Sunday Morning Thoughts

An announcement first. The winner of the writing prompt contest will be announced later today. We apologize for the delay, but several of our judges are fighting deadlines right now and are running behind. So, check back later this afternoon or this evening to see who won.

As I sit here this morning, staring at the computer screen and trying to figure out what to write, a lot of things pop into my head. I could do a follow-up to the on-going debate about Greg Mortenson and Three Cups of Tea. Or there is the Borders bankruptcy and their "need" for another $50 million in financing even as they give their executives bonuses. Or there's the latest insanity -- the witch hunt in Pennsylvania where a group of parents are trying to force a teacher to choose between teaching their little darlings high school English or continue writing erotica (see here and here).

All of those are good topics. They just don't call to me this morning. So, with your indulgence, I want to expound on something Sarah commented on in her last post.

One of the questions she addressed was if e-books are "merely paper books transformed to electrons". It would have been easy to answer "yes" and go on from there. Instead, Sarah brought up the so-called "enhanced" e-books we see advertised in the iBookstore and, to a lesser degree, at Barnes & Noble. For those not aware of what these "enhanced" e-books are, they are e-books with active hyperlinks, video, author interviews, etc., included with the book. Think of it as the director's cut of a DVD. You get the book plus all these extras.

I'll admit, I'm torn about the enhanced e-books. Part of it is as Sarah said. Someone clicking a hyperlink and navigating away from the book may not return. If they don't return, they don't finish the book. If they don't finish the book, they don't buy my next book. See the problem?

The enhancements such as hyperlinks and embedded video might work for non-fiction works, especially text books. I know having that sort of reference at the touch of a finger in college would have been wonderful. However, I don't want it for my fiction. Either the writer has crafted a story strong enough to pull me in or they haven't. Adding music and video and links will only distract me. I shouldn't have to hear the theme from Jaws to know the main character is in danger. The words on the screen should be enough. Remember, the words paint the picture.

Mind you, this is coming from the girl who loves tech toys. Maybe that's why that particular question struck me. I've spent a good part of this past week looking at tablets -- no, not the iPad or the new Galaxy Tab. As much as I'd love to have either one, they are outside of my price range. So I've been doing my research. Part of that was to look at the Nook Color. Here's a tablet most folks will think of as an e-book reader first and that led me to think about enhanced e-books.

My question is if these enhanced e-books will last or if they are just a flash in the pan. My gut feeling is that they will last, in some form, for textbooks and reference books. But I don't think we'll see them long term for fiction. This is simply because the latest figures I've seen about people who actually read using their iPad are dismal. I'll bet if a comprehensive study was done, that would be the trend for all tablets. People see them more as computing devices and not as reading devices. But it is actually more fundamental than that. Enhanced e-books cost more than regular e-books and we all know about the controversy surrounding e-book pricing. Will readers willingly pay more for a book with an author interview and active hyperlinks than they will for "just" the book? Will enough readers do so?

Who knows? All I can say is that it will be interesting to see where things go from here. Fingers crossed it's "interesting" in a fun way and not in the proverbial "may you live in interesting times" way.

e-books, upcoming and present

Given that no one (big publishers, little publishers, individuals, stray elephants) has really mastered the internet equivalent of paying for a big fat book dump at the checkout counter, or paying for end displays, or massive print and distribution strategies to put the book in front of buyers in ever bookstore, etc or any of the other way that publishing cheated and gamed the system (to readers, authors and indeed publishing's eventual loss) we're still in a situation where e- book buyers are looking 'other readers also bought' and where a pre-existing name/series and of course sheer volume of offerings count, I have decided that I have to stretch a little and get some more work out there.



At the moment we have THE GOTH SEX KITTEN, CRAWLSPACE AND OTHER STORIES and forthcoming from Naked Reader, WITHOUT A TRACE.



THE FORLORN is also OOP and out of contracted grant of rights - I've asked for my rights back, and will give it its original ending back - and a new cover. At the moment it is available - for free - from Baen Free Library. It will be fascinating to see how many people buy it.



A MANKIND WITCH also appears to be OOP and I've asked for those rights to revert too. At last I will get that book a cover it deserves. It's a part of a series, but as i am sole author, it's sucked hind teat and been allowed to go OOP.



And finally, I've had SAVE THE DRAGONS sitting at Baen for (mumble) many months now. Patience is not my strongest suite, so that will very shortly be going up too.

It's going to be interesting to see what (if any) impact 6 books(rather than 2 collections of shorts) have on visibility. Personally I am of the opinion these need to approach 20, and include some new novels, in series to be effective. I am thinking of a Rats Bats and Vats book, which will go directly to Kindle.

Interesting times. What do you guys think? How many books do you need out there? Are books (new) more effective than old material? And what do you want to see?

Public Library Online -- a very worrying thing.

"Attention! Attention! The revolution has been made aware of a reactionary incursion into the public library."

The public library -- the place where so many readers gained their first taste of the books they now spend money on. The public library -- an institution, which, for all its flaws in places, remains one of the keystones to literary access for anyone -- including those from a disadvantaged background, and those of us with book-habits too big for our incomes.
The public library -- a pet hate they dared not name -- of Big Publishing because, if they paid anything to anyone (besides the initial cover price) it was to those irrelevancies, authors, via PLR (in the UK, Australia, Canada and another 25 countries, not including the US). On the other hand everyone was supposed to support libraries, and paying authors is the publishers' rationalisation for the cover price (yes authors get... well 6% for newbies. But really we publishers exist merely so we can act as a conduit to them. We make a small nett profit (which, like retail, we compare to the authors gross when questioned). And we do such valuable things for our large gross. Buy paper. Pay for printing. Arrange shipping and distribution. Do the accounting... sometimes editing and proofreading also happen! We keep you readers from being drowned dross, because we know what you really ought to want to read. Authors are lucky to have us and we nurture and look after them out of a love for literature, and pure, well, mostly pure, altruism.).

And then along came the e-book. And many of the stated reasons for the cover price being what it is... evaporated. The monopoly on retail access -- at least for the electronic bookshelf -- disappeared. Many authors and wannabe authors saw that the gatekeepers -- who also kept the bulk of the income -- were being disintermediated. Not many private tears were shed for the behemoths who said the e-book price really had to be almost the same as hardcovers to make ends meet and support their noble efforts (including paying for the office in NY and the advances for the various agenda driven publishers pets) although the beast is not dead, (and won't IMO die, and will remain in new forms) so they got some sympathy in the public eye.

But there is more than one way to skin a cat. And while I expect publicity, money-clout, big-business dirty deals and possibly getting government legislation to get used to keep control of retail display access - or at least most of it, this one I did not expect. It amounts, de facto, if not de jure, to false advertising -- like calling your ten fellow power seizing coup d'etat plotters and wannabe dictators "The Peoples Democratic Liberation Army" and the snatching of the moral high ground by means of terminology.

Enter left, with fanfare, "Public Library Online " -- which is neither a library in the normal understanding of the word, nor does it fulfil the intent behind the word ‘public' as I see it - it's a private company with access by subscription only. In fairness, it is ‘online'. One out of three...

Set up by Bloomsbury, but now allowing access to other publishers (one imagines, for a fee/royalty payment) - not the hoi polloi, however, it is a ‘service' offered to those overextended, underfunded and incredibly valuable national treasures, REAL libraries, of - for a fee - online access to a virtual ‘shelf' of e-books (which can only be read online).

For the library that signs up, well, the admin is dealt with, there is no hassle, with a library card number your library members can read (so long as they're online) any of the books on that ‘shelf'. There are new shelves offered every year (or more often?) all for a 'minimal fee' and there is no need to pay the author a PLR (another bit of admin done away with) as they get 40 Pounds for every participating author, for every 1/4 million people that library authority serves. Why, as this article points out authors who the publishers decided to include would earn 1000 pounds per book per shelf a year - the equivalent of selling (according to them) 2000 paperbacks. And many library readers then go on to buy the book... It's a win-win-win... isn't it?

Hmm. I doubt it. I think it's more like asking the fox to guard your hen-roost. And opening the cage so the fox can do the job better!

For starters 1) while libraries will apparently be able to choose their shelf -- they will not be able to choose their books. So we hand choice to the publishers... who have done such a good job of broadening reading and getting more people to buy books haven't they?

