Ebooks

Articles specific to writing and publishing ebooks.

Amazon Cracks Down on Bogus Keywords

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This post by Mercy Pilkington originally appeared on Good E Reader on 11/27/13.

A growing number of self-published authors are receiving ominous emails from ebook distributor Amazon, warning them that their books are about to be removed from the website if action isn’t taken immediately. The warning–which some authors claim they did not actually receive before their titles were removed from sale–pertains to authors who’ve used titles of other books in the keyword searches for their titles.

Authors who have attempted to garner more searchability for their books have resorted to including titles like “Fifty Shades of Grey” or “Gone Girl” in the keywords for their books, hoping that potential readers stumble across their book listings. This practice is also in place by the traditional publishing industry, and apparently the ruling applies to those titles as well. Warnings to traditionally published authors have even been posted on message boards, encouraging them to contact their publishers as these authors do not upload their own titles or establish their keywords.

 

Click here to read the full article on Good E Reader.

 

Barnes & Noble's Nook Nightmare Stars Amazon and the DOJ

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This article by Brad Stone originally appeared on Bloomberg Businessweek on 1/9/14. It’s a worthy read for authors or publishers releasing books for the Nook platform.

Let’s boil down Barnes & Noble’s (BKS) Nook nightmare into a handy juxtaposition concerning the price of the digital version of Donna Tartt’s gripping new novel, The Goldfinch.

Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle price: $7.50.

Barnes & Noble’s Nook price: $14.99.

There are plenty of reasons for the stunning decline of the once-promising Nook. Barnes & Noble has found itself unable to compete with the likes of Apple (AAPL) and Amazon in the broader arena of multipurposed tablets. The New York-based retailer has also been undermined by the continuing migration of its customers from physical stores to online book-buying and by the desire of its risk-averse institutional shareholders to support deep, profit-draining, long-term investments in new frontiers.

Even that doesn’t completely account for the dramatic upending of its Nook business. Barnes & Noble today reported gruesome numbers—a 60 percent drop in its digital division, to $125 million, from its sales in last year’s holiday period. (Sales in its physical stores fell 6.6 percent from the previous year.)

 

Click here to read the full article on Bloomberg Businessweek.

 

Amazon, World Adult Content Police?

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This post originally appeared on Adele Journal on 5/23/13. Note that it is on the topic of book listing challenges faced by authors of erotica and other adult-oriented fiction, and the full article (link at the end of this excerpt) may include content that’s NSFW and inappropriate for children.

There’s a new sheriff in town, but I was quite happy with the land being lawless. Because, you know, us settlers were pretty good at regulating ourselves. From recent events, it’s clear to me, at least, that Amazon is trying to take control of the wilderness that is electronic publishing.

In retrospect, it shouldn’t be that surprising. They did make the Kindle, after all, and were pretty successful in making their name synonymous with ebooks for the general, mainstream public. But at the time, it didn’t look like Amazon was taking anything away from the ebook-reading people, just making it more available.

Now, they’re starting to impose their order on the wider landscape of all e-publishers, both amateur and professional, and they are taking things away from us.

 

The Amazon Adult Dungeon

If you haven’t heard of this, the Adult Dungeon is what some erotica authors are calling it when Amazon internally labels a work as “adult.” In itself, this is not problematic, as most erotica authors do a damn good job of laying out warnings and content labels in their descriptions. But when a work gets put into the Adult Dungeon, it is no longer searchable. If you search specifically for the title and author, you will not find it.

Nor will it get recommended in the “Customers who bought X also bought…”

They essentially blacklist any book thrown in their Adult Dungeon. They don’t tell the authors they’re doing this, and they don’t tell the readers, either. It’s done behind the backs of everyone involved. Amazon is taking away your right, as a grownup reader, to make your own decisions about what to read. Or, they think you can’t control your (non-mainstream) sexual imagination, so they feel like it’s their place to do it for you.

(This is also what happened, apparently, a few years ago, when they “mistakenly” marked all LGBT related books as ADULT. Of course, they claimed that it was a “glitch…”)

Author Selena Kitt points out — quite rightly — that erotica readers created the Kindle market. Why does anyone want an e-reader? For a private reading experience.

