Michael Andre McPherson

Beyond the Slushpile

Category archive: Traditional Publishing

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Who Would Walk Away From 500 Thousand Dollars?

Apparently Barry Eisler just did.  Why did he walk away from this lucrative book deal with St. Martin’s Press?  Because he believes he will make more self-publishing in the long run, particularly on e-book rights.

Eisler is joining a growing number of authors who are walking away from legacy publishers.  The problem is that the standard industry contract only gives the author  a 25% royalty on e-books, which comes off after Amazon or Smashwords has taken their cut.  Then the agent takes 15% off that 25% and it works out that the author is really only getting 17% of the e-book price.

Why accept that little crumb when an author can sell their novel through Kindle and get a 70% royalty?  No agent or publisher required.  In fact, how can publishers defend such a huge cut when they don’t need a printing press, trucks or a delivery network for e-books?

Up until now they’ve claimed that branding can save their publishing model–that readers will flock to a legacy publisher’s books because there are too many lousy self-published books to sort through.  But the truth is that the internet has its own filters, like the book bloggers who have made Amanda Hocking the new internet writing star.

Publishers are not obsolete, but they need to embrace the future and recognize that things have changed for the better.  E-readers have more people buying books than they have in a decade, and this should be a good thing.  Desperate attempts by legacy publishers to keep e-book prices high in order to stall the e-revolution will fail.  Refusing to give authors a fair cut will cost them content and market share.

Eilser wisely draws a parallel to railroads in the 1950s just as the interstates were under construction.  The railroads thought they were in the railroad business, but actually they were in the transportation business.  Once large trucks became a viable option, many railroads folded.  The smart railroads adapted, combining trucking and rail, adjusting prices and expectations and finding the niches they could still fill.

Because of my film industry background, I’m reminded of Kodak and Fuji film back in the 90s.  Even a camera assistant like me knew that high definition digital video was coming, but Kodak thought they were in the film stock business and tried to fight the change by producing better and better film stocks.  They achieved some amazing things with their 800 ASA film stock, but it couldn’t stop the slide to cheap digital.

Fuji knew they were in the image capture business and went aggressively after the digital video business.  Their CEO got an award a couple of years ago for keeping Fiji successful through this upheaval.

I was in Kodak’s home town–Rochester, NY–in 2006.  It’s the only time that I’ve seen an empty ten-story office building.  I’m talking about a modern glass and steel office building.  Kodak did follow Fuji’s lead into digital and has survived, but it was gut-wrenchingly painful to watch, and a lot of hard working people lost their jobs in the process.

Publishers should be in the business of selling books, not pulped dead trees.  Some publishers will recognize this and adapt to e-books and thrive.  Others will go down.  It doesn’t have to be this painful.

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A Warning for Self-e-published Authors

I prefer not to simply publish links to other people’s content on this blog, but this warning from Amanda Hocking was aimed right at me.

She’s done what I want to do: e-self-published through Amazon and Smashwords, and she’s making thousands a month doing it.  She’s snagged an agent.  She’s making a good living as an author.

But she warns here that she knows another author, J. L. Bryan, who doesn’t sell as well even though he is a good writer and performs the same marketing moves that she does.

The warning is clear.  Even if the writing, promotion and cover are all great, your book might languish simply because you didn’t strike a cord, hit the right topic or simply didn’t appeal to the reading public.

It’s all a big gamble.  Just ask a traditional publisher.  Luckily with e-books, the upfront costs aren’t as huge as print books.

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The Writing World Doesn’t Stop

But I did.  I had to stop blogging until I’d got through a nasty job.  It’s done.  I’m back. But guess what?  The writing world moved on while I was away.  Borders has gone into chapter 11, and no one knows how many publishers and authors will get a financial hair cut in the reorganization, not to mention all those sales staff who showed up to locked doors.  Apparently hundreds of outlets will be closed over the next year.

Meanwhile Torstar, the company the produces Harlequin romances, is finding the recession and the adjustment to e-books a challenge.  The high Canadian dollar is killing their margins in American sales.  But don’t worry, they’re still making money and the e-book sales are rising steadily.

But better yet, tune in here tomorrow to find out who followed my lead into e-books and is now way ahead.

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Snow Helps E-books

Lots of people got Kindles and Nooks and e-readers over Christmas this year.  These lucky people also apparently decided it was too snowy to go out shopping between Christmas and New Year’s, because instead they stayed home and purchased record numbers of e-books.

According to USA Today, the top 6 bestsellers sold more e-books than print books, and 19 of the top 50 also sold more e-books.  After more than a decade of hype and failure, it looks like e-books have finally got off the ground, and this time it’s not just better readers but more and cheaper content that has made the difference.

It’s time for traditional publishers to wake up and remember that they’re publishers, not printers.  Stop fighting to keep to the old delivery system and just move on with the new one.

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The Last Meeting of The Crime Writers of Canada

I went to the Crime Writers of Canada Christmas/Holiday Party last night, a buzzing affair of food, drink, raffles and most importantly, chatting with dozens of published mystery and true crime writers.

