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Read it. Love it. Forget it.

April 19, 2011 in Reflections | 7 comments

“My impression of kindle … is that most readers have a very fast cycle of Read it. Love it (hopefully). Forget it.

The one-click buying is very instant gratification. Unless you’re a prolific writer of formulaic genre books, turning out 2 or 3 a year, I don’t see much opportunity for building up a readership. Unless you are constantly on the forums you will quickly be forgotten.”

So said fellow lit fic author, Ali Cooper, on a Facebook thread a couple of days back, sparking a stream of comments from other writers. Many of them saw this as the fatal flaw in digital publishing. The ebook is a fad. Most serious readers will turn back to print for their serious reads.

People probably said the same when the motor car was invented. Just think of the inconvenience. Someone walking in front of you waving a red flag. And besides, our roads aren’t wide enough for them. Noisy smelly things too. It won’t be long before everyone goes back to the horse.

Like it or not, digital is here to stay. It doesn’t mean the death of the print book. People will always love them, just as they love horses. But while we may still stroke real books and allow them to nuzzle up to us, I suspect most of us won’t actually own one.

The truth is that we always adapt to new media – and quickly. New roads are constructed, pot-holes covered over, speed-limits put in place, pedestrian crossings and traffic-lights invented.

And our lifestyle evolves too. Car ownership made society more mobile. We moved away from friends and family, and started commuting to our jobs, miles away. Homes became a commodity and a housing market emerged, as the pace of our vehicle-driven job-hopping increased. Suppliers became national instead of local. Even our towns and cities shifted, as malls clustered around available parking space for the delivery trucks and shoppers.

Is life better? Debatable. Are our behaviors different? Undeniably. Was change inevitable? Irresistibly.

I’m pretty much in agreement with Ali. Yes, Kindle readers – and all digital readers – do tend to read, love, forget. And there’s a reason. Our reading behaviors are changing in response to the new media. Mine are anyway.

Let me borrow an image from Seth Godin: the purple cow. Godin says that if you’re in a herd of cows, people won’t remember you unless you’re different. Purple. But let’s develop his analogy. Imagine you’re in a herd of a million cows – and there’s a green cow too, and a blue cow, and a polka-dot pink cow, and several varieties of stripy red. The other cows don’t say Moo! – they say Me! – and they’re all trying to push to the front.

Here’s how it is for readers. I remember seeing a funny cow last time I came this way … purple, I think it was. Can’t see it now though. Maybe over there. Ah, there’s a pink one. Look, that one’s cute …. OK, kids, time to get moving.

That’s how we read, most of us, much of the time. Scan. Stop. Sample. Maybe Like. Move on. It’s how we use Twitter and Facebook. It’s how we read blogs. It’s not hard to find the evidence. As I write, one of my posts, One of our Tweeps is Missing, has attracted 143 visits today, largely as a result of a Facebook link from Ommwriter, which was featured in the post. On the face of it, a success. Until I look more closely. Google Analytics reveals that only 10 visitors spent more than a minute on the page, and 80% of them flashed past in less than 10 seconds.

But what about the readers who do engage, the ones who take the time to read and absorb and then open other pages? Or in Ali’s case, the dozens of people who cared enough about her excellent first novel, The Girl On The Swing, to write reviews. Now that she’s just published her second, Cave, where are they? They’ve probably not forgotten her: it’s just that right now they’re all tied up with the stripy cows.

So, what does the forward-thinking, market-oriented, technically-adept purple cow do? Figures out the media. Fits herself with a GPS tag, and hands out scanners to fans.

Or something like that.

Again I think Ali gets it right: it’s all about being prolific. She suggests that writing two or three books a year or pounding the Kindle boards will keep you in the public view enough to build up a following. Like Barbara Cartland, who published 723 books … averaging 20 books a year from the age of 77 to 97 … and sold over a billion books! Probably having a few royal connections didn’t do her any harm either. (Most of us prefer to keep that sort of thing quiet.)

Now I couldn’t possibly hammer out a novel a fortnight, but I can still learn something from Ms Cartland. I’ve been blogging for the last 20 days, putting on a live creative writing gig most days. It’s keeping me in front of my readers, and showing them how I write. I’m not sure I’ll have the energy to keep it up too much longer: I’m not a spontaneous writer, and coming up with the story-line and writing with as much care as I’d take in a novel often expands out into an all-day job. But I could, relatively easily, write a 20-30 minute short story every couple of weeks.

How would the short story help? Well, I have good evidence that in our changed reader market, the demand for short stories is strong. A year ago, as a trial, I published three free shorts on Smashwords under my Rapscallion imprint – two from Suki Michelle and one from me. Without any effort at all, we’ve had 2500 downloads. You might argue that the majority of our readers have been greaders – they took the stories and never read them – and you’d probably be right. But it only takes one or two reviews like the wonderful, thoughtful piece from eCapris yesterday to start showing the discriminating reader that we mean business. That we’re trying to raise the bar.

In our mobile world, and with the reading tools we have in our pockets, the 30-minute read is likely to become ever more important. Commuting. The lunch-break. Between classes. In the waiting-room. The moments we snatch in our busy day. The free short story and smart essay fit perfectly into this window. And if the reader learns to love a writer at lunchtime, she may end up with his novel in bed that night.

Of course other social marketing tools will continue to be important, not least the Kindle message-boards. But while my comments there may show people who I am as a person, my short stories show who I am as a writer. That seems important.

And there’s one more thing. Remember the cow’s GPS tag? Here’s my version. When readers sign up as members for my blog, my (still-to-be-launched-but-coming-soon) Associate scheme will allow them an email notification option every time a new short story is released. This purple writer means to stay found.

Am I right about changes to our reading behavior? Has the way you read changed in the digital age?

Related posts – both written a year ago:

12 Reasons Why Printed Books Will Survive
With A Little Help From My Friends
Seth Godin’s now saying that purple cows need to be in reinventable fields. Me, I’ll stick with the GPS tag.

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Whisperings: birth of the e-novel

March 27, 2011 in Reflections | 9 comments

Just emerging

2010

A year ago, I wrote that April 3rd 2010 would be remembered as “the most important day in 570 years”.

Do you remember that day? The excitement and expectation as the iPad finally hit the stores after months of rumor? Of course by April 3rd 2011 no self-respecting technista would be seen dead with an iPad. Now it’s all about the iPad2 – ‘thinner, lighter, faster’, all manner of temptation to succumb to the Apple again.

But I wasn’t writing about the product. What happened that day was a turning-point in history – a watershed. The ebook had been rapidly emerging for a couple of years, but the iPad somehow legitimized digital publishing. It was the new cool. Bless my soul and whiskers, even Twitter millionaire Steven Fry was promoting the virtues of e-reading on this ‘game-changing’ new product. It was cooler than anything since …

1440

The last game-changer in the history of text – Gutenberg’s invention of the printing-press. No longer would the monk labor in his drafty cell, painstakingly hand-crafting the illuminated manuscript (“How I love the smell of vellum.”). Now a book (“Call THAT a book?”) could be produced in a matter of hours – thinner, lighter and faster than ever before. For the first time, books passed out of the hands of the Church into the homes of ordinary people (“How will standards be maintained if there are no gatekeepers?”). A social and cultural revolution was underway.

