Authors on Self-Publishing E-Books

The stories coming out of the trenches right now are incredible. Success stories from authors who turned flagging or nonexistent careers around, taking matters into their own hands to instant success and wheelbarrows of money. While anyone who has been around publishing -- or the planet -- for a while will greet these stories with some healthy skepticism, if there are e-book failure stories floating around out there, we have yet to hear them. In the meantime, though, the success stories keep pouring in.

The Next Web recently ran a piece called “The Economics of Self-Publishing an Ebook.” While that doesn’t precisely describe the content of the article, it’s hard not to be blown away by some of the numbers they toss around.

A paranormal and erotic romance author named Tina Folsom had tried for years to land a literary agent and traditional publisher to no avail. Almost on a whim she decided early last year to begin uploading some of her novels to various ebook platforms. Sales, at first, were slow — perhaps only a few hundred a month. But then suddenly in October she sold over a thousand titles. In December it jumped up to 11,000, and in January she sold 27,000 ebooks (February, a shorter month, clocked in around 22,000).

Folsom, The Next Web reports, has quit her day job and farms out the parts of e-book creation that require elbow grease in order to concentrate on writing her novels.

Last weekend, the Vancouver Province newspaper ran a piece that also focused on e-books from the author’s perspective. The title itself was enough to bring writers running. “The book is dead -- long live the ebook: Writers are self-publishing their way to fame and fortune as e-readers take over.”

Author and journalist Peter Darbyshire opted to report his story through the lens of someone who has been taking some heat about self-publishing his latest book electronically on the heels of a traditionally published book.

But, as usual, the bad news for some is good news for others. While publishers and bookstores are hurting, many writers are doing better than ever thanks to ebooks. In fact, some are doing so well they've walked away from careers with publishing houses to go it alone on the Kindle, iBookstore, Kobo and the other e-services that are launching almost daily.

In the midst of this flurry of authors getting busy on their own time, at the annual meeting of the Association of American Publishers, Barnes & Noble chairman Len Riggio cheerfully urged publishers to prepare for “transformational growth.” From Publishers Weekly:

He said it was wrong to view bookselling and publishing as a “zero sum game” in which the only way to grow is to grab market share, with a limit to the number of books people will buy. Riggio said he sees the digital marketplace expanding at a greater pace than many analysts, and said the sale of e-books is adding new customers and is just not replacing bound books. With the addition of e-books, B&N’s long tail is getting even longer, Riggio said. He noted that during the peak two-week holiday period not only did digital sales soar but comp sales of print books rose as well.

How to Publish, Not Perish

It sounds like a spam come-on, not the headline on an article in the blog of one of the most respected newspapers in the world:

How to publish your own book online -- and make money

Yet there it is: in backlit black and white, on The Guardian’s technology blog. Technology and economics columnist -- and fledgling poet -- Victor Keegan takes a very personal approach to the topic of self-publishing for fun and profit in a piece that clearly comes from outside of the book industry and approaches the matter at hand from many angles.

It doesn't have to be an embryonic bestseller because self-publishing is best suited to limited editions. Anything over 1,000 copies and you would be better off going to a traditional printer to take advantage of economies of scale. I know a lot people who are self-publishing a record of their own lives together with memories of their parents and grandparents as a bit of family history. That's not vanity publishing, just a great way to preserve memories for future generations and add to the archive of local history. Self-publishing is ideal for that.

Despite Keegan’s clear-eyed approach, I’m still not convinced you can do what the man said and “publish your own book online -- and make money.” But if self-publishing is something you might take a run at, you could do worse than Keegan’s primer.

The Guardian piece is here.

The Changing Face of P.O.D.

This is what micropublishers have been dreaming about for decades, really. One machine that does it all and makes it possible to have books printed and delivered, a single copy at a time. Is this what Print On Demand technology will look like in the not-so-distant future? From The Telegraph:

Crime and Punishment may take the average reader several months to complete, but Britain’s first “book vending machine” can print you a copy in just nine minutes.

A freshly-bound edition of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s classic -- ordered by The Daily Telegraph -- was one of the first tomes to drop out of the Espresso Book Machine when it opened for business for the first time yesterday.

The novel is one of more than 400,000 titles including many rare and out-of-print books that can be printed on demand at Blackwell bookshop on Charing Cross Road in central London.

The bookstore of the future, then, might look very different, indeed. Not shelf upon shelf of books, but row upon row of machines churning out custom copies for waiting customers. Between that and the electronic streams of the e-books whizzing by, it’s possible that, a few years hence, bookstores will be very different places, indeed.

While that idea makes me a little sad, it has a hopeful edge. Back at Blackwell, The Telegraph’s copy of Crime and Punishment was better than all right:

The hefty work that skidded out of the chute, while slightly sticky to the touch, looked and felt like a standard edition, even down to the correct ISBN number on the back.

The paper and ink are the same quality used in larger presses, and the binding appeared flawless.

Phill Jamieson, head of marketing at Blackwell, said that the firm was uncertain how the £68,000 machine -- one of only three such printers in the world -- would be used during its three-month trial period.

And the moral of the story? It seems entirely possible that the death of the book so many have been forceasting will never come. We love our books. Witness the many thousands of readers that pass through January Magazine every day, not to mention other online magazines and blogs and discussion groups and book groups and all of this without even leaving the online world.

At their core and at heart, books themselves will not change. However, how the publishing industry delivers our books, how they sell and market and get them to the consumer, all of that might change quite a bit.

Consider a world without remainders. Now that doesn’t sound so bad.

Graphic Novels: Tonoharu by Lars Martinson

I’ve come to an appreciation of the graphic novel relatively late. I’ve been a bit of a hold-out. And even though I’ve sometimes lauded the idea of the graphic novel, I don’t think it’s possible to get the searing transportation of soul that can be achieved with a really great “real” novel. I still don’t. The mechanics of both experiences are just so very different.

All of that said, Tonoharu by Minnesota-born cartoonist Lars Martinson, comes about as close as anything I’ve seen.

The book, released last month by Martinson’s own Pliant Press, is on its way to being one of those book business phenomena that people talk about in hushed tones: the self-publishing success story. The book has been featured in Publishers Weekly, mentioned in Entertainment Weekly (“the magazine with the GROSSEST initials in the publishing world,” says Martinson on his blog) and The Wall Street Journal.

Tonoharu is picking up steam and moving fast. And why? That’s easy to answer. I mean, sure: Martinson is doing all the right things. The production of the book is great, distribution is in place and strong, the PR has been properly handled: attention has been given to details. But aside from all of those things that are the very basics for self-publishing success at any level, Tonoharu is brilliant.

I’ll say it again: Tonoharu -- and I suspect Martinson himself, as well -- are brilliant. The cartoonist’s work is joyous and smart and tight. I could just look at it all day. He owns a pleasingly cynical sense of humor, one that cuts right through the material he’s chosen here. And it’s good material, and well considered and presented: the weird and perhaps unexpected alienation of a young American teaching English in rural Japan.

Tonoharu is the first book in a planned series of four. I suspect even that quartet will be just the beginning for this massively talented artist.