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Publishing-Online or "Dead Tree" Format?
aliastnb asks "I'm currently about halfway through writing my first novel. After the release of books to the net by such people as Stephen King, I'm wondering if it might be worth my while to cut out the middleman, ie the publisher and release the book online. Trouble is, I'd like to be able to get some sort of reward for my efforts, ie minimise the amount of unpaid-for copies made of the book, and release it to a multi-platform environment - not just Windows software but Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc. Are these goals mutually exclusive and should I therefore approach a conventional publisher, or is there a way for me to satisfy them all?" When it comes to publishing, why limit yourself? There is a "writer's rule" that I've heard from both Emmett and Roblimo recently that "Anything worth selling once is worth selling three times." -- along that vein, why not offer your work in both formats and find out which way is better for you?
Sell it as a dead-tree book, then release it as a textfile over the Internet. This'd be an ideal example to show that people will still buy books even when they can get the content for free. Or, you might try selling it online initially, but don't expect any of the 'secure e-books' to be actually secure against piracy. I.e., don't expect to make money off of the digital version, though you might.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
I love the net, I love the access to information and all that that means. I could stay logged in all day at times. However, short and to the point. There is something about sitting down with a good hard cover book, and slowing the pace down by reading. A couple of hours in a nice chair, a good book, and a little peace of mind does wonders for the soul.
Well. If you publish it online. That makes giving the book away to friends easier. Thus if you figure out any way to charge for it that is useless. Secondly Exclusivlye Publishing Online isn't Wise. Everyone wants Hard copies why? A 12 hour bus ride with no computer means I can't read your book. And Most people don't have flat screens hooked up to the wall across from their toilet either, so reading in the bathroom is gonna be tough. And no one wants to print out 200 300 pages =)
--------========+++Dont Feed The Lab Techs+++========--------
A friend of mine recently was wondering something similar. He's working on an RPG and was thinking of releasing it online, but as I was telling him there's little way of preventing it to spread once its out there.
One possible idea is to have a donation form on your website. Tell people the book is free but if you like it please give me what you feel its worth so I can produce more in the future. I'd be interested to know how many people, and how much would be donated.
Though currently paper books are still huge, and will be for a long time still, you might be able to release in both formats and still make enough from the paper copies to not really care if a small amount of people (relative to anyone who can get paper books) are copying it around online.
Poetry online:
Like flowers, more lovely for
Its impermanence...
It's funny that you mentioned Stephen King's latest book. You are probably aware that the book reading program was cracked, and pirate ASCII copies of the book have been available on many sites for free. And I'm sure you've noticed all the articles about how enraged many artists are that Napster allows people to rip them off because copying of mp3 files simply cannot be controlled. Do you want this to happen? Once your book is in a digital format, you have no way of stopping it's unlimited distribution.
Bottom line: Stick with paper.
if/when publishing your book electronically. judging by the usual response to the napster/mp3/metallica thing on /. you will probably find lots of folks getting a copy of your book that they didn't pay for. <sarcasm>after all, it is a natural right right to download electronic books, music, art, etc. for free, isn't it?</sarcasm>
Well, either of these formats would give you the most platforms for the buck. I guess the problem them becomes how to profit from it. I suppose that you could simply have a pay-per-download approach, but that wouldn't eliminate passingof already-downloaded copies around.
;)
I guess you'll need to develop a PGP-capable PDF viewer
"Being right too soon is socially unacceptable." - Robert Heinlein
People need stuff to read on travel, and not all of them are going to read it as an e-book, and not all of them are going to download it online. If you want to read the broadest audience, publish as a book first, so you get "Bestseller" status, or something along those lines. Then put out the e-book and website. Hype that it was so good, you want to give it away. If you want to make money along with that, smack your users in the face with some banners.
Eh...
Everyone knows who Steven King is, and when he put his book on the web there were innnumerable puff pieces about it, letting everyone know.
Who is going to know about your book, and where to download it?
Publishers still control the physical distribution network, and the means of advertising a work, don't be too hasty to count them out.
George
As for "cutting out the middleman", by all means go for it -- but here's a question -- why not release through a publisher *AND* online ? Of course, you'll need to insist that the publisher allow you to distribute it online.
As for copy protection, I don't know. You could use some kind of encrypt/decrypt thing, or you could just send it by email if the file isn't too big. There comes a point though when you simply have to be prepared to assume that your customers are reasonably honest.
Use latex/tex to typeset your book, then you can generate just about any useful format you might need. Cross platform and all other such goodness is, of course, available.
For publishing, if your a first author interested in self publishing you might be interested in doing a net search for micropublishers. You can do short runs for those who want the paper on the bus and electronic for other folks.
The python doc, for example, is available from http://www.toexcel.com/bookstore/
I'm all for on-line publication, it's a great way for new writers to get noticed, which can LEAD TO getting publishing deals. So, you could start out with some on-line-only books, and see where it takes you!
Personally, i enjoy sitting in my reading chair wit a nice, big, hardback book in my hand. I don't even buy paperbacks if there is a hard back available. Its something about the weight of the book, the sturdiness of the binding, seeing all your books, all lined up...
I've tried reading on the computer. I don't like it.
I love my Palm IIIxe to death, but I don't like reading books on it either.
Maybe I'm a purist, maybe I'm backward.. mabye I'm just obsessive-compulsive (you should see the organization in my antique glass-paneled bookshelf). Whatever the reason, I like the printed tree-killing books.
Publish on the internet, publish on the Palm. But don't skip the real thing.
wish
---
$ su
who are you?
$ whoami
whoami: no login associated with uid 1010.
writer ponders wrong
question. should spend time on book.
too much internet.
A paper version is going to sit on shelves in the store, and people will see it. A web-only version will only be noticed if you advertise (banner ads = $$$ ; spam = bad karma) or if you manage a word-of-mouth campaign.
Besides, many people who access a web version are going to end up printing it, and you won't have saved any trees.
Christopher A. Bohn
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
The problem is, no matter which way you distribute your text, the user will in one way or another be able to copy it, either directly, copy & paste etc. etc. It's a fact of computers.
As i see it, you have two options:
Disadvantages: User/Pass combinations can be distributed, not portable, can still be copied with Copy & Paste and a webbrowser.
Advantages: You keep control of the text, and can disable accounts if abuse is detected.
Disadvantages: Takes time & coding experience to create the reader, propriatry, needs to be ported about, many users probably unwilling to use a peice of software for the one peice of text.
Advantages: Copies will be easier to track, can be disabled with clever programing if abuse detected, can write the reader not to allow Copy & Paste.
Personally, i don't see either option as being very atractive. If you want to make a profit from the book, dead tree is possibly the only way to go at the moment.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
Many publishers would like to get into online publishing but the problem is how does defend against piracy? It is *really* difficult to defend yourself against. After all, HTML or plain text files are trivial to reproduce. *Any* file that can be downloaded from your site may be hijack for another.
The flexibility and ubiquity of the web allow you to be published world wide instantly. It provides no mechanisms to protect your Intellectual Property. If this concerns you, you should stick to paper.
Of course, I'd encourage you to publish your book for free. The exposure that a successful e-book will give should make your negotiations easier when dealing with publishers. This assumes you are confident in your abilities to produce more successful content. :-)
Not that this really answers your question.. But I can tell you that I personally would never purchase a book to read online... I read PDF/HOWTO's/whitepapers/knowledgebases/etc all day long.. if I want to read a book.. I'll pay the extra 9 bucks (even 20! or more!) to have something i can flip through.. and something I can throw in my backpack (I don't care what kind of electronic device I have, Its still not as versatile as a paper book). Now.. SELLING it online might be good.. sort of bypassing the distributor.. but that would all depend on how good of a marketer you are.. Even then, if its your first book (not sure if you said it was or not), do it the regular ways.. you'll be much smarter in the long run.
-- "I feel a strong disturbance in the for.."\*Segmentation Fault*\ (core dumped)
As for the format, I'd suggest LaTeX. You can then use that to create Postscript, PDF, HTML, text, and whatever else you desire.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
So true, I've never felt confortable reading any text on the net for more than ten minutes or so, and when I get a good book I want to hide somwhere for ten hours to read it...
And what about "toilet books". You know, that great books that you read whilst engaging in bodily functions. I don't think many people are going to want their laptop/palmtop/e-book to be faced with that environment :)
...why not offer your work in both formats and find out which way is better for you?
Most publishers buy exclusive rights to a book before they will publish it. Aside from publishing rights, it can also include movie and magazine rights. They usually either buy the rights for a period of time (10 years, plus option to renew) or forever. They will preclude your independant publishing of the novel in any medium, including internet.
If you want to publish in both formats, you'll either need to find a publisher which already does this, or publish it yourself in both formats (quite an expensive venture, and often not as much real world exposure).
-Adam
It's pretty funny, actually. It all started when I thought that inflammable was the opposite of flammable...
Publishers are not just tree processors. You're going to run into the same problem that the people on mp3.com run into... no promotion. Who is going to know who you are? It takes expertise and most of all, big $$$ to create a demand for an unknown author.
There is a reason that publishers (and record companies...) get a big cut. They are taking a big risk by publishing you. It's way more likely that your book will crater rather than being even a modest success. That big cut is paying for the failures.
