SinC Offers Two Hours of Video on the Latest Publishing Trends

For the first time ever, Sisters in Crime (SinC) is offering a series of video presentations of a SinC-sponsored writers’ workshop.

The video content, available online at no charge to members and non-members, includes more than two hours of information on the latest trends in publishing presented by crime fiction industry leaders specifically for crime fiction authors. The sessions were taped during Sisters in Crime’s annual “SinC Into Great Writing” workshop in September 2011.

The free video content includes:

Meg Gardiner: Lying for a Living
Award-winning thriller author Meg Gardiner speaks about the craft of writing and the key elements of a good read. (21 minutes)

Ellen Hart: E-publishing 101
Award-winning mystery author Ellen Hart provides an introduction to the first steps in e-publishing your novel. (9 minutes)

Libby Fischer Hellmann: To E or not to E
Award-winning crime fiction author Libby Fischer Hellmann presents the pros and cons of traditional publishing and e-publishing options. (20 minutes)

David Wilk: Trends in Publishing
Booktrix CEO David Wilk offers a look at a variety of issues facing authors today, from social media to the best materials to e-publish. (22 minutes)

Marcia Talley: Look Ma! I've Been Kindled!
Award-winning mystery author Marcia Talley provides a tutorial on publishing a manuscript for the Kindle and Nook platforms. The PowerPoint slides for her presentation are posted online with the video file. (15 minutes)

The Business of Print Publishing
Award-winning authors Cathy Pickens and Jim Huang present an overview of the business side of print publishing. (12 minutes)

Brazen Hussies Present: A Colloquium on Marketing
Marcia Talley leads a discussion of marketing possibilities. The panelists include Libby Jordan, marketing consultant for Open Road Media; Gina Panettieri, President and Executive Editor of Talcott Notch Literary Services and Debbi Mack, independently-published author. (19 minutes)

The seven-video series is available to Sisters in Crime members online at http://www.sistersincrime.org in the Members Only section at the Promoting Yourself area. Members will need a username and password to access the videos here. In addition, the video files are available to non-members online at http://www.sistersincrime.org in the Recent News section linked here.

Sisters in Crime was founded in 1986 to support the professional development and advancement of women crime fiction authors.

Selling Your Own E-books: Dana Stabenow Reports

Introduction by Dana Stabenow:

Scott Gere has been my webmaster from my first website. Along the way, we’ve talked a lot about the publishing business, as I watched and mourned my backlist going slowly and inexorably out of print.

Inevitably, e-books showed up in our brainstorming sessions - and last year he said, “Let’s just do it.”

We had no idea if we would make any money. I was petrified that his company would be out-of-pocket on expenses and not only would my e-books go away, but he’d fire me as his website client, too.

Everything of course took a lot longer than we thought it would, but Fire and Ice, my first Liam Campbell novel, went up last year three days before Christmas. Since then, we’ve been averaging about a book a month. When we’re a little farther into this process, I’ll be blogging about it with real numbers, but for now let me just say that the results have exceeded everyone’s expectations, and that no one is out-of-pocket.

Gere Donovan Press (GDP) is scanning, formatting and proofing the books, giving them terrific covers and minding the store (specifically putting the books up on iTunes, Amazon and Barnes & Noble and collecting and dispersing the income). Now they've come up with a nifty way for me to sell books through my website, which is currently active on stabenow.com (http://www.stabenow.com/e-books).

Scott wrote about our project on the GDP website, and SinC reblogs his post here for you today:

[From press.geredonovan.com]:

You may have recently encountered a wee web application that we’ve been working on. Indeed, the odds are good that its footer provided the link that brought you here.

Who is Bridgit, you ask, and what does she have to do with your eBook purchase?

Bridgit is a lightweight eBookstore cart solution, currently under development by Gere Donovan Press. Named in part for St. Brigid of Kildare, patron saint of printing presses (who was herself named for the Celtic goddess of Wisdom), Bridgit will enable small publishing houses, self-published authors and others to easily accept credit card payments in exchange for time-limited, DRM-free eBook downloads. It allows you to cut out the middle man, and bridges the gap (ouch). [Note: DRM, or digital rights management, is referred to by some as digital restrictions management.]

