Kris Rusch: Why Traditional Publishing Is Going To Do Just Fine

Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes:

Traditional publishing is going to do just fine. Traditional publishing is going to find writer after writer unwilling to learn the business, writer after writer lining up for the “honor” of being published in lieu of actual money, and, if the traditional publisher is lucky, a few of those writers will become bestsellers.

The rest of those writers will become disillusioned. They’ll go to writers conferences and sit in the bar and kvetch about how impossible it is to make money at writing these days. They’ll talk about the way their publisher screwed them, and they’ll never ever ever take responsibility for the fact that they signed the boneheaded contract in the first place without a single attempt at negotiation.

They’ll give all of us professionals a bad name.

But it won’t matter. Because most of us professionals will only take traditional publishing deals when the deals are advantageous to our business. And the rest of the time, we’ll publish our own books.

We’ll have careers because we are responsible. And we’ve taken the time to learn the business of publishing as well as the craft of writing.

We’re professional writers—emphasis on the word “professional.” And these other published writers? The ones who take the crap deals and do a ridiculous amount of work for no pay?

Those people might be writers, but that’s all they are. They’re certainly not professionals.

Kris Rusch let loose this Thursday and wrote one of her best blog posts ever. She explains that she "had started with some namby-pamby crap that had nothing to do with the topic at hand" and then her frustration got the better of her.

Kris writes:

You see, I’m really getting frustrated. I’ve been doing these blogs for months now, pointing out the various problems with traditional publishing, talking about the changes and the opportunities presented by the e-book and POD revolution, and warning writers to watch their backs on contracts, on their work time, on compromising too much for too little return.

And then what happens? From the World Science Fiction Convention in late August until now, people who should know better have been telling me about their business decisions. That “should know better” refers not just to the decision, but to telling me about it. Because in every single case but one, they’ve contacted me after the decision was made, and wanted me to validate it or to pat them on the head and tell them they did a good thing.

One person even admitted they had “probably made a mistake, but it’s not that bad, right?” Well, it was bad. On the scale of business decisions in the last 20 years, it wasn’t Enron or even what’s going on with Netflix right now, but it was most certainly boneheaded and it certainly made me glad that my career wasn’t tied to that person’s.

Here's what happened to occasion the ire that inspired Kris' post:

Since the beginning of August, six different authors have talked to me, emailed me, or called me, asking my advice about a new “deal” that someone in their traditional publishing company offered them. (By traditional publishing company, I mean one of the misnamed Big Six [it’s not six, that’s wrong, but I’ve railed about it elsewhere to no avail]. i mean one of those publishing houses we’ve all heard of, whose books we all have on our shelves.)

These companies are telling their authors to write a short story or a novella (or short novel) that will be e-book only. The short piece doesn’t have to stand alone. It should be part of an ongoing series of books that the publishing house has under contract from the author. It’s a “loss leader” to get readers into the book series.

The publishing company plans to offer the e-book at a very cheap price or for free to establish interest in the series, and because that e-book will be cheap, the company says, it wants to keep its up-front costs low. So it really can’t afford an advance, but it will pay 25% of net on royalties when/if the e-book sells.

Now realize that these are the deals offered by major publishers to bestselling writers on bestselling series. No advance, and a crappy 25% of net on royalties—of a book that will probably be selling for free for only a short time.

Six writers that I know of have taken this deal, three from companies that are having troubles accurately reporting their e-book sales. Two of those writers told me they knew that, but it “didn’t bother them much.” Um…what?

I think that one of the key points here is that the authors didn't get an advance from companies (these are all Big Six comapanies) who are known to underreport ebook sales. Kris continues:

But chances are, if you are truly a bestseller—and both contracts said in the book description, a story/novella/short piece “in the Author’s bestselling series”, so I’m not making any assumptions here—then your editor will sigh a little when you ask for an advance, and then pony up the money.

Because editors are smart and they know business and they were simply trying to do what their boss wanted, which was to get as many rights from you for as little money as possible.

