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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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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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Introducing The Author Associates Scheme

April 11, 2011 in planning | 6 comments

On a more serious note today, I’m going to introduce a new scheme – Author Associates, intended as a model to strengthen the relationship between writers and enthusiastic readers. I want to look again at Andy Woodworth’s eBook Reader’s Bill of Rights, and suggest how we could give our readers real ownership of the eBooks they buy (which Amazon denies at the moment). And I want to show why Smashwords is one of the indie writer’s most important tools.

Expensive Tastes

First, let’s recap. In my last post, I explained (well, narrated really) why I’m increasing the price of my e-novel – to $5.95 in the US and £3.75 in the UK (plus all the various delivery charges and taxes that eBooks so unfairly attract). The reason was to change reader expectations. At $0.99, the expectation is probably low, and I may be damaging my book’s prospects in two ways: first by not attracting the right kind of reader; and second, by attracting the wrong kind of reader.

‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ is not a value judgement – it’s not the same as saying ‘good’ and ‘bad’. In the book market, there’s plenty of room for both fast-food and fine-dining. Both have their place. But you’d better be sure that if your customers are expecting McDonalds, you don’t offer soft candlelight, an expensive wine-list, discreet table-side service. Or vice versa. You’ll just get them confused – and probably unhappy.

What sort of customers do I want? I’m looking for discriminating readers – people who’ll come to the table with high expectations. They want a good yarn told with craftsmanship, artistry, polish. By increasing the recommended retail price, I hope I’ll be able to find them.

The Value of Sharing

Yet in earlier posts, I’ve often promoted the importance of sharing and the value of free. Not long ago, I wrote:

‘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.’

Look at the copyright notice on The Lebanese Troubles and you’ll see that I’ve encouraged readers to share the book with friends and family, instead of insisting (as most eBooks do) that each reader must purchase a separate copy. It’s not because I don’t need the money: like most writers, I need to make enough to support my habit. But I’m taking the long-term view.

Will readers really recommend? If my work’s good enough, I believe they will. Our libraries and music collections define us: they show our friends who we really are. That’s why Goodreads is so popular. And if we spot a new talent, so much the better: we can claim credit for being one of the first to notice. Yes, people do talk when they find a writer or a musician they really enjoy.

So What’s The Pitch?

Here goes our schizophrenic writer again, raising the price on the one hand while advocating sharing on the other. How can this make sense?

Like this.

The recommended retail price sends my value signal to the market – and that’s where the price will settle in the long run. But at this point in my writing career, volume sales are far less important than winning the support of key ‘influencers’ – people who care enough about my writing project to become participants themselves. I need readers to post thoughtful reviews on the key reader sites – Amazon (US and UK), Smashwords, Nook, Goodreads. I need them to recommend my work to friends. And not least, I need direct feedback.

Where am I going to find these people? Right here, on this blog, if I use it properly. By investing the same amount of creative energy and care into the blog as I would into a novel, it becomes an interactive showcase for my writing. I hear some writers complaining that blogging takes time away from their real writing. For me, this is real writing, and it’s the place where I can interact best with my readers – putting on a series of live gigs. If you enjoy the gig enough, chances are that you may start buying the published material … and hopefully you’ll tell your friends too, so they can catch up with the next performance.

The Author Associates Scheme

It’s because this core group of influencers is critical to my success that I’m launching my new scheme. This is how Author Associates works.

If you enjoy the blog, or already have a copy of ‘The Lebanese Troubles’, you are invited to register. Then, as an associate, you may:

1. Purchase your own copy of ‘The Lebanese Troubles’ for just $1.99, via a discount coupon that will allow the eBook to be read in any format. This offer will expire after 200 coupons have been issued.

2. Apply for a batch of 5 gift coupons, allowing friends and family to get the eBook free of charge on your recommendation.

3. Apply for up to 20 discount coupons, allowing members of your reading-group to purchase the eBook at half-price.

4. Register your TLT purchase. Then, if you have purchased for one e-reader, you will be able to view the eBook in any format. You will also be entitled to a free replacement copy, should your original copy become inaccessible, for whatever reason.

5. View and comment on draft chapters of my next novel, scheduled from August 2011 onwards.


Reader Rights and Redundancy Marketing

Before we look at implementation, let’s just pause for a moment on clause 4 – being able to view the book in any e-reader format, and getting a free replacement copy if your original copy is lost or broken. My thinking here has been greatly influenced (again!) by Andy Woodworth’s e-Book Reader’s Bill of Rights. Here’s his complaint.

‘Digital Rights Management (DRM), like a tariff, acts as a mechanism to inhibit this free exchange of ideas, literature, and information. Likewise, the current licensing arrangements mean that readers never possess ultimate control over their own personal reading material. These are not acceptable conditions for eBooks.’


