Google+ : Do Writers Need It?

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When Google launched Google Plus (Google+) a few months ago in their latest attempt to gain a foothold in the social media world, a lot of people weren’t sure whether to applaud the move or bemoan the fact that we had another place to try to build a community.

After all, the world of social media isn’t exactly lacking in things to keep authors who want to market their books occupied. You can work on building a tribe on Facebook, promote and connect with people in your niche on Twitter, keep track of colleagues and discussions on LinkedIn, and maintain relations with readers on Goodreads. Isn’t that enough?

 

The New Kid Has Some New Tricks

And yet Google+ quickly grew to millions of members and is now the fastest-growing social media site in history. Faster than Facebook, faster than Twitter, faster than LinkedIn. Right now, by recent estimates, there are already more than 40 million people using the service.

There are really good reasons it’s become so popular so quickly. Some of these reasons make Google+ a great location for authors. Let’s take a look at three features that distinguish Google+ from the other networks we’ve come to know, and see where these features present opportunities for self-published authors.

Circling

Before talking about the features, take a moment to enjoy the look and feel of Google+. I don’t know about you, but I find the Facebook interface—at least the last time I looked—to be quite busy and distracting. Twitter, of course, isn’t encumbered with much of an interface, since it’s mostly a stream of short text messages.

Google+ for writers

Contrast that to Google+, which bears the mark of most Google designs. Simple, spare, blue and white, and lots of “negative” space make it seem clean and functional, focusing your attention on the content that’s being shared rather than the accoutrements of the interface.

On Google+ there are no “followers.” Instead you can “circle” people and they can circle you. But you don’t just add people to a circle; you can have many circles if you like, and each can have its own uses. For instance, you can sort people you circle into different areas, like high school friends, colleagues, friends you like to play music with, or bloggers who review books. People can be in more than one circle, too.

When it becomes time to share something, you decide which circles will receive it, or if it’s available to the public (that is, anyone at all on Google+).

Google+ for writers

This solves the ongoing problem I have with Facebook, and I suspect a lot of you have too: mixing personal and professional contacts. With Google+, the ability to segment your interests is built into the program, an intrinsic part of its functioning.

One thing that this makes immediately obvious is that you can craft messages, shares and announcements for specific groups. Authors can easily maintain lists of book reviewers, readers, media contacts, editors, designers, and other authors.Segmentation is the foundation of direct marketing, so this ability alone gives you the opportunity to market in new ways.

You can also follow the circles other people have put together, which is a quick way to gain access to the updates and information being published by leaders in your field.

Hangouts

One of the amazing features Google+ incorporated from the beginning is Hangouts, the ability to have quick video chats with other Google+ users.

If you’ve ever wrestled with videoconferencing software or services, this is an amazing feature. With no more effort than just clicking the “start a hangout” button and inviting others to join you, you can instantly have a real-time video conference right inside Google+.

Authors could use this capability for face-to-face meetings with their editors, to have a chat with a designer, or to bring in virtual assistants and marketing people for a strategy session on a book launch. The ideas for hangouts are pretty endless, and that’s even before you start using them to connect to readers.

Shares

Some people have tried to explain Google+ as being somewhere between Twitter’s rapid-fire text updates and Facebook’s robust photo- and video-sharing abilities.

But Google+ is really different from both other services, and one reason is the flexibility of sharing. On Twitter, of course, you’re limited to 140 text-only characters, although updates are often used for links to other content.

Google+ for writers

On Facebook, the status updates are limited to 420 characters, enough to write a very, very short story perhaps (see Lou Beech for examples). On Google+, I don’t think there’s much of a limit. You can post a one sentence update, and it makes sense. Or you can post an entire article if you like, with photos, videos or other content as part of it. Darren Rowse, for instance, the author and professional blogger, uses Google+ this way to communicate with his vast tribe.

This flexibility combines really well with the ability to segment your lists, since not all communications with all communities can be made to conform to the same restrictions. For instance,

  • you might want to send a 300-word article to your community similar to an email update.
  • short messages to marketing partners like affiliates or other authors in a blog network are just as easy.
  • personal messages with a photo gallery from a trip or celebration can easily be shared with friends and family.

Altogether, Google+ has made a big impression on the social media community. Many users report spending a lot less time on Facebook, as the clean, uncluttered, and easy-to-use interface attracts them. Others say they enjoy the longer communications possible and don’t market quite as much on Twitter. There are communities of authors, readers, and lots of other kinds of people forming on Google+.

All of these developments will become more and more important to you as an author as the service continues to grow. Google has just recently added the ability to create pages for businesses, brands, products and companies.

The more Google+ grows, the more Google will combine it with its search, video, and advertising streams, and that combination is potentially explosive. I think you should be on Google+, and it looks like it’s going to be a great destination for some time to come.

If you have a Google account, you can just go fill out your profile and spend some time checking it out. I think you’ll like what you see.

Google+ Resources for Writers

Debbie Ohi’s master list of literary people on Google+
The Mashable.com Guide to Google+
Book reviewer Natalie Luhrs’ site on Google+
Jason Boog’s GalleyCat roundup of writers on Google+

This article was originally published as “Is Google+ Good for Writers?” on CreateSpace.com on November 17, 2011

 

 

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

Give Your Favourite Fiction Some Cashmoney Love For Christmas

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I’ve just been to a few of my favourite fiction podcast sites – places like Pseudopod and Podcastle, among others – and donated a few dollars their way. I’m a starving artist, but I love to listen to the things they produce and they pay their authors well. It’s in all of our interests to support them. They all have an option on the site to subscribe (by paying a regular amount every month) or to simply donate once.

