Spur for Wheeler
My friend Richard Wheeler has won another well-deserved Spur Award, the Oscar of western writing, from the Western Writers of America, this time for his novel SNOWBOUND. Congrats, Richard!
Cover Story
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.
What About The Content
In all this discussion about the explosion of ebooks, very little is being said about the quality of the work resulting from this newfound freedom, and that disturbs author James W. Hall, who wrote in a comment here:
You know one thing that keeps being left out of this discussion, Lee, is the writing itself. The traditional publishers (I find the term 'legacy publishers' patronizing and silly) served and continue to serve an important function as gate-keepers. They weren't always right, of course. But by and large good books got published and the "tsunami of sludge" that we're seeing now was kept offshore. Book reviewers had their role in all this, steering readers to 'literary' novels and maintaining or trying to maintain some conventional standards. Again, reviewers often got it wrong, and their bias toward a high culture novel often missed the books that people were actually reading and loving. Books like Peyton Place, say, which was an incredible success despite terrible reviews. That list is endless.
Anyway, with the huge sea change underway, neither reviewers nor publishers have the power they once had and many will say we're better off for that. I'm not one of those. I lament the loss of quality writing in this deluge of self-publishing. Being a hustler is now more important than writing well, creating rich, dimensional people, plots that are both full of surprise but are also coherent.
Writers interviews and blog posts are becoming all about cover art and social networking and the masterful manipulation of Internet outlets. I'm trying to learn my way in this new world even as I keep one foot solidly in the establishment publishing world. I read more than half the books I read on my iPad and my Kindle and realize these new delivery systems are inevitable and very positive in many ways. However, in our rush to embrace what's good about the new, there is far too much dismissiveness and self-congratulation by the emerging New Media stars.
In all this discussion about Hocking and Eisler and Konrath, everything seems to be about the marketing and profitability issues. I've yet to see any real discussion of the aesthetic issues, of storytelling, of graceful style, of all those features that writers and readers used to hold dear. Getting a 70% profit on every book sold is fine. More power to all of us. Karen's comment above is right. These are interesting days. I simply hope that what was good in the best books of the past will survive.
And that in our hurry to embrace and celebrate the new forms of delivery, we will not abandon our love for good writing and the well told story and solid, three-dimensional characters. And the discussion of literary values will someday again be about more than 2.99 versus 1.99.
I agree with his concerns about content and over-emphasis right now on money and marketing. The writing is getting lost in the discussion.
As exciting as this new world is for authors, it's creating a new set of obstacles for novelists hoping to stand out and for consumers trying to find the good stuff amidst the preponderance of unreadable, previously unpublishable, self-published crap that is flooding the e-marketplace.
In the near term, the writers who will benefit are those who already have a platform, mostly from having been published by the old guard before the e-revolution, because that's who readers will turn to first…names and franchises they can depend on…especially after they've been repeatedly burned by horrendous crap from writers they have never heard of.
Even 99 cents is too much when what you are buying is nicely packaged, but unreadable swill.
That's not to say there aren't some great self-published, unknown authors out there…there are many (David Dalglish and David McAfee are just two that I'm happy to have stumbled across). But there's far more who aren't. Far, far more. One need only look at most of the stuff on Smashwords, the aggregator many writers use (including yours truly) to get their books on the iPad, Nook, etc.
Go on, I dare you. It's not pretty.
Despite all the hoopla surrounding Joe Konrath, Barry Eisler, John Locke and Amanda Hocking, it could actually get harder, rather than easier, for new writers to break-through the ever-increasing clutter and sell books in this new, e-publishing world than it was in the "old" print-centric one…
I'm still wildly excited about the opportunities for writers now…but I'm not so caught up in my own enthusiasm not to see the pitfalls for writers and readers alike.
A Peek in Barry’s Brain
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
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.
New Media Meets Old Media
From Publisher’s Lunch:
On the same day Barry Eisler turned down half a million dollars from Minotaur Books to self-publish, news emerged publicly that Amanda Hocking appears to be doing the exact opposite. Yesterday afternoon the NYT finally caught wind of what many in the industry have known about for weeks now, which is that agent Steve Axelrod is shopping a new four-book series to publishers, attracting bids “of well over $1 million for world English rights,” according to two unnamed publishing executives who spoke with the paper, and that the auction may be complete by today. Sources in turn tell us that Penguin and St. Martin’s are no longer in the running, and that the series is entirely new an previously unpublished.
The Game Has Changed
My friend, the huggable spy, Barry Eisler has announced that he's walking away from a $500,000 advance from St. Martin's Press to self-publish his books. Eisler explains his thinking in a long and fascinating interview with — who else? — his buddy Joe Konrath:
I know it’ll seem crazy to a lot of people, but based on what’s happening in the industry, and based on the kind of experience writers like you are having in self-publishing, I think I can do better in the long term on my own.[…]I’m not the first example, though I might be a noteworthy one because of the numbers I’m walking away from. But there will be others, more and more of them.
He's right. Just a few weeks ago, Terrill Lee Lankford made headlines by rejecting a high, five-figure deal. By now, the publishers must be doing so much head-scratching that they have no scalps left.
But the reason established authors are doing the previously unthinkable — saying no to big-money advances — is simple. In exchange for that advance, the publisher is, essentially, buying the book out-right and forever (since it's unlikely to ever go "out of print" with the advent of ebooks) and yet are only offering a 25% royalty on ebooks.
