Ebooks

Articles specific to writing and publishing ebooks.

Self Publishing in 2012 (Links From My Ignite Talk)

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This post, by Kevin Dangoor, originally appeared on his site on 10/26/12.

Last night, I spoke at Ignite Ann Arbor 7. As always, the Ignite talks covered quite a range of topics and the speakers gave us a great time!

My own talk was one about self-publishing, which is something I’ve had some experience with this year. Back in 2006, I co-wrote a technical book (Rapid Web Applications with TurboGears) for Prentice Hall. That year, I also self-published a DVD (the TurboGears Ultimate DVD). But, my focus in this talk was my experience this year self-publishing the first three books in my 11 Quests children’s fantasy series.

Publishing companies have their place, and I’m not actually against using their services. My view is that we, as authors, should recognize how much more powerful self-publishing is today than it was even a few years ago. The Internet and modern technology and services are making life increasingly difficult for middlemen of all sorts.

After that bit of background, I dove into things that I found useful in my publishing adventure. First, I started with the writing. I wrote the first 11 Quests stories during National Novel Writing Month 2011 (NaNoWriMo, as it’s more succinctly called). I did all of my writing in Scrivener, which is a fantastic program that is available for Mac and Windows. Scrivener helps organize your writing. And, as an added bonus, Scrivener did a good job of producing my ebooks and the interiors of my print books!

MacHeist, which has been extended for 3 days (through Monday, October 29, I’m assuming), currently offers Scrivener along with a bunch of other apps for just $29. It’s a really, really good deal. And, with NaNoWriMo starting up again on Thursday, the timing is wonderful.

Next, I got into cover design. 99Designs, CrowdSpring, and DesignCrowd all allow you to post a price you’re willing to pay for a design and have a bunch of different designers produce artwork from which you pick the winner. These sites are controversial because only one designer gets chosen, but a bunch of designers are doing the work to try to get selected. Only you can decide how you feel about that issue.

Less controversial would be to find a local artist or someone at a site like DeviantArt or Elance. It’s a much more traditional relationship where you agree upon a price and the work gets done.

The approach I took to cover design was “do-it-yourselfish”. I started with DAZ3D which is free 3D software (Mac and Windows). I’ve also used Poser a bit, but I settled into DAZ Studio for my work. What makes these programs great is that you can buy, for not a lot of money, 3D models and then pose them and otherwise customize them to get the image you’re looking for. These programs have a learning curve, and there’s a lot of work required just finding the right models to match what you’ve written. But, I was happy with the results that I got.

 

Read the rest of the post on Kevin Dangoor’s site.

Peering Into The Future And Seeing More Value In The Random Penguin Merger

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This post, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on The Shatzkin Files blog on 11/26/12.

So now in addition to the Random House and Penguin merger that is being reviewed by governments far and wide, we have the news that HarperCollins is exploring a tie-up with Simon & Schuster in a deal that hasn’t been made yet. That leaves Hachette and Macmillan, among the so-called Big Six, still on the outside as the general trade publishing behemoths rearrange themselves for whatever is the next stage of book publishing’s existence. 

I am not sure we really need an “explanation” for what is the resumption of a perfectly natural phenomenon. Big publishers have been merging with each other for several decades in a process that suddenly stopped after Bertelsmann acquired Random House (to add to its holding of Bantam Doubleday Dell) in 1998. We didn’t know it at the time, but that concluded a long string of mergers that had recently included Penguin’s acquisition of Putnam-Berkley, but which stretched back to the 1970s when pursuit of the paperback-hardover synergy had driven Viking and Penguin; Doubleday and Dell; and Random House-Ballantine and Fawcett into each other’s arms.

(Perhaps HarperCollins should get credit for the resumption of the era of consolidation. Their acquisition of Christian publisher Thomas Nelson, combined with their holding of Zondervan, created a powerful position in one of publishing’s biggest vertical markets shortly before Penguin and Random House announced their plans.)

But consequential events always get an explanation, whether they deserve one or not, and this merger appears to many to be driven by consolidation among the retail intermediaries and the rational concern — amply documented by recent experience — that the retailers would use their leverage to press for more and more margin. This is complicated by the fact that both of the dominant retailers — Amazon in the online world and Barnes & Noble in the brick-and-mortar space — have small publishing operations of their own that are always available to put additional pressure on publishers at the originating end of the value chain.

There is an important asymmetry to take note of here. The retailers publish and are always a threat to acquire manuscripts directly and cut the publishers out but the publishers, particularly the biggest ones, don’t do retail and there is no obvious path for them to enter retailing in any significant way. (That last sentence was written with full cognizance that we await the debut of Bookish, which is an attempt by three of the Big Six to enter retailing in a significant way. Maybe when concrete plans for it are announced there will be some reasons provided to amend that thought.)

In my opinion, the dominant position that Amazon holds in online retailing and that B&N owns in shops are impregnable on their own terms in ways that the positions of each of the big publishers are not.

The threat to Barnes & Noble is that bookstores will become unsustainable: that a retailer trying to exist at scale with books as its primary product offering will, because of ebooks and online purchasing of print, simply become unviable. The threat to Amazon is more nuanced and more distant. One can imagine a world developing where content retailing evolves into niches by subject or tastemaker. But that world is not around the corner (an environment toxic to bookstore chains appears to be much closer) and it would be far easier to imagine how Amazon could adapt to niche online retailing than to see B&N adapting to deliver retail book selections that are only viable at a fraction of their current size.

(I consulted to them a decade ago and suggested that to no interest. They were shutting down their mall stores at the time and the idea seemed totally counterintuitive.  I’ve also written about it.)

 

 

Read the rest of the post on The Shatzkin Files.

Slightly Delayed NaNoWriMo Post-Mortem

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This post, by Lea, originally appeared on the Hundreds of Characters blog on 12/5/11.

I have a really bad habit of forgetting about my blog, of writing few and far between. So I’m going to play catch-up: a couple different posts that I’ve been meaning to write but just never got around to. So I apologize for the slightly out-of-date nature of these couple blog posts, but hopefully the messages will still be relevant.

