Speaking of New Models for Self-Published Authors . . .
swmirsky
Publisher
Creating an online platform for book promotion. How about it fellas and ladies here? Another unpromising effort to parlay the digital revolution for the hapless self-published author?
"Reedsy —a U.K.-based publishing startup that connects authors with editors, designers and marketers who can help them with their projects—has announced a new service to help them called Reedsy Discovery. Reedsy Discovery, which launched today, will let readers know about books its expert reviewers have recommended every week. Those who join are able to look through curated “bookshelves,” preview chapters and connect with other readers. Reedsy Discovery will also issue a weekly newsletter of top books in popular genres and books curated by trusted reviewers. It will also offer a leaderboard where readers can vote on their favorite titles."
"In the not so distant past, self-published books, issued by 'vanity' presses, were often dismissed as work that could not pass muster with traditional publishers. That’s changed, thanks to self-published best sellers such as Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, The Celestine Prophesy by James Redfield and Switched by Amanda Hocking. The Martian, by Andy Weir, was adapted into a 2015 film starring Matt Damon.
"Reedsy —a U.K.-based publishing startup that connects authors with editors, designers and marketers who can help them with their projects—has announced a new service to help them called Reedsy Discovery. Reedsy Discovery, which launched today, will let readers know about books its expert reviewers have recommended every week. Those who join are able to look through curated “bookshelves,” preview chapters and connect with other readers. Reedsy Discovery will also issue a weekly newsletter of top books in popular genres and books curated by trusted reviewers. It will also offer a leaderboard where readers can vote on their favorite titles."
"In the not so distant past, self-published books, issued by 'vanity' presses, were often dismissed as work that could not pass muster with traditional publishers. That’s changed, thanks to self-published best sellers such as Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, The Celestine Prophesy by James Redfield and Switched by Amanda Hocking. The Martian, by Andy Weir, was adapted into a 2015 film starring Matt Damon.
"Today, many entrepreneurially-minded authors prefer to self-publish, so they can keep a greater share of the cover price than they would if they went the traditional route, where a commercial publisher takes a large cut. There were more than 1 million independently published books in the U.S. in 2017, compared to 300,000 conventionally published books, according to data that bibliographic information provider Bowker released in October 2018. Self-publishing grew at a 28% rate, a sharp increase over the 8% increase the previous year."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/elainepofeldt/2019/03/04/new-platform-connects-self-published-authors-with-readers/amp/
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http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/kevinlomas
As usual I am less negative about such efforts than you are, even while recognizing the obstacles to their success. As you note, they want to charge to get access to their services. Well a lot of people may well pull back and say NEVER and sometimes that IS the right decision. But think about it. Professional reviewers get paid for their efforts. The magazines or newspapers who carry their reviews make money from selling their wares and (more importantly) from the advertisers who pay them to carry their ads. No credible site can get going unless it's generating revenue for its owners. Is $50 too much? I don't know. But I have been willing to invest that in my books in the past if I think there is a potential for more sales for them.
There have been other online sites that have done the book review thing. The Midwest Book Review site comes to mind, as does the SF Site in Canada. (I've been lucky enough to have both review my first book though I don't think any real sales came of that -- but the reviews, well written, in both cases, lent credibility to the book's amazon page so that was a plus!) What's needed to make a difference is for a shift in the paradigm, i.e., for people looking for their next read to head for a site like this one as readily or more readily than they turn to the New York Times. That's not going to happen overnight and, frankly, this site is going to have to have some selling points besides providing a "curated" (that means vetted) shelf of new books for those looking to find a good book to pick up and read. Others, like Lunch.com, have tried this model and, of course, GoodReads which, as you know, Amazon took over -- though I don't know if it's doing much for their bottom line!
So I think this is a good idea though certainly not proven yet. It's a little early, Kevin, to complain about it or to badmouth it but, of course, if you don't want to pay $50 to try them out I can't blame you. But I might if and when I finish my next work of fiction.
And a point I mentioned above is worth emphasizing: a traditional literary agency never charges an author a penny. For that matter, a traditional commercial publisher never charges an author a penny, either.
