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If this week’s news column were an episode of The Simpsons it would consist entirely of Bart, standing at the board, endlessly repeating the line “Ebook sales are not in crisis.” I want to devote most of the column this week to this one topic. That might sound excessive. After all, every month or so I dutifully report on the Association of American Publishers’ figures and I add the same caveats each time, and carry on as before. But this time is different. Because this time the mainstream media has got in on the act in a big way. And that has been brought home to me by the fact that several of my friends from outside the indie community have been sharing stories with me. In other words, the disinformation has breached the indie walls – and that means it could be doing real damage to people’s writing plans. OK, let’s get back to the news. This week, following similar figures from the Association of American, the UK Publishers Association announced a 17% fall in ebook sales in 2017. The media leapt on it. The Guardian called it “screen fatigue”. They even ran a piece about how e-readers had become “clunky and unhip”. The national broadcaster had a slightly different take, but even they simply took the figures on board. Even CNN picked it up in the USA. But is it true? Many of us have been querying the “downfall of ebooks” narrative for a long time now. The thing is it may or may not be happening, but these figures don’t tell us – these are figures from selected big publishers for books with ISBNs. That leaves a *massive* hiatus, a mass of ebooks that just aren’t being counted. We *can* be fairly sure that the positive things we are hearing about paper book sales are near the mark. But when it comes to the negatives on ebooks, the same isn’t true. And the prevailing narrative, that one format’s success is another’s failure, is certainly not clear. I will leave the last word to the ever-brilliant Nate Hoffelder, who takes down the “ebooks are failing” narrative coruscatingly...
With the growing popularity of self-publishing, there is one recurring question I get from almost every aspiring author: “How much should I budget?” This is a really hard question to answer because the term “self-publishing” encompasses a wide range of very different possibilities. For example, let’s say you’ve written a first draft of your novel and just uploaded it to Amazon via Kindle Direct Publishing. Technically, you’re “self-publishing.” And your only monetary cost is the formatting to get the required .mobi file, which can be done for free via several online tools. Now, if you want to have a chance of selling that book, you need to replicate at least some of the steps of traditional publishing and ensure a certain level of quality and professionalism. This means having your book properly edited, typeset and proofread, and hiring a designer to create an eye-catching cover. Depending on your genre and your writing ability, these can cost more or less. It’s impossible to say, “Self-publishing your book with cost you $X.” However, it is possible to find average costs for the different steps that go into producing a book: editing, design and typesetting. And this is what the data and infographic below focus on....
From my reading online, it didn’t look like anyone else had taken on this important subject area. Tens of thousands of new authors were kicking aside the gatekeepers and going straight into book production once they had finished their manuscripts. This is probably why many of the early self-published books in the print on demand era were poorly published, and embarrassing, when you look back at them from today’s perspective. This represented a great opportunity, because designing and producing books had been my life for many years. Although book typography and indie publishing was very much a niche field, I was excited to rejoin the industry....
With the growing popularity of self-publishing, there is one recurring question I get from almost every aspiring author: “How much should I budget?” This is a really hard question to answer because the term “self-publishing” encompasses a wide range of very different possibilities. For example, let’s say you’ve written a first draft of your novel and just uploaded it to Amazon via Kindle Direct Publishing. Technically, you’re “self-publishing.” And your only monetary cost is the formatting to get the required .mobi file, which can be done for free via several online tools. Now, if you want to have a chance of selling that book, you need to replicate at least some of the steps of traditional publishing and ensure a certain level of quality and professionalism. This means having your book properly edited, typeset and proofread, and hiring a designer to create an eye-catching cover. Depending on your genre and your writing ability, these can cost more or less. It’s impossible to say, “Self-publishing your book with cost you $X.” However, it is possible to find average costs for the different steps that go into producing a book: editing, design and typesetting. And this is what the data and infographic below focus on....
“I just wanted a story with a nice guy.”In late 2012, author H. M. Ward had an experimental manuscript collecting proverbial dust on her computer. It starred a woman named Sidney and a man named Peter—an impossible nice-guy combo of handsome, strong, smart, patient, and, oh, super wealthy. Ward had been writing since 2010 and had been down the traditional publishing route before, finding an agent and shopping her work around. Her instinct told her that publishers would have no interest in Peter. “If you take a nice-guy book to a traditional publisher,” she says, “They’re like, ‘That’s weird. Nice guys are boring.’” So in April 2013, she published her manuscript online on her own. “I just put it up out of curiosity to see what would happen,” she says. Despite reports that e-books are dying, Ward’s chance paid off, and continues to pay out today. According to the author, Damaged shot to No. 6 in Amazon’s Kindle store within a few days and held the No. 1 spot for several weeks. It spent a month on the New York Times bestsellers list for combined print and ebook. It was the first in two series of nice-guy books that would go on to sell 12 million copies in three years. Publishers took note. In the year after Ward published Damaged, she was offered a series of deals from various publishers totaling $1.5 million, by her estimate. She turned them all down, and by the time she said no to her last contract, she was making eight figures as a self-published author. “It would have been a colossal mistake to sign with them at that point, financially,” she says....
