How to Join the eBook Revolution.
by Graham Murray
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 by Graham Murray
Published by Living Books USA
All
rights reserved. Cover design by author.
Are you thinking of publishing your book? In today’s world, the question is, “Paper or Digital?” Which option is most profitable for you, and how do you go about getting your title published?
For Kinsley, as always.
* * *
How to Join the eBook Revolution.
What is an eBook?
I should perhaps start by answering a question that I have been asked several times over the past few months. Strange as it may sound, the question is, “What is an eBook?”
There are indeed many people, especially from the previous two generations, who are not familiar with the concept of an ‘eBook’ or even a ‘digital’ book. To them, a book is a collection of pages bound together to form a tangible block of paper that one can flip through and read the words. They know these as ‘books’.
Ahh, those halcyon days . . . the smell of the ink, the feel of the paper, the joy of letting your eyes trace down the . . .
But, I digress. Technology marches on at an alarming rate, leaving those who choose not to follow choking in its dust. So, while wiping away a tear of reminiscence, I can reveal to those not ‘in the know’ that an eBook (electronic book) is just that; an otherwise normal book that is not printed on paper and which smells like heaven, but a relatively new format readable on a computer screen (digital) and which smells of nothing. Except the reek of money, if you’re lucky.
These book-reading, hand-held computers come in many different forms, from the ubiquitous PC to smaller devices such as Amazon’s ‘Kindle’ and the ‘Nook Book’ as offered by distributor, Barnes & Noble. And these are just the tip of the digital reader iceberg. Some mobile phones and other dedicated devices that can fit in your pocket are also now eBook capable. These include the iPad and iPhone among others. Every computer manufacturer is launching their own version. No doubt there are more being released as I write, sorry, type. The trend is for smaller, more convenient readers with special emphasis on portability, colour capabilities, interactivity and global communication.
Thus, less is more.
Size Matters
At the very least, one age old question has finally been put to bed, to whit, ‘Does size matter?’ To which the answer is now a resounding, ‘You bet it does!’
I don’t care if yours is bigger than mine. I can keep mine in my purse and it works on batteries.
Now that we are all on the same page regarding eBooks, the next obvious question is, “Paper or digital?” This question could have been asked as, “How long is a piece of string?”
Like all such questions, it can be answered with that most famous of all answers, “It depends.”
And indeed it does. Very much so. It depends on whether you want to sell your book, or have it sitting in your attic collecting dust and serving as a food source for moths and silverfish. I know, it’s a tough one but, as writers, we soldier on.
There is an old adage that the best book ever written will never be published. I concur. t is likely either sitting on a laptop somewhere, or is in an attic being eaten by moths and silverfish. Why? Because the author has either never attempted to have it published, or has had it turned down so many times by traditional publishers that they finally just gave in and tossed it aside, much to the delight of the attic insects.
The advent of the eBook has changed all this, forever.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Now if you want your work published, it can be in full view of the world in mere minutes. Even if your manuscript had been accepted by a traditional paper publishing house, it can often take up to a year or longer before it finally makes it onto the bookstore shelves and, once there, it has a limited lifespan before being unceremoniously tossed aside to become . . . well, you know the rest.
Diamonds are forever, they say. So are eBooks. And like diamonds, eBooks have no real measurable shelf life, no ‘Sell By’ date and are always in demand. Plus, they invariably cost nothing to publish. This is a price we call all afford to pay. Yes, I am talking about the best way to do most things; do-it-yourself, or DIY. In the ‘biz’, we call this self-publishing, vanity publishing or, more acceptable, Indie Publishing - ‘Indie’ meaning ‘independent’ in this case.
Gone are the days of sending out your precious manuscript to publishers; a manuscript that you have nurtured for years and over which you gave blood, sweat and tears, not to mention possibly your job, your spouse and in some extreme cases, even your kids.
