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Monthly Archives: October 2010
Monthly Archives: October 2010
Boarders turns to indie writers for salvation from bankruptcy.
Crazy.
As eBooks have become increasingly popular, many major eBookstores have created ways to fill those eBookshelves not just with the titles of well known authors but with the works of any author willing to cough up the fees to have their projects published and distributed in this new format. And today, Borders throws its hat into the ring with a partnership with the Boulder-based startup BookBrewer, offering a service that will let independent authors publish and sell their eBooks via the Borders’ eBookstore.
The deal with Borders will give authors who use BookBrewer a choice of two publishing packages: the $89.99 basic package and the $199.99 advanced publishing package.
With the basic package, BookBrewer will assign the book an ISBN – something that typically costs $125 value – and will make it available to all major eBookstores at a price set by the writer. Authors who purchase the advanced package will receive a full version of their ePub file, which they will own and may share with friends, family or submit on their own to eBook stores. An ePub file can be read with a variety of mobile devices, including the iPad.
…While there is a lot of competition in the eBook and self-publishing space, one of the key features of BookBrewer is the ability to turn an RSS feed into a book. This will have appeal not simply for independent authors, but for bloggers and for educators.
Indeed, just last week the Chronicle of Higher Education asked, “As Textbooks Go Digital, Will Professors Build Their Own Books?” For those teachers (and edu-bloggers) interested in battling the high cost of textbooks by creating open source textbooks, BookBrewer’s services may be worth exploring.
I’m hoping to have the ebook edition of Conmergence up by Monday. I was going to bring the POD and ebook out at the same time, but I decided it’s less stress to do it this way.
I promised I would log the steps of my journey for those interested. The big step I took this week was setting up a business account so I can keep my writing expenses and income separate from my personal accounts. It’s too expensive to incorporate yet, although that is safer, so I have a sole-proprietorship. However, having a separate account should help me out at tax-time. I deposited $150 to maintain the account. Good practice would have been to deposit the money I needed in the account, then draw out my expenses. I haven’t done that. I won’t take any money for expenses out of the account until I see money actually going in.
I registered on Amazon’s CreateSpace program under my business name and linked the royalties to directly deposit in the account.
I have kept an ongoing balance sheet:
Production
Cover Art: $15
Interior Design: $10
Editing: $175Subtotal: $200
Publishing and Distribution
Amazon Pro: $40
Promotion
Webpage: $100 (one year at Wix)
Booktrailers: $0 (so far)Subtotal: $140
Total: $340
I budgeted a maximum of $1000 and there are still some expenses I haven’t had to pay for yet, but probably will. However, I originally thought editing would be $400. I was delighted when it was less. (Probably because a lot of these stories have been published before and needed minimum editing.)
Now, how much do I expect to make? The real answer is I HAVE NO CLUE. But that’s not business-like, so I’ll give you an OMAF (Out of My Arse Fact).
I read that one can expect a sell-through rate of about 3% on an average list. I have a list of about 1000 people — that is how many people I can reasonably and reliably expect to tell about my book. If three out of every hundred who hear about it actually buy the book, I will sell thirty books.
Yes. Thirty. That’s how many books I expect to sell.
I will be making $2 (net) on each ebook. So I expect to make $60.
Hm.
60 – 340 = -280
That leaves me in the red to the tune of $280. This may be why my husband objects to my business plan.
I need to sell 170 books to break even.
Certain factors could improve this picture. I will do a blog tour, to try to tell more people about the book. And if readers like the book and start telling friends about it, that would be wonderful. I have no way of controlling word-of-mouth, besides trying to write as compelling fiction as I can, and packaging it as beautifully as I can afford. Even if I never earn out my advance (so to speak) I hope to give those who do read the book an enjoyable experience and a lovely object of art.
Another way I could do better is if I had a higher buy-in from my list. If out of my 1000 something internet buddies, there was buy-in rate of 20%, I could sell 200 copies, make $400 net, cover my costs and make $60 profit.
Bottom line, I don’t expect I can make much more than lunch money on one book. That’s why I already have plans to bring out more ebooks.
