I just completed a study of twenty newly released ebooks just to see how far the art of ebook publishing has advanced in the last year. I choose ebooks from well-known authors, from self-publishing authors, some novels, some technical books. I wanted a variety for my study. I would like to share my observations and suggestions for their improvement.

My contention is that REAL ebooks should be a different product than their paper counterparts. They should be formatted differently; sections arranged differently and in some cases they should have different covers. In short, to be a REAL ebook, they should not be just a copy of the traditional book version.

The following is a list of certain areas that I feel need improvement; areas that you must consider when you create your ebook.

REAL ebooks Links
Rendering your ebook with links is a major step in the right direction in creating a REAL book. What items MUST have links?

1. The Table of Contents must have links to the chapter headings. Most are doing this now.
2. Author’s References – the ebook must include links to the author’s website, email address, blogs, online profiles and social networking connections (Facebook/Twitter). You need this to get your reader/audience involved.
3. Author’s Other Books – there should be links to the buy pages for other books created by the author. Why miss this marketing opportunity.

For example, in my study two of the ebooks were written by top 10 authors and published by traditional publishers. Both had a list of their other titles, provided credits for the book creation and the usual publisher information. Neither used links to assist the reader in buying other titles or helping their co-developers secure new business. One did have a link to the publisher’s web site. There was no links to the author’s website, blog, email address or social network information.

4. In book Links – the REAL ebook should have links in the content to footnotes (held in appendix), to word and term definitions and to references. For example, one project I recently worked on was a pictorial about Omaha Beach with over 50 original pictures inserted in the content. With the picture, its title and the picture credits, the content became very difficult to read. The solution was to have a link from the picture title to the picture’s credits in the back of the ebook. If the reader wanted to check out the source they could follow the link and then hit the back key on the ebook device. If the reader didn’t, they could ignore the link and continue without interrupting the reading experience.

Another example in my survey was a technical book about the publishing industry. It was a well written book with lots of good information and references. But there were no links. None! It contained lots of hard coded website addresses and email contact information. All I had to do was re-enter the URL into my web browser and I could find the source.

Actually this is a missed opportunity. One of the problems that traditional books have that REAL ebooks can solve is the maintenance of links in the books. As we know we live in an ever changing world. Web and email addresses change on a daily basis, it seems. So there I am with a link to some interesting information and the link is no good. A broken link, if you will

If the REAL ebook is managed properly, you can avoid or limit this problem. You can create an online directory of links for your ebook. Then you setup a link monitoring process and a link maintenance routine and maintain a valid list of links in the directory. I call this the Goodlinks concept. Just include a link to the online directory in your ebook and you won’t lose your audience.

In fact you can draw the reader to your site and market other products and services. Of course, the beauty of the REAL ebook is you can republish it at any time with the updated links and information.

I believe the REAL ebook can help solve the read-back problems that all readers are faced with at one time or another. I watched a reader the other day try to deal with a novel that was riddled with acronyms and abbreviations. It was getting to be such a problem that half way through the ebook, she actually started writing them down on a separate piece of paper to reference later. Here is an example. “He called USAMRIID for advice.” I give up.

Other Considerations to Ponder
Covers
Sometimes the traditional book cover doesn’t work for the ebook. In this case, size does matter. That great book cover that you had designed is going to go small. On-line distributors try to catch the eye of would-be readers with thumbnail covers. The problem is that sometimes colors get in the way, the type size and face doesn’t look good small and the art gets distorted. A professional designer can solve this problem. You need one that can make the cover work in both environments. Check with our host for this site, Joel Friedlander.

One of the other cover issues is with the effort to get the prospective reader to view a sample of the ebook; some distributors will put a label over the right hand corner of the thumbnail which obscures that portion of the cover. A good designed cover will keep important information viewable like the author’s name or even the title of the book. I saw that in my study.

Copyright
REAL ebooks should include, with their copyright notice, the page number source document for the ebook, especially if the book has various editions. This is relatively a new process but it helps readers coordinate content between the paper version and ebook. This is increasingly important in the educational environment. Students using both hardbound and the ebook versions need a reference point sometimes.

Samples
One of the current ebook marketing strategies is to allow the prospective reader to read a sample of the ebook before buying. All distributors seem to go at this sample process differently but at the end of the day they want to provide the prospective buyer with something that can help with the buying decision. Most of them use a percentage basis.

The REAL ebook concept can help with this process but there has to be a rearranging of the book’s sections if the process is automated like most of them are.

Let me start with an example. I reviewed the buy page on Amazon for each book in my study. I choose one ebook in my study and downloaded the sample, comparing it to the full length version. Here’s what I found.

The ebook sample was in the same section sequence as the paper version. I know there is a traditional way to setup a book. This sample was no exception. It started with the cover followed by the title page, the table of contents, the dedication, the copyright page and a list of the writer’s other works.

