A Writer's Life

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 10

My friend Joe Konrath, who inspired me to put my out-of-print novels on the Kindle, has posted a fascinating and informative account of his Kindle ebook sales and royalties. He compares how the Kindle versions of his Hyperion-published books are doing compared with his "self-published" Kindle titles. Here's an excerpt, but I recommend you read the whole post:

My five Hyperion ebooks (the sixth one came out in July so no royalties yet) each earn an average of $803 per year on Kindle.

My four self-pubbed Kindle novels each earn an average of $3430 per year.

If I had the rights to all six of my Hyperion books, and sold them on Kindle for $1.99, I'd be making $20,580 per year off of them, total, rather than $4818 a year off of them, total.

So, in other words, because Hyperion has my ebook rights, I'm losing $15,762 per year.

Now Hyperion also has my print rights, and my Jack Daniels books are still selling in print. But they aren't selling enough to make up the $15,762. Especially since all of them aren't regularly being stocked on bookstore shelves.

According to my math, I'd be making more money if my books were out of print, and I had my rights back. 

[...]Ebook rights began as gravy. I can picture a day when the print rights are the gravy, and authors make their living with ebooks.

Yes, it's still far off. And yes, print publishing is in no danger of going away anytime soon.

But I don't think I'll ever take a print contract for less than $30,000 per book, because I'm confident I could make more money on it over the course of six years than I could with a publisher over six years.

I wouldn't take this as a rallying cry to turn away from NY publishers and rush to the Kindle. Joe is a special case. Before "self-publishing" his Kindle titles, he'd already established himself with a series of hardcovers and paperbacks from major NY publishers. He also did a 500-store, multi-state book-tour and attended countless conventions. Joe selling thousands of ebook editions of his previously unpublished work is a very, very different situation than an unpublished writer hoping to accomplish the same feat.

As for myself, my Kindle sales are still going strong, though not Konrath-strong. 

 THE WALK has sold 1760 copies in 4 months @ $1.99 each, for a royalty of $1204.

THREE WAYS TO DIE has sold 236 copies in 4 months @ $.99 each, for a royalty of $82

MY GUN HAS BULLETS has sold 254 copies in about 3 months @ $1.99 each, for a royalty of $175

BEYOND THE BEYOND has sold 69 copies in about 3 months @ $1.99 each, for a royalty of $48.30

I've also got out-of-print editions of TELEVISIONS SERIES REVIVALS, UNSOLD TV PILOTS, and my four .357 VIGILANTE novels that have been released on the Kindle at various times over the last four months. 

All told, my combined Kindle royalties from June 1 to 11:23 pm Oct 13, are: $1750. 

It's not enough to make me follow Joe's example and turn away from anything less than a $30,000 advance from a major publisher, but I'm very pleased. It's hardly a fortune, and clearly the lion's share of the royalties are from just one book, THE WALK, but it's found money. And it's gratifying to me to see THE WALK, which was out-of-print, on track to reaching more readers, and making more money for me, in a Kindle edition than it ever did in hardcover.

UPDATE 10/14/09: Joe posted this important disclaimer in the comments to his post:

I do not think that ebooks are able to replace the exposure, or money, you'd get with a print publisher. To All New Authors: JA says try the traditional route first. Find an agent. Land a deal with a big NY house. Ebooks aren't there yet. I'd hate to think some writer gave up on their print aspirations because of something I've said on my blog. I suggest you keep up the agent search. While I have no doubt others will be able to sell as many ebooks as I have, and probably many more, I still haven't made anywhere near the money I've made by being in print. Plus, everyone's situation is unique, and no writer should compare themselves to any other writer. .

Stuart Kaminsky Has Passed Away

 My friend Stuart Kaminsky died today. I really don't know what to say, so please forgive me if I ramble a bit. Stuart was not only a wonderful writer, he was a wonderful human being. He was unfailingly kind and supportive to his fans and his fellow writers. I was both. 

I first met him decades ago when I was a kid and a fan of his Toby Peters books, which I saved up to buy through the Mystery Guild (and wrote in each one "This book belongs to Lee Goldberg and Not You). I wrote him a fan letter and he wrote me back, and that started a correspondence that lasted off-and-on as I went from being an aspiring writer to a professional one.   

We became friends. He was one of the first writers to blurb me and gave me a lot of great advice over the years (and I was ridiculously honored, and thrilled, the first time he called me for advice on something. Actually, that never wore off). We've been produced together (NERO WOLFE) and published together (HOLLYWOOD AND CRIME) and worked together on various MWA committees over the years. The last time I saw him was a year ago in Kentucky, where he was staging an original Sherlock Holmes play at the International Mystery Writers Festival. We spent a week together and his boundless enthusiasm energized the whole event. That was the thing about Stuart, he never lost his love and his passion for writing...and it was contagious. I will miss him very, very much.

(The photo on the upper left is Bob Levinson, Stuart and me at the International Mystery Writers Festival last year. The picture in the lower right is me, Jan Burke and Stuart at the 2002 Edgar Awards. You can click on the images for a large view)

.357 Vigilante #3: White Wash

After inexplicably holding up the book for over a month, Amazon has finally made available the Kindle edition of my long out-of-print novel .357 VIGILANTE #3: WHITE WASH.

Now ALL of the VIGILANTE novels I wrote back in the mid-1980s have been released, including the never-before-published fourth book, which got caught up in the publisher's bankruptcy. (All the books are also available at Smashwords and Scribd for those of you with other e-readers or who would like to download a PDF)

Here's the back-jacket copy on WHITE WASH:

A Clock Is Ticking -- And the Hands Are Dripping Blood! 

A red-leathered sadist with a hunger for black victims is talking the streets of Los Angeles -- leaving a trail of rapes, tortures and mutilations, which threaten to engulf the city in racial violence. And he's calling himself...Mr. Jury. 

