Q&A With Smashword's Mark Coker On The E-book Industry
We have an exciting post planned today. Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, sits with Marketing Tips For Authors and answers questions related to the e-book industry. He sprinkles his advice with industry statistics for an interview packed with valuable information.
If you've been to this blog before, you'll notice that I changed the look and layout of the blog. The old template was a classic Blogger template that had major limitations. I found this one that gave me more flexibility that I needed. I'm sure I will be tweaking it over the next few days, but I hope you find it much easier to locate the great content hidden away in close to 400 past posts and counting. Go ahead, poke around and let me know what you think.
Now, on to our interview with Mark Coker...
Mark, thank you for taking time out of your schedule to sit with the readers of this blog and share your thoughts on the following questions:
1. E-books are getting a lot of attention. Where do you see their place in the industry as this technology starts to settle?
According the data from the Association of American Publishers, ebooks accounted for about 8% of the overall trade book market here in the US in 2010, up from 3% in 2009, 1% in 2008 and 1/2 of 1% in 2007. These numbers are the best around for trending information, yet they understate what's really happening with ebooks.
The data only includes reported results from about 12-14 large publishers, so it doesn't include data from the hundreds of thousands indie authors and the thousands of smaller independent publishers.
Some of the larger, more progressive independent publishers like Sourcebooks are already reporting 1/3 of their revenues coming from ebooks based on January 2011 sales.
Many of our best selling indie authors are selling hundreds of ebooks for every print book they sell.
The AAP data understates the true market share of what consumers are buying, since ebooks are generally priced less than print. This means the unit share for ebooks is much, much higher today than people realize.
I think the overall book industry will see ebook sales eclipse print sales within three or four years, and we'll see that happen faster for self-published authors if it hasn't happened already.
It's really difficult to predict when these tipping points will hit, and in the end the date doesn't really matter. All authors should know now is that they need to release their books asap as ebooks, and if they're selling well in print then by all means continue to sell in print as well.
2. As an author begins to look into publishing in the e-book formats, what do you recommend they consider; what should they avoid?
Back in October I wrote a post and presentation over at the Smashwords blog called The Seven Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success. Here are the five most important tips:
Write a great book – If you don't honor your readers with a great read, they'll either give you negative reviews (an instant book killer) or they'll punish you with the worst fate any author can experience – they'll ignore you. Readers are in control here. If they love your book, they'll talk it up to their friends and that will drive sales.
Write another great book – Each book you publish affords you the opportunity to reach new readers, earn their trust and admiration, and introduce them to your backlist. Make sure at the end of every book you provide a hyperlinked summary of where fans can discover your other books (Most of our authors link back to their Smashwords author page. Click here to see my author page).
Maximize distribution – Get your book in as many retailers as possible. Retailers spend millions of dollars to attract readers to their stores, and all the majors, including Apple, Sony, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Amazon and Diesel, welcome indie ebooks. Don't limit your distribution to only one or two.
Have patience – It can take months or years to build a readership and build sales. In the old traditional print world, if your book didn't immediately sell through within a few weeks, it was forced out of print. With ebooks, you never go out of print. Your book is immortal. We've had authors who experience very slow sales at first, but then they increase over a period of years, and then suddenly their book pops into the best-seller lists at a retailer. Often, these books will pop at one retailer but not another.
Marketing starts yesterday – Don't wait until your book is published for the marketing to start. Instead, start your marketing with social networking the moment you decide to write a book. Build your social network, and most importantly, contribute to the network. If you add value to your networks, and if you help your fellow authors succeed, they in turn will help open doors of opportunity for you. Authors need to help authors. Your fellow authors are not your competition, they're your partners.
The accompanying presentation can be found here at Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/Smashwords/the-seven-secrets-of-ebook-publishing-success
We spend a lot of time at Smashwords creating free resources to help guide even novice authors down the path to publishing success. In our FAQ at Smashwords, we even provide a glossary of common ebook terms because if you don't know the language of ebook publishing, it makes it more difficult to learn.
