Books

The Name is Book, E Book.

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The Ian Fleming Estate has realized what so many other published authors already know — that if you own the digital rights to your backlist, it makes more financial sense to publish the ebooks yourself.  So the estate is publishing the digital versions of the Bond novels themselves, cutting out Penguin, which still has the entire series in print. The London Telegraph says that this move could be the beginning of a wave of established authors choosing to self-publish the digital versions of their highly successful franchises.

The books industry could lose out on millions of pounds because publishers have failed to sign up the digital rights to authors, who are expected to bypass traditional publishing houses in favour of Amazon or Google.

Industry insiders suggested that blockbusting authors including JK Rowling, Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie would be looking at the deal closely.

The digital versions of the 007 books will be published by Ian Fleming Publications, which administers the rights to the Bond books.

[…]There are many authors still working that have not signed away the digital rights to their books, allowing them to cut out their traditional publisher if they chose to. Agents said they had grown increasingly irritated by the low royalty rates offered by publishers for digital rights.

This development doesn’t surprise me at all, especially in light of the sobering news from Publishers Weekly this week about the plunge in “paper” sales and the incredible surge in digital in September.

As sales in the traditional trade segments plunged in September, e-book sales jumped 158.1%, according to the monthly sales estimates released by the Association of American Publishers. Sales for the 14 publishers that reported e-book sales hit $39.9 million in the month, and were up 188.4% in the first nine months of the year to $304.6 million. In contrast, sales in the three adult trade segments, adult hardcover, trade paperback and mass market paperback, all fell by more than double digits with the adult hardcover segment experiencing the biggest decline with sales down 40.4% at the 17 publisher who reported sales to the AAP of $180.3 million. The only other segment to post a significant sales gain in September was downloadable audio with sales from the nine reporting companies up 73.7%, to $7.7 million. Sales of audio CDs fell 42.6%, to $11.6 million, in the month at the 22 reporting companies.

Established authors with a large back-list, whether the titles are in print or not, could see significant increases in their revenues putting the digital versions of those books out themselves. And the news is getting around. Look for a surge in 2011 of established authors self-publishing the digital versions of their backlists.

This has agents scrambling for an approach on how to get a share of this potential income. I’ve already heard that some agents are talking about inserting clauses in their new agency agreements with authors that grant them commissions on the digital self-publication of any books for which they negotiated the original print deals. It will be interesting to see how that goes over.

My Brothers Are Selling TV Shows

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Carl Beverly and Sarah Timberman, the producers of JUSTIFIED, have sold a TV series pilot to FX based on my brother Tod Goldberg's short story Mitzvah. Crime writer Joel Goldman is often mistaken for my brother, so I suppose it's only fitting that those same producers just sold CBS a TV series pilot based on Joel's short story Knife Fight. Now if either pilot goes to series, I am expecting my brothers to play the nepotism card and insist that I be brought on staff.

 

The Mail I Get: Suspenseful Ethics Edition

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I got an email this morning from Suspense Magazine. It read:

Suspense Magazine has sent you a book recommendation!

Blood on His Hands by Mark P. Sadler

Suspense Magazine says, "Great book! Now available on Amazon Kindle."

Check it out!"

So I did.  The link sent me to Goodreads, and a four star, rave review for BLOOD ON HIS HANDS from Shannon Raab at Suspense Magazine. It read, in part:

A hunt for payback—predator vs. prey—is the underlying electrical current coursing through this colorful debut thriller by Mark Sadler. […]Not for the faint of heart, “Blood on his Hands” can make your stomach roll as well as a roller coaster while Sadler zigzags you on a frenzied chase across the country.

SM_December_Cover_FINAL_copy-426x555 That may be the strangest, most non-sensical blurb I've ever read, but that aside, what's really interesting about the review is that it's from the co-publisher of Suspense magazine, which also counts Sadler among their reviewers.

