publishing

Toothpaste, packing tape, and e-books

Moriah

Office Depot logoToday I saw the most brilliant thing I have seen in a week or 2.

Okay, so you know how you go to the store and while you’re waiting in line to cash out, there’s gobs and gobs of utterly useless crap and empty calories surrounding you? They scream at you: Buy me! Buy me! You need me! You cannot live without me one more second!

I’m mostly inured to that now. I’m too busy trying to figure out how Nostradamus gets so much press and I don’t.

However, today I had reason to go to Office Depot. Now, you must understand. Office Depot is like a crack house for me. I go in, I don’t come out for days, high on the scent of new paper, new pens, new plastic floor pads (the ones that go under your chair). Ah, the smell of bubble wrap in the morning.

But today I only needed to return something and went straight to the counter. On my way out, however, in that space reserved for mindless crap wanting you to buy it, I saw a good ten linear feet (3 feet high) of trial-sized toiletries. You know, like at Wal-Mart. Only better. More thoroughly thought out.

I looked. Looked again (and crap, didn’t take a pic; I’ll go back). Studied what they had. Nothing useless and several brands of each type of toiletry (Crest and Colgate, for example).

You may think this is no big deal, but it IS. This is value-added at the finest. It’s not Sony “fashion earbuds” (although those were way cute); it’s not some weird executive toy I couldn’t figure out how to work; it’s not the ubiquitous calendar. It’s also not the candy/pop/bottled water section.

No, it’s TOILETRIES. People need those. People who shop at office supply stores need those because, you know, I bet lots of business travelers end up at an office supply store. And they might have had to stop at Wal-Mart or Target later to get one of those toiletry items, but they don’t have to now because Office Depot had it. HALLELUJAH! I’ll tell you, the trip from my Office Depot to my Wal-Mart (across a highway from each other) would take half an hour because of traffic, parking, and walking. That’s money saved, people. And just think if a business traveler already knows those things are there! When he’s in a strange city, he knows he can go to the nearest Office Depot and get his packing tape AND his toothpaste.

And BRANDING! I will forever now associate the Office Depot BRAND with stocking things business travelers NEED. It’s not a high-cost item. Doesn’t take up much floor space. Dollar for dollar, I’ll bet that’s got a high ROI.

Okay, so what does this have to do with e-books?

Value added.

Things you can’t get in the print version.

If you were inclined to buy my book, but you knew the e-book version had about 10 extra scenes or character vignettes or lists of resources I used or a list of the songs I listened to while I was writing it (things that are not in the print version), would you be more inclined to check it out?1

I would. Give me a favorite author in e-book (one I’m inclined to buy in hardback anyway), tell me it’s got extra stuff on it, don’t slap any stupid DRM on it, and I’ll buy the e-book for the extra stuff and the hardback for the art.

Value added.

Value added.

Value added.

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1.  It doesn’t yet. Be patient. I’ll retroactively send the extra package to those e-book purchasers.

Caving to instinct and capability

Moriah

NOTE: This is the sixth in a series of several posts David Nygren of The Urban Elitist and I have been cross-blogging concerning the issue of authors (whether traditionally published, e-published, or self-published) actually getting paid for their work.

And it’s my final entry because after reading David’s interview with Tao Lin, I’m tired. Don’t get me wrong. Doing this series has forced me to take a good look at what I’m doing and why. Because of all the things converging on the world at the same time, I have been forced to take a candid look at my resources and limitations with regard to A) putting my art out there to begin with and B) getting paid for it. It would seem to me that David’s list of what you have to do to get read, much less paid, can be boiled down to 1 starting point:

Get noticed.

Until you do, you won’t get read. Until you’re read, no one has a reason to pay you for your work, much less your writerly ephemera and dross.

This takes marketing.

This takes time. Lots of it. As Paul said over at Publishing Renaissance,

There is a time limiting factor, people expect you to pay as much attention to their work as they are paying to yours. Many people will only continue to read or comment on your bloggedy blog if you read and comment on theirs. As a result a kind of whirlpool effect is generated, a lot of time and energy expended for very little reward.

Well, I don’t know about looking for reward, but in our heart of hearts, that is the goal, no?

I hang out and comment on a lot of industry blogs: writer, publisher, agent, etc. My name-link in the comments section is an opportunity for someone to click and find me, even though I’m simply participating and not actively selling. But I’m selling. I HATE that. Every single day, something knocks on the door of my brain and says, “Why are you marketing to writers and industry people? Writers have their own projects and if publishers and agents wanted you, they’d’a said so when you were querying.” Every single day, I have the same epiphany:

Go where the readers are.

Well, where the hell are they?

The minute I started to answer that question for myself, the economy tanked, and I had the startling epiphany:

They’re in the financial doghouse, like everybody else.

Well, okay. Maybe I should just be grateful my (non-publishing) business has some income. The fact of the matter is, I invested in a leisure time industry (well, two, but that’s a different story). Right now, folks are trying to put gas in their cars to either get to work or get to job interviews. We’ve been extraordinarily lucky thus far, but those around us haven’t. If I think twice about buying a book or an e-book, it’s very likely others will, too.

