The first is Michael J Dowling’s White Paper on Publishing Options, in which he very clearly spells out the advantages and disadvantages of today’s publishing options. Check it out at: http://www.michaeljdowling.com/pdf/Michael-J-Dowling_Publishing-Options-White-Paper.pdf.

The second is my discussion with JW Najarian about ghostwriters and ghostwriting on his quite fascinating “Cause and Effect” site. Look for it at: http://jwnajarian.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/claudia-suzanne-professional-ghost-writer-on-learning-how-to-find-one-or-be-one/

What a great time to be in the book business!

In the past few days, I’ve encountered two completely diverse situations that speak to the lack of commonality of this enormous, diverse community and how we perceive ourselves within that loose fellowship.

The first came up during my talk with a wonderful novelist. She sold  her first book to an online/POD publisher and subsequently joined its author community via blogging and blog commenting. Problem is, she feels isolated within this group, which she specifically joined to enjoy that wonderful sense of connection we all seek with our fellow writers and authors. Their writing goals and process seem so  different from hers.  The only common ground she can find is their mutual affection for the publisher and desire to get their stories down in writing.

I noticed the second situation in a LinkedIn group discussion as I read over the various answers to a question about the writing industry and thought about my own perspective on the topic. I admit it: I’m ever the optimist. I look at a problem and, like a Ferengi, I suppose, see opportunities and possibilities, not gloom and doom. Yes, the writing and book worlds have changed, enormously. But they haven’t ceased to exist–they’ve merely become different, and I don’t think the answer to “better pay for better writing” is in legislation, but in our individual selves.

So what is the point of this blog? I guess just to point out that writers come in all flavors. That our vast conglomerate of folk never has been and never will be a one-size-fits-all. Writing is so darn individualistic, it cannot and should never try to be stuffed into round holes. We are the last, great independents in a world hellbent on conformity.

Few will remember Gary Cooper or Alice Cooper in 100 years, but they’ll still know Dickens, Austin, and Rowling. And maybe, just maybe, you and me.

And, with nods to Dr. Who, Agatha Christie.

“It can’t make you much money,” she said. “Not for the amount of time and work you put in over the three months.”

She’s right; it doesn’t. I spend three hours a week teaching each class–in the fall, that’s going to go up to four hours/week. My students tell me they put in between 6 and 10 hours on their homework every week–homework that I then have to go over, comment on, discuss, and correct. If I add up everyone’s tuition and divide by the number of hours I put in, I’m making …

Damn little.

So why do I teach GCT? Not sure. Let me muse as I write.

If we go back to the beginning, I started teaching the basics of the book business and a little bit about ghostwriting back in 1993, I think. Maybe 1996. Don’t remember. My motive then was to pass on some information and sell my book, This Business of Books: A Complete Overview of the Industry from Concept through Sales, then in its 3rd Edition.

Maybe I was looking for referrals. Maybe I just wanted to share. I honestly cannot remember. But I found I enjoyed teaching. It was fun. It was stimulating. It was educational for me. And people paid me a little bit of money. A win/win.

Over the years, the class ebbed and flowed. I taught sometimes, didn’t the rest. Tried to put together Professional Book Writing School, but life got in my way. Remember, I spent over two decades struggling with serious health problems, which I have now, Baruch Ha’Shem, completely overcome. But during most of the past two decades, I was inconsistent and intermittent with my work habits, my clients, and my teaching.

Looking back, it’s amazing to me how much I managed to get done by just bulldozing through. When faced with allegedly insurmountable odds, some people take it easy, some people rely on the medical community, and some people give up. I just put my head down and worked. Not fast, not always well, but through the best and the worst of it, I worked.

And then I was facing the end.

It was 2000 and I had one of those “life-changing” episodes during a downward health spiral that told me I was coming to the end of my days. But I had a client! How could I transition to the next world and leave my client up in the air?  So I handed the client over to one of my interns and started pricing funerals.

I won’t keep you in suspense–I didn’t die. In fact, with the help of my beautiful sister-by-love, Bera Dordoni, N.D. (Bastis Foundation), I began the long journey back to perfect and total health. But it was an eye-opening experience and I realized I had to write a book. And so I did.

And I rewrote it.

And rewrote it.

And so and so forth and scooby dooby do.

