Melinda DuChamp & Summer Daniels

Melinda: Like me, Summer Daniels is an erotica writer. She's also the creator of the very popular Facebook page, What To Read After Fifty Shades of Grey (WTRAFSOG).

We'll talk about that site, and your new app, in a moment. But first, what's new on the writing front for you?

Summer: Thanks for the invite, Melinda. I appreciate this opportunity to talk about WTRAFSOG and my writing.

I actually have been extremely poor at carving out time for my writing lately, leaving a lot of devoted fans of my Summer’s Journey series waiting for the next installment. The WTRAFSOG page is a labor of love, but it is a sponge, sucking up any and all available time.

One day I hope to turn WTRAFSOG into a full time gig, promoting authors and spreading the brand out to a larger audience. Until then I work away at a full time day job, somehow fit in another 4 - 6 hours a day on the FB page and occasionally find time to have some semblance of a life. Writing unfortunately has come a distant fourth lately.
However, I am actually working on something new at the moment, just not entirely sure how to classify it in terms of genre. It has elements of romance, paranormal and spirituality (and probably a little erotica as well since I cannot seem to stray too far from my roots!). I love the premise of it, now I just have to finish writing it!

So, what are you up to?

Melinda: Besides the two Alice in Wonderland ebooks, Fifty Shades of Alice in Wonderland and Fifty Shades of Alice Through the Looking Glass, I've done another erotic fairy tale, Fifty Shades of Jezebel and the Beanstalk. Same type of humorous "girl on a sexual journey" story, with a few new kinks, and a lot of new jokes.

Summer: You announced a third Alice ebook, Fifty Shades of Alice at the Hellfire Club. What's the status?

Melinda: That will happen this year. It depends on my writing partner and aligning our schedules.

Summer: So Melinda DuChamp is a pen name for more than one person?

Melinda: Right now there are four people working on DuChamp stories, with a few more in the pipeline. We hope to brand her.

Not literally, of course. The books feature some bondage, spanking, and light S/m, but no branding. ;)

The two latest DuChamp titles are in the futuristic Sexperts series. The Sexperts: Fifty Grades of Shay, and The Sexperts: Girl With A Pearl Necklace.

Though these are science fiction rather than fairy tales, the tone and sex are consistent for all of DuChamp's work. Namely, they're light and fun and hot.

These are erotic stories for smart people who like to laugh.

The main goal is to make the reader giggle while turning them on. But the secondary goal--which is just as important--is to tell a good story, where women are empowered, fantasies (including dark ones) are explored, and readers are both entertained and aroused.

In my opinion, the original 50 Shades didn't do a very good job describing a consensual, kinky affair. Too much fear and pain and manipulation, not enough orgasms. Women are powerful sexual creatures with unlimited potential, and we wanted to write stories that delved into all sorts of kinks to explore their various sexual capacities and appetites, but to do so in a fun and friendly way.

So the books have a lot of humor, along with a lot of heat and a lot of heart. And hopefully there is something for everyone in them, no matter your sexual proclivities. They go WAY beyond 50 Shades of Grey.

Summer: I have read both of the current Fifty Shades of Alice releases and absolutely loved them. Then again my motto has long been “Laughter Makes The Panties Wetter”, so humorous and intelligent storytelling goes a long way with me. I urge anyone who enjoys a well written story that tickles the funny bone (among other things) to give Melinda’s books a read. Just be sure to waterproof your e-reader first.  

Melinda: Thanks, Summer! Not to get all mutual appreciation society, but I found your Summer's Journey series to be powerfully erotic. A woman deciding to finally explore her wild side after years of denying it, and finding a sexy guy to go on the adventure with, is a solid idea, well-executed. It's also very hot.

Summer: You say above that “these are erotic stories for smart people who like to laugh.”  I think this point is very apt as I truly feel there is no need (as some authors believe) to tone down the level of vocabulary or intelligence in order to connect with more readers.  Readers are much more intelligent and savvy than many authors in today’s market give them credit for.  

I have tried to tell an intelligent and well written story with my Summer’s Journey series and have gotten some incredible feedback as a result. Now I just have to break away from the sisyphean task that is WTRAFSOG long enough to get my own writing done! (See what I did with the big word there? Readers are, by their very nature, inquisitive, intelligent and well spoken. That is at least my experience, your mileage may vary.)

Melinda: Sisyphus rocks.

I also could have used the joke "he's trying to be a little boulder in his life" or "from there it was all downhill." But I didn't, and I'm proud I restrained myself.

Summer: There has to be a joke in there somewhere about “rock hard, erotica, etc.”, but I believe we’ll leave that particular stone unturned. For now.

Do you think the erotica market has gotten tougher?

Melinda: Yes. Selena Kitt has talked about this at length. Amazon has blocked certain types of erotica, and made it harder for readers to find it. B&N has kicked erotica off the bestseller lists by manipulating ranking. Plus the major ebook advertisers tend to shy away from erotica.

That said, I believe there is a huge audience out there for well-written “mommy porn.” So the game plan is to release a lot of good books, build the audience, and eventually have such a large catalog that it will be impossible to miss.

I was talking with one of my co-authors about having high standards for this brand. Hardcore readers tend to be discriminating. To gain them as fans, authors need to have standards that are just as high. There is so much out there to read, you may not have a second chance to make that first impression.

