I’m hard at work on Ithaca Diaries–a book, vook, and/or nook about college in the 1960s.I’m debating whether to go via the traditional publishing route (agent, publisher, an advance that will amount to about 2 cents an hour, low royalties, do-it-yourself marketing, wait a year for it to come out)–or self-publish–which carries its own travails.
I’m interested to see that Amazon.com is now offering self-published authors 75 percent of royalties on ebooks–compared with the measly 5 per cent I received for my first book, Broken Patterns–which came out in 1995 and for which I’m still paying back the $2000 advance. ( BTW–it’s now selling for 9 cents a copy on Amazon–plus postage; I now have the rights and will plan to offer a new edition later this year).
I also note that Kindles are now being sold at Target for $279… though you can buy quite a few “real books” for that price, pass them along to others, and not worry that they’ll become useless as technology changes.
Today’s Wall Street Journal does a terrific job of exploring the ins and outs of self-publishing–and includes links to other excellent information.
According to Goffrey A. Fowler and Jeffrey A. Tractenberg:
Much as blogs have bitten into the news business and YouTube has challenged television, digital self-publishing is creating a powerful new niche in books that’s threatening the traditional industry. Once derided as “vanity” titles by the publishing establishment, self-published books suddenly are able to thrive by circumventing the establishment.
Here’s a link to the article: Vanity Press Goes Digital
–Anita M. Harris
HarrisCom Blog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish the New Cambridge Observer and Ithaca Diaries blogs.
Filed in Books, Communications, new media, Publishing Industry
Tags: author, Broken Patterns, Geoffrey Fowler, Harris Communications Group, HarrisCom blog, Ithaca Diaries, Jeffrey Tractenberg, Kindle, New Cambridge Observer, Self-publishing, Target, Vanity Press, Vanity Press Goes Digital, Wall Street Journal
Vooks
October 2, 2009
I read with interest Motoko Rich’s September 30 2009 New York Times article on Vooks–a hybrid “literary” form “mashing together text, Web and video features. “
She describes publisher Simon and Schuster’s release of fitness and diet and beauty books that include videos on how to perform exercises or make skin lotion. Also, Anthony Zuicker’s novel “Level 26, Dark Origins, published on paper, as an e-book and in audio, with a Web component that allows readers to watch brief videos adding to the plot.
The online comments–101 of them–range mainly from skeptical to negative.
John in New York writes, “Should we still call them books?”
Val in Baltimore suggests we’ll soon see “A nobel prize…in viterature!”
Mary the Trainer from Texas writes that the best part of ”reading a novel is creating the scenes in one’s mind based upon what the author has written.”
According to R Weber in Park Slope, ”Publishers –– all corporate hacks these days, with quotas to meet, bearing little resemble to publishers of old who thrived some years, got by in lean years –– have so little imagination & entrepreneurial drive, that idiocies like this are the best they can come up with. The truism proves true once more, “Pay peanuts, get monkeys.”
I scrolled through pages of comments in hopes of weighing in–but found that the comment box had closed.
What I would have said is that as an author, former radio and television producer, photographer, and musician, I’m thrilled and energized by the prospect of being able to merge media in order to give readers/viewers a fuller experience than is available through any single medium on its own.
In research Ithaca Diaries, a book (or something) based on journals I kept in college in the late 1960s, I was delighted to be able to check my fading memories using video, photos and news accounts I readily found on line. I’ve been struggling to pull my journal entries, letters, photographs and drawings into a linear form–but now it will be possible to include video of the Doors from 1969, Bob Dylan’s 1969 concert on the Isle of Wight; old news footage of the Chicago and Democratic News Conventions, maybe even the shootings at Kent State. Maybe I can even read from the diary entries, aloud–and share tapes of my old professors and friends.
Now all I need to do is figure out how to do this and how to find the time, what it will cost–and whether–and how–it will sell.
I’d welcome YOUR comments.
—Anita Harris
HarrisComblog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish New Cambridge Observer
Filed in Books, Media, new media, Publishing Industry
Tags: Anita Harris, Books, Cambridge, Cambridge Authors, Harris Communications, Harris Communications Group, HarrisComBlog, Hybrid books, Ma, New Cambridge Observer, Public relations, vooks