So you ask what’s wrong with this. If this sample was going to help sell my ebook, it probably failed. The sample was 80 device pages long but the viewer had to page through 24 pages before they could start reading the book to make a decision.

I believe if you are going to use the sample as a sales tool, there are some slight changes you can make. I would include the cover and the title page with an abbreviated TOC up front along with the author’s other books with buy links. Also I would include upfront the author’s website and contact information. Move the copyright page, dedications and credits to the end of the ebook.

If you get to setup your own sample, keep this in mind. REAL ebooks and their samples should give the prospect what they need to make a decision and only that. A sample doesn’t need a complete table of content. This ebook had 80 chapters which took up four complete device pages and the kicker was; the links to the last 76 chapters were no good. Make the sample simple. Get the reader to your content as quickly as possible.

Bring on the REAL ebook
In most cases, ebooks are still just copies of the paper version but there is a huge opportunity to improve the ebook reading experience. Creative book design and digital links can help us move the ebook experience forward in acceptance.

Currently we have a problem. Let’s face it. Until traditional publishers start to treat ebooks as separate products with different properties and requirements, we have not taken advantage of the digital product. Their approach is simple but self-serving. Get it out the door. Get the copy into an ebook format, charge a higher price than needed and watch the money fall to their bottom line.

The advantage should go to the self-publisher because they control the process. They have the ability to correct the problems easily and make something really special.

Seek a professional to help you through the process if you’re really serious about marketing your ebook.

What do you think about the REAL ebook concept? Is adding links to an already completed product just too much work or would it move your book to the leading edge of ebook world and improve the readers enjoyment?

View my website: HBSystems Publications
Specializing in the ebook experience
Or EMAIL at: jrm@hbspub.com
Or go to my blog: The eBook Author’s Corner
LinkedIn Profile: James Moushon
Author: Call Off The Dogs, a rendered eBook

This blog was first published at the The Book Designer by Joel Friedlander.

Joel Friedlander is a self-published author and book designer who blogs about book design, self-publishing and the indie publishing life at TheBookDesigner.com. He’s also the proprietor of Marin Bookworks, where he helps publishers and authors who decide to publish get to market on time and on budget with books that are both properly constructed and beautiful to read.

It was posted again on the Passive Voice blog hosted by the Passive Guy.
Together the two have generated over 100 comments.

The Paper Rats deconstruct some common writer stereotypes.

About:

Authors  R.J. Keller and Kristen J. Tsetsi like to make videos when they should be writing. Their show is called “Inside The Writers’ Studio.”

They are Paper Rats.

But most of these errors are correctable.  And it sooooo distracts from the content of the book.  It becomes almost impossible to read some passages as you read, then re-read and then read again and realize the author left out the word “not,” or used double negatives, or means her instead of he.   And I am not discussing dialogue here.  Dialogue sometimes has its own lingo, depending on the locale of the story.  But if you are going to use dialects, then do your research and use it correctly.  I had one book I just deleted because the dialogue was too difficult to read in the chosen dialect.  It was very poorly done.  If you don’t know it, don’t use it.   But when it’s supposed to be English and it looks like pig Latin, you know someone was not proofreading their work.

People rely too much on the power of the word processor to correct most errors.  That is so wrong.  It is a machine, not AI.  The machine does not know you mean their instead of there, or bailed instead of balled.   The words are spelled correctly as far as the machine is concerned.   But you know you didn’t mean “…and the girlfriend balled him out.”

Unless your aunt or sister is a schoolteacher, having a family member proofread your work is not going to do it.  You can see in the acknowledgements at the front of the book “With many thanks to yadda-yadda, my cousin (or fill in the blank), for proofreading my work.  Ya did a great job.”  NOT!  Sorry, but if the relative can’t tell the difference between here and hear, then they did not do such a great job, dude.

Then there is the Kindle formatting.  Now, I know how to format a book myself.  I’ve learned.   But I am an IT freak and software is my game.   But for the average person, this can be tricky.  And when you see typefaces in 4 different font sizes in the same paragraph, you know they were having a hard time figuring out how to work the software.  Or there are 4 blank pages between each chapter.  Or everything becomes indented in the middle of the book.  I’ve seen everything go Italic in the middle of a book and then to bold typeface near the end.  And, of course, the pictures.  Missing, too big, too small; yet the author references them and you need the picture.  All these are due to not knowing how to use the word processing program well enough to correct these errors.

I cannot emphasize enough the need for self-publishing authors to seek out professional help in proofing their work.  And that includes editing.  If you are going to publish a book that references specifics, you need to make sure you are doing your fact checking correctly.  That’s where an editor comes in.  Editors will also tell you if you use something in the wrong manner or if the reference is incomplete, in error or outdated.  I was reading the other day where a character was given a bunch of letters after their name to insinuate they were a psychiatrist.  Well, the letters denoted he was a dentist.  I was wondering why they brought a DDS in to interrogate a suspect.

