The Internet Post That Got Me Started

While there was many influences that got me started then this road, there was one post on the Internet in particular that inspired me to attempt to publish my novel directly to the iPhone.  At the time, I was engaging in my standard hobby of surfing the Internet and wasting time.  To help me waste my free time, I often read an excellent blog "Thompson on Hollywood" by entertainment journalist Anne Thompson.  Thompson is endlessly fascinating when she focuses on the business side of the American film industry, addressing the major challenges that it faces while looking into interesting alternatives.  Well, one day my eyes fell upon this post entitled "Who is Zoe Keating and Why Should Indie Filmmakers Care?".  It is essentially a repost from another blogger by the name of Chris Dorr.  I have blockquoted it below.

Several years ago, I left the movie business and entered the world of the internet and mobile. Since then, independent filmmakers have often asked me about what they should do in this “new media” digital world. As digital innovation has increased in its speed and scope over the past two years, as the iPhone has come out, as social networks have exploded, these questions have grown exponentially as well.Recently I have been telling everyone the same thing. If you want to get into the digital world, if you want to build an audience for your work, if you want to make some money, learn from Zoe Keating.Here are a few relevant facts about Zoe.She is a cellist who writes and records her original compositions. Some call her music pop, some say it is classical, and others insist it is avant garde. Zoe performs by herself with an Apple computer by her side, which allows her to sample her music and create loops that give a density and expansiveness to her sound.Though she has recorded several CDs, she does not have a record deal with any record label, nor does she want one. Her CDs are available on Amazon, CDBaby and her website as well at her live performances.Her recordings are also available on iTunes. On more than one occasion she has occupied the top sales spot in the Classical category on iTunes. As she said in a recent interview, her iTunes revenue exceeds her monthly mortgage payments. (When you spend $.99 on one of her tracks, she gets 70% after Apple gets their 30% distribution fee. Remember—no record company. So real sales equal real money for the creator.)You can find Zoe throughout the internet, on MySpace, on YouTube, on Facebook. And check out this statistic—Zoe has over 1.1 million followers on Twitter. If you do not believe me, go there yourself and find her at @zoecello.As she writes on her blog;“What is great about Twitter is that…it allows me to be myself to as many people as possible….I’ve always had this stubborn, egotistical belief that if I just had a chance to get the real me across…people would be interested. The belief that what I’m doing is worthwhile, even if no one hears it, has sustained me through a lot of rejections and hard times.I doubt my current career would be possible without the internet. Thanks to social networks I can have what feels like a direct relationship with an increasingly vast audience. There is no middleman.”In addition to selling her recordings, Zoe makes money through paid gigs, licensing her music to commercials and writing music for films. In other words, she has created a 360 degree music career that pays her well. It is her sole occupation. She has no side job to keep the music career going. Instead, the money she makes from the music keeps the music career going.None of this is easy. Zoe estimates that she spends 50% of her time on the music and 50% managing all the business and audience development that is required to keep her enterprise going.What has Zoe really done?First, through her work she has created a singular vision, an authentic voice that is uniquely hers. In the language of corporate marketing, she has created her own “personal brand”.Second, she has placed her work on digital platforms that generate awareness and sell her wares.Third, she has used the digital tools that are freely available to reach her audience directly. By doing so, she has created an ongoing conversation with her audience. She has allowed them to become part of her world so they can make her part of their world.These three elements have created an income stream for her, one that flows directly to her and no one else.If you want to do what Zoe Keating has done, you cannot execute one or two of the elements in her digital strategy. For any chance of success you must execute on all three. To use an old analogy, all three legs hold up the stool.Independent filmmakers typically make a film and turn it over to some one else who takes over the responsibility of marketing and distributing it. In today’s world if you want to succeed you have to take a different path.Today filmmakers must engage and build their audiences themselves. The digital tools now exist that allow anyone to engage directly with a vast audience. These tools are FREE. There is no excuse not to use them. And guess what, they get better every day.Don’t believe me? Like I tell every filmmaker I meet—learn from Zoe. So get going and google Zoe Keating. You know how to google don’t you?

