Slashdot Mirror
The Ease of Publishing an Ebook
ISoldat53 writes "This article describes how easy it is to publish an ebook. The author details the costs to the writer for a major publishing house to publish a book and the savings to the writer by self-publishing. He looks to make the same profit selling the book at $2.99 on Amazon as he would going though a traditional publishing process. The book is formatted only for the Kindle right now, but the author explains how it can be converted for other readers, since there's no DRM."
But more profitable
is something that publishes add too.
Important things a publisher provides:
1) Editing
2) Marketing
3) Cover and format
4) Industry connections
to name a few. It's possible to publish without a publisher for sure, but it's also easy to make your own band, doesn't mean you'll be rich and famous.
Other autors publish already publish their stuff as ebooks for years: http://www.michaelastackpole.com/?p=1073 (Ok, that link is just half a year old, but he does it for years now...) A lot of Stackpoles blog posts revolve around autors creating their own ebooks.
I notice he talks about controlling the book forever, so he would also like a copyright term of infinity?
Seems that getting news of your new book onto the front page of Slashdot will help enormously with sales.
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Not that I've read all of the article, but 2.99 seems too cheap. I mean, there is a correlation between price and perceived value, and selling a novel this cheap at release doesn't seem like a good idea.
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
The fact that he can publish on more than 1 device doesn't have much to do with DRM. DRM is about keeping it on a device once someone purchases it.
Things like this will always help small writers due to the cost differential, but for large authors piracy would probably be rampant -- I know I would read more if I didn't have to pay for the content.
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FTA: "Publishers also do promotion and marketing, though I haven't seen much of this for ebooks. Drawing on our fan bases, we sent out 260 advance reading copies of 'Draculas'..."
The undercurrent to all these "internet for the win" stories is the same. This guy's primary advantage is that he's succeeded with major book publishers in the past. This gave him marketing, promotion, name recognition, fan base, contacts with Amazon and Huffington post to get the promotions for this project. Once you have the major-industry name recognition, then it's relatively easy to spin off and use the price advantages of the Internet to do your own thing.
However, the vast majority of EBook self-publishers will not have this advantage, and will not have any chance of leveraging the same success or payoff for the last two month of this guy's labor (which is the entirety it took him to co-write and market this book). In addition, it's quite likely that there's a limited window of opportunity for this -- as book publishers become aware of the "spin-off" effect, it's quite likely that they'll start demanding more restrictive career-long contracts from new up-and-coming authors (same as how the music industry now wants "360 deal" chunks of a performer's outside concert, merchandise sales, etc.)
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Someone I knew self published in the early days of his trend. The book while very good, was not up to standards of a professionally published books. Way more spelling and grammer errors than in edited book. Way more material than needed to be there. All in all, though he had an editor, since the focus was on minimizing cost, the editing was not thorough.
But I am not sure if editing or any of this is really the issue. Back in the day we had pulp publishing. Many authors made a lot of money. Now such publishing does not seem to exist, so if an author wants to make money, they are clearly going to have to bypass the publisher. At $.57 a copy, 100,000 copies is real money, and an average author is more likely to do that at $3 than $15.
The cost of an e-book is $10 new, $5 over time. This cannot support the current publishing inefficiencies. Clearly publishing houses are going to have to the same thing as recording studios if they are to stay relevent.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
He speaks of missing out the editors, as though they're not necessary. Sure, they hold up the project, but they also avoid the obvious typos and editing mistakes that J.A.Konrath's independent work is littered with. Littered sounds needlessly over-descriptive, right?
Oh, well maybe it is. But even one or two typos or mis-spellings or mis-attributions of speech mars a novel for me. Perhaps I've been spoilt, but what is it by - edited works, that's what.
I never like articles like this - it reminds me a bit too much of the earlier adopter chatter back in 2000 when my own e-book was published (and, despite having everything going for me except not being Stephen King, proved to have an almost non-existent market). Certainly Konrath is describing some benefits to self publishing, so long as you have the savvy and editing skill to pull it off. But when it comes to trumpeting e-books as a better way in general than the printed book, he's giving a very skewed picture.
Will he get a greater percentage of the royalties by self publishing an e-book through Amazon? Absolutely. Part of self publishing is keeping all the profits. Will he make more money than he would releasing a printed book?
That, however, is a much different question. And for that, you have to run the numbers.