While you might think the average reader will not notice such “little things,” truth is it should be a matter of pride in your work.  Because you know someone is going to point out your major Faux Pas.  And as a reviewer, I am not only going to knock off a star or two for bad proofing, editing and formatting, but I will mention it in the review I write.  Why?  Because it does make a difference, and it will be noticed and you should really care about what you are writing.

One of the reasons publishing houses take a large chunk of your book fees is because they proofread your work before they publish it.  Now, granted, some publishing houses have crack editors and proofreaders.  Others…well.  Let’s just say I’ve seen some really sloppy editing on the part of some publishers, and have written them asking…did you do that on purpose or did you just not care?

In particular I remember where a biography was done and except for the title on the book cover, the subject of the bio had their name misspelled throughout the entire work.  Someone had the window pop up in the spellchecker that said “this word is spelled wrong, suggesting…” and they hit the “OK, change all” button.   It went to press wrong.  And everyone noticed it right away – Amazon was flooded with reviews about the misspelled name.  How many times have you hit the change button without look at what you are changing?  We all do it, don’t feel bad.  But that’s what a proofreader gets paid to catch.

But back to self-publishing: poorly formatted and proofread work is going to affect the sales of your book, if you want to come right down to the bottom line.  I have seen some author complain about poor sales and then someone comments “well, if your work was readable, it might sell better.”  You have to love Facebook for the raw comments if nothing else.

Look into the numerous proofreading firms out there.  Actually LOOK at the Kindle copy of your book and see how it came out AFTER Amazon converted it.  If it looks funky, chances are it will look funky to everyone and you should get help to reformat it.

One more side note – cover art.  I’ve seen all sorts of “Kindle Art” for books.  That Fire just came out and presents color to the public now is probably a great thing.  But I have a black and white Kindle and I would guess at this point so do many others.  Have you looked at your cover art in a black and white Kindle?  Some of it is scary!  If you don’t have a Kindle, the reader software is free and you can install it on your home PC.  Read your book in a Kindle and see what it looks like BEFORE you load it into Amazon.

If you are not sure, then you should get a proofreader.  And check your formatting.  Present a professional appearance.  You are going to make more money if you present a professional appearance.  I can almost guarantee it.  Of course, a good story always helps.

Now anyone can create stunning iBooks textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books, and more for iPad. All you need is an idea and a Mac. Start with one of the Apple-designed templates that feature a wide variety of page layouts. Add your own text and images with drag-and-drop ease. Use Multi-Touch widgets to include interactive photo galleries, movies, Keynote presentations, 3D objects, and more. Preview your book on your iPad at any time. Then submit your finished work to the iBookstore with a few simple steps. And before you know it, you’re a published author.

Apple-designed templates
• Give your book a great beginning with templates that include a choice of page designs with matching fonts, colors, and textures
• Easily customize your book with text and images, create new layouts, and even save a custom template
• Use the Book Navigator to organize your book and add a cover and table of contents

Beautiful text and layouts
• Use a variety of text styles in each template to give your book a rich yet consistent look
• Add text, shapes, charts, tables, and media anywhere on the page
• Import a chapter written in Pages or Microsoft Word and apply a great-looking layout from your current template
• Add any word to the glossary with a single click and easily include photos, images, charts, tables, and shapes next to any definition
• Automatically create a portrait view of your book, which allows readers to focus on the text

Multi-Touch widgets
• Choose from a variety of widgets that add Multi-Touch interactivity to your book
• Add a photo gallery, chapter review, movie, Keynote presentation, interactive image with callouts, 3D object, or custom HTML anywhere in your book
• Widgets include placeholders for titles and captions and are automatically numbered so you can reference them in your main text
• Add accessibility descriptions to any widget so that it can be used by sight-impaired readers easily with VoiceOver

That “Now anyone” needs to be rewritten. In eager anticipation of the new ebook app, I found this:

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.7.2 or later

I’m using 10.6.8 – a new i5 iMac I just bought, so I’m not about to upgrade for a single app. So not only does this put the app off limits to Windows users, it’s off limits to most Mac users. One of the worst features of the Mac is being forced to buy new hardware to keep up with the software. The reason that I bought the iMac was because my laptop couldn’t run Logic 9. So I’m not about to do it again. This really seems aimed at high-end graphic designers, or wealthy schools – not self-publishers.

I’m glad that Apple’s going down this road and offering this capability, but until it’s a cross-platform app like iTunes that is available for all operating systems, it’s a highly-niche app that’s hardly going to break open the self-publishing industry,

Self-publishing is about ease and availability. It’s about breaking down the barriers and making the tools available to everyone. This doesn’t fit that. You don’t need software to access the Kindle KDP – you just need an internet connection. If this was going to be the thing to rival KDP, Amazon doesn’t have to worry.

