virtualDavis

I enjoyed Eric’s lighthanded but thoughtful reflection on the merits of working with a literary agent in the digital age.

The times, they are a-changin’, mes auteurs. The digital age means more books are available in more ways than ever before, which in turn means two things: first, you have that much more competition for eyeballs, and second, you need some way to differentiate yourself from the crowd such that all those eyeballs are reading your book.

 

In short: regardless of whether [or not] you’re going (exclusively) digital, you want an agent… an agent’s multiple talents, myriad connections, and considerable experience will all be great assets to you in your quest for publication. This is true for more than a few reasons…

• If you’re dealing with an editor, an agent is worth his or her weight in gold in terms of contract negotiation (not to mention that going with an agent in the first place generally makes it much easier to get an editor’s attention). This is doubly true as the details of e-rights are being hammered out.
• An agent will secure you a publishing house by way of said editor, meaning he or she is basically getting you editorial input, a marketing team, a publicist, a sales team, and an art department capable of making you a Truly Fancy Cover. Unless you’re the aforementioned Jack/Jane of all trades, this is a huge bonus for you. (You also won’t have to worry about getting your e-book fed out to Amazon, Apple, and the like.)
• You’ve got a buffer between you and your editor/publisher. This means that you can spend your valuable time writing while your agent spends his or her time talking to the editor/publisher (pitching your next project, hounding them for royalty statements, finding out why the awesome cover they helped you negotiate isn’t showing up on Barnes & Noble’s website, &c).
• You have a Fancy Website with lots of loyal visitors. Your agent has a Fancy Website with lots of loyal visitors. If you both add links to your book to your websites/blogs, you get that many more eyeballs reading about (and hopefully soon reading) your book. Agents go to bat for their clients in more ways than one.
• Finally, you get a measure of that e’er elusive brand recognition that separates your book from Joe “DIY” Lunchbucket. If you self-publish on-line, the only one vouching for your work is you. If you have an agent and an editor, you’ve got at least two organizations behind you vouching for your talent and credibility as a writer. (Pimp my Novel)

Manuscript to Kindle ebook conversion services
(photo credit: 52 Novels)

Some names have a way of popping up no matter where you turn. Once upon a time, it was Dixie Cup. Xerox. Ford. CBS. That evolved into Apple, Sony, Toyota and MTV. And later into eBay, Amazon, Prius and the Huffington Post. Today it’s Facebook, Twitter, Tesla and… 52 Novels. Fifty two what? Novels.

Okay, maybe Rob Siders’ ebook ebook design and creation company still isn’t quite as ubiquitous as Twitter or Twitter, but among authors and publishers — or at least among authors self-publishing (or considering self-publishing) their writing — 52 Novels is creeping into blog posts the way Facebook originally did. Almost like a well kept secret. An insiders’ resource. He’s been at it for a decade, mashing up writers’ manuscripts into digital books. And his ebooks are at least as sexy and professional as the print tomes rolling off the old school presses. Sometimes, more so.

Thinking about adding your book to the Amazon KindleStore but don’t know how to start? Frustrated with converting your Microsoft Word file or PDF to a Kindle-friendly format by yourself?

I can help.

My name is Rob Siders and I’ve been designing and creating ebooks for the better part of a decade. I can save you time and hassle by getting your source document to play nice with Amazon’s Kindle format.

Less time plus less hassle equals more time for you to focus on marketing and selling your ebook.

Reasonable rates. Thorough work. Satisfied when you’re satisfied. (52 Novels Kindle Services)

Intrigued? I am. Time to learn more… And to learn who’s offering similar services for Apple’s iBookstore, etc. I don’t just mean Smashwords, FastPencil and Scribd.com which offer conversion/design platforms. I mean individuals who can custom tailor a solution to your book and have enough experience in the publishing world to design a market-worthy ebook. I mean folks like Rob Siders over at 52 Novels. Who do you recommend for ebook production and design?

I can’t help wondering what Penguin Books founder Allen Lane would think about the advent of digital publishing. Of e-books. Of vooks…

It’s one of the best stories in publishing: how Penguin Books began 75 years ago and became what is arguably the most recognized imprint and colophon in the world.

In 1935, Allen Lane was 32 and worked for The Bodley Head, which had been founded by his uncle. Returning from a weekend visiting Agatha Christie and her husband in the country, he had nothing to read and perused a railway bookstall. While looking at the dime novels, pulp fiction and expensive hardcovers, his little grey cells went to work, as Christie’s Hercule Poirot might put it, and he thought: Why not offer literature inexpensively?

