YorkWriters

Came over from Dean Wesley Smith's blog. This...

2011-12-28T10:26:20.082-08:00

Came over from Dean Wesley Smith's blog.

This is spot on! :-)

Right on! I'm glad to see I wasn't the onl...

2011-12-23T05:20:29.777-08:00

Right on! I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one shocked by the ignorance of the press when talking about computer history. The least these "journalists" could have done is flip through a few late-70's/early-80's BYTE Magazines.

WOW, WOW, WOW. Love the article, revolutionary! Pl...

2011-11-05T14:11:00.646-07:00

WOW, WOW, WOW. Love the article, revolutionary! Play on, play on.

I like stories about clever people, so I figure I ...

2011-10-28T22:22:39.416-07:00

I like stories about clever people, so I figure I should be one. It's only fair. Good points, all.

I only briefly mentioned publishing when I wrote t...

2011-08-01T13:02:29.637-07:00

I only briefly mentioned publishing when I wrote this, but the more I think about it, the more it directly applies to the current changes in the publishing industry. I'll do a follow-up post to discuss this, and possibly expand on my theory a bit in doing so...

I don't doubt that you're correct. We'...

2011-05-30T00:48:44.357-07:00

I don't doubt that you're correct. We're really talking about two different things here: what influences the AVERAGE buyer of books vs. what might get a young reader to pick a book up, possibly in a non-commercial environment like a library or classroom.

And I'm not arguing that books shouldn't have the best cover possible on them. I'm just reporting statistics that they can still sell with a less-than-perfect cover. But if that's true, then they'd most certainly sell some greater quantity with a good cover.

Nor as I saying that there aren't specific areas where covers may be of much greater importance. Thanks for shedding light on at least one of them.

-- Steve

This was a very informative post, although I beg t...

2011-05-29T21:15:18.878-07:00

This was a very informative post, although I beg to differ with you somewhat on the subject of book covers. Perhaps this is not the case with e-books, where all one really sees is a tiny thumbnail at first, but I can assure you that a physical YA book MUST have an attractive cover or it will be doomed. Kids simply will not even pick up a book unless they like the cover, and poor readers will choose a book based on the cover and the title alone. Seriously. I cannot tell you how many times I've had to TELL a student to read the back of the book or a few pages to decide if they might like the story. To a low-level reader, good cover = good book.

I'd be interested to know if Scrivener creates...

2011-04-21T18:55:48.637-07:00

I'd be interested to know if Scrivener creates the NCX file, the secret key to adding those little chapter navigation ticks on the Kindle (and I'm pretty sure, other ereaders as well).

Regarding your point about ebook formatting, and h...

2011-04-21T18:50:50.720-07:00

Regarding your point about ebook formatting, and how programs are coming that will make it easy, I have one word: Scrivener.

Scrivener's been around for a little while now. Its compiler function will put out your manuscript in .epub, .mobi, or just about any other format you want, complete with hyperlinked table of contents, in about 5 minutes max, with just a couple mouse-clicks. There's no need to screw around with learning how to format .doc files to hopefully get through the conversion process without getting jacked up. Alas for PC users, Scrivener's only out for Mac. But they've got a PC version in beta testing, and it's set to come out in a full version pretty soon, or so I'm told.

I think this change is a wonderful thing. More op...

2011-03-25T13:57:29.014-07:00

I think this change is a wonderful thing. More options for creating and accessing literature is never, ever a bad thing. :)

Sara
http://smreine.com/

I absolutely admire how you changed "Leo"...

2011-02-15T11:52:32.298-08:00

I absolutely admire how you changed "Leo" to "Litho"! So creative and innovative!

Man, you got me dead to rights! Just what I needed...

2011-02-12T14:55:24.174-08:00

Man, you got me dead to rights! Just what I needed to hear (and, coincidentally, I am quite the fan of sans serif fonts). Psychic much?

I've been looking for just this kind of guide....

2010-12-04T08:29:16.123-08:00

I've been looking for just this kind of guide. Thanks, Steven.

Writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch ( Http://www.Kristin...

