Apparently, Amazon isn’t cool with any self-published book with the appearance of copyright infringement — specifically, something related to Star Wars.

This is what happened to Gib Van Ert’s memoir “A Long Time Ago: Growing up with and out of Star Wars” yesterday. Amazon yanked the ebook due to an “unspecified trademark issue,” according to the author. The book isn’t telling a story about the characters in George Lucas’s series of films or even the “expanded universe” characters that appear in various sanctioned novels, video games, and graphic novels. It’s about someone’s life experiences and how Star Wars affected them.

“[Amazon's] emails are vague, but they seems to being saying that I have to have Lucasfilm’s permission before selling on their store a book that talks about Star Wars,” Van Ert explained. “It’s a crazy position – Star Wars is a massive pop, cultural, and generational phenomenon, as my book tries to explain through a personal narrative.”

What’s more puzzling about this situation is that Amazon continues to sell the print version of Van Ert’s book, as BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow points out. The only real explanation is that Amazon has some sort of system in place that automatically flags content that may be in violation of infringement — much in the same way that Google has set up a system for media company’s to do with search engine results and infringing videos on YouTube. The real question is whether Amazon also permits its self-published authors to challenge the claim, and how long it would then take for the book to reappear in the ebook store.

It makes sense that Amazon wants to grow its self-publishing business, which is more lucrative for both authors and Amazon than going through a publisher. But an automated copyright infringement system isn’t the way to go, if that’s indeed what’s currently in use. We’re reaching out to Amazon for more information about how it flags ebooks, and will update this post with any new info.

Image via Lucasfilm

He’s also the author of a chart-topping Amazon book that sold 40,000 copies in its first eight weeks of publication — and shot to the top spot in Amazon’s science fiction charts — by following a very strategic publishing and publicity model, which he shared with me when we chatted a few weeks ago.

This is a hot topic right now. Well-known entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki just published APE (Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur), which gives step-by-step instructions on how to self-publish. And an astonishing 27 of the top 100 books on Kindle are self-published.

Here’s how Mather did it.

“I have a background as an entrepreneur and as I was writing the Kindle came out and I wanted to try it,” Mather said. “Traditional publishers have the connections into the bookshops, and pay for printing … but now creators can access the market directly.”

Mather had started writing his novel in 2010, and by 2012 had 150,000 words and 600 pages of The Atopia Chronicles. But he didn’t just throw the novel into the massive Amazon ocean of titles and hope for the best. Using his background in startups and his savvy as an entrepreneur, he created an 11-step program to market and launch the book.

“If you go the self-publishing route, it’s definitely the year to get started,” he told me. “But you need to start with good reviews and get early sales … if you start to become popular, you get into the recommendation system, and the system feeds itself.”

So Mather created the Shakespeare system, an 11-step process to get to number one. Briefly, it outlines the key tips to getting attention, getting reviews, and getting sales:

1. Serialize
   Attention spans are short and readers don’t necessarily trust a new author. Consider breaking your novel into smaller, bit-sized chunks
2. Hook
   The first part of your story needs to be punchy and leave the reader wanting more.
3. Amazon only
   Focus only on Amazon first, because it’s the biggest and sells the most. By focusing, you can promote better, and you can move up rankings quicker. After some success you can consider other platforms.
4. Key networks
   Promote the book in your personal networks. Ask people to re-post your free book offers. Email people. Share it on LinkedIn. Email top-selling authors, and ask them to review your book or even share it with their audiences.
5. Empathy
   You must create a character that people can connect with
6. Select Program on Amazon
   Choose the Amazon Select Program because you can offer your book for free for 5 days in every three months. Then promote it on the free books websites.
7. Perceived value
   Create perceived value by offering a deal … for instance by pricing six serialized parts at $0.99 each, and the entire book at $2.99
8. Editing
   You will get killed in reviews if your book is not well edited. Go on Craigslist, find some unemployed English major, and pay a few bucks to get it edited. Use a real editor if you have the cash, but it’ll be expensive.
9. All free posting sites
   Get feedback on your book from 20 or so people by paying the $10-20 for reading your book. Bonus: they’ll probably become your biggest promoters and will be happy to write reviews for you later. And use the free press release sites when you release your book.
10. Reviews
    It’s critical to get reviews as these have a direct impact on Amazon ranking and recommendations. Don’t do fake reviews — you’ll get caught. Do ask friends and relatives and contacts to review the book.
11. Engage
    Engage with readers via a video blog, or any blog (here’s Mather’s). Show progress on future books. Get them engaged somehow.