Back at The Bodley Head, he proposed publishing high-quality books for six pence each, the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes. Many publishers thought such an approach would ruin the business, but The Bodley Head approved the plan.

The first major hurdle was finding a name. (Shelf Awareness)

In keeping with Lane’s logic, publishing in the digital age will once again recalibrate the cost of purchasing literature. Seventy five years after Penguin Books waddled on stage, which digital publisher is likely to become the “most recognized imprint and colophon in the world”?

Super agent Andrew Wylie has retreated, regrouped and/or renegotiated in his struggle with Random House over ebook rights. After Wylie announced that he would bypass the Big Six publisher by selling his author’s digital work directly to consumers through Amazon.com’s Kindle store, new and old media debates raged. Was this the final nail in the coffin for traditional publishing? Did the authors support Wylie’s bold move? Could he even follow through? Lines were drawn and opinions flared. Much attention was drawn to the plight and future of publishing, but the final verdict is still out. It’s too early to understand Wylie’s decision, but the detente is likely fragile and short lived.

Random House, which publishes 13 of the books in physical format, was outraged at the development and promptly issued a statement announcing that it would not enter any new English-language business agreements with the Wylie Agency – home to 700 authors and estates – until the situation was resolved… A joint statement issued [two days ago] by the publisher and the Wylie Agency said the two parties had “resolved [their] differences”, and that the 13 “disputed” Random House titles… were being removed from Odyssey Editions and taken off sale.

“We have agreed that Random House shall be the exclusive ebook publisher of these titles for those territories in which Random House US controls their rights,” said the joint statement. “The titles soon will be available for sale on a non-exclusive basis through all of Random House’s current ebook customers. Random House is resuming normal business relations with the Wylie Agency for English-language manuscript submissions and potential acquisitions, and we both are glad to be able to put this matter behind us.” (“Truce called in battle over ebook rights” via The Guardian)

Related articles

• Wylie’s Amazon deal brings the end of the publishing world nigh (guardian.co.uk)
• Andrew Wylie, Literary Agent, Plans E-Books (nytimes.com)

Never believe people when they tell you something is impossible, or “that’s not the way things work.” Make your own success or be doomed to fail.

It was this author’s dream. After writing a deeply personal and revealing memoir, The Last Day of My Life, I landed a top agent at the esteemed William Morris Agency (now WME Entertainment). Six months later, I had my first publishing deal and less than a year after that, the book was officially released. Publishing takes a long time, but the wait was worth it. I had hoped that my book would inspire others who were facing troubling times in their lives and I have been humbled by the many emails I have received from strangers who reached out to me since the January publication date.

Then, the unthinkable happened. My publisher abruptly closed its doors at the end of April. The timing could not have been worse. It was just days before the LA Festival of Books, where I had been scheduled to appear. My participation in that event was canceled and it looked like months of effort in landing numerous television and radio appearances and all the print interviews had been for nothing. My old publisher was gracious enough to grant me a reversion of all the rights to my book, along with all the digital files, but what was I to do with them?

“It’s over,” I was told, by most everyone. But I had heard that before. After writing the manuscript for my book, I was told that getting published today was all but impossible. I refused to listen then and I refused to listen now. As Chief Correspondent for the syndicated television news magazine, Inside Edition and as a regular contributor for CNN and HLN and frequent guest host for Larry King Live, I knew that I could continue to land television appearances. I also believed passionately in the message of my book — that no matter what challenges come your way, life is worth living and there is plenty for which we need to be grateful. What better time to put that into practice than here and now?

I reached out to the former head of sales at my old publishing house for guidance. He connected me with both the company which had originally printed my book and with the independent sales team that sold it to stores. My former editor instructed me on how to apply for and secure a new serial number (ISNB) and Library of Congress registration. I hired a talented graphic designer to repackage the book and I came up with a name for my own publishing house: Incognito Books. Within two months, I was “ready for my close-up” again. I timed the launch of my new edition to coincide with an appearance on Dr. Phil, which I had taped in April, but was not airing until July 9. My boss at Inside Edition graciously ran a story about that appearance and on my newly launched book as well. The results exceeded even my wildest expectations.