And at the end of the day and for all your effort and sacrifice, you have a cute little stack of rejection slips, i.e. “Sod Off!” or “Thanks, but no thanks,” letters that are in the attic, gathering dust . . . etc.
The Magic by Numbers
Let us take a moment to look at the current state of traditional publishing and where it is going. Or not, as the case may be.
Over the past few years, publishing houses have been feeling the crunch from independent publishers, not to mention constant pressure from environmentalists to ‘Save a Tree’ by going digital.
Consider this press release from, “Print and Digital Books Reflect Seasonal Sales Patterns According to AAP Publishers' April 2011 Report.” Thursday, 23 June 2011 by Andi Sporkin
A breakdown of key cited April 2011 figures is below.
Trade net revenue and rankings for April 2011:
Adult Hardcover - $111.4 million
Adult Paperback - $95.9M
E-Books - $72.8M
Religious Books (all formats) - $48.5M
Children’s/Young Adult Hardcover - $41.2M
Children’s/Young Adult Paperback - $36.8M
Adult Mass Market Paperback - $28.5M
Net sales for all Trade categories, ytd 2011 vs. ytd 2010:
Jan-April 2011 - $1671.9M
Jan-April 2010 - $1712.4M
Percent change: -2.4%
Digital format growth:
E-Books
April 2011 - $72.8M
April 2010 - $28.3M
Percent change: +157.5%
Total Professional books:
April 2011 - $50.5M
April 2010 - $54.3M
Percent change: -7.0%
Clearly, these numbers speak for themselves, but there’s more behind the scenes. The drop in traditional publishing has seen not only a decline in the number of new title acquisitions, thereby decreasing the chances of your manuscript being accepted, but has also forced an increase in the number of employee redundancies as bookstores face consolidation in order to survive. This in turn will reduce the number of titles that brick and mortar stores can, or will, carry.
So why does this drop in figures have such an impact on the industry as a whole?
We have to consider the traditional publishing methods and their production line. First, like it or not, books are expensive to manufacture, distribute and of course, promote. You also have to take into account the amount of work that goes into each viable title.
Each title accepted by a publisher requires editing, which is a time-consuming process. Each title also requires artwork for its covers, which can also be expensive and labor-intensive. All new titles require all the promotional paraphernalia associated with them. And then there’s the considerable shipping and distribution costs.
It all adds up. And from whose pocket do these costs come? The publisher’s, right? Wrong. No, all costs are deducted from the profits that sales of your book may generate. You get what remains at the end of the line, but only once you have paid for all those returned copies that didn’t sell. So you could end up with as little as 5% of the cover price per title. This is often even much smaller. Profits of less than 1% are common. In some cases, you could technically end up owing the publisher.
I speak from experience when I say that in listing one of my novels at $12.99 with an extremely well-known distributor, I received a whopping one penny per sale from some channels. That’s right, $0.01c/per copy sold. Other channels for the same title earned me an astonishing $1.62 per copy. So how many copies would I have to sell in order to buy my daughter say, a new ‘Barbie’ doll at $21.99?
Okay . . . Next!
But wait, there’s more! Not only this, I have to sell that number of books consistently every month for a long time if I want the title to stay on the shelves. Once sales drop, the book is pulled from the shelves and all unsold copies are returned to the publisher for a full refund - which comes out of your profits. Your shelf space is then available for the next title and it all starts again. Bear in mind that you have only a few weeks for your book to make its mark on the public. If it looks like not selling, it will be pulled and junked.
So, in a nutshell, making a living through writing is a one-in-a-million chance. In paper form, that is. Not so with eBooks.
By comparison, the same title I mentioned in digital format raked me in a colossal $11.04 per copy sold. No rocket science required there, then. Which would you prefer? Guess what I did? Yep, and it’s still selling. I do not recall when last I sold a paperback version of this title and now no longer even look. If it’s part of my royalty check, then all well and good, but I no longer monitor paperback sales. All of my work is now in digital format only, for obvious reasons. And I do it all myself. For free. Not only this, I liked it so much that I launched my own publishing house, which is doing well. That, as they say, is a result.
