"Average Hardworking Author"

For quite a long time I have heard comments by writers that the midlist author is being pushed aside by the NY Six—that is not a typo of Sex but I refer to the NY corporate publishers which currently number Six, while not too many years ago, the number was at least twice that.

Apparently NY publishers for some time have been pulling away from supporting the midlist author who was once considered a consistent, yet moderate seller. They seem also to have given up a vision (if they ever had one) of taking a chance on a new author or an author who has broken through the midlist category into a possible BIG book.

So where does that put the average hardworking author who is marketing his or her new quality manuscript? When publishers are not acquiring new manuscripts where does that put the average hardworking author? When literary agents are not taking on additional authors because they cannot sell the material they already represent, where does that put the average hardworking author? When publishers offer small advances, much smaller than in previous years, and expect to do a small number press run, where does that put the average hardworking author?

It may have the average hardworking author looking at small independent presses, and considering low advances and low print runs. Expectations may not be as high at a small press—so a successful publication of an average hardworking author’s book may just be that: successful.

But that average hardworking author may look beyond tying their manuscript up with even a small press, and look to other publishing opportunities.

And what might those opportunities be for the average hardworking author?

Ebooks and Print on Demand may be exactly what that average hardworking author is looking for.

One place for the average hardworking author to look to publish the quality book he or she has created, is at Amazon’s Kindle and Createspace, and Smashwords.

And that average hardworking author will reap the benefits of excellent royalty rates and enjoy a sense of freedom, which may make the lack of an advance paid against royalties a good thing.

All stories come to an end, but for this average hardworking author who now has a new book published, can do what he or she does best: write the next book.

~Linda

Debate on Self Publishing Continues, and Continues

Author Jon Guenther posted interesting comments on his blog about self-publishing and the ebook debate which is the current hot topic in the world of publishing. (I agree with him). And I have a feeling the topic will not cool to a tepid temp for quite some time.

This week a news item from mass market paperback publisher Dorchester Publishing, reported in Publishers Weekly and elsewhere, stating the company "has dropped its traditional print publishing business in favor of an e-book/print-on-demand model effective with its September titles that are “shipping” now." They have been in the mass market paperback business publishing mainly romance, and also westerns, thrillers, etc., and although not one of the NY conglomerates, they've been a stable and recognized publisher since 1971.

It is also an indication that the movement by many authors into self-publishing ebooks and PODs, along with the public buying and reading ebooks, is definetly having an impact on the book world. Every few days it seems, another topic of interest regarding ebooks arises, whether from Amazon, authors, agents or publishers.

I am currently expanding my ebook distribution beyond Amazon's Kindle now to the various other platforms for reader devices through Smashwords.com. And this week Amazon.com in the UK now has Kindle and our U.S. books available.

Times they are A'Changin' .... and A'Changin'

And many of us are happy to see the changes and new opportunities taking place. I believe it gives us a new sense of identity as authors to have not only choice in the way we publish our books, but control over our works as never before.

Some of my previous posts about the subject of self-publishing PODs and ebooks.

Charlie Rose Interviews Amazon's Jeff Bezos

Linda Pendleton on the Self-Publishing Debate

Linda Pendleton on Pixels and Fonts: Ebooks and Ebook Readers

And two articles I published nearly ten years ago concerning the subject at a time when the interest in ebooks was really just beginning:

Pixels and Fonts, Should it Matter? Resistance to Ebook Publishing by Some in the Library Profession.

Ebook Publishing vs. Print Publishing: A Look at the Pros and Cons.

And more from Jon Guenther on his Blog: Amazon and the Kindle Rock.

Yes, Times they are A'Changin'

Yipee...



~Linda

The E-Book Battle

This Sunday article in the Washington Post addresses some of the publishing issues I have written about, i.e.: e-books, book prices, the industry ignoring what readers desire, and what writers want in regards to fair royalties. You can also add Print On Demand to this as e-books often have POD availability.

Here are some excerpts from the article:

E-books spark battle inside the publishing industry
By Marion Maneker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 27, 2009

“The evolution of publishing from print to digital has caused a schism in the reading world. There are now two constituencies: readers (and writers) on the one hand, and the publishing world on the other. And they don't want to hear each other.”

“Readers want books that are plentiful and cheap, publishers want to preserve their profit, and authors want a larger share of revenue. The conflict has created a strident internecine battle inside the publishing industry.”

...”Publishers can no longer be vast containers of intellectual property distributed in paper form to bookstores, supermarkets and warehouse clubs. But they don't have to be: They can become highly selective distributors to bookstores, supermarkets and price clubs. That's the lesson of the television, music and movie businesses.”

“But if the publishers want a role in the e-books business, they'll need to get over it and get on with it, embracing lower-priced e-books with higher author royalties. That seems unlikely. Because it's now clear that publishers just don't want to listen to what their customers are telling them.”