2010-09-08T01:09:08.054-07:00

Writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch ( Http://www.KristineKathrynRusch.com )was having some trouble posting and emailed me her comments to this post with permission add them myself. (Sorry for anyone who is having difficulties. We've somehow gotten targeted by Chinese spambots, and I've had to crank up the comment-posting security level to eleven. But judging from the number of comments on this post, it can't be TOO hard.) Anyway, Kris's comments follow:

“Good post, Steve. Let me say one thing: Speaking as a Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning editor of fiction, I *know* I need a good editor on my projects, not just a good first reader. My husband, Dean Wesley Smith, is a very good editor, but not for all forms of fiction (he missed something important on my latest romance). And, even more importantly, he has the husband problem. Which is that *I* think he's just flattering me when he says something is good. (Which means that I have the problem, not him.)

So...for that reason alone, I need an editor. But what does a good fiction editor bring to the table? The ability to see an entire story in an almost Zenlike way. Unfortunately, many New York editors don't have this ability. They're as good as anyone you know who likes to read but not Zenlike brilliant.

But there are some editors--at least one per imprint--who are spectacular, who see tiny tweaks that make a manuscript not just good, but fantastic. I've been fortunate to work with many of these people, and I would hire one of them in a heartbeat if I were self-publishing something.

Here's the difference: In conventional publishing, you're stuck with the editor who buys your book, whether she's just a good reader or a brilliant editor. If you were to self publish and you have tons o'dollars (these folks aren't cheap), you can hire one of the brilliant editors. You're not stuck with the date what brung you to the party. That's a benefit...if you have the money to hire someone good *and* you have enough humility to realize that no matter who you are--bestseller, award winner, long term writer--you need one very experienced eye on the project.”

So anyway. FWIW.

Kris

Yes! Excellent points. Thank you. I vote for stead...

2010-09-06T17:31:41.499-07:00

Yes! Excellent points. Thank you. I vote for steady cash flow over personal-finance boom-and-bust cycles.

I will take getting paid every month, based on act...

2010-09-06T13:41:33.119-07:00

I will take getting paid every month, based on actual worth, over some speculative ceiling placed on my work that determines its entire fate (as is true in virtually every publishing contract). Thanks for the insight.

Scott

Very astute observations. I had a career in busine...

2010-09-06T10:47:09.163-07:00

Very astute observations. I had a career in business until I retired to write full time. Publishing has not made sense to me on a very fundamental financial level until now. Thank you. I knew there had to be payback somewhere. Publishers simply can’t spend more on book products than the return they will receive on their investment, unless the deficits are being compensated for elsewhere. Pretty scary stuff.

I agree we don’t need advances (loans) but if we go towards PODs and epubs how do we handle marketing? Dean has ranted against self promotion in regards to funds coming out of our own pockets to do promo events. I wonder what the new models will be for POD and ebook promotions?

Also, loved what you said about editors. Don’t get me wrong, I have a huge analytical brain, but when I write the creative takes over and it is very difficult for me to “see” subtle typos. I would love to find a copy editor that fits for me. Such services would help, but my experience with two them was enlightening in a frustrating way. One was very meticulous, no complaint there, but a lot of the time I paid for was spent stripping the life out of the work and my writer’s “voice” with it-- the result was absolutely perfect Shrunk & White, but it turned the writing to boring flat prose. In the end, I didn’t use 90% of the suggested “corrections” beyond typos and punctuation slips. When I am in town for the October workshops I’d love to talk with you about copy editors. It is tough getting started, most editors I have investigated want $4,000 to $7,000 per novel to copy edit. As a writer at the beginning of my career that is tough to do until I get a sizable income stream going.

Great post. I put your blog on my favorites and will look forward to reading it regularly. Thank you for sharing your insights.

Great post, thanks. I've worked out a deal wi...

2010-09-03T13:10:03.004-07:00

Great post, thanks.

