Here we go. It’s been some time since I wrote the first version of Think Like a Publisher. Since I wrote those first chapters, Scott William Carter and I have taught three workshops by the same name, plus an advanced workshop helping indie writers make more money from their books. This fall I will be teaching a POD workshop on all the aspects of designing and selling paper books. (Watch for the announcement.)
And during those workshops and from comments and from hundreds of sources I learned a ton more information.
Plus the publishing company I helped start (WMG Publishing) now has a full-time employee and has published over 240 different book titles.
And the overall publishing business has changed as well. Amazing numbers of changes, actually.
As traditional publishers grab for more rights and become even more difficult to work with, more and more writers are moving to indie publishing. As they make the jump, they ask basic questions on how to do it, how to be treated with respect as a publisher, and even how to do simple things like setting up a publishing business.
An indie publisher is still a publisher, the same as any traditional publisher.
Think Like a Publisher 2012 is an updated version of the book from over a year ago, including some of what has changed and what I have learned over the last year or more. I’m sure in another two years I’ll do a third edition. Some things are changing that fast.
Every three or four days I will post a chapter for free here with a link under the tab above. But the entire 2012 edition is now available in both trade paper and electronic editions in all electronic bookstores (Kindle, B&N, Smashwords and so on) if you want to jump ahead of these posts. (B&N link also has the paper version through Barnes & Noble.com) Make sure you get the green cover. The red cover is the first edition.
Comments on each chapter are welcome and help us all learn, but keep the comments focused on the topic of the chapter, please.
I hope these chapters help you get a jump on learning how to be a publisher.
And on finding an audience for your writing.
Chapter One:
The Early Decisions
Some of the earliest decisions a publisher has to make can be changed down the road easily. Some are difficult to change. So, I’m going to break down some of these early decisions into basic groups. And keep in mind, there are no correct answers on any of these decisions. Just what you want to do.
You are the publisher. And it’s your business. Always remember those two basic elements and you’ll be fine.
Early Business Decisions
1… Pick a Name.
Yup, as a publisher, your business needs a name. This could be one of the hardest decisions to change down the road, so caution.
My suggestion: Pick a name that is easy for everyone to remember, that is fairly short, and that sounds like a publishing house imprint.
CRITICAL!!! Make sure the name is not being used and go get the domain address. Do not wait. If there is any chance of using a name and it is open, grab the domain address. Just by simply checking on it being available might cause someone else to buy it. Grab it quickly.
If there is no available domain address with a .com in your business name, pick a new name for your business.
2… Pick a Business Structure.
You basically have two choices. One, keep the business as a sole proprietorship. That means you own it all and on your taxes you file a Schedule C business form with your yearly taxes. Unless you are planning on growing your business very large or making a lot of money, this is the easiest way to go.
The second way is go to an attorney and an accountant and have them set up your publishing company as a corporation of one type or another, depending on your long-term plans. If you need to ask why you would want a corporation instead of a sole proprietorship, you don’t need a corporation. All a corporation will do is cause you more costs and get you in trouble.
(Note: WMG Publishing, with about 240 titles up and employees, is just now moving to a corporation structure.)
3…Open up a dedicated checking account under your business name.
This is easy to do in both types of business. For a regular sole proprietorship in most states, you simply get a form from your bank called a “Doing Business As” form. (There are different names in different states, but most call it a DBA.)
File that with the state and give the response to your bank and you can open up the business checking account. Then, as you have money flowing in from all the sales in all the different sources, have the money go directly to your business checking account. And take all publishing expenses out of that account as well.
For heaven’s sake, keep all your receipts, just as you do with your writing.
If you started a corporation, you will know what to do. If not, ask your accountant and think twice about starting a corporation.
Early Business Structure Decisions
Okay, you’ve got a business name, a checking account, and have decided what type of formal business you are running. Now you need to decide what kind of structure your business is going to take inside the publishing house. To determine that, ask yourself these simple questions and write down the answers.
Question 1:
Over the next five years, who is going to do all the production work?
A) You do it all.
B) You do some and hire out contract work for other parts.
C) Other people do it all.
D) Combination of the above depending on the project.
If you are going to do it all, ask yourself:
—Do you have all the tools to do covers and the computers and the software to do them?
— Do you have the ability to design covers?
— Can you layout books for PDF files for POD publishing, both interior and cover?
And if not on any of those questions, what is it going to cost and how long will it take to learn how to do all these things? Most tasks are not difficult, but there is a learning curve that takes a little time.
