Aug
8
Electric Literature’s Model May Save Short Fiction
Filed Under E-books, Fiction, Publishing | Leave a Comment
As a publishing choice, short stories vie with poetry as the quickest way to drain a publisher’s bank account.
Yet, a year-old publisher of short stories, Electric Literature, may have found the magic formula.
The company’s mission “is to use new media and innovative distribution to return the short story to a place of prominence in popular culture.”
Stitched together by two writers, Andy Hunter and Scott Lindenbaum, Electric Literature is essentially a quarterly literary magazine. Each issue has five short stories by known and unknown authors.
Authors benefit too.
According to Electric Literature’s website each Electric Literature author is decently paid. This is unlike most literary magazines—some pay in copies only. Better pay should guarantee a healthier slush pile, and, theoretically, a better magazine with a larger readership.
Not unnoticed.
The pair has garnered attention from heavy hitters in the print world including The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post which called Electric Literature, “A refreshingly bold act of optimism.”
Timing is everything.
The quickening of our daily lives and the proliferation of mobile devices have seemingly combined to produce a ready crop of readers for Electric Literature. As Hunter and Lindenbaum point out, the short story is especially well suited to our increasingly hectic lifestyles: “A quick, satisfying read can be welcome anywhere, and while you might forget a book, you’ll always have your phone.”
Here’s their blueprint:
To publish the paperback version of Electric Literature, we use print-on-demand; the eBook, Kindle, iPhone, and audio versions are digital. This eliminates our up-front printing bill. Rather than paying $5,000 to one printer, we pay $1,000 to five writers, ensuring that our writers are paid fairly. Our anthology is available anywhere in the world, overruns aren’t pulped, and our back issues are perpetually in print.
Electric Literature may be leading the pack among literary magazines, but it isn’t the only, or even the first, publisher to use the POD/digital formula exclusively—today publishers of every ilk do, and it’s a model I’m sure we’ll see more of.
Just a write thought.
Aug
5
NPR Poll Helps Fiction Authors and Publishers
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Thank goodness market research for writers and publishers includes keeping up on one’s reading. When family members see us sprawled on the couch, book in hand, we can claim, oops, I mean explain, we are working.
And, in this endeavor, NPR is here to help.
NPR conducted a poll titled “Killer Thrillers” to help you decide what next to read.
Six-hundred nominations were collected. Seventeen-thousand ballots cast.
In the end, there were few surprises. Most of the authors’ names in the list of the top 100 are familiar: Stephen King, Truman Capote, James Patterson, Dan Brown, John Grisham, as are the titles of the books, even when the author’s name may be difficult to recall: Rosemary’s Baby and Fail-Safe for instance.
Below are the top 20. To see the whole list click here.
- 1. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
- 2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
- 3. Kiss the Girls, by James Patterson
- 4. The Bourne Identity, by Robert Ludlum
- 5. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
- 6. The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown
- 7. The Shining, by Stephen King
- 8. And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie
- 9. The Hunt tor Red October, by Tom Clancy
- 10. The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- 11. Dracula, by Bram Stoker
- 12. The Stand, by Stephen King
- 13. The Bone Collector, by Jeffery Deaver
- 14. Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
- 15. Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown
- 16. A Time to Kill, by John Grisham
- 17. The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton
- 18. Mystic River, by Dennis Lehane
- 19. The Day of the Jackal, by Frederick Forsyth
- 20. Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier
I find polls like this one often reflect what those polled are currently reading—Stieg Larsson has three in the top 100, Lee Child, four—so I was pleased to see books by Agatha Christie, John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, and Ian Fleming in the ranks.
So, your duty is clear, go out and buy a half dozen of these and hit that couch.
As an aside, Barnes & Noble yesterday said the bookstore chain is on the market. B&N’s stock price has been suffering lately even though, as I understand it, profits haven’t been. One has to wonder, does the management at B & N see a bright future in brick and mortar bookstores in light of the budding popularity of e-readers?
Just a write thought.
Jul
27
Literary Agency as Book Publisher?
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There has been an interesting brouhaha since last Thursday when the Wylie Agency announced plans to launch a digital book publishing venture called Odyssey Editions.
Wylie is no slouch of an agency.
Odyssey Editions plans to publish e-book editions of some of Wylie’s author’s backlist titles that have yet to be published as e-books. These include books by literary heavy-hitters Salman Rushdie, John Updike, Philip Roth, and Norman Mailer. Wylie is said to represent more than 700 authors and author’s heirs.
Agency founder Andrew Wylie, is apparently frustrated by two things:
1.) The stance Random House and other publishers have taken that e-book and other digital rights are included in older contracts signed before digital rights existed and thus were not explicitly listed in a contract. (Most contracts spell out exactly what rights the author is licensing to the publisher, such as hardcover, trade paperback, mass market, or foreign language, and retain any rights not mentioned for the author.)
2.) What Wylie sees as e-book royalty rates that are too low to be fair to authors.
Is this ok?
Beyond the contract and the royalty rate issues, there is a lot to question about an agency becoming a publisher.
