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Amazon Bullying POD Writers and Publishers Unfairly

This news is circulating the net as I write, and no one seems to know how true it really is. The report came to me via Twitter, where someone mentioned Angela Hoy's article, "Amazon.com Telling POD Publishers - Let BookSurge Print Your Books, or Else..."

I hopped over to see what the hullabaloo was about and, frankly, I'm shocked! WHY would Amazon do such a thing? Is it possible they feel they're being left out of the POD profits the big guys like Lulu and Blurb make? I cannot believe that. Is it that...they're the 800lb Gorilla in the room so...they figure they can do what they want? (IMHO, we all know what eventually happens to bullies...)

From Angela's report, "Some Print on Demand (POD) publishers are privately screaming "Monopoly!" while others are seething with rage over startling phone conversations they're having with Amazon/Booksurge representatives. Why isn't anybody talking about it openly? Because they're afraid - very, very afraid." Um...afraid of what, Angela? Getting shut out of Amazon? They aren't the only game in town...

Over at TechCrunch, the comments section is flowing with a dozen different opinions on this issue. Self-published authors who have printers they trust, POD printers, are furious. Other commenters are curious - about the truth of it all. And still others are calling for an Amazon boycott.

Workboxers at B5Media quotes Angela, but also has links to others who quote the Wall Street Journal article.

I like PaidContent's title, "Amazon Tightens Noose on Print-On-Demand Publishers; Insists They Use Company's Own Service." To quote from that article, "Here's how an Amazon spokesperson sees it: 'What we're looking to do is have a print-on-demand business that better serves our customers and authors. When we work with some other publishers, it's not truly a print-on-demand business."

What!?! Creating hardship for authors is good customer service? What if I don't want to use YOUR POD service, Amazon? What if my brother or uncle or sister runs a great POD shop and I want to use him or her? What gives YOU the right to call them "not truly a print-on-demand business?" (please don't pull the 'self-published books aren't professional' whine out of your hat - that's as patently untrue as assuming books published by the big boys are all literary masterpieces!)

What IF... POD publishers and authors just move all their content to Barnes and Noble?

That's what's being whispered (sometimes quite loudly) across the net. I have to agree.. If you're a self-published writer and you are happy with the POD printer you're working with, why not move your business to Barnes and Noble? Amazon can have the BookSurge authors. All the rest of us will use our God-given American right to CHOOSE the print-on-demand publisher we want, and we'll get our books distributed at B&N, and independent book stores and a good number of online venues.

In the end, if we don't stand up for ourselves, who else will?

Michael Drew and Publishing

Just stopped over at Michele Miller's Wonderbranding (stuff that's good for you) and found this exciting post on Creating a Bestseller.

She's writing about Wizard Academy partner, Michael Drew, and his new resource on the world of publishing: Beneath the Cover. I took a look at the site and it has some excellent content on it. (not enough women, though... Michael, call me... I'm ready to help out).

The likes of Bryan Eisenberg and Roy H. Williams are included in the contributor's list. There's a link for guest contributors, but the only one that I can see is David Meerman Scott. (the site is new... and the content is outstanding, so... they will likely add guest contributors in time)

Of course, they have a blog, Push the Key: Improve the Book Industry, While Improving You. It's off to a  good start. As with our blog, here at Aha! (authors helping authors), they seem to be focusing on education, not marketing.

It's important to learn as much as you can about the process of writing and publishing, if you really want your work to be a success. As Michael Drew says in his June 29th post, "Bestselling book promotion experts Rick Frishman and Robyn Freedman Spizman suggest that you'll get the attention of publishers if you speak their language - and that's the language of profit and loss."

The title of the post is, "Publishing is a business"... which is exactly what we try to explain to our authors, time and again.

Google's Unbound Conference Tells Publishers "Embrace the Change"

On January 18th, Google brought together "thought leaders and publishing industry veterans who are taking advantage of our increasingly digital world—from blogs and social networks to print-on-demand and online access." It was an "all-day love-fest for book publishers", as Kevin Newcomb over at Search Engine Watch notes, with Google "trying to persuade publishers that [it] could be their friend, and not a book-stealing upstart that just won't follow their antiquated publishing standards." There is a lot of fear in the mainstream publishing industry of Google's BookSearch. 

