A Writer's Life

Editorial Guidance

My Uncle Burl Barer is an Edgar-award-winning author of a dozen books but that doesn't make the job of writing any easier...in fact, he's having some trouble with is current project.

There is something not right about my current book in progress, and it is driving me crazy. [...] So far, at the request of my editor, I've done a complete restructuring of the book, and still it doesn't "sing." Tomorrow I'm calling "headquarters" - the executive editor -- and consulting on what I need to do to make this baby at least hum.

Thankfully, Burl has something most self-published authors do not... an experienced editor provided by the publisher at no charge to him.

Editors are the inspired clergy of the literature religion. They comfort, admonish and encourage. They bring out the diamond potential in our prolix lumps of coal. I am blessed with the editors at Kensington Publishing, headed by the resilient and insightful Michaela Hamilton. Mike Shol is currently editing the manuscript of Fatal Beauty, and it is all coming together. Whew. I pity authors who don't have the blessing of a world-class editor. I've been very lucky. My first book, THE SAINT: A Complete History was edited by Steve Wilson at McFarland & Co. I doubt I would have snagged the Edgar were it not for his guidance. One of the tragedies of self-published (ie self-printed) books is often the lack of editorial guidance, not to mention the lack of sales.

Sadly, many "self-published" authors have gone the vanity press route because they believe their work is perfect "as-is" and reject any suggestion that their book may be flawed in some way (which is one reason why the self-publishing companies are known as "vanity presses"). These aspiring authors don't recognize the importance of editing and rewriting, of having an experienced, and objective, outside perspective on their work. All they are interested in is seeing their book "in print" as quickly as possible without having to "jump through all those hoops" or letting anyone meddle with their "artistic vision." And that's why so much of what is self-published out there is unreadable slop.

The Cons and Cons of Self-publishing

I've been engaged in a discussion about the pros and cons of self-publishing over at The Kindle Boards and thought I'd share some of my comments here.  One person wrote a message talking about the reasons he self-published with a POD press. One reason he did it, he said, was because publishing companies are turning their backs on literary fiction. He said, in part:

Literary novels are a very tough sell to publishing houses. They want the sales of "Water for Elephants" or "The Time Traveler's Wife," but they, like movie studios, can't tell which books will do it. All they know is that they cannot publish many literary novels anymore. Thus, those of us interested in writing literary books as opposed to genre books have to find new paths. My agent at XYZ in New York received dozens of positive rejections on my latest manuscript, for instance. Many editors told him that my novel had them laughing--it was a fun read--but they didn't know how to market it if they were to publish my book. Thus, I'm trying to assist my agent by creating a platform independently.

That struck me as a lot of rationalizing....and not a lot of fact. There are a lot of literary novels published every day, some do well, some don't. There's a lot of "commercial fiction" published every day, some do well, some don't. Publishers never know which books will sell, and which won't. His comment about WATER FOR ELEPHANTS and TIME TRAVELERS WIFE assumes the publisher knew for certain they would sell. They didn't. No more than they knew GARGOYLE would flop (they thought it would be huge). So that rationalization doesn't hold...not that it was honestly credible to start with.

Real publishers are still publishing literary novels. They just aren't publishing his. That's blunt, I know, but that's the truth. the rationalizations may make him feel better about it, but the bottom line is the bottom line.

The market for ALL books, not just literary novels, has narrowed (the same is true for movies and tv shows, another field in which I toil). But good books will still get published. For example, my brother Tod's collection of very literary short stories, OTHER RESORT CITIES, was just published this week and he's on a national book tour financed by his publisher at this very moment. If nobody is buying literary novels, imagine how small the market is for collections of literary short stories...and yet, he's on a book tour. What does that tell you?

The commentor mentions that his book got "dozens of positive rejections." I'm sorry, but a positive rejection is nothing but a polite "we are not interested." They don't want your book. Period. If they can't market your book, that is a serious problem. And it's code for lots of things...bad writing, poor plotting, unsympathetic characters, cliches, boring prose, whatever. But what they are saying is, they don't think your book is publishable or something they can publicize effectively. And if a major publisher can't market it, the odds of you having any better luck with a self-published POD edition that few, if any, bookstores will stock and that few, if any, reputable reviewers will review, and that will have limited distribution, at best, is even slimmer. Yes, the publishing business is changing, but we are a long, long way off from POD self-publishing being the way to success or a wide readership...if ever. (Yes, there will be one or two exceptions....but that's exactly what they are, exceedingly rare exceptions).

I am not saying this from some exulted position -- I may be a published author of dozens of books, but I also have had books rejected that are sitting in my drawer right now. Yes, I got "positive rejections," but I am honest enough to know what that really means....the books are unsaleable. In some cases, after a time, I've gone back and looked at those manuscripts and realized the editors were right...and saw the flaws I couldn't see before...and am thankful I wasn't foolish enough to invest money in self-publishing them anyway in the hope of being "creating a platform."

Someone else wrote that he considers himself a published author even though he selling his work as "self-published" e-books:

Frankly, even with my 1-2 sales a day, I consider myself a published author. I put a hell of a lot of work into my book, and even though only a handful of people will ever see it, I'm proud of it. And yes, I'm asking 99 cents for it, since having people actually pay money, even pocket change, gives me a little ego boost that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.

I wrote that he may consider himself a published author -- I may consider myself the sexiest man alive -- but that doesn't make it so. He's not a published author. He's a guy who has printed his own manuscript (or put it in ebook format). There's a big difference between him and somebody who actually is a published author. In his heart of hearts, he knows that, too...or he wouldn't be striving to become one.