When I first decided to write this particular post, it was to be titled “Why I Didn’t Win NaNoWriMo, and Why That’s Okay.” Instead, it’s “Even Though I Won NaNoWriMo, It Would Have Been Okay If I Didn’t.” Let’s look at why.

At its heart, NaNoWriMo isn’t about writing a novel in thirty days. Be realistic. You’re not going to write a masterpiece in that long. Not to mention, NaNoWriMo has you write 50,000 words. While that’s an admirable feat, the only books that are 50k words long are MG, middle grade. Most teen fiction is at least 70k, and adult novels even longer. My manuscript, currently on its second draft, is just around 70k and, in my opinion, not long enough. But that’s another topic all together.

So if any of you think about participating in NaNo in another ten months, don’t go into it expecting to come out with a sell-able novel on the other side. What you can expect to come out with, though, is a renewed vigour in daily writing limits.

I know that this sort of thing has been talked about ad nauseam on other writing blogs: the topic of daily word goals, of setting word counts, of things to work towards. But bear with me as I briefly discuss my own experiences, and how my first time participating in NaNoWriMo actually made me feel more like a real writer than ever before.

I had heard, long before I took my first NaNo steps, that telling an agent that your book was written during NaNoWriMo was cause for an immediate dismissal. But I don’t think that has to be the case. What I found, with NaNo, was that I was given a deadline – and for me, that’s always a good motivator. I had thirty days to reach 50,000 words; I had thirty days to reach somewhere between a third and a half of my latest WIP. I started my WIP a couple weeks before November since I was so excited to start. I kept the 15k words I wrote in October on a separate Word document so that that count didn’t interfere with my NaNo count. And then I got writing.

It was fantastic to have a writing goal. I found time in the most unlikely of places to pull out my notebook and get writing. I had a forty-minute train ride from suburbia to work in downtown Toronto every day, and I came to relish those forty minutes as a pretty easy way to hit at least 1300 words. And I’d pull out my notebook again while doing an intern duty of covering reception or on lunch. I’d easily hit 1700, 2000 on those days. And at the end of the day, I’d come home and type out what I had handwritten over the course of the day. It gave me a chance to review what I had written, to make sure that everything flowed, and to do some very small edits.

 

Read the rest of the post on Hundreds of Characters.

Tools to use to Recreate the Past: Annie Fuller’s Boarding House

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I am working on Bloody Lessons, the third book of my historical mystery series, which means I am wrestling once again with how adequately and accurately to portray the past, in this case 1880 San Francisco. This led me to the idea of describing some of the tools I used in creating the historical background for my protagonist’s home, which appeared first in Maids of Misfortune and will continue to play a role in all of my books, a boarding house in the 400 block of O’Farrell Street of San Francisco, between Jones and Taylor.

First of all, as Susanne Alleyn points out in her clever and very readable book, Medieval Underpants and Other Blunders: A Writer’s (and Editor’s) Guide to Keeping Historical Fiction Free of Common Anachronisms, Errors, and Myth, an author of historical fiction needs to recognize that the city of today can be vastly different from the city of whatever time period you are writing about, and this is true even when you are talking about a relatively young city like San Francisco and a time period that is only 132 years in the past.

Sometimes cities change for man-made reasons. Street names are changed, new streets laid out, hills graded, wetlands filled in, residential areas become commercial and commercial areas become residential, and railroads, subways, and freeways are built, destroying existing property. Neighborhoods change, expand and contract, and sometimes disappear.

And then there are natural disasters. Hurricane’s Katrina and now Sandy have demonstrated the ability of natural forces literally to obliterate areas, wiping the structures, even the ground the structures are on, off the face of maps. Sometimes these streets and blocks are rebuilt, sometimes they are not, but a good historical fiction writer of the future, setting their stories in New Orleans or New Jersey shore towns anytime after these disasters, will have to take the impact of these disasters into consideration. In short, I needed to take both man-made and natural disasters into account when I set Annie Fuller’s boarding house in the 400 block of O’Farrell Street to make sure that the street existed in 1880, that it was an area of the city that would have had a boarding house, and that the physical environment would be the same (grade of the hill, etc).

So, how did I determine this was an appropriate place to put the house, particularly since I wanted the house to have been built in the 1850s when Annie Fuller’s aunt and uncle first settled in San Francisco? As Alleyn recommends, I started with historical maps. Sally Woodbridge’s San Francisco in Maps and Views, was most useful. O’Farrell Street did not exist in 1847, but it existed by 1852, as determined by a series of surveyor maps of the city streets, and it was named for the first surveyor and map-maker for the city, Jasper O’Farrell. In 1852, however, there were no buildings past the 100 block of O’Farrell.

Yet, by 1859, another map shows at least three structures existed on the south side of the 400 block, making it historically accurate for me to write that my protagonist’s house was built in the mid 1850s. In addition, since the block was so sparsely built up at the time the house would have been built, I was able to a create a house that was a little wider and in a different style than the narrow Italianate houses that would come to predominate in the 1870s and 1880. I used this fact to help me determine that the house would be constructed in the Greek revival style, which was briefly popular in the 1850s, and in my second book in the series, Uneasy Spirits, I used that fact to support the rather large back yard to the boarding house where a Halloween Party was held.

According to historical maps and histories of San Francisco, by 1879, when my first book opens, the streets north of Market and between Van Ness and the financial district to the east were built up with a variety of residential and commercial buildings representing a variety of architectural styles. For example, see Burchell’s The San Francisco Irish, 1848-1880. O’Farrell Street was no exception. Obviously one of the ways I could try to get a feel for what the block was like in 1880 would be to go look at it today,  hoping that some of the buildings are still standing.

However, this isn’t possible because in 1906, between the earthquake and the fires that came after, the 400 block of O’Farrell, along with most of the buildings east of Van Ness, were destroyed. After reading a detailed account of these fires, it looks like the 400 block may have been spared the first day after the earthquake, but the afternoon of the second day, April 19th, it was engulfed by blazes coming from all directions.  If I wanted to get a feel for what Annie’s boarding house would have looked like in 1879-1880, I was going to have to do more research.