We also go out of our way to remind authors that the path to success is not easy. Many authors don't sell a single book. Keep your expectations realistic. I wrote two free guides that between them provide a crash course on ebook formatting, production, marketing and distribution. The first is the Smashwords Style Guide. It's the formatting bible here at Smashwords. Even if an author doesn't publish and distribute with Smashwords, it still provides a good overview of how ebook formatting and distribution works. The second resource is our Smashwords Book Marketing Guide. It provides authors over 25 marketing ideas they implement at no cost. For both of these guides, I tried to explain everything in clear simple language. I talk about not only what you should do, but also the thinking behind it. This context behind the recommendations helps authors truly internalize the knowledge.
In terms of what to avoid, avoid spending money. Ebook publishing and distribution is available to every author at no cost. At Smashwords, for example, all our publishing and distribution services are provided at no cost. We earn our income by taking a small commission which works out to 10% of the retail price for sales through our retail distribution network.
Expense mitigation is important because you, the author, are running a business. The fastest way to go out of business is to overspend and have expenses exceed your revenues. Keep your sales expectations low and realistic. For most authors, sales rarely meet expectations. Most best-selling authors today toiled in obscurity for years before they broke out. Don't break your bank to run your publishing business, and by all means never borrow money to finance your book publishing.
3. Right now, e-book prices vary considerably from title to title. What advice do you have for authors when considering the pricing of their book?
Ebook customers expect ebooks to be priced lower than print. $2.99 to $4.99 is a good price range for many authors. If you're just starting out, consider pricing your first book at FREE, if even only for a short period of time so you can gain your first readers and reviews. Readers are hesitant to take a chance on authors they don't yet know and trust, so sometimes you need to drop your prices to reduce the reader's risk.
Price is one of the most powerful marketing tools for indie authors. Some of our best-selling authors write series of full-length books (see my second secret to success above), and they give the first series-starter away for free. This is what Brian S. Pratt does. His first book, The Unsuspecting Mage: Morcyth Saga Book One is over 140,000 words. He gives it away for free. Many readers then return to buy the other five books in his series for $5.99 each. This strategy only works if you're honoring the reader with a great book.
Amanda Hocking, who has sold over 1 million ebooks, prices her series starters at $.99 each, and then prices her other books at $2.99.
The quality of your book is more important than price. If your book is a horrible read, you'll get hundreds of downloads with FREE but you won't get many readers.
4. Is there any special marketing activities that you find especially effective for e-books?
In addition to experimenting with low prices as I mentioned above, I'd encourage authors to participate in the online communities and message forums where their target readers congregate. Another of our best-selling authors, Randolph Lalonde, has found good success by participating in online message boards that reach his target readers (he writes fantasy). But he's not there flogging his book. Readers don't want that. Instead, he joins in discussions and participates in the community. In the signature of his profile, he lists his books. It's a very subtle, respectful method of marketing. Each time he posts, he's advertising his book. Each of the major ebook retailers operate their own message forums.
Let's say you wrote a book about growing tomatoes. There are probably dozens of online forums frequented by gardeners who could benefit from your knowledge and expertise.
5. As the leader of an e-book distributor, what would you say is important for authors to look for when they are considering a company to help distribute their e-books?
Look for a distributor that doesn't charge setup fees or conversion fees. Inspect their online publishing platform. Is it self-serve, easy to use and well-documented? Do they give you full control over pricing and metadata? Is it free to update your book if you make changes in the future? Do you know other authors who have used them? Does the distributor offer broad reach? Is there a large satisfied community of fellow authors who use them?
At Smashwords, we're publishing over 40,000 books from over 17,000 authors. We have a large online community of authors from around the world. It's easy to get help from these fellow authors. Our official Smashwords Facebook page launched about a month ago and has already become a thriving community where thousands of authors and readers congregate to share tips and talk about Smashwords ebooks. It's all about authors helping their fellow authors.
6. Regarding Smashwords specifically, what formats do you help authors publish their books in? How much technical knowledge does an author need to work with Smashwords?
To publish at Smashwords, an author formats their book as a Microsoft Word .doc document, per the instructions in our Smashwords Style Guide. Next, they upload the book and a separate front-cover image to our site. We then take those files and automatically convert the book into nine different ebook formats. These formats include PDF, EPUB (what we ship to all retailers), MOBI (for Kindle), two text formats, LRF, PDB and two online browser formats.
Authors need no technical knowledge other than what's covered in the Smashwords Style Guide. When I wrote the Style Guide, I was very careful to avoid technical jargon. Everything's explained in clear, simple words, and I provide a lot of pictures. I understand that Microsoft Word is a frustrating mystery to most of us normal human beings, so the Guide walks the author through the formatting process step-by-step.
So bottom line, all you need is a word processor and the patience to carefully read and implement the Style Guide. For authors who don't have the time or patience to implement the Style Guide, they can hire one of the formatters on our official Smashwords list – it's called Mark's List – by sending an email to list@smashwords.com. They'll receive the list via instant autoresponder. All the formatters are fellow Smashwords authors. We don't earn a commission or referral fee.
7. I read that you offer your services for free and you even give an option for authors to acquire ISBN numbers for their books at no cost. How can Smashwords do all this for authors at no cost?
We earn our income by taking a commission on all sales. If we don't help an author sell their book, we don't earn anything. The ISBNs cost us thousands of dollars, but we make it up through book sales.
8. Where do you see the ebook publishing industry heading in the next decade?
10 years from now, ebooks will be the dominant format for book publishing and consumption. There will be more published authors and more published books than ever before. It'll be a great time to be a reader, because readers will have instant, low-cost access to virtually every book ever published, and access to incredible authors they never would have been able to discover were it not the ebook publishing revolution.
Ebooks shatter the traditional economic and geographic barriers of print publishing. Ebooks are cheaper to produce, distribute and sell, and their lower costs mean that the authors and publishers can sell them for lower prices. Lower prices, combined with the magic of instant digital distribution, means that more books will become more available and more affordable to more readers.
9. Are there any new technologies or services on the horizon for Smashwords that you can share at this time?
We're constantly evolving our publishing and distribution services. We're always asking ourselves, "how can we make the publishing process faster, cheaper and easier for our authors?" So you'll see non-stop incremental updates to the platform over time.
Our Smashwords Coupon Manager feature, which allows authors to generate their own custom coupon codes for marketing purposes, is a good example of the type of new marketing tool we'd like to develop for our authors in the future. We're also going to spend a lot of time improving the discovery of our books so readers can more easily find what they're looking for, not only at Smashwords.com but at our retail partners as well.
We have over 400 items on our development roadmap for new features and service enhancements. Our challenge, as a small but fast-growing company, is to constantly reevaluate our development priorities so we're focusing on those issues that give the greatest number of Smashwords authors and publishers the greatest benefit.
10. What parting advice do you have for authors who are looking to begin the e-publishing process with their books?
Ebooks will usher in a new renaissance in book publishing. It's a very exciting time to be an author. The opportunity for authors to reach readers has never been greater than it is today, and the opportunities will only increase in the months and years ahead.
My biggest piece of advice is to get out there now and release your book as an ebook. The rules of ebook publishing and marketing are being written today by the early pioneers. Everything is changing so quickly. The authors who are out there now experimenting are the ones who will be most successful in the years ahead. Get out there and publish, learn, share and experiment. Take chances, make mistakes, learn from your experiences and grow.
Above all, don't fear the change. With change comes opportunity for those who learn to seize it.
--------
Mark Coker is the founder of Smashwords, an e-book publishing and distribution company, and the coauthor with his wife of the novel, Boob Tube. He also wrote the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide and the Smashwords Style Guide. You can keep up with the publishing industry by following his Huffington Post column.
(*Check out Tony Eldridge's, The Samson Effect, on Smashwords)
-------- Tony Eldridge is the author of The Samson Effect , an action/adventure novel that Clive Cussler calls a "first rate thriller brimming with intrigue and adventure." He is also the author of the Twitter marketing book, Conducting Effective Twitter Contests .
If you've been to this blog before, you'll notice that I changed the look and layout of the blog. The old template was a classic Blogger template that had major limitations. I found this one that gave me more flexibility that I needed. I'm sure I will be tweaking it over the next few days, but I hope you find it much easier to locate the great content hidden away in close to 400 past posts and counting. Go ahead, poke around and let me know what you think.
Now, on to our interview with Mark Coker...
Mark, thank you for taking time out of your schedule to sit with the readers of this blog and share your thoughts on the following questions:
1. E-books are getting a lot of attention. Where do you see their place in the industry as this technology starts to settle?
According the data from the Association of American Publishers, ebooks accounted for about 8% of the overall trade book market here in the US in 2010, up from 3% in 2009, 1% in 2008 and 1/2 of 1% in 2007. These numbers are the best around for trending information, yet they understate what's really happening with ebooks.
The data only includes reported results from about 12-14 large publishers, so it doesn't include data from the hundreds of thousands indie authors and the thousands of smaller independent publishers.
Some of the larger, more progressive independent publishers like Sourcebooks are already reporting 1/3 of their revenues coming from ebooks based on January 2011 sales.
Many of our best selling indie authors are selling hundreds of ebooks for every print book they sell.
The AAP data understates the true market share of what consumers are buying, since ebooks are generally priced less than print. This means the unit share for ebooks is much, much higher today than people realize.
I think the overall book industry will see ebook sales eclipse print sales within three or four years, and we'll see that happen faster for self-published authors if it hasn't happened already.
It's really difficult to predict when these tipping points will hit, and in the end the date doesn't really matter. All authors should know now is that they need to release their books asap as ebooks, and if they're selling well in print then by all means continue to sell in print as well.
2. As an author begins to look into publishing in the e-book formats, what do you recommend they consider; what should they avoid?
Back in October I wrote a post and presentation over at the Smashwords blog called The Seven Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success. Here are the five most important tips:
Write a great book – If you don't honor your readers with a great read, they'll either give you negative reviews (an instant book killer) or they'll punish you with the worst fate any author can experience – they'll ignore you. Readers are in control here. If they love your book, they'll talk it up to their friends and that will drive sales.
Write another great book – Each book you publish affords you the opportunity to reach new readers, earn their trust and admiration, and introduce them to your backlist. Make sure at the end of every book you provide a hyperlinked summary of where fans can discover your other books (Most of our authors link back to their Smashwords author page. Click here to see my author page).
Maximize distribution – Get your book in as many retailers as possible. Retailers spend millions of dollars to attract readers to their stores, and all the majors, including Apple, Sony, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Amazon and Diesel, welcome indie ebooks. Don't limit your distribution to only one or two.
Have patience – It can take months or years to build a readership and build sales. In the old traditional print world, if your book didn't immediately sell through within a few weeks, it was forced out of print. With ebooks, you never go out of print. Your book is immortal. We've had authors who experience very slow sales at first, but then they increase over a period of years, and then suddenly their book pops into the best-seller lists at a retailer. Often, these books will pop at one retailer but not another.
Marketing starts yesterday – Don't wait until your book is published for the marketing to start. Instead, start your marketing with social networking the moment you decide to write a book. Build your social network, and most importantly, contribute to the network. If you add value to your networks, and if you help your fellow authors succeed, they in turn will help open doors of opportunity for you. Authors need to help authors. Your fellow authors are not your competition, they're your partners.
The accompanying presentation can be found here at Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/Smashwords/the-seven-secrets-of-ebook-publishing-success
We spend a lot of time at Smashwords creating free resources to help guide even novice authors down the path to publishing success. In our FAQ at Smashwords, we even provide a glossary of common ebook terms because if you don't know the language of ebook publishing, it makes it more difficult to learn.
We also go out of our way to remind authors that the path to success is not easy. Many authors don't sell a single book. Keep your expectations realistic. I wrote two free guides that between them provide a crash course on ebook formatting, production, marketing and distribution. The first is the Smashwords Style Guide. It's the formatting bible here at Smashwords. Even if an author doesn't publish and distribute with Smashwords, it still provides a good overview of how ebook formatting and distribution works. The second resource is our Smashwords Book Marketing Guide. It provides authors over 25 marketing ideas they implement at no cost. For both of these guides, I tried to explain everything in clear simple language. I talk about not only what you should do, but also the thinking behind it. This context behind the recommendations helps authors truly internalize the knowledge.
In terms of what to avoid, avoid spending money. Ebook publishing and distribution is available to every author at no cost. At Smashwords, for example, all our publishing and distribution services are provided at no cost. We earn our income by taking a small commission which works out to 10% of the retail price for sales through our retail distribution network.
Expense mitigation is important because you, the author, are running a business. The fastest way to go out of business is to overspend and have expenses exceed your revenues. Keep your sales expectations low and realistic. For most authors, sales rarely meet expectations. Most best-selling authors today toiled in obscurity for years before they broke out. Don't break your bank to run your publishing business, and by all means never borrow money to finance your book publishing.
3. Right now, e-book prices vary considerably from title to title. What advice do you have for authors when considering the pricing of their book?
Ebook customers expect ebooks to be priced lower than print. $2.99 to $4.99 is a good price range for many authors. If you're just starting out, consider pricing your first book at FREE, if even only for a short period of time so you can gain your first readers and reviews. Readers are hesitant to take a chance on authors they don't yet know and trust, so sometimes you need to drop your prices to reduce the reader's risk.
Price is one of the most powerful marketing tools for indie authors. Some of our best-selling authors write series of full-length books (see my second secret to success above), and they give the first series-starter away for free. This is what Brian S. Pratt does. His first book, The Unsuspecting Mage: Morcyth Saga Book One is over 140,000 words. He gives it away for free. Many readers then return to buy the other five books in his series for $5.99 each. This strategy only works if you're honoring the reader with a great book.
Amanda Hocking, who has sold over 1 million ebooks, prices her series starters at $.99 each, and then prices her other books at $2.99.
The quality of your book is more important than price. If your book is a horrible read, you'll get hundreds of downloads with FREE but you won't get many readers.
4. Is there any special marketing activities that you find especially effective for e-books?
In addition to experimenting with low prices as I mentioned above, I'd encourage authors to participate in the online communities and message forums where their target readers congregate. Another of our best-selling authors, Randolph Lalonde, has found good success by participating in online message boards that reach his target readers (he writes fantasy). But he's not there flogging his book. Readers don't want that. Instead, he joins in discussions and participates in the community. In the signature of his profile, he lists his books. It's a very subtle, respectful method of marketing. Each time he posts, he's advertising his book. Each of the major ebook retailers operate their own message forums.
Let's say you wrote a book about growing tomatoes. There are probably dozens of online forums frequented by gardeners who could benefit from your knowledge and expertise.
5. As the leader of an e-book distributor, what would you say is important for authors to look for when they are considering a company to help distribute their e-books?
Look for a distributor that doesn't charge setup fees or conversion fees. Inspect their online publishing platform. Is it self-serve, easy to use and well-documented? Do they give you full control over pricing and metadata? Is it free to update your book if you make changes in the future? Do you know other authors who have used them? Does the distributor offer broad reach? Is there a large satisfied community of fellow authors who use them?
At Smashwords, we're publishing over 40,000 books from over 17,000 authors. We have a large online community of authors from around the world. It's easy to get help from these fellow authors. Our official Smashwords Facebook page launched about a month ago and has already become a thriving community where thousands of authors and readers congregate to share tips and talk about Smashwords ebooks. It's all about authors helping their fellow authors.
6. Regarding Smashwords specifically, what formats do you help authors publish their books in? How much technical knowledge does an author need to work with Smashwords?
