Month: February 2017

3 Comments

What does your book look like to booksellers?

Posted in Distribution, Just for Writers, and Publishing

Print on Demand (POD) (versus short-run print jobs) is the typical method used initially by indie authors, and the two big providers are Createspace (owned by Amazon) and Ingram, either via Ingram LSI (Lightning Source) or IngramSpark.

[UPDATE: 2018 — Amazon KDP has now fully digested Createspace but nothing else has changed. In all other ways, the remarks on Createspace apply to its replacement, Amazon KDP.]

The merits of Createspace vs Ingram is a common discussion topic among indie authors who produce paperback editions. This post is an update of this analysis and focuses on what your books look like to booksellers placing orders with Ingram.

The recommended practice these days is to use both vendors for print, if you can: Createspace (without their expanded distribution option) for Amazon, for inexpensive orders for inventory, for an online store, and for direct shipping; and Ingram for everything else. (The recent news about availability of print from Amazon KDP seems to signal that access to Createspace directly might change.)

(UPDATE – 2018. Createspace no longer has an online store. Amazon is their only print outlet.)

Some authors create a separate Library edition, just to use that part of Createspace's expanded distribution with a Createspace ISBN.

If you don't want to go to the bother (and the expense) of getting your own ISBN (a whole separate discussion) Createspace will supply you with an ISBN owned by Createspace for you to use, for free. (If you have an ISBN, you can use your own.)

Since the common progression for indies seems to be to start with Createspace only, and Createspace has an expanded distribution option and a free ISBN that gets your books into Ingram (“Booksellers and Online Retailers”), the question often comes up: why bother going to Ingram directly?

Why go to Ingram directly, in addition to Createspace?

The manufactured products are slightly different (quality issues with a small and debatable preference given to Ingram), and unlike Createspace, the Ingram edition costs money: a title setup fee (circa $49), an annual market fee (to stay listed in Ingram's database) ($12), and a revision fee for any change in cover or content ($40 each). The fee details vary a bit between Ingram LSI (mostly for traditional publishers) and IngramSpark (mostly for indies) and coupons/discounts are not infrequently available.

And you need your own ISBN, a not-inconsiderable expense in the US.

But there are other concerns.

Bookseller-specific issues

1) Discounts

A bookstore with good credit and broad needs may use Ingram as its main supplier. Other bookstores use smaller, more targeted suppliers who get their list of offerings from Ingram (and charge a fee).

Ingram allows you to set the same standard discount that traditional publishers use: 55%. Createspace's maximum is 40%.

Here's what that means. Ingram takes 15% of that discount for its services. It subtracts that from the books you list directly with Ingram, but it also subtracts that from the books it lists that were given to it by Createspace via expanded distribution.

So at 55% (Ingram's standard), minus Ingram's 15%, there remains 40%. Some of that may go to an intermediate distributor. Whatever's left over is the bookseller's potential profit, which he may discount to push sales.

At 40% (Createspace's max), once you subtract Ingram's fee of 15%, all that's left is 25% for the intermediate distributor(s) and bookseller to share. That is unattractive to many booksellers. Some won't even order books to fulfill customer requests at that small a profit to themselves.

2) Free ISBN / Publisher name

Createspace offers its own ISBN, if you don't have or want to use one of your own.

The general rule is: whoever owns the ISBN is the Publisher, from the perspective of forms and databases. Some recent forms have separated the two things, so that the owner of the ISBN and the “Publisher of record” and the provider of the data feed on a form can be different things, but that is far from general.

For a while, the Createspace data downstream showed Publisher = Createspace, even if you used your own ISBN. Now that only happens if you use a Createspace ISBN. And even so, what shows on a form depends on what the form uses for data sources: if it shows ISBN and looks up the ISBN, then it would get the ISBN owner. If it simply assumes the supplier of the data feed (Createspace) is the owner, then it shows Createspace as the publisher. That's how audiobooks often show up as Publisher = AudiobookFeedProvider even when the ISBN belongs to the Publisher.

