• print-on-demand (POD) capabilities, which have lowered the costs of small print runs to the point that setup costs for a self-published book now begin around $99, making self-publishing companies like Trafford, 1stBooks Library, iUniverse, Xlibris and GreatUnpublished (most of which offer an e-book option) flourish. So far, self-publishing outfits are the primary users of POD, although traditional publishers are watching the technology closely. "POD books will soon be served up to readers in vending machines when they insert a plastic card into a slot," predicts Elizabeth Laden, a writer on POD technology.
  
  
• on-demand publishing (ODP), is POD taken to the extreme of allowing a single copy to be printed and bound after a prepaid order arrives, thereby eliminating warehousing and inventory costs entirely. It's a technology that also offers savings to firms whose clients want printed copies, not just PDF-format copies, of software manuals, notes Bruce Batchelor, publisher and CEO of Trafford Publishing, a pioneer of POD and ODP technology.
  
  
• the 'Net enables digital publishing, including e-books, which are book-length texts stored or distributed in digital format, and available for reading either online or downloaded onto personal computers, handheld digital assistants or dedicated e-book devices. The 'Net also offers both publishers and authors a handy conduit for book promotion, and has revolutionized publishing by flattening the field between traditional and self-publishing. Amazon.com, for example, draws no distinctions between books with prestigious publishing houses and giant press runs behind them, and books self-published by individuals fed up with a gauntlet of traditional-publisher rejections. (Those who opt for self-publishing in hopes of earning grander sums than traditional publishers pay are usually setting themselves up for severe disappointment, however.)

A decade or two ago, making the leap from low-profile businessperson to author was more daunting. Traditional publishers focused more on writing skills and less on a would-be author's "brand name" in the marketplace. Pre-Internet, they also had a hammer lock on distribution and promotion channels. Self-publishing (also called vanity publishing) was less affordable, accessible or accepted. And there was less pressure on business people to develop the self-promotional skills (public speaking, media interviews, networking) that gave self-publishers a fighting chance of payback. Those skills are now just as key for landing contracts with traditional publishers, who rely ever more heavily on their authors to supplement in-house publicists' efforts.

Reviewers and traditional distributors (the forces behind book store sales, which represent 34% of book sales compared with the Net's 6%) still largely snub self-publishers. "Major chains won't carry POD titles from vanity presses because they're nonreturnable, and reviewers avoid self-published books like the plague unless they're from a local author with a good local interest angle," says Brian Freeman of Author's Edge Design, who provides website design and hosting services for authors.

Batchelor tells self-published authors to jump on that local angle: "Start close to home, test-marketing to local and niche groups, working your network well, and then expand the marketing with refinements learned from the early results."

Roughly 10 per cent of books today are self-published, business books being one of the most heavily represented in that category, says Batchelor.

Why do so many business people opt to self-publish business books? Because they have the most to gain from becoming authors, and assuming they have websites and regular speaking engagements, are well equipped to achieve results.

"Branding comes down to one basic fact: You want the consumer to remember your name when they go shopping for whatever it is you're selling. If they don't know your name, you're losing sales," says Freeman, whose own $8.95 e-book - Buzz Your MP3, written for musicians looking to promote their music - hit No. 6 on Amazon's bestseller list.

"Having a best-selling book will distinguish you in a crowded marketplace, and people can take you home with them after the presentation," says Robin S. Sharma, former lawyer, keynote speaker and author of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.

Of course, publishing a book is one thing. Making it a bestseller is another. Marilyn Ross, author of Jump Start Your Books Sales: A Money-Making Guide for Authors, Independent Publishers and Small Presses, says her best tips are to steer clear of an overworked topic, invest in a professional editor and dynamic cover, ensure a reader-friendly book interior (her own book is an outstanding example) and engage in "tireless marketing."

Having compiled lists of online sources that feature book reviews, book excerpts and books discussions in chatrooms, she says, "Using the 'Net as a venue for marketing is a natural." But she cautions that business e-books play best to readers under 40, which eliminates much of the CEO crowd.

Freeman says, "At the very least, anyone selling a book needs their own domain name and a website to promote that book."

Kimberly Plumley, a freelance book publicist with Publicity Mavens, suggests authors compile a top-ten list of tips from their books to send to media outlets of all sizes, and plan their timing carefully - for instance, launching a book on tax tips at tax time. Authors of e-books can benefit from devising grassroots email campaigns and participating in online chatrooms associated with their target topic, she adds.

According to Freeman, any business executive who fails to post a book as an e-book is making a big mistake, because nonfiction, technical manuals and business-related books are where e-books are seeing the most growth, due to the portability and ease of reference factors.

But most experts agree with Batchelor, who says e-books have been "largely a non-event across the book industry," thanks to the lack of a common format or reading device, and security concerns in a post-Napster world. While Trafford Publishing offers an e-book option, Batchelor reports that very few clients have opted for it, and only one - the author of a book on Internet fraud - has seen impressive sales success.