Depending on the time of year, the total American book market (net sales) can be anywhere from around $450 million to $1.5 billion per month (there are large peaks and valleys, which is why you get the huge variations). The e-book market occupies around $22 million of this per month (it, oddly enough, has a general but very slight upwards slope, and does NOT have large peaks and valleys). As far as I recall, the audio book will take up around $15 million or so per month, but that's not a number I pay too much attention to, so don't quote me on it. So, for every dollar earned by an e-book, print books will earn anywhere from $20 to $65, depending on the time of year.
Now, these are all very rough figures. The Association of American Publishers tracks this in far more detail on a month-by-month basis. The point is, though, that while a well-established author with a loyal fanbase can mitigate a large portion of this disparity, an average book published only as an e-book can deprive itself of over 90% of its potential income.
(That, for example, is why in my business I use e-books mainly for promotional stuff - they just don't have a large enough market base to support them outside of marketing for what I do.)
So, will Konrath keep a greater percentage of the profit per book? Absolutely. Will he make more money than he would publishing a print volume? Highly unlikely.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
I still don't understand why can buying an ebook still be more expensive then then buying the physical book
"Will he make more money than he would releasing a printed book?"
That is only one source for revenue, the others being: the extended copyright length; audio book sales; and movie rights.
There are other factors too. For example, even though the book sales may be lackluster (whether ebook or traditional), they could still make money from movie rights. And since they own the all the rights, they'd get all the revenue.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
If you start out trying to get a big publishing deal with a big6 house you would likely take many, many years to even get a legitimate read of your draft, let alone a single book published. And after you get that first book published you'll likely not make any money apart from your advance. 5 books later you may be sitting pretty, but only if the publisher decides to non-publish your latest effort because they have too many books in X genre this quarter, and the bigger fish gets more attention.
Don't pay any attention to any author out there.
Something I've noticed in the latest iWork software it is extremely easy to export to epub, which then can be read by a number of eReader apps and on the i devices. But writing and publishing isn't what takes up a lot of time and effort for publishers: it's the editing and type setting that is expensive. I have a client and good friend who is in the publishing business and has been for 25 years. We use him for publishing our technical documentation and most of his time/fees are taking what we wrote in whatever word processor and then formatting in Quark or InDesign with making sure images, charts, and graphs are all in the right DPI. Also they do a fair amount of editing and making things visually look neat, clean, and organized.
I have developers and a technical writer who do good work with content and wording, but if you take what they submit as a rough draft and what our publisher actually prints, hey turn good documentation in to great documentation just because of it is presented on the pages. And it takes a certain kind of eye for that kind of work.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Konrath has posted on this topic repeatedly. He makes nearly twice what he did with paper books, in a dollars/month basis. More importantly, he makes what he considers to be a fair amount to live quite comfortably on, and feels that he owes something to the readership - that is, a quality / price point equation they can't get with printed material. As long as he can live well on this, he doesn't care whether he could make that much more.
Footnote: and once a book is made into a movie, its book sales go up.
And if you start out using traditional publishing, it won't take many many years to reach the level Konrath is at?
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Maybe I mis-understand the publishing business, but isn't a huge part of what published do is to *publicize* the works they are publishing? I doubt most independent authors can do the marketing that an established publisher can, and even the very act of getting a dead-tree book on the shelves of bookstore, department stores (target, walmart, et al.) is promotion - people who are in the store browsing, might find your book when they otherwise wouldn't. Publishers can put money into ad campaigns, their PR people can get you interviewed or reviewed on NPR, The Daily Show, PBS, or a hundred other media outlets. They can arrange to get you on a book-signing tour which will also publicize the book, and probably a dozen other ways of getting people to know about and maybe buy the book
I wouldn't want to self-publish if I went into authoring, as I wouldn't even know where to begin to publicize my works.
Now, I realize that not all authors get the premium treatment - as a new author, your book will only get probably a relatively minimal amount of publicity - the publisher won't pull out all the stops, but if they are going to publish you at all, they will at least try to get your books some mindshare so they can recover the costs. If your first book are two make more money than they cost the publisher, and are generally received well, then they might decide to risk a bigger campaign the next time, right?
For all we know the publisher made him a worse writing due to shaping him to the image the publisher set out for him.
Editing works both ways, and considering we only observe the end result and cannot redo the process to the observe the other possible result the argument that the publisher made him a better writer is moot.
