Cover Art - Suicide is a Tax Write-Off
Wow, my apologies. It has been almost too months since my last post. Between editing the final version of E:CotN, going home for a family reunion, taking a camping trip, and the tribulations of life, I have had great difficulty in finding the time to post on this website. With the end of a busy summer, I should be able to write with more frequency from here on in.The big news is that I'm planning to release a short story that I wrote way, way, way back in 1997 for free on Kindle. This will give people a chance to get to know my writing and for me to get some experience with the steps of digital self-publishing before I release E:CotN.One of these steps is to commission cover art for the story. When publishing for Amazon, cover art is essential. It is your firs to opportunity to grab the attention of the reader and get him interested in your story.Since I have no artistic talents whatsoever, my editor Erin Stropes suggested that I work with Jordan Knoll, a graphic designer based out of Toronto. Working with him was great. We were able to pass ideas back and forth until we came up with the concept that you see above. By using a discarded receipt, Jordan was able able to create an interesting image that tells the reader a great deal about the story without revealing the plot. I'm really happy with it. Jordan did some great work on it.Next, I'll have to purchase an ISBN for it and upload it to the Amazon Digital Text Platform. I had also wanted to upload it to iBooks, but to do so I have to charge a minimum price of 99 cents. As I wish to give away the short story for free to promote my upcoming novel, I don't really feel it is appropriate to charge for one platform and not another. So for now, it will be Kindle-exclusive.Anyway, I hope that all of you like it. I'll be spending the next week plowing through Amelia's edits on E:CotN. I look forward to the day when this project is finally completed.
The 99-cent e-book?
As some of you are aware, my original business plan was to sell my self-published short-stories for 99-cents, my novellas, for $2.99 and my novels for $4.99. I thought that these prices were fair, created differential pricing between three quality products, and were cheap enough to encourage buying. It turns out that I may have been wrong. According to David Carnoy, the standard price for an indie e-book is $2.99 and may be dropping to $2.99 99-cents.I had figured that $4.99 would allow me to differentiate myself from the big-box publishers who were overcharging customers. According to Carnoy, the digital revolution in publishing is, like music before it, pushing a race to 99-cents.
In some sense, what's happening in the Kindle Store is what's already happened in Apple's iPhone App Store, where developers have been forced to lower their prices to 99 cents to compete (recently, Angry Birds' maker Rovio told fellow developers to get used to pricing their apps at 99 cents). The price erosion isn't that great yet on the Kindle; there are still plenty of $9.99 and higher e-books out there from traditional publishers. And many of them still sell very, very well. But with so many more e-readers and iPads out there, the market has grown large enough--like the iPhone market did--that you can actually make decent money at 99 cents, particularly if you crack the Top 100.
Carnoy highlights the experience of Christopher Smith, whose "Fifth Avenue" became an Amazon best-seller, dropped his price from $2.99 to 99-cents and watched his sales soar into six figures. His strategy seems to periodically drop his price to 99-cents every once in a while to spike sales and maintain his Top 100 ranking on the Kindle Store. Then he returns his price to $2.99 and reaps the higher margin from sales attracted by his high ranking. It seems to be working well for him.On the other hand, Jesse Brown of Macleans believes that the Internet is becoming a 99-cent store where everything music to books to movies to videogames is sold at the magic price of 99-cents. According to Brown:
One dollar minus one penny seems to be the magic number when selling virtual goods that can otherwise be easily acquired for free. Self-published authors are discovering that when they drop their sticker price from $2.99 to $.99, sales shoot up, and their titles rapidly climb the charts. Rovio, makers of Angry Birds, have built a multimillion dollar business, a buck at a time, and now preach the gospel of that sweet spot price. Kindle Singles are Amazon’s bargain-priced short e-books, which are breathing new life into long-format journalism. Nine of the 10 best selling apps right now on iTunes are priced under a dollar. As different industries experiment with a range of pricing schemes for their wildly divergent products, they are all arriving at the same conclusion: 99 cents.
