tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81891899317103139402024-02-08T12:29:05.494-08:00OF DINOSAURS AND DAFFODILSWhat’s Happening in Genre Fiction Publishing - a commentary by Traditionally Published Romance Bestseller, Stephanie LaurensStephanie Laurenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03516907713454981502noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8189189931710313940.post-39719453961380757932011-03-31T15:09:00.000-07:002011-03-31T15:09:08.950-07:00E-BOOK PRICING Part 2: Promotional Pricing - Or Here Be Dragons.<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“Here Be Dragons” was a phrase written at the edge of old maps, indicating the point where the known world ended. In many ways, that’s the region in which e-book promotions are currently dabbling - in the area beyond the known world.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Not that that should stop any intrepid explorer - or storyteller searching for more audience. However, the e-book world as we know it today is - like those old maps - unlikely to be telling the full story, not yet.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Until digital accounts for the majority of genre fiction sales (>70%), we won’t have any reliable feel for how our audience as a whole is going to behave, and simply extrapolating from current audience behavior is fraught with risk - it might work, it might not.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Until the majority of genre fiction paying customers (>70%) switch to digital - and that’s a different point to the above - our audience is unlikely to demonstrate predictably stable, reliable behavior, even as reliable as such pattterns usually are, because we are talking about a massive group of individuals.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Extrapolating from the present audience is essentially hoping that the woolly mammoth group of readers, those still determinedly and stubbornly reading in print, is going to behave in exactly the same manner as the early adopters reading on their iPhones. They might, but it’s more likely that they will not. And sizewise the mammoth group still dominate our available audience.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">All that said, of course we’re going to try various promotions. And it must be stated that promotions don’t need to work for the audience en masse, but simply for a sufficient subset to generate a viable result.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I’ve picked only three promotional gambits to discuss, but the possibilities are as endless as authors’ imaginations.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span></i></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">a) </span>permanently lowering the price of backlist </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">- something I am sure we are going to see a lot more of from already established authors selfpublishing backlist. There are four points I’d like to throw out there for consideration in terms of how our audience might view this:</span></span></div><ul><li style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">there is no “back” in “backlist” in e-books - it’s all simply “list.” A book that was first published 15 years ago is a “new” book to a reader who has never seen it before. The digital reader sees a range of books on the virtual shelf - all they care about is that those books are available for purchase, not the date when they were first print published. So is age a suitable parameter on which to discount works?</span></span></span></li>
</ul><ul><li style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">if this is being done to determine sweet spot price for the author’s works, is it too early (see the last post) to be doing this without risking unnecessarily lowering the value of the author’s works permanently? And permanent pricing is probably not the way to do sweet spot experimenting anyway, so I would be assuming this is not the motivation in this case.</span></span></span></li>
</ul><ul><li style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">is the author intending to send a message to the audience that the author considers these works of lesser value than more recent works? (we’re talking about </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">permanent</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> lower pricing of older works, not time-limited sales)</span></span></span></li>
</ul><ul><li style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">will lowering the permanent price of the author’s older works while trying to maintain a higher price for more recent releases be an impossible line to walk? Why won’t readers simply wait for the price of works to fall? Especially if, to the audience, there is no obvious difference between the older/lower priced and newer/higher priced works.</span></span></span></li>
</ul><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The above are questions each author needs to be comfortable answering, at least to themselves, when lowering the price of older works. I know where I currently stand on this, but I expect authors to differ, very likely widely.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span></i></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span></i></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">b) </span>temporary promotional pricing</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> - “sales” price, time-limited. This can be and is being effectively used in a multitude of ways - too many to go into. My only concern regarding this is how difficult it’s going to be to gain visibility for any given “sale” when every author is doing at least one of these at any given time.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I know there are sites springing up listing the digital “sales of the week” - I suspect that having effective digital catalog(s) of sales offers is going to be a key development going forward. Without readers finding or being directed to such catalogs, the efficacy of sales will decrease as our ecosystem further develops and the sales arena gets increasingly crowded.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beyond that hurdle, however, this seems one of the tried and true, and most easy to implement promotional pricing tools in any author’s locker.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span></i></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span></i></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">c) </span>e-specials - short works released in digital only at low prices</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. These are not the same as loss-leaders (full length works offered at minimal price), but are shorter works appropriately priced. e.g. novellas @ 1.99.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">To me this is another very viable avenue of reaching new audience at permanently lower prices - this doesn’t rely on sales, but will always be there. It’s something that cannot be done in print, and is to me one of the primary attractions of the digital world. However, there’s one caveat which currrently limits the ability of established authors with significant print audiences to dabble in this arena - they can’t publish any shorter work that connects directly with an ongoing series without risking the wrath of the woolly mammoth. And a happily reading woolly mammoth is still very important to many established authors.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">But established authors are still free to publish new and different works as digital only. I’m about to do so with my short story in the Royal Weddings collection (April 5th; 1.99). That story is not connected to any of my series. Similar in tone, period and place, yes, and typical of my work as far as that was possible (you cannot write a 20 page love scene in a short story, not even one that runs to 13K words), so the </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Wedding Planner</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> short story is a reasonable introduction to Stephanie Laurens’s storytelling - and I’m sure the other two shorts bundled with it - from Loretta Chase and Gaelen Foley - are likewise good introductions to their works.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Which brings me to a few wider points for consideration on the subject of digital promotional pricing:</span></span></span></div><ul><li style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">major established authors with large print audiences are more limited in what they can, at this point in time, do, so those who don’t fall into that category should consider the period from now until more of the print audience shifts as a window of opportunity for actively trialing and testing and seeing what works to increase their audience. You’ll have clearer air and bluer skies now than you will have later.</span></span></span></li>
</ul><ul><li style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">things will change when the major genre fiction authors shift to digitally dominant publishing - do not for one moment doubt that. The sheer weight of their numbers guarantees that. But exactly </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">how</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> things will change is presently anyone’s guess, and I certainly do not claim to know.</span></span></span></li>
</ul><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I’m going to wrap up this limited examination of promotional pricing in our digital world with one observation: Ultimately, the point with any promotion is to entice new readers to try an author’s work - but the result of the promotion is not measured by the number who bought the promoted volume, but by the increased number who buy the author’s next work.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">A Few Reflections of a more General Nature:</span></span></i></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Authors are not interchangeable, at least not after a market matures. History (mystery series in 1940 to 70s; Harlequin category lines 70s to present) shows that as a genre fiction audience matures (in the sense of a maturing market), the audience buys by author (performer), not price, as they do for any entertainment product (why do you think MIRA and HQN exist?). But especially when a readership is in its emerging stages, then low price/interchangeable authors does work.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Price and the established reader - most established readers have a list of authors whose works they buy. They are have little if any interest in seeking new authors because they don’t have time to spare - they spend all their reading time with the books of authors they have already decided they want to read.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">When established readers do raise their gaze and look for new authors to try, they are more likely to be swayed by word of mouth, not price. Price is something established readers distrust - low price is not going to compensate them for time lost reading a poor work.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Time - and their imaginations - is what readers bring to the equation when they read a genre fiction work. They have to put in the time and imagination to unlock and absorb the experience the work offers. Reading a book has a cost to readers that is not influenced by the price of the work.