I think you're ignoring a simple fact: some of us buy more e-books than normal books, and even go to such length as not reading printed books anymore given the choice. Me, personally, if I have the choice between a printed copy and an e-book, I'm going with the e-book. When I shop for books, I start with e-books. Because I want to know what I can read on my preferred medium. If I find nothing (unlikely) I may revert to paper.
So, what I'm saying is this: If a thousand people buy my e-book, and they are all people who only buy e-books and not printed books, then me getting with a publisher to have my book published isn't going to achieve a single thing for me.
And, as a related note: Your numbers quoted do not take this factor into account.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
I should've been more clear: What I meant was if a thousand people were interested in my book, but only wanted it on e-book and not printed.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Traditional publishers act as brokers, bringing the written word to those who want to read.
They sift through the junk so I don't have to.
Self-publishing works well for:
* Authors with an established reputation in that genre
* The rare person who can act as his own editor. Hint - if you think that's you, it isn't.
* Anyone who isn't motivated by finances and who doesn't need the marketing services of a reputable publisher.
The first group we already know.
I don't know anyone in the 2nd group.
The 3rd group includes people who traditionally self-publish, such as universities and religious organizations, the traditional novelty press market, and niche publications which are one step above the novelty press market in quality but where the author won't mind if nobody buys or reads his material.
I would put most bloggers and others who publish non-tolled Internet content in the third group.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Actually if you RTFA you would immediatetly see that he addresses these
criticisms directly in the article:
> Of course, a publisher provides more services than cover art and formatting. For one thing,
> they edit. But among the four of us we've written over eighty novels, and we were able to edit
> each other and do our own copyediting with relative ease.
> Publishers also do promotion and marketing, though I haven't seen much of this for ebooks.
> Drawing on our fan bases, we sent out 260 advance reading copies of "Draculas."
conclusions:
1) the author is clearly aware that the method he has adopted is not suitable for everyone.
2) the original poster did not do his basic homework before posting
What makes a person a good writer is doing a lot of writing and having to respond to criticism. There's nothing about it which requires an editor, some people are just naturally gifted for telling stories and really only need to know how it's coming across.
The book industry really doesn't work the way that you think it does. They invest in order to get a product out of it, and if you're not relatively close already they probably won't sign you.
If you're already that close, then there's no reason why a few neutral friends or acquaintances couldn't do the same thing.
Me, personally, if I have the choice between a printed copy and an e-book, I'm going with the e-book. When I shop for books, I start with e-books.
Doesn't that depend on the type of e-book and the e-reader? For instance, a book about programming, when read on the Kindle (or any other e-reader lacking copy/paste/edit) seems practically useless. Or a book on Renaissance art -- again, practically useless with a monochrome e-reader. (Not just for its lack of color but its small screen.)
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Man, I wish there was some kind of easy way for me to write words, and have them readily accessibly by millions. Heck, they could even save them for later if they wanted to.
I can't imagine how such a system could possibly work though. Clearly, it's madness.
Well, publishing your own eBook is a bit like playing the lottery. You hope to write a book that will make it big much in the same way you hope to buy a lottery ticket that wins the PowerBall or MegaMillions. If you treat it as simply an interesting project and do it solely has a hobby without expectations, writing your own eBook can a rewarding experience. At the very least the act of writing can exercise the brain in a way that daily life cannot provide. I like the fact that Amazon provides the ability for one to self publish and make it practical for a hobby. It does lower the bar for entry into published media.
That is a part of it, and large publishers can do much more on that than smaller publishers. However, there is advertising out there. Every time my publishing company publishes a book, I pay for an advertisement that goes out to tens of thousands of bookstores and libraries (I also do a decent amount of advertising with free online samples, book reviews, etc.).
But, actually, that's not the big problem with self-publishing a book.
Self-publishing tends to have a stigma against it, but that stigma is there for good reason - and that reason is that 95% of self published books are utter crap that didn't get past the gatekeepers in the major publishers due to basic quality control. There is, unfortunately, an entire industry based on publishing writers who have more money than brains or talent - these are called vanity presses. Most of these books are terrible, and the publisher in question makes thousands of dollars on the fees they charge to the writer before so much as a single copy is printed.
(Just as a rule, the money flows to the author, not the other way around.)
