A Dose of Reality

Amanda Hocking may be single-handedly responsible for driving thousands of newbie authors to self-publishing, eager to replicate her astonishing success. But today she gave them a dose of reality. I just wonder how many of them will listen…

Everybody seems really excited about what I'm doing and how I've been so successful, and from what I've been able to understand, it's because a lot of people think that they can replicate my success and what I've done. And while I do think I will not be the only one to do this – others will be as successful as I've been, some even more so – I don't think it will happen that often.

Traditional publishing and indie publishing aren't all that different, and I don't think people realize that. Some books and authors are best sellers, but most aren't. It may be easier to self-publish than it is to traditionally publish, but in all honesty, it's harder to be a best seller self-publishing than it is with a house.

I don't think people really grasp how much work I do. I think there is this very big misconception that I was like, "Hey, paranormal is pretty hot right now," and then I spent a weekend smashing out some words, threw it up online, and woke up the next day with a million dollars in my bank account. 

She goes on to talk about the years of hard work she put into it…and the difficulty of finding good, professional copyeditors…and the huge amount of time she's spent marketing. And yet, she acknowledges that a lot of her success comes down to simple luck (she points out other self-published writers she thinks are every bit as good as she is and yet still have not broken through). Then she makes this point, which I'm sure few newbies want to hear:

I guess what I'm saying is that just because I sell a million books self-publishing, it doesn't mean everybody will. In fact, more people will sell less than 100 copies of their books self-publishing than will sell 10,000 books. I don't mean that to be mean, and just because a book doesn't sell well doesn't mean it's a bad book. It's just the nature of the business. Self-publishing and traditional publishing really aren't that different. One is easier to get into but harder to maintain. But neither come with guarantees. Some books will sell, some won't.

Great advice…and I applaud her for giving it.

Midlist Becomes the E-List

Daily Finance reports that the shuttering of Borders, and the dire situation facing bookstores in general, make it even harder for mid-list authors to break-through, much less even stay in print. A Borders sales exec says that even if the company manages to survive, mid-list authors are facing doom.

· Borders will likely be even more cautious about investing in midlist authors. While their new loans from GE Capital will allow them to finance, among other things, the purchase of new stock, Borders is not in any position to gamble. They're likely, in my opinion, to skipmore midlist titles than usual and to only spend their money on names they know they can sell. This will be exacerbated by the aforementioned store closings.

· Publishers may offer lower advances, especially on midlist titles.The industry has depended on Borders as a major market for new titles. If the publisher can't trust Borders to take a sufficiently large number of copies of a given title, this will factor into their profit and loss statements. As a result, they may advance less money to authors in order to increase the odds that any given acquired title will earn out.

Publishers are going to double-down on their bestsellers and their established, successful franchises — and so are bookstores. That's already the case at the biggest booksellers of all, the big-box general retailers like Wal-Mart, K-Mart and Costco, where mid-list authors are already barely represented on their limited shelf space.

It's no wonder that more and more midlist authors like me are opting to self-publish — which can be far more lucrative, and far less risky, that a publishing contract, especially if you can get back the rights to your backlist.

Double Header

Doubleheader Now you can get both of my acclaimed "Charlie Willis" crime novels — MY GUN HAS BULLETS and DEAD SPACE —  combined together in DOUBLE HEADER for just $4.99. That's two books, complete and uncut, for the price of one. 

MY GUN HAS BULLETS

When Beverly Hills Police Officer Charlie Willis pulls over a speeding Rolls Royce hell-bent for Neiman Marcus, he's surprised to see Esther Radcliffe, the geriatric star of the TV series "Miss Agatha," behind the wheel. He's even more surprised when she guns him down and keeps on driving. A few hours later, he wakes up in the intensive care unit…to find a William Morris agent, a network president, and the head of Pinnacle Studios standing at the foot of his bed. They have a proposal for him: in exchange for conveniently forgetting who shot him, they'll make him the star of his own series, "My Gun Has Bullets." So Charlie trades in his real badge for a fake one…and so begins an uproarious but deadly romp through the wonderful world of TV make-believe…with real bullets. 

"It will make you cackle like a sitcom laugh track. Goldberg keeps the gags coming right up to the end."-Entertainment Weekly

"A very funny novel…a pinch of Carl Hiaasen, a dash of Donald Westlake, and a heaping portion of avarice and inanity Hollywood Style. It's boffo!"– Booklist

DEAD SPACE

Ex-cop Charlie Willis handles "special security" at Pinnacle Pictures. His job: to protect the studio and its stars, to stop scandals before they explode, to keep the peace in the land of make-believe. When Pinnacle revives the cult, 1960s TV series "Beyond the Beyond" as the cornerstone of a fourth network, two powerful forces fight for control of the show-a talent agency that uses blackmail, torture, and murder to keep its clients on the A-list, and a homicidal legion of rabid fans led by an insane actor who thinks he's in outer space.

