Archive: Posts about Books
December 6th, 2009, 2 Comments »
Last Sunday I saw “The Road”, adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name. It stars Viggo Mortensen as a father struggling to protect his son as they journey through a blasted, post-apocalyptic landscape.
The book was remarkable–I wrote about it here (take a minute to listen to the audio sample in that post–you won’t regret it). I place it alongside Netherland as the best written books I’ve read in a decade.
In my mind, then, the film had big shoes to fill. The book is all atmosphere and mood, with a pretty skeletal plot, so it was well-suited to adaptation. As I remember things, every event of the book appears in the film, though sometimes in a diminished role. I’m always encouraged when this happens–most adaptations from novels are both too long and too hurried.
In every respect–the grey, dystopian world, the sparse dialogue, the wasted cast of characters–the film accurately reflects the book. In fact, it’s the truest adaptation of a novel I’ve seen since Gary Sinise’s Of Mice and Men. As such, everything I had to say about the novel is true of the film. The movie making craft on display is, in every respect, exceptional.
The film, more than the book, highlighted the theme of how parents are sometimes burdened with parenthood. The incredibly bleak prospects which the father and son face in “The Road” mean that the father must confront some nearly unthinkable possibilities in protecting his son. There weren’t many dry eyes in the house by the end of this film, but I can’t imagine being the father of boys and not being deeply affected.
It’s not an easy movie to watch. If you’re up for it, I recommend “The Road”.
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December 3rd, 2009, 3 Comments »
As regular readers know, I recently co-authored a book about social media marketing entitled “Friends With Benefits”. Before that, we wrote an ebook on the same topic. We distributed the ebook as a PDF, enabling people to buy it through PayPal. The traditional book is published by No Starch Press and distributed by O’Reilly Media.
A longtime reader asked that I write a post comparing the two approaches.
Editorial Decisions
If you’re self-publishing, you have complete control over what your book is about. You can publish a book on as narrow a topic as you like (”Capri Pants of Upstate New York, 1963 to 1965″), and you get to decide what goes into the table of contents. When we wrote our ebook, we pretty much skipped MySpace because, well, we didn’t know a lot about it, and we didn’t feel like learning.
On the other hand, we negotiated the book’s outline with our editor. This proved a healthy and useful process, as it ensured that we covered all our bases. We did, however, have to write a chapter on MySpace. That was almost certainly the least fun chapter to write in the book.
An editor has a ton of earned wisdom which they can impart to you. They’ve confronted hundreds of decisions–from ideal chapter length to whether website names should be italicized–that the self-publishing author needs to consider.
Length
Your eBook can be as long or as short as you like. A traditional book has certain expectations around length. In addition to the practical marketing requirement that it occupy enough shelf space to be visible to the bookstore browser, it needs to seem substantial enough to merit its price.
Our eBook was about 25,000 words long, while “Friends With Benefits” clocked in at 90,000. The latter, obviously, is a lot more words than the former.
Marketing and Promotion
With a self-published book, you do all of the marketing and promotion yourself. If you’re up for this work, and maybe have done some kind of marketing in the past, this isn’t a big deal. It’s a lot of work, but it’s not rocket science. If you’ve never promoted anything before, then you’re going to face a learning curve.
Publishers offer marketing help. I hear a lot of authors complain about how little marketing support publishers offer, but they may not understand the economies at work inside publishing houses. The publisher may have dozens of books to promote, and few (or one) staff members to do this work. Our publisher helped with a lot of the marketing legwork–writing press releases, pitching reviewers (we helped assemble the list of reviewers to contact) and so forth. Knowing what I do about publishers and marketing, I’m entirely satisfied with their efforts.
I should also mention the process of signing a book deal. For us, it was super-easy. We were introduced to a literary agent, and she asked us to write a three-page proposal for the book. Armed with that and our ebook, she got interest from a publisher within a couple of weeks. I think we got really lucky, so your mileage may definitely vary.
Production Process
When creating an ebook, you can apply as much or as little design work as you like. I’ve seen ebooks that are style-free Word documents, and ebooks that look indistinguishable from published books. I made the mediocre cover of our ebook myself. It’s adequate, but certainly nothing to write home about. The self-published author needs to handle or outsource all of the production aspects–cover design, layout, illustration, indexing and so forth. For our ebook, we hired a designer we know to tweak our layout and give us some good advice on how to make the book look more professional.
If you’re planning on using Blurb, Lulu or the like to sell your self-published book, be sure that you layout our your book to their standards. This was one of the reasons we didn’t use these services–we couldn’t be bothered to match our layout to their requirements. Another reason, if I recall correctly, was that some services only accepted US-based customers.
