Januarie 11, 2012
‘n Nuwe jaar beteken mos weer nuwe dinge…maar vandag wil ek vashaak op oues.
Ek het so lanklaas ‘n goeie chic fliek gekyk – en daar is nie juis oulike lokprente wat ek tot dusver gesien het nie vir 2012 nie, laat ek besluit het om ‘n lys bymekaar te sit vir die Top 20 chic flieks van alle tye – maar ek het bietjie hulp nodig hiermee…
Wat is jou Top Chic flieks van alle tye?
November 11, 2011
Vanoggend het ek sommer vroeg al in die pad geval, want jy weet mos hoe dit gaan. Iemand het vir iemand gese dat Centlec se kragkantore al 07:30 oopmaak.
Helaas- toe ek net na 7 deur die hekke ry is my eerste teleurstelling dat hulle vandag eers 8 uur oopmaak. Prettig.
So nou staan ek reeds 45 minute in ‘n ry…en ek verpes rye!
Wat my opval is, soos ons ry groei voor die hek is daar tog ‘n soortvan kameraderie tussen almal. Maar om met dieselfde pyn en frustrasie te deel is geneig om dit te doen.
Hoe voel jy oor rye by diensverskaffers?
November 1, 2011
Die einde van die dag is amper op ons. Maak jy nou eers gereed om jou target vir die dag te maak of is jy al besig om te ontspan…?
My target is gehaal- maar vir daardie onverwagse dae wat ek nie my vingers oor die sleutelbord kan laat vlieg nie, gaan ek kyk hoe ver ek kan skryf.
November is beslis ‘ Live a little, write a lot!’
Oktober 31, 2011
Jammer vir die GROOT stilte van die afgelope paar maande. Dit was ‘n besige afkop tydjie gewees met tonne gebeure….
Nou is dit weer daardie tyd van die jaar! 1 November skop die National Novel Writing Month(nanowrimo.org) af waar jou enigste doelwit is om 50 000 woorde teen 30 November te haal.
Dit klink en voel dalk soos ‘n mal perd – en heelwat van die duisende Nano’s sal saamstem, maar hierdie is beslis een van daardie goed wat mens ten minste een keer moet probeer!
Hierdie jaar is dit my 2de go om Nano klaar te maak…hopelik kry ek dit reg!
Wie van julle saal ook die mal perd op en wat is julle pva om die maand te oorleef?
Maart 14, 2011
Ek het nou onlangs die resep gemaak en buiten dat dit regtig lekker was, is dit ook baie maklik om te maak. Ek glo mens moet lekker resepte deel met almal.
Bestanddele:
1 Groot ui (fyn gekap)
½ koppie fyn vars sampioene
½ Greenpepper (fyn gekap)
1 pak fyn bacon
1 EL fyn knoffel
250ml Melk
2 eiers geskei
125ml koekmeelblom
250ml gerasperde Cheddar kaas
1-2 tamaties of Cherrie tamaties.
Sout en peper
Cayenne Pepper
Metode:
Braai spek. Voeg ui, knoffel, greenpepper en sampioene by.
Meng melk, meel, eiergele, sout en peper bymekaar.
Vou spekmengsel by en meng goed.
Klits eierwitte styf en vou in.
Smeer groterige bak en gooi mengsel in.
Sny tamaties in dun skyfies en sit bo-op.
Strooi kaas bo-op. Sprinkel Cayenne peper op.
Bak vir ± 30 min by 180˚C.
Opsioneel kan die cherry tamaties (middeldeur gesny) by die mengsel in geroer word in plaas van om die tamaties bo-op te sit.
February 1, 2011
Ek het die oulikste en seker die beste raad nog ooit gekry wat skryfwerk aanbetref en ek moes dit nou net met julle deel:
Writing is a journey, not a destination. Life is nothing if not experience.
Outcome is rarely within our total control.
Ek is so geneig om vas te staar teen die feit dat ek myself beskou as ’n “procrastinator” dat ek nooit dink dat Rome nie in een dag gebou is nie…en dieselfde geld vir bad habits wat mens probeer breek en dis waar ek die stukkie raad gekry het om writer’s block te beveg.
“If you have writer’s block, sit down and write one sentence. One sentence. Even if you want to keep going. The next time, allow yourself two sentences. The third day, stop after three sentences. Avoid the urge to leap to an impressive word count right away. Try for 100, 200, then 300 words. Only then, after about a week, should you set a more ambitious goal.”
