I’d been looking for an agent all this time. I had had a positive response early on from an indie publisher, but I really wanted to find an agent, one who could help me execute all rights, not just print and eBook ones. It’s been (and is) a long, frustrating process, with good feedback but no takers. I suppose it would be easier if they had said my manuscript sucked, but to say my novel is gripping and then turn it down… Well, I want to scream.

And so my novel sits in digital form unseen by any eyes with no physical form to say it’s real. Yes, eBooks are great and gaining momentum, but a novel in manuscript form seems more like hope than reality. When I saw that tweet from NaNoWriMo, I decided I had to see my novel She, see it as a book because who knows how long it’ll be before that actually happens for real, for public consumption.

This week my free proof copy arrived from CreateSpace. The cover quality isn’t that great as it’s rippling from the heat and humidity, and I don’t think clouds against light blue sky rendered that well. But it’s my book. My words. Even my cover. For the first time, a smile reached my lips. It’s difficult to get me excited about anything (thank you brain injury), but I had a moment of feeling it. Yes! I wrote fiction for the first time in 10 years and a novel at that!! For that, the proof is worth it. Now I can continue my endless search.

An entity from nothing space invades a young songwriter, consuming her. She fights to resist him , to expel him – and discovers where evil really resides.

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As I read what MacLachlan had to say, I felt the urge to dissect it. So I did:

But for everybody else, my question is, “OK, you write a book, the thing you traffic in is ideas, do you also then want to become your own manufacturer, your own sales and marketing department, your own shiller of your idea?”

Years ago, I learnt a lot from published authors — not the big names, but the middle ones, the ones who sold well or not so well — about just how little publishers do to market a book. These authors did their own marketing; had to buy their own books (at cost) to sell to readers. This was before self-publishing hit the big leagues, before ePublishing began. As the traditional publishers cut back, these authors had to become their own sales and marketing department. Even if publishers did more than an initial flurry of publicity, they were unwilling to put in the long-term effort needed to sell books month after month, the kind of effort need to put a book into the backlist. With ePublishing, getting a book into the backlist may not be so important anymore as there will be no such thing as out of print. Still, traditional publishers expect authors to put in the bulk of the publicity effort without commensurate compensation. When I read about an author on the Times Bestseller list earning $25,000 while the publisher earned $250,000, the disparity really hits home.

As for the manufacturing, with POD, the Espresso Book Machine, ePublishers, really, how hard is it? The worst aspect of it is formatting a book, but you can hire good people to do good work (something I can’t say about some books from traditional publishers) from editing to cover design to interior design. And unlike with a traditional publisher, the author doesn’t have to compromise. Then companies like Lulu or Smashwords will distribute your physical and eBooks for you. Distribution really is the hardest, but even that can be taken care of for you.

We put a stamp of approval on something by accepting it and by saying, “Yes we want to get behind this and put our resources behind it.”

That’s true. But from everything I’ve read, most publishers do this only for a short time and only if it proves fruitful. Once the 3 months of “getting behind this” are up, then what? The author is still left with the grunt work of long-term marketing. Yet the author receives no extra royalties for the abdication of this role by traditional publishers over the years.

…but what happens on the day when Amazon decides not to pay you or takes two years to pay you? You’re still a lone ranger out there trying to get your money back from them.

Well, that’s a bit rich coming from a publisher. Traditional publishers don’t pay quarterly, they pay every 6 months. And they pay peanuts. They don’t always pay on time either. The author has to play lone ranger to try and get their money from them or even their rights back when they want to make something of their book and the publisher is holding them back. I’ve heard the horror stories. One of the reasons an author needs an agent is because part of what an agent does is to get traditional publishers to pay up and on time. So while traditional publishers bank your money, earning interest off your money, Amazon and Smashwords and iUniverse are sending you cheques.

…we have somebody devoted to web marketing because that is where we can get an audience that is knowable, trackable, with whom we can interact, which is a very important thing for us, to know how people are responding to the books we’re putting out into the marketplace. There’s no question that we will be coming up with ways in which to sell and market books that exist online and that will probably be online.