Now vigilante Brett Macklin, the real Mr. Jury, is hitting the killing ground with just seventy hours to hunt down the deadly impostor and clear his name. All he has to do is take on an army of fanatical white supremacists, stop a news-hungry reporter from digging too deep into his past, and save a tough black cop from being buried alive. Time and luck are running out. 

"As stunning as the report of a .357 Magnum, a dynamic premiere effort [...] The Best New Paperback Series of the year!" West Coast Review of Books

Benson on Bond

 My friend Raymond Benson talks to Buzznews about what it was like to pick up where Ian Fleming & John Gardner left off as author of the Bond novels from 1997-2002. Here's an excerpt:

How did you go about laying the groundwork for your incarnation of James Bond?

Raymond: I was told by IFP (Ian Fleming Publications) that I could "use or ignore" anything that the other continuation authors (Amis, Pearson, Gardner) had done. I didn't contradict anything Gardner did, I just changed a few things back, like the whole "Captain"/"Commander" thing and the gun Bond uses.[...]Basically, the Bond continuation novels should not be taken as an extension of the series that was before it.... they are separate series by individual authors... the only thing we really need to be faithful to is Fleming’s universe. After all, if we were REALLY being a continuation, then Bond would be in his 90s by now.

When you did the novelizations for the movies Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day ... What did you have to do to fit the stories into the reality and you'd already spun? 

Raymond: With the first one, "Tomorrow Never Dies", I tried to fit it in with the continuity after "Zero Minus Ten," my first Bond novel, and mentioned that 007 had been to Hong Kong etc.... but then after that I realized it wasn't worth the trouble. EON didn't care about the novelizations fitting in with my original books, and neither did IFP . They were treated like separate entities, just tie-ins to the respective movies, which is what they were. I don't consider the three novelizations part of my "oeuvre", so to speak.

Stephen King's Rough Draft

Stephen King's upcoming novel UNDER THE DOME is a reworking of a manuscript called THE CANNIBALS that he wrote and abandoned in 1989 which, itself, was a rethink of a novel he abandoned in the late 1970s. King is sharing the first sixty, original, typed pages...with his handwritten changes...of that 1989 manuscript on his website and it's a fascinating peek into how he works.

(Thanks to Duane Swierczynski for the link)

Grimhaven

I finally read Charles Willeford's unpublished novel GRIMHAVEN...and its fascinating. It bears a lot of similarity to some of his earlier books and is every bit as compelling, disturbing, and darkly funny. In some ways, its among his best books. But what is most striking about it is what it represents.

The book centers around Hoke Moseley, the unforgettable detective in Willeford's classic, break-through novel MIAMI BLUES. But that novel, and success, came late in Willeford's life. When he was asked to write a sequel to capitalize on his newfound fame, he did the unexpected. 

He wrote a book in which Hoke leaves the force, moves into a drab apartment, and works in his father's hardware store. Hoke attempts to live a life of extreme austerity, cutting his wardrobe down to just two jumpsuits (and no underwear) and eating a hard-boiled egg each day for lunch, among other things. Into this carefully constructed, cold life, come his two teenage daughters, abandoned by his ex-wife, who has run off to L.A. to live with a baseball player. They complicate his life and stretch his thin budget. So Hoke solves this problem by strangling his daughters and leaving their bodies on ice in his shower (which he continues to use to wash up each day). He eventually dumps the bodies in his father's empty home and drives to Los Angeles to murder his ex-wife. The only reason he wants to kill her is so he can be imprisoned in California, where he'd face death in the gas chamber for her murder as opposed to the electric chair in Florida for killing his daughters. Either way, Hoke figures he can enjoy ten good, solitary years in prison, enjoying the austere "simple life" he'd wanted,  before his inevitable execution.  

I enjoyed the book immensely on several levels. But its real literary value is what it tells us about Willeford the writer. It's like a 2oo page statement on Willeford's fear of success...and his resentment at the demands and challenges writing commercial fiction would place on him. Or so I assume, I didn't know the man and I'm not a shrink. But what other way is there to read it? 

Taken on its own, GRIMHAVEN is a masterful piece of work and pure, unadulterated Willeford. As a MIAMI BLUES sequel, it's a calculated fuck you to the character, the publisher,  the readers and his career. It would be like following up the pilot of MONK by having Adrian rape and murder Sharona, then dispose of her body with acid in his bathtub.

Naturally, Willeford's agent took one look at the GRIMHAVEN manuscript and said there was no way in hell he could send it to the publisher...it would be career suicide and would squander a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Willeford wisely took his agent's advice and shelved the book...but not entirely. He ended up cannibalizing its best parts, and making them even better, in the three fantastic Hoke Moseley books that followed. 

GRIMHAVEN is only legally available to be read at the Willeford Archive at the Broward County Library. I was fortunate to be sent the manuscript a few years ago from Willeford's widow (as a result of refusing to read a bootleg copy that was offered to me). I don't know why I waited so long to finally read it...but it was worth the wait. It's a fascinating piece of work...and a revealing glimpse into Charles Willeford creative life. 

.357 VIGILANTE: #4 KILLSTORM

 KILLSTORM, the long lost fourth novel in the .357 VIGILANTE series...never before published, now available for the first time anywhere in this special Kindle Edition.

Brett Macklin faces his greatest adversary yet -- a ruthless, professional hit woman, seductress and master of disguise who launches a campaign of terror and bloodshed against him, pushing the vigilante to the emotional and physical breaking point, unleashing a bloody killstorm on the L.A. streets.

"As stunning as the report of a .357 Magnum, a dynamic premiere effort [...] The Best New Paperback Series of the year!" West Coast Review of Books

THE STORY BEHIND THE BOOK

The adventures of Brett Macklin, the .357 VIGILANTE, were published by Pinnacle Books in 1985 as part of their popular line of "men's action adventure novels," which included such classics as THE DESTOYER, THE EXECUTIONER, THE PENETRATOR, and THE DEATH MERCHANT, to name just a few.

