Plenty of Good News for Indie Authors and Publishers in the the Winter 2011 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey

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Why would an author or publisher be interested in the Winter 2011 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey?

Well, first, we all know that without other authors we would be nowhere, and one of the best things about other authors is that, with a very few, largely inexplicable exceptions, authors are voracious readers.

The deadline to participate [was] midnight Hawaii time Monday, January 31, 2011. There [were] 15 questions and most people tell me it [took] them about 10 minutes from beginning to end.

But equally important is that the survey results are shaping up to spell good news of dramatic significance for indie authors and publishers. Feel free to go ahead and click here to see the results now. Here are a few of the takeaways from the first 1,900 respondents:

Respondents continue to have strong positive feelings about bestselling authors (56% positive, 3% negative), but they don’t think much of the big agency model publishers (10% positive, 41% negative). Indeed, they have much more positive feelings, for instance, about:

  • Independent and emerging authors (52% positive, 1% negative)
  • Small independent publishers (35.5% positive, 4% negative)
  • Kindle Nation Daily (71% positive, 2% negative)

Influences such as electronic and print media reviews, bestseller lists, Oprah, or big bookstore displays in pointing readers to the books that they actually buy are in decline. Instead, respondents ranked the following, in order, as far more likely to influence them to buy books:

  • recommended or listed by Amazon.
  • recommended, listed, or excerpted on Kindle Nation.
  • reading a free excerpt, author interview, or other material on Kindle Nation or another source.
  • recommended by a friend, relative, or colleague.

Indie authors and indie publishers cannot survive without indie readers, and increasingly, readers are acting as if they are in charge when it comes to selecting the books they will read or acting as if they, the readers, are the final price-setting authorities:

  • 89% of respondents identified with the statement, “I frequently choose to delay purchasing an ebook that I want to read if I believe that the price is too high.”
  • 76% of respondents identified with the statement, “If publishers keep charging higher bestseller prices, I’ll buy more backlist or indie titles.”

Here, if you are interested, are links for our previous Kindle Nation Survey Results:

 

This is a reprint from Stephen Windwalker’s indieKindle.

Adopting a Device-Neutral Approach to Electronic Publishing: A Q&A With Springer's Timothy Griswold

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This article, by Janet Spavlik, originally appeared on Book Business on 4/14/11 and is reprinted here in its entirety with the site’s permission.

Digital publishing was, of course, top of mind for many of the attendees at last week’s Publishing Business Conference & Expo, as the event kicked off with a panel of book industry leaders in print-digital integration. Moderated by THA Consulting President Ted Hill , the session, entitled "The Cross-Platform Book Publisher: Reinvent Your Company," featured panelists Timothy Griswold , vice president, sales, trade and special licensing, Springer; Adam Lerner , president/publisher, Lerner Publishing Group; Deborah Forte , president, Scholastic Media; and Mike Rosiak , lead content architect, Wolters Kluwer Health—all of whom shared their experiences and insights into successfully bringing products to market in multiple formats.

Book Business Extra spoke with Griswold after the conference to expand on some of the themes discussed amongst the panel. Here, he advises book publishers on publishing electronically across multiple devices and discusses the next big opportunity Springer is exploring.

Book Business Extra: During the panel, you stressed Springer’s device-neutral approach in regard to publishing content electronically—the company publishes across as many devices as possible. How has Springer adapted to so many different devices and formats, and what advice would you give to other publishers that want to adopt a device-neutral approach?

Timothy Griswold: … There is a learning curve involved. You take a risk, and some of them are good and some of them may not be so good. … When you’re any publisher, whether small, medium or large, during the negotiation with [online retailers, such as] the Apple iBookstore, Amazon Kindle, Blio, etc., you need to really do that trial run-through at the beginning during the contract negotiation [before the contract is signed]. … What we found is that, in some cases, the content and the format [in which] we delivered the content … the actual appearance on the e-reader, the quality was not good. And so, because of that, with the contract already signed, there were conversion costs, and, in some cases, considerable conversion costs that had to be incurred.

There was a discussion back and forth as far as who was responsible for those conversion costs, so that’s probably the most important thing. … I learned that I need to have the people in production that I can rely on and who are knowledgeable regarding the different formats of e-files and delivery and what has to be done, and I need that knowledge while I’m out there negotiating with Blio or whoever it happens to be in order to deliver the content and make it that seamless transition.

Publetariat Editor’s Note: also see this Storify page, on which Heather Fletcher shares tweets from the conference, many of which include links to blog posts in which attendees have recapped various sessions and commented on them.

 

Library Ebooks & The Indie Author Conundrum, Part 1

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This post, by William Van Winkle, originally appeared on his Behind the Lines blog on 3/28/11.

