Books*Authors*Pubs

Creating e-books

Moriah

Note: I cross-posted this on Publishing Renaissance on December 24, 2008.

I’ve been thinking about offering a quick’n’dirty series on how to create various ebook formats, wondering if independent publishers (or even micro- and small presses) know how to disseminate their wares effectively in electronic format. I know PDF is the fallback position and while I have a love/hate relationship with PDF (formatting, yay! reading on computer, boo! hiss!), most people who don’t have an ebook reading device pretty much are stuck with the computer.

(This is one reason I have issues with places like Lulu, iUniverse, AuthorHouse, etc. Their electronic delivery is exclusively PDF. I don’t know if the authors have the option to create other formats or even if they’re inclined to do so, but I urge those indies who choose such providers to check it out and diversify.)

SmashWords has a grinder program that allows you to upload your document and then spits out various electronic incarnations of it, but it has formatting issues, which is to say, some it ain’t pretty especially if you have a not-very-well-formatted RTF document to begin with. Oh well and get over it. They do a marvelous job with what they get and it’s a few hundred steps in the right direction—not to mention the fact that once you get it on your ebook reading device, it probably won’t make you any difference.

But in case you do want to know how it’s done (or, more properly, how we did it, properly or not), what tools we used, why—and we invite others to correct us on more efficient ways to do it (that doesn’t involve Book Designer, thanks)—here’s the first and most important thing you have to do:

Learn XHTML and CSS. Really.

O’Reilly at Tools of Change is pushing for all formats to be based on XML, but if you’re reading this post, this is probably a DIY project and XHTML is, IMO, easier to learn. You will need this for every format you might want to offer (except PDB [Palm] and as an ebook application [iApp] to be sold in the iTunes store).

After that, it’s all tweaks and about 6 different pieces of (almost free) software.

Go on now and learn XHTML and CSS. I’m not going to post tutorials on that when others have done it better than I.

The holiday TBR pile

Moriah

In order:

Waiting for Spring by RJ Keller

Currently reading. Excellent, excellent work.

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The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom, & Their Lover by Victoria Janssen

Started. I wanted to read this book but then saw the ebook price ($11.30! for an ELECTRONIC book!!!), bitched about it, then was offered a copy if I would review it, which I will. I will admit, however, that I find myself reading it through the filter of some blogging unpleasantness elsewhere.

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The Hole (Draft) by Aaron Ross Powell

Started. This seems more of a visual novel to me (I’m a visual reader) and I have to have some quiet time to do it. Between the DDJ (damned day job) and the Tax Deductions, finding sufficient quiet time has been difficult.

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The Proviso excerpt download

Moriah

THIS IS A STICKY POST. SCROLL DOWN FOR THE LATEST BLOG ENTRIES.

You think you might want to read this book? Need a sample? We gotcha sample, right here! 200 pages of sample, in fact. Go ahead. We dare you. [download id=”1″]

The 5MB zip file includes EPUB, HTML, IMP, LIT, LRF, MOBI/PRC, PDB (eReader), and PDF formats. If you do like The Proviso, you can buy it in digital and print HERE.

Jukeboxes and libraries

Moriah

I have a bunch of beautiful books. They’re mostly in hardback because I don’t see paperbacks as objets d’art the way I do my hardback books. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I read hardbacks, certainly. If I have it, I read it. But there’s just something substantial about a hardback book. Specifically, I’m thinking of my faux leatherbound books, but no matter.

As I go around the ebook blogs like Teleread and The Book is Dead, a bunch of dissociated rememberies from my childhood plague me. They’re always the same ones, played in different order, but in a loop:

Remembery #1.

The mp3 player was only a Wish when I was a child (think 1970s) with my little panda transistor radio barely capable of tuning in the jazz station, but playing disco just fine and dandy. Rock the boat, don’t rock the boat, baby. Rock the boat, don’t tip the boat over.

I had my Wish in my mind like a jukebox, playing all the songs I loved and none of the songs I didn’t love, all in one place, in the palm of my hand. Even as I got older, I couldn’t afford to buy albums and then, once I got a “boom box,” couldn’t afford to buy cassettes, either. I taped random songs off the radio and tried my best to come up with as clean a version as a K-Tel compilation cassette as I could. It didn’t work and my wish became a longing so intense sometimes I couldn’t bear it. Then I got a Walkman, which was a step up, but my ADD/OCD could not be happy. Why, oh why, was there no way to buy a song at a time? What would that look like? How could it be done?

