As part of my ongoing efforts as an independent author and ‘educating’ newbies and/or readers about what sort of results come from being one, here is my round up for the first two months of 2010.

Historically for me, ebook sales tend to be low and slow until April through October, with June through September being my best sales months. Note: I’m lazy about promoting my titles except when something comes up that I could really use extra money to take care of.

(Note: I have medical bills to take care of, so 9 of February’s sales have been through my Payloadz store, via heavy whining on Twitter. All other sales have been through Amazon).

I’ve also changed prices on my ebooks downwards by around 25 to 76 cents on most titles. So instead of prices ranging from .99 to $5.25, they’re now .99 to $4.99.

Results for ‘Set Resurgence Free’: One $5 donation = 1 sponsor so far.

Web fiction ‘tips’: $14 (also in response to my whining – thanks to everyone who has bought or tipped! )

Downloads for the CC licensed, previously published version of Feral Intensity have now matched my total sales of that title. It took two years to hit 90 copies sold; it’s taken exactly 26 days to hit 90 copies downloaded (from here and Smashwords).

At this point in time, neither web fiction nor Resurgence donations have been miserable failures. I will continue reporting on both to see how they do. The Resurgence drive ends April 30, so 61 days more to go. (Note: I did put $10 of the webfic donations towards the goal for it, so actually have 2 sponsors so far.)

I’m an Operation Ebook Drop Author. Operation Ebook Drop is a group effort by a few hundred authors, started by Ed Patterson. Basically, we create and disperse 100% off coupons for our titles listed on Smashwords to active duty military who have ereaders.

From this, I had 8 downloads of my titles in January, and 15 for February.

Since adding my freebies to my blog here between the 2nd and 8th of February, Shades of Gray has had 20 DLs; Solo Mission 19 and Playing for Keeps 14. Over on Smashwords, since July 29, 2009: Shades of Gray has had 1755 DLs, Solo Mission 203 and Playing for Keeps 243.

And there you have it, folks. My total earnings for January to February have been $60.25 after distributor take or transaction fees, with a total of 189 copies going out.

Considering it could be zero, I’m going with ‘not bad’! :)

Amid the dire predictions for publishing, the fumbling about with ebook pricing and the growing hysteria over book piracy, one thing has become perfectly clear: authors need to adapt.

What may not be so clear is that authors can get paid for their work without restricting either availability of it or readers’ convenience.

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I’ll be the first to admit that I know little about publishing, building a readership, promotion and marketing. I’m like any other new author/self-publisher: stumbling along, trying to figure things out as I go.

But I have learned some things with that stumbling along in the past two years and when I see certain opinions or advice, I’m irked by how simplistic or off base it is.

Case in point: I’ve been participating in a discussion here.

One commentor said pirating isn’t stealing, it’s copying.

My reply:

Actually, it’s illegal distribution and copyright infringement, if my understanding is correct.

Whether it’s actual ’stealing’ or not, it’s considered by law to be illegal.

Loaning a physical book to a friend isn’t stealing – because of the First Sale doctrine on physical objects, once you purchase a print book, it’s yours to do whatever you want with.

But ebooks aren’t physical books, they’re digital files. You can’t ‘loan’ a digital file, you have to copy it to make it available to that friend.

A physical book is gone from your possession until your friend returns it. An ebook file is still in your possession and your friend has a full copy as well – which is distribution without permission of the copyright holder, thus illegal by law.

Authors/publishers have long accepted that a print book is out of their control once that first sale is made.

But ebooks are the proverbial horse of a different color. Both readers and many authors/publishers want to pretend they aren’t. That they’re just a more convenient form of books.

Which they are; but with that convenience of less cost to produce, collect and store also comes the convenience for those who decide to illegally distribute them for whatever reason they have.

It’s not surprising authors and publishers get so angry when they learn their books are being downloaded for free, and see each download as a financial loss.

DRM isn’t the solution. Consumers complain it implies they’re all criminals, and writers that do use it are trying to protect their work and ability to earn an income.

Scanning books or putting them on file sharing downloads also isn’t the solution.

Both are just causing a widening division between authors and readers.

I wish there was an easy solution, but there’s just not at this time.

Another said he’d stop downloading books when publishers stop shafting authors.

This was my reply to that:

As an independent author/publisher, I’ve been following the whole Ebook piracy saga with much interest.

I don’t considered a pirated copy to be a lost sale, because as was mentioned above, a lot of people who download books have no intention of paying for something they know where to get for free.

However, I also agree that the cover prices of books have been steadily increasing over the last couple of decades, and that has had a major effect on my ability to purchase books as a reader.

They’re just too damn expensive to buy many of in any given year any longer.

Even so, the remark made above in the comments about “I’ll stop downloading books when publishers stop shafting authors”?

Allow me to play Devil’s Advocate:

You’re contributing to the shafting of authors, because traditional publishers likely view pirated copies as a loss to their bottom line, and want to make that money up somewhere.

You’re contributing to higher prices, because again, they want to make that loss up somewhere.

The lack of availability in digital format mentioned as one reason people download books is a good point.

However, because book piracy IS growing and IS a hot topic, publishers AND authors are reluctant to put titles out in a format that makes it even easier for those books to be pirated.

So piracy basically contributes to lack of digital availability, higher Ebook cover prices and authors getting shafted over their share of Ebook profits.

/end Devil’s Advocate

I’m not too worried about Ebook piracy. I’m not a well-known author, I don’t depend solely on my writing to put food on the table, clothe my kids, pay my bills, etc.

