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Posts Tagged ‘Smashwords’

Make a Move – Christmas Pricing

Monday, December 20th, 2010

Make a Move is now available from Smashwords for $0.99, and will be available direct from the Kindle Store at the same price (plus delivery fee, if it applies) within 24 hours of this posting. The UK pricing on the Kindle Store will also reflect the discount.

I’ll be running this discount for two weeks; after January 1st, it will return to its usual price of $2.99.

You Said You’d Never Discount Your Book That Low

Yeah, I know, but I’m working this DIY publishing thing out as I go, so I have to be prepared to admit when I’m wrong. When Make a Move first came out earlier this year, things were different. There was no significant Kindle ownership in the UK, and eBook sales were still negligible, even if they were growing. In that market, I believe that discounting is bad for everyone, and I wasn’t prepared to be part of the race to the bottom. Now though, things are different, and I hope to see a lot of DIY publishers offering holiday discounts for the following reasons:

  • The Kindle Wifi model is sold out in the US. Although Kindles seem to have sold well this year (with no sales data to corroborate that, it’s just my opinion) I think this is the holiday shopping season in which they’ll finally go mainstream. Every publisher – DIY or otherwise – should be taking the opportunity to get their books onto Kindles as people load up after Christmas Day.
  • Traditional/Legacy/Mainstream Publishers aren’t in a position to discount that deeply without selling at a loss, which no one is going to do in this sales season, so this is a chance for DIY publishers to get a toehold in the market. By offering people the chance to try your books at reduced risk – while still making some money yourself – we can get people reading/discussing/recommending indie titles. DIY publishing isn’t going to eclipse the mainstream, but I do think we deserve a little more of the storage space on people’s Kindles.
  • Amazon is the only platform through which I can distribute directly from the UK; for all other retailers, I have to work through Smashwords. That’s fine – I love Smashwords – but the turnaround time on price changes with the other retailers is just too slow. Barnes and Noble is still an 8-week lead time to see changes I make at Smashwords reflected on the site. For the duration of this sale, Make a Move will be one third the price on Amazon as it is on B&N, iBooks, Kobo et al, and these retailers need to realise that agility is everything in this emerging market. If they can’t open their platforms to individuals, then they need to work with Smashwords to reduce those lead times.

So I’m going to swallow my pride and give discounting a try this season, and hopefully turn more of my browsers into readers, but I do think this Christmas will be a turning point for eBooks, and I’m hoping that all independent author-publishers get to share in that success.

Happy Christmas, everyone.

Steve

 

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Gutterball

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

A common complaint aimed at self-published books is the lack of quality control, specifically in the proofreading and typesetting. I’ve not read enough self-published books to be able to definitively validate this complaint, but if you look at a page of new releases on Smashwords – any page – you’ll find at least one book with typos in the book description. Not just loose or minimalist grammar, but actual typos. Do you want to bet the purchase price on the quality of the manuscript? Neither do I.

Aim For Quality

Getting a book ready for sale is hard, and formatting for a particular eReader is a big part of that. The KindleGen tools Amazon provide are not intuitive, and it took me a long time to research the process online, learn the tricks and traps, and produce a product I was happy with. Even the Kindle Previewer application missed a bug in my HTML that didn’t show up until I tested it on an actual Kindle. It’s not easy, but I think it’s worth the effort, as the automated conversions available play towards the Kindle’s default formatting, and that doesn’t allow you the control you need to nail the layout. I don’t want first-line indents on the opening paragraph of each episode/scene, but the Kindle, by default, will add them, so I overrode them. The monospaced font is too big compared to the default font, so I manually overrode the font size for a script section, setting it -1 size relative to the current base font (and honouring the users’ right to adjust the size to their taste). Neat formatting touches are another way to add quality to the product – the kind of quality you’d expect from a “traditionally published” eBook. If you want to compete with the mainstream, you have to match the quality of their output. “Good enough” just isn’t, well, good enough.

Accept no Substitutes

I was so happy when I got my Kindle for my birthday; I’d been holding off buying/reading a list of books so I could fill it with content – traditionally published and self-published – and just dive in. In the first week I jumped between collections of short stories, novellas and non-fiction before finally choosing the first novel I woud read. I was about two pages in when I spotted the first typo; nothing major – just a missing opening quote. I shrugged it off and got back into the story. But not for long. A slow-burner, most pages were action/description until people started meeting up about 5% of the way in, so the errors weren’t as prevalent, but by the time the protagonists met and started to talk, I was counting five or six typos. Per page.

