If you?ve got the passion, the plan, and the persistence, you don?t need an agent. The Indie Author Revolution: An Insider?s Guide to Self-Publishing is your friendly guide to the new era of self-publishing. Everything you need to create a quality book is within your reach, including editors, designers, printers, mentoring presses, e-books, and social media.
Visit Amazon for more information, or?view the first chapter for free.
- Frankfurt Book Fair: Not Enough Startups
- Frankfurt Book Fair: ?Mr. Bezos, tear down this wall!?
- Frankfurt Book Fair: Humble Hound
- Frankfurt Book Fair: Shellfish Subscriptions
- Frankfurt Book Fair: Gang Way for Ganxy
- Frankfurt Book Fair: Zola, for ?mile
- Frankfurt Book Fair: Beyond the Startups
- Frankfurt Book Fair: Keeping Up
- Amazonia: Don?t Get Comfortable / Kellogg
- Confabulation: High Gear
- Nobel for Literature: Mo Yan
- Craft: Three Tips From an Agent
- Books: Reading on the Ether
- MFA Programs: A Peacemaker?s Viewpoint
- Last Gas: A Good Year for Discoverability
Whoa, duck, fraulein! ? Another low-flying startup. Came in so hot, you couldn?t even muster a BookShout! to warn everybody.
Just missed Hall Six. We could have lost every agent and scout we?ve got.
I did not spot one literary agent at either of the digital conferences Publishers Launch or Tools of Change Frankfurt. Thoughts? Trams: the silent killer of distracted visitors like me.
That was no tram, that was another startup, incoming. BookShout! (exclamation point theirs).
Among the many startups that seem to unveil, unfurl, and unhinge themselves at Frankfurt, this is the one that Laura Hazard Owen says?Pulls users? Kindle, Nook books onto other platforms.
Alastair Horne (@Pressfuturist) got this shot of some good-looking German weather during TOC Frankfurt.
In her own startup practice drill, BookShouting gave Owen some trouble when she tried it for her paidContent report from Deutschland:
When I tested the import function through its iPad app (the function is not yet available on the BookShout website), it didn?t work at all for Kindle books.
When things are working, however, Owen reports:
The advantage for readers is supposed to be the ability to integrate their ebooks with BookShout?s social reading capabilities ? a goal that many startups have focused on, though it?s unclear that many?readers actually desire these features.
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Joe Wikert
That?s Joe Wikert at O?Reilly Media, seeing past momentary glitches when he issues his own appraisal of BookShout?s big landing at the Book Fair.
In Gamechangers: Two important announcements at TOC Frankfurt, he puts it this way:
Jason?s [Illian, CEO) company is helping us take the first steps towards tearing down the walled gardens around two of the biggest ebook platforms: Amazon?s Kindle and B&N?s Nook.
Citia produced a set of its signature ?cards? for TOC Frankfurt?s panel with Pottermore?s Charlie Redmayne and Atlantyca?s Claudia Mazzucco, with Horace Asymco Dediu.
His own trial run with BookShout seems to have been more successful than Owen?s.
I just moved all my Kindle ebooks into it. What a liberating experience. I was half-tempted to open my hotel window and yell out, ?Mr. Bezos, tear down this wall!?
(All quiet on the Seattle Front as yet.)
O?Reilly?s Tools of Change (TOC) Frankfurt conference was the setting for both the BookShout news and the unveiling of what Publishing Perspectives? Alex Mutter terms:
A lightweight, low cost e-reader designed to open up a new mass market for e-books.
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It?s the adorably named TxtrBeagle, the world?s cheapest ereader, at 9,90 euros (with a mobile carrier?s subsidy), about US$13 or ?8. In Txtr Unveils ?Disruptive? 5-Inch Beagle, Mutter writes:
Weighing a mere 128 grams, the 5-inch txtrbeagle is a comparable size to the new Kobo Mini, and is a trimmed-down, simple device?The device uses two AAA batteries and holds 4 GB of memory. Users can read up to five books simultaneously.
Mutter quotes Txtr?s CCO, Thomas Leliveld, describing the device?s target customer as a ??connected novice user??those who want simplicity, style and portability as opposed to high prices and lots of features.?
Keynote is in German ? + we are unintentionally challenging our speakers who are being quite cool headed ? sorry @ #TOCFFM?
And the device, writes Wikert:
Reminded me of a post I wrote more than two years ago where I suggested that Amazon should offer an extremely inexpensive Kindle with no wifi or 3G and just have it connect to your cellphone to purchase content.
The TxtrBeagle / Photo: Publishing Perspectives
Having given the concept a lot of thought, he?s good at positioning this puppy?s place in the e-firmament:
The Beagle isn?t for you or I?It?s for all those people who have yet to jump onto the ebook bandwagon. But imagine getting one of these free with your next cellphone purchase/contract. You buy ebooks on your phone and move them to your Beagle via Bluetooth. Brilliant!
Pending arrangements with mobile carriers, the TxtrBeagle?s launch should come in January or February, Mutter writes.
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As for startup news big enough that it was heard partway around the world in Frankfurt, this one made its splash-down in New York.
?ReadOyster.com? Wie liest man eine Auster??
Beats me ? I can?t even read fried clams, let alone oysters. Oyster is another startup, the one being compared in ambition to Spotify and Netflix, but for books.
Romain Dillet
Romain Dillet wrote that one up for TechCrunch: Oyster Raises $3M From Founders Fund To Finally Create An Unlimited Subscription Service For Books.
??We have several deals in place with several great publishers,? [CEO Eric] Stromberg said. The startup will share its revenue with publishers based on the number of times their book is read.
So the idea is that for a flat monthly fee, you read all the ebooks you want from a curated library. Pundits are arguing on private back-channels that $9.99 is the maximum the traffic will bear for such a monthly subscription. That may be hard to disagree with, considering Netflix?s streaming subscription for films is less than that.
@ Yes, ?hijacked? says it all. Makes me Eeyore sad. No book reader feels this way at all. Pub execs need a new POV.?
There is cordial caution about the mollusk-named book service.
Here?s Digital Book World?s Jeremy Greenfield in E-Book Subscription Service Oyster Gets $3 Million in Funding, Wants to Be Spotify for Books:
Despite the apparent opportunity, Oyster and similar companies face many challenges: Who holds the rights to publish the work in this manner? How are publishers and authors compensated for their work? And what measures will be taken to ensure the books aren?t pirated or that their value is diminished for other markets in some way?
But everything coming from the company about the procurement of content is upbeat.
Ryan Kim at GigaOM in Oyster gets $3M to become the Spotify of books, writes:
The app will feature a growing catalog of books, from national best sellers to classics, both fiction and non-fiction.??Oyster is looking at working directly with publishers, not with authors.
The leadership? at Oyster says it will be using social, curatorial and algorithmic processes to get smarter at what a given reader likes, in order to make recommendations.
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Action-adventure startups, you see. Just for Arnold, who has nothing to do with Ganxy, to my knowledge, but is also at Frankfurt as an upstart unto himself in support of his autobiography.
In Ganxy offers an easier way to sell and market ebooks, Owen writes:
The problem that Ganxy solves should be a simple one: How can authors and publishers market and sell books directly online from one central hub? But this question hasn?t had a simple answer until now ? partly because of the many ebook retailers out there, and partly because many publishers still don?t understand direct marketing.
Get.Ganxy.com is based on ?showcases.? An author or publisher uses the service?s tools to create a presentation for a book:
?that includes its cover, description, video and other marketing materials, and purchase options. Authors and publishers can sell books directly through the showcase or simply provide links to retailers. The entire showcase can then be tweeted, embedded in a blog, website or Facebook page, or can just stand alone as a website.
Ganxy is not a new one to us, actually. It was mentioned by Lorraine Shanley at Publishing Trends in Publishers Launchpad at DBW (the Digital Book World Conference) in January.
And it drew a positive note from Movable Type Management?s Jason Allen Ashlock in his DBW Expert Publishing Blog post Build something. Learn from it. Repeat.:
We have been wowed by the technology of direct sales specialists Ganxy.
Owen points out that Ganxy has an unusual funding posture in the startup world.
Ganxy is entirely self-funded. The company?s president is Aleks Jakulin, who previously taught data mining at Columbia and is an expert in artificial intelligence?Cofounder Cohen previously cofounded the German video identification company iPharro Media and worked at Merrill Lynch, Random House and MTV.
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Kevin Nance
And then there?s ZolaBooks.com, which I thought Kevin Nance described well in the Washington Post, as:
?A venture whose strategy is to combine all three of the e-book world?s major market functions ? retailing, curation and social-networking ? in an ambitious bid to become a one-stop destination for book lovers on the Web.
In Company delves into one-stop shopping for e-reading, Nance previews the project more thoroughly than Frankfurt-related writes did. For example, Nance reveals that Zola (yes, it is named for ?mile), has deals to make available ebooks from the Big Six and many other publishers, in a device-agnostic format.
What?s more, Nance writes, the Zola approach is friendly to independent bookstores:
Zola provides the bookstores with home pages (?storefronts,? in Zola-speak), then forks over 60 percent of the net profit from every book sold there. Zola users can even ?declare allegiance? to their favorite indie stores, funneling most of the profit from their e-book purchases back to their own neighborhoods.
Zola?s Joe Regal was part of a presentation in TOC Frankfurt?s innovations track on Tuesday, and produced some happy tweets during the presentation.
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The Book Fair, proper, opened on Wednesday.
The Publishers Launch conference that preceded it on Monday and TOC Frankfurt on Tuesday were written up as Two digital days in Frankfurt by Philip Jones at TheFutureBook?s blog.
Ecosystems and the discoverability gap have been the main themes running through the two pre-Frankfurt digital conferences, Publishers Launch and TOC, with how publishers add value, pricing, piracy, and inevitably DRM not too far behind.
In an area that has a lot of industry attention at this point ? the pricing of e-content ? Jones? post includes this:
Nielsen?s Ann Betts told us that e-book buyers do get accustomed to higher prices for digital content as the market matures, with $9.99 a popular price in the US now, compared to the UK where e-book buying was coalescing around 99p.
That may hearten writers who have feared a kind of permanent damage to their livelihood in the drastic discounting that can look like the proverbial race to the bottom.
And if you tell me that your DRM can?t be broken, I may also snigger slightly. #tocffm?
And Publishers Lunch?s Michael Cader ? who co-directs the Publishers Launch programs with Mike Shatzkin ? wrote of a major thematic through-line in Monday?s program in At Publishers Launch, Making a Customer Focus Work.
Benedict Evans
Cader writes of Enders Analysis? Benedict Evans? ?look at the larger competitive landscape of Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook to set context.?
He reminded the audience that ?Amazon is a mechanism for capturing the conversion of commerce to ecommerce. As each sector becomes susceptible to ecommerce it captures? that sector or buys those who already do.
?If Amazon is becoming the Sears Roebuck of the 21st century,? Evans suggested, ?the Kindle is its catalog. Even the Kindle Fire is primarily a purchasing product, not just for media, but for everything that Amazon sells.?
Charlie Redmayne
For his part, Shatzkin had previewed Pottermore CEO Charlie Redmayne?s comments about wanting ?to see if what we?ve done on Pottermore can work for other brands.?
The idea of Pottermore as a platform model for material beyond Jo Rowling?s output is exhilarating.
Jones captured it in his write, Redmayne plans to offer Pottermore expertise:
Redmayne indicated that the business was already working with one other brand, but declined to reveal details, though he later told The Bookseller that it was a ?non-book? brand. Redmayne said that part of the road map for the business beyond the Potter books was to work with other content businesses, including publishers, to help ?identify digital strategies.?
