Recently, Newsweek ran an article about the brave new world of self-publishing. Its title asked the question “Who Needs a Publisher?” Well, the short answer is, I do. The bigger answer is: we all do.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad that self-publishing has evolved from stigma to respectability. I love that worthy authors who might be overlooked by the major houses can now be read. It’s great that writers with a special niche, an established following or an entrepreneurial bent can make more money self-publishing than they would in royalties. But I’m also concerned about the future of books and the larger issue of assuring the flow of reliable information.

Continue reading at huffingtonpost.com

Authors need publishers because they need a customer. Readers have been separated from authors by many levels–stores, distributors, media outlets, printers, publishers–there were lots of layers for many generations, and the editor with a checkbook made the process palatable to the writer. For ten years, I had a publisher as a client (with some fun self-published adventuresalong the way). Twelve bestsellers later, I’ve thought hard about what it means to have a traditional publisher.

Read more at sethgodin.typepad.com

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Is augmented reality a way to add value to publications – or a passing novelty?

You know those Smirnoff ads where people look through the lens of a bottle and see strange wonders? I’ve never quite understood what the marketing message there was supposed to be – “get off your face on vodka until you hallucinate”? Well, you can now have that experience with a magazine and an iPhone. So long as the magazine is Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, the first magazine to use augmented reality browser Junaio. Watch this video to see some of the truly astonishing effects of looking at the magazine through a smart phone.

Is this the future? Is this what people want? It looks fun, and it is adding something to the experience. But it seems another step along the way to me, a proof of concept for something better to come. Do you want to read a print magazine with your iPhone on standby, hovering over it like a Victorian magnifying glass? Would you prefer an all-digital magazine, like the well-received Wired magazine for the iPad? Or are we still waiting for the Minority Report Moment, when we can trade our slightly clunky Star Trek style iPads and ereaders for something that behaves more like paper? Paper with ever-changing content, graphics, video and audio. Paper that knows where you are.

Any new technology carries with it a search for its own purpose. Just as digitizing printed books and making them available on an ereader or smart phone doesn’t make the most of the possibilities of the medium (unless you also add multimedia elements), I’m not yet convinced that the best use of augmented reality is looking at a printed page through an iPhone – interesting as it is.

Applications that also make use of your geographic location, such as Nearest Tube, make more sense to me, and augmented reality travel book apps add more value to the content. The augmented reality Rough Guide apps previewed at this year’s London Book Fair Digital Conference seem to me an obvious and happy union of device, content and purpose. But however the new and emerging technologies are applied, the next few years are going to be interesting.

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With the launch of Odyssey Editions, has Andrew Wylie turned publishing on its head?

Is this a tipping point? Did publishing power just shift a little in favour of authors? Are agents publishers now?

Über-agent Andrew “the Jackal” Wylie – no doubt with his little finger at the corner of his mouth, Dr Evil style – has hatched an audacious plot. Or maybe he has just seen the future. Either way, he has disintermediated the publishers he works with – for ebooks at least. With last week’s launch of Odyssey Editions, his Kindle-only ebook imprint, a range of his authors are now available digitally for the first time. And we’re talking some pretty big names here: Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Hunter S. Thompson, William S. Burroughs, Evelyn Waugh, Oliver Sacks, V.S. Naipaul, and Martin Amis are among 700 authors and estates.

To me, this seems inevitable. Many authors and their agents get the new digital realities – and, more importantly, the opportunities – while too many publishing discussions still focus on a protectionist response to the ‘threat’ of digital. If publishers won’t grasp digital, authors and agents will. Ebooks are increasingly maintream, with Amazon now selling more ebooks than hardbacks. Publishers can be slow on the uptake with ebooks, while consumers want to read them. Publishers have a vested interest in holding on to traditional print publishing models – while agents have a vested interest in the success of their authors. This is where the battle lines will be drawn in the coming war of the business models.