How Does Your Garden Grow?
Book publishers are limited in the number of new titles they can publish each year because each book requires editing, artwork, promotional flaps, production, sales support, inventorying and shipping.
How well will your paperback sell? Again, how long is a piece of string? It is almost impossible to predict how well a given title may sell, if at all. Consumerism is erratic at best; making predicting print runs for publishers a hit-and-miss affair for the most part. It’s like predicting the weather; we have a good idea what will happen today, but tomorrow is anyone’s guess – and it is a guess. Granted, this is an educated guess, but it’s an estimate no less and based on several in-house factors that are ‘trade secrets’.
One would think that after several centuries of book production, publishers would have more of a clue as to how a particular title will sell. Not so. If they knew what would become a best-seller, they would be welcoming all manuscripts, just in case the one you happen to be sitting on is a gold mine. So much for psychics and fortune-tellers, then.
Survival of the fittest
Many publishers lose money on most of their titles and compensate by relying on a few ‘best-sellers’ to make up the difference. So if your first book is not an instant hit, what does the future look like for your next title through the same publishing house? Will they welcome your next masterpiece with open arms?
And don’t forget, if a publisher does get the print run wrong for a title and floods bookstores with a dud title, these books are returned for a full refund by the publisher. It’s a so-called “Sale or Return” business. Whatever gets sent back comes out of your profits. Now ask me if you control print run numbers (or anything else for that matter).
Once you hand over your manuscript and agree to let the publisher handle ‘everything’, your presence and opinion is rarely needed or requested. All you can hope for it that somewhere along the line you receive a royalty check. If sales are good, this could be once every quarter, once every six months or, in some cases, once a year. Not exactly regular income, is it?
All of this is assuming that your book is in fact a good seller, and by this I mean thousands or tens of thousands of copies sold on a regular basis. But the story doesn’t end there. Not only are you in competition with many thousands of other new titles, you also have to compete with the so-called ‘midlist’ as well. The midlist is the books that continue to sell quite well and which can remain on the shelves for a considerable period, often years, such as the classics and former bestsellers.
Before a title can be considered in the midlist, it has to meet certain criteria and a threshold of sales, usually in the thousands per year, year after year. And they have to do this on their own merit with little or no promotion from either the publishers or the bookstores, who simply cannot afford to promote all the titles on their list. In other words, good writing sells well.
Never enough Space
Whatever happened to the previous best-sellers that have now been relegated into obscurity simply because there is not enough shelf space to display them? Were these titles still available, they would no doubt still be selling in large numbers. They are now usually only available in digital format. It also means that new generations rarely get to see these books as they are no longer promoted and are difficult to obtain.
This being so, one has to consider physical book space. While digital books do not occupy tangible space, printed books do, and a great deal of it. Bookstores are physically limited in the number of titles they can carry and display. The larger bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders in the US, and Whitestones and Foyles in the UK, are limited to around 100,000 titles at any given time, whereas, as last estimate, digital giant ‘Amazon’ had 2.5 million titles listed and counting. The laptop on which I am typing this eBook has enough storage space to hold all of these books, including all their associated cover artwork. With eBooks, physical space is simply not a consideration. My servers have over 10 terabytes of storage space, and all of it is portable. That’s about enough space to carry every book ever printed.
We’d like to help you, but . . .
As a first time author, you will receive little or no support and promotion from traditional publishers, it being assumed that the author will do their level best to promote their own work, such as arranging in-store signings and physically distributing books to bookstores - if you can convince the stores’ management to agree to carry the title. Think of the work involved in doing that. In this sense, having a good publisher becomes paramount. This translates to having a good literary agent to do all the ‘dirty work’ for you. And agents are not shy when it comes to taking their cut of profits.
