A White Space in the Book Market

At a company meeting I heard an executive talking about the need to “got after every white space in the market”. After mocking this turn of phrase, I later thought of one such white space – in the book market. There has been a wave of independent authors, buoyed by the technological trends in smartphones and e-readers. At the same time there has been a decline in the business of supersized bookstores. The chains are not doing well, and smaller independent bookstores have an opportunity to stake out new territories, and may find some success if they are well-situated and innovative enough. One such junction might be the marketing of independently published books. Many of these are breaking through the e-bestseller lists, so they are proven to be desirable commodities. How to get these books into bookstores is a different matter.

On the one hand, there have been independent distributors in the past, companies that aggregated small press books and had some salesforce and warehousing to funnel these through to independent bookstores. Such distributors found it difficult enough to survive, especially during the rise of the superstores, but right now there may be an opportunity to build on that model with independently published books as well as small presses. It may be only viable, in the beginning, for very localized success, in such markets as New , the Boston Area, Northern California, etc … but some enterprising entrepeneur could take it on. They could work with Smashwords, perhaps, to identify and contact those bestselling – and other worthy – independent writers, and with Lulu, even with Amazon’s CreateSpace to find their way in (bookstores apparently loathe CreateSpace so this part might not fly). It would take some legwork and effort, but they could possibly convince the independent bookstores to set aside a special section for local, independent authors. The problem here is profitability (and tangled issues like returns and many individual relationships)

Another idea combines the advantages of bookstores and web publishing. One of the great things about bookstores is browsing. One of the great things about online offerings is free excerpts. Why not put them together? Print-on-demand machines could produce pamphlet-like versions of books – front and back covers and the first 5-10 pages. Bookstores could display this in racks the way that maps are displayed, or like travel brochures in hotels and rental agencies. The cost up front is low (indie authors may need to contribute a small amount to that, to help defray the cost and also perhaps serve a barrier to entry that would serve to thin the herd, so to speak).

This is the kind of thing that independent bookstores can excel at, and it could work to bridge the gulf between e-publishing and p-publishing, There is no inherent contradiction. Many people prefer paperbacks to e-readers. The same books can find their way to everyone. It would take a group effort – on both sides. Independent bookseller organizations could be working together with independent self-publishers for mutual benefit

Related articles

• Reports of the Bookstore’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated (teleread.com)
• The Business Rusch: The Year of The Bookstore (kriswrites.com)
• Independent Bookstores (bookwormyyc.wordpress.com)
• Indie Book Store and Indie Author Team Up – Burien Books Hosts Book Signing with Local Author T.M. Franklin (prweb.com)
• 5 Ways to Get Your Book into Bookstores (bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com)
• Should We Save Bookstores from the Internet? (misfortuneofknowing.wordpress.com)
• INDIES: How Independent Publishers & Bookstores are Surviving & Thriving in Today’s Market (laurenmbarrett.com)

A Self-Publishing Book Review Sob Story

This article in Salon.com, while mainly a whiny and self-pitying lament, does shed some light on one aspect of the recent changes in book publishing. Publishing is not what it used to be, and neither is book reviewing. It used to be that a published author stood a decent chance of getting a professional review from a newspaper or magazine book reviewer. Apparently, there ain’t no days like those anymore. The article’s writer – a previously published author with in-crowd connections who was once able to garner such blessed reviews – couldn’t even get responses to his emails once he decided to self-publish his latest awesome novel (which he only resorted to after it failed to get traditionally published). The kicker is when he moans that If this can happen to him, imagine how horrible it must be for the 99 percenters of self-published writers, those of us without his hoary ties to people-in-the-know and his track record of proven, if admittedly minor, success.

What we 99 percenters know, of course, is that when it comes to getting (legitimate) reviews of our self-published fiction, we have always relied on the kindness of strangers.  We quickly exhaust our social network supply of potential reviewers (we exhaust them in every sense) and after that it’s all “word of mouth, baby”. Recently a publicist for free-ebooks.net (one of the many ebook sites with an experimental business model, this one a subscription service) asked me if I knew how to convert downloads into reviews. The only answer I could give was “maybe give them stuff” – not money, but rewards of some kind, benefits in kind, more free books perhaps. Goodreads Giveaways are supposed to work like that. The winners are supposed to submit reviews after they receive and read your books. I have no way of knowing if they actually do that. I’ve done four giveaways so far and am beginning another one this week for “Prisoners of Perfection” but there seems to be no tracking mechanism for the reviews or ratings.