By using this system — and by working a 14-hour day when his book was released — Mather ensured that his book launch didn’t disappear into the vast Amazon machine without a ripple. (If you’re wondering why it’s called the Shakespeare system, check the first letters of each step.)

“You need to prepare beforehand and do it all at once, at launch day,” he told me. “I started at three AM, sent out three to four press releases, ran through the whole marketing program in 14 hours, and by the next day I was number one in science fiction.”

One thing that is critical, Mather says, is pricing.

“I talked to a lot of science fiction readers, and it’s sort of like the music industry,” he told me. “A book from a big publisher is $10-15  … so people will pirate them. But if you price it at $2-3, they won’t. And, since you’re getting 70% of the purchase price from Amazon versus maybe 20% from a regular publishing deal … you’re better off in the end.”

The results are pretty obvious: a book that went to first in Amazon’s science fiction list in a day is still on three different top-ten lists and is currently ranked 1,813 on the overall Amazon’s best-sellers list. Not bad for a first-time author.

Of course, it’s not all about the system. One thing that Mather did add when we chatted: it helps if the book is good.

Great news for budding literary types: These days, you don’t need to go through the laborious process of finding a publisher.

With a little cash, why not distribute your book online in a manner akin to 50 Shades of Grey, the self-published smash hit that was developed from Twilight fan fiction? While erotic fiction may not be your cup of tea, the novel’s runaway success proves that anything is possible with the right marketing and distribution.

Since 2006, the practice of self-publishing has nearly tripled, according to a new Bowker report. It has grown 287 percent in the past six years, and numbers are expected to continue to escalate. The study also found that that while production increases have occurred in both print and digital formats, the latter is responsible for the greatest percentage gains.

“It’s provided everyone who has a story to tell with a method for sharing it and leveled the playing field to an unprecedented degree,” said Beat Barblan, the director of identifier services for Bowker, an affiliate of research provider ProQuest in a statement. ”This is no longer just vanity presses at work – self-publishing is out of the dark corners and making its way into the mainstream.”

If you don’t have the cash to publish your work, authors are increasingly turning to Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites. These campaigns are not always successful, as Mashable reports. However, we’ve seen a number of recent successes — one author raised over $15,000 last month for a book about “10 startups with 5 CEO girls, 5 CEO guys and their race for funding and fun.”

The ideas that tend to strike a chord with backers address the topics of business and entrepreneurship. Read more here about whether Kickstarter can help to replace traditional book publishers.

For online distributors, the indomitable rise of self-publishing means more ways to make money.  Smashwords, a site that sells e-books from independent authors, produced a massive 40,608 titles (nearly 47 percent of total self-published e-books) in 2011, says the report. Novelists can also distribute their book on Amazon or the Apple Store.

That said, barriers to entry can still stymie the self-publisher: It takes time to write a book. Traditional publishers are willing to front the “advance” — the $20,000 to $100,000 it takes to forgo a salary. But if Kickstarter users can convince enough people to commit to purchasing a copy, the equivalent of an advance could be generated through crowdfunding.

Image via Shutterstock

Which means that some lucky self-publishers will see their books not just in the digital recesses of various online stores, but front and center at America’s last major bookseller.

VentureBeat spoke to FastPencil’s chief executive Steve Wilson about the deal.

“We’ll publish several thousand books this year,” Wilson told VentureBeat. “And we’ve got three different imprints under which we publish.”

Big-name FastPencil authors, such as US Senator Barry Loudermilk or The War of Art author Steven Pressfield, are in the top level tier: Premiere. With the new deal, Premiere level authors automatically get access to Barnes & Noble’s physical locations. And their books won’t just be in the store — they’ll be featured in the “octagon,” the high-profile front table visible as you enter the store.

In addition, FastPencil’s top authors get premium placement on the web and in the Nook store.

The lower two tiers of FastPencil’s authors, in the company’s Wavecrest imprint and self-publishing level, will have the opportunity to be presented to Barnes & Noble to be considered for inclusion in the program. Good sales and a great book, of course, are the best ways to get noticed.

