Porter Anderson with his usual incisive analysis on the (largely civil) discussion stirred up by Hugh Howey’s recent post on author earnings and the data transparency required to help authors make informed decisions about their publishing route.
Authors demand transparency around ebook sales data and pricing
Mercy Pilkington writes on Goodereader about author H.M. Ward’s recent post saying that the demand from authors such as Hugh Howey for more “transparency around sales data isn’t enough. Authors need to know highly detailed budgets and plans for marketing of any given book before agreeing to sign a contract, a fact that she stood her ground on despite the high-pressure sales pitches and ominous threats to her career that she experienced from some Big Five publishers. Without having clear information on how the publishing house intended to promote her book, Ward opted for the self-publishing and higher royalty route, a choice that has made her an incredibly high ranking author despite having turned down over $1.5 million in advances in the past year alone”
Self-Publishing Truism Bingo
Chuck Wendig pours oil on troubled waters with his usual wit and wisdom: “[self-publishing] has disrupted old models and has done so, in my mind, to the benefit of authors. This is an excellent time to be an author precisely because we now have multiple ways of bringing our books to readers. Whether we do so ourselves or with the help of publishers big and small.”
Self-published ebooks: the surprising data from Amazon
Corey Doctorow, writing at Boing Boing: There are ways to improve the odds for indie authors — a plurality of payment systems, lots of different search- and recommendation services, more companies providing services to authors. These, of course, are exactly the sort of thing that extremist copyright proposals like SOPA and the TPP work against: by making the companies that serve authors and their audiences bear the liability for infringement, we shrink the number of companies that supply authors and ensure that only big players like Amazon, Paypal, Apple and Google can occupy those niches.
Self-publishing: is it killing the mainstream?
Interesting article by Damien Walter in The Guardian. Though I think the answer to the question posed by the headline is “no”, the fact remains that the whole industry is in a state of flux while a new equilibrium asserts itself.
People-Powered Publishing Is Changing All the Rules
Although out of fashion for many years, the rise of the mobile and social web has brought serialization back in vogue. Using the strategy, authors can keep readers excited about a story, gather feedback in real time and generate buzz. The piecemeal approach also suits modern reading patterns, as people increasingly consume shorter content on mobile devices, often on the go.
2014 Author Survey: From Manuscript to Book, How Many Authors Actually Publish?
Dana Beth Weinberg writes: “More than 9,000 authors responded to the 2014 Digital Book World and Writer’s Digest Author Survey. Of these, about 58% had completed manuscripts, and more than half of these authors, 33% of the entire sample, went on to publish their work.”
Step by Step Guide to Evaluating Your eBook Files on multiple devices
An absolutely awesome, must-read, truly comprehensive guide by Jeff Bach, describing the process for checking what your eBook files look like on multiple devices and giving some valuable hints to avoiding common pitfalls.
Most books don’t sell
Hugh Howey tells authors not to worry so much about their book’s sales performance: “Most books don’t sell. Knowing this as a writer, how are you going to feel about publishing your book? One choice will have you turning to the next story with a smile on your face, disbelieving that you can make your works available for them to be discovered or not. The other choice is to give up in frustration, your expectations unmet. Are we free to choose between these two options? I like to think so. But first, we have to understand how difficult — how very nearly impossible it is to see the small good in the world. It takes effort. But it gets easier the more we try.”
The difference between editing and proofreading
This is a useful reminder, especially if you’re looking to self-publish, of thedifference between the two activities . As Belinda Pollard says “Editors need proofreaders. Proofreaders need editors. And books need both!”