“Remember the only readership that matters: You. Your goal is not to write the greatest article or poem for how-to guide or epic novel ever created. Your goal is to satisfy yourself. Author Toni Morrison once said, “If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” And you must do so because you want to read it. If anybody else does, too, that’s just icing on the cake.”
Om die hele artikel te lees, kliek hier: 7 Tips for Overcoming Writer’s Block
Januarie 24, 2011
Daar is tans in die internasionale publikasie wêreld baie veranderinge en fluisteringe oor die toekoms van gedrukte boeke, die voortbestaan van agente en die groot tradisionele drukkershuise aan die gang. Die meeste is oortuig daarvan dat daar ’n radikale verandering binne die volgende paar jaar gaan gebeur met die dat die e-boeke so uiters gewild word.
Ek het onlangs ’n artikel van Randy Ingermanson gelees wat in sy maandelikse E-zine verskyn, tegnies was dit twee en dit het onder andere oor die publikasie bedryf gespekuleer en oor die bemarking van boeke in die toekoms. Lees hier vir die artikels: http://lfourie.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/new-directions-in-publishing/ en http://lfourie.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/the-future-of-publishing-2/
Die groot vraag is net hoe gaan dit ons hier in Suid-Afrika raak? Gaan druk-huise soos NB en Lapa op die ‘bandwagon’ spring en ook hulle nuutste vrystellings as pdf ook te koop aanbied? Gaan jy dieselfde betaal vir die elektroniese formaat as wat jy vir die harde kopie betaal?
Ek dink tyd alleen sal leer wat gaan gebeur en veral hoe dit lesers gaan raak.
Wat dink jy van die elektroniese boeke en wat die verandering vir lesers in Suid-Afrika inhou?
Januarie 24, 2011
My Scribbles Artikel, Randy Ingermanson, Skryf Lewer kommentaar
Publisher: Randy Ingermanson (“the Snowflake guy”)
Motto: “A Vision for Excellence”
Date: December 20, 2010
Issue: Volume 6, Number 12
Home Pages: http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com
http://www.Ingermanson.com
I spent an hour recently Skyping with best-selling
author Bob Mayer on the general subject of “new
directions in publishing.”
If you don’t know who Bob is, here’s a quick description:
NY Times bestselling author Bob Mayer has over 40 books
published. He has over three million books in print
and is in demand as a team-building, life-change, and
leadership speaker and consultant. Bob graduated from
West Point and served in the military as a Special
Forces A-Team leader and a teacher at the JFK Special
Warfare Center & School. His latest books are Warrior
Writer: From Writer to Published Author and Chasing The
Ghost. He teaches novel writing and improving the
author via his Warrior-Writer program. He is the
Co-Creator of Who Dares Wins Publishing. He lives on
an island off Seattle and teaches at the University of
Washington. For more information see:
http://www.bobmayer.org or
http://www.WhoDaresWinsPublishing.com
Our conversation was wide-ranging and vigorous. I cut
and pasted the transcript into a text editor and then
spent some time disentangling things because in many
cases we were both typing at once. I hope you’ll find
our discussion stimulating.
Both Bob and I see a bright future for authors willing
to take control of their own futures. Here’s what we
said:
Randy: Our subject for today is “New Directions in
Publishing.” This is wide open, of course. Nobody has
any clue what’s going on. Except the few people who do,
and nobody knows who they are.
Bob: Reality is going in a new direction — I’m not
sure publishers are. My take is it’s pretty much
business as usual in NY. But the retail end is
changing, which means they have to change or die.
Randy: It looks like the wheels are coming off of the
publishing industry. What’s the current status of the
business, as you see it?
Bob: Confusion and fear. Traditional publishers want
to hold on to the hardcover and mass market paperback.
They say that eBook sales are 10%. If true, that’s a
300% increase from the beginning of this year. I think
they’re ‘juking the stats’ because every author I talk
to says their eBook sales as reported on royalty
statements are 40-60% of total sales. The immediate
effect is that publishers are dumping their midlist and
going with the 10% of their authors who make 90% of the
profit.
Randy: Which means that a lot of midlist authors are
suddenly finding things a tough go. And they don’t have
any idea what to do next.
Bob: To an extent. If the author is established, they
have more opportunities than ever before.
Randy: What I see are two groups of midlisters: Those
who say, “Oh no, the sky is falling!” and . . .
Bob: And those who see opportunity! The Big 6 held a
stranglehold on distribution. That’s no longer true.
Randy: Talk to me more about the Big 6. What’s been
their market share in past years? And how is that
changing?
