R. Scot Johns's Blog, page 10

What's To Come in 2013

Having looked a bit at what transpired in 2012, it's time to turn our eyes to what's ahead for the coming year. As always, predicting the future is a dicey affair, based as much on hopes and guesses as much as facts. So this year, rather than offer yet another banal shopping list of what I expect to see, I thought I'd simply give some links to others who very likely have much better insight than I, and add a few comments of my own to their predictions. There are plenty to choose from, but here are a few I think are worth a look:



Digital Book World - Ten Bold Predictions for Ebooks and Digital Publishing in 2013.

- #2 (year of the enhanced ebook) - I'm hoping to see #2 come true, but it's been pending for awhile, and I'm not expecting to see an overnight explosion anytime soon. iBooks Author proved that this is still a hit and miss affair for most, but one that's just not cost effective, given current device limitations. In fact, I'm willing to bet that until the full line of Kindle devices support audio and video, enhanced ebooks will remain a very small niche market. After that, look out.

- #4 The $0 Kindle. This will never happen. There's just no good reason to give away what people are more than willing to pay for, and Jeff Bezos is no idiot. So while the price of Kindles (and other e-reading devices) will continue to fall quite rapidly, they'll level off at somewhere around the $25-30 mark ($29.99 is my best guess for rock bottom), a price which almost anyone would happily cough up. And lest you answer that Kindles will be packaged in as part of the Prime program, I would once again remind consumers that $79 per year is not free. Free shipping does not cost $79/year, so quit calling it free shipping already! It's not a free book each month if you're paying an annual fee for it. Amazon is not stupid enough to pay authors to give their books away for free - best official Prime membership estimates are somewhere between 5-10 million, which is a lot of money when each one is paying nearly eighty bucks a year for "free" services - and this is why Amazon can happily put up half to three-quarters of a million bucks each month for ebook lending royalties, since there's still plenty to spare.

- #7 (major privacy breach at a library) - This is a fairly bold prediction, and it's one I hope does not occur, ever. Especially for libraries, who are already struggling against a rising tide to eek out some niche in the growing ebook market. Publishers are already hesitant enough to come on board with library lending (one of my predictions from 2012 that didn't really pan out, unfortunately), and this would put a kibosh on that for a good long while to come. In addition, libraries are already pretty good at handling large amounts of customer transaction data, so I see no real reason why it should be a library and not someone else. More likely it will be one of the major publishers who are trying to move into retail operations for the first time who will botch the whole affair. But then, even Facebook can't seem to get a handle on privacy and site security, so who knows.

- #10 (Barnes & Noble stock will fall below $10) - Although BN is struggling, I wouldn't count them out just yet. They've had a less than stellar year for sure, particularly given that Microsoft invested $300 million into Nook operations with no discernible result at all. And last week Pearson bought a 5% share in the company, propping up the retail giant even more. But BN's end of year outlook was far below expectations, as they announced themselves in a press release last week. Apparently the new toy departments are not quite pulling in their share, and the addition of more video content has not drawn in as many Nook buyers as they'd hoped. Honestly, I didn't even bother to go look at the new HD Nook line, which may say something about the general lack of enthusiasm being shown. For me, while I like my original Nook tablet just fine, it's limited by Barnes & Nobles overall higher prices and thinner content, as well as the somewhat less consistent reading experience - even with its microSD slot, transferring files is a hassle, and purchased content is hidden in a locked folder somewhere that I've never been able to access. In addition, BN's refusal to open up their fixed layout spec to independent authors has put me right off them as a serious contender in the self-publishing market. As it is I sell a hundred times more books at Amazon than I do at Barnes & Noble, which tells me everything I need to know. Still, BN is a major player in the retail space for books, and I think they've got something up their sleeves that Microsoft and Pearson want a part of. And they've finally begun to move into International territory, which will either help or destroy them. So we'll just have to wait and see.

- The rest are pretty obvious, so no comment is really necessary.
Jeremy Greenfield (of DBW) provided three predictions of his own over at Forbes, each of which deserve some thought.

- #1 Goodreads becomes a Bookseller. According to Goodreads, this is a "no" (or at least a "not yet"). This goes hand in hand with the Infographic posted yesterday, which shows how much Goodreads' clout has grown this year. Having social networking sites devoted to book lovers has been a tremendous boon for authors and readers alike, and with their dedicated user base it only makes sense to move into retailing. But this comes with a lot of baggage as well, since the site would no longer be wholly user-driven, with its income derived from affiliate referral fees (and some advertising), but led by economic market forces such as major ad budgets that would eliminate the visibility of many independent authors and books for smaller niche markets, turning them into something more like Amazon than Facebook for Book Geeks. In a way I'd actually hate to see this, although it could have some benefits as well. A one-stop-shop for books - and only books - would be nice, a place where direct reader input provides the market force that propels (or derails) the sales trajectory of what's being published. It's a natural marketing machine for authors, so it will probably happen eventually.

- #2 Ebook marketplace gets dynamic and goes beyond discounting. This is already happening, so it's not really a prediction. In fact, it's almost become customary for independent authors to give away the first book in a series as a loss leader promotion to entice readers, and free giveaways are standard fare on blogs and social reading sites like Goodreads and LibraryThing. As mentioned in the post, Barnes & Noble even used the tactic of giving away a free ebook with every book purchased (from a pre-determined list) in the last few days leading up to Christmas. So I'm not really sure this is a prediction so much as a general trend that will continue. Of course, it depends on how creative e-retailers get.