 

Click here to read the full post on Adele Journal.

 

5 Key Trends in Self-Publishing for 2014

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This post, by Carla King, originally appeared on PBS Mediashift on 1/7/14.

The advancement in self-publishing tools and technology is a lot to keep up with, so here’s a roundup of the news that I think mattered most to self-publishers in 2013 and will continue to shape the industry this year.

1. Ingram Spark Gives Amazon CreateSpace a Run for Its Money

Ingram Content Group finally launched Ingram Spark, the much-anticipated print-on-demand and e-book distribution service aimed at self-publishers. It’s a welcome alternative to their publisher services tool Lightning Source, and competes with Amazon’s CreateSpace. Spark offers one author dashboard to handle both e-book and print distribution, while Amazon forces authors to two different places (CreateSpace for POD, Kindle Direct Publishing for e-books). And, unlike CreateSpace, Spark also allows authors to set the 55% discount and returns programs that bookstores insist upon. Do note that Amazon, being the pushy gorilla it is, sometimes lists print books not produced by them as “Out of Stock.” So this author continues to use CreateSpace in conjunction with other services, just to make sure that doesn’t happen.

 

2. E-book Subscription Services Entice Readers to Buy in Bulk

 

Click here to read the full post on Mediashift.

 

For Major Publishers, Will Print No Longer Be the Norm?

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This post, by Rachel Deahl with additional reporting from Jim Milliot, originally appeared on Publishers Weekly on 10/25/13.

Format has been a long-simmering topic of debate in book publishing, and the question of when, and if, a title is published in hardcover, paperback, and/or digital has become even more pressing as bricks-and-mortar bookstores dwindle and e-book sales grow. The idea that any standard deal from a major publisher guarantees a print format release—which was previously a foregone conclusion—is something agents no longer take for granted, with some expressing concern that the big houses are starting to hedge on print editions in contracts.

While e-book-only agreements are nothing new—all large publishers have imprints that are exclusively dedicated to digital titles—a handful of agents, all of whom spoke to PW on the condition of anonymity, said they’re worried that contracts from print-first imprints will increasingly come with clauses indicating that the publisher makes no guarantee on format. The agents say this is a new twist to the standard way of doing business.

While sources acknowledged that contracts from print-first imprints (as opposed to e-only ones) featuring clauses that give the publisher the freedom to decide on format are not new, the feeling is that these clauses are the exception, not the rule. Recently, though, a handful of agents have expressed concerns about print imprints refusing to commit on this issue.

Most of the big five houses PW contacted declined to respond to inquiries on the matter, saying that they don’t comment on contract negotiations. While some agents said they fear that Random House (and, possibly, the larger merged entity of Penguin Random House) is preparing to add a clause to its boilerplate indicating that it doesn’t commit to a format, a spokesman for the publisher shot down this notion. Penguin Random House’s Stuart Applebaum told PW that no change has taken place: “The suggestion that Penguin Group (USA) LLC and Random House LLC are changing their standard boilerplate contracts so as to limit publishing formats is not correct. Each of our author contracts continue to be negotiated individually, and confidentially.”

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Publishers Weekly.

 

The Getty and Google Unleash Free Art — And Your Creative Potential

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This article, by Drue Kataoka, originally appeared on Wired on 12/30/13. Those who do book cover design or who want photos or illustrations for books or marketing purposes will want to pay particular attention: you now have 5,400 more pieces of free, unrestricted artwork and photos to use.

Open sharing has been around forever, accelerating progress in diverse fields. Computing (e.g., Homebrew Computer Club), code (open source), and even academic publishing (“open access,” which goes beyond peer review) are just a few that have multiplied their social impact thanks to this openness. Art may be next, and here, too, technology will play a central role.

Just a couple months ago, The Getty quietly released 5,400 new, high-resolution (800dpi) images from its Getty Research Institute for public use. But here’s the revolutionary part: They did it without fees or restriction. To put this in perspective: Not one of New York’s largest museums — the MoMA, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan, or the Frick have done that yet.

