Entrekin

First, a big thanks to anyone who filled out a survey. It helped me out a great deal, both in terms of my class and in terms of my plans.

Second, if you haven’t by now watched the teaser video for Meets Girl in the previous post, go ahead and do so now.

I tweeted a picture of the cover, and then posted this video. A lot of questions came up, most of which boiled down to “All right, it’s pretty, and I’m excited, now how do I get the damned thing, Will? You’re killin’ me, Smalls!”

The answer is simple:

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Crash-course preamble: before Apple announced the iPad, it spoke to many publishers about providing content for its new device, which it hoped could be used as an e-reader. Perhaps hoping that the iPad could somehow do for books what the iPod did for music, many publishers–including the six largest corporate publishers, who include companies like Harper Collins and Penguin–made arrangements to distribute content via the new device at a price point of $14.99, 30% of which Apple retained. This seemed a coup for publishers, and flush with excitement over the deal, Macmillan decided it was going to use its new leveraging power to re-negotiate terms with Amazon and its Kindle, where e-books tended to run $9.99 when published by the big six. Why, Macmillan figured, should it accept $9.99 when it could charge $14.99 (nevermind that $14.99 is, at this point, mythical, given that the iPad right now only exists on Steve Jobs desk. So far as I know, we can’t even pre-order it yet)?

Amazon held firm to its price, and then a couple of old white guys fought like only the knew how, by digging in their heels and refusing to budge. If John Sargent and Macmillan were going to refuse their pricing scheme, Jeff Bezos and Amazon decided, well, they no longer needed to sell Macmillan books. Which included a lot of imprints, like TOR, Forge, ROC, and myriad others.

And readers, who tend not to care so much who publishes their favorite authors so long as they can buy the books, got hurt. Collateral damage.

Writers? Hurt too. Because most authors have no control over those sorts of things. Certainly not over how much their books cost.

The resulting mess and its Twitstorm highlighted the bigger issue, which is digital distribution, pricing, and information. The appropriate cost of an e-book is endlessly debated because the market is still nascent and nothing has yet emerged as the “right” price point. When Apple’s iPod came out, it established price points: 99 cents per song, $9.99 for most albums, with some bargains thrown in.

Apple came late to the e-book party because Steve Jobs didn’t want to admit he was wrong when he declared “Nobody reads anymore” several years ago. Also because, of course, he wanted to get it perfectly right. That’s what Apple tends to aim for (whether the iPad manages the feat is still anyone’s guess. My thought is close, but not yet). Amazon got to set a price–$9.99–that was widely but not universally adopted. I didn’t hear much about publishers grumbling over the price; all I really heard then, mostly, was publishers hoping to be saved by the Kindle.

For my money, I think even $9.99 is too high. I tend to think e-books’ price should fall around the price we’ve always paid for mass market paperbacks: ~$7.99 or so. Over here, Jeff Vandermeer notes why he thinks the mass market paperback analogy doesn’t work, but I’m not convinced by his argument, if only for the fact that he bases his argument on the mass market paperback business model–i.e., that a book needs to sell a lot of hardcover copies to justify the bulk order of paperbacks–which for me doesn’t make sense because why are we talking about printing books?

I understand why the publishing industry feels the need to justify its own existence. I’m just not sure it can.
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Big publishing industry news this week: Oprah endorsed Amazon’s Kindle reading device, having “fallen in love with it.”

Which is not unusual; I’ve heard very little criticism concerning the Kindle. People may not rave over it like they raved about the iPod when it first came out, but the Kindle seems, for many intents and purposes, rad. Awesome. Exciting.

Which makes one wonder: if it’s so awesome and exciting, shouldn’t Entrekin be available for it?

Why yes, yes it should be:

Ain’t it purdy? You can click that link to find its shiny new Amazon page.

The timing couldn’t be better, nor, I think, any less coincidental. I’ve been working on the Kindle version since back in August. Not that it took that long, but I mentioned I was going to be changing things up toward the end of October.

I still go back and forth on Lulu. The reason I put Entrekin on the Kindle was that the digital downloads have been so extraordinarily successful, with more than a thousand across the various stories. I like that Lulu allows me to offer the DRM-free .pdfs, not to mention that it also allows for the tangible book for anyone who wants a souvenir. I had a bad experience in Lulu’s community, but then again I’ve realized that if I simply decide to use Lulu solely as the printing press I’d always meant it to be, it does still serve my purposes pretty well, its forums, policies, and customer service notwithstanding (more on those three later, and elsewhere).