- #3 Major publishers will form back-list marketing divisions. Duh. Since ebooks technically never sell out (or "go out of print") without a title actively being killed off, it only makes sense that publishers will have a lot more content that needs looking after. This is about as much a prediction as the 2nd of January will follow the 1st. What's more interesting to me is what will happen to the current glut of start-up conversion houses when all those back-list titles have been converted into digital and there's not enough work to be had by all.
Laura Owen over at Gigaom offered up three of her own predictions, of which the first - the remaining publishers settling in the DOJ suit - is a foregone conclusion (what Apple will do is less certain). She also chimes in on Barnes & Noble's downturn, saying they will cut their Nook line, which is also obvious, since the new HD devices inherently made the earlier models obsolete. The real question is whether they will go through with their plans to split off the Nook line into a separate business enterprise, and what will come of that if they do. But she offers no thoughts on that. Finally, there is this:

- A well-known author will turn down a seven-figure deal to self-publish. Didn't this already happen? Okay, looking back it was only a six-figure deal that Barry Eisler turned down to self-publish his work instead, so I guess that doesn't count.
Mark Coker at Smashwords chimes in with his list of what's up and coming for 2013. Some of the more interesting are:
- #2 Unit volume of ebooks exceeds print. This is the first time I've seen the unit statistic given as the vital figure. I've talked about this a lot in previous posts, since it's always the total revenue that everyone compares, which is not a fair comparison given the discrepancy in cost of production and distribution between print and digital (and consequently the profit margin), but also because the units sold are ultimately what matter, as in, how many books are actually getting out there in front of readers' eyes? Unfortunately, these numbers have been nigh-on impossible to find, since only dollars are reported in the AAP charts. I'm with Mark on this one (he also puts ebook sales at 45% of the trade book market by next year, so we'll have to see what extent the recent plateau trend continues - it's currently hovering somewhere around the 22-25% range).
- #6 Overall ebook prices will decline. This is already happening as a result of the recent settlements and end of Agency pricing by most of the big six. With the remaining two more than likely due to settle, retailers will start an ebook pricing war, which Amazon, of course, will win. In the end this is only good news for consumers, who have had to pay some utterly ridiculous prices in the past few years (which they're stupid to pay, since it only aggravates the situation by encouraging publishers to increase their prices).
- #8 Tablets will become the new paper as E-Ink becomes niche product. Only until color E-Ink arrives. Then it's all over for LCD. And this is just a matter of time. Given the extreme long battery life of E-Ink devices, when color reflective technology reaches the point where it's cost effective, high quality with full-saturation color, and has rapid refresh rates that allow for video and gaming, then the backlit screen will disappear. When this will happen is another question altogether, since like most advancements it's just waiting for a big development in the technology, and one can never predict when that will come. But it will come eventually. It's inevitable. And in ten years' time we'll all look back and laugh at the primitive black and white era when color had to be projected with embedded lights! Computer monitors, too, by the way, will all be color e-Ink in the future, and paper thin. Now there's a prediction for you.
- #'s 9-12 all deal with the global market in one way or another, but again it's a fairly mute point: the global market has been growing steadily for the past two years as various retailers expand their reach, and it will continue to do so. It's called evolution. Get used to it. With Apple expanding the iBookstore from 19 to 50 countries in 2012, it's no big calculation to predict their market share will grow (and some competitors will subsequently decline). But to say that the iBookstore will be the breakout story of 2013 ebook retailing is a little bold. In order to consider the iBookstore a "breakout" Apple will have to more than double its current share of roughly 15% in order to be a serious contender against Amazon's current 55% share (see chart here). Of course, these are only U.S. sales stats numbers, so once the International market is factored in the story will be vastly different. Kobo, for example, isn't even figured in the mix here, whereas they're one of the major ebook retailers outside the U.S. But again, those statistics are not as easy to come by (yet). Maybe the breakout story of 2013 will be that International sales figures will start appearing in the BISG charts.
- #13 B&N will rise again like a Phoenix. Well, at least someone's on their side.
- #14 In self-pub...more money will be made in author services than book sales. Not a prediction. Already happening.
- #16 The Big 6 will become the Big 4. It's already looking like the Big 5 (pending merger approval for Random Penguin House), so what's one more? I predicted bankruptcy for one last year, and that happened, so unless they pull their heads out and restructure for the digital age it may be the Big 2 before all is said and done (and that will be Amazon and Apple, by the way, not Penguin House and Macmillon-Simon-Hachette).
- #17 Stigma of Big 6...(or whatever)...will increase as self-pub stigma evaporates. Is there still a self-pub stigma? Where? More self-pubbed authors are making millions every day, with entries into the bestselling charts increasing all the time. If there was still a stigma against self-publishing at the beginning of 2012 it's all but disappeared with the rise of E.L. James, et.al. More readers are buying independent works and more authors are jumping in to try their hand. How is that a stigma? On the other hand, I don't there ever has been, or ever will be, a stigma against traditional published works from a reader's point of view. That's only something authors must contend with, and for very different reasons than anything to do with public perception. And while some of us can see how wanting to be traditionally published is more a vanity pursuit for the sake of validation these days, it's hardly the main reason one would choose to accept a publication offer. If you're making a good income self-publishing then you've already been accepted by the common populace, and if you're not selling anything through self-pub pursuits, then there's nothing to stop you from taking up an offer. This is just a dumb prediction all in all which misses the entire point of what's going on.
- #18 EPUB will disappoint. Already has. See my post here.
- #19 Ebook subscription offerings will face uphill slog. I would say "face impossible climb." The whole subscription model for ebooks is just idiotic. While it makes perfect sense for a niche target market like O'Reilly's tech references, two huge factors stand in the way of there ever being a "Netflix" of ebooks. The first is that people can only read so many books, and if you look at the charts given in my recent post on Pew's latest stats, you'll see that the average person reads 15 books a year, with the mean being only 6. This is hardly enough to justify paying a monthly fee for access. Amazon's Prime members are no doubt pleased to have the added benefit of one free ebook a month for no extra charge, but I highly doubt they'd be willing to pay $79 a year for just that. Secondly, the publishing world is far more fragmented than the video industry, with literally millions of self-pubbed authors out there, and thousands of independents, rendering any comprehensive subscription system impossible. If the miserable state of video streaming subscriptions is any indication, ebooks don't stand a chance. Oh, and by the way, there's already a "subscription" model out there that's been pretty popular for awhile: it's called the library.
The Guardian - Our e-publishing predictions for 2013. This is not a very well thought out list, and I'm only including it because of:
- #4 re: digital publishing startups. The important point here is the last part which predicts that we'll see more self-published authors form co-ops like Awesome Indies, which is a great idea and one I'd like to see pursued. A number of self-published authors who have gone the route of establishing themselves as actual publishers (as I have done), have begun to accept and promote outside submissions (which I have not as yet), using their collective skills and manpower to present a united front in their marketing and at conventions, where they share booths and help promote each others' work. In this way they remain independent and yet united behind a common cause.- #5 Traditional publishing will become more experimental. Unlikely. Traditional publishing's answer to the self-publishing digital revolution was to buy existing vanity presses and charge exorbitant fees for services authors can either do themselves or find elsewhere at a fraction of the price. Their adoption of digital has been sluggish to put it mildly. The traditional model is too slow, too archaic, too behemoth to be innovative. And if "storygames" like Black Crown Project are any indication, what little effort they do make will fail miserably. What the heck is the Black Crown Project anyway? I defy you to discover it without having to submit your personal information for scrutiny and increased spam influx.
- #7 Publisher-led online communities... If putting social networking links on your marketing page makes it a "community," that makes every website out there an online community. Crime Vault is nothing more than a storefront for Hachette's books, with a Twitter link. At least SF Gateway has a forum, such as it is. It takes more than a comment box to build a community (see yesterday's post on Goodreads).
- #10 Amazon will be forced to file for insolvency...with the pseudo-comic postscript "All right, that last one might be a tad optimistic," which is a blind potshot with little or no thought behind it. Honestly, if people hate Amazon so much then why do they keep shopping there? Or is it just that the minority have the loudest mouths? Two things continue to annoy me about this ongoing Amazon-bashing (aside from mindlessly reactionary blathering itself), the first being the blatant hypocrisy of criticizing a successful business venture in a world where human endeavors are supposed to be applauded, and the second is that no retailer has done more to assist and support the independent spirit than Amazon with its Kindle publishing program. Apparently starting an ambitious endeavor on a shoestring against overwhelming odds is admirable...until you actually succeed at it. Jeff Bezos started Amazon in his garage with money that came primarily from his parents, with a business plan that showed no profit for at least five years (which is exactly what happened). He's smarter than me, and chances are he's far smarter than the idiot who wrote this critical "prediction."


