I just posted this in response to a service provider who commented on my earlier post, Ebook Madness: Don't Confuse Ebook Conversion With Ebook Formatting! In his comment on that post, this gentleman said he only charges $40-50 for the typical formatting AND conversion job, and asked if he's not charging enough.
My answer was an emphatic YES, and I'm reprinting the full response here because I think both service providers and those who seek their services need to get a better understanding of the economics involved. Here's my response, in full:
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Yes, you are most definitely not charging enough to either do a thorough job or earn a living wage, though I'm sure you don't realize it.
Let's assume you begin with an MS Word file containing 300pp, which is the typical length of a typical novel. Let's say you charge your higher end estimate of $50 to do the formatting and conversion.
You can take $22.50 right off the top for self-employment taxes**, leaving you with $27.50. But you still have to pay income tax on that income, and even if we assume you're in a very low bracket, say 25%, you're losing an additional $6.88 in income tax, which means you're really only earning $20.62 for the job---and that's before taking out your expenses, as you should be doing before figuring your net income.
**UPDATE - several have questioned my math on the taxes, and since I know math is not my strong suit I'm willing to defer to their judgment. But even if the taxes are only $10 per $50 you get paid as a freelancer (and I'm pretty sure they're quite a lot more than that), you're still only earning slave wages by the time you take all the expenses, weekly hours you don't have booked with paying work, and weekly hours you spend on non-paying but necessary stuff like billing and promotion into account.
Your electricity, internet access and software aren't free. Neither is the cell phone you probably use sometimes for communicating with clients. But I'm fairly certain you're not taking these items, or the taxes, into account because if you were you'd realize you're barely earning minimum wage on each job.
Getting back to those 300 pp...let's assume you spend two hours reviewing the MS Word file and making your formatting changes. Even if you use a bunch of scripts or other automated processes to do the formatting changes, you MUST at least LOOK at every single page to be sure you haven't missed anything that needs to be reformatted to be ebook -compliant. Two hours only allows your 120 minutes total for the job, or 24 seconds per page to review each page AND make any additional formatting changes as necessary. If the MS Word file you've been given is filled with lots of funky and inconsistent Styles and/or formatting, the job will take even longer but again, you have to at least look at EVERY SINGLE PAGE to know if this is the case.
At this point you haven't even done the actual conversion step, or the (absolutely necessary) step of reviewing the converted file---again, if you're doing the job right this means looking at EVERY SINGLE PAGE---yet. Let's allow another 15 minutes for the conversion, since most of that work is done with automated tools, and another 5 seconds per page to review the converted file, which comes out to 25 minutes more: a total of 40 additional minutes, or 67% of an hour.
If you find any irregularities in the converted file you'll have to go back and revisit the formatting work and then repeat the conversion and review steps, but I'm sure your $50 price point doesn't take that possibility into account, either.
So in reality, if you're doing as thorough a job as you should be (by which I mean you're looking at EVERY page both before and after the conversion), it should take you a minimum of 2 hours and 40 minutes to complete a formatting + conversion job on a 300pp manuscript of a novel. It takes considerably longer for a nonfiction book with many images, tables, figures, charts and the like.
Since I've already calculated you're only making $20.62 total for the job after taxes, and at the minimum you should be spending 2.67 hours on the job, that works out to an hourly rate of $7.72 per hour---and again, that's AFTER taxes but BEFORE expenses.
If, on the other hand, you're NOT reviewing every single page both before and after the conversion, then I'd say your work isn't thorough enough.
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So if a freelance service provider says they're willing to do your ebook formatting and conversion job for $50 or so, there are only three possibilities: either that person isn't paying him- or herself a living wage, or that person is not paying his or her taxes, or that person is not doing a thorough job on your book.
(No disrespect to the commenter, I am not familiar with his work so I can't comment on it, but most of the time what's going on with these lowball estimates is BOTH that the person isn't paying taxes AND that he or she isn't doing a thorough job. Most service providers who offer such ridiculously low prices are only using automated formatting and conversion tools, and if they bother to look at individual pages at all it's only to do some minor spot-checking.)
Showing posts with label #ebooks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #ebooks. Show all posts
Monday, May 20, 2013
Monday, February 8, 2010
Avast Ye Lubbers, And Hear Ye Me Pirate Tale of Two Clicks!
Over the weekend, a certain woman who shall remain semi-nameless—I’ll call her May—was confronted with the choice between committing piracy and…well, going without. While her story centers on a couple of music files, the larger issues it raises are equally applicable to ebooks. So hang in there, this really does have some bearing on matters of authorship and publishing.