The conference included many luminaries of the new media, including Chris Anderson (author of "The Long Tail"); author and marketing guru Seth Godin, Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing (and according to Godin, the Michael Jordan of data overload skill, and Tim O'Reilly.  The innovators from the Institute for the Future of the Book, who blog at If:Book, thought that through the conference Google was taking a sort of a carrot and stick approach, telling them that giving away content will, in the end, lead to more sales, while making it clear to mainstream publishers that that if they don't embrace this change it will happen without them.  As Seth Godin closed during the conference (based on one account): "In five years you're either going to be the center of the universe, or you're going to be ... Pluto."

I've found a few more links out there discussing the Unbound conference.  I'm sure there will be more, but thought I'd collect those I found for you here (with some money quotes):

• Publishing Unbound, Google-Style over at Galley Cat.
  
  • "...what especially hit home was how publishing is not best served by a conglomerate approach - because how can one model be applicable for education, science/technology/medicine, non-fiction and fiction? Answer: it can't.")
• Google opens dialogue with book publishers over at CNET News.com.
  • "At "Unbound," the tech-savvy authors, publishers and analysts more or less agreed that to grow and profit in an increasingly digital world, the publishing industry will have to expand its boundaries."
• Free is the New Paid over at On the Turning Away.
  • "As befitting the zeitgeist, the power of the user will dictate the future of the publishing industry. Three segments are emerging in today’s publishing world – printed works, print-on-demand and inventive entertainment – in which authors create personas through multimedia channels, all of which are marketed by search, social communities both on and offline and workflow. The challenge for publishers will be to leverage these channels to create books that users will engage."
• Change is Now, and Free Sells over at The Long Blonde Tail.
  • "The time for (big) change is now. For an incredibly conservative, slow-to-adapt, traditional industry, this is no small feat."
• Four posts over at WebMetricsGuru, who blogged about each session here , here, here (Seth Godin) and here (Cory Doctorow).

They're Out There: A Fifth of Readers Visit Author or Publisher Sites

[Note from Tom: I know no other bloggers experience this, but with our book publishing work directly with authors at WME Books and our other blog work, Yvonne and I feel like we don't get enough time to post in this blog and engage with our A-ha! readers. So we're very happy to have some more help ...

New to A-ha! ... introducing ... Posts by Greg!

Greg Bell, our new A-ha! blogger, is a partner in D.S. Leach Consulting, with his wife Dianna Leach. Both of them will be posting about book publishing here and about blogs at our business blogging blog, WME Blogs. Greg has much to share from his experience both in book publishing and in building and publishing blogs (check out his Jazz@Rochester blog), so let's just dive right in with Greg's first post on A-ha!]

According to a recent report on the Publisher's Weekly website, a survey of a sample of 813 readers conducted by the New York advertising agency Spier-New York found that 18% of readers have been to a publisher's Web site and 23% of those polled had visited the site of an author. A higher percentage of those who visited authors' (35%) or publishers' (21%) sites were under the age of 35 (which as the post notes, is not surprising). The survey also found that 50 percent of those asked said they purchased a book as a gift within the past year. While 89% of those who bought books as gifts apparently bought from a brick-and-mortar retailer, there were still 28% of them bought their book gift online. Also encouraging is that 86% of those buying books as gifts bought at least two books. Using the total number of books sold in a year (it was over 709 million units in 2005) the actual numbers of readers involved could be pretty impressive.

So, is there anything to take away from this survey? To start, it shows that people are still buying books as gifts. And, most importantly for A-ha! readers, an author's or publisher's website (or blog) is becoming increasingly important in driving those sales.

Seth Godin's Advice for Authors

What Seth calls a "short list" of advice for authors reads a lot like the chapter outline for another great book! Nearly every one of his 19 items could stand more elaboration. Maybe we'll get the chance to revisit the list items individually, but for now we especially recommend these excerpts:

2. ... build a blog ...

3. Pay for an editor ...

7. Think really hard before you spend a year trying to ... get your book published by a 'real' publisher ...

8. Your cover matters [i.e. pay for a professional cover designer] ...

12. Blog mentions ... matter a lot.

And the one that should crystalize the most important and valuable ROI a nonfiction author should be focused on (hint: it's not cash in the form of advances or royalties):

19. Writing a book is a tremendous experience. It pays off intellectually. It clarifies your thinking. It builds credibility. It is a living engine of marketing and idea spreading, working every day to deliver your message with authority. You should write one.

