Ebooks

Articles specific to writing and publishing ebooks.

Apple / Agency 5 Antitrust Suit: Settlement News From the Trenches

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It was announced today that the U.S. Justice Department is filing its long-anticipated antitrust lawsuit against Apple, Inc. and the "Agency 5" publishers who are charged with colluding with Apple to fix prices on ebooks. Three of the five publishers immediately moved to settle out of court, though Penguin, Macmillan and Apple itself are digging in their heels and maintaining they are innocent of the charges.

Bloomberg News is reporting that when the U.S. Justice Department officially moved to file suit against Apple and the “Agency 5″, all but Apple and one of the publishers named in the suit negotiated a settlement. From Bloomberg:

The U.S. sued Apple Inc. (AAPL), Hachette SA, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster in New York district court, claiming the publishers colluded to fix eBook prices.

CBS Corp. (CBS)’s Simon & Schuster, Lagardère SCA’s Hachette Book Group and News Corp. (NWSA)’s HarperCollins settled their suits today, two people familiar with the cases said…

Apple and Macmillan, which have refused to engage in settlement talks with the Justice Department, deny they colluded to raise prices for digital books, according to people familiar with the matter. They will argue that pricing agreements between Apple and publishers enhanced competition in the e-book industry, which was dominated by Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)…

You can read the full Bloomberg report here. A report on Fox Business offers some settlement details:

If the settlement reached with the other three publishers is approved, retailers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble could once again set the price of books sold via their outlets. The settlement also requires the publishers to terminate their anticompetitive most-favored-nation agreements with Apple and other e-books retailers, Holder said.

“In addition, the companies will be prohibited for two years from placing constraints on retailers’ ability to offer discounts to consumers.  They will also be prohibited from conspiring or sharing competitively sensitive information with their competitors for five years,” the statement reads.

 
Over on Slate, no less than three news and opinion pieces have been posted in the wake of today’s news. In If Apple and Publishers Plotted, They Didn’t Need to, Reynolds Holding argues:
 

If Apple and a clutch of publishers plotted together, they didn’t need to. U.S. trustbusters say the iPad maker and five electronic book producers conspired to raise download prices. But the model they came up with makes sense even without collusion, giving the publishers perhaps their best chance of survival. 

The book business has changed radically in recent years. The old model of selling wholesale and letting retailers set prices worked fine in the world of printed books and bricks-and-mortar stores. But the arrival of digital tomes allowed Amazon, for one, to slice prices to $9.99 per e-book, providing relatively cheap content that helped make its Kindle e-reader gadgets popular. Prices like that ate into publishers’ profit margins.

But Holding is mistaken. Amazon’s pre-Agency deal with publishers had Amazon paying publishers’ their usual wholesale cut, which was based on publishers’ suggested retail prices. When Amazon slashed prices on mainstream bestselling Kindle books to $9.99 or less, it meant no less profit for publishers, but that Amazon had to take a loss on almost every one of those sales. Amazon is no stranger to the loss-leader strategy of obtaining market dominance however, so it was prepared to take the hit—for years, if need be.
 
This is partly why consumers and consumer watchdogs have been crying, "Foul!" over the claims of publishers and their supporters that Amazon’s pre-Agency ability to set its own pricing was in some way harming the publishers.
 
 
 

Taking Initiative

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This post, by Zoe Winters, originally appeared on her blog on 4/7/12.

I’ve gotten lax in a lot of ways. I used to be all over the internet. Of course a lot of that was arguing which was of only questionable benefit. Annoying potential readers to death seems like a less than awesome business plan. I’m just saying.

Now it seems like I’ve gone too far in the opposite direction. There was a time when I would be the squeaky wheel because I HAD to be or nobody would know I existed or read my books. It’s really easy for somebody to say: “God, that person self-promotes all the time, it’s so annoying”, but if we don’t have “somebody else” doing it for us, or some big advertising budget or front table space at Barnes and Noble, how are readers going to find out about our books?

Is an angel going to descend to tell them about it? Will somebody famous stumble upon the book and then tweet it to their five million followers? We all hope for magic and luck like that but the reality is that writers who want to be read, tell people about their work. I do hope some big lucky break happens for me at some point (like major high sales rankings where suddenly everybody is buying my book for themselves, their friends, and their neighbor’s abnormally smart dog), but… while I’m waiting for some magic to happen I’m going to publish a bunch of books… and talk about those books, and try to figure out the best way to engage without being off-putting.

One of the difficult things with mediums like Twitter and Facebook is… people are on at all different times, so if I tweet something 5 times in one day, someone who is on Twitter all the time and doesn’t follow a ton of people might be “annoyed” because they saw the tweet five times. But what about all the followers who only see it ONE time because they aren’t on Twitter all the time, they follow a bunch of people, and they don’t read every single tweet that happened while they were away?

So it’s a balancing act. When I say something 5 times, it’s not to tell the same person five times. I figure if you want whatever I’m offering you will go get it. And if you don’t, you won’t. I’m just trying to reach different people who are on at different times. My hypno-direct-to-mind beam is only in the prototype phase so… these other methods of communicating with you will just have to do. :P

 

Read the rest of the post on Zoe Winters’ blog.