I enjoyed the evening despite the headaches I endured organizing the party.  I somehow got drafted this year to be the CWC’s regional vice-president for Toronto, a position they asked me to fill since I’m a relative newbie.

The CWC swept me into their association five years ago because I wrote a murder mystery short story by accident.  When I went to the first meeting of this group of crime writers, I was surprised that I was pretty much the youngest person at the meeting.  I wasn’t surprised that there were no twenty-somethings, but I figured that thirty-somethings should be there.

It’s five years later, and I was struck last night by the fact that I’m still one of the youngest members in the room.  I know that there are one or two members who are younger, but for the most part it’s the same people as five years ago, and the new members who are joining are the opposite of young: they’re retirees looking to write and publish that book they never got around to during their working life.

This concerns me.  While membership in the CWC may be on the rise as the baby boomers retire and seek a creative outlet, it doesn’t bode well for the health of the organization.  Some members have already succumbed early to the inevitable.  Demographics could take a nasty toll on this merry band of writers.

If I’m lucky enough to live my full lifespan, it could be that twenty years from now I will preside over the last meeting of the Crime Writers of Canada.  The four of us will toast the boomers who started the organization and then shuffled off this mortal coil, even as we prepare for our own end.

Of course it doesn’t have to end that way.  But the demographics of the country are changing, not just in numbers, but ethnicity.  Perhaps we need some young Muslims who write murder mysteries? Is that likely?

Truth is that I wonder about the publishing industry as a whole in this demographic regard because I sense a sea change coming, and I frankly I want to know how to use this to further my goal of selling lots of novels.

And I better start thinking about where to find young CWC members, or that last meeting in 2030 will be more like a wake than a Christmas party.

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New York Times Conflict of Interest

I’m not actually suggesting anything shady is going on here, because I don’t want to be sued, but it do wonder what happens when the needs of a newspaper’s advertisers are at odds with the content.

Amazon has a great link to the 100 most notable books of the year as judged by the New York Times, and I’m sure that they’re all worthy books.  I certainly don’t see any preference given to a specific publisher, although it is weighted heavily toward big publishers, the kind that would buy advertising in the New York Times, so it makes me wonder if the reviewers are ever pressured.  Does an editor come up to one of the reviewers and say something like, “Thank God for advertisers.  Sales have been so bad this year that if it weren’t for them we’d all be looking for work.”

Far fetched, I know, and I’m sure the paper goes to great lengths to develop processes to prevent that kind of bias.  But as old print newspapers get more desperate, strange things could happen.

But like I said, I’m sure they’re all great books.

H/T to Fogel for the link.

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Conflicted About The New Publishers Taking Their Cut

Amazon and Sony have crossed the line from e-book stores to publishers, although they’re using a very old method to recruit want-to-be-authors:  self-publishers, also known as vanity presses.

There are still bent self-publishers out there, promising fame and fortune if you pay them to publish your novel.  But there are also new smart and professional self-publishers.  Amazon fronts CreateSpace.  The Reader Store has made two deals, one with  Author Solutions and the other with Smashwords.

Traditional publishers have been accused of being gatekeepers, of publishing only authors they know and not truly considering new talent, but the new e-book stores like Amazon and Sony are minding a different gate.  They’ll publish anyone and let the market sort them out, but they want their cut.

To e-publish with Amazon, you’ll get a 70% royalty.  This may be great compared to the 15% you’d be happy to get from a traditional publisher, but Amazon doesn’t have to hire editors, printing presses, trucks or pay for promotion.  What they’re charging 30% royalty for is simply the right to be on Amazon.

Sony’s deal is pretty much the same for their Reader store.  If you want to e-publish with them they’ll send you to Smashwords, who will put your novel into a number of formats, including the e-pub that you need for the Sony Reader store.

Now I could use Calibre open source software to put my novel into e-pub format and offer it for sale through my website for fans who own Sony e-readers, but the traffic on my website isn’t anything compared to the Reader Store.

So that’s why I would eat the 30%.  It’s not unlike the traditional publishers paying for prominent placement in brick and mortar stores.  Not that a self-published author will get front page placement on Amazon, but they’ll have the feel of legitimacy when they send friends to search Amazon or the Reader store for their novels.

And Amazon and Sony will be happy to take their cut of your friends’ money.

I guess that’s okay.  They’re not promising to make you famous.  Yet I’ve got that oligopoly feeling I get when I look at traditional publishers–that claustrophobic feeling that makes me want to shout unfair!  Who made you the gatekeepers?

Of course they’d probably reply that the internet is a big place and I can go anywhere I want, and try to sell my novel anyway I want.  Which is true.  It would just be much easier with Amazon and Sony.

So I’m conflicted.

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Fogel Defends Hard and Soft Cover Books

Guest Post by Melanie Fogel

Not everyone who reads books keeps them. Those of us who do line our walls with books do so because we love books. We like looking at them; we like holding them. Some of us even enjoy dusting them.

I’ll assume somewhere in the world there are people who like to “show off how smart they are by what’s on their bookshelf,” but that’s not me, nor the people I know. And on behalf of all book lovers, I take exception to your dismissing us like that.