May has been waiting for two specific, favorite old music tracks to become available for sale in digital format for many years. Both songs are from British artists, and the albums on which the tracks were originally included have been out of production for years. Kind of like a book the publisher has allowed to go out of print.
May started by checking iTunes, Amazon’s mp3 store, eMusic, and every other legitimate digital music vendor site she knows of to see if the tracks were available for sale. They weren’t, so she used each site’s contact form to request them. Months and years passed, and the tracks remained unavailable on vendor sites.
So she did periodic internet searches, just in case some new vendor might show up with the tracks on offer. She also checked the artists’ websites for any updated information from time to time. Every time she did these things, she’d spend half an hour or more on the necessary research; she really wanted those tracks, and she wanted to get them legitimately. And every time, she’d come up empty-handed. Except for the many links to pirated mp3s of the files she wanted, of course.
Those links were always there, right at the top of any search results, putting the tracks tantalizingly close. And sometimes, she’d follow one of those links to see if the tracks were really there, in their entirety, and in a high-quality file. They were. And on most of the web pages she found, the tracks were downloadable with a simple right-click/Download As command combo. No need to be a semi-hacker, or subscribe to a bit torrent service, or sign herself up for a file sharing network. Just two mouseclicks, and she’d have those songs she’s wanted so badly for so long. But every time she went on this reconnaissance mission, she’d resist the temptation of those two mouseclicks. Until this past weekend, that is.
This past weekend, she decided she was finished wasting her time and energy on the search. In frustration, she joined the ranks of the many consumers who eventually come to feel it’s the publisher’s or producer’s own fault if she downloads pirated copies, because they failed to offer her a reasonable, legal alternative.
She might’ve gone to a reseller site, like eBay, to purchase the CDs upon which the desired tracks originally appeared, this is true. But is it reasonable to expect her to spend somewhere around $10 each for the CDs, plus shipping costs, when she only wanted one track off of each? And while it may be a simple case of guilty rationalization, was she wrong to conclude that since purchasing a used copy would not benefit the artists or producers of the tracks, doing so was no better for the artists and producers than downloading pirated copies?
Now, imagine if May had been on the hunt for an ebook instead of these two music tracks. Imagine further that the book in question is out of print—though not yet in the public domain—, and neither the publisher nor the author has elected to make it available in electronic formats. May could purchase a used copy of the book from any of a number of resellers, but this won’t put any additional royalties in the author’s pocket, or send any money the publisher’s way. And May really prefers ebooks to hard copy books; she’s bought a Kindle or Sony Reader, and intends to make the most of her investment by limiting her book purchases to e whenever possible. If you were in May’s place and found yourself two clicks away from obtaining the desired book in e format, what reason would you have to resist those two clicks? What reason has the publisher or author (in a case where rights have reverted) given you to resist those two clicks?
Taking this a step further, let’s imagine the book in question is still in print, but only in a hardcover edition. May faces the choice between paying $25-30 for a ‘dead trees’ version, or two mouse clicks to get the book in the format she wants for free. May doesn’t want to cheat the publisher or author out of their due, but she can’t afford to spend that much money on a book. So she simply crosses that book off her wishlist, and while she has every intention of keeping an eye out for an electronic edition, life goes on and in a matter of days she’s forgotten all about the book. In the end, she never buys a copy at all.
In yet another scenario, imagine the ebook is made available, but only at a pricetag of $14.99, and with DRM that will prevent May from moving the ebook among her various devices. Furthermore, if May “purchases” the $14.99 ebook, she won’t really own a copy of the book at all. She’ll own a limited license to view the book’s content on one specific device, only in the format specified by the publisher, and that license is subject to recall under numerous circumstances. If the publisher becomes aware of any copyright irregularities, or if May gets into a dispute with the ebook vendor site on an unrelated matter, for example. Alternatively, she can buy the paperback for $13.99 and have a physical copy that she keeps in perpetuity, or can lend to others, or resell when she’s finished with it.
Or she can click her mouse two times and get the ecopy she wants, with DRM stripped, for free. Could you blame her for feeling the publishers’ excessive pricing and limitations on the ebook edition justify a decision to go the two-clicks route?
Observe and learn: this is how well-meaning, otherwise honest consumers are lured—some might say pushed—into piracy. Most consumers want to do the right thing. They want authors to be rewarded for their hard work. They want publishers to earn a fair profit on their products. But they also want reasonable prices, and the same flexibility and functionality they’d get with a hard copy book.