In other words, Suspense Magazine is praising and recommending a book by one of their own reviewers. So I asked Sadler about it:

Suspense Magazine is reviewing and recommending (via emails to its Goodreads followers) a book written by one of its own reviewers. Isn't that a huge conflict-of-interest? 

Sadler took offense, firing back:

They reviewed my book and then asked me to be a reviewer as they liked my style – you should check out the dates before you start throwing around accusations. Mark

So I replied that I wasn't making an accusation, but rather asking a question, one that I thought was valid. I went on to say:

Given that you are now reviewing for Suspense, it probably wasn't a wise idea for Suspense to send out an email recommending your book, regardless of whether it was reviewed prior to you becoming a reviewer for them.

I got an astonishing reply from Sadler that raised the ethical discussion to a whole new level. He wrote:

Again check your facts.. they liked the book so much they published it as an e-book and generally recommend all the books their reviewers write..we would not be great reviewers if our publication didn't like us.. and we are all doing it for free so I dont get your point..

I had to do a double-take when I saw that. Suspense Magazine is reviewing (and recommending) a book that they published that was written by one of their reviewers? And Sadler objected to my question about a possible conflict-of-interest? 

So I checked out Suspense's website and discovered that they are offering a new twist on self-publishing.

Suspense Magazine is excited to announce the opening of Suspense Publishing, a place where authors can get their book published for far less than traditional self-publishing houses. Suspense Publishing will bring the power of Suspense Magazine to its authors. We will help them market their book successfully, not by just giving you—the author—the tools to market your book, but we actually work for you to market your book.

[…]It is true that we will not publish your book in paper format, we are an EBook publisher. We are also a major magazine with a huge marketing presence.[…]Our publishing company takes the power of Suspense Magazine, an internationally read magazine, and puts your book in front of hundreds of thousands of people that read the genre that you are writing!

In other words, Suspense Magazine will use their publication to promote the work of their authors…including having their reviewers, who are apparently Suspense authors themselves, review Suspense books without acknowledging that they are also Suspense publications. Not surprisingly, the two most recent titles published by Suspense Publishing — Terri Armstrong's MORNING MENACE and Starr Reina's IN THE NAME OF REVENGE  – won praise from Suspense Magazine.  For MORNING MENACE, Suspense raved:

The intensity and inclusion of a character tangled in her own neurosis keeps the pages turning and the unexpected ending will surprise even the most adept amateur crime- solvers.

And for IN THE NAME OF REVENGE, Suspense proclaimed:

A new star has arrived in the writing world bringing readers a gripping tale peppered with unexpected bits of humor as the cast of characters and twisted turns unfold.

They claim aspiring authors who engage their services can "use the power and strength of Suspense Magazine to reach millions of readers." Really? Do they honestly believe Suspense reaches millions of readers? That would mean they are reaching more than Forbes (921,000 readers),  Newsweek's (1.6 million) or Vanity Fair (1.7 million).  I'd never heard of the magazine until I went to Bouchercon and met the publishers, John and Shannon Raab.

The Raabs seemed like nice, well-intentioned folks, who genuinely love the mystery, horror and suspense genres. But their magazine won't have much credibility in the marketplace, or in the publishing industry, if they don't follow the most basic ethical standards…and if they use their magazine as a promotional tool for the authors who pay them to package their ebooks.  

It's basic ethical conduct in journalism to try to avoid conflicts-of-interest and to disclose them when they are unavoidable. In this case, the conflicts are totally avoidable. Suspense Magazine needs to disclose when the books that they are reviewing are published by them and/or written by one of their reviewers. The magazine's readers need to know when the critics who are reviewing Suspense's books are also other Suspense authors. It means they have a bias. It's journalism 101, folks. Doing otherwise undermines the validity and objectivity, and certainly the professionalism, of the entire magazine.

My sense was that the Raabs want their magazine to be taken seriously in the field…and it won't be with such loose ethical standards. 