"[It] reads like a modern-day Alice in Wonderland set against the venal world of the TV industry. It's wonderfully revealing and uncannily accurate," Vancouver Sun (Canada)

"The novel's satiric slant is strong enough to have an effigy of Goldberg beamed into outer space at the next Star Trek convention," Los Angeles Times

"This sharp roman a clef goes where no Hollywood satire has gone before…it's a stingingly funny novel." -Entertainment Weekly 

BONUS MATERIAL: This special Kindle edition includes a sample chapter from  THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE.

I'm doing this as an experiment. THE JURY SERIES compilation of my four vigilante novels widely outsells the books individually. So I figured that since MY GUN HAS BULLETS, one of my best-selling books, sells far better than DEAD SPACE, its sequel, this might be the perfect way to maximizes sales of both. I'll let you know how it goes.

The Fall of the Paper Curtain

Mba1 This week marked an astonishing turning point in the publishing industry. USA Today published it's usual list of the top 150 bestselling books…but for the first time, they included self-published work in their calculations. Kindle Nation founder Stephen Windwalker calls it the "fall of the Paper Curtain." As if that wasn't amazing enough on its own, it wasn't just that a self-published author cracked the list…but that the same author managed to get seven titles on it. Self-published author Amanda Hocking's books placed 16, 24, 31, 81, 133, and 146 on the list, outselling authors like Stephen King and Nora Roberts. Here's what Windwalker predicts will be happening very soon: 

  • One way or another, the fact that USA Today has opened its "bestseller list" gates to the great unwashed population of ebook and self-published authors will force the New York Times to do the same, lest its bestseller list be rendered irrelevant.
  • Once the Times and other rags allow self-published books on their bestseller lists, they will have to start publishing reviews of self-published books.
  • The prediction made here just a few weeks ago, that an indie author would be inducted by early 2012 into the "Kindle Million Club" alongside James PattersonStieg Larsson, and Nora Roberts, will prove to have been ridiculously conservative. Regardless of when Amazon makes the announcement, Hocking will pass the million-copy mark in Kindle books sold by the first day of Spring this year, and she will be joined by another dozen indie authors before the arrival of Spring in 2012.

 

Spinetingling Interview

Spinetingler Magazine has a long interview with me today on e-publishing. My thoughts on the subject have changed a bit since I did the interview but probably aren’t new to any of you who’ve read my blog, but even so, here’s a taste:

But have publishers been slow to adapt? Absolutely. Are they pricing ebooks too high? In some cases yes, but I don’t necessarily believe that the arbitrary $9.99 figure set by Amazon makes financial sense for publishers or authors…not while there are still hardcovers and paperbacks being published. The $2.99 price point makes a lot of sense for self-published authors like Joe and me…but does it make sense for Michael Connelly’s latest book from Little Brown? I don’t think so.

There’s no question that publishers should definitely be giving their authors a much bigger ebook royalties…and they will. It’s inevitable. But right now, publishers are in a state of total confusion and terror. They don’t know what to do…Borders is on the verge of collapse, Barnes & Noble is closing stores, ebook sales are exploding… it’s akin to what radio was facing when television came along. So they are trying to cut costs, pruning the midlist, firing editors, hunkering down and waiting out the storm. How they will emerge afterwards is anybody’s guess at this point.

It’s naive to think, though, that James Patterson or Janet Evanovich or authors in their stratosphere are going to be walking away from traditional publishing any time soon…they benefit enormously from the infrastructure and reach those companies provide. You can’t compare what A-list writers get from traditional publishing to what mid-list writers are experiencing. They are different universes. And it’s naive to think that big publishers, or printed books, are going to disappear. I’m sure the ebook world will, like the print world, continue to be dominated by the big publishers and the big authors (the big players in radio became the dominant players in TV, too). But there is more opportunity now for individual authors to take charge of their own careers. That said, it would not surprise me if Amazon, and eretailers like them, eventually institute some kind of filtering system to deal with the deluge of self-published work that they are being hit with. The slush pile has gone digital…and it’s going to be overwhelming, for Amazon and for readers, to wade through it all.