I've worked out a deal with an excellent copyeditor for my current indie work, and I'm really glad I'm working with her. It's not that the work wouldn't stand a chance without her, but she makes the work considerably prettier in many places that I missed, and I'm someone that really wants my prose to sing. We're trading a number of services with each other, and beyond that I'm only paying her $100 in cash.

As for advances, there is something to be said for slower, more steady income. If most publishers treated authors well when it comes to reporting data quickly and making prompt payments, then things would be different. Unfortunately, authors haven't been treated well in many respects for a long time. The publishers who do well in the future are going to be the ones who start treating authors better NOW.

Any time I'll take a monthly or even quarterly...

2010-09-03T11:49:59.832-07:00

Any time I'll take a monthly or even quarterly payday over an every-year-or-so advance and the pittance of many royalty checks. Unless my last name were Patterson or King or Clancy, etc. Their every-so-often checks are big enough to last a while. Of course I don't have any of those last names, so I'll stick with my monthly pay from Amazon and other sources.

Excellent post! Your explanation of the advance as...

2010-09-03T08:40:30.048-07:00

Excellent post! Your explanation of the advance as a loan is one I never thought of and makes SO much sense. I also agree the long tail is more attractive for writers. The more you write and have out in the world, the more money will trickle in over time.

I think the lure of the big advance is desired by a lot of new writers who want a big payday or by some people who think they want to be writers but really want to be an “author.” These are the type who don’t really enjoy the writing but want to have written.

Mind you, if someone wanted to throw a huge cheque (Canadian spelling!) at me, I wouldn't say no! Although, after your "loan" explanation, maybe I should rethink that!

One interesting data point since I posted this. A...

2010-06-03T20:32:57.366-07:00

One interesting data point since I posted this. Apparently more people are downloading Barnes and Nobel's Nook app on the iPad than are downloading the iBooks reader. Maybe the Apple "party line" is steering people away from Amazon's Kindle app, but they prefer the bigger selection and less-flashy reading experience of the Nook app over Apple's.

I'm still haven't heard any reports on initial sales of books on iPad. You'd think we'd be hearing more if the numbers were impressive. The most concrete thing I've heard is a report from Penguin that they're doing well on iPad, especially relative to other publishers.

But this is somewhat colored by their recent Mexican stand-off with Amazon (new Penguin books were unavailable on Kindle for about two months, until a new, undisclosed, agreement was finally signed).

This gives them every reason to push sales on iBooks, no competition from Amazon on Kindle or its apps, and every reason to spin the data in as favorable a way as possible. It's hard to say if this represents a trend, or simply a short-term anomaly.

It now seems that, even just in terms of iPad sales, dominance in the iBooks store may not be as importance as once thought.

I've always found Scorpius a jarring category,...

2010-05-19T01:14:55.664-07:00

I've always found Scorpius a jarring category, but until today I have never encountered a better alternative label.

Slush: ...

I could get to like this one.

One other interesting data point I've just bec...

2010-05-13T01:32:58.365-07:00

One other interesting data point I've just become aware of. According to Publisher's Weekly, Amazon has announced that their Kindle Bestseller list is being split between paid books and free titles (currently they're combined, and many free titles rank among the best-sellers). Here's the story:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/43152-amazon-to-drop-free-books-from-kindle-bestseller-list.html

There could be many reasons for this, and it could be a response to the New York Times article cited by PW. But the timing is suspicious. One possibility is that Amazon is looking at very pleasing sales numbers through their iPad Kindle App, and therefore suspect that a large percentage of those 1.5 million books reported by Apple are actually freebies. Separating out their numbers could put pressure on Apple to do the same, and that might put Apple in a situation of revealing that their iBooks store isn't doing very well compared to Amazon, even on their own device.

Yeah, that's a little convoluted, but worth thinking about anyway.

Hmmm. This logic really only works if Amazon sold LESS than 1.5 million new books through the iPad App, otherwise they could simple release their sales numbers directly, but high enough that they think they might have sold more new books than Apple. If that's true, I'd bet that the total of all books sold by Apple on the iPad plus the NEW books sold by Amazon is somewhere in the 2 million to 3 million range, and probably in the middle somewhere.