The first three books in the .357 VIGILANTE series were enormously successful. The movie rights were sold to New World Pictures. The fourth book, KILLSTORM, was only a few months away from publication in 1986 and a fifth novel was in the works...when Pinnacle abruptly went out of business.

For years, the .357 VIGILANTE books were locked up in a protracted bankruptcy proceeding before the rights to all the books, including the unpublished manuscript, finally reverted back to me.

Now, for the first time anywhere, KILLSTORM is finally "in print," twenty five years after it was written....

THE OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES

.357 VIGILANTE

.357 VIGILANTE #2 MAKE THEM PAY

.357 VIGILANTE #3 WHITE WASH

and

.357 VIGILANTE: DIE, MR. JURY...all four books in one volume.

.357 VIGILANTE: DIE, MR. JURY

All of my out-of-print .357 VIGILANTE novels, including the never-before-published fourth novel KILLSTORM, have been compiled into one Kindle edition --- .357 VIGILANTE: DIE, MR. JURY. 

This is the complete saga of Brett Macklin, a one-man army fighting a war on terror on the streets of Los Angeles in the mid-1980s...

.357 VIGILANTE #1

.357 VIGILANTE #2: MAKE THEM PAY

.357 VIGILANTE #3: WHITE WASH

.357 VIGILANTE #4: KILLSTORM

"As stunning as the report of a .357 Magnum, a dynamic premiere effort [...] The Best New Paperback Series of the year!" West Coast Review of Books, 1985

You can also find the compilation on Smashwords and Scribd in multiple e-formats.

.357 Flashback

I've created Kindle editions of my out-of-print, 1985 paperbacks .357 VIGILANTE #3 WHITE WASH and .357 VIGILANTE #4 KILLSTORM ...but it will be another six or seven days before they're "live" on Amazon.  

So in the meantime, I have posted the entire VIGILANTE series, in multiple e-book formats, on Smashwords and in PDF format on Scribd. Here are the links:

.357 Vigilante #1 by Ian Ludlow Smashwords / Scribd

.357 Vigilante #2 Make Them Pay Smashwords / Scribd

.357 Vigilante #3 White Wash  Smashwords / Scribd

.357 Vigilante #4 Killstorm  Smashwords / Scribd

This is the first time KILLSTORM has been available anywhere on earth. Pinnacle Books, the original publisher of the .357 VIGILANTE series, went out-of-business on the eve of the book’s scheduled publication in 1986. Although the cover painting was completed, and the book was typeset, it never went to press. I couldn't find a copy of the galley, so I scanned my original manuscript, written back in 1984 while I was still a UCLA student. It's a relic from the past, full of dated references to the politics, culture, and technology of the time...not to mention all the cliches of the men's action/adventure fiction that Pinnacle was churning out. But don't let that stop you from buying it!

UPDATE 9-7-2009: It might be a little while longer before those two titles are available for the Kindle...Amazon has asked me to prove that I am, indeed, "Ian Ludlow," and that I have the e-rights to the books. So I have to dig up my reversion of rights letter, which I got way back in 1995. I hope I can find it! I guess Amazon has really been stung by people uploading books that they don't actually own...

Bronson's Loose!

You don't have to be a DEATH WISH fan -- and I'm not -- to enjoy BRONSON'S LOOSE! THE MAKING OF THE DEATH WISH FILMS, a highly entertaining and informative book about the making of the cult classic Charles Bronson vigilante film and its lesser (and inevitable) sequels. Author Paul Talbot has done a remarkable job, interviewing all the major players behind the development and production of the DEATH WISH movies (including Brian Garfield, the author of the original novel), and delivering a tight little book that is packed solid with fascinating details and wonderful anecdotes. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in screenwriting and movie-making. It's a lot of fun to read. 

This is not a new book -- it was self-published by Talbot in 2007 through iUniverse. I don't know if that's because it was rejected by every publisher in NY, or if he opted from the get-go to do it himself. Either way, it's a shame it wasn't picked up by a major publisher, its a book that deserves a wide distribution and critical recognition.

Pondering the Ponderosa and Steve Cannell

I've been reading a bunch of TV and movie reference books lately, most of which have been a disappointment. 

There's a great book to be written about the writing and production of BONANZA, something akin to the brilliant and comprehensive GUNSMOKE: A COMPLETE HISTORY. Sadly, A REFERENCE GUIDE TO BONANZA by Bruce Leiby and Linda F. Lieby, now out in paperback, isn't it. A scant eight pages --- eight pages!-- are given to the creation, writing and production of the show. The bulk of the book is a workman-like episode guide to the 14 seasons and brief synopses of the TV movies, hardly worth the price of purchase. The only thing interesting and worthwhile about the book are the appendices listing various BONANZA merchandise, books, comics, and records. However, I wish the effort the authors put into gathering so much pointless information -- like listing all the shows available on video featuring Tim Matheson -- had been focused instead on giving us the definitive history of the show. Consider this a lost opportunity.

The same can be said of STEPHEN J. CANNELL TELEVISION PRODUCTIONS: A HISTORY OF ALL SERIES & PILOTS by Jon Abbott. While the book is far more substantive and detailed than the BONANZA book, it draws entirely on previously published articles and books. The author, based in the UK, doesn't appear to have actually interviewed anyone himself, either at Cannell or at studios or the networks that Cannell worked for. The one person he should have talked to, and didn't, was Steve Cannell, the subject of his book. That is a glaring and crippling fault, obvious in every chapter. The author tries to make-up for that major weakness by relying heavily on his own ponderous and uinformed commentary (often repetitive, obvious and pointless), his critical overview (often meaningless and ridiculously fannish) and his interpretation of events (often dead wrong). That was a big mistake. What is especially irritating is the author's tendancy to make an assumption, and then afterwards treat it as fact. For example, in the RICHIE BROCKLEMAN chapter, he writes:

"The intention may have originally been to introduce the aggravating Brockleman into THE ROCKFORD FILES as a semi-regular partner for Rockford (to take some of the pressure off Garner's aching back). Fortunately, reason prevailed, and the character was instead written into the 1976 pilot film before surfacing in a double-length 1978 episode of ROCKFORD."

