I try not to be one of those indie authors that’s constantly bitching about the Big Six, especially since I don’t have a deal with them and have no inside knowledge, but some days it’s hard. Today is one of those days, so you get a full-on publishing rant.
First, this story from Digital Shift is a must-read. Randumb House has decided, in their finite wisdom, that since libraries are one of the largest groups of book buyers in the US, that they should pay TRIPLE the cover price for their ebooks. The statements from Randumb basically sum up as “because you can lend it, you should pay more.” I’m sure there are issues of publishers losing some revenue with an infinitely lendable item, such as an ebook, as opposed to a lendable item that wears out over time, like a print book. But really, do you need to TRIPLE the price? For the institutions that provide books to people who often can’t afford to buy the books new in the first place? It seems horribly misguided to me.
Another thing that seems misguided is backlist pricing from publishers. I wanted to buy a copy of a thriller last week. This book was first released in 1997 or so, and probably released in ebook within the last five years. The mass market paperback price – $7.99. The ebook price – $9.99.
I don’t think so.
I understand paying a premium for portability. I understand paying a premium to be the first one to read a book, thus the higher price for hardback. But backlist books are the books that you’ve already made your money on once. Or twice. Or in the case of this book, which was made into a movie, several times over. A fellow panelist at StellarCon brought up a good point that the cost of ebook conversion of backlist titles is a new cost, so that piece of overhead has yet to be absorbed. Which is valid.
But ebook conversion is cheap. Just a couple hundred dollars at worst. So pricing the ebook at $2 more than the mass market paperback is downright silly. It’s one of those things that makes you rail against traditional publishers, makes indies like me all look like we’re anti-publishing, which we aren’t (not all of us), and makes publishers look like assholes.
I don’t believe that Randumb House hates libraries, but I think somebody there is making a terrible decision. I don’t think that their backlist pricing is highway robbery, but I think somebody there is making a terrible decision. And maybe some of the folks making decisions about publishing oughta get out of New York once in a while and hang out with folks in the rest of the country to get some perspective. Because if you’re making all your business decisions based on life on one small island, you’re probably missing the other 290 million people in the country’s point of view.
I’ve joined forces with Scott Nicholson (although according to a comment recently, I may actually be Scott Nicholson, since no one has ever seen us in a room together, but I assure I am not Scott Nicholson, nor could I play him on TV. I’m much too fat these days. But I digress, which makes me more Peter David than Scott Nicholson, but that’s a whole ‘nother post) in his promotional site The Epic Kindle Giveaway. This is a collection of thriller and horror writers all tweeting, facebooking and cross-promoting our Amazon freebies. This should hopefully bring some additional exposure to my work, and some more Twitter followers and more subscribers to my mailing list.
You are signed up for my mailing list, right? I’m still learning how to use MailChimp, but I managed to get out a promo newsletter last week about The Chosen, and some of you obviously enjoyed the reminder, because I sold twice as many copies of that novel the day after the newsletter went out than I had the rest of the month. So that was effective.
I’m also learning to use HootSuite to more effectively manage my Twitter and Facebook feeds, which will become increasingly important as some of my other ventures get off the ground later this spring. I like the interface, and I’m learning how to schedule tweets and posts so I don’t have to be at my computer all the time, which is nice. These tools will let me jam all my promotion and social media time into a shorter window, so I can write in bigger chunks. And that’s the whole goal, right?
This weekend was pretty good on that front. As my days at the job are dwindling, I decided to burn an extra vacation day and not work any more full weeks in the office, so I took Friday off. Friday I got 3,519 words in across two projects, Paint it Black and the Cindy Slaughter book. Saturday I did 4,170 words on three projects – Paint it Black, Cindy Slaughter and mostly on the new Bubba story. And yesterday I got 2,685 words in on the new Bubba story and Paint it Black. I haven’t titled the Cindy Slaughter book or the new Bubba story yet, hopefully I’ll finish the story tonight and have it available for purchase before the end of February.
Yes, I know it’s tight. Thank god for Leap Year. I also still have revisions on Genesis that I’m working on, and I’d like to have that finished soon after getting the Bubba story out the door.