When we buy a magazine – in ebook or print – we’re directly helping that publication to stay alive. But so much content online these days is essentially free and relies on the generosity of its fans to keep it going. I read a thing recently that talked about how downloading doesn’t really cost sales. From the article:

 

The report states that around a third of Swiss citizens over 15 years old download pirated music, movies and games from the Internet. However, these people don’t spend less money as a result because the budgets they reserve for entertainment are fairly constant. This means that downloading is mostly complementary.

On the whole, people can be honest and kind and they do value the things they consume. I’m firmly against DRM and all for open source and Creative Commons. I think it engenders a greater sharing of art and a greater consumption overall. The Swiss study cited above seems to validate that opinion. I know for a fact that I’ve bought music from a band I discovered via downloads. I’ve bought books by authors after borrowing one of their works from a friend too, and that’s exactly the same thing. It’s all about learning that these things exist, discovering that we like them and subsequently paying for those things we enjoy.

With stuff that’s always free, however, like podcasts, it’s not so easy to follow that line of action and end up giving back. So we have to make that little bit of extra effort and find a way to give. Most podcasts, ezines, magazines, publishers and so on have a PayPal option on their site for you to drop a few shekels through and show your appreciation. Tis the season to be loving and generous, so get online and get clicking. Throw some cash around. It only has to be the cost of a few beers and you’ll be making a real difference to your culture and the livelihoods of struggling artists like myself – we need places to sell our work to, and they need cookies to pay us. It’ll make you a better person, I promise.

(Incidentally, Thrillercast has a donate button too. Just, you know, in case you were interested.)

 

 

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

The Sixty-four Million Dollar Question – How Do I Become a Writer?

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The other day a friend of mine said she wanted to become a writer and asked me for advice. At first I thought, "Who the hell am I to give advice. I’m still not sure if I’m a scribbler, a writer, or an author. Well, I have written a book. Maybe I’m a writer. The book has been published – maybe I’m an author. Hummm　.　.　. OK, here is my advice.

 

Sit down and write – write everyday. Set aside a specific time each day. Maybe in the beginning it’s just thirty minutes or an hour, but do it religiously. Soon writing will become a habit. At first don’t get bogged down with creating the perfect sentence. Nothing is ever perfect to a writer. I have revised my book at least thirty times. If I allowed myself, I could revise it several more times. Write what’s in your head and sort it out later. Also read books in the genre want to write in. The authors you read have spent a lot of time learning their craft and have things to teach you. Consider, but don’t be deterred by the opinions of others – follow you dreams.

 

Anything can be fixed, but try to use the same word processing program all of the time. Each program leaves residual formatting that can lead to frustration when you move between programs. Don’t let your word processing program "auto-correct" your grammar. Spell check is ok, but also has its limitations (for example: to, two, and too are all correctly spelled, but may be incorrectly applied. Spell check won’t pick that up.)

 

There are many books on writing. Some of my favorites are: THANKS, BUT THIS ISN’T FOR US by Jessica Page Morrell, A WRITERS GUIDE TO FICTION by Elizabeth Lyon, and GETTING THE WORDS RIGHT by Theodore A. Rees Cheney. Finally, join a writer’s group, keep writing, take everything people say with a grain of salt, and listen to your passion.

 

For what it’s worth – that’s my two cents.

 

 

Stretching The Definition Of The Word, "Book"

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The concept for my latest book, Overshare, had been bouncing around in my head for well over a year. In it, a young man encounters some major life challenges in rapid succession, and unwittingly, publicly reveals his increasing stress level and alienation from his wife, family and friends through his posts on social media sites. It was a scenario I’d seen unspool in the real-world life of an online acquaintance, and I knew it would make a very timely and relatable story. The only problem was how to convey the events of the story in a way that would capture my experience: following status updates and posts with growing heartache for this person with whom I was only nominally acquainted, yet whom I’d come to know so much about—so much more than I’m sure was intended.

Then it hit me: why not give the reader exactly the same experience I had?

 

Why not show the reader my protagonist’s actual social media web pages, containing his status updates and others’ responses to them, as well as his blog posts, but purposely limit the content to only what a member of the general public would see? To make the reader’s experience as realistic as possible, I knew I’d have to mimic the look and content of the most popular social media sites very closely, and the resulting book would have to be presented in full color. To produce such a book in print would be cost prohibitive, but with the advent of color ereader apps and devices, it seemed an ideal fit for a totally new kind of ebook.

The next hurdle to overcome was sourcing the many photos I knew I’d need to fill the simulated social media site pages. I’d need avatars, or user pictures, of the protagonist and everyone he’d be interacting with online. I’d need candid family and event photos of the sort people regularly post on Facebook. And because of the story arc, I’d need a series of pictures of a young woman at various stages of pregnancy, a series of pictures of a young man depicting the journey from hale and cheerful to beaten and haggard, and finally, baby pictures depicting a preemie’s path from NICU to healthy newborn at home.

At first this seemed an insurmountable obstacle. I couldn’t afford to hire models to pose for all the pictures I’d need, and didn’t have the time, equipment or skills to act as photographer. Anyway, posed stills would never give me the realism I needed. Then, another stroke of inspiration: Creative Commons –licensed images are easily found online, and plenty of them have been licensed as permissible for commercial and remix use. I soon had a treasure trove of real-life photos of real-life people for which the rights holders had pre-emptively granted permission to anyone to use for commercial purposes (such as in a book to be sold for profit) and remix use (such as cropping and coloring to achieve my desired effects).

