Guest Post by Lee Goldberg

I've known Lee Goldberg for years. He's a good writer, a good blogger, and a good all-around guy. One of the things I admire about him is his ability to debate, and his zero tolerance for BS.

If you haven't read Goldberg, The Walk is a great place to start. He's been blogging about ebooks for as long as I have, and he's got a somewhat different take on what's happening.

Here's Lee...

It’s astounding to me how much, and how fast, the publishing world has changed in the last nineteen months. On June 5, 2009, I began my Kindle publishing adventure with a post on my blog.
Here’s an excerpt:

My friend author Joe Konrath has done extraordinarily well selling his unpublished books on the Kindle, making $1250 in royalties this month alone. That's very impressive […] Joe is making a lot of assumptions based on the admirable success of his own Kindle titles. It's a big, big, BIG leap to think, just because his book has done well, that Robert W. Walker (or any other mid-list author) will sell 500 copies...or even 50 copies...of his out-of-print books on the Kindle each month. But just for hell of it, I decided to follow Joe's advice and put my out-of-print 2004 novel THE WALK and a short story collection, THREE WAYS TO DIE, up on Amazon for sale on the Kindle and see what happens…

A lot happened. I ended up putting my entire, out-of-print backlist – nine novels and two non-fiction books – on the Kindle. But let’s jump forward to February 2, 2010, when I wrote on my blog:

January (2010) was my best month yet in sales & royalties for my out-of-print books on the Kindle. THE WALK remained my best-selling title with 536 copies sold […] All told, I made $775 in Kindle royalties this month [...] I credit the jump in my sales to all the people who got Kindles as Christmas gifts and were eager to test drive their new toy for as little money as possible. I suspect my sales will slowly decline once the novelty of the Kindle wears off.

To say I was wrong would be a massive understatement.

I’m selling many more books than I did a year ago, but the big game-changer was Amazon upping the royalty rate in July 2010 from 35% to 70% for books priced at $2.99 and above.

This January, if sales continue at the current pace, I will sell about 3100 books this month and earn $6600 in royalties.

That’s a 166% increase in sales and a whopping 751% jump in royalties.

In just one year.

On out-of-print books that I wrote years ago that were earning me nothing before June 2009.
If those sales hold for the rest of the year, I will earn $77,615 in Kindle royalties, and that’s not counting the far less substantial royalties coming in from Amazon UK, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble and CreateSpace.

Even if my sales plummet tomorrow by fifty percent, I’ll still earn about $38,000 in royalties this year…and I’d be very, very happy with that.

My most profitable title, in terms of hours worked and pages written, is THREE WAYS TO DIE, a collection of three previously published short stories. In print, it’s a mere fifty-six pages long, but it’s selling 24 copies-a-day on the Kindle, earning me about $1500-a-month. That means I could potentially earn $18,000 this year just from those three short stories alone.

That is insane.

But what would be more insane is if I took my next, standalone, non-MONK book to a publisher instead of “publishing” it myself on the Kindle.

That’s right. I’d rather self-publish. This from a guy who for years has been an out-spoken, and much-reviled, critic of self-publishing. But that was before the Kindle came along and changed everything. I was absolutely right then…but I’d be wrong now.

The Kindle offers mid-list writers a real option to consider before they sign their next, shitty contract extension with their publisher…and it has given new opportunity to every mid-list author who has been dropped…and it has dramatically re-energized the earnings potential of every published author’s out-of-print back-list.

That’s incredibly exciting. I believe that any midlist author who isn’t self-publishing, either their back list or new work, is making a costly mistake.

If a publisher came to me today and offered me a typical, mass market paperback deal for THE WALK, I wouldn't take it...because I don't see a scenario where I'd end up making more money on the book than I am making right now (selling about 1101 copies a month, earning $2268 in royalties) . I make more in one month from Kindle sales than I did during the two years that the book was in print in hardcover.

And unless I’ve got a book I think has the potential to be a blockbuster, a novel that could break me out of the mid-list and into the upper-ranks of mystery/thriller writers, I don’t see a scenario where taking an original novel to publisher makes financial sense for me anymore.

But I’m an established, professional author…there are a million copies of my 11 MONK books in print. I have a big back list I can exploit. It’s any easy decision for me to make.

But unlike my friend Joe, who is going to accuse me of clinging desperately to old paradigms that are no longer relevant, even today I still wouldn’t recommend self-publishing for a first-time author.

If you’ve never been in print before, I believe you’d be a fool not to take a mid-list paperback or a hardcover deal…even a terrible one…over self-publishing on the Kindle. Financially, you might make less (either in failure or modest success)...but the difference will be more than made up for in editing, marketing, wider readership, wider name recognition, and professional prestige (and that prestige does mean something, whether you want to admit it or not).

You can always go back to self-publishing... and when you do, you will be bring that wider readership, name recognition, and professional prestige with you. But a book deal doesn't come along every day, and that's still going to mean something for a long time yet...and I suspect it still will even if half the bookstores in America close tomorrow.

Of course, that’s assuming you have an agent or publisher interested in your work. What if you don’t? What if you just want to get your work out there?

You better be damn sure your book is up to professional standards.

If your book is awful, amateurish slop, you can embarrass yourself, create negative word-of-mouth, and seriously harm the reputation you are seeking to build.

There’s a gold rush mentality right now when it comes to authors and ebooks (which I am probably stoking with this article) and, like gold fever, it’s making people stupid. Keep in mind that for every Joe Konrath and Amanda Hocking, there are thousands of authors who will be lucky if they can give away ten books-a-month at 99 cents each.

The majority of self-published books are unreadable crap… and that hasn’t changed just because it’s easier now to self-publish than ever before. If anything, it’s made things much worse.

Just because you can publish for free with a mouse-click doesn’t mean that you should.

But because of articles like this one, people with no discernible writing talent, or even basic writing skills, are rushing to get their atrocious, unpublishable garbage onto the Kindle as fast as they can.

The slush pile has gone digital and has unleashed a tsunami of swill onto Amazon and Smashwords. It’s going to get even harder for authors to get their books noticed by readers, who I fear are going to quickly discover that most self-published stuff is awful and, as a result, will be far less likely to take chances on writers they have never heard of… even at 99 cents.

I don’t have a solution to the problem…but I don’t intend to let the tsunami bury me and my work. I’m always looking for ways to get bring new readers to my books.

That’s one of the reasons I will continuing writing the MONK books as long as they remain success. I believe the “dead tree” editions and ebook versions of my MONKs bring thousands of new readers to my work.

It’s also one of the reasons why I’ve joined with Max Allan Collins, Bill Crider, Vicki Hendricks, Harry Shannon, Joel Goldman, Dave Zeltserman, Paul Levine, Ed Gorman, and Naomi Hirahara to launch TopSuspense.com, a site where readers can find professionally written ebooks by highly-acclaimed, award-winning novelists in a variety of genres.

This year, I intend to put at least two original novels on the Kindle, one of which will be the first in a series of books written with several well-known collaborators and a few new authors.

The publishing and bookselling businesses are in turmoil. Publishers are dropping authors, cutting advances, grabbing rights, and cutting print runs. Barnes & Nobles and Borders are struggling, closing stores and cutting back on orders. And beloved independent booksellers, like the Mystery Bookstore in Los Angeles, are folding, unable to compete any longer.

It’s very sad and troubling.

