800) 800-8000; Fax: (800) 800-8001 or visit www.bigbooks.com.
Printed in the United States of America
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Shakespeare, William.
A title of a book : a subtitle of the same book / Bill Shakespeare ; with Ben Johnson.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-9000000-0-0
1. The main category of the book —History —Other category. 2. Another subject category —From one perspective. 3. More categories —And their modifiers. I. Johnson, Ben. II. Title.
HF0000.A0 A00 2010
299.000 00–dc22 2010999999
First Edition
14 13 12 11 10 / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
A Short Copyright Page Example
Here’s a very short and to the point copyright page. It gives the necessary elements and not much more:
Falling Anvil Publishing
123 Mesa Street
Scottsdale, AZ 00000
www.FallingAnvilBooks.com
This is the quick and easy way to get generic copyright page language into your book. Even with this short example, your copyright page will do the job it’s supposed to do, and give interested parties the means to contact you for publishing-related questions.
A few weeks ago I entered a short essay contest at Backword Books. The Grand Prize was a copy of all eight works on the site. Second prize was a single book to each of eight second-place winners, and the contest rules asked each entrant to include mention of which individual book they might like to receive with their entry.
How did I choose which book I was interested in winning? Well, a combination of factors. I read all the summaries, so content was probably the most important filter. Then there was subject matter: I like Maine, and I thought it would be interesting to read something by someone from Maine. Third, the cover interested me, because I like snow and cold. The more snow in my world the better, and if you want to drop -50° F on top of the white stuff, I’m down with that. So barren trees tends in a field of white tends to draw me in.
My prize copy of Waiting for Spring arrived shortly after the close of the contest. The package that arrived had the weight of a book, and when I opened it that’s what I found: a book.
Flipping through the text I could see it was deep black against crisp white pages, giving good contrast. And the pages had some heft to them, so flipping back and forth was easy. In fact, I’ve flipped through a lot of books in my day, and if something had been markedly different about Waiting for Spring I think my book-flipping instincts, muscles and experience would have tipped me off. But no: it flips like a book.
I paused in a few places to read a paragraph or two, and what I read seemed able and sure-footed, like most of the text in most of the books I’ve ever read. I have no comment about the work as a whole because I haven’t read it yet. It’s still sitting pretty much where I left it, on a small stack with other books I intend to read when I have some time. But it doesn’t look out of place on the stack: it looks like a book.
Even as I type this I don’t know much more about it. I don’t even know if it has a copyright page or an ISBN. [Mark pauses to check.]
Okay, it has a brief copyright page, but no ISBN listed. On the back, however, there’s a bar code, and an ISBN is listed on the bar code. The book also contains some blurbs up front, and a Shakespeare quote, and I just discovered that it’s also signed, which is cool — and not because she gave away a signed copy of her book in a subsequent drawing and like and idiot I assumed that meant my copy was unsigned. It’s cool because it seems more real somehow. (Yes, that’s a serious tip to all you would-be authors. However, my lawyer would like me to remind you that if you blow a signature and ruin and entire copy with your errant scrawl it’s not my fault.)
In pretty much every respect Waiting for Spring looks like a book, inside and out. Yes, there’s the question of content. No, I won’t be posting a review. Yes, the publishing industry says it has all sorts of critical checks against content quality, meaning that a self-published work is probably crap. No, I don’t believe them in either case: they produce plenty of crap, and somewhere there’s an author self-publishing books who meets every test of quality and skill.
In the end, looking at the copy of Waiting for Spring now sitting in front of me on my desk, it seems unremarkable. Liberating as an idea, yes, but unremarkable as an object. Despite all the hand-wringing and the snobbery and the fear-mongering and the hysteria, a self-published book is pretty much like a published book, except perhaps in some small ways that simply don’t register with me. To the extent that these might be pointed out, I would never take anyone’s craft knowledge away from them, and I do not doubt the merit or value of their skills.
But from where I sit, at least today, a book is a book.
Note: This was cross-posted for me by the owner of Publetariat.com. Originally it was intended for my blog, so if it sounds a little too "self-promotey" it wasn’t an intentional "ZOMG publetariat guyz look at me!" Re-reading it in this context it may come off that way, so thought I would add a little explanation, since Publetariat wasn’t the original intended audience.
I’ve been thinking about the podcasting and why I’m doing it. I came across Charlotte Stein’s blog. and it’s very silly and goofy and awesome and made of win. Believe it or not, I’m very silly and goofy (I won’t go so far as to say I’m awesome and made of win here, since that’s just never going to come off right.)
This rarely comes off online. I’m very passionate about publishing and my writing and about every other topic under the sun. I have an opinion about everything. I may not be right, but I have a viewpoint and I’m not shy about sharing it. Sometimes people read anger that isn’t there. And I get that. My grandfather once yelled at one of my best friends on Halloween when she came over there with me. Only he wasn’t really yelling AT her. He was just really irate about something and he was yelling “in general” but it seemed like he was yelling at her. She was an audience for his yelling but not it’s intended target.
He doesn’t realize he does it.
I’m kind of in that same boat. Only I realize (generally after the fact) that I do it. Though generally I come off much “harsher” in text. I wish I could let my silly side out and my freak flag fly (and sometimes I do a little bit on Twitter), but online I’m just always on a crusade, even when I’m not trying to be. I’m just intense. And there are days I want a vacation from myself and that intensity.
Though I’m still passionate and intense about things on my podcast, I feel like the more personal level of a podcast changes things. Like I listened to April Hamilton being interviewed by Joanna Penn on this podcast.
In many ways, April is a lot like me. We can both be very outspoken and brash and we can both get into very intense debates with people that somehow go sour when someone gets upset because they feel it’s gotten personal even when it hasn’t. But hearing her speak on the podcast, her voice softens those edges and she sounds about as friendly as a person can get. Then suddenly you’re able to re-frame nearly everything she’s ever said as it’s actually intended to be. I’ve always “gotten” April’s intentions in these sorts of exchanges, but hearing that friendly of a voice on a podcast, drove it home more sharply.
And so I think that’s what a podcast does for me. It gives me that extra dimension and softens some edges. (Well when I don’t sound like a chipmunk in a trailer park. Cause DUDE holy crap sometimes it gets crazy.) Hopefully while it still may be passionate and intense, it becomes clear that I’m *not* angry with everyone. I’m incredibly excited about the path I’m on and what I’m doing.
Then the fiction podcast, that’s all about the work, and it gives me another way to get the work out there and hopefully interacting with and engaging with an audience. Plus I know this sounds crazy-level vain but I really like my reading voice. It’s much better than my other podcast voice or my live interview voice because when I take the time to slow down and enunciate properly the twang is there, but it’s not like ZOMG insane.
Anyway… I also promised a link to the Breakthru Radio Book Talk episode I was on, so here it is. It should be noted that parts of the interview I’ve got that trailer park chipmunk thing going on. Though the reading at the end sounds a lot better (not perfect, but much better!)
Anywho… and then there are times during the interview (I don’t know why I torture myself by re-listening to it) where I remember even during the interview I’m thinking “Don’t say that. My GOD Zoe, shut UP!” But yeah, no. Never happens. No one should give me a microphone and just let me talk, that’s madness I tell you.
Click here to check out my very first podcast. It’s not "state of the art" podcasting but it’s a starting point. Sometimes the important thing is just getting started. And doing a basic podcast really isn’t rocket science. It can be done.