"Turbulence is life force. It is opportunity. Let’s love turbulence and use it for change."
–Ramsay Clark

In case I haven’t mentioned it in the last three or four minutes, I have a new book out, and like every independent, fledgling author, I’m trying to come up with different ways to find an audience — no small trick when your book is digital-only and digital still comprises less than 15% of the total book market.

I’m an avid library patron, and, as an audiobook nut, I’ve dabbled with OverDrive’s Library2Go service over the years. Library2Go (L2G) is my home state’s chosen conduit for making electronic media available to library patrons over the Internet. Most people to whom I mention the service have no idea that it even exists…perhaps for good reason. Historically, I’ve found L2G fairly underwhelming. I had trouble finding enough audiobooks that were in MP3 format, not DRM-constrained WMA, and the titles that interested me were few and far between. I went a year, perhaps two, without looking at the site 

And then something amazing happened. Library2Go hit puberty. We often forget that most librarians, like teachers, have the public’s welfare in their minds and hearts, and they work every day trying to help make the world better. I can only assume that it was librarians (and, behind them, a fleet of impatient patrons) responsible for not only a significant rise in the number of quality audiobooks available but also the recent appearance of ebooks.

The last time I touched OverDrive, I was listening to audiobooks on a 5G iPod. Today, all of my listening filters through a Motorola Droid. (For would-be audiobook listeners, I found my 2007/2008 BlackBerry and other "legacy" cell phones inferior to the iPod for this task. This is no longer the case. Media player apps have matured to the point that they’re at least as convenient for book enjoyment as traditional music devices.) OverDrive’s player app, called Media Console, is available for Windows, Mac, Android, BlackBerry, iPhone/iPad, and Windows Mobile.

Read the rest of the post on Behind the Lines, and also see Part 2.

Author Interview: Naderia by Julian Gallo

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 Author Interview – Julian Gallo’s Latest Novel, "Naderia"

written and conducted by Garry Crystal.  

The Debate Between Romance and Chick-Lit Wages On

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 I read this post on BigAl’s Books and Pals this morning about what exactly is the difference between Chick-lit and Romance? Most of the talk centered around the tried and true formulas we all know. 

Romance: Man and woman face some obstacles, steamy sex scenes (with no genitalia actually mentioned), happily ever after.

Chick-Lit: Narrator is a 20-30 something woman who suffers comedic hijinks to end up with a happy ending.

In the comment discussion, one commenter pointed out that Chick-lit and Romance are both under the umbrella of Women’s Fiction, but that Chick-lit gives an author more freedom with "happy ending." The main charcter could get the guy, the promotion, realize she’s better off without him, change careers altogether, etc.

I am hopeful that with more self-publishing, independent authors will step up and challenge the boundaries of these genres. So many genres are the result of formulaic, publishing guidelines produced to promote  a bottom line, not necessarily literary value. Need proof? How many chick-lit titles have you read are based in either London or New York and involve the publishing/advertising/public relations world in some way? Me? Too many to count. 

Where are the chilck-lit stories about women working in engineering? Or the romance stories about a passionate, frenzied tryst that ultimately fizzles out because most people can’t sustain that level of lust?

Much like other facades the traditional publishing world has hid behind (like the famous "It costs more to produce an ebook than a printed copy""), these genre formulas are going to be torn apart. They have lasted because authors were told "We did the research and this is the story arc the readers will read." Really? So why is self-published erotica suddenly leaping off the sales charts? The very same stories the publishers said the majority of readers won’t touch? 

I am working on my own attack of these genres with my first novel. I talk about this on my own blog. My "chick-lit/romance" is from a male POV, placed in the engineering world pandering for defense contracts, and doesn’t end sappily, happily ever after. And I don’t think readers of either genre will have a problem with this, because the love story is one that is modern, relatable, and realistic. The escape part is that my readers will be relieved this isn’t their life.

Please Don't Reply

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Good morning everyone. First, I would just like to say how thankful I am that Publetariat.com exists for those of us navigating the self-publishing world. I love the tag line: People who publish. Somewhere it seems like the people part of publishing got lost. No personalized rejection letters. Formulas instituted on genres based on sales, not the quality of the story. Obviously, these policies haven’t helped strengthen the community, but temporarily propped up the bottom line.

I have high hopes for the self-publishing/indie author movement. Last night, my husband and I sat at our kitchen table after the kids were in bed, both enjoying a beer. I explained what was going on in the publishing world. The traditional tasks performed by a publishing house–cover design, marketing, editing, typesetting–are being chopped up and provided by freelancers everywhere allowing authors to remain in control of their content and distribute freely to readers. He shrugged, popped open the top to another Dogfish Head and said "Sounds like open source to me." 

I now have the full support of my husband in my self-publishing goals. We’re big supporters of open source technology, and he sees self-publishing as a way to improve information dissemination, even if we’re talking about fiction novels. I think it’s a great metaphor.