I can’t speak to House of Anansi, and I follow agents more than publishers, so this assertion is something I need to look into more. But as a casual reader and a big Twitter user, I see far more Americans online than Canadian publishers and agents. I also see that the Americans understand the point of Twitter (and thus social media) better than the Canadians. And I find the Americans are the ones who interact. There are some exceptions. But I wish Canadian agents and publishers would get off their duff and start being more enthusiastic and interactive on the web, not just put announcements out there like that’s what we really care about. Announcements are good but only in the context of actually talking and responding to your readers. The Toronto Public Library has been stellar on that front. Plus, publishers are assuming most readers prefer particular publishers. When I read a book a day, I didn’t pick them based on the publisher — I’d run out pretty darn quick if I read only certain publishers — I picked them based on first the genre or content and second the author. As I grew older and needed to look further afield for books, I began to care less about who published it, especially as publishers cared less about doing a good editing and proofreading job. I suppose Harlequin readers do stick to their favoured publisher, but that kind of publishing stream doesn’t apply to non-romance books.

I do believe that, yeah, we have to be able to offer things to writers as publishers that they may not be able to handle doing themselves, and might not want to handle themselves.

That has always been the best value a publisher brings to a writer. But more and more, publishers do less and less, yet want to hog most of the price of a book to themselves, along with the retailer, without monetarily reflecting their offloading of responsibility onto their authors (except the big ones). Anansi says that as an independent house, they don’t give up on a book after so many months. If all publishers went back to that model and, as well, upped their royalties, writers wouldn’t be looking to eBook publishers and self-publishing.

Self-publishing still has a kind of… it’s a little bit pejorative.

It’s kind of funny thinking that when well-known writers from long ago started off in the hinterland of self-publishing. I’ve also seen a change in the last two to three years in the way self-pub is viewed, going from marginal to mainstream. My readers also never said to me because Lifeliner is self-published, I don’t want to read it. It was more about content than how and who published it. Does that mean publishers are losing cachet? Is it becoming more about the authors and/or the books themselves? And with so much dreck in the traditionally published canon, is that another reason self-publishing is seen as more on par? In that case, self-publishing and ePublishing becomes even more attractive to the author.

…if you’re an indie band and you get published by Arts & Crafts or Maple Music, there’s probably a little bit more of a good stamp. I think a lot of the indie music scene and doing your own thing is a reaction against the big, giant music publishers. That could happen in books because they’re not dissimilar kinds of creatures.

Very true. And moreso if traditional publishers insist on locking eBooks with DRM and following the music industry down that self-destructive trail. Authors want their books to be read and if going through an eBook publisher or doing it yourself is the only way to ensure DRM-free eBooks, then more will do that as word spreads across the Internet.

And that’s really the key. Today, the Internet allows authors and writers to share, talk, learn from each other and so become more independent from publishers. It allows them to see there are choices. And those choices mean that publishers have to compete with different models and ideas about publishing, not just with each other.

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BIST promises great entertainment, featuring a Battle of the Bands and a “Cerebral Circus” (with an exciting team of Circus Performers) all  M.C.’d by Chris Brown.

Come support the survivors who will display their own artwork and talents. Come hear their stories and meet some fantastic people. Come help raise awareness about the effects of brain injury.

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DRM allows “copyright holders to prevent unauthorized duplication of their work, either to maintain artistic integrity or to ensure continued revenue streams.” (Wikipedia)

A book with DRM on it controls where an eBook can be read, how many copies — if any — can be made of it, if it can be printed, and if it can be shared. The idea is that the digital nature of eBooks allow books to be widely pirated in a way that old-fashioned print books cannot be (never mind that the inside page of a mass paperback usually had some sort of statement that if the cover was missing, the reader was reading a pirated book), and only DRM prevents that. Only DRM ensures authors — and publishers because this is really about the publishers — earn an income from eBooks.

However, after my experience with the trade paperback and hard cover versions of my book Lifeliner: The Judy Taylor Story, I think DRM is pointless. And I dispute the idea it ensures a continued revenue stream.

The first reason I think it’s pointless is because I have way more readers than purchased print books. After Lifeliner was originally published, what often happened was one person would buy and read one trade paperback version of Lifeliner. That paperback then moved from hand  to hand over and over again. I think one book was passed around to 16 people. If every person who read my book had bought it — something that DRM tries to enforce on the theory that it happens with print books — I may actually have an income. At first, when I discovered this mass sharing, I was shocked, then pissed, now I’m at the Gallic shrug stage. It would be nice if all those readers posted reviews or talked Lifeliner up on social media, but I’ve given up on that idea too. A few have sent me wonderful comments; fewer have helped me spread the word; one reader gave it 4 of 5 stars on Chapters Indigo. And those have made my day.

The second reason: DRM irritates the reader, like one person I follow on Twitter who bought the kobo only to discover her previously purchased eBooks can’t be read on it because of DRM. She owns the books; why can’t she read them on any eReader she wants to? It’s like saying I can read a paperback I purchased as long as I keep it in my bedroom, but if I store it on my kitchen bookshelf, then nope, no reading allowed.