Census records (which I had analyzed for my dissertation) gave me information about the size of homes and boarding houses in this part of the city in 1880, and newspaper classified ads not only confirmed that there were boarding houses in this residential area (including on O’Farrell Street), but also gave me a range of prices people were paying for room and board. This all helped me plan the size and number of servants and boarders that would be found in her house. Architectural histories of the city told me what styles predominated in the 1850s, when the boarding house on O’Farrell was supposedly built.  See for example, Kenneth Naverson’s West coast Victorians: A Nineteenth-Century Legacy. In addition, photographs of the city in the 1870s and early 1880s were another enormously helpful source, confirming what I had been reading about. For example, this picture shows how residential and commercial buildings of every shape and style could be found in houses in the same neighborhood in the 1870s. One of the most useful historical sites on the internet links historical photographs by time and place on a map of the city, so you can begin to see what the neighborhood looked like over time.

Since Annie Fuller’s Uncle Timothy, the man who built the house she inherited, was a successful businessman, he would have made improvements in the original 1850s house, including the installation of a bathroom on the second floor, upgrading the woodwork, and putting in new wallpaper and furnishings. I consulted books such as Victorian Interior Decoration: American Interiors 1830-1900,  In the Victorian Style, and a wonderfully illuminating book, Death in the Dining Room: And other Tales of Victorian Culture, to help me determine what Annie Fuller’s boarding house would have looked like by the time she inherited it in 1878.

While Susanne Alleyn cautions historical fiction authors about depending on historical movies as sources, a well-researched movie can provide a useful visual impression. For example, the 1993 movie based on Edith Warton’s Age of Innocence, and the companion book that compares stills from the movie to paintings of the period, were wonderful sources, although the movie portrayed much wealthier interiors than would have characterized Annie Fuller’s boarding house.

While houses from O’Farrell neighborhood don’t still exist, there are examples of Victorian architecture that did survive west of Van Ness that also helped. The Hass-Lilienthal House in San Francisco, built in 1886 and open for tours, has been a wonderful place to visit to for this purpose.

Finally there is simply the tool of my imagination. As I have written elsewhere, forty years ago I lived in a house built in the 1870s or 80s in Ohio, and I used my memories from that house and my own imagination to picture and then describe the interior layout of Annie Fuller’s boarding house.

Are my descriptions of the O’Farrell Street boarding house a hundred percent accurate Who knows. But if I have done my historical research sufficiently and used my imagination and writing skills effectively, I will make my readers believe in this house, picture it in their own imaginations, and want to revisit it, book after book. 

 

 

This is a reprint from M. Louisa Locke‘s blog.

Publetariat Omnibus Now Available: The Best of the First Four Years

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Believe it or not, Publetariat turns five years old this coming February. In light of this milestone, and the massive quantity of content here on the site, Publetariat has released a compilation ebook in Kindle format (which you don’t need a Kindle device to read, there’s a free Kindle reader app available for PC, Mac and mobile devices).

Publetariat Omnibus 2008 – 2012: The Most Popular and Practical Posts From The First Four Years of Publetariat is now available. This book includes 67 how-to, advice and commentary articles, written by Alan Baxter, Julian Block, Mark Coker, Melissa Conway, Nick Daws, Joel Friedlander, April L. Hamilton, Joseph C. Kunz Jr., Cheri Lasota, M. Louisa Locke, Shannon O’Neil, Joanna Penn, Virginia Ripple, Fay Risner, Mick Rooney, L.J. Sellers, Dana Lynn Smith, Bob Spear, Richard Sutton and Toni Tesori. Click through to view the full Table of Contents.

 

All the best stuff is here: excellent self-editing advice, a cover design and ad design walk-through, tax tips, business advice, advice for dealing with internet defamation, tips and how-to’s for author platform, social media and book promotion, copy-and-paste boilerplate copyright page examples, craft advice, publishing advice, a podcasting how-to, a little bit of fun, and lots more! 

 Think

1: Learning to Wait

2: Indie Author vs. Indie Entrepreneur

3: 7 Links To Encourage The Writer In You

4: How a Traditional Publisher Could Harm a Writer’s Career

5: Goal Setting For Writers

6: Musings On POD Publishers And The Music Business

7: Managing Expectations: Patience and Perspective in Indie Publishing

8: The Formula For Success And Life In The Way

 

Write

1: Outlining: Straightjacket Or Lifeline?

2. The Fear Factor

3: 11 Resources To Make Editing Your Novel Easier

4: Writing Detail: Finding The Right Balance

5: 6 Dialogue Traps To Avoid

6. Five Mistakes of New Fiction Writers

7. What Readers Hate

8: Seven Links To Understanding (And Finding) Beta Readers

9: How To Be Your Own Best Editor, Pt. 1

10: How To Be Your Own Best Editor, Pt. 2

11: How To Be Your Own Best Editor, Pt. 3

12: The Greengrocer’s Apostrophe, and Why You Shouldn’t Buy It!

13: Working With An Editor: Got My Edits Back. Now What?

14: The Power Of Strong Characterisation – Dexter Morgan

15: Why Writers Should Always “Give It A Week”

 

Design

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

2: Crafting a Cover, Part II…Making Relationships Work….

3: Crafting Your Back Cover — The Selling Continues….

4: Small Ads Can Be Beautiful And Work, Too!

5: When Redesigning Your Site Or Blog, Don’t Forget To Grandfather

6: Copyright Page Samples You Can Copy and Paste Into Your Book

 

Publish

1: Ebook Madness: Don’t Confuse Ebook Conversion With Ebook Formatting!

2: Peeling Away The Layers of Confusion

3: The Truth About CreateSpace’s Free ISBNs

4: Traditional Publishing And Self-Publishing Are Not Mutually Exclusive

5: Harlequin Horizons & Thomas Nelson West Bow Press: Good For These Publishers and Author Solutions, Inc., Bad For Indie Authors

6: How To Create A Podcast

 

Sell

1: Does Social Networking Really Sell Books?

2: Secrets of Ebook Marketing, Excerpt Trades & the Future of Enhanced Ebooks

3: Regional Bookseller Organizations

4: 7 Reasons You Need A Facebook Fan Page

5: Create Hard-Hitting Ads for Your Book…

6: How To Lose Fans And Alienate People

7: Are You Making These 7 Book Marketing Mistakes?