My goals are:

  • Finish my first novel this summer, and publish a professional product this fall.
  • Promote Imperfect Timing and begin working this winter on my second novel about a nurse with too much personal debt that inhibits her ability to find romance (no, not in a cute Confessions of a Shopaholic way). 
  • Publish second novel in spring. Begin work on third novel, possibly a sequel to Imperfect Timing.

Having a publication date, even one self-determined, reinforces my desire to be a professional author. My writing experience mainly comes from four years of writing non-fiction copy for websites, online newsletters, and internet publications. Literature has always been something I’ve devoured, studied, or critqued. I used my minor coursework electives in college to take English Literature classes.

I never thought I would be a writer, much less an aspiring novelist. Then again, I didn’t plan on moving every two-five years to support a husband in the military and needing a career that allowed me to stay home with my two children. Writing can literally pack up and follow me from Norfolk, Va to San Diego, CA, then back to the east coast in Charelston, SC. Despite living in three different places in four years, and about to move again in less than six month, I am very happy where I’ve landed. I have a family full of love and an escape from the kid’s table to the grown-up conversations in the next room. 

Thank you for reading all the way to the end, and I’m very thankful to be joining the Publetariat.com community. And whatever you do, don’t reply. 🙂

Lulu vs. Createspace: One Indie Author's Perspective

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In 2010 I used Lulu to publish my first book, Fear Not! Discovering God’s Promises For Our Lives. Then, this year (2011), I decided to give CreateSpace a try when I published Simply Prayer. Although the two POD’s are similar, there are some differences I thought others might like to know about before choosing one or the other. Here’s the breakdown of the two.


Lulu

Cons:

  • Not very user-friendly. It took a lot of time to search through the FAQs and community answers to find out how to put Lulu’s free ISBN on my copyright page. By the time I was finished I had a major headache.
     
  • Difficult to add Lulu’s free ISBN to the copyright page. I first had to upload my .pdf to Lulu, then have them issue the ISBN (took only a minute or two), then add that to my copyright page and then re-upload the new .pdf.
     
  • Look Inside! not even an option. Let’s face it, even if you’re buying a book online you want to be able to see between the pages to get an idea if this book is right for you. I did find a work-around, but it’s not the same as having an Amazon Look Inside! right there with the buy button.



Pros:

  • It’s free. This was super important since I’m just starting out and have a very small budget.
     
  • You’re book will be listed on Amazon. It can take a couple weeks, but it does show up pretty quick. Unfortunately, I’ve discovered those supposed listings with other booksellers often show the book as “out of stock.” Not exactly helpful for distribution.
     
  • Great cover designer. I was able to design the front and back, then import them as .jpgs into a basic template. Lulu even added spine text, though they did warn me about the possibility of the text wrapping to one side or the other based on the small page count. This was very important to me as I’ve donated my books to church libraries that will be including them on bookshelves.



CreateSpace

Cons:

  • Cover designer difficult to use. I like designing my own covers (though I hope someday to employ someone much better), but I found designing a full cover (front, back and spine) very difficult. The CreateSpace instructions for creating a full cover were a little hard to figure out. Also, CreateSpace refused to add spine text, even though the page count for Simply Prayer was a little larger than my first book.
     
  • Questioned about picture quality. What I was asked to do was change every picture to “300 dpi” or risk poor print quality. While that might not seem like a big thing, for someone who understands the nature of printing houses it was an irritation because it’s not the dpi that matters. What’s important is the ppi (pixels per inch), which I knew were perfectly fine.
     
  • Look Inside! feature can take up to 8 weeks. Sure, waiting 8 weeks is better than not having the feature at all, but it does wear on one’s patience.

Pros:

  • It’s free.
  • Very user-friendly. With step-by-step instructions and simple buttons, I didn’t need to read any FAQs or search the community pages to figure out how to upload my book.
  • Easy to add CreateSpace’s free ISBN to copyright page. I was able to get the ISBN before uploading a .pdf, so adding it to my copyright page meant only creating one .pdf for the entire process.
  • Listing on Amazon. Of course, that’s where free distribution ends. If you have the budget, then getting the larger distribution package might be the way to go.



Those are the biggest pros and cons I found between Lulu and CreateSpace. Everything else was similar, as far as I could tell. For those of you who have used either or both, or even someone else, what are your experiences?

 

This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s The Road To Writing.

ThrillerCast 15: Fighting And Responding Badly To Reviews

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The latest ThrillerCast is up. In this episode, David Wood and I talk about fighting and writing fight scenes, in some thinly veiled… well, actually not veiled at all, pimping of my new ebook. We also talk about the recent author meltdown, where a self-published author responded really badly to a negative review of her work.

