…of Exhaustion, Frustration, and Some Other Word That Ends In “-tion.”

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This post, from RJ Keller, originally appeared on her Ingenious Title To Appear Here Later blog on 11/21/09.

Friday night, I was told by an author I’d never heard of that her ultimate goals when she began writing were to see her book in a bookstore and to sell a lot of books. She further informed me that because her book had found an agent and a publisher and was now sitting in a bookstore that it was a “real” book. My book, not falling into that category, is – naturally – not “real.”

[Editor’s note: strong language after the jump]

I wanted to tell her that my ultimate goal when I began writing was to write a good book. An awesome book. A book that, when people read it, they’d say, “I have felt exactly this way before! I thought I was the only one!” Or, “I stayed up all night reading this, even though I had to go to work early in the morning.” I might have even wanted it to make people cry, to make them think about things in a way they’d never done before, or to look at people in a way they’d never done before.

I wanted to point her in the direction of postive reviews I’ve received, and send her copies of emails I’ve gotten from readers, stating that my book had accomplished exactly those things. I wanted to send her the link to this post, affirming that my book is, indeed, a real book. Then I Googled her name and learned about her book. That’s when I wanted to tell her that the only reason an agent had picked it up and had been able to sell it to a publisher is because it’s a cookie cutter of about 1000 other books already out there, which means it’s not considered a risk. I also wanted to tell her to stuff it (okay, I wanted to tell her to fuck off). 

Read the rest of the post on Ingenious Title To Appear Here Later.

Adventures In Self-Publishing

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This post, from John Sundman, originally appeared on Self-Publishing Review on 3/24/10.

I’ve been self-publishing novels for a little more than ten years. I’ve had some successes–for example, I’ve won the Writer’s Digest National Self-Published Book competition and I’ve sold more than 6,000 copies of my books. But I’m not a self-publishing rock star and I still dream of doing much better.

Here’s an essay on some things I’ve learned in ten years of doing this. Other versions of this essay appear elsewhere on the net, most recently on my site wetmachine.com, from whence you can download versions of my books for free if you feel like checking ‘em out.

This is mostly an essay about “publishing” in the traditional sense of books printed on paper. I welcome any related discussion about ebooks, web publishing, intellectual property & digital copyrights and so forth that may come up in comments. But when I say “publishing” herein, I’m talking about old-fashioned books.

The Books

I published my novel Acts of the Apostles in late 1999, the novella Cheap Complex Devices in late 2002 and an illustrated dystopian phantasmagoria called The Pains in late 2008. Depending on how you reckon, this venture has been a stunning success, a qualified failure, or something in between. I’ve sold about 6.5k copies, total, of my books. In any event, I’m working on my fourth novel Creation Science, and I intend to publish it before the summer comes (unless a big publisher buys the rights first; see below).

All of these books are available under Creative Commons license for download from Wetmachine (no DRM, no registration required), so you can read them for free.

Background: a tad more on novels and why I published them myself

My novel (”AofA”) is a geeky paranoid technothriller ostensibly about nanomachines and Gulf War Syndrome. This Amazon review sums it up pretty well:

This book is a far-fetched story about mad geniuses, cutting edge technology, world domination and a couple of lovable misfits (computer geeks, at that) who try to thwart them. In broad daylight, you know it can’t happen, but after dark you’re not so sure. I couldn’t put it down. It’s the book Neal Stephenson and Robert Ludlum might have written if one of the evil geniuses of this book had cloned them into one consciousness.

I’ve written elsewhere about what motivated me to write this book, and about how the process of writing and publishing AofA nearly destroyed my family. It is frankly embarrassing–make that humiliating–to admit how insane the whole deal was. However, my family and I seem to have weathered the ordeal OK– or actually we’ve come out a whole lot stronger than we went in. But here’s the key point: I only wrote and self-published AofA because I was nuts. I’m glad I did it, but if you’re not nuts you should think twice before choosing me as a role model.

I tried very hard indeed to find a publisher for Acts of the Apostles. I had a very well respected literary agent representing me & he connected with some very well respected movie-rights agents. Together that team put in about $20,000 of work & materials on behalf of my book. We worked on it for three solid years. The agents covered those expenses out of pocket, by the way. They really thought it was going to be a blockbuster book/movie hit. But the point is, self-publishing was not my first choice.

Read the rest of the post, and check out the accompanying graphic, on Self-Publishing Review.

Alan Moore on Horror

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I’m currently re-reading the old Alan Moore Swamp Thing books. This was a comic that had a couple of false starts and then, in the early 1980s, Alan Moore took over and completely renovated not only this particular title, but the concept of horror comics across the board. Alan Moore is one of those writers that constantly redefines a genre or a medium (Watchmen, From Hell, V For Vendetta, The Killing Joke just to name a few seminal graphic novel works).

I’ve been revisiting some of Alan Moore’s other work, which is what led me to his Swamp Thing stuff again. He picked up the Saga Of The Swamp Thing title in its new run at issue 21 in 1983. It’s the trade paperback collected edition (which has issues 21 to 27, shown above) that I’m currently re-reading. I was particular struck by Moore’s introduction to the book where he asks what horror is and why we have such a fascination with it. I was so struck by it, and thought it quite relevant to a lot of my own work, that I thought I’d reproduce a key part of it here. Particularly interesting is that this was written over twenty years ago and is still very relevant now:

In a century packed to the bursting point with paradoxes, one of the most puzzling must surely be the meteoric rise of horror as a genre in literature, cinema, and even music, all at a time when each day seems to make us just a little more conscious and aware of the real-life horrors unfolding all around us. While the faces of missing children stare from milk cartons, lines for the latest dead teenager movie are stretching ’round the block. While the AIDS virus sweeps through society with a chilling ease, born upon a colossal wave of ignorance and prejudice, the shelves of our bookstores creak beneath the weight of plagues and infestations filling the pages they’re forced to support – whether they be plagues of rats, slugs, crabs, or centipedes that characterize the nastier end of the market or the real thing, as presented in Stephen King’s The Stand. While radioactive clouds blow west and test-ban treaties go up in a mushroom of poisonous smoke, punk bands gob out splatter-movie imagery with a ferocity that at best signals hopeless defiance and at worse a perverse and nihilistic acceptance of the situation.

Like it or not, horror is part of our media, part of our culture, part of our lives – none of which answers the question of why an entire society should stand around engrossed, reading Dracula while up to their jugulars in blood. Do we immerse ourselves in fictional horror as a way of numbing our emotions to its real-life counterpart? Is it some sort of inoculation… a tiny dose of something frightening with which we hope to ward off a more serious attack in later life? Could it even represent a useful, if not vital tool with which we enable ourselves to investigate and understand the origins of horror without exposing ourselves to physical or mental harm? Whatever the answer, the fact still stands: horror fiction of one form or another is a major totem of the twentieth century. – Alan Moore

(c) 1987 DC Comics

And still that applies nearly a decade into the twenty first century.