Yes, it’s difficult. For every thousand downloads-to-strangers you might get one written review. That’s just a guess, nothing scientific, but it seems to correlate with my own experience. Star ratings are somewhat easier to come by, but are not the same thing at all. People who take the time to write and post reviews of self-published books are practically mini-gods to self-published authors. We can’t thank them enough, even if they trash our work. At least somebody said something! Otherwise, how can we even know that we exist? Self-publishing used to be called vanity publishing, but all publishing involves a degree of vanity. The Salon article shines a bright light on that little secret as well.

The article’s conclusion is “I can tell you that self-publishing is not fun.” I didn’t feel too sorry for him. If what the author reallt wants is reviews, only that, his best chance is to give away his book for free and to give it away for free in as many places as he can. He probably still wouldn’t get a boatload of reviews, but then the question is, how many are enough? How many reviews would it take to make it all fun for him? How many readers would it take? How is 1000 strangers reading your book better than 999? What difference does the one thousand and first make, in your everyday life? Where do you draw the line between fun and not fun?

A friend of mine once told me her philosophy of gardening, and it’s stuck with me ever since, especially in regards to self-publishing. One tomato is great, she said. Anything more is “abundance”.

Related articles

• 77 Ways to Find New Readers for Your Self-Published Book (Book Review) (thiscollegedropout.wordpress.com)
• If You are a Writer of Stories, You Should Focus on Storytelling (katmicari.wordpress.com)
• Say Goodbye to the Play-by-Play Book Review (themillions.com)
• MBR: How to Spot a Phony Book Reviewer (thiscollegedropout.wordpress.com)
• Book Reviews: Easy Way to Promote Others, Your Own Blog, and Improve Your Writing Style (lindathorlakson.wordpress.com)
• How I overcame snobbery to self-publish an e-book (telegraph.co.uk)

Jobs Jobs Jobs

Two recent contrasting articles caught my attention this week -Scott Turow’s ongoing doomsday scenario for the traditionally-published authorship profession and Hugh Howey’s ongoing rosy scenario for the self-published authorship profession. We know that technology is often disruptive and entire industries get tossed into a hopper every now and then – just ask the (former) steel workers of Bethelem, Pennsylvania. Somehow it’s supposed to be more vital when “artists” are involved, but I don’t see it that way. One person’s livelihood is just as vital as another’s, and when you are a manufacturer – whether you are manufacturing nuts and bolts or culture with a capital C – you have to adapt to changes to the means of your product’s production. Writers don’t typically identify themselves as workers, or laborers, but those with experience in the worlds of professional journalism know better. If you’re making something to be sold in a marketplace, you’re a worker, and among your responsibilities are: knowing your consumers, reaching them, pricing accordingly, and so on. It’s a business, and lofty ideals mean nothing in terms of dollars and sense. Writers are lucky in that they don’t require a factory – those steel workers could never go “indie” – but on the other hand, they’re pretty much on their own. Nobody says it’s going to be easy

Bingo. Self-publishing in a nutshell

I’m a self-publishing failure – http://pulse.me/s/k7ygQ

LeanPub – Another Self-Publishing Venture

LeanPub seems to be a little different than some of the other self-publishing enterprises popping up all over the place. It’s similar to some in that you, the author/publisher, sell directly to your readers (they’re not a distributor) and they take a (small) cut for the use of their tools and platform. They offer some interesting variations, such as making it easy to turn your blog into a book, or your book into a blog, and they use Dropbox to sync your simple text files into their ebook generation software.

They also encourage publishing your work-in-progress, which can be interesting. I’ve put up the first two chapters of my current novel-in-writing, Prisoners of Perfection, available for free (of course) in case anyone is interesting in following along, providing feedback, etc … It’s the sequel to “Entropic Quest”, a collaborative venture with my son. We enjoyed the first one so much we had to do another, and this one has a lot of potential (we like to think).

LeanPub offers some promotional tools as well, coupons, tweets, reader email list notification, and such. The quality of the ebooks they format for you seems to be very good. So far I’m enjoying the site.

feedbooks: where the foreign language readers are?