The final edition of said book, Secrets of a Ghostwriter: World’s First Step-by-Step Guide to the Theory, Skills, and Politics of Ghostwriting, is at long last complete and exhaustively emended by five wonderful, nit-picky editors. And Ghostwriter Certification Training has evolved from a 5-week to a 7-week to a 14-week and soon to be 16-week program that details exactly what the job is, how to do the job, how to find aspiring authors to do the job for, and how to convert those authors into contracted clients.

Which may be the actual reason why I continue to teach GCT. After putting in all this time and effort to develop what Cora Foerstner called “the seminal text” on the subject and honing the program to the point that I’m confident it’s turning out skilled, competent ghostwriters, how can I stop?

But I warn you now: in fall, the price is going up. Because yeah–I don’t make enough money at this right now!

Steve Jobs thrilled some people and infuriated others when he announced that Apple’s new eBook app will use the agency model for pricing.

Translation: publishers can set the price of their eBooks, and Apple will take a standard 35% discount, or commission.

Amazon was up in arms, because it believes eBooks should be a low-cost alternative to paper books.

Translation: keeping all Kindle prices under $9.95 would help push Amazon’s Kindle—which requires a unique format unusable on any other eBook reader—into the top spot in the eBook-reader market.

In Amazon’s business model, Amazon sets all eBook prices and pays publishers a commission—negotiable for larger publishers, non-negotiable for smaller and independent houses. Traditional publishers have been grousing about this policy for some time. When Amazon grudgingly agreed to accept agency-model pricing —with the stated emphasis on “grudgingly”—they managed to get into such a fracas with Macmillan that they killed the “Buy” buttons on most Macmillan titles. While this situation lasted hours, not months or weeks, it received damn-near minute-by-minute press thanks to the flurry of IMs, text messages, twitters, blog postings, and comments scurrying around the web.

Once consumers found out about the Apple/Amazon/Macmillion/agency model/Random House situation (a good 7.32 seconds after the industry found out) …

Translation: Random House took their sweet time making a deal with Apple and so were not included in the otherwise all-encompassing list of publishers who had signed up to play with Apple and thus caused a minor ripple about preferential treatment that didn’t even have a chance to spread very far before it was squashed with another announcement.

… more blogs and IMs and twitters and text messages and comments flooded the Ethernet as people expressed their outrage at the cost of eBooks to the reader and the unfairness of DRM.

Translation: Digital Rights Management (DRM) is the technology that lets eBook manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders, and booksellers control the electronic material the consumer buys. Examples of DRM that really push consumers’ buttons include the seller’s ability to yank paid-for material off an eBook reader and the inability to lend or sell eBooks by transferring them from one person’s reader to another.

Part 2

All of which logically leads to the question: just how much does it cost to produce an eBook, anyway?

I’m a ghostwriter, not an accountant, so we’re going to work with round numbers pulled out of the air in an extremely simplified example. Let’s start when a manuscript lands at the publisher’s door. We’ll stipulate that it’s a good book, that the agent called ahead, that the acquisition editor expects it to show up on (arbitrarily) her desk, and that a contract will ensue. We’ll include man-hours and cash outlays and keeping a running balance on the side.

Start the dollar countdown:

Getting the “Requested Material” physically from the mailroom or electronically from the editor’s inbox costs, let’s say, a single man-hour arbitrarily valued at $10 per. Cheap labor is good to find.

$10

The editor has to read the manuscript. Since much of the brouhaha is over fiction, we’ll make it a standard 350-page novel, and we’ll value the editor’s at, oh, $25/hour. Let’s say it takes her ten hours to read and fall in love with the manuscript. That’s pretty fast—I would take longer—but we’re working with round numbers and I have a limited number of fingers, even using both hands.

$260

We’ll dispose of the in-house decision-making meetings, discussions, push-and-shove, etc. in another ten man-hours—that includes all the people with whom the editor has to meet, some of whom make more than her and some of whom make less. Again, probably low, but I don’t want to have to take my shoes off. We’ll average them all out to earning $30/hour.

$560

Not too expensive so far. Now let’s negotiate the contract. No one is really disputing the cost of Jane Doe’s eBook—they’re disputing the cost of Stephen King’s new eBook, or Sue Grafton’s new eBook, or Elmore Leonard’s new eBook—but let’s make ours from an author whose reputation is rising but not yet star-level. We can probably get away with offering $60,000.

$60,560

Nice try, but the agent has other ideas. Another round of meetings, this time between the editor and maybe even the publisher with the marketing and legal departments. We can stick to another ten man-hours (low, low, low), but the average cost is now closer to $60/hour, and the final negotiated deal is $75,000. Agents are worthy of their hire.

