crisis in publishing

5 Key Trends in Self-Publishing for 2014

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This post, by Carla King, originally appeared on PBS Mediashift on 1/7/14.

The advancement in self-publishing tools and technology is a lot to keep up with, so here’s a roundup of the news that I think mattered most to self-publishers in 2013 and will continue to shape the industry this year.

1. Ingram Spark Gives Amazon CreateSpace a Run for Its Money

Ingram Content Group finally launched Ingram Spark, the much-anticipated print-on-demand and e-book distribution service aimed at self-publishers. It’s a welcome alternative to their publisher services tool Lightning Source, and competes with Amazon’s CreateSpace. Spark offers one author dashboard to handle both e-book and print distribution, while Amazon forces authors to two different places (CreateSpace for POD, Kindle Direct Publishing for e-books). And, unlike CreateSpace, Spark also allows authors to set the 55% discount and returns programs that bookstores insist upon. Do note that Amazon, being the pushy gorilla it is, sometimes lists print books not produced by them as “Out of Stock.” So this author continues to use CreateSpace in conjunction with other services, just to make sure that doesn’t happen.

 

2. E-book Subscription Services Entice Readers to Buy in Bulk

 

Click here to read the full post on Mediashift.

 

For Major Publishers, Will Print No Longer Be the Norm?

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This post, by Rachel Deahl with additional reporting from Jim Milliot, originally appeared on Publishers Weekly on 10/25/13.

Format has been a long-simmering topic of debate in book publishing, and the question of when, and if, a title is published in hardcover, paperback, and/or digital has become even more pressing as bricks-and-mortar bookstores dwindle and e-book sales grow. The idea that any standard deal from a major publisher guarantees a print format release—which was previously a foregone conclusion—is something agents no longer take for granted, with some expressing concern that the big houses are starting to hedge on print editions in contracts.

While e-book-only agreements are nothing new—all large publishers have imprints that are exclusively dedicated to digital titles—a handful of agents, all of whom spoke to PW on the condition of anonymity, said they’re worried that contracts from print-first imprints will increasingly come with clauses indicating that the publisher makes no guarantee on format. The agents say this is a new twist to the standard way of doing business.

While sources acknowledged that contracts from print-first imprints (as opposed to e-only ones) featuring clauses that give the publisher the freedom to decide on format are not new, the feeling is that these clauses are the exception, not the rule. Recently, though, a handful of agents have expressed concerns about print imprints refusing to commit on this issue.

Most of the big five houses PW contacted declined to respond to inquiries on the matter, saying that they don’t comment on contract negotiations. While some agents said they fear that Random House (and, possibly, the larger merged entity of Penguin Random House) is preparing to add a clause to its boilerplate indicating that it doesn’t commit to a format, a spokesman for the publisher shot down this notion. Penguin Random House’s Stuart Applebaum told PW that no change has taken place: “The suggestion that Penguin Group (USA) LLC and Random House LLC are changing their standard boilerplate contracts so as to limit publishing formats is not correct. Each of our author contracts continue to be negotiated individually, and confidentially.”

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Publishers Weekly.

 

More Open For Indies? What I’d Like 2014 to Bring

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This post, by Dan Holloway, originally appeared on his blog on 12/27/13.

Happy festivities. In this season of round-ups and forward-looks, when Janus stalks the blogosphere, writers everywhere are musing and reflecting. And whilst I am happy to grinch along with the best of them, it seems churlish not to join in the speculation.

But first the important bit. Here is a present. Click the image below to download an exclusive pdf of SKIN BOOK, beautifully illustrated with 8 pictures from Veronika von Volkova’s stunning Grime Angels series.

SKIN BOOK pic-page0001

It’s been a fascinating year for self-publishers. At the start of the year I had just begun work on the Alliance of Independent Authors’ Open Up to Indies guidebook. At time of writing, that guidebook’s release is imminent. But the backdrop against which it will see the light of day has changed – if not beyond all recognition then at least significantly. This autumn, Crimefest announced that it will be welcoming self-published authors next year. The Author Lounge at this year’s London Book Fair included self-publishing luminaries like Mel Sherratt. The Folio Prize, launched as the serious literary alternative to Booker, opened its doors to self-publishers, self-publishing conferences started talking about writing as well as marketing. And the Guardian has been running a self-publishing showcase giving blog time to indies for several months now. We’ve even seen a major serious writing award for the originally self-published A Naked Singularity.

The door feels ajar.

Whether or not it is, now that’s another matter. For me personally, it’s been a year of as much frustration as liberation. I still feel like the amusing pet as often as I feel like the welcome family member. It is getting easier to write about self-publishing. But as a literary writer and poet it remains as hard as ever to get the things I self-publish actually written about. I get to talk about self-publishing more than ever. But about my self-published writing as little as ever. There is still much work to be done to get people talking about self-published books rather than about self-publishing: the phenomenon.

These are the things I’d like to see for self-publishing in 2014.

 

1. Slow writing and the death of the algorithm

The best marketing for your book is other books. Write more. Be prolific. The tipping point to success comes when you’ve written x number of books. More books breed more discoverability. These have become more than mantras of self-publishing, givens that every writer has to take on board.

