e-readers

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Will the Kindle win the e-reader war?

April 27, 2011 in Reflections | 5 comments

In a two-part post, I’ll show why the Kindle seems set to dominate the e-reader market … perhaps driving all its competitors out. And then I’ll explain why, despite the advantages of consolidation, we may have reason to fear an effective monopoly.

Taking the publishing world entirely by surprise last week, Amazon announced that it had signed a deal to make its Kindle list available to 11,000 US libraries later this year.

Commentators, like TeleRead’s Paul Biba, are still busy piecing together the implications of the news and its impact on the market. But essentially the agreement seems to be between Amazon and OverDrive, the major supplier of books to US libraries.

On the face of it, this is good news. If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know I’m a big supporter of book-lending and library systems. Most of the authors I love today were first introduced to me as recommendations from other people; very often I was first a borrower, then a convert, and finally a regular purchaser. That’s why through my own Author Associates scheme, I’m allowing those who enjoy my writing to gift an e-novel to their friends. Although I’ve chosen not to publish in print, libraries are very much in my plans.

Most libraries will probably welcome the announcement as well. Librarian Andy Woodworth wrote recently of the difficulty explaining to a would-be ebook borrower why a book might be incompatible with a reading device. Or if the book could be downloaded, how to organize all the permissions and programs needed. ‘I am the de facto technical support,’ he grumbles. How much easier it would be if, as Amazon no doubt intends, there was only one reading device to worry about. Particularly if it’s probably already the most popular e-reader available for seriously committed readers. (Don’t start growling, iPad fans. I haven’t forgotten you.)

Until now, the Kindle and libraries haven’t seen eye to eye. The Kindle’s proprietary AZD publishing system will not run ebooks published as ePub files, the free and open e-book standard. Other devices don’t read Amazon’s special AZD files. OverDrive meanwhile has always distributed ebooks to libraries as ePub files, using Adobe formatting to set borrowing terms. So Kindle books were out in the cold. (If this all seems too technical, bear with me and just think of it like this: the Kindle won’t read non-Kindle books, and non-Kindle devices won’t read Kindle books. It’s just like trying to run Mac software on a PC, or vice versa.)

But with the new agreement, the whole Kindle library will be accessible. Are you worried, libraries, that your previous investment in non-Kindle ebooks might be wasted? You needn’t be: OverDrive assures you that existing arrangements will be honored and you won’t have to re-purchase books that you already hold.

So, this author is happy that his book can be borrowed; the library is happy that ebook lending will become so much easier – and therefore that libraries can keep up with the digital times; the borrower’s happy that the ebooks she wants will now be available. Everybody’s happy.

Aren’t we?

Let’s look closer at where the Kindle seems to be going in the longer term. A good starting-point is the announcement from OverDrive’s’ manager for content sales, Karen Estrovich:

Your library will not need to purchase any additional units to have Kindle compatibility. This will work for your existing copies and units.

A user will be able to browse for titles on any desktop or mobile operating system, check out a title with a library card, and then select Kindle as the delivery destination. The borrowed title will then be able to be enjoyed using any Kindle device and all of Amazon’s free Kindle Reading Apps.

So, she’s saying existing copies of library ebooks (published in an ePub version, remember) will work on a Kindle. Does this mean that the Kindle will soon be able to read ePub files? I suppose it’s a possibility. But I’d be very surprised. Why would Amazon want to help promote ePub when its own best interests are served by delivering books in its proprietary format? Much more likely is that a major conversion program is underway to get existing OverDrive-distributed titles available in the AZD format.

Estrovich’s assumption seems to be that the Kindle will quickly become the library’s e-reader of choice. I think she’s right, because the Kindle has three important competitive advantages:

  1. It’s easy to download and use. Most readers and writers aren’t especially technical, and librarians are tired of explaining.
  2. Amazon has spent years building its book catalog. Back in 2005, Tim O’Reilly in his landmark article ‘What is Web 2.0?‘ advised: “For competitive advantage, seek to own a unique, hard-to-recreate source of data.” That’s exactly what Amazon has done. Virtually any title will be available.
  3. The Kindle will cost next to nothing.

OK, perhaps I’m jumping the gun on Kindle pricing. True, there’s been web speculation that the reader will be free by Christmas, but Amazon have stated nothing of the sort. Yet all the indications are that further price reductions are in the offing. Already in the last 18 months, Kindle prices have halved, and there was another important announcement last week. Users in the States will be able to buy at a price as low as $114 if they’re prepared to accept advertising.

My view? The price slide won’t stop there … because Amazon, unlike Apple, is essentially a sales and marketing operation, not a hardware manufacturer. They make their money taking a cut on the sales of 900,000 books to a few million readers. But suppose they could drop the price of the hardware low enough so that, say, every school kid and college student carried their text-books on a Kindle? Suppose it became just as indispensable to us as a calculator? Suppose they do exactly what the manufacturers of ink-jet printers did, selling the hardware cheap and maximizing their profits on ink cartridges, selling to a captive market. Because of the strength of their catalogue, that’s exactly what Amazon could do. And their competitors would be left floundering.

If that’s the plan, the libraries initiative makes absolute sense. It’s not the sales of hardware to the libraries that Amazon are interested in. It’s another step towards establishing the Kindle and the Amazon brand as the only viable e-reader in the market. To create an unassailable monopoly.

But of course the Kindle won’t eliminate the competition, you say, you technistas. How could it, when The iPad is packed full of features, offering so much more than the Kindle?