So ask yourself this question: If I self-publish, how am I going to get anyone to read my book? I know for me, I am much more likely to read a new author that has been published by a "real" publisher. At least I know that has gone through a few levels of crap filtering.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
If you get a deal with a traditional publisher (that's a big IF) then you play by their rules. If they don't want the book online, it won't be.
Next, if your publisher allows it or if you didn't get a deal, put your book online using an existing online distributor (like that FatBrain subsidiary whose name escapes me). These guys will normally handle for-pay stuff, so your file will be an encrypted PDF or the like. This file should have a TOC, an index, be nicely typeset and paginated for easy printing.
Then put your book online as a raw textfile, with no pagination, no index, no TOC and no typesetting. This file will be available for free, and coincidentally covers your cross-platform requirement.
This way, people that want to check your stuff out have a free text file that's a nightmare to read but easily available. People that decide to read you in-depth have a for-pay file that's easy on the eyes, and generally approachable. You could also make a regular postscript or DVI available on request for people who already bought the PDF -- that way you're cross-platform, and you still get paid.
But remember: all of this hinges on whether or not you get a deal with a traditional publisher. If you do, you MUST play by their rules or they'll ruin you.
. . . of course, I could be wrong.
I have no
check out http://www.lisnews.com/search.php3?topic=EPublicat ions We have about 100 articles from all over on the pros and cons of epublishing.
Self publishing was traditionally regarded as a *bad thing*. Before the advent of the net, there were only really a couple of ways to publish your own works - you went to a vanity publisher (who charged you loads of money for the privilege of having your book on their list) or you printed it up yourself and hawked it mail order.
This was generally frowned upon by people who did "real" publishing, though it's worth noting that the 'zine scene that sparked off with the advent of cheap copying techniques in the 60's has been a flourishing part of the counterculture ever since and some people still make their crust in this way.
The rise of email and the web threw up a whole range of new techniques for publishing work. It's what first attracted me to the web and the huge amount of zines and online material available show how popular a technique this is for distributing information.
I guess the answer to the original question is - can you get published by a "real" publisher. i.e. one who will give you money for your work and spend money on advertising, publicity, quality printing etc? If so, you'll definitely want to see what they think of your plans to publish online as well. You may find they are dead against it (in which case, if you are completely for it, you'll probably end up in an argument), otherwise, you'll need to examine their contract.
If you publish the material on the net before you get a dead-trees contract, then you run the risk of devaluing your work in the eyes of a publisher. Of course, whether you have actually devalued the work, or added value to it by releasing on the net is extremely debateable, but it's pretty much a sure bet that a publisher will see it as a negative thing (after all, potential customers will have already seen the work without paying).
Of course, if you have no publisher, then there's a good chance that web publishing may be your only chance to get your work released - in which case you'll find quite a few different options for publishing electronic books online in a form where you will be paid per download - but that's another story...
"Give the anarchist a cigarette"
A little planning goes a long way...
I think that digital books hardly have any substance - its a text file on your computer, and not the same. The whole point of reading a book either from the library or buying it, is to get the whole experience. If you really want to put something on the net - I recall someone who put the first couple chapters on the net, thus enticing people to go buy it once they're hooked. You could combine this with a digital copy and a hardcover. It might just work.
This reminds me of a story by RMS.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
How do you plan on releasing it digitally? Perhaps *gulp* encrypt the content and use the DMCA as protection from decryption?
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
PDF files are pretty much platform indedendent. A possible solution would be to use PHP to output the document in PDF format with the user's information encrypted into the file. That way illegal copies/redistributions could be tracked to their source. The licencing terms for the book could provide liability against abusers and you could warn then before they download about the possibility of being busted this way.
OpenEbook is trying to set a standard for publishing documents across multiple platforms. Though it wong prevent copying/redistribution it may allow the document to be read actoss multiple platforms.
PGP may be a security method. Once you decide on a easily distributible format you need a method of having an unlock key for only people who pay.
The game in ordinary publishing is that you get an advance for your next book and you live on the money. Your book never earns enough to pay back the advance, but if it sells well enough, they'll give you another advance on your next book. The internet will not necessarily help to get you on that escalator, unless you manage to release it in a way that catches people's attention: Blair Witch Project, for example.
yeah, I know, I'm using movie examples. It'd be tougher for a book, but I wanted to illustrate how PR and word of mouth work to establish your identity or brandname with "buzz".
Check out http://www.baen.com/ for a publisher who seems to "get-it."
Authors post their drafts to the web site, a chapter at a time.
People who subscribe to the site can read anything on the site. When
the paper book is published, the final book is made available online
(I would suspect there would be some delay). Readers get first
viewing of a book, they can e-mail the author with comments, and the
publishers get some early marketing data about how well the book might
sell.
Bits are free.
Atoms cost money.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Well, having written that subject line, when you phrase it as "dead trees", books sound a little more cruel.
Anyway, to repeat what others have said, I much prefer reading a book in printed format. There really is something to be said for sitting down in a comfy chair with a good book and reading for a while. There's also something to be said for being able to walk into a book store and browse. Bookstores are great, used bookstores even better
paper.
For a simple, but perhaps irrational reason: a book can be cherished. It can be loved, annotated, stained with strawberry juice on a picnic, passed to a friend. It can decorate a room, be read on a train, in a bath, on the beach. It can be imbued with memories, and stained by its (and the reader's) lives.
It's your first novel. Let it be something you can hold.
Leave the pseudopolitical posturing, or the false economy of self publishing for a later work.
Ok, everybody reading this who is halfway through their first novel, raise your hand? How many of those will ever see the light of day? If you'd said that you have several published already, and were considering branching out on your own to self publish, I might take it more seriously. But what you just said is pretty equivalent to "Hey, I have an idea for a program, which company do you think I should sell it to in order to make the most money?" Worry about it when you have something to sell.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
You may be interressed in reading the The Street Performer Protocol, that allow artist to be rewarded in a world where copyright are abolished. http://www.counterpane.com/street_ performer.html
Publish the first couple of chapters and then tell people you'll publish the remaining ones when you get a certain amount of money. Keep a counter of how much money you have on your site. If you can't publish, make sure you return the money to people who gave it to you, and go to a dead-tree publisher.
When you get the amount of money you're asking for, still charge a small fee per download. People who gave you money and registered with an e-mail address get it mailed to them for free. A lot of people would prefer to download it from you for $2-$10 than copy it from a friend. Don't encourage, or discourage copying. Just make it clear that you need money to keep on publishing stuff.
Copyright is largely dead. If you publish online, you have to accept this as a fact of life and work around it. People want books and stories. It'll all work out in the end.
As far as format goes... Don't use PDF. That's silly for a book unless it has lots of figures and tables in it. Use HTML or XML. That way, even someone with a PDA can probably read it.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
If you wish to publish through traditional channels your publisher has to be convinced he may make profit on it * and have the exclusive right to do so.*
This is only right and proper. They have to invest millions to get the book printed and distributed. Of course you hope they promote the living hell out of it too, don't you? Ok, more investment from the publisher.
To compound this the risk of taking on a new unknown author is tremendous. The publisher knows that no matter what he personally thinks of your book its odds are slim.
Steven King is money in the bank, even his latest work stinks. Publishers know this and compete for his business, you are in the opposite position, even if you have written the Great American Novel.
So, why should a publisher take the risk of publishing you on line? He certainly won't take on your book if YOU publish it online, it simply won't be allowed. You'll have to convince them to do it, take whatever check and royalties you might see, and walk away and let the publisher do his business.
Given all the above you'll also find that any publisher taking on a new author will demand the rights to the next book. This reduces a certain amount of risk. If your first book does hit they know that they really get their payback on the second which they can sell easier and cheaper.
If you plan to self publish and take on all the expenses and risks that that entails you can do anything you want.
If you want a traditional dead tree publishing deal it isn't your choice, and won't be your choice on your next book either.
Get to the point that Steven King is at and then you can start making some of these choices yourself.
There are thousands of books that have been published on the net over the years that we have never (and likely will never) hear about. The ones we know of are from already famous authors. The publishing company is right now as neccessary to the book industry as the record company is to the music industry. To really be able to do what you want, you have to find a company that will let you publish at least once and then go from there. Publishing to the net will make your novel unseen and unpublishable, as no company will want a second hand book until you reach a certain level of popularity.
I suggest posting the book online first, so that you can get a feel for how people are responding to it. You could even use this as a means of testing your book. You could get some reader reactions and possibly make some changes before actually approaching a publisher. Also, if your book becomes popular with net readers, it may make it easier for you to approach a publisher, as they will see that you have a marketable product. I'd suggest Abika.com as I know they are pretty good with this sort of thing.
To start with, it would help to get a large group of authors together for a single site. I have the advantage that my site archives a fiction-writing mailing list, so I have new content most days and a ready audience of the readers of the mailing list. An original site would probably need some sort of advertising and enough content to keep people coming back.
Large sections of the text should be made freely viewable. Nobody wants to pay money for a book that they know nothing about. The amount that is free depends on your subject matter: if you are writing programming guides, your chapters are fairly self-contained, so you might want to offer the table of contents and maybe 1/3 of the book for free; if you are writing fiction, you can offer 1/2 to 3/4 of the book for free, since if you get the reader hooked, they will pay a larger amount to find out what happens :)
Keep you prices down. They won't have a nicely bound hardback, so don't charge them those sorts of prices. I would be hard-pressed to justify more than $2 per download, and would recommend $1 as a more reasonable price.
