Ebooks

Articles specific to writing and publishing ebooks.

Ebooks: Fear vs. Opportunity

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This post, by Noelle Skodzinsky, originally appeared on BookBusinessMag.com on 3/1/09.  Noelle Skodzinsky is the Editor In Chief of BookBusinessMag.

People fear the unknown. It’s a simple premise that creeps into our lives more than we realize. Change brings a great amount of uncertainty … and therefore, fear. The changes happening in the book publishing industry right now are enough to prompt even the bravest publishing souls to cover their eyes, cautiously peeking through the space between their fingers to see if it’s OK to look.

It has been a challenge for Book Business to provide you with enough information on digital content without scaring off or angering the print lovers among us. But the simple fact is that whether you love printed books or not, or whether you see them existing forever or not, there is a growing market for e-books and other digital content formats that cannot be ignored. It is going to impact the future of the entire industry. 

A panel at the recent Tools of Change for Publishing Conference confirmed that. The session, called “The Rise of E-books,” shared interesting statistics and trends, and explored why e-books previously failed to gain momentum after their initial launch. David Rothman, founder and editor-publisher at news and commentary Web site TeleRead.org, said he believes the reasons for the initial failure were: the price point was about the same as for printed books; there were not many e-books available to consumers; digital rights management issues; and lack of viewability of e-reader screens. 

Addressing advances in e-readers today, Russell Wilcox, president and CEO of E Ink (the company behind the e-ink technology used in the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle, among others), said, “Every 18 months, the speed of the ink is doubling.” Today, it takes just a quarter of a second for the ink to change (e.g., when you “turn” a page). This year, he said, will also see the launch of new sizes in e-ink screens, both larger and smaller; e-readers will launch in new countries; and we will begin to see touch and pen interfaces, enabling users to input as well as output content.  

“In 2010,” said Wilcox, “flexible displays will expand … and toward the end of the year, we will see the first full-color e-paper devices. In 8 to 10 years, color will get better and better,” he added, ultimately achieving a level suitable for viewing quality, full-color magazines. 

Digital rights management (DRM) continues to present an obstacle, agreed the panelists. “DRM has to go away,” said Joe Wikert, general manager of the O’Reilly Technology Exchange division of O’Reilly Media Inc. He added that the industry needs to stop thinking of digital content as print books in digital form. “As long as we’re focused on bringing print to a digital format,” he says, “[that will be] an artificial ceiling we’re always going to be dealing with.” Instead, publishers should focus on the “great opportunities in video, linkage, etc.” 

Read the rest of the article at BookBusinessMag.com. 

Why I'm Optimistic About The Future Of Books

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In which San Francisco-based literary agent Nathan Bransford gives us all a reason to feel a little less gloomy about the future of publishing.

For the second installment of positivity week: the future.

You don’t hear very much optimism about the future these days, what with the stock market looking like the Grand Canyon and the Bachelor breaking hearts on national television (except my heart — I loved every minute).

We’re just over the horizon from the digital age of books. It will be a major transition. It is going to cause some heartache and displacement and layoffs, as it is already. We’re seeing old models break and die. And right now in the world of books, the shrinking shelf space due to closing bookstores (not to mention closing wallets) isn’t yet being replenished by the new possibilities that are afforded by the digital marketplace. Right now there are still all sorts of bottlenecks in the system that are resulting in good books not being published (or under-published) and all sorts of stress. Plus, change is scary.

(And yes, I know that paragraph may violate the terms of positivity week. Don’t worry, I’m getting to the good stuff.)

Don’t fret over your beloved paper books: they will always be around in some form. But here’s why we, as lover of books, should embrace the coming eBook future: distribution will no longer hold writers back.

Writers from the beginning of time have been faced with one essential physical challenge: you had to get the books to the people. Thus, you either owned a printing press or you had to find a publisher (who owned you). Without the publishers: there was no way to reach an audience.

This physical barrier has already eroded somewhat with POD and self-publishing, but as anyone who has self-published knows: good luck getting your self-published book into a bookstore. You may be able to print your own book these days, but without a publisher’s backing or pre-existing fame it’s ridiculously hard to find an audience.

In sum: throughout the past two hundred years, someone could write a perfectly good book, but there was one big barrier standing in between the author and their readers: publishers. As much as I’d like to think the publishing industry is always right, well, it’s not.
 

But here’s what’s going to happen in the digital era: anyone will be able to publish their book, and there will be no distribution barrier. The same eBook stores that stock Stephenie Meyer and Dan Brown will stock, well, you. Readers will be the ones who decide what becomes popular. There will be no intermediary. It will be just as easy to buy a book by you as it will be to buy the HARRY POTTER of the future. Your book will be just a few keystrokes away from everyone with an internet connection (and their tablet/eReader/iPhone/gizmo/whatchamacallit of the future).

 

Read the rest of the post at Nathan Bransford’s blog.

What About The Readers?

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This article, by Hugh McGuire, originally appeared on The Huffington Post on 2/25/09.

To get the right answers, you have to ask the right questions.

Book publishing has many conundrums to solve in the coming decade, and not a week goes by without a long, thoughtful article in some major magazine about the impending collapse of the industry and its myriad causes: ebooks, Youtube, greed, television, gaming, big advances, returns, amazon, pirates, the Decline and Fall of Civilization.

The articles all revolve around this central and troubling question: "How can publishing maintain its financial viability when fewer people are reading books? Especially when everyone wants everything for free?"

This is going to be a tough question for publishers to answer, but it misses a more fundamental question, which is: "What do readers want, and how can we best provide it?"

I don’t mean: "What books do they want to read," but rather, "What can we do to help people read more books?"

Tools of Change … for Readers?

I recently attended O’Reilly’s Tools for Change in Publishing conference, a yearly gathering of publishers, technology providers, developers, thinkers, visionaries. The TOC conference is built around technology, with an objective to help "decipher the tools of change in this industry and help cut through the hype for a more profitable future in publishing." In 2009 the focus was decidedly philosophical, not technological: what is the future of the book, and how might publishers build successful business models around the coming changes?

No firm answers came from the conference, but there were many glimmers of possible futures, with highlights from Peter Brantley, who examined books in the network, Jeff Jarvis who postulated about the Googly book, Cory Doctorow who skewered DRM as bad for readers, bad for business, and Sara Lloyd, who brings a reasoned and forward-looking publisher’s perspective on digital.

Still, one thing that worried and puzzled me was how rarely the reader was mentioned at TOC. There was talk of the future of the book, the network, Google, and self-publishing models. And of course DRM. But the reader was largely absent.

Tools of Change … for Readers?

One of the problems for publishers is that they have never had much to do with their readers. Their clients, traditionally, have been book stores, who in turn managed the relationships with readers. In a time of limited media choices and abundant readers that probably works. But now that book reading is competing against so many other information-based leisure activities (the web and the Wii, to name two), the makers of books need to have a more intimate understanding of what readers want. Outsourcing your relationships with the people who are your reason for existence is probably a bad idea when your business is in turmoil.

