Hell yes.

A Change of Perspective

You don’t have to be your target market to understand it; I get that now. I’m not selling to a group of people like me, who read books to relax and take a couple of weeks, maybe a month, to finish each title. eBook consumers – those driving the developing market – are voracious readers, and they consume books in varied forms. I don’t buy the pro-Kindle argument that you can take many, many books with you on holiday, as I only take one. Admittedly, it’ll be one big-ass book, but still just one. And my iPod. The people who would buy a Kindle probably take an extra bag, just for books.

Another reality I’m now starting to understand is that the US and UK markets for eBooks are completely different. As in, at time of writing, the US has one. I’m a tech writer when not masquerading as a real writer, and I work for a global software house with a lot of educated, technologically minded people. I know one person with an eBook reader, and I’m pretty sure that 90% of the contents are pirated. Add to that the fact that Sony’s reader is the only retailer-supported device available in the UK (the Kindle’s availability is more of a hack than a product launch) and that’s not a market I’m looking to enter. The US, however, is at the peak of the eBook wave. Until now, that 3000-mile-wide stretch of water separating UK writers from the US has been an insurmountable obstacle to the Stateside distribution of self-published books; it just isn’t cost effective. And now it may as well be gone.

What Price Freedom?

There is still a potential barrier in my way, though, and that’s cost. There may be a large market of readers consuming eBooks in the US, but as literate technology fans, they’re going to be intelligent enough to have the same issues with cost as I do, and that’s something I need to work out before I can find a market.

Do you know what the cost of developing Make a Move for electronic distribution is? Zero. I’ve already paid for everything in producing the printed version, so the eBook is free. Literally free. Yes, I have to reformat the text and proof it again for errors I may have introduced in doing so, but that’s just my time, not my money. I think that’s why I’m so hard on publishers who are defending their eBook prices by outlining the development cost of producing the text to the required standard of editing and proofreading. What? Are you going to slip the print books onto the shelves quietly and hope no one notices? And I know that eBook sales are going to eat into print sales to some extent, but how about allowing your business model to evolve with the market, rather than trying to cover phantom losses with padded margins up-front? Your protectionism is only hurting early adopters – the people you need on your side.

So I still need to set a price that I think is fair, and I’m not 100% decided yet. I need to put the research hours in, which is something I can do while I’m preparing the text files for upload.

But Will it Sell?

Who knows? I have been thinking about something that the poet Guy LeCharles Gonzalez first put in my head: the power of niche content. If you walk into the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section of a larger Waterstones store, you’ll usually find a bookshelf of US imports. These are books by “cult” US writers who aren’t in print in the UK. Their books are generally more expensive due to the import overheads.

So let’s flip it around. How many books by UK writers are in print in the US? Most I guess, but still a lot that aren’t. If you liked a writer and their books were available in print, you’d probably buy the book, but if you can’t get those printed books, the eBook version, coupled with an eReader, is just as good. Ubiquity isn’t attractive, whereas niche can be, simply because it’s niche. I think a lot of American’s would love my book; it’s set in a part of Paris most writers ignore, is filled with British humour, has a European flavour, and is broken down into easy-to-digest sections that I think public-transport commuters will love.

I don’t think I’ll find a mass market in the US, but I may find a comfortable niche. And with no setup costs, there’s nothing stopping me trying.

• Retailers will only take your books on sale-or-return terms. This means you give them X books, and sign a pro forma contract that says in Y months, they owe you X books, or the selling price of your book for each book they’ve sold minus their cut. If no books sell, the retailer doesn’t lose anything other than the shelf space the book was occupying, and you get the books back. This is why you deal with indies and small chains; do you have the cash to ship 1000, or 10,000 or even 100 books to Waterstones with no guarantee you’ll see any return? Do you have the room to store 1000 returned books? I know how much room 100 books takes up – believe me when I say you don’t have room for 1000.
• Retailers take a cut based on a percentage of the cover price. This is typically 35%. I don’t want to say it’s always 35%, but I’ve not met anyone asking for more or less, so I’m assuming it’s always. I’ve also never felt the need to haggle on that deal; as far as I’m concerned, it’s fair.
• Retailers will take a quantity of your books based on their opinion of how well it will sell to their customers. They know their customers better than you – it’s their job to know – so you have to accept their appraisal of the marketability of your book. You don’t need to pitch the book like you would to an agent/publisher, but they’ll want to know the setting/target market to get a feel for whether it fits their customer type. As an extreme example, you probably wouldn’t be able to get erotica into a children’s book shop (unless as part of an elaborate and tasteless practical joke).
• The above point doesn’t mean that you should accept a retailer’s assessment without question; catch someone on a bad day, and they might view your book in an overly negative light. If you truly believe your book could find a market in their shop, ask if they’ll take a single copy and gauge interest based on that. Your book might tap into a market they’ve not found yet. As with all things, however, no means no, so don’t be pushy.
• Your book has to be able to stand on the shelves next to its mainstream brethren without looking like a dog chewed it. It has to be a quality publication.
• The retailer hasn’t the time or inclination to read your book, so needs to make a gut call on whether it’s a) any good, and b) well-edited and proofed. Their only way to do this is to look at how you present yourself, and infer the attention to detail you’ve paid the book from that. You don’t have to wear a dinner jacket and top hat; just be yourself, but make sure it’s a clean, tidy, laundered and polite version of yourself. Oh, and I know this seems obvious, but take a copy of the real, printed book along; no one is going to make a call based on a copy of the manuscript, nor on your word that the book is awesome.
• Get business cards printed, and make sure you have some with you. The retailer needs to be able to contact you to re-order or to return the books, so make it easy for them. Also, when choosing your design, don’t go for glossy cards, or those new “tiny” cards that are the fashion; the one thing most people do with business cards is write on them, so make that possible.