(An aside: I did some pretty ugly covers starting off with an old computer and no good software in helping out WMG Publishing. (Some are still up for another week or two. I started getting a lot better once WMG Publishing invested in a computer and new software for my office. Now, with even more training, the WMG covers are looking more professional. It takes time to learn. Take the time.)
If you are going to hire some jobs out, do you have the upfront money to do so? Or if you are going to hire everything done, do you have that kind of up-front money? (Welcome to being a publisher. Traditional publishers can spend a lot of money on your book before they ever earn a penny. You are now a publisher, not a writer. Expect up-front costs.)
Question 2:
How much inventory do you have or will you have in the next five years?
How many books are finished but unsold? How many short stories? How many novels or stores sold are now reverted to you?
How much new product can you produce in the next five years?
If you only write one book every few years and have no inventory, frankly you don’t need to do any of this.
If you have a number of novels, numbers of short stories in inventory, and can write two or three novels a year and some side stories, then mark that down. Publishers work on a “publishing schedule.” Start setting that up as well and be realistic with yourself.
Inventory is critical in any business. I will talk about inventory-in-business aspects of publishing in a later chapter.
Question 3:
Editing and Proofing.
Every publisher has editors and proofreaders. How do you plan on handling that?
— Do you have a good first reader?
— Do you know whom you can hire for copyediting?
— Can you trade with other indie publishers (writers) for proofing, with you working on reading their books while they read yours?
— Or just not do it? And if you want a copyeditor, can you afford the up front fees.
There are other basic questions, but for now that should be enough to get you thinking on the right track as a publisher.
If you are going to compete on an international levels, your books need to be fairly clean. There are no perfect books, so don’t even shoot for that. But try to get them as mistake-proof as possible.
Early Business Chores
As you are setting up your publishing business, there are numbers of just basic chores that need to be taken care of.
I am assuming you plan on being both an electronic and POD publisher. If not, why not? Why make a decision so early on to limit your possible markets? Plan to do it all, so that means you have chores to do. And trust me, these are chores.
Chore #1:
After you have your business checking account, so you don’t have to change these later, set up publishing accounts on Amazon, PubIt! (B&N), Smashwords, and CreateSpace. (Yeah, I know, you might switch to LightningSource for POD later, but early on save the mistake money and do CreateSpace. Or do as I have done and set up accounts on both. Just practice on CreateSpace where you don’t get charged for every mistake.)
Chore #2:
Set up a PayPal account. Hooked to your business account if possible. You will need this in more ways than you can imagine, including down the road putting shopping carts on your web site.
Chore #3:
Set up a placeholder web site, even if it is under construction as WMG Publishing website has been and is now slowly getting built. You’ll get it fixed later. For WMG Publishing, later has arrived.
There are other chores, like starting to explore how to get books in libraries and how to get ISBN numbers if you even want them, but for now, just stay with the first three. I’ll talk about ISBN numbers and library sales in future chapters in this series.
Early Decision:
What Kind of Publisher Do You Want To Be?
Okay, to keep this basic, there are three major types of publishers in publishing, and I don’t see this model changing at all. In fact, I see it becoming stronger. You can be solidly in one category or actually can function in all three if your readers are clear. But my suggestion is pick one to start.
1) Traditional-Style Fiction/Nonfiction Publisher
2) Discount Publisher
3) High-End Publisher
I will say right off that Pulphouse Publishing Inc. (1987-1994) was a high-end publisher for the most part. In the late 1980s and early 1990s I sold some books for over $50.00 each and most of our books were signed and numbered and retailed between $20.00 and $35.00 each. Very high-end, and although we were trying to change it in the last few years with short story paperbacks and magazines, we never really made the shift before the end.
I will talk about each of these types of publishers and the different business models they demand in future chapters. But for now, here is a very quick summary of the three choices you have to make early on as a publisher.
High End:
I believe that High-End publishers will make great money in this new world with all sorts of enhanced products. This new world is gold for high-end collectors books. But it will take a publisher who can publish top names, do enhanced production and books, and knows how to put out top-quality leather and signed work. This area is difficult at best for a beginning publisher.
Traditional-style Publishing:
Basically, this is the New York publishing model.
Books sell for all the traditional prices, go to the traditional outlets, and are bought by regular readers. All bestsellers for the most part are traditionally published. We have positioned WMG Publishing in this model. Traditionally Published novels will continue to be the vast majority of all books published and where the highest profit margins are per product sold.