How booksellers see a traditionally published book when they order from Ingram

February 22, 2017

2 Comments

No ghosts here

Posted in A Writer's Desk

Typically one speaks of being surrounded by ghosts. Where I live, however, the ghosts are surrounded by us. So are the ghosthunters.

We live in an log cabin, built by Christian Baughman. In 1812 he took out a warrant for a hollow tucked into the base of the Allegheny Front in central Pennsylvania. To convert a warrant on a piece of land, you needed to survey it and make improvements, and the cabin was part of those improvements. He patented the property in 1812 and Baughman Hollow Farm came into being.

Baughman Hollow Farm was originally about 400 acres that started at the head of the hollow and spread down to the south and east. In the next generation, the farm was divided among the children, and then Dr. Robert Piper (1865-1936) began reassembling pieces of it in the late 19th and early 20th century before he passed it along to Cosmo Mannino, the “Banana King” (1879-1965). By the time we acquired the place from the Mannino estate, in the early 80s, and did a bit of reassembly of our own, it was back to about 300 acres, though no longer a working farm.

The road originally ran up the hollow on the west, turned to the right to run along the base of the Allegheny Front, past the cabin and the barn, and then turned right again to run back down the hollow, to Van Scoyoc road, at the site of the famous circus train wreck. In 1840, John Baughman, son of Christian, donated a bit of ground just above that last turn, at the head of the hollow, to serve as a cemetery. Baughman Cemetery is currently run by an association founded in 1926, and it's still active despite its small size.

It's a tiny cemetery, dominated by the names of local families who are still in the area. Their relatives come by to visit on holidays or just to pass the time, some on ATVs from the adjacent hollows down the old part of the Baughman Hollow Road which is now an internal farm road.

Our farm surrounds it entirely, on all sides. The little patch with its slumbering graves is raised above the surrounding land and sheltered by the Allegheny Front. The cemetery is closed from dusk to dawn so that everyone can rest in peace. It's a quiet, tranquil, private place, as little country cemeteries tend to be.

Or it would be, if it weren't for the ghosthunters. Or the teenagers desperate for a place to party or make out. Or the transactions in illicit substances. Some weekend nights, it feels like we get all three simultaneously.

I'm not sure which is worse, but the ghosthunters are high on the list. You see, Baughman Cemetery is famous in the community of credulity.

Tyrone Ghost Hunters — note that this features both ghosthunters and teenagers, so it's a twofer.
Haunts of Blair County — it makes all the lists.
The Pennsylvania Ghost & Paranormal Research Team — I can't tell you how often I've wished we'd installed some microphones and speakers from the cabin so that we could respond to the flashing lights of the ghosthunters with some spooky wails from hidden locations. I know that my dogs who wake us up in the middle of the night to tell us about the shenanigans outside would agree.
(We may do this yet…)

I have some sympathy for the teenagers — I was that age once — though I have to wonder about the sensibilities of bringing a hot date to a cemetery to make out. Drunken parties are more reasonable.

But I have to draw the line at vandalism. The maintenance shed was destroyed recently, and that requires real money from real people to repair. And then there was the sit-around-the-campfire-and-tell-spooky-stories party that ended up with a burning car in the midst of our woods. We were lucky it burned slowly.

Nope, haven't seen a single ghost. All the lights, moans, and hiccups have human origins.

February 21, 2017

Looking for a tune

Posted in Audiobook, Tales of Annwn, and Under the Bough

That's usually a topic for my fiddling website, but not this time.

This year I'm planning to do several of my audio books. That includes the stories from Tales of Annwn, and one of those (Under the Bough) includes a song.

I better come up with a tune for it. Oops.

It's a rollicking drunks-at-the-wedding sort of ditty. If any readers would care to make suggestions, I'll be glad to consider them before rolling my own, and give you a credit in the audiobook. Welsh or general Celtic styling is what I have in mind.