And that’s it. I’ve been following this advice for a couple of weeks now, and have placed the book in three of the five stores I’ve tried (with a couple more in-progress). The two who didn’t take it thought it wouldn’t sell to their market, which is fair enough, and brings me to my final point; the relationship between a writer and direct retailers is more like a partnership than a buyer-seller arrangement. Placing a book in the wrong store hurts the retailer as well as yourself; find the right store and everyone gets paid. Be polite, but remember that you’re in a position to make them money if your book is good and you work hard to market it. You’re offering them a business deal as an equal, so enjoy the encounter, meet someone new, and do some good business.

Or, not. The problem with the eBook revolution, is that not one person in any of the corporations currently fighting for market position has had what this emerging technology requires: an original fucking idea. This is the same restrictive crap the movie studios/distributers have been forcing down our throats since films went mainstream – artificially creating demand by delaying releases to get two bites at the cherry. Well look how that turned out; now they have to release simultaneously worldwide just to secure some box office take before everyone gets sick of being treated like children and just downloads the film from the torrents out of spite.

And here are the same companies owned by the same media groups pulling the same crap with the same consumers. Except you can’t do it with books, because books are perfect, and people love them. People didn’t love VHS, and they don’t love DVD. It appears they’re even less fond of Blu-Ray, and as for downloads… no deal. You try to strongarm people into how they consume books, they will walk away. There are enough books in print right now for everyone on the planet to read in their lifetime, without running out of great stories. People can wait for the publishers/distributers/tech companies/big-ass retailers to dry up their pissing contest and maybe concoct an original idea between them, instead of trying to find new ways to overcharge us for the same shit twice. You want my money? Add value. As of now, DRM stands for Don’t Read Me.

And, yes, it’s been a bad day. Sorry about the language…

1. ISBN Numbers. Most independent booksellers don’t need a barcode to sell your book, and you certainly don’t to sell direct. So who uses a barcode? Amazon, Waterstones and supermarkets. If you can make a deal to supply to those retailers and stop your cost price being higher than theirs, you’re printing in such quantities that the £107 for ten ISBNs is negligible. In other words, if you need an ISBN, you can afford one; if you can’t afford one, you don’t need one. Apparently you need an ISBN to sell an eBook through Amazon Kindle or the other ePublishing services; yeah, eBooks are great…
2. Author Photo. Before the internet, the author photo (and About the Author section) created brand identity and enhanced the connection with the reader. Now we have the internet. The only thing you need to print on the back cover/flap of your book is the address of your website. If you’ve decided you want an author photo, don’t pay a professional to take one. So many people have digital SLR cameras and photo editing software now that you must know someone who can take that photo for you. Professional photographers turn up and take perfectly framed and exposed photos on demand; you have the time to experiment until you get the shot you want. I’ll post soon with some tips on how to get better portrait shots with a variety of levels of photographic gear.
3. Website. I’m lucky – I have a good friend who runs a web/graphic design company (Lemonaise) and is happy to help me out with my site, but even if you’re on your own, pre-built blogging platforms and services like WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger and so on are more than enough for establishing your web presence. Add a Twitter account and not only will you be expanding your reach, you’ll have access to thousands of people who’ve set up their own sites and offer links to help and advice. You don’t need to pay for a website (although you may choose to if you’re after something unique).
4. Distribution. If you’re going to make enough money to give up your job, you need access to retailers. But if you have the tens of thousands of pounds it would cost to supply Amazon et al at the cost prices they’ll demand, and you can supply those books on sale or return terms, with no guarantee of sales, you probably don’t need to work anyway. So let’s discount distribution at that level as beyond out reach. Print on Demand (POD) companies such as Lulu allow you to sell to foreign territories, as the books are printed in the country to which they’re shipped when ordered. Access to the US market for a UK author is tempting (it’s not something I’ve completely discounted) but the profit per book is so low compared to printing the books yourself, I’m not sure it’s worth it. If you could establish sufficient reputation in a foreign market to sell a few thousand books, I’m not sure the time spent couldn’t have been spent pushing your book in your home market, at ten times the profit (I’m generalising on the numbers, but I’m not far off). “Local Author” is a brand that can sell books, and you should work hard to maximise the returns on that brand.
5. Middlemen. We all need more middlemen, right? I don’t know too much about publishing services as I stop reading early whenever they’re mentioned. Forget vanity publishing, misleading branding or outright cons, there just isn’t enough profit on a small print run to leave room for anyone else to take a cut. You, the printer, your retailers; that’s the guestlist, and there isn’t room for crashers.

There are way more than 5 things you don’t need when you’re printing a book (swine flu is one I can advise against based on experience) but these are the main money-sinks I considered and discounted when planning my print run, and upon which I feel able to offer some insight. So what other ways can you suggest to keep that unit cost price as low as possible?