With this last piece of the puzzle locked into place, I knew I’d be able to produce the "book" I had in mind: one consisting entirely of simulated screen shots of the protagonist’s social media postings.

It would be a novel, in that it would be fiction, but it would be unlike any novel I’d ever seen before. Kind of like an epistolary novel, in that much of its content would consist of written communications taken directly from the characters, but not really, in that those communications did not take the form of letters or any other kind of traditional correspondence. Kind of like a graphic novel, in that much of the content would consist of images, but not really, in that it would also contain blocks of prose in the form of blog posts. I decided I’d need to come up with a new term for this type of book, and after giving it some thought, I came up with "social media novel".

Here are some examples from the book:

Something I wanted to be sure to illustrate in the book is how what someone doesn’t say online can often reveal much more than what he does say. The screenshot below shows the protagonist’s first post following the decision to go public with his wife’s pregnancy; note the complete absence of happiness or excitement in his remarks. There’s not even a smiley face there. What does this tell you? Also note how, based on the number of "Likes" and "Comments", you can tell how large Michael’s circle of acquaintance and support is at this point; as the story goes on, these numbers shrink.

In creating this unusual book, I found that the form it took underscored and illuminated the theme as much as the content. A few early readers asked if the people in the pictures might be upset to learn their photos had been used in this way, and my response was if they did, that would only serve to further exemplify the point I’m trying to make in Overshare: that posting anything online for public consumption can have unintended consequences.

This book took a LOT of effort to produce. The words were the easy part, and constituted maybe only 40% or so of the finished book’s content. I had to do a great deal of work in my graphics editor program, and a lot of complex formatting in MS Word. Then I had to pass the completed manuscript on to someone well-versed in advanced HTML and graphics techniques to take my Word file and convert it into an ebook file that preserved my images and formatting. I’m thrilled to see the finished product at last, and know that it looks exactly like the book I pictured in my mind’s eye all those many months ago. I’m also very excited by the creative possibilities I can now see in full-color, non-traditional ebooks. I hope that as time goes on, many authors will be inspired to explore those possibilities.

 

April L. Hamilton is the founder and Editor in Chief of Publetariat. Overshare is now available.

 

In A World With Amazon, Whither The Small, Independent Bookseller?

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There’s been much commentary about Amazon’s new KDP Select program, as well as about its one-day price comparison app promotion, some of which we’ve been sharing here on Publetariat. The debate rages on, and now branches out into the question of the impact programs like this and mega-bookseller Amazon have on small, independent booksellers. Surprisingly, there are well-considered arguments on both sides.

Independent Bookseller Bob Spear quotes from an open letter American Booksellers Association CEO Oren Teicher, written in response to Amazon’s one-day, bricks-and-mortar price comparison app promotion:

Despite your company’s recent pledge to be a better corporate citizen and to obey the law and collect sales tax, you created a price-check app that allows shoppers to browse Main Street stores that do collect sales tax, scan a product, ask for expertise, and walk out empty-handed in order to buy on Amazon. We suppose we should be flattered that an online sales behemoth needs a Main Street retail showroom.

Forgive us if we’re not.

We could call your $5 bounty to app-users a cheesy marketing move and leave it at that. In fact, it is the latest in a series of steps to expand your market at the expense of cities and towns nationwide, stripping them of their unique character and the financial wherewithal to pay for essential needs like schools, fire and police departments, and libraries.

Over on Slate, Farhad Manjoo takes the controversial position that buying books on Amazon is better for authors, better for the economy, and better for you, because (in his opinion) small, local booksellers aren’t really doing consumers much of a service by comparison:

…I was primed to nod in vigorous agreement when I saw novelist Richard Russo’s New York Times op-ed taking on Amazon’s thuggish ways. But as I waded into Russo’s piece—which was widely passed around on Tuesday—I realized that he’d made a critical and common mistake in his argument. Rather than focus on the ways that Amazon’s promotion would harm businesses whose demise might actually be a cause for alarm (like a big-box electronics store that hires hundreds of local residents), Russo hangs his tirade on some of the least efficient, least user-friendly, and most mistakenly mythologized local establishments you can find: independent bookstores. Russo and his novelist friends take for granted that sustaining these cultish, moldering institutions is the only way to foster a “real-life literary culture,” as writer Tom Perrotta puts it. Russo claims that Amazon, unlike the bookstore down the street, “doesn’t care about the larger bookselling universe” and has no interest in fostering “literary culture.”

That’s simply bogus. As much as I despise some of its recent tactics, no company in recent years has done more than Amazon to ignite a national passion for buying, reading, and even writing new books.
 

In a rebuttal to Manjoo, on Flavorwire, Judy Berman explains why she feels he’s giving small booksellers short shrift:

I find it sad, actually, that Manjoo — a generally sharp and smart technology writer — finds clicking around on Amazon to be more fun than browsing the shelves of a real-life bookstore where (gasp!) one might actually interact with other book lovers. It also seems specious to argue that Amazon customer reviews are more useful than the advice of an independent bookstore employee or owner, who presumably has more knowledge of and enthusiasm for literature than your average unknown dude typing angrily in his parents’ basement. A bookseller, for example, would probably not opine that Jane Eyre is “a longer story of 456 pages in which really could have been written well in half the length.”