My Wish: a jukebox in my hand, with all the songs I loved and none of the songs I hated, with the ability to purchase one song at a time.

Remembery #2.

Dark house post family bedtime. Flashlight. Book. Covers. You all know this routine. For my mother, it was hiding in the back of a closet. With a flashlight. And a book. Why didn’t my book come with a light? You know, something handy, that I could clip onto it? That way I didn’t have to give my flashlight a blow job every time I had to turn the page.

Remembery #3.

Jean-Luc Picard sitting in his cabin reading a hardback book. To me, this was nothing until a crew member questioned him. Wesley, maybe? I can’t remember. Too young to know what a hardback book with paper pages was. To Picard, it was an antique. To Wesley, it was a novelty.

DISCLAIMER: I didn’t watch Star Trek much. Not the original, not the Next Generation, not Voyager, or many of the spinoffs (although I actually enjoyed Deep Space 9 because everybody on that show had serious faults and weren’t a bunch of Mary Sues and Gary Stus running around knowing how to deal with every situation). This is why my remembering an STNG episode is so…exceptional. And it had to do with a book and what must have happened to books to evoke the reaction Picard’s hardback paper book evoked.

Something that could store a library in one spot? Like my dream of a jukebox in my hand. Could it be? A library in my hand?

Don’t get me wrong. At that point, I was old enough to know it could be done, but I wasn’t getting my hopes up because the jukebox in my hand hadn’t materialized yet or if it had, I didn’t know about it.

You have to know something about me that makes my need for such things a compulsion (you know, besides my mental disorders): I am an anti-packrat. I hate Stuff. I have Stuff I don’t hate, really, but if it can be condensed, packed, and stored out of sight until I need it, so I can have SPACE, I am more kindly disposed toward Stuff. (Oh, Space Bags, how I would love thee if every blanket we own weren’t in use because it’s as cold as a witch’s tit outside.) I don’t like knickknacks, either. And as I get older, the Mies van der Rohe school of architecture (mid-century modern) gets more and more attractive to me.

The only things I collect and store without driving my OCD/ADD batty is data. And mp3s. And now, ebooks.

(I like lots of art, though, so as soon as the Tax Deductions stop coloring on the walls, I’ll paint and put up my art. It’s difficult to deal with the child who writes her name on the wall and then blames her little brother, who doesn’t know how to read, much less write.)

I haven’t quite figured out how to go completely minimalist, given the life of a family and its needs for Stuff.

But the jukebox-and-library in hand is a good start.

What happened to the epic novel?

Moriah

Last month, a friend of mine who is reading The Proviso said to me (paraphrase), “You know, a publishing house editor would have made you cut some of this.” Beat. “But I don’t know what it could have been.” At 283,000 words, it’s actually right on track for a novel that chronicles the romances of 3 couples. It’s 94,333 words per romance. (No, I don’t know which couple gets more air time, nor does it matter.)

A couple of days ago I blithely typed, “I want to be the Tom Wolfe of genre romance” and suddenly, the light came on for a few people, one of whom said so in that thread. I had never thought of my writing goals in that light until I actually said it, and that is true. (That’s just blindingly arrogant of me, isn’t it?)

Anyway, I had the feeling there were only 3 readers (including me) around Romancelandia longing for the long, involved, complex romance. But a Dear Author thread about the shrinking word counts of some of Harlequin’s lines (this isn’t unusual) disabused me of the notion. More readers came out of the woodwork to express their dissatisfaction with the snacks that are the single-title romances (and we won’t go into category aka Harlequin romance). We want feasts!

But alas. There are none.

Th. made the argument in a provocative post that series writing is a different skill from single-novel writing, and perhaps that’s where the epic novel went: to series. That must be read in the proper order to get the whole story.

I hate that. It’s inconvenient and, from a consumer’s point of view, extravagantly expensive. (And you thought MY book cost a lot of money!) By and large, I don’t stick with series, especially if they’re as intertwined as mine is, but give me an enormous novel that engages me all the way through and you got me and my money in one shot.

But, you know, it took me a long time to decide whether to split the romances out into 3 books and create a series, or create a long novel. It couldn’t be helped. The structure of the story arc just wouldn’t hold up under the weight of the extra bindings.

