Archive for the ‘About Publishing’ Category
Updating Books on the Kindle – A Big No-Go?
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on March 23rd, 2009
One of the attractive options about publishing through Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP) to the Kindle Store was that books could be updated, and folks who had bought an earlier copy could re-download the revised one.
Now, I’ll be darned if I can find the documentation on that (although I very strongly recall that it wasn’t just urban legend), but a recent post on the DTP forums put a torpedo in that particular ship. One of the folks on the forum called Amazon support and was told that there currently is no way for readers to download an updated version of a title, unless they ask for a refund and then repurchase the book. And, of course, Amazon apparently won’t allow that as a general rule.
Hopefully they’ll add that as a feature, because it would be an extremely powerful advantage, particularly for “how-to” books that can be updated periodically with the latest information. Come on, Amazon, push the envelope a bit, would you?
Kindle Publishing Tip: Formatting Differences With Kindle 2
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on March 2nd, 2009
If you publish (or are interested in publishing) on the Amazon Kindle, I wanted to direct your attention to an outstanding post by Joshua Tallent from www.kindleformatting.com on some of the display differences in formatting between the Kindle 1 and Kindle 2. I’m not going to steal any of Joshua’s thunder, so go check it out!
Kindle Publishing Tip: Do You Need An ISBN For eBooks?
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on March 1st, 2009
This question seems to come up an awful lot: do you need to have an ISBN – International Standard Book Number – for an ebook (on the Amazon Kindle or otherwise)?
The answer, bottom line, is no.
Currently, ISBNs are only required for printed matter books. The purpose of the ISBN, according to ISBN.org, is “to establish and identify one title or edition of a title from one specific publisher and is unique to that edition, allowing for more efficient marketing of products by booksellers, libraries, universities, wholesalers and distributors.”
At this point, the main use of the ISBN in Kindle publication using Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP) is to help Amazon link up the catalog entries for the Kindle and print editions of your book so that the reader reviews posted to one version will also appear in the other, and so on. The same is also true for books you publish through Mobipocket.com that are then distributed to the Kindle store: if you have a print edition of your book on Amazon, make sure to put the print edition ISBN in the ISBN field of the ebook metadata.
Self-Published Books: Turning The Tables
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on February 26th, 2009
In an earlier post I went through a bit of a painful discussion of some of the reasons it’s so hard for self-published authors to make as much headway as they’d like. The bottom line is that the literary world, for lack of a better term, looks upon self-published work as crap. And, let’s be entirely honest with ourselves about it, that opinion isn’t undeserved.
The question, then, is can we change that perception? I believe the answer is yes, and here are a few ideas on how we might work toward that goal.
I think there are two main, inter-related issues:
The first is quality. We want “our” books to look like “their” (the big houses’) books. We want them to look like them, be priced as close as we can to them, and have the same literary quality (or at least mechanical accuracy) as them. If you walked into a bookstore and put your book on a shelf of books of the same genre and size/type (e.g., paperbacks), the customers wouldn’t know the difference from the cover, from the interior appearance if they picked it up to browse through it, or from the grammar or punctuation. Maybe they’ll like the bit of the story they read, maybe not – that’s more subjective – but there won’t be anything about the book that says “amateur.”
Second, we want to gain access to “bigger” reviewers and promoters than the typical blogger, or the local newspaper that tosses a bone to a local author with a sidebar on page twenty. But to do that, we need to give them confidence that the book they receive is of commercial quality. They need to know that their time will be well-invested, and that their reputation isn’t going to suffer if they review this thing.
I’m sure what I’m going to suggest here isn’t original, and it’s certainly not going to be without some controversy, nor is it a “silver bullet” that’s going to solve all our problems as self-publishers. But I think that this is one possible way to get where many of us collectively want to go.
One. We need to clean up our act as individuals. If you’re serious about your writing, if you’re serious about competing with the “big boys,” then you need to put the time, effort, and – in some cases – money into making your book pro quality.
Two. There is safety and power in numbers. The big houses hold almost all the cards, but there are enough indie authors and self-published authors out there now to start making a difference. We need to band together in an effective, cohesive manner behind a set of uniform goals.
Three. We need a set of standards. We need templates, if you will, to help authors ensure their books follow the same accepted format standards as “real” books. Margins, type faces and size, the leading pages – all of that sort of thing. Again, we want our books to look just like those of the big houses!
Four. We need a review body that awards a quality seal to books that meet commercial standards. This is likely where things will run aground, because – being indie authors – we tend to want to do our own thing because, well, we’re independent! But I strongly believe that this is really the golden key, because with this mechanism in place, I believe we stand a reasonable chance of convincing at least some major reviewers (among others) to give our books a try. It also shows that we as a group are taking ourselves seriously and are self-correcting our own shortcomings. And, hey, that we are a group – an increasingly large group – rather than just a bunch of unconnectd individuals.
So, there’s some food for thought. I’ll post some more ideas on the details in the next post in this series…
Self-Publishing And Quality: Mutually Exclusive Terms?
