On the One Hand...On the Other Hand...

Update: 1099's went out this morning. Authors should have them in hand before the end of the month. Royalty statements and checks are schedule to go out Monday.

Now on to 'on the one hand...on the other hand...'

So as you know, or have been able to surmise, a major part of The New Big Publisher Model is branding. Over the past few days, I've been adding * A Double Edge Press Selection * to our Kindle titles (and only to Kindle at this time). We'll wait and see before adding it to other outlets. I've been adding the branding to one title at a time rather than diving in all at once. I had questions that would be best answered with a one at a time approach:

First and most pressing: was the additional title tagging going to be frowned upon by Amazon? About six months or a year ago, some too-cute-by-half enterprising self-publishing authors got into trouble by adding best selling titles to the end of their titles so that they would come up in search results when the more popular titles were searched for. Amazon said, no, no, no, and shut that (thankfully) down. They went further and added strong language discouraging any extra words in the title other than what actually shows on the title page. This was their solution to prevent 'title pirating'. The ramification was that it put me in the position of wondering if they would apply this rule to our books when I began branding. The last thing I needed was to do a mass swap out of all our Kindle books at once adding the title branding, have Amazon pounce on it and pull our books and revoke my upload privileges. So did I want to tread with caution? Yes. My saving grace? For some odd reason when I started uploading ebooks, I decided that instead of merely having our publishing house logo and name that I wanted more presentation (and the fact that some platforms didn't support the logo image) and thus I incorporated * A Double Edge Press Selection * after each title and then our pub logo. It seemed a little more inviting then a crossed out image space and Double Edge Press just floating there with no explanation.

So, technically, the title as now displayed with the branding in place is consistent with the wording on the title page portion of each ebook. If I do have complaints from Amazon, I can discreetly add the wording to the Kindle covers also.

Note: this doesn't effect print copies, or, at this point, any ebooks going through alternate distribution routes, such as Kobo, Nook, and iBooks.

The second question was: would the new title 'disconnect' the ebook from the print book in Amazon? And if it did, was this a good thing or a bad thing?

Which brings us to the 'On the One Hand...On the Other Hand'.

On the One Hand for our older titles that have accrued as many as forty and more nearly universally positive reviews, the disconnect would be bad, bad, bad. All those reviews would, presumably, stay with the print version and the branded ebook would take on status of newcomer. And what what about sales rank? Would we lose that momentum also? For books making best seller lists in their niches, would they be knocked off the list and require time to rebuild momentum? And what if they never rebuilt momentum at all?

So obviously the answer was to start with newer books that had no or few reviews and whose momentum wasn not yet on a roll.

What I didn't expect was a crap shoot every time I switched out the title because Amazon has been frustratingly inconsistent on whether they're going to disconnect titles or leave them connected. Of the five books thus far switched, one has stayed connected, and four have disconnected. Reviews on the disconnected ones for the kindle version have been lost (as I foresaw happening). Sales rank for the kindle versions, however, have stayed in place (surprising, but welcome!).

On the one hand...although our titles as a whole garner consistently mostly good reviews, I have noted that one bad review invites a 'pile on' mentality by those who don't like the book, and a 'qualifying' mentality by those who do like the book. Further reviews after an initial bad one tend to be 'me toos (I didn't like it either and here's why), but more troubling are even the good ones tend to be more muted. They read something along the lines of 'well, I did like it, but it would be better if...". So in essence, no one is any longer full-throated and enthusiastic about the title. What is it about our culture that no one seems willing to trust their own opinion anymore? I call it the age of negativity. The only 'thought leaders' deemed acceptable in our country are the ones that tear everything and everyone apart. Nothing can simply be enjoyed. Nothing can simply be 'liked'. Everything that comes up short of perfect is eventually ridiculed and mocked. Don't believe me? Have you watched the politcal scene for more than five minutes? How about celebrities? Any of their foibles not gleefully reported far and wide when they happen? Is the United States such a bad country? I don't think it is, but the thought leaders would have you believe that we're the cause of every problem on the face of the earth. But that is neither here nor there for this discussion, let's just say that in some cases, the loss of a few reviews wouldn't break my heart. A 'restart' might be beneficial.

On the other hand, for titles that have a LOT of reviews, and are still maintaining a four and five star status, no, I don't want to lose them. So they're on the back burner while I think through whether I should just leave them alone, or add the 'branded' title as an additional option instead of a replacement option in the Kindle market.

But, again, on the one hand, for the titles that have converted and disconnected, another interesting opportunity has arose. Since Kindle no longer recognizes it as the 'same' title, that means the new title would be considered as exclusive to Amazon (I haven't changed the title anywhere else yet, remember). That would make them eligible for the KDP Select eLibrary Lending program. Something we had not been considering because it requires its titles to be exclusive. That's additional exposure that may be of use. Also, because Amazon offers a 'pot' each month divvied up according to each 'lend' it wouldn't mean a total loss everytime someone borrows a book instead of buying it.