Rebecca Smart
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And as the trade show, itself, took over from these pre-Book Fair conferences ? Publishers Launch and TOC Frankfurt ? Cader captured a promising comment from Rebecca Smart of Osprey Publishingin the UK:
We?re making books for our customer, not finding customers for our books.
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Whether you?re bobbing and weaving (and tramming, Ginger) among the soaring startups on-site in Frankfurt or tracking things from abroad, there are updating guides available to keep you current and to present you with pages and pages of advertising.
There?s a strong one offered each day by Ed Nawotka and his busy Publishing Perspectives staff.
Here is today?s edition. It?s a PDF.
It?s called the Show Daily.
Then there?s this one from Publishers Weekly.
It?s a nifty Scribd format.
Here is today?s edition.
It?s called the, um, Show Daily.
And then there?s this extra-nifty one from The Bookseller (which is well worth your consideration for a subscription, its coverage being good for both US and UK industry issues).
It?s produced in Yudu with a cool page-turning effect that?s sure to make you miss some of your meetings at the Book Fair once you start reading.
Here?s that one.
It?s called, in a wild break with tradition, The Bookseller Daily.
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As if intending to bring back the emotional scars of not being popular in high school, Amazon has rolled out a beta version of something called Amazon Author Rank. If you are not an Amazon bestseller, you are not going to be in the top. Go on, sit over at the loser table.
Carolyn Kellogg
This is Carolyn Kellogg at the Los Angeles Times in Creating more neurotic authors: Amazon?s Author Rank.
As I write this, Dr. Seuss is #53. But from Kellogg, I learn:
Wednesday morning, Dr. Seuss appeared to be ranked 56th and 64th simultaneously.
Grisham is at #26, King at #28.
Philip K. Dick is at #20.
Hugh Howey
Hugh Howey ? who has just been added as a speaker at Digital Book World (DBW) 2013 in January ? is at #29.
Early Bird rates are in effect for that F+W Media conference until October 26.
There are two sides to the Amazon Author Rank. One is the public-facing one, where the 100 top-selling authors appear. The other is for authors? eyes only ? Amazon provides authors with the ability to see their own sales data in a portal called Author Central. Now the Author Rank has been added to it.
Here?s the ranking.
Authors have been crying out in pain on Twitter ever since.
Jeremy Greenfield at DBW takes a more sanguine stance on the new ranking:
The move is likely aimed at both readers and authors. For readers, it provides a way to discover other books by authors that may be topping best-seller lists. For authors, it provides both a benchmark for performance and a blueprint for success ? (read: ?how am I doing against other authors and what kinds of authors are successful right now?).
The list-toppers are Sylvia Day and E.L. James. Erotic. Of course.
Perhaps an Erotic Ether Edition (eee) is in order soon.
Kellogg offers this soft word to suffering writers:
In the meantime, for those authors who are worried about their rank: Just like being popular in high school, it may not mean all that much in the real world.
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With DBW?s Discoverability and Marketing confab followed by TOC Frankfurt and Publishers Launch Frankfurt (those are discussed above in this edition of the Ether), F+W Media now is about to bring the harvest home with three major conferences in Hollywood in six days.
The first is one of the most specialized and interesting of the year, StoryWorld, October 17-19.
Now in its second annual go (last year it was set in San Francisco), StoryWorld is focused on transmedia and brings together a huge roster of speakers, panelists, and observers to assess where things are in that realm so full of possiblity for literature.
Alison Norrington is chair again, and her cast of thousands includes the producers of Cybergeddon, a parade of top people from Disney?s Imagineering R&D outfit, and some of the leaders in the industry, including Jeff Gomez, Lance Weiler, Gunther Sonnenfeld, Elan Lee, Kathy Franklin, and a former Turner Broadcasting collegue of mine, Rhonda Lowry.
If you can?t join us there, watch for the tweet storm, starting on Wednesday at 8:30aPT/11:30aET. Hashtag #SWC12
Then two first-ever F+W conferences follow StoryWorld into the Loews Hollywood, both running October 19-21.