Someone else argued that self-published, POD novels are every bit as good, if not better, than what is coming from the real publishers. She wrote, in part:

Without a doubt, some of the best novels I've read this year are from independent authors. I'm sure these authors had good editors working with them. Beyond that, I don't think they had a lot of marketing behind them; I came across these novels through the threads here and from e-book blog postings. I think with good, cheap viral marketing a completely independent author with a good story and good editing can make a decent living right now, and things are just going to get better for them.

"Independent authors?" Is that the aspirational, PC term for self-published authors now? (The equivalent, I suppose, of aspiring writers who insist on calling themselves "pre-published"). Sorry, I'm not buying in.

Yes, publishing is in flux, but so far the only people making money off self-publishing are the vanity presses and POD houses. The paradigms aren't changing as fast as the self-published would like to believe they are, or in the ways they would like them to. 

Ebooks make up a very, very small percentage of overall book sales...the POD sales barely even register (the vast majority of POD fiction titles are sold to the authors and their narrow circle of families and friends). I would be interested to know how many POD authors are making a "decent living" off their work...and how much money they consider "a decent living" to be. How many of these POD authors, for instance, are making even $10,000 off their books (after recouping what they spent on printing, formating, etc.). Very, very few.

I don't believe things are going to get better for POD authors...if anything, I believe the narrowing of the publishing industry is going to make it even harder for self-published writers to get noticed...or accepted...by an ever-shrinking reading audience. One problem is that most of the self-published stuff is unmitigated crap. I'm sure there's some good stuff to read among self-published works...but that has not been my experience, or the experience of "typical readers" i know who've sampled self-published work.

Another commenter accused me of being "anti-writer" by attacking vanity presses. He wrote, in part:

Lee, I could understand your attitude if you were a president of a publishing company, but I'm surprised you're so hot-and-bothered against other writers.

I am not against writers -- far from it. I encourage writers to never give up and to continue honing their craft. That doesn't mean flushing your money down the toilet, and harming your career, by self-publishing your work. What it DOES mean is that you need to learn to accept that some of your stuff might be clumsy, amateurish, unpublishable or utter crap...and to learn from it and move on. It means learning how the business works, what the professional standards are, and accepting the reality that there are no shortcuts to publishing success.

I am trying to warn writers away from the vanity press vultures who prey on the desperation and gullibility of aspiring authors by conning them with lies and false hope. And I am trying to stop unpublished novelist from making an expensive and embarrassing mistake that, in most cases, will do them far more harm than good.

Finally, a self-published author disagreed with my view  that you should stick your rejected manuscripts in a drawer and move on. She wrote, in part:

It's also, quite simply, a way to have your book read. Why else write? Certainly not to stick your novel in a drawer. Writers write so readers can read.

Maybe so, but not all books are worth reading...or ready to be read. It's ultimately harmful for writers to publish stuff that isn't ready for primetime, so-to-speak. You only get one chance to make a first impression, and you don't want to do it with a book that's not very good simply because you want to see it in print. 

Bottom line, I believe that self-publishing your unpublished novel is, 9.9 times out of 10, a costly and humiliating mistake. You will not make back your money and you will likely do more damage than good to your career. The odds of actually becoming an acclaimed, respected, and widely read professional writer by self-publishing your rejected manuscript is about the same as finding buried treasure in your backyard.

I am not saying you should give up being a writer if you are met with constant rejection. What I am saying is that you will be far better off -- creatively, financially, and professionally -- if you put your rejected manuscript in a drawer and write another book instead self-publishing it.

I am not saying that every book that's rejected by publishers and agents is a steaming pile of crap. However, you might want to honestly ask yourself why your book is being rejected...is it really because NY agents & publishers are old-fashioned, narrow-minded, bean-counting, creative cowards...or you don't know the right people or the secret passwords...or the system is geared to make money and not art... or the system isn't able accept something as brilliant and original as your work....or that nobody in the mainstream can appreciate your brilliance?

Or could it be that maybe its your work that is flawed in some way...or that you just don't have the talent, skill, or voice yet to make it as a writer? It's hard to accept that possibility, but rather than self-publishing what may be a substandard book...you might be better off trying to see the manuscript the way others have and learning from the experience...perhaps rewriting it, setting it aside, or going back and learning more about your craft.

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. .

The Mail I Get

There's something almost as bad as the complete strangers who want you to read their unpublished manuscripts, read their scripts, and listen to their pitches. It's the people who expect you to be at their beck-and-call for discussion, whether you want to talk with them or not, simply because you are in the public eye. Here's an example.

I got an email from a stranger on Facebook who wanted to share with me a bad experience she had with a vanity press. She wrote, in part:

My name is X and I had a book published with XYZ. Please tell me more of what you know. Having my story published didn't feel like a skam. I had to do all the editing, which I knew nothing about. It was a long process only because I was learning as I went along. [...] Yes they try to get you to buy alot of thier gimmicks. Afraid I fell for a couple because we want to believe it will help sell our books. Have any good advice for me?

