A Writer's Life

Mr. Monk and The Big Thrill

The Big Thrill, the magazine of the International Thriller Writers, features an interview with me this month about my new book MR. MONK ON THE COUCH. Here's an excerpt:

For the first time in twelve original novels inspired by the hit TV series, Natalie Teeger  steps from Adrian Monk’s formidable shadow.  She’s usually consigned to handing her boss anti-bacterial wipes, smoothing his awkward interactions with others, and playing second-fiddle to his savant-like brilliance in the detective world.   But Teeger’s been paying dues of her own and in Mr. Monk On The Couch she’ll finally have an opportunity to withdraw a little personal capital she’s built up as his sidekick.  In fact for this novel, she’s first violin, the cello and the entire string section.  In this book, Natalie moves, ever so gently from behind Mr. Monk to find her own self in the world of murder investigations.  She does so despite Monk, who usually spins disorder in his quest for order.  Life is messy.  Monk cleans it up.  Or so he believes.  He actually creates more messes than he cleans up.  It’s really Natalie who does the cleaning and she’s sees her opportunity to do her own mop-up, hopefully without offending the un-affable Mr. Monk.

“She loves him like a brother,” Lee says, who also penned numerous episodes of the popular television series, “plus they have something in common.  They both lost a spouse to violence.  Natalie knows what that can do to you.  They are survivors.  Yes, he irritates the crap out of her.  Yes, he’s selfish.  But she knows what he has accomplished despite his psychological handicaps.  She knows he’s brilliant.  And she knows the price he has paid for that brilliance.”

For her first stint as a quasi-solo, sort-of detective, Teeger must first elude Monk’s razor sharp sense of observation.  Not so easy when this guy’s eyes are like a computer scanner that slices and dices details easier than most dispatch an onion.  

The book comes out June 7 in bookstores everywhere...and online, of course.

TV Main Title of the Week

Buy THE WALK for 99 cents this week...and get THE DEAD MAN for free!

It was two years ago this week that, at Joe Konrath's urging, I began my "Kindle Experiment" by making my out-of-print book THE WALK available as an ebook. I've sold close to 20,000 copies of THE WALK since then...and to celebrate, I am pricing the book at just 99 cents until June 7th.   

For the most part, the book has consistently ranked in top 2000 Amazon. I would be absolutely thrilled if this limited-time offer could propel the book into the Amazon top 100 for the first time.

As an incentive to help me reach that goal, if you email me proof of purchase of THE WALK at lee AT leegoldberg.com, I will email you, in return, a free copy of my new book THE DEAD MAN #1: FACE OF EVIL. 

That's two books for just 99 cents. You can't beat that!

Eisler Makes News...Again

There' s been a lot of talk lately about my friend Barry Eisler's decision this week, a month after rejecting a $500,00o offer from St. Martin's in favor of self-publishing his work, to bring out his new RAIN novel through Amazon's just-announced publishing imprint Thomas & Mercer.  

Some have said  that this means that he's returned to the "legacy publishing" world, simply opting for a different publisher than the one he had before.  Some have even said his talk about self-publishing his work was just a negotiating ploy and a bid for media attention. 

Of course, most of the people who've made those idiotic comments are so called "indie" authors who know little, if anything, about the nature of "legacy publishing" deals, and who see self-pubishing more as a cause,a religion, or a movement than a business. Take this comment from an "indie" for example:

"guys like Eisler already made their names the traditional route, then came into indie publishing not because they believed in the format, but to position themselves for future leverage.  They go on and on about how much better they have it self-publishing and get everyone drinking the Kool Aid, and then leverage their indie cred for a publishing contract.  [...] They were trad authors who already had established followings and had the marketing savvy to use that to build credibility they didn't deserve as indies.  Because they were never indie in the true sense."

So Barry explained his thinking on their home turf:  a posting on the Kindleboards today. He said, in part:

I've said many times is that "publishing is a business for me, not an ideology" (Google it, you'll see) and that the right deal could certainly lure me back to the legacy world.  That remains true.  What's more important, though, is the nature of what could conceivably lure me back.  And what could lure me back is precisely what I've never been able to get from any legacy publisher -- not the two who have published me; none that I've negotiated with, either.  Specifically:

1)  A *much* more equitable digital royalty split. 
2)  Full creative control (packaging, pricing, timing).
3)  Immediate digital release, followed by paper release when the paper is ready (no more slaving the digital release to the paper release).

