Books

Abandonment Issues

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Galleycat reports that editor Joe Blades is leaving Ballantine — and publishing.

Why? Though Blades hadn’t responded to email queries as of this writing, burnout
seems to be the biggest issue, according to a recent post by
one of his authors. Though Blades isn’t certain what his next move will be,
it won’t have anything to do with the publishing world.

Blades was especially known for editing mystery and crime fiction, and his
author list included Anne Perry, Sandra Scoppettone, Terrill Lee Lankford,
Rochelle Krich, Mary Logue, Gillian Roberts and William Bernhardt. It remains to
be seen how many of these folks will be kept on by Random House, but Blades will
be meeting with various RH brass to discuss which editors get custody of which
authors.

It’s very scary when your editor, often your biggest champion at the publishing house, leaves. When one of my editors left, on the eve of publication of my non-fiction book,  any interest in  me or the book within the company just vanished… the book was orphaned. There was no effort made by the sales force to sell the book or by the PR department to promote it.  Sandra Scoppettone, one of Blades’ authors, is worried this might happen to her:

What worries me is the new book, Too Darn Hot, which will be published in June. 
Even if a new contract hadn’t come my way, this editor would’ve still been on
top of things and moved the book as much as possible.  As the book is finished
and there’s nothing for a new editor to do on it, it’ll lie there like a lox. 
Unless there’s a new contract and then it’ll be different.  At the moment my
book is an orphan.

 

I don’t blame her. I’d be worried, too. On the other hand, losing an editor doesn’t always mean doom for his list of  authors.  I’ve been extraordinarily lucky at Penguin/Putnam/NAL on the DIAGNOSIS MURDER and MONK books. I’m on my third editor so far  (the first was downsized out of a job, the other left for a richer offer) and they’ve all been wonderful… supportive, enthusiastic, and totally committed to the books.

“Pamela Anderson, here I come!”

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The Contra Costa Times, the largest newspaper in the San Francisco East
Bay, has reviewed THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE.…three weeks after my signing up
there. Oh well, better late than never!

Hero Harvey Mapes is one of those
Everyman kind of guys. Yep, he’s more than a few levels down the ol’
status totem pole. In fact, he might be one of the few guys in the
world deemed unemployable by the car wash.

"What?" you say. "Can’t even get a job at a car wash? That’s
impossible." Tut-tut. Where do you think overnight security guards come
from? 7-Eleven? Perhaps you believe the urban legend that they are
dropped off by the Great Pumpkin?

Yes, Harvey is an overnight security guard. But a guy with some
brains, good instincts, stick-to-it-ness and an encyclopedic knowledge
of TV detectives: Think everything from Frank Cannon to Magnum.
"Iron-on Badge" is the story of Harvey’s transition from security guard
to MAN.

Writer Lee Goldberg is a local success story. Walnut Creek native.
Northgate High School grad. Former freelancer for the Contra Costa
Times, UPI, Newsweek. He’s written for numerous television shows:
"Monk," "Spenser for Hire," "Martial Law," "Hunter" and — boy, he must
have done something right in his past lives — five episodes of
"Baywatch."

"Iron-on Badge" is his latest book. It is a fun read, and it proves
that as a fellow Contra Costa Times columnist, I have something to look
forward to. Pamela Anderson, here I come! Woo-hoo!

The First Two Paragraphs Were More Than Enough

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I went to my brother Tod’s house for Thanksgiving. In his office, he had a stack of ARCs and review copies (he reviews books for a Las Vegas newspaper). There was a new book by an author I’m curious about, so I picked it up and started reading. I didn’t get past the first two paragraphs and, as it turned out, neither did my brother.

The first howl sang across the night void and trembled the frozen air, a sound thin as the starlight poised on the blue plains of snow, with no more presence than the memory of a vanished loved one, and just as inescapable across the face of the world; and as with a ghostly visage rising before me, I might have denied the cry existed. But the horses plunged.

Sergei Gorlov, the friend and fellow mercenary who had mentored me for the last two years of cavalry warfare and who guided me now into the vast mysteries of his homeland, sat beside me, bundled beneath blankets in the open sleigh.

Sunday On The Road

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My 10-year-old daughter Madison wanted to hang out with her Dad today, so we both went down to Irvine for my talk with the Orange County chapter of Sisters-in-Crime. My brother Tod was there, too, and we talked about the craft and business of writing with the lovely ladies for two-and-half hours…and then Madison and I schlepped up to Hollywood in bumper-to-bumper traffic for the MONK season wrap party at the Lucky Strike bowling alley.

We chatted with showrunner/creator Andy Breckman, and producers Tom Scharpling, David Breckman and David Hoberman, as well as USA Network head honcho Jeff Wachtel. My old friends Terry Erdman and Paula Block, authors of the upcoming MONK COMPANION, were also there. Andy made Madison’s day by taking her picture with Tony Shalhoub and Traylor Howard (I’ll be sure to post the pictures when they arrive).