I used to worry about it, because everyone was freaking out about it, but after some thought, I decided the worry was just getting in the way of writing, and if I kept worrying, I might end up quitting.

So I don’t worry about it. =)

A couple of other commentors seemed to feel I was complaining about sales and profit based on my input.

I am a bit: I think most distribution channels take too much of a cut for mostly automated listing of submissions. There are exceptions, and changes on the horizon, but really…demanding 50% or more of the cover price from people who are providing you content for your customers? Whose content you use as an advertising draw to sell highly priced ereaders to your customers?

Come on!

And it was suggested that ‘paying Amazon’ was a choice made for wider distribution. Well, duh…but not just that. The same commentor said to take out a loan to pay for editing/proofing/etc. and to stick a PayPal button on your own site, sell through it.

I’d hazard the guess that the influx of new authors are mostly people hoping to supplement their existing income a little with book sales. Going into debt doesn’t help that, now does it?

And your average reader isn’t going to spend hours hopping from author’s site to author’s site searching for something to read. They’re going to go where it’s convenient and easy to find/browse books: Amazon, B&N and such sites.

Not putting your books on those distribution channels is pretty much cutting off your nose to spite your face. Your website is highly unlikely to ever draw the traffic and potential buyers in a month that Amazon or the others do in a day.

I’m curious about pricing. Readers have been pretty vocal that $10 is as much as they’re willing to pay for an ebook. That’s the demand, and there’s literally thousands of authors willing to supply it.

But the growing division between readers and writers worries me. I think about the future possibilities.

Readers demanded $9.99 titles as advertised from Amazon. Now Amazon reportedly takes losses on sales from traditionally published ebooks to supply that demand, because traditional publishers sure as hell didn’t cave on their pricing.

What if ebook piracy continues to grow to the point that the majority of authors raise their ebook prices in order to make up those ‘lost sales’?

Will we see a battle of wills break out? Authors mimicking those Amazon protestors by setting higher prices, readers boycotting those authors, and piracy increasing even more? To the point that some authors just give up and quit? Find something to do that isn’t so damn stressful?

I don’t know. It’s going to be interesting.

What do you think?

Part of Amazon’s TOS for the DTP was that the publisher wasn’t to set a cover price higher there than through other retail distribution outlets.

In other words, you couldn’t distribute your title there for $10 and at Smashwords or elsewhere for $5.

On January 15th, the wording of that particular section was changed to:

(b) the lowest price at which you list or offer any digital or physical edition of the Digital Book on any website or other sales channel;

And that change came about after DTP forum postings asking for clarification on the previous wording, as some authors want to offer their titles at lower cover prices on their personal sites/blogs.

Reasons for doing so should be obvious: most of us are trying to build a readership, and we earn more per sale selling direct through our own sites using PayPal or something similar as our payment processor than we do selling through the various distribution channels like Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, and so on.

I’ve seen some authors who have ebooks available on Amazon for $7-$10, and those same titles available through Smashwords or their own site for $5.

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I just know Dhympna loves giving me posting fodder. Don’t ya?

She made a comment on my last post:

To play devil’s advocate, I am sick and tired of epublishers charging 6 to 8 dollars for a 130 page novel. Some pubs do not list word counts and after I buy such a short book, I will admit that I feel cheated.

So would I, considering I can buy a physical paperback with over 400 pages to read for $8 or less!

The problem is that there’s not a standard page size used across the board when it comes to formatting ebooks. It’s all dependent on preference of the person formatting, or on whether or not they’re also formatting with a POD edition in mind.

The page sizes most typically used by yours truly here are 8.5 x 11 inches for Smashwords publishing (which is reformatted to other file formats) or 6 x 9 inches for print formatting through POD and for my imprint.

Your typical grocery store paperback impulse buy measures at 4.25 x 6.75 inches.

Font size seems to be recommended at around 10-11 points, from my looking/reading around.

Okay, let’s illustrate the fact that it’s word count that matters over page count when it comes to ebooks:

My free novella, Shades of Gray, has a word count of 20, 098.

• 8.5 x 11 equals 34 pages
• 6 x 9 equals 65 pages
• 4.25 x 6.75 equals 157 pages

My ‘category novel’, Tria’s Tale, has a 33, 876 word count.

• 8.5 x 11 equals 75 pages
• 6 x 9 equals 132 pages
• 4.25 x 6.75 equals 306 pages

And there’s variances between page counts depending on the final file format. For Tria’s Tale at Smashwords:

• Online HTML reading: 96 pages
• Download the PDF and it’s 76 pages at 100% view
• RTF? That’s 75 pages.

No clue what the page counts are for .mobi, .epub or the other ereader formats available.

And since readers can change font sizes to suit their comfort, the page counts are likely to change again.

So the number of pages for ebooks doesn’t matter, and shouldn’t be taken into consideration when pricing them.

You can format a 10k short story to be 35, 49 or even 95 pages long, but it’s still a short story and you shouldn’t be pricing it at ‘novel’ prices.

Ebooks should show word count on their listing pages (which I do for our titles at Katarr Kanticles Press, Smashwords gives an approximation of, but Amazon doesn’t; they just show the file size in bytes).

That way purchasers have an idea of what they’re getting and don’t feel cheated or disappointed when they discover they paid $7 for a 30k novella.

It all comes back to setting sensible pricing schedules for your ebooks in the end, people.