Part of my 12 for ’12 plan involves moving into self-publishing. This is the first of (I hope) a series of posts about why I decided to do this and how being an indie publisher works. 

If you’ve been following the ebook revolution, you’ll often hear publishers justify higher prices for ebooks by claiming that it doesn’t cost much less to produce an ebook than it does for a printed book. After all, the writing, editing, cover, and so on — the fixed costs for developing a book — all cost the same amount no matter the book’s format. The only difference is that paper books must be printed and shipped, which we’re often told is a relatively minor portion of the costs of the book.

Even if you take that as true, it misses a huge part of the brick-and-mortar book-selling business that skews things in the favor of ebooks and print-on-demand books, at least for smaller publishers. It’s all about inventory management.

If I’m a publisher and I sell a book to a bookstore (or a chain, or whatever), I sell it on a returnable basis. This means that the store doesn’t pay me for the book until it’s sold. Books are heavy, and rather than pay money to ship them back, most publishers only ask the bookstore to rip the covers off the unsold books and send those back instead. (This is a point against those that argue that it doesn’t cost all that much to ship books around. If not, why worry about shipping covers back instead of full books?)

Somewhere around 40% of all books sent to booksellers are either returned or destroyed. That means that the average book is overprinted by 66%. Even if the cost per book isn’t all that much, that kind of regular, systematic, purposeful overage adds up.

Books that are returned sometimes get sent back out to other stores that somehow found an audience for the book that was bigger than expected rather than less. Others are held onto for reorders later in the book’s life. Those that remain in the publishers warehouse at the end of the year can be taxed as assets, so there’s a strong incentive to get rid of them after a certain amount of time and let the book go out of print.

With ebooks and POD books, you don’t have to worry about any of this. The cost of making another copy of an ebook approaches zero. While POD books cost more per unit to make than regular books, there’s no risk of overprinting or underprinting.

The real trouble comes with trying to estimate the demand for a book. While longtime professionals can have a decent feel for how many copies of a book might sell, so many different factors come into play that it’s impossible to get it right all the time.

Let’s say you decide to print 5,000 copies of a book, and it sells out. Now what do you do? You can take the money and sit on it, or you can go back to press. If you reprint the book, how many do you print?

Let’s say you’re an optimist and order another 5,000 copies of the book. But maybe the whole audience for such a book is 6,000 people, so you only sell another 1,000 copies. You wind up having to pulp the rest of them. That little mistake can amount to a good chunk of your thin margins on the book and turn it from a profitable seller into a money loser.

Now, for a big publisher, multiply that by hundreds of releases in a year, not to mention the thousands of titles on its backlist. It’s easy to see how a few bad mistakes can cost the company a great deal of money, but over the years the risks tend to average out. The smart publishers know this and fold it into their cost of doing business the same way a Las Vegas casino knows that it’s going to make money in the long run by rigging their games in their favor. That’s smart inventory management.

But what if you’re a small or independent publisher? The numbers aren’t on your side. You’re not a casino owner. You’re a player. A good streak can put you at the top of the heap, but a bad run can leave you flat busted and trying to figure out if you can hock your watch for bus fare out of town.

(In the gaming industry, I’ve seen lots of publishers go out of business. In every case I remember, they had a warehouse full of unsold product. Poor inventory management — among other things — killed them off.)

For small publishers, then, ebooks and POD remove every bit of risk involved with inventory management. There’s no inventory to manage. No book is made until someone pays for it. Instead of gambling your company on every book you publish, you reduce your risk to zero — as long as you can sell enough copies to cover your fixed costs.

The other benefit of ebooks, of course, is the higher profit margins. Most books sold through bookstores give the publisher something between 40–50% of the retail price of the book. With ebooks, they get 70% (in most cases). (The profit on POD books depends on what you charge, as the printing costs on each book is fixed.)

The ebook revolution is the main reason I — and many other authors — have been able to go into publishing our own books. The higher margins and lower risks — coupled with the lower costs of producing a book that modern computers provide — mean we can make money without having to mortgage our houses or line up investors. It’s taken a lot of the guesswork out of the business for the small publisher, and it’s hard to overstate how much of a difference that makes.

