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Daily Archives: October 7, 2010

Naysayers

Anonymous said…
Anyone else notice how all the people who are doing well in ebook publishing on the kindle are the ones who started a year ago?

The writers who’ve pulled in traditional contracts or registered huge sales numbers (more than 5000 copies sold of a single title) were the ones who noticed the trend ahead of the masses. Correct me if I’m wrong, but has there been anyone after Karen Mcquestion who has done anything other than sell a few hundred copies per book?

I’m sure it feels nice to kid yourself into thinking this is the new publishing model where everyone, regardless of talent, can play in the sandbox, but that’s not the way this is going to play out.

If you’re thinking you have a chance to break through, or start a indie career, or even be able to call yourself a published writer after uploading your manuscript to the kindle, then you’re delusional.

The opportunity to break into traditional publishing through the kindle has passed.

Youre indie career will be limited to moving a few thousand copies of your manuscript at the most.

Just because you figured out how to upload your typing onto a website doesn’t, and never will, make you a published writer.

Also, keep in mind that Joe’s primary goal is to sell books, and everything he does or has ever done is geared toward that goal, and that includes acting as a self-publishing messiah to the hopeful and the hopeless alike since you guys buy a lot of books.

He’s a smart guy, and he’s riding your hopes and dreams all the way to the bank.

Just a small dose of reality.

Newbie’s Guide to Publishing Blog,
Friday, June 18, 2010
7:25 PM

Zoe Winters said…

@Anon (who called Joe a self-publishing Messiah),

I don’t think Joe is doing that at all. I’ve watched his mind slowly change on this blog. I think he looks at it like a lot of us who are doing well look at it, that we don’t want to see someone miss an opportunity that could benefit them.

When I started this a bit over a year and a half ago I said “do it now before the biggest opportunity passes” but a whole bunch of people said, “I’ll just wait and see how you do first.” Now a lot of those people are jumping on board.

I don’t think the opportunity is “gone” but I do think it will be harder for anyone who doesn’t already have an established ebook buying fan base to rise up in the ranks. But writing a great book, packaging and editing it well, getting it out there, strategic partnerships with writers already doing well, these things all count.

My friend Kait Nolan who also writes paranormal romance, is consistently under 2k in the Kindle store, and sometimes under 1k. And she just released her first ebook a couple of months ago. We cross-promoted each other’s books in our description section. Just a simple line: “If you like Zoe Winters, you may also like Kait Nolan”. And she posted the reverse.

There is never a time when all opportunity is gone and all the success to be made has already been had. Those who think that way are making excuses for not taking action. The excuse starts out: “I’ll see how you do.” And it ends up, “Well, the opportunity is gone now.”

But we should recognize what it really is: An excuse not to step out and take an action you’re afraid to take. Fear of failure. Fear of success. Something. But it’s not rational. There is always a way to get found and get read. It gets harder and more competitive the more people who do it, but just like in traditional publishing… if you’re doing things right, about 90% of your competition is just noise.

10:35

C. Pinheiro, EA ABA said…

“Youre indie career will be limited to moving a few thousand copies of your manuscript at the most.”

A few thousand copies, coupled with Amazon’s royalty structure, could easily be $4,000. That’s very close to what traditional publishers pay a new author as an advance.

There are a lot of people out there who would love to have an extra $4,000 bucks.

By the way, this argument is designed to pop the baloons for fiction writers everywhere, but I’ll tell you that if you write non-fiction, a “few thousand” books can be a full-time salary (it is for me).

So either way, it’s a WIN for fiction writers and a WIN for non-fiction writers.

