Ads in Ebooks
By Scott Nicholson
I’ve gotten out of the “writer babble” business for two
reasons: (1) I don’t know as much as I thought I did, and (2) it’s all changing
so fast that even the boldest predictions of digital evolution quickly become
laughable.
I don’t even use traditional publishing as a reference point
anymore, because that is so far removed from most writers’ realities that it
may as well be Shangri-la or Hollywood.
The indie vs. trad debate is now only meaningful for a small group of people,
and they are all making way more money than you or me.
So you are in it, and if you are lucky, you made a nice little
nest egg back when everyone was standing on the sidelines deciding whether
indie was the way to go. Hopefully, you shook off the intellectual shackles
that chained us to the agent speed-dating sessions at writing conferences and
were hammered and locked into place by “publishing experts” with 20-year writing
careers in the old system. You know the mantras: “Get an agent,” “Only hacks
self-publish,” and “You can’t produce and distribute a book without the advice
of publishing experts.” Basically, ego affirmation. Of course the experts didn’t want to lose their position of authority
(and in the agents’ case, the intermediary status of being the first in line to
get checks.)
But the gate was left open and the horses all got out of the
barn, or something like that (come up with your own gatekeeper metaphor; I am
writing this for free!) So now we have a market where the 99-cent ebook had a
year’s run, and the pool was finally beginning to find stratification (crappy
books sinking, good books nailing stable plateaus) when Amazon unleashed the
latest version of indie roulette—the free ebook.
I'm on record as predicting the flat-text e-book era has an
outside range of five years, at least for fiction—specialized non-fiction and
manuals will continue to be valuable for their content alone. I believe e-book
sales will continue, but certainly not with expanding profits for all involved.
Now that there are thousands of free Kindle books available every single day,
how long before readers come to expect and even demand free books exclusively?
Freebie roulette. Great for readers. Good for Amazon (maybe
in the short term, but it is hard to figure the long term). Terrible for
authors.
The market is diverse enough to support many different price
tiers, but writers who want to survive in 2015 will need to make money off of
free books, or they will soon quit writing.
I only see one outcome: ad-supported or sponsored books. At
first blush, you'd think N.Y. has an advantage, since Madison Avenue is right
there. But can corporations, with their large structures, be able to compete
when indie or smaller entities can react more quickly to present conditions
instead of protecting some imagined status quo?
J.K. Rowling can inspire a Pottermore built around her
brand, and James Patterson, Tom Clancy, and Clive Cussler have already built
factories around their names (and, yes, V.C. Andrews, you can roll over in your
grave two or three more times for all I care, because this is all your fault).
But most of us are not factories or we wouldn’t have to indie publish.
This points out the new era of the branded writer. And not
just "writer," but "content creator" and even mere
"idea marketer." A personality is more suited to building brand
identification and audience than a publisher is. I say "James
Patterson" and you get an image. I say "Random House" and what
do you get? Randomness. We've seen it here locally: "Ray's Weather"
is where you check the weather and "Todd's Calendar" is where you click
to find what's happening in the region—and both are ad supported. You can get
the free content elsewhere but you don't get the human personality attached.
I'm already experimenting with the ad model because I
believe it is viable. I am counting on Idea Marketing being one of my
foundational pillars. I am not quite sure what it all looks like right now, but
I look at it this way—you don't need NY in order to give away tons of free
e-books or to spread an idea or to build a social platform. You are the idea
you want to spread.
Other authors will say “I’ll never sell out.” (Ironically,
those are usually the authors who have given most of their incomes to agents
and publishers…) I don't blame people for sticking with what worked in the
past. It all goes to how invested you are in a certain system and how the
alternative looks, and, of course, the turf where you’ve staked out your ego.
Publishing-industry talk on e-books uses phrases like "managing risk"
and "cautious adaptation." That is why those of us in the trenches
knew Barnes & Noble was in serious trouble when most in the “publishing
industry” only realized it recently when BN’s horrifyingly bad third-quarter
reports came in. They are working off of old data while I work off the data I
got an hour ago.
And my data says this may be the very peak of the Golden Age
of digital publishing. The $9.99 novel may be dead this year, since
three-quarters of the current bestsellers are low-priced indie books. As fast
as major publishers yank their name-brand authors out of digital libraries, 10
new indies cram into that virtual shelf space. Maybe forever. James Patterson’s
factory can’t run on $2.99 ebooks, but mine can.
But what happens when the $2.99 and 99 cents drop to
permanently free? Where’s your sponsor? Are you willing to go there? It's not
going to be as clumsy as an image of a refreshing Bud Lite popping up when the
main character enters a bar (though it's not unthinkable at some point.) Can
you see Jack Reacher with a favorite brand of soft drink, or Bella Swan wearing
only Calvin Klein? At what point is your willing suspension of disbelief
shattered? At what point do you realize the ad is the only reason the book can
exist at all?
My informal polling on ad-supported ebooks yields statements
like: "I'll quit reading before I put up with that." I also remember
saying I'd never carry a cell phone, or be on Facebook, or give up my
vinyl albums, or start thinking that maybe nuclear energy is the best
short-range answer to our energy addiction. Or that I’d ever read an entire
book on a screen.
I don’t know the answer, but I am deeply invested in the
question. So, ads in ebooks. As readers and writers, what is your opinion?
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First, the KDP Select program of Amazon has gone through its natural cycle--early pioneers get great results, word gets back to the others, the Gold Rush turns into a stampede, and the hills are prospected into tiny mounds of pebbles Part of it is Amazon's ever-changing algorithms that no longer give a huge rankings bounce to indies, and part is the sheer glut of free books that results when authors are repeatedly making 130,000 books free. This has all been written about far more ably and in depth by others (Kindleboards is a great resource if you're interested), but I figured the jig would be up by summer one way or another.
