Planetfurry BBS

[Osfer]

Recently, there have been rumblings of dissatisfaction among small-press publishers about Amazon.com. This article, and this one, are the most recent. We at Bad Dog Books have noticed some troubling developments as well.

Amazon.com is apparently slowly and quietly ejecting independent small-press publishers from their catalog, in favor of their own print-on-demand partner BookSurge. The Bad Dog Books products on Amazon.com are listed largely as 'out of stock', and we've had no fulfillment orders from them of late. We're hearing similar stories from others in the business.

While we were deeply excited by the prospect of reaching a larger market by presenting our (frankly superb!) line-up on Amazon.com, the administrative hassle, tight, obtuse policies and extremely low margins have been more of a burden than a boon, and these latest developments are frankly depressing.

It seems that we have ourselves and each other. We're running a sale at FurPlanet this month, cutting $5 off all the books (even Kamui's new art book), basically sacrificing a month's profits to promote the value and importance of small-press publishers like ourselves and our brothers at Sofawolf Press, and niche distributors like FurPlanet and Second Ed.

So, an open question to all of you. As publishers, should we continue to try to expand anthropomorphic fiction beyond our fandom and into the mainstream, with the tremendous financial risk of investing in sales channels such as Amazon.com which may, at their whim, be sealed off, or should we focus on the fandom first, and leave expansion for the future?

I'm very interested in your thoughts.

- Alex Vance, editor-in-chief of Bad Dog Books

[Kellan Meig'h]

My publisher was approached by Amazon with the same deal. The story is HERE

This is out of hand if you ask me. Hopefully all the little guys can band together and take on Amazon (the new M$)

Kellan

[Osfer]

At the end of the day, Amazon are a business, and they're in it to make money. In that respect, fair play... but it does stifle innovation, especially in a time when even little niche communities like ours can have actual publishing industries.

While we at Bad Dog Books are always quick to toot our own horn in that regard, I really have to tip my hat to our brothers at Sofawolf Press -- the lines at their table at FC were mind-boggling. I had to strangle five people to get a copy of the latest Kyell Gold book, and two more to get out again! And then there's FurPlanet, Second Ed, and of course Planetfurry's own Raccoon's Bookshelf...

Banding together as small publishers will, I feel, only serve to form large publishers again, who might pull the same kind of trick. I'm starting to feel that this energy would be better spent promoting these community businesses within the community.

That being said, ours is a fractured little fandom, spread out over a plethora of boards and sites to suit all tastes. When I compare the sales we've made through Amazon to those through furry-specific outlets, it's clear to me there's a large audience out there that has an interest in furry stuff, yet doesn't go over to Bad Dog Books or Sofawolf.

Any thoughts on how these community businesses can gain more, shall we say, notoriety?

[edit]Oh, and thank you for the link. I'd read that article, in fact

[Osfer]

Mike, thanks so much for chipping in. I'd always kind of wondered what your business model was, but for the life of me I can't figure out why I didn't just kick your door in and asked you straight-up. I guess it seemed a little rude.

Being that we're adept with the ol' Creative Suite and the Elements of Typographic Style and don't need no snot-nosed BS'er to layout our book for us, all we'd need is for them to tell us how what kind of file format they want for the interior and cover, catalog and print 'em.

At Lulu.com, another (and much cooler) print-on-demand service, this is free, and they don't eat 65% of the money either. BookSurge used to charge $99 for this, which was already steep. Now it's $299.

Mike, while I've got you, allow me to pick your brain. How do you get the word out about what you've got on the Raccoon's Bookshelf?

[Sigurd Volsung]

Try American Book Exchange, http://www.abebooks.com/ they're not as well known but they might be a better option.

[anthony]

I second that.

I'm not often by ABEBooks, but that's because I always spend waaaaay too much money there...



Don't forget United Publications ( http://www.up1.co.uk) in England.

[Elfen_Furry]

That $%#@&*! sux!


*Edited by Pat for language

[Osfer]

[anthony]

[Kelvin]

I was contacted by a company called Xilberis, or something like that, about publishing my work, but I turned them down because I'm only writing free stories right now.