The big deal here isn’t just that a premiere cultural institution is making so many images available to all, but that it signals a broader, emerging “open content” art movement.

Besides the Getty, the other art institutions leading this open content movement include Los Angeles’ LACMA (which made 20,000 images available for free, albeit in a smaller file size than Getty did), as well as D.C.’s National Gallery of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery. And Google. Yes, Google: its Google Art Project (now called the Google Cultural Institute) has been working since 2010 on changing attitudes towards digitization among cultural institutions. The resulting meta-museum now includes high-resolution images of artworks from over 300 institutions available online. Google’s collection is the largest and, not surprisingly, has the most sophisticated and user-friendly UI. However, unlike the Getty, LACMA, or the National Gallery, Google restricts image downloading and sharing.

Open content in art is a huge shift in attitude compared to fairly recently, when art museums viewed the web cautiously, at best.

 

Read the rest of the article on Wired.

 

Kindle Singles and the Future of Ebooks

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This post, by Joe Wikert, originally appeared on his Digital Content Strategies blog on 10/21/13.

“Compelling ideas expressed at their natural length.” That’s Amazon’s tagline for their popular Kindle Singles program. And while Singles hasn’t exactly been a major industry disruptor I believe it lays the foundation for some of the bigger, bolder initiatives Amazon is planning for the future. I also believe it’s a model that will become much more common over time.

The formula looks like this:

1.End the practice of artificially puffing up content

The greatest aspect of Kindle Singles is, of course, their short length. The first one I read was a Single about media and I remember thinking how a typical business book editor would have asked the author to turn this 30-page gem into a bloated 300-page mess. It happens all the time and it’s a function of both physical shelf presence and perceived value. In the ebook world there’s suddenly no physical bookshelf an individual title has to have a spine presence on. Now we just need to stop equating “shorter” with “cheaper”…more on that in a moment.

2.Attention spans are shrinking

Face it. With very few exceptions you’re probably thrilled to read all this short-form content that didn’t exist 10 years ago. Blogs, no matter what they’re called, are very popular. Then came Twitter with its 140-character bursts of information. Let’s also not forget about all the other terrific short-form content services like Byliner that we’ve grown to love. Shortened content is also why The Week is such a popular magazine. Kindle Singles is just tapping into our desire to find the Cliff’s Notes on everything so that we can quickly read it and move on.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Digital Content Strategies.

 

How Self-Publishing Has Changed the Industry

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This post, by Clare Langley-Hawthorne, originally appeared on the Kill Zone blog on 4/15/13.

I read a recent blog post on The Guardian book blog about the 10 ways self-publishing has changed the book world and, after Jim’s post yesterday, it got me thinking about how I would explain the current state of the book world to friends and family who are neither authors, nor wanna-be writers, but who, as book readers, are nonetheless intrigued by all the changes going on in publishing.

I’ve summarized the Guardian’s top 10 list below and am interested in whether or not you agree (though I do think most of them are pretty self-evident):

1. There is now a wider understanding and increased visibility about what publishing is (and acceptance that it’s more difficult than it looks). Self-publishing has enabled people to learn the process and understand what is involved which has led to a wider awareness and diversity in the publishing process.

2. We are no longer confident that publishers and agents know what everyone wants or should read.

3. The copy-editor is now in strong demand as writers realize the limitations of self-editing. Freelance copy-editors are now in high demand by both self-publishing authors and traditional publishing houses.

4. The book as a ‘precious’ object is re-emerging as publishers produce limited, luxury editions.

5. Authors are being empowered to do their own marketing and are no longer reliant on publishers to mediate the relationship between authors and their readers. Looking ahead, authors are likely to be less compliant with what their publishers demand of them.

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes five more list items and some analysis/commentary, on Kill Zone.