The last reason I think it’s pointless is because I’m quite familiar with computers and know that someone somewhere is going to be able to break it. That person is the real pirate. Or someone rising to a challenge, as things like DRM are red flags to a bull. Or more likely those people who think there should be no copyright, who think that artists live to serve their reading and music needs and those artists ought not to earn a dime from their work but live in noble penury because they’re owed. Or maybe they just think we’re all U2s and Madonnas, Stephen Kings and JK Rowlings, and are so rolling in dough we shouldn’t be demanding people pay for our music or books. I wish. Anyway, the pirates and entitled will always find a way to get a book for free. Meanwhile most readers who have no trouble paying for artistic work will just be annoyed with me, with the DRM, and not purchase my book. And my main goal is to have as many eyeballs on my book as possible, so it’s a bit counter-productive to put DRM on Lifeliner. I also think it’s a lot easier to share a paperback than an eBook. With a print book, you just pick it up and hand it over, with no thoughts of piracy. With an eBook, you got to find the file, attach it to an e-mail or a wireless message of some sort, send it over, etc. etc. Sounds like too much work to me as a reader. It’s way easier to download it from the library or eBookstore and there’s no latent guilt involved. Copyright notices are much more visible on an eBook than on a print book.

Which brings me to the second big discussion about eBooks: price.

Recently, most big publishers went to war with Amazon to enforce what they call the Agency model of pricing. They have always made their money on hard covers because although those are few in sales numbers, the profit margins are high, and by releasing just the hard cover a few months ahead of the trade or mass paperback and the eBook, they force those who can’t wait to read their favourite author’s books to buy a hard cover. Some people prefer hard covers over any other kind of book, true, but most don’t want to pay the high price and heft the heavy book when reading and so wait. But publishers want to keep this tradition going. As a reader, and as an author who wants to maximize sales, I say bah to that.

Let readers decide which version they want to read: hard cover, paperback, eBook. Let readers decide on which platform they want to read their eBooks on: kobo, computer, Sony Reader, iPod or iPhone, iPad, Kindle. Let the massive marketing push done at the launch of any book benefit sales of every version of a book, not just the hard covers. Once the paperbacks and eBooks come out, months after the hard cover and after the big launch, they can no longer benefit from all the initial publicity. The author is left to ensure the word gets out, and readers are left to remember they were going to buy that book once it came out in paperback and eBook. I find that intensely annoying as a reader, waiting months for a book to come out in paperback so that I can read it.

iUniverse published Lifeliner in hard cover, trade paperback, and eBook (with limited distribution) all at once. Surprise, surprise, several people bought the hard covers even though it was $18 more than the eBook, and more bought the hard cover than the eBook. Meanwhile, I’ve just released a multi-format eBook, which is available much more widely than the iUniverse one, and already people who were happy for me when I published Lifeliner originally yet had not bought it then are buying it now. Why? The only difference between then and now: price and availability.

I’m issuing a limited-time coupon to celebrate this eBook launch, and this eBook is available in any format you can think of with no DRM attached. And even though the coupon — code TX53X at check out, good for 4 more days only, until May 31st — drops the price of the eBook from $4.99 to $1.99, I’m still receiving in royalties almost as much as I would if someone purchased my $16.95 (all prices US) trade paperback on Amazon.com. That’s how little authors receive from print books — and I receive higher royalties than if I’d gone the traditional route. That means, to put it crassly, I will earn more from low-priced multi-format, DRM-free eBooks than print books, assuming my marketing campaign works. And, in the end, so what if people share the non-DRM eBooks with their friends and family, co-workers and neighbours? They already do that with the paperbacks.

Technorati Tags: Medicine, Biography, Inspiration, eBook, Publishing, Digital, DRM

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“A compelling story.”

“Shireen Jeejeebhoy has written an extraordinary account of Judy Taylor and her fight for life starting in the 1970′s when medical science was not as it is today.”

“When (Judy) was drugged up, she’s going, ‘I can’t die cause there’s no way that Cliff can raise those three girls by himself. He can’t do it. I have to live.’”

“Jeejeebhoy’s style of writing sets the right pace as we follow Judy’s medical difficulties….It is truly a fascinating and eye-opening story which was well written.”

“Reading it will make you laugh, smile, cringe, cry and most importantly, think. If you want inspiration, Lifeliner has no shortage packed into its pages.”

