Emdashery Blog

Harry Potter kills books?

The death of books. We've heard it before. Advancing technology will make the paper-based, hold-in-your-hand book a thing of the past. Glenn Derene at Popular Mechanics takes a look at the effect of the last Harry Potter book showing up online for free four days before its official release. Is the end near?

"The pirating of a blockbuster novel onto the peer-to-peer networks is one of those seminal moments that is supposed to herald a new era, wherein the old way (books) is cleared out by the new way (computers, e-books) and the days of paperbacks and hard-bound volumes become marginalized to the sentimental periphery of culture along with vinyl records and postcards.

"But the book world is a hard target for digital technology. If anything, the Harry Potter piracy should serve as an interesting anomaly. Whereas digital music, mail and now cinema are quickly changing the landscape of communication and entertainment, digital books seem to have had a much slower evolution. If digital novel sharing marks the death of books, I assure you it will be a long, slow death."

Here's the whole article... Warning, however, don't even read the article's first sentence if you haven't finished The Deathly Hallows but plan to.

Simon Spurrier: giving away a book--

More on free book give-aways in hopes of inspiring future sales...

Headline Publishing Group is giving away a digital download of Simon Spurrier's new novel--Contract. It will be available online for six weeks--with each section available for a limited period. For those who like his work, a limited edition hardback will then be available to buy from the Web site.

Turning the pages online--

This is a cool innovation. Novelist Dale Moses is providing his horror novel, He Still Watches, online for free as he writes it. But it's not just any old e-book in Word or Adobe format, it's an actual book with flipping pages and bookmarks. And he's not going broke because he's giving away the book for free. He has sponsors who advertise at the bottom of each page.

Here's more:

This is a free online horror novel in progress, being created one page per day and posted once a week online in order to bring readers back repeatedly, and offering graphic advertising spots on each and every one of those pages. This gains wonderful exposure for the advertisers, and a free reading experience for the horror reading public worldwide. This is your chance to follow a novel being created! It's a revolution in self-publishing that is sure to change the way you view novels.

Check it out here...

Can you hear me now?--

I've spoken with several people recently who expressed an interest in distributing their book via a podcast--an audio book that would be disemminated through the internet. That's becoming more commonplace today, but what was significant was an audio podcast was the first step in publishing they were considering--before seeking a traditional publisher or even before self-publishing it in book or e-book form.

It turns out that "going first to podcast" is a growing trend. This New York Times article lists several examples of people doing just that. One example is Scott Sigler who writes science-fiction horror novels:

Several times a week Mr. Sigler, 37, steps into a walk-in closet in his San Francisco home. He reads into a microphone that connects to his computer via a sound mixer. Hanging shirts envelop him, masking ambient sound.

After being snubbed by publishers for years, Mr. Sigler began recording his first book, “EarthCore,” in 2005. He offered it as a podcast in 22 episodes (roughly 45 minutes each) that he posted online and sent free to subscribers for downloading. Before long, Mr. Sigler had 5,000 listeners; by the time he finished releasing his second novel, “Ancestor,” last January, he had 30,000, as he does for “The Rookie,” which is playing now.

By establishing a track record with readers listeners, Mr. Sigler eventually landed a publisher for several of his books.

How to publish a blovel--

Yesterday, I mentioned the CAN! Blog, which shares tips and experiences in the world of book marketing and promotion. In this post, one of the blog's authors, Sarah Anne Sumpolec, discusses her innovative attempt to stay connected to her readers while between published book projects.

I found myself with a book idea I was passionate about and no publisher willing to take a risk on it. I could choose to sit around with my lemons or figure out how to make lemonade with what I had.

The trick though, is to be risky and experiment, but be smart about it.

Her idea that wouldn't sell was a YA novel written in poetry. She still wanted to publish the story someday, so she shelved that particular novel, but wrote another poetry novel to publish on a blog. By posting the story in serial format, she hoped to keep her teen readers happy and keep her name out in public while she worked on getting another contract. She also used the blog novel to attract readers to her other published works.