Another problem with self publishing is that most authors are not the best editors of their own work. In fact, very few writers can both write and edit - they're different enough skillsets that there is that little overlap. But even when a writer can, they tend to be workmanlike at best. This is because if a writer writes paragraph X, that is supposed to say Y, that writer will always know that Y is the message. Unfortunately, paragraph X might not have actually said Y, and because the writer automatically reads Y into the paragraph, s/he doesn't catch the error. In short, the author is just too close to their own work to be the best editor of that work.
Those are actually the biggest problems with self-publishing, and why most self-published books fail. If you look at the self-published market, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the majority of the people who managed to make both self-publishing and e-book publishing successful are the ones who started in traditional publishing, built a readership there, learned the business as they did it, and then transitioned.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
I mean, there is a correlation between price and perceived value
Didn't some trade organization advocate the same argument about $0.99 music downloads?
"You get what you pay for." Some goods are more desirable simply because they cost more. All other things being equal, and with incomplete information about the quality of a work, a consumer is likely to assume that a good with a lower sticker price has a lower sticker price because it is the inferior good. See also Veblen good.
YouTube became the way for ordinary people to create their own movies, videos, etc and have an outlet for other people to view them. The Kindle and other platforms do much of the same thing but for reading material. Some YouTubers have lucked out big time while others simply enjoy having an outlet to distribute their media. I think people are being harsh on the author of this article. I think the article simply was designed to give people an idea of how to publish when they want to do so. The author makes no promises of riches.
No, I'm sorry, I'm afraid you're the one making the assumption. You're assuming that it's an either/or when it comes to e-book and print book editions, rather than an "and." The figures I'm working from are for the entire market, and in a lot of places and genres, there are concurrent print and e-book editions (in fact, these days that's in many cases the rule rather than the exception).
So, if a thousand people want the book as an e-book and not a printed book, then they buy the e-book instead of the printed book, and it gets reflected by the figures. So, sorry, but what you mention is already built into the statistics.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Yeah, but you gotta run the *right* numbers. You've cited the income of major publishers, but
given no indication of the income of authors. The right numbers to compare are income
of the authors who published with major houses vs. income of *equally prominent*
authors who self-published. The difference between those two values is the economic
assessment of the value brought by the publishing industry.
Since the publishing industry is, for better or worse (usually the latter, in my view),
responsible for much of the *fame* of so-called "established writers" (and please
don't confuse that with a quality assessment), the best test would unknowns vs.
unknowns.
My guess is the publishers still win, but don't tell people to cite the numbers, then
cite all the wrong ones yourself.
Most self-published books fail because most books fail. The difference is that electronic self-publishing is easy and inexpensive so lots of books that would have stayed in the author's trunk under the old system get a chance. Most fail, of course, but some will succeed that would have never been given a chance under the old system.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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And in 50 years it might be the case that an ebook would be the logical choice.
Right now, ebooks are maybe 4% of the publishing market. And this is with Amazon having a list of 100 books that are free to download on the Kindle immediately. And these aren't just recycled Project Gutenberg titles - there are new authors with some OK books in the list.
So that means that 96% of the people in today's world are buying physical books. If you are thinking about publishing a book with mass appeal, then restricting yourself to 4% of the market - even if you are making 10 times what you would with a print publisher - is senseless.
Now, there are clearly some niches where doing an ebook-only sort of thing might be the right way to go. But the article is about someone with a vampire book and how could that be considered anything but a mass market sort of book?
4% vs. 96% if you have to choose a single format. Why not go both ways? Print and ebook?
The author wanted to make a point, and unfortunately his point is lost because if you know anything at all about publishing and mass marketing of books that niggling 4% figure is going to come up and bite you in the ass.
Yes, I own a Kindle. Yes, I have lots and lots of non-Amazon content on my Kindle so don't tell me about it being locked down, because it isn't. And I have a book that the publisher produced both a print and ebook version of.
> So, for every dollar earned by an e-book, print books will earn anywhere from $20 to $65, depending on the time of year.
Using the total volume sold or the total retail sales shows that the paper market is larger, yes. But the issue is how much you, the author, personally make.