But ebooks cost almost nothing to produce. There's no printing, no warehousing, no distribution. The only costs are editing, formatting, and cover art. So why give authors so little? The truth is, what the author will get is even less than 25%, as Barry and Joe explain:
Barry: […] a 25% royalty on the net revenue produced by an ebook equals 17.5% of the retail price after Amazon takes its 30% cut, and 14.9% after the agent takes 15% of the 17.5%.
Joe: Yeah, that 25% figure you see in contracts is really misleading. Amazing, when you consider that there’s virtually no cost to creating ebooks–no cost for paper, no shipping charges, no warehousing. No cut for Ingram or Baker & Taylor. Yet they're keeping 52.5% of the list price and offering only 17.5% to the author. It’s not fair and it’s not sustainable.
Which is why we are going to see more and more A, B and certainly C-list writers opting to forgo publishing contracts in favor of self-publishing.
Where does this leave print publishers? Domestic print publication will become for an authors a nice ancillary market, much the way audio and foreign editions are now, where limited rights are sold for a negotiated fee. The benefits would be distribution to brick-and-mortar stores (those that are still left). Or perhaps, as one blogger predicted, a retailer like WalMart or B&N might make exclusive deals with authors to sell the print editions in their stores.
But even in that negotiation, authors will have strong, self-publishing alternatives to help them leverage the best possible deal.
I found that out for myself this weekend. I was astonished to find the CreateSpace print editions of my self-published ebooks available for sale at the Virginia Festival of the Book alongside my Penguin-published MONK books…and being gobbled up by readers.
The readers saw no difference between my self-published novels and my published ones (granted, I hired a professional cover artist and formatters, so they looked very slick). But I am seeing a difference: much higher royalties and more money in my pocket. And if I, a mere mid-list author, is seeing that, imagine how much better a guy like Barry could do.
But you won't have to imagine it. Soon you will be able to see it for yourself. Barry's new John Rain novel, The Detachment, will be self-published by Father’s Day. My prediction — it will be a huge Kindle bestseller.
Home from Virginia
I just got back from the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville and had a wonderful time, both as a panelist and a book lover. I was in town less than an hour before I bought my first book, a signed copy of John Casey's COMPASS ROSE, the sequel to the SPARTINA, which won the National Book Award. I was thrilled…and took that as a good omen.
One of the great things about Charlottesville is that they really, really love books. They have lots of great, independant bookstores, including four used bookstores in their historic downtown pedestrian mall. I bought so many books over the first two days (including a signed first edition copy of SPARTINA, courtesy of the wonderful folks at Read It Again, Sam) that I had to send them home in a box. So even without the festival, I would have had a great time.
The festival is first class all the way…not just in terms of the headlines (three National Book Award winners, Scott Simon, Kathy Reichs, Jim Lehrer, Mark Childress, Alan Cheuse, Myla Goldberg, etc) but how it's run. It's classly, slick, and exceptionally well-organized. It takes place all over the charming, colonial town, which I suppose can make it seem too sprawling, but it allowed me to get a real feel for the place and it's people. There were panels & events at bookstores, libraries, big hotel, a grade school, the University of Virginia, government offices, wine bars, and local theaters.
My first event was mixer at Read It Again, Sam, were I had the opportunity to chat with author Diane Fanning, Jenny White, Meredith Cole, Brad Parks, Andy Straka, and Louis Bayard, to name a few, before heading over to the Albemarle County Office building the Friday Night Frights panel with Kathy Reichs, John Connolly, Louis, Jenny and Andy. I was astonished to see every single book I have in print, including my CreateSpace reprints, on sale in the lobby. I could have hugged the bookseller. 
The panel was great, even though Kathy was felled by the tail-end of a bad cold. It's not easy keeping up with authors as smart and witty as John, Louis, Kathy and Jenny (who told a particularly hilarious story about the time her friends came close to accidentally killing her with belladonna). I hope I managed to hold my own. Afterwards, I hung out at a local bar with John, his publicist (and my old friend) Ellen Clair Lamb, and his friend Jeff, who works for the CIA. I had a blast, even if the crowd of college students made me feel like a grandfather who snuck into at a frat party.
The next morning I was up bright-and-early for a screenwriting panel with WKRP creator Hugh Wilson and Oscar-winning documentarian Paul Wagner that drew a standing-room only crowd. Hugh's colorful and hilarious stories won everybody over, especially me. At the booksigning afterwards, a woman asked me what it was like to be married to Myla Goldberg and if we were competitive with one another.
I signed a bunch of books, attended the Kathy Reichs luncheon and then scooted off to a panel with fellow Jewish authors Micah Nathan, Phoebe Potts, and Ariel Sabar, all of whom were enormously entertaining.
That left me me with an hour or so to myself, so I did some quick sight-seeing at the University, which is beautiful, before heading to an authors reception and, finally, capping the Festival with a long and wonderful dinner at a steakhouse with Kathy Reichs and her daughter Kerry, Jenny White, John Connolly, Ellen Clair Lamb, Brad Parks, and Meredith Cole. We talked and ate and drank well past the restaurant's closing time…but the patient proprietors were kind enough not call the cops and have us forcibly removed.
All in all, it was a terrific festival and a welcome getaway for me. With luck, the Virginia Film Festival with select REMAINDERED and I'll have an excuse to go back.
(Pictured 1. a corner of the Daedalus bookshop, 2. my books for sale, 3. Kathy Reichs, Andy Straka and Louis Bayard).