A Writer's Life

Giving it Away

Looking for some action? The Kindle edition of JUDGMENT, the first book in the JURY SERIES, is free for the next five days on the Amazon store. Here's just some of the critical praise for my first published book, originally released as .357 VIGILANTE back in the 1980s...

"This is straight-up men's adventure material {...] So look out, folks! Here comes justice with a big freaking gun!" Bruce Grossman, Bookgasm 

"Judgment  has an amped-up, neon-bright,'burning rubber down the main drag doing sixty while blaring Motley Crue so loud you can't even think' sort of quality. And that's how I like it." --Post-Modern Pulps 

"Generous helpings of sex and violent action, along with some smart-aleck dialog. But if you're a fan of Robert B. Parker, Dirty Harry, or the Die Hard movies, you'll have a very good time,"  --J.A Konrath, author of THE LIST and AFRAID 

"Lee Goldberg's The Jury Series serves vengeance hot with loads of action and plenty of suspense to keep you turning the e-pages. Vigilante justice was never so much fun,"  --Joel Goldman, Bestselling author of "Motion to Kill" 

"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 

This is a really entertaining thrill ride of a story with plenty of sex, violence, humor, social commentary, and great action scenes. Highly recommended. --James Reasoner, bestselling author of "Dust Devils"

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.)

Amazon Launches 47North Imprint with THE DEAD MAN

Today, Amazon announced the launch of their new sf/fantasy/horror imprint 47North...and one of the premiere titles is THE DEAD MAN series. Our kick-off is coming in just a couple of weeks...in a very big way...and we can't wait!

UPDATE: Publisher's Weekly also wrote about it. Here's part of what they said..

Amazon has added another genre to its publishing stable, with the launch of 47North, a science fiction/fantasy/horror imprint that will publish original and previously published works from new and established authors as well as out-of-print books. “We are especially happy to have a diverse list at launch, and look forward to publishing across a wide range of subgenres,” said Victoria Griffith, publisher of Amazon Publishing’s west coast group.
 
47North has signed 15 titles at launch with its first title coming from Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin, the authors of Successful Television Writing and who have written and/or produced scores of highly successful network television series, including Diagnosis Murder, Spenser: For Hire, and Baywatch. Their digital-first novel, Face of Evil, will be published this month; four more installments will also be published in October, with a new adventure following each month thereafter. A print compilation of the first three novels will publish in January 2012.
 

Man Undercover

Jeroen Ten Berge is a terrific cover artist. He' s done the covers for my books WATCH ME DIE and THE JURY SERIES...as well as the books coming out of Top Suspense, to name a few. Author Joseph D'Agnese interviewed Jeroen on his blog. Here's an excerpt:

How do you describe the work you do? Are you a designer, an illustrator, or what? (It might help if you tell us what your training/background is.)

I consider myself a designer first. However, illustration is a skill I almost always use to assist me in creating the design I have in mind. In some cases an illustration becomes the key element of a design. The Scientist & The Sociopath is an example, but the Serial-series covers I created for Blake Crouch and Joe Konrath are also illustrations, as is Suzanne Tyrpak’s Vestal Virgin cover. I also use stock photography, sometimes my own. Several of the covers I designed for Marcus Sakey feature my photos, as do several of Blake’s covers. 

I guess I was fortunate to have studied graphic and typographic design at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague in the early- to mid-1980s. There was a strong focus on teaching the principles of design and typography, taught by people such as Gerrit Noordzij, one of the greatest type designers of his generation. There was, however, equal attention paid to illustration and photography. The philosophy was very much, "Why ask someone else to make an illustration or photograph for your design if you can do it yourself?"  In retrospect I can see that graduating the year before Apple MacIntosh was introduced to the Netherlands helped as well. Knowing how lead type works, and why there are certain rules of design helps me on a daily basis. That said—I have worked on an Apple for more than 20 years now, and would consider a career change if I had to go back designing old school.

 

Mid-list Riches

There's an interesting article at Publishing Perspectives on what a goldmine self-publishing ebooks has become for midlist authors. But that's not news to anybody who has been reading this blog, is it? The article concludes:

There was a time when self-publishing produced little to no revenue, and doing so was often the last resort for a project that had been rejected by everyone it had been put in front of. Now, in the post digital revolution, the model has been turned upside down. Authors are going to e-books first based on earning potential and a quick time to market. If they do well, then they leverage their sales for larger advances and favorable contract terms. Of course self publishing is not for everyone, but at least for those that decide to go this route, they won’t have to be that one in a million outlier—if they can achieve the e-book midlist status, they stand a good chance of telling their boss, “I quit, I’m going to stay home and write for a living.”

Locke Cracks Million Mark

Amazon announced today that John Locke has become the first self-published author to sell one million ebooks on the Kindle, joining a very select group: Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Charlaine Harris, Nora Roberts and Suzanne Collins. 

“Kindle Direct Publishing has provided an opportunity for independent authors to compete on a level playing field with the giants of the book selling industry,” said John Locke. “Not only did KDP give me a chance, they helped at every turn. Quite simply, KDP is the greatest friend an author can have.”  

“It’s so exciting that self-publishing has allowed John Locke to achieve a milestone like this,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content.  “We’re excited to see Kindle Direct Publishing succeeding for both authors and customers and are proud to welcome him to the Kindle Million Club.” 

John Locke, of Louisville, KY., is the internationally bestselling author of nine novels including "Vegas Moon,” "Wish List,” "A Girl Like You,” "Follow the Stone,” "Don't Poke the Bear!" and the New York Times bestselling eBook, "Saving Rachel." Locke's latest book, "How I sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months," is a how-to marketing guide for self-published authors.

