Tourism of the Mind XI - dipping my toe in the ebook water
You might notice the top menu now has the item "ebooks" on it. Click on that and you might notice the Book I cover on it, and even… a price. Not that you can buy it yet. There are other hoops I have to jump through to create an ebook.
I am leaning towards Smashwords, mostly because I heard good things about them some years ago, and more recently, just today in fact, I was on their site. I like their approach… I like the way the guy who owns it (Mark Coker) thinks, and the tone of his communications with writers. He asks for quality and pernicketyness in presentation, and that fits well with me. (The cleanness of my posts, especially the earlier ones, is trad-pub quality. Says the author of dead-tree novels who still resents the typos in them.) I feel like I am on the same wavelength. I also like Smashwords’ success. Old success tip: to be successful, rub up against others who are.
If any of you have any comments on this, any suggestions of another route that might work better for me, please sing out. I need a method of publishing ebooks that is suited to me, i.e., an indie who:
1) Has a well-developed website
2) Produces like crazy
3) Has very error-free copy
4) Designs her own book covers and writes her own blurbs
5) Wants to create a base of several thousand readers who read her work online, commenting, RPing, interacting, contributing, etc., ongoingly, while selling ebooks to many more. That’s Karen’s perfect world!
Smashwords doesn’t provide—or require the use of their—editing, cover-art or blurb services, so there’s a fit. They just do stuff I don’t do: convert to the ebook reader formats, and distribute to their retailers.
Marketing-wise it would be best for me to offer each ebook for sale before completing it on the site… so people who just can’t stand to wait will buy it. Writing-wise it doesn’t work… you know me, I like to change as I go, throw questions out to readers, RP and them make them into scenes, etc. Not that it matters for PA, since it’s mostly written. I have nine books I could sell right now without writing another word (not counting asa kraiya, due to the discontinuity.) One of Mark Coker's seven secrets of ebook success is "build a big backlist." Check!
Reminds me… I am thinking of hiding asa kraiya… so that readers can no longer get ahead of where I’m writing. If I do this (it so goes against the grain) I will not delete it, but will just disappear the links that get you to it easily… on the top nav bar, front page, etc. The original strategy was to give readers of the dead-tree books something fresh to read right off the bat. On retrospect, that was a mistake. They’ve all wanted to read the new version of Chevenga’s story from the start, as far as I can tell. Unless there are howls of protest, I will likely do this soon. If you’ve already read it and enjoy rereading it… bookmark the TOC page - http://chevenga.com/node/6 - right now. You’ll still be able to get to it that way even after it’s apparently gone.
I will definitely make asa kraiya fully visible again, at least chapter by chapter as we go, when I get to the end of PA and it's time for the asa kraiya Club to do its read-through.
I’ve set a goal to get five e-books out there by the end of the year, but I’m thinking that by posting for just three days a week, I might be able to do it faster. Most of the ebook stuff I’m doing today is one-shot—learning about smashwords, looking at their style guide, etc.
It's all scary. Each step in this is another wall to break through, another bout of feeling naked and exposed, another creepy inkling that I am doing something wrong or overly bold or bigger than me or that I don't deserve. I'm starting to get used to feeling this, and pushing through anyway. Huge thanks again to capriox, who ensures I will push through by raising the spectre of even worse pain from her formerly cluex4-shaped bat. I'm saying it facetiously, but I would definitely not be as far along as I am with all this at this point, still hesitating and wringing my hands, if it weren't for her.
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Mobipocket has free
Mobipocket has free publishing software for its format.
I don't mean to bring up what may be a painful subject, but is there any chance of the Baen versions of the Fifth Millennium books hitting E-format? This could drag your later Chevenga books back up into the spotlight where they belong to be. Even a single partial book (or novella) on Baen Free Library would generate enormous publicity.
An interesting and thorny question
For that to happen, I'd have to make a completely new deal with Baen. Those old contracts have all expired now and the rights reverted back to Steve (S.M. Stirling), Shirley and me, and I think Toni Weisskopf, who's the boss there since Jim passed away in 2006, probably thinks of Fifth Millennium as ancient history she'd rather not deal with. Because Shirley's name is on more of the Fifth Mill books than mine, I suspect Toni associates the world and series more with her than with me, and Shirley would have to be part of the deal anyway for all the books to be epublished. She and Toni parted ways non-amicably in 2010 due to an unrelated project falling through, so I don't see that happening.
Even for me to make a separate deal with Baen, just for Chevenga books, I suspect I'd have to give them something closer to what they, as a traditional publisher--a traditional publisher that is particularly hard on its authors--are used to getting from us (an arm, a leg and a goodly part of our mortal soul), not only on the e-reprints but on what I am writing now. (Unless things have changed due to the new nature of publishing and I don't know about it...?) If they e-reprinted LH and LS I just can't see them not wanting an interest in what I'm doing now, because that's how trad publishers work. They aren't just looking at how they can make money on what you've written; they're always looking to the future as well.
Baen and I were never a good match anyway. (They were the thirteenth publisher I sent the manuscript to.) There's a substantial difference in values. I always had the sense that Jim, bless his soul, felt business always required one side to win and one side to lose, whereas I prefer the more modern business model of seeking a win-win in all deals. I wasn't enough of a businessperson back then to understand myself about this, but I know now that was what I yearning for.
In fact... you could say that I and traditional publishing were never a good match. I want neither to exploit nor be exploited, and a total lack of transparency to the author on how gross revenue on book sales is distributed, other than the author's own minute percentage, is standard operating procedure with all of them, not just Baen, a relic of earlier, more exploitive times that they still follow because it's the business model they inherited and learned. In that sense, you are not treated as a business partner in a project, but a minion. When I think about it, that's probably the biggest source of mistrust between authors and publishers. I never liked it. And nowadays, with the new face of publishing, I don't have to put up with it.
So... it's not a painful topic so much as an impractical one. Thanks for the suggestion anyway, and the Mobipocket tip, which I could end up using. And thank you very much for saying these books belong in the spotlight. I am working on other ways of getting them there. Every compliment like that is encouraging, helping me believe in myself enough to do it.
P.S: In case you're wondering why traditional publishing has such a one-sided model, here is my opinion: it was all built on the endemic self-esteem problems of the author demographic. So many writers are insecure and uncomfortable dealing with money (because it is the numerical representation of power) that they have let themselves in for bad deals for the entire history of printed literature. That skews the market, making it hostile even for those who are not insecure, because for every excellent writer who stands up for herself, there are another ten excellent writers who are a) desperate for attention and b) totally convinced of the worthlessness of their work, from whom publishers (who are detached, except from their bottom lines) can pick to replace the strong one. (Anyone who imagines that business is all completely rational and such psychology doesn't enter into it is clueless about human nature.)
In that sense, we got ourselves into this. At least now the strong ones can become indies. I don't see a big-picture solution to this problem until this culture becomes one that values art in general more, and parents quit telling their kids that their creative work is a waste of time and thus convincing them that what is most important to them, what their souls burn for, is worthless.
You might gather I understand the psychology very, very well.