Self publishers who feel a little lost in 2012 should take heart in the old rhyme that prescribed for new brides, “something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.” The most important part comes first, something old, because it’s the something old that’s been paying the bills and giving me the breathing space to plan ahead. Something old for most of us means publishing on paper, which remained the largest contributor to my self publishing income in 2011.
Low priced Kindle eBooks, which have taken over as the main source of income for many fiction self publishers, are also something old and a proven business model at this point. Practically 90% of the e-mail I get these days I can respond to by saying, “Publish on Kindle first, worry about the rest later.” Maybe I should just set up an auto-responder. But if eBook reader adoption is beginning to saturate, as suggested by some surveys, paper may hold on to the number one spot for nonfiction self publishing for some time.
There are so many options for something new that I think the problem for authors just starting out in self publishing will be not getting distracted and chasing too many goals at once. For example, I have one title that is used as a textbook, and the options for textbook publishing are exploding. The new Apple Textbook option is a perfect match in terms of price and interactive capabilities, and the iPad screen is the ideal size for my flowcharts and color photos. But if Apple requires I sign up all of my eBooks, it won’t be an option. Amazon has been offering textbook rentals on Kindle since last summer, but I don’t publish my flowcharts books on Kindle due to the small screen size of most of those devices.
Something borrowed has been the big buzz in the Kindle universe this month, since Amazon announced the December payout for Kindle Select participants would be $1.70 per title. The main obstacle for self publishers who want to participate in Select is that the titles must be exclusive to Amazon while included in the program. So if you rushed to get your titles set up with Barnes&Noble and Apple , you can’t include them in Select. Kindle Select has proven to be a powerful way for self publishers to get more exposure for their titles and, for 99 cent titles, to earn more money by giving the books away than by selling them!
Something blue for my self publishing efforts has been copyright infringement and the impact it had on the Internet publishing portion of my business. The guide to fighting copyright infringements I published on Kindle last week drew over 600 downloads during its five day free promotion, though Amazon has declined to keep it free in return for my accepting no royalties. In the meantime, I’ve been moving some of the most popular pages off of my FONERBOOKS website, in part to give them a chance to recover from Panda and in part to segregate subjects so it will be easier for me to sell or give away those parts of the business.
My direct eBook sales declined around 70% over the last year due to the loss of website visitors and to higher search visibility for pirated copies. And my Adsense earnings declined to zero last year when I removed ads from my website in protest over Google’s promotion of piracy. Since then, I’ve become a big fan of Google’s DMCA Dashboard, and I’ve seen positive signs that they are finally getting proactive about copyright infringements on some Google properties. For example, they recently disabled a Google Sites account that existed to channel search users to piracy sites after I DMCA’d a single page. I might be better off putting some Adsense back on my non-book pages and saving the money in a special pot for litigation:-)
The wedding day outfit for new brides concludes with “and a sixpence in her shoe.” I can’t think of better advice for self employed authors than to save some money for a rainy day, because partners like Amazon, Apple and Barnes&Noble don’t stay married to the likes of you or me when something better comes along.
Wonderful post – thanks. I had to tweet “partners like Amazon, Apple and Barnes&Noble don’t stay married to the likes of you or me when something better comes along.”
Question: Did Amazon request permission from you to rent out your “designated textbook” and what’s the revenue share on that?
Thad,
My designated textbooks are only available on paper through Amazon. The book format is 8.5 x 11 and uses full page flowcharts, no good way to translate them to the small Kindle screen. While Amazon does have a “rental” system for paper textbooks, it cuts the publisher out completely after the first sale:-)
Morris
“My direct eBook sales declined around 70% over the last year due to the loss of website visitors and to higher search visibility for pirated copies.”
How do you know that? How is it possible to really know that?
Jim,
I don’t understand your question. I sell the eBooks direct, I know exactly how many books I’m selling, and can easily do month-on-month, year-on-year comparisons. I’ve been in the book business long enough to adjust for title aging and other issues.
Morris
I thought you were selling through Amazon. Even so, it seems to me that it would be extremely hard to calculate direct decline due to those specific factors. I mean, sure, you can guess, but how could you “really” know? I’m not trying to start a fight or argue. I just think maybe you’re smarter than me.
I’m not a believer that piracy really affects sales.
Jim,
I also sell through Amazon Kindle, but those are different books. The eBooks I sell direct are primarily my computer troubleshooting books, I can’t sell thrm through Kindle due to screen limitations.
The music industry has lost 50% of their business (adjusted for inflation) since file sharing appeared, and it’s not because people are listening to less music. People have downloaded tens of thousands of copies of my eBooks through piracy networks, my textbook business largely vanished after I released the eBook versions. For a large portion of last year, the #1 result in Google for my top selling eBook was a piracy site.
In a week or two I’ll be posting some statistics from both publisher organizations and surveys on eBook adoption and piracy.
Morris
Hi Morris, any general tips for taking my PDF ebook to the Kindle? I also have it as a DOC. Anyway, my only worry is that it has a few hyperlinks that my not work on Kindle. It’s currently priced at $39.95 – will that translate to the Kindle? What is their standard split with self publishing authors?
Thanks!
Ben
Ben,
Don’t send the a PDF, send them a Word file, they do an excellent job on Word conversion.
Hyperlinks work fine as long as the Kindle is connected to the Internet and the Kindle browser supports the website.
Pricing is in your control Their standard split is:
Price 99 cents to $2.98 ( 35% You, 65% Amazon)
Price $2.99 to $9.99 (70% You, 30% Amazon)
Price $9.99 to maximum (35% You, 65% Amazon)
So as you can see, they encourage a price between $2.99 and $9.99. You can price at $39.95, I doubt you’ll send many. The only “stupid price” is between $10 and $20, where you would actually make more if you priced at $9.95 due to the royalty split.
Morris
Morris, the $9.99 option looks like the best deal for me. I have to disagree with you on their excellent job of word conversion though – I’ve been struggling with the KDP version of my DOC file. Their conversion to MOBI stripped out most of the formatting, leaving me with huge gaps in spacing and other oddities. Any tips on this?
Overall, I am looking forward to getting the book to the Kindle as I already have a free app on the Kindle Fire with 80k installs. It seems like a good move to advertise within the app to those users, since it’s a related topic.
Ben,
Remove all formatting before sending, then it won’t get ripped out.
Are you a Kindle User?
Morris
Ben,
BTW, I meant “Kindle user” asin the B&W Kindle reader, not the Fire wich I don’t think many people are using for eBook reading. I’ve read hundreds of eBooks on my B&W Kindles, have only made it through one on my Fire, and that’s because it hadcolor screen shots (though they were fixed size and too small).
The advertising in apps sounds smart.
Morris
Morris, thanks again – I was able to get the book uploaded and accepted. The formatting was a nightmare so I went to Elance and found a pro from India, who did the entire conversion for $45 with cross-compatability on all Kindle models. Amazons new previewer software is quite good and allows for switching between the models. I went for the DRM, since the book reveals very potent and actionable info.
Yeah, the in-house advertising can be great to cross promote to your other products. Millennial Media is another option – Their ad network is the strongest on the Kindle Platform so far and just requires downloading their SDK. Here’s an interesting report from them regarding overall growth: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-millennium-media-says-kindle-fire-impressions-growing-19-percent-each-d/
Ben