I wholeheartedly agree with Andy’s stand. In the digital age, equipment manufacturers and content providers have profited enormously from built-in redundancy. If you’re old enough, you’ll remember the Betamax/VHS divide in the early days of VTR. When VHS finally won out, my whole investment in Betamax videos was wasted: if I loved a film, I had to buy my Betamax version all over again to watch it on my new VHS machine. And then again when DVD swept in to replace video. And then again when I moved back from the Mid-East to the UK, only to find that my DVD player wouldn’t work with European disks, and that my new European player read my existing collection as a series of question-marks. It happens with printers as well. I’ve been using my trusty printer for years, but now they’ve stopped issuing the ink cartridges for that model. And how many times does Microsoft want me to buy their operating system? It’s just an operating system, for goodness sake! I don’t care!

We’re going the same way with eBooks, unfortunately. Yes, there’s apparently an industry-standard – ePub – and the ePub version is fine for the iPad and the Nook. But not on the Kindle. And if I publish via Amazon, using the .mobi standard, that’s fine for the Kindle, but not anything else. I worry about closed systems. I worry even more when I see, in the small print, that the purchase I thought I’d just made is only a license: the eBook doesn’t really belong to me, as a printed book does. If the only concern is to maximize sales and profitability – to sell the same product again and again as hardware is updated or replaced – then all this makes perfect sense. But for anyone who feels that the customer’s interests should come first, redundancy marketing is repugnant.

The good news is that – because I’ve taken the indie path to publishing – I can take a stand and offer my readers a much better deal. With a little help from Smashwords.

Smashwords To The Rescue

Smashwords is a very popular digital publishing platform, but I hear the occasional criticism from authors who say they never actually sell anything there; readers flock to Smashwords looking for free books, but when they want to buy, they go to Amazon. That may be true at present, but it’s a misunderstanding of the Smashwords mission. The site has been built by a writer for writers, and it’s a place where the writer’s interests always come first, where we can truly exercise our freedom to publish, price and market in the way we choose.

When I publish there, my eBook is automatically converted into 10 different formats. So no matter which e-reading device the reader prefers – Kindle, iPad, Nook, the Sony Reader, the PC or laptop, a mobile phone – one of the Smashwords versions is going to do the job (- not necessarily perfectly, but we’ll come to that another time).

The second huge Smashwords benefit is that it gives me complete control and authority over any discounts that I choose to offer. It gives me the flexibility to offer gift vouchers and discount coupons via Author Associates; better still, it has a reporting system that allows me to relate a coupon number to an individual associate, so that I can track coupons already used, and monitor the effectiveness of my scheme.

Getting Started As An Associate

There’s still work to be done to perfect the new scheme. Smashwords doesn’t tell me who’s purchased my books. Nor should they. I personally wouldn’t want to be pursued by every writer whose book I’d downloaded just to take a look-see. It’s important that Author Associates should be an opt-in scheme for readers who are genuinely enthusiastic, and that no-one should feel pressurized to participate. But that means I’ll need to build a special sign-up tool here on the blog. (Don’t be surprised if you see scaffolding here in the next few days.) I’m going to need a good database too, to keep on top of the interactions with associates. Luckily in another life, I’m a web/database designer – so I’ll be able to cope. No doubt there’ll be other teething problems…

But to get started, there’s nothing like starting. So if you’re interested in joining me as an Associate, and taking advantage of any or all the benefits of the scheme, just let me know right now in a brief comment, and I’ll get back to you by email with more details.

Related posts

Triple Filtrée – No Smooth Outcome. Positioning the novel – as a large potato, or a large beer?
Whose eBook – Yours, Mine or Amazon’s? Am I buying the eBook or just licensing it?
Go On! Lend My Book! – My original post on book-sharing – including a sample ‘sharing’ copyright notice.

Other References

The eBook Reader’s Bill of Rights: Andy Woodworth
Smashwords: sign-up page
Smashwords: my novel page

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Shiny happy people

April 6, 2011 in The TwitFace Project | 4 comments

Thumbs-Up

A big thumbs-up to Amazon and Smashwords after they introduced a Like feature recently on their book pages. Many of us are so busy greading that there’s no time any more to read reviews, let alone write them.

What I like about Like is that it requires no thought or time at all. It’s an entirely involuntary reaction, like a smile or a wave. You’re out shopping or running an errand in WebLand: you can’t just stop and chat with everyone you meet, or you’ll never get home. But a Like just lets them know that you’ve seen them, that all’s well with the world, that you’ll get together and catch up sometime – even if you’re busy right now. It makes the world a better place, full of shiny happy people.