2)PLR generally pays according to the number of times your book is taken out. It is, at the moment, possible to donate your author copies to libraries (I do), and thus at least get them into the system, letting people try them, and to get some feedback not related to retail access. It won't be under this system.

3)PLR pays the author. Not the publisher... to hand on a smidgen (no doubt adjustable at the publisher will), and, if you want to be on a ‘shelf' you'd better suck it up, and take whatever terms you are offered. In other words - less books for more money in PLR expenditure terms.

4) We return to the gatekeeper model - where the publisher decides exactly who will crack the nod. And Bloomsbury decides which publishers will crack the nod. So from bad we go to twice as bad, as far as allowing the public to choose what they would like to read. So much for ‘Public'.

5) Being on a ‘shelf' with a popular best-seller will mean a great deal to an author, especially a new one, or midlister. It's almost zero cost to the publisher, but can be used as a powerful inducement/threat to keep writers in line. ‘You self-publish on Kindle, you'll never be on our bookshelf again.'

6) A book once paid for, is paid for. It remains there even if your library has no money spare for new books. Not so with this system. You've _leased_ the books for a year. If you have no money: you have no books. If you have less money... you'll have less books. Not exactly a gift to the public in straitened times.

7) In normal parlance - and in the new e-book retail - a book remains on the shelf many more years - far longer than brick-and-mortar retail access. This allows the book to gradually build a following by word of mouth, removing the ability of publishers to control sales by publicity and distribution. Not with this system. You have a year. When you have no large publicity spend, a year is not enough. When you do, it's plenty.

8) This is nice and easy, we do it all for you.... ergo this a proprietary system we control. You, Joe Author, cannot merely donate your work to it, and once your library is dependent on it, we can do whatever we like to the costs etc.

9) Counting the book numbers on a 'shelf' - if I have this right - 9-10 - means authors get 35-40% of the income - and the library is spending more or less 100 pounds per book. That's NOT a bargain. 60-65% of that is being absorbed by the publisher, who has no returns, no paper costs, trivial distribution and storage costs, and no retail cost, and thus are taking this share (way above what they had for ordinary books) for admin and proof-reading and editing. -talk about gouging ‘the public' - getting your money whether you like the author or book or not by means of your taxes.

10) The effect of this on the value and role of librarians does not seem to be considered. I'm all for libraries doing away with/making simple the stupid donkey work of people who should be there because they know and love books -- replacing books in alphabetical order, and clocking books in and out. But this removes the librarian one step further from the ESSENTIAL functions of good librarianship -- choosing the right books (not ‘shelves') for their readers interest, and directing specific readers to those books. Next thing we know it'll imitate the ‘brilliant' success of taking away local control over these functions in book shops. That worked SO well there, I am not surprised that publishers want to repeat it in Libraries.

I could go on... but I really do not see this as a good thing for readers or authors.

I love and support libraries. This I see as a very bad thing for them, and for readers, and for writers. Publishing has, with some exceptions (and help from Chain retail and education authorities), been in the driving seat for the decline of literate people reading (the absolute numbers of literate people has increased, the numbers of readers in this group has dropped dramatically - the market has increased a hundredfold, the number of books sold... 10 fold.). Are they the right people to hand the exclusive keys to the library system to?

I'm not sure how to counter it. The Baen Free Library is one possible model.
About the only good thing I can say about it is that it is only online - at this stage.
Anyway: your thoughts?
Am I entirely wrong? Are they saints being vilified by bad me?

Without a Trace

And the skylight is like skin for a drum I'll never mend
and all the rain falls down amen
on the works of last year's man.
Last year's man - Leonard Cohen

Well, you know what they say about a broken drum - you can't beat it.

I thought I'd actually write about what was behind one of my books. I detest sermons-books, or agenda books (especially when they're a reflection of PC rather than thought). Books need to be enjoyable reads and it is a very rare writer who is good enough to carry a sermon and good entertainment. I know I am not that good (and frankly neither are most of the other proponents of this), so my target has always been to write a great story... which just might happen to make you think. Which show -- rather than prescribe how you should feel -- things which I feel strongly about. The conclusions you reach are your own. For example: RATS BATS AND VATS was variously described as "funny, funny, funny (Brian Murphy, SciFi.com), Noirish comedy alien shoot-em-up (Kirkus) . It's also probably the most serious book I have ever written, about socio-politics, and social exclusion. Oh and about conscription and militarism. I doubt if one reader in ten thousand realised all that as they laughed and enjoyed, but I do hope that a fair number of readers found themselves questioning other unsupported conclusions afterwards. It's what Sir Terry Pratchett does, and while I am not in that league, that is my role model. I remain, I suppose, an idealist. One who writes for money, a mercenary, if you like. But there are causes which pay well I could serve, but will not. And being paid for my books is the sincerest affirmation the fact that I do entertain, for all that.

Anyway: WITHOUT A TRACE is in many ways the works of last year's man. It was written in South Africa, at a time when the various militias of the various political factions were increasingly using children as cannon fodder.

It's not something that has gone away (they perpetrated most of the murder, destruction and rapine in Zimbabwe, and are stirring in South Africa now) -- or was new then -- and its tragic consequences, child soldiers in Sierra Leone, or in Uganda with the Lord's Resistance Army are the end point of this. Nor is something that is confined to Africa, as shown by the Hitlerjugend and the Deutches Jungvolk, and their charming Russian equivalent -- where children were encouraged to spy on their parents and turn them over ‘re-education' to merely name two of these pestilences.

I've always felt those using ‘youth leagues' for their political (and often military) ends were engaged in a process not unlike paedophile grooming -- and targeting the children for much the same reason as paedophiles find their targets suitably vulnerable for their depraved desires. I don't hold these organisers in very high esteem, as you might possibly gather. They like their fodder without much experience of a wider world, with discernment and empathy still only partially formed, and in the grip of that difficult hormonal phase (period seemed a bad choice of word). It does mess about with your thinking, especially, I think, testosterone. As someone once said: it's like having to get used to having PMT for life. It's not easy being a teen, and, as I remember it, my head was messed up enough without someone else manipulating it. To be clear: those who run youth organisations aimed at letting kids GET that experience and learn that discernment, and NOT TO USE the kids come under the heading of heroes in my book -- the very inverse of the Hitlerjugend, ANC Youth League or Young (insert political party of choice here) movement.

At the time that I wrote this book both the ANC Youth League and Inkatha Youth League were being used in what could only be called atrocities against their opponents. As another form of less obvious and brutal atrocity -- but none-the-less terribly destructive to society and their future, children - particularly boys - were being driven away from reading by the choices of prescribed reading matter for our schools. These were boring, PC and very agenda driven, slow moving, linguistically difficult/weak and nearly on average as appealing to a middle grade child as a bowl of cold dog-sick. There was little in the way of hope and VERY little in the way of entertainment in these books.

And one of the School Text Publishers decided to have a competition for a new school reader. I decided to take on both issues. I knew my attitude towards them had a snowflake's hope in hell with the gatekeepers, but I've been taking on hell with a fire-bucket all my life.

I wrote WITHOUT A TRACE. You can read the start of the book here.

The book was one the finalists, and retained for publication.
Only then after six months... they chickened out.

I shopped the book around to South Africa's pathetic crop of publishers -- who were divided into Apartheid government subsidy publishers, and struggle subsidy publishers. It took me another 14 years to find a publisher, get an advance... and lo, last year they chickened out.

So here it is: It's a story I believe that still has relevance. It was aimed at Middle Grade Readers... by me. Which means if I didn't think it was good enough for adults to read, it wasn't good enough children.

On the book itself: it is set on one of the most turbulent and wildest coasts in Africa: the appropriately named ‘Wild Coast' - the known grave of many ships and disappearing place of far more. A place of savage currents, vast waves, strange phenomena, fragments of history. It's a haunted coast, visited by centuries of Arab slavers and Portuguese carracks, a place of lost dreams, terrible deeds and of great courage.

It's a Bermuda triangle for Africa if you like. And into that African Bermuda triangle -- a universe close enough to break through into periodically - I plunge my heroes -- two boys, honor, courage, determination and mischief, a sense of humor, and lots of attitude. Just your average twelve year olds... dealing with a world lost in time and space, with remanents of all those lost in it: from pirates to warriors, from wild beasts to wild fire. About cliffs, and raging seas.
I've been there, I've seen it. I've done a lot of what I write about.

It's also about loyalty and hope (no love. No kissy stuff, sorry).

