NabaTech

Book Promotion—Harder Than Writing the Book

Recently I bought two non-fiction books after I heard about them—the first one through a TV appearance and the second when the author spoke at a conference I attended. I must confess that until recently I have not done much to promote any of my computer books, nor have I taken advantage of my "already published" status to establish what Joe Wikert called an author platform. I honestly can't tell if the lack of an author platform hurt the sales of my books, but the lack of any promotion certainly did not help sales. After I began this blog, I got reeducated on how book promotion is ultimately in the author's hand. I accept this responsibility at face value, but I am not sure what specifically a computer book author can do to help promote books. The publisher certainly does the necessary work to make sure the book appears in catalogs and is available at both brick-and-mortar and online bookstores. For my part, I now have this blog and I am setting up an online presence, and perhaps I can gradually establish an "author platform" with my efforts. However, none of these steps address the problem of simply making the existence of the book known to prospective buyers. I don't think I have enough visitors to my blog and website to make a difference. Someday, in the future, I'll find out first hand if having a blog and a web presence makes any difference in book sales, but in the meanwhile I wish there were some other ways to promote an upcoming book—without spending too much money, of course :-)

Tags: books publishing promotion author platform presence blog online sales marketing

Shouldn't Ebook Pricing Model Be Different From Print Books?

I must confess that until I began to blog, I had not paid much attention to ebooks. Now that I have been checking out ebook news and availability of ebooks, what I hadn't known is that over the past two or three years most publishers have been offering ebooks and continue to do so. I found that there is, for example, PerfectBound for HarperCollins ebook titles, ContentLink—Random House's ebook store, Amazon ebooks, and many more online ebook stores that carry ebooks from various publishers. Then I looked specifically for computer and technology books and noticed that many technology publishers also offer their print books in ebook version, usually in Adobe or MS Reader format. If you want a quick look at some of the computer ebooks, check out the Computer Technology ebooks at eBookopolis. These ebooks all seem to be straightforward electronic versions of the corresponding print books. Now take a look at the prices for the ebooks. Each ebook seems to be priced nearly the same as its print counterpart. This ebook pricing model is confusing me. Shouldn't the publishers be able to price the ebooks much lower than the print versions, considering that there are no printing costs, shipping costs, and no need to accept returns from booksellers? Or, put it another way, wouldn't it make sense to price the ebooks as low as possible just to encourage buyers to go for the ebooks? Before we think of better formats and designs for ebooks, publishers should rethink the pricing model for the current computer ebooks—to ensure that there are some real incentives for buying the ebooks. One way or another we'll probably see a move towards lower-priced computer ebooks because that's an obvious way to compete in this marketplace.

Tags: books ebooks epublishing pricingmodel trends ebookopolis amazon harpercollins randomhouse adobe msreader

Another Ebook Benefit—No Returns!

Last Friday's Wall Street Journal had a front-page article on the insidious problem of "returns" in the print book publishing world. Because book retailers can return unsold books, even successful titles can end up with tons of returns if the publisher overestimates the demand or if the retailers order too many copies. The WSJ article says publishers end up having to raise prices to compensate for the lost revenue due to returns, which makes books harder to sell (too expensive) and leads to even more returns. You get the idea—"returns" are causing a big mess.

Even if print books are not going away any time soon, perhaps we can lessen the problem of returns for tech books by moving to ebooks. With ebooks, there's no need for returns; nor any need to waste all that money and paper upfront and ship boxes of books around the country in the first place. I'm sure you can think of many reasons why ebooks may not sell—no good reader device;  tried it, didn't work; and so on. Well, we don't need a ebook reader device for reading tech ebooks on computer and perhaps the current prices are too high to generate sales of ebooks. We can't expect people to shell out $30 or more for an ebook that's simply a PDF file version of a print book. I think an ebook has to be priced much lower. If this requires reducing the size of the ebook (and focusing on a narrower topic), so be it. And while we're at it, we should redesign the ebook to take advantage of the electronic format; for example, use a layout that's easier to read on computer monitors, and include multimedia that provides a richer experience than a print book. For a 75- to 100-page ebook packed with information, a price point of $5 or so sounds right. On the other hand, the same size ebook with  embedded multimedia could be priced $10 and up. What I don't know is whether such a pricing model for tech ebooks would work for mainstream publishers or are such ebooks more the domain of self-published authors or small niche publishers. I guess we'd find out as the market evolves!

