Transforming The Book Industry: How Seth Godin Is Poking The Box

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This article, by Michael Stelzner, originally appeared on the Social Media Examiner site on 3/14/11.

I recently interviewed Seth Godin, author of the new book Poke the Box. Seth has written more than a dozen other books, many of them focused on marketing. Some of his notable books include Permission Marketing, Linchpin and Tribes.

During this interview, you’ll learn about his latest book, his views on the state of the publishing industry and about his new venture The Domino Project.

Mike: Let’s start with Poke the Box. What exactly does “poke the box” mean?

Seth: If you’re a computer programmer and you want to figure out how something works, the way you do it is not by reading a manual or following a map. You do it by trying something, seeing what happens, learning from it and then trying something else. That’s how we figured out how the world worked when we were 5 years old, and it’s the way we figure out how to do something new in a changing world.

The reason that I wrote the book is that somehow we’ve lulled ourselves into this feeling that we need to wait for someone else to tell us what to do and give us permission to do it, as opposed to taking action and doing it ourselves.

Mike: You mentioned in the book it was your uncle who designed the “box” and put it in the crib of one of your cousins?

Seth: My uncle has a PhD from MIT. We call him “the admiral” because he was in the Navy ROTC program. He worked with lasers and all sorts of technology.

I have this vivid memory of when I was just 10 or 12 years old. My cousin was born and my uncle built a box—it must have weighed three pounds—in gray steel with one of those big, thick, black electrical cords. It had on it three or four switches and dials, and when you flipped a switch, something happened. A buzzer would go off or a light would flash. You’d turn a dial and something else would change. He plugged this thing in and threw it in the crib.

His thinking was that it’s natural for a kid to play with things, to figure out how they work. In a stable world, we don’t necessarily want people to do that because we want them to work on the assembly line and do what they’re told. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this isn’t a stable world anymore.


Read the rest of the article on Social Media Examiner.

When To Self-Edit (And When To Get Help)

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This post, by Jenn Mattern, originally appeared on Get Paid to Write Online on 3/21/11.

As a writer should you edit your own work? Would it be better to hire an editor? It’s a question I sometimes feel torn over. And that’s not to mention I’m always a little bit leery of writing about editing — a near guarantee of typos.

There are times when I personally wouldn’t hire a third party editor to review my work. For example, I run more than a handful of blogs. They’re largely personality-driven and they aren’t places where I obsess over grammar. As long as you don’t find typos in every other sentence, I’m okay with that. Then there are projects I wouldn’t even consider pursuing without bringing in a professional editor. The nonfiction book I’m working on is a good example.

When would you hire an outside editor? Is it always a good idea or are self-edits sometimes enough on their own? Here are some situations where I would lean towards self-editing and others where I’d suggest bringing in a pair of fresh eyes with a professional.

When Self-Editing Might Suffice

 

  1. You need to publish right away and can’t afford a lengthier editing process — such as with a time-sensitive article for your own blog or news site.
     
  2. The work is going to a client and their own editor will give it a final look-over before publication. In this case your own edits are usually fine before delivery.
     
  3. The writing is for your own site and your voice matters more than grammatical perfection. In the case of more personal sites and blogs, sometimes that rougher (although not sloppy) approach actually works well in connecting you to readers.

Read the rest of the post, which provides two more bullet items for When Self-Editing Might Suffice and 5 bullet items for When It’s Better To Bring In Outside Help on Get Paid to Write Online.

Bestselling Author Turns Down $500K Deal to Self-Publish

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This post, by Jane Friedman, originally appeared on the Writer’s Digest There Are No Rules blog on 3/21/11.

The breaking news today is that NYT bestseller Barry Eisler turned down a $500K deal from his publisher, St. Martin’s, in order to self-publish his next book.

In honor of the occasion, he and JA Konrath have a conversation that extends 12,000 words. You can read/download the entire thing here as a PDF. It’s worth reading in its entirety.

Below I’ve summarized a few of the key points, along with related highlights from the conversation.

