Tag: self-publishing

Readers seek great books, not big publishers: Bibliocrunch CEO Miral Sattar

Published by Adam on January 21, 2016

Indie authors can’t do it alone. Believe me, I’ve tried. What I’ve learned over the course of writing, self-publishing and marketing three novels is that it pays to get help.

Over the last year, I’ve featured several tech companies and indie book promotion websites that aim to put indie authors on a level playing field with the traditionally published. These include Reedsy, The Fussy Librarian, NoiseTrade and Story Cartel.

miral-sattar_headshot — Miral Sattar, Bibliocrunch CEO

Today I’d like to feature Bibliocrunch, a company that’s actually been in the indie publishing game since 2011. The service connects authors to freelancers for editing, marketing, graphic design and much more. The site also hosts book giveaways and provides useful advice about indie publishing. Check out my profile on Bibliocrunch as an example.

I spoke with founder and CEO Miral Sattar about what Bibliocrunch hopes to accomplish and where she sees the publishing industry headed. Miral leads a team of seven based in New York City.

Adam: What problem is Bibliocrunch trying to solve?

Miral: Giving authors access to tools resources to publish the best book possible. We have a vetted marketplace that connects authors and publishers with vetted publishing professionals. But we also have our LearnSelfPublishingFast.com series which is growing very popular.

Adam: Today’s 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?

Miral: If someone is paying for your book, then you need to make sure that it is in the best state possible. You need an eye-catching cover, a well-edited book that’s error-free, and readable on all devices and formats.

The investment varies. You can publish a quality book on a budget or pay what a typical publisher would pay for one of their authors. I have written articles on both. It’s different for each book.

Read Miral's articles on this subject!
How to Self-Publish Your Book on a Budget
The Real Costs of Self-Publishing a Book

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?

Miral: I don’t think this is a relevant question. I think it’s more important that traditional publishers start offering more to their authors. Right now, 40% of the books on Amazon’s best-seller list are self-published. People usually don’t care whether a book is self-published. They want a great read. If they love the book, they will recommend it to their friends.

Adam: What was your background before starting this company, and what led you from there to here?

Miral: I’m an engineer and writer by background. I went to both graduate (NYU) and undergrad (Columbia) in the city. I had been working at TIME Magazine for several years, leading a lot of the editorial product development. I was also finishing up my Masters at NYU at the same time.

In 2011, I noticed that people were publishing books based on breaking news events and selling tons of books. The people who were publishing were not professionals, and they were doing it through Amazon. So I went back to the higher-ups at TIME and pitched my project: publish books based on breaking news events. We had the best writers from all over the world between TIME, Fortune, People, etc. But like any big corporation, they were slow to approve and execute.

I ended up leaving and starting my own company, Bibliocrunch, several months later. We launched as a tools platforms where authors and publishers could write and convert their books in the cloud. However, we kept getting requests from authors asking if our platform could convert PDF files into eBooks, or design covers. We referred so many people that we made a marketplace out of it.

Adam: How many customers do you have?

Miral: We have about 20,000 authors and 1,500 vetted freelancers who provide services to authors and publishers.

Adam: What is the most popular service authors seek freelance help with?

Miral: I’d say editing and then cover design.

Bibliocrunch offers a variety of paid VIP services to authors.

Adam: Do you typically get authors who are looking to self-publish, or are they polishing things up with the intention of querying a big publisher?

Miral: We get all types of authors, though the majority of our authors are self-published. We also have publishers who have hired freelancers because they don’t have the budgets to keep qualified folks in-house. Each author is different, so we tell them the first thing they should do is define their goals.

Adam: Do you have minimum qualifications for the freelancers? Must they have professional experience in the publishing industry?

Miral: Absolutely. We check to see if they already are a member of a pre-existing organization, their LinkedIn profiles, their testimonials, works samples, and website.

Adam: Have you had any major success stories so far?

Miral: We’ve had a few authors hit the top 10 on Amazon. Most recently, Howard Kaplan, author of The Damascus Cover, bumped James Paterson and Patricia Cornwell one week.

publishingboxset — Bibliocrunch offers a free 4-book box set of books to help indie authors. Click the image for more details.

Adam: What do you believe is your competitive advantage to other companies offering similar services?

Miral: I think we’ll see the rise of marketplaces in 2016. Almost everyone has one now which is great! Blurb, Publishers Weekly, Publishers Lunch, just to name a few.

We have a VIP Service that guides authors through the self-publishing process with a real person on the phone. We also have our LearnSelfPublishingFast.com author training courses, which come with tools, templates, blog posts and guides. Our most popular course is our marketing intensive.

Adam: What’s coming next for Bibliocrunch? What can you tell me about any plans to further expand or enhance your services?

