Comments on A Newbie's Guide to Publishing: As The Publishing World Turns: An Advertising Idea...

That's brilliant!

2008-01-04T15:28:00.000-06:00

That's brilliant!

I've read that reading from a computer isn't the s...

2007-12-20T13:14:00.000-06:00

I've read that reading from a computer isn't the same as reading from a book.

Light eminates from the computer, while it only reflects off the pages of a book. Plus, the light coming from the computer is not actually continuous, but intermittent...flashing at an extremely high rate of speed.

I've read reports that say there's no real difference in the end, and I've read others saying just the opposite. I think as long as the jury's still out, maybe we should encourage our children to read from paper.

It seems to me that computers are only teaching our children how to get faster at things, when what our children need to learn is how to slow down and appreciate humanity. I think we're forgetting how to be people. And spending too much time on the computer is only adding to the problem.

...life isn't about eye-hand coordination; it's about interacting with life.

I think this is an interesting conversation, becau...

2007-12-19T09:19:00.000-06:00

I think this is an interesting conversation, because as a publisher in the newspaper industry, we are facing these questions daily.

However, I believe a couple of things.
First, the music industry isn't the perfect model to look at. It has a set up that is different - always has.

I have a friend who is a musician in a relatively popular punk rock band that has released six or seven cd's under contract. They've never made much off CDs. The bulk of their money comes from touring and merchandise sales. While I've not researched to verify, he tells me bands have never made much (and by much I mean a percentage of total revenue) from CD sales when compared to concerts and merchandise.

Don't think we can charge a couple hundred bucks for a reading and $35 for a t-shirt.

Will print die? No. But I do believe electronic publishing is going to change things dramatically. It remains to be seen how.

Video games companies have learned from the mistakes of the recording industry and made changes. You can now download games completely without having to go to WalMart or Best Buy. But you can't share the files. There's encoding that prevents DVD files from being shared ... though admittedly sites such as Limewire and Kaza have plenty of movies you can download.

Frankly, just like in the newspaper industry, it is an interesting and exciting time in publishing. Lots of changes are happening really fast.

One thing is certian. Authors need to make sure their rights are protected. Without someone representing them, they will get lost in the future. Maybe the guys from Metallica are available to help us out.

Finally a true story. I've been publishing for about 25 years now....non-fiction in magazines, a little fiction, and a lot of newspaper work. As the internet explosion started, sometimes I'd write an article and get paid for it and see it published in such and such magazine. Then, the darned thing would appear all over the internet.

The good? Exposure. The Bad? Me and/or the magazine should've been paid for those "reprints" online. Happened several times in the early days and I was both excited and pissed by it.

Anyway, I've babbled enough. It's 9 in the morning and I need to go save the newspaper industry.

I do read e-books as long as they are free. I don...

2007-12-16T19:00:00.000-06:00

I do read e-books as long as they are free. I don't care if there are ads at the back, but most likely I will ignore them (as I ignore most ads that appear in online magazines, whether they are at the middle front or back).

I would buy your books via Lulu in print--but I would not spend money to read an e-book (and I have read at least one of your e-books and it was fabulous, which is why I would spend actual money to buy a print copy of one I haven't read yet.)

Would I buy the ads...I dunno. Like you, I'm not a huge believer in return on investment of most ads. 10 bucks isn't a lot though so I'd consider it a better deal than a lot of other possibilities.

I always enjoy reading about your various experiments--even the weird ones. :>)

Good comments R2.But why follow the music industry...

2007-12-15T15:57:00.000-06:00

Good comments R2.

But why follow the music industry at all? Everyone assumes that there will be a parallel path in the publishing industry. That books will go digital. Why?

While you make vaild points about the reasons consumers switched from LP to CD to mp3, I think you missed a few majors.

1. Space. 3000 CDs take up a lot of room. But I have a 500 gig hard drive, which can hold ten times that many.

2. Organization. I've got thousands of songs, which are automatically organized in iTunes, with cover art, making it easy to create playlists, switch around from artists to artist, and skip songs.

3. Simplicity. I don't have to haul CDs, bring them with me, change them, search for ones I've misplaced, etc.

4. Formats. I've got five speakers hooked up to my computer, to listen to music while I'm working. I've also got iPod hook ups for the cars, and for my entertainment center. One little gadget holds all my songs and plays on everything, including while travelling. Who wants to bring 30 CDs on a plane?

4. It's easier to buy music and share music with mp3s.

In short, mp3s are better than CDs, and that's where there was a change.

Ebooks could offer all of these possibilities as well, plus many more I've previously mentioned.

That's why Kindle isn't there yet. It's an alternative to print, but isn't a huge leap forward like iPods are compared to CDs.

