Let's pay authors directly

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by DavidKitson

the license with the book allows non-commercial redistribution.

Have you thought about putting it on some pirate sites under an assumed name? I've had a lot more downloads through those than legal alternatives (though no payments). Also, instead of asking for money in the free copies maybe it would be better to ask people who liked it to leave a review on Amazon? That might attract buyers.

[Grey Ram]

Not really. I actually hope people will look elsewhere and find the book for free. If they pay, then I certainly don't expect them to donate. It's frustrating that Smashwords and Amazon don't have their act together yet.

Sales on Amazon BTW: 1 unit. Confirmed downloads elsewhere: >1000 units on Smashwords alone.

I have not read your book, but if (when) I do, it would be much more convenient for me to buy it from Amazon than making a donation through PayPal. What option would benefit you more?

What do you think of promoting sales on Amazon as an alternative to donations? As someone else has said already, convenience is a factor when deciding to donate, and for me it is more complicated to use PayPal, I am also wary about them (more so than Amazon ) because of their past behavior.

I have been lurking on MR for quite some time now, but had to sign up just to post this answer. There are many authors whose e-books I want to read, but they don't want to (or can not) sell them to me because I don't live in the US. I want to give money to the authors by buying books, but it is frustrating not having the means to do so. Since I'm not about to pirate their books, the only option is to not read them. I occasionally buy paper books, but the shipping costs are sometimes greater than the price of the book.

[DavidKitson]

Originally Posted by Grey Ram

What do you think of promoting sales on Amazon as an alternative to donations?

Hi Grey Ram,

I don't have a problem with people purchasing the book off of Amazon. At the lowest price, I get around 35% but 34c for each book purchased isn't that bad.

However please try to use the Kindle edition from Smashwords if you can. The Amazon formatter has mangled all the paragraphs so it's not as neat as the Smashwords kindle format. I would actually prefer people to have the neater format and not pay than go to the effort of paying and getting a lower quality book. I'm trying to work out how to fix that at the moment.

I get the feeling that a lot of authors tie their books down needlessly, fearing always that someone might take advantage of getting their work for free, or locked into marketting restrictions by publishers equally fearful. It's a real shame too. Others are more advanced in their views. Within the writing group I am a member of, there is the full spectrum. I am probably at one end of the spectrum, but there are others equally retentive of their rights as I am progressive with mine.

Unfortunately, some are very good writers and the only way people will see their works is by paying the price. I would rather have others see my works and never make a cent from it if need be, but then I don't have to feed my family off the income from my writing.

Mr Ploppy:
Good idea. I've been toying with this, but really don't want to be deceitful in my approach.

To be honest about the entire process, it's tough writing a book to be marketted for free/donations. I can't afford an external editor, so a few more mistakes creep into the process than would otherwise be present in a professionally edited version, so I've been collecting the mistakes people mention for a corrected edition.

If you read my reviews, some people mention that. In one, I lost a "star" for it - 4 stars, but others have commented on it and still given 5 stars and justified the ranking.

But I will keep on trying to produce the best vesion I can for readers. At least as far as I can without being able to spend money on it. I guess that means some of the editing is crowdsourced

But otherwise there's no reason a book shouldn't be of similar quality to prepaid books just because it's not commercially produced and sold.

Regards
David

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by DavidKitson

1% isn't too bad at all and I am happy with that, but it's a low 1% at that. You are right. The technology is not yet at the point where I can use it to support the sales. Since it doesn't benefit the ebook manufacturers, I don't know if they'd support it either. I suppose it would benefit them if they did, at least a little.

The potential for a social book sharing app is large, especially one that aggregates indie content, with revenues from donations and perhaps ads.

I was thinking the other day about a kind of meta book site, that did not exist anywhere but inside the book itself. It seemed interesting, but I wondered about people and their tendencies to attach themselves to something tangible, like websites.

[Grey Ram]

I don't have a problem with people purchasing the book off of Amazon. At the lowest price, I get around 35% but 34c for each book purchased isn't that bad.

