From the interview:

One of the questions that all authors right now are facing is: to what degree should they feel responsible for getting their books out there and promoting their books. For some authors, that seems like a lot of fun and it comes naturally to them, but for many writers, that’s not something that they naturally want to do, and they sort of feel like, “I’m a writer and that’s my job: to write my book or to write my article. I don’t feel like I have to be responsible for all these other things.”

And there’s a lot of talk about branding, and I think the word “brand” has a lot of negative connotations for people, so I always think about my voice, because to a writer thinking about your voice feels much more natural.

A joint production of Digital Book World and Astral Road Brand Media: http://www.astralroad.com/. Founded by Rich Fahle, Astral Road Media is a full-service digital media agency, providing content strategy, design, video production, and other creative forms of social outreach for authors and content creators of all types.

By Scott Walker, President, Brain Candy, LLC

In my last post, I explored the concept of value co-creation with audiences and suggested it as a way for publishers to explore new methods for reaching consumers and increasing the value of their intellectual property. This post will provide a great case study of one author’s attempt to literally co-create content with his fans.

In 2006, author and podcaster J.C. Hutchins began publishing podcasts of his 7^th Son technothriller trilogy. He had shopped the property around to different literary agents but failed to secure a publishing deal. As a result, Hutchins began offering free audio installments of his books as a way to raise awareness and establish a devoted fan base. His efforts paid off, and each podcast garnered thousands of downloads. Hutchins kept up the podcasting into 2007, when he secured a publishing deal with St. Martin’s Press for the first book in the trilogy, 7^th Son: Descent.

However, plans called for the book to be published in 2009, and Hutchins struggled to find a way to maintain his audience during the interlude. Given his other professional obligations, he knew he couldn’t single-handedly continue to publish enough content to sustain his fans until 7^th Son: Descent was available.

So, how to solve the problem of sustaining interest in the meantime?

Inspiration for the solution came from the short film anthology, The Animatrix, which was based in the world of the Matrix movie franchise. Nine different creatives were invited to tell their own original story within the Matrix world, using their unique vision and animation styles. The anthology explored both existing characters during the Matrix timeline as well as introduced new characters and storylines that exist before the Matrix timeline.

Hutchins decided to apply this approach to his own trilogy: “The Animatrix was an interesting narrative that took place in the gaps of the Matrix trilogy. I wanted to use that same philosophy of inviting professional creatives to come play in the 7^th Son world.”

Hutchins began by inviting seven other popular podcaster novelists to write and record short stories set in the 7^th Son universe. His plan was to publish them on his site through the existing 7^th Son podcasting channels. Hutchins offered each of the podcasting novelists $100 for their contribution, with the agreement that Hutchins would not commercially benefit from the contributed podcast.

In order to remove additional hurdles for the author-podcasters, Hutchins scoped the chronological boundaries for the contributed podcasts and provided the following guidelines:

• Contributed podcasts would take place during a two-week period in the 7^th Son timeline when the U.S. experienced a crippling nationwide power outage.
• None of the main characters from 7^th Son could be used by the podcasters.
• Authors could write about anyone in the U.S. who experienced the power outage.
• There was a minimum word count but no maximum (essentially a short story in length).

Hutchins also reached out to another group of podcasters he describes as “great verbal storytellers.” These podcasters were invited to contribute much shorter works, possibly as small as a five-minute audio clip).

To help encourage contributions that would dovetail into the existing trilogy, Hutchins provided these invited contributors a single page of information that would be sufficient for podcasters who had never read 7^th Son: Descent to still be able to participate. The page included key plot points from the novel, headline news and common knowledge that any character in the 7^th Son world would know.

Additionally, Hutchins aimed to have every accepted podcast maintain world continuity and be able to be viewed as canonical within the 7th Son world. While this added to the workload of reviewing and editing submissions, the result was a more official feel to the project. Acceptance carried a much greater weight for the 7^th Son: Obsidian contributors.

During the process of ramping up the podcasting collaboration, Hutchins realized he wanted to do more, and he wanted to include not just other podcasters but potentially any existing fan of the 7^th Son podcast. Hutchins named this participatory anthology of audience-crowdsourced content 7^th Son: Obsidian.

Following the same philosophy of lowering the bar for contributing, Hutchins set up a phone number for fans to call to leave in-world voicemails of fictional characters surviving the crisis of the blackout. As with the podcasters, Hutchins provided guidelines for submitting additional audio and video files.

