Kindle

Sign of the Times

by

The Los Angeles Times reports that Barnes & Noble is now selling more ebooks than paper ones at their online store. 

Customers bought or downloaded nearly 1 million e-books on Christmas Day alone, the company said in a press release.

The Nook e-reader has become a bestseller, according to the bookseller. The Nook Color, introduced two months before Christmas, was the company's No. 1 selling holiday gift item, according to the company release.

Maybe so, but sales of my books on the Nook have been lousy…about 75 copies in December. On the other hand, this has been my best month ever on the Kindle. I've sold 800 copies of THE WALK as of today (nearly 20,000 total since I launched the ebook in June 2009) and I'm looking to earn $5000 in royalties this month from all of my out-of-print work.

Blocking Out the Past

by

Strange Lawrence Block has written a terrific piece for eFanzines.com – Earl Kemp: eI53 – e*I* Vol. 9 No. 6  about the thought-process behind his decision to release many of his obscure, long out-of-print paperbacks, many written under pen-names, in new, digital editions. He says, in part:

What other titles I decide to reissue will depend at least in part on what kind of money comes in from the ones I’ve already slated for e–publication.  If nobody’s interested in them, why inflict more upon the reading public?  But, if there turns out to be a genuine demand, well, hell, there’s more where those came from.

While I was writing the end notes for a Jill Emerson novel, A Madwoman’s Diary(originally Sensuous), I remembered that I’d based the plot on a case history from one of John Warren Wells’s books.  So I wound up writing at some length about my career as John Warren Wells and his psychosexual reportage.  And it occurred to me for the very first time that I might actually reissue those books as well.  Not all of them, I shouldn’t think, but one or two.  And if people like those—

“Greed is good,” Gordon Gekko famously informed us.  But why go all judgmental?  Greed, I’d say, is beyond good and evil.  It is what it is. 

Which might be said as well for the books I’m bringing back.  And, come to think of it, for their author.

(Hat-tip to Bill Crider for alerting me to this great post)

The Name is Book, E Book.

by

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.

Top Suspense

by

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

by

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!

King of the Kindle

by

Author Parnell Hall sings in this video about wanting to be "The King of the Kindle" and has jam-packed it with author cameos from Bouchercon… including a moment with yours truly. 

 

To Speak for the Kindle

by

Night Vision,Redskyfinal.jpg Paul Levine's iconic hero Jake Lassiter burst onto the mystery scene with TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD, the first in a widely acclaimed series that has since gone out-of-print. Now Lassiter is making a triumphant return — with the out-of-print titles on the Kindle and with a brand new hardcover release entitled LASSITER coming this fall.  So I thought I'd ask Paul what it's like being one of the few authors these days who is both still very active in print and yet diving head-long into the uncharted waters of the ebook biz.

LEE: You're a recent convert to the Kindle… and in the space of just a few months, you've released many of the Jake Lassiter backlist as ebooks, including MORTAL SIN. Have they been successful? What have you learned from the experience?

 The success of the books has startled me.  “To Speak for the Dead” and “Night Vision,” the first two Jake Lassiter novels, both hit number one on the Kindle “hardboiled” and “legal thriller” lists.  So did “Reversal,” my stand-alone Supreme Court thriller.  “False Dawn” and “Mortal Sin,” the next couple Lassiter books, hit number two.

These books were long out of print and originally appeared in hardcover in the early 1990’s.  So, the point for all authors is this: books you thought were long dead have an afterlife.  You can resuscitate your out-of-print and out-of-mind books by electronically publishing them.  Also, and this is BIG: the books gather momentum and grow each month.  This is the opposite of our experience with dead-tree books, which have the same life expectancy as yogurt in the fridge. 

LEE: What are the chances that you'll write an original ebook some day soon?

I have three more Lassiters to put up on Kindle and Smashwords, which then distributes to B&N, Borders, Sony, and the rest.  Then…and I haven’t said this publically before…I’m publishing “Ballistic.”  It’s a loose nukes thriller I’ve adapted from a spec feature script I wrote some time ago.  The script had some close calls, but never was made.  After that, who knows? 

LEE: Do you think releasing the out-of-print Lassiter books will give your traditional, hardcover release next Fall of LASSITER a sales spike? Or do you think it will work the other way around?

Both, I hope! 

But let’s be realistic.  I’m the publisher of the “old” Lassiters, so I can charge $2.99 on Kindle and Kobo etc.  Will those buyers shell out $25 for a hardcover?  Should they?  Remember, too, that I have no control over what Bantam will charge for the e-book edition.  I will plead for as low a price as possible, but we know that won’t be anywhere close to $2.99.

LEE:. Do you think it's wise for unpublished authors to self-publish? What about mid-list authors who have been dropped? Is this the future of publishing…or just an additional revenue stream for authors?

Some smart-alec at the Bouchercon e-books panel said that self-published authors were producing a “tsunami of swill.”  Wait!  That was you.  It’s true, of course, but as you also pointed out, there is some very good fiction being written by otherwise unpublished authors.  It’s so damn hard to break into mainstream publishing now that it’s inevitable that some good writing will be left at the door.  The problem is that way too many writers lack the training or discipline or just plain talent to produce readable fiction.  Separating the wheat from the chaff produces…a lot of chaff.

For mid-list authors who’ve been dropped, it’s a different story.  They have the training, the experience, and some audience.  The Internet can provide a new source of income…and satisfaction.  We write because we have to….because it’s an illness, a fever…not just for the bucks.  If you want to get rich, open a burger joint across the street from a community college. 

As for the future of publishing, I’ll borrow William Goldman’s line about Hollywood, “Nobody knows anything.”

I’m Giving Away THE WALK

by

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!

I Want to Suck Your Eblood

by

Draculas01c Joe Konrath, F. Paul Wilson, Blake Crouch and Jeff Strand have collaborated on DRACULAS, an original novel for the Kindle. It's yet another intriguing Konrath e-book experiment. He wrote about it all on the Huffington Post. He said, in part:

"Draculas" will be exclusive on Kindle for a year, as a favor to Amazon since they've been so helpful. But those with other brands of ereaders will be able to buy "Draculas" from Amazon and convert it to the format of their choice with free ebook software like Calibre or Stanza. We have instructions for doing this on our website, www.draculasthebook.com. We also plan on doing a print release later in the year, using Amazon's CreateSpace.

Since professionalism is essential, we hired a cover artist and an ebook formatter. A publisher providing these services takes 52.5% of an ebook's cover price, and the retailer gets 30% through the agency model. That leaves only 17.5% for the author. By absorbing these sunk costs ourselves, we're able to earn the full 70% royalties and not have to share them with anyone. Though we're splitting the profits four ways, we're each earning only slightly less per copy sold (51 cents each) than we would on one of our own paperback books (64 cents each), and still only charging the reader $2.99.

The book is 80,000 words and also contains 80,000 words of extras, like the 700 emails the authors sent back-and-forth while writing this book in just eight weeks. If the book is a success, which I suspect it will be, it could lead even more published authors to try self-publishing an original ebook…even as they continue to write novels for major publishers. Judging by the conversations I had at Bouchercon, lots of writers are already considering this, seeing it not as an all-or-nothing alternative, but as an additional revenue stream. I'm one of them. But more on that later…

Swain is Rolling the Dice on Ebooks

by

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.