As it happens, all these terms are available to a self-published author, so I decided to self-publish.  What some people might be missing in that simple statement, though, is that it's the *terms* that are important to me, not the means by which I achieve them.  If these terms are a destination, self-publishing is undeniably an excellent vehicle for getting there.  But it isn't the only vehicle.  And if another vehicle comes along that offers all these terms, plus a substantial advance, plus a retail wing that can reach millions of customers in my demographic... then, as a non-ideological businessman, I'm going to change rides.

[...]For a single title that doesn't incumber my ability to self-publish or otherwise publish anything I want, Amazon offered me all three of the items I list above (except for pricing, but regardless of what the contract says, we agree that digital books should be priced far lower than legacy prices), plus a massive, uniquely Amazon marketing push to its retail operation and otherwise, plus an advance comparable to what SMP had offered me (note, though, that the Amazon deal is for one book; the SMP advance was predicated on two books. When I say "comparable," I mean on a per-book basis, and sorry if I wasn't clear about that in my announcement at BEA). In exchange, I've given up certain digital retail channels because the Amazon deal is exclusive to Kindle platform devices. And Amazon will sell paper versions through its retail stores and through wholesale channels to other retailers. If any of this sounds like a legacy deal to anyone here, you've been talking to legacy publishers I've never heard of.

Although Amazon will be publishing his RAIN book, and more sooner and under much more favorable royalty terms for him than St. Martins Press offered, he still intends to self-publish his other work.

What his deal illustrates, as does the mulitple platform Joe Konrath publishes on ("legacy publishing," self-publishing, Amazon Encore, Thomas & Mercer), is that authors have more options now than we've ever had before...and that self-publishing is now, for the first time, actually a viable and realistic choice.

"And it's a great one," Barry says, adding "but as new possibilities emerge, I'll consider them, try them, and perhaps integrate them into my overall strategy. Why would anyone do anything else?"

That doesn't make him a hypocrite or a liar, as some inexplicably outraged "indie" authors have suggested, but rather a shrewd businessman trying to do what's best for his career.

Fall Season Promo of the Week: Bright New World of ABC

I miss those fall preview promos with the  catchy jingles that the networks used to run during the summer...so I am going to be sharing some of those golden oldies over the next few weeks.

Cheesy Gold

GOLD is a terrible movie, but I absolutely love this cheesy Elmer Bernstein theme song. It's a true guilty pleasure. It's one of my favorite soundtracks.

 

Dr. Who: A Quinn Martin Production

Edgar's Checkered Past

I was asked – okay, more like begged -- to chronicle the hilarious history of the Edgar for the Edgar Awards banquet program. Unfortunately, you’ll find more laughs reading the tax code. I hate to say it, but the history of the Edgar Awards is almost as boring as an Edgar banquet.

Perhaps that's why they didn't run the article (something I only found out about today when my copy of the program arrived in the mail). But since I hate to waste anything that I've written, I've reproduced some of it here:

The Edgar Awards were launched shortly after the Mystery Writers of America was created in 1945. None of the organizers wanted, at first, to give an award for Best Novel because they were afraid that any writer who didn’t get the award would quit the MWA. So they only honored a Best First Novel. It wasn’t until 1953 that they decided to take the risk. But if you see a bunch of authors walking out en masse tonight when the Best Novel award is announced, now you know why.

The ceramic Edgar Allan Poe statuette, made by Peter Williams, was first given in the third year of the awards. A couple of years later, Peter received an Edgar for his contribution. I’m sure he was thrilled to have another one of those Edgars around the house. (It’s sort of like honoring Sue Grafton by giving her a signed copy of one of her own books, but I guess it’s the thought that counts).

What’s really great about ceramic Edgars is that if yours breaks, any pre-schooler can fix it for you in class. It’s a shame there wasn’t a pre-schooler around when, a few years back, Joel Goldman and Sandra Brown awarded Alex Berensen his Edgar in pieces.