I post this not so much to provide an answer than to provoke a debate. Everything that Moore says is true, perhaps even moreso now than it was then. Dark fiction in all its forms is still massive business, from the pop culture mass consumption stuff like Ghost Whisperer and Supernatural on TV to the more more cerebral dark fiction found on television, in books and in movies. It’s an eternally popular genre, even if it is something of a sub-culture.

Then again, I’m often surprised at the people that read and praise my books. It’s not all goths, emos and heavy metal fans that enjoy my fiction about demons, magic, death and mystery. It’s housewives and grandmothers too. Gentlemen and teachers. Very few people, if really questioned, are averse to a bit of darkness now and then. Some people have berated me because my stuff scared them and kept them awake, yet they still read it. Something compelled them. And my stuff isn’t really straight horror, designed to scare people. It’s dark fantasy, designed to peel back any veneer and reveal the dirty, gritty reality of the human condition.

It’s like a rollercoaster ride. We love to be scared. But why?

This is a reprint from Alan Baxter‘s alanbaxteronline site.

Amazon Builds Kindle Revolution with Guerilla Tactics vs. Conventional Warfare by Publishers and Competitors

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There is a revolution taking place in what and how we read. Although it has been fired by movements and changes in technology that have been gathering for decades, it began in earnest on November 19, 2007 with the release of the Kindle. It might therefore be natural to think that this is a revolution about gadgets and technology, and which ebook reader or convergence device will win, but that would seriously miss the point.

In the long run, this revolution will be about what we read, our right of access to what we read, and the right of authors to connect with readers.

In most cases where there is a revolution, sooner or later there’s going to be a war, and it is now clear that there is a full-fledged war going on for the future of books, reading, and publishing. As is often the case, most of the participants would prefer not to be at war: for starters, readers would rather just read, and the big publishers and their most successful authors would prefer to return to some sepia-toned notion of the way things have always been. War is distracting and warlike behavior is unseemly, which is one of the reasons why it matters when New York Times reporters go all Judith Miller and regurgitate spoonfed publishing industry leaks that cast Amazon as the primary agent of threatening behavior in a controversy where, actually, all the players are playing hardball.

But while it is unfair to single out Amazon for "threatening" behavior, it would be silly not to realize that it is Amazon that is the revolutionary force here: it is Amazon that has taken the pulse of its current and future customer base and decided that we, those readers and customers, will insist on new ways to read, new forms of access to what authors are writing now and have been writing for centuries, and economic efficiencies that will better serve readers and authors (as well as Amazon itself). The Kindle is the magic that is making it possible for Amazon to deliver most, or much, of what it believes readers will insist upon, because it is, at once:
 

  • a reading device
  • an increasingly ubiquitous multi-device reading platform
  • an online bookselling and content delivery system
  • an astonishingly accessible and ultimately meritocratic direct publishing, distribution and marketing platform

By bringing out the Kindle and engaging customers with it well in advance of the existence of a mass appetite for its features, Amazon has achieved first-mover status and shaped an increasingly broad-based appetite for the Kindle’s benefits. At the same time, it has built a critical mass of customer loyalty and perhaps even turned the name of its device into the noun and verb by which we may know all ereaders and ereading in the future: I kindle, you kindle, we kindle, each of us on "one of those kindle things." If ever there was a trademark that its holder should be willing to set free, the Kindle® may be it.

None of that, of course, is very appealing to the big publishers or, in general, to Amazon’s bookselling competitors. The big publishers have not wanted ebooks, ebook readers, or any changes in the traditional gatekeeping and distribution channels for books. Barnes and Noble, late to every party, did not want to create and sell the Nook any more than it wanted, a few years after Amazon’s launch, to open an online bookselling website. And the extent to which Apple wanted to launch iBooks was pretty clear when Steve Jobs told the Times in January 2008 that the Kindle’s "whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.” Nearly all of these players have been dragged kicking and screaming, and unfashionably late, to the ebook party.

 

So the publishers and Apple and other Amazon competitors are fighting back hard with the most conventional and traditional tactics of business warfare, including:
 

 

  • price-fixing collusion
  • supply-chain manipulation and interruptions
  • duplication and cynical rebranding of products and features, and 
  • the use of fear tactics and disinformation to get authors and agents, with whom they actually share very little self-interest, to carry their water.

While it has also employed some conventional business warfare tactics along the way, Amazon’s fundamental approach to this war has been characterized by guerilla tactics, and guerilla tactics often win when the war is essentially a revolution. The most obvious area where these guerilla tactics are playing out involves authors and content.

Apple has been signing iBooks deals with (mostly) the big publishers, and those publishers may feel very confident in the short run to put their bestsellers up against scruffy upstart authors and indie publishers that bear, in some cases, the fading stigma of the self-published. But Amazon understands better than anyone else in the content business that nurturing "the long tail" can deliver significant revenues and occasional future bestsellers. The company that launched the Kindle is also supporting the expansion of the Kindle catalog by developing a remarkably diverse and potent infrastructure aimed at bringing authors, independent publishers, and other content providers directly onboard through a variety of channels including:
 

Not that Amazon is concerned only with the long tail of Kindle content sales. Kindle owners are not only Amazon’s best customers; we are, almost by definition, the book-buyingest people in the world. We buy a ton of bestsellers, and bestselling authors and their publishers who have made millions of dollars over the past couple of years on Kindle downloads are not likely to turn up their noses at those growing revenue streams.

"Amazon has built up a 90 percent share of the American e-book [content] market," according to the Times. That market share may fall to less astounding levels over the next few years, but it is likely to remain at high enough levels that many authors — from the very successful to the emerging — will be inclined to make direct or even exclusive deals with Amazon if they determine either that
 

  • their publishers are not playing nice with the Kindle, or 
     
  • the "10 to 25 percent of net proceeds" Kindle sales royalties offered by the big publishers look rather anemic next to the "70 percent of gross sales based on suggested list price" offered directly by Kindle’s Digital Text Platform (beginning in June). 

It will be interesting to see how this migration away from publishers-as-middlemen unfolds, and there are a range of possibilities:
 

Amazon’s ownership of the long tail supports an ebook ecosystem in which an astonishing number of author’s success stories are blooming and then, in the evangelical retellings by authors like J.A. Konrath, inspiring other established authors to take note and consider new options. As Amazon becomes increasingly aware of the importance of luring authors to interact directly with its Kindle Digital Text Platform without the intermediation of corporate publishers, it would be wise to build on the promise of forthcoming 70 percent royalties and take further steps to level the playing field between its DTP and its offerings to corporate publishers, including parity in access to such things as zero-priced book promotions. Amazon could also do much to strengthen and protect its Kindle content market share by taking two steps that seem mind-numbingly obvious given the fact that the company already owns Amazon Associates and Shelfari:
 

  • restore Amazon Associates affiliate commissions to Kindle content (the only major part of the Amazon website where they are disallowed), even if at a lower percentage than the 10% that Amazon applied to Kindle content for the first year or so after the Kindle’s launch; and
     
  • integrate Shelfari, which bills itself as "the social network for people who love books," fully into the Kindle reading experience. (The most natural way to build on these two necessary features, of course, would be to provide ways for Kindle owners to receive account credits when their Kindle device and book recommendations to other Amazon customers result in purchases.)