Tags: books ebooks epublishing returns trends WSJ

Microsoft's New eHow-tos

I thought adding animations, if not full videos, would be a good idea for computer ebooks. As it so happens, Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) has recently introduced what they call eHow-tos—multimedia documentation on various Windows software development topics. They are meant to be played in Windows Media Player, but the website says other JavaScript-capable media viewers would also work. I tried out several eHow-tos in Internet Explorer; for example, try the one on Creating a Bluetooth Application and you'll see how an ehow-to works. It's more of a video tutorial, but you see the code in the background screenshot with a smaller image of the speaker in the foreground, which seems quite effective. If you don't want to bother playing the eHow-to or don't have a suitable media player, here's a sample screen photo:

As the speaker explains the code, you can follow along in the screenshot in the background. The speaker can highlight parts of the code, point out specific items related to whatever is being discussed. When I was talking about interactive animations in computer ebooks, I was assuming simple animations, perhaps just the screen being captured with the mouse pointer highlighting code or pointing to specific parts as the ebook's text explained the concepts. I think full video with audio narration would be a bit much for computer ebooks, which may not be played in a full-blown media player; besides the file size would get bloated. Nevertheless, Microsoft's eHow-tos are an example of the new trend towards online multimedia tutorials and they're fun to watch—if you are into any kind of software development :-)

Tags: books ebooks epublishing multimedia tutorial ehowto microsoft msdn

My Tech Ebook Wish—An Example

I mentioned how ebooks would be ideal for technical information, but I haven't explained what sort of information I have been in mind. I am specifically thinking of just-in-time information, packaged in small ebooks that cover a narrow topic. Here's a concrete example. Let's assume that I want to set up a website for a small IT consulting business. I do my research, pick a webhosting company, and sign up for a hosting plan along with a domain name. Next comes the task of designing and putting up the website. I'll leave the designing part to my artistic side and focus on the technical "putting up the website" part here. I decide that I'd go for database-driven content, specifically a site based on PHP and MySQL. Since there are many PHP–MySQL open-source content management systems (CMS) around, I do some research again and even try out some of these CMS at opensourceCMS.com and then pick Drupal as my CMS of choice. I read Drupal's online handbook and, following those instructions, download the Drupal tarball, install it at my hosting site, and soon I have an empty Drupal website that looks something like this:

Now comes the fun part, I need to add content, but I don't know all the details of Drupal to get moving quickly. I add the administrator account and do some configuring and then start reading the online help, but it's slow going because I don't I fully understand terms such as block, node, taxonomy, vocabulary, and so on. I know I'll eventually figure it out and then I can drop the website content into the Drupal CMS and have the website ready to roll, but if I could get my hands on a small ebook, perhaps no more than 100 pages, that explained the basic principles of Drupal and walked me through the steps involved in creating a few typical websites in Drupal, then I'd certainly be willing to pay $7-10 for the ebook. It'd be even more appealing to me, if, instead of just text and some static screenshots, the ebook included animations to show exactly which field to change for a task and the result of that change on the website's appearance. To see if the ebook is appropriate, I'd like to browse the table of content and perhaps 5 to 10 pages of material. I'll be looking for some real knowledge, not just a rehash of installation steps. That's the kind of just-in-time technical information I want to see in ebooks that I'd be willing to pay for :-)

Tags: books ebooks epublishing drupal php mysql cms justintime opensource

Ebooks Ideal for Just-In-Time Tech Information

Computer books get outdated quickly and often you need technical information on a narrow topic, just in time for some upcoming project. I think ebooks (or e-docs as Amazon calls the technical documents) are the best way to deliver this type of information. When you need technical information in a hurry, you probably don't have the time to run to the bookstore or the library (and who says the bookstore even has a book with the information you need) or wait for a print book shipment from an online store. When you need it fast, electronic delivery is the best way. Even if you have the time to wait, what you need might be just 50 pages of detailed information on a specific technology (or the detailed steps to perform a specific task) and it's doubtful that any publisher would want to print and distribute a 50-page or even a 100-page book. For this type of tech information, ebooks are ideal.

As for the rapid aging problem of print computer books, ebooks would make it possible to keep the content up to date, correct any errors easily, and, best of all, not expend resources printing lots of copies. That should lower the upfront costs of publishing and enable authors/publishers to sell content at lower prices in many different formats such as a whole book, one or more chapters, or selected sections from multiple books. Of course ebooks can and should be more than just an electronic version of print books; ebooks can include multimedia content (for example, simple animation that illustrates concepts and steps with annotated text or even audio narration), better navigation within the book, and links to online resources related to the topics covered in the book.