It's a boys book for boys, but I have been told by several young women that was pretty cool too. I dunno. I've never been one. But as a young teen it's the book I would have loved to read.

The e-arc of the novel is up at Naked Reader. If you have been wondering what to put on that Kindle for your middle grade reader: you might try this.

In the Marketplace of the Blind

It's been one of those days when focus is hard to find. I started my day by hearing my older son is coming to the Island to get married in July, so, while that is a glad note, it's also not been good for the thoughts about blogs and writing. This is the reality of the working writer - real life intrudes, and I think it worse than the real life intrusion of say such an event on an office worker, because fortunately, office workers leave the cubicle behind when they come home. Writers never really do, unless real life is being too darn pushy for its own good.

A discussion I was peripheral to a while back focussed on e-book covers. A lot of things came out of this which I think worth summarising. It was fairly plain that there was considerable sexual dimorphism in what people liked see on covers. To my unholy amusement I found covers with bare-chested well-muscled strong-jawed men were a biggy with a vast majority of the female respondents. I wondered what the reaction to the opposite gender equivalent would be, but for a change kept my yap shut. Still, it was plain that faces (and manly upper torsos) - which told little about the story were popular with the female respondents, whereas scenes/objects (and possibly female torsos) were more interesting to the males. Of course this is a generalisation, totally unscientific and very subjective and who gives a damn, but worth thinking about, as, after all, the purpose of the cover is to get a reader to look at the book. We are not selling covers.

A couple of other things that really did come out strongly were the need for text to be legible at thumbnail size, relatively simple if they're to carry visual impact at that size, and that print needs to be in stark-contrast colors and the covers really really do need a look of professionalism about them. Oh and information is important 'short story / short story collection /part of the Lanata series etc' is vital. I've decided that one of my future conditions for e-books is more control over my covers and getting them professionally laid out -- simply because I believe this is important.

But I don't believe it is MOST important. We're moving from a small highly controlled-stocking visual/tactile market with an intrinsically captive audience once they got there (the brick-and-mortar bookstore) to a vast - millions of times the size - totally free-for-all stocking market in which our view is so darn narrow... we may as well be blind, and there is no real tactile element at all, and where the audience can find ONE book without noticing another product. So where COVER and DISPLAY were the two absolute vital keys to brick-and-mortar bookstore success, we move to a situation where cover is a lot less likely to get your book noticed. Display is of course still vital but may be more tricky. I have a feeling that display in future is going to work (sadly) like display past - publishers will pay for prominence. However, the ordering of importance and therefore logically investment (by author and publisher) will change. In the Internet bookstore I rank them like this:
1)Name. Known names/brands/ series will be searched for. Your name and your title are your most valued properties.
2)Outside feed. If you have blogs/ facebook / twitter/ review sites feeding readers towards your book, it will be vital. Professional review sites may become more relevant than they are now.
3)Linkage. Both 'customers who bought X also bought Y' and linkage to type and ranking within type.
4)Searchable/matchable content (this one will move up as becomes better)
5)Publicity (this one could move up depending on expenditure. For example, spend enough and you make someone into a name, and generate outside feed)
6)Cover
7)Viewable/ sampleable content.

A book of course will need probably 6 and certainly 7 to convert 'look at' into BUY.
We're out of the sheltered, heavily controlled puddle and into a big wild ocean. Those who survive will have learn to work with the new waves and use their energy to lift them. Those who cling to rocks... will drown. The rocks may survive and surface at the next low tide, but authors who held on tight, won't be there. On the other hand there is a chance to grow into Leviathan out there, or at least to swim free.

Any other ideas on how to work with sea-change? To get yourself found in the marketplace of the blind?


Oh BTW - I have been following my books on the Amazon Author central - which gives bookscan numbers. DRAGON'S RING paperback - which came out on the un-enviable 28/12, data is a bit worrying. I think we can safely say DRAGON'S RING is simply not in - or in very very small numbers in most major chain stores across the US - it sold 171 copies in the last week (very poor numbers for a book just out), but only from 70% of the reporting areas. So if you happen to go into a store, and see it there, I'd love to know about it.
On the other hand SLOW TRAIN TO ARCTURUS - apparently voted one of the worst covers in sf, continues to sell (if Amazon is to be believed on 5th reprint -presumeably VERY small runs) 35 copies the same week reporting period - not bad for a book that's been out since March. So you can't judge a book by its cover...

New Years Begins With a Bang and a Whimper

Well, it's a new year and things have certainly gotten interesting quickly. Of course, for some that means interesting in the proverbial sense of the word. So, let's start with the elephant in the room and go from there.

The elephant this time is Borders. Or perhaps I should say the elephant is still Borders. The troubled bookstore chain started the New Year by laying off a number of high ranking executives. Then came the news that they had “stopped writing checks to key suppliers”. Going hand in hand with the latter was news that they were going to ask these same suppliers to push back payment dates for stock already on hand. What you have to remember is that these "suppliers" are the publishers. Publishers who are already feeling the pinch of fewer sales, the declining economy and such. Publishers who will be pushed by Barnes & Noble and other booksellers to extend the same concessions to them that they offer to Borders. Am I the only one who sees what a disaster this will be for all parties involved?

In related news, word of the probable implosion of Borders caused Credit Suisse to upgrade Barnes & Noble shares. In explaining this move, Gary Batler explained that B&N would benefit if Borders winds up closing all its stores. The increased sales for B&N should this occur is estimated to be 18% of Borders's sales. In the same article, it noted that since the introduction of B&N's ebook store, they have secured approximately 17 - 20% of that market, a much larger share than Borders which has no dedicated e-book reader coupled with a very late entry into the e-book market.

On the e-book front, USA Today reported that in the week after the holidays, e-books came out on top of print books. "E-book versions of the top six books outsold the print versions last week. And of the top 50, 19 had higher e-book than print sales. It's the first time the top-50 list has had more than two titles in which the e-version outsold print."

Does this mean we're at that tipping point yet? Possibly. If not, we are so close it wouldn't surprise me to see it happen soon.

Finally, a report has come out noting that students still prefer hard copy textbooks over digital versions. (Scroll down to Notes: Students Like Printed Text Books). Remembering my own student days back in the Dark Ages, I can understand. There is still something about being able to highlight and write in the margins...or to draw descriptive pictures of a certain professor that you just don't get with most e-book readers.

So, e-books are on the increase despite all the cries from traditional publishers over the years that they would be nothing but a flash in the pan. Borders is in serious trouble and that trouble is flowing right back to the publishers -- with potentially catastrophic results for some of those publishers. Are e-books to blame? No. Or at least not in the main. Mismanagement, over-expansion and failure to understand the changing demands of their customers are all to blame. Add in a sluggish economy, people who don't read as much as they used to -- and, sorry, I don't buy the argument it's because we get all our entertainment from TV, etc. A big part of it is because stores aren't stocking books we want to read and that is because management has gone to regional or even national purchasing instead of allowing mangers to stock what they know their customers want. A larger part of the blame falls onto the heads of publishers who stumble upon a best seller and then decide that readers want only that sort of book and so they push it at us until we quit buying. How many poor clones of The Da Vinci Code were there? Worse, how many sparkly vampires and emo werewolves have we been forced to endure of late?

To combat this trend, a number of small e-presses have emerged (and, in full disclosure for those of you who don't know, I'm the senior executive editor for Naked Reader Press. But I am also a writer, so these trends are important to me on both fronts.). Authors are starting to bring their backlist out in digital format. Why? Because it is answering a need the readers have been voicing for years, a need that has been denied for any number of reasons -- not always good ones -- by traditional publishers.

Where this will end, no one really knows. But the next few months/years are going to be exciting, scary and tumultuous in the publishing industry. What do you think will happen?

Random Thoughts

First, let me start by apologizing for being late this morning. I didn't get the post written last night and, gasp, slept in some this morning.

Reading through the comments to yesterday's open thread post started me thinking. Yes, I know, this is a dangerous thing. But I'm not to blame. Really, I'm not. You guys are the ones who did it. ;-p

What I'd like to do is talk publishing through Amazon's DTP platform, Barnes & Noble's PubIt program or even Smashwords as an independent author. More than that, I'd like to focus on doing it as an independent author who doesn't have books already out through traditional routes.

