Springtime in the Sonoran Desert

I arrived in Arizona last night with my wife. For the next two days, we’ll be staying with friends in their home surrounded by a stunning desert landscape. There are very few landscapes prettier than the Sonoran desert in the spring. I’ve been all over the world, and except for the dunes of Namibia, I believe the Arizona desert is the most beautiful in the world.

From here, we will drive down to Tucson for the Tucson Festival of Books. I’m a panelist in three sessions: Amazon for Authors, What to Expect With Self-Publishing, and Genre Writing. There will be a lot of great authors at the event and the festival ought to be fun. If you love books, there is no better place to be this weekend.

After the festival, we go to San Diego for two weeks of thawing out. There was little snow in Nebraska this year, but I could answer my wife’s question about the temperature with the fingers of a single hand. We have quests and family visiting us, but I should have plenty of time to catch a few waves.

Before returning home to Omaha, we’ll fly to New York City for 10 ten days to see our other grandchildren. My wife said something about shopping, but I’m sure I can bribe the grandkids to distract her.

When we get home after a month, our new house will be waiting. We’ll have more boxes to unpack, pictures to hang, paraphernalia to buy, and lots of handyman tasks. Maybe we’ll stay away longer, in hope that things will just sort themselves out. Fat chance.

Panelist at Tucson Festival of Books

The Tucson Festival of Books (March 15-16) is the largest book festival in the southwest. Featured authors include: Richard Russo, Alice Hoffman, Scott Turow, Sandra Day O'Connor, Craig Johnson, and Jacqueline Woodson. The agenda has been finalized and I’ll be a panelist in three sessions.

Amazon for Authors                                       Saturday, March 15         1:00-2:00           

  

What to Expect with Self-Publishing               Sunday, March 16            10:00-11:00        

Genre Writing                                                Sunday, March 16            2:30 to 3:30        

If you’re in the neighborhood, come on over. It’s a load of fun and I’ll be pleased to meet you, as will many other authors at the event. Book signing, author panels, industry seminars, and good food. What could be better?

Publishing Trends Viewed from an Omaha Armchair

The digital revolution continues to roil publishing, so here are a few of my recent observations. I suspect at least three of these five are correct. It’s your job to figure out which three.

1. Shift from books to e-books is leveling out
2. Content becoming more profitable than e-reader devices
3. Amazon continues to innovate ahead of traditional publishers
4. Traditional publishers are adapting
5. Indie-e-books are a saturated market

Can traditional publishers fight off the pesky indies?

Shift From books to e-books is leveling out

For the prior five years, my printed book sales as a percent of total sales have declined. Until this year. In 2013, the ratio of print, e-book, audio, and large print sales have all held steady with 2012. In fact, in recent months, I have seen a slight resurgence in printed books. I suspect this means that the e-book phenomenon has reached a mature state.

Content becoming more profitable than e-reader devices

Amazon appears to be shifting its e-book strategy, with increased emphasis on content rather than on selling Kindles. Device prices have dropped as technology-prone readers have for the most part already purchased Kindles. Now, the big money is in selling content and annual device upgrades. Amazon has taken a couple of subtle steps to nudge e-book prices up, or more precisely to inhibit low or zero priced content.

Amazon continues to innovate ahead of traditional publishers

Amazon has recently started two new programs. The Matchbook feature allows publishers to offer a steeply discounted Kindle version to print book purchasers. This is doubly clever. Matchbook encourages book purchases through Amazon rather than competitors who cannot offer a similar deal on the market-leading Kindle. Matchbook also adds revenue without cannibalizing either format, while at the same time furthering Kindle domination. The second program is called Kindle Countdown Deal, which allows publishers to program discounted e-books for a limited time. The trick here is that Amazon "counts down" the remaining discount days to build urgency into the buy decision. Both of these are attempts by Amazon to increase their control over e-book discounting.

                                         Traditional publishers are adapting

Even a battleship can eventually turn. Traditional publishers are flexing their promotional muscles and showing contract flexibility with their bestselling authors. Mid-list authors aren't getting any better treatment, but they seldom made money for traditional publishers anyway. Few care if they jump ship. It looks like it’s turning into a build your platform first world. By the end of the publishing digital revolution, it’s possible traditional publishers will be more profitable. 

Indie-e-books are a saturated market

First giving away books for free quit working, now it’s hard to sell e-books at 99¢. When there are tens of thousands of e-books published every month, it’s hard for any particular author to get noticed, despite whatever financial shenanigans are employed. As more and more indie-authors experience weak sales, a growing number will pursue other endeavors. This will reduce supply until we reach market equilibrium. In the meantime, indie competition will be a slugfest.

