Nonfiction in Non-Book Form

Let's begin by agreeing that everyone reading or writing for I.N.K. loves books, obviously(!) During my career, many changes have taken place in the publishing industry, from big box bookstores to word processors to personal computers to digital layout and illustration. Recently all this ebook stuff started up...reflowable ebooks, book apps, subscription services, and other innovative ways to deliver "content." (Don't you just love being a content creator and/or a content consumer? Whatever!)

Anyway, I looked into a variety of options, put an o.p. title on iBooks, helped start a group blog about digital books, and spent many hours absorbing blogs/forums/webinars. One criterion is that I must have big, colorful visuals as part of my digital creations. It's fairly easy to have a text-based ebook up on Amazon et al without too much difficulty, but it's not relevant for my purposes.

If a publisher wants to do something ebookish with one of my published books, there's no additional effort on my part, probably. But if not enough is happening along that line, many authors have been seeking other options.

After looking into various alternatives and pursuing some, I've come up with these general guidelines for evaluating potential indie projects:

How long does it take to create it?

How "gettable" is it for buyers?

How robust is the marketplace?

And does it have to be a "book?"

In all the excited chatter about this or that innovation, rarely is the cost-benefit ratio mentioned. Sure you can do X, but if it takes months and/or thousands of dollars to do X, how realistic is it for a product that needs to earn its keep via actual sales? I can tell you from personal experience that merely planning an interactive book app (for example) takes eons, much less actually making it. Many of us don't have a lot of spare money or months to gamble away on this or that project that may or may not sell. Trying to learn some new miraculous tech-of-the-moment before it withers away may not be the best use of one's time. Perhaps some "old" technology may be perfectly fine and offers orders of magnitude less hassle. Not to mention that many more potential customers already have the reader or other software installed and they don't have to buy a new device, download an app, or learn a new program.

I'm not sure when the idea of getting out of the book "box" dawned on me. The question became: what am I trying to deliver...is it a book, or is it information + fun? So let's say it doesn't have to be a book or a digital book-facsimile. Then what are the possibilities: a game, a play, a song, a video, a hands-on project? Without further ado, here's one nonfiction resource that I've made:

Shown is one part of a PDF that has printable posters, an informational text selection, charts, diagrams, student response pages, plus the butterfly craft where students showcase what they've learned about Monarchs. More info is in this blog post. I have no idea how commonly available this type of hands-on educational activity may be, but based on the feedback so far, teachers and students are enjoying it. And just about anybody with a computer and an Internet connection can download a PDF and already has a printer.

Other non-book nonfiction examples
• Crazy for Similes is a book extention activity in PowerPoint format, another very common program that zillions of people have. This one is a freebie, and has been downloaded over 500 times in less than a month.

• A PDF related to my book Seeing Symmetry has a scavenger hunt, an illustration matching activity, various drawing, cutting, and folding pages, posters, and a real-world symmetry recording sheet.

• On my drawing board is a printable nutrition game related to an upcoming fall book, and nearby are piles and piles of scribbles about ideas from A to Z that I'm dying to work on, just as soon as I finish this book dummy for a publisher.

And what about that marketplace guideline? As far as I know, you can't sell PDFs on Amazon, or if you can, nobody knows about it. My stuff is too big to fit in a dinky little tablet screen (you know I love you, my iPad) and besides, have you ever tried to search for anything in the so-called iBookstore? Apple wants to sell hardware and software, but books, not so much. If they did you could search on "sea turtles" and have my sea turtle book come up, and a bunch of other relevant iBooks that don't necessarily have "sea turtles" in the title or subtitle. And, you could read an iBook on a non-Apple device/computer the way you can read a Kindle book on just about any device. Not to go on a rant, but seriously!

The marketplace that I stumbled over last year is TeachersPayTeachers. With over a million registered users, it's going great guns with just under $7 million in earnings for its sellers in the 1st quarter. The sellers are primarily teachers, who are self-publishing resources that they use in their own classrooms. It's intriguing and just plain fun to cut out all the intermediaries, sell for a lower price, and hear directly from people who are using your creations and who often make suggestions for things they need. There are other options out there for selling digital and hard goods such as Etsy, and other teacher-oriented selling sites.