I agree that products succeed because you’re giving the people what they want or think they want, and that we aren't there yet with ebooks.

But I believe we will get there.

But why follow the music industry at all? Everyone...

2007-12-14T23:54:00.000-06:00

But why follow the music industry at all? Everyone assumes that there will be a parallel path in the publishing industry. That books will go digital. Why?

Music went the way it did because there were market forces at work. The first digital format, CDs, was developed because the daughter of the president of Sony was tired of her records getting scratched up. No matter what audiophiles tell you about the warmth of records vs. other recorded media, the format was very fragile. You could get a brand-new record and hear tiny pops. And, the only time you heard a record at its best was the first time you played it. Each and every time you played it, the quality went down. It went down less with really expensive turntables, but it went down nonetheless.
In essence CDs offered three advantages that were very important to consumers:

1. Much less fragile.
2. Portable
3. The sound didn’t degrade with every playing.

When CDs first came out they were two to three times the cost of vinyl LPs.
However, unlike other technological breakthroughs, once they became popular the prices never came down. That was due to $100 million plus contracts by the Rolling Stones and Michael Jackson. And then, other artists followed suit.

So then there were four more market forces at work that made digital downloads very attractive to consumers.

1. People were getting sick and tired of paying the high prices of CDs.
2. The product wasn’t as good overall.
3. Because of #1 and #2, the album format was over (people wanted to make their own mixes and they only wanted one or two songs from an album.
4. There was a demand for even more portability so people could take their music when they walked the dog, exercised, etc.

Advance technology itself doesn’t force change. Advanced technology that offers a consumer benefit that consumers want causes change. I haven’t heard a big outcry to reformat books. The digital format offers no consumer benefit.

1. It is MORE expensive.
2. The players are MORE fragile than either a hardback or paperback. (plus if you lose a paperback, it’s not the financial blow that losing a player would be).
3. Paperback books are probably more portable than e-books or your computer screen.
3 ½. This may just be me, but I find books in a digital format harder to read. That’s why it doesn’t really count.
4. Books are still more swappable.

In a free market, products succeed because you’re giving the people what they want or think they want. I see neither here. I think the digital format is going to be a fringe format, at least for the foreseeable future. I do not think it’s the inevitable future so many predict.

Ebooks could be on cards specific to the reader an...

2007-12-14T23:08:00.000-06:00

Ebooks could be on cards specific to the reader and sold through brick and mortar stores and internet stores.

Sony tried that. It was called a Betamax. Better picture, and smaller size, than VHS. Remember who won that war?

As for the video game analogy, new gaming systems are the only way to play certain games. Books have many different formats, and can be read in a variety of ways.

Here's a thought, Joe:Maybe, instead of following ...

2007-12-14T18:05:00.000-06:00

Here's a thought, Joe:

Maybe, instead of following the music industry's losing model of having product available as internet downloads, we should take a lesson from the video game industry. Ebooks could be on cards specific to the reader and sold through brick and mortar stores and internet stores, the way audio books and print books (and video games) are now. The price could be set comparable to retail hardcover, but the buyer could still get the bonuses you mentioned earlier (author interviews, trailers, free short stories, etc.).

I just don't think letting the pirates have their way and depending on advertising dollars is the answer.

But I guess we'll see.

Maybe we could sell them for $3.99 and attach buy ...

2007-12-14T11:11:00.000-06:00

Maybe we could sell them for $3.99 and attach buy one/get one free Whopper coupons or something. I'd buy that.

A good idea, but remember the big problem here; Ebooks will be shared and traded freely, resulting in lost sales.

Ads in the back mean the ebook would be free, so no lost sales.

I think ads work (although I'm personally immune t...

2007-12-13T22:11:00.000-06:00

I think ads work (although I'm personally immune to them), but I don't think they work very well for books. People buy books for a variety of reasons, and advertisements just aren't very high on the list.

So, for authors to make money on ebooks, I think we're going to have to find another solution.

Maybe we could sell them for $3.99 and attach buy one/get one free Whopper coupons or something. I'd buy that. Even if I didn't like the book, I'd still have something of value to take away. The author wins, the publisher wins, the buyer wins, and Burger King wins. That's what's going to keep us alive, I think. Everyone feeling like their getting a good deal.

It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

aren't you opening yourself up to critics who migh...

2007-12-13T19:29:00.000-06:00

aren't you opening yourself up to critics who might say that by selling ads of dubious exposure in the backs of novels your agent couldn't sell, that you yourself are preying on newbie writers?

An interesting thought, Jude.

My agent never attempted to sell 55 Proof and Distrub, so they weren't ever rejected by anyone (and 90% of 55 Proof was previously published in other venues).