The first things you need to remember is that not only do you have to read the book, but you have to make sure it is edited on a professional level. This isn't so much because the platforms for digital self-publication require it and will check for it but because your readers will. Amazon et al, doesn't offer editing services. However, they will yank an e-book if they receive enough complaints about the editing. (The same goes for formatting, but we'll discuss that in a moment.) Worse, if your book is poorly edited -- and this means copy edits as well as proofreading -- it will be discussed at length not only in reviews that will be posted on the e-book's sales page but in the various ebook fora where readers congregate to discuss their latest reads.

You also have to worry about layout and formatting. Working hand-in-hand with this is making sure you submit to each of these e-book outlets in the appropriate manner. Amazon DTP requires different files than B&N which requires slightly different from Apple's iBookstore which is different from Smashwords. Also, Smashwords requires certain language be included on the title page showing that your e-book is being distributed through them. After each of your e-book outlets have done their conversions, you need to check EACH PAGE of your book or short story to make sure everything looks right.

This is important because your formatting can and will change at least once. A chapter title that was centered may no longer be. That special character or accent is no longer there and, in it's place, is some strange mark. The spacing between paragraphs is missing and you don't have indentions so it now looks like you have one great big paragraph.

Oh, and you can't rely on their emulators to know how your e-book will look when opened on the appropriate e-book reader or pc version of their reader. You need to look at it on the reader or pc program. Again, more time.

And, again, if you have too many issues with formatting, the readers will complain in the fora and to the seller and the e-book may be pulled. Amazon, when they do this, will let you know so you can correct the problem.

Another factor to take into account is the fact that after you upload a file to any of these e-book sellers, it take time before it appears on their site. You need to generally allow a week from upload time to appearing in the catalog. Sometimes it will be less and sometimes it will be longer. It all depends on how many other e-books are in the queue ahead of you and how many "problems" their automated programs spot in your submission.

Other things you need to do that publishers would do for you -- secure an isbn for your work. Not all retailers require this, but a number of them do. Cover art and the more professional it looks the more seriously your book will be taken. Most e-tailers do require covers for any e-book submitted to them. Accounting. This is a biggie. You need to keep track of who is selling your e-book for what. Remember, you set the 'cover' price, but they can price it below that at whim. And that may impact your royalties. You also need to make sure their payouts meet what your dashboard says you've sold and your returns. And yes, there are returns on e-books and they are charged back against you.

Finally, there is the elephant in the room that can't be ignored. There are hundreds of thousands of for pay e-books out there (probably many more if you look at all the different outlets). Add to that the public domain e-books that are also being offered. You are in competition with all of them. Ask any author who has published through the traditional route about how their need to self-promote has changed over the years. Now, multiply that by 100 fold and you might be where you need to be as an indie e-book author. You don't have a publisher's name to bring readers to you. You don't have a name yourself -- unless you've been in the field for awhile and are releasing your back list now. So you are in the middle of the scrum with all the other writers trying to get readers' attention. That means promotion. Lots and lots of promotion and that takes time and creativity.

One more qualifier to consider. Bookscan will soon begin tracking e-books. That groan you just heard came from every author who has lived in fear of Bookscan numbers for their print books. Bookscan is Nielson's program a number of editors use to determine if an authors' numbers are high enough to justify buying another book from them. It's not perfect -- far from it because it doesn't track sales from Amazon (at least that's my understanding at the moment) and a number of independents, etc. So how they will track e-books is something that will be interesting to see. It may also change how they track hard copy books. But, it means the numbers from your self-published e-books will also be available to these editors and will be something they can and will refer to when considering publishing you later down the road.

All this said, I'm not trying to discourage you. But I do want you to go into this with your eyes open. It really is a lot harder to put our a quality product than it first appears and there is a lot more to being successful at it than just putting the book up on Amazon or B&N or elsewhere and waiting for the readers to come.

So, how would you promote your new e-book? Are you already building your "platform"? Do you have any questions you want to throw out there for the hive mind?

Publishing in Slippers

Greetings from New Zealand to the Naked Readers.

To write is to change, and to effect change — as long as we’re following some necessity of our own in what we write. For me, the process has been one of serious at-home introversion (entering the imagination and spending long days alone writing it out) followed, then accompanied, by relentlessly evolving extroversion (being published; speaking about the process to ten, fifty, or 400 people; travelling; living with international writers; collaborating; working for a publisher . . .)

Then late last year, in keeping with the global financial scene and the state of crisis in the established publishing industry, I lost my two-day-a-week job and was forced to find another way to fund myself — one more in keeping with this new(ish) webbed-up world we inhabit — and to make another stretch out into the community. Besides that, my latest novel, born into the dark night of the abovementioned crisis, seemed to be drifting into obscurity.

I knew what I’d do. I’d woken one night 18 months earlier and the concept was slid deftly into my keeping, if you will. Now it was time to start seriously incubating it. Digital publishing is not a wildly pioneering idea. It’s been around for a while, piecemeal, but I seemed to be alone here in NZ, with the plan to do what conventional publishers always wanted to do (but got sidetracked from by financial necessity): publish work I love. Beautifully written books whose content is dynamic, truth-telling, and heartening. Work that lights me up no matter how many times I work through it with the author, assessing, discussing structure, close editing, proof-reading, having a cover designed, signaling its glories . . .

Rosa Mira Books goes live later this month. The first novel, The Glass Harmonica: A Sensualist’s Tale, by Utah author Dorothee Kocks, will be out in November, followed by an anthology of Slightly Peculiar Love Stories, by New Zealand and international writers.

What an age we live in, where a woman can start a publishing business at her kitchen table. She can roam about the world in her bedroom slippers, finding colleagues and allies and answers to her myriad questions. She can find designers and marketers, writers and readers, a deeply satisfying job, and sometimes even joy.

I came upon the Naked Reader by the usual ‘you need to check out this’ from a friend. It’s great to find others running parallel along the writing-publishing track, and I’ve admired the energy and generosity of the writers on the Mad Genius Club blog, which seems to be mysteriously linked with this one.

I wish us all the best, we who are having so much fun doing exactly what we want and are best fitted for.

www.penelopetodd.co.nz
www.rosamirabooks.blogspot.com

(Edit: I've fixed the links - I'm not sure why they went wrong)

E-books again

This is probably going to be a fairly short post, as Dr Biren -- our Island GP -- has just done a house-call to check that I'm behaving myself. Which I suspect doesn't include sitting here and typing. I won't tell if you don't. My sense of humor is just a little less present than usual. Tickle yourself for the obligatory chuckle.

I've just read my first book on an e-reader. As you all know I am an enthusiastic supporter of e-books. I've read on screen for many years now... and never really figured why people found it awkward or difficult.

I think I understand now.

Barbara loves the e-reader, and has always struggled to read on a computer screen. The difference between us is quite simple. B is a relatively fast reader, and can perhaps finish a book in a 4-6 hour sitting. I am a very fast reader. A normal 400 page novel will take me 2 hours or less. I'll persevere, but honestly the e-reader was not very pleasant, because there is relatively little text to a page, and I was changing pages every 8 seconds, which I found an irritation. So: as e-readers are intended for overconsumers (and I am an extreme example, I grant) for me they'd need a very much bigger screen.

Which brings me to ask: are there different formats (not fonts or line spaces, but structural format) and requirements for ideally presenting a story to e-book consumers that are different to the requirements of a paper-book?

I suspect ideally e-books need to be shorter, and possibly more modular. Eric Flint is a good eg. of an excellent modular writer. Although his books fit together well as units, they're made up of a sequence of modules, each of which stands on its own to some extent, and one can take out and replace with slightly different scene, ending in more or less the same point, without damaging the overall story line. I am not a good modular writer, as there is a lot more interweave and foreshadowing in my work (I am not a pantster, I know where a book is going and build toward that) - with the book being the smallest unit. This means I am a lot harder to read -- as people often do read with e-readers -- in snatches.

I'm also of the opinion that the current length of books is more to do with economics than ideal reads. A book after all is as long as it needs to be. There is usually a relationship between the number of major characters and its length (this differs from writer to writer as some writers devolop characters more and some of us are more wordy than others.) A short story is very difficult setting to adequately develop a complex set of characters or a complex story line or world-building. Of course some authors do this, it's just hard. This is why I believe that writing shorts (even if you can't sell them) is the best possible training for writers.
But I believe there is a market and space for the Novella and Novelette again, especially if priced appropriately. Of course we are now in a situation where cover art becomes a serious part of the cost.

Your thoughts?