ThrillerCast PodcastI deliberately avoided blogging about it at the time, as there was enough internet beating up going on already. But Dave and I talk about it in this podcast and discuss how people should respond to reviews. Clue: it’s a very simple aswer.

Enjoy. And if you do enjoy it, please recommend us to your friends.

 

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

4 Solutions To The Book Discount System

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I’m finding in talking to new self-publishers that many people don’t quite get how the discounting works in different parts of the book distribution system. This is vital to understand because it affects whether your publishing company will make a profit or not, whether it will be a viable business enterprise. Besides, you want to know how much you make for each book you sell, don’t you? Sure, and why not. So let’s step through it together.

As a publisher, you are a retail product manufacturer. You are supplying a unique product to the market and it’s up to you to set the terms on which you’ll sell your product.

Depending on how your book is produced, you may have more or less flexibility in how you deal with the rest of the chain of distribution. Here are some scenarios:

     

  • You ignore it completely

    You do this by not selling your book wholesale. In other words, you, as the manufacturer, sell direct to the end user. For example, John T. Reed who I’ve written about before, only sells his line of books from his website. He has no need for a discount schedule because he is outside the chain of distribution. This method has some advantages, too. You capture 100% of the sales price, since you don’t have to share it within wholesalers, distributors, jobbers, or retailers. You also can capture the names of everyone who buys a book, which can build an asset that’s very valuable when it comes time to offer other books or services to the same market. The disadvantage is that you have to do all the work yourself, or pay for fulfillment through a fulfillment service. Also, some people may be reluctant to buy from a self-publisher’s website, trusting big companies like Amazon to protect them and offer services like bundled shipping or free shipping, returns, and other amenities. In addition, you will have to do all the marketing for your book, and any interruption you have in your website hosting will cause a financial loss from lost sales.

     

  • You use a print on demand supplier

    Most print on demand suppliers restrict the size of your discount, demand minimum discounts, or don’t allow you any say at all in discounts. Other suppliers, like Lightning Source, allow you to set your own discount within limits, but offer just that one discount to every retailer or jobber who buys your book from Ingram, whom Lightning Source supplies. So if you set your discount to 20%—the minimum allowed—bookstores won’t buy the book because they need a minimum 40% discount. But if you set your discount at 40% to appeal to the bookstores, and then end up selling most of your books on Amazon or BN.com, you will have given up 20% and gotten nothing in return. (If you need a review on how to trace the flow of money through the print on demand system, see this link: Understanding Print on Demand: Follow the Money.)

     

  • You print offset

    If your book has to be printed offset (and examples might include color books printed overseas, odd-sized books, and books that can’t be produced by print on demand methods) you will have to be your own distributor, unless you sign with a distributor (see the next option). That means that you’ll have to come up with a discount schedule that applies to retailers, maybe a separate one for libraries, and other terms for special sales or direct sales. In addition, some retailers will demand steep discounts, up to 55% off your retail price, and you’ll have to agree to take returns of unsold merchandise. In addition you’ll be responsible for shipping books to retailers, effectively reducing your profit margin even farther. And, as it should be clear by now, you will spend a lot more of your time handling all the details of wholesale selling, including paperwork, invoicing, tracking payments, packing and shipping books, and all the other minutia of doing your own fulfillment and distribution.

    book discount schedules

    Typical Discount Schedule – Click to enlarge

     

  • You sign with a distributor

    In this scenario your book is of wide enough interest and large enough potential or proven sales that you can get a distributor to take over supplying your book to retailers. Distributors will put your book in their catalog, their sales reps may help promote the book to booksellers, and they will deal with the bookstore bookkeeping, returns, shipping, warehousing and may even offer fulfillment services for single copy sales. The downside to having a distributor is what you have to give up: usually 65% or more of the cover price. Let’s say your book costs $10. You will receive $3.50 for each book sold after giving up 65%. If the book cost you $2.00 to produce, your gross profit is 15%. This is not significantly better than the royalty offered by most trade publishers, and it’s taking you a lot of work and risk to earn it. The only way this option makes sense to me is if you genuinely have a book that you think you can promote nationally, and for which you realistically can expect to have sales of 5,000 or more copies per year. Distribution also becomes a more viable option when you start to have more books in your line. If you have 5 books, you might find distribution an advantage, because if any one of them sells well it will help the others get a foot in the door.

When you plan your publishing project, think about the eventual buyers you plan to market to. Where do they buy their books? Knowing this can help you make smart decisions about how you approach dealing with retailers and, consequently, how you choose to discount your books.

 

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

The Adman Cometh

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It’s no surprise…that ads have come to the Kindle. The good news — relatively speaking — is that you can save a few bucks by purchasing an ad-enabled machine:

Although the hardware is identical to the standard $139 Kindle, the new Kindle with “Special Offers” will feature advertisements and deals as its screen saver and on the bottom of its home screen. But for that added distraction, the company will take $25 off the price—dropping it to $114.