 

Mark Coker believes the KDP Select program is wholly predatory, and bad for authors, publishers, and booksellers alike. As he writes in his blog post on the matter:

Impact on authors:

  • Forces the author to remove the book from sale from the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Smashwords and others, thereby causing the author to lose out on sales from competing retailers.
     
  • By unpublishing a title from any retailer, the author destroys any accrued sales rank, making their book less visible and less discoverable when and if they reactivate distribution to competing retailers

     

  • Makes the author more dependent upon Amazon for sales. Do you want to become a tenant farmer, 100% dependent upon a single retailer? As some of you history buffs may know, tenant farming, and the abuses of power by landlords, was a primary contributor behind the great Irish potato famine.
     

Author LJ Sellers, on the other hand, feels her decision to offer some of her work through KDP Select was merely a formality since most of her sales come through Amazon anyway:

…I don’t want to see Amazon become a monopoly or have it be the only place my books are available. I want readers to have choices. Still, to survive financially, I may have to climb on board the Amazon train and let go of the idea that I’m an independent author.

Two issues are on deck for me right now. First, is the lending library that everyone’s buzzing about and some are calling predatory. Amazon called me two weeks ago to pitch KDP Select to me personally. Surprised by the contact, I assume it’s because I have ten books on the market and sold quite a few on Kindle last year.

My only concern was the exclusivity issue, but in the end, I decided to enroll two of my standalone thrillers. Which means I had to pull those books from all other e-readers. I wasn’t making enough money on them from any other sources for it to be a financial decision. My hesitation was based only on my commitment to give readers full access to my books.

But the promotional opportunity Amazon offered—a five-day giveaway of the books—was hard to resist. The exposure could be invaluable. Right now, The Suicide Effect is being downloaded in record numbers. Because I have nine other books for new readers to buy, this could turn out well for me. I’ll know in the next month or so.


Bookavore examines the corporate culture and business practices of Amazon, as they trickle down to readers:

At this point I am thinking one or all of the following must be true:

  1. The company culture at Amazon is in some part developed on the back of a scrappy underdog mentality that can only, given their current dominance, be furthered by deliberate business decisions that allow the company to feel like a misunderstood victim
     
  2. The marketing department has hard data showing that given the general miasma of free market exhortation in modern political discourse, consumers respond enthusiastically to offers that deliberately and overtly screw over competition, in large enough numbers to make any negative press a moot point
     
  3. This is all part of an elaborate campaign to make decisions that compel Amazon’s competition and detractors to come out in numbers ruing their predatory and unethical practices, which given the reactive nature of the Internet will give Amazon’s defenders endless chances to label the detractors as old-fashioned, elitists, nostalgia-hounds, and/or Luddites, further cementing the “Amazon vs. the world” brand story
     
  4. Amazon has studied the possibility that they could make more money long-term by gaining the loyalty of customers who would be swayed by more ethical business practices, but has also realized it wouldn’t be worth the investment

 

 

 

A Statement From Louis C.K.

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In which the comedian, writer-director and producer makes proponents of DRM look foolish, and demonstrates how going indie can be much more profitable for artists—even those as famous and successful as himself.

Today, Galleycat reported Louis CK Earns $200k Profit on DRM-Free Show:

Comedian Louis CK wrote a frank essay about his most recent experiment, a “Live at the Beacon Theater” comedy DVD that was sold for $5 to fans without any digital rights management (DRM) protection. In less than four days, he has earned a $200,000 profit by avoiding traditional distribution strategy and channels.

Nearly all digital books currently contain some sort of DRM protection–making it harder for readers to take notes, read on different devices or share the book. Publishers and authors should read Louis CK’s argument against using these tools to restrict your readership.

In the ‘frank essay’, Louis C.K. shares the following interesting facts and figures:

The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we’ve sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.

Read the full statement from Louis C.K. here. (Note: the statement contains some strong language)

 

How Amanda Hocking *Really* Did It

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This post, by Scott Lorenz of Westwind Communications, originally appeared on The Book Publicist blog on 12/10/11.

Amanda Hocking, as I’m sure you know, is a best-selling e-author on Amazon.com. Since uploading her first e-book in the spring of 2010, she has grossed about $2 million. She’s got 10 novels under her belt, all of which fall into the paranormal-romance category. The prominent entertainment company, Media Rights Capital, optioned her four-book vampire series “Trylle”.

Clearly, she’s had great success self-publishing her e-books. So, it was a surprise when Hocking decided to sign with St. Martin’s Press, which is a very established publishing house.

Hocking has openly explained that she suffered from depression for the vast majority of her life and turned to writing as a sort of escape. She finished her first novel at 17, titled “Dreams I Can’t Remember” and was turned down by each of the 50 agents to whom she’d sent her work. Not long thereafter, she caught a clip on YouTube of the band Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus encouraging American youth to make their dreams come true. Hocking admits having a sort of “aha” moment and realized that she could not wait for her dreams to come true. She had to put forth the effort and make them come true.

In 2009, Hocking began to treat writing as a job rather than something she did for entertainment. She wrote a few more novels, sent them off to agents, and still received only rejections. In April 2010, Hocking uploaded her novel “My Blood Approves” to Amazon, then later to Smashwords, then directly on Barnes & Noble’s site. Hocking started selling books, first a few a day, then as she uploaded more of her work, she managed to sell 26 books in one day in May. These days, the author is selling 9,000 books a day.