I replied, in part:

My advice is NEVER pay to be published. You are throwing your money away. As far as XYZ goes, they are a vanity press and they prey on the desperation and gullibility of aspiring authors. They will tell you whatever lie you want to hear as long as your credit card is valid

She took issue with that and wrote me another email. Here's an excerpt:

You made a remark that has really bothered me. It came across as degrading talented authors, saying we were being taken for a ride. That we were desperate and our desperation was making us gullible, really sounding like we are all stupid. I see you have accomplished a great deal with your writing. I am sure a lot of self pub. authors are doing as well. I'm working on that my self with my book. I've had great responses and reviews. I was not desperate. I just wanted a fast way to get my book out.

I ignored it because I had nothing more I wanted to say. So, she started nagging me for a response by posting comments on my Facebook wall every few days, like this one:

Still waiting Lee. Please tell me you're a nice guy.

So, in other words, by not responding to her email and her constant nagging, I am, by default, not a nice guy. Josh Olson was right in his essay when he says you really can't win with these people. You are damned if you respond and damned if you don't. So here is what I wrote:

That last line -- "I just wanted a fast way to get my book out" pretty much explains why you got taken by a vanity press. The truth is, that very few self-pub authors are doing well...99.9% of them never even come close to making back their investment. The only ones who make money going to vanity presses are the vanity presses. I'm sorry if you were offended by my remark but the fact is, regardless of how talented you are, you were gullible and naive...and, by your own admission, desperate ("I justed wanted a fast way to get my book out"). XYZ counts on people like you.

One other thing, a bit of advice on dealing with authors and people you don't know: I don't work for you. I am not your child, your teacher, or your shrink. I am responding to this email as a courtesy. Chiding me repeatedly on my Facebook page as if I am your employee, or as if I have nothing better to do than talk with you, is NOT a way to win friends or influence people.

Believe it or not, I have other priorities in my life ...all of which are more important than responding to a complete stranger who didn't hear what she wanted to hear about her self-publishing mistake...and instead of leaving it at that, decided that nagging me was a bright idea.

I fully expect to get an email back where she tells me her tale of woe and then informs me that I am an insensitive prick who doesn't want to help others.

UPDATE 10/11/2009: I don't know whether she read this post or not, but I heard back from her. She did end up telling me her tale of woe, and about all the hard work she put into the book...but instead of calling me I'm a jerk, she apologized very politely:

Please accept my apology. I am not the person you have perceived me to be. I would like to be a friend. If you don't I will understand. I am no one special, not looking for fame. I do admire anyone that writes for a living. It's not easy. I feel really bad for the way I went about trying to interact with a stranger. We both felt like we were being disrespected.

UPDATE 10/13/2009:I didn't reply to her apology. So I got this email from her today:

Alot of my facebook friends that are alot more famous than you, did not like what you said. You could have posted an apology as I did.

Some people never learn. She doesn't realize it, but she is exactly the person I perceived her to be.

.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.

The Mail I Get

Those incompetent hucksters at Bookwhirl are back. This week they cold-called a major, A-list novelist I know, offering him their inept "services." The guy who called my friend, who is a household name, sounded like someone from Dell Customer Support in India and had no idea who he was speaking to.

Even though I have repeatedly trashed Bookwhirl here on my blog, today I got a solicitation from them. It was from "Marketing Consultant" Melissa Adams, who apparently hasn't mastered English yet:

I came across your book, “Mr. Monk is Miserable” and I find it very interesting. Our company, Bookwhirl.com is really interested to help you in promoting your book/s online because we find out that your book/s deserves to be recognized

And that's the most coherent paragraph in her pitch. Imagine how dumb and gullible someone would have to be to hire these dimwits. I wrote her back and suggested that she take a few English courses before trying to portray herself as an expert in promotion.

How Did I Miss This?

Glorianna Arias, aka Lady Sybilla, the delusional fanficcer who plans to self-publish her own TWILIGHT novel entitled RUSSET NOON, has launched a blog where she's sharing chapters from her upcoming, craptastic opus...

"The reason we continue to move forward with the publication of Russet Noon as a paperback novel is because we are confident that there are no grounds for a lawsuit. We do not intend to make a profit from this venture, and any books we publish will be given out for free. The only difference between Russet Noon and other Twilight fanfics is that Russet Noon will be a free paperback novel."

What she meant is that she no longer intends to make a profit from the book...but she once did. Arias was taking orders for the book on her website and on ebay until word got out about it. 

But this story keeps getting better...and weirder. Arias has announced that she's going to self-publish a "tell-all" book entitled LADY SYBILLA'S MANIFESTO: THE TRUTH BEHIND THE 'RUSSET NOON' CONTROVERSY. 

You will be able to find the book online and in the gift shops of  mental hospitals nationwide in January. 

I can't wait.

.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...

Florida Sues Writers Literary Agency

The Florida Sun Sentinel reports that the state attorney general has filed a lawsuit against Robert Fletcher, aka Writers Literary Agency, for defrauding authors:

The so-called Writer's Literary Agency used more than 20 websites and related companies to collect money from writers, who paid fees from $89 to $600 for critiques, editing and marketing of manuscripts, according to the Attorney General's Office.

The state's lawsuit says few books were ever sold as the result of company owner Robert Fletcher's efforts.

More than 175 complaints were filed from around the world about Fletcher, who admitted to having no background as a literary agent and to using at least 10 aliases in his businesses.

The lawsuit seeks to prevent Fletcher from future business ventures in the literary field, restitution for his victims and fines.

This is great news. You may recall that Fletcher unsuccessfully sued Writer Beware for exposing his activities. It would be nice if other state attorney generals were as aggressive about shutting down scam literary agents and vanity press "publishers." Even so, I'm hoping this will have a chilling affect on similar activities by others who prey on aspiring authors.

