To The Author In Search Of A Publisher

I distinctly remember listening to E. G. Marshall trying to reboot radio drama. I would be driving home or back to grad school after a date with the delightful girl I eventually married, and the car radio helped keep me awake. Late night radio often has unsold air time and a certain class of vendors gravitate to this cut-rate advertising. 

One of which had a rather stuffy sounding guy talking about "the author in search of a publisher."

He was trolling for suckers for the vanity press. For a few thousand 1979-dollars you could have your manuscript turned into a real book and get it printed. Yay. 

Then what? You'd have a garage full of boxes of books. Then it was up to you to find a way to sell them. Good luck with that. Most of the time, this was not a wise investment of one's savings.

Time passes and technology advances. It is now completely feasible to realize camera-ready typeset pages using just your home computer and a laser printer. It's trivial to produce good looking book designs using just Microsoft Word or any number of other cheap or free tools. Good. We can now produce "galley proofs" at home.

And if you want to fill your garage with boxes of books, any medium-sized town will have several print shops who can obliged you.

The last two paragraphs enable any non-idiot to completely disintermediate the vanity press guys. The dirty little secret is that writers in search of a publisher could have disintermediated them back in the '70s, too.

But even if you did, and you saved thousands of 1979-dollars it was a sucker bet. How are you going to get those boxes of books out of your garage and into bookstores?

Then an amazing thing happened: Amazon.com. Now, all you had to do was hook up with Amazon to get those boxes of books out of your garage. The amazing thing got amazinger. Amazon came out with the Kindle. And they had the good sense to buy a print-on-demand publisher. Now, anyone could click a web site and your book in bits or printed-on-demand would be shipped to their door.

This made me think that self-publishing a non-sucker bet. (And I hope you'll vindicate my opinion by buying either The Aristotelian or Finding Time.) I think self-publishing is a viable route for any writer who doesn't have a book deal. But you gotta be smart about it.

I think the vanity press companies are still a sucker bet. I don't understand how they can still exist when they are so trivially bypassed.

What's truly amazing is the tangled network of ownership. The biggest vanity publisher is now owned by a traditional publisher. You can get the details here.

Why would a traditional publisher own a vanity publisher? In the former case, the publisher pays the author an advance and royalties. In the latter case, the author pays the publisher. Heh. If I were the publisher I'd quit with the advances and royalties. So, there are some conflicts of interest here.

I don't quite know what will come of these changes in book publishing. It looks to me like we aren't seeing the old sucker-bets going away. Instead I think we'll see a whole raft of new and improved sucker-bets to beware of. Let me know if you come across any.

How To Publish An Ebook

A couple weeks ago a friend of mine at writers' group asked about publishing an ebook. Since I've published The Aristotelian and also Finding Time, I've worked out a workflow for ebook creation. Last summer I gave a presentation at Bar Camp Grand Rapids and that was well received.

I did not use a fancy Power Point or Prezi presentation--just a text file zoomed up and projected on the screen. This is what it said:

1) Write a book. Use Word, or Emacs. If you use vi, you can't. Just quit...
2) Convert DOCX to HTML using Rick Boatright's script
3) Copy HTML into Sigil.
4) Create a snazzy cover with a pretty girl.
5) Open someone else's ebook in Sigil to see how they did it
6) Convert ePub to Mobi using Calibre.
7) Go to the County clerk and register a DBA, e.g. Atlas Integrated Publishing
8) Buy an ISBN or 10 ISBNs
9) Create an account on Kindle Direct Publishing
10) From your Bookshelf add a new title
11) Wait 12 hours for notification from Amazon.
12) After you sell 100 books, look into CreateSpace
13) Build a web page for your book
14) Create a snazzy book trailer
15) Create marketing pieces. Like bookmarks or business cards

About a week later, another friend, Matt Heusser, wrote this summary of my talk. I should apologize for step #4, because a snazzy cover may also have a pretty guy, or a pretty guy and girl. Or a puppy.

Coming back to now, my friend wanted this done for his book. I told him that the first thing he has to do (mindful of the above), is to decide what you want to do and what you want to hire out. I feel pretty handy with the geeky stuff and I feel pretty lame with the artsy stuff. That's why I hired my friend Joanne Renaud to do the artwork. And my friend Kemp Lyons to do the book trailer.