Just how did she do it? Well, the stories she writes are an obvious piece of her success. Her novels combine action and romance with a dash of quirk and topped off by Hocking’s creative style of writing. Additionally, by selling e-books, Hocking was able to sell the books for far less money compared to a traditional bookstore book. Therefore, people were more inclined to spend the 99 cents or $3.00 to read her work instead of dropping upwards of $15.00 for a book off the shelf of a trendy bookstore. Hocking has a very blasé attitude in regard to her success and rapid writing. When asked just how she manages to complete her work so quickly, Hocking responds on her blog, “I don’t know. I just write a lot and drink a lot of Red Bull.”

Hocking also suggests that writing paired with reading more than she writes, was instrumental in her success. She made sure to edit her novels a great deal in order to get them just right. Learning to take criticism was useful to Hocking’s success because she was able to understand that although her books weren’t for everyone, they did have an audience.

 

Read the rest of the post on The Book Publicist.

Re-Brand Without The Sex

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In this rapidly changing industry, writers must adapt on a near-daily basis and continuously search for new ways to reach new readers. In that mode, I’ve decided to re-brand my Detective Jackson series by listing Secrets to Die For as the first book and creating a new cover for it. The old cover was never meant to be the final product, but that’s another subject.

 For those of you who have read and loved The Sex Club, first I thank you for your support, and second, I ask your forgiveness… for pushing this story into my standalone thriller column. I do it reluctantly after much consideration and many discussions about changing the name. After thousands of people have read it though, changing the name was not an option. And a new title wouldn’t alter the content.

Which brings me to the Why? There are many readers who will never try my series because they can’t get past the name, and others who can’t get past the provocative subject matter. So now that I have five other Jackson stories, I’m setting The Sex Club apart from the series. The truth is when I wrote the novel, it was intended to be a standalone with dual protagonists.

Then at some point, it occurred to me the detective would make a great series character. I wrote Secrets to Die For three years later, based on the Jackson character and thinking I’d try to make a series of it. So Secrets is really the first book I intended as a series. Of course, readers can start with either one. But right now as part of this effort, Secrets to Die For is on sale for $.99  at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

In this very competitive market with ebooks selling for $.99 and $2.99, I can’t afford to alienate thousands of potential mystery readers with one little word. Don’t worry, The Sex Club isn’t going away. I’m very proud of this book and will continue to sell it as a standalone thriller.

Also, as part of my whole re-branding project, I’m also launching a new website that will be more search-engine friendly and will accommodate my growing number of books. I’d hoped to announce these things at the same time, but the website is a little behind schedule. It should be up and running in another two weeks.

One other bit of news: I finished the first draft of the new Jackson story, and I’m working on the rewrite. If my editor and formatter both do their part on schedule, I’ll have the ebook ready by Christmas and the print book shortly after.

So what do think of this re-branding decision? Brilliant or cowardly? Worthwhile or waste of time?

 

This is a reprint from L.J. Sellers‘ blog.

 

How Much Do You Want To Get Paid Tomorrow?

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This post, by David Gaughran, originally appeared on his Let’s Get Digital site on 12/11/11.

Things had been going pretty smoothly for self-publishers.

We were more or less done with the arguments about whether this was a viable path and whether you could attract an agent/publisher (if you wanted to) by self-publishing first.

We had generally agreed that e-books were here to stay and that print books and bookstores (sadly) were on the way out.

 

Then Amazon came along with a curveball, splitting the community: KDP Select.

KDP Select is an opt-in program where self-publishers can be part of Amazon’s e-book lending library.  There has been a lot of discussion about KDP Select and the Lending Library – some hysterical, some measured – but I think it needs to be considered in the framework of subscription models in general.

I won’t spend much time on the pros and cons, they have been debated pretty exhaustively on The Passive Voice and this Kindle Boards thread, and I think most writers already know where they stand on this. I want to ask everyone to take a look at the bigger picture of subscription models and how we will collectively define future compensation for our work.

There had been murmurings about Amazon’s move for some time. With the launch of the Kindle Fire – and the obvious corollary that the device was designed to generate future profit on content – speculation turned to whether Amazon would attempt some kind of Netflix-for-Books. Indeed, rumors abounded that they had approached publishers on this and had been universally rebuffed.

For a reader, the deal is seductive: read as much as you like for a fixed fee. In practice, it’s only attractive if the books you want to read are part of the package. For the company selling the package, the clearest way to show value is by having content you can’t get anywhere else.

It was inevitable in one sense. Exclusivity was always going to rear its head. We’ve seen it in plenty of other content industries (software, games, music); it was only a matter of time before it inserted itself in the e-book game. It’s not that new – Amazon just got people talking about it.

Writers are used to being on the sidelines, watching these power plays. This time is different (partly because the publishers decided to sit this one out). We’re being asked to make a decision. And make no mistake, whether we participate, and how we participate, has huge ramifications for the whole publishing business: how readers pay for books, how writers get paid for those stories they read, and how publishers and retailers get to play in this new game.

Amazon arouses strong feelings (in either direction). But whatever your feelings are, you need to realize that subscription models of some sort are going to play a big part in the immediate future.

 

Read the rest of the post on Let’s Get Digital.

Just What is an Indie Author and Publisher?

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This post, by John Austin, originally appeared on his Writers Welcome Blog! on 12/9/11.

More insight from writer-publisher-entrepreneur-businesswoman Joanna Penn (Please visit my post Future Publishing and Book Selling – An Insight RE Joanna on my Publishing/Writing: Insights, News, Intrigue blog) for even more background.