If ads on the Kindle are inevitable — and they are, as are ads on every imaginable surface and device — I think this is a smart way to introduce them. Rather than inject ads into every Kindle, thereby infuriating all those nice people who helped make the Kindle a success, Amazon is giving the customer a choice and motivating that choice with savings.

As a result of this innovation I assume the people who buy and sell things in the publishing world (agents, editors, publishers, advertisers) are having yet another breathless conversation about what this means, where it might lead, and whether or not ads might be injected directly into the content of books as a means of making lots of money. So far Amazon seems to be holding the line:

The screen saver and home screen bar are the only places customers will see ads and offers, according to Russ Grandinetti, vice president of Kindle content. “We are not interested in doing anything that interrupts the reading experience,” he said.

If Amazon was facing more competition or in need of revenue I’m confident the reader’s experience would be the first thing on the auction block. Then again, it’s not like these things haven’t happened before, and some have actually failed. While advertisers would be happy to have ads on every page of a book — and would still complain bitterly about that limitation — consumers have shown that there is a limit to what they will tolerate.

On a related note, for a while now I’ve been seeing an odd announcement when I use my Gmail account: “Coming soon: Better ads in Gmail.” Now, I don’t know about you, but not only am I not interested in better ads in Gmail, I’m pretty sure Google’s idea of ‘better’ and my idea of ‘better’ are wildly divergent if not mutually exclusive.

So how is Google making my Gmail ads better? By mining my personal data, of course:

Google says that the system uses signals similar to those utilized by Priority Inbox, the automated system launched last August that attempts to highlight which of your incoming email is most important. These signals include things like who sent the message, whether or not you read it, and keywords that appear in the message.

(What I like most about this opt-out change is that Google has introduced the abstracted word ‘signals’ to replace the easily recognized term ‘personal information’.)

Why is Google improving its Terminator-like ability to target specific ads at specific keywords and the people who use them? Well, it might be because Google is facing increasing pressure on the search front:

Bing is expanding its reach as a search engine, according to new data from Experian Hitwise. In March, Bing powered nearly a third (30.01 percent) of U.S. searches.

The amount of Bing-powered searches has been steadily increasing. In February, they accounted for 28.48 percent of traffic, meaning the March figures are a 5 percent increase.

I don’t know anyone who clicks on Google ads. I don’t know anyone except SEO consultants who talks about AdSense anymore. If Google’s dominance in search erodes it’s going to have to make up that revenue somewhere, and since its main business is advertising it’s a given that Google is going to be bringing more ads to more surfaces and devices in the future. Like the Kindle.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk.

Author Blogs – Use Categories To Organize Your Posts

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Many blog platforms have a default setting that places certain items (often called widgets) in the sidebar (the narrow column on the side). Two common default widgets are Archives and Categories. 

The Archives widget displays a list the months of the year, with the most recent month listed first. Usually there’s a number next to each month indicating how many blog posts were made that month. Clicking on the month brings up the blog posts made during that month. I recommend deleting the Archive widget from your blog. It doesn’t serve a useful purpose, it takes up valuable space in the sidebar, and if you don’t post very often, the small number of posts listed for each month looks bad.

Having a list of blog post Categories in the sidebar is much more useful to visitors, especially for nonfiction author blogs. If someone has an interest in a particular topic, they can quickly and easily find more articles on that topic using the Categories list.

Each time you publish a blog post, you have the option of assigning a category to that post. The Categories widget displays a list of the categories you have used. Clicking on a category name takes the blog visitor to a page containing the articles in that category.

You may have the option of presenting your categories in cloud format. The cloud displays the category names in a cluster, rather than an alphabetical list, and the names of the most frequently used categories are shown in larger type. The cloud may be harder to read if you have very many categories, but it is more eye-catching than a list.

Another option is include category names in a navigation menu across the top of your blog. This works best if you have a small number of categories. You can use the menu in addition to or instead of the Categories widget in the sidebar.

On my own blog, I deleted the Categories widget and created a custom widget called “Book Marketing Resources,” which you can see it in the lower right column of this page. Most of these category links go to a page listing all the blog posts in that category, but several of them go to special resource pages that also list additional resources related to the category. For a sample resource page, see the Library & Educational Sales page. 

Another way to use the categories feature is to link to a category page at the end of some of your blog posts.  For example:  See more articles about Blogs & Websites.

See this post to learn how to avoid common mistakes in using categories on author blogs.

This is a reprint from Dana Lynn Smith‘s The Savvy Book Marketer.

Arab Spring Update: Are Social Media Being Given Too Much Credit For Recent Changes In The Middle East?