The Last Victim – A New Novel About the Consequences of Obsession, Lies, and Deception

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Novel

Plot summary: From the first moment Sophie Rothman lies to her husband about the child she is carrying, the lives of everyone in her family are changed forever.

Driven by a twisted obsession to accumulate money for its own sake, Sophie forces her family to live beneath their means and drives her husband, Harry, away. During his absence, Sophie’s loneliness leads her into an illicit affair and an unwanted pregnancy. When her lover leaves, Sophie begs Harry to return and then deceives him into believing the child she’s carrying is his. If Sophie keeps her secret, no one will be hurt. Or will they? It’s a question Sophie will have to answer one day.

Jeanie, the product of Sophie’s affair, grows into a beautiful, strong-willed woman who defies her mother at every turn and becomes an archaeologist. Destiny takes Jeanie to Masada—one of the greatest archaeological digs of all time—where she falls in love with David. When Jeanie announces her plans to marry, Sophie is forced to reveal her long-guarded secret and forbid the marriage.

The events set in motion by Sophie’s revelation catapult Jeanie to a near breakdown and tear the Rothman family apart. On Jeanie’s final journey, she draws on all her courage to confront her mother and break the bonds that bind and sometimes destroy.

The Last Victim is a riveting saga about the consequences of obsession, lies and deception. It is a story spanning three decades—from the streets of Brooklyn, New York in the 1940s to the streets of Jerusalem and the harsh desert sands of Masada in the 1960s. Here is a multi-layered portrait of Jewish-American life during a turbulent time in America, and the deep connection to Israel’s fight to survive in the Middle East. Against this rich historical background, powerful characters clash in conflict after conflict as they struggle to fulfill their dreams.

Get the paperback novel, “The Last Victim,” for only $14.95
Get the E-Book novel, “The Last Victim,” for only $9.95

* The E-Book is available in 3 file formats – (PDF, EPUB, MOBI) and readable on all devices. You get all 3 files for $9.95.

* The E-book is also available for purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Goodreads.

*Visit www.elainebossik.com for more information.

Author

ELAINE BOSSIK had three careers: as magazine editor, medical writer and teacher in the New York City school system. She received BA and MS degrees from Brooklyn College (City University of New York), and now serves as a staff columnist for Scriptologist.com, writing how-to articles for aspiring screenwriters under the name of Elaine Radford. 

While her professional experience helped shape her writing, her fascination with people—their motivations and the everyday dramas they create—is the inspiration for her fiction. She believes that really great stories begin and end with provocative characters.

Growing up in Brooklyn, NY and as a young adult traveling in Israel, she found the rich details for the events that take place in this novel.

KDP Select's Effect on a Reader Who Writes

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This post, by Dan H. Kind, originally appeared on his Read Write Myth Dharma blog on 3/2/12.

 Yeah, sure, I’m a writer. But before that I was a reader, which I still am to this day. It’s my hobby. It’s my escape. It’s my Water of Life. And I wanted to tell you what KDP Select has done for me as a lifelong lover of stories told through the written word.

Two months ago my Kindle Touch was nice and light, filled with stuff I’d bought with hard-earned cash and really, really wanted to read, even if I paid a mere dollar for it. These days it’s a bloated, word-filled beast I drag around the house with me like an old wooden leg.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve read and enjoyed some of the free offerings I’ve picked up recently, and gone and purchased other stuff by that author (Ann Charles, notably, on the list below, who I probably wouldn’t have picked up otherwise, cozy mysteries not usually being my thing, but the book was fun and well-written). Those with one book . . . give me more! And I’ll buy it next time (which is what people did a distant few months ago to get books). I will gladly pay for a book from an author I know will entertain me for a few hours. I don’t think this recent glut of free has changed that attitude in many readers.

Below are the books I’ve downloaded onto my Kindle since January 1st. The books in boldface I purchased; the books with links I’ve read. I only download stuff that I’m pretty damn sure I’ll like, even if it’s free.

If my count is correct, [my chart contains] 105 total downloads since January 1st.

22 paid, 83 free.

Of the 22 paid, I’ve so far read 7, just started on the 8th.

Of the 83 free, I’ve read 10—and 5 of those are short stories by the same author, Christian Cantrell, which I very much enjoyed and whose new offerings I will be purchasing from now on.

And the percentage winner is . . . the paid stuff, hands-down.

It used to be at least fairly easy to pick out what I’d be reading next. Now, I’m drowning in a sea of free. And I’m a bibliophile. I usually devour a novel in a day or three. Or four. Or seven. It all depends. But it might take me years to get to some of this stuff, especially since there are many authors, both established and indie, who if they come out with a new book I’ve gotta dash out as soon as payday hits and buy it and read it and funk everything else that’s been sitting on the bookshelf, physical or digital, for however long.

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes the chart listing all of Kind’s downloaded ebooks, free and purchased, since January 1st, on Read Write Myth Dharma.

The Hunger Games, Hype and Adults Reading YA

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Like so many people, I’ve just read The Hunger Games. I read it because I wanted to know what all the hype was about. The books on their own were a big success, then big budget movie moguls took them on and the production company engaged in a massive online hype campaign. Also, a friend suggested I read them, as he thought they were pretty good. So I did. Meh.