Update: I may have gone too far with my annoyance at updating to Lion – but 1. It is an extra expense for a “free” app and 2. Updating an OS is not always a seamless process, as happened with my last update, which broke my computer.

But beyond that, there are problems with the app beyond the software required.  First, it requires exclusivity – so this isn’t an epub tool you can use to distribute on other sites. It’s Apple-only.

See: The Unprecedented Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

So, to paraphrase: By using this software, you agree that anything you make with it is in part ours. But if it can say that and have legal force, can’t it say anything? Isn’t this the equivalent of a car dealer trying to bind you to additional terms by sticking a contract in the glove compartment? By driving this car, you agree to get all your oil changes from Honda of Cupertino?

Apple, in this EULA, is claiming a right not just to its software, but to its software’s output. It’s akin to Microsoft trying to restrict what people can do with Word documents, or Adobe declaring that if you use Photoshop to export a JPEG, you can’t freely sell it to Getty. As far as I know, in the consumer software industry, this practice is unprecedented.

Jon Konrath has a very good comment below.

JA Konrath has a post about how publicity doesn’t lead to book sales. David Gaughran wrote this comment, which acts as a kind of companion piece to his post,Why is My Book Not Selling?

I was interviewed by two national newspapers here in Ireland over the last few months. As luck would have it, the interviews ran on Saturday and Sunday – two huge double features on self-publishing, with big chunks of quotes from me, and mentions of books etc.

I suspected it would do little for my sales, and it did exactly nothing. Now, it’s nice for my friends, and especially my family – this stuff is important to them, and maybe it will open some doors for me – who knows. And maybe it gets my name out there a little too, so the next time somebody comes across my books, they might be (slightly) more inclined to check them out. Maybe.

But there is no sales spike from this stuff. I couldn’t attribute one extra sale to being featured in the two biggest weekend papers in Ireland (that are read by pretty much everybody who reads books). Zero.

They’re right, in part. Press doesn’t always move books. Back in the day, my novel was reviewed by the biggest self-publishing reviewer going (back when there were 5): Poddy Mouth. I was mystified and sort of heartbroken that the post didn’t lead to many sales. Read that as: zero sales. It did eventually: her selections were picked up by Entertainment Weekly:

In all, because of that small piece, I think I sold 50 books. Cool, nice, but not earth-shattering. I also got an offer of representation from a high-caliber agent. But that’s not even my point. Here I am 5 years later referencing that review, which may cause someone to take a look at that old book. Reviews are accumulative, just as new books are accumulative.

More than that, however, is being a part of the discussion. An interview or review is as much an artform as writing. Here’s an interview I did recently, and I’m proud of it. I like what I have to say. Did that interview lead directly to any book sales? Not that I’ve seen. But I’ve condensed some of my ideas from the novel, and gotten the word out about some things I believe in. This has value beyond book sales.

Putting too much of an emphasis on marketing is a cousin to saying: if it doesn’t sell, it’s not worthwhile. This has been the mantra of the traditional publishing industry, and it would be a shame to see this taken on by self-publishers as well. Everything is writing: a review, an interview, a guest post, even a Facebook post. It’s all self-expression of some kind. And even if it doesn’t lead to direct sales, it’s just plainly fun to be a part of the discussion.

A later comment on the “Publicity” post says:

Joe, the crux of your point here is shocking, but absolutely true in my experience. I was on an east coast book tour when I got the opportunity of a lifetime…er, so I thought. I appeared live on national tv: Fox Morning Show with Steve and Gretchen. It was a great segment. The Washington Post did a front page story on me, suggesting that I might be the “Next Harry Potter.” Holy SNOT, you’d think my sales would quadruple overnight. Nope. A two day bump in sales is all that happened. I was so frustrated I could barely sleep. I used to think that the press was an excellent way to meet readers.

This is eye-opening, but how many sales did he have for that two-day period? Looking at his books, he has hundreds of reviews, so it looks like he’s getting read. I don’t really want to single out an individual writer, but have self-publishers gotten greedy, now that they’ve heard stories of Konrath, Hocking, and Locke making millions? It seems to me that the experience of going on TV should be gratifying in some way. So it didn’t lead to permanently heading towards the best-seller list – it still seems like a pretty cool thing to have done.

Maybe writers need to take a step back and revel in all that’s available to them, and what’s possible. I’m speaking to myself as well because, believe me, I look at my own sales sheet and all the success stories and think, why not me too? But I’m a writer first, marketer second, and I’m proud about what I’ve written and published, even if it isn’t a goldmine. I have faith in what’s possible.