Read the complete Washington Post article.

See my previous post on ebooks, self-publishing, Kindle.

Unease in the Publishing World

Pixels and Fonts, E-books and E-book Readers

Publishing With Kindle

~Linda

The Unease in the Publishing World

"Nothing endures but change." - Heraclitus

Many authors are moving away from traditional publishing and going to self-publishing. This last month there was outrage in the publishing industry because Harlequin and another publisher now have a branch of their companies dealing in self-publishing.

Kevin Weiss is CEO of Author Solutions, the company who owns the self-publishing companies such as Exlibris, Author House, and iUniverse (who I have published several books with in 2000 and 2002, in addition to putting 12 of my late husband, Don Pendleton’s books back in print with their program in association with the Authors Guild, Inc.).

I’m not necessarily recommending an author choose to go the self publishing route without doing some research of the idea, but as I have written I have been upset by the attitude of publishers and many agents who believe a self-published author is not worthy of regular, traditional publishing and is not a professional. And I am also perturbed by the same attitude of author organizations, such as the Mystery Writers of America, who will not allow membership in the organization unless an author has been published by a company they consider to be a traditional publisher. I consider those attitudes to be elitist and unreasonable.

I must say I agree with what Kevin Weiss states in his video, and in my last blog I talked about Jeff Bezos’ Amazon and the Kindle Reader.

Change is happening in the industry and there is resistance. I doubt we’re going to go backwards so everybody might as well surrender to it instead of fighting it. It is time for change. And readers who are not spending $30 on a hardcover book should be giving publishers a hint. And millions spent on advances, especially celebrity advances, are not being recovered.

Seems there is a message there.

Let's see what 2010 brings....

~Linda

Publishing with Kindle

Recently I have been reading blogs of several authors who have taken the leap into publishing for the Kindle Reader at amazon.com

For some authors, it has been books never before published and for others it is their unpublished works.

So with enough on my plate as always, I decided I needed an added challenge! So I have published three books with Kindle this past week.

The first one I decided to do was my novella, The Masquerading Cowboy, a short I wrote some time back and won a writing contest with it. I decided I would try formatting it myself for the Kindle and I was having problems with the formatting such as putting in a cover graphic within the text, and feeling uneasy. So I contacted Joshua at Kindle Formatting and in a few days he had my book formatted and ready for me to upload at Kindle.

But one book did not satisfy me so I did a second one, a nonfiction, A Meeting of the Minds: 19th Century Poet-Philosophers Explore Spirituality, and formatted it myself with some trial and error. I know a little about html coding and actually was able to read the html and correct a few little flaws. It took a few uploads and going through the preview of it a few times, but I finally got it!

So my success with formatting led me to publish a third one, Exclusive Interview With Richard S. Prather, Author of the Best-Selling Shell Scott Mystery Series.

I also began to thinking about my other books and putting them into Kindle editions. So I decided to do two of my published novels and The Dawning and Roulette will be Kindle editions in the coming weeks. I decided not to tackle the formatting on those myself but left it up to my publisher to do so.

I work with my web designer, Judy on my book covers. I give her the idea of what I want and she comes up with it. So if anyone needs a cover for a Kindle book, an ebook, or a POD, visit her website.

One day I may have to break down and buy a Kindle Reader. I only know one person with a Kindle and she really likes it.

I don’t know where publishing is going as the economy has definitely affected the business and in turn all of us authors. Many authors are looking at alternative choices such as self publishing, PODs, ebooks, and Kindle editions. There are pros and cons in moving away from traditional publishing, the main thing being distribution and ending up with only online bookstores and not in brick and mortar stores. Some people will always want the physical book in their hands, not a reading device. But it appears over these last years or so people are very willing to read downloaded books on their reading devices or computer screens. And this young generation is exposed to computer technology at such a early age, sometimes pre-school, they may always prefer to use a computer or reader instead of a paper book. After all, many of them do text or tweet all the time from their handheld devices.

In 2002 I wrote an article about ebooks versus print books and quoted N.Y. agent, Richard Curtis, a well known New York Literary Agent and president of E-reads, an electronic publishing company. He had this to say, January 7, 2002, in a "Publishers Weekly Magazine" article: "How long are we going to endure skeptics telling us that nobody wants to read on screen, when thousands are paying do so every day?" He also stated in response to critics, "Those of us making money in e-books, delivering thousands of downloads every month, paying royalties to authors and publishers, have to wonder what planet these pundits are on." I agreed with Curtis then, and still do.

Will it replace library bookshelves? Probably not, but it may in time drastically change the book market. After all, the world is changing. And probably most of us are using technology now that we never dreamed of a few years ago. Isn’t that right?