Gumming up the Plumbing with Your Old Underpants

Charlie Wendig has written a hilarious… and genuinely insightful…post about the justifiable stigma attached to self-publishing and how to avoid it. Here's a taste:

I (and I’m sure other capable writers) have noticed and noted that self-publishing bears a certain stigma. With the term comes the distinct aroma of flopsweat born out of the desperation of Amateur Hour — it reeks of late night Karaoke, of meth-addled Venice Beach ukelele players, of middle-aged men who play basketball and still clutch some secret dream of “going pro” despite having a gut that looks like they ate a basketball rather than learned to play with one.

Self-publishing just can’t get no respect. This is, of course, in contrast to other DIY endeavors.[…]This is in part because it’s a lot harder to put an album or a film out into the world. You don’t just vomit it forth. Some modicum of talent and skill must be present to even contemplate such an endeavor and to attain any kind of distribution. The self-publishing community has no such restriction. It is blissfully easy to be self-published. I could take this blog post, put it up on the Amazon Kindle store and in 24 hours you could download it for ninety-nine cents. It’s like being allowed to make my own clothing line out of burlap and pubic hair and being allowed to hang it on the racks at J.C. Penney.

That last line just killed me. And it's not even the funniest bit in his post. What's great is that he doesn't just take cheap shots at bad, self-published writers the way, say, I would.  By using strong examples, he clearly and hilariously illustrates the many cringe-inducing mistakes made by aspiring writers and, at the same time, offers solid advice on how to avoid "gumming up the plumbing with your old underpants."  It's a very entertaining read, whether you're a writer or not.

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 21

The_Walk_FINAL This was, far and away, my best month ever for sales of my out-of-print backlist on the Kindle.

I sold 3075 books and earned $6624.40 in royalties.  My biggest seller was THE WALK, which sold 1083 copies and earned $2230.98.  

I also did nicely on Createspace with the trade paperback editions of my books, earning $483.94 but not-so-well on the Nook, earning  just $211.46 (though I am told B&N was having accounting problems this month and may be adjusting those numbers upwards, as they did in December).

The grand total in royalties for January, not including Smashwords (Apple, Diesel, Kobo, Sony) or Amazon UK sales, is $7319.80.

By comparison, in January 2010, I sold 536 copies and earned $775 in royalties.

Unbelievable.

(My poorest selling books are the four JURY titles, formerly known as the .357 VIGILANTE series. I blame that, in part, on the negative reviews they've received due to sloppy proofreading. No matter how many times I've gone through the books, errors still seem to slip past me. So the books are now in the hands of a professional copyeditor…when she gets them back to me I will relaunch the books, give way free copies for fresh reviews, and update the product descriptions). 

Announcing Top Suspense

Here's the press release announcing TopSuspense, which just went out to media outlets this week.

Navigating the Sea of E-Books

Nine top suspense authors join forces to promote quality e-books www.TopSuspenseGroup.com

 The e-book market is exploding. With over 700,000 e-books currently available and hundreds more added every week, it’s growing increasingly difficult to distinguish quality books from those that are unedited and written by inexperienced authors.

That’s why nine established, professional authors have formed Top Suspense Group, a site where readers are guaranteed to find top-notch, award-winning authors in multiple genres who deliver a great e-reading experience in their dozens of highly-acclaimed books.

"Readers can count on us," acclaimed author Max Allan Collins explains. "Every member of our group has already made his or her mark on genre fiction, whether it's noir, crime, mystery, thriller, horror or Westerns, and in some cases, several of these genres."

Top Suspense authors have each:

  • Published multiple novels with traditional publishers
  • Won or have been nominated for major literary awards
  • Been internationally published
  • Received critical acclaim from national publications

Many of the authors have graced the national bestseller lists and have had their work produced or optioned for film (the Oscar winning “Road to Perdition”) and television (the Emmy winning “Monk”). Our authors include:

 Max Allan Collins · Bill Crider · Lee Goldberg · Joel Goldman · Ed Gorman · Vicki Hendricks

Paul Levine · Harry Shannon · Dave Zeltserman

 This unique site provides a one-stop-shop of quality suspense fiction. As the e-book market continues to flood and overwhelm readers, Top Suspense will remain a succinct guide to quality, professional e-books written by today’s leading authors.

 

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 20

I've got a new guest post up on Joe Konrath's blog charting my Kindle experience…and the complete change in my thinking about ebooks. A lot of what I'm saying there you've already read about here, so let's cut to the chase:

This January, if sales continue at the current pace, I will sell about 3100 books this month and earn $6600 in royalties.

That’s a 166% increase in sales and a whopping 751% jump in royalties.

In just one year.

On out-of-print books that I wrote years ago that were earning me nothing before June 2009.

If those sales hold for the rest of the year, I will earn $77,615 in Kindle royalties, and that’s not counting the far less substantial royalties coming in from Amazon UK, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble and CreateSpace.

