The Self Publishing Boom And How It Gave Birth To Unsuspecting Authors

We have to admit that self publishing is now a very acceptable means of putting your work out there.

To quote Mediashift, "Mid-level authors already know that the era of large advances, generous royalties, book tours and media spots are over. They have to spend their own time and money to create a website and publicize their books. Publishers just don't have the resources to offer them full support. Why? The Internet, online bookstores, e-books, and an economy in decline are cited as some root causes of the steady slump in the traditional publishing industry. In 2005 sales were down by 9 percent (and have continued to fall). Yet in 2006 print-on-demand exploded."

Sure the big names like Random House might still make a difference in terms of publisher credibility but the power of the big publishing houses are no longer as prominent as they'd like it to be. Self publishing has blurred the definitions and means of "HOW" to get published as long as well they see the light at the end of the tunnel and eventually just get their book to the marketplace.

Today's definition of self-publishing includes subsidy and vanity presses, print-on-demand companies, and book packagers, which many would like to clarify as being publishing or author services companies.

"Author Solutions' brands -- AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Trafford, Wordclay, and Xlibris -- have published more than 120,000 books by 85,000 authors," Publishers Weekly's Lynn Andriani reported her article.

In the end I think it's going to lean a lot on the author's preference, ambition and capacity to pay.


Read the full article, Self-Publishing, Author Services Open Floodgates for Writers

Why does Scribd work as an online selling tool for books?

Scribd is deemed the newest challenger to Amazon. However this was pretty much discovered accidentally by publishers. One author - Bob Seidensticker, complained just a year ago that his book was being made available on Scribd.com (this is short-hand for scribbled by the way).

Scribd quickly took it down after the complaint was posted by publisher, Berrett-Koehler.

However one thing led to another & Scribd was later on discovered to be a very viable marketing venue for books.



Here's some background: Simply put, Scribd is like the Youtube for printed material. It's simple enough to understand - people get to upload material on to Scribd like presentations, files & yes... books too.



So how do we make money off this? Scribd is now uploading excerpt for books on to its site. It's quite similar to Amazon's "Search Inside" feature so it isn't that big a deal really. However publishers seem to be attracted to the idea of having a thousand more views than normal.

The combined material makes Scribd a proverbial library of excerpts for book lovers to enjoy. The lay-out is also pretty simple (in fact it's a knock off of Youtube so it's not that hard to figure out)



So there you go. A new marketing venue for your book. Scribd is FREE by the way so there's no cash out to join. They get a cut from books that are sold through their store though, but I bet you it's not as high as Amazon.

I've been to the site a lot of times because search engines usually lead me there when I'm looking for some items on literature, research material & most of the time non-fictional work. The pages are saved as text so imagine the depth of the content for your book as well as the categorization.
I don't think Scribd will beat Amazon, but I do think it's a worthwhile option to consider.

The Future Of Book Publishing

I've always wondered what will book publishing be like in the future given the rise of so many new technologies like the ebook and the internet, will we stop reading books? Just as the encyclopedia is slowly growing out of style and obsolete by the minute, will books in general lose its place?


Here are the statistics for book publishing via Thad McIlroy's future of publishing

1. Nielsen BookScan, quoted in the June 2007 Harper's magazine (available to subscribers only), reported that nearly 1.5 million different titles were sold in the United States in 2006, although 78% of those titles sold fewer than 99 copies, while only 483 titles sold more than 100,000 copies.
2. A ground-breaking 2005 report by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) revealed that there are 62,815 active publishers in the United States, and that 46,860 of these publishers had revenues below $50,000 per year. (Most observers would have placed the number well below 5,000; in 2002 the U.S. Census reported 3,570 book publishers.) In 2006, using a slightly different methodology, the BISG reported that there were in fact 88,528 "active" publishers in the U.S. Nearly 68,000 had sales under $50,000 per year.
3. Book publishing remains arguably amongst the least digitized of publishing industries, and yet this lack of automation appears not to have hampered the business. What might improved use of digital production bring to the bottom line? The industry has only begun to explore the many opportunities that the Web is offering, in terms of promotion, sales and distribution. There remains a significant upside here.
4. With all of the demographic changes in print readership, book publishing industry has weathered the challenge, in part through the publication of more specialized titles in shorter print runs, in part through increased publications of "non-books" (novelty titles) and in part through improved distribution method, including on the Internet.
5. In the separate section on Education I cover the textbook industry. While it currently remains profitable, growth has stalled, and the move to new electronic media poses a very serious threat to this $20 billion sector of the book publishing industry.
6. Despite some modestly positive trends, the underlying basis for a successful future for the book publishing industry is rapidly being eroded. As reported below, reading rates are dropping drastically, and average annual household spending on books dropped 14% between 1985 and 2005 when adjusted for inflation.
7. On the other hand, e-books do appear to be rapidly (and finally) gaining a foothold in the industry, both substituting for and augmenting print sales.

