Thanks to Joe Biel, the ​Founder, Publisher and ​Owner of Microc​osm P​ublishing​, for this guest column. TeleRead welcomes others.

JoeB (1)Microcosm Publishing is celebrating our 20th anniversary on February 12. We like to joke that we are the largest small publisher you’ve never heard of. ​Our titles focus on a message of self-empowerment for the reader and how they can create the world that they want to see.​

We’ve seen e-books rise from a rumor of a product that would change our industry in ways that no one dared to predict to fear-mongering about the death of print to a gradual launch and a veritable commercial flop. Yet every first-time author whom we sign pleads that we release their work as an e-book. Whenever I tell a stranger during a casual encounter that I am a publisher by profession, they either offer a sympathetic look and offer condolences for my “dying industry” or are shocked to learn that ​99 percent of what we sell are paper books. Amazon’s marketing dollars are spent so thoroughly that they have effectively changed public opinion about the current success of bookstores and what consumers actually prefer to read.

It often takes fifteen minutes to get a stranger’s assumptions on the table and to explain what the facts are: bookstores just had a record sales year and have been growing steadily. Paper books still comprise 95-96 percent of total industry sales, with e-books shrinking from their 2012 peak at eight percent of industry market share.

Of course, there’s bad news too: Even during record sales, the average publisher-supported book only sells 3,000 copies and the average self-published book only sells 250 copies. This, again, is mostly the fault of Amazon, which has successfully flooded the publishing landscape with unedited, undeveloped new releases through their publishing services. The total number of new books published every day in the U.S. has reached 4,000. It’s impossible for even the most fervent devourer of books to even know which titles of interest are released each month. Just keeping track of this information would be more than a full time job.

Generally, when I explain that current e-book sales hover around 4-5 percent of total industry sales with Amazon selling roughly two-thirds of these, people wonder how this is possible. They cite that their local bookstore went out of business during the depression and even the local Borders and Barnes & Noble stores closed. Without pointing out once again that Amazon is undermining price points on these retailers, I tend to explain that certain genres sell very well in electronic format. They tend to be “disposable” books that we read quickly and don’t think about again, the kind of thing we don’t want to shelve in our living rooms afterwards for when we try to convince someone of our worldliness: fantasy, vampire fiction, slash fiction, erotica, science fiction, etc.

Unlike Hachette, Microcosm has the luxury of not exerting much stress over the e-book debacle. Most of our books have a heavy focus on design, texture, paper choices, and varnishes which e-book readers lose out on. Microcosm, w​ith only eleven empl​oyees, has the advantage of having a trade distributor that actively sells our books into major wholesalers and retailers, so you can tend to find them at your local bookstore. Our e-book sales hover roughly around three percent of our trade sales ​ and one percent of our total sales​, with similar exceptions. For example, when we have a title that has an audience in the tech world, 30-50 percent of our sales for that title ​are ​ e-books. Perhaps due to the provocative title that people don’t want to be seen reading on the bus, Sarah Mirk’s Sex From Scratch continues to sell roughly 50 percent of its copies in e-books. Undeniably, this is also due to the outlets that featured the book. Related articles appeared on Salon, Boing Boing, and the like during the week of its release, and many people reading them did not want to wait for a paper book to arrive in the mail. They want the instant gratification ​of seamlessly transition​ing​ from reading the article to reading the book.

Naturally, a publisher could incline their list towards titles that sell well in electronic formats or are of interest to traveling business people or those who work in the tech industry and love their e-readers. A publisher could target media that reaches these kinds of readers. Even if the subject matter that they handle isn’t traditionally of interest to e-reader types, the pitches could be tailored to show how those books are interesting to that audience.

Of course, since the medium is already in decline within ten years after its launch, it’s probable that it will either see a major technological innovation, go the way of the laserdisc and BETAMax​,​ or globalism will create major logjams in paper supplies and e-books will be our de-facto option. But perhaps as David H. Rothman pointed out, the future of e-books is not just in commerce but also is in ​closing​ resource gaps for students, underserved people, and those geographically isolated or otherwise unable to have equal access to information as those of us living in the center of major U.S. cities. Frustratingly, publishers seem to see this mission as little more than a marketing opportunity when it fulfills one of Microcosm’s fundamental missions: giving readers the tools for self-empowerment in order to create a better world around them.

Yes, we’d love to sell more books in any medium, print or digital, and we will welcome practical suggestions from TeleRead community members, via the comments area.

