Current News

Assuming no major problems, I'll have two books finished by end of next week: Bog-trotting for Orchids and Archaeology and False Antiquities. I haven't decided whether to go ahead and send them to the printer or hold off.

I really need to go ahead and try and finish up the first volume of Varmints, which will deal with the mystery felines of North America. That'll probably take a month or two.

POD's Big Jump

PW is noting that while there was a 1% increase in traditional book publishing in 2007, there was a 39% increase in POD, short run, and other titles. I suspect that trend will continue in 2008.

I'm not sure, though, that traditional publishers really "get" what's going on here. Here's a quote from an associate publisher for editorial at a traditional Christian publisher, InterVarsity Press:

"On the one hand, obviously, it makes it easier for authors to get their books in print on their own or through a publisher that specializes in print-on-demand books. On the other hand, it increases the competition and makes it more difficult for any particular book to get noticed and have significant sales."

This may be true for generic titles or perhaps fiction, but it's not that difficult for a specialty title in a well-defined niche to be marketed effectively. "Significant" sales for a POD book is different from a traditionally published book. My first cryptozoology title, for example, has done better for me than it would ever have done with a traditional publisher, even if it sold there in greater numbers. There are so many niches where competition is lacking, that a publisher just needs to find an author who can produce quality work in that area. (Of course, that's a problem for both traditionals and PODs.)

Ebooks Again

I've decided to integrate ebooks into the publishing again, just added 10 titles as printable PDFs, using Payloadz for payment/delivery. Of particular interest, included both Historical Bigfoot and Boss Snakes, at $9.95 each, and included a $3.00 affiliate referral fee.

Color in the UK

LSI now has their color printing available in the UK, so that will help my titles from being so "one-sided" distribution-wise. This means that as of June (I've just submitted the changes, so it takes a little while before it comes into effect), the color plates volume of American Spiders and Their Spinningwork and Forged Egyptian Antiquities will both be available in the UK. Several more color books are on the way.

Something To Look Forward To (In 2019)

Sad to say, but I've postponed my edition of Gould's Case for the Sea-Serpent due to copyright reasons. While going over a last-minute consideration, I ran across mention that when a book is published outside the US more than 30 days before the US edition, the copyright policy must follow the first country's rules. Drat it all. The US edition was published 4 years after the UK edition, with no substantial changes as far as I know. This means my edition can't be published until 2019. (Unless I can track down and make arrangements with the Gould estate; unlikely, but I'll make inquiries.) [To the lucky few who ordered copies prior to my cancellation, you've got a very, very limited edition.] What's killing me is there is a Singing Tree reprint from the 1960s or so, and I'm pretty sure they considered the text public domain. But... that's the way it goes.

UK vs US Copyright

I'm trying to finish up my reprint of Gould's Case for the Sea-Serpent this evening, and after a little investigation realized that I'll only be able to offer US distribution of the title, rather than US/UK as with most of my books. UK copyright is life of author + 70 years, which means this book won't be public domain in the UK until 2018, another ten years. Because it had a US printing in 1934, without copyright renewal, it is public domain here. While my UK sales are trifling, I was expecting to sell at least a few copies over there, so this is a little annoying, but not much I can do about it. (Technically, my books would be "published" in the US, and "printed" in the UK, but I'm too uncertain of legal liability in this instance to take a chance.)

Gould's Loch Ness book would also have the same copyright period in the UK, but it never had a US printing (as far as I know). So, in the US, it won't be in the public domain until 2029, 95 years after publication in the UK. So, we won't be seeing reprints of those (legal ones, at least), unless the Gould estate gives permission.

Similarly, I would love to reprint Gandar-Dower's The Spotted Lion, but it's not in the public domain, and I have no idea how to get hold of his estate.

A Suggestion for Lightning Source

Given the recent Amazon attack on POD publishing, specifically LSI clients, I'm wondering if there isn't a (relatively) simple solution. After all, Lightning Source stands to lose some significant earnings (from both present and future clients) if Amazon forces a shift in the primary POD publishing arena. LSI has spent significant money already in expansions and upgrades, and they're looking outside the North American and European markets, so this can't really be seen as anything but a direct challenge.