“Thank you so much for telling the story of your father’s care for her and the strength and courage she displayed in such a compelling and interesting way!”

Just some of the nice things reviewers and those who knew Judy said about my book Lifeliner: The Judy Taylor Story when it first came out in print and limited eBook distribution. Recently, Smashwords made it possible for authors to publish their books in multiple eBook formats and have them distributed to all the big virtual bookstores from Amazon to Sony to Kobo to Apple’s iBookstore. It was time to properly join the eBook digital revolution.

Judy Taylor relished her simple happy life. She had a loving husband, three young daughters, a beautiful suburban home. Good health. Suddenly, intestinal blood clots annihilated her guts. Judy faced the certainty of starving to death in a cold Toronto hospital. “Don’t let me die,” she cried out. The year was 1970. There was nothing they could do. And then they heard of a radical young doctor doing revolutionary work on artificial feeding. She went for it; she agreed to become a guinea pig. And Judy lived two more decades without eating again. And because of her courage, she gave people a better chance at living with AIDS or cystic fibrosis, recovering from traumas, and surviving the rigors of chemo. Lifeliner is Judy’s inspirational story from death to life, from ordinary woman to medical pioneer.

Today, I’m proud to announce that Lifeliner is available on Smashwords and has been approved to be distributed to Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Amazon, and Apple. To celebrate this awesome occasion, I am offering — until May 31st only — Lifeliner for a measly $1.99 at Smashwords. Simply enter coupon code TX53X at checkout to receive this special introductory price.

At that price, I would buy it even if I didn’t know what it was, said one reader.

Read a free sample. Then take advantage of this amazing offer and download it in your eBook format of choice. And if you have a moment, please leave a review too!

Technorati Tags: Medicine, Health, Inspiration, eBook, Publishing, Digital

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Smashwords will take your MS Word document and convert it to many eBook formats, such as HTML, Java, PDF, ePub, Mobi, etc. They will make your eBook available on their own website as well as distributing it to Amazon, Kobo, Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, and eReading apps for all mobile devices from iPhone to Blackberry to Android. The cost to do this is zilch. Author royalties range from 85% of net sales on Smashwords; 70.5% elsewhere. The catch: you have to go through the extremely tedious process of ensuring your manuscript conforms to Smashwords style guide. I am just about comatose from the process. Chocolate helped revive me, sort of, by this afternoon.

Although my brain injury necessitated reading and rereading the style guide over a period of weeks in order to absorb it, reviewing the steps and writing down which ones apply to me, setting SMART goals to get it done, being methodical in making each change, the process is a good one for anyone to follow because the task is tedious, and tediousness can lead to errors. I used to do this back in my consulting days when programming databases and debugging them. I’d look for one type of error or do one formatting thing at a time. For Lifeliner, I went through and fixed the double paragraphs and spacing (that is, look for double spaces, spaces at end of paragraphs) all at one time, then changed all the paragraphs as per the style guide, then worked on the exceptions, then changed the headings, and lastly changed the style of each chapters’ first paragraph. Because I used the NUCLEAR OPTION — I had only a PDF as the final version with all the proofing changes done, which I had to convert to basic text — I had to put back in all the italics and bold and centring. I did italics first, bold second. That way you don’t lose track of what you’re doing if you try to do italics and bold all in one go. The last thing I did was follow the steps for creating a linkable Table of Contents. My head hurt doing that, but the links worked when I tested them!

I have absolutely no idea if my methodical way has produced an acceptable DOC, I have yet to acquire a new eBook ISBN for it and submit it to Smashwords Meatgrinder, but at least I know the errors should be small (I hope!), I understand the process a little bit now, and I am one step closer to being able to create my own ePub. I will no longer be at the mercy of publishers when it comes to eBook versions of my work. Also, I used to do desktop publishing pre-injury; this is a natural extension of that work. I am not as interested in it as I was (in fact, not), but being able to do it is a good skill for an author to have.

Technorati Tags: Smashwords, eBook, Biography, Publishing, ePublishing

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If you read my brief blog posts during the self-publishing phase of Lifeliner, you’d surmise I had a mostly good experience with iUniverse. There were a couple of odd things, like I wasn’t allowed to know the names of the editors who edited my book, but overall I found my Publishing Services Associate friendly, helpful, and professional. I liked how the editors helped me craft a better book. I liked that I had a chance to have Lifeliner‘s cover professionally designed. And I liked having the opportunity to have my book stocked in an Indigo bookstore in Toronto. After that though, things went downhill.