Miral: We’re expanding our LearnSelfPublishingFast.com series to include children’s books and also launching a few children’s book initiatives later this year.

Adam: Besides Bibliocrunch, what other innovative companies helping indie authors do you like?

Miral: I love Wattpad and BookBub and recommend both to all our authors. Wattpad is great if you’re good at social media and have a fantasy type novel. BookBub is a great way to kickstart sales if you get accepted.

Thanks so much to Miral Sattar for the Interview! Miral also contributed a new year’s prediction for my article on indie publishing in 2016! For more on innovative indie publishing companies, check out my interviews with Reedsy, Story Cartel, NoiseTrade and The Fussy Librarian.

Want to be featured or suggest an innovative indie publishing company? Contact me.

Divided We Fall joins Library Journal’s SELF-e Select

Published by Adam on November 20, 2015

Library Journal and Biblioboard have selected my second novel, Divided We Fall, as a featured indie novel in its curated SELF-e Select module!

This means my novel will soon be available to libraries all over the US through BiblioBoard Library. In addition, Divided We Fall will soon be available to readers throughout my home state of Pennsylvania in the Indie PENNSYLVANIA module as a highlighted selection.

Divided We Fall is a dystopian love story and the sequel to We, The Watched, which was accepted into SELF-e earlier this year.

The idea behind SELF-e is to expose notable self-published eBooks to readers around the country who are looking to discover new authors. Libraries can make ebooks available for free with no requirement to return the book and no multi-user restrictions.

Libraries are a perfect place to discover new books, and I’m super excited that both of my novels will soon be available for free to this large audience of hungry readers.

In Divided We Fall, Elite Guard Eve Parker must arrest her fiancé after he loses his memory and becomes a revolutionary called Seven. But when Eve learns more about the President’s plan to broaden citizen surveillance, she begins to question what she’s always believed to be right.

Seven runs, but in his flight realizes that losing his memory may not have been enough to erase his feelings for Eve. Unable to escape his past, Seven determines that he must come to terms with the man he was if he ever wishes to win freedom.

You can buy Divided We Fall today as an eBook or paperback from Amazon and other major online retailers.

Join my mailing list to get a free eBook edition of the first book in the series, We, The Watched.

Reedsy pushes for better indie books through collaboration

Published by Adam on October 28, 2015

Reedsy co-founder Emmanuel Nataf talks about the future of indie publishing.

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.

Also read:
Line between traditional, indie publishing nearly gone: The Fussy Librarian
How indie authors can break through the noise with NoiseTrade
How to find readers and get book reviews with Story Cartel

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.

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.

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Line between traditional, indie publishing nearly gone: The Fussy Librarian

Published by Adam on August 17, 2015

Jeffrey Bruner, founder of The Fussy Librarian

Today’s indie authors can punch above their weight and take on traditionally published authors, says The Fussy Librarian founder Jeffrey Bruner.

The Fussy Librarian, based in Des Moines, Iowa, sends daily book recommendations to readers based on their preferences.

“The line between ‘industry’ authors and ‘self-published’ authors has just about vanished,” Bruner, a former journalist for Gannett, tells me. “An author can hire a cover designer and copy editor and produce a book that looks and reads just as well as anything by the big publishers.”

Also read:
How indie authors can break through the noise with NoiseTrade
How to find readers and get book reviews with Story Cartel

The marketing budget possessed by big publishers might not be as big an advantage as authors think when deciding between indie and traditional publishing, he says.

“The marketing budget of the big publishers usually goes to only a handful of titles — the superstars like James Patterson, John Grisham, etc.,” says Bruner. “Everyone else is getting the crumbs.”

It’s a sentiment also voiced by Guy Kawasaki, the former chief evangelist of Apple, who wrote a book on indie publishing.

“The fact is that they only do [extensive marketing] if you are Hillary Clinton or you’re David Beckham,” Kawasaki said last year. “They don’t do it for the other 10,000 authors every year because frankly they can’t call the New York Times 10,000 times every year.”

Bruner says that indie authors can do a lot with a little. “Self-published authors don’t need to have a huge marketing budget — just enough to create what Kevin Kelly calls 1,000 true fans. Once you have established that base, they will provide the word of mouth to boost you to 50,000, 100,000, 500,000, etc. But the book has to come first and it’s got to be great.”

He points to many tools available to indie authors today, including Rafflecopter for giveaways, MailChimp for mailing list management and PayPal for e-commerce.

“I’m not saying it would have been impossible to self-publish a bestseller 15 years ago, but it’s a lot easier now.”

Meet The Fussy Librarian

The Fussy Librarian seeks to help readers find well-written books, regardless of how they were published.

