A Writer's Life

Robert B. Parker is Alive and Well

Ace Atkin has pulled off a miracle. With LULLABY, he has managed not only to pitch-perfectly capture Robert B. Parker's voice and narrative pace, but also his story-telling structure, without once slipping into pastiche or parody. LULLABY rings absolutely true to Parker, and you only have to look at the first few pages of Michael Brandman's excreble Jesse Stone novel to see just how hard that is to pull off.

Moreover, LULLABY is even better than the last few of Parker's own Spenser novels. While LULLABY isn't as good as the early Spensers, it certainly fits right in with the mid-stream stuff, the period roughly between STARDUST and POTSHOT, which still makes it a wonderfully entertaining and satisfying read. It's as if Parker, not far from the top of his game, is still with us. It makes me wish Atkins would take on Jesse Stone, too.

Home Again

I just returned from a week away, a few days in Bethesda to attend Malice Domestic, and then a quick side trip down to Florida on some business (which I hope to be able to tell you about soon, but top secret for now).

I had an absolutely wonderful time at Malice, where I met some great people and received the Poirot Award which, as you can see from the photo, I guess I am supposed to use to serve tea to Jan Burke, their Guest of Honor. I finally met online friends Debbi Mack and Bill Peschel face-to-face and got to catch up with folks like Penguin/Putnam editors Sandra Harding and Ellen Edwards, and authors like Charlaine Harris (pictured with me on the right), Elaine Viets, Hank Phillippe Ryan, Parnell Hall, Dana Cameron, Elizabeth Peters, Christina York, Sharan Newman, Simon Brett, Chris Grabenstein, and Rhys Bowen.

Rhys was supposed to interview me on stage but tripped and cracked her hip on the first night. Some people will do anything to get out of being on stage with me.  I am pleased to report that Rhys was in her usual good humor despite her injury and, although she had to return home right away, she is recuperating well. She also won an Agatha Award, which I hope too some of the sting out of her injury.  Hank Phillippe Ryan took over for Rhys as my interrogator and we had a grand time.  

One of the highlights of Malice for me was participating with Simon Brett, Jan Burke, and Dana Cameron on Verena Rose's panel about the unusual fan mail we'd received. Simon and Jan read some letters that had the audience, and the panel, roaring with laughter (both pieces of mail, by the way, involved sexual fantasies, a very uncozy subject for Malice!).

On another panel I was on, a reader stood up and said to Halle Ephron: "Your book put me to sleep but I woke up to finish it."

Now there's a great compliment :-)

And only at Malice would I have overheard snippets like this from authors at other tables as I ate at the Daily Grill on the first night: 

"Shes a great cover artist for animals but she is terrible with food." 

"I can use my own name when I write books about cats or cakes, but not for witchcraft."

"I have three names," another author added. "But I'm thinking of using a fourth for my pottery series."

And I heard another author lamenting that her vintage clothing ghost mystery came out at the same time as another author's vintage clothing ghost mystery, thus undercutting her sales. I have to admit that one surprised me. I  would have thought you could safely write a vintage clothing ghost mystery without worrying about another one being out there...or being published the same month as yours!

I took a few hours off to be a tourist, visiting the usual DC landmarks and the Spy Museum, and bought a few books at Politics and Prose, including one signed by Bill Clinton which, to be honest, I got just for the signature.  

My trip to Florida was great, too. While I did work in Orlando on SeaQuest, I was mostly on set so I still feel like I've never actually spent any time in Florida. And even that was way back in 1995, so it was nice to have a chance to reacquaint myself with the the state. I was able to spend lots of time with an old friend and do a little sight-seeing, too. I loved the beaches and the weather...and was stunned by the opulence and size of the waterfront homes that I saw. There's some astonishing wealth down there.  

Now that I am back, I am hard at work on my last MONK book, the DEAD MAN series, and getting geared up for the promotion of KING CITY, which launches in a few weeks. 

 

Scudder Fans Rejoice!

 My friend Lawrence Block has taken three of his best Matthew Scudder books -- A Long Line of Dead Men,  A Stab in the Dark, and A Walk Among the Tombstones -- and brought them back as $4.99 ebooks and republished them in very slick, reasonably-priced trade paperback editions. The digital editions are available from Amazon, B&N and the iBookstore, but you can also get the paperbacks directly from Block's website ...and he'll even sign'em for you, too!

The Dr. Kildare Scrapbook

If you're hoping to learn anything about the history, development, writing, or production of  Dr. Kildare in radio and television, or simply want an in depth, detailed episode guide, you are going to be sorely disappointed by the DR. KILDARE SCRAPBOOK.  This isn't a book. It's barely more than a brochure. At best, it's a lengthy article...and yet it still lacks any substance. This exceedingly thin (100 pages, including the index) paperback is nothing more than a bare bones episode guide...and even on that level, the summaries are so sparse and devoid of details that it's a major failure. It's also very badly written. For example, here's the first line of chapter one:

As part of its bringing some of its most famous movie series to radio, MGM put the team of Lew Ayres and Lionel Barrymore from the Dr. Kildare  movies back together for a radio series called The Story of Dr. Kildare.

It only gets worse, and less informative, from there. 

This "book" might have worked as an appendix to an actual book about Dr. Kildare on radio and television, but as a standalone reference work, it's terrible. I am a huge admirer of Bear Manor Media, the company that published this book...so I am not only surprised that that they took this poorly executed, superficial project on, but that they had the chutzpah to charge $14.95 for it in print and $9.99 for the digital edition. Don't waste your money on this one.

In Pursuit of Spenser

Too many of my good friends contributed to In Pursuit of Spenser, a collection of essays about Robert B. Parker and his writing,  for me to be unbiased or, conversely,  too critical in my review. 

The line-up of authors that editor Otto Penzler assembled for the book includes Loren D. Estleman, Parnell Hall, Brendan DuBois, Gary Phillips, Lawrence Block, Dennis Lehane, Max Allan Collins, SJ Rozan, Jeremiah Healy, Ed Gorman, Reed Farrel Coleman, and Spenser's new author, Ace Atkins.

I'll just say that some of the essays are much stronger than others and don't quite jell as a whole.  There's a great, indepth book to be written about Parker and his work and this isn't quite it. For the most part, this book just skims the surface, but I get the sense that's exactly what Penzler was going for. Something as breezy and light as Parker's fiction. 

At times, the book reads more like an extended memorial, what friends and admirers might have stood up at the podium to say at Parker's service, had they been given the chance. And it's those essays in particular, the more personal ones from Lehane and Block, that are the most entertaining and revealing.  Block obviously admired Parker's craftmanship but also didn't pull any punches. You can read his chapter here.  

First Responders

I'm a big sucker for books about TV series, especially encyclopedic works on particular genres (like Wes Britton's The Encyclopedia of TV Spies, etc.) so I would have grabbed Richard Yokley's The First Responders of Television,  which covers series about firefighters, medics, and lifeguards, even if Bear Manor Media hadn't been sent me a review copy.  And before I tell you what I think of it, you should know that Yokley is a frequent commenter on this blog and that I played a small role in getting his book published.

First Responders is a massive and ambitious undertaking, covering every U.S. TV series, unsold pilot, reality show, dcumentary and TV movie about first responders (mostly firefighters, but also lifeguards, medics, forest rangers,highway patrolmen, etc), produced from the 1950s to early 2011. If that wasn't enough, the book also covers major and minor TV series about first responders produced all over the world and has appendices on such things as firehouses on television, rescue vehicles on TV, and on technical advisors.

Yokley is primarily interested in  how authentic the shows were, particularly the vehicles, equipment, and locations they used, and other details relating to how the rescues and fires were depicted. It's fascinating stuff, but for me, I would have appreciated knowing a lot more about the shows creatively,  how they were developed and written, and how they ultimately went right or wrong. So, for me, the book was a little unsatisfying...but even so, I loved it. It's truly a great TV book. The depth of Yokley's research, his personal knowledge of the rescue field, and his appreciation of first responders (fire fighters in particular) comes through on every page. This is a major work of television scholarship, something Bear Manor Media specializes in publishing, and is a must-have for any television reference library. 

Our FAVORITE KILLS

We're back.

We hope you're sitting down, and that you've finally caught your breath from Top Suspense, our first bestselling anthology. You're about to take another screaming thrill ride with twelve master storytellers. Each Top Suspense Group author is an award winning, highly acclaimed pro whose compelling and unforgettable tales have been published all over the world—and, in some cases, have even become blockbuster movies and TV shows.

For Favorite Kills we've collected our very best short stories. All major prize-winning tales and personal favorites, each one a knock-out punch of suspense.

So hold on tight my friend, or better yet, tie yourself down. You're in for another breathtaking wild ride of seething sex and unexpected twists, dark humor, and certain death. And when it's all over, and you're sitting there spent and satisfied, soaked in a flop sweat of terror and exhilaration, we're gonna be right there to bring you even more.

The authors in Top Suspense are... Harry Shannon, Bill Crider, Vicki Hendricks, Naomi Hirahara, Stephen Gallagher, Max Allan Collins, Paul Levine, Libby Hellmann, Dave Zeltserman, Lee Goldberg, Joel Goldman, and Ed Gorman

The Early Word on "McGrave"

I've already started getting some terrific reviews for McGRAVE, my new action-adventure novella for the Kindle. Post Modern Pulps says:

McGrave is that perfect blend of action, humor, gratuitous violence and ludicrous hyperbole that fueled so much of my adolescent reading materi...oh, who am I kidding?  It's still the bread and butter of the printed pages I read. [...]  This book is the literary equivalent of buffalo wings and boilermakers.  

Author James Reasoner says, in part:

Goldberg pulls off a very neat trick, producing a yarn that's part serious, part satire, and all action. It seemed like I had a grin on my face the whole time I was reading it. I loved it.

