Bad News for Borders

Speaking of Borders' financial troubles ...

Borders may put itself up for sale.

The company has also taken out a $42.5 million loan to help with day-to-day operations in the coming months.

This loan may complicate Borders' ability to sell all or part of its operations, however.

Barnes and Noble—the most likely prospect for buying Borders—may not be interested anyway. B & N recently reported that fourth-quarter profits had declined 9 percent.

To read more about Borders' financial situation, as well as the general pressure on booksales nationwide, click here.

Good News for Borders

Another update on the ongoing Borders kiosk saga ... this time, on prices.

Soon, customers at select Borders stores will be able to publish their books using Lulu's software at prices ranging from $299 to $499.

That's a pretty cool thing, but it's only part of the story.

My guess is that prospective customers will be especially intrigued by the possibility of their books being carried in Borders stores—which the new service touts.

I can't help but bring up the issue this raises, which I cited in my Feb. 15th post:

"A final note: I wonder how this move will affect Borders' relationship with its customer-authors? Barnes and Noble had a terrible problem regarding the customer service involved with this kind of relationship when it was a part-owner of iUniverse, another self-publishing service (customers kept asking when their books would be carried on B & N bookstore shelves; the answer almost always disappointed them).

"The problems were so severe, apparently, that they eventually led to B & N severing its relationship with iUniverse altogether last year.

"I guess Borders—a bookseller whose financial problems have been well-reported over the last few years (in large part because they completely missed the boat on online bookselling)—has decided that the possible rewards are worth the risks."

You can check out Borders' new program here.

Ebooks--Will They Work for You?

I have been following the development of ebooks for eight years now. The one thing I still remember from Book Expo America 2000 in Chicago is how the topic of ebooks seemed to dominate every single workshop I attended. Ebooks were the next big thing.

We've been publishing books for eight years now and converting to and distributing our titles as ebooks has always been in the back of our minds. (We were even fortunate to register the domains ebookpublishing.com and ipublisher.com in time!) Yet the big ebook invasion promised in 2000 never really happened. There are still too many competing ebook platforms and formats to choose from. (See the recently resolved battle between Blu-ray and HD DVD for high-definition DVD formats.) Digital rights management (DRM) is also a mess. Besides, we already offer superior book publishing services and distribution of paper books, and we will do the same with electronic books only if it benefits our authors and the sales of their books.

Having said that, this may be the time to reevaluate launching our ebook services and I need your help! Amazon has recently introduced its ebook reader, the Kindle. This device breaks away from the other competing technologies by including its own wireless distribution system: you don't need a computer or Internet connection to be able to purchase and read ebooks on the Kindle. As we look into the launch of our ebook publishing services, Amazon's Kindle will definitely be on the top of our list for available formats.

I need your help with the following: Assuming that you have written or are writing a book, post a comment below with your thoughts on whether you think your book would be well-served by distribution as an ebook. Do share with us also whether you have a strong preference for a particular ebook format: Kindle, MobiPocket, Adobe Reader, Microsoft Reader, Palm Reader, etc. If we were to provide you with your ebook, would you want it distributed and rights managed by Wheatmark (through Kindle, Amazon, online ebookstores) or would you just prefer to get a particular ebook file (e.g. PDF) that you would host and distribute on your own website yourself?

Any comment you have, please, share it with us by posting it below. Anonymous posts are OK.

How to Increase Your Book Sales without Spending Money

May Sinclair, one of Wheatmark's published authors, has sent us some valuable tips she learned on how to increase your book sales without spending your money. The technique involves utilizing Amazon.com's closed platform for selling books. Click here to read the article in our Author Resources center.

Sell Yourself, Not Your Book!

Here's a book marketing advice I hope you'll take the right way:

Forget about trying to sell your book. Nobody is interested in buying your book.

What people are interested in is you, your services, your cause—and not a book.

There are many, many great books. But hardly any book out there can sell itself on its own. The bestselling books out there became bestsellers not because their authors were trying to sell books.

You will sell the most copies when people you have sold yourself to will want to get you and your ideas packaged between two book covers. It is not a book they are looking for, therefore, it's not a book you should be selling to them. Sell them yourself—in the form of a book. Most authors get it backwards: They are trying to sell a book instead of selling themselves. They are using their profession to sell their book, when in fact they should be using the book to sell their professional services.

What you want to do is to market not your book, but what your book is about. Use your book to promote your business, your practice, your cause. If you are a professional speaker, sell your speaking service using your book, rather than try to sell your book using your speaking business. If you are a counselor, use the fact that you've written a book about relationships as a way to solidify your credentials. If you are exposing human rights abuses in your book, all the more you should be thinking about advancing (marketing!) your cause, not your book.

"I don't know how to market a book!" is the most common excuse I hear from authors. Forget marketing books. How good are you at marketing YOU? Are you or your service marketable? Can you sell yourself? If the answer is yes, you don't need to know that much about book marketing. When you "market your book," do not market it, market yourself. Market your practice, your services, your advice, your concept, your cause! If you do a good job marketing YOU, your book sales will follow.


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Borders Kiosks

Follow-up to my post of February 15th, in which I noted that Borders bookstores would be installing kiosks using Lulu's software for self-publishing: the Guardian (seems to) report that the kiosks will simply mirror the experience of using Lulu online. To quote:

"Would-be authors will be able to go into the stores and use interactive kiosks to create their own books for the cost of a few hundred dollars. They can pay extra for editing, marketing and other services."

To read the whole article—which is a good summary of the new self-publishing universe in general—click here.

Better Writers: Better Books!

This morning I received an email from an author that really made my day. It was from Matt Arnold, author of An Open Universe and Crossroads. The gist of the email was this:

Since publishing my novels, I've made it a habit on occasion to search through the Wheatmark bookstore and have ordered at least a half a dozen books by fellow authors. Most of them have been amongst the best books I've read and it feels good to support other authors who have self-published. I've exchanged emails with a few of the authors and we've read each other's novels....

Now, in the business of self-publishing you sometimes hear the charge: If you publish anything, surely you must publish a lot of bad books, too!

As a professional self-publishing service, we publish books that our authors want to publish. We focus on finding great authors. It's true, within certain limits, we will publish what they write... And, as seen form the quote above, it appears that better authors invariably write better books!

Check out each other's books in your genre. You will likely agree with Matt and find books that will make it to your top-10 list as well!