Indie publishing gurus gaze into their crystal balls.
Happy new year, everyone! As the proud indie author of two self-published books, I thought it’d be fun to see what people closely involved in supporting and promoting indie publishing predict for book publishing industry in 2016.
“Most forms of publishing have dramatically changed in the past few years: it’s become incredibly easy to publish photos (Instagram), song tracks (Soundcloud), videos (YouTube), blog posts (WordPress), etc. In 2016, it’s book publishing that will become more mainstream than ever. Through books, more people will express who they are and communicate their vision of the world with others. With 2016 set to break all records with hundreds of thousands of titles pushed to the market, authors need to have a clear idea of what they can expect from publishing a book. In most cases, it will be a gratifying and enriching experience; but only those willing to work hard will find it lucrative.”
“I predict that Barnes & Noble’s eBook division will either be sold or auctioned off through bankruptcy proceedings and acquired by a tech startup that will reinvigorate B&N’s website and database and create a little more competition for Amazon.”
“Now that there are more and more quality books being published a day, largely due to self-publishing, you’ll see a rise of companies that provide marketing tools or services to help the best ones reach the top and get discovered.”
Meanwhile, Smashwords founder Mark Coker wrote an excellent post on his own 2016 predictions. I’ve quoted a few of his predictions below, but definitely read the full article!
Change! Innovation! Weirdness! These are all things that led me to buying a Steam Controller. My experience since then has been a mix of wonder, excitement and frustration.
For those who are unfamiliar, the Steam Controller ($49.99 at Amazon) looks like this:
The Steam controller with included batteries, USB wireless dongle and PC attachment.
That might look kind of flipped when compared to this Xbox One controller, which you’re probably a little more familiar with:
Credit: Microsoft
That’s because the front of the Steam Controller actually bends inward (concave for you geometry fans). This is to make it easier to access the signature feature of the Steam Controller — touch pads! Yes, touch pads have replaced traditional control sticks. (Except for that one stick they threw in at the last-minute when people freaked out … but it’s only one and most games use two.)
So do the touch pads they work for gaming? Yes … but it takes a lot of getting used to. I read in another review somewhere that this is like an “alternate universe” controller that decided against control sticks. Pads can work just as well, but the problem is our thumbs have become accustomed to the movements associated with pushing a stick.
As you might expect, then, the pads work best as a replacement for a mouse in games built for a keyboard/mouse setup. I found Valve’s flagship Portal 2 to work pretty darn well with this controller. However, in a game made for the Xbox controller–such as Batman: Arkham Knight–by default you have the pad simulating a control stick, and it’s kind of weird.
See, when you simulate a mouse with the pad, as in Portal 2, it acts a lot like a trackball. Keep rolling it in the direction you want. It even feels good thanks to haptic feedback. But when it’s simulating a game pad, you’re “holding” an imaginary stick in the direction you want the camera to turn, and then returning your thumb to the center of the pad when you’re done moving it.
After about a week of play, I did find myself getting better at this. I could definitely play Arkham Knight and do well. However, I always felt handicapped anytime I needed to make small, accurate movements such as aiming the cannon of the Batmobile, or checking on the position of unsuspecting criminals before making a sneak attack.
Gyros and customization to the rescue!
After more time spent with the controller and hanging out in the Steam community, I found two solutions. One that made me feel a little better about the Steam Controller, and one that makes me think it might even work better than an Xbox controller.
The truly cool thing about the Steam Controller is that you can customize just about everything with the controller. This includes more than what the buttons do in a game. You can adjust sensitivity of inputs, turn the touch pads into a keypad and much more. And if that’s all too technical, you can simply apply control schemes uploaded by either the game developer or other people in the Steam community. Meanwhile, Valve itself continues to add more functions to the controller as users provide feedback.
The first thing I discovered that made Arkham Knight play more easily was the ability to change the behavior of the right touch pad (which stands in for the right control stick and controls the camera) to work as a “mouse-like joystick.” This mode, Valve says, is built for games that don’t let you play with a gamepad and mouse at the same time (actually I don’t understand how a two-handed person would do that anyway). Through magical engineering (or something), this just lets you use the pad as if it’s a rolling trackball.
That feels far more intuitive, at least, but it still does not feel super accurate, especially when you’re under fire in a Batmobile and a helicopter keeps dive-bombing you.