What kind of business runs without constantly questioning how it can best serve it’s clientele? The answer, especially when consumer choice has never been so great, is probably: a business that’s going to have trouble surviving.

Read the rest of the article on The Huffington Post.

Personal [And Author] Branding In The Age of Google

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In his blog entry of 2/28/09 , Seth Godin offers the following anecdote:

A friend advertised on Craigslist for a housekeeper. Three interesting resumes came to the top. She googled each person’s name.

The first search turned up a MySpace page. There was a picture of the applicant, drinking beer from a funnel. Under hobbies, the first entry was, "binge drinking."

The second search turned up a personal blog (a good one, actually). The most recent entry said something like, "I am applying for some menial jobs that are below me, and I’m annoyed by it. I’ll certainly quit the minute I sell a few paintings."

And the third? There were only six matches, and the sixth was from the local police department, indicating that the applicant had been arrested for shoplifting two years earlier.

Three for three.

Google never forgets.

Of course, you don’t have to be a drunk, a thief or a bitter failure for this to backfire. Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you’re on Candid Camera, because you are.

This cautionary tale is just as relevant to authors as it is to job-seekers.  Whenever someone reads or hears about your work and would like to learn more, Google is likely to be the first stop on the fact-finding mission.  All authors want to present a polished, professional web presence to the world, but it’s even more critical for indie authors to do so because indies are still working to gain mainstream acceptance and a wider readership.

So take a long, hard look at your Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blog and personal website pages, and ask yourself if the content there will leave viewers with a positive impression of you as an author.  If not, edit and clean up accordingly, but don’t expect those skeletons in your web closet to vanish the moment you hit the Delete key; Google and other search engines can keep archive copies of web pages for years. 

As Mr. Godin suggests, the best you can do following an online image scrubbing is to load any search engine results with pages and references that do you proud. Post fresh content on your site(s) and blog(s), and post comments to popular online discussion boards, sites and blogs—under the same name as that under which you publish, since that’s the name interested parties are most likely to type into a search engine when seeking more information about you.  In a day or two, the new content and comments will turn up in web searches of your name, pushing the old, archived stuff you no longer want so prominently displayed further down the list of search results.  Continue with your front-loading mission, daily if necessary, until the undesirable, archived content is buried at least a couple of pages down in web search results for your name.

Mainstream Publishers: Some Perspective

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April Hamilton posted about mainstream authors defining legitimacy for other writers.

 

Ignoring for a moment the fact that writing is a very personal endeavor with very personal wants and needs attached to it, that are unique to every writer, I want to talk about what mainstream publishing is to a writer.

 

Maybe it’s because of the early cost barriers for self publishing, and maybe it’s because of all the vanity press scams that got perpetrated on desperate authors, but somewhere along the way mainstream publishers began to be seen, not only as the holy grail of writing, but as some sort of salvation and validation of the struggling writer.

 

We somewhere along the way, gave the power of gods and magical elves to these otherwise normal human beings, and became dependent upon them for our worth and validation as writers.  And since our identity as a writer is so often such a big part of who we are as people, for some of us, our worth and identity as people.

That’s a big boatload of validation responsibility for a mainstream publisher.  As a business entity, they just can’t meet that need.

 

So let’s add some perspective back into the mix.  What is a mainstream publisher really?

 

Two things mainly:

1. Financial backing

2. Distribution

 

That’s it.

 

I’m sorry if you were misled into believing this is still the world of Maxwell Perkins, and that you would be nurtured and coddled.  While it still seems to be true for some writers published by mainstream presses, it’s no longer the general rule.

 

1. Financial Backing.

 

Every necessary skill needed to bring a quality book to market is available on the free market.  You can buy it with cash/credit/selling your child into slavery (just kidding on that last one.  Maybe.), or you can barter for it if you possess skills/products that the individual you want to hire needs.

 

Mainstream publishers have clearly demonstrated a lack of ability to be infallible when it comes to quality. (Which to be fair, they never claimed to be infallible.) There are many books that are very well-written but are rejected either based on the arbitrary taste of a given publisher, or marketing trends.  Very often the latter.

 

Which is fine.  It’s a business, not a charity.  No one expects any other company to put out a product just to fulfill the hopes and dreams of that product’s creator.

 

Mainstream publishers do not have magical editors, interior design people, or cover artists.  All those same skill sets and quality exist on the free market.  And in this shrinking downsized corporate world, chances are good your average mainstream publisher is using a lot of freelance editors, artists, and interior layout people themselves.  

 

If you’ve got the finances or ingenuity to create the book, then that’s one of the two above things a mainstream publisher brings to the table, that you don’t really need. 

 

I was a wedding coordinator in a previous life, and using the knowledge I gleaned, I coordinated and planned my own wedding.  A few good friends were very surprised by how inexpensively I got everything.  It’s because when you start thinking in a budget-conscious way, you figure out what you really have the skill-set to do yourself and what you don’t.

 

Common wisdom says you get someone else to do your flowers.  I had wanted artificial flowers and I knew I could arrange what I needed myself with a few simple books and could save myself a ton of money on the labor.  So I did, and no one knew the difference.  But I didn’t bake my own cake, because I recognized that a wedding cake was way outside my scope of expertise/abilities.  But I still compared prices until I found something reasonable.

 

As I started to consider indie authorship, I realized I was in very familiar waters.  While I may be able to do one facet of the process myself, another would have to be hired or bartered out for.  But in the end, guaranteed I’ll have laid out much less money for the whole thing, than the casual observer might be led to believe.

 

2. Distribution

 

Mainstream publishers can get your book into bookstores, Walmarts, and Costcos across America.  But will they?  Walmart kind of has limited shelving space for books, since that’s not their primary function.  So in all likelihood we’re looking at the big chain bookstores.  The big chain bookstores that in this economy aren’t doing so well.

 

Or, there’s the internet.  Internet bookstores don’t have limited shelving space and Amazon especially is very indie-friendly.  Every year more and more consumers are becoming more comfortable with buying at least some, if not most of their books online.

 

I used to shop in bookstores, but no matter how large a bookstore, the chance that they’ll actually have any given book I’m looking for, unless it’s a new release or a bestseller, is constantly shrinking.  Eventually I just gave up and started shopping on Amazon.

 

And I’m not the only one.

 

And then there is the whole ebook thing that is now starting to really rise.  When was the last time you saw ebooks for sell in a brick and mortar bookstore?  Or maybe the question should be: Have you ever seen them there? 

I won’t dispute the fact that mainstream publishing distribution still is a nice deal when you can get it.  Though it’s nicest if you’re their debut darling of the season and your name gets splashed in front of the faces of everyone in the known reading public.  But the argument that a mainstream publisher is necessary because of distibution is wearing thinner as time goes on, the economy continues to not be great, the internet becomes a bigger factor, and the barriers just keep lowering for indies to play this game in their own way.

