R. Scot Johns's Blog, page 17

Amanda Hocking on USA Today [Updated]

With the first book of her Trylle trilogy being published by St. Martin's Press today, USA Today did a nice long piece on Amanda Hocking this morning. The self-pubbed rags-to-riches princess signed a seven figure deal ($2 million) last March for four new books and the rights to reprint the Trylle series that held positions on the USA Today bestseller list for 50 weeks, selling well over a million copies.



Nine months after signing with St. Martin's, the first book in the series, Switched, comes out today in new print and ebook editions containing "extended scenes and bonus content" according to the press materials, which for this first part consists of a new short story entitled "The Vittra Attacks." The print edition is getting a first printing of 250,000, which is, I think, frankly overzealous for a book that almost everyone interested in already owns. The remaining books in the series are due on Feb. 28 and April 24, with a Hollywood movie in the works (which means at least a year away). Her first new book for St. Martin's - Wake, part one of the 4-book Watersong series - is set for release on August 21st, and is about as guaranteed a bestseller as there could ever be. Expect to see a first printing in the millions on advance orders alone.



I only mention this as news due to Hocking's origins as a self-pubbed author and the subsequent whirlwind of publicity her success has caused. I thought it might be interesting to follow up on what has happened since. As you can see from the picture above the cover has received an update - the sickly green covers of the previous editions were frankly lame, and these new romance-looking ones will appeal more to the younger female audience that made Twilight such a success. Her website has also received a professional polish, and according to the article she's being prepped for an "international media blitz," so expect to be seeing a lot of her on talk shows in the near future.



The books are being released at $8.99 for both print and ebook versions (the ebook was $2.99 before, and originally only .99 cents as I recall), and currently list on Amazon's rankings at 14,000 and 12,000 respectively (as of noon Eastern Time). That means she's only sold about 10-15 copies of each edition so far today, give or take (from personal experience I can tell you that ten copies in a day will put you at about 10-13,000, depending on how many other books are selling at the same time - right now I'm at 23,000 having sold ten books in two days). So not a great rush to read the new "bonus" short story going on so far. Of course, almost everyone who's interested in this genre has already bought the book, so one bonus chapter won't likely entice very many to spend three times as much as they did for the entire story in the first place.



UPDATE: Later That Same Evening...



Switched is currently #18 in print and #786 in ebooks, so that goes to show you how little I know. A lot can change in a day.



SECOND UPDATE: Sometime Around Noon the Next Day...



After its initial surge last night sales of Switched have slackened off somewhat, dropping it to #615 in print and #1228 in ebooks. Meanwhile, my book continues to sell steadily in moderate quantities, bringing me to #16,997 in ebooks, which isn't bad considering I only have the one title published, but leaves a lot of room for growth.

Print Book Sales Continue to Decline

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Print Book Sales Comparison 2010 to 2011 [Source: PW]

Neilsen BookScan have reported their final print book figures for 2011, and as you can see by the numbers in the column on the right, it's not good news for traditional print. Overall decline was double that of last year's 4.5%, in large part due to Borders closing. A slight pre-holiday rise in print sales was offset by a 30% decline in the final week of 2011 as owners of new e-readers turned their attention to ebooks.



Hardest hit this year were Adult Fiction and Mass Market Paperbacks, with each declining by double digits, at -17.7% and -23% respectively. These are, of course, the categories with the largest increase in digital sales. We should see the AAP stats in the coming weeks, which will give us the figures for ebooks. This will tell the other side of the story, which should all be positive.



BookScan data represents roughly 75% of the book trade, with a quarter of the market not reporting. Aside from total income, non-corporate entities are not required to report their sales data, so these figures don't include the tens of thousands of indie publishers out there. However, they do account for the majority of book sales and consequently tell us much about the current trends and trade winds.



Those winds are blowing fiercely in a fairly consistent direction. According to Publisher's Weekly sales of Mass Market Paperbacks have fallen 60% since 2008. Meanwhile, this summer's BookStats report showed ebook sales had grown by 1039% between 2008 and 2010, with revenue increasing 1274%. And 2011 will likely add a fair amount to that.

Apple To Offer Self-Publishing On iBooks?

Rumors are floating about like Autumn leaves in a blustery whirl today (it's an Apple tree) as speculation swirls around Apple's announcement of a press event later this month in New York, apparently aimed at publishers. Numerous tech blogs (AllThingsD, GoodEReader, TechCrunch, CMSWire) are reporting that "sources" have confirmed the event will focus on improvements to iBooks and the iBookstore publishing platform. As always, however, no specifics are forthcoming as yet (that's what the media event is for), although one source states that Apple plans to launch a new self-publishing program to compete with Amazon KDP and Barnes & Noble's PubIt, among others, so of course this is what most of the rumors are about.



However, one other possibility no one has mentioned yet is ebook lending. If Apple's intention is to battle head-to-head with Amazon's new exclusivity agreement for the Kindle Library Lending Program, there is a possibility that they have reached agreements with at least a few of the major trades to offer ebook lending via libraries. This is pure speculation, of course (but then so is everything else), but it would make great sense given Apple's relatively close ties to the Big Six and their need to respond to Amazon's efforts to draw away top authors with the lure of lending royalties. After all, a six million dollar pot is a pretty big carrot. Were I an Apple executive in charge of iBooks content I would want to nip that in the bud right quick. Garnering ebook lending deals with publishers who have rejected Kindle lending would be a massive shot across the bow of Amazon's flagship.



That said, a self-pub program would make the most sense, and certainly be most welcome to a great many independent authors, as Apple are the most locked down retail avenue out there. Getting ebooks into the iBookstore is difficult at best, requiring a $250 up-front fee and a Mac running OSX, or a third-party aggregator who take a cut of profits, whereas Amazon has gone to great lengths to make it as cheap and easy as possible for everyone to publish to the Kindle. In this respect, Apple have fallen ever further behind, even while the iBooks format surges ahead in terms of format quality. But if they truly want the iBookstore to succeed, they need to open it up to a larger market, and that includes independent self-pubbed authors who use Windows.



Whether or not this will happen is yet to be seen, particularly given Apple's penchant for relatively strict "quality" control, and it's unlikely they will ever completely open the floodgates, since (unlike Amazon) they've always had very rigid gatekeepers and high admission fees. But until they do it's unlikely that they'll ever gain a serious hold on the ebook market: the recent Aptara survey I discussed last month shows Apple with only a 4% share of the digital trade book market while Amazon has 56%, even though Apple sells vastly more iOS devices than Amazon sells Kindles. Granted, Kindles are designed primarily as eReaders and free Kindle apps are available for every platform, but even so one would think that Apple could sell more than 4% after nearly two years in the business. Clearly their strategy has failed and it's time to rethink the future.

Amanda Hocking on USA Today

With the first book of her Trylle trilogy being published by St. Martin's Press today, USA Today did a nice long piece on Amanda Hocking this morning. The self-pubbed rags-to-riches princess signed a seven figure deal ($2 million) last March for four new books and the rights to reprint the Trylle series that held positions on the USA Today bestseller list for 50 weeks, selling well over a million copies.



Nine months after signing with St. Martin's, the first book in the series, Switched, comes out today in new print and ebook editions containing "extended scenes and bonus content" according to the press materials, which for this first part consists of a new short story entitled "The Vittra Attacks." The print edition is getting a first printing of 250,000, which is, I think, frankly overzealous for a book that almost everyone interested in already owns. The remaining books in the series are due on Feb. 28 and April 24, with a Hollywood movie in the works (which means at least a year away). Her first new book for St. Martin's - Wake, part one of the 4-book Watersong series - is set for release on August 21st, and is about as guaranteed a bestseller as there could ever be. Expect to see a first printing in the millions on advance orders alone.



I only mention this as news due to Hocking's origins as a self-pubbed author and the subsequent whirlwind of publicity her success has caused. I thought it might be interesting to follow up on what has happened since. As you can see from the picture above the cover has received an update - the sickly green covers of the previous editions were frankly lame, and these new romance-looking ones will appeal more to the younger female audience that made Twilight such a success. Her website has also received a professional polish, and according to the article she's being prepped for an "international media blitz," so expect to be seeing a lot of her on talk shows in the near future.



The books are being released at $8.99 for both print and ebook versions (the ebook was $2.99 before, and originally only .99 cents as I recall), and currently list on Amazon's rankings at 14,000 and 12,000 respectively (as of noon Eastern Time). That means she's only sold about 10-15 copies of each edition so far today, give or take (from personal experience I can tell you that ten copies in a day will put you at about 10-13,000, depending on how many other books are selling at the same time - right now I'm at 23,000 having sold ten books in two days). So not a great rush to read the new "bonus" short story going on so far. Of course, almost everyone who's interested in this genre has already bought the book, so one bonus chapter won't likely entice very many to spend three times as much as they did for the entire story in the first place.

Predictions for 2012

And here are a few thoughts on what we might see in the coming year...




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

As much as authors and publishers would love to see a standard one-size-fits-all ebook format, that's just never gonna happen, because the business interests of ebook retailers can overrule it via proprietary e-readers. Even ePub based fixed-layout books are already fractured into multiple formats with their own unique specifics, and that trend will continue for a good long while so long as Apple, Amazon and B&N hold the cards. The high ideal of a single universal standard for all ebooks is unrealistic, if only because it is simply too constraining for the pace of today's artistic exploration. By the time EPUB3 is fully integrated into the next generation e-readers, technical advances will have rendered it outdated. The pace of universal adoption is just too slow to keep up with individual discovery and invention. My prediction is that the ebook market will fragment even further as the power players move to consolidate their hold on their segment of the market and others move in to claim their share.





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




The Kindle 4/Touch will be the last black and white eInk reader we'll see from Amazon. Color reflective technology is good enough now to be acceptable to ebook readers, both in terms of speed and image quality...or at least it will be by the end of 2012 when the next Kindle line is due. Grayscale screens are the black and white televisions of today, and they'll all be junk tomorrow (or at least by next year anyway, since a lot of people tend to keep their old TVs around awhile). Consequently, there will be a smaller lineup of models next time, with a low-end color touchscreen reader and a mid-ground Fire 2 update. Buttons will be gone for good (and good riddance to them, too).




3. 10" Kindle Tablet will debut at $399




Amazon will also introduce a new high-end full size tablet this year to compete directly with the iPad. The Kindle Fire is a nice mid-size sedan, but the iPad is a Hummer. With a growing app store and a full complement of multimedia content, the color Kindle Fire just cries out for more legroom. It's a nice one-handed reading device and suited better to small kid's hands for games and movies, but it's just too small to do much else with comfortably for any length of time. In addition to which, illustrated books and magazines demand a larger screen to fully appreciate and enjoy, and since Amazon is first and foremost a book retailer, they would be remiss in addressing this segment of their market. The price point is a reasonable guess as a competitive price that's low enough to be a good deal and high enough to be conceivable.




4. Publishers will come on board for library lending




The public is just too demanding to ignore, and they want to borrow ebooks plain and simple. Being able to gift or resell your used ebooks is still a few years off so I'll reserve those predictions for another day, but library lending is an issue that needs to be dealt with now. 2011 was a watershed year for libraries as they finally came to grips with the changing landscape and began to confront the many problems it presents. But publishers have not been helping and so their hands are tied. But as print becomes less cost effective publishers will begin to see the light. Why print an expensive hardcover for a few thousand libraries when a digital file beamed out will cost you almost nothing and net you just as much? Libraries don't get ebook licenses for free, so it's just a matter of time before the major trades realize they're sitting on a cash cow here. Surveys show consistently that readers increase consumption as access becomes easier. More loans = more licenses = more good word of mouth from happy readers = more potential sales. It's really not a hard equation.




5. Ebook prices will increase, stabilizing into three price ranges




As print book sales decline ebooks will simply have to fill the void, so ebook prices will go up. More and more of the overall production costs (i.e. editorial, layout, marketing, etc.) will be laid on the shoulders of the digital editions, making their effective costs increase. Ultimately ebooks must pull their weight and pay their fair share. But those costs are not the same for every title or publisher across the board, so they will fall into three main categories and be priced accordingly:


.99 / $2.99 - These are your self-pubs and independents looking to gain entry and build or maintain their following, as well as daily specials and discount backlist titles and classics
$7.99 / $9.99 - Mid-list authors and backlist titles by top authors, as well as a handful of the top selling independents; successful self-pubs will start to move up into this category
$12.99 / $14.99 - Bestselling titles by top authors and new releases by trade pubs, as well as major author catalog and new enhanced ebooks


There will still be ebooks listed at every other imaginable price - particularly in the $4.99-$5.99 range for overzealous self-pubs - but few of these will sell more than a handful. The major trades just can't afford to go much lower than $7.99 and hope to support their massive infrastructure, and they don't want to drop new titles below ten bucks. But readers have shown they won't buy books much over that by anyone but the top draws, so eventually $12.99 will become the go-to price for new releases, with mid-list coming in just under ten. It may take another year for this to solidify, but that's the direction it will be heading in due time.





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




While several self-published authors have achieved Top 10 status this year (on one list or another), they have mainly been for bottom-tier price point titles, with a few $4.99 or so oddities thrown in. Nearly all top selling self-pubbed titles go for .99 cents, with a reasonable amount at $2.99. But for the first time a self-pubbed author will climb the list on the back on a top tier price this year, and I'm not talking about someone who's jumped ship from traditional publishing to go it alone on the strength of their name - I'm talking about a full-fledged independent up-by-the-bootstraps kind of author who did all the work themselves and has not yet been successful. And it may well be someone who's all but unknown today.




These are just some thoughts on the direction things are going. Most of them are certain to be horribly off their mark, as the target just keeps moving, bringing an endless stream of surprises. But then, that's what makes predictions so fun. If they were certainties, this would be a news report instead.

The Publishing Year In Review

A quick look back at the mile markers of 2011:




January


Post-holiday ebook sales spike to 23.5% of all U.S. trade book sales
Amazon now selling more ebooks than paperbacks
Kindle Singles launches


February


U.S. ebook sales up 202% over previous year
Barnes & Noble selling twice as many ebooks as print books online
Apple begins enforcing new in-app purchase rules requiring 30% cut
Apple and the "Agency Five" publishers come under investigation for price fixing
Random House last of "Big Six" to adopt the agency pricing model
Harper-Collins caps library ebook loans at 26, to the chagrin of everyone else


March



iPad 2 launched: it sells in massive numbers without slowing throughout the year
Amazon launches Appstore (and is subsequently sued by Apple over the name - unsuccessfully)
Google Books settlement rejected by Federal judge
Self-pubbed author Amanda Hocking signs 7-figure deal for four books


April



Amazon offers local library loans through OverDrive


May



Amazon now selling more Kindle ebooks than all print books combined
Amazon hires trade vet Larry Kirshbaum to head its publishing division
Barnes & Noble launch the eInk Nook Touch ereader
Kobo also launch an eInk touchscreen reader
Random House reaches 2 million ebook sales


June



Pottermore launches (without any content or apparent plan)


July



Borders is liquidated
Amazon buys The Book Depository
Google launches the iRiver Story ereader, but no one cares


August



Amazon launches a web-based reader to counter Apple's in-app purchase policy
Apple and the "Agency Five" publishers hit with multiple civil lawsuits
Steve Jobs steps down as CEO of Apple


September



Amazon launches the new Kindle line, with prices ranging from $79 to $199 for the 7" Kindle Fire tablet
Barnes & Noble stocks plunge as a result
Prices of ebook readers plunge as well


October



Death of Steve Jobs
Wall Street Journal launches ebook bestseller list
ePub 3 spec finalized
Amazon announces KF8 (Kindle Format 8), but doesn't release the specs
Kobo releases the Kobo Vox 7" tablet reader


November



Kindle Lending Library launches as part of the Amazon Prime program
Penguin pulls new titles from Overdrive library lending program
B&N launch the 7" Nook Tablet, but inexplicably keeps making the Nook Color


December



EU begins investigation into Apple/Agency 5 price fixing
Amazon buys 450 Marshall Cavendish children's titles
Amazon price check app causes flurry of retailer agitation
Sales continue to decline at Barnes & Noble, dragged down by fading print book sales
Amazon selling over a million Kindles a week


And those are just some of the main events of 2011. All in all a rather busy year. Stay tuned for the next round...it's shaping up to be a doozy.

SkyNews on the Rise of eBooks

SkyNews HD brings us this video report from the UK concerning the rapid rise of ebooks...

iPad 3 Screen Specs

The All-New Frameless Holophonic Projection iPad 3D

[Source: Someone's Imagination]

As always there has been a lot of grist and speculation being churned out lately by the rumor mill about the many possible improvements we'll be seeing when the iPad 3 debuts this spring. With some honest competition finally appearing in the form of the Kindle Fire (albeit not directly, but for a portion of the market nonetheless), Apple can now start bringing out some of the innovations they've been holding in reserve for just such an eventuality.



But while many (if not most) of the rumors floating about remain just that - rumor only, and nothing more - at least two of them have received some support of late, and one a reliable debunking. According to Apple supply sources there will be no 7" iPad going toe to toe with Amazon et al. in 2012, supporting Steve Jobs' assertion (at least for the time being) that the smaller form factor does not lend itself well enough to the tablet environment for Apple to pursue in earnest. That move (if true) will leave Amazon with at least a year of market domination in the 7" sector (barring a late-year release of a 7" iPad), and possibly delineate a reading / personal entertainment tablet sector from a broader computing / multi-use tablet market by year's end.



And while rumors suggest Apple will continue to provide the iPad 2 at a lower price after the introduction of the newer model, it's extremely unlikely to go lower than $399, which is still fully twice the price of a Kindle Fire. But you never know. It's possible the entry-level iPad 3 will debut at that price with the iPad 2 reduced to $299 or so. But I doubt it. Still, everyone was fairly shocked when the first iPad hit the street at $499, so Apple's not exactly behind the curve here. But this is all mere speculation, just more grist for the ever-grinding mill. Chew on it as you see fit.



As for what we will most likely see, the supply chain source corroborated earlier reports of a higher resolution screen in the form of a QXGA standard 2048x1536 display (produced by Sharp, Samsung and LG), which retains the prior models' 9.7" size. That fully doubles the current screen resolution of 132 ppi to 264, making it the first truly high resolution tablet capable of displaying HD video and images. This will provide both opportunities and challenges for content creators who don't want products designed for the iPad 2's lower resolution to show up pixelated on the newer screens as have iPhone apps installed on an iPad in the past. In addition to this news, the source reports that Menebea will provide dual-LED backlight units to enhance the tablet's brightness, supported by batteries with 14,000 milliampere-hour capacity.



Finally, Samsung will continue to supply the iPad's processing power in the form the quad-core A6 chip rather than the iPad 2's dual-core A5. This additional computing power will be relied on heavily to display four times as many pixels just as smoothly on the iPad 3 (2x2 = 4 pixels where there was only 1 before; thus, 1024x768 = 786,432 pixels, while 2048x1536 = 3,145,728 pixels). So while the increased quality of a higher resolution display is truly exciting, it poses a serious dilemma for graphic artists and illustrators working to produce ebooks with a file size that's not outlandish. There is, after all, only so much memory available for storage on these devices, and even with Apple's current 2 Gb limit on file size, fully illustrated ebooks and graphic novels of even half that size will fill up 16 gigs right quick.



Now, it would take a fair amount of hi-rez images to reach 2 gigs, but with enhanced audio and video and some animations it's not outside the realm of possibility that we will start to hit those limits in the not too distant future. The recent Yellow Submarine ebook comes in at 320 megs, and that was done with vector graphics for the most part (which are suited to that style), whereas my Ring Saga project is all full color bitmapped images that create even larger file sizes: just 22 pages and an outer cover at 2700x3375 resolution comes in at 48 Mb with high quality jpeg compression. Those sizes may have seemed a bit excessive before, but now a full-bleed image for a two-page layout will need to be at least 2048x3072 in size in order for each half to fill the screen in vertical orientation on the iPad 3 (presuming these specs are accurate). I'll obviously shrink those hi-rez images for the final iPad version anyway, but nowhere near as much now as I would have done before this news came out. And I'm glad it did, because it may have saved me a whole lot of work in the coming months redoing everything that I've just done.

ePub File Icon

Lately I've grown tired of seeing the default Windows system icon representing .epub files, and decided to go looking for a new one. Since the official ePUB logo was revealed well over a year ago - way back in April of 2010, in fact, when Ralph Burkhardt's design was chosen as the winning entry - I would have thought by now an official icon would appear on .epub files in system folders. But sadly that's not the case. Not only that, but I couldn't readily find a good one based on the official logo. So I made one. Now all my .epub files are represented by this readily recognizable little green "e", to which I've added a bit of style in Photoshop.



Right-click the image above to download the linked icon file (not the .png image itself, but the file it links to), which is a 256 x 256 .ico file. For Windows 7 users you'll have to use a file manager such as FileTypesMan to change the default icon, since the "change icon" option is for some inexplicable reason no longer available in folder options or context menus for anything but shortcuts. In lieu of an official icon this should hold you over in the meantime.

New KDP List Price Requirements

The new pricing structure for Amazon KDP's 35% royalty option [Credit: Amazon]

Authors distributing their works through Kindle Direct Publishing should be aware that Amazon has recently altered their ebook pricing structure for the 35% royalty option to include restrictions based on file size. As you can see from the screen cap above there are now three divisions within the 35% option, requiring new minimum prices for files over 3Mb in size, with $1.99 as the new minimum list for those between 3 and 10 megs, and $2.99 as the lowest allowable price for files over 10 megabytes in size.



Until now there were no conditions set on the size of an ebook file in the 35% margin and no delivery charge associated with the file delivery, so that for a .99 cent title an author receives .35 cents, regardless of the file size. Ebooks receiving the 70% royalty have always been subjected to a .15 cents per megabyte bandwidth fee for the initial download, which is one reason the minimum price for this option has been $2.99 from the start. By comparison, at .15 cents per megabyte a .99 cent title at the 35% royalty would cost more to deliver than its profit margin affords at sizes over 2.3 megs. As a practical example, the file for The Saga of Beowulf is 2.31 Mb (640 pages in print, with a half dozen images), which deducts exactly .35 cents from my profit for each purchase.



With ebook files beginning to increase in size (often dramatically) as multimedia content is added, the logic here is obvious: Amazon is looking to a future when ebooks sold in KF8's more content-rich format will frequently contain enhanced audio-visual content, and thus require greater bandwidth to deliver - the addition of a single video, for example, can swell the file size to 50 megs or better depending on its length and compression ratio, and even shorter graphic novels will be hard pressed to come in at much less than that and keep the image quality decent. But since Whispersync delivery is free to users, the added cost must come from somewhere. Consequently, Amazon is making something of a preemptive move here as it eyes the future.



The most obvious and practical result of this new policy is that for titles with files larger than 3 Mb the .99 cent price point is now no longer an option. Amazon is essentially stating that going forward .99 cent titles are restricted to basic text-only ebooks of a reasonable length (or very short works with a handful of images). In essence, there will be no such thing as a .99 cent enhanced ebook on Amazon. For larger books, prices must be higher.



But the most interesting thing about this structure change is that while at first glance it appears to put a heavy limitation on the 35% option, in fact the 35% rate is by far the more profitable for larger files. A 10 Mb file at 70% will cost the author $1.50 in delivery fees, leaving only .59 cents on a $2.99 title after Amazon deducts their 30% share, whereas the same ebook at the 35% rate would net the author $1.05 - .46 cents more! And of course, the difference only goes up as file size increases: a 50 meg file at 70% will cost the author a whopping $7.50 for delivery alone! This effectively eliminates the 70% royalty as a possibility for enhanced ebooks, which is why Amazon has just raised the bottom line for the other option.



KDP Royalty Rate Comparison for Various File Sizes

As you can see from the table I made above, in practical terms 7 Mb is the dividing line for a $2.99 list title. At that size the 70% royalty nets $1.04 after delivery fee is charged, a penny less than the same $2.99 title with the 35% margin chosen. One can always raise the price, but that has drawbacks of its own each author will have to justify for themselves. For an ebook listed at $4.99 the dividing line increases to a 12 Mb file, with the 70% royalty netting six cents less at that point than the 35% option, but sales will also likely drop by half due to the higher price, depending on your popularity as an author, so you'll have to take that into consideration as well. Of course, if you're a well known author none of this will matter to you much, as you're probably charging $15 or better for your books, and unlikely to be reading this anyway.