And these truisms are poison. Roz Morris wrote a brilliant post earlier this year about the slow novel, about the fact that some genres such as literary fiction spill their words more slowly than others. And yes, I absolutely accept that some genres are more sales friendly than others. But sales are not the be all and end all, and should not be the guide for whether or not a book receives coverage or acclaim.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Dan Holloway’s blog.

 

The Good And Bad In Chaotic eBook Pricing

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This post, by Mike Masnick, originally appeared on Techdirt on 10/8/13.

For years we’ve discussed the ridiculousness of ebook pricing, where some publishers seem to think that sky high prices for ebooks (often higher than physical copies) make sense, despite the lack of printing, packaging, shipping and inventory costs. And, of course, we won’t even get into the question of the price fixing debacle. Art Brodsky recently wrote a fascinating piece over at Wired about how ebook pricing is an “abomination,” because it’s designed to price people out of reading. He points out that we should think more about ebooks like we think about apps, since that’s a much more direct comparison than “books.” And then he gets into a discussion of how publishers are going crazy with their library pricing:

Take the example of J.K. Rowling’s pseudonymous book, Cuckoo’s Calling. For the physical book, libraries would pay $14.40 from book distributor Baker & Taylor — close to the consumer price of $15.49 from Barnes & Noble and of $15.19 from Amazon. But even though the ebook will cost consumers $6.50 on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, libraries would pay $78 (through library ebook distributors Overdrive and 3M) for the same thing.

Somehow the “e” in ebooks changes the pricing game, and drastically. How else does one explain libraries paying a $0.79 to $1.09 difference for a physical book to paying a difference of $71.50 just because it’s the electronic version? It’s not like being digital makes a difference for when and how they can lend it out.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Techdirt.

 

Successful Authors Are Outliers, Not Statistics

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This post, by Bob Mayer, originally appeared on his Write on the River site on 12/10/13.

Digital Book World has put out another survey about authors, indie authors, hybrid authors*, hobbits, wizards and drones.

While I applaud the effort, I find a lot of the data about authors essentially skewed, especially when it comes to those of us who make our living writing. Especially for those of us who’ve made our living writing for more than a year or two, ie those who’ve made a career writing. Which is about as rare as a hobbit in an orc bar. Unless it’s being served for dinner.

While I’m not a fan of Malcom Gladwell’s public condemnation of Amazon while still selling his books there (also Scott Turow), I accept that they are both highly paid indentured servants to their publishers who have no control over whether their books are sold at Amazon. Gladwell wrote a book introducing a concept called Outliers, which looks at the factors that lead to high levels of success (see, I link to the book on Amazon—please donate all sales to charity, Mr. Gladwell). I submit that any person who can make a decent career as a writer of fiction (ie a professional bullshitter) has achieved a high level of success in the world of publishing. It’s something I learned in Special Forces, who are almost all outliers.

So how are successful authors outliers?

Gladwell: “the biggest misconception about success is that we do it solely on our smarts, ambition, hustle and hard work.”

I do think we need all four; and while I know writers who’ve come from nothing and pushed all four to the extreme and have become successful, there are certainly other factors that Mr. Gladwell explains.

At Cool Gus one of our mottoes is: the best promotion is a good book, better promotion is more good books. Gladwell has a term called “Accumulative advantage”. He uses the example that most elite Canadian hockey players were born earlier in the year. What’s the connection? Since leagues are done by year, a kid born in January has almost a year of experience and growth over a kid born in December. Thus the earlier birth players seem to be the best. Thus they are treated as better—it’s a case where the rich get richer.

In publishing this means those of us who came out of traditional publishing with rights to some or all of our backlist have had a huge advantage.

 

Read the rest of the post on Write on the River.

 

Why Writers Must Self-Publish Their Books

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This post, by Joel Friedlander, originally appeared on his The Book Designer site on 12/2/13.

In yesterday’s New York Times there was an opinion piece by Gary Gutting, a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Here’s a quote:

“Even highly gifted and relatively successful writers, artists and musicians generally are not able (to) earn a living from their talents. The very few who become superstars are very well rewarded. But almost all the others—poets, novelists, actors, singers, artists—must either have a partner whose income supports them or a ‘day job’ to pay the bills. Even writers who are regularly published by major houses or win major prizes cannot always live on their earnings.”
— New York Times, The Real Humanities Crisis

You know this is true as well as I do, and it speaks to several larger truths:

◾ the low regard most creative artists who are not “superstars” generally command in our society

◾ the lack of leverage most creatives have in dealing with corporations who license their work

◾ the disempowerment of writers who are not “bestsellers” and who, by and large, are poorly compensated for their work

Stable jobs with dependable income involve helping the wheels of commerce keep turning, or unavoidable occupations like road building and health care.

But try making a living as a poet, a writer of histories, a novelist, a short story writer, a playwright, or any kind of writer whose work isn’t essential to making a living, and you better not give up that day job.

We don’t need to comment on the values this reality expresses, but we do have to deal with the consequences.

Now, with all the new tools of publishing, we can take a bigger role in our own publishing careers than ever before.

 

Self-Publishing Today

Talking to authors—and especially authors who have already been published by big traditional publishers—you can see the excitement and anticipation when this subject comes up.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on The Book Designer.