The Publisher is Dead – Long Live the Publisher 📚
Not really a typical Enterprise Systems Architecture(EA)topic - but I thought I would share - may add value to some of you!
This short blog presents an overview of what I call the journey for publishing and highlights some of the decision points around the new author to consumer business model you may encounter.
Introduction
As budding authors, we all have our reasons for wanting to publish material, some of which are listed below;
- Promoting and sharing one’s knowledge in a particular field.
- Creating a tool to aid marketing and selling future consultancy services to potential clients.
- Simply having a good story to share that you feel others may benefit from
- Creating an additional revenue stream.
- Or extending a passion for blogging.
For me, my journey began when I stumbled into a session being presented by a friend at a conference, where he was using material prepared by me to illustrate some complex n-tier systems thinking. Whilst I was happy for my material to be reused, something I encourage, I was slightly shocked that the presenter did not credit the source until I walked into the room. So whatever your reason for wanting to publish and distribute your material, I would advise where possible to protect your intellectual property as you will encounter numerous challenges along the way which can be easily mitigated against.
The business operating model (BOM) for publishing is quite simple where the author prepares a proposal or manuscript, finds a literary agent who presents and agrees the idea/concept/contract with a publisher who subsequently molds, prints and distributes the final product. This BOM has now been unsettled with the move to a new digital business model, where the author has greater control of the end-2-end process and can bypass the agent/publisher steps and go direct to market from manuscript in a few simple keystrokes. This new disruptive business model is depicted below;
I usually try to avoid the use of buzz words like ‘disruptive’ which become over used and often out of context, however this new publishing business model i.e. Author to Consumer (A2C) is very much a disruptive force in publishing.
This new disruptive digital publishing business model, with key platform providers like Apple, Amazon , Google and others offering new online tools and distribution channels for authors to leverage tools with templates for creation, production and marketing on a single global platform.
This new A2C business model, on the face of it seems simple , straight forward and supported by a set of well-defined / documented process however, often not really all that easy to navigate, can be time consuming and requiring a lot of effort in getting the final product suitable for distribution.
The journey along with some of the challenges and options are discussed further below to illustrate how this simple model requires the authors to now be both tech and commercially savvy.
The Journey
Every publishing journey starts with that first step, one which is triggered by an idea or event, that results in the creation of a draft manuscript. Which can be processed via the traditional publisher or via the new self-publish platform route which provides all the tools for delivering a product to market.
The diagram below depicts the various stages of production and the decision points using both the old and new disruptive business model for publication and discussed below;
The Idea 💡
It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong - Thomas Jefferson
The first part of the journey is the thought or ‘light bulb’ moment when a theme, topic, concept or subject materialises as a possible manuscript and that special period one considers if the idea is viable - could it deliver value ? especially when explained to others.
Before deep-diving into writing the manuscript, the idea needs to be analysed, tested and validated to establish if your time / effort is worthwhile investing. This litmus test establishes the viability of the venture which should at a minimum consider the following;
Testing
We all think our material is worthy of sharing and deserves writing a manuscript. However, technical subjects requires great effort and a big endeavour which requires constant validation of the content .
I started a blog several years ago using freely available online tools which provided me to post material and test how it is received. The blog sites provided excellent tools to enable you to create, modify and publish content and also to monitor and produce statistics on views, feedback/comments etc.
Sample
In most cases, literary agents and especialy publishers will wish to see sample chapters or any material you have produced to allow them to establish your writing style and gauge how your material could be received. It is also a good test for yourself to see if you have the patience to commit to a project of this nature.
In my experience when publishing material for the public eye, you should plan and expect feedback often in the form of critical comments, however when no feedback is forthcoming, then consider this a positive.
📝Create a Table of Contents (TOC) for your book - this allows you to structure your document and work on specific sections and keep notes on the sections you are not working on ultimately maintain line of sight for the end product.
The sample size is up to you, however a good sample could easily be around 4-5000 words which should enable you to gauge the amount of effort you will need to put into creating the book. However, the sample should be reusable and targeted to slot into your table of contents.
When I amwriting a blog, or article or even as I work on my next book I find it best to avoid reading material from others who have published on a similar topic unless you are quoting as a reference, source etc. This ensures that your material remains original[1] and void of errors.
Need
By relaying some of your content socially and in the form of blog or article the subsequent feedback or comments you receive will allow one to determine the need. The challenge in the form of comments on a post allows you to establish the validity of some of your content
The Proposal 💎
📝Even if you decide to ‘self-publish’ I strongly recommend completing a proposal form from a publisher as this allows you to replay the viability of the book for your own due diligence.
In most cases the publisher is looking at the commercial viability of the proposal and will require some if not all the following areas addressed in your proposal;
Critical Questions
- Who is the book targeted at, how big is the potential readership, who are the competitors i.e. who has written a similar book?
- What needs are you fulfilling, is there a gap in the market , what tools can be used to promote the book?
- Why should the publisher publish the book – how does it fit in with their current titles?
- Where will the book sell – what are the channels that could be used to sell the book?
Viability
• Product – The description of the subject area, the size of the market and more important the viability of the product.
•
📝It is important to think about price. However, this can be put on the backburner until a later date if you opt to self-publish and revenue generation is not your motivation.
• Distribution – In the proposal the publisher will want to establish if the book is better suited for eBook format or physical print and this must be considered in relation to the target audience.