With the infrastructure in place but the public launch date still weeks away, Hutchins “primed the pump” of contributions by directly courting selected fans and friends with a simple invitation to participate in “something very cool” connected with 7^th Son. Cryptic invitations were also sent out on various social media platforms, with the simple offer to contact Hutchins via email to participate in a cool project related to 7^th Son. He included no details about how they could participate.

For those who emailed Hutchins, he provided details about the project and began working out deadlines for the submission. In this way, Hutchins managed to aggregate a lot of contributions – some from professional podcasters, some from regular fans – well before the public launch of 7^th Son: Obsidian.

Much like with the seven podcast novelists, Hutchins constructed the invitation in a way that allowed fans to meaningfully contribute to 7^th Son: Obsidian without having to read any of the novels. He gave the same narrative boundaries to fans as he gave to the seven podcasters, plus some guidelines specific for contributing video. The same non-commercial understanding applied to all contributed content.

Hutchins launched 7^th Son: Obsidian in May of 2008 and began accepting submissions from anyone. Guidelines and rules were published on his website, giving anyone the opportunity to participate. Since Hutchins did not have a mailing list at the time, he promoted the project on his blog, in his podcasts, and by encouraging word-of-mouth promotion among his audience and friends. Part of the appeal for fans was the opportunity to actively contribute official content to a storyworld they were already excited about. Instead of just talking about the 7^th Son world, they could literally tell the next story in that world.

Hutchins set up a page on his website with the same guidelines and rules, and with the exception of the month of September, he published multiple installments each week through mid-October. Installments might be pure audio or video and may consist of a single work or be a compilation of several accepted contributions.

By the end of the project, Hutchins estimates he received well over one hundred submissions from fans, with more than half of them being audio-only submissions (and most of those came through the recordings left on the phone number Hutchins set up). The majority of submissions came after the public launch of the project.

Although Hutchins was responsible for managing the project, confirming that accepted submissions maintained world continuity, and the production of the 7^th Son: Obsidian installments, he did accept help from a fan (Shawn Bishop) to assist with reviewing some of the audio submissions.

The project was well received by Hutchins’ fans, as evidenced by both their willingness to contribute to the 7^th Son world and their interest in the resulting anthology. Downloads of the anthology installments within the first two weeks of publishing consistently fell between 8,000 and 10,000, though audio downloads were always higher than video downloads (Hutchins muses that if the project were launched today, the audio/video downloads numbers would likely be reversed).

Out of pocket expenses for Hutchins were well under $1,000. He used free software already on his Mac computer for media editing/producing (iMovie, GarageBand), and he used free services like k7.net to manage voicemail submissions and YouSendIt to receive large digital files from fans. He offered each of the podcaster novelists $100 to write and record a short story, but not every contributor decided to collect. Finally, Hutchins spent roughly $50 on stock footage he integrated into some of the video installments.

So, for less than $1,000, Hutchins was able to produce a fan-created multimedia anthology of official 7^th Son content and publish multiple weekly installments over a 6-month period. This content remains on his website, serving as additional ways for fans to enter and experience the larger 7^th Son world.

Aside from the obvious benefit of keeping his audience engaged until 7^th Son: Descent was published, there are some important takeaways about this project that apply to any participatory invitation to audiences:

1. Hutchins encouraged a higher degree of participation by creating a collaborative sandbox with only a few rules and limits on creativity. Importantly, the sandbox didn’t require contributors to be intimately familiar with the 7^th Son trilogy podcasts.
2. Hutchins recognized accepted submissions as official 7^th Son world content.
3. Hutchins made the rules of participation very clear from the beginning, and he provided parity for participation in the form of payment (to the seven podcasters) and credit (to the fans).
4. Hutchins ensured there was a critical mass of quality content of at the time he publicly launched the project and invited all fans to participate.
5. Hutchins put a hard deadline on submissions, adding to the attraction of participating before the project stopped taking contributions.

Regardless of the details of the participation, Hutchins acknowledges the value of inviting fans to contribute officially to an entertainment property. Importantly, he recognizes the value his fans brought to him: “The real heroes here are the people who created the content for 7^th Son: Obsidian. They were the ones building the stories. I was just curating and publishing.”

7^th Son: Obsidian achieved several goals. Primarily, it met a business need to maintain a connection between Hutchins and his audience between his podcasts and the release of 7^th Son: Descent. It also pushed at the boundaries of collaborative entertainment within the podcasting space by allowing audiences to extend an existing podcast world in new mediums. It was produced on a very low budget that Hutchins could fund himself. Finally, it gave Hutchins’ fans a chance to participate in a once-in-a-lifetime, unique opportunity to add their voices to the 7^th Son universe.