8: Preparing For A Book Sale

9: Update on Categories and Keywords: Why Authors Should Still Care

10: Build Your Author Platform Through Guest Posts

11: Do We Know The Author?

12: Help! My Book Isn’t Selling. 10 Questions You Need To Answer Honestly If You Want To Sell More Books.

13: Email Service Roundup

 

Business End

1: Significant Reader Trends

2: The 70 Per Cent Solution

3: Write For All You’re Worth

4: 10 Signs That You Are Not Ready To Self-Publish

5: Jump-Start Your Self-Publishing Adventure in 10 Steps

6: Avast Ye Lubbers, And Hear Ye Me Pirate Tale of Two Clicks!

7: The Future of Book Publishing: Risk Shifts To Author

8: Internet Defamation, Author Platform And You

9: Splurge & Save: How To Be A Thrifty Indie!

10: Writers’ and Other Freelancers’ Tax Questions Answered

11: Dress For Success: Just Don’t Expect The IRS To Help You Foot The Bill

12: KDP Select Free Promotion — Discoverability Experiment: One Month Later and Feeling Fine!

13: Simple Steps to a Successful KDP Select Free Promotion

14: Lessons Learned From 1 Year As A Fulltime Author Entrepreneur

 

Lighter Side Of The Writing Life

1: Indie Author: THE GAME

2: How To Write The Best Critique Ever

3: Top 10 Reasons Not To Be A Writer

4: An Author’s Field Guide To Internet Trolls

5: The Writer’s Night Before Christmas

 

 

So whether for yourself or a writing friend, Publetariat Omnibus 2008 – 2012: The Most Popular and Practical Posts From The First Four Years of Publetariat  is an invaluable resource you’ll find yourself (or your friend will find himself!) referring to again and again. 

 

Be Afraid

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This post, by JA Konrath, originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog on 10/11/12.

A few years ago I wrote a horror novel called AFRAID.

I tried to write the scariest book of all time, and lots of people seem to think it is. But it wasn’t an easy sell. In fact, it took my agent six months to find a buyer. After many, many rejections, we landed a two book paperback deal with Grand Central.

I got a $20k advance. Not enough to support my family, but enough to keep me in the business. I hoped that AFRAID would be given a wide distribution, quickly earn out its advance, and I’d be able to grow the Jack Kilborn brand (that’s the pen name I used). To promote AFRAID, I did a blog tour, appearing on 100 blogs in 31 days. I also did a  real book tour, signing at 206 bookstores in 12 states.

Happily, AFRAID managed to find an audience, and quickly earned out its advance. Between March 2009 and June 2012, AFRAID has earned me $75,882. Not too bad.

But all was not rosy.

Grand Central didn’t like my follow-up horror novel, LEVEL 6. They didn’t like the title, or the story, even though they published the first few chapters of it in the back of AFRAID, under a title I hated, TRAPPED.

So I rewrote TRAPPED, because even though I thought the book worked well, I needed the money.

They didn’t like the rewrite, either. I had fans expecting TRAPPED, but apparently they weren’t going to get what they wanted.

So I wrote another novel for Grand Central, ENDURANCE. This one they liked, but wanted changes. I told them no, and paid them back the advance I got for the second book.

Telling a major publisher off was pretty much unheard of at the time, and I believe I became the first author to reject a Big 6 deal in favor of self-pubbing. I published TRAPPED and ENDURANCE myself. Had Grand Central been smarter, they could have published TRAPPED and ENDURANCE and perhaps even more Kilborn novels.

So how’d I do on my own?

 

 

Read the rest of the post on A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.

The Only 2 Things Authors Ought to be Doing

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Part of running this blog is answering questions.

Many of these come from authors who’ve decided to dive into the waters of indie publishing. Spurred on by reading Joe Konrath‘s blog or by stories in the press about the contracts signed by e-book superstars, they are ready to take the leap.

(As an aside, this is already a pretty amazing paragraph I just wrote. Compared to the secrecy, dissembling, misinformation and prejudice that surrounded self-publishing during most of my career in the book trades, the turnaround is as startling as it has been rapid. Okay, back to the story.)

 

Now, authors are a lot like everyone else. Some are more technically-minded, others less so.

Some notice and appreciate typography, cover design, fine artwork and a beautiful page. Others either don’t notice or just don’t care about that stuff.

As my first boss, Harry Sandler, used to tell me, “That’s what makes horse races,” and I suppose he was right about that.

But There’s a Problem

When authors decide to self-publish, they naturally try to educate themselves, and that’s a very good thing.

They read blogs, buy books on self-publishing, download lots of free information on the topic, maybe take an online course.

Once they start to focus on actually creating a book, they get wrapped up in page margins, which fonts to use, who is the best print on demand vendor for their project, and myriad other details in the process.

Here’s my message for authors who think they have a book that will actually sell: don’t do it.

The Lure of the Process

Maybe it’s because much of the work of traditional publishers takes place behind a wall. It’s kind of the electrical and plumbing of book publishing.

Editors cut and shape manuscripts, designers create one version after another of the book’s cover until it’s right. Coders and typesetters and printers and binders work on creating the physical product that the book becomes.

Who knew what dark arts were being used to turn lumpy, awkward typescripts into beautiful, readable and enjoyable books?

In the belief that they now have to replace every one of the departments at the publishing house on their own, authors get stuck in the swamps of tutorials, courses, e-learning programs, webinars and action plans. How is anyone supposed to make sense of all this?

Of course no one person can be expert in all these fields. Even if you tried, you would be a novice in several fields at once. You know, the first books I designed didn’t look all that good. After all, they were the efforts of a novice, and we all know how those go, don’t we?

Where To Put Your Energy

Okay, here’s the follow-through. After talking to hundreds of authors, helping launch scores of indie books, sitting on panels and writing for several years on these topics, I’ve come to the conclusion that:

There are only 2 things authors ought to be doing: writing, and marketing that writing.

That sounds a lot like advice you might get if you’re a traditionally-published author, doesn’t it? But with a difference.

