Rick Cook's Blog, page 3

More on the world changing

Ran across a fascinating post by Robin Sullivan at
http://publishingperspectives.com/201...

dealing with the changes in epublishing. Sullivan (whose husband is Michael J. Sullivan, a fantasy author) keeps records of her husband's sales and also tracks the Writers Cafe forum on the Kindle Boards. And she documented the change.

Basically it happened a lot faster and more sharply than I thought. According to Sullivan, the change started with an increase in sales in November-December in 2010 and accelerated from there. Michael Sullivan, for example, went from sales of about $1,500 a month for the self-published and ebook versions of his novels to making just over $100,000 in the first five months in 2011. Almost all the increase came in ebooks.

In her blog post Sullivan then analyzes the reports from Writer's Cafe. Of the authors reporting, the number of writers selling more than 800 copies a month of their books went from about 30 a month to around 80 a month in the same period. By the end of the period, the top ten writers were making between $3900 a month and $16,000 a month from their ebooks.

To which I can only say: "Write on dudes and dudettes!"

Roots of Revolution, Part 2: The Day The World Changed

Americans love fixed dates for any important event. Thus, we celebrate the 4th of July to mark American independence and we mourn Sept. 11 as the beginning of the war on terror.

Of course most such dates don't mark when the real event happened. Both the American Revolution and the War on Terror started considerably before those dates, but we like the comfort of having a nice solid date we can quote like a mantra.

The change that's taking place in publishing has a special date as well. January 20, 2010. Like the others, the tidal wave didn't start then, but it is significant. In future years I wouldn't be surprised if authors get together to raise their glasses and party on that day.

(Not so much because most authors will remember the date, but because authors love an excuse to slack off and party.)

What's so special about January 20, 2010? That's the day that Amazon kickstarted the epublishing revolution by announcing they would be raising the royalties on their ebooks to 70 percent of list prices. (Amazon actually raised rates on Jun 30, so you can celebrate that date too.) That makes it a convenient date to mark as the day the Revolution began.

The higher royalties were actually the second step in the events starting the revolution. The first one was the ebook readers took off. Today something like 12-15 percent of all American readers own an ebook reader and Amazon sells more ebooks than it does conventional books. Between them, those facts set off the explosion in publishing.

There is a third factor leading to the revolution as well. Ebook publishers do an absolute minimum of gatekeeping. If you write an ebook, Amazon or Smashwords or whoever is just about sure to publish it, no matter what the subject. (I will admit I've had a little trouble selling the concepts for The Serial Killers' Handbook and The Official Hannibal Lechter Fan Club Guide And Recipe Book, but those are about the only limits.)

So, anyone gets to publish anything they want, charge between $2.99 and $9.99 for it and collect a royalty of 70 percent of the price. That's a minimum of $2.10 per book.

Both buyers and sellers were energized by the changes. Buyers responded by buying more ebooks readers than even the most sanguine marketers imagined -- and they're still buying them. Sellers started cranking out books so the buyers would have a large choice of reading material at very low prices. The cycle rapidly became self-perpetuating and it shows no sign of slowing down.

We'll leave the quality of the new books for another post. Here we'll simply observe that there is a huge amount of dreck being published. Illiterate dreck, mostly. However there are also some gems that rival the best printed books being published (never mind the stuff that makes the best seller lists)

So the next time January 20 rolls around, buy a writer a drink and raise your glasses to the Revolution.

Scanning: The saga continues

When last we left our hero he was trying to scan in one of his stories from a science fiction magazine so he'd have a text file to edit to reprint the story. You know, the job that people always tell you is "easy".

In a pig's eye, said the little bird.

The scanning itself went fine. I've been scanning contracts and such for long enough I pretty much know the drill. The fun began when I tried to put the .pdf file from the scan through the OCR software to get a text file.

The first problem was I couldn't get the program to start. Every time I gave it a file name to upload the text copy to the program rejected it a message saying there was an error in the path name. Finally I called HP tech support. It cost me $20 because the printer was out of warranty, and a lot of time on the phone, but the tech was able to locate the problem. It turned out I couldn't enter a path name without hitting the "browse" button. Talk about counter-intuitive and no hint in the documentation.

Okay, problem solved. Now to let the OCR software create the text file. Tell it to go and it starts scanning -- and then stops halfway into the first page. The system hangs, eventually crashes and does something bad to the system that requires a power-off re-start to fix.

Rinse and repeat a couple of times.

The obvious diagnosis is that the software stubbed its toe on something, wandered off into the weeds and did something funky somewhere where it shouldn't. But what do I know? So another call to HP tech support. This time t hey don't charge me $20, but it takes an inordinate amount of time messing with settings and such. Finally in the course of this I repeat (for the second or third time) casually to the tech that this is a really big file.

How big? he asks not so casually. 40 pages or so, I tell him. Aha! A quick check of task manager reveals that the file is about 20 MB. Way too big for the program to handle. After a little messing the tech determines that there's no way the software will read a file that size. So its either re-scan the file in smaller chunks (ugh!) or find other software that can handle it (less ugh, but expensive).

I decide to see what I can find in the way of new software. After looking, I come across a recommendation for an Open Source program called "FreeOCR", which is, guess what?, free.
What the heck. I'm on deadline and I need something NOW. So I download FreeOCR and try it.

And it works. Not perfectly. There are a couple of annoying little details, like having to select each column on the page separately to input, but it's fast and it will read a file that size without even breathing hard. (The trick is that FreeOCR operates on a page at a time, no matter how large the file is. So instead of choking on 20 MB of stuff, it takes it in smaller bites.) True, it doesn't do as good a job at character recognition, missing maybe one character in 200, but even at 40 pages that's good enough for me.

