Author: Gareth

Back on Day Nine of this series, I spoke about the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing program, and it’s importance to Insurgent Creative writers, as it represents 60 to 70% of the total electronic publishing market. For a writer to make a living without a traditional publishing deal, it is essential to be available via the market-leading site. To thrive, however, it makes sense for a writer to have material available via as many platforms as possible. Otherwise, you’re just leaving money on the table. Rather than cover some of the other options as short individual entries (and given that we only have 4 more entries in the series), I’ve decided to cover some of the other publishing options briefly in this entry.

PubIt! is Barnes and Noble’s rather unfortunately-named electronic publishing platform, specific to the Nook ereader. Barnes and Noble is one of the top three sites, sales-wise (Amazon and Apple being the other two). Unlike Amazon, which uses the Amazon-proprietary Kindle format (based on MOBI), PubIt! uses the open-source standard EPUB format. Files can be imported ranging from Word, HTML, RTF and TXT and covered to EPUB via a free tool offered by the site, and can be error-checked via a Nook simulator before submission. From there, the process is fair standard to pretty much any epublishing platform. FAQ and instructions can be found here.

One thing to keep in mind is that PubIt! requires a U.S. Bank Account, U.S. Credit Card, and a U.S. Tax ID (either Social Security Number or Employer Tax ID number), that are ALL tied to a U.S. address. In addition, books released through this platform will only be offered for sale in the U.S (which, bluntly, puts Barnes and Noble at a serious disadvantage to Amazon KDP, which offers books world-wide).

Smashwords is not only a (fairly negligible) sales site, but also an aggregator, allowing authors to have their material sent via the platform to other sales sites, including the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and the Diesel eBook Store (and Amazon too, starting next year). Generally, speaking, I would recommend that a writer deal directly with each sales platform — but that’s because I prefer more direct control. If you don’t want to be bothered with that level of involvement or maintenance, then going with an aggregator makes sense. Expect to be paid somewhere in the neighborhood of 60% of your book’s retail price, and payment is also only issued quarterly.

Apple’s iBookstore is one of the big three, and you can submit your work directly, or go through one of Apple’s approved aggregators (including Smashwords and Lulu). Apple uses the EPUB format exclusively. Books sold through the iBookstore earn 70% for the writer (even on books priced outside of the $2.99 to $9.99 range, so here Apple has an advantage over Amazon, albeit one which is pretty much entirely negated by Amazon’s far larger market share).

Lulu is a publishing option that’s been around for a while, and primarily offers print options, although electronic publishing is also available via your Lulu storefront. They also offer print distribution to bookstores via various paid programs. I’ve used Lulu for years for a handful of RPG titles, and sales have never been stellar — but steady. I suspect if I spent more time exploiting all the tools that Lulu offers, my results would be better.

Speaking of RPGs — another option for those of you producing game books, or books which might have a large crossover with the gaming audience — as I mentioned in Day 12 of this series, OneBookShelf now offers a print-on-demand program. (The procedural FAQ is here.) The program does not offer distribution outside of the OneBookShelf sites (RPGNow, DriveThruRPG, etc.), but integrates with the electronic publishing sales, and is a worthy option for writers who produce material of interest to gamers.

There are many other sites and services out there, and as always your best bet is to educate yourself as much as you can about all of your options, and to make the choices that benefit your career. If you’re going to make a living on your own, it makes sense to have as many tools as you can at your disposal.

Storm the gates!

Just a short entry today — but a good one. This is another tool for my fellow game designers. Speilmaterial.de is a German supply house for game components, incredibly useful for prototyping designs (for playtests), or even for the creation of artisinal games created from the components. The site sells everything from dice to cards to tokens, as well as packaging material, boxes and labels for customization. The link above is to the English translation of the site — their FAQ states that they do ship foreign orders, but only with pre-payment and you need to contact them first about shipping costs.

One of the cooler things about the site is the number of products they have available which use A4 labels which you can print via your inkjet printer. They’ve got game boxes designed to be customized via an A4 label, game boards of varying sizes, all sized for A4 labels, and even labels cut to standard playing card size to make custom cards. (Although a more attractive option would probably be to just contact them about customized card production, which they offer.)

If you’re a game designer looking to explore options for board and card games, without sinking tens of thousands of dollars into production costs, Spielmaterial is an excellent solution.

Any tool that allows an Insurgent Creative to compete on the same playing field as large gatekeeper companies gets my attention, and I’ve been impressed by this one in particular. Mag+ is a service that offers free software for production of publications for digital tablets, without coding, and fee-based publication of that tablet content as a branded app on the app store of your choice.

In early 2010, the Bonnier Corporation, the publishers of Popular Science, partnered with London-based design firm BERG to create Mag+, a magazine publishing platform for tablets, and launched in April 2010, with version of Popular Science available in the iTunes store the same day the iPad launched. The Mag+ platform offers free plugin software for Adobe InDesign (the industry-standard desktop publishing layout software), as well as a free Preview Reader allowing you to check your work on your own tablet. Once you’re ready to publish, that’s where the fees kick in. Mag+ will publish your magazine app as a single-issue app for $199 (for a single type of tablet — iOS, Android or Kindle Fire starting in 2012), or you can publish unlimited issues from your own in-app storefront for $2500 (with expansion to another tablet OS or another language for $500). There’s also an enterprise-level feature at $3000 per month, which entitles you to hosting, free personal support, etc. — but that’s pretty much the corporate level. The first two levels, though are certainly doable by an Insurgent Creative, given the one-time fee. The pricing and features are detailed here.

Here’s an overview of the service:
 
 

What is Mag+? from Mag+ on Vimeo.

 
 
There have been a lot of digital publishing roll-outs over the past year and a half, and most of them have been solidly aimed at Corporate clients, unfortunately. I was especially disappointed by Adobe’s official Digital Publishing suite, which was priced at such a way as to actively discourage Insurgent Creatives from participating — a move which I felt was antithetical to their previously-established philosophy. I’m very glad to see Mag+ taking up the seemingly-abandoned niche of offering high-quality service to individuals and small businesses as well as larger corporations, with tiered pricing. Any Insurgent Creative can afford $199 in production cost to get onto the largest app stores in the world… and if you’re planning on a project with more than 12 releases, the $2500 level makes economic sense (less than that, you’re better off paying the $199 per release).

You’re not limited to “magazines” either — there’s no reason why an Insurgent Creative couldn’t use Mag+ to release a comic book, or a role-playing game, or even a unique digital story, using the format and tools (embedded HTML5 functions such as video, etc. — again, all achievable via Mag+ without coding) to create an entirely new product category. I find the possibilities of this platform really exciting!

We’ll be back tomorrow with another entry. In the meantime, as always:

Storm the gates!