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The State of E-Publishing: What Happened?

Electronic publishing has taken a hit, but the Web remains a vital tool for helping independents compete.

The whole e-book concept is being scorned by some and mourned by others. Although there were some success stories in 2001, acceptance of digital publishing by consumers isn't happening as fast as predicted. You just don't see many folks out there with their noses buried in electronic reading devices. What went wrong?

"Digital products have the potential to provide both bigger profit margins to their creators and more value to consumers," says Bob Dunn of DunnWrite Productions and creator of Netaloid. "I hope when the ebook business model resurfaces, it's led by 1,000 small publishers building businesses by providing products of good value to their customers. Unfortunately, AOL/Time Warner had done a mind-meld with numerous other big publishing houses in rushing to feed at what they presumed would be a golden trough."

"They offered ebooks that were really little more than e-texts, at prices the same level as hard-bound books. What a surprise that no one wanted to purchase huge amounts of text in a form harder to read than a book, at an equal price, while in a form that would not even allow the same benefits as the physical book in that you couldn't lend it to a friend!"

"The problem lies partly with hardware, and the two most promising ebook reader devices were bought up by the same company (Gemstar), which promptly sat on their development until interest managed to dry up."

"The public needs to be offered a well-designed, back-lit ebook/e-text reader for $200 or less that is very light weight, has a ton of memory so that you can hold hundreds of books -- not the handful the current readers offer -- and a higher screen resolution than at present. The ebooks themselves need to be at a good discount off the price of the same text in paperback. After all, the distribution/printing costs are much, much less than they are with printed books. The public knows that, and is rightfully insulted when AOL or Random House tries to stiff them with the kind of pricing we've seen recently."

"Finally, the publishing industry needs to learn from the moronic moves of the recording industry: Don't insult the public by treating them like potential criminals. Joe Bookfan is not going to try to re-sell your texts to the world and cheat you out of profits - but if a book really impresses him, he's going to want his brother, neighbor, and best friend to read it. Let him share it, that's what he's used to doing with his 'real' books. The goodwill and sales volume the industry receives will more than make up for any text re-selling efforts."

Not all digital digital publishers are dead, and the most alive seem to be those that also went into print-on-demand, such as FirstBooks and iUniverse. One author who chose POD is Matthew Gurewitsch, whose fine arts features and essays have appeared with regularity in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly and others. Even with this kind of bio, he decided to publish his first novel, When Stars Blow Out, with iUniverse.

"Creative people in every medium are looking for new ways to reach their audiences now," Gurewitsch says. "Big publishing houses really only care about the next John Grisham or Danielle Steele, and that's not me. Still, I think When Stars Blow Out is a book a lot of people will enjoy and want to pass on to their friends. With print-on-demand, sales can grow as the readership grows. No exorbitant advertising campaign. No stacks of unsold books. No remainders. In an age of scarce resources, doesn't it just make sense?"

Established authors are also finding solutions in digital and POD publishing. Warren Adler, whose War of the Roses and Random Hearts were hits in the eighties and both made into films, decided to keep his work alive through modern technology, offering his catalog of work in every imaginable format on his website.

"With twenty-five of my books out there in cyberspace in all formats including print-on-demand in both paperback and hardcover, not to mention those books in the traditional publishing pipeline, we're beginning to be able to track specific results in all categories. With six months under our belt and an on-going infrastructure creation program continuing as new formats emerge, we are beginning to unlock the book marketing secrets of the Web. Our focus has been on perpetual experimentation, using the Web not only as a selling tool, but also for promotional purposes to create awareness of our authorial brand and obtain sales of ancillary rights like movies, television and foreign rights."

"For an author, the Web offers a cornucopia of benefits that belies all the negative publicity about e-books promulgated by the media. Actually, it may offer the author far more immediate and long-term benefits than for publishers, especially those who are attached to public companies and must show three-month economic progress statements. An individual author seeks a comfortable niche, a kind of reader's community that cannot be achieved by publishers who must put all its authors under one umbrella."

"Of course, e-books are still dependent on developing more and more reader-friendly devices. There are many new devices poised to enter the marketplace that will greatly improve and enhance the e-book experience. Readers are beginning to discover that the experience of reading text on portable devices like Palm Pilots can be a fulfilling experience and comparable to reading a paper book. In addition, the convenience of transporting multiple books in a handy device offers an attractive alternative to readers who travel frequently."

