Archive for the ‘BAIPA’ Category

BAIPA Meeting 5/8/10 – How to turn your book into a audio book

Sunday, May 16th, 2010

Jessica Kaye from Big Happy Family Audiowas this month’s speaker at BAIPA. Big Happy Family Audio specializes in “Helping independent audio book publishers secure online download distribution”.  The company can help small publishers get their audio books sold by big audio book companies like Audible. It is often difficult to get distribution through big companies like Audibles, which make distributors like Big Happy Family Audio ideal of small publishers.

Kaye discussed what goes into producing a great audio book. Professional  audio books require editing, directing, good equipment, a good studio, and a professional narrator. She stressed the importance of finding a good audio editor, someone with experience in the business. If you want to narrate the book yourself, Kaye suggests taking at least one acting class. A one-hour, professionally produced show costs about $5000.

According to Kaye, there is a professional audio book standard that exists. Because of all the free audio downloads available, a lower standard has been established, but Kaye recommends publishers seriously pursuing the audio route pursue a professional standard. You can learn more about this at the Audio Publishers Associaion.

Kaye gave examples of things to look out for when producing a professional audio book. Anything that takes the listener out of the story, such a coughing, background noise, page turning, or mis-pronounced words are all things to avoid. She also stressed the importance of finding a professional narrator with a voice that fits the style of your book. Oftentimes, you can interview prospective narrators; you send them a portion of text, and they send you an MP3 clip. A good place to find professional narrators is www.voice123.com.

There are many people out there who don’t have $5000, but still want an opportunity to turn your book into an audio book. There were several people in the BAIPA audience who had experience in creating their own audio books for very little upfront costs. There are 3 essentials:

1) SOFTWARE. Audacity is a free, open source software for audio books. For about $50, you can buy Sony’s Sound Forge. This software allows you to make tracts, which can be helpful to audio book listeners.

2) MICROPHONE. You can buy a very cheap one at Amazonfor about $25, although BAIPA members in the audience recommended spending a bit more to get better quality. Among those recommended were the Yetti, which costs about $100 and is available at Blue Mic. Also recommended was the purchase of a “pop screen,” which dulls sharp “p” sounds that we make when we talk.

3) RECORDING STUDIO aka a walk in closet. The clothing in a walk-in does a great job of muffling all outside noises that might interfere with a good recording.

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BAIPA ‘Get Published’ Institute — “The E-book Bandwagon: Myths, Realities, and News You Can Use”

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Saturday was BAIPA’s annual Get Published Institute, held in San Rafael, CA, at the Domincan College. It was a day for new and small publishers to learn from the pros.

The first key note presentation was by Danny O. Snow. It was entitled “The e-Book Bandwagon: Myths, Realities, and News You can Use.” Snow was kind enough to post a summary of his presentation on his website. It’s available here.

Here are some of the highlights of his presentation:

E-Books vs. Tree-Books
Snow discussed the difference between e-Books and Tree-books. Tree-books have been around for thousands of years. They reflect light. In comparison, e-books emit light. Humans are physically conditioned to read things that reflect light. Thus one of the major hurdles faced by producers of portable reading devices.

The future of e-Books: the Smartphone
According to Snow, there are approximately 5 million Kindles in the hands of consumers. In comparison, there are about 50 million Smartphones in the hands of consumers. With such a vast amount of Smartphone in use–with their popularity growing every day–Snow maintains the future of e-books lies in Smartphones. According to Snow, 5 of the 10 best sellers in Japan last year were “cell phone novels” — books that were produced and distributed through cell phones. Snow also pointed out that the easy portability associated with Smartphones will likely play a large roll in making them the e-book readers of choice; they are much easier to carry around than a Kindle, or other digital reading device.

The Future of Digital Right’s Management
One of the most difficult aspects of e-books is DRM (Digital Rights Management). Snow talked about how easy it is to download a Word.doc or PDF and email it to hundreds of friends. And how easy it is for those friends to pass the file onto their friends. Thus one of the inherent weaknesses of e-books. Snow then discussed how difficult it is to email applications (like the acutal Microsoft Word program)to friends. He maintains the best way to protect e-books from piracy is to sell the e-book as an application, not a file. AppsPublisher is a new site that will convert your e-book directly into a application and make it available for sale directly through the I-phone Store.

These are just a few of the highlights of Snow’s presentation. Visit his website for the complete presentation summary.

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BAIPA (Bay Area Independent Publishers Assoc.) Meeting, 1/9/10 – An innovative approach to EBooks

Saturday, January 16th, 2010

At this month’s meeting of the Bay Area Independent Publishers Assoc, we were given a special treat: a power point presentation by E.M. Ginger of 42-Line. 42-Line is a publishing company specializing in converting rare manuscripts into digital books.

What I loved most about this presentation was the innovative use of digital media and eBooks. There are lots of eBooks out there, but let’s face it: nothing beats the smell and feel of a real book. But 42-Line realizes there are in fact a lot of rare books out there that can’tbe held and touched and smelled by the common public–books like the Guttenberg Bible, of which there are only 3 in the world. 42-Line makes rare and special books available to common public though digital media. A rare book that carries a price tag of $143,000 can be purchased as a digital book for anywhere from $20 – $80 from 42-Line.