 Meanwhile, publishers are fighting a conventional, old-school war to prop up their hardcover sales and their traditional wholesale and retail distribution channels, but as Michael Mace made clear in a brilliant speech at O’Reilly’s most recent Tools of Change conference, "the real threat to [publishers] is the likelihood that in the future authors will publish their books directly to the public, bypassing the entire publishing value chain:"
 

We’re likely to have a latency period of at least several years while the e-reader installed base gradually grows. During this time nothing terribly dramatic will happen to publishers, and they may think they have the situation under control. But then we’ll reach a tipping point, and suddenly established authors will have a financial incentive to go direct rather than bothering with paper publication of their books. Once that happens, all book buyers will have a very strong incentive to get e-readers — some books by bestselling authors simply won’t be available in paper form, or will be available first electronically. This will drive more rapid sales of e-readers, which will give authors even more incentive to bypass the publishers. 

Once the dam cracks, the water will move very quickly.

In making its (so far) largely successful pitches to publishers that they should sign ebook deals with its iBooks store for the iPad, Apple has built its argument upon what could be, for the publishers, a potentially fragile premise. This premise is that Apple’s iBooks store will quickly become such a serious market share competitor to Amazon’s Kindle Store, in actual ebook content sales to actual readers, that new iBooks revenues will replace lost Kindle Store revenues. The challenge for Apple becomes impossible if Amazon employs its "nuclear option" of deleting those publishers’ buy buttons across the entire Amazon website. Then, Apple’s new iBooks revenues (combined with other book sales displaced but realized somewhere) would have to replace the publishers’ lost Amazon Store revenues in toto, which might be as much as 20 percent of total book sales.

I do not mean to discount Apple’s truly impressive market power and digital ecosystem, but for Apple to deliver on either of these challenges would be a very tall order. Amazon already has an installed base of over 3 million Kindles, and the reports seem to have been that after over a year of delays, hype, and pent-up demand, there were somewhere around 125,000 first-day iPad pre-orders. That seems a little underwhelming, but I’m perfectly prepared to grant the possibility that the iPad and the Kindle will each finish 2010 with an installed base of 5 to 6 million units.

But who knows how many prospective iPad owners are serious readers or will be serious ebook buyers, and who knows how many of them will choose the iBooks store over the Kindle Store? As of yet, nobody has ever bought a book from the iBooks store, and nobody has ever read a book in the iBooks environment. Among those loyal Apple customers who are regular readers and book buyers — whatever percentage that is — it seems likely that a relatively large portion are also loyal Amazon customers. Prying those customers loose when they have had nothing but good customer experiences with Amazon will not be easy. Most people who buy expensive gadgets are not gadget zealots; they populate the great middle and are likely to own and use several different kinds of devices and numerous online websites and services.

Beyond the question of the device itself, of course, Amazon has been achieving brilliant success at another kind of guerilla warfare. While new-kid hardware manufacturers (and, believe me, I do not include Apple here) have been breathlessly copying and trying to improve upon the Kindle and its feature set, they consistently miss the point of the four Cs that have made the Kindle, so far at least, unbeatable: customers, catalog, convenience and connectivity. There are some very cool dedicated ebook readers being launched these days by companies that are not Amazon, but if you have found a way to imagine them taking over a large market share either of U.S. ebook devices or content, you are way ahead of me either in seeing or imagining the future. Meanwhile, among all the other devices that are not dedicated ebook readers — from PCs and Macs to the iPhone, the iPod Touch, the Blackberry, the iPad and various other tablets and Android devices — the Kindle for X app is either on the device or on the way.

So far, Apple and Steve Jobs have succeeded in getting most of the major book publishers to change the basic structure of their way of doing business so dramatically that it might be compared, to use an old metaphor, with getting them to turn around a super tanker. But if the customers do not line up to purchase what is on that super tanker, or if growing numbers of authors abandon the publishers’ ship in favor of their own dramatic changes in the way they, the authors, do business, the super tanker may prove to be an empty vessel and the navigational 180 a Pyrrhic triumph indeed.

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

Me Busy?

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Did I say I was ready for spring to get here? I think I should be careful what I wish for. I was looking at an Amish website awhile back and saw the cook columnist had taken the month off because she needed to help the family with home butchering. I know from my childhood that it’s a big job to process a beef or hog by canning and preserving all the meat. Also, I know something about home butchering today, but I’m lucky to have plenty of freezer space.

As my week has turned hectic and my Tuesday post date came and went, I wondered how I was going to squeeze this post in this week. Did I have any excuses to measure up to the Amish cook’s? First of all, we are making many trips out to the barn to check for new babies (lambs and kid goats). I had been going to bottle feed two lambs four times a day. I cut my trips down to three Monday so I didn’t have the bedtime feeding. A sister- in- law had surgery last week. I offered to stay with her from 1 to 10 while my husband’s brother is at work. My husband now does the dinner time bottle feeding and watches the mothers after I leave. Yesterday morning, I had a scheduled appointment at the nursing home, I used to work at, to take a lamb and baby goat in for the residents to see. I was asked several times what I do to keep busy now that I’m retired. I repeated much the same as this post. The replies were it didn’t sound like I retired. After the visit, it was back home by noon, fix lunch, feed babies, and go help the sister-in-law, come home, change into chore clothes, go to barn and help new mother and babies.

With all that the exciting news is I stopped at the post office Monday and Tuesday morning with a box full of new books to send buyers. So there was packaging and email buyers those mornings. I enjoy hearing from new buyers and returned buyers that have become old friend, email pen pals in the last few years because they buy my books. My latest Amish book is the second in the Nurse Hal Among The Amish series – The Rainbow’s End- if you want to look for it on Amazon or ebay.

Now I promised you an excerpt from my Amazing Gracie Mystery Series – The Chance Of A Sparrow. So here is Gracie Evan trying to cope with spring fever and suddenly her prayer comes true. Oh by the way, this book and the other four in the mystery series are sold on Amazon and ebay.

Tightening her grip on the railing, Gracie climbed the church steps. In the quiet, her black, high topped shoes made a hollow tapping sound. She opened one of the double doors. The groan from the hinges echoed through the empty building, reinforcing her despair. Persistent irritation with everyone and everything that she had no power to change welled up in her.

Gracie shut the door behind her as easy as she could and proceeded up the aisle. Normally, she stayed toward the back during the service, but this time she had the whole church to herself. Best time to come when she didn’t have to worry about the greeters and hand shakers getting in her way. Gracie marched down the aisle past the slick, dark pews and plopped down in the front row. That was as close as she could get. She intended to have a serious talk with God now that she had made up her mind to do so. Since he hadn’t been paying much attention to her concerns lately, she wondered if it was because he had become hard of hearing over the years. She sympathized with him. If she felt old, think how old God must feel.