Just as the head of a traditional publishing house probably isn’t writing the press releases or setting up his blog syndication, you should focus where your work will have the biggest impact.

That means, unless you want to start a side career as a publicist or a blog technician, you should probably outsource all of that work. Everything. Why?

Because self-publishing does not mean “do-it-yourself publishing.” Self-publishing is not about:

  • picking fonts,
  • creating covers in Photoshop, or
  • learning Adobe InDesign.

No. Self-publishing is about controlling the process and the end result, it’s not about doing it all yourself.

Certainly you need to understand what an ISBN is and how to use it, but you might not need to get much more technical than that.

As long as you have a roadmap, you understand the process and where your books fit, and you have the ability to track and control your costs, you can run your publishing company by hiring the “technical” help you need.

This leaves you to write and market what you write. From everything I know, that’s going to give you the best chance for success. 

 

 

This is a reprint from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

Small Press And Non-Digital Survival

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It’s a fact of the publishing world that new ventures rise and old ones fail all the time. Running a small press is incredibly hard work, and there’s not much, if any, profit to be found. So many small presses are run for the love of it, with their owners also keeping a full time job and using their own money to keep the press afloat. If a small press can break even, financially, it’s considered a success.

 

Of course, there are those which do actually turn a profit, even if it’s not a full living wage, and those presses could go on to eventually become financially successful ventures. But it’s not easy and by no means definite. With the way the publishing world is currently changing, there are a lot of pitfalls along the way, just as there are a lot more opportunities out there. Never before has the phrase “Adapt or die” been more relevant.

So it was with sadness and some consternation that I read about the closure of Wet Ink the other day. From their announcement:

It is with great regret we have to announce that Wet Ink is closing down after seven years of publication; the current issue, number 27, is the last.

We were hoping for number 28, but it isn’t feasible.

Basically, the reasons are financial. Retail sales are weak, advertising and sponsorship are almost impossible to obtain and subscriptions levels haven’t been enough to make up for the shortfall in other areas. Despite all of these problems we are not interested in only going digital, as it isn’t for us a meaningful alternative.

Now I quite understand that some people are married to the physical artefact and not interested in reading ebooks. I understand that many publishers aren’t interested in learning new skills to engage with the digital marketplace. Even though those skills are easy to learn and implement, I get that some people aren’t interested. And, as a result, the publishing endeavours of those people will die because of it. What confused me more in the case of Wet Ink was this line:

Despite all of these problems we are not interested in only going digital, as it isn’t for us a meaningful alternative.

(The emphasis is my own.)

Only? Meaningful? The implication there is that survival is only likely with a purely digital product, which is simply not true. Digital production doesn’t mean only ebooks. With technology as it is today, it’s quite possible to build any publishing venture into a print and digital product without any compromise on quality and with far lower operating costs. Print On Demand technology is responsible for producing some truly beautiful books and magazines these days, without the high cost of physical print runs. Also, the difference between producing a print product and then adjusting that product for the ebook market is negligible in terms of time and effort.

A press that is producing a quality magazine with high running costs can switch to POD and ebook production quickly and easily and still produce their own favoured high end print artefact, as well as making ebook versions available, thereby maintaining any existing (print) subscriber base and potentially attracting a whole new set of electronic subscribers. That’s adapting to the modern era and giving yourself a chance at survival.

To suggest that it’s death or digital, as in suggesting that it’s a choice between losing money on beautiful books or giving in to those awful ebooks, is misinformed. It’s a perfect example of refusing to adapt, therefore dying.

I feel for the people behind Wet Ink, I really do. It sucks when something you love becomes unsustainable. I quite understand that there are people who don’t want to learn or embrace the new digital ways. But it’s a shame that a well-respected journal like Wet Ink has to die because digital isn’t seen as a “meaningful alternative”. What’s not meaningful about keeping a good thing alive?

Adapting to the modern environment is something people have always had to do. Every industry goes through many changes and old technologies die or change. Publishing, until recently, has been strangely insulated from change. But not any more. It’s very sad to see Wet Ink die, just as it’s sad to see any journal die, thus reducing the variety of publications out there.

I wish the people behind Wet Ink all the best. And I hope other publishers stay on top of this changing world and manage to adapt so their publications don’t die too. Still, even if they do, young turks will come along with new ideas, embrace the new technology and opportunity, and exciting new things will appear. Publishing isn’t dead or dying – far from it. It’s never been more vibrant. 

 

 

This is a reprint from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.

Saying “No” to NaNoWriMo

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This post, by Steven Ramirez, originally appeared on his blog.

As I write this there are thousands of other writers around the world, madly slaving away at their novel in honor of NaNoWriMo. For those of you who are not in the writing trade, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. Here is an excerpt from the “About” page on their site:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing on November 1. The goal is to write a 50,000-word (approximately 175-page) novel by 11:59:59 PM on November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

So that’s fifty thousand words in thirty days or 1,666.666666666667 words per day. Yeehaw! Well, guess what. I’m not having it.

That’s right. I refuse to participate. Why? It’s not because I don’t respect anyone who has the discipline to write nearly seventeen hundred words a day for thirty days straight. And it’s not because it wouldn’t be fun to see if I could create a story from start to finish in that time. And it’s certainly not because I wouldn’t be able to boast in some future tense that I created my bestselling masterpiece in thirty days. No, my reason is much more prosaic. I don’t have time.

It’s All About Priorities
I actually considered participating in this year’s contest. I’m a member of several writers groups which give out daily encouragement to those foolhardy enough to attempt this Herculean task. But you see the thing is, I am into the second draft of my zombie novel and at seventy-five thousand words it really isn’t long enough to begin with, which is a never-ending source of agita. In addition I have committed to posting regularly on this blog and am doing my best to market my published works via Twitter and Facebook. On top of that I regularly offer my time to other writers for anything from marketing and social media advice to written critiques of their works in progress.

Not that I’m complaining! I love what I do.

Looking at the problem practically, however, I would essentially have to put everything on hold for thirty days in order to participate in this contest. But if I want my book ready for publishing in the spring—or let’s face it, summer— I simply can’t afford to take a month off.

What Happens on December 1st?

 

Read the rest of the post on Steven Ramirez’ blog.