What changed? As literacy spread, learning was increasingly secularized. Books started to appear in the vernacular instead of the language of Christendom, Latin. There’s a strong case to be made that print was directly responsible for the Reformation, the Renaissance. The reliance on oral tradition died. Arguably, print brought about the growth of organizations and centralized businesses, created modern urban society. But of one thing there’s no doubt. Print created a market of private readers. And to satisfy this market, a new art-form emerged: the novel.

Fast forward

To today, a year after a new text revolution. What’s changed? Perhaps it’s not so much change as acceleration. Writing has been democratized: we write almost as much as we talk – some of us more so. A year ago, we sent 50 million tweets a day; today it’s 140 million. In the same time the number of WordPress blogs has increased from 10.5 million to 18 million. The number of books published on Smashwords has passed 40,000, with 5000 new titles added per month.

Those are the figures, but what’s the impact? We’re beginning to recognize the vernacular: this week OMG and LOL were added to the OED. (If OED is a new one to you, don’t worry – you really don’t need it for most texts.) We’re decentralizing: who needs to be in an office when you can message anyone on your mobile? The prophet of our electronic age, Marshall McLuhan foresaw this 50 years ago when he wrote of our return to the village – but now ‘the global village’.

But most tellingly, the events of the last few weeks in the Middle East are directly the product of the text revolution. I remember sitting on a beach in one of the Arab Gulf states 35 years ago, and asking how long their comfortably feudal systems could survive in a modern world. The answer was 35 years. After all those years of quiescence, the ruled have erupted against the rulers. And what’s driven their revolution – not the cause but the mechanism? Text messages, Facebook, Twitter.

Weren’t you supposed to be talking about the novel?

I’m coming to that.

So authors are publishing 5000 new books a month on Smashwords. On Amazon it’s probably more … plus of course all the previously published books re-released there. In the digital world, publishers realize, books never need go out of print. (Watch for proposals to change the copyright law.)

But almost without exception, books are still written first for print, then converted to a digital format. The iPad in particular perpetuates the illusion that we’re still reading a printed book, with a display that simulates a page turn. How long will it be before we start seeing books written to take advantage of the new medium? How long before an e-novel emerges, as radically different from the current literary form as the novel was from its predecessors?

Probably a long time. After all, it was 200 years or more after the printing press that novels in English began to take off with the work of Bunyan, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding.

Our friend Stephen Fry, it’s true, has already had a stab at it. In September last year The Fry Chronicles, a memoir, was published simultaneously in hardback, as an eBook and as an iPhone app. And it’s genuinely innovative: the app allows readers to skip through the book using color-coded categories to focus on different people and subjects.

But most writers have carried on as before, conceiving the novel as a print object, thinking in terms of the number of print pages, maintaining a print layout, telling the story as they would a print story.

Then this week, for the first time, I heard the faintest whispers that change is in the air.

First on an Amazon thread – that old chestnut, ‘What is literary fiction?’ In a fascinating series of posts, Stefano Boscutti claims to be working on stories that can change in reaction to a reader’s physiological responses – but admits that it’s ‘a stupid, crazy, ridiculously daunting project’. Maybe. But it will happen one day, to be sure. Then Stefano touches on something of particular interest to me, because it’s exactly what I’ve tried to do in my novel, The Lebanese Troubles:

I’m pushing for a hybrid of screenplay and prose to make my stories “read” better on screens. Increasingly the screen is how we consume text.

Then just this morning, I was followed on Twitter by 40kBooks.com – and their site was a real find. ‘Smart content for smart people’ was the message I got from their home page. And I have to say that these folks have a smart marketing strategy. They’re thinking about where their smart readers read, and how. It may be hard to get time to curl up with a novel, but there are times in the day when you’re waiting, maybe commuting, maybe taking a lunch break, and your mobile phone is already with you. So what kind of material are they publishing? Novellas, from both top and up-and-coming European and American writers. Essays, from leading thinkers. The sort of content that will keep the reader fully absorbed for around an hour. Because ‘short is more’ they say. That’s thinking outside the book.

And then, right there on the home page, two sentences that expressed my thoughts perfectly, from an essay by Thierry Crouzet:

We know today how to translate books from paper to the e-world. It is now time to learn how to write books which could not have been written on paper.

Whisperings perhaps, but the game really is changing. The e-novel is being conceived.

* * *

If you’re a novelist who thinks screen rather than paper, please check in here, with a comment. We could have fun exploring ideas together.

The discussion continues in ‘e-Novel: explorations in writing and reading‘, with discussion on the changing relationship between writer and readers, and a live e-Novel exercise.


References

The most important day in 570 years – my original post
MediaDigest – Twitter figures
ReadWriteWeb – WordPress figures
Smashword figures – see post for March 25.
Wired.co.uk – new entries in the OED
Stephen Fry‘s blog
Stefano Boscutti‘s website
The 40kBooks website
Thierry Crouzet on 40kBooks.com

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We’re Lendle-ing again – but maybe not in Japan

March 25, 2011 in News | 10 comments

Lendle-ing again

Well two-and-a-half cheers! eBook-sharing is back on the agenda again.

One day after stopping Lendle in its tracks, Amazon relented and they’re back in business again, with just a teensy bit of sync-ing goodness (‘useful but non-essential’ say Lendle triumphantly) removed. If only we could deal with all the world’s great crises so amicably!

And for indie publishers and writers, it’s an important victory too, because it leaves us the right to choose whether we want to share our books or not. If Lendle is to survive, so will Booklending.com, and both figure in my long-term marketing plan.


… With Reservations

But the news doesn’t quite get the full three cheers.

First there was a thumbs down from Shiori, the Japanese student who’s been living with us for several months now. I used ‘Lendle’ for a few harmless pronunciation exercises. Sadly, she now hates the word, and says the thing would never catch on in Japan anyway, with a name like that.

Not that she needs to worry, not yet anyway. Because when I started the sign-up process with Lendle, this was the Welcome I got:

Please note that Lendle is currently only available in the United States. We expect Amazon to allow book lending elsewhere soon.

Well, I’m a Brit, and the news wasn’t entirely a surprise. You know what we’re like, we’d be awful at returning books on time – though perhaps not as bad as your George Washington who, I hear, had a book out on loan from 1789 until last year – and then got off without paying the $300,000 late fee.

But the Japanese, the Germans, the Swedes … surely you could have trusted them!?

My guess is that Amazon will want to install a GPS book-sniffing device inside each eBook before introducing sharing outside the US, so that recalcitrant foreign libracriminals can be hunted down. Whether the expiry of the Patriot Act at the end of May will have any impact is hard to say.

