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Novelist Ann Patchett discusses on The Colbert Report the importance of brick-and-mortar bookstores and explains what prompted her to open Parnassus Books (@ParnassusBooks1) in Nashville.
In Fast Company (@FastCompany), NYU journalism professor Adam L. Penenberg (@penenberg) interviews self-published author Charles Orlando, who’s written two volumes of The Problem With Women… Is Men. Orlando has sold upwards of 15,000 copies of his work as a Kindle, iPad, and iPhone ebook, as well as a traditional paperback, generating around $130,000 since its release in November 2008.
Which self-publishing service did you choose?
BookSurge Publishing (now CreateSpace, @CreateSpace). BookSurge was partnered with Amazon.com, and once I was published, my book was automatically included on Amazon.com (this was 2007/2008, before there was a real ebook publishing effort). It was print-on-demand with really good quality, so I didn't need to hold an inventory and I didn't need to be part of the backend stuff: shipping, fulfillment, returns, chargebacks, etc. Plus, I would get all the benefit of being grouped with best-selling authors, receive reviews, and more. They had multiple levels of service – editing, marketing, public relations, custom covers, and much more – but I elected to go with a flexible offering (allowing me a custom interior, custom cover, and no more than 10 interior illustrations).
What did all this cost?
Editor: $500 (flat fee)
BookSurge publishing package: $900 (now priced lower)
Cover design and all artwork: $750
25 copies (for review): Free.
Total: $2,150
He goes on to explain how he marketed his book.
I started a blog: three posts a week. Simultaneously, I spun up my Facebook and Twitter (@charlesjorlando) efforts and started publishing my blog posts to my Facebook Page. But I could see that readers had to leave Facebook or Twitter to interact with what I had written. As a test, I just wrote on Facebook, using the Notes application on my Page. And... voila... increased engagement and interactivity; more comments, more sharing on individuals' Walls. I took down my blog at the end of 2009 and in an effort to meet my audience where they "lived" I transitioned all my efforts to Facebook (and some on Twitter). My Facebook Fan Page was now a few hundred strong.
Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you with your publishing, marketing, and branding needs.
Be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially take advantage of the list of self-publishers in the Publishers tab.
Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) senior news editor Calvin Reid (@calreid) says, “Despite the constant economic pressures on a book publishing industry in the midst of change, the Digital Book World conference (#dbw12) [that ended yesterday in New York City] offered a snap shot of a range of industry positions and best practices as it comes to grips with digital delivery.... the book industry is indeed reinventing itself on a daily basis.”
There are more electronic reading devices, some 60 million e-readers and tablets, in the hands of consumer and there are more ways to buy books, read them, and talk about them, than ever before. “Books today are elastic and dynamic,” said Hyperion president Ellen Archer.
Reid also reports
The transition to digitization continues in book publishing, an industry that is both susceptible to digital disruption, but also positioned to benefit tremendously from it, according to Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey (@jmcquivey) who kicked off this year's Digital Book World conference. That said, a survey conducted by Forrester in collaboration with Digital Book World found that while 82% of publishers were optimistic about digital, the number was down from 89% last year. Indeed only 28% of those thought their own company would be stronger in the future, down from 51% last year.
The decline has a lot to do with a realization of hard work ahead for publishers to adapt to the new digital environment, according to McQuivey.
Other stats:
· 25 million people in the US own an e-reader
· 34 million people own tablets
· 8 million homes have at least 2 tablets.
· 75% of publishers have an executive level person responsible for digital
· 63% of publishers report that digital skills are formally integrated into all departments
· 69% of publishers expect to increase digital staffiing in 2012
· 22% expect overall company staffing to go down in 2012.
· 75% of the publishers surveyed produce apps, but 51% said they cost too much to produce; only 19% believe apps will change the future of books and 15% say apps represent significant revenue for them.