They should probably give out honorary Edgars to anyone who has attended more than one Edgar Awards banquet. Want to get an Al-Queda member to talk? Forget waterboarding. Make him sit through a couple of comedy routines by guys who spend their days in dark rooms writing about decomposing corpses. There’s a reason why Henny Youngman never wrote a serial killer novel and why you’ve never seen a mystery writer do a set at the Comedy Store. But it could be worse. They could sing instead.

Lawrence Block says that for years the Edgars were hosted by lawyer-turned-writer Harold Q.Masur, who worked summers in the Catskills during his teens, and told the same jokes year after year after year.  One of them was about a letter to MWA that asked “Can you provide the number of mystery writers in America, broken down by sex.” And Harold’s answer?

“Well,  the drink got a lot of them, and gambling has taken its toll, but. . ."

A lot of the same authors get nominated in the same categories year after year at the Edgars, so if you’ve had a few drinks, and hear John Hart, Laura Lippman, Michael Connelly or T. Jefferson Parker being called up to the dias yet again, don’t panic if you’re not certain whether you’re conscious, or out cold with your face in your breaded chicken breast having a flashback to last year’s event. Or the one before. Or the one before that.

However, the Edgars are a great opportunity to see your favorite authors in a new light. For instance, I’ve seen Harlan Coben naked. Before an Edgar banquet back in the 90s, when he was still in the midlist, he asked if he could change into his tuxedo in my room. I hear he’s much bigger now.

Which leads me to my next point… the Edgars can also be a humbling experience.

At one of the banquets, author Bill Crider left his table to go the restroom and when he came back, he discovered that his wife Judy had given his seat to Stephen King. She wanted to talk to a famous writer instead of, well, her husband. I think Bill got stuck sitting with Jeremiah Healy and hearing about his prostate.

One author I know, who was nominated for Best Paperback Original, ran into one of the judges on that awards committee before the banquet and introduced himself to her. She’d never heard of him or his book. He took that as a subtle hint that he wouldn’t be leaving with an Edgar that night and left early. He was right.

 Sitting at your publisher’s table is always a thrill. While you’re chatting with the marketing people and publicists who have never heard of you or your book, you can also worry about whether that expensive bottle of wine that your tipsy editor just bought is going to be charged against your royalties. It probably will be.

After the ceremony, free books are given away in the lobby and hundreds of writers, publishers, and editors, who get free books all the time, rush out to get them, stuffing novels and galleys into shopping bags, cardboard boxes, suitcases and their cleavage. One year, they had MWA bouncers stationed at the doors so people couldn’t sneak out of the banquet early to snag the swag. It’s a miracle no one has been trampled to death yet.

But the real surprise is how authors react when its their own books that are being given away. They just can’t resist taking some books to augment the three contractual copies that their publisher graciously sent them. In fact, I know of one author who was so busy hording free copies of his own book that he forgot all about his Edgar and left it behind.

I’m not sure what that anecdote demonstrates about the value placed on earning the admiration of one’s peers, as symbolized by a ceramic head, as opposed to answering the demands of one’s own ego, as symbolized by grabbing as many free copies of your own book as you can carry, but I’m sure it’s very profound.

You can think about that tonight as Thomas Harris and Patricia Cornwell are singing their duet or Dennis Lehane is telling jokes. 

 

TV Main Title of the Week

Review: 101 Best TV Crime Series

I'm  a sucker for books about TV, so I couldn't resist nabbing Mark Timlin's 101 BEST TV CRIME SERIES.  Let me state at the outset than I am a fan of Timlin's books, so if I had a bias going in, it was a favorable one. That didn't last long. 

The pluses are that Timlin, a top-notch mystery author himself, is a real fan of the genre and he writes in a casual, easy-going style. As a whole, the book provides a nice overview of a bunch of UK series that are probably obscure and unfamiliar to most U.S. viewers. 

The cons, however, far, far outnumber the pluses. Apparently, Timlin's actual knowledge of the shows he's talking about isn't as strong as his admiration for them...and nobody bothered to fact-check the book, so it is filled with cringe-inducing errors and unfortunate omissions. 