[Publetariat Editor’s note: strong language after the jump]

I probably won’t go to see the movie, but, in case I did, I wanted to read the book first. The book is always better than the film, after all. And so many people have waxed lyrical about The Hunger Games, I thought it must be worth a try. In all honesty, I was underwhelmed at first. The book drags interminably with an unnecessary amount of worldbuilding and backstory. It’s called The Hunger Games, for fuck’s sake – the games really should start before I’m halfway through the book. They do, just, at around the 40% mark or so, but that’s way too late. I was moaning online about it and one person said, and I paraphrase, “Yeah, I read that book. I’m sure there’s a pretty good novella in there somewhere.”

That was a fairly accurate comment. However, when the games got underway, and kids were running around trying to survive and kill each other, my interest was hooked. In case you’re wondering what the hell I’m on about, The Hunger Games is the story of a post-apocalyptic kind of future where the masses are entertained every year with one boy and one girl from each of twelve districts dumped into a wilderness arena where they have to hunt and kill each other for televisual shits and giggles. There can be only one and so on. Also, if you haven’t heard about The Hunger Games, how’s that rock you’re living under?

So, as I said, the games themselves were good. It was interesting stuff, exciting in its own way and I finally found myself enjoying the story. I could understand what some of the fuss was about. It wasn’t brilliant, certainly not worth the level of hype, but it was pretty good. That first 40% of the book, however, should really have been, at most, 10%. The whole thing would have been much better. And as a book for young adults, it doesn’t need to be a huge tome.

So I could kind of understand where the affection for the books came from. Whether I’ll bother with parts two and three remains to be seen. While I ended up enjoying the last half of the book on a very superficial level, it didn’t take away from the many, many flaws. The vast majority of the worldbuilding and the concepts on which the entire story is built are very contrived. There’s a lot of forced convenience in the telling. But this is okay when you’re just having a casual read. It’s not claiming to be anything else.

The dicussion on Facebook also raised another point, when someone said, essentially, “You’re reading a book for children, so you should be bored”.

I was astounded at that. There’s a vast chasm between writing/storytelling that is simpler and less sophisticated than adult fiction and writing/storytelling that is boring. Kids get bored too. To suggest a book for teens should bore an adult is asinine. It would bore a child too. A story aimed at a teen/YA audience certainly won’t have the depth and complexity of an adult novel, but should still be an engaging and entertaining story. When you read something like Harry Potter or His Dark Materials, there’s nothing boring about those. Except the last Harry Potter book, which should have been called Harry Potter And The Interminable Emo Camping*. Seriously, that book should have been half the size and it would have been great. But that’s a whole other rant.

The Harry Potter stories and the Dark Materials books are not boring, even though they’re aimed at a YA audience. They’re interesting and well-paced throughout, and they deal with subjects which challenge the thinking of their YA audience, just like YA fiction should. We should never write down to young people – they’re smarter than you might think. The Hunger Games deals with themes which should challenge YA readers too – kids as young as 12 running around killing other kids as young as 12 for sport, for instance. The whole premise of the book seems well outside a YA purview. Perhaps that very fact alone is what’s made The Hunger Games so popular. And that story, contrived and flawed though it may be, isn’t boring. The first 40% of the book is boring, however, and it shouldn’t be. To suggest we ought to find it boring as adults reading YA is ridiculous.

It should simply have been a shorter book, with all that worldbuilding and backstory tightened right up so that we got into the excitement of the Games themselves sooner. At least, that’s my opinion. And you all know how much I like to share an opinion.

SPOILER AHEAD!

One more thing before I go – I have one MAJOR issue with this story. I’ve saved this for the end, because it’s a real spoiler if you haven’t read the book. So, if you want to read it, maybe you should skip this last bit. I mean, the whole story is utterly predictable from the outset. That’s the lack of sophistication I was talking about earlier, which doesn’t have to be boring in a well-written story. But…

We know damn well that Katniss is going to survive. We know almost certainly that Peeta will survive too, somehow, or die doing something to ensure Katniss survives. From the very opening scenes, we know how this thing is going to play out, but we’re happy to go along for the ride.

There are several problems with it, which I really can’t be bothered to go into now any more than I have already and, in truth, it doesn’t matter. I still enjoyed the book and I’m glad it’s popular and getting young people reading. Top work.

But, right towards the end, there’s a surprise twist thrown in that’s just fucking mental. What the holy god-dancing shit is that thing with the dead tributes all coming back as werewolves? Or something. Seriously, what the shit, Suzanne Collins? All these kids had been killed in various ways. Many of them we don’t know how they died, but they did. Then they’re suddenly all werewolves come out to screw around with the final battle between our heroes and the one surviving tribute. It’s utterly bizarre. Why are they werewolves? How are they werewolves? What the fuck is the point in suddenly throwing that in at the end?

Sure, if you wanted some extra excitement, throw in some random attacker to mess with the balance of things. Even a pack of genetically modified wolves or something. But why the dead kids from before? Dead, remember? No longer freaking living.

And, just as a matter of detail, if Katniss, Peeta and Cato hadn’t managed to get onto the Cornucopia and have their last little scrap up there, that pack of wolfchildren would have torn all three of them to pieces and there would have been no victor, so letting those werekids out at all makes no sense.

Anyway, I’ll stop ranting now.

* I can’t take credit for that title. I can’t remember where I heard it, but it’s perfect.

