Do-It-YourSelf-Publishing A Blueprint for Publishing Your Own Books THE DIYP UPDATE PAGE July 17, 2006 I just learned that Lightning Source, the company I recommended for print-on-demand and ebook hosting services, will no longer be using Amazon as a retailer for ebooks. This was Amazon's decision, and I do not have any information on their plans for selling ebooks in the future. This is the full text of the announcement I received from Andrew Weinstein, Senior Vice President, Business Development for Ingram Digital Ventures (LSI's digital division): "I want to make you aware of several significant developments to the e-Book fulfillment services Lightning Source has provided to you for the past six years. "As you may know, Ingram Digital Ventures (IDV) was formed in 2005 to extend Ingram's services to publishers and content owners by providing state-of-the-art digital content accession, storage, management, and delivery services. IDV is a natural expansion and complement to Ingram's existing wholesale, distribution, bibliographic/merchandising information, and the print-on-demand services provided by Ingram Book Group and Lightning Source. IDV is assuming management responsibilities of Lightning’s existing e-Book business and will be working to develop future digital businesses, including new types of content, delivery platforms, and other evolving markets. "In a strategic expansion step for Ingram in the digital arena, IDV has announced the acquisition of Vital Source Technologies.  Vital Source is a leading trusted provider of digital solutions in education and professional learning environments. Please see the attached press release for details of the IDV acquisition of Vital Source. Visit their website at www.vitalsource.com for further background information and a description of their extensive capabilities. "Lastly, Amazon.com has decided to discontinue its use of Ingram’s e-Book delivery services effective mid-July for new e-Book sales and the end of August for prior e-Book sales. Amazon.com was a significant portion of our existing e-Book business and it is likely you will see a decline in your e-Books sales. As an innovator of services in the digital market, Ingram is committed to e-Books and we are very excited about our future opportunities and initiatives to provide digital services and solutions to you as part of your e-Book publishing program." I wrote to Mr. Weinstein and asked "What new outlets do you hope to establish to replace Amazon as a retail outlet for ebooks published by LSI?" His reply: "As many as possible. Discussions are ongoing, but it will take some time to build the volume back up." I will post to this page any additional information I learn on this subject. --D.L. August 8, 2006 Over the past weekend Amazon did indeed withdraw all their LSI ebook titles; in fact, all the ebooks they previously offered that are not in Mobipocket format. Amazon recently purchased Mobipocket and now refers ebook shoppers to the Mobipocket site. LSI book titles in both pdf and lit format are offered by Powells Books (at www.powells.com), which now seems to be the pre-eminent source for ebooks. Mobipocket being a format that few readers use, I'm puzzled why Amazon was willing to sacrifice all those sales. But we'll see what the future brings. --D.L.

October 2, 2006

To update you on the situation with Amazon’s ebook sales and Mobipocket:

10/1/06 Status of eBooks on Amazon

There are still a few random pdf titles available from Amazon, many of which seem to be “Amazon Shorts,” books released specially by Amazon itself prior to the switch.  There are also a number of html documents for sale, which seem mostly to be non-fiction papers, articles and essays.  You actually can’t find any Mobipocket format books on the site as far as I could tell.

Trying to find ebooks at all on Amazon now is a formidable challenge.  There is no longer a browsing area dedicated to ebooks.  If you select “ebooks and docs” from the dropdown menu and do a search on “romance” (you can only get to any kind of ebook list by providing the site with a search term) the results are not romance fiction ebooks but a nonsensical list of other things. 

If you tell the screen to remove the search term “romance,” and have “search by bestselling” selected, that will supposedly give you a list of the current best selling ebooks.  A glance through the top ten will show you this is a useless list.  Johnny Tremain  as an audio book tops the list (and is ranked overall at #1,788,463, so can’t really be a bestseller).  So, clearly the search engine at Amazon has not yet come to grips with the changes.

Some weeks ago Amazon referred ebook shoppers to the Mobipocket site but I wasn’t able to find them doing that on 10/1/06.  I did investigate the Mobipocket site, but I did not find all the old titles which used to dominate Amazon’s ebook bestseller lists.  I’m not privy to the plans of all the significant players in independent ebook publishing, but I didn’t find Ellora’s Cave, Amber Quill Press, etc. there yet.  However, there are some books present from the independent presses; it’s just hard to tell how long they have been there.  My point is, there is not at this time any indication a mass conversion to Mobipocket is going on. 