I put La Acera Secreta (Secret Sidewalk in Spanish) on both Smashwords and Feedbooks for free last week. Total downloads so far:

Feedbooks: 133

Smashwords: 1

Feedbooks is a European company and 68% of those downloads are from Spain, but the rest are mainly from Latin America, where it seems Smashwords doesn’t have a presence.

Some numbers on downloads, ratings and reviews

Zombie Nights is just about to hit 50,000 downloads on Smashwords (3 years in), where it is now the #7 most downloaded ebook from that website, trailing two Smashwords’ user guides, one Islamic baby name book and 3 erotica titles. There have been very few other titles breaking into that top 10 free list over the past two years, which makes me think that fewer and fewer people are following the ‘free’ route towards readership these days, preferring instead to test the cold hard sales waters. That’s all well and good. It’s a thriving new market, or perhaps one that is not all that new at all. A very interesting article on the business of literature provides a lot of history and perspective on bookselling and is well worth reading. Our current era may be more like an earlier time than we realize.

I often come across comments in self-publishing blog posts that numbers are interesting to indie authors, so I thought I might offer some here regarding Zombie NIghts during its 50,000-Smashwords-download-jubilee-day celebration. (Overall downloads for Zombie Nights, including Apple, Amazon and Barnes & Noble, Feedbooks, Obooko, Google Books, Sony, Kobo and Smashwords, are somewhere around 150,000).

On Smashwords.com its overall rating is 3.73 based on 33 reviews – note a mere 33 reviews, only 1 every 1515 downloads.

On Amazon a scant 10 reviews nets it a 2,5 rating, while on Goodreads there have been 107 ratings, including 29 text reviews, for an average of 2.76

As usual, Apple readers are more  generous. 155 ratings on iTunes give it a 3.5 rating, while on Barnes and Noble, 101 ratings give it 3.0 stars. On Sony there’s been only 1 review (5 stars), and on Kobo 3 ratings give it 3 stars overall. On Google Books, 8 reviews give it an average of 4 stars.

I’ve noticed this pattern is typical of most of my books: Smashwords and Apple readers are often a full star more generous than Goodreads and Amazon reviewers. Theories have been offered, but it’s only guesswork. The main thing is, reviews remain sparse as a percentage of downloads. I have not gone out of my way to ask for reviews of this book or done any sort of marketing or advertising for it, other than having it show up on getfreeebooks.com, a site I always recommend to free-ebook-offerers.

experiment in español

I treated myself to a Spanish translation of Secret Sidewalk (La Acera Secreta) and have posted it in most of the usual places in most of the usual ways (smashwords, kindle, feedbooks, liibook), and it will be very interesting to see what happens. Expectations are low.

One thing I like is how liibook now offers the possibility of “pay with a tweet” so I changed all the books I’ve posted there for free to use that instead. Another experiment! I wrote to Smashwords asking if they were considering offering this, and they responded “That’s not something we were considering, but I’ll definitely pass this idea along to the team.”

I’m counting on certain superstitions to ensure a good result from these endeavors. Liibook is from Argentina and an Argentine just became Pope. Also, today is the thirteenth and that’s got to be a good sign :}

Related articles

• Secret Sidewalk has a day (pigeonweather.wordpress.com)

Wake Up: Real Writers Are On Their Own

Reblogged from Mike Cane’s xBlog:

The Outrage of the Week is the revelation that Random House is out to screw people with their new self-publishing scheme.

Just Shut the Fuck Up. No, really.

For years I have screamed -- screamed! -- about how the Big 6/4 are out to screw writers.

Read more… 852 more words

I've been awake to this for decades!

Macedonia (gets a little love)

Assuredly this book is not for everyone. No book is, and some are far more eclectic than others. All books rely on their readers. Many are “aimed” at a specific “target” audience and use tried and true techniques for “hitting” that target (putting those suggestively violent aspects in quotes) – from cover art to directed advertising to product placements in various arrangements. For those books whose potential audience is small, anarchic and scattered, it can be something of a rarity when they actually do find a kindred reader. Their chances are elevated when there is a gatekeeper of sorts, a champion with their own audience. I discovered a lot of such books through the prism of Susan Sontag, who was a great hero for obscure, forgotten and often odd authors from around the world, such as Robert Walser, to give one example.