Publishers and authors who think raising the prices and restrictions on ebooks will work because readers will have no other choice are forgetting about those two mouseclicks. And the many justifications they’re giving consumers for making those two mouseclicks.
No publisher or author would have much to worry about with respect to ebook piracy if they would just give readers what they want, within reason. The criminal element that cares nothing for compensating content creators is a small group that will always find a way to steal content no matter what you do. But that group’s ranks are being joined by guilty, reluctant ‘pirates’ every day. This new type of pirate isn’t out to hurt authors, and in fact would probably be very happy to “pay” a reasonable price for pirated copies through the use of a donation button on authors’ websites. But of course, this would still be illegal and would likely put the author in hot water with his or her publisher.
Publishers: other than complaining about how wrong and unfair it is, what are you doing to make a legitimate, legal option both available, and more attractive, to consumers than a free ebook that’s just two clicks away? Because at the point where your choices with respect to ebook pricing and restrictions look more unethical to the consumer than their own choice to download a free, pirated copy does, you’ve lost the sale.
And Authors: if the only thing standing between you and giving your readers what they want is a publisher, have you considered the possibility of retaining your e-rights and releasing ebook editions of your work yourself? I’ve provided a free guide for publishing to the Kindle on my website, and there are many for-hire services that can do it for you. This is impossible for works already under contract, but is it a move that might make a whole lot of sense for your unpublished works, or works for which rights have reverted back to you?
May has been waiting for two specific, favorite old music tracks to become available for sale in digital format for many years. Both songs are from British artists, and the albums on which the tracks were originally included have been out of production for years. Kind of like a book the publisher has allowed to go out of print.
May started by checking iTunes, Amazon’s mp3 store, eMusic, and every other legitimate digital music vendor site she knows of to see if the tracks were available for sale. They weren’t, so she used each site’s contact form to request them. Months and years passed, and the tracks remained unavailable on vendor sites.
So she did periodic internet searches, just in case some new vendor might show up with the tracks on offer. She also checked the artists’ websites for any updated information from time to time. Every time she did these things, she’d spend half an hour or more on the necessary research; she really wanted those tracks, and she wanted to get them legitimately. And every time, she’d come up empty-handed. Except for the many links to pirated mp3s of the files she wanted, of course.
Those links were always there, right at the top of any search results, putting the tracks tantalizingly close. And sometimes, she’d follow one of those links to see if the tracks were really there, in their entirety, and in a high-quality file. They were. And on most of the web pages she found, the tracks were downloadable with a simple right-click/Download As command combo. No need to be a semi-hacker, or subscribe to a bit torrent service, or sign herself up for a file sharing network. Just two mouseclicks, and she’d have those songs she’s wanted so badly for so long. But every time she went on this reconnaissance mission, she’d resist the temptation of those two mouseclicks. Until this past weekend, that is.
This past weekend, she decided she was finished wasting her time and energy on the search. In frustration, she joined the ranks of the many consumers who eventually come to feel it’s the publisher’s or producer’s own fault if she downloads pirated copies, because they failed to offer her a reasonable, legal alternative.
She might’ve gone to a reseller site, like eBay, to purchase the CDs upon which the desired tracks originally appeared, this is true. But is it reasonable to expect her to spend somewhere around $10 each for the CDs, plus shipping costs, when she only wanted one track off of each? And while it may be a simple case of guilty rationalization, was she wrong to conclude that since purchasing a used copy would not benefit the artists or producers of the tracks, doing so was no better for the artists and producers than downloading pirated copies?
Now, imagine if May had been on the hunt for an ebook instead of these two music tracks. Imagine further that the book in question is out of print—though not yet in the public domain—, and neither the publisher nor the author has elected to make it available in electronic formats. May could purchase a used copy of the book from any of a number of resellers, but this won’t put any additional royalties in the author’s pocket, or send any money the publisher’s way. And May really prefers ebooks to hard copy books; she’s bought a Kindle or Sony Reader, and intends to make the most of her investment by limiting her book purchases to e whenever possible. If you were in May’s place and found yourself two clicks away from obtaining the desired book in e format, what reason would you have to resist those two clicks? What reason has the publisher or author (in a case where rights have reverted) given you to resist those two clicks?