According to the Mobipocket site, as of this writing they feature 370 publishers and 27,239 book titles, a fraction of what used to be on Amazon.  That said, it is also true that the big publishing houses like Random House, Simon & Schuster, Scribner’s, etc. are there and have quite a few titles.

Meanwhile, I am starting to see from my own publishing house’s sales stats that readers are finding other sources for their pdf and lit book purchases, but not yet in the numbers they used to purchase from Amazon.  I will keep an eye on this, since Lightning Source has told its publishers they are doing all they can to open up new distributors for pdf and lit titles.

Publishing with Mobipocket

I made the decision to offer my ebooks via Mobipocket after Amazon provided me with the information about how to do so.  I will offer here the very basic highlights of the process and invite you to visit www.mobipocket.com for full details.

Suffice it to say, creating ebooks in this format (using the free Mobipocket Creator software) is not too difficult.  If you have formatted your ebook titles already (using Word, for example) for conversion to Microsoft Reader, you can work from the same source text document.  The interesting thing about Mobipocket is it converts from html.  That is, if you have your book in Word, you must first use Mobipocket Creator to convert that Word document to html, and use that as the Mobipocket source document.  The Word-to-html converter results in an occasional formatting glitch but is pretty good; plan to check the conversion though, and make corrections with your html editing software.

The one tricky thing is using the Table of Contents feature.  I won’t attempt to explain it here, but I will tell you it was a bit of a challenge to figure out.  You do have the option of not using a Table of Contents, however, and that may be your best choice.

When your document is in clean html, you can then use Creator to generate the Mobipocket ebook.  Creator is not the most intuitive software ever, but it is fairly simple, so you should be able to work through how to use it in a pretty short period of time.  You will set up the cover image and all the meta-information (ISBN, synopsis, retail price, etc.) right in Creator, and once you have done so, you select your encryption level and generate the book.

The Mobipocket Reader software is also free to download.  It installed easily on my PC, but I confess I had a heck of a time figuring out how to install it on my iPaq.  That took some Googling, and the answer, interestingly, was not on the Mobipocket site anywhere I could find.  Nevertheless, the reader is very nice.  It’s similar to Microsoft Reader in look and feel.

I’m happy to say, it is really quite easy and remarkably fast to offer your book for sale from Mobipocket and its affiliate sites.  The place to start is the eBookBase. You apply for a publisher’s account, and download the publisher’s agreement.  Sign and fax this back to Mobipocket in Paris, France, and they will send back an acknowledgment by email (within 24 hours in my case) that you may begin publishing.

It is very simple to upload your ebooks to the site and you simply need to supply more or less the same meta-info you did when creating your book initially.  Mobipocket does require you create the ebook with full encryption if it is to be offered through them.  I found I got an error message when creating encrypted ebooks, but they seemed to be generated fine anyway and so I ignored it.  I noticed on the Mobipocket forum that this glitch had happened to others before me.

The nice thing was, once I uploaded my ebooks, they were instantly available for purchase on the Mobipocket site, with cover image, synopsis, and review all on the page.

So, what about the money?  Well, the software is all free, listing your books is free, there is no out of pocket expense for you to publish with Mobipocket.  They take a cut of your sales and pay you the rest, paying monthly.  If you set up links to your books on their site and code those links properly, they will pay you extra for sales referred from your site.  Read the Mobipocket publisher’s agreement for complete details of the financial arrangement.  Be aware that while the content of your books belongs to you, if you choose to sell Mobipocket ebooks directly from your own site’s ebookstore, you will have to sign the Publisher/Retailer agreement and pay a fee to Mobipocket for each book sold.

The one downside of selling via Mobipocket is that they will not issue you a check until they owe you at least $150.  So if you self-publish your own books and only sell a few a month, it will be quite awhile before you see the cash.  On the other hand, you have nothing to lose but your time.

The other unfortunate thing about Mobipocket, at least at the time of this writing, is their very inadequate support system.  The only way to request information or tech support currently is to post your question on their forum and wait for up to a week for a reply.  They do seem to try to address everyone’s problems, but if the troubleshooting requires exchanges back and forth, you can see how long it is likely to take!  The fact that it is a French company should not be daunting to anglophones, however; everything is in English for you.

