BookFinder.com Journal

To self publish or not to self publish: an authors tale

If you have ever considered self publishing a book, or wondered how much money a self published author actually ends up pocketing from your average self published book I found an interesting read.  Most of the articles surrounding  self publishing either discuss an amazing success story, or the thousands of titles which never sell a single copy.  This may be why I found this article written by Keir Thomas very interesting.  Keir Thomas is a technical writer who has written a number of books, which were published by various major publishers, about the Linux operating system; and this is his experience with self publishing.

In 2008 he had the idea to write the Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference (Ubuntu is a Linux operating system) but he was unable to print though his usual publishers because, as a pocket guide, the book would naturally have a fairly low price point.  He understood where the publishers were coming from but still thought the book could be useful.  So he decided to try a self-publishing experiment. I encourage you all to read the article in full as it's quite interesting, but here are the nuts and bolts of how he did:

Aside from writing the actual text and editing (Do you love how I am glossing over this huge task?) the first thing he had to do differently was find a way to promote the book with essentially no budget.  To do this he gave the ebook version which did in fact net a bunch of publicity including reviews and recommendations from tech journalists and bloggers:

The eBook is hugely popular. I average around 400 visitors a day at http://ubuntupocketguide.com, peaking at 40-50,000 every now and again. The website advertises the print edition of the book, as does an advert within the PDF itself.

I’ve lost count how many people have downloaded the eBook but the last time I audited the figures, which was around six months after the book’s release, it’d seen around 500,000 downloads. I suspect that number has doubled since then. I encourage people to redistribute the PDF, including via BitTorrent, so auditing is practically impossible. (Redistribution is fine, but not modifying; the book uses a standard copyright.)

So his community knows about it, and it turns out people do find it quite useful, but how was the print edition selling?

Since going on sale at the start of 2009, the book has made me $9,000. Bearing in mind the book took three months to produce, that’s a salary of $3,000 per month, although costs such as hosting have to be deducted, and I also spent quite a few days marketing the book once published.

I’ve had worse salaries in my life, and I’m very grateful, but I know total royalties would probably have been higher had I gone through the traditional route of working with a mainstream publisher.

Thomas finishes by suggesting that self-publishing might not be the best option for you if you really want to make money, but it can be a great way to get your ideas out there if you only need to cover your costs. 

[Now Reading: The Snapper by Roddy Doyle]

What is the value of book?

How much do you think a good story is worth?  I don't mean a book necessarily since books can be collectible and that's not what I am getting at here, but how much do you think a novel length story is worth?

When deciding this you might compare the value of the read vs. other entertainments such as the cost of a movie rental? The price of a video game? The cost of a newspaper or magazine? The drop in fee for a local gym or that knitting class at the community center?  For me the value varies wildly depending on how much I enjoy (or expect to enjoy) the book. 

With that in mind I have been thinking about the current "race to the bottom" debate in e-publishing that has been raging on the blogosphere. For those of you who are unaware it essentially boils down (in an inelegant way) to publishers claiming that self published authors are going to ruin publishing by offering eBooks at rock bottom prices; while the self-published authors are claiming that large publishing houses are bloated profiteers.

From the publishers side: two years ago I posted a rough breakdown of what the costs of printing a book might be for a traditional publisher.  Based on these figures you get closer to understanding the $9.99 price point that publishers seem to be trying to stick with for an ebook.  Shave a little here and there and then knock off the additional costs associated with a physical book and you are close to that figure.  Everyone takes a bit of a hit in total values but I can see where they are coming from.

On the other hand it's now very common to see self published ebooks for sale for as little as $0.99-$2.99. You may also see these self published authors explaining that they are in fact making money at this price.  So why do the publishers need to charge more?

Now that authors can self publish without having to front the serious amounts of cash to physically print their books they are less likely to need a publisher to bankroll the project.  Couple this with the fact that an author can now act as or hire a publicist and designer on a piece meal basis to cover most of the basic marketing needed for a book launch and you can see why some mid and backlist authors choose to self publish.

