Books

Backlist Ebooks

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BEBwebpageicon There's a new website — Backlist Ebooks — launched by Patricia Ryan and Doranna Durgin that's devoted entirely to previously published, out-of-print books that the authors themselves have made available again on the Kindle. 

Backlist Ebooks is comprised of print-published authors who have re-released our out-of-print backlist titles as reasonably priced ebooks. Our authors include NYT and USA Today bestsellers, as well as those who have won major literary awards–including the Hugo, Nebula, RITA, Romantic Times and more.

You'll find my books there, as well as titles by Julie Ortolon, Lillian Stewart Carl, C.J. Cherryh, Karen French, Libby Fischer Hellman, Patricia Rice and many more. New authors are added everyday. You can also check out Backlist's Facebook page for the latest news.

Ebooks Are Not the Enemy

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Jeffrey Trachtenberg of The Wall Street Journal reports that authors are getting screwed by publishers in the ebook business.

It has always been tough for literary fiction writers to get their work published by the top publishing houses. But the digital revolution that is disrupting the economic model of the book industry is having an outsize impact on the careers of literary writers.

[…]The new economics of the e-book make the author's quandary painfully clear: A new $28 hardcover book returns half, or $14, to the publisher, and 15%, or $4.20, to the author. Under many e-book deals currently, a digital book sells for $12.99, returning 70%, or $9.09, to the publisher and typically 25% of that, or $2.27, to the author.

But Trachtenberg leaves out an attractive third option (and I have no idea why he did). What he doesn't say is that an author can publish their ebooks to the Kindle themselves and earn 70% of whatever the purchase price is ($2.06 on a $2.99 ebook). So why even bother with a publisher? I know it's a question more and more mid-list and literary authors are asking themselves. I certainly am.

The problem here isn't the rise of  ebooks…it's publishers that are a) charging too much for ebooks and b) not giving a fair royalty on ebooks to authors.

In other words, it's not ebooks that are the problem here, it's the publishers failing to adapt.

Andrew Coburn

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Five years ago, I blogged about discovering author Andrew Coburn's terrific crime novels and how wowed I was by his books. Today I got this note from his daughter:

This is a pivotal time in Andrew Coburn's life. He is my dad. He's written, I think, 14 novels and though he hasn't stopped writing (been writing lots of short stories published online and in university periodicals), he is struggling with a life-threatening illness. His family is around him, of course, but he needs to be reminded there is life beyond the four walls.That his work has been –and more importantly, still is–his lifeblood. I can forward any mail: Cathleen Coburn; 4 Patricia St, WIndham, NH 03087. My email is cathycoburn@live.com Thank you! If his words have inspired you, touched you or mattered in some way, please let your words do the same for him. My father's daughter, Cathy Coburn

If you are a fan of Coburn's work, now is the time to let him know!

Mr. Monk and the Nice Review

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Amazingly prolific  author James Reasoner has  given MR. MONK IS CLEANED OUT a rave review on his blog. He says, in part:

What’s left to say about Lee Goldberg’s Monk books? You already know they’re some of the very best TV tie-in books being published today. More than that, they’re some of the very best mystery novels being published today, period. MR. MONK IS CLEANED OUT is the latest in the series, and it’s excellent, as always.[…]The plot is appropriately twisty, but as usual, Goldberg plays fair with the clues. Monk has never been more miserable (or funnier), and Natalie’s narration is as charming and appealing as ever.

Thank you, James!

Unfanboy Enjoys his WALK

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The blogger  Unfanboy’s very positive review of THE WALK is the most detailed, and thorough, one the book has received yet. Here’s a taste.

The plot seems simple enough: it is the story of a man’s attempt to get home and find his wife after the long-anticipated “Big One” earthquake more or less levels Los Angeles. As the book’s peripatetic title might suggest, it is more of a philosophical meditation than a thriller – except that makes the book sound much less funny than it actually is. It might be more appropriate to describe The Walk as a kind of anti-apocalypse novel, or perhaps a satire on every disaster movie you’ve ever seen – but like the best satires, it offers some redemption in the end.

The center of this non-thriller is its rather unheroic protagonist, Martin Slack. Marty is a television network executive who is doing pretty well for himself but also realizes the emptiness of his work. He had once hoped to be a writer and even made decent headway on a novel, but most of his time is now spent giving “notes” on rehashed scripts in snooty restaurants. He is also married to a woman he loves, but their relationship has come to be dominated by their inability to have a child. As he comes to reflect near the end of the book, the symbols of his life have become “the blank page and the semen cup.”