Indie Publishing Rewrites Promotion

Kim McDougall of Castelane, Inc. recently wrote to  ask for permission to re-publish on the new Castlelane website an article I wrote for Turning Point .  I agreed, but in rereading the article, I decided it could use an update. Here is the revised article.

There’s not much you can believe about indie-publishing.  Information from indie-publishing houses is suspect, and most of the other data comes from people who make their living off striving writers.  As someone who has published with a traditional house and indie-published, I’ll try to give you the straight scoop.

First, I Indie-publish by choice.  It didn't start out that way, but now I’m convinced that indie-publishing is the best route for me.

My first book was published by Wiley.  It was an agented, non-fiction book.  After I completed my first novel, Tempest at Dawn, I secured a different New York agent that specialized in fiction.  While the agent shopped my lengthy, historical novel, I wrote a genre Western titled The Shopkeeper.  Since the typical advance for a Western wouldn't make a decent down-payment on a Nissan Versa, my agent declined to represent it.  No problem, I’d indie-publish.

Currently, my novels are in print, large print, audio, and e-book formats.  My large print and audio contracts are traditional contracts with advances, so I still have a foot in each world. I’m making money, but what is more important, my platform continues to grow.  (My agent didn’t sell Tempest at Dawn, so I ended up indie-publishing it as well.)

Why I Stay with Indie-Publishing

That’s how I started indie-publishing, but why do I stay with it after building a respectable platform? Three reasons:  speed, income, and control.

10 Myths of Indie-Publishing

I indie-publish because I like the control and speed. Traditional publishing is far too controlling and works at a glacial pace. I know because I've been traditionally published. Still am. The large print and audio versions of my books are traditionally published with advances. Which brings up a third reason I like indie-publishing—control over the various rights to my work. (Anyone interested in a musical?)

There is a lot of misinformation about indie-publishing, so here is my feeble attempt at myth-busting.

1.    Indie-publishing is a path to wealth

I once owned a tee shirt illustrated with a bum holding a sign that read, “Please help, employed writer.” Except for a select few, writing has never been a lucrative profession. In recent years, there has been a wave of books about how you can sell a gazillion eBooks and soon be doing a Scrooge McDuck dive into a money pool. Not likely … unless you write a book about eBooks being an easy path to wealth. It’s difficult to produce a book thousands want to read, and real wealth won't come until you find hundreds of thousands of fans. However, if you are creative and hardworking, writing can provide a nice supplement to a day job.

2.    Publishing an e-book is free

You can electronically post a book for free, but it would not be published in a professional sense of the word. You need editing and probably professional formatting. The good news is that formatting is relatively inexpensive. The bad news is that editing costs about two cents a word, and proofreading another penny. Do the math. If you choose to proceed without editing and formatting, myth #1 comes into play.

3.    Price your book at 99 cents and you’ll sell a million

The primary marketing task for an indie-author is to stand out from the crowd … and right now the crowd looks bigger than the population of Cairo. For one brief moment you could stand on the shoulders of all the other indie-authors by promoting your book for 99¢ or free. Not anymore. Now low cost books have to figure out how to stand out from the low cost crowd … and if they succeed, they still won’t make serious money. For the most part, this is a yesteryear strategy.

4.    Giving a book away will build a sustaining platform

A free book promotion can generate immediate downloads, but it does not build a sustaining platform. The book will fall back into historic sales patterns soon after the free promotion ends. Free promotions must be done over and over again with each promotion having less impact. And there is no long term advantage. Free book groupies are fans of free books, not specific authors. There is money to be made with free book promotions, but they do not build author platforms.

5.    You can easily use social media to build huge sales

The words easily and huge ruin #5. Promoting a book with social media is hard work, and more important, it must be thoughtful. There is so much hype flying around that whatever you post is quickly dismissed unless the content provides useful information or has an element of cleverness. Huge sales may result from working social media, but only after an extended period of consistent and thoughtful postings. Social media is great, but it is not an easy path to sales.

6.    Amazon needs me—Amazon owes me

Amazon is not your servant. Amazon is a marketplace.

In the Amazon marketplace, Amazon makes the rules. Whenever you chafe at the rules, ask yourself where you would sell your book without Amazon. There are a number of alternatives, but all of them combined do not approach the clout of Amazon. Besides, without Amazon, those alternatives would be less accommodating to indie-authors. Amazon is the single biggest reason there is an indie-publishing revolution.

7.    E-book formatting is a piece of cake

Narrative books can be uploaded with very little special handling. It’s still not a good idea. Any little format glitch distracts the reader from being transported to another place and time. It ruins the magic. If your book is worth hours upon hours of someone’s time, it is worth careful formatting for each brand of eReader. Do it right, or have it done by a professional.

