Self Publishing

E-Volution

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IMG_0218 The talk of the Romantic Times conference, at least among the published authors, was the e-volution of publishing. I was fortunate enough to spend time with two authors at the forefront of it all…Barry Eisler and Boyd Morrison.

Barry and I got together for breakfast and, while I can't go into details of what we discussed, he has some very innovative, creative, and ambitious plans for  self-publishing his books. He's definitely given his controversial decision to walk away from a $500,000 book deal, and how best to capitalize on the ebook/self-publishing market, a lot of careful thought and there's no question in my mind that he will be successful. 

It occurred to me that one major advantage that all of us who were published before have going for us as we enter the self-publishing world…which the newbies flooding the Amazon, Smashwords, etc. do not… is a network of other published, successful authors we can reach out to for blurbs, advice, cross-promotion, recommendations, etc. Those relationships, and that wealth of shared experience, will give us a considerable edge in the marketplace and a way to rise above the tsunami of swill for a while to come.

After our breakfast, I headed to the RT booksigning event…which was,without a doubt, unlike any booksigning I've ever attended in my career. There were hundreds of authors and thousands of fans. It was amazing. IMG_0222

I was sandwhiched between a woman who wrote "man on man erotica" and Colleen Gleason (aka Joss Ware). Colleen and I passed the three hours, between signing scores of our books, talking about — what else? — ebooks and self-publishing.  She's concerned, like many other authors I talked to, about this race to the bottom, in which authors are pricing their books at 99 cents in a desperate effort to sell books or crack the top 500 rankings.

After the big signing, I got together with Brett Battles, Robert Gregory Browne, and Boyd Morrison for a late lunch…which went so long, it almost became an early dinner. We had a great time talking shop and just about every aspect of the ebook/self-publishing/"traditional" publishing biz.

Boyd, you may recall, was the first Kindle sensation…and quickly got snapped up by a big six publisher with a rich, multi-book contract. He's now published in print world-wide. His take on the Amanda Hocking deal, from his uniquely informed perspective, was very interesting (without going into details, essentially he thinks it's a no-lose situation for her, even in the unlikely event that her books under the deal fail).  I came away from that long, liesurely lunch with a lot to think about.

I had a great time at the RT conference…it certainly exceeded my expectations. But the best part for me wasn't any of the programming…it was talking shop with my fellow authors. 

(Pictured: One corner of the vast signing hall as it was beginning to fill up. And Joanna Bourne, Stephanie Bond, and Rhys Bowen)

Lies That Reveal Your Publisher Is a Fraud

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You'd thnk the ebook revolution would have killed off the vanity press hucksters…but it hasn't yet. But until that day comes,  Writer Beware has created for writers a handy list of lies that scammers tell to trick the unwary, the desperate and the gullible into thinking that you're deading with a real publisher.

If  the publisher you are considering getting into business with is telling one of these whoppers, you know you're in trouble. Here are a couple of examples:

We aren't a vanity publisher because we also offer non-fee contracts. Okay. But you only have their word for that, right? And even if it's true, YOU are getting a fee-based contract. Think about that double standard–what does it say about the way the publisher views you and your work?

We aren't a vanity publisher because your fee covers only part of the cost–we provide the rest. Again, you only have their word for that. It's highly likely that this claim is being made not because it's true, but to make you feel better about surrendering large sums of money. In most cases, where publishing fees are due, they cover not just the full cost of production and publication, but the publisher's overhead and profit as well.

We aren't a vanity publisher because we refund your money if you sell a certain number of books. Once again, this is a sales ploy, designed to make you feel better about paying a fee. It's likely that the sales threshold is set so high that authors will rarely, if ever, achieve it–especially given the very limited distribution and marketing that most fee-based publishers provide (since the bulk of most fee-based publishers' income comes from authors' fees, they have little incentive to cut into their profit with effective marketing and distribution–although some will provide more if you pay extra).

Another thing to wonder about: if by some amazing chance you do manage to reach the sales threshold, will your publisher make good on its refund pledge? Some fee-based publishers will. Others are just plain lying.