Mobipocket provides publishers with online tracking of sales in real time, just as Lightning Source does.  I’m curious to see how sales will go.  I’m also very curious to see what Amazon plans to do about offering Mobipocket ebooks on their own site, or be more aggressive about marketing ebooks in their new pet format.  As I said above, at the current time the ebook situation at Amazon is completely nonsensical, a situation I have to believe will be temporary.

And it would be great if Mobipocket improved its tech support.  The software and website both  seem a little glitchy, and not everyone can be expected to do their own troubleshooting and workarounds. 

December 1 , 2006 - Status of eBooks on Amazon - Mobipocket Titles Coming at Some Point

After seeing Mobipocket titles finally appearing on the Amazon site, I corresponded with Amazon about their ebook program for an update. I was told they are in the process now of putting up all the Mobipocket titles bit by bit on Amazon.com, and one of these days will go live with selling them (right now they all just say available soon). I was told eventually the entire Mobipocket inventory will be there, but the timing seems undetermined at the moment.

March 9, 2007 - Status of eBooks on Amazon - Something's Afoot

This week I was asked by Amazon to sign off on a couple of documents granting them permission to be a vendor of my Mobipocket titles, with a deadline of March 15. Definitely a sign of a launch of these books on the Amazon site soon. While the site still refers ebook shoppers to the Mobipocket site at this time, I noticed too that they have really cleaned up their "e-docs" offering. Whereas last time I checked, the romance section was a crazy mishmash of formats, with essays, a stray pdf ebook or two, and a few Mobi titles for preorder, now it is limited strictly to nonfiction essays and "Amazon Shorts," those short stories and brief non-fiction articles that Amazon now offers.

This development suggests Amazon is at last gearing up for launching a big Mobipocket offering. I've been looking for further word too regarding "Kindle," their proprietary ebook reader which was rumored to be in the works last September. If Amazon does indeed start selling this cutting-edge, inexpensive ereader, along with showily launching a line of Mobipocket ebooks, that would finally explain to me why they have taken this strange approach for the past seven months.

November 20, 2007 - Amazon Kindle eReader and Publishing for the Kindle

The long wait is over and yesterday Amazon finally launched its proprietary ebook reader, the Kindle.  Much to my delight, I rushed over to the Kindle Store and found all my titles previously released as Mobipocket format ebooks were up and available for purchase already, among the 90,000 Kindle titles.  If the rankings on these titles may truly be believed, it appeared I had even already sold a couple of copies only a few hours into the launch.

What does this mean for ebook publishers such as myself?  Well, it’s too early to tell if Amazon’s ambitious aspirations for the Kindle will come true and it will become the ereader of choice.  However, the mere fact that Amazon is back in the ebook business and putting a lot of money and effort behind the promotion of same can only be a positive.  I have no doubt that in view of their huge commitment to this format, Amazon will do all it can to promote its ebook line.

Here’s what the critics are griping about most so far: the price of the reader, the price of the ebooks and the optional media subscriptions, the “unsexiness” of the design, and the challenge of translating other formats to be read on the Kindle.

Here’s what has people thinking it just might fly:  the fee-free wireless connection, the generally positive design, the backing of Amazon’s ability to provide vast content, and the hopes of future improvements (color E Ink, more attractive design, lower price).

Amazon now offers a program called Digital Text Platform (DTP), which enables anyone to publish books in Kindle format and offer them for sale in the Kindle Store.  It would seem that any ebooks a publisher publishes through Mobipocket automatically appear on the “shelves” of the Kindle store.  However, this step can be bypassed if you wish, by using DTP.  Full information is here: http://dtp.amazon.com.  But the gist is that your document needs to be set up as html and then uploaded to DTP for conversion to the Kindle Edition format.  You set the book price and are paid 35% of whatever Amazon sells (although they reserve the right to discount your sale price if they so choose).

Needless to say, I’m very excited to see where these developments lead.  And although they took way too long to get here, I commend Amazon for committing the time, money, and resources to develop and promote a truly successful ereading program.