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In this podcast and transcript, from the Copyright Clearance Center’s Beyond the Book site, the CCC’s Chris Kenneally interviews Egyptian-born journalist Mona Eltahawy about recent events in the Middle East and the role social media have (or have not) played in those events. The podcast and transcript are provided here in their entirety with the CCC’s Beyond the Book site’s permission.

As popular uprisings have spread across the Middle East and North Africa, media pundits have credited Twitter and Facebook. But one Egyptian-born journalist based in New York says the acclaim for social media is misplaced, even though she admits to a Twitter addiction herself.

“It was a revolution of courage, rather than a revolution of Twitter or Facebook,” says Mona Eltahawy. “Social media connected real-life activists with online activists, and with ordinary Egyptians whose only exposure to politics came through Facebook and through tweets that they read. And through that connection, [Twitter] brought people out on the ground. But it was a tool. It was a weapon.”

An acclaimed freelance journalist, Mona Eltahawy is also a lecturer and researcher on the growing importance of social media in the Arab world. She spoke with CCC’s Chris Kenneally at the We Media NYC conference about her work and her insights on the Arab Spring.

 Arab Spring Update [12:15m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download

 

The Importance Of Author Organizations

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Writing can be one of the lonliest career fields. There you are–hour after hour, day after day, etc. working away in a room by yourself. Even in a public setting such as a coffee shop, we build walls around us that warn, “Don’t bother me! Writer at work!”

Writers are human too. They need connectivity, especially with like-minded writers. There are a several ways you can do this. The first is to join a local group of writers. These are often sponsored by bookstores and libraries. Just ask at the counter. Contacts with these may also lead to contacts with critique groups, although you need to be careful. Other credible sponsors are colleges and community colleges. Ask in the English departments. Some schools offer workshops such as the University of Iowa’s Writing Workshop and their MA degree. Kansas University’s famous Jim Gunn runs an excellent SciFi/Fantasy program.

Probably the most helpful ar the writers’ organizations for specific genre fiction. The following are links to some of these:

Author Organization links

Amazon Author and Writer Groups  http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=13786431

Mystery Organizations:
http://www.mysterywriters.org/

http://www.sistersincrime.org/

Erotica Fiction:
http://www.erotica-readers.com/

Horror Fiction:
http://www.horror.org/

International Thrillers:
http://thrillerwriters.org/

Romance Fiction:
http://www.rwa.org/

Science Fiction and Fantasy:
http://www.sfwa.org/

Western Fiction:
http://www.westernwriters.org/

Historical Novels:
http://www.historicalnovelsociety.org/

Children’s Books:
http://www.scbwi.org/

If some of you host similar sites, please comment to let us know.

Finally, some very gracious popular authors provide pages for other writers who want help and assistance in their writing. My favorite is Orson Scott Card at http://www.hatrack.com .

Linking in with other writers interested in your genre can be very helpful. Oft times they will point out other resources and people with which to network. Don’t let loneliness get you down. Get out there and network with others.

 

This is a reprint from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends Blog.

Allowable Home Office Tax Deductions

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Publetariat Contributor Julian Block shares this helpful tax information for writers and other freelancers:

The National Association of Realtors has a Web site for the general public, houselogic.com. At the site, [you will find a slideshow entitled] "Home Office Tax Deductions: Tips to Get It Right". The slides pair attention-getting images with brief explanations of what expenses are allowable for freelance writers and others who operate businesses from their homes. The explanations alert [viewers] to opportunities to save taxes this year and get a head start for next year. Here is a direct link to the slide show.

 

Platform Evolution

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Here’s a graph from my Twitter Quitter post:

A basic premise of independent authorship is that authors should establish their own platform in order to reach out to readers and potential customers. I believe in that premise. What constitutes a platform, however, remains undefined.

Implicit in the idea of an author’s platform is the creation of an online presence. Because the internet has become commonplace it’s easy to forget that an independent platform for individual artists would be impossible without it. (Prior to the internet an artist’s platform was limited by geography. Bands were limited not by their music but by their touring range.) While the advantages and opportunities provided by the internet are astounding relative to the pre-internet age, the internet is still a communications medium devised by human beings, with inherent strengths and weaknesses.

Understanding how the internet works in a business context is an ongoing process. Two days ago the New York Times put up a paywall, attempting for the second time to derive revenue from its own online platform. (The first attempt failed.) That one of the most prominent newspapers in the world is still struggling to monetize content despite almost unparalleled visibility and economic muscle is a reminder to everyone that the platform question has not been answered.