I recently got active (well, semi-active) on Twitter and every time I log on, I wonder why I waited so long. I love Twitter. I love it far more than blogs and fora. It’s the methadone for my chronic IRC and Usenet withdrawal (even though I do have a really really good newsgroups provider and I hang onto mIRC like a fiend). When I tweeted my frustration with Amazon and that I feel my presence on Amazon is solely as marketing and visibility, and NOT as a revenue stream, I got this:

Along with the book marketing advice I’ve sometimes seen given: “The best marketing is to write another book, build your backlist,” this had me thinking for days.

  • About my limitations as a writer/publisher/marketer.
  • About my limitations as a writer.
  • About my limitations as a mother and wife.
  • About my limitations as a business owner (other than publishing).
  • About my obligations and priorities, to whom I owed what first.
  • About that little economic concept called opportunity loss.

The sad fact of my life is that I’m not a sales person and I don’t think creatively about ways to market. Tao Lin’s creativity in this knows no bounds, yet it stymies me, even when it’s laid out in detail. Every single new idea that comes to my attention seems like a chore of enormous proportions, adds to my to-do list, and takes the joy out of writing and, moreover, out of meeting people because I start to think of them as sales targets and my web stats start to become the measure of my worth.

Do I want to monetize my art? Yes, I do. I surely do want to make money doing what I love, but I have had to come to terms with the fact that I probably won’t, or at least, not anytime soon. I not only don’t enjoy marketing, I find it drains my energy for anything else in my life I could or should or want to be doing because I’m always chasing that next sale. It decreases my enjoyment in online and real-life interactions.

As an independent, I can be in this game for as long as I want; I have no restrictions other than whatever my resources allow. I can afford the time to wait out the economy, to build the backlist, to interact with a community of people who like my books.

But in the end, it only boiled down to one thing: I had to come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to close my main business and write full-time. Not now. Maybe not ever. I had to decide that if the best I can do is make the books pay for themselves and give that many people a good read, then I have to be at peace with that.

Monetizing art? It’s a gamble at best, especially with the roadblocks in the way: market saturation, financial doom’n’gloom, loss of leisure time and money, changing technologies. But it’s not like most of us are going to stop doing the art. I’m not. David’s not. Tao Lin’s not. Zoe, Kel, Robin, J.M. Reep, and Ara aren’t. Scalzi and Wheaton and Gennita Low aren’t.

My instincts say to me, “Mojo,” they say, “a lot of people have paid money for your book and they like it and they want more. Ultimately, your loyalty should be to them, and what you owe them is another book and, if you’re feeling generous, a whole multi-media playground in this world you’ve built.”

Eventually, the economy will cycle around again (economies are cyclical, though it seems everyone forgets that), people will have money, and they will spend on leisure activities. In that time, I will have built my backlist and my world so that those people who find me and want to immerse themselves in what I’ve created will be able to pay for it.

So what have I come to? It’s simple really:

Work at the money-making business I’ve got.

Write.

Be patient.

Patient? you hoot. Yeah, in this society, whatever.

No, really.

If the only real resource you have is time, use it.

The Urban Elitist interviews Tao Lin…

Moriah

NOTE: This is the fifth in a series of several posts David Nygren of The Urban Elitist and I will be cross-blogging concerning the issue of authors (whether traditionally published, e-published, or self-published) actually getting paid for their work.

… a rather benignly frenetic author whose ability to think out of the box in terms of monetizing his art is, well, astounding. David had to promise Sontag in return for an interview; the barter system at work and tax-free, to boot!

I’ve had time to stew on this a bit and I have some closing thoughts (at least, for me), which I’ll blog in the coming days.

Guest blogging and Tools of Change

Moriah

I’m over at Publishing Renaissance today, blogging part 3 about how The Bewbies™ came into existence; in case you missed them, see part 1 and part 2, too!

April Hamilton, independent publishing crusader extraordinary, built a new site called Publetariat, which will serve as kind of a clearinghouse/gathering space for independent-like authors. As soon as I figure out the Nixonian Drupal (you know, tricky dicky), I’ll be adding my voice over there. At least, uh, that’s what I’ve been s’posin’ to do for a while now and haven’t gotten to it. I’m sure April will find a suitable punishment for me.

The O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference went on earlier this week and I followed the comments on Twitter. Fascinating! although I’m not sure any conclusions can be drawn in any direction. Frankly, it seems to me nobody really knows what the hell’s going on in publishing right now. I will just keep on keepin’ on. By the way, a free e-book rundown of the conference is available for anyone who wants one.

A lot of what I saw related to the creative monetization of fiction, which ties in perfectly with The Urban Elitist’s and my cross-blog series on the same.

The EPUB format drum continues to be beaten and pleasepleaseplease, PTB, do IT! All for one and one for all! The mp3 format of e-books. I cannot tell you how I salivate at the thought.

DRM was preached against as the Great Satan (which it is).

The guy behind the Espresso Book machine spoke. I don’t know what he said, but check out this video.

Some of my independent publishing cohorts and pals had a session. I wish I’d been there!

I’m coming to the conclusion that it will be another few years before e-books are widely read and that at that point, the value of the print book will be in POD pretty, well-made editions, hardback with gorgeous jackets and/or the ability to offer leather-bound and tooled editions or other specialty editions, where the object of the book is the art as well as the content. Until then, the market’s going to be in flux with regard to price, from free to outrageously overpriced. (I’ll blog this later; I have lots to say about this.)