Hocking on Hocking

There's a great interview with self-publishing superstar Amanda Hocking in the New York Times today. She comes across as very natural, likeable, and surprisingly level-headed about her success, which came to her surprisingly fast once she put her books on Amazon:

...Hocking uploaded “My Blood Approves” to Amazon and, about a month later, to Smashwords, a service that makes her books compatible not only with the Nook but also with less popular devices like BeBook and Kobo. (When, in October 2010, it became possible to self-publish directly on Barnes & Noble’s site for the Nook, she did so.) It’s a surprisingly simple process in each case — much like signing up for Facebook. She took the e-leap because she thought that even if she sold her vampire books, there was going to be a reaction against them before they made it into stores.

The first day, she sold five books. The next, five more. “I took screen shots a lot,” she said. Then she uploaded another novel and sold a total of 36 books one day in May. “It was like: 36 books? It’s astounding. I’m taking over the world.”

Soon she started selling hundreds of books a day. That June, she sold 6,000 books; that July 10,000. “And then it started to explode. In January, it was over 100,000.” Today, she sells 9,000 books a day.

Hocking is at a loss to explain the phenomenon. “I’ve seen other authors do the exact same things I have, similar genre, similar prices” — like many self-published authors, she prices her books radically below what traditional publishers charge; typically hers cost between 99 cents and $2.99 — “and they have multiple books out. And they all have good covers. And they’re selling reasonably well, but they’re not selling nearly as well as I am.”

The problem is, now everybody thinks they can be Hocking...or John  Locke...and don't seem to realize that they are exceptional cases. 

Tsunami of Swill Makes News

The Los Angeles Times reports today about something I've been talking about for months...the tsunami of self-published swill washing over Amazon. The article refers to bad self-published books, but mostly discusses rip-offs of other people's work and books cobbled together from public domain sources.

Spam has hit the Kindle, clogging Amazon.com Inc.'s top-selling e-reader with material that is far from being book-worthy and threatening to undermine the company's entry into publishing.

Thousands of digital books, called e-books, are being published through Amazon's self-publishing system each month. Many are not written in the traditional sense.

[...]These e-books are listed for sale — often at 99 cents — alongside more traditional books on Amazon's website, forcing readers to plow through many more titles to find what they want. Aspiring spammers can even buy a DVD box set called Autopilot Kindle Cash that claims to teach people how to publish 10 to 20 new Kindle books a day without writing a word.

This new phenomenon represents the dark side of an online revolution that's turning the traditional publishing industry on its head by giving authors new ways to access readers directly.

[...]In 2010, almost 2.8 million nontraditional books, including e-books, were published in the United States, while just more than 316,000 traditional books came out. That compares with 1.33 million nontraditional books and 302,000 conventional books in 2009, said Albert Greco, a publishing industry expert at Fordham University's business school. In 2002, fewer than 33,000 nontraditional books were published, whereas more than 215,000 traditional books came out in the United States, Greco noted.

"This is a staggering increase. It's mind-boggling," Greco said. "On the positive side, this is helping an awful lot of people who wrote books and could not get them published in the traditional way through agents."

But Greco listed downsides. One problem is that authors must compete for readers with a lot more books — many of which "probably never should have seen the light of day," he said.

My Favorite Child

  I’ve written thirty novels – eight of them Diagnosis Murder books and thirteen of them Monk tales – but my favorite out of them all is Watch Me Die, which was originally published in hardcover in 2005 under the title The Man with the Iron On Badge.

It’s about a guy who learns everything he knows about being a PI from reading books and watching TV shows. It's about the clash between fictional expectations/stereotypes and reality. The book is something of a spoof...and yet, at the same time, a straight-ahead crime novel full of explicit sex and violence. That shifting tone made the book a hard sell...because it didn't fit into a particular marketing niche. Is it a satire? Is it a PI novel? Is it a thriller?

Most of  the editors who rejected the book back in 2003 praised the writing but didn't see where it would fit in their publishing line.  There were two editors at major houses who loved it and wanted to acquire it...but  couldn't convince their superiors. Another wrote a LONG rejection letter, saying how much she loved it, that it was the best PI novel she'd ever read, and how it pained her not to be able to publish it. (In the mean time, I wrote a screenplay version of the book, which landed me the gig writing the Dame Edna movie. It never got made, but it was a very, very big payday for me and was my first solo screenwriting job outside of episodes of TV shows that I'd produced).

It was frustrating not being able to sell the book because I felt it was the best novel I'd ever written. I loved writing it and I very much wanted to write more about Harvey Mapes, the main character. I couldn’t complain too much, because I was having a lot of success with other books. Even so, this one meant more to me than the others. I approached my Diagnosis Murder & Monk editors at Penguin/Putnams about The Man with the Iron-On Badge...but as much as they liked me, and my work, they weren't willing to take the gamble.

Finally, after two years of  shopping the book, we took it to Thomson/Gale/Five,  which had a reputation for putting out fine mysteries...and for being a place  where  published authors can find a home for their "dropped" series and unpublished works.  It was an imprint run by writers (like founder Ed Gorman) and editors (like legendary book packager Martin Greenberg)  who truly loved books and appreciated authors. They produced handsome hard-covers that were respected and reviewed by the major industry publications. I had a great experience with them on The Walk (another book that was a hard sell that but went on, after it fell out of print, to sell 20,000 ebook copies in two years)  and I knew they would treat the book well. 

The downside with Five Star was that they paid a pitifully  low advance, primarily served the library market and had very limited distribution to bookstores.  Still, it was possible to win wide acclaim and impressive sales with a Five Star title. And I did. Here's a sample of the reivews:

"As dark and twisted as anything Hammett or Chandler ever dreamed up [...] leaving Travis McGee in the dust." Kirkus, Starred Review

 “This was a witty, wonderful book,” Deadly Pleasures

“Goldberg delivers a clever riff on the traditional private eye novel, resplendent with witty and dark turns,” Knight-Ridder Newspapers.