But, as we will see, Reedsy is not really about representing your book or making an effort to present it to publishers.
Reedsy is being disingenuous in citing "self-published best sellers such as Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, The Celestine Prophesy by James Redfield and Switched by Amanda Hocking [and] The Martian, by Andy Weir..." since these are a vanishingly small proportion of the number of books published every year. Indeed, The Celestine Prophecy was published 26 years ago! In fact, Reedsy itself emphasizes this miniscule success rate by pointing out that 1,000,000 self-published books hit the market every year. The four titles they single out account for just 0.0004% of this total, if we include a book that was published a quarter of a century ago.
The sad fact is that when Reedsy claims that "In the not so distant past, self-published books, issued by 'vanity' presses, were often dismissed as work that could not pass muster with traditional publishers," this is something that has not really changed.
Reedsy is also being a little cagey when they say that "Today, many entrepreneurially-minded authors prefer to self-publish, so they can keep a greater share of the cover price than they would if they went the traditional route, where a commercial publisher takes a large cut." It might be true that the self-published author may be able to get a larger percentage of the cover price of each book but...
The self-published author is also responsible for all of the costs of promoting, marketing and advertising their book. They are also responsible for the costs of (if they are smart) having their book professional edited, copy-edited and designed, which includes the cover art.
All of these are costs that are absorbed by the traditional publisher.
In fact, if you dig deep enough into Reedsy you will find that they estimate the costs of "developmental editing, copy editing, proofreading, cover design and typesetting [which they explain actually means formatting]" of a self-published novel as being between $4000 and $5000. The costs for cover art, for instance, range from $300 for a "newcomer" to $1500 for an experienced professional. These are in addition to the fees that Reedsy itself charges. There are no estimates for advertising, promotion and marketing (for instance, if the author wants to run an ad, print posters or postcards or send out review copies of their book, they have to pay for these things out of their own pockets).
This $4000-$5000 is what Reedsy is hoping you will pay them.
And all of these are expenses that have to earned back before the author can make a single penny.
In fact, it appears that offering these services on a commercial basis is really what Reedsy is all about rather than promoting your book or acting in any way as an agency representing it. And these are all services you can find elsewhere. All you have to do is a little shopping.
And, of course, in self-publishing there is the absence of a non-refundable advance. This is money paid up front by a commercial publisher. This may range anywhere from just a few hundred dollars to several thousand, depending on circumstances. The important thing is that this is money the author gets to keep, even if the book never sells a single copy.
But one of the most important differences is the issue of volume. It is all well and good to get two or three times the royalty on each book you sell if you self-publish, but if you sell only a few hundred books you will not make as much money as you would have with a smaller royalty from a publisher that sells a thousand books or more. (For instance, a book of mine that was published in October 2017 has averaged 30-35 copies sold every day since according to the last accounting I got.)
Let's say an author has a 300-page novel published as a trade paperback. The going cover price for a similar book by a commercial publisher is between $15 and $20. Lulu's cost for such a book is $7.25. This means that the author would have to sell at least 400 copies at $20 each just to break even if they use Reedsy's services and undertake no promotion or advertising. I'm not familiar with how earnings work when a book is carried by Amazon or Barnes and Noble, but the earnings per book may be less. If so, that means even more copies will have to be sold for the author make back their expenses. (Others here in the Forums have more experience with this than I do.)
It's all well and good to try to develop new models for getting books published and sold, but there also has to be a dose of reality involved. Reedsy may be the harbinger of things to come, but if I have a book I want to have published, promoted and sold, my responsibility would be to pursue the course that would be best for my own immediate future, not what may or may not be to the benefit of some new system or any other authors.
Black Cat Studios http://www.black-cat-studios.com/
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/kevinlomas
In any event, I can see where this might be great for Reedsy and its ilk, but how does it really benefit the author? In other words, who is profiting from this? In traditional publishing, the publisher is the one who puts everything at risk financially...if the book succeeds both the publisher and author gain, if it fails only the publisher is the substantial loser since they will have lost all of the costs attached to the publication of the book, including any advance paid to the author. But in this new model it appears that all of the investment, and attendant risk, falls on the author’s shoulders. On the other hand, Reedsy loses nothing no matter what happens.