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. 

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.  

You Can Be a Kindle Millionaire, Part 8

The second month of my Kindle experiment has ended and here are the results:

(Click on the image for a larger view).

All told, I made $375 in royalties selling three out-of-print novels at $1.99 each, a short story collection at 99 cents, and an out-of-print, non-fiction reference book for $2.39 .

THE WALK sold 444 copies in June and 373 copies in July. My short story collection THREE WAYS TO DIE sold 54 copies in June and 40 in July. So sales of both titles have dropped in their second month on sale. 

Still, I'm very happy to have sold 817 copies of THE WALK to readers who missed the book the first time around in hardcover. At this rate, it won't be long until I've sold more copies of THE WALK on the Kindle than the book sold in print.

On July 14, I added my novel MY GUN HAS BULLETS to the Kindle Store. It has sold 95 copies in 17 days at $1.99 each, earning me $65 in royalties. On July 17, I added the sequel, BEYOND THE BEYOND, which has only sold 29 copies at the same price, earning me $20. 

Two days ago, I added TELEVISION SERIES REVIVALS. I set the price for that one at $2.39, just to be daring. It has sold 17 copies so far, earning me $14.28.

(All those titles are also available on Scribd and Smashwords, but so far I've earned less than $10 in combined royalties from both sites over the last two months. They can't compete with Amazon and the Kindle).

This month I did slightly better than last month, but I also added three more books to the mix. 

So far, I have earned nearly $700 on out-of-print books that I thought were long past their earning potential for me. That's not a lot of money, but it was enough to buy me a Kindle and leave plenty of money left over to buy books for it (I'm still not earning anywhere near what Joe Konrath and John August, my inspirations in this endeavor, are making with their work...but I am thankful to them both for showing me the way). 

I've said this before, but I don't think the Kindle is the wave of the future for authors or publishing...at least not yet. Not even for self-publishing. There just isn't enough money in it for original works to make a living at it or simply a decent wage.

But not all authors care about making money. Some are in it "for the art" and just to reach people. They are happy giving it away for free...or for next to nothing. Well, let me tell you something, the "free" and $1.99 Kindle books that I have sampled so far have been, for the most part, unspeakably horrendous shit. There's a reason most of these authors can't find publishers for their work. It's stuff so awful you can't even give it away. The Kindle won't change that. The novelty of downloading crap, even when it's free, will pass quickly.

I do think, though, that for authors with out-of-print books sitting in their drawers earning nothing but dust that publishing on the Kindles makes a lot of sense. I don't see the downside. It's found money. And it's fun to watch the royalties and sales click up in real-time (yes, it's a new way to procrastinate!)

I was surprised to discover, once I got my Kindle, that my out-of-print books that I posted myself are better formatted than some of my in-print titles posted by my publishers. I will be talking to my publishers about it.

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!

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 6

Here are my Amazon Kindle sales figures and royalties for July as of today at 5:49 pm. All the titles are priced at $1.99, except for THREE WAYS TO DIE, which sells for 99 cents (Click on the image for a larger view):

I sold 444 copies of THE WALK and 54 copies of THREE WAYS TO DIE in June. If sales continue as they are, I'll fall a little short of those numbers this month (and far short of the Kindle sales enjoyed by Joe Konrath and John August, the authors who inspired me to do this). Even so, it's found money for an out-of-print book and a collection of three, previously-published stories.

Encouraged by even those small numbers, and with nothing at all to lose, I added Kindle editions of my out-of-print novels MY GUN HAS BULLETS on 7/14 and BEYOND THE BEYOND on 7/17.  It's too soon for me to draw any conclusions about how they are selling.

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 5

Okay, the first month of my Kindle experiment, inspired by the successes of Joe Konrath and John August on the platform, has ended. Here are the results.

From June 1-30, the Kindle edition of my 2004 novel THE WALK sold 444 copies @ $1.89 each, for $302.67 in royalties. As of today, I have sold 37 more copies for a royalty of $24.78 (I also raised the price a dime to $1.99 for the heck of it).

The book was also available on Smashwords, where I sold one copy, and Scribed, where I sold two copies, for combined royalties of about $4. Hoo-hah.

I have since pulled the book from both Smashwords and Scribd so that it's exclusively available on the Kindle. I've done that as part of a promotional effort by Amazon that will roughly coincide with the release Tuesday of the Kindle edition of my new MONK novel, MR. MONK AND THE DIRTY COP (I'll talk more about that in a later post).

I also released a collection of previously published shorts stories that I packaged for the Kindle under the title THREE WAYS TO DIE. I sold 54 copies @ 99 cents, earning a royalty of $18.90. I sold one copy of the collection on Scribd and none on Smashwords. It remains available on all three services. 

The only promotion I have done for these books are posts on this blog, my Facebook page, Twitter, and a few Amazon Kindle forums. 

I haven't spent a dime on this...but I have spent time.

What have I learned? 

Well, there's money to be made from your out-of-print work. Not a lot, but it's found money. THE WALK wasn't earning anything for me anymore and now it is. Pretty soon, it will have earned enough to buy myself a Kindle.

