Self-publishing, part I: “There are no unrealistic expectations anymore”

Self-publishing platform Smashwords announced this week that it’s making self-publishing faster: Smashwords authors who sell e-books on Kobo and Apple will see faster “shipments” to those platforms, meaning that if they update their e-book’s price the change is reflected in near-real time. “We try to listen to people with unrealistic expectations,” CEO Mark Coker told me, “because their unrealistic expectations are the leading indicator of where we need to go.” Near-instantaneous price changes would allow an author to, say, sell an e-book “at $0.99 for the next five hours only.”

Smashwords is now working with library distributors 3M and Baker & Taylor’s Axis360 so self-published authors can get their e-books into libraries. Right now, the libraries buy Smashwords books at list price (publishers like Random House, meanwhile, charge more for the e-books they make available to libraries). Soon, Smashwords will allow its authors to set special pricing for libraries, Coker told me. “A lot of them are going to want to offer libraries lower pricing,” he said, or “will want to offer their books for free to libraries.”

Smashwords will soon let authors specify the countries where their books are distributed. Right now, authors (and the agents Smashwords works with) have the rights to sell their e-books in some territories, but not others. With the changes, for instance, an author could define that his or her e-book should be distributed “globally, except for commonwealth countries.” Smashwords will also let authors specify their prices by currency — a change from now, when authors have to price in dollars and retailers convert the currency automatically.

Also, Coker said, Smashwords will start accepting EPUB files (as opposed to Word files) later this year. With EPUB 3, that means the company could “potentially take more sophisticated books or enhanced books.”

Getting rid of DRM: This is going to take forever

Macmillan’s Fritz Foy announced at the Publishers Launch BEA conference that the company’s sci-fi/fantasy imprint Tor/Forge will launch a DRM-free digital bookstore this summer, and it may include DRM-free e-books from other publishers too. Meanwhile, distributor IPG announced that it will give client publishers the option to sell e-books DRM-free, and Kobo will give authors the option to sell DRM-free through its new self-publishing platform Writing Life. Still, publishers are moving slowly and it looks as though changes are going to happen in trickles.

Penguin global digital director Molly Barton said at Pub Launch that “Penguin is interested in methods of file security that would allow greater interoperability between platforms,” but Random House president of sales, operations and digital Madeline McIntosh called the DRM discussion “a red herring in a publishers panel at the IDPF conference, Publishers Lunch reports (paywall). She noted DRM’s not the only thing that keeps readers using a particular digital bookstore’s platform: “We have to be clear about what the goal is and commercial reason [to remove DRM].”

Self-publishing, part II: It’s getting closer

“We saw that seven percent of the units sold [on Kobo] were coming from self-published authors,” Kobo EVP of content and merchandising Michael Tamblyn told me, making those authors “collectively the size of a major publishing house,” so we “wanted to get closer” to them. Thus the launch of Kobo’s new self-publishing platform Writing Life. Authors using it get a 70 percent royalty on e-books priced between $1.99 and $12.99 and a 45 percent royalty on books below $1.99 or above $12.99. By “looking at how e-books sell in general,” Tamblyn said, “we know that after $12.99 there’s a drop…and after that it’s difficult to generate significant demand.” So the royalty structure “encourages authors to stay within that space.”

Amazon took up a lot of floor space, with separate sections for Amazon Publishing and self-publishing platforms Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace. At KDP, the company set up rows of chairs and, all day long, self-published authors gave presentations on why they use KDP. “I also sell on Nook [Barnes & Noble's self-publishing platform is PubIt],” I heard one author say, but Barnes & Noble doesn’t rent a public booth at BEA — which seems kinda dumb considering both Amazon and Kobo’s emphases on self-publishing at the show. Kobo, too, had the self-published authors participating in the beta launch of Writing Life speaking at its booth.

