11. Overall strategy Author Product Packaging Distribution Marketing Traditional publishing route Alternative self publish / digital route Author ePub / Apps Amazon / Apple / Web Own marketing and promotion Sales Sales
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Notas del editor
Breakdown Each of the industry sectors are at a different stage with digital. Academic have been using online downloadable content for years and it works well for their specific journal titles. Standard retail sales are just moving into digital now with e-books etc. Wholesalers were affected by Woolworths bust, Bertrams still remains. Borders went bust last year. Return per square foot on books is not the same as it used to be. The Net Book agreement went (1997) in the UK meaning that prices can now be set by retailers, allowing Supermarkets to sell them low, often as loss leaders. I.e Harry Potter selling for a pound! Independent book sellers find they can make a better return per square foot on other products, i.e. stationary, gifts etc. Of course book shops make more money from the bestselling books and therefore tend to stock these over the niche specialist books. Thus online where there’s neverending capacity there’s more option to sell niche books that the bookstores wouldn’t consider stocking. Print on Demand – may increase the range of books available from a book store and they will be growth in this area over the next couple of years.
Interesting content is the important thing to create first. You’d do this whichever way you are hoping to publish your book, whether traditionally or digitally. Storing Content – With fiction you probably have got your content stored in Word or a design package but essentially it is free flowing text thus is easy to store in a variety of formats. It will also flow effectively into the various formats that you need it to be in for digital publishing. Non-fiction is more difficult as flowing into formats for digital publishing is more difficult. If you want the best solution for non-fiction, adding to a database is the perfect answer. This means you can pull the data out as and when required in any format for any purpose. Alternatively InDesign is the best format for converting to the major format of ePub.
You may get the idea by looking online that copyright is outdated and that consumers don’t want copyright. This obviously for the book industry doesn’t work. However –Facebook Fundamentals of copyright must remain, i.e. the property must belong to the author or the publisher. DRM – Amazon – proprietry DRM, iPhone / iPad has it’s own DRM. Books released on the internet just through PDF’s etc won’t be able to have DRM, especially if you’re allowing people to just download them. Unless you build a login site to hold all the data behind, even then if you allow them to download or copy they will be able to distribute how they like. Cons – Some people refuse to buy products with DRM, some won’t be able to use them because they’re not compatible, you’re tying them to one devise. It will cost you, or the publisher money to implement DRM.
- e-books, Phone applications Website applications Depending on content of book some digital products are more suitable ……… also depends on the type of consumer. Value – perception that e-books should be much cheaper than books, however much of the cost of books is in the authoring, images, promotion etc etc and only around 10-20% of the book cost is the actual print. Thus e-books shouldn’t in reality be that much cheaper. Issues with retail prices of e-books especially through Amazon as they can retail them for whatever they like. Dan Brown was sold for $9.99 when launched compared to the hardback price of $29.95 by most retail shops. Where are publishers? Major ones, investing heavily in e-books and phone apps, the smaller publishers, especially reference publishers haven’t even started thinking about digital products yet. Self Publishing – skip the publisher and provide your own content. More opportunity to sell online, eliminate the cost of printing. However you also lose the value of the publisher, i.e. editing, promotion etc. Will require more effort by the author to sell.
General intro In 93 percent of cases, publishers sell fewer than 1,000 copies of their books. If you're trying to sell your own ebook, it's important to keep this in mind. However, Internet sales open up a wider audience than selling offline and allow readers to download books automatically. For these reasons, selling 500 copies of your ebook is an ambitious yet achievable goal. UK digital sales were £15million last year, doubled from 2008. Currently around 20% of sales of books come from the digital version, although this varies widely by the type of book – academic etc etc Apple Books can only be uploaded to the iBookstore through major publishers currently or through 3 rd party online sites – i.e. Smashwords or Lulu. Apple works on an agency model and publishers / authors get 70% of the retail price they set themselves. However Smashwords / Lulu also take a percentage of this so you’re only likely to get a return of around 60% using this method. Alternatively use Stanza. Stanza is a free iPhone application that enables users to view book content. To add your book it needs to be in ePub format. However this is free and you will receive no payment for the downloads. Or you can sell copies in ePub or PDF to view through applications such as Stanza. You can sell these on your website, however to get any sales, time and effort will need to go into the website and the promotion of. Amazon If you want to go direct to Amazon, then you can add your book and it will appear in the Kindle Store, currently only available in the US, UK to launch soon, however of course there is no shipment so anyone worldwide can use this store to download content. iPhone and iPad readers can now access Kindle content, so adding to Amazon could be a good way to get your title into both major players. Content can also be accessed through a computer. To add content you use the Digital Text Platform. You need an ISBN to add your book. You can allow the content to be accessed through any territory in the world. The file needs to be in HTML, Text or Word although Amazon recommends HTML to be the best format for conversion. Royalties – you get 35% of the Retail Price you set for your book. However Amazon may choose (and probably will sell for a lesser amount.) you still get 35% of YOUR retail price, not the lesser price. Google – Editions = not yet live but likely to be influential, like Google Books was. Smashwords Smashwords takes a small percentage of the royalties that various e-book stores offer. But they will upload to the major stores, Barnes and Noble, Amazon (not yet live), and the iBookStore on Apple devices. However, authors merely need to upload a specially formatted Word document with the text of their book, along with an image of the cover. Smashwords uses tools that automatically convert the Word file into the formats specified for online e-book stores such as Barnes & Noble, Amazon Kindle, and Lexcycle Stanza, and uploads books to the stores that an author requests. Need an ISBN.
Phone apps could be thought of as enhanced e-books, whereas a traditional e-book is really just a digital version of the book. Enhanced e-books or apps enable you to add value by including pictures, sound, video content, animation, even up to date links to external websites to enhance your own content. Phone apps becoming extremely popular…… cheap…… high multiples low values…… Costs are in developing the application. If you aren’t a software developer chances are you will need someone to develop for you. However, anyone can make money from applications, you don’t need a publisher – even seasoned authors are now skipping publishers to develop applications themselves – i.e. the new Jamie Oliver application. Android or Apple - 270 Android applications being developed for every 70 Apple apps (figures per day.) Apple Developing for the iPhone and iPad. Non e-books. Good for reference publishers and anyone with content that can be used in different ways. $99 to become a developer and ability to add applications. Good for promotion of content – Lite versions. You get 70% of the Retail price, which you set, from Apple for each sale. Android Free to access developer network, uses open source software. You get 70% of the Retail price, which you set, for each sale.
iPad and other tablet computers mean that users can access the internet on the move far more easily now. This does mean that content doesn’t have to viewed on these hardwares through applications necessarily. Access to a website is available. Sell downloadable versions of your book online. Either whole book Chapters of books Useful snippets etc Or add free enticing downloads for your readers and then try and upsell the full product. Custom applications – Custom travel guide. Taking your content and look at how it can be used interactively. cookery books, recipe downloads, video guides etc.
Traditional role of the publisher Editorial Packaging Marketing and promotion If you haven’t got that you’ll need to do it yourself by any of the following methods Website – Add content about your book, add downloads (paid for or non-paid.) Don’t forget about SEO Social Networking, Facebook, Twitter, social bookmarking (Stumble upon, diggit etc) forums, blogs etc.
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