In fact, e-books are a shrinking component of the 3.5 million books in print - down from 11,400 in 2001 to 8,899 in 2002, according to the R.R. Bowker Books in Print database, while the number of POD books is growing (from 142,000 in 2001 to nearly 150,000 in 2002). Until the current $400 to $600 price tag on dedicated e-book reading devices tumbles and the experience becomes more comfortable, that is not likely to change, but nor is the plunge likely to be a permanent trend, notes Andrew Grabois, senior director of publisher relations for R.R. Bowker. In fact, Forrester Research predicts e-publishing will be a $400 million industry by 2004, up from $9 million in 2000.

The number of would-be authors stepping up to the plate has increased dramatically, reflected by the 11,000 new publishers - mostly self-publishers - entering the field every year, according to R.R. Bowker.

While some authors have launched e-books from their websites to test market interest by watching book reviews and collecting pre-orders, and some e-books have lured contract offers from traditional publishers, Ross says it's just as easy to reach sufficient readers to justify a print book. One key to helping an e-book fly as a print book, however, is investing in a dynamic cover, she advises.

While a few marketing wizards have carried off the e- to print-book transformation with financial success, "the concept hasn't panned out for the average author," observes Batchelor. More impressive are business-book authors who collect large pre-orders from corporations for their self-published books. "We've had a few authors sell thousands of copies to a large corporation, and pocket over $10,000 in royalties on a single sale," he reports.

Amazon.com carries 32,000 business books in print and e-book versions, a heavy increase over 20 years ago. Why the growing number of business books?

"People's lives are perhaps more affected by business issues nowadays than they were 20 years ago...and more and more are going into business for themselves," says Marven Krug, general manager of Amazon.com.

The dot-com boom and bust increased readers' interest in how a business works, and especially in post-mortem books of businesses that failed, agrees Freeman.

Stephen Cole, managing editor of ebooks.com, says that out of a 10 to 15% spike in book sales last year, categories most in demand were business, computer, self-help and genre fiction books.

Business folks with a yen for authorhood would do well to heed the current popularity of business books about "corporate malfeasance, coping or the chronicle of a rise and fall," says Steven Szeitchik, news editor with Publishers Weekly.

One growing trend is linking printed books with websites that offer updates to their information. When business-book publisher Perseus Publishing launched its 2,000-page Business: The Ultimate Resource, it embedded a password inside the book that gave buyers several months of free access to a dot-com site. "It keeps them up to date on the changing world of work," explains Lissa Warren, senior director of publicity for Perseus. The book has sold 70,000 copies to date. More common, says Warren, is ensuring the author's website address is displayed prominently in the book, so the author can update information as desired, as the author of Perseus's Smart Mobs has done.

"I see an increasing connection between books and the web. I find it funny when people say the web will make books obsolete; I see them as synergistic," says Warren.



Pam Withers, www.pamwithers.com, edits business books.



E-Publishing Trivia:

• Readers can buy and download books night and day, search 500 pages in a few seconds and carry 1,000 books in a laptop.
• Experts say the downloading process needs to be simplified, reading platforms stabilized, and reading content increased to a critical mass before e-publishing will enjoy significant expansion.
• A survey by Versaware found that 62 percent of students prefer e-textbooks - to save backaches.
• For $50, e-book fans can have their book read to them with an eBookMan device from www.franklin.com/ebookman
• Organizations such as Questia offer 24/7 libraries with more than 45,000 downloadable books.
• Royalties from e-books are higher than for hardcover because e-books are cheaper to produce.
• In three to five years, the Microsoft Tablet or something like it will become the device people use for reading e-content on the go, predicts David Dorman, a library consultant in Champaign, Illinois.
• The major complaint about e-books, according to a survey: the inability to loan or resell them. Most e-book fans are between 30 and 59 years old (only 14% are under 30). They read between one and three e-books a month, more for leisure (93%) than educational or reference reading.
• E-docs, downloadable documents shorter than book length, heavily out-sell e-books, and Harvard Business Review articles are the best-selling e-docs on Amazon.com, according to general manager Marven Krug.

POD: Print-on-demand refers to the printing equipment that allows books or manuals to be stored digitally, ready to be printed on high-speed laser printers in short runs, typically 300 or more copies. That makes for smaller piles of unsold copies gathering dust in garages and warehouses, and a more rapid response to new orders. POD has also slightly reduced printing time, not a large factor in the big picture, as most books take nine to ten months to reach press stage. POD, which has become almost synonymous with self-publishing, has had relatively little impact so far on traditional publishers, who are locked into providing their books on consignment to bookstores, and find offset printing cheaper on a per-unit basis for their press runs of 3,000 copies or more.

ODP: On-demand publishing entails POD taken to the extreme of enabling one copy at a time issued to prepaid orders, combined with book distribution links. It adds up to no warehousing or inventory costs.