Kindle

Here Comes the Slush

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With so many ways for aspiring writers to self-publish their books, Laura Miller at Salon says the slush pile of millions of rejected manuscripts is about to go public…but will readers have the stomach for it?

People who have never had the job of reading through the heaps of unsolicited manuscripts sent to anyone even remotely connected with publishing typically have no inkling of two awful facts: 1) just how much slush is out there, and 2) how really, really, really, really terrible the vast majority of it is. Civilians who kvetch about the bad writing of Dan Brown, Stephenie Meyer or any other hugely popular but critically disdained novelist can talk as much trash as they want about the supposedly low standards of traditional publishing. They haven't seen the vast majority of what didn't get published — and believe me, if you have, it's enough to make your blood run cold, thinking about that stuff being introduced into the general population.

[…]It seriously messes with your head to read slush. Being bombarded with inept prose, shoddy ideas, incoherent grammar, boring plots and insubstantial characters — not to mention ton after metric ton of clichés — for hours on end induces a state of existential despair that's almost impossible to communicate to anyone who hasn't been there themselves: Call it slush fatigue

So what happens to the book business when readers, who've filled their Kindles with $1.99 slush, discover that most of it is unreadable drivel? What will the backlash be?

A few days of reading bad manuscript after bad manuscript has a tendency to make you never want to pick up another manuscript again, but when finding new talent is your job and your vocation, you keep at it until you're successful enough to hire someone else to do it for you. If, on the other hand, you're a civilian, and reading is something you turn to, seeking fun or transcendence, during your precious hours of free time, how long will you persist when book after book has exactly the opposite effect, crushing your spirit instead of refreshing it? How long before you decide to just give up?

Some argue that readers and bloggers will spread the word about what is good or bad, and the market will become self-correcting. The sludge will quickly be identified, as well as the few genuinely terrific books buried amidst it all. But Miller argues we are just trading one set of gatekeepers (publishers, editors, "elite" literary critics) for a new set (bloggers, pundits, self-annointed experts).

Perhaps this system will work better, but I'm not so sure. Contrary to the way they're often depicted by frustrated authors, the agents and editors I've met are in fact committed to finding and nurturing books and authors they believe in as well as books that will sell. Also, bloggers or self-appointed experts on particular genres and types of writing are, in my experience, just as clubby and as likely to plug or promote their friends and associates as anybody else. Above all, this possible future doesn't eliminate gatekeepers: It just sets up new ones, equally human and no doubt equally flawed. How long before the authors neglected by the new breed of tastemaker begin to accuse them of being out-of-touch, biased dinosaurs?

The Other Side of the Coin

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Dancing-dark-175  A few days ago, I talked about how successful Joe Konrath has been on the Kindle and I argued that he's an exceptional case. Well, now author Mark Terry shows us the flipside. He's put five books on the Kindle, a mix of out-of-print and unpublished stuff. So farthis month he has sold 30 books and earned $29. And that's an uptick on his previous month's sales. He writes, in part:

Honestly, I don't know what to make of Joe's success. Joe says he doesn't know why some of his e-books sell great and others don't. I don't know why DANCING IN THE DARK sales seem so sluggish even though it's been out for months.

[…]I'm pretty unsold on the idea of people who can't get traditionally published just e-publishing, but a number of people have done it successfully. Maybe it all depends on what you want out of it.

Let's put it this way. On the basis of what I've seen so far, I'm still leaning strongly toward traditional publishing venues.

People who look at Joe's success or, to a far lesser degree, mine publishing books on the Kindle and think that our sales are the norm are in for a rude surprise…particularly if they don't already have an established following or strong name recognition. Sure, there might be a handful of exceptions out there, but that's what they are, the exceptions. Sadly, I believe Mark's experience is closer to the norm for the majority of authors self-publishing their work for the Kindle.

Kindle King Konrath

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Endurance_cover_Kilborn2b  My friend Joe Konrath can't stop making Kindle news. A month ago, he announced that Amazon Encore will be publishing his next Jack Daniels novel, first as an ebook exclusive and then as a trade paperback. Yesterday, he upped the ante and announced that he's giving up on print altogether and putting all his chips on the e-format, primarily the Kindle. And he's kicking it off with the Kindle publication of ENDURANCE and TRAPPED, two horror novels originally commissioned by a print publisher… but that he pulled from them rather than accepting the editorial changes they wanted him to make. Joe writes, in part:

Last year, some fans asked me to put my early, rejected books on Kindle so they could read them on their cool new device. I figured it couldn't hurt to try.

Fourteen months later, I've sold over 52,000 ebooks, and will earn over $100,000 this year on Kindle sales alone. On books that NY Publishing rejected.

So now I've taken the next, logical step. ENDURANCE (now available on Kindle for $2.99) is being released exclusively as a self-published ebook.

