Mark Coker: Why eBook Retailers Are Embracing Self-Published Authors. If anyone doubts the speed at which the epicenter of book publishing is shifting from publishers to self-published authors, look no further than the Apple iBookstore. Last week, Apple's iBookstore launched Breakout Books in the U.S., a new book merchandising feature that showcases books from popular self-published authors, including several that have already achieved New York Times bestseller status. The New York Times covered the story last week, as did The Wall Street Journal. Apple's merchandising team hand-picked the titles, all of which have earned high ratings from Apple customers.
Disclosure: Many of the eBooks featured were distributed to Apple by my company, Smashwords. Although the iBookstore has always carried and supported self-published eBooks, last week's launch signified an escalated commitment on the part of Apple, whose iBookstore currently sells books in 50 countries. eBook Retailers and Readers Are Embracing Self-Published Authors. The Financial Reality of a Genre Novelist. If you have dreams of selling your science fiction, fantasy or horror novel and getting filthy rich, you need to adjust your expectations.
We’ve collected three testimonials from genre writers below to help aspiring writers to maintain realistic expectations. Horror novelist Brian Keene gave a speech at Towson University’s Borderlands Boot Camp recently, laying out some frank statistics for aspiring genre novelists. Here is an excerpt: The average advance these days, for a genre fiction novel, ranges between $2,500 and $10,000. That’s right. On the Fantasy subreddit, novelist Mark Lawrence wrote a frank post about his finances, urging readers not to pirate eBooks and reminding them: “I’m doing very well compared to most fantasy writers. His post laid out the changing economics of digital books, showing the razor-thin margins that most writers make in eBook marketplaces. So Amazon.com ran a promotion on Prince of Thorns before Christmas and I was very glad to get it. Here is an excerpt: The rise of the multi-e-reader household and 'hand-me-down' e-reader.
Edmonds, WA - January 15, 2013 - As more consumers across all age segments transition from physical to digital books and tablet adoption continues to climb, a resulting surge in the growth of multi-e-reader households has taken hold according to new research from NextMarket Insights. Results from a US survey conducted at the end of 2012 show approximately half of all e-reading households have more than one e-reading device (including both dedicated e-readers and tablets) and over 17% have three or more e-reading devices. "Many households that purchased a dedicated e-reader in the last few years have now also have acquired a tablet," says chief analyst Michael Wolf.
"This has resulted in a growing number of households that have multiple e-reading devices as well as 'hand-me-down' e-readers. " Hand-me-down e-readers are those e-readers passed on to another household member when the original owner buys a new e-reading device. An on-line magazine for writers and readers... Picking Fonts for Your Indie Book by Joel Friedlander One of the first and most basic questions you need to answer if you're going to be designing your own book is: what fonts should I use? Since the beginning of the so-called "desktop publishing" era in the 1980s, which was boosted by computers' new ability to show accurate graphics in "what you see is what you get" displays, millions of computer users have become familiar with fonts.
Ever since, computers have come bundled with fonts. The Problem with Defaults Computer engineers can be forgiven for putting these fonts in a premium position. But there are problems with that approach, too. Arial is a copy of Helvetica, probably the most popular font in the recent history of typography (and the only typeface I know of to have an entire feature film made about it). Better Solutions for Your Font Needs Recognizing Oldstyle Fonts There are three identifying characteristics to oldstyle fonts: Fonts That Work in Books Putting It Together. Margaret Atwood's Brave New World Of Online Publishing.
Hide captionMargaret Atwood has written 13 novels, including The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake. George Whiteside If you're a Margaret Atwood fan — and you've got some spare change under the couch cushions — just a few dollars will get you a stand-alone episode of the new novel she's writing in serial form. It's called Positron, and Atwood is publishing it on Byliner, a website launched last year that's one of many new sites billing themselves as platforms for writers. So what inspired the best-selling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Blind Assassin and The Handmaid's Tale to try out this newfangled approach? "Once upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form," Atwood tells NPR's Audie Cornish.