“A fast paced, first person thriller about an under achiever who has to strive to be more than he ever thought he could be,” Permission to Kill

“Approaching the level of Lawrence Block is no mean feat, but Goldberg succeeds with this engaging PI novel,” Publishers Weekly

"Lee Goldberg bravely marches into territory already staked out by some fierce competition -- Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, the early Harlan Coben-- and comes out virtually unscathed." The Chicago Tribune

"Goldberg has a knack for combining just the right amount of humor and realism with his obvious love for the PI genre and his own smart ass sensibilities. [The book] is a terrific read. Goldberg is the real deal and should be on everyone’s must read list." Crimespree Magazine

The book even got nominated for the Shamus Award for best novel by the Private Eye Writers of America (losing to Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer)

And  although it sold well for Five Star, it failed to land a paperback or foreign rights sales…and went out of print in 2007. 

Last year, I re-released it as an ebook…where it has failed to gain much traction, despite several different covers,  lots of flogging on this blog, and a stage production by the legendary Firesign Theatre.

So now I have re-re-released it as Watch Me Die. And am doing more flogging.

I really, really want Watch Me Die to succeed.

I want it to be my bestselling book...by far. Not so much for the money, but because I am proud of it.

And if it does finally do well, I can justify to myself (and, more importantly, to my wife), investing the time to write the sequel. Or a string of sequels. I would like nothing better than to write as many Harvey Mapes books as I have Monks…or many more….because Harvey Mapes is a character and a voice and an attitude that I love.

So please, help me do that. Spread the word about Watch Me Die.   

 (Pictured: Orson Ossman performing as "Harvey Mapes"  in the Firesign Theatre radio play/stage production, at the RiverPark Performing Arts Center in Owensboro, Kentucky )

MWA Opens Active Membership to Ebook and POD Authors

The MWA membership committee, of which I am chair, has crafted a major overhaul of the criteria for Active Membership to embrace the new technologies that are changing our industry. These new guidelines, approved unanimously today by the MWA Board, opens the door to scores of authors whose books are published solely as ebooks or via print-on-demand, but they still exclude self-published works. An  email blast with all the changes went out to all MWA members moments ago. Here's the intro...

The publishing business is experiencing massive changes and if MWA is to remain relevant, we have to change, too.  That’s why we’ve revised our Approved Publisher criteria to make books published solely in e-book format or using print-on-demand eligible under certain conditions for MWA membership (and, perhaps later, for Edgar eligibility as well).  Self-published books, whether they are published in print or as e-books, still do not qualify for MWA active membership. [Note: The italics added by me for clarity in this post, they are not italicized in the actual guidelines]

In crafting the criteria below, we had to strike a balance between including books published using those new technologies while also  maintaining our high professional standards and our commitment to protecting our members (and writers in general) from the less-than-reputable publishers who seek to take advantage of them.

We hope you’ll agree that we accomplished our goal. 

There are a lot of tweaks to our existing rules, but here's the ground-breaking portion...the new section on Approved Publisher criteria for ebook publishers. If your ebook publisher meets these criteria, then your book qualifies you for Active Membership in MWA.

E-Book Publisher Guidelines:

Publishers interested in being on MWA's Approved E-Book Publishers List must fill out the affidavit and submit a sample contract. If all of the following criteria are met, contact the national office to begin the vetting process (the affidavit will be supplied if these requirements are met). The publisher must also meet all of the following criteria (the term "book" refers to all e-formats, "Publishing" refers to print, web, and other e-formats):

1. During the preceding year, the publisher must have paid a minimum of $500 in advances and/or royalties to at least five authors with no financial or ownership interest in the company.
a) The publisher must have paid a minimum royalty of least 25% of net revenue to authors.
b) The royalties must have been paid at least quarterly, with a detailed statement, breaking out books sold through affiliate sites, through the publisher's own site, as well as print books if applicable.
c) Payment must be in monies, not in barter for advertising or copies or any other considerations.
d) Payment must be actual - not, for example, a donation of writing deemed worth a given amount.
e) Payment must have been made and not merely promised.
f) A contract alone is not payment. Proof of payment may be requested by the committee.

2. The publisher must have been in business for at least two years since publication of the first e-book by a person with no financial or ownership interest in the company.

3. The publisher, within the past five years, may not have charged a fee to consider, read, submit, or comment on manuscripts; nor may the publisher, or any of the executives or editors under its employ, have offered authors self-publishing services, literary representation, paid editorial services, or paid promotional services. If the publisher is affiliated with an entity that provides self-publishing, for-pay editorial services, or for-pay promotional services, the entities must be wholly separate and isolated from the publishing entity. They must not share employees, manuscripts, or authors or interact in any way. For example, the publishing entity must not refer authors to any of the for-pay entities nor give preferential treatment to manuscripts submitted that were edited, published, or promoted by the for-pay entity. To avoid misleading authors, mentions and/or advertisements for the for-pay entities shall not be included with information on manuscript submission to the publishing company. Advertising on the publisher's website for any for-pay editorial, self-publishing or promotional services, whether affiliated with the publisher or not, must include a disclaimer that it is advertising and that use of those services offered by an affiliate of the publisher will not affect consideration of manuscripts submitted for publication.

4. The publisher must publish at least five authors per year, other than those with a financial or ownership interest in the company, such as an owner, business partner, employee, or close relative of such person. Those persons should be listed on the application.