And BTW don't forget to check out http://www.nakedreader.com/ - they have some great books and stories. Some even free - if you look in at the right time.

Sunday Morning Round-up

I have to start by telling Dave he owes me a keyboard. Not only did I spew coffee all over it when I saw the pictures of poor bald Roly with his ugg boots, but Rocky (my rocks for brains but very loving collie mix) tried to jump into the laptop to see his new friend. For those of you who haven't seen the before and after hair cut pics of Roly, check them out here.

This weekend has been a busy one between Sarah's writers workshop and the author event last night at the library. I feel like the walking dead this morning and my brain still hasn't kicked in even though coffee has flowed in copious amounts into my body. So, that witty yet deep post I know I would have done is still imprisoned somewhere deep in my brain. Instead of trying to pull it out kicking and screaming, I thought I'd throw out some links of interest and see what sort of comments they stir up.

For those following the soap opera in the boardroom at Barnes & Noble, the New York Times has this article detailing the fight. It's a good article on the motives -- or potential motives -- of the parties involved. The question here is, do you believe Burkle is in a shadow fight to take over the B&N board or not? More than that, if there is a change in the board, is it too little too late?

One of the best pieces of advice I've seen in the blogs in a long time comes from agent Kristen Nelson. In her blog, she recounts how, at a recent conference, she recounted the stats on how many queries they get, how many sample pages they request and from that how many clients they actually sign. It is, in her own words, "daunting" for new writers to hear these stats. But her advice is unique and something I agree with whole-heartedly:

Then I tell them to cover their ears and say, “la, la, la I’m not listening” because what it boils down to is that these stats should be white noise to you aspiring writers. You can hear it, but it’s in the background. Know the stats so you have a keen understanding of the reality behind the business of publishing but then don’t let it stop you.

If you love writing, if you are passionate about it as your dream, then you are going to write no matter what. Publication is one possible end result but whether that happens are not should not be the only determiner of why you write. You write because you have to. It’s like breathing. Absolutely necessary.

Besides, you never know when toughness and persistence will finally pay off so don’t lose sight of that!

On the e-book front, the Association of American Publishers has posted the sales figures for July

The Adult Hardcover category was down 15.2 percent in July with sales of $74.1 million, although sales for the year-to-date are up by 10.2 percent. Adult Paperback sales decreased 10.1 percent for the month ($111.1 million) but increased by 8.6 percent for the year. Adult Mass Market sales decreased 11.0 percent for July with sales totaling $60.6 million; sales were down by 13.1 percent year to date."

E-book sales continue to grow, with a 150.2 percent increase over July 2009 ($40.8 million); year-to-date E-book sales are up 191.0 percent.

Does anyone else see a trend here?

Finally, Laini Taylor has a great post about writers needing cheerleaders. She comments that, " Before editing. Before almost anything else but snack-making, we need to be convinced and reminded that we are GOOD." Check out her post and see if you agree.

So, what are your thoughts? Do you pay attention to agent and publisher stats? Do you have a cheerleader and how important is it that you have someone who pushes and prod and cheers as needed? And what about B&N, bookstores in general and e-books? The floor is now yours.

E-books, books and the pain of being Australian

Let me introduce myself. My name is Darryl Adams, and I am a frustrated writer. It is only by accident that I discovered that I can write about technology in general and e-books in particular, so logically I find myself writing in a blog full of writers that are way better than me.

A famous joke (and yes it is funnier if you’re an Aussie and not a Queenslander) is an airline pilot telling his passengers “Welcome to Queensland. Turn your clocks back 1 hour and your mind back 20 years”. That, in a nutshell, is the Australian book marketplace.

We are a book colony of the United Kingdom. I have been told anecdotally that we represent about 50% of the book sales for the UK publishing houses. The Aussie publishers (generally owned by British publishers) own the distribution system. As a result, book prices are high, and local retailers are low on the totem pole compared to the big retailers.

The small independent book retailers are in a world of hurt. One side is the high book prices and poor supply fulfilment of the locally supplied books, and other is the mail order book retailers like Amazon and Book Depository who can sell and mail a book and still offer a price half the local book price.

E-books are another issue. The Kindle has only been available for about a year (when the Kindle was released internationally), and the Amazon bookstore is only a small subset of books available to the US public and are more expensive in comparison.

The other local e-book retailers (ebooks.com, ebookbop.com and readwithoutpaper.com) again have many books unavailable for Aussie readers. Price wise the local e-book retails are more expensive, with some books approaching paperback prices.

The Apple ibook platform for iPhone and iPad only offer Public Domain books. Apple has advertised for a local book manager, but it will take time for Apple to negotiate agreements with the publishing houses.

The only bright spot in the marketplace is Borders and Whitcoull (under the REDGroup banner). They have partnered with Kobo to release a reader and are slowly working to have a robust range of books for sale. The Kobo reader is a good reader, but is currently way overpriced (A$199 and NZ$250) as we are not seeing the massive price drops that that US is seeing at the moment.

Other readers are slowly being released, from the impressive Kogan reader to a range of disappointing LCD and e-ink readers that lack the DRM systems required to use locally purchased e-books.

For me, books are content. Either paper or e-ink, the words are still the same, it is just the delivery system that is different. I bought a copy of Dave Freer’s (and I believe Mercedes Lackey and Eric Flint may have supplied the pens) Much Fall of Blood in both ARC e-book and hardcover. Mainly because I wanted it now! And when I reread it, I ont have to think hard what format I want to read it in. What I don’t want is to have the choices of how I read a book taken away from me, and DRM, format lock-in, poor pricing, bad delivery mechanisms (wither in the real world or digitally) and propriety applications/devices/software actively do this. Or to say it simply, almost all of Australian book market is against me. It as if the WANT me to buy foreign sourced books.

And if the publishers, distributors, authors and retails finally work this out and get their act together in the United States or United Kingdom, odds on it will be 20 years before the Antipodes see it…..

Links:
www.borders.com.au (Borders AU)
www.whitcoull.co.nz (Whotcoull NZ)
www.koboreader.com (Kobo reader)
http://www.kogan.com.au/shop/category/ebook-readers/ (The Kogan Reader)
http://www.officeworks.com.au/retail/products/Technology/Ebooks-and-
Digital-Pens/Ebooks (Some of the less than impressive e-book readers available.)
www.baen.com (Nuff said)

You can find more of Darryl's thoughts about e-books and publishing in general at http://oz-e-books.com/

E-Books in the news -- again

This week has been an interesting one on the e-book front. Amazon released its latest version of the Kindle. The Kindle boards have been alive with anticipation -- and frustration -- as all those who ordered the first day waited on the UPS truck to come down the road. As I read some of the posts, all I could think of was that scene from The Music Man where a very young Ron Howard lisped his way through "Wells Fargo Wagon" as he and the rest of the town waited for the delivery of the band instruments. Of course, there were the subsequent posts about how wonderful the new Kindles are, about the ones that didn't live up to expectations and the wails of despair because their Kindle had yet to be delivered.

But the new Kindle wasn't the only bit of news surrounding e-books this week. There has been a lot of speculation the last few years about whether e-books are really here to stay or if they were just the latest flash in the pan. People have predicted the tipping point for e-books has been everything from just around the corner to years down the road. Well, my friends, I have a feeling it is closer than we think. Laura Lippman's new book, I'd Know You Anywhere, went on sale the 17th of this month. The sales figures for the first week show that the electronic version of the book outsold the hard copy version. And it wasn't by just a few copies. For that first week, 4,739 e-books were sold of the title as compared to 4,000 hard covers.

“This is the first book of ours of any consequence that has sold more e-books than hardcovers in the first week,” said Frank Albanese, a senior vice president at HarperCollins. “What we’re seeing now is that if a book gets a good review, it gets a faster lift on the digital side than it does on the physical side because people who have e-readers can buy and read it immediately.” The same article notes that e-books sales have risen to approximately 8% total revenue this year for the leading publishers as opposed to 3 - 5% for the same period last year. More importantly, by the end of 2012, these same publishers forecast that e-book sales will comprise 20 - 25% of their total revenue. Yeah, I think e-books are here to stay.

What struck me as truly interesting in the comment by Albanese above is the phrase "first book of ours of any consequence". Call me paranoid, but it sounds to me like this isn't a new development for HC. It's just the first time it's happened with one of their best sellers. And, because it has, they can no longer deny the existence of e-books. What will be interesting is to see how HC and the other major publishers react as this trend becomes more and more the norm.