8.    Print Books are Dead

Many indie-authors were drawn to eBooks because they grew up in a digital age and believe the physical world is unreal. Not true. Most readers prefer a physical book or read both formats. Even eBook enthusiasts often check to see if there is a print format before buying. Why? Because it means the author is serious and believes in his work. Like it or not, printed books lend credibility to eBooks.

9.    Networking with other indie-publishers will help build sales

There are many reasons to network with indie-authors, but sales is not one of them. Other indie-authors may share tips, but they’re not great buyers of other indie-author books. When you social network, don’t get sucked into spending all of your precious time chatting it up with other writers. Go find readers.

10.  Everyone has a book in them

Most people don’t. Not even one. Every successful writer writes. They don’t think about it, they do it. Just because indie-publishing has become feasible for the masses doesn’t mean everyone should be pounding away on a keyboard. Some people are better off expressing their creativity in another venue. Here is an easy test to see if you’re a writer. Do you enjoy writing? Is it something you can’t wait to get back to? If you think of writing as work, you’re probably not a writer. Writers love to write. 

Books are such simple creatures

I’m currently going through the galley proof for The Return, A Steve Dancy Tale. In my supposedly perfect manuscript, I've already found over twenty revisions, errors, and typos. After these changes are incorporated into the text, the final step will be proofreading. Getting close.

The publishing process made me think that a book appears deceptively simple. Mental_floss recently published “10 Terms to Describe the Anatomy of a Book.” All of these words describe myriad parts of a book. Not such simple creatures after all.

Leaves

Endpapers

Edges

Wire lines and chain lines

Signatures

Manuscript

Head-piece

Half-title

Foxing

Diaper

Physical books are being shoved to the side by eBooks, so these terms will become increasingly important as books are collected for their aesthetic value. If you interested in the meaning of these terms, you can follow this link to mental_floss.

Book Cover ... by Design

Book cover design is an art ...and I am not an artist. At least, not a visual artist. Previously, I posted a mock-up of the book cover for The Return, A Steve Dancy Tale. The cover I chose was one of twenty-two different mock-ups. Here are a few of these rough prototypes.

The prototype we choose is on the left below, with the final cover to the right.

The cropping, typeface, and coloration were refined. This is a famous 1887 New York City photograph by Jacob Riis, titled Bandits Roost. I especially like Steve Dancy's shadow in the foreground.

Here are the covers for The Steve Dancy Tales. As with any series, there is a consistency in the design. Among other things, all of them use vintage photographs from the period. I'm a little disappointed in the size of my name, but I've been advised that when the author's name becomes larger than the book title, it's a signal that the writing is on a downward slide. We'll keep the name small for the time being. 

Honest westerns filled with dishonest characters

Get a Spine!

The spine is the most undervalued aspect of book design. This is especially true today, when so many indie-books only publish electronically. Writers are doing themselves a disservice by restricting the market for their books. Granted, the majority of my sales are eBooks, but I also sell a respectable number of print books. I do well with libraries, and despite not pursuing bookstores, I've found my novels carried in the big chains and independent stores. Additionally, some readers who prefer electronic books still look to see if there is a print version to strengthen their purchase decision. My recommendation is that authors insist on a printed version. 

If a print format is produced, then a book becomes a three-dimensional object and must have a back cover and spine. The spine is the most important.

Unless you’re a bestselling author, your books will not be stacked on tables at the front of the store, so only the spine will be seen when your book is on a shelf. The same is true for a library. If you want to sell your next book to a library, people must find and check-out your previous books. So pay attention to the spine. Getting sales is tough enough without your book disappearing in a maze of other books screaming for attention.

The perils of being a midlist novelist

The Washington Post has done an article on the perils (and rewards) of being a midlist novelist.  Interesting reading. Mary Doria Russell was dropped by Random House just prior to release of her new book Doc, a novel about the legendary John Henry Holliday. Doc has been on my "to read" list for nearly a year. Now, I think I'll move it to the top of my list.

It’s always been tough for first-time novelists to find a publisher. A dirty little industry secret is that it is much more difficult to get a second book published if the first one flops. Baseball gives you three strikes, after a loss you can run for political office again, a musician can usually get a second gig, but writers get one shot at fame and fortune.

Midlist is a tough place to be. It’s easy to slip into oblivion. Poor sales don’t seem to be the problem with Russell’s books. She seemed well ensconced, with good reviews and a dedicated following.

The traditional publishing industry is in the throes of a massive transformation, and Random House’s actions are indicative of this change. Many have said publishing is going the way of digital music, but I think it is going more in the direction of movies. The big Hollywood studios are in constant search of the next blockbuster, while on the side a thriving indie-film industry nurtures creativity and new talent. I suspect the big publishing houses are turning their backs on back-list and mid-list books. That’s okay. Indie-publishing will fill in the gaps.


Link to WAPO article