I consider Origin and The List to be failures, but not because they aren't any good. They didn't find homes because they crossed too many genres, not because they were crummy, and I have the rejection letters to back that up. Remember that I wrote 9 previous novels, and have only made 3 of them available as ebooks. The other six were rejected because they weren't very good.

As for dubious exposure, these books have been willfully downloaded thousands of times by people who want to read them. That's an ad man's wet dream--a specific, targeted, active, focused demographic, with unlimited viral potential.

The experiment isn't about the effectiveness of ads. It's about free ebooks as a source of income for writers by selling adspace. Putting free ads in the back of my ebooks wouldn't teach me anything. Money has to change hands to prove that people would, indeed, pay for ads in ebooks.

I've been on record many times that I don't think most ads are effective. The rest of the world doesn't agree. But can you buy any ad anywhere else for ten measley bucks? Especially an ad with such a targeted demographic?

While POD and/or small press authors might be the initial ad buyers, I'd hardly call that preying on newbie authors.

Book doctors, vanity presses, and agents you pay, all cost big money and offer lies.

Now, I'm also on record saying that I think some ads do work: catalog ads. Quaretly publishing catalogs sell books the same way that the weekly Best Buy circular sells electronics: They contain items people actively are seeking out.

I believe ads for books in the back of books function in the same way. People who read a certain type of book often want to find more of that type of book. Its the smae principle as walking into a grocery store and picking up the sale paper. You may be there for something specific, but you also want to check out what else they're offering.

But again, this isn't about the effectiveness of ads. This is about the effectiveness of selling ad space.

So to answer your question, I'm not worried about opening myself up to critics. The more criticism, the better, because it makes me rethink and reanalyze my position and intentions.

This was actually done in mass-market paperbacks i...

2007-12-13T19:08:00.000-06:00

This was actually done in mass-market paperbacks in the sixties. Publishers ran ads -- chiefly for cigarettes -- in books without the authors' permission, and authors got uniformly pissed off.

Eventually the phenomenon died of its own weight.

Joe, very intriguing and thought provoking post as...

2007-12-13T18:00:00.000-06:00

Joe, very intriguing and thought provoking post as are the comments. As a history major in college, I just want to add that when the Industrial Revolution occurred, most people anticipated and imagined change. In the huge majority of cases, their imagination was way off base. It's been said that the e-revolution is far greater than the Industrial...so we're in for a wild ride.

And I too, think us writers need to be as pro-active as possible, so thanks, Joe, for this great post.

Aren't you worried about losing credibility in the...

2007-12-13T16:56:00.000-06:00

Aren't you worried about losing credibility in the publishing world with this stunt?

Using Google Adwords, or soliciting banner ads, would turn it into a pimp for POD presses, editing services, unscrupulous agents, and other companies that must advertise to prey on newbie writers.

Joe: I know this isn't your intention, but aren't you opening yourself up to critics who might say that by selling ads of dubious exposure in the backs of novels your agent couldn't sell, that you yourself are preying on newbie writers? The same critics might say, "If it's truly an experiment, why not offer the ads for free? Why not track them yourself to see if people actually look at them? Once you've established their value in terms of circulation, then you can charge people money and tell them what they're getting for it."

I'm just predicting what certain critics might say.

I think you're on the right track by thinking outside the box and trying to get a step on future tech trends, etc. But, like I said before, I would question the value of ads in the backs of books, same as I would question the value of commercials clumped together at the end of a TV show.

1. Would you pay $10 for a six month ad in one of ...

2007-12-13T12:05:00.000-06:00

1. Would you pay $10 for a six month ad in one of my ebooks? Why or why not?

Yes, a thousand times yes. I'm of the newer school of writers who believe that it's time to look forward, rather than back, and I know what name recognition can do for you. Even if I made not a single sale directly because of the ads, maybe, just maybe, someone would buy a book next time because they saw my name and recognized it.

And maybe they'll tell their friends if they like it.

We all know how well THAT works.

2. Is $10 too much of too little? Is six months too long or too short?

I think they're both just right. Writers, especially those of us just breaking into the business, aren't made of cash. If I dropped ten bucks of my advance on it, it would be a worthy investment, to me.

3. Would you rather pay for an ebook with no ads, or get a free ebook that contained some ads? What would you pay for the ad-free version? Assume it's an author you enjoy.

Free with ads. I'm poor... poor of the food stamps and government aid type, not poor of the student type. I adore reading, and have not been able to buy new books in a long time. I want books I pay for to be something I can hold... but free online? I'll take a few unobstrusive ads for that. I hate advertising, but I accept it, and acknowledge its effectiveness. Advertising WORKS.

4. Did I cover everything? Did I overlook something?

I'd say you thought long and hard about this. :)

5. Will this idea work? Why or why not?

Who can say? I'd say you've got a 50/50 chance of making it work. Them's good odds, if you ask me.