 

 

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

A Feast Of Data To Interpret In New Pew Survey Of Book Readers About Ebooks

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This post, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on his The Shatzkin Files blog on 4/5/12.

There are a few gems to interpret in the just-released Pew survey of ebook reading.

1. We are getting very close to half (they report 43%) of Americans 16 and older saying they have read a book or other long-form content in digital format in the past year. As other data in the survey suggest, this number is still rising rapidly.

This number is an index of how much of the reading public can be reached without print. Since elsewhere in the data it is reported that only 78% of the people 16 and over have read a book in any format in the past 12 months, it appears that more than half the book readers can be reached without print already.

2. Pew tracked some startling growth around Christmas. Just before the holiday, 17% of Americans 18 and over (sometimes they seem to measure “adult” from age 16, sometimes from age 18) had read an ebook in the previous 12 months. But right after the holiday, that number had jumped to 21%. Remembering that 22% of the population hadn’t read a book at all in the past 12 months, that means that about 27% of book readers report having read an ebook recently. And that number jumped nearly 25% in a month!

3. One of the most startling data points reported is that both tablet ownership and ereader ownership had just about doubled over Christmas, from 10% in mid-December to 19% in mid-January in both cases. With overlap accounted for, Pew estimates that 28% of Americans 18 and over own one or both.

Device ownership is still climbing fast, although it is likely that the overlap, a single person owning both devices, grew faster over this Christmas than it had before. When people get a second device, a replacement or a complementary device, they probably don’t indulge in the same buying spurt as they do when they get their first device. The data summary I saw didn’t correlate the rise in ownership of each of the two devices with the rise in ownership of either of the two devices, which limits our ability to forecast how much content growth we should see following the increase in device penetration.

 

Read the rest of the post on The Shatzkin Files.

Twitter 10,000

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This post, by Joel Friedlander, originally appeared on The Book Designer on 3/26/12.

When I checked my Twitter account this morning (@JFBookman) I had 9,951 followers. Over the next day or two I expect this number to click over, like the odometer in your car, to 10,000. This comes with a variety of responses:

  • Surprise: What took so long?
  • Incredulity: You mean you really like me?
  • Malaise: Does anyone care?
  • Humility: That’s a lot of people to answer to!

Does having a lot of people listening influence me? A little bit, but I’ve been pretty focused on curating my Twitter stream, keeping it on the topics I write about. In that sense, I do think a lot about readers, and what’s most useful that I can provide.

Maybe because of that care, Twitter is my most important social media investment, the place I enjoy spending time and where I’ve put in the most work to establish a robust “outpost,” made the most new friends, created the most connections.

But here’s what’s really interesting to me. It took me two years of almost daily work to reach this milestone. Does this seem like a good thing? You could get 10,000 Twitter followers today:

twitter followers

So what’s the difference? Why spend all that time and energy if you could just spend a couple of hundred dollars and be done with it?

The Difference, Explained

What makes a community of interest? That’s the question that has guided me on Twitter over the last couple of years.

Sure, I enjoy Facebook once in a while, there’s no better way to find that cute girl who sat behind you in American History class all those years ago. That’s fun.

But for me at least, it doesn’t equate to business, and there’s no community of interest in that kind of connection.

You can also find community on Google+, a service that allows for longer text and lots of other goodies, but that isn’t where I’ve spent my time.

Twitter seems to attract certain types. As a long-time word buff and writer, the 140-character limit to your posts on Twitter seemed more like a delightful challenge than a restriction. It reminded me of the strict rules certain kinds of poetry require and the fun of working your words into a form.

A Little History, Please

Although I signed up for Twitter early in 2009, I never used my account until later that year. The stimulus was starting my blog in the fall of that year.

At the time, the people who had massive followings amazed me. How did they get all those people to listen to what they had to say?

Now, celebrities of all kinds are on Twitter, and tweets appear every day on cable news shows and at presidential debates. Twitter continues to make news as the communication medium of choice for social upheavals as well as for companies who want to use social media to influence buyers’ behavior.

But for bloggers (and authors who blog), Twitter has two blockbuster attributes that make it a desirable destination:

  1. There’s no better way to connect to influencers and thought leaders in your niche, whatever it is
  2. There’s no easier way to find that community of interest that can multiply your communication efforts

How to Find 10,000 People Who Want to Follow You

Compared to the really big Twitter followings, 10,000 isn’t much. Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian 14,214,322 followers) probably gains or loses 10,000 followers in a typical day.

In book publishing, Jane Friedman (@JaneFriedman 149,080 followers) towers over most of us. Michael Hyatt, blogger and head of Thomas Nelson, is doing well (@MichaelHyatt 115,988).

In the indie publishing niche, my pal Joanna Penn (@TheCreativePenn) makes me look rather mouselike, with her 25,721 followers.

But here’s the thing: 10,000 is a heck of a lot of people. The biggest group I’ve ever spoken live to was about 400 people, and that filled a pretty good-sized room.

So, how do you get all those followers? Here’s my simple 3-step formula:

  1. Find people who are interested in the same topics you’re passionate about
  2. Follow those people
  3. Post useful, amusing or educational content with links to resources, mostly not your own

That’s not too hard, is it? Just rinse and repeat for a couple of years.