Bridgit assumes that the parent site provides all of the product information. Place an add-to-cart button on the book’s page, targeting your Bridgit instance, and we handle the rest. Bridgit processes the financial details of the transaction, generates download links that are unique to the customer and emails them a receipt. Books are provided in both .mobi and .ePub formats, via links which are valid for 24 hours.

In that no DRM has proven to be proof against piracy, while virtually all DRM has been shown to annoy honest people who just want to move their files from one device to another, Bridgit’s downloads are DRM-free. As devices and file types evolve, Bridgit may expand her horizons a bit… we’ll see what the market wants.

To experience Bridgit for yourself, [take a look at] one of the fine GDP eBooks from Stabenow.com. If you’re interested in discussing how Bridgit could be used to handle your own eBook transactions, or want to tell us what you think Bridgit should do, please drop us a line at press@geredonovan.com.

Dana Stabenow is the award-winning author of the 18-book Kate Shugak mystery series, the four-book Liam Campbell mystery series and the three-book Star Svensdotter science fiction series. The most recent title in the Kate Shugak series is Though Not Dead, a mystery set in contemporary Alaska that includes more than a passing mention of Dashiell Hammett's Army days in the Aleutian Islands during World War II.

Shaken: Stories for Japan

By Jeri Westerson


Early in June, Amazon will feature a new Kindle book that may be the first major e-book charitable fundraiser.

Prompted by the disaster in northern Japan, Shaken: Stories for Japan, is a collection of original, exclusive, Japan-themed short stories by some remarkable writers: Gar Anthony Haywood, Naomi Hirahara, Ken Kuhlken, Cara Black, Dianne Emley, Dale Furutani, Jeri Westerson, Gary Phillips, Kelli Stanley, Brett Battles, Robert Gregory Brown, Jeffrey Siger, IJ Parker, Wendy Hornsby, Vicki Doudera, Adrian McKinty, Debbi Mack, Meredith Cole, Rosemary Harris, CJ West, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Hong Kong film historian Stefan Hammond and Edgar-nominated author Tim Hallinan, who is editing the collection.

One hundred percent of all writer royalties for this book will be paid directly into the bank account of Japan America Society of Southern California, which has already raised more than $1 million for the relief effort.

I think this is the first time anyone has taken advantage of the rapid turnaround time possible on the Kindle and the monthly direct-deposit of royalty payments to raise money for a major charitable enterprise. This actually probably wouldn't have been possible before the advent of the ebook. (We're exclusive to Amazon only because of their payment policies, which are prompt and automatic, freeing up money as it's needed, not at the end of various bookkeeping quarters.)

When Tim Hallinan approached me about this project in late April, it was really a no-brainer. First off, I live in southern California and am intimately acquainted with earthquakes to the point where I can guess the Richter scale size of it just by the feel. That’s too intimate!

Most of the quakes that roll in from time to time are minor or come from far away (a big rolling feeling means it comes from afar, and you can hear those coming, too. A hard, building jolt means that the epicenter is quite close, a few miles or so.). But it’s like living on a precipice: Get too complacent and bad things can happen.

We don’t know when an earthquake of devastating proportion will strike and we don’t know what will happen to us and our community when it does. I live pretty far inland, so a chance at a tsunami is zero, but you don’t need a wall of water to destroy life as you knew it. The earth moving can take care of that.

I would have to say that empathy was the biggest factor that encouraged my participation in this project. But getting a chance to have a story alongside this talented array of authors was certainly another big factor. I haven’t read any of the other stories and am just as excited to get the book as anyone else. It’s a great chance to do some good and get a great collection at the same time. That seems like an easy decision for mystery readers.


