Ebooks

Articles specific to writing and publishing ebooks.

Congratulations: You Get To Be The Bigger Person Now

by

If you’re working your author platform effectively, you’re very active online. You’re doing any or all of the following: posting to your blog, possibly posting to others’ blogs, tweeting, posting updates on Facebook or MySpace or LinkedIn, participating in online discussion groups and comment threads, posting or commenting on YouTube book trailers, and maybe even podcasting. Your goal is to open a dialogue with readers and your peers, and the better your author platform, the more feedback and discussion you will generate. Much of the feedback and discussion will be enjoyable and thought-provoking, a kind of online ‘salon’. The rest of it, not so much.

An awful lot of people will have strongly held opinions with which you disagree, or which are ill-informed, or which are obviously being shared only for the sake of getting a rise out of you or casting aspersions on you or your work. But however much you may want to angrily tear into this latter group anytime they darken your virtual doorstep, however tempting it may be to respond with a biting and clever remark, you must never do it. Answering the uncouth and trollish in kind requires you to become uncouth and trollish, which can quickly escalate beyond your control and undermine all the goodwill you’ve built up to date with your community of readers and peers, and quickly turn off any newcomers to your tribe.
 
As an author, you’ll find there are two primary arenas in which you may feel it’s necessary to rain invective down upon a perceived adversary: following a bad review, or following an ill-informed or insulting post to, or about, you. First, let’s look at what happens when authors respond to negative reviews…negatively.
 
Consider this case of commercially- and critically-successful novelist Alice Hoffman, who was so outraged by a negative review (some have called it merely lukewarm) from author Roberta Silman in the Boston Globe that Hoffman ended up flaming Silman all over Twitter. Hoffman eventually went so far as to provide Silman’s phone number to her fans and request that they call Silman to defend Hoffman. It wasn’t long before the mainstream press was all over this, and not much longer before an embarrassed Hoffman began making public apologies.
Then there’s author Alain de Botton, who responded to a negative review on Caleb Crain’s blog with a number of posts that eventually escalated to the point where Botton was saying things like, “I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make.” There’s a terrific post about the incident on Ed Rants in which de Botton responds to questions about the incident and provides an essay as part of his response as well.
 
Next, take a gander at the controversy more recently sparked by author Candace Sams on Amazon. When reader-reviewer LB Taylor posted a one-star review of Sam’s novel Electra Galaxy’s Mr Interstellar Feller, Sams responded with a series of angry responses, initially under an alias but eventually under her own name as well. When the dust had settled and the press and blogs were finished with her Sams went back and deleted all of her posts in the Amazon thread, but it was too late by then because plenty of sites and blogs (such as Babbling About Books) had already copied and re-published the worst and most disturbing of them online.
 
Prior to the Sams dustup, perhaps the best-known author outburst came from Anne Rice in 2004, also on Amazon, in response to multiple negative reviews of her novel, Blood Canticle. In a 1200-word diatribe, among other things, Rice responded to reader-critics by saying, “Your stupid, arrogant assumptions about me and what I am doing are slander…You have used the site as if it were a public urinal to publish falsehood and lies." Her entire response is reprinted on the encyclopedia dramatica site, where the term “rice out” is defined as, “To make a spectacle of oneself in response to literary criticism by insisting that one’s creative work is superior in all aspects.”
 
Now, compare these authorial meltdowns to the actions of Carla Cassidy, who posted a wry and clever rebuttal to a negative review on the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books site. SBTB’s review featured a sarcastic, snarky list of 26 reasons why Cassidy’s novel Pregnesia is the best book in the history of pregnant amnesiac romance books. Cassidy responded with her own list of 10 reasons why she loves the SBTB review, as detailed on the Saturday Writers site. According to Saturday Writers, “Carla responded with grace and humor that exactly matched the tone of the review. I don’t think I could respond so well to a negative review. I’m in awe of her.”
If you can’t craft a humorous and/or graceful response to a negative review—and the many examples of non-humorous, non-graceful responses from seasoned authors given in this post are proof enough that you can’t trust your own judgment on this—, then it’s best just to keep your mouth (and keyboard) shut entirely on such matters. As Neil Gaiman has said on his blog, “some things are better written in anger and deleted in the morning.”
 
As for coping with stuff and nonsense from respondents to articles or blog posts you’ve written, or from people who are more or less just out to make you look bad, you should simply ignore such commentary when it’s clearly labeled as opinion but it may sometimes be necessary to correct inaccurate factual information posted about you or your work. If you choose to do so you must tread with the utmost care, lest a new idiom for author freak-outs turns up in common usage with your name attached to it. I don’t think I’ve yet seen a more shining example of calm, professional, classy damage control than that of Harlequin Digital Director Malle Valik in response to the firestorm of controversy that followed Harlequin’s announcement of its partnership with Author Solutions, Inc.
 
First, Malle responded personally to the many charges leveled against the partnership on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books (scroll down through the comments thread to Malle’s first comment, posted on 11/18/09 at 6:48am). Next, she graciously answered some specific questions about the deal on Dear Author, then came back to respond to some very pointed and angry remarks in the comments thread following that interview. In the face of a plethora of insults and accusations, Malle kept her cool, kept a positive attitude, and remained professional. She kept the discussion on-point, and never allowed herself to stoop to the mud-slinging tone employed by many of the attackers.
 
Malle Valik is to be commended for her exemplary performance in this matter, and to be emulated by every one of us anytime we find ourselves in the unenviable shoes she was wearing last November. To do so, you must first acknowledge that as a writer, you are in the free speech business. It is your duty (and should be your honor) to defend the right of anyone to voice any opinion on any subject, however much you may disagree with that opinion or even find it offensive. While I freely acknowledge that very often, the people who put you in a mind to take the low road are not honestly attempting to engage you in a fair debate, it will do you no good to respond to them in kind. Correct factual errors if you must, but only if you’re certain you’re capable of Valikian conduct in the matter. Take action on libelous statements about you or your work if you feel they have the potential to do significant damage to your earnings or reputation, but do so in private, offline. Otherwise, your safest bet is to ignore the noise; it’s not truly worthy of your attention, anyway.

This is a cross-posting from April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author blog.

With Kindle Royalties About To Be Set At 70%, Is It Time To Revisit Bestselling Novelist Anne Rice's Post: "Should Major Authors Think About Making Kindle (If Possible) Their Primary Publisher?"

by

 

Many Kindle owners may care very little about issues such as author and publisher royalties, digital rights management, the finer points of Kindle book pricing, or whether Kindle authors need traditional publishers like a fish needs a bicycle. But some of these issues ultimately will have a powerful effect on the selection of books that are available to us as Kindle owners.

 
As of yesterday, the prospect of Apple unleashing a popular tablet device and negotiating great deals that would lure authors and publishers away from the Kindle was looking like the first real threat to the growing dominance of the Kindle in the field of ebook reading devices and content. 
 
Today, not so much.
 
Any fears that authors and publishers were about to begin jumping ship in droves from Amazon’s Kindle catalog were vaporized this morning when the company announced a suite of dramatic changes in its relationship with authors and publishers. The headlines will be all about the fact that Amazon is promising to begin, on June 30, paying a 70 per cent royalty on qualifying Kindle books, but there is much more to ponder in the requirements that Amazon will use to qualify authors and publishers for that 70 per cent royalty, and in the overall impact that these moves will have on the book business. Amazon never seems to be short on arrows in its quiver, and in this case its tactical moves are bound to have a chilling effect on Apple’s apparent efforts to lure authors and publishers away from the Kindle platform.
 