5. The publisher is not a "self-publishing" or "subsidy publishing" firm in which the author has paid all or part of the cost of publication, marketing, distribution of the work, or any other fees pursuant to an agreement between the author and publisher, cooperative publisher or book packager. Among (but not all of) the situations defined as "self-published or cooperatively published" are:

a. Those works for which the author has paid all or part of the cost of publication, marketing, distribution of the work, or any other fees pursuant to an agreement between the author and publisher, cooperative publisher, website owner or book packager;

b. e-books published by a privately-held publisher or in collaboration with a book packager wherein the author has a familial relationship with the publisher, editor, or any managerial employee, officer, director or owner of the publisher or book packager;

c. Those works published by companies, websites or imprints that do not publish other authors;

d. Those works published by a publisher or website or in collaboration with a book packager in which the author has a direct or indirect financial interest;

e. Those works published in an anthology in which the author is also an editor, except an anthology for which the author is a guest editor;

f. Those works published in an anthology or magazine wherein the author has a familial relationship with the editor or publisher

6. The publisher pays for editing, copyediting, design, cover art, production, advertising, marketing, distribution, web design, graphics, and all other aspects of publication. They do not require authors to pay for any of the above.

7. Books must be available through major online retailers, like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the iBookstore, and not just through the publisher's website.

8. The publisher must not be engaged in the practice of wrongfully withholding or delaying the payment of acceptance fees to authors.

As the industry changes, you can expect the MWA's criteria regarding Approved Publishers will evolve as well.

In the meantime, now that the Board has passed these new rules, the issue moves to the Edgar committee (which I also serve on) to determine how these new criteria will impact Edgar Award eligibility, award categories, etc. for the 2013 Awards (for books published in 2012).

 

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

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

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

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

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

Eisler Makes News...Again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good JUDGMENT

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shoot for This

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

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

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

And a murder.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The E-Book Gold Rush

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

And for good reason.

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

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

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

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

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

Earnings for that month? $19,315.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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.

Hot Sex, Gory Violence

Newsweek published this My Turn essay of mine back in mid-1980s, while I was still a college student and writing my JURY books, then called .357 Vigilante, under the pen-name "Ian Ludlow." Now that I have re-released the books, I thought you might enjoy it:

HOT SEX, GORY VIOLENCE

How One Student Earns Course Credit and Pays Tuition

My name is Ian Ludlow. Well, not really. But that's the name on my four ".357 Vigilante" adventures that Pinnacle Books will publish this spring. Most of the time I'm Lee Goldberg, a mild mannered UCLA senior majoring in mass communications and trying to spark a writing career at the same time. It's hard work. I haven't quite achieved a balance between my dual identities of college student and hack novelist.

The adventures of Mr. Jury, a vigilante into doing the LAPD's dirty work,  are often created in the wee hours of the night, when I should be studying, meeting my freelance-article deadlines or, better yet, sleeping. More often than not, my nocturnal writing spills over into my classes the next morning. Brutal fistfights, hot sexual encounters and gory violence are frequently scrawled across my anthropology notes or written amid my professor's insights on Whorf's hypothesis. Students sitting next to me who glance at my lecture notes are shocked to see notations like "Don't move, scumbag, or I'll wallpaper the room with your brains.

I once wrote a pivotal rape scene during one of my legal-communications classes, and I'm sure the girl who sat next to me thought I was a psychopath. During the first half of the lecture, she kept looking with wide eyes from my notes to my face as if my nose were melting onto my binder or something. At the break she disappeared, and I didn't see her again the rest of the quarter. My professors,  though, seem pleased to see me sitting in the back of the classroom writing furiously. I guess they think I'm hanging on their every word. They're wrong.

I've tried to lessen the strain between my conflicting identities by marrying the two. Through the English department, I'm getting academic credit for the books. That amazes my Grandpa Cy, who can't believe there's a university crazy enough to reward me for writing "lots of filth." The truth is, it's writing and it's learning, and it's getting me somewhere. Just where, I'm not sure. My Grandpa Cy thinks it's going to get me the realization I should join him in the furniture business.

I Wanna Get You Hooked...

...so, for a very limited time, JUDGMENT, the first book in the four-book JURY SERIES, is now just 99 cents. 

This is an ALL-NEW edition, completely reformatted and repackaged for 2011.

JUDGMENT is the classic action/adventure novel that was a runaway paperback sensation under the title ".357 Vigilante" back in the 1980s...and was immediately snatched up by New World Pictures for a feature film (that, sadly, never happened).

But that screenplay adaptation launched my partnership with William Rabkin and our careers as screenwriters, so this book will always hold a very, very special place in my heart.

This is the ultimate JUDGMENT, as it was originally meant to be, taken from the original, first-draft manuscript. 

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 murdered by a street gang, Macklin becomes something else--a deadly weapon against crime, a relentless vigilante who won't stop until he's wiped out the killers who have turned Los Angeles into a war zone. 

And here are the other reformatted and repackaged books in the JURY series...

ADJOURNED

PAYBACK

GUILTY

And all four books in one:

The Jury Is In

New for 2011! The Jury Series

From Lee Goldberg, the bestselling author of  THE WALK, comes all four of his acclaimed JURY novels..collected into one totally reformatted, repackaged, mega-sized, pulse-pounding, thrill-ride that will leave you breathless:

JUDGMENT * ADJOURNED * PAYBACK * GUILTY

The JURY SERIES is the complete saga of Brett Macklin, a one-man judge, jury, and executioner, fighting a war on terror on the streets of Los Angeles in the mid-1980s. Over 160,000 words/550 pages of non-stop action, wildly erotic sex, and wicked humor.

"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 series, published in 1985, under the title ".357 Vigilante," was written by Ian Ludlow... a pseudonym for Lee Goldberg, who wrote the books while he was a UCLA student, under the supervision of his professor, novelist Lewis Perdue ("The DaVinci Legacy," "The Queensgate Reckoning," "Daughter of God," etc). Goldberg would later go on to write and/or produce such TV shows as "Monk," "Diagnosis Murder," "SeaQuest," and "The Glades" and write many more novels, including THE WALK and the best-selling "Monk" series of original mysteries. 