Large blocks of text were missing opening quotes, leaving you half way through a line before you realised the speaker had changed, and there were other typos – obvious formatting errors where letters had been replaced. Now, I know I’m not an average reader; I was a bit OCD about typos before I became obsessed about the quality of my own work and trained myself to hunt them down, but this would be distracting for any reader. Me? I was completely kicked out of the story, and didn’t know what the hell was going on. I persevered to 10%, but then called it a day. I was mad. I emailed Amazon support and asked for a refund and for them to scrub the book from my Kindle, and even though I was past the seven-day return window, they agreed. My argument was that the book was not of a saleable standard and that it should be removed from sale until a corrected version was available. They said they’d contacted the relevant party and had passed on my comments.

So, who was the DIY author who’s careless conversion so offended me?

It was…

Wait for it…

Not… an indie.

It was a book from a publishing house. A big publishing house. One of the biggest publishing houses.

And it wasn’t cheap.

Get Your Mind Out of the Gutter

I’m not going to say what the book was, firstly because I have a submission with the publisher in question right now, and secondly because it’s not the author’s fault – they had no part in the conversion – and they don’t deserve to lose any more sales (although, sharp-eyed friends on Goodreads may notice my to-read shelf is missing a book, but let’s keep it a secret between us).

I couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. The print version of the book could never go out in this condition, and conversion is surely a case of reworking the final manuscript draft into HTML, so what had gone so wrong in the process? I’ve been working as a professional writer for a long time, and I’ve used most processes involved in getting text onto paper, so it didn’t take long to spot the clues and work it out. Example: on numerous occasions, “ll” was replaced with “U”. Kind of looks the same if you squint, right? Another example: “some_word?” was replaced with “some_wordY“. Again, you can see that the characters are in the same league, if not the same ballpark.

I’ve converted a lot of text, and I know that basic characters – the core alphabet – are never changed unless you overwrite them on purpose. Mathematical symbols, accented characters, even things like double-quotes and em-dashes can easily get nuked across devices, but you’re safe with “ll”. The only way those mistakes made it into the text were from OCR – Optical Character Recognition – the process whereby printed text is scanned into a computer, which then converts the graphical interpretation of the characters into editable text. Usually by guessing, as I’ve yet to see an OCR system that’s even 90% accurate. Yep – somebody mashed that book flat onto a scanner or photocopier and scanned every page into a computer. You know how else I know? The character substitutions aren’t consistent; it only happens some of the time. This, in addition to the fact that it was opening – not closing – quotes going missing, is a result of the person scanning the book not being able to get the pages flat due to the spine curve; the more the text curves into the gutter margins, the less accurate the scan, and therefore the OCR.

So what? Maybe this is a perfectly legitimate way to convert a print book to electronic format? Maybe the original digital manuscripts of this (very recent) book were lost? Maybe it’s cheaper to farm out conversion to a third-party using unskilled labour to manually scan-in the books? Maybe I’m just being naïve?

And maybe someone at the publisher should have got it proofread.

The Weakest Link

I’m mad as hell about this, as you can probably tell, given the length of this post. But I’m not mad as a reader/consumer (like I said, I got a refund). I’m mad as a DIY author-publisher. I need eBooks to be a success in order to maintain my distribution platform. Without eBooks, I can’t sell beyond the UK. Hell, beyond Greater Manchester is difficult. Publishers are fighting to maintain revenues on eBooks, while customers are pushing to reduce cover prices. Perceived value is everything in this intangible market; when text is all you’re selling, it has to be correct, even if the story sucks. Anyone selling poorly converted content is undermining that value perception – whether inadvertently or not – and is directly impacting eBook adoption.

So many people point to the self-published books “flooding” the eBook market as the weak link in the business model, but anyone, no matter how well-respected, can step into that role, and the more respected the source, the more damage is done.

 

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Why I’m Cheating on Mark Coker

Saturday, August 7th, 2010

Background

Smashwords – Mark Coker’s open-to-all eBook publishing and distribution portal – is, in my opinion, the biggest thing to happen to books and publishing in a long time. Create an account, upload a Word document of your manuscript, and your book is converted to all eBook formats and distributed to all of the major eBook retailers. Smashwords collect revenues from the retailers and pass the money onto you minus a 15% commission. They even give you a free ISBN.

How freaking awesome is that?

Yes, Smashwords is inundated with books of questionable merit (every day you’ll see new books with word counts optimistically in the “novella” range, with misspelled blurbs, priced for $9.95) , but Mark and his team have opened the market to ALL writers. Curation is just a view – a subset – of the book list, and any and all critics can step in to fulfil that function. I’m happy with the weaker books being out there, as I know there are some real gems – original, if uncommercial works – just waiting to be found. Smashwords, in my eyes, can do no wrong.