Top Suspense

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Authors Bill Crider, Ed Gorman, Max Allan Collins, Harry Shannon,  Dave Zeltserman and Vicki Hendricks have teamed up to create Top Suspense, a site showcasing their terrific books in e-format. 

Electronic books are soon to be a billion dollar business, yet it's more difficult than ever to find a good read, especially via digital download. With more than 700,000 ebooks already on line, with a good number of them self-published, ebook stores are becoming the equivalent of publisher's past 'slush piles'. […]The Top Suspense Group plans to slash through all the clutter.

[…]"Readers can count on us," creator and acclaimed author Dave Zeltserman 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."

[…]Zeltserman has spoken before about the difficulty readers have in searching for sites that offer seasoned professionals. Top Suspense Group members make some of their finest material available at affordable prices. Many of the ebooks will contain bonus material, such as the writer’s commentary on the book that has been purchased, or the addition of a free short story.

“We believe readers will appreciate a reliable inexpensive site that continuously delivers some of the best in contemporary genre fiction,” said Top Suspense Group member and multi-award winning author, Max Allan Collins.

It's a shrewd marketing move and they are a very impressive group of established authors with a strong line-up of books. Collectively, they've got all the genres covered, from mysteries to westerns, and have made major literary contributions in all of them. It will be interesting to see how their experiment works out.

UPDATE 11/25/2010 : Full disclosure. Since publishing this post, I have accepted an invitation to become one of the authors at Top Suspense.

Get Badged

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GOLDBERG_Iron_On_Badge_FINAL Of all the books that I've written, my favorite is THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE. It was nominated for the Best Novel Shamus award by the Private Eye Writers of America, and won quite a lot of critical acclaim, before falling out-of-print. Here's a sampling:

"As dark and twisted as anything Hammett or Chandler ever dreamed up […] leaving Travis McGee in the dust." Kirkus, Starred Review

"Approaching the level of Lawrence Block is no mean feat, but Goldberg succeeds with this engaging PI novel." Publishers Weekly

I want to introduce THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE to the next wave of new Kindle, iPad, and Nook owners this holiday season… and to do that, I’d like send you a FREE COPY of the novel in whatever eformat 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 BADGE 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 MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE by Christmas Day. (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 November 30.

The book is about Harvey Mapes, a 26-year-old security guard who spends his nights in a guard shack outside a gated community in Southern California, reading detective novels, watching reruns, and waiting for his life to finally start. It finally happens when Cyril Parkus, one of the wealthy residents, asks Harvey to follow his beautiful wife Lauren. 

The lowly security guard jumps at the opportunity to fulfill his private eye fantasies and use everything he’s learned from Spenser, Magnum, and Mannix. But things don’t exactly go according to the books…or the reruns. As Harvey fumbles and stumbles through his first investigation, he discovers that the differences between fiction and reality can be deadly. 

With the help of his mortgage broker neighbor and occasional lover Carol, Harvey uncovers a blackmail plot that takes a sudden and unexpectedly tragic turn…plunging him into a world of violence, deception and murder… and forcing him to discover what it really takes to be a private eye. 

Here's a sampling of some more of the critical praise the book received from authors and critics…

“A wonderfully fresh voice in the mystery genre, Goldberg will delight fans of Janet Evanovich and Robert Crais,” – Rick Riordan, author of "Percy Jackson & the Olympians"

"Lee Goldberg bravely marches into territory already staked out by some fierce competition — Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, the early Harlan Coben– and comes out virtually unscathed." The Chicago Tribune

"Goldberg has a knack for combining just the right amount of humor and realism with his obvious love for the PI genre and his own smart ass sensibilities. THE MAN WITH THE IRON ON BADGE is a terrific read. Goldberg is the real deal and should be on everyone’s must read list." Crimespree Magazine

"The Man With The Iron-On Badge is a quick, fun read with a satisfying and unexpected ending. Harvey Mapes is a hero I hope we see in a sequel." — Phillip Margolin, author of "Gone But Not Forgotten"

I hope you will like it, too!