I am making the suggestion that now a publishers greatest value is not to the average author but to the reader.  Publishers do help separate the wheat from the chaff. By helping readers find quality writers they can save them from that feeling of wanting those last few hours back.

I am willing to pay a bit more to know that the novel I am about to read is at least going to be well written and hopefully interesting but exactly how much more I am willing to pay for that is what publishers need to figure out.  I kind of wish I could tell them.

Ebooks environmental?

A study was released this week proclaiming that ebooks were the magic bullet solution to greener reading.  The Cleantech Group (who commissioned the study) claimed that the carbon emitted in the life cycle of the ereader was fully offset after a year of use, or 22.5 books. 

The report indicates that, on average, the carbon emitted in the lifecycle of a Kindle is fully offset after the first year of use.

The report, authored by Emma Ritch, states: "Any additional years of use result in net carbon savings, equivalent to an average of 168 kg of CO2 per year (the emissions produced in the manufacture and distribution of 22.5 books)."

In the United States, Amazon currently holds a 45 percent market share of e-reader devices, with one main competitor Sony trailing at 30 percent.

The Cleantech Group forecasts that e-readers purchased from 2009 to 2012 could prevent 5.3 billion kg of carbon dioxide in 2012, or 9.9 billion kg during the four-year time period.

The Daily Finance, however, published a rebuttle yesterday suggesting that these figures may be a bit of an exageration.  They suggested that many "average" readers would read less than the suggested 22-23 books a year, and that if you compare ereaders to digital music players most consumers upgrade or replace their device well before the four year lifecycle that the study suggests.

I think the takeaway is that of course an ebook is going to reduce the amount of paper waste, but you also have to take the impact of whatever electronics you use to read it into account as well.  And  if ebooks are not for you then there are always used books!

Australian publishing, ebooks and pricing

I have been busy this week and thus unable to post as much as I would like.  I will however leave a short round up of news from the past week. 

Australian Publishers
Australia has some of the most strict importation laws in the world, when it comes to books.  Currently Australian bookshops are banned from importing overseas editions of a book if an Australian publisher has produced their own edition within 30 days of its foreign publication.  Opponents to the law say that this allows publishers to charge significantly more for books in Australia.  Proponents of the law, including Australian writers Peter Carey and Tim Winton, claim that it preserves cultural diversity and that without the added income publishers receive from these rights local authors would be up a creek.

Earlier this week the Australian government began to re-evaluate the usefulness of this law, much to the chagrin of Authors and publishers.

The Productivity Commission, which the Australian government had asked to review the law, recommended that the restrictions should be removed, with the industry given three years to adjust before the changes take effect. "One of the Commission's concerns is that consumers pay higher prices for books, regardless of their cultural significance," said the Commission's deputy chairman, Mike Woods, announcing the results of the study (it found that last year Australian books were on average 35% more expensive than US editions). "A second concern is that these costs to consumers generate greater benefits for overseas authors and publishers than they do for our local writers. In effect, Australian consumers are subsidizing foreign book producers,"

Full details in The Guardian

ebooks: when to publish
The current publishing format has been in place for many years.  If you want to read a book when it comes out you must buy it in hardcover, and to save a few bucks you can wait for the paperback, with super budget editions of the biggest bestsellers trailing months or even years down the road. But the question that publishers are asking themselves now is, where does the ebook fall into this mix.

The New York Times took a look at the dilemma for Dan Brown's publishers when The Lost Symbol comes out in September.

No topic is more hotly debated in book circles at the moment than the timing, pricing and ultimate impact of e-books on the financial health of publishers and retailers. Publishers are grappling with e-book release dates partly because they are trying to understand how digital editions affect demand for hardcover books. A hardcover typically sells for anywhere from $25 to $35, while the most common price for an e-book has quickly become $9.99.

