From Dr Alison Baverstock, author of The Naked Author: A Guide to Self-Publishing, via IndieReader:

I began my working life as a publisher, both full time and freelance, and went on to write books about writing and publishing.

. . . .

I currently lead the Masters Course in Publishing at Kingston University, UK.

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The publishing industry I joined after university was firmly against self-publishing.  For my own part, I was always fascinated by the motivation of authors; why some kept pursuing a professional publishing deal and what this had to say about the individual’s determination to battle on and withstand rejection – ironically the same skill set that often makes for successful self-publishing.

My research interest in self-publishing was further fueled by the industry’s tendency to dismiss it; insisting on the need for validation by a ‘proper publisher’. It seemed to me that given the size of the traditional industry, and its rather un-diverse recruiting practices, it was unlikely that a) all work worth reading was being captured and b) those doing the capturing knew precisely what everyone else wanted to read.

. . . .

I have now spent four years researching both the process of self-publishing and those involved. What I found was in direct contrast to previously widely held assumptions: that the motivations of self-publishing authors were often more connected to completion and future discoverability than money; that they enjoyed the process, would do so again and recommend it to others – and that it had made them happy.

. . . .

I emerged from the process with many reasons for admiring self-publishers, but I will confine myself here to just five:

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3. They’re resourceful

Research shows that many of those dubbed self-publishers are in fact operating in small teams, buying in services as needed. Support has been variously obtained: from friends and colleagues; paid for support; some via the internet. 59% of my research cohort had used an editor and 21% had taken legal advice.

Being self-published does not absolve you from paying careful attention to the legal issues behind sharing content, and committing libel or infringing copyright may be very real dangers which self-publishers must manage themselves.

4. They identify new markets

It’s becoming a relatively common phenomenon these days for work to locate, and reveal, a market through self-publication – and then once the project looks less risky, for it to find more traditional investors. Self-publishers have drawn attention to previously overlooked demand (memoirs, fantasy and soft porn being particularly good examples). But a new market does not have to be vast, or public, to matter – many self-publishers have taken care of content they valued, and ensured it will be discoverable by their families and friends in the future, should they want to know. Worth doing, I say.

Link to the rest at IndieReader and thanks to William for the tip.

From Teleread:

Is the end of the golden age of self-publishing already in sight?

. . . .

The real issue for me in that lies exactly in self-publishing’s advantage: the ability to get inside the distribution and exposure system and game it for your own benefit. Beyond marketing, nothing builds presence like a good platform, and Amazon has the best. But its omnipresence means that everyone is studying it, learning it, tweaking their offerings and strategies to take advantage of its quirks. Now what if all the self-publishers apply that same knowledge at the same time?  Online, they can do that. Then Amazon changes its systems, and the self-publishers move on to the next trick, which burns across the Kindle Boards like wildfire, and the same thing happens again. This is apparently what happened when Amazon’s changed its popularity algorithms in March 2012 after the initial launch of KDP Select. The ecosystem reacts on itself so fast that differential advantage is eaten away in no time. And an arms race like that will ultimately be won by the biggest guns.

The problem is oddly typified by the runaway success of David Gaughran’s new book, Let’s Get Visible: How To Get Noticed And Sell More Books, already lauded on Amazon. “Will recommend to every indie author I know,” writes one breathless reviewer. Here, I’m not criticizing that book or its approach: Every self-publisher should buy it, read it, and go out and do exactly what it says. All the same, that book’s popularity practically guarantees that its advice comes date-stamped, and that advice equips self-publishers very well to compete against each other. In the other leading platforms, Barnes & Noble and Kobo especially, this isn’t such an issue because they simply sell the exposure.

The established publishing players have been extraordinarily slow to learn how to avoid becoming extinct, and that may extend self-publishers’ lead for a little while longer. But in this analysis, publishers and agents can breathe a sigh of relief. I don’t necessarily see a problem with that: If you can grow my pie, you’re welcome to your slice. And many writers may simply decide their time is better spent writing than marketing. Now that publishers are no longer compulsory, they might actually start to appear desirable.

Link to the rest at Teleread and thanks to Antoine for the tip.

PG suggests the best permanent advantage an indie author has comes from writing good books.

Bowker has a site called SelfPublishedAuthor:

Here at Self Published Author.com, we offer tools, advice, and resources to help you through the publishing process. Bowker is the official ISBN agency in the US and Australia. We’re excited about authors taking the publishing process into their own hands, and we’re here to help however you need it.

