Saturday, May 24, 2008

The Kindle Experiment

As you know your Captain wrote a book a couple years ago. It was titled "Behind the Housing Crash" and my own personal bias aside, it was a brilliant and foresightful book. Everyone who has bought it has liked it and it has very high ratings on Amazon.

Of course only about 2,000 copies sold. And though this is considered a "success" in the self-publishing world, let us be frank...

The Captain wants to make millions, not thousands of dollars.

The problem is quite simply the publishing industry itself. The industry is old, archaic, cronyistic and inept. You need to know somebody in order to get published. And like Dr. Seuss, William Faulkner, Stephen King and many other famous authors, these publishing houses lack the ability to see genuine skill and talent when it's sitting in front of their faces.

You ask, "how can publishing houses turn down the works of Stephen King, Anne Frank, Vince Flynn and Aaron Clarey?" The answer is a simple and economic one;

If you look at who is in charge of these publishing houses you will see nothing more than a bunch of elitists who all have masters degrees in "creative writing." In other words, the people who currently head not just the publishing houses, but the agencies that represent authors are not writers or readers themselves. Oh mercy no, not one of them have written anything, that would be dirtying their little fingies. They are middle management types who have NOTHING in common with the common reader. Ergo, they lack the judgment to discern or predict what is going to be popular amongst the "commoners."

It is here that you are witnessing the extinction of an industry that has proved itself to be self-serving and not a net-positive benefit to society. Much like the mainstream media has proven itself to be an arm of a political movement, the publishing industry is proving itself to be an exclusive club, not concerned about good writing that it can bring to the masses and thus joy to the people, but rather serving connected members favors in the publishing world.

What's brilliant though is the unstoppable forces of capitalism, free markets and economics. Enter the internet. Namely, Kindle.

Digital books, combined with the internet have largely rendered these traditional publishing houses irrelevant, obsolete, and unneeded. Sure, if you're a baby boomer that wants to be lied to about how you're 50 years and you're still going to find love and romance and riches, and you're too damn lazy to learn about the internet, you can find a book called "Eat Pray Love." But once the social security checks start running out and the last vestiges of "The Doors" fans die off, who is really going to want a physical book?

Regardless of what you think about the younger generations, they have made their decision. They prefer to be online over pretty much everything else. Their social lives, their dating lives, their career lives. And when given the choice to pay $22 for a physical book of 99 cents for a book, what do you think they're going to do?

It is therefore why your Captian is pursuing an economic experiment I like to call the "Kindle Experiment."

Your Captain loves to write. He would love nothing more than to have a life where he lives in a small mountain town, drives his motorcycle around, fishes, fossil hunts, tornado chases, polishes agates and salsas the night away all while financing this lifestyle with superior and engaging writing that gives his readers more value than what they paid for it. To achieve this though, the Captain cannot rely on a defunct and corrupt industry such as the traditional publishing houses in New York. It simply won't work. And it is here where the Kindle Experiment in economics begins.

"Behind the Housing Crash" is now available on Kindle.

It is 99 cents.


My business model is much based off of two things. One Amanda Hocking, the 26 year old self-published author who writes books about vampires and twilight and other such nonsense. And two, "Angry Birds" which has made a ton of money NOT because of the profit margins, but because of the volume of sales.

In short, I could charge the $22 for a book which results in 2,000 units of sales. Or I could charge 99 cents and sell millions of copies. The second of which would result in a lot more profit.

Of course, "Behind the Housing Crash" is a dated book. But this experiment is simply just that - an experiment. I don't expect to sell a ton of books. I'm just seeing how much more responsive and elastic demand is to a book that is essentially free and will base future publications on it.

So if you want to buy the book, it now costs you an irrelevant 99 cents.

If you know somebody who would like to read the book, it now costs them the 99 cents.

If you want to read books I have in the pipeline such as "Enjoy the Decline" and "The American Bachelors Guide to Happiness" and "The Battlefield Compendium for 14 Year Old Boys" and other great books, it now costs you 99 cents.

Or if you plain just want to stick it to the elitist commie snobs of the east coast publishing houses, it will cost you 99 cents.

So go forth and purchase, or simply recommend it to friends. Future brilliant works depend on it.

26 comments:

  1. Don't forget about the Barnes & Noble Nook.

    Regarding prices, I'm not about to pay $12.00 for an ebook, so I think the publishers still have a lot to learn about that. The 99 cent price is good, and I've wondered why publishers haven't followed that pricing model. I'd be willing to pay maybe $5 for an ebook. Ah well.

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  2. je je and I just received my brand new kindle. We will see...

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  3. sth_txs2:05 PM

    I've been waiting for the electronics to drop some more, and I really don't have a need for a Kindle or anything similar right now.

    Good luck Captain.

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  4. The publishing industry is really clueless. They think they can charge more than the retail price of a paperback for an ebook. When they drop the price to less than the wholesale price of a paperback, I may be interested.

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  5. Ill pay full price for your book using my Amazon Christmas gift card, even though you would not publish a left-leaning, right-bashing post of mine.

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  6. Shit... I bought that before I finished reading the blog post. Now go write something.

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  7. Anonymous6:40 PM

    "who is really going to want a physical book?"

    Me. I hate reading lots of words of the screen. Of course, since all modern fiction is shit, I only buy second hand books, so it doesn't cost me much anyway. Part of the reason publishing houses are losing money is their poor taste in fiction.