Michelle Gagnon on KIDNAP AND RANSOM

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Michelle_web-1 My friend Michelle Gagnon — the lovely, lethal, and talented author of the Special Agent Kelly Jones series — has a new thriller out entitled KIDNAP AND RANSOM that critics are already calling her best novel yet. So I thought this would be a good time to ask her about  her work, her craft, and her take on where the business is going. 

LEE: The old adage is "write what you know," but the heroine of your books is a kick-ass FBI Special Agent. You've been everything BUT that… a dancer, model, dog walker, personal trainer, bartender, etc. Is writing about Kelly Jones purely an escapist fantasy for you?

MICHELLE: So true, I’m clearly in way over my head. The smart thing would have been to set a book in a Russian supper club starring a modern dancer and call it a day. 

Here’s the thing: with THE TUNNELS, I initially set out to write a college coming of age story. But I kept stalling out after twenty or so pages. Each time I went back and tried a different approach, starting with a different scene or tweaking the characters…and each time, I got the same result. 

Then one night, I had two of my characters walking through this abandoned tunnel system under the university. And I almost inadvertently killed one of them off. I sat back, re-read what I’d written, and shrugged, figuring I might as well see how it played out. A few pages later FBI agent Kelly Jones walked on to the scene, and the story was off and running. I completed a rough draft within a month.

In retrospect, even though it was entirely unintentional, I feel lucky to have stumbled upon choosing an FBI agent as one of my main characters, because she has the capacity to go almost anywhere. It’s enabled me to have books set in the Berkshires, Arizona, and now Mexico City. And although I’m far from an expert, I’ve done a ton of research on FBI procedures, spent time at the FBI Citizens Academy and Quantico, and had an agent vet every one of my books for accuracy. Although that being said, my favorite quote was from a career FBI agent who said that if I really wrote about what she did all day, the book would only be useful as a sleep aid. I stay true to their procedures as much as possible, but take license when the story calls for it. Kidnap&Ransom

 LEE: This latest book, KIDNAP AND RANSOM, is already being hailed as your best work. Wasn't this one inspired by a true story?

MICHELLE: Absolutely it was. While researching border issues for THE GATEKEEPER, I stumbled across an article detailing the kidnapping of Felix Batista. Batista was a world-renowned hostage negotiator who had personally secured the release of over a hundred kidnap victims. While in Saltillo, Mexico for a security conference, he walked out of a restaurant one night, was pushed into the back of a van, and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. The irony of the story grabbed me—the hero becoming the victim, an expert suddenly forced into the position he’d saved so many people from. Stranger still was the fact that his kidnapping wasn’t proceeding normally—there was no ransom demand, and no one claimed responsibility for seizing him. It was a true mystery, and I always find those irresistible. Mind you, in KIDNAP & RANSOM every other aspect of his abduction was fictionalized, and the character of Cesar Calderon is not meant to represent him in any way, shape, or form. Hopefully Mr. Batista will be reunited with his family soon.

LEE: Your books are all mass market, paperback originals. But the talk in publishing circles these days is that paperbacks may be an endangered species, soon to be replaced by ebooks. What's your take on that? 

MICHELLE: Oh no, I’m doomed! After your Bouchercon ebooks panel, we discussed the fact that you stopped buying paperbacks once you got an ereader. I was an early adopter myself: I received a first generation Sony Reader, Kindle, and iPad as presents over the past few years. Yet I’ve still been buying mass market books. I always bring a paperback on planes to carry me through the inevitable forty-five minutes between take-off and landing when electronic devices must be turned off, or to read at the beach, or in the bathtub. I’ve pretty much stopped buying trade paperbacks, and I usually only buy a hardcover novel if I’ve already read it electronically and loved it so much that I felt compelled to add it to my collection. 