So this seems to leave me with two possible business models. The first is where I sell Novellas for 99-cents, Novels for $2.99, and drop the periodically to drive sales. The second option would be to sell everything for 99-cents. Personally, I more inclined to the former option as this would allow drop my price periodically, like Smith, to boost readership and give me something interesting to announce on my website (eg. "It's Canada Day. All books for 99-cents"). However, if Brown is right, then we're all going to end up at 99-cents anyway.One change is for certain. I will have to give away short stories for free. While they involve hard work and dedication to craft, they don't simply have the value proposition that a full-length novel would have. Instead, I can use them as a way to attract readers (who doesn't love free?) and build an audience for my full-length novels and novellas. They will also provide valuable experience in navigating the e-book self-publishing environment, even at a modest loss.Regardless of whether or not the ideal price is $2.99 or 99-cents, the goal remains the same: to publish and sell books. However, the pace of change is shocking in the industry. My life's work, once priceless in my eyes, is now probably worth 99-cents. Would you buy that for a dollar? I'm hoping so.
The Future Will Not Be Printed
I haven’t had much time to post recently. My job, hot yoga and preparations for an upcoming family reunion have taken up more and more of my time. In the time I’ve been away, the publishing world has continued to undergo rapid change. Most notably, Amazon has announced that ebooks now outsell all printed books on Amazon.com. Amazon now claims that since April 1, for every 100 print books that Amazon has sold, they have sold 105 Kindle ebooks. They also claim that they have already sold more than 3x as many Kindle ebooks in 2011 then they did for all of 2010.However you want to cut it, that is a significant shift in how the public consumes literature. It’s not surprising. Ebooks are cheaper, more convenient, and more portable. But their rapid growth since the introduction of the Kindle and iPad are no less impressive.The growth of the Ebook sales and its growing acceptance by the public through multiple devices such as the Kindle, iPad, and other tablets has begun to challenge the current pricing model. Narasu Rebbapragada from PCWorld has a fascinating article on the subject. I won’t review the entire document, but I would say that the current prices for ebooks are far too high. The strength of app and music sales from iTunes comes from impulse buying where customers instantly buy what they want without stopping to think about their pocketbook. If the customer has to think about the price then you’ve probably lost a sale. Personally, I believe that $4.99 is the most appropriate price point. It’s reasonable high enough to differentiate its higher value in comparison to songs or apps, but it’s low enough that the consumer is not going to worry too much about the price. $5 is an easily digestible sweet spot.That said, I don’t have too much of a problem with the publishing industry’s agency model. Personally, I believe that they can and should be able to set the price to whatever they want. If they believe that they can sell a book at $14.99, then it is their right to set their price. I believe that they’re wrong but I’m not going to begrudge them their right to do so. Besides, with hundreds of thousands of books available now, it’s not like the customer doesn’t have other choices. For me, it’s an advantage. The high price point creates a opportunity for cheaper, independent books to gain a greater share of the market.It is indeed the Wild West and nobody knows exactly how it will turn out. However, one thing remains true: we are entering an age of complete literary freedom. Anybody can publish a book and anybody can sell a book. The publishing world has become a free market. It will be fascinating to see what it can produce.
Converting Your Manuscript to ePub
This week, I endeavoured to convert my dear-god-i-hope-it's-true-second-to-last-manuscript into ePub format so that I could send it to my brother to read on his iPhone and check out how it looks on my iPad. It wasn't really necessary at this point, but I was too excited to see how it looked on the electronically-printed page.The result? It was a little trickier than I expected.First, I tried copying the manuscript over into Storyist and then converting in ePub. Unfortunately, I ran into a number of problems. First, when I copied the text over to the Storyist program using the Past and Match option, it removed all of the italics in the manuscript and altered some of the formatting. This is a problem because in E:CotN, I used italics to denote when the character Blue, who has survived a bullet wound to her throat, speaks in our hollow, whispery voice. Without the italics, the text just doesn't look right. I could copy and paste without matching the formatting but this resulted in text that was too small and inconsistent to be used. I could highlight all of the text and change the font type and size, but this would also remove the italics.
The second problem that I had with Storyist is that when you export a manuscript to .ePub, it adds a little space after each line. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem for me but E:CotN has a lot of very specific formatting for newspaper inserts, song lyrics and computer text. With the extra space added after each line and paragraph, there wasn't enough white space to differentiate between the standard prose and the very specific inserts. There is probably some way to change the settings to remove the extra white space and adjust the formatting, but I was too impatient to attempt it. Instead, I tried converting the manuscript directly from the original .pages file.
However, Apple Pages had its own challenges that I eventually overcame. First of all, the convertor didn't recognize that I had chapters. The chapter headings that I had created were simply seen as bolded but normal text. So I took the .ePub template file that Apple has provided online, imported the document's styles into my document, and set all of my chapter titles to use the "Chapter Name" style now available in the Inspector.Next I found there was no page breaks between each of the chapters. This was solved by replacing the page break that I had placed in between the chapters with a section break. Finally, I was puzzled by the extra characters that were showing up in the .ePub text. For example, the title of the my first chapter would read: "Chapter 1 - - The Chapter Title". I finally realized that Pages .ePub convertor also converts the markup that has been accumulating since the editing process began. After accepting all of the changes to the document, the problem disappeared.