This is slow, by the way, unless you’re willing to spend hours at it each day. Most of us have other things to do.

A lot of this regular day-to-day posting can be handled through nifty software like HootSuite, which allows you to schedule a bunch of posts at one time that will then be delivered at specific times.

What I like about this slow growth is this: I know that virtually every follower on my list is involved in writing, publishing, design or a related field. That’s what I was looking for when I began the search for that community of interest.

And it works! Twitter is the second-largest source of traffic to my blog, and I consider the people behind all those accounts part of the community here.

In the End, Gratitude

More than anything else, I’m left with a feeling of gratitude to all the people who’ve helped me along the way. People who re-tweeted my posts when I first got started, people who posted great content themselves that was ready to pass along to others.

And the people who served as models of how to engage on social media in general, and Twitter specifically. You can’t help but learn when you follow great people, the ones who care about helping other people to succeed.

And also to my assistant, Shelley Sturgeon of E-Vantage Business Services, who attends to all those things I seem to forget about.

Looking Forward

When authors ask about diving into social media, I always tell them that they’ll be most successful with the service that they enjoy the most.

Long term, you’ve got to be getting something more from a social media site than drudgery. Try them all to find the one that feels most comfortable to you.

I believe Twitter will eventually grow to “utility” status, like gas, electricity or telephone service. It’s such a neutral communication medium that it can be used in lots of different ways.

Apple seemed to be moving in the same direction since integrating Twitter functions into the operating system for its mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad.

Maybe someday soon we’ll all be connected to each other seamlessly, and everyone will have their “@” address issued at birth. But by then, the whole concept of “followers” will have faded into history.

Since that day isn’t here quite yet, I’m going to go raise a glass and toast the power of social media. I think there’s no place else you can see so clearly the wisdom of marketer and motivational guru, Zig Zigler:

“You can have everything in life that you want if you just give enough other people what they want.”

 

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

Prices For Ebooks On Kindle Could Tumble As Deal In Apple Book Price-Fixing Case Is Just 'Weeks Away'

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This article, by Rob Waugh, originally appeared on The Mail on 4/2/12.

  • Justice Department could halt price deal which prevented Amazon discounting
  • Deal between Apple and five publishers
  • Ebook prices risen up to 50% in last two years

Book prices on Amazon’s Kindle and other e-readers could tumble after a deal in a major price-fixing case is said to be ‘close’.

America’s Justice Department is in the closing stages of a deal with Apple and major publishers.

The deal would call a halt to a deal struck by Apple which prevented publishers selling books via Amazon and other online stores at lower prices than via Apple’s iTunes Store.

The deal has seen prices for eBooks artificially inflated so that many cost the same – or even more than – their paper counterparts.

Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, for example, has been priced higher than the paper edition on ebook stores.

The deal could mean that pricing control over eBooks shifts from publishers to retailers such as Amazon, which would then be able to discount and offer sale prices to its consumers.

The news came in a Reuters report quoting unnamed sources.

‘It would be a positive for Amazon because the company’s greatest strength is as a high-volume, low-price retailer and the wholesale model plays into that,’ said Jim Friedland, an analyst at Cowen & Co.  

It’s unclear what sort of knock-on effect this deal would have for European consumers. The European Commission is already investigating alleged price-fixing in the eBook market.

The Justice Department is seeking to unravel agreements Apple secured from five publishers about two years ago, as the Silicon Valley company was launching its iPad and was seeking to break up Amazon’s dominance in the digital book market.

The publishers are Simon & Schuster Penguin Group, Macmillan, a unit of and HarperCollins.

 

Read the rest of the article on The Mail.

Does Agency Pricing Lead to Higher Book Prices?

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This post, by Smashwords founder Mark Coker, originally appeared on the Smashwords blog on 3/28/12. In it, Coker rebuts the widely-held contention that agency pricing drives up ebook prices.

According to a March 9 story in the Wall Street Journal, The U.S. Department of Justice is considering suing Apple and five large US publishers for allegedly colluding to raise the price of ebooks.

At the heart of the issue, I suspect, is concern over the agency pricing model. Agency pricing allows the publisher (or the indie author) to set the retail price of their book.

Although Smashwords is not a party to this potential lawsuit, I felt it was important that the DoJ investigators hear the Smashwords side of the story, because any decisions they make could have significant ramifications for our 40,000 authors and publishers, and for our retailers and customers.

Yesterday I had an hour-long conference call with the DoJ. My goal was to express why I think it’s critically important that the DoJ not take any actions to weaken or dismantle agency pricing for ebooks.

Even before the DoJ investigation, I understood that detractors of the agency model believed that agency would lead to higher prices for consumers.

Ever since we adopted the agency model, however, I had faith that in a free market ecosystem where the supply of product (ebooks) exceeds the demand, that suppliers (authors and publishers) would use price as a competitive tool, and this would naturally lead to lower prices.

I preparation for the DoJ call, I decided to dig up the data to prove whether my pie-in-the-sky supply-and-demand hunch was correct or incorrect. I asked Henry on our engineering team to sift through our log files to reconstruct as much pricing data as possible regarding our books at the Apple iBookstore.

We shared hard data with the DoJ yesterday that we’ve never shared with anyone. I’ll share this data with you now.