Now, Atwood says, the advent of the Internet means that platform has reappeared, and she's in the middle of writing Positron — the third episode went on sale last week at Byliner. Another First for Self-Publishing. Will Immersive Reading Save Publishing and Kill the Traditional Novel? In the digital book world these days most of the talk is about whether the big publishers will survive, and what the relative merits (or demerits) of self-publishing are. But simmering in the background is another issue, one that could affect all fiction writers forever. And that is whether the simple reading experience itself is on the way out. I’m talking about “immersive reading.” Recently PW reported on Apple’s iBooks Author development initiative. Since iBooks Author was released, hundreds of books created with the authoring tool are being sold through the iBookstore in a variety of categories, including travel, children’s, cooking, music instruction, gaming strategy, biography, entertainment and other categories.
Thus, publishers are using iBooks Author to create “an impressive selection of enhanced e-books with everything from photographs, sound, and animation to video footage.” A few thoughts here. Think about it: how many live, black-and-white TV shows do you watch? Tag and the Digitization of Publishing. With the rising popularity of e-readers, multipurpose tablets, smartphones, and other digital devices, the future of the printed word is looking distinctly digital.
And the publishing industry is getting on board with Microsoft Tag, among other technologies – no wonder since Tag is known for providing a new and unique way to link the worlds of print and online. To help visualize how the publishing industry is shifting, check out the infographic below, one of two that PSFK recently highlighted (click to enlarge): Here are some highlights from the infographic: 15 to 20 percent of people in developed countries will have adopted tablets or e-readers by 2015. In the United States, 3 percent of the population used tablets or e-readers in 2010, but we’re projected to jump to 8 percent by next year. We might be a little hesitant compared to Korea (which also started at 3 percent in 2010 but is projected to jump to 11 percent next year). YouTube. Boundless Books Gives Away Free Online Textbooks, Faces Lawsuit. Ask Ariel Diaz why he’s taking on the college textbook industry and he’ll tell you, “Quaternions.”
Quaternions are a number system used for calculating three-dimensional motion, popular in computer graphics. And Diaz needed a crash course to help him with a consulting gig after his online video platform startup, Youcastr, had failed. He started with Wikipedia and found it was surprisingly good at explaining this complicated mathematics. Diaz, who still resents how much he’d paid for textbooks in college and graduate school, realized he’d hit on his next business idea. In 2011, he started Boundless Learning, a Boston company that has begun giving away free electronic textbooks covering college subjects like American history, anatomy and physiology, economics, and psychology.
What’s controversial is how Boundless creates these texts. Theft or not, the college textbook industry is ripe for a disruptive shock from the Internet. For now, however, replacing textbooks like N. Inside Random House: Bringing Our Authors' Books to Life. Ebook Pricing vs Revenue - Evil Genius Chronicles. Posted on January 12, 2011Filed Under books | 49 Comments It’s amazing how often I see some variant of the phrase “We can’t afford to price our ebooks lower because we have costs to recoup.” 10 minutes ago I saw that in the current Locus magazine interview with John Picacio.
He in general seems like someone who gets it, both here and in the Sidebar podcast interview with him that coincidentally I listened to last week. This is not to single him out, he is maybe the 10,000th person I’ve seen say this, only the most recent before I type this up. In his interview he says: If pricepoints for e-books are forced down, do publishers simply slash budgets to achieve their margins? This reflects a point of view so common in the publishing world that is received wisdom. I’m attaching to this post some graphs I generated. Let me disclaim my analysis by saying I am not an MBA or a business guy.
I took the Konrath data and did a logarithmic regression. . Comments. How Your Textbook Dollars Are Divvied Up. Laura Kadue won't be studying economics this semester, but that isn't stopping her from conducting a cost-benefit analysis. This academic exercise isn't taking place in the library or in her dorm room. It is playing out while she weighs textbook prices at the George Washington University bookstore. [See U.S. News' Best Colleges.] "I was going to get my books at the store, but people have been saying they're cheaper other places," like on Amazon.com, she says. A few aisles away, second-year political science Ph.D. student Lucas Winter considers his options. "It's not worth it," he says. Students currently have more textbook-procurement options than ever: buy them new or used (at the bookstore or online), rent them, or buy or rent e-textbooks on their Kindles or iPads.
That trend is long-standing. Where does all that money go? NACS no longer receives information from publishers about where textbook money goes, but as recently as 2008, they provided that cost breakdown. Why the ebook you want isn't for sale in your country. WIth A LIttle Help: Publishing’s Virtue. Pity the poor antipiracy pitchman. Digital media means perfect copying, and most pirate goods are now of comparable quality to the official release, and often superior to the commercial alternative.
