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Author Ian Edward put me onto a great website called The Publetariat.Some of their recent posts include:
What Readers Hate
With All The Hype, Is Self-Publishing Really For You? Five Questions to Ask Yourself
7 Links To Help Every Writer With Taxes
No, Seriously, I'm Not F**king Around, You Really Don't Want To Be A Writer
Free Fiction And The Value Of Our Efforts
Self-Publishing Index: Criteria Explained
Writing And The Mixed Blessing Of A Day Job
Thanks for sharing this. It's now saved in my favorites list!
Jacqueline wrote: "I can claim some experience in this area, both for Australia and overseas. I am fairly sure that there are only two approved routes to publication.1) Be famous. Preferably a famous sports perso..."
Three cheers for the internet
You know, I really, really think we are reaching a tipping point, the ice berg is calving, the log jam is collapsing - and the literary world is CHANGING! At last, you might say.The internet is the catalyst, both with ebooks, and international online sales. Whatever the future brings, it will not be business as usual.
For me, it means that ebooks will bring most of my profit (pennies, I assure you) although I will still need paper copies for promotion, face to face selling etc.
As the old style book trade has done nothing useful except make money out of me, I can't say I will miss it. I am scrambling to adjust to the future, so I will be ready when it happens.
I can't promote to female readers online. There are folks out there who seem to chat online all day, but sorry... I have books to write. I have joined a small online co-operative Red Lipstick Journals ( http://redlipstickjournals.blogspot.com/ ) which is a tight group of authors doing mutual promotion. That is a useful approach and has certainly multiplied the hits on my website. I don't know how much it has affected sales yet.
None of the authors in that group has an affectionate word to say about their publishers, and as one direct sale is worth at least 4 through the publisher, most of us have a mix of 'proper' and self-published books. Root of the problem is that publishers only handle and promote a tiny fraction of the books being published. The rest of us are on our own.
Times are hard in Australia for self-published authors - it's harder for a new author to get published than it is to win the lottery. The government has colluded with the major publishers and book chains to keep Amazon out with the result that independent authors have no option than to sell their books on Amazon US and adding $10.95 postage to the cover price. You have to want a book 'real bad' to pay the freight cost!! Seems like e-books is the only fair playing field
Anne, I hear you, but there are alternatives to US book production. As a guide, you can say that if 50 copies of your 100,000 book are delivered to your door for a gross cost in excess of $10, you are paying too much. By all means email me for a chat, if you like. You can have them sold on-line in Australia by people who do not charge a fortune for postage, and give you a 25% cut.I have started a virtual publishing house of my very own to avoid the stigma of self-publication. it will, in effect, just be a trading name. Rather Robert Smith trading as Bob's Plumbing, but at least it means people picking up my books and looking inside will not see my name under Publisher, and think 'Oh-oh, more self-published rubbish'.
Jacqueline wrote: "Anne, I hear you, but there are alternatives to US book production. As a guide, you can say that if 50 copies of your 100,000 book are delivered to your door for a gross cost in excess of $10, you..."Thanks for replying Jacqueline. I would be interested in finding out more about selling online in Australia.
Ann
Ann, email me at jacquelinegeorge(at)westnet.com.au and let's have a chat...
Jacqueline wrote: "Anne, I hear you, but there are alternatives to US book production. As a guide, you can say that if 50 copies of your 100,000 book are delivered to your door for a gross cost in excess of $10, you..."Jacqueline - we think along the same lines - for my novel Ice King, I set up a trading name, which is the publisher, hired an editor, book designer, used Smashwords to convert to e-book, printed 100 using a local book publisher in Sydney, (four copies had to go to State & Federal Governments - for free, plus postage costs!) bought ten ISBN numbers (much cheaper than buying one), used Lightning Source for the UK, USA & Canada (LS will be in Oz by July, not sure where they will be located, although I have asked) all of the above was 'easy' compared to getting the book 'out there' i.e marketing !
Have been following The Creative Penn for ideas, so like Ann, I would appreciate any suggestions.
This is an interesting story, especially for any authors who are still only publishing in paperback form:How I Went from Traditional to Ebook Publishing (and Started Selling Again)
http://bookbee.net/how-i-went-from-tr...
A great article from the Publetariat website:The Economics Of Self-Publishing An Ebook
"At first it was just an experiment. Blake Crouch, a mystery and suspense novelist, was not lacking for a traditional book publisher. His last few novels were put out by St. Martin’s Press and he has a literary agent dedicated to selling the rights to his work. But early last year, intrigued by success stories with Amazon’s Kindle store, he decided to release a collection of his short stories as an ebook without the aid of a publisher.
Though sales started off slow — maybe a few hundred a month — within the last two months he’s been averaging 5,000 purchases a month. With his 70% cut from Amazon, that means a $2.99 ebook has generated upwards of $10,000 a month, money that bypasses a traditional publisher completely and goes straight to his pocket. Five thousand sales a month, he told me in a phone interview, “is far more than I’ve sold traditionally.”
Crouch is among a growing list of authors who are forgoing the traditional publisher route to sell their work directly to consumers. Though self-publishing is nothing new — it has long been referred to as “vanity publishing,” typically a disparaging term — the rise of the ebook market has allowed authors to eliminate the high infrastructure costs of a print product. A typical print run of a few thousand books can cost a vanity publisher a hefty five figures, whereas the actual publishing of an ebook (not including the production costs) amounts to virtually nothing.
The ebook also allows authors to skip over other hurdles, including the very cold reality that most offline retailers won’t stock a self-published book on their shelves. Though online retailers like the Kindle and Nook stores can still give preferential treatment for major publishers, they’re able to provide a wide swath of inventory from the long tail." Read more.
Ah, does my heart good to read stories like that. When (if?) it happens to me, you'll be the first to know.
Here's a way to get published in Australia - Sign up for The Book of Fascination project. I'm applying for an OZ Co grant very soon.So go here http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/4...
Have a look and sign up if you feel it's for you, I need Aussie writers.
Cheers
Rob
Mandy wrote: "A great article from the Publetariat website:The Economics Of Self-Publishing An Ebook
"At first it was just an experiment. Blake Crouch, a mystery and suspense novelist, was not lacking for..."
Interesting, Mandy. I had to smile that sales were slow - only a few hundred a month. It shows what a well known name can do. I agree that ebooks are the future. Laurel http://aussieauthorsatwork.blogspot.com
Wow. Um. My experience has been rather fantastically different.After a lot of playing around I decided my most recent writing would work as a prose novel and started to write in in November 2009. I finished it at the end of December 2009 and started to look for a publisher. I was writing the the m/m romance genre and went to look at all of the publication options, and quickly realised I had to go overseas for it. I settled on MLR Press because they stated that they read all submissions and promise a response so you know they've read it. They were also one of the few publishers in the genre that publish concurrently in both print and electronically.
Long story short, I submitted to one publisher and got accepted by that one publisher within 6 months (including one resubmission). I am not a celebrity, and I didn't know anyone in that publishing house. It is now available, having been published at the end of February this year.
I am in a non-exclusive contract, which means if I want to I can self publish it or have local versions made, although I understand Ingram are looking to build a printer in Australia which will mean they are able to print locally, which should hopefully reduce postage fees and help books become more available in Australia.
The Secret Of Talmor Manor is being distributed by Bulldog Books nationally though, so I'm hoping it'll make it into a few bookstores.
Some interesting things on eBooks:
Why some eBooks cost more than their hardcover versions
Amanda Hocking and the 99 cent kindle millionaires
Self publishing is certainly possible and can be respectable. However, I've been told by players in the Australian industry that it's difficult to be published here unless you fit the 'mould' of the literary writer: academically trained as a writer, worked at a major news publication for 6 years or so, etc. etc.
If you go internationally, you need to ensure that your work has commercial appeal--wide enough commercial appeal and is well written enough to compete with the local authors in that country. Trying to sell Aussie historical fiction to an overseas publishing house is going to be difficult because there may not be local demand for them.
That said, publishing houses and agents are making guesses as to what will sell. Nathan Bramsford himself states that he passed up the opportunity to represent Amanda Hocking's writing. However, there's no guarantee self-publishing will make you rich or richer than you would get via traditional publishing. And it's a lot more work.
Amanda Hocking: Some things that need to be said. Amanda Hocking herself states that she doesn't know how she did it: no one does. She also states it's bloody hard work going it alone.
I guess my point is that it is possible to get published. You don't need to know anyone, or be a celebrity. I would like to think you have to be brilliant, but I rather suspect you have to be good at writing a synopsis and query letter, be a reasonably good storyteller (or have a good story), and be lucky.
Of course, just about everything there applies if you want to be a successful self publisher too, I think.
I ran into a little confusion with a friend recently, and would just like to clear that up. The issue was between publishing and book production.I find it is relatively straight-forward to produce books. You write, edit, format them, go through the ISBN and bar-code process, provide a cover, deliver it to the printer, and viola! Or format it and give it to an ebook distributor, whatever.
Publishing it a very different game. That involves promotion, marketing and sales. As Matthew says, publishers make a guess at what they can turn into a best-seller, and work hard to generate a buzz around it. The author and the quality of the book have little to do with this, as the large fraction of fairly ordinary writing in our bookshops confirms. It is all about presentation and marketing.
Personally, I would say book production is easy. Publishing is very difficult.
DIY Publishing
Our theme this week in the Dailies has been the rapidly changing landscape of the publishing industry (here). Today we present a sample of the content pinging around the dubya-dubya-dubya on the do-it-yourself opportunities now available to emerging writers.
We begin with an excellent introduction to the field at Self-Publishing Review by Western Australian Phill English (first published on his blog Toothsoup).
Gary Smailes at BubbleCow has plenty of good advice about DIY e-publishing: “It is possible to get a professional standard book onto a digital platform (such as the kindle) for less than £1000 ($1500). This means that selling your book at £5 ($10) a writer would only need to sell 150-200 books to recoup their costs.”
At Guide to Literary Agents, guest blogger Lisa Napoli writes about how she’s taking the DIY approach to marketing her literary memoir. Joanna Penn guest posts on Alan baxter’s blog on 5 lessons learned on being an indie author. On her own site she’s posted a comprehensive DIY online marketing plan for indie authors.
This year’s SXSW festival in Austin, Texas features a session called “The Self-Publishing Novelist‘ featuring Jane Friedman, who was quoted in yesterday’s Dailies.
Finally, those writers who write from the chaos of their bedrooms may find this article an inspiration – reposting from the Happiness Project, whom we featured earlier this week. Which gives us an opportunity to revisit this old favourite.