Hutchins acknowledges the challenge he had juggling his other projects and professional obligations while managing the 7^th Son: Obsidian project. Still, he’s excited about the prospect of another collaborative anthology:

The most important insight I learned during Obsidian was that by providing a welcoming and fun environment, my fans could create without fear. That’s the best kind of collaboration, and I look forward to revisiting the model in my upcoming creative projects.

Value co-creation with audiences can take many forms and use many practices, but at its core is a connection between the creator and an audience. Once established, that connection can produce some surprising and wonderful experiences for everyone involved.

“One of the many joys of managing the 7^th Son: Obsidian experience was watching the roles of author and audience absolutely reverse,” Hutchins said. “With the proper encouragement – not just from a project curator, but from an entire fan community – it can be relatively easy to empower everyday folks to pick up a phone or a video camera to help tell a larger story.”

Scott Walker likes to play in the collaborative sandbox of entertainment, building bridges between creatives and audiences. His most recent project is Shared Story Worlds, a site focused on participatory commercial entertainment. Scott is also a member of the StoryWorld Conference Council.

Want to learn more about inviting your audiences to create value with you or about using transmedia storytelling and cross-media strategies to extend your brand and intellectual property? Then, join us at StoryWorld, the only major gathering of industry leaders, decision makers, and transmedia specialists, to explore new business models, innovative partnerships, and fresh revenue streams.

On June 6, L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories will be available for digital download from all major ebook retailers. Eight well-known authors will explore the dark and violent universe of Rockstar’s L.A. Noire video game, a universe that draws on research about crime and criminals in post-war Los Angeles. Some of the research to create the story world can be viewed at an interactive map published by the Los Angeles Times.

“L.A. Noire draws on a rich history of not just film, but also great crime literature for inspiration,” said Sam Houser, Founder of Rockstar Games. “Using the game’s world as a springboard, we worked with the genre’s best writers to create stories that lived up to the finest traditions of crime fiction.”

“We are thrilled to be embarking on a creative partnership with the team at Rockstar Games,” said Michael Pietsch, Publisher of Little, Brown and Company. “The possibilities for cross-promotions of this nature, encouraging gamers to read and readers to play games are huge. We’re looking forward to a new frontier of book publishing possibilities and see Rockstar as an ideal partner.”

Contributors to L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories include Joyce Carol Oates, Lawrence Block, and Joe Lansdale, among others. According to Mulholland’s Director of Marketing Miriam Parker, some of the writers were able to preview the game. One of these authors is Megan Abbott, who describes her encounter with the L.A. Noire story world at her own blog. An excerpt of Abbott’s story, “The Girl,” is currently available as a preview.

Another contributor, Edgar-nominated crime thriller author Duane Swierczynski penned “Hell of An Affair,” which centers on William Shelton, a professional land surveyor. “Hell of An Affair” is currently available as a free download at the Rockstar Games website.

I caught up with Swierczynski over email to ask him about how the creative process worked, and this is what he had to say:

We were asked to write an original story that connected to one of the segments of the game — however, the story couldn’t “step on” or spoil any part of the game, for obvious reasons. Jonathan Santlofer (who edited the collection) called me to run down a list of possibilities, giving me a thumbnail of a few segments until I stopped him on one: “A Marriage Made in Heaven.”

Now I can’t tell you *exactly* why this appealed to me, because then I’d be arrested and hauled off to Spoiler Jail. But something in it spoke to me, reminding me of the kinds of stories that James M. Cain (one of my favorite writers of all time) used to cook up. Even in that short thumbnail, I saw the potential to have a lot of nasty fun.

Jonathan sent me a longer synopsis of that segment. I read it. I brooded. The tricky thing was coming up with a story that connected with “Marriage” in some meaningful way, but didn’t ruin any of the plot surprises. So I put my brain in reverse and wondered if a “prequel” could work — taking one of the characters from “Marriage” and telling their backstory, while at the same time making it as suspenseful and action-packed and noir-ish on its own. That’s where my contribution, “Hell of An Affair,” came from. (And I’m proud to say that my story ends at the exact moment where “A Marriage Made in Heaven” begins.)

It will be interesting to see how “traditional” book authors are brought into collaborative relationships with video game producers–and to see how such collaborations are constructed. Neither Swierczynski nor Abbott seem to have had access to the “story bible” or other production and development documentation, but instead either previewed the game itself near the end of the production cycle or viewed thumbnails/synopses of the game’s chapters.