The one epic is more than the sum of its parts.

Now, would someone else PLEASE write something long and involved? And if you know of any, please let me know what they are.

To be or not to be

Moriah

Offended.

I think I’m supposed to be. I’m told I should be. My neck twitches just slightly when I know I ought to be. But I don’t think I am. Am I?

Bodice ripper.

I just can’t muster up the outrage necessary to protest the term. I mean, there are seriously a bunch more important things to do in life and better battles to fight and more important wars to wage.

A friend of mine refers to The Proviso as a “Mormon bodice ripper.” To my recollection, no bodices were harmed in the making of this book, but a pair of shorts was. So…shorts ripper? Cause, that’s where the goods are, folks, and Some People’s Hero really needed to get to Some People’s Heroine’s goods. Right then.

Okay. Anyway.

No, sorry. Can’t be outraged today. Try me tomorrow.

Judge. Book. Cover.

Moriah

Th., give thanks and be glad! You are no longer alone in your opinion on my cover. 😉

LDS Fiction has very kindly listed my book amongst the LDS fiction released in the last little while. You have to request this, along with sending its information and the cover (because the poor blog owner can’t be expected to keep track of all the LDS authors and fiction out there). If I recall correctly, I didn’t send a pic of the cover with it because, well, it has bewbies on it. It’s entirely apropos to the story thematically (on about three different levels), but unless you read the book, you aren’t going to get that. On the other hand, I know the audience there and while I didn’t think it would appreciate the cover, obviously the blog owner did what she thought consistent with her blog.

So I’ve garnered a one-star review. Oh, wait, did I say REVIEW? I meant to say, a one-star disapproval rating, based on the cover.

That’s an awful cover. I don’t think I would pick up based on the cover. I couldn’t have it in my home.

To be fair, it does say “rate this book,” not REVIEW this book, but in my world, you kinda have to read a book to rate it, so I think I can be cut some slack for assuming that a rating = review.

This kinda reminds me of the “reviews” Eugene’s book got wherein some folks flew up into the rafters over the fact that there was a bishop’s wife and a vampire together. (Or, better, when the back blurb SAID there was a bishop’s wife and a vampire together, and the reviewers didn’t get it might not be something you’d buy from Deseret Book until they got to the sex scenes.)

I can so appreciate that someone wouldn’t want the print version in the house, so the Lord has provided you with a SOLUTION!

EBOOKS!

Give thanks and be glad.

The perfect bookstore

Moriah

Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Hey, publishers and booksellers. Let me help you solve all your problems, ’kay? Behold the perfect bookstore:

The problems? You know exactly what they are and obviously you aren’t interested in solving them.

You booksellers have been rolling around on the back of the consignment system like it’s catnip for too long—and it’s still going to bite you in the butt.

You publishers are doing everything you can to stymie ebooks and are determined to cling to your outmoded ways. You can lay off people all you want, but you’re not actually willing to do what it takes. Never fear, though! The economy will help you with that.

Now, in a quaint little town that is a suburb of Kansas City, they have a town square surrounding the 19th-century county courthouse. In one of those slender 19th-century 2-story buildings, there is a mom’n’pop bookstore that has been there for, oh, EVER. The top floor was always for used books, the bottom floor stocked to bursting with books. Then they put in a coffee shop. Last week, we found out they were phasing out the books altogether. Now, I ask you. What is a bookstore without books? It’s not. It’s a coffee shop.

I’ve been thinking about these issues for a long time and shaking my head sadly, wondering how long it’ll take before the consignment system collapses.

Say the above drawing is the bottom floor of the aforementioned 2-story 19th-century storefront on the town square. The 2nd floor could house a coffee shop or used books or books that you wanted to order to keep in stock (and you paid for them up front on a wholesale basis) because you’re a bookseller and you love books and books are a perfectly reasonable thing to have in a bookstore.

But do you see what is going on? A way to be inventory-free, using the just-in-time inventory system that half the rest of the retail industry in the world has been using for going on 15 years now.