Authors Guild's Scott Turow: The Supreme Court, Google, Ebooks, Libraries & Amazon Are All Destroying Authors

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This post, by Mike Masnick, originally appeared on TechDirt on 4/8/13.

from the old-man-yells-at-cloud dept
We’ve written more than a few times about Scott Turow, a brilliant author, but an absolute disaster as the Luddite-driven head of the Authors’ Guild. During his tenure, he’s done a disservice to authors around the globe by basically attacking everything new and modern — despite any opportunities it might provide — and talked up the importance of going back to physical books and bookstores. He’s an often uninformed champion of a past that never really existed and which has no place in modern society. He once claimed that Shakespeare wouldn’t have been successful under today’s copyright law because of piracy, ignoring the fact that copyright law didn’t even exist in the age of Shakespeare. His anti-ebook rants are just kind of wacky.

However, in his latest NY Times op-ed, he’s basically thrown all of his cluelessness together in a rambling mishmash of “and another thing”, combined with his desire to get those nutty technology kids off his lawn. For the few thousand members of the Authors Guild, it’s time you found someone who was actually a visionary to lead, rather than a technology-hating reactionary pining for a mythical time in the past.

First up, a confused reaction to the Supreme Court’s protection of first sale rights in Kirtsaeng.

LAST month, the Supreme Court decided to allow the importation and resale of foreign editions of American works, which are often cheaper than domestic editions. Until now, courts have forbidden such activity as a violation of copyright. Not only does this ruling open the gates to a surge in cheap imports, but since they will be sold in a secondary market, authors won’t get royalties.

First of all, no, this was not a “change” in US law. Courts had not forbidden this particular situation in the past, because the specifics of this hadn’t really been tested in the past other than a few recent cases with somewhat different fact patterns. The point of the Supreme Court’s ruling was to reinforce what most people already believed the law to be: if you buy a book, you have the right to resell it.

As for the “surge” in cheap imports, let’s wait and see. It might impact markets like textbooks, which are artificially inflated, but for regular books? It seems like a huge stretch to think that it would be cost effective to ship in foreign books just for resale. And, of course, secondary markets have existed for ages, and studies have shown that they actually help authors because it makes it less risky to buy a new book, since people know they can resell it. Turow admits that secondary markets have always existed, but then jumps to what this is all “really” about in his mind:

This may sound like a minor problem; authors already contend with an enormous domestic market for secondhand books. But it is the latest example of how the global electronic marketplace is rapidly depleting authors’ income streams. It seems almost every player — publishers, search engines, libraries, pirates and even some scholars — is vying for position at authors’ expense.

Yes, that’s right. The Kirtsaeng decision isn’t just about first sale, it’s really about the evil “global electronic marketplace” sucking authors dry. Of course, Turow fails to mention that Kirtsaeng had next to nothing to do with the internet. Yes, Kirtsaeng ended up selling his books via eBay, but tons of books sell on eBay. That had no impact on the ruling at all. The issue in the ruling was about books legally purchased abroad, and Kirtsaeng did that without the internet — he just had friends and family back in Thailand buying books for him. To blame that on “the global electronic marketplace” is just completely random and wrong. It seems like the kind of thing someone says when they just want to blame technology for everything. Turow has his anti-technology hammer, but he’s got to stop seeing nails in absolutely everything.

 

Read the rest of the post on TechDirt.

The Point Of The Paperback

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This post, by Nichole Bernier, originally appeared on The Millions on 4/2/13.

1.
“Why are they still bothering with paperbacks?” This came from a coffee-shop acquaintance when he heard my book was soon to come out in paperback, nine months after its hardcover release. “Anyone who wants it half price already bought it on ebook, or Amazon.”

Interestingly, his point wasn’t the usual hardcovers-are-dead-long-live-the-hardcover knell. To his mind, what was the use of a second, cheaper paper version anymore, when anyone who wanted it cheaply had already been able to get it in so many different ways?

I would have taken issue with his foregone conclusion about the domination of ebooks over paper, but I didn’t want to spend my babysitting time down that rabbit hole. But he did get me thinking about the role of the paperback relaunch these days, and how publishers go about getting attention for this third version of a novel — fourth, if you count audiobooks.

I did what I usually do when I’m puzzling through something, which is to go back to my journalism-school days and report on it. Judging by the number of writers who asked me to share what I heard, there are a good number of novelists who don’t quite know what to do with their paperbacks, either.