But…

Even though my book is being distributed to Sony, Kobo Books, Apple iBooks and was on Barnes and Noble before I opted out of that distribution option, it’s not on Amazon Kindle, and that’s the biggest retailer of eBooks by a long, long way, no matter who’s publishing their optimistic, massaged sales figures this week. If I’m going to achieve anything like notable sales, that’s where I need to be.

Mark explained the Amazon position from the start – that they wanted extended formatting options, which the Meatgrinder (Smashword’s automated conversion system) didn’t support – and I was fine with that as it was his priority to rectify the situation and get the books over to Amazon. But that was the message from when I uploaded Make a Move in April, and it’s now August. When the UK release of the Kindle was announced (the real release, not the mid-Atlantic hack that’s been in place until now) I knew I had to have my book on the Kindle store, and I couldn’t wait any longer. I downloaded the Kindle formatting guidelines, and conversion and testing tools, and I started converting my Word manuscript to HTML.

OCD

I was never happy with the automated book conversion Smashwords produced; the main problem was that my first-line non-indents were ignored, and I hate how it looks. Unfortunately, I followed the formatting guide to the letter, so I don’t know how I can fix that. I left it as it was, which is fine (the words are the important part) but it still bothers me. Now, with my Kindle Preview app which replicates how the text will display on the Kindle hardware, I can test and test and test, and fix anything that isn’t working. I’m a technical writer by trade, and a Virgo, so you can imagine how satisfying this is for me. Even though I’m hand-coding the HTML, the level of control I have is worth it.

An Uncomfortable Situation

So Smashwords aren’t shipping to Kindle, and now I am, so no harm, no foul. Except that Mark announced this week that they will be shipping to Amazon soon, and that the Meatgrinder upgrades are close to finished. So now I’m in the position of bypassing the distributor – a position with which I’m not 100% comfortable. It would be easy just to select the “opt-in to Amazon distribution” option on Smashwords and sit back, and I have been tempted, but I’ve tasted the level of formatting control Amazon’s DIY tools afford me, and I’m loathe to let it go. Not to mention the week of very late nights I’ve spent working on the conversion.

I guess it comes down to timing; I’m too far along now to quit. And I know I’m denying Smashwords their 15% commission on any Amazon sales, but time is money – my time is money – and after the effort I’ve put into this conversion, I think I deserve that 15%. I’m planning to have the book on the store in the next week or so – definitely before the August 27th UK Kindle release – so if you’re buying a Kindle, you’ll be able to see if my work was worth it.

 

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How To Be Cool

Sunday, April 25th, 2010

It’s not possible to be cool; it’s only possible to be thought of as cool.
That was something I worked out a long time ago, something that’s since flavoured my perception of all things deemed worthy of my limited attention. Being cool has nothing to do with writing, as authors are generally considered uncool, but it has everything to do with the subjectivity of brands. If you’re marketing your own book, you’re creating a brand: you. You have control over that brand through what you do and say, and what you do and don’t reveal about yourself. What you don’t have control over is how that brand is perceived.
Writers are a predominantly solitary breed, so a common approach to building a brand would be to plan, create, execute and then sit back, safe in the knowledge that you have created a good thing. The benefit of this isolationist stance is that you’ll never know if you were wrong. It could be that your brand is so finely crafted and astutely executed that you’ll perceived as the literary equivalent of Eric Clapton from the second your website goes live, in which case you should probably give up writing and go make six figures a year in advertising. Chances are, though, that you’re not making as good a first impression as you could, and the perception of your work suffers as a result.
So How Can I Be Cool?
I already told you – it’s not possible. It’s only possible to be thought of as cool, and in the absence of the powers to pull off the Jedi mind trick, there’s only one way to achieve the perception of coolness, and that’s to engage your readers in the development of your brand. Give them every opportunity to feed back on:
Your blog posts – good or bad? too long or too short? too tame or too sweary?
Your book cover and marketing materials – it took a 1cm drop of my book title to change the perceived message of my book, and I didn’t spot that – someone else did. It really is the little things. 1cm was all the difference between a contemporary slacker-thriller and a Clive Cussler knock-off.
Your social media – you might think that last Twitter update was biting satire, but there’s a fine line between satire and just being a cock.
No matter how long you’ve been working in solitude on writing the book, you have to let others get involved once you go public. I get the impression that too many indie authors are working in a vacuum (I can’t think of another way to explain some of the ridiculously high prices on Smashwords, coupled with typo-ridden synopses) and that’s not a good place to create a brand that’s going to have broad appeal.
Let’s go one further; how about letting others design your brand? I recently shot an author interview that will be online in a few weeks (volcano, ash, technology shipments, tedious story…) and my only role in designing the piece was to put the team together and show up with cake. The list of questions and the final edit are out of my hands, because that’s the only way I can produce something that shows me and my writing as perceived by others.
Will I come across as cool, and thus enhance my brand and the perceived value of my writing?
You tell me.