That’s when I discovered motion controls. Or, I should say, the Steam community discovered them. Turns out the Steam Controller has a gyro sensor, much like the Nintendo Wii controller, which allows it to track physical movements of the hands. Well, what happened is that some genius (not sarcasm) in the Steam community got the idea to turn this feature on in addition to the mouse-like joystick behavior.
When I switched to this control scheme, I kid you not — it was like removing a neck brace
To turn this on, go to the controller customization settings and select the gyro icon under the center of the controller diagram (it looks a bit like an atom). Set this up as a mouse joystick and you’re good to go!
The motion controls let you adjust the camera (or your cross-hairs) by moving the entire controller up, down, left or right. To ensure you don’t do this accidentally, it only detects movement while your thumb is on the right touch pad.
This would never work by itself, because you’d basically have to turn away from the TV if you ever wanted to do more than 45-degree turn. But for small movements–lining up the cross-hairs or taking a quick peek at something peripheral–it feels very natural. When you do want to make a bigger turn, you swipe the touch pad like before … and to be honest it’s fine for that.
When I switched to this control scheme, I kid you not — it was like removing a neck brace. In fact, now I really can’t imagine going back to the old way.
Worth the trouble?
You might be thinking to yourself: “That sounds cool, and it’s great that you got the Steam Controller to work for you … but the Xbox controller already works for me. Why bother?”
Yes, I would agree that is a fair point. If you’ve got an Xbox controller already, and it’s working for you, and you have no desire at all to try something new, there really is little reason to get a Steam Controller.
Besides the pads, the Steam Controller’s other big issue for me is the placement of the A, B, X & Y buttons. While in reach, the placement of this diamond arrangement feels a bit low and could lead to some wrong presses until you get used to it.
Also, I should caution that I’ve only tested the Steam Controller in console-like action games. I’ve not tried it for mouse-intensive genres like real-time strategy. I’ve written this article from the perspective of someone who wants a controller for games made for controllers.
However, if anything about the Steam Controller intrigues you — perhaps the customization, or maybe just the fact that it’s not made by Microsoft or Sony — I am here to say that it is in fact a solid controller that can do a lot now and has promise to do a lot more in the future. Buying a Steam Controller is not the equivalent of buying a knock-off Mad Catz Xbox controller (sorry, Mad Catz) to save $10 off of the official brand.
You do have to go in knowing that it’s not necessarily going to work perfectly from the moment you start up a game. There will be fiddling. In the future, there will be more community control schemes available that will make this fiddling easier. But you’ll still have to fiddle to make the Steam Controller work for you.
My early impressions of the Steam Link after three weeks playing with Valve’s PC game streaming system.
For a long time, I had this problem. Valve would announce these great deals for PC games on Steam, and naturally I wouldn’t be able to pass them up. The issue was that I was actually a console gamer, and my laptop at the time wasn’t really built for games.
So why did I buy games on Steam that I couldn’t actually play? Well, you see, I had this plan to become a PC gamer. I was living in Australia at the time, and so I told myself that when I eventually moved back to the USA, I would build a desktop computer and play all these Steam games I’d been amassing.
We made the move back to the US this summer, and moved into an apartment a little over a month ago. It was finally time–I was ready to build a gaming PC.
Or so I thought. See, I’d just purchased a fancy new TV, and now I wanted to play games on that. I reconsidered my gaming plan. Maybe I should spend less money on the PC–use that for productivity–and get a PS4 for games. But then again, what about all those Steam games?
That’s when I started thinking seriously about the Steam Link ($49.99 on Amazon). The device, released last month, hooks up to a TV and streams games from the PC to the TV over a wired or wireless home network. It was October and Steam Link wasn’t due out until early November, so I had no idea how well this would actually work in practice. But early buzz was good, and it seemed like it would satisfy my two main gaming desires–playing Steam games, but doing it on a TV.
Some of you may be asking, “Uh, why didn’t you just connect a really long HDMI cord from your desktop to the TV? Didn’t you say you’re living in an apartment?”
To which I would reply, “I have a wife.”
Trust me, the concept of Steam Link as a seamless streaming device that avoids the need for long wires is a very good thing. Anyway, it’s only $50! Get over it!
So I went ahead! With the help of a good friend who knows his stuff when it comes to computers, I built a new gaming PC and pre-ordered the Steam Link and Steam Controller (also $50 — I’ll write up some impressions of this product at a later date).
Setting up the Link
I was surprised by the smallness of the Steam Link .
