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iPad vs. Kindle
iPad’s iBookstore has inked a deal with Smashwords and Lulu, two of the more popular self-publishing services. Unpublished authors (and published seeking a larger percentage of the traditional cover price) are lining up to self-publish through their services in the iBookstore starting April 3rd, the launch date of Apple’s iPad.
In an email leaked to Smashwords’ clients, details emerged. The price must end with .99 cents, the total price must be lower than any paper edition (if one exists), the cover must be at least 600 px and the book must have a unique ISBN (Smashwords is helping with this.) Apple gets 30%, Smashwords gets 10% and the author receives the remaining 60%. This is far more lucrative than the 35% for publishing on the Kindle and 4-8% for paper books.
iPad is also offering free downloads of public domain titles from Project Gutenberg.
The line has been drawn in the war to come. The question is – who will be the winner? I’m hoping it will be the reader and the author, but time will tell in this volatile industry.
For my friends in the Northeast, stay dry.
I’ll be back on Monday with tips to clean up your writing. Mary takes over until then.
Mary and I ordered business cards from Vista Print, the author’s friend. They came in the mail Saturday (I’ll get your box to you Thursday, Mary) and they are super awesome. I can’t wait to start passing them out, especially at Spring Fling in Chicago, 3.4 weeks from now.
Some business card tips:
Choose a background that defines your style of writing.
Don’t pay to add something on the back when it’s the perfect place to jot a note (Ms. Agent, we met at xxx conference)
Leave off your book info. You’ll have another out and 250+ cards take a long time to disburse. Consider rack cards instead for promo.
Hand them out to everyone. You never know where it might lead.
And now, for a little business card fun, here’s a video made by Mike Crozier, when he interned for SNASK, a Swedish marketing firm. It took him four days and 1846 shots to make. If only we could present our own cards with such flourish. What an impression that would make!
Revisions are your friend. Trust me. I published yesterday’s post after going through it a couple of times and correcting the mistakes I found. Today, I went back and found several more mistakes. (I’m sorry if you suffered through them before I made the corrections.)
Anyway, that’s my point – rewriting is a fact of life for a writer. No one writes a perfect first draft. Well, maybe E.B. White and C.S. Lewis did but they are gone, and the rest of us will never measure up to them. So we must edit and rewrite, and edit and rewrite again.
Next week, I’ll give a list of my favorite editing tips, but I have a challenge for all of you “perfect” writers to do today. – Find a piece of your writing that’s more than a week old, one you thought was finished, and – being honest with yourself - edit it for errors. Then rewrite it. Make it better, tighter, and more complete than it already is. If you’re a great writer, you may have to work at this, but you can do it. Check for errors again. Then give it to a friend to critique.
Don’t hate me for this exercise. It’s a lot of work. It will tax your brain. But someday, when you’re a famous novelist, you’ll thank me.
