Monthly Archives: May 2014

Non-Fiction vs. Fiction

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I have to admit that initially I thought everyone would want an e-book over a printed book because printed books are bulky and expensive. Yet after turning my most popular e-books into print-on-demand books, I’m starting to see twice as many sales through print-on-demand as I am through e-books. Although there’s no definite proof why this might be, here’s my theory.

E-books are especially popular for romance novels since nobody can see what type of book you’re reading on a tablet. Romance novels have always been popular with many women and now that they don’t have to hide the lurid covers of most romance novels, reading a romance novel in public is easy. This may also be why the odd subcategory of romance novels involving falling in love with monsters and mythical creatures has taken off. Dubbed “monster porn,” these romance novels involve women romancing vampires, werewolves, aliens, and ghosts. E-books are especially popular for fiction that you’ll likely read once while letting you read in public without revealing what you’re reading.

My most popular e-books are reference books so it’s likely people want a printed copy in front of them so they can quickly flip through the pages to find the information they want. Looking for information in a printed books is more familiar than searching through an e-book, even though an e-book is actually faster and more accurate. However the big drawback with an e-book is that you can’t easily see two facing pages.

So based on this non-scientific results of my own experience, I’d conclude that e-books are especially good for fiction (and romance fiction in particular) due to its low cost, anonymity while reading, and lack of needing to refer to the book over time. Print-on-demand books are particularly good for non-fiction because it allows readers to view more information and open the book faster than loading a tablet and searching for contents within an e-book.

If you’re writing fiction, e-books are cheaper ways for people to satisfy their reading needs. If you’re writing non-fiction, print-on-demand seems popular for reference works despite the higher cost of print-on-demand books compared to e-books.

Of course, it’s free to create print-on-demand books and e-books so you might as well do both just to increase the chances of a sale. Just be aware that the type of book you write will partially determine whether more people will want to buy it as an e-book or a printed book.

E-Book Sales Rise

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Bloomsbury Publishing announced that 12% of its book sales are now digital e-books. The publisher of Harry Potter said that its digital sales rose by 21% to £12.2m in the year to February 28, contributing 12.1% of title sales – up from 11.5% at the same time last year. Nigel Newton, chief executive, said: “We have continued to grasp the opportunities offered by the digital revolution to build a growing profitable, sustainable and balanced twenty-first century publishing business. Underpinning this is our success in developing into a wholly integrated trade and academic publisher in the major markets around the world. During the year we made good progress towards our longer-term strategic targets.”

In other words, even traditional publishers are seeing increased e-book sales. While the older generation still clings to printed books, a newer generation will find e-books far more convenient, especially for throwaway type books like romance novels and other types of genre fiction. As traditional publishers learn the importance of e-books, that will help legitimize the e-book industry for everyone.

As more people rely on smartphones and tablets, you can expect more people to read e-books. As brick and mortar bookstores struggle or go out of business, expect more e-book sales to keep both publishers and authors profitable and happy in the near future.

To read more about Bloomsbury Publishing and their increased sales of e-books, click here.

Print vs. E-Books

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When I first started self-publishing, I assumed people would gravitate towards e-books since they were cheaper and easier to carry on a smartphone or tablet. After selling e-books for several years, I noticed that some people kept asking for a print version of the book. That’s when I decided to create a print-on-demand version of my most popular e-books through CreateSpace, which is a division of Amazon. Surprisingly, I’m now selling more print-on-demand books than I am selling e-books, even though the print-on-demand books cost twice as much.

Although there’s no way to know the reason for sure, I think the reason is the target audience. In the e-book world, romance novels are extremely popular since they tend to be more disposable in the sense that once you read it, you’ll likely never bother rereading it again. However if buy nonfiction, it’s far more convenient to have a printed book in front of you that you can reference over and over again without needing a smartphone or tablet to read it on.

In my case, I’m targeting screenwriters so they tend to be an older audience that wants a reference book that they may not read from start to finish, but will likely read in bits and pieces whenever they want answers to problems.

Based on my own unscientific experience, I’d suggest if you’re writing fiction that’s meant to be read once and likely never reread, you’ll be better off with e-books. If you’re writing nonfiction that targets older people (who tend to prefer print over e-books) and that needs to act as a reference, you’ll probably be better off with a print-on-demand book.

Of course, you can still do both, but it’s likely that fiction will sell far better as a disposable and easily carried e-book while nonfiction will sell better as a print-on-demand book that can be readily accessed without the need of smartphone or tablet.

Whatever the real reasons for the differences in sales between my e-books and print-on-demand books, the end result is that there is no one-size-fits-all formula for success in self-publishing. Just try both and see which method of self-publishing works out best for your particular books. Whatever the case, self-publishing is still more profitable than traditional publishing.

High School English Classes Self-Publishes Poetry

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When the students at Los Gatos High School wanted to publish a book of their poems, they decided to self-publish it. If they had tried to go through the traditional publisher route, they would have had to write a proposal, mail them out to publishers, and hope that one publisher might accept the project. If a publisher did accept the project, they would have to wait even longer to get their book edited, printed, and distributed. By that time, some of the students in the high school might have left.

Traditional publishing takes too long with no guarantee of results. Self-publishing takes far less time and puts you in complete control of the final result while giving you global distribution at no cost thanks to the Internet. Even if this book of poetry doesn’t sell tremendous numbers of copies, the experience of putting the book together has given these students skills and knowledge that they can apply to future e-books they might wish to create. More importantly, it has also given these students a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction knowing that their works can now be purchased by people all over the world.

As first-time authors understand, you rarely make money off your first published book, but the joy of seeing your work available to the public is priceless.

To read about the Los Gatos High School students and their self-published book of poetry, click here.