Upon reading this quote, I actually did Google Zoe Keating and found her website.  I looked her up on iTunes and bought one of her albums.  In fact, I'm listening to it now.  Her music is definitely off the beaten path, but it is beautiful, and most importantly unique.  Her musical style is such that it would never get a record deal under the traditional path.  But in the age of the Internet, the niche has become the normal.  Zoe Keating has been able to make a living at what she loves the most, playing music.  Even ten years ago, this would have been possible.Thus after listening to her music and checking out her website, I thought to myself, "Why can't I do this?"  I write unique and bizarre fiction that nobody will publish.  To be self-sustaining, I wouldn't need many readers, just enough to build an audience that I could stay in touch with.  To wit, Zoe Keating showed that interesting possibilities lie upon digital publishing - if I was only brave enough to step forward.And so here I am.  For those who find themselves in a similar situation to mine, listen to Chris Dorr and follow the example of Zoe Keating.Zoe Keating can be found online at www.zoekeating.com.  You can follow Chris Dorr @chrisdorr.

Amazon vs. Macmillan is missing the point

April L. Hamiliton of the "Indie Author" blog has an interesting run-down here of the Amazon vs. Macmillan.  In a nutshell, the battle between the online store Amazon and the large mainstream publisher has boiled down to who has the right to set the prices for eBooks on the Kindle.  Amazon, interested in attracting readers to its Kindle device, had wanted to maintain a price point of $9.99 while Macmillan has wanted the right to charge more for their titles, upwards of $14.99.  To wit, Macmillian has won.  Amazon has conceded and will allow Macmillan to sell books at a higher rate.Indie Author argues that this is a huge loss for both writers and readers as the higher price point will not serve readers who might be interested in gettting into eBooks or writers because the higher price point will significantly reduce their market.  I believe the bigger problem is not who has the power to set eBook prices, but that eBook prices are still way too high.  I find it ridiculous that publishers are trying to sell an electronic version of a book, a file that takes only a few thousand dollars to produce, at high the price of the hardcover version.  Hardcovers books are a physical product that you can hold, that you can give to others, and hold in the family library for generations.  They are valuable.  An eBook is a data file that has no pictures, no video, and no interactivity.  They are simply less valuable.  But that's what makes them attractive.Because an eBook has significantly reduced production costs than a mainstream published manuscript or even a POD, the purchase price can be reduced to a point where they can become an impulse buy.  Just look at the success of 99 cent apps in the app store.  Small development teams have been very successful making cheap applications because the resistance to buying the app is none existent.  IfI buy an App for my iPhone and I don't like it, then "eh, it was only a buck."  This type of price point is the critical enabler for eBooks to take off and stabilize as a content delivery system like music and movies before it.  But this won't happen when Macmillan is charging $14.99 for what is essentially a text file and it won't happen even with Amazon's lower $9.99 price point.  If these remain the standard price points, then electronic publishing will remain a pipe dream.So what is the correct price then?I think that April L. Hamilton has the right idea.  She sells her novels for $4.99 apiece.  Now that is about right.  $4.99 is still low enough to encourage impulse buying while high enough to allow differentiation between novels, novellas, and short stories.As I plan to publish short stories, novellas, and full-length novels, I'll be using the following pricing list:Short Stories: 99 centsNovellas: $2.99Novels: $4.99As a consumer, these strike me as fair prices for the amount of material.  If I'm paying $60 for a video game, $30 for a Blu-Ray, $20 for a DVD, $10 for a downloadable game, and 99 cents for a song, then $5 for a full length novel is just about right.  It just makes a lot more sense than $15 or even $10.What will be really interesting to watch over the next few years is to see if short stories come back in a huge way.  With an absurdly low price point and short duration, they would be perfect for impulse buyers who read on their way to work.Electronic publishing has the potential to dramatically change what we read and how we read but the prices have to fit the technology and competing forms of entertainment.  At this point, it seems that neither Amazon or Macmillan understand this.