Gracie twisted to face the simple, unadorned cross above the pulpit. She smoothed her

braids, then clasped her hands together and licked her lips. Inhaling deeply, she began, "God, I’ve had plenty of time to give some thought to how things work in life. Don’t mean to complain, mind you." She paused a minute. It occurred to her she should be truthful. After all, this was God she was talking to, and she figured he pretty much knew what she had on her mind before she did even. "Well, that’s not exactly right. I do mean to complain. That’s why I’m here. In the short time it took you, I think you did a wondrous job creating the world and all the creatures, but seems to me, you might have gotten in something of a hurry when you made them all in seven days. For instance, maybe you should have taken just a little more time to think about some way to improve on humans. Take sparrows. Lord, did you ever stop to think sparrows get a chance to have two families a year? That’s ever year, mind you, but humans only get one chance in their life time. Take me. All my family is gone now, and I didn’t choose to marry and have younguns. Now that’s not your fault. I made the choice to say no when Millard Sokal ask me all those years ago, but now I’m sitting in a rest home with no family, wasting away the last of my days. Oh, I know there’s not much you can do about it now that you have everything created, but I just wish you’d have thought to give us lonesome human beings the chance of the sparrows. Well, that’s all I got to say on the subject. Just wanted to get what I was thinking off my chest. Thank you for listening God. Amen."

The rest home’s front screen door clattered shut, echoing down the entry hall and into the library. "Where you at Molly?"

Molly Lang stopped writing. She knew from the sound of Orie’s voice that something had him excited. She dropped her pen in the cobalt, ink well on the writing table and combed her fingers through her honey shaded hair before she called, "In the library."

Her hazel eyes twinkled when she smiled at her tall, dark haired husband as he burst through the door. He was definitely easy to look at, striding hurriedly across the room. "Molly, I have something to tell you."

"What are you doing home this time of morning? Is everything all right at the farm?"

"Yes, everything’s fine." Orie yanked the chair across from Molly out from the table and plopped down. "You know how mopey Miss Gracie’s been lately?"

Molly furrowed her eyebrows together. "Yes. The poor dear. I’m really worried about her. She hasn’t eaten well for days. She’s beginning to look thin."

Orie shook his head. "Undeniably the worse case of spring fever I’ve ever seen, but I have an idea how we can perk her up."

Molly suddenly straightened in her chair. "By the way, speaking of spring, could you bring home a wagon load of straw to use under the rug in the parlor? It’s time to take the old up and put down new."

"Yes, yes, I can do that. Molly, you want to hear what I have to say or not?" Orie asked impatiently.

Trying to look serious, Molly folded her hands in her lap, giving him her complete attention. "All right. Tell me your news."

"This morning on the way to the farm, Thaddeus Sawyer stopped me. You know, the man that rents Miss Gracie’s farm, Three Oaks. Seems he needs someone to stay at his place to keep an eye on it for about a month. He wanted to know if I knew anyone he could ask. Right away I thought of Miss Gracie."

"Oh, Orie, I don’t know. Miss Gracie? All the way out there by herself," groaned Molly.

Orie shook his head sideways. "It wouldn’t be all that bad. I go by there every day to the farm so I could check on her. I could pick her up on Sundays and bring her in for church. Maybe I could even talk our neighbor, Millard Sokal, into looking in on her, too."

"Would Mr. Sokal want to do that?"

"We’ve helped each other farm for years. I’m sure he would do this as a favor to me,"

assured Orie. "I think Miss Gracie would perk up if she had the chance to get out in the country again."

Molly worried, "But, Orie, she couldn’t do farm work anymore."

"Thaddeus said all she’d have to do is milk twice a day and gather the eggs. I think it would do her good to go home for awhile. Work the spring fever out of her system," Orie pleaded.

Tax Tips For Writers: Bad Debts And Income Averaging

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Question: Last year, a magazine agreed to pay $2,000 for an article, plus reimburse my expenses. Usually, I ask and receive more for this kind of article, but I wanted the exposure this publication could provide. This year, I made sure to deliver the article well in advance of its due date, along with my bill for $2,700, comprised of the $2,000 fee and $700 for travel, telephone and other expenses incurred in the course of research. The assignment turned out to be a fiasco. I will collect zilch, because the magazine went kaput; last I heard of its publishers, they had gone into the witness protection program.

 

When tax time rolls around, I know where the various out-of-pocket expenses aggregating $700 go on which lines of Form 1040’s Schedule C (Profit or Loss From Business). It seems only fair that I should be entitled to a further reduction in my income taxes with a bad-debt deduction on Schedule C for that unpaid $2,000 fee. As I fall into a 30 percent federal and state bracket, the additional write-off works out to a savings of $600 — not monumental moola, but likely enough to cover several sumptuous spreads of my favorite paella at a Zagat-recommended restaurant. Some extra consolation is that a decrease in Schedule C’s net profit will lower what I owe for self-employment taxes. But where do I enter the $2,000 deduction in the expenses part of Schedule C? Or am I supposed to amend the previous year’s return in order to claim it?


Answer: Downsize your dining desires and be content to gorge with the other gringos at La Casa Internacional de Pancakes. You cannot take any deduction for the $2,000. The snag: You are what is known as a “cash-basis taxpayer.” That is the Internal Revenue Service’s designation of individuals (including most of us) who generally do not have to report payments for articles, books and other income items until the year that they actually receive them and do not get to deduct their expenses until the year that they pay them. As the tax code does not require you to count the $2,000 as reportable income, it does not allow you to deduct an equivalent amount. Only if you were an “accrual basis taxpayer,” and had previously counted the $2,000 as reportable income at the time it became due to you, could you deduct it now, as it has not actually arrived and is a lost cause.
 
Question: For the past few years, my writing income has been meager. But this year’s income will soar because of a six-figure book advance. According to a fellow writer, income averaging will lower my tax tab by many thousands of dollars. When I file next spring, do I need to complete some form for averaging that has to accompany the 1040 form? 

Answer: Your friend’s advice might have been helpful when the Oval Office was occupied by Ronald Reagan. But the rules now on the books provide no break for someone whose income jumps. A top-to-bottom overhaul of the Internal Revenue Code, known officially as the Tax Reform Act of 1986, included a provision that abolished averaging for nearly everybody, though there continues to be a limited exception for farmers. My advice is to focus instead on easy and perfectly legal ways for writers to trim taxes. A standard tactic is to stash some of that advance money into one of those retirement plans for self-employed persons.
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Julian Block, an attorney in Larchmont, N.Y., has been cited as “a leading tax professional” (New York Times), "an accomplished writer on taxes" (Wall Street Journal) and "an authority on tax planning" (Financial Planning Magazine). He speaks at writers’ conferences. His books include "Tax Tips For Writers: Savvy Ways To Trim Taxes To The Legal Minimum," praised by law professor James Edward Maule of Villanova University as "An easy-to-read and well-organized explanation of the tax rules. Writers, photographers and artists would be well advised to buy this book.” Information about his books is at www.julianblocktaxexpert.com.  Copyright 2010 Julian Block. All rights reserved.

