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Category: Publishing (Page 2 of 3)

A Thinking Man’s Guide To Piracy

A Thinking Man's Guide To PiracyIt’s every publisher’s hope that new books will catch on and find an audience. You promote, promote, promote and then watch the sales figures. If all goes well, the rocket takes off and a smile comes to your face. I’d been smiling a bit lately about Oh My! A thinking man’s guide to crossplay.

The eBook has been doing reasonably well on the Kindle, but when sales recently spiked a bit, I was curious and began to do some digging. What I discovered was that the book was also available on a number of file sharing sites on the web. My book was being pirated!

I knew that this was a possibility from the beginning. Piracy is just an unavoidable part of the digital ecosystem that has to be accounted for in any modern business plan. So rather than becoming angry, I was rather proud that someone thought my book was worth pirating. At $1.99, it certainly isn’t too expensive, and the sales spike is very likely due to the increased exposure.

So it seems that there really is no such thing as bad publicity!

Oh My! A thinking man’s guide to crossplay is available for Kindle, Nook, and iPad/iPhone.

Closing The Book On Borders: Liquidation

 

Anyone who’s been following the Borders saga is probably not surprised at the news that Borders is closing its remaining stores and liquidating. Like watching the decline of an ailing old friend, I’m somewhat relieved that Borders will soon be out of its misery. All remaining stores may close as early as this Friday.

Goodbye Borders

That Borders execs continued to seek bonuses even as the company sank, seems like some surreal necrophilic episode as this ordeal draws to a close. Much has already been made of the company’s failure to compete with Amazon and the rise of eBooks. But in the end, I think shortsighted, greedy executives killed what was once a great bookstore chain.

The demise of Borders is going to leave publishers with a lot fewer places to sell books and ultimately with a lot less leverage on Amazon. Like Apple was to the music industry, the demise of the large bookstore chain is casting Amazon into a similar role in publishing. If publishers want to stay in business and sell books, they have to play ball with Amazon whether in print or eBook format for the Kindle.

While Barnes & Noble can offer some alternative for publishers right now, it remains to be seen whether or not they themselves will escape Borders’ fate. Reports are that the Nook is doing well versus the Kindle, but the balance of our own eBook sales here at Learncrest points up an enormous Kindle advantage. Titles are moving on the Kindle but not so much on the Nook. And while Barnes & Noble stands to gain Borders customers in places where they have stores nearby, those readers farther away will likely turn to Amazon. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of marketing pitch B&N will make to woo those orphaned readers. Heavily discounted Nooks would be nice!

If anyone had any doubts that the book business had changed forever, they can be sure now. Rest in peace Borders old friend. Rest in peace.

Digital Manga Guild Launches With Boatload of BL/Yaoi Manga

Tired of Waiting for LoveDigital Manga Inc. announced 23 launch titles for its Digital Manga Guild program at its Anime Expo panel on Saturday. It appears that all of these manga are of the popular Boys Love (BL) or Yaoi genre. While this may not appeal to most manga readers, all have reason to rejoice that the Digital Manga Guild is moving forward with a substantial list of titles that will be available in digital format.

The recent losses of TokyoPop and the Borders bookstore chain have made buying manga outside of Japan a more challenging prospect. While Amazon carries many titles, the loss of large U.S. publishers has made it less likely that even some popular manga will find legal publication outside of Japan. Niche titles even less so. And online purchasing is generally not an easy option for younger manga enthusiasts.

This has undoubtedly made scanlations, fan translated scans of manga, more popular. The avid manga reader may simply have no other choice than illegal scanlations for a growing number of titles. While the internet is rife with people who think everything should be free, many manga readers would gladly pay something to support the artists they love.

Efforts like the Digital Manga Guild promise to not only make more  yaoi manga available, but cultivate the next generation of manga translators. So over time, if successful, we should see a wider variety of manga being translated and sold outside of Japan. The many scanlation groups clearly show that there are talented people out there who want to share their love of manga with others. And the thousands reading scanned manga online indicates that the time for digital manga has arrived.

Will Publishers Survive The eBook Revolution?

My youngest son, who’s only 10, wants to publish his Young Authors story as an eBook and sell it for 99 cents. I told him sure, I’ll do it. With the process I’ve built, it’s pretty easy to do and should be a fun project. And who knows, it might even be profitable!

Scenarios like this can only cause great fear and trepidation in the large publishing houses, who like the music industry before them, are faced with a serious threat to their existence as they have known it. Any artist with the technical know-how and inclination can create and sell directly to the public. Authors no longer need publishers to sell their books. Arguments about editing and quality of work aside, those are the brutal facts.

So how can publishers survive? Well first of all, they can last a long time on their enormous back catalogs books that can be converted to eBook formats. It means renegotiating a lot of contracts, but, if they aren’t too greedy, it can be done. Readers don’t just want cheap eBooks, we want quality ones as well. The big publishers have many of the world’s best writers to draw on. If they market and price their products well, people will continue to buy.