Have a convenient method of payment. This was the bane of shareware; nobody will ever send you money if you only provide a mailing address and require a check or money order. You need to either accept credit card payment or some equivalent instant payment option (PayPal.com has had some good press; I've never checked them out, so I have no idea)
Don't quit your day job. You won't make money at this very quickly, and unless you're very good, you won't make much money at all. Even authors who get published and are available at every bookstore in the country don't tend to get rich, and you won't have the advantage of shelf space or beautiful cover art. Your readership will only increase with your reputation as an author and that sort of thing happens slowly.
After all that, if anyone is still interested, let me know and I'll put a writeup of their site/book on my website for free. Due to the nature of my subject (anime fanfiction), I am not allowed to profit from my site, but I would love to help someone else profit from their works. I get about 1,500 unique visitors a day who are looking for reading material, and quite a few would also be interested in publishing their original works somewhere that they could get paid from.
One way to do it might be to publish the first few chapters on your Web site, and offer the full novel via email for a modest sum.
Alternatively, you could offer the entire novel for download, but post a notice that writing the book was hard work, and you expect a payment of about $X from anyone who reads the book and enjoys it. Note that if enough people enjoyed your work enough to send you $X (where X is maybe 1-3, since they're paying all of the printing and binding costs), it would encourage you to write additional works. You could, for example, set a base fee of $1, and ask for $2 if the reader found the novel to be very good and $3 if the reader found the novel to be excellent.
Alternatively, you could charge per download. That's the simplest, most straightforward and most traditional way to do it.
Don't forget that a printed novel will likely be (legally) read by many more people than copies of it are sold. People borrow novels from their friends and from their public libraries all the time. If you publish your novel electronically, soome people will undoubtedly make copies for their friends, but I don't think that this kind of copying will actually have a significant effect on sales, assuming that most of the people who receive "pirated" copies of your novel would have simply, legally, borrowed the original from their friend or the library had it been in print.
The only singificant threat to your power to control the distribution of your work is if someone posts the work publically. If you opt for the "pay per download or email" model, this may work against you, and you may want to be vigilant about enforcing your copyright. OTOH, if you choose the "please pay me if you enjoyed this" method, you are implicitly betting that people will reward you because they liked your work and want to show their appreciation and encourage further writings. In that case, it would be to your advantage to have your work as widely distributed as possible.
There's no such thing as Scotchtoberfest!
If you would like to reduce the risk of having your book spread across the internet, you could consider using an "on-line" publisher. People who use electronic book readers connect directly to the publisher's network (with the book's built-in modem) where they can browse, purchase and download books from a selection of titles. Authors who would like to make their work free on the internet should consider adding it to an on-line library.
MP3.com and CDnow (used to) allow you to buy a cd online and then instantly have access to the streaming audio version of the cd while your cd was in transit. You could allow people to order the book from the publisher's website and at the same time give them a text or encrypted copy to read if they choose while they wait for the hardcover. In fact, I think all kinds of e-commerce companies should do this. I would certainly buy more things online if they did.
If I buy a book, and want to give it to someone else when I am finished so that they can read it, I can because it is mine. How can this be applied to a file I downloaded, and how can you copyright protect it? I suppose that if I only let one person at a time borrow the file, then it would be ok, but this seems to be something that will turn into another Napster Nightmare to control and regulate.
Perhaps we need a new copyright law for electronic media. New ideas on how to sell the content and new pricing structures that reflect the risk that someone takes today to publically release their information. Any ideas that would be fair to both the consumer and the originator?
Go with a publishing house first. They'll give you one of three choices (if they accept it):
1. they'll publish it if they expect to make money (good for you. you can get paid to write.)
2. they'll invite you to "share the risk", and ask you to pay part of the publishing costs. (translation, one person here thinks it'll make money, and no one else does. if you put up part of the money, and it fails, you're out money. if it sells, we'll both profit)
3. vanity press. you pay for everything. very popular amongst some U professors (who require the book for their class)
Go with a publishing house now. Give short stories away for free. That's the teaser. that gets you an audience. The publishing company then covers the cost of promoting you.
don't rule out serializing it for a magazine, or turning it into a short story for some other publication. if you get paid now, up front, you can then run your own web site where you can make things available, notify fans of new works, publish stuff that would get read (but not commercially published). other things++
The chairman of the company that I work for released his book free online, and as a dead-trees book.
Apparently, the online version has not hurt the sales of the print edition. The two versions of the book offer a profoundly different reading experience.
The print version adds value by being printed on easy-to-read glossy paper, and by having interesting photographs scattered throughout. No monitor is as easy on the eyes.
On the other hand, the online version is frequently updated, and provides people with an easy way to reference passages via online searches. Many people who start reading the book online eventually buy the print version. In that sense, it could be considered an effective marketing tool. (Though convincing a publishing house that this is the case may be problematic.)
docwolf
The book now written
Publish to bits or paper...
Depends, does it suck?
I wrote a techinical manual and published it myself. Instead of the 50 cents the publisher would have given me I got $70 a copy. Coarse if your book is in the $10/copy zone, I would think the printing/shipping costs might be the biggest issue. There are plenty of websites that will advertise and sell your book for a percentage ofthe profit. -d-ale>
You get to keep all the rights and deal with the marketing yourself. We can print anything up to about 400-500 pages. If you buy a few hundred copies, we can work out a custom cover design.
I dont know about the rest of you guys, but I always prefer a good solid book as opposed to a big bulky monitor; You'll never be able to sit on your couch, relax, and read a good computer screen book there; lets face it, even a laptop screen is not as easy to read as a paperback novel. Even with new portable electronic books, I still think the feel, the texture, the tactile response and aroma of the book is better. Merely my opinions...
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If he is illiterate, I guess that would make viewing Slashdot a rather boring activity.
I've written (and had published) a lot of material, in just about any format. Atoms or bits, it doesn't much matter--folks will pay for compelling content.
Two years ago I decided I was fed up with the traditional publishing racket and figured I could do it at least as bad as the big presses. After all, I'd just spent three years in arbitration with one of them.
The single biggest factor that's almost always overlooked is marketing. How are you going to let people know about your masterpiece? All in all it's a pretty sleazy process and not much fun at all, at least for me.
Here's a couple of articles I wrote a few years ago about the publishing industry and why it sucks so hard:
Way New Publishing
Way New Publishing Part 2
State of the Publishing 1999
As a result, I self-published my latest book and simultaneously in print and on the web:
Information Eclipse
This will get people interested enough in the book to buy the real version (especially if you have a "click here to order the book" link).
Possible solution to portability:
The drawback to PDF is that PDF files tend to be huge and you'll be stuck paying for the software to write the PDF file (only the reader is free). The good news is that plain text shouldn't be that big, and the reader probably isn't horribly expensive. Also, this will far and away give the prettiest looking output.
The drawback to HTML is that it's a moderate pain to write portably (don't to "save as HTML" from Word; find someone who knows how to write HTML that looks good on all platforms and hire them to do it). It also doesn't look spectacular. However, it looks good enough for most purposes if written well, and can be viewed absolutely anywhere.
The drawback to text is that it looks ugly and that you'll have a hard time supporting all of [Windows, Mac, Unix]. Windows uses CRLF for line breaks, Mac uses CR, and Unix uses LF. On the plus side, text converters for these forms are abundant, and producing the text in the first place is fairly easy ("save as text" usually works adequately).
As another reader points out, your main problem will probably be advertising. Electronic publication is probably best viewed as a supplement to conventional publishing instead of a replacement, unless you're well enough known that "click here to order" traffic through your web site will be enough to sustain you.
It is notoriously hard to get a book published.
But I'd try that first. The publisher's marketing channel is still the best way to get money for writing.
Unfortunately, you probably won't get a publisher. You aren't a commodity like Stephen King.
Once you put the book out in digital format, you've blown the most salable right. Now, you might be able to promote it enough to make a publisher notice and offer to buy the remaining rights, but the chances are slim.
Multiple platform downloadable formats that aren't easy to pirate are kind of a contradiction. Sure, it is probably possible, but very difficult and likely to annoy the customers. I work for a software company, and our copy-protection system is the single biggest source of tech support calls.
What might work is to make a value-added CD. Fill a CD with your book, including illustrations, and maybe a sound file of you reading it. The point is, the CD ends up with too much content to be a reasonable download. Sure, some people might copy it, but burning a CD is enough of a chore that a significant number of people would rather pay. Burning a CD seems to trigger the concience in some people who wouldn't think twice about sharing a file over the net.
Our secret is gamma-irradiated cow manure
Mitsubishi ad
We apologize for the inconvenience.
What do you intend to do with the rights? I would assume you'd retain the the rights for quite some time, but is there any point where you would be willing to hand the rights over to the public domain?
Personally, I intend to hold onto any rights that I have until I die. At that point, it's PD for my stuff. Copywrite law is too prohibitive at the moment to allow creative adaptations -- or even verbatim reproductions once the author's deceased. The DMCA obviously complicates this also.