"Today, authors often receive royalties in the range of 7 to 15 percent of the list price that publishers set for their physical books, or 25 percent of the net that publishers receive from retailers for their digital books," said Russ Grandinetti, Amazon’s vice president of Kindle Content, in today’s news release. "We’re excited that the new 70 percent royalty option for the Kindle Digital Text Platform will help us pay authors higher royalties when readers choose their books."
 
Indeed. There’s plenty for authors, publishers, and literary agents to chew on here:
  • Amazon is prepared to compensate authors and publishers more generously than they will be compensated anywhere else.
     
  • For authors who deal directly with Amazon rather than through the mediation of a publisher, royalty compensation could be astonishingly high.
     
  • Despite all the buzz about "Kindle Killers," the Kindle Store is the only real game in town if it is true, as some have claimed, that the Kindle Store currently accounts for over 90% of all ebook sales.
     
  • Even at the current 35 percent Kindle royalty, popular authors like Anne Rice are already thinking about making Kindle "their primary publisher." At 70 per cent, there may be no stopping them.
Back on December 13, Rice went on an Amazon customer forum and asked:

What do you think? If regular publishing is having a very hard time marketing and distributing books effectively, should major authors think about making Kindle (if possible) their primary publisher? Kindle would then be the one to introduce and advertise the book, and Kindle could license limited hard cover editions for those addicted to the "real book." Would this be good for authors? Would it be good for readers? Would Kindle do it?

Of course, it’s not like Amazon’s sole purpose here is to do better by authors. Like nearly every major occurrence in the economic marketplace, today’s announcement is driven a complex web of market forces, of which the key factors here are Amazon’s desire 
  • to maintain the dominance of the Kindle catalog, 
     
  • to outflank Apple in that potential ebook newcomer’s effort to negotiate with book publishers, 
     
  • to organize Kindle Store pricing into a logical $2.99 to $9.99 range (at least 20 percent below competing hardcopy prices but higher than the zero-to-99 cent range that has been growing in the Kindle Store and threatening the overall Kindle pricing structure),
     
  • to strengthen participation by authors and publishers in the Kindle text-to-speech feature and other coming Kindle features, and
     
  • to persuade publishers to play nice with the Kindle ecosystem, in part by making them aware how easily they could end up losing authors who might opt for the direct relationship whose possibility Rice raised in her aforementioned post.
Nobody but Amazon and the publishers really knows what deals, percentages, and subsidies may have informed Amazon’s previous dealings with corporate publishers of Kindle content over the past 26 months, but one thing that seems likely today is that, with the royalties and qualifying requirements noted in this 70 percent royalty option, Amazon may be pushing more and more of its corporate publishing partners in the direction of the Digital Text Platform that has been seen heretofore as a publishing platform for smaller indie publishers and self-published authors. After all, for example, participation in the text-to-speech program has never been optional for DTP publishers, so the inclusion of it as a qualifying requirement for the new royalty program suggests that publishers who have accessed the Kindle via corporate publishing channels in the past may be pushed now directly into the DTP. And, like the major music labels that participate in Amazon’s "self publisher" print-on-demand subsidiary, CreateSpace, in order to market their previously out-of-print backlist music titles, the smartest of the major book publishing houses are going to go where the best terms are. 
 
If they lag behind, they run the risk of arriving there only to find that some of their authors are already there.

 

 

This is a cross-posting from Stephen Windwalker’s Kindle Nation Daily blog.

Alien Languages: How Foreign Would They Really Be?

by

This post, from Juliette Wade, originally appeared on her TalkToYoUniverse blog on 1/10/10.

This post was requested by CWJ, my friend from the forum over at Analog – thanks so much for the question, CWJ! It also strikes me that this may be a timely topic for people who are considering the Na’vi language that was used in Avatar.

CWJ asked: 

Juliette, I’d like to hear more about (constructing) non-human languages. In particular, if Chomsky’s idea of universal innate grammars is correct, does that mean there are only certain avenues down which humans can go, which might be different from aliens? That is, maybe there are some concepts or constructs that would be difficult for humans to truly conceptualize. Or the other way around. In short, I am interested in the possibility that communication may be very difficult.

This is a complex question, so I’ll take it a bit at a time.

First, the Chomsky question. Chomsky proposed the idea that there was some basic sense of grammar universal to all humans, that was passed on as an instinct.

Now, human languages are very diverse. The most thorough article I’ve seen on this topic was recently published in the Economist, and you can check it out here.

In fact, it’s hard to say how much of human language is innate and how much is learned. Humans are oriented towards language from birth or even earlier; this is well known, as newborn infants prefer to listen to language sounds over non-language sounds, and their mother’s native language over other languages (studies measured strength of sucking response!). They also go through a number of language development stages, like early babbling, even if they don’t have any auditory language input (say, with non-hearing babies). Non-hearing babies are also known to babble with their fingers. People have also looked at pidgin languages, which tend to take on grammatical structure – and very similar grammar structure – when they’re passed on to the second generation, and used this as evidence for a more extensive innate language faculty.
 


Read the rest of the post on Juliette Wade‘s TalkToYoUniverse blog.

Chapbooks: The Personal Side of Self-Publishing

by

 I recently came across a blog by Betty Ming Liu, an award-winning teacher of writing and journalism at NYU, The New School, Media Bistro, and Sarah Lawrence College’s Writing Institute. She recently learned a lot about chapbooks at a panel discussion devoted to the topic. Check her blog post for a great introduction to chapbooks and how to make them.

Chapbooks can be a lot of fun.

My father, Roy Friedlander, was a printer who apprenticed in the Compositor’s union in 1933, and I grew up around books. Later, he would bring home chapbooks like these and other ephemeral printed pieces.

He worked his entire life in commercial printing, business forms printing, briefly at the New York Times and later as a teacher at the New York School of Printing. I think these books, almost exclusively by poets, short story writers and graphic artists, really appealed to him because they were so different than what printing usually meant for him.

(Photo credit: Betty Ming Liu)

Now that the holiday season is here, I started thinking how wonderful a gift a chapbook can be for a writer who wants to share her work with friends and family. It’s a way of bringing publication into your own hands, and of seeing at least some of your work in print. A well-designed chapbook, neatly produced and sewn up, would be valued by whoever received it. 

What Is A Chapbook? 

17th Century Chapbook PeddlerAccording to The Chapbook Review, they are “slim, soft-cover books, usually inexpensively produced and independently published.” In fact, the form of a chapbook is largely undefined. Today, many poets use chapbooks to issue poems, assembling them by hand from pages they’ve printed themselves.

Although small presses may issue chapbooks that have been printed with engravings, lino cuts, or letterpress printing, none of these are required. In its simplest form, a chapbook might be a cover printed on slightly heavier, or colored, paper, with several folded sheets sewn inside the cover. 

This simple and easy to produce “booklet” can easily become a vehicle for your creative prowess. Adding an illustration to the cover will make it more attractive. Look at line drawings, where there are no gray tones, for the best and most traditional match for your content.

What will you put inside your chapbook? The choices are pretty unlimited. I’ve seen lovely chapbooks with poem sequences, a single short story or essay, or a combination of poems, stories, and drawings. Sometimes the chapbooks have limitation statements inside the back cover which add an exclusivity to the production. This is a good place to sign the chapbook, if you want to add another personal touch.

Yes, It’s a Business, But There’s More To It Than That

We are usually very focused on publishing as a business, how to make good decisions about publishing, controlling costs, meeting schedules, and all the other necessities that enter into self-publishing as a business. Sometimes it’s refreshing to remind ourselves of the beauty and power of writing in its most unadorned form; the essence of writing as communication.