 

In the end, I wonder if mainstream publishers, with the exception of those rare times when a writer gets a really plum contract, aren’t just there now to validate our egos.  Even if that isn’t their stated purpose, I wonder if that’s the purpose writers have invested in them now.  And maybe all the other reasons you really "need" a mainstream publisher, are all just so much fluff touted by those who got their big break already.

 

If so, the only thing you have to let go of is your ego. 

 

Viva la Resistance!

 

Bestselling Author JA Konrath Thinks You're Delusional

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In a blog post dated 2/25/09, bestselling detective/crime author JA Konrath says, among other things:

"Are you confident or delusional?

Chances are high the delusional people will believe they’re confident, since self-awareness is in short supply in the writing community.  Here are some questions to ask yourself.

Have you been published by an impartial third party?

Confident writers eventually get traditionally published. Period."

Okay, so Mr. Konrath is saying pretty much anyone currently reading this on Publetariat is delusional. He goes on to say:

"Would you rather be paid or be praised?

Confident writers know the best form of praise is a royalty check."

A book from an author you might not want to supportSo it seems Mr. Konrath has much less interest in his readers’ praise than he does in the checks coming from the accounting department of his publisher.  If you take Mr. Konrath’s comment to its logical end, he’s basically saying that he doesn’t care how much readers ultimately like or hate his work, so long as a publisher is willing to pay for it, he’s satisfied and fulfilled.  Here’s my response to Mr. Konrath, as posted on his blog:

 

Getting signed with a large, mainstream publisher nowadays has much more to do with marketing concerns than it does with the quality of the work. Being published by a mainstream publisher only proves one thing: that the publisher’s marketing department thinks your book will appeal to a broad enough sector of the public to sell very, very well—45k copies or above, as a guideline.

This isn’t to say that all mainstream-published work is of poor quality, but the inverse: that not every manuscript which *isn’t* picked up by a mainstream publisher is necessarily of poor quality. Now, it’s simply a numbers game. Big publishers have dropped their midlists and many multiply-published authors on the grounds that while those books may be successful, they’re not quite successful *enough* by today’s publishing business paradigm.

At the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference, at which I was a speaker on The Rise of Ebooks panel, I spoke to countless publishing pros who confirmed what I’m saying here. Furthermore, I got confirmation of the fact that for a new author, there’s an unwritten rule among most big publishers that the author be able to demonstrate a significant online presence with a minimum audience of 25K. You might say this is merely a case of publishers asking the author to prove his "confidence", but what does it have to do with writing?

An author with enough entrepreneurial spirit to build his own audience to that degree AND the ability to write well has all the tools at his disposal to become an indie author, much the same as an indie musician or filmmaker. If such an author can find an appreciative audience of something less than 25K, an audience deemed too small to be worth big publishers’ time, why shouldn’t he reach out to that audience directly by going indie? And who are you to judge him as "delusional" for choosing to do so? Many formerly midlist, mainstream-published authors are choosing to bring their books back into print by going it alone—are they "delusional" as well?

Furthermore, you seem to be saying that all confident writers are published by the mainstream, period, but what about all those who approached the mainstream, were rejected by all, self-published to great success, and were *then* signed by a big publisher? True, they did *eventually* meet your criterion, but there was no way of knowing that would happen when they originally self-published. You’re saying that anyone who self-publishes—and I suspect you’d think *especially* after being rejected by a big publisher—is "delusional", but neither you nor the author have any way of knowing whether that author will achieve solo success and go on to be picked up by a mainstream publisher. Moreover, what would you have said about a self-published author such as Brunonia Barry (The Lace Reader, originally self-published, picked up by Harper and went on to become a NYT bestseller) on the day BEFORE she signed with a big publisher? And what would you have said if she had elected to remain independent, rather than sign with a big publisher? What I’m getting at is this: the involvement of a mainstream publisher, or lack thereof, proves nothing about the quality or desirability (or lack thereof) of Ms. Barry’s work.

Big, mainstream publishers are chasing after big, mainstream blockbuster hits, much the same way mainstream movie studios do. Yet in the film industry, there’s a vibrant indie movement that gets nothing but respect from the mainstream. This is because the mainstream knows the indie movement is a terrific proving ground for both films and the individuals making them. An indie film even swept the Academy Awards this year, so that alone should tell you how much respect is afforded the indie filmmaker by his mainstream peers. Why should writers treat one another so differently–so badly—by comparison?

Forward-thinking luminaries such as Jeff Jarvis, Tim O’Reilly, Peter Brantley and Bob Stein see self-publishing as the new frontier in publishing, a movement that stands to benefit authors and publishers alike, as evidenced by their keynote speeches at the O’Reilly conference. In my opinion, forward-thinking writers would do well to heed what those at the leading edge of change are saying.

I launched Publetariat.com, an online news hub and community for indie authors and small imprints, on 2/11, and it’s already achieved an Alexa traffic rank in the top 4.5% of all websites worldwide. You probably think this is because there are so many "delusional" writers out there, grasping at any straw of legitimacy offered, but it might interest you to know that a large (and growing) sector of the site’s audience is made up of mainstream publishing professionals. They’re savvy enough to know a sea change is afoot, and wise enough to know that finding ways to leverage and cooperate with the new, indie author movement will serve their businesses much better than simply dismissing it out of hand, as you are doing here.

[UPDATE 2/10/10 Since the time this was written, JA Konrath has become a self-publisher. He still has his print editions and some e editions released by his mainstream publishers, but he’s self-publishing works to which he owns the rights in electronic format, and reaping major financial benefits. So I guess even someone who used to be as staunchly anti-self-pub as Konrath has come to see there are valid reasons for authors to self-publish: well-considered reasons which have nothing to do with confidence or delusion.]

Self-Publishing And Quality: Mutually Exclusive Terms?

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Self-publishing your book, like everything else, has its pros and cons. In my view, the biggest of the pros is that you have complete control over your work; the worst of the cons is that no mainstream reviewer – someone who might really be able to help get your book in front of a lot of people – will touch your work with a ten-foot pole.

Some self-published authors may claim that there’s an evil cabal led by the major publishers that’s dedicated to keeping out the little guys. There may be some truth to that, even if it’s in the form of momentum in the relationships between the publishers, bookstores, and so forth. The big houses have been doing this for a long time, and they’ve certainly got the inside track, not to mention big bucks to spend on marketing and promotion (not that they’ll necessarily spend it on any given author).

But let’s set that argument aside for a moment. You see, before we – as self-published authors or even small press publishers – can throw stones at the big publishers’ glass houses, we need to take a close look at our own.

To do that, let’s start with looking at self-published books from a reviewer’s perspective, because they’re generally seen as a critical factor in spreading the word about your book. If your book is self-published, virtually every major reviewer (and by “major,” I mean someone who has a following of thousands of people, if not more) won’t even consider looking at it. Even many blog reviewers – and there are lots of them across the different genres – with much smaller (but collectively significant) followings won’t look at self-published books. Why?