Bob: The Big 6 Publishers control 95% of print
publishing. Starting in 1995, the print business began
contracting. The decline of the book chains is the
biggest problem for traditional publishers. Borders
will soon be gone. I believe Barnes and Noble won’t be
far behind. This means the selling of print books will
fall more and more to places like Target and Walmart
(besides the growing digital market). To me this means
midlist authors are in an even worse bind than ever as
far as print, because those places are only going to
rack Brand Name authors. We’re going to miss Barnes
and Noble’s huge shelf spaces. On the bright side, the
eBook market is wide open. There are only 300 indie
bookstores left and they’re dying off too. 10 years
ago there were 4,000. 7 out of 10 books printed by the
Big 6 lose money. 10% of their titles generate 90% of
their revenue. Those two facts indicate a reality: the
focus for the Big 6 is going to be more and more on the
Brand authors and less on midlist. The problem is:
where are the next generation of Brand Name Authors
going to come from?
Randy: Right. And my view is that they’re going to come
out of the ranks of e-book authors who have an
entrepreneurial spirit.
Bob: Right. And the Big 6 will try to scoop up the
successful ones. Except their royalty rates for eBooks
have to increase. It’s a Catch-22. If someone is
succeeding on their own, why give up 70% royalty for
25% of 70%?
Randy: Exactly. An author would be crazy to do that. I
have a theory that authors will e-publish themselves at
70% royalties and then hold onto the e-rights when they
sign contracts for p-books with publishers.
Bob: Publishers won’t go for that. I’m fighting Random
House right now for e-rights on some books.
Randy: Publishers will hate the idea. So there’s going
to be a period of war before things settle out. But the
authors actually hold more power than they imagine.
Bob: The overhead for the Big 6 operating out of the
Big Apple is way too high. Heck, even Who Dares Wins
Publishing, which we started up this year and operates
out of my office in WA and Jennifer Talty’s office in
NY, has overhead. We could never operate brick and
mortar out of a NY office. So that’s something that’s
going to have to be addressed. I see further major
contractions occurring in NY and more out-sourcing of
jobs to people digitally. The acquiring editors will
still be in NY with the agents, but a lot of the other
parts are going to be out-sourced. We control content.
Readers buy content. Everyone else needs to either help
connect the two or they’ll fail.
Randy: Right, and with e-books, we can control our
distribution to an extent. Do you think publishers are
going to lower prices on retail copies of e-books?
Bob: They have to. They can’t right now because their
overhead is too high. So they’re in a crunch.
Randy: Which is why they’re going to continue shedding
people. An author can self-pub on Amazon and do fine at
a $2.99 price point. Can a major publisher survive at
that price point?
Bob: Actually, what Wylie tried to do, may be the
future. Random House blacklisting him, told me how
scared publishers are. Agents are going to start
wondering why they need publishers too. Since they are
essentially the quality control for the Big 6.
Randy: That raises another issue — the future of
agents. Some people think that agents are becoming
superfluous. But I’m not so sure.
Bob: I think they could become more important if they
change. I see agents sort of merging with smart
publishers.
Randy: Agents have been reading the publishers’ slush
pile for years. What else will they do in the future?
Bob: They’ll become publishers. Screen the slush, pick
the books they think can make it, then outsource all
the editing, uploading, covers, etc.
[Interruption! We inserted one comment each later
during the editing of this dialogue:
Randy: This could be a conflict of interest for an
agent, so it would need to be done in a way that
protects the author's interests. Any thoughts on this?
Bob: That's the tipping point. Andrew Wylie tried to
do it this year: publish his authors backlist on his
own, and the traditional publishers piled on him with
threats of cutting him out. There will come a time
when an agent will have to make the decision to become
a publisher rather than an agent. When they do, they
won't be able to sell to traditional publishers any
more. So they won't be able to wear both hats. What I
believe will actually happen is a smart publisher will
merge some agents into their business, giving them the
financial backing to work, with the real money on the
back end. One topic we didn't discuss is the profit
sharing concept. The days of the big advance are
dwindling because so few books actually make a profit
under the current model. What the future holds is
where authors, agents and publishers all share in the
profits on the back end. The question then arises, how
does an author make a living while writing without any
advance? Every answer raises new questions, as they
always do.
End of the inserted discussion on potential conflicts
of interest.]
Randy: An agent is intrinsically a much lighter and
more nimble business than a publisher. So they can do
that. And authors can be nimble too. But it could make
traditional publishers obsolete. The big corporations
with big buildings.
