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Time Investment

jakonrath.blogspot.com

72 pointswglb19 comments

I wonder: was his working-like-a-dog to self-promote was necessary so that he could be successful with ebooks? He clearly started to establish a name for himself before his massive success with digital sales. Note that he is in the top 10 Mystery and Thrillers for free ebooks on Amazon. I'm guessing his prior reputation helped with that.

I would think that hustling is still needed for new authors to break through, probably including both relentless web and in-person self-promotion. But, I have no info on that. Anyone know?

This topic comes up in a lot of his other blog posts. He cites both never-published-before authors, and already published authors using pen names being successful.

However, I don't really see how an unknown name can become successful without self-promotion just by putting a book "out there". They would have to get insanely lucky and get a high profile review without soliciting it.

Agreed. The smart authors who are going indy are having to think of themselves as entrepreneurs not just writers. Making contacts, delegating tasks that aren't to their strength (covers is a very good example here), promoting their work, it's all part of the package as an indy, because they are making themselves a publisher.

Sadly many don't get that and still want to JUST write, but I think Konrath and a few others who are busting their ass or at least used to will get through to a lot of the rest, and the others will either get lucky or fail.

You would still think this would scale better online than doing the promotion in person. Also the publisher is there to make a profit so presumably an author can spend the same amount on promotion a publisher would have spent for them and still get a better return.

Maybe the answer is more akin to how bloggers gain a big following, writing shorter stuff regularly. Maybe if you started telling a story online in this format you could gain a following for your first full length novel.

Amanda Hocking is probably the best example right now of an author who made it big through ebooks without having been published traditionally first.

She does have a blog [1] and promotes herself quite heavily through social networks, but she's never had the support of a big publishing house that Konrath had.

She's far from being an overnight success though - in an interview with the Huffington Post [2], she explains how she's been writing fiction constantly from the earliest age, attending every possible writing courses along the way.

1: http://amandahocking.blogspot.com/ 2: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tonya-plank/meet-mega-bestsell...

Part of it's also the fact she has a LOT of books out there, the more material you have the higher chance someone discovers you and if you write well enough, they'll love your stories and start buying them all up. THAT is how an author makes a living at it without being a lottery, create enough content that fans can keep buying while picking up a few new readers here and there.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: this is one of the best business blogs there is. (And traditional publishing is screwed up if it was ever rational to have this guy move his own books at retail.)

Traditional publishing is hugely screwed up, but I'm not sure this particular point is irrational from the publisher's point of view. If they can get the author to promote a book --- and it's increasingly common for them to demand that authors do exactly that --- then promotion doesn't come out of their own budget.

Which raises the question: if the author's doing all the promotion to readers, what do they need the publisher for?

If you're trading in physical books (which were still more than 99% of the business, in 2009[1]), there actually is a sensible answer: most physical book sales are on physical stores, so you can't sell to readers unless you first convince bookstores to sell the books. That, in turn, in the U.S. means basically convincing the buyers for the major chains that they should give you shelf space --- there are as many Borders' as all independents put together, and Barnes and Noble is way bigger than that. And the big publishers have built up personal relationships with buyers for the chains, and expertise in catering to their whims. Which can be a big deal --- see [3] for an example of a book series that's being completely repackaged because the buyers couldn't figure out to do with the first cover.

So, it's not like the chains will take anything the big publishers dish out. But the conversation about what physical books get sold in physical stores is largely a conversation between their sales guys and the chain buyers. And the only way for a self-published author to break into that conversation is to somehow sell a few thousand units through some other channel.

On the other hand, if you're willing to forgo the physical stores as a sales channel, which is starting to matter, well... less than it did in 2009, then it really isn't clear that the publishers have much else to offer you. Their other services (editing and packaging) do have value, but not nearly enough to account for their customary share of the gross.

It may be that publishers' problem in the future is going to be justifying themselves to authors --- but I try to read up on this stuff, and I'm not sure I've seen any of them putting it that way to themselves yet.

A couple of references --- Charlie Stross on ebooks

[1] http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/05/cmap-9-e...

part of a longer series on the publishing industry from a successful author's point of view, as of a year ago:

[2] http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/common-m...

and the blog post on promotion I footnoted above:

[3] http://www.iantregillis.com/index.cfm?blog=164

"Their other services (editing and packaging) do have value, but not nearly enough to account for their customary share of the gross."