To publish at Smashwords, an author formats their book as a Microsoft Word .doc document, per the instructions in our Smashwords Style Guide. Next, they upload the book and a separate front-cover image to our site. We then take those files and automatically convert the book into nine different ebook formats. These formats include PDF, EPUB (what we ship to all retailers), MOBI (for Kindle), two text formats, LRF, PDB and two online browser formats.
Authors need no technical knowledge other than what's covered in the Smashwords Style Guide. When I wrote the Style Guide, I was very careful to avoid technical jargon. Everything's explained in clear, simple words, and I provide a lot of pictures. I understand that Microsoft Word is a frustrating mystery to most of us normal human beings, so the Guide walks the author through the formatting process step-by-step.
So bottom line, all you need is a word processor and the patience to carefully read and implement the Style Guide. For authors who don't have the time or patience to implement the Style Guide, they can hire one of the formatters on our official Smashwords list – it's called Mark's List – by sending an email to list@smashwords.com. They'll receive the list via instant autoresponder. All the formatters are fellow Smashwords authors. We don't earn a commission or referral fee.
7. I read that you offer your services for free and you even give an option for authors to acquire ISBN numbers for their books at no cost. How can Smashwords do all this for authors at no cost?
We earn our income by taking a commission on all sales. If we don't help an author sell their book, we don't earn anything. The ISBNs cost us thousands of dollars, but we make it up through book sales.
8. Where do you see the ebook publishing industry heading in the next decade?
10 years from now, ebooks will be the dominant format for book publishing and consumption. There will be more published authors and more published books than ever before. It'll be a great time to be a reader, because readers will have instant, low-cost access to virtually every book ever published, and access to incredible authors they never would have been able to discover were it not the ebook publishing revolution.
Ebooks shatter the traditional economic and geographic barriers of print publishing. Ebooks are cheaper to produce, distribute and sell, and their lower costs mean that the authors and publishers can sell them for lower prices. Lower prices, combined with the magic of instant digital distribution, means that more books will become more available and more affordable to more readers.
9. Are there any new technologies or services on the horizon for Smashwords that you can share at this time?
We're constantly evolving our publishing and distribution services. We're always asking ourselves, "how can we make the publishing process faster, cheaper and easier for our authors?" So you'll see non-stop incremental updates to the platform over time.
Our Smashwords Coupon Manager feature, which allows authors to generate their own custom coupon codes for marketing purposes, is a good example of the type of new marketing tool we'd like to develop for our authors in the future. We're also going to spend a lot of time improving the discovery of our books so readers can more easily find what they're looking for, not only at Smashwords.com but at our retail partners as well.
We have over 400 items on our development roadmap for new features and service enhancements. Our challenge, as a small but fast-growing company, is to constantly reevaluate our development priorities so we're focusing on those issues that give the greatest number of Smashwords authors and publishers the greatest benefit.
10. What parting advice do you have for authors who are looking to begin the e-publishing process with their books?
Ebooks will usher in a new renaissance in book publishing. It's a very exciting time to be an author. The opportunity for authors to reach readers has never been greater than it is today, and the opportunities will only increase in the months and years ahead.
My biggest piece of advice is to get out there now and release your book as an ebook. The rules of ebook publishing and marketing are being written today by the early pioneers. Everything is changing so quickly. The authors who are out there now experimenting are the ones who will be most successful in the years ahead. Get out there and publish, learn, share and experiment. Take chances, make mistakes, learn from your experiences and grow.
Above all, don't fear the change. With change comes opportunity for those who learn to seize it.
--------
Mark Coker is the founder of Smashwords, an e-book publishing and distribution company, and the coauthor with his wife of the novel, Boob Tube. He also wrote the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide and the Smashwords Style Guide. You can keep up with the publishing industry by following his Huffington Post column.(*Check out Tony Eldridge's, The Samson Effect, on Smashwords)
-------- Tony Eldridge is the author of The Samson Effect , an action/adventure novel that Clive Cussler calls a "first rate thriller brimming with intrigue and adventure." He is also the author of the Twitter marketing book, Conducting Effective Twitter Contests .
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