Late again. Wish I could say its because I was writing, but I haven't been. Between the pain and not sleeping, I've got no excuse.
The Forth approaches. To most Americans this means a three day weekend, burning meat over a fire, and drinking oneself silly. To me it means not sleeping and really not having a good time that night. It didn't used to be that way - coming up, I looked forward to the fireworks, hot dogs, and after the third time I reached the legal age to imbibe in the state of Texas, quite a bit of adult beverages to help with the weekends festivities. Five years of listening to everything from small round fire up to heavy rocketry changed that. Most people don't get it. Its just fireworks. But it sounds the same as rounds in the distance, which takes my mind back to the land of dust and fun. So there's why I don't like to go out on the Forth, or any other holiday we tend to celebrate with explosions.
On to other things - one of the blogs I follow linked to this - http://www.thepassivevoice.com/07/2014/two-different-worlds/ - yet another salvo in the Trad Publishing vs Ebil Amazon war. Even better, PG has a link to the discussion he participated in - and its horrible. Out of seven people in the discussion, there was one author - although calling the publishing machine that is James Patterson an author might be an insult to him - or to authors long term. Its also telling to see how quickly the six folks most involved with the Trad Publishing model rally to protect their market - and upsetting to hear the multimillionaire James Patterson say that publishers aren't making a lot of money. I did find it amusing to hear a publisher say "I use 20% of my gross to publish things that would otherwise be unpublishable". So, you're a charity organization now? Hell, I've published a work of poetry - on Amazon. Yes, I'm biased towards Amazon. As someone trying to break into the field, its about money. Sure, I could go the trad route - if I'm lucky and writing the proper group think that NYC's publishing Mafia thinks is going to sell this week. So, I spend hours writing, editing, listening to my alpha and beta readers and making changes, then I have options. Traditional option one - I fire it off to a slush pile in NYC and hope someone there reads it and likes it enough to pitch it at an editors meeting, and then I get contact and a contract and if I'm somewhat lucky an advance and things are good. Except I've just given the publisher the rights to my work for a specified number of years. Lets say they think it will sell a total of 5000 copies. They print those 5k copies, distribute them, and they sell. Let's say that they sell really well and pay back the advance in the first few weeks. Then, the book, which is selling like proverbial hot cakes, disappears from the shelves. Why? Well, according to the editors, it was only going to do 5k worth of sales. And there is just to much work involved in doing another print run. So you can, under this model, be a best selling author and have no book in the stores.
I mentioned advances above - advances are, from what I can see, a two edged sword. If you're a best selling author, their a great idea - you get money that is paid back shortly after the book comes out and you start making royalties. But what about if you're an author with steady sales that take a year or three to make back the advance? Then you wait until the advance is paid off and you start making royalties.
Option Two, Traditional publishing is to write it, edit it and get an agent. Who will, for a cut of your money (and any option where you pay the agent up front should be run from rapidly and with great vigor) navigate the byzantine world of the NYC Publishing houses for you and get your book before the editors and then our story goes on as before. You're paying someone for a service, and I have no objections to that - but they're taking a cut of your cut - which for a mid lister based on my research is anywhere from 10-15 percent at most of the cover price. So, a book which is published in paperback (not even going to talk about the lofty world of hard back pricing at the moment) with a price of $9.99 brings the author between .99 and 1.50 once you start getting royalties. Now, lets think about that advance you got in this light. If you're making essentially a buck a copy (because the math on a 9.99 book is actually .999) and you got a $5000 dollar advance, you have to sell 5000 copies before you start getting royalties. Now, go back and do that math in light of the model that says the publishing house gets to set the number of copies their going to print - if all that is ever printed is 5000 copies, and you get a normal rate of return, you could theoretically never see a royalty one. This is the model that the Trad Publishing houses are fighting to keep.
Or then there's route three - independent publishing. I'm going to use the Amazon model, because that's the route I've chosen to follow. As with the other models, I've written my book, the alpha's and beta's have gone through it, and its been edited. I've also come up with the cover and the blurb and am doing my own publicity - down side to going indie is you do a lot more of the work. I put it up on Amazon and set my own price. Now, with Amazon, I can get up to a 70% return on my work. Wait, what? Seventy percent? So, that $9.99 book price nets you $6.93. Yes, there will be differences if you're doing a print on demand copy (royalty is taken after printing and shipping costs) and yes, you are charged by Amazon for their online delivery through Kindle Direct Publishing. But honestly, which would you rather have for your hard work - a dollar a copy, or seven dollars a copy. Selling the same number of copies, you make oh, seven times the money for the same work. I wonder why the Trad Publishers are so damn afraid of the Amazon Model? Even if I set my price at 2.99, I'm still making $2.09 a copy. Its a no brainer folks. And I'm not having to meet the cause du jour to make sure that my book jumps the hurdles. All I have to do is tell a story people want to read.
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