Consumption Paradigms: PART I

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I just read that term in a press release advertising some schmo as president of some company I’ve never heard of. The release was so poorly written I don’t even know what the company does. Not important right now.

There are so many variables in this move to digital books that it’s hard to digest. TUMS, please. Compounded with people talking just for the sake of talking about it, it’s hard to identify issues that should really be tackled now rather than later, when everyone is all hepped up about an idea and it turns out it has no legs because no one thought of it.

[Editor’s note: strong language after the jump]

Two things that strike me as important are pricing model(s) and bridging the technology/content gap. This post is about book pricing. When I get my head together on the other thing, I’ll post that.

A Book Pricing Model: Just a Proposal

I know this is coming from leftfield, but it’s at least a proposal that’s different than discounting or finding the magic price. Big Pharma prices its new drugs according to a complex formula of R&D budget, marketing budget, patent portfolio, sales volume and profit margin. Fair enough. Direct your attention to the patent part. A patent can be enforced for a finite period of time. When drugs come off-patent, generic manufacturers can file a Amended New Drug Application (ANDA) to make and market the drug in its generic form. Generic companies are doing quite well, thank you, and have the benefit of a sympathetic congress and loosened regulations under which to operate. What the fuck does this have to do with book publishing?

While I don’t pretend to be any kind of an IP expert, there is a valuable lesson that content-givers (new name for writers and artists?) can learn from industry in patents and the protection they offer. We have run roughshod over copyrights, as writers. Publishers are not our friends. They are business partners. And yet, we give them our blood and guts and consent to fuck with it for near infinity. What’s up with that? As owners of our own "patents," our content, we need to look at publishers as lessors of our property for a much shorter period than is widespread business practices today. For those releasing their own books, it’s like the generic drug model without having to pay the costs of an ANDA application and ensuing litigation.

We should also be considering this model as a foundation on which to build a pricing model: When books are hot, newly released and getting a lot of marketing–whether through publishers OR by independently released books–they should be priced higher. Simple. Every industry does it, even publishing right now. The difference I propose is that as OWNERS of our works, we take the motherfuckers back after a 60-90 day period, give or take. I mean, like, listen, Mr. Publisher, you have 60 days to sell the shit out of my book, after which you give it back to me, pay me my royalties, and fuck off until next time. The SAME should apply for books we release ourselves. Price it high in hot-season, then when you’re done with your initial marketing push and your book tour (even if the book tour consists of yours and the 5 towns surrounding you that your local bus line goes to), lower the price. Make it a competitive generic price.

I’ll wait for a publishing person to argue with me about how much to price these things at, numbers wise, so until I see the accounting methodology, I’m unsure anything needs to be priced more than $10. It’s a fucking book, not a piece of gold. Can someone out there do a comparative pricing model with the inflation built in as to how the price of books has increased over the past, say 75 years? Ok, 50 years? That’d be great, thanks.

Stay tuned for the Consumption Paradigms: PART II when we’ll discuss bridging the gap between what the technies know and do, and what the content-givers want and can provide.

This is a reprint from Jenn Topper‘s Don’t Publish Me! blog. Also see her follow-up post, Consumption Paradigms: Part II.

Lulu: You Wanna Piece of Me?

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DIY self-publishing service provider Lulu has set in motion a process which could see the company offering public shares on the Canadian stock market as early as next month.

Last Friday Lulu filed a preliminary prospectus with the regulatory authorities in Canada. The first moves that may see shares in Lulu sold on the stock exchange had been anticipated since early January, with the only surprise being the company’s choice of Canada.

The choice may have been influenced by the fact that Canada’s regulatory authority is not considered to be as heavily stringent and require the levels of open scrutiny demanded by its US counterpart. Company CEO Bob Young does have family connections in Canada and spent a period of time growing up there.

The prospectus filed on Friday does however reveal that Lulu had been making a loss throughout 2009 until the final quarter when it made its first profits of the year. Making a successful initial public offering (IPO) will depend greatly on Lulu attracting strong investors, and ultimately that investment may still come directly from the US, with Lulu still having the opportunity to try a move to the US stock exchange further down the financial road.

The prospectus also revealed that Bob Young will continue to remain a majority stockholder in Lulu following the IPO. Money raised from the IPO will be used to continue to expand Lulu’s marketing development and introduce new products and services to businesses, publishers and authors.

 
More in-depth detail here.

This is a cross-posting from Mick Rooney’s POD, Self-Publishing and Independent Publishing blog.

ISBN for Self-Publishers: Answers to 20 of Your Questions

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One of the areas that I get the most questions about is the use of the ISBN, the unique numeric identifier that’s used around the world to identify books. New self-publishers are especially concerned with making sure their books are registered properly, that everything is done so that their book can be sold without any problems or confusion.

Because this area is specific to the book business, there’s a lot of confusion and misinformation about ISBN and how it works. I strongly recommend you use the resources provided by Bowker, the company resposible for ISBNs in the United States, on the ISBN website and at Bowker’s website.

But even faster, without any further delay, here are 20 answers to the most commonly-asked questions about ISBN.

Questions and Answers about ISBN

  1. What is an ISBN?
    ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number. It is a 13-digit number that’s used as a unique identifier for books. ISBN is used internationally.

     

  2. What do all the numbers mean?
    See my earlier article on decoding the ISBN.

     

  3. Why do we need ISBNs?
    We need them to identify each book that is published, and each edition of the same book. ISBN also identifies the publisher of the book. It is the standard ID number used to identify books by booksellers, libraries, book wholesalers and distributors.

     

  4. Should I get an ISBN?
    If you plan to sell your book in bookstores, to libraries, or through online retailers like Amazon.com, you will need an ISBN.

     

  5. Does a book have to be published to have an ISBN?
    ISBNs are issued to publishers, who then assign them to individual books. This can be done at any time, even before the book is written.

     

  6. Is the ISBN the bar code I see on the back of books?
    The bar code is a representation of the ISBN in a form that can be identified by scanners. The bar code might also have other information embedded in it, like the price of the book and the currency in which it is priced.

     

  7. Okay, do I need to have a bar code too?
    Only if you plan to sell your book in bookstores. If you only plan to sell online, or privately like at speaking engagements, you don’t need a bar code. Many publishers put them on their books anyway.

     

  8. If I get an ISBN, does that mean my book is copyrighted?
    No, ISBN is administered by a private company for the use of the international book trade. Copyright is administered by the Library of Congress and is an extension of intellectual property law.