I've gone from desperately wanting to be accepted by NY Publishing, to completely ignoring NY Publishing.

And for him, I predict it will pay off handsomely. As of 10 pm tonight, ENDURANCE is ranked #42 out of all the books available in the Kindle store… and #1 in horror. I think his book is going stay at the top of the Kindle lists for some time to come. And if this book does a fraction of the business that AFRAID, his first Jack Kilborn horror novel, did as an ebook, then Joe is going to make a hell of a lot of money out of this…certainly more than he could would have made sticking with his publisher.

But I want to stress that I believe that Joe's success is the exception, not the rule. Mid-list or newbie authors who yank their books from publishers over editorial notes and go the Kindle route shouldn't expect to do nearly as well as he has. He is a very special case. 

Prior to his ebook success, Joe was doing well in print… and heavily promoted his books by attending dozens of conferences annually, sending out thousands of newsletters, and visiting hundreds of bookstores across the country (if I am not mistaken, I believe he landed in the Guiness Book of World Records for most bookstore signings in one year). He had a considerable blog presence and significant name recognition before embarking on this Kindle course. 

There's no question that Joe is blazing a trail in ebooks… and doing incredibly well at it. I am one of many authors who have benefitted from both his example and his great advice…but I fear that aspiring writers will read about his success and believe it's a short cut that will lead them to a pot of gold. And it's not. 

He paid a lot of dues, suffered a lot of rejection, honed his skills, and established a strong, professional reputation before he got where he is. That's very important to remember before you decide to follow his path…which, contrary to what you might think, isn't necessarily paved with gold. 

Cover Story

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Here are the new covers for MY GUN  HAS BULLETS, DEAD SPACE, and THE MAN WITH THE IRON ON BADGE, all designed by Carl Graves.  

GOLDBERG_My_Gun_Has_Bullets_FINAL
GOLDBERG_Dead_Space_FINAL

GOLDBERG_Iron_On_Badge_FINAL
 

GUN and SPACE share the gun/bullet hole motif because they feature the same hero and the same comedic tone. This is the most professional, and the best, MAN WITH THE IRON ON BADGE cover yet. I think I've finally got that one right.

I am confident, based on past experience, that I will see my sales go up as a result of the cleaner, simpler, more professional covers and the "branded" look that's consistent with the previous covers that Carl designed for me. 

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 19

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MY GUN 3  This was another record month for my Kindle sales. Sales were up across the board — in March, I sold 1360 books, in April I sold 1798, and this month I sold 1919. I earned $1415 in April and this month I earned $1543.

THE WALK continues to be my bestselling title. I sold 629 copies in April and 720 this month. 

THE MAN WITH THE  IRON-ON BADGE is a distant second, with 234 copies sold, exactly the same number as last month. How bizarre is that? 

GUILTY, one of my re-branded VIGILANTE novels, moved up to #3 with 184 copies sold compared to 125 last month. 

There was one bit of troubling news…MY GUN HAS BULLETS went from selling 264 copies last month to 166 this month… I have no idea why sales plunged by 100 copies. That's a dramatic drop. I may need to try a new cover and see if that will stop the slide.

This will be the last month of Kindle sales under the old royalty system. Starting July 1, my royalties will go from 35% to 70% of each sale. I can't wait.

SHAKEN Shakes Things Up

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Shaken_CoverArt  Joe Konrath is breaking new ground on the e-front yet again. Today Amazon announced that Amazon Encore is publishing SHAKEN, his latest Jack Daniels novel, first as a $2.99 ebook in October and then as a traditional trade paperback in February 2011. 

Up until now, Amazon Encore has only reprinted books that didn't make a big splash in their initial release and had fallen out of print. This is the first time they are publishing an original novel. 

Joe took the deal after Hyperion dropped the Jack Daniels series and no other publisher stepped up to publish the new book…and after his extraordinary success selling his other unpublished manuscripts as ebooks on Amazon. 

There's no doubt Amazon has noticed how well Joe's books are doing on the Kindle. From their POV, this deal had to be a no-brainer (though I suspect they would have liked to charge more than $2.99 but less than $9.99 for the ebook).  It certainly was a no-brainer from Joe's side. On top of that, Amazon will find no better cheerleader for the Kindle than Joe, which should lift up sales of all Kindle titles across the board as he works tirelessly to promote SHAKEN. In the Amazon press release, Joe says:

“My Kindle readers have been incredibly faithful fans and I’m excited to be able to release the Kindle edition of ‘Shaken’ several months before the physical version is available to purchase,” said Konrath. “Since it’s easier, faster and cheaper to create an e-book than it is a physical book, Kindle owners will get to read the seventh Jack Daniels before everyone else. The ability for authors to reach fans—instantly and inexpensively with a simple press of a button—is the greatest thing to happen to the written word since Gutenberg.”