I particularly like the artisanal quality of these chapbooks. A writer becomes something of a self-publisher, and also a craftsman, as she chooses her work, arranges the pieces, prints her sheets and assembles the chapbooks. Many parts of her being come together to create these very personal creations, and the results speak of the individual attention that goes into them.

There is no more personal expression of the desire of a writer to self-publish than a chapbook, and no more direct way for the writer to bring their work to a small circle of intimates.

Resources

You can explore the intriguing and personal world of chapbooks, both those from small presses and ones created by individuals, as well as learn some of the history of chapbooks, and see another set of step-by-step instructions. Here are some links:

 

This is a cross-posting from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer site.

Kindle Store Pricing Trends: Is Amazon Backing Away From Big Deals?

by

Kindle Store prices, discounts, and promotions are moving in so many different directions that we should resist concluding that there are many real identifiable trends, but here are a few things I have noticed lately:

 

  • Amazon’s own Big Deals on Kindle page, which tended to go unchanged and stagnant for months at a time after being launched last year, still exists but its link has been removed from the "Special Features" section of the Kindle Store’s left-sidebar Browse link list. This could mean nothing in particular, or it could mean either than Amazon is backing away from the free promotional book offers from mainstream publishers that have tended to populate the page or — and this is the more interesting of these possibilities — that the page is being overhauled and might be rolled out anew with information not only on free promotional books but also on over a million other free books available to Kindle owners, including Amazon’s own listing of nearly 20,000 free public domain titles and other free-content channels via Project Gutenberg, the Project Gutenberg Magic Catalog, the Internet Archive, ManyBooks, Feedbooks, and others.
     
  • The number of free promotional titles in the Kindle Store has been trending down lately, and may have become more of an annoyance for Amazon (in terms of customer service and its impact on the Kindle Store bestseller list) than it is a benefit for customers, although total abandonment of the listings might be a risky move in the context of Amazon’s "customer experience" business principle. Although the Kindle Store listings seem to suggest 56 free promotional titles at present, there are actually fewer than 40 after one subtracts free sample chapters and one title that is actually not available for order or pre-order.
     
  • An alarming number of the forthcoming likely bestsellers in the Kindle Store — especially among those slated for Kindle release between March and May 2010 — show Kindle prices in the $14-to-$15 range. Generally (but not always!) such prices are the result of listing issues and tend to sort themselves out (and be lowered to the range of the $9.99 bestseller price point) within a few days of a title’s release in the Kindle Store.

This is a cross-posting from Stephen Windwalker’s Kindle Nation Daily blog.

Kindle Rush Results

by

This post, from Seth Harwood, originally appeared on the Author Bootcamp blog  and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

Click here to Listen to this post as Audio. (Right-click to download.)

As some of you already know, back on December 27th, I released a sample of my first short story collection A Long Way from Disney on Amazon’s Kindle store and used social media strategies to market it. I did this for various reasons, but mainly because, as I said here on OC before, I believe authors need to take on the role of scientists and experiment with what’s possible in today’s publishing world. (If you’re interested in how I publicized this, see my recent posts at AuthorBootCamp.com.)

A Long Way From DisneyFrom a scientific point of view, the experiment was a great success. I learned a great deal, which I’ll discuss below. I sold a lot of books (at $.99 each): around 350 in the first week, and I got my name and stories in front of a lot of new people. I also heard from a number of them who read the book right away and really loved it! For you authors out there, I hope you can relate: Getting positive feedback on your work from total strangers is about the best feedback there is.
[For those of you keeping score at home, those sales put $260 into Amazon’s pockets and $140 into mine. Not too shabby, I don’t think, but also not the split an author might hope for.]

Okay, without any further delay: Here are the Results (What I’ve learned) from Experiment 1:

1) Timing can be essential. I positioned myself to hit the Kindle store just after Xmas, thinking that with many newly gifted Kindles out there, a lot more Kindle ebooks would be selling and that I could cash in on this rush. I was correct in this prediction (Amazon sold more ebooks than paper copies over Christmas), but what I didn’t predict was how much harder this made it to reach the Top 100 Kindle bestseller list, a goal I had set for myself. I wanted to hit the top 100 because it would give the book additional exposure and stimulate more buying from newbie Kindle owners looking for quick, cheap content.
 

Ultimately, I think choosing this time right after Xmas might have helped me sell a few more books. But by not hitting the top 100 list, I missed a critical chance to attract more attention on the Kindle store. As author Rob Kroese posted on an Amazon Kindle Discussion board, he was able to hit 300 in books on the Kindle bestseller list prior to the holidays by selling 30 copies a day. During the holidays, he sold 60 copies per day and couldn’t crack the top 500. I should mention that the highest ranking I got on Kindle Bestsellers was #250, which in retrospect was a great achievement, even if it came short of my goal.

On that note, I also hit #4 in Short Stories, #16 in Literary Fiction and #40 overall in Fiction.

Would I have been able to reach my goal of the top 100 at another time? I’m not so sure.
 

2) Making the Kindle Top 100 list is actually pretty hard for an independent author. Initially I figured, how many copies of these books can they be selling? Well, I learned that in actuality the answer can be quite high. A lot of the books on the Top 100 list are actually FREE! The Kindle store includes many classics in the public domain—for example, Sherlock Holmes, Pride and Prejudice, Treasure Island, Little Women, etc. And whenever someone downloads these free texts, Amazon counts it as a sale. It’s hard to compete against FREE. And, for this reason, the bestselling ebooks list can be harder climb than the paper version. (Back in March 08, I made #45 overall in books on Amazon when I tried a similar experiment with a print on demand publisher and my first novel, Jack Wakes Up.)
 

3) Free isn’t for Everyone. So why shouldn’t I set the price of my book at FREE—the web’s new magic price, according to Chris Anderson—as I’ve done with audio podcast versions of all my fiction at my site and on iTunes? Well, because Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (how you put your book up on Kindle) won’t let me. That’s right, as an independent posting content to the Kindle store, the lowest I can go in price is $.99. It’s true. So who’s posting these freebies on the Kindle store? Publishers. Including, you guessed it, "Public Domain Books."

There’s no sour grapes here. I hope no one will misread any of these statements as that. But there are some interesting lessons learned. Would I have made the top 100 if I had put my book up at a less busy book-selling time? Who knows. But if Rob Kroese can hit #300 by selling 30 books in a day, I probably would’ve had a good shot when I sold close to 200 copies on just the first day. I’ll just have to try another experiment at some point to find out.

When I do, I’ll also capitalize on one more thing I learned in this experiment about actual buying on the Kindle platform:
 

4) Non-Kindle-owners need education if you want them to buy. Not too many people have a Kindle out there, but any Kindle book can be purchased on a PC or an Phone/Touch. This means that a great many people can actually buy a Kindle book, but many of them will need to be educated about how they can do this—something that I tried to enable, but could’ve done far better with in retrospect.

So how did I do? As a writer, the biggest success of this experiment was getting my fiction into more people’s hands and hearing strong feedback from them. As for my writing career and how to proceed with publishing experiments going forward, I really learned a great deal. I hope you found it helpful. To talk more about this with me, please comment on either of my writing/publishing websites: sethharwood.com or authorbootcamp.com, or hit me up on Twitter (@sethharwood) or Facebook.

What am I doing next? Going cross-platform with this experiment—taking the Kindle version of A Long Way from Disney and bringing it to Smashwords (Sony reader and others), Mobipocket (Blackberry) and the iTunes store as an App to enable the content to be read on even more devices! I’ll be back to talk about how that all goes soon!

#fridayflash: Snow Ball Excerpt

by

This week, I present an excerpt from my other novel, Snow Ball. Snow Ball is not at all like Adelaide Einstein, it’s a dark comic mystery. And when I say dark, I mean it — as this excerpt will demonstrate.

