ebooks | Kicking around an idea

Kicking around an idea

Inspired by

elf's posts on electronic books, I'm thinking seriously about starting a company that will sell ebooks at a very reasonable price, like $3-$5 each, with about 1/3 to 1/2 going to the author. These would be high quality common formats. PDF, TXT, RTF, possibly even HTML, with no DRM on them.

The questions I have are these:

1) do you think this would be a good service?
2) if you had this available would you use it?
3) if you were an author, would you put your books up to be sold this way?
4) Are there any other common and cross-platform formats I need?
5) would you be willing to help convert/proofread books into those formats?

ETA: Okay, obviously I'm not the professional marketer that I think, so let me bore you all some more.

Yes, I would be paying others to do proofreading/editing. No, I would not be publishing unknown works. My idea is to contact some of the authors I know, see if they would be willing to let me have the epub rights to older books of theirs, that their publisher may not be interested in printing more copies of (Mercedes Lackey and her "Diana Tregarde" series spring to mind). The authors retain all rights to their work. ALL this would be doing is providing inexpensive, well formatted versions of those books for reading on e-devices. The author would write the book, it would be published through their normal print publisher. Several years later when the interest has waned, but the author still has their copyrights to it, I would take the book, put it into an e-format such as above (including epub apparently) and provide that to those who want to buy it.

It would be something like the "used book store" where you can get copies of old favorite books and read them again without having to pay $18 for it from Amazon. In that it is using older books, $1 to $3 per book royalties to the author isn't a small amount, considering that currently used books don't generate anything for the author, and all they are doing is sitting on their manuscript.

*I* or my employees would be doing the linking, the formatting for HTML, PDF and other formats, including the pictures and diagrams, converting it between the various formats and making sure that it converted properly. No OCR and throw it into the web, but checking it against the manuscript to make sure.

I would have to hire a programmer to make a kick-ass search engine for the site, but I have someone in mind for that. Cross links, links to other sites and so on would also be done by the company. Promotion as well. Naturally I'd have to have an attorney to help with the legal issues.

I'd like "cheap-ebooks.com" to be more than a fly by night internet bubble dot com. I'd like it to have saying power like YouTube or something similar.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sigh.

Here's the thing -- epublishing companies are popping up all over the Internet, because the barrier to entry is so low. Anyone with a few web skillz can create one and call themselves a publisher. Then they solicit manuscripts and disappear.

The number of epublishing companies that make a profit, or even last a year, is very, very small. The number who actually publish books that are remotely professional quality is even smaller.

Your questions suggest to me that you know essentially nothing about the industry.

If you have no experience (and by that I mean professional experience) in the following: (1) Marketing; (2) Editing; (3) Proofreading (which is not the same thing as editing); (4) Layout (yes, you need layout, even for ebooks, it's not just "run a text file through Calibre to turn it into an epub"); (5) The publishing industry; (6) At least half a dozen other things I have no doubt forgotten; then you need staff to handle all those things.

Otherwise, you're just going to be another fly-by-nighter with big ideas who will break the hearts of naive aspiring writers who think you're their ticker to becoming Real Authors.

Additional information above. Thank you.

Okay -- let's suppose you contact Mercedes Lackey and offer to epublish her out-of-print backlist for her.

Why would she choose you, an unknown start-up, when she could choose an existing epublishing company that already has a presence and a customer base? Or for that matter, shell out some money to have someone do the e-formatting and website for her and sell the books directly? Or through Amazon?

Lots of authors are indeed seeing the potential of epublishing their backlists. I just don't see what you're going to offer. When you decide to jump into an already-crowded field that has very low barriers to entry, you'd better be well-financed and have a brilliant business plan. What is going to distinguish you from everyone else on the Internet who's trying to sell cheap ebooks?

Okay. Thank you for your thoughts.

1) Yes, depending on the offerings.
2) Yes, if it sold books I wanted (preferably in EPUB).
3) Maybe, if I had already published in print but kept the ebook rights to market my own ebooks, and I thought this platform could do so better than me. Probably not if I were going for just ebook off the bat.
4) I would want EPUB, and if not EPUB, HTML so I can readily convert it to nice EPUBs.
5) Not for free, I'm afraid. It takes enough time tweaking the ebooks I do have into formats I can tolerate.

Additional information above. Thank you.

Mercedes Lackey and her "Diana Tregarde" series spring to mind

This does not fill me with confidence. Have you read anything Lackey's said about these books? I can't imagine her allowing them to be republished unless hell freezes over (which is unfortunately, and I don't think in today's UF/PNR climate that they'd bring the weirdos out of the woodwork the same way, but I can see why she's so adamant).

I'm still skeptical.