You can read how she did it here. And you can start reading the novel, Totally Unfamous, here. I believe we're going to see a lot more fiction on blogs in the next few years.

Getting close and personal with an author (for free)--

Publisher's Lunch is a free daily e-newsletter put out by Publisher's Marketplace detailing some the latest information in the publishing world. The newletter comes with a lead-off advertisement usually put out by companies such as Microsoft, who has been spreading the word about it's new Microsoft Live Book Search capabilities.

A few days ago, however, the lead ad was from author Bill Stephens who is making his new book available for free on his Web site. The site also includes a forum where readers can "comment, critique, rant, rave, revise the plot, and even post fan fiction. You can play 'Rename The Novel,' and 'Be a Movie Producer.'" He also will appear on Youtube.com.

Here's the ad:

Advertisement

OK, You Guys Win

While my hard working agent is busy convincing you publishers how amazing my debut novel is, I'm taking the more direct Texan approach. I'm just gonna let everybody read it for free.

HORIZONS PAST
Cultures collide and humor abounds when the movie star
(think Sandra Bullock) encounters a reclusive Texas beach sand poet (think Harrison Ford).

Every Tuesday I'll post a new chapter on www.horizonspast.com.

Set a calendar reminder so you don't miss all the fun. The website Forum lets you comment, critique, rant, rave, revise the plot, and even post fan fiction. You can play "Rename The Novel," and "Be a Movie Producer."

Hey, it beats working, right? Let's also meet weekly face-to-face on www.youtube.com. Search "Olwriter". We'll share some reader comments (even the nasty ones) and we'll review where we are and preview the next chapter. Enjoy!

Bill Stephens

More betting of the farm by giving it away--

In earlier posts (here and here), I mentioned that J.A. Konrath and Mark Goodyear are offering their novels for free over the internet. From Terry Whalin, I just read this Forbes article by Cory Doctorow, who has been giving away free e-books of his work while also selling them through a traditional publisher.

Doctorow's first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, was published by Tor Books in 2003, but at the same time, and with the publishers buy-in, Doctorow made the electronic text of the novel available on the Internet. Over three years, more than 700,000 copies of the book have been downloaded. The interesting result...a significant percentage of the people downloading the free e-book later bought the printed book.

Doctorow says:

The thing about an e-book is that it's a social object. It wants to be copied from friend to friend, beamed from a Palm device, pasted into a mailing list. It begs to be converted to witty signatures at the bottom of e-mails. It is so fluid and intangible that it can spread itself over your whole life. Nothing sells books like a personal recommendation--when I worked in a bookstore, the sweetest words we could hear were "My friend suggested I pick up...." The friend had made the sale for us, we just had to consummate it. In an age of online friendship, e-books trump dead trees for word of mouth.

He's done this with three novels and a short story collection and every one has outperformed his publisher's expectations.

What is certain is that every writer who's tried giving away e-books to sell books has come away satisfied and ready to do it some more.

It will be fascinating to see where all this leads...

Free books for sale! Get your free books--

A few days ago, I blogged about author J.A. Konrath offering two of his books for free via e-books. Now, I'm finding other authors who are also offering their work for free in an effort to attract reader attention or feedback. In the case of Mark Goodyear, he is looking for both by providing Into the Mountain: A Book of Visions in a series of installments. According to The Corporate Blogging Book as referenced by Mark, one of the top five things people want to see on blogs is more fiction. So, Mark posted the first four chapters on his blog, but now with a publisher potentially interested in the book, he is offering the book through an e-mail subscription.

You can view the four chapters and subscribe to the rest here.

Betting the farm by giving it away--

If you're a mid-list author with a modest fan base, what is the best way to break through the mid-list ceiling and dramatically increase the distribution of your next book?

Well, you could always give it away as a free e-book. Maybe the number of buyers acquirers of a free e-book would increase ten-fold and then would be willing to dish out the money for the book after that.

That's just what thriller author J.A. Konrath is doing. At his blog A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, Konrath discusses his reasons for giving away the farm--or more specifically, two of his books. In the same post, he also talks about the failure (up to this point) of the promise of e-books and his predictions for the future of book media.