PW’s news editor Gabe Habash (@gabehabash) writes
Perhaps the most eye-opening facet of a study on the children's ebook market discussed at a Digital Book World panel was how great the potential for ebook reading in children really is:
· 27% of 7-12-year-olds own their own computer
· 25% own a cell phone
· 7% own a reading device.
· teens have tripled their reading rate of ebooks in the last year.
Ron Hogan (@RonHogan) reports that Shelf Awareness’ (@ShelfAwareness) editor-in-chief John Mutter (@JohnMutter) moderated a panel on “The Bookstore Renaissance” where it was stressed that bookstores must stay relevant. Roxanne Coady of R.J. Julia Booksellers (Madison, Conn.) (@rjjulia) talked about the recently launched JustTheRightBook.com (@JTRBook), which offers subscribers a monthly book selection based on a personal review of their reading tastes — “the opposite of the wisdom of crowds,” she quipped.
Coady elaborated on how the site’s “human algorithm” drew on one of their biggest strengths as booksellers: “We know how to put the right book in the right hands,” she said, “and we are early discoverers.” She noted that 67% of the visitors to the site who took their quiz wound up buying or borrowing one of the recommended titles (though not always from R.J. Julia).
Also see DBW conference coverage by paidContent (@paidContent), especially its article about e-singles (and its “guide to e-singles”).
Read Porter Anderson’s (@Porter_Anderson) conference wrap-up on the Jane Friedman site (@JaneFriedman).
See GalleyCat's (@galleycat) coverage.
See DBW’s (@DigiBookWorld) own coverage of the show at “Video: Seen and Heard at Digital Book World.”
And see conference photos.
Stay current with news about the publishing world by bookmarking Somersault’s (@smrsault) SomersaultNOW online dashboard.
Making ebooks just became easier (at least ebooks only for the iPad). That’s the outcome from today’s announcement at the Apple event in New York City (see the QuickTime video of it). Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) says
Apple's event was first rumored to be a self-publishing venture then called an "education" venture. It turned out to be both. Apple is launching iBooks 2, a new multimedia textbook platform and iBooks Author, a shockingly easy authoring tool to create them – indeed to create any kind of book – and publish them instantly to the iBookstore. Both the new iBooks 2 app and iBooks Author app are free and available today.
On top of all that, iBooks 2 textbooks will be priced at $14.99 or less. The new iBooks 2 app will provide the usual access to the iBookstore but will also feature a new category: textbooks….They feature beautiful layouts, endless multimedia (audio, video, animation, animated 3D models, interactive quizzes, the list goes on). And iBooks Author makes it really easy--any author can follow the template or make up a new one and drag-and-drop prepared materials like text and video right into the new book. Once complete, a push of the button places it in the iBookstore in a digital marketplace holding hundreds of millions of credit card numbers....
In addition, Apple is relaunching iTunes University with a new free app. Originally focused on offering videos of university lectures, the new iTunes U app will make it possible for professors to offer full online courses, complete with assignments, notes and communications with the students, all situated on iTunes U and all for free. Several universities, including Duke and Yale, have already started posting courses.
The Washington Post covered the event live, quoting Apple’s iWork vice president, Roger Rosner, “In like 5 minutes flat, we created an ebook and deployed it to the iPad. I hope you find that as inspiring and empowering as I do.”
Lindsey Turrentine (@lturrentine), editor-in-chief of CNET Reviews, offers her commentary in “Apple iBooks in schools: Devil is in the hardware.” She says the high cost of outfitting classrooms with an iPad for each child and the blunt-force trauma students would inflict on the tablets, coupled with rapid advancements in technology leaving the school’s investment soon outdated, make her skeptical that today’s announcement is actually practical.
Jeremy Greenfield (@JDGsaid), editorial director, Digital Book World (@digibookworld), says of today’s event:
In a stunning display of ebook creation acrobatics, Apple executives dragged images and video into an e-book page and text wrapped seamlessly around it.