Most of the Cannell series, even from his days at Universal, are given full chapters and sketchy (to the point of almost being useless) episode guides...but after UNSUB, for reasons not explained, only passing reference is given to TOP OF THE HILL, BOOKER, BROKEN BADGES, 100 LIVES OF BLACK JACK SAVAGE, PALACE GUARD, MISSING PERSONS, THE LAST PRECINCT, COBRA, STREET JUSTICE, HAWKEYE, MARKER and three of his all-time biggest hits, RENEGADE, THE COMMISH and SILK STALKINGS. Perhaps the author just wasn't able to get video tapes of those shows from his circle of collectors, who he thanks in his acknowledgments, which noticeably doesn't include the names of any people associated with Stephen J. Cannell Productions or his shows. It begs the question -- why didn't he actually talk to anybody? I know many of these writers, producers and directors, and I can tell you, they aren't hard to find or unwilling to share their experiences. Maybe he couldn't afford the long-distance phone calls. 

All that said, there is a lot of useful information in the book and, since the definitive book on Cannell has yet to be written, this is not a bad place-holder until somebody writes it (hopefully, Cannell himself will do it some day!). 

The Angel's Game

I read THE ANGEL'S GAME by Carlos Ruiz Zafon because my brother Tod gave it such a glowing review. And, at first, it seemed like the book more than deserved the praise.

The book starts out brilliantly, rich in a character, humor, and a powerful sense of place. I was utterly captivated. I couldn't wait to keep reading. I felt I was reading a truly great book, one I was certain would become a beloved favorite of mine.

I was so in love, that I was willing to overlook a nagging flaw -- in a story where language and the craft of writing mean so much, where the writer himself aims a spotlight on authorial laziness ("Don Basilo [...] subscribed to the theory that the liberal use of adverbs and adjectives was the mark of a pervert or someone with a vitamin deficiency"), I was astonished by the repeated reliance on cliche phrase like these:

"In this neck of the woods, one doesn't have to run very fast."

"The editorial board had opted to take the bull by the horns..."

"technically, it was my father who paid, but don't look a gift horse in the mouth"

"my father came back and found me alive and kicking..."

It was especially bewildering since the author is capable of amazing, vivid, and fresh prose.  How could he possibly let a cliche like "he let the cat out of the bag" get past the rough draft?

Since the book is a translation, I will give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume it's the translator's fault and not his (one need only look at The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo  for an example of that).

But the cliches would be a minor annoyance if the rest of the book matched the brilliance of the first half. Unfortunately, the book quickly devolves into relentlessly dull exposition, delivered by one-note characters with absolutely no motivation or reason to deliver the speeches to our hero besides the author's need to relay the information.

Worse, the plot totally collapses into an unintelligble, incoherent mess that isn't satisfying or entertaining. Nothing that was "planted" in the first half pays off in the second. For me, the book was a crushing disappointment.

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 9

My third month of Kindle sales has ended (click on the picture of the Amazon Royalty Report for a larger image). 

My out-of-print novel THE WALK , priced at $1.99, is my biggest selling Kindle title (not including my MONK books, of course). I sold 444 copies in June and 373 copies in July. This month, I sold about the same, 380 copies, earning me a royalty of $266.  I have sold 1197 copies of the Kindle edition so far.

Sales have actually ticked up a bit for my short story collection THREE WAYS TO DIE.  I sold 69 copies this month at 99 cents each, for a royalty of  $24... that's up from 40 copies in July and 54 copies in June. So sales of both of my "premiere" Kindle titles have remained more or less steady.

In mid-July, I added two more of my out-of-print novels and one non-fiction book to my list of Kindle editions.

My novel MY GUN HAS BULLETS, priced at $1.99,  sold 65 copies this month, earning me a royalty of $45.50. That's down from last month, when it sold 95 copies in 17 days earning me $65 in royalties. The sequel,  BEYOND THE BEYOND, is also down, selling 21 copies as compared to 29 copies in 14 days in July. 

TELEVISION SERIES REVIVALS was only out for two days in July, selling 17 copies at $2.39 each, earning me  $14.28. In its first full month of sales, however, it sold a mere 16 copies, earning me $13.44. That's a steep drop...and yet its consistently listed as the #1 bestselling TV reference book in several Amazon categories (History, Direction & Production, Guides & Reviews) on the Kindle. Clearly, that isn't saying much.

This month, I made several more of my out-of-print titles available in the Kindle format. 

I added Unsold TV Pilots: The Greatest Shows You Never Saw on August 2, priced at $2.39. I've sold 28 copies for  royalty of $24.36. Those sales are pretty weak...and yet that book is consistently listed as the #2 bestselling book in three categories:  TV reference, TV direction & production and TV Guides & Reviews.  TV reference books clearly don't sell well on the Kindle.

I added a Kindle edition of my out-of-print 1985 paperback .357 Vigilante: #2 Make Them Pay on Aug 5, priced at $2.99.  I've sold 25 copies for a royalty of $25.26 . On Aug 19, I added .357 Vigilante #1, also priced at $2.99. I've sold 21 copies for a royalty of $22.05

All together, I earned $436.45 in royalties on my out-of-print books in August, up from $375 in July. As I've said here many times before, that's found money on material that wasn't earning me a dime before, so I am very content with those figures.