And in the case of five of the six authors (I still don’t know what the sixth did), those publishers made out like bandits. These writers might see a few measly pennies on this deal, but I’ll wager you that the writers will not get the money they’re owed. After all, at least three of these deals were offered by companies who are being investigated for underreporting royalties on e-books. One of these deals comes from a company being sued for underreporting royalties on paper books.

These authors all knew that. And they still made a royalty-only deal with these companies.

See why I want to scream? Really and truly scream? Because it doesn’t make sense—not in any business world, not in any way. These writers gave their work away to a company that doesn’t deserve their trust. And at least four of these writers are slow writers. They can’t afford to give away anything, because it’s a goodly portion of their yearly output.

To read the rest of Kris' article, click here: The Business Rusch: Professional Writers

Why Should A Writer Blog?

Do you want to write a book or even an article or essay, but feel stressed out and self-conscious when you think about the fact that your writing will be read by others? Does this reduce your creativity and leave you feeling blocked and unable to write? Try blogging.

. . . .

Blogging provides a format that actually can reduce the amount of writer’s block produced by fear of exposing your work to the world. In the process, your productivity will increase.
- Improve Writing Creativity and Productivity by Blogging

This is exactly what I was trying to express yesterday, in an email to a fellow writer. I find that I'm less nervous about sharing my writing since I've been blogging and I hope that will help me write more since I'll spend less time wringing my hands, wondering what other folks will think of my prose.

Yes, when you blog you do show your work to the whole Internet community, but, in truth, for most newbie bloggers this really is not something to fear.
When you begin blogging—or even blogging a book, you typically don’t have any readers. If you don’t tell anyone about your blog, surely no one will find it right away. This allows you to get your cyberspace legs. You can test out your blog voice and your idea before anyone even shows up to read your first post in most cases. You can even delete the first posts if you don’t like them and start over and in many cases no one will have read them yet.

When I read this I got excited, because this is exactly what I did! (Yes, a few of my early blog posts have gone to the great blog in the sky.) But, more, it's how I thought of it. I wasn't using Google Analytics in the beginning so I had no idea whether anyone was reading what I wrote -- and I suspect no one was. But it gave me a platform for my writing, it got me writing to a schedule and it helped me build up a few articles so that when folks did eventually come by and take a peek, there was something for them to look at.

Blogging ... helps you move through fear (writer’s block), thus freeing up your creative flow so you  can write more easily, produce a manuscript more quickly and get your work read at the same time.

The quotations I've used are all from this post: Improve Writing Creativity and Productivity by Blogging

Edit: Almost forgot! I came across this link when I read The Passive Voice blog. I read PG's blog every day and I highly recommend it! :-)

Could Newspapers Become Ebook Publishers?

Swiftly and at little cost, newspapers, magazines and sites like The Huffington Post are hunting for revenue by publishing their own version of e-books, either using brand-new content or repurposing material that they may have given away free in the past.

And by making e-books that are usually shorter, cheaper to buy and more quickly produced than the typical book, they are redefining what an e-book is — and who gets to publish it.

On Tuesday, The Huffington Post will release its second e-book, “How We Won,” by Aaron Belkin, the story of the campaign to end the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. It joins e-books recently published by The New Yorker, ABC News, The Boston Globe, Politico and Vanity Fair.

The books occasionally snap up valuable spots on best-seller lists — “Open Secrets,” an e-book published by The New York Times, landed in the No. 19 spot on The Times e-book nonfiction best-seller list in February.
- The New York Times, In E-Books, Publishers Have Rivals: News Sites

I hadn't considered this possibility, that newspapers could bundle content into ebooks, but it makes sense.

When the phone-hacking scandal erupted at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in early July, Vanity Fair collected 20 articles on Mr. Murdoch, his family and their businesses and put them in a $3.99 e-book that went on sale July 29. Graydon Carter, the magazine’s editor, wrote an introduction. The articles were then grouped into six chapters, each with a theme that reflected various aspects of Mr. Murdoch’s life.

“It’s like having a loose-leaf binder and shoving new pages into it,” Mr. Carter said. “E-books are a wonderful way to do a book and do it quickly. They don’t need to be fact-checked again. They do go through copy-editing. But you’re not reinventing the wheel each time.”