January 10, 2008 - Getting Paid for Amazon Kindle Sales

It took some doing, but I was able to determine additional paperwork necessary for Amazon to pay publishers of Kindle books derived from Mobipocket book. Amazon needs to have a Publishers Agreement with Amazon Digital Services (see HERE) on file as well as an income tax document. For more information, contact digitalrights@amazon.com. I know it works, because I've actually been paid for Kindle sales now!

April 1, 2008 - Amazon Limiting POD Sales to B00kSurge Produced-Books

In Do-It-YourSelf-Publishing I use the model in which you use a print-on-demand publisher, in my case, Lightning S0urce, Inc. (LSI). I've been doing business with them for years now and they are wonderful. LSI provides printing and also distribution to countless online retailers, including Amaz0n. Well, during recent weeks Amaz0n has been requiring all POD publishers to switch to their subsidiary, B00kSurge, if they want their books to be sold as "in-stock" by Amaz0n. The story was that any publisher not switching to B00kSurge would lose their "buy" buttons, with a deadline of April 1, 2008.

Today Lightning S0urce issued a letter to its publishers that stated: "Lightning S0urce will continue to monitor this situation and let you know when we have more information." As of today my books are still showing with buy buttons on Amaz0n, but I will keep you posted as to any changes.

February 3, 2009 - Update on Amazon, LSI Color Books

Just wanted to post an update that to date, Amazon has not done anything about my buy buttons. Whew! No other news in this department either.

Meanwhile, I just published my comic book Sign of the Bloodletters and can attest to the superb quality of Lightning Source's color interior books. Beautiful stock, excellent print job. The only hang-up I had was the difficulty generating a 100% black barcode, which is a requirement. But LSI provided much assistance with resolving that issue.

July 10, 2010 - More on the Subject of Pros and Cons of Traditional Publishing: "Lessons Learned from 'Success'"

I thought I should update this page with some new thoughts on this subject, since after having published a dozen print books and even more ebook titles by myself, I had the experience over the past year of having a traditionally published book deal. I was approached by a very successful, mid-sized independent publisher to write a book for them. That book, How to Catch and Keep a Vampire, turned out to be the largest print run in the company's longish history, and the title into which they put the most effort ever. It was an experience that was very exciting and rewarding, but in the end merely reinforced my belief in the value of self-publishing. On this subject I wrote the following essay in April 2010...

Last year I had the great experience of being "discovered" by a good-sized independent publisher that had the means and desire to put a book that I authored in bookstores. Lots and lots of bookstores, including all the big box stores, many independent bookshops, and even Target. Bookstores all over the world. Sounds like a dream come true, doesn't it?

Well, it was indeed a dream come true, but probably not exactly in the way you're thinking. And the things I learned from the experience were definitely not the things I expected to learn. Many of those things were lessons I wish I had been tipped off to by someone who had trod the road before I did.

Which is why I'd like to share them with you. My experiences are by no means universal, nor would every writer react to them the same way I did. But for what it's worth, here's what I would tell you if you and I were talking over coffees at your local Barnes & Noble.

Let's start with this: Fame is fleeting. Well, that's an old saw we've heard before, but it has new meaning when you have a successful book. For the very rare author, the book deal lands you high on bestseller lists and leads to more deals from your publisher that will employ you for the rest of your life. But in the vast majority of cases, even if your book sells well, your publisher may move on to the Next Big Thing and not want another title from you. And likewise, there are many things completely out of your control and your publisher's that can impact sales and popularity. From the economy to where bookstores elect to display your book to competition from similar titles, the publishing biz really is a crapshoot.

On the positive side, even if your book sells only modestly, you will have new fans and an established relationship with a publisher, neither of which are bad things! So I'm not saying a significant book deal should bring dismay (as if it possibly could!), only that you should have realistic expectations of what you can count on:

* You will have the delight of seeing your book on the shelves of bookstores.
* You will gain readers and get some nice fan mail.
* You will probably get to do book signings or other appearances/interviews (which may be good or bad news, depending on your personality).
* You will have the bragging rights of having a successful title (and anything over 5,000 copies sold is considered respectable).
* You'll be able to make a nice scrapbook including such things as bookstore posters, newspaper articles, reviews, and photos of your book in stores and yourself with fans.

These things are all good and fun! And they are definitely worth the hard work you'll put into your book and its promotion. Oh, yeah—let's talk about promotion.