Merely having your book accepted by a publisher is not in itself a guarantee of success, which is why so many authors change publishers, providing they have not signed contracts that have tied their hands and which could lead to the title’s demise through lack of promotional endeavour.
The music industry works in much the same way inasmuch as any new song is only going to be as good as its promoter. How did you get to hear about the new song you like? On the radio? On an MTV-type TV show? Through word of mouth? Consider how the song got there in the first place. Movies we watch that portray new musicians ‘doing the rounds’ of the recording companies are not far off the mark. It takes a great deal of determination and shoe leather to promote just about anything. And the longer it takes, the less likely you are of finding success as your title/song falls out of fashion. This is why the WWW is so popular. You can promote anything around the world without ever leaving your seat, if you know how.
Where in the world . . . ?
Regardless of your promotional abilities, you are still geographically limited, usually to within your own country, or perhaps even just your own state or regional borders. Few people have the time or resources to promote their work outside of a certain geographical radius, and certainly not abroad. If you want to make your title available in other countries, it will have to be translated and re-printed in the appropriate language; Dutch, German, French, etc. Who will do this for you? I live in a state eight hundred miles wide and six hundred miles deep. How could I possibly drive around dropping off books to stores? Yes, I could ship them, but at what cost? Usually the cost of shipping exceeds the unit price of the item being shipped. It’s just not feasible.
Most books, therefore, remain within their own country and in the local language. Few publishers have the ability to publish titles worldwide. Although I hold worldwide rights on all of my titles, I still spend a considerable amount of time ensuring that these titles’ promotional material is current. While I am able to do this electronically, I do have to repeat the entire process for each country wherein my books are available – a tedious and time-consuming task; time that could be better spent writing new material. I could of course hire somebody to do this for me, but this expense will come directly from sales profits.
The vast majority of first-time authors receive royalties that amount to between 5-10% of the title’s retail price; the rest goes towards publisher’s fees, printing costs, distribution and promotion. Some of this can be consumed by the use of agents and discounts to help promote the work. It all adds up, and it all comes out of potential profits. Digital books do not have these overheads.
If you do manage to become a huge success, then you will see your profit margins rise, often up to 40% if you’re an author of note and value, but this is the exception rather than the rule. Many authors do not sell a single copy of their brainchild masterpiece.
Our shrinking planet
However we look at it, printing paper books is an expensive business. In the Western world, we still complain about book prices, which can be high. A hardback novel can be between $20 and $30, while paperbacks can be as high as $10-$15. If we are complaining about these prices, imagine how these numbers appear to people in developing and less-privileged countries.
Such numbers may be an entire months’ salary for some people in the world. Are they likely to use this to buy your book, or feed their families? What about literacy levels? Many countries around the world have poor levels of literacy, meaning your book has very little value to them whatsoever, apart from as a firelighter, or as something softer than a dock leaf for ‘personal use’.
Overall, books in printed form are poorly supported by traditional publishers and this leads to readers being denied access to titles they may otherwise have enjoyed, simply because these titles cannot be published and distributed. The eBook evolution has removed these constraints. Now, almost any book is available anywhere in the world at a fraction of the price of their paper cousins and is well within the budgetary restrictions of millions of potential new readers. Even some of the remotest islands on the planet now have access to the World Wide Web.
A Brave New World
The world of the eBook is a very different place. In fact, it’s a whole ‘nuther world entirely. The WWW (W3) has become a virtual utopia for writers, who can now publish almost anything they wish, all at a click of a button. Not only this, but promoting your book is limited only by the amount of time your are prepared to sit in front of your computer at home. You can easily create websites to promote and sell your book as no paper copies are required, only a small digital file. There are many avenues of promotion open to eBooks.
