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Nicolai Borovskaya
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Joined: 18 May 2006
Posts: 464
Location: Wherever the fictons carry me
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 Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 11:39 am Post subject: |
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Very informative, Scotty. Thank you. 
I've learned a lot reading this thread, and it is making me think. As an inveterate and occasionally obsessive reader, it makes me value those books a lot more.
Nicolai
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Nicolai
When you talk about damage radius, even atomic weapons pale before that of an unfettered idiot in a position of power. |
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ScottyDM
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Joined: 12 Feb 2005
Posts: 1142
Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA
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| Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 3:02 am Post subject: |
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| Mike Regan wrote: | Since I have a steady retirement income I did not get into book sales to get rich. The Bookshelf as a business had a purpose for me and it has now served that purpose. I continue though because of my friends the ones that write the books and have put faith in me. Now while I did not plan to make a lot of money, I would not object if I did. 
The more I make the more the authors make as well. So anything I can find and is possible for me I will try.
As most of you know, I run the Bookshelf alone and that includes the website as well as the print books. A lot of work but - I like to read.  |
It's so much easier to be a success if making money is not a part of your definition of success... and no, I'm not trying to be flip. My specialty Internet hosting company is an "advanced hobby" for me, and clearly see Anthrofiction Network as a labor of love: with the goals of helping furry authors improve their craft and to promote anthrofiction.
But what is success then? I have spent time studying the book business, at least from the writing and publishing end. Publishing is a tough business, and making money as an author is almost impossible. Like the music and movie industry, publishing is facing a new world with new challenges and expectations. I suspect there may also be new opportunities too.
As an author I would measure minimal success as selling my manuscript to a professional publisher, then making enough sales that the publisher isn't too disgusted, and will take my second book. How many copies = not too disgusted varies by publisher but my expectation would be a minimum of 10,000 copies sold at retail. Since we're talking fiction, and since I believe fiction is a very poor fit for self-publishing, my criteria is to have someone else publish my fiction.
As a publisher (if I go that route) I would measure minimal success as selling maybe 10,000 copies at retail of each title and at least breaking even, and then while doing that build some bridges to the trade organizations such as ABA and wholesalers such as Ingram. So that potentially the next book will do better. I'd also need to keep good relations with my authors. Since my interest is anthrofiction, a major goal would be to sell my books to the general public and to build a good name for anthrofiction as a genre. If a title did 100,000 copies I'd see that as a win for the genre. However having good cash flow and at least some profit is a necessity, if not a goal.
But those two models imply traditional books printed on paper and sold through normal channels. One can sell traditional books directly to the reader, but that doesn't have the same potential to build the genre or sell in larger volumes as selling through traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Selling through the channel requires that you play the promotional game, which is outside my comfort zone. As far as production, I think Ingram's POD service at least bears investigation.
Here in the Springs there are four bookbinders listed in the yellow pages, and of course bookbinders know printers. And I recently talked to a local author who'd never heard of POD, but had a printer produce 10 copies of his book that he distributed to his beta readers. The price was low enough the local printer probably did not farm out the job to to some other POD printer, so perhaps someone locally has one of those automated printing machines that creates a new "plate" each page printed by using a laser.
If book publishing is in transition then why do traditional books? E-books? But the volumes are quite low. However for the tiny publisher e-books have a nice production cost: zero. The expense is up front, which you've got to do for traditional publishing anyway. How about something else. Something that potentially has stronger sales than e-books but lower production costs than traditional books.
Audio books. Sure there's an extra step in the process of preparing the book, but setting up your own basement production line is about 1% the cost of setting up a POD printing plant, and production costs even at modest volume can be under a buck a unit. The opposite of e-books, many audio books sell for a premium over the cost of the paper version. If we're talking 10 hours of audio on conventional CDs, that's probably about right. But if the consuming public will take a CD full of MP3 files you can get your book back down to one disk. Another approach is the novella, and keep the story under an hour.
I spent a few minutes on Google and this is the first thing I found--only $1,500. Judging from the specs I'm gonna guess 3 to 5 minutes per CD. It only handles 20 blank disks at a shot, so you'd need to poke at it every hour or so, but it'd get you started. You'd also need to print inserts for cases unless you found a nice clear case that showed off your disk to maximum effect. If your volume jumped to where you needed more than a 100 disks per day there's always pressing.
I think audio books would be awesome to promote on YouTube and similar websites. If the stories are compelling and the vocal actor does a good job, the vids will eventually become popular. If you cut the audio quality so they are listenable, but not great, or if your story is long enough, some people will give up on sitting in front of their PC and simply buy the audio book. If the story is 10 hours of audio and you cut that up into 10-minute chunks...  But you're being generous by offering the whole thing for free, right?
You could start out by selling your audio books one copy at a time to the end customers from your website. However if you get enough volume then get a block of ISBNs from Bowker, become a "real" publisher, contract with Ingram, and start selling audio books through traditional book stores.
It might be a method to ramp up to reasonable sales volumes with a minimum of cash outlay, and build a marketing presence at the same time.