This weekend is StellarCon in High Point – I have three panels, a reading and a signing, so there’s plenty of chances for folks to come by and say hello. If you’re in the neighborhood, please stop by.
And here’s a little more of my music to write by – The Dirt Drifters. I’m loving these guys right now.
There have been a few questions posted as to when the fourth book of the Black Knight Chronicles will be out (tentatively titled Paint it Black, subject to change at any moment).
The honest answer is…I don’t know. Working with a publisher is a different beast, y’all. For the first time it’s not just my book that somebody (me) is thinking about. They’ve got a calendar, and I know Book 4 is on there, but I don’t know what the release date looks like. I know when my first draft is due (March 31). And I think that I’ll make that deadline, but it’ll be tight. I can already tell that this book will be a little darker, probably a bit longer, and will feature all your favorite characters from the first three books. I’m at around 20,000 words right now, or about 1/3 of the way through a typical Black Knight Chronicles book. And I’m not sure I’m more than 1/4 of the way through the story, so that makes me think it might run longer. But I’ve been wrong before. I thought the same thing about Knight Moves, and it ended up shorter. I’m learning a lot working with a developmental editor for the first time. She’s kicking my ass about plotting and making sure everything paces out right, that I lay the groundwork for things early in the book that I want to use later in the book, and stuff like that. So I’m getting everything out of the traditional publishing process that I’d hoped for so far. Now for the money truck to back up to my door…
But I don’t know when Book 4 will drop, and as soon as I know something, I’ll let you guys know.
What I do know is that we’ll have a new Bubba story each month (on average, I might have to double-dip in March to make up for February), and sometime in the spring we’ll have the Cindy Slaughter novel/novella. I can’t tell how long it’s going to be yet. I’m at 20,000 words in that one and have just gotten to the start of Act 2, so it might end up being a full-blown novel as well.
Then this summer I’ll have Book 2 of Return to Eden, I promise. I think that series is going to be a one book per year kinda thing, though, so it might be 2013 before I wrap it all up.
Book 5 of Black Knight Chronicles is due to Bell Bridge the end of September, so that’ll take up the summer to write, along with the Bubba stories, and I might work on Book 3 of Return to Eden when I finish it, or I might hammer on another project or two that I’ve been kicking around in the back of my head.
So while I don’t know when you’ll see the next Black Knight book, I know there will be a Bubba story this month (or two next month, I promise), the Cindy Slaughter book late spring, Return to Eden 2 in the summer, and more Bubba stories to keep you laughing at my gun porn all year round. A few people have asked if Bubba is going to get his own novel, and the answer for now is “no.” Bubba’s a fun diversion between books, and a way to blow off steam, but I haven’t built enough backstory yet for him to get his own novel. It might happen, but almost certainly not in 2012. There might be a Bubba origin story next year, but we’ll see how I feel about the Cindy Slaughter book when it’s done, and whether or not I want to play around in that universe any more.
So there’s a little ramble on what I’m working on. Currently two books at the same time, which is working well, but I don’t think I want to try to hop between three. That’s why there might not be a February Bubba story, but I’ll get back on track someday, I promise. Like in a couple weeks when I quit the day job!
In other news, I’ve decided to open Falstaff Books up to other authors. Currently I’m looking at working with playwrights, but that might broaden to general fiction writers in the future.
Not really. Found out this morning via Facebook that an acquaintance of mine died this weekend after an illness. He was too young, and he’ll be missed. I have a real blog post rolling around in my head about the brotherhood all of us who have worn stage blacks are a part of, and how we’re all connected, but it’s not ready to go just yet.
Instead we’ll recap some of January. It’s been a very good month for sales, surpassing December’s numbers and putting an end to the slight downward slide overall sales will likely be higher than any point since October, and several of the new titles are performing well. There hasn’t been any kind of bump from KDP Select yet, but I don’t start with any of those freebies until mid-week. I’ll be reporting back on how that all goes.
The new stuff is going well so far. Monsters Beware, the Bubba collection, has sold over 100 copies in the first month, while not really eating into the individual story sales too much. Cat Scratch Fever is having a good debut week, with 24 copies sold so far, and Gone Daddy Gone and Knight (Un)Life are coming out of the gate pretty strong as well. I now have somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty titles available, most of them short works. But as I colelct more of them into full-length volumes, I think I’ll continue to see increased sales.