There is the question of the ebook format. I hope the ongoing work by the OpenReader Consortium will give us a universal distribution format for digital publications. In the meanwhile, unencrypted PDF files would have to do. In fact most of the Amazon e-docs—the ones that cover technical topics— are offered as downloadable PDF files (take a look at the E-Books & E-Docs category in Amazon).

Tags: books ebooks epublishing edocs amazon openreader PDF

Lamenting the Size of Computer Books

I still have my copy of Kernighan and Ritchie's The C Programming Language that I bought around 1980 when I first learned C (transitioning from FORTRAN), on a VAX-11/780 running Berkeley Unix that we installed following instructions outlined by Bill Joy (Sun Microsystems wasn't incorporated yet). Kernighan and Ritchie's paperback book, published by Prentice-Hall, was all of 225 pages or so, yet it was packed with everything I needed to learn C. Kernighan and Ritchie subsequently had a second edition of the book in 1988, updated to ANSI C, and it's still only about 275 pages long. I continued from C to C++ and when Addison-Wesley published Bjarne Stroustrup's The C++ Programming Language in 1985, it too was only about 325 pages. Then something happened and computer book sizes jumped. In fact I was part of that trend—I wrote the 800-page The Waite Group's Microsoft C Bible in 1988. Of course, today the majority of computer books (at least the ones dealing with programming languages or operating systems) are typically close to a thousand pages in size!

I think I know the reasons why computer books end up so large. First, the subject matter has grown in complexity, so we need more book pages. For example, C relies on libraries to do all the hard work and once you start describing the libraries, it's hard to keep the book's size down. C++ also has standard libraries and when you describe them, guess what, the book gets larger. Even Stroustrup's third edition of The C++ Programming Language grew to 920 pages. The second reason is that it's not economical to sell smaller books at lower prices—I am not an expert on this, but it seems the numbers just don't work out. A third reason is the book buyer's expectation of getting a certain number of pages at a certain price. This is related to the reason that smaller print books are not economical. If there are a whole bunch of books on the same subject and all priced at $49.99, the feeling—right or wrong—is that the book with most pages would be perceived to be a better value. Even with all these reasons for selling the huge tomes, I still wish we could move to 300-page computer books that focus on narrow topics and offer good value to the book buyer. Perhaps computer ebooks will help us reduce the size and offer better value than print books.

Tags: books ebooks epublishing trends size C C++ Kernighan Ritchie Stroustrup Joy billjoy

EBook Formats and Standards

Recently I wrote about using animations in computer ebooks and mentioned PDF as the ebook format. As a computer book author, I am considering ebooks as an easy way to package and distribute digital content. I would like to avoid the waste of unsold paper copies (not to mention the cost of printing and storing those copies) and instead deal with relatively cheap digital bits. Being new to the world of ebooks, I didn't realize that there are so many competing formats for ebooks—Adobe, Microsoft, Palm, Gemstar, Mobipocket, Plucker, and more—vying for dominance. All these competing ebook formats—reminiscent of VHS vs. Betamax (but with more choices)—is probably a good sign; that must mean there is a market out there and everyone with a viable format wants to lock in their customer base. Along with the ebook formats, there is the issue of digital rights management—DRM—that publishers want and consumers resist, for valid reasons from both perspectives.

As you might guess, the ebook format becomes a factor when you want to distribute the book. In other words, the same book that you wrote using your favorite word processor could be packaged and distributed in many different ebook formats. That's the idea behind the Open eBook Publication Structure (OEBPS) from the Open eBook Forum—a standards organization for the electronic publishing industries. According to the OEBPS FAQ, the publication structure "is an XML-based specification for the content, structure, and presentation of electronic books.... OEBPS enables you to create a single electronic representation of a publication that can be rendered by many devices." This means that I could put a book in OEBPS files and they can then be used by many different epublishing and ebook reading devices. OEBPS sounds good for the future, but what do I do until OEBPS catches on. I was hoping I could just use PDF without any encryption for computer books meant to be read on desktop or laptop computers. If the PDF ebook is priced low enough ($5 to $7.50), I think the lack of DRM should not pose a problem.