“That’s an opportunity most self-published authors don’t get,” said Wilson. “Barnes & Noble is the only major retailer left in physical book sales.”

Wilson says that FastPencil, which he launched in 2009, currently has about 50,000 authors.

“95 percent of our sales come from the three big players: Amazon, Apple, and Barnes & Noble,” Wilson told me.

About 40-50 percent of those sales are via Kindle, with 30-35 percent on Nook, and the remainder on Apple iBooks.

FastPencil also has a smaller marketing agreement with Amazon.

Image credit: Vesna Cvorovic/ShutterStock

While technology has certainly made it easier for people to self-publish comic books or graphic novels, the same isn’t true when it comes to digital distribution — or getting self-published “indie” comic books into multiple online stores so people can buy them.

The lack of affordable distribution options for self-published comic books makes it difficult for creators to turn their work into a business. But with over 300,000 self-published creators expected to begin selling their own comic books and graphic novels in 2012, digital comic book startup Graphicly sees a huge opportunity for growth.

In addition to Graphicly’s web and Facebook distribution channels, the company recently opened up its platform for self-published comic book creators to sell their work across several different digital bookstores, including Apple’s iBookstore, Amazon’s Kindle store, the Android Market, Barnes & Noble, and others. Creators pay an initial “conversion fee” for each comic book they want to distribute, and retain most or all of the revenue depending on the distribution channel. Sales made through Graphicly’s online store or integrated Facebook store are free, but sales through channels like the iBookstore still incur a revenue sharing fee.

Considering the extremely high costs associated with making a single self-published comic book series available across all of the aforementioned stores/platforms, Graphicly’s “distribution as a service” model makes perfect sense for most self-publishers. The company estimates that it can implement a new comic book into all the appropriate distribution channels a week after receiving a PDF file of the book itself.

Self-published comic book creators also gain access to a useful set of analytics tools, which measure things like the average length of time people read a book, number of total readers, what platform people are using, social activity, and much more. This kind of information will definitely be useful to self-publishers with limited resources for marketing and promotion. And since the analytics tools measure a customer’s behavior, it could drastically change the way stories are told, according to Graphicly CEO Micah Baldwin.

“From our initial testing with the analytics tools we discovered that most people read an average of 3 to 4 minutes for each full length comic book before putting it down,” Baldwin said in an interview with VentureBeat.

Having been a serious comic book reader for decades, I determined that this length of time is roughly about how long people need something to read while sitting on the toilet. And while Baldwin jokingly agreed, he went on to explain how future creators might want to publish a new issue after three or four pages rather than the currently industry standard of 22-pages per monthly comic book.

“The only reason 22-pages is the standard length of a comic book is because most artists can typically finish drawing one page per day… So, 22 pages spread out over the entire month, they would have enough time to finish the whole issue,” he said.

For example, if a self-published comic book creator determined that people only read five pages at a time based on Graphicly’s analytics, it might change the frequency of distribution. That in turn might improve reader engagement, which could impact sales.

Why Graphicly’s self-publishing model will disrupt the comic book industry

Previously, Graphicly concentrated on its own distribution channel for a handful of major comic book publishers like Image, Marvel and IDW, as well as a variety of smaller and creator-owned publishers. The distribution channel can be integrated within a Facebook company page or official website, which gives it an advantage over competitors like comiXology because it combines the marketing efforts of publishers with Graphicly’s own promotional efforts. Graphicly generates revenue by taking a cut from each comic book sale, much in the same way that both Apple and Amazon do with their respective digital book stores.

The inherent problem with this strategy is that people inevitably favor the platform with the most “complete” collection of media in its library, which often contains exclusive content unavailable to competitors. For example, Netflix has the largest library of streaming video content and the most streaming video subscribers. As for digital comic books, comiXology has the largest selection of content from all the major publishers and likely the highest base of customers among digital comic book distribution channels. While Graphicly has more content available by a much larger number of publishers, it still lacks inventory from DC Comics, which brings in the majority of all comic book sales (digital and print). And since digital purchases are only stored within each individual distributor’s platform, its likely that people will end up choosing the platform with the most complete selection of content available for purchase.