If you're still doing this when I get my first novel published, you'll be seeing MY ad in your books. Count on it.

This blog is meant to help newbie writers. Using G...

2007-12-13T10:42:00.000-06:00

This blog is meant to help newbie writers.

Using Google Adwords, or soliciting banner ads, would turn it into a pimp for POD presses, editing services, unscrupulous agents, and other companies that must advertise to prey on newbie writers.

I can support my fellow writers and their books on my website. I can support my fellow writers and their blogs on this blog. But neither will ever contain the type of ads that their demographic attracts.

However, if a non-publishing-related advertiser wanted to throw money at me, I'd consider it.

Joe,Read my article, THE KINDLE REVOLUTION. It's ...

2007-12-13T08:42:00.000-06:00

Joe,

Read my article,
THE KINDLE REVOLUTION.

It's on my blog. Leave a comment there if you like (that goes for anyone else too ):

http://patmullan.blogspot.com/

Slan go foill,
Pat

"There will always be a demand for paper books."So...

2007-12-13T07:50:00.000-06:00

"There will always be a demand for paper books."

So many authors keep saying that. I've never heard anyone but an author say that, actually...

They said we'd never fly. They said the telephone was a ridiculous invention and it would never catch on.

There are no absolutes. Don't discount the possibility that not everyone loves books as much as authors. Of COURSE we love books. That's why we write them.

But we can't keep an entire industry afloat by selling our books to each other forever.

Some good points, Joni. Also, we lost some subtle ...

2007-12-13T06:17:00.000-06:00

Some good points, Joni. Also, we lost some subtle frequencies when music went from vinyl and analog tape to CD. And how in the world do people clean the seeds out of their pot these days, with no big double album covers?

Oof. Interesting concept and discussion.I'm with t...

2007-12-13T02:48:00.000-06:00

Oof. Interesting concept and discussion.

I'm with the (minority?) crowd that wants ad-free books, thank you. Last bastion. Plus, I have to stare at an electronic screen all day for the day job and all evening for writing, so enough's enough. If that means I have to buy out my library's old tattered stock when they close up shop because nobody can read on paper any more, fine. There's a lifetime of classics I've missed.

One note on the music industry parallel -- it's not discussed much outside the professional realm, but anyone with an educated ear can hear a big downgrade in quality from CD to MP3 (and 1/4" speakers instead of 2-foot ones.) Not to mention the loss of the "storytelling" quality of an album, which is typically no longer listened to as related songs in order but as isolated tracks, rearranged or sliced-and-diced with other artists. That's a loss to the art. I don't know what the book parallel would be, but there might be one unanticipated.

Like it or not, I think the real answer to the "how are we going to make money?" question is the same for us as it is for most working musicians. It's called a day job.

"Would you ever put ads on your blog?No."May I ask...

2007-12-13T01:32:00.000-06:00

"Would you ever put ads on your blog?

No."

May I ask why not, Joe? Just curious.

I agree that it's necessary to think ahead. Business models just don't remain constant forever. You might have noticed that these days we get our stories from books, movies and TV. We don't get them from travelling storytellers who tell a tale - or two - for their supper. How we transmit stories - and how storytellers earn a living - has changed radically in the past. It will change again, and I think it will change sometime within our lifetime.

Would you ever put ads on your blog?No.

2007-12-12T22:10:00.000-06:00

Would you ever put ads on your blog?

No.

Publishers will find a way to stay profitable and ...

2007-12-12T22:09:00.000-06:00

Publishers will find a way to stay profitable and stay in business even though the technology and print formats are, and will remain, in flux.

Tell that to the record companies, dropping bands left and right.

Publishers, and bookstores, may stay in business by diversifying. But they won't stay in business by digitally publishing midlist authors.

Have you ever thought of selling ad space on your ...

2007-12-12T20:04:00.000-06:00

Have you ever thought of selling ad space on your blog?

The idea has been on my mind since getting the howtopublishbook.org site to rank in search engines. I've also read that Google Ads actually improve your search engine ranking with Google, as well.

Would you ever put ads on your blog?

"I don't like ads. But I'm wracking my brain, and ...

2007-12-12T18:05:00.000-06:00

"I don't like ads. But I'm wracking my brain, and can't think of another way to make a living as an author with what I belive is going to happen in the future."

Joe, don't panic. Here's the bottom line. Publishers will find a way to stay profitable and stay in business even though the technology and print formats are, and will remain, in flux. All authors need to do is hang on to their publishers and be sure that their contracts are broad enough so that they don't get squeezed out of the profit (wherever the publisher may get that profit from).

Just be cool, dude, keep writing and forget about non-author get-rich things like ads. Your real worth is as an author, not an ad man. Stay where the value is.