The chapter 29 draft is up on Wattpad, and a mecha pilot needs a mech! In this chapter, Penny Tanaka, one of the veteran instructors at the academy frantically looks for a mecha to use against the raiders. You can have a look at the draft of Neo Ace over at Wattpad here for free.
I have done my second pass through up to chapter 30, and have 3 chapters to go. Then I have to format it for the Kindle - table of contents, cover, the front matter for the book, and the book blurb. My copy editor will then have a look at it. Christmas publication is possible, but I'm betting only 50/50 right now. Late December or early January looks like 100% though. The holiday season is tough. I'm going to try to get some blog posts up about the world building in Exocrisis Blue next, and have to crank out a few new posts for my Tokyo Excess blog on Japanese pop culture too.
 |
| Ebook publishing on your own is like diving in the deep end. |
I've been reading news and blog posts about this subject for a few years now. I'm a business analyst and have been pretty excited about this transformative stage in book publishing. The subject really has been written to death by now, but I'm going to kill it deader than dead (from Groo I think). Do you actually kill zombies who are technically dead or do you bring them back to life to kill them as the opposite of dead or do you destroy them? Anyhow, I'm going to look at this trend from a pros and cons perspective with a touch of innovative business disruption thrown in.
Base Assumptions About Indie Ebook Publishing.
This is a big topic and I'm probably just scratching the surface here with these points.
- Breaks down the barriers to publication for all writers.
PROS- Under the current business model, anyone can publish a book if they can follow the publishing directions for Google, Amazon, or Apple. There may be a small fee involved, but it is essentially open. Amazon is the 800 pound gorilla in this ecosystem. Places like Smashwords and other publishing platforms exist too with more limited traction.
- No one can reject your writing other than the mass market.
- There are three main walled gardens for indies to publish in right now. The rules can change.
- The quality of writing will be across the board from terrible to really good for independent publishing. It will be like rolling dice on a book to see if you have a winner based on limited reviews.
- The gatekeeping performed by book publishers was seen as a quality check. After all, a publisher wants to publish something that sells and does perform the QA function on the book. This doesn't mean a crappy book can't get published, it just goes through QA first.
- You can bypass mainstream publishers and keep most of the book revenue for yourself.
- Publishers have the resources to publish only so many books a year. A hundred books get published to every one of theirs. If the hundred indie books were of average quality (but this isn't the case) - this would kill them off in a few years or less. They will get a smaller piece of the pie as they are being nibbled to death by mice.
- Empowers authors.
PROS
- Writing really is a solitary occupation. Writers, painters, musicians can all work on their own. You DO NOT NEED A TEAM. This isn't a movie or a musical or a giant AAA videogame. This means if you have the muse then you can go and create and find an audience.
- If you are well connected to your readers (e.g. via social media) and have industry connections you will do better than if you don't have this as a lone writer in a cabin with internet. You could match anything a big publisher could do for you to a certain level. E.g. You can promote yourself, but you are not going to be able to doing mass media marketing via movies, ad campaigns, cross-marketing, product tie-ins, etc.
- Mid-list authors can only benefit from this as they were only making a living. If they control their back list and it is always available it can only increase their income. They can also better cross-promote their books.
- There is piles of competition for consumers of your product. You are a plankton in the great big sea. Big publishers are still the apex predator other than the odd really successful indie writer or big name author who has gone off on their own.
- Might still need help to finalize product.
- Being just on your own doesn't mean you are good enough to survive. E.g. lost in woods and starved to death.
- Anyone can write and find an audience.
- You can write what you want.
- Anything can go viral with the right situation, luck, or skill.
- Provides plenty of variety to pick from to read.
PROS- If you like fiction of a particular type, there will probably be more of it available. E.g. Finding fiction or non-fiction about giant robots. No one else but the author is determining market suitability and even then, they might just not care about the economics as it is a work of love.
- There will be just more writing available.
- With plenty of variety, niche markets will likely be served less by big publishers due to the inherent overhead that they have. They are not going to usually publish something unless they think they can make money. If the small fry are selling cheaper or for free, they're not going to publish.
- Too much variety - too much of a good thing and you cannot find the good stuff. But this could be solved by the correct application of technology for search and review.
- There will always be more variety.
- Many more books will be published. PROS
- More books being published means that there is more information available. More information means that there is more to read. If you read, this is good.
- If only 1 in 100 books per year is of great quality - a masterpiece of literature and 20 in one hundred are really good, then there are 21 books out of a hundred that are worth reading. The rest is forgettable. In traditional publishing you would only have 21 books as that is the production that big publishers can put out per year. With self publishing and smaller publishers I'll just say the process scales to provide more good reading even if there is more dreck. So there are now 1000 books being published by indies per year. Even if 1 in five hundred is a master piece, and 10 per hundred are really good, that is still 2 master pieces and 100 good books plus the 21 books from the big publishers. Do the math!
- There is too much to read. The signal to noise ration is poor. How do you find the good stuff?
- Discovery technology will play a big role to determine who will be read. No one has done this as a killer app yet.
- Publishers can only lose, indies can only gain.
- Book pricing should come down.
PROS- Cheaper ebooks for everyone.
- Most ebooks are overpriced in the traditional sense as the overhead of physical production and transportation is gone so there is room for prices to come down.
- Free doesn't mean good.
- Cheap doesn't mean a good writer can make a living unless there are massive sales volumes involved.
- Book pricing really can be set to what the market will bear. If you are a big name author, your loyal fans will support you with a more premium price.
- Back list books don't seem to come down in price much (big publisher issue mainly) so the focus isn't on the long tail.
- You are selling information and entertainment. What is the price of this?
- More innovative sales packaging with value-adds or cross-sales is a possibility to support authors. E.g. premium bound books, t-shirts, limited edition items, meet the author, toys, etc.
- The publishing transformation hasn't ended yet. PROS
- Change is good for a model that hasn't changed in a hundred years. It was kind of stagnant no matter how you look at it.
- People who depend on the old publishing need to adapt and change. Stop bitching about too many amateurs. You're the old guard in the revolution. Change and succeed instead.
- Plenty of business opportunities to help indie authors. From contract editing, contract cover design, contract ebook assembly to publishing cooperatives that provide book development infrastructure and kill off some small publishers who take too big of a cut.
- Role of bookstores and libraries is still in flux.
- Big publishers are not out of the game. They can still change the game. What if they building their own ebookstores for indies and groom indies themselves? Just look at blogging. It was supposed to kill of traditional news and such, but it is now the domain of big aggregators.
- No-DRM ebookstores with no affiliation to the existing players.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.