Book lovers are a subclass of readers. I suppose there are book lovers who don’t read, but I’ve yet to meet one. They may not love books for the same reasons I and the people I know do.

There’s something wonderful about sitting in a room surrounded by books. It’s like sitting in a room surrounded by friends and family: no matter where you cast your eye, you see someone with whom you have an emotional bond. And unlike family, you can chuck the ones who made you angry or sad. So there’s only good memories in a room full of books.

Books aren’t just containers for ideas, they’re artifacts to appreciate in their own right: their colours, their textures, their smells. As packages, they beat heart-shaped chocolate boxes hands down. More than that, reading—at least in the age of paper books—is a tactile experience, and just touching a book can recall memories. Opening one is even better.

Unlike electronic books, paper books can hold more than ideas. Signatures, for example. Or bookplates, which are somehow more intriguing when you’ve acquired the book second hand, and you wonder why anyone who took the trouble to paste in a bookplate would later give the book up. Then there’s the miscellany of what else you use for a bookmark: postcards, photographs, shopping receipts, dollar bills. Or bookmarks themselves—be they embossed leather gifts from friends, souvenirs of a book launch, a giveaway from a bookstore no longer in business. All memories at least as rich as photographs, that spring at you unexpectedly when you open a book.

A room lined with books is a room filled with potential that you can “see.”

I have no doubt that today there are children who will become adult readers who’ve never read a paper book. They won’t know what they’re missing, which is probably a good thing for them. But I have to wonder what they’ll fill their rooms with, and if it’ll be anything near as satisfying as a room full of books.

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John Grisham’s Revelation

I know I said this yesterday and last week, but now John Grisham has said it too.

He was commenting in the Wall Street Journal about the first week’s sales of his new novel The Confession.  It seems the number of hardcover sales were well below the first week’s sales of his previous novel The Associate, way back in February of 2009.

Here’s what surprised Grisham and his publisher: the ebook sales of 70,000 units more than made up for the fewer number of hardcover sales.  More people were reading his book even though fewer people were buying the hardcover.

“The e-book sales are astonishing,” says Grisham.  “Would anybody have thought that a year ago?  The future has arrived, and we’re looking at it.”

With the hardcover at $30 bucks and the Kindle e-book at $9.99, it’s not hard to see why e-book sales are taking off.

Grisham’s publisher, Doubleday, has printed 1.5 million hardcovers instead of the 2.8 million that they had originally planned to print.  Good call.

And hey, think of all the trees they saved, and the trucks that aren’t farting around the country delivering boxes of books.

I’m breathing easier already.  I like the future.

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What I Wrote for The Crime Writers of Canada

E-readers: A Fad or the Future?

Way back in 1994, a CBC television producer told a researcher I was dating that the internet was just a fad like CB radios.  If she wanted to build a web page for the show, she’d have to do it on her own time.  Oops.

The producer can be forgiven this assessment of the internet because he was confusing a device, a radio, with a new and highly versatile medium of expression.  C.B. radios had only one purpose, and no one could use them for advertising.  He was also probably thinking about that eight-track tape player gathering dust in his basement.

E-books are the new must-have gadget, and they are everywhere.  Last week the new color version of Barnes and Noble’s Nook reader launched.  They’ve sold over a million of the old (so last year) black and white version, and they expect to sell a million of the color Nook over the next year.  Combine that just with Amazon’s Kindle and the Sony e-reader and you’ve got a lot of consumers looking for content for their new toys.  Let’s not even get into the tablets like the i-pad.  Avid readers can also get apps for their smart phones that’ll allow them to purchase e-books, so every Blackberry, Apple i-phone or any phone with Google’s Android operating system is a potential e-reader.

But I’m sure some authors and publishers are still thinking about all those eight-track tape players or their Beta VCRs.

They should think again.  E-readers are evolving platforms for expression.  Cookbooks will be able to insert how-to videos, and advertisers can find nooks (pun intended) and crannies to sneak in their less than subtle messages.  People can find new ways to make money.

More importantly, like the internet, e-book readers are going to enable content providers and facilitators to appear from unexpected places.  Who’d ever heard of Google, E-bay, Wikipedia, Facebook or even Craigslist in 1994?

E-readers are going to allow small publishers to distribute electronic downloads on an equal footing with big publishers.  No trucks required.  No expensive warehouses.  There will be price wars, content wars and jostling for attention.

I don’t predict the imminent death of the hardcover or paperback because some people still like to show how smart they are by what’s on their bookshelf.  But like the newspapers, big publishers are going to have to get used to slumping sales of paper books–sales that never recover to the glory days of the twentieth century and fade with the boomers.

Yet e-readers may be good for writers.  There’s opportunity for creativity, a new and (for now) more egalitarian platform from which to sell your words.  It’s exciting.  I’ll go out on a limb and say that it’s the future.  You heard it here first.

By the way, I married the researcher.

Mike’s Note:

The Crime Writers of Canada asked me for an article on e-books for their newsletter.  The article I wrote above turned out to be very similar to one they’d published last month.  Who knew?  I’m not the first person to see this coming.

I slashed off a different article for the newsletter, but above is what those Crime Writers would have read if they hadn’t aleady read it somewhere else.