I wouldn't write an original novel for the Kindle. It just doesn't make any financial sense. But if you have an out-of-print novel, and you happen to have the copy-edited manuscript sitting on your hard-drive, it makes more sense to re-publish it for the Kindle than have it brought back in print for free as a POD title through the Authors Guild. You won't get rich doing this...but it also won't cost you anything. In essense, you have absolutely nothing to lose. And if the Kindle edition sells in huge numbers, it might help get your book  back-in-print (though I haven't heard about this ever happening for anyone). On the other hand, it could also limit your agent's efforts to sell other print editions of the book...which is why I haven't posted THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE on Kindle, even though it is now out-of-print in hardcover.

I think there's no real money in "self-publishing" original novels to the Kindle if you aren't already an established name (which both Joe Konrath and John August are). You won't sell much, if anything, because you don't have a strong platform from which to promote your work. I'm not famous, but at least I have a little more recognition than your typical, unpublished author...and my Kindle sales so far aren't phenomenal or particularly lucrative. You could argue that THREE WAYS TO DIE is essentally a self-published, original novella...and it has tanked. I've sold 55 copies @ 99 cents each in total across all three web platforms this month for a royalty of less than $20. (Joe has an excellent post about the pros and cons of self-publishing here)

The one big advantage the Kindle platform has for self-publishing is that it's free and puts your book on the best bookselling website on the planet.  And It cuts the predatory, vanity presses with their outrageous fees out of the picture entirely. Good riddance! 

The "publishing" aspect of making your book available for the Kindle is not as easy as it seems at first. My manuscripts looked fine in the "preview" on the publishing page but turned out to be filled with formatting errors when actually seen on the Kindle. It took me a lot of time, and the generous assistance of some Kindle owners, to clean the manuscripts up. 

Smashwords and Scribd are also very easy to publish to...perhaps easier than Amazon...but if my experience (and Joe Konrath's) are any indication, your sales will be pitiful to non-existent. They just aren't in the game yet. Then again, they are free...so it costs you nothing to make your books available there as well. Just don't expect to make any money off of it.

So is this the future of publishing? 

I don't think so...the money just isn't there yet for authors or publishers. That's not to say it won't be in the future if the price-point for the Kindle, and products like it, drops considerably and millions of people buy them. 

Is it the future of self-publishing? 

Perhaps. It certainly has the benefit of being free to the author...at least for now. But actually selling copies will be a huge challenge. And in a broader sense, if there's a deluge of horrendous, self-published crap on the Kindle, it could actually turn readers away from risking money, even a few cents, on authors they aren't already familiar with. 

Right now the Kindle is a novelty, and users are eager for content...they're grabbing whatever they can, especially if it's under a buck or free... but if they get burned too many times by garbage, they'll be a lot more discerning about what they download, even for nothing.

That said, there are some unknown, self-published authors who are making decent money selling books on the Kindle...and I've interviewed a few of them for an article in an upcoming issue of the Novelists Inc newsletter (www.ninc.com). I believe, and so do many of them, that they are the exceptions rather than the rule. I'll share some of their experiences here at a later date.

I'll also report back on how THE WALK continues to fare as a Kindle edition.

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 4

Here's  a quick update on my e-publishing experiments. Following in the e-footsteps of Joe Konrath and John August, I made  THE WALK, my out-of-print 2004 novel, and THREE WAYS TO DIE, a collection of previously published short stories, available as Kindle editions. I subsequently made them available as downloadable PDFs on Scribd as well.

So far, I haven't had nearly the volume of sales that Joe and John have experienced. From June 1 to today, I have sold 371 copies of  THE WALK at $1.40 each (the actual price is $1.89, but Amazon has discounted it), earning myself $236.91. My sales of THREE WAYS TO DIE are flat at 54 copies at 99 cents each, earning me a whopping $18.90. I have sold two copies of THE WALK and one of THREE WAYS TO DIE on Scribd, at the same prices as the Kindle editions, earning me a staggering $2.44 in royalties.

At the request of several of my blog readers, I have gone one step further and have made THE WALK and THREE WAYS TO DIE available on Smashwords, where you can download them in the format of your choice. The price in all formats for THE WALK is $1.89, the same price I set for the Kindle edition on Amazon. 

So, here's where you can buy THE WALK and THREE WAYS TO DIE  in the e-versions of your choice... 

THE WALK on the Kindle 

THE WALK as a PDF at Scribd 

THE WALK in multiple formats, including Kindle, PDF, and Mobipocket, at Smashwords. (If you use this code KN24A at checkout, you will get 25% off, the same as the Amazon discount)

===========

THREE WAYS TO DIE on the Kindle 

THREE WAYS TO DIE as a PDF at Scribd.

THREE WAYS TO DIE in multiple formats at Smashwords. (I am experimenting with this title by using their "set your own price" feature where you, the reader, decide how much to pay).

I shall report back at the end of the month on how the books are doing on the various sites and in all the various formats. 

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire

My friend author Joe Konrath has done extraordinarily well selling some of his unpublished books on the Kindle, making $1250 in royalties this month alone. That's very impressive. And since its free and easy to upload your book to Amazon for sale on the Kindle, I'm sure that Joe's success is very exciting and encouraging news to a lot of aspiring writers out there. But I suspect Joe's success is the exception rather than the rule. That said, he is encouraging others to follow his lead. He writes:

The average advance for a first time novel is still $5000. If Kindle keeps growing in popularity, and the Sony Reader opens up to author submissions like it intends to, I think a motivated writer will be able to make $5000 a year on a well-written e-novel. Or more. All without ever being in print.