My prediction for 2013 is simple: the future will arrive...and it will soon become the past. All we can do is try to keep up.

Goodreads Grows By Leaps & Bounds (Infographic)

I love Infographics (and apparently a lot of other people do as well), so here's a new one posted on the Goodreads blog yesterday, showing how much they've grown this past year - in 2012 their numbers doubled! This is four times more growth than either Facebook or Twitter showed over the year (+125% each). Even more than Pinterest (+145%). Vastly more than Instagram (-25%). 




From among the data provided, the most compelling figure given is the more than quarter-million books that have been given away to users during the year. How many social networking sites can boast a stat like that? And certainly, if you're looking for a book review, Goodreads is the place to go: with more than 20 million book reviews posted, whatever book you're looking for is pretty sure to have at least one. 




And while Goodreads is not immune to fake reviews and planted promotions, you can be certain that the vast majority of these are from actual readers of the book, since that's what the site is all about. However, my main gripe there has always been with users who rate and/or review books they list as being on their "to-read" list, or which they state outright in their review that they haven't finished! Why would I want to read someone's review of half a book?! Even worse are readers who simply give books five stars because everyone else is, without adding any critical commentary of their own to the discussion. After all, Goodreads is a social networking site, not a "jump on the bandwagon" platform. 




Still, you can get a general sense of what a book is like from the amalgamation of feedback given on the site, and usually there are one or two thoughtful reviews that provide real insight into a work you might be considering. And with the glut of reading material available these days - and so many other things competing for your time - choosing the right book can be a critical decision.









If you're interested in seeing how well other social networking sites are faring, check out the compendium of Infographics here for a look at further stats from 2012. In particular, the "Winners/Losers" section of one entitled "Current State of Social Networks" is interesting.

2012 By The Numbers (According to Pew)

While we're having a look back at the year in passing, it might be a good time to stop and take stock of the situation. To that end, no doubt, numerous surveys and tallies will soon be forthcoming, but the first of these is this one by Pew Research, detailing current e-readership statistics in the U.S. (follow link to read the full results).