So, why doesn't LSI set up a direct ordering site (opt-in for client-publishers) that integrates the drop-shipping capabilities they already have in place for Amazon and other retailers. Cut out the middle man. Sure, Amazon's got market share, but if a book-selling site is set up right, and seriously promoted by the many LSI client-publishers, it stands a chance of taking back some of the lost profits to both LSI and the individual publishers.

As it stands, if the Amazon rampage continues, POD publishers that don't migrate to Booksurge will only be offered by third-party sellers, with no discounts, no free shipping option, and probably an increase to the price by the third-party seller. POD publishers that do migrate face lower profits via a higher forced wholesale discount, or through increased retail pricing that decreases the number of books sold.

If LSI set up a direct-buy website for its client-publishers, they wouldn't have to give the wholesale discount to a retailer -- they could keep that as retail-side profit. There'd be no need to discount titles (which is only done by Amazon as a gimmick, anyway), but there'd also not be a tacked-on increase to retail pricing, so it would be a good site for authors to direct potential buyers. I'm sure a viable and economical shipping solution could be arranged.

With as many titles as are in the LSI system, if it were set up correctly it could help even out the POD retail playing field. Amazon's only getting away with this because of the lack of direct competition. Someone else needs to show up to play.

Amazon Sends Mixed Signals

I'm not sure what Amazon's up to right now. First, comes the news that Amazon's Booksurge department is strong-arming several large POD publishers into joining them (at a substantial profit loss) rather than sticking with Lightning Source or other printers. This has a lot of the smaller POD publishers in a frenzy, as it could pretty much ruin our business, forcing much higher retail pricing to accommodate the required wholesale discount. Or we might just need to funnel our book buyers to online stores like Barnes & Noble as our primary distributors.

Now, though, I see that Amazon has most of my titles at a 10% discount to buyers, even with the minimal wholesale discount I offer. That's a bit strange, and seems unnecessary. But, if you've been waiting to buy a POD book, now might be the time to save a few bucks...

Update

Scanned another classic cryptofiction/lost race novel (Vampires of the Andes), so should have six of that genre ready to go in a month or so. I'm trying to decide whether to publish these novels separately, or perhaps pair them up...

Madge the Magician's Daughter didn't come out well, when I looked at a proof, so it's out of circulation until I get time to revise it. These are old newspaper comics that were scanned by another source, so I'm limited in my ability to fool with it too much. It came out a bit too faded in parts.

The editing for Al Spoo's Pearly Mussels of Pennsylvania (working title) is coming along nicely. I'm pleased with how the color images are looking.

Am thinking about doing a short booklet, color images, of scorpions of eastern North America... if I have time...

I'm going to put out Gould's Case for the Sea-Serpent, but only recently got around to ordering a copy to get the inside cover map scans. (My previous working copy didn't have those.) Figures, the book dealer mistakenly switched books and sent it to another book buyer, so have to wait however much longer before I get the book now.

What's New?

Currently, am editing Gary & Dwight's Atlantic sea serpent manuscript, which is about 90% complete. This may take a few weeks to finish for editing, then will need final additions.

Picked up a number of "lost race / living dinosaur or some other strange creature" type classic novels for scanning.

Still trying to finish up my spider book, Eight-Legged Marvels; got stuck on the final chapter, and need to pick up a few specific spider images yet.

Need to figure out a way to subsidize putting out more manuscripts...

February has been a good sales month so far, would like to keep that up.

Upgraded (SEO-wise) CoachwhipBooks.com and StrangeArk.com. Might be a while before I have time to work on Herper.com.

Evaluated a submitted summary and sample chapters by a potential author on Bigfoot, but decided the book wasn't a good match for my publishing goals.

Naturalist Bob Chance should be getting his manuscript to me (a compilation of his Maryland newspaper columns) within a short time.