Discount Publisher:
This area is very large in the publishing world in general and has many large companies working it. But to most writers and readers, it’s been kept a secret.
The outlets for discount publishers consist of discount shelves in normal bookstores, discount mall stores, and other types of discount stores. Many books beyond the bestsellers that you see at Costco are discount books.
In electronic publishing, the price being set by discount publishers is 99 cents.
In this area of publishing, the margins of profit are thin and the publishers depend on volume of sales to make even a decent profit margin. Very few traditional publishers have discount arms, but they do high discount at times to some stores like Wal-Mart. That is different than discount publishing as a business model. Most discount publishers only focus on being discount publishers and go for the volume of sales.
Again, more on all three of these major types of publishers in future chapters.
As a new indie publisher, you want to decide what area of publishing in general you want to fit into.
As I said, with Pulphouse Publishing Inc., I started as a high-end publisher and that was our plan from the start. It was only years later that we decided to try to move to the traditional model. And the move, once we were established as a certain type of publisher, was difficult at best.
Summary
That’s most of the basic early decisions you have to make once you decide to publish your own work. Get the business set up, do the chores, look at your start-up inventory, and then look hard and fast at what kind of publisher you want to be.
Being a publisher is fantastic fun.
And to be honest, I’m once again having a great time playing on the publishing side of the desk. I never thought I would move back to this side of the desk, to be honest.
But at the moment I am glad I did.
(A quick note for the blog post: Stunning how little in this first chapter actually did change in the last year-plus since I wrote it. I guess basic business is just basic business.)
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Copyright © 2012 Dean Wesley Smith
Cover Photo by Edward Fielding/Dreamstime.com
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This chapter is now part of my inventory in my Magic Bakery. I’ve talked about the Magic Bakery a few times in various posts, but just think of this column as a pie and I am allowing samples of the pie here. Understanding the Magic Bakery is critical to making good money as a publisher. So I will talk about it in these chapters coming up as well.
If you feel this helped you in any way, toss a tip into the tip jar on the way out of the Magic Bakery.
If you can’t afford to donate, please feel free to pass this chapter along to others who might get some help from it.
And I would like to thank all the fine folks who have donated over this last year. The donations and the comments both after the posts and privately are really keeping me going on this. Thanks!
Tip Jar: Go To Paypal
Something I can add to this is a great resource from the New Zealand government. It’s a Word document business plan template.
You can find it here:
http://www.business.govt.nz/starting-up/writing-a-business-plan/free-business-plan-template
I think once I filled that out it really started to ht me that this publishing thing that I’ve been doing is a business – a big one by most SPubs standards.
Dean, in some states there’s one other business option that’s worth consideration.
Here in NC where I live, you can structure your business as a single-member LLC. That’s what I did. You get some of the legal protections that a corporation gets, but you have the option to file taxes as a sole proprietorship. (You can change to a corporate accounting structure later if necessary just by filing a paper with the Secretary of State.)
As with anything else, there are drawbacks and benefits. The biggest drawback I’ve found is the yearly annual report filing, which costs $200. (It’s only a 5-minute process online, but the price always hurts.) I also had some confusion setting up my account at B&N’s PubIt! because their site doesn’t recognize this setup. (Note to potential PubIt! users: If you have a EIN and you’re a sole proprietor, you’ll have to talk to their account people. They can set it up very simply, but you have to let them do it from their end. Unless they’ve changed it their online form recognizes only two options — you’re a sole proprietor with a Social Security number, or you’re a corporation with an EIN .)
Still, there are still some benefits to having gone through the paperwork of setting up an “official” business. I’ve found that I get taken more seriously, and that often streamlines business dealings.
Each state treats LLCs differently, so you need to check your state’s laws. But at least in NC this is a reasonable option.
Mike, absolutely correct. But again, you have to know what you are doing, and until you get enough business under your belt to even understand the difference between a LLC, an S-Corp, or a C-Corp and why, stay with sole proprietor. Doing a Schedule “C” for your taxes is a lot easier than dealing with corporations in all forms. But you are dead on right about LLC as an option for people who know what they are doing, as you do.
A side note: WMG Publishing, in a matter of days, will be WMG Publishing Inc. And we have two other corporations forming with it at the same time. All are through the lawyers and at the state.
Dean;
I went to Amazon to get the e version and it’s not there. I clicked the “Tell the Publisher You Want This Book for Kindle” link, so you’ll be getting a noodge from them, too.