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Do not ever make the reader who has paid full price for your book feel like a dummy because she paid full price.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Someone (Selena Kitt, I think) said that she still values a Louis Vuitton purse even if she bought it at half-price at a sale. Naturally, one would. But if Louis Vuitton purses were routinely offered for half-price 6 months after their release, available at one click the world over, would very many still buy at full price?</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As a 20-yr veteran of this business, my future lies in the hands of my established readers, and I will never forget that. I will never undermine my relationship with my established readers to race after a few “new” readers - I’d have to be daft.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Regarding the so-called “tipping point” - there’s clearly going to be more than one. We’ve already passed at least two. I believe our transition will not travel along a single smooth gradient, with e-book readership steadily and predictably increasing, but will instead be a series of plateaus, with the next rapid digital increase brought about by the next of a set of dominos, each of which has to ultimately fall, actually falling.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">My prediction for the next tipping point’s cause - the next domino to fall - is a severe contraction in the availability of print titles in wholesale outlets, </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">or</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> the appearance of very low price or free e-readers. Or both those dominos could fall concurrently, possibly even connected by cause and effect.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Ultimately, however, it’s whatever finally gets the attention of the woolly mammoth enough to make it raise its head, scent the wind, and then lumber across to the daffodil patch and start to appreciate the new and various blooms that will herald the end of the transition and the final shift into our digitally-dominated future. And not immediately, but sometime after that we can expect to be able to discern long-term reliable patterns in e-book reader behavior.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(R)evolution is about transformation of an exisiting ecosystem brought about in this instance by the introduction of new technology. It is not about setting up a de novo system starting from scratch. We are currently in a transition from the old to the new, and there are groups who exist only in the new as well as groups who are still fimly in the old. The (r)evolution is progressing, but we need to strive for balance through the transitional phase, because we don’t want to disenchant the old by only catering for the new.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Free books, devaluing works, DRM and protecting works, effective promotion, the services publishers might offer authors - I had all these topics on my blog posts’ list, but over the last seven posts I came to realize that the experience of each individual author with, and therefore their opinions on and decisions about, such subjects, will necessarily be dictated by that author’s career. So opinions and experience will necessarily vary widely - and there may not be, and need not be, any true common ground.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As Nathan Lowell frequently says: Your mileage might vary. I’d go one step further - each author’s mileage is all but guaranteed to vary in our new digitally dominated world.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">There may never be a time when one-size-fits all, not even of one-size-might-fit-some, in this brave new world of ours. And that’s by no means a bad thing.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">That’s my current view, and I’m sure a lot of you have different views, but those are the elements of my thinking to date.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And that’s it from me…</span></span></i></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I started this blog when I had time, energy, and a desire to work through all the issues we’ve touched on over the last 7 weeks. Posting on the topics forced me to research aspects I never would have otherwise, and I hope you’ve enjoyed going on this journey with me. But now life and writing have caught up with me, and I no longer have the time or energy to do justice to further exploration of, and speculation about, our ever-evolving ecosystem. I remain hugely excited by the possibilities opening up before all authors and readers, and will be watching with interest to see how we all survive, and just what our ecosystem eventually looks like once all the tremors and upheavals subside.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I will leave the blog in place (it’s the internet, after all) so it’ll still be here if anyone refers to it. If the posts and comments help any other inhabitant of our ecosystem to cope with this sometimes scary, often frustrating, shift to digital, that’ll just be cream. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Or in publishing lingo, value-added.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Protect your creativity, write well - and don’t forget to nurture those daffodils.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 10.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">CAVEAT: Nothing posted on this blog, or in its comments, should involve commercially sensitive information. Contracted authors please exercise due diligence in your comments.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 10.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 12.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 10.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">All blog posts by the author should be viewed as personal opinion and postulation. Said opinions will alter to reflect changing facts.</span></span></span></div>Stephanie Laurenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03516907713454981502noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8189189931710313940.post-24521708661052892092011-03-24T15:12:00.000-07:002011-03-24T15:12:46.897-07:00E-BOOK PRICING Part 1: The List Price<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">By “list price” I mean the price that a book is listed for sale, not a time-limited promotional price, or a subsequently discounted price - IOW, the price an author (or their publisher) initially puts on their work. I’m limiting this discussion to US list prices, as the US genre fiction market is the most mature, and the non-US markets at the moment are a largely random mess of prices, for various reasons that have nothing to do with authors or readers.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">One of the few things I feel reasonably certain of is that ultimately genre fiction readers as a whole, our audience en masse, will define the price of genre fiction e-books, just as audiences always have and always will with all entertainment products based on a value-to-them-for-$-paid-and-time-invested judgment.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Consequently, the approach I’m taking to e-book pricing is to ask one simple question: What are our readers willing to pay for genre fiction e-books?</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Let’s start with now, today.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Check the Kindle and Nook stores, look at the majority of books on the genre fiction bestselling lists, look at the majority of genre fiction books selling overall throughout the stores. Look at the USA-Today list.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The vast majority of genre fiction e-books are selling at either the paperback equivalent price, or higher when it’s the e-book of a genre fiction hardcover release - e.g. Lisa Gardner @ 12.99, many others @ 9.99.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The genre fiction audience en masse appear to have accepted the genre fiction paperback pricing range (and it is a range, with influencing factors including length, author, publisher among others) for genre fiction e-books. On the issue of price, our audience </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">as a whole and at this point in time</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> doesn’t appear to distinguish between e-books and paperbacks.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Yes, I know a lot of commentators want to insist that e-books should be cheaper, for this reason or that, but again, go and look at the stores - our audience as a whole doesn’t care. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">To reiterate from last week: For any piece of entertainment, it’s the experience the audience pays for, not the ticket that gets them into the show. Words on a page are words on a page, whether it’s a digital or a paper page - to the genre fiction audience the end result, the end value, is the same. And they are demonstrating that that’s how they see it.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>But</b></span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b> </b>there are other reasons to vary the list pricing of e-books - namely to optimize audience and commercial return. Those two parameters are of paramount importance to any storyteller, and also to their audience, and the digital format finally - </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">finally</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> - allows these to be optimized, in a way that could never be done with print.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I am, of course, speaking about authors experimenting with pricing to find what has been termed the “sweet spot price” - the one at which audience and commercial return are maximized.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">At this moment in time, my prediction is that at some time during our (r)evolution, all authors/publishers are going to want to establish the sweet spot price for each individual author. </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Individually</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. Because to our audience en masse we, the storytellers, are individuals, and the digital world finally allows for that.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Once authors move to digital (either only or dominantly) there is no logical reason that broad-based, albeit audience-defined price ranges of any sort need continue to apply.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">To my established author colleagues, does this picture scare you - the one where you are standing before your audience and essentially saying: you know me, you know my stories - how much are you, my audience en masse, willing to pay for my works?</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The truth is we’ve been doing this all along, but have been constrained by the limitations of print pricing and the industry that necessarily surrounds print publishing.