Macedonio Fernandez is one of those writers who, while well-known in his native Argentina (mainly as a friend and mentor of Jorge Luis Borges), could fairly be classified as less than universally recognized. His most famous novel is famous mostly not for the novel itself, but for the proliferation of prologues which precede it, a series of early post-modernist, even dadaist introductions that are full of deep humor, charm and playfulness. Written in the 1920′s, it was one of those works that remain well ahead of its time for decades. He even declared the book to be “open source” in the sense that he invited future writers to take it and rewrite it as they felt like. And I, a great fan of open source and one to never hesitate to make a fool of myself, decided to do just that.

I called the book “Macedonia“. The title may change in the future, as it does confuse people with the country of that name. Perhaps I will called ‘The Macedoniad’. I don’t know. In any case, the book was based on two strains of the Macedonio Fernandez legend. One is the prologues of  aforementioned “Museum of Eterna’s Novel“, and the other is a story from his real life, in which it is alleged his friends and followers went around the city distributing scraps of paper with his name on it as a farce of a political campaign for the presidency. In my version, the character named Macedonia is the pseudonym of a radio broadcaster who intersperses the telling of the time with ridiculous factoids. She has attracted the devotion of a group of homeless children who decide to distribute her name all over town – ‘Macedonia Presidenta’ – during a time of military dictatorship. Consequences ensue.

There is a strong element of post-modernism in the book, which is out of fashion nowadays in our post-post-modernist world, and some elements of magical realism, which is also no longer in favor. These are two reasons why the book is not likely to find kindred readers. You’d have to time travel and space-shift a bit. The book should probably have been written by an Argentine writer sometime in the early 1970′s and published in Argentina as well. I really wish I had the power to make that happen! I’m not sure why, but it seems you cannot read a contemporary book as if it were not a contemporary book! When we read an older book, we know it’s older and take it in that context, but if it’s written now, and published now, by a person living now, we don’t frame it the same way. That’s just how it is.

One of the great things about the current e-book flurry is that even the unlikely becomes likely, as a statistical matter. If enough people download a free e-book, some one or more are bound to be a kindred reader. It may be only one out of a thousand, or one out of a hundred thousand, but then it’s merely a matter of sample size! This is one reason why, for writers like myself who write books that don’t easily fit into existing categories, or are generally eclectic in nature, giving away the books for free is the best way for those books to find any audience at all. It becomes harder due to the ratings systems – most of the readers who find these books will not be kindred and will rate them low, making it less likely for others to even try them in the first place – but every now and then you get lucky. That happened to “Macedonia” just now on Amazon:

 An Exciting Find – post postmodern at its best March 5, 2013

The Amazon product page for this book is worthless as an introduction to or description of what you’ll find when you download this book and read it. Maybe this will help. Here is a more or less randomly selected excerpt:“The novel will consist of many parts. Each of these is called a chapter. The chapters will be very small. Each chapter will focus on one, and only one, aspect of the novel. The chapters will be short because I do not have much time. I can only write in short bursts and I am easily bored.”

Now, I have loved this stuff since the 60′s, from William S. Burroughs on the left coast to Donald Barthelme in New York, by way of Texas. It’s all called “postmodern”, but since the early 70′s we’ve all been heading toward post-postmodernism anyway. If you find this kind of fiction at all agreeable, you should try some Lichtenberg.

For what it’s worth this seems a little bit old school, and I mean that in a good way. A lot of the current work is too showy and too cute-clever. A lot of it is navel gazing and lame, maybe even spineless. Lichtenberg’s work has a little more muscle. Even as he playfully suggests, over and over, that you are in charge of the reading experience as the reader, he is actually in total control of what’s going on and of what you are experiencing. You are being entertained, educated and manipulated. You are being experimented on, but it will feel good, (like a lab experiment that activates the pleasure centers of your brain.)

But all of this is way too heavy. This is meant on at least some level to be fun and it is. There are some marvelous turns of phrase; some playful deception; a lot of joy and a bit of subtle aggression. There is much here to think about or to just appreciate. This is a great find.

I would certainly encourage you to take a look at this and see what you think. Please note that I found this book while browsing Amazon Kindle freebies. I have no connection at all to the author or the publisher of this book.

I’d like to thank the reviewer, but that’s not advisable on sites like Amazon, so I will just say ‘thank you’ right here.