But at least the principle seems now to have been accepted – that writers should have the choice whether to offer their books for sharing or not.


With big reservations

Of course, there will still be writers who think that Amazon’s change-of-heart will open the door to unspeakable evils, and this view has been eloquently expressed by Steven Lewis on the Kindle Writers blog. In an open letter to Jeff Croft, co-founder of Lendle, he writes:

Maybe I don’t have Mr Croft’s vision thing. Have I even understood your business correctly? (It is a business, right?) After all, as a publisher, I have what Mr Croft calls an old school business model, that’s the one where I expect to be paid for my work.

Perhaps you agree with Steven. That’s fine. If so then you don’t need to offer up your books for sharing. Everyone should have the right to opt out too. But before you come to a decision about it, take a look at the comments following Steven’s post. As well as a response from Croft, you’ll find other writers making a cogent case for participating in a book-sharing scheme – because they’re convinced it will increase both readers AND income.


Getting started with sharing

We’ll let the argument rage over there. Assuming you have made the decision to be a book-sharer, where do you go from there?

The starting-point is your copyright notice – and I was delighted today to get a ringing endorsement for the wording I’ve proposed from none other than Andy Woodworth, the co-sponsor of the eBook User’s Bill of Rights. So you could share this too.

Treat this ebook as you would a printed book. If you enjoy it and want to share it with friends and family – as we hope you will – then please do so. The best support you can give is by helping to spread the word about a (publisher’s) author or book. All we ask is that you respect the author’s right to make a living from his art: so please do not re-distribute this book in any format for commercial purposes, or modify the content in any way.

But that’s only the start. Just because I allow people to share my book, it doesn’t follow that anyone will want to do so. There are 130 million other books published (according to Google, whose plans to scan all of them came to a crashing halt yesterday at the end of a long-running law-suit). Over 18 million WordPress blogs – and probably as many more that are not WordPress). 200 million Twitter users sending 1 billion tweets a week, as Twitter celebrates its 5th birthday today. How has your book got a chance unless it’s either extraordinarily good – and even then maybe not – or extraordinarily bad?

That’s where we’ll start next time – with a look at how to create passionate early adopters, those who will help to launch your book out into the world.


Sources

References::

Related posts – Writers without Borders:


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Whose eBook – Yours, Mine or Amazon’s?

March 22, 2011 in News | 2 comments

lendle

About 15 minutes after my last post, recommending that we writers should pro-actively encourage lending, news started circulating that Amazon had forced Lendle to close down.

To be honest, I didn’t know of Lendle – it was after all only 6 weeks old. But I’m learning now that many thousands of book-lovers were already signed up, lending and borrowing their Kindle books just like those who use the service I described yesterday, Booklending.com.

Before I go further, let me make it clear that these sites were NOT latter-day Kazoos, designed to encourage indiscriminate copying of an artist’s work. The borrowing process was carefully circumscribed, using the API that Amazon itself introduced at the turn of the year: a single purchaser could lend each book properly purchased once only, and the book would be automatically returned to the purchaser after 14 days.

Why should I – as a writer – be keen to encourage this? Doesn’t it deprive me of sales? Absolutely not, if I take the long-term view. If I look at the books and the authors I love best, almost without exception I started reading because of the recommendation of a teacher or reviewer I respected, or a friend or a family member. In many cases, I was a borrower, then a convert, then a purchaser.

Seth Godin, social media’s poster-child, understands this. His latest scheme, The Domino Project, seeks new ways to spread ideas – through books – quickly. Godin is frustrated that while a tweet or a blog-post may gain exposure a thousand times in a few minutes, the book – ‘still an ideal tool for the hand-to-hand spreading of important ideas’ – is held back by slow publishers, inflexible and ill-considered pricing, and antiquated distribution.

Godin’s solution? His latest book, Poke the Box, was first released for $1 to early adopters, people who were sure to spread the word. Now officially released, the book is priced at $4.99 but readers who love it and want to share it with their friends or colleagues can get a special price for a 5-pack or a 52-pack of books – buy 14 and get 38 for free. Echoing Tim O’Reilly, Godin says:

Our enemy is not piracy; our enemy is not our best readers not paying for it; our enemy is obscurity.

Sharing then, borrowing, lending. All to spread ideas, to get people listening. And who are the co-sponsors of The Domino Project. Why, Amazon!

The same Amazon who yesterday told Lendle, in a no-reply email, that their website “does not serve the principal purpose of driving sales of products and services on the Amazon site.”

Search for #Lendle on Twitter and you’ll see, not anger, but sadness and resignation. Jeffrey Zeldman, (the inspiration behind the wonderful “A List Apart”), tweets:

“Sad to see Amazon shut down @jcroft’s lovely Lendle. Yesterday’s futurist is today’s future obstructor.”

Wasn’t it really inevitable that Amazon would yield to the publishers’ demands. Unlike Godin, publishers don’t peddle ideas; their bottom line is sales. And right now, immediate, short-term sales. Remember Amazon’s statement? They talked about their “principal purpose of driving sales of products and services”. So we know which camp they’re in. Not that I’m blaming them for trying to make money.

But there’s another issue. Here’s Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch:

It isn’t terribly surprising that Amazon is shutting Lendle down as it could conceivably lead to people buying fewer books, but it’s another reminder of the frustrations associated with DRM-laden content — you may have just paid $10 for a novel, but you don’t really own it.

Here we come to the real point: who owns our ebooks?

When I chose to be an independent author, I did so because I wanted to retain control over every aspect of my book’s publication. The cover, the pricing, the line-spacing, the distribution method, the relationship with my readers. Everything. Perhaps I would make mistakes along the way, but if I did, they would be mine too. Perhaps you’ll think me arrogant, but I’m not saying I won’t listen to advice, or ask for help, or listen to criticism. It’s just the same as being an employer, not an employee. If I get it right, I may win; if I don’t, I’ll fail.

I’m not saying either that any other writer has to make the same decisions as me. Some will want to encourage book-sharing; others may completely disagree with me. But that’s their choice. The point is, we have a choice.

One of the choices I’ve made is to allow my readers to share with other readers. I’m giving them the right to OWN the books they buy from me, with all the rights that ownership confers.

As I write, there’s still no sign that Amazon will try to snuff out Booklending.com too. Early days – I sincerely hope not. But if that were to happen, it’s not the end of the story. Seth Godin has shown us that we can still poke the box: if we want to allow our readers to share, we just need to use our imagination.

And there’s something else. Technology is inevitable. So we might as well embrace it.

24 hours after this article, Lendle was reinstated by Amazon and the service is now fully restored (- see my post “We’re Lendle-ing again – but maybe not in Japan“). However, the points I made in this post about ownership are still valid … so I’ll leave the post here.

References
The official announcement from Lendle
Seth Godin talking about The Domino Project at The Kindle Chronicles. (Find the audio clip below the fold, just above comments, and start listening at 20:00.)
Godin’s Poke The Box
Techcrunch: Amazon Gives Kindle Book-Swapping Service Lendle The Axe
A List Apart
Booklending.com – still operating – and waiting for you to share The Lebanese Troubles!