So saying something like “All my marketing efforts have been futile” only makes sense if you’ve landed zero reviews or interviews. But if you’re being discussed in some way, this is a start. Ask yourself, does it feel like a book sale when you get a good review even if you’re not selling any books? For me, it does: it’s fun, it’s exciting, even on some blog with 20 hits a day.

For some people writing is purely a business, and so if a book’s not selling, it’s a failure. That’s fine for those people, but I imagine for a majority writing is also about self-expression and conveying ideas. If you’re writing, you’re doing that even if you sell nothing. So what you’re doing has value before money changes hands. We’d all love to sell thousands of books – but if you don’t you’re not a failure, unless you believe book sales are the only measure of a book’s worth. And if that’s the case, then there’s not a lot of difference between traditional publishing and self-publishing except for the royalty percentage. I don’t think that’s true, but money isn’t everything.

I prepared a timeline, which works very well with a detailed report on top self-published Kindle ebooks of 2011 and will be a part of the infographic about self-publishing I’m going to post at Ebook Friendly by the end of January.

If you don’t want to miss the infographic and new posts on self-publishing, please get free updates by either RSS or email.

* * *

January

Amazon extends the 70% royalty option from their self-publishing platform, KDP, to include books sold to customers in Canada.

February

Amanda Hocking in top news as a first author to earn millions of dollars from selling only self-published Kindle ebooks.

March

Amanda Hocking sells a four-book series to St. Martin’s Press. The new fantasy series will be called Watersong. The first book is scheduled for release in fall 2012.

It’s calculated that “every 7 seconds, 24 hours a day, a John Locke novel is downloaded somewhere in the world.”

The New York Times bestseller list for ebooks is letting self-published books in.

March is the best month for self-published books in Kindle Store. 27 are listed in Top 100, four of them in Top 10.

Barry Eisler turns down a $500,000 offer from a mainstream publisher in favor of self-publishing his own book.

April

According to Haydn Shaughnessy from The Forbes over one million people wrote an ebook in the past 12 months. “What are they trying to tell us?” asks Shaughnessy.

May

IndieReader introduces the list of bestselling self-published books.

June

John Locke is a first self-publisher sells more than one million Kindle ebooks and joins seven big-name writers in Amazon’s Kindle Million Club.

Locke releases a self-help book How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months! where he reveals the marketing system behind his bestselling, self-published books.

The article from Reuters starts an online discussion about spam in Kindle Store coming from Amazon’s self-publishing platform.

July

IndieReader launches Discovery Awards for self-published authors. Entries are being accepted till February 29th, 2012.

August

Amazon launches Kindle Indie Bookstore, a special section of Kindle Store, featuring books published via Amazon’s self-publishing platform, KDP.

Books from Amanda Hocking’s Trylle series, Switched, Torn and Ascend are being removed from distribution. The series will be republished by St. Martin’s in early 2012, both in print and digital form.

The Book Designer introduces monthly Ebook Cover Design Awards.

John Locke signs a deal with Simon & Schuster, but only for the sales and distribution of print editions of his novels. First books will be available in February 2012.

September

Smashwords, the most popular site with ebooks from indie authors and publishers, reaches three billion words published.

Lulu releases the Lulu Epub Converter. This highly advanced tool not only converts files but also automatically fixes many formatting errors including accepted fonts and extra spacing.

October

Bookwire signs a partnership deal with Apple as a first European ebook aggregator. Authors and publishers from Europe can now use the service to publish their books in iBookstore, which has been recently launched in 26 more countries.

November

Amanda Hocking joins Kindle Million Club.

Amazon don’t pay a self-published author James Crawford for his self-published zombie novel, Blood Soaked and Contagious, which was mistakenly given away.

December

Amazon introduces KDP Select – an offer for authors and publishers using Kindle Direct Publishing platform. In exchange for the exclusive distribution to Amazon, the books will be distributed via Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and their authors can earn a share from monthly funds of $500,000.

The Mill River Recluse, a debut novel by Darcie Chan is the top-selling Kindle book of 2011. Two other self-published books, The Abbey by Chris Culver
Caribbean Moon by Rick Murcer, are in Top 10.

December is the worst month for self-published books in Kindle Store. Only 13 titles entered the list of top 100 bestsellers – the level from before self-publishing exploded in February.

After finishing a first draft of the manuscript, I jumped through all the typical hoops: got an agent, wrote a fat book proposal, revised till my nose bled, this, that, the other. Ultimately, after several years of trying, my agent was unable to sell it because, even when editors were interested – and we did have a few big pubs on the line  -the marketing departments would always veto its acquisition because they didn’t know how to market the thing (which I found completely laughable). Basically I needed to already be famous, then marketing could work its magic.

My agent – who did yeoman’s work on the manuscript and really functioned more as an editor – finally gave up and I moved on to my next project, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there definitely was an audience for the book, so I self-published.