However please try to use the Kindle edition from Smashwords if you can. The Amazon formatter has mangled all the paragraphs so it's not as neat as the Smashwords kindle format. I would actually prefer people to have the neater format and not pay than go to the effort of paying and getting a lower quality book. I'm trying to work out how to fix that at the moment.

Hi again, trying to stay on-topic.

The issue is how to compensate you, in a way that you approve. I think I'm savvy enough to find the best format to read your work (by the way I've just downloaded "Turing Evolved" from Smashwords as you recommended) even if i had to resort to "dark"means, which I will not do just from an ethical basis.

I'm not impervious to the appeals of authors, but I'm not so foolish as to think that the current legal framework is the best we could have. So there are things that just rub me the wrong way, and the fact that I respect the wishes of the authors doesn't mean that I approve the current state of affairs and all the ensuing silliness. Finding writers like you brings a breath of fresh air, and (for me) points the way to the future, where writers and readers are closer than they previously were and the old ways are replaced for good.

The problem remains how to compensate you, if I find I would like to read more from you. Since you have chosen to offer your novel for free, I could take the easy way and assume that you don't need the money, but I understand the need of good writers, and I know than somewhere along the line somebody has to pay up.

So, for me, it is quite fitting that you have to prices: $0 with quality editing at smashwords and $2.99 international pricing (I guess) at Amazon. Obviously I will read the smashwords edition, and if I find I like it, I will pay the Amazon price, even though I will not read it. The question remains, is this acceptable? or would you rather have a direct donation by PayPal?

Regards

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by Grey Ram

The problem remains how to compensate you, if I find I would like to read more from you. Since you have chosen to offer your novel for free, I could take the easy way and assume that you don't need the money, but I understand the need of good writers, and I know than somewhere along the line somebody has to pay up.

So, for me, it is quite fitting that you have to prices: $0 with quality editing at smashwords and $2.99 international pricing (I guess) at Amazon. Obviously I will read the smashwords edition, and if I find I like it, I will pay the Amazon price, even though I will not read it. The question remains, is this acceptable? or would you rather have a direct donation by PayPal?

The problem is getting this book, which I am going to read shortly into the hands of as many people as possible. The donation tech is secondary.

[Leyor]

Can someone help me here with an earlier statement I genuinely don't understand?

Why does an established author who's already publicized one work prefer earning 34c pr. book over say a 1 dollar donation? Someone mentioned that the author would prefer actual sales of a lower value as it'd decide wheter the publisher would want to pick up his next book.

But if he's already received visibility enough that people will want to donate or copy his work, why does he needs a publishing deal more than he needs the actual income? From what I understand, the advance is quite small.

I'm sure there's something I am missing, can someone who knows more about publishing help out?

Thanks

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Grey Ram

So, for me, it is quite fitting that you have to prices: $0 with quality editing at smashwords and $2.99 international pricing (I guess) at Amazon. Obviously I will read the smashwords edition, and if I find I like it, I will pay the Amazon price, even though I will not read it. The question remains, is this acceptable? or would you rather have a direct donation by PayPal?

Regards

I'm not speaking for anyone else, but I would rather you left a good review, mentioned it on your blog, or told your online friends about it than send a small payment that gets gobbled up by Paypal or Amazon. At the early stages, a writer needs readers more than they need money.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Leyor

Can someone help me here with an earlier statement I genuinely don't understand?

Why does an established author who's already publicized one work prefer earning 34c pr. book over say a 1 dollar donation? Someone mentioned that the author would prefer actual sales of a lower value as it'd decide wheter the publisher would want to pick up his next book.

But if he's already received visibility enough that people will want to donate or copy his work, why does he needs a publishing deal more than he needs the actual income? From what I understand, the advance is quite small.

I'm sure there's something I am missing, can someone who knows more about publishing help out?

Thanks

A lot of writers are stuck in the past, thinking they can't survive without a publisher. Others just want to write and don't want to have to deal with cover artists, find editors/proofers, people to make the ebooks, etc. For them it is worth giving away 80% of their income for such one-off jobs. For others it's a vanity thing — look at me I've got a real publisher paying me $5,000 a year, aren't I great. There is still a stigma about self publishing with writers, even though readers stopped caring a long time ago.