Giddy-up to Rancho Diablo

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Rancho Diabloe Dead Man's Revenge 2 copyNovelists Mel Odom, James Reasoner and Bill Crider, under the pen name "Colby Jackson," have teamed up on RANCHO DIABLO, an original series of western ebooks. The third book in the series, DEAD MAN'S REVENGE, is now live on Amazon…and a steal at $2.99.

The three authors are experienced western writers and lovers of the genre…one that's seeing hard times in print but is ripe for revitalization on the Kindle. 

They're trying to do for traditional westerns what I'm trying to do… with their help, in fact…. for the men's action-adventure series with THE DEAD MAN.

And if anyone can do it, they can. Don't miss RANCHO DIABLO #1 SHOOTERS CROSS or RANCHO DIABLO #2: HANGMAN'S ROPE

DEAD MAN #2: RING OF KNIVES out now!

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RING OF KNIVES is the second book in the DEAD MAN series, which readers and book critics alike are already hailing as "an epic tale" that compares to the best of Stephen King and Dean Koontz…

Matthew Cahill is an ordinary man leading a simple life until a shocking accident changes everything. Now he can see a nightmarish netherworld that nobody else does. Now for him each day is a journey into a dark world he knows nothing about, a quest for the answers to who he is and what he has become…and a fight to save us, and his soul, from the clutches of pure evil.

RING OF KNIVES

Matt believes a madman may hold the secret to defeating Mr. Dark, the horrific jester with the rotting touch. But to reach him, Matt must infiltrate a lunatic asylum, where he is soon caught up in a spiral of bloodshed and madness. His only chance of escaping with his life and sanity intact is to face the unspeakable terror that awaits him deep in the asylum's fog-shrouded woods…within the Ring of Knives.

BONUS FEATURES include:

* an excerpt from DEAD MAN #3: HELL IN HEAVEN by Lee Goldberg & William Rabkin

* an excerpt from GHOST BRIDE, the new novel by James Daniels.

This is James Daniels' first published novel! 

I first encountered James' writing several years ago through his brother Michael Daniels, who was a screenwriting student of mine at UCLA (and who has gone on to great success as a producer of ONE TREE HILL and VAMPIRE DIARIES). Michael asked me as a favor if I would look at his brother's book and offer him some advice.

I was immediately struck by James' obvious talent and vivid prose. The problems with the book had more to do with focus and structure than with the writing itself. But I was so impressed with the writing, with his fully-realized and compelling characters, sharp dialog, and strong voice, that I recommended him to my literary agent, who worked with James for some time in an effort to get the book published. Although the book didn't see print, which is a damn shame, I remembered it with fondness and always kept my eye out for opportunities for him.

When Bill Rabkin & I came up with THE DEAD MAN as a book series, we knew we wanted the roster of writers to be a mix of seasoned pros and exciting new voices…and James was the first name that came to mind. It's an enormous thrill for us to be the first to bring James into print and to introduce him to a wide audience. I have no doubt he's going to have a long and successful career as a novelist…he is too good not to.  

You can help…by snagging a copy of his first book today.

UK Agents Declaring War over E-Rights

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The Bookseller reports that UK agents are refusing to accept the line from publishers that 25% is a fair rate for e-royalties. They insist that print and e-deals be seperate.  Agent Sonia Land got so frustrated that she and her client Catherine Cookson are e-publishing her backlist themselves.

Land has warned book publishers they will lose control over authors’ digital backlists unless they improve their royalty offer.

Land this week announced her decision to publish 100 of Catherine Cookson’s novels as e-books through her company Peach Publishing, bypassing Cookson’s physical publishers Transworld. Other agents warned against the move, one calling it "tantamount to a declaration of war".

In a column in this week’s Bookseller, Land called on publishers to up their rates from 25% to 50% of net proceeds from e-books to secure digital rights.

Land said the publisher forced her hand by not showing an interest in Cookson’s digital rights. She said: "I’ve been thinking about this for a year and a half. They never approached me with a deal, but I think they knew I wanted a better offer."

Speaking about publishers in general, Land said: "The thing that really annoys me is that they won’t even negotiate a decent rate . . . They say ‘25% is perfectly reasonable’. They need to stop pretending it’s so expensive. I’ve just done it. I can do my sums."

 

 

Publishing As We Knew It Is Called…what?