In both cases I was able to take delivery of content online and I was able to pay via PayPal. We're all still talking to one another, and I'll gladly do business with each of them again. I'll call that success. The more you can iron out up front, the less risk of hard feelings later. It's not reasonable to expect the other person to read your mind. Both of you should expect a bit of to-and-fro while you're converging on a solution. I hope to expand on this later.

My timing is either Really Good or Really Bad

Did I say how something about buying ebooks from Baen?


Let's pause for a moment to remember who we're talking about when we're dealing with Baen Books. These guys sell Science Fiction books, and the market for science fiction books include a disproportionate number of geeks like me. Geeks like me were the early adopters of ebooks. Yes, I own a SONY Reader--one of the first ebook readers that came out when the Kindle first did. And yes, I paid way too much for it.

Moreover, Baen has been one of the best publishers to embrace the hacker ethics of anti-DRM and giving away the titles that would otherwise go out of print.

It's a great loss-leader to have a series of N books with a give away of the first half of the series. We'll just give you a taste, a sample, to get you hooked. Baen learned this way back when.

Put all these factors together and it made sense for Baen to put together a book-selling-and-giving-away operation that was independent of Amazon's Kindle site.

But not playing nice with Amazon had its downside as I discussed above. Sure, I can follow the procedure outlined in that note, but it's a lot easier to push the Buy-Now-With-1-Click button. For an early adopter like me, the procedure I used to buy Sarah Hoyt's Darkship novels makes a lot of sense.

Nevertheless, the world of ebooks and ereaders has evolved from us early-adopters to the mainstream. In the years that have elapsed, Amazon has dropped its DRM requirement, so the hacker ethic is now OK with buying ebooks from Amazon's Kindle store.

This morning I read here that Baen and Amazon are getting in bed together. My post about buying ebooks then and now is soon to be obsolete. You want a Baen book, just click on Buy-Now...

The downside, if there is one, is that Baen cannot give away books for free or charge $6.00 for titles that would otherwise go for $9.99.

So, if you know of any Baen titles you want to buy at $6.00 or snag for free, you'd better move fast before Baen's agreement with Amazon goes into force.

Buying Books Then And Now

In 2009 I purchased Darkship Thieves as described below. Just now I purchased its sequel, Darkship Renegades and I'm updating what I originally wrote back then. And added what I've learned.

How Books Are Were Bought In 2009

I was minding my own business, surfing to my favorite blog. Instapundit. He linked to a SF novel twice. The second had an interesting author's story of how the novel got published.

This interested me enough to want the book. But I was not going out and I doubted Barnes & Nobel has it on their shelves this soon after release. So, I clicked the Amazon link that Professor Reynolds helpfully provided. Sadly, I learned the book is not available on the Kindle.

My sadness was short-lived. "Hey, the publisher is Baen." Those guys aren't luddites. There's got to be an electronic copy available somewhere. So, I bypassed Amazon.com and went to see if they were selling an ebook that I could download immediately. I could.

A few mouse clicks later, I'd purchased the ebook for $6.00. A relative bargain. Moments later, I received an email with links to download the book. I clicked on the link for epub format (for my Motorola Droid and also my SONY Reader) and also mobi format (for my Kindle DX). They arrived on my hard disk and I unzipped them to a scratch directory.

Then I fired up Calibre and imported them into its database. (Think of Calibre as iTunes for ebooks.) Then I plugged in my Kindle DX and told Calibre to upload it. Then I repeated the procedure with my Motorola Droid.

Altogether satisfactory. Less time that it would take to drive to the bookstore. Cost is $6.00. And completely DRM-free. This is the way the future of books and reading should be.

How Books Are Bought In 2012

Inflation may have hit food and gasoline, but not ebooks. The price is still $6.00.

Meanwhile, Baen has streamlined the buying process. Buying the ebook directly from Baen is still the only option, but you can tell them to deliver it directly to your Kindle (or iPad).

I love Calibre, but shlepping cables from my laptop to my iPad is annoying.

Delivery from Baen to your Kindle is now a 2-step process.

First, you go to your Amazon account's Manage Your Kindle page. Find the link and click on Personal Document Settings, and add ebooks@baenebooks.com to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List.

Second, copy the email address that Amazon uses for your specific Kindle device under your Send-to-Kindle E-Mail Settings. When you click on the link from Baen, you'll find an option to have them send the ebook to your Kindle, and that's where you'll paste the email address you just copied. Click the button and Baen will do the rest. Painless. Easy.

Let me know if you have any difficulty with these instructions.

