Aug
8
Electric Literature’s Model May Save Short Fiction
Filed Under E-books, Fiction, Publishing | Leave a Comment
As a publishing choice, short stories vie with poetry as the quickest way to drain a publisher’s bank account.
Yet, a year-old publisher of short stories, Electric Literature, may have found the magic formula.
The company’s mission “is to use new media and innovative distribution to return the short story to a place of prominence in popular culture.”
Stitched together by two writers, Andy Hunter and Scott Lindenbaum, Electric Literature is essentially a quarterly literary magazine. Each issue has five short stories by known and unknown authors.
Authors benefit too.
According to Electric Literature’s website each Electric Literature author is decently paid. This is unlike most literary magazines—some pay in copies only. Better pay should guarantee a healthier slush pile, and, theoretically, a better magazine with a larger readership.
Not unnoticed.
The pair has garnered attention from heavy hitters in the print world including The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post which called Electric Literature, “A refreshingly bold act of optimism.”
Timing is everything.
The quickening of our daily lives and the proliferation of mobile devices have seemingly combined to produce a ready crop of readers for Electric Literature. As Hunter and Lindenbaum point out, the short story is especially well suited to our increasingly hectic lifestyles: “A quick, satisfying read can be welcome anywhere, and while you might forget a book, you’ll always have your phone.”
Here’s their blueprint:
To publish the paperback version of Electric Literature, we use print-on-demand; the eBook, Kindle, iPhone, and audio versions are digital. This eliminates our up-front printing bill. Rather than paying $5,000 to one printer, we pay $1,000 to five writers, ensuring that our writers are paid fairly. Our anthology is available anywhere in the world, overruns aren’t pulped, and our back issues are perpetually in print.
Electric Literature may be leading the pack among literary magazines, but it isn’t the only, or even the first, publisher to use the POD/digital formula exclusively—today publishers of every ilk do, and it’s a model I’m sure we’ll see more of.
Just a write thought.
Jul
27
Literary Agency as Book Publisher?
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There has been an interesting brouhaha since last Thursday when the Wylie Agency announced plans to launch a digital book publishing venture called Odyssey Editions.
Wylie is no slouch of an agency.
Odyssey Editions plans to publish e-book editions of some of Wylie’s author’s backlist titles that have yet to be published as e-books. These include books by literary heavy-hitters Salman Rushdie, John Updike, Philip Roth, and Norman Mailer. Wylie is said to represent more than 700 authors and author’s heirs.
Agency founder Andrew Wylie, is apparently frustrated by two things:
1.) The stance Random House and other publishers have taken that e-book and other digital rights are included in older contracts signed before digital rights existed and thus were not explicitly listed in a contract. (Most contracts spell out exactly what rights the author is licensing to the publisher, such as hardcover, trade paperback, mass market, or foreign language, and retain any rights not mentioned for the author.)
2.) What Wylie sees as e-book royalty rates that are too low to be fair to authors.
Is this ok?
Beyond the contract and the royalty rate issues, there is a lot to question about an agency becoming a publisher.
First and foremost is the appearance of a conflict of interest, if not an actual conflict. How will the agency-publisher-author split be figured?
Will there be advances paid? Is the agency prepared to do all the things a publisher does? Will the e-book be an exact duplicate of the printed book if the final editing is done by the print book publisher?
How likely is the printed book publisher to aggressively promote and market the printed versions knowing some of the cream of its endeavors, in the form of e-book sales, will be skimmed off the top?
Wait, it gets weirder.
Wylie further confused the issue by saying he planned to give Amazon.com exclusive rights to Odyssey titles for its Kindle editions for two years.
It is commonly thought that Amazon isn’t paying for this exclusivity since that would likely trigger “favored nation” clauses present in contracts Amazon has with other publishers. So what benefit does the author receive by limiting the titles to one e-book edition? What benefit does Wylie receive?
IMHO
Publishers should remain publishers and literary agencies should remain literary agencies and never the twain should meet.
A word about e-book royalties
It’s my experience that royalty rates on e-books appear to be settling in at about 25 percent of net proceeds. I don’t think this will stand.
Our plan for The Write Thought’s “Classic Wisdom on Writing” e-book series of reissued writing titles, to be launched in 2011, is to pay authors 50 percent of net proceeds.
With pressures from the big authors and their agents, I imagine a figure closer to 50 percent than 25 percent will eventually prevail in most publishing agreements.
Just a write thought.
Jul
20
E-books Already Outselling P-Books?
Filed Under Books, E-books, Publishing | Leave a Comment
Funny how headlines morph as stories move from one newspaper or online media to the next. I usually spend a few minutes each morning reading the Slatest Morning Edition, a daily e-mail that offers a headline and the first few sentences of a dozen top news stories of the day from Slate, a Washington Post company.