​Microcosm has always bucked industry trends, and we’d love to change the current focus on e-books as disposable consumer products. Digital books need to be so much more.

GoodTroubleJoeBielNote: The above facts and opinions are Joe Biel’s, not necessarily ours. This is the twelfth post in his Business of Publishing series. “Each article attempts to spread information about best practices within the the publishing industry and clarify common confusions.” ​Joe is a self-made publisher and filmmaker who draws origins, inspiration, and methods from punk rock, and he is also​ the founder/manager of Microcosm Publishing ​and co-founder of the Portland Zine Symposium. ​He​ tour​s​ with​ his films on the Dinner and Bikes program and have been featured in Time Magazine, Publisher’s Weekly, Utne Reader, Portland Mercury, Oregonian, Broken Pencil, Readymade, Punk Planet, Profane Existence, and Maximum Rocknroll. Check out Joe’s biographical video, as well as his forthcoming back: Good Trouble: Building a Successful Life and Business with Asperger’s, with an introduction by Sander Hicks (founder of Soft Skull Press) and a  foreword by Joyce Brabner (widow of the famous comic artist Harvey Pekar). Ordering information for the book is here. The Amazon page is here. A Kindle version of Good Trouble will appear in mid or late March.

24 COMMENTS

  1. @Everyone: Please treat Joe Biel respectfully; stick to the “civil and thoughtful.”

    Yes, I myself would differ with him on the percentage of the market e-books claim. He and Data Guy definitely need to talk.

    That said, I agree with Joe on many other matters, such as the need for the e-book world to be friendlier to literary fiction and serious nonfiction. And I also believe that, yes, certain books, including some that he publishes, may do better on paper. Let the dialog begin!

    Meanwhile please note TeleRead’s interest in expanding the range of views here even though Chris Meadows and I, along with the other regulars, will keep speaking our own minds and not water down our own beliefs.

    We can all learn from each other. I’d especially welcome essays from, say, Authors Guild types or advocates of DRM.

  2. I’ll treat him respectfully, but not his opinions or conclusions, which are clearly, blatantly at odds with data from most sources – even the big 5’s own claims and sources, which are likely to be biased. In fact, I’d have to say that this is either spin or willful ignorance of the facts.

    “99% of what we sell are paper books.” Well, even if we believe his quoted statistics, his company is apparently doing a poor job of taking advantage of the ebook market. He should be able to sell (by his own figures) 4-5% more books via the ebook format, but he seems to be failing at that – unless this is hyperbole, which has no place in a blog post that quotes statistics.

    “Paper books still comprise 95-96 percent of total industry sales, with e-books shrinking from their 2012 peak at eight percent of industry market share.” The naturally biased big 5 claim “only” a 20% or so market share for ebooks. Author Earnings puts it above 30% This guy has apparently missed the mark by, at the very least, three full measures. If this is the quality of his analysis, I’d be wary of anything he says.

    • He has his facts wrong, yes. Even the AAP has released data that says otherwise.

      It’s simply not possible to take someone like this seriously. I also don’t think we can help him, not when he writes FUD like “the medium is already in decline within ten years after its launch”.

  3. @David VanDyke: Thanks very much for focusing on the arguments rather than the personalities (and, yes, I fervently agree with you about e-books’ share of the market!). Here’s an idea. Look over Joe’s site, especially the catalog, and see if you have any friendly tips on how he could sell e-books more effectively. After all, the headline invites people to do just that. As I’ve written, some kinds of book may just fare better on paper. But I still wonder if he couldn’t expand his revenue from E.

  4. Surely publishers could do many things to make the eBooks they offer more attractive to their patrons vis-à-vis pBooks. The trick will be to do the necessary objective research to learn why and under what circumstances a person might prefer the pBook. Armed with that knowledge, one might then be able to work on those aspects of their eBook offerings likely to make them more palatable.
    The problem, so far, is that research in this area tends to be rather poorly done or, worse, aimed at preconceived conclusions. For example, students still tend to prefer paper-based textbooks but few people in academia know or even want to know why, let alone do something about it.

  5. I’m curious about your experiences and background that leads you to these conclusions David Van Dyke. I have encountered also that all manner of statistics are wildly inconsistent about market share. These are the truest numbers that I’ve seen from having earnest backdoor conversations with publishers of all size. It’s hilarious that you doubt even my data about my own company! I explained why we rank lower than average in the article. Why would you be skeptical of even that?