By the way, there is a relatively new project—OpenReader—aimed at creating a platform-independent open standard format for distributing digital publications. The project plans to develop an OpenReader system for reading ebooks. The OpenReader system will support OEBPS, XHTML, MathML, CSS, SVG, and much more. I can't wait to try it out, once the first version of OpenReader is released!

Note: The Teleread blog as well as the Yahoo Group eBook Community discusses OpenReader (as well as ebooks in general).

Tags: books ebooks epublishing trends OpenReader OEBPS PDF XHTML CSS MathML SVG

Computer eBooks with Interactive Animations

From my perspective as a computer book author and reader, I think computer books (and some other technical books) could be good candidates for PDF ebooks that the readers might be happy to read on their computer. After all, if the book is about programming, for instance, I would be at my computer anyway, so it's hardly any trouble to open the PDF file and read while I try following the steps outlined in the book. This is where I think it might make sense to embed simple interactive animations showing code samples or illustrating some steps with an animated sequence of screenshots (here's a sample PDF with simple interactive animation). The reader could click a button to play the animation or pause. We could add voice narration as well, but, for computer books, I prefer simple animations with narrative text (the sound can be irritating). The ability to add animations is one feature that distinguishes ebooks from print books and may be a good selling point for the ebooks.

I am thinking of PDF as the mechanism for interactive ebooks with embedded animations because Adobe Acrobat 6 or later enables you to embed sound and movie files (in many formats such as WAV, MP3, QuickTime, Flash, and AVI) into PDF documents. Acrobat also supports JavaScript code, with which you can control the audio and video playing (for example, do such things as start, stop, and pause the animation when the user clicks a button or opens a specific page). You can even embed interactive 3D animation within a PDF file. The documents with embedded animations can be viewed in any viewer that supports Acrobat JavaScript—one good example is Adobe Reader 7, which is freely available for a wide variety of systems. All these features make PDF convenient for embedded interactive animations.

By the way, I keep mentioning PDF as a format for interactive ebooks only because PDF is widely used and I am used to PDF. Besides, with the recent announcement of Adobe's agrement to acquire Macromedia, perhaps we can expect improved integration of PDF and Macromedia Flash animations. Anyway, my main point is that addition of interactive animation could be a useful feature in ebooks that cover computers and technology.

Tags: books ebooks epublishing PDF interactive animation acrobat javascript 3D

Sales Rate versus Amazon Sales Rank—Power Law Distribution

At his Foner Books web site, Morris Rosenthal has lots of good advice on print on demand (POD) publishing. In fact, Foner Books has used POD publishing for its own titles. One of its current titles—Print-on-Demand Book Publishing—is all about how to do POD publishing, including selling on Amazon. Morris Rosenthal also talks about estimating the sales figures from the Amazon sales rank; that's part I want to talk about today. He provides an analysis—Estimating How Many Books Sold by Amazon Rank—that includes a plot of sales per week against the Amazon sales rank, based on data he gathered during November 2004. The plot is on a logarithmic scale and it's shows linearly decreasing sales with increasing rank. For example, a title with a sales rank of 1000 sells 90 copies a week whereas a rank of 100,000 translates to 3 copies a week. Although it's probably not a good idea to extrapolate the data into the lower sales ranks, I was tempted to get to an equation for the sales per week (S) versus rank (R) and it's roughly the following power law equation with a power of 0.74 (this is the "shape parameter"):

Then I plotted the function and as expected it's the usual power law curve except that in this case, the plot shows an empirical plot of copies sold on Amazon per week versus the Amazon sales rank:

By the way, there is an economic analysis of online book sales by Judith Chevalier and Austan Goolsbee—Measuring Prices and Price Competition Online: Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com—that also includes an estimation of rank from online sales. Their formula expresses rank as a function of sales, but if I were to use their formula and rewrite it as sales expressed in terms of rank, the shape parameter would be 0.83 instead of 0.74. This causes the sales to drop off faster as the rank increases. Both of these examples gives you an idea of the power law distribution at work for online book sales. By the way, the term "long tail" comes from the power law distribution's tail that shows small, but non-zero sales figures for books way down in popularity. The impact of the long tail is that the sales of a large number of high-rank (low demand) books could add up to a sizable amount, so they're worth selling for online stores such as Amazon that can keep all those titles in stock.

Tags: ebooks epublishing trends long tail longtail POD print-on-demand