Joe Konrath's eBook Self-Publishing Drastically More Profitable than His "Big Six" Deals

Konrath's blog: " ... not only does self-publishing earn more money than a print deal does over the years, you can also reach more readers by selling more copies. Think about that. I've gotten over a quarter of a million dollars in advances from the Big 6. That's more than most writers will ever get. And I've also earned out above and beyond that number. But all by myself I can make a quarter mil in two years. And I can reach more people in six years than a Big 6 publisher with all of its distribution power."

Get Chicken On Your Kindle

My  favorite indie novelist hits Kindle. Wanda Shapiro/One Girl One Novel: "Sometimes That Happens With Chicken is now available on Kindle for all you ebook addicts. I’ve been looking forward to this for quite some time and soon you’ll be able to get Chicken on your iPad too. Here’s a link to Amazon where you can start reading in under a minute. http://www.amazon.com/Sometimes-That-Happens-Chicken-ebook/dp/B0040GJ97A/ref=kinw_dp_ke?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2 I personally haven’t tranistioned my reading habits to the very sleek and tempting Kindle but I can feel myself getting closer to taking the leap. When I was testing my Kindle file I got help from a friend who seems to have given up paper books almost completely. It was the first time I had actually used a Kindle and I must say, I was impressed. I’m even a little more tempted now that the price has dropped a bit ... "

More Re: Seth Godin's Abandonment of Old-Model Book Publishing

WSJ.com: "The author of about a dozen books including 'Purple Cow' said he now has so many direct customer relationships, largely via his blog, that he no longer needs a traditional publisher. Mr. Godin plans to release subsequent titles himself in electronic books, via print-on-demand or in such formats as audiobooks, apps, small digital files called PDFs and podcasts. ... It's unclear how many, if any, best-selling authors will follow Mr. Godin's lead. However, his departure from Portfolio, an imprint owned by Pearson PLC's Penguin Group (USA), comes at a critical juncture for the industry. With many new titles spending less time on best-seller lists and in bookstores, publishers are increasingly dependent on brand-name authors such as Mr. Godin to deliver significant book sales."

And of course the brand-name authors are the very ones who are best positioned to fly the coup.

Who Needs a Publisher?

Newsweek: "Boyd Morrison was finishing a Ph.D. in industrial engineering when he wrote his first novel. Five agents rejected it. Nine years later he tried again, and this time he did get an agent—after nearly three years and three novels. But that turned out to be some kind of cosmic tease, because 25 publishers turned down The Ark. With nothing left to lose, Morrison uploaded The Ark and his two other unpublished novels to Amazon’s Kindle store in March 2009. Within three months, he was selling books at a rate of 4,000 a month—a number that attracted the attention of the same publishers who had rejected him."

Bravo. Note that Thoreau, Whitman and Virginia Woolf are among the writers who could tell similar tales, though without the digital element, of course.

Self-Publishing and Liberation, etc.

Belatedly, here is Laura Miller's excellent June 22nd Salon.com essay concerning eBook- and POD-enabled self-publishing:

If you have any contact with the publishing world, you probably hear some version of the story above every day. What's most striking, however, about the many, many conversations I've had about e-books, innovations in self-publishing and the emergence of publicity venues like social networking is how difficult it is to stay focused on what all of this means for readers. No matter how hard you try, within five minutes the talk turns inexorably back to how agents, editors and publishers will suffer in the coming cataclysmic change -- and, above all, how gloriously liberating it will be for authors. ...

Indie Lit Experiment: Sometimes That Happens With Chicken

Indie author and publisher Wanda Shapiro is giving her novel Sometimes That Happens with Chicken away as a downloadable PDF, and selling the self-published paperback, ala indie musicians and also such writers as Cory Doctorow, using a model of the type I blogged about here. Check out Wanda's book and her concept.

Apple Opens iBookstore to Self-Published Authors

Details from ars technica:

To take advantage of the service, you must first have an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) for each work you wish to make available for sale. Obtaining an ISBN isn’t as difficult a process you might think; it can take as little as two weeks. Second, you must have a copy of the work in ePUB format. There are a variety of different ways to convert text into ePUB format, many of which are free (a list can be found on the LexCycle website). You must also have a valid iTunes Store account as well as a US tax ID.

The last requirement is that you, as the author, must have access to a modern Mac. In order to participate, you must encode your eBook with Apple’s software, which needs an Intel Mac running at least OS X 10.5. The encoding process most likely adds Apple’s very own brew of DRM to the book, ensuring that your writings won't be distributed outside of the iPhone or iPad.

MacLife also has something.