[anthony]

I'd be very vary about anyone approaching you wih offers to publish.

Most likely it's a 'vanity publishing' company which'll dump all the cost in your lap, AFTER you've signed contract.
(In other words, it's a scam... )

[Osfer]

Anthony, thanks for the information on Abebooks! It seems that they're an integrator of various bookstores' inventory systems, so I'll check with FurPlanet and see what can be done to integrate their catalog with Abebooks -- and, of course, whether Abe are interested

Xlibris, which I considered using when I was just starting FANG way back when, is very much a vanity publisher. You had to pay quite a bit to have your book published, which is what distinguishes traditional vanity publishing from modern print-on-demand.

Even their most basic package costs as much as BookSurge, with far less control over the product, and no guaranteed listing in Amazon.com -- a rather bad deal, as far as I can see.

[ScottyDM]

I've been following this thread with great interest.

I didn't realize Amazon was in the process of squeezing out their smaller suppliers, and I'd never explored AbeBooks website before, but I was aware of the other issues brought up.

Books: publishing, printing, wholesaling, and retailing has been a constantly shifting endeavor. While book selling resembles traditional forms of retailing on the surface, the details are radically different. The retailer wants at least a 40% discount, and then they want to have net-90 terms (or better), and they want the right to return unsold stock for full credit... unless it's a paperback, then they expect to return only the front cover for full credit as it's cheaper for them to destroy the bulk of the book than ship the whole thing back to the publisher. As a publisher, if you don't extend these terms to the retailer they will not stock any of your books. Of course the wholesaler wants a profit too (Ingram in North America). From what I've seen, any publisher who wants a snowball's chance of making it in the traditional book market needs, a direct production cost of about 1/8th of the cover price.

Is there in room in the traditional model for POD (print on demand) for production? I don't think so. A 400-page trade paperback (the nice kind of paperback) might retail for $16. I've seen a few POD quotes and they were no where near $2. You can get under that price with traditional printing if you order and pay for 3,000 to 5,000 books. Of course no printer will give you net-90 terms. Now there are some national book printing companies, but when you consider the price of shipping the things, 'cause they are so stinkin' heavy, you're better off using a local--so you only have to ship the things once (if you're lucky).

Small publishers who have the capital to control their production costs still struggle. There are many books in print and no bookstore carries them all. So that means personal contact with the store-buyer to convince her to stock your company's books, which means a sales force. That works if you publish dozens or hundreds of new titles per year, but not for the little guys. There are only two big retail chains in the US, so you only need to convince two corporate-buyers, but those chains typically carry fewer titles (despite having more space per store), and they often want a "placement fee" to carry a publisher's books.

Naturally the retailers struggle. Books get soiled and become unsaleable and unreturnable, or people shoplift, or some other junk happens. Naturally the big chains hurt the independents and booksellers go out of business all the time. And then Amazon hurts the big chains and the independents. Part of the problem is that there are more titles in print now than ever before, and far fewer people buy books today than they did a few decades ago. TV may have killed the radio star, but the Internet killed TV, and both have hurt books.

Can we distribute books over the Internet? To some extent. You still have to physically ship the thing. This is in contrast to other forms of media such as music. The consumer needs technology to experience music--a music player. So selling folks direct downloads of MP3s and the like are a natural. But no one needs any form of technology to read a book. E-books exist, but they are not natural. The consumer must put up with purchasing a special "player" for his e-books, then must store the things somehow, and must hope his storage media doesn't "forget" his investment. Contrast that with a bookshelf, or just a stack of books in the corner of the room. Sure, you can store and read e-books on a computer, but that's less convenient than on a specialized reader, which in turn is less convenient than with a physical book. From what I've read, when a book is offered in both physical and e-book forms, the physical far outsells the e-book--despite all the problems with the traditional retail channel. For the publisher, the good attribute of e-books is that the direct production cost is almost zero.