Yes, I have read her comments on that series. a) it's an example b) there are already reprints out there, so it is no longer applicable c) she's been to conventions since the incidents that provoked her to write what she did on that topic.

Thank you for your thoughts.

I'm not really seeing the appeal for established authors here, when they could market their own ebooks and pocket more of the profit, as some authors already do.

1-3. That's... not actually a description of a service. You don't describe what you-as-publisher would do in any way. So I don't know if it would be good, or if I would use it, or if I would give you my stuff to sell there. I mean, Amazon and Smashwords don't do much, and Amazon promises me 70%. You'd better offer some awesome services if you're only going to give me 1/3 of the cover price of my book.

4. I think the obvious missing format there would be epub (and mobi) since those are what most ereaders like. I read my ebooks on my ereader. I can translate them in calibre but I'd rather not have to.

5. Possibly, if you paid me. Since you're trying to be professional, you'd be paying your typesetters and proofreaders, right?

Additional information above. Thank you.

So what you're interested in are books that were traditionally published but are now out of print or never sold ebook rights, correct?

Yes, that would be the focus. Not publishing new manuscripts.

Well then I guess I wouldn't put my books in your store. XD

To be honest, that sounds like a terrible idea.

Actually, let me rephrase that. I do think that there's room for a backlist converting service (though uh, don't expect it to have a long lifespan), but it shouldn't be focused around creating a new online bookstore. You have no built in audience, you probably don't have the capital to do it properly, and frankly, they'll still be selling more on Amazon/Barnes and Noble/Smashwords/etc. Have you thought through what you'll do with the authors wanting to upload their finished files onto those sites?

If you wanted to do a backlist converting service, I'd suggest selling it as that, with a flat fee per book and an overall per job fee + phone support + complete and very, very completely written instructions on how the authors can upload the books themselves on the major sites. I don't think any of them have a good, basic way that a company can upload for an author and still direct the royalties to them, or I'd suggest that. If I were you, I'd investigate that though.

You have two separate business concepts here: A conversion service, and an ebooks store.

Conversion service is a viable business. Ebook store is basically not--you're competing with Amazon, B&N, Smashwords & Lulu, and hundreds of smaller stores, including Backlist Ebooks.

If you require authors to sell exclusively through your store, you'll kill your ability to get conversion jobs. If you don't, they'll sell at other places and your store will be yet-another-tiny-ebook-store in the big big web--and you'd have to spend resources supporting it in addition to conversion, which could be a full-time digital job on its own.

Conversion of paper backlist to digital: plenty of opportunity. Plenty of authors who have regained their copyrights would love ebook versions, and would pay for them to be made.

Product:
Offer proofreading & basic HTML versions for one price (that's the most convertible to other formats), and a premium package with Smashwords-formatted Word doc, and Calibre-friendly XML and potentially nifty CSS. From those, it's a minor jump to actual sellable ebooks; Premium-plus can include those, and a set of formats: epub, mobi/prc, lit, eReader pdb (for the six of us who still like it), fb2, lrf, doc & rtf, PDF in 2-3 sizes (letter, half-letter/mmpb, and 6" screen optimized) and plaintext pdb & txt. If you want to be extra-nice, you can make two versions of text files: one stripped directly from the HTML, and one with _underscores_ around the italics and *asterisks* around the bold words. (Maybe a script can create that version?)

Setup:
You'd need book-formatting skills. I'm mediocre at best;

amalthia is better; some of the crowd at Mobileread are excellent, and give out tutorials & hints, which I'm too lazy to bother with. If you're doing PDF, especially optimized for small screens, you need real typography skills to make decisions; those are different from markup skills.

You'd need OCR software, because the reason a lot of authors don't sell ebooks is because they don't have digital versions of their books. Finereader's the best; Omnipage is good; the free Windows OCR thing I've heard is tolerable, especially for good scans of printed books. If you don't have practice with proofreading OCR, you'll have to price much lower than a decent hourly rate while you're learning.

You'd need image software & skills for diagrams, maps, pictures etc. [Assume insertion of thousand-word lecture on digital imaging technical details.]

You'd need a contract establishing that you have the right to make copies during processing, and something that establishes whether/when you need to delete that info. (Do you keep the final digital version/s forever? For a year? Delete two weeks after delivery?) It'd have to establish how subcontractors/employees deal with copies as well.

You'd need a secure file-transfer system. For a small business, password-locked zip files in emails is fine.

You'd need to write up descriptions of your services that make sense to authors who know nothing about ebook creation, and more-or-less assumed it was "feed book into scanner, *poof* instant ebook." (After all, that's what "scan to PDF means, right?)