The main trend this year was a shift away from dedicated e-reading devices, such as the eInk Kindles and the Nook Simple Touch, in favor of full-featured tablet devices like the iPad and Kindle Fire. This is hardly surprising, and not entirely enlightening since the comparison is not exactly fair: last year there were far fewer tablet devices available, and thus much less competition for the dedicated devices. But this has been a general trend ever since the first iPad was released, and with every major dedicated device platform now also boasting a tablet version of that same machine, it's only natural that a certain portion of the target audience for e-readers would be drawn off in that direction. After all, you get an e-reader and a load of other features too. Historical sales have clearly shown that a large number of consumers are more than willing to pay extra for added features, even during a recession, oddly enough. And of course, now that we're emerging from that economic dip those numbers are only going to increase.




The chart above shows that over the course of 2012 U.S. ownership of some variety of e-reading tablet device increased overall from 18% to 33%, a significant increase. At the end of 2011 device distribution was split evenly between tablets and dedicated e-readers at around 10% each, while this year dedicated device ownership nearly doubled to 19%, while tablet ownership leaped to 25% - a full quarter of U.S. adults over the age of 16 now own a tablet device of brand or another.




In other findings, the overall number of book readers who now read ebooks increased from 16% to 23%, while at the same time those who read print books declined from 72% to 67% (again, counting only those over the age of 16). Interestingly, that overall number of book readers declined slightly from 78% of the population (over 16), to 75%, meaning that a full quarter of the U.S. population does not read books at all, a sad statistic if there ever was one. But then, with games and movies and apps galore to keep one occupied its hardly any wonder.




There are two additional charts on the Pew Research page that give detailed breakdowns of the demographics within the above numbers, and some of these are quite enlightening as well (useful for authors to know how and where to promote their work). 




For example, among ebook readers Urban Females make up the fastest growing segment of the market, with Women leaping from 20% to 31% (+11%), while Men grew from 22% to 30% (+8%), and Urban jumping by +12% from 22% to 34% while Rural only grew by a paltry +3% from 17% to 20%. Likewise, the 16-17 and 30-49 age ranges showed the greatest ebook adoption this year, growing by 15% and 16% respectively, while the 50-64 year old bracket barely edged up by 4%, outpaced only slightly (interestingly enough) by the 18-29 age group at +6% - even the 65+ age bracket fared better at +8%! This is probably an economic issue more than anything, with twenty-somethings mainly struggling just to make ends meet these past few years.









The final chart above provides a breakdown of how many books each demographic faction reads per year, and here again there are some interesting finds. For example, Rural readers tend to consume more books each year (17) than their techno-savvy Urbanites (14), while the 65+ age bracket reads the most overall (18). So writing books for old retired farmers is the way to go, I suppose (Fifty Shades of Grey?). Not surprisingly, women tend to read more than men, at an average of 17 to men's below-average 13 (the average being 15). The mean number of books read per year is 6, meaning that half of book readers read less than this and half read more (the half that read more tend to read considerably more, thus driving the average up). Of the two extremes, 7% of Americans 16 years and older read only a single book this year (and actually confessed it), while 14% read 21 or more books during the past twelve months.




As a personal aside, I only managed to read 34 books this year (so far) - rather an off year for me, as I tend to read a book a week, more or less. But two factors enter into this, one being that I also read a ton of reference materials this year (tutorials and product guides and the like), which I generally do not count among my reading list, and secondly, many of the books I read this year were rather long - my total page count was just shy of 11,000, which is more than last year's 8900 pages, even though I read more books in 2011 (47). If I counted comic books and magazines the number would be vastly higher. I may have inadvertently neglected to add a title or two to my Goodreads page as well, but it's hard to always remember to do so.




So, as you see, these statistics charts must be taken as a very broad average of a much more complex picture. Still, it's worth a glance to have at least a general sense of the world we live in, and where it may be going.

Pending Projects for 2013

Just a quick rundown of some upcoming activity in the near future...




Publication of a complete Kindle fixed-layout format tutorial, with multiple support template files (for which I've had a great many requests!), from basic image-only ebooks to complex layouts with region various magnification styles and methods
Updates to the iBooks Tutorial and Template to include changes introduced in the latest format upgrade (as per the Asset Guide 5.1)
How to create a single epub file that is compliant with both iBooks and Kindle ingestion systems, as well as all standard EPUB-based platforms
How to build a Nook fixed layout file with Replica Map for reflowable zoom pop-ups (currently not accepted by B&N for ingestion from independents, but functional for side-loading, and thus, direct sales)
Re-publication of The Complete Study Guide to Beowulf, in print and ebook (iBooks and PDF via my website, as well as a Kindle version if I can rework the formatting to fit a 7" display size)
Ongoing series of digital art tutorials based on The Ring Saga illustrated novel project, available at fantasycastlebooks.com in conjunction with my "new" author blog at www.rscotjohns.com (pending further chapter releases, to be forthcoming very soon, I promise!)


I've spent the better part of last year in learning mode, immersing myself in endless tutorials and online courses and seminars to help develop my digital art skills and teach myself how to use a lot of new software I've acquired (or had for awhile but not used), such as Lightwave 11, Modo 601, ZBrush 4R4, Postworkshop Pro 3.0, Corel Painter 12, and just recently Photoshop CS6 (upgraded from CS4 primarily so I can use the degrading brush feature for more realistic watercolor effects).




I may confine my art posts to the other blog and keep this one dealing more with the technical aspects of digital publication and ebook formatting, since that's what it seems to have morphed into. Either way I'll note any major updates in all three places (with the bulk of content being hosted on the Fantasy Castle Books website).




I haven't gotten too much into digital modeling yet, and probably won't do too much along these lines until the Ring Saga project is complete, since I have most of my models compiled and/or morphed from existing models already. I mainly needed to build some custom props that I have been unable to find for purchase, or build from spare parts found elsewhere. For example, I'm currently working on a massive Valhalla prop for Odin's hall based loosely on Nordic stave church architecture. I'm doing this as a modular construction set, and may release it on Renderosity once its complete.




In addition, I've been working on a lot of Viking-era costumes, as the ones I've purchased have been giving me no end of grief, being way out of date and far too low rez for my liking. Having learned to make my own high resolution textures I decided that I may as well learn to make the costumes themselves as well, so that I can fully customize my characters. The problem I'm now facing, of course, is in having to redo a lot of art I had thought to be completed. But this is as it must be, and the delay will be worth the wait in the end (or so I can only hope).




First up, however, are the ebook tutorial updates, since I've been harangued to no end regarding this for months now - hardly a day goes by I don't get at least a couple of requests for help from authors attempting to format their own fixed layout ebooks, and since my iBooks tutorial is a bit out of date now, and my Kindle one useful only for the region magnification features, both are in need of fleshing out.




So those are just a few things you can look forward to in 2013, sooner or later.

2012 - The Year in Review

The Mayan "Doomsday" Calendar - Not!


What do you know, 12-21-12 has come and gone and the world is still here! So I suppose it's time to look ahead and make some plans for the new year. But first, we should pause and reflect on the year that has passed...




2012 has proven to be a year a enormous turmoil for the publishing world, with more upheaval than the Mayans might have ever guessed...so much so, in fact, that I stopped blogging about it back in August (after all, why bother if the world was going to end in just a few months?). In truth, the pace of change in the publishing industry has become so rapid and frantic that it's nearly impossible to keep up with. Take just these few points for example (in no particular order):



Encyclopedia Britannica goes out of print
Apple and five of the Big 6 publishers are sued for collusion by the U.S. DOJ
eBook pricing fluctuates wildly as 4 of the 5 sued publishers settle throughout the year and Agency pricing is dropped
Google (wisely) bails out on its fledgling retail partner program (to sell virtual goods in a physical space), leaving independent bookstores hanging...
Kobo steps in to offer a new ebook program to bookstores, who still have no idea how to sell them
Kobo launches its own self-publishing portal
Three new iPads appear in a single year
.iBooks and KF8 formats are rolled out, while EPUB3 is still virtually ignored
Amazon updates the Kindle Publishing Guidelines five times
Apple updates the iBookstore Asset Guide five times
Top tablet display resolution increases from 1280x800 (160ppi) to 2560x1600 (300ppi)
Microsoft invests $300 million into Barnes & Noble with no noticeable effect on either
eBook sales slow (to a modest 37% increase), but still surpass hardback print sales
Penguin and Simon & Schuster invest in "self-publishing" divisions
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt files for bankruptcy (May), then buys Webster's and CliffsNotes (Nov)
Random House and Penguin announce their pending merger
Jackie Collins decides to self-publish, because "publishers are in business to make money"
Self-published author E.L. James scores a 7-figure deal for her fan fiction erotica trilogy
Amazon strikes a print-distribution deal with HMH, but no retailers will stock them
J.K. Rowling publishes a novel for "adults" - poor ebook formatting makes it (even more) unreadable, but people buy it in droves anyway
Pew Research announces that U.S. tablet ownership is now 25% (Oct)
CEA announces that U.S. tablet ownership doubled in 2012 to 31% (Nov)
Forrester Research announces that U.S. tablet ownership doubled in 2012 to 19% (Dec) [huh?] - showing that no one agrees on what a tablet actually is


And these are just a few of the highlights of 2012. There was also a big storm and a moderately suspenseful election, but that doesn't concern us here. The big takeaway from this year's news events is that everything is really still up in the air. In fact, I won't even try to make any predictions about what next year will bring (well, maybe one or two...). But I will have a look at last year's predictions and see how I did [you can find that blog post here].




1. EPUB 3 will fail to heal the digital format fracture



Contrary to the wishful thinking of many independent publishers and ebook formatting professionals, this was a no-brainer for me. As I wrote in my post titled "EPUB 3: DOA" back in February, "The idea of creating an open standard that many reading systems can handle is a noble, but unrealistic goal. It's just not a practical business model." I think EPUB 3 will gain some inroads in the coming year, but will ultimately be found wanting as the code is haphazardly supported and consequently displays inconsistently across devices. There is hope, however, as several major players have announced "full" support for the EPUB 3 specification, among these being Apple's iPad. But neither Amazon nor B&N will follow suit, since their own fixed-layout formats are now well entrenched, so that only Google and Kobo offer any serious avenue for EPUB 3 to survive.



2. Conversion services flourish as pubs embrace fixed layouts



This was something of a hit and miss prediction, in that conversion services have certainly flourished over the course of the year (though fixed layouts have not), with literally hundreds - if not thousands - of new start-ups appearing from out of the woodwork, offering everything from per-word pricing to flat rate packages, as well as software applications and plug-ins that can purportedly take your basic text file and turn it into polished gold (for a fee). Most of these are bunk, but some of them offer honest work and real quality, although many are overpriced (Simon & Schuster's new "self-pub" package will set you back as much as $25,000!). I've been working for several months now (under strict confidentiality until last week) as an ebook formatting consultant for Circular Software, makers of CircularFLO, an InDesign plug-in which creates a single output file that is both EPUB 3 and KF8 compliant, with full feature sets for Kindle and iOS devices, including fixed-layout and live text region magnification (download their free sample ebook for an impressive introduction). iBooks Author appeared this year as well (even receiving a 2.0 upgrade in October), offering a simple user interface for creating complex fixed format books. Unfortunately, it's only available for Mac and the output it produces can only be sold in the iBookstore, severely limiting its appeal and functionality. So things are looking up for fixed-layout content, but it's still very much in its infancy, as formats fluctuate and develop to take advantage of their intended devices. Eventually it will all settle out, but it will take a few more years yet.