The tricky thing for them will be attracting and retaining new talent. The authors of today know that they don’t need publishers to sell their books if they’re willing to publish in purely digital format. Publishers have to offer something more. Money certainly helps, but today’s author is going to be very reluctant to cede much control/ownership of their works to publishers. I think editing and marketing are the places where the big publishing houses offer the most attractive services. They have the resources to promote authors across all major media.

To survive, the major publishers need to identify and sign the next generation of authors. These writers are not waiting around to be discovered. They are writing and publishing eBooks right now and some of them are already having a lot of success doing so. If publishers miss this boat, they really will be sunk.

TokyoPop Manga Licenses Fly Away Home

Anime News Network has reported that TokyoPop’s manga licenses will revert to their owners when the publisher shuts down at the end of May. There is no word on the status of TokyoPop original English language (OEL) works.

TokyoPop LogoThis is rather disappointing. I had held out some hope up until now that perhaps TokyoPop could continue its current licensed series in eBook form, at least until license expiration. But it is very likely that the licenses were specific to printed distribution. Digital distribution usually requires negotiating a new license if not part of the original.

It’s a near certainty that at least some of the most popular titles will be licensed by some other publishers. Still, anyone following any current TokyoPop series is in for some anguished waiting while things get sorted out.

Borders Sale Seen As More Likely

Publishers Weekly has reported that the likely sale of ailing bookstore chain Borders in part or whole may be one outcome of recent actions. The bankrupt company has sought court permission to sell some assets that do not have any current lien against them.

I suppose it’s a good thing that I used up my remaining Borders Bucks this morning. Given that rival Barnes & Noble has shown little public interest in acquiring Borders intact or any of its assets, I think any buyout of Borders will be quickly followed by a total liquidation.

The book business has changed. While Barnes & Noble is in better shape, recent actions intended to reduce its interest payments speak to a continuing struggle to stay afloat. It’s hard to say whether B&N would benefit from the loss of Borders, or if Amazon has already done so.

The end of Borders will accelerate the push towards eBooks because of the very real problem of finding a new book bookstore nearby. Faced with the option of waiting several days for a book to come in the mail, or downloading the same book for a few bucks less instantly, many will opt for the eBook.

eBook readers are rapidly moving into sub-$100 range and free eReader software is ubiquitous. Faced with fewer locations to sell physical books, publishers are being forced to sell more eBooks to survive. In particular, I’m sure that they are working very hard to make as much of their back catalogs available in eBook format as possible. They’d better be quick about it too, or someone else will!

With or without Borders, bookstores will survive. But the age of the large bookstore chain seems to be coming to an end. Many of us are going to need some new places to hang out.

Monobookist Bookstore Heralds The Boutique

As Borders reports that it needs an additional $50 million to reorganize, an interesting new bookstore has popped up in New York City. A so called, monobookist bookstore. This bookstore opened in a modest space, stocked with 3000 copies…of one book!

To celebrate the launch of his new book about the Phoenix Mars mission, author Andrew Kessler constructed a “monobookist bookstore”–a temporary shop stocked with more than 3,000 copies of Martian Summer.

I’d been wondering when we might start to see the rise of boutique bookstores as the eBooks become the preferred way to consume literature. These boutique bookstores would be in small spaces, about the size of a cafe coffee shop, and they would only stock a few copies of the most popular new books. A monobookist bookstore is the extreme example of this, but makes the point well. A boutique bookstore would exist first and foremost to promote the works of the featured authors.

Selling a few copies on site would be nice, but I think the ultimate goal should be to increase sales of the author’s eBook catalog. Physical books can be great marketing tools used this way, but I’d probably plan to support the shop itself more on coffee and muffin sales than on the books themselves. No long term leases here!

A boutique bookstore should be an ephemeral thing, a temporary place to launch some books, sell some coffee, and host author signings. And don’t forget the free Wi-Fi to sell those eBooks too!

We’ll always have printed books, but the new star is the eBook. The bookstore itself is only dust in the wind.

Tokyopop Closing North American Publishing Division

The Anime News Network has confirmed that Tokyopop will close its publishing operation on May 31. Love them or hate them, this is big blow for American manga fans. Tokyopop was one of the oldest manga publishers in the US and did much to popularize manga here. They will be missed.

The fate of their digital manga publishing project and remaining print titles is yet to be announced. It seems likely that other publishers will pick up the rights to popular titles. I hope that the passing of Tokyopop from the publishing business marks a bottom of sorts for the collapse of the manga market in the US.

Fruits BasketThis latest news is more evidence that the traditional print publishing business model is no longer viable, particularly for niche publications like manga, graphic novels, and comics. The massive rush to digital comics I saw at C2E2 this year was no accident. The industry insiders already know that with fewer physical bookstores, that digital is the only way to cut costs, combat piracy, and reach a consumer base that clearly wants digital product. Going digital will also allow them to monetize extensive back catalogs of books in a way never before possible.

Sadly, it appears Tokyopop won’t be around to take part in the digital transition. RIP Tokyopop, you brought me Fruits Basket for which I will always be grateful.

New York Times Online Seems Reasonable

As a long time reader of the New York Times online, I read today’s subscription rate email with some initial trepidation. People have grown used to getting news online for free. Or at least without paying the newspapers and other news organizations directly. So I was a little worried about what the Times was going to be charging.

