TodayBooks.Com Seeks Short E-Book Manuscripts
July 22nd 2007 08:23
Have You Ever Dreamed of Writing A Book?
Have you always dreamed of authoring a book? Do you envision yourself confidently penning a popular novel or sought-after self-help book? Perhaps you periodically glimpse yourself deftly assembling several decades of your most tantalizing recipes into a classic cookbook to share with the world. Or maybe your dream is to compile a collection of your best mystery, humor, or horror stories, or even your own personal poetry anthology.
Yet, despite these dreams, do you continue to cramp your personal style by confining yourself to shorter pieces, such as articles, blog posts, and other individual short works simply because of the time it would take to complete a work of great enough magnitude to be called a "book"--and the difficulty you anticipate in actually finding a publisher for it? Well, times certainly are changing.
E-Books, The Latest Book-Publishing Trend
The advent of the internet has drastically altered the publishing landscape, bringing easy-to-write, easy-to-publish, and easy-to-access electronic books (also called e-books) to the forefront of the modern publishing industry. What does this mean to you, the writer, who may still be seeking your chance to break into the book publishing market? It means that the job of getting your name before the public eye, as a writer of books, has recently become quite a bit easier--easier, in fact, than it's ever been.
TodayBooks.Com, Online E-Book Publisher
One online publisher of e-books, TodayBooks.Com, is, it turns out, actually seeking writers of short (10-50 page) e-books, which they will publish, market, and sell on their site for the writer. In return for their work, e-book authors receive 20% of the retail price of each book sold. Since the books are so short, they are also inexpensive, coming in at $4.99 each. This comes to a little under $1.00 per book sold as the author's cut.
I haven't personally researched the issue or compared this percentage to that of other e-book publishers, but, having come across this website during my internet travels, I thought I would put it out there for you to investigate further and determine whether it seems like an equitable deal to you. In future posts, as I come across further information related to the e-book publishing phenomenon, as well as the practices of other e-book publishers, I will be sure to fill you in on whatever I may learn.
TodayBooks' FAQ Page: Important Info for Authors
According to the TodayBooks.Com FAQ page, each e-book they publish receives its own ISBN number, in the same way that print books do at the time of publication.
About the author's cut, here's what the site has to say: "TodayBooks will pay the author 20% of retail sales (before tax if applicable) and occasionally may add bonuses if the author links from high ranking web pages to the TodayBooks site and/or the book on the site." They go on to state the following, in comparing their author's percentage, as well as the services they provide, with those of other publishers: "Traditional book deals are about 8%, the difference between us and other self-publishing web sites is that we market your book directly. Our largest percentage of sales (besides the credit card fees) is in marketing."
Regarding your book's design and formatting, they say, "Yes, we will even help you with layouts, book templates and other great tools to get your book going. We have excellent suggestions for authors regarding writing books. You may also qualify for our "E-Z write" template, please enquire for more information."
One More Prospective Market for Your Work
TodayBooks.Com can provide one more option among many for publishing your work. They are, no doubt, worth looking into; but always remember to go into any prospective publishing situation with your eyes wide open, with as few stars as possible in them to obscure your view, and without too many visions of dollar signs dancing in your head.
Do some comparison shopping, decide whether you believe their deal is worth it to you, and then, if you think so, go for it: write your book, say your piece, submit it to the site, and then wait and see what happens (while simultaneously moving on to your next writing project). If you make lots of money through the sale of your e-book, wonderful! Write another! If you don't, at least you won't have wasted hundreds of thousands of words of your precious creativity and expertise, as well as your limited physical energy and stamina, to find that out!
Wishing you e-book success!
Jeanne
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Comment by Lillie Ammann
As you probably know from reading my blog, I'm a fan of e-books. In fact, I recently ran a series of articles on e-books.
I am not familiar with this publisher, but I can say that the royalty rate is low for e-books. Most electronic publishers pay between 30% and 50% in royalties, and most do provide editing services and cover design at no cost to the author. This company does no editing but will refer authors to outside editors so authors can pay for editing.
Most e-book publishers, however, do not accept every submission. The average acceptance rate for e-book publishers is about the same as for print publishers (a wide range between different companies, but averaging somewhere in the range of 10% of submissions or less). This publisher does publish short work that most publishers don't.
Amazon.com publishs Amazon Shorts, about the same length as Today's Books $4.99 books for .49, but I'm not sure what the author's royalty rate is. And Amazon accepts work only from published authors with at least one book for sale on Amazon already. Some authors seem to do quite well with Shorts, but the ones I know who have Shorts for sale are also doing well with other books.
I couldn't find anywhere on Today's Books what format((s) they publish, but since I saw a link for Adobe Reader, my guess is that the books are in PDF. Amazon Shorts are published in several formats, and buyers have access to all formats with a single purchase.
I started to work for a company several years ago and eventually became the majority owner. We published 6,000 word how-to e-books, which were stringently edited and formatted consistently. We couldn't generate enough sales from our own Web site to be profitable. I am in the process now (very slowly) of converting all the e-books to free online articles. Our goal is to generate income from advertising and affiliate programs.