"Yet for me, as an author with considerable output and a track record, the most satisfying result has been to see books of mine long out of print and moldering on bookshelves, infused with new life, happily selling again, and introducing themselves to a generation of new readers that, hopefully, will continue on into the future."

"And this last note. An author's copyright lasts 75 years beyond his lifetime. Cyberspace offers a chance to perpetuate one's life work for all the years of the copyright offering a benefit to heirs for nearly four generations."

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I dropped a line to Dick Harte, one of the pioneers of online bookselling and marketing, who coined the phrase "click and mortar" and has helped hundreds of independent booksellers get a Web presence for their stores. I told him I thought Powell's Books was doing a great job of creating a site that felt like a community bookstore, with lots of content and personality. He answered:

"I am with you regarding Powell's, but there is only one Powell's. What is everyone else to do? No other indie has that kind of critical mass and it is pretty hard to maintain a site without some order flow.

"I have a really politically incorrect view of this. Anybody that wants content will go to Amazon, anyone that wants community will go to their local bookstore (not their site). All a website is for indy stores is a surrogate for not being there and for information tied to actual business."

"I like to say that Amazon needs to generate traffic via the Internet, while regular bookstores need to add value to their valued customers with the Internet. One is a marketing ploy, the other a customer loyalty ploy. I have yet to run across a consumer that was ever looking for more content from their local bookstore. If they went on the Internet they were looking to buy a book and just needed enough info to make sure they didn't order the wrong thing."

"I think the name of the game is bringing data -- the right kind of data -- to the consumer, where the consumer wants it. I don't think that date is 1st chapters, and I don't think where they want it is in the home. I think the name of the game is bringing interesting stuff to the consumer in the store. Like streaming videos of The Lord of Rings movie instead of first chapter. And contests all based on in-store websites. To do this publishers and booksellers would have to work together, and this is where the infrastructure comes in, and the chicken or egg quagmire needs to be broken down." The Web is becoming a vital tool for helping independent authors and publishers compete in the bookselling market. "I can't stress enough the importance of presenting a professional-looking commercial Web site, especially for small presses and independent publishers and authors," said Roxyanne Young, Vice President and co-founder of 2-Tier Software, Inc., a commercial software design company based in San Diego, CA. "For writers, this is essentially an online resume and portfolio you're posting for the world to see. For publishers, this is your business at stake. You want it to look sharp, not like someone's HTML homework. You want clean lines, logical navigation, good quality graphics, legible text. Make it easy for your site visitors to get the information they're looking for."

"Trying to keep ahead of the technology is next to impossible for most people. It's more important to focus on good design principles," Young said. "Above all, know your audience, know yourself, and build from there."

Tips for a Professional Site:

1. Easy navigation is key. Put the navigation at the top of the page and keep it consistent from page to page, adding new sub links at the bottom of the top-level navigation - if you've got different top-level links on each sub-page, your visitors will get confused. Make sure you've got a Home Page link at the top of each page, too.

2. Use good quality graphics. If you've got a book jacket image, your visitors should be able to read the text on the cover. If you've got a picture of yourself, make it a close up head shot. Scan your images in at 300 dpi - the new monitors have much better resolution than older models - and adjust the size to as close to what you want them to appear onscreen as you can. A portrait shot looks pretty good at about 125 pixels wide, for instance.

3. Keep graphics file small so as to minimize your site download time. Nobody is going to wait more than 15 - 20 seconds for your page to load. If it take much longer than that, they'll assume the browser has locked up and click out of your page. Download time has a lot of factors: the number of unique images, the size of the HTML code, the number of Web servers serving the page, and the size of the data connection on the server side and the viewer side (the ISP connection speed and the server connection speed). At a connection speed of 28.8K, a 100K page will take a little over 4 seconds to download the first time. That 100K encompasses the size of the actual code and all the image files.

4. Get your own domain name. Which do you think is more professional: a business card with yourname.com or yadda.com/homepage/freewebsites/customer495295388/~yourlastname.html? Even if your current ISP won't support custom domain names, you can use a domain forwarding service like D-Gear at www.AllDomains.com to point a custom domain to your free Web site for about $25 per year.

5. Above all, focus on your audience and what they'll be looking for, and give them that. Is it information on your new releases? A calendar of book signings? A bookstore where they can buy your niche market books? Author bios and photos? Sample chapters? Make a separate page for each of these and keep the navigation logical and easy to follow.

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2-Tier Software, Inc. offers an affordable, professional template Web site program for writers and publishers, available February 1, 2002. For more information, go to www.2-TierSoftware.com, or contact Roxyanne@2-TierSoftware.com.