Startups: Maybe we’ll find a better way next year

The Javits Center’s vastness makes it tough for publishers and startups to randomly encounter each other, a lame “Digital Discovery Zone” is removed from the rest of the floor, and terrible or nonexistent WiFi prohibits quick demos or many interactions you need the Internet for. (Can I throw in one more complaint? There’s no WiFi in the press office and the woman who runs it yelled at me for “drinking all the water.”) The founder of one fairly well-known startup told me he was finding it tough to meet with the publishers who could get use out of his product. Despite a few panels that try to bring traditional publishers and newer companies together, BookExpo America remains, primarily, an event where publishers and authors pitch new books to librarians and booksellers. Maybe that’s what it should be, but since it’s also the largest book industry event in the United States, it’s not surprising that digital companies arrive with expectations about who they’ll meet and leave wanting more. It seems as if there should be a more efficient way to make these meetings happen — stay tuned on that.

Don’t hold your book party on a rowboat

OK, this one’s not digital. Author Robert Sullivan took BEA-going booksellers to the Hudson to promote his upcoming book “My American Revolution,” which is about the historical importance of New York Waterways. As the New York Times reports, “two rowboats – built at the boathouse to imitate 19th-century New York Harbor craft known as Whitehall gigs – left the pier loaded with booksellers, volunteer coxswains and local residents.” Unfortunately, one of the boats “struck a pier” and flipped, “dumping three BookExpo conventioneers, two instructors and two others into 60-degree water.” Five were able to climb onto the pier. “The other two drifted 100 yards away.” There were no fatalities.

See also

Social reading, discoverability and other unsolved problems at BEA 2012

Kobo launches e-book self-publishing platform, Writing Life

Macmillan’s Tor/Forge will launch DRM-free digital bookstore this summer

Wattpad raises $17 million to become the YouTube of writing

Photo courtesy of BEA

Publishers don’t control engagement

Start off by assuming that social reading means being able to interact with a book through social media or with social features inside the book, and discoverability is the challenge of finding new authors and books.

Part of the challenge comes from the fact that many of the parties trying to come up with solutions are startups or retailers rather than the publishers themselves. Tony O’Donoghue, UX (user experience) lead of mobile applications at Kobo, noted in a social reading panel that “at the moment it’s retailers like us” adding additional features into e-books, but “eventually publishers could add them directly to their EPUBs. I do see us moving toward the publisher having control over this type of engagement in the book.”

O’Donoghue also claims that readers are going to want e-books “to be like the rest of the web that they use every day, with Google integration, Wikipedia, all the social networks.” But those may actually be things that Kobo wants readers to want.

Bookstores are going down and taking discovery with them

Social tools haven’t taken the place of brick-and-mortar bookstores, which are declining as a source of discoverability for books, industry consultant and analyst Peter Hildick-Smith noted in a Publishers Launch BEA panel on Monday. His company, Codex Group, tracks discoverability by asking readers where they bought the last book they read. Two years ago, 31 percent of respondents found the book in a bookstore. As of the end of May 2012, that number has decreased by 45 percent — down to 17 percent.

That’s bad for book sales, Hildick-Smith said, because bookstores prompt a lot of spontaneous purchases. The Codex Group asked book buyers if they had a specific book in mind to buy the last time they went to a brick-and-mortar bookstore. Only one in three had a specific title in mind; the rest were going to browse and buy. Kindle owners are even more likely to browse in bookstores — 76 percent go in spontaneously — suggesting that online solutions (like Amazon’s algorithms) aren’t yet doing the trick for discoverability.

The future of fiction on Twitter

In a 7x20x21 panel, where authors have seven minutes to give a twenty-slide presentation (each slide appears for 21 seconds), writer Robin Sloan (whose novel will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in October) said “interesting, identifiable formats are going to be the future of fiction on Twitter.” Sloan thinks author Teju Cole has mastered this more than anyone else with his “small fates” tweets — all drawn from hundred-year-old newspaper reports. “Just the language, something about the structure, the rhythm, the tone, [you see one of these tweets and] know immediately it’s one of his ‘small fates,’” Sloan said.