Black Cat Studios http://www.black-cat-studios.com/
When I wrote "since most reviewing entities pass up self-published books, Kevin responded:
Kevin writes:
Kevin wrote:
Ron wrote:
Ron adds:
So what does Reedsy lose if the undertaking fails? Well it's owners lose whatever they invested to set up and run their site as well as the time lost doing so plus the opportunity they presumably hoped to make real by creating the next big online digital platform. The participating author(s) lose whatever the invested in getting their book seen and reviewed on the site, presumably fifty bucks.
Black Cat Studios http://www.black-cat-studios.com/
Swirmsky, I appreciate these interesting links you bring up. I think it's great you are always on the lookout for different opportunities to get your work out into the world. No one is out there promoting our stuff. We chose to be our own promoters, that's what we signed up for, at least I did.
So keep sharing news about these outlets.
I'll be over here sending more books off to publications and putting a new batch of stickers onto chairlifts this weekend.
Of course, we all would. But as you note there are some paid review sources which have more credibility than others. Kirkus reviews books for the industry rather than for the general public and so it has plenty of reason to seek credibility. That, presumably, is the kind of profile Reedsy wants, too.
Ron adds:
Ron went on:
No one forces anyone here to avail themselves of other services offered through Lulu or, for that matter, through Reedsy whose premise is not that they are the POD provider but a provider of promotional support, in this case "credible" book reviews by leveraging the Internet for that purpose. More power to them if they can make a go of it. If they parlay their idea into a successful business that works for the potential users of their services, too.
But no one here has urged anyone to go straight to POD self-publishing instead of going the traditional route first. Why keep bringing that up anyway? I would presume that anyone who is here aiming at or working on self-publishing his or her work has already tried the traditional route and either obtained some modest success which they think they can better by publishing themselves OR has faced a brick wall and decided to just do it themselves. I get your recommendation to go the traditional route Ron, but why keep kicking that horse? Do you really suppose there are large numbers of people here, if anyone, who haven't already gone the traditional route and found good reason to do otherwise here?
So long as sites such as Reedsy encourage authors to go directly to self-publishing, I will continue to urge them to be more cautious and realistic, especially when it comes to expectations. I have no problems at all with self-publishing---I think it's wonderful, otherwise I wouldn't have self-published books of my own---but authors need to be not only realistic about self-publishing but also realistic about traditional publishing. In other words, they need to make genuinely informed decisions and not decisions based on mistaken notions.
By the bye, speaking of bringing things up often, I am not sure why you keep promoting Reedsy as a way of promoting a book. I have yet to find any way on their site in which an author can do that directly through Reedsy. That is, there is no place to browse the books they have helped create. However, Reedsy does offer marketing and advertising as among the paid services they offer.
I do give Reedsy full marks for generally being pretty upfront and honest about most things. For instance, in talking about marketing they point out that "authors are expected to take on the lion’s share of marketing efforts, regardless of the publication path" and that "most successful independent authors admit to spending a large part of their day marketing their books rather than writing."
Black Cat Studios http://www.black-cat-studios.com/
Ron added:
As it happens, I am in the midst of writing a new one and have been thinking a lot about new ways to promote it and so, naturally -- and given my interest in how the digital revolution has changed publishing and book selling -- I am looking for new approaches to doing this via online capabilities. And needless to say, of course I will pursue the traditional routes first but I don't plan to do it like I did back with kvs when I spent two years seeking a publisher before finally tossing in the towel and deciding to go POD. I'm a bit more savvy now and don't want to waste a lot of time so, instead, if when it's done I don't get a positive response in about three months, I will go the tried and true POD route. In that case I expect I will need a strong online presence and a promotional strategy to fit the book. Reedsy might offer that.
More, it might be a new model which can achieve success in our modern digital world in which case it might also be an interesting investment down the road.
None of this is about "promoting" the site though.