Jeri Westerson, the president of the Orange County chapter of Sisters in Crime, is the author of the Crispin Guest medieval mysteries. The newest title in the series, The Demon's Parchment, was nominated for the Reviewer's Choice Award for Historical Mystery from Romantic Times magazine and the Bruce Alexander Award for Best Historical Mystery. For more information, see www.JeriWesterson.com.

Braving the New World of E-book Pricing, Part 2 of 2 Parts

By Lori L. Lake

Bransford’s final question in his essay was this:

Are we headed to free for e-book prices or will we find a way to charge as much as people are willing to pay?

Is he kidding? Of course the answer MUST BE the latter! This writing business may be creative/touchy-feely/artsy fartsy and all that, but at the end of the day, the bottom line always ends up being the bottom line. Can we make enough to live on so we can keep on being writers? Joe and Barry can afford to give books away. Evanovich and Patterson and Clancy and Dan Brown and all those other heavy-hitters could afford it. 98.9% of the rest of us would be seriously unwise to do so.

All of these people who are trying to make a name for themselves now by giving away free copies and 99-cent copies aren’t doing themselves or anyone else any favors. They may be capitalizing on the “Tragedy of the Commons,” but only those few who got their foot in the door early on will benefit. The market is flooded more every day. It’s also unfortunate to have to say that, as far as I can tell from a random experiment, far too many of them are giving away crap. (Pardon my "French.") I “bought” a couple dozen free and 99-cent books from unknown authors, and the vast majority were really odorific smelly stinkers!

This $2.99 to $9.99 price scale that Amazon has jammed down everyone’s throats is all well and good at the moment, but that means that $9.99 is being set up as the future top-end cost of a “book” (print or digital). Why are we letting readers get accustomed to that level when actually a hardback (at $25) or trade versions (at $13-16) have been underwriting the e-book process all along?

It’s clear and verified now that as every day goes by, print books are selling fewer copies and yielding smaller revenues while e-books are increasing in sales volume. But, because the price point has been set up arbitrarily, most publishers will have declining revenues – even if they sell more e-books than print books. The cost of producing and distributing a printed hardcover can’t settle at $9.99. It can’t be done that cheaply with the overhead a big press has.

This point cannot be overlooked: E-books from many publishers have been cheap so far because the physical book had already been created and it wasn’t too hard to convert it from the printed book’s digital file.

Some say NY will save money in e-book creation compared to print books because they don’t pay warehousing or for the returns process. I have to argue that all the funds saved from the cost of printing/warehousing will have to be allocated to pay someone to format, upload, and test the e-book product. Instead of paying the printer, publishers are now having to hire whole staffs to set up and administer the e-books.

So where is the big savings that warrants NY charging $9.99? There’s not enough room in the equation to pay for the expenses from initial acquisition through editing/cover/rollout to promotions all the way up to e-book promulgation to the various sales outlets. This is why most presses are trying very hard to pay 8% and 10% or maybe 15% NET INCOME to the author for e-book royalties. How else can they survive if the writer doesn’t take the hit? I’ll spare you the math on Net Income for even 15%. It’s not pretty. (Along with Dean Wesley Smith, Joe and Barry do a great job discussing this: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/04/ebooks-and-self-publishing-part-2_03.html).

The time is coming where big presses simply will not be able to afford to support the structure as it’s currently set up. Not to mix metaphors, but a lot of what I see happening lately in publishing is the fretful rearranging of deck chairs and book and magazine supplies on the Titanic. The center will not hold, and the iceberg of expectations and ignorance is about to crash into NY – which also includes everyone who is published by the big houses. The financial foundering, bankruptcies, and closings of Big Box stores is just the beginning. Indie stores are feeling it too—even if they do have dedicated readers to whom they cater. The NY publishing houses are next.

What will take the place of NY, which busily anointed numbers of authors and distributed their print books? How will the readers find books without the (seriously inaccurate) NY Times Best-Seller List? What’s this new digital world *really* going to look like when the over one million books published each year are ALL vying for the reader’s attention in the e-book virtual world?

And the big question: how fast is it coming on? In 1983, compact disks and players became available and sales grew steadily as people adopted the new technology. In 1985, David Bowie put his records on CD, kicking off a rush by other music houses to get their “Big Artist” backlists up.