Screenwriter?s World is just that, with its own double Pitch Slam, and a three-track array of sessions on feature screenplays, the business of screenwriting, and ?the small screen and beyond.?
That one is hashtagged #Screen12 and its heaviest Twitter traffic should be moving around 8aPT/11aET on Friday, October 19.
And running parallel to the screenwriters is Writer?s Digest Conference West, a first doing of the big deal on the Left Coast (the annual New York conference is still very much alive and in the planning stages.
This one also has three tracks of breakout sessions at times ? though they?re not tracked by theme, you simply choose what you need and want to see most. It also has a double Pitch Slam and a huge roster of good people in place with sessions from craft to legal topics and marketing and a NaNoWriMo prep, an author signing showcase and enough more to raise a blizzard of tweets.
That hashtag is #WDCW12 and some noise may be moving as early s 12:30pPT/3:30pET Friday the 19th, from a boot camp session with Rob Eagar of Wildfire Marketing.
For an updated list of more planned confabs, please see the Publishing Conferences page at PorterAnderson.com.
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The Swedish Academy, announcing his win this lunchtime, said that ?with hallucinatory realism?, Mo Yan ?merges folktales, history and the contemporary.?
Alison Flood at the Guardian covers the announcement of the award ? traditionally made on the Thursday of the Frankfurt Book Fair, and coming just this morning Eastern time.
Mo Yan / NobelPrize.org
In her write, Mo Yan wins Nobel prize in literature 2012, Flood notes that Mo Yan is now the first Chinese author to win the prize. His name is a pseudonym meaning ?don?t speak.?
Mo Yan?s writing, said head of the Swedish Academy Peter Englund this lunchtime, draws from his peasant background, and from the folktales he was told as a child. Leaving school at 12, the author went to work in the fields, eventually gaining an education in the army. He published his first book in 1981, but he first found literary success with Red Sorghum, a novel which was also made into an internationally successful movie by Zhang Yimou.
Mo is 57, according to Reuters? Sui-Lee Wee, who adds some notes on influences including Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and D.H. Lawrence.
In her story, China?s Mo Yan feeds off suffering to win Nobel literature prize, she quotes his comments at Frankfurt 2009, in fact:
?A writer should express criticism and indignation at the dark side of society and the ugliness of human nature, but we should not use one uniform expression,? Mo said in a speech at the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair, according to China Daily.
?Some may want to shout on the street, but we should tolerate those who hide in their rooms and use literature to voice their opinions.?
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The good news is that these problems are all very fixable?so read on and see if you think your book might be suffering from these same three writerly mistakes.
Jenny Bent
Agent Jenny Bent offers authors Beginnings, Endings, and the stuff in between?a post from Jenny on editing your ms.
Wouldn?t dream of not passing them on to you, they?re real good. Her write gives you some quick depth on each note.
- You don?t need the first 50 pages.?? Let me clarify.? You needed to *write* the first 50 pages.
- Your characters need to *feel* more.?? I think ?show don?t tell? has been drummed into our heads so long and so often that we forget that we do need to let the reader into our characters? heads.
- Your ending is rushed.? Readers love a satisfying ending.?? Think of all the times you raced through a book only to feel let down by the ending. ?Try to go in the opposite direction with your book.
The horse?s mouth has spoken. Check it out.
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The books you see here have been referenced recently in Writing on the Ether.
I?m bringing them together in one spot each week, to help you recall and locate them, not as an endorsement. And, needless to say, we lead our list weekly with our fine Writing on the Ether Sponsors, in gratitude for their support.
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Writing on the Ether Sponsors:
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There?s incessant talk about the decline of poetry and a never-ending litany of literary controversies, but when it comes to drama, no subject leads to more hysterics than the popularity (and very existence) of MFA programs. MFAs have been variously described as a pyramid scheme, a place for relentless careerists, and perhaps most famously, a veritable fast food joint where mediocre poets produce ?McPoems.?