Here’s what I learned, after a month of talking to editors, literary agents, publishers, and other authors: A paperback isn’t just a cheaper version of the book anymore. It’s a makeover. A facelift. And for some, a second shot.

2.
About ebooks. How much are they really cutting into print, both paperbacks and hardcovers? Putting aside the hype and the crystal ball, how do the numbers really look?

The annual Bookstats Report from the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which collects data from 1,977 publishers, is one of the most reliable measures. In the last full report — which came out July 2012 — ebooks outsold hardcovers for the first time, representing $282.3 million in sales (up 28.1%), compared to adult hardcover ($229.6 million, up 2.7%). But not paperback — which, while down 10.5%, still represented $299.8 million in sales. The next report comes out this July, and it remains to be seen whether ebook sales will exceed paper. Monthly stat-shots put out by the AAP since the last annual report show trade paperbacks up, but the group’s spokesperson cautioned against drawing conclusions from interim reports rather than year-end numbers.

Numbers aside, do we need to defend whether the paperback-following-hardcover still has relevance?

Read the rest of the post, which includes a gallery of before and after book covers, on The Millions.

4 [Nonfiction] Ebook Writing Tips that Will Help You Go from Average to Awesome

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This post, by Cheryl Pickett, originally appeared on The Future Of Ink site on 2/22/13.

If you’re going to go through all the effort and time to write an ebook, I’d be willing to bet you don’t want the response to be like a bored dog!

You don’t want people feeling uninspired, or worse yet, like they’re ready for a nap when they’re done reading your words.

So how do you create a book that’s interesting instead of sleep inducing, awesome instead of average? Here are four ebook writing tips that will put you on the right track.

Build a Bridge

Even though these tips are about how to improve your writing, the first thing I’d like you to do isn’t about words, but rather a picture. In your mind’s eye, picture a bridge over a river.

It doesn’t really matter what kind you think of. All bridges have one thing in common; they are a straight line between the two points they connect.

Bridges don’t meander like a garden path or a winding road. They take you from Point A on one side to Point B, the other. Also, there’s no confusion about where you will end up if you take a bridge; bridges won’t suddenly move so that you end up somewhere other than where you set out to go.

Books, whether print or digital, are a lot like bridges. People buy nonfiction in particular expecting it to take them from where they are now, needing some information, to where they want to end up, informed and maybe inspired too.

Most people will not be happy with a book that meanders to its purpose or gets totally off track. Unfortunately, a lot of average books out there do exactly that.

Your ebook will be awesome and not average if you’re clear about where it goes from the outset, it’s easy to navigate, and ultimately delivers the reader to the promised end result and no place else.

Go Beyond

 
Read the rest of the post on The Future Of Ink.

4 Obstacles to Self-Publishing Success

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Are you one of those authors who keeps meaning to get to publishing your own books, but somehow never manages to actually get all the way to the finish line?

Hey, you’re not alone, it happens to lots of people.

Gathering information from many talks with authors, it seems to me there are 4 big obstacles that trip authors up, and that get in the way of their goals.

What are they?

  • Rejection–Thinking that you’re just not good enough, that people will hate your book—and you—because you’re actually a no-talent hacker with no business publishing your own book.
  • Worry–Feeling overwhelmed by how big the project is, that you will never be able to do it all.
  • Fear–Feeling that no one will notice your book and no one will buy your book and the people that do read it will hate it and write bad things about you on the internet.
  • Confusion–Becoming so totally confused about just what to do and where to start that you never end up doing anything.

Let’s face it, these are powerful human emotions. Putting our work out into the world can bring up lots of resistance and make us question the value of our message, the quality of our writing, and the passion we bring to our work.

That’s why I hate to see authors trapped in these emotions, because they just keep you stuck.

New Video: “Self-Publishing Mistakes, Screw-Ups and Disasters”

I’ve got another video for you that addresses this subject head on, and suggests ways you can get over the traps if you happen to be caught in one at the moment.

In the video I also look at some common mistakes new self-publishers make, and go over some of my own classic goofs just to reassure you that even professionals can screw up big time.