Gary Mugford over at Mugshots says, in part:

Lee Goldberg has answered one of my prayers. A new lawman-in-new-territory series[...] McGrave is everything I've been waiting for. The L.A. detective ends up across the pond, bringing American bravado to the streets of Berlin[...]this a first-rate, one-night read. For me it's a five-star implementation of a five-star idea.

And author Mel Odom says: 

The story is a blistering read from page one to the gut-wrenching ending. There’s not much room for examination of character or How The World Truly Works in this one. It’s pure actioner [...] McGrave is one of those palate cleansing reads. Not because it’s deep and emotionally uplifting or anything like that. But because it sucks you in, yanks you through the story at a vicious pace, and leaves you sprawling, gasping for air at the finish line.

And Bill Peschel says:

“McGrave” was designed like a high-performance car, intended to go fast and scare hell outta people, and Goldberg’s an old-school TV producer and the author of the “Monk” novels, so he knows how to design a story. There’s detection scenes and chase scenes and clashes with authority, and McGrave rumbles through it all knowing exactly what to do next. He doesn’t hate authority or paperwork or his bosses. What he does hate is crime and criminals with a childlike simplicity that would be endearing except to those who get in his way, especially on the road.

Thanks so much for the great reviews!

Rich Reviews for RICHEST HILL

If you're a regular reader of this blog, Richard S. Wheeler is a familiar name. He's a multiple Spur Award winner and undeniably one of the greatest living writers of western novels. I hesistate to say that because that well-deserved, and well-earned, honor tends to ghetto-ize his fiction as cowboy tales when they are far more than that. Which is why it's alawys great when he gets the strong critical praise he deserves. His new novel The Richest Hillon Earth as been winning acclaim everywhere. For instance, Kirkus Reviews says:

Wheeler's work isn't character study, nor is it a shoot-'em-up, hero-centric tale.

It is a mirror to a time and place where copper, for wires, for brass, for war and peace was clawed from the earth by men as disposable as machinery, men left without care or comfort to hide away in the tunnels so they might once more be warm as they cough up their lives.

"The Richest Hill on Earth" is passionate, intelligently written, thoroughly entertaining historical fiction.

 The latest rave comes from Bookgasm's Alan Cranis, who says, in part:

Richard S. Wheeler applies his formidable skill of combining Western historical events with fiction in THE RICHEST HILL ON EARTH, his latest stand-alone novel. Here, the story surrounds the battle for control of the rich copper mines during the early history of Wheeler’s home state of Montana.

THE RICHEST HILL ON EARTH ironically reminds us that corporate greed and control of the government — along with the 99 percent who suffer in its wake — is by no means a contemporary phenomenon. This may not have been Wheeler’s intent, but it nonetheless adds another dimension to this fascinating if somewhat downbeat historical novel. 

If you haven't read Wheeler yet, this would be  fine time to start. 

Useful Fictions

My friend John Vorhaus has written a book called The Little Book of Sitcom and the advice, tricks, and lies to tell yourself that he offers are  useful no matter what kind of fiction you're writing. Don't believe me? You will after you read this excerpt from his book:

It took me six months to write my first sitcom script. The next one took three. I knocked off the third one in about six weeks, and I continued to get faster and faster as I learned more and more about everything from how to format a script to how to turn unfunny jokes into funny ones. Last week I wrote a sitcom script in four and a half hours. It was an ugly first draft – first drafts are ugly by definition – but I got from fade in to fade out in a single afternoon’s work, and to me that’s not nothing. So if you’ve embarked upon a sitcom writing career, and especially if it’s early days for you, I want to give you some good news from somewhat further down the line: you’ll get better and you’ll get faster. You can kick this thing’s ass.

It’ll never be as easy as you’d like it to be. You’ll never stop struggling to find the perfect turn of phrase or joke, or character key, or that one plot twist that resolves your story in a surprising, satisfying and rewarding way. You’ll never entirely free yourself from those awful moments of staring out the window, wondering why your brain is broken or where your next good idea will come from. You’ll always have moments where you think, “I suck,” and no amount of pep-talkery from others (and no quantity of overproof rum) will persuade you otherwise. But those moments will pass. You will solve your story problems. You will have good ideas. You will write jokes that are funny the first time, the next time, every time. You will get better at your craft, and eventually you will master it. Why? A couple of reasons.

First, writing sitcoms isn’t really that hard. So much of what you need to know is already defined for you. You know that your script needs to be a certain short length, with a certain small number of characters. You know that your choice of scenes is limited to your show’s standing sets and maybe one or two swing sets or outside locations. You know how your characters behave and how they’re funny, either because you invented them or because you’re writing for a show where these things are already well established. Sitcom is easy and sitcom is fun. Sitcom is the gateway drug to longer forms of writing. It’s a pretty good buzz and a pretty good ride, a great way to kill an afternoon, or even six months.

Second, improvement happens naturally. Every time you write a sitcom script you get a little better at it. You learn how to avoid dead-end stories. You learn how to enter a scene as late as possible and leave it as soon as possible. You learn how to avoid chuffa, the boring bullshit that slows down a story or scene, or as it’s otherwise known, tomando café –drinking coffee –  meaningless moments where people are just sitting around talking about nothing. You learn how to stay out of joke deserts, where pages and pages of dialogue roll by but nothing particularly hilarious happens. And you learn all of this organically, almost subconsciously, simply by attacking over and over again the problems peculiar to writing a sitcom script. 

Now, are you ready for the great news? This education takes place even if what you’re writing is not particularly good. It’s true. No matter how badly you suck on the page, you’re always learning something new about your craft, and thus steadily (okay, in fairness sometimes unsteadily)  moving toward a time when you generally don’t suck. All you have to do is keep writing. The learning takes care of itself.  

That said, no one around you will tell you that mastering this craft is a snap. It takes a lot of work: hours and days and weeks and months of creative labor and skull sweat, trying to turn nothing into something. It’s hard on the ego to face rejection and revision and notes and suggestions from yammerheads who may or may not know what they’re talking about. It challenges your resolve when people around you (maybe your nearest and dearest) tell you that you’re wasting your time. It takes a toll on your social life when writing your next script is more important than seeing friends, doing laundry, taking a shower. There’s doubt, fear, procrastination, alienation, poverty, writer’s block, writer’s cramp and dozens of other real and imagined setbacks, hurdles, distractions and delays. It would be fully disingenuous to pretend that these roadblocks don’t exist – yet that’s exactly what I want you to do. There’s a name for this strategy. It’s called adopting a useful fiction.

A useful fiction is a certain sort of lie we tell for the sake of moving past barriers and moving closer to our goals. If you believe me when I tell you that writing sitcoms is easy, you’ll be more motivated to try, because just generally we’d rather do things that are easy than are hard. If I tell you (or you tell yourself) that you’ll get better at your craft, then you’ll cast loose the air of hopelessness that might otherwise engulf you. You’ll push ahead, having such writing days as you are able to until you find to your surprise and delight that you are, in fact, getting better at your craft. In this sense we can say that a useful fiction is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You might say that it’s a case of “fake it till you make it,” or of having faith in your ability at a time when evidence is absent. No matter how you look at it, a useful fiction is a fiction, but it’s useful just the same.

So right now I’m asking you to adopt this specific useful fiction: You can do it. Go ahead and say it right out loud. Yes, it’s dumb, but it’s not the dumbest thing you’ll do in your career, or even today. And even if you don’t believe it, you have to agree that saying, “I can do it” is a whole lot more uplifting, more enabling, and more likely to breed success than saying, “I can’t do it.” That’s the power of the useful fiction, and that’s exactly how it works. You tell yourself you can do a thing for the sake of being able to do that thing, because you know for sure that if you tell yourself you can’t, well, you won’t.

I’ve been writing situation comedies for more than a quarter of a century, and showing others how to do it for nearly as long. I’ve taught and trained writers all over the world – 26 countries on four continents at last count. Along the way, by closely examining my writing process and the process of others, I’ve developed some pretty slick tricks, and it is these tricks that I intend to share with you here. Because it’s not enough just to sell you the useful fiction that sitcom is easy. I want to make it easy. I want to help you find shortcuts, see creative problems clearly, and generate solutions you can trust. I want to help you be funny and I want to help you be sure-handed in story. You’ll find some of these techniques to be immediately useful; others will not really bear fruit until you’re somewhat further advanced in your craft. But they’ll all help in the same way: by demystifying the creative process, and making it easier and more enjoyable for you to do what you do.

So let’s have some fun, shall we? Because this is sitcom writing, after all. As jobs go, it’s not a hard one. We get to work indoors, sitting on our rhumbas. We don’t punch a clock. We play and invent and create. I remember once running a story meeting on an episode involving a woman’s decision to get breast augmentation surgery. At the conclusion of the meeting I said, “Do you realize we just spent the entire afternoon talking about boob jobs?” Sitcom. It’s nice work if you can get it. And you can get it if you try. 

That’s the good news, and it’s not even a lie.

 

You Are a Billion Dollar Multi-National Publishing Conglomerate

Unlike in paper, where an author needs a distribution partner to cost-effectively reach a mass market of readers, in digital a lone author has exactly the same ability to distribute as any New York-based, billion-dollar multinational conglomerate.

In that single, succinct paragraph, my buddy Barry Eisler makes it clear why publishers are becoming increasingly irrelevant for authors...and why guys like me are turning down book contracts, even on successful series, from big six publishers in favor of self-publishing and/or publishing through one of the Amazon imprints. 

That paragraph is an excerpt from Barry's terrific guest post at Writer Unboxed -- an essay that should be required reading for authors, editors, publishers, and aspiring writers. Here some more of his sharp observations about the digital landscape.

In digital distribution, legacy publishers offer zero value. An author can distribute one-hundred-percent as effectively alone as she can with a legacy publisher. In other words, in digital distribution, an author has no use for New York. For more, see this guest post I did at J.A. Konrath’s blog, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing (a blog you should absolutely be reading regularly).