And that's only audio books.
Scotty <- gots ideas
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| Kantaro wrote: | | Almost real enough to be considered non-fiction, if it weren't made up. |
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Kellan Meig'h
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Joined: 01 Apr 2007
Posts: 2045
Location: Just East of Indianapolis, Indiana
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| Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2008 12:58 am Post subject: |
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Before this gets any further, I want to point out that my publisher charged me exactly zilch to publish my book.
Well, that didn't seem like much to say...
Anyway, PublishAmerica seems like a good outfit to deal with and I haven't had any problems with them. Now if I can just get my book to sell... 
Kel
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ScottyDM
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Joined: 12 Feb 2005
Posts: 1142
Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA
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| Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2008 2:31 am Post subject: |
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Dude, do some dramatic readings, video tape them, and upload to YouTube. It's gotta be better marketing than a link in a sig. The worst I'm gonna say about Publish America (based on second-hand knowledge) is that they're not going to sell your book for you.
Edit:
You wouldn't happen to have a few pages of Destiny's Change as a sample, would you? I finally got that PA page to download (Internet gremlins) and I don't see a sample.
Scotty
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| Kantaro wrote: | | Almost real enough to be considered non-fiction, if it weren't made up. |
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Osfer
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Joined: 12 Jul 2005
Posts: 50
Location: The Kingdom of Love
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| Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 6:57 am Post subject: |
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Lord have mercy, I'm away for a few days and the place blossoms with activity. Scotty, thanks so much for your informative and highly structured posts!
Regarding the issue of audiobooks, we have in fact considered them, but the response to the dramatic readings we released on the Bad Dog Books Podcast wasn't particularly overwhelming, so we're rather at a loss how we'd market (not to mention copy-protect) something like that.
Considering typical reading speed, typical editing and engineering speed, transforming one of our novels into an audiobook would require between one hundred and one hundred and fifty hours of work, and span a dozen CD's. Maybe interesting for the future, though, if Apple's exclusive contract with Audible.com expires and it becomes possible for independent publishers to sell audiobooks through iTunes' copy-protected facilities!
Kellan, it's interesting you should mention PublishAmerica. They recently issued a rebuttal to Amazon.com's new strategy, a rather bold and daring stand: http://www.publishamerica.com/amazon.htm
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Kellan Meig'h
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Joined: 01 Apr 2007
Posts: 2045
Location: Just East of Indianapolis, Indiana
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| Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 12:37 pm Post subject: |
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Osfer-
PA is taking that stand because they are protecting their authors! The have 30,000+ titles in print that they make good money on (I'm guessing here on the money part) that would require rework to BookSurge's format to allow Amazon to print them.
I'm sure that this arrangement would also allow BookSurge to report whatever they want for printed quantity, too. I'm not sure that business model makes sense but Amazon believes they can be the 500 pound gorilla.
I have read that BookSurge doesn't care if they print faulty books and their customer service sucks air. Now that Amazon owns them, I'm fairly sure that their customer service will go straight in the cr@pper.
The part that really blew my mind is the idea that Amazon thought they could print these books but pay less of a royalty to recoup costs!
Anyway, I'm glad PublishAmerica has adopted this stance as I'm sure other small publishers should. BTW, my book is not available directly from them (Amazon) but through their resellers that are marking the book up drastically. At least B&N has access to it through Ingram and I happen to know the local B&N manager. She's going to put me on the local author endcap.
Keep your eyes peeled-this thing isn't over yet!
Kel
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ScottyDM
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Joined: 12 Feb 2005
Posts: 1142
Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA
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| Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 8:36 am Post subject: |
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| Osfer wrote: | | Considering typical reading speed, typical editing and engineering speed, transforming one of our novels into an audiobook would require between one hundred and one hundred and fifty hours of work, and span a dozen CD's. Maybe interesting for the future, though, if Apple's exclusive contract with Audible.com expires and it becomes possible for independent publishers to sell audiobooks through iTunes' copy-protected facilities! |
True, but if you consider the broader issue of being a storyteller, or of being in the business of getting stories out to people who want to experience them, then producing an audio book isn't that much extra effort. What is the future of storytelling? Books? E-books? Audio books? Many people don't have a lot of time for books anymore.
Movies? My Skin is a stunning example of what can be done with writing, acting, lighting, sound, and very little else. Animations? Have you seen what Adam Phillips has done with Flash? Well, Flash is sort of overkill for what he's doing, it is capable of interactivity and linear stories don't need that. I've seen software that was specifically for producing cartoons for about 1/3 the price of Adobe's Flash creation tools. 3D animation is another approach. Stephen Millingen has made this amazing trailer using Hash. There are many 3D tools besides Hash (it's just one of the more capable, inexpensive offerings).
Traditional film requires a crew, but to go with something computer-generated means creating lots of cell-style art, or 3D models, world settings, and key frames (motion control) and that learning curve. Both film and comp-gen require sound effects, music, and of course acting... at least voice acting.
