Last saturday I presented a “half” session at BuchCamp Frankfurt, May, 6th 2012 ( related blog entry German). BuchCamp was organized by a lobbying association of German publishers called Börsenverein.
As the event was announced as a barcamp and each participant can be a presenter too, I decided to offer a talk on my work as a “selfpublishing author” (and of course I had not prepared any slides). I presented the idea with the words:
I’ll tell you about my work, you tell me about your work and then we have a look, what we can achieve together.
I shared a session slot with another participant at Sunday 10 Uhr (which was fine).
What I said in the Session (and wanted to say :) )
You have to follow the links to get the big picture (right mouse click -> open in new tab, then the article remains in its tab)
- I write non-fiction for 10 years. This is the list.
- I distribute the PDF files of books, where I have all the copyrights, free on the Internet. Here are the current download figures (The counting started in March 2011. Every day there are currently 1,000-3,000 file downloads. While writing this article, there are 360,000+)
- For years, I offer HTML versions of my books on-line.
The publishers (with whom I worked together) allowed me that to a certain extent. These online versions are often linked to other pages. - Readers can give feedback to the chapters and make frequent use of it (example).
Have a look at a very motivating e-mail that just arrived (I have not shown it in the session
[flickr-photo:id=7175594402,size=-] - I write the first version of a book in English and then translate it by myself to German. I am not perfect in English nor German, but there are always people who write a comment and point out typos to be corrected
- I use an online HTML editor (TinyMCE) and write the text directly using our website
- The images and screenshots are saved at Flickr.
- I sell advertisements in the books. These companies and individuals support my work. On a map it looks like this:
[flickr-photo:id=7176426982,size=-] - People contact me and ask if they can translate the books. To do so, they need a user account on cocoate to get started. Here is a list of all the translators. A Brazilian group has started a Facebook group for coordination (This is so far the result)
- The books can be purchased as well at Amazon (eg, Germany) and a few in the iBookstore as e-books (eg, U.S. store). And on Book on Demand (eg, Germany) and CreateSpace (eg USA) as a printed books.
- Earlier, I recorded screencasts (example). It is poorly paid, makes a lot of work and the author (me) is not even mentioned. Today, I have my own equipment and take screencasts if necessary (even without any business model). The videos I upload to YouTube and Vimeo, offer them on our website, link it with the HTML chapters and create a feed for iTunes, as well as an appstore independent feed.
- I know many of my business partners not personally, most of them (can e-mail just to clear) only using Skype (
) , Twitter, Facebook (add me if you want) and e-mail - The next book is called Going Mobile with Joomla! and is currently being written – you may like to join.
- One more little thing. I have NO problem with existing copyright principles – to be honest I understand nothing of it and reading those texts is not illuminating for me …
How can you help me?
- by direct donation for travel expenses, equipment, ect.
- by clicking Flattr
- Buy a book as EPUB from our website or at Amazon or other stores
- Buy a paper book
- just tell others … (Twitter, FB, like Google+ all the rest)
- Buy me a WiFi voucher when we meet somewhere
- Spend your holidays in our village rent an apartment :)
Why am I telling you all this on a book camp?
I am not a selfpublishing author because I like it!
One of the reasons is, that I find no one who offers me services, in the speed, the formats and the communication channels, I work with!
To give you an example what I need
- a cover for each book
- some kind of marketing
- publishers in countries where Russian, Spanish, Italian, French, Persian, English, German, Chinese, Portuguese and Hindi books can be delivered in any form.
- I’ve no certified “quality management”
- the EPUB creation workflow can be described at the moment as “pathetic” :)
- the whole screencast creation must be optimized
- our website needs a CDN and a mobile version
Many of these services could be offered by publishing houses and I would also enjoy participating in the development of such services.
Yeah, and now I would like to know what you are doing and what we can we do together?
After the session I was asked if I would like to attend the BuchTage meeting in Berlin.
I would be happy to attend, but I have no budget for such things. So it’s up to you.
If the ChipIn is successful, I am available for nearly everything during the BuchTage meeting :)
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