You, Random Reader, are a book lover. You want a book you can hold in your hands. You go to Quaint Bookstore and they do not have what you want in their meager stock. NO PROBLEM! You sit down at one of the book stations. You browse the computer catalog (probably Ingram or Baker & Taylor). You pick your book. You punch in your credit card number (tied to the store’s point-of-sale system). The order goes directly to one of the Espresso machines behind you. You wait 10 or 15 minutes (by which time you’ve probably already ordered another 3 books), and out pops your book. You are GOOD TO GO.

Or hey! Maybe you don’t want to wait the 10 to 15 minutes, so you tap into your Quaint Bookstore account from home or work or school and order the book that way. You can pick up your Espresso when you pick up your espresso on the way to or from work or school.

And say you want an e-reading device, but you don’t want to get burned. You go to Quaint Bookstore and you pick up one of their demo devices loaded up with ebooks. You sit go upstairs to get an espresso (heh) and read for a while to see if you like it. If not, go back, pick up another one, and make sure you like what you’re getting. Then you buy it and boom, healthy profit for Quaint Bookstore on an e-reading device (which will probably get the customer back to buy at least 1 print book for every 10 ebooks they read—okay, I made up that number, but still!).

Honestly, I do not know why this has to be difficult. The technology’s there, waiting—no, begging—to be used. The consumers are there and will grow as the economy cycles back up again. With one Espresso machine, Quaint Mom’n’Pop Bookstore could get rid of its book stock, but still be a bookstore.

Did I mention there is a small liberal arts college in this town, too? Can you say “bypass the college bookstore for your textbooks”? Ka-ching.

But you know, I’m not even sure this particular Quaint Mom’n’Pop Bookstore ever heard of an Espresso and probably are afraid of ebooks, and are unwilling to look past the death of the consignment system. (I should probably ask them those questions before I assume things, eh?)

I tell you, the time is (almost) right for a new breed of independent bookseller.

 

Zoe Winters’s “Kept”

Moriah

Kept
by Zoe Winters
published by IncuBooks

Zoe is an independent publisher I “met” by happenstance when I got soundly thrashed on Dear Author for suggesting that a multi-published author whose 3-book SERIES contract had been canceled after book 2 (leaving her fans out in the cold with characters they loved) actually self-publish the third book in the series (you know, since her rights had reverted back to her and she already has a fan base salivating for it). Good gravy, you’d’a thunk I’d said the Rapture was coming tomorrow and they’d all be left behind and have 666 burned into their foreheads bwahahahahaha burn in hell losers.

Anyhoo, as Bob Ross would say, it was a happy accident.

Kept is a free novella you can find at her site (link above) in PDF form. You can find it at Amazon in Kindle for 80¢ and you can find it on Smashwords in various formats for those of us who bitch if we don’t get it the way we want it. Somebody call me a waaaaahmbulance.

And really, “free” is my second-favorite four-letter f-word.

Here’s the blurb:

Greta is a werecat whose tribe plans to sacrifice her during the next full moon. Her only hope for survival is Dayne, a sorcerer who once massacred most of the tribe. What’s that thing they say about the enemy of your enemy?

Now, I don’t do much paranormal and I really don’t like shapeshifters, but throw the word “sorcerer” or “wizard” or “warlock” at me and I’ll take a second look. And I’m glad I did.

Beefs first:

The story was a little choppy in moments of transition, but I’ve seen that so much lately that it doesn’t bother me as much as it used to and, I’m guessing, readers are being taught to get used to it and, by extension, writers are doing it more.

Also, the story could’ve been longer with more explanation of the world. I (Random Reader who likes really really really long books) would have liked that. Let me get you some salt for that opinion.

Good stuff:

What glimpses of their world I got, I liked. I could tell it wasn’t a half-assed world half-thunk-up on the fly, and that it had depth and detail underneath. (Repeat: wanted more.)

I really enjoyed the hero’s crankiness and the fact that he was “old” (how old we’re not told, but I inferred around a century). I liked that when the hero and heroine had sex pretty nearly upfront it was because of species-specific hormone issues (i.e., cat in heat) that she usually controls with medicine, but didn’t have her medicine with her.

I laughed a lot through this book. The banter is witty and cute, seems natural to both of them, and gave the characters the depth that natural humor brings to people.

The cover’s pretty and the interior design is good. In short, it’s right up there with a lot of the novellas in the anthologies by traditional publishers that are on bookstore shelves and much better than a lot of other stuff I’ve read lately from the e-presses that I paid for. I enjoyed myself.

Coulda been longer. Did I say that?