Building a Blurb - Evermore: Call of the Nocturne

After a long day finishing Bioshock, buying groceries, and making lunch for the work, I finally found some time to work on the web page for my first novel - Evermore: Call of the Nocturne.  To start with, I've decided to stick to a simple teaser blurb.  Despite its short length, blurb writing is no easy task.  In the two years that I've struggled to get COTN published, I have always a challenge summarizing the story.  My first synopsis was eight pages.  I managed to shorten that to five for my later submissions.  For a blurb, on the other hand, you only have 100 words or so.  Not very much space.So for help on this task, I turned, as usual, to Google.  Google led me to the following link by Marilynn Byerly which helped me a lot in writing my blurb.  Marilynn has specific tips for each of different genres in which she writes.  Based on her science fiction advice, I wrote the following:

Adam should be a happy man.  He is the creator of Evermore, a virtual reality world in which millions of people play, work, and live out their lives.  Days away from an initial stock offering that will make him a millionaire, Adam is on top of the world.  But there is one secret that Adam must hide.  Evermore can kill you.Faced with a sudden and inexplicable murder inside his virtual paradise, Adam must turn to a dangerous mercenary known only by the name Blue.  Driven by her insatiable lust for violence, Blue must enter Evermore and hunt down the killer.  But once she jacks in, will she be ready for the secrets that await her?Evermore: Call of the Nocturne is a science-fiction digital novel coming to iPhones everything Fall 2010.

All in all, not a bad first try at it.  This blurb will of course change as we get closer to publication but to be frank I am pretty happy with my first try.The Evermore: Call of the Nocturne page can be found at http://scottblurton.com/?page_id=23.  Stayed tuned to this page for new information about my first digital novel.

The Biggest Apple News Today Was Not the iPad

There was great excitement among tech geeks today as Apple revealed its first-generation iPad.  Some people like it, some people hate it, but you can't deny that there is some great potential there.  However, the iPad announcement was not the biggest news of the day.  This was.That's right.  Apple has created their own electronic book store.Now in their announcement today, Apple boasted the support of five major publishing houses including Penguin, Macmillan, and Simon & Shuster and most likely many more.  However, that in itself is not a particularly revolutionary concept for digital publishing.What is revolutionary is Apple's vision for the digital publishing medium as covered in this article by Wired.  According to Wired, Apple's goal is not simply to sell mainstream books, but to revolutionize publishing in the same way that they revolutionized music and movies.  In a sense, Apple wants to open up content production to everyone, a strategy that they call crowd-sourcing.  This was the strategy that propelled the App Store to over a 100,000 apps, 3 billion downloads, and over a billion dollars in revenue.With books, if the Wired story is correct, that means that Apple would allow small publishers to publish content for the iBookstore while only taking a 30% cut.The consequences for our nascent industry are astonishing.  The traditional chokepoints to distribution would essentially be annihilated.  Through the iBookstore, essentially anybody would be able to sell their content to everyone for the first time and in only one place.So rather than sell self-published digital novels on Amazon, and Smashwords, and numerous other small distributors, you would sell it on iBookstore and reach an already established user base of millions (assuming that they'll bring the iBookstore to iPhone).That's it.  No more half-solutions, no more backdoors, just one-stop shopping for everything.When I saw this story this morning, my jaw dropped.  My game plan had to change.  My goal was not just to get my novel onto iPhones.  My goal is now to get my novel onto the iBookstore.How to do that however is left unanswered.  If we are to go by the experiences of iTunes, then within a few months we'll have to go through a third-party like CDBaby that has an Apple License.  Regardless of how it's done, it is apparent that it will soon be possible to self-publish your stories and sell them directly onto the iPhone and the iPad.  This has been the holy grail for self-publishers and now it's within reach.Another interesting choice for Apple's new iBooks service is the adoption of the open source ePub file format.  The ePub file format does have some detractors but it has one huge advantage over the "Meat Grinder" option that Smashwords offers: control.  Using the ePub file format allows you complete control over how your digital book is displayed.  This means that not only will you be able to publish your books on iPhone, you will be able to manage the typesetting of the manuscript.  As someone who was discouraged by the Meat-Grinder one-size-fits-all typesetting of Smashwords, today's development enables me to make my manuscript look indistinguishable from the books from the major publishing houses.  That is a major improvement.In short, it's a brand new world for digital self-publishing thanks to Apple and more importantly the new iBookstore.  It is a world that I and many other prospective digital novelists will have to learn how to navigate.  I hope that you will be able to join me.