Ebook Sales Surpass Print, Again: Is This a Win?

Last week, the Association of American Publishers released their February 2011 sales report, which indicated, among other things,

According to the February results, once again e-Books have enjoyed triple-digit percentage growth, 202.3%, vs February 2010. Downloaded Audiobooks, which have also seen consistent monthly gains, increased 36.7% vs last February.

For February 2011, e-Books ranked as the #1 format among all categories of Trade publishing (Adult Hardcover, Adult Paperback, Adult Mass Market, Children’s/Young Adult Hardcover, Children’s/Young Adult Paperback).

This one-month surge is primarily attributed to a high level of strong post-holiday e-Book buying, or “loading,” by consumers who received e-Reader devices as gifts. Experts note that the expanded selection of e-Readers introduced for the holidays and the broader availability of titles are factors.

However, as Audrey Watters from ReadWriteWeb points out, among others, falling print sales are not really being matched or exceeded by ebook sales:

While that excitement to buy books might sound like good news for the publishing industry, the buzz over e-books hasn’t stopped sales overall from falling. For the year-to-date, sales of e-books have grown by almost 170% to $164 million. But the sale of print books, which is still a far larger portion of overall publishing revenue, has fallen by almost 25% to $442 million.

Can Publishers Avoid a Talent Time Bomb?

With the ongoing shift in ebooks versus print sales, of course, book publishers have had to incorporate new skill sets to keep pace with advances in technology. Looking specifically at gaps in skills, Suzanne Kavanagh from Skillset.org summed up a London Book Fair Panel that she chaired, called “The Talent Time Bomb: Can Publishing Learn New Media Skills?“:

From the summary:

In 2010, 28% of [UK] publishers reported skills gaps in their current workforce; with 64% of those reporting gaps in sales and marketing; 50% in technical skills; 46% for software; and 38% in business and entrepreneurial skills.

From another perspective, this time from the tech side, this article by Joseph Walker at FINS Technology (a job site from The Wall Street Journal), suggests that maybe publishers are between a rock and hard place when it comes to incorporating tech talent into the publishing workflow:

Publishing companies can have a hard time competing for top tech talent as they’re often unable to match the salaries offered by the Facebooks of the world. According to Payscale.com, the median salary for a software developer at a book or newspaper publisher is $61,100, compared to $69,000 at Internet companies like Google or Facebook. For an IT product manager, the salary gap can be as much as $20,000, with book publishers paying $66,200 compared to $84,900 at an Oracle or Microsoft and $83,200 at a Google. (The data was compiled by Payscale from surveys of full-time U.S. employees from April 2010 through April 2011.)

Kindle Library Lending: What Took Them So Long?

Amazon announced yesterday that it was making ebook lending through public libraries available through the Kindle, in partnership with Overdrive—big news especially in the context of the recent controversies over some publishers’ stance on ebook lending.

From the Amazon press release:

Customers will be able to check out a Kindle book from their local library and start reading on any Kindle device or free Kindle app for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone. If a Kindle book is checked out again or that book is purchased from Amazon, all of a customer’s annotations and bookmarks will be preserved.

In many ways, this is an extension of Amazon’s October 2010 decision to introduce ebook lending functionality between individual Kindle users, sparking many reactions in the digital book world that seem to echo eBookNewser Nate Hoffelder’s straightforward response: “What took them so long?” On how this might change publishers’ views regarding ebook lending in general, Philip Jones over at FutureBook summed up nicely:

The deal that will allow users of the OverDrive digital e-book library platform the ability to borrow books on their Kindles is a move that will surely once again make publishers look seriously at digital lending. How much easier was it to turn a blind commercial eye to e-book lending when it was confined to “lesser” devices such as the Sony Reader? How difficult will it be now when the biggest commercial driver of e-book sales is allow those customers to borrow from another source for free? Is it lost sales, or marketing?

Who Are the Gatekeepers in the Book World?

In other news, controversy has erupted around Nobel-nominated Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea, published by Viking, for fabricating the details about his visits to Pakistan and his charity work, so much so that the management of his charity as well as his book have come under scrutiny after 60 Minutes investigated the bestselling author.

From the transcript:

Another place where no one has done much checking is into the financial records of Mortenson’s non-profit organization, the Central Asia Institute, which builds and funds the schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and is located in Bozeman, Mont., where Mortenson lives.

Mortenson says the charity took in $23 million in contributions last year – some it from thousands of school children who emptied their piggy banks to help its “Pennies for Peace” program, and some of it from large fundraisers.