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on February 25th, 2009
Self-publishing your book, like everything else, has its pros and cons. In my view, the biggest of the pros is that you have complete control over your work; the worst of the cons is that no mainstream reviewer – someone who might really be able to help get your book in front of a lot of people – will touch your work with a ten-foot pole.
Some self-published authors may claim that there’s an evil cabal led by the major publishers that’s dedicated to keeping out the little guys. There may be some truth to that, even if it’s in the form of momentum in the relationships between the publishers, bookstores, and so forth. The big houses have been doing this for a long time, and they’ve certainly got the inside track, not to mention big bucks to spend on marketing and promotion (not that they’ll necessarily spend it on any given author).
But let’s set that argument aside for a moment. You see, before we – as self-published authors or even small press publishers – can throw stones at the big publishers’ glass houses, we need to take a close look at our own.
To do that, let’s start with looking at self-published books from a reviewer’s perspective, because they’re generally seen as a critical factor in spreading the word about your book. If your book is self-published, virtually every major reviewer (and by “major,” I mean someone who has a following of thousands of people, if not more) won’t even consider looking at it. Even many blog reviewers – and there are lots of them across the different genres – with much smaller (but collectively significant) followings won’t look at self-published books. Why?
The answer, my friend, is that the quality of much of what we self-published authors put out is – to use that highly technical publishing term – crap. Many reviewers have gotten tons of self-published books, only to be repeatedly disappointed and disgusted by them. Many reviewers have a stated policy up front that they won’t review self-published (or small press) books. Others will accept them, but send them to the bottom of the review pile. Still others happily accept them, and then expose all their flaws (to the author’s dismay – but what did the author expect?).
The fact is that we can’t expect to have our work viewed in the same light as the major houses unless we can polish the inches-thick tarnish from the term “self-published” and stop producing reams of crap.
Before your head explodes with righteous indignation, let’s go over a quick check list to see if we can further define “crap” in this context, starting from the outside of your book and working our way in:
- Would the cover (front, back, and spine) of your book stand out – in a bad way – on the shelves of a bookstore?
- Is it outrageously priced compared to similar books (genre, length, etc.)?
- Do the first pages leading into the main body of the text – the title page(s), copyright page, etc. – follow the general norms for “real” books? Do you even have any of those pages?
- Are the margins, font face and size, leading, and headers/footers consistent with the norms for “real” books?
- If someone were to flip to a random place in the text, would they find a typo or grammatical error in the first five minutes of reading? The first thirty seconds?
- Assuming we’re talking about a work of fiction, is the story good? That’s something that only folks who don’t have a vested interest in your ego can properly answer.
- And if the story is good overall, are there any major breaks in logic, sequence, etc. – anything that jars the reader’s experience and kills suspension of disbelief?
Now, I will stand here and tell you face to face (in a very virtual sort of way) that I’m not going to claim that my first novel or any of my other writing is the greatest thing since sliced bread, or that I’ve “passed” all of the tests above with the proverbial flying colors. This is not about me saying, “Hey, I know what I’m doing, bub, how about you?”
No. This is about stepping back and critiquing ourselves to improve the standards of our work, with the end objective being to make our books indistinguishable from those by major publishers.
Let me repeat/rephrase that: we want our self-published books to look just like “real” books. We want them to read just like “real” books (is my use of “real” annoying you?), or maybe even better (hey, I don’t know about you, but I’ve read my share of books from the big houses that were stinkers with bad stories, typos and bloopers, etc.).
As self-published authors and small press publishers – independents (indies!) – we have a lot of things standing against us (anybody remember David and Goliath?), but we also have some significant advantages over the big boys. We have complete control of our work, and we have the freedom to explore fresh ideas that offer readers something more than the same-old, same-old (which essentially is another form of “crap”) churned out by the big houses. Technology – primarily print-on-demand (POD) and ebook platforms such as the Amazon Kindle and Mobipocket Reader – is our friend, and allows us to get into the game with at least the major on-line retailers wth almost no out of pocket cost and, for the most part, reasonable pricing for our books.
Quality. It’s all about quality, and remaking the term “self-published” into something that’s sought after – or at least respected – and not shunned.
How do we do that? I don’t claim to have any magic bullets, but we’ll take a look at some ideas in the next post on this topic, so stay tuned!
How To Be Successful
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on February 19th, 2009
I apologize for the rather sensational title of this post, but I got to thinking the other day about my own struggles to get where I am now and thought that it might help someone with their own life journey.
I’m sure you know that you can drop a fortune at Amazon or anywhere else on books and other stuff to help you learn how to “be successful.” I’m not saying that stuff doesn’t work – it very well may – but I’ve never responded well to that sort of thing. I mean, let’s face it: how many of us confess to ourselves that we’re not successful? On top of that, how many of us really have a clue about what being successful means for us as individuals?