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In the digital world, we are no longer so constrained. We are free to deal openly with our audience, and I would hope that ultimately both storytellers and audience will be the better off for that.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Currently my only reservation about experimenting to define the sweet spot price is this: Doing such an experiment before the majority of an established author’s already established audience has shifted to digital is very likely to give skewed results.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">To me, with a very large proportion (>90%) of my already established paying audience still buying in print (yes, right now), that’s a big reason to wait. Even though I don’t want to.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Yes, of course I’d love to be jumping in and playing in this new pool ala Konrath, Wesley-Smith, Eisler et al., but I’m a numbers person, and for me the numbers currrently say: No. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Actually, that’s not true - they say </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">No!</span></span></i></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">But that’s me.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I believe that in our digitally-dominated ecosystem, for each author’s works, the audience as a whole will make the value-to-them-for-$-paid-and-time-invested judgment that they always have, but in moving to digital the range of prices over which storyteller and audience can negotiate currently runs from 0.99 to 20.00.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Where any author lands sweet-spot-price-wise will be defined by the audience-en-masse’s perception of the value to them of that author’s works.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So how to define what a new author’s digital works should be priced at?</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">To me, this is the next (r)evolutionary invention required - we need some clever person to define a list of steps a new author can follow to approach what I view as a negotiation with the digital genre fiction-buying public.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">That said, so far I’ve seen 3 different approaches and outcomes:</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1) list low to reach a wide potential audience seems the way most have opted to go. An entirely legitimate strategy, which has been successful for some but not for others, but one that doesn’t solve the pricing issue - what of their next work? And the next? What is their sweet spot price and when and exactly how are they going to determine it? And (the potential worm in the apple) will starting out at 0.99 with a body of works impact on an experiment run later? I’ve no idea - I’m just asking the questions.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">2) there have been several instances reported (on KB) of new genre fiction authors who have not succeeded at 0.99, raising their prices to something more in keeping with paperback prices for similar works and actually selling significantly better. Is this a case of sweet spot pricing in action with a different audience-generated twist?</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">3) others have from the first priced their works in line with the current paperback price range, and are gradually building decent numbers as they add works - very much akin to a print-publishing build over a succession of releases. I suspect this is sweet-spot pricing starting at a different point on the curve - trying to predict the sweet-spot before setting the initial price. Arguably the smartest move.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">That said, I’m not advocating any particular stategy - there are pros and cons to all, and what works for one may not for another. To me the target should be getting the price right for the audience that wants to buy and actually read your work - and then come back for more.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For established authors, once they reach the point where they are comfortable doing the experiment, they can move up and down, and then decide which way to head. And yes, for some, the way might be up. For established authors already selling sufficiently well to get by, there’s no need to go in big leaps - a small but definite step using one title will point the way, and can then be followed with further steps, further titles, as appropriate. For established authors with lots of works, I see no reason to rush this process.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">But for all authors, the mammoth in the corner is the huge overhang of genre fiction readers still reading in print who will eventually transition to digital. You can argue % until the cows come home, but it won’t alter the fact that there are a lot of such readers out there - enough to swamp the current digital genre fiction-buying audience and then some. And for many, perhaps most, of those yet to switch, their perceptions of value are already entrenched. Of course, perceptions can change, but I doubt anyone can at this point guess where the balance of value-to-them-for-$-paid-and-time-invested price perceptions for the audience as a whole will lie once the transition is closer to complete.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Nevertheless, for list pricing of digital works in a digitally-dominated future, my prediction would be that the pricing ladder will have a lot more rungs in it than at present, and each author’s position on that ladder will be based on the audience-en-masse’s perception of the storytelling value attached to each author’s name.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And that position might change over an author’s career, in either or even both directions.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">From where I sit, the switch to digital is underscoring and emphasizing that every storytelling author - their body of works, their audience, their career paths, every aspect of being such an author - is individual. And that’s by no means a bad thing.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I’ve restricted today’s discussion to the list price of e-books - next week, in what will be my last post, we’ll look at the thorny issues of permanently lowering the price of backlist and e-only specials, and also temporary promotional pricing and the differences between e- and p- in that regard.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Next topic: will be posted on Sunday in the comments.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Next blog post: will be posted next Friday</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 10.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">CAVEAT: Nothing posted on this blog, or in its comments, should involve commercially sensitive information. Contracted authors please exercise due diligence in your comments.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 10.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 12.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 10.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">All blog posts by the author should be viewed as personal opinion and postulation. Said opinions will alter to reflect changing facts.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>Stephanie Laurenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03516907713454981502noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8189189931710313940.post-66453440863936917572011-03-17T14:13:00.000-07:002011-03-17T14:13:38.689-07:00SO YOU WRITE FICTION. WHICH FICTION? ...or we need to explore what our product delivers to our customers before we try to price or market it.<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In my experience as both reader and author, the lack of comprehension and attention to this question has led to more mistakes made in publishing, bookselling, and in authors’ careers than any other factor.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In what follows I’m going to make declarative statements rather than expound and explain (because I could explicate on this topic for hours), but don’t let that put you off questioning and discussing. The purpose of this post is to make everyone stop and think this point through - because we can’t have any meaningful discussion on pricing without a solid understanding of the product we offer our audience.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">All writing is judged by how effective it is in achieving its purpose. e.g. scientific papers, travel brochures, how-to manuals, technical reports, and fiction. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">There are at least three types of fiction, each with a different purpose.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Literary fiction</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> - is about the arrangement of words on the page and letters in a sentence. Might have a story, might be entertaining, but that is incidental and not the purpose of the literary fiction author. (OED, and also from the lips of major literary fiction authors)</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">General fiction</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> - is about a subject, illuminating, demonstrating, discussing, revealing, examining, exploring the subject. Usually has a story, sometimes entertaining, but the purpose of the story is first and foremost to elucidate the subject, not to entertain. e.g. Cold Mountain, The Lovely Bones, Annie Proulx’s works, Phillipa Gregory’s works, etc. (listen to any interview with a general fiction author - it’s the subject that matters to them, both story and language are secondary to it)</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Genre fiction</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> - is all about the story - a tale told to entertain. Always has a story, and the telling (voice = language used) is critical. The entire focus is on telling a given story in the most effective and audience-engaging way possible. Genre fiction is the province of the storytellers who tell story to entertain.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Yes, there are authors who bridge forms, but they stand outside this discussion.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In shorthand, Literary Fiction is about the writing, General Fiction is about the subject, and Genre Fiction is about telling a story to entertain. These are three very different purposes.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">A Potted History of Storytellers:</span></span></i></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">90,000 years ago - the tribes walk out of Africa. The oldest profession bar none is likely already established (that’s our profession, incidentally; no caveman ever paid for sex, but good storytelling is not something you can seize or force, only barter for or buy)</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">40 - 45,000 years ago - music starts to evolve; some cave paintings suggest rudimentary story forms</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">…..