An ‘interesting’ month

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Barry

Shortly after my last blog post all four of our websites were the victims of a hacker attack on HostPapa’s web server. Anyone visiting the sites received a blast of anti-Israel propaganda – in Turkish! With hindsight it wasn’t sensible to have all the sites on the same server, but it was the easiest option.
If nothing else, it has had the effect of making us sit back and reconsider what we are trying to achieve. I’ll be announcing some major changes to the Moorhen Publishing operation in the next couple of weeks together with a change of direction for me.
The big publishing news to break while we were under attack is Amazon’s continuing squeeze on free books.
Continue reading →

A Look Back Over 2012

Posted on January 5, 2013 by Barry

A rather belated Happy New Year! May 2013 bring you peace and happiness.
2012 was a difficult year in many respects. The weather, of course, made normal life all but impossible for thousands of people whose homes were flooded. The terrible weather didn’t just affect the UK, of course, with communities across Europe and Asia also being hit. As I write this news is coming in of floods claiming lives in Brazil. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, South Australia is suffering stifling heat and forest fires are sweeping Tasmania. Continue reading →

What should Indie authors be writing?

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Barry

Given the freedom that the Kindle Direct Publishing platform has brought to authors, how should they be taking advantage of it?
I blogged recently about how the short story is ideally suited to the world of KDP as it makes possible the publication of material that simply cannot be economically published in print format.
It is also clear that it is now possible for writers of specialist non-fiction to produce material, publish it and promote it easily via the Internet to small special-interest groups.
But what about full-length fiction? How do Indie authors make an impression on a market that is not only well catered for by the traditional publishers but is swamped by the thousands of Indie books pouring out week by week?
I seldom post on the Amazon Fiction Forum. This is mainly because I find it very difficult to join in without revealing that I’m doing so from a writer’s perspective and that tends to disturb the delicate sensibilities of those posters who are constantly on watch for anything that carries a hint of self-promotion. It’s a lot easier to just observe. Occasionally an interesting debate takes place and recently one centred on what should Indie novel writers be publishing.
The point was made that it doesn’t seem very sensible for an unknown author to expend an enormous amount of time writing a novel that drops neatly into one of the standard genres such as crime, romance or thriller. Any fan of such genres is already spoiled for choice. There is no need for them to take a chance on an unknown author when they can buy a book by a well-established, proven writer and know that it will be well written, professionally edited and proofread. If price is an issue the reader can pop into any charity shop and buy an excellent book for 50p.
The feeling was that Indie authors would be more successful if they produced work that traditional publishers would be frightened to touch: work that is original, challenging, controversial – or just plain different. There is simply no point in Indies producing books that are just like the output of the traditional publishers.
That, of course, is much easier said than done. For one thing, most Indie authors don’t want to be Indie authors; they would much rather be on a contract with a traditional publisher. So they have followed the standard advice and written books that drop into standard genres that traditional publishers know how to market. It’s only after receiving a stream of rejection slips that most Indies become Indies and then they are publishing the books rejected by the traditional publishers as being no better than their existing output. Hardly a recipe for success, is it?
Two authors who are successfully writing and publishing material that would unnerve traditional publishers are Stuart Ayris and Rosen Trevithick.
I’ll soon be reviewing Stuart’s latest book, The Bird that Nobody Sees so all I’ll say about it here is that it’s brilliant. It contrives to be both humorous and deeply moving, but it’s the original content and the writing style that would terrify a traditional publisher.
Rosen’s output varies between the stunning depiction of mental illness and the outrageously funny. Her latest novel, Pompomberry House delves into the world of Indie authors. I don’t suppose traditional publishers would touch it as they like to pretend that Indie authors don’t exist.
If you haven’t read these two authors then I strongly recommend that you do so. Their work shows precisely what Indie publishing should be striving to achieve.

Waterstones to sell Kindles

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Barry

James Daunt is the CEO of Waterstones who was appointed by new Russian owner Alexander Mamud. A few months ago Mr Daunt launched a media offensive against Amazon, ridiculing the experience it provided for book-buyers and describing the company as ‘a ruthless money-making devil’.