Note that I’m only talking about distribution and I’m only talking about digital. I didn’t say that New York publishers have no value to offer in paper, in, editing, or in other areas. To me this is obvious, but I’ve learned to include this sort of disclaimer to make it marginally more difficult for dodgers, denialists, and dudgeon demons to avoid actual thought in favor of straw man arguments and other mischaracterizations of what I’ve actually said.

Third, and flowing from the first two: in a digital world, the primary value a publisher can offer an author is direct-to-consumer marketing. This is why Amazon is so strongly positioned to succeed in digital publishing: its book business is built on its ability to reach tens or even hundreds of millions of readers directly by email. Amazon marketing is both exceptionally focused (book buyers) and exceptionally broad (tens or even hundreds of millions of customers). Entities that can offer authors compelling direct-to-consumer marketing value will be in a good position to take a cut of the profits. One recent example is the L.A. Times. Think of entities that fit the bill, and you’ll be able to predict tomorrow’s publishers.

Interestingly, there’s one particular group of companies that lacks any meaningful direct-to-consumer marketing ability. That group is New York publishing. Draw your own conclusions.

But he's got more to say than just that...go read his post. You won't be sorry. 

Inside the Mind of a Literary Thief

Everybody knows by now that the spy thriller Assassin of Secrets was stitched together by "author" Quentin Rowan from passages stolen, word for word, from other espionage novels. But he went even further than that... he also stole from other authors for the essays, blog posts, and the Q&A interviews that he did to promote his book.

Novelist Jeremy Duns, who blurbed the original novel, has been extraordinarily aggressive now in exposing the ruse and, in the comments section of his excellent blog post dissecting the Assassin of Secrets, Rowan shows up to explain himself, leading to a revealing, back-and-forth interview. It's fascinating stuff. Here's an excerpt of Rowan's mea culpa...

"[...] the minute I got an agent and started showing it to people who suggested changes, I began to distrust the quality of whatever real work I'd done on it. So I started ripping off passages from spy novels in my collection that fit. Somehow public scrutiny has always been the pressure point for me. Once I feel I'm doing the work for someone else's eyes, I begin stealing, because I want to impress.

Once the book was bought, I had to make major changes in quite a hurry, basically re-write the whole thing from scratch, and that's when things really got out of hand for me. I just didn't feel capable of writing the kinds of scenes and situations that were asked of me in the time allotted and rather than saying I couldn't do it, or wasn't capable, I started stealing again. I didn't want to be seen as anything other than a writing machine, I guess. Some call it "people pleasing." Anyway, the more I did it, the deeper into denial I went, until it felt as if I had two brains at war with each other. Half of my time this past year was spent in a strange internal argument: Yes I can, no I can't. They'll figure it out! No they won't! It became like a strange schizophrenic form of gambling, and for some reason - viewing myself as a failed 'literary' writer - I saw this book as my "last shot." So even though what was left of my rational mind understood I would probably be found out, I still thought I had to bet it all on this one horse."

Get on The Fight Card

Bill Rabkin and I aren't the only ones who had the idea of reviving the "men's action adventure series" on the Kindle. The incredibly versatile Mel Odom has teamed up with several of my good friends to launch not one, but two original ebook series... the western Rancho Diablo (with James Reasoner and Bill Crider, all writing under the pseudonym Colby Jackson) and now  Fight Card (with Paul Bishop, both writing under the pseudonym Jack Tunney).  

The series is inspired by the "fight pulps" of the 30s and 40s, which are totally unknown to me and, I am guessing, most readers out there. And that's a good thing, because Fight Card doesn't handily fit into any particular existing genre, with the possible exception of "damn good fun," which makes it unlike anything else out there for $2.99

Here's how Paul Bishop describes Felony Fists, the first book in the series:

Los Angeles 1954

Patrick “Felony” Flynn has been fighting all his life. Learning the “sweet science” from Father Tim the fighting priest at St. Vincent’s, the Chicago orphanage where Pat and his older brother Mickey were raised, Pat has battled his way around the world – first with the Navy and now with the Los Angeles Police Department.

Legendary LAPD chief William Parker is on a rampage to clean up both the department and the city. His elite crew of detectives known as The Hat Squad is his blunt instrument – dedicated, honest, and fearless. Promotion from patrol to detective is Pat’s goal, but he also yearns to be one of the elite.

And his fists are going to give him the chance.

Gangster Mickey Cohen runs LA’s rackets, and murderous heavyweight Solomon King is Cohen’s key to taking over the fight game. Chief Parker wants wants Patrick “Felony” Flynn to stop him – a tall order for middleweight ship’s champion with no professional record.

Leading with his chin, and with his partner, LA’s first black detective Tombstone Jones, covering his back, Patrick Flynn and his Felony Fists are about to fight for his future, the future of the department, and the future of Los Angeles. 

How can you possibly resist that? I know I can't. The second book in the series, The Cutman, is also available.  

(My one piece of unsolicited advice for Mel and Paul is to rethink the covers...the series title is buried in tiny type under an armpit and is totally unreadable in thumbnail, which is how most ebook buyers are going to encounter it.)

Ella Clah is Back

Several years ago, Bill Rabkin and I had the pleasure of adapting Aimee & David Thurlo's terrific Ella Clah novels into a one-hour pilot for CBS. We loved that script, but the network passed us over in favor of  Queens Supreme, which was cancelled after just three episodes.  

But Ella Clah has continued to enjoy a long, healthy run in print. And now she's back in her 17th novel, BLACK THUNDER. Here's what Publishers Weekly had to say about it:

In the Thurlos’ satisfying 17th novel featuring Navajo policewoman Ella Clah (after 2010’s Never-Ending-Snake), a remote area near a steep-sided outcrop called Hogback becomes a murder scene with the accidental discovery of a buried body with two bullet holes in the skull. More grave sites in the same area, including one just outside tribal boundaries, make it a multijurisdictional investigation bringing in San Juan County (N.Mex.) sheriff Paul Taylor and FBI agent Dwayne Blalock. Tracking the victims, some dead for several years, complicates the investigation. An attempt to get rid of a possible witness, a young boy playing near Hogback, heats the action. Meanwhile, Ella must deal with the needs of her teenage daughter, Dawn; mother, Rose Destea; and romantic interest, Rev. Ford Tome. Navajos known as the Fierce Ones threaten to worsen the situation with vigilante justice in this insightful portrait of a native culture still evolving between tradition and modernity. 

 The Thurlos are among the most prolific authors I know -- I think they're juggling three book series now -- and they always deliver a great read.  Do yourself a favor and grab this book!

Road Kill

My good friend Zoe Sharp's terrific novel ROAD KILL is now available as an ebook...and it includes a teaser chapter from my soon-to-be-published crime novel KING CITY.

ROAD KILL is Zoe's fifth novel in the acclaimed Charlie Fox series. Here's the scoop:

 Still bearing the emotional scars from her traumatic first bodyguarding job in the States, Charlie Fox returns to her former home to try and work out both her personal and professional future.

Instead of the peace for which she's been hoping, Charlie is immediately caught up in the aftermath of a fatal bike crash involving one of her closest friends. The more she probes, the more she suspects that the accident was far from accidental − and the more she finds herself relying on the support of her troubled boss, Sean Meyer, despite her misgivings over the wisdom of resuming their relationship.

And Charlie's got enough on her plate trying to work out who suddenly wants her dead. The only way to find out is to infiltrate a group of illegal road racers who appear hell-bent on living fast and dying young.

Taking risks is something that ex-Special Forces soldier Charlie knows all about, but doing it just for kicks seems like asking for trouble. By the time she finds out what's really at stake, she might be too late to stop them all becoming road kill 

Going for the Money

For years, so-called "literary" writers routinely to sneered at genre fiction as a lesser form of writing. But now more and more of those same writers,  under their own names and under pseudonyms (like John Banville writing as Benjamin Black, or Scott Spencer writing as Chase Novak for example), are turning to genre fiction because that's where the money is, as The Millions reports:

The good ship Literary Fiction has run aground and the survivors are frantically paddling toward the islands of genre. Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic, but there does seem to be a definite trend of literary/mainstream writers turning to romance, thrillers, fantasy, mystery, and YA. Justin Cronin has produced the vampire epic The Passage.Tom Perrotta is offering The Leftovers, a tale of a futuristic Rapturesque apocalypse. And MacArthur-certified genius Colson Whitehead is writing about zombies. It’s enough to make my historical mystery about Jack the Ripper look downright pedestrian.

[...]So while publishers might happily support a literary author making the switch to genre they’ll probably be less enthusiastic when that writer develops an itch to move back toward literary writing. The obvious compromise – write literary under one name, genre under another – works for some, but is a stopgap solution while the industry struggles to catch up with the reality of what’s happening. Because it’s not just a matter of writers flipping back and forth, it’s a matter of genre and literary cross-pollinating to produce a new species. Genre books written by literary writers are different than those written by authors who have always embraced and exemplified that genre.

The so-called "literary writers" are only beginning to notice what those of us who've always toiled in  "genre" writing have always known...the labels are meaningless. All that matters is whether you are telling a good story that grabs readers. And all it takes is one look at the bestseller lists to see what readers really want. More often than not, the bulk of the NY Times list is dominated by mysteries and thrillers. If a book is a mystery or a thriller, does that inherently make it less "literary" than a story about a family that's slowly disintegrating under the weight of the lies that they tell themselves and one another? I don't think so.

Books Without Borders

The demise of Borders, though widely expected, is sending shockwaves through the publishing industry that authors will undoubtedly be feeling in their wallets, as the Wall Street Journal reports.

When you lose literally miles of bookshelves, it's going to have an impact," said David Young, chief executive ofLagardère SCA's Hachette Book Group, which Borders owed $36.9 million at the time of its bankruptcy filing. "I hope other retailers will now step up and make offers for what they consider to be the prime sites," Mr. Young said. "It's a tragedy Borders didn't make it through."