 

“Shine on, shine on harvest moon, up in the sky…” Velma crooned, bouncing one hip as she worked.  She spun to open the refrigerator door, briefly eyed its numerous contenders for lunchtime beverages, then closed it again and stepped over to the basement door.  She gave it a little push to open it wider, calling, “Do ya want pop or milk with your lunch?”  Her accent made the word “pop” sound like “pap”.

She heard a grinding sound, a muffled cry and a thud.  “Ah…milk is great, hon,” Walter responded from somewhere out of view.  “With a little chocolate syrup?”

She smiled and closed the door, turning back to get the milk.  “He’s as bad as the kids,” she chuckled to herself.  She put the toast on the plate and the chipped beef on the toast, then set the table with a placemat, flatware and Walter’s glass of chocolate milk.  She flung the basement door open again and had to yell to be heard over the buzzing power tools.  “Walter, soup’s on!” she called.  “Now can ya turn that thing off and get your hiney up here before it gets cold?”

The buzzing stopped and Walter appeared at the foot of the stairs, wearing a yellow, blood-sprayed, disposable surgical suit with matching mask and booties, his glasses speckled with red and his gloved hands smeared with the same.  He lowered his mask.  “Before what gets cold,” he jokingly asked, “my hiney or the chipped beef?”

Velma giggled.  “Oh, you!” she chided him.  “Get all that stuff off and come on up now.”

When Walter reappeared, stripped of his disposable garb, glasses washed, he took his place at the table and said, “Oh, this looks great, just great Vel.”  Anyone seeing him on the street would’ve assumed he was an accountant or maybe a junior college math teacher.  He took a bite and hummed appreciatively. 

After he’d swallowed and had a slug of chocolate milk, he smiled at Velma and, pointing at his plate with his fork, asked, “Do ya know what they used ta call this when I was in the service, Vel?”

Velma’s eyes rolled and she smiled back indulgently.  “Yah, I do.  Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Walter.  Do ya have ta tell that story every time I make ya chipped beef?”

Walter chuckled.  “Oh, I was a different man then, Velma.  If you’da seen me then, ya woulda thought I was like John Wayne.”  He looked a little distant as he reminisced.  “We hadda be ready for anything.”  He looked at Velma and smiled again.  “But ta tell ya the truth, I’m glad I never got the call.  Truth is, I don’t know if I’da had the stomach for it.”

Velma turned off the radio and took the chair next to Walter’s.  “Yah, I know whatcha mean,” she said, squeezing his hand.  “Gunning folks down, left an’ right.  It’s all so impersonal, ya know?  I mean, those other boys never did anything ta you, they’re just fighting for their country same as we are.”

“Yah,” Walter sighed.  “War is a terrible business, ya got that right Velma.  If there’s a war going when our boys get ta be old enough, I’ll have ‘em up at Peter’s faster than you can say Jack Robinson.”  He dug back into his lunch. 

To change the subject, Velma cocked her head toward the basement door and brightly asked, “So didja get anything yet?”

Walter tucked his napkin in at his throat and grumbled, “Not much.”  He took another bite and smiled as he chewed and swallowed.  “He’s a toughie, all right,” he said with admiration.  “Golly, I don’t know what else ta try.”

Velma patted Walter’s left hand as he continued eating with his right.  “Are ya sure it’s really worth all this work, Walter?  I mean, couldn’t ya just finish it and move on ahead?  We’re all set ta go with the pharmaceuticals business now, and―”

“No, no,” Walt gently protested, wiping his mouth and shaking his head.  “Now that’s just the problem nowadays, is folks lettin’ other folks take advantage.  That last kilo wasn’t stolen from this turkey, he took it and he sold it himself.  He stole it from us, Velma.”

Velma shook her head and clucked, “I know I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, with all I’ve seen, but jeez louise, doesn’t that young man have a mother?”

“I know, I know what you’re sayin’.” Walt nodded.  “It’s like the parents today don’t even bother ta teach their kids common courtesy, let alone how ta behave like proper citizens.”  He tapped the table with his index finger for emphasis.  “And it’s just that kinda thing that’s ruining this country, Vel.  First there’s no respect for the elders, then it’s a lack of manners, and next thing ya know ya can’t even leave your fence alone with your merchandise for ten minutes.”

Velma clasped her coffee cup.  “Yah, I s’pose you’re right, Walt.  It’s just that it’s taking so long, and the kids’ll be home in a coupla hours.  Dickie’s hockey playoff starts at three, and ya promised him you’d be there.” 

“I know, hon,” Walter whined, “but I gotta finish this thing.”  He polished off his chocolate milk and snickered, “I can’t leave ‘im in there all night, ya know.”

Velma studied her cup.  “But there must be a way ta speed it up…”  She paused to think a moment, then snapped her fingers and stood up, saying, “I’ve got just the thing!”  She trotted out of the room and reappeared a few minutes later, holding a seam ripper. 

“A lotta times it’s a mistake ta go right ta the heavy machinery, Walt.  A lotta times it’s attention ta detail that gets results.”

Walter took the small, sharp, hooked blade and beamed, “Ah, you’re a peach, Vel.  This is super.”  He turned it over to look at it from all angles.  “How does it work?”

“Oh Walter,” she sighed, shaking her head patiently.  She took the implement back and pantomimed in the air as she explained, “Ya stick it in an opening, any opening, and then pull it along in the direction ya want ta cut.”

Walter took it back.  “Wow, that’s really somethin’,” he grinned.  “I bet this’ll do the trick all right.”

“Well all right then, but ya gotta buy me a new one,” Velma replied, giving Walter an affectionate pat on the shoulder.  “I’m not done with that quilt I’m making for your mother, ya know.”

 

If you liked this and would like to check out more of Snow Ball, it’s available in Kindle format on Amazon, various other ebook formats on Smashwords, and in a print edition on Amazon.

 

 

5 Reasons Writers Need to Embrace Technology

by

Many people I meet say “I don’t like computers” or “It’s too hard to use all these sites” when I mention words like ebooks, social networking, online author platform and blogs.

But if you are serious about your career as a writer/author, think about these 5 reasons you need to embrace technology (by which I primarily mean the internet!).

  • People are online. Those people could buy your book. Even if you don’t like consuming ebooks or on mobile devices, millions of other people do and more join the fun every day. You want to reach them so you need to be online or at least have your information available to be found. If you are engaging on social network sites, providing information on your blog or producing your work in podcast audio format, you are more likely to get readers of your work than if you just wait for a publisher to find you, or bookstores to stock your book.
  • It is the best way to build an author platform. The author platform is now critical for everyone except the top authors and famous celebrities. It means people will find you, hopefully engage with you and then be interested in your writing/books or business. The old way of building a platform was through traditional media and PR (which costs money), or through 1:1 contact/networking as well as speaking. All of this is still relevant, but if you also have an online presence you will reach people globally when they are searching or browsing. You can also utilize word of mouth online which can boost your platform much faster and much further.
  • The tools have never been easier and they are free. You don’t need to know how to program to have a website or blog now. You don’t need $20,000 to have a website. You can have one for free. You don’t need to know much except how to drive a mouse. Point and click is all you need for most of these tools plus the confidence to try them out. The recent list of the most influential websites in the world included Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, all of which are great tools for platform building and all very easy to use. For more ideas, check out my free Author 2.0 Blueprint which contains other free sites you can use.
  • Mobile devices are exploding and the internet is going mobile. You may not know people with an ebook reader, but how many of your friends and family have a mobile device? Most of them? All of them? In fact, 1 billion mobile web users are predicted in 2010. Some of these people absolutely love what you do. They want to know you, connect with you and read what you produce. You need to be online to connect with them. The exciting thing is that this opens up the market to millions of people in countries who can’t afford a computer but who can surf the web on a mobile device. Wow! A whole new world of readers.