1. In the self-publishing arena, the most profitable use of an author’s time is writing more books. And self-publishing helps you focus more on the writing itself.
 

Barry: Now, with digital books, once again there’s no more profitable use of an author’s time than writing. Not to say that authors don’t need to have a strong online presence; of course they do. But any time you’re thinking about some other promotional activity—a blog post, a trip to a convention, an hour on Facebook—you have to measure the value of that time against the value of writing and publishing a new story. The new story earns money, both for itself and your other works. …

Joe: But it’s even more than that. … A virtual shelf, like Amazon or Smashwords, carries all my titles, all the time. And I don’t have to compete with a NYT bestseller who has 400 copies of their latest hit on the shelf, while I only have one copy of mine. We each take up one virtual space per title. … Virtual shelf life is forever. In a bookstore, you have anywhere form a few weeks to a few months to sell your title, and then it gets returned. This is a big waste of money, and no incentive at all for the bookseller to move the book.

But e-books are forever. Once they’re live, they will sell for decades. Someday, long after I’m gone, my grandchildren will be getting my royalties.

…

Barry: A lot of people don’t realize—and I probably wouldn’t have realized myself if you hadn’t pointed it out—that the appropriate measure for determining how much your books can earn you in digital is forever.

In paper, with rare exceptions, there’s a big upfront sales push, followed by either total evaporation or by years of low backlist sales. Digital isn’t like that.

Joe: Time is the ultimate long tail. Even with a big wad of money upfront, if something sells forever, the back end is what ultimately counts.

[My note: For more on this issue of the long tail of sales, read this excellent post.]


Read the rest of the post on There Are No Rules.

Getting A Read On The Future Of Publishing

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This article, by John Barber, originally appeared on Canada’s The Globe and Mail site on 3/17/11.

Crises spawn innovation, and despite regular headlines portending doom, the 21st-century publishing industry is bubbling with new ideas made possible by digital disruptions (and the odd hand-printing tool). Some will evaporate into thin air, while others change everything. But the level of activity today in Canada and the world strongly suggests that whatever the future brings, it will arrive in the capable hands of former book publishers. Herewith, seven trends to watch.

1. THE TEXTUAL MIX TAPE

One of the country’s most ambitious digital publishing ventures began when the staff at Vancouver’s Douglas & McIntyre asked a simple question: Why is there no iTunes for text? The soon-to-be-launched Bookriff is the result. The service is “a technology platform that allows customers to repackage, repurpose and even resell content from existing copyrighted publishers, from the web or from their own content, and mash it all up together,” according to Bookriff CEO Rochelle Grayson. The result is a kind of textual mix tape. “But what’s really important is that we ensure the copyright owners all get paid for their piece of micro-content in that mix tape,” Ms. Grayson says.

2. SMALL PRESSES SPEAK UP

While some lament as digital technology drives down both production costs and potential remuneration to “content providers,” others see new opportunities. Not long after creating PressBooks, which allows users to easily create their own books, Montreal digital innovator Hugh McGuire introduced Iambik, a site that commissions and sells low-priced audio versions of literary fiction from independent publishers, an innovation made possible by revenue-sharing agreements among authors, publishers and narrators. “There are many thousands of fabulous books that are not in audio, and we’d like to change that,” Mr. McGuire says. “We do that by having a different cost structure because of our distributed model.”

2[sic]. LIQUID BOOKS

Everybody knows that what we call an e-book today will evolve into something quite different as text sheds its Gutenberg-era shackles, but nobody knows what that is or what to call it. Neither do the Goggles, the Vancouver duo of Mike Simons and Paul Shoebridge (creative directors at Adbusters magazine), whose recent hybridized whatzit, Welcome to Pine Point, is currently playing on NFB.ca. It’s not a website, it’s not an interactive documentary and it’s not a “vook” (video-book hybrid), according to its creators. Instead, they have taken to calling the production, which explores memory through the story of a small mining town erased from the map, a “liquid book.” It’s a format that allows “exploration within the narrative,” according to Mr. Simons, “but channelled exploration.”