The loss of Borders may also make it more difficult for new writers to be discovered. "The liquidation of Borders is an irreplaceable loss of a big part of the book-discovery ecosystem," said Michael Norris, a senior analyst at Simba Information, a unit of MarketResearch.com "Thousands of people whose job consisted of talking up and selling books will eventually being doing something else, and that's bad for authors, agents, and everyone associated with the value chain in books."

Hardcover and paperback book sales are bound to take a huge hit...and publishers are going to pass on the pain by offering lower advances. This is bound to drive more authors, particularly those in the ever-widening mid-list, to self-publishing. It will also have, oddly enough, a negative impact on at least one e-reading platform -- the Kobo, which was Borders' answer to the Kindle and Nook (though the Kobo remains the device of choice for Canada's Chapters chain of book superstores).

The liquidation of the 400 remaining Borders stores could start as early as Friday.

What Royalty Should Publishers Pay Authors For Ebooks?

Publishers maintain a 25% royalty on ebooks is generous but the Authors Guild thinks it should be 50%. Author Kelly McClymer's thoughtful husband has crunched the numbers and determined what he believes, based on industry figures, what he thinks the fair royalty should be. He goes into great detail about how he determined those numbers, and it's truly fascinating to read, but here's the bottom line:

25% net is much too low a royalty rate, a 50% net is too much as it assumes no cost to the publisher and is not realistic. [...] Ebook royalties should be between 31.4%and 45% of net. The lower royalty rate assumes publishers have the same cost to publish an ebook as a paperback while the 45% has a more reasonable cost.

The Interrogator Is Interrogated

Brian Drake conducts an indepth interview with my buddy Paul Bishop, who has just reissued all of his terrific crime novels as ebooks (some under new titles). Paul is a veteran LAPD detective and an interrogation expert (also the star of ABC's upcoming reality show Take the Money and Run) who brings that experience to his books. But, like Joseph Wambaugh before him, he writes more than simple police procedurals.  In the interview, he talks in detail about how the characters in his books are shaped, in particular his series heroine Fey Croaker. 

BD: Fey Croaker is a great character in her Detective Fey Croaker L.A.P.D. Novels. Was there anyone in particular who inspired her?

PB: All of my long-term partners on the job have been female.  I learned a ton from all of them.  In my opinion, the average woman in law enforcement is much better than the average man – and yes, I know saying that is sacrilege to many.  Women on the job are natural problem solvers and can instinctively deescalate potentially violent situations far quicker and easier than their male counterparts because they are not hung up on their own machismo.

Working for so many years with female partners, I saw firsthand how they were mistreated by bureaucracy, how every time they turned around they were being hit on sexually.  It got to the point where I’d heard every pick-up line in the book a hundred times used on my partners.  I got really tired of it, so I had some inkling of how they felt. 

I also came to understand why female cops have a very hard time sustaining personal relationships outside of the job.  And through investigating sexually related crimes for thirty plus years, I came to believe the majority of females have some kind of sexual abuse – almost always unreported – in their background.  This was inside knowledge, and I wanted to bring it to the character of Fey Croaker. 

Before I had even started writing the first book, I had plotted out a four book story arc for Fey’s personal life.  I knew each book would contain a standalone plot, but would also be designed to isolate Fey more and more personally, before forcing her to deal with her demons in the fourth novel.

So, Fey is a combination of many of the great female detectives with whom I’ve had the honor of working.  And the best feeling was when I would be approached by female law enforcement officers who had read the book and demanded to be told how I knew this stuff – it meant I’d gotten it right.

That's not all he gets right. If you're looking for great summer reading, do yourself a big favor and pick up a Paul Bishop novel.

Literary Agents Reinventing Themselves

With the publishing industry undergoing cataclysmic changes, and with self-publishing now a viable option for authors, it's only natural that literary agents are scrambling to position themselves.

How are they going to make money in this new publishing business? How are they going to be relevant?

One way is to reinvent themselves. Instead of just finding clients publishers and negotiating the deals,  they are now branching out into publishing books themselves... or helping their clients self-publish by taking on the management and business side of the business (finding cover artists, copyeditors, tracking royalties, etc) ...in exchange for a 15% commission on books sold. Here's how the Dystel & Goderich Literary Agency is doing it:

 We have a project manager whose job it is to coordinate, advise, and make sure that the process goes smoothly with minimal work on the part of the author.  This, because we want our authors to write, not have to engage in a 47-e-mail exchange with someone about font size.   Everything is subject to the author’s approval.

Which brings up the question posed by several of you, both here and on Joe Konrath’s blog: what are you people doing to earn that 15% commission?  Pretty much what we do now to earn that 15% commission.  Our commitment to this is more than just uploading and watching the dollars trickle in.  In addition to all we do as agents, managing self-published properties will be part of our job: updating metadata, copy, next-book excerpts, etc.  It’s not just vague managerial duties, but concrete tasks that we will be adding to our other duties.

Over on the Writer Beware blog, there's an informative, thoughtful, and remarkably civil discussion going on about this new development, one that Victoria Strauss sees as a troubling conflict of interest. Here's just one of her many concerns:

 If an agency can publish a client's book itself, will it try as hard to market the book to traditional publishers? Will it give up sooner on a book that doesn't sell right away? Where and how will the line be drawn between "this book still has potential markets" and "this book is tapped out?" How much--unconsciously or otherwise--will the agency influence clients' decisions on which publishing route to take? According to Dystel & Goderich's announcement, "what we are going to do is to facilitate e-publishing for those of our clients who decide that they want to go this route, after consultation and strategizing about whether they should try traditional publishing first or perhaps simply set aside the current book and move on to the next." (My bolding.) Does this mean that the agency may take on clients whose manuscripts are never marketed to other publishers at all?

 But in the comments section, author Barry Eisler, who is married to an agent, and Joe Konrath, whose agents just announced their new self-publishing intiative, have  jumpd in to explain in detail why they see this as a natural evolution for agents as advocates for their authors. Barry says, in part:

I think you're defining the author/agent relationship premise too narrowly. Most fundamentally, the purpose -- the end -- of the agent is to help authors get their books to the greatest number of readers and achieve the greatest possible commercial and literary success. The means by which this end has traditionally been achieved is a sale to a legacy publisher. Because the "sale to a publisher" route has until quite recently been the only means to the "getting the book to the greatest number of readers and achieve the greatest possible commercial and literary success" end, it's easy to conflate the two. But just as railroads were not in the railroad business, but rather were in the transportation business, agents are not in the "selling to publishers" business, but rather are in the "helping their authors reach the greatest number of readers and achieve the greatest possible commercial and literary success" business. Agents who miss this fundamental distinction are making the same mistake the railroad companies made, and will achieve similar results.

It's discussion well worth reading.  

I'm sure you're wondering where I weigh in on this.

I agree with both Victoria... and with Barry & Joe.

I think it's a big conflict-of-interest when an agency becomes a publisher...creating a situation that's rife with ethical problems and plenty of opportunities for the authors to be exploited and screwed.

However, I think that's very different from what agencies like Dystel & Goderich appear to be offering.  

If I am reading it right, they're offering to take all the headaches out of your self-publishing venture by dealing with the cover artists, copyeditors, formatters, and sales platforms for you.

In other words, you write, we'll handle as much of the business side of it as you'd like us to. You'll still be making all the decisions and writing all the checks...we'll just shoulder all the time-consuming, day-to-day managerial work. 

I don't see a conflict-of-interest in that scenario. It's your self-publishing venture, they're just managing it for you in exchange for a commission (I think 15% for that service is way too high, but that's another discussion).

 (Pictured: Victoria Strauss and Barry Eisler, who photo was taken at Bouchercon 2010 by Mark Coggins)

The Funny Side of Thomas Perry

If you're a regular reader of this blog, then you know I'm a huge Thomas Perry fan. We did a panel together at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and I used the opportunity to urged him to bring back his two hilarious, out-0f-print classics, BIG FISH and ISLAND, as ebooks. I'm thrilled to say that he cracked under my relentless nagging...both books are now available!  Here's the story on BIG FISH:

First published in 1985 and long out-of-print, Big Fish, one of Thomas Perry's most sought-after titles, is now available to readers in an e-book format. Powerfully-plotted and funny, Big Fish follows dangerous and mysterious Los Angeles entrepreneur Altmeyer, and his wife Rachel whose quiet lives in the Hollywood hills are disrupted when a multi-million dollar gunrunning deal goes bad. 

Under most circumstances, Altmeyer might be mildly amused by the audacity of the double-cross. But whoever cheated Altmeyer may also be planning to destroy the world. With so much at stake, Altmeyer and Rachel and their friend, super-agent to the stars Bucky Carmichael, set off on a perilous adventure in search of the identity of the Big Fish. What they find is shocking and horrifying and all too credible.

And here's the story on his classic ISLAND:

Island, first published in 1987 and long out-of-print, one of Thomas Perry’s most sought-after titles, is now available to readers in e-book format. The riveting and entertaining thriller follows a husband-and-wife con team on the run from the Mob, a soldier of fortune between jobs, a two-bit operator with grandiose dreams of tribal dynasty, a sultry CIA operative with divided loyalties, and the most dazzling defector ever to hurl a split-fingered fastball––twentieth-century buccaneers who wash up on a tiny island in the Caribbean and turn it into a multinational cash machine—but then the shooting starts.

Somebody is trying to invade the island, and that somebody could be anybody: the CIA, NSC or IRS; the most powerful, corrupt bank in the U.S. or the South American cocaine mafia—or it could just be the Los Angeles incarnation of the devil himself, a shadowy figure with a checkered past named Fat Jimmy… 

If you are Thomas Perry fan, these classics are a must-buy...revealing a lighter side only hinted at in his string of thrillers. And if you've never read Perry before, these are a great place to start.