I intend to add the two remaining books in the out-of-print  ".357 Vigilante" series to the Kindle in the next month or so, even though, as you can see, there really isn't much of a financial incentive to do so. 

The Case of the Piss Poor Gold

My "novelette"  The Case of the Piss Poor Gold appears in the November issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, which is shipping to subscribers now and will be available at newsstands across the country next week. The story is an excerpt from my upcoming novel MR. MONK IN TROUBLE and is a "standalone" mystery featuring Adrian Monk's ancestor Artemis Monk, an assayer in the California gold rush town of Trouble in the 1840s.  

The book is set in the present day, but Adrian finds some startling similarities between the murder he's solving now...and some of the cases Artemis investigated. The story in EQMM is about one of those cases.

I had a lot of fun writing the "Western Monk" stories in the book...but I couldn't have pulled it off without help from western pros like Richard Wheeler and Ken Hodgson, who kindly answered my dumb questions and reviewed my rough draft. I hope you enjoy the story now and the book in December!

UPDATE: As if that wasn't reason enough for me to pick up a dozen copies of the magazine, I just learned that there's a rave review for MR. MONK AND THE DIRTY COP in the same issue. Jon Breen gives the book three out of four stars and says, in part: "As in the TV series, sharp character comedy combines with ingenious and fairly-clued puzzle-spinning. Don't miss Lt. Disher's hilariously non-sensical variation on Sherlock Holmes' 'eliminate the impossible' dictum."

Elmer Kelton Passes Away

I just learned the terrible, sad news that one of my favorite authors, legendary western novelist Elmer Kelton, passed away this morning. He's considered one of the greatest writers of westerns ever...in fact, he was named the number one western writer of all time by the Western Writers of America, which has honored him with seven Spur Awards for Best Novel. 

His best known work is probably THE GOOD OLD BOYS...thanks to the Tommy Lee Jones movie version... but his many memorable novels include THE TIME IT NEVER RAINED, THE SMILING COUNTRY, HONOR AT DAYBREAK, SLAUGHTER, THE DAY THE COWBOYS QUIT, and his "Texas Rangers" and "Sons of Texas" series. 

I don't think he ever got the credit and recognition he deserved outside of the western genre and that's a damn shame. His books weren't just great westerns...they were terrific novels by any measure. I was lucky enough to meet him once, a few years back, when he was in Los Angeles and found him to be a gracious, friendly, and funny man. He will be missed but I'm convinced that his work will continue to captivate, entertain, and enlighten readers for generations to come. 

UPDATE: Bill Crider,a top-notch western writer himself, remembers Kelton.

.357 VIGILANTE is back...run for your lives

.357 Vigilante, the first book in my long out-of-print paperback series, is now available in a Kindle edition.

I wrote it under the pseudonym "Ian Ludlow" (so I would be on the shelf next to Robert Ludlum) back when I was a college student in the 1980s. The movie rights were sold to New World Pictures...and my career as a screenwriter was born. Alas, the movie was never made. Here's the scoop on the book:

A Man Can Only Take So Much...Before He Takes Revenge.

.357 VIGILANTE

He lost a father, a friend, a whole way of life...now he's looking for justice down the barrel of a gun.

Brett Macklin was a freewheeling son of sunny California, a collector of vintage cars and a connoisseur of beautiful women. But when his father is gunned down by a street gang, Macklin becomes something else -- a deadly weapon against crime. He won't stop until he's wiped out the rapists and killers who have turned Los Angeles into a war zone.

"As stunning as the report of a .357 Magnum, a dynamic premiere effort [...] The Best New Paperback Series of the year!" West Coast Review of Books

The sequel, .357 Vigilante #2: Make Them Pay is also available on the Kindle....and will soon be followed by the other books in the series.

Writer Beware Kicks Butt

The Bookseller reports that a judge has thrown out a lawsuit by so-called "literary agent" and vanity press "publisher" Robert Fletcher against Writer Beware and ordered him to repay Victoria Strauss and Ann Crispin  all of their legal costs. 

Judge Thomas Connolly, who ruled that Fletcher and his company were liable for the costs, said: "The plaintiffs have exhibited extreme bad faith in bringing this frivolous lawsuit for the sole purpose [of] causing great expense and harassment to Crispin and Strauss... The court concludes and finds that this case was brought in bad faith by the plaintiffs."

The judge added that Fletcher's purpose was "not to prevail in the lawsuit but just to bankrupt the defendants". [...]Fletcher claimed the blogs "alleged fraud, misrepresentation and dishonesty towards authors" and were "defaming and libeling" by "publishing warnings to potential authors of the fraudulent practices of LAG and Fletcher". Fletcher operates a fee-charging literary agency/writers' consultancy under a variety of names.

I hope this will serve as a warning to others like Fletcher, and there are many of them out there, who think they can intimidate Writer Beware and prevent them from warning writers about deceptive publishing practices. 

It's also my hope that more organizations will join the Science Fiction Writers of America and the Mystery Writers of America in sponsoring Writer Beware...and that the support of major writers' organizations will frighten off scammers from filing frivolous lawsuits against the site.  

Me on Me

The second part of Lori Ham's interview with me is now up on her No Name Cafe site. Here's an excerpt:

Café: What do you like best and which is harder — writing novels or TV? 

Lee: They are entirely different experiences. Television is very much a group effort and what you are writing is a blueprint that lots of other people are going to use as the basis for their creative work, whether it’s the actor, the director, the production designer. And when you write a script it’s not locked in stone. It’s going to change. It’s going to change because everybody has notes. It’s going to change because production concerns force rewrites. It’s going to change because of actors and directors. 