Globe not actual size of Earth.
The Steam Link in its box.
The Steam Link includes plugs for multiple countries, HDMI and ethernet cords.
Tidy boxes for the Steam Controller and Steam Link.
The Steam controller with included batteries, USB wireless dongle and PC attachment.
My Steam gear arrived on November 10. I was amazed by the small size of the Link. You can look up the specs on your own time, but I’ll just say it’s got everything you need and nothing you don’t. And it disappears completely into the TV stand. Given how easily that can get filled up, that’s totally fine by me.
Connecting the Link to my TV was a breeze — the thing was pulsing on my TV screen before I even realized I had turned the thing on. It also recognized my controller right away without me having to do any setup other than connecting the wireless dongle to a USB port on the Link.
The Steam Link next walked me through connecting it to my network. Valve recommends a wired connection, but supports wireless networks including the fastest available, 802.11ac (5GHz). I’m doing a mix–my PC is hardwired by ethernet to the router, but I connected the Link wirelessly on the 5GHz network.
A quick word about my PC: My graphics card is an EVGA GeForce GTX 970 with 4GB VRAM. My PC has 8GB of RAM. The processor is Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Haswell Processor. It’s not the highest spec PC you can get, but it’s pretty damn good.
Smooth video, but some audio annoyances
I put on Batman: Arkham Knight first. Maybe not a totally fair test, considering all of the issues the PC port has suffered. But the latest patch worked great for me, and it felt just like playing the old Arkham games on Xbox 360.
Next, I tried a game from last generation, Alan Wake, and encountered a major bug with Steam Link — audio crackle. In 1080p, the video ran smoothly, but the audio skipped and made crackling sounds. The next day, I tried Portal 2 and discovered the same problem. The video was running a silky 60 frames per second, but the sound kept making annoying crackling noises.
I started reading the Steam Link forums, and discovered quickly I was not the only one with the problem. A handful of users blamed some kind of interference involving wireless controllers, but most people seem to blame it on a bug related to using a wireless connection for the Link. What fixed it for everyone was downgrading the resolution to 720P.
I went back to Arkham Knight to see if I could figure out why that game wouldn’t have the same problem. Afterall, it was running in 1080p, too. As I went through the settings, I discovered the framerate had been set to 30fps. Shocked I wasn’t seeing the game in its full glory, I upped it to 60fps. As soon as I did, the audio started crackling.
Having to downgrade graphics settings for Link when they work fine on your PC is obviously not ideal. For their part, Valve has acknowledged the audio problems and appears to be working on it.
A recent update (Build 388) to the Steam Link included a “temporary” fix for the problem that seemed to resolve the problem for me in my games. According to Valve’s documentation, however, it seems that the fix merely limits the resolution on wireless networks to 1600×900. I’m still waiting for a more permanent fix that lets me play in 1080p.
Update: About a week after I wrote this article, a Steam Link update fixed most of the audio crackle issues I describe above. There are still occasional sound glitches, but these aren’t quite as distracting.
A lot of promise
It’s great to see Valve releasing a steady stream of updates to fix problems with the Link. And I should point out that the audio issue above is something you can work around. Unless your screen is massive, games still look pretty good in 1600×900 or even 720p. On the other hand, if you don’t absolutely need something like the Steam Link in your home right away, you might want to wait until all the bugs have been worked out.
Waiting will also mean you’ll have more features available. For example, you can’t today connect a USB or Bluetooth headset to the Link. It has USB jacks and Bluetooth, and the Link will recognize them. However, if you try to set it up for action via the Steam Link menu, the device will joyfully inform you that this feature is coming soon.
As an early adopter of the Steam Link, I kind of figured there’d be some kinks to be worked out going in. I mean, the thing works well enough. I’m playing games on the TV and having a lot of fun.
But I’m the kind of guy who enjoys installing updates and finding out what’s been changed for the better. A lot of people–especially console gamers–are used to their gaming systems more or less working right out of the box. They don’t want to play with settings or go to online forums to work out what’s wrong with their setup.
For those kinds of gamers, I really believe the Steam Link can still be a good option … but only in time.
The good news is that Valve seems to be working hard to make this product as perfect as it can. When I’ve had problems with other tech products in the past, I’ve looked online for answers only to discover the vendor had abandoned the product. This is not so with Valve and Steam Link.
But it still means we all have some waiting to do.