---
script-fu: hash bang slash bin bash
[ approaching AI ]
HTML is okay if it is one or two pages or less than 10. Since this is a book, I'd recommend against this format.
If you have Windows or Mac you can get a tool called Framemaker or Pagemaker/PageMill? and have the book entered in it. You can then easily convert or save it as a pdf file or postscript file. YOu can also edit it and have pictures in it too. By using pdf format you can save much if not all of the layout of the book so that in the future if you want a printed copy you can have that too. Also pdf can give you the cross platform compatiblity that you want. Adobe pdf viewer is available on Windows, Mac, Solaris, Linux and many other platforms as well. I believe in fact that this may be a "standard" format and that there are other pdf viewers that are open source that run on just about any platform.
On a personal note, I like the idea of releasing books on the web, because it makes putting them in handheld devices so much easier.
send flames > /dev/null
Only 'flamers' flame!
People are right to be pointing out that this is very similar to the issue many musicians have with Napster and the like. Of course, the difference is, character recognition scanners aren't yet as advanced as sound recording technology, so you can probably expect that your book won't get "ripped" and put on the internet against your will. Yet.
People are also right to point out that many people feel there's something special about an actual, physical book that's superior to staring at a screen. Plus, books are still much more portable than laptops.
But what I haven't seen anyone say yet is that there are a whole lot of people out there who don't have computers or internet access yet, but might still want to read. If you think your book might appeal to that audience, you're not doing yourself (or them) any favors by releasing it exclusively online.
Of course, if you really wanted to release it in a "multi-platform" format, there's always good ol' ASCII text. Or HTML. But then you'd have to put up banner ads to make money off it, like someone pointed out. Which is, to be fair, a real possibility.
[We Have No Product] [The Swindle
Seriously - publishers aren't dopes. They've lots of experience at selling folks material and making a profit for themselves (and some for their authors.)
Do you see any of them running into online-publishing? No. Why not? IP rights. Copying. Insufficient mass of readers. Nasty format: how many folks want to sit at a desk reading anything that takes a significent amount of time? How many books do you see printed in 8.5"x11" or A4 format? Lack of control: no numbers for the best-seller lists, no metrics for comparing popularity, no 2nd & 3rd reprints...
Furthermore there are entire libraries of free stuff out there that folks are ignoring (see Project Guttenberg) and you expect your for-cost story will make a splash? If that were so we'd be swamped by chain-mails of expired-copyright texts. I don't know about you but except for my cousin Bob's drunken email ramblings about "The Greys" I haven't gotten any books emailed to me lately.
Heck, the Stephen King thing was a publicity stunt and aside from a rash of piracy it's probably one of his least *read* stories ever. Few folks can get the kind of press he did and even then I doubt he made as much money as he could of with other mediums.
My advice? Write. Sweat blood. Try like mad to find a reptutable publisher. Listen to their editors and do as they tell you. Release the book in the traditionial (marginally profitable) fashion. Move on.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I'll start by saying that you don't want to minimize the number of unpaid for copies, you want to maximize the number of copies that make you money. Those aren't the same thing.
I'm a little unsure of how much income you'd make, by, for instance, putting it all up on a multipage web site with banner ads. If you could get enough page views it might be worth it (apparently you need around 30 page views to make a dollar - beats me if that's accurate.)
Personally, I prefer to read my books on paper, but I have been know to kill a few hours reading things on the internet. You might want to make the book available for download in multiple formats (pdf, plaintext, whatever) in addition to having the whole thing available online in html. That way, people could read the whole thing - and generate page views, or they could download it. I'd only put a few chapters online at a time, so that people would have to return - but I wouldn't make it so anyone had to wait more than a week to download the entire thing.
Of course, this would probably work better once your site develops some brand recognition, and you have multiple works availble. Possibly even works by other authors, and/or in various genres. Add in an online order form for getting the deadtree editions, and some Venture Capital, who knows?
The fact is, a printed and bound version of a book that you use a lot is cheaper than downloading a digital version and printing it on your own printer.
And don't forget the vanity thing. An author can do a book tour and autograph copies of the book for his or her fans. But you can't autograph a laptop. Whitout doesn't work well either. And for swatting flies, forget it.
If people like the book they will buy a printed copy.
As an avid reader and a hopeless geek when it comes to computers, I've tried reading digital books - it don't fly with me. Old-fashioned though it may be, there's no substitute for something you can carry to the park, or the bathroom, or the bus and read a bit at a time. My comprehension is better on paper, the portability is a big value-add, and I don't want to burn out my printer running off a book just so I can read it someplace besides my desk.
Plus, you can loan a friend a book. Give them a digital copy of anything, and that's piracy.
I'd say go with both mediums, paper AND electronic. That way you can hit both markets, those old farts like me and the technomad that think if it isn't pixellated it isn't worth looking at.
There are some things that are just better in a tangible form, like books and paintings and women.
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
Your chances of publishing the book in dead-tree format are really quite slim, whether or no it has merit. Publishing a first-book without an agent is only slightly more likely than hitting the Powerball. You have about a 1/100 chance of getting an agent to respond to a query with a request to read. Once your get your sample chapters over the gunwale, they'll be handed to an editor who will skim the thing in an evening and give a yea or nay to read the complete work. My wife does just this for a local agency and reads something like four novels a week, has been for a year, is one of eight editors working for the agency and she has yet to recommend a book be represented by the agency. Should this unlikely event occur for you, you can then count yourself among the successful. Your book is actively being shopped by one of the thousands of literary agents in America. You've still got a long way to go.
But there is hope; nothing succeeds like success! Get the book in the hands of a small publisher distributing in the open e-book format (XHTML -- readable by modern browsers, all the e-readers and some accessiblity systems). Offer the book for free or next to it (i.e. at cost). Make a market and then turn to an agency or go directly to a publisher with some numbers: x downloads in x weeks/months.
illegitimii non ingravare
What many of the posters here don't seem to know is that dedicated readers (such as the Rocket eBook) are alive and well, with tons of content already available. I wouldn't consider reading a book online, from a laptop, or even from my Handspring. I do, however, find the large font, backlit, ergonomic nature of the Rocket eBook to be more pleasurable to read from than a normal paper book, and it adds value, like telling me words I don't know, allowing me to add margin notes and bookmarks and holding lots of books!
The publishing business seems to be going through quite a transition right now. Small online publishers like Hardshell Word Factory and Treeless Press are nipping at the heels of traditional paper publishers. They are churning out low cost eBooks online, much faster and cheaper than the hardback -> paperback publishing route.
One of the best resources for eBook info is Knowbetter.com. They keep an ongoing list of epublishers, hints&tips, and general news on the ebook industry. Check 'em out - I think you will find what you are looking for.
Good luck with your book.
Here's a possible solution that might make it possible to publish online and limit casual copying. This is just a brainstorm and there're probably a hundred reasons why it's not practical, but here it is:
1. Make the book available only online as an HTML document. Charge the viewer a small (compared to a paper book) one-time fee to view the book any time they wish.
2. Create a special purpose HTML browser for the purpose of reading these books and only allow pages to be served to that browser. Some kind of crypto authentication can be used to authenticate the browser. This browser would be able to view but would have no ability to print, save, or copy/paste. It could be made to port easily by using a cross-platform toolkit.
Advantages: casual copying would be difficult - it would require page-by-page screen dumps and then OCR on each image, not something everyone would want to do to save a buck or two. Individuals might share accounts, but that level of book sharing already occurs with paper books. Widespread account sharing could be detected and disabled.
Disadvantages: Requires user to be on-line while reading (this will become less of an issue in the future with full-time broadband connections), requires special purpose browser to be developed for the various platforms. Ultimately, someone could still distribute pirate copies by doing screen dump/OCR or by cracking the browser authentication.
Timothy Lord, Steve Killen (from freshmeat), and I all live close to one another and have been known to (GASP!) trade copies of books back and forth.
What's worse, we've all been known to patronize dens of print piracy called "used bookstores" and have been spotted skulking around an infamous spot full of books that can be read as freely as commie-style GPL software that we fondly call a "public library."
We are evil!
- Robin
Secondly, you might not want to print anything until it has been edited and proof-read. This isn't just a professional plug from an editor, but every piece of work needs editing and proof reading. There is no way the author can perfect a piece of work no matter how often he or she looks at it.
In essence, there should be no problem, but as I said, make sure that the publishers don't own complete distribution rights to the book before you try and distribute electronically.
If you are trying to publish via PDF online and want to do it securely so you can get paid, try SoftLock or fatbrain's new e-publishing section. It works pretty good. James Ellis PolyMedia Developer
Definitely. I've put up quite a few of my travel stories up on the net. Travel writing is practically impossible to sell and so I haven't even tried, but on the Net, with no advertising other than a few search engine submissions, I've gotten thousands of readers and lots of feedback. Write a really good story, like Philip Greenspun, and you'll get hundreds of thousands.
Philip also explains why he isn't a writer and why the Net is far better medium than dead trees. Excellent reading.
Cheers,
-j.
aliastnb asksFirst off, IANAI (I Am Not An Author) but my Significant Other is. So I think I can contribute something here.
: "I'm currently about halfway through writing my first novel.