Of course, I hope my sales of Conmergence will be better than I’ve estimated. With ebook sales increasing by 193%, from $89.8 million for 2009 to $263 million in 2010 this is a great time to publish an ebook. But other people’s success doesn’t guarantee mine. Conmergence might do worse. I imagine it’s possible a month could go by and find me selling only 3 or 4 copies. If that happens, I will cry. But I won’t give up.
I am trying hard to behave like a grown-up and approach writing as a business venture, and I hope one day it will help me support my family. But I am still an artist, one with more hope than financial sense, and I’ll keep trying even when a realistic look at the numbers dictates quitting now.
The dark side is, the books are cheap. Not quite the same commitment as someone plunking down $12.99 or even more for a tangible book. I would love to see stats on the percentage of books downloaded vs. actually read. I think it would be a scary number.
I still REALLY don’t understand this argument.
It seems to be that accessibility, convenience and affordability will somehow devalue books.
This really seems to me exactly like monks telling Gutenberg, “But when books aren’t handwritten and therefore become more accessible, convenient and affordable?”
And to be fair, the monks had a point. When books had to be handwritten, only very valuable books were written — the Bible, maybe Aristotle. Perhaps a treatise by Galen. Etc.
But after the advent of print, you started getting these crass, money grubbing, capitalist pigs selling pamphlets about two-headed cannibals and all sorts of weird sh$%. Pretty soon writers even started wasting their time writing deliberately “novel” “fictions”.
It got so bad that concerned authorities had to start banning and censoring books just to keep a lid on things. Occasionally, burning the authors. Fortunately, that worked. Oh, no, sorry. Didn’t work.
The dark side is, the books are cheap. Not quite the same commitment as someone plunking down $12.99 or even more for a tangible book. I would love to see stats on the percentage of books downloaded vs. actually read. I think it would be a scary number.
I still REALLY don’t understand this argument.
It seems to be that accessibility, convenience and affordability will somehow devalue books.
This really seems to me exactly like monks telling Gutenberg, “But when books aren’t handwritten and therefore become more accessible, convenient and affordable?”
And to be fair, the monks had a point. When books had to be handwritten, only very valuable books were written — the Bible, maybe Aristotle. Perhaps a treatise by Galen. And the scholars who read these things were very serious about it.
But what happened when just any boob could buy Aristotle? Or read the Bible?
Actually, come to think of it, that started a century of warfare.
Ok. I stand corrected.
The dark side is, the books are cheap. Not quite the same commitment as someone plunking down $12.99 or even more for a tangible book. I would love to see stats on the percentage of books downloaded vs. actually read. I think it would be a scary number.
I still REALLY don’t understand this argument.
Accessibility, convenience and affordability =
…people reading LESS?
In what universe does that make sense?
The only thing I get is that there will be more competition for the individual author. Right now, a person may hesitate a long time before buying a $30 hardcover or $8 paperback. But chances are, they are committed to that book once they buy it. (Less so with the paperback, presumably.) And they have less money left after buying your book to buy the competition.
Now, it seems the fear is that after readers stock up their Kindle with hundreds of competing titles, your book STILL has to compete for reader attention even after it’s bought.
But again, I don’t think this will translate to LESS readers. Because the people who would have been your fans before (and spent more money to buy your book) are the ones who will still value it the most, whatever they paid for it. The people who buy your book not sure they will read it are people who wouldn’t have taken a chance before, but now have, because it’s not as big a loss if they don’t get around to it. And once they have it, they are more likely to read it.
So your book is not going to lose anything by not being read by a few buyers. Those were buyers who wouldn’t have bought you otherwise. In that case, what do you care if they buy your book but decide not to read it after all? Except maybe a blow to the ego.
There’s nothing scary about this to me.
Throughout the history of the book, there has always been one predictable truth:
Accessibility, convenience and affordability = MORE READERS.
Kindle Singles is not a dating service.
I know. Sorry.
But what is it? What does it mean for readers? For writers Is this a reprise of Amazon Shorts for the Kindle?
Less than 10,000 words or more than 50,000: that is the choice writers have generally faced for more than a century–works either had to be short enough for a magazine article or long enough to deliver the “heft” required for book marketing and distribution. But in many cases, 10,000 to 30,000 words (roughly 30 to 90 pages) might be the perfect, natural length to lay out a single killer idea, well researched, well argued and well illustrated–whether it’s a business lesson, a political point of view, a scientific argument, or a beautifully crafted essay on a current event.
Today, Amazon is announcing that it will launch “Kindle Singles”–Kindle books that are twice the length of a New Yorker feature or as much as a few chapters of a typical book. Kindle Singles will have their own section in the Kindle Store and be priced much less than a typical book. Today’s announcement is a call to serious writers, thinkers, scientists, business leaders, historians, politicians and publishers to join Amazon in making such works available to readers around the world.
“Ideas and the words to deliver them should be crafted to their natural length, not to an artificial marketing length that justifies a particular price or a certain format,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President, Kindle Content. “With Kindle Singles, we’re reaching out to publishers and accomplished writers and we’re excited to see what they create.”
Right now I know a lot of indie authors who have novellas up as ebooks for .99 cents. In the future, must these be categorized with the “singles”? How about serialized novels? (I’m thinking of doing this.)
But will it be open to indie authors? Or, like the Shorts, will they require some proof of having been past gatekeepers? And how many gatekeepers? I was able to publish through Amazon Shorts because I had sales to traditionally published anthologies.
To be considered for Kindle Singles, interested parties should contact digital-publications@amazon.com.
Hm, that doesn’t sound as though they want just anybody. Plus, Russ Grandinetti, the Vice President, Kindle Content, said “With Kindle Singles, we’re reaching out to publishers and accomplished writers and we’re excited to see what they create.” [emphasis mine] In other words, self-published whack-jobs need not apply.
TechCrunch seems to think it will be open to all:
This new format is is important because Kindle Singles opens up a market for new authors. Singles gives bloggers and writers out there who don’t have time to write a book the opportunity to publish a pamphlet or shorter work. And it seems fairly easy for writer to publish these works. Amazon will work directly with publishers and writers to publish Kindle Singles. Amazon says that “Any rights holder can use the already popular Kindle Digital Text Platform (DTP) to self-publish work in the Kindle Store, and this include Kindle Singles.”
This makes sense if the real aim here is to do for journalists what CreateSpace has done for novelists.
If viewed through a magazine/newspaper lens, this could be the first step in letting journalists and writers produce their own work rather than having to be on staff or go through the tedious pitch process. While the press release did not discuss the business model, there is also the possibility that writers might even be able to earn more for their work by going straight to distribution and bypassing the publishers.
What I really noticed was what wasn’t said. What price point does Amazon envision for these Singles? .99 cents? Less? The Shorts were .49 cents. Will Amazon bring that back? What about the possibility of micro-pricing? .25 cents? .10? .01? How about $200,000 (Zimbabwe) dollars? (About $0.0002 US dollars). I’m not sure what the point of that would be, of course. I just wanted to publicly mock Zimbabwe’s currency.
The other number missing is what the split would be between the publisher/”accomplished writer” and Amazon. Right now Amazon offers a 30/70 split for ebooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99. Amazon is not price neutral; they make it clear that this is what they think is the right range for the price of an ebook. If a writer wants to offer a book for $1.99, for instance, because it is a novella, this means a drop from 70% royalties to a mere 35% and that stings. If you could offer that novella as a “Single” and earn 70% on a lower price, that would be sweet.
* * *
It’s not much advantage to sell a novella for 10 cents. At least, I think you’d have to sell an awful lot of copies to make that worthwhile. But nonfiction? Basically, this is like directly monetizing a long blog post, or a single newspaper/magazine article. Something you could write in a few hours, or at most, a few weeks. It might be very much worth it to sell that for pennies per shot, if those pennies added up.
Let’s play with some numbers:
Let’s say you sell a Single for .20 and split it 50/50 so you make .10 cents a pop.
If you could sell one Single a week to 10,000 regular subscribers, that’s $1000 a week. Not too shabby.
The price to the consumer: $10.40 for a year’s worth of once-a-week content.
Ok, what if you can sell one Single a day, every working day, for a year — about 260 Singles?
If you had 1,000 regular subscribers, that’s $100 a day and $26,000 a year.
If you had 10,000 regular subscribers, that’s $1000 a day and $260,000 a year.
Cost to the consumer: $52 a year.
F’kn brilliant.
Now, I’m sure some people will object with the usual, “But what about the mountains of crap!” As usual, the answer is simple. If it’s crap, don’t buy it.
Another possible objection is whether consumers will pay for this when they can just read blogs for free. Well, sure. But this is a bit of a longer of a read than a blog post. I think, as long as it’s not terribly expensive, and the content is good, people will buy it.
All you out-of-work journalists who are presently employed by Demand Studios or Target…this could be for you!
* * *
What about fiction? Well, let’s say my friends and I decided to get together and start our own novella and serialized novel publisher. Stories between 10,000-30,000 in length. I’m assuming it would be hard for any one writer to come up with that much content that fast, but a magazine with submissions, sure.
Apply the numbers above. Reduce by half to pay for overhead. (Reading slush for submissions, editing, advertising, etc.) Let’s take the once-a-week scenario. $26,000 / 2 is $13,000 a year / 52 weeks, and the writer of an individual story can earn $250.
Not bad, though not great. But, here’s the thing, the story can continue to earn royalties. Is it worth it to publish with a small publisher to get that initial list of 10,000 fans? Honestly, I don’t know.
An alternative model would be that the writer sells only first rights, and after the story goes out to the list, rights revert back and the writer can continue to sell that story as an independent vendor on Amazon. In that case, I’d say it would be definitely worth the exposure for the writer to share 50% of the price with a publisher.
* * *
There’s one other theory about the target audience:Academics.
Do you know who is going to love this? Academics, that’s who.
Which is exactly who Amazon is targeting with Kindle Singles….
“Serious writers, thinkers, scientists” and “historians” sure sounds like college professors to us, and the length of the Singles is about exactly what a serious academic journal article or research paper comes out to, isn’t it? Those articles certainly are “crafted to their natural length” more or less, and academic book publishers – unless the book is an edited selection of essays – don’t touch those kinds of article with a ten foot pole: they simply can’t sell them. In academic circles, however, journal articles are the meat in the college sandwich, and right now on the Kindle, these are mainly read as PDFs. However, give academics the opportunity to not only get their writings out to “readers around the world”, but also make some money (especially without having to give their cut to the publishers) in the process…they are going to line up to write Singles, and Amazon knows it.
That said, for right now, Amazon is playing nice with publishers by saying “we’re reaching out to publishers and accomplished writers” but that is just a nicety that Amazon has to do at this point. In the not-too-distant-future, we fully expect Amazon to open this up to many more people – especially hungry-to-get-published-academics. When those young, hip, professors and teaching assistants can point their students to their latest journal article/Kindle Single on Amazon.com, then we’ll start to see the real tipping point in academics towards ereading.
I hope to gd this is true. Really. I cannot tell you how many times in the last week, while trying to write an academic paper, I have come across papers hidden behind a ridiculous price wall. I have access to a university library; nonetheless, when I try to access an article for a journal which the library subscribes to I frequently encounter some blasted message telling me snidely that I can read the entire article for one day for a mere… $19.99.
$19.99?
For one article?
For one day?!
ARE YOU MESSING WITH MY MIND?!
I shouldn’t have to pay anything for that article, since, as I said, it should be in the library. But whatever. I would pay .99 cents or less to buy the article. (For all time, damn you, not a day. Sheesh.) But if I want to spend $20, I’d rather buy someone else’s book on the same topic. So I won’t be citing that article, sorry Journal of Antiquated Microbiology and Forensic Anthropology.
I wouldn’t expect Singles to be a panacea to the many headaches of academic publishing. As nice as it would be as an academic to simply self-publish one’s erudite brilliance, there’s the problem of peer-review.
People might look down on self-published fiction authors, but money speaks louder than scorn. If novels sell, that’s the only proof of success that matters in the end.
Academic writing is genuinely different. It’s not just snobbery. (Though there is plenty of that.) Academic ideas are not supposed to gain acceptance just because they sell copy. (Though this happens more than academics would like to admit.) Ideas must be vetted by other authorities in the field.
Nobody is going to cite a self-published academic article, because that’s the same as citing a popular magazine article with no peer review.
However, could peer reviewed journals sell through Kindle Singles? For, dare one hope, reasonable prices? That would be glorious.
* * *
Interesting times.
“Fortunately or unfortunately, the historian has not the novelist’s freedom.”
And the same goes for the grad student.