Madison says she learned a lot from our talk and that she had a great time at the party, so it looks like she may be tagging along with me more often… which is fine with me!

Still More Dollars and Sense

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Authors everywhere are getting their royalty statements in the mail, sparking a lot of blog talk about money. Bestselling novelist Tess Gerritsen says you don’t need to look at an author’s royalty statement to figure out how much he’s probably making:

If you follow the announced deals in PUBLISHERS WEEKLY or the
online website PUBLISHERS MARKETPLACE, you’ll start to get an inkling
of what multi-published authors are getting. But you can also guess,
knowing typical royalty rates, what an author is probably worth in real
dollars. With major publishers, hardcover royalties tend to run around
12 – 15% and paperback royalties tend to be around 6- 10% of cover
price. So a writer who’s sold 25,000 hardcover copies has earned
$75,000 in royalties in hardcover sales alone, and his next book deal
should certainly reflect that. His next advance should be, at a bare
minimum, $75,000. (And we’re not even talking about paperback earnings
yet, which will be on top of that.) More likely, the next advance will
take into account continued growth, and will probably reach well into
six figures.

But once you get into the stratosphere of NYT-bestselling authors, the
numbers may no longer be anchored to real sales figures, but may soar
much much higher. From my own observations of the business, authors who
consistently place in the bottom third of the NYT list (Positions # 11
– 15) are worth at least a million dollars a book, North American
rights. We’re talking combined hard/soft deals here, since most
publishers now retain paperback rights. If you consistently place
#6-10, your deals go even higher, into multi-million dollar range. Once
your books consistently place in the top third, the deals become wildly
unpredictable, because now we’re talking Harry Potter and Dan Brown
territory. Eight-figure book deals are not out of the question.

Of course, what you get really depends on how good your agent is. Novelist Laurie King left this comment on my post about author Sara Donati’s royalty chat:

[A] typical royalty division (for regularly discounted books sold in the US
market) is along the lines of 10 percent for the author on the first
5000 books sold, 12 1/2 percent on the next 5000, and after that 15
percent. Or more if, as you say, your numbers mean you can dictate to
your publisher what you want. Then 7 1/2 percent on trade paperback, 10
percent on mass market.

More Dollars and Sense

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There’s a lot of great inside-knowledge on the business of being a novelist from pros to be found on blogs lately, all of it pure gold for aspiring authors. Not so long ago, Alison Kent shared her latest royalty statement with the world. Now author Sara Donati explains  in simple terms how royalties and advances work.

I’m always surprised that many aspiring authors don’t understand how
the money works. A publisher offers you a contract, and an advance. The
amount of the advance doesn’t have to do with how good the novel is, or
how much they like it. A million dollars does not equal an A+. The
advance is their best guess on how many copies of the book they can
sell. No matter how much the acquiring editor loves your novel, the
publishing house does not want to overpay you. End of story.

Not exactly the end. She has a few more interesting observations to share in that post and in another one on the subject as well (UPDATE:  Sara made an error in her figures in her original post, which she has corrected and so have I:).

If you’re talking about a hardcover book, the author generally gets
10% on the first 1 to 25,000 copies sold, 12% on the next 25,000 and
15% on anything sold above 50,000 copies — after the advance is paid
out, of course. And these figures are negotiable. I would guess Stephen
King’s numbers are better.

For softcover, the range is much greater, usually someplace between
6% and 10% of the cover price, again with increases as the number of
sales climbs.

This probably is pretty sobering for those who are hoping to make a living writing fiction.

Speak Up

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As a novelist on the signing/promotion circuit, I end up going to a lot of readings, conferences and seminars…and I hear a lot of authors speak. What I’ve learned is that someone could make an awful lot of money teaching public speaking skills to authors.

It’s amazing to me that people who are so good at expressing themselves on the page can be such dull, uninspiring, and clueless public speakers, whether they are in front of five people or five hundred. They give meandering speeches while mumbling into the microphone (if they even remember to hold the microphone to their mouths), completely unaware that no one is listening to them. It seems to me like they aren’t even trying to engage or amuse their audience, to connect with them in any way. They just stand behind the podium and blunder along, reciting in mind-numbing detail the plot of their latest book, oblivious to the fact that people are jamming forks into their legs to stay awake.Leespeak

So many authors look at giving a speech or being on a panel as an opportunity to sell books. It is. But people aren’t coming to hear your sales pitch or an hour-long, meticulously detailed summary of the book. They are coming to learn something about you. To get a sense of the man or woman behind the words on the page. And if what they get is a huckster aggressively trying to sell his book or, worse, someone who sucks the soul out of every single poor person in the room, then your appearance has been counter-productive. You will actually lose readers. The next time someone in that audience sees your name on a book cover, all they will remember is that boring speech that felt like a root canal without the pleasant distraction of the drill.