In other news, the XY Tax Deduction went rooting in the cabinet and brought me a can of corn to make for him. So I did. He said, “I not hun’ry.”

Are authors like journals?

Moriah

NOTE: This is the fourth in a series of several posts David Nygren of The Urban Elitist and I will be cross-blogging concerning the issue of authors (whether traditionally published, e-published, or self-published) actually getting paid for their work.

Yesterday (grimace) was David’s turn and he’s got me seriously thinking about that whole FREE thing again. I swear, the more we hash this out, the fewer solid opinions I’ve got.

How valuable is knowledge?

Moriah

NOTE: This is the third in a series of several posts David Nygren of The Urban Elitist and I will be cross-blogging concerning the issue of authors (whether traditionally published, e-published, or self-published) actually getting paid for their work.

Outside of David’s and my continuing exploration of how to monetize our work (and for me, this means fiction), I’ve come across some interesting things that really only cement my opinion that, in a misguided attempt to be generous, knowledge is flung around like rotting leaves on a late fall day: plentiful, soggy, and seemingly worthless.

In ages past, knowledge was specialized and carefully husbanded, passed down from father to son or from master to apprentice, under the craft guild’s auspices: tailoring, goldsmithing, masonry, jewel cutting. These trades were respected, well paid, and each had their—get it?—guild to watch out for the trade. (I won’t go into the differences between a guild and a union at this time.)

This Old House logoNot that long ago, esoteric specialized trades with their own secrets began to write how-to books. I still liken this to the groundbreaking This Old House (and if you don’t know how groundbreaking this was in the building and remodeling industry, you just weren’t paying attention or you weren’t born yet). In 1979, I was 11 and I ate it up, glued to PBS every Saturday morning. (There’s a genome for DIYers, you see.) Still, the how-to books got bought and people learned these things—and they paid for the privilege.

A couple of years ago, I thought I’d undertake the task of making drapes, so I bought (oooh, there’s that word again) an e-book on the subject. It was self-published, an A-to-Z how-to with simple instructions laid out for an idiot ADDer like me, and far superior to anything I’d seen in a bookstore or at the library. It was $24.95 and worth every penny. (Never did get around to doing the drapes, but now I understand the concepts and principles of drape-making.)

Today, I went looking for how to create dollhouse plans and build a dollhouse. Now, I have never been into dollhouses and this project has to do with my current WIP, Stay, for which I want to build Whittaker House (a gothic revival mansion inn) and its surrounds in miniature. And I found this: FREE dollhouse plans and instructions.

I would’ve paid money for instructions like that, perhaps as an e-book or as a serial or a do-along project. I mean, she seems to know what she’s talking about, right? I wondered, “What’s wrong with that woman?”

Meme of a brass fairy garden ornament reading a book, with a cat looking over its shoulder with the text “Dis same book she was reedin las year She not 2 smart.”But then I looked at the header of my own blog, where it says, CREATING E-BOOK SERIES. I’ve been spending hours and hours building the next post on this (in case anybody was wondering where the hell it was). What’s wrong with that woman in the mirror?

Three things:

  1. I’m a dilettante. I’m not sure I’m doing this the “right” way. I can only share what I’ve done; thus, I’m not sure my knowledge is actually worth anything.
  2. I like to teach, and any bit of knowledge will spur me on.
  3. I’m a compulsive helper. Knowledge is power and I think there are a lot of people out there who could use some empowerment.

If I had a penis and had gone to a master to teach me, say, stone cutting, my father would have paid the master to take me on as an apprentice. I would have served in his household in whatever capacity in exchange for room and board and knowledge for a period of 7 years (or more), which would have made me little better than an indentured servant. And then I would have struck out on my next phase as a journeyman and continued training. Once I earned the title of master under stringent training and specification, I could then say, “These are my credentials because I gave 14 years of my life to my trade in money, blood, sweat, and tears, and I am now in a position to charge money for my expertise and get my own little slave.”

If I had gone to college and enrolled in their fashion program, I would have paid tuition and gained credentials that told people, “Yeah, I kind of know what I’m talking about, so you need to pay me for my knowledge.” Oh, wait. I did do that. And I have a couple of awards to show for that. In my particular field of textiles, I’m considered a bit of an expert. So I charge.

But I didn’t go anywhere to learn how to create e-books. I learned my CSS and (X)HTML on my own from the free sites online (which sites exist in order to promote a standard markup). I learned the software programs by hit-or-miss. Nobody taught me; I didn’t ask anybody to teach me. I don’t feel I know enough to charge.

So why am I doing it?

To get traffic here into my blog to get you to buy my book. I am an expert on the subject of The Proviso, so I want to get paid for it. I am fortunate in that a couple of people have mostly agreed with me on my level of expertise.

Rightly or wrongly, some knowledge has to be given away to entice you to buy my product. Sometimes, those enticements don’t seem related. Obviously, there are some problems with the method I’ve chosen, which is to say, the people most likely to show up here to take the knowledge I’m offering free are probably writing books of their own and I should view them as my competition. They probably view me as their competition, too.