[...]Robert W. Walker, has written over forty novels. Most of them are out of print, and the rights have reverted back to him. If he digitized and uploaded his books, and priced them at $1.59 (which earns him 70 cents a download), and sold 500 copies of each per month (I sold 500 of Origin and 780 of The List in May), he'd be making $14,000 a month, or $168,000 a year, on books that Big NY Publishing doesn't want anymore.
Even if he made half, or a third, or a fifth of that, that's decent money on books that he's not doing anything else with. Now, all of us aren't Rob, and we don't have 40 novels on our hard drives, especially 40 novels that were good enough to have once been published in print. But how long do you think it will be before some unknown author has a Kindle bestseller?

Joe is making a lot of assumptions based on the admirable success of his own Kindle titles. It's a big, big, BIG leap to think, just because his book has done well, that Robert W. Walker (or any other mid-list author) will sell 500 copies...or even 50 copies...of his out-of-print books on the Kindle each month. 

But just for hell of it, I decided to follow Joe's advice and put my out-of-print 2004 novel THE WALK and a short-story collection THREE WAYS TO DIE up on Amazon for sale on the Kindle and see what happens. 

So far, after only a few days on Amazon, sales of those Kindle editions have been brisk. For instance, today THREE WAYS TO DIE was ranked as Amazon's #30 bestselling Kindle short story collection and the 40th top-selling hard-boiled Kindle mystery. 

Pretty impressive, huh? 

And it's paying off in the wallet, too, my friends. I've already raked in ten dollars in royalties. So I spent today at the Bentley dealership checking out the car I'm going to buy at year-end with my Kindle royalties.

I do not mean to belittle Joe's success on the Kindle. It is truly impressive and its a reflection of his considerable promotional skills (as well, I'm sure, of the quality of the books themselves). But do I think the vast majority of published, as well as unpublished, writers can easily achieve the same success he has with Kindle editions? No, I don't.

But I would love to be proved wrong. I'll report back at the end of the month on how my Kindle sales on these two titles are doing.

(Incidentally, several of my MONK and DIAGNOSIS MURDER books are also available on the Kindle. Although the MONK books sell very well in hardcover and paperback, the Kindle sales are miniscule...and keep in mind that my MONK books, unlike those that an unknown writer might put up for sale on the Kindle, benefit from the huge advertising, promotion, and brand awareness that goes along with a hit TV series)

UPDATE 6-11-2209: Joe Konrath has updated his Kindle sales figures and they are pretty impressive. Here's a sample:

On April 8th, I began to upload my own books to Kindle. As of today, June 11, at 11:40am, here is how many copies I've sold, and how much they've earned. 

THE LIST, a technothriller/police procedural novel, is my biggest seller to date, with 1612 copies sold. Since April this has earned $1081.75. I originally priced it at $1.49, and then raised it to $1.89 this month to see if the sales would slow down. The sales sped up instead. 

ORIGIN, a technothriller/horror occult adventure novel, is in second place, with 1096 copies sold and $690.18. As with The List and my other Kindle novels, I upped the price to $1.89. 

SUCKERS is a thriller/comedy/horror novella I wrote with Jeff Strand. It also includes some Konrath and Strand short stories. 449 copies, $306.60.

Joe also talks about some of the lessons he's learned along the way. I'll post the stats from my experiment at the end of the month.

Blog Spamming

This takes some chutzpah. S.G. Kiner is trying to promote her self-published book by spamming the comment sections of blogs all over the Internet. Take, for instance, this comment that she left on author Laura Caldwell's post at The Outfit:

"The Hong Kong Connection" is a legal thriller about a gutsy female attorney who takes on high ranking International officials. It's a taut, rollercoaster of a ride from New York to Palm Beach to Washington D.C. to Hong Kong. The plot is expertly woven, the characters persuasive, and the dialogue snappy and spot on. www.StrategicBookPublishing.com/TheHongKongConnection.html

This comment, of course, had absolutely nothing to do with the subject of Laura's post. It is, however, an example of inappropriate and stupid behavior by an aspiring author. First Kiner was dumb enough to fall for the Strategic Publishing scam (the latest incarnation of Robert Fletcher's infamous Writers Literary Agency). Now Kiner is compounding that mistake by ineptly trying to leach readers off of another author. The only thing she's succeeded in promoting is her own rudeness and ineptitude. 

When to Self-Publish

Karen Opas-Lanouette, a freelance editor and ghostwriter, believes it only makes sense to self-publish if you meet three criteria, which she's posted on LinkedIn. I think her list is great:

1) You have written a memoir or cookbook that you want to share with family and friends. Professional editing and cover design/interior layout are not an issue. A POD self-publisher like Lulu or iPublish is an inexpensive way to put a book into the hands of friends and family.

2) You have a successful business and a book will enhance your authority as an expert. You prefer the 50%+ of the cover price you will receive via this process than the 7-15% you will receive via traditional publishing. You can write the initial expenses off against marketing, and declare income as you hand sell books to clients and at lectures. In this case, it is worth the money to hire a professional editor, an experienced book designer, and create a combination of printed physical copies and a POD set-up with someone like Lightning Source.

3) The expenses involved in creating a professional quality self published book are worth it to you in the same way that going on a vacation is worth it--you are unlikely to make a profit, but the mental and emotional rewards of having your book out in the world, along with the statistically slender chance that your book will hit, make it worth the money.

