Electronic Book Signing

A signed e-book.

While e-books are busy conquering the print world (and Borders vanishes, accelerating the trend towards e-books, there are certain advantages that print books still maintain. One of the less obvious ones is the signed copy. It's really kind of cool to go and see an author at a bookstore, hear them talk about their book and answer questions, and then get your very own copy signed.

With e-books, you can still go and hear an author speak, but there's been no way for her to sign your e-book. Some have been in development... and now there's Kindlegraph. It's a way to sign Kindle e-books, and it seems to have some basic issues solved. Basically, you can get an author to write an inscription to you, and the PDF gets sent to you and stuck onto your Kindle book file.

This does mean the author doesn't have to be in physical proximity to you... this can all be done remotely, though of course that's a less compelling attraction than the actual press-the-flesh style book-signing. A more basic problem is that unlike a signed physical book, you have not added any value to your Kindle book... since you can't resell it.

That is one of the key disadvantages of the e-book... it's not lendable or resellable. There are efforts to make books lendable, and I hope someone will figure out the resale part someday. Though that wish is probably not shared by most authors.

The E-Book Revolution Is Over; E-Books Win

Harry Potter and friends, shown as they are about to zap traditional publishing.

I don't think there can be any clearer sign that publishing has changed for good and e-books are king than this: J.K. Rowling has announced that she will be self-publishing Harry Potter e-books. I guess anyone who thinks that self-pubbing is a sign that your books can't make it in the marketplace is going to have to rethink.

The e-books will be sold through her new web site, Pottermore, which means she'll get to keep all the revenue. I suppose she'll make some sort of deal with Amazon and Apple so that Kindle and iPad users will have easy access to her books, but nothing's been said about that so far. Joe Konrath has some good thoughts on the matter here; he sees it as the continuation of the death spiral for traditional publishing. He's right.

Be careful walking around Manhattan during the next few weeks; falling publishers could be a health hazard.

Lending E-books

Borrow me.

The e-book industry continues to evolve, with more and more of the traditional practices of paper books somehow finding their way into the new format. One of these practices is lending a book. Yes, it's possible to lend an e-book, and this article covers some of the companies making it possible.

For example, Lendle uses Amazon's API to allow you to lend out your Kindle e-books to other Kindle users. You have to be willing to lend your own e-books in order to borrow someone else's, but that's not a big restriction. Best of all, your book should be in the same condition when you get it back.

This removes one of the barriers to buying an e-book; I'm more likely to buy one if I know I can lend it to someone. This may not make authors terribly happy, but being found is a bigger problem for authors than piracy. Lending is a great way to get someone to try out a new author, and if they like it they'll become purchasers. There's nothing I love better than finding an author I like... it means I can collect everything that author has written and know I'll be getting something good.

More E-Book Publishing Options

The e-book field continues to evolve, as publishers and authors figure out that e-books can be more than just a regular book output as a PDF instead of a printed, bound version. A Spanish company, 24symbols, as recently gone into beta on a book publishing service that offers both ad-supported and subscription options. They are looking at reading e-books as a web activity, perhaps one that you do along with friends. They're exploring a variety of models, including the freemium model. It's a way to offer content in a variety of payment plans, offering a way to find more readers for content.

This kind of experimentation is important as we all are finding out what works and what doesn't. I'm sure the nature of e-books will continue to evolve rapidly. Which means that something that's the right course of action today may not be correct tomorrow. Stay flexible, and stay in touch with what's happening out there. Your profits may depend on it.

Ebook Sales Triple

Ebook sales have tripled since last year, and the trend shows no sign of slowing down,  comparing January-February sales to last year's. It looks like the wave of ereaders and tablets sold over Christmas resulted, not too surprisingly, in a wave of ebooks sold in the first quarter. With tablet sales alone expect to be triple sales of last year, not to mention how many e-readers will be sold (and smartphones!), you can expect ebook sales to continue their headlong growth.

At the same time, paper book sales are declining, helped along (no doubt) by the closure of many bookstores. Not just a little; adult books dropped 34%, while children's books dropped 16%. No wonder bookstores are hurting. I think it's pretty clear readers are switching to ebooks as fast as they can.

Not without some hitches, though. As this case shows, when the Hachette Group decided to price Michael Connelly's latest best-seller The Fifth Witness at $14.99 for the e-book... and it was selling for $14.28 on Amazon as a hardcover. Not surprisingly, Amazon reviewers savaged it for the pricing, giving it a slew of one-star reviews. The ebook price later dropped to $12.99... but it still shows a stunning disregard for reality. It sure reminds me of the cluelessness of the music industry, which was still trying to sell CD's for $18 when people could buy the tracks for 99 cents. How's that working out for the music industry? About as well as it's working out for the book industry, which is to say not well at all.