So there's a lot to chew on here, nuances to think through, and the most important factor of all, will all this ncrease sales, is a long way from being able to pin down. But to my knowledge, I'm the first and only pub house to be doing it and I do think that branding is the new path to success in the new publishing world. Readers have to have some instant recognition that what they are about to buy is a good value, and that's what I aim to provide.

Expectations...and...Bottled Water

Two quick things:

1. Expectations:

As of January 17, 2012, we sold as many books this year as we did for the entire year 2005.

As of today, we have sold as many books this year as we did for the entire year 2009.

Next in our sights, and with the expectation of surpassing sometime in February: 2008 and 2006.

Then come the banner years of 2007 and 2011, our two best sales years so far: we should pass 2007 by March. 2011 will be a little tougher, because it was a very good year for us. Expectation at current rates: July.

2. Bottled Water:

Question of the day: why do people drink bottled water? and what does the answer have to do with ebooks?

The School Marm Brigade and Other Oddities Driving the eBook Market

Yesterday (yes, two blog posts in two days...it's a miracle) I blogged about the New Big Publisher Model and what was driving the change. I haven't said exactly what that model is going to look like yet, although I have an idea. But to fully understand how and why I came to the conclusions I've come to, one has to look at all the factors that are involved. So, I'm going to try and break it down. How coherent I'll be is anyone's guess.

The old, traditional publishing model:

Author writes book.

Author submits book to publisher.

Publisher accepts book, pays author advance (risk 1)

Publisher bankrolls editing, formatting, cover artwork, marketing (more investment - risk 2)

Publisher places book in distribution - at 55% off the list price and fully returnable to make the bookstores happy (risk 3 - BIG Risk - Books are now printed and return of non-sell-throughs can now eat through ALL the profits of the sell-throughs if the return to sale ratio is high.)

Distributor offers book to bookstore at a 40% discount (keeping the other 15% for themselves, in addition to charging the publisher warehouse space for books stored, and charging bookstore return rates for books returned - yes, the only real winner in this game is the distributor. Not only do they make out whether books are selling or not, they have also effectively removed the incentive that returnable books offered to bookstores in the first place - allowing them to stock 'questionable books' at no risk. Now they are exposed to the risk of being charged return fees by the distributor - hence, they begin looking for sure-sells only).

End result - book prices inflated beyond belief as not only do Publishers need to cover their risk with as high a profit margin as possible, but they have to make a real killing on the books that become bestsellers to offset all the losses they're taking on the ones that are not best-sellers. Choices to readers reduced as publishers concentrate more and more on 'sure winners' and book stores refuse to order in anything other than 'sure winners' that will sell well to the least-common-denominator mass market.

Who loses? The reader. Choices are narrowed down to SSDT (Same Stuff - Different Title) and they get to pay higher prices to read what they don't necessarily want.

Enter Amazon:

Even before Amazon came out with the Kindle, it was making steady, significant and disconcerting to the bookstores inroads into the book market. Keep that in mind, because although Kindle sped up the process, the process was already in place. Let me repeat that: Kindle accelerated the process (from let's say about 2nd gear to warp speed) but the process was already in place.

Bookstores were already being threatened. Publishers were not being threatened. Amazon offered Choices. Readers could buy what the bookstores were offering (usually at a better price) and they could also buy books that the bookstores couldn't offer, not without ordering them in (and if you have to wait for the book anyways, you may as well order it from Amazon and have it delivered to your door instead of having to make a second trip to the store to pick it up). Amazon had virtual, unlimited shelf-space without expiration dates. They made money on best sellers, but they made even more money on back-list, obscure, niche market titles. Let me repeat that also: They made even more money on the non-bestsellers than they did on the best-sellers. This phenomenon was termed the Long-Tail Theory.

By now, probably all of you are aware of the Long Tail Theory, but in a nut-shell, here's a chart and a brief explanation:

If you think about books as real estate, think of the 'head' in blue as top-end penthouses worth millions of dollars. You may be very rich and own one or two of them. They demand a high price and you are the envy of everyonewho owns any real-estate at all. In book terms, these are your best-sellers. But for every pent-house, there are hundereds of thousands, even millions, of low-cost real-estate, from nice suburban neighborhoods to slums. This is the pink area. If you're a landlord, you can still make a lot of money by owning a lot of middle and low-end real-estate. In book terms, these are your back-list and your marginal sellers. 