1:30 AM

Frankfurt 2010 and Ebooks


Ebooks are a big topic at Frankfurt 2010. The questions are about how soon will ebooks take over? and who will dominate the market? Emphasis mine:

In a 2008 survey, some 40% of 1,000 industry professionals surveyed said digital content will overtake traditional printed book sales by 2018. Now, it looks like “it may be sooner than that,” Mike Shatzkin [said]…

But the first session of the afternoon, on e-books, really captured the pace of change now hitting the publishing industry. Speakers included Brian Murray, CEO, HarperCollins; Evan Schnittman, managing director, Bloomsbury; Andrew Savikas, v-p, O’Reilly Media; and Rick Joyce, CMO, Perseus; and the panel was moderated by Google’s Tom Turvey. All of the panelists noted explosive growth in e-book revenues. Murray said e-books made up about 9% of HarperCollins’ total revenue, but when that number was adjusted to filter out things like children’s books or other materials not easily consumed digitally, closer to 20% of trade title revenue was now derived from e-books. The panelists agreed the growth was explosive, and that e-book revenues were now a significant revenue stream. In fact, with print revenues flat, nearly all of the industry’s growth can be attributed to e-books, another indicator of e-books’ crucial role.

As to whether e-books were adding incremental growth or cannibalizing print sales, the panelists said it was hard to tell. Schnittman, however, said you can’t measure that kind of thing on a title by title basis, but on a customer by customer basis. Once a reader makes a decision to read on a device, he notes, that customer is basically lost to print. There were thorny questions as well, with Turvey asking the panel if the industry standard 25% of net receipts royalty would change. Murray said no, defending the rate as a fair cut, adding that he saw nothing on the horizon that would change his mind on the subject.

A couple of points.

I would like to see the rest of the survey. If 40% think ebooks will overtake print by 2018, does that mean the rest think ebooks won’t overtake print, or will do so sooner, later?

I find it really weird that they assume once a customer buys a reader “that customer is lost to print.” I’ve had a reader for a year, and I still buy print. In fact, I often use my reader to “test” whether I want to buy a book in print, which is one reason it annoys me when the ebook is priced the same as a hardback or even a paperback. Admittedly, maybe I just do this because I grew up on print, and still enjoy seeing a hard copy on my shelf. It also has to do with my deep distrust for content that someone else might be able to take away from me after I’ve bought it… I expect ereaders to keep changing and I don’t know if the Kindle books I buy today will be upgradable to tomorrow’s device. I like to keep printed copies of my own wips for the same reason.

I actually see the revolution as two-fold. Ebooks are the biggie, yes, but I think POD is going to play an important transitional role. POD is going to keep treebooks circulating long after offset print runs are no longer profitable. Remember when everyone said email would mean a “paperless office”? Yeah, that happened…. oh, no, actually what happened was more paperwork than ever. (Trees, I apologize on behalf of my species.)

Final point: after all that, Murray thinks there is no reason to change his mind about the royalty rate?

Google Editions also made a splash.

This year, however, publishers seem eager for Google Editions, and most say they are happy to have Google enter the rapidly growing e-book market. At a CEO panel on the fair’s opening day, Simon & Schuster president Carolyn Reidy praised the program for offering a way for small bookstores to sell e-books. “This is important,” Reidy said. “We feel in the coming years a store that cannot hold on to their customers both physically and digitally will cease to exist.” Other publishers, who asked not to be named because they are still in discussions, praised Google’s flexibility in working with publishers and authors on sale terms, and its cloud-based program that allows books to be read on any device with a browser.

…A Google spokesperson said more than 35,000 publisher partners are now enrolled in Google’s partner program, with more than two million books digitized through the partner program. Some 15 million books in total have been digitized by Google Books, in 100 languages.

So what’s changed between this year and last for Google at Frankfurt? The short answer: time. Perhaps the e-book market surge over the last 12 months has pushed things to a tipping point, with real money now at stake for publishers, new tablet devices for consumers like the iPad, smartphones everywhere, and lower prices for the Kindle and other devices. Google’s Santiago de la Mora (who was on the panel with Reuss last year) agreed, telling PW that as people’s understanding of the e-book business and its importance does seem to have evolved, and as it has, the anticipation over Google Editions has grown.

It’s very funny. But is this not actually an ad for ereaders that offer the best of both worlds?