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To "e" or not to "e"? The Question Becomes More Pertinent Every Day
Stephen King brought ebooks into the headlines "with a bullet" this past June. He's kept things stirred up by "planting" a new seed, publishing and distributing an ebook completely on his own through his personal website.
The percentage of authors who can actually pull off such a kingly marketing feat is small, of course, but that doesn't seem to deter everyone from first-time authors to mid-list veterans from getting involved.72-year-old William F. Nolan is the author of 65 books, 135 short stories, 600 nonfiction magazine pieces, and 40 screenplays. He is best known as co-author the sci-fi classic Logan's Run which became a world icon and was turned into a hit film and a television series in the 1960's. Warner Bros. is currently spending $100 million on a remake, which should be in theaters in two years.
Always the innovator, Nolan has remained on the technological cutting-edge, and recently published Logan's Return, the first new Logan adventure in 20 years, with Virtual Publishing Group, the ePublishing arm of eBooks2go.com. All three of Nolan's previous Logan novels--Logan's Run, Logan's World, and Logan's Search--are now available as e-books, and Virtual Publishing has also released them in commemorative "millennium" trade paperback editions.
"I believe in the future of e-books, and just as Stephen King was the first horror writer to turn out a major new story just for the Internet, I am the first science fiction writer to turn out a major new story just for the Internet," says Nolan. "A futuristic venue for a futuristic story!"
One of the canaries in the publishing coalmine is the reaction of the chain bookstores, and Barnes & Noble recently made a landmark move. During a recent press conference, B&N Vice Chairman Steve Riggio hinted at some of the changes the company will make in its stores to keep pace with technology.
Invited to speak at Microsoft's e-book reader launch in New York, Riggio predicted that Barnes & Noble's shelves will remain filled with books, but that customers will also be able to download the latest e-book onto their Pocket PC or Rocket eBook reader--maybe even onto a Barnes & Nobel-branded device. "You could see B&N-branded (handheld) devices by next year," Riggio said. "You will see a situation where you can have books beamed onto your device at the store."
Riggio also commented on how e-publishing will allow publishers to release more books that aren't guaranteed best-sellers, and that stores will begin stocking a far broader range of titles. One of the most talked-about aspects of e-publishing and print-on-demand technology is how they virtually eliminate titles from having to go out of print. Soon, a superstore's worth of shelved titles may well be stored digitally on any bookstore's computer system.
So how does all this affect the independent author and small publisher?
"I think the commonest misconception is that e-books are already popular with the general reading public. They aren't," says Moira Allen, author of Writing.com: Creative Internet Strategies to Advance Your Writing Career (Allworth Press 1999). Allen is also the managing editor at Inkspot.com. The site, which recently merged with Xlibris, contains an excellent e-publishing FAQ and numerous other resources.
"The vast majority of readers go into bookstores or order print books online -- but they aren't buying e-books," says Allen. They haven't determined a 'need' for what e-books provide. Rocketbook E-readers are still slow to sell; many of us make a quick calculation as to how many actual BOOKS we could buy for that same $200, and it's sort of a no-brainer."
"The attendant misconception, the loudly trumpeted cry, is that 'e-books will replace print books by (fill in your favorite year)' or 'e-books will soon be as popular or more popular than print books', etc. It may happen. It won't happen soon. Authors who are hoping to build their reputation on the idea that it has already happened or will happen next week are going to be profoundly disappointed."
"For the unpublished author, e-publishing represents a huge temptation and a huge risk. Much depends on whether the author wishes to publish fiction, or a niche-focused nonfiction book. Fiction has never done well in the self-publishing arena, whether it's print or electronic. Nonfiction authors have a better opportunity, because many, many people are accustomed to doing research and looking for information online. Nonfiction reading isn't the same as 'recreational' reading--it's research, and often it's related to 'work.' So for readers, making the jump to buying a nonfiction e-book is no big stretch."
"In either case, authors must be prepared to handle much of the marketing that they might normally expect a commercial publisher to handle. I don't see how you could market a book without a website. You can do so much with a website: Post a sample chapter, post a FAQ (if your book is nonfiction), post nonfiction information relating to your book (e.g., historical background to a historical romance), and exchange links with other authors and relevant websites to attract traffic.
"E-publishing, I believe, IS going to be a powerful force in the future. But it's still going through the same 'sorting out and getting established' phase that self-publishing went through ten years ago. I don't think it will take ten years for e-publishing to sort itself out--but it isn't going to happen overnight, either. Authors need to know all the facts before they enter this arena."
Nick Barnes has just published his first novel, Thresholds, with iUniverse.com, and likes the idea of being able to offer his book in both electronic and printed formats. "I would not feel comfortable with my book being an e-version only at this stage of the game," he says.
"I wanted to publish exactly what I wrote, the way I wrote it, without jumping through hoops, without giving up rights, without having to adhere to current marketability trends to impress editors, and without being screwed out of the profits. iUniverse was the best place for that."
"Because of the fact that the first thing I ever wrote was published in an anthology within a few months, I had a rose-colored-glasses perception of the publishing industry. The royalty publisher that bought my story turned out to be a poor excuse for a partner and did a terrible job of communicating with me. It was a bad experience."
"After a few minor subsequent publications (Akkadian, Wolf Head Quarterly, Zoetrope All-Story Extra) and numerous rejections of my book because of 'marketability concerns,' I decided to stop conventional submissions altogether in early 2000 and to take advantage of POD."
"Being part of Francis Coppola's Zoetrope online workshop for over a year made me realize one thing: most writers are gearing their material toward a standard set forth by corporate publishing -- one based on money and quick sales instead of on quality -- which reduces writing to a formula rather than an art form. The New Yorker and other short fiction magazines were publishing crap, Melissa Bank was on the best-seller list, and my opinion of conventional publishing grew into full-fledged disdain."
"In my ongoing arguments with other writers who view self-publishing as illegitimate, I often bring up the topic of independent musicians. People like Ani DiFranco are widely respected for their shunning of record company contracts. Likewise, there are plenty of independent bands who make a living playing at bars, recording their own CDs, and developing a following via word of mouth. Nobody calls these musicians 'hacks,' yet writers who choose to remain independent often are viewed this way."
"A lot of this has to do, I think, with too many writers needing a 'sanction' from some profit-minded editor in New York before they can see the value in their own work. In reality, readers should be the judges, and POD offers writers the opportunity to offer their work directly to those readers, completely unfiltered, the way it should be."
"I was hesitant about having an e-version of my book being available on iUniverse (for 'browsing'), but I'm not too concerned with people pirating it. There is sentimental value in owning an actual book, I think. Anything that can be uploaded to a computer can be pirated, as with the Napster fiasco. That said, purely e-published material, ala Stephen King, could run into the same problem as with MP3s. Hopefully, someone will develop a safeguard that allows for printing, but not downloading. That way, the thief would have to physically type an entire book into his word processor before uploading it to the 'net."
"At any rate, we're looking at a revolution in how consumers are 'detected' by distributors, and an ongoing battle over privacy versus the good of the whole--it's a new version of society's oldest philosophical struggle."