Probably the only people who can consistently make money in this business are the Ingrams of the world. In North America Ingram effectively has a monopoly. As a publisher you can get Ingram to warehouse your books for you for a small fee--but since you're shipping pallets of books at a time you can get lower freight costs. I just figured out that Ingram has a POD service called Lightening Source, which might make sense if they don't kill you on cost. I noticed they pay your wholesale minus the printing cost... with net-90 terms at the end of each month (making some books shipped net-120). I have no idea what their up-front fees are, but at least you don't have to pay your printer.


So if the traditional model is so messed up, then what's next?

Baen Books has experimented with some innovative methods over the last several years. They sell mass-market paperbacks (the cheap kind) and mass-market paperbacks typically have a very short shelf life. One of their experiments is known as the Baen Free Library, where they give away e-books from their back catalog. What they've found is that not only does this pump up an author's readership, but it creates a demand for physical copies of the same book they give away for free. While book samples generate some demand for a book, the whole book as a sample seems to generate even more. A little counter-intuitive, but I'll let you read those pages on Baen's website for yourself. This works best when an author has a body of work, so they have a "back catalog" (the back catalog consists of older books that are typically out of print). They also sell e-books and apparently have gotten good enough at it that some of their authors make four-figure incomes per year per title off of e-books alone (my understanding is that most authors are lucky to break three-figures on royalties for e-books--because they sell so poorly).

But should we even be selling books in any form, or do we need to take a step back and consider the real nature of what we do? Perhaps if we consider that we are storytellers first, and being authors, publishers, or sellers is simply a means to that end. Some storytellers have been experimenting with distributing their stories over YouTube. Some folks use live actors and a production crew, some use Flash or some other form of 2D animation software, some use 3D modeling software, some use dramatic reading coupled with simple line-art as in a slide show or reading alone, and I've even seen some people use a video camera and Barbie(tm) dolls.

Well great, but how do you monetize that? If you're reading a whole novel in front of a camera you could find the same effect Baen's giving away e-books--at some point folks get tired of sitting watching the crappy YouTube quality vids and they buy your book, or better yet they buy your DVD or audio CD of your "book". I watched the entire 5 hours of A&E's production of Austen's Pride and Prejudice (a pirated upload) in 10-minute segments, then a few weeks later bought the DVD set at the store and watched it all over again.

What's possible? Christian radio has a drama series called Adventures in Odyssey (Odyssey is a small town where these "adventures" take place). Well great, it's Focus on the Family, a largish non-profit with dozens of full-time employees and they hire professional script-writers, actors, sound techs, and all that. Except that Oren Otter (Eric Vary) does essentially the same thing and distributes his show on his website (he calls the audio shows "web sonics". He's got music, sound effects, and a dozen or so friends to help him with the voices. Eric lives in the tiny town of Julesburg and most of his people live elsewhere, so they somehow do this virtually. I know he spends almost no money on creating his show.

It doesn't matter if you put teasers or even your whole work on YouTube or some other website, how do you get the word out? YouTuber Nalts is a marketing professional in his day job and he's created a free PDF report on becoming popular on YouTube, but many of the principles are general and widely applicable.

Food for thought.

Scotty

[anthony]

[ScottyDM]

True, but with POD you're pretty much on your own, and your best selling model is direct sales to readers. This works very, very well in some circumstances.

For example, one LuLu author is a college professor and he sends his students to his LuLu page to buy his textbook at a fraction of normal textbook prices. Plus he keeps a far higher % of each sale then if he'd gone through a traditional textbook publisher. Textbooks are usually low volume and high cost, so 100 books per year isn't shabby.

Another example I heard about--although I don't believe he was using POD because of his sales volume, and he stocked his books--was that of a motivational speaker who got paid for speaking to groups (mostly corporate clients). I think he said he spoke to over 50,000 people per year, and that a significant percent of them bought his book off the back table at every venue. I'm not sure what "significant" means... 20%? Still 10,000 per year if you get to keep something like 70% of the retail price (assuming traditional printing and including the cost of hauling around a bunch of books all the time) as a profit is phenomenal. I think he sold his little book for $10 or so.


Briefly touching on POD, self-publishing, and vanity publishers.