It is no surprise that the big publishers don’t like this. They don’t like it at all. Random House disputed the deal. And Macmillan CEO John Sargent was quick to respond on his blog:

This is smart retailing, and a great deal for Amazon. But it is an extraordinarily bad deal for writers, illustrators, publishers, other booksellers, and for anyone who believes that books should be as widely available as possible. This deal advantages Amazon, which already has the dominant share in this market.
JOHN SARGENT, CEO of Macmillan, 22 July 2010

Is it really a bad deal for writers? The comments say it all, such as this one from Richard Askenase:

Sounds like a VERY sound business deal to me. First, Wylie probably got about 70% royalties for his company/author. Second, the sale price of the ebooks are reasonable (unlike so many of your company’s prices). Third, if you wanted to publish these books, why didn’t you do so already? The point is, Wylie acted for his clients in dealing with the present/future and getting them very good money. MacMillan et al? They sat on their hands and overpriced them, with LOW LOW royalties to the authors.
RICHARD ASKENASE, commenting on John Sargent’s post

The Authors Guild described the move as ‘weird’. But added that: “This sort of weirdness will only multiply, however, as long as authors don’t share fairly in the rewards of electronic publishing.”

You may recall, at the London Book Fair Digital Conference this year, there was palpable eye-rolling in the room when agent Ed Victor asked why, if there are no warehousing costs, no manufacturing costs, no distribution costs, and no bookshop returns, did agents have to drag publishers kicking and screaming to 25% of net receipts? This is not a question most publishers like to engage with.

But the harsh truth is: it doesn’t matter whether publishers engage or not. Those publishers who don’t engage will be cut out of the loop as the world rolls on regardless. It doesn’t even matter whether they decide to pay fair royalties or not. Ultimately, it’s not their decision any more. The economics of the new publishing are open to all. Publishers no longer have the monopoly. Anyone can play. And if someone chooses to take their ball away and play a different game with someone else, what, exactly, are you going to do about it?

To a large extent, publishers have brought this on themselves. This storm has long been gathering. Literary agencies have refused to sign e-rights deals for countless backlist books with traditional publishers, even though they and their clients, no doubt, see real benefits in having a single publisher handle the print and electronic rights to a book. Knowledgeable authors and agents, however, are well aware that e-book royalty rates of 25% of net proceeds are exceedingly low and contrary to the long-standing practice of authors and publishers to, effectively, split evenly the net proceeds of book sales.
AUTHORS GUILD statement

The Authors Guild also estimate that author income from ebooks will be 300% higher under this deal than under traditional publishing contracts – 60%-63% of retail price rather than 25% of net receipts. What’s not to like?

The big publishers may rage against the dying of the old business models. They may even delay the inevitable. But they won’t prevent it. As ‘Skip’, a commenter on John Sargent’s post put it: “John is worried that in a few years nobody will want to buy his buggy whips any more, so he’s doing anything he can to stop those new-fangled automobile things.” Welcome to the 21st Century. Adapt and survive, or disengage and die. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

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Which digital format is best for authors? Tom Evans considers some of the options.

Well I never thought I’d ever buy Knitting for Dummies. But I just got a copy via the Amazon Kindle Store to read – or is that to watch? – on my iPad.

So am I taking up crocheting iPad covers? No, I am just checking out how embedded video and audio in Kindle books for the iPad and iPhone works.

Somewhat ironically perhaps, the video and audio doesn’t work on the Kindle. Is this a sign that Amazon are moving away from hardware – or preparing a son of Kindle?

So what should authors and publishers do? Here are just some of the current options:

• Print – not going away in a hurry
• Publish for the Kindle and iPad via the Amazon Digital Text Platform
• Publish for the iPad via the iBookstore
• Publish via a third party ebook app like Stanza
• Publish via an aggregator like Smashwords, Lulu, Myebook, Issuu

Well, before you make a decision, note that almost certainly Apple will be bringing out an ebook format based on HTML5 – and hopefully some book creation and publishing software.

In 2011, we are bound to see an end to end solution from them with Apple aiming to do for books what it did for music in the last decade. It opened the iTunes store in April 2003 and by the end of the decade they dominated the music download market.

ePub2 perhaps – Betamax and VHS – here we go again.