So. If you get it from Smashwords, leave a tip, okay?

Oh, Tipper, where are you?

Moriah

So our application to get The Proviso into the iTunes store was denied. Seems it’s a tad too racy for the terms of service. Who’d’a thunk it, right?

Roger from eBook App Maker tells us that Apple is in the process of applying a ratings system to their games and he doesn’t think it’ll be too long until they start in with the ebook apps. So instead of sanitizing the book, we’ve decided to wait until Apple has a rating system.

UPDATE:

Today Richard Curtis (I love this guy, really) discusses Steve Jobs’s dismissal of ebooks as a viable revenue source a la iTunes with the comment, “People don’t read anymore.” I’ve discussed this before and it makes my head explode every time I think about it.

Fortunately, a number of determined and enterprising programmers took it upon themselves to spec – or hack – a reader application for the iPhone. And even more fortunately, Jobs did not discourage them. One hopes he realized he had spoken recklessly.

There is another way to read The Proviso on the iPhone/iTouch and that’s using Stanza and our EPUB format (included in the zip file).

But he also talks about Fictionwise:

Aside from the satisfaction of seeing Steve Jobs proven wrong, it’s also inspiring to see Fictionwise taking this initiative. We at E-Reads are big fans of Fictionwise. It is our principal e-book distributor and a major reason why this industry is beginning to thrive.

Now, I like Fictionwise, I do. But we can’t get on Fictionwise, either, because they require a publisher have 25 different titles by 5 different authors and although B10 Mediaworx does have titles in the works by people other than I, it’ll be a long time before we see that goal realized.

Book Review: The Truth About Roxy

Moriah

The Truth About Roxy
by Jenny Gilliam
published by The Wild Rose Press

I like the longer single-title contemporary romance (no suspense, thanks, and the category lengths are just way too short) and lately, the ones I really like have been coming out of the smaller e-presses. They’re not as well edited as I’d like, but they’re fun reads whose story lines seem to stick with me quite a while.

The Truth About Roxy was a light, fun read that still managed to make me laugh and cry. I’ve read another of this author’s non-suspense novels (Letting Luce) and it was just as light and fun. Even *I*, lover of all alpha heroes monied, adore that Jenny’s characters are normal people like me, with normal-people jobs and normal-people problems.

Here’s the blurb:

Roxy Palmer is a walking, breathing cliché. And darned tired of it. Working as the assistant librarian in her small, Southern home town, Roxy also anonymously pens the local love column, ASK PAULA ROCKWELL–Thorton, Georgia’s answer to Dear Abby. But when the door leading to Roxy’s lifetime dream is slammed in her face by one of the good ol’ boys, Roxy brings out the big guns–and turns the genteel town upside down with her racier, feminist, home-wrecking new format. Paula Rockwell is making Sheriff Noah Kennedy’s life crazy. He’s got angry husbands lined around the block, demanding the cancellation of the column, fights breaking out and women catching their boyfriends’ trucks on fire. If he ever gets his hands on that woman… But he’s got his hands FULL of Roxy at the moment, and if he ever discovers the truth about Roxy, all hell will break loose.

Beefs first:

I thought Noah’s extreme reaction to Roxy’s coming-out (as it were) was too much, because he’d known her all his life and he should’ve understood her better.

And oh, that cover, bless their hearts. [Insert longsuffering sigh here.]

Good stuff:

Again, fun, light romp. The characters were engaging and I believed in the nutjobs and the goofy backwater Southern town because they were drawn so vividly.

I had a really good time with this book, and that’s all I care about.

More reviews for The Proviso!

Moriah

Wow. It doesn’t rain but it pours and I so want to thank the reviewers for their time!

First up is from R.J. Keller’s blog:

My faithful readers know I’m always looking for something more than just a good book. I want a book that moves me, or makes me think about or look at Stuff in a way I never have before. And I recently found such a book. […] This is a deep, intelligent book. It’s a long’un, yes, but so engaging that I didn’t want to put it down. The characters are real, the writing is top-notch…oh, and it’s damn hot, too!

One of the best books I’ve read in a very, VERY long time. Highly recommended.