: After the release of books to the net by such people as Stephen King
Stephen King is a Johnny-come-lately to the world of electronic publishing. There are several publishers already out there that cater to electronic/on-line books, such as New Concepts, EBooksOnThe.NET, Diskus, and so on. Some of them have been in business for several years, and there are many authors who have their works published by these companies. Also realize that the so-called phenomenal success King had with that (60 page) book was mainly because they gave it away. I'll bet the sales receipts would show a lot fewer than half a million copies from paying customers.
: I'm wondering if it might be worth my while to cut out the middleman,
: ie the publisher and release the book online.
The difficulies you'll face with this are:
I know of some authors who have "gone it alone" and one or two of these have had some modest success. Others have not. YMMV.
: ...I'd like to be able to get some sort of reward for my efforts,
: ie minimise the amount of unpaid-for copies made of the book
Then I would recommend you hunt around for a good electronic publisher.
: and release it to a multi-platform environment - not just Windows
: software but Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc. Are these goals mutually exclusive
No. Most "e-books" are released in HTML or PDF format, which are readable anywhere (just about). There's a palm pilot format too, but that doesn't strike me as a good platform for serious readers; and there's the Rocket Book Reader, but that requires a M$ system and the format is closed and proprietary. The new Crusoe based web pads will IMHO be far better at this sort of thing (and if they are wildly successful, may well create a huge new market for electronic books). Besides, they're based on Linux :-)
Many of the electronic publishers are also dipping their toes in print-on-demand technology. In this way, you could get the best of both worlds. There have also been many (apocryphal) stories going around about big (dead tree) publishers picking up e-published authors after said authors become successful and have a good book or two out there.
- Pat Murphy
-- This
I can't help thinking that a book published on the web that was not about the web, or about computers in general; would have about as much chance of being "seen", as a garage band being discovered from Napster. Like one of the above posters said, the publishers do not have the market on trees, they have the ability to advertise and get your book into peoples faces as they walk into Barnes and Noble. Any similar approach on the web would require one to generate much spam, bad karma, and annoying banner ads.
I think it is a very perplexing issue, as to how one would properly advertise a product above "cult" status in the internet world yet keep the spam and ABA (annoying banner adds)out of the picture.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Hey, I'd buy it if it seems good, but you're not exactly approaching the right audience if you're actually looking to be compensated for your work. He might champion the community, but why do you think Tim O'Reilly so rarely releases a book in HTML format? It's incredibly easy to transform documents which comform to the DTD they use into HTML. Who wouldn't want to be able to get a complete HTML version of all the ORA titles that they own for easy searching? It's obvious that people would want this, it's so easy to do, so it makes you wonder if Tim doesn't really trust the community not to pass his dough-winning products the way they do with MP3s. Where's the love, Tim?
Oh yeah, and when you make that eBook, an MS Reader version would be good, too, 'cause it rocks the house on PDAs.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I posted this in the thread on Metallica, it applies here as well.. I would add to the below the following - A recipricative editorial process - you edit three pieces of similar length in a similar genre and in return three people edit yours. You give feedback, those with consistently high feedback (and who begin totransform non-selling authors to selling authors) can begin to charge for their services (ie a percentage of profits, or flat fee...). Similar relationships can be worked out for art work- although it may be less relevant to online versions...
Here is my original statement in regards to music, replace music with books, Record companies with publishers etc.
Lars mentioned the single download of a nonsigned artist, and the fact that he feels that a small band could never make it without the record industry. However, with a reputation manager, and shared interest manager, his point could quickly be invalidated. Ie, I go through a slection chart listing my likes, dislikes, yada yada, just as is done with amazon. Then, each song can be rated by the individual similar to slashdot, with an added field for additional comments (and possibly multiple rating categories.) This would allow a method for finding quality music by relatively unknowns. Giving them the full power of network effects/pulbicity without the costs.
LetterRip
You are making some common mistakes here. The first is that cutting out the middleman is a good thing. Ask most any shareware author, or someone in a local band, and find out how much money there really is in getting people to buy something from an unknown. Getting something distributed outside of your own meager means is a huge, huge boon.
Second, there is a reason that publishers reject manuscripts. Sometimes they are wrong. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance being a famous example of a book that was rejected dozens of times before becoming a bestseller. But often they are right. Just because you think something is great and worth reading doesn't mean that it is. You are asking web surfers to be your editor, and to read your story with the foreknowledge that it may be downright lousy. This can work, if you are very good at what you do, just as many bands act as their own producers, but most people need someone else in the loop, especially early on.
Third, you need the experience of going through a true editing and publishing process in order to gain experience. Playing music in your bedroom is completely different than trying to put a CD together. In effect, you're just going to put a tape recorder in your bedroom and give the result to the world.
Finally, the web is becoming very full of garbage and this is making people cynical. There are endless home pages of poetry from high school girls. There are sites for pseudo-companies, complete with faux press releases and corporate titles, put together by some junior high kids who decide to put together a software developer. A site with some guy hawking his Great American Unpublished Novel isn't going to garner much confidence or attention.
Attempting to get published is still the way to go.
First off, I don't believe that this technology is mature enough to adapt to a narrative format.
Consider that the greatest volume of information published on the internet is non-fiction. This sort of information lends itself to being categorized, cross-referenced, indexed, tabled, and linked. It makes it very easy for the audience to learn the information that they are interested in, while skipping whatever they like. I think of it as do-it-yourself dynamic content.
On the other hand, non-fiction works are, by their nature, narrative documents. It seems to me that this is fine for short stories, but for a longer work it gets more complicated.
The internet seems to me to be a form of short attention span theater. We get our information in small, easily digestible bites, and move on to the next thing that interests us. Certainly a novel requires a greater attention span than this.
Also, novels effect their readers much differently. When I curl up with a good book I find that my body physically reacts to the temperament of the book that I'm reading. Tense pages may cause me to curl up into a little ball, while relaxed one's cause me to stretch out. This interaction with the book would seem to be difficult to reproduce here at my desk.
Personally, the e-texts I have tried to read have failed to keep my attention. Not because they weren't any good, but because there are so many reminders of the other things I have to do right here in front of me, or because I became uncomfortable. (I recall that my very last e-text outing left me with a headache, a backache, and a sore ass)
At first, however, I thought it might have been the content that bothered me. A quick trip to the store to purchase an unfinished Dickens book seemed to prove that wrong.
These are just a few considerations you should make for you reader. Perhaps some people out there are perfectly happy to spend 2 hours reading your narrative on their computer screen, but I'd like to spend them on my couch.
On the other hand, there are some considerations you should make as an author.
If you choose to publish your work without the support of a traditional publishing house you lose the benefit of a great deal of experience. Most importantly, you lose access to an impartial editor. I've put down books that are poorly edited again, and never picked them up again. In the worst cases there are authors I will never read again simply due to a series of dumb editing mistakes.
If you don't desire success, or fame, then some of these other things are much less important, but a publisher also offers you marketing, promotion, publicity, and sales management. It can be a lot of work for an author to do.
I think the best approach I have seen so far is to publish in a dead tree format, but to make the first chapter (or three) available on line. I think this is an especially wonderful idea for new authors, who may otherwise have a hard time convincing readers that they have something interesting to say.
Previously published authors may be able to get away with putting new or derivative works on the internet, but I doubt any new author will see a significant audience for his work. Would you commit to spending an hour or two a night in front of your computer to read something by an author you've never heard of when you could be reading slashdot and playing Team Fortress II (or whatever) instead?
-geek@large
The publication issue seems to boil down to a couple of major questions:
(1) how much exposure do you want to get (remembering that this determines income)?
(2) is your target audience for your novel more demographical likely to be Web denizens?
The first question pretty much explains itself. Like it or not, traditional publishing houses are mature businesses, and they probably know a few things about promotion. They could make you more of a household name if they are feeling evangelical about what you have to say.
The second question deals with who you write for. I know a lot of people who read a lot and never go on the Internet (mostly older people). Are your ideas the sort that would appeal to this audience? You also have to factor in the newness of the online publishing industry, and the additional trouble the non-technical have to go through to read you. This may be worth doing some research on for your target audience.
The safe way to go seems to be to do traditional publishing first (if you get the opportunity), and save the online pub for last resort (or the second book if thinking optimistically). Just my two cents.
-L
One of the very first self-published books I ran across on the web was Halcyon Days: Interviews with Classic Computer and Video Game Programmers. It was released back in 1997. I remember reading about it in a number of places, including Wired. It might be worthwhile to talk to the author and see how it turned out.
Maybe there are other examples of this kind?
Alright, as it happens my parents are authors so I grew up kind of "in this world."
A few realistic facts:
(1) Steven King is a "household name." Thats why he was able to sell copeis of a novel sight-unseen in an encrypted file. You are unlikely to be able to do the same.
(2) As a new author, you need to build a reputation. The only way to do that is to reach the audiance and youa re much more likely to reach that audiance with the respurces of a book publisher pushing your book/
(3) As a new author, frankly, you're unlikely to have had gold flow from your pen. Sad, and humbling but true. A publisher does much mroe then print books. By working with a major experienced publisher you will also get to work with an experienced editor. Even if you have the skills and experience, it is VERY difficult to get enough distance from your own labors to do a decent editing job. My folks have been writing for 40 years and they still don't edit their own stuff. (Since they both are quite experienced they take turns, one writes and the other edits.)