So I’m not sure if the mass market format is truly going the way of the eight track. I’d love to see a future where books are bundled in a few different formats—for example, receiving an audio, ebook,  and mass market paperback editions of the same book for a certain price. While I love hardcovers, they’re bulky, unwieldy, and really only designed to be read at home- wouldn’t it be great if you could also have an electronic copy of the same novel when you’re traveling, and the ability to switch to the audio version for a long car drive? 

LEE:  You're an active presence on Facebook, you're a regularly blogger…how important is keeping yourself front-and-center on the web for an author's career these days?

MICHELLE: I think it’s critical, although it can also be exhausting. I’ve tried to be better about turning off my wireless access while I’m writing, and I don’t get on the computer at all after 5pm. Now I share my Thursday slot on THE KILL ZONE blog with the extremely talented Jordan Dane, because I  was becoming overwhelmed by the weekly posts (I don’t know how you do it, Lee!) 
For Facebook and Twitter, I’ll post articles or other stuff that I stumble across that strikes me as interesting.  Even though those networks serve as my virtual watercooler, I’m pretty sure that most of my friends and followers aren’t desperate to know what I ate for breakfast, or how much sleep I got, so I keep those types of posts to a minimum. I have an unfortunate tendency to be easily distracted. So I think that although authors need to capitalize on those resources, it’s necessary to strike a balance, too.

 

I’m Giving Away THE WALK

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The_Walk_FINAL (2) When THE WALK came out in hardcover seven years ago, nobody noticed it. I figured that was the end…but 15 months ago, I re-released it as an ebook. It was an immediate success and has sold nearly 12,000 copies so far and is still going strong.  

I want to introduce THE WALK to the next wave of new Kindle, iPad, and Nook owners this holiday season… and to do that, I’d like send you a FREE COPY of the novel in whatever eformat you prefer (epub, PDF, txt, html, etc). Here’s all that you have to do:

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

    2. 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 THE WALK by Christmas Day. (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 100 people who respond by November 30.

    UPDATE 10-27-10, 5:14 pm: I've given away thirty books already…so if you're interested, you'd better hurry!

Swain is Rolling the Dice on Ebooks

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Wild Card James Swain has started to put his out-of-print backlist of terrific crime novels — including THE PROGRAM, WILD CARD, and THE MAN WHO CHEATED DEATH – on the Kindle. They represent a sampler of sorts of his three series for readers unfamiliar with his work… which has won wide and enthusiastic praise (I've always liked this rave that he got from The New York Times:  "Swain uses language with such blunt force he could be hammering in nails”).

I thought this would be a good time to catch up with him and get his views on his career, the publishing industry and the new world of ebooks…

LEE: Your early books — like GRIFT SENSE, FUNNY MONEY, and SUCKER BET — are all set against the world of gambling and cons. Were you writing about what you know?

JAMES: Yes, I was. I’ve been a magician since I was a kid, and used to hang out with guys in New York who cheated in private card games. They’d come into Tannen’s magic shop and blow our minds with their skill. In the late 1970s, I was visiting Las Vegas, and saw a guy switch a card while playing blackjack. It was amazing how skillful he was. I later told a magician friend of mine named Mike Skinner who lived in Las Vegas and knew a thing or two about cheating. Skinner proceeded to tell me how the casinos got ripped off all the time by cross roaders, which is a hustler’s term for people who cheat casinos (it refers to parking your horse at the cross roads in a town in case you need to make a speedy getaway). I started researching the subject, and met a number of famous cheaters, and collected their stories. Twenty years later when I started writing the gambling books, I had a wealth of information to work from.

LEE: You branched off into other series… was that a creative decision (to stretch yourself as a writer), a marketing decision (to broaden your brand) or were sales of the Valentine series tapering off?

JAMES: It was a fluke. The Valentine books were doing just fine, and had been sold in many foreign markets and also to Hollywood. I’d written nine of them, with two more set to be published –WILD CARD and JACKPOT. I needed a break, and wrote a book called MIDNIGHT RAMBLER, which is about a down-and-out ex-cop who helps police departments in Florida find missing people. I didn’t tell anyone about RAMBLER except my wife – it was my little secret, just to see if I could do something else. When I was done, I showed it to my agent, and he called me up, and started yelling how good it was. He showed it to my publisher, and they reacted the same way. The next thing I knew, I had a new contract and a new series, and the Valentine books were put on hold.

