self published ebooks

The changing face of publishing – from a selfie’s point of view

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Unless you’ve spent your entire life on another planet, you can’t fail to be aware of the digital explosion that rocked the publishing world. Readers are now snowed under with choice, from free books to cheap books, and our ebooks have given readers the upper hand.

Everyone who wants to, can publish a book now, and with so many doing it, competition is fierce. In order to get sales, authors must think carefully when pricing their ebooks, and many resort to giving them away for free, or pricing them at 99 cents. If you price them too much higher, you won’t make sales unless you’re already very famous. There is much debate about pricing among authors, with some feeling that if you price them too low, readers will think your work is no good. The general consensus among authors is that the ‘magic price’ is between $1.99 and $3.00. This is of course, just the opinion of authors, based on sales.

I think that readers know full well that authors want to get noticed, and if they hold out long enough, you will eventually give your books away free, or set the price at the minimum 99 cents. They aren’t stupid, and they want things as cheap as possible (who doesn’t), so they just won’t buy if they’re higher than a dollar or so. I had one gal message me on facebook to tell me “let me know when you’re giving it away free and I’ll download it.”

This is soul destroying, for me anyway.  It seems that whichever way I go, I’m fucked.  If I give them away free, I make no money, but if I set them for actual money, I make no money either. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

This is one of the many downsides of the digital publishing revolution, and one that I can’t fathom how to change.  The only way out of this dark hole, is to have a lot of money to pay a PR company to market your work for you and get you quality visibility and make you into a celebrity.  I don’t have the money, hell I don’t have any money so that’s out of the question.

One of the other problems resulting from the digital publishing explosion, is the quality of work being put out. I personally choose to hope that within a few years, the bubble will burst and the majority of those self publishing what is quite frankly, crap, will decide to get a different hobby, allowing the rest of us to get some sunshine at last.  All we have to do is hold out until that happens, and then breathe a sigh of relief.

The traditional publishing houses are struggling. This has become clear by the number of big publishing houses making the jump into vanity publishing to try to attract more customers. The problem with traditional publishing houses, is that they haven’t changed the way they operate. They still make it almost impossible for authors to even get their manuscripts read, let alone accepted. Most are just thrown on the slush pile unread. They still refuse to accept sci fi/fantasy or horror, despite sci fi/fantasy being the most popular genre, and they’re still trying to maintain the charade that being traditionally published is the only way to be a ‘proper’ author.

I still see authors who openly believe this to be true, and those folks are the trad houses’ unpaid PR guys.  Readers don’t care who published the book they’re reading, and most probably don’t even know anyway.  All readers care about is getting the book preferably for free, or at the most, $1 or so.  The readers have the upper hand now, and they know it. They are  using their power to get what they want, for as little as possible, and killing us in the process.

I hope that they bring about the bubble burst that I still hope to see in a few year’s time.

WH Smith removing all self published ebooks

I just found out that WH Smith has taken down their website while they remove all self published ebooks from their site.  Apparently, they get some of their ebooks from Kobo, one of their partners, and some self published authors have been ignoring the ‘decency’ rules by using these platforms to publish content containing rape, incest and bestiality.

You can read a BBC report about it here.

On one hand, I can see their point.  Does incest, rape and bestiality really make a good work of fiction?  Why in the world anyone would want to write a book about bestiality, is totally beyond me but, it takes all sorts to make a world I guess.  I wouldn’t want to read such stuff, especially as I was a child victim of incest myself, but does that mean no one should be allowed to?

On the other hand, is this just another example of the nanny state gone mad?  Rape and incest happen, every day, all over the world and stopping people from including it in works of fiction, might be construed as censorship on steroids.  There are ways to infer rape and incest in a storyline, without giving readers a gut-wrenching blow by blow account, and in so doing, keep the story within bounds without taking the realism out of it.

WH Smith is a Newsagent, and they sell newspapers and magazines, including ‘top shelf’ men’s smut rags.  Surely, if they want to remove all ‘dirty stuff’ they should stop selling these too?  And, furthermore, I’ll bet fifty quid of anyone’s money that there are numerous traditionally published titles that also feature rape and incest.  Possibly not bestiality though, do people really write about that?  Seriously?  Anyway, are they going to remove the trad pubbed smut too?  They damn well better, or there will be a riot.