For example: 

1) he refers to the lead of THE FUGITIVE as Dr. David Kimble when, of course, everyone knows it's Dr. RICHARD Kimble. 
2) He says the iconic IRONSIDE theme was composed by Oliver Nelson when it's actually among Quincy Jones' most famous pieces of music (Nelson supplied some of the episodic scores, but didn't compose the theme). 
3) He says that the Quinn Martin shows had a voice over that went "This has been a Quinn Martin Production" when, in fact, each show opened with the narrator announcing the name of the series, followed by the words "A Quinn Martin Production." 
4) He says the UK LIFE ON MARS began with DCI Sam Tyler walking down a Manchester street, listening to David Bowie on his iPod, when he's hit by a car. That is, in fact, totally incorrect, making this reader wonder if Timlin actually saw the show he was writing about. 
5) When discussing HARRY O, he says the hero was an ex-LA cop. He was actually an ex-San Diego cop. 

I could go on and on. Beyond the numerous errors, there's also a lack of detail. For instance, when referring to KOJAK, he mentions the 2005 remake with Ving Rhames but either completely overlooked, or was totally unaware of, the six KOJAK TV movies Savalas did on CBS, and later ABC, a decade after the original series was cancelled. In fact, almost all the entries suffer from a paucity of useful information in favor of irrelevant, personal asides by the author ("Oddly enough, it was 'Hill Street Blues' that got me my first video recorder; back when it started, I was offered a job driving a loser heavy metal band called 720. The show had just started and I took the job o the condition that the manager paid for the hire of a VCR. He agreed. Blimey the thing was the size of a suitcase...") Maybe Timlin is a celebrity in the UK, and the readers there are more interested in his asides than information about TV cop shows, but it doesn't play on this side of the pond. 

One other beef...I found Timlin including his own series, SHARMAN, among the best TV Crime Series to be more than a little self-indulgent (although he didn't write the entry, he had someone else do it, which only makes the inclusion feel even more self-serving). If only he'd given all the other series mentioned in the book the same loving attention as he did his own (he gives THE SOPRANOS three tiny paragraphs, but the short-lived SHARMAN gets four pages!). 

Overall, unless you can get this book at a major discount, I'd skip it.

Good JUDGMENT

James Reasoner  first stumbled on my .357 VIGILANTE books in the mid-1980s when he was working in a used bookstore. Although he was a voracious consumer of pulp fiction, he'd never heard of Ian Ludlow, and the men's action adventure genre was dying, so he didn't bother reading it.  But now he's caught up with it again in JUDGMENT, my new re-release of the first book in the series. He says, in part:

This is a classic case of not knowing what I was missing. Now, of course, we know that “Ian Ludlow” was actually a college student named Lee Goldberg, who went on to become a top-notch novelist, screenwriter, and producer 

[...]You know right away that this is a little different from the usual men’s adventure novel because of the protagonist, Brett Macklin. [He] no superhuman men’s adventure hero. He screws up, he gets hurt, he’s lucky not to get killed several times, but eventually he uncovers an even bigger plot that puts a lot of people in danger.

This is a really entertaining thrill ride of a story with plenty of sex, violence, humor, social commentary, and great action scenes. When I think about what I was writing when I was in college . . . well, there’s really no comparison. JUDGMENT is the work of someone who was a solid pro, right from the first page.

I'm really flattered by James' review.  It's hard for me to believe that it's been nearly thirty years since I wrote those books. Some of the writing makes me cringe...and some of it is certainly dated..but mostly I'm amused by it.

What's really strange is that sometimes a sentence or a scene will bring back memories I haven't had in, well, thirty years. I can remember where I was when I wrote certain portions...or what was happening in my life at the time. The books are a time capsule for me in many ways. But I'm thrilled to learn that they are still entertaining to read for others.

Talking Tie-Ins

Christa Faust will moderate  Further Adventures: On Writing Novelizations and Media Tie-In, a special luncheon program sponsored by MWA/SoCal at the Sportsman's Lodge in Studio City on June 18, 11-2pm. Guests include Doug Lyle (Royal Pains), William Rabkin (Psych), Nathan Long (Warhammer), and yours truly.  Lunch: $20 for MWA members, $25 for non-members. Visit the MWA website to pay via Paypal or to download mail-in form.