Black Cat Studios http://www.black-cat-studios.com/
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/kevinlomas
Unless I've lost something of my reading comprehension skills you DID say "promoting Reedsy" and my response was that talking about Reedsy's operation is not to "promote" them. If THAT were so, anything we ever mention would also be promoting. But maybe you just misspoke as we all sometimes do in conversations?
As to Reedsy promoting books, my take accords with yours. They claim to offer services to help authors promote their books, not to promote books for their authors. The service that caught MY attention, as it did the author of the Forbes article from which the story came, was that of "curation," i.e., creating an online platform to vet books for prospective readers the way traditional professional book reviewers (and, frankly, publishers) do in the non-digital self-pub domain.
I find that especially interesting.
(PS: I think it’s your reading comprehension. Just to be really, really clear, I never once suggested that you were promoting Reedsy. I only referred to your implication that it is Reedsy itself that was already promoting books...something they are not yet doing.)
Black Cat Studios http://www.black-cat-studios.com/
As to panning books, the general tendency, even among traditional professional reviewers, is to basically say nice stuff, even when some criticisms are included. There are lots of reasons for that including the fact that most reviewers are also writers and so generally have books of their own, so there's a kind of professional courtesy at work, and, of course, self-interest. Also the media which publish the reviews have relationships with publishers in terms of advertising and don't really want to harm that revenue stream so it's in their interest to make their periodicals or newspapers friendly places for authors, too.
It's very rare, though not impossible to read a very negative review of any book. But the potential for that must be maintained if the reviewing entity is to retain credibility so full on pans do occasionally show up. Obviously this doesn't happen in a paid for milieu where the author/publisher is buying the review and that adversely affects credibility. Given the Reedsy concept of authors paying a fee to get their books into that reviewing process, that dynamic poses a problem to credibility and will need to be overcome.
And, frankly, what Reedsy offers now is indeed a valuable service, which is something that I am afraid I lost track of in going off on a tangent that, in fact, had nothing to do with the services Reedsy currently offers.
That being said, I still stand by my assertion that too many people looking to self-publish are not being realistic. And this is something that Reedsy, to its discredit, actually reinforces when it brings up the handful of self-published books that have become best-sellers as examples or suggests the possibility of being able to earn more money by self-publishing.
Black Cat Studios http://www.black-cat-studios.com/
You probably just need to read more reviews.
In any case, here is an interesting take on the question from a NYT book reviewer: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/books/review/do-we-really-need-negative-book-reviews.html
The NYT Book Review editor Pamela Paul addressed this direct question:
It’s so hard for good books to get attention. Why bother publishing negative reviews?
We don’t try to! We send out books because we think they are worthy of review. But that does not mean that our reviewers will always like them. For us to edit those reviews in a way that altered their judgment or to kill reviews because the editors disagreed with the reviewers would be journalistically irresponsible, unethical and unfair all — to the critics, to our readers, and even, one can argue, to the authors who might value the criticism.
That said, negative reviews have a function. Our responsibility is ultimately to our readers, who are trying to make informed decisions about which books are worth their time and money. If all reviews were positive, it would be awfully hard to pick out the truly great from the merely mediocre.
And while we are on the subject of bad/good reviews, there was a study done about such things that came to a pretty interesting conclusion. https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mksc.1090.0557
(Here is the paper itself if you want to read it )
Black Cat Studios http://www.black-cat-studios.com/
https://www.amazon.com/King-Vinlands-Saga-Stuart-Mirsky/dp/0738801526
and other online retailers sold extremely well (from about 1999 -- it came out in the late fall of 1998 -- to about 2001 or 2002). I did a very aggressive individualized email campaign and also went to bookstores, organized a related major event, etc., but the real powering impetus for sales were lots of good reviews that started appearing on amazon as a result of those sales (driven by my promotional efforts). However, some time around 2001 or 2002 a few highly negative reviews started showing up. Sometimes they were just one liners. One I recall went like this: "This book sucks and I ought to know because I am as much of a viking as anyone."