And, as I understand it, these things can be done directly by the author. So a lot of what is left is the publisher takes on the risk - they pay for the editing, the artwork, the printing, the marketing etc up front.

That depends on the author. But for what it's worth, Joe Konrath, the self-publishing advocate who wrote the original blog post, does pay for packaging assistance, and strongly recommends that others do likewise. (The right hand sidebar of his blog has links to his cover artist --- for ebooks, if you want the Amazon "buy this" page to look like anything --- and book interior designers. Editing is more of a mixed bag, but it's a very rare, and generally very experienced author whose work doesn't need a second set of eyes.)

Most of the risk that publishers take on is in the form of returns: retail booksellers effectively operate on consignment, which is one of the reasons the industry is so screwed up. It's also a big reason most trade published books don't earn out the advance.

Editing, layout, artwork, and editing are outsourced. If you choose to self-pub, you can hire the same people the Big 6 publishers hire, as long as you're willing to do a little legwork to discover who they are.

Kindle / ebook publishing is making the layout and printing part mostly obsolete. If you know HTML and a bit of CSS, you can write the book in native Kindle format - it's pretty similar to writing a blog post. (I tested this yesterday - it's not at all difficult.)

Once you're done, you can publish in ~24 hours. That beats the 18-24 month trade publishing cycle. The successful self-pub authors have a lot of books, and doing it yourself makes it much easier to publish a few books every year. You also get to keep 70% of the sale price vs. the standard 5-15% royalty for trade publishing.

I'm thinking long and hard before signing another trade publishing contract, that's for sure. If I do, it's going to be with the publisher's understanding that I'm fully capable of doing this myself, which should be reflected in the advance.

Outsourcing has gone farther than that --- at this point, they often outsourced even the business of coordinating the editorial and production functions, and you can hire those people too. (There's even a professional association: http://www.abpaonline.org .)

My running joke used to be that they'd outsourced everything but the rolodex. Then I found out that a lot of the production of the latest edition of my mother's "The Bond Book" (no fixed income investor should be without one!) had been outsourced to one of these guys; they'd outsourced the rolodex itself.

Most knowledgeable authors don't recommend going without editing at all. They may substitute an editor for peer editing by fellow authors they trust, but it's still editing by a second set of eyes.

I know of no author who can single handily turn in something that doesn't need some grammar/spelling/etc correction help. The writer is simply too close to the work to see some of them, though there are tricks to help like having text-to-speech read the item back to you.

Ah, I miss-wrote. I meant "arranged" by the author when I said "done" by the author. As you and the other commenters say I meant an author can go out and find an editor/proof-reader/cover-artist etc. and pay them directly for their work. I've written enough reports to know full well that an author can't proof read his/her own work.

Ah gotcha. Certainly you can hire your own. A small industry of people who want to edit and willing to work for less than the big names seems to be cropping up around the self-publishing industry.

What's really going to be fun is to see how many OTHER business opportunities crop up around those who wish to self publish. As I go through my own writing and beyond I'll certainly be looking at areas that beg for such.

And it was you Patrick that turned me on to this fellow. Thanks.

> Now let's look at ebooks.

In January, I haven't done a single bit of promotion. No touring. No signing. No interviews. I've basically sat on my ass this month.

Fallacy. The classic example is the successful individual who gets paid $50k or more for a single speech. They would not have been bookable at the rate had they not created enough personal value to be worth that much. This author busted his ass on the road for years. He is probably the best example of "1,000 true fans" that I've read of recently.

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fan...

He's certainly riding on his previous success, but only a tiny bit, if you look at the orders of magnitude increase in his sales.

How did many thousands of new readers find him and decide to buy his books almost without doing any promotion? Through much lower cost of books, instant delivery, easy discovery through search and auto recommendations. And now he has more time to produce more. Accelerating sales!

The 1,000 true fans analogy doesn't hold for him at all. He has at least 10,000 fans and that number is going up fast.

It seems pretty implausible that he has 1000 true fans who bought 18,000 books in one month when he didn't have any new releases.

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