Musical Ebooks: Breakthrough, Fad, Or Bad Idea?

The New York Times recently published an article on Booktrack, a New York startup that takes top sellers like The Power of Six and old public domain classics and gives them a score.  The article can be read in full here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/books/booktrack-introduces-e-books-with-soundtracks.html.

According to The Times, "As e-book sales have skyrocketed in the past several years, publishers have searched for ways to improve on the digital editions of their books. In 2010 enhanced e-books with video and audio were all the rage — Simon & Schuster, for instance, found some success with an edition of its best seller “Nixonland,” with 27 videos scattered throughout the text — but sales for many enhanced e-books were dismal, and the books were often expensive to produce."

Will The Power of Six turn this around?

If this enhancing becomes cheaper, will it become a new fad in the year head?

Probably not.  Truthfully, this strikes me as gimmicky and (as the article notes) accompanying books with music is not a new concept.  Film scores work for films, but for books?  I'm not sold.  Still, I commend the idea of ebooks embracing  multimedia technology.  As noted in an earlier post, in my opinion ebooks like Al Gore's Our Choice show possible benefits of mixing media for nonfiction, if done in an intelligent way.  I do believe that multimedia is the future of publishing.  However, I think it will take more than a gimmick to bring ebooks into the next generation.

Oddly (to me at least), the publisher mentioned doesn't focus more on the obvious place for these books: the children's market, particularly picture books and more juvenile and middle grade titles.  Maybe this is because numerous physical chidren's books already have interactive components and / or sing-along CDs, or maybe it's because those rights were harder to obtain.  Whatever the case, this strikes me as something that would appeal to younger readers more so than to older sticks in the mud like me.

Otherwise, a book with a score?  I'll be happy to hear the music, but not when I'm reading.

Why All The Furor Over Free?

If you're an indie author, it's hard not to notice the furor over "free" ebooks.  It's become the new
John Locke / $0.99 model, and authors at all corners of cyberspace seem to be setting up for the
holiday shopping season by putting freebies out there for readers to voraciously consume.

So why, then, is it so polarizing among indie authors?  Here's an attempt to consider both sides, as
misguided as I think the anti-freebie arguments may be.

Anti-Freebie (As seen from comments on the Kindle Boards):

1. It cheapens books, making readers accustomed to getting freebies.  This is often presented as an alleged domino effect in which readers will stop buying as many books and / or will start expecting more free material.

2. Number one leads to this point, which is that freebies may hurt honest good old-fashioned capitalism among indies.  Why buy an unknown author's work, even for $.99, if a thousand other authors post free material?

3. It doesn't generate sustained interest, leading to only temporary spikes in sales.

4. It reeks of desperation rather than effective marketing.  Readers will equate free ebooks with cheap material, which may not help an author's marketing effort after all.

Pro-Freebie (As seen from comments on the Kindle Boards):

1. Insane numbers of downloads, which include potential buyers of future series or trilogy installments.

2. One free book, if well-written and well-marketed, may lead to lasting spikes in sales.  Several authors have reported serious increases in income.

3. Effective (and cheap) marketing.  Similar to loss leader marketing strategies, but significantly cheaper for authors.  Authors may be taking a financial hit on one book, but sales to other books and increased publicity more than make up for the lost sales.

4. Readers don't necessarily equate price and value, and positive reviews and buzz may build from favorably received free ebooks.

Personal disclaimer: I have current books listed for free; thus, I have a horse in this race.  Having said that, though, I just want to point out what I think are fallacies about the free ebook.

1. Fallacy #1: Customers will stop paying for books just because they download free ebooks. 
While there may be those who only get what's free, there's no evidence that this is the majority of Kindle / Nook users.  The best seller lists still include quite a few indies.

2. Fallacy #2: That "free" is something new.  This is as old a marketing technique as any in existence, and entire types of marketing include variations on the "free" model.  So far, it hasn't led to the death of books or ebooks.  In fact, Baen Books once used free ebook downloads to increase, not decrease, their paperback sales.  Go to goodreads.com or librarything.com and authors, including those put out by large New York publishers, are giving away free copies for sales.  The key, as with any marketing strategy, is to use free effectively.  It should be an author's best work, in my opinion, and making a book free for a period of time doesn't necessarily mean doing so in perpetuity.  There may be a time when it's no longer needed for some authors.  There may be authors who are better off keeping ebooks free indefinitely.