     

  9. If I have an ISBN, does that mean my book will be in Books in Print?
    Once you have an ISBN you can go to BowkerLink to fill out the forms necessary for your book to be listed in Books in Print.

     

  10. Can self-publishers get an ISBN?
    A self-publisher is still a publisher, so yes, you just apply for an ISBN like anyone else.

     

  11. How do I get an ISBN?
    Go to myidentifiers.com, the ISBN website run by Bowker, which is the only company authorized to administer the ISBN program in the United States. Click on “ISBN Identifiers” and you’ll be taken to a page where you can buy 1, 10, 100 or 1000 ISBNs.

     

  12. How many ISBNs should I buy?
    The least economical choice is to buy 1 ISBN. If you ever publish another edition of your book, or another book entirely, you will need more than one ISBN. I suggest you buy the 10 pack.

     

  13. What do ISBNs cost?
    A single ISBN today costs $125, while 10 ISBNs cost $250, 100 cost $575 and 1000 cost $1000. Note that the price per ISBN drops from $125 to $25 to $5.75 to $1.

     

  14. Isn’t it just a number? Why does a number cost $125?
    Many people are pondering this question, so far without an answer. Obviously, it’s not because of the cost of the product. Could there be another reason?

     

  15. Well, can I re-use my ISBN?
    No, sorry, once assigned to a book, an ISBN can never be reused.

     

  16. Where do I put the ISBN?
    You’ll print it on the copyright page, and it’s included in the Cataloging-in-Publication data block, if you use one. Otherwise, just print it on the copyright page and, of course, on the back cover as part of the bar code.

     

  17. I’m doing a print book and an ebook. Do I need two ISBNs, or can I use the same one?
    This is a matter of some discussion at the moment, since there are more and more electronic formats. The policy of assigining a separate ISBN to each and every edition is under review. Check back for more info.

     

  18. How about a hardcover and a softcover of the same book?
    You need a separate ISBN for each edition, to identify them for everyone who might want to find them in directories, catalogs and databases.

     

  19. If I revise my book, do I need to give it a new ISBN?
    If you only correct typographical errors, and don’t make any substantial changes to the text, you don’t need a new ISBN because it’s considered a reprint. A new edition would contain substantially new material, a major revision, or the addition of completely new elements. Anything that makes it a new book is likely to create a new edition and, therefore, need a new ISBN.

     

  20. How about if I just change the cover?
    You can continue to use the same ISBN, since the text has not changed.

Well, there you have it. In 20 questions and about 5 minutes, you’ve overcome the confusion about ISBN. Have a question you didn’t see answered here? Ask in the comments and we’ll run down the answer.

Takeaway: Getting the ISBN for your new publishing company is a necessary step to becoming a publisher and getting your book into print correctly. It’s not difficult once you understand how to do it.

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

Fantastic Book Marketing: A Great Example

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This is a great example of fantastic book marketing! “Wired for War” by P.W. Singer is not my type of book and I haven’t read it myself, but my husband saw a review, visited the website and bought it immediately. I was curious to see how he made a decision so quickly to buy a book. You may not agree with the subject of this book, but it is a case of perfectly directed marketing.

Here are some lessons we can all learn from this book:

  • Identify and know your target market. If you get 100 men in a room, how many of them are interested in talking about war machines and robots? Probably quite a few! This book has a target audience of techy men only. No one else would even be interested, but that group are totally into this subject. The first chapter is entitled “Why a book on robots and war?” and the first line “Because robots are frakin’ cool”. That says it all! If you have a book that a market will definitely buy, you just need to tell them you are there (and that is marketing!)
     
  • Get reviews online where your target market are hanging out. Many authors aim to get reviews on book review websites and from literary critics in print media. If you have a non-fiction book, you are better off aiming for websites where your target market are. Most readers don’t actually hang out on book review sites, and particularly not techy men. Singer got reviews on Gizmodo.com, SlashDot (news for nerds) and Robotics.com as well as The Financial Times, traditional media and The New Scientist.
     
  • Become a multimedia presence. Singer has videos of himself as well as print and internet reviews. You may not make it onto TED or The Daily Show, but you can make a video and put it on YouTube and embed it on your website. You can record some audio, get some blog posts online and be multimedia in no time! Meet people where they are, and people find books through all different media.
     
  • Establish an excellent, but basic, website for free or cheap. I don’t know the details of who built Singer’s website, but it is built on Joomla, which is free software and easy to customise. I use WordPress, but Joomla is definitely recommended for people who want an easy to set up and maintain website. This is a basic website, but very effective and to the point.
     
  • Make it easy to buy your book. There is a link to Buy the book on every page of the site.
     
  • Engage your readers. I had to sit through a number of the videos of “cool war robots” such was the enthusiasm this website aroused in my husband. It also has interesting polls, pictures, a discussion topic page and even a playlist of appropriate war-related tunes to listen to as you read.
     
  • Be an expert. This is specifically for non-fiction authors, but Singer is obviously a master in his field. His bio demonstrates how much of an expert he is in this area and he has 2 previous books behind him. He is also passionate about this topic, and the book is also packed with references and technical knowledge. The book is excellent quality (if you like those kind of books!) so it is not a triumph of marketing over content, but more a case of a great book being extremely well marketed.

This book is published by Penguin, and Singer has a professional publicist behind him, but there are many authors who don’t achieve such a pervasive online presence. Other published and self-published authors can certainly learn a lot from this example.

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn site.

Writing More Than One Book

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You labor over your first book, maybe for years. You seek help from other writers and editors, finely tuning your book to hopeful perfection. The important day comes—it’s accepted for publication and it starts selling well. The buzz is out—you are a great new author with something important to say. Your publisher says, “Quick, we need a follow-on!”

You sit down to write your second book, but now you are under a time crunch and intense scrutiny. Will it surpass the first? Hey, no pressure here—riiight! This is why too many first time authors do somewhat poorly the second time around. They’ve rushed to get something out and their fan base or platform rushes to judgment.

It Can Happen to Self-Publishers As Well

A similar thing can happen to self-publishers. You work hard to produce your first book and then begin marketing it. You know you need to have a good follow-on to take advantage of the swell of the first one’s popularity. Unfortunately, you have also discovered the dirty little secret that producing the first book was not the hard part; it’s the marketing of it that takes so much of your time and resources. Having been down this road before on both sides of the coin with my nonfiction work back in the 80s/90s, I knew what to expect with my reentry into publishing with my fiction. This is why I carefully took several years to develop a series of four (soon to be five) mysteries before I launched the first. Once you hop on this merry-go-round of publishing/marketing, there won’t be as much time to write, unless you hire someone else to do all the marketing for you, which is expensive, since it is a full time endeavor.

Different Ball Game

To add to the challenge of creating additional works is the complexity of today’s publishing and bookselling business. There are so many more ways to produce a book in several different formats: POD, traditional offset print, ebooks in 6-9 different formats, audio books in CD and downloadable versions, DVDs, and all the attendant marketing that goes with them. It really requires much more attention.