Read the rest of the article on The Globe and Mail, and also see these related stories from the same site:
No e-books without authors, Atwood reminds us
Are mid-list authors an endangered species?
Time to Lead: The shaky state of Canadian book publishing
 

E-Books, Downloadable Audio Books Continue Growth Based on AAP Publishers January 2011 Sales Report

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This press release originally appeared on the Association of American Publishers site on 3/17/11.

March 17, 2011, New York, NY– E-books and downloadable audio books continue to grow in popularity according to the January 2011 sales report of the Association of American Publishers.

Figures for the first month of the new year show that E-book net sales increased by 115.8% vs January 2010 (from $32.4 Million to $69.9M). Sales of Downloadable Audio Books also rose by 8.8% vs the previous year ($6.0M to $6.5M). As AAP reported last month in its December 2010 monthly report and full 2010 analysis, E-book sales have increased annually and significantly in all nine years of tracking the category.

Among the other highlights of the January 2011 report:

  • Total books sales on all platforms, in all categories, hit $805.7 Million for January. This was a slight drop from January 2010’s $821.5M sales (-1.9%).
     
  • Adult Hardcover category fell from $55.4M to $49.1M (-11.3%), Adult Paperback dropped from $104.2M to $83.6 (-19.7%) and Adult Mass Market declined from $56.4M to $39.0 (-30.9%)
     
  • In the Children’s/Young Adult category, Hardcover sales were $31.2M in January 2011 vs $31.8M in January 2010 (-1.9%) while Paperbacks were $25.4M, down 17.7% from $30.9M in January 2010.
     
  • Physical Audio Books sales were $7.3M vs $7.9M the previous year (-6.7%).
     
  • Sales of Religious Books grew by 5.6%, from $49.8M to $52.6M.
     
  • Sales in the Higher Education category were $382.0M for January 2011, a slight drop (-1.4%) from $387.6M the previous year. K-12 sales hit $82.6M for the month vs $97.0M for the previous year (-14.9%).
     
  • In Professional and Scholarly Books, sales grew 1.3%, from $51.2M to $51.8M. Sales of University Press Hardcovers were $3.9M in January 2011 vs $4.5M the previous year (-14.0%) while University Press Paperbacks were $6.2M vs $6.7M (-7.8%).

All figures cited represent domestic net sales for U.S. book publishers.

About AAP
The Association of American Publishers is the national trade association of the U.S. book publishing industry. Its 300 members include most of the major commercial, education and professional publishers as well as smaller and non-profit publishers, university presses and scholarly societies. They publish content on every platform for a global audience.

Contacts:
Andi Sporkin – asporkin@publishers.org – (202) 220-4554
Tina Jordan – tjordan@publishers.org – (212) 255-0275

Write What You Feel

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Every time you read a novel, you get a peek into the writer’s soul. Some authors are good at separating themselves from the story, especially if they write about a character unlike themselves (Jack Reacher, for example, who is not like Lee Child). Yet I believe that circumstances in each writer’s life affect what they write in at least small ways.

For example, if I have a headache when I’m writing, one of my characters will have a headache on the page that day, which I may later edit out. Or if I’m trying to lose weight, one of my minor characters will likely be in the same mode. Why not? Characters need realistic details to come to life on the page.

The pattern of transferring our own circumstances into the fiction we write happens on a much broader scale too. When I wrote The Sex Club, the first book in the Detective Jackson series, my son was in Iraq and I worried every day that he would die. And my sister had just died of cancer and I grieved for her. So Kera, my main female protagonist was dealing with those elements. Right or wrong, I couldn’t separate those emotions from my writing and they ended up on the page.

Writing what you feel gives a story passion and realism that draws readers in. Yet there’s a fine line that novelists have to be careful with. Earlier I mentioned Jack Reacher, a popular character for millions of crime fiction readers. He comes to mind because of a discussion on a listserv I participate in, which is what triggered this blog. Readers were discussing the author’s last two stories. Some felt the character had changed too much, and others thought the writing had changed too much. It made me wonder if something significant had changed in the author’s life. I have to mention that many readers said they loved both stories and that the author, Lee Child, is a very nice person who I’ve been fortunate to meet at Bouchercon.