You'd suspect that Amazon might also have sold more free books than paid ones, so the REAL total of books downloaded to the iPad could be much healthier than Apple's report indicates. Maybe 4 million or more, and that's starting to sound like a much healthier ebook platform. Just not one that's going to wrest control of the ebook market from Amazon like Apple and the publishing industry hoped.

I have heard from a number of iPad owners, directl...

2010-05-13T01:00:17.180-07:00

I have heard from a number of iPad owners, directly and indirectly, protesting that they're avid readers and have downloaded a bunch of books on their iPads.

From this we can learn at least two things:
1. A lot of iPad owners think they're "average."
and
2. Several of these people are dragging everyone else's average down...

You see, I've always assumed that some people out there were excited about their iPads as ebooks and were downloading a ton of books. But the more books that a few people download out of the 1.5 million, the less likely it is that a lot of people downloaded any at all.

My feeling, and I think it's sound, is that if you don't download at least a few books onto your iPad in the first month, it's fairly likely that you'll never download a significant number. Fairly likely you'll never download any at all.

My gut feeling at this point is that a fair percentage of iPad owners, probably at least 25%, maybe higher, haven't downloaded any books, and reading (books anyway) will never be a significant use of their iPad.

Some other percentage (maybe 25% or more) have downloaded some books to try it out, but will never buy more than the occasional best-seller.

Some small percentage (probably less then 25%), greatly over-represented in the people-who-care-enough-to-pay-attention-to-my-theorys department, are avid readers who have already downloaded a lot of books, and will likely download many more in the future.

Really it's this last group that count. Will they buy fewer paper books because they have an iPad? Will they compensate by purchasing as many or more ebooks on their iPad? If they were using a Kindle instead of an iPad, would they buy the same number of ebooks, or less, or more?

It will be some time before we know. This is all a big, real-world experiment, and it's going to be interesting to see how it shakes out.

Really, I'm convinced the spoiler here is the Amazon Kindle App. Yes, there are a lot of ways to get ebooks onto the Kindle. But my money says that the iBooks store and the Kindle App numbers are doing to drop everything else into the statistical noise, and I would be less than surprised if books sold through the Kindle App exceed those sold through Apple's own store.

Wonder if Steve Jobs is regretting not blocking the Kindle App right now? Don't see how he could get away with it at this late date.

However, there could be one bit of brilliance in this on Apple's part. Amazon has been keeping actual Kindle book sales very close to their chest. I'm thinking that Apple has a way to track Kindle sales through the App, at least the number of downloads, if not the details. That could be very useful intelligence as Apple tries to outmaneuver Amazon in the future.

I use my iPad for reading ebooks a lot. But I use ...

2010-05-12T20:54:35.857-07:00

I use my iPad for reading ebooks a lot. But I use it with the Kindle for iPad app. I bought a lot of ebooks for my previously used, now almost never used, Kindle. I much prefer my iPad for reading over reading on the actual Kindle. I like the backlighting as a read a lot in the dark in bed, and well, the whole thing just looks nicer, cleaner, sharper.

I think that you do have some serious issues in your numbers when you take into account that iBooks is not the only ebooks store/app you can buy ebooks for, as you mentioned. Kindle for iPad has a much better selection, and B&N has an app now for iPad, too. And once I purchase a Kindle version book I can read it on a Kindle, a Mac, an iPhone, or an iPad--all synched to whatever page I'm at.

I prefer the user experience of the iBooks app (except for the bookmarking function, which I find somewhat overdone--i'd like to just hit "bookmark," not have to select some text), but I have only purchased one ebook in iBooks, and that was because the preorder I made for Death in the Family through the Kindle store was cancelled suddenly because they'd no longer be offering it in the Kindle store at release date. Since I could buy it from iBooks, I bought it there.

I will keep buying my ebooks from Amazon through the Kindle store because of the selection and the better book descriptions. The iTunes store data is not very compelling for figuring out about whether your really want to buy a book. It's missing the reams of info found in Amazon. But I'll keep reading those books on my iPad.