You can now even make a home video of yourself promoting the book and post this on ‘YouTube”. You may become a ‘star’ through your video alone as some of them are hilarious. There are also many ‘social networking’ websites that are effective platforms from which to promote your book - if you don't mind the risk of identity theft, spyware and other nasties on the Internet. (Technically, it is actually the ‘World Wide Web’ (WWW), which is a program that sits on top of a network known as the ‘Internet”. We have all just come to use the word ‘Internet’, albeit incorrectly, to mean the WWW.)
So now, with a single website address, your eBook can be made available to millions of potential readers worldwide. With modern, secure payments systems, obstacles such as determining exchange rates and payment methods are taken care of for you. Consider also that, unlike brick and mortar bookstores, the Internet never closes.
You effectively have 24/7 promotion of your book and you need do nothing more than set it all up and let it run. These days, you do not even need any webpage writing skills; it is all automated and built for you at no extra cost.
A full website with all the modern features should cost no more than $10/month. It should also come with a dizzying amount of storage space available for you to promote your work to your heart’s content. Once you have done this, you can fine-tune your promotion techniques and sit back to reap the benefits. Of course, you may not sell a single copy, which is often the case, but you are more likely to sell copies of an eBook on the Internet than one (or many) sitting in your attic and gathering dust.
And the price is . . . free!
Unlike paper books, eBooks have the added advantage that writers can offer a ‘free sample’ of the work in order to entice potential readers to purchase the full title. We can now literally ‘test drive’ books. There is a great deal of psychology behind the amount of sample you offer on your book. If you think about it, the larger the sample the more likely you are to make a sale as the reader becomes more hooked on the story and wants to know how it ends.
I rely heavily on this technique for new releases and all of my July, 2011 releases have a coupon attached to them, making many of them free to selected readers, i.e. regulars who follow my work.
You are more likely to sell an eBook with a 60% sample than one with a 10% sample. Ten percent is not enough to draw the reader in, whereas with a 60% sample, the book should be well on the way to entering its finale.
As the author of an eBook, you can also very often control the digital rights management (DRM) to it, meaning you can make it available across different reader formats and even subject it to ‘lending’ parameters where, once purchased, a title can be lent to other readers, just as libraries do. You receive no payment, but you do receive something just as valuable in return - more exposure and promotion of your work and style.
Something for Nothing
Everybody expects something for nothing. Digital books are no different. This is why many writers will make available free copies of some of their work. I call these ‘sacrificial books’ as they are designed to entice readers to seek out your other works and purchase them.
Believe it or not, it really works. And it works well. At any given time, I usually have six or more titles available for free on the Internet or on one of my websites in the hope that readers enjoy my literal ‘voice’ and will seek out my other, longer works and purchase these. So far, I am not complaining and have made my living as a writer for years.
Just like real libraries and book collections, readers can now create and maintain digital libraries of their books. These are easy to create and maintain; usually simply a case of drag-and-drop or even clicking on a title will add it to your library, complete with a beautiful full-colour cover and synopsis. I can see a time where eBook covers will become something of collector’s pieces, similar to postage stamps and baseball cards.
The Internet also allows for easy reviewing of books. You can read reviews yourself to determine if a particular title appeals to you before you purchase it (or download the sample if available).
For now, let us revisit the concept of the ‘free sample’ of an eBook. Why do this at all? All advertising, whatever the product, has one aim in mind and it’s all competing for the same thing, namely your attention. If a promotion is lucky, it also gets your money. But ultimately, the initial drive is to win your attention over the competitors’ attempts. Now, what to do with your attention once it has been won, bearing in mind that you had a choice of millions of other possible alternatives? Here is the simple psychology behind offering a free sample of your work (or complete titles).
Let’s say you have available a 300-page novel and you make 75% of it available as a ‘free sample’. Now consider the reader. If they accepted your offer, they have invested a great deal of time in reading the first 200 pages of your novel when suddenly . . . it ends.