Confusion is evident in the fast changing world of publishing … especially in understanding just what in the hell is an ‘indie’ author and an ‘indie’ publisher … I know I get mashed potato brains thinking about it at times! 🙂

Here is a post by Joanna Penn from her Creative Penn blog that brings clarity and is one of the best, all-inclusive explanations I’ve heard to date:

Self-Publishing And The Definition Of An Indie Author

I’ve been at two publishing conferences in the last week and it’s evident that myths and misconceptions abound when it comes to independent authors and self-publishing.

Book Machine’s Publishing Now even had a debate on the motion “Self-publishing is devaluing publishing.” In a heated discussion afterwards, I could see that the definition of ‘indie’ as it applies to authors is still misunderstood. Of course, when mainstream publishers like Penguin announce their own self-publishing arms, it can be difficult to know what the hell is going on!

Read the rest of the post on Writers Welcome Blog!. Also see How Darcie Chan Became a Best-Selling Author on The Wall Street Journal and How to Self-Publish an Ebook on PC Magazine.

No Room at the Inn for Indies

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This post, by Steve Piacente, originally appeared on his site on 12/10/11 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

Mainstream newspapers – even struggling, mid-sized papers – seem to look at Indie authors the way the hot girls in high school looked at the manager of the football team. You’re nice, but you really don’t expect me to date you, do you?

This situation was different, I thought, because I had been the mainstream newspaper’s Washington correspondent for a decade. I didn’t want special treatment, only a look, and figured my time at the Charleston, S.C. paper would get my self-published novel into the hands of the book editor.

The book did reach editor Bill Thompson, who politely informed me that the newspaper:

–       Will not consider paperbacks, eBooks, self-published, textbooks, or children’s books.

–       Only publishes 325 reviews a year, and there are 60,000 hardcovers from “legitimate” publishers released in the U.S. alone each year, plus 250,000 paperbacks.

NO OFFENSE, BUT …

The paper’s reviewers are unpaid volunteers who “insist” on “legit” hardcovers. Thompson said this was no reflection on any individual book, “but rather on the totality of the self-publishing field, which, as a rule, has tended to produce books of grossly inferior literary quality.”

Ouch.

He added, ”To be candid, and meaning no offense, no book review editor I know (and I am a member of three different professional associations), will have anything to do with them.”

Double ouch. But Indies should know what they’re facing.

The only time mainstream papers seem interested is when a success story rises up and forces them to pay attention. This is one of the latest, from The Wall Street Journal.

Thompson says he gets 25-30 new hardcover books each day. Worse, book coverage has gone from one-half of his job to about one-sixth. That’s because the Post and Courier’s features team has shrunk from 17 people to four, and the workload hasn’t let up. “I’m getting 100 emails a day just from New York publishers. This doesn’t count the 47 local arts groups and 60 area writers I’m trying to cover.”

OLD WAYS HAVE GOTTEN RUSTY

I pushed back, saying that technology has changed the world, and newspapers clearly haven’t kept pace. The situation in Charleston is not unique. Newspapers everywhere are in trouble, which is why it strikes me as odd that execs would cling so hard to old ways that clearly aren’t working.

As Thompson struggles to do more with less, he says he’s “bombarded by self-publishing houses and their authors … That some writers of worthy books cannot get them published through conventional means is unfair and regrettable. But the fact remains our reviewers do not want them. Nor does management, for that matter.”

Declaring every Indie author unworthy seems unjust, especially when this sentiment comes from folks who are supposed to help separate worthy from unworthy, whether it’s books, politicians or pro athletes. Aren’t feature writers journalists? The Code of Ethics calls for journalists to: seek truth and report it; minimize harm; act independently, and to be accountable.

So to whom are reviewers accountable to when they won’t even consider Indie authors?

Thompson says he doesn’t have the time to separate the wheat from the chaff. “As a book review editor of 31 years, I have a critic’s mentality, and a critic’s belief in the importance of sustaining standards of excellence,” he says. “With few exceptions, self-publishing is the antithesis of this ethic.”

WHO STILL USES INK?

I see it this way: Back in the dark ages (like about five years ago), if you wanted to be an author, you’d write a book, scour the city for an agent, and, if the stars aligned, get one and sign with a big-time publisher. That’s how it worked – there was one key to the literary castle. If you didn’t get the key, and all you got to write were letters home.

If you did land an agent, he or she would need enough gumption to snag a publisher. If not, story over.

Technology has changed the game by providing a direct path to prospective readers. Screw the middleman. Tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have enabled writers to find cover artists, illustrators, trailers, editors, web designers, and, most importantly, readers. Sure, we’d like a newspaper review, but that’s just one of many avenues.

The trick is figuring out how to distinguish your work from the glut competing for people’s attention. It’s true that the good news is the same as the bad news – anyone can publish pretty much anything. My hope is that, as with any other product coming to market, the cream will rise.

As a former journalist, I like this. It’s got a democratic feel to it. There used to be a saying about not arguing with folks who bought ink by the barrel, meaning reporters always got the last word. Perhaps that day has passed. Is anyone still using ink?

 

Why Santa Claus Became an Indie Author

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This post, by Jeff Bennington, originally appeared on The Writing Bomb on 12/11/11.

Back in the day, before the Internet, global warming and eReaders, an old friend of mine who goes by the name of St. Nicholas, aka Santa Claus, wanted to write a book. He enjoyed reading the old classics such as Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Frosty the Snowman and the ever popular, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. He wasn’t trained in the craft of literature by any means, but he certainly had an appreciation for the literary arts.