You'd need a contingency plan in case some big-name publisher with lawyers from hell decides that that author *doesn't* have his rights back, and comes after you. (This wouldn't need to be a solid plan; you'd just need to keep in mind that, at any point, you *could* be getting a C&D or notice of a copyright infringement lawsuit out of nowhere.) At the very least, you'll need to decide what kinds of verification of reversion of rights you'll accept.

You'd need to decide what starting materials you work with, and how to address those costs. Do you tell authors, "send me a paperback and in a month I'll send you an ebook?" Do you tell them you're willing to track down a physical copy yourself, and put a price tag on that? Do you deal with paper originals that can't be destroyed? Will you deal with scans someone else made? (On the one hand: less time/hassle involved. On the other: if they're low-quality scans, you might as well be just typing in the content.)

Would you work with *any* kinds of books, or have content limits? Only already-published books? New books only by previously-pro-published authors? Formatting services for new authors who just want to write--and aren't aware that they need an editor? Magazine articles, either from indiv freelance authors, or from small-press magazines that want their backlist converted? Adult/erotica books? (The only reason that's an issue is things like PayPal: if they decide you're doing an adult business, they won't allow you to use them.)

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And that's all in addition to the standard business stuff: a tax ID number, payment terms (I'd be creative & sneaky and put something in the contract about "if payment is not rendered in X time, I have the right to start selling these books myself at Y price, until such time as I receive payment."), scheduling around internet problems and RL situations, tracking expenses, etc.

I think it's a great business idea. I haven't done it because I don't want to run a business; I want to do doc conversion & OCR correction work.

Additional: You'd need either book cover creation skills (a whole separate set of graphic arts & copyright issues), or references for book cover creators.

Occasionally, when I'm really hating my job I've considered the idea of contracting out my services to create ebooks for self-published authors or author's with a backlist. You've just listed about five things I hadn't even taken into consideration.

Main reason I haven't quit my day job is that I still have to pay for school and the marketing aspect of starting my own business has me a bit stumped. That and a tiny lack of faith in my own skills.

I think I'm going to print out this list. The actual creating the ebooks part seems like the easiest section of it. Though, I know if there are footnotes, that'll be a bitch to code.

Someone who knows how to write code/scripts could come up with something for footnotes. The entire "make ebook" part is easy--you only have to figure out how once, and find ways to streamline/batch as much as possible of it. It takes a substantial portion of working time once the system is set up--but the process itself is simple, just time-consuming.

Harder stuff is "decide on CSS details with enough variation that all your books don't wind up looking identical," but that's still potentially part of setup arrangements. (And it's a "you decide" thing.)

Dealing with someone else's scans is a nightmare. Dealing with "the only known copy of this book is a 1963 collector's edition paperback with a crumbling spine; DO NOT DAMAGE the original" is a nightmare. Dealing with color-coded maps on yellowing paper is trouble. Dealing with "so, what do you do when the author hasn't paid you yet?" is icky, especially if you know how tight a budget the author's working under.

I've put serious thought into "could I do this as a business," and eventually came up with, "probably, but the first four months would be borderline-starvation, and ick, I'd have to run a business." I'm currently looking for someone else who wants to run an ebook conversion business and will hire me to do formatting & OCR corrections, and the occasional weird image-editing job.

You'd think that once you know how to make the ebooks it would get easier but I know with fan fiction depending on where I download the story from it could be a breeze to convert or a nightmare! Then there is the issue of embedding fonts, epub I believe supports it but not mobi or LRF, so if the story has any Polish in it the diacritics don't convert properly without the correct font embedded.

I imagine working with physical copies has it's own set of challenges as you aptly described here!

Then there is the business aspect. I keep running into my own not so great communication skills. I can't sell water to a man dying of thirst in a desert. Though, if I were to get fired, I'd give this option more consideration.

A lot of it does seem to be going out and drumming up some business. However, after reading many blogs and talking to other authors not many people have the necessary skills needed to create a well crafted ebook. Sure there are programs that can help but if you don't know how to read CSS I don't know how a person would get fine control over the illustrations in the document.

I've also found that depending on what platform you're reading the ebook on the formatting elements don't always carry over. It's incredibly frustrating. That and all the different formats have their own quirks. I code everything for epub because mobi and lrf are more forgiving in terms of what codes you use to center images and etc...

I think I now know why so many author's just use the tools at Smashwords and Kindle to upload their ebook. It seems much easier than learning how to create the ebook from scratch.

But I've read that those tools don't always produce the nicest looking ebooks. I can see that there is probably a need for help with these types of services but my strong suit seems to be more technical than managerial. (having said that managers do tend to make the most money)

Let me be blunt:

If you don't know already that ePub and Mobi are the two biggest formats for people with dedicated devices, then you have way more research to do.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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