So, What to Do?

Look for expert distributors and producers for some of your versions. Let them provide marketing paths they’ve established, which you don’t have the wherewithal to do—it’s worth their fees. My first mystery, Quad Delta, is published as an ebook with Smashwords at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/8850  Think outside the box. I’ve made application to Lightning Source to print and distribute POD versions of my books. I’m still waiting for that application process to complete, so I’m ordering my first 50 copies from a good local source, insuring I have enough on hand for my official release. Once LS comes through, I’ll order 100 copies from them for the follow through. If the book sales are promising, I may go to traditional offset printing down the road. While all this is going on, my second mystery, Firebug, is already published at Smashwords as an ebook at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/9114 , and I’m waiting a couple of months before I release it in print form. Now you can get a feeling for why I waited until I had four in the can before I launched into self-publishing again. It also shapes my marketing from selling just one title to selling a series of titles, which encourages whatever fan base I develop that other Bob Spear fixes are on the way. That helps the viral buzz.

Finally

Writers need to be aware of these dynamics and plan on coping with the complexities instead of blithely ignoring the realities of writing multiple books and then walking into a meat grinder of time pressures and public expectations. The bottom line is to always seek to be pro-active. Nobody likes SURPRISES!

This is a cross-posting from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends blog.

Publetariat Anniversary Contest Results

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The pageviews have been counted, the finalists’ blogs and sites have been given the once-over by Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton, and the results are in.

All seven finalists’ entries generated a lot of interest on the site. All received over 140 unique pageviews during their first seven days posted on Publetariat, and all of them were linked and tweeted repeatedly on the web. In short, every one made a fine showing. 

And after seeing this, along with the quality work being done on all of the finalists’ blogs and sites, Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton has decided to invite every one of the finalists to become a regular Publetariat Contributor. (Finalists, she’ll be emailing you details in the coming week.) So congratulations to all the finalists, and here’s hoping you’ll be seeing more of their fine work here on Publetariat soon.

Here are the finalists, in ascending order of unique pageviews each article received in its first seven days posted to Publetariat:

Shaun Kilgore – Why I Started A Publishing Company – 144 unique pageviews

Virginia Ripple – Success Feels Like Failure – 145 unique pageviews

Fay Risner – Preparing For A Book Sale – 165 unique pageviews

J.D. Sawyer – If You Build It, Will They Come? – 186 unique pageviews

Edward G. Talbot – Publishing In the 21st Century: Are The Best Things In Life Really Free? – 251 unique pageviews

PJ Kaiser – Surprise Endings: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – 259 unique pageviews

M. Louisa Locke – How To Be Your Own Best Editor, Pt. 1 – 279 unique pageviews

The three top finalists are Edward G. Talbot, PJ Kaiser and M. Louisa Locke. All three of them will receive one year of VIP registration in both curricula at Publetariat’s sister site, Vault University, beginning next month. 

The winner is M. Louisa Locke, who will also receive a signed copy of April L. Hamilton’s upcoming book from Writer’s Digest, "The Indie Author Guide: Self-Publishing Strategies Anyone Can Use", when it’s released in November of this year. 

Thanks to everyone who entered, and to everyone who voted with their pageviews.

[Note: pageviews were originally transposed between entries from Edward G. Talbot and J.D. Sawyer, indicating J.D. Sawyer received the third-highest pageview count. This error has been corrected, and as compensation for the error, J.D. Sawyer will also receive a year’s VIP registration in both curricula at Vault University]

Lessons Learned From TOC: Don't Be A Jerk

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Don’t believe what you hear about New Yorkers being rude. During the four days I was there for the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference [in 2009], only two people were rude to me. One was a woman who sat next to me during a showing of the musical Billy Elliot. The other was an author in attendance at the conference. I’ve blurred the details in relating my experience with the author here, but there’s still an important lesson to be learned from it.

I’d long been a fan of this author and a regular follower of her blog and online columns for various publications, and had long pondered a specific passage in one of her books. Seeing her at the conference, I figured this was my chance to ask her for further clarification directly. Her response was curt. She tersely said I’d completely misunderstood the passage and rather than indulge me with further explanation, directed me back to her site. Not surprisingly, my impression of this author has changed entirely, for the worse, and my new, negative impression will undoubtedly color my opinion of all her work in the future.

In fairness to this multi-published, big-name author, it must be said that she probably receives queries like mine all the time and is sick and tired of having to answer the same questions from the boneheaded public over and over again. However, in fairness to the boneheaded public, it must be said that we pay her bills and it is our desire to read and understand her work that allows this author to maintain her lifestyle and vaunted status. While I sell respectable numbers of books and get tens of thousands of hits on my various websites each month, I’m a relatively smalltime operator in the big scheme of publishing. Even so, I cared enough about this author’s work to buy it and try to absorb it, and I think that’s reason enough to deserve a modicum of respect from the author.

The author essentially made me regret having posed my question to her, and by extension, having spent the money and time I’d invested in her work to date. I was left to slink away in quiet embarrassment as other, better-known conference attendees swooped in and were granted a much warmer welcome by the author. What could I say? "Gee, sorry to show interest in your work, I’ll try not to do it again."

As an author, you should count yourself lucky to have each and every fan, and treat every one of them with the same level of respect and interest you would show to the most famous and influential person you can imagine. In the general sense it’s just plain good manners, but in the marketing sense it’s critical.

You may think a bumpkin housewife who accosts you to ask the most lamebrained question about your work you can imagine isn’t worth your time because she’s just a lamebrained, bumpkin housewife, but you’re wrong. That housewife buys books, belongs to book clubs, church groups and the PTA, and comes from a large circle of family and friends in her community. Whatever she tells her circle about you is something that circle will repeat to their circles, among whom are sure to be some bloggers and influential voices—six degrees of separation and all that.

Each contact with a reader is an opportunity to make a good impression, reinforce an already good impression, or spread bad press on your own behalf. No matter how tired, frustrated or annoyed you may be feeling on the inside, paste on a smile and show your audience some respect.

This is a reprint from April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author Blog.

7 Reasons Not to Self-Publish—Is This You?

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Yesterday the publisher services company Lulu.com announced that John Edgar Wideman, two-time winner of the Faulkner Award for fiction, would be publishing his new collection of short stories, Briefs, Stories for the Palm of the Mind, in conjunction with Lulu’s new VIP program. Wideman has been published for years by Houghton Mifflin, according to the report in Publisher’s Weekly.

This was notable, although Wideman may just be the first of many as self-publishing gradually loses its stigma and is seen as simply another path to publication, and for many people, a superior one to the traditional publishing route.

Here’s part of what he said in a press release issued by Lulu:

Wideman decided against a traditional publishing contract — and royalty advance — for Briefs because he wanted more control over the publishing process and to develop a more direct connection with his readers. He also wanted to experiment at a time when the publishing industry is undergoing more revolution than evolution. . . . I like the idea of being in charge. I have more control over what happens to my book. And I have more control over whom I reach.