As I tracked both Amazon and Barnes and Noble sales numbers throughout the day, I watched in amazement over what happened as both shows aired in the various time zones across the country. It was remarkable. By Friday evening, I had hit #1 on Amazon’s “Movers and Shakers” list with an astounding increase of 309,000% in ranking, from number 80,000 to number 31. I also reached #17 on BN.com. I have already ordered a second printing and I am launching the book in all available digital formats in the next two weeks.

I am still at the beginning of what I hope is a long journey as a writer, both for this title and other books I hope to write. Still, I learned a valuable lesson — never take “no” for an answer. The old publishing model is no longer the only one available to writers. (The Huffington Post proves that.) Look hard and be creative and you may just discover a new way to get your message out there. (Huffington Post)

The Beatles (Photo credit: The Economist)

The band of analogue holdouts is gradually dwindling. Because they are so few and so large, the holdouts are valuable: any technology firm that can persuade the Beatles to go digital will reap fat rewards. Theft provides another stimulus. All the analogue holdouts are widely available online—just not legally. That seems to be persuading even Harry Potter to look more closely at digital distribution. As Neil Blair of the Christopher Little agency, which represents J.K. Rowling, admits, holding the books back from e-readers “is not the best strategy for combating piracy”. (The Economist)

The Economist’s July 22 look at media’s analogue holdouts such as “the Beatles, Harry Potter, Bella magazine and the grizzled crew of the Northwestern, an Alaskan crab-fishing boat”. These “digital resisters refuse to distribute over the internet” at least in part because the financial view is decidedly more bleak than the analogue realm where they’re managing to endure. At least so far. Of course, pirated content circulates the net illegally, and this means that there is value being lost by not digitizing. Is the exodus from analogue to digital inevitable?

Related articles

• Ten Bold Predictions for Book Publishing in 2012 (digitalbookworld.com)
• Publishers Otimistic but See Hard Work Ahead (digitalbookworld.com)
• Digitisation and the Enviroment (rhetoric114.wordpress.com)
• Pre digital (sethgodin.typepad.com)

Are you familiar with Ryu Murakami? He’s a successful, established Japanese novelist, and he’s breaking away from the heard with his next novel, A Singing Whale. Although he’s still ironing out the details for an ink and paper edition, he’s releasing the digital version directly to his audience via Apple’s iBookstore, “circumventing his traditional publisher in the process…”

Murakami’s project should be hailed less as a blow against the monopoly of big publishing houses over authors and the circulation of their work, and more as a celebration of the kinds of opportunities that devices like the iPad can provide for creativity and cost-efficient distribution.

Other authors are, however, dispatching more direct challenges to the traditional publishing industry model by signing deals directly with e-book retailers, rather than through their publishers. This spring, bestselling suspense novelist Stephen King released his latest work, Blockade Billy as an e-book one month before releasing the hardcover version in the U.S. and Canada, and published a short story, “UR,” exclusively for the Kindle in February 2009. Other prominent American writers have also sold the e-book rights to past and current work exclusively to Amazon. (Mashable.com)

Wall Street Journal blogger, Yoree Koh, explains that the release and rapid adoption of Apple’s iPad has fueled a world of worry among old guard publishing industry heavyweights who “have feared the worst: thatprecious big-name authors might sign directly with e-book retailers, relegating the old-school publishers as the dispensable middleman.”

Let the nightmare begin. Novelist Ryu Murakami… replaced the publishers with a software company to help develop the e-book titled “A Singing Whale,” or “Utau Kujira” in Japanese. The digital package will include video content and set to music composed by Academy Award winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto… Mr. Murakami’s decision is the latest step taken by well known authors in re-writing the business model of the publishing industry… [By] offering fresh material only in an electronic format, Mr. Murakami’s plan has basically removed the traditional book publisher from the calculation entirely. (Wall Street Journal)

Obvious growing pains will follow such a bold move, but this as an inevitable and exciting evolution as the publishing industry moves away from the Gutenberg Paradigm toward a more audience-centric publishing model. I see this transition not so much as a challenge, but rather as a reminder that content can easily and quickly be packaged into engaging, innovative, multi-modal, portable and user friendly formats. Vook, iBookstore, Kindle and others are leading the innovation, while the lumbering dinosaurs sit by and grumble.