Far from being an isolated incident, however, fabricated memoirs (and, the question of responsibility for them) have emerged quite frequently, as we are reminded by this litany of questionable cases from The Christian Science Monitor.

On a related note, but looking at the self-publishing world in “The Great Rise of Indie Publishing,” Alex Wilhelm over at The Next Web suggests that the real shift with digital publishing in who the true “gatekeepers” are:

But all we have shown thus far is that the old world of print was not completely effective at keeping out poor texts. The real question is how will indie published books avoid descending into the muck, with everyone publishing half-baked, poorly edited schlock? In short, many weak books will be published, but a different gatekeeper will separate the wheat from the chaff: the reader…. Readers have always done this, of course, at the bookstore looking down aisles of books, but in the digital world shelf space is infinite, so the work might be slightly more taxing.

It’s certainly a valid question, as controversies about the quality of books (both digital and print) continue to create something of a public relations problem for all parts of the publishing workflow, from authors accused of plagiarism to continued failures of editing and quality control (both by publishers and self-publishers).

Tweet of the Week

That’s just a taste of what you may have missed this week. To stay on top of the most interesting news, commentary and tweets related to publishing, keep in touch via our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, join your publishing colleagues in our LinkedIn group, and connect with the broader DBW Network.

The most interesting news, commentary and tweets related to publishing that you may have missed, from all over the digital book world.

From the interview:

Because agents found themselves more and more providing services that they never needed to in the past: a cover approval, correcting cover copy, editing, spellchecking authors manuscripts, marketing, and other tasks that should be the publisher’s, but the publishers either can’t or won’t do some of these things. They keep pushing the burden of responsibility back on to the author. And the author, if the author can’t do it or is helpless or doesn’t want to, the agent has to do it.

A joint production of Digital Book World and Astral Road Brand Media: http://www.astralroad.com/

By Carolyn McCray, Author

In my previous article on ebook giveaways, we discussed how not all ebook giveaways are created equal.

We learned that researching and setting goals for your giveaway were as important as what you’re giving away itself. We covered the four main goals of any free ebook giveaway (beyond the vague sense of wanting to build name recognition and to grow a “reader base”):

1. Generating sales of your backlist.
2. Compiling an email list to be used in future campaigns.
3. Obtaining reviews to be used in your other marketing efforts.
4. Creating good will within the reviewer community.

Today we are going to look at how you can accomplish these goals at the start of your giveaway and beyond.

Promoting Your Giveaway on Day One

The day of the giveaway has arrived. So you can sit back and relax?

Absolutely not!

You need to be out stumping on all of your social media platforms, driving traffic to the giveaway site. If you have any cross-promotional partners, get them involved as well. Also you need to be all over that promotion. It is best to give away a free ebook per comment (this helps the blogger/reviewer/host to engage their readers) and to give the book away immediately if possible.

Giving away free reads in real time is preferable because many people hop right back onto the comment stream after downloading and talk up your book. It is an excellent technique to increase hype and buzz during the giveaway itself.

You also need to mix it up in the comments. Talk to the readers. Discuss your process. Thank them for their time. Joke, laugh, have some fun.

The “You’ve Won My Book” Email

Beyond being an engaged, responsive and prompt promoter of your giveaway, the other single most effective way to fulfill your goals is to create a dynamic “You’ve Won My Book” email. After a giveaway, most people simply thank the winner for participating and hand over the book.

Au contraire! Consider this “You’ve won” email a chance to shake the winner’s hand and create a lifelong reader.

The key goals of this letter are to:

• Thank the winner for participating and commenting. (This is just nice to do, and it helps with all four goals!)
• Thank the host of the giveaway because, especially for bloggers and reviewers, they need to know you are supporting them. (This clearly supports goal #4—creating good will with the reviewers)
• Let the winner know you would love to hear how they enjoy the book, and as an indie/new/struggling writer, you would really appreciate a review once they are done. (Supporting your goal #3—obtaining reviews for future marketing purposes.)

Remember though, this call to action is asking the reader to do you a favor. Now, as always, you should then give them a reward for that favor.

One of the most effective ways I have found to reward readers for giving me a review is to inform the winner that if their review is chosen, it may end up in future versions of the book! Many avid readers get very excited by this opportunity and jump at the chance to review.

Gift Card Offers and Special Discounts

If you don’t have control over your future editions, you can substitute that enticement with a gift card offer. Inform the winner that out of the reviews you receive for your book, you will randomly draw a winner for a $5 Amazon gift card. Or for the most thoughtful or funniest review. You get the picture.