“A Supposedly Fun Book I’ll Never Read Again”

Author, comedian and Brooklyn bookseller Dan Wilbur does his part to spread the word about literature at @betterbooktitles and betterbooktitles.com, as he explained in his 7x20x21 presentation. A few rewritten titles: “Hamlet” becomes “Ghost Dad,” “Mrs. Dalloway” becomes “A Quaint, Midafternoon Panic Attack,” “James and the Giant Peach” becomes “It’s Ok if giant fruit kills your aunts so long as they were bitches,” and David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” becomes “A Supposedly Fun Book I’ll Never Read Again.” Penguin’s Perigee will publish Wilbur’s own book, “How Not to Read: Harnessing the Power of a Literature-Free Life,” this September. Wilbur promised, “It’ll be the last book you’ll ever read.”

Illustrations from betterbooktitles.com: Hamlet; Animal Farm; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Three months ago, Amazon yanked over 5,000 IPG titles from the Kindle store after IPG refused to capitulate to Amazon’s demand for better terms. The titles were restored just before Memorial Day. IPG wouldn’t comment on those negotiations, but president Mark Suchomel wrote in a letter to clients at the time, “We will continue to work hard for every last sale so that all of our publishers stay healthy moving forward.”

Now, Suchomel says in a statement, “Whether or not to sell books with DRM is a decision publishers need to make. Since there was interest among our clients, we felt IPG could service them better by giving them an option.” Though Suchomel does not mention Amazon explicitly, anti-DRM advocates have argued that DRM keeps users locked to the Kindle store.

Cynthia Sherry, publisher of IPG client Chicago Review Press, says, “I do not believe that DRM prevents piracy, but simply frustrates paying customers and hinders sales. By removing DRM we are offering our customers the flexibility to read their e-books on whatever device they please.”

IPG’s announcement coincides with BookExpo America, the United States’ largest book industry event. Yesterday at the Publishers Launch BEA conference, Macmillan’s Fritz Foy announced that, in addition to removing DRM from all Tor/Forge titles, Macmillan is launching a DRM-free science-fiction digital bookstore.

See also:

“Why I break DRM on e-books”: A publishing exec speaks out 

DRM is crushing indie booksellers online

A kinder, gentler DRM?

Note to publishers: Your addiction to DRM is killing you

Will Hachette be the first big-six publisher to drop DRM on e-books?

Writing Life is in beta tests with 50 authors now and will launch in English by the end of June, “with new language and country-specific support added in the coming year,” it said in a blog post.

In a separate press release, Michael Tamblyn, Kobo’s EVP content and merchandising, says, “When we started working on Kobo Writing Life, the first thing we did was ask authors what they felt was most important in a self-publishing platform. They were incredibly clear: openness, control, great royalties, incredible reporting and global reach. It should be powerful but drop-dead simple.”

On its website, Kobo takes a jab at Amazon: “Unlike some self-publishing portals we could mention, Kobo doesn’t bind you to us. Publish to Kobo and take your ePub to your adoring fans, no matter where they might be. You’re free to sell your eBook the way you want.” To be fair, Amazon’s KDP doesn’t require exclusivity, but its KDP Select (which lets self-published authors include their titles in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library) does. The main difference between Kobo and Amazon is outlined in the press release:

Unlike competitive self-publishing tools, Kobo allows authors to set their book price to “FREE” at any time without restrictive exclusive agreements, in addition Kobo pays 10% higher royalties on sales in many growing international markets and allows authors much more freedom on pricing.

Jane Litte at Dear Author reports that Kobo is paying a 70 percent royalty on e-books priced between $1.99 and $12.99, and a 45 percent royalty on e-books below $1.99 or above $12.99. By contrast, Amazon pays a 70 percent royalty on KDP e-books priced above $2.99 and a 35 percent royalty on those below $2.99. And she notes that authors can sell their books with or without DRM.

Writing Life also gives authors an analytics dashboard showing real-time sales stats, including sales by country. “The ability to see the performance of my books across different markets helps me to understand how my advertising and promotions are influencing sales so that I can engage with more readers around the world,” self-published author Bella Andre, who is beta-testing the program, says in the release.