I’ve often heard other self-publishers voice the exact same sentiment, although few had a royalty to turn down. But there are also echoes in Wideman’s statement of the move to what you might call author self-empowerment. When publishers rely on authors for marketing plans, platform building, and finding their own community of readers, they inadvertently also pass a great deal of power over to the author at the same time.

Self-publishers have traditionally grasped for this power directly. Before the internet, self-publishers lived by direct mail, and the direct selling that happens on the internet today owes a great deal to what direct marketers have learned over the last 50 years in other media.

But the growth of self-publishing as an accepted path to publication, aided by authors like John Edgar Wideman, is not what this article is about. No, this article is about you.

You Know Who You Are

Wideman found compelling reasons to self-publish his book, based on an informed and pretty astute reckoning of where publishing is at the moment.

But, like anyone connected to book publishing, I often hear the exact opposite from people who buttonhole me and start telling me about the book they have “in their desk drawer” or “packed up in the attic” or “in a big box under my bed.” These stories are amazingly common.

A woman dreamed of writing a book, spent months working on it, but never got any further. Or a man, getting up early for years, completes a manuscript but just prints a few copies to give to friends. Why?

Because they have found many reasons to not self-publish. Look, most authors are never going to get a contract offer from a big—or small—publishing house. The demand for publishing far outstrips the supply of big-publishing company openings for books. That’s what’s caused the meteoric rise of self-publishing, once digital printing and print on demand distribution removed the monetary risk of getting into print.

So what obstacles are left? Why haven’t these writers become authors, fulfilled their dream of publication, and found their readership?

Here are the top reasons I’ve identified why you might decide not to self-publish:

  1. You don’t want people to look to you as an authority—Authors acquire a definite authority within the area they write about. This is particularly true of non fiction authors. Even though you know quite enough to write a book on the subject, does something about being looked to as an authority make you nervous?
     
  2. You’re afraid of speaking in public—It’s common for authors to be asked to speak in public, and to pursue public speaking as a way to market their book. Common knowledge tells us that the number one fear in Americans is the fear of public speaking. Perhaps this is really the fear of appearing a fool in public. Is that what’s stopping you?
     
  3. You don’t need another income stream—Novelists would like to make money from their books, but would write them anyway. Nonfiction authors often write in order to make money, to capitalize on a business opportunity or leverage their experience to improve their clientele or their hourly rate. The independently-wealthy and people satisfied with their current income might see self-publishing as a waste of time.
     
  4. You have nothing unique to say in your field—Maybe you’ve spent a career as a primary school teacher, following curriculum. Perhaps you’ve been a cubicle slave for years, and the creative juices have been beaten out of you. I’d say it’s more likely you’ve simply forgotten how unique your own perspective on life, your business, or your hobby really is.
     
  5. You’d rather not contribute to publications in your niche—Once you start publishing you naturally start marketing, and writers use writing as a way to get the word out. But maybe you are embarrassed by the chance you might seem to some a “know it all” if you start getting articles published in relevant trade magazines and websites. That could slow you down.
     
  6. You prefer to wait a few years and see if you get offered a contract—There’s a certain kind of writer who is happy to write, and never get published if they can’t get that contract from Knopf, or Random House, or whoever. They accept the wisdom of the agents and editors they submit to (literally) over the years, and feel it’s better that their work stay unknown, since it’s unworthy of their gods. That’s a tough one.
     
  7. You hate the idea of autographing books for buyers—Having fans, people who will show up at bookstores to hear you talk, stand in line to get your autograph, may be disconcerting. People in our culture often feel unworthy of attention, as if others are deserving, but I am not. Maybe this shame was drilled into us when young, it certainly is long-lasting.

The World of Publishing is Changing: It’s Your Turn Now

I fully expect to see more authors like John Edgar Wideman turning to self-publishing out of pure self-interest. But many other writers can do the same thing. The tools of Lulu and other publishing services companies are there for us to use. Many involve little or no expense.

Writers who publish a book themselves, if they are realistic in their expectations are usually energized by the experience. Since print on demand means you’ll never get left with a garage full of unsold books, the risks have become almost completely psychological.

My message is this: Now is the time. It has never been easeir, faster, or less expensive to get into print. With the tools of the internet and social media, the marketing landscape has never been so level. Go drag that box out from under the bed. Climb up into the attic and pull that manuscript down. Fulfill what you started, or start what you’ve dremed of. You won’t regret it.

Takeaway: The obstacles to publishing are, increasingly, within us. Our opportunities to self-publish have never been better, and the stigma of self-publishing may fade rapidly. The time to act is now.

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

Pricing A Short Story Collection

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I am in the process of readying a collection of short stories for online publication. The stories are literary, and focus on one character (a young boy) over the course of a year. I hope readers connect with these stories emotionally. If not, I failed to hit what I was aiming at.

I will be posting the collection first on Smashwords. I have decided that I will not be posting the collection for free, but rather will be setting a price. I do intend to allow readers to sample the collection to demonstrate that I can, at the very least, carry a tune.

The question before me now is what the price should be. It’s a question everyone is wrestling with, so I don’t feel alone in my consternation. Whatever your feelings about the fluctuating price of gasoline over the past few years, at least there’s a constantly-updated market price for that product. If I was trying to unload a gallon of gas right now I’d know where I stand. Twelve literary short stories? Not so much.  

A big part of the problem is that I’m not selling an object, but an experience written by someone who is not famous. Another factor is that the experience I’m selling has pretensions to art, or at least sober craft. In order to determine the price of such nebulous goods, markets tends to rely on abstract consumer sentiments such as personal taste and cultural appeal, rather than functional utility. For these and other reasons I’m obviously going to have to make a series of assumptions in order to set a price.

I do know that every aspect of pricing — every possible permutation of every possible permutation — has been studied to theoretical completion. I also know I don’t have time to learn about all that, so instead I’m going to fly by the seat of my pants.

Mark twirls the propeller on his beanie and by god lifts off the ground!

Over the course of this week I will be exploring the pricing question with several brain-dump posts on various aspects of the problem. I genuinely do not have any idea what the price of this collection should be, and I find myself as intrigued by that fact as I am by the prospect of having people read (it not also buy) my work.

If you have any thoughts on the subject I would be grateful if you would share them. What would you charge? As a content consumer, do you have a positive or negative response to various price points? Although Smashwords is an e-book only site, product can flow from Smashwords to other online retailers, who may in turn kick out a print-on-demand version. How much does posting the work on Smashwords affect your feeling about what the price should be?

At the very least I think I should know something about the pricing of print books as well as e-books, if not also any price relationship between the two. On that basis alone this conversation will necessarily be rolling and wide open. Feel free to chime in [in the comments section for the original post, on Ditchwalk].

This is a cross-posting from Mark Barrett’s Ditchwalk site.