The good news is that the charge seems to be quite reasonable. Unlimited access to NYTimes.com and a smartphone app for $1.88/week for the first 26 weeks. If you want the tablet app then it goes to $2.50/week. The NYT subscription page says that these rates are 50% off the regular rate and if you subscribe to the print edition you get online access for free.

NYT Online Subcription Rates

New York Times Online Subcription Rates

 

I don’t really know why it makes a difference whether you access via a smartphone or tablet, but on the whole these seem like reasonable rates. But will it be enough against a culture addicted to free news? The short answer is no. There will always be people who simply won’t pay. And it should be noted that a lot of NYT content will continue to be freely accessible via Google News and Facebook to name two. The Times doesn’t want to cut itself off from the millions of readers who use those sites everyday in order to maintain ad revenue. Finally, there are already a growing list of sites with instructions on how to defeat the new paywall, oy.

So if free still wins out, why bother with subscription fees at all? Well news costs money to produce, for lack of a better word. Journalists and editors need to eat too! The New York Times produces a very high quality product worthy of being paid for. I think that with a reasonable subscription rate and easy availability on devices like smartphones, and tablets, the Times stands a good chance of improving their bottom line. I don’t think that digital subscription revenue will rival what they get from print, but it should buy them some time as the market transitions from print to digital.

One thing I’m sure of is that the whole print industry will be watching this bold experiment. If successful, it may be the yellow brick road that leads all newspapers to the Emerald City of a digital future. Otherwise the internet cyclone that’s been sweeping away one newspaper after another will leave few survivors. Either way, we’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.

Publishing eBooks On The iPad

My first two eBooks, Anime Aftershocks, and Rolled Up Dimensionality, are now available on the iPad! While it is true that the Kindle and Nook versions of these books can also be read on the iPhone and iPad using their respective reader apps, going forward it is important to have an iBooks version available as well.

Despite its higher price, the iPad has become an important eBook reader and platform. And after what I saw at C2E2 this past weekend in Chicago, the iPad is likely to become the dominant eReader for digital comics and manga. So how does one publish an eBook on the iPad? The short answer is with money and some effort. Right now it is harder and more expensive to publish on the iPad relative to the Kindle or the Nook.

Think Different

The first thing you’ll need to publish on the iPad is a Mac capable of running iTunes Producer. This is the application you will use to actually bundle and upload your book to the iTunes Store. You’ll have to join iTunes Connect to gain access to iTunes Producer. So if you do not have a Mac and are not comfortable or inclined to the technical side of things, then you’d be best served to publish your eBook through a 3rd party such as Smashwords which publishes on multiple platforms including iPad. Obviously, this will reduce your share of any sales, but it will take the messy technical stuff out of the equation for you.

Running the Numbers

Next, you’ll need to buy ISBN numbers for your eBooks. Even if you already have an ISBN for a print version of your book, you’ll need to get a unique number for the eBook version. Currently, you can buy a block of 10 numbers for $250 USD from the Bowker web site. The process is relatively straight forward and while you can buy a single number for $125, clearly if you plan to publish more than one book in your lifetime, it is more cost effective to buy a block of numbers. Publishing on the Kindle or Nook doesn’t require an ISBN, but if you feel that you may want to publish on the iPad at some point, it’s a good idea to just bite the bullet and buy the numbers up front. I look at it as added incentive to write more eBooks!

Checking It Twice

In my case I already had my eBooks in ePub format which Apple requires for iPad books. And because these books had already passed muster on the Kindle and the Nook, I thought I was home free to publish on the iPad. This was not the case. I discovered that Apple has more stringent requirements than Barnes & Noble or Amazon. To figure out why my eBooks were failing the ePub checks during my upload attempts, I used the ePubChecker app from Rainwater Soft. The cause of the errors turned out to be pretty minor. In one case it was caused by a missing alt property in an image tag and in another, a div tag nesting issue. This is somewhat reminiscent of how early versions of Internet Explorer allowed some pretty messy HTML that other browsers would not be too happy to display properly. This made it easy to write pages for IE at the expense of teaching some pretty bad page authoring habits. So while finding and correcting the errors was a hassle, the lessons I learned will yield higher quality eBooks in the future.

Wait For It

Once I fixed the errors, uploading my eBooks to the iTunes Store was easy. Then it was time to wait for them to be processed and approved by Apple. As one might imagine, Apple likely receives hundreds, if not thousands of submissions per week. It took about 10 days before the books cleared and went on sale in iBooks. I did not receive a notification email to inform me of this. You just have to keep checking your book status on iTunes Connect.

Link It Up

Now on sale, it was time to do some marketing. This article describing how to link to books in the iBooks Store made it easy for me to construct the proper links to my iPad eBooks. The format required is as follows.

http://itunes.apple.com/[country code]/book/isbn[your book’s isbn]

So my links are

Anime Aftershocks: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn9780983358503

Rolled Up Dimensionality: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn9780983358510

That’s All Folks!

So that’s it! The first time through was fairly challenging, but having done it, I’m confident now that supporting the iPad won’t require much additional effort. Indeed, it’s actually improved my overall eBook publishing process!

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