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How to stifle dissent

March 7, 2011 in News | 4 comments

It’s been a while. A long while. I’ve ignored my poor novel for the past nine months, while giving birth to another creative baby in the real world. It’s no fun up there, let me tell you, in a place where an author’s ability to control people and events is absolutely zero.

In the meantime, reports have been filtering through to me about trouble in my novel – unrest amongst some of the main characters, demonstrations against Richard ( – who I left in control of things), calls for me to resign as the author, even a suggestion that the title should be changed from The Lebanese Troubles to Middle-EastEnders, in a misguided attempt to reach out to a mass-market audience.

So I did a deal with them, offering a few concessions that should keep them happy and me in power. I’ve promised to clean up this blog, making sure that all the links still work. I came to an arrangement with Smashwords, offering the novel free during the Read An E-book Week – that’s March 6 – 12): with lots of new tourist-readers coming visiting, that should keep all my characters busy and feeling self-important again. And I’ve given them the right to form a union with characters from other books – what they want me to do is go out and make contacts with lots more novelists.

Privately, I feel betrayed. After all, who would they be without me? But I’m biting my tongue and keeping my powder dry for now. Compromise isn’t such a bad thing, if it preserves my status quo.

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Paul Story: Finding Your Writing Twin

May 4, 2010 in Activities | 15 comments

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Postbox

‘Postbox in Cambridge’
Not my bike – but it could be!

I’m hosting this post on behalf of Paul Story, author of Dreamwords,who came up with an excellent suggestion on the Kindle Community forum today. His idea is that a community of talented independent writers should seek out books which will ‘twin’ with their own. The twin would be in the same genre, might have a similar theme, would appeal to similar readers, and would maintain the same high standard.

There’s been considerable interest – follow this link if you’d like to see the whole discussion.

We’ve agreed that we now need to discuss the details off-line – so today, A Real Writer takes on a new role – it’s a gleaming, freshly painted postbox. If you’re interested in the idea or you’d like to learn more, just post a response to this post. I’ll then pick up your email address and forward it to Paul.

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that I’ve been an advocate of indie writers learning to hunt in packs for some time – and Paul’s idea has the virtue of simplicity.

There must be something in the air. Paul wasn’t the only one talking about collaboration today. I’ve been talking to Ali Cooper, author of The Girl On The Swing, who’s also keen to cross-review with other literary fiction writers.

What unites Paul, Ali and myself is that we’re all disenchanted with the constant beating of the self-promotion drum that seems to afflict indie writers. Yes, of course we all want to draw attention to ‘the best book you’ve ever read’. As a reader – a fan of indie books – commented on Paul’s thread today: ‘…a lot of writers shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to promotion.’ Better than self-promotion, we think, is building a strong community of talented writers, and reviewing the work of those we most admire. If we do so fairly, intelligently and professionally, this is surely an important step on the road to indie credibility and a wider readership.

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Use Your PC As An E-Reader

May 2, 2010 in Activities | 2 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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Rapscallion – Keeping It Simple

April 24, 2010 in Rapscallion | 2 comments

Continuing the discussion on the formation of Rapscallion – a framework for shared resources and marketing for indie writers.

In responses to my post on the Rapscallion framework, several of you were concerned about the apparent complexity of the plan. The aim is to minimize complexity. Like everyone else, I want to write more and to achieve better sales, not to tie up myself – or anyone else – in administration.

Your concern was that there would need to be some system of tracking time or earning credit hours in order to pay people for services rendered. I’d be against that. It would leave the door wide open for dispute and disagreement. And administration would be a nightmare.

The system I’d like to see is a lot simpler. For the writer, a standard set of services is supplied, making sure the book is edited and published to a high standard, marketing it alongside others in the same category, and making sure that the book gets plenty of reviews. Marketing advice is also given. In return for editing, preparation and marketing support, a set percentage amount is deducted from the author’s royalty (just as an agent’s commission is deducted from royalties paid).

It’s then up to the writer to decide if she wants to hire in other services – cover design, maybe someone to write publicity, legal guidance etc. In its writer-only/members-only web-site, Rapscallion would list resources provided by its own members, or third-parties whose products and services meet a high standard. Rapscallion would also try to negotiate decent rates for its members. But best, I think, if the writer deals directly with the supplier for these supplementary services. Some would need them; others wouldn’t.

Take my position right now, for example. I may need to hire an artist. Let me tell you why.

I wasn’t expecting early sales of my novel to be sensational, but I’ve not managed to make any real impact yet. Friends and colleagues have been very supportive, but there are still only two or three readers outside my immediate circle. Why are we finding readers for the Rapscallion short stories reasonably well, but not for the novel? The problem doesn’t appear to be that readers are finding the book, trying it, and deciding it’s not for them. It seems to be more a question of not catching the reader’s attention. And that makes me question a number of important elements: the title, the cover, the blurb, the price, the number of reviews … and possibly the way the opening 1-page chapter begins. Let’s take just one aspect, the cover.