Savvy authors who are self-publishing are making a mint with ebooks priced at $4.99 or $2.99 or even 99 cents. There's no sure bet on pricing, except that readers aren't dummies and realize that an ebook should cost less than a printed book. So if paperbacks are $9 or $10, readers expect an ebook for a lot less. And hey, they might even buy more books... or be more likely to take a flyer on an author they don't know, or a genre they haven't tried.

OK, but printed books still have advantages... like you can get one autographed. Can't do that with an ebook, right? Maybe, but not for long. A new company promises to provide a way for authors to sign ebooks... and authors can do book signings from the comfort of their own homes, and even put pictures into the signature of themselves with their fans. That's going to be really cool when it arrives... a terrific tool for self-publishing authors.

I'm sure the book publishing industry will figure all this out someday... maybe a few years after the industry collapses.

E-Book Market 2011: Apple Tightens Its Grip

Interesting news coming out of Cupertino... Apple is getting tougher with apps that sell products outside of Apple's usual 30% cut. Apparently Apple has blocked Sony's e-reader app and mandated that purchases of e-books cannot be sold without giving Apple their cut. Even books you bought outside the App would not be allowed within.

This has massive implications. Kindle has been successful partly because the software is available on all sorts of platforms, and wherever you bought your Kindle book it's available, and bookmarked the same. So if you start reading a book on your Kindle reader, then go to it on your iPhone, it's in the same place. No longer; under Apple's new policy apps can no longer access content purchased outside the App Store.

As you can imagine, there's already widespread concern since this article was published in the New York Times. I can understand Apple's concern, because at its logical extreme this would encourage app makers to funnel in-app purchases to outside places, and Apple would lose what's currently 50% of App Store revenue: the in-app purchase. On the other hand, you can see where Amazon wouldn't want to take an extra 30% hit on ebooks they sell... there goes the profit margin, and then some.

Conceptually there seems to be a difference to me between buying an e-book on Amazon, then wanting to read it on my iPhone or iPad, versus going to an app on my iPhone and buying an ebook there. Though it gets fuzzy when I think about using a Kindle app on my iPhone to buy an ebook... would the user even know where the transaction takes place, or care? Well, Apple and Amazon sure do.

So this struggle is going to be a major one, and it may well affect how ebooks are sold and distributed and read. I'd hate to see ebooks become walled off based on the platform where you purchased them, and I don't think consumers will sit still for that, either. This same policy would also affect things like Sony's plan to bring PSOne games to iOS, for instance; Apple would not allow sales of Sony games within a Sony app unless Apple got a cut, under this policy. Would Sony sit still for that?

This also bears on the magazine/newspaper subscription revenue issue that's still outstanding.

Apple's going to be in the middle of some interesting discussions. I hope this ultimately plays out to the benefit of the customers. Apple may have to make its simple 70/30 split structure a little more complicated to accommodate reality and customer needs.

UPDATE: Apple has responded, to clarify that content purchased elsewhere is OK as long as it is also available through an in-app purchase (where Apple can get its cut). If the app developer doesn’t want to use Apple’s in-app purchases to sell content, then the app can’t access content purchased elsewhere either. I don't think this solves the problem, and no doubt the discussions will continue.

E-book Market Predictions 2011

The e-book market is finally arriving in a big way. Amazon hasn't released sales figures for the Kindle, but they have admitted that it's their best-selling product ever. Even beating out Harry Potter... and Kindles are a tad more expensive. Barnes & Noble reports the Nook is their bestselling product ever. Meanwhile, Borders edges closer to bankruptcy. Here's some relevant info:

Forrester Research expects U.S. e-book sales to total $2.8 billion in 2015, up from nearly $1 billion in 2010. The research firm projects the number of e-readers and tablets in the U.S. will soar from more than 15 million in 2010 to nearly 60 million in 2015.

And I think those numbers are conservative.