(4) Its worth noting that there are a few web-based publishing houses that have spring up specificly to publish eBooks. In these cases, they handle the download and charging off people's credit cards and send you a percentage (usually better then a typical print royalty.) You might consider these in order to avoid the hassles of billign and distribution yourself.
(5) IF you stll think you want to try to 'self-publish', then for a new author I would suggest share-ware format. Publish a few chapters (enough to get the reader hooked) as a free download and make people send you a check or other payment to get the rest.
(6) Lastly, but probably most important, don't expect to make much money off this no matter how you do it. A first novel is for proving you have talent and an audiance. Very very few authors ever make much money at all, and of thsoe that do almost none make it on their first book. If you build a loyal readership, that puts you in the position to negotiate better deals and, if youare both very talented and very lucky, maybe someday make decent money off it. In general, if money is your goal, go into something else.
Taking myself as an example, I'm relatively unknown. When I wrote Linux Administration: A Beginners Guide, I had no way of getting anyone to visit my web site and download my book unless I spent a lot of time and money doing the advertising. In the end, it was better that I let my publisher take care of that. Being placed on the shelves has given me a lot more visibility than I could have gotten anywhere else. (Short of a Slashdot review... Hint hint.
Final note: If you are doing a technical book, don't forget that in a situation where the reader is trying to do the task that you're guiding them through, having a hardcopy is crucial. If the OS is crashing or their viewer is being a pain, or they simply don't have the screen space to both view your book and do the work, having the book in electronic format does them no good.
Once a few more big names go electronic with PDA type devices, we'll start seeing some more interesting options. Until then... Well, recycle old books! (Please, never throw away an old book. Donate it to your local library. At the very least, they can sell it at their used book sale and get some much needed money out of it!)
-Steve
and don't put the last chapter online... if it were a great suspense novel, that could work... let them read everything up until the chapter tha puts everything together for them for free... When they're hooked and want to know how it concludes, and click for the next page, they're presented with an ordering page... make it like $10 to receive the book and access to the last page online, or $8 to get access to just the last page online. With the price differential so close, people will probably just buy the book.
While this might not be suitable for you (e.g. if you feel you have to make money from it), I'd like to see a book released this way:
Have people visiting a web-site submit their name/address.
(Snail)Mail them a username/pass for the download site of the book. Encourage them to send you money.
Keep track of how much people send you and post the amount on the your web-site. Keep stats for how many downloads/username and how much money/username.
I would snail mail the user/pass because I believe people would feel more accountable for downloading your work.
This isn't the best (and probably not even a good) way to make money on your book. I just think it would make a great experiment to see how much people value the product through voluntary contributions.
I believe many people will pay you a few bucks for an online copy book if you make it easy to pay (and cheap, or even let people pay what they think it's worth).
The trouble with some of these pay sites is they ask for so much info which I feel is irrelevant.
Just credit card number, amount to donate/give to you, name, expiry date. That should be enough.
If you make it too difficult or scary (privacy issues), people may think twice about paying you.
I feel for software/books/etc people can always find a way NOT to pay, or at least they pay but the money doesn't get to you anyway. So just leave a channel open for payment- so that no matter how people get hold of your stuff, they can pay you.
Cheerio,
Link.
An interesting experiment would be to publish it online for free, but offer printed versions for sale .. possibly with a copyright that limits physical reproduction of the free electronic form to only "fair use" type scenarios -- ie, you can't print it and sell it, but you can print it to read it. An affordable way to distribute to the print books is to find one of the new one-off publishers (can't find a URL at the moment) that can fill orders as they come in. The only thing that needs to be printed traditionally is the cover -- the whole process is a lot cheaper and less risky than printing a whole ton of books before the orders come in. The only trick then is promotion... Which is all traditional publishers are good for.
I don't think the analogy between books and music should be taken that far.
When an MP3 is distributed, in addition to the convenience of listening to it on a computer or portable digital audio device, one can cheaply get back to the original medium by burning a CD (with a little or a lot of quality loss depending on the data rate, etc.).
The electronic conveniences (like searchability) are lesser for a novel, but are quite important for a technical manual. And getting back to the original medium (by printing) is expensive compared to buying a mass market paperback and doesn't have the feel of a bound and well sized book.
Electronic publishing is a nice extra convenience for those who want to research your work (find the first mention of a specific character, index your book looking for neologisms, or any of a thousand other things that are vastly more convenient (or only feasible) by electronic means.
If you're writing a novel (or anything that will be read serially or by a non-technical audience), paper is the way to go. It is the preferred format of the audience, and is where most of the profits come from.
There are a number of things you could do to publish online, but there are several problems with each.
You could simply publish the book to a web page in the regular manner, but that would negate making any money on it.
Another option is to do what Steven King did, and publish it in some manner that lets people download the text after they pay.
This also creates a problem. Steven King did it for the publicity. If you are trying to make money as an author (King already has loads, and can afford a flop), you want to reach the widest audence possible. Online publishing doesn't do this.
Then comes the problems of downloading anything over the internet:
1. Paying for it. You need a credit card. Most people do have them, but some don't, and some (myself included) don't want them.
2. What happens if something happens right near the end of the download? You would need protection to allow a person to download it again, but only if necessary. Not everyone has cable or DSL. My local phone provider (Name withheald to protect the guilty) can't even provide an acceptable voice connection for more than an hour or so (Not Internet voice, dial your friend's phone number and talk voice). Cable and DSL are just becomming available where I live.
3. There are a lot of people who don't get online, and wouldn't think of looking for YOUR book when they are online. I know of no 'Online Bookstores' that sell digital books. (Yes I know there are several that you can order paper books, but I've never heard of one that lets you BUY digital copies).
4. Piracy. We all know just how easy it is to copy and distribute anything in a digital format. Placing your book online with no paper version would give people no incentive to buy it. They would just copy it. Orson Scott Card places part of his books on his website, but the paper version is still at the bookstore.
5. I for one hate sitting and reading the screen. I can't lie back in bed and read my computer monitor. I can't take it with me in the car easily. Laptops mitigate this somewhat, but laptops are still more unwieldy than a book, and more valuable. I can leave a book, walk away and come back. If it isn't there I'm annoyed, but I can get another for under ten dollars (paperback). A laptop is a little more difficult to replace.
The internet is not ubiquitous enough to consider publishing to it exclusively. Steven King can do it, because he already has huge amounts of money. It is likely that he is doing the online thing because he wants to sell more of his other books, not because he wants to sell the novella he put online. It's all kinds of free publicity. An unknown author trying to do the same thing, after it's already been done, won't make news at all.
There is a civil war coming in the United States. Remember which side has most of the guns
Your chances of making much money on your first novel are probably already fairly slim. If you write off all chance of making any money on your first book, and focus on getting people to read it, you have the potential (if people like your work) of developing a market for future books.
If you do this right, you can also get the feedback that you need to develop your writting style and make your future work better.
My advice is to focus on finishing the book, get some help editing it, and put as much work as you can into making it a good book.
Meanwhile, have someone else work on the technical details. Tell them what you want and have them make it happen.
What you want is to release it on-line, for free, in many formats. You want to make it easy for people to use it in whatever manner they want, and to encourage them to distribute it and share it with their friends.
You'll need to make it available for download in about 20 different formats, and to set up a web page inviting feedback to the author.
If you do these things, and you write a good book, you will have no trouble selling your next one, and having enough people know that they like your work enough to buy a book.
On the other hand, if you write a book that nobody like, you won't make any money this way. It's all a matter of how much confidence you have in your work. Ask yourself if you think that people would be likely to tell their friends they should read your book.
If your doctor were going to operate on you, would you prefer him to use a screwdriver or a scalpel? Most of us would prefer him to use the appropriate (depends on whether you're organic or cybernetic) tool. The tools have evolved for the application and don't cross over easily to new applications. Neither tool would work well in adjusting the response time of a web server.
So what application are we discussing here? Reading? The "words on paper" tool has evolved over the last few centuries to support the "reading" application - which includes several unstated but required features such as "in a comfortable chair," "propped up on my lap," and "in a warm incandescent light." Clearly, few electronic books meet those user requirements. Clearly, we are talking about using a "book" for some application other than what it was designed for. If we want "words on phosphor" to replace "words on paper" then we will also have to change some of the other requirements of "reading."
The application "enjoying a good story" has different requirements from "reading" and both differ from "locating parameter info for API." "Reading" is assumed when we're discussing the use of "words on paper" but electronic media including "words on phosphor," "books on audio tape," "DVD movies" and other multimedia presentations are distinctly different tools and should be used with applications other than "reading." Which has been a very round-a-bout way of saying we need to have a common frame of reference when we compare paper and electronic distribution of a collection of words - what's the intended audience and what's the intended application? These are vastly different and have little overlap.
----
VP Unmarketing, Product Confusion and Linux Distributions
VP Unmarketing, Product Confusion and Linux Distributions
Megadodo Publications, Ursa Minor Beta
You can talk about the wonderful feel of cracking the binding of a new book, and all such things, and you may be right, but I think it's more simple than that. I think it's just physically easier to read large amounts of text from a book than off a monitor. I don't know whether it's because of neck position, eye strain, or something else, but I think most people just don't enjoy reading novels on monitors. I am a hardcore Stephen King fan, and I got his online book, only to find I couldn't pay attention to it on the screen. When it comes out in "dead tree", I'll be the first to drop the money for it.