    And I would point out, respectfully, of course, that with our paper books, our bookscan numbers represent about 10% of actual paperback sales in most cases. Most of the industry quotes this between 25-50% of actual sales, which explain the discrepancies in these numbers.

    We are one of the only publishing companies that I know of that transparently publishes our entire data in annual reports.

    More to the point, WHY do you think our eBook numbers would be so much lower than our paperback numbers? I would LOVE to achieve 20-30% market share of eBooks. They receive the simultaneous publication, marketing and publicity efforts, and push. It’s actually kind of shocking to me that even with professional conversions we are behind even the lowest industry averages.

  6. ” Why do our differing perspectives make it impossible to engage with me?”

    Because I get the impression from your post that you don’t want to increase ebook sales; you want validation for your focus on print.

    You say you want help with ebook sales, but then you go and say that ebooks are “a veritable commercial flop” and write things like: “the medium is already in decline within ten years after its launch” and “Paper books still comprise 95-96 percent of total industry sales, with e-books shrinking from their 2012 peak at eight percent of industry market share.”

    If you really believe these statements are true then you are saying that you don’t think there is an ebook market now and that there won’t be one in the future.

    So, no, you don’t really want to engage in a discussion on how you can boost ebook sales.

    • This is completely confusing. I’ve always bucked trends, just as the article states. At no point do I say that there’s not an eBook market now. Those are your words. More importantly, the quotes that you mention are not in conflict, just framing where I am coming from. Why would I not want to grow my business in every way that I could? This issue seems emotional here when it is not at all for me. I want to continue succeeding.

      Speaking for me is strange. What if I told you what you thought or what your real motives were?

      Most of our books are sold in stores. Yes, brick and mortar stores. About 10,000 books per month are sold this way. We sell another 500 or so on our website. Perhaps it’s the way that our website draws those sales away from Amazon that hurts our eBook share? That aside from the kinds of nonfiction books that we publish, that we don’t pricefight all the way to the bottom, and that we create aesthetic design projects are the biggest reason that I suspect our eBook sales are so dismal.

      Anyone else have theories or ideas of how this could change?

      And….wait….we just sold an eBook on our website. That makes TWO today! You guys ARE helping! Whatever you are doing, keep it up!

    • I read both of Ed’s supplied articles but neither of them contained any information that was new to me. The fact of the matter is that our eBook sales have been flat at 1% of our net since we introduced them as our print sales keep growing (up 28% in 2014 and up a further 23% in 2015) which is notable growth for a 20-year-old company. So sure while you can speculate that these are reliable growth areas, that has absolutely not been my experience. But I would love to have that experience as well!

      Rather than explaining how that happens it’s like you are arguing about science while denying the statistics that our database produces.

      Why is my experience hitting such an emotional nerve for all of you? I’m not denying your experience. I’m telling you what mine is and that I’m willing to learn from yours.

  7. Joe. Your unfortunate (and incorrect) comments about EBooks has somewhat derailed the feedback you wanted, Most of those publishing statistics on book sales cover only those books with ISBN’s, and much of the media reporting on which you seem to have based these opinions relies on such statistics, which now pretend a large and increasing segment of the market does not exist. Author Earnings seems to be the most accurate for the moment.

    I am no expert and am not in the publishing industry. However, it seems to me that you have simply introduced ebooks as an afterthought and placed them on your website. I’m not sure what steps you have taken, if any, to attract likely buyers to your website. It sounds to me like your print book customers are coming mainly from shoppers in book stores. But where are your ebook buyers. No one knows to come to your site unless you promote it, though you have gone some way towards doing this with your post, at least initially. The other way to sell ebooks is through Amazon and to a lesser extent other ebook stores. But even here you need to promote your books in some way. And to experiment. Some small publishers are placing at least some of their ebooks in Kindle Unlimited. You can try KDP exclusivity. Promotions, give aways, free days, Book Bub etc promotions. Also, the link from the post to the Amazon page shows that the EBook is not yet available! Ebooks are not second class citizens. If you are doing it properly you should be selling at least as many EBook’s as Print Books. The EBook should be out at the same time as the Print Book, or even before! Readers of this blog who clicked on the link and may have been tempted to buy are unlikely to come back and buy later. This is a missed opportunity. With your post not only here but now echoed by Nate at the Digital Reader your EBooks will be getting more attention than they likely ever have before. To not have an EBook available at this time is a bad mistake.