The best technology in the world is useless if it's too hard for people to utilize, and without a good marketplace for people to buy and sell, nothing much happens. Who knows what the nonfiction ecosystem will look like in 5 years? I'm looking forward to watching it evolve and taking part. Oh, you're probably wondering about my sales, aren't you? It's definitely a learning curve to figure out what people will pay for. Let's put it this way...if all my items sold as well as my top sellers, I'd be a very happy author-illustrator. Just like regular ol' traditional publishing, you make what inspires you, put it out there, and hope somebody will want it!

Welcome to the Wild World of Enhanced E-Books

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the publisher of my book The Mighty Mars Rovers: The incredible adventures of Spirit and Opportunity just released enhanced e-book versions of my book and three other Scientists in the Field titles. And I have to say, they are pretty dang cool. Here’s a short video that shows how they work:

If you have trouble viewing the video click here.

I’m a pretty low-tech person (lucky to be married to a high-tech hubby and raising a high-tech tweener) and I still read books the old fashioned way – printed on paper and bound with a cover.  But iPads and the like can do something that print books cannot. They can show video.

When I was researching and writing The Mighty Mars Rovers, I discovered a treasure trove of cool videos and animations produced by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab, available for free to the public. They showed Spirit and Opportunity’s launches (impressive billowing smoke at take-off), the sequence of their landings (parachutes deploying, retrorockets shooting, air-bag-wrapped landers bouncing to a stop), and how their robotic arms move. Several videos strung together photos taken by the rovers so you could watch their journeys across the red planet as if you were rolling in their tracks. And update videos showed scientists and engineers talking about their work on the mission – their hopes and dreams, their disappointments and triumphs.  I loved watching the videos while researching and I remember wishing my readers could watch them, too.  But how would kids ever find them and would they take the time to wade through the archives to find the best ones?  I linked to a few of my favorites on my website, but I really wished readers could see the robotic arm in action while reading about the robotic arm.

And now there they are (among other enhancements). As you flip through the pages, small video icons show where to click to view a short video on the topic discussed. My daughter, who has read the book, spent several hours watching all the videos – some of them multiple times. And I think she got more from the book as a result.

But what if kids simply flip through and only watch the videos? Would that undermine the purpose of the book? From viewing the videos, kids would learn a lot about rovers, about Mars and about the scientific process. Some might be inspired to consider a vocation in science. Others might be inspired to work a little harder to overcome obstacles to follow their dreams. But I wonder: Will some kids be inspired to read a book they might otherwise have passed up? That’s something I’d really like to know. Will the enhancements become a substitute for the written word or a way to pull kids in or lead them to a deeper understanding?

What do you think about interactive enhancements in ebooks? What are the possibilities? What might be the drawbacks? Writers: What have been your experiences with enhanced versions of your ebooks? Teacher, librarians, parents and kids: Have you had any interesting encounters with enhanced ebooks?  What was it like? Did it change the way you approached the book? We are entering a brave new world full of pitfalls and possibilities. I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences.

Elizabeth Rusch

Bubbling Up Through the Slush

          Happy 2013 everyone!  My New Year has started well with the promise of a multi-book contract.  With a real publishing company!  One that will pay me! The past three years of struggle and shrinkage in the publishing industry started me thinking about books and about the digitizing of everything.  We will come out of this, but things will be different.

             In the process of writing the proposal for my new series, I needed to refresh my memory of the gas laws, some classic settled science.  I first studied them many decades ago and still have my college textbook:  Foundations of Modern Physical Science by Gerald Holton and Duane H. D. Roller, copyright 1958.  It is a brilliant book that combines history of science with breakthrough laws that define physics and chemistry.  You can see that it has been well used.  But I’m in today’s mode of at-your-fingertips research, so I Googled  “the gas laws” and received a wealth of material, which I browsed through, looking for a clear, succinct treatment.  I happened upon an ebook written by a high school chemistry teacher.  It was lively, light-hearted and easy to understand.  Clearly the author grasped the concepts and knew how to get them across.  His words had “voice.”  Then I read a sentence that jarred me.  He was discussing carbon dioxide and mentioned that yeast produced it.  So far, so good.  Then he said that yeast was an animal.  That’s just plain wrong!   I read no further.  The talented teacher/author had not had his book vetted, or perhaps even edited.  This is not unusual for much of the fare available on the web. Hordes of wannabe authors have embraced the new leveled digital playing field.  If you can type on a computer, you can be a published author.