Are you using Steam LInk? What have been your impressions so far? Sound off in the comments! I’m also happy to answer questions or clarify any details about my Steam setup.
Reedsy co-founder Emmanuel Nataf talks about the future of indie publishing.
Credit: Reedsy
Just because I’m an indie author doesn’t mean I can’t get good help with editing and book design.
I recently signed up for Reedsy, an innovative web platform that helps indie authors find freelance publishing assistance. A few days ago, I signed ex-DC Comics editor Rachel Gluckstern to edit my upcoming novel, The Wanderer and the New West. It’s an exciting collaboration that was made possible by Reedsy.
Reedsy was founded in London during the summer of 2014 by Emmanuel Nataf, Matthew Cobb, Ricardo Fayet and Vincent Durand. For the first year, the co-founders worked on Reedsy as a side project on nights and weekends, but it became a full-time job after the startup was accepted into Seedcamp, a London-based startup accelerator. Soon after, the tech startup raised cash from angel investors including Ben Yoskovitz, the bestselling author of Lean Analytics. Today, Reedsy is a team of seven that operates out of a co-working space in the Shoreditch neighborhood of London.
I spoke with co-founder Emmanuel Nataf about what Reedsy hopes to accomplish and where it sees the publishing industry headed. You can read the full interview below.
Adam: What problem were you trying to solve when you created Reedsy?
Emmanuel: We were seeing two major publishing trends converging. On the one hand, more and more authors were self-publishing, as they could easily reach an audience through digital distribution (460,000 titles were self-published in the US in 2014 according to Bowker). On the other hand, more and more top publishing professionals have left traditional houses in the past few years and have gone freelance, available to work with both traditional and self-published authors.
At the time, we were seeing too many low-quality books being pushed to the Kindle Store. It was clear that self-publishing was not yet a viable alternative to the traditional route. Quality can only be achieved with an investment in editorial, design and marketing services, something that self-published authors did not have access to. They needed a single, trusted and quality source of people that they could collaborate with.
It’s from this frustration that we decided to create Reedsy, a curated marketplace for the
publishing industry.
More recently, we started to work with traditional publishers as well. They have been impressed
with the level of quality Reedsy professionals can provide, and love the way our collaborative
tools streamline their workflows.
Adam: Today, authors can self-publish a book all by themselves if they want to. Why is it important that authors pay for freelance help, and how big of an investment does that need to be?
Emmanuel: The production process of a book doesn’t stop after the writing phase – it starts there. Self-publishing authors can certainly release new titles much faster than “Big 5” authors but they can’t skip editing, design or marketing if they want to have any chance of being successful. In fact, to stand out from the crowd, they need to publish a high-quality product and have a solid plan to commercialize it. This takes time and requires experience. This is where Reedsy professionals can help.
We are planning on open-sourcing our data so authors can get a better idea of the cost of self-publishing. However, for an 80,000 word book that needs editing, design and marketing help, you will need at least $2,000. Most spend $5,000 or more if they want to work with award-winning professionals and want to design an aggressive marketing plan.
Adam: The publishing industry is in a state of flux right now. Where do you think it’s going, and how well will self-published authors fare against industry published authors?
Emmanuel: The whole value chain is evolving so much that I’m not sure how long the selfpublishing/traditional publishing antagonism will remain.
For instance, we recently helped PFD Literary Agents set up their own digital imprint where they give a very interesting 50/50 deal to authors. The emergence of more digital imprints is something that we follow closely. What we believe, though, is that the production of high-quality books can be commoditized through a service like Reedsy, and that publishers should only do what they do best: curate content, offer physical distribution and negotiate foreign rights.
Credit: Reedsy
Adam: How many freelancers and how many authors do you have on Reedsy?
Emmanuel: About 6,000 authors have joined Reedsy so far and we have selected 300+ professionals out of 7,000 applications.
Adam: What is the most popular service authors are looking for when they join Reedsy?
Emmanuel: Self-publishing authors are mainly looking for editing services when they come to Reedsy. We would love to see self-publishing authors invest more into their book covers though: too many of them still underestimate the incredible impact a beautiful cover can have for their book sales.
We see mix of authors looking to self-publish and authors looking to polish their manuscript before submitting to agents or publishers, which is why we recently added a “query letter review” service to our marketplace. Eventually, we want Reedsy to become the backbone of the industry, providing high-quality services to all authors or publishers.