But the listserv comments made me realize that readers notice changes in an author’s style, and if they follow the author’s personal life, they make connections. During the discussion, one list member said, “The writing reminds me of Robert Ludlum’s novel just prior to his cardiac event. It didn’t feel like a Ludlum novel…”

As an author, I hope to learn from this, but I’m realistic enough to accept that whatever is happening in my personal life will somehow affect what I write. When I outlined Dying for Justice, I was planning to start a new series, so I could pitch to a new publisher, and that affected the POV and plot of the story. Having just finished the fifth Jackson novel, I’m at a point of choosing what to write next. After five detective novels, I’m ready to try something new. Throw in five months of winter and I’m experiencing some cabin fever and crying out for a change of pace.

So I’ve decided to write a futuristic thriller, based on an outline I crafted a year ago. In reading back through the outline, I realize the theme of the novel is rather dark, and a year ago, I was at rock bottom in my career. It’s no coincidence.

Earlier this week, I took the first chapter to a critique group and they loved it, so I’m going to finish writing the story. But considering that my life and career are doing quite well now, I expect the ending to be more upbeat than I had originally planned. :)

Readers: What changes have you noticed in writers’ styles because of personal circumstances?
Writers: How has your personal life affected your writing?

L.J. Sellers is the author of the bestselling Detective Jackson mysteries and standalone thrillers.

Five Books Out, The Sixth On Its Way

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Over the past several years I have brought out five books in various formats, all currently self-published. The first, Worldmaker, was originally published by Ace Books in the ’80s. It is now a self-published book througn iUnivers’s Back-In-Print imprint. Then there were two sf novels released through BookLocker — Soldier of ‘Tween and Shadow Run. Those three are the sf.

I have a mystery/Suspense novel out there, In Pursuit of the Enemy. It was released through Infinity Press.

And, finally, I collected my short stories into a collection titled Spaceships and Brass Knuckles. This I released only as an e-book.

I am working on another mystery/suspense, titled Hollow Point, which I hope to have ready for release in a month or two.

I’m glad I found this site. Looks like there’s much great information here, and a fantastic community!

Breaking Writer's Block: 10 Tips To Get You Back On A Writing Roll

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You have been on a roll in writing your book. The ideas and words have been flowing and you feel like you could write all night … then …. Nothing.

Your mind’s a blank.  Some passages don’t “sound” right and you just can’t get passed it. You close your computer in disgust. Still the problem keeps nagging you. What to do?

Below are 10 hints for moving past the stumbling block and getting your writing flowing again.

  1. Give it a rest! Put away the material for a day or two at most. Schedule a time to return to the material. You will experience a fresh look at what you have written and how you need to revise it.
     
  2.  Be flexible. Be willing to throw out ideas or sections of text that are causing problems or just don’t work.
     
  3.  Plunge Into the Scary Parts. What are you afraid of? Spelling poorly? Weak transitions? Go ahead and deliberately spell every word incorrectly, write without transitions, don’t use any punctuation–do everything you’re not supposed to do, and have fun doing it! Draw caricatures of your writing demons, put the dreaded failure behind you, and move on.
     
  4.  Loosen Your Standards. There’s really no reason to worry about critics or evaluators and what they think until the last stage of revising. Until that time, indulge yourself. Don’t correct anything; write in slang; work for 15 minutes; leave notes to yourself, like ADD DETAILS HERE or FIX THIS LATER, throughout your work–anything that makes it easier to write.
     
  5.  Continue with whatever part is easiest or most exciting for you. Don’t let one part of your material stump you for long. If it’s bugging you, just skip it and move on to an easier, more appealing part. Skip along to the next part and let your unconscious work on the hard stuff for a while. Continue writing at whatever point you like. If you want to begin in the middle, fine. Leave the first sections until later. The reader will never know that you wrote the material backward. Some writers routinely save the introduction until later when they have a clearer idea of what the main idea and purpose will be.
     