The publisher takes care of all of this for the author. In a couple of cases, I simply drew illustrations on our whiteboard, photographed them and sent them along to the illustrator to render as actual diagrams. We’re very happy with the cover and illustrations in our book.
Earned Credibility
Obviously there’s a difference between self-publishing a book and convincing a publisher to produce your book. The latter includes an implicit endorsement of you and your work. Of course, we’ve all read really bad books from publishers and great ebooks, so one should take this with a grain of salt. However, there’s no question that people view published books as more ‘legitimate’ than self-published ebooks. Take that for what’s it worth.
Money
Here-in lies the rub. As I said in an earlier post, you don’t write a book to make money. You can, however, write an ebook to make money. The math is pretty simple.
- We sold our ebook for $29. After transaction fees, we made about $27.25 per book.
- On our actual book, after our advance, we make less $2 per book.
It’s a little hard to say at this stage, but we’ll probably make about the same amount on the actual book as we did on the ebook.
If you consider all the above factors, the ebook is by far the better money-making proposition. Say you spend 100 hours writing and producing a 25,000-word ebook. Then you spend another 100 hours promoting it, and you sell just 500 copies at $27.25 a book. You’ve just earned $13,625, or about $65/hour. Not serious money, but better than a kick in the pants with a frozen boot. This is doubly true if you’re passionate about the subject matter. Plus, if you write five ebooks, and offer them for sale in perpetuity, then there’s a lot of potential for ongoing passive revenue.
Which is Right For You?
If you want to make money, go the ebook route. You’re the captain of your own fate, and your hard work can translate directly into hard-earned cash. If you’re looking to (as we marketers say) ‘establish expertise’ and ‘build your brand’, then get a publishing deal.
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November 25th, 2009, 2 Comments »
At the book launch last night, my brother reminded me of this awesome New Yorker piece entitled “Subject: Our Marketing Plan”. It’s written as an email from an intern to a book author, and simultaneously pokes fun at so many things:
- Web marketing and its endless jargon.
- Authors’ very common anxiety around promoting their books.
- Tightening belts, cost-cutting and staff turnover at publishers.
- General workplace incompetence
Here’s my favourite bit:
Do you blog? If not, get in touch with Kris and Christopher from our online department, although at this point I think only Christopher is left. I’ll be out of the office from tomorrow until Monday, but when I get back I’ll ask him if he spoke to you. We use CopyBuoy via Hoster Broaster, because it streams really easily into a Plaxo/LinkedIn yak-fest meld. When you register, click “Endless,” and under “Contacts” just list everyone you’ve ever met. It would be great if you could post at least six hundred words every day until further notice.
I should mention that, perhaps because our publisher handles mostly technical books, they ‘get’ the web, and have been very pleasant to work with on a promotional (as well as every other) front.
2 Comments »
November 24th, 2009, 19 Comments »
As regular readers know, I recently co-authored a business book. Though I once wrote some humongous manuals as a technical writer, and we previously wrote a 100-page ebook, this was my first grownup book. As you might expect, I learned some lessons about the process. On the day of our book launch, I thought I’d share eleven lessons with you:
- It’s way more work than you think it will be.
- A co-author is an excellent idea.
- This may be obvious, but if you get a publishing deal, you’re immediately on a schedule. There’s no looking back. If you want to write the book on your own time, write it first and then look for a publishing deal.
- There’s probably just enough time to write the average book in a year and a half of evenings and weekends.
- If I had to divide up the process, I’d say it’s 40% thinking and research, 30% writing a first draft, and 30% rewriting and proofreading.
- Don’t be precious. As a professional writer, the more I’m paid to write something, the less likely I am to receive credit for it. So I’ve learned to be fairly fire-and-forget about my writing. It’s probably not worth the emotional effort to argue with your editor or publisher about small stuff. Win the big battles, and let go of the rest.
- Once you submit a first draft, a ton of people touch your book. Our book had an editor, technical reviewer, copy editor, proofreader, production manager, graphic designer, cover designer and indexer (a soul-destroying job–I speak from experience). That excludes the marketing people and the publisher himself.
- You’ll never have enough time to make the writing as good as it could be.
- I forget where I heard this, but there’s so much truth in this quote: “Publishing isn’t an industry, it’s an organized hobby.”
- Amazon punishes publishers for missing publication dates. So publishers tend to initially set a publication date which is strikingly far into the future. Don’t let this panic you.
- This was something I already knew, but it’s worth mentioning: don’t write a book to make money. For the vast majority of authors, it’s not a moneymaking proposition. Write a book to spread your ideas, to earn ‘because-of’ income through speaking, consulting and so forth, or to get the perceived endorsement as a capital-a author.
