Once upon a time before parenthood and marriage, I had the notion that I wanted to accomplish something big. I decided I was going to ride by my bike (yes, the pedaling kind) across the United States. The best part of the trip ended up being something I had never even thought about while planning....the relationships I would build.
About 2,000 miles and 45 days into the trip and after a very long and mentally draining climb across Togwotee Pass in Western Wyoming, I met Scott Stoll while camping in Grand Teton National Park. I won't bore you with the subsequent long story but essentially we became life long friends and finished our trip together a few weeks later, putting the front tire of our bikes in the Pacific Ocean near Victoria, BC. During our ride to the Coast, Scott posed the idea of riding around the world on a bike. My adventurous spirit was temporarily satiated by the North America ride so I politely passed. Being somewhat crazy and completely brave, Scott did eventually circle the globe by bike, an incredible accomplishment. Scott subsequently wrote a book about it and I asked him if he would share his experience writing, publishing, and publicizing in 2010. As he had first-hand experience, I wanted to hear what he thought about how technology has forever changed the publishing business. Thanks Scott for sharing....
How to fall up the e-book hill
Scott Stoll
I considered myself
lucky. I've got a creative bone that just needs to be itched, and I had
something entertaining and enlightening to write about—I rode a bicycle around
the world in quest of happiness. Combining work and play seemed a recipe for
success. I thought there couldn't be a simpler business plan than to produce a
book, and I would have the added benefit of fulfilling another dream. Well,
years later, including a year of promoting Falling Uphill, the book about my quest for
happiness and the meaning of life, I seem to keep surprising myself how
difficult it is to sell a book. And that's not including a 4-year, 26,000 mile
trek, including dengue fever in India, being imprisoned in Zimbabwe, suspected
of terrorism in Israel, nearly dying of dehydration in Mexico, meanwhile
discovering the meaning of life along the way; and let's forget the degree in
graphic design and production, and the on-the-job education of learning my P's
and Q's as a copywriter, and nevermind the thousands of hours of writing. That's
all simple stuff compared to the publicity stunt of selling a book.
It
should also be noted that I achieved some stellar results. I started a book tour
again riding my bicycle around the country as a publicity stunt. Spending 6
hours a day pedaling wasn't a great use of time, but it did produce results even
without a PR agent. I had dozens of media interviews, including the New York
Times, far exceeding the average 1% return rate on my cold emails. I advertised
on Youtube with a movie about my trip that actually got conversions. I had
friends helping me. My mom sent out 200 letters to agents. They actually
responded. Even publishers were showing interest. My book was translated into
Korean. I had rave 5-star reviews. And I broke at least 4 records at bookstores
for author signings. In fact, I have 18 spreadsheets of actions and ideas that
are too numerous to list. The bottom line is I sold about 4000 books so far,
which is 8 times more than the average book even by a big name publisher. But
yet, I have still burned/invested every penny I own, hoping someday my book will
go viral. Yet, the world seems to have had other plans, for one inventing a
thousand upon a thousand devious ways to get a slice of my pie, or prevent my
pie from getting to the market. So, what is my devious solution? Why not fight
fire with fire?
Why not enter the world of online innovation and
publish an e-Book? This will save me the cost of manufacturing and shipping,
especially opening up the overseas market. I can tap into this market that has
seemingly exploded overnight. (Two new e-readers have hit the market since I was
asked to write this article.) And, hopefully, I can claim some online real
estate, since it seems people are skipping books and even televisions and going
straight for instant online satisfaction. Plus, there is fairly convincing
evidence that you will sell 35% more books at the click of a
button.
What the heck is an e-Book? Well, obviously it is an
electronic book that can be read on a computer or portable device using a
variety of file formats. The most basic kind is an ePub format, which is
basically a variation of HTML so that the type can be reflowed and resized at
whim. The second kind is a PDF, which can look fantastic, but the page layout is
static. And, there are a bewildering array of other file formats: DRM, XML,
LIT, DTP, PDB, JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP, MP3, Kindle (AZW), TXT, Audible, MOBI, PRC,
HTML, XHTML, DOC, RTF, BBeB, and more.
What kind of e-reader should I
choose? It seems every e-reader is different and uses different formats,
which means publishing numerous different versions of your book. The big players
at the moment are the Amazon Kindle, iPad, Barnes & Noble Nook, Adobe
Reader, MS Reader, Palm Reader, and your basic old computer or cell
phone. However, the current battle that is revolutionizing the publishing world
seems to revolve not around the e-reader itself, but the unique distribution
network each one is attempting to capture.
So the next question is:
Which distribution network do I use? My printer, a division of Ingram,
the largest book distributor in the world only deals with a handful of devices,
excluding the Kindle and the Nook; however, they just struck a deal with Apple's
iPad. The cost is astonishing! Apple takes $250 to join plus 30% royalties; and
Ingram gets another 5.6%. So far, Barnes & Noble, in traditional fashion,
snubs the small publisher, offering no information except an email address. And
Amazon's Kindle takes a whopping 70% of my literal blood, sweat and tears. There
are also a variety of online bookstores that will distribute your book for
you.
So what's the answer? Well, I haven't been able to find a
good solution. So, I plan to take a few small steps in the general direction and
see what happens. I think my book, Falling
Uphill, would simple be lost on the e-shelf of most of the
distributors(there were a record breaking 1,000,000+ new books in print in 2009); and, since, publicizing my book and driving the customers to the
bookshelf is 99% my problem (i.e. being an unpaid employee for the
distributors), I've decided to simply sell the e-book on my website. I know how
to make a PDF and ePub file, and those two formats work on every device. One of
the consequences will be security. The benefit of the aforementioned
distributors is being able to prevent people from pirating your book, you can
even set your book to expire. However, since after a year of hard work it still
hasn't gone viral, I don't foresee e-piracy as being a big problem. (I never
figured into my business plan that multiple would read my paper book or the used
market further undermining my promotion efforts.) Also, though I like to
attribute Amazon as one of my biggest problems (read my article "The
high cost of low price") I have to give them credit for making publishing on
their Kindle open to everyone and super easy to convert to their format and
distribute inline with your existing paper book, rather than having to buy a
separate ISBN at another $125 bucks and marketing a second e-edition. Plus, they
promise to lower their royalties to 30% this summer, provided you meet their
list of unmeetable requirements.
And, if you are new to this, you will
soon realize that e-book or paper book, the great grandmother question of them
all is: How do I publicize my book? Well, that is a whole other e-ball of
wax.
Stay tuned for an update of how this whole dream manifests itself
into some kind of cyber reality.
Read more about Scott and his journey.
