Google eBooks: Today, History Is Made

 Posted by at 4:41 pm  No Responses »
Dec 062010
 

You’ll be able to tell your children’s children that you remember the day Google launched Google eBooks and changed the landscape of publishing.

Well, there may be a little hyperbole in that sentence, but today Google put more than 3 million e-books in reach of anyone in the U.S. Soon, I’m sure, availability within the rest of the world will follow.

Besides Google’s huge reach, Google e-books will be popular because:

  • Nearly every e-reader (not Kindle—yet), iPad-like tablet, and smart phone will work with Google e-Books. As will laptops and PCs
  • Books are stored online, so there is no limit, storage-wise, to the number you can have in your library.
  • Current best-sellers are available.
  • So are hundreds of thousands of other books including the classics.
  • Self-published books will be available.
  • Many out-of-copyright titles are free.
  • Since the book normally remains in the cloud, when you switch devices, say from your laptop to your iPhone, you can just continue reading at the place you left off.
  • You can download an e-pub or PDF version to read offline.
  • You can buy books directly from Google or from one of a number of independent booksellers.

Here’s a video of how it works.

Two reasons e-books are important to authors and publishers:

One of the biggest challenges every publisher has is distribution. Soon an author’s work can easily be made available from Jersey to Jakarta.

Instant gratification will drive sales. Say you are on the beach in Bali and the fellow on the blanket next to you tells you of a terrific thriller he’s reading. Within minutes, if that long, you can be reading your own copy.

There are a lot of good things about the digital delivery of books, but some rough spots remain to be worked out. Not the least of which has to do with how the sale price of an e-book will be split between the retailer (Google in this case), the publisher, and the author. This will, of course, be worked out to the satisfaction of all since, like water, economics finds its own level.

Just a write thought.

Four Reasons Writers & Publishers Should Be Thankful

 Posted by at 1:51 pm  1 Response »
Nov 242010
 

As unemployment in the United States hovers near nine percent this Thanksgiving, people who write or who publish have at least four things to be thankful for.

One: A writer or publisher can never be replaced by a computer anymore than a barber can.

Two: Some writers (and their publishers, obviously) are raking in the dough, perhaps you can join them.

For instance, Forbes magazine somehow gathered a list of the 10 best-compensated authors in the world for the one year period June 1, 2009 to May 31, 2010:

  1.  James Patterson ($70 million)
  2.  Stephenie Meyer ($40 million)
  3.  Stephen King ($34 million)
  4.  Danielle Steel ($32 million)
  5.  Ken Follett ($20 million)
  6.  Dean Koontz ($18 million)
  7.  Janet Evanovich ($16 million)
  8.  John Grisham ($15 million)
  9.  Nicolas Sparks ($14 million)
  10. J.K. Rowling ($10 million)

It is interesting that all in this top 10 are fiction writers. Nonfiction writing is easier to make a living on, but I guess if you are planning on getting on the Forbes Top Ten list, you’d better write fiction.

Three: Writing well is job security.

Even if you too aren’t on this list, but still have a day job and can write to boot, you have lots to celebrate. In the office of every business I’ve been in, from the wholesaling of wine to the publishing of books, there have been those few who are sought out by coworkers for help writing something, be it an important e-mail or an employee manual. Good writers are generally clearer thinkers and better communicators. People with these skills are, or at least should be, the last to be laid off.

Four: Content is king.

As the huge multi-national corporations battle it out over what e-reader the masses will use when reading and how that which they do read will be delivered, the demand for written material is certain to wax not wane. Printed books may be in less demand in the future, maybe even long-form prose will be, but people will not stop reading and someone has to supply the content. That is where writers and publishers come in.

An aside: Never say die.

According to a Christian Science Monitor item, Google has counted the books in the world. There are 129,864,880. When I read this, I felt the same profound insignificance I feel when I look up at the stars on clear summer nights. Then it dawned on me, while I’ll never create a star, I can write a book. Ego restored, I sat down to work on my novel.

Just a write thought

The Next Big Thing to Shake Up the Publishing Industry?

 Posted by at 10:49 am  No Responses »
Sep 232010
 

While-you-wait book printing will soon be available in stores of all kinds.

