Crowdfunding and the age of the reader

It’s a familiar story to many would-be authors. Their book is good, but it’s too niche. The audience isn’t big enough. There used to be two options: keep trying, or self-publish.

Now there’s a third: crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding refers to funding a project using small amounts of money from large numbers of people.

The two biggest crowdfunding services are Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Project creators make a page for their venture, with details about the product and a video pitch. Users can then choose to ‘back’ projects, donating money in exchange for tiered rewards.

Websites like these have enabled the development tens of thousands of projects from video games to smartphones. The only people deciding which are worth funding are the consumers themselves – eliminating the gatekeeper role of publishers.

Author and entrepreneur Seth Godin crowdfunded his 2012 book The Icarus Deception using Kickstarter, raising over $250,000. As his blog is one of the most popular worldwide, Godin was able to appeal to a wide audience for funding.

More recently, the UK-based service Unbound has been launched, providing a crowdfunding platform specifically to publish books. Authors post a video pitch on their page to entice an audience of potential readers.

It could herald a new trend in publishing, giving the audience more control over the content they consumer. It also benefits the creators – if their venture is successful, they have a guaranteed audience for their work. If they do not reach their goal, the losses are minor compared to a traditionally published book which flops after time and money invested in publishing it.

However, crowdfunding is far from perfect. It can be difficult to get your project noticed, especially on popular sites like Kickstarter. It’s also easy for creators to misjudge the level of funding they will require, leading to a failed venture and disappointed backers.

But with interest still high, and many successfully funded projects, it could be that crowdfunding is simply another facet of the changing industry. After all, the most important person in publishing is the reader, and the reader’s interests drive the market.

3 online platforms to share your writing

With the internet offering an instant global connection, it would be a mistake for writers not to take advantage of it. Particularly for self-published authors and newcomers, offering a taste of your work online can build an audience rapidly. Whether it’s a single-chapter preview or a free ebook, readers will inevitably want more of a good thing.

Here are three effective ways to share your work online.

Self-publishing service Smashwords allows authors to make their books available as ebooks. Unlike other similar services, such as Amazon’s Kindle, Smashwords does not use Digital Rights Management (DRM), and its authors are free to set their own prices.

Wattpad is a free online community where writers can post books, short stories and poetry and receive feedback from readers. Both published and undiscovered authors post works on the site, which has more than 10 million users and allows readers and writers to interact directly.

Less well-known than Smashwords and Wattpad, Jukepop Serials offers a semi-selective environment which reinvigorates the “newspaper serial” format for a modern audience. Authors submit a first chapter, which, if accepted, becomes the starting point for a regular serial. The site encourages authors to post regularly in order to maintain readership, and readers can vote for their favourite serials, which are rewarded with payment.

Print may not be dead, and traditional publishers may be a long way from going under, but there is no denying the changes in the industry. Authors, whether self-published or not, are taking on greater roles in the marketing of their work. Books are as accessible as they’ve ever been, and now it’s easier than ever for writers to share them with the world.

The digital revolution: why we can’t predict the future of ebooks

It’s been a repeated refrain over the past decade: the music industry is on its way out. Since the introduction of the iPod in 2001, digital music sales have boomed. Many have pointed the finger at digital formats for the perceived decline in music sales, due to the ease of piracy, and predict the same fate for books now that ebooks have rocketed in popularity. But can we really compare the two?

Ebooks have been around in various forms for many years, but it was only after Amazon launched the Kindle ereader that they began to gain widespread popularity. Today, ebook sales make up almost a quarter of total book sales. Like digital music, sales appear to be driven by the release of new technology.

Concerns about piracy are at the centre of many arguments against digital media, as well as the idea that physical media will be lost. However, the evidence is mixed, with some of it suggesting that illegal downloaders are also the biggest buyers of legal downloads.

It might be tempting to apply lessons learned from digital music downloads to the burgeoning ebook industry. But the two, while superficially similar, have fundamental differences. A key feature of music downloads is the breakdown of albums into individual songs, which make downloads more appealing for those who prefer to pick and choose their tracks. Books, meanwhile, represent a larger investment of time, and therefore users will follow different download patterns. (This may change, with the introduction of Kindle Singles, but it’s still too early to tell.)

Although digital sales are rising while physical sales continue to drop, CDs still make up the majority of the market. It may seem like the industry changed overnight, but in reality the shift is occurring more gradually.