  6.  Use the buddy system. Work with a writing coach or someone who can help get you “unstuck” and keep you on track. Using a friend or family member doesn’t usually work, since there is a need to be totally objective and professional in the approach to identifying and removing the stumbling block. Another writer or a critique group can be helpful.
     
  7.  Research other material. Reread related books, articles, blogs, etc.and jot down ideas while reading. Add new ideas, re-sequence ideas, and eliminate sentences.
     
  8.  Follow a routine. Follow a routine to get into the mood to work on your book. Try activities like wearing comfortable clothing, or listening to a particular type of music. Plan to write nonstop for a minimum of 15 minutes.   
                                            
  9. Take a break. Physically move around, stretch, or walk. Get a snack or drink, talk to someone, or just relax for five minutes before starting to work on your book again. 
     
  10. Stop when you’re on a roll. When writing becomes a struggle, try sticking with it–and quit when you’re on a roll, so that next time you’ll be eager to return to the work. Or start jotting down ideas when you know you have to do something else in 45 minutes–as soon as the pressure’s off, as soon as you say “well, I know I won’t get anything done in this little bit of time” you’re free to let your creative juices flow. Waves of inspiration will come and go. The trick is scheduling your work to take full advantage of the tides.

 

This is a reprint from the AuthorAssist blog.

How To Write Your Novel's Hook

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We’ve all heard how important it is to begin your NOVEL with an effective hook. The reason, of course, is your novel’s hook helps potential readers make many of their decision about your book. Be it AGENTS, publishers or readers, everyone seeks out these first few words and these lines make a lasting impression.

(Listen to a PODCAST of this article.)

When I focused on that first paragraph, I spent a great deal of time to research how to write my novel’s hook and I thought I’d pass along some of the better tips I found.

By the way, I just made up these hooks as I wrote this article, so cut me some slack if they’re not up to par, okay? After all, there’s just examples.

1. You may craft an opening that sets a mood. This is the method I employed in "Born to be Brothers" when I wrote, "Something was about to die."

2. One alternative is to pique the reader’s curiosity. "I always wondered how it felt to die."

3. You might pen a line that compares two things not normally associated with each other. "Jackson couldn’t decide if he should go to his father’s wedding or his mother’s funeral."

4. You can have your main character perform an action. "He mumbled to himself as he lifted the pocket watch from the dead man’s vest."

5. You may wish to indicate something is about to change in a radical fashion. "I felt my body grow lighter as it began to blend with the fog."

6. Why not begin with an intriguing person or place. "The countryside looked as if an artist had painted his fondest vision."

7. One choice is to have a character speak about an unusual situation. "Yep, I seen it all. It exploded and blew that guy to kingdom come."

8. Another option is to offer your reader something unexpected. "The aircraft crashed into the ground with a fiery explosion. Then the pilot stepped out and dusted himself off as if it was all in a day’s efforts."

9. You might open your novel with dialogue. "Are you ready to tell me about it now?"

10. Yet another opportunity lies within immediate conflict. "She knew she’d get in trouble even as she clinched her fist." I’m working on my next novel and this is how it starts, at least in the first draft.

11. A strong hook can begin with an emotion. "I hated that man from the moment I met him."

12. Yet another opening hook might be to offer your reader a puzzle. "I wondered how could a human being shrink so much in one night?"

13. Have you ever thought to startle your reader? How’s this? "I never knew humans tasted like chicken."

Of course, there are any number of other methods by which to create your novel’s hook, and you can even combine two or three of these ideas for maximum effect. Regardless, your goal is to draw your reader into the story and you’ve got only one chance to do so. Best of luck with it.

Now, does anyone have a hook they’d like to share with our readers?

I hope by now you know, I wish for you only best-sellers.


This is a reprint from C. Patrick Shulze‘s Author of Born to be Brothers blog.

How To Exhibit At Book Industry Trade Shows

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One of the best ways to promote a book to bookstore buyers and librarians is for them to see the book in person at a major industry tradeshow. Read on for information about the most important shows and tips on how to participate on a budget.