</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Oral format continues - shamen, bards, minstrels, etc; also troupes - archetypes emerge and evolve</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Sole performers continue (Beowolf, Song of Roland, and other heroic tales; fantasy and romance already discernible) - troupes go onto the stage, playwrights emerge.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">…..</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1400s - Morality plays (? the forerunners of the crime genre)</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1440 - Gutenberg invents the printing press</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1473 - Caxton establishes printing in London.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Late 1500s - Shakespeare, Marlowe, et al - playwrights are the audience’s darlings; the stage as we know it is established as a storytelling platform</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">…..</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Early 1700s - many sole performers switch from oral format to the written word - print format born, cloth-bound.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">…..</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1740 - Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (a romance) is one of the earliest bestsellers. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">By this time in London, there are 2 distinct publisher types - those publishing “serious” works (the forerunners of literary and general fiction publishers) and those publishing entertaining tales for the masses. All cloth-bound.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Late 1700s to 1800s - Austen, Dickens, Scott, Wollestonecroft, Radcliffe, etc, etc, published with great sucess by the forerunners of mass market publishers</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">……</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Early 1900s - Movies emerge as another storytelling platform (the death of the book is predicted by those who do not understand the difference between a platform and a format)</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">…...</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1931 - paperback books invented by Albatross Press (Ger)</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1935 - paperbacks picked up by Penguin (UK)</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1939 - Pocket Books established in US to publish paperback books for the mass audience</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1941 - Avon Books established to compete with Pocket.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This led to the format switch from cloth-bound to paperback for genre fiction works.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Genre fiction paperbacks given various tags: penny dreadfuls, pulp fiction, mass market fiction, disposable fiction. Could more accurately be termed entertainment fiction.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">To summarize:</span></span></i></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">- Ancient storytellers all used an oral platform (platforms are delivery media). </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">- Then came the divergence of some (playwrights) to the stage, a different platform.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">- Remaining oral storytelling shifted to the printed word, a platform with much greater reach than oral. For genre fiction authors, our platform/medium is the printed word, but whether that word is printed mechanically or digitally makes no difference to our audience.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">- Some playwrights and print storytellers (screenwriters) shifted to the new audio/visual motion picture/TV platform.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Genre fiction authors, most playwrights, most screenwriters, all deliver the same story experience to their audience, each group via a different platform.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Our reality: Genre fiction = entertainment fiction.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Most genre fiction authors know this. Most instinctively and frequently use the sort of language that demonstrates they do. Most, however, promptly forget this fact, our reality, when it comes to making business decisions, and flip to treating Genre Fiction works as Literary or General Fiction works. But they’re not. Different purpose, different product, different audience, hence different market. And different competition, too. Different ecosystem entirely.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Why is understanding all this important in pricing e-books?</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">a) because the shift from p-books to e-books needs to be seen in historical perspective - it is simply the latest in a series of format shifts the print-storyteller has undergone, from originally oral, to cloth-bound, to paperback - so now to digital.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">b) because this is just a format shift, and the product we deliver to our audence hasn’t materially changed since the dawn of time - we are still delivering a largely oral/aural experience, which is why “voice” is so very important in our game.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">c) because truly grasping the above illuminates this point: the physical thing that conveys our product to our audience does not itself have any significant value - not to our audience.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For millenia, our audience has valued our works (whether oral, cloth-bound print, paperback and now digital) for the storytelling experience they deliver.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For any piece of entertainment, it’s the experience the audience pays for, not the physical ticket that gets them into the show.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Going forward into next week’s conversation on e-book pricing, we need to first understand what our audience pays us for, and then compare what we deliver in digital format to what we deliver in other formats, and also what our storyteller-colleagues presenting via different platforms (movies, stage, etc) deliver to their audiences (essentially the same audience) and what $ value the audience places on their works in comparison to the $ value the audience places on ours.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In closing, a quick list of the elements audiences value in storytelling-based entertainments (via all platforms):</span></span></span></div><ol style="list-style-type: lower-alpha;"><li style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">escape</span></span></span></li>
<li style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">reiteration and reaffirmation of the universal human values audiences believe important (justice always triumphs; evil is vanquished by good; love conquers/comes to all; etc)</span></span></span></li>
<li style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">actively exercising and strengthening imagination (only genre fiction offers this - it’s a unique property embedded in the way our written words interact with the reader to create the experience the reader perceives)</span></span></span></li>
</ol><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And finally to repeat: The purpose of this post is to make everyone stop and absorb this point - because we can’t meaningfully address the issue of pricing without a solid understanding of the product we offer our audience.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Lisa Buchan commenting on Mike Shatzkin’s blog comparing the emergence of e-books to the emergence of mass market paperbacks on Mar 14th: “(This) harks back to the old marketing levers of the four "p"s - product, place, promotion and price.” </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The last two weeks’ posts have been about “place.” This week’s post is about “product.” Next Friday’s post will be on E-book Pricing - Part 1. The List Price. And the post after that will be about promotional pricing...despite the (r)evolution, nothing much has really changed.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 10.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">CAVEAT: Nothing posted on this blog, or in its comments, should involve commercially sensitive information. Contracted authors please exercise due diligence in your comments.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 10.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 12.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 10.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">All blog posts by the author should be viewed as personal opinion and postulation. Said opinions will alter to reflect changing facts.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>Stephanie Laurenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03516907713454981502noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8189189931710313940.post-21471133680832620932011-03-10T15:57:00.000-08:002011-03-10T15:57:31.463-08:00WHY MANY AUTHORS ARE REMAINING WITH TRADITIONAL PRINT PUBLISHERS - IT’S ALL ABOUT REACHING READERS.<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Knowing which of your formats (p-mm, p-hc, or e-) your audience is buying and where they buy them is arguably the most critical factor in considering any publishing contract, and also in deciding to shift from traditional to self-publishing.</span></span></div><div style="font: 10.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 12.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The recent Rasmussen Report (telephone survey Feb 17/18, 2011) confirmed that as of that date, only 8% of US readers read e-format (4% on dedicated e-readers, 4% on other devices). 71% still buy a print book at some form of retail outlet, and 21% order print books online. That’s all books, not just genre fiction.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So the US book-buyer market (Feb 2011) is only 8% e-book as an overall average.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">8%. So 92% are buying and reading in print.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So consider the spectrum of distribution for traditionally published genre fiction paperback authors. For this comparison, bookstores = chains, indies, all online, anything not wholesale. Wholesale = Walmart, Target, Safeway, Albertsons, Fred Meyer, Costco, etc.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Author A - e-book everywhere; p-book at the lower end of print distribution - shelved in section in bookstores, very little if any in wholesale.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Author B - e-book everywhere; p-book at the mid-point of print distribution - in section in bookstores and some presence at Walmart and Target and the bigger wholesalers at least.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Author C - e-book everywhere and supported; p-book toward the upper end of the print distribution - promoted via coop, paid placement in the front of bookstores, deeply distributed with position on the placement cards through all wholesale outlets including airports, Walgreens, etc, etc. Has a reasonable chance of being slotted almost anywhere books are sold.