Kate Eltham has an interesting post on her Electric Alphabet blog about a recent ebook buying experience — or at least an attempted ebook buying experience. If you’re a publisher, have a quick read and if you partake in the many “levels of stupid” Kate discusses forever hold your peace when your content is downloaded much more easily on The Pirate Bay!

‘Content is king,’ we used to say back in the good old days of digital publishing. It was a publisher’s defence against the Invasion of the Geeks: the IT guys who were the driving force behind wonders of the modern world such as Microsoft’s Encarta.

In the 1990s I was Executive Editor of the London-based unit charged with taking the very American Encarta World Atlas and ‘internationalising’ the text content, making it an object of desire for the world outside the USA. We all expected that sales of CD-ROMs would outstrip print books within a decade.

It’s a new world that we live in now. CDs are for music, Wikipedia reigns supreme, people find out where they are by looking at their iPhone. What’s a publisher to do?

Answer: focus on the medium. Medium is king. The content has to be as good as ever, but now one of the publisher’s pivotal business decisions is how to deliver the goods. Once upon a time, it was either a book or a rejection letter. Now the right medium may be a print book, an e-book, a blog, an iPhone application, a subscription-based product.

The Bookseller & Publisher report on digital publishing at this year’s London Book Fair said, ‘there are some areas where publishers will be defeated (for example, street maps and encyclopedias).’ That’s true enough, if we think of ourselves as print publishers rather than publishers who assess the best means of packaging and presenting different types of content. I say that recognising the huge investment involved in producing geographic or encyclopedia content: that is true whether the outcome is print or digital.

I’ve always loved the physicality of books, and the decisions to be made about the best way to present them: should they be full colour with photos throughout, or should we commission black and white illustrations; should we print on creamy matt stock and emboss the title on the cover … The new challenges of medium take that two-dimensional process and make it three-dimensional and ever more complex.

That’s the new playing field for publishers. Let the games begin.

If you’re looking to make your book available as a digital edition you might know there are quite a number of ebook formats you need to consider.

Amazon uses a proprietary format for the Kindle, quite a number of smartphones use the Mobipocket format, while the epub format appears to be gaining traction on a range of devices.

As I note on our ebook services page, “we believe authors should focus not on which ebook format to use but rather which hardware platform is most dominant in their market.”

In Australia that primarily means mobile phones, and that means smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone, the Blackberry or any number of Nokia’s N-series devices.

Here’s where it gets a little tricky. The epub format works on the iPhone and you can grab a reader from the App Store (I personally prefer and use Stanza). In regards to the epub format it’s worth noting its compatibility with Adobe’s Digital Editions desktop reader, creating another market for your book.

Although epub is gaining traction as a ’standard’ (perhaps I’m being a little optimistic) Blackberry and Nokia devices use Mobipocket, another format entirely. Incidentally, Mobipocket is an excellent choice for dictionaries and books with mathematical/scientific formula.

What all of this means is that unfortunately you either limit yourself to one store/device or convert your book into at least two ebook formats — epub and Mobipocket — if not three by including the Kindle.

My personal hope is that the industry settles on a standard format: it will be easier for authors and publishers to convert their titles, and make for a more seamless acquisition path for consumers. And that can only be good for business.

Let me tell you I wish Red Hill was a vanity publisher. We’d have a dozen books on the go by now, and we’d be making quite a lot of money. Yay!

But at the end of the day our authors wouldn’t see a return on their investment, our reputation would stink and we’d be another excuse for what’s wrong with the fee-for-service book publishing business.

Quality, quality, quality. It’s the only thing that matters when publishing a book.

I have a confession to make: I may well hold the title of managing director in the two-person operation that is Red Hill Publishing (soon to be three or four if things keep going as they are), but I am not a ‘publisher’ in the sense that I don’t live and breathe books. I am a businessman and I care greatly for the future of our industry; I work diligently to find solutions to the digital dilemma, declining book acquisition, changes in media consumption habits and so forth.

But what I can say is that I know a well-written book when I read one. For that matter I can see the potential in a good manuscript when I read one too. In simple terms, I read books as a layperson, the average book-buyer (if there is such a thing).

So I am surprised how many manuscripts I read that don’t convey a story. Remembering here that Red Hill is a non-fiction publisher, so we’re not looking at novels. Even so, any book has to progress, to draw its readers in, to lead us somewhere worth going. Saying that a good book is about the story is as preposterous as telling a musician that they need to focus on songwriting, or a filmmaker that they need to focus on their script. Yet I know for a fact that all too often musicians and filmmakers alike fail to focus on the fundamentals of their craft. So too do some authors, it seems.

As a self-confessed non-publisher, I don’t dissect a manuscript from an editorial perspective (I leave that to Red Hill’s bona fide publishing genius, Sally), so I want to read a story, even if the subject matter is based on fact.

The best stories take the reader for the ride of their lives. I’m looking forward to seeing more manuscripts that make me want to buy a ticket on that particular rollercoaster.

This post’s subject is money: supposedly it makes the world go round, after all.

The Red Hill business model is a little different to a that of a traditional publishing house, so I thought it would be a good idea to explain just how different.

Under a traditional deal the publisher takes the financial risk while also adding value to a manuscript (i.e. providing editorial, proofing, typesetting and design expertise), so they retain the majority of the profit (or wears the loss). Red Hill, on the other hand, adds exactly the same value in terms of publishing expertise but defers the risk to the author, who in turn retains the majority of the profit (or wears any losses).

The difference between the business models starts to get interesting when we look at who earns what, and when.