Often I only read the headline, a perilous habit. Today, a headline announces “E-book Sales Outnumber Traditional Hardcover Sales.” From this one could mistakenly assume that e-books were outselling printed books everywhere. Particularly if one misinterpreted the word “hardcover” to mean “printed.”
The story is a rehash of a New York Times article with the headline, “E-Books Top Hardcovers at Amazon.”
In the New York Times article, we learn that Kindle (Amazon.com’s e-reader) editions have outstripped Amazon’s sales of hardcover editions of books—this doesn’t include paperbacks which, it is safe to say, outsell hardcover books by a huge margin. A milestone to be sure, but not the same as is perhaps suggested in the Slatest headline.
Other interesting tidbits gleaned from the NYT article:
• Over the last three months 143 Kindle editions were sold for every 100 hardcover editions sold by Amazon.
• The pace is accelerating with Kindle editions, in the last four weeks, selling 180 copies for every 100 hardcovers sold.
• Acute industry observer Mike Shatzkin predicts, “within a decade, fewer than 25 percent of all books sold will be print versions.”
• According to the Association of American Publishers, hardcover sales are up 22 percent this year. (Now that is a surprise and one wonders if it could be correct.)
• E-book sales have grown 400 percent this year through May.
• Sales of Kindle have tripled since Amazon lowered the price to $189 from $259 earlier this year. (The increase may not be completely price-driven. E-readers and tablets like Apple’s iPad have gotten great press lately.)
IMHO e-books are in the process of leveling the book-publishing playing field. Smaller publishers and lesser-known authors will benefit.
On another note, I’ll be presenting at the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in Bali in October and at the Space Coast Writers Conference in January. And, at the end of this month, the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. Tough duty, but I’m up to it. Be sure to say hello if you’re at any of these.
Just a write thought.
May
24
Books Can’t Be Free
Filed Under Books, E-books, Free Speech, Publishing, Writing | Leave a Comment
Amazon.com has plans to split their bestseller list into two, one for free titles and one for paid books. This will likely please authors and publishers and add a tenth of a basis point or so to Amazon’s bottom line.
It also points out that “free” isn’t the price point for delivery of content. Authors, publishers, and retailers need to make money if readers are going to have a robust selection of informational and entertainment material available to us at any price.
Just a write thought.
Apr
30
Dust Already Settling: Microsoft’s Courier Tablet a Fatality. HP’s Slate too?
Filed Under Books, E-books, Publishing | Leave a Comment
The weeding out of the e-reader/mobile device field has started (continued?) with Microsoft announcing it is canceling further development on its book-shaped, two-page device codenamed Courier.
HP’s Slate is rumored to be on the chopping block too. Perhaps something to do with HP bailing out Palm last week. According to this rumor, HP didn’t like the Windows 7 touch screen technology and felt that Palm’s webOS was better.
Does this mean eventually there will only be one or two players on the field? Nope. The market is too big and there are still a number of heavy-weight companies with product in the pipeline including Dell with its 7- and 10-inch iPad-look-alikes named “Streak.”
Perhaps even Microsoft is still in the game. According to Frank Shaw, a corporate vice president, quoted in a Business Week aritcle, “[the courier’s] technologies will be evaluated for use in future Microsoft offerings.”
What is the eventual impact for authors and publishers? Virtually every book—self-published or not—will be available to download to virtually every reader from dozens of sources. This broadens and levels the playing field for authors and independent publishers who today have to battle the many gatekeepers in the distribution chain.
Just a write thought.
Apr
25
Heady Times in E-Book Publishing
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As I read the April 19th edition of Publishers Weekly, which has a number of articles touching on e-books, I’m reminded of the 1970s when Gottschalk’s, a Fresno-based department store chain, was offering free lessons to housewives on how to use a new-fangled device called a microwave. I’m also reminded of when Beta was battling VHS for dominance in our living rooms. And of the mid-1400s when Guttenberg put his big toe into the river that today we call the “information highway.”
The e-reader or mobile device—it’ll do a lot more than allow you to read text—is analogous to the microwave. We still don’t understand quite what it is or what it will do for us but we are anxious to learn.
And today’s technology battle is among competing e-book formats (Amazon’s Kindle, Apple’s iPad, Adobe’s Digital Editions, and the soon-to-be-released Blio, just to name a few frontrunners), each vying to be the leading, if not the exclusive format.
Finally, the Guttenbergs of the day are giving us many new ways to receive information beyond ink on paper, often richly interactive ways Guttenberg could never have envisioned.
It’s fun to watch, but it’s difficult to know where to place your money.