That is one of the most-clearheaded, accurate, and helpful posts about self-publishing that I've read in some time. I agree with everything she's said. But I would add one more important criteria -- self-publishing makes sense if you have written a non-fiction book and have a built-in sales and promotional platform. In other words, if you lead seminars, have a TV or radio show, teach a class, preach to a congregation, etc...a stage from which you can promote the book and a ready-made venue/audience for selling it yourself.

UPDATE: Jane Smith pointed me to this excellent post that makes some excellent points about self-publishing Here's a taste:

4) Nearly all self-published books sell in minuscule numbers. How many friends do you have? How many could you persuade to part with cash? Well, that's how many books you will probably sell. Unless you are a seriously brilliant and dedicated salesperson and are prepared not to write any more ever again because you will be selling, selling, selling. You will lose hair, weight (hmm, good idea), self-esteem and years off your life; you will gain wrinkles, bags, and new respect for book-led publishers. You will probably not make any money but if you do, you will be rightly proud of it. But too tired to do it again. 

5) Whenever someone tells you that publishing is "broken", ask yourself who is saying this and why. Is it a published author? Is it an author who has won awards, received good reviews, has a genuine fanbase? Or is it someone who has either failed to get published or who has decided to make money out of other people's failure to do so? 

6) When you hear about a self-published book becoming "successful", (and this does occasionally happen, but much less often than you are led to believe) realise that this success nearly always happens when a book-led publisher takes on the formerly self-published book. So, is that a self-publishing success or proof that publishing is neither dead nor the future?

The Independence Fallacy

I have to point you to two terrific blog posts from Writer Beware's Victoria Strauss, who tackles the fallacy behind POD companies calling themselves "independent publishers"  and their customers calling themselves "independent authors." The POD companies are eager to cast themselves as the equivalent of indie movie-makers. But the comparison doesn't fit. Indie film-makers and musicians don't pay someone to package and market their work, they do it themselves. Victoria notes:

If you sign a contract with a self-publishing company, you are not an independent writer, no matter how emphatically the self-pub company says you are.

She goes on to note:

If you are a true self-publisher--if you've handled every aspect of publication on your own--then yes, you can accurately call yourself an independent author.[...]If you've used a print-on-demand self-publishing company, you've granted it a limited license to your work, you've chosen from a pre-determined package of services, you're dependent on whatever distribution the company provides, and you probably don't own your ISBN number. Also, since most self-pub companies reserve the right to discontinue publication for any reason, you don't fully control your work's availability, and since most pay a royalty, you don't control its income, either. In other words, you are not independent.

By the way, there's some very good news coming soon about the future of Writer Beware that will make it even stronger.

More Vanity Press Kool Aid

Every time a major magazine or new outlet does a story touting self-publishing, in this case a piece on the CNN tech website, I get inundated by readers asking me what I think. So does Victoria Strauss at Writers Beware...only she probably gets it ten times worse than I do. She's written a post on the formula most of these articles usually follow. She says, in part, that they:

1. Pick a rare instance of self-publishing success--in this case, Lisa Genova, whose iUniverse-published novel Still Alice garnered a major publishing deal. Make sure not to tell the whole story--omit, for instance, the fact that Genova hired PR firm Kelly & Hall--the same firm that propelled self-published Brunonia Barry to success--to publicize her book, and acquired a literary agent as a result of the attention Kelly & Hall was able to generate.

2. Segue to the growth of self-publishing and the great possibilities it offers for budding authors, while taking a swipe at the commercial publishing industry. Totally ignore the contradiction inherent in the fact the success of the self-published author just discussed hinged on her transition to a commercial publisher.

3. Toss out a few random facts about self-publishing (not all of them necessarily relevant--Khatami notes that the self-published author "retains the copyright to his or her book," as if this were not the case with commercial publishing), while ignoring the issue of low sales (the average self-published book sells fewer than 200 copies) and limited distribution (most self-pubbed books are not distributed beyond the Internet).

These articles never mention the tens of thousands of dollars that these "successful" self-published authors had to spend...and how extraordinarily rare it is for vanity press authors jump to a real publisher, which despite their hoo-hawing for vanity presses is what they all want.

The CNN website story mentions that Lulu has published 820,000 titles since 2002 but they don't say how many of those authors actually sold more than a few dozen copies of their work. A real reporter might have asked that question...and posted the answer as a reality-check. But this was nothing more than a vanity press puff piece...the last thing anyone was interested in doing was shining a light on the ugly truth.

AuthorHouse's online Fact Sheet, updated in September 2008, reported 36,823 authors and 45,993 titles. According to the New York Times, AuthorHouse reports selling more than 2.5 million books in 2008, which sounds like a lot, but averages out to around 54 sales per title.

iUniverse's 2005 Facts and Figures sheet reports that the company published 22,265 titles through the end of that year, with sales of 3.7 million: an average of 166 sales per title. Obviously some titles can boast better sales (Amy Fisher's If I Knew Then sold over 32,000 copies)--but not many. According to a 2004 article in Publishers Weekly, only 83 of more than 18,000 iUniverse titles published during that year sold at least 500 copies. And in a 2008 article in The New York Times, iUniverse's VP, Susan Driscoll, admitted that most iUniverse authors sell fewer than 200 books.

The vanity presses make their money selling books to authors, not selling books to readers.

There are three more items on Victoria's list and I'm going to refer people to it every time they email me a mindless article like this one.