If you are an author however, my advice is to write, create accompanying audio and video assets and by the time you are ready to publish, there will be more than one route open to you.

There are also differences in margins between Amazon and Apple – and if you are non-US a couple of hoops to jump through which should be sorted shortly.

Smashwords and Lulu don’t necessarily allow multimedia embedded at the moment. Note that they also take a little margin but this is just a sign of how a new Pie Chart will look for books in the coming decade – will blog about this soon!!

Myebook does do embedded multimedia and may well come out with a route – worth keeping an eye on – see my sample ebook www.wordlube.com to see what you can do today – for free!

P.S. Actually this knitting malarky looks kinda fun …

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Is Second Life still useful for authors and publishers? It depends how you use it, argues Adele Ward – who has recently used virtual contacts to make her new publishing business a reality.

I’ve probably tried as hard, or harder, than anyone to find out how useful Second Life could be for publishers and authors. There are serious obstacles that most publishers and authors are finding, and I’ll talk about them at the end. However, I’ve just started a new publishing company called Ward Wood Publishing together with business partner Mike Fortune-Wood of Cinnamon Press, and I have to admit that it wouldn’t have happened without Second Life putting us in contact.

Apart from getting me and Mike together, Second Life also led to a working relationship with the London School of Journalism (LSJ) who asked for my advice when they started their island. Now the LSJ have helped Ward Wood by financing our website, www.wardwoodpublishing.co.uk, and I expect they’ll work with us more in future. So Second Life has been a greater asset than I was starting to think it could be.

This story probably shows how Second Life can work in quite unique ways. I could have ‘met’ Mike Fortune-Wood on other social networks like Facebook. But would we have got to know each other in a way that would have led to us working together? It’s hard to imagine that we could have achieved that. He lives in Wales and I live in London so we were extremely unlikely to meet face-to-face and learn what we thought of each other as potential work partners.

The difference on Second Life is that it really does feel like meeting somebody and even working with them. So you can get a good idea of the level of their professionalism and how compatible you are as working partners. I met Mike when I was organising free space for publishers and writers as I’ve always felt Second Life would work best if publishers, writers, publications and writing projects were gathered together. The writers bring traffic to an area because they like to have regular events, such as open mics, and the publishers can then offer tips and advice on submissions with interactive signs in their stores. This interaction leads to interest in the publishers’ displays and links to their websites.

Whereas in the past publishers invested in whole islands and created impressive builds to attract traffic, they seem to be realising that a small display with the right information in a busy area and the right target audience seems more effective. Although most send marketing people on to Second Life, there are smaller publishers with editors who come on, attend open mics, and have even offered publishing contracts. The standard of writing on Second Life is high. International contacts can also be made between publishers and authors.

Mike Fortune-Wood took one of the spaces I offered near two popular open mic and performance venues and we have got to know each other over a long period. We have both had a chance to see how the other one works, and we must have liked what we saw. I’ve sat with Mike in a virtual café and he has given me extremely useful advice at times about financing my own freelance writing work.

When Mike heard that I wanted to start a publishing company he contacted me immediately with an Instant Message on Second Life and said he would like to join me. He had already set out ideas on how he would like the company to run and told me all of them. As Mike’s skills complement my own I was interested immediately and went away to think about his approach to publishing.

I’ve worked for more than thirty years in writing and editorial work as well as press relations and had thought I would need to learn more about the production, distribution and financial side of the business before starting a company. Mike is expert in these sides of publishing and likes to work with an editor as he doesn’t want to be involved in that side. It was a perfect match, and I must admit that I have Second Life to thank for it.

We signed our partnership papers weeks ago and the website went live on the 4th of July, very apt as our first book will be launched in September and is a novel called A Clash of Innocents by American author Sue Guiney. We then have poetry collections coming out in October and November from Ann Alexander (previously with Peterloo and a poet with an impressive set of competition wins) and Mike Horwood who is also previously published. Social networks helped me to find the authors and to see that they needed a publisher, so I value them all, but Second Life worked in a different way to bring me and Mike together as business partners.