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR LEE GOLDBERG:

"A high-octane mystery that moves like a bullet-train!" New York Times Bestselling author Janet Evanovich

"Can books be better than television? You bet they can -- when Lee Goldberg's writing them," New York Times bestselling author Lee Child

"Leaves you guessing right up until the heart-stopping ending," New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner

"Lee Goldberg can plot and write with the best of them," Mystery Scene Magazine

"Entertaining and ruefully funny," Honolulu Star Bulletin

"THE WALK is a magnificent novel -- by turns hilarious, scary, sad, witty and ultimately wise on its judgments about the way so many of us live these days. And it's one hell of a page-turner, too," Author Ed Gorman, founder of Mystery Scene Magazine

"Harrowing and funny..." -Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 

"With books this good, who needs TV?" Chicago Sun Times

"You'd be hard-pressed to find another recent work that provides so many hip and humorous moments," Bookgasm

Important Warning for Smashwords Authors

If you are using Smashwords to distribute your ebooks to online retailers, go there right now and OPT OUT of having your books distributed to Kobo.

Today Kobo, without my prior knowledge or consent, has slashed the prices on a bunch of my ebooks from $2.99 to as low 99 cents....and Amazon has followed suit. This is going to cost me thousands of dollars in lost royalties this month if I don't resolve this situation fast.

I don't know how long it takes for Kobo to remove books after an author has opted-out of distributing to them through Smashwords, so I have contacted Mark Coker, owner of Smashwords, to see what he can do before I lose a lot of money.

In the mean time, get your books off of Kobo now before they do the same thing to you...if they haven't already.

I am furious about this. It's as if they've hacked into my checking account and started making unauthorized withdrawals. I am assuming there is some language buried somewhere in the Smashwords agreement that allows Kobo to charge whatever the hell they want for my books. The problem is, Amazon matches the lowest price out there...and adjusts your royalty accordingly.

So now on Amazon, instead of making $2.06 each sale of  THE WALK, I am making 70 cents. And instead of making $2.06 a sale on THREE WAYS TO DIE, I am making 35 cents. This is a major blow for me, since those two books are my bestsellers...

I really hope I can get my books off of Kobo quickly...and then convince Amazon to restore my original prices immediately thereafter.

UPDATE: 4/12/11, 8:37 pm: I got an email from Mark Coker, who tells me this is a big technical glitch at Kobo and that they are working on fixing the problem.  He hopes to have it resolved by Thursday. Even if they do, I don't know how long it will take Amazon to restore the original pricing...and I still will have lost money in the interim. I doubt I'll be posting my books on Kobo again...my pitiful sales on their platform are not worth the risk of future accidental or intentional price cuts.  

UPDATE 4/14/2011 - My books are off of Kobo and, from what I am hearing from other authors, the prices have been restored. I appreciate Kobo and Smashwords resolving this problem quickly...but I won't be back on Kobo any time soon. Now I've got to get Amazon to jack my prices back up to where they were before....

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

UK Agents Declaring War over E-Rights

The Bookseller reports that UK agents are refusing to accept the line from publishers that 25% is a fair rate for e-royalties. They insist that print and e-deals be seperate.  Agent Sonia Land got so frustrated that she and her client Catherine Cookson are e-publishing her backlist themselves.

Land has warned book publishers they will lose control over authors’ digital backlists unless they improve their royalty offer.

Land this week announced her decision to publish 100 of Catherine Cookson’s novels as e-books through her company Peach Publishing, bypassing Cookson’s physical publishers Transworld. Other agents warned against the move, one calling it "tantamount to a declaration of war".

In a column in this week’s Bookseller, Land called on publishers to up their rates from 25% to 50% of net proceeds from e-books to secure digital rights.

Land said the publisher forced her hand by not showing an interest in Cookson’s digital rights. She said: "I’ve been thinking about this for a year and a half. They never approached me with a deal, but I think they knew I wanted a better offer."

Speaking about publishers in general, Land said: "The thing that really annoys me is that they won’t even negotiate a decent rate . . . They say ‘25% is perfectly reasonable’. They need to stop pretending it’s so expensive. I’ve just done it. I can do my sums."

 

 

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.

 

Floored and Flattered

Bruce Grossman at Bookgasm praised THE DEAD MAN today, saying, in part:

THE DEAD MAN: FACE OF EVIL, a short novella from the very prolific authors Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin, is the first step in an intriguing series, for which this lays the groundwork. [...] I've not seen a writing tandem like this since the glory days of Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy. 

We are extremely flattered by the review. The comparison to Sapir & Murphy means a lot to us. We were not only big fans of the "Destroyer" novels, but we had the good fortune of working with Warren Murphy many years ago on the TV series "Murphy's Law," which was loosely based on his "Trace" and "Digger" novels. We have remained friends, and admirers, of Warren's ever since.

 

TOP SUSPENSE Free Advance Reading Copies

Hold on tight for a literary thrill-ride into the wickedly clever, frightening, and exhilarating world of  Top Suspense, a sizzling collaboration of twelve master storytellers at the peak of their
powers in thirteen unforgettable tales...Max Allan Collins, Bill Crider, Stephen Gallagher, Joel Goldman, Libby Fischer Hellmann, Naomi Hirahara, Vicki Hendricks, Paul Levine, Harry Shannon, Dave Zeltserman, and yours truly.

This unforgettable anthology – packed full of cold-blooded killers, erotic tension, shady private eyes, craven drug dealers, vicious betrayals, crafty thieves, and shocking twists – is coming out on APRIL 1 and is only a taste of the thrills you will find in the breathtakingly original ebooks by these authors at www.topsuspensegroup.com.

But you can get a FREE ADVANCE READING COPY...in your e-format of choice.

Here’s all you have to do:

1. Send me an email at lee@leegoldberg.com with the subject FREE TOP SUSPENSE BOOK and give me your name and the address of your website or blog (don’t have one? That’s okay. Read on).

2. Agree to post a review, positive or negative (but with no spoilers!) on your blog, website, Goodreads page, Facebook page, or the Amazon listing for TOP SUSPENSE in the next 60 days. (You don't have to buy the book on Amazon to review it there, you only need to have an account). 