As you can imagine, the Christmas season would take its toll on the old-butter ball. So after the packages were delivered, the cookies eaten and the payroll met (damn elves had formed a union and nearly brought the north pole into bankruptcy court), my holly-jolly friend would find himself kicked back in his leather BarcaLounger with a stiff drink and a good book. While reading, and slowly getting buzzed, he’d dream up his own novels. His love for the story, or perhaps his bout with ADHD, would send him into a dream state where his mind did a dance, forming new characters and worlds and plots that only he could imagine.

You see, Santa had lived quite a life. He had many stories to tell, you know, the usual world-traveler fare: fine dining, the occasional holiday mascot kidnapping/ransom thingy and  Colombian cigs. Finally, his vast experiences and love of the arts had come to a head. He took one more drunken sip of his Jack-n-Coke and rang his little jingle bell that he kept near his side at all times.

 

The bell rang and a sexy little elf strutted into his private quarters and humbly bowed before the saint. He asked her to get him his old typewriter. She suggested he use the new MAC laptop that had recently come in from R & D. He smiled, parting his beard with his happy lips and his eyes beamed. Minutes later, after a brief tutorial, old Santa was off and running, well, typing actually.

His life-long dream of writing a hard-boiled crime fiction series had begun. Words came to him fast and furious, whipping through his thoughts and into the computer like Balzac on his sixth cup of coffee (look him up). Day after day he crafted his series, finally giving him the sense of fulfillment he had always longed for.

He once told me that bringing presents to those snot-nose brats year after year had lost its glam decades ago. But writing had ignited a spark in him. He had discovered that he wasn’t a saint after all, but rather, a novelist, a gosh-darn-can-you-believe-it novelist.

 

Read the rest of the post on The Writing Bomb.

Amazon Shows Predatory Spots with KDP Select

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Amazon today announced a new service offering for authors and publishers who upload to their KDP platform: KDP Select. Writer beware.

At first glance, the program looks enticing. Amazon has created a $500,000 monthly pool of cash they’ll distribute to participating authors based on the number of times your book is borrowed from their new lending library.

As they note in their FAQ, if your book accounts for 1.5% of the downloads during the monthly lending period, you’ll earn 1.5% of the pot, or in this case $7,500.

But there’s a catch. Actually, multiple catches, which are outlined in their Terms and Conditions:
 

  1. For the time your book is enrolled in the program, you cannot distribute or sell your book anywhere else. Not Apple, not Barnes & Noble, not Smashwords, not Kobo, not Sony, not even your own personal blog or web site. Your title must be 100% exclusive to Amazon.
  2. If you violate their exclusivity terms at any point during the three-month enrollment period, or you unpublish your book to remove it from the program so you can distribute your book elsewhere, you risk forfeited earnings, delayed payments, a lien on future earnings, or you may get kicked out of the Kindle Direct Publishing program altogether.
  3. Your enrollment, and thus your liability to Amazon, automatically renews every three months if you neglect to opt out.

Amazon has also modified the Kindle Direct Platform’s user interface with the effect of making it almost difficult not to enroll your books. Where they once placed their pull down menu for managing your book’s settings, they’ve now placed the enrollment link. The pull down settings menu is moved to the bottom of their dashboard.

Let’s examine the implications for this new program, not only for authors but for the nascent ebook industry as well.

When authors enroll a title in the program, they’re contractually obligated to remove their books from all other distribution channels.

Wow. Most indie authors appreciate their independence. This rule is quite restrictive.

Impact on authors:

  • Forces the author to remove the book from sale from the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Smashwords and others, thereby causing the author to lose out on sales from competing retailers.
     
  • By unpublishing a title from any retailer, the author destroys any accrued sales rank, making their book less visible and less discoverable when and if they reactivate distribution to competing retailers
     
  • Makes the author more dependent upon Amazon for sales. Do you want to become a tenant farmer, 100% dependent upon a single retailer? As some of you history buffs may know, tenant farming, and the abuses of power by landlords, was a primary contributor behind the great Irish potato famine.

Impact on competing retailers:

  • Harms other retailers by denying them access to your book.
     
  • Many authors will permanently stop distributing to Amazon’s competitors once they become fully dependent upon Amazon for the lion’s share of their earnings
     
  • Motivates more customers to purchase at Amazon since Amazon has this exclusive content.
     
  • Discourages formation of new ebook retailers around the world

The new Amazon KDP Select program strikes me as a startling example of a predatory business practice Amazon has the opportunity to leverage their dominance as the world’s largest ebook retailer (and world’s largest payer to indie authors) to attain monopolistic advantage by effectively denying its competing retailers (Apple, B&N, Kobo, Sony, etc) access to the books from indie authors.

The move will also make it more difficult for new retailers operating outside the US to gain footholds in their respective markets if they lose fair access to the content readers want to read.

Amazon might argue that indie ebooks today only account for a fraction of overall book industry sales. True, but that fraction is growing quickly as indies scale all the best-seller charts. This trend will continue as more and more professional authors turn their back on traditional book publishers in favor of self-publishing. Amazon is smart. They understand indies are the future of book publishing.

European Commission and US Department of Justice Unwittingly Working to Create Amazon Monopoly

Amazon’s new service offering comes at a time when the European Commission and even the US Department of Justice

are scrutinizing the legality of agency ebook pricing. Agency ebook pricing, as you’ll recall (see my     blog post last year on our move to agency pricing) allows authors and publishers to set their own price and receive higher royalty rates. Amazon is a long time foe of agency, and as a result is probably enjoying a virtual wet dream as they savor the implications of potential restrictions against the agency model. 