There are several large shows in the U.S. geared toward booksellers and librarians, including:

•  Book Expo America (BEA – geared to booksellers)

•  Christian Retail Show (CBA)

•  American Library Association Annual Conference (ALA)

•  American Library Association Midwinter Conference (ALA)

•  Public Libraries Association (PLA – in even-numbered years)

•  Association of College and Research Librarians (ACRL – in odd-numbered years)

•  American Association of School Librarians (AASL)

•  Texas Library Association (TLA – the largest of the state shows)

•  Other state and regional library shows

The major international book shows, such as the Frankfurt Book Fair and the London Book Fair, focus largely on international book sales and the sale of foreign and translation rights to books. For the national and international shows, nonfiction books probably have a higher chance of success.
 

How to Exhibit at Book Shows

The expense of exhibiting in person at the major shows is usually prohibitive for independent publishers, however it may be beneficial to participate in your state library association show, especially if it’s held nearby and you are able to share a booth with one or two other publishers. Be sure to find out if show management permits booth sharing, and don’t be shy about asking if your book would be a good fit for their audience. For example, I have found that there are a lot of children’s and young adult librarians in attendance at the Texas Library Show.

The most economical way to participate in the major shows is through a co-op booth, where books from a number of different small and independent publishers are displayed together. You pay a fee (typically around $50 to $100) and ship your book to the booth sponsor. They take care of shipping the books to the show, displaying them in the booth, staffing the booth, and providing literature to the visitors. These organizations provide co-op display services at a number of national, international and regional shows:

•  Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA)

•  Combined Book Exhibit 

•  Jenkins – Global Book Shows  

•  Association Book Exhibit

In addition to library shows, Association Book Exhibit participates in some other professional association conferences. If you’re a nonfiction publisher, check out their list of conferences to see if any match up to your book’s topic.

If a book industry tradeshow is being held near where you live, it’s a great learning experience to attend the show. Contact show management to find out if authors or publishers are allowed to attend.

For tips on how to sell more books at book fairs and tradeshows, see these articles:

The 12 Commandments of Selling Books at Book Fairs, Conventions and Festivals by Terry Cordingley

12 Secrets to Selling More Books at Events by Penny S Sansevieri
 

 

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

A Writer Muses On Marketing And Sales, Part II

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There’s no right answer to whether you should view writing as a business or not. It’s a personal choice dependent on myriad factors. Knowing the answer, however, allows you to effectively navigate choices you’ll face in marketing and/or selling your work. While you should always control your costs, there’s a big difference between the expense of a print-on-demand book intended for friends and family and the effort you may need to embrace in order to take a work to the competitive retail market.

Inextricably Bound
In the previous post I said that marketing and sales were two ends of the same spectrum. The desire to resolve uncertainties about potential consumer interest is the glue by which marketing and sales are inextricably bound.

Exploring market uncertainties may involve advertising or promotional events or other common marketing and sales strategies. The results of those tests will be measured in pageviews, conversions, purchases or other metrics. As a writer, I think you should constantly remind yourself that marketing and sales are most useful when they are used to answer questions relevant to your personal objectives. Treating marketing and sales as gauges rather than goads means you will be less likely to sink cash into marketing and sales ‘solutions’ that are, at best, speculative, or be led astray by people who will gladly take your money in exchange for promises they can’t possibly keep. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Mr. SEO Evangelist.)  

The Ends of the Spectrum
Imagine you’ve created something purely, unapologetically artistic. You’ve allowed no thought into your mind other than what the final form and expression of your creation should be. You don’t care what anybody else thinks of it and you don’t care if anybody else wants it.

Now imagine putting a sign on your creation that says “For Sale” or “Free”, then tossing it out a window. You don’t look to see where it lands, you don’t look to see if the sign is visible, or if anyone has taken notice of your creation’s arrival in the world.

That’s sales in its purest form. The product has been made available and the intent has been communicated, but only in the most minimal way. If someone does not literally stumble across the item there will be no chance of a transaction taking place.