3. Email me a copy of the review or a link to the post.

Each Top Suspense author has been alotted just 25 copies to giveaway, so if you're interested, you'd better hurry. And once you get your book,  sit back, bite down on a piece of strong leather, and prepare to get hit by some gale-force suspense and writing so sharp it will draw blood.

The Man with the Lousy Title

 THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE  is by far my most critically-acclaimed book, but the ebook sales aren't as good as I think they could be. My theory is that the clunky title is to blame. So I'm seriously considering retitling the book and coming up with a new cover. The stage play version of the book was called MAPES FOR HIRE, but I'm not wild about that title, either. 

If you've read the book, and have some ideas for a new title, please let me know!

 

 

Publishing Leprosy Cured

Mid-list novelist Beth Orsoff talks on her blog about how she turned a disappointing (and all too familiar) experience at a big six publisher into success as a self-published author:

My first book, “Romantically Challenged” was published in April 2006, approximately six months after the chick lit markettanked.  I had a small print run, no publisher support, and, not surprisingly, my book was not a huge success (massive understatement)[...]While I was waiting for “Romantically Challenged” to be published I wrote another book, also chick lit.  NAL elected not to option it and my agent started sending it to other publishers.  

When that book, and a couple of others, failed to sell, she got the rights back to "Romantically Challenged" and put it,along with several of her unsold manuscripts, on the Kindle and the Nook. 

Thanksgiving weekend I uploaded all three books to B&N via their PubIt program.  I sold 9 books at B&N in November.  In December I sold 500 books at B&N.  In January 2011 I sold almost 7000 books at B&N.  Between Amazon and B&N, I sold over 13,000 books in January.  Will I continue to sell books at that rate?  I don’t know.  But I’ve already had much more success as a self-published author than I ever did as a traditionally published author, plus I get to write the books I want to write, choose my own covers, and publish on my schedule, not someone else’s.

I am hearing stories like hers every day...especially in the wake of my first "Midlist to E-List" post... and its inspiring. It used to be that when a midlist author was dropped, it was a living hell getting published again because your lukewarm sales figures would follow you wherever you went. Reinventing yourself with a new novel and a new voice was also a steep, uphill climb.

But now, for the first time ever, midlist authors not only have an alternative, but one that could actually be more lucrative and perhaps more creatively fullfilling, than sticking with their publishers. For the first time, a midlist author doesn't have to take a crappy deal just to stay in print...or feel like a literary leper when they have been dropped.

These are exciting times.

A Dose of Reality

Amanda Hocking may be single-handedly responsible for driving thousands of newbie authors to self-publishing, eager to replicate her astonishing success. But today she gave them a dose of reality. I just wonder how many of them will listen...

Everybody seems really excited about what I'm doing and how I've been so successful, and from what I've been able to understand, it's because a lot of people think that they can replicate my success and what I've done. And while I do think I will not be the only one to do this - others will be as successful as I've been, some even more so - I don't think it will happen that often.

Traditional publishing and indie publishing aren't all that different, and I don't think people realize that. Some books and authors are best sellers, but most aren't. It may be easier to self-publish than it is to traditionally publish, but in all honesty, it's harder to be a best seller self-publishing than it is with a house.

I don't think people really grasp how much work I do. I think there is this very big misconception that I was like, "Hey, paranormal is pretty hot right now," and then I spent a weekend smashing out some words, threw it up online, and woke up the next day with a million dollars in my bank account. 

She goes on to talk about the years of hard work she put into it...and the difficulty of finding good, professional copyeditors...and the huge amount of time she's spent marketing. And yet, she acknowledges that a lot of her success comes down to simple luck (she points out other self-published writers she thinks are every bit as good as she is and yet still have not broken through). Then she makes this point, which I'm sure few newbies want to hear:

I guess what I'm saying is that just because I sell a million books self-publishing, it doesn't mean everybody will. In fact, more people will sell less than 100 copies of their books self-publishing than will sell 10,000 books. I don't mean that to be mean, and just because a book doesn't sell well doesn't mean it's a bad book. It's just the nature of the business. Self-publishing and traditional publishing really aren't that different. One is easier to get into but harder to maintain. But neither come with guarantees. Some books will sell, some won't.

Great advice...and I applaud her for giving it.

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.

Double Header

Now you can get both of my acclaimed "Charlie Willis" crime novels -- MY GUN HAS BULLETS and DEAD SPACE --  combined together in DOUBLE HEADER for just $4.99. That's two books, complete and uncut, for the price of one. 

MY GUN HAS BULLETS

When Beverly Hills Police Officer Charlie Willis pulls over a speeding Rolls Royce hell-bent for Neiman Marcus, he's surprised to see Esther Radcliffe, the geriatric star of the TV series "Miss Agatha," behind the wheel. He's even more surprised when she guns him down and keeps on driving. A few hours later, he wakes up in the intensive care unit...to find a William Morris agent, a network president, and the head of Pinnacle Studios standing at the foot of his bed. They have a proposal for him: in exchange for conveniently forgetting who shot him, they'll make him the star of his own series, "My Gun Has Bullets." So Charlie trades in his real badge for a fake one...and so begins an uproarious but deadly romp through the wonderful world of TV make-believe...with real bullets. 

"It will make you cackle like a sitcom laugh track. Goldberg keeps the gags coming right up to the end."-Entertainment Weekly

"A very funny novel...a pinch of Carl Hiaasen, a dash of Donald Westlake, and a heaping portion of avarice and inanity Hollywood Style. It's boffo!"- Booklist

DEAD SPACE

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.

"[It] 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)

"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

"This sharp roman a clef goes where no Hollywood satire has gone before...it's a stingingly funny novel." -Entertainment Weekly 

BONUS MATERIAL: This special Kindle edition includes a sample chapter from  THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE.