Read # 19 again, slowly, line-by-line, and let those benefits sink in:

Writing a book is a tremendous experience.

[Wtiting a book] pays off intellectually.

[Wtiting a book] clarifies your thinking.

[Publising a book] builds credibility.

[Your book] is a living engine of marketing and idea spreading, working every day to deliver your message with authority.

You should write one.

Now GO! Read the rest of Seth's tips . . . and follow some of the trackback links, too (some good ones here, here, and here, but the list keeps growing every time I go back, so explore).

Podcasting Book Deal

We're excited to be involved in the forthcoming book on podcasting announced yesterday by our friends Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz. Yvonne acted as their agent (how's that for Authors Helping Authors?) and she's blushing over the nice things they wrote about her in their blog announcements.

The book will be called “How to Do Everything with Podcasting” and published by McGraw-Hill as part of its “How to Do Everything” series.

You'll be able to follow the progress of their work in their podcasts at For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, as well as a new blog devoted to the book (coming soon at www.podcastingbook.net). You can start by listening to their podcast recorded Thursday on location at the New Communications Forum in Palo Alto, California.

(Neville and Shel podcasting from New Comm; photo by Phillip Young)

Can Self-Published Authors Get Noticed?

We're asked this question a lot. Most authors want their work to be noticed. It's the first step toward selling, of course, but in some cases getting the author noticed may be a major goal in itself.

Usually, we respond with examples down through history, from William Blake to Mark Twain to John Grisham, sending people to Dan Poynter's extensive list.

But today we can't help but point to one of our own: Dr. Stephanie Siegrist. She's quoted and her book, Know Your Bones: Making Sense of Athritis Medicine, is mentioned in the holiday issue of Woman's Day magazine (Dec. 6, 2005; pg. 54).

It's also worth noting that the connections that lead to Stephanie being interviewed for this article came through her and Yvonne's blogs.

So yes, self-published authors and their books can get noticed. The trick is in

1. Producing a book worth noticing (Know Your Bones qualifies; check the sample chapters for yourself); and then

2. Using the available tools to help promote it (do we need to say it again? Blogs work! Check the Wall Street Journal article "Book Publishers Build Buzz Early, Hollywood Style," online version, or print version, WSJ, 12/1/05, p. B1, col. 5).

Advice for the Blog-lorn

Good information over at Debbie Weil's blog BlogWriteforCEOs on her book deal with Penguin Portfolio. Note the timeframe involved from first contact to contract signing. And, when the book will actually be out. This link to Elizabeth Wales' agent information is invaluable.

We congratulate Debbie on her accomplishments, and recommend her advice to all. While we promote self-publishing using an author services company, and the quick turn around of Print-on-Demand, there is something to be said for having an agent and getting a book contract from an old-fashioned publisher.

In this case, Debbie was already way ahead of the curve. Not only is she already a published author, she's personable, smart, talented, and in the know. All the qualities one needs to be an A-list blogger and famous author.

We know that the old-fashioned world of publishing is taking a long, hard look at us -- independent publishers who use POD. They're looking for good work, authors with talent, and places to partner with. If you visit Tom and Marilyn Ross's webpage on some high-powered self-published authors, you can see how this venue might be a good way to get started. Then, you can be just like Debbie Weil: writing great stuff and sharing insight into the way to a publisher's heart.

One of the best things about Debbie is her openness. She's blogging her book...how cool is that? No wonder she gets the right attention from the right folks.

Books and blogging: it's a match made in heaven, whether you're using an author services company or an old-fashioned publishing company.

Once Upon a Time When I Wrote a Book: Part III

While I am not as consistent, nor as prolific, as my good friend David St. Lawrence at Ripples, I am committed to continuing the saga of how I wrote and published my first book, using an existing POD company.

In the months since launching my own Authors Services company: Authors Helping Authors, for which this blog is named, I've learned more than I expected to learn, about old-fashioned publishing, vanity press publishing, and print-on-demand. Understand that I went into the goal of beginning my company with a lot of experience, not only from the months working with the company which published my book, but from YEARS of dealing with old-fashioned publishers. And yet, my knowledge of how this industry works has grown a hundredfold...and, I believe, will continue to grow every day that I stay in business.