It all began when Author Solutions bought out iUniverse. My PSA couldn’t move with iUniverse to their new headquarters due to the burst housing bubble. My newly assigned marketing associate also left the company shortly after I contracted with iUniverse to use one of their publicists, and I wasn’t allowed to have her as my publicist (due to conflict of interest, they said). And in the midst of releasing and marketing Lifeliner, my lawsuit against the drivers who mucked me up emerged from one of its many long lulls into the final throes of resolution, which of course took months and months and months. Because I had little energy left over to market Lifeliner and to stay on top of the publicist’s and iUniverse’s efforts on my behalf, I relied on them to fulfill their contractual obligations, to do everything they said that they would.

iUniverse stated in their paperwork that they would do the following in their three-month publicity campaign:

The publicist…will contact the author the first day of the campaign to determine specific media target audiences and develop a plan.

A plan will be developed based on the following schedule:

Month 1

• Pitch magazines.
• Set up book events in author’s hometown and surrounding markets.
• Pitch to Amazon reviewers.
• Pitch to Top 100 Newspapers.

Month 2

• Continue to follow-up on all interested media pitched to date.
• Pitch to radio and television in local and regional area (talk, drive time, interview).
• Pitch to newspapers in local and regional area

Month 3

• Continue to follow-up with all interested media to date
• Pitch national wire services
• Pitch wire services
• Pitch all freelance writers

That’s pretty much the gist of the agreement. My publicist and I talked specifics about what kinds of magazines and because she was from the NE USA, I had to fill her in a bit about the media market here in southern Ontario, despite the fact that I wasn’t fully cognizant of all that is published round here. (Months later, when I’d recovered from the end of lawsuit, a quick Google search netted me a long list of newspapers, radio stations, and television stations in Ontario, a few in upper New York state, just across the border from Toronto.) My publicist didn’t set up book events because of my energy limitations but we did discuss one event that I set up myself, and she sent out an announcement to a couple of publicity places. It didn’t help that there was a problem with the timing of when to start the campaign because Indigo, to put it politely, bounced around the start date of when to stock Lifeliner in the World’s Biggest Bookstore (WBBS). I was also informed that Indigo would not tolerate me approaching them about having a book signing for Lifeliner, yet I suppose my publicist could’ve spoken to them, I don’t know. It didn’t happen anyway.

Aside from that item, the Month 1 obligations were fulfilled, well, except that 100 newspapers were not pitched to.

My publicist followed up on all her pitches over the three months of the campaign, and I received several Amazon reviews. I had had no idea book reviewers don’t just work for newspapers and magazines solely, but also post their reviews on Amazon and several other websites. Over Months 2 and 3, she also pitched to a few of the national newspapers and magazines (in addition to specialty ones in Month 1, including The Women’s Post, which was just not interested, sheesh), and to radio stations and Citytv in Toronto. The manager at WBBS told me that getting mentioned on CBC would help me sell books because their biggest customers listen to the CBC. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to pitch — though I tried on my own several months later — and my publicist was not familiar with how CBC worked, though she followed the website instructions. So that pretty much went nowhere. She pitched to community papers in Toronto but not regional newspapers in southern Ontario or upper New York state. I tried to do it myself months later but with my energy limitations and lack of knowledge, it was an impossible task. She did send out all the review copies I’d bought for the campaign to various magazines and reviewers. Of those, about 13% resulted in reviews of Lifeliner. I don’t know if that’s a good response rate or not.

The wire services pitched were of the web-based kind, not what I would consider national (like AP or CP). And if freelance writers were pitched, they were few in number.

With iUniverse in upheaval during this time, it was difficult to find out who my new marketing associate was and when I did find out, impossible to get a proper answer from her after our first e-mail exchange that I initiated in the brief moments of respite in the insurance company showdown. Of course, iUniverse had no problems billing me for postage for the publicity campaign. Even when I earned iUniverse’s Reader’s Choice award, no one e-mailed or called me to tell me this good news. I stumbled upon this fact when I was checking out my book page on iUniverse’s website. They again ignored my e-mails, even though all I wanted was the image of the RC logo to put on my website. You’d think they could at least respond to that.