As simple as it sounds, that enticement is a great incentive to many free ebook winners to actually not only read your book but formally review it.

The next section of your “winner” email includes:

• An opportunity for the winner to purchase another of your titles at a steeply discounted price.
• If you are an indie author on Smashwords, you can provide a 25%, 50%, or 75% off coupon. Even having a new reader spend 10 cents on your work, converts them from a free user to a paid reader, which is a huge accomplishment. Getting people to crack open their wallets, especially in these tough economic times, is paramount.
• If your books are only on the larger retail platforms such as Amazon or B&N, you should have at least one backlist title “value” priced at 99 cents. The rationale for strategic pricing of your backlist is probably enough for an entire other article, but for our purposes here, 99 cents is the lowest price these retailers will allow and gives a new reader a fairly low entry point into your backlist.

To finish out this “winner” email, you want to request permission to add the winner to your monthly newsletter. You should be able to guess what comes next. We just asked a favor of a reader (adding them to our newsletter), so now we must offer an enticement.

Again, offering up gift cards works like magic here. Offering a $5, $10, or $25 gift card randomly to your newsletter recipients a) increases your list retention significantly, b) increases your open rate, and c) increases your click rate.

In a single email you are well on your way to accomplishing all four of your goals!

• You have prompted the winner to search out your backlist and purchase from it.
• You have collected their email and created an opt-in for future newsletters.
• You have cultivated an environment for reviews.
• You have thanked the primary blog host/reviewer and reinforced their brand.

While you don’t have to include each and every portion of what I have described in your “You’ve Won My Book” email, you should at least experiment with each section and see what works for your book. Also keep in mind that you can’t simply say “buy my backlist.” Or “join my newsletter.” As always we want to keep our marketing copy fun, engaging, and entertaining.

Following Through on Your Ebook Giveaway

Then about a week after the giveaway you should tabulate your four goals and see how closely you came to meeting them:

• How many of your backlist did you sell?
• How many new emails were you able to collect for your newsletter list?
• How many people promised to review your book? (Check in a month to get a final tally of people that actually did it!)
• How many bloggers/reviews/hosts requested to do another giveaway or recommended you to colleague for an event?

Compare the goals you set in the first article to the results of your giveaway. Did you meet them? Exceed them? Or is there sobbing involved?

No matter what your results, now that you have a detailed strategy you can work to fine tune your results and reap real, tangible benefits to your giveaways! Running an ebook giveaway? Share a link to your giveaway in the comments below, and I’ll be glad to hop over for a mini-critique and give pointers on your giveaway strategy.

Carolyn McCray is a social media and sales consultant to writers and publishing houses alike.  Her own controversial thriller, “30 Pieces of Silver” hit the #1 spot on the Amazon “Men’s Adventure” list, (beating out the likes of Clive Cussler). Carolyn is also the founder of the Indie Book Collective, an organization dedicated to helping writers utilize social media to sell their books.

Legal Setback for the Google Books Settlement Agreement

Google Settlement Is Rejected (Andrew Albanese & Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly): Summary of the decision by Judge Denny Chin, which concluded that ”While the digitization of books and the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many, the [Amended Settlement Agreement] would simply go too far.”

Books Settlement statements of: AAP, Open Book Alliance, Nat. Fed. of the Blind (Paul Biba, Teleread): A roundup of statements from organizations in reponse to the decision.

Good and Bad in Google Book Settlement (Corynne McSherry, Electronic Frontier Foundation): Legal commentary about the decision.

Research Libraries See Google Decision as Just a Bump on the Road to Widespread Digital Access (Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education): Perspective from the academic community, along with proposed alternatives.

Ebook Lending

It’s Not About HarperCollins (Francine Fialkoff, Library Journal): Continued commentary about the HarperCollins decision to cap lending on ebooks.

No Sharing Allowed: Amazon and book publishers’ stupid attempts to curtail e-book lending (Farhad Manjoo, Slate): An out-of-industry view of the ebook lending controversy, sparked by the brief dispute between Amazon and ebook swapper service, Lendle.

Self-Publishing v. Traditional Publishers

Noted Self-Publisher May Be Close to a Book Deal (Julie Bosman, New York Times blog): News that self-publishing phenom might be shopping around for a four-book deal from a traditional publisher.

Ebooks and Self-Publishing – A Dialog Between Authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath (Joe Konrath): While, in contrast, author Barry Eisler rejects a two-book deal and an advance reportedly worth $500,000.