The New Yorker created a similar e-book about Sept. 11 using content from the magazine’s writing on the attacks and their aftermath — everything from poetry to reported pieces on Al Qaeda. It sells for $7.99.

So far, sales for the handful of digital special editions that The New Yorker has released remain relatively small. Pamela McCarthy, the deputy editor, put the number in the thousands. “The question of what constitutes well in this new world is one that seems to be up for grabs,” Ms. McCarthy said of the success so far.

Read the rest of the article here.

Dean Wesley Smith: Book Cards Work!

Here's the idea: You have an electronic book to sell but how can you show it to potential customers at, say, a convention? How can a bookstore sell your electronic book? It is stating the obvious, but ebooks aren't like paper books, you can't just hand the book to someone.

Sure, you can direct them to Amazon.com and say, "Well, just search on 'Until Death' ... and maybe add 'Karen Woodward' so you're sure to get the right 'Until Death' ... I mean, who knew certain titles would be so popular! You'll remember all that? Right?"

No. They won't. The solution? Book cards! This is Dean Wesley Smith's idea and I think it's brilliant. I'll let him describe it:

Each “book card” had two parts.

Part one was the plastic gift card the size of a credit card and the same thickness. The cover of the book is printed on one side, the code and instructions on the back. We used these cards alone for a sort of business card as well, since the cards had our web site addresses as well as WMG Publishing website address.

As you can tell from the image up to the left, these credit-card-sized book covers were way cool.

Dean cautions that,

For the next few years, until book cards become more accepted by bookstores, I do not see them being economically viable for an indie publisher to produce for every book for sale. It would take too long to return the printing investment.

But WOW are they great promotion. Worth every penny.

Let me say that again. On special books and for events, book cards are worth every penny.

He closes by saying ...

Honestly, I see book cards becoming a major way for bookstores to sell electronic books in four or five years. It’s going to take traditional publishers to jump onto the idea to make it easier for indie publishers to get book cards into bookstores.

And book cards, packaged like gift cards, have a huge market in major supermarkets and other major retail stores besides bookstores, placed right beside all the other gift cards that have already gotten into those stores.

Electronic books are clearly going to be over 50% of all books sold within five years. This is a way to get those books into reader’s hands and thousands of new markets that paper books are too expensive and large to get into.

And from the author perspective, all I can say is that they are great fun. These are fantastic promotion.

Now it is up to traditional publishers to get this going. Cindie and I gave copies of these to many New York editors and a couple major New York publishers who really, really loved the idea.

First publishers have to train bookstores.

And then bookstores have to train readers that they can buy their electronic books in a regular bookstore.

It will happen.

Read Dean Wesley Smith's entire article here: Book Cards Work.

Harlan Ellison: Writers Need To Be Paid

When I read this blog post -- Un-Screwing The Writer -- I immediately thought of Dean Wesley Smith. Those of you who follow Dean's blog know why.

The video is short (3 mins or so) and eye-opening. It is of sci-fi legend Harlan Ellison ranting about the assumption that writers don't need to be paid for their work. I read what I've just written and think: Of course writers need to get paid for their work, it seems glaringly obvious, but as Harlan Ellison notes, all too often it doesn't happen.

Kristine Rusch: Playing to Win

Imagine me as the couch who wants to teach you how to play effectively. The first thing you have to do is learn how to win.
- Kristine Kathryn Rusch, The Business Rusch: Playing To Win

Kris Rusch hit a home run with her blog post this Thursday. It feels like each week I say: This blog post by Kris is a must read! And they are, but this one especially. She writes:

You won't succeed at writing and business every single day. You will fail. But no one wins without losing. Failures teach you how to be a success. In fact, the biggest successes always have a slew of failures behind them. Failing is how we learn.

We shouldn't feel like a failure if we haven't written a bestseller (yet!). Success comes over the long term. The key is to write fast and well and get a lot of work published, so it can sell consistently over time.

Playing To Win is a wonderful, inspiring, article. I'm going to go and write now.