“We want to be your personal librarian, the person you can turn to when you want to read a good book,” says Bruner. “We’re like a matchmaker for readers.”

The company knows it must court authors if it wants to provide a valuable service to readers.

“Our business doesn’t exist without readers, so they have to be our primary focus … but you’re also not going to last long unless you provide great customer service for authors, too,” says Bruner.

While the Fussy Librarian is not the only game in town for book recommendations on the Web, the company tries to differentiate itself by providing more personalized recommendations to readers, he says.

“A lot of services send you a list of books. We email you a list of books that match your taste in reading.”

The Fussy Librarian breaks down book promotions into emails based on 40 genres, more than competitor BookBub, and also provides content filters for readers who don’t want to see books with profanity or sexual content, he says.

The company has tried to entice authors with competitive pricing offers. Authors pay a fee per genre, but get discounts when they promote books in more than one genre. Also, the Fussy Librarian doesn’t charge extra to promote box sets.

“Our company is privately owned, so we don’t have venture capitalists demanding a return on their investment,” says Bruner. “And we know that most authors aren’t rich, so we try to keep our prices as low as possible. The cost of living is low in Des Moines, so we don’t need to keep much for ourselves.”

How many readers see a promotion varies by the chosen genre, with anywhere from 25,000 for cookbooks to 95,000 for contemporary romance fiction, says Bruner. Readers see anywhere from three to 20 books in each email, depending on their preferences, he says.

With only one full-time and one part-time employee, the Fussy Librarian cannot read every book submitted to the site. To ensure a base-line level of quality, the website requires that books have at least 10 Amazon.com customer reviews with an average score of 4.0. If it’s a new release, the author must have a previously published book with 50 reviews on Amazon averaging 4.0.

Before starting The Fussy Librarian in 2013, Bruner worked as wire chief for Gannett’s national wire desk.

“Like a lot of people in journalism, I decided I needed a Plan B,” he explains. “I worked at the Des Moines Register and its owner, Gannett, started layoffs in 2005 whenever it decided the bottom line needed boosting. After surviving seven or eight rounds, I got tired of waking up each morning wondering if I would still have a job. I also calculated that, when adjusting for inflation, I was actually making less than when I was hired in 2000.”

At first, Bruner kept his day job at Gannett and worked on his new venture at night. Then, in October 2014, he submitted his resignation and made Fussy Librarian his full-time job.

“My only regret is I didn’t do it five years earlier,” he says.

Bruner says the service continues to evolve, with new features on the way. “We’re working on two major projects — one for readers, one for authors — over the next six months. We think they will both be innovations in the book marketing industry, so I’m reluctant to spill too many details, but they both hold tremendous potential and we’re really excited about them.”

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How indie authors can break through the noise with NoiseTrade

How indie authors can break through the noise with NoiseTrade

Published by Adam on August 7, 2015

My biggest challenge as an indie author is getting the word out about my books. In a maelstrom of self-published authors, shouting louder than everyone else is just not a viable strategy–and at worst might very well annoy the audience I’m trying to win.

Lately, I’ve been looking into innovative book marketing companies who promise to help authors reach their audience more effectively than the author can do alone. After giving Story Cartel a go, I also decided to check out NoiseTrade.

NoiseTrade launched in 2008 as a music website, but expanded into eBooks in 2014. It’s a place for authors and musicians to give away their latest work to hungry readers and music lovers. While NoiseTrade consumers pay nothing to download, they are required to give their email address and postal code, and provide their consent to be added to the author or musician’s e-mail list. Downloaders can decide later to tip the author.

It costs nothing to post a book on NoiseTrade. However, authors can pay $50 to $500 extra to receive promotion in NoiseTrade’s Wednesday newsletter, or $500 to $1000 for a feature in NoiseTrade’s Saturday newsletter, which usually includes an interview.

NoiseTrade counts eight people on its core team. Staff work remotely from Minneapolis, Nashville, Chicago and Atlanta.

Amanda Michelle Moon, head of NoiseTrade Books, told me that she is optimistic about indie publishing. She also gave a few tips about how to have a successful launch on NoiseTrade.

Amanda Moon is the head of NoiseTrade Books and creative coordinator.

Q. 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?

Amanda: My background (and degree) are both in Music Business. I’ve published two books, and the music experience has helped with the process greatly. Publishing has, and (I believe) will, continue to follow the music industry trajectory. The huge signing bonuses have already gone away, publishers are getting stingy about where they are spending money. It’s going to continue to get harder and harder to get that elusive Big 5 contract.

However, self-published authors have huge opportunities. By getting smart about the business side of publishing, they have the potential to make much more money than most ever would with a publisher. Having to do everything “yourself” is impossible, though, so I am much more an advocate of people thinking of themselves as “Indie” rather than “self” published. “Indie” is independent of a major publisher, but not alone. Very few people can actually do it alone.

