MM
Hi MM, thanks for the questions.
Hi, Smashwords, and thank you for taking the time to answer people's questions. I just had a couple of comments of my own that I wanted to add.
An 85% royalty figure is high, but the figure itself is meaningless if people aren't selling a high enough volume of ebooks to make it worthwhile. Although Ebook sales are (I understand) increasing, they still only account for a fraction of the market. How does Smashwords intend to generate the volume of purchasers to their site that would make this a profitable venture for its authors?
I agree. Even a 100% royalty is meaningless without sales. Ebook sales only account for under 1%, possibly under 1/2 of 1%, of paper book sales. So for every ebook that sells, 100 to 500 print books sell. This is why we encourage our authors to publish in print as well (not that it takes any encouragement from me. Our authors realize e- is just one form of book consumption). We're taking multiple steps to achieve volume, but I have no illusions here - it's not going to happen overnight.
We have many obstacles to overcome:
1. 1/2 of 1% E. Even at the current 70-80% annualized growth according to the AAP, it'll still take several years before the E percentage reaches mainstream status.
2. In any form, e- or p-, it's tough work to sell a book! This challenge is made even more difficult because consumers are at their saturation point in terms of free and low cost media alternatives for their entertainment and information needs. Every form of traditional media out there is suffering, from television to newspapers to magazines. It's tough to hold consumer attention in this ADHD world.
3. Consumer awareness about ebooks is very low, at least here in the US (many other countries are more advanced).
4. There's great initial prejudice against ebooks when you first tell someone about them. It's only after people try them that *some* become fervent converts.
5. There's prejudice against self-published authors because some view the authors as failures and not good enough to get traditionally published.
6. There's prejudice and mistrust of self publishing companies thanks to the ongoing sins of the bad seeds that came before us, and of the ones that continue to operate.
So with Smashwords, we're working to overcome each of the above obstacles, as are our authors and many other players in the ebook industry. Again, it won't happen overnight and many of us will fail along the way. Like I think I said in an earlier post, I enjoy a challenge. For me, every time I see a new author publish their work on Smashwords, its a joyous celebration because I feel like I just helped that author get one step closer to connecting with readers.
More on how we're helping: Take a look at The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide - here's a link to the third page that highlights 14 benefits we provide our authors, all without them lifting a finger (other than the 5 minutes it takes to publish with us):
http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/305/3/the-smashwords-book-marketing-guide
In addition to the above, we're developing tools to help authors promote and sell their books. Many of our tools leverage the unique characteristics of social media, which, in other words, are word-of-mouth tools optimized for the Internet. We've already developed several tools, all outlined in the Guide above, and we're developing others. The most recent tool we announced just a couple weeks ago is a coupon code generator, so authors can generate their own unique coupon codes they can share on social networks, their blogs, their websites and their fan lists. Many of the tools we've developed so far, and the new tools that are coming, are do-it-yourself. The author needs to make the personal investment of their time to benefit from some of these tools.
As has been pointed out here, one huge advantage of a traditionally published book is the ability to receive overnight exposure in thousands of book stores. So in the digital realm, one of our opportunities is to do the same, only differently. Our forthcoming deal with Stanza, for example, will get our books and book samples in the hands of over 600,000 iPhone and iPod Touch users. Yeah, we'll be sharing that virtual shelf space with thousands of other books, many of which are free.
The problem for an author is in achieving that "it" and that "and" in the first place. At the risk of sounding mean, even though everyone is said to have a book in them, 90% of would-be authors shouldn't be trying to let that out. There are plenty of vanity and self-publishing outfits that are testament to the dross that comes out on the printed page and even though some blogs like PODY mouth tried to sort out the wheat from the chaff, even they found that the true gems were few and far between.
I don't disagree that some self-published books don't fit certain norms for quality, but the same can be said for many traditionally published books as well. I think when agents, publishers, editors and all the rest are at their best, they provide incomparable value (I know my wife and benefited enormously from the feedback of our agent, and the feedback from the editors who rejected our book). But the publishing industry is incapable of publishing all authors, and incapable of identifying all the great future writers in our midst. Many great writers aren't recognized as great until they and their contemporaries are long dead. At Smashwords, we believe it should be up to the reader to determine what's worth reading, not the agent or the publisher. The current buzz phrase is "wisdom of the crowds." It was drives many successful social media ventures such as YouTube. The idea is that the good stuff bubbles up to the top and the bad stuff falls to the bottom and disappears.