Am I a “Real” Author If I Only Publish Ebooks?

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This post, by Jim Edwards, originally appeared on Dvorah Lansky‘s Book Marketing Made Easy.

For some authors this is a real concern. They write books to gain credibility and readership as much or more than they do to make money. Being perceived by others as a “real” author is very important to them, and for good reason. However, the world of “books” has changed dramatically in the last decade. What made you a “real” author just a few short years ago may not represent what can actually make you a legitimate author today.

What is a book?

A book is a unique publication with a beginning, middle and end aimed at a specific target audience. Length can range anywhere from a few dozen pages to over a thousand. Readers can enjoy real books either in physical (print) format, or in electronic format on any of the hundreds-of-millions of ebook readers, iPads, and computers in the world. Real authors publish their work as ebooks and don’t even think twice about it.

What counts as a “published” author?

In the “old” days, a published author had a traditional publishing house and everything that went along with that (including tying up your rights for eternity, doing all your own marketing, and earning a pittance on each sale). NOW, a published author is someone who has their book for sale where people can find it and buy it (online or offline).

Amazon Changed The Game

I got my first taste that the world of publishing had changed in the late 1990’s when I was still selling real estate. I’d written and self-published a book about how to sell your house yourself, and was using it to help build my business. A home seller in the area told me “Selling Your Home Alone” wasn’t a real book, not because I didn’t have a publisher, but because she couldn’t find it for sale on Amazon!

 

Read the rest of the post on Book Marketing Made Easy.

More Thoughts On Libraries And Ebook Lending

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This post, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on The Shatzkin Files on 10/31/12.

On Thursday of this week, I’ll be at the Charleston Conference appearing in a conversation organized by Anthony Watkinson that includes me and Peter Brantley. Brantley and Watkinson both have extensive backgrounds in the library and academic worlds, which are the milieux of most attendees at this conference. I don’t. I am being brought in as a representative of the trade publishing community. Watkinson believes that “the changes in the consumer area will break through into academic publishing and librarianship.” I am not so sure of that.

 

I am imagining that what creates interest, and concern, among all librarians about trade publishing has been the well-publicized tentativeness of trade publishers to serve the public libraries with ebooks in the relaxed and unconcerned manner with which they have historically been happy to sell them printed books. Big publishers have expressed their discomfort with ebook library lending in a variety of ways. Macmillan and Simon & Schuster, up to this writing, have declined to make ebooks available to libraries at all. HarperCollins instituted a 26-loan limit for ebooks with libraries a little over a year ago. They received apparently widespread — certainly loud — criticism when they announced the policy, but it seems now to have been accepted. Penguin and Hachette delivered ebooks for lending and then stopped. Now both are putting toes back in the water with experiments. And Random House raised their prices substantially for ebooks delivered to libraries for lending.

So, six for six, the major publishers have struggled publicly to establish a policy for ebook availability in libraries.

The concern, as I’m sure my conversation-mate Peter Brantley will point out, extends to what rights libraries have when they obtain ebooks. I’ve expressed my belief before that all ebook transactions are actually use-licenses for a transfer of computer code, not “sales” in the sense that we buy physical books. When Random House declared the opposite in the last fortnight — that they believed they sold their ebooks to libraries — it only took Brantley a wee bit of investigation to find that Random House’s definition of “sale” didn’t line up with his.

Of course, his doesn’t line up with mine. I believe (he’ll correct me on stage in Charleston, if not in the comments section here, if I’m wrong) Brantley accepts the one-file-transferred, one-loan-at-a-time limitation that has been part of the standard terms for libraries since OverDrive pioneered this distribution over a decade ago. That control enabled ebook practices to imitate print practices (except for the “books wear out” part, which Harper was addressing with its cap on loans). Without it, one ebook file transfer would be all that a library — or worse, a library system — would need of any ebook to satisfy any level of demand. The acceptance on all sides of that limitation says clearly to me, without resort to any other information or logic, that there is an agreement — a license — that the library recipient of an ebook file accepts in order to obtain it.

People who spend a lot of time with libraries and library patrons are quite certain that the patrons who borrow books and ebooks often also buy books and ebooks. (Library Journal offers patron data that supports that idea.) Although library services are many-faceted and not primarily designed to serve as marketing arms for publishers, the libraries themselves see the ways in which they aid discovery by their patrons.

And they also see the patrons that couldn’t afford to buy the books or ebooks they borrow and therefore wouldn’t and couldn’t read them if they weren’t available in the library. Since these patrons become part of a book’s word-of-mouth network by virtue of being able to read it, it looks like this behavior by publishers is not only anti-poor and anti-public, but also counter to the interests of the author and the publisher itself. (In fact, most publishers acknowledge the importance of libraries to the viability and marketing of the midlist although that, until very recently, was adequately addressed with print alone.)

 

Read the rest of the post on The Shatzkin Files.

Non-Writing Spouses

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This post, by Kaitlin Ward, originally appeared on YA Highway.

If you’re here reading this blog, odds are high that writing is a major part of your life. For many of us, writing is a thing we do whenever possible, something that makes us happy, that we love, that is a massive, important part of our lives.

But writing might not be something that matters to the people we marry (or date). Every couple has at least some interests that don’t overlap, and that’s okay. It’s good, really. You need things that are just for you, whether it’s writing or something else. But sometimes it can be weird when your spouse just cannot fathom how writing could possibly be fun, and when you want them to be able to be part of this thing that matters so much to you. As a person whose spouse is completely uninterested in writing–and in fiction in general–I have navigated these waters, so I thought that I would share some things I have learned.


1. It’s okay that they don’t care about writing–or even reading. Really, it is. Unless they have an actual interest, there’s no reason to try to force them to understand the wonder that is writing. They have their own hobbies, and it doesn’t lessen their quality as a partner if they don’t care about active sentences and the beauty of a carefully crafted book.



2. You don’t have to tell them everything about your writing, but you should tell them something. I don’t remember exactly when I told my husband that writing was something I did a lot, but I know it was fairly early in our relationship. I couldn’t exactly hide the dozens of notebooks that I have always had in storage bins, drawers, and all over the floor. But the point is, even if they can’t relate to it, your significant other should know about the things that you love, especially a hobby as time consuming and (often) emotionally trying as writing.