Recently, I received a promotional e-mail from iUniverse. I was back in their good graces, I guess. And so that got me thinking again about the botched publicity campaign. I contacted the person who e-mailed me; she gave me the name of the guy who covers marketing for me; he, also a nice person, said he wasn’t familiar with my publicity contract, would look into it, and get back to me. Yup. You all know what that meant. Before we hung up, never to speak again, we also discussed getting Lifeliner into the Sony Reader Store (for eBooks) and onto Amazon Kindle. However, he said that would cost me. Apparently, iUniverse has a new deal where they’ll do the work for you, and you pay. Since I was already feeling like I’d overpaid for my less-than-promised publicity campaign, I wasn’t too interested in paying more. He never considered that he had a pissed-off customer who, being a writer, may one day grump about it online, and the best way to head that off was to make me happy by offering that deal for free as a make-up for my lousy experience. That kind of offer may also have upped the odds of me being a repeat customer. But clearly he was not too interested in resolving my issue and more interested in sending me regular promotional e-mails. Yup, great way to placate an unhappy customer.

Because of my previous posts on iUniverse, I heard from some unhappy iUniverse customers. One, distressingly, confirmed my 2008 experience of not being paid for books sold — basically, iUniverse under-reported sales. Because I happened to know just how many books sold through all
sources, I knew the numbers were off. iUniverse blamed a software
glitch. The same furious customer also informed me that iUniverse inaccurately reported how much they were discounting his book, meaning less royalty in his pocket, more in the retailers’. This was pretty much my beef about how they capitulated to Amazon without so much as polling their authors.

And so what began as a good experience, ended up with me feeling cheated, both on publicity and royalties. I have no intention of hiring iUniverse again, or, for that matter, any AuthorSolutions company. Jane Friedman in her recent blog post on AuthorSolutions says they are very focused on what their authors want. I beg to differ. Although when they do deliver, it’s worth it, I would advise any writer thinking of going this route to do it only if you’re a persistent little bugger who will not have any trouble sitting on them when they don’t deliver on what they promise. Meanwhile, I am going the trad route. For now.

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But Macmillan didn’t fall into line, insisted on being able to set their own eBook prices, and Amazon conceded and has been slowly restoring the Buy buttons. The battle is not over yet and it isn’t that simple, for Apple has brought out the iPad, Sony and other companies produce readers with eInk technology, and unlike the Kindle, they all can read books in many different formats. Amazon has competition. Apple and Sony Reader bookstores allow the publishers to set the price for eBooks, as does Chapters eBookstore, Kobo. Publishers are more likely to supply these eBookstores than they are Amazon’s kindle library.

Several people-in-the-know have opined on this issue, so I thought I’d toss in my penny, all that I have left after publishers and retailers take what they consider they’re entitled to, after all I’m just the writer, the author, the kind of person without whom there’d be no books. Ahem.

As a reader, I prefer mass paperbacks. They’re light, portable, and affordable. I really resent publishers who quickly follow the Canadian dollar down and raise the price, but take way longer to lower it as the dollar increases in value dramatically. I usually buy trade paperbacks for non-fiction books or maybe when there’s no mass paperback version available. They’re less affordable than mass paperbacks, and so I restrict my purchases of them or wait until they hit the remainder table. I only read hard covers either when someone gives me one as a gift (can’t remember when that last happened), or I want a particular book as a keepsake, or for straight pleasure reading when I find an interesting one on the remainder table. eBooks I’m new to. I received the Sony Reader for Christmas, and I’ve been dipping my toe into the eBook market and the virtual library. As a person with a brain injury, I find it much easier to read eBooks as there’s no visual distractions, which can seriously affect my reading, retention, and learning. With eBooks, I can zoom in and see just the text I’m reading. The Sony Reader also allows me to write notes and bookmark pages. My grandmother used to fold her paperbacks and turn down pages; made me cringe. I like my books pristine. But with eBooks, I don’t have to worry about it. There’s no beauty or art to spoil, and electronic notes and bookmarks can easily be wiped clean.

So as an author, I think about these things when thinking about the current book publishing war and how to sell my book (soon to be books). And so I’m not so sure that Macmillan’s attitude of setting a high price for eBooks is the right way to go.

My first book Lifeliner: The Judy Taylor Story came out in trade paperback, hard cover, and eBook all at the same time. I figured no one was going to buy hard covers except those who wanted a keepsake. Boy, was I wrong. People are still buying hard covers of Lifeliner. True, not nearly as many are buying them or eBooks as they are trade paperbacks, but what it says to me is that we all have preferred formats. Some like hard covers and won’t buy paperbacks; some will only buy paperbacks (like me); and some are on the cutting edge and buy eBooks. iUniverse’s SOP of releasing all formats at the same time left it to the readers to decide which format they wanted to buy, and I had no quibble with that. When marketing Lifeliner, I did not consider format an important factor. All I cared about was how many I could sell. And if someone bought a hard cover, with its slightly higher royalty because of its higher price, I considered that a bonus. But whether I was able to recover my costs had nothing to do with whether I could sell enough hard covers, but whether I could sell enough books, period.