I bought my last record album in April 1987. In 1983, I said I’d *never* give up my LP albums to buy CDs. I now have over 2,000 CDs, some of which duplicate my old LP collection (which is mostly long gone). Once again, new technology is on the rise and now I’ve also got several hundred digital music downloads. I say today I’ll never want to get rid of my CDs….but I suspect the day will come when they’ll all be digitized, and I’ll have moved on to the next technology.

Just like the people who are now adopting e-books and eReaders.

But to answer Nathan’s question: Many early adopters of this new technology (including me) are making enough to live on with the 70% of each $9.99/book sold, but I’m not able to sell any cheaper anytime soon. If the price goes up, I’ll be perfectly happy to go with it.

Lori L. Lake is the author of six novels, two short story collections and is the editor of two anthologies. Her most recent book, Like Lovers Do, was released on May 10. For more information, see www.lorillake.com.

Braving the New World of E-book Pricing, Part 1 of 2 Parts

By Lori L. Lake

Nathan Bransford recently wrote a timely and insightful piece called “99 Cent E-Books and the Tragedy of the Commons” in which he responds to the latest news about e-book pricing.

In addition, Jeffrey Trachetenberg has an informative article called “Cheapest E-Books Upend the Charts: 99-Cent Titles From Unknown Authors Put New Pressure on Big Publishers”. The title says it all.

Many fellow writers and colleagues have fallen into a frenzy of excitement about the prospect of getting rich (or, in the alternative, at least finally making a living) with their writing. Self-pubbed Amanda Hocking’s name is bandied about. People are telling anecdotes about authors making thousands of dollars in mere days. At long last, maybe all of those years of toil will pay off!

The much-discussed dialogue between Joe Konrath and Barry Eisler is also cited as further evidence that authors may finally receive their due. All over the place I’m hearing writers saying that all you have to do is write a book, get it online, and voilá -- instant presto money!

The problem with extrapolating the Konrath/Eisler situation to a general author’s circumstances is that those guys have made names for themselves. They’ve already built huge fan bases to rely upon and have the stature to continue to gain more notoriety. Many small press and midlist authors have cultivated fan bases as well, but there’s only so much room for blockbuster authors. A writer friend of mine once said that for pop fiction, the public can’t recall more “Big Apostles” than 12 or 13 – and she argued that the number may be lower than that since most of us can’t remember all the apostles names either.

If a writer has a dedicated group of readers and libraries regularly purchasing his or her works, then putting out her or his own e-books can certainly bring in some revenue. But I would argue that little by little, the marketplace is flooding. A tremendous number of fiction backlists are popping up steadily online, and new books are being uploaded daily (some would say frantically). The more e-books that become available, the smaller the pie gets for everyone. I know, I know, the reports are telling us that people are buying more books than ever. But that always happens when someone gets a new toy. Once the market becomes saturated with e-readers, the sales will normalize.

At some point, quality is really going to start to matter. A lot of authors are getting away with substandard editing and formatting. That won’t last much longer. (See the Jacqueline Howett meltdown for a good example of how readers are starting to fight back: http://booksandpals.blogspot.com/2011/03/greek-seaman-jacqueline-howett.html).

But the vast majority of writers – certainly almost all of the ones aspiring to the mainstream (like many of those on the SinC Yahoo listserv, for instance) – do not have the luxury of a rabid following. They can post their books all they want on Amazon and other sites, but nobody’s going to find them on page 473. Having been with a publisher or having found a niche is a HUGE advantage.

Whether you have a name or not, I would argue that charging 99 cents or even $2.99 for a full-length novel is a wretched, stupid idea. If we do the math, you can see what I mean. I’ll just use my own work as an example.

It typically takes me about 300 hours to write a complete first draft. Add another 100 hours of my own revising and editing, then another 30-50 hours for working with the editor and proofing, and I’m up to, let’s guesstimate, 440 hours. (I’m not even going to count research and the time I spend dithering and fretting and all that. And of course, this doesn’t include e-book creation time with formatting/uploading/testing, cover creation, marketing and promotions, etc., or doing all the administrative work that a publisher used to do.)