The long-tail theory showed that in effect, the long-tail (pink area) as a whole far outsold the head (blue area). The blue area sold far more units per book, but the pink area collectively sold as more than the blue area collectively, despite the high per unit ratio the blue area provided. In other words, would you rather sell 10 items 100 times each or sell 1000 items 10 times each? It was actually kind of a toss-up, because managing 1000 units of 'real-estate' is certainly more complicated than managing 10. But keep in mind that this theory was around before Kindle and ebooks. It came into being when Amazon was just Amazon and big publishers still ruled. It was the first indication that there was at the very least a market for the underdog. You could make a living on having a multiple holding of mid-list and even marginal selling titles while you waited for the magic book that would hit best-seller status.

This was something that could never have been done when dealing exclusively with brick and mortar stores. 

Enter ebooks and Kindle:

So as I stressed before, the revolution was on, quietly, even before Kindle hit the scene. What changed when Kindle hit the scene was that not only did readers have more CHOICES, they now had CHEAP CHOICES. Except that the best-sellers that the big publishers depended on to keep their books even marginally in the black weren't cheap. They were just as expensive as ever. Sometimes selling at an even higher price for the ebook than the actual hard-back. Publishers didn't want to kill their golden goose, high margin sales through the bookstores by having the ebook compete. They brought out the ebook version months, sometimes as much as a year after the release of the hard-back. They wanted to wring as many sales out of the print copies as they possible could before offering the ebook version. They justified the high ebook price by pointing out that they offered quality - first rate editing, first rate formatting, first rate covers, first rate authors with first rate writing.

And there was another factor in play: the bookstores. How could the publishers risk alienating the very stores that had been their primary source of sales for generations? If they offered the ebook simultanesouly with the release of the hard-back, and at a lower price, they would essentially be putting the final bullet in the book stores' already severly maimed body. Was it decency? Was it short-sightedness? Was it a lack of understanding that survivability of the publishers was going to depend on an 'every man for themselves' mentality? Was it simply too much change too fast and a lack of understanding that the teeming masses would swarm on bargains, despite all their griping about poor editing and a less than perfect track record of winners in the endless stream of cheap and free ebook choices?

In the end it was the School Marm Brigade that did them in. The School Marm Brigade are those readers that demand high quality in their reading. The big publishers best friend, you would think. They're well educated but not necessarily intellectuals. I think of them on the retired school teacher level, the ones that bandied rulers, smacked knuckles and knew how to crack a few skulls, all while having a perfect bun in their hair. They know more than the average bear, but their pay-grade is lower than many of their similarly educated retired counterparts. Let's just say economics is a factor for them. After all, one can only afford so many cans of cat food for their array of cats and still afford a good book. If they're offered one good (read well-packaged from a major pubisher) book for one price, or the ability to buy three, maybe four books of questionable merit for the same price, they will go for the bargain every single time, almost without exception.

They gripe. They complain. They want better books. They want better editing. They actively review what they read and they always give poor marks for grammer, because, after all, they are well educated and they know that if Billy had paid attention in seventh grade when they were doing sentence diagraming that Billy would write a better book. What is the world coming to when books have so many errors in them? But mostly they want to READ. And they want to be able to AFFORD to read. So despite their disappointment in the new product offerings, they buy them, and hope that someone, somewhere is listening and will provide a better product for the same cheap prices they are now accustomed to and demand.

I don't know if the major publishers are listening, or if they can afford to listen, but I'm listening.

I HEAR YOU, READERS! And we're going to give you what you want: Good Books, Good Editing and Packaging, and a GREAT VALUE (read cheap). And most importantly, we're going to make it easy for you to find what we're offering.

And, hence, the New Big Publisher Model was born.

To be continued....

Note: yes, you will find errors in this post. The length and the image, I suppose, have made the platform 'twitchy'. I can add stuff to the bottom, like this note, but can't edit anything above. Sigh.

The Next Big Publishing Model

Every morning I hit a list of blogs I read regularly. One of these is Chris Hamilton's Florida Writers Conference blog. Like every other blog I hit, sometimes I read it and sometimes I don't. But I always check in to see what subject they're writing about today.

Today, Chris's post featured his take on a big (traditional) publishing house letter from an (nameless) insider that is featured on a site I don't normally visit: pandodaily. The post is called Confessions of a Publisher: "We're in Amazon's Sites and They're Going to Kill Us". Chris focuses on the "we're in Amazon's sites and they're going to kill us" aspect of the piece. What struck me, however, was the last line of the post, part of the summary and not part of the actual 'confession'. That line reads:

"Someone will build the next great publishing imprint out of these ashes. And as a reader and an author, I can’t wait."

In it's most basic terms, publishing has never been more than a service to readers (vanity presses, conversely, are a service to writers). The main task of a publisher has been to service the reader by taking someone else's production (the manuscript) polishing it with editing and formatting, packaging it with an attractive cover, and, most importantly, applying quality control in the way of standards. This service assured the reader that they were getting good writing in a good package with a good story (that may or may not be something they themselves enjoyed, but that would be enjoyed by those whose tastes ran along the same lines). No book is ever going to be enjoyed by everyone. No amount of service can ensure that. But every book should be presented in its best possible light so that those who do enjoy it can enjoy it to its utmost.