3. They will listen if you need them to.

 

Read the rest of the post on YA Highway.

Indie Author vs. Indie Entrepreneur

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As you may have noticed, it’s been a LONG time since I’ve posted here. There are good reasons for that, like the fact that my former house was foreclosed in August and I had to move on short notice, plus some divorce-related challenges that I can’t really detail for you here. 

But I’ve been thinking about this post for weeks now, and I’m sorry to tell you that it won’t come as a welcome insight to everyone. Still, judging by the recent blog posts or inactivity of many of my online writer friends, I don’t think it will come as a huge surprise to very many of you, either.

I’ve said all along that in order to really make a go of earning a living as an indie author, one must approach it with all the verve, dedication and business acumen of an entrepreneur. I stand by that to this day, but here’s what’s new: maybe not all of us need to be, nor even want to be, indie entrepreneurs.

This new paradigm of indie author-entrepreneur (I’ll abbreviate it to IAE in this post) is totally different from what the idealized picture of being a Published Author was just a few short years ago. While the IAE has much greater control over her work and career, with that control comes greater responsibility, too.

You’ve got to SELL, SELL, SELL. You’ve got to PROMOTE, PROMOTE, PROMOTE. You’ve got to LEARN, LEARN, LEARN. You’ve also got to WRITE, WRITE, WRITE, because having a large published catalog is one of the commonalities among indie authors who are truly making a living at it. And once you get that momentum ball rolling, you can’t stop pushing it, EVER. Not if you want to continue selling, that is.

So making it as a fulltime author means working at it, fulltime. It also means coping with the same stresses and uncertainties as any entrepreneur: unpredictable income, all the administrative duties and headaches that come with running a small business, the constant pressure to produce and promote, et cetera.

A few years into it, many indie authors are stopping to reassess. The initial rush of excitement over being able to call our own shots and write our own tickets is over, and now we’re wallowing in the morning-after hangover realization that being a successful IAE means spending at least as much time on the business and promotion side of things as on writing. 

All those years we spent daydreaming about being a Published Author never included scenes of bookkeeping, coming up with promotional campaigns, buying our own ISBNs, boning up on ebook tech, strategizing over our books’ prices, and so on. We weren’t daydreaming about running a small business, but unless we’re willing to go back to the old ways of querying agents and praying for a mainstream publishing contract, that’s exactly what we have to do.

Those who are trying to transition to being a fulltime IAE while working a fulltime job to pay the bills are finding it very difficult, if not impossible, to manage. It was never easy finding the time to write, let alone query agents, enter contests and so on; being an IAE adds many, many more hours of work to the authorship equation.

I’ve concluded that for me, it’s just not worth it. 

I’m not willing to give up so much of my life to this effort, even if I knew for a certainty that I’d be a Joe Konrath at the end of it: making a comfortable living as a fulltime IAE. I’m not willing to trade years of stress and 80-100 hour workweeks to achieve that particular goal, then continue working 60-hour workweeks to maintain it. Considering that I was never in it for the money anyway, I guess this is not a difficult decision for me to make. For those who are struggling with it, consider this:

Being the next Konrath may not be realistically possible for most of us indies, anyway. Remember, Konrath went in with the advantage of already having a large back catalog of mainstream-published books (plus the royalties that go with them), and he was already a fulltime author before he went indie too. His journey to fulltime IAE was much shorter and less difficult than what the rest of us are facing.

At the outset, my goal for my novels was to get them published and know they’d reached an appreciative readership. My hope as an indie author overall was to see indie authorship go mainstream and become a respectable alternative to mainstream publishing within my lifetime. I’ve achieved the first goal, and seen my hopes for indie authorship realized far beyond my original notions, and much more quickly.

I have a ‘day job’ I love that’s steeped in books and media (Editor in Chief of Kindle Fire on Kindle Nation Daily). I’ve come out of a marriage of over 18 years, and I’m facing the happy prospect of building a new life for myself, exactly how I want it to be. I’m also thoroughly enjoying these regrettably short years of remaining time before my kids are grown and out on their own.

So while I’ll still write and publish, I’ll continue to run Publetariat, and I’ll remain active in the publishing and indie author communities, I’m not working toward the goal of becoming a fulltime IAE, and I guess I never really was. Anyone reading this who DOES want to be a successful IAE, you have my admiration and I support your choice completely. I’m certainly not making any kind of value judgment, or trying to imply there’s something better about my choice in this.

All I’m saying is, if you have decided, like me, that being a successful IAE isn’t really your dream after all, that’s okay. Choosing a different path does not make you a failure. Just be glad that as indie authors, we now have the flexibility to design our own career trajectories. As with pretty much everything else in indie authorship, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. 

 

This is a reprint from Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author Blog.

12 Holiday Book Promo Ideas

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The holiday season is upon us.

It’s only [a few days past] Halloween, but you and I both know that holiday displays are going up in stores as I type this.

Scratch that. I was just at Walmart, and half the store is already decorated!

While this time of year is crazypants for you (what the heck am I going to get Dad this year?), it’s also the busiest shopping season for your readers — and that makes it the perfect opportunity for a fun promotion.

And, when you start planning your special holiday promotions now, you  build up excitement before everyone else (except Walmart) begins their own jolly campaign.

While you could go with the old standbys of discounts and personalized copies, they’re…well, somewhat predictable. You know your Duolit gals — we like to have a bit more fun!

So, check out these 12 other holiday book promotion ideas (prettily tied up in a bow):

1. Package Deal

Buyers loooove packages. Less shopping, more gifts, right? Create fun packages including your paperback, such as:

– Discounts for buying multiple copies (2 for $15, 4 for $20)

– Bundling multiple books together (2-for-1, 3-for-2)

– Buy one, share one (one book for you, one for a friend!)

2. Post 12 Days of “Your Book”

This can be a blog series or a great theme for a guest posting spree! Celebrate the 12 Days of [Your Book] by showcasing gift ideas, recipes, flash fiction, or playlists centered around your book and its characters.

3. Create an Indie Authors Bundle

Time to grab those indie author friends and gather your books into a package — at an unbeatable price.