And second is from Julie Weight’s blog:

This books moves at a slower pace than I’m used to but it’s been a long time since I picked up and read a lengthy, layered story that delves into the details of the characters. As I read it and sometimes got annoyed with the slow pace, I remembered that I loved Shogun – and if you’ve read Shogun you know how involved that story is! And this story takes the time to acquaint you with the characters. […]

[…] in my opinion this is a character-driven story. Any story about religion, money, politics and sex is about entanglements, complications, lies, deceit, manipulation, good and evil – and this The Proviso delivers in spades while delving into the human side of the main characters. My favorite part of the cover says what this story is really about: “…embroiled as they are in their war, the last thing they expect to find on the battlefield is love.” […]

Bottom line? Big thumbs up for this first novel by new author Moriah Jovan.

Julie also notes:

I have a print copy of the book and the first thing you notice is it’s size. It’s huge. The second thing you notice is that it’s absolutely gorgeous. The cover art is extraordinary, in my opinion. If you walked into a bookstore and this was on the table inside the door, you wouldn’t be able to resist walking over and running your hand over the cover before you flip it over to see the back (also beautiful artwork). When you lay it open, the inside is as gorgeous and rich as the cover and there are actual chapter titles, something you rarely see any more in a book.

The print copy is expensive. I know the author believes in e-books and of course the e-book version is much more affordable. However, for those of us who like the tangible feel of a print book, this one is worth it (and would make an excellent gift for any reader on your list).

Emphasis mine.

And really, you have to read Keller’s post on “more than just a good book” (linked above) because I so identified with it as a reader. Those are the books I read as a teenager and they’ve gotten more and more scarce over time. I’m still looking for those books, though now I have a head start since I’ve got a copy of Shogun in my hands.

Thank you, ladies!

You can purchase The Proviso at B10 Mediaworx in print ($27.99, and we do offer gift wrapping) and ebook ($8.99). It’s also available for the Kindle and soon you’ll be able to purchase it in the iTunes store as an iApp (we’ll let you know).

My way or the highway

Moriah

Lately I’ve been reading a snowballing number of posts in the ebook community about adopting EPUB as the international (and pleasepleaseplease DRM-free) standard. This is great and I’m SOOO on board with that. What’s got me disturbed is that the subtext (and sometimes it’s not even that subtle) is that in order to adopt EPUB, publishers ought to ditch every other format, I assume, to force the issue of EPUB format adoption for everyone.

No fucking way!

Are you serious?

As a consumer and producer of ebooks, let me tell you, this is simple crackpot evangelism. EPUB is the future; I do not disagree and I would love to see it come into its own and beat the competition.

HOWEVER

The competition exists for a reason and that’s because there are competing machines out there. Why in the world wouldn’t a producer find and exploit every digital outlet he could while they exist?

Now, I understand it’s perfectly reasonable for a producer of analog music to give up making vinyl records and 8-track tapes when there are few enough record players and 8-track players that it makes no sense to spend the time to do so. But if there is fairly equal money in each format, it would be foolish for the producer to give up producing even one of those formats.

In short, there is no way we would give up any one of the (now) 10 digital formats we publish in unless and until all devices can and will read one format and that the majority of the users of those devices are choosing one format:

AZW (Kindle)

EPUB (any device using Stanza or Adobe Digital Editions)

HTML (a lot of devices, plus any browser)

IMP (eBookWise)

LIT (Microsoft Reader)

LRF (Sony PRS)

MOBI/PRC (any device using Mobipocket)

PDB (Palm)

PDF (any device that reads PDF), and coming soon,

iApp for the iTunes store (iPhone/iTouch)

The fact of the matter is that once you’ve formatted for one of the above, you’ve formatted for over half the rest with minor tweaks. Yeah, it takes time to make each pretty for its own device, but it’s worth it as long as people feel they’ve gotten their money’s worth.

And every single one of those formats has a serious issue or 3 that consumers don’t like. However, each consumer still has the choice of the format with the least number of annoyances for him. Giving me 1 format (or, in the case of a book I really really really wanted to buy) 4 formats that are pure hell on me isn’t going to get me to adopt those formats; it’s only going to jolt me out of my impulse buy and now that I’m not BUYING paper books anymore, I’ll get it at the library.

So, Hachette Book Group. Thanks for saving me some money, ’cause I wasn’t strong enough to withstand the temptation if it had been in a format I could use.