With the growing popularity of self-publishing, there is one recurring question I get from almost every aspiring author: “How much should I budget?” This is a really hard question to answer because the term “self-publishing” encompasses a wide range of very different possibilities. For example, let’s say you’ve written a first draft of your novel and just uploaded it to Amazon via Kindle Direct Publishing. Technically, you’re “self-publishing.” And your only monetary cost is the formatting to get the required .mobi file, which can be done for free via several online tools. Now, if you want to have a chance of selling that book, you need to replicate at least some of the steps of traditional publishing and ensure a certain level of quality and professionalism. This means having your book properly edited, typeset and proofread, and hiring a designer to create an eye-catching cover. Depending on your genre and your writing ability, these can cost more or less. It’s impossible to say, “Self-publishing your book with cost you $X.” However, it is possible to find average costs for the different steps that go into producing a book: editing, design and typesetting. And this is what the data and infographic below focus on....
For many authors, self-publishing is a first option instead of a backup to traditional publishing. Two years ago I broke down the costs to self-publish a high-quality book. The costs covered how much a traditional publisher typically spends on a book.
The book publishing industry is one of the last industries to go digital, and things are constantly in flux. What worked yesterday might not work next week.
Putting together a quality book involves not just writing it, but getting it edited and formatted, designing a cover, and having a marketing strategy around it.
The rise of new tools, platforms, and new entrants to the publishing space have made it even easier and faster to get a book out into the world. As a follow-up to my first piece, I’ve written a piece on how to publish on a budget....
Last night, Julianne Moore won the best actress Oscarfor her role as a university professor whose descent into dementia due to early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease was portrayed in the filmStill Alice.
The amazing backstory behind the award is that all the big publishing houses had rejected Lisa Genova, the author of the novel Still Alicefrom which the movie was based....
But making an ebook can be overwhelming. Not only do you have to write the content, but you also need to design and format it into a professional-looking document that people will want to download. But with lead generation as the top goal for content marketing, ebooks are an essential part of any successful inbound marketing program.
So in this post, we'll walk you through the ins and outs of creating an ebook by ... well ... creating an ebook. And if you're worried about your lacking design skills? Fret not ....
Amazon’s new Kindle Unlimited e-book reader subscription program caused a real commotion in the publishing industry last month. But how will this “Netflix for books” model affect the self-publishing industry? Is Kindle Unlimited the best, or should self-publishers join the Scribd or Oyster programs instead? How do you get in? Read on for a comparison of these top three reader subscription programs and best recommendations for self-publishers who are looking to add these channels to their revenue streams....
Thanks to the advent of self-publishing, crowdfunding and e-commerce, indie artists of all kinds are launching their creative careers as solopreneurs...
...“When you make something easier to do, people do more of it,” wrote Thompson. “‘Print-on-demand’ publishing is about to do the same thing to books. It’ll keep them alive—by allowing them to be much weirder.
”By ‘weirder’ Thompson means more individualized and diverse. And he was correct. Bowker has reported increases in the numbers of book titles published overall for years, despite decreases in titles published by traditional publishers. The bibliographic information clearinghouse reported the growth has been ”driven almost exclusively by a strong self-publishing market.”...
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At every writers conference or self-publishing panel the question that almost always inevitably comes up is: “How much will self-publishing really cost me?” Because the book publishing industry is one of the last industries to go digital, it’s going through a quick transition. As a result of this shift, authors no longer need to go through the traditional gatekeepers to publish high-quality books and are instead moving toward self-publishing. Launching a book is like launching a startup. Putting together a quality book involves not just writing it, but getting it edited, then formatted, designing a cover, and having a marketing strategy around it. Below, I break down the costs of how much professional services will cost you for a high-quality book....
Today’s short-run printing companies cater to self-publishers by offering easy-to-use book design templates and astoundingly quick service. Here is a review of the companies from which you can get a PDF-formatted proof, approve it, and order 1, 25, or more books. "Because these services do not lock you in, you can print with whomever you like, changing print and distribution vendors at will."...
We can’t all be J.K. Rowling or Stephenie Meyer, but if you’re working on a book, it’s nice to know what helps with success.
First, don’t get too long-winded: Surprisingly, the average length of a best-selling book is 375 pages. (Lord of the Rings is definitely an outlier here.)
As far as setting goes, most bestselling books are set in the U.S., with lawyers or detectives as main characters. Romance is, by far, the most lucrative genre. Romance books bring in $1.4 billion a year, with crime books in second place. Interestingly enough, people finish romance novels but often ditch religious books.