Taking this a step further, let’s imagine the book in question is still in print, but only in a hardcover edition. May faces the choice between paying $25-30 for a ‘dead trees’ version, or two mouse clicks to get the book in the format she wants for free. May doesn’t want to cheat the publisher or author out of their due, but she can’t afford to spend that much money on a book. So she simply crosses that book off her wishlist, and while she has every intention of keeping an eye out for an electronic edition, life goes on and in a matter of days she’s forgotten all about the book. In the end, she never buys a copy at all.
In yet another scenario, imagine the ebook is made available, but only at a pricetag of $14.99, and with DRM that will prevent May from moving the ebook among her various devices. Furthermore, if May “purchases” the $14.99 ebook, she won’t really own a copy of the book at all. She’ll own a limited license to view the book’s content on one specific device, only in the format specified by the publisher, and that license is subject to recall under numerous circumstances. If the publisher becomes aware of any copyright irregularities, or if May gets into a dispute with the ebook vendor site on an unrelated matter, for example. Alternatively, she can buy the paperback for $13.99 and have a physical copy that she keeps in perpetuity, or can lend to others, or resell when she’s finished with it.
Or she can click her mouse two times and get the ecopy she wants, with DRM stripped, for free. Could you blame her for feeling the publishers’ excessive pricing and limitations on the ebook edition justify a decision to go the two-clicks route?
Observe and learn: this is how well-meaning, otherwise honest consumers are lured—some might say pushed—into piracy. Most consumers want to do the right thing. They want authors to be rewarded for their hard work. They want publishers to earn a fair profit on their products. But they also want reasonable prices, and the same flexibility and functionality they’d get with a hard copy book.
Publishers and authors who think raising the prices and restrictions on ebooks will work because readers will have no other choice are forgetting about those two mouseclicks. And the many justifications they’re giving consumers for making those two mouseclicks.
No publisher or author would have much to worry about with respect to ebook piracy if they would just give readers what they want, within reason. The criminal element that cares nothing for compensating content creators is a small group that will always find a way to steal content no matter what you do. But that group’s ranks are being joined by guilty, reluctant ‘pirates’ every day. This new type of pirate isn’t out to hurt authors, and in fact would probably be very happy to “pay” a reasonable price for pirated copies through the use of a donation button on authors’ websites. But of course, this would still be illegal and would likely put the author in hot water with his or her publisher.
Publishers: other than complaining about how wrong and unfair it is, what are you doing to make a legitimate, legal option both available, and more attractive, to consumers than a free ebook that’s just two clicks away? Because at the point where your choices with respect to ebook pricing and restrictions look more unethical to the consumer than their own choice to download a free, pirated copy does, you’ve lost the sale.
And Authors: if the only thing standing between you and giving your readers what they want is a publisher, have you considered the possibility of retaining your e-rights and releasing ebook editions of your work yourself? I’ve provided a free guide for publishing to the Kindle on my website, and there are many for-hire services that can do it for you. This is impossible for works already under contract, but is it a move that might make a whole lot of sense for your unpublished works, or works for which rights have reverted back to you?
Friday, January 29, 2010
Why I See The iPad As An Epic Ereader Fail
My ereader is a tablet computing device that's 9 3/4" x 8 3/8", with a full-color touchscreen that measures 6 3/4" x 5 1/8". It's 3/4" thick and weighs about 2 pounds. It carries an on-board, removable stylus, like a Nintendo DS.
It came standard with 2 USB ports, a built-in microphone, jacks for an external microphone and headphones, built-in compact flash card reader, 9-pin connector (for connecting to printers, external hard drives and other devices), internal wireless adapter, built-in network card reader, onboard speaker and A/C adapter/charger. It can surf the web, play games and music, run a mobile edition of MS Office and other programs.
With μBook (a freeware ereader program) installed it reads ebooks in multiple formats, and allows the user to customize all of the following when reading an ebook: page orientation, page background color/texture, font, font size, font color, font style (e.g., bold/italic), character and line spacing, bookmarks, indent spacing and more. It also has search, touch page-turning and 'jump to page' functionality. Other freeware ereader programs I could install include dictionary and markup/notes capability, but since those aren't functions I feel I need, I'm content with μBook.
None of this would seem particularly impressive, were it not for the fact that MY EREADER IS TEN FREAKIN' YEARS OLD!!
It's not as sexy as the iPad or the Kindle, and it doesn't have an e-ink display---neither does the iPad. But considering that it's TEN FREAKIN' YEARS OLD I'm more than a little disappointed that when the wizards at Apple finally decided to come out with an ereader, they couldn't beat my dinosaur device (ten years may as well be an epoch in terms of advances in technology) in either functionality or price.