Get Branded

My buddy Axel Brand's latest mystery, NIGHT MEDICINE is now available on the Kindle. This is the third book in the acclaimed Joe Sonntag series...the first of which, THE HOTEL DICK, was published top wide acclaim in hardcover by Five Star some years ago (and is not yet  available in e-format).  The second Sonntag tale, THE DEAD GENIUS, comes out in hardcover from Five Star in August. Here's the skinny on NIGHT MEDICINE...

It's summer, 1948, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The body of a lovely, well-dressed young woman is discovered at the Washington Park Zoo, near the lion cages. She is lying in a bed of ferns, her arms folded over her breast, her skirts smoothed and her legs straight. Nearby a lioness prowls her cage. Clearly, someone cared about this unknown young woman, and laid her out as if she were in a funeral home. Why she was placed there, in that fashion, is a riddle that Detective Joe Sonntag and his gifted staff try to solve.His quest leads him into strange dark corners, where compassion and death intersect.

Book Review: TV Noir - The Twentieth Century

I bought TV NOIR: THE TWENTIETH CENTURY by Ray Starman based on a rave review by my friends over at Bookgasm... and because I'm a sucker for TV books. But TV NOIR was a huge disappointment on just about every level, from the actual printing itself to the thin, badly edited, content. 

Even by self-published/print-on-demand standards, the print quality is awful. The photographs look like reproductions of xeroxes. The copyediting and proofreading are atrocious (missing and inconsistent punctuation, show titles with and without quotation marks, etc). It does not look or read like a professionally published work. 

But all of that would be tolerable if the content was worthwhile. Sadly, it's not. There are some compelling ideas here, but you have to slog through some truly awkward, rambling sentences to get to them. Sentences like these: 

Stack was able to overcome his 'tennis anyone' roles and an academy award nomination for the melodramatic "Written on the Wind" ('57) to perfect his underplayed and superior to the later Clint Eastwood's monotone style to gain status as a subtle and ironic characterization that was unique.'

Huh? That's crisp, lean, clear prose compared to this sentence:

Add to the list the controversial but I think brilliant 'Blade Runner' ('82) complete with Harrison Ford's tough guy voice-over reminiscent of Bogart in anything and William Holden's commentary in the noir-ish 'Sunset Boulevard' ('50) and you have future noir served on a platter existing in a dark futuristic society where Harrison Ford, as a 21st century ex-cop is recruited to find alien androids settling among humans.

Painful stuff. This is a writer in desperate need of an editor and a few lessons on how to use a comma. The book is about noir, but he uses the word so much, that I often wondered if his goal was to stick it in as many times in as many sentences as he possibly could. For instance:

Although science fiction is not a particularly strong genre for noir analysis, certain key noir elements may still apply it for noir status.

Or

'City of Angels' is another noir curiosity that only ran from February to August 1976 but deserves inclusion because of its private eye genre, it's noir-ish photography and general 1930-1940s style that lent itself to noir iconograpy.

It's a shame he couldn't have stuck the word noir in there one or two more times. He also spends way too much time sharing with us his own, internal debates about whether shows deserved to be included in his book or not. For instance, in the midst of discussing "Harry O," he starts rambling...

Much lighter in tone than the very dark 'The Fugitive', it still did not reach the humorous heights of James Garner's 'Rockford Files' or even Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul's inspired comic renderings of 'Starsky and Hutch'. Two worthy programs I have not included in my analysis because their humor prevented them from noir status. A tough decision, but Garner's often-folksy humor and Glaser and Soul's comedy team antics were just too light for noir justifications.

As if we cared. But more importantly, what the heck does any of that have to do with "Harry O?" Nothing. 

I love books about TV, particularly those that focus on cop shows. But this book is a mess. And way, way over-priced at $15.95. Skip it. 

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.

Amazon the Bookseller meets Amazon the Jungle

My friend James Polster's out-of-print, 1987 comic novel A GUEST IN THE JUNGLE was just re-released by Amazon Encore, or as he explains it,  "Amazon the bookseller has recently decided to become Amazon the publisher and reissue my novel about Amazon the jungle." 

GUEST IN THE JUNGLE is about a Pittsburgh attorney named Whitehill who sets off on a South American vacation that he thinks will be a leisurely jaunt, hiking through the Amazon in his Brooks Brothers pants. But a sightseeing trip goes awry, leaving him stranded in the heart of the Amazon jungle...beginning a serious of outrageous, darkly comic misadventures.

James based the book on his own world travels. The snapshot on the left is from his own foray into the jungle. 

"It was taken by the anthropologist who had first contact with the tribe.  I never met him because he was killed by a coral snake (not that easy to happen, the snake has to get a really good bite) shortly after shooting this, about three months before I was taken in- by the guy who was with him when he was bitten," James says. "The anthropologist was also a marathon runner, and when he realized what had just happened, instead of staying in the cool river where he had slipped, his instincts kicked in and he started to run.  Pumped the venom all through his system."

His experience with Amazon has been fantastic...and they will soon be releasing his entire backlist, including BROWN and THE GRADUATE STUDENT over the next couple of months. Here's a Q&A with himself that he sent me. 

Q: After your world travels, you ended up in Los Angeles, a kind of jungle in its own right. What took you to L.A.?

A: I had an offer from Columbia Pictures, and a separate offer to write the screenplay for A GUEST IN THE JUNGLE.  I got the screenwriting offer because they knew about Columbia, and I got the Columbia offer because they knew about the screewriting thing.  So, I showed up in town with two jobs, neither of which I was qualified to do.

Q: In your second novel, BROWN, main character McGee Brown is a former sports writer turned amateur detective. Are you a sports fan as well as an adventure traveler? Any detective work in that daredevil past of yours?

A: I am a sports fan....I never was a detective, but I had an office in New Orleans that looked like something out of the Maltese Falcon, and a friend kept insisting we become detectives because of this.  

Q: Your newest novel, THE GRADUATE STUDENT, centers on the bizarre world of Hollywood with a little bit of jungle mystique mixed in... Any behind-the-scenes info you can share, either from Hollywood or the jungle?

A: Hollywood behind the scenes- It's all in the book.  Where else in the world can a bunch of daft people gather in a room to figure out how to spend millions and millions of dollars?  From the studio's old, secret staircase used to sneak starlets up to the casting couch, to Stallone's jokes, to the guy who taught one of the world's most powerful computers to be a screenwriter- so much of it is true. 

NY Publishers Terrified by Self-Pubbed Authors

The Wall Street Journal reports that cheap ebooks from self-published authors are making NY publishers wake up in a cold sweat...a notion that self-published authors used to fantasize about and that I've scoffed at (and ruthlessly ridiculed) for years.

But the advent of the Kindle, combined with Amazon  offering their sales platform to all-comers for free, has changed everything. Now that self-pubbed  fantasy has come true in a big, big way:

"[Amazon is] training their customers away from brand name authors and are instead creating visibility for self-published titles," one senior publishing executive who asked not to be identified, says of Amazon.

As digital sales surge, publishers are casting a worried eye towards the previously scorned self-published market. Unlike five years ago, when self-published writers rarely saw their works on the same shelf as the industry's biggest names, the low cost of digital publishing, coupled with Twitter and other social-networking tools, has enabled previously unknown writers to make a splash

Now it's actually possible for an author nobody heard of to become a millonaire within just a matter of months. I'm not exaggerating. Everyone talks about Amanda Hocking...but perhaps the most astonishing success story of all is John Locke.

Mr. Locke, who published his first paperback two years ago at age 58, says he decided to jump into digital publishing in March 2010 after studying e-book pricing.

"When I saw that highly successful authors were charging $9.99 for an e-book, I thought that if I can make a profit at 99 cents, I no longer have to prove I'm as good as them," says Mr. Locke. "Rather, they have to prove they are ten times better than me."

Locke earned $126,000 on 369,000 sales on Amazon in March alone. That's a huge uptick from the 75,000 he sold in January and the 1300 he sold in November.

Wait, let's think about that some more. 

John Locke went from selling 1300 books to 369,000 in four months. 

Holy.

Shit.

Anyone who thinks the e-book market has peaked isn't paying attention....and any midlist author who signs another pissant three-book contract with a NY publisher (or any publisher) should check themselves into a mental institution right away. 

Don't look for Locke to follow Amanda Hocking's footsteps and take a NY publishing deal. He says he's not interested, though he has signed up with a high-powered agent to field movie offers and deal with foreign publishers. She sums up the whole ebook marketplace very nicely: "This is a Wild West of a world," she says.

The Wit and Wisdom of Jonathan Hayes

My friend Alafair Burke has a terrific interview with my friend Jonathan Hayes up on Murderati. I first met Jonathan, a NY medical examiner and novelist, at Left Coast Crime in Hawaii and liked him instantly...he's one of those people you meet and, after about five minutes, feel like you've known them your whole life. One of my regrets about Bouchercon in SF this past year was that I didn't get a chance to spend some time with him. He's got a wicked wit, a fierce intelligence, and he's a hell of a nice guy, too. Jonathan has a new book out, A HARD DEATH, which you've got to read...

You are a fierce Facebooker.  Unlike many writers, you rarely even mention your books or your life as an author.  Instead, you really show your actual life through photos, music, and video.  What rings your bell about Facebook?

Yes, I am the bane of my publicist's existence – I'm frequently invited to comment on high profile killings on national TV, but always decline. I think it's inappropriate to hold forth on something so serious about which you only have third- or fourth-hand knowledge. All of us hate to be second-guessed; it's horrible to watch the jackals come out of the woodwork when a celebrity dies.

I've had a strong online presence for more than 20 years – I've had the same email address for all that time, and probably as many people call me "Jaze" as call me "Jonathan".

I find just about everything fascinating – seriously, I could get engrossed in an article about the history of cereal box typography design. As a result, I have the attention span of a magpie, regularly developing odd obsessions that are gushingly watered by the fountain of esoterica that is the Internet. And when I'm passionate about something, I want to share it, hear what other people think.  So I post it on Facebook, or on my Tumblr blog.