The thing about commercial publishers is that to a given extent they do operate a quality threshhold and produce a polished product. Self-publishing, by definition, doesn't have that quality bar and although you may encourage your authors to edit their work properly (even having it professionally edited), if the majority of work on your site is dreck then the talented authors are going to get lost within it and if your site ends up with a reputation for publishing anything and everything, what incentive is there for authors who want to be taken seriously to use it?
(Note: I have not checked out the work available on your site and am in no way impugning the abilities of those using it but apologise for any offence I may cause with the previous observation).
No offense taken.
I encourage you to check out some of our books. Some are quite good, and some will disappear almost as fast as they appeared.
Re: talented authors getting lost in the dreck, as I tell our authors all over the site in our FAQs and Guides and elsewhere, if an author simply puts their book on the site and does nothing else, they're not going to sell well. Most of our sales are author-originated, meaning the author send the customer to our store to buy. Our most successful authors are those that leverage the site as a sampling and selling platform. They've got blogs and websites and participate in the social media world and have followers, and they send their prospective readers to the site to sample and purchase. These authors send their readers direct to their Author Profile pages, or to their Book pages, so the reader doesn't need to sift through our virtual shelves to find what they want.
Then we come to the "and" - how does an author generate word of mouth? Commercial publishers have been trying to find the answer to that and use a variety of techniques from promoting web communities to providing free copies to book groups. The simple truth though is that a book either catches the public imagination so that people talk about it and recommend it or it doesn't. If a commercial publisher's marketing department can't make a book take off with their budgets, how is a self-published author supposed to do so with little or no support and only their own finances and experience to help them?
I agree, it's a huge challenge. We can't promise we'll do any better. In fact, I think I can promise we'll do worse, at least in the short run, thanks to the obstacles I mentioned above. But I'm also confident that one day we'll have our own break out hit that captures the imagination of not only readers, but authors as well.
One of the challenges in publishing is that you can publish a true masterpiece yet noone buys it. What makes a book resonate is not always predictable beforehand.
Finally there's the fact that even if a self-published author manages to make a few thousand sales of their book, a commercial publisher is going to have to work out whether in doing so, they've managed to tap out the potential market. This can certainly be the case with more niche non-fiction work.
I don't disagree. Every situation will be different. One of the impetuses for me starting Smashwords was the realization that there are probably hundreds of thousands if not millions of unpublished manuscripts tucked away in dresser drawers and attics that never got a chance to find their audience. We hope to give every author that chance to find their audience. We're very clear all over the site that we're not promising them anything other than that chance.
But the point is that for all that dissatisfaction, the author did get a cheque in advance as remuneration for their book and the publisher will have priced the royalties as against the expected performance of that book.
Authors whose books underperform against expectations are the ones who really have to worry because poor sales on a first book may mean that a second book will not be picked up, but this risk can be offset if the book has had good reviews or there is a good "feeling" about the second book at the publisher's marketing department. And even if an author does get dropped by a publisher, they still have the cash in their bank account from that first book sale and their agent will know the ways and means of getting a deal with another publisher (usually by submitting under a different name).
Agreed.
I agree that it's a personal call for an author whether they take an offer, but I'd suggest that for many people $4k in the hand is a damn sight more worthwhile than the possibility of maybe earning a couple of hundred dollars going down the self-publishing route (which is realistically the most that self-publishing authors can hope to make after taking their expenditure into account). And of course, the irony is that even if an author makes the sales necessary via self-publishing to attract a commercial publisher's interest, they still might not make more than $4k in advance on that book anyway.
MM
Right. Every author has a different threshold. Given the current average sales of most self-published authors, $4k would be tough for most authors to turn down. For me, given the thousands of hours my wife and I invested to research, write and revise our book, not to mention the $$ spent on editing and a book cover, $4k is insufficient.
Thanks for the questions.
mark