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Readers’ Rights

March 11, 2011 in Reflections | 2 comments

Revolution, it seems, is all around us. Last time I talked about a publishing revolution, led by writers. But not to be left behind, readers are getting into the act too. Led by a fiery librarian, Andy Woodworth.

His blog post begins with a banner headline – “START A REVOLUTION”. Goodness, Andy, where did you get that typeface, with it’s dagger T’s, arrowhead V’s, and battleaxe L’s? This revolution promises violence.

But fear not, gentle reader. Andy’s not calling for blood – not yet, anyway. All he wants is a perfectly reasonable eBook User’s Bill of Rights. Essentially, these are the four demands:

  • eBooks should not be locked or limited, preventing readers from taking back-ups, or allowing publishers or writers to remove them at a whim. In others words, readers want to buy and own books, not receive a version under license.
  • When you purchase an eBook it should be available to you in the format of your choice. You should not need to buy a new copy if, for example, you decide to move your library from an IPad to a Kindle – or any new electronic reading device that may appear in coming years.
  • Readers should have the right to annotate, quote passages, print, and share eBook content within the spirit of fair use and copyright.
  • The eBook purchaser should be able to share and resell the book.

Is that a sharp intake of breath I hear from my friends up in the gods – the writers – after that last demand? What did you say? Something about a ‘dead body’?

Well, I’ll come back to demand four in a moment. But let’s look at the first three. From an independent writer’s standpoint, there’s nothing too outrageous here. I’m sure I speak for most writers when I say that I don’t want to lock my e-words away. I want them to float freely through the ether, available to potential readers at any place and at any time, unencumbered. And where my book seeds take root, I want them to grow. Sure, I want to make a fair living from my writing – a good living if possible – but unlike some operating system providers I could mention, I’m not interested in making my readers pay for an ‘updated’ version of the same book every couple of years.

I guess it’s different for the publishers and hardware suppliers. No soft and fluffy approach for them. There’s not the same emotional attachment to readers. They’re in business, they have stakeholders to satisfy, and in these straitened times, they need to make money every which way. Licensing, digital rights management, these are inventions hatched by the commercial folk, not by the artist.

The beauty of independent e-publishing is that authority remains in the author’s hands. We can choose, even when we publish with Amazon these days, not to lock our books with DRM. And we have a very important tool at our disposal. Smashwords.

Smashwords deserves all the recognition and support it can get, both from readers and writers. Smashwords may not yet be the sales powerhouse that Amazon is, but founder Mark Coker is clearly committed to the principle of author control. By following clear guidelines, our Smashwords books are available in all formats, for all readers, including PC readers. We can choose to distribute to any of the major outlets (except Amazon – I needed to make a separate version for them). We can sell at any price, including free. It’s easy to generate discounted or free vouchers.

And with this degree of control, here’s a way that we independents can meet Andy’s first and second demands. If we ask those who purchase to register their copy, then if their current copy is lost for whatever reason, or their hardware changes, we could issue a voucher via Smashwords for a replacement – in the format of their choice. It’s not quite as simple as it sounds. We need to think this through and perhaps develop a common approach or a simple tool … but it’s do-able. It’s on next week’s task-list.

But now let’s move to the final, and most contentious demand. A follow-up posting from Andy this morning How the Ebook Reader’s Bill of Rights Benefits Authors made a convincing case:

Sharing ebooks would be word of mouth on steroids for authors since it means making a recommendation and the ability to put the book almost instantly in the (virtual) hands of another. Sharing is not a lost sale, but a new marketing foray into a previously unrealized potential fan.

OK, sharing, but what about re-selling? Even Andy admits that ‘I do not have a perfect answer on this point’, and flounders a little, suggesting a ‘limited DRM’.

Writers will have different views about this – likely formed by where they stand in the market. Those who have already made their fortune from books will probably be perfectly happy to lend. Mid-market authors struggling to make a living will probably resist.

Where do I stand? I’m perhaps a rather unusual writer: I’m not intending to publish paper editions of my current novel because it’s been designed as an e-book: my approach to dialog for example, would work less well on a printed page with its spacing limitations. But no print copy means no bookshop displays, no book signings. For that reason, word of mouth recommendations, viral marketing, reader reviews are essential. Even more so because of The Lebanese Troubles‘ genre. If the novel has to be categorized, it sits on the ‘literary’ shelf. And that’s not exactly where readers are massing.

So for me, Andy’s advice is a no-brainer. It’s all about engaging with readers, gradually gaining their commitment and support. So yes, I will encourage readers to share, and even to sell on their copies – and I’ll be making changes to the copyright notices as soon as Read an Ebook Week is over.

And nothing would please me more than offering my book through libraries. Andy, are you listening?

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The Rapscallion Framework

April 23, 2010 in Rapscallion | 3 comments

Core skills

Today I’m going to propose a structure for Rapscallion.

I announced a few days back my plans to launch a ‘seed publishing’ operation, helping talented indie writers to work together, share resources, build credibility through association, and reach the widest possible market. A number of you posted excellent questions and responses, helping me to clarify my thoughts.

What I’m presenting today is imperfect, and will be further modified in the coming weeks – but it serves as the basis for discussion. This time I am asking for your views. Where can you see weaknesses in the approach?

Let’s start with the core skills needed for an effective team. I’ve listed on the left expertise that would have helped me as I brought my novel to the market. It’s a combination of the support I might have expected to get from an agent and a publisher, had I trodden the traditional route. The length of the list is some indication of how difficult it is to do everything alone.

As an aside, I imagine that some of you will be thinking that if I need standard agency/publisher skills, why not look for an agent and a publisher? Three reasons. I want to do it now, on a schedule that suits me, not others. Second, I want to retain as much control as possible, and have the ability to experiment and innovate. And third, some of the core skills are not currently provided by most agents and publishers – for example, guidance on web and blog design, which I’d rate amongst the most important marketing tools.

The first skills listed are self-evident, a few would only be required in some cases (such as voices and musicians – only, I imagine for audio books), but some need further explanation:

  • Legal/Financial Advisors – to make sure that this international operation is properly and efficiently structured, and to help members to negotiate contracts with third parties when the time comes.
  • Bloggers – to design and then maintain the Rapscallion blogs, one a dynamic shared resource for members, and the other an interactive site where we engage with (and sell to) readers.
  • Researchers – all members will be expected to share and publish their research … for example, perhaps you’ve been researching POD companies, or have found a great reviewer, or a cheaper way for us to get ISBNs …
  • Publicists – people who know how to manage an effective PR campaign, whether for Rapscallion or for an author.
  • Marketers – in particular people who have their finger on the pulse of the latest publishing trends.
  • Administrators – to make sure that sales are tracked, royalties paid on time … and for dozens of other small but important jobs.
  • Specialists – as required, people who can verify specialist/technical content in a book.
  • Critics – not just literary critics, but people we can trust to give a contrary (but balanced) view when we’re hopelessly optimistic.
  • Influencers – people who would help to give weight and credence to the imprint; or who have significant influence with major publishers.

