Mike Macartney's Blog - Posts Tagged "publishing"
A Kodak Moment for Books
I feel sorry for Barnes & Noble, the last man standing in the big box print retail business. They are having their Kodak moment. They are flailing in the water next to the ship that is rapidly sinking, but they can't let go of the gunnel. "If we can just arrange the deck chairs once more, everything will be all right...."
In the last year or two B&N has tried taking out large chunks of their inventory and reducing shelf space. They have built up their game section and have tried white label presses for old and non-mainstream books. They have reprinted old classics in hardcover, like Poe, at huge prices, and printed hardcovers with cheap graphics on the cover and no dust jackets. The stores added new sections: like "teen" to traditional fiction and mysteries, and put small nook ereader displays in and then made them much larger, and so on and so on. But never have they relaxed their white knuckled grip on print books and large anchor stores, at least in Northern California where I live.
I walked through the local B&N in Silicon Valley on Saturday and looked at the new titles. I photographed a few with the smart phone to look up later to see what was being said about them and what they were about. The Nook section at the very front this store is larger all the time and there are always a few people in it. The usual old people were sleeping in the soft chairs and there were a couple of people buying things. There were more laptops in the attached Starbucks than people in the bookstore.
Why is B&N afraid to take on Amazon head-to-head? It would be scary and unknown waters, and they might drown, but they are slowly drowning now. Why not go down fighting? Why not create a phone app to allow shoppers to scan the bar code on a book and get the reviews of it? Why not have the app give a menu of things to check about the book? Why not have another app that allows the shopper to buy an ebook of the book and download it to their Nook while they are shopping, so they can read it when they get home? Why not have the app email the ebook to the shoppers Kindle so they can read the book on their Kindle when they get home? Yes, or email the book to the reader's iPad too. Maybe they could get really aggressive and show the shopper the Amazon and Apple prices and match them for price on the book? After all ebooks now outsell hardcovers, what are they protecting?
The apps to buy and review books inside B&N would take all of a month to write, simple. They could use the bar code on the book, nothing special. B&N already has the sales site and the Nook SW done behind it. Kindle and iPad already have email capability to send ebooks to them by anybody, even B&N.
Kodak, B&N, film & books. Why don't these old behemoths shake it off and fight? Guess it just does not work that way. Old dogs, new tricks, slowly dying as the ship sinks.
Originally published on Technorati. http://technorati.com/business/articl...
In the last year or two B&N has tried taking out large chunks of their inventory and reducing shelf space. They have built up their game section and have tried white label presses for old and non-mainstream books. They have reprinted old classics in hardcover, like Poe, at huge prices, and printed hardcovers with cheap graphics on the cover and no dust jackets. The stores added new sections: like "teen" to traditional fiction and mysteries, and put small nook ereader displays in and then made them much larger, and so on and so on. But never have they relaxed their white knuckled grip on print books and large anchor stores, at least in Northern California where I live.
I walked through the local B&N in Silicon Valley on Saturday and looked at the new titles. I photographed a few with the smart phone to look up later to see what was being said about them and what they were about. The Nook section at the very front this store is larger all the time and there are always a few people in it. The usual old people were sleeping in the soft chairs and there were a couple of people buying things. There were more laptops in the attached Starbucks than people in the bookstore.
Why is B&N afraid to take on Amazon head-to-head? It would be scary and unknown waters, and they might drown, but they are slowly drowning now. Why not go down fighting? Why not create a phone app to allow shoppers to scan the bar code on a book and get the reviews of it? Why not have the app give a menu of things to check about the book? Why not have another app that allows the shopper to buy an ebook of the book and download it to their Nook while they are shopping, so they can read it when they get home? Why not have the app email the ebook to the shoppers Kindle so they can read the book on their Kindle when they get home? Yes, or email the book to the reader's iPad too. Maybe they could get really aggressive and show the shopper the Amazon and Apple prices and match them for price on the book? After all ebooks now outsell hardcovers, what are they protecting?
The apps to buy and review books inside B&N would take all of a month to write, simple. They could use the bar code on the book, nothing special. B&N already has the sales site and the Nook SW done behind it. Kindle and iPad already have email capability to send ebooks to them by anybody, even B&N.
Kodak, B&N, film & books. Why don't these old behemoths shake it off and fight? Guess it just does not work that way. Old dogs, new tricks, slowly dying as the ship sinks.
Originally published on Technorati. http://technorati.com/business/articl...
Free Is Dead
It is time. The sharing economy ain’t what they tell you it is.
Take a page from Rupert Murdoch’s playbook; you think he ever gave away anything for free? When is the last time you saw a free Stephen King book? How about Anne Rice? J. K. Rowling?
Back in 2011, 2012, or 2010 when eBooks were new we all did it, I did it, made some books free to boost exposure and get sales going. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. It was delusion, desire, wishing on a horse to ride.
And back then it was all 99¢ eBooks too. It looks really cheap with the “¢” sign instead of $.99 doesn’t it? How’d that work out for you? People waited to get your book free and knew if you were only asking 99¢ you didn’t think much of your work either. “But, but, I did it to offer a sale price to get customers.” We all did, we are all guilty. The big publishers do offer their books at a discount to boost sales and introduce a new book – but they do it at $2.99-$3.99.
You know too that in the heady early days of self-publishing that there was a cavalcade or crap, a tsunami of shit being thrown at the new market. Free eBooks to promote websites and how to get rich and influence people, really bad books that were full of typos, bad grammar, and dumb stories, terrible romance and erotica hacked out, vampire/paranormal/dumb tripe, you name it – all free or 99¢ flooding the market and burying some really good stuff. And lets not forget 50 Shades of Grey, you know it was tripe, but it was free fan fiction and happened to catch with mainstream publishers desperate to latch on to something all those online readers would want.
And what was happening with all this free? Why people were throwing together garbage or having it written by offshore word mills and gaming the system to become best sellers and con people out of money.
http://thehustle.co/underground-world...
It’s 2015. EBooks are a much more mature market. Amazon only allows free books when you sign up for Amazon Prime and you give them exclusive publishing rights for your book. (You used to be able to make your book free on Apple iBooks and then Amazon would match it and it would then be free on Amazon. We all did that, but it is over now.) Even people with a modicum of fame are saying no to free.
http://www.salon.com/2015/10/28/wil_w...
No more giving your work away, no more free to build sales, no more 99¢ books unless it is a limited promotion and you go back to a reasonable price after. And make your book quality. If you have not had a tough editor go through it and make you do it right then don’t put it out there. You are the gatekeeper, the quality control. You don’t like reading bad books full of errors and typos, why would you expect others to pay you for the same? This is old, but still applies: http://www.syeopub.com/is-your-book-g...
I made sure that I no longer have any free eBooks out there, all my books are priced fairly, it is always a struggle to go through the editing process, but I do it. I pay artists for their work and fix errors even when I don’t want to and re-do things.
What would happen if you asked for your lunch to be free?
http://www.photographybay.com/2015/11...
So, why are you giving your work away or selling it for a pittance?
Take a page from Rupert Murdoch’s playbook; you think he ever gave away anything for free? When is the last time you saw a free Stephen King book? How about Anne Rice? J. K. Rowling?
Back in 2011, 2012, or 2010 when eBooks were new we all did it, I did it, made some books free to boost exposure and get sales going. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. It was delusion, desire, wishing on a horse to ride.
And back then it was all 99¢ eBooks too. It looks really cheap with the “¢” sign instead of $.99 doesn’t it? How’d that work out for you? People waited to get your book free and knew if you were only asking 99¢ you didn’t think much of your work either. “But, but, I did it to offer a sale price to get customers.” We all did, we are all guilty. The big publishers do offer their books at a discount to boost sales and introduce a new book – but they do it at $2.99-$3.99.
You know too that in the heady early days of self-publishing that there was a cavalcade or crap, a tsunami of shit being thrown at the new market. Free eBooks to promote websites and how to get rich and influence people, really bad books that were full of typos, bad grammar, and dumb stories, terrible romance and erotica hacked out, vampire/paranormal/dumb tripe, you name it – all free or 99¢ flooding the market and burying some really good stuff. And lets not forget 50 Shades of Grey, you know it was tripe, but it was free fan fiction and happened to catch with mainstream publishers desperate to latch on to something all those online readers would want.
And what was happening with all this free? Why people were throwing together garbage or having it written by offshore word mills and gaming the system to become best sellers and con people out of money.
http://thehustle.co/underground-world...
It’s 2015. EBooks are a much more mature market. Amazon only allows free books when you sign up for Amazon Prime and you give them exclusive publishing rights for your book. (You used to be able to make your book free on Apple iBooks and then Amazon would match it and it would then be free on Amazon. We all did that, but it is over now.) Even people with a modicum of fame are saying no to free.
http://www.salon.com/2015/10/28/wil_w...
No more giving your work away, no more free to build sales, no more 99¢ books unless it is a limited promotion and you go back to a reasonable price after. And make your book quality. If you have not had a tough editor go through it and make you do it right then don’t put it out there. You are the gatekeeper, the quality control. You don’t like reading bad books full of errors and typos, why would you expect others to pay you for the same? This is old, but still applies: http://www.syeopub.com/is-your-book-g...
I made sure that I no longer have any free eBooks out there, all my books are priced fairly, it is always a struggle to go through the editing process, but I do it. I pay artists for their work and fix errors even when I don’t want to and re-do things.
What would happen if you asked for your lunch to be free?
http://www.photographybay.com/2015/11...
So, why are you giving your work away or selling it for a pittance?