Right now, for example, I'm obsessed by a mostly West Coast niche subculture: girls and young women who've developed a style fusing psychobilly rock style (fringes, retro clothes, Sailor Jerry-style retro tattoos) with facial and body piercings, breasts plumped up by clothing or surgery, Hello Kitty-style kitschy accessories and My Little Pony hair colors borrowed from Harajuku in Tokyo. It's an odd look, a deliberate, almost angrily in-your-face miscegenation of Kiddie Cute and Hypersexualized Adult. I think it's less rock'n'roll than a new incarnation of rave style; that scene was characterized by a conscious infantilization that had kids drowning in brightly colored, deliberately oversized clothes, carrying animal-shaped backpacks and handing out candy while they chewed pacifiers. (Admittedly, those last two were to help deal with the jaw-grinding and clenching that are a side effect of the drug Ecstasy, but, still.)

Uh, here's my Facebook album for that – careful; depending on where you work, it might not be 100% safe for you.

I don't talk about my work work on Facebook because it's not appropriate; people died to make their way to me, and that should be private. This is one of the reasons I write fiction: to talk about the things I see, and the reactions they evoke, without betraying any confidence.

 

Barnes & Noble 2.0

The Nook might just save Barnes & Noble if they commit to becoming a Nookstore instead of a Bookstore...making ebooks the primary focus of their brick-and-mortar stores as well as their website.  That's the thesis of an interesting article from CNN Money. 

"Barnes & Noble didn't get into this market very early, but when they got into this, they got into this very smart," says Forrester research analyst James McQuivey about the company's ereader. "They went in with with both feet, quickly got a device on the market as opposed to picking someone to partner up with like Borders did, and when the firestorm in 2010 hit, they already had their device ready to go. Borders did not." (Pop quiz: Do you even know the name of the Borders ereader? It's called the Kobo. And it's nowon clearance for $60 at Borders stores that are liquidating.)

In fact, McQuivey thinks Barnes & Noble has a better than 50% chance of making the switch to digital if it becomes even more aggressive about its Nook hardware, software, ebook and accessory business. And there is room for growth. Based on a Goldman Sachs analyst report, the Nook business is on a hockey-stick growth curve, with sales going from $62 million in 2009 (the year the device launched) to an estimated $1.163 billion for 2012. Meanwhile, the book business -- sales at brick and mortar locations -- will decrease, according to the same estimates, from $4.37 billion this year to $3.95 billion for the company's fiscal year 2012.

In other words, the day is fast approaching when ebooks will drive B&Ns sales and paper books will be little more than colorful decor in their Nookstores. Or, as the article concludes:

Regardless of the path executives take, the Barnes & Noble of the future (if there is one, of course) will probably look nothing like it does today. The company could even choose to drop the name altogether and let Nook become the consumer-facing brand.

E-Volution

The talk of the Romantic Times conference, at least among the published authors, was the e-volution of publishing. I was fortunate enough to spend time with two authors at the forefront of it all...Barry Eisler and Boyd Morrison.

Barry and I got together for breakfast and, while I can't go into details of what we discussed, he has some very innovative, creative, and ambitious plans for  self-publishing his books. He's definitely given his controversial decision to walk away from a $500,000 book deal, and how best to capitalize on the ebook/self-publishing market, a lot of careful thought and there's no question in my mind that he will be successful. 

It occurred to me that one major advantage that all of us who were published before have going for us as we enter the self-publishing world...which the newbies flooding the Amazon, Smashwords, etc. do not... is a network of other published, successful authors we can reach out to for blurbs, advice, cross-promotion, recommendations, etc. Those relationships, and that wealth of shared experience, will give us a considerable edge in the marketplace and a way to rise above the tsunami of swill for a while to come.

After our breakfast, I headed to the RT booksigning event...which was,without a doubt, unlike any booksigning I've ever attended in my career. There were hundreds of authors and thousands of fans. It was amazing.

I was sandwhiched between a woman who wrote "man on man erotica" and Colleen Gleason (aka Joss Ware). Colleen and I passed the three hours, between signing scores of our books, talking about -- what else? -- ebooks and self-publishing.  She's concerned, like many other authors I talked to, about this race to the bottom, in which authors are pricing their books at 99 cents in a desperate effort to sell books or crack the top 500 rankings.

After the big signing, I got together with Brett Battles, Robert Gregory Browne, and Boyd Morrison for a late lunch...which went so long, it almost became an early dinner. We had a great time talking shop and just about every aspect of the ebook/self-publishing/"traditional" publishing biz.

Boyd, you may recall, was the first Kindle sensation...and quickly got snapped up by a big six publisher with a rich, multi-book contract. He's now published in print world-wide. His take on the Amanda Hocking deal, from his uniquely informed perspective, was very interesting (without going into details, essentially he thinks it's a no-lose situation for her, even in the unlikely event that her books under the deal fail).  I came away from that long, liesurely lunch with a lot to think about.

I had a great time at the RT conference...it certainly exceeded my expectations. But the best part for me wasn't any of the programming...it was talking shop with my fellow authors. 

(Pictured: One corner of the vast signing hall as it was beginning to fill up. And Joanna Bourne, Stephanie Bond, and Rhys Bowen)

Giddy-up to Rancho Diablo

Novelists Mel Odom, James Reasoner and Bill Crider, under the pen name "Colby Jackson," have teamed up on RANCHO DIABLO, an original series of western ebooks. The third book in the series, DEAD MAN'S REVENGE, is now live on Amazon...and a steal at $2.99.

The three authors are experienced western writers and lovers of the genre...one that's seeing hard times in print but is ripe for revitalization on the Kindle. 

They're trying to do for traditional westerns what I'm trying to do... with their help, in fact.... for the men's action-adventure series with THE DEAD MAN.

And if anyone can do it, they can. Don't miss RANCHO DIABLO #1 SHOOTERS CROSS or RANCHO DIABLO #2: HANGMAN'S ROPE

Spur for Wheeler

My friend Richard Wheeler has won another well-deserved Spur Award, the Oscar of western writing, from the Western Writers of America, this time for his novel SNOWBOUND. Congrats, Richard!

Eisler & Hocking

The news this week that Barry Eisler snubbed a $500,000 publishing deal to self-publish and that self-pub phenom Amanda Hocking is negotiating a $1 million+ deal with a publishing company has created a lot of discussion among authors, agents, editors and pundits. Even Hocking herself has weighed in with her reasoning:

I'm writer. I want to be a writer. I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling emails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc. Right now, being me is a full time corporation. As I said before in my post - Some Things That Need to be Said - I am spending so much time on things that are not writing.

 

I like writing. I even like marketing, especially when it comes to interacting with readers. And I don't mind editing. I just don't want to run my corporation, because that takes away from writing and everything else that I actually enjoy doing.

Booksquare offered some interesting analysis, crediting both authors for making shrewd moves based on their unique situations in the publishing universe. 

Eisler and Hocking are making the right choices, but, if you were to corner me in a bar and ask me which author is following the right path right now, I’d say Eisler.

He’s taking a riskier path, for sure, and there is no guarantee. His history suggests he has some talent when comes to calculated risks. And while he’s burned some publishing bridges, he also has a track record in the industry.

Hocking, however, is more of a publishing dark horse. She’s done the indie thing amazingly well. I cannot over-emphasize how critical this is, and how well she’s done it. But there is a gap between indie publishing (especially self-publishing, without a lot of professional editorial input) and corporate publishing.

The biggest challenge, and the reason I’m putting my money (virtual because the husband hates it when I bet cat food dollars) on Eisler is that the publisher who signs Amanda Hocking today will likely not have a book on the shelf before 2012, more likely 2013. Note my nouns.

The Hocking zeitgeist is right now. Her audience is right now. Her moment is right now. Can this buzz be sustained a year or more? Can her audience be engaged for that long? Yes, if she’s continually giving them the books they want…at the price point they want.

What's interesting to me is how many editors and pundits still don't see how fast things are changing, in many ways for the better, for writers in this new, digital landscape. The media that covers publishing...Publishers Weekly, Publishers Lunch, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc... seem to be even slower to get this than the publishers are. Some of the coverage of Eisler and Hocking, and the ways the economics, sales, and distribution of self-publishing have changed in the last twelve months, has been totally inept.

The Game Has Changed

My friend, the huggable spy, Barry Eisler has announced that he's walking away from a $500,000 advance from St. Martin's Press  to self-publish his books.  Eisler explains his thinking in a long and fascinating interview with -- who else? -- his buddy Joe Konrath:  

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.[...]I’m not the first example, though I might be a noteworthy one because of the numbers I’m walking away from. But there will be others, more and more of them.

He's right. Just a few weeks ago, Terrill Lee Lankford made headlines by rejecting a high, five-figure deal. By now, the publishers must be doing so much head-scratching that they have no scalps left.  

But the reason established authors are doing the previously unthinkable -- saying no to big-money advances --  is simple. In exchange for that advance, the publisher is, essentially, buying the book out-right and forever (since it's unlikely to ever go "out of print"  with the advent of ebooks) and yet are only offering a 25% royalty on ebooks. 

But ebooks cost almost nothing to produce. There's no printing, no warehousing, no distribution. The only costs are editing, formatting, and cover art. So why give authors so little? The truth is, what the author will get is even less than 25%, as Barry and Joe explain:

Barry: [...] 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.

Which is why we are going to see more and more A, B and certainly C-list writers opting to forgo publishing contracts in favor of self-publishing.

Where does this leave print publishers? Domestic print publication will become for an authors a nice ancillary market, much the way audio and foreign editions are now, where limited rights are sold for a negotiated fee. The benefits would be distribution to brick-and-mortar stores (those that are still left). Or perhaps, as one blogger predicted, a retailer like WalMart or B&N might make exclusive deals with authors to sell the print editions in their stores.