If you were around at the end of the 80s, maybe you’ll remember those feature-full, multimedia-capable home computers, the Commodore Amiga and the Atari ST. Alongside them the clunky IBM PC, with only 16 colors and a few beeps – fine for business applications, but also trying to push into the home market with pricing at less than $1000. I remember attending a conference of leading British leisure software publishers as late as 1990 and debating: Was the PC a serious contender? The answer was a resounding ‘No’.

Yet a couple of years later, the PC was almost the only show in town. Not the IBM model though. Manufacturers in the Far East managed to reverse-engineer the machine and flooded the market with cheap clones, with prices at or below the cost of the best home computers. The combination of keen pricing and a wide, versatile software range – including proven business and productivity applications as well as games – made the PC clone the perfect family computer.

What happened back then seems to be characteristic of emerging technologies. In the early days a number of manufacturers struggle for pre-eminence, each of them with a slightly different system and standards. Before the PC clones, there were at least half a dozen serious contenders for home computer leadership, all with their own operating systems and their own software. But eventually a point is reached where one of them wins out, and a single standard emerges. It happened with home computers. It happened with video – when JVC’s competitively-priced VHS machines eventually triumphed over Sony’s technically superior but more expensive, Betamax. And I think it’s about to happen with e-readers.

I’m not saying that the iPad isn’t a wonderful machine, or that its success will be short-lived. It offers tremendous potential for so many different activities, which users love. But if we’re talking specifically about the world of digital books, it’s the Kindle which seems poised to assert its supremacy and consolidate the market.

Which will make a lot of people happy.

And which fills me with concern.

Next time, I’ll explain my concerns, drawing on my experience as an independent software publisher working with another company that built a monopoly – Microsoft.

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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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Use Your PC As An E-Reader

May 2, 2010 in Activities | 4 comments

Kindle for PC

Amazon announced an upgrade to its Kindle for PC reader yesterday.

Wait! You didn’t know that you could use your PC as a Kindle and get access to over 375,000 ebooks? Well it’s easy. And free. All you have to do is click on this link and then find the download button. (I understand that Kindle is only available for the Mac in a beta version so far, but apparently that will change soon.)

Then all you have to do is pop across to the Amazon site, set up an account, and navigate to the Kindle -> Books catalog. Lots of ways to navigate there: by genre, sales, price, number of reviews, publication date, author or title, topic tags. Or just browse till you find something you like (The Lebanese Troubles, plug, plug, plug – just click the Amazon link on the right), and then to test your PC Kindle, download the free sample.

That’ll take you back to your Kindle application. On the home page, you’ll see the book you’ve selected in your library. Open it up and you’ll be able to play with the features. What can you do? Select a font-size you feel comfortable with. Change the background color – white, sepia, or black. Bookmark a page or find a previous bookmark. Right-click to add a note or highlight a key passage. Review all notes. Move to full-screen. Nothing especially fancy, but everything I needed. And it’s a very comfortable, smooth read.

So why use Kindle for PC? First, because it is comfortable. Much more so that any other way I’ve found of reading a book on a PC. But for lots of other reasons too:

  • It’s a great way to discover new writing. (Check out the Amazon discussion groups or Kindle Boards – listed below – to find out other reader discoveries
  • Ebooks are much cheaper than printed books – and many cost almost nothing. (Amazon doesn’t publish free material, but Smashwords does.)
  • You can usually sample a book before you commit to buy
  • Delivery is instant.
  • Reader reviews – from people just like us – are pretty good guides to the quality of the book. Look for quality reviews.
  • You’ll kill fewer trees.


But what if you’re a really serious reader, and 375,000 books just isn’t enough for you? What if the book you want to read isn’t on the Kindle list? Many of the out-of-copyright classics are now available as free ebooks. And then there are all the free Smashwords publications. Well the good news is that, as well as Kindle, there are several other decent e-readers for the PC.

Not quite as polished as Kindle for PC, but still effective, is the Adobe Digital Editions reader. This will read any book released in an EPUB or PDF format. (Officially, EPUB is supposed to be the standard format for ebooks: there’s a movement to encourage all publishers and e-readers to use the same format, so that books once acquired can be read on any e-reader.)

Try it out with any of the Rapscallion releases. Go to Smashwords and download the EPUB version. Save the file in the Downloads folder on your computer. Then open up Digital Editions, click on the Books icon at the far left of the screen, and then on Library -> Add item to library. Find the EPUB file in your Downloads folder. For comparison, you might also want to grab a second Smashwords publication, but this time download a PDF version. This will open directly on your computer, but save it into your Downloads folder, and then copy it into your Digital Editions library just as before. Then open up your books and experiment with the controls.

What I don’t like so much in Digital Editions is the heavy black background around the text, which I find distracting. Also I’d like to be able to adjust the page margins in the EPUB files so that the text is not so close to the edge of the page. But I prefer the EPUB to the PDF version because it offers more flexibility with font size, and also scrolling down a page is more precise – it’s exactly one page at a time. I’m not sure whether I prefer the vertical scrolling of pages, which is what I’m used to on the computer, or Kindle’s horizontal left and right scrolling, which resembles a printed book.

Like Kindle, the Adobe reader, allows you to set bookmarks, automatically remembers the last page you read, and has a Find tool, so you can search for a word or phrase. But it differs from Kindle in two important ways. First Adobe offers a Print capability – which somehow seems to defeat the purpose. And it misses a feature that I think is an essential: there’s no capability for note-taking.

That’s my experience, but there are other free e-readers for the computer too. Perhaps you’d like to tell us about another you’ve tried. What’s your favorite way to read an ebook?


Useful Links

Download page: Kindle for PC

Main Amazon page

Amazon’s Kindle Discussions – Main Page

Kindle Boards – mix with Kindle readers and writers.

Rapscallion publications – so far – via Smashwords

Download page: Adobe Digital Editions

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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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