Now rewind that scenario past even the act of creation. Imagine that you want to create something — anything — that will be readily, eagerly received. Maybe it’s something you want to sell, maybe it’s something you intend to give away, but the one thing you know even before you decide what to make is that you want it to be desired by as many people as possible.

That’s marketing in its purest form. In order to accomplish your goal, at least in theory, note that you will need to have perfect knowledge of what people want, as well as the means to notify every person on the face of the earth. This is the exact opposite of the pure sales example described above. In the sales example you gave no thought to what people wanted and you did nothing to communicate the product’s availability to anyone. In the marketing example all you’re thinking about is what people want and how you can make sure everybody knows it exists.

Admittedly these are the absurd theoretical ends of the marketing-sales continuum. It should also be obvious from these extreme examples that marketing and selling any product involves both intentions in some measure. Starting at the sales end, any effort to meet the needs of the customer involves marketing. Starting at the marketing end, any aspect of a product that will not shaped by consumer interests is something that must be sold.

How authors, and in particular storytellers, can find the right balance between the need to market and the desire to sell will be the focus of the remainder of the posts in this series.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett’s Ditchwalk.

The Economics Of Self-Publishing An Ebook

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This post, by Simon Owens, originally appeared on The Next Web, Media section, on 3/7/11.

At first it was just an experiment. Blake Crouch, a mystery and suspense novelist, was not lacking for a traditional book publisher. His last few novels were put out by St. Martin’s Press and he has a literary agent dedicated to selling the rights to his work. But early last year, intrigued by success stories with Amazon’s Kindle store, he decided to release a collection of his short stories as an ebook without the aid of a publisher.

Though sales started off slow — maybe a few hundred a month — within the last two months he’s been averaging 5,000 purchases a month. With his 70% cut from Amazon, that means a $2.99 ebook has generated upwards of $10,000 a month, money that bypasses a traditional publisher completely and goes straight to his pocket. Five thousand sales a month, he told me in a phone interview, “is far more than I’ve sold traditionally.”

Crouch is among a growing list of authors who are forgoing the traditional publisher route to sell their work directly to consumers. Though self-publishing is nothing new — it has long been referred to as “vanity publishing,” typically a disparaging term — the rise of the ebook market has allowed authors to eliminate the high infrastructure costs of a print product. A typical print run of a few thousand books can cost a vanity publisher a hefty five figures, whereas the actual publishing of an ebook (not including the production costs) amounts to virtually nothing.

The ebook also allows authors to skip over other hurdles, including the very cold reality that most offline retailers won’t stock a self-published book on their shelves. Though online retailers like the Kindle and Nook stores can still give preferential treatment for major publishers, they’re able to provide a wide swath of inventory from the long tail.

Sales

Recent figures released by Amazon indicate that its ebooks are now outselling their print counterparts. Most the top sellers in the Kindle store also have print editions, but there are dozens of “indie” authors who are selling thousands of ebooks a month without a print version. Most the authors I spoke to for this article noticed a drastic increase in sales in the last few months, but none of them knew exactly why. “Something happened after the new year,” Crouch said. “I don’t know if it’s because more people purchased ereaders or what. But in January sales almost doubled what they were in December, and it was just a huge upswing.”


Read the rest of the post on The Next Web, Media Section.

The Ebook Revolution

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This post, by David Wilk, originally appeared on the Booktrix Blog on 3/15/11.

I think today it is both revealing and helpful to think about e-book pricing in the context of the rise of mass market paperbacks in the 1950’s and into the 1960’s.

As a book industry veteran friend of mine has pointed out to me, when mass market paperbacks first became popular, they were priced at approximately 10% of the retail price of the then prevalent hardcover editions, on average about $.25 for a mass market paperback at a time when hardcover books were selling for $2.50 or $3.00.

At that time, paperbacks were cheaply produced in huge quantities and displayed in drugstores, supermarkets, department stores.  Some of the relatively small number of independent bookstores did not even carry mass market paperbacks, and if they did, they were in racks and spinners supplied to them by the wholesalers that controlled magazine distribution and therefore had access to retailer channels.