I’m not the world’s greatest public speaker but I can immodestly say that I don’t suck, either. While I am up there, I try to enjoy myself. I try to be energetic, to speak loudly, and to make eye contact with the people in the audience. If I can, I get out from behind the podium. I look at people’s faces and if I see I’m losing them, I change subjects, pick up the pace, or abandon my intended comments altogether and go with something else.

I like to make my audience laugh, but laughter isn’t what’s important. Your job is to be interesting and enthusiastic, to communicate your
ideas and point of view clearly and in an engaging way. You are there to entertain, educate, amuse and even provoke the audience. You aren’t there to numb them into a persistent vegatative state.  Also, don’t try to be an infomercial for your book. It turns people off. They may be awake, but they hate you. They will be reflexively hitting a fast-forward button with their thumb. No one likes sitting through the commercial.

I don’t use my time at a podium or on a panel to sell my book but
to indirectly sell me,  a nice, interesting and perhaps amusing guy who
has written some things you might enjoy reading or watching on television.

Mystery2You can learn to be a good, self-taught, public speaker.  Many speaking engagements and conference panels are recorded. Buy the tapes. Listen to yourself. It can often be a cringe-inducing experience…but do it anyway. It’s important that you know how you sound to others. Take note of what parts of your speech, or which of your comments on a panel, worked and those that fell flat. Zero in on those places where you rambled, or blundered along aimlessly, and come up with a sharp new way of articulating the same point or answering that same question next time.  And most important of all, listen to the other speakers as well.  Pay attention to how they succeeded or failed…and learn from it.

I know a lot of writers are writers because they like the solitude, because they aren’t good in front of a crowd. They simply don’t like public speaking and aren’t comfortable on panels. My advice for those writers is…don’t do it. It’s better not to do the speech or be on the panel than to bore your readers.

Thanks, Joe!

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Author, comic, blogger and international sex symbol Joe Konrath surprised me by giving my new book THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE a plug on Amazon:

This isn’t satire or parody, even though it is laugh aloud funny.
Goldberg has written a cleverly plotted mystery– one that also happens
to be a tribute to mysteries in general, pulps and TV private eyes in
particular.

If you’re a fan of the genre, you’ll find a lot to like here.
In-jokes abound, and Harvey Mapes is one of the most likeable PIs in
years. But don’t expect Naked Gun type antics. There is blood. There is
sex. There is tragedy. And there are even some bittersweet moments to
go along with the many belly laughs.


The Man with the Iron On Badge flaunts convention while also being
a part of that very same convention, and the result is a cross between
Dave Barry and Donald Westlake. It’s a one-sitting read, and more than
worth the price of admission.

Thanks, Joe!

Murder He Wrote

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045121662801_sclzzzzzzz_Author Donald Bain’s MURDER SHE WROTE novel, MARGARITAS & MURDER is now in bookstores.  This is the 24th book in the long-running tie-in series. 
Remarkably, every book  is still in-print — adding up to more than three million copies sold since the series was launched. And there’s more to come. Don reports that he’s signed a contract for another four books in the series, which he now writes in tandem with his wife Renee. I hope my DIAGNOSIS MURDER books, which wouldn’t exist if not for his amazing success, do even half as well…

Portrait of an Anxious Writer, the Sequel

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Novelist Joseph A. West, author of the GUNSMOKE novels (among many others) read my previous post on this topic and sympathized with Sanda’s anxiety. He, too, knows it all too well ("writing is a lot of agony and damn little ecstasy," he tells me).

My worst
bouts of dark depression come after I’ve sent in the manuscript. After a week
with no word from New York the conversation between my wife and myself always
runs something like this:

"Well Emily, that’s it. The end. The end of everything."
"What are you talking about?"
"Brent hates the book. He probably thinks it’s the worst piece of shit
that’s ever been written in the entire history of the world. Maybe in the entire
history of the universe."
Emily, her head bent to the embroidery on her lap: "Don’t you think if the
book was bad he’d have called and told you so?"
"Hell no. He’s so appalled by its shitiness he’d been struck dumb, maybe
even blind. He may have shown it around to other publishers as the worst book
ever written and they’ve also been struck dumb and blind. In one fucking stroke
I could have single-handedly destroyed the whole New York publishing
industry."
"I thought the book was fine."
"You’re my wife. Don’t you think you may be just a wee bit
prejudiced?"
"No. And I also think you’re nuts."
I shake my head. "It’s the end, the end I tell you. I knew that book was a
piece of fucking crap from the first word to the least.God, I may have killed
Brent. He could have read the damn thing and suffered a massive stroke."
"I’m outta here," Emily says."I have to put on the potatoes."
And me, I call after her: "I’m doomed, I tell you, doomed."
Then to myself: "I should have done like my old grandpappy told me to do
and become a plumber."