Check out this video if you need convincing, it’s a brilliant look at this mobile, connected world.

How can you embrace technology and not go mad?

Pick a site and start somewhere. Grow from there. That’s it! Here are the most influential websites online – they include some great sites to start playing with technology including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

If you are overwhelmed, start with these 3 : Decide on your goals. Set up a blog. Start on Twitter. [Read the whole article here].

Yes, you will get frustrated. You will find it a bit hard to get started. You will have to play around, spend some time with it, and you may get it wrong. But the rewards are endless!

Please do let me know any questions you have on this. I’d like to help you!

Personal note: I am an IT consultant, but not a programmer. I am Gen X and was not brought up with the web or computers in general. I got my first email account at 21. My degrees are in theology and psychology, not IT. I am a geek but I have learnt this stuff, it doesn’t come naturally. So this is something I am still learning myself! Come and join me!

This is a cross-posting from Joanna Penn‘s site, The Creative Penn. See this page on her site for more information about the various ways to contact and connect with Joanna.

Press Release: New Publishing Strategy

by

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Startup Publisher Offers Ebook First
Major publishers hesitate to give customers what they want

North Andover Massachusetts, January 11, 2010—New children’s book publisher, Stick Raven Press, is bucking convention by publishing its first title, NOT JUST FOR BREAKFAST ANYMORE, as an ebook two months before the print release.

Announcing this new strategy, publisher Pär South said, "Unprecedented amounts of ebooks are being sold, along with ereaders. Clearly customers are showing us what they want. " Yet major publishers continue to ‘window’, or delay ebook editions or avoid producing them altogether.

To further support this trend, Stick Raven is offering its initial release for an introductory rate of $1.99—70% off the print list price.  Says the founder, "Ebooks are the new dimestore novel: affordable for everyone."

NOT JUST FOR BREAKFAST ANYMORE, by PV Lundqvist, is about a twelve-year-old boy who receives a pig as a surprise pet. This causes problems with the town and in his life, but offers an opportunity for him to learn to stand on his own.

CONTACT: Pär South
Publisher/Stick Raven Press   

Website: stickraven.com

###

The Thorny Issue of Ebook Royalties

by

This post, from Sharon Blackie, originally appeared on the Two Ravens Press blog on 1/8/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

In a recent blog, the Society of Authors has been railing against publishers again, and calling for higher e-book royalty rates than the 15-25% that currently prevails in the market:

 …it is unconscionable that publishers should be attempting to strong­arm authors into accepting fixed royalty rates on e-books for the entire duration of copyright—and setting them, what is more, at a miserly 15% to 25% of their receipts. That may still be fair enough back in the Cretaceous world of dead tree publishing, but it is hard to see what it is about the selling of an e-book that entitles the publisher to cream off such an exorbitant share of the revenue.

I should say that, as a published author, I am a member of the Society of Authors, and I think they do many fine things. However, this whole e-book royalty question is NOT as simple an issue as it appears, and I find myself wishing that they would do a little more research before they simply assume that all publishers are out to fleece all authors for every last penny that they can. I’ve read a number of statements from the SOA recently (including in the recent issue of their magazine, The Author) on this issue and they are often filled with misconceptions about the practicalities of running a publishing business when it comes to independent publishers, who publish rather a lot of their members.

For example, one piece (irritatingly, I can’t locate it any longer) stated outright that there were no big distribution/wholesaler costs for e-books as there are for print books, because there is no need for warehousing/storage. WRONG! – Absolutely, utterly, 100% wrong. The distribution and warehousing charges for e-books are absolutely as high as they are for print books. For example, the biggest book warehouser in the country, Gardners, who distribute our e-books, charge exactly the same as they do for print books – an average whopping 50% of retail price. Why? Because they argue that there are still large costs associated with the production and maintenance of e-books: they’re just different ones. They relate to building, managing and keeping secure e-warehouses, among other things.

At Two Ravens Press we price our e-books as low as we possibly can, but the ultimate price of an e-book is driven by a desire to ensure that the author will get as much royalty from the sale of an e-book as from the sale of a print book – to the extent that that is feasible in the marketplace. With 25% royalties, we can usually achieve this. In fact, for e-book sales through our website, we can usually do better. According to the SOA, we must therefore be making vast amounts of money! Well, the truth is that on the average e-book, after we’ve taken off file conversion costs and everything else, we don’t make any more than we do on the sale of an average print book. And we still have to produce, market, cover our overheads etc etc – just as we do with print books. It is true that if your anticipated e-book sales for a given title are in the thousands and thousands for a bestselling title, you might be making a very large amount of money indeed for a relatively small amount of work. But in order to make back the conversion costs alone of an average TRP e-book, we’d have to sell over 100 copies. That’s without taking into account time, overheads and the vague desire that one of these days we might make a profit. Right now, I think our bestselling e-book has shifted around 6 copies.

The moral of the tale? Well, there are many, but I’m not going to go into them all here. At a minimum, please don’t tar all publishers with the same brush. Independent publishers with low volumes simply cannot operate, let alone make a living, on the kinds of royalties and terms that the SOA is beginning to insist on for all its members, regardless of who the publisher is. At TRP our publishing contracts are among some of the most generous around – certainly compared with other small indie publishers. But they’re right at the limit of what we can do and still operate. And whereas our authors always make money from their books, we often don’t.

Sharon

 

In 2006 Sharon Blackie, a former neuroscientist and practicing psychologist, decided to throw in all forms of gainful employment and set up a small independent publishing house at her 5-acre croft on the shores on a sea-loch in the north-west Highlands of Scotland. Her husband, David Knowles, a former Royal Air Force fast-jet pilot, became infected with the same insanity and gave up flying to join her. Both are successful writers and are firmly committed to their writer/publisher model; Sharon is a novelist and David is a poet.

Two Ravens Press specialises in contemporary literature – fiction, nonfiction and poetry – with a penchant for books that take risks with form and language. Described as ‘a quiet publishing revolution’, Two Ravens Press has also developed a reputation for being unafraid to tell it like it is on their blog at http://tworavenspress.wordpress.com.

The Year in Self-Publishing

by

This post, from V.J. Chambers, originally appeared on her In The Gray Twilight blog on 12/23/09 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

It’s been a little over sixth months since I decided to give this indie publishing model a go. What have I learned?

A-When people tell you that self-publishing fiction doesn’t make you any money, BELIEVE THEM. Seriously. 🙂

B-Writing for an audience is about seventy zillion times more rewarding than writing stuff to send to agents and then shelve indefinitely. Rejection letters don’t prompt you to get words on a page. Myspace comments exclaiming that your novel is better than best-selling novels do. 🙂

C-Serial fiction may be the current model that everybody and his brother is going for, but it doesn’t work for me.

A (expanded)–Here’s my money earned from my books this year. Okay, first, the expenses: $275 for a block of ten ISBNs from Bowker. $40 for the Pro Plan from Creatspace x 4 = $160. $20 for registering my domain name and for web hosting service for the year. For a total of: $455. Darned cheap, if I do say so myself. 🙂

Earnings: Createspace & Amazon (print books): $273.62. Kindle earnings: $56.54. Smashwords earnings: $307.32. For a total of: $637.48.

Meaning that my total net profit is…. $182.48.

Do I have to mention the $1.50 I’ve earned in ad revenue from Project Wonderful?