    To summarise, stop relying on statistics which pretend thar most self=published and Indie books do not exist to support erroneous conclusions about EBooks. The EBook market is growing. New bricks and mortar book stores are simply partly filling the gap left by Borders etc. Print books are not going to die any time soon, but they are now only part of the market. Treat EBooks as being as important as ebooks and think about how best to market them. Experiment, particularly on Amazon. If something doesn’t work, you are not locked in forever,

    • Thanks for the response Darryl.

      Let’s take industry statistics out of it and just rely on data that we can vet. That’s what seems to offend the emotional sensibilities of everyone here. Can we do that?

      As I’ve said on our other posts, our eBooks are sold wherever eBooks are sold. Other distributor lists them on all platforms and formats, including, obviously, Amazon. They receive the same love, attention, publicity, marketing, schedule, and timeline as our paper books. Our books are brought to market by Legato/Perseus but we also employ an in-house sales team.

      Let’s further break down Microcosm’s sales channels:
      5-10% in bookstores
      25-30% on our website (that’s several thousand books per month, but only about 10-20 eBooks)
      20-50% gift retailer
      30-40% speciality retailer (hardware / gardening supply / herbal / mercantile / grocery)
      1% digital

      Based on the responses, I’m guessing that what people aren’t counting on is that Gift has subsumed more than 50% of the retail book market, and most books are no longer sold in bookstores. The reason for this is simple, most bookstores order 1-2 copies of a title and never reorder while speciality and gift tend to order 5-24 copies and reorder as they run low.

      The Kindle version of GOOD TROUBLE Is not yet available because the paper version isn’t either; it doesn’t pub until March 15 as the post states. Fortunately we have hundreds of other eBooks available (and we had a record TWO eBook sales on our website yesterday).

      We attract buyers to our website through all manner of traditional marketing like advertising, going to about 50 events per year (trade and industry, consumer and otherwise), doing a 30-city book tour every year, and printing a total of about 100,000 promotional materials annually (catalogs / postcards / brochures broken down by product type / key marketing for key titles / etc) and we tend to ship about 24 web orders each day as a result.

      So what are we doing wrong? Why are the eBook sales so low?

  8. Lower your ebook prices. I went to your website, chose three, and went to Amazon. Of the three, only two were available for Kindle, and both were priced above $10. I’ve never heard of you, Microcosm, or any of the authors or books for whom I just searched, so I’m disinclined to spend more than a few bucks to find out if I’m going to like what you publish. Sad, too, because the “How to Ru(i)n a Record Label” sounded interesting.

    But that’s all answering your question of how you might increase your ebook sales. I think I might have a better question for you: do you even want to? You say “Most of our books have a heavy focus on design, texture, paper choices, and varnishes which e-book readers lose out on.” You also mention your trade distribution, and print sales.

    It sounds like you’ve got a pretty good operation going, and that you like print, and I think that’s fine. I think print will ultimately become a niche/luxury item, a lot like vinyl. I still own some print books, which I keep in a bookcase I built myself. I mean, I don’t read print anymore (I use my Paperwhite for long text, and for anything that would be served better elsewhere, I’ve got my iPad for the books that focus on design. I don’t care much about texture and paper choices unless it has to do with the actual subject I’m reading about). I think it’s fine if you’ve staked out print and want to keep your focus there.

    All that said, I think you’re trying to justify your focus on print by relying on outdated opinions and demonstrably inaccurate facts about print versus digital. The good news is you don’t need to! You do you.

    • Hi Will,

      Thanks for the closest thing yet to a supportive post!

      Our eBook prices are 30% lower than our paper prices. Is this not standard? For us, it’s just not worth discounting further unless sales would double or triple as a result. Would they? They haven’t in the past when we’ve tried.

      This ties into a deeper issue: the devaluing of the book. Amazon actually forces our eBook prices just like they tried to do to Hachette. We are locked into 30% off of paper list, rounded down to .99. The vast majority of our books end up being $2.99-6.99 as a result. And still we’ll sell one or two each month on Amazon. But even when we’ve attempted price busting or promotions, it seems like doing so is at the cost of actual sales in dollars. The customers don’t last or come back.

      And as you noticed, we don’t have eBook rights on all of our titles.

      Let’s clear the air: Yes, we want to increase our eBook sales but not by devaluing them.