Adam: Do you have any minimum qualifications for freelancers? Is it required they have
experience in the publishing industry?
Emmanuel: Yes! Our team receives hundreds of applications every week and only selects a handful of professionals. The objective is to provide the highest level of quality to authors and publishers. This is why people often describe Reedsy as a “curated” marketplace. We require a strong experience working at top publishers or with bestselling authors and a portfolio of at least 10 books. We also ask them to connect their social networks to Reedsy so we can verify their online identity.
Adam: How does Reedsy make money? Is it purely commission-based?
Emmanuel: Our fees are shared between professionals and clients who both pay a 10 percent commission on every transaction. This allows us to develop our product, curate our network, and offer customer support with a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee.
Adam: Besides Reedsy, what other innovative companies are helping indie authors right now?
Emmanuel: Crowdfunding platforms are a good complement to Reedsy. For instance, Reedsy authors often use Publishizer or Kickstarter to raise funds to pay for our services. We are also pretty excited to see what Find My Audience is going to release in the coming months to help authors locate and engage with a highly qualified audience.
Adam: What’s coming next for Reedsy? What can you tell me about any plans to further expand or enhance your services?
Emmanuel: Many things! First, we will be adding more services to our marketplace in the coming months: marketing, ghostwriting and translation will be progressively rolled out. Then, we will be adding dedicated publisher accounts to allow publishers to manage entire teams and projects through Reedsy. Last but not least, we will be releasing our collaborative book editor to allow any author to work collaboratively on their books and get properly formatted EPUB and PDF files instantly.
Thanks so much to Emmanuel Nataf for the Interview! For more on innovative indie publishing companies, check out my interviews with Story Cartel, NoiseTrade and The Fussy Librarian.
I am not one of those authors who writes on a typewriter. How do you delete?! No, I need tech to keep me organized and to give me the flexibility to jot down ideas or do actual writing on the go.
Here are the apps and gadgets I currently rely on the most for writing:
Evernote
Logo credit: Evernote
I often get ideas for my stories when I’m riding a subway or walking in the park. I can either keep reciting the idea in my head over and over until it was pounded into my memory, or I can just make a quick note on my phone using Evernote. The app syncs notes across all my devices, so when I get back to my computer at home, it’s right there and ready for me to act upon!
Scrivener
The corkboard view in Scrivener keeps me organized. photo Credit: literature & latte
Look, Word is a great app and I still use it for short things like letters and news stories. But novels, which can be 80,000 to 100,000 words, get unwieldy real fast. If you need to refer to some detail earlier in the story, you’ve either got to do a lot of scrolling, or try to remember a specific phrase and search for it in the text. If you realize Chapter 8 should really be Chapter 6, you’ve got to cut and paste (and it’s scary to do a Ctrl+X on an entire chapter), and then renumber all the affected chapters.
Scrivener does all of this for me and I don’t have to panic. It puts each of my chapters and each of my scenes into notecards that I can reorder at will through drag and drop. It all displays a list of everything in a convenient sidebar that I can use to jump around my book at will. And it backs up everything, so if disaster strikes, I can restore my project! I can even take snapshots of scenes I’m about to massively revamp, just in case I change my mind later. Brilliant!
Microsoft Surface 3
Surface 3. I don’t use it to research plant cells, though. photo Credit: Microsoft
This is my latest tool, and I’m already loving it. I needed something light and portable so I could write on the go without feeling like I was carrying a bowling ball in my backpack. I also needed something with a decent battery life. Finally, and this is critical, I didn’t want to pay heaps of money for a Surface Pro 3.
Surface 3, the Atom-based cousin of Surface Pro, meets these requirements handily. It’s a beautifully engineered device that’s perfect for writing at the café. cases. It’s not my main PC, so I didn’t need it to be super powerful. I just needed something with a clear screen and a decent keyboard that runs Scrivener okay. Sold.
My only complaint is that Microsoft totally gets you with the separately sold keyboard and pen. These things are essential to the experience, and you end up paying almost $200 more than you expected. I know, I know, I could have gone Macbook Air, but I’m stuck on Windows.
Oh well, at least it’s kept me writing! Time to finish that novel…
Jeffrey Bruner, founder of The Fussy Librarian
“Now that there are more and more quality books being published a day, largely due to self-publishing, you’ll see a rise of companies that provide marketing tools or services to help the best ones reach the top and get discovered.”