At least one huge tech company has plans to launch a machine that will print and bind paperback books in just a few minutes. (As an Independent Book Publishers Association board member, I was in on a pre-announcement phone conference with two of the people from the company who are working on this a week or two ago and they asked that our conversation be off the record. Still, it can’t be too great a secret; they are already testing a couple of the machines in university bookstores.)

The book you choose will be downloaded from an Internet-based digital file repository then printed and bound while you finish your shopping—much like having your film developed while you shop. If you want, you can take in your own PDF of a book you wrote and have that printed and bound. Great for family histories and the like.

Look for these machines to be found in bookstores, drugstores, discount chains, warehouse chains, and large supermarkets.

A smaller company, OnDemand Books, has been developing this model for some time now. Maybe it’s time for a buyout?

Just a write thought.

Electric Literature’s Model May Save Short Fiction

 Posted by at 1:59 pm  No Responses »
Aug 082010
 

As a publishing choice, short stories vie with poetry as the quickest way to drain a publisher’s bank account.

Yet, a year-old publisher of short stories, Electric Literature, may have found the magic formula.

The company’s mission “is to use new media and innovative distribution to return the short story to a place of prominence in popular culture.”

Stitched together by two writers, Andy Hunter and Scott Lindenbaum, Electric Literature is essentially a quarterly literary magazine. Each issue has five short stories by known and unknown authors.

Authors benefit too.

According to Electric Literature’s website each Electric Literature author is decently paid. This is unlike most literary magazines—some pay in copies only. Better pay should guarantee a healthier slush pile, and, theoretically, a better magazine with a larger readership.

Not unnoticed.

The pair has garnered attention from heavy hitters in the print world including The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post which called Electric Literature, “A refreshingly bold act of optimism.”

Timing is everything.

The quickening of our daily lives and the proliferation of mobile devices have seemingly combined to produce a ready crop of readers for Electric Literature. As Hunter and Lindenbaum point out, the short story is especially well suited to our increasingly hectic lifestyles: “A quick, satisfying read can be welcome anywhere, and while you might forget a book, you’ll always have your phone.”

 Here’s their blueprint:

 To publish the paperback version of Electric Literature, we use print-on-demand; the eBook, Kindle, iPhone, and audio versions are digital. This eliminates our up-front printing bill. Rather than paying $5,000 to one printer, we pay $1,000 to five writers, ensuring that our writers are paid fairly. Our anthology is available anywhere in the world, overruns aren’t pulped, and our back issues are perpetually in print.

 Electric Literature may be leading the pack among literary magazines, but it isn’t the only, or even the first, publisher to use the POD/digital formula exclusively—today publishers of every ilk do, and it’s a model I’m sure we’ll see more of.

Just a write thought.

NPR Poll Helps Fiction Authors and Publishers

 Posted by at 11:03 am  No Responses »
Aug 052010
 

Thank goodness market research for writers and publishers includes keeping up on one’s reading. When family members see us sprawled on the couch, book in hand, we can claim, oops, I mean explain, we are working.

And, in this endeavor, NPR is here to help.

NPR conducted a poll titled “Killer Thrillers” to help you decide what next to read.

Six-hundred nominations were collected. Seventeen-thousand ballots cast.

In the end, there were few surprises. Most of the authors’ names in the list of the top 100 are familiar: Stephen King, Truman Capote, James Patterson, Dan Brown, John Grisham, as are the titles of the books, even when the author’s name may be difficult to recall: Rosemary’s Baby and Fail-Safe for instance.

Below are the top 20. To see the whole list click here.

  •  1. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
  • 2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
  • 3. Kiss the Girls, by James Patterson
  • 4. The Bourne Identity, by Robert Ludlum
  • 5. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
  • 6. The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown
  • 7. The Shining, by Stephen King
  • 8. And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie
  • 9. The Hunt tor Red October, by Tom Clancy
  • 10. The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  • 11. Dracula, by Bram Stoker
  • 12. The Stand, by Stephen King
  • 13. The Bone Collector, by Jeffery Deaver
  • 14. Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
  • 15. Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown
  • 16. A Time to Kill, by John Grisham
  • 17. The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton
  • 18. Mystic River, by Dennis Lehane
  • 19. The Day of the Jackal, by Frederick Forsyth
  • 20. Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier

 I find polls like this one often reflect what those polled are currently reading—Stieg Larsson has three in the top 100, Lee Child, four—so I was pleased to see books by Agatha Christie, John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, and Ian Fleming in the ranks.