Why? Catch up. Surpass. Imagine an even sexier future! Paper and ink publishing is grand. Aesthetically pleasing, nostalgic, luxurious and enduring in a fragile sort of way. All true. I love books. And they’re here to stay, though their production will not continue to be the primary vessel for publishing content. They’ll likely become a specialty item. Electric format books offer outstanding financial benefits, distribution benefits, and creativity benefits. The biggest challenge will be to storytellers and content providers. It’s time for us to begin dreaming up the next frontier of storytelling, and Ryu Murakami’s A Singing Whale is just the inspiration we need. It’s time to liberate words from their bindings, time to let them soar and dance!

Related:

• Self-publish with Borders and Barnes & Noble
• Self-publish with Apple’s iBookstore
• Publish and Distribute with CreateSpace
• Economics of Self-Publishing
• Inverted Publishing Funnel
• Save Yourself, Save The Industry

Mike Cane has posted a link to the press release posted by Amazon earlier today announcing that Amazon.com is now officially selling more Kindle ebooks than hardcover books. You heard right! With month over month sales growth in the second quarter, the Kindle device seems to have reached a tipping point for growth. (Note that Amazon is distinguishing hardcover sales from all print book sales, but this is a significant step nevertheless.)

There is just one stat that needs to be called out of that press release:

“On July 6, Hachette announced that James Patterson had sold 1.14 million e-books to date. Of those, 867,881 were Kindle books.“

Boldfaced emphasis added by me. James Patterson is like the McDonald’s or Coca-Cola of mass fiction. If he sold most of his books in Kindle format, that settles it.

It would be interesting to know how many of these digital sales result in full readings. I suppose consumers have always overbought, anticipating that they’ll get through an extensive backlog of reading. But I bet there’s a shift with digital consumption. Less likely to buy now, read later? More likely to buy now, read later?

More nuggets of wisdom from Debbie Stier.

The moral of the story is to think differently.  Really differently.  Forget the old way.  It doesn’t work in the new economy.  Stop trying to control; make something useful and help people use it; get out of the way. Re-imagine the future.

If you’re not too sick and tired of the soap boxing, prognosticating and Doomsday ranting about the future of the publishing industry, Debbie Stier is a good level head to follow. She gets it. Goodbye, Gutenberg paradigm. Hello, Socratic paradigm. But she’s not sensational, nor does she submit her readers to the histrionics proliferating lately. It’s simple: create value, share, yield control and stand clear!

Lately the blogosphere is busy dissecting the merits and demerits of self-publishing. Though diverse concerns and hopes abound, the economics of self-publishing is a popular point of debate. Can authors earn a living by self-publishing?

Frankly, it’s still too early in this revolution to answer the question definitively. But as the economics of the publishing industry begin to shift rapidly and radically as they’ve already done in the music business, writers, agents and publishers need to study the financial viability of their occupations. On Thursday author Joe Konrath posted, “How to Make Money on eBooks” offering advice to writers in our post-Gutenberg era. His seven recommendations and Q&A are not groundbreaking news perhaps, but they are straightforward, important and timely for authors (and agents and publishers!)

1. Write a damn good book.
2. Price it right.
3. Format it correctly.
4. Design a professional book cover.
5. Write a great product description.
6. Choose your platform.
7. Publicize your ebook.

I’m going with numbers one and seven as the most obvious but most important reminders. And I’m learning that platform, platform, platform (above and beyond deciding on whether you want to publish your digital book with Kindle or iBookstore…) is rapidly becoming the Holy Grail of the publishing world. So number eight, or maybe seven point five, should be build, improve, expand, support, and LOVE your platform.

Konrath’s Q&A section covers critical territory about agents and the pros and cons of traditional versus self publishing, and he circles around to the question on everyone’s mind: Can authors earn a living by self-publishing?

“I don’t know many people who make a living being traditionally published. Most of my peers have day jobs.That said, I’m making a living self publishing. I’m sure others can and will. But whether you can or not involves a lot of factors, some within your control, some not. But, in my humble opinion, a dedicated writer who turns out good material on a consistent basis will be able to, on average, earn more money self publishing than traditional publishing. I say this having done both.”

This might be the most hopeful publishing industry perspective in months!Read the full post here…

Related:

• Self-publish with Borders and Barnes & Noble
• Ryu Murakami Bypasses Publishers, Opts for iPad
• Self-publish with Apple’s iBookstore
• Publish and Distribute with CreateSpace
• Inverted Publishing Funnel
• Save Yourself, Save The Industry