Anyway, 440 hours x $30/hour means I need to make about $13,200 selling The Novel as an e-book or I may as well go back to government work. (And I need to make AT LEAST $30/hr because the government is going to tax me out of over 40% of it!)

I’ll use Amazon as an example because they have some of the best rates for writers publishing their own work – 70% for $2.99 to 9.99 price points and 35% for .99 to 2.98. Applying their price points, here are some calculations for how many units I must sell to make $30/hour for the work I did on the book:

• I have to make 37,714 sales if the e-book sells at 99 cents.
• I have to make 18,857 sales if the e-book sells at 1.99.
• I have to make 6,316 sales if the e-book sells at 2.99.
• I have to make 4,204 sales if the e-book sells at 4.49.
• I have to make 2,699 sales if the e-book sells at 6.99.
• I have to make 2,223 sales if the e-book sells at 8.49.
• I have to make 1,889 sales if the e-book sells at 9.99.

I share those numbers to illustrate how ridiculous – or perhaps I should say, damaging – a .99 cent price point is. How can the average non-blockbuster author make ends meet? And my needs are probably a lot lower than those of authors like Joe and Barry. They can probably sell 37,714 e-books easily, I suppose – but the rest of us I’m not so sure about. I know I’m a long way off from that. I happen to write in the niche of lesbian fiction, and for many gay/lesbian authors, we have a dedicated audience of GLBT people, along with some open-minded mainstream readers, but we get little promotional support. We’re often lost completely in the enormous and busy marketplace of mainstream works. 37,714 books would be a dream that few niche and/or self-pubbed authors could achieve.

To be continued...


Lori L. Lake is the author of six novels, two short story collections and is the editor of two anthologies. Her most recent book, Like Lovers Do, was released on May 10. For more information, see www.lorillake.com.

Ebooks and Self-Publishing: A Conversation Between Authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath

[Today's blog post is an excerpt of a lengthy online conversation between writers Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath. To see the discussion in its entirety, go to: http://barryeisler.blogspot.com]


Barry: This is a live Google docs discussion I had with my good friend, novelist Joe Konrath. It examines the history and mechanics of the publishing industry as it exists today, analyzes the way the digital revolution reflects recent events in Egypt and the Maghreb, and considers a completely inappropriate YouTube video featuring a randy monkey and an unlucky frog. It clocks in at 13,000 words, and reveals some pretty startling things.


Joe: To the casual observer, you appear to be heavily invested in the legacy publishing system. They’ve been good to you, they helped you get onto the NYT bestseller list, made you wealthy with several large deals, and seem to have treated you fairly.

Barry: Well, I don’t know about wealthy, but I’ve been making a living writing novels for almost a decade now, which is a pretty great way to live.

Joe: You had six-figure and seven-figure deals. Logic dictates anyone offered a deal like that should leap at it.

Barry: You wouldn’t.

Joe: But I never had the treatment you had from legacy publishers. I would walk away from a big deal now, most certainly, because I have two years of data proving I can do better on my own.

However, what if a NYT bestseller were offered, say, half a million dollars for two books?

Or, more specifically, let's say you were offered that.

You'd take it. Right?

Barry: Well, I guess not... ;)

Joe: So... no BS... you were just offered half a mil, and you turned it down?

Barry: Yes.

I know it’ll seem crazy to a lot of people, but based on what’s happening in the industry, and based on the kind of experience writers like you are having in self-publishing, I think I can do better in the long term on my own.

Joe: "Barry Eisler Walks Away From $500,000 Deal to Self-Pub" is going to be one for the Twitter Hall of Fame.

* * * *

Barry: There’s a saying about the railroads: they thought they were in the railroad business, when in fact they were in the transportation business. So when the interstate highway system was built and trucking became an alternative, they were hit hard.