Should self-publishing writers learn to take no for an answer? (Chris Meadows, Teleread): A look at the decision to go with a traditional publisher or not, with a view toward the issue of ebook pricing.

Ebooks at the Leipzig Book Fair

Using Text to “Enhance” E-books and Other Insights from the 2011 Leipzig Book Fair (Siobhan O’Leary, Publishing Perspectives): Highlights from the Leipzig Book Fair, with an electronic publishing theme.

Just for Fun

The Electronic Publishing Bingo Card (John Scalzi)

The Traditional Publishing Bingo Card (Shmuel 510 on Flickr)

Tweet of the Week

That’s just a taste of what you may have missed this week. To stay on top of the most interesting news, commentary and tweets related to publishing, keep in touch via our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, join your publishing colleagues in our LinkedIn group, and connect with the broader DBW Network.

By Carolyn McCray, Author

In theory, ebook giveaways sound so beguilingly simple, don’t they? Give people free books, they will love your work and create gobs of word of mouth sales. This is one of those theories that turns out to be nothing more than an urban myth: Build it and readers will come.

With the exception of a handful of writers who have created a large sales platform off of free giveaways, the vast majority of ebook giveaways fail to create anywhere near the amount of buzz or secondary sales that the writer had hoped.

Why?  Because the giveaway did not have a solid set of goals and a strategic plan for after the book was given away. Sure, they had a sense of wanting to generate some name recognition, however their planning stopped there.  This has been the death keel to many a giveaway.

Instead of vague hopes, dreams, and wishes, we should concentrate on four measurable goals for any free ebook giveaway:

• Generating sales of your backlist.
• Compiling an email list to be used in future campaigns
• Obtaining reviews to be used in your other marketing efforts
• Creating good will within the reviewer community

For each and every ebook give away, you should set some very specific goals for what you wish to accomplish. Is the focus of this marketing campaign to increase sales?  Or is your main priority collecting email addresses, etc? Or a combination of the four? It is difficult to measure success and make vital changes to your marketing strategy if you do not know what you turn out you expected and how well you fared.

How exactly do you go about this?

Pre-planning Stage

1. Study the blog stops on your tour (or your own website statistics if hosting it yourself).  How many books do they normally give away per stop?  How many do they anticipate giving away for your promotion?

2. How are the winners notified?  You, as the author, always want to do the notification.  Work this out ahead of time.

3. How are you and the blog stop going to work together?  How much pre-event publicity do they do?  How much on the day of?

4. Do you have any promotional partners that can contribute extra support during your tour?  If not, you might want to get some!

Let’s say based on the research you did above you calculate that you will be giving away 100 ebooks on a blog tour which encompasses 6 blog stops.

Setting Goals

How many backlist copies do you hope to sell? A good rule of thumb is a 10:1 ratio.  For every ten books you give away you would like to get 1 sale of a backlist title. More than that? Great! Share your secret for the rest of us.  Less than that, you will want o take a look at your after-giveaway protocols.

How many emails do you hope to add to your newsletter list? Usually you want to convert 75% of all emails collected into long-term newsletter recipients.

How many reviews do you hope to get from the give away? A good ratio to shoot for is about 20:1.  So for every 20 books you give away, you get 1 review back.

How many blog tour hosts do you wish to convert to long-term reviewers? Ideally you would want this to be a 1:1 ratio, however personal taste, work load, etc can affect this so I tell everyone to shoot for a 50% retention rate.

You can now calculate your concrete set of goals for this imaginary give away:

1. 10 Backlist Sales

2. 75 new, unique email addresses added to your newsletter registry

3. 5 Reviews of your free ebook

4. 3 Long term reviewer contacts

Fantastic! Um, great… but how do we achieve them? Ah, that’s for the next article!

Comment below to let me know if this article was helpful to you in planning your next ebook giveaway and any questions you may have regarding the information.  Also feel free to share your successful and not-quite-so-successful ebook giveaways.

I subscribe to the comments, and will try to answer any questions within a few hours of posting.  Feel free to leave your Amazon.com page link, blog link, or links to any giveaways and I will hop over and give a mini-critique of what I see with a few pointers on how to improve your overall goals.

Carolyn McCray is a social media and sales consultant to writers and publishing houses alike.   Her own controversial thriller, “30 Pieces of Silver” hit the #1 spot on the Amazon “Men’s Adventure” list, (beating out the likes of Clive Cussler).  Carolyn is also the founder of the Indie Book Collective, an organization dedicated to helping writers utilize social media to sell their books.