Let's look at some of the problems I had with the publishing company I chose to help me with Dickless Marketing: Smart Marketing to Women Online. It should first be noted that I researched the POD industry by exploring my online options...

What was out there? Who was offering POD and what kinds of authors were choosing to use this new technology? My decision to choose AuthorHouse (which used to be 1st  Books, and is named here for the first time) was based on their website (was it up to the standards I was going to write about in my book?) and how long had they been in the business of offering POD? I also looked at a number of their books. They seemed the best choice, overall...

What ensued, over an eight month period, was a disappointing experience, as I've noted before here and here, and a burning desire to show them how to REALLY be an author services company, using POD.

As I mentioned in previous posts, the communication level at 1st Books (it's hard to remember to call them AuthorHouse) was less than satisfactory. Except for my original contact, Brian. He was, and continues to be, a gem. Beyond Brian, I was assigned several other account managers...who knew nothing about me or my book, as evidenced by their inability to answer questions when we first met -- via email, of course. But, even on the phone, these folks were clueless about me, about my book, and about where the project was in its development.

I was often reduced to sending repeat emails, and then...phone calls, in order to get a reponse. For the most part, the account managers did want to help -- they gave the appearance of wanting to help -- they promised to help -- but, generally, it was only through consistent nagging that Ifinally got attention. That was my first clue that perhaps I'd made a mistake.

Part II of this story explains how I finally got to the galley proofs of my book. I don't want to rehash that here, although you may click back to read it if you need to. Suffice it to say, the galley was a complete disaster. 1st Books produced incomprehensible pages...with images overlaying text and all bullet-points removed from my bulleted lists. When I called my current account manager to question how this could have happened, this conversation ensued:

"Clark, have you looked at the galley?" Not hard-copy, yet. Digital.

"No, I don't look at the galleys That's part of production."

"Do you suppose anyone in production LOOKED at the galley before sending it out?"

"I don't know. Do you want me to ask?"

"Why, yes...or, give me a phone number and I'll ask."

Clark took it upon himself to ask. He called me back a day or two later to say, no, no one at production had looked at the galley before sending it to me.

<SIGH>

Tom and I spent days -- literally days -- fixing their mistakes. We asked again and again -- what page margins do you want? What sizes and types of images can we use? How can we make this print-ready and avoid making the same mistake?

We sent the reformatted and revised manuscript, via email, and waited. A new galley came back. It was okay. But, it lacked some updates in my stats -- so we signed their correction form, gave them the proper page, paragraph, and lines that needed changing, and sent it along, all the while keeping our fingers crossed. What came back, a week later...was the original, badly formatted manuscript, with the corrections added in!

Can you image the frustration? Can you imagine how sick I became? I was two-months overdue for launch. I'd done some premarketing and now...it was for naught. People were going to forget all about "Dickless Marketing," or worse yet, when it finally came out...I would have lost first-mover advantage. The women's market was taking off...it was late 2003...I needed to get this book published before Christmas, now it was going to be well into 2004 before it would see the light of day because...it once again needed to be reformatted.

Once again, Tom and I worked on the corrections. Before sending it, we turned it into a PDF. We were finally sure that this was it -- this copy was the one that would go to print. And so, the book was on its way.

After signing off on the hard-copy that arrived within 10 days (with inferior paper, but...I could NOT afford to haggle over that...time was of the essence and my readers, who had been invaluable throughout, said the poor paper quality wasn't worth waiting another untold number of weeks to fix)...I called Clark and said, "Send it to print. Now, let's get started on the press release."

You see, I had paid for some marketing, including a press release, with the expectation that an established company would have more clout to get my book noticed, than I -- a fairly new author.

Clark said he would have marketing get in touch with me.

It took more than a week for marketing to call me. With this information,"We can't help you with your book. We're afraid the title will offend a little old lady in Texas, and get us in trouble." Yes, they said, "a little old lady in Texas"...

Eight months. I worked with them on this book for eight months. For eight months they knew the title of my book. I signed for the marketing package when we were three or four months into the project. I ASKED if the title was going to be a problem and was told, "No, why should it be? We will note that it's a spin on Dick and Jane..."