IMO, the tipping point is the author's popularity. If you know you're only going to sell 10,000 copies either way, you might as well do it electronically and make more money. But there's a tipping point; if you're popular enough, fewer people have ebook readers than the number of people who'd buy your book in print. So at some point the greater volume of paper books sold, even at a lower per unit pay to you, exceeds what you could make doing only ebooks. (This point is moving upwards as more people buy ebook readers, of course). The question is just where the balance point is right now.
old computer 80$
internet account 60$/month
xampp webserver free
linux free
private bit torrent tracker free
140$ and get a few people to spread the word your selling your ebook for 1$
all you need to do is sell 60 a month to cover the net and then 80$ for the old box.
if you htink you can do so go for it....maybe someone like me might list you freely as long as it has nothing to do with a true publisher....
So that means that 96% of the people in today's world are buying physical books.
For what it is worth, I would imagine it is even higher. Likely, ebooks are purchased mainly by people who also buy physical books, so it is a supplement to their book collections, not a replacement of. I would imagine there are very few people who only buy ebooks (not counting piracy and free books), perhaps as low as 1%.
No matter how cool a reading medium gets, it will always be an uphill battle to beat the tactile, analog feel of dead tree when it comes to reading. If you put a paperback in your back pocket, and sit down, it doesn't break. It never needs batteries or recharging, and even if one "breaks", you only lose one book. Ebooks are handy for some things (searching text, skipping around tech manuals, etc.) but they will never completely replace physical books.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
As was previously report on Slashdot, e-books are only 6 percent of book sales
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
I notice he talks about controlling the book forever, so he would also like a copyright term of infinity?
Is his book about cryogenic freezing?
It's logical that the first person to live well beyond a normal copyright term would also want to write a book about doing it.
Just sayin'.
I just wrote a book which is compilation of the blog/articles on my website over the past years. By going through LULU.com, we were able to publish the book for free when no other people wanted to publish our book. My family members who don't use computers got to read what I wrote and they enjoyed it. If you ever have some information available to you, put it in book form, maybe someone will want to buy it. Like I said,"You can do something as simple as compile all your blogs/articles over the past few years, and turn it into a book!"
God spoke to me.
For those that are serious about ebook production, and that need a professional editor and someone who can proof and format your book for EPUB, MOBI, etc., then g
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
For those that are serious about ebook production, and that need a professional editor and someone who can proof and format your book for EPUB, MOBI, etc., then go here for more info: http://www.phoenixstudios.com.np/corporate [phoenixstudios.com.np]. Our rates are low, as we are an outsource provider with little overhead. No, this is not spam, I read /. everyday and found this article of great interest (well, the comments were interesting). Cheers!
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
Another problem with self publishing is that most authors are not the best editors of their own work.
Isn't that complaint like saying actors can't become directors because it's a different skillset, or they're too close to their work (Leonard Nimoy for example).
I think the more insightful question when articles like these come up, is why does the audience not understand the processes behind the creation of the entertainment they enjoy? Today it's books. Tomorrow it could be music. The following day, movies complete with the "down with the man" and "buggy whip" posts. Is there really anything insightful about basically saying,"I like cheap stuff and 'the man' is keeping that from happening".
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Self publishing is only really viable the last 2 or so years, so there's going to be ZERO stats on the subject, but I wonder if that's actually true at all?
Take 100 starting out authors today (50 self publishing, 50 submitting drafts to big publishing houses). Check their average earnings from books in 2, 5, and 10 years.
You really think the ones just starting submitting, as opposed to publishing NOW (and for cheap), will wind up better on average?
Do you actually think that a single author out of those 50 just starting submitting manuscripts will make it at all in the standard writing game? (by make it I mean earn a living family wage from books alone)
A quick look at the music industry hints this is not the case. They're not the same, but there are too many similarities to simply ignore. I'd be betting on more out of the self publishing crowd doing well.
This is only possible because of the proliferance of ereaders, which even 2 years ago were new and the to average person unheard of.
ebooks are a paradigm change, just like the Guttenburg press. Hint:there were many people who thought that was a bad idea at the time too!. The establishment always FEARS and DERIDES change.
Bookstores EVERYWHERE are closing! Everyday, in every city another bookstore closes and there aren't any new one's opening! The large chains are going bankrupt as they scramble to figure out how to eek out revenue from declining sales. eBooks are the future.
Just as there are 'self-published' authors there are freelance editors as well. There seems to be a disconnect that one assumes just because someone is a self-publisher that they don't hire an editor. This criticism seems like a petty and desperate attempt at justifying the current publisher's monopoly.
The ebook market is growing year to year, while paper books are continuing to shrink. Give it 5 years, the pattern will be even more accelerated.