But say I’m wrong and it’s painfully obvious to everyone (except me and the people who take my advice) that I have no clue what I’m doing. Well, then my competition will screw up, too.

Sometimes free isn’t worth what you paid for it and can actually cost you a whole lot of real time and cash.

Sharing knowledge

Moriah

NOTE: This is the first in a series of several posts David Nygren of The Urban Elitist and I will be cross-blogging concerning the issue of authors (whether traditionally published, e-published, or self-published) actually getting paid for their work.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while; how, if the product you offer is free, can you make a living at it? Answer’s simple: You can’t. So why do we writers do this? Just be read? Really? I thought I might need therapy, which is when I began writing this post.

In David’s excellent post, How to Get Your E-book Read, my overriding thought was that getting read is not the problem. In the era of “information wants to be free,” getting paid will be the problem. His article was serendipitous because then I knew I wasn’t alone in my thinking and we began to talk. Since he and I started brainstorming last week about what facets of the money issue we could cover (and believe me, we’ve uncovered more facets than a 2-carat marquis diamond), I’ve seen three disparate conversations/articles concerning this.

First, this Dear Author thread (almost 550! comments) wherein an author stated that she pulled a series because her work was pirated so heavily she couldn’t make money on it and, further, that if a day came that she couldn’t make money writing, she’d just stop.

Second, Ara13 in this Publishing Renaissance thread says:

I read last week how one of this blog’s bloggers complimented a writer by saying she passed on her book to a friend. I winced. For me, that was a back-handed compliment. Sure, it’s great that you like my work and want others to be exposed to it, but if you really want to help, you’ll buy them a copy. Sorry, but being able to pay my rent and grocery bills allows me to pursue such a creative endeavor.

Third, this Time article, most of which is quotable, but this is the phrase that stuck out to me:

From a modern capitalist marketplace, we’ve moved to a postmodern, postcapitalist bazaar where money is increasingly optional.

Postcapitalist.

Money optional.

I nearly had a heart attack.

When I was 18 and new to college, I had a teacher who told me, “Don’t give away your knowledge. You earned it, you paid for it in time, money, blood, sweat, and tears. Don’t give it away for free.”

I choked. It went against everything I’d been taught both at home and at church (Mormons have no paid clergy; it’s strictly volunteer), and I was horrified. Then that teacher went on to prove himself an asshole, so I felt vindicated.

But as I got on in life and saw that those who have knowledge and who teach for little or no money aren’t very … respected. And I read books of philosophy that changed my thinking. Yeah, one of them was Atlas Shrugged. Sue me.

Then I got along farther in life and saw that sharing a little quality knowledge is useful as well as generous. It’s empowering to giver and taker. It at once gives the receiver a fish so that he doesn’t keel over from hunger and teaches him how to use a fishing pole. It’s a personal choice in how to balance what to give, how much, and when. However.

There is a price:

  1. Expectation and entitlement. As in, some people will then feel entitled to more of the giver’s knowledge, and possibly get upset when more is not forthcoming.
  2. Devaluation. As in, whether it’s taken or not, it will be seen as disposable because it’s cheap or free. “This is advice is free, so it’s worth what you paid for it” takes on a whole new meaning in today’s postcapitalist, money-optional bazaar.

I have fear for the future of information.

What I truly fear is that all content, all information, all written entertainment, will be free and thus, devalued. The consultant (knowledge) and artist and musician and author need to be rewarded monetarily for their work or else they can’t eat.

Most consultants will find a way to monetize their knowledge. Chris Brogan does. Ramit Sethi does. Christine Comaford-Lynch does. Suze Orman does. No matter how much they give away.

Artists find ways to monetize their knowledge, from the elite to the bourgeois to the commercial to the assembly line.

Musicians tour and sell merchandise. (I probably should’ve used Radiohead for that example, but oh well.)

But most writers have no real avenue of residual earnings off their writing, except through direct sale of the work itself. Most writers will do whatever it is they do anyway without pay and continue to sling hash and throw themselves on the altar of “honing their craft” in order to earn the approbation of agents and editors (if they continue to exist in any number). They’ll take increasingly lower wages in order to be afforded the privilege of writing for money (i.e., “be a REAL writer”) for the cachet of having gotten The Call.

And then they’ll be pirated one way (cutting a print book open and scanning it) or another (file sharing).

Because the consumer has been trained via a number of methods to feel entitled to intellectual property and will, in turn, slap down any writer egotistical enough to say, “Hey, the work product of my brain is worth money.” They’ll do this through two methods:

Refuse to pay and not consume, then find free (possibly inferior, probably equivalent, possibly superior) content elsewhere.

Refuse to pay and consume anyway. Piracy.

No, his mind is not for rent to any god or government.

Nor, I would add, a self-entitled public. It should be for sale.

Aside: I needed the expertise of an editor to thoroughly go over my book. I paid her. I will not disclose how much because I don’t want to think about it; however, she had expertise I did not and I felt … weird … about asking someone to do that much work for little to no money.

What’s the answer?

Hell, I don’t know.

Rand had her architect and her musician and her novelist ride off into the sunset poverty-stricken for the sake of their art, taking their work with them.