3. The Kindle 5 will have a color Mirasol/eInk screen



Wrong. This was a big disappointment in every way for me, although I'm quite impressed by the entire Kindle "5" line, including the Paperwhite, which is by far the best eInk reader yet devised (I even bought one, even though I swore I would never buy another black and white e-reader). Unfortunately, Qualcomm announced this year they were suspending development of Mirasol displays (due to high fail rates in production), and eInk has still only managed to produce pastels when the world expects fluorescent. This will come, just not as quickly as I had hoped.



4. 10" Kindle Tablet will debut at $399



Well, not exactly... The all-new, larger Kindle "tablet" debuted in September at $299, a full hundred bucks below my guess, but it's also 1.1" smaller than I predicted, at 8.9". So it's a toss-up, really. Is it a tablet? I'm guessing Pew Research thinks so, but not Forrester's. This is where things just get dicey and I give up. I mean, is an iPhone a tablet, just because it has a lot of apps? Is the Kindle HD 8.9" not a tablet because it doesn't have as many apps as Apple? Honestly, who cares. It's a device you can do a load of stuff on, and probably most of what you want to (and then some).



5. Publishers will come on board for library lending



Okay, don't even get me started! This has gotten nowhere fast, and it's just ridiculous. Simon & Schuster now boast ... count them ... one (1) title that can be borrowed in ebook format from your local library. Yep, you read that right. One. Meanwhile, Penguin (who last year pulled all ebook titles from library lending) has signed up with 3M and Baker & Taylor to make titles available in a whopping four libraries, with prices at full retail for a one year license (which is better than HarperCollins' full retail fee for every 26 transactions). This is a "test program" they say, but so tentative is its reach that it will be hard to gauge the results. Hachette, too, have rolled out a test program with two ebook distributors - with a limited number of titles to a limited number of potential patrons. And, of course, Random House caused a furor back in March when they increased their ebook fees to libraries by a staggering 300%. Not exactly "coming on board" I guess.



6. Ebook prices will increase, stabilizing into three pricing tiers



Yeah, this didn't really happen either, although for reasons no one could have anticipated. Due to the DOJ lawsuit (and subsequent settlements) this year against Apple and five publishers, Agency pricing was suspended, allowing retailers to once again determine the price (via discounts) at which that they sell their ebooks. This has actually caused overall ebook prices to go down rather than increase, although there has been a fair degree of fluctuation either way, none of it remotely resembling stability. There are, however, still a few primary prices at which ebooks tend to gather, these being the .99 cent price point (quickly losing relevance via over-saturation and high trash ratio), $2.99 (the lowest price point at which the higher royalty rates kick in), $5.99-7.99 (which seems to be the sweet spot for independents and popular back-list titles), and above ten bucks (where the "pros" congregate and charge what they will to those who will pay whatever is asked because they don't know any better and only read what everyone else reads anyway). This latter can range all the way up to an astonishing $17.99 or better, for a work you can often find in print for less at big box retailers - and which will be half that (if not forgotten) a year from now. Which goes to show that what people pay most for is celebrity. Which is why actors and athletes get paid millions while bricklayers and coal miners eat dust.



7. A self-pubbed author will reach the N.Y.T. Top 10 with a $9.99+ title



Fifty Shades of Grey anyone? This hit #1 in March after nearly a year of building momentum, with the second book hitting #8 the same week, upon which it was immediately picked up by Knopf Doubleday and held the top three spots for 25 weeks. I don't know what the retail price was for the ebook before Knopf stepped in, but it was $9.99 after that. Still, it began life as self-published fan fiction, and sold 250,000 copies before reaching #1. And while most self-published hits don't command the over $10 price point, they hit the Top 10 more often these days nonetheless. Forbes did a piece on just this phenomenon two weeks ago, listing other self-pubbed successes such as Stephanie Bond, Bella Andre, and Colleen Hoover, a Smashwords author who hit #8 on the NYT bestseller list before being picked up by Atria Books. Again, I don't know what her retail price was, but being a Smashwords title I imagine it was fairly low - $2.99 at most. The trend, however, is that an increasing number of self-published authors find legitimate success in terms of sales (which equals readers), and generally a publishing contract follows.



8. Ebooks will account for 50% of the trade book market by year's end



Not quite. However, there is growing confusion about what this number actually is. The latest "official" statistics place it at around 25% to maybe 30%, but it could be more (or less), depending on who's counting, and what they count. The thing is that only a fraction of publishers actually report their sales data to the AAP (Association of American Publishers), who "officially" tally this stuff, as well as the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), who look into it. But I don't report my sales figures to them, even though I'm officially a publisher, with Fantasy Castle Books filed as a sole proprietorship back in 2008. That's somewhere around 2200 ebook sales this year not counted in the "official" tally. Publishers Global lists 2660 publishing houses in America (though I'm not one of them), although only 1189 report their sales data to the AAP, leaving 1471 listed publishers unaccounted for in the sales stats, not counting all the self-pubbed authors out there selling ebooks. One wonders if those quarter-million self-pubbed Shades of Grey sales got on record. Finally, it also depends on whether you're using individual sales or total revenue as your percentage value. After all, ebooks are by far less expensive then print books overall, so if one print book sells at ten bucks but five ebooks sell at .99 cents, then ebooks make up roughly 33% of the market by revenue ($4.95 out of $14.95 total sales), but 83.3% of the overall market by volume (5 books out of six sold). The truth is somewhere in between the two, although you can look at it either way.