$76,160

Huzzah! We own the book! Now things start pricey. The editor is going to spend at least 80-160 hours doing what editors do best (and most): editing. We’ll average it out to 100 man-hours at $25/hour. You’re right—that’s not much, but publishers expect the heavy editorial to be completed by the time they look at the manuscript. Chalk up another $2,500, minimum.

$78,660

Interior design really, really, low-ball: 40 hours @ $20/hour.

$79,460

Cover design: 80 hours @ $35/hour.

$82,260

ISBN, LCCN, CIP paperwork & follow-up: 5 man-hours @ $15/hour.

$82,335

Marketing. The industry rule of thumb is to spend the same amount marketing and advertising a title as it cost to buy the title—in this case, $75,000.

$157,335

We’d be fools to try to recoup over $150,000 on eBooks alone, especially since only about 6% of the population have readers and digital still only account for about 4% of total sales. Ergo, we have to print. If we print 25,000 copies—a gamble—our production cost should run approx. $.75/copy or $18,750

$176,085

We’ve got that $75,000 worth of advertising supporting our sales, so we need to get those books out to our distributors, wholesalers, and booksellers. The average distributor takes a 60% discount; wholesalers take 50. We’ve priced the title at $12.95, so we get $5.18 through our distributors and $6.47 from our wholesalers, for an average of $5.82 per book. If we sell out our initial 25,000 copies at an average return of $5.82/book, we recoup $145,500.

$30,585

We’re still in the red, but we’re getting close to breaking even—not making a profit to boost our budget for buying another book, just barely covering the costs of publishing this one. But hey—what about those eBooks? That cost is minimal at best: say, 10 hours of technical man-hours at, oh, $20/hour. That’s  $200, barely raising our nut.

$30,785

Let’s say the eBook sells for an average retail price of $9.95, Amazon’s comfort number, that we net 35% of that $9.95, or $6.47, and that 1,000 people—about 4%—buy it. Cool! We’ve made $6,470.

$24,315

We’re still over 10% in the red even without taking myriad other costs into account: bookkeeping, troubleshooting, production overruns, flat covers, and so on and so forth, and scooby-dooby-do. A lower advance won’t make any real difference because we’ll just go with a smaller print run and smaller marketing budget.

If we sell out that initial print run in a week or so, we’ll do another immediately. If we don’t run out for six weeks, we’ll calculate the potential against the cost—after all, we don’t have any more marketing/advertising dollars to spend. If we’ve still got books in the warehouse after six months, we’re not going back to the printer unless the author does something newsworthy to make demand shoot up. As far as eBooks are concerned, any additional sales will be trickles since we’ve already factored in the expected 4%.

Part 3

“But wait!” I hear you cry.

“I’m not going with a traditional publisher. I’m going with a nifty ePublisher whose web site promises to that all I have to do is pay $99 and we’re in business!”

Good for you! Since you have 10,000 Facebook friends and all the time in the world to promote your book because you don’t have a day job, the public will probably flock en masse to buy your eBook.

Approximately 5.8% of the reading public, that is, because that’s about how many people own an eBook reader. Let’s add another 1% percent who will read it on their computer. Oh, heck, let’s make your potential eBook audience an even 10%. The publisher has priced your title at a tempting $4.99 and you only have to recoup $99—hey, you didn’t waste your money paying for their phony extras. Figure you get 50% of that $4.99, or $2.495, so when 10% of your 10,000 Facebook friends buy your eBook—an inflated number, sure, but we’re going for the gold here—you’ll net $2,396, because you don’t count your own man-hours or value. Of course, unless all those people buy at the same time, your income will trickle in at a couple bucks per month, but hey—you’ve got an eBook!

Are these figures accurate?  Nope. I pulled them out of the air, remember? But the concept is solid. As authors, it’s easy to forget that books are business, and business is all about moving units.

Warning! Shameless Self-Promotion Ahead

If you had spent $25,000 to hire a professional to get your manuscript viable in the traditional-publishing world and had captured that $75,000 advance—or even a $40,000 advance—you’d have made at least $15,000, maybe $50,000, all at one time, with the potential to make a lot more since, after all, you have all the time in the world to promote your book. And having that money all at one time would have given you the funds to do a lot of specialty marketing and promotion, so yeah—more people would know about your book and want to buy it.

Just something to think about.

I did not write the 5th Edition of THIS BUSINESS OF BOOKS.