I adore the cover on The Lebanese Troubles. Key themes in the book are invisibility, emptiness, loneliness, and Tom Young’s painting perfectly captures the mood at the end of the story. However, I’m beginning to think that in an ebook context where covers are generally seen as thumbnails, it doesn’t really work. I look at the various forums and everyone’s advice is to have a strong single central image. My cover contradicts all the advice … while appropriate, it may not be commercial. If I’d been working in a team, a more experienced team-leader might have warned me. So now I’m thinking about a change, and I have an idea – which I’ve tested on a few people. In Rapscallion, I might have discussed it with my team-leader. Now, the question is, can I execute the idea?

I’ve told you before that when it comes to design, I don’t know my art from my elbow. However, the most effective ebook covers are simple – clever but simple. With the wonderful tools now available, even I, like many other indie authors, can assemble a decent cover. (That’s what it is, assembly, not design.) I produced the covers for two of our Rapscallion short stories, Waiting for Orders and Mirage, and I’m pleased with the impact they make.

But the design I have in mind now will require more than cutting and pasting. This time I’m not sure I’m going to manage. I’m going to try. If I can’t make it look good, then I know I’ll have to ask someone with better skills to help.

So how would this work with Rapscallion? First, the writer would discuss ideas for the cover with the team-leader. She’d refer to our writers’ blog to find guidance on best practice and best tools, examples of Rapscallion covers, and simple tutorials. At this point, she might decide to hire an artist – and she’d find a list of artists and pricing guidelines in the blog’s reference pages. Or, like me, she might try to go it alone. After completing the design, she’d pass it back to the team-leader, who would ensure that the standard Rapscallion guidelines had been followed. The team-leader would also probably have a view – will the cover sell the book or not? If the leader’s opinion was negative, then she might decide to ask someone else in Rapscallion – preferably someone she doesn’t know well, for the sake of objectivity. Ultimately the decision will be hers: is she happy with her design despite the advice? Or would it be better to hire an artist, after all? If that’s her decision, she’d make the arrangements (perhaps asking for two or three quotations) – and she’d pay, because this is not within the standard Rapscallion agreement./p>

I hope that makes it clearer. A set of clearly defined services is supplied to the writer for a fixed royalty deduction. Rapscallion will make it easy to find additional help, but if this is required, it’s in the writer’s own hands. Service providers will be free to set their own rates; Rapscallion will promote those that appear to offer excellent value at a fair price.

For the team leaders, calculations would be just as simple. After training and approval, they would try to identify authors whose books complement their own, appealing to the same kind of reader. Their job would be to identify authors, and then do the work required to make their books market-ready, editing, preparing them for e-publication (no technical skills are required, just training), passing on knowledge and advice, ensuring that all Rapscallion procedures have been followed. They will benefit in two ways: joint-marketing should help sales of their own book. And in recognition of their work, they will receive a fixed percentage of the royalties earned by the books they have helped to bring to market. Again, no complex administration – and if Rapscallion’s going to work that’s the way it must be: clear guidelines and procedures, and administration stripped to the bone.

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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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New Rapscallion Release – Daddy’s Machine

April 12, 2010 in News | 3 comments

Daddy's Machine - Cover

Today we published a new Rapscallion short story on Smashwords – Suki Michelle’s remarkable and disturbing voyage into the tortured mind of a Down’s Syndrome child who has miraculously been given the gift of intelligence and knowledge without wisdom or understanding – or love.

The Smashwords edition allows you to download and read the story on your computer today. In a few days time it will be available on the iPad, the Nook, the Sony Reader and probably Kindle. Just click on the picture to collect your free download of Daddy’s Machine – and if you enjoy the story, don’t forget to leave a brief review.

We’re interested in your views on the cover design. First, before you read the story. The cover is supposed to catch your attention and make you want to dive in. Does it succeed? And then after reading – has your opinion changed?

 

Next time – well, we’re going to lift the veil on Rapscallion. Somewhere between an agent and a publisher – could we help you find a route to market?

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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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The Most Important Day In 570 Years

April 4, 2010 in Publishing | 2 comments

Printing Press

I’ve been wondering what Marshall McLuhan would have said about the iPad, if he’d still been around for the launch yesterday.

McLuhan – one of the high-priests of 1960s pop culture – with his catchphrases that are now part of the language – ‘The medium is the message’ (well actually ‘massage’ – McLuhan loved his puns), and ‘the global village’. It’s almost 50 years now since his groundbreaking study of mass media, The Gutenberg Galaxy.