On the other hand, publishers are convinced that they can only make money by selling hard covers. They believe that income can only come from a big profit margin, not from volume sold.

Publishers also ascribe to the odd method of flooding the marketplace with a new book and hope not too many come back. That means you don’t really know your earnings until the return period is ended, however many weeks or months that is. It’s also environmentally wasteful, and in the age of good-quality POD and the burgeoning espresso book machine, there’s no reason for it anymore. eBooks also get around that entire problem because eBooks don’t need paper and it’s not likely they’d be returned.

That old-fashioned thinking is why publishers want to (1) price eBooks high, (2) gyp authors on the royalty rate, and (3) release eBooks and paperbacks only several months after hard covers. They believe that anyone who buys eBooks has money to burn and will buy hard covers if they weren’t buying eBooks. I assume they have market data to prove their point, but frankly hard covers are big and heavy, and as a previously voracious reader, I find them too expensive to feed a reading habit unless you get them out of the library. However, I would buy an eBook. I see eBooks as not only satiating the need of voracious readers but also as a way to create a new reading market, a market of people who find books not to their taste, being physical objects and all, expensive, and not cool. Anything digital is cool though. The iPad is cool. The iBookstore will be cool. Coolness is great marketing bait.

The other problem publishers have with realistically pricing eBooks is that in their minds, an affordable price diminishes the value. Huh?

The value of my work is not in how much it costs per copy, but in the copy itself. The value is reflected in the number sold. People pay attention to bestseller status, as determined by sales numbers, not by how much a book costs. Bestseller status usually denotes that this book is good. Purchase price does not.

On the other side, some people say that the price of an eBook is almost zero and the digital revolution means creators should put their work out there for free. Excuse me. But my work is not zero value. My imagination and creativity and ability to think, without which there would be no book, is not of zero value. If you want a free book, write one yourself, and then decide if all that time you spent was of no value.

I believe Amazon’s bully tactics are starting to backfire. It should be up to the publisher and author to set the price of the book, not one elephant-sized retailer who insists that they should be determine price and be given such a huge discount that it will allow them to sell for less than anyone else. It also cuts the author’s royalties. Frankly, I think it borders on anti-trust what Amazon has been doing. But that’s for US courts to decide.

I think publishers are still watching the glaciers recede, and like Amazon, don’t remunerate authors fairly, without whom there would be no books. I think publishers in the US are a bit ahead of their Canadian counterparts, but neither seem to see the possibilities that the iPad and eBook Readers offer, the possibilities of creating a different kind of product and a larger market of readers.

In the past, publishers were essential to authors to getting their books out to the marketplace. But that’s changing for two reasons: (1) publishers more and more expect authors to market their books. The one expertise publishers truly have that authors need — marketing — they are no longer offering except to a few. Since publishers have withdrawn the single biggest asset they offered to authors and since authors now have to pay for publicists and a marketing program, why should authors continue to accept the same low royalty rate? If the author is expected to do what used to be publisher work, then the author should get a bigger piece of the pie. (2) POD, espresso book machine, freelance editors and designers, supported self-publishing companies, all offer alternatives to publishers. These services replace everything publishers do, from editing to book design, allow an author to get a book out much faster than a traditional publisher (and waiting for a book to hit the public is not easy!), and gives an author greater control over the title, cover, and back cover copy. For a Canadian author, these alternatives also mean one can publish using Canadian English.

For mainstream publishers to stay in the game long-term, they need to provide authors that old value or offer a bigger royalty, they need to offer authors a higher royalty for eBooks and other digital media, and they need to provide readers affordably-priced and exciting alternatives. They need to focus on moving books out the door, not on what format those books come in. I haven’t even talked about eBooks beyond the text model, but the iPad will start that revolution too, and publishers and authors ought to start preparing for that. I also haven’t talked about agents. Some believe that the digital revolution will bring about their demise; but it seems to me that authors will need smart agents to help them navigate the minefield of the different kinds of digital rights, in addition to traditional rights like movie and spoken word.

Instead of hanging onto the old model, authors, publishers, and agents need to work together to ask themselves how they can use these new technologies to produce books faster, better, and affordably so as to expand the book-buying audience.