A book is entirely my own and unaffected by production concerns or actors. I’m the actors, the director, the production designer [...] It’s not a blueprint. It is the finished product and it won’t change much once I am done with it. It’s not a group effort — I plot it myself and I write it by myself. It’s entirely in my head and I live it for months. Creatively speaking, there’s a big difference between writing prose and writing a script. In a book, you are seducing the reader. You are bringing them into your imagination and holding them there for as long as they’re reading the book. You construct everything. You construct the sets, the wardrobe, the world. You’re God. You can even read a character’s thoughts. 

.357 Vigilante Returns....

I admit it...I've got the Kindle fever...and I've got it bad. I don't mean reading books on the Kindle, I mean creating Kindle editions of my out-of-print books. The idea of making easy money from stuff that was buried in boxes in my garage is too good to resist (thank you, Joe Konrath!).

So the 1985 "men's action action novel" .357 VIGILANTE #2: MAKE THEM PAY by Ian Ludlow is now available as a $2.99 Kindle edition. Here's the scoop on the book:

"As stunning as the report of a .357 Magnum, a dynamic premiere effort [...] The Best New Paperback Series of the year!" West Coast Review of Books 

 Brett Macklin is justice -- a one-man judge, jury and executioner, wiping out the L.A. street scum that the police can't catch, that the law can't hold -- dealing sweet revenge from the barrel of his .357 Magnum. Now Macklin's target is Wesley Saputo, child porn kingpin and murderer who has slipped through the courts time after time, only to kidnap, rape and kill again...and again. Macklin's mission: locate and brutally destroy Saputo before he finds another little girl blue...

This Kindle edition includes a special Afterword essay, "Hot Sex, Gory Violence: How One College Student Earns Course Credit and Pays His Tuition," which was originally published in Newsweek magazine and that explains the origins of the ".357 Vigilante" series and the "Ian Ludlow" pseudonym.

I've found the manuscripts for the other two books in the series, as well as the unpublished fourth novel, and will upload them over the coming weeks.

UPDATE: Here are some blog reviews of MAKE THEM PAY...from Chadwick Saxelid, S. Michael Wilson,  and Marty McKee.

I'm Going Kindle Crazy

I've just posted another old, out-of-print book of mine on the Amazon Kindle Store...my 1991 paperback Unsold TV Pilots: The Greatest Shows You Never Saw, which was the basis for the hour-long ABC special "The Best TV Shows That Never Were" and the hour-long CBS special "The Greatest Shows You Never Saw. It is now available in a special $2.49 Kindle edition. Here's the book jacket copy:

“The Best Bathroom Reading EVER," - San Francisco Chronicle

"A must-browse for media freaks.” —USA Today

“Irresistible and enthralling.” —Hartford Courant

“Full of fool’s gold and genuine TV treasures.” —The New York Post

This lively and entertaining book looks at the three hundred best and worst TV series ideas—known in the industry as "pilots"—that never made it to primetime. From the adventures of a Samurai D.A. to the antics of an invisible alien baby, Lee Goldberg details the greatest shows you never saw.

The paperback was originally published by Carol & Company and was an abridgment of my fat hardcover  "Unsold Television Pilots 1955-1989," which contained over 2000 pilots. Maybe some day I'll get around to making that big book into a Kindle edition, too.

The Wild, Wild Joseph West

The folks over at the Western Fiction Review have a great Q&A interview up with author Joseph A. West, who wrote those terrific GUNSMOKE tie-ins a few years back. Lately, he's been writing the Ralph Compton books as a work-for-hire writer and his comments about that will give you some insight into what it's like to be a working writer these days:

"The Ralph Compton books are all work-for-hire, and I write them because I like to eat. I can’t write in Ralph’s style, nor do I try. I do the best I can, send the novel off to New York and keep my fingers crossed. Touch wood, they’ve never bounced one back to me for a rewrite, so I must be doing something right. At the moment times are hard for writers, and I appreciate any work I can get. In a way, a work-for-hire is a great compliment from the publisher. Three or four times a year, I get an email from my editor that says simply: “Joe, write me another Compton, due XXXX.” I never hear from him again until the next assignment. I guess he knows I always send him a professional product on time."

I have great admiration for guys like Joseph West...talented, hard-working professional writers who do the job because they love it and because it's what they do. And they do it damn well. Aspiring writers could learn a lot from him.

The Last Picture Show

Larry McMurtry, one of my favorite authors, says that his next book, RHINO RANCH, may be his last.

"It's a finite gift, for sure," he says of novel writing. "I'm about at the end of it. I can write certain things. I don't think I can write fiction any more. I think I've used it up over 30 novels. That's a lot of novels. [...]Most great novels are written by people between 40 and 60, or 35 and 60. Not too many great novels are written by people over 75. Hardly any. Maybe Tolstoy."

RHINO RANCH comes out August 11th and is yet another sequel to THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, as were TEXASVILLE, DUANE'S DEPRESSED, and WHEN THE LIGHT GOES. I'm a huge fan of McMurtry's work, but I've found his "contemporary" novels of the last few years, particularly his sequels to THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, to be morose, meandering, and boring tales that lack his usual punch. I'll buy it and read it anyway, of course. Over the last 20 years, by far his best books have been his westerns, most notably LONESOME DOVE and its sequels and prequels.

But this is not the first time McMurtry has threatened to quit...and then followed the announcement by writing a great novel. 

The Show Must Go On

Don't be fooled by the title of Douglas Snauffer's new book, The Show Must Go On: How The Deaths of Lead Actors Have Affected Television Series...this is not a lurid or gossipy book but rather a serious, well-researched, detailed reference work about the business of television.

On the surface, the book is about what happens to a TV show when one of its stars dies, covering the impact of the calamity from every angle. But that death is just one part of the story. Douglas Snauffer, author of the exceptional Crime Television, gives us the full picture of the show, before and after the tragedy that may (or may not) have ultimately defined that series in TV history. Each chapter offers an in-depth look at the creation, development, production, and history of an individual series. It's that detailed examination of each series -- backed by interviews with all the key players in front of, and behind -- the camera that gives this book it's real value.

