My Blog

Midlist Becomes the E-List

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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.

Poop Paper

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59808169 Now they are making stationery out of pachyderm poop. Obviously, this is going in my next MONK book. Here's an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times story:

Vijender Shekhawat's big break came while visiting a shrine near the Amber Fort in Jaipur, as he glanced down at the pile of elephant dung he had just failed to avoid. A struggling maker of handmade paper, he noticed that the texture of the plant-eating animal's manure was a lot like wood pulp.

Eureka! he thought. Pachyderm poop paper.

[…]Shekhawat, who believes he was India's first elephant dung papermaker when he launched the venture eight years ago, uses 3,300 pounds of droppings a week. The dung is first washed, then boiled with baking soda and salt to reduce the smell, beaten to a pulp, forced through a sieve and flattened into sheets. Drying takes a day to, during rainy season, a week.

At one point, Shekhawat fed the elephants turmeric hoping to create yellow paper. That failed. Now he adds organic dyes late in the process, including beet juice for red paper, dried pomegranate skins for gray and the castor oil plant for green.

He now produces 2,000 2-by-3-foot sheets a week, which sell as far afield as the United States and Europe.

Mr. Monk is a Reader’s Choice

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My friend Dave Zeltserman just passed along the good news that my story "Mr. Monk and the Seventeen Steps" was the fourth-ranked finalist in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine's 2010 Reader's Choice awards. Here's the list of the Top Ten stories, as chosen by readers of  the magazine:

1. Dave Zeltserman, "Archie's Been Framed" (Sept/Oct)
2. Doug Allyn, "The Scent of Lilacs" (Sept/Oct)
3. Doug Allyn, "Days of Rage" (March/April)
4. Lee Goldberg, "Mr. Monk and the Seventeen Steps" (Dec)
5. Brendan DuBois, "To Kill an Ump" (Sept/Oct)
6. Clark Howard, "Winter's End" (Dec)
7. Clark Howard, "Last Dance in Shanghai" (June)
8. Evan Lewis, "Skyler Hobbs and the Rabbit Man" (Feb)
9. Stephen Ross, "The Man With One Eye" (Dec)
10. Carol Biederman, "The Changelings: A Very Grim Fairytale" (Nov)

Also in the May issue, is Jon Breen's rave review for MR. MONK IS CLEANED OUT:

 The latest hilariously funny and devilishly clever novel about TV's obsessive-compulsive sleuth Adrian Monk is an impossible-crime lover's delight. How could the driver of an otherwise empty, constantly observed vehicle be garroted? How could a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme operator under house arrest and constantly wearing a state-of-the-art tracking device leave his home to murder former associates? The best comic set-piece, in which the financially ruined Monk, having lost his consultancy job with the San Francisco P.D., becomes a supermarket employee, is also one of three self-contained mystery puzzles unrelated to the main plot.

Thanks so much, Jon! 

Here's the trailer I made for "Mr. Monk and the Seventeen Steps."

Let’s Schmooze in the Writer’s Chatroom

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The Writer's Chatroom
     
Chat with Dave Zeltserman and Lee Goldberg
 Dave Zeltserman is the Shamus award winning author of JULIUS KATZ. His 'man out of prison' crime noir series features the novels SMALL CRIMES, PARIAH, and KILLER.

SMALL CRIMES was selected by NPR as one of the five best crime novels of 2008 and by theWashington Post as one of the best novels of 2008. PARIAH was selected by the Washington Post as one of the best novels of2009. Dave's novel THE CARETAKER OF LORNE FIELD is a finalist for a Black Quill Award for best dark genre novel of the year.

Dave lives in the Boston area with his wife,Judy, and after spending 20 years developing network management software for several of the world's leading technology companies, he now splits his time between writing crime and horror fiction and studying martial arts, where he holds a black belt inKung Fu. His upcoming crime novels include OUTSOURCED (Feb. '11) and THE ESSENCE OF MONSTERS (Fall, '11). OUTSOURCED has already been called a 'small gem of crime fiction' by Booklist and has been optioned by Constantin Film and Impact Pictures.

(See more of Dave's books here)

Lee Goldberg is a two-time Edgar Award nomineewhose many TV writing and/or producing credits include Martial Law, SeaQuest,Diagnosis Murder, Spenser: For Hire, Nero Wolfe, Monk and The Glades. His books include The Walk, Successful Television Writing, The Man With with The Iron-On Badge and the Diagnosis Murder and Monk series of original mystery novels.

As a TV development consultant, he's worked forproduction companies and broadcasters in Germany, Spain, Sweden, and theNetherlands. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Mystery Writers of America and is the co-founder of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers.

(See more of Lee's books here)

Dave and Lee are both members of the Top Suspense Group.  http://www.topsuspensegroup.com/ 

 
WHEN?

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Eastern USA Time…..7 PM

Not sure what time that is wherever in the world you are? http://www.worldtimeserver.com

WHERE?

The Writers Chatroom at:  http://www.writerschatroom.com/Enter.htm

Scroll down to the Java box. It may take a moment to load. Type in the name you wish to be known by, and click Login. No password needed.

Please note:  The chatroom is only open for regularly scheduled chats. 

 


 

 

The Casino Royale You Never Saw

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The Telegraph has a fascinating story today about development of Ben Hecht’s unproduced screenplays for CASINO ROYALE…which eventually morphed into the comedy debacle that starred David Niven, Peter Sellers and Woody Allen. Here’s an excerpt:

The fact that Ben Hecht contributed to the script of Casino Royale has been known for decades, and is mentioned in passing in many books. But perhaps because the film Feldman eventually released in 1967 was a near-incoherent spoof, nobody has followed up to find out precisely what his contribution entailed. My interest was piqued when I came across an article in a May 1966 issue of Time, which mentioned that the screenplay of Casino Royale had started many years earlier “as a literal adaptation of the novel”, and that Hecht had had “three bashes at it”. I decided to go looking for it.