I was taken aback and complained about it to Amazon because it really said nothing about the book itself and used what I took to be an offensive term and Amazon took it down. However, soon after several other highly negative reviews began appearing, more substantive in their comments (so I couldn't complain that they really said nothing) and without offensive language (so I had no beef there either). These reviewers apparently just hated my book. Given that, I felt I could not, in good conscience, complain. What readers think is what they think and reviews are useless if they are pitched to only be positive. But as a result of those few reviews (being more recent they tended to show up on the book's page under the old Amazon standard of newest first) my book's sales collapsed. And I decided to let that happen because I could see nothing I could do to argue against highly negative reviewers.
One review did insult me personally so I responded to that reviewer on the Amazon page but I made no effort to have the review removed. And so the newer generally negative reviews edged aside all the positive ones the book had once garnered and sales suffered for it. I wasn't quite sure why there had been such a sudden turn in reader sentiment but reading the comments more closely I came to think that the problem lay in my decision not to write a blood and guts "viking" tale but a nuanced and character-driven saga pastiche, the kind I liked and had wanted to create when I first undertook to write the book.
I concluded that these new readers had been put off by my effort to emulate the saga "voice" and/or by my failure to make it a story of heroic toughs bullying their way by rapine and pillage through the countryside or across oceans the way so many modern (and successful) viking novels do. My book wasn't really about vikings at all. It's just that in our common usage we tend to call the Scandinavian- based sailors and adventurers of that period by that name (which really refers to a vocation and not an ethnicity). Obviously I had begun to reach a readership with different expectations than the ones who had written all those earlier reviews. Given the abrupt plunge in sales, I decided to end my promotional efforts. Perhaps, I thought, I had reached all of those who were attuned to a more literary effort that I was going to reach and was now left only with readers who wanted the titillation of rape and pillage and the vicarious thrill of the viking life.
So I can say that negative reviews DO affect book sales even if someone like Trump exults in generating coverage whether it's negative or not!
As to the surfeit of viking books today, I have to admit I have little interest in most of them and don't read them though there are so many now I can't count them anymore although when I wrote mine you could count the available titles focused on the Norse world on one hand (maybe two at most)!
Perhaps, then, I was ahead of my time?
At least the five reviews you excerpt on the Amazon page are not only enthusiastically positive but from respectable sources.
Black Cat Studios http://www.black-cat-studios.com/
And I suppose it's worth keeping in mind that Reedsy will be advocating only a tiny fraction of the 1,000,000 self-published books that are appearing every year. It would be great to be among one of those chosen, but one will have to be realistic in one's expectations. In other words, it might be a wonderful way to get your book promoted but it will have to be one of the ones that passed through whatever curating gauntlet Reedsy will have. I hope KVS makes the cut!
Black Cat Studios http://www.black-cat-studios.com/
One thing about the Reedsy possibility is that, even if only a few books "make the cut" as you say, THAT provides a valuable service to self-publishing writers because it sets a standard to shoot for, thus improving our overall output at least among those seeking to reach that standard. And also, IF THEY SUCCEED IN BUILDING THEIR CREDIBILITY, they can provide a valuable vetting service to give confidence to prospective readers looking for places to spend their money on new books.
If you recall, I first started posting here with an idea that some authors here band together to try to create a curated (I like THAT word) imprint which would stand out from the run-of-the-mill self-published books. I see this move of Reedsy as similar to that earlier proposal of mine. Only it's better because, if done right, Reedsy (or some other outfit that might adopt the approach) can play a disinterested role in the process. It would have been a challenge, as you and Kevin suggested, to have achieved real credibility with a band of self-interested authors doing it on their own. But maybe Reedsy or some group like it can serve that crucial intermediary curation role down the road.
You keep saying that, but one only has to look at the star ratings, and you have to look hard to find a bad review within the 48 in total.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/kevinlomas
Perhaps, then, I was ahead of my time?
I think it's been pointed out here many times that there's always been fiction about Vikings in book, film and TV series form. The two latter two when those media were possible of course.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/kevinlomas
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/kevinlomas
My Books:
https://voidwheretaxed.wixsite.com/rockandfirepress/about
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/kevinlomas
Black Cat Studios http://www.black-cat-studios.com/