          Our culture has traditionally embraced published authors in the same manner it esteems professional athletes.  To be a pro means you have survived a rigorous competitive winnowing process.  For authors it involves an initial acceptance by editorial gatekeepers only to be admitted into a new, higher-level game where their work is measured publicly by critics and award-bestowing committees.   Stories of rejection slips chronicle every writer’s journey to the promised land of seeing words in print.  I remember when I received the galleys (old word for “proofs”) for my first to-be-published book after five failures.  I must have stared at the words “by Vicki Cobb” in a bold-faced Roman font for hours.  It was so professional; so formally different from the Courier typeface of my typewriter. It had a sense of permanence and importance.  It was meant to last. (Carved in print?)  And best of all, I had earned it!

          Back in the day, if you wanted payment as an author, the first hurdle was to get to an editor.  It helped to have an agent.  So wannabes sent in unsolicited manuscripts to agents and to publishers where they were relegated to something called “the slush pile.”  Not a very encouraging title!  Many publishers hired  “readers,” English majors fresh out of college, to cut their editorial teeth by reading the slush pile.  It didn’t take long for them to realize that most unsolicited submissions were not worth even a modicum of the work needed to salvage something the public would buy.  But every once in a while someone discovered a diamond-in-the-rough and a best-seller actually emerged from the slush pile, keeping alive the hopes of all the wannabes.  

          How has the digitization of everything changed the game? Now everyone gets to read the slush pile!  Oh, where are the gatekeepers when you need them?  Just the other day, I was told the story of a local minister who has just published four story-books for children through Amazon’s self-publishing program.  (Why does everyone think they can write a children’s book?  Cuz they tell the story to their own kids, who like them?)  I politely said, “Good for him!  How are sales?”  “Well, he just started.  He’s learning Facebook.”  The game for today’s self-published authors  is to develop an online readership, one beyond friends and family, that will make a “real” publisher sit up and take notice.

          So take heart, publishers.  There is a role yet for you to play. Yes, you need our talent and creativity.  But we need your editorial and design support and the rigorous vetting process you put us through, something unknown to all those digital “authors” out there.   And together, we need to forge a stronger, more inventive partnership to promote our collaborative efforts so that they bubble quickly to the surface, well above the melting slush.

Epublish or Not?

Here I am, writing from beautiful Whitefish, Montana, late with this blog--the internet here is on the iffy side!  I spent the weekend at the Flathead River Writers Conference in nearby Kalispell, MT.  The word "Flathead" has nothing to do with the state of the writers; it's an unfortunate name whites gave some western Indians because they purposely flattened the heads of their babies.

A featured speaker at the conference was Mark Coker, the creator of Smashwords.  Mark is the ultimate democratic person.  Anyone can publish a book on Smashwords, with a few content exceptions, for no cost, and Smashwords takes a modest cut of revenue.  Sounds perfect for the frustrated author who can't find a publisher for her/his masterpiece, doesn't it?  The problem is that many thousands of writers have posted their creations, and it's very difficult to get noticed.  Mark believes that the best will ultimately be rewarded, and the lousy will sink into obscurity.  However, even the best of the best need considerable savvy on the part of the author.

What opportunity does Smashwords create for nonfiction writers?  From what I heard over the weekend, both from Mark and from a local author/promoter team, my conclusion is "not much," unless the works are in the "how to" category and in a series.  The lone book without sequels is hard to promote, as one of the easiest promotional tools is to write a series, then offer book #1 or #2 for free.  Free books "sell" quite well on the internet and can result in 4 or 5 star reviews that give buyers confidence they aren't wasting their money.  So if book #1 in a series is free and gets good reviews, the author has a good chance of actually getting revenue from subsequent books in the series.  The price of book #1 can also be changed over time, going from free to, say $2.99--which seems to be a prime price point--in hopes that the good reader reviews will boost the book into visibility.

So for now at least, I'm sticking to the traditional "slow but (sort of) sure" route of proposing books to publishers, signing contracts, and getting to work.  And for nonfiction, an advance upon signing the contract is usually part of the deal, so there's a "sure thing" factor that's hard to resist in the traditional publishing world.

Epublishing does, however, also offer an opportunity for us to get our books that have gone out of print in front of readers.  I've put my one OP novel, "Return of the Wolf," up in a variety of e formats, but so far, it has gone pretty much unnoticed.  I'm going to experiment with some tricks I've learned this weekend and see if I can change my beloved novel's fate, but I'm not holding my breath!