• Regular book sales drop, e-books continue explosive growth. There's an easy prediction for you. I might as well start off with a no-brainer. B&N is selling more digital books online than physical books. With physical bookstores going out of business, it's clear which way the trends are going. Physical books will tend to be more for certain types of books (like coffee-table books), and popular fiction will inevitably for the e-book.
• E-book readers hit $99 or less. This is already happening, but expect it from the market leaders (I'm looking at you, Kindle) with a resulting jump in sales. When the e-reader is less than 3 or 4 hardback books, it's harder to resist. When publishers finally get smarter and lower e-book prices more, sales will jump even further. If they don't, authors will step in. Lower prices are inevitable in a friction-free distribution network; publishers should get ahead of the trend instead of being rolled over by it. Sadly, very few if any will.
• Explosive growth in the tablet market contributes to e-book sales growth. Tablets are eating into dedicated e-reader market share, too. The Kindle has a 47% share, down 15 points, while the iPad has a 32% share, up 16 points. The Nook and Sony's E-reader are hanging in around 5%, though I expect the Nook's numbers to improve. It looks like the iPad sold about 13 million units in 2010; Apple is expected to at least double, and maybe triple that number in 2011.
• More companies spring up offering a la carte services to authors; big publishers lose some big names to self-publishing. These two things are related, of course. The easier it gets for authors to publish their e-books themselves, the more authors will do it.
• Magazines finally crack the e-reader market in a big way as Apple makes it easy to buy subs. This one is dependent on Apple and magazine publishers reaching some sort of agreement on revenue splits. Publishers don't want to give up 30% of their sub fees to Apple, and Apple doesn't really want to go to the extra effort of negotiating with everybody. I'm hopeful Apple will do something to really help magazines out, but I fear they won't. Eventually magazines will be viewed on tablets, but getting to that point will be difficult for the businesses. Current iPad versions of magazines are individually priced and difficult for the magazines to produce well, since they take different skill sets. I foresee many magazines having trouble until subscriptions to tablet versions become easy, and magazines get more adept at crafting them. Maybe Google will add this capability to Android before Apple gets around to it; if so, a big win for Android. Hey, Google, if you really want to make an inroad on the iPad's market share, cut a deal with textbook publishers before Apple does.
• Android tablet version finally appears; Android tablets boom; e-book sales zoom faster. It may happen late in 2011, but it will happen. The opportunity is huge and Google won't pass it up. Prices will drop as competition roars. Maybe we'll even see a two-page tablet at a reasonable price.
• Apple introduces iPad 2, drops iPad prices, sales zoom. Yeah, it's inevitable. People are so focused on the new iPad that they forget what Apple does with old technology... they drop the price. So even more iBookstores will open up.

All in all, it will be a great year for e-book authors. The only downside is that marketing e-books will get tougher due to the increased numbers of titles. Authors will need to make sure they've done their marketing properly. Persistence is a key virtue; if you don't do something correctly at first, figure it out, fix it and continue.

Finding E-Books

As a corollary to my last post on finding digital products, I thought I'd talk about the problems of finding e-books. It's a related issue that's of concern to many authors, especially new ones. How will readers find my books? Fortunately, the tools for finding books have been refined much more than for finding games. Amazon has developed some great software behind the scenes that helps you find books you might be interested in, knowing what you've already purchased.

The problem with Amazon's tools, for instance, from the author's standpoint is that this is a black box. You don't know how Amazon figures this out, and there's no clear way to influence it. You don't know who will find out about your book, or how many of them. So it's not really something you should worry about. It just is, and hopefully it will be of some help.

Authors do face something of a conundrum. For the most part, they don't want to be marketers, or to become marketers. It's hard enough being a writer, and the time you spend marketing your book is time you could be spending writing another book. Yet you see books become bestsellers that you know aren't particularly well-written... so you figure it must be marketing, and if only you could add some of that magic pixie dust maybe your book would be touted by Oprah, too.

If only it was that easy... but there is a middle ground. Setting up a Facebook page for yourself as Author is pretty simple, and an easy way to get started. You'll have to spend some regular time adding to it, though, to make it work for you. Social media like Facebook and Twitter only help if you (or someone working for you) is using them to be social. (Authors may want to enlist a friend or big fan to help... but you have to monitor that to be sure you're getting the kind of help you want.)

Authors who make friends with other authors can cross-promote, if their fan bases are at all similar. The experiment that Draculas conducted was interesting and worked well on a number of levels.

I'm making notes towards a book to help authors market themselves. I think it's most important for authors to know how to get maximum marketing impact for the minimum time and effort. Authors should be spending time writing more books, and making sure they are the best they can be. A good series of quality books is a terrific marketing tool all by itself. Besides, they make money. Dean Wesley Smith, an author who blogs about such things, believes writers should write and spend a minimal amount of time marketing. I agree; if you don't enjoy marketing, don't really understand what it is you should be doing with it, then do enough to cover the basics and get back to writing. You might try to buy some marketing services and see if it brings in enough extra revenue to pay for itself. Otherwise, get back to turning out some books you can sell, and hone your craft.