A few months later I managed to get a great review in Publishers Weekly’s inaugural PW Selects quarterly review of self-published titles. The review caught the eye of an editor at Amazon Publishing, who got the book and loved it, then contacted me about reissuing it in a new edition under the AmazonEncore imprint in order to bring it to a wider audience. (The self-published version was NOT a big seller.) I hesitated for a few seconds before shrieking “YES, YES, A MILLION TIMES YES! HURRY, WHERE DO I SIGN?” Nine months later the book was published again as a trade paperback and an e-book, with the full force of Amazon’s on-site (and some off-site) promotional support.

It seems to me this is kind of a phenomenon that is happening more and more often: author self-publishes then gets published for real, by whatever publisher. The twist in my case is that Amazon is now in the publishing game and is throwing bookstores and other publishers for a loop. They’ve got lots of customer data and can very effectively find readers for whatever books are out there, as we all know. This of course includes books that they themselves publish.

Additionally, now I find myself in the unusual position of starting to resent bookstores. Barnes and Noble is not stocking the book (though it can be ordered). And, because of their frothing hatred for Amazon, a lot of indie bookstores are refusing to stock the book as well; my own local bookstore in Greenpoint, Brooklyn – a place that loves to tout itself as a community bookstore focused on local authors – told me outright that they would not allow me to schedule a reading and would not stock the book because of the Amazon connection. I certainly understand the unease about Amazon on the part of small bookstores and such, but it just seems to me this is an idiotic, childish, and short-sighted way of going about things.

Here’s Sullivan’s take on the publishing industry:

I’ve been curious how this post has affected sales of the book – and it’s gone from a million rank to 100,000 for print and #217 for the Kindle. So publicity helps – despite what JA Konrath might say. At the very least, it has to be fun for Tim Anderson to be talked about on such a popular blog.

Konrath is doing something similar.  He’s saying that his $100,000 month is because of Amazon, not name recognition:

I made $100,000 in three weeks from people who have no idea who I am. If they knew who I was, they would have bought those titles years ago. Because they’ve been available for years.

Don’t get me wrong. I know I have fans. I know I have some name recognition. But the sales they bring are paltry next to the marketing machine which is Amazon.

How do I know this for sure?

Because all of my other books were (until recently) on other platforms, where they did mediocre compared to bestselling authors.

James Patterson is selling well on Kindle, but he’s also selling well on Sony and Kobo and Apple and B&N. On Kindle, I’m outselling many Patterson titles. That isn’t the case anywhere else.

So it isn’t my name or my past that is responsible for this success. Nor is it any marketing efforts I’m doing now, because I’m not doing any. I haven’t visited my Facebook page in six months. I have a fan page but don’t know how to use it. I’ve never bought an online ad. I’ve got Twitter followers, but they’re writers, not fans.

To say this success is not because of his past doesn’t really make sense.  Konrath’s name is mentioned in every mainstream article about self-publishing.  Every single one.  This has led to sales.  These sales have led to thousands of “Also boughts,” which have led to lots of reviews.  At some point, this process takes on a life of its own, but his success is completely because he’s JA Konrath.  It’s hard to make the argument that he’s Amanda Hocking, who suddenly became successful out of nowhere.  The reason he’s selling better on the Kindle is because everybody is. His $100,000 month is because of all the Kindle Fires received on Christmas.

Does this matter?  A little bit: because it’s somewhat inaccurate information and Konrath is still saying things like:

In the long run, except in the case of bestsellers and huge advances, a writer WILL make more money self-publishing.

This can’t really be stated yet.  Some books will find astounding success.  Some books will sell nothing – or maybe a few hundred dollars worth of books over time.  Non-commercial fiction has a much harder time making a go of it in the world of indie publishing because there’s less of everything catering to it: fewer review blogs, fewer readers.  Self-publishing will work for some writers and it won’t for others.

He does temper it with this:

Can you be a successful self-pubbed author?

It depends. How hard are you willing to work, and how long are you willing to wait, before success happens?

Those books that are harder to market will take a bit longer than other ones. And it’s incredibly encouraging to know how many potential readers are out there. Ereaders are thought to be owned by only 5% of all readers (maybe more now post-holiday).  If writers can make $100,000 today, what will it be like when 90% of readers have a tablet or reader?  In 2012, however, there are arguments for traditional publishing as much as there are for self-publishing.

Commercial vs. Literary

Maybe Konrath is speaking only to authors of commercial fiction. After all, his tagline is “Is it possible to make a living as a genre fiction writer? Yes it is.” But Konrath has become a self-publishing spokesperson, talking about the death of publishing and the rise of independent publishing, so he’s a go-to source on how people should publish. If you publish commercial fiction, then there should definitely be more incentive to go straight to self-publishing.  But literary fiction – or writing that’s difficult to market in some way – will have a harder time of it.   In a post on Jane Friedman’s blog, the question is asked: Why Isn’t Literary Fiction Getting More Attention?