Mark, it’s there. We just haven’t nudged Amazon to link the paper with the electronic versions yet. I don’t know if most authors know they have to do that, and honestly, I just keep forgetting. (grin) Thanks for trying and the push to Amazon. Much appreciated.
Purchased! But almost not: Amazon listed the date as August 2011, so I thought it was the old one. Then I clicked through and saw the new cover.
Not sure you have any control over the date Amazon puts on it, other than launching a whole new book.
Thanks, Martin, I had better check that. Much appreciated.
Martin, got the date changed no problem.
Everyone, caution, I had a copy also up of Think Like a Publisher: The Early Decisions. With a red cover. That’s not the 2012 edition and I have taken it down now. I forgot it was there, actually. (grin) Just remember the 2012 has a green cover. (grin)
Here’s the link where I bought it, for Mark and anyone else having trouble finding it on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Think-Like-a-Publisher-ebook/dp/B005GDF7MM/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1335022145&sr=8-3
I have recently discovered the true beauty of the Kindle Fire that I got last fall: it plays music and runs apps as well as showing books, which makes it perfect for my workout sessions at the Y. Today I listened to Johnny Cash for an hour, read 64% of your book, and walked 3.5 miles on the treadmill. Between you and Johnny, I never noticed the time passing. And when I was done, I used a fitness app to record my progress.
So the Kindle is now my workout buddy, and I’ll be doing even more reading! I can even bookmark important sections (like your discussion on organizing files) with one touch during the middle of my workout.
Dean,
Great post, and picking up the entire book as well.
I’m thinking about indie publishing (hoping to attend the July workshops), and perhaps you’ll cover this later but…
Rather than having multiple pen names is it feasible to have imprints within my overarching publishing company, one for each genre I’m looking to write?
Sorry if this is off topic, or is so basic a question!
Jerry
Jerry, sure, imprints are fine and dandy. At WMG we’re just going to break them out as tabs on our web site when we get that far. But the nonfiction will all be (eventually) under the imprint of Writer’s Notebook Press. But you can do whatever works for you. Traditional publishers break them out by imprints as well.
But you might still want to have pen names, since in the bookstores, on searches, the imprints will mean nothing and all the names under the same book will come up together. And that’s when you get into trouble with readers who love your science fiction but hate your romance. Better to have those under pen names, even if you have them in different imprints. Remember, readers do NOT buy for company names in most instances and almost never honestly notice. Writers notice, readers seldom do.
Dean,
Thank you for the advice, and I have a lot of learning in front of me. What you wrote makes a lot of sense. Guess I’ll be looking into more pen names here soon.
I’m really looking forward to reading the updated book, and hopefully attending the July workshops.
Jerry
I hope this isn’t too bone-headed a question, but how do you link the e-book and POD versions? I need to do that for my trade paper editions. Do you just contact their customer service?
dws, thank you for the update, I have your ink on paper book, great layout, easy to read incidentally. I’ll have to compare page by page to see what is new? would that be a good way?
As an aside, are you still teaching the classes back to back in a few weeks? I sent an inquiry to you a couple three weeks ago, but have not heard back yet. Nu?
thanks again
drcpe
archangel, never got the inquiry I’m afraid. Make sure to just send it with “Writer” or “Workshop” in the subject line.
Tori, on B&N you go to edit and then click the button that says there is a paper edition and it will ask you how many pages. On Kindle KDP there is a place on the left in the accounts setting or something like that which allows you to put in the numbers of the two books and link them. I just did it this afternoon and now can’t remember a bit of how to do it again. (grin)
Dean:
Looking forward to reading the book. Looks helpful.
One area that I am really wondering about is liability insurance, or what we in the TV biz used to call E&0: Errors and Omissions. We live in a litigious society, and live in fear that some nut will sue me because of something I’ve written.
In Legacy the big houses cover you, I presume? (I am only assuming; when I wrote TV Paramount or whatever studio I worked for indemnified me, since writing scripts is basically work for hire, plus residuals
What do you suggest indies do for insurance? I know Author’s Guild has a policy, but as a lowly Indie I can’t join the Guild.
This is, frankly, my biggest concern about self pub. I’ve asked this question on other forums and have never been able to get a good answer. What do you do at WMG about liability insurance?
Thom, Kris and I are major believers in insurance, and we are covered from just about every direction. And I tell everyone to do the same. We have business insurance, of course, attached to our home insurance, and then we have a liability rider over the top of everything. WMG will also have insurance as it hits corporation here in the next few days. It will have liability, and all the other types as well. We mostly work through our agent at State Farm. It is not that expensive, and critical.