You will be expected to put a lot of work into promoting your book, and you won't get any additional remuneration for it. This could mean such things as seeking out and participating in online discussions on relevant topies; courting reviews; doing interviews for print, radio and TV; doing appearances (which may involve significant travel); arranging and doing photos shoots; holding contests; blogging and contributing content to websites and/or social media outlets (e.g. Facebook, Twitter); and more. Some of this will be fun and exciting, some of it tiring or a chore, and none of it is guaranteed to sell a lot of books.

In other words, you will definitely earn your advance and royalties. While when you first saw your contract you were thrilled at seeing earning possibilities you never had before, I assure you it is not easy money. And if you see a possibility of living off your book sales, I recommend you pause before quitting your day job. There are a couple of main reasons why it is hard to be a full time professional author even when you have a "lucrative contract" in hand.

First of all, do not forget about that infamous clause known as "reserve against returns." Your publisher may place their entire print run in stores, but that doesn't mean you will get paid a percentage of all those sales. The publisher is entitled to a "reasonable reserve against returns," a guesstimate of the possible number of copies stores will not sell, and will return instead. This can be a very large percentage, and there is no point in an author arguing that it's too high.

It's very easy and inexpensive for bookstores to return books. All they pay is shipping and they get their money back from the publisher, and remember, with paperbacks all they need to ship back is the torn-off covers. Most stores will opt for this rather than leaving old titles taking up shelf space. And by old I mean books as new as six months out from publication.

Which leads to my second reason. The attention span of the publishing industry is very short (a lot like the television industry, really). If a book is not a hit right away, no one will keep it around to see if it finds an audience. So between these two factors, the wise author doesn't count her royalties until the check is in hand, particularly after the first year. It's fairly likely you will make some money, which beats the heck out of writing for nothing; however, even if it is a living wage it will probably not be one for long.

Now I realize my tone here has been pretty glum, so let me take a little brighter view. Let's say you walked into a Borders or a Books-a-Million store. You wave a magic wand and turn all the books on the shelves into their authors. Then you sort out those authors by their success. You will have a small corner where you can put the super-rich folks like Stephen King, J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer. There won't be a lot of those. Then you'll have another area where you have authors successful enough to live modestly off their work. You'll be very surprised that some of these are pretty well-known people, downright famous ones even. And there will be surprisingly few of those, too.

The biggest group by far will be authors with day jobs. Many of these will be multi-published authors with lots of fans--truly legitimate talents. They can justly consider themselves professional writers and feel proud of their success. No one would accuse them of being posers in any way. It is no small accomplishment to be one of these people and anyone would be proud to be among them. But they are not full-time writers and they can't live off their royalties alone.

I wrote this column to dispel any illusions you may have about your aspiration to be a successful author, lest you discover one day that achieving your goal did not equate to achieving your goal at all. But what I really recommend is simply having an accurate understanding of what "being successful at writing" is. It's not making enough money to live on so you can write full time. It's not becoming famous. It's not finding yourself with guaranteed publication for the rest of your life.

It IS getting your book in the hands of a goodly number of readers and, in your own small way, changing their lives. And because that's what it is, I recommend that you always do the best work you can do, whether in the initial drafting, the long editing process, or the promotion of your book. If you do that, you won't have to measure your success in checks or sales figures. You can measure it by the impact your book had on the lives of lots of good people.

That, regardless of anything else, is always worthwhile.

July 10, 2010 - A Few Words on Barnes & Noble's eBook Program and the nook eReader, and Other eBook Options

Also new and noteworthy: I listed all my ebook titles with Barnes & Noble, a process that began in the summer of 2009. B&N opened their ebook store for business in November 2010, and after a few months I began to see an amazing upward trend in the sales of my books in the "nook" version. This trend has been occurring likewise with Kindle in 2010, but even with something like an 18 month headstart on nook, they are lagging behind nook sales somewhat.

It was a MUCH simpler process listing ebooks with Barnes & Noble--you can send them pdf's and they will do the conversion to ePub format on their end. And considering the success of their ebook program after only six months, I highly recommend selling through them, even more so than Kindle.

I also looked into selling for the iPad. I rejected that option because of the $250 start-up fee that was required. I would probably make it up in profits before too long, but seeing as there is no such fee for nook or Kindle, I didn't want to support a platform that had a requirement like that.

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