The morale among literary authors is low. Because even though they know their books are great, the mainstream voice is saying, “But not great enough to be worthy of sales efforts!”  The playing field is leveling as reading becomes more digitized, and I’m not the only one who’s saying it. It’s time for literary authors to reclaim a segment of the market.

If I was in a different position, perhaps I wouldn’t feel this so acutely.  But I write books that are harder to market and I’m not exactly finding astounding success – though miles ahead of where I was when I published POD-only in 2006.  But the reason that publishers were unwilling to take my books on is the same reason that it’s harder to find footing in indie publishing. I’ve written crime fiction and science fiction – harder to brand me that way.

The good news: this will change.  Literary fiction is where all of self-publishing was 5 years ago.  This site began in the POD era, and post after post said, just you wait until more people have ereaders.  That’s happened and self-publishing has broken through.  But literary readers were very likely more snobbish about reading on an ereader because literary books are packaged differently – the paper its printed on, the cover.  It’s more of an object to be owned than a supermarket paperback.  So commercial readers were the first to adopt the new technology.  My guess is this changed in a big way this last holiday season with more and more people getting a Kindle Fire who may never have wanted an ereader in the past.

Still, there’s a way to go where self-publishing is a viable route for all types of writers.  A comment on the Jane Friedman piece asks:

Why do literary books get reviewed in newspapers, but genre books get reviewed on blogs?

“Serious” books are the ones that get reviewed in mainstream media.  And the mainstream media refuses to review self-published work.  What propelled Amanda Hocking to success was the genre blogosphere.  Konrath says that we’re in an era where Kirkus and such outlets are less necessary – but this isn’t necessarily true for all types of writers.  This time will come, which is amazing.  But his message that self-publishing can be more profitable needs to be tempered.  It’s a great avenue for some writers.  Eventually, it truly will be better for all writers to self-publish.  And really: it’s a great time to be a writer in general because it’s even possible to make this prediction.

Update: JA Konrath responds (?) – or at least addresses what’s talked about in this post:

You’d think all of this publicity has lead to increased sales of my ebooks.

You’d think wrong.

I’m obsessive about numbers, as anyone who reads this blog can tell you. So when I appear in some major periodical, I watch my Kindle numbers, looking for the big spike.

I never see a big spike. In fact, I hardly ever see a small spike.

Huh? WTF? Does that make sense? We all know that publicity leads to sales, right?

Wrong.

I’m getting a name for myself in the self-publishing world. I get millions of hits a year on this blog. When people discuss self-pubbing, my name often comes up.

But the people who visit this blog, and discuss my self-publishing efforts, are writers.

Writers aren’t buying my fiction. They aren’t buying my non-fiction either–I have an ebook called “A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing” and it is among my lowest-selling titles.

The people who buy me are readers, and the vast majority have never heard of me. Readers find me on Amazon, because Amazon has made it easy for my books to be discovered.

I responded:

I don’t think you can say all those articles have such little value based on immediate sales. It’s not the clicks that matter, it’s the publicity – and A LOT more people have heard about you than other writers.

At some point – as it is with you, Locke, and Hocking, the Amazon engine becomes an amazing monster and takes on a life of its own. But those Guardian articles have no doubt helped you. Even if 100 people buy books based on this blog and whatever press you’ve gotten, that helps. And it’s probably more in the thousands.

So I’m not sure if writers should avoid publicity and hope some Kindle magic happens. For the up-and-comer, any mention is useful – especially if books aren’t taking off on their own. If nothing else, getting a review or being talked about in some way can be fuel to write more.

It would be enormously important to see Bounce Rate: how many people are coming to the page and leaving without making a purchase. What about Returning Visitors: people who have bought the book the second or third time they came to the page. More importantly would be seeing where that traffic came from.  Are you getting traffic from a certain page – a tag, another book, a review, an interview, social networking – that are leading to more sales?  It will tell authors where to focus their efforts. Imagine if you found out that you’re getting a lot of sales from one particular book or author.  One idea would be to have a dual promotion with that author to help increase that visibility. Twitter could be your goldmine – any number of things.

Traffic doesn’t mean everything: you may get little traffic from the blog review itself, but that doesn’t mean the review is useless.  A reader could go to Amazon five days later and look you up.  So this does not necessarily tell you everything: but it certainly tells you a lot more than the very little authors have at their disposal today.