The answer, my friend, is that the quality of much of what we self-published authors put out is – to use that highly technical publishing term – crap. Many reviewers have gotten tons of self-published books, only to be repeatedly disappointed and disgusted by them. Many reviewers have a stated policy up front that they won’t review self-published (or small press) books. Others will accept them, but send them to the bottom of the review pile. Still others happily accept them, and then expose all their flaws (to the author’s dismay – but what did the author expect?).

The fact is that we can’t expect to have our work viewed in the same light as the major houses unless we can polish the inches-thick tarnish from the term “self-published” and stop producing reams of crap.

Before your head explodes with righteous indignation, let’s go over a quick check list to see if we can further define “crap” in this context, starting from the outside of your book and working our way in:

  • Would the cover (front, back, and spine) of your book stand out – in a bad way – on the shelves of a bookstore?
  • Is it outrageously priced compared to similar books (genre, length, etc.)?
  • Do the first pages leading into the main body of the text – the title page(s), copyright page, etc. – follow the general norms for “real” books? Do you even have any of those pages?
  • Are the margins, font face and size, leading, and headers/footers consistent with the norms for “real” books?
  • If someone were to flip to a random place in the text, would they find a typo or grammatical error in the first five minutes of reading? The first thirty seconds?
  • Assuming we’re talking about a work of fiction, is the story good? That’s something that only folks who don’t have a vested interest in your ego can properly answer.
  • And if the story is good overall, are there any major breaks in logic, sequence, etc. – anything that jars the reader’s experience and kills suspension of disbelief?

Now, I will stand here and tell you face to face (in a very virtual sort of way) that I’m not going to claim that my first novel or any of my other writing is the greatest thing since sliced bread, or that I’ve “passed” all of the tests above with the proverbial flying colors. This is not about me saying, “Hey, I know what I’m doing, bub, how about you?”

No. This is about stepping back and critiquing ourselves to improve the standards of our work, with the end objective being to make our books indistinguishable from those by major publishers.

Let me repeat/rephrase that: we want our self-published books to look just like “real” books. We want them to read just like “real” books (is my use of “real” annoying you?), or maybe even better (hey, I don’t know about you, but I’ve read my share of books from the big houses that were stinkers with bad stories, typos and bloopers, etc.).

As self-published authors and small press publishers – independents (indies!) – we have a lot of things standing against us (anybody remember David and Goliath?), but we also have some significant advantages over the big boys. We have complete control of our work, and we have the freedom to explore fresh ideas that offer readers something more than the same-old, same-old (which essentially is another form of “crap”) churned out by the big houses. Technology – primarily print-on-demand (POD) and ebook platforms such as the Amazon Kindle and Mobipocket Reader – is our friend, and allows us to get into the game with at least the major on-line retailers wth almost no out of pocket cost and, for the most part, reasonable pricing for our books.

Quality. It’s all about quality, and remaking the term “self-published” into something that’s sought after – or at least respected – and not shunned.

How do we do that? I don’t claim to have any magic bullets, but we’ll take a look at some ideas in the next post on this topic, so stay tuned!

Michael R. Hicks is the author of In Her Name. You can learn more about Michael and his work at his blog.

Advertisements For Yourself: Can, and Should, Book Authors Become Brands?

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This piece, by Jill Prulick, originally appeared on The Big Money on 1/28/09.

People in the book business rarely agree on much, but no one disputes that the long-suffering industry is slogging through one of its worst periods ever. Editors are freezing their acquisition budgets; publishing houses are shrinking; booksellers are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Paradoxically, the proliferation of digital media that is arguably the biggest threat to traditional publishing also offers authors more opportunities than ever to distribute and promote their work. The catch: In order to do that effectively, authors increasingly must transcend their words and become brands.

What does that mean? It depends. In the book world, where the word "brand" is either sacrosanct or dirty, there’s little consensus. Is there a difference between a best-selling author and a brand? What is the process by which an author becomes a brand—and is it a good thing?

The answers are as varied as weather in New England: A brand goes beyond one format into television or film; a brand is someone you would read regardless of the subject. For every theory ("All best-sellers are brands, but not all brands are best-sellers"), there’s a near converse ("You need to achieve best-seller status to launch a brand"). And some shun brands entirely. "Authors of best-selling books are not brands," insisted former HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman.

There are even more contradictions. Traditional branding—a mix of ads, media appearances, and book tours-is dying. Marketing departments are being slashed. Authors are pushed to promote their own books, while reviews-and their accompanying ad space-are shrinking. Independent advertiser Verso, which recently launched targeted online advertising, now spends about $2,000 to $3,000 per book on marketing, a fraction of its budget a year ago. And yet publishers, agents, and editors all say that recognition, dependability, and longevity sell books.

No one questions that James Patterson, author of 45 New York Times best-sellers and subject of a case study in brand management at Harvard Business School, is a brand, thanks to an army of consultants. Patterson’s books, which have grossed more than $1 billion and have filled the author’s coffers to the tune of more than $100 million, are practically encoded with unifying, Patterson DNA—from the title to the packaging to the hook and hanging cliffhanger.

The clear lines end there. Five percent to 10 percent of publishers’ lists, the so-called blockbusters, are top-performing authors with built-in, expanding audiences—i.e., brands. Tom Clancy. Patricia Cornwell. Suze Orman. Mitch Albom. Or are they? "I don’t really look at him as a brand," said Albom’s agent, David Black, who recently negotiated the deal to release an Albom commencement speech on the Kindle to extend the author’s reach. "Whatever we can do to expand his audience we will do."

Brands are often the elephant in the room no one wants to confront. Some authors consider it unwise to be branded as, er, brands; it’s a signpost for low-brow, mass-market sensibility. And it’s also the case that the vast majority of fiction writers, even today’s best-sellers, did not begin their lives as brands. Many were unknowns whom publishers rejected. Believe it or not, there was a time when few had heard of John Grisham. He sold his first book from the back of a car and no one was interested. Then came The Firm. "I took John to bookstores, and, at every turn, clerks were putting his book into the hands of customers," said Ellen Archer, president of Hyperion Books. It became a hit and launched the author into a brand name.

In today’s fickle marketplace, the Internet—with blogs, videos, Twitter, and other promotional tools like Amazon’s Author Stores—is the modern-day equivalent to hand-selling. Thomas Friedman even posted a chapter of Hot, Flat and Crowded on LinkedIn and asked members to weigh in. (Disclosure: I was part of Friedman’s publishing team.) In a way, authors are empowered in this new model, provided they can leverage their networks into living, breathing communities who have a stake in—and benefit from—an author’s ballooning platform.

But it comes with a price. When authors are beholden to a brand, they ally themselves, almost like actors and athletes, with agendas and meanings that are well beyond their control. In their desire to fulfill the dictates of a brand, authors can compromise their integrity as writers, especially if they cubbyhole themselves.