Bob: Yes. We’ve changed our business model at Who
Dares Wins six times in just this past year. A large
corporation can’t do that. Agents can.
Randy: Tell me more about Who Dares Wins.
Bob: We started it to get my backlist out in eBook and
POD. Once we went through our learning curve, we
realized we could expand and have slowly been doing
that. Taking on other writers.
Randy: How does your acquisition process work?
Bob: Right now, it’s mainly authors who have rights to
their backlist. Most authors think they can do it
themselves, but it’s not as easy as it appears.
Randy: No kidding. There is a learning curve on the
formatting of an e-book. And most e-books need cover
art because they can’t use their old covers from the
original book.
Bob: And we also have done a book that needed to be out
right away on social media for writers. A traditional
publisher would have taken a year to get it out, which
would have made it obsolete. Cover art requires an
expensive program and expertise. Has to pop in
thumbnail.
Randy: Meaning that a 100 x 150 pixel cover is a whole
different game from a 600 x 900 pixel cover.
Bob: Yes. Simple is better. Contrast is important.
Randy: But on the plus side, the cover will appear in
RGB format, not CMYK. Which means that certain colors
that simply can’t be done on a paper cover will work on
electronic media.
Bob: We just did a blog on cover art and some things we
learned. We’re still learning. Also there are six
different eBook formats right now, so that’s a lot of
work.
Randy: Do you automate the process of putting out all
the formats? SmashWords uses their “meat grinder”
technology to produce them all from one Word file.
Bob: Right now, the other half of my company, Jen
Talty, does all that. We dropped Smashwords because
you lose some control over pricing and that then
becomes an issue with Amazon’s webcrawler.
Randy: Can you elaborate on that? What control do you
lose?
Bob: When Smashwords puts a book to all its sources,
those sources can reprice it. Amazon will then lower
your price on Kindle to the lowest price it finds.
Randy: Amazon has the market clout to do that.
Bob: Yes. So we lost our 70% royalty on some books
that got priced below the $2.99 threshhold.
Randy: Gack! Not good. The 70% Amazon royalty is huge
for authors. That makes the game reasonable.
Bob: We pulled them and are now reloading on Smashwords
but restricting where the books can go. The CEO of
Smashwords actually came to my blog to explain what
they were doing, so it’s getting worked out. What no
one talks about is 100% royalty.
Randy: Meaning?
Bob: We’ve formatted all our books for the various
devices. When someone buys an eBook directly from our
web site, we don’t have a middle man.
Randy: Right, but you still have credit card charges,
which amount to about 14% of the price on a $2.99 book.
Roughly.
Bob: We use Paypal right now, and I think their % is
under 5%.
Randy: It is, but they also charge a $.30 base fee,
which is about 10% on a $2.99 book. Both PayPal and
credit card charges work out about the same, when all
is said and done. I love PayPal, by the way. But on
small ticket sales, there’s a hefty fee as a percentage
of the sale.
Bob: Yes. Still, a 90% royalty is very nice.
Randy: Yes, it’s much better than 8% from a major
publisher. Which gets paid 9 months after the purchase.
With a percentage held back for fear of returns.
Bob: Yes. I earn more in one month from a book we
publish than six months from my traditional royalties.
Randy: I’m not surprised. Speaking of returns, do you
think the industry is going to change the return policy
in the future? I’m astonished that it’s still in place.
Bob: Yes. Because Print On Demand is the future. Once
the price point on the Espresso Machine gets low
enough, they’ll be no more shipping of books to
bookstores. They’ll be printed right there. We use POD
to supplement our eBook sales. We find that for
non-fiction, readers often want the physical book.
Randy: I agree. For fiction, I always get the e-book
now. But for nonfiction reference books, I still like
paper. You don’t think brick and mortar bookstores will
die, do you?
Bob: Sadly, I think brick and mortars will die. They
already are. Unless they specialize. Do what
Starbucks is doing. The trend is to go local. Local
authors, local books. Hold more events. Use the
Espresso Machine as an income source by letting people
print their own books right there.
Randy: But local has the disadvantage that it doesn’t
scale. An author can only be in one place at a time.
Whereas the web never sleeps.
Bob: True. And with social media an author has a much
greater reach than ever before. I think it’s an
exciting time to be an author.
Randy: It’s a GREAT time to be an author. You’ve got a
book out on social media correct? By one of your
authors?
Bob: We Are Not Alone: The Writer’s Guide to Social
Media by Kristen Lamb. What’s key about her book is
she focuses on content BEFORE worrying about getting on
social media. Most authors are using social media
poorly without a plan. For example, authors using their
book cover or their pet as an avatar is wrong. Unless
they’re only going to write one book or sell their pet.