And yet, this is also an incredibly exciting time to be an author…as long as you are motivated, out-going, and entrepreneurial.

For once, I feel like I actually have some control over my publishing career and that my success or failure will be due the decisions that I make, not someone else’s poor choices or lack of enthusiasm.

I am enormously grateful to Joe for leading me down this path…but most of all, I’m thankful for the readers, bloggers and fellow authors who continue to support my work.

Joe sez: I agree with 95% of everything Lee has said here. What's refreshing is that when he and I originally began discussing ebooks, he thought I was full of shit. But he put his money where his mouth was, and tried it out for himself. Then he drew similar conclusions, and wound up changing his mind.

The most difficult thing a person can do is change their mind. Lee gets a lot of flack for his opinions, but he always backs up his opinion with facts. If the facts change, his opinion changes. That's the mark of a very smart guy.

However, I disagree with him on a few bits, because he's clinging desperately to old paradigms that are no longer relevant.

While I agree that a lot of writers are putting crappy ebooks up on Kindle, and that there is a learning curve to becoming a good writer--a learning curve that previously required gatekeepers (agents and publishers) to vet new writers and nurture them along on their path to becoming competent, I disagree that publishers are still needed.

Agents are still needed. Mine sells my subsidiary rights, and is doing a great job with that.

Vetters are still needed. It's impossible for a writer to improve unless they know what they're doing wrong. This requires a second pair of eyes.

But that second pair of eyes doesn't have to be a publisher.

The vetters can be readers.

I've already seen several examples of this. But first, let's go back in time and look at something called pulp fiction.

Years ago there was a gold rush similar to the gold rush we're no seeing with ebooks. Except this one was paper, not e-ink.

Cheap paper allowed for the printing of mass quantities of paperback books and magazines. As a result, millions of these suckers were produced, feeding the country's voracious appetite for inexpensive fiction.

Of course, with a demand this big, the editors of these magazines, and the editors for these new paperback lines, needed to find writers to meet their quota.

As a result, quite a few writers who later became big bestsellers got their start in pulps. And guess what? A lot of their early stories weren't very good.

But the more they wrote, the more they improved. Sure, they sometimes had editors to help them. But unlike today, those writers were learning on the job. They got paid to learn their craft, making a living until they were good enough to go from pulp mags to novels.

Me? I have my peers vet me. I also have fans who are beta readers who spot typos and errors.

But what about green newbies who don't have bestselling author friends or loyal fans?

I've followed a few authors on Kindle who originally published some pretty unpolished stuff. But the readers point it out, usually with a bad review, and then more often than not the mortified writer goes back and fixes it.

The reader has become the vetter.

Is it ideal? No. Ideally, writers would only self-publish flawless work. Both both Lee and I originally put ebooks on Kindle with formatting errors in them, which were pointed out to us and we fixed. We learned on the job.

Yes, it is necessary to have a second pair of eyes on your work. But those eyes don't have to be an editor at a Big 6 house.

Taking a shitty publishing deal with shitty royalties just because it offers you the opportunity to learn has some merit, but I really believe these things can be learned independently of taking a shitty deal. If the writer can even get a shitty deal these days, with the way the industry is imploding.

If I were a newbie, I wouldn't sit on a manuscript, hoping to be discovered by an agent, when there is a perfect opportunity to test-market my writing on Amazon.

Lee also said: (readers) are going to quickly discover that most self-published stuff is awful and, as a result, will be far less likely to take chances on writers they have never heard of… even at 99 cents.

Again, I disagree. I give readers more credit than that. This isn't a once-bitten/twice shy scenario. Every reader has read bad books, but it hasn't soured them on reading.

With Amazon reviews, star ratings, and preview features, bad books aren't going to sell well. The Readers (aka vetters, aka gatekeepers) will warn others against trash, and reward good books with lots of ratings and increased sales.

There is a LOT of crap on the Internet, a LOT of worthless, if not outright dangerous, websites. But that doesn't stop people from surfing.

There is a LOT of crap on Youtube. But that doesn't stop the good videos from rising to the top and going viral. The bad ones don't take away from the good ones. It isn't a zero sum game.

There can also be a lot of crap on Amazon, and it won't hurt those writing good fiction. Lee is an example. Right now, The Walk has been in the top 2000 for 18 months. It doesn't matter that there are a million other Kindle ebooks on Amazon. People are still finding him.

I've told Lee that the best thing he could do for his career is stop writing Monk books and start writing expressly for Kindle. It's a big risk in a bird-in-the-hand way, but I'm pretty sure the risk would pay off for him if he did it.

The more good books you list on Amazon, the more you'll sell.

The readers will see to it.

Guest Post by Aaron Patterson

Surfing the interwebs, I've found that the most vocal opponents to writers self-publishing seem to be:

Writers.

When I began self -pubbing two years ago, I had my reservations. I didn't believe it would ever be my sole source of income (especially one where I make $1200 a day, which I'm currently doing.)

But many writers have shown this to not only be an obvious alternative to traditional publishing, but a preferable one. There is money to be made, readers to be discovered, publicity to be garnered. All it takes is trying it.

And yet, all over the world wide web, I see writers repeating and restating the same tired argument against self-pubbing: If you do it, you probably won't sell many books.

What amazes me about this is it is coming from traditionally published authors who fail to see the irony of that statement.

If you've been traditionally published, you have first-hand experience about how truly few books you can sell within the system. You also know the hard work, sacrifices, tireless promotion, and luck it took to sell in those paltry numbers.

But Stockholm Syndrome reigns supreme in this business. Writers cannot wrap their minds around the fact (and it is a fact, not a hypothesis) that publishing houses aren't needed anymore. They make excuses for publishers, and call writers like me exceptions.

While I've never said that self-pubbing is a guaranteed ticket to wealth, I've seen enough evidence to realize that writers can and will make more money self-pubbing than they will going the traditional route. You have just as much of a chance selling a book on Kindle as you do signing with one of the Big 6 and selling a book in a bookstore. And actually, according to my numbers, your chances are better on Kindle.

Some writers have conducted their own experiments, putting up a single ebook, pricing it too high, and after a month have concluded there is no money to be made.

That isn't following the formula. And there is a formula. The majority of those who succeed are publishing multiple titles at low prices with good covers, and it is taking several months, or even years, to find an audience.

Until you've done that, you can't say self-pubbing doesn't work. All that doesn't work is your poor attempt at an experiment.

But don't take my word for it. In the past few days, I've featured guest posts from self-published authors selling as well, or better, than I am.

Today's post is from Aaron Patterson, who regularly smokes me on the Kindle bestseller lists.

From Rags to Royalties
by Aaron Patterson

I believe eBooks are the future for publishers and authors alike. I find many in both camps are resistant to the idea; some are outright against it. I hope my story will shed more light on the subject and will inspire other authors and aspiring writers.

I am 31 years old and worked in construction for eleven years. Reading has always been an addiction. Growing up, I was the stereotypical odd duck—home schooled, introverted and painfully shy. I was the kid who read two to three books a day, the kid who wanted to be a writer but never thought I had what it took.

In 2008, I decided to try my hand at a novel. I sat down with no formal training, no writing experience or any idea what I was doing. I just had all these stories and I knew they had to get out. A month later, I finished my first book, Sweet Dreams.

I set out to learn everything I could about the publishing industry. After a year of research, I almost gave up; the publishing world was a mess! I didn’t want to waste two years sending out query letters with little guarantee of success. So I decided to self publish and started my own company. To this day, I haven’t submitted a single query letter. I figured the best thing to do was start selling some books to see what the public thought of my writing.

In December 2008, Sweet Dreams was officially published online and in print. I uploaded it as an eBook on Amazon, not really understanding the potential of such a market. The initial eBook price was $14.99; and I sold only 12 a month for 6 months. But, because I was a new writer, I believed building a fan base was more important than the bottom line, so I dropped the price to $4.99. That month I sold 48 eBooks.

This is when my little brain started working. I released my second book, Dream On, in December, 2009 and dropped the price of Sweet Dreams to $0.99. This is when many authors begin to roll their eyes and mutter that my shenanigans were “devaluing the market.”

Here is a breakdown for Sweet Dreams:

In the first month at its new price point, I sold 102 eBooks.
The next month, 250.
Then, 340, 550, 700, 850, 900, 1000 and 1200.

I eventually readjusted the prices of both my novels to $2.99. I expected my sales to drop, but my numbers went up instead: I sold 2600. In December, I sold 3200, and my sales continue to climb.

I never really thought anyone would read my book, let alone publish it. But here I am, making a living as a full time writer and helping others do the same. My story is proof that you don’t need a big publisher to be a successful author. J.A. Konrath is not “an anomaly.” Anyone can do what we have done. By means of online marketing, blogs, Facebook and Twitter, we are able to reach out to fans. And because of eBooks, I’m building my own future.

To you, the author: The power is now yours if you choose to take it. The question is, will you?

Aaron’s blog: www.theworstbookever.blogspot.com
Twitter: @mstersmith
Web site: www.StoneHouseInk.net

Books:
Sweet Dreams
Dream On
19 (A Digital Short)
The eBook on eBooks (a Digital Short)
In Your Dreams (Coming 2011)
Airel (Coming 2011)

Joe sez: Patterson did what all writers should be doing. He tried it for himself, then experimented over a long period of time in order to find the sweet spot that maximized sales. He also continues to innovate, and has rereleased Sweet Dreams as a double ebook, pairing it with The Remains by Vincent Zandri. That's a smart way to cross-pollinate fans, and also doubles Aaron's virtual shelf space, allowing him to be more easily discovered.

So to all the naysayers who continue to beat the tired drum of traditional publishing, and continue to insist that self-pubbed author will sell in tiny numbers and never make any money, I say: try it.

You may not hit a homerun. But many baseball players have long and lucrative careers hitting infield grounders over and over again, and over the years those stats accrue. If you write good books, with good covers, and release them at low prices, you WILL make more money and you WILL sell more books than you would selling traditionally. Ebooks are forever. Print books are not. Infinite will earn more than finite. Just be in it for the long haul, don't shy away from experimenting, and start now.

Forever is a long time. But if you don't start until tomorrow, you lost the money and the head start you could have had today.

Guest Post by Selena Kitt Part 2

As promised, I'm going to continue hosting guest bloggers who have done exceptionally well self-pubbing. In the upcoming weeks I'll have posts by Terri Reid, Aaron Patterson, and Stephen Leather.

It's 11am on the 14th of January, and so far this month I've sold 9319 ebooks and 392 self-pubbed print books.

This is the California Gold Rush of 1849. Will everyone get rich? No. But damn near everyone who tries will make more money than they would if they try the traditional publishing route.

Selena Kitt has posted here once before, about Amazon's removal of her erotic incest fiction from their website. A month has now passed. This is her follow-up:

Banned by Amazon
by Selena Kitt

They say the only bad publicity is no publicity. Perhaps they’re right.

In mid-December, Amazon decided to ban three of my books (Back to the Garden, Under Mr. Nolan’s Bed and Naughty Bits) because they were in “violation of their content guidelines.” I could deduce (Sherlock that I am) that the common theme in all three was erotic (consensual and adult, I might add) incest. Then I discovered that several more authors had received the same notice from Amazon, and their books, too, dealt with taboo topics.

Now, I’m a big supporter of free speech and intellectual freedom and my hackles get raised when we start walking down slippery slopes like these. Censorship in general, whether it comes from a government or a corporation, is abhorrent to me.

Principles aside, though—those three books earned me roughly $3000 a month on Amazon Kindle. That was nothing to sneeze at and I was understandably angry. Why had they removed these books and yet left books like Daddy Helps Out, which, if reviews are to be believed, involves incestuous sex with an eight-year-old? (That book is still on Amazon’s shelves a month later, by the way). I wanted and demanded an explanation.

What I received from Amazon was silence. For a week, no one would talk to me or return my calls. I talked to other authors whose taboo books had been removed and they, too, were getting the silent treatment. To me, this spoke to Amazon’s poor business ethics. If they were making a new policy, why wouldn’t they contact publishers and tell them about their new guidelines, give them time to prepare their authors and make other arrangements? Anthologies that contained offending material, for example, could have been reworked and re-uploaded instead of being removed, without any penalty in loss of ranking. Amazon didn’t give anyone that opportunity. Instead, they clandestinely removed titles, informed authors and publishers days or weeks later, and most importantly, refused to tell anyone what they were doing or why.

I finally talked to an “executive customer service representative,” who gave me the runaround (we literally talked in circles for half an hour) about Amazon’s content guidelines. She told me that Amazon was refusing to tell anyone, now or in the future, how or why any book violated their content guidelines. But while she wouldn’t give me the reason that my titles had been removed, when I asked if "all titles that violated the content guidelines in a similar way" were going to be removed, she confirmed that yes, that was their intention.

Then when I asked if Amazon had any intention of removing books that violated their content guidelines in other ways, she said that while they would exercise their right to revisit their policy, she thought it was now pretty well set. Of course, that was before two gay male books with “rape” in the titles were removed. And then, just a few weeks later, Amazon told the author they would be restored to the site.

Just what in the world is going on over at Amazon?

No one knows. And their backhanded removal of books and stonewalling practices aren’t helping. Look, I shop at Amazon. I enjoy the variety and convenience as much as anyone else. I also love my Kindle. But my estimation of them has gone down considerably. I don’t like the way they have handled this situation, but it isn’t the first time they’d done something like this. Look at what they did with the ped0phile book. And Wikileaks. And then there was that “technical glitch” that stripped gay and lesbian titles of their rankings last year. Oops.

Honestly, I have no objection to retailers deciding what they will or will not sell in their stores or on their sites. Wal-Mart does this. And I choose not to shop at Wal-Mart. Their choice, my choice, free country. However, a distributor like Amazon has an obligation not only to their customers, but to their vendors as well.

If you’re a business, and you’re going to make a policy, then your vendors and customers have a right to know where you stand. Wal-Mart makes it public knowledge to vendors and customers that they don’t accept music with explicit lyrics, for example. But Amazon hasn’t made any such statement about books. And Amazon’s arbitrary removal of books, lack of transparency and waffling on their decisions doesn’t inspire much confidence in their business practices.

And I’m in business with Amazon.

Before this incident, I would say I was 80% happy with that relationship. There were a few issues I wasn’t thrilled about, the same ones other authors complained of—things like not allowing authors to offer books for free, for example. But Amazon was the heavy hitter, the only game in town when it came to big numbers. I was earning a majority of my income with them, and while I had my complaints, there wasn’t much I could do about them.

For example, when Amazon switched my books from their Mobipocket feed over to Amazon DTP, they took six months to do it. They hadn’t anticipated that someone with excellent rankings would lose those in making the transfer to DTP and might be a little upset about that fact. (Doh!) But they were determined to switch all Mobipocket books over, so they had their tech people develop a program that would transfer the rankings. That took them six months. And when they did transfer my titles, it didn’t work. I lost a considerable amount of rankings due to their technical glitch, and my books dropped from being in the top ten in erotica to the top twenty-five or fifty, and they still haven’t recovered. Ouch.

Again, although I was angry and disappointed, there wasn’t much I could do about it. Amazon was still the biggest online book retailer around, and if I wanted to sell my books in large quantities, theirs was the only place that offered that kind of opportunity.

But maybe that won’t be the case for too much longer.

I did a survey with Amazon about six months ago. They were calling high-earning self published authors for feedback about their experience with Kindle DTP. I was asked, at the time, to keep the conversation confidential, but since Amazon currently refuses to offer me an explanation about my books and I didn’t sign anything legally binding about nondisclosure, I really don’t feel obligated to keep quiet about it anymore.

During that survey, the Kindle DTP representative I talked to was thrilled with and actually pretty smug about the market share that Amazon Kindle had cornered. I confirmed, with my personal numbers, that they earned me about 80% of my sales. That was true at the time.

Last month, all that changed.

I sold 18,000 books on Barnes and Noble after Amazon “banned” my books (from December 15th or so until the end of the month). And 4000 of those were copies of banned titles. Erik Sherman over at CBS was interested in this information (he’s diligently been covering this issue since it started while the rest of the press seems to just ignore it) and did a blog post about the power of “banning” a book.

So I earned double from Barnes and Noble what I made from Amazon in December. And I’m sure I can (oh so ironically) thank Amazon in part for this shift. Banning books always makes people interested—"What could be so bad that it had to be banned? Maybe I’ll have to check that out…" So I’m sure there were people who heard my book had been removed and went over to Barnes and Noble (the biggest online retailer next to Amazon) to buy it.

But I also think it may indicate a real shift in the market. I think it also had something to do with the holiday season and the new color Nook and people getting ereaders for Christmas. I think ebooks are just starting to get going, and perhaps this upswing in Barnes and Noble sales (and the news seems to support this idea as well) is an indication that Amazon won’t always be the big dog (i.e. bully) on the block anymore.

And frankly, I’m actually a little relieved. Amazon might not have had a monopoly on ebooks, but a “majopoly” is still a bad thing for the free market. I’ve always said (in my Chicken Little way) that it’s dangerous to keep all your eggs in one basket. Someone once remarked on this blog that Joe Konrath was “working for Amazon now.” Up until last month, that’s been primarily true for me as well, and it made me a little nervous. Of course, right now I’m working for Barnes and Noble. My hope, though, is that in the future, things even out a little more in the market so that Google Editions and Amazon and Barnes and Noble (and Borders, if they survive) and whoever else is going to come onto the scene as an ebook player, are on more equal footing.

I know that all of them are going to have their problems and issues. Amazon totally messed up my rankings, but Barnes and Noble was much more prepared, it seems, in that department. The books that came over to Barnes and Noble from my Fictionwise feed did so seamlessly, with no loss in rankings at all. Why couldn’t Amazon have done that? Of course, Amazon’s accounting is up to date, real-time sales, to the hour, but Barnes and Noble has been hit and miss, to say the least. I have no idea how much I’ve sold with them in January so far, because their reports don’t say – although they assure me that “all sales are being recorded correctly.” Let’s hope so.

I think it’s hard to have confidence in any big company, and small and indie publishers and authors need to stick together to keep calling the big boys on their incongruent business practices. Yes, a business has a right to make a policy—but do they have a right not to tell you what that policy is and how they’re going to enforce it? I’m sorry, but I just have to call Amazon out on that one.

For example, most publishers (and Amazon is a publisher now, whether they like it or not) are clear about what they do and don’t accept. This is even more true for erotic publishers in the ebook world.

At Excessica, we’re very clear:

No sexual situations featuring characters under the age of eighteen

No bestiality (fantastical creatures exempt)

No necrophilia (fantastical creatures exempt)

No incest

Yes, we added that last guideline recently, thanks to Amazon’s ham-handed censorship tactics. We have caved and self-censored in anticipation of Amazon’s rejection of future work. It’s unfortunate—and I’m sure it’s exactly what they intended.

I’ve also personally self-censored my books, releasing a new version of Under Mr. Nolan’s Bed without the father/daughter incest titled, “Plaid Skirt Confessions,” and a different version of Naughty Bits without the sibling incest titled, “Foreign Exchange.” I’ve clearly stated in the descriptions that they are reworked versions of the originals, so readers will know.

And now we’re in the business of censoring ourselves. Big Brother has won that round, I’m afraid.

But at least when it comes to business practices, we are still being clear about our policies. I don’t think it’s all that hard to do and it’s certainly not too much to ask. If we can do it, so can Amazon. I hope that, at some point, they do. Or if they continue to refuse and act without transparency, I hope the free market will work and they get knocked off their high horse so they’re not the only viable ebook game in town anymore.

My sales at Barnes and Noble last month has given me a glimmer of hope in that regard.

In the meantime, I’m going to cash my December royalty check and hope that B&N doesn’t decide to follow Amazon down their slippery slope and start banning books from their virtual shelves as well.

Guest Post by H.P. Mallory

HP Mallory is one of the authors smoking me in sales. Not only are her Kindle numbers fantastic, but she's going gangbusters on Barnes & Noble. My B&N numbers are so-so--roughly 400 a month. I expect this to change when I switch from Smashwords to PubIt next week. While I love Smashwords, in order to upload to B&N through them I have to use shorter descriptions and fewer product tags. Several of my peers have shown me that this is often the key to selling big numbers, so I look forward to seeing if I have similar results.

Like Karen McQuestion and Amanda Hocking, Mallory is kicking ebook butt without ever having sold a book through traditional publishing, even though she tried.

Now, I don't discount that the Big 6 reject a lot of crap. But their ability to separate wheat from chaff is impressing me less and less. My rejected books have sold over 100,000 copies, and I'm currently selling 600 ebooks a day (In the first ten days of January, I made over $12,000.)

Yes, everyone makes mistakes. And hits are hard to pick. Last I heard, only 1 out of 5 books lucky enough to get past the gatekeepers actually turns a profit (two lose money, two break even.) But every indie success story is a crapload of money that NY missed out on, and we're seeing more and more writers making big dollars on books that were passed on by both publishers and agents.

Publishers have had a hard few years. The recession was tough. Fewer bookstores mean fewer sales. Amazon and the rise of ereaders is eating into their print sales. But I don't think bookstores closing, or customers switching to ebooks, are what publishers need to fear most.

Publishers need to fear authors.

Now, if you talk to any group of newbie authors who have been rejected by the industry, you'll feel their bitterness toward the difficult, often humiliating, and seemingly arbitrary nature of the query-go-round.

And if you talk to any group of professional authors, you'll feel their bitterness toward publishers who have made a lot of mistakes in regard to their books and careers.

Add the fact that publishers take 52.5% royalties on ebooks, leaving the authors only 17.5%, and that even if an author landed a contract today there would still be an 18 month wait for the book to come out, and I have to wonder what publishers are going to do in order to keep authors submitting to them. Hint: DRM and high ebook prices aren't the answer.

As more authors hear about the possibilities self-pubbing offers, and read about success stories like this, what could possibly motivate them to ever sign another publishing deal? Publishers, once an essential part of the equation, are no longer needed to connect authors and readers. And, amazingly, they don't seem to understand this yet.

But they will. Now here's HP...

Hello! HP Mallory here! Joe was kind enough to let me borrow his blog for a quick post about a pretty fun contest I’m running. The winner will become a character in my next book, due out in April! You can find more information here.

OK, so now that my shameless promotion is out of the way, LOL, I thought I should introduce myself since I imagine none of you have a clue as to who I am. Well, as you know, my name is HP and I’m a self-published author. I sort of prefer the term indie—it just sounds cooler.

Anyway, my story starts about three years ago when I was living in England and decided to write a book. Although it might sound like my book writing debut was a whim, it was anything but. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, ever since I was young. But, it seems like life (aka parties, drinking and boys) got in the way while I was in my twenties. Fast forward to my early thirties and I was ready to write my novel. I’m a big fan of paranormal romance/urban fantasy so writing in these genres just felt right.

After I finished my first paranormal romance, Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble, I figured it was time to get an agent. So, I sent out query letters and was pretty encouraged by the responses to the book, as agents requested partials and fulls. Imagine my elation when my dream agent requested the full, stayed up all night reading the book and offered representation the next day! Oh, happy day! Well, happy day turned into two or three months of rejection after rejection and then the fab agent gave up on me and I never heard from her again.

So, thinking I had something in common with Hester Prynne, only my scarlet letter would be a big “L” for loser, I gave up. And I gave up for about two years. Then, my fabulous critique partner, Lori Brighton, told me about a lady named Karen McQuestion who had uploaded her books to the Kindle self-publishing platform and was outselling traditionally published authors. Well, I figured I had nothing to lose and decided to put myself out there and see what happened.

On July 7, 2010, I uploaded Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble followed by my other book, To Kill A Warlock. And…nothing really happened. I sold a few books here and there—not exactly earth shattering. Figuring I needed more of an audience, I started thinking about how to spread the word. I created a robust website, joined Facebook and started blogging. Then I got fairly involved in the Kindle forums and started contacting book bloggers to see if they might be interested in reviewing my books. I was amazed to find they were interested! Little by little my reviews grew and my rankings on Amazon improved bit by bit.

Then Barnes and Noble came out with the Nook self-publishing platform, Pubit, and I uploaded both of my books right away. The Barnes and Noble Gods must have liked me because my books were suddenly ranked first for searches like “fantasy” and “paranormal romance”. I was amazed as more and more sales rolled in. At this point, I was selling about 1,000 books a month across both platforms.

In December I came out with a third book, the second in the Fire Burn series, Toil and Trouble. And, wow, December was an incredible month for me. I sold nearly 23,000 books and to date, I’ve sold roughly 37,000.

So, the long and short of it is that self-publishing saved my books from a life of quiet desperation in my PC. Now, I have a thriving Facebook community, I’m on the Kindle bestseller list, I landed a new agent who hopefully will be better than the last one and some marketing company in Brussels just wrote an article about me! Random!

I’m an indie author and I couldn’t be happier!!!

Thank you to Joe for allowing me to tell my story and plug my contest!!

Joe sez: Success like Mallory's isn't the norm. Luck plays a part. Luck always plays a part. But selling 20,000 ebooks in a single month is more than just luck. She's done a lot right in order to maximize that luck.

Cute, professional-looking covers, good writing, low prices, and her ability to utilize social networks no doubt helped her sell so many. She's spent the last 17 days in the Kindle Top 100, and all three of her books are in the Top 50 on Nook. (Incidentally, two other indie authors, Amanda Hocking and Selena Kitt, also have several spots each in the Nook Top 50.)

Now, hindsight is always 20/20, and I'm sure the comments section will abound with Monday Morning Quarterbacks eager to explain and dismiss Mallory's success. These may include:

"Paranormal Romance is a hot genre."

Joe replies: Then you write one and crack the Top 100.

"She's an anomaly compared to the 300,000 other indie authors who sell poorly."

Joe replies: A New York Times bestseller is an anomaly too. But unlike the NYT, Mallory did this on her own, without a big advertising push or coop.

"If she had a traditional publishing deal, she'd sell ten times this amount."

Joe replies: If she had a traditional publishing deal, her books wouldn't be out until June of 2012. Will there even be bookstores still around then? And how much money will she have lost during those 18 months her books aren't available (best guess, minimum $300,000.)

"The majority of indie authors will never reach this level of success."

Why has it become "unless you sell 10,000 ebooks a month you're better off going the traditional route"?

The point of this blog is to show authors what is possible, not what is likely.

But I'm convinced that it is more likely to make money self-publishing ebooks than it is to make money landing a traditional publishing deal.

It's still notoriously difficult to find an agent and sell a book. And even if you manage that, the book takes a long time to be released (and it will be at a high price with DRM, which readers hate) and there is no guarantee it will be successful. To make the odds even worse, there is a high likelihood that it will be difficult to ever get the rights back, and the writer will be stuck in a bad royalty situation forever.

If there's something to be learned by me, HP Mallory, Selena Kitt, Karen McQuestion, Amanda Hocking, LJ Sellers, Michael R. Sullivan, and the many other indies currently doing well, it's that good books can find a wide audience without New York.

But before that can happen, those books have to be self-published.

How many trunk novels do you have? How many books of yours are currently on submission? How many of your backlist titles are out of print?

There is NO GOOD REASON not to get those up on Kindle, and Nook, and Smashwords.

Every day you wait is a potential sale lost.

Guest Post by Robin Sullivan

Some incorrect presumptions are just too good to die.

The "JA Konrath is selling a lot of ebooks because of his traditional publishing background" presumption has practically become an internet meme, being parroted by both my detractors and indie authors. This misconception makes it easy to dismiss me as an anomaly, which means people don't have to actually examine the issue and seek more data.

So I'm happy to provide that data.

These are DECEMBER sales figures for some indie authors. In other words, they account for only 31 days of sales.

Are you ready to be blown away?

Blake Crouch - 2500+
Nathan Lowell - 2500+
Beth Orsoff - 2500+
Sandra Edwards - 2500+
Vianka Van Bokkem - 2500+
Maria Hooley - 2500+
C.S. Marks - 2500+
Lee Goldberg - 2500+
Lexi Revellian - 4000+
Zoe Winters - 4000+
Aaron Patterson - 4000+
Bella Andre - 5000+
Imogen Rose - 5000+
Ellen Fisher - 5000+
Tina Folsom - 5000+
Terri Reid - 5000+
David Dalglish - 5000+
Scott Nicholson - 10,000+
J.A. Konrath 10,000+
Victorine Lieske - 10,000+
L.J. Sellers - 10,000+
Michael R. Sullivan - 10,000+
H.P. Mallory - 20,000+
Selena Kitt - 20,000+
Stephen Leather - 40,000+
Amanda Hocking - 100,000+

For a more detailed breakdown, visit Derek J. Canyon's blog http://derekjcanyon.blogspot.com/2011/01/keys-to-epublishing-success.html. This was compiled by him, and Robin Sullivan.

Now, this list is hardly comprehensive. There are many others who belong here, but neither me, Derek, or Robin are going to spend weeks tracking down every independent Kindle bestseller just to prove a point. I think the point has already been proven. To wit:

MORE WRITERS THAN J.A. KONRATH ARE DOING WELL SELF-PUBLISHING, AND THEY DON'T HAVE PUBLISHING BACKGROUNDS

That's right. On this list, only six people had previous print deals with major publishers. The rest did not. (Originally this article said five, which was erroneous on my part.)

In the upcoming weeks, I'm going to feature several of these indie writers mentioned on this list, asking them to share their self-publishing journey with readers of this blog.

Hopefully it will kill the "only J.A. Konrath can do it" bullshit that continues to circulate.

Speaking of Robin Sullivan, she brings a unique perspective to this. First, she's not a writer; she's a publicist for her husband. Second, they price their ebooks higher than I suggest.

As many have mentioned, having a lot of sales is great. But if they're all 99 cent books, it's tough for a writer to earn a living.

Robin and Michael price quite a bit higher than that. Here's their story.


History of an Indie Published Nobody
by Robin Sullivan

Many say that Joe’s success is a direct result of his traditional publishing foundation and that new authors can’t hope to do the same. Since we don’t have a time machine so that Joe can remake his career, perhaps looking at someone who started with nothing, and is currently selling similarly, can be used as an example for what is possible.

First, who am I? My name is Robin Sullivan and I’m the wife and self-appointed publicist of my husband Michael J. Sullivan. I basically handle all the business aspects for Michael allowing him to focus on doing what he loves—writing. Yes I know, every author wants to have someone like me, Michael gets requests all the time…sorry…after 30 years you can’t pry us apart so you’ll just have to find your own “Robin.”

Anyway…Michael has released five of a six-book fantasy series. It is called The Riyria Revelations and they are all “self-published” and sold through ebooks (Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords for iPad, Sony, Kobo, etc.) and dead tree varieties using POD through CreateSpace. The release schedule looks like this: The Crown Conspiracy (Oct 2008), Avempartha (Apr 2009), Nyphron Rising (Oct 2009), The Emerald Storm (Apr 2010), Wintertide (Oct 2010) and Percepliquis is in editing.

Now why did I use quotes around self-published? If you look at the copyright pages, the publisher listed is Ridan Publishing. Ridan has 6 authors with 18 released books (2 more authors are signed, 4 books are under development), which classifies Ridan as a small press (sometimes referred to as an indie press). Ridan is…well us. I (along with interns and paid freelancers) do the editing, Michael creates the covers and does layout, I convert to e-book formats. Marketing and distribution are handled by myself.

So…technically the other 5 authors are published through a small press but Michael is self-published since he was not independently vetted. (Sleeping with the submissions editor, even though you are married to them, pretty much guarantees you’ll get signed).

One thing that I’ve done differently than Joe, and I know he’ll take issue with this, is I set the price of all of Ridan’s ebooks at $4.95 except for Wintertide which I priced at $6.95. (There are many reasons why Wintertide is $6.95 but I don’t want to derail the post). His print books sell between $12.95 and $14.95.

Now I’m not saying Michael is Joe (we all know there is only one of him) but Michael is producing Joe-like numbers for November and December. Now I’m talking only about Joe’s self-publishing numbers (not including traditional publishing sales, and his super-secret (I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you) AmazonEncore sales, prevented by NDA).

Since Joe is so generous with numbers I’ll lift up my…err…spreadsheet and do the same. Ebook profits are $3.46 to $4.97 for US and $1.73 and $2.43 for overseas. His print books make between $3.50 and $3.80. As I write this (12/29/2010) Michael has sold just under 10,000 books for December: 570 print books 9,250 kindles, 85 Nooks, and some unknown number from Smashwords (I’m too lazy to look them up right now). While the US/Overseas division is not known I’ll use a 90%/10% split (which has been typical) so his expected income for December will be…drum roll please while I check the calculations on the spreadsheet…

$34,820.

Wow, is that really right? Had to check the spreadsheet six times to make sure I had not done something stupid.

As for November, I did a lot of playing with price points (believe it or not when I tried $2.99 I actually lost sales – not income but actual number of books was lower). When all was said and done the Kindle Royalty report shows $17,575 and CreateSpace $1,485. That came from 7,860 books of which 450 were print.

So that’s $53,880 in 2 months.

Now for the $64,000 question…is November and December part of a trend? Or is it a blip? Ask me come June 2011 and I’ll let you know. My crystal ball is too foggy for me to proclaim that 2011 sales will be $323,280 (53,880 / 2 * 12). And I still have my day job (Michael writes full time…so yes I’ve been supporting him during the lean months but I think I won’t be able to hold that over his head much longer).

Part of the problem is there are too many other factors in play here, we just released book #5 which was highly anticipated and sold over 1,000 for each month (1036, 1112, 1642). In addition, I did a lot of strange promotional stuff in November (messing with price points and even taking book #2 “free” for a short while).

But now let’s look back in time to get a historical perspective. Prior to October 2009 Michael was selling about 50 – 60 books a month. When Book #3, Nyphron Rising came out in October the sales went as follows: 190, 205, 355, 445, 576. Then March 2010 sees the release of Book #4, The Emerald Storm and the sales were: 960, 1105, 1044, 925, 835, 930. Book #5, Wintertide was released and the sales have been 2420, 7860, 10000.

Now Joe gave me a word count for this post, and I want to stay within it, but I do want to circle back to one thing that was pretty instrumental in Michael’s success (or at least I think it was). I’ve always positioned him as traditionally published even though he was self published. I can’t really describe the techniques I used to do that in this post now (not enough space left) – but maybe Joe will have me back at some point and I can elaborate. (Joe sez: the comment section would be great for that, Robin.) But this is how you can tell that I was successful in doing that…

If you look on the Amazon print books you’ll see down at the bottom a section that is entitled Customers Also Bought Items by. This is a listing of 17 authors that are cross selling to his audience. (NOTE: This is basically a pooling that takes in account those 100 books you see in the customer also bought list). For Michael, you see standard industry names such as Sanderson, Rothfuss, Weeks, Scholes, etc). Nothing unusual there but…

If you go to THOSE authors books and look at their cross lists…you’ll find Michael in the #1 spot for the following: Ken Scholes, Peter V. Brett, N.K. Jemisin, Robert V. S. Redick, Rachel Neumeier, Celine Kiernan, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Jon Sprunk, James Barclay, Mark Chadbourn, Jill Williamson, James Enge, Rowena Cory Daniells and a few more. All respected authors from traditional publishers. In addition, you’ll find Michael on the list (one of the 17) with industry heavy weights such as: Patrick Rothfuss, Joe Abercrombie, Tad Williams, Scott Lynch, and Guy Gavriel Kay. I have checked these numerous times (and saved the screen shots) and Michael is the ONLY indie on ANY of these lists. What does this mean? It means he sells very well to THEIR audience.

Another indication that I’ve been successful in aligning Michael with the other traditional fantasy authors is the following: Fantasy Book Critic (a well regarded review site for his genre) named Wintertide and Emerald Storm to the 25 best books of 2010 (every other book listed was…you guessed it from a traditionally published fantasy author). Also, Michael’s Emerald Storm was picked as one of 15 books in the Fantasy Category for the 2010 Goodreads Choice Awards (again no other indies). Lastly, Avempartha won the 2009 BookSpot Central Tournament of books where 64 novels of the previous year are pitted against one another in a March Madness competition voted on by the readers (guess how many other indies were there? Yep same as before…none).

So that’s my story about a little indie that could. I’m at 1308 of my 1500 words so I’ll wrap up. I just want to say Michael and Joe are not unique. There are hundreds of authors that are doing the same. Take a look at the Top 100 lists on Amazon and you’ll find a lot of indie authors there just like Michael, who started with no sales, no platform and are now selling thousands and thousands of books a month. I want to close by thanking Joe for allowing me to tell Michael’s story. I hope you found it both interesting and inspirational, and as always thanks Joe for being “you” and helping to light a torch that other indies can follow. Outside of the Dan Poynter (who I consider the father of self-publishing), you’ve done more than anyone I can think of to promote this publishing revolution.

Joe sez - This is an eye-opening post for many reasons, the first of which is Robin and Michael made $10k more than I did in December, even though I sold more books. It certainly makes me rethink my "$2.99 is the magic price point" stance.

But when I read this post, one thing jumps out at me: this is only the beginning.

Ebooks currently account for 10% of book sales. What happens when they're 40%? 60%? 85%?

What happens when, in a world economy, Amazon begins selling Kindles to China, India, Japan, Russia, and all the other countries?

There are perhaps 15 million Kindles now, and 70 million Kindle apps.

I foresee a day when there are billions of ereaders.

When that happens, I predict I'll be earning a wee bit more than I am now. And so will the other indies smart enough to jump on this bandwagon.

A Response to Richard Curtis

Yesterday, respected agent Richard Curtis posted an article he wrote called Do Authors Make Good Publishers?

His conclusion is: No.

He cited me as one of his examples, and quoted my website. I wish he'd contacted me personally, because the quote he took is out of date.

It's my fault for not updating my website regularly, but I've since had a 180 degree change of stance on self publishing.

Authors should self-publish.

As ebooks continue to gain ground, and print continues to lose ground, and publishers and bookstores continue to report losses, this industry isn't nearly as stable as it once was. In fact, I'm not sure the industry will survive.

In an ebook-dominated world, are publishers even needed?

I can't think of a single, compelling reason to allow publishers to keep 52.5% of ebook royalties and give authors just 17.5%--especially when any writer can make 70% by uploading to Kindle themselves.

In December, I made over $24,000 self-publishing, and I'm currently averaging $1300 per day. But I'm far from the only one doing well.

Among other insights, Curtis said:

If your name is not familiar to the reading public, however, emulating Konrath will flop.

That's an easy conclusion to jump to, but it's wrong.

LJ Sellers sold 10,000 ebooks in December. No agent or prior large publishing contracts.

HP Mallory sold over 22,000 ebooks in December. No prior publishing contracts, and she just signed with an agent.

Michael R. Sullivan sold over 10,000 ebooks in December. No agent or prior publishing contracts.

Amanda Hocking recently turned down a lucrative offer from a house to continue self-publishing. Amanda sold a staggering 100,000 ebooks in December alone.

Here's a partial list of authors selling more than 1000 ebooks a month, none of who had any traditional publishing background (no deals, no agents.)

David Wisehart
B. Tackitt
Vianka Van Bokkem
Maria Hooley
Tina Folsom
C.S. Marks
Melanie Nilles
Robert Burton Robinson
Bella Andre
Lexi Revellian
Michael Sullivan
Victorine Lieske
H.P. Mallory
Lauren Saga
Terri Reid
Imogen Rose
Nathan Lowell
Ellen Fisher
Vianka Van Bokkem
David Dalglish
Sandra Edwards
C. S. Marks
Sibel Hodge
Julie Christensen
Holly A. Hook
David McAfee
Danielle Q. Lee
Valmore Daniels
Steven L. Hawk
Edward C. Patterson
William Meikle
Maria Hooley
M. Louisa Locke
Beth Orsoff*
Eric Christopherson
Monique Martin
Ellen O'Connell
Karen Cantwell
Stacey Wallace Benefiel
Aaron Patterson
Zoe Winters
Karen McQuestion
JR Rain

And this is a very small sampling of authors doing well epublishing.

If you browse the Kindle genre bestseller lists, between 20% and 90% of the authors listed there are self-published authors. In some cases, because of the higher royalties Amazon offers, these writers are making more money than traditionally pubbed authors. I earn $2.09 on a $2.99 ebook. I only earn 82 cents on a $4.79 ebook published by my print publisher.

On top of that, I'm earning $100 a day on POD books through Createspace, selling through Amazon.

I really think it's time the world stops calling me an outlier who is successful because of my platform. Here are three reasons why the outlier argument is poor:

1. If platform is the key, why are unknown newbies smoking me in sales?

2. If background and name recognition leads to huge sales, why aren't my traditionally published peers who decided to self-pub (I can name a dozen) selling as well as I am?

3. And if my name is so gosh-darn golden, why weren't any of my print novels bestsellers?

Change is scary. When it first starts to occur, people are afraid of it, and come up with excuses for it. Of course the industry wants to view me as an anomaly. If I'm not an anomaly, and others can do what I'm doing, the industry is in big trouble.

Guess what? Others ARE doing what I'm doing. And the industry IS in big trouble.

If you want to read about more self-pubbed authors doing well, check out this thread on Kindleboards, begun by Robin Sullivan.

http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,47263.0.html

Guest Post by L.J. Sellers

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be spotlighting authors who have been selling a lot of ebooks. By "a lot" I mean near as many as I am, or more.

I can name at least ten authors making a very nice living self-publishing, and most of them don't have the platform, experience, or traditionally published backlist like I do.

There is money to be made, and you don't have to be a midlist writer with years of experience in order to make it.


I Left My Publisher, Gave Up on Bookstores, and Started Making Money by L.J. Sellers, author of the Detective Jackson mysteries

In January of 2010, I had one book on Kindle and sold 31 copies. I had two print books on the market with a small publisher, and they weren’t selling much better. In December, I had six books on Kindle and sold over 10,000 copies. To get from point A to point B, I had to make some radical decisions.

Several circumstances came together this year that forced me to rethink everything about my publishing career. First, I have to thank Joe for inspiring me to believe that I too could become a successful e-book author. The other incentive came from a round of layoffs in March for both my husband and myself.

I decided I had to stop wasting time and money on things that weren’t working and focus on things that were. What wasn’t working for me was my small publisher, which couldn’t get my books into bookstores. What was working for a lot of people was the growth of e-book sales.
I set aside the novel I was writing and got busy saving my career.

The first step was to rewrite and self-publish on Kindle a standalone thriller I had completed but never sold. I’d once had a big-name agent for it, so I knew it was solid. I also had a second standalone thriller that my publisher had offered a contract for, but I hadn’t signed it yet—because the book wasn’t scheduled to be released until late 2012. That seemed like an eternal and foolish wait. I had a mortgage to pay immediately. What made sense was to get the two thrillers into the digital world where readers were buying. I took the second major step and let my publisher know I was withdrawing my standalone.

I spent a couple months rewriting and updating the stories, then I paid for editing and cover design. I withdrew the money from my miniscule retirement account and considered it an investment in my future.

In August, I published the two thrillers (The Baby Thief and The Suicide Effect) on Amazon’s DTP. At that point, I had one foot in each world. I was self-published, but I still had a traditional press for my series.

Next, I rerouted my promotional efforts toward e-book readers. I quit sending marketing material to bookstores and instead joined several Kindle forums, where I participated in discussions. I got more active on Goodreads and did five back-to-back book giveaways just for the exposure. I wrote a dozen guest blogs and sent them all over the Internet.

My sales jumped significantly. By then my publisher had uploaded the second Detective Jackson story (Secrets to Die For) to Kindle, and I started thinking about how much money I could make if my publisher wasn’t keeping most of my digital profits.

After the third Jackson book (Thrilled to Death) faced the same difficulty getting into bookstores, I decided withdraw from my press. It took a few weeks to finally make the call. Who willingly gives up a second publishing contract? Taking back my series meant foregoing the industry’s stamp of approval. I hated to let it go, but I felt I had no choice if I wanted to make a living.

So I called my publisher and asked for my Kindle rights back. I also asked to be released from the contract for the fourth Jackson story (Passions of the Dead). I knew the manuscript had not been edited, so no time or money had been invested. My publisher was not happy, but graciously granted my requests.

Letting go of that contract was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Not only did it mean taking on the “self-published” stigma, it also meant giving up book signings, which I love. But I had looked into the future and determined that bookstores were not where most people would buy their novels in 2012. For once, I wanted to be ahead of the curve.

I sent my Jackson files to be converted to e-books, then uploaded my versions to Amazon, as my publisher took hers down. At that point, I had five books selling on Kindle, and my numbers were getting better every month. While the last manuscript was out for editing and cover design, I bought an inexpensive ad on the Kindle Nation newsletter and increased my online promotional efforts. Sales took another huge leap.

When I released the fourth Jackson story on Kindle, I dropped the price of the first book in the series (The Sex Club), to $.99. Sales for the first book skyrocketed, and a week later, sales for the follow-up stories nearly doubled.

I’m also fortunate that Mystery Scene magazine has been supportive, giving me great reviews and featuring me as an author. I received another terrific review in its Holiday issue and that pushed both e-book and print sales.

Yes, I’ve made all my books available in print through CreateSpace, and I’ve contracted with INgrooves to target all the non-Kindle devices and libraries too.

Interesting side note: For the fourth Jackson book, I made more money from Kindle sales in the first two weeks than I had made from my publisher in two years. If I had stayed with the contract, that book would not have been released for another nine months. Life is too short to wait for someone else’s publishing schedule.

Now in December, I have six e-books on the market, with all the royalties coming to me. The Sex Club consistently ranks in one of the top three spots on Kindle’s police procedural list, and the three other Jackson books are almost always in the top 20 or 30 on the same list. I’m happily writing a fifth Jackson story and calling myself a full-time novelist.

Joe sez: L.J. is a perfect example of all the things I'm constantly harping about:

1. Good books.
2. Good covers.
3. Good book descriptions.
4. Low prices.

She was smart enough to leave her publisher, and savvy enough to do a lot of marketing, including giving away freebies and working the social networks. By treating this as a business, and acting like a pro, she's managed to hit a lot of Kindle bestseller lists. She also has a backlist of several books; which is akin to shelf space in a brick and mortar store. The more books available, the more customers who will see them.

10,000 ebooks in a month is damn impressive. If she keeps this up, she's going to make a nice chunk of change in 2011, and beyond.

Here are some other successful self-pubbing writers whom I've interviewed, or who have guest posted on my blog:

• Selena Kitt
• Blake Crouch
• Robert W. Walker
• James Swain
• Lee Goldberg
• Henry Perez
• David Morrell
• Scott Nicholson
• Simon Wood
• Boyd Morrison
• Mark Terry
• Karen McQuestion
• Libby Fischer Hellmann
• Stacey Cochran
• Bestselling Kindle Authors

The Death Spiral

This today from PW:

Still reeling from record losses and a continuing drop in sales in the third quarter, the Borders Group announced that it is delaying payments to some publishers.

The whole article is HERE.

This is something that has concerned me for a while. Here's how it could play out.

1. Publishers insist on being paid.
2. Borders begins returning books for credit, to pay what they owe.
3. Fewer books on the shelf means fewer sales.
4. Fewer sales means more bookstores closing.
5. More bookstores closing means fewer sales.
6. Repeat.

If Borders closes a lot of stores, or closes their doors completely, it will mean publishers will make less money.

If they make less money, they won't be able to publish as many books. Fewer books published means fewer books sold, which means even less money.

I've heard a lot of anecdotal evidence from my writing peers about authors being dropped by their houses, or being offered smaller advances. I've heard more anecdotal evidence that it has become harder to sell books to publishers.

So what are authors going to do if they can't sell their books to publishers?

The smart ones will self-publish.

Here's a broader possible forecast:

1. Borders withholds payments.
2. Publishers demand to be paid.
3. Borders returns books.
4. Fewer books means fewer sales, which means smaller profits.
5. Publishers tighten their belts and don't buy as many books.
6. Fewer books published means fewer books sold.
7. Bookstores close, meaning fewer books sold.
8. Fewer books sold means fewer books bought by publishers.
9. Authors, unable to sell to publishers, decide to self-publish.
10. Self-pubbed books means fewer books sold in bookstores, and fewer sales for publishers.
11. Repeat.

Things don't look good for bookstores.

They don't look good for publishers either.

But could the skyrocketing ebook market save publishers?

It depends. If the majority of bookstores close, the print midlist will probably disappear. Bestsellers will still be sold in big boxes and non-bookstore outlets, but if a book isn't a blockbuster, it likely won't be released in print.

The reason publishers are so important to authors is because they have a lock on distribution, and they get those print books onto shelves and into stores. Everything else--editing, cover art, marketing--can be outsourced by the author. But the author can't get their book into Sam's Club or CVS or every Borders store.

If publishers stop printing books and focus on ebooks, authors have to ask themselves what are the benefits of signing with a publisher? Why let a publisher take 52.5% of the cover price of an ebook, while an author takes only 17.5%? Especially when an author can do it themselves and make 70%?

This death spiral may not happen for a while. It might not happen at all.

But authors should be thinking about all of the changes happening in the industry right now. If you sign a book deal which states the first book won't be released until June 2012, will there be any chain bookstores still standing? What if it's a three book deal, with the last book out in 2015?

In the past, publishers could be counted on for stability. But in the last year, we've seen Leisure and Medallion stop their print lines. I have friends who haven't gotten their latest royalty statements or checks.

Here are some things for writers to discuss with their agents to protect themselves:

1. Make sure there is a reversion of rights clause based on the book being in print and selling a certain number of copies per year.

2. Look out for "non compete" clauses, which wouldn't allow a writer to release ebooks on their own during the duration of the print deal.

3. Make sure there are clauses that protect the writer in case of a publisher's bankruptcy.

4. Look out for clauses that state the publisher can release the ebook without releasing the print book.

5. If ebooks become the dominant format (a possibility if the death spiral ensues), then the 17.5% royalty rate publishers currently offer needs to change. A "most favored nations" clause along the lines of "if the publisher ever offers another author more than 17.5%, that rate will automatically be applied to this contract" is a way for authors to avoid getting locked into a lousy royalty rate for life.

6. Get as much money up front as you can.

In my previous post, I said that authors should self-publish because they can make more money.

Looking at the current publishing climate, I'd be really hesitant to sign a deal because I'd be afraid bookstores, or publishers, won't be around much longer.

In the past, it made monetary sense for publishers to allow books to go out of print.

Today, a savvy publisher would want to hold onto those rights as long as possible, to exploit the erights.

That scares me more than a little.