Anyway, for "new media" audio books don't seem all that tough. And back when my daughter was a little pip, I read Grahame's Wind in the Willows into a tape recorder so she could enjoy it anytime. I photocopied the book and marked up the dialog with different colored Hi-Liters. I didn't have any sound editing so I had to try not to mess up... or rewind and try it again. I made it about half-way through before I gave up, and Wind in the Willows is not all that long by book standards. So I know you speak the truth.
Publish as raw audio or as compressed audio files? Raw audio might require 6 to 10 CDs, depending on the length of the book and at a basement-production cost of around 50 cents each the production cost would be a bit high (remember the 1/8th rule). MP3 files (or something similar) will let you put your whole book on one CD, but will people buy CDs with MP3 files? Maybe. Or sell them on iTunes. It might be worth it to ask Apple about something like that. Apple's not the only game on the 'Net though.
Anther thought:
Many people have long said that the true place for POD was to put the machine in the book store. Since a successful publisher is getting around 20% of retail price as profit (before they figure royalty) why go to the messy hassle of printing something in one state (using any printing technology) and then shipping it to another state, stocking the thing, etc. Heck, if the bookstore could print and bind the books while the customers waited, the publisher could give the bookstore 80% and make the same profit. Well, hasn't happened and I don't see it happening in the near future.
| Osfer wrote: | | Kellan, it's interesting you should mention PublishAmerica. They recently issued a rebuttal to Amazon.com's new strategy, a rather bold and daring stand: http://www.publishamerica.com/amazon.htm |
Now that is interesting. Writer's Weekly has an even more interesting article. BTW, this is sort of the equivalent of putting the POD machine in the bookstore. The major problem is that BookSurge's format seems to be different from Lightning Source's, which is probably different from other POD printers--at least when it comes to little nit-picky details such as layout and pagination issues.
| Kellan Meig'h wrote: | | PA is taking that stand because they are protecting their authors! The have 30,000+ titles in print that they make good money on (I'm guessing here on the money part) that would require rework to BookSurge's format to allow Amazon to print them. |
So they say... but I doubt that is their real concern.
Making Books (Washington Post) An overview of the issues.
On PublishAmerica (Digital Medievalist) Interesting for the evaluation of what happened between the manuscript and the printed book (induced errors) for at least one author.
Book Publisher and Distributor Listings - P (Preditors [sic] and Editors) You'll have to scroll about 1/3 down that page to find PA, but then almost 70% of that page is all about PA. Tons of documentation.
PublishAmerica is Not a Real Publisher (personal) This is interesting because it talks about how some PA authors have been able to scam the feedback system on Amazon.
Condensed: Here are The Reasons We Don't Recommend PublishAmerica (Absolute Write forum) Absolute Write has a whole forum set aside for PA and some of the threads go back years and have over 30,000 replies.
PublishAmerica Sting (Critique.org) After all the negative it's kind of nice to find some levity. A response to the claim that PA rejects 80% of the manuscripts they receive.
Also, according to what I've read about the industry in general, a seven year contract is unusually long.
Scotty
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| Kantaro wrote: | | Almost real enough to be considered non-fiction, if it weren't made up. |
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ScottyDM
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Joined: 12 Feb 2005
Posts: 1142
Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA
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Dave Freer
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Joined: 14 Jun 2008
Posts: 1
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| Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 2:55 pm Post subject: |
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 - In the interests of openness - I am published by Baen and as mentioned by Scotty they do e-books without DRM and in any or no proprietary format -and cheaper than print. The Baen Free Library books available free to anyone - quite a few of my books are up there, including those involving talking rats and bats... The free library has helped, probably added 10% to my sales of books available on it. They continue to sell - only through indies and amazon. About 1/3 of my sales are online, and those go on a long time - but like all of us I suffer from the opacity of online...
The big issue is the sheer opacity of the market - you might be writing great stuff with an appeal to millions, but as an author without a distribution network it's a tough sell. I self-pubbed my first book of cartoons - broke even just as I sold my first novel and quit with relief. It is hard work and I'm a terrible salesman. I like Scotty's ideas and I'll be interested to hear if anyone has had any success with any of them. Meanwhile I am trying to figure a youtube clip  |
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Chris Regan
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Joined: 23 Jun 2001
Posts: 138
Location: Ridgecrest, Ca.
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| Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 11:38 am Post subject: |
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As many on Planetfurry know I come and go like the wind. I'm Mike's better half, and am still learning about the writing and publishing business.
At this time I'm in school, and I am working on a Buffy/Spike fanfiction which is up on Fanfiction.com.
Osfer: Head pot-scrubber of Bad Dog Books
Nice to meet you Osfer I'm the Head Pot-scrubber of The Raccoon's Bookshelf.
Scotty: True, but if you consider the broader issue of being a storyteller, or of being in the business of getting stories out to people who want to experience them, then producing an audio book isn't that much extra effort. What is the future of storytelling? Books? E-books? Audio books? Many people don't have a lot of time for books anymore.
This is very true Scotty, many people listen to there iPods going to and from work we live in a fast paced world.
Dave nice to meet you.
Thank for the information, and the conversation it has been interesting and enligthening.
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