• Promotion – How will you as the author promote your book e.g. will you write follow up articles with quotes from the book will you present at conferences (often at your own expense) etc
It is important to get non-bias published reviews for your book – so you may have to factor in the cost of providing a free physical copy and in some cases the cost of postage may exceed the cost of the book
Production 📀
You cannot open a book without learning something - Confucius
Content
Content creation for a systems text book, is not as easy as one thinks with each sentence requiring a great deal of thought (yes sentence) and must be assessed for grammar, accuracy and more importantly the challenge.
A sentence that is incorrect, extraneous or ambiguous will result in comments from the public that may focus on that one point at the cost of the rest of the book i.e. one bad comment can easily destroy how the rest of the content is perceived. So think about sentences and any contentious statements should be minimised and maybe come with a disclaimer e.g. “in my professional opinion and experience from projects, I find… “ and in most cases articulating the rationale behind your contentious point.
Content should be constantly re-evaluated against the goals of the book and should evolve while proceeding with writing the book and terms / phrases should be consistent throughout the book – something the publisher will validate during their editing of your manuscript.
📝Images should be consistent in look and feel and I would recommend saving the source and final diagrams in two i.e. Source (files used to create the image) and Figures(Jpegs/Tiffs/etc) -using a standard naming convention to identify how the files relate back to the book e.g. image 1 could be fig 1 etc
All references should be catalogued. I found maintaining a table of references (with URLS) in an excel spreadsheet which could be pasted back into the book at the end useful.
The publishers will also send out the manuscript for review, especially when the book is an academic or specialist book, amongst their trusted advisors most likely 2 or 3 they consider experts in the field.
If you are self-publishing ,then like me you may want to conduct an integrity / grammar check before sending out for a formal peer review as you want the focus to remain on the content. I strongly recommend that you ask a minimum of 5 people to review your material.
Whilst most people are happy initially to review your material you may find that when they presented with say a 40,000 word document they are busy. In my first book I asked approx. 8 people to review the manuscript (which I provided as PDF) resulting in 3 providing constrictive feedback , 3 providing generic comments and 2 not responding.
Content creation is the biggest time consumer and should not be underestimated and when self-publishing you will need to familiarise yourself with the content creation tools provided by the platform e.g. iBooks Author (Apple) , Kindle Create (Amazon) which allow the creation of eBooks. However, most if not all tools support the upload of a Microsoft Word document but can result in the loss of some formatting but you can easily cut and paste into most tools .
Distribution🚚📲
Your publisher will provide you with sample copies of the finished product before distributing.
If you self-publish you may buy copies at cost + postage from the platform. Author copies provide you with a tangible product and allows you to assess the channels for further distribution either;
• Hard Copy - where publishers will sell via their websites or redistributors. Distributing a physical copy to retail shops if you self-publish whilst possible is very difficult. Please note the royalties from a physical book are not as great as the royalties from an eBook
• eBooks are fast becoming popular with most publishers formatting your manuscript for distribution via this channel and provide the support for digital copyright protection to avoid unlawful copying.
🧨Surprisingly to date only 2 reviews have been provided from my free giveaways, hence my strong advice to avoid giving away free complete books – I would recommend a sample chapter !
Fixes 🕷
There will always be errors ! no matter what channel you use you will find and spot errors. These can be fixed on eBook formats immediately and supported on most platforms. TI would adopt a change control process where ;
· Minor updates e.g. typos, image distortion etc can be fixed on the fly especially for your eBook but with each update a version should be maintained and a record of all updates kept.
• Major updates which applies to the print copy and the eBook should be formalised with the version and last update published in the book.
Sometimes minor mistakes can result in major changes . Upon spotting a mistake on the first draft of my physical book I decided to add an additional black and white image in the appendix allowing for the small text to be clearer which could only have been done when I had a physical copy of the book allowing me to see what customers would see it and the subsequent book was released as version 1.1
Monitoring 📡
Once the book has been published and distributed you are not out of the woods ! as the product requires consistent monitoring in terms of sales and feedback where ;
• Sales i.e. the number of units being sold daily, weekly and monthly this indicates if you need to be marketing the book more aggressively.
If you self-publish the platforms provide you daily updates of sales – this can be quite addictive
• Feedback is important to monitor – any negative feedback should be addressed. I was fortunate enough to have positive feedback from the individuals who bought the book which was helpful when planning the next project
Finishing Note 🤔
The above outlined some of the steps and challenges when publishing a book.
Realistically you are provided with two clear choices
1. Follow the traditional route where you have the support and resources of the publisher which should not be underestimated.
2. Self-publishing which I would advise to consider as a ‘not for profit’ option , where you will need to do most of the work i.e. structure your deliverable and be responsible for content creation, distribution , integrity and the sales.
Self-publishing in the technical space is great for a targeted limited audience, where if you have a created a public profile and can easily market to your audience is a viable option but not always the best .
If you enjoy creating content and it will add value to your brand and audience then I strongly recommend getting your material out there, which is now easier than ever, especially with the new digital publishing platforms.
Useful URLs 🕸🖥
- Kindle Direct Publish (Amazon) : https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/
- Apple Publishing Services - https://itunespartner.apple.com/books/
- Example Publisher Submission Document ( O’reilly) : https://docs.google.com/document/d/16B8ZmpEj-DULGNb8X2NjpQPUnZMWUn5kM1ZBaN7pSUs/copy
- Some great notes found at the BCS Publishing site : https://volunteer.bcs.org/Rules_publishing
- Free Blog Sites - http://www.wordpress.com / https:/www.blogger.com
[1] Original new content, not found anywhere else, with all sources documented and all measures / precautions taken to avoid anything that can be perceived as plagiarism of material from others.
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