TV Main Title of the Week

Big Island Film Festival Final Day

Alas, REMAINDERED didn't win anything. But the films that did snag the big prizes certainly deserved them, so there are no hard feelings from this fellow. All in all, it was a great festival and I had a terrific time.

Big Island Film Fest Day 4

REMAINDERED screened today and received a very enthusiastic reaction from the audience. That was nice, but I have to say we're up against some stiff competition. I've seen a lot of great shorts this week...and every single one that I saw today was very well done, particularly THIEF, about a little boy who befriends a young Saddam Hussein in 1959 and then comes face-to-face with him again in 2003. It's not going to be easy for the judges or the audience to pick a best short from among so many fine films. 

Before the screening, I spent some time on the beach. I glanced to my left and was startled to see Harlan Coben staring back at me. Alas, it was not the man himself but his enormous photo on the back of a hardcover book that a tourist was reading. I took a picture of the tourist, which I emailed to Harlan, then chatted with the guy, who was very nice. He's a salesman for a big drug company that is rewarding its best reps with an all-expense-paid trip to Hawaii that also includes elaborate banquets by the beach, tons of free tours & activities, cash money for expenses, and goodie bags in their rooms each day stuffed with things like Raybans and cameras. I should have been a Viagra salesman instead of a writer.

After the screening, I drove up to Waimea to Huli Sue's Barbeque. Their ribs aren't bad but what  I really went up there for was their incredible Banana Cream pie...which may just be the best Banana Cream Pie on earth.  

Then it was back to the Fairmont Orchid, where I hunkered down to work on MONK...well, that was the intent, instead here I am writing this post.

Tomorrow is the Golden Honu Awards Brunch, a concert, and the Best of the Fest screening. In between, I'm going to try to squeeze in some more lazing around.

 

Big Island Film Fest Day 3

Not a whole lot to report. I spent my morning on the beach then showered, changed, and watched a few of the short films in competition in the afternoon. The screening room was actually a screening room...something I didn't expect to find at a hotel.

The short films were very uneven...one was really good, one was absolutely awful in every possible way,  one was so flat I've already forgotten it entirely and one was so heavy-handed and cliche-ridden that I was able to successfully predict, almost word-for-word, exactly what each character was going to say before they said it. 

I spent the rest of the day in the lounge, working on my next MONK book, which is due in a few short weeks. Writing is so much more pleasant with a breath-taking ocean view and a hostess bringing  you food and drinks.  

At nightfall, I dropped my computer off  in my room and went to another outdoor screening under the stars. All three films tonight were good...but the best was a feature length, black comedy from the UK called THE DRUMMOND WILL.  It was shot in black-and-white and starts off very slow...with two estranged brothers arriving in a strange village for their father's funeral... but events soon escalate into a hilarious farce with an ever-rising body count.

Tomorrow REMAINDERED screens, so I'll be spending most of the day watching short  films. I'll probably skip the night screenings to work on my book...

 

Big Island Film Fest Days 1 & 2

I've been having a great time at the Big Island Film Festival  on the Big Island of Hawaii. I arrived on Wednesday night, showered, and hurried over to the Mayor's reception, where  I chatted with some of the other film-makers, who have come from all over the U.S. and a few from overseas. Then I headed over to the Shops at  Mauna Lani for an outdoor screening of a handful of short films. You couldn't beat the venue...watching movies under the stars with a gentle sea breeze. The films themselves were well-made but suffered from very, very predictable, by-the-numbers story-telling. 

I played hookie from the Festival during the day on Day 2. You'd have to be insane to fly all the way to paradise to stay indoors when it's gorgeous outside. So I hung out at the beach, where the sand and pavement were so hot, you could get third degree burns if you walked barefoot. Just about eveyrone has a Kindle, which is frustrating, because I can't tell what strangers are reading any more.

I intended to do some writing, but failed. I swam, I walked, I read, I ate, I sweated. A perfect day. After dinner, I went to the night-time screenings, held under the stars at the Fairmont Orchid Plantation House. The films this time were much better than the previous evening...particularly the short COLD SORE and the hilarious, uniquely Hawaiian feature GET A JOB...but is there a  rule somewhere that there has to be at least two zombie movies at every film festival? I have totally over-dosed on zombie movies. 