Rather than solely compete with comiXology or others like it, Graphicly decided to tweak its business model. The startup will continue offering popular comic books within its own distribution channel for publishers with a high volume of sales and taking a percentage of the revenue. But now, smaller publishers and self-published creators will pay a base fee for each comic book ($150 per book) they want to distribute through Graphicly and keep all the revenue.

“The beauty of this model is that we don’t need DC Comics to succeed,” Baldwin said. “Hopefully, DC and other big publishers will eventually see the value of Graphicly’s distribution and analytics,” which will bring them on board, he added.

Essentially, if you can generate at least $150 in sales from your self-published comic book, you are earning a return — excluding any other operating costs. And since the Graphicly platform makes the book available on all major digital bookstores it improves the possibility for higher sales. Compared to printing costs, the “conversion fee” is also a cheaper means of distribution — making it possible for more independent creators to publish books. (It’s worth noting that Baldwin said the $150 fee is “beta pricing” and will likely change to better fit the needs of each small publisher as the platform gains steam.)

The new publishing platform is available to current Graphicly publishers, with a full roll out coming in the next few weeks.

The Boulder, Colorado-based startup closed a $3 million funding round in January 2011 led by DFJ Mercury, with participation from 500 Startups, Dundee VC, Ludlow Ventures, and individual angel investors. The company was incubated by TechStars and previously raised $1.2 million from DFJ Mercury and others. It has 20 employees and has raised a total $4.2 million to date.

The goal is to create an alternative distribution model that preserves the creativity and independence of small developers but allows them access to vast markets at the same time.

Tapjoy has an existing platform that developers use to make money from games or apps. With a variety of monetization options,  Tapjoy can do things like insert ads into apps that earn cash for developers when a user downloads an advertised app. That is called a pay-per-install business model.

Since lots of developers are using the platform, Tapjoy can reach more than 200 million mobile consumers and 100 million social game players. Tapjoy is generating more than $35 million in ad revenues per month for developers. It is also generating more than 1.5 million app downloads per day for its advertisers.

That has allowed Tapjoy to launch its own self-publishing platform now, called Tapjoy Publishing. Tapjoy will let developers publish their own games through Tapjoy’s infrastructure, allowing them to distribute their games to the Android Market, the Apple App Store and Facebook.

Mihir Shah, chief executive of San Francisco-based Tapjoy, said that the self-publishing program will help smaller developers better compete against big rivals in the app space such as Electronic Arts, Disney-Tapulous-Playdom or DeNA-Ngmoco. Tapjoy’s goal is to democratize the distribution of apps by giving them the same advantages that the big companies have.

As part of the program, Tapjoy offers its know-how on getting apps noticed and publicized. It will also fund the cost of converting a game to Tapjoy’s program, in effect financing the cost of finishing a game. (OpenFeint, gWallet, Playfish, and Scoreloop are all doing similar things). If this sounds a little like the practice of vendor financing, which has a very mixed record, that’s not so far from the truth. Once the game or app launches and it generates revenues, then Tapjoy gets paid back for its financing. In the meantime, in exchange for the financing and publishing help, the developer uses Tapjoy’s monetization platform exclusively.

Tapjoy gets paid back by getting its monetization fee. For developers, this kind of financing could be attractive because they don’t have to give up any equity in exchange for publishing and publicizing the app. And by working with Tapjoy, a game or app can get enough distribution to become a decent hit, and the developer winds up owning the whole game.

Tapjoy has been testing the idea for a while and has done one deal with 5th Planet Games and its Dawn of the Dragons game on Facebook. Robert Winkler, founder of 5th Planet Games, said Tapjoy drove a 40 percent increase in his game’s monthly active users in a month, giving the game maker its best revenue month ever. Shah thinks that tens of thousands of developers could eventually use a self-publishing program like this.

Tapjoy selects a promising partner for game publishing and gives the company “marketing credits” for new user acquisition through Tapjoy’s network of more than 200 million mobile consumers and 100 million social gamers (the latter mostly on Facebook). The game or app is promoted to that network and it is more likely to see high download numbers because it gets exposed to so many users. Tapjoy’s ad targeting technology creates personalized app recommendations for individual users, so the apps are promoted to the users who are most likely to buy them.

“We’re in the unique position of being able to turn great but undiscovered apps into major hits by leveraging our mobile social distribution platform,” said Shah.”And we encourage developers to stay independent. We become a real alternative.”

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---