It is hard to believe that that was the same Mr Daunt who has just announced that Waterstones will soon be stocking the Kindle, Amazon’s own ebook-reader.

To say that this has come as a shock to the book industry is very much an understatement. There has been a rumour (now clearly unfounded) that Waterstones was about to announce that it would be stocking the Barnes & Noble Nook, in a similar tie-up to that between W H Smith and Kobo. The rumour was readily believed because it appeared to make perfect business sense. Now the book industry is reeling as everyone tries to make sense of the development.

The Los Angeles Times has provided a useful summary of the media reactions here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2012/05/waterstones-deal-sell-amazon-kindle-dismaying-many.html . The overwhelming feeling is that the UK’s leading High Street book retailer has shot itself in the foot.

The reaction that really caught my eye compares this deal with the one between Borders and Amazon, describing that as one of the contributing factors towards Borders decline into collapse.

The brief announcement raises a lot of questions. For example, what is Waterstones going to do about all those customers who have bought one of the Sony ebook readers it has been selling in recent years. Those readers use ePub files (as do Kobo, Nook and all the Apple devices) and do not support the mobi files used by the Kindle range.

A further announcement is to be made in August. I doubt if an announcement about books has ever been so eagerly awaited.

Virginia Woolf vs John Locke

Posted on May 12, 2012 by Barry

These two authors, both enormously successful in their own way, probably represent the opposite extremes of fiction writing. One advantage of the eBook format is that it gives the reader inexpensive access to both.

The Complete Works of Virginia Woolf is currently available on Kindle for only £1.95 – and if it hadn’t been so cheap I wouldn’t have bought it. From time to time over the years I have had another look at Woolf’s work. She has such a reputation as an influential, modernist writer that I can’t help feeling that my inability to appreciate her books must be due to some failing in me. So, I grabbed the £1.95 bargain and had another go.

It’s no good; I simply can’t cope with the 250-word, oddly-punctuated sentences and the strange perception of what is important. She can spend pages describing the trivial and then deal with the death of a central character in a single phrase. It’s time I accepted that I really am afraid of Virginia Woolf.

John Locke could hardly be more different. An American writer, who sold well over one million copies of his eBooks in five months, has shown what digital publishing can do for independent publishers if they are prepared to totally embrace the new technology. Before taking up writing Locke had already made himself a millionaire. He started selling life insurance door-to-door and was so successful that he grew his own life insurance agency to 7,000 salesmen. He expanded into property and owns a dozen shopping centres. He has applied the same hard-nosed business practices to eBooks.

He decided on a genre that he thought would be popular (thrillers about an ex-CIA assassin) and wrote several books with the same central character before really launching his marketing campaign which basically relied upon efficiently working the social networking websites. He has gone on to write in two different genres, but all being undemanding, pure entertainment books. Locke has turned down a conventional publishing contract, but has entered into a distribution agreement so cheap paperback copies of his books will appear in retailers like Walmart. His eBooks are cheap – he has the stated ambition of being ‘the world’s greatest 99c author’.

His reviews show that readers either love him or hate him. He certainly isn’t bothered about making a contribution to the arts.

Given a choice of novels between a John Locke or a Virginia Woolf, I know what I’d choose.

eBook pricing

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Barry

The fact that the U.S. Department of Justice has instigated legal action against Apple and a number of major publishers is an interesting development. This has been much commented on, but many of the comments give the impression that it is the agency agreement basis of trading that is under attack.

As I understand it, it’s not the agency pricing model that is the basis of the legal action. All of us Indie publishers operate on an agency pricing basis with Kindle books – we set the prices and Amazon takes an agent’s commission for acting as a conduit for our digital books. It seems a perfectly sensible way of operating.

The legal action is actually based on the claim that before supplying books via Apple on the agency basis the big five publishers colluded and agreed to undertake price-fixing. It’s a claim that Penguin and Macmillan flatly deny. It will be interesting to see how the court case progresses.

What always struck me as odd is that when ebooks became available the major publishers supplied them to Amazon under the wholesale agreement that applied to print copies. It seemed to me that the product was so utterly different in the way it is distributed to the consumer that the supply should have been subject to a different form of agreement from the outset. I read that, rather belatedly, publishers are now refusing to renew their existing annual agreements with Amazon.