The Chick Lit genre provides numerous examples. The Nanny Diaries, published in 2002, sold more than 1.5 million copies and was made into a film starring Scarlett Johansson. But the author’s 2004 follow-up, Citizen Girl, pitched as social satire—male bosses filled in for Park Avenue socialites—was a flop. The authors, who reportedly were unable to sell their idea to Random House, settled on Simon & Schuster’s Atria—and satisfied the beast that was the brand. Lauren Weisberger, "Bridget Jones," and Melissa Bank suffered similar trajectories—some worse than others—and their careers as writers have waned.

Read the rest of the article at The Big Money.

Kindle 2 Review, the Formatting Perspective

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This is a cross-post from my Kindle Formatting blog.

There have been a couple of really good Kindle 2 reviews in the last day or two, including Alexander Falk’s, which I found to be a good overview of the changes and adjustments in the K2. What I am going to bring you now is a review of the formatting and book display changes that come to us in the new device, some of which are great and some of which are just going to cause frustration. I’m going to list them in no particular order.

Line height: The line height on the K2 has been reduced, allowing more text to show up on the screen. This equates to about 4 more lines of text on the screen at font size 3.


click for full-size

Font clarity and size: The new 16-level grayscale screen, in addition to making images clearer, has made the Kindle font (Caelicia) show up a bit better on the screen. That actually makes the font a little bit lighter, from what I can tell, but it does not make it significantly less readable. It does appear as you compare the two screens that the font on the Kindle 2 is just a tiny bit smaller than the same size font on the Kindle 1. I have compared the font sizes in screen shots, and it does not appear to actually be smaller. However, there are a few places where a size difference definitely does stand out, most noticeably the size of the bullets in unordered lists.

Indentation: On the Kindle 1 the first-line indentation for paragraphs is .25 inches and the left indentation for blockquotes and lists is in .5 inch increments. That allows three full indentation levels and part of a fourth before the text is too scrunched up and the indentation just stops happening. On the Kindle 2 the blockquote and list indentation has been reduced to .25 inches, allowing five full indents and part of a sixth before stopping.

Em units are smaller: On the Kindle 1, em-units (a measurement that equals the height of the font at the current size) are about twice as large as they should be, but on Kindle 2 they have been reduced to the correct size. On both devices the em-unit size does change properly with the user’s font size adjustments.

Justification wrapping: The Kindle automatically fully justifies the text in books unless the creator explictly overwrides that setting. On the Kindle 2 there seems to be a bug that does not spread the text of a line out to the end if there is a certain amount of space already between the words. So, if a larger word wraps to a new line the text before it may not be flush with the right margin. This is apparently only a big issue at the larger font sizes, but it does show up periodically at the sizes 3 and below.

Broken Justification: This next one is a pretty important bug that I hope gets addressed soon. On the Kindle you can override the default first-line indentation on paragraphs by assigning a width="0" to the paragraph or by giving it a text-indent:0 CSS style. You can also use other numbers in those values to precisely manage the first-line indentation in the file.

The problem is that any time you use either of those commands the Kindle 2 will assign a left justification to the paragraph instead of retaining the default full justification. This bug poses a significant problem for formatting since no-indent paragraphs are used on a regular basis in books. For example, in many books the first paragraph under a heading is given a no-indent style. Unless the entire book is formatted in a left-aligned style, those paragraphs will stand out significantly.

It should also be noted that the option to turn on or off justification, which is available in the K1 with a hidden command in the font size menu, is not available in the K2, as far as I can tell.

Image Dimensions: The dimensions of the space available on the Kindle screen for book content (both text and images) has changed a bit with the new device. First, you should be aware that since the release of the Kindle 1 the typical answer on the DTP forums has been to make full-page images 450px by 550px. However, on the K1 the available screen area is actually 524px by 640px. Images smaller than that but larger than 261px by 319px will be upscaled to fill the screen area in width or height. This automatic adjustment can have a negative effect on the quality of the image, so it is best to size images at the actual dimensions of the available screen area.

On the K2, the available screen area is 520px by 622px. This is an odd size difference, but the best approach is to size images with the smaller K2 content area in mind.

HTML Tables: One of the biggest complaints about the K1 has been that it does not support tables. This complaint was made more pointed by the fact that tables are supported in Mobipocket, which is the foundational format of Kindle books. Well, the K2 displays tables, even handling them the same way Mobipocket does, by allowing the user to scroll the table horizontally when it is wider than the screen area.

Strikethrough: The K2 has a small change in the placement of the strikethrough line as seen in the image here.

 

Overall, the changes in the Kindle 2 seem to be aimed at making the text easier to read and easier on the eyes. The line height changes look good, and seem to handle superscripts and subscripts better. The justification issues will be annoying for formatting needs, but should be easy to fix with a firmware update. I really would love to see the Kindle 1 get table support, but unless or until that happens I will continue to use images. The 500,000 or so Kindle 1 users out there will appreciate that, I suspect.

Mur Lafferty and "New Media"

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This post, by Edmund Schubert, originally appeared on his Side-Show Freaks blog, and features a guest post from author Mur Lafferty.

A few weeks ago I posted an essay about achieving success in the publishing industry that included a link to an article posted on Time Magazine’s website. One of the people quoted in that Time article was a friend of mine named Mur Lafferty, a fiction and non-fiction author who has built her career on using new and open media.

She can be found on Suicide Girls as a regular columnist, on Tor.com as a blogger, or on her home page, murverse.com. Her first novel, Playing For Keeps, is available via print and free audio podcast (and was reviewed on IGMS by James Maxey). She graciously agreed to write more about the subject of new media, for which I am grateful. I’ll let her take it from here…

Edmund posted recently on this blog about podcasters getting publishing contracts. He then invited me to guest blog here, and I wanted to discuss this in more detail.

I am a podcaster who built an audience of over 40,000 via free giveaways of audio podcasts and PDF podcasts, so you can guess I’m rather gung-ho about new media. Podcasting my book led directly to it being picked up by a small press and released in print.

Yes, print publication, or "old media" is my ultimate goal. Giving work away for free is not a way to directly make money, obviously. But new media allowed me to connect to an audience, make them care about my work, and then ask them to help me with the marketing of the small press book. Many bought copies of the book for themselves and to give as gifts. I received one email from a woman who appreciated the free podcast so much that she promised to buy several copies for Christmas gifts.

I’m never clear on what number makes a small press book a success, but I earned out my advance and had a strong showing on Amazon for several weeks after the release, so I’m pretty pleased with the sales numbers of a book that never hit the bookshelves.

New media is not a fad or a gimmick. It’s not a pipe dream or a crazy idea. It’s a way to connect directly to an audience in a way that just a website will not do. Established authors with existing audiences can afford to look down on new media, but new authors with no audience would do well to consider audio or ebook releases of their work.

The relationship with the community is what it’s all about. What I’ve discovered from the listeners who hear my voice talking to them in intros and read me on blogs and Twitter, is that they want me to succeed. I’m not an author in an ivory tower to them, I’m a person trying to climb a pretty big mountain and can’t do it alone. (Yeah. Sometimes I mix metaphors.) When these people see my book, they don’t think, "Oh, a superhero novel by that author I heard of once." They think, "Mur’s book came out! Awesome!"