Make it easy on the customer

Moriah

There’s a book I really really really want to read. However, it’s only available in e-format 2 ways: Serialized on the author’s blog (i.e., on the computer—no thanks) and via Kindle (no thanks). Now, I’m getting ready to email him and ask him if it’s available any other way, so we shall see.

There’s another book I really really really want to read. However, it’s only available in 4 formats (actually, 3 because 2 formats are identical in nature), none of which I can read on my ebook reader. The format I want is MS Reader (LIT). Why? Because I can break the DRM and put it on my ebook reader. Which, come to think of it, is probably why it’s not offered in that format.

Really, there’s enough GOOD stuff out there in more accessible formats to waste time having to read on the computer. After having had my eBookWise for a mere 7 months, I’ve gotten to where I WILL forgo a title (no matter how badly I want to read it) if I can’t get it in a format that is accessible to me. Otherwise, I’ll just go to the library, where it likely won’t be.

We’re really trying to put The Proviso in as many places as possible in as many formats as we can. It’s not just in the B10 Mediaworx bookstore (8 DRM-LESS formats bundled together in a zip), but at Amazon in both trade paperback and Kindle, at Barnes & Noble, at Books-A-Million, at Powell’s, and now at ebooksjustpublished (which takes you back to the B10 Mediaworx bookstore, but hey, it’s exposure).

Some time next week, The Proviso will be in the iTunes store as an iApp for iTouch/iPhone. Although we’ve formatted it into EPUB for those who’ve downloaded Stanza on their iTouch/iPhones, we really want to present as many options as possible to make it easy for every customer to read it the way they prefer to read it.

Because not being able to read a book I want to read the way I want to read it is beginning to weary me.

Moratorium on manuscript buying

Moriah

From Publisher’s Weekly:

It’s been clear for months that it will be a not-so-merry holiday season for publishers, but at least one house has gone so far as to halt acquisitions. PW has learned that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has asked its editors to stop buying books. […] Another agent who had also heard about the no-acquisitions policy at HMH called the move “very scary” and said it’s indicative of an industry climate worse than any he’s ever seen.

Predictions:

1. Expect this to keep happening for a while at other major publishers.

2. More independent publishers will spring up, particularly in the ebook arena.

3. Major publishers will start mining their backlists for ebooks. Oh, wait, they already have. Credit for innovation coming right up!

4. Revisions in the advance/royalty system. E-presses blazed this trail, but Harper Studios has taken up the cause (and may end up reaping the credit for that, too).

5. This may be the death knell for the consignment system of selling books. One can hope, anyway.

Yeah, it’s depressing, but A) everybody’s having a hard time, so boo hoo at you too, publishing and B) everything is cyclical.

Quite frankly, the economic downturn and the rise of the ebook couldn’t be timed better. You build up the low-cost or free alternative in the downswing (coupled with instant gratification), something people can afford and are open to, then you see it explode once the upswing begins.

Dead tree books will NOT be a thing of the past (knock on wood), but the smart publishers and booksellers will find cheaper alternatives to bring those to market too. If you want to survive after an economic downturn, you must start thinking in the long-term instead of the short-term; you sure as heck aren’t making any money now, so figure out how to make money when everybody has some again.

Pssst, publishers and booksellers:

It’s called the Espresso.

In kiosks.

At Wal-Mart, Target, and smack DAB in the middle of your chain or independent bookstore.

Ah, homogeneity!

Moriah

So I saw this in Publisher’s Weekly online yesterday and bookmarked it to blog about, but then Janet Reid beat me to the punch.

Recently, funny things have been happening in my slush pile. I find myself receiving well-written, correctly formatted, professional-looking query letters from bad writers. Imagine my chagrin: one minute I’m intrigued by a smoothly crafted query letter, the next I’m staring down at a crackpot writing sample.

I wondered how long this would take.

I will always and forever remember a story my dad told about Hardee’s barbecue sauce and a taste-tester he met. The point wasn’t to make a standout barbecue sauce. The point was to make the barbecue sauce as inoffensive as possible to the largest number of people.

So I’ll call it the Hardee’s BBQ Sauce Query.

One comment on Janet Reid’s blog summed up my thoughts quite nicely:

Post Summary: In the 21st Century, people can Google query on how to do something and find carefully composed instructions. Thus, the prior vetting process is no long efficient for the Literary Agent.

My 2 Cents: Awesome. Adjust or die.