So, your duty is clear, go out and buy a half dozen of these and hit that couch.

 As an aside, Barnes & Noble yesterday said the bookstore chain is on the market. B&N’s stock price has been suffering lately even though, as I understand it, profits haven’t been. One has to wonder, does the management at B & N see a bright future in brick and mortar bookstores in light of the budding popularity of e-readers?

Just a write thought.

Literary Agency as Book Publisher?

 Posted by at 11:03 am  No Responses »
Jul 272010
 

There has been an interesting brouhaha since last Thursday when the Wylie Agency announced plans to launch a digital book publishing venture called Odyssey Editions.

Wylie is no slouch of an agency.

Odyssey Editions plans to publish e-book editions of some of Wylie’s author’s backlist titles that have yet to be published as e-books. These include books by literary heavy-hitters Salman Rushdie, John Updike, Philip Roth, and Norman Mailer. Wylie is said to represent more than 700 authors and author’s heirs.

Agency founder Andrew Wylie, is apparently frustrated by two things:

1.) The stance Random House and other publishers have taken that e-book and other digital rights are included in older contracts signed before digital rights existed and thus were not explicitly listed in a contract. (Most contracts spell out exactly what rights the author is licensing to the publisher, such as hardcover, trade paperback, mass market, or foreign language, and retain any rights not mentioned for the author.)

2.) What Wylie sees as e-book royalty rates that are too low to be fair to authors.

Is this ok?

Beyond the contract and the royalty rate issues, there is a lot to question about an agency becoming a publisher.

First and foremost is the appearance of a conflict of interest, if not an actual conflict. How will the agency-publisher-author split be figured?

Will there be advances paid? Is the agency prepared to do all the things a publisher does? Will the e-book be an exact duplicate of the printed book if the final editing is done by the print book publisher?

How likely is the printed book publisher to aggressively promote and market the printed versions knowing some of the cream of its endeavors, in the form of e-book sales, will be skimmed off the top?

Wait, it gets weirder.

Wylie further confused the issue by saying he planned to give Amazon.com exclusive rights to Odyssey titles for its Kindle editions for two years.

It is commonly thought that Amazon isn’t paying for this exclusivity since that would likely trigger “favored nation” clauses present in contracts Amazon has with other publishers. So what benefit does the author receive by limiting the titles to one e-book edition? What benefit does Wylie receive?

IMHO

Publishers should remain publishers and literary agencies should remain literary agencies and never the twain should meet.

A word about e-book royalties

It’s my experience that royalty rates on e-books appear to be settling in at about 25 percent of net proceeds. I don’t think this will stand.

Our plan for The Write Thought’s “Classic Wisdom on Writing” e-book series of reissued writing titles, to be launched in 2011, is to pay authors 50 percent of net proceeds.

With pressures from the big authors and their agents, I imagine a figure closer to 50 percent than 25 percent will eventually prevail in most publishing agreements.

Just a write thought.

E-books Already Outselling P-Books?

 Posted by at 8:07 am  No Responses »
Jul 202010
 

Funny how headlines morph as stories move from one newspaper or online media to the next. I usually spend a few minutes each morning reading the Slatest Morning Edition, a daily e-mail that offers a headline and the first few sentences of a dozen top news stories of the day from Slate, a Washington Post company.

Often I only read the headline, a perilous habit. Today, a headline announces “E-book Sales Outnumber Traditional Hardcover Sales.” From this one could mistakenly assume that e-books were outselling printed books everywhere. Particularly if one misinterpreted the word “hardcover” to mean “printed.”

The story is a rehash of a New York Times article with the headline, “E-Books Top Hardcovers at Amazon.”