It used to be easy to spot the vanity publishers before the days of POD. They're the guys who wanted $3,000 to $10,000 up front to publish your book. They'd talk about how high your margins would be, and since your book was so terrific it'd fly off the bookstore shelves and you'd make all this money. In their contract they promise such-and-such a quantity in "3 printings" or so. What they'd actually do is print maybe 200 and bind 100 for the first printing, and when those were gone they'd drag their feet at binding up the rest let alone print any more. Because they did zero marketing, an author who did a little bit of footwork locally might actually sell 50 copies. Their polices were anti-bookstore and so nobody who counted, stocked the things. Also, since most of what they publish is unedited junk, no retailer will buy books from those publishers sight-unseen.

POD is a production technique, although some POD-based publishers such as Booksurge have some of the secondary hallmarks of a vanity press--they charge lots of money for stuff that's impossible to measure, such as faxing a press release about your new book to a bunch of folks, such as newspaper editors. You can guess how effective that sort of "junk mail" might be. Most of these outfits offer their services a-la-carte. However most of them still lie about how ease it will be for you to sell hundreds of thousands of copies, and they lie about how great your book is, and they have sales policies that the bookstores hate unless you pay even more upfront to the publisher.

The real difference between a vanity publisher and a professional publisher is that the vanity house expects to make all their profits from the fees they charge you. The professional publisher expects to make all their profits from the books that the reading public buys.

Although LuLu is technically a publisher they have the lowest upfront cost of any such service I've seen, in some cases as low as $0. They also don't bother to offer some of the more dubious services. However, consider LuLu's stated business model: they hope to help 1-million authors sell 10 books each. Actually, that's a realistic average. Since LuLu doesn't have to charge fees to make money, their model relies on having very low costs of getting a book (uploaded as PDF files) into their system and storing it--until those 10 buyers come along and order their books.


Why so low? Marketing... or lack of it. Which is where the bookstores come in with the traditional model.

I tried to answer what appears to be impossible (at least within 20 minutes using Google) and that is: in the USA, how many bookstores are there? I finally found a few interesting numbers, but woefully incomplete. The American Booksellers Association caters to the independent bookstores, but the only membership numbers I saw on their site was for what appears to be a sub-group of the ABA called Book Sense, and they claimed over 1,200 members (stores are members, not humans). On Bowker's website they had several pages of on-line booksellers. On one page they had 320 websites listed and 43 of those had "ABA" in their description, which is roughly 13.5%. So if the ABA has at least 1200 members and 13.5% of bookstores are members of the ABA, then there would be about 8900 bookstores in the USA. Additionally, Evelyn C. Leeper maintains an online directory of brick-and-mortar bookstores for both the USA and the UK, but I didn't feel like try to guesstimate the numbers by analyzing her pages.

Anyway, the idea is that if you're going to try to sell something it might be worth the hassle to try to plug into a system with close to 9,000 retail outlets rather than go it alone.


I have it on good authority that the very best way to sell books is by word of mouth. Many of the larger publishers plan to give away 200 or more copies of each title they produce and the call the expense, marketing. If you've got several thousand copies sitting in your garage and they only cost you a buck a copy, giving copies away isn't too painful.

Let's say you're headed to MFM and you'd like to spend a few days before the convention at book signings in some Memphis bookstores, and you think you can talk a local radio station personality into giving you an on-the-air interview... but you've got to ship out a few free review copies about a month early, plus if the bookstores say yes you'll need to supply stock, and you'll need stock for MFM. Hmmm, go down to the garage and grab a few boxes of books, or call up your POD supplier and order them at $5 to $8 per copy each?


Well, whatever model you use it'll be a challenge.

Which comes back around to creative techniques such as giving away the full PDF to your book and offering folks a link to your LuLu page for when they get tired of reading it on-screen. This works best when you have several books. You give away one and sell the rest. Or when your series of 10-minute readings of your novel on YouTube has 10s of thousands of views per video, and you can link to your LuLu page so folks can get a real copy of your book in their sweaty little hands. Either of those models would work very well with POD only.


A bright spot of news: ABA reports that 115 new independent bookstores opened in 2007.

Scotty