c2011Shalako
Hot damn! I'm so excited I'm fit to bust; I'm so happy I could shit!
That's right, ladies and gentlemen, we got our first fan mail for the first time ever, just this week!
Okay, okay, okay...(sorry!) Here's a little snippet from the first one:
Dear Louis;
I see that you are such a nice person and I don't know where else to turn. Boy! Oh, boy. Am I in a lot of trouble. You see, my father, the King Of Ethiopia, has been captured and taken hostage and held for ransom by rebels. While he is being held in the hills not far from the capital, I myself cannot help him as I escaped with my colleagues and the bodyguard and the Crown Jewels.
We are in a camp for displaced persons just outside of Val d'Or, which I admit is actually in Italy. As you should know, kind sir.
Unfortunately, the rebels are demanding cash, i.e. untraceable assets. They are quite adamant you see, and so of course I thought of you. You have many friends around the world and we (the government in exile,) were kind of wondering if you had any friends at the Bank of England.
(Personal details omitted.)
Okay, here's the next one:
Lou!
Old buddy, old pal!
Say, Lou, all kinds of lazy, no-good bastards, untalented fools and other assorted shitheads are making a ton of money off of the internet. Why not you?
What's so fucking special about you?
If these idiiots can do it, so can you! I'm here to help you, and if you will just click on this link to receive my free pdf, we can get started right now!
(Withheld.)
Don't worry, I got lots of links. But before we do that anyway, look here:
Here are the twelve points of successful internet marketing:
1.) Listen to me.
2.) Sign up for my course.
3.) Check out my other products, all free!
4.) That's right, Lou, they're all free!
5.) It is only when you go to upgrade, that the reasonable monthly charges really start to kick in.
6.) But I could go on!
7.) Lou, I can see that you are a busy man, just like me, so I will now enroll you into my only-free newsletter, for a special thirty day free trial!
8.) I am really looking forward to our new relationship.
(Name withheld.)
...and I got a couple others here, as well. Yes, ladies and gentlemen:
'Nothing beats the glow of a job well-done.'
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Flux or Revolution?
c2011Shalako
I’ve been trying to make sense of what I’ve learned over the last few months. Is the industry in a state of flux, or is it in a state of revolution? It is my assertion that debt and recession has shrunk the market for brand-new authors, i.e., ‘real’ publishers, by an estimated ten to twenty percent.
Self-publishing is not revolutionary. It’s been around for a long time. What is revolutionary is that it doesn’t cost any money. What’s revolutionary is that you don’t even have to leave home. You can do it from a blanket on a beach. You can write your book while commuting to your day job on the train and you can publish it from a table at a fine restaurant.
E-books are not going to ‘kill the book.’ The forty or fifty dollar cost of a typical hardcover, or the ten, to fifteen, to twenty-dollar cost of a paperback, are not going to ‘kill the book.’ The sheer weight, bulk, and cost of producing a book, the investment in plant and machinery, plus the high cost of labour and shipping, (i.e. fuel,) will inevitably shrink market share in the face of professional digital publishing and distribution without the use of trucks, warehouses, and human employees unpacking cardboard boxes and sticking books on shelves.
The POD of ‘Case of the Curious Killers,’ is listed at $13.99. By the time it is shipped to your house, it will cost about $20.00 or more, depending upon where you live. My profit would be sixty cents. I can set the price of an e-book at less than two dollars and still make my sixty cents.
Is there some reason why big box publishers can’t see this? I have no costs—no costs except my own time and labour. It’s a good investment, from my point of view.
The old fashioned full-service gas station went away, for many reasons. It was hard to get good help for a buck-ten an hour, which is what the wage was back then. But it was the sheer weight of traffic that actually killed the old fashioned gas station. No one was willing to wait for thirteen cars ahead of them to be filled.
Global online traffic is growing at an exponential pace, especially in developing and newly developed nations.
In five years, ninety or ninety-five percent of all publishing in major markets will be digital, and that’s just because people will still be sticking flyers in old people’s mailboxes. It will never be one hundred percent.
‘Readers,’ are a small demographic group. I’m not saying this to be facetious. But someone remarked that ten million people in France read ten books a year or less, and someone else pointed out that only ‘x-percent’ of people in this other country read ‘y-number’ of books a year. There are plenty of other things to do which don’t require the investment of time that a good book demands of a reader. Why read when you can flip through two hundred channels of TV?