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Differences Between Boy and Girl Readers

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In the book “Jump-Starting Boys,” the author makes the case that boys tend to lose interest in reading far more often than girls. To counteract this tendency, the author suggests that boys need more positive male role models who read and read to the boys. However, what’s particularly interesting is the different topics that male and female readers seem to enjoy the most:

  • Book readers overall: 46% men, 54% women
  • Literary readers: 37% men, 63% women
  • Heavy readers: 29% men, 71% women
  • Science fiction and horror readers: 15% men, 8% women
  • Mystery and suspense readers: 14% men, 24% women
  • History and war readers: 9% men, close to 0% women
  • Science and technology readers: 7% men, close to 0% women
  • Romance readers: close to 0% men, 12% women
  • Personal growth readers: close to 0% men, 8% women

What’s noticeable is how more women than men tend to read except in the fields of science fiction and horror, history and war, and science and technology. In general, women tend to read more than men, which partially accounts for boys reading less when they have fewer male role models to emulate.

For a self-published author, you can look at these statistics and decide to follow them or buck the trend. If you decide to follow the trends, you can create romance novels geared for women. If you decide to buck the trend, you can create romance novels geared for men, but at least you’ll know ahead of time that you’re facing an uphill climb getting an audience.

By studying these trends, you can get a better idea how your own self-published books might fare with both men and women. If you’re writing a book about the history of war during medieval times, chances are good you’ll be better off targeting men. If you’re targeting personal growth readers, don’t ignore the needs of women.

In general, expect more women to buy your books than men unless you’re in the male-dominated fields like science and technology. The next time you write and market your books, keep these statistics in mind so you don’t waste too much time marketing war books to women or romance novels to men. If you do, you could create the next sensation, but at least do your best knowing the trends so you won’t be surprised if your war history book fails to reach many women readers. Of course, if you write a war history book specifically for women, you might have more luck than just writing for a general audience.

In any event, the main lesson from these statistics is that men and women have different interests and if you know how to target those interests, you can be more successful in marketing your books to the audience most likely to buy your books.

Making the First Sale

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Don’t think that self-publishing e-books will be an instant path to fame and fortune. There are literally thousands of e-books on the market so if you throw your e-book in that market, it will immediately get lost in the crowd. If you do nothing but throw one e-book on the market, you can expect to make one sale every year or two. If that’s all you want, then that’s what you’ll likely get regardless of the quality of your writing.

That’s why I advise against spending a lot of money on editing services or book cover design. Many of these services can cost hundreds of dollars. They may do exactly as they say, but they probably won’t increase sales of your self-published e-books. They can help, but the money you spend on this help will likely never be recovered by sales of a single e-book. There may be exceptions to this, but someone always wins the lottery every week too, so don’t plan on being the exception.

To succeed, you need to market your e-book. That means promoting it through your website and building an audience for your information whether it’s non-fiction or fiction. No  after how much you may promote a single e-book, it will likely never be enough. What you need to follow through are more similar e-books.

Write a spy or romance novel and people happy with your book will want to read similar spy or romance novels. Don’t write a spy novel and a romance novel and expect to sell both to the same audience. Pick one niche and stick to it initially. Later you can branch out, but initially stay focused. Selling e-books isn’t easy, so concentrate your efforts to boost your sales.

The two best marketing tools are your own efforts through websites and social networks, and a continuous supply of related e-books. The more e-books you put on the market, the more credible you look and the more likely someone will buy one of your e-books. Once someone buys one of your e-books, they may buy another one. if someone buys two of your e-books, they’ll be more likely to buy a third one and so on. So the more related e-books you have, the more likely you’ll reach people and make additional sales.

The key is persistence. You’re probably not going to make a bundle of money with one e-book. It could happen, but don’t count on it. Keep growing your e-book library and keep promoting it through websites and social networks. You need to build your own following. The moment you build your own following, the more likely you’ll sell your e-books. Just throwing an e-book in the market is like buying a lottery ticket. The odds are heavily against you hitting it big with one chance, but the more chances you take, the better your odds get. The more related e-books you write, the more sales you’ll get.

Self-publishing isn’t a get rich quick scheme but a business that can take time. Just get started, make your mistakes, and keep going. When you make that first sale, it will help spur you on to increasing your odds of making a second sale. It all starts by making that first sale. Even best-selling authors started by selling one book at a time.

 

McDonald’s Gives Free E-Books with Happy Meals

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In the United Kingdom, McDonald’s isn’t giving away action figures or toys from the latest hit movie. Instead they’re giving away a free e-book. When kids buy a Happy Meal, they’ll get a download code for one of Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven children’s mystery books with every meal purchased between now and June 3rd as part of its annual “Happy Readers” program. McDonald’s has partnered with Kobo to offer e-books as a free bonus.

Will kids want an e-book instead of a toy that provides instant gratification? Maybe, but remember that most kids are growing up in a digital world so they have far less memories about printed books than most adults do. To many kids, they see the advantages of e-books and fail to see the advantages of printed books, which is often the opposite way many adults think. Most likely McDonald’s is testing e-book giveaways in the United Kingdom to gauge their popularity. If free e-books prove popular in a small market, look for McDonald’s to expand the promotion to larger markets worldwide.

As much as older people may only see the benefits of printed books, e-books are going to be the next future of publishing. With e-books, you can reach customers directly without the need for book distributors or book stores, which essentially eliminates the huge advantage of going with a traditional publisher in the past. The e-book revolution is coming and as authors, self-publishing is a viable and profitable alternative to getting past the gatekeeper mentality of traditional publishers that routinely reject books like Harry Potter and Chicken Soup for the Soul.

To read more about McDonald’s plan to give away free e-books with Happy Meals, click here.

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