In a traditional deal an author receives an advance, let’s say $10,000, and earns a royalty per book sold, let’s say $3. So the publisher needs to sell 3,333 books before the author sees a single $3 royalty payment.

Under the Red Hill model the same author would pay all costs associated with producing the title, let’s say $20,000, and retain the majority of revenue from the sales, let’s say $26.25 (on $30 RRP), assuming they sell directly to their audience rather than entering into a third-party distribution agreement. (Red Hill receives 12.5% on all books sold after the author recoups Red Hill costs.) Even if the author sold only 1,000 copies of their book, they would generate revenues of $26,250, representing a small profit for them.

But what if, over time, the author sold 3,333 copies of their book? Difficult for sure, but certainly not impossible. Author revenues would be $87,500: less original production costs ($20,000) and additional print costs ($6,066 at $2.60 per book for 2,333 copies) the author net profit would reach $61,434. On those same sales figures, under a traditional deal the author would not have yet received a royalty payment.

But this isn’t really about saying our model is better than any other. After all, Red Hill’s own co-founder, Sally Collings continues to be published by HarperCollins and benefits greatly from that relationship. What this is about — indeed what Red Hill is about in part — is helping authors make better-informed decisions. As Christopher Marlow suggested, “…there is no sin but ignorance”.

No doubt most authors will continue to pursue a traditional publishing deal and we unreservedly wish them well. But there will always be those authors who are prepared and able to back their vision, who understand their market and their audience, and have the means to reach them directly. These are people for whom Red Hill should become home – there’s more money in it!

The phrase ‘work-life balance’ makes me think of a jittery parent, tiptoeing along a tightrope with a laptop in one hand and a bundle of nappies in the other. With no safety net. And a pond full of sharks circling underneath.

At Red Hill, we try to make the balancing act a little easier (and less prone to bloodshed). We actively follow the principles of flexible working hours and close teamwork, so that if someone is taking care of family business, Red Hill doesn’t drop the ball on any of our projects. Because we’re a tight-knit company, the whole team is in the loop: from titles being assessed and developed through to books that are already out in the market.

Many of our suppliers are freelancers who have cut loose from corporate life because they want more freedom to mix work and (child’s) play. It’s a principle that is close to our hearts too.

Watch this space: as Red Hill grows, we hope to build our reputation as a canny and creative publishing company as well as a company that makes the work-life tightrope feel a bit less death-defying.

“Hi, I’ve written a book and I’m looking for someone to get it in bookstores and do some marketing….” We receive many requests of this nature and each and every time we politely decline.

It’s not personal, it’s our business model.

Red Hill Publishing is not a publishing services company. One way to look at it is that we don’t offer services for self-publishers, we offer an alternative to self-publishing.

If you have written the world’s next bestseller, had it edited, typeset and the cover designed and are looking for someone else to take care of distribution and marketing, unfortunately Red Hill is not the publisher for you. In fact, if you read our publishing guidelines carefully you’ll note that we look for authors with existing non-retail channels to market.

First post in our Inside Red Hill series, where we explain how and why we do the things we do. Today we will focus on one of the criteria we use to determine whether a manuscript is a Red Hill manuscript: channels to market.

So, what are channels to market?

In the most basic sense a channel to market is the path goods take – such as your book – between manufacturing and the end user. Usually when the term is used people are referring to distribution and retailing. For example, Sally Collings (my Red Hill cohort) is published by HarperCollins. Sally’s channel to market is through HarperCollins, its distribution service to retail, and from the retailer to the reader.

This model has served the publishing industry well (although this is changing) and it serves Sally well. But there are problems, such as not knowing the size of the market, placing products into retail without knowing whether they will be sold, along with the range of distribution costs. In short, it’s costly and risky.

Red Hill looks for authors with their own non-retail channels to market, which is not to say we won’t work with authors who have a book with mass market appeal. But, at the same time, we don’t want our authors to be stuck with a pile of unsold books (as can be the case).

You’ll be pleased to know that we all have existing channels to market, but the issue is that for many of us the market is not particularly big; family, friends, work colleagues, et cetera. Red Hill looks for authors with direct access to large markets. Public speakers, professionals with well established client bases, entrepreneurs and others actively engaged with the public are all examples of potential Red Hill authors.

Usually the authors in the above example will have various channels to market: direct sales, newsletters, email lists, a regularly visited website, non-book retail outlets, media appearances where they can present their book and so forth.

So when we appraise your manuscript and consider the business case you now know what we mean by “channels to market”. If you don’t have them you need to start building them.

Wishing you well and if you think you’re a Red Hill author be sure to give us a call.

I reckon this has to be the ultimate vanity project – e-book self-publisher James Bridle has collected two years’ worth of Tweets using the print-on-demand service, lulu.com. He says: “I wanted to … see if you could make a traditional diary/journal in retrospect. And you can, and it’s quite nice. No, most of it doesn’t mean anything, certainly not to anyone else, but it makes physical a very real time and effort … When Twitter is inevitably replaced by something else, I don’t want to lose all those incidentals, the casual asides, the remarks and responses. That’s all really.”

If it only means something to the author, it’s got an audience of one. I’d call that a journal rather than a book.

As self-publishing hits its stride around the world – the Bookseller + Publisher reports that the number of print-on-demand titles published in the US has exceeded the number of traditional books produced for the first time ever – we’re watching with interest to see how many of those titles actually have a readership beyond the author and their immediate circle. Of course some of them do: there are already some big-selling success stories out of lulu.com and others.

At Red Hill, we continue to press the question: is this title of interest/useful/appealing/amusing to a sufficient number of people to make it a strong commercial proposition?