Digital first: branding and personality

Brand is not a new concept – it’s always formed a central part in media creation and distribution. However, its role it plays and the forms it takes have changed drastically with the arrival of digital media. Today, branding is more important than ever.

Rich Keith, speaking at Bath Spa University in 2013, used the example of the Yogscast Youtube channel, which curates online content about video games. The channel has a strong branded personality which can be extended to different forms of media.

Disintermediation refers to the gradual elimination of the media barrier between the producer of content and its consumer. As digital media continues to gain popularity over legacy media, this process becomes more apparent.

A successful brand must achieve three goals:

• tell a compelling story
• understand its audience
• create great content

With media diversifying more than ever, brands must be consistent across multiple forms, e.g. printed content, website, and app.

Many book publishers have been wary of moving away from the familiarity of print, resulting in digital initiatives which are not integrated with their print divisions. Magazine publishers have often taken a better approach, such as PC Gamer, which uses the same editorial team for its print and digital division.

There is also an increasing move towards “digital first” branding – brands are developed primarily for online use, with new content on the web before it’s in print. This is instead of merely transferring printed content to websites and mobile apps.

Kindle MatchBook: a railroad through new country

If you use a Kindle, odds are you’ve wished it was possible to fill it with all the books weighing down your shelves. Well, this autumn, that reality may be a step closer.

Amazon’s new Kindle MatchBook scheme offers a free or discounted digital copy of every book you’ve ever purchased from them, dating back to 1995 and covering 70,000 titles. It’s currently only available in the US, but if AutoRip (its sister scheme for music downloads) is anything to go by, MatchBook should be rolled out in the UK in six months or so.

A lot has been said about the conflict between print and digital media. The arrival of MatchBook could signal a new way of looking at the problem – why not make the best of both worlds?

As well as encouraging shoppers to buy print books, MatchBook may also help ebook sales, which have levelled out over the past two years. Those reluctant to convert to a digital format may be persuaded by a good bargain, widening the market for ebooks while still supporting a physical format.

From a more cynical viewpoint, this could be seen as the start of Amazon’s attempt to phase out their print division by selling ebooks more aggressively. However, it’s unlikely that this will be successful any time soon. The physical book is not just words: it’s the feel of the pages, the weight of the covers, a tangible object. A large proportion of books are bought as gifts, too, and it’s much nicer to receive a lovingly-wrapped parcel than an online voucher.

Kindle MatchBook looks set to be a success. But the industry is still in a state of flux, and it’s still impossible to tell where we’ll end up. The concept of ‘creative destruction’ is one that has often been applied to the publishing industry. We are still finding new ways to function in the face of sweeping technological advances.

“A railroad through new country upsets all conditions of location, all cost calculations, all production functions within its radius of influence; and hardly any ‘ways of doing things’ which have been optimal before remain so afterwards.” Joseph Schumpeter, 1939

Hardwired for story: children’s literature in the digital age

In the face of brand-new digital media, is the printed word becoming obsolete?

Kate Wilson, managing director of independent children’s publisher Nosy Crow, believes firmly that the answer is no. “The death of print has been greatly exaggerated,” she said, speaking at the Bath Children’s Literature Festival last week. That doesn’t mean digital media is irrelevant.

Alongside author Kate Pullinger, Wilson explored the impact that new forms of media are having on readers, and how print and digital media can coexist. The rapid expansion of digital media means that children have more ways to access story than ever before. Ebooks, online content, smartphone apps – and, of course, the faithful old picture book, which is unlikely to disappear any time soon.

Making content that will both engage and enrich a child’s learning experience is just as much of a challenge as figuring out how to sell e-readers to adults. The concept of “gamification”, or using game mechanics to engage an audience, has the potential to change the way children learn. It has already been demonstrated as a tool to change people’s behaviour, such as the “piano stairs” designed by The Fun Theory.

 

As well as consuming media, children are increasingly able to create their own content in a digital world. Pullinger, creator of digital adventure Inanimate Alice, described how a group of “hard-to-reach” 17-year-olds created their own episode of the story and shared it online. The boom in vanity publishing sites such as Lulu.com has also provided children with the ability to create their own books.

Wilson believes that no matter what form fiction takes, children will always be fascinated by it, as humans are “hardwired for story”. As long as writers, publishers, and creators can keep up with the rapid pace of technology, children will keep paying attention. As Wilson concluded: “I do not want reading to be the most boring thing a child can do on a screen.”