What did she see in him?
Who could explain?
Another full glass,
And we’ll not mind the pain.
Pain, no pain,
Again and again,
Another full glass,
And we’ll not mind the pain.

Over and under him,
Country or town,
Give us one more
And we’ll drink it right down.
Down, down,
Away with her gown.
Give us one more
And we’ll drink it right down.

Lift up your glasses,
And do what is right.
Wish them the best,
Of both day and of night.
Night, night,
An inspiring sight,
Wish them the best,
Of both day and of night.

The world of deep metadata for your books: LCCN, PCIP, MARC, ISNI, ISTC, OCLC, and more-4

Posted in Just for Writers, and Publishing

Index of topics

ISNI – International Standard Name Identifier

This is one of the international standards for disambiguating identical names for different individuals. You can contact one of the regional standards bodies and request an ISNI (free). It's intended for all sorts of creatives — writers, musicians, artists, etc. — as well as anyone else in the public eye who needs to be uniquely identifiable, including scientists, living and dead. Einstein has an ISNI number.

You can see at the bottom links to VIAF and the LC (Library of Congress LCCN-N) authority records mentioned in the MARC and LCCN sections above.

They are not the place to send all your ISBNs to — links to a list of books on your site will do the trick.

The world of deep metadata for your books: LCCN, PCIP, MARC, ISNI, ISTC, OCLC, and more-3

Posted in Just for Writers, and Publishing

Index of topics

MARC – MAchine-Readable Cataloguing

This is a standard for a digital version of the information carried in a CIP or PCIP block — and more.

Here's a MARC record for one of my books, from my local library. Easier to show than to tell.

This is how it looks in the library's internal catalogue. The MARC specification goes on forever with all sorts of optional fields, and when it gets passed along to Worldcat (see OCLC below) a lot more had been added to the “Linked Data” XML record they maintain, with a great deal of additional info.

The world of deep metadata for your books: LCCN, PCIP, MARC, ISNI, ISTC, OCLC, and more-2

Posted in Just for Writers, and Publishing

Index of topics

CIP / PCIP – Cataloguing-in-Publication / Publisher's Cataloguing-in-Publication

Remember the card catalogues in libraries (if you're old enough)? This is the same sort of information, done as a brief bibliographic block that goes at the bottom of the copyright page of your book. It takes the place of your LCCN statement (because it incorporates the LCCN on the last line) like this:

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Myers, Karen, 1953-
To carry the horn : the hounds of Annwn : 1 / Karen Myers. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-9635384-0-6
1. Fox hunting–Fiction. 2. Fantasy fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.Y4726T6 2012
813′.6–dc23

2012040017

Even though LCCNs are only for print editions (see above), and the LCCN is included in the CIP block, the same CIP block applies to all formats of the work (Print, EPUB, MOBI, Audio). A PCIP block (see below) can be created for books without LCCNs, including books that have no print edition.

Let's look at some of these cryptic numbers.

The ISBN is the 13-digit version. It has a complex history of its own. A digression — the original ISBN (International Standard Book Number) was 10-digits long. As it began to run out of numbers to accommodate new books, it evolved into a version of the 13-digit EAN (European Article Number), an identifier related to the UPC (Universal Product Code) for any manufactured article in the world. The first 3 digits of the EAN indicate the country and, since books were already considered to be international, the prefixes “978” and “979” were dedicated to books, and consequently referred to, jokingly, as the country of “Bookland”.

The 10-digit ISBN is always called an “ISBN”, but the 13-digit version can be referred to as an “ISBN” or, in a nod to its derivation, as an “EAN”.

The “PS3613.Y4726T6 2012” is a Library of Congress Call Number (which, despite its initials, is not to be confused with the LCCN above). This book is in “American Literature / Prose fiction”.

The “813′.6–dc23” is a Dewey Decimal Classification. This book is in “American Literature in English”.