This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to know how TV series are created, written and produced...and why some succeed while others fail.

Book Reviews

Elmore Leonard has often said that his writing was deeply influenced by the works of Richard Bissell.  Curious,  I searched for a copy of Bissell's work...and I am glad I did. And after reading HIGH WATER, a tale of a first mate on a Mississippi steam boat during an epic flood, it's easy to see the influence Bissell has had on Leonard's approach to character and dialog. Bissell has that same naturalistic, funny, amiable way with characters, whether they are "good guys" or "bad guys," that makes even the most minor players in the tale memorable and interesting. His plotting is loose and yet surprisingly powerful. And his eye for the telling details is sometimes astonishing in their simplicity and truth. I can see why Leonard, as a young writer, was impressed, and why he adopted some of the same techniques. HIGH WATER is well worth reading, not only for insight into Leonard's writing style, but on its own considerable merits. I loved it and look forward to devouring Bissell's other work.

I went from that pleasurable surprise to a real disappointment. I really wanted to like Kate Christensen's TROUBLE, because I have heard great things about her work in the past. But from the first chapter, I knew I was in trouble, and not the kind she had intended. The characters are literary constructs rather than characters, totally unsympathetic and unrealistic in just about every way. From the moment her heroine, a shrink in a decaying marriage, describes herself by looking at her reflection (a tired cliche and a surprisingly lazy gimmick for a PEN/Faulkner award winner to employ), and decides to dump her husband as a result, things go downhill fast.

Her decision to leave her husband is the impetus for everything that happens in the book, so it's important that we, as readers, buy into it and are invested in her and her journey. But the decisive moment is so unreal, so oblique, and the guy she is talking to at the time is such a caricature, that the crucial moment of reader investment in the heroine doesn't happen. And never does. I wanted to like her, or at least to care, but I never did. It doesn't help that what follows her introduction are pages and pages of exposition meant to establish what is, at heart, a contrivance. I never believed the relationship between Josie and her world-famous, rock star friend, nor did I care about her journey of self-discovery through sex. Her adventures are laden with exposition, contrivance, and stilted conversations that feel so written, so self-conscious, that it's maddening rather than entertaining. My advice: skip this and try one of Christensen's earlier works.

My REVIVALS Revived...And Revived Again

My 1993 book TELEVISION SERIES REVIVALS is back... in trade paperback (as I mentioned last week) and now in a Kindle edition. I have no idea if Kindle users are interested in non-fiction, TV references books...but I figured I had nothing to lose by finding out. If it looks like they do, I may make my book UNSOLD TELEVISION PILOTS available for the Kindle, too, though that might actually take some time and effort on my part.

Odds and Ends

I spent yesterday at the San Diego Comic Con, where I talked shop with writer/producer Bill Freiberger and the terrific novelists of  International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, like Max Allan Collins, Scribe Award winner James Rollins (pictured witih me on the left) and  my old friend and Scribe Award winner Bob Greenberger, who was an editor at Starlog back when I was writing for the magazine in the 1980s. I think it's been 20 years since I've seen him.  Afterwards, I grabbed an early dinner at a faux Irish pub with TV writer/producer Phoef Sutton and my brother Tod. We had a great time sharing anecdotes about our experiences in TV and publishing. I really have to get out more with other writers because it always reinvigorates me.  

This morning I received the latest issue of the Mystery Readers Journal, which is chockful of articles, including one from me, about Los Angeles as a setting for mysteries. Other contributes include Gregg Hurwitz, Kris Neri, and Wendy Hornsby.

I decided to spend some of my Kindle royaltes from The Walk and My Gun Has Bullets on -- what else? -- a Kindle. It should arrive next week in time for me to take it on the plane to Owensboro for the International Mystery Writers Festival, where I will be moderating a panel with my friends Sue Grafton and MONK writer/producer David Breckman. 

You Can Be a Kindle Millionaire, Part 7

Can you tell a book by its cover?

The original, St. Martin's Press cover for my 1997 novel BEYOND THE BEYOND was horrible. It was a giant penis bursting out of a TV set against a piss-yellow background. I'm not kidding. You can see it here. I know for a fact that it killed sales. I was sent on a national book tour and everywhere I went, the booksellers said "we can't stick that book in our window, there's a penis on the cover!"

So when I did the Kindle edition, I asked my talented and wildly creative sister Linda Woods, a professional artist and author (Journal Revolution: Rise Up & Create! Art Journals, Personal Manifestos and Other Artistic Insurrections), to design a new cover in the same style as the one she designed for the Kindle edition of my first book, My Gun Has Bullets (which also had a horrible St. Martin's cover when it was first published). BEYOND THE BEYOND is a sequel to MY GUN HAS BULLETS, so I thought some consistency was a good idea. Isn't that what branding is all about?

But while the Kindle sales for MY GUN HAS BULLETS have been brisk, the sales for Beyond the Beyond are flat. The culprit? I think it was the cover...again. It mayhave looked too much like the cover for My Gun Has Bullets and might have been confusing people into thinking it was the same book. 

So Linda has tweaked the cover for me. It's the one on the right. It will be interesting to see if a new cover makes a difference... 

Then again, maybe it's the book that sucks!

Nude Classics

Could somebody tell me what a naked woman has to do with FRANKENSTEIN? Or Tom Sawyer? 

Why I Wrote BEYOND THE BEYOND

This article originally appeared in Mystery Scene Magazine back in 1997. I thought I'd repost it here to mark the publication of the Kindle edition. 

An awful lot of people in the television industry see shrinks. Those who don't, write novels.

Well, that's my theory, any way.