So I can say from experience that a small, independent publisher has a hard time making a lot of sales from its own Web site without additional channels of distribution. Most e-book publishers sell through a number of outlets, including several online e-book stores.
I'm not trying to be negative ... but I've been in e-publishing for 8 years and know the pitfalls.
Comment by Jeanne Dininni
Writer's Notes
Thanks for using your firsthand knowledge and considerable expertise in the field of e-book publishing to clue us in! It's much appreciated!
After I completed this post, I noticed that some of the other e-publishers offered higher royalties; yet I am intrigued by the possibility of being able to break into the field more easily with very short e-books, which, for one thing, would be far quicker and easier to write than longer ones. Also, a smaller publisher might be more likely to accept the work of a less-known writer who needs a chance to get his or her foot in the door.
While I realize a smaller publisher might also have greater difficulty marketing the material and making enough sales to earn enough of a return for the writer's work, it might be an interesting way to gain a bit of experience with the form--sort of like submitting articles and other written works to various websites with little or no compensation to gain exposure early in one's career or in order to break into a new niche where one isn't yet well-known enough.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I believe that once a writer has gained the desired experience (and hopefully made at least a little money out of the deal), he or she can always move up to a more prestigious e-publisher.
Thanks so much for your substantial contribution to the topic! What you've said does make me realize that there are a lot of e-book publishers out there, besides the one mentioned in my post, and it always pays to check out as many of them as possible in order to track down the best deal one can.
Perhaps a publisher can be found that will accept shorter books from less-known writers, help the author with editing, and still pay a decent percentage to the author for his or her work. In that regard, one thing is certain: If we don't research the issue, we'll never know!
Thanks again for your welcome comments!
Jeanne
Comment by Kleonaptra
Kalikapsychosis
Comment by Jeanne Dininni
Writer's Notes
To be honest, I've been thinking of doing so myself. But I am hearing that there just might be greener literary pastures out there than this particular e-book publisher.
So, I would recommend doing your homework before deciding which e-book publisher to ultimately go with. Many apparently offer their authors higher percentages, as well as free editing services; and, of course, the larger companies would be better able to effectively market their authors' work. Many other e-publishers also offer e-books in various different formats, whereas this company appears to only offer them in PDF format.
However, the downside of some of the other companies might be their reluctance to take on writers who aren't well-known and their longer manuscript minimum length requirements.
You might want to read the first comment this post received, written by my good friend, Lillie Ammann, from A Writer's Words, An Editor's Eye, for a few cautions. Lillie has a lot of experience with e-book publishing. (She does mention one company that publishes shorter e-books.)
I plan to do more research on this issue myself, though I might be inclined to try this publisher out if I'm unable to find another one that will publish shorter e-books written by authors with less e-book publishing experience.
For someone like me, who can edit my own work, it could just work out. But, I wouldn't recommend that a writer who needs help with editing use a company like this, which would possibly require him or her to pay a third party for editing services.
Thanks for your comment!
Jeanne
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
Thanks again for the good information here... I will look into it for a science fiction novel I once wrote about 200 years ago... it could be just what it was waiting for... e-books.com! *lol*
Hope you're keeping warm...
Lilla ...
Comment by Jeanne Dininni
Writer's Notes
Happy to pass along whatever info I find in my web travels! I think it's a fantastic idea to resurrect your sci-fi novel! I see no reason at all to let our early, unpublished works continue to languish somewhere in the back of the closet! I'm behind you 100%!
But, just for reference' sake, before you make your final decision on which e-book publisher to approach, if you haven't followed the other comments on this post, you might at least want to read the first one, written by Lillie Ammann. Lillie has a great deal of experience in the e-book publishing field, and as a result of her expertise, she graciously offers some very valuable tips and cautions for the writer seeking to publish an e-book.
I certainly am keeping warm here in sunny California! The temperature hit 87 here today, though it has thankfully cooled down now that it's after 7 pm--one of my favorite things about summer weather in good old CA! No matter how hot it may get during the day, you can always count on cooler evenings!
Wishing you the best with your novel!
Jeanne
Comment by Jeanne Dininni
Writer's Notes
Jeanne,
I'm not trying to discourage anyone who has short pieces they want to market from trying this publisher. Most publishers don't take short pieces, and, as you say, this may give some useful experience.
I appreciate your encouraging writers to do some research - you can find quite a few e-book resources on my Web site, linked from my blog. I don't try to link to individual publishers because there are so many, and the industry is constantly evolving. However, some of the resource sites are directories or promotional sites that link to other e-publishers.
EPIC, Electronically Published Internet Connection is an excellent resource on the electronic publishing industry. The members are all published authors or industry professionals.
My response to Lillie's comment follows:
Lillie,
Thanks for this helpful info! I'd been thinking of doing a post soon about these e-book publisher directory sites, since I came across some of them when I Googled e-book publishers. But it's great to know that you have these resources listed on your site! I will definitely plan to mention that fact, as well as to include a link to your site, when I write that particular post.
Thanks, again, for all your valuable input on this issue!
Jeanne