Even if my sales plummet tomorrow by fifty percent, I’ll still earn about $38,000 in royalties this year…and I’d be very, very happy with that.

My most profitable title, in terms of hours worked and pages written, is THREE WAYS TO DIE, a collection of three previously published short stories. In print, it’s a mere fifty-six pages long, but it’s selling 24 copies-a-day on the Kindle, earning me about $1500-a-month. That means I could potentially earn $18,000 this year just from those three short stories alone.

That is insane.

But what would be more insane is if I took my next, standalone, non-MONK book to a publisher instead of “publishing” it myself on the Kindle.

That’s right. I’d rather self-publish. This from a guy who for years has been an out-spoken, and much-reviled, critic of self-publishing. But that was before the Kindle came along and changed everything. I was absolutely right then…but I’d be wrong now.

Yes, it's happened. I have become a complete convert to self-publishing and the Kindle. But do I recommend it for you? It depends. I go into more detail in the post on Joe's blog, so check it out.

Get DEAD SPACE For Free

GOLDBERG_Dead_Space_FINAL I will soon be releasing a trade paperback edition of my book DEAD SPACE to go along with the ebook edition, which has been available for some time now. To generate fresh word-of-mouth and new reviews, I’d like email you a FREE COPY of the novel in whatever format you prefer (epub, PDF, txt, html, etc). Here’s all that you have to do:

1. Send me an email at lee@leegoldberg.com with the subject FREE SPACE BOOK and give me your name and the address of your website or blog (don’t have one? That’s okay. Read on).

2. Agree to post a review, positive or negative (but with no spoilers!) on your blog, website, Goodreads page, Facebook page, or the Amazon listing for DEAD SPACE in the next 60 days. (You don't have to buy the book on Amazon to review it there, you only need to have an account). 

3. Email me a copy of the review or a link to the post.

This offer is limited to the first 50 people who respond by January 15. (UPDATE 1/6/2011: I have already given away 25…so if you are interested, contact me ASAP!)

Here's the story on the book, which was originally published under the title BEYOND THE BEYOND by St. Martin's Press in the mid-1990s as a sequel to my book MY GUN HAS BULLETS

Ex-cop Charlie Willis handles "special security" at Pinnacle Pictures. His job: to protect the studio and its stars, to stop scandals before they explode, to keep the peace in the land of make-believe. When Pinnacle revives the cult, 1960s TV series "Beyond the Beyond" as the cornerstone of a fourth network, two powerful forces fight for control of the show—a talent agency that uses blackmail, torture, and murder to keep its clients on the A-list, and a homicidal legion of rabid fans led by an insane actor who thinks he's in outer space.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR 'DEAD SPACE':

“Goldberg uses just about everything he can think of to send up the studio system, fandom, Star Trek, Trekkies, agents, actors… you name it, he’ll make you laugh about it.” Analog

"An outrageously entertaining take on the loathsome folkways of contemporary showbiz," Kirkus Reviews

“Mr. Goldberg has an observant eye and a wicked pen!” Washington Times

“[It] reads like a modern-day Alice in Wonderland set against the venal world of the TV industry. It’s wonderfully revealing and uncannily accurate,” Vancouver Sun (Canada)

"Some of the easily recognizable actors, agents and producers who are mercilessly ribbed may find it hard to crack a smile at the author's gag-strewn prose, likewise those seekers after politically correct entertainment. But the rest of us should have no trouble….the novel's satiric slant is strong enough to have an effigy of Goldberg beamed into outer space at the next Star Trek convention," Los Angeles Times

"Pinnacle Pictures has decided to revive a 25-year-old cult sci-fi TV show called Beyond the Beyond, but somebody keeps killing off the new cast. Is it the Hollywood agent who eats human flesh? The aging actor who still thinks he's a starship captain? The fans who live only to attend conventions? This sharp roman a clef goes where no Hollywood satire has gone before—altering just enough facts to avoid the libel courts but still smacking of a certain je ne sais Trek. It probably won't make Goldberg, a television writer and producer (Baywatch, Spenser: For Hire, seaQuest), the most popular boy on the Paramount lot, but it's a stingingly funny novel just the same." 
Entertainment Weekly 

"The hilarious follow-up to Goldberg's witty debut, My Gun Has Bullets…[this book] skewers the entertainment business, which Goldberg knows well," Oline Codgill, Knight-Ridder Newspapers.

"As in his riotous novel My Gun Has Bullets, TV writer/producer Goldberg once again bites the hand that feeds him, laughing all the while. Inspired silliness," Publishers Weekly