Getting back to what you're currently doing, you were a guest here a few years ago, talking about WTRAFSOG. For those too lazy to follow links, can you give us an overview of the page, and what's changed since 2012?

Summer: The WTRAFSOG (What to Read After Fifty Shades of Grey) page was set up in April of 2012 with the initial intent of gathering a few readers together to help sell my Summer’s Journey series. I also really liked the idea of Paying It Forward and giving back a little to the community that had been so welcoming to me when I first started writing. It has evolved over time into an incredibly active reader recommendation and author promotion community.

I had to go back and read the previous guest blog to recall the exact state of WTRAFSOG back then. Hard to believe a year and a half has passed since that blog post. Looks like the FB page was doing well back then, just cresting over 10,800 fans and averaging a little over 200 books sold per day through the links on the site.

Since then, we have grown just a little.  We are now at 81,000+ fans on the Facebook page and the site averages over 500+ books sold every day through the posts and promotions on the page.

In that original post long ago we also talked about Discoverability and the “war” for finding readers in the virtual world.  

In a lot of ways there is more need for pages like WTRAFSOG to help spread the word about authors and their books, but certain market limitations have been imposed by large players in the field such as Amazon and Facebook.  Eighteen months ago, before many of the algorithm changes that Facebook has imposed, a typical post on a page like WTRAFSOG reached anywhere from 30% - 50% of any page fans that have “Liked” your page.  After algorithm changes and a push by Facebook to monetize their service, essentially requiring authors and pages to “pay to play”, a typical post now is lucky to reach 10% and often much less than that.

There are mitigating factors such as the number of likes and comments (and shares) of a particular post that dramatically impact how many fans of the page see a given post, but for less than 10% of your fans - who by liking the page stated their desire to see your content - to actually be receiving that content, is extremely limiting.

Add on top of that one major change by Amazon in terms of the number of FREE books that can be advertised / downloaded, and you have reduced the capability of pages like WTRAFSOG to reach readers.

One of the things I have done with WTRAFSOG to help combat these changes is to start trying to brand the WTRAFSOG page (and service) as the new “Erotic Bookbub”. I have built the mailing list up to almost 7,000 subscribers and I have started doing individual promo and multi-author email blasts to help spread the word to even more readers. (Multi-Author promo example here - including a sign up link for our mailing list should anyone be so inclined.)

The other development that I’m pretty excited about in terms of the potential to reach a wider and more diversified audience is the WTRAFSOG APP.

Melinda: Tell us all about it.

Summer: The WTRAFSOG App mirrors the Facebook Page to a large degree, but adds the functionality of a FREE Ebook of the Day feature, Hot New Releases, Pre-Orders, Author Spotlights, 99 Cent Sale Bin (for books that are always 99 cents), Trilogies, Box Sets and more. I’ve packed a lot of features into the app, which I’ve now marked down to 99 Cents!  Included as well is our bi-monthly Top Fifty list, which has been cultivated by tracking 23+ months worth of sales data from reader recommendations and author promotions.  

App Links: iTunes  /  Android  /  Amazon

Melinda: I've downloaded the app for my iPhone, and found it very user-friendly and simple. Have you considered charging authors to be featured?

Summer: I have indeed considered charging authors to be featured, but I want to spread the visibility of the app a little wider first in order to provide better value for their advertising dollar.

One thing I will say about the app is that, although time consuming to initially design, it was fairly easy to build utilizing the online tool that I did. A simple app, given away for free, that includes bio information, links to websites and where to find that author’s works, etc. could be another valuable arrow in the marketing quiver. If I had the time to devote, I would offer to build said author apps for a small fee. I would imagine anyone with the skills and inclination to do so could make a small cottage industry out of this idea. I’ll only expect 30% in return for this idea.

Getting back to you, I've heard this rumor that Melinda DuChamp is actually Joe Konrath.

Care to comment?

Melinda: Anyone who reads the books and gets my sense of humor should know right away. The DuChamp books are laugh out loud funny, they're intentionally branded, my buddy Carl Graves did the covers, and Brilliance Audio--which publishes all of my audiobooks--also publishes DuChamp.

Of course I'm Konrath.

Partly.

I wrote my first explicit sex scene in Cherry Bomb back in 2008, and I found it to be a lot of fun. So did my wife. So when 50 Shades of Grey became huge, I saw an opportunity to do three things:

1. Write some fun smut for smart people who like to laugh.

2. Prove I could write books that sell under a name other than "J.A. Konrath."

3. Diversify. A different income stream, under a different name.

But I can only take half of the credit for Melinda DuChamp. I have a main co-writer--who is well-known in the romance community--and this writer does 50% of the work, if not more.

We're currently working with other writers, splitting the work three ways.

Franchising DuChamp will give us the greatest opportunity to be visible. Of course, the writers we've recruited are pros, so the standards stay high.

Self-publishing has given writers an unprecedented opportunity. We can be whomever we want to be, write whatever we want to write, reinvent ourselves as often as we want to.

How cool is that?

Summer: So why are you finally coming out as DuChamp?