Likewise, publishers have naturally conflated the specifics of their business model with the generalities of the industry they’re in. As you say, they’re not in the business of delivering books by paper--they’re in the business of delivering books. And if someone can do the latter faster and cheaper than they can, they’re in trouble.

Joe: You say they're aware of it, and some evidence points to that being true. The agency model is an attempt to slow the transition from paper to digital. Windowing titles is another one. So are insanely high ebook prices.

Barry: All signs that publishers are aware of the potential for digital disintermediation, but that they don’t understand what it really means.

Joe: Because they still believe they’re essential to the process.

Barry: I would phrase it a little differently. They recognize they’re becoming non-essential, and are trying to keep themselves essential--but are going about it in the wrong way.

Joe: You and I and our peers are essential. We're the writers. We provide the content that is printed and distributed.

For hundreds of years, writers couldn't reach readers without publishers. We needed them.

Now, suddenly, we don't. But publishers don't seem to be taking this Very Important Fact into account.

Barry: Well, again, I think they’re taking it into account, but they’re drawing the wrong conclusions. The wrong conclusion is: I’m in the paper business, paper keeps me essential, therefore I must do all I can to retard the transition from paper to digital. The right conclusion would be: digital offers huge cost, time-to-market, and other advantages over paper. How can I leverage those advantages to make my business even stronger?

Joe: We figured out that the 25% royalty on ebooks they offer is actually 14.9% to the writer after everyone gets their cut. 14.9% on a price the publisher sets.

Barry: Gracious of you to say “we.” You’re the first one to point out that a 25% royalty on the net revenue produced by an ebook equals 17.5% of the retail price after Amazon takes its 30% cut, and 14.9% after the agent takes 15% of the 17.5%.

Joe: Yeah, that 25% figure you see in contracts is really misleading. Amazing, when you consider that there’s virtually no cost to creating ebooks--no cost for paper, no shipping charges, no warehousing. No cut for Ingram or Baker & Taylor. Yet they're keeping 52.5% of the list price and offering only 17.5% to the author. It’s not fair and it’s not sustainable.

Barry: I think what’s happening is that publishers know paper is dying while digital is exploding, and they’re trying to use the lock they’ve always had on paper to milk more out of digital. In other words, tie an author into a deal that offers traditional paper royalties, which are shrinking, while giving the publisher a huge slice of digital royalties, which are growing. The problem, from the publisher’s perspective, is that their paper lock is broken now.

Joe: I feel all writers need to be made aware that there is finally an option. Not just an option, but an actual preferable alternative to signing away your rights.

Barry: It’s inevitable that more writers will be realizing this is true. It’s being demonstrated by more and more self-published authors: you, Amanda Hocking, Scott Nicholson, Michael J. Sullivan, HP Mallory, Victorine Lieske, BV Larson, Terri Reid, LJ Sellers, John Locke, Blake Crouch, Lee Goldberg, Aaron Patterson, Jon F. Merz, Selena Kitt, hopefully me... :)

Joe: You're on track to make $30,000 this year on a self-published short story. I'm not aware of any short story markets that pay that well.

Barry: Well, it’s early yet, but yes, "The Lost Coast" has done amazingly well in its first few weeks, netting me about $1000 after the initial fixed cost of $600 for having the cover designed and having the manuscript formatted. I plan to continue to publish short stories and I’ll be getting the new John Rain novel, The Detachment, up in time for Father’s Day, and I have a feeling that each of the various products will reinforce sales of the others.

Joe: That's a really smart plan. My own sales, and the sales of other indie authors doing well, pretty much confirm that a rising tide lifts all boats. Virtual shelf space functions a lot like physical shelf space. The more books you have on the shelf, the likelier you are to be discovered by someone browsing. And when a browser reads you and likes you, she buys more of your work, and often tells others about it.

In other words; the more stories and novels you have available, the more you'll sell.

Barry: Gotta just jump in here to point out the significance of this. It means that a writer’s best promoting tool is once again her writing. Advertising costs money. New stories make money.

Joe: I told you so...