Depending on your perspective, the tendency of the human mind to cherry pick information can be seen as either a bug or a feature. In the context of online platforms, it’s easy to see successes like iTunes as indicative of potential and promise when it’s actually the result of a unique set of circumstances. Finding gold in a stream may spark a gold rush, but only a few people will stake claims that literally pan out. The internet is no different. As I noted in a post about the future of publishing:

In return for making distribution almost effortless and almost free, the internet promises nothing. No revenue. No readers. Nothing.

Possibilities are not promises. Possibilities are chances, which is why I always say that writing for profit is gambling — and gambling against terrible odds. Determining what your online platform should be, and how much time you should devote to that platform, is an important part of nudging the odds in your favor.  

Lowering the Bar
Platform-services consultants, like marketing consultants, will always tell you that you can never do enough. Because the time you can devote to your platform is limited, but the time you should devote is infinite, these people will offer to bridge that gap on your behalf, for a fee. Because the internet is driven by technology, and because anything less than a cutting-edge platform means you’re falling short, platform consultants will also offer to sell you myriad apps and solutions, all of which they will teach you about, maintain and upgrade for a fee. (The New York Times was convinced by these same people to spend $40 million dollars on a paywall that can be easily circumvented.)

Approaching your platform as a vehicle of infinite possibility constrained only by your own feeble lack of determination is a recipe for failure. You do not have an infinite amount of time and resources to devote to your platform. Even if you did, there’s no guarantee that such a commitment would equal success. From part IV of my marketing and sales series:

In the real world, if you really did grab a pick and shovel and head out into your backyard to strike it rich, your friends and family would rightly think you a loon, no matter how deeply felt your convictions were. Why? Because it’s common knowledge that gold isn’t plentiful everywhere. Rather, it’s concentrated in veins of rock or in waterways that hold gold from eroded veins of rock.

If you try to dig in the wrong place it doesn’t matter how much time or money you spend, or how cutting-edge your tools are. You’re not going to get any gold even if you have infinite resources. Because the internet obviates geographical limits it seem to negate all limits, but as the NYT’s second attempt at a paywall makes clear that’s not the case. The internet is not an infinite vein of gold waiting to be exploited if only you’re smart enough to pick the right mix of apps, site functionality and marketing techniques.

(This false premise echoes the happiness industry’s determination to blame everyone for their own failings. If you’re not a happy person it’s your own fault: stop whining and try harder. If your platform isn’t racking up clicks and sales it’s your own fault: stop whining and try harder.)

Platform Motivation
I think the right question to ask is how each independent author’s platform can most effectively dovetail with that author’s individual goals. If you’re the kind of writer who wants to write a lot of books, slaving yourself to a complex or time-consuming platform is going to keep you from reaching that goal. (I’ll elaborate on that in a moment.) If your writing goals are more modest or limited — and if the work you’re producing is itself part of a larger goal — then creating a more complex platform might make sense. For example, if you’re a public speaker or have a primary profession, authoring a book might help you further those pursuits even if the work itself never becomes a bestseller.

I think it’s also important to be conscious of the motivations behind the voices championing the idea of a platform. As a writer I think you should have a platform in order to make yourself visible. Making yourself available online allows people to find you and your work, and it allows you to have information or products waiting for them whenever they choose to arrive. Without a presence on the web you are invisible and mute, no matter how many pages you crank out.

Publishers, agents and editors want you to have a platform, but for slightly different reasons. To them your platform provides a metric by which they can measure your popularity in an uncertain marketplace crowded with aspiring writers. The measure of dedication you show to your platform also indicates how interested you might be in doing the things those people would want you to do in order to maximize sales. Given that they only make money if you make money it’s understandable that they would have these interests, but those interests do not put writing first.

In my case, for example, the decision to quit Facebook and Twitter was made after considerable deliberation about what was best for me as a writer, including assessment of the workloads involved. I’m fairly confident most publishers, agents and editors would see my choices as a mistake, if only because I’ve made it harder for them to assess my platform relative to other authors. Staying active on those sites would please them, but it would make my writing life more difficult without any demonstrable payoff. (If I write a runaway hit I can always join those sites again in order to capitalize on that success.)

Platform Criteria
So: how to juggle all of the available platform options? Well, after testing some of the options I’ve changed my own platform weighting as follows:

  • Creating and publishing new work is more important than any platform activity by at least an order of magnitude. If there’s a choice between writing and working on my platform, I’m going to write. Doing so emphasizes the proper ratio of time I should spend on my platform.

    As I said above, writers who crank out books probably need less of a platform relative to other writers. Why? Because after you establish even on an online toehold, your growing body of work becomes the greatest expression of, and attraction to, your platform.

  • Becoming a better writer is more important than bettering my platform by at least an order of magnitude. Because I’m never going to be able to drive sales with my celebrity I need to make sure I can compete with my content. Here’s how I put it in the conclusion to my series on marketing and sales:

    Writing is a qualitative act. It matters whether you suck or not. As such I believe mastery of craft is the most reliable predictor of critical or commercial success for the great majority of writers. There will always be people who succeed despite a lack of authorial gifts and there will always be good writers who are overlooked in the marketplace. But if you’re determined to play the percentages and protect your own authorial vision, nothing pays off like focusing on being the best writer you can be.

