Guest Post by Adam Pepper

In July, I self published my dark urban fantasy novel, SYMPHONY OF BLOOD: A Hank Mondale Supernatural Case. The process leading up to this decision caused me to rethink my entire worldview on writing.

I’ve been circling the periphery of the publishing business for over a decade. I’ve had two agents, written five novels, accumulated hundreds of rejections but failed to land a mass market deal. I have had some success in the small press and built a loyal, grassroots following but I’ve always aspired to more. I wanted to be in the bookstore, front and center. I came from the school that always measured success by the size of your publisher. I was taught to start at the top and work your way down, no matter what you were trying to publish. Always aim high. Never settle.

The pecking order was easy to see, especially for genre fiction. New York publishers on top. Then other major publishers. Next, the reputable small presses. Then the niche and micro presses. And way, way, way at the bottom was self publishing. The place for wannabes without the talent to succeed. They were chumps, worse than hacks. At least a hack could write for a check. A self publisher was the bottom feeder.

These beliefs were so deeply ingrained in my thinking they weren’t easy to shed.

I’ve known Joe Konrath since before his first novel was published and I’ve always liked and respected him. I’ve been reading his blog since it began. But when Joe started talking up self publishing, I snickered. Then, my snickers changed to, “well it works for him but it won’t work for me.” What Joe calls Stockholm Syndrome, I know all too well, because I had a nasty case of it! Many of my friends and colleagues still suffer from it. It’s not easy to dismiss an entire mindset. Especially when you’ve built everything around it, your hopes, dreams, career aspirations—your entire identity even. You’ve invested countless man-hours into achieving it. And suddenly, you scratch your forehead and realize, “Wow. Konrath may have a point!”

People tend to focus on the extremes, and they do so at the expense of their own career. We aren’t all going to be Hocking or Locke any more than we’re going to be Patterson or Connolly. Most of us won’t win lotto either.

You don’t plan a career around winning lotto.

Make no mistake about it, playing the slush game, trying to rise above the mountains of manuscripts, getting past the intern, then the junior people, then the senior people, all of whom--no matter how well intentioned--are human beings who are overwhelmed and inundated with submissions, bring their own personal biases and subjective tastes to the table and generally treat slush with equal parts horror, humor and contempt.

It’s lotto, plain and simple.

I’ve seen many friends land deals and I’ve been nothing but happy for their successes, but I won’t concede they were better writers than me. Their work simply resonated with one person in a position of power who was able to make it happen. The question that I asked myself wasn’t how can I be the next Konrath or Locke, but simply what was best for my career? Put the preconceived notions aside and truly be objective. I’ve watched this industry and see what goes on. There’s no vast conspiracy to see Adam Pepper fail; there’s merely apathy. The only person I can truly count on to build my career is me.

I remember reading an interview with literary agent Scott Hoffman where he compared authors who submit to the slush pile to a desperate girl sitting by the phone waiting to be asked to the prom. At the time it infuriated me. He was calling me a loser. What the hell else was I supposed to do? To me it was just another insider who had no clue what it was like to be on the outside breathing steam on the glass trying desperately to get noticed. In fairness to Hoffman, I was in a bitter state of mind and I don’t have the quote in front of me today. But now, that’s sage advice. Why passively sit around praying for a break when you can take it upon yourself? Why play the slush lottery when you can stack your own deck? For the first time since I’ve been in this game, writers truly don’t need an agent or a publisher to succeed. Authors need an audience. And the audience is out there, reachable and eager to be captured.

Getting caught up in rhetoric. Choosing sides. Prognosticating. None of that means a thing to me. Selling books and reaching readers does.

I’ve always had the talent and the drive, now I have the opportunity. Digital books and the internet truly are the great equalizers. Self publishing wasn’t made for Konrath and Eisler, it was made for me. The guy who played by the rules, followed every guideline, submitted to every market, and never got a shot from New York. Now, here’s the chance to drive my own carriage instead of waiting for my editor in shining armor.

It took a long time to realize this. But I’m glad I have. SYMPHONY OF BLOOD has been out just two months. It’s been in and out of the top 100 Dark Fantasy ebooks on Amazon and the reviews have been great. The response from book bloggers has been positive. There’s been a nice presence on GoodReads and Library Thing. So far so good.

I have plans for two more indie books by holiday season. One of them is currently on submission with a big six house. I’m going to pull it and publish it myself. Sound insane? It does to me too. After all, I’ve spent the last decade building relationships with industry people in hopes of launching a career. There aren’t many editors in NY who give me the time of day, but this one does. I’m very grateful for the interest he’s shown in me. But I’ve reassessed everything. What gives me the best chance at success? If the editor was truly interested, he would’ve asked me to the prom by now, and I’m done waiting by the phone. It’s my career. After a decade of chasing a dream that was totally out of my control, I can’t tell you how incredible that feels.

Joe sez: Adam was one of the first horror writers I became chummy with, while doing the convention circuit back in 2003. I dug his first book, Memoria, but Symphony of Blood was terrific. When I read it, years ago, I was sure it would get picked up by a major house. It's a cool horror noir novel with a cool hero and a cool monster, and it has a huge twist in the middle that throws readers for a loop.

(Side note--it's 99 cents on Kindle right now. Buy it.)

But it didn't sell. Adam, like many other authors I know, was screwed by the system. Because the system, as it exists, eventually screws everybody.

The only authors still pursuing legacy deals are:

1. Those who have never had them, so their views are all rosy and idealistic. As Adam said, they're waiting for that phone to ring. In the past, there was no choice. Now, it's rather pathetic.

2. Those who have had legacy deals, and have convinced themselves it's the only way to make a living. As I've said before, this is Stockholm Syndrome. The publishing industry does not care about authors. They also are inept when it comes to making books profitable. Why are you still dancing with an abusive partner? Unless they're paying you HUGE money, I can't think of a single reason.

Yes, this is a lottery. Luck plays a huge part.

But you can get lucky on your own terms, by self-pubbing. Or you can get lucky based on the whims and trends of an industry that treats authors poorly, makes lots of bad decisions, and has a terrible profit track record.

In other words, you can put your fate in the hands of the readers, or a group of dinosaurs who are making themselves extinct.

Side note: I just had a one hour conference call with Amazon yesterday about the November 22 release of STIRRED, and it blows me away how smart these folks are. It was unlike any conversation I've ever had with any Big 6 publisher. Amazon truly understands that an essential part of making money is treating authors fairly. They pay much better than the Big 6, listen to and implement authors' ideas, and understand numbers on a near-savant level.

As a result AMAZON HAS MADE MONEY ON EVERY BOOK THEY'VE PUBLISHED.

Reread that sentence above. Now compare that to a Big 6 publisher, who only makes a profit on 1 out of 5 books they publish.

Now, there is no one-way ticket to success. Any way you go, you'll need luck. But legacy publishing involves a lot more luck and doing it on your own, or signing with Amazon, and legacy publishers can actually worsen your luck.

I just got my royalty statement for AFRAID. It has made $60k since 2009.

The two books Hachette rejected, TRAPPED and ENDURANCE, have made $160k since 2010.

My book TIMECASTER, published by Berkley, has failed miserably, saddled with a high ebook price and a terrible, generic cover. I begged them to sell it for $2.99. I begged them for a different cover. I begged them to put J.A. Konrath on the cover, since I have a huge fanbase. My pleas fell on unsympathetic ears, and the sales suck.

And don't even get me started about how much money I'm losing on my Jack Daniels books--try a few hundred thousand dollars per year.

Figure out what your goals are, and pursue them. But pursue them logically, armed with information, and don't be afraid to change your goals if the information changes.

Being naive, or having Stockholm Syndrome, shouldn't be among your goals.

Guest Post by Rob Siders of 52 Novels

It’s wonderful that Joe has opened his doors to the independent publishing community so that he can take a much-deserved break. I imagine that much of what will be written here while Joe’s on hiatus will be from authors chronicling their journeys and giving advice on what worked for them.