My device is about the same size, and just slightly heavier than, an iPad. While the iPad's processor speed is faster than my device's, and its screen is larger and higher-resolution than that on my device, I'd have thought that with ten years to build on what I've had since 2000 it would've been no problem for a bunch of hardware and software engineers to improve my device's processing speed and screen to match the iPad's specs. Also, while my Ereader-saurus Rex's (largely useless today) wireless infrared adapter would be replaced with a wireless bluetooth adapter in a device built more recently, my device can still connect to the internet or a wireless network via a wireless network card.
Where are the iPad's USB ports? There's just one, on the available-for-separate-purchase docking device. Where is the iPad's microphone jack, where's its flash card reader, where's its input/output connector port? My ereader has had all of these for a decade, yet Apple couldn't find a way to get them into the iPad.
My device is an ePods: a tablet computing device that was originally intended to be used as a portable computer for email, simple productivity applications (e.g., stripped-down word processor and spreadsheet), playing music files and simple games, and for surfing the web via connection to a dedicated Internet Service Provider (ISP). When the ISP folded, there were suddenly a bunch of these ePods devices out in the world with no network to support them. It wasn't long before someone took a look at the device's form factor and available functionality and thought to himself, "Hey, this thing would make a terrific ereader!"
Soon, that someone figured out how to bypass the device's automatic attempt to connect to its now-defunct network every time it was turned on, and how to get the device to load a simple desktop like any other computer. With the simple desktop in place and USB connection to another computer, getting programs like μBook loaded onto the ePods is easy. With the ePods connected to a computer via USB, transferring files in either direction is a simple, drag-and-drop operation.
The ePods' compact flash card reader (which would be an SD card reader on a device built more recently) makes concerns about storage limitations moot: need more storage? Get more memory cards. The iPad, on the other hand, is like an iPod: you're limited to the on-board storage that comes pre-loaded on the device. Need more storage? Buy a better iPad.
I can buy books for my ereader from many different vendors, I'm not locked into a specific vendor's store. I can comparison-shop. I can read ebooks offered in various formats. I'm not chained to a specific vendor for my ebook purchases, nor am I married to a 'preferred' vendor which will allow me to buy ebooks from other sources but will make it a royal pain to get them loaded on the device.
I pay no monthly fees to use my device, and I actually own my copies of the books I've bought (or downloaded from public-domain repositories like Project Gutenberg). I will never turn on my device to find that this or that book's licensing term has "expired", or that some of my content has disappeared because the vendor who sold it to me had to pull it back due to questionable content licensing.
I paid about $60 for my ePods when I bought it on eBay. As of this writing, the lowest-capacity iPad costs $499 and the Kindle DX costs $489. After comparing the feature sets, it's clear to me that buying either device would be an expensive step backward for me in terms of ereader functionality. Sure, I'd like to have an e-ink display, but with my preferred font style, color and size selections made, my ereader isn't particularly hard on the eyes. And since ebook files are small (in terms of file size) and comprised primarily of text, I don't need any more processing power than my ePods has for reading ebooks. I don't use my ePods to run programs, access email, surf the 'net or subscribe to newspapers, magazines or RSS feeds. I just use it to read ebooks. And in terms of that functionality, it easily holds its own against the Kindle, Kindle DX, and the iPad.
I look forward to the day when a device with all the functionality and connectivity of my ePods comes along, with an added full-color e-ink display, enough processing power and screen resolution to run enhanced ebook "apps" that have full-motion video and interactive features, high-quality audio for text-to-speech and audiobooks, all at a reasonable price. But that day hasn't come yet, and I have no idea why. And it's kind of annoying.
In the meantime, if you want an ereader with all the functionality and connectivity of my ePods and a Kindle (minus the e-ink display) and a Sony Reader, but with a speedier processor, full-color display and more power to run programs and surf the web, here's what you need to do. Get yourself a netbook and load it up with the free Kindle reader software for Kindle books (and Kindle Store connectivity), free Sony Reader software for Sony Reader books (and Sony Reader Store connectivity), and one of the many freeware ereader programs for all other ebook formats. Voila! You've got a small, light, portable ereader with all the functionality of a Kindle, a Sony Reader and my ePods rolled into one device, with more computing power than any of those devices, more connectivity and storage flexibility than an iPad, and all at a pricetag of around $300.
On the other hand, if you'd rather just have $500 worth of cool, sexy and impress-your-friends, get an iPad.
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