42-Line gained access to the Library of Congress, where they used specialized equipment to photograph every page of rare books such as the Guttenberg Bible. They use the highest resolution available, so that buyers of their ebooks can zoom in on rare illustrations found inside the books. They also take high-res photos of the book covers, so the details can be enjoyed by bibliophiles. 

The photographs of the books and all the interior pages are only one facet of 42-Line’s digital books. Each eBook is designed so reader can print the entire content. They also include translations. They even embed a search engine into the eBook, so readers can search for special passages. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. The eBook software can’t scan the pictures of the text. Instead, every word of the books has to be manually embedded into the software for the search engine.

To produce these digital formats of rare books, 42-Line employed designers, photographers, typographers, writers, translators, etc. — everything you would need to produce a print book, and in some cases, more.

And where does the name of the company, “42-Line,” come from? Apparently, the Guttenburg Bible is famous for having 42 lines of text on each page. From what I understood from Ginger’s presentation, this was the first time 42 lines of text was made standard.

I’ve seen a lot of great presentations at the monthly BAIPA meetings, but this one was by far the most exciting. I love to see how other publishers are distinguishing themselves through creative innovation.

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12/12 BAIPA Meeting: Marketing is Everything

Saturday, December 26th, 2009

I’m a little ate posting on this month’s BAIPA meeting, but better late than never, right?

First off, I had the pleasure of attending the meeting with Amanda Baker, a local illustrator from Sonoma County. You can learn more about Amanda and see samples of her fabulous illustrations at: http://amandakaybaker.com/ She is actively seeking work as an illustrator, so if you know of any opportunities, please contact her. Most impressive are her fairies.

This month’s BAIPA presenter was David Cole of Bay Tree Publishing. His book is The Complete Guide to Book Marketing. (Check it out on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Book-Marketing/dp/1581153228.) David gave us several great handouts. One handout covered the Bay Tree publishing model, and the other was a list of marketing resources. Some of the resources on his marketing resources handout include: Independent Book Publishers Association and Northern California Book Publicity and Marketing Association.

David Cole had some neat insights into the publishing industry. Here are a few of the things he covered in his presentation:

- Writing in only about 10% of the work; the other 90% of the work is marketing/publicity. I think this is true whether or not you are a publishers or an author or both. If you want people to buy your stuff, you have to let them know it exists through marketing and publicity.

- Marketing is Everything & Everything is Marketing. This is one of my favorite tips that I picked up from David. When he says everything is marketing, he means EVERYTHING: from the author, to the interior of the book, to the title, to the target audience, to the book cover, to the publisher — EVERYTHING is an aspect of marketing, it’s just a matter of finding out how it fits into the puzzle. This made me think more about some of the marketing plans I’m working on.

- The intent of a writer is to find a reader, to share his/her story with others. If this wasn’t the intent, all of us would be writing and just sticking our stories away in a drawer or computer file. Some of us do this anyway. It’s always a bit scary for any artist to put his or her work out for the public, whether it’s a painting or a sculpture or a magazine or a book. But it part of the process, and a part of intent behind the writing (for most of us, anyway).

- Marketing is the process of putting the writer and the reader together. You don’t have to reach 1 million people, just the people who are most likely to buy your book.

- How do you make a small fortune in the publishing business? Start with a large fortune. Enough said.

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September BAIPA Meeting – Getting Creative with Marketing

Sunday, September 13th, 2009

I recently joined BAIPA, the Bay Area Independent Publisher’s Association. It’s a wonderful organization. There are authors, publishers, editors, book designers, etc. — just about everyone you could think of who might be involved in the book publishing business. It’s a greay way to network. I’ve been amazed at the wealth of information to be learned at these meetings.  If you live in the Bay Area of California, I encourage anyone involved in the publishing world to attend these meetings. You can learn more at www.baipa.net. 

Each month when I attend the meetings, I will share what I have learned on this blog.  If you plan to attend a BAIPA meeting, please let me know so I can say hello.

This month’s speaker was Marie Etienne, author of Confessions of a Bi-polar Mardi Gras Queen. She gave a wonderful, energetic presentationon on her experiences in the marketing world of publishing. Using the Book Expo of America as a luanching platform, Marie was able to pre-sell 1200 copies of her book! She did this mainly by utilizing the Book Expo mailing list to let everyone know about her book. She also managed to get a write-up in Publisher’s Weekly prior to the show. She gave away free galleys and hired an attractive woman to work in her booth. (Don’t be quick to knock this last tactic. I’ve been to big equipment shows where suppliers hire models to sell tractors. Guess which booths have the most attention?) And even though she didn’t fit the distribution “standards” (10 books to sell or 10,000 annual copies), she also managed to secure a contract with a large distributor.

What I Learned: You have to be creative and tenacious to be successful in the publishing world. Rules are meant to be broken.

You can learn more at http://marieetienne.com/

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