My plan today is to do some writing (I can feel my deadline like a physical presence in the room) out on the lanai overlooking the water, take a swim, a long walk, and then attend the evening screening again. REMAINDERED plays tomorrow...

(Click on the images for a larger  view.)

Hawaii Lee-O

I am off to Hawaii this morning to attend the Big Island Film Festival, where my short film REMAINDERED is in competition. I'm really looking forward to the trip...I haven't been back to Hawaii since I was Toastmaster at Left Coast Crime  two years ago and I absolutely love it there, which is why I have set three books on the islands -- Dead Space, Diagnosis Murder: The Death Merchant, amd Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii. Who knows, maybe a  fourth book will come out of this trip. 

I'll try to report back with photos and highlights from the festival.

 

TV Main Title of the Week

Shoot for This

My buddy Terrill Lee Lankford's terrific first novel SHOOTERS is now available as an ebook...with a great cover by JT Lindroos, an introduction by T. Jefferson Parker and an afterword by Lev Raphael.

You may recall that Lee was one of the first authors to reject a lucrative book deal in favor of self-publishing. This reprint is his first foray into self-publishing and I predict it's going to be blockbuster. Here are the details on SHOOTERS...

Nick Gardner is a fashion photographer of the highest caliber. His erotically-charged photos grace every major magazine in the world. He is a superstar shooter in a town filled with supermodels, desperate wannabes, and burned-out has-beens. His peers consider him cold and impenetrable. A loner who will let no one see beyond his carefully crafted facade. See, Nick has a secret. Another identity, buried for more than a decade. An entirely different career that has been hidden and denied.

And a murder.

From the sun-bleached shores of Malibu to the pages of Vogue and the porno empires headquartered in the San Fernando Valley, Shooters reveals the naked truth behind the twin worlds of high fashion and hardcore, where the difference between the two can be a well-chosen shadow or a brazen shaft of light.

"Lankford breathtakingly tosses the reader into a Hollywood snake pit that is at once compelling and repugnant." -Dallas Morning News

"Shooters cooks! This is a blood thriller that will vibrate your vindaloo! Terrill Lankford has crafted a truly bitchin' novel that will keep you up nights howling at the moon! Read it or be deprived!" -James Ellroy

"Shooters is excellent. It grabs you on page one and won't turn you loose." - Robert B. Parker

"'Shooters' is a dark, speeding ride on LA's fast lane. It's like you're watching a car accident. Once it starts to unfold you can't look away. You're hooked." -Michael Connelly 

"Shooters marks a fine noir debut by Terrill lankford. Welcome to the land of twists and turns." - Gerald Petievich

 

The 1973 Season on CBS

The E-Book Gold Rush

The Washington Post reported today on how the rise of the ebook has been an overnight game-changer for authors...and has sparked a gold rush among them to get their back-list books and unpublished manuscripts on the Kindle as quickly as possible.

And for good reason.

The article leads off with the story of author  Nyree Belleville, who was dropped by her publisher early last year. Demoralized and desperate, she put one of her old books on the Kindle just to see what would happen. She earned $281 her first month...and couldn't wait to share the news with her other author-friends.

 “That moment is burned in everybody’s mind now,” she says. “It was not a tipping point. It was a turning point.”

She put her other old book online and figured out how to place both on other e-readers — the Nook, the Sony Reader, the iPad, Kobo. The next month, her royalties bumped to $474. Giddy, she self-published a new e-book in July. She made a jaw-dropping $3,539. It was like the best thingever!

“Every day, as the numbers ticked by, my husband and I were floored,” she says.

She got the rights to two more old novels. She feverishly wrote another e-novel, “Game for Love,” about a bad-boy pro football player and his unexpected marriage. She popped it online Dec. 15.

Earnings for that month? $19,315.

In January and February, she e-published a trilogy of young-adult novels she’d written years earlier. She called the first one “Seattle Girl” and chose a new author name, Lucy Kevin, to distinguish it from the sexually explicit Andre books.

Here’s what her first quarter looked like: 56,008 books sold; income, $116,264.

[...]There is no good comparison for what’s happening in the frontier world of self-published e-books, because there has never been anything like it in publishing history.