Linda Pendleton at Kindle Store

~Linda

World's Oldest Publisher

Although King Henry VIII of England was a controversial figure of the 16th Century with his six wives, numerous mistresses, beheadings, during his 55 years one good thing he did was granting a royal charter to Cambridge University Press in 1534 to print “all manner of books.”

This month Cambridge University Press, the oldest publisher in the world, celebrates 425 years of printing and publishing.

~Linda

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Huge Success Story

Harry Potter is about to hit the bookstores and quickly jump into readers’ hands at 12:01 Saturday, July 21st. This 7th and last book in J.K. Rowling’s series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, has already accumulated pre-orders of 2 million books, well above the previous record of the 6th Potter book.

The book has been Number One on Amazon for many days over the last six months or more. A few times it may have been bumped from first place for a short-lived book. According to the July 9 issue of Publishers Weekly, the book has had the highest number of Amazon pre-orders in history, one million books! The 12 million first printing is expected to fly off shelves, and although I haven’t heard, I would guess it may be into a second printing or will be before long.

The Harry Potter Series of the six prior books have sold 27.7 million books in the U.S. alone, and 22.5 copies in the UK. In addition it has been translated into more than 63 languages, with German and Japanese editions doing especially well, resulting in worldwide copies of the series so far, reaching 325 million copies. You can imagine how that figure will jump as the new publication is translated in coming months.

As we know, there are always people out there who will try and ruin things for others. Her UK publisher Bloomsbury is taking immediate legal action as a result of leaks and breaking of the on-sale legal agreements, with information of the book popping up on the Internet. Scholastic, her U.S. publisher, issued a statement asking fans to "please not spoil the book for the rest of we Harry Potter fans who are eagerly awaiting the final installment of the Harry Potter series and to help ‘preserve the fun and excitement for fans everywhere’."

Rowling has posted this message on her website as of July 18:

"We are almost there! As launch night looms, let’s all, please ignore the misinformation popping up on the web and in the press on the plot of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I’d like to ask everyone who calls themselves a Potter fan to help preserve the secrecy of the plot for all those who are looking forward to reading the book at the same time on publication day. In a very short time you will know EVERYTHING!"

I’ve been happy for J.K. Rowling’s success as a writer, and it has turned out to be quite an incredible success. She is richer than the Queen of England and the # 2 richest in the entertainer category, just behind Oprah. J.K. Rowling is the highest earning novelist in literary history and it is well deserved.

From the first I heard of her Harry Potter book, I have been intrigued how the story came to her during a four hour train ride. Not just the idea for a book, but the plot for a series of seven books! And the "dream" came to her when she was down-and-out as a struggling, single mother. A beautiful success story!

It’s so ironic and, I suppose, satisfying to me that the books have been such a world-wide success after the outcry from some religious groups and others who wanted the books banned. It is a good example how those outcries were based on fear, and control, instead of looking at Harry Potter and gang as a magical and fictional fantasy story of good, enjoyable (and harmless) entertainment enjoyed by children and adults, alike.

Google presently lists 4,780,000 references to the title Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. That shows how powerful words are.

As Lord Byron said years ago: "Words are things; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions think."

~ Linda

Simon and Schuster and Author Contracts

The Authors Guild (of which I’ve been a member since 1990) sent out a notice to members early this week to let us know that publisher, Simon and Schuster has made changes to their standard contracts with authors. Traditionally all major publishers follow the practice in which rights to a work revert to the author if the book falls out of print or if its sales are low. Their new contract language apparently will no longer include minimum sales requirement for a work to be considered in print, and the work would remain under their exclusive control as long as it is available in any form, including through its own in-house data base (POD) and not even available to be ordered by traditional bookstores. In essence, this would amount to an exclusive grants of right in perpetuity. And as the Authors Guild suggests, this would effectively mean the publisher would co-own the author’s copyright.

The Authors Guild, who represents thousands of writers, states this is unacceptable. And most authors and agents would agree! This is very troubling. It will mean more negotiation for an author to protect his rights. Simon and Schuster is now stating that the Authors Guild is over-reacting and that they will negotiate reversion clauses on a "book-by-book basis."

An author wants to have control of his work. Books normally have a short shelf life, sometimes as short as three or four months, unless it really catches on. In this scenario, Simon and Schuster could publish a book, and it might have a short run, and even after a reasonable length of time when rights traditionally and usually revert, they could continue to consider the book "in print" as a Print on Demand, forever.

In many cases, an author wants to take back the rights of out-of-print books so they can give their work a new life with a new publisher. That happens often. When Don Pendleton’s six Joe Copp, Private Eye novels and six Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective novels were out of print, I asked for the rights back and soon put them into print again.

Richard S. Prather is another example: his Shell Scott mystery series is available again after many years, and his 1952 novel, The Peddler, was published a few months ago by Hard Case Crime.

I’m sure we will be hearing more on this from literary agents and authors. It’s difficult enough negotiating a decent contract without having this added issue.

~Linda