Three weeks ago I wrote about Amazon announcing a 70% royalty for authors

It seems Amazon overreached in seeking to establish itself as the online publisher resulting in the heated argument being who controls price, overlooking what the price needs to be to sustain a publishing industry. Now the bits and bytes have settled – Amazon yielded to BigPub and the cost of eBooks, at least new titles, will be going up. Has BigPub discounted the significance of reader boycott when Amazon has tried pricing a few Kindle books above ten dollars? Possibly.

Is boosting the price of eBooks BigPub’s final frontier in the face of the combined effects of more appealing book readers like Apple’s iPad,  rampant file sharing, do-it-yourself pBook scanning, and new habits of consumer thrift borne of this economy? I heard San Francisco agent Ted Weinstein say last November, “The publishing industry is in trouble because publishers have outsourced everything except warehousing and even that will become obsolete.” 

Even readers, like the wife of a middle-aged friend of mine who have resisted eBooks because of the preference for the feel of a print book, can now see themselves reading a book an iPad. Kindle use has spread when friends show their Kindles to their friends. This multiplier effect will increase as iPads get into consumers’ backpacks and bedrooms, attracting more eBook readers. 

The number of digitized books available on file sharing sites is rapidly increasing, too. One of the largest sites posts how many files were added the day before On February 5, the database increased by 29,590. On February 13, 34,166 additional files were added, making nearly twelve million books available for free at this writing. Who’s providing these books and where do they come from?  The majority of pirated files are not hacked eBooks: they are scanned pBooks, manuscripts and galleys, according to Peter Balis of John Wiley.

A large number of pBooks are scanned with do-it-yourself (D-I-Y) book scanners that rival the capability of the $5,000-$50,000 scanners. D-I-Y scanners were the subject of an article in Wired Magazine.  Do-it-yourself scanning has a trade association and a how-to guide for making a book scanner that makes the uploading of pirated books all but unstoppable.

 A 2010 survey by VersoAdvertising found 37% of e-reader owners have downloaded one or more pirated books. At what point does price drive book buyers to move from being purchasers to being downloaders of pirated books? We can safely reason that it’s below $10.00 because file sharing is growing despite Amazon’s $10.00 price point. The history of music sales presents a concerning precedent with songs selling at 99 cents.  Cigarette smokers respond to higher taxes by ceasing smoking, crossing state lines to buy cigarettes in states with lower taxes, or buying smuggled-in cigarettes. We’re looking at a near term in which competition won’t be between Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target, Barnes & Noble, and Borders for pricing books, the real competition will be free eBooks available by download from file sharing sites.

 How you can you as an author or small publisher win in this emerging environment?

• As an author or small publisher, you can take advantage of the price umbrella being created by BigPub and price your eBook at or below the $9.99 price millions of readers have become accustomed to spending on Kindle books. Large publishers are opening the door to being supplanted.
• As Tim Bajarin of PC Magazine points out, authors of how-to books can do what individual programmers did when iPhones were introduced. They produced the first games using the distribution reach of Apple’s App Store. Authors producing how-to book applications for the iPad will likely beat larger publishers as the game developers did.
• Keep a step ahead of the file sharing sites by adding and updating multi-media audio and video capabilities to your print and eBooks. For print books, even fragrance can be integrated into pBooks as is being done by a Jerry Van Diver, pioneering the mating of fragrance  with pBooks.  See an example of this at http://www.sniffpublishing.com/Use your eBook or pBook to discretely sell your or others products or services as discussed in last weeks’s blog “Can There Be a Silver Lining in Wholesale Book Piracy?

We welcome you to circulate this blog, recognizing our copyright. We also encourage you to post comments, which encourage dialog and hopefully new ideas for you to use. See our new page “What’s New and Developing.”

Next Week: The Eight Ways to Make Money Writing Books Today

Don’t know how to proceed with a book you have already written or one you plan to write? I can help. You can contact me directly for a free consultation at paul@9lives4yourbook.com.

Once you get your email message opened, your next challenge is to get the reader to click through. So make it clear how to click through to buy, try, or do whatever the purpose of your mailing is: 

So instead of a embedding a link in your text (“Click Here” – a term to avoid), you’ll get better results if you make the desired action visible, including making a tag line in a  larger size of font size than the rest of your text and place it above a bullet containing your hyperlink.

My latest book with just two clicks!

Studies of when people open and click though emails have been conducted. From study to study and year to year, the days when people opened and clicked through links are spread over the seven days of the week. And for the most part, the best day for getting email messages opened differs from the best day for people clicking through on links. A Gallup poll found that consumers spend more on Fridays and Saturdays than other days of the week: $73 and $76$ versus $58 on average on other weekdays.  What’s to be learned from this is that the results you get from your mailing may relate to the people on your list or be related to factors other than the day of mailing, such as if you have a book related to a season or an occasion,  or the approach of winter when many people read more. Think of paydays as a time to send email, too.

The time of day you send your email may be as important to getting your email read. One of the values of using an email service is that you can see when people opened your email. Then you can send it to them at that time of day. Until you get some feedback from when people open your list, send them to them for the time they arrive after work. My partner and wife, Sarah, author of Sitting With The Enemy who is working on the last chapter of a free sequel that is available on her website, have noticed in our mountain village that this is when web traffic is highest. However, if you want to reach readers at their businesses, there’s research showing email is more likely to be opened midweek shortly after people arrive at work or after lunch.