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">All traditionally published authors fall somewhere along the spectrum A - C and in the US all are already being offered to the 8% pool of e-book readers.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">From % e-sales for romance/romantic suspense recently aired:</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Author A - anything up to 35% of sales might be e-books</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Author B - 10 - 12% and slowly but steadily rising as the months go by</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Author C - 3 - 6%. And rising, yes, but print outweighs e-sales by a massive margin.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 10.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[Note: my own figures may be as high as 20% e-sales in the first month, but that % falls as the print sales continue to roll in]</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Let me clarify: this does not mean Author C (which is any of the bestsellers) is not selling well in e-format. Most Author Cs are selling as well if not better in e-format than most successful indie authors, and at significantly higher prices. What it does mean is that Author C sells many more print books.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">To underscore that, as of this moment, for even my older titles (constantly in print 10+ years) the monthly e-sales are still lower than the monthly p-sales. That is shifting, but e-sales do not dominate p-book sales even there, yet.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">There’s been a lot of speculation on blogs all over as to when traditionally published bestsellers will turn their backs on major publishers and go the self-publishing route with e-book and POD. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Absorb the figures above, and the most likely answer is: Not anytime soon.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Any established author knows that your book must appear in front of your already established readers in the format those readers want, and in the place where those readers go to buy books, for you to retain your sales levels. For any genre fiction bestseller, that format is currently 95% p-book (roughly 85% in wholesale, 10% in bookstores incl online).</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Is any bestseller going to turn their backs on 95% of their established audience and sales? No. So is any bestseller going to move from the publishers who can guarantee them reaching that print audience and making those sales? No - or at least, not yet.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What we are seeing with the uptake of e-books is predominantly the readers who used to buy in bookstores and/or online moving to e-books, plus readers who haven’t been buying recently lured back by the technology. That’s not surprising. And with the decline of bookstores, we’ll see more readers moving first online to order print books, and subsequently a percentage of those will take the next step and move to e-books. But the wholesale print reader hasn’t yet shifted to any great degree - and why would they?</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What we have seen so far (8%) is just the beginning of the transition of readers - even if all bookstores closed tomorrow, and all those bookstore print readers migrated immediately to e-books, genre fiction paperback bestsellers would still be selling mostly in print via wholesale (approx 15% e-books & 85% in print via wholesale)</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What will significantly impact the speed at which e-books replace p-books is the contraction of shelf space in wholesale.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The day either Walmart or Target axes the floor space they currently devote to genre paperback bestsellers is the day genre fiction publishing starts on the downhill run to e-book + POD only.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">That will be the first point of pause for traditionally published bestselling genre fiction authors. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">By </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">point of pause</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> I mean the day those authors will have to sit down and do the sums about whether to stick with traditional publishers or move to self-publishing, and for bestselling authors, those sums won’t just be about $. They’ll be about reader reach. They’ll be about what balance publishers and authors might strike to continue to cater for established readers still reading in print. For most authors, the ideal is to not have to stop print publishing until virtually all readers have changed to e-books, but realistically it’s not going to happen like that. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">There will come a point when doing an off-set print run and distributing mass market books for even bestsellers will become commercially unviable. For some genre fiction bestsellers, it may be that publishing via traditional publishers to the very end will be the preferable option, depending on the deals struck and the size of their established audience sticking to print that they would otherwise have to leave behind.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">No long-term established author is going to want to leave welded-on print-readers behind. Uncatered for. We’d have to be daft.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For established authors, it’s always about readers (audience). </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Yes, a balance will need to be struck between the finances and audience retention, but for all long-term established authors, bestsellers or not, anywhere from Author A’s position to Author C’s position above, from the point where our individual print distribution starts to decline below a certain point, we’re going to come to our first point of pause, and that point will be different for every author. Once we each reach that point, if we continue with major publishers we’ll need to keep assessing at every contract, at every successive stage of the transition as our audience shifts into reading e-books.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It’s our audience’s behavior - how they react to the decline in availability of print books - that’s going to dictate the speed of the transition.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Clearly the Author As are going to have to face their decisions first, then the Author Bs, until we finally reach the bestseller Author Cs. For bestsellers, the first point of pause won’t come until the wholesale print distribution of our works significantly decreases, and at least 50% of our audience has converted to e-books. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So that’s why established authors are still signing contracts with traditional publishers, and will for at least a while longer. Because we have very large audiences out there who are still determinedly reading in print. It’s not all about e-books for us.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And how does that impact on pricing? Because our pricing is solidly established in print mass market, and for our audience en masse there is no significant difference between print and e-book with respect to what they get from our works. Which is the point we’ll be discussing next week.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">To me it is no surprise that newbie indie authors are signing with Big 6 publishers - those new authors want to step outside the 8% pool and have a shot at the other 92% of readers. Mind you, I think Amanda Hocking has sidestepped the point and gone beyond the 8% without major publishers, but I suspect she won’t be an easy act to follow.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For traditionally published authors thinking to switch to self-publishing, what % of your established audience would you be willing to leave behind in print?</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So...the big question. How soon before the genre fiction ecosystem goes 100% e-book? </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Until I considered the recent data, I was inclined to imagine 3 to 5 years. Now...I’d opt for more than 5 but less than 10, but it ultimately depends on the wholesale print business - and that could change overnight. Any night.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The specific author %e-sales above were drawn from romance/romantic suspense works. Does anyone have similar data on mysteries, thrillers, fantasy works? I would imagine these might differ, but probably not by a lot.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">One last point, and for this I’ll speak from my own experience, having 92% of my audience in print severely limits what I can do by way of promotional e-books, because, for instance, doing e-only shorts connected to my major works will seriously aggravate my print readership, who see this as rewarding the e-book readers and discriminating against them. No established author with a large print readership can afford to do this. (So self-published authors can make hay while the sun shines, but it won't always be so - not once established authors start to shift)</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">On that note: On April 5th, Avon Impulse will release ROYAL WEDDINGS, a collection of three shorts from me, Gaelen Foley and Loretta Chase - all established historical romance authors. These shorts are not connected to our major works, and we are working on making it as easy as possible for our print readership to access these works without having to formally move to e-book readers or apps to do it. The only way we could have done such a release, timed with that other royal wedding, was to do it in e-book + POD, and use a big publisher to take care of the details.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">If anyone is interested in the story behind ROYAL WEDDINGS, ask below, and I’ll go into it. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">One more post to go before the big one on pricing</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Topic of next blog post: will be posted in comments below on Sunday.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Next blog post: will be posted next Friday</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 10.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CAVEAT: Nothing posted on this blog, or in its comments, should involve commercially sensitive information. Contracted authors please exercise due diligence in your comments.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 10.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 12.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 10.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">All blog posts by the author should be viewed as personal opinion and postulation. Said opinions will alter to reflect changing facts.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>Stephanie Laurenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03516907713454981502noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8189189931710313940.post-45024828410332451252011-03-03T15:11:00.000-08:002011-03-03T15:11:58.775-08:00UNRESTRICTED TERRITORY - THE WORLD IS NOW OUR OYSTER.