From the interview:

I think that books remain the ultimate random access memory. A book is still something that you can pick up anywhere and have immediate information. Nothing digital beats that yet. I think that whatever you’re reading digitally it’s still a book, it’s just becoming a better way to get information.

I think publishers are more open to innovation than people suspect. I also think that a lot of the really cool stuff that’s going to come out is going to come from an author working with someone in digital media production, whether that be a filmmaker, a video editor, a music producer. When the two media join up, that’s when we’re going to see the really cool new products coming.

A joint production of Digital Book World and Astral Road Brand Media: http://www.astralroad.com

Borders Missteps Go Back 20 Years
John Mutter, Shelf Awareness

One of Borders’s early advantages–its computer system, the creation of Louis Borders in the company’s early years–became dated after the Borders brothers sold the company to Kmart. For many years, Borders and Walden continued to use separate computer systems. In addition, the Borders system has continued to use proprietary bar codes, which means that every book ever sold by Borders has had to have a special sticker printed out and applied to it, usually over the industry-standard bar code that is printed on all covers and jackets now. Stocking and restocking in the Borders system lagged behind its competition.

From our point of view, Borders’s last chance for a turnaround came during the period when George Jones, CEO from 2006 until early 2009, headed the company. He undertook a series of initiatives, including extensive store remodeling, taking back the company’s website from Amazon, creating (again) a publishing program, improving merchandising and buying processes. He also spun off most of the international operations, which were usually profitable, but which many considered a distraction. Unfortunately, the financial collapse in 2008 shook the company to the ground, bringing on the Ackman-LeBow era of the past two years, when a hedge fund manager and a corporate raider, both of whom represent the worst of American capitalism, took over and drove the company into the ground.

Borders decline means big changes for industry
Hillel Italie, AP

“They’ve always been great champions of the trade paperback format,” says Carrie Kania, who heads HarperCollins’ paperback imprint, Harper Perennial.

“Borders has, from their beginnings, been a consistent supporter of literary and first fiction,” says literary agent Ira Silverberg. “Their loss will absolutely be felt in lower projections for first print runs by publishers.”

The New Archie Comics
Calvin Reid, Publishers Weekly

One reason why Archie comics remain so popular with children is that they are among the few comics still available on the newsstand and at supermarket checkouts; indeed, the newsstand represents “the lion’s share” of comics sales for the company, according to Goldwater. In September, the company signed a distribution deal with Random House, which Goldwater says has spurred a renewed emphasis on graphic novels. The monthly comics are not going away, but Goldwater says he wants to increase the company’s graphic novel line by 50%–100%. “It is a very, very important part of our business here at Archie Comics, and we are focusing a lot of energy and resources behind promotion and creation of our graphic novels,” he says. Last week, the company announced its first original graphic novel, Archie Babies.

Digital Is The New Direct Market
Torsten Adair, The Beat

So stores order fewer copies of already marginal titles. Publishers notice this, as well as the number of digital copies sold (as well as subscriptions, which can be lucrative for children’s titles). So, like Marvel in 1981, they realize that printing paper copies is no longer profitable, and only distribute the issue as a digital file. Perhaps the publisher charges $2.99. Perhaps $1.99. Maybe these “Digital Direct” titles feature journeymen talent which work at lower rates. Or maybe the publisher sells a cheap version with ads, and a more expensive edition without. Maybe later they collect the digital copies into a trade paperback. (Quite possibly as a print-on-demand edition!)

Can Google Beat Apple With Its Publisher-Friendly “One Pass” Digital Subscriptions?
Kit Eaton, Fast Company

But the real thrust of the announcement is about how publisher-friendly One Pass is. Publishers can “customize how and when they charge for content while experimenting with different models to see what works best for them–offering subscriptions, metered access, ‘freemium’ content or even single articles for sale from their websites or mobile apps.” One Pass also lets “publishers give existing print subscribers free (or discounted) access to digital content” and Google takes care of “the rest, including payments technology handled via Google Checkout.”

Where in the publishing world are libraries?
Katie Dunneback, Consultant East Central Library Services, Bettendorf, IA

Margaret Atwood, “The Publishing Pie: An Author’s View”
TOC 2011

Tweet of the Week

That’s just a taste of what you may have missed this week. To stay on top of the most interesting news, commentary and tweets related to publishing, keep in touch via our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, join your publishing colleagues in our LinkedIn group, and connect with the broader DBW Network.