The Game Plan

To take my manuscript and turn it into a digital novel  is not nearly as easily as creating a blog.  There are number of things that I will have to do in order to get it on iPhones and to attract interest so that people read it.  Here is my game plan for the next several months.Start a Small BusinessAs I am publishing my novel myself and receiving the royalties (we hope) directly.  I will have to set up a new small publishing house.  Fortunately, creating a Sole-Propriety Business in Canada is extremely easy as there is no paperwork.  It is treated as individual income.  However, for tax purposes, I will have to keep diligent records of what I spend and what I earn.  This will certainly be a new challenge for me as I have never run a small business before.Build a Website and BlogThis is an essential step in order to build interest around my novel.  To this end, I have bought a domain and web space from a company called 1an1.  I have already created the blog that you are currently reading.  Now my challenge will be to integrate my blog straight into my website but so far 1an1 is having problems integrating wordpress into their sites.  Hopefully a call to the technical department will help me to figure things out.  The goal at this point is to simply get a professional website up and running.  Once it is stable and I am comfortable with it, I can start adding new features and especially content.  Content will be my primary strategy to attract readers and my big project will be to create, upon my manuscript's release, a wiki for the Evermore TrilogyHave my manuscript copy-edited by a professionalThis is perhaps the most expensive part of self-publishing.  To hire a professional copy-editor to go through a manuscript line-by-line, is extremely expensive, running in the thousands of dollars.  For this reason, most self-publishers prefer to use their friends and colleagues to copy-edit and proofread their manuscripts.  Big Mistake.  One of biggest knocks against self-publishing is the poor quality of the manuscripts.  This isn't to say that a manuscript is bad, but when you spot a glaring spelling mistake, it completely takes you out of the novel, and forces you to question the professionalism of the author.  This is perhaps the biggest reason while most readers do not take self-published authors seriously and nor should they until the quality of the manuscripts improve.  And that costs money.   Lots of money.  But it is an essential step to producing a professional digital novel and no author should do without a copy-editor.In my case, I'm going to spend the next couple of months looking for a copy-editor (if I'm going to spend that amount of money I'm going to make sure that he or she is worth it) by getting referrals from publishing houses.  The actual process of copy-editing should take three to four months.Design a book coverThe next step will be to design a book cover.  Now this is the fun part so I've already gotten started on it.  I've hired my colleague Kevin Bookhun to design the cover for the digital novel.  If you are fortunately enough for someone to find your book on Smashwords, a smart cover design can make the difference between them buying the book and moving on to the next entry.  The cover design is always a challenge because it has to be simple, provocative, and aesthetically pleasing.  With the necessary back and forth needed between Kevin and I to get it just right, this step will take several months.  By summer, I should have an good idea of what the book cover will look like.  This is one of the advantages in digital publishing.  Whereas in traditional publishing the author usually has very little say over the design of the his book, in digital publishing the author has complete control over the end product.Placing the Manuscript onto SmashwordsThe next step will be to place the manuscript and its cover design onto Smashwords.  I've chosen Smashwords because it is the one service available to self-published authors that can get their manuscript onto the iPhone in Canada.  To format it properly for all of the different digital formats that are in use these days, Smashwords feeds the manuscript through a software program called the "Meat Grinder".  This gives the author almost no control over the final end product.  In a perfect world, I would prefer to use Amazon's Digital Text Platform.  Amazon's DTP would give more control over the final product and make my manuscript available to buy on both the Amazon Kindle and the Kindle app for iPhone.  Rather than buying it through an obscure websitem, Amazon's DTP would allow me to sell my novel on the popular Amazon store.  Unfortunately, neither the DTP or the Kindle are available yet in Canada so I will have to stick to Smashwords for the time being.Promote the NovelThe final step will be to promote the novel and try to get people to buy it.  At this point, I'm a little unsure of what I'm going to do for this step.  I will remain open to ideas from my readers as we move closer to the publication date.And that's it, that's the general game plan.  As I move forward, the gaps will be filled in and I expect that I will encounter problems that I had never expected.  But in publishing as in life, if we didn't encounter the odd roadblock, then the journey wouldn't be very interesting.