At Self Published Author.com, we

• offer industry advice and perspective, giving you an inside scoop on the business
• explore marketing tools
• refer you to partners who can help
• list events specifically for self-published authors

Link to the rest at SelfPublishedAuthor

PG hasn’t reviewed the site in any depth, but he did note that #1 on a To Do List was to buy ISBN’s from Bowker for your ebook which is not something Mrs. PG does for her ebooks.

#7 is to buy a QR Code from Bowker. There are a zillion (maybe only a half-zillion) places online where you can create a QR Code at no charge.

From Jane Friedman:

I spend a lot of time at writers conferences trying to clarify the pros and cons among the different publishing paths and the growing number of services available to authors.

. . . .

1. Traditional publishing: where you query and submit to agents and editors in an effort to land a contract that pays an advance and royalties (and typically involves nationwide bookstore distribution).
2. Partnership publishing: one might consider this the evolution of traditional publishing, where authors are positioned more as partners, receive higher royalties, but usually no advance.
3. Fully-assisted publishing: the old “vanity” self-publishing model, where you write a check and get your book published without lifting a finger. I don’t recommend this, but it’s still a significant part of the self-publishing market, now dominated by Author Solutions.
4. Do-it-yourself (DIY) publishing with a distributor: while this applies to either print or e-books, today this usually involves e-publishing your work (to reduce financial risk and investment involved with print), and using a service provider or distributor to reach all possible online retailers—and/or to provide some level of assistance.
5. Do-it-yourself (DIY) direct publishing: when an author doesn’t put any middlemen between him and the retailer selling his books. Often, this option is combined with #4 above; for example, someone might sell direct through Amazon KDP, and complement it with distribution to all other retailers through Smashwords. This is possible because most distributors and online retailers of e-books work on a nonexclusive basis.

Link to the rest at Jane Friedman and thanks to Ant for the tip.

From Blank Slate Press:

This past Thursday and Friday I attended the IBPA (Independent Book Publishers Association) Publishing University in Chicago.

. . . .

1)    “The flaws in the traditional publishing model are everywhere. It is not a viable model.”  This is one of my favorite quotes from Dominique Raccah, founder of Sourcebooks and one of the people busy reinventing the industry.  The telling part of the quote is in its context. Her presentation was not about the industry per se, and that quote was not taken from her presentation, but rather was a response to a question from an attendee who asked why, with all the opportunities available for authors today, she or anyone else should seek to publish traditionally. Raccah responded that she actually had no idea why anyone would want to do that if they are willing and able to take on the tasks necessary to make a book a success according to their own measures and expectations.

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5)    The Myth of Big 5 Marketing Support. So, this may sound strange coming from a publisher, but I’ve been on the other side as well and I know that, for many (most?) the idea that just because you got a nice advance and you’ve got a publicity team assigned to you, doesn’t mean you’re actually going to get real, sustained—or intelligent!—pr/marketing support. Dori Jones Yang, a successful historical fiction author, told the story about her agent’s response to all the marketing she was doing. The agent was thrilled at her success and said, “As soon as you hit it big, your publisher’s publicist is going to leap into action.”

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Ingram took the opportunity to formally announce Ingram Spark—a “new and improved” service designed for small publishers that will roll out later this year.  I learned that very small publishers (those with under 1 million in sales…uh, yeah, I fit in that group), makes up 20% of the publishing industry, and Ingram is perfectly positioned to serve that 20%.

As the largest wholesaler in the industry, Ingram serves over 200 ebook retailers in over 150 countries. They have 2500 partners, they handle 11 million titles through 3800 channels, and can output a different book every six seconds. But still they see room for significant growth catering to that 20%–as well as working with many of the major publishers who use their services (including O’Reily Media who just closed their last warehouse).   Ingram Spark will be much easier (according to the Ingram folks) to use than Lightning Source today. It will be “easy, quick, and free” and will provide one interface for POD and ebooks.

Link to the rest at Blank Slate Press and thanks to Lassal for the tip.

And this from Midwest Independent Publishers Association:

Ingram used the IBPA keynote luncheon on Saturday as the platform to introduce “Spark.” This new Ingram service was created to allow independent publishers to deal directly with Ingram in DISTRIBUTING print on demand (POD) books. The quoted costs for the POD service: 1.3 cents a page and 90 cents for the cover (no varnish or embossing). A $49 fee to set up a title is waived if you order 50 books. Ingram will make the books available throughout the US and 38 countries across the world. Spark is scheduled for launch on May 28. By August, Ingram will also offer e-book conversion and e-book DISTRIBUTION for Kindle, Apple, Kobo, Nook, and all LSI partners. Ingram plans to eventually offer the sale of ISBNs (as arranged through Bowker) and add marketing services.