But it’s important not read too much into a Like. Just because I Like you, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I want to have your babies. Let me illustrate.

Yesterday was a special day for me, an occasion. As you know, my TwitFace schedule doesn’t allow me a lot of time for getting out. In fact, it was the first time I’d left the house for three months. But I’d been unlocked from my computer chair, and there I was, on the train, heading south, to visit my aged parent.

It was in London that I saw the girl. All the seats were taken, so I stood next to the door, rucksack at my feet, laptop on my shoulder. I scanned the passengers, reading newspapers, text-messages, ads, thrillers. I made a mental note. Write in 15-minute segments: aim for the commuter-market. ‘Short is more’.

But she was different. She was reading on a Kindle. I Liked that. Maybe she sensed it. She glanced up. I let her know. Thumbs-up and a smile.

I sensed her coloring as she went back to her reading. Perhaps it was my book! What a coincidence that would have been. Did she look like one of my readers? Did my readers look like her? As our eyes touched again, I gave her two thumbs-up.

She turned to the guy on the seat next to her, and whispered. He looked at me, curious, rose. We’d connected.

- Hey man, why you coming on to my woman?
- No, not coming on. I was just Liking her.
- You gotta be kidding me.
- I thought maybe we could be friends.

Well, clearly he wasn’t a Facebook user. Fortunately it wasn’t too long before the next stop, and although not having my glasses meant I couldn’t post last night, I’ve been able to get a new pair this morning. So no permanent damage, only bruising.

I never did manage to ask if it was my book she was reading.


References

If you’re a commuter-reader, you might Like 40kBooks and eCapris, thinking of people like you.

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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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Go on! Lend my book!

March 21, 2011 in Activities | 2 comments

Forbidden to lend

Do you feel you’re treated as a potential criminal every time you download an ebook?

That’s how Andy Woodworth feels. In his eBook User’s Bill of Rights, he writes:

I am a reader. As a customer, I am entitled to be treated with respect and not as a potential criminal. As a consumer, I am entitled to make my own decisions about the eBooks that I buy or borrow.

And what makes him feel like this? The copyright notice that most of us add at the front of our ebooks. Thousands of us have followed the excellent Smashwords Style-Guide as we make multi-format versions available, using the suggested wording:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient…

So who reads copyright notices? Well, clearly some people do, and you can understand Andy’s indignation. Just imagine if the same rules applied to print books, and you needed a separate copy for every member of your family. A library in every room!

But it’s not just that the demand is unreasonable. We indie authors need sales and income, certainly, but that’s unlikely to happen unless we can first create a buzz. What’s the best way to do that? With family members and friends. I remember 20 years ago, when my son was about 7, I spent weeks reading Lord of the Rings to him. He doesn’t hate me for it, although he still thinks he’s Aragorn today. We shared our delight in Pratchett together. And later, he introduced me to Wilbur Smith and Jason Fforde. Now, as adults we each buy our own copies.

So, maybe our copyright notice should be active, not passive. Not just allowing sharing, but encouraging it. Here then is my new copyright notice:

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 Rapscallion 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.



If you distribute through Amazon you might have noticed a new checkbox that appeared at the turn of the year as you upload your masterpieces. By default, you opt in to Kindle’s lending program. So, in effect, unless you uncheck the box, you’re probably nullifying any restrictive copyright notice anyway. (To set your mind at rest, if you’re worried this could mean you’ll never see another dime for your work, Amazon only allows each purchased book to be lent once.)

Again we can be pro-active about this and actually encourage our readers to lend. Booklending.com is a free site, not affiliated to Amazon, that makes lending and borrowing Kindle (or Kindle for PC) books a breeze. You log in and enter the details of the book you want to borrow. As soon as someone’s ready to lend it, the deal is done, and like all matchmaking sites, you both live happily ever after – well, for 14 days at least, until the title is automatically transferred back to the book owner’s Kindle.

You may not be a best-selling author yet. You may not have thousands or even dozens of your books in circulation yet, with people willing to lend. People may not be clamouring to get a copy of your book. So much the better – that’s why you need Booklending.com to help build reputation.

Just tell both the readers you have – who love your book of course – that you want them to think of someone whose life would also be forever changed after reading The Lebanese Troubles (er … you can substitute your title here of course, although I’m not forcing you). They both go to the site. One lends; the other borrows. Oh and you might also mention that the owner is welcome to leave a short Amazon review, and that the borrower can at least click the ‘Like’ button and check the content-tags at the bottom of the Amazon page – so that other potential readers will know you’re getting popular, and won’t be shy to buy.

I won’t detain you. You can start now.


Links:

Booklending.com’s FAQ page
The Smashwords Style-Guide
Andy Woodworth’s eBook User’s Bill of Rights

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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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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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