However, that said, working in Hollywood is a different animal than fiction. Thankfully. But insurance is still needed and it must be bought. But alas, most indie writers don’t even understand that their homeowners insurance or renters insurance does not cover their office stuff. You have to have a rider for office in the home. And the liability insurance can just be added in over the top of all that. And honestly, we will keep the liability umbrella with a large deductible on our personal even when the corporation gets insurance as well. Like I said, Kris and I believe in insurance of all types. We would pay that before we would pay a house payment if it came down to that. It’s that important. We can go without a house for a time, we can’t go without insurance.
Be insured, folks.
I think you forgot to mention designing a logo. It’s one of the first things we did when we decided to take control of my backlist as e-books under our own imprint, E&E, Eyes and Ears Editions (keeping in mind audio books to come) and once we’d decided on a simple logo/font design, I printed it out and posted it on the door of the office.
Contrary to legacy practice, we decided that the E&E logo would appear on the front cover of the e-books and shift to the back only for the paperbacks. It makes for a nice “signature” look when they’re all lined up in my email signature or on the Amazon author page. This is one design point when I think Indies are capable of being ahead of trad publishers in their web marketing style. (Did we remember to build ourselves an email signature using bitty jpegs?)
Designing a logo was the “emotional” start of all the business chores to come, as you listed them above. As I read through your list, I realize where the year has gone, but now it’s done. Logo, Facebook product page, Paypal, learning formatting with Styles, Smashword Style Guide/paperback PDFs, designing covers, tax status, not to mention re-editing OCRs of the previously published books to which I held e-rights.
Now six novels are up under two author names, on all the platforms we could access except OmniLit (still to come but with tax status confirmed.)
Note: Tax status for us overseas had to be dealt with to avoid 30% withholding, so we were saved by Caffeinated Catherine’s great post on the quickie way to get an EIN instead of faffing around with a ITIN. We asked Amazon/Smashwords to hold all payments until E&E could get that assured and registered. Oops! Amazon issued an unwanted check minus 30% anyway, but after a flurry of emails, they refunded back taxes from 2011 via EFT.
There’s setting up and then more setting up: We’ve had a bitch of a time getting CreateSpace (who are at least accessible by phone 24/7) to stop realizing they are the cart, not the horse. Problems arise when you fill out their book description form, e.g. having created titles for the KDP e-books first, CS automation came up with the most unforeseeable variations that prevented us from linking e- to p- versions without a flurry of corrective emails to KDP and CSpace both. e.g. In the mystery series, CS introduced a colon into the title, The Wardens of Punyu: The Handover Mysteries, instead of The Wardens of Punyu (The Handover Mysteries) the existing title across all the reading platforms like KDP, Goodreads, Library Thing, Shelfari, etc.
When we asked CS to correct? They came up with The Wardens of Punyu:(The Handover Mysteries.) Nope, try again. More emails…
Thinking there wouldn’t be a problem with the latest stand-alone novel, we were wrong. The KDP Love and the Art of War became (and they are creative at CreateSpace!) Love and the Art of War (Volume 1.)
Uh, CS fellas, there is no Volume 2. More emails.
We thought it was all solved but yesterday saw that with so many cooks in the kitchen, Love and the Art of War had vanished from the Author Central page and…yes, more emails and it’s back.
Some days, it feels like mole-whacking. My only consolation is that my trad publisher, an old-fashioned small literary house in London would never, never, NEVER have taken the time or understood the computer skills required to nurse my books through the system.
My point is that setting up is one thing, but there are hiccoughs where you least expect them, again and again, before you can rest on your haunches and start to think of writing again!
I hope in your revision of a great blog-book, you stress the time consumption of follow-up and mindless archiving tasks on the readers’ platforms, not to mention harassing the delightful people who hold these mind-breaking jobs at Amazon and Smashwords when you need fine-tuning. (Diesel posted a gobbledy-gook book description when they uploaded A Visit From Voltaire. Smashwords had to contact them after I stumbled on it.)
I always remember to thank the online people for their hard work and I think courtesy pays off. You’d be surprised, at least in our European time zone, how often the same names in India and South Africa, as well as the US, start to crop up in the correspondence (thanks Suresh Rao! thanks Raylene!) and as my father always said, “You always meet a man a second time.” This is fast becoming a global business network as well as a global marketplace.
Love your blog.