Thanks so much, Unfanboy!

DEAD SPACE for under a buck

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DEAD_SPACE_FINAL I've slashed the price on the Kindle edition of DEAD SPACE to only 99 cents for the rest of this month. The book is the sequel to my first novel, MY GUN HAS BULLETS, and was originally published in 1995 under the title BEYOND THE BEYOND. 

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

Ed takes THE WALK

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The_Walk_FINAL (2)

THE WALK probably wouldn't have been published by Five Star back in 2004 if it wasn't for Ed Gorman's enthusiastic recommendation to the editors. I've always known that he liked the book, but until his blog post today, I didn't realize how much. He says, in part:

it's a book far richer than most suspense novels[…]Marty Slack is the protagonist, a TV executive whose largest burden is being himself. As much as he resents and hates the grasping, greedy, treacherous people at the top of the TV ladder, he has to reluctantly admit to himself, in the course of his journey to reach home after being stranded miles away, that he is an awful lot like them. Slack is a character we get to know as well as we know people in the best of mainstream novels. Goldberg gives us a real live person here. And he doesn't cheat. We come to like Slack but there are moments when we see him as shallow, selfish and even pompous. But he's fascinating because he's so well detailed.

[…]And then there's Marty Slack's marriage. This storyline is another example of what I mean about Goldberg pushing against genre boundries. This isn't just a cliche portrait of a marriage in trouble. This, and at some length, is the dissection of two people who've realized that their marriage may be beyond repair. The scenes of recrimination, rage, despair hurt to witness. Beth Slack is just as painfully real as Marty Slack.

[…]This is a magnificent novel–by turns hilarious, scary, sad, witty and ultimately wise on its judgments about the way so many of us live these days.

Thank you so much, Ed!

The Mail I Get

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Over on Debbi Mack's blog, someone asked me:

Lee, you said that you would advise new authors (unpublished) to take a contract with a small press over self-publishing. Could you expand on that? What do you think that would offer them over the chance to sell more books and attract more readers?

Very few self-published authors are selling as well on the Kindle as Joe Konrath …or even close. But let’s say you are one of the lucky few selling about 500 copies of your book a month at $2.99, earning $1000-a-month in royalties.

If the sales hold, you’ll sell 6000 copies-a-year, and earn $12,000. A typical, low-end advance for a new writer would be about $6000, give or take a thousand. A low-end mass market print run would be about 30,000 copies…a hardcover run would likely be about 5000 (and, of course, in success it could be considerably more). Your book will be in most bookstores in the country, and if it’s a mass market paperback, probably most drugstores, convenience stores, and some airports. And, of course, there will also be an e-book edition. You might even get foreign sales, large print deals, and an audio book out of it, generating more income.

I would argue that you'd be a fool not to take a mid-list paperback or a hardcover deal over self-publishing on the Kindle. Financially, you might make less (in failure or only modest success)…but the difference will be more than made up for in editing, marketing, wider readership, wider name recognition, and professional prestige (and that prestige does mean something, whether you want to admit it or not).

You can always go back to self-publishing… and when you do, you will be bring that wider readership, name recognition, and professional prestige with you. But a book deal doesn't come along every day, and that's still going to mean something for a long time yet…and I suspect it still will if bookstores disappear.

I have no doubt the big reason my out-of-print are doing as well as they are is because they are riding on the large readership of my MONK and DIAGNOSIS MURDER books.

So let's use a real world example. Boyd Morrison sold thousands of copies of THE ARK on the Kindle…and abandoned Amazon in a nanosecond for a print deal. Why? Because he knew he could reach even more people and potentially make even more money (and sell the rights to other publishers around the world, not to mention audio, film, etc). He was thinking about his long-term career. It was a wise move…because you can always go back to self-publishing… but a contract from a major publisher is a lucky break that may not come again.