As background, Smashwords is one of several authorized aggregators supplying ebooks to the Apple iBookstore. On day one of the iPad’s launch, we had about 2,200 books in the iBookstore, and our catalog there has grown steadily ever since.

Henry was able to assemble a complete data set going back to October 2010. We created once-a-month snapshots of the Smashwords catalog at the Apple iBookstore between October 2010 and March 2012. Our data captures the average price of our titles in the iBookstore, and the number of titles listed.

I’m sharing four data sets. The first data set, …at left, shows the number of Smashwords titles for sale in the Apple iBookstore. As you can see, the numbers have grown steadily. I’m not aware of any other agency pricing study that worked against such a large body of data.

 

Read the rest of the post on the Smashwords blog.

INTERVIEW: Seth Godin on Libraries, Literary Agents and the Future of Book Publishing as We Know It

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This piece, by Jeff Rivera, originally appeared on the Digital Book World site on 3/4/12.

He is arguably one of the most successful bloggers and thought-leaders of our time. When Seth Godin speaks, people sit up and listen, even if they’re the CEO of one of the Big 6 publishers. He raised eyebrows with his decision to leave the traditional book publishing industry in order to form his own entity called The Domino Project. But when he made the decision to move on after 12 bestsellers, tongues wagged.

Had his precious experiment failed or knowing Godin, was something greater in store? To find out, I asked Godin about this as well as his thoughts on not only the future of the book publishing industry as we know it but also why he calls some book publishers’ decision to pull the plug on libraries’ access to eBooks “silly”. 

Rivera: Your latest book, Stop Stealing Dreams deals with the educational system in America. If you were to have a sit down with the Secretary of Education, what would you say?

What’s school for?

Instead of overhauling our tactics to get better at delivering what school used to deliver, can we have an honest discussion about what we’re trying to create?

And if you don’t believe the entire system can be rebuilt to deliver on these goals, how can we blow it up into little bits in a way that causes the quickest reinvention?

 

Rivera: You recently closed The Domino Project. If you could do it all over again, what would you have done differently?

You never close a book project, in that the books remain on sale, hopefully forever. We did 12 books, had 12 bestsellers, brought a dozen big ideas to more than a million people–I’m not sure I’d change any of that.

The book industry is going through a massive change, and the reason I called it a project, not ‘the answer’, is because this is a step along the way in a pretty long journey.

 

Rivera: If The Domino Project wasn’t a “failure”, what were your main reasons for “transitioning” it and refocusing on other things?

Godin: Of course it was a project, not a forever gig. Deep down, I’m a writer, not a publisher, and as I saw the shifts in the way people are consuming media, I came to the conclusion that my authors would be better off being even more directly engaged with their readers than I could deliver for them. We were 12 for 12, but that’s a big promise to make to the next round of authors and I just didn’t want to jump through those hoops to deliver on it.

 

Rivera: Forrester recently reported that they foresee a drastic drop in book print sales by 2013. What do you envision the book publishing industry looking like in 3-5 years?

 

Read the rest of the piece on Digital Book World.

What Book Publishers Should Learn From Harry Potter

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This post, by Mathew Ingram, originally appeared on GigaOm on 3/27/12.

After months of anticipation, the e-book versions of author J.K. Rowling’s phenomenally successful Harry Potter series are now available through Rowling’s Pottermore online unit, and as my PaidContent colleague Laura Owen has noted in her post on the launch, Rowling has chosen to do a number of interesting things with her e-books, including releasing them without digital-rights management restrictions. Obviously, the success of the Potter series has given Rowling the ability to effectively dictate terms to just about anyone, even a powerhouse like Amazon, but there are still lessons that other book publishers should take from what she is doing.

 

One of the encouraging things about the Pottermore launch is that the books will be available on virtually every platform simultaneously, including the Sony Reader, the Nook from Barnes & Noble, the Kindle and Google’s e-book service (which is part of Google Play). And in keeping with Pottermore’s status as a standalone digital bookstore in its own right, users will be able to buy the books from the Rowling site and then send them to whichever platform they wish. As Laura points out, even Amazon has bowed to the power of the series and done what would previously have seemed unthinkable: it sends users who come to the titles on Amazon to Pottermore to finish the transaction.

As we’ve pointed out before at GigaOM, one of the problems for users when it comes to the e-book landscape is the clash between competing platforms — with Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble all trying to create their own walled gardens, where users can only access titles from publishers that have deals with the platform they happen to be using. Amazon and Apple in particular both seem to see books and other media content primarily as loss leaders that can help them lock users into their proprietary platforms, and recent skirmishes have seen Apple reject books that have links to Amazon’s store, and Barnes & Noble block Amazon titles from its store.

 

Read the rest of the post on GigaOm.

Why the Harry Potter E-books Are and Aren't a Really Big Deal

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This post, by Nathan Bransford, originally appeared on his site on 3/29/12.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the last tome of a hardcover that I lugged around on vacation. It took up seemingly half my suitcase and weighed a ton, but because it wasn’t available in e-book form and because I don’t believe in piracy, I carried that thing across the country.

Now I’m thrilled to have the entire Harry Potter series resting weightlessly within my iPad.