The Internet drowns in pundits and theorists claiming, “Information wants to be freeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

The writer in me, the one who was reared to give away knowledge, still hears the siren call of That One Person to whom what I have to say will make a difference in his life and possibly change it for the better—whether I know it or not.

The entrepreneur in me wants to make a living doing what I love to do. Validation is gravy, but I gotta have the spuds.

This crow needs pepper or sumpin’

Moriah

Smashwords logoOkay, so remember where I said I wouldn’t put The Proviso on Smashwords because it had special formatting and boo hoo hoo?

You know what? I’m a capitalist-pig whore1 and I’m full of shit, too.

Smashwords partnered with Stanza and Stanza’s iPhone store, so naturally I got over my formatting/design hubris immediately and figured out a way to do all my special little touches with your bare-bones Word settings. So, yeah. Apple, bite me. Or rather, let me bite you. The Proviso is now available on your iPhone/iTouch at the Stanza store via Smashwords in EPUB, LRF, MOBI/PRC, PDB (the PalmDoc source file, not the eReader container), and PDF. You can read 30% of it free there, too.

But, erm, be patient. Their servers are very popular at the moment.

Yay Stanza and a big THANKS! to Mark Coker and Bill Kendrick for going out of their way to help me.

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1.  Yeah, I know it was redundant and probably went without saying anyway.

Faith and hope and elbow grease

Moriah

I’m a permablogger over at Publishing Renaissance (for those of you who don’t know). I’m alternating Thursdays, starting January 1 [post is gone] (yeah, I know, it was 2 days ago). And it’s so cool to be kicking off Publishing Renaissance’s year.

Lately, I’ve been around some blogs that are extraordinarily kinda negative and I notice it brings my production down, in terms of writing the next books in the Dunham series, in terms of the projects B10 Mediaworx has on the table right now (I don’t have enough fingers to count), in terms of my own blogging, in terms of doing what writers are supposed to do once their books are published, in terms of the DDJ, and most importantly, in terms of how I treat my Tax Deductions and Dude. I know I shouldn’t allow myself to be that influenced by negativity that it starts trickling down to my fandamily, but I am.

I’ve never been a positive-thinker type of person, but Dude is and he’s rubbed off on me. I’m also not one of those “think it into existence” people, either. It’s just that I’ve noticed that the more productive I get the more positive I get; the more I hang around negativity, the less productive I get. This isn’t a good situation. I have too many interesting things to do to mess around with things that don’t advance my goals.

One of the interesting things I’m into is, as you know, independent publishing. While I do point out what I feel are the weaknesses of traditional publishing (and I’ll admit to a certain level of frustration and bitterness—I’m only human), I do that to highlight the fact that one can be in charge of one’s own destiny—

—and it’s an incredible feeling, let me tell you.

There are “vanity press” naysayers and name-callers and compulsive “helpers” who aren’t really helping. The fact that they quite often don’t differentiate between “vanity” and “POD” and “self” publishing is, I think, a function of insufficient research or a measure of insulation from the querying masses or resentment for taking a “shortcut” and bypassing the “system.” Depending on the day, that might hurt my feelings, but I keep on keeping on.

Mostly what keeps me going is when I look at the pile of projects that have been brought to us (B10 Mediaworx) that are incredible and fantastic. To know we might have a role in bringing such incredible and fantastic things to the public—things that have never been done before and we would never have conceived of on our own—because I took my destiny in my own hands is …

I have no words to describe it.

We might fail. I might fail.

And that’s okay.

But I have to make the effort, cut through the bullshit, and go forward with courage and optimism. Maybe, just maybe, I can offer someone else a hand up or a piece of information they needed or some encouragement along the way.

Creating e-books: The easy way

Moriah

I AM AGAINST DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT (DRM). ANY VENDOR I RECOMMEND WILL SHARE THIS STANCE AND ANY INSTRUCTIONS I GIVE WILL IGNORE ANY POSSIBILITY FOR ENCRYPTION. IF YOU WANT TO LOCK UP YOUR WORK, FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF.

In my last episode, I instructed you to go learn (X)HTML/CSS. I was gently taken to task for that with the point, “writers shouldn’t have to learn code.” While I am of the opinion that for some writers, this is not only true, but that they should be kept from any computer interaction whatsoever, I’m afraid it’s just not realistic in the long run. You will learn something, even if it’s only the paragraph tags and all of it will be useful to you at some point.

Yes, you can use blogger.com or wordpress.com or any other sign-in platform for your blogging.

Yes, you can use Word and PrimoPDF to set type and distribute your work as a free PDF.

If you want to:

  1. offer more than one file format (PDF) and/or
  2. charge for your work

you’re going to have to either pay someone to do it for you or learn how to do it yourself.

There are quite a few places that will help you with #A.

FEEDBOOKS. As far as I can tell, if you use this service, you must offer your work for free. If this is not acceptable to you, just don’t use their service. (And if this isn’t true, let me know because I scoured the site and couldn’t find any “payment” type information.) Also, you must manually build your book. Now, this has its pros and cons. The con is that it takes a while. The pro is that you can make it look purty with a little care and attention without having to learn much (if any) (X)HTML/CSS.