SEO would be nothing without analytics – you need to test how keywords, links, and content are working to generate traffic and referrals.  And books are just another form of content, so it’s slightly crazy that authors don’t have access to this type of information. Forbes asks the same question: Amazon should give self-publishers more data:

If we are to approach self-publishing as a business proposition, we need to understand not just the market for ebooks but also the performance of our own works within that market. Just as a web publisher needs to understand traffic stats, so ebook publishers need to understand ebook stats. Except Amazon’s Kindle store gives ebook publishers only the barest minimum of information.

This effectively means that there’s no way to compare the success of your promotional campaigns, or spot interesting routes of discovery. The stats you might be used to seeing for your web properties simply don’t exist for ebook sales…

Amazon must have this data somewhere. I have no doubt that they gather it for their own use so that they can improve their own sales. Packaging it up in a meaningful way and providing it to self-publishers would be a smart move: It would allow self-publishers to refine their promotional strategies which would in turn result in more sales and a higher income for Amazon.

Smashwords at least offers analytics about page views vs. downloads on specific days, as well as sample downloads – but it doesn’t say where the traffic is coming from, which is the most important metric. Currently, there’s no information that this is in the pipeline at Amazon, though there are stirrings of analytics being offered on the corporate level -  because there’s money in it. There’s also money in providing data to authors so they can sell more books. So this most certainly seems like it should be in the pipeline in the future.

These days, being attacked isn’t just the result of saying something badly, it’s the result of saying anything at all. I can testify to this, because for more than six years, I have been a weekly opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times. This is a great gig, and I have many loyal, smart, thoughtful readers. But I also live with the fact that practically everything I write is met with an avalanche of invective. It runs the gamut from partisan attacks to personal attacks to entreaties to my editors to stop publishing me immediately. Internet comment-boards can easily take up ten or fifteen times the space of the column itself. My email in-box overflows with outrage and umbrage: “Shame on you!” “You are an idiot and a disgrace.” “What a stupid little twit you are.” And, in one of my recent favorites, “You have no credibility because you let your opinion get in the way.”

Some weeks, if I’ve hit a particularly sensitive nerve, blogs of every imaginable variety will link to the column, offer their own spin, and then invite their own legions to chime in. On one hand, of course, this is what every columnist wants most. Like anyone who publicly expresses his ideas, be it through writing or music or visual media or anything else, the goal is to be heard, to inspire reaction and generate discussion. But based on much of the reaction I get—especially the comments in my own paper, where a stable of regulars have become so personally invested in their dislike for me that they’ve taken to remarking not on my column but on my looks, marital or reproductive status, and standing on the bitch-o-meter—I can hardly give myself credit for starting anything resembling a discussion. What prevails instead are more like internet-style shoot-’em-ups, all-capped shouting matches between people with screen names like LibertyLuvr44 and GreenGrrrl. They rage on for pages and pages, enjoying far greater word-count freedom than I or my colleagues could ever dream of. Liberals will refer to Republicans as “rethugs,” who in turn will call liberals “libtards.” Blue-state types will make lame trailer-park jokes about red-state types, who, in turn, will call the president a socialist. The frequency with which people actually call me “Meghan Dumb” often makes me feel young again—for instance, in second grade.

It’s said that writers need to have  a thick skin when it comes to bad reviews, but we’re reaching a point where the negativity is so common and predictable that even a scathing one-star review seems to say a lot more about the reviewer than the book.  Of course, there are those well-considered bad reviews that might make you want to curl into a fetal position, but the majority of one-star reviews seem to be written by a person with a personal vendetta.

Were people always this unhappy – and the web is just revealing so many people’s private minds?  These are difficult economic times, but there have been hard times in the past as well. Maybe this is being done by non-writers – people who don’t see words as carrying as much weight.  Whereas a writer is more likely to choose words carefully and think about his or her audience. It’s puzzling to me – because I’d never throw this much anger at a stranger. But then, I have an outlet in fiction, and I might lose my head if I didn’t have that.

Here’s an interesting post from New Scientist outlining why commenting has become so vitriolic:

Social psychologists have known for decades that, if we reduce our sense of our own identity, a process called deindividuation,  we are less likely to stick to social norms. For example, in the 1960s Leon Mann studied a nasty phenomenon called “suicide baiting” when someone threatening to jump from a high building is encouraged to do so by bystanders. Mann found that people were more likely to do this if they were part of a large crowd, if the jumper was above the 7th floor, and if it was dark. These are all factors that allowed the observers to lose their own individuality.

Social psychologist Nicholas Epley argues that much the same thing happens with online communication such as email. Psychologically, we are “distant” from the person we’re talking to and less focused on our own identity. As a result we’re more prone to aggressive behaviour, he says.

This may seem far afield of self-publishing, but not really. Every comment is a form of self-publishing, and it may just be the ugliest kind of publishing there is.  Most of all, don’t take any of this criticism to heart.  The more successful you get, the more these types of comments will come.  So, really, negative reviews are as much a result of success as failure.