As you may imagnine, I was not a happy camper. I insisted on speaking with the marketing manager. Michael Johnson called me and relayed the exact same information, but assured me I could have my money back, and that they would still send me their free "How to Market Your Book" booklet, as well as write my press release. But, I would have to distribute it.

And so...we are at the end of Part III of "Once Upon a Time When I Wrote a Book," and...we have a book, but, no help with marketing. In Part IV, you will learn what I did to remedy that situation, how I parlayed their inability to get over the title (which I have received more compliments on than I can count -- and a number of critcisms which change to laughter when I explain the Dick and Jane pun) into working to my advantage, and how I discovered...the printing of my book was being outsourced to Lightning Source (another POD company) which, in turn, was sending the job to ... Rochester, NY. My hometown!

The printer printing my book was only a few miles away from where I lived!

That was the final straw. That information, and a subsequent visit to Colorcentric, convinced me that I could compete with 1st Books...because I have the experience and the talent, because I know what it means to be an author, and because, I live in THE hub of the print-on-demand world.

Part IV to come later this summer...sooner, one hopes, than later...but...WME Books is growing nicely and I am hard at work on the second edition of Dickless Marketing, so...we will take up the final part of this story in August.

Print-on-DEMAND, or Extreme Publishing

What do you say when your friend Anita calls, tells you she's editing a book for a friend of hers (motorcycle industry guru John Wyckoff), and asks if you can have the book printed and delivered to a trade show ... in a little under three weeks?!?!?

You say, "Sure, no problem," of course.

Well, actually you ask a bunch of questions about how close the manuscript is to being done, file formats, sizes, quantities, cover design, and so on. Then you check with your new best friend at local printer City Blue Imaging for a quote and delivery estimate.

But in the end, Anita's a friend ... so your answer is basically the same: "Get it to us by next Wednesday and we'll get it to the conference on time."

Then you hang up the phone and scream, "How are we going to do THAT?"

After another few moments of panic, you take a couple of breaths and get to work. In this case, we had several things going for us. First, we had a couple of days before the manuscript would arrive to work on a cover design, assign an ISBN and obtain the Bookland EAN barcode for the back, and think about the inside layout of the book itself.

Second, the book contained only a few simple black and white graphics. The tables and a scanned form were no problem. The clip art graphic used as logo for the chapter headings needed some fussing in Photoshop to create a clean, 300 dpi image. But that was nothing compared to the complex images and varied formats that are invovled in most book projects.

Third (and most important), we had Anita doing the editing. (As an aside, Anita ran an interesting post on her blog the other day from Guest Author Wayne McVicker, discussing his own experience and advice on self-publishing his book, Starting Something.)

Anita was working in Microsoft Word, which produces files that are generally unusable for commercial print projects. But she understood things like the need to format the pages as facing pages with alternating inside margins and how to create margins that corresponded to the finished 5.5" x 8.5" trim size.

Working with Anita's manuscript made it much easier than most to flow the text into a professional page layout program (we use Adobe InDesign CS). Adding page masters for the headers and footers and inserting the front matter completed the task.

Here's the result: we were able to overnight 100 copies of his finsihed book, MYOB-2: The Complete Guide to Profitable Powersports Dealerships, to John in time for his attendance at the 2005 V-Twin Expo held in Cincinnati January 29-31.

And he sold all but 4 on site, without any pre-marketing, signage, a booth of his own, or any of the usual preparation.

Okay, it was not as easy, or as smooth, as I'm making it sound. There were lots of little glitches, big gulps, and another scream or two, over those two and a half weeks.

And yes, there were trade-offs -- the biggest one being that we had no time to send the print proofs to Anita or John. They got to look at PDF's of the cover and page layout online and had to take it on faith that the print proofs looked even better. I doubt any of us would have been willing to make that trade-off, but for working with friends.

We definitely don't recommend turning out books at this pace, as a regular practice. But in this case, John had a great opportunity to show off his new book at an industry trade show and sell a few copies to start creating buzz.

POD, a great editor, and help from an author services company made it possible for John to seize that opportunity.

In similar circumstances, we'd probably answer, again, "Sure, no problem." And then hang up ... and scream ... and then get to work.