      Yes, our gift an specialty channels are very effective for placing our books. But let’s straighten this out: I’m not trying to justify my experience or views. My views are informed by my experiences, not by statistics or facts. If I didn’t want our digital component to succeed, we could have ignored it completely. We bring in enough to stay our staff every month and honestly, eBooks have been a huge cost center for us.

      • Oh, I didn’t notice you didn’t have ebook rights on everything. I can totally understand how that would be limiting.

        I don’t see devaluation as an issue; I’ve always thought of it as publishers’ attempt to justify overpriced ebooks — and given cost of production, I see all ebooks priced higher than $6.99 as overpriced. But then, I look at ebooks like mass market paperbacks, and back when I used to read those that was about how much they cost at the local drugstore, so that’s where I come at the angle.

        I think “Is this not standard?” is a bit of a mistake in thinking. Especially when you note Microcosm has always bucked industry trends. If that’s the case, why not keep bucking? Why consider what’s a standard and simply drive at the best experience possible for your readers?

        I come at this from the perspective as an indie publisher myself. I manage a nano-press, which has published my own titles as well as those by other authors. But we’re kind of the opposite of Microcosm; we’re exclusively digital (I don’t want to deal with print, because I don’t read it and I’m happier leaving those rights to people who do). The price range you mention ($2.99 to $6.99) is the one we’ve adopted, with individual short stories priced like music singles at 99c. Like you, I’m always considering new ways to drive sales. But I look at it as a reader first, author second, and publisher last. When I consider pricing, I think of what I would pay, myself, and try to price accordingly. I’d really hesitate to pay $8 for something that’s only going to exist in my Paperwhite. Generally it would only be an author of whom I was already a fan — and at that point, I might as well just buy a signed hardcover I might read before I put on my shelf but really probably buy the ebook, anyway, because that’s just what I prefer as a reading experience.

        • I guess it’s like this: We offer sliding scale pricing on both our paperbacks and our eBooks, so a customer can “turn down” a price when ordering on our website (as low as $1.99). Still, we find that our customers vastly prefer paper books.

          Can I ask which books were over $9.99 on Amazon? That doesn’t sound right.

          Part of the issue is that this is not only my job but it supports ten other people so while I love crazy experiments, Amazon actually treats eBook sales for small publishers pretty poorly. We receive 37.5% of the net 150 days after date of sale.

          I’m not a stubborn stick in the mud nor am I set in my ways. I’m here to learn and I realized where the difference in our numbers must come from: If you remove gift and specialty markets, which make up more than half of our sales, your numbers work. Our eBook sales have been flat across five years EVEN as we add 20-30 new titles each year. I’ve watched warehousing and paper prices go up over 20 years and I assumed that the eBook’s place in the market would shift for us when these fixed costs had a major spike.

          You are the first person to be genuinely helpful here and thank you for that. We have people at Perseus who advise on these decisions but they are steeped in industry best practices rather than Microcosm’s best practices, which as you point out, can be selfish and outdated. I’m willing to try everything at $6.99 or below if that’s what you think our major issue is.

          • Sure, Joe. Angels with Dirty Face is listed at $10.99, while How to Ru(i)n a Record Label is $10.49. And no problem; I’m totally glad to be helpful as I can, and talk business. It’s fun!

            (Really specific idea/suggestion: the former is listed as three stories, so consider doing each one as its own “single” for a lower price, perhaps.)

            “Part of the issue is that this is not only my job but it supports ten other people so while I love crazy experiments, Amazon actually treats eBook sales for small publishers pretty poorly. We receive 37.5% of the net 150 days after date of sale.”

            Two things, there, the first of which is a simple, hard truth that David actually alludes to below, which is that your goal should be to serve readers while making the money you need to keep going: every business hopes to be viable, but that doesn’t mean it will be. Your business seems to be running well, and you have a number of employees, and it’s true — maybe the books you like to publish just don’t work as ebooks in a digital format. Like I’ve said, that’s okay.

            Maybe that’s what you need to consider in the first place: what rights do you have that you can use and create a cool experience for readers? While “increase ebook sales” is a fine goal, have you looked at your catalog and considered which titles work well as ebooks? Like, I see you have a coloring book — that’s not going to work digitally, right? That sort of question.

            Second, I wasn’t aware of Amazon’s difference for small publishers, but that may be because I manage my titles through a Kindle Direct Publishing account. I get the normal break out that way: 35% or 70% (depending on list price) 15 days after the final day of every month, approximately.

