Tamara Wihite is a professional technical author with over 1000 articles published. She has also written several science fiction, horror, and frugal living books. She has published articles in print magazines and websites, print books and eBooks. The lessons she has learned in these forays can benefit many writers crossing the digital publishing divide or reaching into multiple publication avenues.

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Writing Lessons Learned in Print and Digital Media

• 2004 – Baby Book (eBook) with small press, option to buy print version offered to customers

Results: A few friends bought digital editions. I received no money because they had to break even on their costs of publication. Fortunately, that total did not leave me owing any money.

Lesson learned:

1. Small presses that offer print on demand have to charge a high rate. You won’t sell many copies that way in most cases.

• 2005 – “Humanity’s Edge”, first book in print

Results: Several hundred copies sold, enough to generate some royalties. It’s a small press, so there was limited distribution.

Lessons learned:

1. If you have a print edition, use someone who can distribute it. Go with someone with access to book stores and distribution networks.
2. Promote, promote, promote. And this should be a joint effort between publisher and author. Many book signings were scheduled. Events attended often sold only 1 book per hour. With promotion, this would have been much higher.

• 2007 – “Sirat: Through the Fires of Hell”, second book in print

Results: Several hundred copies sold, enough for the publisher to break even on the book advance. Book signings sold most of these copies.

Lessons learned:

1. Use a company with a marketing plan for its books. And do not use a publisher that expects you to foot marketing costs of your own book.
2. Book signings by authors using “author discounted” copies at big book stores quickly become a break even or money losing proposition. Discounted books provided to the author do not count toward royalties. When holding a book signing at a large book store like Barnes and Noble, their commission per title often costs as much as the author discount, resulting in little or no profit per title.

• 2008-2010 – Amazon Mturk

Results: Writing articles on demand generated some income when spouse was laid off. Continued writing and generated $100-300 per month this way for about two years. Then I did the cost-benefit analysis and found it was equal to $1-4 an hour. This is less than minimum wage.

Lessons learned:

1. Track your time on projects against the pay rate – make sure you get at least minimum wage or realize that you work for less than this rate because of the flexibility (such as after kids are in bed, during naps).
2. During 2009, the pay rate per hour dropped from about $4 per hour to $1 per hour for articles. This corresponded to an influx of Indian workers to the site and the Great Recession bringing in American workers working for these wages to bring in some money, any money. If you’re going to write or do other online tasks, do something that cannot be easily outsourced to the cheapest person with a computer.

• 2009-2010 – Demand Media

Results: Writing articles on demand generated income of several hundred per month. Revenue sharing articles were written (over 100) but resulted in little income of an average $0.10 per article per month for a total of about $10 per month in royalties.

Lessons learned:

1. Revenue sharing is a great concept. It can bring in significant income for high traffic content. Of the 100+ articles with revenue sharing, half that income was from one article on MRSA. Write revenue sharing articles on topics with high traffic and click through rates to generate the most revenue sharing income per article.
2. Writing articles for pay pays the most for niche articles. Either write articles in a few niches of expertise or become knowledgeable on several topics so that you can produce quality articles on these topics in less time. If you can produce quality material on high demand niches, you can get higher paying per article rates.
3. Balance quality with quantity. If quality goes down as quantity goes up, you can lose the gig. A lower score on grammar and research, frequently set at 3.7, can close whole categories for which you could write.

• 2010 – Docstoc

Results: The goal of this project was letting someone else’s site collect revenue sharing based on my content and potentially from sale of content. Income was minimal, since click through ads were sparse.

Lessons learned:

1. Revenue sharing based on your own webpage may not generate much income, but when revenue sharing from ads is shared with the hosting website, the income is even less.
2. Your content is now out on the web and free for all to see. You cannot sell it anywhere else, even for pay, because it will show up on plagiarism checkers. And that is assuming it is not ripped off by others.
3. Unless you have hundreds of files for sharing AND they receive many viewers that click through to the ads, this is not a good venue. And if you have hundreds of files, why not sell the content one page at a time with other publications?
4. You must meet high quality standards AND share digital sales of downloads to be considered by Docstoc as a content seller. It may be cheaper to sell content through your own website if have a PDF to sell.