There you have it kids. Writing doesn’t pay bills. 😛

C (expanded)–I’ve decided not to post my books as serials anymore. There are two reason for this. The first is that my books are not serials. I never wrote them to be broken up into chapters and posted piecemeal on the internet. I wrote them to be read all at once. (In one sitting, if you’ve got the time. I certainly aim to make them as page-turny as possible.) Breaking them up into episodes, I think, only serves to stunt the forward motion of the plot, and does next to nothing for the experience of the book.

The second reason is that posting serials is a little tiring. Updating twice a week may not seem like a big deal, and honestly, most of the time, it isn’t, but it does mean that I’m constantly trying to think about the book that I’m updating. It divides my mind between the book that I’m marketing and the one that I’m writing. (Well, okay, I haven’t written a book since Tortured, but, still, theoretically…) Anyway, I feel like if I weren’t constantly trying to update my website, I could spend more time writing, which is important, because that’s the whole reason I have a website in the first place.

So…what to do? I’m going to play with some ideas, but what I’d like to be able to do is this: Keep all the J&A books up for free on the site. Post 50% previews of Mischief, Death Girl, and Brighter. Leave the website like that for…months. So, if you like the new books, you can buy them. If someone new stumbles across the site, they’ve got three free books to read. As I get some new stuff written, I’ll transition the preview books to free books.

I’ll be starting an email list for those people who’d like to receive updates from me. That way, once you’ve read everything I’ve posted, you can go on your merry way until I send you an email, telling you that a new book is up.

On the marketing front, I’m toying with the idea of allowing my readers to help me market. Some people, I understand, don’t have the money to buy new fiction. So, if you’ll instead plug my stuff–write blogs, facebook notes, reviews on Amazon and smashwords, etc–then I’ll send you free ebooks. I haven’t worked out the details on that yet, but it will be coming soon.

So, that’s it. The year in self-pubbing. It’s been an adventure guys. 2010 is going to be even cooler.

V. J. Chambers decided to chuck the mainstream sometime the spring of 2009. Since she’s an indie author, she makes a living teaching high school. She is also fond of snakes, cheesecake, her boyfriend Aaron, Stephen King books, Buffy, and corduroy pants (although not exactly in that order). She lives in Shepherdstown, WV. You can learn more about V.J. and her work on her website. 

Platform Resolutions For Writers 2010

by

This post, from Christina Katz, originally appeared on her blog on 1/4/10, and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

Before writers establish an author platform, they typically establish a writer platform. Over the past decade, thousands of writers have parlayed established influence into traditional book deals. Landing a traditional book deal is still an effective way to exponentially increase your credibility and visibility.

Your “platform” refers to what you do in the world with your professional expertise that makes you visible and influential in the world. Having friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter is not your platform, unless the majority of those people know who you are, what you do, and are enthusiastic about your work.

I thought I would offer some advice about how to slowly and steadily establish a lasting platform. You may note the lack of fanaticism in this advice and the emphasis on enduring success instead. I’m a mother and a wife, a freelancer, a speaker, a teacher, and a blogger, so aiming for balance is the only way I can afford to work if I plan on sticking around for the long haul.

This advice has worked consistently for my students over the past several years. I think you will find that a grounded, step-by-step approach works just as well for you if you choose to follow it:

1. Develop a platform topic that you love and can work on tirelessly for the next few years. Your passion of the moment should come in second to the topic you could delve into deeply for a good, long time. Prior professional education and a depth of personal experience are going to be a boon to your platform if you have an eye on a future book deal.

2. Hang back from establishing a blog on your topic until you have cultivated a wealth of content and experience working with others on specialty-related activities that lend credibility and trust to your name. Others will tell you to start blogging immediately, but don’t, if you want to be efficient with your time and money.

3. Instead, gain authority by seeking publication in established, highly visible publications both in print and online that serve your target audience. Avoid the kind of publishing that anyone can accomplish, like posting on article sites, and work on your professional communication skills instead. By all means, avoid the content mills offering writers slave wages with the promise of future earnings.

4. Don’t begin any kind of marketing campaign for any product or service offerings until you have established yourself as a go-to person on your topic, again saving you time and money. Before you look at ways to serve others directly, channel your expertise into the best service methods possible based on your strengths and weaknesses. This is a meaty topic that is covered in-depth in my book, Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Author Platform (Writer’s Digest Books 2008).

5. Then, develop a product or service that can become one of several multiple income streams over time that will support your goal of becoming a published author. For example, teaching classes over the years has allowed me to re-invest more of the money I earn from writing books back into book marketing. Make sure any offerings you produce are released conscientiously and are integrated into the professional writing you already do. Otherwise, you will seem like you are all over the place and just trying to score a buck.

6. Don’t expect your platform to support you financially for at least one or two years, as you micro-invest in it, re-invest in it as it grows, and expand your visibility.

7. Once you have a professional publication track record in your niche topic, then it’s time to hang your online shingle. I’ve seen this accomplished in as little as six months by exceptionally focused students. Take a portion of the money you’ve earned writing and invest it in a professional quality online presence.

8. A low-cost way to do this is to purchase your name as a URL and use a hosting site like GoDaddy.com to host a WordPress.org blog. I use the Thesis Theme, which you can see in action at my blog. In this way, a blog can also serve as your website where you post your published clips, offerings and bio. If you don’t have a ton of money to invest in the look of your site, you can always pay a designer later.

9. Delay partnering with others on joint ventures until you have a clear idea of your own strengths and weaknesses in and around your topic. And when you do partner with others be extremely discriminating. Make sure the partnership is going to be win-win-win for everyone involved.

10. Start an e-mail newsletter or e-zine with those who are most interested in your topic. Build your list by invitation and then grow it into a permission-based following over time. Create an expected, ongoing dialogue that is mutually beneficial to everyone involved and your list will grow.

11. Now you are ready to start blogging. And yes, I mean while you continue to do all the things we’ve already discussed. Be sure to zoom-focus your blog on what you have to add to the conversation that is already going on about your topic. Don’t just share information; make an impact. Make your blog a go-to, up-to-date resource for your audience.

12. Partner selectively with others who serve the same general audience that you do with integrity and humility. Spend time getting to know folks before you decide to partner with them. You can’t afford to taint the reputation you have worked so hard to establish by partnering with just anyone.

13. Now that you have an established niche and audience, definitely participate in social networking. I like Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In because they all offer something unique. The best way to learn is to jump in, spend an hour online each week until you are up and running. Follow the instructions for getting started provided by social media expert Meryl K. Evans.

This start-up plan for a writer platform will eventually blossom into an author platform. From start to finish, implementing a solid platform following this advice should take you about a year. By the end of that year, you will have established yourself as a serious contender in both professional and online circles, without killing yourself for some huckster’s promise of overnight success.

Have a plan. Leave a legacy in words, connections and professional influence. If you are consistent, by the time the year is done, you will have made effective use of your time and money in 2010.  I wish you the best of luck in your platform-building efforts!

 

Christina Katz is the author of Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Author Platform and Writer Mama, How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids for Writer’s Digest Books. She has written hundreds of articles for national, regional, and online publications, presents at literary and publishing events around the country, and is a monthly columnist for the Willamette Writer. Katz publishes a weekly e-zine, The Prosperous Writer, and hosts The Northwest Author Series. She holds an MFA in writing from Columbia College Chicago and a BA from Dartmouth College. A “gentle taskmaster” to her hundred or so students each year, Katz channels over a decade of professional writing experience into success strategies that help writers get on track and get published. Learn more at ChristinaKatz.com.

Publetariat, Circa 2010

by

April L. Hamilton here, your friendly Editor in Chief, with some Publetariat news and freebies for you. On February 11, Publetariat will celebrate its one-year anniversary. It’s been a busy, fulfilling 11 months, and Publetariat has some new developments and giveaways set for its audience in 2010, as well as one event. 