Joe/Melinda: Since updating my website, I've been getting more traffic. I think there are some Konrath fans who would like DuChamp if they knew it was me, and some DuChamp fans who would like my other work. I write horror, mystery, thriller, science fiction, and humor. I believe I can add erotica to the resume and people will accept it Plus I can now tell the 10k readers on my newsletter list about my naughty side.

So who is my main collaborator, and why haven't they come out as Melinda? They can speak for themselves.

Melinda: I haven’t come out as Melinda, because Joe is paranoid. :P

Joe: Untrue. I just happen to be the proud owner of five firearms and am a pretty decent shot. Plus I'm too unpleasant and ugly to stalk.

I'm friends with a few authors who write erotica, and they use pen names because of cyber-creeps. Of which there are many. It's a shame that there are unstable people out there who harass authors, and feminist erotica can be a bullseye for stalkers.

When I said we were franchising DuChamp, does that mean we want to open submissions to everyone?

Melinda: Not at the moment. We simply don’t have the time to take submissions. But who knows? Maybe that will change in the future.

Summer: Oooh!!  (Raises Hand!) I wanna do the DuChamp!!  And yes - I’m picturing a particular funky dance number to go along with that. I’m thinking a cross between the Lindy and the Waltz perhaps.  

Joe: So your pen name wants to write under my pen name? That's up to my partner.

Summer:  When you say under your pen name, how far are we going under?  This is starting to seem like Inception: The Erotic Chapter.

Melinda: Sounds kinky. ;)

Joe: Maybe we can cross-brand sometime in the future. A DuChamp/Daniels collaboration. But we'd have to specify it is Summer Daniels, not Jack Daniels...

But getting back on track, here.

Summer Daniels has a new free app, and everyone who likes romance and erotica should download it. You'll also like her Summer's Journey stories. 

And if you like my writing, and have never read my erotica, give it a try and let me know what you think.

If you don't like it, it's my collaborator's fault. :)

Guest Post by Tahir Shah

THE ADVICE THAT J. D. SALINGER AND DORIS LESSING GAVE ME

The first sound I can remember is the click-click-click of typewriter keys.

The machine was a pre-War Olivetti, and the fingers that gave it life belonged to my father – the Sufi scholar, Idries Shah.

In a career that spanned forty years, he churned out dozens of best-selling books, most of them relating to philosophy and human thought.

He was obsessed with creating work.

One summer, I remember him leading me by the hand through blazing sunshine. I must have been five years old.

‘When are you going to write your first book?’ he asked earnestly.

Any other father might have been joking.

But mine was deadly serious.

Nothing is taken quite so seriously in our family as the creation of written text, the telling and retelling of stories. It’s a kind of ancestral lifeblood, a matrix by which one generation passes on ideas and wisdom, gleaned through centuries of experience.

Some family weave carpets in the shadows of their homes.

We weave stories.

Just about every member of my immediate family is a published writer – both my grandfathers, one grandmother, my father, aunt and uncle. And, both of my sisters have books out this week – same as me.

The key idea passed down to us, generation on generation, is that you must write for yourself – and not as part of a crazed circus, one created to publish for the sake of publishing.

It’s an idea that has been drummed in to me throughout my life by a close family friend – Doris Lessing. She would always say that writing is a way of creating equilibrium in one’s mind, a method of escape unlike any other.

The advice was echoed one afternoon by an American guest. He had turned up to see my father at our home in the English countryside. And his name was J. D. Salinger.

He said that a typewriter was a kind of magic wand, and that the ability to harness it was an alchemy of its own.

And so it was that I learned the obsession of putting words on paper, and the puritanical work ethic and the angst needed to create.

My first book was an assortment of travel writings that I called Beyond the Devil’s Teeth. Looking back at it now, I was fumbling in darkness and hadn’t yet learned the craft. But I was enthusiastic, even when I couldn’t get an agent.

I’d been refused by absolutely everyone.

Undeterred, I started my own agency. It consisted of a plush color letter-heading, a telephone, and me…

I was the agent (William Watkins) and the only client.

Having sent the manuscript out to a zillion publishers, I sat by the telephone, waiting for it to ring. It didn’t. So I got into bed and hunkered down under my quilt.

Days passed.

Days of hibernation.

Days of misery.

Then, one morning, the phone rang. I picked it up and answered breathlessly.

‘Is that Worldwide Media?’ asked a prim woman’s voice.

Pinching my nose, as if I were a receptionist on a switchboard, I answered in the affirmative.

‘I would like to speak to Mr. Watkins, please. It’s about Beyond the Devil’s Teeth.’

The rest is history… a history of toil, grind, and wordage.

My books were commissioned by increasingly large publishing houses – book projects with a pay-check even before I had written a word. It was good. My wife and kids were clothed. We could travel. All our mouths had smiles. Editors took me to fine lunches and ordered rare wine. There was a joie de vivre, a sense that the glory days would never end. I was swooned over and praised, and told how absolutely fabulous I was.

And I believed it.

But, worse than that, was the small fact that, with each book I produced, I was coaxed (and sometimes cajoled) to rejig my work – taking it in directions I was less than happy to go. ‘Just change the beginning old boy,’ the editor would say as he poured another glass of Chateau Lafite. Or, ‘Think we could lose chapter 9. It’s a bit of a downer, don’t you think?’

And the foreign publishers were no better.