What else? Tell me.

Let me now show you the proposed Rapscallion structure, and explain how everything fits together.

What you see here is a very simple business structure with three layers – a strategic level, operational management, and a set of small independent cells – what management guru Tom Peters might call skunkworks operations.

###

Strategic Management – The Think-Tank

The role would be to set and approve strategy and (later) budgets. I envisage five or six people in the team – and between them, I would want most of the core skills to be represented. They would not necessarily be writers. Committed readers would add value in the same way that non-executive directors in a business can often provide an invaluable objective, and perhaps consumer-oriented view.

The Think-Tank would be a sounding-board for the operational manager(s) and would regularly review the performance of the management team and the organization as a whole. They might expect to contribute around 15 hours a month to Rapscallion.

###

Writer Cells

I’ll move next to the bottom of the organization chart – what I’ve called writer cells (- and yes the pun is intentional).

Why Writer Cells?

Let’s use a simple example, my situation right now. I’m marketing a novel that fits broadly into an “international” category. Forget the literary fiction tag that I’m stuck with at the moment. My book is likely to appeal to people who think internationally. So where will I find readers? Probably readers of the Christian Science Monitor would like it. In paperback, it would probably be a good airport book. If I can plug into expatriate networks on the web, that’ll be helpful too.

But think how much more effectively I could make an impact if alongside mine, there were 3-4 other novels under the same imprint that would appeal to the same kind of reader. That wouldn’t be competition, but reinforcement – establishing loyalty to the brand. So if I were the leader of the ‘International’ cell, my job would be to headhunt other indie writers I admire with the same kind of market appeal, and persuade them to join Rapscallion.

What would writers get by participating?

  • The experience and knowledge of the Rapscallion team.
  • The strength of the brand – credibility, which will grow as we deliver more outstanding books.
  • Editing and preparation of the book for publication.
  • Preparation for e-publishing, if the writer chose this route to market
  • Guaranteed early reviews, and assuming writers have been invited to join because our team thinks their work outstanding, they’d be good reviews.
  • Positioning alongside books that attract similar readers.
  • Assistance and ideas for the marketing plan.

Importantly though, final decisions on format, pricing, sample material, etc would continue to be decisions made by each individual writer. And writers would be free to leave Rapscallion at any time (following exit procedures that are clear and fair to all), if they felt they would do better elsewhere.

What would be required from the writer?

  • Conformity with Rapscallion’s branding standards (although cover design decisions would be left to the writer).
  • X reviews of other Rapscallion books per year.
  • Participation in the Rapscallion blog.
  • Constant promotion of the Rapscallion brand – through email signatures, blog and Facebook links, etc.

Above all, we’d be looking for people who are prepared to spend a few hours a week promoting their own books and, at the same time, Rapscallion. To take an analogy from basketball, we really wouldn’t be interested in players who just wanted to take all the free throws – no matter how talented they may be; we need people who are willing to play the whole match with the team.

What would it cost?

This is difficult. Nothing up-front for sure, or at least not if the writer just required the standard services listed above. But my inclination would be to suggest that a percentage of royalties should be deducted. Some of this would be paid to the leader of the cell the writer belongs to (- we’ll go into more detail later). This would have a two-fold effect. First the cell leaders would be paid for the work they do. (What work? Again, details below.) Second, this would encourage team-leaders to select their members wisely – choosing books that complement their own and which are likely to be well-received by readers.

The writer would also be able to purchase additional services from the Rapscallion store, if required. If for example, they wanted help with art-work or photography, or specific legal advice. The store would include services offered by other members, and those provided by recommended third parties. In such cases, payment would probably be required with purchase.

How would the teams be managed?

By their team-leaders, who would generally select their own team-members. Teams would be limited to 4-5 writers, and the leaders would be personally take responsibility for making the standard Rapscallion services available to team-members – editing, preparing for e-publication, assisting with marketing, etc

How would we control this? Our team leaders need to be trained, and approved … And it’s time to turn our attention to Rapscallion’s management layer …

###

The Creative Director(s)

Day-to-day management of the organization would be in the hands of the Creative Director, reporting to the Think-Tank and responsible for maintaining quality and stimulating innovation within the writer cells.

Functions

  • Training for potential team-leaders – so that they can deliver the standard services; those who prove to us that they have the skills and qualities to maintain a Writer Cell will be authorized to do so.
  • Ongoing assistance for authorized team-leaders.
  • Right of veto over potential team-members whose work does not meet Rapscallion standards (- with a right of appeal by the team-leader to the Think-Tank; the Creative Director would ask the Think-Tank for a second opinion, if uncertain).
  • Final approval required on any Rapscallion material to be published – whether books or blogs.
  • Resource co-ordinator
  • Creative ideas generator

Just as in any business, the operational manager’s success will be judged by his/her ability to make money for the enterprise, and therefore for its author-members. But even more important we’ll need to be able to measure the amount of exposure our writers are getting, and whether they are attracting the attention of the publishing majors.

Expansion of the role

In the organization chart above, I’ve included three notional Writer’s Cells. The objective of course, in order to build the imprint’s credibility, would be to stimulate the formation of far more Cells … as long as we keep identifying talented writers and find people who are prepared and qualified to be team-leaders. Even with three or four cells to support, it’s likely that the Creative Director will have a full-time job, and as more cells are formed, we’re likely to need more than one person in this position. There could then be a requirement for one more level – someone to co-ordinate the activities of all the creative directors.

And, given that theirs will be a full-time job, we’ll probably need to find a way to pay the creative directors. Where will that money come from? Well, I haven’t done the math yet, but suppose we had an arrangement along these lines? From their net royalty income, writers would pay a 20% deduction to Rapscallion. 10% would go to their team leader. The other 10% would go to a Rapscallion fighting fund, administered by the Think-Tank. From this an agreed salary would be paid to the creative director(s), always assuming that Rapscallion income was greater than the salary – if the managers failed to run the business well therefore, they’d fail to make their salary. A little different from the banks!

Where would a royalty arrangement like this leave the author? In a much better position, relatively speaking, than in an agent/publisher relationship, where after deductions, authors typically earn less than 8% of the published price.

I’d like your views on this idea of royalty sharing – and then we’ll do the math properly. I’ll also show you typical indie author royalties, for self-publishing, POD and e-publishing, so you can see the full picture.

We’re some weeks (if not months) away from cutting the tape on Rapscallion. Before we go into full operation, there are procedures to be written and agreed, and right now, a good deal of market testing. As you may have noticed, that’s already started. So next time, I’ll tell you how you could participate in the test phase.