But even in that negotiation, authors will have strong, self-publishing alternatives to help them leverage the best possible deal.

I found that out for myself this weekend. I was astonished to find the CreateSpace print editions of my self-published ebooks available for sale at the Virginia Festival of the Book alongside my Penguin-published MONK books...and being gobbled up by readers.

The readers saw no difference between my self-published novels and my published ones (granted, I hired a professional cover artist and formatters, so they looked very slick). But I am seeing a difference: much higher royalties and more money in my pocket. And if I, a mere mid-list author, is seeing that, imagine how much better a guy like Barry could do.

But you won't have to imagine it. Soon you will be able to see it for yourself.  Barry's new John Rain novel, The Detachment, will be self-published by Father’s Day. My prediction -- it will be a huge Kindle bestseller.

 

Midlist Becomes the E-List

Daily Finance reports that the shuttering of Borders, and the dire situation facing bookstores in general, make it even harder for mid-list authors to break-through, much less even stay in print. A Borders sales exec says that even if the company manages to survive, mid-list authors are facing doom.

· Borders will likely be even more cautious about investing in midlist authors. While their new loans from GE Capital will allow them to finance, among other things, the purchase of new stock, Borders is not in any position to gamble. They're likely, in my opinion, to skipmore midlist titles than usual and to only spend their money on names they know they can sell. This will be exacerbated by the aforementioned store closings.

· Publishers may offer lower advances, especially on midlist titles.The industry has depended on Borders as a major market for new titles. If the publisher can't trust Borders to take a sufficiently large number of copies of a given title, this will factor into their profit and loss statements. As a result, they may advance less money to authors in order to increase the odds that any given acquired title will earn out.

Publishers are going to double-down on their bestsellers and their established, successful franchises -- and so are bookstores. That's already the case at the biggest booksellers of all, the big-box general retailers like Wal-Mart, K-Mart and Costco, where mid-list authors are already barely represented on their limited shelf space.

It's no wonder that more and more midlist authors like me are opting to self-publish -- which can be far more lucrative, and far less risky, that a publishing contract, especially if you can get back the rights to your backlist.

The Fall of the Paper Curtain

This week marked an astonishing turning point in the publishing industry. USA Today published it's usual list of the top 150 bestselling books...but for the first time, they included self-published work in their calculations. Kindle Nation founder Stephen Windwalker calls it the "fall of the Paper Curtain." As if that wasn't amazing enough on its own, it wasn't just that a self-published author cracked the list...but that the same author managed to get seven titles on it. Self-published author Amanda Hocking's books placed 16, 24, 31, 81, 133, and 146 on the list, outselling authors like Stephen King and Nora Roberts. Here's what Windwalker predicts will be happening very soon: 

• One way or another, the fact that USA Today has opened its "bestseller list" gates to the great unwashed population of ebook and self-published authors will force the New York Times to do the same, lest its bestseller list be rendered irrelevant.
• Once the Times and other rags allow self-published books on their bestseller lists, they will have to start publishing reviews of self-published books.
• The prediction made here just a few weeks ago, that an indie author would be inducted by early 2012 into the "Kindle Million Club" alongside James Patterson, Stieg Larsson, and Nora Roberts, will prove to have been ridiculously conservative. Regardless of when Amazon makes the announcement, Hocking will pass the million-copy mark in Kindle books sold by the first day of Spring this year, and she will be joined by another dozen indie authors before the arrival of Spring in 2012.

 

Spinetingling Interview

Spinetingler Magazine has a long interview with me today on e-publishing. My thoughts on the subject have changed a bit since I did the interview but probably aren't new to any of you who've read my blog, but even so, here's a taste:

But have publishers been slow to adapt? Absolutely. Are they pricing ebooks too high? In some cases yes, but I don’t necessarily believe that the arbitrary $9.99 figure set by Amazon makes financial sense for publishers or authors…not while there are still hardcovers and paperbacks being published. The $2.99 price point makes a lot of sense for self-published authors like Joe and me…but does it make sense for Michael Connelly’s latest book from Little Brown? I don’t think so.

There’s no question that publishers should definitely be giving their authors a much bigger ebook royalties…and they will. It’s inevitable. But right now, publishers are in a state of total confusion and terror. They don’t know what to do…Borders is on the verge of collapse, Barnes & Noble is closing stores, ebook sales are exploding… it’s akin to what radio was facing when television came along. So they are trying to cut costs, pruning the midlist, firing editors, hunkering down and waiting out the storm. How they will emerge afterwards is anybody’s guess at this point.

It’s naive to think, though, that James Patterson or Janet Evanovich or authors in their stratosphere are going to be walking away from traditional publishing any time soon…they benefit enormously from the infrastructure and reach those companies provide. You can’t compare what A-list writers get from traditional publishing to what mid-list writers are experiencing. They are different universes. And it’s naive to think that big publishers, or printed books, are going to disappear. I’m sure the ebook world will, like the print world, continue to be dominated by the big publishers and the big authors (the big players in radio became the dominant players in TV, too). But there is more opportunity now for individual authors to take charge of their own careers. That said, it would not surprise me if Amazon, and eretailers like them, eventually institute some kind of filtering system to deal with the deluge of self-published work that they are being hit with. The slush pile has gone digital…and it’s going to be overwhelming, for Amazon and for readers, to wade through it all.

Just Say No

Author Terrill Lee Lankford announced on his blog that he has just walked away from a big advance from a major publisher on his next book over the outrageous 75/25 e-book royalty split...and is going to self-publish instead. He says, in part: 

What this "sizable advance" now looks like to me is a very expensive loan. I have been watching the e-book revolution carefully for the last two years and it is clear to me that by 2012 everything we have thought about traditional publishing will be history. The bookstores know this. The publishers know this. And some of the writers know this. But I have a feeling not everyone has gotten the memo yet.

[...] So I have no choice but to go full indie here. You heard me. I am walking away from a potential traditional publishing deal and joining the ranks of the self-published.[...] This is a huge gamble for someone in my position. I am not prolific. My habit has been to publish two books every seven years or so. That time was approaching and I was hoping that I had found a new home with this editor and publishing house. But I can't sign away my financial legacy to my children in this fashion, however small it may be.

He also has a warning for mid-list authors who are seeing new publisher interest in their dormant backlist...

In the meantime a lot of the little folks who just want to see print again are probably going to be seduced by new interest from publishers. I have a feeling there is going to be a tidal wave of cheap purchases by the publishers hoping to tie up as much material as possible at these usury rates. And then how much will your "platform" be worth? If you are just another name in a list of hundreds fighting for attention on a giant slate of titles you will have handed in your work cheap, with no way of getting it returned to you. Yes, that's right. E-books don't go out of print, so if you don't fight for time limits, your work will be lost to you. Permanently.

I think we are going to see more and more authors, those who haven't become household names, doing the math and making the same decision that he has.

Publishers Screwing Authors out of E-Book Royalties

Here's an Authors Guild report regarding how publishers are ripping off writers on ebook royalties...

E-Book Royalty Math: The Big Tilt
 
To mark the one-year anniversary of the Great Blackout, Amazon's weeklong shut down of e-commerce for nearly all of Macmillan's titles, we’re sending out a series of alerts this week and next on the state of e-books, authorship, and publishing. The first installment (“How Apple Saved Barnes & Noble. Probably.”) discussed the outcome, one year later, of that battle. Today, we look at the e-royalty debate, which has been simmering for a while, but is likely to soon heat up as the e-book market grows. 
 
E-book royalty rates for major trade publishers have coalesced, for the moment, at 25% of the publisher’s receipts. As we’ve pointed out previously, this is contrary to longstanding tradition in trade book publishing, in which authors and publishers effectively split the net proceeds of book sales (that's how the industry arrived at the standard hardcover royalty rate of 15% of  list price). Among the ills of this radical pay cut is the distorting effect it has on publishers’ incentives: publishers generally do significantly better on e-book sales than they do on hardcover sales. Authors, on the other hand, always do worse.
 
How much better for the publisher and how much worse for the author? Here are examples of author’s royalties compared to publisher’s gross profit (income per copy minus expenses per copy), calculated using industry-standard contract terms:  
 
“The Help,” by Kathryn Stockett  
Author’s Standard Royalty: $3.75 hardcover; $2.28 e-book. Author’s E-Loss = -39% 
Publisher’s Margin: $4.75 hardcover; $6.32 e-book. Publisher’s E-Gain = +33%
 
“Hell’s Corner,” by David Baldacci 
Author's Standard Royalty: $4.20 hardcover; $2.63 e-book. Author’s E-Loss = -37% 
Publisher’s Margin: $5.80 hardcover; $7.37 e-book. Publisher’s E-Gain = +27%
 
“Unbroken,” by Laura Hillenbrand 
Author’s Standard Royalty: $4.05 hardcover; $3.38 e-book. Author’s E-Loss = -17% 
Publisher’s Margin: $5.45 hardcover; $9.62 e-book. Publisher’s E-Gain = +77%
 
So, everything else being equal, publishers will naturally have a strong bias toward e-book sales. It certainly does wonders for cash flow: not only does the publisher net more, but the reduced royalty means that every time an e-book purchase displaces a hardcover purchase, the odds that the author’s advance will earn out -- and the publisher will have to cut a check for royalties -- diminishes. In more ways than one, the author’s e-loss is the publisher’s e-gain.
 
Inertia, unfortunately, is embedded in the contractual landscape. If the publisher were to offer more equitable e-royalties in new contracts, it would ripple through much of the publisher’s catalog: most major trade publishers have thousands of contracts that require an automatic adjustment or renegotiation of e-book royalties if the publisher starts offering better terms. (Some publishers finesse this issue when they amend older contracts, many of which allow e-royalty rates to quickly escalate to 40% of the publisher’s receipts. Amending old contracts to grant the publisher digital rights doesn’t trigger the automatic adjustment, in the publisher's view.) Given these substantial collateral costs, publishers will continue to strongly resist changes to their e-book royalties for new books.
 