Apart from the sales model, there are many complaints from consumers about the prices charged by mainstream publishers for ebooks. The feeling is that with no printing or warehousing costs and with very low distribution costs, the price should be a small percentage of the printed copy price. The publishers still have to cover their basic admin costs (submissions, selection, editing, proofreading, formatting, artwork, marketing, accounts, royalties), and instead of printing and warehousing, they have to pay for the creation of the digital files in different formats and IT delivery systems. They are also stuck with the bizarre position that ebooks, unlike print copies, are subject to VAT, which in the UK adds 20% to the price. All they are doing is sharing their costs over both print and digital editions – and trying to make a reasonable profit.

I very much doubt if mainstream publishers feel that they have to price-match Indie publishers. They feel that they are offering a product that the buying public will perceive as superior – in much the same way that BMW doesn’t worry about price-matching with Fiat. But books aren’t cars and it’s a superiority complex that may prove costly.

Eventually the pricing of ebooks will settle down. Currently the pricing of the books is being used as a marketing weapon in the ebook reader wars. It makes me laugh when I see the W H Smith Kobo advertising campaign. Here we have a bookseller telling its customers that if they buy an ebook reader they will have access to 1,000,000 free books. What sort of business plan is that for a bookseller?

There’s no money for Amazon, either, in giving away books. I don’t think it will be long before the only free books are the out-of-copyright classics.

“May you live in interesting times” is a Chinese curse that has come to pass for authors/publishers.

Still, mustn’t worry about these things. The appalling weather means that most of our small boat fishing fleet hasn’t put to sea, so Brixham’s pubs should.l be pleasantly busy – I’m off to find out.

Responses to Posts

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Barry

When I first started a blog about my self-publishing activities there were plenty of comments made by readers. I had a break from blogging for a couple of years and since my return I’ve noticed a significant change. My posts still generate responses from readers, but now the vast majority come in the form of emails to the mail@moorhenpublishing.co.uk address, rather than as comments to be made public as part of this blog. Let me give a couple of examples.

I’ve been taken to task by Jane, who works for a mainstream publisher. She says that I was unfair when I laid a lot of the blame for the current problems of independent bookshops at the door of the publishers. My point was that by giving enormous discounts to the supermarkets and Amazon, the publishers are making it impossible for the bookshops to compete and many are closing. However, Jane insists that many booksellers could do a lot to help themselves if they would deal direct with the publishers, rather than buying through wholesalers, as by doing so they could eliminate the substantial charges of the wholesalers and double their own gross profit margin.

I can’t argue with that. In fact, I deal with this point in my guide to self-publishers that will be published in the next few weeks. Bookshops tend to order a small number of books from each of a large number of publishers. Placing those orders via one or two wholesalers means that the bookshop only has to deal with one or two invoices each month, rather than than with dozens. This greatly reduces both time spent on admin and bank charges. I have to agree with Jane; with better computerisation of their record-keeping and increased use of online banking, bookshops should be able to reduce their dependence on wholesalers and do more to help themselves. But they are going to need very positive support from the publishers before it’s too late.

I also received a complaint from Anthony who feels that I have fallen into the trap of identifying ‘bankers’ as the sole source of many of our current financial woes – and he’s right. I did fall into the trap of euphemistically using the term. I’m sure that most decent people were shocked by the October report from Incomes Data Services revealing that the average annual income of a director of a FTSE 100 company had risen by 50% over the previous 12 months to £2.7m. We have the sickening spectacle of this cosy closed-shop electing to continue pushing up their own remuneration to obscene levels while imposing severe pay/pension restraint on their employees. The Government pretends to be appalled, but does nothing except say that it is up to shareholders to hold directors to account – but most shares are held by institutional investors and those high-earning fund managers are part of the problem.

Changes underway

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Barry

Lots of changes underway at the moment. Revised/updated websites are being launched for my personal site and for Moorhen Publishing. A third site focussing on the new self-publishing guide will also appear in the very near future. This blog should soon be operating actively, so please come back and join in.