WSJ had another article about e-books and e-readers, this time looking at reading habits. I'm sure you remember the uproar a few years ago when a couple of studies came out decrying the decline in reading in the U.S. Well, according to preliminary research, "[p]eople who buy e-readers tend to spend more time than ever with their nose in a book." The reason, with so many gadgets able to display e-books -- everything from dedicated e-book readers to smart phones to net books and so on -- people read in places they didn't before: check out lines at the market, etc.

Now, before you point out the study that came out earlier this year about people reading slower on e-book devices, I'll say I agree with the WSJ article that part of the reason may be the technology of turning an e-page. But there is another reason, at least for me. It is a lot easier with a physical book to skim pages, skipping over those massive infodumps to get to the juicy action, than it is with an e-book. You simply thumb through the pages, scanning for the return to action. It is a familiar action for almost all of us. It is something we have to learn how to do with an e-book -- at least in my case. And, to be honest, I hope it's one I don't learn because I'm enjoying reading every word an author wrote -- usually.

So, what do you think? Are we reaching the tipping point with e-books? Did you find the "books of consequence" language by Frank Albanese as interesting as I did? And what about your reading habits/purchasing habits? Have they changed over the years and, if you are the owner of an e-book reader or a device that lets you read e-books, has that changed your habits? Inquiring minds want to know.

Naked Reader

No, no, no! I'm not sitting here in the suit I was born in, reading a book. Nor am I encouraging you, dear readers, to toss off your clothes as you read MGC. Unless that is how you usually read us, and then, well, I really don't want to know ;-) In fact, the photo to the left is a clue. So, read on, dear readers, read on and all will soon become clear.

If you've followed the blog for any length of time, you know there are a couple of things I'm passionate about. One is the growth and future of digital publishing -- of e-books. The second is that I view DRM (digital rights management) as not only unduly limiting on customers but also nothing more than encouragement to geeks and pirates. Encouragement to geeks because who doesn't want to prove you are a better hacker than big business is a programmer. To pirates because DRM limits the market unduly, thereby building an underground market for books that are either not offered in digital format or in a "locked" format.

This is where the drum roll comes in. I have the pleasure of announcing the formation of a new e-publisher. That's right, there is a new player in the game. Naked Reader, LLC will go live tomorrow. About 30 seconds after the site goes live, I'll either be dancing in celebration or hiding in the shadows, waiting to see how things go. Maybe both. This is a big step for me, and for those I'm working with. But it is something we are all passionate about and we truly believe it is something we can do and do well.

Let me start by reassuring you that Naked Reader isn't THAT kind of publisher. ;-) What you'll find there are quality short stories and novels by established authors as well as those just breaking into the business. I am thrilled to be able to announce that this first month, we will be offering a wonderful short story -- Left Behind -- by our own coconut tosser, Dave Freer. Also on the schedule for August is A Touch of Night -- think Pride and Prejudice with shifters -- by Sarah A. Hoyt and Sofie Skapski. Our novel reprint for August is the mystery/suspense B. Quick by C. S. Laurel. Two more short stories, one by Charles E. Quinn and another by Pam Uphoff, will also be available. To help introduce people to Naked Reader, all downloads in August will be free.

But it goes beyond that. Beginning in September, we will operate on a quarterly schedule. We will offer new books for sale this September and December. The other months will see new short stories, the occasional novella, as well as previews of upcoming novels -- all for free. And, no, we haven't lost our minds. The only way to succeed in this business is to build up a following and the best way to do that is to get people coming to the site and seeing the quality work we will offer.

Oh, one more thing, we will have a slush pile. Full details will be available on the site. But the quick version is that we will open up for submissions three times a year. The first submission period will be November. I invite those of you who are interested to visit our site tomorrow and read the guidelines.

Now, for some details. There will be no DRM added to e-books published by NR. The caveat for this is, of course, that certain stores (iBooks, Barnes & Noble, etc.) will add their own DRM. We can't do anything about that. However, for those sold through Amazon, there will be NO DRM encryption. We opt out of that.

The website is www.nakedreader.com. But don't go there today. You won't find anything. It will be up tomorrow. I promise. You'll find our schedule for the rest of the year, more information about the "house" and some of the people who operate it behind the scenes. I think -- I hope -- you'll like what you see.

So, this is your chance to tell an editor -- or at least a "senior executive editor" -- me. And, omg, I have a title!!!!!!!!!! (looks around for a place to hide because titles scare me) -- what you would like to see from an e-press. What formats of e-books do you prefer? Are you more likely to download, and pay for, a single short story or a collection of short stories? What do you see as the top price you're willing to pay for an e-book? We've done our research, but I'm always interested to see if we're on the right page.

Oh, and, Chris K, no fears or need to curse with regard to Kate's Drac. I shall say no more....bwahahahahahaha!

It's an Odyssey

The general definition of an odyssey is an extended adventurous voyage or trip, or an intellectual or spiritual quest. If you've kept up with news from the publishing world this week, you'll probably agree with me that this profession is on an odyssey right now, on odyssey of exploration of new technologies, new relationships and -- unfortunately perhaps -- new conflicts as the struggle for domination continues between the traditional and the innovative.

All right, I hear you asking how this week has been any different from the last year or so. Two things stand out, in my opinion. Both of these are indicators that the business of publishing has changed much faster and in ways that are rocking the traditional publishing business plan so badly that the little leak in the boat has become a flood. How the "agency plan" publishers react very well may be the make-or-break point for them.

The first item that caught my eye in the last week or so was Amazon's announcement that the first quarter sales for the year saw more e-books being sold than hard covers. Specifically, it announced a ratio of 143 e-books sold for every 100 hard covers. In the last month, the difference has increased to 180 e-books sold for every 100 hard covers. Is this the tipping point for e-books, I don't know. I think if it isn't, we are almost there. And, yes, that slight tremor you feel is the "Agency Five" quaking in their boots and trying to hide it.

To put that into perspective, the American Association of Publishers has released its May sales stats. Books sales increased in May 9.8% and sales are up 11.6% for the year. That's the good news:

The Adult Hardcover category was up 43.2% percent in May with sales of $138.5 million; sales for the year-to-date are up by 21.7% percent. Adult Paperback sales decreased 2.2 percent for the month ($110.7 million) but increased by 15.7 percent for the year so far. Adult Mass Market sales decreased 14.6 percent for May with sales totaling $54.6 million; sales were down by 7.3 percent year-to-date. . . E-book sales grew 162.8 percent for the month ($29.3 million), year-to-date eBook sales are up 207.4 percent. [emphasis added] Year-To-Date E-book sales of the 13 submitting publishers to that category currently comprise 8.48 % of the total trade books market, compared to 2.89% percent for the same period last year. . .

So, e-books for these 13 publishers total less than 9% of the market. However, if we were to take into account all books bought in this country, I have a sneaking suspicion that number would be much different. But that is just supposition on my part. However, the rate of growth for e-book sales by the 13 publishers who reported to AAP is telling. Yes, that tremor we felt earlier is getting stronger.

Finally, the news that turned the tremor into a full-blown quake has certain publishers threatening dire consequences. In case you haven't heard, Wednesday, Andrew Wylie announced an exclusive deal with Amazon to bring out 20 "modern classics" as e-books. Among the authors involved are: John Updike, Salmon Rushdie, Philip Roth, and Vladimir Nabokov. You can just imagine the roar that went up from the offices of publishers throughout New York. "These books are still in print. They are still under contract. They are ours! Oh, wait, there's no clause in the contract for electronic or digital rights. Well, that doesn't matter. There is language there somewhere that will cover it. We know there is. So, Andrew Wiley, you can't do this."

Yes, I'm being facetious here. But it does point out the problem facing publishers, authors or their estates with the changing of technology. These contracts written years, sometimes decades ago are out-of-date with the times. And the publishers aren't renegotiating. So agents are looking for alternatives for their clients.

And there is, in the short term at least, going to be fall-out not only for the publishers but for the agents and their clients, even clients who aren't involved in the Odyssey 20 deal. “The Wylie Agency’s decision to sell e-books exclusively to Amazon for titles which are subject to active Random House agreements undermines our longstanding commitments to and investments in our authors, and it establishes this agency as our direct competitor,” Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Random House, said in a news release on Thursday. “Therefore, regrettably, Random House on a worldwide basis will not be entering into any new English-language business agreements with the Wylie Agency until this situation is resolved.”