Resistance, in the long run, will be futile. As the e-book market continues to grow, competitive pressures will almost certainly force publishers to share e-book proceeds fairly. Authors with clout simply won’t put up with junior partner status in an increasingly important market. New publishers are already willing to share fairly. Once one of those publishers has the capital to pay even a handful of authors meaningful advances, or a major trade publisher decides to take the plunge, the tipping point will likely be at hand.
 
In the meantime, what’s to be done? We’ll address that in our next installment in this series, on Monday.
 
Our assumptions and calculations for the figures above follow.
 
-------------------------------------------------------- 
Doing the Numbers: Hardcover
 
To keep things as simple as possible, we assumed that for hardcovers: (1) the publisher sells at an average 50% discount to the wholesaler or retailer (2) the royalty rate is 15% of list price (as it is for most hardcover books, after 10,000 units are sold), (3) the average marginal cost to manufacture the book and get it to the store is $3, and (4) the return rate is 25% (a handy number -- if one of four books produced is returned, then the $3 marginal cost of producing the book is spread over three other books, giving us a return cost of $1 per book). We also rounded up retail list price a few pennies to give us easy figures to work with.
 
“The Help,” by Kathryn Stockett has a hardcover retail list price of $25. The standard royalty (15% of list) would be $3.75. The publisher grosses $12.50 per book at a 50% discount. Subtract from that the author's royalty ($3.75), cost of production ($3), and cost of returns ($1), and the publisher nets $4.75 on the sale of a hardcover book.
 
“Hell’s Corner” by David Baldacci, has a retail list price is $28. The standard royalty is $4.20; the publisher's gross is $14. Subtract royalties ($4.20), production and return costs ($4), and the publisher nets $5.80.
 
“Unbroken,” by Laura Hillenbrand has a hardcover list price of $27. Standard royalties are $4.05. The publisher's gross is $13.50. Subtract royalties of $4.05 and production and return costs of $4, and the publisher nets $5.45.
 
Doing the Numbers: E-Book
 
E-book royalty rates are uniform among the major trade publishers, but pricing and discounting formulas fall into two camps: the reseller model favored by Amazon (Random House is the only large trade publisher using this model) and the agency model introduced by Apple a year ago. (See yesterday’s alert for more information on these models.)
 
Under the reseller model, the online bookseller pays 50% of the retail list price of the book to the publisher and sells the book at whatever price the bookseller chooses (for bestsellers, Amazon typically sells Random House e-books at a significant loss). Random House frequently prices the e-book at the same price as the hardcover until a paperback edition is available.
 
Under the agency model, the online bookseller pays 70% of the retail list price of the e-book to the publisher. The bookseller, acting as the publisher’s agent, sells the e-book at the price established by the publisher, but the publisher is constrained by agreement with Apple and others to set a price significantly below that for the hardcover version.
 
The unit costs to the publisher, under either model, are simply the author’s royalty and the encryption fee, for which we’ll use a generous 50 cents per unit.
 
Here’s the math:
 
“The Help” has an e-book list price of $13 and is sold under the agency model. Publisher grosses 70% of retail price, or $9.10. Author's royalty is 25% of publisher receipts, or $2.28. Publisher nets $6.32. ($9.10 minus $2.28 royalties and $0.50 encryption fee.)
 
“Hell’s Corner” is also sold under the agency model at a retail list price of $15 list price. Publisher grosses 70% of retail price, $10.50. Author's royalty is 25% of publisher receipts, or $2.63. Publisher nets $7.37. ($10.50 minus $2.63 royalties and $0.50 encryption fee.)  
 
“Unbroken” is sold by Random House under the reseller model at a retail list price of $27. Publisher grosses $13.50 on the sale. Author’s royalty, at 25%, is $3.38. Random House nets $9.62. ($13.50 minus $3.38 royalties and $0.50 encryption fee.)

UPDATE: Here's a letter that MacMillan is sending out to authors with their royalty statements...

Dear Authors, Illustrators and Agents,

As you all know, there has been tremendous growth and change in the digital book market over the last year, The purpose of this note is to explain two favorable adjustments we have made to your earnings on e-book sales during the past royalty period in light of the events of last year.

On April 1st 2010, Macmillan adopted the agency model for selling our e-books and, in doing so, we accomplished two extremely important goals to help ensure that the publishing business remains healthy for both you and us. The first, and most important one, was to create a level playing field for electronic book distribution. Amazon had been providing the e-book versions of new release hardcovers at $9.99, considerably under Amazon’s cost, making it very difficult for anyone else to prosper or even enter the market. Since we moved to the agency model, Apple has entered the market, Barnes and Noble has increased its investment in the business, and independent booksellers, working with Google, are now selling your books competitively in the electronic book market. Second, by successfully setting the price on the e-book versions of first release hardcovers above $9.99. We have been able to prove that the consumer does in fact place a value higher than $9.99 on first release electronic books.

The long term ramifications of both these changes are enormous. What was previously a digital business with only one real player (who was getting dangerously close to a monopolistic position, fueled by aggressive pricing) is now a much healthier marketplace where many can compete and distribute your books at prices determined by the market.

All of this is the context for answering the question I’m sure is on your mind: What about my royalties?

Your enclosed statement includes e-book royalties if we sold an e-book of your work during the May 1 through October 31 royalty period. Almost every contract we had in effect during this royalty period sets an escalating royalty (10%/12.5%/15%) based on the list price of the book. Under the agency model, the list price is the end price to the consumer, so your contractual earned royalties would therefore be the number of e-books sold multiplied by the list price of the e-book and then multiplied by the royalty rate.

Meanwhile, the publishing industry standard for electronic book royalty rates has clearly settled 25% of net receipts, which is the rate that we now offer in our publishing contracts for new books. This rate produces higher royalty earnings than the list price based rate.

We have therefore made the decision for this royalty period to increase your royalty to 25% of net receipts. We are presenting this adjustment in your attached royalty statement by first backing out your contractual electronic book royalty earnings (so you can see what they were) and then adding in the new higher royalty earnings according to new agency model calculation. We have only made this adjustment if it works in your favor (which is almost universally the case).

If you have not previously signed an amendment adjusting your contractual royalty on e-books to 25% of net receipts and you would like us to continue making this adjustment in future royalty periods, we need you to amend your contracts with us… [Contact information deleted here]

In addition to the favorable royalty recalculation mentioned above, you may also see an item toward the bottom of your statement called Amazon Kindle Outage Adjustment. Most of these adjustments were processed last royalty period but some are being finalized now. We believe it was not fair that authors should suffer from the Amazon buy button takedown imposed on us for a week last year when we switched over to the agency model. So we estimated as best we could what Kindle sales would have been for that week and processed the royalties on those sales as if they had happened. Amazon felt the same way and graciously split the cost with us. Interestingly, from what we could discover, almost all non-Kindle Amazon sales migrated to other outlets.

It is hard to see into next month never mind next year. Our business is in the midst of an enormous transformation. But do know that we are in this together and that our interests are aligned. We at Macmillan will keep working for a piracy-free, competition-friendly digital marketplace for your works, while supporting the bricks and mortar retailers for the ink-and-paper books that we all cherish. It is, as always, a great delight to be your publisher.

I hope this letter has been helpful. If you have questions about your statements please contact our Royalty Accounting Department.

All best,

John Sargent

Farewell to the Mystery Bookstore

Tonight, the Mystery Bookstore had their farewell party. It was a bittersweet event. It was great to see so many mystery writers and fans in one room...but sad to see a legendary, independent bookstore close down.

 

The owners and employees, in their good-byes, observed that they've never met a nicer, more supportive group of people than mystery writers and what a pleasure it was just having the chance to get to know them all.

They're right. As I was looking at all those faces, and talking to all those writers, I was struck by what an incredibly friendly, warm, and out-going group they are...and how much I like them.

Unlike TV, where there is a real class system...you don't see showrunners hanging out with staff writers and treating them as equals... that isn't the case at all among mystery novelists.  Everyone mixes together. The superstars like Michael Connelly and Robert Crais are as friendly, approachable, and supportive as the least-known mid-list writer. They don't just hang out with other writers in the bestseller list. Everyone treats one another with mutual respect. Sure, there are a few in the biz who don't, but those are the exceptions. 

The Mystery Bookstore was like our home, the place where all of us could get together several times a year, like a family gathering for the holidays, and talk shop and catch up with one another. Losing the store is like losing our home. I wonder now how often we'll all get together under one roof now that we've lost the store...my fear is that it will be hardly ever.

The loss of independent bookstores, which are really so much more than just places that sell books, is one of the real, and painful, downsides of the success of the Kindle.

(Pictured: Lee Goldberg, Dick Lochte, Thomas Perry)

Zach Is Back

Back in the 1990s, my friend Zachary Klein wrote three terrific, widely-acclaimed mystery novels about substance abusing PI Matt Jacob ("Still Among the Living," "Two Way Toll," etc.) and then disappeared from the book scene. Until now. He's back with a new blog...and soon his out-of-print books will be showing up again on the Kindle (and, I hope, the unpublished fourth book in the series will follow, too). Here's an excerpt from his first blog post...

Creating fiction has always been crucial.  Imperative, really, to keep my mother from slamming my ass with the telephone or frat paddle.  To juke the rabbis in the Brooklyn Mirrer Yeshiva when they’d catch me in Greenwich Village or reading Playboy(just for the interviews, of course).  Unfortunately my verbal dancing wasn’t always successful since I got thrown out before high school graduation.  But no serious damage.  I’d done well on the New York State Regents and had been accepted at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, before the toss. (Actually, everyone from the yeshiva did well. They made sure the collective marks were always high enough to keep their accreditation.)