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In the midst of the big e-revolution in publishing, nobody has quite figured out how to characterize publishing as we knew it, way back in the day (2010). Terms like "traditional publishers," "dead tree publishers," "NY publishers," and now "legacy publishers" have been thrown around, but none of them has stuck (though "legacy publishers" seems to gaining traction lately). How do you think we should refer in our discussions of the business to what we used to think of, in a general sense, as "publishers" and "publishing"? 

More Eisler vs. Hocking

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There's a very interesting conversation between authors Barry Eisler and Amanda Hocking on literary agent Ted Weinstein's blog today.  Hocking kicked off the interview by sharing some eye-opening numbers:

I have self-published eight full-length novels and one novella since March or April of 2010. I thought it was April 15th, but Amazon emailed me on my "anniversary" and said it was March 15th. I've sold somewhere over a million copies in that time (it was 1,030,768 when I last added up totals last Tuesday). I don't know the exact amount of money I've earned, but it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.5 – $2 million. 

[…]I also have paperbacks made through CreateSpace, and those are available on Amazon and my blog. My paper sales are minor when compared to my total. I think it's around 10,000 copies sold in paperback, compared to over a million in ebooks. The royalties I'm getting on my paperback sales are much smaller than my ebook royalties, too. 

As for the St. Martin's deal, I haven't actually signed anything, and I don't know the exact terms of it. What I do know is that the offer was over $2 million for four books world English rights, and the royalty rate is on line with the industry average. 

She went on to say that she formatted books and did the covers herself but hired freelance editors to proof them. She also did all of her own social networking PR. Only recently has she brought on an artist, an assistant and an accountant. She has agents handling the sales of foreign and subrights.

My friend Barry wasn't quite as forthcoming as Hocking about his sales figures and earnings (he's an ex-CIA agent, after all)…

Let's see, eight books total, six with Putnam, the most recent two with Ballantine. Off the top of my head, I don't know how many units sold total (hardback, paperback, digital). How much I've earned… also a little hard to say. Some of the contracts have earned out, some not, and there are foreign sales in at least 20 different languages. But the advances have been six and seven figures and I've been making a good living writing for the last decade or so.

Unlike Hocking, he's been at this a lot longer. And he's had the benefit of publishers handling most of the tasks that she took on herself. He says:

I have a circle of family and friends who are all talented editors, for example, and I would never release a book before hearing from each of them. On cover design, I've been consulted, with different results with different publishers. On publicity and marketing, same. I guess the short way of explaining my experience on working with legacy publishers on various packaging, marketing, and publicity matters would be to say, these are areas I've long wanted to be fully in charge of. I've always carried a lot of the weight when it comes to marketing and promotion, and have been disappointed more than once by my publishers' packaging decisions, so the way I see it, going indie won't represent much work that I haven't been doing myself anyway, plus I'll get to make my own decisions. Plus for me, I think indie will be more lucrative.

A big reason behind Barry's decision to leave "legacy" publishing for self-publishing was the money. It just made more financial sense to go out on his own now.

In a typical legacy deal, the author gets 14.9% of the retail price of a digital book. So when my of my publishers sells one of my digital titles at $9.99, I get $1.49 of that. When the same title is self-published at $2.99, I keep 70% of the retail price, or about $2.10. And if fact, I plan on pricing my first self-published novel, The Detachment, at $4.99, which would mean a $3.50 per unit royalty for me. So I don't have to sell as many self-published books as I did legacy; in fact, I can sell far fewer and still come out ahead.

A big reason behind Hocking's move in the other direction was distribution and name recognition. She wants to reach a larger audience, and become a household name, something she thinks a publisher is better positioned to do for her than she can for herself. She wrote on her blog:

I am fully aware that I stand a chance of losing money on this deal compared to what I could make self-publishing.

I honestly didn't do this for money. But let's not forget that as much money as I've made, James Patterson made $70 million between June 2010 and July 2010. Legacy houses (is that what we're calling them now?) have made a lot of authors very rich.

So what do I actually want out of this deal? What do I hope to gain?

Career stability. As an author, I'll never really have one. Each book I come out with could bomb and could be the one that turns readers off me forever. Any day, my books could just stop selling. And I know that going with a house isn't going to change that. Any author can stop making money any day.