Reminds me of Schwarzenegger going round schools telling kids not to use ze shderoids.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I'm not a traditional published author. This is my first book. Using the logic that an ebook has numerous formatting considerations that make it easier (far less worry about page numbers, page size, left/right concerns, etc...), I decided to go with the ebook in the hopes of making enough $$ that it'd be worth my time to properly format a print book.
The book is about Shakespeare (specifically, a collection of Shakespeare wedding material), and I knew two things - I should have some sort of credentials in the area I'm writing about, and some sort of way to market. I run a number of Shakespeare sites (http://www.shakespearegeek.com primarily among them), and have done so for a number of years. They've got a pretty good following. I thought I'd be all set there, at least as far as getting a jumpstart goes. I'm also a web guy for a living (though not a designer), so arranging a domain and getting some content on it was not much of a worry (http://www.hearmysoulspeak.com did I mention that?) My strategy has been "Have something acceptable up, then drive traffic, and then once you've got traffic up, worry about making a prettier site."
I did have an editor. You need an editor. You will make stupid typos, if nothing else, and you'll need another set of eyes to spot them. An editor also serves as your first reader, and can say things like "This part didn't make sense to me" or "You said the same thing here that you said over there." Get an editor. I lucked out, one of my regular readers who happens to be a college professor said he'd do it for me, and was very helpful.
The publishing part is actually the easiest. There are a zillion "ebook converter" apps out there. But instead of doing that, just go straight to Calibre (http://www.calibre-ebook.com), as it does everything. I originally started mine in LaTeX, because I was heading for print. Then I switched to PDF (easily converted) until eventually ending up with EPUB since it seemed popular. EPUB, for the curious, is basically just a zip file of HTML with some organizing context thrown in). See below, though, for thoughts on how to handle multiple formats.
Here's the tricky part of publishing, even if you do crank out multiple versions of your book : a) every publisher wants a different one, and b) you have to do it individually for each. I started out on Lulu, because that was the most efficient way I saw into the iPad store. iPad wants EPUB. Fine. But then I wanted to release a PDF version as well, to cover the wider case for people reading on a PC. Lulu can handle that - but it can't apparently associate them both on a singe page. So I'll forever have two products in their catalog. I can live with that.
Aha, but what about Kindle? Kindle has its own store, for one. And, it wants MOBI format. Ok, did that. Now I've got to maintain my book in two places.
Guess what happened last week? Barnes and Noble opened up their Pubit! store for the Nook. Yayyy, three places to maintain my book. I hear Borders has a project in the works as well.
I generated every format (EPUB, MOBI, PDF) of my book in Calibre, and then tweaked them by hand until they looked the way I wanted (or at least, as close as I could get). Although all of the ebook stores will do automatic conversion for you, keep in mind that your copy will end up looking terrible.
Your pages on all these stores will also look very plain, until you get some reviews. Seriously, go get some reviews. Give away as many copies as you can, and beg reviews. This is the stage I'm in now. I've got web reviews, but I'm trying to get people to take the time and go give Amazon or iPad reviews. They help. Nobody wants to feel like they're the first one taking a chance on what could be a piece of garbage.
Lessons learned so
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
JA Konrath himself writes that he submitted his works to agents for 6 years until someone picked it up.
He admits that it was a great learning period to learn his trade of entertaining writing.
On his blog he also explains why he thinks that agency model is flawed. Generally only 1 out of 5 books earns out advance payment to authors and start earning royalties, so publishers are mostly shooting in dark. Most pbooks sold are trash. Even great talents e.g., JK Rowling had many rejections.
The sci-fi books I liked most are not even published either as pbooks or e-books. They are just put on website by authors themselves. The trash among e-books is enormous. At the same time it also gives more opportunity for talents to express themselves. And before we counter that publishers provided better support for authors then there is a fact that only 1 out 100 published authors earn living exclusively with writing.
So, will Konrath keep a greater percentage of the profit per book? Absolutely. Will he make more money than he would publishing a print volume? Highly unlikely.
According to his blog he is already making more money from e-books than from print books.
He may be just in specific position due to his fan base but he is betting that e-readers base will grow and paper books will diminish sooner than later. The authors who now sign seemingly lucrative but restricting contracts with publishers may regret it later. He says that such contracts made sense previously but not in e-book age.