<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is the 2nd of 4 posts leading to our conversation about e-book pricing. How does territory influence price? Because territory defines your potential audience/market, and you need to know your market - its size, where it is, and what’s involved in reaching it - in order to position and price your product.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Last week I posted my guiding principle for genre fiction business decisions: “I am a storyteller. For me, audience is everything. To gain audience, I need distribution. To grow audience I need increasing distribution.”</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The distribution and access to a truly global market that e-books offers is, to me, the single most exciting aspect of the digital sphere.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To properly understand my excitement, you have to get your head around this fact: For every 1 English-language (EL-) book reader within the US, there are between 2 - 6 EL-book readers outside the US.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Translating that to numbers (guestimate round numbers to illustrate): If there are 100 million potential EL-book readers in the US, then there’s 300 - 700 million potential readers for your EL-books globally.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That’s a very attractive extension of market, of potential audience. Yes, the uptake of e-readers is slower outside the US, but it’s not neglible and eventually, with the ultimate demise of off-set print runs of genre fiction EL-p-books (unknown years from now), e-books + POD will be the globably accepted norm for genre fiction.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In Queen Victoria’s time, the sun never set on the British Empire.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We can now translate that to: the sun never sets on our audience. At any minute in the 24 hours, someone somewhere could be downloading your book.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In terms of audience, to me this is nirvana.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For self-published e-book authors:</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> you are sitting pretty. Assuming you’ve ticked the right boxes in uploading, then your books published via Kindle will be available to readers globally. Note: prices vary over the 10 Kindle territory stores, and are apparently set by Amazon outside the US (based on some convoluted algorithm that no one else seems to know, but presumably to cover different internet distribution costs?).</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For the traditionally published, if neither you nor your principal publisher (US, UK or wherever) have sublicenced your works for print editions in any other EL-territory,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> then you, too, should have the respective e-books up in all the 10 Kindle territory stores, uploaded either by your principal publisher (if they hold World EL-rights), or by you if you have retained the other EL-territory rights.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For traditionally published authors whose works *are* sublicenced to other EL-territories for print editions,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> life is significantly more complicated, because EL-publishers globally have tied EL-e-rights to EL-p-rights on an EL-territory basis. Example: If your US publisher has sublicenced your work to a UK publisher for a print edition, then the UK publisher also claims the e-right in the UK (and possibly elsewhere).</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have never been a fan of territorial e-rights. The internet is a global market, not one bound by artifical “virtual” borders. That said, I can understand the traditional publishers’ reasons, which can be summed up as “protecting their existing print businesses.” </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Because of EL-territorial restrictions, a US-traditionally published author who wants a print deal in the UK has to allow the UK publisher to have the e-rights in that territory. As a result, US-trad-pubbed authors with UK print editions lose $ on their UK e-books, and so do their US publishers, although the US publishers will make up the loss by conversely sublicencing the US editions of UK authors’ works from UK publishers. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You can swap any other EL-territory for US or UK above, and that statement holds true.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The only reason any traditionally published author accepts this situation is because of the exercise of the linked p-book rights in, for example, the UK, and weighing the benefits of that against the loss in e-books. Remember the “pragmatic hat” I mentioned last week?</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To illustrate from my own situation, as well as my US editions (p- and e-), I am published in 2 separate EL-editions, one in the UK, and one in Australia/NZ. This was and will continue to be a *good thing* while the major format in those territories remains print, which it will for many years yet. I have gained and continue to gain exposure and readership I wouldn’t otherwise. Definitely. On balance, I do not - could not possibly - regret that my US publisher made those deals.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Of course, once print is no longer the dominant format, my attitude will change. That, however, may not happen for more than a decade.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In addition to the loss of $, the author with EL-e-rights exercised by different publishers in various territories also has to contend with a range of associated headaches.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For example, currently each of my EL e-books (30+) are uploaded 3 times, by 3 different publishers, to Kindle alone, covering the 10 Kindle territory stores (same book, 3 uploads from different sources, spread over the 10 stores - sometimes there can be uploads from different publishers to the same store). Multiply that over all the different platforms, and the chance of someone slipping up or some technical glitch sneaking in increases dramatically. It is therefore necessary to check, and keep checking, to ensure books are put up in a timely manner in each territory and on each platform, and harass where necessary, and keep checking routinely to make sure they stay up. Who has time for this?</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In terms of getting books in front of our e-audience, territorial exercise of e-rights has to be the most inefficient system anyone could possibly have devised.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The catch of course is that in terms of getting print books in front of our global EL-audience, the only way is via territorial EL-publishers. And print is still by far the biggest market in any EL-territory.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">IMO, what we need with e-books is what I have heard the Spanish publishers are (wisely) claiming - global language rights. They will publish e-books in Spanish globally.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With global language e-rights:</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> for every e-book published, traditionally or self-published, there would be a global right available for licencing in every language. You wouldn’t sell a French-Canadian right and a French-France/Belguim right. You’d sell one global French-e-right, and that publisher would be able to distribute globally, servicing French-language readers wherever they happen to reside on the planet. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Aside from improvement in $ and transparency in accounting, the efficiencies for authors and agents are staggering. For each language, you and your agent have only one publisher and translated edition to deal with.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Self-publishing authors can move most quickly into dealing in global-language e-rights (unless you also want trad-p-book deals in specific territories).</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My prediction: once print is no longer the dominant format in the UK (the 2nd biggest established EL-territory after the US), there will be no place for territorial e-rights with new works. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ultimately, we will end with global language e-rights, each exercised by one publisher globally - to the immense relief of authors, agents, and readers everywhere.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That said, until the market in the UK tips, trad-published authors with UK print deals will have to bear with the inefficiencies and frustrations of selling e-books by territory.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For the traditionally published: Are your e-rights being exercised as global-EL, or have they been carved up into territories? If the former, are you happy with the outcome? If the latter, do your views/experiences differ from mine?</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For self-published authors: Are any of you already moving on licencing other language rights as global rights? If so, how are you finding the experience? Also, what are your feelings about the prices Amazon puts on your books in the other 9 Kindle stores - or can you specify the price in those Amazon-defined “territories”?</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Two more posts to go before we focus on pricing.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Topic of next blog post: will be posted in comments below on Sunday.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Next blog post: will be posted next Friday</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 10.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">CAVEAT: Nothing posted on this blog, or in its comments, should involve commercially sensitive information. Contracted authors please exercise due diligence in your comments.</span></span></div><div style="font: 10.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 12.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 10.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All blog posts by the author should be viewed as opinion and postulation. I can guarantee my opinions will alter to reflect changing facts.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>Stephanie Laurenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03516907713454981502noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8189189931710313940.post-48188444279819994002011-02-24T13:46:00.000-08:002011-02-24T13:46:20.580-08:00THE VEXING QUESTION OF THE BESTSELLER LISTS<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">BEFORE I get to today’s topic, a note about the road we’re starting down. To return to the dinosaurs and daffodils analogy, genre fiction publishing is an ecosystem (a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment). In this ecosystem, authors, readers, publishers, distributors, librarians, booksellers, mavens and reviewers and all others involved are ALL players. None of us exist in isolation. We all interact.