I’m not overly positive about Second Life. It has proved extremely difficult for publishers to use it as a sales tool as people don’t tend to buy books there. It’s also hard for businesses to justify the time it takes to do anything, even to build a fairly small display and update it. It’s almost impossible to attract traffic so it’s essential to locate yourself on an area with the right target audience coming to regular events near your display (they don’t move far from the stage or event venue). I think, most of all, the findings I’ve made show that it doesn’t work in the expected ways.

It’s best for the activities other social networks can’t manage – in particular interactive voice events like open mics, performances, talks, disussions and even classes. Added to that it lets you make contacts in a way that feels face-to-face no matter where you both are in the world, and can lead to a kind of networking you can’t initiate easily on other social networks where you need to know the people you approach with friendship offers.

Jon Reed is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Publishing Talk, and author of Get Up to Speed with Online Marketing. Follow him at @jonreed or @getuptospeed.

There are natural advantages to being a small, independent publisher when it comes to social media marketing. So are the big publishers too big to use it effectively?

I spoke at the Inpress Digital Conference at Foyles bookshop in London this week, a one-day digital conference for independent publishers run by Inpress, the sales and marketing agency for independent publishers in the UK and Ireland. The conference included: an industry overview of the digital future from Benedict Evans of Enders Analysis; a report on ebooks from Julie McNair; Julia Kingsford, head of marketing at Foyles, on how the company has diversified into selling ereaders and ebooks – including the revelation that Faber and Transworld dominate ebook sales simply because they bother to include bibliographic data; and Inpress MD Rachael Ogden on the explosion of book apps available for the iPhone and iPad and how to get involved.

It was great to see a room full of independents getting to grips with digital publishing. I was speaking on social media marketing for publishers (of course), a two-hour workshop session with plenty of practical advice on creating social media marketing plans, and getting the most out of a range of social media tools.

The independent advantage

I think this is one area where it is actually easier for small, independent publishers to succeed than their corporate counterparts – something I’ve previously written about in The Deal. Why? Because:

1. Social media is a personal medium where things like personality, tone of voice and authenticity matter – things that are much easier to achieve if you are a small business. Last week the Huffington Post identified who it considers the best publishers on Twitter. It is telling that six of the 11 chosen were independents; two were imprints and the remaining three were big publishers. When it comes to engaging people on Twitter, it helps to have an independent voice. Find out more about how two of those publishers, @AAKnopf and @AlgonquinBooks use Twitter for community building in this week’s Huffington Post article Does Twitter Sell Books? Yes, It Does.
2. You can punch above your weight. Because the tools are – mostly – free, you can use them without a huge marketing investment. Indeed, this is why social media is so widely used by independents – they have no choice but to use these tools since they have little or no marketing budget. The investment may be in time rather than money – but they have the commitment to put in the hours.
3. Social media levels the playing field. Independents have the potential to reach as wide a market with these tools as big corporates – especially since some of the big publishers are still not really engaging with social media.
4. Social media is about relationship building – something independents have always done well.
5. You can just do it. No need to worry about getting your corporate comms strategy through a series of committees and approved by a manager who doesn’t get it. Independents are nimble and agile, and adopting a new strategy isn’t like turning a battleship around. If you’re small, you can just do it.

One advantage that big publishers historically had was the resources to create rich media such as podcasts or video, or to terraform islands in Second Life. But now you don’t need expensive equipment or recording studios – just use AudioBoo to create a podcast, or a Flip or Zi8 camera to record video. Everyone has abandoned expensive brand islands in Second Life – though there are still plenty of low-to-no cost opportunities for independent publishers and authors ‘in-world’. Bigger is not necessarily better.

Big or small, there’s a social media marketing strategy for you. Just keep it appropriate to your type of organization, make sure you engage your audience, and go for a personal voice – whether that is you and/or your authors.

Twenty-five of you? One of me? I make that Pimms o’clock!