The current situation is different from 2000. For casual reading I mostly buy ebooks. It wasn't the case even half a year ago.
You could have told us the story was on the Huffington Post - that article was as much promotion for the book as it was anything else.
So, to re-cap, this is the "new publishing" model:
1) become a famous, published author with 13 books published, have sold one book as a movie
2) work with three other famous/published authors
3) write the book collaboratively
4) save all your process documents as special 'e-filler' material
5) crowd source the editing to friends & co-authors
6) give away a couple hundred advance copies to friendly reviewers (to stuff the Amazon review space prior to publication)
7) price the book so low (less than many magazines), to capture impulse buyers
8) keep a larger portion of a lower book price (divided four ways) for a book available to only those reader/customers that buy ebooks at Amazon.
9) in 12 months make the book available to other buyers (other ebook retailers, physical books, etc)
That's great - now, can someone help me with step one?
Ken
The sci-fi books I liked most are not even published either as pbooks or e-books. They are just put on website by authors themselves.
Can we have links plz?
What do you think about his claim that the four authors of the book edited one anothers' work? At least that takes away the "it was supposed to say Y but doesn't" problem.
Editing would be hard to crowd-source, but might be able to be paid for. Filtering should be able to be crowd-sourced somehow. But I can't see how promotion and marketing can be crowd-sourced without a pre-existing fan base (as the author of the article clearly has).
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
Oh, and heres my book if you want a copy!
My web domain.
Okay, I read at least part of his blog, but the impression I got was that he was comparing e-books currently in print to printed books currently out of print. Now, I could be wrong, and there is plenty of room for somebody with a pre-existing fan base to have a successful e-book career, or even for lightning in a bottle. One of the problems with taking the macrocosm and trying to draw conclusions about the microcosm from it is that the macrocosm is general trends, and there will be plenty of examples that are the exception to the rule.
As far as e-readers growing and printed books diminishing, I very much doubt that. And the reason I doubt that is that there is something REALLY odd going on with e-book sales figures. And I'm not talking about Amazon refusing to reveal Kindle sales numbers. I'm talking about what the publishers see and report about their sales.
The book market has very large peaks and valleys. The difference between the highest peak and the lowest valley, for example, can be over a billion dollars. The main peaks seem to be December and July/August, and the main valleys seem to be March and October. There is, of course, variation from year to year.
The e-book sales, however, do NOT have these peaks and valleys. If you were to plot them on a graph, you'd see the books appearing to be a sort of sin wave, and the e-book sales would be straight line with a very small upwards slant. Occasionally, there seems to be bump where the e-book gains some ground, but then it returns to the straight line - just a higher one. Now, if this was just two different formats in the same market, you would expect to see the peaks and valleys reflected to a smaller degree in the e-book sales (the exception being December, as e-books are quite difficult to give away as Christmas presents). But this just isn't present.
The implication is that e-books are actually a related, but a separate enough market that the market forces impacting the printed book do not impact the e-book. The more I look at it, the more I'm convinced that these just aren't part of the same market to begin with, as strange as that sounds.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Here: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
It would be interesting to analyze the peaks and valleys of pbooks market.
As I understand, Amazon is trying to become a mega-publisher via e-books and Kindle devices but not only that. It appears that they are creating a platform for content providers, including blogs, newspapers, articles etc. They are also planning selling Amazon singles – short essays for 50 cents. Not sure if they will succeed but it solves the micropayment problem. Once you have a single platform it is trivial. I predict that it will not go as smoothly as intended due to format and device incompatibilities – epub vs. Mobi, plus DRM restrictions.
Well, that really depends on the skill of the people editing him, but it should take away from that problem, yes. The ideal editor is somebody who is very good at editing, and who did not have any connection with the creation of the book. But, ultimately, the results tell the tale, so to speak.
Promotion might be crowd-sourced, to a degree. One of the things I count on for my promotion when I launch a book is that people have this strange habit of downloading just about anything free, regardless of if they have any interest in it at all. So, I rely a lot on free samples on file-sharing sites, etc. But, the more directed the approach, very frequently, the better the results. No argument there.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
From what I've seen, Amazon is trying to create a monopoly, and they've ruffled quite a few feathers - and caused a couple of lawsuits - while they do it. One of the earlier things they did was try to move all the smaller publishers like myself onto their own print-on-demand service (a company called Booksurge known for very poor quality printing), threatening to remove the buy button for those who didn't. That started a lawsuit. There was a lawsuit over e-book prices, although as I recall that was because Amazon was trying to lock the major publishers into an agreement where they had to offer the lowest prices to Amazon and nobody else (and Amazon talked it up as publishers being greedy and just wanting to charge more in general).