Q. How can self-published authors match the marketing budgets of the big publishers?

Amanda: They can’t, and they don’t need to. A lot of publishers work through a formula for each book: Galleys on NetGalley, giveaway on Goodreads, ad in Name Your Large Publication. They can’t look at each book individually and make the strategic decisions that are right for that particular book, they don’t have time. It’s a shotgun approach. A self-published or indie author can take the time to really get to know their readers and target their marketing dollars in more effective ways. Just because a New York Times ad worked for Stephen King doesn’t mean it will work for your horror story.

Q. Could you provide a brief history of NoiseTrade, including when it expanded from music into books?

Amanda: In 2006 one of our founders, singer/songwriter Derek Webb gave away one of his albums for free online, asking in return for a little information (name, email address, and postal code). In three month’s time he gave away over 80,000 full downloads of his album and collected valuable information for as many new fans. As a direct result, Derek saw many sold out shows, increased merchandise and album sales, including a curious spike in sales of the very album that was given for free.

It was the massive success of this experiment that inspired Webb, with the help of a few trusted friends, to start NoiseTrade. Since its launch in 2008, NoiseTrade has seen incredible growth as a marketing and distribution platform for music. Books was added in early 2014. It was an idea that had been kicking around for a while–a few of the founders had ties in the book world, and the similarities between the recording and publishing industries are undeniable.

Q. How many book downloads do you get per month compared to music album downloads? How many musicians and how many authors have posted their work on the site?

Amanda: Music has about 10 times the downloads as books. There are over 20,000 musicians that have used the site in the last seven years, and almost 2,000 authors in the last 18 months.

Q. For an author looking to add their book to NoiseTrade, what tips do you have to maximize the success of a launch?

Amanda: Promote it! So many people put books on our site and don’t do any promotion around them— that has about the same success as putting a book on Amazon and then never pointing people to it. There is a ton of noise, you have to let people know what you have out there. We offer a few tools to help, including a widget that can be embedded on web pages, and a weekly, curated newsletter of paid content.

My NoiseTrade widget for We, The Watched:

Q. What do you tell authors who are worried that putting a book up for free on NoiseTrade might hurt their sales on other channels?

Amanda: Josh Garrels, an independent artist, recently released his new album with us the same day as it dropped at all the major retailers. When factoring in the tips he received, the amount of money he lost was negligible, and he added tens of thousands of new fans to his email list. These are the people who are going to support his subsequent albums, his shows, everything else he’s doing.

Authors have the same opportunity to create dedicated fans as musicians do, but they need to weigh the short-term loss against the long-term gain. We see a lot of authors put excerpts of their books on the site and see minimal engagement and high unsubscribes. It’s because they’re not offering anything other than what someone could find on iBooks or Amazon already, without having to give up their email address. The transaction has to be beneficial for both the author and the reader for it to work.

Q. When someone downloads a book, are they opting in to receive emails from the author?

Amanda: Yes. When a fan, either music or books, submits their email address to us to download something, they are agreeing to receiving emails from us (our weekly features) and any author/artist whose work they download. We do not share or sell email addresses beyond with the content creators.

Q. Besides NoiseTrade, what other innovative companies are helping self-published authors right now?

Amanda: I’m a huge fan of the model created by InkShares. It’s crowd-funding, but one person can’t spend a bunch of money to get the book through. The crowd really does need to support the project.

WiseInk also has a really great business model. As an author, what I really want is the “Manager” from the music industry: the partner with the experience to help make decisions, coordinate all of the other moving parts, and really help think strategically and long-term for both the particular project, but also for the artist’s career. WiseInk is more of a partner than a traditional publisher, and I love what they’re doing.

Q. What’s coming next for NoiseTrade? What can you tell me about any plans to further expand or enhance your services for authors?

On the immediate horizon are some updates to our weekly emails. We’re adding descriptions to all our books, not just our main features. We’re also launching a book club, where readers are going to have access to ask authors questions on social media. We’re actively working to bring in more genres, and also new readers, and continuing to create a community on the site.

Thanks to Amanda Michelle Moon for the interview. Please also check out my interview with Story Cartel’s Joe Bunting on how authors can get more customer reviews.

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Tag: self-publishing

Readers seek great books, not big publishers: Bibliocrunch CEO Miral Sattar

Divided We Fall joins Library Journal’s SELF-e Select

Reedsy pushes for better indie books through collaboration

Reedsy co-founder Emmanuel Nataf talks about the future of indie publishing.

Line between traditional, indie publishing nearly gone: The Fussy Librarian

Meet The Fussy Librarian

How indie authors can break through the noise with NoiseTrade

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