• 2010-2011 – Google Books Google books generates revenue two ways: add click through revenue and eBook sales after November, 2010. As of December 2010, I had four books uploaded to Google eBookstore. Sales were slow, and ad revenue was slow. At the end of 2010, seven titles were available. The titles I had listed with Google eBookstore that were also listed on Amazon Kindle sold faster through Amazon’s website. I traced the root cause to prior promotional efforts for the Kindle listings, which had not been done for the Google editions. Kindle editions that were cheaper than then Google editions sold more, even though they had a lower royalty rate.

Lessons learned:

1. Getting listed with Google eBookstore is just another digital publication method. If you want to make money at it, you have to promote it like any other digital publication.
2. Price your digital editions all the same. If you have differing royalty rates for the same price, simply promote the one with the better royalty rate. Otherwise, people will buy the cheaper version, regardless of your net profit.

• 2008-2010 – Experiences of former Digital Publication Manager for NVF

When submitting short stories, an author is thrilled to be informed that they like your work. After several story submissions with positive responses, David Byron Boyer asked if I could take a story he had trouble ending, “Mutant Moon”, and finish it. I did, and he loved it. He asked if I could edit some other works. We ended up with “Dead City Chronicles”.

He talked about publishing it and finding a printer. I asked if he’d print it digitally, too. He had no idea. I’ve worked in information tech support for several years, so I said I’d research it. I learned how to publish via Amazon Kindle and published several of my own works.

David Boyer than asked me to do this for his works in return for a portion of the royalties. He would send a new anthology like “Genres” and “Vast Horizons”, some with fiction, some mostly interviews. I’d publish them.

In late 2010, he asked that I de-list several stories. The stated reason was that several authors wanted to publish the works in other publications. So I took the works down.

The second week of December, he asked me to publish a new anthology. What struck me as odd was that he asked me to publish it in a new pseudonym.

On 12/10/2010, I asked why he wanted the new name used. He said he had moved into Christian fiction so his publicist recommended a new name to break away from his horror reputation. He then sent me two more books to upload as fast as possible. I said I’d try to get to it by the weekend.

Around 12/16/2010 , I did a Google search on all Mr. Boyer’s projects. Then I learned of the growing list of accusations of plagiarism by David Boyer. Other authors then began contacting me about actual plagiarism. I was sent a link that he had ripped off “Rock and Roll Party of the Dead”, a manuscript sitting in my inbox to be uploaded to Amazon Kindle.

The Horror Writer’s Association had also found that he had plagiarized “Electrocuting the Clown”, a work word for word the original except the by line. Other authors had not received the royalties I had forwarded to Mr. Boyer for distribution to them per our contract.

On 12/17/2010, I took down all Amazon Kindles I had ever published for the man. I also provided a full list of the titles, their contents, and a financial summary of royalties received. (It was less than $200, for roughly 2 ½ years.)

I had unwittingly helped a plagiarist make money from the work of others. I had also told him how to sign up with the Google Book Settlement, such that the work of these individuals was in Google eBookstore with his name on it.

Two attorneys have been forwarded this information, as of 12/18/2010.

Lessons learned from this experience:

1. Plagiarists can work by posing as editors. This is even easier via the Internet than in the pre-digital world.
2. Just because they have the title editor and a website and some books on Amazon and Lulu.com with their publishing imprint does not make them a legitimate publishing house. Anyone can set up a website. And self-publishing options via Lulu.com will let you publish books with any imprint name that isn’t obviously a big name publisher.
3. Consider plagiarism checks of all work sent to you by someone.
4. Plagiarism checks do not

Potential lessons for everyone:

1. Don’t be a middle-man for publishing. Help them publish their own content, offer your own content for sale or monetization, or provide a forum for their content from which you both profit.
2. The volume of someone’s reputation is determined by the amount of time they or their allies can spend typing on the computer. Fifty rave reviews by “customers” can easily be generated via Amazon Mturk tasks at 10 cents each. A dedicated and motivated person, as Mr. Boyer was, can also spend hours racking up comments and positive ratings for themselves. Granted, his many aliases also helped with this.