[DavidKitson]

Yes, for me a few posts in different forums or a review on Amazon is far more helpful than a donation, though of course, I expect and appreciate real opinions so criticism is OK. I would never ask for a false review.

I'm not going to pretend that I wouldn't love to see my book in print, but it's just a little bit too different from the established books of today to catch a publisher's attention.

On the other hand, if I get some decent stats behind it, then who knows. I may well be able to find an agent or publisher to create a p-book version and put some effort into it's distribution.

Regards
David

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by DavidKitson

On the other hand, if I get some decent stats behind it, then who knows. I may well be able to find an agent or publisher to create a p-book version and put some effort into it's distribution.

Regards
David

It worked for David Moody, but it did take him about 12 years

[starrigger]

Personally, I've been trying a variety of approaches. I have 16 books available in ebook format, all originally published in print. Some appear through the original publisher, some through E-reads (a secondary publisher), some self-repubbed indie-style, and some (at times) for free. I have a Paypal donation button on my website, put there when I had a significant offering of free titles. My publisher has never complained about the Paypal button.

The donation model was a mixed success. Certainly a very low percentage of people who downloaded came back with donations. But some did, and some were quite generous in their support. Over a couple of years, I probably received a couple thousand dollars in donations. This is absolutely welcome, and helpful. That said, what's even more helpful is for people to tell their friends, write good reviews, etc.

I do recognize that the publisher deserves some of the credit for the value of those books, and the best way I can think of to share what I've received in donations is to write the very best next book for them that I can. Someone said that the man-hours a publisher contributes to a book are about the same as the man-hours the author contributes, and that's not even remotely true, at least for me. Still, all those contributions are real--the editing, the art, the production, etc. Please don't dismiss them.

I've cut back on the free books (I still have a couple), and on the books that I'm repubbing myself, I've gone the low-cost model. That seems to pay better than the free-donation model, though the sales patterns have been highly erratic--highly encouraging in the first quarter of this year, and highly discouraging in the second quarter.

So hey, if any of you have liked my books and would like to post favorable reviews in any of the ebook stores, that would be a great way to pay the author!

[odiakkoh]

I think free books should be considered into advertising costs. If I liked a free book enough I would buy my own copy (if I borrowed it), I'd check out and buy the author's other books and I would recommend it to everyone. The authors would make more in the long run if I had 1 free book to read. Also, I'm more likely to complain about a bad (to me) book if I paid for it lol.

[anamardoll]

I have to say I love the idea of a donation button, especially if it was centralized somehow (i.e., every author on a "free ebooks" site like, say, GoodReads had a donation button - assuming they participated). I like the idea of a standardized way of giving a little more to an author.

My husband is a bedroom programmer and last year released a "reviewer analysis tool" for dedicated Amazon reviewers like myself to use. We were shocked and surprised when people started writing in DEMANDING that he add a "Donate" button so that they can send him money! Some people have donated multiple times as the program has grown and evolved.

We've seen this also with the Google app market. If an app has a paid "ad-free" version, I'll usually keep the free version because I don't feel the need to pay to get rid of ads. But if the author of the app has a "donation" version (full functionality as the free version, but with a small fee), I almost always buy that one if I like the app, because I ( a ) can afford to do this (very important caveat), and ( b ) I like and respect the author's attitude and I feel good compensating them.

Sometimes I get books for free online from GoodReads or Smashwords or whatever and I enjoy them so much that I would LIKE to send the author money, but there's not currently a great easy way to do that. Similarly, sometimes I read library books that I don't really want to buy at $7 a pop because I didn't like them THAT much and I don't intend to read them again, but if there was a way to "tip" the author a dollar or two, I probably would.

I really don't see a Donation button as begging - it's more like giving people the option to say thanks and even (what they perceive as) a social debt. (i.e., you brought value to my life, now I want to bring value to yours to the tune of X monetary compensation)

[Giggleton]

The thing that I like about ending copyright and replacing it with the donation button is that it should encourage the creation of quality works. The marketplace would be completely leveled, everything would be priced at zero. In order to compete in this marketplace, your book would have to be extremely good.

Getting rid of the ebook hooligans would be a bonus.