Technorati Tags: Amazon, Macmillan, Publishing, Apple, iPad, eBook

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Back then, I didn’t think of it as an eBook, as simply an electronic version of the printed book. I imagined it as an interactive experience with photographs and videos, interview excerpts and audio, and of course the text itself. I imagined that in one package one could read, listen to, and watch Judy’s story.

For background research on Lifeliner, I had interviewed over 60 people, all of which I had taped (except when my recorder decided to act up or batteries gave up, having less stamina than humans deep in question and answer). I had borrowed and watched videos of Judy having a good time in her community or shilling for Toronto General Hospital. I had a plethora of Judy’s personal archival material, school records, family photographs, and my own photographs that I’d taken of her home. And I had medical records up the whazoo. I felt that seeing and hearing this material, judiciously edited, would bring Judy and her personal and medical experiences to life in a way that was different from reading a book or seeing a movie. The reader could decide what they wanted to watch or not, what they wanted to listen to or not. I don’t remember all the details, but I have a memory of it being like a game where the reader determined the path they took. Some would be more interested in the medical side, while others in Bobcaygeon life. Some would want to see the family side more, while others her doctor and fellow lifeliners. All would be possible.

With the Apple iPad, it’s at last doable.

Many are talking about eBooks as just electronic versions of printed books. In that form, eBooks, I believe, are best read on eInk technology because reading is more than just the cognitive act of processing words and sentences, it’s also the physical act of keeping one’s eyes sharp. And a bright screen isn’t always the best for long periods of straight reading. But I believe that one can do so much more with a digital book than just putting text in bits and bytes, particularly in the field of biography, and that’s where the iPad shines. Several decades ago, biographers really only had printed materials like letters, which could readily be photographed and reproduced on the printed page. But today, with modern subjects, we have video and audio, photographs and e-mails, as well as letters or articles. You can’t see those in books. But a well-edited choice of all of these could be shown to readers through the Apple iPad. When they’re reading about a television interview, they could click on a still shot and watch the interview. When they’re reading a letter, they could click on the letter and hear it being read in the author’s voice (author of the letter, that is, if still alive). They could read the book as the book author wrote it or perhaps follow a game format where they focus on one particular aspect of the subject’s life. Really, with digital media, only the author’s imagination and publisher’s innovation is the limit.

It’s too bad this technology came too late for me and Lifeliner, but perhaps if I find the right agent and publisher, we can work on a way to bring video and audio and photos to my newest book for the Apple iPad.

Technorati Tags: iPad, Apple, Publishing, eBook

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I discovered this little problem when I recently learnt about the Google Book Settlement.

If you first published your book in Canada or any other country outside of the US that’s a signatory to the Berne Convention, you can certify you have authority to claim your book. However, no matter where you live, if you first published your book in the US, you can only make a claim if your book meets the definition of a United States Work. The key to that definition is that your book or insert was registered with the United States Copyright Office before 5 January 2009.

“A book is a United States work if it meets the definition of “United States work” under the U.S. Copyright Act. See 17 U.S.C. § 101. In general, a work is a United States work under the Copyright Act if it was first published in the United States; or was first published simultaneously in the United States and a treaty party (i.e., a country with which the United States has copyright relations) that has the same or longer term of protection as the United States; or was first published simultaneously in the United States and a foreign nation that was not a treaty party; or was first published in a foreign nation that was not a treaty party and all of the authors of the work are nationals, domiciliaries, or habitual residents of the Untied States. If you have questions about whether your book qualifies as a United States work, please consult counsel.

If your books are United States works and were not registered with the United States Copyright Office as of January 5, 2009, then those books are not covered by the Settlement Agreement, and you would not be releasing any claims you may have against Google with respect to those books (i.e., you retain the right to sue Google for copyright infringement for those books).” From the Google Book Settlement Website FAQ (italics, bold mine).

Unfortunately, those of us ignorant of this Settlement in the works prior to Notice being given and ignorant of the convoluted way US Copyright law works — you have copyright unless someone steals your work, then you only have legally-enforceable copyright if you’ve registered with the government, cause we the US government prefer the stupid-lawyer way rather than the common sense way — probably don’t have our works registered and therefore can’t make a claim against Google.

However, it still pays to spend the $35US (and we thought us Canadians were taxed to death) to register copyright of your book only if you published in the US first in case some other behemoth or little plagiarist decides to steal it. Without that registration, you cannot recoup the money they’ve made on your work neither can you sue for your own legal costs in pursuing them. And do not assume, like I did, that the American company publishing your work has registered it because they may not have. In fact, that’s a good mantra for life: never assume, always check first.

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Book Settlement, Copyright, US Work

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