Everybody says “write the next book” as if it’s the Holy Grail of book marketing, and I’m here to tell you something – they’re right. You’re only as good as your last project, so you’ve got to keep the wheels turning and the ideas churning if you’re going to make it in this business. But it’s been a great January, better than January 2011 by a factor of several thousand dollars! So thanks for all your support, I couldn’t do any of this without you!
I’m going to postulate for a few minutes, because that’s what I’m good at (and because I don’t feel like outlining Paint it Black right now). I came to a realization this morning when I read round two of my notes from my editor blowing up pieces of my book and adding in better chunks – editors don’t buy a book from a new author. They buy a voice they like and think has potential, then they spend a year or so teaching that person how to write a novel.
At least that’s what it feels like from here. The more I figure out, the more I realize that I know friggin’ nothing about putting a book together, and I can see how it could get overwhelming if you let it. And if you didn’t have an ego the size of Cleveland, which I do. I’m excited about all these notes, because it really does feel like school again, and I enjoy learning new stuff when I can see the value of it. In this case, the point is to make me a better writer, to make me more marketable, and to sell more books. That was the whole point behind signing with a traditional publisher in the first place – to elevate my craft and make us both money. Then I can take what I learn and move it across to my self-pubbed products and be more profitable everywhere.
So do I think everyone needs to sign with a traditional publisher to learn how to craft a novel? No. Do I think I found a good place for me to hone my craft while making money? Yes. I’m not a flag-waver. I don’t care how you choose to manage your career. For me, the hybrid career seems to be the best plan. I’ll sell some stuff to small press, some stuff self-pubbed, and if I get a NY deal, that’s cool, too. For me, right now, the point is to hone my craft and keep putting food on the table. And the best place for me to be to do that is with Bell Bridge Books. So my advice to new writers is this – check out the small press world. They aren’t going to give you buy a Ferrari advances, but they will give you personal attention and work with you to help develop your career.
So I’m pretty sure that my editor and I just blew up Paint it Black, Book IV of The Black Knight Chronicles. I sent in my synopsis, and she did exactly what I want her to do – she poked holes in the book and called me on my BS. That, kids, is why I signed with a traditional publisher instead of continuing to do everything by myself. Having someone who’s worked on a ton of books to look at a sketch of a book and say “nothing is happening, where’s the excitement?” Is worth the chunk of royalty percentage I’m giving up. Especially at this point in my career. I’ve got five novels out, and I think I’m just learning to tell a story.
I’m not going to pitch everything I’ve written in Paint it Black, but I am going to blow up a fair bit of it. As I read my editor’s notes on the synopsis, I realized that there were a couple of things that made this book very different from the others in the series, and not necessarily in a good way. There was practically no supernatural stuff going, I was almost 20,000 words in and we hadn’t had a fight scene yet, and there was no Father Mike. These are problems. I love the character of Father Mike, and he needs to be in every book. The characters are vampires, and they fight supernatural bad guys, so there needs to be a supernatural element. And really, I went nearly a third of a book without a fight scene? God, I was doing some serious navel-gazing.
So I now have a totally new direction for the book, and I’m pretty excited about it. There will be supernatural stuff going on – fairies, trolls, vampires, and new monsters. There will be Father Mike. And there will be fighting. Oh yes, there will be fighting.
So that’s my lesson for the week for self-pubbed authors. If you don’t have someone you trust to bounce ideas off of, then go find that person. I chose a traditional publisher to fill that role, but it can be a critique partner, a friend, whatever. It’s usually not a great idea of it’s a spouse but your mileage may vary.
I’ll leave you with a scene from Chattacon, where I spent the weekend chatting with some awesome authors and publisher types, got to watch one urban fantasy bestseller’s phone leap unprovoked to its death in a vat of bourbon, and realized that writers drink even more than theatre folk. I gotta step up my game! And I got hammered on chocolate wine by mute writer with an iPad and an evil, evil soul! Lando says “Playa, please!”
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