Here I am, writing from beautiful Whitefish, Montana, late with this blog--the internet here is on the iffy side! I spent the weekend at the Flathead River Writers Conference in nearby Kalispell, MT. The word "Flathead" has nothing to do with the state of the writers; it's an unfortunate name whites gave some western Indians because they purposely flattened the heads of their babies.
A featured speaker at the conference was Mark Coker, the creator of Smashwords. Mark is the ultimate democratic person. Anyone can publish a book on Smashwords, with a few content exceptions, for no cost, and Smashwords takes a modest cut of revenue. Sounds perfect for the frustrated author who can't find a publisher for her/his masterpiece, doesn't it? The problem is that many thousands of writers have posted their creations, and it's very difficult to get noticed. Mark believes that the best will ultimately be rewarded, and the lousy will sink into obscurity. However, even the best of the best need considerable savvy on the part of the author.
What opportunity does Smashwords create for nonfiction writers? From what I heard over the weekend, both from Mark and from a local author/promoter team, my conclusion is "not much," unless the works are in the "how to" category and in a series. The lone book without sequels is hard to promote, as one of the easiest promotional tools is to write a series, then offer book #1 or #2 for free. Free books "sell" quite well on the internet and can result in 4 or 5 star reviews that give buyers confidence they aren't wasting their money. So if book #1 in a series is free and gets good reviews, the author has a good chance of actually getting revenue from subsequent books in the series. The price of book #1 can also be changed over time, going from free to, say $2.99--which seems to be a prime price point--in hopes that the good reader reviews will boost the book into visibility.
So for now at least, I'm sticking to the traditional "slow but (sort of) sure" route of proposing books to publishers, signing contracts, and getting to work. And for nonfiction, an advance upon signing the contract is usually part of the deal, so there's a "sure thing" factor that's hard to resist in the traditional publishing world.
Epublishing does, however, also offer an opportunity for us to get our books that have gone out of print in front of readers. I've put my one OP novel, "Return of the Wolf," up in a variety of e formats, but so far, it has gone pretty much unnoticed. I'm going to experiment with some tricks I've learned this weekend and see if I can change my beloved novel's fate, but I'm not holding my breath!
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Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Blog: Publishing a Picture Book - Getting it all together (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: self publishing, how to, AWZ files, Hettie Ashwin, books, book creation, file creation, generic readers, self-publishing, kindle, files, epublishing, Add a tag
~PEN TO PAPER~: How to convert kindle AWZ files to Epub for generi...: There are so many readers on the market and so many files to choose from. But what if you want to buy that book on Amazon and it is for kind...
Blog: BookEnds, LLC - A Literary Agency (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: epublishing, Add a tag
Sheila Connolly
Called Home
Publisher: Beyond the Page
Pub date: July 2011
(Click to Buy)
Sheila Connolly
Bitter Harvest
Publisher: Berkley
Pub date: August 2011
(Click to Buy)
COME ON IN—THE WATER'S FINE!
I will confess to being "of a certain age," and that means that I grew up reading pages, not pixels. I learned to type (the young'uns would call that "keyboarding") in a summer school course on a manual typewriter. The room at the local middle school where we met to pound on those hulking machines wasn't air-conditioned, so it was six weeks of hell.
When I was a Ph.D. candidate in art history, I had to produce a doctoral thesis that was some two hundred double-spaced pages long (that was just the text—pictures had a volume all their own). On a non-correcting typewriter (at least it was electric). The submission guidelines stated that there could be no more than two typing errors per page, plus I had to insert footnotes manually on each page. You can bet that there was a lot of cursing and a lot of wasted paper.
As you might guess, I have embraced the electronic age. I love the ease of editing on a computer, where you can delete vast swaths of text—but save them just in case you might want them later. Where you can store your precious material on disks, flash drives, external hard drives, and off-site (or all of the above, if you're really paranoid about losing anything).
But until now I've been leery of entering the world of electronic publication. Silly, I know—I have plenty of writer friends who have taken the plunge successfully. But the transition is challenging. I have been collecting books as long as I have been reading, and I've been reading as long as I can remember. I have a copy of the children's anthology Read Me More Stories, which, according to the inscription inside, was given to me when I was three, that I "improved" with my own scribbled additions. I have full shelves honoring my science fiction phase, my women's fiction phase, and of course, my mystery phase (by far the largest group, and still growing). In fact, I have so many books that I've run out of space for them, even after donating five boxes of the overflow to our local library this week. So the time has come to face electronic reality.
