Targeting an E-Publisher (Part 5)

I'm BAAACK - my hand is much better and I'm out of the really annoying splint that made me type so slowly I frustrated myself continually.

Back to my series on e-publishing and, more specifically, how to figure out whick e-publishers you want to target for your submission.....

Read part one here.
Read part two here.
Read part three here.
Read part four here.

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E-Publisher Product Quality
More information can be surmised by looking at the e-publisher’s current offerings and seeing just what they have out right now. Some of these are a little more fuzzy than others and a lot hinges on your own comfort level with the way the e-publisher handles them.

Covers
I mentioned this in passing before but covers can vary widely by publisher and they are important for several reasons:
• Cover appearance has an effect on readers and, thus, on sales.
• Cover appearance has an effect on the author and the author’s desire to promote that book.
• Cover appearance has an effect on some reviewers.

Do be aware that you should look at the average cover art. Better selling authors or bigger name authors tend to get better covers and more consideration. Don’t hang any hopes that your first book with any house will have that house’s gold standard of cover art.

Preferred Subjects
What types of books does the e-publisher specialize in? The submissions may say one thing but what do you see in the books being sold, especially those in the last couple of months? Is there a heavy weighting toward a particular subject or type of book?

Be sure to also pay attention to the length of the stories. It’s not unusual for an e-publisher to say they accept long stories but have a definite preference for shorter ones.

Story Quality
What do you think of the story you bought a story? Was it something you liked? Do you think the e-publisher looks for new and interesting takes on things or do all the blurbs sound familiar?

Editing
What do you think of the quality of the editing in the story you bought? Do you consider it to be a well-edited story? Did you find issues that continually drew you out of the story? Did the story line work well or did it lag and sag in places? The most important thing is whether you feel you would be happy if your story went out in the same shape as the one you are reading.

Pricing
What is the e-publisher’s pricing structure? Pricing is always a tricky subject because authors and houses need to make money but readers also need to both be able to afford the stories and they need to perceive it as a good value. Do you feel the price charged is a fair price for the book you received.

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Part Six on Thursday!

Targeting an E-Publisher - Next Party Delayed --Anderso

I had hand surgery yesterday so I'll get the next installment of Targeting an E-Publisher up tomorrow.

Sorry for the delay.

Targeting an E-Publisher (Part 4)

Continuing on with examining e-publishers to narrow down those you want to target for submissions.

Read part one here.
Read part two here.
Read part three here.

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E-Publisher Website Usability
TeddyPig did a feature on his blog talking about publisher website designs and how easy or hard they are to use for readers. I highly recommoend reading his thoughts in addition to my own.

The reason you look at this is that it has a direct impact on your sales. Websites that are difficult to use or problematic can frustrate readers and make it difficult to find or buy your stories.

Can you find new releases?
Are new releases displayed prominently so readers always know what’s new? Many readers look at the front page of the publisher’s website to find brand new releases. New releases should be listed in date order because it’s frustrating to have to check every book released in “this month” to see which ones are new this week.

Can you find other books in a series?
If a book is part of a series (single author or multi-author), can you find the other books in the series easily and can you tell the order of the books in the series? This can make it far easier for readers to buy an entire series if they like one book in it or to keep track of a series at any time.

Can you find other books by a particular author?
Can you easily find other books by any particular author? If you open any book’s page, can you click on the author name to go to a bio or a page that contains links to other books by that author? This makes it easier for readers to discover your backlist and buy it when they like the book they’ve purchased.

Can you find a list of coming releases?
Is there a Coming Soon page that shows you the cover, blurb and author information for books that are coming soon? You want to be able to start promoting a book heavily once it shows up on the Coming Soon page and readers go through that page a lot more than some authors think, often announcing they’ve found new books by their favorite authors on it and asking for details.

Can you understand the Categories?
Are the e-publisher’s categories fairly standard or are they being customized to the point they are no longer recognizable. If your readers can’t understand the categories because they’re specific only to that author, they may not bother to browse them and you may lose a reader that may have otherwise stumbled across your book.