(Of course, after you buy Sarah's books, I'll be much obliged if you'd consider Finding Time or The Aristotelian.)

Makers versus Takers

Depending upon how you look at it, this fat cat represents either a corporate tycoon--one of the 1% who gets his GOP buddies to vote subsidies to his business and swing sweet-heart deals his way.

Or if you swing the Democrat way this fat cat represents a welfare queen who's never worked a lick in her life and is just riding the gravy train nursing at the public teat.

A pox on both your houses. I'm for the Whigs.

This morning an email arrived at my inbox from Sarah Hoyt who is most definitely NOT a poopy-head. Her ire was raised by some concern troll on another blog and this moved her to utter some inescapable truths. It is not safe to utter inescapable truths.

When she said "The 'government' is not some disinterested entity run by angels," I was reminded of a debate between Milton Friedman and Phil Donohue about greed wherein Friedman points out that government officials are not angels.

At this writing, publishing is in transition. Certain fat cat publishing companies have enjoyed joint monopoly powers that they have wielded to their own advantage and not necessarily to the advantage of the reading public or those who write books.

When cats get too fat they cannot catch mice and find alternate sustenance. Like using the government to hobble the thinner, faster cats.
Independent publishers and writers have the means to circumvent fat cat publishing companies who will use any means necessary to save their phoney-baloney jobs.

Sarah Hoyt is has written down inescapable truths that are most definitely worthy of your time. I most strongly suggest you read them. She believes the future hangs in the balance.

Comparing Kindle DX models

Sadly, a couple weeks ago, I pulled my Kindle DX from its protective case and I discovered the 5-way control button had spontaneously cracked. I contacted Amazon and they sent me (for a little more money) Kindle DX Graphite--the newer model DX. As you can see here:

They wanted me to send back the old-broken unit, so I thought I'd record my side-by-side experience while I had them both in hand. The original unit is on the left, the new DX Graphite is on the right. (If you know what to look for, you can see that the 5-way control button has cracked. I hope Amazon used a better quality plastic in the Graphite.)

My son and I had a little argument about the display quality. Had it improved? If so, how much? My subjective opinion was that it was subtle, but a small improvement. Nevertheless, the argument prompted me to use my microscope to find out.

The following images show the e-ink display under a low-magnification:

The first image was taken of the older Kindle DX. The second image was the newer DX Graphite.

I also compared the displays with high magnification:

To be fair, my Kindle DX is years old and my DX Graphite is brand-spankin' new. Will the DX Graphite display quality degrade with time? I don't know. Ask me in a couple years.

A Proposal For Improving eBooks

Every book can have typos. Sadly, the rate at which typos occur--especially in ebooks--has increased at just the time when it might be easiest to report them. Books today are written on word processors with spell checking, but even the best spell checker won't catch a substitution of one valid word for another valid word--like there and their, or where and wear. And repairs

There are systemic reasons why ebooks often have a higher rate of typos than conventional books. This can be traced to the workflow of typesetting and printing that catches typos without propagating fixes back to the writer's original manuscript. This file is in turn converted to ebook formats.

I think we should turn the workflow inside out. Let's produce ebooks first, put them in front of a lot of alpha-readers' eyeballs to find typos, then propagate bug reports back to the writer to fix before typesetting and printing.

The trouble with the last paragraph is that it can be tedious to mark a typo in an ebook and report it back. I think technology can make this a lot easier and it can streamline reporting. Amazon could tweak their Kindle software to do this fairly easily, and if they get the @author thing working, it might be turned to this purpose. However, since Jeff Bezos doesn't take orders from me, I think we should modify an open source reader program--since we have the source. Pick one that runs on any Android device--cell phone, rooted Nook Color, or tablet. Maybe a Kindle Fire if Amazon doesn't get in the way.

To this application a programmer could add code to mark a word or words, where it appears in the text, what the problem is, and who the reporter is, pack it up in a well-formatted message, then transmit the message via the web to the writer. Bonus points for macro commands for the writer's word-processing program that will position the text at the location of the error as indicated by the report. And the reviewer's notes inserted as a comment.


The publisher could circulate advanced review copies to alpha/beta readers who'd use this system as indicated to improve the work's accuracy.

Since I'm a programmer all this seems very feasible to me. But I've learned that if I'm the only one interested in making something happen, progress goes very slowly. Does anybody else think this could be useful?

Leave a comment if you think so. If enough votes are in favor, I'll see about next steps.