If agency pricing is limited or overturned, it would allow Amazon to price ebooks at below cost and effectively eliminate the profitability of all its competing retailers. This would also discourage the formation of new competitors. It’s ironic that the EC and US DOJ are pursuing these ill-advised campaigns that could lead to less competition in the ebook market, not more.

What the EC and US DOJ fail to realize is that big publishers (the target of these investigations), which (I agree) price their books too high, are becoming less relevant to the future of book publishing as authors lose faith in the myth of big publishing. The problem of high prices from big publishers is not an agency issue, it’s big publishers pricing their books too high.

Agency Pricing Enables Indie Authors and Small Publishers to Lower Prices

Despite fears to the contrary, we see evidence at Smashwords that agency pricing might actually encourage lower book prices. Indies, which are enjoying great benefits from the agency model (Smashwords only distributes to agency retailers), are using agency to offer customers lower prices, not higher prices. The average ebook at Smashwords is priced under $5.00, and we have over 15,000 books priced at FREE. Why do indies price their books lower when they have the freedom to charge anything they want? The reason is that indies realize that consumers value fair prices, and as a result these lower prices give indies a competitive advantage over the large publishers. 

When an indie author can earn 60-70% of list with agency pricing, they can set a lower price yet still earn more per unit than if the book was sold under a wholesale pricing model (where the royalty would equal 43-50% of list). As an example, if an author wants to earn $2.00 from each book they sell, at a 70% agency rate they’d price the book at $2.85. Under the wholesale model (50% discount off list), they’d need to price the same book at $4.00. 

The agency model puts profits in the pockets of the author or publisher, where it belongs, while allowing the retailer to earn a fair profit. Agency pricing relieves retailers from the pressure of competing on price and instead forces them to compete on customer experience, such as developing discovery tools and recommendation systems that help match readers with the books they’d enjoy reading. 

How should indie authors respond? Horror might be a good start. Recognize that your long term interests are best served by enabling a vibrant and competitive global ebook retailing ecosystem to develop. Distribute your book to as many retailers as possible. A world of many ebook retailers, all working to attract readers to your books, is much preferable to a world where a single retailer dictates all the terms. 

Obviously, I have a horse in this game. Smashwords is probably the world’s largest distributor of indie ebooks. We publish and distribute over 90,000 ebooks from 33,000 indie authors and small presses around the world. We exist to serve our authors and publishers. We supply Amazon’s competitors. We’d love to supply Amazon as well, but they’re unwilling to provide us agency terms.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Coker‘s Smashwords blog. Also see Amazon Backlash Continues to Build, regarding Amazon’s price comparison app, on Publishers Weekly.

PUBLISHING SERVICE INDEX – December 2011

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The most asked question we get at The Independent Publishing Magazine is often along the lines of; ‘What self-publishing service should I go with?‘; ‘Is so and so a good service to go with?‘; or ‘Is so and so a scam?‘

In some cases, that is an easy question to answer, cut and dry, but in other circumstances, the answer is entirely arbitrary. We are not here to review and run down a company’s name, nor are we here to endorse a company’s services. If we were only to review author solutions services according to every point in our ideal list of what an author should get from a company offering publishing services; we would have very few reviews to share with you. In truth, no company has ever attained a 10/10, and only a few have recorded more than 08/10. In the autumn of 2010 we [posted] all our reviews with a rating, and any new reviews since February 2010 have automatically had a posted rating at the bottom of the review.

 
The reality is that some author solutions services begin in a blaze of glory and we might rate them favourably  at the time; others, frankly, are just poor, and yet, they improve (sometimes in response to our reviews) to offer reasonable services for authors. We are constantly updating our reviews, but this takes considerable time, and so do the initial reviews.
 
We get a vast amount of information from authors and the companies selling author solutions services every day – good and bad. We get a great deal of information from monitoring services week by week against the experiences of what authors report back to us. Simply put, and truthfully, we cannot reflect all of this information through the reviews. That is why the comments section under each company we review is so important. It is your recording and dealings with that specific company, and a positive or negative flag to subsequent authors considering using the same company.
 
So, how do we reflect the changing ups and downs with services?
 
We believe the PUBLISHING SERVICE INDEX will help to guide authors to services on the up, and those, gradually on the down. If you like, what we are proposing is effectively, a kind of stock exchange for author solutions services.
 
The SELF-PUBLISHING INDEX was first launched in June 2010. The PUBLISHING SERVICE INDEX for author solutions services is something we [at The Independent Publishing Magazine] have been working on since June 2010. Here is the final index for 2011.
 
 
 
This is a cross-posting from Mick Rooney’s The Independent Publishing Magazine.

BISG Policy Statement POL-1101: Best Practices For Identifying Digital Products

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With the rising popularity of ebooks, podcasts and other digital media, many have wondered if, and how, these new forms of product should be identified via the ISBN system. The Book Industry Study Group issued the following policy statement and document on December 7, 2011.

This BISG Policy Statement on recommendations for identifying digital products is applicable to content intended for distribution to the general public in North America but could be applied elsewhere as well. The objective of this Policy Statement is to clarify best practices and outline responsibilities in the assignment of ISBNs to digital products in order to reduce both confusion in the market place, and the possibility of errors.

Some of the organizations which have indicated support of POL-1101 include:

  • BookNet Canada
  • National Information Standards Organization (NISO)
  • IBPA, the Independent Book Publishers Association

CLICK HERE to download (PDF)
Published December 7, 2011