Why Sponsored Publishing?
Copyright 2000 By Ed Howdershelt
(Updated 28.12.2000)
(Updated 14.01.2001)
(Updated 12.03.2001)
"Because regular ebook publishing
doesn't pay as well at this time." - Me.
Ebook publishing is in a stage much like that of an infant discovering that it has fingers and toes.
A few of the brighter epublishers have managed to stand up and toddle around and some have even made websites, but it seems that most are still playing 'King of the Hill' before actually having a hill on which to play.
The 'hill' is customer demand, because that's what it takes to make publishing successful, and widespread customer demand is still a prophecy, not a reality.
Potential ebook customers are leery of prices that are often ridiculously high and writing quality that is frequently ludicrously low.
Strange encryption schemes, proprietary formats, and special reading software baffle customer decision-making even as those potential customers become impatient for the promised future of epublishing to simplify itself enough to finally come true.
So, too, do many authors become impatient.
They're the authors who don't want to send postage-eating manuscripts to countless publishers in exchange for rejection slips that might as readily have been generated by an assistant-editor's-intern's bunions or bad mood as the type or quality of a manuscript.
Those authors want the electronic ease and speed of email submissions and editing.
They want publication of their works within a few months, not several years.
They'd rather be pioneers in the establishment of ebook publishing than stand in line indefinitely, waiting for one of the demigods of paper book publishing to glance at their works.
On his website, Piers Anthony refers to the big paper publishers as "Parnassus".
I laughed the first time I read that, but I could and still do definitely agree with it. They've simply become too big to turn a profit on anything less than a best-seller, so they tend to avoid taking chances.
There are authors who don't have a crying need to see one of the "Parnassus" logos on their books.
These authors are simply impatient to turn out an entertaining or informative product and start selling it.
They want to be pubbed now, on the Internet, where their works can spin up new money indefinitely and never go "out of print" because some publisher can't afford to bother with a run of less than 14,000 copies.
Because I'm a moderately prolific author, people have been emailing me questions about posting their own works on pay-per-view websites.
Most have wanted more information about such sites and some have been worried that posting there would kill their chances for publication elsewhere.
re: killing your chances... Doubtful.
If you're any good and if you have sense enough not to send the publishers the same version you posted on a website, why worry about that?
The fact is that a great number of initially self-published works that proved marketable have been bought up by the big publishers, who follow money-trails just like other businesses.
(Update 28.12.2000: Adapted the following paragraph to mention money & total.)
I started posting on Themestream 13 September 2000, and as one who will have a 3.5-month accumulated total of just over $900.00 by Dec. 31, 2000, I'm not currently in a position to be too unhappy about Themestream.
(Update14.01.2001: Yes, my stuff broke $900, as expected. At 01:10 hours on 01 Jan. 2001, my accumulated total was $914.76.)
(Update March 2001: Themestream now pays only 2 cents and pays only for views by Themestream-registered readers. This requires logging in or registering with Themestream, and I'm afraid that most people simply won't take the time or trouble to do either. I did, however, manage to pull $1329.66 out of them before they changed their pay and view-counting system.)
By contrast, very few ebook authors -- myself included -- presently make $900.00 per fiscal quarter from ebook sales in the usual formats such as PDF, PDB, .Lit, or .RB, and most ebook authors didn't make that much from ebooks of any sort in all of 2000.
How I know this:
I monitor a couple of organizations that market ebooks and I'm a Rocket/Gemstar® published author, with six ebooks in their hardware-based format that are available for download through Barnes & Noble and Powell's Books.
Their titles are: (Verification, not a sales pitch!)
ISBN 1-58505-943-9 "Anne"
ISBN 1-58505-941-2 "Dragonfly Run"
ISBN 1-58505-940-4
"In Service to a Goddess, Book 1"
ISBN 1-58505-939-0
"In Service to a Goddess, Book 2"
ISBN 1-58505-938-2
"In Service to a Goddess, Book 3"
ISBN 1-58505-942-0 "Mindy"
Note that Powell's price for one of my ebooks is $3.00, while Barnes&Noble charges $3.75. I don't know why that is, since I asked that they be priced at $3.00 each.