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">I sometimes get the impression that self-published authors think they are not connected in any way with Big6 publishing. I have news for you. The Big6 impact on you, and you impact on them. That’s how an ecosystem works. None of us are entirely and completely cut off or independent from the rest.<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So here we are, in the very early stages of our (r)evolution. The key aim we all share is for our ecosystem to thrive. It’s not an easy ecosystem to manage, based as it is on the commercialization of a product that is constantly evolving and changing itself (quite aside from the ecosystem changing). What we need to aim for is a nurturing balance that keeps all the vital systems of the ecosystem functioning at their best.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">No one can say, at this point in our revolution, whether or not our brontosauruses will survive. It is perfectly possible that some many evolve - slim down, become more agile and nimble, and turn into really expert gardeners nurturing the daffodils. Others may mutate in some presently impossible to predict way. None of us can know. But given that ours is a commercially-based ecosystem, only the commercially-successful evolutions and mutations will survive.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There’s no benefit to authors in focusing our energies, positive or negative, on the brontosauruses. Their evolution and their future is in their own hands. As a group, authors need to focus on our needs and wants, on what we need to best thrive in the new world. We need to work this out as best we can, then articulate it clearly - so that we know, and everyone else in the ecosystem knows, too.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">That’s one thing we can and should do, and that’s what this blog is designed to foster.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">MY SHORT TERM AIM is to have a rational conversation about E-book pricing. However, as soon as I started structuring such a conversation, I realized there were a number of other elements in the equation, and without first bringing those elements to the forefront of our minds, any rational conversation on pricing wasn’t going to happen.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So the four posts of which today’s is the first are all leading to a discussion on pricing. Each of the four posts will address some aspect of our business that impacts on, and is impacted on by, pricing. I’ve started with the Bestseller Lists because they are a straightforward issue, and a very visible one. And one that can be and should be addressed quickly.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">ALSO, to help set a frame of reference for this blog, I’ll make five quick points:</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">a) Authors and business are intrinsically not a good match. To create and craft our works, authors must have a passionate soul. Business, OTOH, to be successfully negotiated, requires cold and analytical reasoning - passion plays a part, but it’s not the same creative passion we work with every day. So to succeed, past, present and future, an author needs to learn to wear a pragmatic hat, and to put on that pragmatic hat and deal with the business, and protect and reserve our passion for our works.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">b) A guiding principle I’ve used throughout my career: “I am a storyteller. For me, audience is everything. To gain audience, I need distribution. To grow audience I need increasing distribution.” As a storyteller, reaching my audience is paramount, so distribution of my work is key. Distribution has always been the final deciding factor in all my career decisions.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">c) With respect to both the above, ask yourself this: Would we have the market we presently have, the one we’re all so keen to sell into, if we hadn’t had publishers large and small working alongside us over the past centuries to get our works to our audience? To grow and nurture that audience? Give credit where it’s due, and in that respect, tread gently. What for authors is shaping as an exiciting, if sometimes scary, brave new world is for publishers large and small a minefield they may not be able to negotiate. </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">d) What the world of publishing is going through now is not a de novo creation, but a transformation of something that’s existed for centuries. Transformation is always more difficult to manage than de novo creation because you have to deal with what already is along the way to transitioning to what works best on the new playing field. That said, in a situation where there’s an existing and long-established product and market in place - as in genre fiction - then jettisoning the old wholesale and trying to start up as if de novo is...unwise doesn’t come close to describing such an act of business folly.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">e) Ultimately every author will have to make their own business decision about how they are going to best reach their audience in the new world that’s taking shape. Hopefully via this blog we can explore some of the aspects that may influence that decision. Key among those aspects is the question of where each author’s audience actually is. More on that 2 posts on.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">FINALLY...TODAY’S POST:</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">At the time of writing:</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">USAToday: now includes e-books, including those from self-published authors, in its list, ranked on units sold, all formats included on the one list.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">NYTimes: have started a separate E-book fiction list, self-published excluded, ranked on unit sales.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Amazon, B & N, and other online stores: currently have various lists - main, genre-specific, live-time - ranked on unit sales. Inclusion of self-published works appears to vary.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our first question has to be: why have lists at all? </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s a marketing tool. We all know that hitting a list will lead to better sales - better positioning in the store, more exposure (physical or virtual store, it’s the same). Until recently I believed that the better sales came from that better positioning and greater exposure - more potential readers saw the book, right?</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But in the online world especially, whether with p-books or e-books, that’s not the whole of the equation. Overwhelmed by choice, readers are increasingly using the readily available lists to choose books, especially from authors they haven’t read before. </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Yes, obviously - but why? Because a reader sees a bestseller list position as meaning: <i>lots of people bought this book</i> - and from that follows: <i>perhaps I should try it</i>. They get the sample, and hopefully you’ve made the sale.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Lots of people bought this book.</i></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The critical elements in that statement are: “lots of people” and “bought.”</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This is where I think the currently available lists are shortchanging readers, authors, and everyone else. The current lists, based solely on unit sales, correctly reflect the “lots of people,” but they do not adequately reflect the “bought.”</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Let me pose this: On Kindle, Book A sells 1000 copies @ 9.99, while Book B sells 3000 copies @ 0.99.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If readers are using lists as a “hard cash vote of confidence” (as I believe they are), then which of our two books should rank higher? Book A, for which other readers have plunked down $ 9990 in a given time, or Book B, for which readers have offered only $ 2970 over the same period?</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">On the current lists, Book B ranks significantly higher than Book A.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">You might fool consumers once, but we all quickly learn to distrust information sources that steer us wrongly. As I recently read somewhere about marketing in general, trust is what it’s all about. If consumers lose trust in a source, they won’t pay attention to it - they will actively turn their backs on it. If Bestseller Lists do not continue to meet readers' true needs, such lists will soon become worthless - which is not to anyone’s benefit.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Amazon, are you listening? Also B & N, USAT and NYT.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Yes, I know the prices are shown on most lists, but readers are not about to waste their time doing the comparative maths. And anyway, they can’t - the lists are rankings, not absolute # sales, and to do a Best Grossing List you need the actual sales figures.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Apple already address this on their App store - their lists are Top Paid (#), Top Free (#), and Top Grossing (# x $). And yes, the Top Paid and the Top Grossing are significantly different. And Apps are very like e-books in this respect - a downloadable product with a wide range of prices.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When lists were originally set up, most products on any list were of similar price (for instance, the current NYTimes Mass Market Top 20 are all 9.99 or 7.99). Not necessarily identical, but close enough. Except for USAT, which has always been a purely numbers ranking, but everyone using that list for anything meaningful pulls it apart into its price-limited segments - mass market, trade, hardcover, etc. Whenever I have a USAT listing reported to me from within publishing, it’s always as “number 3 in mass market” or similar - which illustrates the point. To be useful, a bestseller list based on unit sales alone has to compare like products (e.g. books) in a similar price range (e.g. print mass market).</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The reason the NYT fiction list was split into Harcover and Mass Market Fiction many years ago was because as the NYT adjusted to more accurate reporting of unit sales, the mass market books routinely weighed out the leading hardcovers, leaving said hardcovers struggling to gain a mention. That is an example of a change in how lists are compiled that was driven by price difference. Likewise the NYT Trade list.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My contention is this: with fiction e-books ranging in price from $ 0.99 - $ 20.00 +, we need to revise the relevant bestseller lists to make them more reflective of what readers are actually voting for with their dollars.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">NOTE: I have no quibble with continuing to have a list based purely on unit sales (as the lists currently are), but I believe we need another list alongside, a Best Grossing List ranked on unit sales x price.