It’s been a crazy week. I launched the Dangerous Games drive on Wednesday, and it’s already up over $5k, which is the best start yet, by far. Thanks to everyone that’s pitched in over there! The rest of us have until June 17, Father’s Day, but please don’t put it off until the last second. My poor heart can’t take it.

Meanwhile, I’ve been sending out the hardcopies of Brave New World: Revolution to the people who backed at the $35 and $50 levels. I still have a few folks who haven’t responded to the survey yet, so if you’re expecting to get one of these and didn’t get a survey from Kickstater, don’t be shy. Check your spam filter, or drop me a line at matt@forbeck.com.

In other news, Brave New World: Revolution hit the #1 spot onDriveThruFiction.com the day after the ebook debuted! It’s since slipped to #2 and been hovering there all week, right behind Don’t Read This Book, an anthology by Chuck Wendig, in which I have a story. I’m just thrilled to see it rocket so high. Many thanks to everyone who’s bought it.

If you enjoyed Brave New World: Revolution, I’d appreciate if if you could take the time to tell people about it. The best way is often through online reviews. The ebook is now for sale through most major retailers, so if you frequent one of these places, stop by and tell the folks there how much you liked the book. It’s also up at GoodReads — thanks to some help from Abhinav Jain — so you can leave a rating or review there too.

• GoodReads
• Kindle
• Nook
• DriveThruFiction.com
• Forbeck.com store

Thanks again for all your support! It’s both humbling and thrilling at the same time, and I truly do appreciate it.

I just launched my latest Kickstarter for my third trilogy in the 12 for ’12 series: Dangerous Games. The pitch goes something like this:

Once a year, the greatest tabletop gamers in the world descend upon Indianapolis for Gen Con, the Best Four Days in Gaming, to play games, see friends, and have fun. They play things like D&D, Magic: The Gathering, Warhammer 40,000, Settlers of Catan, Munchkin, and everything else they can get their hands on. Mostly the competition is friendly.

Sometimes it is not.

When a world-famous game designer turns up murdered at the convention, a group of gamers makes it their quest to figure out who killed him, and why. As they dig deeper, they start to question everything they thought they knew about the man: who he is, why someone hated him enough to kill him — and if he’s really dead. In the end, they must figure out who’s playing whom or risk not only losing this most dangerous game but their lives.

If that sounds like fun, check out the video below too, and then head on over to Kickstarter and place your pledge. The drive ends on June 17 (Father’s Day!), but that’ll be here before you know it. 

If you can also help spread the word, I’d appreciate that. The 12 for ’12 plan has been a huge success so far, but that all falls apart without help from wonderful people like you. Thanks!

Yesterday, I put Brave New World: Revolution up for sale on DriveThruFiction.com and here on my site. You can now also get it for the Kindle and for the Nook through their direct stores.

Best of all, although the book’s only been available for about 24 hours, it’s already hit #1 on DriveThruFiction.com! To frost that cake, Don’t Read This Book — Chuck Wendig’s Don’t Rest Your Head anthology, in which I have a story — sits at #2, and Gareth-Michael Skarka’s Tales of the Far West — in which I also have a story — stands at #7.

Thanks to all the people who have backed and bought the book so far. I’m just thrilled with the response. If you’ve enjoyed it, don’t be shy about posting reviews, whether on your own site, at Amazon, on Goodreads, or wherever else you like. Woot!

Amazon jumped the June 1 release date and has the audiobook of Carpathia for sale already. This is my first-ever audiobook release, and I cannot wait to hear it. The talented Ralph Lister provides the voice for it.

Amazon has it for the low-low price of only $11.24 at the moment for the whole nine hours. If you like your historical horror served up with a proper British accent — which only seems fitting, given the fact the heroes are all English — be sure to check it out.

I just uploaded the files for Matt Forbeck’s Brave New World: Revolution — the first book in my 12 for ’12 series — to a number of ebook retailers. It should be available soon for the Kindle and the Nook, and I’ll post links for those formats as soon as they’re ready. In the meantime, you can order the ebook immediately through DriveThruFiction.com and directly through this website in my spanking-new ebook shop. Both of those offer the book in ePub, Kindle, and PDF formats at a single price without any DRM getting in your way.

I set up the shop today (using Jigoshop for WordPress, for those who care to know such things), and it seems to work well so far. If you have any issues with it, though, don’t hesitate to let me know.