Thanks, D.L., for the great comments. And yes, you are right. First off, always be polite to the wonderful people who help you at these places. I have been stunned more than once at the friendliness of the people I have talked with about problems. And the quick responses. It’s been wonderful for the most part.
And yes, I do mention the time spent on learning curves, especially in some later chapters. And yes, that’s why I called some of the things in this first part “chores” because they are just a pain to get through.
But worth it at the end, as you are saying. Thanks again for the great viewpoint from Europe. Things are really ramping up there and will be changing a ton as new markets come on line. This is all great fun.
I’m starting to understand what you are saying. The publishing name I take it is what appears on the spine and the back of the book like a little logo?
I was thinking of vjkbooks as there seems to be no vjkbooks.com out there. So I would buy the domain for this as well as the two pen names I’m planning on writing under?
And the accounts with Amazon, Createspace and smashwords would be under the vjkbooks names? I can’t get into publit because I’m Canadian.
I would be a sole propietorship and according to an article I read by David Gaughran said that for non us residents that applying for a EIN number is easier that than getting a ITIN number so I think I will try that.
But is that basically what I would be doing?
Vera, yes, your publishing company name will be the name on the spine and on the copyright page. It will say “Published 2012 by vjkBooks, copyright © 2012 your author name.” And yes, before starting a publishing name, get the domain locked up. Critical. And yes, the accounts would be under either your publishing name or your name, depending of if you have a checking account in your publishing name. But when you load on the book, there is a place to put the publisher name on each book. Not a clue about the tax stuff for you. But basically it seems you got it. Have fun.
When I launched my DBA name, Bunderful Books, in 2009, I offered both print and eBook. My eBook sales quickly eclipsed print sales. The eBook version of my second indie release spent several weeks on the Top 100 of multicultural romances with an overall eBook ranking in the 10,000 range, but the print version rarely cracked 100,000 and often dipped below 1,000,000. I have had improved sales with subsequent eBook releases, with my most recent release hovering between the 30s and 50s in the multicultural bestseller romance list, but I suspect that if I went through the trouble (formatting) and expense (I use Create Space but want Bunderful Books to show as the publisher, not Create Space, which means purchasing ISBN numbers) of releasing a print version, I suspect the story would be the same. Like pricing, to print or not to print is a personal decision.
OK, finished reading the book this morning. It’s better as a book than as blog posts spread over time. (Though there are a few places where the bloggy roots show.)
I’m very pleased with this purchase. It’s also timely, as I have new novel/series ideas forming, and I want to have the business side ready when those come together.
Thanks, Dean!
Thanks, Martin, glad you liked it. And yup, I said right up front it was front a blog in the book. And weirdly enough, I decided to do it as a book before the first “Think Like a Publisher” workshop to give to everyone attending and all I did was copy and paste the blogs and then did a paper version. This second version I pulled some of the blog stuff out, but left some in for the flavor. (grin)
Thanks again.
The chores continue, (just finished emailing Smashwords coupon codes to 90 Library Thing Early Reviewers,) but to add to the global marketplace theme: I was disappointed to see my six weeks’ report for sales from KDP considerably less than in previous months. Then I examined the figures and realized, happily, why; the same number of books had sold as in the previous month, but most of these sales were from new marketplaces beyond the 70% domain and had brought in the 35% royalty instead.
What good news, as readers beyond that mythical “corner bookstore” we’re all supposed to be worried about (I certainly don’t have one here in Switzerland!) are making the most of their e-readers. It confirms what Kris wrote recently about the unlimited versus scarcity model for sales.
Reading through the Library Thing reviewer list, I see locations that surely were never served by B&N, Waterstones, or any English-language bookstore, like Finland, Germany, the Philippines, Italy and South Africa. Meanwhile notably, an astonishingly disproportionate number of US e-readers responded from Florida, the Carolinas, California, Kentucky and Texas.
Fascinating and well beyond our promotional reach in the traditional order of things.
I loved the disclaimer in “Think like a Publisher”:
“This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.”
Makes me wonder, Dean …
I already had the first edition and do not regret having both on my iPad now. Really shows how things are evolving.
I also found Catherine Caffeinated and opted for an EIN instead of an ITIN. Took less than two minutes on the phone to get one.
I have not wrestled through POD yet, though. Preparing 25 books for publication in the next couple of weeks. Will put them up one after the other and hope to have mastered the POD game at the end of it.
Thanks for all your help, Dean. This is a great blog.
Iassal, ahh, you spotted that goof. (grin) Yeah, we left the fiction disclaimer on the book. Ahh, well, that will be changed out next edition.