First and foremost is the appearance of a conflict of interest, if not an actual conflict. How will the agency-publisher-author split be figured?
Will there be advances paid? Is the agency prepared to do all the things a publisher does? Will the e-book be an exact duplicate of the printed book if the final editing is done by the print book publisher?
How likely is the printed book publisher to aggressively promote and market the printed versions knowing some of the cream of its endeavors, in the form of e-book sales, will be skimmed off the top?
Wait, it gets weirder.
Wylie further confused the issue by saying he planned to give Amazon.com exclusive rights to Odyssey titles for its Kindle editions for two years.
It is commonly thought that Amazon isn’t paying for this exclusivity since that would likely trigger “favored nation” clauses present in contracts Amazon has with other publishers. So what benefit does the author receive by limiting the titles to one e-book edition? What benefit does Wylie receive?
IMHO
Publishers should remain publishers and literary agencies should remain literary agencies and never the twain should meet.
A word about e-book royalties
It’s my experience that royalty rates on e-books appear to be settling in at about 25 percent of net proceeds. I don’t think this will stand.
Our plan for The Write Thought’s “Classic Wisdom on Writing” e-book series of reissued writing titles, to be launched in 2011, is to pay authors 50 percent of net proceeds.
With pressures from the big authors and their agents, I imagine a figure closer to 50 percent than 25 percent will eventually prevail in most publishing agreements.
Just a write thought.
Jul
20
E-books Already Outselling P-Books?
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Funny how headlines morph as stories move from one newspaper or online media to the next. I usually spend a few minutes each morning reading the Slatest Morning Edition, a daily e-mail that offers a headline and the first few sentences of a dozen top news stories of the day from Slate, a Washington Post company.
Often I only read the headline, a perilous habit. Today, a headline announces “E-book Sales Outnumber Traditional Hardcover Sales.” From this one could mistakenly assume that e-books were outselling printed books everywhere. Particularly if one misinterpreted the word “hardcover” to mean “printed.”
The story is a rehash of a New York Times article with the headline, “E-Books Top Hardcovers at Amazon.”
In the New York Times article, we learn that Kindle (Amazon.com’s e-reader) editions have outstripped Amazon’s sales of hardcover editions of books—this doesn’t include paperbacks which, it is safe to say, outsell hardcover books by a huge margin. A milestone to be sure, but not the same as is perhaps suggested in the Slatest headline.
Other interesting tidbits gleaned from the NYT article:
• Over the last three months 143 Kindle editions were sold for every 100 hardcover editions sold by Amazon.
• The pace is accelerating with Kindle editions, in the last four weeks, selling 180 copies for every 100 hardcovers sold.
• Acute industry observer Mike Shatzkin predicts, “within a decade, fewer than 25 percent of all books sold will be print versions.”
• According to the Association of American Publishers, hardcover sales are up 22 percent this year. (Now that is a surprise and one wonders if it could be correct.)
• E-book sales have grown 400 percent this year through May.
• Sales of Kindle have tripled since Amazon lowered the price to $189 from $259 earlier this year. (The increase may not be completely price-driven. E-readers and tablets like Apple’s iPad have gotten great press lately.)
IMHO e-books are in the process of leveling the book-publishing playing field. Smaller publishers and lesser-known authors will benefit.
On another note, I’ll be presenting at the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in Bali in October and at the Space Coast Writers Conference in January. And, at the end of this month, the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. Tough duty, but I’m up to it. Be sure to say hello if you’re at any of these.
Just a write thought.
May
24
Books Can’t Be Free
Filed Under Books, E-books, Free Speech, Publishing, Writing | Leave a Comment
Amazon.com has plans to split their bestseller list into two, one for free titles and one for paid books. This will likely please authors and publishers and add a tenth of a basis point or so to Amazon’s bottom line.
It also points out that “free” isn’t the price point for delivery of content. Authors, publishers, and retailers need to make money if readers are going to have a robust selection of informational and entertainment material available to us at any price.
Just a write thought.
May
13
Can You Buy Your Way into Being a Published Author?
Filed Under Books, Promotion, Publishing, Writing | 1 Comment
Yesterday an elderly gentleman was in my office asking what he should do with his fourth book. He’d paid a “publisher” out of Southern California $25,000 to publish his first book and $5,000 to publish his second. The publisher published the third for free. None of them sold any copies to speak of even though the publisher said he sent out a bunch of review copies.
To make matters worse, my visitor had heard that millions of books were sold on the Internet so he paid to be included on a book-selling website that told him he would “earn consistent income from the site selling 4,000 to 5,000 books a month.” He sold 21 copies. He thinks friends bought most of them.
A member of the hope-springs-eternal crowd (as we all are), he was there to ask if he could pay me to publish his book.
If you are an author, and you are paying to get published or for services that guarantee to sell your books, chances are you will have a bad experience. Is this always the case? Almost. What can you do about it? Learn the industry—learn what works and what doesn’t—before you open your checkbook.