BOOKWORM. This is a peculiar service in that you may upload your own book, but the only format you get is the EPUB format. It is also more for reading than publishing (as far as I can tell; more information on this is welcome).

SMASHWORDS. This is the Q-DOS of e-book building/formatting. It’s very quick. And yeah, sometimes it’s dirty, especially if you don’t format your Word document correctly (as in, according to standard word processing practices and to Smashwords’s style guide). That’s the con. The pro is it’s fast and you can charge for your work.

I’m making several assumptions here. The FIRST assumption is that you want your book to be in as many electronic formats as possible. The SECOND assumption is that you want to have those formats available to you on your own hard drive for dissemination as you please. The THIRD assumption is that you want your work to have widespread visibility across the interwebz. The FOURTH assumption is that you might want to get paid for your work.

So let’s talk about Smashwords.

I heard about Smashwords from Eugene Woodbury quite a while back, who used it for his novel Path of Dreams, but I dismissed it because I thought the work had to be offered free. Then Zoe Winters used it for her free novella “Kept.” Okay. But then Aaron Ross Powell used it to offer his draft of The Hole in more formats than Kindle right after I bitched about it. Then RJ Keller used it to offer Waiting for Spring, and that’s when I had the V-8 moment.

I figured, well, what the hell, I’ll try this thing. So I took a vignette from The Proviso’s world (not in the book) called “25 to Life” and decided to put it on Smashwords.

[07/15/2025: At the time of cleaning this post up, I can’t retrieve “25 to Life” from the archive where I put it, so instead, I made my story from Monsters & Mormons, “Allow Me to Introduce Myself” available for free to demonstrate.]

CAVEAT: “25 to Life” did not call for fancy formatting like The Proviso does. The Proviso has blog posts, e-mails, news clippings, court transcripts, social services records, a wedding announcement, and other specialized formatting that required different fonts, spacing, and margins to make those items look good. If you have something like that, this will not work for you.

ASSUMPTION 1. That you want your book to be in as many electronic formats as possible.

They have this nifty little API they call the “MeatGrinder.” It will turn a plain, properly formatted Word document into any one or more of the following digital formats:
“Allow Me to Introduce Myself”
uploaded 07/15/2025 for demonstration purposes
 
Now you can read “25 to Life” here for free.
 
FORMAT
FULL BOOK
Online Reading (HTML)
View
Online Reading (JavaScript)
MOBI (Kindle)
Download
EPUB (open industry format, good for Stanza reader, others)
Download
PDF (good for highly formatted books, or for home printing)
Download
RTF (readable on most word processors)
LRF (for Sony Reader)
Download
PDB (Palm Doc, for Palm reading devices)
Download
TXT (plain text: flexible, but lacks much formatting)
Download
TXT (plain text: viewable as web page)
As you can see, that’s a lot of variation. I got both The Hole and Waiting for Spring in the RTF format, as that was the easiest for me to convert to my eBookWise reader. Powell asked for $2.99 and Keller offered hers for “you set the price.”

ASSUMPTION 2. That you want to have those formats available to you on your own hard drive for dissemination as you please.

I don’t even know if you have to buy it yourself (if you set a price) to download which formats you want to offer from your own site or elsewhere, but even if you do have to, you got off cheap in both time and money.

Don’t be an ass. Be courteous and leave it up on Smashwords. They did the work for you.

You will not be able to get a straight HTML document to download and then tweak to other formats, which is good.

ASSUMPTION 3. That you want your work to have widespread visibility across the interwebz.

The founder of Smashwords, Mark Coker, says: “Our mission is to give every author a chance to find their audience.”

Smashwords is gradually gaining in name recognition and usage. Augment your presence on Smashwords with placement of your work elsewhere on the ’net. It benefits you and Smashwords (you know, the people who did the work for you).

ASSUMPTION 4. You might want to get paid for your work.

There are several payment options at Smashwords, which I’ve addressed. In my first “creating ebooks” post, commenter and indie author champion Morris Rosenthal told me about e-junkie.com, which is a payment portal for downloads. He’s had quite a bit of success with this method, though I can’t vouch for it at this time (although I do intend to check it out).

However, as far as I know, Smashwords is the only independent e-publishing vendor that offers an API process AND a payment portal and quite frankly, there’s just nothing else that beats that, even if you do have to sacrifice a little formatting.

So after having put “25 to Life” up on Smashwords, used their API, seen their output, what do I think?

The HTML and Java versions (the ones that you read on your computer) are very pretty and you can adjust fonts, colors, and sizes as you like.

The plain TXT ones are, well, plain text. It says “may lack some formatting,” but if you know anything about plain text, you know that means no formatting.

The EPUB (use with Stanza for iPhone/iTouch, Adobe Digital Editions) format doesn’t seem to have centered anything, but I can live with that.

The LRF (Sony) and PDB (Palm) didn’t pick up the italics, which is something I can’t live with, but it’s being worked on right now (no promises!).

The PDF looked like a manuscript because, well, it comes from a plain Word document, so you know that going in.

The MOBI/PRC (Kindle, MobiPocket) looked great.

The RTF is obviously going to look just like a Word document, and it’s my go-to for conversion to IMP (eBookWise), so I don’t care how it looks.