To my amazement, I found that Hecht not only contributed to Casino Royale, but produced several complete drafts, and that much of the material survived. It was stored in folders with the rest of his papers in the Newberry Library in Chicago, where it had been sitting since 1979. And, outside of the people involved in trying to make the film, it seemed nobody had read it. Here was a lost chapter, not just in the world of the Bond films, but in cinema history: before the spoof, Ben Hecht adapted Ian Fleming’s first novel as a straight Bond adventure.

[…] these drafts are a master-class in thriller-writing, from the man who arguably perfected the form with Notorious. Hecht made vice central to the plot, with Le Chiffre actively controlling a network of brothels and beautiful women who he is using to blackmail powerful people around the world. Just as the theme of Fleming’s Goldfinger is avarice and power, the theme of Hecht’s Casino Royale is sex and sin. It’s an idea that seems obvious in hindsight, and Hecht used it both to raise the stakes of Fleming’s plot and to deepen the story’s emotional resonance.

 

UPDATE: You can read excerpts from one of those terrific lost scripts here.

DEAD Paper

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THE DEAD MAN: FACE OF EVIL, which has been out as an ebook for a week, is now available as a trade paperback, too. We couldn't be happier with the enthusiastic response we've  had from readers so far. Some of the new blog reviews include this one from Book'em Benj-O:

 This adventure story has engaging characters, elements of finely tuned horror stories, and some fun thrown in for good measure. I’m looking forward to future installments to see where Cahill’s adventures take him.

And this one from Nathan Shumate:

It’s also pulp, in the best sense of the word: a supernaturally-flavored action-adventure, with this first installment setting up a mysterious conflict which will be pursued throughout the series […] overall I think both the concept and its execution is a perfect one for the new realities of Kindle-based fiction, delivering a linked series of short novellas which can be consumed like popcorn.

And this one from Journey of a Bookseller:

This is the first in a series of horror stories that will have you sitting up straight in your chair as you read along.[…]You race through the story waiting to see what evil what will pop up next and the words flow well.  I don't read a lot of horror stories, but I sure enjoyed this one.  And I want to see where the story goes from here.  It's just beginning…

And this one from Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine:

THE DEAD MAN FACE of EVIL reminds me of Stephen King and Dean Koontz.[…]Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin have written an exciting, journey into what if….They have merged writing styles to produce a fascinating horror story that leaves you wanting more, more, more!

Those are just a few…and we are very appreciative. We can't wait to get the rest of the books in the series out there, including HELL IN HEAVEN by me & Bill Rabkin, RING OF KNIVES by James L. Daniels, and THE DEAD WOMAN by David McAfee. You can keep up on the latest DEAD MAN news on our blog.

Hocking Self-Published Books

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Amanda Hocking's astonishing success with her self-published ebooks, which made big news after USA Today started tracking ebook sales on their bestseller list, is getting her noticed by the media all over the world.  Now the media, suddenly aware of what's happening with ebooks,  is turning their spotlight on other authors who have also scored big on the Kindle and Nook.

The London Observer recently featured the story of Stephen Leather, a mid-list UK author who is doing great with 99 cent ebooks of his unpublished work on Amazon UK, earning him the title of "UK's leading independant author."

Leather, who celebrated his seventh consecutive week at the top of the Amazon chart with his novella The Basement, about a serial killer in New York, also occupies fourth place with Hard Landing, another thriller, and 11th place with Once Bitten, a vampire novel.

He is one of many authors increasingly turning to ebooks as an alternative way to the top. Capitalising on the popularity of e-readerssuch as the Kindle, a new generation of writers is bypassing agents and publishers and using the flexible pricing model of ebooks to offer their work directly to the public at rock-bottom prices. Some, like Leather, are achieving huge sales, which, not surprisingly, is striking fear into publishers.

Leather enjoys a successful parallel career writing "big international thrillers" for Hodder & Stoughton. But last August, when Amazon.co.uk opened its Kindle store, he saw an opportunity: "I was lucky, in that I had three novellas Hodder had turned down because they were in a different genre from my other books and too short to work as conventional paperbacks. But I realised they might work for the Kindle."

I see more and more established, professional authors following the same path as Leather…and they'd be fools not to be. The publishing world has changed dramatically in the last few months, upending all the old paradigms. Whoever thought a year ago that it would be possible for a mid-list author to make more money, and reach more readers, by self-publishing than going with a major, established publisher? I certainly didn't.

And there's Amanda Hocking who, with no previous publishing experience or any kind of promotional platform, has become an overnight sensation, all on her own. Did I see that coming? Hell no. What she has accomplished is nothing short of amazing.

Leather's achievements are dwarfed when set against the scale of independent publishing in the US, where ebooks are estimated to be 20% of the total market. The most spectacular example of an author striking gold through ebooks is 26-year-old former care assistant Amanda Hocking, a Minneapolis-based writer of paranormal romances. She had completed eight novels but had failed to acquire an agent when, last April, she decided to publish them herself via the Kindle store.

"I sold 50 books the first month. It picked up over the summer, then really took off in November," she said. Hocking is now the world's bestselling ebook author, selling more than 450,000 titles last month alone.

It's an exciting time to be an author.

(Thanks to David Cunningham for the heads-up)