9. Major trade publisher files for bankruptcy



Check. That would be Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. But the troubles aren't far behind for several others, among them PenguinHaus, whose pending merger smells fishy and desperate to me. While this will inherently make them the largest publishing house in the world, it will also complicate their pipeline, render a portion of the staff redundant, and remove one avenue for authors to get their work published, meaning that the two houses together will inevitably produce less output than they currently do apart. This will only fuel the self-pub frenzy as fewer legitimate authors find plausible opportunity pursuing the traditional route.



10. An all-new breed of e-book emerges



Not yet. I'm waiting for someone to come up with something really clever, something no one else has thought of, or implement available features in a new and unexpected way. But for the time being I think everyone's just trying to figure out how to make what we have work before they change it and we have to start over. The Choose Your Own Adventure book series got a 21st century revamp this year, with the titles being refreshed and rolled out in hyper-linked eBook format. But that's not exactly new and exciting, is it? More interesting is what Coliloquy are doing with episodic content creation, where readers can input feedback on a current section which is then compiled and transmitted to the author for use in creating the next episode. But like most trending fads, it's unlikely this will last and become a standard practice. What I want to see is an ebook that takes advantage of digital technology's interwoven audiovisual capability to produce an all new breed of book, something that is not a "book" - and yet is still a book. But we're all still stuck with our page-turning preconceptions of what a book is supposed to be, so this might not come for some time yet. It might also take some coding skills that most of us just don't have (or current devices can support). But creativity will always find a way.



That about sums it up. All in all a very hectic year. Looking forward to what 2013 will bring.

New Blog

I started this blog in late 2008 as a way to document my "adventures" in independently publishing my first novel. This included everything from the post-content creation phase through production, promotion, and sales tracking. Beginning at just around that time the publishing industry began to change in very substantial ways, first with the advent of print on demand and then the rapid explosion of digital self-publishing.



Consequently, since then I've been focused primarily on trying to keep up with the rapidly evolving landscape of the publishing world, and this blog has gotten more and more technically involved and less about the creative process than I had originally planned once that first book was put to bed.



In addition, my own creative process has changed enormously with the inclusion of illustrated graphics in my ongoing Ring Saga project, an addition which has greatly increased the burden of technology in my life. Producing text-only books is a simple process by comparison to the creation of a fully illustrated graphic novel, particularly in digital format. This is why I've been so focused here on ebook production over the past year or so. And I intend to continue working on those aspects of independent publishing, and talking about it here.



But I've also decided to start a new blog to document and discuss the creative side of book production, from developing story ideas to struggling with plot complications and character flaws. Things book readers would be more interested in than how to format a Kindle ebook, like why I had a particular character make a particular choice, or what color should the Fafnir dragon be. Those elements just don't seem to fit this blog audience, which has grown over the years into an eclectic group of tech-focused authors and ebook creators, rather than readers of my own creative work, who I fear I have somewhat alienated here. Hopefully the new blog will rectify that, and give those readers a place to go.



In the menu above you'll find a link to this new, as-yet-untitled, content-focused blog at rscotjohns.com. I suppose I'll just call it "Scot's Other Blog."

The Ring Saga Archives

I've spent the past few weeks loading content back onto the Fantasy Castle Books website, and now have nearly a hundred pages of resources for the further study and enjoyment of both Beowulf and the Ring cycle matter, including over a hundred individual files you can download for free in a variety of formats. There are links from bookshelf collections on each page like the one seen above, some leading to other shelves with additional titles to dive into. 




This is only about half of what I've got, and many of the bookshelf titles in the Ring cycle portion of the site have no links yet, but that's about as far as I'm going to go for now, as I need to get back to work on creating original content for The Ring Saga, which I've put off for far too long. I'll add more resources to the site as I find time, but for anyone interested in the Old Norse sagas and mythology there's plenty there to delve into. There are also a fair number of pages devoted to my own creative work, including both art and story content, and more will be added there as I find time as well. As always, the front page of the site will list any new additions, and I may also start mentioning them here.




If there are any particular areas not yet available on the website that you're interested in, let me know and I'll push it to the top of my priority list. I know some of you have shown an interest in other, earlier retellings of the Ring cycle story so I'll add a page with links to some of that, as well as the Arthur Rackham illustrations I had promised. For those of you in the Old Norse study group make sure you check out the Elder Edda and Volsunga Saga pages, as they have links to download a lot of the "Comparative Study" editions I put together.



Click the image above to go directly to the Ring Saga Research page, or click the Fantasy Castle Books tab at the top to hit the main page of the website. And as always, I welcome any feedback, comments, questions, or issues you may have. Just drop a note here or via the Contact page on the site.



By the way, I've added sample chapters of my books that you can download in three formats, and you can now once again read the entire first chapter of The Ring Saga online, plus some shorter online excerpts from The Saga of Beowulf. Just hit the Samples page for the online stuff or go to the Bookstore for the downloadable files.