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How To Marry Off Your Maiden Aunt

April 20, 2010 in Rapscallion | 4 comments

After my last post, a number of you went Backword – and you clearly liked what you found there. A smart, professional, attractive site for writers crafting great novels. Certainly Rapscallion is going to need something similar: a permanent gallery for its writers, a place where readers can suck in the atmosphere, feel welcome, browse, hopefully buy, and promise to tell their friends to come by. If we could find a way to serve coffee on the site, it would help. And we’re going to need a place for coats. Putting that together may be a task for another Rapscallionista, with better design skills than mine.

But that’s not the only way to win credibility and attract attention.

Yesterday, the trade press was buzzing with news of a new venture by a publisher I’d never heard of before, and which appears to be a relative newcomer – Ether Books. Go to their web page and it’s iffy. Try the Facebook fan page and there are only 7 fans, including me. But to be fair, Ether have been busy, at the London Book Fair.

This is what they’ve announced. That the future of e-reading is not the iPad or Kindle or any of the heavyweight reading devices. No, they say, it’s the iPhone.

Your groans have already reached me, in advance. Don’t these people have any respect for literature? Don’t they understand that the proper place for words is in a book? Well, just stay with me for a minute and I’ll tell you why it’s such a good idea. After a short history lesson.

A long long time ago, back in the 1980s, I had the frequent pleasure of traveling on the London Underground. What was pleasurable? Well, I’ve always loved the way London Transport – or whatever they’re called these days – arranges their passengers: sitting facing one another. We humans love to watch, but we hate to be seen watching. And so for fifteen minutes, we need a place for our eyes. In a newspaper, in a book, pretending that we need to check the route, reading the advertisements so conveniently placed above eye level. Anywhere the people opposite won’t notice that all you really want to do is study them.

I was cured of my annoying habit of trying to outstare my fellow-travellers (if it was you, then I apologize) when I first spotted, mingling with the advertisements, a poem. A Shakespeare sonnet. The next train I was on, there was another: Roger McGough this time. Then Keats. Then someone I’d never heard of. And before long, the first thing I did as I entered the carriage was to seek out the poem and make sure I sat or stood somewhere I could read it. I’d always loved reading poetry, but somehow I’d fallen out of the habit. This was a re-discovery. I bought my first poetry book for many years – a collection called ‘Poems on the Underground’. It’s still a treasured book. All the years I was traveling, I always made sure it was with me.

What someone had spotted was that there was a market for poetry in those in-between moments we all have. And that’s Ether’s brainwave. They’re not planning to publish novels for the iPhone. There will be poetry. But the headline news is that they’re planning to revive the short story – ‘the elderly aunt of the literary world: almost impossible to marry off to a publisher’ as The Guardian puts it. Launching yesterday, 200 shorts were available, from well-known writers including Booker prize winner Hilary Mantel and literary luminary, Sir Paul McCartney. But, say Ether, they’re talking directly to new writers too, to find enough material for the ‘time-poor commuters, or workers grabbing a 10-minute break’ ready to cough up between 50p and £2.39 for the privilege.

Think of it. At the bus stop. In the doctor’s surgery. Waiting for the kids to come out of school. And your phone is always with you, no matter who you are. Brilliant!

This is exactly what I meant a couple of posts back, when I wrote about innovation. Taking the new publishing media, thinking about the means we have of accessing and interesting readers, and shaping or reshaping our output to set the market a-buzzing. Interestingly, it’s a small publisher who’s come up with this idea. My experience in business is that innovation is almost always led by the small guys, because the big guys have too much invested in existing technologies, and the chain of command almost inevitably means that change is slow.

In your responses to my last post, there’s been a lot of discussion about the shape and size of Rapscallion, the command structure. What I’m sure of is that we’ll need critical mass, enough talented writers to cause more than a ripple of interest. I’m equally sure that we’ll need to be small and nimble enough to stay innovative, and to seek out market opportunities, just as Ether Books has. In the next post I’ll tell you exactly what I have in mind.

But just to round out the iPhone story, I thought you might be interested to take a look at the competition. Ether aren’t in fact the first into the iPhone market. Wattpad, for example, describes itself as ‘the world’s most popular ebook community’, and you’ll be pleased to know that all its titles are available on your mobile. Let’s take a look at ‘what’s hot?’ today – the numbers in brackets show the total of ‘reads’ then the number of ‘votes’:

  • Dinner with a vampire. Did I mention I’m vegetarian? (1,808,720 – 31,566)
  • Came home to find a hot guy in my bed. WTF?! (444,715 – 8,528)
  • Pride and Prejudice (22,404 – 95)

And since I believe in diversity and innovation, here’s an extract from one of their most popular stories.

Stigma? What stigma?

Note to myself. Is my blog iPhone-compatible?

Related:

Poems on the Underground is still around today, I’m happy to see.

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Indie Writers – Freedom To Innovate

April 17, 2010 in Reflections | 4 comments

Over at the Kindle Boards site – where Kindle readers and writers exchange views – there’s been animated discussion in the last 24 hours about ‘How to get rid of the indie stigma?’.

Smashwords, Amazon (i.e. Kindle) and others have made it possible for writers to e-publish their books without the intervention of agents and publishers. Writers have responded with enthusiasm: Smashwords has published just over 10,000 books and half a million words to date, and they’re forecasting that the totals may double by the end of 2010. Readers too seem to have jumped onto the ebook bandwagon, particularly for budget books. In an illuminating article, mid-list author J.A. Konrath reports that he’s selling 180 $1.99 ebooks a day, and that although published research says that ebooks are only one-tenth of the total market for books, his ebook sales are keeping pace with his print sales.

But the problem is that if anyone can publish, then what happens to standards? Yes, inevitably there will be some great books self-published by great writers who might otherwise have been lost in the slush pile. But there will also be other books that should have been burnt before they even reached the slush stage. Who will protect the reader? And what if a reader comes across three appalling books in a row, and swears never to read an indie book again. There’s the stigma. If we ally ourselves with failure, might we not be labelled failures ourselves? Can anyone take our work seriously if it doesn’t have a proper publisher’s stamp of approval?

I saw the problem at first hand last night. I’d been telling an old friend about my novel – it turned out that he’d already bought it after spotting my LinkedIn announcement. He then wrote: ‘Have you ever come across XXXXX.com? Its a web-based bookshop site partially owned by a friend of mine – good ideas – but they need stuff that is already published – don’t know if it may offer a channel?’ Did you spot the stigma? He wasn’t meaning to be unkind, but because I’d released my novel as an ebook, he considered it still unpublished.

For a few seconds I was hurt. But not for long. Because this whole venture is not just about independence. It’s about innovation – about embracing innovation. And throughout history, innovators have always been treated with a wry smile, suspicion or outright hostility.

What happened when the printing press was invented? The Church felt threatened. Suddenly the world of knowledge and learning wasn’t their exclusive domain any more. Anyone could read books. There was a demand for Bibles in the native language for Heavens sake. Not in Latin, the language of the Church. Surely this was opening the floodgates too far – the democratization of learning was a threat to the status quo. Today they’d call it socialism – and we all know how dangerous that is, don’t we? The Church tried to get books banned – and burned printer/publishers at the stake. And we’re worried about a little stigma?