As I grew more confident, I was able to start playing around with the manuscript: setting up the title page to look professional, enlarging the standard text so that it would look just right the first time that it is opened in iBooks, and other experiments with the format. As a result, the text looked exactly how it imagined it on the page. I felt a chill of anticipation run down my spine as I gazed upon my electronic manuscript. It almost looked like a real book, except that it my words.So for the most part, I found Pages easier to use in creating .ePub documents. This is no knock on Storyist, I am certain for my next manuscript that I can produce exactly what I want. But for now, Pages has the edge. It's text simply looks more attractive in .ePub than does Storyist.There are many things that I want to play around with before I publish my novel, including starting each chapter halfway down the page instead of at the top. But for now, this looks good enough.
Looking for a New Editor
Hi everyone. Progress on the next draft of E:COTN is going well. I should have it ready by Christmas. I had originally planned to finish it by December 1st but I unfortunately I have learned that the editor that reviewed the previous draft, Erin Stropes, will be unable to take a second look at the manuscript due to her taking over the editing responsibilities for her university program's journal.I had hoped that since she had given me so much feedback, that she would have been perfect to evaluate the many changes that I've made to the manuscript. Unfortunately, that won't be possible. I would like to extend Erin my thanks for her work on the manuscript and to wish her the best of luck on her new responsibilities. I hope to work with again on future stories.So I am looking for a new editor. It may prove advantageous in that I will be able to get a different perspective on the text. I hope to find one by January so that I can have his/her notes by the Summer. This will give me the summer to finish the manuscript and prepare the text for publication on iBookstore and the Kindle Store. If you have any recommendations, please let me know. In the meantime, I will be finishing off the edit and reading through the Giller-prize winning "The Sentimentals". Until next time.
Self-Publishing Expo
After about 3 months of work, I have finally finished the development edit of Evermore: Call of the Nocturne. I've taken the rest of the week off to relax, play some World of Warcraft, watch some baseball playoffs, hang out with the little one, and generally avoid my novel for fear of finding more continuity errors.Starting Monday, I will go through the novel (yet again) to follow-through on the line-edit that my editor has suggested. This should go fairly quickly as I shall follow the rule that my editor is always right. For those of you who are still on the fence, hiring an editor is one of the best decisions that I have ever made. I have learned more over the past four months about writing than I have over the last ten years.In the meantime, I have been reading Michael N. Marcus' synopsis of the Self-Publishing Expo in New York on his blog at http://bookmakingblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/impressions-of-self-publishing-book.html. It's a good read and I highly recommend it. There were several observations that he made that I thought were interesting.
There were lots of people there, right from the opening at 10 a.m. It was obvious that Expo impresarios Diane Mancher and Karen Mender were correct in assessing the need for such an event, and they made the right decision in making the exhibit floor a freebie for all attendees. Last year nothing was free. The panel sessions I visited were well-attended, with an alert audience asking important questions and getting good answers from knowledgeable and experienced experts.
The irony about the self-publishing industry is that we are as much consumers as we are sellers. So it's interesting that they made the show floor free for everyone. given that I hope to publish within the next year, I should definitely think about attending, New York hotel costs not withstanding.
I was surprised and dismayed at the ignorance demonstrated by some self-publishing newbies, and even by some of the exhibitors. It seemed strange that there had to be a session called "Why a professional editor can be your best friend." People in the audience (and the authors of most of the books I featured in last week's BAD BOOK WEEK) just didn't realize that professional editing is vital--not optional. I've said this before and I'll say it again: "If you can't afford to hire a professional editor, you can't afford to self-publish."
It's understandable. You spend a lot of time on a book and you think that its perfect. you are insulted to think that someone else could improve it. But as I said before, it is an absolute necessity. Once you get an editor, you can never go without. they are outstanding tools.
I was surprised to see the large number of companies offering marketing and publicity services. There is definitely a need for them, but I don't know how an author can decide among them. I spent some time with Beth Werner, who operates Book Marketing Boot Camp, a series of one-to-one sessions to help you create a marketing plan. Beth believes that advertising fiction can be profitable for the author, which surprised me. Beth seems to know what she's doing and her service is definitely worth considering.