It’s not possible to be cool; it’s only possible to be thought of as cool.

That was something I worked out a long time ago, something that’s since flavoured my perception of all things deemed worthy of my limited attention. Being cool has nothing to do with writing, as authors are generally considered uncool, but it has everything to do with the subjectivity of brands. If you’re marketing your own book, you’re creating a brand: you. You have control over that brand through what you do and say, and what you do and don’t reveal about yourself. What you don’t have control over is how that brand is perceived.

Writers are a predominantly solitary breed, so a common approach to building a brand would be to plan, create, execute and then sit back, safe in the knowledge that you have created a good thing. The benefit of this isolationist stance is that you’ll never know if you were wrong. It could be that your brand is so finely crafted and astutely executed that you’ll perceived as the literary equivalent of Eric Clapton from the second your website goes live, in which case you should probably give up writing and go make six figures a year in advertising. Chances are, though, that you’re not making as good a first impression as you could, and the perception of your work suffers as a result.

So How Can I Be Cool?

I already told you – it’s not possible. It’s only possible to be thought of as cool, and in the absence of the powers to pull off the Jedi mind trick, there’s only one way to achieve the perception of coolness, and that’s to engage your readers in the development of your brand. Give them every opportunity to feed back on:

  • Your blog posts – good or bad? too long or too short? too tame or too sweary?
  • Your book cover and marketing materials – it took a 1cm drop of my book title to change the perceived message of my book, and I didn’t spot that – someone else did. It really is the little things. 1cm was all the difference between a contemporary slacker-thriller and a Clive Cussler knock-off.
  • Your social media – you might think that last Twitter update was biting satire, but there’s a fine line between satire and just being a cock.

No matter how long you’ve been working in solitude on writing the book, you have to let others get involved once you go public. I get the impression that too many indie authors are working in a vacuum (I can’t think of another way to explain some of the ridiculously high prices on Smashwords, coupled with typo-ridden synopses) and that’s not a good place to create a brand that’s going to have broad appeal.

Let’s go one further; how about letting others design your brand? I recently shot an author interview that will be online in a few weeks (volcano, ash, technology shipments, tedious story…) and my only role in designing the piece was to put the team together and show up with cake. The list of questions and the final edit are out of my hands, because that’s the only way I can produce something that shows me and my writing as perceived by others.

Will I come across as cool, and thus enhance my brand and the perceived value of my writing?

You tell me.

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Posted in Blogging, Opinion, Social Media | No Comments »

I Smash Pads

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

I was disappointed when Apple released the iPad. Not because it sucks in any way, but because I was hoping for a new idea – something that hadn’t been done before. Functionally and physically, the iPad is just a large iPod Touch; there’s nothing new about it – it’s just more of something we could already buy. I wanted it to do something mind-blowing, something that would create or revolutionise a market. Like I said, I was disappointed.

One area I thought Apple might explore, given their history of placing pro-level creative tools into the hands of amateurs, is publishing. Maybe adding an iPublish app to the iLife suite that would allow you to upload magazine layouts or text from their Pages app to create online magazines or eBooks for sale from their online store. Maybe iPublish would let you take the podcast you could already create in Garageband and upload it to the iTunes Music Store. I’m just thinking out loud here, like I was back then, but that’s the kind of market shift I was hoping for. There’s still time for them to do this – the iLife suite is overdue for an update, and could be released soon after the iPad with a new twist to offer, but it’s not looking likely.

Then, two days ago, I realised that Apple had actually delivered that market shift; they signed a distribution deal with Smashwords. I know that Amazon have allowed writers to publish directly on the Kindle store for a while, but you need a US bank account to do it, which shuts out a lot of people. Apple have removed the last obstacles to any writer reaching their readers. By signing a deal with an independent distributor of independently published books, Apple have removed all need for publishers and agents. Notice that I said need, not want; there’s every chance the iBook store will devolve into the same morasse as the App Store, so there’s still a strong argument for the consistent “quality” that the traditional publishing machine can deliver, but as long as I can buy a title of the quality of Doom Resurrection in the App Store, there’s hope for its literary neighbour.

This isn’t “the death of traditional publishing”, but something big did just happen. Where we all go from here is anyone’s guess; I’m sure that Apple like to think they know, but they can’t predict what readers are going to choose any more than I can. And Smashwords aren’t predicting anything; they’re just enabling the rest of us.

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