As you have likely heard, Harry Potter is available in e-book form. And not just in e-book form, but available only through Pottermore, the digital extension of the Harry Potter brand. No other e-book vendor has it for sale, including the e-book behemoths like Amazon, B&N and iBooks. And the e-books are published by Rowling herself.

Yeah, wow.

Why This is a Big Deal

J.K. Rowling just did an entire end-around on the entire publishing world in many, many ways.

Most of the focus has been on how these are for sale only from the author, and rightly so. Even Amazon is playing ball, listing the books for sale but referring people to Pottermore to make the purchase.

And the manner in which these e-books are being distributed is revolutionary.  They’re being sold without DRM but with digital watermarks to guard against piracy. Each purchaser has 8 digital copies they can download in various formats, and it’s very easy to convert to the most popular devices. I had the e-books on my iPad within minutes.

The approach to DRM is, ironically enough, extremely similar to my earlier post on what good a good approach to DRM would look like – you can convert the files to any device and you have a sufficient number of copies for yourself and others… Only there’s no DRM. Ha! 10 points for Gryffindor.

So let’s talk about this. No publisher. The author as e-distributor. No DRM.

 

Read the rest of the post on Nathan Bransford‘s site.

The Economics of [Self-Published] e-Books

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This post, by Dan Arnzen, originally appeared on Writely Done on 12/2/11.

“The times they are a-changin’ [sic]” – Bob Dylan

A quick Google search on “economics of ebooks” will result in a mix of articles either espousing gloom and doom for the book publishing industry, or discussing the unfairness of e-book pricing. Most of the discussion focuses on comparing e-books to printed books. This is not a valid comparison because the economics are completely different.

 The music industry has gone through several transitions in the past. There are two transitions I want to focus on: the transition from cassette (analog) to CD (digital), and the transition from CD (physical) to MP3 (virtual). When music went from being distributed in analog format to digital there was fear that the ability to make perfect copies would kill the industry. This didn’t happen; however, the transition to MP3 and down-loadable music has been very disruptive. This is because the industry had been optimized over many years for the economics of the physical distribution of recorded music. The technology resulted in large changes in the behavior of consumers, which changes everything. Years later, the music industry continues to adapt to these changes.

Most analysis of e-books are looking at the transition like the move from cassette tapes to CD. The focus is on the lowering cost of production and consumers demanding lower prices, or how DRM is needed to prevent piracy, or how authors will starve as they receive a percentage of a smaller revenue stream.

Book publishing is making a bigger transition. Digitization and virtualization are occurring simultaneously. It is more like going from cassettes (or even LP’s) to MP3’s directly. This results in a lot of turmoil. No one knows how this will change the behavior of the consumer, and the existing infrastructure is trying to maintain the status quo on how business is done.

Supply and Demand

 

Read the rest of the post on Writely Done.

Konrath vs. Turow, RE: Amazon

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On March 9, Authors Guild President Scott Turow posted an open letter on the Authors Guild site, calling the announcement that the U.S. Justice Department was near to filing an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and five large publishers (often referred to as The Agency 5, as these are the publishers who immediately signed on for Apple’s agency pricing scheme) "grim news". 

Author J.A. Konrath offered a fairly scathing blog post in counterpoint on March 16, calling Turow out for supporting publishers over the interests of authors—even the very authors whose interests Turow is supposed to be protecting and furthering in his role as President of the AG.

Here’s just one thread of Konrath’s post, in which he addresses Turow’s contention that allowing Amazon to become the dominant player in the ebook market would be somehow disastrous:

——————————————————————————————–

Scott said: "Look, if what they’re into is maximizing profits, then if they were to have a monopoly there’d be no rationale not to use the monopoly power to increase prices to consumers. That is historically what monopolies do. There is plenty of precedent for that. It’s only rational to fear what they’re going to do with this accumulation of power."

That’s historically what monopolies do? Okay, so show me the precedent.

Microsoft has pretty much dominated the market with Windows. Has Windows become more expensive since it first launched because MS has a monopoly on operating systems?

It launched in 1985 for $99.00. In today’s dollars that equals $212.00

The latest version of Windows is $179.00.

But Amazon must have a track record for doing this, right?

When the Kindle was released in 2007, it was $399. Now that is has an overwhelming market share, how much did Amazon jack up the price?

The Kindle Fire is $199. The bare-bones Kindle is $79.

Hmm…

I’m old enough to remember Ma Bell having a true monopoly on telephones. You had no choice. You couldn’t even own your own phone–you had to rent from them.

Am I off base, or did prices seem to get higher once the Department of Justice broke them up?

Monsanto owns 98% of the US soybean market, and 79% of the corn market. Last I checked, both corn and soy were still pretty cheap.

Where is all this precedent? Can’t Turow offer a single example? Just one to show the bad things that happen when a single company controls an industry?

Certainly OPEC is an example, but that’s a cartel, not a single company. They all agree on the price of oil, and we’ve seen how crazy oil prices have become. We’re hitting $4.00 for a gallon of gas in Chicago right now. All because they collude to fix prices.

I mean, four bucks for gas is outrageous. It’s almost as bad as paying $14.99 for an ebook.

Hmm. That’s sort of ironic, isn’t it? Because the Big 6 also fit the definition of a cartel, and they’re being investigated for collusion.