Kobo’s international growth: Now 8 million users in 190 countries

Separately, Kobo released some year-on-year growth stats (though no actual numbers): e-book downloads up 400 percent, e-reader device sales up 160 percent and the number of people reading internationally with Kobo up 280 percent.

Kobo was acquired by Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten for $315 million in November and says it “will be launching in Japan, with subsequent launches planned for Portugal, Spain, Italy, with more launches to follow. These markets have distinct needs for digital reading and Kobo intends to provide access in regions where printed books are inaccessible and where electronic devices can be more easily obtained.”

The store will sell all of Tor’s DRM-free titles and may also sell DRM-free titles from other publishers, Foy said. Tor tried launching an online bookstore for print titles in 2009, but that initiative didn’t last.

Science fiction authors Cory Doctorow, Charlie Stross and John Scalzi also spoke on the panel. By adding DRM to their e-books, Doctorow said, publishers send the message to readers that “by being foolish enough to buy this book instead of stealing it, you agree that it will only live on a device from which we can remove it at will without notice. Who wrote the design brief, Joseph Stalin?” Most sci-fi fans “ignore the fine print” (and presumably break DRM), Doctorow said: “They understand that publishing empires rise and fall, and all of the big-six will someday be as dead as Byzantium and Sumer. But the book will live on.”

Getting rid of DRM “delivers a longterm boost to the midlist,” Stross said, by reassuring “voracious genre readers” that “it’s safe to buy e-books and that they won’t lose access to them five years down the line.” These readers may read thousands of books over a decade, but “they are no more immune to the elaborate turnover of electronic devices than the rest of us…they’re not going to happily walk away from the thousands of books they bought during that period.”

Scalzi said that when readers have problems with DRM, they turn to the author first. “When something goes wrong with their ebook, when they can’t transfer it from one place to the next, the person who hears about this first is us,” he said. “Authors want to tell stories. We don’t want to be the guy at the other end of the line dealing with technological and purely interface issues. That is not what we were hired to do. We were hired to tell a story.”

Photo courtesy of Flickr / jonny2love

See also:

“Why I break DRM on e-books”: A publishing exec speaks out 

DRM is crushing indie booksellers online

A kinder, gentler DRM?

Note to publishers: Your addiction to DRM is killing you

Will Hachette be the first big-six publisher to drop DRM on e-books?

Twenty-four percent of Indian adults with Internet access have bought an e-book, Bowker’s Kelly Gallagher said in a panel at the Publishers Launch BEA conference today, and 18 percent of Brazilian adults have done so.

In predicting e-book penetration rates, it’s key not just to look at the “technology-savvy” countries, Gallagher said, but to look at the size of the overall population combined with Internet penetration rate. “Suddenly, India becomes the second largest potential market” after the U.S., he said, followed by Brazil. The UK and Australia have high Internet penetration, but their populations are small.

“The perfect storm”

Gallagher calls e “the perfect storm for publishing in emerging countries.” Here’s why:

• Growth of the middle-class economy, focused on education
• English is the universal language, at least of business. Translated works will be important, Gallagher said, but “where these readers want to go today is not in leisure reading, but primarily focused on business. And they are asking for the content in English.”
• Advancements in the online payment process (we’ve seen it in the prepaid phone card system, for instance)
• No supply chain necessary; affordable tech

Why the e-reading transition in India and Brazil is different

Here’s why the e-reading transition in India and Brazil will look different from the way it has in the U.S. and UK:

• The transition is led by professional/business and academic e-books. 80 percent of Indian e-book buyers have purchased business, professional or academic ebooks and nearly 75 percent of Brazilian e-book buyers have done so. “The education and business genres are key growth opportunities” in the BRIC countries, Gallagher said, compared to “leisure genres” driving the “traditional Anglo markets.”
• E-book buyers most often purchase e-books directly from the publisher. Amazon has a small market share (at least for now).

Most Indians and Brazilians are still reading e-books on PCs and laptops, but as e-readers become more affordable, Gallagher says BRIC countries have the potential to “leap-frog” the U.S. in e-book penetration in the next couple of years.

Photo courtesy of Flickr/gaby_bra