So I’m doing that one now. This January, 2010. Really. I mean it. Absolutely for reals. I may have to buy an interest in Mars Candy Company to recoup my investment in M&Ms to get through it, but I’m doing it. Right now. Seriously.

For six years now—six years?!  What’s the matter with you? Just write the damn thing!—I’ve promised myself to slam-dunk this revision in a matter of ten to fourteen days. A month at the outside. Six, eight weeks, tops. Definitely within a fiscal quarter.

And for six years—six years?!—I’ve found good reason to not even crack the thing open. I had clients’ work to do. I was backed up on my bookkeeping. It was still selling as is. I had other stuff to write. I didn’t want to self-publish again and I didn’t want to create a proposal. I’d gotten two negative reviews (out of about forty-five or fifty, the rest all positive —so sue me, I’m an author, just like you). Other books had taken its place. I didn’t know what I wanted to change.

I didn’t want to do all that work.

But this year—this glorious 2010 year, this tenth year since we stopped saying “nineteen” and started saying “two thousand” and now say “twenty,” this fantabulous year wherein my husband goes forth with his reinvigorated career, my daughter and her fiancée move to Boston, I sell SECRETS OF A GHOSTWRITER and even find a new agent for HIRED BODIES—this year I’m knuckling down and doing the 5th Edition.

In fact, I’ve already started. Mostly by pretty much catching up on everything else so I have no excuse left, but also by making notes in the margins of my desk copy. I’ve created a new file with a new file name that I can fold, spindle, and mutilate. I’ve collected articles and URLs with important albeit already outdated information. I’ve figured out exactly what I want to change and how I’m going to adjust the cover. I’ve determined the best BISAC Subject heading. I’ve even seriously thought about maybe starting a possible book proposal!

Whew! Is it time to take a break yet?

But no—I slog on. Neither rain nor sleet nor beckoning dirty toilets shall stay me from actually rewriting the obsolete stuff, editing the perennial stuff, updating the transient stuff, and throwing out the rest. The revision-needy text and its accompanying diagrams, tables, and sheaf of amendments sits right here before me, slightly right of my monitor, on the very top of the manuscript pile, obvious, relentless, demanding. I shall persevere. I shall overcome. I shall write the 5th edition.

But as Harry Truman would say: don’t quote me, that’s strictly off the record.

Please.

Signing up with a self-publishing service doth not make thee a self-publisher.

Actual self-publishers get LCCNs and P-CIPs so their books can be sold to libraries.

Actual self-publishers do, indeed, have imprints and business addresses and business licenses and resale licenses and their own block of ISBNs purchased directly from www.bowker.com.

Actual self-publishers are members of Amazon’s Advantage program and Independent Book Publishers Association and Small Presses of North America  and have book-rep and wholesaler and distributor agreements; they use traditional book manufacturers or industry-connected printers  and go to great lengths to ensure editorial accountability, find credible internal and cover designers, and pay for warehouse and fulfillment facilities.

Actual self-publishers only use POD (Print, not Publish, on Demand–it’s a type of printing, not a type of publishing) to send out advance galleys for reviews, because short-run POD printing tells the book industry you only intend to sell a few dozen copies.

Self-publishing is a full-time business that requires editorial accountability, industry registrations, and multiple-avenue distribution supported by marketing and promotion. Whether you’re releasing your own titles or someone else’s, the enterprise requires business formalities, serious time, and significant financial investment.

I’m sorry–and I know I’m fighting a losing battle along with all the other people in the traditional-publishing world–but “self-publishing” through a “service” is just another euphemism for subsidy publishing, pure and simple.

There are only two absolutes in the book industry: 1) all publishers edit according to Chicago Manual of Style (except those that don’t) and 2) all publishers expect authors to use MS Word (except those that don’t).

The Pirates of the Caribbean movies said it best: all those “rules” are really just guidelines. When it comes to writing, editing, submitting, and publishing,  there are really no absolutes, no hard-and-fast rules, no by-the-book regulations. Instead, the business is very firmly based on what this person wants, what that person remembers has sometimes worked in the past, or what some guy in marketing believes will work next quarter. It’s quite hit-or-miss, very trial-and error, extremely whatever works for a particular individual at a given moment on their one, specific project.

So if it works, you did it right. If it doesn’t, you didn’t. If it worked last time, you did. If it doesn’t work now even though it worked last time, you did then but not this time. If it works again next time, you did. If it works for you but not for him, you did, he didn’t.

Have I made myself fairly clear?