Publetariat – New Contributors
First, Publetariat is proud to welcome Joel Friedlander, Jenn Topper, Stephen Windwalker, Bob Spear, Richard Sutton (The Indie Curmudgeon) and Mark Barrett as regular site contributors. Indie authors and/or publishing professionals all, they’ll be bringing valuable information and thought-provoking opinion to Publetariat.

 

Publetariat – Blogs and Free Exposure
Just a reminder: all Publetariat members have access to create blog entries on the site, and the 10 most recent blog entries are always featured on the front page of the site in the right-hand column. It’s an easy, free way to get some exposure to Publetariat’s  audience of writers, authors, publishers, and all manner of other bookish types, and that audience is quite large. As of this writing, Publetariat ranks in the top 1.4% of all websites worldwide in terms of traffic, per Alexa.

Publetariat membership is free, and we don’t share your contact details so you need not worry about being added to any spam lists. Heck, Publetariat doesn’t even send out any type of newsletter, so you don’t have to worry about us clogging up your in-box, either.

I’ll be honest with you: I do not recommend using Publetariat’s blogging feature as your primary blog, because it will always be framed by Publetariat columns/content (as opposed to a blog that contains nothing but content related to you and your work) and it doesn’t have all the nice bells and whistles you can get with Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, or another dedicated blogging site. Still, it can be a nice adjunct to whatever else you’ve got going on, and you may want to use it just to publish the occasional article you feel is deserving of wider exposure than your blog’s traffic level typically provides. I use it as an adjunct: even though I have my Indie Author Blog set up with Blogger, I use my Publetariat blog to publish my weekly #fridayflash flash fiction because my other blog is dedicated to posts about authorship and publishing.

If you’d like to start blogging here, just sign up for a free member account and, once your registration has been confirmed via email, log in and click the Create Content link in the upper area of the left-hand column on any page of the site. Select Blog Entry on the Create Content page, and you’re ready to go.

 

Publetariat Vault – Free Listings for the First Half of 2010
Sister site The Publetariat Vault was launched last summer and has recently announced it is extending free listings through June 30, 2010. The Vault is a listing service for self-published authors who still own the rights to their works and wish to sign those works with a mainstream publisher, literary agent or film/TV/game/multimedia producer. Self-published books which have generated a lot of buzz, or sales, or both, are of great interest to such people, but until now it’s been very difficult for them to locate these books in the vast, undifferentiated sea of the internet.

That’s where the Vault comes in, providing not only standard catalog data (e.g., title, date of publication, page count, etc.), but actual sales figures and author platform links as well. Some have asked why anyone who already has a slushpile on his or her desk would want to search the Vault, and the answer is simple: not only is the Vault’s content searchable based on specific criteria (e.g., genre, protagonist sex or age, intended reading age for audience, more), but the results of Vault searches include actual sales and author platform information. This extra bit of information and links enable self-published authors to clearly demonstrate how both they, and their books, are performing in the marketplace.

The reason behind the decision to extend six months of free listings, a $60 value per listing, comes down to raising awareness. While the Vault has already registered such searchers as Sourcebooks, NBC/Vivendi/Universal (TV shows, movies, games), agent Nathan Bransford and publishing think tank Idealog, we recognize that the site needs more time to fully develop and become a trusted resource for its intended audience of authors and searchers alike—but we don’t expect authors to finance the effort.

This article provides a good overview of what the Vault is and how it works. You can read the Vault’s FAQ here, and its Terms of Use here. You can view a sample, dummy listing here, and see what the publisher/agent/producer search form looks like here. If you decide to register for a free account, you can do that here. After doing so, you will receive an email with full details on how to create your listings and bypass the PayPal payment system when publishing them.

We’re also working on expanding the Vault to include authors who have published with a small press but are still seeking representation; there will be announcements both here and on the Vault site when site changes to accomodate such authors are complete.

 

Vault University – Free Lessons/Handouts in Publishing and Author Platform/Promotion
Sister site Vault University launched last fall. This site provides monthly lessons for authors in two curricula: Publishing and Author Platform/Promotion. Vault U. was originally developed as a free educational service for authors who have their books listed in the Publetariat Vault: authors with at least one Vault listing are entitled to free enrollment in the Vault curriculum of their choice, though they’re enrolled in the Author Platform/Promotion curriculum by default since that’s the area of most interest to most self-published authors. If you take advantage of the Vault’s free listing offer above, you’ll also get access to Vault U lessons for free through 6/30/10. 

But that’s not the only means of getting free lessons and handouts from Vault U. Because lessons tend to be lengthy, entire, self-contained sections of lessons are often provided in the form of separate, standalone pdf "handout" documents. When this is the case, Vault U. makes those standalone pdfs available online free of charge to anyone who wants them. I always tweet about them, so if you follow me on Twitter ( @indieauthor ), you’ll be sure to hear about any that are posted in 2010. There are also plans to add a page to the Vault U. site with links to all available free handouts by the end of this month, so watch the Vault U. site for the appearance of that page. So far, Vault U. has offered the following freebies:

Crunching The Numbers: How It’s Possible To Sell Every Copy Of Your Self-Published Book And Still Lose Money – And How To Avoid That Outcome

Setting Up An Author Blog

Basics of Effective Website Design (intended for authors with some web developer skills and HTML literacy)

What Goes Into An Author Press Kit

If you like what you see in these lesson materials and would like more, but don’t wish to list a book in the Vault, Vault U. also accepts paid subscriptions at a rate of $5/mo per curriculum. You can read more about the Publishing curriculum here, and about the Author Platform/Promo curriculum here. Subscription links are provided at the bottom of each of those pages. 

 

Author Workshop Cruise
Finally, there’s the Author Workshop Cruise, scheduled for the week of 10/10/10. In this weeklong, all-workshop cruise, only 30 attendees will have the opportunity to learn everything they need to self-publish and promote right. It’s a vacation and writer’s workshop bundled into a single trip.

Workshops will be led by me (self-publishing in POD formats), Joshua Tallent (publishing for the Kindle), Kirk Biglione and Kassia Krozser (author platform and social media for authors) and Seth Harwood (author platform and podcasting for authors). Attendance is limited to allow for more personalized attention, and because all attendees will receive a private, 45-minute consulting session with a workshop presenter.

Cruise sponsors include Writer’s Digest, Smashwords and Everpub, and travel arrangements are being handled through AAA Travel, of the Auto Club of Southern California. This hasn’t been officially announced yet, but just between you, me and the internet, in addition to premiums provided by sponsors and workshop presenters, all cruise attendees will also receive a free, 12-month enrollment in the Vault U. curriculum of their choice as a benefit of cruise attendance.


That’s about all the news for now, but plans for a first-anniversary giveaway are in the works too so stay tuned!

BookBuzzr – The One Free Tool That Every Author Needs For Book Marketing

by

This post, from Saneesh, originally appeared on the Freado The Book-Marketing Technology Blog on 10/20/09.

[Note from Publetariat Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton: While this is really just a promotional piece about the BookBuzzr widget, since that widget is free and I use it myself and can therefore recommend it personally, it’s a resource I’m very happy to share with Publetariat’s audience. I’ve embedded the BookBuzzr widget for my book, The IndieAuthor Guide, at the end of this post so readers can see for themselves exactly what it is and how it works.]

As an author trying to market your book online, you may find that many of the simple steps involved in Internet marketing are actually quite daunting. Consider the simplest and most important prerequisite, of offering an extract of your book online in a nice to read format that can be easily shared among your readers.