So no, I’m not done yet. I’m still curious about a lot of aspects of publishing and the ways it’s changing, so it looks like Entrekin will still be around for a bit. As always, you can get it here.

Thanks to everyone who’s made it such a success so far, and remember to keep telling your friends about it.

Especially if, you know, your friends own Kindles.

(because, really, here, so far, I’m at a loss; where and how does one market to Kindle owners?)

There’s been a kerfuffle this past week, mainly among the small community of self-published authors who use print-on-demand technologies, and mostly again at Lulu. I’m not all together certain of all the issues involved in the debate, but it seems that Amazon decided to use a specific printer, and any publishers who didn’t use that printer were, so far as Amazon goes, basically out of luck. Over here, Emily Veinglory of PODPeep notes Amazon’s “scheme,” stopping just short of calling them the sort of villain Stephen King would make use of; while over here, Nick Mamatas first states that there is no POD industry, then claims that POD is dying anyway. He ends, unfortunately, with his best argument:

the glorious day when there will no inventory anywhere except for dumps of the Important Thriller, the Big Romance, This Month’s Diet Book, and All About Jesus, with everything else existing only as a month’s projected sales and digital files.

Personally, I find the whole thing a non-issue. While I buy just about everything from Amazon anymore (books, CDs, DVDs, videogames, and even my iVoice [an iPod speaker dock]), if Amazon didn’t exist, I’d still buy those things. In addition, my collection is available exclusively by way of Lulu. There is, quite simply, no other place on Earth to get it (well. Unless you happen to meet me on the street, and I happen to have a copy on me, and you buy it off me. So far, that’s never happened, and probably wouldn’t, for the simple fact that I don’t usually carry my book around [unless to give to someone]).

Know what? I don’t think its reception has suffered for it; so far as I can tell, it’s sold a remarkable number of copies, especially considering it’s a self-published, print-on-demand collection by a basically completely unknown author–I’m not really into numbers and such, but I’ll say it’s sold more than a hundred copies but less than a thousand. Mind you, that’s the collection itself; when you factor in the downloads of the individual stories, the numbers are substantially higher.

All without Amazon. Shit, my book doesn’t even have an ISBN, and I’m not sure I’d ever buy one. I mean, really, what’s the point? That someone could go to a bookstore and order one? That’s not a point, if only because they could go to Lulu and order one. To be honest, I think the whole ISBN/Amazon thing is counterproductive, certainly for what I’m doing and in addition for what I believe a lot of other authors are doing; Amazon’s mark-up is such that it reduces royalties often by nearly 75%. The plain and simple fact is that I get to charge readers less because I use Lulu exclusively, and I’ve been working since the beginning to bring the price to its most effective point (I think I’m there, now).

And seriously, how many self-published, POD authors are doing booktours? I haven’t done a single reading to support my book. Not even in my writing program (I may this month. We’ll see). I did a reading the week before it came out, before copies could actually be purchased, but otherwise?

Mamatas’ second-best point is the sales; most aren’t selling many copies to begin with. Most books, in fact, regardless of their distribution method, sell fairly few copies. There are exceptions, of course, like Rowling and Brown and King, but I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that more than 90% of all books published, in general, sell fewer than 1,000 copies (actually, I’m sure I did. here’s a source. In the interest of full disclosure, there is some debate over said statistics, but, then, 94% of all statistics are made up on the spot, anyway). In fact, according to same, 80% sold fewer than 99 copies.

But this isn’t about numbers. This is about the fact that, lately, it seems self-published authors will jump into any argument headfirst to rant and rave simply to start a kerfuffle for the attention, without every considering whether the argument is actually worth it.

Yes, I buy books from Amazon, but will it bother me, or has it ever, that Amazon won’t carry my book? That I won’t get some shiny frickin’ button to use to sell the damned thing?

No. Because shiny frickin’ buttons never sold shit. Might dupe people into paying for something they didn’t actually mean to, but quality is what sells. Good stories sell.

And good stories will sell whether people purchase them from Amazon or not.

And when self-published stories sell, I suggest the authors who sold them might want to use the proceeds to purchase a clue, rather than a shiny frickin’ button.

Or a good editor. Lord knows most self-published authors could use one of them, as well.