An indie author publishes her sales figures for August 2011

I can’t force everybody to jump on the ebook party bus, but I will say that if you’re looking for a business that can insulate you during life’s hard times, you might find it’s a very nice place to be.
- Dahlia, My ebook sales figures for August 2011

Dahlia writes:

Everybody’s got a song-and-dance they’re using to get to the top of the financial food chain. But the big question you should be asking yourself today is that if life were to toss you a bag a moldy lemons and you can’t make lemonade, could your online business still support you?

If you were (God forbid) to become terribly ill and could only spend a maximum of 90 minutes a day online, could you still put a roasted chicken (or some veggie tofu) on the dinner table without straining?

A lot of online businesses are dependent on steady and active participation. I’m thinking in particular about my freelance writing friends. They stop grinding and the revenue stops flowing. That’s a little scary for me, even with a savings to pad the fall.

That’s part of the reason why I really began to pursue ebooks as my primary revenue source. I needed to know that I had something to support me should I suddenly need surgery, or if there’s a death in the family, or even if I fall in love with some awesome muchacho. (Love? Yes… I make breathing room for everything!)

Dahlia reports that she made $4,210 dollars in August! And her sales are down a thousand dollars from July. Way to go, Dahlia! To read her entire article click here.

4 Ways To Get Reviews For Your Book

Someone tweeted me today asking me how authors could go about getting their book reviewed and it got me to thinking: Hey! That's a great idea for a blog post.

1. BookRooster.com
Earlier this year Joe Konrath interviewed Catherine MacDonald of BookRooster.com (Interview with Catherine MacDonald from BookRooster.com). Joe's interview is well worth the read and many writers left a comment in which they talked about their experience with BookRooster.

The following is from BookRooster.com:

BookRooster.com is a community of over 3,000 passionate readers/reviewers drawn from BookLending.com and other Kindle reader communities. We organize the distribution of review copies of your book (in MOBI format for Kindle) to reviewers in exchange for their unbiased Amazon customer review.

How BookRooster.com Works:

1. Reviewers sign up to receive review copies of books in their favorite genres. BookRooster.com reviewers are expected to review a reasonable proportion of the books they receive, and we read every Amazon customer review they submit to keep an eye on review quality and objectivity.

2. When you request distribution of review copies of your book, we extend invitations to a select group of reviewers drawn from hundreds who have indicated a desire to review books in your genre. The invitations describe your book and provide a link for reviewers to request your book if they’d like to read and review it.

3. We send out review copies of your book (in MOBI format) to these reviewers on a first-come, first-served basis until at least ten reviewers post their reviews of your book.

We charge an administrative fee of $67 per book to invite suitable reviewers to review your book, to distribute your book to those who have agreed to review it and to track to make sure at least ten reviews are submitted by BookRooster.com reviewers.

Please note: BookRooster.com is not a pay-for-review service. Our reviewers love to read in their favorite genres and they will write unbiased, sincere reviews that reflect their real opinions about your book. For more information, you can read our Reviewer Guidelines.

2. Book Bloggers
Amanda Hocking, among others, attributes much of her financial success to book bloggers. Alan Rinzler writes that

When she rolled out the first of nine books in March of last year, Hocking had no idea what to expect. Over the next couple of months, her Kindle sales amounted to around 600 eBooks. Not bad for a newbie, but not enough for the 26-year-old to quit her day job.

Whoosh! Into the fast lane

Then she discovered and tapped into the world of book bloggers. Her sales took a gigantic swerve into the fast lane, tallying 164,000 books sold by the end of 2010.

“I had no idea such people existed,” Hocking wrote on her own website. “They just read books and write about them. And I don’t mean “just.” They take time out of their busy lives to talk about books and have contests and connect with followers and writers and other readers. These guys are honestly my heroes. I’m a little in love with all of them.”

USA Today this week reported the jaw-dropping news that last month alone, Hocking sold 450,000 of her nine titles, breaking into their top 50 bestsellers list. Taking her cue from iTunes, she had priced her self-published eBooks at $2.99 (she keeps 70 percent) and .99 cents (keeping 30 percent.) Do the math. That day job is history.

Here is a link to A Tale of Many Reviews, a book review site. I have never used this site (although I might!), I came across it as I was doing research for this blog post. It looked good, so I thought I'd share. :-)

Also, I have a list of book blogs on the left side of this page. You may have to scroll down the page to see it.