LEE: How did you feel about that? Was it hard to see those books put on the shelf?

JAMES: It was gut-wrenching. I loved those books, especially the last two. But it’s difficult to argue with your publisher when they’re throwing money at you. I bit my tongue and accepted it.   The Program

LEE: What's your take on the state of publishing today? If you'd written GRIFT SENSE today, would it get published? Do you think it would receive the same kind of enthusiastic support and wide notice you got back in 2001?

JAMES: To be honest, I didn’t get much support when GRIFT SENSE was published. I paid for my own tour, and did most of my own marketing. The book was purchased by a lovely editor at Pocket Books named Emily Heckman, who was let go before the book came out. There wasn’t much support for it in-house.

The support I did get was from the mystery field, which pushed the book heavily. For example, Otto Penzler gave the book to a customer named Anthony Mason, who’s a newscaster for CBS Sunday Morning. That led to be being on the show a year later, which was a huge break for me.

In 2003, I went over to Ballantine Books, and my editor there purchased GRIFT SENSE and FUNNY MONEY (the 2nd book in the series) from Pocket. Ballantine got behind the books, which led to much of the success I’ve had.

So to answer your question, I really think that publishing today isn’t much different than it was ten years ago when I started. The avenues of distribution have changed, as have the ability to market yourself over the Internet, but at the end of the day, it’s still about hard work and catching some lucky breaks.

LEE: You've recently released a bunch of your books on the Kindle (and other e-formats). What prompted you to do that? And would you ever consider writing an original book directly for the Kindle, bypassing publishers altogether? If so, why?

JAMES: My decision to release books as ebooks was brewing for a while. The two Valentine books I mentioned earlier had reverted by contract back to me. I also had a thriller called THE PROGRAM which my agent had been shopping around, then had to pull when I got an offer from Tor to do a new series. So I had these three terrific books sitting on my laptop, which bothered me no end.

Then I bought my wife an iPad, and to my surprise (and hers), she fell absolutely in love with it, and started reading 4-5 ebooks a week on it. That got me thinking that maybe I should take these books I had, and release them as ebooks.

The turning point was hearing Joe Konrath speak at the Mysteries To Die For conference in Sarasota this past summer. Joe answered every question I had about the process, and gave me the confidence to put these books out. Will I ever write an original book directly for Kindle? The answer is yes. I’m working on a new Valentine novel right now, and plan to release it in the spring of 2011.

LEE: You've gotten some terrific blurbs from authors like Lee Child, Michael Connelly and Randy Wayne White. How important do you think blurbs from other authors are in selling your work to booksellers and readers? Have blurbs lost their punch or are they even more necessary today to rise above all the clutter out there?

JAMES: Blurbs are very important. They set you apart from the rest of the crowd. They can also tell the reader what they’re in store for. I’ve never released a book without one.

Steve Cannell in Trash TV

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I've been inundated with emails from people asking me about that Steve Cannell clip I posted yesterday. It was from a two-part episode of DIAGNOSIS MURDER entitled "Trash TV." It was actually Steve's second appearance on the series as Jackson Burley, a burned-out, action-adventure TV producer from my book MY GUN HAS BULLETS, which I wrote while I was working for Steve years before on a terrible series called COBRA. How's that for coming full circle? Naturally, my dream was to get Steve to play the part and we were thrilled when he said yes. You can find the scripts for both "Trash TV" and "Must Kill TV" here. Working with Steve on those three episodes was one of the highlights of my career.

I was able to find the entire episode of "Trash TV" on YouTube. One of Steve's best scenes is right after the main titles as he pitches Dr. Mark Sloan (Dick Van Dyke) on his new approach to the "Dr. Danger" pilot.