I am very reluctant to recommend marketing and publicity services. Start with free publicity through your own blog and social media connections before thinking about paying someone to do your job for you. You should delude yourself into believing that you're going to sell ten million copies through self-publishing. Your going to sell hundreds, maybe thousands. The only thing that is going to push your sales numbers higher is the quality of your manuscript, not your promotional dollars. if you have money to burn, spend it on your editor, not Publisher's Weekly. Just look at Minecraft. No promotional dollars but it has sold like hotcakes due to word of mouth.
The Expo was great place to pick up chicks, for those so inclined. (I'm married and don't cheat--but I do browse.) A recent study of the publishing industry revealed that people in the business are overwhelmingly female (and white). Some online commenters said that this condition has resulted in scarcity of books for men. But, since most book buyers and readers are female, I'm not sure about the cause and the effect.
This has become a problem with the industry as a whole (not hot chicks at the SPE but the dependence of the publishing industry on female readers). Women readers and writers are great but we need to bring back young boys and men for the industry to be healthy. What do male readers want? Action, action, action. As my dad says, "I like those Tom Clancy books when there's lots of action, but I get bored when they go back to Washington." There is a huge untapped market in the male reading demographic that mainstream publishers are not addressing. Self-publishers must pick up the slack.
Jason Kuykendall [from Amazon] admitted to owning both a Kindle and an iPad. (MEMO TO JEFF BEZOS: Don't fire Jason for heresy. He's good for Amazon.) Jason was smart to point out that Kindle should be considered a channel for distributing books, not just one family of devices for reading them. He's right. I've enjoyed many Kindle books on my iPad. Jason gave me some surprising good news. I had heard that it was very difficult to format a book with lots of graphics, and my books have lots of graphics. Jason explained that it can be difficult to do a Kindle book with complex graphics like flow charts and mathematical formulas, but there is no problem with ordinary photos, diagrams and charts. Based on his recommendation, I uploaded my first Kindle experiment a few hours after I got home from the Expo. I still have to make some adjustments, and I'll give you a full report later.
It's a good point and indicative of Amazon's strategy. I read Kindle books on my iPad and the experience is awesome. I prefer the iBook reader but Amazon simply has far more content. It's a strategy that seems to be serving them well as several commentators have started to question whether or not the iBook is dead after six months due to lack of content.In short, the Self-Publishing Expo looks like a great experience. Hopefully next year, with Evermore: Call of the Nocturne available for purchase, I'll find the time and the money to attend.
Late Night Thoughts
And so I am up at 2 AM in the morning typing a blog post on my iPad. For some reason, I can't sleep tonight. I'm not exactly sure why. But it does give me an opportunity to apologize for my readers my lack of posts over the last few weeks. However, that has been due to some great progress on my novel. For those of you who might remember, I hired Erin Stropes in Montreal to edit my novel. She did a great job and got it back to me in June.Since then, I have been diligently working away at it. First, I have been doing a development edit. This will be followed by a line edit based on the comments that Erin gave me. To wit, the development edit has been hugely successful. I have probably rewritten about 25 percent of the novel, but the changes have made the story much quicker with far less confusion than before. I have probably learned more about writing over these past few months then I had over the previous ten years.I should finish the developmental edit this Sunday. I will probably take the rest of the week off, make sure that I don't have more major changes that I would like to make and then start on the line edit. The reason that I have to push myself so quickly is that I have to get the next version of the manuscript to Erin by early December so she can do the second and final edit over the Christmas break. I have been spending about 2-3 hours a day on this manuscript so it will be nice to get something of a break. I wish I had the time to go into more detail over the changes at have been made but it's hard to explain what exactly is going on without having the manuscript in front of you. Once I submit the manuscript to my editor, I will have more time to post.There have been some topics that I would like to go into further detail over the Christmas Break. I would love to write a shot-by-shot analysis of the zero-g fight scene in Inception and explain why it works so well (hint: it's the carpet) and how it forced me to change a key fight scene in the middle of my novel. another idea that I would like to try once I publish the book would be author commentaries. Recorded and distributed for free through iTunes (so you could listen while you read), author commentaries would be a neat idea that could work on a digital platform like the iPad. Another project that I would like to work on would be a wiki for the world of evermore. It would contain character biographies, object descriptions and plot synopses from the novel. I will hold off on that until the text is finalized for production.So I hope that this post gives you a better idea of what I'm up to and how the novel is progressing. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to leave me a comment.