Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, has a longish post in
which he discusses the present and near future of ebooks – and acts as an
evangelist for indie authors. I can’t agree with everything he says, but he
does offer quite a bit of interesting bits to ponder.
Full article is here. Here are a few highlights, through my
eyes:
There’s A Glut of High-Quality Ebooks
There’s been a lot of hand-wringing by self-publishing
naysayers who criticize the indie publishing movement for causing the release
of a “tsunami of drek” (actually, they use a more profane word than “drek”)
that makes it difficult for readers to find the good books. Yes, indie
publishing is enabling a tsunami of poor-quality books, but critics who fixate
on drek are blinded to the bigger picture. Drek quickly becomes invisible
because readers ignore or reject it. The other, more important side of
this story is that self-publishing is unleashing a tsunami of high-quality
works. When you view drek in the broader context, you realize that drek
is irrelevant. In fact, drek is yin to quality’s yang. You must
have one to have the other. Self-publishing platforms like Smashwords
have transferred editorial curation from publishers to readers, and in the
process has enabled publication of a greater quantity and diversity of
high-quality content then ever possible before.
NOTE: I’ve found a lot of the dreck that Coker describes.
About half of it is published as indie ebooks. The rest is published
traditionally, through publishing houses critical of the tsunami of dreck Coker
describes. I remind people of this OFTEN when they question why I’m looking to
become an indie author and say I’ll swim in a cesspool.
Good isn’t Good Enough
With the glut of high-quality books, good books aren’t good
enough anymore. Cheap books aren't good enough (Smashwords publishes over
40,000 free ebooks). The books that reach the most readers are those that
bring the reader to emotionally satisfying extremes. This holds true for all
genre fiction and all non-fiction. If your readers aren’t giving you
reviews averaging four or five star and using words in their reviews like,
“wow,” “incredible” and “amazing,” then you’re probably not taking the reader
to an emotionally satisfying extreme. Extreme joy and pleasure is a
required reading experience if you want to turn readers into fans, and turn
fans into super fans. Wow books turn readers into evangelists. Last
year I wrote a post titled, Six
Tips to Bring Your Book Back from the Doldrums. It's a
self-assessment checklist that prompts you to take an honest look at your
reviews, your cover image, your categorization and targeting. With some simple
questions and honest answers, you'll be ready to give your books a makeover.
NOTE: Thus why I’m re-writing Doleful Creatures for the
fifth and likely not last time.
Leverage Professional Publishing Tools
Over the last couple years at Smashwords, we’ve introduced a
number of new tools that give our authors a competitive advantage in the
marketplace, such as Smashwords
Series Manager for enhanced series discovery, and preorder
distribution to iBooks, Barnes and Noble and Kobo. Yet despite the
availability of these tools, they’re not universally adopted. Even though
we’ve proven and communicated that books born as preorders sell more units that
other books, only a minority of Smashwords authors release their books as
preorders. Take advantage of these tools. They give you a
competitive advantage!
Best Practices Bring Incremental Advantage*
Here's a quick summary of some of the most commonly
underutilized best practices: 1. Many indies release their
books without professional editing and proofreading. 2. A
surprising number of authors end their book with a period and that’s it, and
not with enhanced
back matter and navigation that drives sales of your other books and drives
the growth of your social media platforms. 3. Although indie
authors are releasing books with better quality covers than ever before, a
surprising number of authors still release books with low-quality homemade
covers. 4. A lot of series writers haven’t yet experimented
with free series starters, even though free series starters are proven to drive
more readers into series and yield higher overall series earnings. 5.
Many series writers don't yet link their series books in Smashwords Series
Manager, even though this tool increases the discoverability of series books at
Smashwords and at Smashwords retailers. 6. Even though we’ve
published strong evidence three years in a row in our Smashwords Surveys (2014,
2013,
2012)
that longer ebooks sell better than shorter ebooks, some authors still divide
full length books into shorter books that can disappoint readers. 7.
Sloppy descriptions. You'd be surprised at the number of book
descriptions that have typographic errors, or improper casing or
punctuation. Readers pick up on this stuff. Mistakes like this are
like a slap in the face of your prospective reader.
*This point I have a love/hate relationship with. I
appreciate what he says about Smashword’s surveys. But shilling Smashwords
tools here, well, I’m a little less smitten with.
Take Risks, Experiment, and Fail Often
Success is impossible without failure. Failure is a gift. The challenge is to take a lot of little
risks and make every failure a teachable moment.
Dream Big Dreams
Be ambitious. Aim
high. You’re smart and you’re
capable. You must believe this. Because if you don’t try, you can’t
achieve. Salvador Dali said: "Intelligence without ambition is a bird
without wings."
Never Quit
Never give up. Quitting guarantees failure. If you never quit, you’ll never fail. Stamina and staying power beat the
sprint. Think of the story of the
tortoise and the hare. Fight for your right to pursue the best career in the
universe.
And never think you're too old, or it's too late. I'm still working.
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