My overall rating for the future of book publishing is a continuing modest decline in total sales volume, but certainly not an impending catastrophe.

According to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), "the total number of films released in the U.S. in 2007 remained on par with 2006 with 603 films released." (They have subsequently revised this figure to 590 in 2007, vs. 599 in 2006). According to Bowker, the book publishing industry "bible," "(in 2004) publishers in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand released 375,000 new titles and editions." While I can't find updated worldwide figures, a May 2008 press release from Bowker reports that the company "is projecting that U.S. title output in 2007 increased slightly to 276,649 new titles and editions, up from the 274,416 that were published in 2006."

Getty Images Helping Authors And Book Publishers With Book Images

I know how it feels trying to find just the right image to compliment your thoughts, trying to find just the right illustration to convey how you feel... that one picture that speaks a thousand words to better emphasize your theme and help you tell your story. It is very difficult to find the right picture to compliment your words in just the way you want it.

So here comes Getty Images. They just opened a Book Zone that has tailored offerings for book publishers, including images, footage, music and more.

They have a specialized book team to help with everything from image searches to licensing with galleries across a broad range of book-publishing themes as well.

I think it's a very timely service, having the kind of database that they have. Getty Images though is a tad high-end so depending on your budget you should consider your options carefully

Near-Time Develops Book Building Website

Wiley Technology Publishing and Wrox Press partners with developer Near-Time to generate a wiki-based software that allows books to be viewed in an online publishing platform, reports Publisher's Weekly.

Wiki-based software allows publishers to post interconnected content permitting users multiple levels of access to the text itself, along with other digital functionality.

“Publishers want to extend the e-book format,” Near-Time’s Joel Bush said. “Our technology offers publishers the ability to get consumer feedback, add rich media, create an online community or even make a book available online while it is still being edited.” Bush noted that the software lets publishers revive interest in backlist titles and easily promote new titles. Near-Time’s software also allows publishers to offer content free or through subscription access or to support the text with advertising.

I think it's kind of like Google Book Search only that it publishes books while they are still in the process of being completed. Somebody's still writing the book and it's already available online, kind of like a soap opera on television where you can await the next chapter. In itself, this concept I think holds a lot of promise and peril for authors. This will help authors be motivated if they know someone is already interested in their work. But it can also be a haven for plagiarism and content piracy issues.

Book Publishing Statistics

I just finished reading Susan Driscoll's book, Get Published. And here are some insights I got from that book about how traditional publishing works. But first to start with some statistics

• As of 2005, the book publishing industry in the US was worth $5.2 billion. And there was already a 10% decrease of titles published this year compared to 2004


• Five publishing conglomerates control 80% of books sales and together they have published 23 thousand titles. That's less than 5% of all books published


• 87% of retail bookstore sales in 2004 came from only 7% of the books published that year. Translated to units, that's less than 1,200 new titles selling 50,000 copies or more


• The rest of the books, the other 93% - sold less than 1,000 copies each

Based on that, if you manage to sell more than 10,000 copies of your book, you will be considered a success in the book publishing arena. Then you'll be a best-seller! At least you'll be in the 90% percentile and better than 22 thousand other titles.

No wonder traditional book publishers are very picky about who they want to publish and how careful they are about accepting manuscripts. Major book publishers must lose a lot of money on a majority of the books they publish.

If you take it from this perspective, it will be easier to understand that they must acquire and promote titles that have high probability of selling. In any case, book publishing is still a business regardless of how passionate writers are about their manuscripts. Publishing companies need to make the money.