The company also demonstrated completed textbooks, showing off interactive features, including: Images that come alive with explanations when tapped; fluid layouts that shift smoothly from portrait to landscape view; and index and glossary functions that are integrated directly into each page.
As for the ease of creating ebooks, CNET’s (@CNET & @CNETNews) technology columnist Don Reisinger (@donreisinger) explains it in “Apple’s new iBooks Author targets ebook creators.” Also see "Apple revamps iTunes U, makes it class portal."
Other articles to read are "6 things we don't know about Apple's e-textbooks strategy" by CNET's David Carnoy (@DavidCarnoy) and Scott Stein (@jetscott), and "This is Apple At Its Absolute Worst: It Thinks It Owns Any Book You Make Through iBooks Author" by Business Insider's (@sai) Steve Kovach (@stevekovach).
What do you expect today’s announcement will mean for your publishing plans? Write your comments below.
Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you with your textbook and reference publishing. Veterans with more than 100 combined years of experience in the field, we eagerly embrace current technology and the revolutionary changes it’s making in the publishing world.
Be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially see the list of self-publishers in the Publishers tab.
This article in GigaOM (@gigaom) by Trey Ratcliff (@TreyRatcliff), founder of FlatBooks and the travel photography blog Stuck In Customs (@StuckInCustoms), says, “The ebook business will grow faster than people think. Innovations from Amazon and Apple have increased the velocity at which we consume ebooks, but there are two emergent behaviors that will increase the rate of overall consumption.”
Emergent behavior 1: Ebooks are not 1-for-1 with the traditional book business.
Most ebook projections are wrong. They anticipate for every $1 billion lost in the traditional book business that $1 billion will be gained in the ebook business. This ratio is actually closer to 1-to-2 because people are collecting ebooks like nuts for the winter. They are easy to buy and download, much like music. And, frankly, it’s fun to fill up your iPad with a colorful, robust set of thumbnails in your library. I don’t know why this is a good feeling, but it is.
Emergent behavior 2: Social media is a marketing multiplier.
The best way to successfully market something is to have true believers with big followings talk about it on the Internet. Since we have many authors who are socially popular, a multiplier effect begins to take place....The spread of good books has always been a word-of-mouth phenomenon. Now, with social media, ebooks are word-of-mouth-on-steroids.
As ebooks grow, a concurrent problem will need to be addressed. Read paidContent's (@paidContent) "Why Amazon's Plagiarism Problem Is More Than A Public Relations Issue," by Jeff Roberts (@jeffjohnroberts) and Laura Hazard Owen (@laurahazardowen).
Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you identify blue ocean strategy for your ebook publishing agenda.
And be sure to bookmark and use daily SomersaultNOW, the online dashboard especially for marketing and publishing executives.
In New York magazine (@NYMag), Boris Kachka (@Borisk) writes that ebooks are more than a publishing platform — they’re a whole new literary form.
The great hidden virtue of ebooks — hidden beneath the chatter about their effect on the bottom line — is that they allow stories to be exactly as long as we want them to be. It turns out that many of them work best between 10,000 and 35,000 words long — the makings of a whole new nonfiction genre occupying the virgin territory between articles and hardcovers....
From one angle, the short book might look like another manifestation of the shrinking American attention span. From another, it speaks to our longing for a lot more depth than shrinking periodicals can handle.
Also see our previous post, "In the Year of the Ebook, 5 Lessons From - and For - News Organizations."
Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you plan your ebook strategy.
Seth Godin (@ThisIsSethsBlog) is bringing to an end The Domino Project (@ProjectDomino), his publishing venture with Amazon. Twelve books in 12 months. Godin gives a history, calls it a success, and says it’s over “because it was a project, not a lifelong commitment to being a publisher of books.”