They're right...because her story is not unique. Just today I helped two friends of mine get their out-of-print backlists up on the Kindle.  But the Post article also acknowledges not everyone is making a fortune self-publishing ebooks...in fact, most aren't making anything.

The overwhelming number of self-publishing e-authors are consigned to the same fate as their print counterparts: oblivion.

“We have less than 50 people who are making more than $50,000 per year. We have a lot who don’t sell a single book,” says Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords.com, a Web site that helped launch indie publishing.

“When I load all our numbers on a spreadsheet, it’s the typical power curve,” he says. “On the left, there’s a skinny area of the chart where people are knocking it out of the park. And then we have a very, very long tail off to the right, where some titles sell very few at all.”

I'm impressed that Mark Coker is telling it like it is.  It's remarkable, and commendable, that he's not just making it easy for authors to get their books on Amazon, B&N, Kobo, etc, he's also being honest about their chances for success. He's not trying to trick them into thinking that publishing with Smashwords is all it takes to become a successful author.

Unfortunately, too many aspiring authors, giddy with greed and a desire to be the next Amanda Hocking, are more than willing to trick themselves.  They delude themselves into believing that all they have to do is put the raw manuscripts on the Kindle and the cash will start pouring in, which is why there is tsunami of swill is sweeping over Smashwords and, by extension, Amazon.

But those of us who were previously-published have an edge. We have a platform and, more importantly, a backlist.  You can't imagine how thrilling it is for mid-list authors to discover that our out-of-print books, something that we believe had no monetary value, are suddenly worth tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars.

Any published author who isn't putting their out-of-print books on the Kindle, Nook, etc. is making a huge, and costly, mistake. But not just financially...they are missing an opportunity to establish a beachhead in the ebook world while having been previously published still means something and can give you a platform to rise above the tsunami. 

 

 

The Laziest Writer on The Friggin' Planet

James Reasoner's latest LONGARM novel may be his last...he says he just doesn't have time to keep writing them, what with all the other books he's doing each year. So the lazy, whiny bastard is quitting, after only writing this measly handful of'em. 

#178 LONGARM AND THE GOLDEN DEATH
#185 LONGARM AND THE DRIFTING BADGE
#192 LONGARM AND THE MAN-EATERS
#207 LONGARM AND THE BRAZOS DEVIL
#208 LONGARM AND THE ANGEL OF INFERNO
#214 LONGARM AND THE RACY LADIES
#222 LONGARM AND THE BACKWOODS BARONESS
#228 LONGARM AND THE VOODOO QUEEN
#229 LONGARM AND THE BORDER WILDCAT
#242 LONGARM AND THE RED-LIGHT LADIES
#245 LONGARM AND THE VANISHING VIRGIN
#250 LONGARM AND THE CHAIN-GANG WOMEN
#253 LONGARM IN THE VALLEY OF SIN
#256 LONGARM AND THE DYNAMITE DAMSEL
#258 LONGARM AND THE PISTOLERO PRINCESS
#261 LONGARM AND THE GOLDEN GODDESS
#266 LONGARM AND THE WAYWARD WIDOW
#272 LONGARM AND THE SIX-GUN SENORITA
#277 LONGARM AND THE YUKON QUEEN
#279 LONGARM ON A WITCH HUNT
#281 LONGARM AND THE LADY LAWYER
#283 LONGARM AND THE OZARK ANGEL
#287 LONGARM AND THE BLACKMAILERS
#290 LONGARM AND THE DESERT ROSE
#294 LONGARM AND THE ARIZONA FLAME 
#301 LONGARM AND THE BANK ROBBER'S DAUGHTER
#302 LONGARM AND THE GOLDEN GHOST
#309 LONGARM IN THE TALL TIMBER
#311 LONGARM AND THE DEVIL’S BRIDE
#315 LONGARM AND THE LOST PATROL
#320 LONGARM AND THE TEXAS TREASURE HUNT
#323 LONGARM AND THE SCARLET RIDER 
#329 LONGARM AND THE RESTLESS REDHEAD
#332 LONGARM AND THE OWLHOOT'S GRAVEYARD
#342 LONGARM AND THE BAYOU TREASURE
#345 LONGARM AND THE HELL RIDERS
#350 LONGARM AND THE HANGTREE VENGEANCE
#352 LONGARM AND THE PINE BOX PAYOFF
#374 LONGARM AND THE SAND PIRATES
#379 LONGARM AND THE DEADLY FLOOD
#387 LONGARM AND THE PANAMINT PANIC
#390 LONGARM AND THE BLOODY RELIC