What could be nicer than a summer’s evening with a couple of dozen book trade tweeters, a vast picnic spread and lashings of Pimms and champagne? #booktwicnic, the latest London book trade tweetup, took place on Thursday evening in Regent’s Park, attended by the usual mix book trade folk. The best bit was the lock-in – a literal one, due to outstaying our welcome in the Park – resulting in some undignified clambering over the railings to get out. We were just having so much fun we didn’t notice the sun going down…

Thanks to Elizabeth Jenner (aka @MissCellany) for organizing, and to Toby Rhind-Tutt for taking the photographs, which you can see on his Twitpic page.

There’s now also another way to find the photos and keep up with the proliferation of London-based book trade tweetups: a new Facebook group! Hopefully this will also be useful for those who spend all their time on Facebook instead of Twitter. Or who (horror) are not even on Twitter. Based on the fact that there has now been a London book trade tweetup every two months since December 2009, I expect the next one will be in August. Watch this space for details.

And if you’re in another part of the world, why not start your own book trade tweetups? Let us know, and we’ll give them a shout-out here on Publishing Talk, and list them in the Events section.

• Join the London Book Trade Tweetups Facebook group

What is the iPad for? Is it just an expensive toy? Or a valuable tool for writers?

So I’ve had an iPad for three weeks and loads of people have asked how I use it and what I’m using it for – or if it’s just a bit of a toy. Well I’ve discovered using this new type of tablet (and watch this space for the clones) ushers in a whole modus operandi.

In short, it’s brilliant – especially for writers, designers, entrepreneurs, inventors and creatives.

And this new way of working merits the introduction of a new word – iPadivity.

noun [n] :

1. the phenomenon of increased creativity and productivity when using an iPad – and activity while doing the same
2. the generation of new ideas using an iPad
3. profitability from generating and using iPad apps

Now I have to say everything I’ve been able to do I could do with a combination of iPhone or laptop. Some of it admittedly even with paper and pen. While the iPhone scores on portability, it lacks screen real estate and typing is slow (this whole blog incidentally was written at speed using the iPad on screen keyboard).

The laptop is just so much heavier and I have always felt a bit nerdy to get out on a commute and certainly in a coffee shop. It also takes too long to boot if you just want to do something quickly and acts as a barrier in a business meeting. The 3G enabled iPad delivers a useful synthesis of both devices which is better than both – plus I have to say it looks cool !!

This Mind Map tells the story of what I am using it for … of course generated on the iPad as were all the graphics in this blog.

The first iPadivity gain is really good use of “dead time” – those times in the day when you would have been waiting for something can now be used to process email, do a tweet or two and check out news or write a blog.

The second iPadivity benefit is being able to read, listen to or watch pretty much anything – either online, in iTunes or your own archive.

The third iPadivity capability, and to me the most important, is being able to write stuff. Here the lightness and specific functionality of the apps comes into its own. For example, before writing each chapter of my new book, I’ve taken a hint from artist Cat Bennett and I am drawing using Brushes an image that encapsulates the concepts I am about to write about.

I am working to a master Mind Map structure for the whole book but I’ve also started mapping each chapter before eventually writing it in Pages.

This has lead me down several new avenues I simply wouldn’t have explored.

Now could I do this on the laptop or desktop – absolutely – but not when the Muse takes me – and certainly not with as much ease and FUN !!

Add to all of this, the ability to browse on a whim for research and dip into the brilliant Wikipanion app, my iPadivity is probably up 400-500% of where it was just a fortnight ago.

I’ve also used the iPad in several client sessions. Again, its unobtrusiveness is the key. It’s like having a paper notebook but where you can email the notes instantly. In the sessions I did last week, this included a colour-coded Mind Map of actions arising and a wireframe for an iPad app I am designing, using iMockup – example only below as the real one is subject to confidentiality at the mo.

This of course points to an amazing iPadivity – the ability to encapsulate your knowledge and wisdom in an iPad app which you can share with other and generate profitability from… watch this space!

So if you’ve got an iPad, or are getting one, I’d be interested in your thoughts….

Self-publishing is easier than ever. But how can you do it well – and make your book look as good as a traditionally published one?