Authors helping authors. A-ha!

Getting Ready to Print

Most people think of writing a book as sitting down and pounding out a manuscript, using the word processing program on their computer. Maybe they have in mind including a few photographs or other kinds of graphics (clip art, charts, tables, screen shots).

Getting that far is a lot of work, of course, but it still leaves the author a long way from a professionally printed book. Just how much important work remains became clear to me recently. I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Douglas Holleley at the Rochester Institute of Technology's "Getting Into Print" self-publishing fair.

Dr. Holleley's presentation on using your desktop computer, scanner, and printer to produce a book led me to his book, Digital Book Design and Publishing. In the Introduction, he reminds us of many of the tasks that go into making a book:

To make a book one adopts a series of roles that, in the not too distant past, were whole fields of specialized study. Consider for a moment the steps involved and the level of skill required at each stage.

When one makes images for the book, one is a photographer. When one writes the words that accompany the images, one is an author. When one places these words into an appropriate format, making decisions about type styles and typefaces, one is a typographer. When one commences to assemble all this material into a coherent package, one is both editor and graphic designer. One then proceeds to turn to the equivalent of a reprograhic camera operator, a platemaker, a printer ...

You get the point. Finishing the manuscript certainly is a major step. But several equally vital steps remain before you can hand over a disk, or upload the files, to a printer and expect a quality book to come back.

Fortunately, there is help. Holleley's book provides an enjoyable trip through the history and important concepts behind the typographic, page layout, and graphic design tasks that can now be performed with the help of powerful software, such as QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign (for typography and page layout) and Photoshop (for image preparation). He then shows how anyone willing to learn these programs, who has access to a computer, a digital camera and/or scanner, and a printer can turn out a professional quality book.

I've read and used Holleley's book and found it extremely useful, despite the fact that he focuses on QuarkXPress loaded on a Mac and I use InDesign on a PC. It's a tribute to how well he explains the fundamentals that his tips and techniques translate easily to newer versions of the software on a different platform.

For those who want to write a book, but don't have the time or inclination to learn all the skills, or adopt all the roles, required to get the manuscript ready for printing, we suggest treating it in a business-like fashion: Staff your weaknesses. Hire a professional editor (this one is probably essential, regardless of your skills), a graphic designer, and a skilled page layout professional.

Or, connect with an author services company (like WME Books) who can create a customized package of services to handle only those tasks you don't want to do for yourself.

You don't have to do it all alone - a probably shouldn't.

A Gathering-place for Authors and their Ideas

Again, a warm Welcome! to everyone. And we do mean everyone, since we believe the adage that everyone has at least one BOOK in them.

Yes, that includes you. Remember that book idea that's been germinating in your head for ... what, years now? This blog is meant to help anyone with the desire to take that idea and nurture it into the book you've always dreamed of writing.

Along the way, we'll all learn from each other. Our successes and challenges will provide guideposts to smooth the way for the next author.

A-ha! Authors helping authors.

Which reminds me, where are my manners? Introductions are in order.

We're Yvonne, Tom, and Maryanne, the ones who'll be writing the main posts. That was Yvonne writing yesterday. This is Tom writing today. And you'll hear from Maryanne tomorrow.

Confused? Well, don't worry. It's like we've just met and been introduced in a group. It may take a couple of visits for us all to get comfortable. Think of this blog as a virtual gathering place, like it's the watercooler or coffee area at WME Books, where you can stop by and get to know us. As you do, we're going to share our experiences with our own writing and encourage our authors to do the same. We hope you'll join in, too, with comments and maybe a guest post?

We're writers and bloggers ouselves. Yvonne is well known for her Lip-Sticking blog focused on marketing to women online. Tom's is called Knowledge Aforethought and he writes about "collecting and connecting the dots" (i.e. knowledge management and information design). Maryanne recently launched her own blog, Maryanne's Blog: Powdering Our Noses.

Together we all work to help others join the "bloggersation" (Maryanne's word) with our Business Blogging Boot Camp seminars and the supporting Business Blogging Boot Camp blog.

There, that gives you a start on who we are. What we want to share here are books ... and the ideas that fill them ... whether they've been written yet or not ... by us, or one of our authors, or you.

Please join us.