19 Comments »
November 17th, 2009, 20 Comments »
As you may have heard, the Amazon Kindle has finally come to Canada. Chalk up another late victory for the digital content ghetto that is our sprawling nation. We join the likes of Kyrgyzstan, Libya and Oman as countries able to use the gadget.
I’ve played with a Kindle a couple of times, and they’re pretty nifty things. You can store about 1500 books on them (have I read that many books in my life? Surely not) and the battery apparently lasts for two weeks worth of reading. Amazon offers about 300,000 books at US $12 or less, and you can get a bevy of newspapers and magazines online as well.
And yet, I don’t want one.
Cost, Backlog and Snobby Appeal
First there’s the cost. With taxes and import fees, the Kindle is going to cost at least CAN $325 before you buy a single book. Given that you might save an average of $10 per book by buying digital versions, you can start realizing cost savings after buying about 30 books. I wish I read more, but 30 books represents at least two years worth of reading. And who knows what options will be available by then?
Yes, it’s thrilling that I could carry a ton of books with me on the go. But, I don’t have a too-many-books-to-carry problem. I have a not-enough-time-to-read problem. I have at least five or six Audible credits waiting to be used because I’ve got a backlog of audio books which I haven’t listened to yet.
Plus, I’m totally unexcited about yet another electronic device which requires recharging. Plus there’s the ‘valuable object’ problem. If my bag gets stolen and there’s a book in it, then no big deal. If my Kindle gets stolen, then that’s a bigger problem.
Finally, there’s the snobby appeal of having your walls lined with bookshelves, and those bookshelves lined with books.
It’s a cool object, and I can see why lots of people want one. If I ever go back to school, for example, the idea of having all of my text books on one device sounds awesome. Still, I’m not salivating about yesterday’s announcement from Amazon.
Do you want a Kindle?
20 Comments »
November 13th, 2009, 5 Comments »
Can I get an amen?
That’s good news. I wasn’t looking forward to selling little USB drives at our book launch if the actual books got held up in customs.
They smell a little odd, if you stick your nose right in them (as I always do with pretty much everything). That’s probably just because they came fresh and direct from the printer.
5 Comments »
November 3rd, 2009, 5 Comments »
As I mentioned, our book (see also Amazon) is coming out later this month. In celebration (and relief), we’re holding a book launch party on November 24. Here are the details:
Date: Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Time: 7:00pm - 11:00pm
Location: Autumn Brook Artists Gallery, 1545 West 4th Avenue (map, view from street)
We’ll do a brief talk at some point in the evening, followed by a short reading from the book. We’ll also be available to personally inscribe the many, many copies you’ll surely be purchasing to give out as Christmas gifts.
Sundry details:
- Appetizers will be served.
- Convenient cash bar.
- Autographed copies of our book will be available for purchase for $20.
- There’s lots of street parking around, or you may want to consider parking on Granville Island and walking up to the gallery. Otherwise, the location is served by many lovely bus routes.
If you’re local to Vancouver, feel free to stop by. Please either RSVP to the Facebook event or, if you’re not the Facebooky type, drop us a quick email at rsvp@capulet.com.
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October 28th, 2009, 6 Comments »
Our book’s release is imminent. We should have it in our hot little hands on November 20 or so, and it will be in stores virtual and actual shortly thereafter.
We’ve been doing some marketing for the book–mostly soliciting blurbs and reviews. However, we’re going to fire up our book blog for at least a couple of months (here’s the RSS feed), and have plans to make a short-lived podcast that will feature readings from the book.
We adapted our book site from our old ebook site, which is why it may look familiar to a few of you. My first blog post over there is about a lack of magic beans:
We can often, however, divide our students into two big groups: those who get it, and those who don’t. Those who get it nod when we talk about the exciting possibilities of Foursquare, and say they’re inspired by the case studies we share. Those who don’t tend to fret about and focus on perceived barriers like copyright and privacy. They look for reasons to discount social media as a viable marketing channel.
On a related note, we were debating as to whether we should set up a Facebook page for the book. I wonder if it’s worth the effort, given that we don’t have the bandwidth or attention span to make it a longterm, sustained online community.
A Matter of Priorities
On another related note, at BookCamp Vancouver, I participated in a panel with the lovely and super-smart Monique and Deanna. Somebody asked me why, when they visited this site, they couldn’t find any information about the book. Given that we were advocating that authors need to become more engaged online, they asked it with a certain amount of relish. I may have even seen them high-five their colleague at the back of the audience.
I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the way I answered the question, and wanted to give it another crack. To me, the stuff I promote on my site is a balancing act. I don’t want to inundate people with ‘asks’, so I generally try to limit myself to one item at a time. Before October 15, I was running a Blog Action Day badge. Now, on internal pages at least, I’m running a banner for TckTckTck.