Seems like cartels want to keep prices high, when Amazon wants to lower them. That’s the reason the Big 6 colluded, remember? Amazon was selling ebooks for less than the cartel wanted them to be sold for. So the Big 6 forced Amazon to take the agency deal, resulting in LESS MONEY FOR AUTHORS.

I put that in caps because Turow and the Authors Guild support the agency model, when authors make less money from the agency model. And the rationale behind it is so funny it hurts:

The Big 6 wanted to control ebook pricing so they could keep the prices high, because they were afraid of Amazon becoming a monopoly which might raise the price of ebooks.
 
 
Read the full post on JA Konrath’s blog, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. Seriously, read the whole thing, and then make up your own mind as to whether or not Turow is on the right side of this argument.
 

The Rise of Indie Authors and How This Helps Publishing

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Despite being an introvert, I love public speaking, especially when I get to share the positivity I genuinely feel about publishing and being a writer in these amazing times.

On March 8, I was one of the keynote speakers at the Publishing Innovation conference and spoke on ‘The Rise of Indie Authors and How This Helps Publishing” (more info below).

 

I also stayed for the two debates that followed as well as a diametrically opposed keynote to mine where the speaker basically said the internet would destroy everything creative, Amazon was annihilating everything and publishing and authors were doomed. I don’t believe that and don’t want to repeat it on this blog, so you can go find doom & gloom elsewhere if you want it :) But I have included some of the positive key points from other speakers below.

The Rise of Indie Authors and How This Helps Publishing

You can view or download my slides here => PublishingInnovationJoannaPenn

I acknowledged the ‘tsunami of crap’ that people expect with self-publishing and pointed out that we don’t really see it. It sinks into the depths of Amazon with rankings of hundreds of thousands. Customers are now the gatekeepers with book reviews and stars being the way Amazon shuffles content.

I then went into the difference between self-publishing and independent publishing, pointing out that most of us use professional editors and cover designers, acknowledging that publishing is a collaborative activity if it is to be a quality product.

I outlined the positives of being an indie that make it worthwhile:

  • 35% or 70% royalty, payment by check/ bank transfer 60 days later
  • Reconcilable reporting to the sales figures we can see daily on the back end (vs the late and enigmatic royalty statements traditional publishers provide)
  • Transparency in reporting which enables agile marketing and response as well as tracking of results in real time
  • Direct relationships with readers and the ability to respond to them with sales
  • Experimentation in genres with readers as gatekeepers
  • Speed of publishing, instant changes and speed of income
  • Global sales in an increasing ebook market

I also outlined my sales figures to 2 March 2012 – 33,734 books. 75% sold to the US, 25% UK. 99% ebooks. Bestseller on Action Adventure and Religious Fiction lists.

Finally, I outlined how indie authors could benefit traditional publishing in terms of new models, a form of slush pile and working in collaboration/ hybrid models.

Pan Macmillan MD on why indies take traditional deals

I was impressed by Anthony Forbes Watson, MD of Pan Macmillan. He spoke coherently and without vitriol on self publishing. It is important to remember that there are some very smart, passionate people in publishing, and that traditional publishing is still a very attractive prospect to many.

Here are some of his points, my notes only so not verbatim.

  • Amanda Hocking & Kerry Wilkinson (UK indie author) both accepted traditional deals because (a) they didn’t want to be publishers (b) they didn’t understand how they became successful and were worried they would disappear just as fast unless they solidified their careers with a trad deal (c) publishers develop the author as a brand over time (d) global distribution in print as well as ebook (e) protection from piracy (f) publishers can make ‘pretty stuff’ (quality print product) (g) books can be sold at a higher price. This represents the value add that a publisher can provide.

***Update: As per comment below, Kerry Wilkinson has responded that these are not the reasons he went with traditional publishing. I shall endeavor to find out more***

  • Publishers will survive if they generate emotion in an author’s work that touches an audience. [I thought this was more the author’s job in terms of writing something that touches an audience.]
  • The model used to be that the grad students sifted through the slush pile. They didn’t have the experience to choose great books. This is how Harry Potter got missed. But this has been changed now so more experienced people look at new authors.
  • Publishing and self-publishing can be a symbiotic relationship, so indie can act as a form of slush pile. It can also show publishers the way to experiment with digital and other models.
  • We are finding the things that don’t work and we’re trying to fix them, albeit slowly. The slush pile didn’t work but now we are fixing that. Pricing is being experimented with. There is some alchemy in getting a reader to pay more than £5 for an ebook. The bookshop is also not working right now, so we need to fix that.
  • No one knows how these breakout books work. The magic happens but we can’t recreate it. It’s about listening for an echo when we pitch books. Self-publishing is almost the chance to listen for an echo.
  • The object quality of print books is still important. Only 20% of sales are ebooks right now and publishers still do print better.
  • The challenge is to verticalise the business and get the right book to the right audience.

In general, this was a positive conference with some great people. I know my glass is always half full but I genuinely believe there is a great future for publishing of all kinds as well as for authors who treat this as a business and connect with their readers.

What are your thoughts about how indie authors relate to traditional publishing these days? Please do leave a comment below.

I am available for speaking on all things writing, digital publishing and marketing. More information here about my live events as well as testimonials from happy customers. Please do contact me if you need a speaker, either live or via Skype.

 

 

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.