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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.
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.
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>
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.
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
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.
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...
This reminds me of a story by RMS.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
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.
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
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
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.
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++
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.
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!
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
$30,000 or $99 through Iuniverse.com and your distributers are Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble Online, and any bookstore that orders from the Ingram catalog in whatever size runs they want. The books are printed on demand and available as quickly as most other books. Limited to 6" x 9" paperback format, but that's not much of a restriction. You may not be on the shelves in the local Borders by default, but no other publishing method guarantees that either. I've seen several of the titles published in this program on endcaps in my local B&N.
LetterJ
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
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.
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.
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?
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
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 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.
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
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.)