James Patterson has a book out now that has incredibly low reviews, some of the lowest I've seen for any book, and that book is still selling like crazy, and I can find it Target and Walmart. Even the sequel to the book, which the reviews say is even twice as awful as the original, is selling like crazy. Why? Because James Patterson wrote it. (Or more accurately, because his name is on the cover).

I want that. Not the writing bad books thing. I'll always strive to write a product that people enjoy. But I want to be a household name. I want to be the impulse buy that people make when they're waiting in an airport because they know my name.

That, I think, is as close to career stability as I can get. And that's why I took the deal.

Clearly, these are two different authors at two very different places in their careers who, from where I am sitting, have made the right moves for their unique situations.

Barry has been at this awhile and has been doing well. From what I can tell, Barry isn't after Patterson-esque ubiquity, he just wants to make more money from his work than he's being offer from publishers right now. And I am willing to bet that he will, even if he sells far fewer copies than he would have before. 

Hocking is just starting out at a time when publishing is undergoing seismic changes. Beyond being very talented, Hocking is obviously one very sharp young woman. She knows what she wants and what it will cost her to get it. And she's okay with that. But some chide her for it, like Macy Halford at the New Yorker. She says: 

Even though Hocking seems to care about quality, her desire for Patterson-style ubiquity is troubling. She seems to think of herself as a corporation in a way that few writers do, speaking of herself as a commodity with complete ease—she understands that her blogging and tweeting selves are marketing tools, but she doesn’t seem either to mind or to view them as entirely separate from her writing self. 

Which is part of the secret to her success.  What writer out there wouldn't want Patterson's ubiquity? Or for that matter, Stephen King's or Michael Connelly's or Nora Robert's? Kudos to Hocking for acknowledging it and for leveraging her success in self-publishing so shrewdly that she might actually achieve her goal.

There's a lot to learn from Eisler and Hocking. The big lesson? There isn't just one approach to publishing any more. You now can, and must, find your own path that fits your talent, your skills, your experience, your goals and your potential. 

Cover Story

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Top Suspense Cover One thing that hasn't changed with the e-revolution in publishing is the importance of a good book cover. One of the best cover artists out there is Jeroen Ten Berge, who I had the pleasure of working with on the TOP SUSPENSE anthology and the upcoming, April relaunch of my JURY SERIES books.  He's also done kick-ass covers for Joe Konrath, Blake Crouch, Brett Battles and J.D. Rhoades.

The Man Eating Bookworm is finally giving Jeroen the attention he deserves with a great interview…which I'm very ambivalent about sharing with you, only becuase it's going to make Jeroen even more in-demand than he already is…meaning he'll have less time to work on my stuff!

Here's an excerpt:

 

MEB: "Never judge a book by it's cover." What do you think?

Jeroen: Baloney.

A picture tells a thousand words. A great cover should do exactly that – convey the essence and feel of the book in a confident and striking fashion, with a design that stands out, one that hooks you in mere seconds. Once that is achieved the product description hopefully complements the cover, pulls in the buyer even further and a sale is made.

Today, with e-books and Amazon, an effective cover is even more important than before. Unlike traditional bookshops, unknown writers and renowned bestselling authors now share the same shelf, next to each other, with equal opportunity to present their work. That has never happened before and it is a major game changer. But if you're an unknown, and your cover looks crap, a potential buyer will most likely not read the product description, move on, and click and buy someone else's book.

 

A Peek in Barry’s Brain

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Barry Eisler, in a Book Beast interview with Jason Pinter, goes into more detail about the thinking behind his news-making decision to turn down a $500,000, two-book deal from Minotaur to self-publish his books instead. He says, in part:

My tendency has been to focus too much on that big, seductive number. But to understand what the number really represents, you have to break it down. Start by taking out your agent's commission: your $500,000 is now $425,000. Then divide that $425,000 over the anticipated life of the contract, which is three years (execution, first hardback publication, second hardback publication, second paperback publication). That's about $142,000 a year.  This is a more realistic way of looking at that $500,000.

