SELF PUBLISHING COMPANIES
Self publishing companies divide into print-on-demand and electronic publishing, the last being covered on the electronic books page. Electronic publishing is much the same as traditional publishing. You still have to convince the publisher that your book will make money, even though though risks are reduced as the electronic book is cheaper to produce. Royalties tend to be more generous, of course, and a popular website promoting your ebook takes the place of bookstore signings and readings.
Electronic books are basically computer files, created to be read on a computer or hand-held device. Technology is making great strides, but the traditional paper book remains the more popular.
Self publishing companies have recently grown more cautious in what they will publish, having seen many of their fraternity disappear when the enthusiasm gave way to hard business sense. Only a few electronic publishers now accept poetry, where you'd probably do better to purchase the software and create your own ebooks.
More information can be found on these sites:
Electronic Book, e-Book, eBook, eJournals, and Electronic Journal Watch. Articles and a good listing.
NetLink E-Publishing & Print-On-Demand Sites. Includes general sites on electronic publishing.
Electronic Publishing. About/Jeeves's extensive listing.
EPIC. Professional organization for e-book and print authors.
netLibrary. Large eContent provider: listings for books and services.
Online Books Page. Lists 25,000 free books online.
Electron Press. Publishes books in Adobe Acrobat or PDA-readable format.
eBookAd. Ebook information, news and supplies.
Ebook Palace. Resources for publishing and marketing ebooks.
Internet Authors Network. Services and user group to promote ebooks.
Journal of Electronic Publishing. More scholarly articles on e-publishing
Open Ebook Forum. Organization of publishers, authors and software houses striving for international common standards in e-publishing.
Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography. Extensive and well-maintained.
Internet Publishing. Personal site, with an excellent listing of electronic publishers.
EPS. Good source of statistics for the online publishing industry.
E-Reads. Offers e-book versions of previously-published books.
WBJB. Online radio show devoted to self publishing: links to articles and newsletter.
A few of the many e-publishers still in business: quality varies:
Hard Shell Word Factory.
New Concepts Publishing.
Awe-Struck E-Books.
C & M Online Media (Boson Books).
Fictionwise, Inc.
Writer's Exchange E-Publishing.
Atlantic Bridge Publishing.
Wings ePress, Inc.
Virtual Book Publishing Co.
Background to Self Publishing Companies
Ecommerce Digest has been surveying the electronic publishing scene since 2001, and their reports over the years can be summarized as follows.
2001-2002 Performance
Conversion rates for online book sales were 42% in the case of Amazon, but average 5-8% overall. {1} Mainstream publishers are beginning to take up material originally self-published or published in electronic form. {2} The year saw a steady growth in ebook sales, with the main publishers reporting year on year increases from 40% to 100%. Palm Digital Media alone sold 180,000 e-book titles in 2001, and 5 million copies of Microsoft Reader were downloaded for use on desktops, notebooks and pocket PCs. {3}
2003-4 Prospects
We did not found a reliable Internet survey of immediate prospects for e-publishing and e-book marketing. All the same, trade articles and the output of e-book hardware suggest an accelerating acceptance of e-publishing, and no doubt more success stories. The really exciting new developments — lightweight flexible screens, wireless downloads — are proven technology, but cheap products are still some years away. Nonetheless, and more than other forms of ecommerce, e-publishing will change entertainment habits, and widen educational opportunities.
2004-5 Prospects
The heady predictions have been toned down, and even scholarly publishing seems to prefer the old-fashioned book. {4} Nonetheless e-book sales rose 28% on last year, according to figures from the e-book trade association, generating €2.7 million in the first quarter of 2004. {5} 2003 e-books accounted for 15% of total book sales in Holland, totalling €307m, a 28% increase on digital content sales in 2002. {6} Judged on these rather scattered figures, e-book sales seem likely to increase a further 25% in 2005, a figure supported by reports of e-book revenues up 25% for the third quarter of 2004. {22} In contrast, US net sales for books were $23.7billion in 2004, only a 1.3% increase over 2003, according to AAP figures. {23}
2005-6 Prospects
The picture is mixed, with talk of imminent 'tipping points', but the market still small: 1000 copies may be a good sales figure for an e-book, but not for a magazine or paperback. Some booksellers doubt if the e-book revolution will ever happen. One leading UK publisher said, 'Novels on handheld terminals are not important. The novel does not suit electronic dissemination. Most people buy books to read for comfort. A lot of books bought are not actually ever read
they sit on shelves or on coffee tables. Books are very cheap. Why would we replace that with something that is not that cheap or could go wrong.' Nonetheless, e-publishers are increasing sales to scholars, scientists and students, if not the general public. {24} Several e-book sites listed below seem either not to be undated properly, or have little to report. E-book compilers continue to appear, one of the latest being WebWorks ePublisher Pro for Word, a $1,000 package handling HTML, XHTML and DHTML. {25}
2006-7 Prospects
Despite disappointing results in their home countries — the natural consequence of high hardware prices, limited reading choices, and draconian DMR (digital management rights) measures — several Chinese and Japanese ebook readers are being re-engineered for the US and European markets. Librie has been re-released as the Sony eBook, and the Sigma, Argosy and EasyRead are under development, probably with distribution agreements now being tied up with e-book suppliers. {37}Many of the last now offer a good range of material, up to 30,000 titles in some cases, but readers dislike being tied to specific outlets, and the books themselves are expensive. The DMR can be disabled, but not all users have the technical expertise or wish to tamper with expensive equipment. The potential market is enormous. US publishers alone sold 2.3 billion books in 2004, but only 0.1% of these were ebooks. Opinion is therefore divided on the prospects of this new generation of hardware. The price tag is still too high ($200-$700), and the screens too small. The success of miniaturized MP3 players shows what is possible, and sales here — vastly more demanding technology, and prices as low as $70 — may persuade the manufacturers of ebook readers to take the obvious course.