3. Author/Writer Bloggers
I think of book bloggers as folks who primarily do reviews and who are attached to a book review website, but there are other kinds of bloggers.

Bloggers like me! Writers who blog about the world of writing. Sure, the blogger might say, "No!" to your request for a review, but the negative response doesn't cost you anything and you'll never know if you don't try.

If you decide to go this route, it helps if you do your research. Read a few of the blogger's posts so that when you contact them you'll be knowledgeable about their work. I would suggest that you offer the blogger a free copy of your book.

4. Ask your readers for reviews
Amanda Hocking did this, and I thought she did it well. I don't think readers mind being asked, politely, without any pressure being applied, to share their opinion of your book by writing a review.

What to do after the review:

Blog about it! Let as many folks know about the review as you can. Blog about it and then tweet the link to your followers.

Also, IMHO, there's only one appropriate response to a book review, good or bad, insightful or all-kinds-of-wrong: Thank you for taking the time to review my book.

If anyone can add to my suggestions for how to solicit book reviews, I would appreciate your feedback.

By the way, if anyone would like to review my book, Until Death, please do! :-)

You Can Be a Successful Writer Without a Bestseller

To make a living at indie publishing, you must have a decent number of books and stories for sale.

This is the point Dean drives home in his latest blog post: The Money is All in the Numbers. Dean acknowledges that there are people like Joe Konrath and Amanda Hocking who have made a huge amount of money off of one or a few books in a relatively short period of time, but these good folks are the exception not the rule. Dean's point: you don't need to write a bestseller to earn a comfortable living as an indie writer.

Dean writes that

I have, at my last count, just over nine million copies of my books in print, yet I have never had any big splash. Just a book here, a book there, and a lot of books selling over decades. And none of that counts any ghost-written novel or indie-published title. (The number would be a ton higher if I counted those.) Just traditional novels through traditional publishers under one of my own names.

Traditional publishers, Dean says, make their money "not so much on sales-per-book ... but on numbers of different titles that are for sale". It is all about control. A publisher can't control whether one of their books will become a best-seller, but they can control how many titles they have for sale. The more titles they have for sale, the more money they will make month after month, year after year.

Some books lose money, some make more than expected. But the hope and goal is that the average over a line of books over a period of time will be around the 4% figure, give or take. If the book line loses money regularly, the editor is eventually fired or the imprint or publishing company is killed. Just business.

If these big publishers were only publishing one book (or even only one hundred books) per month, they sure couldn’t afford the big buildings.

Quantity in numbers of titles is everything.

Here's how all of this applies to indie writers:

Indie-published writers got all the money that publishers used to get for building those huge buildings in New York.  Instead of getting 14.8% on electronic sales (25% of 70% – 15%), that publishers were offering, we got 65-70%. Period. And we could put books on our own web sites for sale and maybe even make 100%.

And even more importantly to us midlist writers: All our backlist suddenly had value again. (This is huge!!!)

On top of that, indie writers have more freedom. Not only can we write what we want but we can also write to the length that's right for the story.

Even if you are a novelist. Remember the one-hundred-thousand word novel was an artificial creation of the publishing industry over the last forty years to justify price increases. Let your stories go natural lengths. You will discover that most novels are fine around fifty-to-seventy-thousand words. Sometimes shorter. Just write the story you want to write.

I have only discussed a few of Dean's points, I would highly recommend that anyone interested in writing or publishing go over to his blog and read his article, The Money is All in the Numbers.

Then, write, and build up that backlist! :-)

Indie Success Story Bella Andre: Two pennames are better than one

In the past 18 months Bella Andre has self-published 12 books in two genres: spicy contemporary romance and sweet teen romance. Further, she has published under two different pen names: Bella Andre (erotic romance) and Lucy Kevin (sweet young adult romance).

Her key to success?

Diversification across genres and author brands.