I'm doing this as an experiment. THE JURY SERIES compilation of my four vigilante novels widely outsells the books individually. So I figured that since MY GUN HAS BULLETS, one of my best-selling books, sells far better than DEAD SPACE, its sequel, this might be the perfect way to maximizes sales of both. I'll let you know how it goes.

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.

Gumming up the Plumbing with Your Old Underpants

Charlie Wendig has written a hilarious... and genuinely insightful...post about the justifiable stigma attached to self-publishing and how to avoid it. Here's a taste:

I (and I’m sure other capable writers) have noticed and noted that self-publishing bears a certain stigma. With the term comes the distinct aroma of flopsweat born out of the desperation of Amateur Hour — it reeks of late night Karaoke, of meth-addled Venice Beach ukelele players, of middle-aged men who play basketball and still clutch some secret dream of “going pro” despite having a gut that looks like they ate a basketball rather than learned to play with one.

Self-publishing just can’t get no respect. This is, of course, in contrast to other DIY endeavors.[...]This is in part because it’s a lot harder to put an album or a film out into the world. You don’t just vomit it forth. Some modicum of talent and skill must be present to even contemplate such an endeavor and to attain any kind of distribution. The self-publishing community has no such restriction. It is blissfully easy to be self-published. I could take this blog post, put it up on the Amazon Kindle store and in 24 hours you could download it for ninety-nine cents. It’s like being allowed to make my own clothing line out of burlap and pubic hair and being allowed to hang it on the racks at J.C. Penney.

That last line just killed me. And it's not even the funniest bit in his post. What's great is that he doesn't just take cheap shots at bad, self-published writers the way, say, I would.  By using strong examples, he clearly and hilariously illustrates the many cringe-inducing mistakes made by aspiring writers and, at the same time, offers solid advice on how to avoid "gumming up the plumbing with your old underpants."  It's a very entertaining read, whether you're a writer or not.

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 21

This was, far and away, my best month ever for sales of my out-of-print backlist on the Kindle.

I sold 3075 books and earned $6624.40 in royalties.  My biggest seller was THE WALK, which sold 1083 copies and earned $2230.98.  

I also did nicely on Createspace with the trade paperback editions of my books, earning $483.94 but not-so-well on the Nook, earning  just $211.46 (though I am told B&N was having accounting problems this month and may be adjusting those numbers upwards, as they did in December).

The grand total in royalties for January, not including Smashwords (Apple, Diesel, Kobo, Sony) or Amazon UK sales, is $7319.80.

By comparison, in January 2010, I sold 536 copies and earned $775 in royalties.

Unbelievable.

(My poorest selling books are the four JURY titles, formerly known as the .357 VIGILANTE series. I blame that, in part, on the negative reviews they've received due to sloppy proofreading. No matter how many times I've gone through the books, errors still seem to slip past me. So the books are now in the hands of a professional copyeditor...when she gets them back to me I will relaunch the books, give way free copies for fresh reviews, and update the product descriptions). 

Announcing Top Suspense

Here's the press release announcing TopSuspense, which just went out to media outlets this week.

Navigating the Sea of E-Books

Nine top suspense authors join forces to promote quality e-books www.TopSuspenseGroup.com

 The e-book market is exploding. With over 700,000 e-books currently available and hundreds more added every week, it’s growing increasingly difficult to distinguish quality books from those that are unedited and written by inexperienced authors.

That’s why nine established, professional authors have formed Top Suspense Group, a site where readers are guaranteed to find top-notch, award-winning authors in multiple genres who deliver a great e-reading experience in their dozens of highly-acclaimed books.

"Readers can count on us," acclaimed author Max Allan Collins explains. "Every member of our group has already made his or her mark on genre fiction, whether it's noir, crime, mystery, thriller, horror or Westerns, and in some cases, several of these genres."

Top Suspense authors have each:

• Published multiple novels with traditional publishers
• Won or have been nominated for major literary awards
• Been internationally published
• Received critical acclaim from national publications

Many of the authors have graced the national bestseller lists and have had their work produced or optioned for film (the Oscar winning “Road to Perdition”) and television (the Emmy winning “Monk”). Our authors include:

 Max Allan Collins · Bill Crider · Lee Goldberg · Joel Goldman · Ed Gorman · Vicki Hendricks

Paul Levine · Harry Shannon · Dave Zeltserman

 This unique site provides a one-stop-shop of quality suspense fiction. As the e-book market continues to flood and overwhelm readers, Top Suspense will remain a succinct guide to quality, professional e-books written by today’s leading authors.

 

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 20

I've got a new guest post up on Joe Konrath's blog charting my Kindle experience...and the complete change in my thinking about ebooks. A lot of what I'm saying there you've already read about here, so let's cut to the chase:

This January, if sales continue at the current pace, I will sell about 3100 books this month and earn $6600 in royalties.

That’s a 166% increase in sales and a whopping 751% jump in royalties.

In just one year.

On out-of-print books that I wrote years ago that were earning me nothing before June 2009.

If those sales hold for the rest of the year, I will earn $77,615 in Kindle royalties, and that’s not counting the far less substantial royalties coming in from Amazon UK, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble and CreateSpace.

Even if my sales plummet tomorrow by fifty percent, I’ll still earn about $38,000 in royalties this year…and I’d be very, very happy with that.

My most profitable title, in terms of hours worked and pages written, is THREE WAYS TO DIE, a collection of three previously published short stories. In print, it’s a mere fifty-six pages long, but it’s selling 24 copies-a-day on the Kindle, earning me about $1500-a-month. That means I could potentially earn $18,000 this year just from those three short stories alone.

That is insane.

But what would be more insane is if I took my next, standalone, non-MONK book to a publisher instead of “publishing” it myself on the Kindle.

That’s right. I’d rather self-publish. This from a guy who for years has been an out-spoken, and much-reviled, critic of self-publishing. But that was before the Kindle came along and changed everything. I was absolutely right then…but I’d be wrong now.