But don’t take my word for it… here’s what Boyd has had to say on the topic:

“If your goal is just to write and get your books out there where readers can find them, e-publishing lets you do that in a way that doesn't cost you thousands of dollars paid to vanity presses to get a few thousand copies that will molder in your basement. Instead, you can now make some decent money selling ebooks, which will reward independent writers who produce good books that are well-packaged and cleverly promoted. […] But if you are writing books to make a living (so that you can ditch your old job), you'll certainly have to consider the financial ramifications of staying indie versus going with a publisher. In my case, I wanted to reach as many readers as possible, and though ebooks are growing at an exponential rate, most sales are still currently in stores. In two years, those numbers will be very different, but for right now that's the situation. In addition, I'd be surprised if I ever would have gotten deals for The Ark in UK, Germany, Holland, Italy, and all the other countries without a US publishing deal. Although I'm not anywhere near the league of Stieg Larsson's sales, you can get an idea of how the US market compares to the rest of the world by looking at his numbers: he has sold 4 million books in the US, but he has sold over 40 million books worldwide. That percentage is not uncommon for authors of thrillers, which are what I happen to write. Yes, with the advent of Amazon Kindle UK, I could have put my books on that store as well, but I never would be able to put my books on Amazon Kindle Deutsche because I would need a German translator. And remember that Amazon Kindle UK wasn't even a faint glimmer when I got my publishing deal last year (47 Internet years ago). So truly take a deep look at what your goals are before you decide to take either the indie route or the traditional publishing route. Either way, you'll get to do what you love, which is write. But the effort, hassle, financial rewards, prestige, and desired readership should all be factors you consider in your decision.”

For me, and other mid-list authors, it’s an entirely different decision.

I got a $2000 advance when I sold THE WALK to Five Star in 2003. It was published in hardcover in 2004 and didn't earn out. It tanked. I have since sold close to 9000 copies of THE WALK on the Kindle. I make more in one month from Kindle sales on THE WALK than I did during the two years that the book was in print in hardcover.

If a publisher came to me today and offered me a mass market paperback deal for THE WALK, I probably wouldn't take it…because I don't see a scenario where I'd end up making more money on the book than I am making now. But it's easy for me to say that… I have 1 million copies of my MONK books in print with Penguin/Putnam.

If I was a newbie author, who'd never been in print before, I would probably take the mass market deal even if it meant earning less just for the exposure and professional credibility it would give me.

All that said, writers now have more options than ever before…which is great. And the rise of FREE self-publishing  (meaning no cash out-of-pocket) may finally drive into extinction Authorhouse, Jones Harvest, and all the other sleazy vanity presses out there that have preyed on the desperation and naivete of aspiring writers for too long.

TIED IN Ties Up More Raves

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Tied In Cover 6-22-2010

Author/blogger Ed Gorman, founding publisher of Mystery Scene Magazine, has given TIED IN an incredibly flattering review.  He says, in part:

I say this without a whit of exaggeration: TIED-IN edited by Lee Goldberg, and written by Lee and other members of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, is the most fascinating, entertaining and honest book about the writing life I've ever read. […] we see the pleasures and frustrations of this particular craft. And in the process we see what life is really like for professional writers.

[…]TIED-IN is rich with humor, lore, wisdom about the writing life

Thank you so much, Ed! And Mark Baker, one of Amazon's top reviewers, has also given TIED IN a rave. He says, in part:

We get a look at every kind of tie-in imaginable. There are the books based on TV series, as covered by Donald Bain (author of the Murder, She Wrote books), Tod Goldberg, and William Rabkin. Max Allan Collins discusses his two most frustrating novelizations of movies. Is writing for a YA crowd harder or easier? You'll get the answer from Aaron Rosenberg. Writing a novel based on an entire season of episodes, novels based on comic books, and writing novels set between movies are all discussed. […]My respect for tie-in writers has really grown as a result of reading this book. One of the repeated facts is their short deadline. We're talking weeks to complete a book. And that's with multiple people telling them how the book should be written. This isn't easy work.[…]if you enjoy reading about the adventures of your favorite screen characters, this is a book you need to check out. You'll love getting a peak behind the scenes at how authors create these further stories.

Thanks, Mark!

Taking The Walk

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The_Walk_FINAL (2) James Reasoner had some very nice things to say today about the paperback edition of THE WALK. He said, in part:

THE WALK is part adventure novel, part horror novel, part comedy. A lot of terrible, tragic things happen, but Goldberg’s dry, satiric wit crops up often enough to keep things from getting overwhelmingly gloomy. Marty and Buck are fine characters who play off each other wonderfully well, and the pacing really keeps the reader turning the pages. All of it leads up to an absolutely great ending that really put a grin on my face.

[…]this is hardly an unbiased review, since Lee Goldberg and I have been friends for years. However, trust me on this. THE WALK is one of the very best novels you’ll read this year or any other year.

Thank you so, much James!