Many epublishers try to convince people that an ebook -- although it has no printed paper pages and attendant expenses such as printing machinery and ink, skilled labor running the presses, shipping, and warehousing -- should nonetheless cost as much as a paperback or hardback book due to "other, similar expenses".
I don't "buy" that. Do you?
Ebooks are just a files from which copies are made, no matter how entertaining or informative they may be.
If you buy ebooks on CD's, you also pay for the blank CD and mailer, putting the ebook on the CD, barcoding, label printing, shipping, and any other packaging and handling involved.
When the ebook market has evolved a bit, the CD-making end of things will cost less than a buck, just as it now does in the stamped-out music industry. For now, each CD is marketed pretty much as a hand-made work of art.
There's been a lot of excited flapping and shouting about Rocket/Gemstar® ebooks in particular lately, but little discernable progress.
Despite having Gemstar/RCA's REB 1100 ebook appear on Oprah and two-page ads in TV Guide about new reading hardware, their market growth appears slow, probably in large part due to the prices of the reader devices.
Gemstar is pitching only the more expensive ebooks - bestsellers from big publishers - on their site's main page, which further limits their sales efforts.
Smaller publishers (like mine) of Rocket ebooks are simply listed as links on another page. They aren't hard to find, but they aren't very well displayed, either.
I can understand downplaying the freebie library, but sales are sales, wherever they come from.
My commissions from my six Rocket/Gemstar® titles in their .RB format came to less than a hundred bucks in the third quarter of 2000.
I was not thrilled about sales progress in the .RB format, particularly since my Science Fiction "free taste" in the Rocket Library had been downloaded over a thousand times in 2 months.
To me, those sales figures appeared to mean that most Rocket eBook owners were reading only freebies from the library.
Those figures may also explain why the Rocket Library has not been as prominently displayed on Gemstar's pages as it was on Nuvomedia's.
My Rocket publishing contract specifies that my publisher controls marketing rights only to the .RB formats of those six titles that they've published for me.
I therefore decided to fish in other waters while the .RB market develops itself a bit more.
As a casual author, I write when I have time and interest, but I don't make time for writing or force myself to write when I'm not in the mood. It only happens at my convenience.
Editing and re-editing is a tiresome chore, but someone has to do it, so I'll take this opportunity to thank all those who have reported the errors they've found and ask them to please continue to do so.
I belong to only one writer's group - the Abintra Universe Writer's Group - mostly because we share an interest in a few subjects and we're all friends. That means that we don't rip each other's works apart for entertainment. Instead, we pick nits, correct spellings, and make suggestions. We also let each other know when our work shines a bit.
Most other writer's groups that I've visited - on or off the net - aren't quite like the AUWG.
Some have seemed like dogpacks, eager to entertain themselves by shredding any newcomer or new story.
Some have been nothing more than an author's personal herd of sycophants, meeting only to glorify their leaders and - by however distant an association - themselves.
One group I met in Dallas - years ago and before the Internet went public - seemed to be a good one. They offered cooperative editing arrangements and the membership included a couple of published authors who talked about much more than themselves.
(If I'd only stayed in Texas..?)
On to the inspirational part of our program...
(The "I dunnit! So can you!" speech.)
Labor involved:
Posting my existing works, adding links on my websites, and then watching the numbers get bigger on a daily basis. Barring a cataclysm, they should continue spinning upward indefinitely as ever more readers find my stuff.
Note: I tagline my newsgroup and email messages, but I don't specifically send out emails about my articles.
I prefer to let my websites and my articles do the recruiting work.
The ARTICLES - EBOOK LIST:
For a list of my current articles and ebooks, go here:
Abintra Press
List Notes:
Some DRAGONFLY RUN chapters were pulled by TS due to language or content.
Resubmitting sanitized versions to keep things intact changed a few chapters to the two-cent rate, which accounts for the odd pennies in the total accrued amount.
If you're curious about what I look like with two cats parked on my lap, go here:
WiccaWorks™
Abintra Universe Writer's Group
Piers Anthony
Indexes to my other articles and ebooks
may be found on my websites:
Abintra Press!
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