I think all of us involved in the publishing industry these days—writers and publishers alike—are struggling to understand and take advantage of the possibilities of electronic publishing and distribution. We've watched the Borders chain implode, and seen too many small independent bookstores shut down. Yet people still read, and the electronic vendors make our books available to a far wider group of rea
Blog: ACME AUTHORS LINK (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: book promo, ePublishing, ePub Consortium, ePub bks., press releases, PR, book marketing, Add a tag
I understand skepticism but trust me, here you can put it aside. There are some functions at the site that are confusing simply because of their simplicity but anticipated complexity. The reviews is one such area.
You can place a review, vote, etc., just like posting in a forum. You can copy other reviews on your books and paste them into the submission form.
The trick for me was getting into the habit of checking the menu and seeing what options changed depending on which module I selected. Keep in mind that each menu item is a different module, they were programmed independently on purpose so their systematic promotions would be unique as well.
Don't be intimidated by the scope and hope of this site, that is the ambitiousness posited here. That's just Patrick at work -- a challenge. Just look at it as another site to explore and use to your advantage when it makes sense to do so. Currently, it is a grass-roots effort to create a home for us all. I hope you will accept my highest recommendation for this site. Here is where our ePublishingConsortium can be found and some information on the ePub author behind it, Patrick:
http://ePublishingConsortium.com
The Legacy Inheritance
http://www.amazon.com/The-Legacy-Inheritance-ebook/dp/B004OA6EAM/
The Lady of the Lake
http://www.amazon.com/Lady-Lake-ebook/dp/B004OYTT28/
PLEASE leave a comment and take advantage of the above --
Robert W. Walker (Rob)
author, Children of Salem, Titanic 2012 (limited time sale thru July)
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=Robert+W.+Walker&x=17&y=27
Blog: Robin Brande (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Writing Advice, Publishing, Writing, ebooks, indie publishers, Epublishing, Dean Wesley Smith, indie bookstores, Advice for Writers, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Kris Rusch, indie authors, ebook gift cards, Add a tag
Oh, that Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch, always thinking, those two.
Thank goodness, because this one’s a doozy.
Blog: Official Blog of BookGenie (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: eBooks, Technical, ePublishing, ipad, iPhone, Add a tag
The market for children’s books offers an exciting opportunity for publishers to have a sizeable pie of digital publishing. And the game changer has been the apps. Apps based on various popular bedtime stories give a whole new interactivity to story-telling, and kids always love interactive things. The fact that they can play Cindrella and [...]
Add a CommentBlog: Official Blog of BookGenie (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: eBooks, Technical, ePublishing, eBook Publishing, eBook piracy, Add a tag
The world of publishing is going crazy about e-book publishing and the world of opportunities that the digital world offers. However, like everything else, ebooks too have a flip side to them. Here’s an unbiased opinion on ebooks and ebook publishing, and some piece of advice every now and then in between. Let’s look at [...]
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JacketFlap tags: ePublishing, eBook Publishing, eBook pricing, General, eBooks, Add a tag
Right then, the sale of ebooks is on the rise and is fast outstripping the sale of print books. That’s no secret at all. According to the most recent data, the sale of ebooks has tripled over the last year or so. However, when it comes to the returns, the digital publishing domain still accounts [...]
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JacketFlap tags: XML conversion, Technical, inDesign, ePublishing, ePUB, Add a tag
If ever there was a really discreet way for publishers to sniff on their competition and still get to network with the best, this is it. InDesign Secrets, now in its sixth year since inception, is hosting the print and epublishing conference this year in Washington DC. The event is scheduled for two days from [...]
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JacketFlap tags: K12 publishing, prepress service, publishing support provider, STM publishing, Uncategorized, typesetting, ePublishing, trade books, ePub conversion, Add a tag
Cost effective ways for publishing Why and how to venture into cost effective publishing! Media industry analysts estimate that newsprint accounts for up to 20% of a newspaper’s overall costs. This applies to print books also. Do you feel that increase in newsprint cost and other raw materials are obstacles for profitable publishing? Obviously, there [...]
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It's also intersting to see that Seymour Simon and a bunch of other authors have started an e-book venture for bringing back their OP titles. It's called StarWalk Kids Media and I believe it just went live a few days ago.
iNK is also publishing OP titles for authors in this blog group. We're on the verge of launching the first set of titles as iBooks. You can check with Vicki if you have any OP books you'd like to see made available.