Ebook Pricing
And while publishers fight the concept of the $9.99 ebook, which is at risk of reducing their profit margins, critics at Slate are suggesting that losing the price war might be the best thing to happen to them.  Their theory is that should publishers win and increase the price of ebooks cusomers will turn to pirated versions placing literature in the same boat as record lables.  They say all that it will take is a better reading device

What has kept illegal e-books from taking off? First, all the electronic reading gadgets on the market are subpar, if you ask me, making the reading of books, newspapers, magazines, and even cereal boxes painful. The resolution is poor. The fonts are crap. The navigation is chunky. Not since the eight-track player has modern technology produced such a heap of garbage. If you're looking for the reason e-books constitute just 1 percent or 2 percent of all book sales, stop the search. Second, the hassle factor is too great. Only a student or a deadbeat with a lot of time on his hands is going to want to search the Web and scour the torrents for, say, a free, bootlegged copy of A.J. Liebling's The Telephone Booth Indian. It's as tedious as fishing! Third, not all bootlegged e-books are created equal. On finally finding that free book you so desire, you may find yourself wishing you had purchased the legal edition: Your bootleg may be filled with typographical errors, thanks to the slipshod application of optical character-recognition software. If a nicely produced Kindle version of The Telephone Booth Indian that doesn't have to be monkeyed around with can be easily nabbed for $9.99, which it can, why bother breaking the law to obtain an inferior edition for display on a rotten device? It's like using an acetylene torch to loot a kid's piggy bank.

Escapist reading

Booze and Gambling may not have shot up in the recession, but literary escapism has been on the up since the dow started to dive.

Romance -the traditional escape for the fairer sex - and Science Fiction - the traditional choice for men who when they want to stick their head in the clouds - have experienced big boosts in the last quarter.

"Harlequin, the world's biggest publisher of series romance, saw North American sales rise $3 million in 2008's fourth quarter from a year earlier. Other escapist literature also has done well: Although most book sales were flat or down in February 2009 from the year before, a spokesperson for the Borders book chain says that science fiction and fantasy were up—as were humor titles." - Yahoo

Just avoid George Orwell, Ayn Rand, and the rest of the dysotopic futures when picking your SF and you should be good to go!

[Now reading: An Area of Darkness by V.S. Naipaul]

[Now reading: An Area of Darkness by V.S. Naipaul]

Used bookselling in the recession

IOBA just released the results of a survey on how independent booksellers are faring during the recession.

Based on sales data from 48 participating bookstores, IOBA President Chris Volk reports:

• the average sales drop from 2008 to 2009 was 10.6%
• for sellers with an average sales price between $10-$40, the average sales drop was 7.1%
• for sellers with an average sales price between $40-$100, the median sales drop was 18.7%

See more details...

[Now reading: The Solitude of Emperors by David Davidar]

Beyond author websites

For the last several years, I've been the webmaster for my friend Chitra Divakaruni, a mid-career novelist and poet. Her website talks a bit about her and each of her books. It's pretty simple, and hasn't changed dramatically in a long time.

Chitra has the paperback of her latest novel coming out soon, as well as a new book for young adults. This, along with the ongoing death of US newspaper book sections, has lit a fire under us, and we're trying to think beyond the website, embracing social media to better reach readers where they're at. We have a mailing list set up, and are syndicating tour dates on BookTour.com; a blog and an expanded Facebook presence are on their way. It's been exciting to see the kind of positive feedback Chitra's already been getting from readers able to connect directly to a favorite writer.

The New York Times recently ran a piece on the new business of big budget author websites, online book launches, and author promo videos. As much as I'm into this sort of thing, some of the tactics just seem excessive. Is it really worth spending $35,000 to launch a promotional website for a novel? Does a website for a book really need an original score? Apparently I'm not alone in my confusion; publishers, bullish as they are, also seem to be a bit fuzzy on the ROI. (The article does mention that in a specific study, 8% of readers had visited author websites in the past week; by extension, 92% hadn't.)