The importance of the printing press, McLuhan argued, wasn’t just a matter of speed – that a Bible a monk had lovingly hand-written and illustrated for a year could now be produced in a day or two. It certainly wasn’t a matter of aesthetics – on that count the monk won hands down. But printing transformed the way we lived. Not just read. Lived.

For a start, books and learning were no longer in the hands of a privileged few – the Church. Almost immediately there was a demand for the unthinkable – for the Bible to be published not in Latin, but in modern European languages. This was dissent – it was dangerous. Rome tried to ban books (just as states try to deny access to the internet today); printers were burned at the stake for their heretical ideas. The democratization of learning was a bad thing – how could you control the quality of the message if anyone could publish (sound familiar?), and if the whole population could read?

But media are unstoppable. They won’t be denied. Whether directly or indirectly, Gutenberg’s invention gave rise to the reformation of the Church and the growth of secularism, the spread of universal education, the belief in individualism and self-expression … the novel. Not everyone agreed these were good changes – certainly not those whose authority was threatened. But that’s another thing about the media, says McLuhan. They don’t have feelings. They don’t regret, or necessarily respect the past.

His thinking went deeper. Before printing, most people didn’t read. Passing information involved an oral / aural transfer. When stories were told, the teller and the listener needed to be together – in a room, in a village, round a fire. And all the senses came into the act.

But after printing, how quickly everything changed. The eye became the primary sense. Information transfer could happen over a distance of time or space – we no longer depended on the village. And we learned to be linear, organized. With the printed word, thought was best expressed in structured sentences and paragraphs. So, McLuhan explained, the printing press spawned business organizations, mass production … schizophrenia (well, his thinking was always quirky – you try to explain that one!)

All this was history. But what really excited this media prophet was the future. For 500 years from 1440, nothing much had changed. Print continued to exert its influence over every aspect of our lives. And then suddenly there was a technological revolution – with the invention of radio, TV, the cinema, the phone. Years before the first personal computer was even thought of, McLuhan knew that we were on the threshold of a new age – an electric age.

The new media realigned the senses, moved back away from linearity. Sure, TV and the cinema are visual media, but not in the same way as printing and the book. Once more we’re watching story-tellers, but this time they’re not around the campfire. They’re in Karachi, Johannesburg, Washington. And they work for the BBC or CNN. It’s a different kind of village – a global village.

Apple's iPad

So what would McLuhan have thought on April 3rd as our friends from Cupertino rolled out their all-singing, all-dancing, finger-clicking new machine? With a full-color e-reader, ibooks with pages that flip to try to pretend this is a real book you’re reading, a free sample of Winnie the Pooh just to get you started? Like me, he might have shaken his head and muttered something about this year’s wannabe becoming next year’s has-been. Because we should know by now, machines are temporary .. but technology is permanent.

And if he’d been sitting next to me, he’d have smiled as we tried to post my ebook to the Apple ibooks store the other morning and discovered that even before breakfast, mine was the 107th electronic book that had been posted by one smallish publisher THAT DAY. He’d have pointed at the Twitter messages fluttering across the top of my Tweetdeck screen from friends in writing and publishing. ‘Don’t try to read them all’, he’d have said. ‘That’s not what they’re there for. They’re just environment, background, to give you a sense of the mood of the day, what the tribe are talking about. Don’t try to read the messages like a book.’

What was my tribe talking about? E-publishing. Every single one of them. Ebooks, just a small – though rapidly growing – fraction of the market a few months ago are suddenly big business. That’s what we’ll remember April 3rd 2010 for. It was the day when e-publishing came of age … the iPad just happens to be – perhaps for only a few days, or weeks, or months – the standard-bearer.

And suddenly, in a few hours, the publishing world has turned upside down. Publishers fear for their books and their profits – they’re trying to drive prices up when inevitably they must come down. Distributors are flexing new muscles and forcing publishers into a corner. New e-providers have suddenly emerged, looking for an opportunity, offering dubious services and terms for e-publishing that writers would be fools to accept. Writers can foggily see new opportunities but don’t know which way to turn. Readers are jumping on bandwagons, loving this and hating that.

And McLuhan says – or it might have been a tweet: ‘Once a new technology starts to roll, if you’re not in the steamroller, you’re on the road.’ He looks me up and down, appraising me. ‘Just make sure it’s the right steamroller.’

 

This is the first post in a series on the changing publishing landscape, explaining the guiding principles behind Rapscallion – our own new imprint.

If you’re an iPad user, please check out The Lebanese Troubles in ibooks and tell me how it looks.

And if, like me you’re living in a country where the iPad is off-limits, then here’s a look at what you’re missing.

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