In marked contrast to text on screen, MP3 technology has opened a new digital age in audio books. Many customers of Audible (the UK distributor of audio books in the iTunes format) had never purchased a book before in CD or cassette format, and the company reports that downloads accounted for 6% of the $800m audio book market in 2004, but have been increasing annually at 80% per year since. {38} Apple's iPod has done much to make audio books acceptable to the young, and there are now clones and cheaper alternatives, though none so popular. Apple is to introduce software that speaks the song title, bands, and albums (safer when driving, etc.) {39}, and Microsoft is to bring out its own iPod shortly.
The proliferation of file formats is a pressing difficulty for publishers of ebooks, and many are more expensive than they should be, given the ease of duplication. Schoolchildren, university students and adults are increasingly turning to ebooks for information and entertainment. Authors are also finding that epublishing gives them a better chance of being read. British publishing houses, for example, print more than 160,000 new titles a year, but only 5% of these are from unsolicited manuscripts, submitted without a literary agent. Self-publishing is therefore growing — 200,000 titles in 2005, up 25 per cent from the year before. The self-publishing company Lulu currently features 45,000 titles on its site, and over 1,000 new titles appear every week. Most are not commercially viable, but surprises happen. GP Taylor, an Anglican parish priest from Scarborough in England, sold 20,000 copies of his fantasy children's book in the first month of national publication. The book was picked up by Faber and Faber, and the American rights sold on for £314,000. {40}
Podcasts and audio books are also making inroads on traditional guide books and customer support. Lonely Planet now supply Podcast supplements to their guides, and some 200,000 podcasts were downloaded in less than a year from Virgin Atlantic Airlines' site. {41} Increasingly, US libraries are providing audio books, and these are particularly popular among schoolchildren who must otherwise lug heavy textbooks in backpacks (3,400 were treated in emergency hospitals for resulting back injuries in 2002). Of the $7.5 billion that US school districts spent on textbooks in 2004, $2 billion was for electronic textbooks and other digital teaching materials. {42} Yahoo announced in November 2004 an ebook service allowing publishers to have their material distributed as plain text, one long page per chapter, {43} and Microsoft have invested an initial $2.5 million to digitize 25 million pages of content at the British Library. The documents will be readable at print.google.com. {44}
Subscription Services
Very different from e-books are subscription services. While the distinction between content downloaded and content read online may seem purely technical, Internet users do not like subscription charges. The content providers argue, very understandably, that their material costs money to collect, analyze and present, and that charging is becoming more acceptable, if not inevitable now that advertising revenues have dried up. {7} But 70% of online adults in a recent survey could not understand why anyone would pay for online content. {8} Only 12% in fact paid up when faced with subscription charges,{9} and anecdotal evidence suggests that even that 12% can be optimistic. Content providers trying to estimate future conversion rates should note that commercial schemes for individual pages are even less popular. Nonetheless, spending on web content nearly doubled from 2001 to $1.3 billion in 2002, led by dating, financial advice and lifestyles sites. An extra 4 million paid for online content in 2002. {10}.
Against this trend, research firm Outsell's 2004 report has indicated that the market for paid content online stands at $50 bn, or about 35 times larger than commonly reported if all aspects are included — dispelling the common notion notion that users will not pay for valuable content. {11}
US subscribers paid $853 million for online content in the first half of 2004, {12} and time spent viewing content online surpassed that on communications (email or instant messaging) for the first time in the history of the Online Publishers Association's Internet Activity Index. {13} MediaBay, an audio entertainment company, is to offer audiobook titles on the MSN Music Service, supplementing their download music service. {14} According to Spectrum Strategy, paid-for content revenues from the fixed internet are predicted to grow from around £0m currently to £400m by 2007 in the UK, and online advertising revenues from around £200m to £300m by 2007. {15} The European online information market grew by 14% in 2003 to a value of €2.799m, according to IRN Research. By the end of 2003, online accounted for 49% of all STM information sales in Europe, and this share is predicted to be well above 50% by mid-2004. {16} Spending on online content in 2003 rose to nearly $1.6 bn, an increase of 18.8% over 2002. {17}
US consumer spending for online content reached $1.8 billion in 2004, a 14% increase over 2003, boosted by growth in games (+22%), sport (+38%) and lifestyles/entertainment (+90%). {18} Newspapers are losing out to web portals and local TV newscasts as purveyors of news. Women prefer the local TV and men the Internet. The last will become the dominant news source over the next three years, despite the dislike of excessive ads. {19} Faced with such competition, more newspaper web sites are considering, or perhaps hesitating, to charge for online access. Currently, only one US national paper, The Wall Street Journal, and some 45 small dailies charge readers for content, though an announcement is expected soon from the New York Times. {20} The big news is Google's plan to scan and index books from five major libraries, a six-year task for the University of Michigan's seven million volumes. The company has applied for a patent called "Method for searching media," which may enable Google News to index print magazines and newspapers, and then charge a subscription for viewing. {21}