He elaborated in on the deal, and why he took it, in more detail on his blog. He said, in part:

Traditional publishers had a chance to buy SHAKEN last year. They passed on it. Their loss. Their big loss. Their big, huge, monumental, epic fail.[…] I signed a print deal with a company that can email every single person who has every bought one of my books through their website, plus millions of potential new customers. I've never had that kind of marketing power behind one of my novels. I'd be an idiot not to do this.

I think it was only a matter for time before Amazon reached out to Joe to aggressively capitalize on his success instead of passively (they have been getting the lion's share of the money on his ebooks by doing nothing but hosting him). 

Joe is calling this deal a defining moment in publishing and so are his many fans. I'm not so sure that I'd go that far, but it was certainly inevitable. I think the only real difference between what Joe has been doing up with his ebooks and this Amazon Encore deal is that now he will have the full promotional might of Amazon behind him. As an e-venture, this will surely be a massive success, but as a print-publishing venture, I am not so sure. There's no doubt, though, that it's a win-win for Joe, who is bound to see the sales of his current slate of ebooks skyrocket as a result of the Amazon push for SHAKEN (including, ironically, the books still held by Hyperion).

UPDATE 5-18-2010: I woke up this morning to a bunch of emails asking me why this is a significant development in publishing. How is this any different, they ask, than what Joe is already doing self-publishing  his unpublished work on the Kindle?

In essence, Amazon Encore is a publisher that has picked up Joe's mid-list series from Hyperion. They are publishing the book first as an ebook then later as a trade paperback. The difference here is that the publisher is also the largest bookstore on earth and will put their considerable promotional and marketing might behind his book. But there's a bit more to it than that. Here's how Joe explained it in the comments section of his blog post:

"In this case Lee, it's a bit more complicated.

This bookseller is the number one online bookseller in the world, and they've created the number one dedicated ereading device.

Publishers need authors to write books, then booksellers to sell those books.

In this case, Amazon owns the bookstore, and the platform for the ebooks. And by cutting out distributors, publishers, and brick and mortar bookstores, they can offer a professional product faster and cheaper–and give the author better royalties–than a traditional publisher could.

In other words, Amazon is cutting out just about all the players in the traditional publishing industry, and directly connecting reader with author. 

If ebooks, and Amazon, continue to gain popularity, will there still be a need for the Big Six? Or would authors do better by either self-publishing, or dealing directly with the sellers of the new technology? I think this is pretty significant in the publishing world." 


UPDATE: Jason Pinter, author and former editor, shared his worries on The Huffington Post about what this deal means for the future. He said, among other things:

Amazon and other online retailers have made it incredibly easy to publish books on their servers. They give each author the ability to format books price them how the authors themselves see fit. There is certain freemarket sensibility here that is inspiring, and in a way each author becomes the proprietor of their own small business. However, I feel that the example of Konrath will inspire other, less successful and even less talented authors to publish their works online. They might see the Kindle as a bypass, a way to showcase their works that the Evil, Stupid Publishing Overlords in New York were too blind to realize are, in fact, literary masterpieces.

Now, publishing is not a perfect industry. And the examples of books that were rejected numerous times or even self-published that went on to become great successes are many. Because book publishing is a wholly subjective business–the only books that are published are the ones that editors truly love (let's ignore celebrity and cynical publishing). Many wonderful books are rejected because one or more editors simply didn't 'get' it. There are plenty of books I passed on as an editor that went on to be published to tremendous critical and/or commercial success. Every editor has their list of books that they kick themselves for having passed on. That is a flaw inherent in the system, only now it is easier than ever for authors to circumvent the system.

The Ark: A Kindle Success Story

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Cover_theark_large  On Joe Konrath's blog, author Boyd Morrison shares the amazing story of how he turned his Kindle ebooks into a four-book print deal, kicking off with the launch today of THE ARK. His story is unusual, and inspiring, but newbie writers should read it carefully before thinking they can easily replicate his success. 

One thing he didn't do was go to a print-on-demand vanity press, and for reasons beyond just the outrageous, and unreasonably, high cost and false promises:

I decided to put all three books on the Kindle store just to see what happened. Irene (Goodman, his agent) was fully supportive of the plan. I had nothing to lose.

What I didn’t do was self-publish in print because I would have something to lose. From the beginning, my goal was to get a traditional publishing deal (remember this was in early 2009, which seems not so long ago, but the ebook market was still in its infancy, and making a living from self-published ebooks seemed like a pipe dream). If I had published print books, not only would it be a hassle I didn’t want to deal with, but it would also mean my novels would need ISBNs.

