The Dark Side of the iPad

Steve Jobs has done it again. Wooed all of us with another Wow device with the introduction of the iPad last week, a new color ebook, email and web browser tablet that many critics say will go head to head with Amazon's Kindle.

And Kudos to Jobs for bringing another technological marvel to the market, but there is a darker side to the iPad.

With the launch of the new iBooks app for the iPad, five of the largest book publishers, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster had signed up to provide e-book content for the new tablet.

And one of the major reasons they jumped on board so quickly is because the iPad gives them the opportunity to sell their books between $12.99 and $14.99 whereas Amazon limited their highest priced titles to $9.99.

The dark side to all of this is greed. These publishers are going against the natural laws of the market by forcing a higher price for ebooks on an already well accepted market price of $9.99.

One of the major reasons for the attractiveness of the Kindle is the $9.99 price for mainstream book titles. For the price of one hardcover book, a Kindle owner can have three major titles. I know many Kindle owners who have filled up their Kindles to capacity because of this low price and I know of others who easily spent upwards of $300 plus on Kindle titles.

These publishers are following the same path as the music industry – attempting to raise prices beyond what the market has deemed the comfortable price point. And they are using the same lame excuses – the publishers claim the low ebook prices are hurting hardcover sales; the music industry claimed the low price of downloadable songs cut into their CD sales.

Both are false. Many young people do not read books today preferring to get their content on video games, the Internet, ebook readers or on mobile devices. The older generations buy fewer books because of the high price of hardcover titles and wait for the paperback versions.

The trend is clear – sales of ebooks and electronic content are exploding; sales of print books are decreasing. This is the reality of the market, but the book publishers refuse to accept this.

Instead, they see an opportunity with the iPad to further preserve and hopefully bolster their failing business model – to give the booksellers as many printed titles as they want on consignment and allow them to return what they don't sell at no cost to the bookseller.

They believe the higher ebook price will cause people to buy the hardcover version. I don't think so. I believe they will only decrease sales of both versions. The $9.99 and lower price point will prevail.

The iPad pricing model is also bad news for mid list and back list authors because with the higher ebook prices only the major titles by the bestselling authors will sell, again closing the door to many unknown authors with good content.

If Amazon raises the prices of their books to be in line with these publishers, it will turn the ebook business model into the failing print book model – where publishers depend on bestsellers to support their businesses and publish fewer and fewer unknown authors.

And Jobs – he supports the higher ebook price because Apple will make 30 percent of each book sale on the iPad. The following from The New York Times on 1/27 sums it up:

"Mr. Jobs credited Amazon with pioneering the category with the Kindle, but said 'we are going to stand on their shoulders and go a little bit farther.'"

Remember that when you decide to purchase an iPad.

So You Think You Can Write a Book?

By Anthony S. Policastro

The Jenkins Group, an independent publishing services company, says four out of five people they surveyed said they believe they have a book to write. Even fewer actually sit down and write a book and even fewer get published. Many established literary agencies in New York and elsewhere get upwards of 500-email and snail mail book queries a week and less than one percent of them are considered for representation.

So how do you get published with those odds?

It is easier than ever to get into print with the magic of print on demand and do-it-yourself publishing web sites like Lulu.com, Lulu is one of the few sites where it is free to upload your manuscript, design your cover or pick a pre-designed one and publish your book complete with an ISBN number and distribution on Amazon.com. There is no minimum number of copies to purchase, no hidden, we gotcha fees, and no secrets about how much you will make on each sale, what Lulu makes and what print and distribution costs amount to for your book. You keep all your rights and you set the price and the royalty.

A recent article in The New York Times reported, “In 2008, nearly 480,000 books were published or distributed in the United States, up from close to 375,000 in 2007, according to the industry tracker Bowker. The company attributed a significant proportion of that rise to an increase in the number of print-on-demand books.”

So what are you waiting for? Change your odds of getting in print. Go to one of the self-publishing online sites and publish your work! What? You’ve done that already? Okay, now comes the hard part - the marketing and promotion of your work.

If you wanted to sell homemade jewelry on the web, you would put up a web site complete with a storefront and check out cart and sit back and hope one hundred or more orders a day came your way. Now, would they? Most likely not. You have to promote your site, its market advantages like price, quality, brand, and ensure you are reaching people who are interested in buying homemade jewelry.

It’s the same when publishing a book. If you write a romance novel or a technical manual on how to tune the engine of a 737 you have to reach the right market with your message. One of the great advantages to using Lulu is that you can choose between doing everything yourself or buying the marketing services of publishing professionals from Lulu.

Here a few cool tricks I use to market my Lulu books . And they are free. Go to Google Blog Search and search for blogs pertaining to the subject area of your book. When you find some, read a few posts and leave a comment with a link to your book on Lulu or to your web site. This takes time and you must leave a comment with some substance for it to work. But if you hit the right blog with the right audience, it’s like winning on a slot machine in Atlantic City. One post increased traffic to my site by six times in one day! You can also do a search on Google, but you will get mostly web sites and often you cannot leave a comment.

Offer a free download of your book for a limited time. After all, if someone is willing to read your entire book on a computer screen they must be pretty interested in your work. What usually happens is if they like your book enough, they will purchase the print copy out of convenience since it is easier to read a book in print than on a computer display. This is also helpful when you send out press releases – you can direct the media to download your book for review. This is the preferred method of distributing your electronic version to the press and reviewers. If you attach a copy to an email, press people most likely will not open it for fear it may contain a computer virus or Trojan horse.

By the same token, send emails with links to your book to people involved in your book’s subject matter and ask them to review your work and write a short review. Mention that you can include their comments in your book if they want.

If you want to market your book as an eBook check out Smashwords. It’s free to upload your book and you make 85% of the price you set. The most significant advantage of Smashwords is that the site automatically converts your manuscript into ten different electronic formats so that your book can be read on a standard PC, iPhone, Kindle, Sony Reader or Palm Pilot. Readers can also view your work directly on the site using a web browser or standard word processor.

If you have never written a press release, Lulu offers an excellent template that walks you through the process so you can produce a professional release that the press will read and hopefully follow up with you. I used to be a journalist and it was nearly impossible to read every piece of mail that came into the office. But a professionally written press release always managed to get read.

And if you want to write your next book rather than market your current one, you can easily purchase Lulu’s many marketing and distribution services created and offered by professionals in the publishing business.

If you are considering self-publishing, my good friend and colleague Henry Hutton just started publishandsell.com, a supermarket of author services that will greatly help you navigate through the complex world of self-publishing. He is also one of the founding members of Lulu.com and extremely knowledgeable about the industry.

Just keep in mind you are the best sales person for your work – you are closest to the content and you are passionate about what you wrote or you would not have made the effort to create a book.