My angle is from the other side of that... the services side. At my ebook design shop, 52 Novels, we see a lot of manuscripts and work with a lot of authors. As a result, we’ve gotten feedback on what’s worked for people, and we give frequent advice on how to put your best foot forward when becoming an independent author/publisher.

It’s no longer enough to simply write a great book. You’ve also got to think about your ebook as a core part of your marketing, rather than simply the thing that your marketing is designed to move.

Here’re some of the things we often advise:

1. Make sure your manuscript is in publishable shape

This seems elementary, but you’d be surprised by the number of authors we work with whose manuscripts aren’t ready... typos, incorrect punctuation, missing modifiers, characters whose names change (sometimes more than once). The story can be fine. And the book may have been rewritten, multiple times perhaps, to solve the sag in the second act. But it’s critical for anyone entering this business to ensure that their product is tested.

We’re well aware that an author may have read his or her book a hundred times. But we’ve made enough ebooks --- nearly 400 as of this writing --- to know that seeing them on an ereader for the first time reveals things the author missed on paper or while staring at the manuscript on their computer monitor. Even the pro authors we work with tell us they find things on their device that they’ve never seen before. The better you handle the editing on the front end, however, the less you have to worry about things on the back end.

Some ideas:

• Find or form a writer’s group. Some of the best story and structure advice I’ve ever gotten has come from my peers.
• Ask five people you trust to read the book. Give them each a new red pen and require them to drain the ink barrel.
• A good copyeditor is worth every penny you’ll spend, so hire the best one you can afford.
• Set up a crowdsource editing project using Amazon Mechanical Turk.
• Use a service like ErrNet to proofread your book. It’s fast, inexpensive, and will help you spot things you may have overlooked.

Because your book is at the center of your marketing, you cannot rush this. The temptation to engage in “just in time publishing” is great. Resist.

2. Make sure you think about your book’s packaging as a whole

One of the things I like best about making books for Joe is that he understands the book-as-centerpiece concept. Completely.Passionately. As such, when he sends me a new manuscript to work on, it’s usually just one of several components that become a new Konrath/Kilborn/Kimball product.

For example, take SERIAL KILLERS UNCUT. It’s an extreme example, but I think it works well here. The book itself is the culmination of several different stories, plots/subplots, and character arcs that intertwine between a couple of universes that Joe and co-author Blake Crouch created over nearly a decade.

To keep all of these datapoints straight, Joe and Blake created a network of collateral material that enhance the reader’s experience beyond simply reading the epic novel.

• Want to know when Luther Kite makes his first appearance? Go to the Cast of Characters page and follow the internal link to Kite’s first time on stage in Part Two. Every major character has an entry on the Cast of Characters page that’s clickable to their first appearance in the book.
• Curious about how Jack Daniels got her start hunting down serial killers? Check out the full story chronology --- for both Joe’s and Blake’s books --- in the back matter.
• Because SKU takes place in periods before, after and concurrent to Joe’s and Blake’s related work, head to the Storyline Endnotes section to find out what happened before or after events in this book.

But these things aren’t the true brilliance of this collateral material. What makes this stuff so great --- from a business perspective --- is that it’s driving readers to buy other books by Joe and Blake.

So, you’re probably asking “what if this is my first or second book?” At minimum you should think about some of the things you find in paper books: an author bio, acknowledgments, a dedication, a one-sheet hype page, blurbs. (A quick story on blurbs... a legacy-published author with whom I worked recently is indie publishing her first Young Adult novel. She asked her beta readers --- tweens and their parents --- to blurb the book. Brilliant!)

If you’ve got a few short stories, clean them up and include them as bonus content (and then publish them as stand-alones later so you can link to them from a bibliography in subsequent ebooks you publish). If you’ve started another book, polish the first chapter or two and add that content as a teaser.

Maybe you’ve got a friend who’s also publishing a first book. Team up and swap out teaser chapters to include in your back matter. Better still, find TWO friends who are publishing for the first time and trade out space at the back. (There’s an added benefit here in that the more you have at the back of the book, the bigger your free sample will be at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. But that’s a technical discussion for another time.)

3. Consider adding POD to your product mix

With the tidal wave of independent ebook publishing well upon us, it sounds a little odd saying you should also add print to your product mix. If you consider readership on the whole, there’s a wide swath of book buyers who still go exclusively for paper, and many more who buy paper in addition to ebooks. Even with the release of the Kindle 4 at $79 for the ad-subsidized model, the death knell of paper has yet to be rung.

If you can afford it, don’t leave paper sales on the table.

4. Don’t cut corners on your cover

Joe’s dedicated a lot of space at the Newbie’s Guide to this topic already, but I have to give my full-throated endorsement of this. Your cover must --- no ifs, ands or buts --- be the enticement to your sales page. In short, find a designer who gets what an ebook cover is supposed to do: look fantastic and entice a buyer when it’s the size of a postage stamp.

Some things to consider when evaluating a cover scaled to a small size:

• Is the title legible at that scale?
• Does the cover tell a story?
• Does the design echo the book’s theme/tone/mood?
• Would I want to learn more about this book based on a 5 second glance?
• If the book is part of a series, does the design effectively and consistently convey the author’s or the series’ brand?

Please indulge me a moment and click through to my Web site’s Recent Projects page. Scan the collection of book covers, all done by different designers (although some are represented more than others). The image dimensions for those covers are all roughly the size you’ll find in search results at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. While you’re there, jot down some notes about the ones you like while considering the questions above. Something might not be to your personal liking, but the ones that stand out to you likely answer the questions above with a “Yes.”

5. Finally, make sure your product description --- the copy that appears on your product page--is working on your book’s behalf.

This also seems elementary, but I find a lot of books whose covers appeal to methat fail to convert me to a buyer because the product description falls flat. Amazon gives you 4,000 characters to write your sales copy. Use every last one of them! A two sentence plot synopsis and a nugget from your About the Author copy might be all you can come up with… and it might not be enough to sell someone who’s on the fence about sampling your book, let alone on the fence about buying it.

These days, I buy ebooks almost exclusively. As a result, I don’t spend a lot of time in book stores like I used to, combing the stacks reading jacket copy.

In a digital store, your Web site product description is your jacket copy.

With ebooks, I’ll take a chance on an author I’ve never read if they can sell me from their product description page. I don’t care where they were born or where they live or that they used to sell Pop-Tarts door-to-door before they started writing. Sell me on your story. Convert me to a sale. Convince me I should spend $3 on you, Unknown Author.

—Rob Siders runs 52 Novels, an ebook design shop. Kindle. ePub. POD. Amazon. Barnes & Noble. Apple. Kobo. Smashwords. CreateSpace. Lightning Source. Follow us on Twitter. Like us on Facebook.

Joe sez: I'm the reason Rob got into this biz. He did a favor for me years ago, put a bug in my ear to keep him in mind if I ever needed anything techy. When some readers complained about my Kindle formatting errors, I turned to Rob and he learned how to create perfect (and wonderfully artistic) ebooks.

Now it is his fulltime job.

Rob is very busy, but he's worth waiting for. Amazon is using him to create the ebook for Stirred, and I've gotten emails from Amazon's tech staff asking, "How'd he do that effect?"

Lots of people can help you format a readable ebook. But Rob's work goes beyond that, and turns your ebook into something beautiful.

But don't take my word for it. Try him for yourself.

Hiatus Part Deux

So two days after asking people for guest posts and I've gotten over a hundred.

Unless I stay on hiatus for a year, I'll never be able to post all of these. I doubt I'll even get to post 1/3 of them, and they keep coming.

This is unfortunate, because there is a lot of good information in these posts that writers could benefit from.

Which got me to thinking about the obvious solution: These should be compiled into an ebook.

Over one hundred ebook authors writing about their personal publishing journeys. We'd all want to read that.

I don't have the time, or the energy to do such a project. The compiling and editing would be a nightmare. Plus, there's no way to split royalties on a $2.99 ebook among 150 authors. Sending monthly paypals to 150 people for 8 cents each is ridiculous.

That said, it would be a shame if all this info wasn't available.

So I had an idea. I called up my ebook designer, Rob Siders of 52 Novels, and asked if he'd be interested in compiling this collection.

Rob told me he was interested. Here's how we'd do it:

I'd write the intro, and put a few pieces in there, so it would be an ebook edited by J.A. Konrath & Rob Siders. So far, no one has written the definitive tome on ebook self-publishing. This could be it.

Rob does amazing work, and he's going to put in dozens of hours on this project, and he deserves to be paid. I'm not going to pay him, because I'm not going to make any money on this. I'm just the figurehead.

So this is my proposal. I think this ebook should be priced at $2.99, and Rob keeps the money.

If you're a writer who sent me a guest blog, I'm sure part of the reason you did it was to reach my readers and publicize your ebook.

An ebook collection would work in the same way. You get the exposure and links to your titles, Rob gets paid for the untold hours he has to put in, and I don't have to disappoint anyone.

I don't pay people for guest blogs. And I've always allowed people to repost my blog entries on their blogs (or in their how-to books) for free, so I'm not asking you for anything you weren't already willing to give away.

I'll make zero money on this, but my name is pretty well-known, so you'll get your article in front of a lot of eyes. Your article, plus links to your ebooks and your websites and blogs.

Rob would be asking for non-exclusive rights, meaning you could use your piece elsewhere, and you could have it taken out of the collection at any time.

What do you folks think?

Hiatus

I have screamed into the wind for a long time.

Screamed so loud, some have heard me.

But I'm tired of screaming.

I'm taking a hiatus from blogging for an indeterminate time. This indiestry (just coined that term) is sustainable without me.

However, I am going to open up this blog to writers, and let other people do the screaming for a while.

If you'd like to write a guest blog, email me your piece.

It has to be about sharing what you've learned about publishing. Blatant self-promotion won't win you a spot. Neither will praising me, shameless sycophantic behavior, or posts focusing on you and your books.

Describing your writing journey, whether you're experiencing success or failure, is what will be helpful to readers of this blog.

That's what I'm looking for. Sure, you can slip in some links to your book. But I want you to show what you're doing, and explain if it is working. Shoot for under 1200 words. You can be confrontational, or funny, or even act like a dick, as long as it is real.

I'll read everything emailed to me, but I'll only respond if I'm interested in running your piece. My lack of response doesn't mean you suck. It means I'm overburdened and can't post everything I'm being sent. Don't bug me asking if I liked it, or if I'll use it. I'll use what I use.

As for my loyal readers, I'll be back. Eventually.

In the meantime, I want you to take my place. Do what I do. Preach what I preach. Or preach the opposite of what I've been saying, as long as you back it up with logic and evidence.

Show me, and the world, whatcha got.

Race to the Bottom Part 2

Back in August, I wrote a post about the supposed race to the bottom with ebooks, refuting some nonsense written by an establishment bonehead.

This meme won't die. People are still convinced that new ebooks are going to be priced at ten cents, and writers will starve, and this will cause a second Great Depression where banks will close and people will be forced to buy Kindles with food stamps, and then the earth will enter another ice age where all the bunnies will freeze to death.

Lots of doom and gloom here.

Barry Eisler has a non-ebook post on his blog about establishments, and how people within establishments serve one of two functions: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work to sustain the organization itself. The latter are those who wind up running the organization.

Publishing is a perfect example of this behavior. This industry began as a way to bridge the gap between readers and writers. That was its goal. But somewhere along the line, legacy publishers began to worry more about sustaining themselves than connecting readers with books.

That's one of the reasons power corrupts. You begin to believe your own hype, which leads to a disconnect between your decisions and their results. If you have the power, you must be infallible, right? And even really stupid business practices, such as treating your content providers badly, allowing full credit for returns, never doing focus groups or pre-release testing, using purposely obtuse accounting practices, windowing titles, DRM, erights grabs, the agency model, etc. can't possibly hurt you, because You Da Man.

Publishers began to really believe that they were essential. And they managed to convince a lot of unpublished authors of the same thing. There are a whole bunch of people in the publishing industry, and trying to get into the publishing industry, who are confusing acceptance by that organization with what the original goal was: getting books in front of readers.

But publishers have always been middlemen, even though they had a lock on distribution and a filter on content. And middlemen tend to eventually get streamlined out of the Circle of Money.

Their locks and filters are now disappearing, and this is naturally scaring them. It's also scaring a lot of the brainwashed writers who work in the industry, or have been struggling to break into the industry. No one wants to believe the god they've been worshiping is about to die.

Enter the memes. Publishers, and their supporters, keep trotting out the same old BS about how the future will be bleak without them.

"You'll be nothing without me!" is the mournful whine of every jilted lover.

One meme is that the lack of gatekeepers will result in a tsunami of crap. Another is that writers can't succeed on their own. The meme I want to focus on is that continual price dropping will result in all ebooks being free and no writer able to make a living.

Let's look at some of the flaws in the race to the bottom meme.

1. There are still plenty of ebooks priced over $4.99 on the bestseller lists. Check any genre list, and they're there. So while it is true people would rather pay less than more, there are plenty of people willing to pay more. But, as we'll see, not too much more.

2. The sweet spot for ebooks may be changing. I've been charging $2.99 for novels because I've been making a lot of money. But I may be doing myself a disservice and leaving some money on the table. The goal is to find that perfect point that balances sales and profits. That means experimenting. In the past, I've been against charging more, because my own experiments showed it didn't work. But I've now seen other authors who it is working for, and that encourages me to experiment some more.

3. Some people may be conditioned to avoid lower-priced ebooks. Maybe they got burned on a shitty 99 cent novel. Maybe they equate higher price with higher quality (something we're all guilty of.) As long as there are folks willing to pay more for something they perceive is better, some authors will be able to charge more.

Another way of putting it: even if all ebooks are fungible and created equal, there can still exist a spectrum of prices. Take Blu-Rays. Some are $4.99. Some are $39.99. How new something is, how popular it is, the extras it has--people will pay more for these things.

4. If all ebooks become free, we'll still make money. There has been a lot of talk about subscription models, or ebooks funded by ads. Either way, the content creators (the writers) are still the essential part of the business. We'll find a way to get paid.

5. Legacy publishers aren't helping anyone but themselves by pricing ebooks $9.99 and over. This high price is to protect print sales, and suck as much money from readers as they can before the house of cards collapses.

Readers don't want to pay $9.99. They've been very clear about this for several years. The $9.99 boycott, and associated 1 star reviews, is still widespread. As a result, books priced at $9.99 or higher don't sell as many copies as they could, and the author misses out.

$9.99 isn't the sweet spot.

6. There can't ever be a true race to the bottom, because books aren't in competition with each other. This isn't a zero sum game. Never has been. When readers find something that interests them, it is never either/or. If they find two books to be interesting, they read both books. And since ebooks are cheaper than paper, and it has been widely reported that those with ereaders buy and read more, the pie is actually getting bigger. We can sell to a smaller percentage of ereaders and still make a killing.

Sure, we all have limited leisure time. We all have limited lifetimes.

But if you like reading, you fit it into your life. Just like you fit anything else you like into your life. I've never met a single reader--and I've met thousands--who said, "Well, I can read this OR that, but I'll certainly never have time to read them both, because time is finite."

That "not enough time" meme is bullshit.

Now, we're still in the early adopter phase of ereader sales. The prices haven't sorted themselves out yet. Which is why experimentation is essential. As self-pubbed writers, we need to try different price points, and compare notes, in order to find that sweet spot. I just released a 35k word novella, EXPOSED, for $2.99. My next novel will be $3.99.

Lower prices may sell more copies, but they leave money on the table because people would have paid more. Higher prices may have a larger profit, but they also leave money on the table in missed sales.

Your goal, as a self-published writer, should be to keep an open mind, and always remember this is a business, not an ideology.

The is no race to the bottom. It's just a bunch of scared people who need to regurgitate false memes in order to feel safe.

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Exposed - A Thriller Novella (Chandler Series) by J.A. Konrath & Ann Voss Peterson

I get a lot of email, and a lot of comments in my blog posts, from people thanking me for helping them out on their self-pubbing journey. If you really want to thank me, there's an easy way: buy my books.

That said, here's my latest. And it's a lot of fun:

EXPOSED by J.A. Konrath & Ann Voss Peterson

She's an elite spy, working for an agency so secret only three people know it exists. Trained by the best of the best, she has honed her body, her instincts, and her intellect to become the perfect weapon.

CODENAME: CHANDLER

Before special operative Chandler was forced to FLEE, she executed the most difficult missions—and most dangerous people—for the government. So when she’s tasked with saving a VIP’s daughter from human traffickers, Chandler expects the operation to be by the numbers…until she uncovers a secret that will endanger the entire population of New York City, and possibly the world.

EXPOSED - Death is in her blood.

EXPOSED is a 35,000 word novella (roughly 150 pages) and is part of the Codename: Chandler series. It also contains an excerpt of SPREE, the next Chandler novel coming this winter.

Available for $2.99 on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords.

To talk a bit about Exposed, here's my collaborator, Ann Voss Peterson.

Joe: So three years ago, I had this cool idea about a female covert operative whose cover gets blown and she goes on the run. It was called FLEE. I wrote a quick outline and the first few chapters, and then shelved it because I had too many other projects going on and didn't have time to finish it.

When did I ask you to collaborate?

Ann: Right before Bouchercon in Indianapolis, 2009. You sent me some pages you'd written, and I thought it seemed like a lot of fun. Then we carpooled to Bouchercon and later Romantic Times together in my 1988 Chevy Nova and talked about it on the drive. Because both of us were busy with other books, we didn't do much more on the project until last winter when we brainstormed over burgers on the 95th floor of the John Hancock building.

Joe: Right. A key scene took place there, and we wanted to check it out.

I remember how shocked I was when I heard how low your advances were from Harlequin. You called it "the golden handcuffs", because they kept offering you contracts, and you kept taking them because you needed the money. I called it "working for the company store." They kept you so busy that you didn't have time to work on any of your own personal projects, which no doubt would have earned you more money. Your feelings about HQ?

Ann: To be honest, the "golden handcuffs" is stolen from a comment Morgan Freeman made about the years he was on the TV show "The Electric Company." He'd landed a steady acting job on a fun show, but that show prevented him from branching out and taking other roles would progress his career.

I've enjoyed writing for Harlequin. My 25th book for Harlequin's Intrigue line will be released in November. But although I made enough money on the books to quit my day job and write full time since 2000, I've never made enough to do anything more than live royalty check to royalty check.

In addition, I've always written on the plot-intensive side of romantic suspense, and on more than one occasion, my stories have stepped too far to the suspense side for some romance readers. Self-publishing has given me the opportunity to explore my more violent tendencies.

Joe: So now you're flying solo...

Ann: Not really. Now I'm writing with you. But I am working on some solo stuff as well.

Joe: We're working on SPREE, the next Chandler adventure, which begins right when FLEE ended. I'm hoping for a November release. What's up with that stand-alone you've been working on for the past 18 years?

Ann: While you're finishing the sequel to Timecaster, I'm trying to sort through what I have on this story. The downside of working on it so long is that it's changed so much, I'm no longer sure what I have.

That's nothing new. Unfortunately my creative process can be a bit messy at times.

But I haven't been working on it for 18 years, Joe. That's a gross exaggeration.

Joe: It's been longer than 18 years? Wow.

Ann: (shakes her head sadly)

Joe: We wrote FLEE pretty much based on my original outline, though you had a hand in crafting many of the scenes. We divvied up the actual writing about 50/50, using Dropbox and Google Docs. It went pretty quick once we committed to it, and it's one of my favorite books. I love the character of Chandler, and she's as much your creation as she is mine.

Ann: I love Chandler, too. She's kick-ass but she's also vulnerable, and that's what makes her so interesting.

It was a lot of fun working with you. Over the years I'd gotten used to always being the best plotter in the room. But I have to say, you're better. Which, of course, is one of the reasons I wanted to write with you in the first place.

Joe: Thanks. I wanted to write with you because you're good, and fast. One of the advantages of collaboration is: two people working on a story can get it done twice as fast, which means more work released, which means more virtual shelf space, which means more sales. In other words, you can actually make more money by co-writing. If I can put eight novels out a year with a collaborator, vs. four on my own, the eight will spread my brand and name recognition twice as far. At least, that's the theory.

With EXPOSED, you did the heavy lifting. The concept, and about 75% of the writing, was all you. So it's only fair you get 75% of the royalties.

That said, the story reads a lot like FLEE, with a consistent tone and voice. And like FLEE, I'd challenge anyone reading EXPOSED to figure out who wrote what part. It's pretty seamless.

Ann: Agreed. I got a kick out of peoples' guesses as to who wrote what in FLEE. No one was correct. But then, we tended to bounce off one another quite a bit as we wrote, so a lot of it is a true mix.

Another interesting thing to me was that I never felt like my vision for EXPOSED was realized until you added the Joe parts. It was as if Chandler didn't really feel alive to me until then, as if she was missing half of her personality...or at least 25%. ;D

Joe: I'm frankly shocked how much you can write like me. Or maybe it's how much I write like you. A mutual friend of ours just read EXPOSED, and he thought I wrote most of it. You even had a few jokes in there that he attributed to me.

EXPOSED began as a short story, then blew up to mini-novel length, about 35,000 words. We also managed to fit a sex scene in there. What's your feeling about all of those folks who get mad about sexual content in books?

Ann: Fiction is about the extraordinary moments of human life, the highs and lows, the events that exert the most pressure and force change. Sex is one of those moments. To refuse to use it in a story that calls for it is dishonest and cowardly.

Of course since sex can be so powerful, it carries a burden as well. Intimate scenes are the dramatization of a character's inner conflicts. Everything from the tone, to the dialog, to the actual sex acts involved are a window into a character's deepest fears and greatest hopes. That's why sex scenes are so difficult to write. Whether they are about love or not, they carry an emotional wallop.

But difficulty and personal discomfort are not bad things to face when you're a novelist. More often than not, they are signs that you're on the right track, that you're touching on real emotion. That can be disconcerting, but it's also the heart of what fiction is.

I fully expect some people to hate the sex scene in EXPOSED. It will likely make others feel uncomfortable. That's fine. The scene itself is neither comfortable nor safe. But anyone who says that scene doesn't change everything for the characters, that it isn't a glimpse into who they are,
that it isn't necessary to the character growth and plot is either clueless or fooling themselves.

Joe: I've heard that every scene in a story should do at least two things, or else it really isn't needed. Moving the plot forward and deepening character are the two obvious ones, but I also like to provoke base emotions as well. Laughter. Tears. Fear. And, in the case of sex, if it isn't turning the reader on at least a little bit, it isn't a well-done scene.

Ann: I absolutely agree. Readers read fiction for the vicarious emotional experience, especially popular fiction. That's the biggest part of our promise to the reader.

Joe: What is your view on legacy publishing? Would you take a Big 6 deal if offered? Or a Thomas & Mercer deal from Amazon?

Ann: If a legacy deal was good enough, I'd take it. But I'm not seeking one at this point.. I have to admit, I'm intrigued by Thomas & Mercer.

I became a novelist because I wanted to write fiction, not to become a publisher. I'm having a lot of fun doing the indie thing--the freedom, the control, the never going out of print again--so I would be hesitant to give that up, but the actual writing is what turns me on.

Joe: Same here. Now that the money is coming in, my goals have changed. I'm trying to limit the non-writing aspects of this business so I can write more. I don't want to run a company. So if I can afford to hire out and let others run the company, that means I can devote more time to my love, writing.

EXPOSED was a lot of fun to write. Crazy action, some laugh out loud humor, car chases, hot sex, insane violence, a big twist. It's like a female James Bond on amphetamines. It isn't necessary to read FLEE first, because this comes before FLEE.

And for those who don't have an ereader yet, I heard the Kindle is now just $79...

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Drink the Kool-Aid

Yesterday, an agent blogged about a speech she recently gave to Sisters in Crime. Some of the advice was fine. Some was archaic (no, writers don't need to attend conventions or volunteer for anything), but this was just downright awful:

"Do NOT drink the kool-aid on E-publishing. It's too early to be making sweeping statements about any of it. We're all learning this as we go and the right answer to almost everything is "we'll see what happens."

I threw up a little in my mouth when I read that. It's terrible advice, especially coming from someone who should have writers' best interests at heart.

Here are some sweeping statements I'll make, which can be verified:

1. Ebooks sales are going up, paper sales are going down. This trend WILL continue. This means that you need to worry less about who handles your paper rights, and more about who handles your erights.

If you handle your own erights, you keep 70% of the list price (that you set.)

If you let a publisher handle your erights, you get 17.5% of the list price (which they set.)

2. There isn't much a publisher can do for you that you can't do for yourself (or hire someone to do.) In other words, paying a publisher 52.5% to create cover art and do some editing is crazy.

3. More and more self-pubbed authors are doing well. And more and more legacy pubbed authors are trying self-pubbed. On this blog I've had dozens of guest posts, and listed hundreds of authors by name, who are making good money. Some are getting rich. None of them would be making bupkis if they didn't drink the Kool-Aid.

4. Bookstores are closing. The only thing a publisher could do for you, that you can't do yourself, is get your book into bookstores. But with paper sales down, and ebook sales rising, getting into a bookstore shouldn't be the priority.

5. Every day you don't self-publish is a day you aren't making money. This is a tough concept to wrap your mind around. We're used to thinking in analog terms. With paper, there's a release date, then sales eventually trickle down to nothing, until the book is out of print.

But ebooks are forever. There can be a big surge in sales when a book is released, but I've also seen books that surge regularly, like waves in the ocean. Lulls and peaks, over and over. Sometimes it tapers off, but then something happens and it gets new life.

When a book has the potential to not only make money, but to sell better than it did yesterday, it no longer has a lifespan. Which raises the question:

If you have a book that will sell forever, do you want to start earning money today, or next month?

If you wait a month, you won't make-up the month you lost. That month you lost will be income that you never earned.

I can't think of a single advantage to waiting around. Even if you really, really want a legacy deal, I know lots of authors who self-pubbed and then got legacy offers.

Barry Eisler also had some thoughts on this, which he offered as comments to a previous blog post. I'm going to post them here, too, with a few interpolated thoughts:

Barry: "Do NOT drink the kool-aid on E-publishing." What does this mean, other than that the declarant thinks in cliches?

Joe: I think it means, "If you do something without me, I don't get my 15%."

Barry: Then she said, "It's too early to be making sweeping statements about any of it."

Isn't that itself a sweeping statement?

Never mind. As with the Kool-Aid reference, these sorts of massively vague pronouncements are difficult to address because, as articulated, they're fundamentally meaningless. But if you think about it for a second or two, just why would it be too early to come to various conclusions about the nature, trajectory, and speed of the revolution we're seeing in publishing? We have a lot of data, after all, to which we can apply logic while extrapolating from experience. Isn't analyzing broad industry trends, and trying to understand, extrapolate from, and exploit them, exactly what smart businesspeople ought to be doing? If you have to decide -- today -- between a legacy deal and self-publishing, should you just stick your head in the sand and your ass in the air?

Joe: I think it means, "I'm worried about the future, and my livelihood, so I'm not going to think too hard about it."

Barry: Next she said, "We're all learning this as we go…"

Well, no, there are clearly many people who are *not* learning as they go, or learning at all, for that matter. The rest learn different lessons and at different rates. The different lessons people are learning -- that is, the different conclusions people are coming to as experience continues to accrue and as data continues to come in -- are interesting and potentially valuable for anyone who thinks understanding today where the industry will be tomorrow is useful thing to do.

Joe: I've been learning this as I go. And while learning, I've made several hundred thousand dollars. Because I wasn't waiting around to see what happened. I was taking control of my career, experimenting, trying new things, sharing what I've learned with others.

Scores of writers who read my blog also gave it a shot. Some became very successful. Because they tried, rather than waited around.

Barry: Next she said, "...and the right answer to almost everything is 'we'll see what happens.'"

Absolutely! If something that looks like a tiger pops out of the underbrush and is hurtling toward you, it's best not to make sweeping statements. Better to learn as we go and just see what happens. Running for a tree would be foolish.

Same thing in intelligence work. Who really can say where Pakistani nukes are stored, or how soon China might be able to deploy a blue water navy, or who are the true power brokers in Russia? Better to just sit back and see what happens.

And isn't the same inevitably true in business? If you're in the horse and buggy business and you hear about a thing called a car, or if you're in the the candlelight business and you hear about a thing called an electric light, or if you're in the eight-track cassette business and you hear about a thing called a CD, or if you're in the paper book business and you hear about a thing called Kindle, you should absolutely avoid trying to understand -- let alone exploit! -- any of it, and should instead sit back and just see what happens. In fact, sitting back and seeing what happens is the one common denominator of profitable businesses and successful businesspeople. Amazon, for example, became a a hundred-billion-dollar company by doing little else but going along and seeing what happens, while legacy publishers are dying precisely because they've always ruthlessly examined, prepared for, shaped, and exploited industry, technological, and cultural trends.

Joe: "Daddy, those lights are coming straight for us!"

"Don't move! Just remain standing in the middle of the street, and we'll wait and see if they run us over or not."

Barry: "Drinking the Kool-Aid" means "to become an unquestioning believer in some ideology, or to accept an argument or philosophy wholeheartedly or blindly without critical examination." Who's really doing that here? And the phrase is derived from the Jonestown massacre, where cult members followed one another into a massive group suicide. Again, not a bad metaphor for following "advice" like Janet's, which consists of nothing but cliches, sloppy thinking, and bromides.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid

It's one thing to be not very good at making predictions yourself, and Janet's track record is not the best:

http://twitter.com/#!/trow125/status/51355244587794433

But to advise that everyone else refrain from trying to understand where the industry is going and how we might profit from how it's changing? That's just irresponsible.

Joe: Barry, I meant to ask you about that above tweet. Now that The Detachment has launched, do you regret working with Amazon and not taking that $250k St. Martins deal?

Barry: Let me put it this way. Amazon sold more digital copies of the Detachment as preorders than Ballantine sold digital copies of my previous book, Inside Out, ever. After that -- that is, apart from and in addition to all those preorders -- the book surged to #6 in the Kindle Store, stayed in the Kindle Top 20 for over a week, and currently (two weeks in) is at #57. Yesterday it was at #3 in the UK Kindle Store. The paper version doesn't even come out for another two weeks, and they're planning another big push then. I've earned more money from this book in two weeks than I've earned from some of my titles to date -- and I've had eight previous novels published, starting in 2002.

Joe: The money you've been earning since The Detachment was released makes the money I've been earning on Kindle look paltry.

You hear that, NY Publishing Industry? You thought Barry was silly, turning down a Big 6 contract. In two weeks, he's made more money than he did with any of you.

You hear that, name brand authors? You want to know who to sign your next contract with? It's Amazon.

Barry: And that's just The Detachment. Sales of my backlist have surged, too. Since April, my short story, Paris Is A Bitch, has been earning me about $1000 per month. This month it's going to be more than three times that -- as of today, it's sold 1677 copies in September, at about two dollars profit per unit. Sales of my other short story, The Lost Coast, are up, too, though I did drop the price of that one to 99 cents, which obviously affects the experiment. But even sales of my legacy-published works are significantly up -- at one point, my first book, Rain Fall, was at #146 in the Kindle Store, which is insane for a book that's coming up on ten years old. The other Rain books are all up significantly, too, though not as much as they should be, because Putnam insists on pricing them at $7.99, the same as the paperback. If I had control of those books, I'd repackage them, drop the price to $2.99… and I can't even imagine how many I would have sold in conjunction with The Detachment.

Joe: Golly, why doesn't Putnam do that itself? It's leaving a ton of money on the table.

Barry: Heh. You know why. Legacy publishers aren't primarily interested in maximizing profits from digital titles. They're primarily interested in preserving the position of paper and retarding the growth of digital. To that end, they price digital books artificially high and hold back the digital release until the paper one is ready. And that hold-back, by the way, for the reasons you discuss above, costs the writer a ton of money -- the money she would have been earning if the digital book had been made available earlier.

Let me preempt the response I know is coming from the Reidian antediluvian naysayers out there: "But you didn't self-publish The Detachment, Amazon published it! So all this success, all these massive sales, none of it counts!"

If that's what you think, read the section on either/or and other erroneous thinking in Joe's and my free ebook, Be The Monkey. My goal isn't to make any one of my titles a success. It's to make *all* my titles, collectively, the greatest possible success. As I've said many times, I think my best strategy in that regard is a mix of self-publishing and Amazon publishing-- not an either/or approach. And I think my experience so far suggests I'm right.

Since walking away from the St. Martin's offer, I've self-published two short stories, I've self-published a political essay, and I've self-published (with you) a short book on the changing landscape of the publishing industry. And I've published a new novel with Amazon. What I haven't done -- what's conspicuously absent from my business strategy over the last six months -- is a new work with a legacy publisher. And I'm doing far better than I ever have before. Maybe that's a coincidence. Maybe it's all just dumb luck. Maybe I would be doing even better if I'd gone with the legacy deal (though we wouldn't know yet, because if I had gone the legacy route, The Detachment wouldn't have been released until spring 2012).

Or maybe there are some principles in my experience that are worth pondering, and that might be applied by others who don't believe business is best conducted by just waiting to see what happens.

Joe: I look back on the past few years, and all the bad decisions made by legacy publishers, along with agents who think they're working for those publishers rather than for their authors, and I keep wondering at what point they're going to realize they aren't in a Jacuzzi, enjoying a luxurious soak, but actually in a stew being boiled alive.

High ebook prices, low ebook royalties, windowing, poor formatting and conversions, the agency model, retroactive erights grabs, DRM--each of these are bad decisions on their own, but add them all together and it's one huge crock pot of fail that they're now marinating in.

But we authors have more opportunities for success than ever before.

Legacy publishing is a vestigial organ. And it's about to be cut off.

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Konrath's Ebook Predictions from 2009.

I wrote the following blog post in 2009, a list of ebook predictions.

I'll put my recent updates in bold:

1. Ebook readers will be available in stores for less than $99.I believe this is the magic price point, and the ability for consumers to purchase their device at their favorite department store will finally allow this tech to enter the mainstream.

As of today, the Amazon Kindle is now available for $79. The new Amazon Kindle Touch is $99. Kobo has been $99 for several months.

I expect B&N to drop Nook prices sometime soon.

Also, ereaders are now available in stores, Best Buy, Staples, Target, and many others.

2. Amazon will adopt Epub standard format. I've blogged about formats before, and how proprietary formatting is preventing worldwide acceptance of ebooks. The closest to a universal format is Epub, and once there are millions of non-Kindle ereadersout there, Amazon will want a piece of the pie and offer different formats.

They haven't done this yet. But they are releasing titles without DRM. Now that Amazon has launched several paper imprints, and B&N has refused to carry those paper books unless they can also sell the ebooks, it will be interesting to see how this gets resolved.

3. Ebook readers will improve. Well, no duh. All tech improves as time goes on. But I'm talking about the look and feel of the device, not just what it can do. As advanced as ebook readers are, they still look low tech. Compare this to the iPhone or iPodTouch. These devices look, and feel, 21st century. Some ereadermanufacturer will come up with a device that just looks right (the Nook comes close) and it will sell like crazy.

Amazon Kindle Fire tablet just announced, for $199.

4. Ebooks will go multimedia. The potential for ebooks to change the way a book is experienced has not been explored yet. Author annotation, interviews, video, audio, extras, music, deleted chapters, short stories--these are all benefits that could be added to content at no cost.

Not quite. There are a few companies doing some innovative things, but nothing that has caught on in a big way. Yet.

5. A third party etailer will rise to prominence. Currently, people buy most of their ebooks online at Amazon. But someone with deep pockets will launch a big website and begin to gobble upmarketshare. My guess is this site will be the first to begin offering the out-of-print backlists of published authors. Public domain isn't the key to success. Copyrighted work that is only available used is the key to success, because ebooks can make these vetted, professional books available again. It's a gigantic, viable, untapped market.

Smashwords and Kobo are doing very well. I just launched my own ebook store.

As for the copyrighted work I mentioned, Amazon is buying many out of print backlists from name authors, including Ed McBain and Max Allan Collins. Al's book just hit #1 on Kindle.

6. Estributors will become common. Where there are writers, there are folks who help writers and take a percentage of their income. Agents currently hold this position. But it won't be long until some smart folks realize they can make money being a liaisonbetween the writer and the ebook world, and offer services that include editing, formatting, uploading, and cover art, so the only thing the writer has to do is write.

I'm working with my agent in an estributor capacity. We'll see how it goes.

7. Print publishers will get savvy. Some major publisher is going to realize they can make more money selling ebooks for under $3 than selling them for $15, and they'll give it a try and be successful. Others will follow suit.

In the past two weeks, I've seen no fewer than eight Big 6 titles crack the Kindle Top 10 by selling them for $.99 to $2.99. Once they hit it, they jack up the price back to normal and the sales fall off. But they're learning...

8. Ebook bestsellers will emerge. As more reviewing sites and blogs dedicated to ebooks rise up, word-of-mouth will propel some independent ebooks author to bestseller status. It's inevitable, and both the print publishers and Hollywood will take notice.

Amanda Hocking and John Locke, anyone? I wrote this prior to their successes. I've also sold a movie option on an ebook.

9. Print books will be packaged with an ebook version. Perhaps it will come on a CD or an SD card. Perhaps it will come with a code so the ebook can be downloaded for free. But some smart publisher is going to include the ebook with the print version. A really smart publisher would also include a download for the audiobook version with the package. Then folks wouldn't mind paying $25 for a hardcover, if it came with those downloads.

I talked about this when I spoke at the Google Unbound Conference a few years ago. I've heard rumors of it happening, but nothing concrete yet. BTW, that blog about the conference is from January 2007. This is one of the things I said:

"On the subway today, I counted 7 people with PDAs, Blackberrys, and Palms, and two more with mp3 players. People need their media so much they're taking it with them when they leave their desks. Only three people on that train were reading newspapers. What does that say about the future of print media?"

All the major publishers were there, listening to my speech. None of them listened to me.

10. Exclusivity. If an author is big enough, they are available everywhere: Amazon, Nook, Shortcovers, iTunes, Sony, etc. But someone is going to sign an author exclusively, so their book is only available in one etailer location, to lure people to their device and website.

Barry Eisler. Boy, he did make the right choice signing with Amazon.

11. I'll continue to pay my mortgage with ebook sales. I've been self-publishing ebooks on Kindle since April, and every month since I've earned enough to make my monthly house payment. I'm also going to release a novel exclusively as an ebook in 2010, as a long-term experiment, to see if I can earn more in five years than I could on my previous print deals. This is the beginning of a very long tail, and writers really do need to think about how much their ebook rights are worth over the course of their lifetime and beyond. Because that's how long this technology will be around.

I've earned more in the last eight months than I did on all eight of my previous print deals, combined, since 2003. And this holiday season looks to be even better than last year.

So I got 8, maybe 8.5 out of 11 right.

So what do I see for the future?

1. Publishing houses closing. Maybe it will be bankruptcy or maybe their parent company will just shut the doors. These houses once controlled paper, and because of that they could control authors. Now paper is a subsidiary right (something I wrote about last year, before ebooks were actually outselling paper) and authors can do better on their own.

No lock on distribution + authors now having choices + readers unwilling to pay $12.99 for an ebook = game over.

2. Interactive multimedia. I've been talking about this for over four years. Vook and Hybrid Books are only the beginning. One day enhanced ebooks will be the norm.

3. Ads in ebooks. This is something else I've been talking about for years. The $79 Kindle is ad-supported. As ebooks drop in price (or become free) authors will supplement their income by selling ad space and taking corporate sponsors.

4. Ereaders under $49. It'll happened quicker than the drop to $99 took.

5. People abandoning paper. I've already gotten rid of several hundred paper books, replacing them with ebooks. Watch as more and more people do the same thing, just like they dumped their vinyl and VHS. Thrift shops, Goodwill, the Salvation Army, will stop taking book donations because they already have too many.

6. Global market. Ebooks will be worldwide. Smart authors will work with translators (or smart estributors will have translators on payroll) to exploit these new avenues, which had been closed off to all but the luckiest authors. And even then, foreign deals were notoriously small, and hardly ever earned out. Watch for self-published authors becoming international bestsellers.

7. Bookstores, book fairs, writing conferences, and writers organizations will have to change, or perish. As paper popularity fades, and self-pubbing ebooks becomes more prevalent, there will be fewer and fewer people who gather around paper books.

Companies like Autography will allow readers to get personalized autographs on their ebooks. Add some video-conferencing, and no one will even need to attend another genre convention.

Conferences that sucker authors into paying $500 for a chance to pitch to a Big 6 editor will disappear.

Used bookstores will do well in the beginning, due to all the people dumping their collections, but eventually won't be able to give books away.

All the professional writing organizations will have to admit self-pubbed authors, or their ranks will thin.

8. Pottermore is just the beginning. Watch as more and more authors lure their fans to their websites, without any need of a publisher.

9. We'll see a lot of new stuff from old writers. All writers have shelf novels, or ideas that they couldn't pursue because their publishers wouldn't allow it. There are no longer any barriers to ideas, and we're done with all that bullshit about buy-in and sell-through. The fate of books will be decided by readers, not by a handful of people in a room looking at prior sales figures.

10. Libraries. There are tens of thousands of libraries in the US alone. I currently have 30 ebook titles available. If I sell one copy of each of my ebooks to every library, I've made over a million dollars--and many libraries will buy multiple copies. When Canada, the UK, Australia, and eventually the world get in on the library thing, it's going to be gigantic.

11. I won't continue to pay my mortgage with my ebook sales.

That's because I'm paying off my house with my ebook money. :)

What about you folks? Any predictions for the future?

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Ebooks A La Carte

Last month, I did a blog post with Blake Crouch about the future of ebook sales. In that blog, we talked about the only two parties needed for a transaction: the author, and the reader. Everyone else (agent, publisher, retailer) is a middleman, taking a percentage.

But if a writer already has loyal fans willing to seek him out, why should the middleman get a cut? Couldn't the author and the reader complete a transaction (the reader buying the book) where the writer receives all of the profit?

Enter xuni.com. A few months back, they made an ebook store for Barry Eisler. I loved this idea, and loved how they implemented it. But Eisler only has three ebook titles for sale, and while it is cool that he offers readers different formats to choose from (epub, Kindle, and pdfs) I read ebooks on several different devices and it seems silly to have to buy the same book multiple times to get the various formats.

So I asked the team at xuni if they could make an ebook store for me, with a few tweaks. When readers buy an ebook from my store, they get four DRM-free formats (epub, Kindle, pdf, doc) in a single download. Also, it made perfect sense that I should sell ebooks by some of my peers (Eisler and Crouch as of this writing) and offer them the same 70% royalty rate as other retailers do.

A few days ago, my ebook store went live. So now I'm able to sell directly to customers, and cut out the middle man.

On a $2.99 ebook sold through a retailer, I earn about $2.04.

In my ebook store, I earn $2.79.

On a $0.99 sold through a retailer, I earn $0.35.

In my ebook store, I earn $0.89.

I've heard about other ways to sell ebooks directly, but they involve either paying a monthly fee, or a percentage of each sale. Going through xuni, I paid a flat fee, and now my ebooks can earn money forever. As I add ebooks to my oeuvre, xuni can add them to my ebook store for a tiny additional cost.

If you have fans, it makes sense to offer those fans easy access to your titles. If they like you enough to visit your website, give them the option of buying your books directly from you. (I also have a paper store, for those who want autographed editions.)

This is passive income that earns forever. Once it is set up, it becomes a 24 hour worldwide store. You'll need a Paypal account set up for micropayments (xuni helps with that) and a three figure initial investment, and you're set.

Also, Maddee and Ryan at xuni were fast, responsive, easy to work with, and extremely nice. I highly recommend them, and this service.

Contact xuni HERE, or in my sidebar.

Guest Post by Rick Mofina

I've known Rick Mofina for years, before he began to sell like crazy. I remember three years ago, walking through a grocery store and seeing one of his paperbacks in the checkout isle, alongside a Stephen King and a Janet Evanovich, and I thought, "Wow! He made it!"

But even though Rick has sold gazillions of books, he's still dipping his toes into the self-publishing pool. Here's a guest post by him about his journey:

Fear and Loathing on the Publishing Trail – Confessions of an Uneasy Midlister, by Rick Mofina

Thanks to Joe for inviting me to tell my story.

Chances are you’ve never heard of me.

This month I am officially self-publishing my first eBook, Dangerous Women & Desperate Men, a collection of four stories.

It’s a milestone for me.

I’ve written 12 thrillers through legacy publishers and I now have about 2 million books in print in some 20 countries. Yet, this month with my first effort to self-publish an eBook I feel like I’m starting over.

I wrote my first story when I was about ten years old, in neat, cursive handwriting, and from that point on I never stopped writing.

It became my joy and my affliction. By the time I was 14, I had discovered The Writer magazine and read it as though it were a new found holy book. In high school I was the only boy in my typing class. After school, I used the old manual Olympias to type my stories and snail mail them off to magazines. I waited weeks and months for responses and collected a suitcase full of rejection. By the time I was 15, I had my first sale, a short story to a small magazine in New Jersey for $60.00.

That was a milestone.

I had become a professional. Part-time. I still had to go to school.

When I was 18, I wrote my first novel, a horrible monster that must remain in darkness. But I never stopped writing – and reading everyone -- through factory work, university, [among the courses I’d studied: Religious Responses to Death, Existential Literature and American Detective Fiction then later I was on the crime beat]. Then came marriage, kids my job as a reporter and now my fulltime day job as a communications advisor.

But the need to write is in my DNA.

I had written stories, plays and novels. By the time I was forty, and after so much trial, error, study, practicing and polishing, I had, between shifts on the crime desk, completed what I believed was a decent novel. I sought an agent. After a year, I got one in New York.

“I think I can place your book,” she’d said after reading my mss.

After another year and much hard work she’d called to say she’d sold my book to a New York publisher. I was ecstatic.

“Can I get a new car, or get my brakes fixed?” I’d asked her.

“You can get your brakes fixed,” she’d said.

I was still ecstatic.

That book, IF ANGELS FALL, a crime thriller, set in California, was published in 2000, as a paperback original. It felt magical in my hands, I was a published author. I thought everything would change.

It did.

Since my first published book and through to my 12th, I’ve learned about the world of commercial fiction, agents, publishers, editors, production, deadlines, cover art, jacket copy, permissions, blurbs, distribution, cycles, wholesalers, retailers, placement, co-opting, shelf-space, velocity, royalties, reserves, promotion, book signings, conferences, readings, panels, booksellers and store managers.

I’ve had movie options, foreign sales, audio sales and digital sales. I’ve yet to make the New York Times list, or USA Today. I’ve never been reviewed by either, but I’ve had starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and Library Journal. I have readers around the world and my work has been acclaimed several times – most recently, my book The Panic Zone was nominated for a SHAMUS by the Private Eye Writers of America.

I am honored, privileged and damned lucky to be published.

It’s been said here many times and I agree: no one owes you anything. I am as blue-collar as the protagonists in my books. My old man, as the song goes, got his back into his living. I believe in paying your dues.

That’s just me.

Since I’ve been published this is my routine: I rise around 3:45-4:00 a.m. Head to the keyboard and read over chapters and make notes. Then on my 50-minute bus commute to my fulltime day job. I use those notes to advance my story. I do the same on the 50-minute commute home. I work on those notes at bedtime and repeat the process at the crack of dark. On weekends I turn those notes into chapters. I write in hotels, at airports and on airplanes.

The craft and product are paramount.

I put everything I’ve got into my work. My readers get the absolute best I can give because without them, a story never lives. I go to conferences on my own dime because as a midlister you take nothing for granted. You do all you can to hang on to the pursuit in which you’ve invested much of your life.

That’s why I’ve decided to publish my own eBook.

That, and the fact we are in the midst of a revolution.

When they first emerged, I scoffed at eBooks. Those things will never catch on, I thought. This from the guy who vowed never to stop writing books in long hand and typing them on an IBM electric typewriter.

My typewriter is mothballed. I am now on my sixth PC.

At book conferences, in the tribal camps of authors, Joe Konrath, and other prophets, would tell us what they saw on the publishing horizon.

It made me uneasy.

At the same time, authors I knew were losing publishing contracts.

Then along came kindle and things changed fast.

Some of us embrace change. Some fear it. Still some, like Joe, learn to surf. A light went on for me in 2009, at a conference in Indianapolis. A reader showed me her kindle. I’d never seen one before. Then she showed the book she was reading on it: VENGEANCE ROAD, one of mine produced by my legacy publisher.

It was another milestone.

Day by day on my bus commute to my day job I began spotting more people using eReaders. Then last Christmas as we all know, sales of eReaders and eBooks exploded. Since then we’ve all read the jaw-dropping statistics, witnessed the e-author success stories, and heard the fury of an industry in the throes of a shift in its evolution.

So what does it all mean for writers?

Simple: the path to the reader, and to success or failure, however you personally define it, has been accelerated to the point of being instant.

Some argue that it is a threat to the quality of storytelling.

I disagree.

What we’re seeing is a leveling of the publishing playing field. Those who are born storytellers, those who have the talent, discipline and pride of craftsmanship, now have a better than ever chance to find an audience. They get an opportunity that was, until now, denied them.

That’s exciting.

Allow me to digress a bit. That eBooks are a game changer was driven home to me recently.

Yes, I came up through legacy publishing and my relationship with my legacy publisher is very good. But my recent experience solidified the power of traditional publisher support when married to the power of eBooks.

You might find little new in this example, but I think it is a valid one.

My thriller Six Seconds was released in the UK in 2009 in paperback and e-format. The book has sold well around the world and in the UK. Both the paperback and e-version achieved fairly good Amazon UK rankings before sales slipped as they usually do months after release.

A few weeks ago my British publisher informed me that Six Seconds was a candidate for a brief online free-eBook promo through Expedia and iTunes in the UK. All I had to do was temporarily waive e-royalty claims.

I did, hoping the book might get some renewed attention.

Boy did it.

For about five days Six Seconds held the #1 Amazon UK ranking for all free eBooks. I was amazed. I noticed that my other books, those still fully priced on Amazon UK, also started selling. I was getting new and positive reviews and emails from new readers. Without my legacy publisher I never would have had the opportunity to participate in that promotion. Six Seconds was running in the slow lane until the power of online promotion of eBooks happened.

When the promo ended, I thought Six Seconds would plummet on Amazon UK but it didn’t. It fell but rebounded to the top 50 for some time afterward. Paperback sales climbed a bit too.

Yes, not every author gets a break like that.

I don’t feel I deserved it. As Joe would say, I got lucky, very lucky.

This UK thing happened coincidentally when I was in the process of releasing my first self-published eBook, Dangerous Women & Desperate Men. It affirmed my plan to learn to swim in the rising tide of change concerning eBooks.

Prior to that, what had been on my mind was the fact that I had a number of good stories, acclaimed stories that I wanted to offer readers. Most of the stories had been published, but I still owned all rights to them and wanted to get them in the hands of readers.

If ever there was a time for me to try to self publish an eBook this was it. But I knew nothing about the process. Zero. What I learned, I learned through Joe, other authors and reading. After thinking things through, I developed a plan and decided to make a financial investment.

In laying out my plan for you, here comes the BSP.

I selected four of my short stories for an anthology titled, Dangerous Women & Desperate Men, with the theme of ordinary people on the brink. Each are also available separately for 99 cents each.

With the first story, “Blood Red Rings,” I wanted to partner the reader for one night with seasoned cop Frank Harper. After 24 years of putting his life on the line, Harper sees it all tick down to one defining moment. “Blood Red Rings,” first appeared in Crimespree Magazine where Jon, Ruth and Jennifer Jordan have opened the door of their revered publication to short crime fiction.

The second story, “Lightning Rider,” is the study of a damaged woman determined to achieve what she believes she is owed. The reader meets Jessie Scout, a twenty-six-year-old woman who had endured a life steeped in pain and goes to Las Vegas, a city of risk, not to gamble, but to collect. “Lightning Rider” first appeared in Murder in Vegas, edited by Michael Connelly. It also won Canada's top literary prize for crime fiction, the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story, presented by the Crime Writers of Canada. It is also featured in Deadly Bride and 21 of the Year's Finest Crime and Mystery Stories, Edited by Ed Gorman & Martin H. Greenberg.

In the third story, “Three Bullets To Queensland,” we meet Ike Decker, a loss recovery agent, for the armored car industry. His dream is to leave the U.S. for Australia but the only thing in his way to realizing it is Paco Sanchez and $1.2 million in stolen cash.

The last piece is, “As Long As We Both Shall.” It features Liz Dalton, a hard-working middle-aged woman. When her world was coming apart she fought back with a shocking vengeance. This story is presented in the format of transcript, much like a court document. The story first appeared in Blood on the Holly, an anthology of Christmas mysteries edited by Caro Soles and published in 2007 by Baskerville Books. “As Long As We Both Shall Live,” was named a finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story.

With this collection I wanted readers to step into the lives of everyday people as they battle extraordinary circumstances.

My publishing plan was to offer each story individually as eBook for 99 cents, and all four together for $2.99 in the collection that includes an introduction and added features, such as the stories behind some of my legacy eBooks.

For the formatting and posting on Kindle, Smashwords etc., I approached Donna Carrick with www.CarrickPublishing.com of Toronto.

Then I approached a friend, John Holt at picturecover@gmail.com to do the covers. I sketched my concepts and John made them a beautiful reality. For promotion, I wanted to use social media to the best of my ability, which is not much.

I also set aside several hundred dollars for advertising, chiefly for one small ad that appeared with the bestsellers list in the September 25th print edition of the Los Angeles Times.

My total investment will be around $1,300.00.

A roll of the dice but I believe in these stories.

Like my books, I’ve thrown everything I have into them. They’re good stories that, until now, were essentially sitting on my hard drive.

Thanks to the revolution they can be in readers’ hands in minutes, at least that’s the aim of the $1,300.00 plan.

If it works, I’ll do it again and keep doing it.

I owe it to the kid who used to sit alone in typing class after school hammering away on an Olympia manual typewriter and snailing off stories dreaming of the day they’d find readers.

Joe sez: First of all, apologies to Rick because I told him I'd post this yesterday, but time got away from me. I'm currently on a deadline for Timecaster 2 and have been putting in long hours and forgetting things I promised people. (Why do I still have deadlines? I'll blog about that soon...)

Second, the first thing that struck me reading this post was, "He sold 2 million books and he still has a day job?!?" I was able to write fulltime having sold only 500,000 paper books. So either Rick loves his day job, or he's not getting paid as much as he should.

Third, Rick approached me after he'd already bought the ad in the Times. Had he approached me prior to that, I would have tried to talk him out of it. I've always found ads for books to be a big waste of money. Hopefully Rick will chime in on the comments here and tell us if it was worth it.

Fourth, good for him for being proactive and trying this out. He did this the smart way: releasing the shorts for 99 cents each, bundling them all for $2.99, getting quality covers and formatting, having punchy, concise cover copy.

Shorts (and collections) don't sell as well as novels. Four other authors and I just confirmed this in a talk on Fearnet. So this isn't a perfect way for Rick to test the ebook waters, because a novel would sell better. I notice Rick some of Rick legacy pubbed books don't have ebook editions. If he's got the rights, he needs to get those live. If he doesn't have the rights, both he and his publisher are losing money.

Rick is a great writer, and a great guy. I encourage everyone reading to try out his collection (or, if you're cheap, one of his 99 cent shorts.) If you like thrillers, you'll love them.