  • Both Twitter and Facebook demonstrate the same inescapable truth: if you have celebrity you’ll have more success at exploiting those sites; if you don’t, the road to cultural currency (to say nothing of sales) becomes much, much more difficult. The written word is the root of any storyteller’s celebrity. It is the engine of an author’s success in every way, including platform success. I agree that authors should launch their platforms before they launch their books, but the success of that platform will be defined largely by the success of those books, not the other way around.

  • All platforms are not the same. Some authors focus on issues, some authors focus on readers, some focus on both. (Zoe Winters wrestles with these choices here and here.) I’m at the point where I want to write and self-publish more fiction, and engage more readers. Again, however, my success at doing so will come from spending more time writing things for people to read, not more time working on my platform.

  • After a year and a half I can say with conviction that an author can have no better platform than their own website and blog. If you want to extend that locus through other sites like Facebook and Twitter, that’s fine. But you should have your own home base and you should own it. It doesn’t have to be a complex site, and probably shouldn’t be if you want to protect your writing time. And you should always protect your writing time.

Everything I’ve learned over the past year or two says that an author’s platform should be smaller rather than larger. Everything I’ve learned also says that authors should concentrate on writing rather than augmenting their platform. You do need to have a presence. You don’t need to obsess over it.

The Platform in Context
Launching an online platform is like staking a claim. You hope you pick a good spot but you also know you have to compete with everybody else working the same territory. However much time and money you decide to devote to your platform, some of your competitors will have more money, some will work harder, and some will have trained professionals helping them.

Treating your platform like a competition with others is tempting but it’s a big mistake. I’m convinced that the people who visit my site and read my words are less concerned with how my platforms stacks up against other sites than they are with how well I deliver on my promises to them. I certainly don’t want my site to look amateurish, but beyond that low bar my focus needs to be wholly on my readers.

Because the internet potentially allows an author to connect with everyone on the planet it’s tempting to try to drive readers to your platform. I’ve come to believe that doing so is a waste of time. You should approach your platform and presence as something long-term and make it easy for readers to find you when they’re interested. The best of all possible worlds is one where readers promote you and your work by word of mouth, and apart from celebrity-driven successes I can’t find any examples to the contrary. Bottom line: it takes time, so plan accordingly, including emotionally.

One of the most oft-quoted remarks about the obstacles facing independent artists comes from Tim O’Reilly:

Lesson 1: Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.

This idea has also been heavily promoted by anti-DRM advocate Cory Doctorow:

That’s because my biggest threat as an author isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity. The majority of ideal readers who fail to buy my book will do so because they never heard of it, not because someone gave them a free electronic copy.

The problem with this claim isn’t that it’s false, it’s that it’s meaningless. Obscurity is also a far greater threat to authors than smallpox, grapefruit and linoleum. If nobody knows who you are, yes, that’s a big problem. But ignoring the costs of piracy doesn’t solve any author’s obscurity problem. In fact, based on my Twitter experience, I don’t think anything can solve the obscurity problem because it’s baked into the online cake.

The internet made information available 24/7. It also made it possible for anyone to distribute digital content. Now, with the advent of Facebook and Twitter, it’s effortlessly easy for people to express every stray thought in their heads. As a result, the wall of noise that any content provider must compete against has grown exponentially. We’re at a point where every single person on the face of the earth is a direct competitor. There is no longer any distinction between the people who make content and the people who consume it.

The fact that everyone seems so deeply invested in expressing their own thoughts means fewer and fewer people are listening. Attention has become a commodity as critical to the lifeblood of a writer as obscurity is daunting:

Many of the filters earlier generations took for granted, the ones imposed by the absence of real-time communications and efficient transmission and storage, have now been eradicated by the advent of internet and digital media.

The only possible solution to the obscurity/attention quandary is not to play. No matter how great your celebrity or big your platform, there are limits. Just ask Roger Ebert. (There are also good reasons to believe that Facebook and Twitter are overvalued financially and culturally. Just ask Warren Buffett and Vincent Eaton.)

Picturing Your Platform
When I first thought about my own platform I imagined it as a kind of soap box. It was my spot in the public square of ideas. Later, I also came to think of my platform as a retail space. It was my shop and display.

Now, however, I’ve come to see my platform as a launching pad. It’s how I try to put stories and ideas and conversations into virtual orbit. Some of the things I launch may blow up on the pad, some may go to the moon, and the fate of some launches may be unknown for a long time. And nothing I do to my platform will change that.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk.