Prithee, Inform Me: Return of the E-reader

The last time I polled you on your e-reading habits in June, 42% of you indicated you owned an e-reader and 58% of you said you didn't. With Christmas come and gone and a variety of new and improved readers on the market, I thought I'd revisit the question.

Books Without Borders?

Happy 2011, mes auteurs, and a big thank you to all the guest posters from the last seven days. You guys rock.

But alas and alack, faithful readers, it's not all sunshine and lollipops in the land of publishing. As you by now surely know, Borders is (still) in trouble.

On the last day of 2010, BGP announced it would be delaying payments to vendors (i.e. not paying publishers for books). This caused some publishers to stop shipping them books, and Borders' stock tumbled (insofar as one can tumble from under a dollar per share) as a result. After a low of $0.83/share, it's trading at heavy volume at a shaky $0.88/share. Borders' market capitalization hasn't budged much from $60 million (that's "million" with an "m"). For reference, Barnes & Nobles' (BKS) is $930 million and Amazon's (AMZN) is $82 billion ($82 thousand million).

After two top executives resigned, Borders management traveled to New York City for a meeting with major vendors, which (one assumes) included the Big Six publishers that comprise Borders' largest source of books (and therefore income). Borders is apparently asking publishers to convert delayed payments into interest-bearing debt while simultaneously trying to renegotiate their loans with GE Capital and Jefferies Group. In short: they're out of cash and trying to find a way to keep the doors open and the lights on.

With staff apparently being advised to seek employment elsewhere, however, I don't think that's going to be much longer. In my opinion, Borders will be lucky to survive the month, much less the first quarter. They're strapped for cash and straining their relationships with suppliers, and it would be the understatement of the year (granted, it's early yet) to say they're poorly positioned for the ongoing digital shift in publishing: their website is inferior to their competitors', their continous couponing and deep discounts don't seem to be slowing the decline in their sales, and without a dedicated e-reader, they're nowhere near in league with the Kindle or the Nook.

That said, gentle readers, I'm afraid (barring divine intervention or acquisition by another company) Borders is more or less finished. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and (to a lesser extent) Apple will be left to determine the future of publishing when the dust from BGP's fall clears. I can only hope some of those empty storefronts become independent book stores.

What about you, meine Autoren? How would the demise of Borders affect you and your reading habits?

Guest Post: Is "Kindling" For You?

by C.J. Lyons

The publishing industry is in an era of upheaval, forcing authors to flex their entrepreneurial muscles, searching for new avenues of income and ways to keep their books in the public's eye.

One way of doing this is to self e-publish your backlist or other books that you hold the rights to. With more and more readers embracing e-books and e-books becoming the fastest growing segment of publishing, the idea of cutting out the middle men and keeping profits for ourselves is tempting.

Here are a few things to think about before walking the path of electronic self-publication:

Why self e-publish?

Like many authors, once I was firmly established with NYC publishers, I never thought about e-publishing or self-publishing, much less doing both!

But I found myself with four manuscripts that were previously in the hands of NYC publishers but for a variety of reasons never made it to publication. Then I saw a blog by multi-published thriller author JA Konrath discussing his own experiment with electronic self-publishing. His argument was logical and the numbers impressive, but I was still skeptical.

I wanted these books to find an audience but I didn't want to tie them to contracts I might later regret, especially as these four novels were all romantic suspense/thrillers and my career has moved to more mainstream suspense/thriller. So, I decided to perform my own self-publishing experiment.

I realized that I could use these books as promotional products as well as money-makers. Since I was in control of when they were released, how long they were available, and what their price was, I had a greater freedom than I do with my traditionally published works.

This turned out to be an unexpected bonus as by the time I had them formatted and ready for publication it was December, 2009. Then a few weeks later the earthquake in Haiti hit. Since I'm a pediatric ER doctor as well as a thriller novelist, I wanted to raise money for Doctors Without Borders.

What better way than using my experimental self e-pubbed books?

I sent out a newsletter and posted on my website and a few blogs that I was donating the proceeds of my Kindle sales for the month of February to DWB. I chose the Kindle format simply because it is exceptionally easy to track Kindle sales on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis through my Amazon DTP (digital text platform) account.

What I discovered was: Kindle readers read… a lot! I ended up raising over $1600 for DWB, which translated to almost 1700 books sold in one month on Kindle.

Possible Pitfalls

Anyone deciding to self-publish should have a good grasp of their target audience. You want to build an audience who will stay with you and help spread the word of your books—and that means making a promise to always deliver a high quality read.

In other words, just as in mainstream publishing, self e-publishing is still all about the reader.

It's not about clearing your closet of dusty manuscripts just because you can. Unless you plan on giving your work away for free, your goal is to attract paying customers. Which means the books you self e-publish need to be just as good as any book a NYC publisher is selling.

If you have a backlist that you own the rights to, they've already been professionally edited, you're good to go. Do be aware that publishers own the cover art, so you'll need to create a new cover for your e-book.

If you're planning to publish a book that hasn't been previously published, make certain it is professionally edited. The four books I chose for my experiment were all edited prior to my self-publication—three by NYC editors (before their road to publication went astray) and one by a professional freelance editor. Do not rely solely on your critique partners or your Great Aunt Martha who gushes to her bridge club about your writing!

Remember, not only are you competing against NYT bestsellers, you're also selling a product to a consumer. If you expect to win their hard-earned money—and more importantly, their time, attention, and future sales loyalty—then you need to create a worthy product.

What about the money?

Some authors are focused on the income they can earn from self e-publishing. I choose to use these books as promotional devices, a way to keep my name out there in between traditionally published books. But that still meant finding the optimal price points.

I did my own experiment, setting various price points for my four novels. The first, NERVES OF STEEL, is a romantic suspense that includes a cover quote from Sandra Brown as well as endorsements from a dozen NYT bestsellers, so I set it at the highest, $3.99.

The next two books, CHASING SHADOWS and LOST IN SHADOWS, were romantic thrillers, the first two of a series, and were a bit shorter in length than my other two novels, only around 80,000 words. I priced them at $2.99.

The last novel, BORROWED TIME, was the oldest manuscript of the group, and I priced it at $1.99.

My results? In the first week, with no advertising or promotion, the most expensive, NERVES OF STEEL, sold 42 copies on Amazon and 4 on Smashwords.

CHASING SHADOWS sold 85 copies on Amazon and 10 on Smashwords. The second book in the Shadows Op series, LOST IN SHADOWS, sold 49 copies on Amazon and 9 on Smashwords.

And the least expensive of the four, BORROWED TIME, sold 37 copies on Amazon and 4 on Smashwords.

After that first week, when I began to advertise my program to raise money for Doctors Without Borders, my sales increased dramatically to an average of about 50-55 sales a day on Amazon alone.

Bottom Line

It's not a huge amount of money, but I'm on track to make more in a year than I would if I took any of the offers from NYC publishers that I'd received for these particular manuscripts. All with no expenses incurred other than my time and a few dollars for the copyright, ISBNs, and the stock art I used in the cover design.

I now have seven e-books and am experimenting with new ways to use them as promotional tools. Since I'm also traditionally published, I like to use my e-books as reader appreciation gifts. I've incorporated one novel as a free giveaway to anyone who "likes" my Facebook fan page at http://www.facebook.com/CJLyonsBestsellingThrillerAuthor.

Amazon and Barnes and Noble don't allow self e-pubbed books to be given away for free (at least if they do, I haven't figured out how), so I also plan to have special "sales" pricing a title at $0.99 for a limited time.

As with all of my e-book efforts, I won't do any promotion except letting my newsletter readers and perhaps a tweet or post to Facebook or a group. So far, that's working.

Self e-publishing has its place in an author's career path, whether to keep a backlist alive, to try new genres and markets, to use as a promotional tool in conjunction with traditionally published books, or to generate a little income on the side.

Thanks for reading!

As a pediatric ER doctor, CJ Lyons has lived the life she writes about. In addition to being an award-winning medical suspense author, CJ is a nationally known presenter and keynote speaker. Her first novel, LIFELINES (Berkley, March 2008), received praise as a "breathtakingly fast-paced medical thriller" from Publishers Weekly, was reviewed favorably by the Baltimore Sun and Newsday, named a Top Pick by Romantic Times Book Review Magazine, and became a National Bestseller. Her award-winning, critically acclaimed Angels of Mercy series (LIFELINES, WARNING SIGNS, URGENT CARE and CRITICAL CONDITION) is available now. Her newest project is as co-author of a new suspense series with Erin Brockovich. To learn more about CJ and her work, go to www.cjlyons.net.

Guest Post: A Sale is a Sale—Hard Copy or E-Book

by June Ahern

Both my self-published books are now also e-books. I like having this option to sell my self-published books. Selling and marketing books has greatly improved since I self-published a how-to booklet, in 1990. Through the use of the web and e-books I’ve sold more of my second book, a novel published in 2008, than the first did in five years.

Not being particularly technical or overly ambitious (a trait needed to sell a lot of books), I wasn’t sure at first if I could figure out how to sell e-books on Amazon. But since I was already selling hard copies of my novel there, I gave it a shot.

I began the process by registering at dtp.amazon.com and following the easy enough instructions. I researched the middle-priced novels and picked an amount, then uploaded my novel’s PDF (sent to me by the publisher). My only concern was what authors were saying on the site about royalties not being paid. I vowed to keep an eye on my account and am glad I did.

After seeing some sales had taken place and receiving no payment, I revisited the site and found the error was mine. I hadn’t put the correct information about where the royalty payment was to be made. Both the uploading and royalty problems have improved since I first started.

I sent an email announcement that my novel was now available as an e-book. My first Kindle sale was from a woman who had bought several copies of my hard copy novel as gifts. She now wanted the first book on her newly acquired Kindle to be mine. She was the first but not the last.

As Kindle sales of my novel increased, I decided to also sell my first book, which had to be retyped because the old floppies had gone asunder and I had no copies left. That proved a bit more challenging format-wise. At first I tried .doc and .docx, but neither translated well (although Amazon is improving what formats can be uploaded). Jimmy jacking a .pdf, I finally let it go as that. The information is there, but I don’t like the way it turned out. I haven’t received any complaints to date, though.

I’m told that for traveling purposes, e-books on Kindle (or other electronic devices) are the best way to go. Even at a few book reading events guests have proudly displayed their Kindles, happy to show off the book on screen. My Facebook page has secured even more Kindle sales (in addition to the hard copies.)

I’m happy my books sell—no matter how many or by which outlet—whether my own stock, through Indie bookstores, Amazon, hard copy or Kindle. After all, who am I to judge how people enjoy reading? Personally, though, I still like the book in hand.

June Ahern is the author of The Skye in June and The Timeless Counselor-A Professional Psychic Reading. You can find her at www.juneahern.com.

Guest Post: Print is Killing Publishing

by Joseph L. Selby

Whether you love the smell of paper books or not, digital distribution will be the primary means of accessing text-based media within your lifetime (unless you die in the next couple years; if so, my condolences). Three years ago I was in a meeting of department heads and vice presidents and all the people that make decisions on things. We were discussing the company's ebook strategy. Three years ago, Flashpaper was relatively new and xml-ebooks were in their first iteration. We were on the precipice of massive change, not that such changes were noticeable in the market.

We're now over the precipice, in case you're wondering. We're falling. Argue all you want that you prefer paper. We'll hit the bottom soon enough and paper will become the minority distribution method for published media.

Flashpaper seems like old hat now. XML is realized (not fully, as we continue to experiment with enhanced ebooks). HTML5 and CSS3 are the vanguard of the mobile revolution, where computers play second hat to smart phones and tablets. The entire publishing paradigm is shifting and those companies that deal with text-based media are trying to figure out how to handle such a rapidly changing market.

At this meeting of mine, standing at the precipice, we discussed the marketplace, the challenges of digital sales, and most importantly, the challenge of pricing. I asked what I thought was a simple enough question: Why don't we just sell content directly to the consumer?

Now at the time, ebooks represented less than 1% of total sales. MUCH less. The industry moneymaker at the time (and currently, though not for much longer) was paper books. Paper books sold in stores and online at Amazon. A book's marketing budget was much smaller than what was needed to force any one particular title to the forefront of the consumer consciousness. So much of the business depended on customers finding the books while looking for other items. (You know the "people who browsed this item also looked at X, Y, Z" suggestions on Amazon? Those are a big deal.)

The answer was as simple as the question: We can't sell directly to customers because it will upset the market. Cutting out the middleman would rock the boat for the much larger revenue generator.

In truth, the answer isn't so simple. The excuse was simple. There are too many challenges to selling directly that publishing isn't willing to tackle. How do you set up a marketplace? Which department owns it and maintains it? Will this require new staff and the costs that go along with them? How does a marketplace work? (I cannot express to you the number of meetings I had to have with directors and VPs explaining what meta-text and catalog searching is.) How do you handle international sales? How do you draw users to your market without the goods of other publishers that are offered in the collective of a place like Amazon? How do you establish industry market standards without provoking (more) anti-trust accusations? How do you sell books?

Did you catch that last one? How do you sell books? Publishers are really good at selling books to the market. Publishers are not very good at selling books to the consumer. The industry grew up in cooperation with the marketplace, not in opposition to it. Publishers do not have the staff, the institutional knowledge, or the will to bring anything but a marginal effort to bear when it comes to direct selling.

How does that affect you and me? You get the agency model of ebook selling. Ebooks cost as much as their hard-back brethren because the cost still accommodates the middle man. Rather than a 50/50 split between author and publisher, the whole thing is muddled by including a third party to act as a literary fence.

With the inclusion of self-publishing arms like CreateSpace and fourth-party catalogs like Smashwords, marketplace e-bookshelves are less accommodating than ever for browsing. There aren't enough ways to hone searches aside from direct keyword searches. If you want to see fantasy, you get sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. And a LOT of it. And a lot of that, self-published. Sure Tor might not represent 100% of the fantasy market, but when you trace so many of the imprints up to their parent corporations, you'd be surprised how many of them are owned by the same people (Penguin owns at least four different fantasy imprints. Macmillan at least three, and so on). Bundle all these titles into a top-notch database driven search engine, slap a nice marketplace on the front of it, and all of a sudden you don't need to charge $17.50 for an ebook. You can charge $10 and make more money than you ever did before.

With the rapidly changing distribution paradigm, the obligations of playing nice with the market because of print will soon be meaningless. The problem is, by the time that happens, the publishing industry will have given up any opportunity it had to establish itself as a market option for readers of its work, will have allowed Amazon to muscle its way to control the industry despite spats with Macmillan (which I still contend Amazon won despite [or because of] the application of the agency model to ebook pricing [something that will bite publishers in the ass]).

The game is being played while we fall. When we hit the bottom, the game ends, the new era of publishing begins. The question is, who will get up and walk away? If things remain as they are now, Amazon WILL be the victor. If decisive action is not taken, publishers, authors, and customers alike will lie broken and bloodied at the foot of the Cliffs of E-sanity.