I had a man approach me at DragonCon last year. The conversation went something like this:
 

Read the rest of the post at the Side-Show Freaks blog.

Amazon Kindle 2 Review

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This post, by Alexander Falk, was originally published on his XML Aficionado blog on 2/24/09.

My Kindle 2 arrived from Amazon today!

It appears that I am lucky in this respect, because Amazon had originally announced the ship date as February 25th, and most people are still waiting for their unit to show up. But I had ordered mine literally within 10 minutes of the announcement – so I guess being an early adopter finally got awarded…

As I had promised a few weeks ago, I am providing a review of the new Kindle 2 as a follow-up to my popular original Kindle Review from November 2007. Just like with the previous review, this one is based on unpacking the Kindle 2 and working with the device for about 2-3 hours. I plan to add information about long-term issues such as battery-life in a future blog posting once I have accumulated several days of usage of the Kindle 2.

Unpacking the Kindle 2 is fun. Just like the Kindle 1 the packaging is well-designed and this  resembles a shipping box with a "tear here to open" strip on one side. The package contains the Kindle itself, a thin "Read me" brochure, and the charging cable. The screen of the device shows instructions to plug it in and then push the power switch on top of the unit – for those that hate even the shortest of manuals.

Once you turn the Kindle 2 on, you immediately get to read the User’s Guide on the screen, or you can skip ahead and press the Home button to get to your main library page.

Before I talk about the improvements in the software, let’s take a look at all the improvements in the hardware of the device compared to the Kindle 1:

  • The Kindle 2 looks much more polished or refined and gets rid of some of the edginess of the original unit. It feels more "solid" and less flimsy, which may also be due to the fact that it is about 10g heavier (468g with book cover for the Kindle 2 compared to 458g for the Kindle 1). 
  • The Kindle 2 now locks into place in the book cover / sleeve that you can order from Amazon. The original Kindle fell out of that cover far too often, so this is a great improvement.
  • Another annoying "feature" of the Kindle 1 is now a thing of the past, too: accidental clicks on the Next or Prev buttons. The buttons on the Kindle 2 are still on the very edge of the unit, but the buttons now have their pivot point on the outside edge and need to be clicked inward, which completely prevents accidental clicking. Very clever design change!
  • The new Kindle 2 gets rid of the shiny silvery and strange LCD sidebar that the old unit used to provide a selection cursor on the page or within a menu. Since the new display is much faster and more responsive, the selection feedback is now directly shown on the main screen.
  • The Kindle 2 has a better position for the power switch (top left of the unit) and gets rid of clumsy wireless on/off hardware switch on back of unit, too.
  • It comes with a better power adapter (mini USB plug on Kindle, charger cable can either use desktop USB plug or wall outlet), which is similar to what the iPhone charger from Apple does.
  • I’m lucky to be in a Spring 3G network coverage area, and so I found the unit to have much faster downloads using Amazon 3G Whispernet (only in areas where 3G EVDO service is available). This was especially noticeable when I downloaded all my previous purchases to the new device.
  • The new 16-grayscale display is great, especially for viewing web content, such as Wikipedia, newspapers, or blogs. It’s probably not the most important feature, but certainly nice to have and much easier on the eyes than the old display when rendering images.
  • I never really liked the hardware on/off switch in the back or the sleep mode on the old Kindle, but this is now all much more user friendly and consistent: wake-up from sleep mode is now done using power-button instead of "Alt-AA", and it is much more responsive; pushing the power button briefly puts Kindle in sleep mode (artwork screen saver is shown); and pushing the power button for 4-5 sec turns the Kindle off.

In addition to these hardware changes, the Kindle 2 also apparently offers some improved software that contains several usability enhancements. Some of those are more network features and I assume they will be available as an upgrade on the old units, too, but I haven’t heard any details about such an upgrade yet. Anyway, here are the software enhancements that I found notable:

Read the rest of the review at XML Aficionado.

O'Reilly Tools of Change (#TOC) Trip Report, Pt. 2

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Now that a couple of weeks have passed since the TOC conference, the main thing that has stuck with me is the fact that many—perhaps most—of the mainstream publishing staffers present at the Tools Of Change conference aren’t truly ready to change.

Even now, with mainstream publishing in crisis and Web 2.0 rapidly becoming a dated term, I met a surprising number of publishing industry professionals who are far more interested in discovering ways to further fortify their strongholds than they are in exploring the opportunities created by branching out into new media and fostering community among their customers.

At lunch one day, a gentleman at the table asserted it’s unreasonable for readers to expect ebooks to cost significantly less than their bound-paper counterparts.  Casting myself in the role of "ignorant consumer," I asked him to explain why ebooks shouldn’t cost less on the basis of savings in paper, printing, hard copy distribution and shipping costs alone.  He explained that those expenses don’t just go away, but are replaced with equal or even greater expenses introduced by the need to preserve "branding" in the ebook through the use of specialized layout, design and typography experts and technologies.

He took as his example the ‘Dummies’ series of books, which utilize proprietary fonts and graphics and are all laid out for print in a manner consistent with one another (i.e., sidebars with tips and gotchas, highlighted through the use of specific graphic icons).  He went on to explain the incredibly difficult and expensive process of trying to faithfully recreate the Dummies ‘experience’ in an ebook, particularly since there are so many different ebook file formats to deal with, each with its own limitations and technological specfications.

When I raised the possibility that it might not be necessary to perfectly reproduce every aspect of the paper book when releasing it in e form, because people who read ebooks don’t necessarily expect electronic books to look identical to their paper counterparts, he flatly disagreed.  Preserving the ‘look and feel’ of the paper book was critical, he felt, not only to meet customer expectations but to keep the sanctity of the ‘Dummies’ brand intact.

Like so many others I met at the conference, this gentleman has not yet altered his definition of the word "book".  Numerous speakers at TOC exhorted attendees to stop thinking of books as those paper things bound between two covers, and recognize that when people buy books, most of them are paying for the content—not the delivery system.  And with some notable exceptions (i.e., books containing physically interactive elements like letters to be pulled out of envelopes bound into the book, pop-ups, etc.) paper bound between covers is nothing more than one of many possible delivery systems for content. 

There was much agreement with this gentleman’s point of view at the table, however.  So when you see an ebook from a mainstream publisher that’s priced at or above the price of the paper version, it’s probably because the publisher is spending lots of money and effort to faithfully recreate the ‘look and feel’ of the paper book for you—something they’re very certain is critical to you, even though they’ve never actually asked your opinion on the matter.  In other words, they’re trying to force new media into an old media mold; they don’t get it.

Community-building is another area where there seems to be a great dearth of insight among mainstream publishing professionals where their customers are concerned.