The Birth of "Confessions of a Digital Novelist"

Hello and welcome to my new blog, Confessions of a Digital Novelist (CoaDN for short). Now you may be asking the most important question that anyone wishing to create a blog should ask themselves.Why?Why on earth would you start a new blog when there already 800 gajillion blogs already out there? What would you talk about when everything under the sun is already discussed ad nauseum in cyberspace?Well, to understand why I chosen to create a new blog, you will have to understand a little bit about my current situation. For the better part of a decade, the exact duration escapes me, I have worked on my debut novel, Evermore: Call of the Nocturne. After ten years following first conception, it is finished and I am extremely happy with the result. It is complex, fast-paced, and exciting. It conceives of a world that is unique to literature, fills the world with fascinating characters, and lets them explore themes and issues that work on multiple levels. It is far and away the best work that I have ever done or ever will do. It is my masterpiece.And it will never be published.You see, once I had finished the manuscript, and trudged through eight revisions of the text. I sent it out to every publisher I could think of.And nobody wanted to publish it.For you see, I had failed to understand that you need three things to get published: You need Talent, You need Marketability, and You need Luck.Now, I am talented and Evermore: Call of the Nocturne shows that. However, when I decided to write it, I was focused on creating the best novel that I was capable of. I, for the most part, ignored marketability. Whereas marketable novels align themselves into genres, I blurred them. Whereas marketable novels utilize tropes, I dissected them. Whereas marketable novels tell the same stories over and over again, I subverted them. In the process, I created a terrific novel but it is a novel that would only appeal to very small number of people.And as for luck, I have never had much success with luck.Also working against me was the consequences of the revolution that is the Personal Computer. The invention of the personal computer, and the rise of scores of software designed to help write the novel that you’ve always had inside, the number of prospective authors has exploded over the last twenty years. At the same time, the number of books available to the public as remained the same or in some cases decreased over the last twenty year as books have been forced to compete with more interactive forms of story-telling such as video games. Thus whereas thousands of authors had been competing for tens of millions of readers, now millions of authors were competing for the same number of readers. The result has been that the odds of getting published have gone from difficult to astronomical, akin to winning the lottery.Now you can’t blame the publishers for this, although many frustrated writers do. The publishers are in difficult battle for survival. They don’t have the luxury of giving new authors a chance, although some do. They need books that they know will sell. They need books that are safe and already have a dedicated reader base. Hence the transition from pure-writers to platform-based writers, that is from writers who have only ever written fiction like Philip K. Dick to writers who have built up an audience base either through journalism, film production, or reality TV like Lauren Conrad. This is coupled with the fact that the publishers’ “slush pile” has grown from thousands of new novels a year to millions of new novels a year. To sneak through this clogged grate, when everyone else is trying to do the same requires not just talent, but an act of god. There is simply only so much space for authors under the traditional publishing model.And so, my options exhausted, I saw the futility in continuing my efforts to get my work published. Then one day, I rode a bus in Ottawa and saw a curious sight. Three separate individuals were reading books …. on their iPhones. Three of them, on a single bus. Thus arose my curiousity, so I bought an iPhone, went home, and began to read the ancient classics that were available for free on Stanza.I was blown away. The reading experience was much better than I expected. The small page sizes kept me actively engaged in the story as I flipped quickly from page to page. Instead of losing my place, Stanza remembered it for me. Rather than lying awkwardly down with a book, reading in bed and in the dark become comfortable and soothing. To my surprise, I enjoyed reading on the iPhone far more than I’ve ever enjoyed read a book.What my fateful trip on the bus demonstrated was that the iPhone had created an entirely new market of readers whose demand could be met without going through a traditional publisher.It was at that moment that I made a decision. Rather than let my novel, a work that I had spent a third of my life writing, go to waste, I might as well try to sell it to consumers directly through their iPhones.Once I examined the technology available and decided to give this crazy idea a shot, I also came to the realization that my journey from manuscript to direct download might make an interesting tale to follow in a blog.Rather than write about videogames or movies or music, ground well-covered by millions, I could write about something unique. I could write about something very few people were experiencing.Thus Confessions of a Digital Novelist was born.Over the next year, I will write about my experiences, my trials and tribulations, in taking my manuscript and turning it into a professional product available in the palm of your hand. As I proceed, I will talk about my strategies, the technologies that I use, and the steps that I will follow. I hope that by doing so, I will create a community around digital publishing and tread a pathway that others will follow.Publishing is entering a period of transition. Much like music and movies before it, digital publishing will transform our industry in ways that we are only beginning to understand. Through this blog, I hope that you will join me in exploring this undiscovered country. I hope that you will follow my Confessions of a Digital Novelist.