Can you easily purchase a book and download it?
How difficult is it to purchase a book and get it downloaded to your system? Do you have to go back and forth to a 3rd party fulfillment site? Do you get a download link immediately or do you have to wait to get an email? What formats are offered?
If you buy a book, do you pay per format or can you download any format at the end?

This can be a bit of a minefield and not many, if any, e-publishers do everything in the way I’d prefer but mainly you’re judging the pain factor of trying to be one of your potential readers by buying one or two books that interest you. If it’s too difficult, readers won’t bother to keep coming back and may not even complete their first transaction. That’s a sale lost.

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Part Five tomorrow.

Targeting an E-Publisher (Part 3)

Read Part 1 of the series here.
Read Part 2 of the series here.

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E-Publisher Website Data
You can learn a surprising amount by looking around each e-publisher’s website. This is what customers will see and use and you should put yourself in the mindset of a customer when you explore it. If you find something confusing, so will other people. If you find something a pleasure to use, so will others. Customers are very easy to influence with website usability and design, so it pays to take it into account.

Things you see on the website can also be extrapolated to give you clues to certain behaviors or data that can make a difference on how you rank that e-publisher on your list.

How Long Has This E-Publisher Been In Business
Length of time in business is not the whole story. E-publishers have failed after months in business and years in business. What this information does do is give you a data point to look at when you also look at the number of releases or authors.
But a new e-publisher will most likely not have the customer base of an e-publisher that has been in business longer. New stories may not have the sales figures with a smaller or newer e-publisher that they would have with an older or larger one.

What Do Current Covers Look Like?
Covers can take many forms and many “looks.” Not everyone’s taste in covers is the same and it can make a significant difference for some readers and authors. You should wander through each e-publisher’s catalog of books and get a feel for what that e-publisher’s normal cover look is. Then decide whether you are comfortable having that cover on your book or not. You really are the only one who can make that call. If you don’t like or at least accept your cover, you’re less likely to be happy and less likely to promote your work.

How Many Releases Per Week?
The number of releases per week will give you a rough look at the volume of the e-publisher. Because e-publishers do not generally provide sales numbers, you have to make some rough guesses of what that might be. Typically, the number of releases per week corresponds to the e-publisher’s sales volumes. An e-publisher that has one release a week almost certainly has lower overall sales than an e-publisher that has four new releases per week.

How Many Authors in the Stable?
Take a look at the stable of authors the e-publisher has. If most of the stories published are from a small subset of the stable or the stable is very small in relation to the number of stories released per week, that may be a sign of either a publisher that is mostly focused on its owners.

Don’t mistake this for a publisher who is merely new and has a small stable because of that. In that case the e-publisher may only release one book a week and have a small stable of core authors.

What File Formats are Offered?
This is another factor that can have an impact on the customer base. People quickly develop favored formats based on how they read ebooks and are less likely to buy a format they cannot easily use unless they are already hooked on the author’s work.

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Part 4 will be posted Sunday :)

Targeting an E-Publisher (Part 2)

I'm posting this early because I actually have to get to bed before midnight.

You can read part 1 of this series here.

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Narrowing the Field
There are a lot of factors to take into account when you look at e-publishers. As is the case with a lot of things, there’s no absolutely perfect solution for everyone. You will need to make choices and consider tradeoffs. Only you can tell what is truly important to you for any particular story and any time in your writing career.

When you look at the list below, I encourage you to make a list of pros and cons for each e-publisher you’re considering. If you are not eligible for that e-publisher for some reason, just remove them from the list. This will leave you with a much clearer idea of what places may suit your work and you can then rank the remaining e-publishers in order of how desirable you find them.

E-Publisher Submissions Page Information
One of the best places to start is the e-publisher’s own submissions page. A lot of the most basic information you need should be located there. If the e-publisher you are considering does not have a submissions page, that may be a red flag right there.