 

99% of author websites are unable to allow sampling of books on their websites. They simply stick in an image of their book and hope that this is enough to stimulate the desire to read the book among site visitors. You know you can do better than that!

BookBuzzr is built from the ground-up for word-of-mouth (or shall we say, click-of-mouse) book-marketing. By signing up for BookBuzzr you can allow readers to browse through portions of your book in a nice to read online, flip-book format where the experience is similar to reading a real book. Additionally, they can get a [centralized] listing of all things related to your book such as links to where they can buy your book, where they can discover interviews with you, where they can listen to podcasts related to your book and more.

Need another reason to sign-up for BookBuzzr? Let’s talk about "share-ability" or "distribute-ability." Let’s say you saw a book-extract of a book that you loved and you want to share this with readers of your blog. The best most people can do is to put up a link to the book-extract. But is this enough? The era of people going to a few "destination" websites to get their content is over. Today you are as likely to see an interesting video embedded on a blog that you discovered as you are to see that video on YouTube. So we’ve taken care of this for you. Fans of your book can easily embed your book on their personal blogs and become ambassadors for your book.
BookBuzzr is intended to take care of most of the details related to online book-marketing and book promotion on an ongoing basis. At the very least, BookBuzzr helps you to:  

  • Reach your target audience by allowing them to discover your book in various places such as blogs, websites, social networking sites and more.
     
  • Tell them that your book is available by providing links to places where they can buy your book.
     
  • Persuade them to read it by allowing them to easily sample your book with jaw-dropping book simulation technology.

As a bonus, when you sign up, you also get listed on fReado.com where readers can interact with you and with other readers. Further, you can link from fReado to your own author site or blog, thus helping your search engine rankings. Because fReado.com is optimized for search engines and because fReado.com is regularly crawled all over by the major search engines, the information about your book will soon be noticed and your pages should be listed in response to web searches. We also have plans to connect fReado with Facebook Connect. This enables your readers to:
 

  • Seamlessly "connect" their Facebook account and information with your book
     
  • Connect and find their friends who are on fReado
     
  • Share comments made on your book with their friends on Facebook

Sign up now for free and join other elite authors who understand the art of online book promotion!

Given the growth of Twitter and its importance in helping authors build their platform and sell more books, a number of Twitter features have been added to BookBuzzr to help authors market their book on Twitter with a large degree of automation. The goals behind these features are:

  • To help the author gain more followers on Twitter
     
  • To make the book more visible among the authors’ Twitter followers
     
  • To help readers of the book share the book among their Twitter followers.

These Twitter features for marketing books online include:
 

  • Authors can schedule tweets about their book in their Twitter accounts daily or weekly.
     
  • Every time a reader opens an author’s book-excerpt, a tweet goes out to the authors Twitter followers mentioning that the book was opened.
     
  • Readers will find a link to follow the author on Twitter when they are reading the author’s book-excerpt and when they finish reading the book-excerpt.
     
  • Readers can tweet about the book with just a few clicks. 

 

Bookshops Are Dead: And I Killed Them

by

This post, from Eoin Purcell, originally appeared on his blog on 1/4/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

2009 was a weak year for me in book reading terms. I read perhaps 26 or so (with some extra I’m fairly sure I have forgotten):

1) Europe Between The Oceans
2) A Fire Upon The Deep
3) The Ascent of Money
4) Blood of the Mantis
5) The Training Ground
6) Dragonfly Falling
7) The Blade itself
8)Millennium
9) Before They Are Hanged
10) Ireland in 2050
11) Gutenberg Revolution
12) Empire in Black & Gold
13) Empire of the Sea
14) Edward I: A Great & Terrible Kind
15) The Last Argument of Kings
16) The Steel Remains
17) The Dreaming Void
18) The Adamantine Palace
19) Defying Empire
20) The Darkness That Comes Before
21) A Shadow in Summer
22) A Betrayal in Winter
23) An Autumn War
24) Young Miles
25) The Stars My Destination
26) Earthman, Come Home

On the other hand I bought quite a few more than that, perhaps something like 50 or 60 books. I’m hoping to push the read figure up towards 45 or so and if I’m really lucky, I might even average one a week.

Serious thoughts
I was thinking while calculating this poor reading effort of the changes that Seth Godin pointed to in a recent post:

iTunes and file sharing killed Tower Records. The key symptom: the best customers switched. Of course people who were buying 200 records a year would switch. They had the most incentive. The alternatives were cheaper and faster mostly for the heavy users.

He drew a comparison with books and Amazon’s recent somewhat questionable Kindle news, that they sold more books via Kindle than in paper on Christmas day:

Amazon and the Kindle have killed the bookstore. Why? Because people who buy 100 or 300 books a year are gone forever. The typical American buys just one book a year for pleasure. Those people are meaningless to a bookstore. It’s the heavy users that matter, and now officially, as 2009 ends, they have abandoned the bookstore. It’s over.

I think Seth is right and yet wrong. He is right, bookstores as we’ve known them are dead. But Amazon killed them long before they released the Kindle. Cheap books delivered through the mail are the way forward for those of is who buy in large numbers (I’m probably a medium rank buyer of books).

The Book Depository sucks up a good 60% of my book buying at the moment and accounts for almost all my new book purchases with 10% or less spent in chain stores or supermarkets. The rest is spread very unevenly as follows: 25% in second-hand and car-boot sale locations (Ravenbooks features here and I suspect in 2010 will feature even more) which is made up almost exclusively of out of print and pre-2000 books, the last 5% or so gets spent fairly randomly everywhere from good independents, to local shops with self published titles and random online direct purchases and ebooks (I’m still primary print and suspect I will always be so, despite a belief and passion for digital text).

He is wrong, however, when he says that the top rank of book buyers are gone for ever from print, because many of those buying books on Kindle will buy some, get some free and eventually return to print books, many more of the top buyers will simply ignore digital books in favour of print because they like it.

This is not a defence of print against digital (like this op-ed from Jonathan Galassi president of Farrar, Straus & Giroux) as, ultimately, I believe the bulk of books will be read digitally before the end of the teens, but it is not as simple a case as music when whether or not you had a cd or an mp3 makes little difference to the listener, the quality was just the same and the process of using it fairly similar too. Books on the other hand are usable on their own without input from a device of any kind and with the proviso that there is light. Those readers who, like me, still enjoy the experience of reading in print will still buy in print even as the price of print books rises.

So there will be demand for print books but at a much reduced level (because many others will shift to digital as will casual readers and new readers) and the economics of bookshops will become completely skewed favouring the online Emporia. Booksellers can react by hand-selling to customers and making themselves relevant as Ravenbooks has (I am increasingly sure of finding a pile of relevant books there every time I walk in) and no doubt this will mean concentrating on older books, out-of-print books and second-hand books, books that appeal directly to the customer, and print-on-demand books printed directly on site (though I am less convinced of the economic case for this).

Whatever way you look at it though, by not buying in chain stores, and rarely enough in independents, I killed the chain bookshop and I got away with it!

More to come today!
Eoin

Eoin PurcellEoin Purcell works and lives in Dublin where owns and runs Green Lamp Media, a publishing, publishing services and content company. Green Lamp works with authors, publishes books digitally and in print and with publishers on social media and content projects.

He was formerly commissioning editor with one of Ireland’s oldest independent publishers Mercier Press. Prior to that he worked at Nonsuch Ireland as commissioning editor and publishing manager. He is a board member of Publishing Ireland, the Irish Publishers association.

He contributes occasional blog posts and columns on the Irish book trade for The Bookseller magazine. He also writes a blog at www.eoinpurcellsblog.com and edits www.irishpublishingnews.com