Link to the rest at MIPA

From Passive Voice regular JW Manus:

So here’s the situation: You have a book to publish and you have a budget. You need to know how best to spend your budget to produce a profitable product. The “experts” are the wrong people with which to have this discussion. They can give you facts and figures. But. An editor will tell you, and mean it from the bottom of her heart, that editing is most important. An ebook formatter will tell you formatting is most important. A cover designer will tell you that without a top-notch cover your book is dead on arrival. Marketing and PR will insist that they are the ticket to success. Any of those experts could be right, but they could also be dead wrong.

To know why, you have to understand the reality. Up until the self-publishing boom, it was a rare writer who was making a living from his writing. I can’t recall who said it: “You can get rich writing fiction, but you can’t make a living.” For the longest time that was true. Even best sellers had to work “real” jobs. Even writers who commanded respectable advances weren’t making a living. They might get a $100,000 dollar advance, but that might be their only income from writing for three or four years, and when you factor in taxes and agent commissions, that figure shrinks considerably. Genre fiction writers fared slightly better. Those who were prolific and could consistently please their publisher, could publish multiple titles each year and make a living based on output. (There is a reason best selling writers who make tons of money are news–it’s because they’re rare!)

With self-publishing, more and more writers are making a living. There is a reason for that. Availability.

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Maybe one first book in 100,000 will make a noticeable splash, money-wise. It’s a rarity. Quite frankly, those are lottery odds. If you’re a serious self-publisher who intends to make a living from your writing, then you have probably figured out by now that blowing your wad on any individual title is a fool’s game, especially early on. I will go so far to say that depending on where you are in your career, some of the money spent will be a total waste.

Once you have a product in hand (a book is only art when you’re creating it; when you try to get people to pay for it, it’sproduct), you need a budget. Once you have a budget, you have to allocate those funds. What you need to do is put on your businessperson hat and figure out the best way to use your budget to get the greatest return on your dollar. In order to do that you have to ask the right question:

What do my readers value?

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Take editing for example. If your readers value quantity more than quality, then using a large part of your budget to pay a developmental editor is probably a waste. You can save a lot of money by using beta readers, then use your editing budget for a competent line editor to find your most egregious mistakes. The perversity of publishing is this: The smaller, more exclusive, your intended audience, the more you’ll need to pay for editorial.

What about covers? Do some market research. I popped over to Amazon this morning and did a quick survey (very non-scientific). I looked at the top selling ebooks in science fiction and fantasy. Overall, the covers are VERY good. Very artistic. Most look expensive. What this tells me is that readers value “high-dollar” covers–why, I don’t know, but that’s the surface appearance. On the flip side, I looked at the top sellers in romance. The covers? Not so good. In fact, a large number in the top one hundred are pretty crappy, with the majority being mediocre. What that tells me is that–perhaps!–while romance readers are looking for covers that look like romance covers, they aren’t judging the quality of the story inside by the covers. Do better market research than I just did. While a gorgeous, beautiful cover never hurts (unless it’s not a good fit with the genre), spending more than you need to can hurt your pocketbook and put you in the red longer than is necessary.

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[I]n my opinion, based on observation, you’ll get a better return on your dollars by burning them on an altar to the BestSeller God than you will by spending them on advertising. UNTIL you have a decent sized body of work available for sale. Early on in your career, rather than shelling out big bucks for ads, book trailers, PR services, paid reviews, etc. write more books.

Link to the rest at JW Manus and thanks to Julia for the tip.

PG missed this one a few days ago.

From the Smashwords blog:

For the study this year, we analyzed over $12 million in sales for a collection of 120,000 Smashwords ebooks from May 1, 2012 through March 31, 2013.  We aggregated our sales data from across our retail distribution network, which includes the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and Amazon (only about 200 of our 200,000 titles are at Amazon).  As the world’s largest indie ebook distributor, I think our study represents the most comprehensive analysis ever of how ebooks from self-published authors and small independent presses are behaving in the marketplace.

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1.  Ebook Sales Conform to a Power Curve
Most books don’t sell well, but those that do sell well sell really well.  This finding wasn’t a surprise.  Just as in traditional publishing, very few books become bestsellers.

However, the underlying dynamic of the power curve is extremely significant, especially when you consider it as a framework for evaluating the survey’s findings.  As a title moves up in sales rank, its sales grow exponentially.  We see this in our sales results all the time.  On any given day, a #1 bestseller in an ebook store might be selling twice the number copies as the #5-ranked title on that day, and triple or quadruple the number of copies as the #10 bestseller.  In our data over this 11-month period, the #1 Smashwords bestseller, measured in dollars, sold 37 times more than the book ranked #500, and #500′s sales would put a smile on most authors’ faces.