And lastly, if you haven't taken advantage of the free ebook offer yet, you can still get any one of my titles free until the end of the month. Even if you've already got them, downloading from the Fantasy Castle Bookstore will get you automatic membership status with access to restricted content and all future upgrades, as well as all available formats of that title now and in perpetuity, so no matter what e-reader you use in the future you will always be able to read the ebooks you get directly from my website.

The Saga of Beowulf Archives

I have finally completed rebuilding The Saga of Beowulf portion of the online Archives, or at least as much of it as I could dredge up from the wreckage of the previous website. There are four levels of menus, each featuring a bookshelf filled with resources for the study and enjoyment of either the original Beowulf poem or my novelization of it - just click on a bookshelf item to open it. These range from outlines and story summaries to chronologies and genealogies not found in the novel, as well as maps, detailed glossaries and a handful of downloadable texts, including my original feature film screenplay. There is video and audio content, high-resolution artwork, and a few additional hidden bonus features. In addition, there is an Art Gallery, with six clickable artist easels featuring artwork created for the novel, each of which take you to a page with notes and alternate artwork.




I will now turn my attention to The Ring Saga, reconstructing the Archive I had started for that project. Once the resources for chapter one are up I'll begin posting materials for the new chapters as I complete them. You can currently get Chapter 1: Theft of the Rhinegold as a free download, but only until the end of the month. After that each new chapbook will be posted as a limited edition offer. There will also be a members-only area with bonus content not included in the print or ebook editions. Membership is granted automatically with the purchase of any book from the Fantasy Castle Books website, including the free ebooks currently available through the 31st.

Fantasy Castle Bookstore Grand Opening

At long last, and after many trials and tribulations, the new bookstore is up and running. And in celebration of that fact I'm giving away a free ebook to anyone who wants one. Just head over to the new website by clicking on the menu link above and use the coupon code "Free Ebook" to get one free title of your choice.




The bookstore offers both print and digital editions, and each have special benefits only available by purchase through this website. All print editions are autographed by the author and include a complementary bookmark featuring artwork from the cover of the title purchased, as well as the ebook edition for no extra charge. Digital editions are DRM-free and include all available formats for a single price, as well as any future updates and revisions. These will generally include the Kindle edition, an ePub version and a PDF, at the least. See the FAQ page for more info regarding ebook formats.




The new website is still a work in progress, and very likely will be for some time to come, as I continue to uncover archival materials that were lost in the move from the old website. Only time will tell how much I'll find, but I'll keep adding to it as I come across things in my search and find time to post them up. For now, there is some artwork in the gallery, which you can access by clicking on The Art of Beowulf in the Archive bookshelf.




The newest updates to the site will always be posted on the front page in the "Latest New & Updates" section, or you can subscribe to receive email updates or via RSS feed.




Finally, for a limited time I am offering for sale handmade chapbooks of the Theft of the Rhinegold, the first chapter in The Ring Saga. Additional chapbooks will be offered as they are completed until the final book is finished, at which time the individual chapbooks will be withdrawn from print. Digital editions are available as well for just .99 cents each. Stay tuned for Chapter 2 coming soon!

Public Libraries In Crisis Infographic

The American Library Association released a compelling infographic yesterday relating a number of unsettling facts regarding the current state of public libraries, which can best be described as "in turmoil," due primarily to budget cuts, but equally to the shifting trend toward digital distribution of books, with its requisite infrastructure requirements.



This has demanded an enormous expenditure of resources (both financial and logistic) in transitioning to the new mode of operations, exactly at a time when public funding has been cut due to the recent financial crisis - a crisis, by the way, which is in large part due to the electronic revolution itself: a large percentage of U.S. commerce now occurs online where little if any taxes are collected, thus lowering the pool of funds just such institutions as schools and libraries rely on.



Just ten years ago nearly all commerce occurred locally, or at least regionally, and people still asked questions like "is it safe to buy stuff online?" and "aren't you afraid someone will steal your credit card number?" When was the last time you heard that? The point is that buying online is now not only an accepted means of doing business, but very often the preferred one. Amazon's ongoing battles with state and federal governments regarding tax collections are just one part of this phenomenon. The other part of that equation is school and public libraries losing funds to stock their shelves.



For the past three years around 60% of U.S. public libraries have reported decreased budgets, while at the same time demand for services has risen proportionally: computer use is up 60% and Wi-Fi use up 74%. Anyone with a data plan knows what a 74% increase in bandwidth use can cost. An astonishing number to me was that 62% of public libraries are the sole provider of free public access to the Internet in their communities. And this is actually down from 73% in 2006. I guess a lot of towns still don't have a Starbucks yet.



The positive side of this equation is that 76% of public libraries now provide ebooks to their patrons - up from just 38% in 2007 - and a surprising 39% now offer reading devices for checkout. In addition, more and more resources are now found online, making equity of access to information and services a growing concern among rural and poorer communities without a strong digital infrastructure. And off course, all that new technology is putting an enormous drain on the shrinking budgets of libraries as they struggle to meet their patrons' needs.



As you can see from the infographic, providing training and online job searching is a fundamental service of public libraries, as over three-quarters help their patrons complete online job applications and 96% offer assistance in accessing online governmental services, such as unemployment and medical benefits. 90% provide technical training to help them do so (as in, how to use the computer and navigate the Internet).



It's surprising how many people just expect libraries to be there when they need or want them, but give no thought to how they're paid for. That's a statistic I'd like to see in an infographic some day.