Barry: You did. Glad I listened late rather than never. It’s amazing: for most of the history of publishing, outside a brief book tour and maybe a few public appearances throughout the year, a writer couldn’t do much to promote. Then the Internet happened, and writers had to do a tremendous amount of online promotion--blogs, social networking, chat rooms--to be competitive. Now, with digital books, once again there’s no more profitable use of an author’s time than writing. Not to say that authors don’t need to have a strong online presence; of course they do. But anytime you’re thinking about some other promotional activity--a blog post, a trip to a convention, an hour on Facebook--you have to measure the value of that time against the value of writing and publishing a new story. The new story earns money, both for itself and your other works. The social networking stuff doesn’t.

* * * *

Barry: To turn a manuscript into an actual book and get it into the hands of a reader, we still need an editor, line editor, copyeditor, proofreader, jacket copy writer, bio writer, cover art designer, and digital formatter. Plus there are various marketing and sales elements, too. You manage all these functions yourself, and this is one way in which I’d argue that you really are, if not exceptional, then at least unusual.

Joe: I wouldn’t disagree with that.

Barry: So as legacy publishing dies out, where will other writers turn to for assistance with the critical functions I mention above?

Joe: We’ve talked about this before.

Barry: I know. I was trying to prompt you in an unobtrusive way.

Joe: Right. Okay, unobtrusively, I think agencies will morph into what I call E-stributors.

Barry: I agree with the concept, even if I don’t like the nomenclature.

Joe: You don’t like “print,” either.

Barry: Not when you’re talking about paper. There’s paper print and digital print. I think the better distinction is between paper and digital.

Joe: I know, I know. Anyway, E-stributors will be a combination of publisher and manager, handling all the elements you mention above for authors who don’t want to manage those elements themselves. The ones that do it well will probably be able to make a good case for keeping their 15% cut.

Barry: As opposed to legacy publishers, which are keeping 52.5%.

Joe: Yes. Hard to see how legacy publishers will be able to compete with the digital model being adopted by agencies. They’d have to morph into E-stributors themselves, which would be a huge challenge given their attachment to a paper infrastructure. More likely, you’ll see the most entrepreneurial editors jumping ship and joining agencies.

Barry: Sorry for the digression. I guess I was just wondering aloud whether the term “self-published” will be widely applicable after all. For some, no doubt. But maybe “indie-published” will be more appropriate across the board.

Joe: Could be. Regardless, the one trump card legacy publishers always had -- the lock on distribution -- is now gone. Writers can reach readers on our own through Kindle, Nook, Smashwords, Createspace, and Overdrive (a company that distributes ebooks to libraries.)

Even with all that, however, it still takes a lot of guts to walk away from a half-million dollars.

But it's the right thing to do. And you're correct that you won't be the last to do so.

Allow me to congratulate you on being the first one to do so, my friend.

If I'm right, you may have just fired a shot heard 'round the world...

Barry: Thanks for the kind words, amigo. But you saw the way and blazed the trail. I might be doing something to make the way more apparent myself, but in the end I’m still just following in your footsteps.


Joe Konrath is the author of more than 20 novels and hundreds of short stories, written under the names J.A. Konrath (the Lt. Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels series), Jack Kilborn (Afraid, Trapped, Endurance, Draculas), and Joe Kimball (Timecaster.) He began self-publishing on Kindle in April 2009. As of March 2011, he's sold more than 200,000 ebooks. On his blog, A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, he has chronicled his writing journey. His website is www.JAKonrath.com.

Barry Eisler spent three years in a covert position with the CIA's Directorate of Operations, then worked as a technology lawyer and startup executive in Silicon Valley and Japan, earning his black belt at the Kodokan International Judo Center along the way. Eisler's bestselling thrillers have won the Barry Award and the Gumshoe Award for Best Thriller of the Year, have been included in numerous "Best Of" lists, and have been translated into nearly 20 languages. When not writing novels, Eisler blogs about torture, civil liberties, and the rule of law. You can find out more at www.barryeisler.com.