This past Sunday the New York Times ran an article by Julie Bosman about how certain genre writers used to write a novel every year but are now being asked to buckle down and write as many as two — or at least some short stories to supplement their annual book. It’s called “In E-Reader Age of Writer’s Cramp, a Book a Year is Slacking.”

As you might imagine, I found this hilarious.

Now, I’m not mocking any writer’s work ethic or process. We all write at our own pace, and in the end it’s what’s on the page that matters, not how fast it got there. Besides which, every one of the authors quoted in the piece has likely sold far more novels than I have, so clearly what they’re doing works well for them.

The reporter takes an odd angle at the story, highlighting how hard this pace is for authors to manage. I doubt any of the authors pushed that angle. While writing is challenging and can be difficult, it’s not hard work.

My brother, for instance, works as a carpenter, often outside all winter here in Wisconsin. That’s brutal. I get to sit in a climate-controlled room and make up stories during hours I set. By almost any yardstick, I have it far easier.

There’s a better angle for the article, and it’s buried there in the text. It’s about how the publishers who work with these bestselling authors have finally figured out that readers want more from an author than a single book each year. Writers like James Patterson have known this for years. He uses co-authors to help him come out with around a dozen novels a year, and they all sell well.

Here’s hoping more publishers figure this out soon. It’s one of the reasons I took up my 12 for ’12 challenge this year, to show that it can be done. However, the reason I’m self-publishing the books is that no big publishers would even think about taking on a dozen books from me — or anyone but James Patterson, it seems. Moving writers up to two books a year is a step in the right direction, but they still have a long way to go.

I’m in the final stages of planning my next 12 for ’12 Kickstarter. It’s for a trilogy of thrillers set at Gen Con, the largest tabletop games convention in the hemisphere. I call it Dangerous Games.

This combines two of my great loves — fiction and games — and just thinking about it gets me excited for it. I’ve been a professional game designer for over twenty years and a published novelist for eight. If the success of a book comes down to “Write what you know,” these books will be amazing.

I hope to launch the Kickstarter drive this week. I have a preview of the page up now. Head on over there to get a taste. 

I’m hoping to start my next Kickstarter for the third 12 for ’12 trilogy (a trio of thrillers set in the largest gaming convention in this hemisphere) sometime next week. This schedule is relentless, but I knew that going into it. Despite that, I’m having fun riding the wave so far.

I’m thinking about altering the structure of the Kickstarter a bit this time around. Rather than try to fund one book for $3,000 and set the others as stretch goals, I’m considering setting the goal as $10,000 for all three books. This comes with its own set of risks and benefits.

The reason I went with the original structure is that it’s great to be able to step forward and say, “Hey, we hit our goal right away! Here are some stretch goals to go even farther!” The trouble comes in the way I set up the reward structure to go with that. If you went in for a trilogy right away, you risked the stretch goals not being reached and then feeling like a fool for paying so much for one or two books rather than all three.

I never want a backer to feel like they made the wrong decision by choosing a higher level. Setting the whole trilogy as a goal means that no one has to worry about that. You know that if the drive succeeds, you’ll get all three books — and if it doesn’t, you’re not out a thing. That seems fairer, right? Of course, it means a higher risk of not getting funded at all, but if that happens, at least it’s a clean break.

That raises another question, though, which is whether or not I should restructure the reward levels to eliminate the single-book levels. I’m inclined to leave them in place, but I can see the allure of streamlining the structure down to just three or four regular levels, plus the premium ones.

I’m looking for feedback on this one. What do you think?

Marty and me at last fall's Gaming Hoopla.

Later today, I’m off to the Gaming Hoopla in Janesville, WI, just up the road from where I live. This is a great little convention that the folks here run twice a year, and the proceeds all go to Relay for Life, the big event for the American Cancer Society. So, you get to do something for a good cause and have a ball doing it.

I’ll be there with my son Marty this afternoon and maybe into the evening. (I’m still trying to catch up with my work after that horrible illness last month, so I may cut out at a reasonable hour to get back to my keyboard.) At 2 PM, I’m running a seminar on designing and publishing games. If you’re around, come on by, ask me questions, get things signed if you like, and play some games. Hope to see you there!