LONGARM GIANT #24: LONGARM AND THE OUTLAW EMPRESS
LONGARM GIANT #25: LONGARM AND THE GOLDEN EAGLE SHOOT-OUT
LONGARM GIANT #26: LONGARM AND THE VALLEY OF SKULLS
LONGARM GIANT #27: LONGARM AND THE LONE STAR TRACKDOWN
LONGARM GIANT #28: LONGARM AND THE RAILROAD WAR

Man up, Jimmy. That's nothing. Bob Randisi has written 359 GUNSMITHS...you've still got a couple hundred to go. 

"The Dead Man #3: Hell in Heaven" Is Out

The third book in the DEAD MAN series, HELL IN HEAVEN, is now available on the Kindle, as a trade paperback, and on the Nook.  Here's the story...

Matthew Cahill was an ordinary man leading a simple life until a shocking accident changed everything. Now he can see a nightmarish netherworld that nobody else does. Now each day is a journey into a dark world he knows nothing about, a quest for the answers to who he is and what he has become...and a fight to save us, and his soul, from the clutches of pure evil.

HELL IN HEAVEN

The sign on the exit reads "Heaven." What better place could there be for a dead man to visit? But when Matt takes the ramp, he finds a banner welcoming him by name to a tiny town seemingly left behind by the 21st century... and waiting for him to rescue it. But when he agrees to save Heaven's citizens from a coming terror, he discovers that evil has more faces than he could ever imagine - and good is far more complicated than he ever dreamed.

BONUS MATERIAL

* the first two chapters of THE DEAD MAN #4: THE DEAD WOMAN by David McAfee

* The first chapter of JUDGMENT, the first book in the JURY SERIES, by Lee Goldberg.

TV Main Title of the Week

My Day at the LATFOB

I had a great time at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books today. It was held at USC for the first time, and that was a little disorienting...but in a good way. Most of the bookstores booths were  in the same spot, year after year, at UCLA. But at USC, I didn't know where any of them were...so wandering the campus was more fun because I "found" the bookstores as I went along.  I think I ended up visiting more booths and buying more books as a result. My haul included guidebooks for San Francisco (research for Monk) and signed copies of books by Steve Martin, Kelli Stanley, Tom Franklin, and Laura Lippman.

My general sense was that there were fewer people attending the fest at USC than there were past years at UCLA, but that might just be because the festival was more spread out and less crammed together. 

There was one definite improvement over UCLA -- the author "green room" was much swankier and more comfortable. Even the food was better.

I chatted with Gary Phillips, Kelli Stanley, Denise Hamilton, Mark Haskell Smith, Aimee Bender, agent Ken Sherman, LA Times Magazine editor Nancie Clare, and lots of other authors before I got together with my fellow panelists Don Winslow, John Vorhaus and Thomas Perry for lunch.

Tom and I had a long talk about JUSTIFIED, and what makes Elmore Leonard so special, and the appeal of amiable bad guys. We also talked about the fates of the TV pilot scripts for BUTCHER'S BOY (for Fox) and JANE WHITEFIELD (for CBS). We talked about some of the books Tom abandoned before finishing...and about the new stuff he has coming.

I went all fan-boy over Don Winslow when he joined us... I think his book SAVAGES is the best book I've read so far this year. I loved it and grilled him on some of his daring creative choices.

Then it was time to head off to our panel. 

She actually didn't know how to get to our room, but luckily I did, so I ended up guiding our guide. The panel went great. Don, John, and Thomas were terrific and not only were they very funny, but they shared some very good insights into the writing process (I used some of what I learned from them at lunch during our personal conversations as the jumping off point for some of our panel discussions). Afterwards, we had good signing and headed back to the green room to eat more food. (That's John, Don, me and Tom in the picture)

After gorging ourselves, Don, Thomas and I went to Mystery Ink's booth for another signing and talk shop.

All-in-all, it was a fine day.