If you follow the Smashwords style guide to the letter, you’ll have a slew of decent-looking e-books (including EPUB!) as defined by my last post on “the page” and you’ll get them in about 3 minutes, along with a payment portal.

Smashwords is an elegant little API, and it’s still in beta testing. I can’t wait to see what it’ll be at full force.

A rose by any other name

Moriah

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the definition of a “book,” or more specifically, the proper formatting of an e-book, and the definition of a “page” and its importance in the New eWorld Order.

I’m here to tell you: Unless it’s on paper or in PDF, they ain’t no such thing as a page.

I’ll admit that it took me a while to get used to reading on my eBookWise. Between the whacked-out spacing and the left justification and the lack of paragraph indents, it looked … sloppy. Inferior. But I stuck with it and realized that each book is formatted differently; some are prettier and easier to read than others, but mostly not. I did, however, have problems even with the “prettiest” of the formatting. I was able to adjust my expectations of the presentation once I realized it was a function of the DEVICE and that the DEVICE was not a print book. The print book and the e-book simply have nothing in common except the words they contain: not headers, not footers, not design, not formatting, not … page numbers.

To use the “page” as common ground, each user must have the same edition of a paper book and/or the same edition of the PDF file, but that’s a fairly easy task to accomplish.

In any other format, however, it’s nearly impossible without each user having the same device, the same font settings (i.e., large or small), the same page view settings. Gentlemen, let’s synchronize our devices. Taking the probability of that into account, then, the concept of the “page” vanishes.

The latest argument I have seen for the need for strict pagination in e-books to approximate or duplicate that of a print book is for reference books and the uses of academia viz. for annotation and bibliography, tables of contents and indices, footnotes and end notes. What this demonstrates to me is ignorance or lack of vision or an inability to understand the vast differences in the format, and the capabilities and limitations of each.

ANNOTATION and BIBLIOGRAPHY
A set of the four Mormon/LDS scriptures (King James version of the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price) in one book.
a “quad”

When your bishop or your preacher or your pastor or your minister or other Protestant-type ecclesiastical leader gets up and wants everybody to flip open their Bibles, does s/he say, “Please turn to page 1436 in your Bible”? No. He says, “Romans chapter 15.” (Cause that’s where mine is. In the King James Version. What if you prefer to use a different version? No problem! Romans chapter 15 is still where it’s supposed to be, which is between Romans 14 and Romans 16.)

Cover of a refreshed version of HAMLET by William Shakespeare.When your English lit professor or your director or your acting coach directs you to a certain passage in a Shakespearean play, does he say, “Please turn to Hamlet, page 783”? No. (Well, first of all, he’s OBVIOUSLY working from an anthology if it has 783 pages to begin with.) He says, “Please turn to Act 2, Scene 2, Line 35.” So what this means is I was smart and brought my little bitty Hamlet and everybody else was stupid and brought their big fat anthologies. And it makes no difference whatsoever.

The two print books, Bible and Shakespearean anthology, have page numbers. But they aren’t referred to or necessary for annotation or bibliography. In fact, the only thing they’re used for is within the book itself to create tables of contents and indices.

So let’s talk about that.

TABLES OF CONTENTS, INDICES, and FOOT/END NOTES

There’s only one thing a table of contents and/or index is good for: To find your place in the book. Thing is, in a print book, that’s the only way you can find anything … maybe kinda sorta quickly.

In an e-book, the tables of contents and indices have completely different purposes. In fact, an index isn’t even necessary in an e-book, although I would argue that a table of contents is. However, their function and mechanism of use are entirely different from that of a print book.

  1. It’s called a hyperlink.
    • Now, don’t be scared. I’m sure you’ve seen them before here and elsewhere on the interwebz. You put your cursor over it and click and boom … you’re somewhere else on the interwebz. Cool, huh?
    • You can do that in an ebook, too.
    • A list of hyperlinks in the beginning of the e-book serves the same function as the table of contents serves in a print book. A print book has page numbers after the chapter name. An e-book has a hyperlink you touch with your stylus and boom, you’re there, same as it works on the interwebz. No page numbers? No problem! Not necessary at all.
    • But hyperlinks are good within the text, too. If a word is hyperlinked, you touch it with your stylus and it takes you to further reading. They used to be called “footnotes” and “end notes.” Don’t need those anymore, either. Oh, they’re still footnotes and end notes, but they have no precise structure because it’s not necessary. The device will take you where you need to go.
       
  2. It’s called the “find” function.
    • You can’t do this in a print book. There is no CTRL-F. There is no “Find.” You go to the table of contents and/or the index and if you’re lucky, that book had an excellent indexer. If you’re not, well, good luck to you then. I’m going out to get some Chinese while you look for that reference. Want anything?
    • Is there an e-reading device that doesn’t have a “find” function? If there is, smash it and get something else, ’cause there is no point to an e-reading device without a “find” function. Because why? Because there are no page numbers.

If the argument (with regard to reference material) is that e-reference books can’t be annotated or bibliographed or referenced, there’s a simple way around that. Organize the book in some other fashion, a la the Bible or Shakespeare. It’s been done. The system’s only been around for a few hundred years now. If it ain’t on paper, it ain’t got pages.

And if it’s inevitable, just lay back and enjoy it.