The opportunity for every Smashwords author and publisher is to make decisions that cause their books to move up in sales rank.   This is power of my Viral Catalyst concept.  When you consider that there are potentially dozens if not hundreds of factors that can make your book more (or less) discoverable, desirable and enjoyable, then you realize that you – the author/publisher – have more control over your book’s destiny than previously thought.  Your opportunity is to make dozens of correct decisions – big and small – while avoiding the poor decisions that will undermine your success.

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2.  Viva Long Form Reading:  Longer Books Sell Better
For the second year running, we found definitive evidence that ebook readers – voting with their Dollars, Euros, Pounds, Krone, Krona and Koruna – overwhelmingly prefer longer books over shorter books.

The top 100 bestselling Smashwords books averaged 115,000 words.  When we examined the word counts of books in other sales rank bands, we found the lower the word count, the lower the sales.

Now consider how authors can use this finding, combined with the knowledge of the power curve, to make smarter publishing decisions, and to avoid poor decisions.  Often, we’ll see an authors with a single full-length novel break the novel into chunks to create a series of novellas, or worse – they’ll try to serialize it as dozens of short pieces.  When you consider that readers overwhelmingly prefer longer works, and you consider that bestselling titles sell exponentially more copies, reach more readers and earn more money than the non-bestsellers, you can understand how some authors might be undermining their book’s true potential.

Like every finding from this survey, you should use this information as one data point.  There will always be exceptions to any rule.   If your story deserves 50,000 words – nothing more and nothing less – because this is the length packs the biggest pleasure punch for readers, then by all means don’t bloat your perfect story with extra words just because the data shows that longer books, on average, sell more.  Do what’s right for your story because that’s what’s right for your reader.

Link to the rest at Smashwords

From Orna Ross on Jane Friedman’s blog:

Self-publishing is not for every writer. In order to succeed, you need to have or develop specific traits, along with certain ways of approaching the publication of a book. Consider the following questions.

1. Are you positive and proactive?

Many writers wait for permission from an agent or publisher to say they are fit for publication—or for a PR campaign to explain why somebody should buy their book. The flip side of this passivity is chronic complaint syndrome: writers moaning about the vagaries of agents or publishers, about the death of bookstores, the dominance of Amazon, etc.

Not independent authors. You must take responsibility for the risks, as well as the rewards, of publishing your own work.

. . . .

4. Are you entrepreneurial?

Independent authors who do best have an entrepreneurial mindset. You must always be on the lookout for new ways to reach readers, new communities who might be interested in your books, new opportunities to get your message out. You should be a savvy user of social media and know how to engage resources like e-mail lists, newsletters, promotions, competitions, and book giveaways to extend your readership. You must be open to failure and willing to learn from mistakes, while excited by the prospect of new projects and creative collaborations.

. . . .

13. Do you know who your reader is?

Some authors become self-publishers because they are recognised experts, or to enhance their standing in their field, or to justify an increase in their fees. Some they are committed to a cause, or have a story that just has to be told.

Regardless of your primary motive for writing, you must have a marketer‘s sensibility. You may not use marketing terms, but you will not survive, never mind thrive, if you are not attuned to the needs of your readership or don’t communicate with them. You will need to to go where most of your readers are most likely to be found online, to their forums and blogs, and make it your business to understand their concerns.

Link to the rest at Jane Friedman

From The Bookseller:

Orange Prize-winner Ann Patchett has warned that authors who decide to shun traditional publishing deals and instead use self-publishing channels to “cut out the middle man” are turning their back on vital publishing services they really need.

. . . .

Patchett told The Bookseller that authors should become more involved in the industry and take greater responsibility as part of a wider ecosystem, just as book-buyers should think twice about purchasing through the cheapest channel, like Amazon, if it means they might lose their local bookshop. She also said authors who shunned traditional publishing deals in favour of self-publishing, thinking they would be able to earn more money, should think carefully about the step.

“If you had asked me two years ago, I would not have thought it was my responsibility. But I do think authors need to get involved with all sort of aspects of publishing and health of the publishing industry,” she said. “This is not every man working for themselves, we need to think and work as a business. Authors have been protected for a long time, we are very well cared for, but we need to think about our other partners, from bookshops to publishing and self-publishing.”

Regarding self-publishing, she added: “There are people who want to put books on Amazon because they cannot get publishing deals and that is understandable. But there are some authors who could get published in the mainstream but because they are trying to make more money, they think the best way is to self publish. They are cutting out the middle man whose services they really need, such as the editor and the publicist.”