Are Submissions Open or Closed?
Closed submissions means, if you are determined to write for this e-publisher, you’ll have to wait to submit until the submissions open again (or a contest is being held). If submissions are closed, make a note of the date they will reopen to submissions, if it’s mentioned.

Does Your Story Fit the Guidelines?
If your story doesn’t match the list of what that e-publisher is buying or, worse yet, violates one of their explicit rules, don’t bother to submit it.

What Needs to be Submitted and How?
Some e-publishers want information in addition to the more standard query letter and partial. If you do not already have this information available, it may cost you some time to produce it.

The type of material requested may also give you clues to the e-publisher’s concerns – for example, a request for a marketing plan may give you an indication that the e-publisher may be concerned that their authors make a significant contribution and investment in self-marketing and promo. These may also be positives or negatives, depending on your own comfort levels or resources.

What is the Stated Response Time?
This can be significantly different between different e-publishers. Most e-publishers request that you at least indicate if you are doing simultaneous submissions (submitting to more than a single publisher and/or e-publisher at any one time) and some request that you do not do it. What that means is that your submission may be tied up waiting for a response for an e-publisher for up to a year or maybe even more and you need to factor this into your submission decision and order.

What are the Standard Contract Terms?
Many e-publishers list at least their author royalty percentage and a few post sample contracts on their websites. You should try to get an idea of both royalty percentage and just what rights are requested and note those details down.

Is Print Possible? On What Terms?
This is only listed on e-publisher submissions pages occasionally but if going into print at some point is important to you, be sure to look around and see what you can discover about the chances of going into print and what is required. Sometimes it’s a certain minimum of sales, sometimes the author has to pay into production or buy a certain number of books to qualify.

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I'll post more on Saturday, as long as Emily doesn't kill me first because I'm rather long-winded.

Targeting an E-Publisher (Part 1)

(This is another post that has to be split up over multiple days because it's so long.)

Note: If you want a PDF version of my first post in this series, Formatting a Manuscript for E-Publishing, you can download the PDF from my Scribd folder.

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Introduction
Once you have a manuscript written and it’s been proofed and test read and is ready to go, you have to try to sell it. For many people, this is the most harrowing part of the entire process and, unfortunately, this often leads to even more frustration because they will end up submitting manuscripts and collecting rejections from houses they shouldn’t have targeted at all. This is needless work and needless pain.

I really advocate being smart and educated when deciding which e-publishers to submit your hard work to. This includes doing some research and due diligence on the various e-publishers and making sure any compromises or tradeoffs are made knowingly. Educated decisions and even compromises are a key part of success in this industry.

I’m not attempting to tell you which e-publisher to choose. Instead I’m just trying to give you ideas of what to consider when selecting which e-publishers you want to submit your hard work to.

Know Exactly What You’re Selling
The first part of the formula is to know exactly what you are selling. This sounds like a really obvious and redundant thing to point out but I’ll do it anyway. I have actually met people who do not know what genre their story is and some aren’t sure how long it is!

If you followed the instructions in the first article in this series (Formatting for E-Publishing), you will already have a cover page that tells you exactly what genre you believe your story to be and how long it is. If you didn’t follow those instructions, write those two key pieces of information down and keep it handy.

Finding E-Publishers
There are a number of places to look for simple lists of e-publishers that publish the type of work you want to sell.

Some suggestions are:
• EREC (Erotic Romance E-Publisher Comparison Site): http://www.erecsite.com/index.html
• Preditors & Editors: http://anotherealm.com/prededitors/
• EPIC (Electronically Published Internet Connection): http://www.epicauthors.com/
• Piers Anthony: http://www.hipiers.com/
• Publishers you own books from.
• Recommendations from friends, loops, etc.

Note that some of these sites give information and offer recommendations. I always think these should be noted but no one recommendation or warning should constitute your entire decision on an e-publisher.

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Part 2 will be put up tomorrow and will start talking about the various pieces of information you can use to narrow down and rank your list of e-publishers with.