Book Review: Waiting for Spring

Moriah

Cover of WAITING FOR SPRING by R.J. Keller, showing a barren tree and snowy grass.Waiting for Spring
by RJ Keller

It’s been a long time since I threw common sense to the wind and stayed up to finish a book knowing how much I had to do the next day, but not resenting it the next day because it was totally worth it.

This book has no spiffy genre classification. After some thought, I think I’d call it “literary romance.” I don’t know what “women’s fiction” is and I’m not sure I really even know what “chick lit” is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not either of those. And you know, lately, I’ve been very happy with the books that haven’t been easily classified.

Here’s the blurb:

It’s not the kind of pain she can see and smell and wrap with an ace bandage. It’s the kind she tries to numb with sex and work and cleaning-cleaning-cleaning the house. The kind that comes from enduring a lifetime of rejection. First from her mother–whom Tess knows would have aborted her had the law allowed it–then from a string of men whose names she can never remember. And finally, at age thirty-four, from her husband of ten years; the man who once promised to love her forever.

You want angst? I gotcher angst right here, pal. And this is the good stuff, the kind that jerks you around and bashes you over the head and makes you come back for more to see how it all ends. In my experience with literary fiction (one of which was an Oprah pick—sue me), there seems to be some sort of unwritten rule about writing angst, which is to understate it, to let the subtleties of the angst dawn on the reader like a sunrise behind storm clouds.

Problem with that approach is that A) I don’t ever get to know or care about the characters enough to care about their angst and B) their angst isn’t that big of a deal anyway; if the characters clearly don’t care about their angst, why should I? So I’ll read literary fiction, don’t get me wrong, but later, I’ll scratch my head and say (if asked), “Yeah, I think I read that book, but I don’t remember the name or the author.” I just remember dipping my toe in the wading pool of that world once upon a time.

The main character, Tess, has angst and she doesn’t seem to care about her angst, either. But I cared about her angst from the very first paragraph:

They say actions speak louder than words. Maybe. But words do a hell of a lot more damage. Even well-meaning words spoken by well-meaning people.

People like Sister Patricia Mary Theriault. She was my catechism teacher when I was seven years old. Until she ruined my life. [ … ]

Then she told us about the bad soil. [ … ] But the only bad soil I heard about was this:

“As the Sower was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on and–”

Path. Trampled. Bad soil. [ … ]

“Don’t let your hearts become trampled down, children. Keep them soft and fertile so you can feel God’s love inside of you.”

Seven years old. And already I knew I was in some deep shit. The kind that even Sister Patricia couldn’t do anything about.

The twin hyperbolic allegories of “until she ruined my life” and “Seven years old. And already I knew I was in some deep shit” are not, actually, hyperbolic or allegorical, but the reader doesn’t find out why or how until far, far into the book.

You might be tempted to point out that this is simply excellent fiction infrastructure, to which I would say … yeah, I know. But I don’t see that a whole lot anymore. As far as I can tell, the current writing fad is to make me, Random Reader, ask the question and then never let it linger like a good combination of spices on my tongue or let me savor the moment of enlightenment when/if it happens.

Instead, it will ask the question and proceed to answer it for me 2 pages later and sometimes, even worse, will over-explain it in case I didn’t get it fast enough or thoroughly digest all the layers of subtext. I’m very tired of being treated like an idiot in my fiction and, further, I hate that I actually have to call attention to this amazingly annoying trend.

There are quite a few laugh-out-loud lines, sharp. Wry.

When Tess, age 34, takes Brian, age 25, as a lover, they finish, talk, then begin again not long after. Tess observes,

Ready again. Twenty-five. Gotta love that.

Keller also gives the reader glimpses of the spirituality that’s woven all through the tale; they glimmer, like the gold threads in shot fabric:

The stars, he said, were actually souls; all the souls that were too restless to be locked up in heaven. They were so restless that God let them stay outside at night to play.

And when an 8-year-old girl about to take her first communion asks Tess if she believes in God, Tess says:

“Yes, I believe in God. I just … I don’t feel close to him in church.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

I shrugged, even though I knew exactly why. I knew because I’d felt that way since I was a little girl, sitting in my church clothes, listening to the Mass. Trying to feel His presence. Struggling to feel His love. But there was nothing there. Nothing but words I didn’t completely understand and scary status. And then, one beautiful Sunday Spring morning when I was nine years old, something occurred to me. Something I never told anyone else.

He’s not really in here. God doesn’t live inside a building, and that’s all a church is; just a building filled with lots of words. [ … ]

Because Anne [of Green Gables] said that if she really wanted to talk to God, a real true prayer, then she’d have to go outside to do it. She’s need to surround herself with God’s creation, with His beauty; drink it in and let it fill her up. And then she could look heavenward and just feel a prayer.

The narrative itself is choppy, with sentences and paragraphs written in fits and starts, which perfectly mirrors Tess’s personality and her coping mechanisms (particularly her “personality disorder”). In fact, a good portion of Tess’s internal dialog and her observations are written as wry asides to herself and she is inviting you, Random Reader, to chuckle along with her.

And I did. Even while I had tears running down my cheeks.

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.

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.

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.

Blue exclamation point clipart
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 [dead link]. 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 [out of print] (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.