Randy: A lot of authors try to just promote themselves,
rather than promoting ideas. Content is still king.
Bob: Right. I’m reading Steven Pressfield’s The War of
Art right now. He has some great ideas.
Randy: I love that title.
Bob: Content is King. But I’ve had to accept promotion
is Queen.
Randy: Promotion is a whole lot easier when there’s
content to back it up.
Bob: Most writers hate promoting. Author is INFJ on
Myers-Briggs. Exact opposite, ESTP is promoter.
Randy: Right, I’m an INTP myself. So maybe I’m a half
and half.
Bob: Yes. Always have to have great content.
Randy: One thing established authors have is name
recognition. Like David Morrell, one of my favorite
thriller writers.
Bob: Yes. Being a Brand. Morrell just bypassed
traditional publishing.
Randy: Right, and I bet he’ll do extremely well.
Bob: He will. Along with his backlist.
Randy: That’s one thing people don’t talk about much
with e-books, but it’s huge — backlist. When you
discover a new author and he has a big backlist, you
can get it all. Instantly.
Bob: I’ve got 18 titles from my backlist up and it’s
great to watch the money roll in.
Randy: I just started reading Lee Child’s Jack Reacher
series. I started with Book 15.
Bob: His first book, Killing Floor, is classic.
Randy: Then I went back to Book 1 and started buying
the whole series. That’s a whole lot easier to do with
e-books than with p-books.
Bob: Yes — people who read eBooks buy more books.
That’s a glimmer of hope if publishers will embrace it.
But they haven’t yet.
Randy: E-books are always in stock and they’re
available at 3 AM on a Saturday night in Ulan Bator.
Bob: And they tend to be impulse buys.
Randy: Part of the publishers’ problem is that
contracts written more than 10 years ago don’t really
cover e-books.
Bob: That’s what I’m battling Random House over. I
stupidly signed away 2 books to them last year, but
declined to do any further.
Randy: Books published in the last few years will never
go out of print now, because of e-books. Unless you put
clauses in the contract to redefine what out of print
means.
Bob: There are clauses being built in on that. RH says
less than 300 sold in two reporting periods, which is
pretty low.
Randy: My agent friends tell me that publishers are
rewriting the contracts.
Bob: Yes. The 25% eBook royalty isn’t going to work
much longer.
Randy: I think it has to go up to 50%, which is still
low compared to 70% or 90%, but most authors would be
willing to take that to avoid the work. But 25% seems
unfair to most authors.
Bob: Yes. We offer 40% right now, but I’m accepting we
probably have to go to 50%. Still, it’s currently
higher than pretty much everywhere else.
Randy: This is a time of chaos for publishing.
Bob: Yes. And the key is to stay on top of all the
latest information and try to sift through it all.
Randy: Right, things change every month.
Bob: Reading blogs, things like your newsletter, PW,
going to conferences. It’s all key. Twitter is a good
information source. I hit probably five or six links
from people who have good information every day to stay
updated.
Randy: One thing that’s changing is the required
lengths of books.
Bob: Yes. We’re focusing soon on shorts. 10-15
thousand words at $2.99. And, on the other end, it
doesn’t cost any more to do a 170,000 words book.
Randy: The nice thing is that you could write a 10k
book in a week.
Bob: Or pull it together from a bunch of blog posts.
Randy: Whereas most authors would be stressed to do a
100k book in a month.
Bob: Yes. I’m getting some experts to put together
shorts on their particular fields.
Randy: And as you say, books that were formerly too
long (more than 150k or so) can be done economically.
It only adds a few cents to the Amazon cost to the
author to do a really long book. I think they charge
the author about 5 cents in delivery fees for a normal
sized book.
Bob: Yes. The other interesting thing is going to be
enhanced ebooks. We’re not sure how that’s going to
work, but we’re playing with it.
Randy: Meaning “director’s cut” editions? Something
I’ve been thinking about a lot.
Bob: Adding in links to photos, maps, etc. And, like
Baldacci did, extra content.
Randy: Most of the e-book readers won’t support video.
Bob: No. And it could be distracting if done badly.
Randy: The iPad could handle it, I think, but not the
current Kindle.
Bob: Readers read. That’s why I’m not a fan of film
trailers for books. Different medium.
Randy: The thing with video is that it requires really
good production values or it looks hokey. I don’t like
them either. I looked at trailers for a while and found
that I was unimpressed with every trailer I’d seen. And
a 3 minute video feels like forever. I’d rather have
text so I can skim.