          This winter marks the time when for most book buyers the word book no longer calls up the image of printed sheets of paper bound together. That time is past.  This Christmas day, Amazon, the world’s biggest bookseller sold more eBooks than print books! Print books are now a subcategory in the publishing industry, referred to as p-Books,.

For people like Sarah and I who have written 18 p-books between us, this is time for reminiscing and nostalgia. As a child, I looked admiringly into the Canterbury bookstore window in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, and wished someday that I might write a book that would be on the shelves and in the windows of  stores like Canterbury. So for me, this passage is not just a change in packaging, marketing and pricing, it’s the end of an era that began long before I was born.

This new era promises opportunity and hope for some, perhaps many. To get an eBook to readers no longer requires the intermediaries aspiring authors once needed to navigate. There was a saying that you needed to first please your editor and the sales department, then your readers, and last yourself. Now you only need to please your readers first and foremost as well as yourself. But gone, too, is the financial and marketing support these many intermediaries provided.  To be sure, there will be winners and losers in this transformation.  For newer writers, this is the new normal; for established authors like ourselves we all need to adapt.

Sending an email blast is one thing – getting your message opened is another.

• First, the subject line needs to be shorter than a Tweet, at most 50 characters, just five or six words. That’s not even half of the 140 characters allowed for a Tweet. Too long a subject line is apt get trapped by spam filters or at best, truncated and the meaning or impact is lost.
• The subject line must provide enough information that it will interest people in reading your message. It also needs to be enticing, raising curiosity. Here are some possible leads:

                        Seven ways to …

                        Three things to avoid to …

                        Factors to consider when ….

                        When to clean …..

•  To get through spam filters, use sentence case – not all CAPITAL LETTERS.
•  Avoid words in your subject that filters identify as junk mail even when it’s not.  For example, a spam filter recently entrapped an email ad our domain name “Elm Street Economy” in the subject line. We expect the filters don’t have anything against Elm Street, but economy is apparently another matter. Other words that are getting blocked: sale, discount, consumer, % off, free, and even ‘free’ being in a domain name. Anything with a sexual connation, such as hotties and stud are also unlikely to reach your recipient.

So subject lines, like headlines, must interest readers but they must also get past electronic censors.

Once you have a mailing list, it’s time to use it. Your next choice is whether to do it from your own computer using a program like Outlook or to use one of the more than a dozen email services.

Sending email from your own computer will cost less out-of-pocket, but over the course of several mailings will take more of your time.

Another advantage of an email service is you they all have statistical reports so you can track the performance of your mailing, including whether your email is opened, gets bounced, and if links in your email are being clicked. Email services provide a library of templates and if find an appropriate design, you only need to cut and paste.  

However, if you decide to mail to your list from your own computer, it’s a good idea to break your list into groups of 20-25 for sending. This way, if there’s an incorrectly formatted email address in the batch, you can more readily identify it from a smaller list than a large one.

We are more likely to take notice when a mailing or newsletter is personalized with our name. That’s another plus of a mail service. Most email services make this possible.  To do this in your computer would mean editing and sending each piece of mail individually. Email services also provide different supplementary services. For instance, iContact provides a daily “how to” article and ConstantContact offers workshops in communities and free webinars. Another reason for using a service is they automate the process of enabling people to “opt-out” of receiving emails from you, as required by law. All offer free trials in which you can send out a limited number of mailers for free.

Janine Warner, author of Dreamweaver CS4 For Dummies and Web Sites Do-It-Yourself For Dummies, tested five email mailing services (AWeber, Benchmarkemail,  ConstantContact,  iContact, Streamsend based on how they price, ease of importing or entering your mailing list. You can see the results of her survey.

The pricing is more attractive at Benchmarkemail and Streamsend for people with smaller lists.  However, price isn’t everything if you can get better results with less effort from what may not appear to be the lowest price service. One service we tried simply sends a one-line notice that a newsletter is awaiting. Not included was a reason for people to open the message.

If you’re new to using email blasts for marketing, trying one is the only way to determine if it will work for you. If you’ve had experience doing mailings but weren’t excited with the results, ask yourself if using another mailing service might produce a better return.

Coming next week: The Subject Line for Your Email

9 Lives 4 Your Book – where our team can help you turn books and ideas into new income streams. For further information, contact paul@elmstreetlibrary.com.

A dynamite email list may take time, perhaps even years, but you will find it can be an invaluable way of selling your books in the process. Here’s how:

• You may already have the email addresses of people who have previously bought your books or from subscribers to your blog, if you have one.  Start there.
• If you do not have a sign-up form on your website where people can subscribe, you will need one so you can continue communicating with your readers and potential readers. 
• You can also build your list by taking a table or booth at fairs and holding a drawing for your book or something related to your book that involves leaving an email address to enter. By making the prize be your book or related to your book, you are more likely to collect names of people interested in your topic area.
• Networking and community events may also work if your book has a local flavor. You may be able to provide prizes in exchange for receiving a copy of the email list of people who have opted in to find out more.  Or you can contribute a free article to an online or print publication and offer to send some specialized information or a small item to people who email you.  
• You will want to identify your website on everything you write or produce, as this is likely be your best way of gathering names.  And keep your list updated, which is easier to do using a email list service. Renting lists usually produces low results, but if you do rent a list, make sure it is pertinent to your topic.

9 Lives 4 Your Book – where our team can help you turn books and ideas into new income streams. For further information, contact paul@elmstreetlibrary.com.