At the end of the video there’s a story I call “The Most Important Book of All,” and I think you’ll get something out of it.

It describes some of the things that happened to me when I first overcame my own resistance and succeeded in publishing a book I knew there was a need for.

Getting that book out into the world wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t cheap either. But I had no idea when I published it just how much it would change my life.

I would have to say that nothing was the same afterwards as it was before.

But better yet, go over and have a look at this video. It runs about 21 minutes and it’s packed with content.

Here’s the link: Self-Publishing Mistakes, Screw-ups and Disasters

If it brings up issues for you (I just watched it again, and it brought up issues for me!) leave me a comment below the video. I’d love to hear from you.

Here’s the link one more time, this will be 21 minutes well spent: Self-Publishing Mistakes, Screw-ups and Disasters

 

This is a reprint of a post that originally appeared on Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

Am I Good Enough?

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This post, by Steven Ramirez, originally appeared on his Glass Highway site and is reprinted here in full with the author’s permission.

Douglas Adams had a name for it. In fact, it was the title of one of his books: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. Sounds dreamy, right? Adams used the phrase in the service of his second detective novel featuring Dirk Gently. In the book, Adams deals with man-made gods who, no longer worshipped, have become destitute, as well as with Gently’s crippling guilt.

For me, though, the phrase aptly sums up that miserable time between two and four in the morning when your eyes fly open suddenly from a troubled sleep, you sit straight up and ask yourself, “Am I good enough?”

If you’re a writer, you know exactly what I’m talking about. All that nonsense about opening a vein and finding your muse—it’s rubbish. What really matters to a writer is Do they like me? Consider this quote from Adams’ book:

There are some people you like immediately, some whom you think you might learn to like in the fullness of time, and some that you simply want to push away from you with a sharp stick.

We all want to be that first guy, but will grudgingly settle for the second. And, God help us, we live in horror of third when it comes to our books.

It’s All Amazon’s Fault
In the world of traditional publishing, publishers actually saved you a ton of time with something called a rejection letter. It was short, painful and private. No one else in the world needed to know that you just had your kiester handed to you because you were not deemed good enough to have your words committed to paper. Over the years, you collected these things like parking tickets and continued writing till you actually produced something that a publisher would accept. You were, according to these great and powerful Wizards of Oz, good enough.

Now it’s actually worse, and it’s all Amazon’s fault. Indie publishing has made it possible to put whatever you want out there in no time at all. Never mind that the cover is cheesy and the text is filled with mistakes and sloppy prose. Never mind that you rushed to finish the last third of the book. Just hit the Publish button and you’re golden! Now the entire world can—well, not reject you, of course. No, it can do something much worse. It can ignore you. Ouch.

The Thrill of Failing
It’s precisely because I am planning to publish my new zombie novel this summer that I am plagued by thoughts of inadequacy. During the daylight hours, I go happily about my business, revising my manuscript, finalizing the book cover and experimenting with eBook formatting. But it’s at night when The Doubt hits me. And it hits hard, son, let me tell you. Sure, I’ve published a number of short stories that have gotten some lovely reviews. But this is a novel we’re talking about. It’s the majors, and I don’t know if I’m good enough.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Remember that one? I keep telling myself that I need to try this. The book, regardless of how well or poorly it’s received, will give me the courage to try another, and another. And that’s a writer’s life. You keep at it because you have no choice.

Nevertheless, failing still sucks but it’s instructive. No one ever does a post mortem on their successes—only the failures. And with failure, you pretty much have a nice blueprint of what not to do next time.

Stay the Course
So what do you do? You keep going. One thing that’s important to remember is to keep your doubts and fears from sabotaging your current efforts. Writing is something you have to work at every day. And every day, if you’re doing it correctly, you get a little better. This is what I tell myself.

Here’s a final thought. There’s nothing more thrilling than thinking you’re going to fail and succeeding wildly against all odds. That’s an experience worth having. Just make sure that whatever it is you’re slaving away ends up with a better title than Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter. Come to think of it, the right title may be the key to the whole thing.