But there's more. Some people have mistakenly argued that, for my move to make financial sense, I'll have to earn $142,000 a year for three years. But this is one time when you don't want to be comparing apples to apples. Because the question isn't whether I can make $425,000 in three years in self-publishing; the question is what happens regardless of when I hit that number. What happens whenever I hit that point is that I'll have "beaten" the contract, and then I'll go on beating it for the rest of my life. If I don't earn out the legacy contract, the only money I'll ever see from it is $142,000 per year for three years. Even if I do earn out, I'll only see 14.9% of each digital sale thereafter. But once I beat the contract in digital, even if it takes longer than three years, I go on earning 70% of each digital sale forever thereafter. And, as my friend Joe Konrath likes to point out, forever is a long time.

Ballantine managed to sell about 10,000 combined digital copies of my last two books at a $9.99 price point (a price point that was earning me $1.49 per unit sold, BTW) in the latest three-month period for which I have data. Call that 5000 of each book for three months, so 1,667 of each book per month. If I cut the Ballantine price in half and still can only move 1,667 units a month, at a $3.50 per unit royalty ($4.99 x 70% = $3.50), that's about $5,833 per month. But unlike paper books and digital sold at paper prices, low-priced digital books sell steadily, so it seemed to me that I could make about $70,000 per year, per book on my own. Assuming nothing changes and digital doesn't keep growing (and that would be crazy–Charles Cummings' critically acclaimed spy thriller The Trinity Six just sold three times as many digital copies as hardback in its first week), I should be able to make $140,000 a year for the two books I could have sold in a $425,000 legacy deal, instead. $70,000 for the first year, then $140,000 for each year thereafter, when I'll be selling two books instead of just one. So if I'm right about all this, and I'm pretty sure I am, I should be able to beat the contract about halfway through the fourth year. And again, all of that ignores the continued growth of digital, the way low-priced digital books reinforce sales of other such books, etc.

It's clear that Barry Eisler gave this decision a lot of very serious thought and his reasoning is strong. The article goes into much more detail, including his pricing plans for his books and his perspective on self-pub phenom Amanda Hocking taking a publishing deal. Fascinating stuff.

Eisler & Hocking

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The news this week that Barry Eisler snubbed a $500,000 publishing deal to self-publish and that self-pub phenom Amanda Hocking is negotiating a $1 million+ deal with a publishing company has created a lot of discussion among authors, agents, editors and pundits. Even Hocking herself has weighed in with her reasoning:

I'm writer. I want to be a writer. I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling emails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc. Right now, being me is a full time corporation. As I said before in my post – Some Things That Need to be Said – I am spending so much time on things that are not writing.

 

I like writing. I even like marketing, especially when it comes to interacting with readers. And I don't mind editing. I just don't want to run my corporation, because that takes away from writing and everything else that I actually enjoy doing.

Booksquare offered some interesting analysis, crediting both authors for making shrewd moves based on their unique situations in the publishing universe. 

Eisler and Hocking are making the right choices, but, if you were to corner me in a bar and ask me which author is following the right path right now, I’d say Eisler.

He’s taking a riskier path, for sure, and there is no guarantee. His history suggests he has some talent when comes to calculated risks. And while he’s burned some publishing bridges, he also has a track record in the industry.

Hocking, however, is more of a publishing dark horse. She’s done the indie thing amazingly well. I cannot over-emphasize how critical this is, and how well she’s done it. But there is a gap between indie publishing (especially self-publishing, without a lot of professional editorial input) and corporate publishing.

The biggest challenge, and the reason I’m putting my money (virtual because the husband hates it when I bet cat food dollars) on Eisler is that the publisher who signs Amanda Hocking today will likely not have a book on the shelf before 2012, more likely 2013. Note my nouns.

The Hocking zeitgeist is right now. Her audience is right now. Her moment is right now. Can this buzz be sustained a year or more? Can her audience be engaged for that long? Yes, if she’s continually giving them the books they want…at the price point they want.

What's interesting to me is how many editors and pundits still don't see how fast things are changing, in many ways for the better, for writers in this new, digital landscape. The media that covers publishing…Publishers Weekly, Publishers Lunch, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc… seem to be even slower to get this than the publishers are. Some of the coverage of Eisler and Hocking, and the ways the economics, sales, and distribution of self-publishing have changed in the last twelve months, has been totally inept.