Self-publishing your book is now easier than ever. Self-publishing your book well, however, can still be a real challenge. You will often hear mutterings in the publishing spheres that, “You can always spot a self-published book just by looking at it”. And in all fairness, it’s not too surprising, especially if you have chosen to do as much as possible yourself. I’m going to hazard a guess that it is unlikely that as an author, you have also trained and worked as a designer, typesetter, editor, proof-reader and marketer in between writing your book!

It’s undoubtedly going to be hard to get the same effect as a publisher who has spent thousands on a book’s production. However, there are some basic things that you can do that will make your life much easier and help your book blend in with the best.

1. Learn to use Microsoft Word

This probably sounds rather patronising, but Microsoft products have the problem of being a lot like icebergs to the majority of their users – there is a huge amount of depth to them in terms of the functionality available but most users only see and use the surface. There are some really useful tools built in that writers and self-publishers can take advantage of, particularly if you don’t fancy investing in and learning the professional packages such as InDesign and Quark.

Firstly, make a copy of your manuscript (or a chapter) and then give yourself at least a couple of hours to just play around with it. Get familiar with the following things:

• Inserting page breaks – handy to make sure that your chapters always begin on a fresh page.
• Creating paragraph styles – a great way to ensure consistency throughout the book (here is a helpful guide from Snowbooks).
• Document map – really useful for jumping between chapters (find out more about the benefits on Write for your life)
• Adjusting margins and page sizes – you will probably need to do this if you need to upload your manuscript to a self-publishing website. Adding in page breaks prior to this will save a lot of time (and pressing of the enter key).
• Changing the line spacing – adding some extra space between lines can make the text much more readable
• Adding headers, footers and page numbers
• Using tracked changes  – for when you send to other people who would like to edit.

2. Study the page, not the words.

If you’ve already nailed all of those tools in Word, that’s great. The next stage is to apply this to typesetting your manuscript. Look at the pages in books that you own that are in a similar genre/category to the one you have written. Scrutinise the typeface, line-spacing, layout, chapter headings etc. and choose the style that you like best, and then try and emulate that.  Sometimes it will say in the front of the book the typeface used which can be pretty handy. The important thing is not to get distracted by what the words say – focus on what the page looks like.

NB – always save copies of your book at various stages of formatting. You will probably find that for some eBook formats you need to strip out lots of the formatting that you have done for the print version (because they don’t translate well). It’s often easier to do that with an earlier, simpler version.

More advice on typesetting and formatting your book.

3. Become an expert in ‘packaging’

Book covers, even for online books, are very important. Again, if you are going to do the design yourself  you really need to go into a bookshop (or even just browse online) to get a good idea of how books that are in a similar genre to yours are represented. Choose some favourites and go away and base your cover on a similar style. Look at the text on the back cover – how big is the text? What does it say? This is what you are aiming for.

Don’t fall into the same traps as one year’s The Apprentice contestants did when they designed packaging for a children’s breakfast cereal (you might remember the episode better if I use the word ‘Pantsman’?) One team decided to create something very different to anything currently on the market and chose a bright green colour scheme. The judges rightly said that the box looked like it would be much more at home on a gardening shelf with the weedkiller! So, the lesson is don’t be too creative. Remember, the book cover is, essentially, the packaging, so it needs to convey the contents of the book to the reader. Looking very different rarely works in your favour when it comes to packaging a product that already has consumer expectations attached to it.

In addition, you’ll probably need an image or two for your book – be careful of relying on your own photos which may be a bit on the dark side. Fotolia is a handy website for low cost professional images.

4. Be flexible

If you go into publishing with a very particular end product in mind, you can make life difficult and expensive for yourself. Keep an open mind in terms of the size, format and methods you use to publish your book. Being flexible will mean that you can take advantage of the lower budget options, or you can get a premium product at a more reasonable price.

If you limit yourself to having a rare size, unusual binding method and a special type of cover, you could end up having to do a much larger print-run to be able to justify the cost.

So, if you are self-publishing, particularly on a tight budget, then it is worth taking some time out to consider these four things. It’s amazing the difference it can make.

[Image ©iStockphoto.com/MiquelMunill]