The Screwpulp Letters: A Look at a New Self-Distribution Model
Screwpulp is one of the latest entries into the self-publishing market and has a business model with a unique twist.
Screwpulp founder Richard Billings notes that his company is not an actual publisher – Screwpulp is solely a distributor of content. Mr. Billings was an amateur writer who saw the difficulties in getting published in the traditional manner and also noticed the many pitfalls that keep authors and readers from getting together on the same field in today’s e-publishing revolution. So after several years of research, and a lot of discussion with both writers and readers, he started Screwpulp, which is currently in the beta stage of testing.
The gist of Screwpulp is this: Any e-book uploaded to the site starts out being a free book. A reader can come in and download one free e-book every day. When they’re done with the book (or the next day), they can download another, but only after leaving a rating and/or review for the last one. As a book gets more ratings and reviews, the price goes up in dollar increments. There is no “top” price, (though naturally after a certain point, price increases become self-defeating). It is actually a rather unique take on the consumer-driven price model, using the basic system of supply and demand in a positive way (being that e-books have a virtually limitless supply).
Screwpulp has been live for about two and a half weeks (as of this publication). The site is pretty easy to follow. While a lot of things that Mr. Billings has planned haven’t been implemented yet, any author can post a book on the site by e-mailing it to the submissions address, along with the usual author info, cover, synopsis, and the like.
When your book does start costing money, you get 75% of the revenue brought in by sales on Screwpulp. That does Amazon up a treat by 5% on royalties. The one question I really had about the concept was about how many downloads/sales it took to move up a dollar increment in price. I was of the mind that if it took, say, 100 downloads, then the whole process might be self-defeating, if you look at the near-apocryphal anecdote of a self-published book only selling 100-200 books ever. You would have lost nearly half of your potential profit from using this as a promotional idea! Needless to say, the number that the system is currently using is much less than that, and eminently workable in my view. (Please note that I am not including that particular number in this post. I wasn’t asked not to or anything like that by Mr. Billings; I just don’t feel like giving the abusers out there any ammunition to wreck a good thing. If enough people ask about it, I’m sure they will incorporate it into the literature.)
Most of the promotion for Screwpulp is done through Twitter and from word-of-mouth by authors and readers. One very useful method that Mr. Billings uses in his Twitter links is to promote a book with the title and an author’s Twitter handle instead of simply his or her name. A very simple change that he’s noted has helped some authors establish meaningful dialogues with readers on that social media site.
Screwpulp will be adding a lot of new features as they continue to roll out the site, including a system of weighted ratings to prevent people from gaming the system, a dashboard for authors, and other helpful tidbits. The site is fairly sharp in terms of looks, and has potential just from that angle.
The only real qualm an author might have about using Screwpulp as a distribution venue would be if the author also had the e-book listed on other venues. The hazards of price-matching, as many authors who have not used the coupons to make their books free for promotions on Smashwords, could come into play; remember that a lot of distribution sites (and in particular, Amazon.com) do not allow authors to sell their e-books for less than on other sites, and will automatically change the price to that level without warning.
It is rather nice, once in a while, to not have to report on a website or a company that is using self-publishing as an avenue to get its grubby little fingers on your money. Mr. Billings and Screwpulp.com appear to be quite genuine in the desire to actually help writers find the readers they need for their own level of success, and to help readers find the good books they want to read.