Pirated e-books, for example, can be easily converted to any format, for any player. And pirated games don’t include antipiracy technology that force-quits your game every time your network connection bobbles. Likewise, there’s no way the legit marketplace can compete on price. It’s eminently possible to compete with free (just ask any bottled water company), just not on price. Some legitimate sales channels are marginally more convenient to use (think of Amazon’s Whispernet), but most online content marketplaces can’t hold a candle to the Pirate Bay on the user experience side.
Yes, making the case against illegal downloading can be hard graft. Corporate Culture It sounds too simple, but it can be effective. But trade publishing is different, especially when it comes to fiction. Honor and... Nookd. Today's post departs from my stated mission to provide a glimpse into daily island life...except so far as it reflects my reaction to something I stumbled across in my reading. Some weeks ago I decided that I wanted to read Tolstoy's War and Peace.
Lou Ann loaned me her copy. At more than 1100 pages, reading it in bed required as much strength as balancing a box of bricks in my hands. In my senior years I have developed arthritis in my thumbs, which made the effort not only difficult, but painful. I had read about half of the novel when I was given the gift of a Nook, the e-reader from Barnes and Noble. As I was reading, I came across this sentence: "It was as if a light had been Nookd in a carved and painted lantern....
" For the sentence above I discovered this genuine translation: "It was as if a light had been kindled in a carved and painted lantern.... " Someone at Barnes and Noble (a twenty year old employee? I was shocked. Will paper books exist in the future? Yes, but they’ll look different. Book designed by Sara De Bondt Studio/Visual Editions. The change has come more slowly to books than it came to music or to business correspondence, but by now it feels inevitable.
The digital era is upon us. The Twilights and Freedoms of 2025 will be consumed primarily as e-books. In many ways, this is good news. Books will become cheaper and more easily accessible. Hypertext, embedded video, and other undreamt-of technologies will give rise to new poetic, rhetorical, and narrative possibilities.
But a literary culture that has defined itself through paper books for centuries will surely feel the loss as they pass away. In the past several years, we’ve all heard readers mourn the passing of the printed word. Luddites can take comfort in the persistence of vinyl records, postcards, and photographic film. We’re warned from an early age not to be taken in by the sensuous aspects of a paper book’s design, such as its cover. Book designed and photographed by David Pearson. Plum Tree Books. Seek and ye shall find. ✔
SOBCon Founder, Liz Strauss. Meet Liz Strauss, founder of SOBCon, the high-touch business summit, a social web strategist, and one of the most thoughtful, prolific bloggers on the planet. —Connie Dieken, The Top Influencers Alive: 10 Breakout Influencers of 2011 About Liz Liz Strauss is an opportunity creator, an international business strategist, and keynote speaker. She’s been called the most influential “real-ebrity” on the web. She’s a master teacher, an über connector, an idea machine with bias toward action. No one questions that Liz brings a one-of-a-kind authenticity backed with hands-on authority. Liz speaks softly and carries a lot of street cred. Strategist, CEO and founder of SOBCon, author of the popular Successful-Blog.com, keynote speaker. storyteller.
Liz defines irresistible businesses as those with great relationships who constantly Remove what customers don’t want.Enhance what customers love.Add something unexpected customers would die for. Irresistible defines Liz. Past Awards and Achievements. Home - Bologna Children's Book Fair.
Publishing can be the engine of the engagement economy. Brian O’Leary (@brianoleary), founder of Magellan Media, says the roles of publishers and editors are changing — where the role used to be deciding what would get published, now it’s figuring out how what is published will be found. In the following interview, O’Leary addresses issues of — and solutions for — content abundance from the viewpoint of publishers as well as consumers. He argues that the increasing numbers of non-readers, people who don’t engage with content, “represent a threat not just to publishing, but to the way we function as a country, an economy and as a part of a world order.” It is the responsibility of the publishing industry, O’Leary says, to reposition itself as the “engine of the engagement economy.”
O’Leary will expand on these ideas at Mini TOC Austin, just before SXSW. Our interview follows. How do you define “content abundance”? Brian O’Leary: The traditional barriers to getting a book published are all but gone. How about challenges for readers? Related: