Shelf Space and Paper Trails

Whoever has their name on the most pieces of paper, wins.

This has been true in the print world since the beginning of print. The more copies available, the more exposure people have to those books. The more exposure, the more potential fans.

With authors, having big print runs is always a good thing. Even if a hardcover run doesn't sell that well, the books get remaindered. While authors don't get any royalties on these $3.99 discount titles found in the sales sections of bookstores, these books do find new readers, some of who will go on to buy the author's other, newer work.

If your book stays in print, and it's joined by other books of yours, this improves your chances to be discovered, because now you have shelf space. If your books take up five, ten, or twenty spots on a bookstore (or library) shelf, you're more likely to be noticed by browsers.

But your name on books isn't the only paper that counts.

Your name in reviews leads people to your books. Your name on the blurbs of other writers' books can also have a similar effect. Every short story you write and sell widens your potential fanbase.

Ads. Press releases. Articles. Every piece of paper your name is on can help your career, because it's one more reminder to the world that you exist. It's a paper trail that leads right to you.

But does this apply to virtual paper? How about ebooks and the Internet?

Yes. A thousand times yes.

The Internet is permanent. Every mention of your name and your books will last forever, leading people in your direction. And unlike print, which can take a long time to build up to reach that critical mass/tipping point where you become a household name, the Internet can work much faster.

As far as I know, no author has gone "viral" yet. Though some, like Cory Doctorow, Boyd Morrison, and Scott Sigler, have used the Internet wisely to widen their fanbase and turn popularity into money.

This blog gets thousands of hit per week. On weeks I blog about ebooks, my ebook sales go up. When I release a newsletter to 10,000 people, my Amazon numbers spike. If I Twitter something timely, I get more traffic.

Your digital name on digital paper (the world wide web) works twice. First, it works for those who see it when it happens. Next, it works for those who see it weeks, months, or years after it happened.

It can be both instant and cumulative. And it can be very effective.

As of today, Feb 24 at 9:07am, I've made $2750 this month on Kindle.

Next month, I'm putting four more ebooks up on Kindle (including an updated version of the Newbie's Guide to Publishing book.)

I'd be a fool not to. More ebooks means more chances to discover me, which means more potential sales.

The more shelf space I have, the more books I'll sell.

Which brings us to the obvious question: What can you do to get your name on more pieces of paper?

1. Look At Your Past - My early novels, which were rejected more than 500 times, have become long-term investments that are finally paying off. I wish I had more rejected novels. If you've got a book that was good enough to land an agent, but didn't sell, there's no reason you shouldn't be getting some of this ebook traffic. Just make sure the work is good.

2. Previously Published Work - Got some out-of-print novels? Some short stories or articles? Turn these into ebooks. Put them on your website for free, and on Kindle for a small fee. The more virtual shelf space you take up, the better.

3. Blog, Website, Social Networks - Your Internet presence is the perfect opportunity to find new readers. Surfers are looking for content. If you write a thoughtful blog, have a lot of free stuff on your website, and you're an active participant in online communities, you're getting your name out there, both passively (thanks to search engines) and actively (thanks to links and signatures.)

4. Reviews - Recently, several large NY Print Publishers announced they were discontinuing printed galleys and instead giving ebook advanced readers to booksellers and reviewers. Guess what? I've been doing this for years. I've sent out hundreds of ebooks for free to reviewers and bloggers and booksellers. If you can trade an advance ebook copy for a review, that's a small price to pay.

5. Writing. Writers write. If you're avoiding writing for the ebook market, you should perhaps rethink your priorities.

My third bestselling ebook on Kindle is TRUCK STOP. I wrote TRUCK STOP specifically for Kindle. And I had an insidious reason for doing so.

TRUCK STOP is a Jack Daniels novella, where Jack chases two killers. The first is Donaldson, the villain from SERIAL which I wrote with Blake Crouch under the name Jack Kilborn (and which has been downloaded more than 200,000 times.) The second is Taylor, the villain from AFRAID by Jack Kilborn.

TRUCK STOP is basically a gateway drug. Those who read SERIAL for free, or TRUCK STOP for $1.59, will often go on to read AFRAID and the entire Jack Daniels series. TRUCK STOP is a fun story, with some thrills and laughs, but its ultimate goal is to lead people to more of my writing. It's currently the #380 bestseller in the Kindle store.

AFRAID is currently #756 in the Kindle store. It came out ten months ago, and is priced at $5.59.

WHISKEY SOUR is currently #3174 in the Kindle store, priced at $4.79. That's not too shabby, considering it came out six years ago.

Why is a six-year-old book selling better than 420,000 other Kindle titles, many by big bestselling name authors?

Because of shelf space and paper trails. Because I've positioned myself there, with low cost Kindle books and timely blog topics. Because I've blurbed a lot of authors, and keep my website updated, and use Twitter and Facebook. Because I've toured, and been reviewed, and gone to conferences, and generally done all that I can to get my name out there.

I never got big discounting in the bookstores, or coop. I never got huge marketing campaigns. I never got big print runs, or my books in Sam's Club and CVS.

Yet I'm still standing. And I can't help but think it has something to do with my efforts to get my name on as many pieces of paper--both dead tree and virtual--as I possibly can.

Quality counts. But quantity is important too.

It would be wonderful if every new book got a huge print run and a major advertising campaign and a giant marketing push. I'm still waiting for that to happen to me.

But while I continue to wait, I'm doing everything I can to make my own luck. And as the tide shifts from DTBs to ebooks, more and more authors are going to make their own luck, too.

Do you want to be one of them?

Understanding Kindle Bestsellers

This blog title is misleading. I make no claim to understand why a book becomes a bestseller on Kindle. I have a few hypotheses, but no real way to test them.

So I'm going to ask you what you think.

Currently, I have four self-published ebook novels on Kindle, each priced at $1.99. As of right now (Feb. 17 at 7:20am) one of these novels has sold 1327 copies so far this month. Another has sold 519 copies. The third has sold 212. And the fourth novel has sold 166.

There's a big gap between 1327 and 166. And I've been scratching my head for months, wondering why that gap has stayed so wide.

Is it cover art? Is it genre? Is it the writing sample people can download for free before they buy? Is it the product description? Is it bestseller ranking (meaning a bestseller continues to be a bestseller because people see it on the bestseller list)? Is it word of mouth?

The natural assumption would be that this book sells the best because it is my best. But I don't feel it's better than the others, and neither do readers if we go by reviews and the email I get.

This gets even stranger, because if I look at the downloads on my website (three of these books are available for free on my site) the bestseller on the Kindle store isn't the bestselling download on my webpage, even though the ebooks all have the same cover art and description as their Kindle counterparts.

Color me confused.

These books have been on Kindle since April. One might think that the numbers would have reached some kind of equilibrium by now. That the biggest seller would slow down, and those who read it and liked it would be buying the other three books. Or that the top bestseller slot would change.

But it hasn't. These four books have been in the same bestselling order since April. Here are their total sales so far:

First bestseller: 9691
Second bestseller: 5014
Third bestseller: 2239
Fourth bestseller: 1716

My question to you is: why?

I'm going to post the covers and the product descriptions for all four. I'm also going to post links, if you're so inclined to download the free sample.

After you look at the covers and descriptions for each, tell me which you think is best, and why.

DISTURB

A medical investigator tormented by secret guilt.
A beautiful doctor with an illicit desire.
A millionaire businessman indulging a passion for murder.
And a human guinea pig who has been awake for seven straight weeks.

DISTURB by JA Konrath
You’ll never sleep well again...

JA Konrath is the author of six mysteries in the Lt. Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels series, including Whiskey Sour, Bloody Mary, Rusty Nail, Dirty Martini, Fuzzy Navel, and Cherry Bomb. Disturb is Konrath's first medical thriller.

Disclaimer: This novel is filled with extortion, conspiracy, taboo sex, hidden secrets, shocking violence, and murderous betrayal. Not recommended for the faint of heart.

This ebook version also includes the bonus horror short story, "Dear Diary," about a very special pom pon girl.


THE LIST

A billionaire Senator with money to burn...
A thirty year old science experiment, about to be revealed...
Seven people, marked for death, not for what they know, but for what they are...

THE LIST by JA Konrath
History is about to repeat itself

JA Konrath is the author of six novels in the Lt. Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels thriller series. The latest is CHERRY BOMB.

THE LIST is a bit of a departure for Konrath. It's a technothriller about a group of ten people who each have tattoos of numbers on the bottoms their feet, and don't know why.

One of them, a Chicago Homicide cop named Tom Mankowski, has had one of these strange tattoos since birth. When he investigates a violent murder and discovers the victim also has a tattooed number, it sets the ball rolling for an adventure of historic proportions.

To say more would give away too much.

Like the Jack Daniels series, The List combines laugh out loud humor with serious suspense and thrills.


ORIGIN

Thriller writer J.A. Konrath, author of the Lt. Jack Daniels series, digs into the vaults and unearths a technohorror tale from the depths of hell...

1906 - Something is discovered by workers digging the Panama Canal. Something dormant. Sinister. Very much alive.

2009 - Project Samhain. A secret underground government installation begun 103 years ago in New Mexico. The best minds in the world have been recruited to study the most amazing discovery in the history of mankind. But the century of peaceful research is about to end.

BECAUSE IT JUST WOKE UP.

ORIGIN by J.A. Konrath
All hell is about the break loose. For real.


SHOT OF TEQUILA

A GUTSY ROBBERY
Several million bucks, stolen from the mob...

A PERFECT FRAME
All caught on video, with no chance of redemption...

A RED HOT RECIPE FOR RAMPAGING REVENGE
Now one man must face the entire Chicago Outfit, a group of hardened Mafia enforcers, a psychotic bookie, the most dangerous hitman on earth, and Detective Jacqueline Daniels...

His name is Tequila. And he likes those odds.

SHOT OF TEQUILA by JA Konrath


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So tell me, based on the above, which is the most appealing? What's the best cover? What's the best description? Why is the bestselling ebook selling almost seven times the number of the least selling ebook, when they're all thrillers written by the same author and with similar styles?

I'm eager to hear your responses, because I flat out have no idea why one book sells more than the other three combined.

If you follow this blog regularly, or click on the links to read the free samples (you can download a Kindle reader to your computer for free), you already know which one is my bestseller. But please refrain from trying to explain why it's the bestseller, because that's attributing significance to an occurrence after it happens.

Instead, tell me what does or doesn't appeal, and if you had to buy one of these books, which one it would be and why...

Which JA Konrath Kindle Ebook Would You Buy First?

Kudzu and Kindle

All along, the goal has been to build a fanbase.

In the history of publishing, this was usually a slow and steady process. You write a book. Then you write another a year later. And another a year after that. Hopefully the publisher keeps them in print, the bookstore keeps them on the shelf, and the fans like them and talk about them. This linear approach, if kept up long enough, can lead to a career, and even a spot on the bestseller list.

But there's an easier way to achieve market penetration and saturation.

Instead of releasing one book at once, you release sixteen.

There's a plant known as kudzu, which is widely hated in the south because it takes over cropland. It grows fast, and uses runners to spread. Kudzu can quickly saturate an entire field. One patch becomes two patches, then four patches, then sixteen patches, and pretty soon it's everywhere you look.

I'm noticing a similar phenomenon with writing in general, and ebooks in particular.

I've always believed that being prolific and diverse are the two biggest things a writer can do to create fans. Because of this, I write a lot of short stories, in various genres. The effect works as intended. I've got a few hundred thousand novels in print. But my short stories have been printed millions of times. Each published story is an opportunity to gain a new fan, some of whom will buy my books.

This approach has served me well. I get a lot of fan mail about my short work, and it often leads to the intended effect; to point readers toward my novels.

But this still isn't literary kudzu. It's a slow, gradual build up (albeit faster than if I only did novels.)

Then along comes the Kindle.

For those new to my blog, here's a recap of how I got started on Amazon.

Ever since my first novel, Whiskey Sour, was published back in 2004, I've had a website, www.jakonrath.com. I understood early on that people on the internet are looking for free content, and the two main forms of content are information and entertainment. So, from the very beginning, I've had free downloads on my website. Lots of short stories, and several of my pre-Whiskey Sour novels that couldn't find publishers.

After the Kindle's debut, I had Kindle readers contact me, saying the pdf downloads I offered on my site weren't compatible with their ereader. Could I please somehow make my ebooks available on Kindle?

So I did. But I wasn't allowed to give them away for free. So after some experimentation, I settled on a $1.99 price point.

This was in April 2009. In ten months and a few days, I've sold about 26,000 ebooks. In the first fourteen days of February, I've already made $1600. My bestseller, The List, isn't just the number one bestseller in the Kindle police procedure category, it's the number one bestseller in the overall police procedure category. In other words, I'm outselling print novels from Jonathan Kellerman, JD Robb, James Patterson, Robert Crais, Michael Connelly, Harlan Coben, John Sandford, and everyone else. (For the curious, this book is averaging 82 sales per day.)

That's pretty astonishing. All of these writers are NYT Bestsellers. I am not. I'm just a midlister with a low cost ebook.

But here comes the kudzu tie-in. I've recently learned that all six of my Jack Daniels ebooks are among my print publisher's top 50 Kindle bestsellers. These books are priced higher than $1.99. In fact, one of them costs $9.99.

On the Kindle police procedure bestseller list, I currently have 7 books in the top 100.

This is instant market penetration and saturation. Unlike a slow, gradual growth, this is more like kudzu, which pops up in a bunch of places at once and keeps spreading out. Different readers discover different ebook titles of mine, and it sends them to other ebooks.

The more chances you have to be discovered, the more you'll be discovered. Building a fanbase, which used to be linear and gradual, now becomes more like a patch of weeds, spreading out in all directions and at great speed.

So you want to be a Kindle bestseller?

The more quality content you have, the better your chances. Short stories. Out of print books. Unpublished work that your agent couldn't sell.

This is more than just a quick way to make a buck. This is getting a firm foothold in the oncoming digital revolution.

I used to be known as the guy who wrote nine unpublished novels and got over five hundred rejections before landing a book deal.

Now I'm known as the guy who pays his mortgage selling books on Kindle that NY rejected.

Be the kudzu. Join the revolution before everyone else figures this out and it's harder to get noticed.

You Can Pry My Ebooks From My Cold, Dead Fingers

Recently, I've been blogging about the inevitable dominance of ebooks over dead tree books.

My own experiments show I can make more money selling ebooks than print.

I talked about how Amazon was losing money on Kindle ebooks sold, and envisioned a new publishing system involving estributors.

I refuted some of the common arguments against ebooks.

I predicted what the future of ebooks might be like. And how format is largely the reason we haven't fully embraced ebooks yet.

I considered the new agency model in selling ebooks, and came to the conclusion that publishers seem to care more about selling paper than connecting writers with readers.

I talked about the perception of ownership and the perception of value with print and ebooks.

Barry Eisler put forth a terrific argument about the inevitability of digital dominance.

And finally, I considered the difference between destination value and journey value, and concluded that the sentimental connection people have with print books will likely change, as it is no more compelling than an attachment to any other outdated method of media.

The overwhelming conclusion I've come to is that ebooks will one day be the preferred method of reading. This day is inevitable, and is coming quickly. Print publishers don't seem ready for it, and their methods to delay this eventuality will only lead to annoying their customers, piracy, and alienating their authors.

When I first talked about ebook piracy, I made an argument that cheap sells, free sells even more, and the only way to fight file sharing is with cost and convenience.

The music and movie industries tried to fight piracy, and failed. As a result, companies not previously associated with music and movies have become rich by doing three things.

1. Understanding consumer need.
2. Giving the consumers what they want at a price consumers are willing to pay.
3. Making it as convenient as possible for consumers.

As a result of this, the biggest music player maker and music seller is a computer company, and companies such as Tivo and Netflix, along with services like Direct TV and On Demand, are changing the way people watch movies.

Apple, and the companies that rent TV shows and movies through subscriptions, have discovered something interesting about the media habits of humans.

It used to be thought that we really valued the physical object the media was presented on. As consumers, it was important for us to own VHS and cassette tapes, DVDs and LPs, CDs and BluRay.

And yet, consumers have shown, in greater and greater numbers, that they don't care about the delivery system, and they don't care about ownership of a tangible product. They just want a cheap and easy way to watch the damn movie and listen to the damn song.

Where did this trend begin? When did we start to realize that ownership of an experience didn't require a physical object?

Oddly enough, I think piracy plays a large part in the acceptance and adaptation of new technology.

Let's look at three types of media. Music, movies, and video games.

I've already yakked at length about the many different formats music has had over the years, so I won't recap it here. But when we did fully embrace CDs, it seemed to coincide with the invention of the CD recorder. Being able to share media, ironically, led to the sales of more media.

The RIAA says that the widespread adoption of mp3s lead to more piracy than ever before. But perhaps piracy is what lead to the widespread adoption of mp3s. While music companies tried to block it, Apple created a player for it, and a store to sell the media. Apple looked at what consumers were doing, and responded accordingly.

In the latest video game console wars, is it a coincidence that the only system that has remained hack proof, the PS3, has also sold far fewer units than the hackable Xbox 360 and the Wii? The PSP and Nintendo DS are also hackable, as is the iPhone. All are flourishing.

People like being able to do what they want with their media, and with their media readers. They like to share, and copy, and customize. And as a result, more units, and more media, winds up selling on systems where piracy thrives.

There's a lot of movie and TV show piracy online. But it's a very odd phenomenon. On one hand, there are those who sneak camcorders into films still in the theaters, and upload their copies. There are also those that make 1:1 copies of DVDs and BluRay disks, complete with cover art, so you have a perfect copy of something you'd otherwise pay for.

But, believe it or not, the majority of movie and TV piracy isn't with first run flicks and full DVD copies.

It's with rips and with recent TV shows.

A "rip" is taking a movie and stripping out most of the extra stuff so it's still good quality, but under 700mb (a DVD is normally 4.7 to 8.5 gigabytes.) 700mb fits on a CD, but more often than not, pirates will watch these directly on their computers.

Right after any TV show airs, the torrent sites and file lockers are flooded with people sharing the latest episode of Lost or House or The Biggest Loser.

The conclusion I draw from this isn't that pirates are interested in stealing media. They're more interested in file sharing as a cheap and easy distribution method. You search for what you want. You download it quickly. You experience it.

So along come Tivo, On Demand, Direct TV, and Netflix. What do they do? They allow consumers to experience media cheaply, easily, and quickly. And consumers have embraced these distribution methods to the point where Blockbuster Video--the same dominant force that squeezed out all the mom and pop video stores across the country--is now themselves closing stores left and right.

Consumers have shown us what they want. Ownership of a tangible product is becoming less and less important. Downloading a song, or a movie, or a TV show--either permanently or temporarily through a subscription model--is how many people are deciding to experience media.

I've said before that piracy is human nature. The internet was created to store and share information. It's directly tied to how we communicate. That's why we lend each other blooks and movies, and send emails linking to YouTube videos, and link to each other's blogs and then Tweet the link on Twitter.

How do books play into this? A hardcover book is a luxury item in today's market. It's eight hours of entertainment for $30. That's a month's worth of movies on Netflix, or thirty songs on iTunes. And a paper book is far from an instant delivery system.

If books are going digital, as most seem to predict, the ability to share media, and get it instantly, will help advance the adoption of ebooks by the masses. And as companies like Apple and Netflix and Gamefly (for videogames) have learned, the masses dictate what they're willing to pay for this service.

Not the film producers. Not the music producers. And not the videogame producers.

It's a third party that stepped in, saw the need, and exploited it.

So along comes Amazon. They already have a huge advantage over any other third party. They're the largest online book retailer. It didn't take a huge leap in faith for Jeff Bezos to realize he could also become the biggest online ebook retailer, if they only had an ereader device.

Now the Kindle is the market leader. The technology is only going to become more widespread, more advanced, and cheaper, as time goes on.

Where are the print publishers? Why aren't they making ereaders? Why aren't they allowing for cheap ebook downloads on their websites? Why don't they have customer forums and subscription models? Why are the clinging to an outdated model so tightly that they're now demanding to set both wholesale and retail price of their products?

The videogame industry got it. The PS3, Xbox, PSP, and Wii all allow for downloadable games and online subscription-based play. And guess what? The PS3 finally got hacked. I predict sales will rise as a result.

People want inexpensive media at the press of a button. Books will follow the same model as movies, music, video games, and TV.

It will be an ebook future. A cheap, instant, ebook future.

And we'll embrace it. We always do.

You Can Pry My Paper Books From My Cold, Dead Fingers

People have an emotional attachment to printed books. So much so, that the most repeated argument against the universal adoption of ebooks is "I love print, and no ebook will ever be able to take its place."

Let's analyze this position. At its heart, the argument is emotional, not logical, for reasons this essay will explain. But an emotional response is still a very effective one. We're an emotional species, and the history of mankind shows that emotion often dictates our actions.

Looking at the history of technology, it isn't too often that a new tech completely replaces the tech that existed previously. The automobile became the preferred method of personal transportation, but many people still own horses, and every big city offers the expensive horse and buggy ride around town.

Consider the bow and arrow. When gunpowder was invented, a natural assumption could have been that there would never again be any use for arrows. Yet archery is still a thriving business, and you can go into any sporting goods store and buy a crossbow.

People used horses to get from point A to point B. People used bow and arrows to hit a target from a distance. When cars and guns came, it was easier to get to point B and hit targets using these new techs. As a result, they became the widely adopted methods to complete these tasks.

Let's say that a technology used to complete a task has "destination value." The goal is getting the task done, and if one tech is advantageous over another tech, it often becomes the preferred method.

But there are still archery ranges and horse riders. That's because these offer an experience as well as a destination value. It's fun to get to point B on a horse, and ask any Ted Nugent fan about his affinity for the compound bow.

Sometimes it isn't just about the destination value. Sometimes the journey is also important.

Let's call this experience "journey value." It's a large part of the reason the horse and bow never went away.

These techs, however, aren't media.

Media, by definition, is a delivery system.

But is the end result the destination? Or does the journey also have value?

Let's use the music industry as an example yet again, because I believe there are parallels to the publishing industry.

The LP was the dominant music format for years. 8 track tapes were invented as an alternative, and though they had some advantages (you could now play music in your car) they didn't replace LPs.

But in the case of both the LP and the 8-track, they had similar destination value. They both allowed you to listen to a song. Their comparable journey value was negligible. How you listened to the song really didn't add much to the experience. The point was being able to listen to a song, not the format the song was in.

Along come cassette tapes. These had an advantage over 8-tracks and LPs, because they could record music. But they didn't replace LPs. Music stores sold LPs and cassettes side by side, and different consumers had different preferences.

Again, the experience is the song itself, not the delivery method. High destination value. Low journey value.

Then CDs came on the scene. It was originally thought by the industry that cassettes would be the death of LPs, because cassettes allowed for piracy. But the two mediums co-existed peacefully for years.

With the advent of CDs, the quality of music went up. Digital allowed for a lossless version of the musical artist's master tapes, with a delivery system superior to both LPs and cassettes.

Digital also allowed those original masters to be digitally remastered, to make the quality better than ever.

But consumers didn't warm up to CDs right away. First of all, the device to play CDs on was very expensive (I recall it being the most expensive part of a stereo system for several years after it was introduced.)

Music publishers, however, wanted people to adopt this new format. I'm not sure why. Maybe deals with CD player manufacturers. Maybe CDs had a higher profit margin than LPs and cassettes, or were easier to ship or mass produce. Whatever the reason, they wanted to push this new technology. And one of the ways they did this was to stop making as many LPs.

At one point, you would walk into a music store and it was all LPs, and some 8 tracks. Years later, it was about half LPs and half cassettes. Years later it was a few LPs, cassettes, and a growing CD selection. Then it was no LPs, a few cassettes, and mostly CDs. And eventually, it was all CDs.

CDs did provide a better way to experience a song. They sounded better (though a few diehard LP audiophiles may argue against the point.)

But a CD was just a vehicle for the thing that hadn't changed: the song.

The destination value of a CD was equal to the destination value of a cassette. They both played a song that you could listen to. And the journey value to each was negligible. They could both be played on portable Walkmans, and in cars. CD had better sound quality. Cassettes could record music.

The ability to record music adds an interesting dynamic. One of the things I find interesting is that cassettes weren't fully replaced by CDs until another invention came out: the CD burner.

Like the CD player, the burner started out as very expensive. And it actually wasn't invented as a way to copy music. It was invented as a way to store data on a personal computer. But computer users soon realized that this new technology could be used for piracy.

A CD is digital. This digitized information could be copied onto a computer, and then that could be copied onto a blank disk.

Piracy then evolved. A CD of 12 songs takes up a lot of megabytes. So users began to play with ways to compress this information, so more songs could take up less space. The MP3 was born.

With the advent of the MP3, something interesting and unexpected happened. Consumers of music, used to having a physical, tangible product that was the delivery system for their music (the LP, cassette, or CD) realized they didn't need the tangible product. Music could exist solely as digital binary code on a computer.

Apple looked at this user trend, and created a user-friendly device that played MP3s. Today, a computer company is the biggest retailer of music players (iPod and iPhones) and music itself (on iTunes) in the world.

You'd think that maybe Columbia Records, or some other big record company, would have been the leader in this industry and spearheaded the MP3 movement. But they didn't. They tried to block it, and hired lots of lawyers and sued a lot of people and invested a ton of money in copy protection that didn't work.

Or perhaps a major retailer, like Sam Goody or Musicland, would have realized they were losing CD sales, and taken a good look at where there customers were now getting music. Surely they could have found a way to make money off of this trend.

But they didn't. They went out of business.

So a computer company now rules the music industry.

Now let's go back to destination value and journey value. While Apple changed the way the world listened to music, the destination value was still the same thing it has always been: the song.

While listening to a song on an iPod is easier and has many advantages to listening to an LP, the song is still the important thing. How you listen to a song has continually evolved since Edison. But this experience can't be logically compared to shooting a bow or riding a horse.

When you close your eyes and listen to a song, it's for the song. It's not for the experience of using a record player, cassette player, CD player, Zune, iPod, or computer. The joy is not sticking the tape in, or putting the headphones on.

I'd say that the delivery system for music is not nearly as important as the music itself. Which is why we've had so many delivery systems, and will no doubt have many more in our lifetimes.

The song remains the same. Technology will always march on. And neither the big record companies, nor the big record stores, ever figured that out.

So let's bring ebooks into this discussion.

By stating they won't ever give up print books, print aficionados are giving value to the journey. The act of turning pages, the smell of paper, the feel of a book in their hands--to print fans, this seems to be just as enjoyable as the story itself.

I don't buy it.

The joy of riding a horse, while destination can be important, is also closely tied in with with the experience. You can ride a horse with no destination at all and still have a great time.

You don't need to hunt with a bow and shoot an animal to enjoy the feeling of pulling back the bow string and letting an arrow fly, no matter the target. Using a arrow is fun just shooting it into the air (make sure no one is around first.)

Can you picture yourself popping a CD into the stereo without music coming out? Can you imagine going for a walk with your iPod, putting in your ear buds, and selecting a song on iTunes with the sound on mute? That's journey value, and the journey value is zero.

Now picture being curled up on a couch with a book. Smell it. Feel it. Stick out your tongue and taste it if you so desire.

How often would you repeat that experience if the book had no words on any of its pages?

In fact, the journey experience with media is imagined. Or it's tied into nostalgia, pleasant memories, and previous pleasurable experiences. People love paper books because it was the only way they've had, in the hundreds of years the medium has exited, to experience a story.

But a story is not print on a page. It never has been.

A story is the writer's words in your head.

And guess what, print book aficionados? You can get the story into your head without dead trees.


(This is the first part of a two part essay about changing media technology, the role of piracy in adopting new media technology, and why an online bookseller is now feared as having a stranglehold on the future of publishing. Part 2 is HERE.)

Digital Perception

Digitization has really screwed things up.

Whether the screw up is a good thing or a bad thing still remains to be seen. But recent talks of ebooks and piracy brings up two important (and I feel thought-provoking) issues.

First is the perception of ownership.

Second is the perception of value.

Ownership used to be an easy concept to grasp. If something exists tangibly (you can see, hear, taste, smell, and/or touch it) and it is in your possession (you bought it, traded for it, found it, created it, were given it), then you own it.

People get loans in order to own big things, like houses and cars, and until they pay off those loans, the bank is the true owner.

It's a pretty simple concept. Equally simple is the concept that if someone takes something you own without your permission, it is theft.

When we bring multimedia into the picture, things get sort of odd.

If you buy a CD, you own a physical object (the plastic disk) and also have the rights to listen to the music on it. You can legally sell the CD, though it would be considered illegal to make a copy for yourself first, because you're only entitled to listen to that content if you own the CD.

If you buy a song on iTunes, you don't own anything physical. You own a bunch of code that, when played on your iPod or computer, you can listen to the same as you can listen to a CD. You are allowed the rights to listen to that music depending on the terms of the sale. iTunes currently limits the number of computers you can have an iTunes account on (it's 5). If you try to transfer songs you bought to a sixth computer, you can't through iTunes.

If you listen to a song on the radio, you have the rights to hear that song, because the radio station and advertisers paid for it. It is within your rights to make a copy of that song from the radio and listen to it over and over.

It is not within your rights to borrow a CD from the library, make a copy of the CD, and listen to the songs over and over. That is considered theft.

So what constitutes ownership in a digital world?

If you digitally copy a song off the radio, and sync it with iTunes, do you own it?

I don't know the legal answer. I don't really care about the legal answer. I know I can record TV shows and cable movies, put them on a DVD, and keep them legally. I know I can buy used DVDs for dirt cheap and keep them legally. I know I can download pay-per-view movies, and depending on the terms, keep those movies for an extended period of time on my DVR, or forever on Tivo.

Do I own these movies or shows? Do I have the rights to watch these movies and shows?

If you Tivo a TV show, and skip through the commercials, is that stealing? The ads pay for the show. If it is stealing, I don't believe the average consumer cares.

Digitization has changed the perception of ownership in a digital world.

Those who create digital products know that these products are easy to copy and share. Even with the restrictions they put on these products (Macrovision, DRM, proprietary formatting) anyone with a bit of ingenuity can find their way around these copy protections.

In fact, a lot of people believe there should be no copy protection at all. If you legally buy a CD, it is yours to do what you want with. You can sell it, or loan it to your mom, or legally make a back-up copy.

These people wonder why they can't do that with intangible, digital media. They wonder why their rights are restricted.

If I bought a song on iTunes, shouldn't I be able to do the same thing with that song that I could do with a CD I bought?

And what of experiences? What constitutes ownership of an experience, rather than a tangible object?

If you sneak into the movie theater, it's stealing. You didn't pay for that experience.

If you borrow a DVD from the library, or watch it over at your friend's house, it isn't stealing, even though you didn't pay for the experience.

If you borrow a DVD from the library, and copy it to watch later, it is stealing.

If you Tivo the same movie to watch later, it's legal.

The concept of ownership is muddied in a digital world.

I'm sure there are laws that show the dividing line. I'm also sure that most people don't know, or in fact care about these laws. A movie is a movie. A song is a song. You can get them buy paying for them, or for free, through legal and illegal means.

In a digital world, without a tangible object (the plastic disk that is the CD or DVD), perception of ownership is cloudy.

But perception of value is not cloudy.

I don't know a lot of people who go into Best Buy and steal DVDs. They believe that it's wrong to do so. Theft of a tangible object means a monetary loss to the owner of that object. A tangible object has a perceived value beyond what the set price is, simply because it can be seen, heard, tasted, smelled, and touched.

Someone created it. It exists. Therefore, it has a perceived value.

I do know people who download music illegally. They feel it isn't theft, because there is no loss of a tangible object. They aren't paying for the experience the music provides, but there are other ways to experience music without paying for it, so why not download it for free? Downloading doesn't equate to a lost sale.

Now let's bring up books, since you all know I was heading there.

A book has a perceived value. That value varies wildly. You can buy a book for $24.95 new, or get an unread used copy of the same book in perfect condition for $3 at a used bookstore. What is the book truly worth?

What if you got the book from the library? Is the perceived value of a book in the ownership of the tangible product, or is it in the experience of reading the story?

If a book is only read once, the reader who bought it for $24.95, and the one who bought it for $3, and the one who got it from the library, all had the same experience.

In a normal system of supply and demand, goods are worth what consumers are willing to pay for them, dependent on the number of goods and the number of consumers. Those who want a book right away are willing to pay a higher price. Other are willing to wait for it to be sold used, or for the cheaper paperback edition, or they put their name on the library waiting list. While the experience of reading is the same, and the prices varies, there still is a perception of value because the book is a tangible object. Books are loved, treasured, shown respect. Books are our friends. We display them proudly in our homes.

Now along come ebooks.

The perception of ownership is tougher to define with something that exists digitally, as a bunch of ones and zeros in binary code.

But what's really tougher to define, is the perception of value.

A print book exists as a physical object, and has a perceived value based on supply and demand.

With ebooks, the supply is unlimited. They can be reproduced and delivered for free (or for pennies.)

Even though the experience reading an ebook is the same experience as reading the $24.95 hardcover or the library copy (and by experience I mean the act of the words being absorbed by your mind), there is a much lower perceived value in ebooks.

Because ebooks aren't tangible. Everyone believes they cost less to create and distribute than their print counterparts. And they're correct. They do cost less, and they aren't tangible.

And their intangibility makes the perception of ownership sketchy. Do you own an ebook if you buy it? Or do you only own the rights to use it on a specific device? Is that true ownership?

It's easy to price a print hardcover at $24.95, because the market will decide if it can sell at that price. Only so many exist. Supply and demand.

But I believe publishers are making a mistake trying to use a supply and demand model, and its pricing structure, with ebooks.

Because the perception of ownership of ebooks is sketchy.

Because the perception of value of ebooks is lower than with print books.

And because ebooks, like all digital media, are damn easy to copy.

There aren't many bootleg print books. Costs too much to print and bind, and there are no outlets to sell them.

There are a lot of bootleg DVDs. They cost less to produce, and there are markets for them.

But there are a lot more illegal digital movie downloads than there are pirate DVDs.

It's much harder to stop illegal movie downloads. One reason is because they aren't being sold--they're being shared. Another reason is because the people sharing them are numerous, individual users.

In fact, there are over a billion of them.

Downloading illegal movies is a pain in the ass. For a good quality, lessor known movie, let's say something 8gbs, it can take weeks, even with a lot of bandwith and a decent server.

DVDs have come down so much in price, I'd much rather pop over to Best Buy and spend $5 on a new copy of the Bad News Bears than download one. (the original, not the crummy remake)

Still, a lot of people experience movies by pirating them. And they don't find it any more wrong than borrowing a movie from the library or recording it on Tivo. Because perception of ownership and value is different for digital products.

Now publishers want the price of ebooks to be high, for several obvious reasons.

First, they don't want ebooks to cannibalize print sales.

Second, because they make a larger profit on high priced ebooks.

Third, because if ebooks fully take over, their role in the publishing process could become greatly diminished.

But ebooks aren't subject to the rules of supply and demand, because they can be copied and shared by pressing a button. And because the consumers have a lower perception of an ebook's value, but still want the experience, I predict they won't pay what the publishers are asking.

The consumers will go elsewhere.

One growing option is piracy.

Downloading a 4.7 gigabite DVD movie, at 1mb per second, takes over an hour.

Downloading 30 ebooks in .txt format takes 8 seconds.

Downloading 1300 ebooks in various formats (epub, mobi, pdf, doc) takes 13 minutes.

Is it really in publishers' best interest to price ebooks at $14.99?

Is it in authors' best interests?

Is it in readers' best interests?

One of the headlines in Publisher's Weekly today was "Agent Community Happy With Macmillan Move."

Well-known and respected agent Richard Curtis called it a "terrific thing." Curtis said the move “restores control of book pricing—on both e-books and print—to the publishers,” and that this is the healthiest thing for the industry.

You're free to draw your own conclusions. I've drawn mine. I believe that people won't pay $14.99 for ebooks. It will lead to fewer sales and more piracy. I believe the way to fight piracy is with cost and convenience. I believe a cheap, or free, ebook model is coming in the future, no matter how much the entire industry seems to be hoping otherwise.

But then, who am I?

I'm a writer.

The reason the publishing industry even exists is because of writers.

We create the content. And in most cases, we get paid very little for this.

Now Amazon and Apple are offering writers 70% royalty rates on ebooks, and the ability to set our own prices.

"A terrific thing"?

Indeed it may be. For the writers

But not for the publishers and the agents.

Selling Paper

Remember my last blog entry, where I talked about Ebook Piracy? During the Digital Book World conference, the president of Macmillan, a very large publisher, called for all publishers to fight piracy, citing some of the same tactics that were unsuccessful for the MPAA and RIAA.

Since then, Amazon has stopped selling Macmillan titles.

The reason seems to be that Macmillan wants Amazon to raise their ebook prices, and Amazon refuses to.

This is being discussed in more depth on the Amazon Forum.

As it currently stands, Amazon buys ebooks from the publisher at 50% of the hardcover price, then prices those ebooks at $9.99 or less.

In other words, Amazon is losing A LOT of money on every ebook sale.

As far as I know, Amazon hasn't come out and said why it has decided to take a loss for each ebook it sells. If I were to guess, I'd say there are several reasons for this. They want to get a large share of the growing ebook market. They want to sell Kindles. They want to price competitively, and charge what they feel their customers are willing to pay.

Personally, I think Amazon knows that $14.99 for an ebook is too much, especially considering it costs nothing to distribute and manufacture.

So, since the Kindle first appeared, Amazon has been losing a lot of money by selling ebooks.

Macmillan wants Amazon to operate like Apple, which offers publishers a way to set their own price.

But shouldn't Amazon be able to sell things for whatever they decide to sell them for?

The loss-lead has been a mainstay in retail since the beginning of retail. Black Friday doorbuster sales are a perfect example of that.

So Macmillan tried to tell Amazon what to do, and Amazon stopped selling their titles, and now the Macmillan authors are suffering.

But let's take a closer look at why Macmillan wants Amazon to charge higher prices for ebooks.

It would have really sucked to have been a buggy whip manufacturer when Henry Ford introduced the Model T. But technology changes things, and it isn't always fair.

As far as technology goes, print has had an incredible run. This single format has lasted hundreds of years. Contrast that to music. In my lifetime, I've seen reel to reel, 8 track, LP, cassette, digital audio tape, CD, mp3, and now a host of lossless formats like flac, ape, aac, wav, etc. Go back to my grandmother's time and there were 78s and Edison cylinders. Lots of format changes in just a hundred years. And during each change, there were those who lost and made money.

Print has reigned since Gutenberg. But now the times are changing.

Publishers need to figure out what it is they do. Is it ship and sell paper? If so, that costs money, and they need to price books at a high cost and pay the author a fraction of the retail price.

But if a publisher's job is to help storytellers reach a readership, through vetting, editing, formatting, cover creation, and distribution, that can now be done in a much cheaper way, digitally.

So let's look at what a publisher does, and some of the costs involved.

Print publishing has a lot of overhead, and a LOT of waste. A 50% sell through (the number of books printed vs. sold) is acceptable, and returns are acceptable (any book shipped can be returned for a full refund.)

What if Chevy only sold 1 car out of every 2 it produced? What if Costco could ship back any old bananas it couldn't sell and get a full refund from the banana grower?

This is a very bad business model, and it is what publishing uses.

Publishers acquire manuscripts, and spend a lot of time, money, and energy doing so, because acquiring and publishing a book is a big investment (an investment that often fails to earn a profit.)

In the current model, publishing is NOT about connecting storytellers and readers. It's about selling as much paper as possible. They print paper, ship paper, use paper to advertise their paper. Paper, paper, paper.

In an ebook world, there's no paper. No printing. No shipping. No catalogs. No ARCs. No print ads.

Editing, proofreading, cover art can be outsourced. How much would this reduce costs?

No expensive Manhattan offices. No editor expense accounts. No sales reps or marketing department. No employee benefits.

Print publishers see this future, and are trying to use the current system as a pricing structure for the future system, because they don't want to change.

That won't work. People don't want to pay $9.99 for a DRM restricted ebook that can only be read on a single device. That's why ebook piracy is on the rise.

Rather than figure out a strategy that will work, publishers are instead circling the wagons, making the same mistakes the RIAA and MPAA did.

Because publishers are in the business of selling paper, and they think a digital book is just another type of paper.

Why are they doing this?

One reason is because of history.

Historically, we were told what to read, watch, and listen to.

In the past, artists needed big companies behind them to manufacture and distribute their work.

When I was a child, there were three television networks. If I wanted to watch something at 7pm on Thursday, my choices were limited.

Radio and record companies decided what we listened to. Hollywood told us what to see in the theater. And publishers printed what they deemed fit for public consumption.

Gatekeepers (the few) chose what the masses (the many) got to experience.

Then along comes this internet thingy.

YouTube is one of the top ten most visited sites on the net. Why?

Because the viewer actually IS the gatekeeper.

We decide what we want to watch. We create videos ourselves.

It is an entire media empire built around the viewer. A video can get ten million views without any gatekeeper at all, because there is no cost and no risk.

Why not the same for ebooks? If the cream rises to the top on YouTube and goes viral, what is to stop an ebook from doing the same, if there was a forum for such a thing?

But instead of embracing the future, print publishers are going to try to fight to preserve the past. That's why they charge Amazon, Sony, and other retailers 50% of the price of a hardcover for an ebook. They don't want things to change. And they're inflating the price of ebooks to try and prevent that change.

That won't work. Formats change. New technology always comes out the winner. DVD beat VHS. CD beat cassettes. Cable TV beat network TV. Cell phones beat Ma Bell. And ebooks will someday beat print books.

But all isn't lost for publishers.

If I were a publisher, I'd start by acquiring out-of-print backlists. This is where Google and Amazon both dropped the ball. Google tried to scan copyrighted material without permission, and Amazon concentrated on public domain, rather than going after name authors and actually making some money off of ebooks, rather than losing money on each one sold.

There is a 4 billion dollar a year used book industry. The majority of everything ever published is out of print, and a good portion is still under copyright.

Acquire those rights (and not try to retroactively grab them like Random House did.)

A smart publisher or retailer with deep pockets could acquire thousands of books that have already been vetted and edited.

Once they did that, they'd be responsible for formatting and distribution, which is cheap and/or free. Pay fixed costs upfront, then earn forever.

But publishers can't think this way. That would mean they'd have to entirely restructure their business, and probably downsize dramatically.

Right now, rather than consider changing its business model, Macmillan wants things to stay how they are now. That makes sense. Why wouldn't they want things to stay the same?

But they're no longer the ones who decide what people must read. They don't have that control anymore in this new world. Now people have choices. One of the things that helps dictate choice is price.

Amazon understands this, and prices accordingly.

I feel terrible for Macmillan authors. Several of my close friends are being hurt by this. And I wonder if other publishers are going to desperately band together and attempt to do the same thing. I'd be deeply upset if Amazon stopped selling my Jack Daniels novels.

But then, I did figure out that I could earn more money than Hyperion is earning for me, if I had the rights to those titles back.

But that's because I figured out you can make more money selling cheap ebooks than selling expensive ebooks.

Here's a screen shot of my January sales on Amazon Kindle to emphasize my point (and it isn't fully accurate because it's only 10:40am and I'm thinking I'll make a few more sales by the end of the day.)

In June, my Amazon royalty rate will go from 35% to 70%.

So I'll be looking at 40k per year on these old titles that NY Publishing didn't want.

I'll earn almost as much on a $2.99 download than I earn on a $24.95 hardcover.

And why shouldn't I? I'm the writer.

I don't have any benefits. No heath insurance. No retirement fund. No 401k. No expense account for lunches. No holiday bonuses.

I live off of advances, and bi-annual royalty checks, and I'm one of the lucky ones. I actually am making a living at this, whereas the majority of my peers cannot.

And let me say, for the record, that I love paper books. And I've loved the publishers I've worked with, and think many of the folks in publishing are some of the smartest and coolest people I know.

But I believe publishers need to switch their focus from selling paper to connecting storytellers with readers.

Unlike the buggy whip, publishing isn't a niche market. It can change with the times. But it will be a painful change.

You can stack up sandbags against the tide. Or you can ride the wave.

C'mon, Big NY Publishing. Put down the sand, and grab your surfboards.

Booty Call

Digital Book World is a two day digital publishing conference recently held in NY. One hot topic at the event was ebook piracy. The conclusions drawn were:

1. People are stealing a lot of ebooks. (surprise surprise!)

2. Publishers need to fight this with lawsuits, better DRM, takedown pressure, anti-piracy legislation, targeting upload sites, and ultimately fighting the pirates themselves.

Apparently, publishing has paid close attention to the music and film industries, who have been successful at stopping pirates with the above tactics.

Oh, wait a second... The RIAA and MPAA have NOT been successful at stopping piracy. In fact, they've done nothing but irritate paying consumers.

It's good to know that the smart folks in publishing are ready to spend millions of dollars to make the same mistakes, no doubt with a similar outcome.

Of course, no one invited me to speak at the conference, which is a shame, because perhaps I could have saved the publishing industry the heartache and financial trouble they're about to embrace with one simple sentence.

The Only Way To Fight Piracy Is With Cost And Convenience.

How do I know this?

Because I've done extensive experiments with ebooks. The cheaper the ebook, the more you sell. And if the ebook is free, the downloads are off the charts.

I also know how pirates think, because I'm a pirate. Yes, I admit to being one of the billion people on the planet who download copyrighted material.

In fact, I've downloaded all of my own ebooks and audiobooks for free from various bit torrent and file locker sites. I'm able to do this because I too am being pirated. A lot.

Google konrath torrent and you get over 14,000 hits. These are all sites where my work is being stolen.

Does it bother me that people are sharing my books online?

No, it doesn't. Because piracy hasn't hurt me financially.

Why is that? Especially since I can account for thousands of illegal downloads of my own material?

Because I'm still making money. I don't think piracy has hurt my sales. In fact, I think it helps my sales by giving me a wider distribution network and greater brand recognition.

My self-pubbed Kindle titles are $1.99 or less. Since last April, I've sold over 20,000 books on Amazon.

Want to hear the funny thing? These same ebooks are available for free on my website. For FREE.

Does free hurt sales? Apparently not.

I've already blogged that if I had the rights to my in-print books, I could make a bigger profit selling them for $1.99 on Kindle than I'm making with the prices my publishers have set.

Cheap sells. Free sells even more. And if you make it easy for people to get your product (like pressing a button on a Kindle or an iPhone) they won't bother going to Pirate Bay or Rapidshare or Limewire or Megaupload or Isohunt.

File sharing is a pain. It can take a long time to download a file. The files can get corrupted. Sometimes they're tough to search. Often you can't find what you want. There are viruses. Seeding files takes up bandwith and harddrive space, and there's always a fear that The Man will send you a letter saying they'll sue you.

How much easier would it be if the large publishers, instead of adding extra copyright protection and hiring a team of lawyers and tech guys and lobbyists to fight piracy, just made their downloads cheaper?

Malls are dying. Main streets are dying. What's taking their place? Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart has shown that if you offer customers inexpensive one-stop shopping, they'll spend money.

iTunes has shown the same thing.

Amazon hasn't been able to do that yet, because publishers insist on DRM (which consumers hate) and high prices for ebooks. $9.99 for a bunch of ones and zeros is overpriced. But if it were up to the publishers, they'd charge $14.99 and more for their ebooks.

Amazon is fighting back, though. In June, they'll begin paying ebook authors a 70% royalty rate.

Let's play the numbers game. Let's say a midlist author, like, oh, JA Konrath, uploads a new Jack Daniels book on Amazon and sells it at $2.99. A coffee at Starbucks costs more than that.

Let's assume JA Konrath can sell 10,000 copies per year of an Amazon title--something he's proven he can do. The 70% royalty rate will mean he earns 20k. PER YEAR. For just the erights.

This is more than most fiction writers earn on a single book for all rights: hard, soft, audio, ebook, movie, and foreign.

Shouldn't publishers try to follow Amazon's example, rather than continuing to charge hardcover prices for ebooks, which have no shipping or production cost?

That's what I'd do. But no one is asking me. No one invited me to speak at Digital Book World.

It's impossible to stop piracy. The whole reason the internet was invented was so people could share and trade information and media.

But it is possible to co-exist with pirates, and make a good living doing so, by making sure ebooks are easily and cheaply available.

Instead, it looks like we're going to see the publishing industry make the same mistakes the music and movie industries have made.

Copyright cannot be successfully defended in a digital world. Period.

Human beings are genetically wired to share information. And the internet has made it easy.

Publishers should be taking advantage of both human nature and the internet. Instead, they're gearing up for a fight they can't win.

Oh, and since I anticipate the comments saying, "If books are free, how can we make money?" I want to restate that authors will be able to make money on free downloads someday.

Let's say a well-known author releases a free ebook. But there's a catch. In the ebook, there are fifteen print ads, like you'd see in a magazine. Each ad costs the advertiser 2 cents per impression, which is comparable to other internet advertising.

That means each free download will earn the author 30 cents.

More than 100,000 people have downloaded my free ebook, SERIAL.

If I'd sold ad space for 2 cents an impression, I'd have earned 30k in less than a year. Even more money than I'd earn selling 10,000 ebooks for $2.99 each.

Of course, I've been saying this for a few years now. And I'll keep saying it until someone finally listens.

I just hope, by the time this is over, there will still be some publishers around to listen.

Good Things

Okay, so I still can't divulge specific details about what's happening in my career, but this is how the last two weeks have gone for me.

• My first sci-fi novel, TIMECASTER, was accepted by Ace/Berkley. Pub date TBA.
• German rights to AFRAID sold for a tidy amount.
• I've had a story accepted into the horror anthology BLOOD LITE 2
• I've had a story accepted into the horror anthology BATS IN THE BELFRY
• Chinese rights to the Jack Daniels books have sold to China
• I've had a story and an interview accepted by CEMETERY DANCE magazine
• I've had another story accepted into a CEMETERY DANCE anthology
• I'm in negotiations for a 7th Jack Daniels novel
• I just signed a very high six figure deal for a thriller trilogy (more on this later)
• I finished my Jack Kilborn novel ENDURANCE two days ago
  
• I just got these links in my email this morning:
  

http://ramascreen.com/the-dowdle-bros-are-afraid/

http://blodic.us/entertainment/quarantine-s-dowdle-brothers-directing-adaptaiton-of-afraid-55-0.htm

http://networkedblogs.com/p25034176

So, in a nutshell, I've gotten more good news in two weeks than I have in 19 years of struggling in this business.

I don't deserve it any of it. But I'm sure happy it's happening.

More details to come as I'm allowed to reveal them. But feel free to spread the word about the AFRAID movie deal. Building buzz is important for this project to get greenlighted by a major studio.

I'd also be curious, for those who have read AFRAID, who you think should be cast as the heroes and villains. Since I have zero say in this, it's purely a fantasy exercise.

For the good guys I'd like Tom Skerritt as the Sheriff (though I wrote it picturing an older Bruce Willis), Mark Wahlberg as Josh the firefighter, Gwyneth Paltrow as Fran the waitress.

For bad guys, Andy Serkis would be a perfect homicidal pyro Bernie, William Baldwin would do a good job as the Ted Bundyesque Taylor, Lou Diamond Phillips would be cool as South American interrogator Santiago, and the hulking Ajax should go to Kane Hodder, who is a pro at that sort of role.

As for directors, the Dowdle Brothers are already attached, and a perfect fit. I loved QUARANTINE. I also loved their first film, THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES, about a serial killer who videotapes his victims (anyone who has read my Jack Daniels book WHISKEY SOUR will see some strong similarities.) POUGHKEEPSIE isn't out yet, but I got a bootleg through my nefarious underground connections. It's really a chilling movie, brilliantly executed. Can't wait until it comes out so I can get an official version.

Now I've got to stop fantasizing about Hollywood and get some writing done...

Luck You

I haven't blogged in a few weeks, because I've been busy. Besides working on a deadline, I've had a ridiculous number of good things happen in my career lately.

I'll make official announcements when I can, but I will say that I'm going to be around, in various genres, for the next few years, and I'm going to make a nice amount of money.

I've told a few of my writing peers some of the details, and their remarks have been genuinely supportive. They're happy for me. This means I pick my friends well, because I haven't encountered a single smidgen of envy.

But I am noticing something they say which I don't agree with.

Everyone I've told has told me I deserve this. Every single person.

They back up their statements by saying, "You've worked so hard" and "You've done so much" and "It's about time your writing got some recognition."

They're sweet to say so, but they're wrong.

Long time readers of this blog know that I truly believe, deep in my heart, that no one deserves anything.

But sometimes, we get lucky.

If people truly deserved things in life, it would imply there is some sort of fairness in the world, and some sort of guaranteed way to get rewarded for our talents and efforts.

I'm pretty sure that's not the case. Many talented writers languish in obscurity and poverty. Some newbie writers get huge deals without "paying their dues."

It's always been about luck.

Luck dictates where you're born, and who your parents are. Luck dictates the traits you're born with. Luck plays a part in your education, your career, your love life, the friends you have, and pretty much every facet of life.

As I write this, Haiti was just hit by a massive earthquake, and tens of thousands are dead. None of them deserved that. It was just horribly bad luck.

By the same token, no one deserves to land big publishing deals.

We all want big publishing deals. And a select few get lucky.

I believe if you work hard, learn to understand the business, and work at bettering your craft, you can improve your odds.

But at the end of the day, it's still luck.

Now, I understand why my peers said this. I have worked hard. I think I write pretty good books. They're telling me my efforts have paid off.

But the writing business isn't like planting a seed and growing a tree. There are many other factors involved. This isn't science, where you can run an experiment and always get a predetermined result.

People really hate to think that we don't have complete control over our lives. In fact, even those meticulous folks who measure out their lives with coffee spoons have less control than they think.

The fact is, you never truly know what's going to happen. You can create incredible works of art, toil your entire life, and never sell a single thing. Landing a big publishing deal is not something within your control.

So focus on what is within your control.

Read. Write. Improve. Submit. Learn. Experiment. Try.

I'm not entitled to all of these good things that are happening in my career. I don't deserve success. And neither does anyone else.

But I can say, with complete candor, that getting lucky is a lot more fun when you work your ass off. :)

So ditch that poisonous sense of entitlement. Don't be bitter if things don't go your way at first. Concentrate on what is within your control, and keep at it because you love it.

Happiness isn't the destination. Where you wind up is determined by luck.

Happiness, true happiness, is the journey that takes you there.