Yes, it's happened. I have become a complete convert to self-publishing and the Kindle. But do I recommend it for you? It depends. I go into more detail in the post on Joe's blog, so check it out.

Get DEAD SPACE For Free

I will soon be releasing a trade paperback edition of my book DEAD SPACE to go along with the ebook edition, which has been available for some time now. To generate fresh word-of-mouth and new reviews, I’d like email you a FREE COPY of the novel in whatever format you prefer (epub, PDF, txt, html, etc). Here’s all that you have to do:

1. Send me an email at lee@leegoldberg.com with the subject FREE SPACE BOOK and give me your name and the address of your website or blog (don’t have one? That’s okay. Read on).

2. Agree to post a review, positive or negative (but with no spoilers!) on your blog, website, Goodreads page, Facebook page, or the Amazon listing for DEAD SPACE in the next 60 days. (You don't have to buy the book on Amazon to review it there, you only need to have an account). 

3. Email me a copy of the review or a link to the post.

This offer is limited to the first 50 people who respond by January 15. (UPDATE 1/6/2011: I have already given away 25...so if you are interested, contact me ASAP!)

Here's the story on the book, which was originally published under the title BEYOND THE BEYOND by St. Martin's Press in the mid-1990s as a sequel to my book MY GUN HAS BULLETS...

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.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR 'DEAD SPACE':

“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

“[It] 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 

"The hilarious follow-up to Goldberg's witty debut, My Gun Has Bullets...[this book] 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

Sign of the Times

The Los Angeles Times reports that Barnes & Noble is now selling more ebooks than paper ones at their online store. 

Customers bought or downloaded nearly 1 million e-books on Christmas Day alone, the company said in a press release.

The Nook e-reader has become a bestseller, according to the bookseller. The Nook Color, introduced two months before Christmas, was the company's No. 1 selling holiday gift item, according to the company release.

Maybe so, but sales of my books on the Nook have been lousy...about 75 copies in December. On the other hand, this has been my best month ever on the Kindle. I've sold 800 copies of THE WALK as of today (nearly 20,000 total since I launched the ebook in June 2009) and I'm looking to earn $5000 in royalties this month from all of my out-of-print work.

Blocking Out the Past

Lawrence Block has written a terrific piece for eFanzines.com - Earl Kemp: eI53 - e*I* Vol. 9 No. 6  about the thought-process behind his decision to release many of his obscure, long out-of-print paperbacks, many written under pen-names, in new, digital editions. He says, in part:

What other titles I decide to reissue will depend at least in part on what kind of money comes in from the ones I’ve already slated for e–publication.  If nobody’s interested in them, why inflict more upon the reading public?  But, if there turns out to be a genuine demand, well, hell, there’s more where those came from.

While I was writing the end notes for a Jill Emerson novel, A Madwoman’s Diary(originally Sensuous), I remembered that I’d based the plot on a case history from one of John Warren Wells’s books.  So I wound up writing at some length about my career as John Warren Wells and his psychosexual reportage.  And it occurred to me for the very first time that I might actually reissue those books as well.  Not all of them, I shouldn’t think, but one or two.  And if people like those—

“Greed is good,” Gordon Gekko famously informed us.  But why go all judgmental?  Greed, I’d say, is beyond good and evil.  It is what it is. 

Which might be said as well for the books I’m bringing back.  And, come to think of it, for their author.

(Hat-tip to Bill Crider for alerting me to this great post)

The Name is Book, E Book.

The Ian Fleming Estate has realized what so many other published authors already know -- that if you own the digital rights to your backlist, it makes more financial sense to publish the ebooks yourself.  So the estate is publishing the digital versions of the Bond novels themselves, cutting out Penguin, which still has the entire series in print. The London Telegraph says that this move could be the beginning of a wave of established authors choosing to self-publish the digital versions of their highly successful franchises.

The books industry could lose out on millions of pounds because publishers have failed to sign up the digital rights to authors, who are expected to bypass traditional publishing houses in favour of Amazon or Google.

Industry insiders suggested that blockbusting authors including JK Rowling, Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie would be looking at the deal closely.

The digital versions of the 007 books will be published by Ian Fleming Publications, which administers the rights to the Bond books.

[...]There are many authors still working that have not signed away the digital rights to their books, allowing them to cut out their traditional publisher if they chose to. Agents said they had grown increasingly irritated by the low royalty rates offered by publishers for digital rights.

This development doesn't surprise me at all, especially in light of the sobering news from Publishers Weekly this week about the plunge in "paper" sales and the incredible surge in digital in September.

As sales in the traditional trade segments plunged in September, e-book sales jumped 158.1%, according to the monthly sales estimates released by the Association of American Publishers. Sales for the 14 publishers that reported e-book sales hit $39.9 million in the month, and were up 188.4% in the first nine months of the year to $304.6 million. In contrast, sales in the three adult trade segments, adult hardcover, trade paperback and mass market paperback, all fell by more than double digits with the adult hardcover segment experiencing the biggest decline with sales down 40.4% at the 17 publisher who reported sales to the AAP of $180.3 million. The only other segment to post a significant sales gain in September was downloadable audio with sales from the nine reporting companies up 73.7%, to $7.7 million. Sales of audio CDs fell 42.6%, to $11.6 million, in the month at the 22 reporting companies.

Established authors with a large back-list, whether the titles are in print or not, could see significant increases in their revenues putting the digital versions of those books out themselves. And the news is getting around. Look for a surge in 2011 of established authors self-publishing the digital versions of their backlists.

This has agents scrambling for an approach on how to get a share of this potential income. I've already heard that some agents are talking about inserting clauses in their new agency agreements with authors that grant them commissions on the digital self-publication of any books for which they negotiated the original print deals. It will be interesting to see how that goes over.