Link to the rest at The Bookseller and thanks to David for the tip.

PG has just about decided that the differences between indie publishing and traditional publishing are so great that nearly anyone immersed in traditional publishing has almost nothing useful to say about indie publishing.

One of the most fundamental mistakes someone who is an expert in one field can make is to assume their expertise is transferable to another.

Thus, those who have deep experience with traditional publishing assume indie publishing is the same except without advances or some other such idiocy. Those who have lots of experience with bookstores assume Amazon is the same except with lower prices.

The idea that an indie author pursues his/her path because day-to-day life in indie world is superior in every way to traditional publishing with all its accoutrements and hangers-on is terra incognita for most in traditional publishing.

But, the services! How can we forget the services that traditional publishing offers?

Editors? Indie authors can choose the one they want to work with instead of arguing semi-colons with a fresh-faced and clueless English major who is somebody’s niece.

Publicists? You mean people who order authors around and insist on twenty Tweets per day?

Publishers? Ah, yes,those who present you with medieval contracts, take most of your money, never answer emails and send you disappointing checks with impenetrable royalty statements every six months.

What professionals get paid every six months? Lawyers? Doctors? Accountants? Teachers? Publishers? Editors? Publicists? No, no, no, no, no, no and no. Even sex workers get paid more often (and usually better) than traditional authors.

Even if indie life didn’t pay more, it would be worth it to a lot of authors not to have to deal with so many annoying and largely useless “services” they don’t need from people they didn’t choose.

From author Scott William Carter:

A couple days ago, when I wrote about my upcoming novel, Ghost Detective, I mentioned that I’m doing a little bit of recalibrating with my writing career.  Well, republishing my Jack Nolte books under my own name is a big part of that process.

Why go to all the trouble, and why did I publish those books under a pseudonym in the first place?

. . . .

I was feeling like I was building toward something of a career as a young adult/children’s writer under my own name.

Now, you have to understand, this isn’t how I saw my writing career.  I follow a simple motto when it comes to my writing, one that I actually have taped to my monitor as a daily reminder:  Write your own favorite book. What I mean is, I try not to pigeonhole myself as a young adult writer or a children’s writer or a mystery writer or a science fiction writer or literary writer, though in my short career, you could already make the case that any one of those labels applies.  I just try to write my own favorite book.

. . . .

But back to 2010.  There are many valid reasons to write under a pseudonym.  You could do it because you don’t want people to know (anonymity) you write “that sort of thing,” whatever “that sort of thing” is.  You could do it because you write across genres and you want to more clearly distinguish those books for readers (branding).  But even if you don’t feel the need to write under a pseudonym for those two reasons, there was an even better one if you hoped to have a long and fruitful traditional publishing career:  protecting your sales numbers.

If you wrote thrillers that were expected to move 100,000 units a book, you may not want to release that latest science fiction novel that’s only expected to sell 5000 under your own name.

. . . .

[B]ecause nobody really knew what the future held for indie-published writers in 2010 (though it was looking promising), I decided to release The Gray and Guilty Seaunder the pen name Jack Nolte.*

Honestly, I was unsure about the book, too.  A writer’s self-confidence can already be an iffy thing, and this is a book that had failed to sell to traditional publishers.

. . . .

So I just stuck it out there with no fanfare, not even a mention on my own blog.  I even put the book at 99 cents originally because I just didn’t care.  I created a JackNolte.com website ( a site which, you’ll notice, now links back here) and treated Jack like he was a separate writer altogether.

And an amazing thing happened. The book started to sell.

. . . .

Over the past few months, this whole pseudonym thing has been nagging me a great deal.  It’s hard enough to build one name, and it’s doubly hard if you’re spreading your books among several.  This has always been true, I guess, but it’s even more true now:  The best way to build a career, today, and with indie publishing specficially, is to steadily release new, similar material.  It’s not the only way, and it’s certainly not right for every writer, but it’s probably the most common method I’ve seen writers use to achieve success recently.

. . . .

Here’s what I did over the last week:

1. Add my own name to the online listings of the Jack Nolte books as a co-author
2. Repackage the covers, dropping the Jack Nolte to a “writing as” subhead
3. Direct all traffic from JackNolte.com to my own site.
4. Publish updated versions of the paperbacks with new covers and interiors.
5. Write this blog post, so Jack Nolte fans will know why I’m making this change.

This way I don’t lose any momentum from the Jack Nolte name, but I position myself so that when the third Gage book is released, I can just release it completely under my own name.

Link to the rest at Scott William Carter