How are your purchases swayed by author or book websites?

German market news

I’m pretty interested in German used and rare bookselling market. It has one of the most developed ecosystem outside of the Anglophone market, and looking at what’s happening offers a great set of data points to understand where our industry’s at. I was excited to came across a number of great stories covering the space in boersenblatt.net, a German book trade magazine. Here are some of the pieces I found.

(All of these articles are in German. To translate them, use Google’s handy 1-click translate bookmarklet. For English, you can drag this link to your browser toolbar —> View in English. Then click the button whenever you want to see a page in English.)

ZVAB:

• New pricing model
• Early history
• Peter Zylla exits
• Interview on pricing model, etc.
• ZVAB on shipping regulations
• Site relaunch

AbeBooks:

• New Italian site
• Reaction to Amazon acquisition, parts 1, 2, 3
• New pricing model
• Gojaba launch
• Market positioning overview

eBay:

• eBay.de’s new shipping policies
• eBay business model changes
• More fixed price listings on eBay.de

Smaller marketplaces and services:

• Prolibri on shipping regulations
• Buchfreund pricing model changes
• Interview on Oxfam Germany used bookstores
• ILAB rethinking Rockingstone relationship
• Eurobuch redesign
• momox-books buying used books en masse

Market-wide news:

• Antiquarian year in review series
• Overall used book sales trends

Law:

• Booksellers and child porn laws
• AbeBooks comments on bookselling law
• Online content labeling requirements

Posted by Anirvan

The state of Bay Area indies

The Los Angeles Times recently ran an article on the state of independent booksellers in the San Francisco Bay Area, “Bookshops’ latest sad plot twist”. The dispiriting story hits on all the high-profile low points: the closure of Cody’s Berkeley, A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, and Wessex Books, and the financial pressures on Black Oak Books (another local fave of mine). Reading “Save The Bookstore, Save The Community” at Booksquare left me further depressed.

I was at the AbeBooks Seller Summit on Monday, where I met Alan Beatts, founder of Borderlands Books, one of the trio of local San Francisco Bay Area science fiction bookstores. (Myself, I pledge allegiance to The Other Change of Hobbit, right across the street from BookFinder.com’s office.) Alan’s on the board of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association; as we talked about the local bookselling scene, he kept mentioning details that surprised me. For example, reading the LA Times article on high profile local closures, I wouldn’t have expected that the NCIBA would be seeing new bookstores opening faster than those closing, for a net increase in independent Bay Area bookstores over the past year. I wouldn’t call Alan an optimist (check out the dire predictions he made in an interview last year), but it’s interesting seeing a more measured take in the midst of all the doom and gloom.

I don’t follow the independent brick and mortar bookstore market very closely (except as a customer). Anecdotes aside, what’s really going on out there?

Posted by Anirvan

Short head retailers

Giovanni blogged about the Long Tail over on the JustBooks.de Blog.

In his post, he discusses an European online new book retailer that sees 95% of their sales from their top 1,000 bestselling titles, and 98% from their top 40,000.

So is the Long Tail bunk? Why might a reasonable modern online book site be living in the short head?

• active promotion or discounting of bestsellers and frontlist titles, but not the midlist or backlist
• having designed a website to encourage browsing among a limited universe of titles, rather than searching a larger catalog of books in print
• users coming to a site looking primarily for only one type of book (e.g. new mysteries, university press books)
• existence of a relatively small number of in-print titles in the local publishing market
• the store’s failure to carry the full range of in-print titles
• the mixing together in-store and online sales to derive sales figures

I admit it—I’m flummoxed. The numbers don’t make intuitive sense to me, and the only reasons I can come up with essentially consist of blaming the bookseller for stocking or promoting a limited range of titles.

Knowing what we know about demand distribution for online retailers, why might a normal online new book retailer see 95% of its sales coming from just 1,000 titles?

[Now Reading: Matrimonials are Deadly by Shreelata Rao-Seshadri]

Posted by Anirvan