Am I saying there's no point to releasing books online? Hell no. If I want to reference a passage from a paper document, I have to hope it's in the index or else page through it. On a computer I can hit Ctrl-F and be there in seconds. If I want to quote it, I can copy and paste. (Assuming it's not in one of the unusable e-book programs.)
So the bottom line is that online books are extremely useful, but pose no threat to the sale of paper books.
grep -ri 'should work'
wow, a very cool service. This would be all I would ask for anyway. If it's in books in print and Ingram's database, it's trivial for any bookstore to order copies. So if people like it, the spreading word will translate into real sales. You can tout it on our home page and point people at amazon for instant ordering. I'm really quite impressed, this is publishing in the internet age. Or would be if they were offering electronic versions for sale. :)
Unfortunately, they require that you sign over exclusive rights to the work for print, electronic, and subsidiary publication. The royalty schedule seems reasonable to me (20% for print 50% for electronic-how does this compare with traditional publisher contracts?) but that's more than I'd personally want to give up. Free software bias and all that.
Publisher's co-op anyone? How much do these on-demand print-and-bind machines cost?
Don't worry about fancy copy protection mechanism. Don't limit your consumer base by only releasing in a format like PDF that can only be read on a desktop PC.
Sell subscriptions to your book. Release a chapter every week, or every month. Release the first chapter or two for free. The free chapters give people a chance to decide if they really want to read this or not and hopefully gets them hooked.
If you charged $5 for the subscription and released a chapter per month I'm sure plenty of people would sign up. I would!
I like to read books on my PDAs and my laptop. I'll never buy an on-line book in an proprietary file format. I need to be able to convert it to any format, perhaps obscure, that is appropriate for me. I also need to know that in 10 years I'll still be able to read the file. Some brain dead format like PDF or e-book might not be around in 10 years and the software from today may not run on computing platforms available in the future. Plain text, xml, or HTML are nice.
I've bought ever CD-ROM that O'Reilly has put out. They got it right the first time. Just put the books in HTML (doesn't cost a lot in technology investment for them) and the readers will convert it to whatever format they need.
i agree that ideally consumers should not have to pay for such information. however, i feel that in nearly all cases creators need to be compensated (not always with $$$, tho...) for their work. in some circles (free software, linux, etc.) people do not produce with the intent of reaping financial rewards. however, when somebody writes a book they generally are looking to be rewarded financially. when the creator is expecting (and perhaps depending on) financial compensation then i think that it is justified that somebody should pay them. if there were some way for them to get paid without the consumer having to do it...great! however, i don't see a way to do that.
Take the case of "The Truth Machine", which was initially published for free on the Web from galley proofs. The author collected edits and suggestions from the site, friends, and well-known authors. Many revisions and months of work by a publicist led to a book deal with a large publisher and some time on the best-seller list. I understand the movie will be out soon. Bottom line, the Web is a great marketing tool and writing/publishing books is a punishing business. Unknown authors can use hard work and the Web to help break through.
I agree w/ you on that. nuff said.
-- 100% MS-Free as of 4-4-1999, 11:47:38 PST. "The lapdance is always better when the stripper is cryin'" Free Kevin,
(I was going to post this as an "AskSlashdot"...but here's as good of a place as any....)
The problem with the original question is that it's posted as an either/or option. Unfortunately, we deal with a mix of electronic and printed documents -- and you're like me you've paid for some of them in both formats.
My "AskSlashdot" is this:
I'll buy new documents in electronic *searchable* format when I can. For example, O'Reilly's Networking Bookshelf is easily worth the price I paid since I can now search it -- and everything else I have -- easily.
Yet, I have a four foot wide stack of technical documents and books that just isn't going to come with me on each plane trip. I'm not going to get rid of them -- they are still valuable -- but I have this creeping feeling that they would be more useful if they were searchable all the time...not just when I think of a specific text.
The available tools for capturing paper and converting it into searchable PDFs is costly, and is geared toward corporations that can justify the costs by the number of users. To me, a per-use licence of Adobe's Capture --
Adobe Capture - Features
-- is just not cost effective.
If the document is already a text document -- even if it's in some wordprocessor I don't use -- generating PDF files is easy and cheap;
Print a document to a Postscript file, or create one. For example a simple text document is trivial;
Convert the resulting Postscript file to PDF;
Converting a paper document to PDF is also easy. Just scan the image and use tiff2ps or jpeg2ps to create the Post script file. The only problem is that the resulting PDF is a bitmap image and isn't searchable.
So, if you want it done, you're back to paying Adobe for Capture or some other nearly as expensive method.
Tell me I'm wrong...please!
Other references: PDF utilities on Freshmeat.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
until one person buys the damn thing, cuts and pastes it into one document and puts it on freenet.
I do a lot of reading in bed. My PC is at the other end of the house. Naturally, the bed and the PC don't go weel together. I wonder if you've considered the palm DOC format or ISilo format? These formats, especially DOC, allow documents to be loaded on a PDA like the Palm platform or Pocket PC platform. These platforms are much friendlier in bed and make your document much more accessible(? OK--I can't spell!).
Try "open sourcing" your text in a way that would allow people to interact with it such that you build a community of people around the book.
Then, when people buy the book, they aren't really buying the book... they are buying the community that comes with the book, a community that has one precious commodity that no pirated copy has: your personal involvement.
Yes, you will lose some revenue to people who don't care to interact with a book community but instead want something quick to read and throw away. But what you get in exchange is a more satisfying interaction with and greater loyalty from your core readers... and potential support for the next book you roll out.
*** BLATANT PLUG FOLLOWS ***
If you're interested in the idea of "open source" texts, please email me. Yes, we're a startup, and yes, this is our core value proposition.
If you expect to make much money from your publication, I'd go dead-tree. It's just so much easier to copy-control, and nicer to read (I have a Sony Trinitron 17" monitor and for normal tasks like web browsing, I keep the brightness as low as it will go, so maybe I'm not the best sample here)
/. book review.
You can, optionally, put the first few chapters online, unless it's like a 'Tom Clancy' (Or whoever is writing for him) book which tends to be 75% building up to the action and 25% action, i.e. vivid descriptions of how terrorists are building and shipping a nuclear bomb for the first three quaters of the book which aren't that exciting but you have to read.
If you're writing a technical book that has a CD in the back, or a technical book costing more than, say, $45, you could put a HTML copy on a CD in the back, so as to be easily searchable.
As for self-publishing, I'd advise against it. No offense meant but you have to remember: It might suck.
In summary, for a novel, I suggest going to a proper publisher. Optionally publish a few chapters online. If possible, as a follow-up, send it for a
Just my $0.02
Michael Tandy
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
You submit your book to them in a specified format. They get it an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) and make it available through distribution that can be ordered through almost any bookstore.
They print it on demand, collect from the bookstore, and pay you a royalty on each book sold... better than that in most conventional book contracts.
It's free. If you want value-added services like proofreading, editing, more illustrations than the standard package provides, you pay for them,
Getting people to buy it is YOUR problem. Presumably you don't need Web-based marketing explained to you.
The science fiction/fantasy writer Piers Anthony has already made his entire list of out of print books available through one of the two, I can't remember which.
Of course I'm thinking of doing a book this way.
Tech Public Policy stuff
At fatbrain.com there is a site called eMatter or MightyWords that allows you to post your book in PDF format (thus cross-platform). Then people pay to download it, and you get 50% royalties automatically. Although the normal fatbrain site is only technical books, the eMatter site covers any type of book. You can generate PDF documents for free no problem, check out Adobe site. Also, if you buy a PocketPC, get the PocketPC SDK and you can publish your own books in the much nicer ClearType format for eBook, etc. (that is how stephen King and the others have published). eMatter would definitely carry your book. Then I dunno if bn.com or others would carry...
fatbrain's ematter lets you publish an electronic edition of your book. You set the price, and when someone buys one from them, they take half the money and send you the rest, making a 50% royalty rate for the author.
They'll take Acrobat, Word, Postscript, or flat text files. For pages that look nice and can be viewed on multiple platforms, including Windows, without putting any money in Bill Gates' pocket, I'm sure Acrobat will fit the bill.
Bob DuCharme
www.snee.com/bob
A simple example from a government office should illustrate my point: a pamphlet was being sold for about $10 via the mail, but wasn't getting many orders. The administration decided to put the text online for free, and the next year, they had ten times as many sales of the paper document.
I myself am writing a book on MP3s (very slowly, mind you) and have published the first two chapters online in HTML format. As I write chapters, I'll be posting them to my website and then when I'm all done I'm going to sell a print version. Fundamentally, it's going to be a while before a sufficiently compelling non-paper solution comes into existance.
For another example of this in action, take Neal Stephenson's "In the Beginning was the Command Line" which he released as ASCII text to the Net for free redistribution and simultaneously put up for sale in bookstores. I can't speak for the sales of the book, but I know that I bought a copy as did quite a few of my friends.