In Mr. Wylie's defense, if he needs to be defended, he noted in his announcement that the deal to bring out the Odyssey books was limited to those books where the publishers did not have the digital rights. “The fact remains that backlist digital rights were not conveyed to publishers, and so there’s an opportunity to do something with those rights.” This has been, in my opinion, an issue since the onset of e-books. If the publisher has the digital rights to an author's backlist, then why not bring them out, if for no other reason than as promotional tools for the newer books?

Needless to say, the industry is standing up and paying attention to what happens next. The "Agency 5" publishers are taking the hard line and saying that Wylie's actions are wrong and injurious not only to the authors but to the publishers and the industry as a whole. Some traditional booksellers are worried that this action is just the tip of the iceberg and will further erode their business. Agents are watching closely to see what happens -- some are probably acting like sharks attracted by chum, circling to see if any of Wylie's 700 clients jump ship -- while others are thinking about how they can follow Wylie's example for their own clients. Then there are the writers. We are a wide and diverse lot. You'll find any number of reactions from us. For myself, I applaud Mr. Wylie and his agency for what they have done. My only fear is that this will cause publishers to insert clauses into their contracts that give them digital rights -- no biggie here if there is reasonable compensation for the author. The key term being reasonable -- but that they will also amend the term "still in print" so that as long as a nominal number of digital copies of a book are being sold, it will considered "in print" for all forms of the book, thereby all but preventing the rights from ever reverting back to the author.

Some other links about this issue:
Galley Cat
Jason Pinter

So, what do you think? Did Wylie make a good move for his clients, all of his clients, or will this wind up backfiring? Should publishers be able to claim the digital rights for books that are "still in print" but were contracted before the advent of e-books and for which they have not executed contract amendments? Is this the tipping point for e-books?

After the gold-rush...

By the way, dear readers - we've put up a twitter/facebook access bar. If you think what a contributor writes is worth reading - please use it. This site's success has an effect on the future of all of us (even our want-to-be-writer readers).

I've finished my current book, so a rather long post: an exercise in economic comparison and predictiveness.

"There's gold in them thar hills..." And the old coot gets trampled in the rush. After a while he gets up and heads very sensibly in the other direction.

Oh yes... it's the dream-chase, and sometimes it wise to step back and look at those dream chases and work out... just who did get rich (or successful) and who actually made them rich.

Is it miners? Staking a claim and striking it rich... it happens. In the first two weeks. After that the incidence slows and eventually the only finds of mining riches come from very large companies. Oh, individual miners find the gold nugget/ diamond but the claim is owned by the company. The finder may get a generous reward, but it's the company that gets rich.

And the of course just after the miners comes the traders, offering all you may need from floosies to flop-houses. At a price naturally. They're giving their chance of getting rich to serve you! Oddly they get rich, and the miner just goes right on dreaming and getting nowhere. Actually, quite a lot of the money going to the middlemen is from elsewhere and not the little gold they find, anyway. The miners and their other, previous jobs, are subsidising the middlemen.

Which brings me to a study done the economics of crack selling gangs in Chicago. Oddly , yes the two have a lot in common... You see: Selling drugs must be a way to get rich...

Except its not. Turns out that the gang-foot-soldiers are earning... around $3.50 an hour, and it was twice as likely you'll be killed as it was for a soldier in Iraq at the height of the insurgency. For which they got... About the same as at the time they could get for flipping burgers at MickeyD. And, um, it turned out that quite a few of them were moonlighting at MickeyD...

Of course the higher tiers of gang hierarchy do get rich. Well, in the middle not really rich. They do as well as an engineer... and the top end got VERY rich.

So: why are they doing this...? It's quite simple really. They hope to get to the top. And once this was possible. If you got in with the first bunch. Turns out just like the gold-rush miner, the time to get rich and move up in the hierarchy was 30-40 years back, and this is what people still believe may happen (and um, the upper parts of hierarchy, who hand down their power and mantle and money... to... not one of the foot soldiers - go to some length to foster the dream). The crack-selling gang members are living on dreams (and not quite in the way you might expect).

This obviously has parallels in many industries, including our own.

Along with Gutenberg we had gold rush. And then again I suppose with the cheap paperback. And then again with the Internet and social networking (Cory Doctrow and Charlie Stross being good examples of early adopters). And on each occasion the equation worked very similarly. The miners/writers who got in quickly and were hardworking and lucky too were successful. The chances were not great, but they were a lot better than they became (where moonlighting at MickeyD also became a necessary survival strategy). Like the gold mining industry, or the crack-selling one... it's not that very large amounts of money (as measure of success) don't come into the business, it's just that most writers don't end up getting it. In actual fact, just like the parallels, many of them are subsidising the industry by working for less than they can live on.

We're in the middle of a new paradigm shift right now. A new prose-spectre just rode into town on a swayback mule with a few bags of ‘ooooH! Shiny!' in the shape of e-books and net-distribution.

And the new gold rush is on. A few people like Baen Books got in early, staked a claim and have a ‘mining company' working the new reef. The rest of the traditional publishers -- the Anglo Americans and Billitons of the publishing world -- see the new reef and the possibility that their dominance may be lost and are trying to decide what to do. They have started by trying to block or at least slow the access of other middlemen. In the meanwhile new entrants are pouring in to scene. Soon the market is (as Amanda pointed out) going to be very full of hopeful self-pubs, and small houses/co-ops.

Some of these are going to be much better than others. Some of these will be running slush disasters. Some will be typo central. Others will be 'good story needed editing'.

And a handful will be the new leaders of the writing world, really there on merit, loved by readers, unique, fresh and wonderful. Um. And selling books and making pots of money And other miners... authors, with experience and skill but who have always been the ‘workers' making a living - possibly by cross-subsidising their publisher by working at MickeyD - will arrive from the old companies to try and do the same.

And this gentlefolk, is when the fur really starts to fly. Because... their present employers are effectively middlemen. They used to do lots of the jobs in the middle but these days they do one very powerfully: they gate-keep access to retail space - or in crack-gang comparison, they control access to the turf and you're not gonna sell anything much without them.

The turf just got a lot bigger. And there is a _lot_ of bad sh*t going to be sold... Which was fine when THEY were selling it, because it was the only stuff to be had. A few companies had carved out a reputation (brand) for ‘their' stuff being good, but mostly publishers relied on not their reputation, but their ‘dealer'/authors reputations. The author couldn't go anywhere but to the territory of rival publisher -- where the deal was pretty much the same. The author was, to a large extent, dependent on the publisher for quality control (and promotion, and size of turf he was allowed to operate in) - although of course he did have some control over how good it was to start with. These publishers didn't bother with brands. They had a stable of trademarks (authors names) they controlled. You don't search Amazon for a Harper Collins or Warner Aspect or Bloomsbury book. You search the Author's name. Most readers don't know who the publisher was anymore than a jewellery buyer knows her gold ring was made from gold ore dug up by Newmont. Of course the exception proves the rule - Baen established themselves as BRAND that did quality trademarks. And promoted the brand along with the trademarks... which means in the new expanded turf, where anyone can play, their brand has value and recognition. Harper Collins has, for example, to readers, far less - but HC has deep pockets and a stable of relatively captive well-known trademarks.

So: I don't see business-as-usual trad-pubs being threatened by self-pubs or trying to stop them much. I don't see them willing or able to really build brands (that's hard expensive work) What I DO see is them getting very aggressive about 'keeping their trademarks' ie. their established authors. You see, these authors have a reputation to trade under already. If they fulfil their last contract, and go to Kindle... or a Co-op - they have an audience buying from electronic booksellers and possibly from their own web-sites. And it doesn't take a degree in higher math to work out that even if e-books (which sell mostly online, and not in the exclusive access turf) sell 1/3 of the volume of their traditional paper sales, but they earn 70% (or 60% less the cost of editing, proof and cover) as opposed to 10% (if they're lucky) they're going to double their income. And what's more they'll have CONTROL of quality, which means a lot to us. Actually, as I work it out, break even point is 16.5% of present volume. Depending on who you believe - that's either next year, or four at the most.