Just a write thought.
May
6
Something to Shoot for when You Make Your Book Trailer
Filed Under Book Marketing, Books | Leave a Comment
I’ve been researching do-it-yourself video for a presentation I’m giving later this month at the Independent Book Publishers Association’s Publishing University.
This is hardly an example of what most indie publishers will attain, but it is an example of what you can do with clever people, a home studio, a somewhat hefty budget, and two minutes and ten seconds.
Much of the actual videotaping is quite professional and may be beyond most publisher’s expertise, but many devices used in this video, like the simple title cards (some on masking tape!), the replaying of parts of scenes, and the sound effects (most available free on the Internet—Google “free sound effects”) could be used pretty easily.
It is inspiring, does give us a target to shoot for and besides, it’s fun to watch.
Just a write thought.
Apr
30
Dust Already Settling: Microsoft’s Courier Tablet a Fatality. HP’s Slate too?
Filed Under Books, E-books, Publishing | Leave a Comment
The weeding out of the e-reader/mobile device field has started (continued?) with Microsoft announcing it is canceling further development on its book-shaped, two-page device codenamed Courier.
HP’s Slate is rumored to be on the chopping block too. Perhaps something to do with HP bailing out Palm last week. According to this rumor, HP didn’t like the Windows 7 touch screen technology and felt that Palm’s webOS was better.
Does this mean eventually there will only be one or two players on the field? Nope. The market is too big and there are still a number of heavy-weight companies with product in the pipeline including Dell with its 7- and 10-inch iPad-look-alikes named “Streak.”
Perhaps even Microsoft is still in the game. According to Frank Shaw, a corporate vice president, quoted in a Business Week aritcle, “[the courier’s] technologies will be evaluated for use in future Microsoft offerings.”
What is the eventual impact for authors and publishers? Virtually every book—self-published or not—will be available to download to virtually every reader from dozens of sources. This broadens and levels the playing field for authors and independent publishers who today have to battle the many gatekeepers in the distribution chain.
Just a write thought.
Apr
25
Heady Times in E-Book Publishing
Filed Under Books, E-books | Leave a Comment
As I read the April 19th edition of Publishers Weekly, which has a number of articles touching on e-books, I’m reminded of the 1970s when Gottschalk’s, a Fresno-based department store chain, was offering free lessons to housewives on how to use a new-fangled device called a microwave. I’m also reminded of when Beta was battling VHS for dominance in our living rooms. And of the mid-1400s when Guttenberg put his big toe into the river that today we call the “information highway.”
The e-reader or mobile device—it’ll do a lot more than allow you to read text—is analogous to the microwave. We still don’t understand quite what it is or what it will do for us but we are anxious to learn.
And today’s technology battle is among competing e-book formats (Amazon’s Kindle, Apple’s iPad, Adobe’s Digital Editions, and the soon-to-be-released Blio, just to name a few frontrunners), each vying to be the leading, if not the exclusive format.
Finally, the Guttenbergs of the day are giving us many new ways to receive information beyond ink on paper, often richly interactive ways Guttenberg could never have envisioned.
It’s fun to watch, but it’s difficult to know where to place your money.
What should an author or publisher do at this stage? Learn what you can, participate when it makes sense, but don’t fret. Content is still king and when the dust settles, the king may have a queen, a few princes or princesses, and maybe even a consort or two, but it’ll still be king.
Just a write thought.
Apr
11
Naïve Self-Publishers often Taken
Filed Under Book Marketing, Books, Promotion, Publishing | Leave a Comment
[Under the "everybody needs an editor" category, the following paragraph was left off this post. Ooops.]
There is a huge industry built upon the dreams of would-be published authors and startup publishers. Look around a little and you’ll find any number of dubious opportunities. For instance….
For $305 ForeWord magazine will write a review of your book and give you the opportunity to have it placed on their website and distributed to other online sites.
Is this worth $305?
Conventional wisdom holds that paid reviews offer little value in terms of selling books. In many instances you can have a colleague write a review and distribute it to the same sites. If your colleague has a name or title people respect, the review may be better received than one from a little-known magazine. Why pay hundreds for something of doubtful value?
Wait, it gets worse.
For $195 more ($500 total), iUniverse will send your book to ForeWord for you. What is the postage on a book today anyway?
Are there better ways to spend one’s money promoting a book?
Here’s a fun idea: The $500, Three-Day, Three-City Book Blitz.
Arrange for three presentations on your book’s subject or, if you are a novelist, on some aspect of your story, in three different cities within driving distance of each other over three days. Think beyond bookstores to Friends of the Library groups or senior centers or fraternal organizations. Be inventive.
Be sure books are available for sale and signing at each event. Alert the media in each city. Mention it in your blog—both before and after. Have pictures taken of you speaking and the crowd and post them on your site and around the Web.
Now for the $500.
Use $300 to pay for lodging and gas. Treat yourself and a companion to a gourmet dinner each night of your trip with the other $200.
Not only will you have more fun, you’ll likely sell more books.
Just a write thought.
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