So release your book online in HTML format and sell it in paper version as well. Don't worry, if your content is good, you'll find an audience. =) And remember, it's not about minimizing the number of people who read your book without paying for it; it's about maximizing the amount of money you make. There's a big difference there; those two goals may very well be in opposition to each other.
David E. Weekly
David E. Weekly
Code / Think / Teach / Learn
h4x0r for
Whether to publish it electronically, or in print really depends on the type of book that it is you wrote. If you wrote a book about pretty much anything involving computers linux, then yeah I would just go straight to online publishing.
However, if you are writing a real serious book, then the only way the book will become profitable, and the only way you may get some recognition for the book is if you publish it the real way, with a publisher.
Yes, probably, I could have got some of it published. But it would be a lot of hassle, and would have meant going through a process of being rejected again and again (which is not very good for the self confidence), and I would have been lucky to earn more than a few hundred pounds as a result. Very, very few people make a living out of writing fiction. The way I write it, because I'm not under pressure and don't have deadlines, I enjoy writing. It isn't a job. And I have plenty of time to write software, which I also enjoy and which pays far better.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Acrobat reader which is all need for this purpose is available for - lets see 1. Windows (all) 2. Mac 3. Linux 4. HP 5. AIX 6. Solaris 7. BeOS 8. Java - the list grows
Unfortunately, this leaves out most handheld computers such as my Palm IIIx. What if I want to read my copy while I'm on a park bench, on a bus, or on the can? Also, it leaves out any emerging free operating system that can't run the proprietary Acrobat binaries. (There are truly Free viewers for the PDF file format that work on many of these platforms and could be ported to all bust the worst handhelds, but it's likely they wouldn't be able to support a security-by-obscurity access control method such as Acrobat Merchant without breaking it at the same time.)
I totally agree with part of this statement. And if someone is really concerned with free copies floating around, they shouldn't publish it digitally, and that's that.
On the other hand, in 10-20 years when that's how everyone publishes things, an author who does that will find themselves with no exposure or distribution. It will be considered quaint and old fashioned, and the author will be considered to be a bit of a crank. Sorry to burst your bubble, but publication of everything is moving online, and copyright is dead.
I repeat... Copyright is dead, get over it!
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
That would give those on-line-content hooligans a run for their money. ;>
Everything's been downhill since the TRS-80
Anybody can get a "vanity" book published on the internet.
If it's in paper, and actually carried by bookstores, it at least has the verification that SOMEONE read it and didn't think it was total crap.
I know, everyone's taste is different. My point is just that anyone can publish on the internet, there's nothing to set you apart from the next guy and his self-published 50,000 words of crap.
One of the many things I hate. thingsihate.org
Ok, this article got me thinking, how could you make it so that a web-page could contain text, which COULDNT just be 'right-click, save as'ed, and how to make it still small to view the page.
Then I had an idea.. it's immensely horrible, but it's an idea.. it's not very practical, but solves some problems.
Generate a set of 60 or so small 2 bit images, for the letters, and punctuation you need. load them into one frame, so that the browser is liable to keep them cached.
Then, when wanting to show a page, you generate s (unfortunately quite huge) HTML file with all the images used instead of letters. Problem, it'd be simple to just save the source, and pipe it through sed or something. Answer, dynamically replace the origional image in each position with the correct ones, through some horrificly complex bit of java script. This way the source you see doesnt match what's actually there. You just have the problem of huge HTML files to solve... and in the end it'd probably be easier to just make a single image for a page of text, and hope most people couldn't be bothered saving a few hundred images (and maybe run an OCR program over them)
Like all ideas... it's crap, but it might just work... not practical though.
Oh well, back to the old drawing board...
The quote, "Anything worth selling once is worth selling three times" is from Larry Niven as part of his "Niven's Laws"
Those who would trade freedom for security will not have, and are not deserving of, either - Thomas Jefferson
Checkout BookFace.com. Peter Mattis (of GIMP fame) is the CTO of Boookface, btw.
The question is, even with the net, even with the ability to sell online copies and to sell, online, bound copies, do you think you can get enough attention, and is your writing good enough, to make money. If the writing is really good, you might be able to pull it off. However, a book label will lend you its brand name, one of which, unlike Stephan King, you don't have. I'd think you'd be more successfull -- at least for your first book -- going the book label route. Sherman Alexie might be a better example than Stephan King. Say he was 10 years younger, and had just published his first one or two books. Having just published The Business of Fancydancing and I Would Steal Horses, I bet he could use his website, fallsapart.com (gratuitous plug), to sell online and bound copies of Old Shirts & New Skins and First Indian on the Moon, and do quite well at it. But Sherman Alexie is an amazing writer -- one whose reputation and hard work creates his own brand name. A lesser writer could probably do the same, but with significantly less success -- and would probably be better off using a publisher.
So I'd say you probably should go the other-published route for the first book or two, then decide if you think you're good enough, hard working enough, and lucky enough to go the self-publishing route. However, if you do decide to self-publish, I'm behind you all the way. Self-publishing is wonderful and fun! And remember, there are some publishing collectives, if you don't want to go it alone, but don't want to support corporate branding either.
If you relese it online, as we all know, it there will be alot of free copies getting passed round. But depending on the price I might work or fail.
I think that if you sell them dirt cheap (~$2), then alot of people wouldn't mind paying for it. But if you charge too much, then people will just not bother. After all, it's isn't a real book, which is another point. Not everyone wants to sit in front of a CRT and read a text. Even if the did spend an A4 relm or t just printing it off, I'm not sure that many people would like to read it off big A4 sheets, probably heald together with a staple. To many people, I think it would be easyier to just buy the book.
But who knows, if it's a good seller, then people might want the online version. Since it would be easy to get over the next, and would cost cheaper.
So, I guess the best way is to both and see what happens. Should be very interesting. Good luck.
I read all my books online. I suggest you do the same. Sig11, signing out.
-o I'm not monotheist; It's obvious I'm a queer. o-
Lots have been said by now about the issue, but to me, the real challenge is not "paper publishing vs on line publishing" but "writing for paper vs writing for the web". A new medium (and the net IS a new medium for publishing), demands that writers rethink the way texts are displayed and accessed. The only way to compete with paper books is by not competing at all. The challenge is how to offer a new way of reading and accessing texts. If any writer wants to keep the reader's atention on the net, they will have to offer a lot more than the typical clickety click, next page format. Why would anyone trade the comfort of an armchair with an amusing book on their laps for the boring endless scrolling of an electronic text on their screens? The only way to get readers to be interested in texts published on line is by offering such texts in a fashion that has nothing in common with the paper book. Yes, readers will still be able to print the files and get to read them off line, but they will miss the thrill of the on line version: interaction, link interactivity, animated text or whatever it is that the writer decided to put in their design. On line writers should think of their texts more as a complete work, including design and display than as a simple gathering of words. In the not so far future I imagine on line writers closer to movie directors (giving their texts not only an aesthetic related to the usage of the words but also an aesthetic in the way such texts are displayed and accessed).
Is it too obvious that this is my first post? Nice display NOT! I accidentally clicked on submit instead of Preview and I came accross this massively horrible bold text. I truly apologize for it.
If you buy the material, you should get it in whatever format you want. This is why record companies are evil. "Oh, you want it on tape too?...that'll be $14 please."
"E Pluribus Unix"
As the author of an online book, I'd like to point out some realistic issues that are getting missed in all the discussion of generalities: (1) Dead tree versus digital? It depends entirely on what kind of book it is. Nobody wants to read a novel off of a computer screen _or_ off of single-sided 8-1/2x11 computer output. On the other hand, slashdot is a perfect example of reading material that nobody would ever want to access on wood pulp. (2) Regardless of reality, publishers are terrified of losing control. They are not willing to let non-copy-protected digital versions coexist with dead tree versions. (3) Digital publishing and print-to-order publishing are very immature industries. My impression so far is that the work I'd have to do to go with one of the commercial nontraditional publishers would be a waste, because they'd probably go out of business or change business models within six months.
Find free books.
I just use the Gnu-FDL (that's Free Document License from your friends at GNU) and put my novel up for grabs. You can read it, take it, modifiy it, whatever. As an unknown author, your work is only as good as others say it is. Get an audience first. Then print on demand. You can check out what I'm up to with the Open Story initiative at the above URL.
Cybercosim.com "An Open-Story Universe for Sci-Fi Writers"
You can use adobe acrobat to publish your book, all of the os's have adobe readers for them, offering the book after the credit card is entered is the standard, and the comment about them giving away the electronic copy is no different then someone giving a book they purchased to a friend to read, I do it all the time, primarily because the cost of the book more than likely covers the percentage of times that's actually done. This form of publishing offers you the ability to test response with out spending too much money, go for it........
Unix Diva for web space http://thesankofegroup.com for business recources http://www.business-to-business-web-services
Check out Qvadis for programs to edit and convert regular text to Palm DOC format on the PC (Express Reader DX), and for programs to read your e-book on the PalmPilot (Express Reader GT).
Qvadis also has a huge Library of free e-books for download to the PalmPilot, and other excellent features, such as the Palm e-Book-of-the-Month.
Yup, agree with this. E-Books are great with PDAs, especially the PalmPilot. My favorite PalmPilot DOC reader is Qvadis Express Reader Pro. They also make utilities for converting your regular text to Palm format.