Many of those to whom I spoke still view online communities they might build primarily as sales channels, failing to take into the account the fact that nobody enjoys a sales pitch, much less is willing to go out of their way to seek one out online. 

Others see market research as the main benefit of community-building: get a captive audience, get them to give you as much information about themselves as possible, and then data-mine to your heart’s content. They plan to keep large chunks of their site’s content and functionality locked up from the general public, forcing visitors to register for an account before spilling the goods.  When someone does elect to sign up, they’ll be presented with an exhaustive registration form in which nearly all fields must be filled out in order to submit the form.

All of this stuff can be boiled down to a single, pervasive problem I observed among most of the mainstream publishing industry pros I met at TOC: they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be an "ordinary" reader, and it’s been so long since they were ordinary readers, they can’t even imagine what it might be like to think like one once again. Their perspective is so mired in publisher-speak and publisher-think that it’s nearly impossible for them to come up with truly groundbreaking ideas, and when truly groundbreaking ideas are put before them, those ideas are either rejected out of hand or forced back into the box of their current ways of thinking and doing.

I’m not saying the situation is hopeless. The fact that so many big publishers sent their staffers to a conference about change is a good sign. Nevertheless, in the coming year we can probably expect to see quite a few ebook and community initiatives come barrelling out of big publishers’ gates, only to falter and fade away once the initial blitzkrieg of publicity is over.  Hopefully, lessons will be learned and improvements will be made, and the next generation of ebooks and publishers’ online communities will be more reader-centric.

Where to Submit Your Book for Review

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Book reviews can be a powerful marketing tool for books of all types. Potential customers learn about books by reading reviews in newspapers, consumer magazines, professional journals, newsletters, ezines, book review websites, and other websites and blogs. In addition to bringing books to their attention, well-crafted reviews also help the reader determine if a book is a good fit for them.

Submitting books for review can be time consuming and the costs can add up quickly, but the selling power of reviews is well worth the effort. You can save time and money by planning in advance and being selective about where you send review copies.

When submitting review copies to publications, make sure your book’s subject matches the audience and the book meets the publication’s review guidelines. Some publications only review certain types of books and some only review prior to or within a certain time after publication. For example, The New York Times only reviews books available in retail bookstores.

Book reviews in newspapers are getting harder to come by, but many special interest magazines and newsletters do book reviews or mention books in articles related to the book’s topic. Publishing expert Dan Poynter sells lists off special interest publications in dozens of subject areas for a modest fee.

Bookstore buyers and librarians base many of their ordering decisions on reviews in the major book review journals. Eligibility and submission instructions vary by publication, so be sure to read the requirements carefully.

Online reviews can also be a great book marketing tool. Having lots of good reviews on Amazon.com can boost sales, especially for nonfiction books where customers are comparing several different books on a particular topic. There are numerous other websites that feature book reviews.

For a list of online book review sites, along with tips on getting reviews on Amazon.com and other websites, read Annette Fix’s article about online book reviews at the WOW! Women on Writing website. Yvonne Perry at Writers in the Sky has also compiled a list of people and organizations that do book reviews.

Use caution when sending review copies to individuals who request them. Some people have good intentions, but simply won’t find the time to write a review, while others offer to write reviews mainly as a way to get free books. If you don’t know much about the reviewer, it might be a good idea to politely inquire what other book reviews they have done and where they were published.

"I sent copies of my book to book bloggers who responded to my email that they indeed wanted to review the book, but who never reviewed it. I later realized that I wasn’t anyone to them, so my book got buried in the avalanche of books they receive," says Phyllis Zimbler Miller of MillerMosaic.com. "I found that bloggers on my virtual book tour and book reviewers whom I connected with through social media were much more committed to actually reviewing my book." For more tips from Phyllis, see this book review article.

Several services, including Kirkus Discoveries and Clarion, offer paid review services. The practice of paying for book reviews is controversial. Some people think that paid reviews are biased since they are done for a fee and that it’s a waste of money. Others maintain that paid reviews are just as fair as other reviews and that reviewers need to be compensated for their time.

Librarians and booksellers know which publications do paid reviews, so reviews from those sources won’t carry much weight with them. Paid reviews could generate good quotes for consumer marketing purposes, but there are so many places to get free book reviews that it’s generally not necessary to pay for reviews.
 
Wherever you choose to send your galleys and review copies, plan ahead and get them out as quickly as possible. And, whenever customers give you good feedback on your book, be sure to ask for permission to add their quote to your testimonial list and ask if they would be willing to post their comments on Amazon.com.

Book marketing coach Dana Lynn Smith is the author of the Savvy Book Marketer Guides, a series of book marketing ebooks that are available at http://www.SavvyBookMarketer.com. For free book marketing tips, visit http://www.BookMarketingMaven.com.

When To Schedule Bookstore Events (And When Not To)

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This piece, by Yen, was originally posted today on The Book Publicity Blog.  While it’s geared toward mainstream authors and publicists, indies can benefit from this advice as well.

Friday night I was chatting with a novelist friend who said she was a little surprised her publisher wasn’t sending her on a book tour, given that her last four books have sold well (and that she had offered to pay her own way).  Admittedly, bookstore events have seen better days.  Still, it surprised me when my friend mentioned her publicist had refused to schedule a New York event for her.  (She’s a native New Yorker, who — four bestselling books ago — managed to pack The Corner Bookstore to within an inch of the fire marshal being called.)

Very mysterious.  Something wasn’t adding up.  Although we aren’t the same readers who catapulted Jacqueline Susan’s Valley of the Dolls to bestsellerdom as she road tripped across the country 40 years ago, a popular author speaking in her hometown is, well, a pretty safe bet.  (Or at least, as safe as they come.)

 This got me thinking about why bookstore events should and shouldn’t be scheduled.  For the benefit of authors and book publicists, I’m listing some issues to consider while planning an author’s schedule.  (Thanks to the tweeps who already contributed to this post and readers please feel free to add your own ideas in the Comments section — or by emailing me — and I will try to update the post.)  Also, do share the list with all and sundry if you think it will be useful.

 

Why you should not schedule a bookstore event:

– Topic: Some books, often of the self-help variety (finance, parenting, self-help, some cooking and humor) simply don’t lend themselves to bookstore talks.  It doesn’t mean readers won’t buy these books — and it doesn’t mean talks won’t work in other settings — but are 50 people really going to pop into Barnes & Noble to listen to what types of nonallergenic foods they should be feeding their babies?

– Timing: With a handful of exceptions, bookstores like to hold events within about a month of the book’s publication.  Stores typically schedule events between two and six months in advance of the event / publication date in order to have time to adequately promote their events.  This means that suggesting events two weeks before a book’s publication date will not elicit a favorable response.  From anyone. 