 

Book Buying Trends

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[At] the end of the year [it’s] time for my wife, Barbara, to sum up our bookstore’s sales. There are some interesting results that I’d like to share with all of you.

First of all, the typical customers are in their forties and older. The younger people are, the less likely they are to buy books. Of course some younger people still do, but overall, the book buying populations tends to be older.

The preponderance of children’s book buyers are grandparents. The parents tend to buy electronics. One interesting factor is how many grandparents want to buy books they read when they were kids. Although a few are still in print, they don’t hold the interest of the younger population.

Another interesting fact: 55% of young adults books are bought by adults who prefer reading that genre. So many adults do not have enough time to read as much as they would like. They find young adult books are easy and quick reads with fast developing plots. They are easier to fit into their schedules.

My last article addressed the trends of ebooks, which are having a definite impact on shopping habits. Internet sales are also taking their toll. The current group of young readers, our potential future group of shoppers, are actually being given tablets or readers by their schools. There are some youngsters who have never read a printed book. This does not bode well for bookstores or major publishers.

One interesting trend has been major publishers who have insisted on charging as much for ebooks as they do for printed paperbacks. To me, that is simply greed, because it costs much less to publish an ebook than a printed version, especially since they are producing a printed version anyway. One device they have invented is the “Agency” model, where they dictate to bookstores a 30% rather than a standard 40% discount rate and no discounting the standard retail price. This has come under fire by the Federal Trade Commission in several court battles.

Yes, the book industry is in turmoil. The only easy prediction to make is that the ways to publish and market books will be changing drastically. It is my guess that the days of independent bookstores are numbered. Oh well, I’ve been trying to talk my wife into retiring for several years now.

 

This is a reprint from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends blog.

Self-Publishing Is The Future, And Great For Writers

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This post, by Hugh Howey, originally appeared on Salon.

Books have changed forever, and that’s good. Writers will find readers and make more money going it alone, like me.

Contrary to recent reports, I am not the story of self-publishing.

The story of self-publishing is Jan Strnad, a 62-year-old educator hoping to retire in four years. To do so is going to require supplemental income, which he is currently earning from his self-published novels. In 2012, Jan made $11,406.31 from his work. That’s more than double what he made from the same book in the six months it was available from Kensington, a major publisher. He has since released a second work and now makes around $2,000 a month, even though you’ve never heard of him.

Rachel Schurig has sold 100,000 e-books and made six figures last year. She is the story of self-publishing. Rick Gualtieri cleared over $25,000 in 2012 from his writing. He says it’s like getting a Christmas bonus every month. Amanda Brice is an intellectual property attorney for the federal government. In her spare time, she writes teen mysteries and adult romantic comedies. She averages $750 a month with her work.

Like Schurig, Robert J. Crane is quickly moving from midlist to A-list. When Robert shared his earnings with me late last year, his monthly income had gone from $110.29 in June to $13,000+ in November. He was making more in a month than many debut authors are likely to receive as an advance from a major publisher. And he still owned his rights. His earnings have only gone up since.

Right now you are probably thinking that these anecdotes of self-publishing success are the result of my having cherry-picked the winners. In fact, these stories appear in this exact order in my private message inbox over at Kindle Boards. The only sampling bias is that these writers responded to a thread I started titled: “The Self Published Authors I Want to Hear From.” I wanted to know how many forum members were making $100 to $500 a month. My suspicion was that it was more than any of us realized. Every response I received started with a variation of: “I’m actually making a lot more than that.”

My fascination with this story began back when major media outlets like Entertainment Weekly and Wired magazine called to interview me. Perhaps the transition from near-minimum-wage bookseller to New York Times bestseller was too surreal for me to embrace, but my reaction to these entreaties was that I couldn’t possibly be the real story. For every outlier like myself or Bella Andre or Amanda Hocking, there must be hundreds of people doing well enough with their writing to pay a few bills. The more time I spent online in various writing forums, the more this hunch hardened into a real theory. People I interacted with every day were appearing on bestseller lists or emailing me for advice on handling calls from agents. The hundreds appeared to be thousands. And this could only be a fraction of the actual number.

 

Read the rest of the post on Salon.