Writing for E-Publishers

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Starting a Self Publishing Company

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The Internet Exploitation of Writers and Authors

The Internet has opened up an incredibly valuable publishing platform for writers. Unfortunately, unscrupulous E-publishers lay in wait to take advantage of writers who lack Internet or publishing savvy, primarily through the practice of gaining free content for their sites in return for an "exclusive contract" and the carrot of possible royalties. This practice is particularly effective with unpublished writers who understandably want to have something to show for their labor of love and will eagerly sign on the dotted line for the right to finally tell themselves they have arrived. For some, this may be worth it. Particularly for those who have a large number of short stories stocked up on the hard drive waiting to see the light of day and can therefore afford to lose the rights to one for six months or a year. But when it comes to longer books, representing hundreds or thousands of hours of labor, writers need to carefully examine what they are getting in return for presenting an e-book publishing site with this free bonanza. The only parallel to the current practice of most e-book publishers that I'm aware of is that of unpaid internships. However, unlike the unpaid internship which often carries the implied promise of a paid writing job offer on completion, or at least provides resume experience in the publishing field, the publication of e-books on many sites returns nothing to the writer.

E-book publishing falls into five basic categories:

An E-book version of a work that has already been published on paper by a traditional publisher in accordance with the original contract terms for the paper book.
An E-book written for an E-publisher, based on the standard proposal-contract-advance model used in traditional publishing, in which the E-publisher has the right to produce a print version.
An E-book written for an E-publisher without a proposal phase, and without an advance. The book may still be given some professional editing or formatting, and will only be accepted for publication based on editorial review or some sort of peer review mechanism. Royalties are possible, if it sells.
An E-book that is automatically accepted for publication by the E-book site; the "quantity" over "quality" approach. Royalties are possible if it sells, and this approach may actually be better for writers than option #3, which may entice these writers to write material tailored to the site which then rejects it or fails to promote it.
Self publication on the writer's own web site, with the option of self-publishing short runs or using print-on-demand to create and sell printed books.

The first category is of little interest here, since all major publishers have locked authors into this option by contract for at least the past ten years. However, if you fall into this category and your book is officially "Out of Print", it is definitely worthwhile to pull the contract out of the drawer and check the clause about how rights can revert to the author. Often, if the publisher doesn't put the book back into print by producing a short run or making it available as "Print on Demand" at the author's request, the author may recover rights to the book, even if the publisher holds the copyright.

The second category, in which the E-publisher basically follows the procedures of a traditional publisher, is the most attractive option for writers. What many writers fail to realize is that the hated proposal phase does more to protect them than it does the publisher. This applies primarily to non-fiction, since fiction works from unknown authors must be essentially finished before any serious publisher would even consider them, but seven out of eight books published in this country are non-fiction. Publishers like proposals for non-fiction books, even if they are completed, because the author is required to present a brief market analysis. Many authors may trip over this assignment, primarily due to unfamiliarity with the business or marketing worlds, but there are several excellent books on proposal writing, such as those by Jeff Herman. The important thing about writing proposals is that once the art is mastered, the writer can obtain a contract and possibly an advance payment before investing all the time required to research and write an entire book. The main drawback of E-publishers who follow these procedures is that they are few and far between, and once they are established, getting a contract with them is probably more difficult than finding a paper publisher.

The third option, E-publishers who cherry pick the works they will publish without granting advances or signing contracts for partial works, is probably the most dangerous. Some of these sites are associated with traditional publishing houses, so writers perceive them as a possible back door. The interactivity of these sites can really raise the hopes of unpublished writers who are being taken seriously as writers for perhaps the first time, but most of this interactivity is automated or provided by their peers. While I'm all in favor of feeling good, I'd hate to see a fellow writer invest serious time in writing a book tailored to a suggested topic which that author wouldn't have otherwise taken on. For example, any non-fiction writer with an interest in the stock market might be tempted to try a book on "Dow 20,000" in response to a tempting offer to E-publish the best entry on the subject. However, keep in mind that a decent proposal on such a hot topic can be written in a tiny fraction of the time required to research and write the whole book. The odds of that proposal bringing a real contract and advance from an established publisher are probably appreciably higher than the odds of a completed book, written without editorial feedback, winning the run-off at the E-publisher. Even if the writer wins the contest and has the book produced as an e-book, what is the financial reward? Unknown, but very few writers are earning more than pennies through e-book sales unsupported by print editions. Those who are making real money are likely writing for an E-publisher in our second category. Remember, even the least efficient paper publisher has a strong motivation to try to sell your books once they are printed, to recover the printing, editing and production costs which amount to tens of thousands of dollars for even a relatively short run with no advance. An e-book publisher who only invests a few minutes converting your word-processor file to a PDF or other e-book format has no motivation to push your book. I've even seen "contracts" where these E-publishers have the gall to make you agree not to submit the work anywhere else for 90 days while they are considering it - something no traditional publisher will do until a contract guaranteeing publication is signed.

The fourth type of E-publisher, those who basically accept any finished work for publication, may be the best path for authors who can spare something off the hard drive as a test. Some of these sites are very up-front and honest, allowing even "non-members" to view how much traffic the works posted on the site receive. A recent visit to one such site showed that the largest number of downloads for any of the numerous works on the site the previous week was in the teens. Based on six years of writing and posting books and articles on the web, I generally feel I've missed the boat unless a non-fiction work is at least getting fifty hits a week. Fiction is the best bet for these sites, since getting people to come to your fiction works on an independent site requires active promotion. Some of these sites also offer you a route to "Print-on-Demand" publication, which I'll discuss in the next paragraph. The most important issue in choosing an E-publisher, and the reason I haven't provided a list of favored publishers here, is you want to pick the one that somebody looking for your type of book would be most likely to go to. This means that you need to set aside a little time for web surfing in one of the honest search engines, like http://www.google.com and figure out where would YOU go if YOU were looking for an e-book like yours to read. Don't simply go with the first site you find; try a variety of search words and phrases and follow some links and banner advertisements. By the way, don't be surprised if an idea for a book you thought was unique has already been done by five other authors. Anything so unique that it has no comparison may well have no audience, and stands a slim chance of ever attracting a paper publisher, if you're interested in that option.

The fifth category of e-book publishing is self-publishing on your own web site. The advantages to this route are:

You retain all rights to your works.
Any traffic or positive e-mails or press coverage your site generates will be extremely useful for landing a paper publisher (see The Path to Publication in the New Millennium).
There are several "Print-on-Demand" options, from doing it yourself to Booklocker.com, who pays a 35% royalty on the cover price.
You control promotion for your book, without getting stuck promoting somebody else's whole e-book site to do it.
The Internet is here to stay, may as well learn something about it.

The drawbacks are:

Cost. While you can build a site with a free hosting service, I discourage it. Site statistics are unavailable, performance is lousy, they bombard you and your visitors with advertisements, and most importantly, they are ignored by most search engines. On the bright side, you can buy a decent commercial site with your own domain name (the domain name for this site is fonerbooks, as in www.fonerbooks.com) for $10/month or less, with a $25 or $30 setup charge and no long term contract required.
You have to design the site yourself, because anybody who charges to do it for you will charge an arm or a leg, $1000 or more being the rule unless you find a kid to do it.

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U.S. residents can order the 171 page paperback direct from the publisher for $14.95 plus $2.25 shipping and handling (media mail - normally 4 to 14 business days). The book can also be ordered through any retail store by the title "Print-On-Demand Book Publishing" or ISBN which is: 0-9723801-3-2.

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