So: If you're unpublished... now is probably the time to get in. Quality is only going to get worse, you need your audience established soon before the slush flood puts them off. And make sure it is edited, proofed and has a quality cover. If you are published and have an audience: I think you will find restrictive clauses in contracts wanting your name in perpetuity. Don't do it. Don't sign these sort of deals - not unless they put up your share of e-books 50% + of retail. In the meanwhile do your best to establish either your own brand or join a co-op. Otherwise... your situation will remain as is, or get worse

Otherwise, if you just want to do well financially it's probably a good time to start a publishing venture, or co-op or offer proof reading. Remember who did well out of the Gold-rush.

OK - am I out of my tree again?

The best and worst of times.

The best of times, the worst of times...

There have been some fairly gloomy posts lately which may lead some of you to conclude we're a sour, miserable bunch of old bastiches.

Heh.

There are times when that is true for everyone, and real life intrudes onto the lives of authors too, believe it or not.

There is no getting away from it... we're in turbulent times. There is also no getting away from the fact that it's been steadily getting tougher and less likely that a book will win through just by being a great book that appeals to a lot of readers. The intermediates have gradually done away with pure reader selection, they've gobbled up the margins meaning book buyers pay more, and writers actually get even less. It's been getting harder and harder to get in and then harder to make a living as the bestseller budget gobbled most of the cash (which was very nice if you happened to chosen to be a ‘bestseller' and be pushed but sucked if you were the rest of us... And it didn't do the market any good either.)

On the other hand, this may be the best of times to arrive on the scene. Turbulence is a sign and time of changes. The last 10 years were the worst of times to get into writing... but that's pushed the equation toward where change simply has to happen (it will be argued by the various Uncle Tom's of the status quo, that more more books are being sold now, than hitherto. This gentlefolk is what is meant by lies, damned lies and statistics... 1) it has become easier to do very small press. You can even do it yourself. If you discount titles selling under 1000 copies you will I think discover that the drop in the number of titles is steady. If you discount titles selling under 40K - as the one time noob fiction genre paperback starting point... you will find that actually the drop has been precipitous. 2)It is convenient to these folk not to separate fiction out. Wonder why? 3)The only accurate way of assessing the health of the fiction industry would be proportionate. If in 1930 50% of the English speaking population could read and 50% possibly afford a book and the uptake was 25%... and 2010 90% of the now very very much larger English speaking population could read, 90% possibly afford a book and the uptake was 10%... Your final number of book sales might be larger.... but you have lost a vast amount of ground. And we have.)

So things are at a point where they have to start breaking. Yep, publishing as we know it will still be around maybe even for another ten years. Some companies much longer... but the world of books will be a very different place (for the better, we hope).

And then we added the internet and e-books (the two go hand-in-hand). Which wasn't just the last straw... it was enough to be a paradyme change on its own. As Kate wrote, the internet was alone enough to start the death of intermediates - with Amazon (and others) helping to speed/cause the collapse of the over 500 distributors (I think we're down to 4 ) which exacerbated the problems above and made life very hard for smaller publishers, and indies and sheltered big publishers and big box bookstores so they didn't have to start adapting. The other big effect is to reduce the value of ‘retail access' which, from a very long list that publishers in 1920 offered authors was one of the few things not eroded by technology and outsourcing. And then to this you added the e-book.

Now, in the realm of hard to pin-down figures... this one is very elusive. Charlie Stross on a list I belong to said that figure is supposed to be under 2% - although doubling every year. Another spot talked about 10%. And Sony reckons it'll be 50% in five years. Believe who ever you choose - the undenyable fact is the change is coming rapidly, and will have some substantial effect on....

Not the hardbacks they're trying to price them as...

But paperbacks.

Despite the price differential, hardbacks were really a bit of vanity once. Because cheap paperbacks outsold them a myriad times. Paperbacks and poplarity go together.

So where does this leave us? Remember I said this was the best and worst of times. It leaves us with a fighting chance to adapt and get with the new paradyme pretty quickly and cleverly. Which, may not seem such a bargain - no certainty, no safety. But hell, the way the status quo was going, it was getting harder and harder for new talent to emerge, and harder and harder for anyone but the chosen few to survive. The historical meritocracy of writing still existed but it was definitely getting tougher for the few to make their way up. It happened, though rarely without intervention. That was bad for everyone... except the people running the status quo and the chosen few. Now, for a while anyway, there is a chance in the shake-out to get a foothold. Carpe diem ( A carp a day, nothing like it).

There will be a bunch of new start-ups. There are going to a bunch of failures. Some of the major stakeholders now are like that chappie from penny-go-in are going to desperately fight the tide. Others, like Baen and Amazon will try and run in front of it and shape it and work with it. Some publishers will survive and thrive. Lots won't. The model is changing and we need to make sure it changes in a good way readers and writers and so that middlemen go back to serving both as as the best way to to well (instead of screwing both for their short term benefit).

This is a good time to be here. Some time back Charlie Stross was once again holding forth about what you needed to do to promote your books on the subject of blogging -- and someone asked the question - if bOing bOing started up today, in the sea of blogs... would it have succeeded? Maybe. But it would have been a lot harder work.

So: What do you see coming? And how do we best ride out the turbulence?

I see all sort of exciting new things. Changes in length is a biggy for me. How long will e-books be? And would you advance buy a series? (Not advance pay, but book a copy)

The Inmates are Obviously Running the Asylum

(Before I get to today's post, I want to take a moment to thank all the men and women who have given their lives in the service of their country. Tomorrow is Memorial Day here in the U.S. I tip my hat and offer my sincerest thanks and prayers to those who have served, those who are currently serving and to their families and loved ones. Thank you.)

Anyone who has a Kindle, or who has been following the never-ending saga of the Agency Model proposed by certain publishers, knows that Amazon and Penguin Books have finally come to an agreement. The terms of this agreement haven't been released. All we know for sure is that Penguin books published since April 1st are finally appearing in the Kindle store. Oh, we know one more thing -- a number of these books have prices that aren't just surprising, they are absolutely unbelievable.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is now available as an e-book. Now, my first question about this is that it is advertised as the "Centennial Ed. HC) edition. Well, last time I looked, a book on the kindle was made up of nothing but a bunch of electrons and was not -- could not -- be hard cover. But it gets worse. The Kindle version is listed at $27.99. Yes, that's right, $27.99. Now, I have to wonder what Penguin Publishing was thinking when they set this price since the school & library binding version is $14.88, the tpb is $15.82, mmp is $9.99, the audio version is $23.07.

Okay, maybe this is just a fluke and Penguin hasn't completely lost its corporate mind. So let's look at some others. The Help by Kathryn Stockett has been out for almost a year and a half. That means it is out in paperback at $10.20. The Kindle version -- $12.99. According to Kindle Nation Daily, this is $3.00 more than it had been offered in the Kindle store prior to the Agency Model blowup. (Check out the KND post. It has a lot of good information not only about the possibility Penguin is giving Apple preferential pricing but also how we, as consumers, can let our voices be heard.)

Jim Butcher's Changes, which is offered as a hard cover at $10.95 by Amazon is being sold as an e-book by Penguin for $12.99. This is $3.00 more than the paperback price announced for the same book. (In fairness, I'll note here that the pb won't be out until next year.)

One more example: Sue Grafton's U is for Undertow has been out since December. I can buy the hard cover from Amazon for $18.45 -- less than that if I buy from one of the Amazon associates and not Amazon itself. Yet, if I want the Kindle version, I'll have to pay $14.99. This is almost twice as much as they will be selling the pb version when it comes out later this year.

To be fair, this oddity in pricing isn't reflected in every Kindle book being released by Penguin. Sarah's No Will But His is listed at $9.99 for the Kindle and the tpb is being sold for $10.20. That is reasonable for an e-book being released at the same time (relatively speaking) as the tpb or hard cover.

If you think Penguin is only trying to slow down the sale of e-books, think again. In my opinion, to kill those sales, check out this article. Penguin's David Shanks says this about e-books: "more than 90%" of the business was still in paper. "We need to protect as long as we can the apparatus that sells physical books." While I agree that we need to promote bookstores and find a way to let them remain in business -- especially the independents -- you can't put the genie of e-books back into bottle, no matter what the publishers want.

To me, this paragraph sums it all up: In the end, while Prichard spoke of ours being "one of the most exciting times," Galassi [Jonathan Galassi from Farrar, Straus and Giroux] spoke of it being a "scary time".

Unfortunately, it is scary for all of us, and for authors in particular, because of the way publishers are burying their heads in the sand and, on the whole, refusing to adapt to new demands and desires from their readers, new technology and changing times.

So, what is your tipping point on prices for e-books. How much will you pay and why?