The goal was to explore what could be done in a fast-changing environment. Rather than whining about the loss of the status quo, I thought it would be interesting to help invent a new status quo and learn some things along the way. Here are a few of my takeaways:
Permission is still the most important and valuable asset of the Web (and of publishing). The core group of 50,000 subscribers to the Domino blog made all the difference in getting the word out and turning each of our books into a bestseller. It still amazes me how few online merchants and traditional publishers (and even authors) have done the hard work necessary to create this asset. If you're an author in search of success and you don't pursue this with singleminded passion, you're making a serious error.
Godin says, “permission” doesn’t mean “might be interested;” it means that “if you didn’t show up, they would want to know where you were.”
In its article “Is Seth Godin Right About Book Publishing?,” Digital Book World (@DigiBookWorld) says
The book business, for its part, is listening to Godin. The many industry experts we spoke with today read what Godin has written and followed The Domino Project closely in its short life. They praised him for his insights and agreed with many of his ideas – or, at least the general gist. In addition to building their own “tribes” and gathering “permission,” the book business still has other ways of selling books.
Another DBW article, “Hachette Document Explains Why Publishers Are Relevant,” reports on Hachette Book Group’s (@HachetteBooks) (multiple Twitter streams) response to Godin in a document it circulated to its employees, which begins:
“Self-publishing” is a misnomer.
Publishing requires a complex series of engagements, both behind the scenes and public facing. Digital distribution (which is what most people mean when they say self-publishing) is just one of the components of bringing a book to market and helping the public take notice of it.
It goes on to say publishers are important because they offer an array of services to authors: Curator, Venture Capitalist, Sales and Distribution Specialist, and Brand Builder and Copyright Watchdog.
You may also be interested in reading how Thad McIlroy (@ThadMcIlroy), of The Future of Publishing, reacts to Godin’s announcement in terms of allowing libraries to lend ebooks.
Stay up-to-date in the world of publishing news by bookmarking and using daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard of more than 300 links and RSS feeds specifically for publishing and marketing professionals.
iPad storyteller Joe Sabia (@joesabia) introduces his TED (@tedtalks) audience to Lothar Meggendorfer (Lothar Meggendorfer at University of North Texas Libraries), who created a bold technology for storytelling: the pop-up book. Sabia shows how new technology has always helped tell stories.
Also see our previous blogpost, “Infographic: The Periodic Table of Storytelling.”
Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you tell your story and promote your brand.
This article for independent ebook authors on The Savvy Book Marketer (@bookmarketer) by Mark Coker (@markcoker), founder of ebook distributor Smashwords, says “it’s important to consider price as only one of several factors that influence a reader’s purchase decision. We have many free ebooks that earn few downloads, and many priced books that get more paid downloads than some of the freebies. In the end, if a book doesn’t honor the reader with a great read, you can’t pay a reader to read it.” Coker says the pricing decision should be made within the context of these other important factors:
A separate article on The Shatzkin Files is for established publishers. “The ebook value chain is still sorting itself out, and so are the splits” by Mike Shatzkin (@MikeShatzkin) examines how publishing pricing strategy and author royalties are dramatically changing in light of the digital revolution.
Right now for ebooks we have two “standards” for the publisher-retailer division of revenue. For agency publishers across all retailers and for all publishers selling to (or perhaps we should, with respect for the agency logic, say “through”) Apple, the retailer share is 30% of the purchasing customer’s payment for the ebook, or the publisher’s “digital retail price.” For non-agency publishers selling to everybody else but Apple, the normal offer is 50% off the publishers “suggested retail price”....
What if one retailer (B&N? Kobo? Google?) were to offer publishers a deal where a discounted version of an ebook were offered through them on a temporary exclusive — say, the first 60 days the ebook was out — during which they would help subsidize the discount by taking a smaller percentage themselves during the promotion. Would publishers find it tempting to accept such an arrangement to poke a hole in the 30% standard?....
Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you establish your ebook publishing and pricing strategy. And use the SomersaultNOW online dashboard to stay current with publishing news.
Do you have Writer’s Block? Consult this Infographic to break through. ☺
Click for a larger version.
By the way, today is the National Day of Listening (@StoryCorps).