What should an author or publisher do at this stage? Learn what you can, participate when it makes sense, but don’t fret. Content is still king and when the dust settles, the king may have a queen, a few princes or princesses, and maybe even a consort or two, but it’ll still be king.
Just a write thought.
Feb
27
Three Things I “Knew” Before the O’Reilly Tools of Change Conference
Filed Under Book Marketing, Books, E-books, Publishing | Leave a Comment
One of the reasons to attend conferences is to confirm that your current beliefs and practices are valid. If you are anything like me, you, on occasion, make business decisions and take actions based on gut feelings or past experiences—feelings and experiences that are, as Nixon’s press secretary Ron Zeigler might have put it, inoperative.
There were at least three things I “knew” before I attended the TOC conference. I was pleased to find they were in fact still “operative.”
1. It isn’t time yet to abandon all the marketing efforts that have worked for years. Book events, speaking engagements, printed reviews, and interviews on radio and TV still have a place. Support your non-social media marketing with social media marketing and vice versa.
2. An app for an iPhone or other device isn’t a replacement for a book, but can both support your book sales and be profitable on its own.
3. The author, rather than the publishing company, is the social media marketer of choice. This is true for at least three reasons: Authors are usually more passionate and knowledgeable about their subject than a publishing company’s employee; social media is about personal connections, not corporate connections; and authors offer star appeal.
One thing I was surprised to learn was pointed out by Tim O’Reilly in his conference-closing address: The top ten blogs according to Technorati.com often include large organizations that are, in reality, publishers in that they are involved primarily in news gathering and distribution. Examples are The Huffington Post, Mashable and Boing Boing.
A side note: When my friends turn up their noses at reading books on a Kindle or other mobile device (like I used to), I’ve been smugly telling them there is an e-reader in their future. Now, after seeing what’s about to hit the landing strip, I’m going to tell them it is in their near future.
Just a write thought.
Feb
24
TOC Publishing Conference Takeaways
Filed Under Book Marketing, Books, E-books, Promotion, Publishing | Leave a Comment
Here, in random order, are a few quotes worth contemplating —often paraphrased—from various speakers at the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference. My apologies to the speakers for not attributing these, all were brilliant and many said basically the same things in different and enlightening ways.
• Mobile publishing does not equal digital publishing.
• Mobile is more like print than digital.
• Engagement is on the user’s terms.
• Mobile users are acceptive of ads.
• Usage is in short bursts of 3.5 to 4 minutes.
• Monetary exchange answers aren’t clear yet.
• In 2005, Apple’s first attempt at cell, the ROKR, held 100 songs.
• 2010 will be “The Year of the Mobile.”
• Consumers are trained now.
• The pieces are finally in place: Content, distribution substructure, devices.
• No buginess is accepted by users.
• Apps run from $3,000 to $100,000. Sourcebooks spends $3,000 to $7,000 for an app.
• Collect and analyze data: Metrics, metrics, metrics.
• Mobile devices are “super measurable.”
• Apple’s app store: 200,000 plus apps with 2 billion downloads.
• $4.99 is the pricing “sweet spot” for an app right now.
• No gatekeepers, but no quality controls.
• 75% of apps are paid, 25% are free.
• Symbian is the most-used cell phone operating system, but not popular in the U.S.
• Vendors (set up to assist you in making apps) make money by confusing you.
• One app sold for $800 and just returned an image of a ruby. Three were sold before Apple took it down.
• Plan your app’s launch day like you would with a book.
• Tuesdays and Wednesdays are best for launches.
• If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.
• Fail quickly, iterate rapidly.
• For wirelesss downloads mentions on Mashable and TechCrunch are better than regular media.
• There’s a free Stanford course on iPhones available from Apple’s iUniversity.
• Most success stories are without a marketing budget.
• Learn XML.
• Your website is the hub of a social media strategy.
• Choose team members passionate about your topic for social media marketing.
• Offer tools so your audience can promote your content.
• Content is king.
• Sales are driven by instant gratification.
• Embed links generously.
• Don’t be a commercial.
• Your high quality content is a targeted sales pitch.
• Stay focused.
• Start slow and build.
• Think long-term.
• Be consistent and persistent.
• A sign in Einstein’s office: Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
• Macmillan’s Dynamic Books: Text books that can be changed by the professor are an effort to curb used book sales.
• The speed of innovation is accelerating.
• Generational shifts are coming into play in big ways.
• The 8 to 18 crowd spend average of 7.5 hours on digital device a day.
• Simplify, connect, conquer.
• Watch the periphery.
• Limit the variables.
• Leave your comfort zone.
• Publishing was B2B is now B2C.
• Golden Age of Engagement.
• Self-expression is the new entertainment.
• Moore’s law (Google if you aren’t familiar with it) applies.
• Information technology has a 50% deflation rate annually.