Speaking as a publisher, though, the thing that keeps me from ever supporting the Kindle is the sheer level of secrecy involved. Amazon refuses to announce sales figures, and the one time they did talk about their e-book sales, they did it in such a way that the comparison was meaningless (comparing sales from one of the cheapest formats against the most expensive format tells you very little, and even there, considering the prices, to match up the actual money it would have to be around 3 e-books sold for every hardcover, not 1.6). In business, success means a lot, and if Amazon really was having the success they claim, there should have been a lot more openness on the numbers. The implication is that the Kindle and their e-books are not performing to expectations. When you're running a small publishing company, you have to choose your markets carefully, and when the answer to "How big is the Kindle market?" is "Millions, just trust us," it doesn't tend to look like a good way to move.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
I have known ppl that have been published. They put in loads of time and got next to nothing back. The fact is, that 10-40% of book sales (top authors make 40%; new authors make 10%, or less), which have not had a massive review, will give you very little money, compared to almost 100% of the same book sales.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well, that really depends on the genre, and how good your book is.
For example, as far as I know, mysteries tend to move pretty quickly. Fantasy glutted itself after the Lord of the Rings movies to the point that response times went from months to years (and even in science fiction there were apparently cases of established authors from the "golden age" deciding not to submit new books because it was taking so long that they didn't know if they'd live long enough to see them in print), and it's only now just getting back to where it should be.
Really, though, the response time varies from publisher to publisher, and from genre to genre.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
I think part of the problem is this statement: "The book is formatted only for the Kindle right now, but the author explains how it can be converted for other readers, since there's no DRM." Right, you can convert it. But the average user isn't going to do this. Why do this when you could easily sell an epub version on a multi-device site, or put out versions for the big 3 (nook, sony, kindle). Only doing one of the three is part of the reason buying e-books right now can be REALLY frustrating. It feels like it is a console war with only some of the books being out for particular devices.
In which other mistereous ways does an editor help?
You sound like an apologizer for the music industry.
The eternal plight of the middle man is that without them you can't succeed.
What you forget to tell us is the terms that editorial houses impose on writers, how unlikely you are to ever be published (one has just to know about author like JK Rowling that went from publisher to publisher and they would not even read what she was sending. I hope they regret it every single day of their lives, in synthesis getting an editor is a wasteful pursuit, you could as well get down to work, write and publish) and in general terms how much control you give away when putting in somebody else's hands the fruits of your labour.
People that self publish have to build a reputation, there is no way around it, either in a specific field if that is what they want to write about, or by writting for free in a blog, magazine or amateur publication of any kind.
If you are any good you will obtain a small but commited readership.
As for the claim that editing may make or brake a great book, I will past the tip to Shakespeare, Cervantes and the myriad of great and good writers that had the misfortune of not having one.
And now you invoke also the gods of marketing. Well, you can be your own marketeer, and if you don't fancy that you can ask somebody that is an expert, which the editoral houses aren't.
And to slose the argument a threat: you leave our protection racket at your own peril. That "warning" alone should tell anybody with good sense the kind of entity they would be dealing with if postrating themselves in fron of a publishing house.
Writers should go to a publisher only when they are in a strong position, not when they are starting, because the Net is the facilitator of the samll guy. The people with something valued by others will grow, thrive and reach the point where they can say to a publisher "I have sold 500 or 1000 self puvblished books, do you want a piece of the action or do I go next door?"
Publishers that don't understand this will be cast aside, Amazon is showing the way and they are going to eat traditional publisher's lunch if they don't wisen up and abandon the prepotent attitude so neatly portrayed in the above posting ....
You can buy real books for 0.01 (or even 0, I don't know how they do it) + P&P.
When I find a cheap book by a good author I know I have a bargain, when I find a cheap book by an unknown author ai have got a potential risk in my hands.
WHen I have got an expensive book by a good author I mat way for cheaper editions.
Expensive book by an unknown? No chance. The only way unknown writers will build a readership is by appealing with their talent and their proice.
Most people are intelleigent enough to recognize works of literaty value according to personal tastes without even looking at the price label.