– Hidden Costs: As The Bookish Dilettante’s Kat Meyer points out, even if an author pays his / her own way, events take time to set up and money to promote.  Event coordinators often work odd hours and typically aren’t planted in front of their computers when they are in the store.  They’re also juggling dozens of events and publicists and dates.  Case in point — I first got in touch with one events coordinator in December about an April event.  Between my trying to sort out the author’s availability and her trying to sort out the store’s availability, we only just finalized a date — two months and numerous email messages later.  Then, once an event has been scheduled, the store must then invest time and money in promoting the it.  This just isn’t a process that can be ironed out with one phone call.

 

Why you should schedule a bookstore event:

– The author is local.  Many bookstores try their best to support local authors.  Plus, they know they can count on the support of the authors friends and family members.  (Fortunately for authors and bookstores, although these are the people who probably could wrangle free books from authors, they often end up buying books to support the author.)

– The author has a good track record.  Often, the best predictor of how an event will go is how the last (somewhat recent) event turned out.  This is one of those situations in which no track record won’t hurt an author (there are plenty of first-time authors who draw healthy crowds to bookstore events and plenty of stores willing to schedule events with these authors), but a good track can really help. 

– First editions:  Books on the Nightstand’s Ann Kingman reminds us that some stores host first edition book clubs, whose selections can be dependent on an author coming to speak and sign books.   Also, for certain types of (mostly) genre hardcover books — mystery, science fiction, romance, etc. — but some others as well, signed first editions go over really well with readers whether or not the books are selected for book clubs.

– The store requests an event.  For logistical and financial reasons, publishing houses can’t schedule events at every single store that requests an author.  (And certainly, successful events have been held at stores that did not request authors.)  But when a store expresses interest in an author, it can be a sign they’ll try their darnedest to get a crowd and sell that book.  Michele Filgate of Reading is Breathing (and events coordinator at the Portsmouth, NH RiverRun Bookstore) says events are critical for independent bookstores who are trying to be/become community — as well as reader — destinations.  (Not that events aren’t important for the chain stores too.)  Plus, an added benefit, courtesy of Teleread’s David Rothman: hand selling.  Author appearances keep books at the forefront of employees’ minds (and at the top of their recommendation lists).

– An investment in the future: Published & Profitable’s Roger C. Parker notes that events can teach authors what questions readers will ask and what topics they’re most interested in.  For authors who have more than one book in the pipeline, events can be a good way to build a following.

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What are your pros and cons?  Have you ever scheduled a bookstore event when you didn’t feel it was appropriate?  (Or vice versa?)

You can find many more articles on topics related to book publicity on The Book Publicity Blog.

The Problem With Self-Publishing

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by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

[A version of this article originally appeared on loudpoet.com]

 

Unless you’re a traditional publisher with a vested interest in the status quo, or an insecure writer who puts a lot of stock in the name of one’s publisher, there’s really nothing wrong with self-publishing that’s not a problem for the publishing industry in general:

  • Too many mediocre books being published? Check!
  • Minimal marketing support for the vast majority of books being published? Check!
  • Too much up-front money being put towards vanity projects? Check!
  • Lackluster editing and/or pedestrian design? Check!
  • Huge, out-of-control egos in need of a reality check? Checkity check check!

Except for Marvel and DC Comics, very few publishers have the kind of brand recognition that can influence sales at the retail level. Their strength is primarily on the backend, their ability to get books onto bookstore shelves and into influential critics’ hands. Ask 100 people in a bookstore who publishes Stephen King, or Stephenie Meyer, or the “For Dummies” series, though, and you’ll likely get a blank stare and a shrug from 75% of them.

Most people would say their decision to read a book comes from some combination of three criteria: personal interest in topic/genre, recommendations, and sampling.

Only the latter point is really influenced by a traditional publisher, as theirs are the books most likely to be on a bookshelf available to browse and sample, but between Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature, free samples via the Kindle and iPhone, and smartly designed and optimized author (or publisher) websites, even that isn’t an obstacle for any book, self-published or not, that hits someone’s radar via the other two, significantly more important criteria. In fact, the ability to sample a book digitally opens it up to a much wider audience than having 1-2 copies in a bookstore, buried in alphabetical order between a bunch of similarly unknown authors’ names and unimaginative titles.

Distribution and visibility aside, the most commonly noted “problem” with self-publishing, of course, is that self-published books mostly suck and there’s so many of them being cranked out every year that finding a good one is a near impossible and not terribly worthwhile task. While literally true, it ignores the larger reality that taking a stroll through any Barnes & Noble or Borders in search of a good book can be a similarly frustrating and unfruitful undertaking.

The fact of the matter is that writing a book is hard; writing an objectively good book is even harder; and writing one that can survive the subjective tastes of influential critics, well, that’s practically impossible.

Just ask Stephenie Meyer, best-selling author of the Twilight series, who got ripped by Stephen King in USA Today a while back: “The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.”  I’ve never read any Potter or Twilight novels, but King’s criticism of Meyer’s writing is one I’ve seen made many times, in a variety of places, of both of them.

It’s true that the vast majority of self-published books are vanity projects, most by authors who never bothered to attempt to go the traditional route because their primary goal was getting the finished product into their own hands, not the “validation” and “legitimization” so many tend to associate with a traditional publisher. As a result, the closest they’ve come to being edited is a cursory reading by a couple of friends or family members followed by compliments and encouragement to pursue their dreams. It’s like a poetry slam where 10s are mandatory; most of it is self-indulgent dreck with a narrowly defined audience of one.

Less typical, but often lumped in the same category, is the wannabe author whose work probably wouldn’t get past the critical eye of an editor or agent without a revision or three, and goes the self-publishing route of out of frustration (or pride), usually in hopes of landing a copy on an influential someone’s desk to become the next one-in-a-million success story who nails a lucrative publishing deal after proving their worth. While this certainly does happen, it’s rare because of the stereotypical stigma that still defines self-publishing for those on the inside of the industry.

Finally, and for whom Publetariat was primarily created for, is the ambitious author who understands that, no matter who their publisher is, they’re going to have to bust their ass to market their book and hand-sell it to as many people as possible, one copy at a time, in person and online. These are most often non-fiction writers with a niche expertise and poets — and to a lesser degree, REALLY ambitious comic book creators and fiction writers — who have the ability, innate or developed, to perform in front of a crowd of tens or hundreds (or online, millions), able to schmooze just as comfortably on a one-on-one level as on Twitter.

These savvy authors tend to have built a platform for themselves over time — something almost every traditional publisher pretty much requires these days — and know how to use it, attracting a loyal tribe and continually nurturing it.

For these entrepeneurial authors, there aren’t any problems with self-publishing at all, as they stand to reap significantly greater rewards for their greater effort. If anything, it’s traditional publishing that has the problem, with expectations for the same level of author effort in return for minimal marketing support and a much smaller cut of the sales of each book.

For these authors, self-publishing is ultimately a question of independence, and for them, Publetariat is a community where that independence is encouraged and honored, while also serving as a much-needed support system.

Nope, no problems here!

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Spindle Magazine. He’s won some poetry slams, founded a reading series, co-authored a book of poetry, and still writes when the mood hits him and he has the time. Follow him on Twitter: @glecharles