          • Thanks for the plea for practicality and civility, David.

            Will, neither of those have digital rights handled by us. I would guess that the authors have issued those editions at those prices. Nothing we can do there.

            Here’s another question: We sell our own Kindle editions on our own website at lower prices than on Amazon because we keep 67% of the pie. We also offer a sliding scale pricing structure that is up to the reader (a unique and “cool experience.”) Other than access, is there a reason that readers would be averse to shopping on our website for Kindle products rather than on Amazon?

            To be fair, digital coloring books are emerging but are about as marginal as most of our titles in E.

            Here’s the thing: Our business IS viable. It’s growing. Everything but our eBook sales. In that regard, we do serve the needs of the reader. We know which titles work well as eBooks and we are implementing $6.99 as a price ceiling (some are currently $9.99). That’s tangible progress and that’s because of you, Will!

            I value everyone’s input (I’ve never had a response editorial published to an article that I wrote; it’s almost enough to get to my head) and while I still don’t understand the religious fervor around this medium, I have a better understanding of the kind of thinking and concerns involved. So thank you all for that.

            That is, until my next Earth-shattering TeleRead article (this one is truly incendiary material) hits in a week or two, when I expect at least TWO response editorials.

  9. @Joe and @Wjll (and others using the same nuts-and-bolts approach): I love the dialogue going on now–the kind the headline calls for.

    Everyone, let’s focus on how Joe can grow his e-book business within the limits of the titles his house does best with and the ones about which he is most passionate.

    Digital just might not be the best medium for many and perhaps most of his books, although he is eager for tips in this area. And notice how he’s open to the possibility of pricing adjustments to some extent?

    In the end Joe’s goal should be not to promote E or P but to serve readers and writers as well as he can, while making the money he needs to keep going.

  10. @Joe. My apologies for my comment on the book not being available on Amazon. I missed the fact that not even the Paper Book had been published.

    I do think you should be experimenting with the various approaches to getting your books more attention on Amazon. This is perhaps where most people are looking for their books. This is not to say that people will not use your website. The first major problem is getting potential readers to visit it. Even then, it is a sad fact of life that many readers will stick with the so-called “walled garden” provided by Amazon, Kobo etc. Whilst it is very easy to sideload a book to most devices it is not as easy as one click and it is delivered wirelessly to your device. I believe that Baen clung to sales from its own site for many years before finally coming to terms with the fact that it was losing sales and needed to have its books on Amazon. Certainly don’t give up on your own site, but most of your ebook sales should come through Amazon.

    • I understand that this runs counter to the philosophy here but we do roughly 20-30 times as much business on our website every day than we do on Amazon and we keep 96% of the revenue. As a result, that’s where our effort to drive traffic goes. It is extremely concerning to me that people use language like “indies” or “self-publishers” when in reality the industry’s monopoly is actually their publisher and controls the terms of service. That is the definition of dependence, not independence.

      The philosophy is the opposite: by offering a curated editorial selection we attract people interested in those titles and subjects. That’s why we don’t offer thriller/romance/mystery/fantasy/SciFi unless it hits upon our themes of self-empowerment.

      I can understand how this can seem counter-intuitive or contradictory to my stated goals (and how it can run counter to them at times) but we’ve never had a lack of readers visiting our website.

      But let’s be clear, it was a compromise (and we did it) to have our books listed on Amazon. Some readers are more comfortable there, sure. But we aren’t going to direct our sales to Amazon nor develop our product pages there. We’ll try slashing prices again and see what happens. But as you pointed out, many of our subjects just aren’t suited for that.

      Our worlds can coexist. Our approach does nothing to threaten what works for anyone else. I have learned a tremendous amount about the worldview of TeleReaders in the past two days and it makes me respect this philosophy more. It’s great to see it as an actual community as even my community of medium-sized indie publishers can be really private and competitive. It seems like people are just as impassioned here but into sharing at the same time.

      It’s educational to see why our eBook approach hasn’t worked and that it would require an overhaul of what does work for us. Naturally, I’ll try a middle-ground between the two for our digital sales and see if that works better. Admittedly, it has perplexed our distributors just how low our digital sales have been.

The TeleRead community values your civil and thoughtful comments. We use a cache, so expect a delay. Problems? E-mail newteleread@gmail.com.