    1. Captain, as someone who failed to get a book through the traditional publishing houses, how do you get a book on kindle? Do you still need it endorsed or whatever by a reputable publishing company or can you put your book on kindle yourself?

    2. Following on from 1, if you can submit your own books, what will that do to the quality? One thing the traditional publishing companies have going for them is that they thoroughly edit each manuscript.

    3. Captain, if you don't understand why twilight sold so well then you don't understand women.

    - Breeze

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  8. Sounds like a good idea Captain, though I am old enough to still prefer books on paper (I have thousands of them.) I enjoyed your book and if you publish an updated edition, I'll buy that too.

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  9. Anonymous7:38 PM

    http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/05/why-and-how-i-self-published-a-book/

    he explains some ins and outs//likes self pub even after he had 3-4 old-style books out

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  10. Anonymous8:19 PM

    And once you've figured out how to do it and how to market this kind of e-book, you write a how to do it e-book - a.k.a. Electronic Self Publishing for Dummies.

    Hey and don't forget to have a .pdf format for download that us folks without Kindles and Nooks can read them.

    BTW, I know a person who literally wrote an e-book on how to write and market apps like Angry Birds. Needless to say she's doing pretty well with it because everybody wants to cash in like Angry Bird's developers did.

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  11. Chris8:53 PM

    If you can get it to work with Kobo I'm in for a buck.

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  12. It's funny, I grew up reading books. My father was in the Air Force when I was a kid so we moved every 2 years like clockwork. I experienced the world through the rear car windows, and since this was the pre-digital age (70's and early 80's), all I had for entertainment were comic books and paperbacks. He would read to me every night before bed and it just stuck. I love the smell, the feel, the wild imagery that science fiction and fantasy offers in my minds eye. I was therefore very much anti-e-book since I felt the loss of tactile feedback would be off putting. My mother bought a Kindle for me last Christmas and pre-loaded it with a lot of my favorites as well as a few pirated collections.

    I can honestly say I'll never go back. I LOVE my Kindle. No more dog-earring pages or misplaced bookmarks, no more giant heavy boxes of books to lug around every time I move. I carry around with me literally hundreds of volumes. I scan Amazon often for 99 cent books and buy them even if they're not hugely appealing. I'll get around to reading them and get much more than 99 cents worth of entertainment out of it. On top of all that, I'm in the process of teaching myself programming, web design, and games design and am saving hundreds of dollars buying digital copies rather than hardbacks.

    Oh Capt'n my Capt'n, consider your volumes purchased!

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  13. Well Sir, since I just picked one up a couple of months ago and enjoy reading with it, you've got a customer!

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  14. JB100011:18 PM

    I went Kindle about a year ago. I looked up your book on Amazon a few weeks ago and saw it was not available on Kindle. You just sold me a copy.

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  15. Marty1:00 AM

    You must tell us how it goes...

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  16. Could I get my print copy signed instead?

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  17. This is what I have suggested in a comment some time ago so I'm very happy for the Kindle option.
    I rushed to buy your book but I was charged $3.44 instead of the .99 expected. This is not a problem as $5 is my treshold. I wish you to get rich but please keep posting if you do.

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  18. Chris P.4:12 AM

    You don't kneed to own a Kindle device to read the books. There is a Kindle app for PC & Mac and a great number of small devices.

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  19. Anonymous5:30 AM

    Congratulations on this decision! I'm going to go buy a copy now. I don't have a Kindle, but I do have an iPhone with the Kindle app, and it works quite well.

    -Ben

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  20. Anonymous6:21 AM

    You just sold me a copy.

    Personally, I shelled out close to $200 for a kindle because my addiction to reading is unstoppable and quite expensive. However, I found out that I could get a whole bunch of old books for free. Although old, these books are still important and worth reading, but obtaining a physical copy of some obscure, old books in their original language is not cheap.

    Unfortunately, from what I understand, the publishers set the price of the kindle books, which often results in a book priced $1 less than the physical copy, or even slightly more expensive than the physical copy. I don't think that this will continue for much longer.

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  21. BC Monkey6:54 AM

    If you have a PC, download Kindle for PC and download the book there.

    I previously bought the book, will be getting the Kindle edition to support the Captain's assorted bad habits and have already forwarded this post to my friends with the recommendation to get the book on Kindle.

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  22. Anonymous9:26 AM

    Ergo, they lack the judgment to discern or predict what is going to be popular amongst the "commoners."

    They only know one metric: Has this same author already sold a bunch of books. Ergo, A famous author will only write good books in the future. So guys like Clancy and Clive Cussler can keep phoning it in for another decade after they have obviously lost interest in writing and still get published.

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  23. Toss it on the kobo and the nook as well.

    I still do like a physical book, but its hard to be the portability of an ereader. The nightstand has physical books queued up while the carry on bag has a kobo.

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  24. Works for me. UK Person here has just bought it.

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  25. I'm at the front end of the online generation you speak of (born in December of '82) and I bought that sucker for my iPad as soon as I saw the link. Keep fighting the good fight Cappy Cap! Your blog rocks!

    Also, as someone who voted against Captain Hopenchange, you are right on the money when you argue that my generation voted for him because it was the cool thing to do. I have friends who would scream and sputter in rage whenever I tried pointing out the ridiculousness of their false god. Most of them are unemployed and living with their parents now.

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  26. Great post! Mr. Scott Bainbridge opened my eyes to your blog (I work with him), now here I am, and I'm loving what I'm reading.

    Nice to meet you, and I will most likely be delving down this path in the fall.

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