But what really got me was how much time I spend reading online. It’s about ninety-eight, or ninety-nine percent of my reading now. Without a computer, I would read a good deal less. Also, I read much less fiction than I did before, and a lot more technical and how-to material. Digital publishing brings the most up-to-date research to my device. With the devices available today, an old fashioned book is only one kind of programming, and providing it, like music, in the most portable, convenient, and ecologically sound manner makes perfect sense to this writer.
Stripping away everything that is inessential about a book and distributing it globally, to a potential market of one-point-six billion English speakers, at a world-shattering price of one dollar—that is revolutionary, ladies and gentlemen.
That would be a stroke of genius, if it ever comes up in conversation or debate.
A week or so ago, I gave away a box of CD’s. I may never buy a CD again, and the likelihood of buying an ‘LP’ ever again seems rather slim. Did the iPod and MP-3s kill music?
Did sound recorded on wax cylinders kill the orchestra?
I’ve been trying to make sense of what I’ve learned over the last few months. Is the industry in a state of flux, or is it in a state of revolution? It is my assertion that debt and recession has shrunk the market for brand-new authors, i.e., ‘real’ publishers, by an estimated ten to twenty percent.
Self-publishing is not revolutionary. It’s been around for a long time. What is revolutionary is that it doesn’t cost any money. What’s revolutionary is that you don’t even have to leave home. You can do it from a blanket on a beach. You can write your book while commuting to your day job on the train and you can publish it from a table at a fine restaurant.
E-books are not going to ‘kill the book.’ The forty or fifty dollar cost of a typical hardcover, or the ten, to fifteen, to twenty-dollar cost of a paperback, are not going to ‘kill the book.’ The sheer weight, bulk, and cost of producing a book, the investment in plant and machinery, plus the high cost of labour and shipping, (i.e. fuel,) will inevitably shrink market share in the face of professional digital publishing and distribution without the use of trucks, warehouses, and human employees unpacking cardboard boxes and sticking books on shelves.
The POD of ‘Case of the Curious Killers,’ is listed at $13.99. By the time it is shipped to your house, it will cost about $20.00 or more, depending upon where you live. My profit would be sixty cents. I can set the price of an e-book at less than two dollars and still make my sixty cents.
Is there some reason why big box publishers can’t see this? I have no costs—no costs except my own time and labour. It’s a good investment, from my point of view.
The old fashioned full-service gas station went away, for many reasons. It was hard to get good help for a buck-ten an hour, which is what the wage was back then. But it was the sheer weight of traffic that actually killed the old fashioned gas station. No one was willing to wait for thirteen cars ahead of them to be filled.
Global online traffic is growing at an exponential pace, especially in developing and newly developed nations.
In five years, ninety or ninety-five percent of all publishing in major markets will be digital, and that’s just because people will still be sticking flyers in old people’s mailboxes. It will never be one hundred percent.
‘Readers,’ are a small demographic group. I’m not saying this to be facetious. But someone remarked that ten million people in France read ten books a year or less, and someone else pointed out that only ‘x-percent’ of people in this other country read ‘y-number’ of books a year. There are plenty of other things to do which don’t require the investment of time that a good book demands of a reader. Why read when you can flip through two hundred channels of TV?
But what really got me was how much time I spend reading online. It’s about ninety-eight, or ninety-nine percent of my reading now. Without a computer, I would read a good deal less. Also, I read much less fiction than I did before, and a lot more technical and how-to material. Digital publishing brings the most up-to-date research to my device. With the devices available today, an old fashioned book is only one kind of programming, and providing it, like music, in the most portable, convenient, and ecologically sound manner makes perfect sense to this writer.
Stripping away everything that is inessential about a book and distributing it globally, to a potential market of one-point-six billion English speakers, at a world-shattering price of one dollar—that is revolutionary, ladies and gentlemen.
That would be a stroke of genius, if it ever comes up in conversation or debate.
A week or so ago, I gave away a box of CD’s. I may never buy a CD again, and the likelihood of buying an ‘LP’ ever again seems rather slim. Did the iPod and MP-3s kill music?
Did sound recorded on wax cylinders kill the orchestra?
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