He’s absolutely right–from an agent’s pov. Here’s my take: publishers aren’t willing to spend money on these books because the market for them is down since the Internet is indeed awash with such personal stories for free. But therein lies the rub: the public still wants to read them; they just don’t want to pay for them anymore.

Subsidy press, disguising itself as self-publishing service, is really the answer for almost all memoirs these days. I used to rail against it, but now accept its value in the changing landscape. Here’s the trickle down: as life becomes more and more virtual, more and more groups and organizations are springing up so people can physically get together, make new friends, network, or just enjoy live human contact (LHC). Most of those organizations and groups enjoy having speakers as part of that LHC experience. Hence, more and more Baby Boomers and young entrepreneurs are adding “speaker” to their resume and hitting the road, either locally, regionally, nationally, or internationally.

Whenever someone moves their audience, that audience wants to take a piece of them home; it’s a natural human response. Ergo, selling a POD (print on demand) title BOR (at the back of the room) becomes a logical and almost essential revenue stream. Will the speaker continue to get gigs and grow their reputation if the book does not read well? No. Negative reactions spread very fast. Ergo, those speakers need our ghostwriting and editing services.

Plus, using Chip’s advice, authors can not only sell a POD title BOR (back of the room), they can spin their title into a secondary advice book or Ebook. Ebooks are the wave of the present, if not the future. Since the cost is so low–the ability to create an XML file that can be tagged and converted to various readers, all of which is built into Word 7 (Vista) and above–the emphasis returns once more to a well-crafted manuscript which, in turn, promotes sale of the POD hard copy.

In other words, as the playing board expands, our services are in ever-expanding demand.

God Bless the computer age.

For additional information on making money with ebooks, check out Ellen Violette, The eBook Coach. I sat on a panel with her the other night, and she definitely seems to know her stuff.

I got three of them this morning in my email, and I just have to rant this off my chest.

Marketing isn’t just marketing anymore. Now, instead of merely promoting  product or a service, today’s “thought leaders” market expensive programs on how to market your product or service. And oy, is it easy to get caught up in all the hype and start believing you really need all this information!

So, as a public service and for no money down or due, here’s what I’ve gleaned about modern marketing–and I’ve done it without spending any thousands of dollars:

1. If you’ve got a product or service, you’ve got to get the word out about it to as many people as possible. Hmm — not exactly a new concept, is it?
2. Spending time on  social network sites is a fun way to blow a couple hours,  but it does not necessarily translate into customers or clients any more than the old method of sending out direct mail flyers to everyone in your geographical region. And if you compare cost of paper and stamps to cost of computer and Internet service, I’m not sure we’re coming out ahead. (I suppose online networking is more “green,” but only if you don’t think about all the components that go into a computer.) Bottom line: it still all comes down to the personal. To make real, personal contacts online or put out an advertorial every day requires a major investment of time and effort.
3. All marketing programs come down to essentially the same set of parameters that, gee, have been around for decades:

• Know your target audience. Today we say, “Create your Ideal Customer profile,” but it comes to the same thing. Know who you want to sell to.
• Know what you’re selling, and how it’s different, or better, or more useful, or less expensive than your competitor’s product or service. Basic marketing, 101.
• Incorporate the four “U” messages (unique, useful, urgent, ultra-specific) in all your advertorial content; i.e., web sites, blogs, articles, tweets, announcements, promotions, postings, etc., etc., etc.
• Include as many of the who, what, why, when, how, and where information as appropriate. Make sure it’s easy to contact you. I tend to be suspicious of sites and promotions where my only avenue of contact is an anonymous form, don’t you? “Organizations” may be the buzz word of the day, but I like to deal with people.
• Talk more about the benefits for the customer, less about how great you are. Everybody wants their proverbial 15 minutes of fame, but today’s celebrity is tomorrow’s joke, and you want your business to continue for awhile, right?
• Offer real value for reasonable prices. This is so basic, and so often ignored these days. I cannot help but wonder who is filling the coffers of all the “thought leaders” who demand thousands of dollars to show their customers how to demand thousands of dollars to show their customers how to demand thousands of dollars … Whoever is getting rich in these pyramid schemes, you just have to know it’s not the guys coming in past level two.

I still pass out business cards and brochures, send out personally written mailers, and, when a new book comes out, pop for oversized postcards and stamps to get the news out to the specific people I want to inform. It’s easy to expend a lot of time and money on marketing and end up with nothing more than a tax write-off.

Okay, end of rant. Back to work.