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Put both sort of lists up, and let readers decide which they find most useful in successfully helping them choose books to read.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Amazon already has a Top Paid, and a Top Free. A Top Grossing needs to be added, and that shouldn’t be a big deal.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Why do I think this point is important here and now? Because bestseller lists should rightly remain an important and potentially effective marketing and positioning tool going forward into our (r)evolution, and it will benefit none of us - publishers, distributors, authors or readers - for the concept of bestseller lists to become tarnished and ultimately rejected by readers.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So that’s my current view on the vexing question of the bestseller lists in our new world. </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And there must be something in the ether, because I posted in the comments that this would be today’s topic on Sunday, then Mike Shatzkin made a comment in the comments section of his previous blog, then touched again on the issue at the end of his blog post of Feb 22nd. His comments and mine align. We need the Top Grossing List.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Why do I consider the bestseller lists important with respect to e-book pricing? Because price currently significantly influences the ranking on bestseller e-book lists, and for some/many self-published authors getting on those lists is the primary if not sole motivation driving their low pricing. IMO, this is the wrong reason for low pricing, but more on that anon.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Meanwhile, the unintended consequences of e-book bestseller lists based solely on unit sales are disrupting and destablizing our emerging ecosystem in ways that are not healthy for ANY of the inhabitants, especially not in the long-term. Everyone will ultimately lose, and I don’t think it’s too alarmist to say that if not rectified, this issue could ultimately send our ecosystem into terminal imbalance.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We need those lists brought back into balance. Yesterday.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What say you?</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Topic of next blog post: will be posted in comments below on Sunday.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Next blog post: will be posted next Friday</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">CAVEAT: Nothing posted on this blog, or in its comments, should involve commercially sensitive information. Contracted authors please exercise due diligence in your comments.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">All blog posts by the author should be viewed as postulation. I love playing devil’s advocate, but I can guarantee my opinions will alter to reflect changing facts.</span></div>Stephanie Laurenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03516907713454981502noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8189189931710313940.post-66404984282767128782011-02-17T22:00:00.000-08:002011-02-17T22:57:32.925-08:00Let's Start Here...<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Dinosaur = a person or thing that is outdated or has become obsolete because of failure to adapt to changing circumstances (OED)</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Daffodil = one of the earliest plants to emerge in spring, heralding a new season of growth and abundance (we hope).</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In my view, this is where we’re now at in the continuing evolution of the world of genre fiction - the period when dinosaurs still rule, but daffodils are sprouting.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Qn: Will the dinosaurs turn around and stomp the daffodils into the ground?</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Or will they recognize and nurture them so they can feed on the leaves and blooms?</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Or will the dinosaurs be unable to sustain themselves on said daffodils and die?</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(Note: Daffoldils are narcissi, therefore loaded with narcotics. Who said this wasn’t a good analogy?)</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Dinosaur - as Anne Elk said, they are thin at one end, thick in the middle, and thin at the other end (tip of the hat to the Monty Python guys). I’m thinking brontosaurus. To me, publishers look rather like that - a huge body of workers in the middle, but with a long neck and a small head - meaning only a few people at the top with time and the task to look about and see what’s coming, sniff the air, and report back to the huge body. But the head is a long way, communication wise, from the huge body. And I’m not sure that the head spends all that much time looking around anyway, too consumed with the need to graze and feed that huge body.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As for the tail...that’s the analysis side of publishing, which is...well, thin. Not to say tiny. The “recognizing and noting and learning from past mistakes” department, which I’m not sure exists in big publishing at all. There’s always so much focus on dealing with “now” and of course the demands of “now” never end. Looking analytically back at yesterday, then projecting forward to tomorrow...who has time for that?</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For me, the daffodils bravely blooming today are the prospects and possibilities for authors that are rising out of the e-book (r)evolution.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The indie authors are leading the way, with Konrath, Wesley-Smith, and a host of others giving support. This is a vibrant community, and one which has much to teach us all - I know I’m watching. Avidly. Excitedly. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So much easier (and safer) to let others blaze the trail, and nurture, feed, and propogate the daffodils.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Which is why I’ve decided to write this blog. Because it’s not good enough for authors like me - traditionally published and settled comfortably in a niche with my name on it in the house of one of the Big6 - to simply sit back and let the revolution roll - and then at the end say: well, if they’d listened to us they wouldn’t have built that fire just there, in just that way, so that it got out of control, burnt all the daffodils, and left us with a lunar landscape.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">That’s not a viable argument if we never raised our voices and spoke up in the first place.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So that’s what this blog is: a place where a successful traditionally published author will ask questions and raise issues. Nothing more, nothing less.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Whatever I write here is intended purely to provoke thought, and hopefully discussion. There are few if any absolute truths, definitive rights and wrongs in this business. What works for one may not for another. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">But overall directions matter. The skeleton of this newly emerging industry matters - to all authors everywhere - and it’s that skeleton that’s taking shape now. Today.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For established authors, standing back and not sharing our views isn’t helpful. Not to others, and also not to us. If we never speak, no one will hear us. And we - many of whom have been making a good living in this business for over 20 years - might have important insights that need to be addressed if we want this new revolution to play out to the best benefit of all storytellers and their audiences.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Because ultimately that’s who matters in this business - the storytellers and their audiences. Publishers, distributors, booksellers, librarians, reviewers...all those are facilitors in connecting the storyteller to their audience.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">How well we all survive - storytellers, audience, and all in between - comes down to how well we all adapt to our changing circumstances.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Those of my peers who are attuned to analogies should be able to point to at least one “fire” already crackling (e-book price point), but that’s for another post.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The point of this first post is to posit this: traditionally published authors need to engage with this new world. It is not in ours or any one else’s best interests to let the revolution roll on without our input.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Authors at all levels need to join together and share our views - traditionally published, self-published, and all in between. As a reader, I don’t look at and don’t care who published the book - I only care about the story.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I’ll close this first post (I was going to call it a virgin post, but thought better of it) with the following observations:</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">One thing I know beyond question or dispute - I don’t know the answers, I don’t know what the landscape of genre fiction publishing is going to look like 1 year, 3 years or 10 years from now - and neither does anyone else. Period.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I do know that sittng in my lovely library writing my stories and effectively hiding my head in the sand (which I could so easily do) is not going to help me cope with the changes that will inevitably come.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">If I have my head down, how am I to avoid a forest fire that someone else might have unintentionally lit?</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">That happened here on the day they call Black Saturday. People drew their blinds against the heat, sat down with a cold beer, focused on the screen and shut everything else out. They didn’t look out, look up, and see the sky turn red...not until it was too late.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Anyone for United Authors?</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Anyone out there in traditonal-publishing land feeling schizophrenically torn between welling paranoical fear and burgeoning hopeful excitement?</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">One simple question to get the exchange rolling: as this new publishing landscape takes shape, what’s your greatest fear?</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">CAVEAT: Nothing posted on this blog, or in its comments, should involve commercially sensitive information. Contracted authors please exercise due diligence in your comments.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">All blog posts by the author should be viewed as postulation. I love playing devil’s advocate, but I can guarantee my opinions will alter to reflect changing facts.</span></span></span></div></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div>Stephanie Laurenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03516907713454981502noreply@blogger.com64