But do not despair. Others have seen the chess match being played and have begun to work toward an endgame. Do you remember that huff on Black Friday/Cyber Monday when a major publisher offered 50% off direct online purchases? It undercut any sales independents might have made on the same day. While the uproar was in defense of the independents, this sale was a critical step in the outcome of the ePocalypse. Publishers need to not only attempt but succeed at selling their product directly to consumers. While there are plenty of horror scenarios of publishers maintaining their own marketplace (same pricing, same piddly author e-royalties, and no middle man?), the risk is necessary for the fruitful transition of the industry from paper to electrons. It is necessary for publishers to treat authors fairly by offering a reasonable royalty rate. It is necessary for publishers to treat customers fairly by not charging $17 for an ebook or by attempting to explain why an ebook is worth $17 when they already lost that battle (twice in fact, but that's a separate blog post). It is necessary for publishers to maintain themselves in a world of reduced revenue and growing publishing alternatives.

Joseph L. Selby is a fantasist seeking representation. From 9:30 to 5:00 he works as a media project manager for one of the big 6's education division (translation: he makes the ebooks). He blogs at http://jlselby.blogspot.com.

Guest Post: The Joys of a Threesome

by Beck McDowell

For many years, I’ve been in a monogamous relationship—with paper. Paper books have satisfied my urges, helped me escape, taught me to love. There’ve been too many meaningful encounters to list—from one night stands to ongoing commitments that lasted for weeks. I love the smell of paper books, the heft of their spines, the feel of tender pages against my fingertips. Many are with me still—flashing their graphics from my bookshelves, reminding me of special nights spent together.

But I’m expanding my definition of a relationship. Don’t judge me; it’s a very personal choice that each of us must make. I’m going public today with the news: I’ve found happiness in a threesome. It’s a highly satisfying, infinitely entertaining, rewarding and stimulating arrangement that enriches my life immensely. That’s right. From now on, it’ll be e-books, tree books, and me.

Some of you will say I’m unfaithful. I’ll be accused of cheating on the very tomes that introduced me to my lifetime love of literature. But I have passion enough to go around. My eyes have been opened to a new world, and I’m embracing a new chapter in my life.

My first love moved me in ways I can’t describe, but please understand that e-books take me places I’ve never been before. They fly with me to faraway cities, they lie with me beside sparkling pools; they love to travel in a way that paper books never could. They come to me at any hour of the day or night. They calm me in long lines of traffic or grocery shopping. They rescue me from boring doctor’s office magazines and meager dental offerings of Highlights for Children. And in bed at night, they whisper to me in the dark, leading me to dramatic climaxes and happy endings.

My e-books invite me to taste freely of new adventures, sampling 50-page portions of journeys I might wish to take with them. They let me choose which memories I’ll want in hardback to keep and savor, and which I’ll file away on a cloud full of memories of pleasant but ultimately unfulfilling forays.

E-books welcome non-traditional relationships. They’re eager to link with videos, websites, and photos in a way that some might call promiscuous. It’s true they can’t compete with the velvet touch of a leather-bound classic when I want to curl up in a soft chair by the fire, but they do have their own special glow and, I have to tell you, it speaks to me. I’ll never leave my first love. I can’t be happy unless I’m surrounded by books I can fondle and caress, but readers who close their minds to the possibilities of a new love are missing a life-changing opportunity. My paper books, e-books and I enjoy a beautiful threesome that I recommend to book lovers everywhere. Find a cozy Nook at your iPad to Kindle a new relationship. You’ll be glad you did.

Beck McDowell demonstrates her dual devotion by publishing LAST BUS OUT in enhanced digital form AND paper. She blogs (from Huntsville, Alabama) at BeckMcDowell.com, and tweets at @BeckMcDowell.

Guest Post: So You Want to Write a Novel

by David Kazzie



David Kazzie lives in Virginia with his wife and two kids, and by day, he works as a lawyer for the state. In addition to working on fiction, he writes a weekly humor blog (http://wahoocorner.blogspot.com). He's also the author of the "So You Want to Go to Law School" video, which has received more than 1 million hits on YouTube.