Bob: Exactly. I used to have video of my
presentations, but dropped it because the quality
wasn’t good enough. And, interestingly, people would
rather listen to CDs or MP3 than watch something.
That’s another area where we get income: MP3 downloads
of my workshops. We’re on iTunes with that. We also
sell MP3 direct. Just got an order as we’ve been
talking for my Warrior Writer presentation.
Randy: Audio has high value to the customer. They can
put it on an iPod and listen on the commute or in the
gym. I’ve been selling MP3 direct on my site for a long
time because it’s a great deal for customers and
therefore a great deal for me.
Bob: Yes. It’s one of those things that took a little
while to perfect, but we’ve got it down now.
Randy: What are your thoughts on podcasting books in
segments?
Bob: I don’t know about podcasts. We’ve been
discussing them, but it’s a big investment in time. So
it’s on our “to look at” list.
Randy: It’s something I’d love to try for promoting my
novels.
Bob: One thing we thought of yesterday was a free eBook
with excerpts from all our books. A sampler. So that
will be done before the end of the month
Randy: That would be cool. People tend to be quick to
download free, but not so quick to consume it.
Bob: Yes. But it only costs us the time to put it
together. It’s hard to tell what works and what
doesn’t as far as promotion.
Randy: One thing I think might be cool would be an
“omnibus” version of a series — get them all in one
big e-book at a price that’s much better than buying
them one by one. It could work for a complete series.
Not so much for a series in progress.
Bob: Good idea. I think we’ll try that for my Atlantis
series. Have six books in it. Pull them all together
at a discount.
Randy: Joe Konrath mentioned this idea on his blog a
few months ago and I’ve been itching to try it.
Bob: Actually, we could do it this weekend and get it
up. I’ll let you know how it goes. That’s the great
thing about eBooks — you can do things fast.
Randy: Right, once you’re past the learning curve. I
think you’d need to price it so that it’s still a good
deal if people have bought one or two books. So it
needs to be a deep discount. That’s my hunch.
Bob: I’ll update you on it. I can hear my partner in
NY groaning as I’ve just made more work for her. But
since the books are already individually formatted, it
shouldn’t take much time.
Randy: LOL, just what she needs — more work.
Bob: Yeah. Our To Do list is never-ending.
Randy: I’d love to hear how it works out.
Bob: I’ll email you and also blog about it at Write It
Forward
Randy: One last thing before we break — how important
is POD for an author going the e-book route?
Bob: I don’t think it’s that important, unless you have
a following or are doing non-fiction. We put
non-fiction on LSI right away. For fiction, we do a
couple a month as they get traction in eBook to keep
our overhead reasonable.
Randy: Makes sense to me. LSI is Lightning Source,
right?
Bob: Yes. The good thing is you can also sell via LSI
in the UK. And it’s expanding to Australia next year.
Randy: When you say “overhead” you’re referring to the
cost of typesetting, correct?
Bob: Set up costs. Plus, formatting takes quite a
while for the POD book. That was a steep learning
curve. You only get two shots at upload or they charge
extra.
Randy: Gack! What are the setup costs for Lightning
Source?
Bob: $75 initially and then another $20 charge for
something else. Not too bad. But when you’re doing a
lot of titles, it adds up.
Randy: Right. Plus the time to do it. And time is
money.
Bob: Time is the key for that.
Randy: OK, we’ve covered a huge amount in the last
hour. Anything to add?
Bob: Just reiterate that it’s a great time to be a
writer, but the most important thing is to have great
content.
Randy: Agreed on that. Thanks for your time!
Bob: Thanks — have a great weekend.
If you’d like to know more about Bob and his company,
check him out on these sites:
http://www.bobmayer.org
http://www.WhoDaresWinsPublishing.com
Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, “the
Snowflake Guy,” publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing
E-zine, with more than 23,000 readers, every month. If
you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction,
AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND
have FUN doing it, visit
http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.
Download your free Special Report on Tiger Marketing
and get a free 5-Day Course in How To Publish a Novel.
Januarie 24, 2011
My Scribbles Artikel, Randy Ingermanson, Skryf 2 Kommentaar
Publisher: Randy Ingermanson (“the Snowflake guy”)
Motto: “A Vision for Excellence”
Date: July 6, 2010
Issue: Volume 6, Number 7
Home Pages:
http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com<http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/>
http://www.Ingermanson.com<http://www.ingermanson.com/>
The world of publishing is currently going through massive turmoil. Some people believe that the rise of e-books is going to be the biggest single change in publishing since Gutenberg’s invention of movable type.