In the New York Times article, we learn that Kindle (Amazon.com’s e-reader) editions have outstripped Amazon’s sales of hardcover editions of books—this doesn’t include paperbacks which, it is safe to say, outsell hardcover books by a huge margin. A milestone to be sure, but not the same as is perhaps suggested in the Slatest headline.

Other interesting tidbits gleaned from the NYT article:

• Over the last three months 143 Kindle editions were sold for every 100 hardcover editions sold by Amazon.

• The pace is accelerating with Kindle editions, in the last four weeks, selling 180 copies for every 100 hardcovers sold.

• Acute industry observer Mike Shatzkin predicts, “within a decade, fewer than 25 percent of all books sold will be print versions.”

• According to the Association of American Publishers, hardcover sales are up 22 percent this year. (Now that is a surprise and one wonders if it could be correct.)

• E-book sales have grown 400 percent this year through May.

• Sales of Kindle have tripled since Amazon lowered the price to $189 from $259 earlier this year. (The increase may not be completely price-driven. E-readers and tablets like Apple’s iPad have gotten great press lately.)

IMHO e-books are in the process of leveling the book-publishing playing field. Smaller publishers and lesser-known authors will benefit.

 On another note, I’ll be presenting at the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in Bali in October and at the Space Coast Writers Conference in January. And, at the end of this month, the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. Tough duty, but I’m up to it. Be sure to say hello if you’re at any of these.

 Just a write thought.

To Keep Your Writing Ahead of the Curve, Use “Top Searches”

 Posted by at 7:55 am  No Responses »
Jun 282010
 

“If you want to see how a society thinks, look at what it searches for.”

                                     —George Bernard Shaw

Allow me to slightly rewrite Shaw’s wise counsel: “If you want to know what a society is thinking about, look at what it searches for.”

As writers of nonfiction books, magazine articles—even novels—it behooves us to be on top of whatever is about to break into the collective consciousness. In other words, to be able to predict what a majority—or at least a large segment—of us are going to be interested in next week, next month, or next year.

Easier said than done
I don’t know about the rest of you, but it seems to me that, by the time I notice a trend exists, it’s already fading.

So how do you figure out what will be hot and thus what you should be pitching to editors? Check out the “Top Searches” lists supplied for free by the many Internet search engines. Most of them keep the lists updated, and archives of past lists are even available.

Check out more than one list. The searched-for items that appear on each list are undoubtedly what people are interested in at the moment and these subjects may be old news by the time you do your research and write about them, so look for subjects that are just beginning to show up here and there on these lists. Editors love fresh and new.

By the way, George Bernard Shaw is the only person to have been awarded both the Noble Prize for Literature and an Oscar.

 (Full Disclosure: If this post sounds a bit familiar that’s because it’s a slight rewrite of a post I wrote in December 2007 for the old Quill Driver Books’ blog.)

Just a write thought.

Books Can’t Be Free

 Posted by at 8:18 am  No Responses »
May 242010
 

Amazon.com has plans to split their bestseller list into two, one for free titles and one for paid books. This will likely please authors and publishers and add a tenth of a basis point or so to Amazon’s bottom line.

 It also points out that “free” isn’t the price point for delivery of content. Authors, publishers, and retailers need to make money if readers are going to have a robust selection of informational and entertainment material available to us at any price.

 Just a write thought.

Can You Buy Your Way into Being a Published Author?

 Posted by at 10:22 am  3 Responses »
May 132010
 

Yesterday an elderly gentleman was in my office asking what he should do with his fourth book. He’d paid a “publisher” out of Southern California $25,000 to publish his first book and $5,000 to publish his second. The publisher published the third for free. None of them sold any copies to speak of even though the publisher said he sent out a bunch of review copies.

To make matters worse, my visitor had heard that millions of books were sold on the Internet so he paid to be included on a book-selling website that told him he would “earn consistent income from the site selling 4,000 to 5,000 books a month.” He sold 21 copies. He thinks friends bought most of them.

A member of the hope-springs-eternal crowd (as we all are), he was there to ask if he could pay me to publish his book.

If you are an author, and you are paying to get published or for services that guarantee to sell your books, chances are you will have a bad experience. Is this always the case? Almost. What can you do about it? Learn the industry—learn what works and what doesn’t—before you open your checkbook.

Just a write thought.

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