It's just my opinion, but I truly feel whoever the next Locke or Hocking is this holiday season will be an author who isn't afraid to use the "free" model effectively.  Rather than debate the practice, authors should consider trying the model out for themselves.  If it works, great--if it doesn't, well, there's always other marketing strategies.

Five Ways To Tell You've Met An Insane Indie

In the good old days, say the nineties, before Kindle, e-book audiences, and a large ditigal marketplace, one of the premiere ways for an author to grow a following was a blog.  Okay, maybe not for this author, but for those who link to other blogs and grow a steady readership over time.  It was a golden idea then, and it has its appeal now.

It seems only natural that aspiring bloggers would elevate their names in the indie community by offering some service to fellow authors.  That was originally the idea behind this blog, and it seems to be the idea behind a more elaborate blog from a self-publisher (who apparently dislikes the term indie) who fancies himself a critic.

The only problem: this guy seems totally insane--so much so that I don't think I'd even post this if there was a chance of him reading this blog!  Luckily, he's one literary critic who admits he doesn't like to read, so I don't have any problems there.

That being said, here are five signs you've just come on an insane indie:

1.  The indie decides to run a scam, offering editorial services after threatening to post bad reviews.  When this doesn't work, said indie goes to the Kindle Boards (in a misguided attempt at validation) to admit to doing just this in the form of writing retaliatory reviews. 

2.  Said indie invokes standards for what he calls good literature and then he proceeds to violate every single one.  He does this by releasing a poorly formatted, unfocused book with pages running into one another while critiquing the format of others.  He does this by refusing to follow even the most basic of mechanics.  On his blog, one sentence doesn't even end.  It simply begins and then goes to limbo, and yet this reviewer still criticizes others (and no, not me!) for doing the same.

3. The critic actually admits, on his own blog, that he hates to read and that he doesn't even find fiction that interesting.  Even so, for reasons that remain obscure, he expects everyone else to take his reviews seriously.  This when even the average sixth grader can spell better.

4. He refuses to learn from the experience, constantly engaging in the same abusive behavior and posting about it.  If that's what he can do with the internet, one only wonders what would happen if anyone was stupid enough to hand this guy gasoline! 

5. The critic sends emails to detractors constantly, yet complains when some of the recipients of those emails don't take kindly to his spamming and retaliate against it.

I don't mean to make light of this.  I also have no vested interest.  I'm simply astonished at how anyone can be so dense.  Maybe the real reason is mental illness.  If so, I sincerely hope he gets the help he needs and that someone pries his keyboard away before he does further damage to himself.

New York Fights Back!

Here's a tale that's both old and recent news, as the site should be launching any week now.

From Newsbreaks, it looks like the Big Six (or at least three of them) are finally waking up to what they should have started doing ten years ago:  "Bookish, set to launch this summer—though no one is saying exactly when that will be—is backed by such industry heavyweights as Hachette Book Group, Penguin Group (USA), and Simon & Schuster."

All of these giants have had their issues with Amazon.com in the past, and it's no surprise that they finally joined forces to come up with an attractive way to promote their books.

But what sets them apart in an age where Amazon has brand recognition and consumer confidence?

According to Newsbreaks, "Part online community, part recommendation engine, part bookstore, Bookish seems to be doing a little bit of everything."

This makes it sound like publishers are looking to combine Amazon.com, goodreads.com, and librarything.com into a site designed to help readers decide what to read next.  Is there a need?  Is this really anything new?  Maybe not.  However, if Bookish offers greater interaction with leading authors readers might not be able to access through other sites, and offers exclusive content about and from said authors, Bookish could build a following.  Otherwise, the site doesn't seem too dissimilar from what's already out there.

It's summer--pretty far along in summer--and the site isn't up and running yet.  When it does go live, we'll see if Bookish lives up to all the buzz.