LSI News

Well, I didn't get anything on my Lightning Source wishlist this year, but LSI has just made a couple of new changes. First, they've added some new color book trim sizes. Frankly, I'd call that irrelevant until they decrease the price of color pages. I think they're trying to get publishers to put out more color books by offering a wider range of sizes, but until the books are economically feasible, it's not going to happen on the scale they're looking for. Second, they've flattened the publication fee. Now, regardless of b/w or color, and no matter how many pages, it is $75 to set up a new title (US pricing). This makes it a little cheaper to set up books with high page counts, but makes it more expensive for shorter books. This will offer some minor savings, but I wouldn't say it's a big deal.

On a different subject, the NY Times has an article discussing why it takes so long for a traditionally published book to come to market. The answer? Mostly, marketing. I'll stick to POD.

Coming in 2008

Technically, this is more of a "wish list," as it depends on several factors. But, I'm planning to put out 5-10 reprints on various subjects, starting an "urban wildlife" series authored by Dwight Smith, a two-volume set on Pacific and Atlantic sea serpents by Smith & Mangiacopra, possibly a "sight-seeing guide" to Lake Champlain by Dwight Smith, Bob Chance's Earthline column anthology, Bill Gibbons' Mokele-Mbembe book, and (as far as my own projects go) possibly a sequel to Historical Bigfoot dedicated to the 1950s through the 1970s, and a guide to cryptozoological canines/felines/other predators in North America. I'd also like to start a series of 20 or 40 page color books on North American snake genera.

Boss Snakes Finished

OK, Boss Snakes is finished, and available from Amazon, though the data hasn't yet propagated to Amazon UK or Barnes & Noble. (Oddly, my last title also isn't on B&N yet; I'm thinking it needed to be entered into Bowker first, for some reason, so have done that and will wait and see.)

Next up, trying to finish Eight-Legged Marvels.

Caught It (A Little Late)

Being a one-man shop, I can always look forward to seeing some dumb editing problem in a newly published book. It's due to a sort of word-blindness, where I can look at a phrase, read it, and completely overlook an incongruency. Usually, it involves prepositions on my covers. I'll put one preposition on the title page, and a different one on the cover. Almost put "Sightings and Stories" on the new Boss Snakes cover, when it was "Stories and Sightings." Quickly caught that before I sent it. But, last night, several days after uploading the book to the printer, was going over a few things in my head, and thought, 'I did use Mark Chorvinsky's name, right?' I mention the late Strange Magazine publisher briefly... and a quick check confirmed I had, of course, inserted Mark Opsasnick's name instead. Well, they're both from Maryland. A few choice words, a quick change and re-upload, another $40 down the drain, and the book will be bumped back a few days, but will have the correct name in it.

And, noting some odd little comment elsewhere about the use of a black racer on the cover of Boss Snakes, it's a bit sad to see that cryptids as social (ethnozoological) constructs has taken such a turn in popular culture that we are so certain that they must in fact be strictly based on unknown species. That's one reason I dislike over-generalizations in the attempt to name or describe a mystery animal prior to physical confirmative evidence. (Or rather, the effort to make specific claims about a generalized far-flung topic.) The giant snake phenomena in North America is based on a wide range of folklore: hoaxes, misidentifications, exaggerations, tall tales, as well as credible sightings involving larger than expected specimens of native species, introduced or feral exotics, and maybe (just maybe...) unrecognized variations or species.

Online Sales Categories

I'm still in procrastination mode (need to tie down some final text edits and photo licensing for Eight-Legged Marvels, and haven't quite gotten in the mood to finish Boss Snakes, though I've got the sightings layout done), so just a quick glance (generic musings) at how I think we can categorize online booksales, particularly with POD.

Directed (informed) purchases: running along a scale from low need to high need, these are the niche-specific sales for someone who has done their homework and is specifically looking for a book on a certain topic. The higher the need (along with other factors, like few competing titles), the better the chance for an online sale.

Casual (recognized) purchases: running along a scale of low value to high value, these are the sales within a community-based niche, where any new title will have a decent chance of being noted, and where purchases are based on past experience (how well previous titles were written), market saturation or over-saturation, and similar factors.

Impulse (triggered) purchases: these sales run along a scale from low stimulus to high stimulus, and involve individuals who might otherwise have no real interest in the subject. Factors include cover appeal, and marketing approaches to the title, subject, and scope of the book.