The key, my friend, is in goals. Let me give you an example from my efforts as an aspiring (starving) author:
Back in 1991, for various reasons best left unsaid, I decided to do something rash: to write a novel. I had set myself an extremely challenging goal – in part, I must confess, because to that point I felt I’d achieved very little in many ways – although I never really considered it as such. I spent the next four years (part-time) writing In Her Name, then probably another six months editing and revising it. I didn’t really praise myself at that point like I should have – hey, you deserve to pat yourself on the back if you do something like that! – but I did manage to finish it. But that’s where my goal-setting – and success – ended: I shopped it around to a number of publishers at that point, and got the customary rejection notices. But there were other things going on in my life at the time, and without a firm goal I just shoved it aside for about a dozen years.
Then the Amazon Kindle came out, and I finally decided to give publishing In Her Name another go, this time on my own. But this time, I set a conscious, stated goal. If you don’t have any goals set, you have no way of measuring your success; you have no benchmark. And believe me, I am not a big goal-setter! This was totally alien to my way of thinking. I normally just bumble along in life, but publishing a book – being an author – was a dream I’d had since at least high school. Hell, I’d written the book already – that part was done! All I had to do was get it out there where somebody might trip over it and maybe even buy it.
So, with that firm goal in mind, I did all the stuff necessary to put it out in the Amazon Kindle store and Mobipocket (and later into print), and it started pulling in some sales. It was exciting: people were buying my book! But then I started to notice that I was checking the sales figures all the time, and would really get bummed when there were dry spells. When the first reader review was posted on Amazon, it really made the week for me. And then more reviews were posted – all of them four and five stars (so far) – and I got psyched. But I would still get into this funk about where it all was going. Would the book be a success? Would I be a success as an author?
That’s when I had a bit of an epiphany: what exactly did it mean – to me – to be a successful author? How was I going to really measure that? What was my goal now that I had published a book?
I think all authors have the same dreams: wind up on the NY Times bestseller list, have your book appear on Oprah, have it made into a blockbuster movie, make a bazillion bucks, and so on. I certainly have those dreams, but after I thought about it a while, I came to the startling conclusion that the best indicator of my success as an author was that people enjoyed reading what I’d written. And I don’t mean just members of my family who wanted to humor me, but people I didn’t know, who didn’t know me, but who checked out the blurb on my book and liked it enough to plunk down their money to buy it, then came back and spent their precious time writing a review of it. Will I sell a bazillion copies and chalk up some of those dreams I mentioned to you? The statistics are against me, but I don’t really care now, because in writing that book I’ve actually achieved three major goals – successes – in my life:
- Writing In Her Name in the first place. And it’s actually three novels in one, so technically I should give myself triple credit!
- Getting the book published. This was a particular achievement because, taking the self-publishing route, I had to do every bit of it myself, from cover art to promotion.
- Learning that I’d written a story that people enjoyed. This was, by far, the most rewarding of the three things I’d achieved in writing this book. The money from sales is always welcome – and Oprah, I’ll be happy to be on your show, anytime! – but the inner satisfaction I get at hearing what people have to say about In Her Name is a very precious reward.
Anyway, while this example was about a guy (me) writing and publishing a book, the underlying key is the same for anything: you have to make goals for yourself, both to help guide your life and give you some feedback on how the heck you’re doing. And then you have to focus on them and follow through. If you find that every day you’re just doing the same old crap and don’t seem to be going anywhere, it’s because you haven’t set any goals! You’re not working toward anything, so your just spinning on the ol’ hamster wheel. Yes, you don’t want to aim the bar too high: just aim for something you think you could do, then work to achieve it!
And forget about excuses (particularly that you don’t have time): part of giving yourself the gift of success is prioritizing and making some changes in your life. Just as an example, if you’re really out of shape, set yourself a goal of run/walking a 5K race this year (that was the goal my wife and I set for ourselves fitness-wise last year). That’s three miles, and there are tons of places that hold 5K events. Even if you’re a total couch potato, if you started now you could at least walk three miles by mid spring – think of how good it would feel to cross that finish line, even just walking! So, instead of sitting on your widening rear end and watching TV for that sixth hour of the evening, why don’t you take the first hour of TV time and just go for a walk? Take the entire family!
Another example (and this is dedicated to a good friend of mine): if you’re stuck in a job that you hate, look around for other opportunities. Even in this crappy economy right now, opportunites can be found. But only if you look! Maybe you’ll find something soon, maybe it’ll take a while. But if you set that goal you’ll have a benchmark to measure your success. There are times when my own job drives me nuts, but all in all it’s great. And I firmly believe that people shouldn’t have to work at jobs they hate: you spend a third (or more) of your life at work. Even if you don’t really enjoy your job, it shouldn’t totally suck.
So, think about that and see if it helps you. Think about some things you’d like to accomplish in your life, then – as Chalene Johnson says – write them down. Tape them up on the refrigerator if you need to, then work toward them. Every day. If I can find success in my life, with as much of a bumble as I normally am, you can, too!