If they have read this far, what are the odds that they will splash out the few dollars needed to discover how the story concludes? They are much more inclined to purchase the remainder of the book if you have drawn them in by allowing them to become embroiled in the story by offering the first three-quarters of it for free.
Some writers choose to give away entire books (‘sacrificial’ books) in the hope that you enjoy their work and will actively seek out further titles and purchase them for a few dollars. Many full-length eBook novels are available for $2.99 – half the price of a good cup of Joe from . . . Shh, you know who.
Out With the Old
As mentioned previously, I have now ceased publishing my work in paperback. When the current batch has run its course, that’s it. No more paperbacks. And I can’t say that I’m sorry to see them go. Yes, I loved the covers and the feel of them and the fact that I could sign and personalize them for friends and family and light fires with them, but . . .
Why am I not sorry to see their demise? Simple. Profit margins. I earn peanuts from paperbacks compared to the same titles in eBook format. The $20,000 I earned from paperbacks last year will, through very little effort, become $150,000+ this year.
Any eBook can earn me in excess of 85% of the title price, whereas the same title in paperback usually pulls in less than 10%. As previously stated elsewhere in this eBook, one of my titles actually earned one penny from each $12.99 sale, and at best, peaked at a mere $1.62. The same title in digital format earns me over $11 for every copy sold, regardless. It’s a no-brainer. Simply put, I literally earn 10-20x more profit from eBooks than paperbacks. And in the process, I saved a tree or six. Tree-huggers love me. And read my books, especially the ones about trees . . .
Preparing a manuscript for paperback release is time-consuming and restrictive. I can have the same eBook title ready to go in under a minute because I use pre-prepared templates. I simply dump the completed manuscript into the template, rename it, hit ‘Publish’ and it’s done. I literally make my new titles available for purchase, complete with full-colour cover, synopsis and description in the time it takes me to enjoy a cup of tea (yes, I am British).
I also currently also have most of my titles listed with a particular distributor where I earn 85% from direct sales and 70% from affiliate sales. Even the world’s largest online eBook distributor comes nowhere near these profit margins. Plus, I have the added advantage of running my own websites where I actively promote my work and push readers towards my listings. I don’t even have to deal with online purchases; it is all done for me at a minimum charge, usually 1-2% of the title price.
Dad, what’s a book?
Never make the mistake of attempting to entice readers with free samples of work you consider mediocre as this can have the opposite of the desired result. Always make available a free sample of what you consider your best work. Don’t fall into the trap of giving away a freebie of what you feel is your lesser work, expecting readers to actively seek out more of your work. You may already have chased them away. Always put your best foot forward.
The idea of the free sample is to reach an audience, and the best way to do this is to offer your best work. Once a reader is hooked on your style, they may then seek out and purchase your lesser-known titles. It never works the other way around. Ever.
One major advantage that eBooks have over their paper counterparts is that they are amazingly portable. Electronic readers such the ‘Kindle’ and the ‘Nook Book’ have the ability to hold thousands of novels at any given time - all in a box of tricks one quarter of an inch thick and no bigger than a small paperback. Try carrying around a thousand paperbacks. Most readers can hold your entire book collection in one easy-to-access location.
Not only do readers have incredible storage capacity as eBook files are small, they also have many other desirable features such as full-colour screens, electronic bookmarking, always opening where you last left off, and of course, interactive comment sharing. You can read others’ comments and synchronize these with your own comments. Readers also have built-in dictionaries and thesauri. For me, simply clicking on a word calls up the built-in digital OED (Oxford English Dictionary) so I can read the definition of a word - a very useful feature for a writer. If you’re a bit peculiar, you can even open a copy of the OAD (Oxford American Dictionary); a classic example of an oxymoron.
As these new readers also contain networking abilities, you can have books you purchase sent to your reader in seconds from almost anywhere in the word. The new models also allow you to ‘surf the web’, making them even more powerful. Soon they will no doubt perform other amazing feats, pushing the paperback further into obscurity.