A single book can be marketed to each of these purchase categories, but the methods are different. And, of course, a given title may not appeal to certain categories.

A Hurdle for POD

Just thinking this over... One of the most commonly listed problems with POD books (from traditional publishers) is the lax editing most receive. Now, you'll still see errors in traditional publishing (oddly enough, I recently noted two separate uses of the number 1, when a capital letter I was called for, in Harper Publishing's edition of Making Money, by Terry Pratchett), but it is true that micropublishers rarely hire professional editors.

Generally, I'm not sure this matters so much if the publisher isn't targeting millions of buyers. Still, poor editing can grate, particularly if combined with poor layout design. (I stick to my own preferred template, created from trial-and-error, and follow a few basic rules: no orphans, no widows, etc.) But the cost of adding a professional editor on staff (or even hiring on a line-by-line basis) is too expensive with books that might take 5 years to reach 1,000 copies.

So, there's a potential market for alternatives here. It probably wouldn't be worth it for an editor to offer "quick edits" for a lower fee. Perhaps there is opportunity, though, for small community-oriented editing groups. Set up a sort of private wiki for 5-10 interested people with a background in writing/editing, and an interest in the subject, and give them the ability to make basic edits. Not sure how that would offer compensation, but it's one possible angle.

Lightning Source: 10 Years

LSI is celebrating ten years in the print-on-demand business. Overall, I've had a great experience with this company. They've done a good job of keeping up with trends, and pushing forward in new areas. But, as Christmas is coming up, here's my wish list for Lightning Source, things (from a small publisher's perspective) I think would really help this business grow and compete with "mainstream" publishers.

1. Print books with horizontal (landscape) layouts, also, rather than just vertical (portrait) layouts.

2. Cheaper color printing. Even coming down to 6 cents a page would drastically improve pricing and distribution capabilities.

3. Drop the annual title "catalog" fees. With 500,000 titles, do you really need $12 a title a year? (Did I just answer my own question?)

4. Allow digital certification after 25 titles, rather than 50.

5. Bring the publisher-ordered print costs down to the same price as vendor-ordered books.

6. Develop the capability for color inserts, rather than just full-color versus black-and-white books.

7. Work with Ingram to create a marketing catalog for libraries and bookstores that doesn't discriminate against POD books

8. Convince Amazon to accept LSI ebooks again. It's not like their own ebook program has taken off.

9. Make the discount program for higher-quantity orders standard, not just the occasional promotion.

10. Decrease the cover replacement "correction fee." $50 a shot is a bit high.

Reprints: Paperback or HTML?

Looking forward, I have many more potential reprints than actual new material, in the pipeline. This is mostly because it's only a few days' or a weeks' work to get the scanning and OCR done, while months of research may go into a brand new title.

But, of course, not all reprints have a ready-made audience. Just because I find them interesting doesn't mean that anyone else will (or that my low-key low-cost marketing will attract anyone who might). Take for instance a reprint of a small booklet of philatelic cartoons from 1916 (I used to collect stamps, so still carry a slight interest in the subject); there might possibly be two or three philatelic historians who'd shell out for a copy (the cartoons are only mildly amusing today, as they appear to be riffing on people long gone...), but there wouldn't be much else. So, should I forego the print copy (which would cost me about $75 to produce via normal methods) and just reprint it on some pages on the CoachwhipBooks site? Maybe publish it as a paperback through Lulu, where there are no upfront costs, but wouldn't be distributable elsewhere and would have a higher print cost...

There are a few possible titles for alternative publishing routes, but will have to decide what's worth spending time on and what should be left to other salvagers.

Philip Henry Gosse

One of my favorite classic natural history writers is Philip Henry Gosse. He wrote several books in the mid- to late 1800s, including a few titles in which he discusses mystery animals (sea serpents and the like). He was the first naturalist to create (and write about) the salt-water aquarium, and had a particular interest in marine life.
I've spent the day scanning the text and color plates for Gosse's A Year at the Shore. I'll put it in line to reprint in a few months, if I have time. Lots of other books I need to keep working on, but I would like to start reprinting a few more of his books. I did have an ebook for his text, The Romance of Natural History (American version), which was fairly popular as a free download.