Will I eventually stick up a little ad about the book? Yep, though if you’re a regular reader, you already know about the book. You’ll buy it, or you won’t, and the ad probably won’t change your mind. Besides–and I don’t want to sound ungrateful here–the book is just one project among a bunch of things I’m doing. So I don’t feel a need to pimp it more aggressively than I am.
6 Comments »
October 16th, 2009, 7 Comments »
Today I attended BookCamp Vancouver at SFU. It’s was a well-run, well-organized event that frequently featured an engaging exchange of ideas. It probably could have used a few more of the unconference features that make BarCamp so special. I expect some industries are more comfortable than others with this kind of open, egalitarian model, so better baby steps than none at all.
Throughout the day, I recommended a number of articles to various writers, editors and publishers. I figured I might as well gather them here in case they’re of interest. Long time readers have probably seen me recommend one or more of these articles before:
- The Economy of Ideas by John Perry Barlow - From 1994, but still pretty relevant today. Extremely prescient for the time. “Even the physical/digital bottles to which we’ve become accustomed - floppy disks, CD-ROMs, and other discrete, shrink-wrappable bit-packages - will disappear as all computers jack-in to the global Net. While the Internet may never include every CPU on the planet, it is more than doubling every year and can be expected to become the principal medium of information conveyance, and perhaps eventually, the only one. “
- The Next Economy of Ideas by John Perry Barlow - Six years later, and even more insightful. I’ve been saying this next sentence ever since I read this piece: “Art is a service, not a product. Created beauty is a relationship, and a relationship with the Holy at that. Reducing such work to “content” is like praying in swear words.”
- 1000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly - I recommend this to every artist I meet, regardless of medium. It’s an extremely elegant way of thinking about fostering community and building an audience. For some reason it reminds me of the central metaphor in Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird”. “A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.”
I wanted to offset those first three from the next two because the former are truly remarkable, visionary pieces. The next two are smart thinking and worth reading, but might pale a bit by comparison.
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September 28th, 2009, 3 Comments »
Last night, courtesy of the Vancouver Comedy Festival, we watched George Strombopolous interview Steve Martin at the Orpheum Theatre. There was no particular framing around the evening–Martin wasn’t promoting a book or movie–just a reasonably informal chat in front of an adoring, apparently sold-out crowd.
I’m not a big fan of Strombopolous’s public persona, but he’s a reasonably capable interviewer. The conversation meandered through Martin’s youth, his stand-up career, his movies and other sundry pursuit–he’s a bit of a Renaissance Man.
Though I don’t consider myself a huge Steve Martin fan, I’ve actually consumed a ton of his work. I’ve seen most of his movies (excepting those made ‘for the whole family’) and at least one of his plays, and I’ve read both his novels and his autobiography. He writes charming, readable books, and his autobiography was a fascinating study of one artist’s mind.
Having read Martin’s autobiography, a number of his entertaining anecdotes were familiar to me. Still, it was a funny evening. After 35 or 40 years on-stage, he’s just an innately amusing performer. Looking dapper in a linen jacket and striped socks, he was kind of everyone’s funny uncle. Though I’ve never made this connection before, his physicality reminded me quite a bit of Alan Alda–skinny, white hair, all elbows and knees.
An Adoring Audience
And everyone else seemed to agree. I was surprised by the youthfulness of my fellow audience members. I wasn’t particularly scientific, but I’m pretty sure the majority of the audience was born after 1976, when Martin stopped regularly doing stand-up comedy. I saw a couple of my friends from the theatre community there, which seems natural, but I was, frankly, shocked at how many people paid $60 to $185 to watch Martin chat with Strombopolous and play a couple of bluegrass tunes on the banjo. And they were so smitten. They gave Martin a standing ovation when he walked out on stage.
Maybe it’s a supply and demand question: the opportunities to see him locally, in any guise, are pretty rare.
A significant chunk of the evening was given over to questions from the audience. As they always do, these ranged from the inane to the insightful, and people frequently started by gushing about how much they loved the comedian. I could have done without this. I’d rather watch a succinct, well-run 80 minute interview–I came to hear from Martin, not his fans.
My only technical complaint is that the sound seemed pretty poor. I was toward the back of the main floor of the house, but I often had to strain to hear what Martin and Strombopolous were saying. Strombopolous, in particular, is a bit of a mumbler. If that was the best the venue could do for amplification, they might have been better off not using microphones at all.
A few random quotes from the evening:
- Martin described the movie poster for The Lonely Guy as “the worst movie poster ever made”. He’s right.
- “3:00pm is the worst time for comedy.”
- When asked, he admitted to occasionally reading the message boards on his website. He said, “if there was a discussion forum about you, wouldn’t you read it?”
Rebecca scored an interview with Canada’s boyfriend yesterday, in case you’re looking for more Strombopolousity.
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