In Germany they excised the entire 80 pages from one of my books, while muttering apologies. I found out later it was because all German letterboxes are apparently the same size (the mind reels), and that my book was a shade too thick to get through any of them.

And so, as the years passed, we were lavished in royalty cash. I bought myself little pressies, and jewelry for my wife, and a shiny new car, and toys for the kids.

I even bought a cabinet of curiosities.

Inside it was an assortment of prehistoric dinosaur teeth, a phial of sulphur from an ancient mine, a bent nail from a gallows, and a strand of hair from an Amazonian shrunken head.

But, all the while, I found myself slipping away from the sound advice of Lessing, Salinger, and of my own father…

The advice to write for myself.

On the rare occasions I entertained the thought of going it alone, my editor choked. Charging my glass with claret, he poured scorn on the abysmal anti-world of ‘self publishing’. Agreeing with him, and laughing at the idea, I shuffled home and got down to my new commission.

Time passed.

And, as it did, I kept thinking and wondering.

What did all those people in a big publishing firm actually do? Some of them pushed paper from one office to the next, and back again. Others made restaurant bookings, or soothed the editorial egos.

A great many more appeared to do nothing at all.

Then, one morning, I received an email from my editor in New York. He was an untouchable, the ruler of a kingdom all of his own. I half expected him to be inviting me to another luncheon – roast suckling pig and another cascade of Chateau Lafite.

But it wasn’t like that.

The editor’s tone was suddenly meek and crestfallen. He was ‘moving on to new challenges’. That’s publishing speak of having been laid off. I gawked at the words, and I gaped.

It was the beginning of the end.

That night I saw Salinger and Lessing in a dream. They were looming over me, as was my father. Each of them was wagging an index finger in my direction, while shaking their head in disappointment.

‘Stay on the true path,’ they said as one.

‘How do I do that?’

‘By going it alone.’

And so I did.

Over the next year I created a new publishing model for myself. It consists of two distinct parts, under the name Secretum Mundi Publishing.

The first part is dedicated to creating some of the most beautiful books ever printed – books written by me. I scoured the world for the finest book printer, and found him in Hong Kong. His firm printed my epic novel Timbuctoo, interleaving within it a series of enormous eighteenth century maps of London.

Timbuctoo was followed by Scorpion Soup, another exquisitely-bound volume, with yet more maps – this time hailing from the seventeenth century.

Both books made me proud to be a writer for the first time in years. Beyond that, they filled me with joy at having created the kind of opuses that no number-crunching money-man in publishing would ever have signed off.

The second part of Secretum Mundi is devoted to releasing print-on-demand editions and Ebooks of my backlist, as well as to a great new panoply of work. Among them is a new series of novels that I am releasing them under the title PSYCHO ZONE.

The first book in the series is called Eye Spy. It is about a serial killing eye surgeon called Amadeus Kaine who develops a curious delight in eating human eyes. I used Lulu.com for the initial books and have been quite happy with them. The most recent book I have self-published is Casablanca Blues. It just came out.

The benefits are many. They are endless.

With my own small team of freelance editors, typesetters, proof-readers, and designers, I have brought out books that are how I want them to look and to read. They are launched when I want, and the way I want. I don’t even have to beg an editor about anything, because I can have my way.

Always.

It’s like a child’s dream. No grown-ups to hold me back.

And, the result has been that I can produce far more work than a conventional publisher would allow. But, better still, it means that I have total control.

You don’t need to hear it from me to know that publishing is going through a revolution. Nothing gives me more joy than to see the monolithic publishers of yesteryear sliding into oblivion. I just can’t believe that they didn’t spy it on the horizon. Didn’t they consider the music industry fair warning?

I guess not.

The result is a complete leveling of the playing field.

Technology is making the business of printing in mass, or shipping books vast distances, unnecessary, and even laughable. It’s making it simple for anyone to bypass a crooked broken system, and to go it alone. Ebooks and print-on-demand will change publishing more in the next five years than anything has in the last century and a half.

The way I see it, the business of books is getting back to how it was in the early days – to the time when a writer would have their work edited, bound by a bookseller, and put for sale.

The key difference now is that we can get our work out to the whole wide world in the blink of an eye.

My own journey has brought me through twists and turns, trials and tribulations, but at last I feel contented. For the first time in my life I am holding the reins of the work I am writing… work that I am publishing as well.

After an eternity of suffocation, it’s like being able to breathe at last.

Visit Tahir Shah’s site at TAHIR SHAH.

Joe sez: Everyone's journey is different. Sometimes you get what you want. Sometimes you get what you think you want.

I just bought Shah's Eye Spy because I followed the link after the description an immediately smiled.

Shah is no doubt doing exactly what he wants, and that kind of self-awareness is rare.

I'm big on self-awareness. The root of it is not only knowing who you are, but understanding your effect on others and the world around you, and cultivating how you are perceived. To implement self-awareness, you have to be deliberate (as I stated in one of my more controversial blog posts.)

It's hard to be both deliberate and self-aware when your publisher cuts 80 pages from your novel so it is slimmer. You could either recite the Writers Serenity Prayer and accept it, knowing it is wrong without trying to change things. Or you can change things.

If your future as a writer hinges on someone else making important decisions that will effect your writing, your sales, and your career, I hope you're self-aware and being deliberate. You need to understand exactly what you're getting, and what you're giving up. You also need to consider what you'll do when your expectations aren't met.

A wolf in a trap has two choices; die or chew off its own leg.

A self-aware, deliberate wolf would have avoided the trap completely. 

Many in this business believe the revolution going on right now--the growth of the shadow industry of self-publishing--makes this an us vs. them scenario.

There is no "us vs. them". There is only setting realistic goals, informing your decisions, and being deliberate and self-aware.

I've never been anti-legacy publisher. Many of my good friends have legacy deals, and I'm thrilled for them.

I have always been pro-writer. Which means I spend a lot of time explaining why many legacy policies aren't good for the writer, and cutting through the BS that legacy pundits spout. 

Doctors, lawyers, engineers, plumbers, electricians--these folks have clear career paths. They figure out what they want to do with their lives, they study, they learn it, they do it. There are timeworn paths that one must follow to complete that journey.

With writers, the paths have changed. All the things we thought we needed to do to get published, we no longer need to do.  Writing dozens of query letters to find an agent isn't the same thing as interning in the ER. It never really was the same thing, but now it isn't needed at all.

Figure out what you want, and why you want it, and set appropriate goals. Whenever you make a decision, know why you're doing it, what you expect from it, and what you'll do if it doesn't work out.

You don't want to suffocate for eternity. I've been there. Tahir Shah has been there. Thousands of other authors have been there. It sucks.

But the cool thing is, because writers now have options, the only writers who will suffocate are the ones who choose to.

Or, in different terms, don't step directly onto that wolf trap unless you have a damn good reason for doing it, and a really smart exit strategy. 

A Big Bestseller Weighs in on “Publishing Is A Lottery”

Yesterday, a big bestseller (really big) Barry and I know and respect emailed Barry in response to our post Publishing is a Lottery/Publishing is a Carny Game. The bestseller’s thoughts were so interesting we decided to post them here, anonymously, with our response. We hope the person in question will offer some additional comments, whether anonymously or otherwise, because this is exactly the kind of conversation we hoped our post would elicit. And we hope we’ll hear from many more people who can offer different perspectives based on different vantage points within the industry.

Big Bestseller: Barry, my friend, evidently the new world is already old enough to have grown zombie memes of its own.

Barry: Not just that, but many of them are already several years old!  In fact, Joe and I have been talking about doing a post of the Top Ten of them. We’ll let you know when it’s up.

Big Bestseller: You write, re publishing deals, "First, it’ll cost you your rights, which someone else will own for at least a very long time and in all probability forever ... " I have publishers in 98 countries and none of them own my rights. I own them all. You might say, come on, you know what I meant, or that it's a distinction without a difference, or that you were exaggerating for effect, or whatever—but be fair: you'd have ripped Turow for saying that. You'd have said, "A lawyer who doesn't know the difference between owned and licensed? Really?"

Barry: You’re right about the difference between own and control; I appreciate the correction and I have asked Joe to run a strikeout through the first and to add the second. You’re not right that I would have ripped Turow for the same mistake—precisely because I recognize that in this context it is indeed a distinction without any difference, and making a big deal of it would be pointless and petty (not only that, but I spend so much time addressing the egregious substance of Turow’s frequent mistakes of fact and logic that afterward I don’t have a lot of time left to nitpick him). That said, depending on my mood it’s possible I might have tweaked Turow for his harmless error, as you have me. A little tweak here and there can be good clean fun.

Now, if only Turow would crawl out from under his rock to engage his critics the way you and I are engaging each other…:)

Joe: I changed the word "own" to "control." But I'm okay with "own." You don't own a car you lease, but if you lease it for 70 years until it dies, you might as well have said you owned it. It isn't as if the owner is ever getting it returned, and possession is 9/10 of the law.

Big Bestseller: And earlier, that lame, tired, sad canard: "... hard work demonstrably does not guarantee success. If it did, then those hard-working publishers would produce nothing but massive bestsellers. After all, don’t they work hard on all their books?" That's like saying, "If the Yankees are such a great franchise, how come they don't win the World Series *every* year? How come they don't all bat a thousand?"

Barry: I know you’re fond of this analogy, and I suspect that fondness might be causing you to bring it up even when it’s not applicable. Here, it isn’t. One is an analysis of a lack of guarantees for purposes of arguing that a system functions as a lottery. The other is an analysis of whether something is good. These are not the same inquiries.

If what you’re trying to say instead is, “You can’t expect a guarantee from New York or from anywhere else, but you can expect the best possible odds, just like you can expect the best possible effort from a great team like the Yankees,” then although I wouldn’t entirely agree, I wouldn’t call it an incoherent argument, either. But I’m not sure if that’s what you’re trying to say.

Joe: Your comment that the Yankees can't be great unless every player bats 1000 and they never lose the World Series is (sort of) analogous to the Big 5 can't be great unless every book is a bestseller. That's not our point.

When legacy pundits refer to publishing as a true meritocracy, and they extol their ability to create bestsellers—much like you do later in this post—it is fair and approproiate to call them on that BS. How hard you work is no guarantee of success.

Baseball teams compete against one another, and statistics are carefully tracked and transparent. Book sales are not zero sum (authors don't compete with each other like baseball teams do), nor are book sales statistics known by the public. If I were to try out of the Yankees, my numbers would mean a lot, and everyone would be aware of them. The Big 5 doesn't release numbers, but I'm guessing not all their authors sell as well as you.

When Gottlieb gives examples of big publishing successes, he does so like a carny, pointing to the big stuffed Snoopy no one will ever win because the odds are so against it. And the thing is, the publisher will never tell anyone those odds. But I could find out exactly what numbers and odds I'd need to do to be a Yankee, and how well I'd have to perform to stay a Yankee.

All that aside, your analogy doesn't fit. Barry and I constantly talk about luck being a factor. Publishers can work hard, authors can work hard, or both can work hard, and none of it is any guarantee of success. But show me where publishers are admitting this.

So we're not likening the Big 5 working hard and making every book they release a bestseller to the Yankees working hard and batting 1000 and winning the World Series. The Yankees aren't claiming that will happen. They don’t suggest that if you become a Yankee, you’ll bat 1000 and win the World Series. The Big 5 are the ones being dishonest about a writer's chances.

Working hard does NOT mean you'll have a great batting average, become a Yankee, and win a ring (though hard work can affect your odds of getting lucky, which is one reason to work hard). Just like a big publisher working hard does NOT guarantee you'll sell like Nora Roberts or Dean Koontz.

Big Bestseller: You have to scale praise or criticism to what is possible, within the parameters of likelihood. And it's arithmetically impossible for every book to be a bestseller. The word "best", after all, has meaning.

Barry: Well, not arithmetically impossible (there are different ranks of bestsellers, after all—the New York Times even helpfully numbers them), but perhaps linguistically impossible. Beyond that, I don’t disagree. I just don’t see the applicability of your otherwise true statement to an analysis of systems as lotteries.

Big Bestseller: You betray your bias by blithely walking into it later, when you mention: "Amazon’s unmatched direct-to-consumer marketing power." To which I say, of course, "If Amazon's marketing power is so great, it would produce nothing but massive bestsellers." Right? See what I did there?

Joe: Actually, no.

Amazon does have unmatched direct-to-consumer marketing power, via its website and email lists. Publishers treat the bookstore as the customer, not the reader. Besides, Amazon isn't pointing to Barry, or me, or Hugh Howey, as something attainable, nor is it spouting BS about meritocracy or the importance of gatekeepers. Amazon is keeping mum for the most part, just like legacy publishers are keeping mum, about actual sales figures.

Amazon doesn't spout the BS or the ridiculous claims that legacy pundits have in the last dozen times we've fisked them. If Amazon did, I'd admonish Amazon—I've been critical of them before when they removed reviews, and Barry and I both don't like the amount of legacy legalese creeping into their current contracts. As we've said, this is a business, not an ideology.

My intent is for authors to be treated fairly. So far Amazon is much better for authors than legacy publishers on contract terms, royalties, control, and many things authors want... with the exception of paper book distribution. Legacy trumps Amazon on paper distribution. But I'm doing well enough that I don't need those paper distribution to make a nice living.

Big Bestseller: And seriously, it's a question worth examining. Why has no AP title ever even approached a million sales? Why has no KDP title?

Barry: This is a great point precisely because it leads to the kind of honest and productive conversation about payoffs, odds, and risks Joe and I hoped to elicit with our post. We could talk about what legacy publishing’s power is intended to achieve, what Amazon’s power is intended to achieve… things like that. We could talk about the ways these two lotteries differ, while being careful to scale our praise or criticism to what is possible, within the parameters of likelihood. This is useful.

So why hasn’t Amazon had a million-copy bestseller yet? My guess is it’s primarily because their strength isn’t in paper and because their digital editions are Amazon exclusives, unavailable in other retail channels. Their focus is on selling a lot of digital copies to Amazon customers, and at this they’re demonstrably great. For some people, this kind of lottery will be attractive (it’s working better for me than the legacy one ever did, both in terms of overall volume and because I make so much more per unit with Amazon in digital). For others, such as you, it likely wouldn’t make sense. The point is to understand the benefits, odds, and costs of all the available lotteries so we can make the choices that are best for ourselves.

Big Bestseller: Because a million is fairly routine for a BPH e-book. Even though BPHs have "virtually no such power at all ..."

Barry: A million copies of an ebook is “routine” for BPH? (I confess I’m not not familiar with the abbreviation BPH, but I’m guessing you mean Big Publishing House?) That sounds like a huge number to me, but perhaps that’s because we hobnob with what Donald Maass would call different classes of author?

Anyway, in the absence of verifiable data it’s hard to know for sure, but judging from my own experience and from that of the many other Amazon-published authors I know, Amazon is indeed using its unmatched direct-to-consumer marketing power to generate sales for its authors far larger than those their previous, legacy publishers were able to achieve. Sales as large as yours? Not even close, I imagine. But this brings us back to that interesting and productive conversation about benefits, odds, and costs, of the different natures of the different lotteries, about why some people would want to play one and some people another.

Joe: A million is fairly routine? No, it isn't. Not even close. Not even close to being close.

It perhaps is fairly routine that a paper book that sells a million will sell a million ebooks, but even then I'd balk at the word "routine". A million is a lot of books, and very few titles sell that many. I'd posit those that do are bolstered by the omnipresent paper distribution, which we'll get into shortly...

Big Bestseller: Problem is, you're viewing Amazon's marketing in a solipsistic way. An Amazon blast might indeed be a wonder to behold, compared to anything else you've seen in *book* marketing, or not, but consumers are just regular folk, not especially interested in books - and, crucially, they're all getting somewhere between thirty and forty e-mail offers every day. Not technically "spam", as defined by their ISP's spam filters, but certainly spam as defined by their frontal lobes. They pay less and less attention. Delete, delete, delete. Direct-to-consumer marketing is a losing proposition now. It usually takes the public the best part of twenty years to wake up to something, and now folks are beginning to understand: the Internet is all about selling them something, and they're starting to build resistance.

Joe: Based on... what sources? If you look at what Amazon does to sell books, compared to what the legacy industry has done (big ads, book tours, coop to booksellers) I'd say people are more apt to buy books based on an email than a billboard. My numbers, both via Amazon campaigns and BookBub, show that visibility through email can increase sales for a title by 3000%, and that those effects last for a bit after the promo has ended.

Moreover, all A-Pub authors get this treatment. Which is why there is a disproportionately high percentage of A-Pub authors in Hugh's data. 

Barry: Direct-to-consumer marketing involves a lot more than just email campaigns. For example, there’s also merchandising on the Amazon website and ads on the home pages of Kindles, both of which are also exceptionally powerful sales tools. True, legacy publishers can indirectly achieve something similar by buying coop, whether in brick-and-mortar stores on the Amazon website. But legacy publishers have virtually no contact with, and therefore very little knowledge of the behavior of, end-user customers. They have less ability to tailor such campaigns to make them as effective as possible.

Also, I’m pretty sure it’s a mistake to dismiss all direct-to-consumer marketing as “a losing proposition now.” That’s an awfully broad statement when you consider how much it must encompass, now and historically.

I’ve seen amazing results from Amazon’s campaigns so far, but it’s certainly not logically impossible that direct-to-consumer marketing could lose its mojo. The key question, I think, is how much of what Amazon does akin to what Seth Godin calls “permission marketing,” and how much of it is akin to spam? People like permission marketing (“You want fries with that burger?”). They hate spam. I think if Amazon continues to do the former, they’ll stay strong. If they drift off into the latter, agreed, they’ll get tuned out. Either way, it’s probably a bit early to make across-the-board pronouncements about the death of direct marketing.

Much of this comes down to the question of, “What do you primarily want from your publisher?” Which can be rephrased as, “What are you primarily paying your publisher to do?” In a paper universe, I think the answer is “distribution.” In a digital universe, I think the answer is “marketing.” Now, as the consumption of books becomes increasingly digital, if you’re right about direct-to-consumer marketing being dead already and right about New York being the best marketing game in town, New York will be fine, and authors will continue to be happy paying New York 75% of their digital royalties in exchange for all that great marketing. I don’t see things shaking out that way, but I’m not clairvoyant and I could be wrong. Regardless, as long as authors are asking themselves these questions (“What do I want from my publisher? How likely is it my publisher will provide it? What will it cost me?”), I’m happy. How individuals decide is their own business.

Joe: One of the things I'm keenly aware of, and caution others against, is believing that because something worked for me, it must work for others.

It certainly can work for others. I've been thanked hundreds (thousands?) of times by authors who gave self-pubbing a try because of my blog, or after seeing me speak. Just like there are more authors on the bestseller lists than just you, BB. But we have to figure out odd, payoffs, and costs in order to make informed decisions.

Big Bestseller: I have absolutely no beef with Amazon—I make a fortune from them, many times more than any AP or KDP author. They're definitely one of my Top 10 trading partners around the world. But I believe the desire to buy my books comes from third-party recommendation, either a trusted voice inside the national conversation, or a trusted friend. Or chance browsing. Not direct-to-consumer marketing by the seller.

Barry: I doubt it’s either/or. And you’re arguing as though New York has some ability to market indirectly that Amazon and others intrinsically lack. What New York has that no one else does is potentially massive paper distribution. If legacy distribution results in no more than your being spine-out in every third B&N, it’s just distribution and gains you little visibility. But if it means you’re in every big box store, every front table of every B&N, every airport kiosk, every drugstore, then distribution becomes its own form of marketing, and agreed, no one can do this the way New York can. But how many people get that treatment? And how many of your sales do you expect to be in paper vs how many in digital? And how long will the paper party rock on? These are precisely the kinds of questions authors need to ask when deciding whether the legacy lottery is right for themselves.

That said, I agree that the best advertising is "third-party recommendation, either a trusted voice inside the national conversation, or a trusted friend." But I think you might be confusing the match and the kindling, on the one hand, with the long-term fuel, on the other. The question is, how do the flames get fanned? Presumably you wouldn’t argue that advertising is useless, coop is useless, blurbs are useless, etc, for purposes of igniting and fanning a national conversation. None of these efforts is either/or.

No book can get beyond a certain point without going viral. But there are various tools that can help in that enterprise. If your response to this would be, “Yes, Barry, but direct-to-consumer marketing isn’t one of those tools,” I’ll respectfully disagree.

Joe: BB, your diehard fans benefit from direct-to-consumer marketing, because they're looking for your next book. But I'd argue that chance browsing is the real factor behind many NYT bestsellers, because their books are available everywhere. If there is a selection of 15 titles in a CVS or an airport kiosk, and one is yours, those looking for that kind of book are limited in their choice by what is available.