From that media revolution, the novel was born. And from today’s media revolution – electronic publishing – who knows? At the moment, we still think of the book like a printed book, and everyone’s trying to replicate the experience. For example, when we publish an ebook we include a static book-sized cover with the file. But when will someone realize that we don’t need to do that. Why does it need to be that size? Why does it need to be static – why not a sequence of images or a video, or like the Harry Potter’s photographs why can’t the characters on the cover be waving or chatting to each other? Stupid? Perhaps. But let me pose another question. Why does the book need to be a one-way experience, from writer to reader? Why can’t it be interactive, since e-publishing would easily allow that? And why oh why, has the iPad used the cheesy page-turning icon when you move from one page to the next? It would drive me mad … if they ever release the iPad here in the UK.

Who’s going to lead innovation? Not the traditional publishers, I’m almost sure of that. At a time when anyone familiar with the web knows the power of free and the impact of viral marketing, the big six are fighting to raise prices and are delaying their e-editions to protect the time-honored print model. Surely it makes sense to release the e-version first, make sure there is a market for a book, and then release the print version. Perhaps then they wouldn’t make losses on so much of their fiction list.

So I’m happy to live with condescension as I retain my freedom to experiment. But I’m not sure I’d go quite as far as Margaret Lake on Kindle Boards, who’s waiting, tongue in cheek, for the time when “we’ll be saying to authors with publishers and editors and agents and publicists … Couldn’t make it on your own, huh?” Retaining your independence doesn’t necessarily mean going it alone. There are advantages to hunting with the pack, as we’ll see next time.

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12 Reasons Why Printed Books Will Survive

April 9, 2010 in Publishing | 5 comments

Effective insulation in your home

I love books. Some of my best friends are books. Proper books, the printed ones, with real pages.

Yes, I know I’ve been talking lots about ebooks, and I’ve just published a novel as an ebook with no plans for a print version. Yet.

But books aren’t about to fade away. Here are 12 reasons why, in no particular order – and I’m counting on you to send additional reasons so we have a list of at least 20:

  1. You can touch books. Each one has its own distinct physical identity. Somehow, that makes the story real.
  2. You can smell them too. Books smell like proper books.
  3. Your books let your visitors know who you are.
  4. My book annotations let me know who I am.
  5. Without books, coffee-tables would look empty.
  6. Without books, there’d be no libraries. Without libraries there’d be nowhere to shelter from the rain – except McDonalds.
  7. Books make great gifts. It’s somehow not the same giving someone a voucher, or telling them you’ve gifted them an ebook.
  8. When I’m reading a book I can wrap up with it. I don’t want to wrap up with my email, Twitter and a zillion other things. (That’s why Kindle, a dedicated reader, is likely to be more popular amongst book afficionados than the multi-purpose iPad.)
  9. Books are permanent. Electronic communications tend to be transitory. (How much of the material you had on your computer 5 years ago is still there today?)
  10. Books are safer in the tub – not that I’m recommending dunking, but your book will survive.
  11. There’s still no single ebook standard. What if the e-reader you choose today has no future tomorrow? (Remember all those Betamax videos that you suddenly couldn’t play because there were no Betamax machines any more?)
  12. Books are a great way to insulate your home. For passing on this important information, thanks to the wonderful Boing Boing and Cory Doctorow.

Specialist e-readers, like Kindle and the iPad, will address some of these issues. Some already allow annotations; some are dedicated only to reading; an e-publishing standard, known as EPUB, has already been established. But there are plenty of other reasons in the list for readers to prefer print for their permanent library of favorite books.

If I’m so convinced that printed books have a future, then why have I decided to publish The Lebanese Troubles as an ebook – first on Smashwords, then on the iPad, and from today – April 9th – on Kindle? Because, at this point in my young writing career, e-publishing checks all the boxes.

My story – of expatriates caught up in a war that’s not theirs, and entangled in a byzantine web of relationships – is the first in a series of novels I’m planning to write. My objective for the next 12 months is to find and engage readers who enjoy the settings and themes I deal with. The Middle East – unfamiliar, unmapped, poorly understood. Politics and religion as drivers of human conflict. Nationality, friendship, loyalty. The isolation of the outsider. I’m hoping too that other writers will enjoy my experiments with literary style, as I attempt to create novels that read like playscripts, and let my characters tell their own stories, without author intrusion. Above all, I want to find readers who just enjoy my stories. If I can engage them with my first novel, then perhaps they’ll be looking out for my second, third and fourth.

Nothing about me or my book suggests that The Lebanese Troubles is going to end up on the best-seller lists. I’m not a media/sports star – I haven’t got a stellar following on Twitter or Facebook. I’m not even Joe the Plumber. And my novel’s not exactly mass market material. There are no vampires or extra-terrestrials or people with magical powers or romantic heroes. All-action? All-reaction, more likely. One gun. Not much death. No happy ending. And as for Lebanon? Who cares?

That’s the way publishers are likely to see it. They might love the story, admire the writing style, but they don’t publish books just because they love them. They have to be convinced that there’s a substantial market as well, so that they can recoup their investment. For years, publishers have been wringing their hands and complaining that only one novel in ten makes money. With the perceived threat to their market from ebooks, they’re going to be even less inclined to take a chance on a new author than ever before. And if publishers are cautious, agents will be even more so. They get no credit from publishers for recommending books that don’t sell.

So what do I do? Send off the manuscript to an agent and sit waiting for an answer? For me that seems a bit like sending out a message in a bottle. Sure, someone might see it someday. Could be next week. Could be in fifteen years time. But it’s all a bit hit and miss.

Or I could self-publish or print on demand. But without the distribution network and marketing power of a publisher behind me, how many shops are likely to stock the book? Why should they give their limited space to my novel which might sell a copy or two when they could use it to display a highly promoted best-seller, whose sales will be fifty times higher. Booksellers are feeling the economic crunch too. They’re not likely to take chances either.

So the third alternative is e-publishing. What does that offer?

  1. There’s no financial risk. All it takes to publish on any of the main e-reading platforms is time, not money.
  2. I can actualize my book immediately. I’m finding readers today, not waiting till next year or the year after.
  3. I can target high-potential readers directly. By tagging my novel ‘expatriate’, ‘Lebanon’, ‘relationships’, literary fiction’, ‘Mid-East politics’, anyone who’s searching in any of these categories will see my book listed. Similarly, it’s not too difficult to build links with other books similar to mine. Someone who enjoys journalist Robert Fisk’s books on Lebanon for example, would likely enjoy my novel.
  4. I can see immediately which elements of the marketing strategy are working and which not, and adjust the campaign accordingly. Is the cover making an impact? How many pages of the sample are people actually reading? Is the pricing right? Should I add an index? Is the blog persuading people to go take a look at the novel? It’s all under my control, and I can micro-adjust till I think I’ve got it right.
  5. The share of revenues from most (though not all) e-providers is reasonable, and you’re likely to begin making at least a little money from 3 months after publication.