Sometimes you don?t look back at all those years on campuses with fond longing. Each time I hear of this long-running uproar about MFA programs in writing, I feel well out of it, frankly.
Brett Ortler
So it?s pretty gratifying to read editor and writer?Brett Ortler?s Drama in Poetryland in the Virginia Quarterly Review blog.
True to form in many disciplines and controversies, Ortler writes about the MFA battles with a youthful buoyancy and an easy gait through his own experience.
Here?s the awful truth the cynics don?t want you to hear: We?ve got no reason for cynicism. When it comes to poetry, we?ve actually got things pretty good. There are more poets (and therefore more poetry readers) than ever before, and MFA-trained poets are producing some damn fine work. The anti-MFA folks may be vitriolic and loud, but they?re a fringe group. They are the poetry world?s version of birthers.
Taking the typical complaints in turn (an MFA in writing won?t do much for you on the job market, etc.), he swats them aside.
In short: Don?t like MFA programs? That?s fine, don?t go to one. But spare us the outrage.
Ortler also walks you through his own financial experience of an MFA ? the loans, with actual figures. A pretty generous gesture on his part.
And he gets out the door without losing his balance.
So let?s ask the big question?was it worth it? In my case, yes. Professionally, as a writer, and as a person, my life is immeasurably better thanks in large part to my MFA. Can I say the same is true for everyone who pursues (or has pursued) an MFA? No, of course not.
His write is less about trying to change your mind than it is about trying to re-set the severe list at which this boatload of contention normally travels. When it comes to MFA programs, he needs ?win? nothing more than the chance to say that yes there are many drawbacks:
Nonetheless, I doubt I?m the only satisfied customer.
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A?monthly?selection of 12 wines are offered; the selection having been made by sommeliers on staff. First month, you answer 5 questions about your taste in food (do you like citrus? how do you take your coffee? etc.) and a selection of three bottles is made.
Brett Sandusky
At the risk of making you wonder why you?re in publishing, not wines, here?s Brett Sandusky going over one set of procedures for discoverability.
You can go with their selection or choose other bottles. A box arrives with your three bottles of wine. You enjoy the wine. While or after enjoying the wine, you are able to rate each bottle individually. This informs the algorithm.
What Sandusky is describing is what he calls, in his headline for the piece, Discover Me!
I argue that the first operation should and must be accomplished by humans. A curated list of products should be offered?This is similar to the ?staff picks? section of your local bookstore.
The next step, then (of two) is where algorithms come in, taking in the data a customer offers on his or her preferences and matching it up with potential new selections.
Here a machine is better than a human and can provide for efficiency and scale. Here, users get better selections based on a range of preferences and are able to truly find new things.
Sandusky translates this to books and the ?discoverability? dilemma so many of us in the industry are debating. And he ends ? in preparation for an appearance on this topic at Mini TOC Vancouver, Oct. 19-20 ? with a point worth considering:
Without involvement from publishers to accommodate this shared goal by changing how products are built and deployed, any ?discoverability? tool will end up as they are now: bestsellers across the board while midlist titles, in many respects the foundational canon of actual discoverability, are nowhere to be found.
In other words, we?re in trouble if we skip the human-curatorial stage. The machines can?t handle it alone.
In an update, Sandusky points to the new Amazon Author Rank we?ve covered above. In highlighting the existing bestsellers, he points out, the attention of readers is again focused on a small subset of existing success ? the machines, not people, have made a selection using wide-cast data, without anything specialized for a given reader.
?Another failure of real discoverability,? he calls it.
We?re not there yet.
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If you?ve got the passion, the plan, and the persistence, you don?t need an agent. The Indie Author Revolution: An Insider?s Guide to Self-Publishing is your friendly guide to the new era of self-publishing. Everything you need to create a quality book is within your reach, including editors, designers, printers, mentoring presses, e-books, and social media.
Visit Amazon for more information, or?view the first chapter for free.
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