I’m not a prophet nor a seer nor clairvoyant. But I do have my eyes open, and in this column, I give you my best predictions for the coming years. They may be right. They may be wrong. Either way, one thing seems
certain: Huge changes are coming.
I offer these predictions to suggest ways you might plan for your future. I’m using them to plan for mine.
Prediction #1: E-books Will Surpass P-books Soon
I define a “p-book” to be a book printed on paper. This term includes books created by traditional royalty-paying publishers (usually in large print runs of thousands or tens of thousands). This term also includes print-on-demand (“POD”) books.
P-books are very wasteful and inefficient. To create a p-book, you must pay all of the following:
* The person who typesets the edited manuscript
* The person who cuts the trees to make the paper
* The person who turns the trees into paper
* The person who puts ink on the paper
* The person who binds the paper into books
* The person who puts the books in a box
* The person who drives the box to the store
* The person who unpacks the box in the store
* The person who puts the book on a shelf
* The person who rings up the sale at the counter
* The person who puts the unsold copies back in a box
* The person who drives the box back to the publisher
* The person who unpacks and shreds the returns
To create either an e-book or a p-book, you must pay all of the following:
* The person who writes the book
* The person who edits the book
* The person who makes the cover art for the book
* The person who markets the book
* The person who enters the book info into the store computers
E-books require one other player who must be paid once by each reader:
* The person who makes the e-book reader
I’ve left out a number of minor players in the above cast of characters, but I think these are all the main parts. The marginal cost to create an e-book is lower than the marginal cost to create a p-book. You can automate the sales process for an e-book and deliver it anywhere in the world almost instantly at almost zero cost.
The only obstacle here is the cost of those pesky e-book readers. That cost is dropping rapidly.
Furthermore, many phones and other mobile devices now include e-book reading as a standard feature, and numerous software products allow you to read e-books on your computer.
Apple’s new iPad marked a turning point, because Apple promised to pay publishers a hefty 70% of the retail price of each e-book. Shortly after the iPad’s announcement, Amazon began changing their payment model to be in line with Apple’s. This makes e-books very profitable for publishers — and potentially for their authors.
I believe that e-books will surpass p-books in market share within five years.
If you want some specific reasons why, I suggest you read the blog of Joe Konrath:
http://JAKonrath.blogspot.com <http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/>
Read a few of Joe’s recent blogs and see if you’re not astounded at how well e-books can do in the hands of a competent marketer.
Prediction #2: E-books Will Become The “Minor Leagues”
A beginning writer faces a very long learning curve. It typically takes a writer several years to develop the skills and the contacts needed to sell a first novel to a major publisher. It’s not uncommon to hear of a writer who took “ten years of hard work to become an overnight success.”
During that 3 or 5 or 10 or 20 years when a writer is learning the craft of fiction, she earns nothing (or a pittance if she can find a magazine to buy her short stories). Typically, a writer writes several complete novels before she sells her first to a publisher.
That will change in the coming years. The reason is because we writers are an impatient lot, and we all believe that our work is unalloyed gold and that those philistine agents and publishers just can’t recognize genius when it smacks them in the face.
I believed this before I got published. I believe it still about a couple of my manuscripts that crashed and burned before publication. You probably believe it too.
In many cases, we’re right.
In coming years, writers will simply short-circuit the traditional route by e-publishing their first book. It will probably sell a copy to Mom and to Aunt Mabel and to a few friends.
If the writer gets any encouragement at all from this first attempt, she’ll e-publish another, and another, and another. As she improves, her books will sell to a wider and wider audience, eventually going far beyond her circle of family and friends.
When I outline this scenario to my writer friends, they’re all horrified at the prospect of a market “flooded with awful e-books.”
My response to that is simple: The market is smart.
Readers will ignore the “flood of awful e-books.”
They’ll gobble up the e-books that are good and will recommend them to their friends. Those friends will do likewise. The cream will rise to the top. The dregs will not. It’s that simple.
For those who live in terror of the coming “flood of awful e-books,” I’ll simply point out that the market is already flooded with hundreds of thousands of self-published e-books (and p-books). Did you notice?
Were you flooded out of your house? Are you drowning in a sea of awful books?
No, no, and no.
The market chooses the quality books because the market is composed of people who know what they like and who talk about it. Word-of-mouth will sift the quality from the quantity, just as it always has. Only a very few people ever see any given “awful book.” Most readers only come across a few “awful books.” Lots of people see the really good books. The market efficiently finds them.