Thanks to Joe Konrath, here is her incredible story:

In April 2010, I began e-publishing with two sexy, contemporary, backlist Bella Andre romances. After having a bit of unexpected success in those early months, I knew my chance had come to finally write the book my readers had been sending me emails about for five years. When LOVE ME did better than I ever imagined--Joe and I spoke on the phone last summer and I remember telling him I was shocked to have sold 1000+ copies of that book. He cheered!--I realized there was something to this whole e-reading business.

Of course I quickly went out and bought a Kindle and then a Nook later that fall and most recently an iPad. I released a couple more backlist books in October 2010 and then an original sequel to my Bad Boys of Football series that had been released through Pocket a few years back.

Amazingly, GAME FOR LOVE went to #28 at BN.com and was one of the top 5 erotic novels on Amazon for months at $5.99. This June 20th I launched a 8 book contemporary romance series about the Sullivan family with THE LOOK OF LOVE. It hit #19 on BN.com right out of the gate and has been a consistent Top 30 romance bestseller at Apple. Frankly, the whole thing continues to blow my mind.

Meanwhile, my husband had been watching my e-numbers rise for these self-published Bella Andre books and he kept saying, “Put out those fun chick lit books you wrote that no publisher ever bought!” Because I’d written them several years earlier, they needed significant rewrites, but I had always believed in the novels...and I like my husband to feel like I listen to him now and again. :) But since those books were very sweet (and snarky all at the same time), I knew they couldn’t be published as Bella Andre books.

Lucy Kevin came into being on a cold January morning in the Northern California wine country. Honestly, I figured 6 people would buy her books. To say that I was shocked when more than 25,000 people had downloaded SEATTLE GIRL and FALLING FAST by the end of February is a huge understatement. I released a third Lucy Kevin book in March titled SPARKS FLY.

The thing people are surprised to hear is that I didn’t draw from my existing Bella Andre readership for the Lucy Kevin books. In fact, until the Washington Post article came out, no one knew that Lucy and Bella were the same person, because I wasn’t sure the readerships would overlap between my teen-friendly books and my super-sexy romances. With the Lucy books I got to experience launching a new digital author--and building that readership--entirely from the ground up. It's been a lot of work, but I've loved trying to figure out what made people want to take a chance on a book. Heck, I’m still trying to figure that out :) and then find enough hours in the day to actually make it all happen!

Amazingly, here’s what happened--in some cases retailers were more excited to feature Lucy Kevin because the chick lit/sweet romance novels could reach a bigger mainstream audience. It simply didn’t seem to matter that no one had heard of Lucy Kevin. The fun, flirty covers (Oh, hello new graphic design skills I never thought I'd need!) seemed to draw people to the books and I’m guessing the $.99 to $2.99 price points helped, as well. Once I’d developed relationships with retailers via my Lucy books (I’m a “PubIt! Pro” for Barnes & Noble’s self-publishing wing), my recent launch of the more mainstream Bella Andre THE LOOK OF LOVE became even bigger and better.

But wait, that wasn't all Bella did. Besides being a writer and graphic artist she is a singer-songwriter. She writes:

I took things another step further in April when I decided to incorporate multimedia in my latest Lucy Kevin young-adult romance, GABRIELLE. In my previous career I was a singer-songwriter, so I wrote five original songs (rather, my songwriting heroine, Gabrielle, wrote them during the course of the story) and linked to them via Youtube and iTunes as an ebook package to create not only added value and excitement for my readers, but also another potential revenue stream.

Here's Bella's analysis of her success so far:

I really like not having to depend on one author name to maintain--and build--sales. Having two brands means I can build sales with new books while offsetting risks. We all know that diversifying our financial portfolios is a good money strategy. I’ve found that diversifying my e-book portfolio has not only been a good financial strategy, but as importantly, it had been a really lovely creative strategy, too.

So if you have a new idea or platform – if you want to try something completely different from what you’re doing now – I say go for it! Even if you think no one will be interested, the truth is that until you put your book out there, you'll never know.

Bella is an inspiration; a very talented inspiration! What she says about writing under more than one pen-name, or at least in more than one genre, rings true to me. As independent writers we aren't strangers to risk, why not try and reduce it?

Joe's comments are, as always, one of the best parts of his guest posts. To read the rest of his great blog post, click here.

Cheers!