While the U.S. leads for its publishing industry, Germany, France, China, Japan and the UK also have large markets for authors. If you’re publishing an e-book, Amazon might be the best bet –– the company controls more than half of the e-book market. Authors also get to keep 70 percent of what they make on Amazon....
The average prices and ballpark ranges displayed in the infographic have been calculated using raw, unmodified data from over 2,000 quotes exchanged on the Reedsy platform. Not all of these quotes have been accepted, obviously. Editing quotes have been broken down by type of editing (editorial assessment, developmental editing, copy-editing, proofreading) and by word count. We then applied a linear regression on the thousands of data points to determine a “price per word count” for these different services. For cover design, we considered both quotes for a simple ebook cover (front only) and for a paperback cover (front, spine and back). The way most of our book cover designers work is that they charge a mark-up to do the paperback cover, but some do both for the same price. We therefore didn’t make the distinction in this infographic. For interior design, all quotes have been considered, from simple ebook formatting on a straightforward novel, to the complex design and typesetting of cookbooks and coffee table books. This explains the strong variation in pricing....
It’s 2016. We are landing rockets on floating platforms in the ocean. Engineers are developing high-speed transportation systems in which pressured capsules ride on air cushions facilitated by linear induction motors. A network of high-altitude Wi-Fi balloons is being designed to float on the edge of space so that everyone on the planet can connect to the Internet.
And ebooks turn pages.
What happened to the exciting digital future of ebooks?
As the leader in the digital book space, Amazon is doing very little to innovate around ebooks. Last week, ZDNet ran a series of articles titled “Why Amazon is the king of innovation.” As it pertains to Prime, drone delivery, and Amazon Web Services, Amazon is exceptionally innovative. Arguably the best. But finding one ebook in a vast digital store and reading it on an e-ink device is archaic compared to Amazon’s other initiatives. “It reads in the sunlight” is about as innovative as “It’s called a fax machine.”
Why are our friends in Seattle so slow when it comes to the future of reading?...
As we look forward to the coming year, the self-publishing world will undoubtedly present us with a few new surprises. As self-publishers, you probably have some thoughts on this topic as well. So, I felt it was timely to take a pause to collect a few 2016 predictions from some of the pros—those experts who have a proverbial finger on the pulse of industry changes. Many of these folks you will recognize as they have served us as reliable resources for BookWorks in the past. They include marketing strategists, publishers, and bloggers, in addition to the founder of Smashwords, one of the top self-publishing platforms in the world.
Learn about their prognostications and what they had to say when asked the question, “What do you predict for the self-publishing industry in 2016?”...
While the KDP Kids’ Book Creator still has a few rough spots (which Amazon is presumably ironing out in response to user feedback), it’s a good start. Those of us who have worked in children’s publishing for years recognized this move for what it was: a game changer.
Just how much has Amazon’s new free software changed the game?
With the release of the Kid’s Book Creator, as well as the Kindle Fire HD Kids Edition tablet, Amazon is investing in illustrated ebooks. And they need content.
So now comes the big question. Are you ready to ride this wave?...
Last week, my seventh book, Philadelphia, was released. In many ways it is the best writing I have ever done, particularly in terms of fiction, and I thought the concept — a collection of short stories, a few op-ed essays, quotes, and lists, all relating to my beloved city of Philadelphia in one way or another — was interesting and appealing.
Clearly, very few people agreed because, well, it didn't exactly do Harry Potter numbers.Don't get me wrong. I'm not naive. This is my seventh time going through this process of self-publishing a book, so it's not like I wasn't prepared. I know the figures. I know that the average U.S. book is now selling less than 250 copies per year and less than 3,000 copies over its lifetime and that over 60% of self-published authors make less than five thousand dollars per year from their writing....
At every writers conference or self-publishing panel the question that almost always inevitably comes up is: “How much will self-publishing really cost me?”
Because the book publishing industry is one of the last industries to go digital, it’s going through a quick transition. As a result of this shift, authors no longer need to go through the traditional gatekeepers to publish high-quality books and are instead moving toward self-publishing. Launching a book is like launching a startup. Putting together a quality book involves not just writing it, but getting it edited, then formatted, designing a cover, and having a marketing strategy around it.
Below, I break down the costs of how much professional services will cost you for a high-quality book....
Whether you’re circulating a periodic publication or writing a book, WordPress provides an easy way to organize and structure your content while it’s in process. Posts can be kept private while you’re working on finishing the book. Alternatively, you can release installments of your work to the public by publishing them on your WordPress site. This option gives you the benefit of community feedback during the process of writing your book.
Whatever process you choose to enhance your workflow is up to you. WordPress offers the flexibility and tools for any approach and provides several advantages over traditional publishing houses
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ALLi's self-publishing news looks at allegedly falling ebook sales, a good week for Amazon, and a controversial week for box sets