So a 'simple' job of scanning ended up taking two days of clock time because scanning isn't so simple at all. A few years ago I was talking to Eric Flint, who is head of the Baen Free Library. The Library is a program to provide free Baen e-books online. (Usually the first book in a series, which hooks you nicely and then they sell you the other books.) He was talking about how difficult it was to get books up for the library, especially the ones that were printed before delivering books as word processor files became popular.

Someone suggested that Eric use volunteers to scan in the books. Eric reacted negatively -- overly so, I thought.

However after this week's experiences, I think I owe Eric an apology.

--RC

Writers: Image versus reality

First, the image. A PR photo taken several years ago.

Then a picture of me as I really am

The Sea Change In Publishing -- Pt 2

Of course book prices reflect a lot more than the cost of physically producing a book. We'll look as some of the sheer craziness in the business later.

In the meantime you have to ask why, if book prices are so inflated, someone doesn't come along and publish books for something closer to the actual production costs? That is what is supposed to happen in a free market, right? The cost of goods should shrink toward the cost of production.

In a word: Distribution. Conventional publishers have a lock on distribution through conventional channels. You either play by their rules or you face a long, hard road with little chance of success.

A modern publisher of the conventional sort today really owns only one thing and that is a distribution network. Almost all of them sold off their presses years ago because of the cost of running them, they may or may not own their own warehouses, most of their low level editorial work is probably farmed out. What's left is essentially a few key editors and such and a network which is specialized in getting books into conventional book stores or the paperback rack at your local supermarket.

The key part of that distribution operation are the sales reps who constantly visit bookstores, buyers, wholesalers, etc. to convince them to stock their publisher's books. (I say "stock" because typically publishers offer book sellers a return policy. If the book doesn't sell it goes back to the publisher for credit.

The big publishers have very large distribution networks and the little publishers usually work a deal with one of the biggies to have them distribute their books. For example Baen books has such an arrangement with Simon and Schuster (or did -- since Jim Baen died I don't have an inside source on the industry.)

Of course the little guy who's trying to do it without a big publisher is basically screwed. No matter how hard he or she (girls can be guys these days) the self-published author simply can't get the reach to get a book into bookstores. In fact most booksellers hate to see self-published authors at all, deeming them a nuisance.

It is this lock on the distribution channel that keeps conventional publishers in business. No distribution, no sales, at least under the conventional model.

Which is where e-publishing breaks the cycle.

E-publishing allows authors to avoid the big publishers and their distribution networks altogether. There's still often a big company, like Amazon, involved, but they're acting as a bookseller more than a publisher. In e-publishing the jobs like editing, which are done by conventional publishers, are the responsibility of the author.

The thing that makes this work is that the distribution potential of e-publishers is literally world wide. Anyone with a computer can sign on to their web sites and order a book. In fact the distribution network of an e-publisher is bigger than the network of any conventional publisher. It also bypasses the conventional bookseller entirely and goes direct to the customer.

In effect it's disintermediation at work because the supply chain reduces to three: The author, the e-publisher and the bookseller. What's even better is that because the cost of producing an e-book is so low for the e-publisher the e-publisher doesn't have to act as a gatekeeper. There is little or no barrier between the author and the customer.

The result is, if you want to write a book, you can easily and cheaply e-publish it. Of course you can also e-publish it no matter how bad, illiterate or just plain wacko the book is. This leads to the conventional publisher's claim that e-books are all crap.

There's enough truth in that to make it sting badly. That's why it's going to be the topic of the next post in this series.

--RC

Here's the Japanese cover

Just a quickie scan

The Roots Of Revolution Pt 1

It's fine to talk about a sea change and paradigm shift in publishing because of e-books. It's better to talk about how a lot of people are going to make huge amounts of money. But exactly what changed and how does it open opportunities for authors?

Actually there are several changes coming together. Let's start with the most basic.

The Marginal Cost To Produce
The Next Copy Of An E book Is About Zero

In other words, once you've got your book written, copy edited and set up on the web site, the cost to provide a customer with a copy is very nearly zero. Oh, there's the cost of storing the book on the system and servicing the order, but it's so small as to be negligible.

This is very different from the situation with printed books. At the least, such books have to be printed, paper and ink purchased, and the product packed and trucked to bookstores. Just printing and binding a typical book costs $2. So the absolute cost of a book can't go below $2 (plus shipping, etc.) or the publisher loses money on every copy.

Two dollars versus zero is a pretty big difference, but wait (the announcer says) there's more. In fact there's a lot more. In the next blog post I'll look at some of the built-in costs of printed books that aren't necessary to produce the book but are built into the system.

And on a more fun subject

My review copies of the Japanese reprint of my first novel arrived today. Yippee, now I can annoy people with bad puns in two languages. I wonder how computer humor translates into Japanese?
--RC

New Japanese Edition of Wizards Bane

Just got my review copies today from the Japanese edition of Wizard's Bane, the first novel I ever sold.

Interesting to see the differences in the cover. The American edition, from Baen, featured dragons. The Japanese edition features a redhead.

I also like the way my name transliterates. In Japanese I'm "Riku Kuku".

Scanning

Well, I expected trouble and I got it.

I think the document scanned in correctly. At least the first of the .pdf looks good. However I've got a hangup in running OCR on the document to give me a text file. After screwing with it for an hour and getting nowhere, I've put that aside and I'll call HP tech support tomorrow.

Fortunately I don't have a tight deadline on this.

--RC