E-books will be the minor leagues of publishing (to use a baseball metaphor). This means that new authors will try out their talents and rise to their own level.
Agents and publishers will no longer have to play the role of gatekeepers who try to guess what the market will buy. The market will decide what it wants to buy.
I know there are some authors who think it will be a horrible prostitution of our art that the market should actually get to decide what sells. Tragically, the market has been deciding what sells for hundreds of years. In the future, it will do so better and quicker because the gatekeepers will vanish.
Prediction #3: Beginning Authors Will E-publish First
Beginning writers will e-publish their work long before they p-publish it. They will do so because all the other beginning writers are doing so. Nobody wants to get left behind. Everybody wants to be discovered.
Everybody believes they are writing a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.
Some writers are.
Yes, really. Some writers are exceptionally good. Those writers will get discovered far quicker than they would have in years past. They’ll earn money at their writing. They’ll blog about their successes, making it clear that their road to success led through e-books.
Many other writers will follow and soon the majority of unpublished writers will be publishing their work first as e-books.
The result of this is that agents and editors will buy fewer and fewer unpublished novelists. Instead, they’ll simply watch the e-market to see what sells. Then they’ll acquire the p-book rights for those e-books that are proven successful.
This is the smart thing for them to do. Publishers have long joked that “The way to be profitable in this business is to only publish the bestsellers.” In the past, nobody had any idea how to predict the bestsellers. In the coming e-future, it will be obvious. Successful e-books will make successful p-books.
I believe publishers will eventually refuse to take chances on any unpublished writers. Those writers will therefore be forced to publish themselves first as e-books, whether they want to or not. This transition will take time, but I expect that within five years, the overwhelming majority of all first novels will be published first as e-books.
Prediction #4: Mid-list Authors May Do Better
Mid-list authors have had a rough go during the last few years. Publishers have been chafed by shrinking profit margins. They’ve been willing to pay big bucks to the sure-thing bestselling authors. They’ve been willing to pay peanuts to new novelists in the hope of finding gold and raking in huge bucks. But they’ve been less willing to keep paying the mid-listers to write book after book that just earns out its advance (or doesn’t quite earn out but does still make a small profit).
In the coming e-future, mid-list authors will try their hand at e-books and discover that their fans love them in e-format just as much as in p-format. Mid-listers will decide that self-publishing an e-book for 70% of the pie is better than working with a traditional publisher for 7% of the pie.
This is rational behavior. Those mid-list authors who can market themselves at least 10% as effectively as their publishers would market them will decide to do so. They’ll e-publish their own work and market it themselves, no longer subject to the whims of their publishers.
Some mid-listers will flourish in this e-culture.
They’ll connect to their fan base and grow it. And the publishers will notice. The publishers are both smart and rational. They’ll see which mid-list novels do best as e-books and will bankroll them as p-books.
Some mid-listers will refuse this route. I believe they’ll do less well as time goes on. They’ll find their publishers increasingly fearful of publishing their work and increasingly stingy with advances.
In this world, publishers will finally achieve their goal
Januarie 24, 2011
Tafelberg het nou onlangs weer twee kompetisies die lig laat sien. Dis gereelde kompetisies wat elke twee/drie jaar aangebied word met prysgeld wat jou beslis laat dink aan om die projek aan te pak.
Vanjaar se prysgeld vir die Groot Afrikaanse Roman kompetisie is beslis enig in sy soort met R200 000.00 op die spel vir die eerste prys. Selfs tweede en derde plek is ook nie te versmaai nie. Die kompetisie sluit die 1ste November en wenners word in 2012 aangekondig.
Die ander kompetisie is die Jeug Roman kompetisie wat in al die amptelike tale aangebied word. Die een se sluitingsdatum is die 30 ste Junie. Selfs hier is die prysgeld nie te sleg nie.
Skryf kompetisies soos die is in my mening ’n wonderlike manier om skryfwerk in sy geheel te bevorder. As jy net die rakke by Exclusive Books dophou sal jy sien dat al hoe meer Suid-Afrikaanse skrywers die Top 10 beste verkopers-rak haal en ek glo dit is ’n bewys dat mense beslis nie minder lees nie maar ook terugkeer na hulle wortels. Vir lank was al wat jy op die rakke gekry het boeke van Amerikaanse skrywers.
Wat dink jy van die tipe kompetisies? Is dit iets wat jy sal aanpak?