I figured it was either write a book, or go into psychoanalysis. Writing a book seemed like a better alternative, since you can actually make a few bucks while you sit and whine about how crazy the business is and what the craziness does to you.

I wrote my first novel, My Gun Has Bullets, while writing/producing a really terrible, syndicated action show. In that book, a good, decent cop named Charlie Willis is gunned down by a lunatic TV star on her way to a sale at Neiman-Marcus. To cover up the crime, the studio buys him off by making him the star of his own action series. But things go bad when someone loads his prop gun with real bullets and he kills his guest-star. I trashed everything and everyone that drove met nuts about the TV business...and there was a lot, having written and/or produced such series as Hunter, Baywatch, Spenser: For Hire, Cosby Mysteries and Diagnosis Murder, to name a few.

I felt a lot better after I wrote the book.

But I didn't get around to writing the sequel, Beyond the Beyond, until a couple years later, when I became a writer/producer on SeaQuest. Within weeks, I was getting email death threats from deranged fans, including one lady who was enraged weren't consulting her for advice or staying true to the "fanfic" (fan-written, self-published fiction). Another lady, calling herself an "Admiral in the United Earth Oceans," was convinced one of the characters in the show was in love with her.

Of course, it reminded me of what the actors and writers on Star Trek must go through (which I knew well, since many of my friends have worked on the show). And that reminded me that a spin-off of Star Trek was the cornerstone of a new television network. And that made me think about the whole Star Trek phenomenon...and the emergence of new TV networks...and the consolidation of media empires.

Before I was a TV producer, I worked as a reporter covering the entertainment industry beat for Newsweek, Starlog, American Film, Electronic Media, and Los Angeles Times Syndicate, among many others. During that time, I wrote extensively about the birth of the Fox Network and was the first person to break the story that Paramount was reviving Star Trek as an all-new, syndicated series. So I already had a lot of background in both the business of TV and the business of Star Trek and had given this stuff some thought before.

Suddenly, I felt a book taking shape...

What if someone bought a studio decided to use it to launch a new network? And what if the cornerstone of that new network was a revival of cult, 60s science fiction series – with an all-new cast? How would the lunatic fans and original cast react?

There was a story there...and I also had a lot more personal demons to exorcise now, too. And I was fresh from my experience on SeaQuest.

In Beyond the Beyond , Charlie Willis is now a special security officer for Pinnacle Pictures. When the studio revives the cult series Beyond the Beyond as the launching pad for a new network, two forces fight for control of the show, a vicious talent agency that uses blackmail, torture and murder to keep its clients on the A-list, and a homicidal legion of rabid fans led by an insane actor who thinks he's in outer space.

The publisher calls it a dark/comic thriller about TV. But I'll tell you a little secret: most of it is true, drawn either from my own experience or those of my friends in the TV business.

And like the first book, I felt great after I finished it... though somewhere out there a shrink is going hungry because of it.

Beyond the Beyond is back

BEYOND THE BEYOND, the sequel to MY GUN HAS BULLETS, is now available in a Kindle edition!

"The hilarious follow-up to Goldberg's witty debut, My Gun Has Bullets...Beyond the Beyond skewers the entertainment business, which Goldberg knows well," Oline Codgill, Knight-Ridder Newspapers.

"As in his riotous novel My Gun Has Bullets, TV writer/producer Goldberg once again bites the hand that feeds him, laughing all the while. Inspired silliness," Publishers Weekly

Ex-cop Charlie Willis handles "special security" at Pinnacle Pictures. His job: to protect the studio and its stars, to stop scandals before they explode, to keep the peace in the land of make-believe. When Pinnacle revives the cult, 1960s TV series "Beyond the Beyond" as the cornerstone of a fourth network, two powerful forces fight for control of the show-a talent agency that uses blackmail, torture, and murder to keep its clients on the A-list, and a homicidal legion of rabid fans led by an insane actor who thinks he's in outer space.

Editorial Reviews:

"Goldberg uses just about everything he can think of to send up the studio system, fandom, Star Trek, Trekkies, agents, actors... you name it, he'll make you laugh about it." Analog

"An outrageously entertaining take on the loathsome folkways of contemporary showbiz," Kirkus Reviews

"Mr. Goldberg has an observant eye and a wicked pen!" Washington Times

"Beyond the Beyond reads like a modern-day Alice in Wonderland set against the venal world of the TV industry. It's wonderfully revealing and uncannily accurate," Vancouver Sun (Canada)

"Some of the easily recognizable actors, agents and producers who are mercilessly ribbed may find it hard to crack a smile at the author's gag-strewn prose, likewise those seekers after politically correct entertainment. But the rest of us should have no trouble....the novel's satiric slant is strong enough to have an effigy of Goldberg beamed into outer space at the next Star Trek convention," Los Angeles Times

"Pinnacle Pictures has decided to revive a 25-year-old cult sci-fi TV show called Beyond the Beyond, but somebody keeps killing off the new cast. Is it the Hollywood agent who eats human flesh? The aging actor who still thinks he's a starship captain? The fans who live only to attend conventions? This sharp roman a clef goes where no Hollywood satire has gone before-altering just enough facts to avoid the libel courts but still smacking of a certain je ne sais Trek. It probably won't make Goldberg, a television writer and producer (Baywatch, Spenser: For Hire, seaQuest), the most popular boy on the Paramount lot, but it's a stingingly funny novel just the same. " 
-Entertainment Weekly 

"An outrageously entertaining take on the loathsome folkways of contemporary showbiz." 
-Kirkus Reviews

"For the most part, this is a pleasant fantasy and a harmless escape, but there could be a fringe group out there almost exactly as Goldberg describes them in outlandish detail. It all could be true. It works hilariously. Don't miss Lee Goldberg's Beyond the Beyond. It's one to beam up!" Mark Levine, Ventura Star-Telegram