But for me there’s one fundamental reason why e-publishing is important – and it’s BECAUSE ‘electronic communications are transitory’. The way I see it is that people are going to use their e-readers for the ephemera of life – the daily newspaper, magazines – content that means a lot today and probably won’t tomorrow. For many, I think it’ll be the same with ebooks. They’ll use their e-readers to sample authors, perhaps spend a few dollars buying a book or two. If they think these books are just OK, then no big deal. But when they find a writer they really like, that’s when they’ll go and buy the proper printed books. Because they’ll want those around always.

There’s a good deal of evidence, from the pioneers of ‘free’, suggesting that low-priced ebooks actually help to promote their print sales. I’ve quoted a couple of examples at the bottom of this post. My ebook is not free – because I have no print version at this point. I allow readers to sample up to 50% of the novel, but then set a price that makes it an easy buy, yet is high enough for readers not to feel it’s an inconsequential giveaway. My objective is clear: to use the ebook to build interest and gather attention that will later give me – or a publisher – the confidence that there is a market for my printed books.

So, here’s a new model for publishing fiction. Very few novels make money. Fine, then make the cost of actualization as low as possible – if there’s no cast-iron guarantee that sales revenue will cover costs, then bring out an ebook. Then, publishers and agents, work with the author to build a readership. Set the price low. Help the writer to build a good website or fan page. Make sure there’s two-way communication between writer and readers. Use your marketing skills to guide and advise. If you get the success you’re hoping for, then print the book – or perhaps print the author’s second and third books first, then the first later.

Sounds easy? It’s not. When I visited the Kindle store this morning, I noticed that there were over 122,000 other e-novels vying for attention with mine. Imagine a very large department store. My novel’s in the darkest corner at the top of the tallest shelf in the smallest, least visited department … the question is how to get it out of there and make it a display item in the shop window. That we’ll deal with in the next posts.

To me, the approach I’ve outlined – using ebooks to build a market, particularly for a new writer – makes sound common and business sense. And yet – maybe I’m missing something – I see most traditional publishers moving in the opposite direction entirely. They’re continuing to take risks by bringing out the print version first and delaying the ebook for a few months – so it doesn’t impact the print sales. They’re pressing for digital rights management (DRM) on the grounds that this will make copying more difficult. They’re wrong – copying will always be possible, and all they’re achieving is making ownership more difficult. And just to be sure they do motivate the pirates, publishers are trying to drive ebook prices up – to around $14.99 – instead of down to build markets. Anyone would think they were trying to kill off ebooks to preserve print.

If that is the plan, publishers won’t succeed. Ebooks are here to stay. So are printed books. But the publishers themselves – will they survive? I’m not so sure. Not those who don’t quickly recognize the new realities, I suspect.

References

Cory Doctorow and the philosophy of free (Please ignore the first sentence on ‘socialized medicine’ – that’s another debate)

Study: The Short-Term Influence of Free Digital Versions of Books on Print Sales – Journal of Electronic Publishing

Publishers delay ebook releases – New York Times

Kindle fans strike back at publishers who delay ebook releases - Techdirt

O’Reilly e-book sales increase after dropping DRM - Boing Boing

Ebook price increase may stir readers’ passions – New York Times

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How To Publish God

April 6, 2010 in Publishing | 7 comments

Ancient of Days

‘Ancient of Days’ – 1794.
Slightly mad self-published poet and painter William Blake prophesies electronic publishing

It all started, as it usually does, with God.

It wasn’t a novel – well, the genre hadn’t been invented yet – but God had content that He needed to get out to people. Not just the immediate circle of friends, but everyone. So what God needed was … a publisher.

Here, the records are murky. Did God self-publish, or did he leave it up to Moses? That, we don’t know. But whichever it was, the job was well done. The Ten Commandments was an instant hit, and still today it’s right at the top of the reading-list.

Now if it had been today, I’m pretty sure God would have used Twitter. The Commandments would have slotted right in there beside:

But these were early days. Before e-publishing, before the printing press, before paper, before papyrus. And anyway, if the Commandments were going to make a lasting impression, then best to use something permanent. Like two tablets of stone. Or three, if we can trust Mel Brooks’ account.

So that’s how publishing started. Three elements. A creator, or in this case, a Creator, a medium for the message, and a publisher – and that was Moses.

Now wait a minute. Didn’t we say there was some doubt about whether God self-published or not? Who created the tablets – God or Moses? Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, it was God. I’d still say that Moses was the publisher. Why? Because it was Moses’ job to broadcast the Commandments. No good just to blast the message on the tablets and leave them under a rock. No, Moses had to let everyone know they existed. He had to convince people they were worth a read.

So let’s look again at the process. Three elements. Creation, actualization – giving the words some tangible form – and publishing. From the Latin root ‘publico’ – to make something public, to show or tell to the people. In 21st-century-speak, marketing.

We know who created, and who published. What we don’t know is who actualized.

History also doesn’t record the discussion between God and His publisher. Would Moses have given advice? ‘People these days aren’t reading Commandments. You need more showing and less telling. No, I’m sorry, I love your work, but I don’t think we could do it justice.’ Somehow doesn’t seem appropriate, does it? Not when you’re dealing with God.

Centuries have passed. And for a long time now, it’s all been rather different. For Moses it was all about the message. For the modern-day publisher, it’s all about money. Which is absolutely understandable. Because, let’s face it, in publishing there’s a lot to gain, and a lot more to lose. Actualizing a book, ever since the printing press, has been an expensive proposition. There’s editing, set-up, binding, the cost of paper, card and ink. To recover your costs, you need a decent run of several hundred books. Then, there are advances to pay to greedy authors, booksellers who insist on returning unsold books, staff to employ, publishing events to attend, pensions … And this is before we even begin to think about marketing.

Hardly surprising then that publishers are reluctant to take on a book, unless it’s going to be a sure-fire success. Unless it’s written by someone famous, or is particularly topical, or fits neatly into a top-selling genre. Even for God, it might have been difficult to get started today. For small gods, like us, who create little imaginary worlds of fiction, virtually impossible.

But publishers, I bring you good news. You see, there’s a new tablet, an electronic tablet, no longer made of stone. In fact there are several: you might know them as the iPad, or the Kindle, or Adobe Digital Editions for the PC. For all of these I can actualize my own work for free – and it doesn’t cost you a cent. So you don’t need to worry about it any more. All you need to decide is whether you’d like to publish my novel – remember ‘publico’ – to show or tell the people. If that’s a role that interests you – a service to the author – then good. If not, well, gods work in mysterious ways.

The Lebanese Troubles

Stay in touch for more posts in the series ‘The Right Steamroller’ – ruminations on the future of publishing.

And to sample or buy my actualized novel, check out The Lebanese Troubles at Smashwords. Just click on the cover design here.

And don’t forget, I’m looking for reader contributions to build our index of Resources for independent writers. Got anything to add?

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