Australian authors

Bite Me on the Barcode: More on Pricing and POD for the Aussie author

/ annettehamilton82 / 4 Comments

In my last post here I confessed to some serious doubts about the effects of “selling” your books for free, not just on the individual author, but on the indie ecosystem as a whole. Since then I have entered a NWOP (and it ain’t Fifty Shades). What to do with that second white square at the end of your ISBN barcode?

I published my children’s book The Priceless Princess with Kindle and Createspace just a couple of months ago. I had already purchased my own ISBNs which I used correctly, one on each version. Book came out, very cute, set a low price for the print version thinking of my Australian readers who would have to pay the US dollar price. Dumb me only then realised that Amazon in Australia does not sell any print versions. Australian readers would have to go to the US site, purchase in US$ and then pay a fortune to have the book posted to Australia. Or buy copies from my website. So I order a bunch of copies from Createspace and lo! I am paying  dollars per copy just to have them posted to me in Australia by the only postage option available through Createspace.

Don’t want to do that again, so I would have to do what everybody recommended and get the print version onto Ingram Spark, who do print in Australia. I download their nifty Cover Generator and it asks do I want to set a price in the barcode. What? So I go back to my Createspace version and notice for the first time that there is a code adjacent to the ISBN, and it is Code 90000. For a minute or three I am diverted by the idea that this could be a great title for a thriller, although Code 9000 would be better. But back to matters at hand! This code turns out to mean that no price has been set. Should I set a price? What price should it be – the same as the Createspace one on the Amazon site? But that is in US$ and obviously for people who are in the US.  I need these books asap, so to save time I decide to use the Amazon price in the barcode so I send the  Cover Generator to my illustrator who is putting the files together. But I am uneasy about it, and go into research mode. Should I have put the price in the barcode, or not?

Of course there is no clear answer. I email Ingram Spark, they email back almost immediately (great service by the way) to recommend that no price be put in the barcode because if you ever change your price then you have to reprint the cover and upload the new one, decommissioning the previous one. But other sources say bookshops won’t stock books that don’t have prices in the barcode. Codes begin with a number indicating where the book is published and priced. 5 is for the US. 3 is for Australia. If for some reason a store outside Australia wants to stock your book it won’t be able to sell it if the code starts with 3 because its stock system won’t be able to read it.

Some say it is another covert way to tell whether or not a book comes from a “real” publisher as against one of those pretend publishers who are really just some idiot typing something up in Word and using wicked Amazon to hide behind, people like me. You need that numbered price code to show you are the real deal. Others say it used to be important but not any more because booksellers stick their own codes over those on the book and charge whatever they fancy anyway.

I go to my bookshelves and check my physical books. Some have a price code but a lot of recently published books from “real” publishers only have the 90000 code. Many writer/bloggers say the likelihood of getting anything into a physical bookstore is so low you might as well forget about that anyway, go with the “no price” option. So I decide to do that but my illustrator has already done the cover for Ingram Spark and now I have to download a new Template and get him to do it over.

Every step of the way there is something mysterious and new to discover. Books and writing used to be a world of pleasure. Now it’s a mystery tour and nothing too magical about it either. Maybe not quite the Haas of Pain, but still!

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The Haas of Pain: Charlie Haas performing his finishing submission move, 31/3/2012 Wikimedia Commons.

Create Space and Australian Authors: Amazon replies -“Expanded Distribution”

/ annettehamilton82 / Leave a comment

After finally getting that Australian author’s titles printed on Create Space would not be available in the Amazon Australian store, I decided to ask why not. Here’s the answer:

“We do not currently distribute to Amazon.au. We welcome future opportunities for new international marketplaces helping you reach more customers worldwide.

“We offer an option to enroll eligible titles in the Expanded Distribution Channel at no cost.  Enrolling can allow your book to appear on Amazon Australia or on any of the other sites not directly supported through us at the moment. The availability of your books on these sites is at the discretion of retailers who purchase your books through the Expanded Distribution Channel. We cannot guarantee your book(s) will appear on Amazon Australia.

Once you have successfully enrolled your title in Expanded Distribution, it may take up to six to eight weeks for your title to begin populating in the distribution channels you have selected.”

Right, so even if I do enrol in Expanded Distribution that doesn’t guarantee that my book will be on the Australian Amazon site, and it may take two months to turn up on any of the distribution channels which may decide to list the book.  WHAT???

I have read lots of threads on forums and blogs trying to explain what all this means and I already knew that there was a very important reason why you SHOULDN’T enrol your Create Space printed book with Amazon’s Expanded Distribution. No booksellers or libraries will buy it. I found some old notes I’d made to myself months ago explaining why you should print through Ingram Spark if you want to reach these wider channels. I already knew this was a recommended strategy but it still didn’t mean your book would be available at any booksellers in Australia. Ingram Spark doesn’t guarantee your print books will be on bookshelves. It does mean a reader who has already heard of your book can order it from a bookshop. But just in case a bookseller DOES want to stock it you have to set the price for all copies with around a 50% discount.

I someone has already heard of your book, why can’t they buy it from your author website? They can,  but you have to have a Paypal button and then post it to them. That’s a nuisance especially if the books start selling well. You should be so lucky!

The real problem is that most dedicated and enthuiastic Australian readers only find out about books from places like Arts TV shows (yes, Jennifer Byrne et al) or from national newspapers and magazines who only ever talk about trad pub books so they are not going to hear about your book or find your website in the first place. Unless you are writing about golf, or fishing, and advertise your book in specialist magazines. I hear that can work really well.

But if you are writing literary fiction or at least decent genre fiction you are out on a flimsy limb.hawk_out_on_a_limb_at_lake_woodruff_-_flickr_-_andrea_westmoreland Australian traditional publishers don’t want authors who haven’t gone through the secret accreditation process which dominates the business. Australian agents won’t represent them. They can write books and publish them on Amazon but Amazon won’t sell the print copies in Australia. Australian booksellers stick with the traditional imprints, mostly from the Big Five international houses. Many dedicated Australian readers can’t or don’t do e-books and/or hate Amazon because they’ve been told that Amazon is the enemy.

In the US, the large chain bookstores are in trouble: Borders closed, and Barnes and Noble is struggling. Lonely authors wait for someone – anyone – to come and buy their books.

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“Snooki” Polizzi: a reality TV star turned author – actually she is doing quite well even if Borders is no longer with us

Small independent publishing seems the way to go, but how to get the books into the bookshops where Australian readers still want to shop for books? Dedicated readers seem to love their bookshops here. But booksellers needs books which are in some way curated for quality:  you can be sure they don’t want badly written junk with naked alpha billionaires on the cover. Whichever way you look, it’s a minefield.