Mass market paperbacks were initially differentiated by being reprints of books that had come out first in hardcover, and because publishers knew they would compete with their higher priced new books, they simply held back mass market releases until the hardcover sale had run its course, usually a year, to be sure they harvested as much demand as possible at the higher hardcover price.  Some titles, particularly those in genres like westerns, mysteries, science fiction and romance, were released in mass market first (or only), to feed the burgeoning demand of general readers for inexpensive entertaining books (which publishers differentiated, sometimes snootily, from the “serious literature” and nonfiction they saw as the core of their business).

Sound familiar?

 

Read the rest of the post on the Booktrix Blog.

The Crack in the Lens – Actor's & Teacher's Pocket Tax Guide

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I added 3 more ebooks to Barnes & Noble Pubit over the weekend. The Actor’s Pocket Tax Guide, the Teacher’s Pocket Tax Guide and a Novel The Crack in the Lens. I am very impressed with their speed and efficiency. I uploaded The Crack in the Lens http://bit.ly/ffqUs2 at 2:30 am Monday morning and it was selling by 9:30 am! A seven hour turnaround!

At first the print editions of The Crack in the Lens and the Writer’s Pocket Tax Guide were not all synching together and not everything was coming up under searched of my name, but they fixed that within hours.

On the other hand, things at Google Books/Editions are stuck at "processing." Not happy with them.

Hope to be uploading to Kobo, Sony and Kindle soon.

Darlene Cypser

Foolscap & Quill, LLC

www.foolscap-quill.com

Do I Really Need A Separate ISBN For My Ebook?

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This post, by Ron Pramschufer, originally appeared on Publishing Basics on 3/14/11.

This is probably one of the most asked; least understood questions out there in the self-publishing world today. Technically you not only need an ISBN but you need a different ISBN for each format your ebook is being offered. If you are offering your book as a mobi, epub and a PDF, you need three different ISBNs. That’s technically. In reality, if you are only making your eBook available on Amazon, you don’t need any. Confused?

If you think about it a minute, it makes sense. If an ISBN is like a fingerprint, every different edition of your book needs a separate set of fingerprints (ISBN) to identify it. The easy one to understand is paperback and hardcover. They are obviously different editions. When a person purchases the paperback version of your book, that is what they expect to receive. The ISBN is what identifies the format. How about if the paperback book version was the tradebook size of 6 X 9. Let’s say you get an inquiry for the mass market paperback size of 4 ¼ X 7. Do you think you would need a new ISBN for the mass market size? Of course you would. How else would know which book was being ordered? So in reality, it is not one for the paperback version and one for the hardcover. It is one for each format. A 4 ¼ X 7 paperback is a different format from a 6 X 9 paperback, thus a different ISBN is needed.

Now let’s think about eBooks for a second. You need a separate ISBN for your eBook, right? Makes sense, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t want someone to order a paperback book when they really wanted an ebook. How do you tell the difference between the two? The ISBN, of course. Now let’s take that one step further. I want to buy an eBook to read on my Kindle. The file type that works on a Kindle is a Mobi file.  I also want to buy the same book for my IPad. The IPad takes an ePub file. How do you think the store tells the difference between the two? What would happen if both versions has the same ISBN? It would be just like the trade paperback, mass market paperback situation. If it’s a different format, it needs a different ISBN. That’s the official story… Now the reality story for 99% of the self-publishers.

Amazon has its own numbering system called ASIN. The ASIN number for Publishing Basics-Navigating the Self-Publishing Minefield is B003Y8XR0K. Amazon uses the ISBN like window dressing. If you go to the eBook upload link at Amazon, the spot on the form that says ISBN, also says “Optional”. IE: You don’t need one for Amazon. Amazon is the only place that uses a Mobi file… Amazon has their own numbering system…therefore your Mobi file does not need a separate ISBN. Will the possible eBook formats remain at two? Fat chance. Do I suggest that you run out and buy a 100 block of ISBNs so you can be “ready”? NO. I suggest you purchase one and apply it to the ePub file.


Read the rest of the post, which includes a great deal more commentary and a lengthy Q&A section, on Publishing Basics.