In other words, you sell a lot because you're everywhere. That isn't taking anything away from your ability as a storyteller. It's simple numbers. The more places a book is for sale, the more copies it will sell.

Amazon sells books on Amazon. It is one location. And its location is closer to an even playing field than authors have ever had. It is also a location with no barriers to entry, is a relatively even playing field, and is a place where authors have a measure of control.

When I was legacy pubbed, I had no say in distribution, marketing, coop, or discounting. Your books all have incredible distribution, marketing, coop, and discounting. Mine never did. And it isn't a quality issue. Some of my titles have more, and higher, Amazon ratings than some of your titles, even though you outsell me by an astronomical amount.

Big Bestseller: Again, no beef. Your main argument seemed to be that it's relatively a little easier to earn decent money through AP or KDP, and I don't disagree. Hugh Howey's guesses—while hilarious in their earnestness—back that up, because I believe them to be accurate in broad substance. But the "Stephen King!" response is also valid, I think. Why not shoot for the big win? So timid not to.

Barry: Now who’s being solipsistic? (And I want you to know, I find your earnestness is endearing, too. ;)). Someone prefers to play in a lottery that’s different from the one you prefer, and that means she’s timid?

How about if we play a nice game of Russian roulette. Five chambers in the cylinder, one loaded, a million bucks if you win. An eighty percent chance of winning a million dollars!  What, you won’t play? When did you get so timid, my friend?

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with swinging for the fences. Nor is there anything wrong with just going for a solid base hit. All I’m concerned about is that people understand the odds and the risks of each so they can make decisions that are best for themselves. Which, as I’m sure you know, won’t always be the same as the decisions you feel are best for you.

Joe:  The “Stephen King” meme is not valid. You're quite literally one in a million. And, as Barry's post correctly pointed out, the cost for taking that shot is high compared to the chance of it happening.

It is a fallacy to believe we got where we are because we deserve it. A whole lot of stars had to align to just reach my small level of success. But for a JK Rowling to happen, the odds are astronomical (for more, I recommend Leonard Miodinow’s The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives). To advocate that approach to authors is unfair, and harmful. It's okay to sign an unconscionable deal with shitty royalty rates and no chance of ever getting your rights back for the 1/1000000 chance of selling as well as you do? No thanks. Especially because I'm pretty sure, once B&N collapses, most NYT bestsellers will see lower sales than ever before.

I can't match Patterson's sales in the paperback racks, because he's in all of them and I'm in none. I'm not a giant bestseller who releases 25 titles a year and has movies and TV shows based on my work. I'm not a regular guest CBS and NPR and have full page newspaper ads and television commercials and radio spots. But from time to time, my ebook titles can outsell his.

Again, everyone's mileage may vary, just as everyone's goals vary. Writers should understand the odds, payoffs, and costs. If they want to sell as much as King, Koontz, Roberts, Child, Clancy, Cussler, Rowling, Steel, Patterson, Grisham, etc. then the only way to currently do that is by signing with a BPH and hoping for the star treatment. Nothing wrong with chasing that dream, as long as you're informed of your chances.

Big Bestseller: And the win is bigger than you suggest, I think. Even at my level, which is far from the very top, the win is ten times bigger than we're seeing with AP or KDP, and even on your estimates it's not ten times harder to get there.

Barry: I named some of the biggest winners I know of, acknowledged that there’s more to the potential payout than just those megahits, and called upon New York to share anonymized data to help authors make better choices. As I said: if New York has the best lottery in town, why not back the story up with evidence?

I know, I know…because they don’t need to, everything is fine, self-publishing is the new slush pile. Maybe so. It’s interesting to watch it all unfold.

Big Bestseller: But that last paragraph refers to today's status quo. Will it sustain itself? No, I think, not in any recognizable way on either side, but that's a different subject entirely.

Barry: A different subject, agreed, but I wouldn’t say an entirely different one. Because depending on how much your digital sales are growing relative to your paper ones, you might find self-publishing or Amazon-publishing an increasingly attractive kind of lottery to play, and that inquiry involves the larger questions of, “What happens if B&N closes? What happens if digital continues to grow relative to paper overall? How long can the current structure of legacy publishing endure?" These were all part of my own decision several years ago. Not that my conclusions will necessarily be instructive for other authors, but I think the framework will be.

You want to know my favorite thing about all this? That we’re talking about it at all. Five years ago, or certainly ten, there was only one lottery to play, and conversations like this would have seemed pointless. Now, no matter how grudgingly or implicitly, everyone acknowledges there are new games in town. Trying to dismiss their significance or even their existence is like that Samuel Beckett line: “God. That bastard… he doesn’t exist.”

The new choices are real. Sometimes I forget how monumental that is. Sometimes I take for granted that even the staunchest establishment insiders like Maass and Gottlieb now feel compelled to try to marginalize them. But then I remember how awesome it is that for the first time authors have meaningful choices. Thanks for adding your voice and helping more authors make the best choices for themselves.

And now if only Scott Turow would say something…:D

Joe: Thanks, BB. And again, feel free to add comments, or email Barry or me if you want to add anything lengthy