Attending conferences like this is expensive, but it repays you over the year many times over.
Just a write thought.
Feb
23
Books and Cell Phone Apps?
Filed Under Book Marketing, Books, E-books, Promotion, Publishing, Writing | Leave a Comment
The O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, held this year at New York’s Marriott Marquis Times Square, is the place to try and keep up with the technological advances currently flooding the book publishing industry.
I attended three workshops yesterday. The first was titled “Selling in Mobile Markets” and was presented by Rana Sobany author of the O’Reilly book Marketing iPhone Apps.
She gave some interesting history:
The 1980s, she said, was all about carriers establishing the substructure necessary for cell phones. The first cell phone call was made in 1983.
The 90s were about cell phone size with, in 1999, Motorola unveiling the StarTAC, the first cell phone to weigh in under one pound.
Today there are a reported 4.6 billion cell phones in use. This approaches the population of the world, which is approximately 6.8 billion, but there are lots of third-world countries without land lines to most places, forcing the use of cell technology and, apparently, many people carry more than one cell phone.
Sobany, an articulate woman in her 30s (I’d guess) who is passionate about her subject, said she’d bet many in the audience were carrying more than one. I doubted that, but later in the conference I was speaking to the sales rep for Publishers Weekly and he fielded calls on at least two as we spoke. I felt underprivileged with only a single iPhone in my pocket.
What does that proliferation of cell phones mean for authors and publishers? It means we had better plan on having a presence in the mobile world. It is predicted that within a few years more people will access the Internet via mobile devices than from PCs. Mobile apps are today—and will be more so in the future—important ways to support book sales.
Here, in no particular order, are a few new nuggets I gleaned from Sobany’s talk:
• She says this decade will be the “iPhone” decade. Not meaning that iPhone will be the only player, but is the one currently defining the industry.
• Publishers, in designing apps for mobile devices need:
—a brand vision, by which I took she meant working single titles would result in loss of momentum and subsequent impact. She said, at the least, use a common logo. This would suggest book authors should consider writing series or leave the apps to your publisher.
—to make data-driven decisions. Metrics, metrics, metrics…one great thing about mobile devices and the web in general is that you can obtain lots of data. Using it to ferret out what actions are best is still art as well as science, but ignore it at your peril.
—iterate quickly. Updating to keep your app current to the needs of today’s user is important if you don’t want your app to be replaced by another’s.
—keep in mind that the attention a user gives to his device is given in short bursts of about three and a half to four minutes. This isn’t all bad, it is a highly-focused three and a half to four minutes, but an app that requires 10 minutes of concentration….
There was much more. I’ll try to get to some of it later, but, an interesting prediction I heard more than once at this conference is that Twitter will, in essence, be a thing of the past by the end of the year. Twitter, a short-lived fad? Who could have predicted?
Just a write thought.
Feb
1
Amazon.com Caves on Kindle E-Book Pricing
Filed Under Book Marketing, Books, E-books, Publishing | Leave a Comment
Amazon.com and MacMillan, one of the nation’s largest publishers, engaged in a bit of tussle over the last few days. It was about the much-debated (within the publishing industry anyway) pricing Amazon had chosen to offer on Kindle e-book editions of best-selling books.
Where a hardcover best-seller might have a retail price of $25 to $30, Kindle editions were offered at $9.99.
Since Amazon pays about half of the retail price for each Kindle edition sold, the company was apparently using the $9.99 pricing as a lost-leader in an effort to sell more Kindle e-readers which in turn would create a greater demand for Kindle e-books.
Publishers, however, were worried that, in the nascent e-book business, consumers would become fixated on a belief that e-books should sell at considerably lower prices than hardcover books.
MacMillan raised a fuss over the discounted pricing and, for a few days, Amazon quit selling thousands of MacMillan titles directly—you could still buy the titles through Amazon from other vendors.
Yesterday, Amazon reversed course and capitulated. They will now offer Kindle editions of MacMillan titles at the publisher-suggested prices of around $12.99 to $14.99.
In my opinion much of this is moot or soon will be.
Within five years, digital files of most books will be stored in one or two huge repositories where the rights owners—publishers, authors, whoever—will dictate how much they want to charge for each downloaded copy; perhaps with prices for different categories of buyers such as libraries, brick-and-mortar stores—who will use equipment that prints and binds a book while you wait—and online retailers.
Amazon and other retailers will tap into these repositories, downloading and delivering a copy each time they get an order for a book. The retailer will add whatever mark-up their efficiencies and market pressures allow to the price they pay.
The repository will handle collecting from the retailer and paying the publisher or other rights holder.
Look for Amazon to discontinue stocking printed editions of most titles, prefering to download and print each book when a customer orders one.
Just a write thought.
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