You’ll gain exposure to completely new fanbases, and give everyone’s readers lots of ideas for holiday gifts. Be sure to include a ‘gift guide’, so readers know exactly who on their shopping list would love each book!

4. Share Gift Basket Ideas

Make your book the featured item in a gift basket! Post creative suggestions on your website, so all your readers have to do is purchase your book and create the basket! Ideas include:

– Cozy Reader: hot chocolate/coffee/tea, a mug and a blanket.

– Rockin’ Out: albums or playlists to accompany your book.

– Yummy in My Tummy: A character’s favorite recipe and all the ingredients to make it.

– Book Fair: Your book along with others by your favorite authors.

5. Host a Recipe Contest

Everyone has a special family recipe they’d love to share! Get your readers into the holiday spirit by creating your own fanbase cookbook! Let each reader submit a recipe, then give away digital copies to celebrate the season.

6. Donate Proceeds to Charity

Give back during the holidays by donating a week of your book’s profits to charity. If you choose a smaller/local charity, be sure to let them know of your plans — they’ll want to let their donors/fans know of your good deed!

7. Write a Holiday Story

Borrow characters from your novel and craft a short story centered around the holidays. Sell it as an eBook or give it away as a “Holiday Card” to your fans!

8. Partner with Local Stores

The holidays are the perfect time of year to get offline and pound the pavement. While you’re doing your own shopping, ask local stores to consign copies of your book, featuring you as a local author (what a great gift idea, right?). Bonus points if they’ll host you for a signing!

Side note: Shannon’s book is being featured at a local mall kiosk starting this weekend, and she’ll be blogging about the experience on her website!

9. Decorate Your Emails

Y’all know how wild I am about keeping in touch with your fans via email! Don’t slack on this during the holidays — share your feelings about your holiday experience (loving them? feeling stressed?) and ask a question at the end of every email, such as:

– What gift do you think [character name] would love to receive for Christmas?

– Which menorah would suit [family name] the best?

– Which holiday song is your favorite? [Character name] looooves “White Christmas,” but I rock out to “Little Saint Nick.”

– If you use a graphical template, check out your mailing list provider’s holiday-themed options. Now that’s really decking the halls!

10. Offer Free Wrapping

This one depends on your ‘gift wrap’ skill level (read: this would not work for me),but offer free gift wrapping for books you sell from your website. Pick out (or create) cool gift wrap that goes with the “theme” of your book — and don’t forget agift tag, too!

Note: Make sure this is an option, since some peeps like to wrap their own gifts  😉

11. Give the Gift of Books

Prefer a simple promotion? Host a giveaway for Amazon or bookstore gift cards — everyone could use more books this time of year!

12. Close Up Shop

This flies in the face of reason, but, let’s face it, everybody needs a break. If you feel overwhelmed during the holidays, take some time off: announce that you’ll stop accepting sales from your website as of [a particular date].

If you go this route, close with a bang (plan one awesome promotion) and use the time wisely (reflect on what you’ve learned this year).

Talk Back

What promotions are you planning for the holiday season? Do you want to give one of the above a try? Would you rather ignore the whole thing? Let’s brainstorm (and share) in the comments!

 

This is a reprint from Duolit.

Varieties of the Publishing Experience

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I’m not sure how many of you—authors who took the leap, self-published your own books—know quite how heroic you are.

I bet a lot of you have already published books, but there are even more writers who are still thinking about it, reading about it, testing the waters.

And that’s a good idea. There’s no reason to rush into self-publishing, particularly if you think about what you’ll be taking on.

 

There are a lot of skills you’ll have to learn, new companies to research, service providers to vet. It really can be a lot of work, and it can test your own resources, the assets you bring to publishing, and your native abilities. Sometimes, even your character.

True, there are some people who are passionate about getting their work out there, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to see their book in print and up for sale. I admire that kind of dedication.

But I also know that not everyone feels that way. There are lots of people who would like to publish, who might even have a book finished or almost done. But they haven’t made the decision to move forward.

Making Choices Isn’t Always Easy

A very successful author called for a phone consult recently to talk about the exciting prospect of publishing her own books.

We talked about her newest book and her publishing background. Then I started to talk about the kinds of tasks she would confront as a self-publisher.

As the list went on, I could sense her drawing back. And I was right.

This author had absolutely no interest in running a publishing business, buying ISBNs, setting up printer accounts and all the other little details that go into establishing yourself as a publisher.

So why do it? Why make yourself miserable doing stuff you hate?

In the end I suggested she find someone within her extensive network of authors and entrepreneurs to partner with, someone who enjoyed that part of publishing as much as she enjoyed meeting people, speaking, and networking about her work.

Together, they might make a dynamite combination that could be the beginning of a great publishing business, since one was already a bestselling author.

I think the moral of this story, if there is one, is to be honest about what your capabilities are, what things you enjoy doing, and what you can barely tolerate.

You know, the stuff that always seems to slip to the bottom of your to-do list, that you procrastinate about because it’s just easier to avoid.

On the other hand, you can format your book by yourself even if it doesn’t give you a lot of joy. Why? Because you only have to do it once.

But if it’s one of those things that you just keep putting off, it’s not that hard to find someone to do it for you.

On the other hand, if you hate bookkeeping or tracking expenses or keeping receipts, maybe you shouldn’t be in business at all. Accurate recordkeeping is a prerequisite for most successful businesses, and if the idea of tracking costs makes you want to scream, look for a different solution or see if you can outsource that part of your tasks.

Sometimes you have to look for ways to free yourself up to do the things that only you can do. If those are things you love to do, you’ve got a winning proposition.

My takeaway today is that there are lots of ways to get into print and participate in the amazing possibilities in book publishing. Maybe for you it’s going to be getting focused training in the publishing process that will give you real self-confidence as a publisher.

Or you might be better off looking for help with the tasks you don’t want to tackle. As long as you don’t lose control of your own book, there are lots of solutions out there that can work for you.

I’m curious: how have you dealt with all the tasks you take on when you publish? Have you outsourced, or gotten training? Let me know in the comments [on the original post].

 

 

This is a reprint from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.