So this is and always has been the publishers job: servicing the reader.

Servicing the reader does not include limiting their choices. Somewhere along the way, publishers began doing just this. They limited choices for the reader in both content and writing style. Where in the 1800's to early 1900's it was common for writers to put out their own works (yes, self-publishing) or by a single backer who believed in the work, and were responsible for every aspect of the finished product, from hiring a printer, a cover artist and editor, not only did the content vary to great degree, but the writing styles did also. There were no publishers insisting that everything be written in the manner that the least common denominator of the reading public could comprehend. Comprehension and appreciation can be two very different things.

Consider, for instance, the following brief story taken from wikipedia:

"Rejecting Jane" is the title of an article by British author David Lassman, which became the 'literary story of 2007'.^[1][2]

The article, which was published in Issue 28 of Jane Austen's Regency World magazine,^[3] is a critique of the publishing industry through their inadvertent rejection of Jane Austen.^[4][5] Using the pseudonym 'Alison Laydee' - a play on Austen's original nom de plume "A Lady"^[5] - Lassman sent out the opening chapters of Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion to several major publishers and literary agents, with different titles but only minor changes to the text, such as character names and locations. The resultant article chronicles the fact that all but one of the publishers and agents failed to recognise her works, including Penguin Books and J. K. Rowling's publisher Bloomsbury, with the vast majority rejecting out of hand this apparent attempt by one of the world’s greatest known authors to gain a publishing deal. This despite the fact that one of the most famous opening lines in English literature, Pride and Prejudice’s "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife" was left intact.^[5]

Are Jane Austen books the easiest to read? No. But neither is Moby Dick, East of Eden, The Scarlet Pimpernel or A Tale of Two Cities. I can guarantee you that if any of these manuscripts were making the rounds of submissions to large publishers within the last twenty to thirty years, they all would have suffered a similar fate as the proffered Jane Austen novels written about above.

So what's all this have to do with 'The Next Big Publishing Model"? Where Amazon is succeeding overall (not necessarily within their publishing arm - yet) is that they're offering choices. Not every choice is going to be popular (read, bestseller) but they're available.

More on where we come in tomorrow...

Running on Instinct

So as a follow-up (finally) to my last post outlining my intention to begin adding * A Double Edge Press Selection * on the end of each title, here's my thinking:

First, I had to check my 'gut' results. Running on instinct sounds like a poor business model, but how has it served me? One thing about January and being in the midst of a). readying 1099's and other tax items, b). readying royalty statements, and c). looking at the numbers for the previous years in some type of context, I'm a little amazed at how well my gut has served me.

The most exciting news, as expected, is ebooks in general and Kindle in particular: we sold ten times as many ebooks this year as last year, and ten times as many ebooks last year as the year before. If that trend continues this year...well, I will be quite happy.

The hidden and surprising story is that we sold nearly twice as many print books this year as last year, and over three times as many as the year before.

I blogged a while back about ebook sales actually stimulating print sales, an observation made mostly on gut instinct, and I find that I was right. Which is good to know.

Another thing my gut told me to do was to drop our ebook price from $9.95 for most of our titles to $2.99. A gut decision that has served us very well.

Not every instinct plays out as well. My whole big idea of the "E"ndependent Ebook Club fizzled and died from a lack of participation among outside authors (our authors, I'm proud to say, did their part quickly and professionally). It was big, it was ambitious, and it flopped. Not among readers. I still have a long list of email contacts of readers who voluntarily signed up. I just ran out out of material to send them. Maybe the lesson learned is that my instinct ideas have to be something that I can implement on my own and not require a coordinated effort of many people. And aren't the best ideas always the ones that are quite simple?

All this to say that I'm going to go forward. I'm going to try another one and hope that I hit a home run as I did with dropping the price. I want to keep our momentum going, and I want to broaden our scope. I'll be working on this, and the best thing is, I can pull the plug if it brings negative feedback.

I mentioned in my last post that there was a vision behind this. It's not all gut. A Double Edge Press Selection has to stand for great reads at a great value, every time. But it doesn't necessarily have to be confined to what we ourselves are publishing. It can be a very large umbrella. Publishing is about vetting and polishing, putting together the best possible package for a book in content and cover. What if others out there have already put together a great package through whatever means available to them? It may not be our pub house, the important thing is that we vet it, approve it, and slip it under our umbrella.

But that's a story for another day and down the road. The first thing to determine is if our umbrella is going to bring our own books more sales.

And there's no way to find that out until we open it.