ISBNs are international standard book numbers that can be tracked by publishers. If my sales were low, publishers would be able to see that and might not even want to look at my next book. But with ebooks on the Kindle, you don’t need an ISBN. If my sales were bad, no one would ever have to know. And if they were good, I could use that data as evidence that readers were interested in my books.

[…]Would I recommend self-publishing ebooks? It depends what your goals are. If you want to see your book in print, as I did, I wouldn’t choose that path as your first option. I was in a unique limbo because I had an agent and blurbs from bestselling authors, but I couldn’t get a publisher. Once my sales jumped, my agent was able to act on it immediately. If I had to start the agent search from scratch at that point, it would have been much more difficult.

Good luck doing that if you, unlike Boyd, don't already have power-house representation. But the e-book market has changed. It's actually possible to make good money on an ebook. So why go thhe print route at all? Here's Boyd's take:

My goal was always to be traditionally published. I wanted to get my books in front of as many readers as possible, and while ebooks are the fastest growing part of the market, they still represent only 3-5% of all books sold. If I wanted to reach a broad market, I’d have to be in print, and the only way to get into most bookstores is through a traditional publisher. Plus, foreign rights, which represent a surprisingly large segment of the market, would have been virtually impossible to sell without a deal with a traditional publisher. And as much as I love ebooks, there’s still no substitute for holding a print book in your hands to make you feel like a real author.

I agree and am not ready myself to forsake print for the digital publication. 

But the publishing world is changing very fast. If you'd told me a year ago that I could actually make $18,000-a-year off my out-of-print work on the Kindle (or potentially $55,000 with the new royalty rate), I would never have believed it. 

So some of my attitudes are changing as a result. I am beginning to rethink the advice that I've always given aspiring writers not to self-publish their novels. I still believe that going the vanity press route is a huge mistake…but posting on the Kindle cuts the print-on-demand scammers entirely out of the equation and all the risk of getting swindled (you DON'T need Lulu or Authorhouse or any other vanity press to get your book on the Kindle or iPad, no matter what they those self-publishers may tell you). So why not do it?

On the plus side, Kindle/ebook publishing can be cost-free and, if your book is really good, and you are very lucky, you could make some real money…and, perhaps, attract the attention of a major publisher. 

But if your book is awful, and truly "not ready for prime time," you can embarrass yourself, create negative word-of-mouth, and potentially seriously harm the reputation you are seeking to build. 

I am still thinking it all through. That said, there's no question that these are very interesting, potentially game-changing times in the publishing business. I am very interested to see how Joe's two new horror novels, published for the first time on the Kindle, sell and whether the royalties match what he could  have earned with a print contract.

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 18

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Royalties0430.1110
 On April 17, I predicted in a post on this blog that I'd earn $1400 in Kindle royalties this month. I was right. I earned $1416. It was, by far, my best Kindle month since I began this experiment eleven months ago. Last month, I sold 1360 books…this month I sold 1798, an increase of 438 books and $400 in royalties. (Click on my royalty statement for a larger view).

BADGE 3  I credit the surge this month to three things:

1.   my bet with Joe Konrath, which resulted in new covers and titles for my Vigilante novels. It was a bet I was thrilled to lose.

2.  raising the price of THREE WAYS TO DIE from .99 cents to 1.99. 

3. adding a Kindle edition of my out-0f-print book THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE to my available titles. 

Sales of the VIGILANTE books (now known, thanks to Joe, as The Jury Series) shot up enormously. For example, the previously titled .357 VIGILANTE #4: KILLSTORM sold  14 copies last month. This month, by rebranding the book GUILTY, I sold 125 copies.  I now have someone re-reading the manuscripts of all four books, correcting the conversion errors that have bedeviled me since I posted them a few months ago.

Last month, THREE WAYS TO DIE sold 201 priced at 99 cents and earned $70. This month, I sold 169 and earned $103. Fewer sales, but higher royalties. I can live with that.
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THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE, priced at $2.99, quickly became my second best-selling title, if not in volume (234 copies sold) certainly in profits ($245). Those sales reassure me that my bestselling title, THE WALK, will do fine when, in late June, I raise the price from $1.99 to $2.99 to take advantage of Amazon's new royalty formula, which will give me a 70% royalty instead of the 35% I get now.
By the way, this month THE WALK  sold  629 copies, earning me $440 (last month I sold 575 copies). A new high.
Beyond project4  

Changing the cover and title of BEYOND THE BEYOND boosted sales a bit. Last month, under the BEYOND title, I sold 73 copies. This month, rebranded as DEAD SPACE, I sold 92.

I can't wait to see how things shake out in July once my royalty doubles. Will my earning, if not my volume of sales, go up? Or will it level off? Or will the bubble burst and sales slowly begin to deteriorate? I don't know, but no matter what happens, I am already a winner. As I keep saying, this is all found money on out-of-print books that were packed away in my garage or in a dark corner of my hard-drive.