More Word from The Dead

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Ron Hogan at Reader's Entertainment has written a great background piece on THE DEAD MAN series and our new deal with Amazon. Here's an excerpt:

“Ultimately, we are the ones responsible for maintaining the consistency of the franchise and turning in great books to Thomas & Mercer,” Goldberg explains; each book is commissioned on a work-for-hire basis, with the authors receiving an advance and splitting royalties with the series’ creators. Although Thomas & Mercer will be paying a lower royalty rate than the 70 percent Goldberg and Rabkin earned while self-publishing, the deal is still “much better than what we would get from a traditional publishing contract,” he says. “In addition, we are going to move a lot more units than we would thanks to Amazon’s marketing and promotional savvy on their own platform.” 

That’s welcome news for Goldberg, who attributes much of the “great” sales for Face of Evil to a guest post he wrote for Amazon’s Kindle blog in which he described how the series was connected to his love of classic “men’s adventure” novels that flourished when the paperback market was in its heyday. “The other books [in the series] were doing fine, but not spectacularly well,” he admits. “Nowhere near what we saw as their potential, based on the amazing critical response and reader reviews we’ve been getting.”

When Amazon’s audiobook division, Brilliance Audio, began negotiating at the beginning of the summer with Goldberg and Rabkin about audio versions of the series, Thomas & Mercer quickly became involved as well. “They instantly understood what we were hoping to accomplish with the series,” Goldberg says. “They saw the potential in it and, like us, were frustrated that it hadn’t been tapped yet.”

 

The Mail I Get

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How not to solicit a review:

The digital galley proofs of my new biothriller XYZ are now ready for review. […]I am not requesting a complete review, just one to three sentences giving your general opinion of the novel. You probably won't need to read the entire book, just enough of it to to form some general impressions. Of course, if you prefer reading it all the way through in order to write a more complete review, please do.

Dated Angels

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My favorite jab at the new Charlie's Angels came from the New York Times:

ABC has marketed the remake with the slogan “These are not your mother’s Angels.” And that is certainly true — they are your grandmother’s Angels, throwbacks to an era when there was something contrary and cute about a woman with flowing hair and a lethal karate chop.

Priorities

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I'm always trying to juggle my family and work committments to figure out the best, and most productive, use of my time. Unfortunately, writing a post for my blog always ends up at the bottom of the list. It's not like I don't have things to say about television, publishing, or the writing process…or pet peeves to vent about, publishing scams to rant about or ridiculous emails to ridicule. My "For the Blog" file on my hard-drive is full of emails, links and tidbits. But between my deadlines, business meetings, and family obligations, I just haven't had the time to pay much attenton to this blog. I don't know how my friends Ken Levine and Bill Crider manage to post new material every day…  

IAMTW Suspends Dues for 2012

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Gse_multipart38023 These are tough financial times…and writers, particularly those in the tie-in field, are hurting. 

We want to do our small part to help out.

The International Association of Media Tie-in Writers is suspending annual dues for current and new members effective immediately and on through 2012…dues will be re-instated on January 1, 2013.

That doesn’t mean we’ll be shutting down and riding out the economic storm…quite the opposite. 

We’ll continue to introduce our members to tie-in editors and licensing execs with our quarterly mailing of member credits and contact info…we’ll continue to put out TIED-IN, our newsletter about tie-in writing…we’ll continue to give out the Scribe awards for excellence in media tie-in writing…and we’ll continue to moderate our highly popular private discussion board for media tie-in professionals.

And over the next month or two, we will also be renovating our website, freshening up our Facebook presence, and adding an audio category to our Scribe Awards.

We hope this will not only help our current members but also draw some new professional tie-in writers into the fold.

A Big Deal for THE DEAD MAN

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DeadmanlogobwOkay, I can finally reveal some of the big news I've been dying to share with you… 

I am thrilled to announce that Amazon's Thomas & Mercer imprint has picked up THE DEAD MAN series in a unique and exclusive 12-book digital & print deal … with an option for more. But that's not all. Brilliance Audio will be also be rolling out their own editions of the books.

The five books that we've already published — FACE OF EVIL, RING OF KNIVES, HELL IN HEAVEN, THE DEAD WOMAN, and THE BLOOD MESA — will be re-released in the days leading up to Halloween … so keep your eyes peeled for great offers.

The sixth book in the series will be released in November and will be followed each month by another new adventure in the continuing saga of Matt Cahill, a man resurrected from the dead to battle evil among us that only he can see.

Amazon will also be releasing three-book compilations of THE DEAD MAN series in trade paperback (as well as in specially priced digital editions). The release dates of the first compilation, and the Brilliance Audio editions, have not been determined yet … but we’re hoping they'll be ready for Christmas.

Bill Rabkin and I will continue to run the series, which we're writing with a terrific group of action, horror, mystery, SF and western authors, like James Daniels, David McAfee, James Reasoner, Harry Shannon, Joel Goldman, Mel Odom, Jude Hardin, Lisa Klink, Mark Ellis, Matthew Mayo, Joe Nassise, Bill Crider, Matt Witten, Marcus Pelegrimas, Burl Barer, and Phoef Sutton.

And we couldn't have hoped for a better partner than Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer. I just returned from meeting with the Thomas & Mercer team (including editors Terry Goodman and Andy Bartlett) in Seattle and was blown away by their creativity, enthusiasm, and eagerness to see THE DEAD MAN reach its full potential. They get exactly what Bill and I are trying to do with this series.

And what is that, you ask?

We want to capture the spirit of the “men’s action adventure” paperbacks of the 70s and 80s – short, tightly-written books full of hard-boiled heroes, outrageously sexy women, wild adventure, and gleefully over-the-top plots – and reboot the genre for a new generation that maximizes the potential of the Kindle.

And with Thomas & Mercer behind us, I don't see how we can fail.

 

Ebook Sales Are Skyrocketing, Paperback books Are Plummeting

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According to figures released today by the Association of American Publishers, so far this year ebook sales are up 167% while paperbacks have plunged 64% and hardcovers have dropped 25%.  It's a safe prediction that the holiday season will create a sharp spike in ebook sales and an even steeper drop in paperback and hardcover sales. It won't be long now until the mass market paperback becomes virtually extinct.