An Unpleasant Word

The Winepress Group's print-on-demand vanity press Pleasant Word, which calls itself  "a leading light in Christian self-publishing," is threatening to sue author Mark Levine for criticizing their business practices and proclaiming them "a publisher to avoid" in his book "The Fine Print of Self-Publishing" (which I favorably reviewed).  Winepress/Pleasant Word sent out a press release through the Christian Communications Network that reads, in part:

His review of Pleasant Word closes with the statement that "there are plenty of honest Christian publishers. Find one."

In the book, Mr. Levine asserts that he holds publishers "who cloak their services around religion to a higher standard." However, he ranks another Christian publisher as "Outstanding," despite comparing poorly on many of the same criteria he used to judge Pleasant Word.

The Winepress Group has been a leading light in Christian self-publishing since 1991 and enjoys a reputation for integrity and quality within the industry. The company is also a member of the Better Business Bureau with an excellent record.

"This is not about a bad review," said Malcolm Fraser, the Executive Officer at WinePress, "Mr. Levine's research was certainly poor and his conclusions are totally inconsistent, but he's entitled to his opinion. However, he has misrepresented the facts and published statements that are blatantly untrue. His accusations of dishonesty cross the line into slander and break the law. It's potentially very damaging to our reputation and harmful to everyone connected with the company."

What Levine has done is scrutinize Pleasant Word's contract and fee structure in detail and comes to the conclusion that company is not very author friendly.  For instance, Pleasant Word claims they give their authors, excuse me customers, 100% of the net profits, which Levine says is not the case:

The author makes 100% of the profits after Pleasant Word nearly doubles the printing price and adds a handling fee

For a book priced at $17.99 and sold on Amazon, Levine calculates that the author's royalty is a mere fifty cents...while Pleasant Word pockets $3.60. Praise the Lord. Levine writes:

I believe it's a compromise of Christian values (and just about every other moral value I can think of) when a publisher leads authors to believe that its printing costs are 100% higher than they actually are.  

[...]When a publisher choose to make religion a central focus of its service and writes copy that suggests that due to strong Christian principles authors "know they can trust us," the publisher has a duty to be over-the-top honest. Being less than forthright about the real printing costs, while advertising how honest and Christian it is, instantly makes Pleasant Word a publisher to avoid. 

[...]There are simply no pleasant words to describe the business practices of this publisher. 

For the record, Levine also lists Tate, another "Christian" vanity press, among the self-publishers to avoid. But he praises Xulon Press as "hands down [...] the best exclusively Christian self-publishing company out there."

The Vanity Press Kool Aid

Mrs. Giggles blogs today about the slew of self-publishing hype lately. She says, in part:

The problem with self-publishing propoganda, if you ask me, is that most of these circus barkers are telling people what they want to hear, as opposed to telling them the hard facts. They tell barely literate high school dropouts that grammar and writing ability don't matter because stories "come from the heart" or something like that. They tell desperate authors that traditional publishers are evil people who deliberately set out to crush their dreams. They tell these people that they are entitled to be authors, and yes, fame and success and respect will follow shortly after because look at the handful of current self-published authors who have made it big, blah blah blah.

[...] Self-publishing is no short cut to success - it is another way to get published, but it is also another kind of hard work awaiting the author. And the rewards are far lower than you would reap with traditional publishing, unless you are an expert in your field with a ready-made audience at your seminars and classes [...] or you are content to sell a dozen or so copies and knowing that there is an audience, however small, that appreciate your art.

I couldn't agree more. The problem is that most of the reporters writing about vanity presses either have their own agenda or don't dig deeper than the press releases they are giving. Recently, Publishers Weekly profiled several fast-growing "small presses" but neglected to mention that two of them -- Greenleaf and Morgan James -- are vanity presses that make their money selling books to authors rather than readers (hat-tip to Victoria Strauss for that one). PW is an industry trade publication...they should know better.

Lightsword Becomes a Vanity Press

Now that Lightsword Publishing has gone bankrupt, crippled by revelations of fraud and incompetence, disgraced "publisher" Linda Daly has reconstituted the company as a vanity press operation. Here's what she's written on her Lightsword Digital site:

Currently, LSP Digital is NOT accepting submissions. In early Spring of 2009 we look forward in updating our guidelines for submission requirements along with a complete outline of any and all fees for publishing with LSP Digital, LLC.

Now that's chutzpah. 

Hosing Yourself

Author John Gilstrap doesn't understand the desire to self-publish at all.

I don’t understand why people would pay the thousands of dollars necessary to make self-publishing happen. If the goal is to get one’s book into the hands of friends and family, a Kinko’s would serve as well as a self-publishing house. If the desired audience is bigger than that, the writer is hosed. Selling a hundred copies to people who all know where you live is not really publishing, is it? Isn’t the point to sell not tens of copies, but tens of thousands of copies? It’s impossible to get that kind of distribution without a legitimate publisher.

He's right, of course. But some argue that pros like John are looking at this from the wrong angle. Some authors aren't interested in making any money on their art, they are in it for the creative expression. Well, if that's the case, why not just post the book for free download on a blog? doesn't understand why anyone would self-publish.

Harvesting More Suckers

Brien Jones is at it again...the vanity press huckster is offering to sell your self-published book to Hollywood using all of his amazing connections (which, translated, means he's going to attend "The Great American Pitchfest" like hundreds of other wanna-bes).  Victoria Strauss at Writer's Beware has the scoop on Brien's pitch, which sounds an awful lot like the scams run by Bookman/Airleaf, his former employer, which I first blogged about back in 2005.. Airleaf has since been shut down by the Indiana Attorney General.

No End to Vanity...or Stupidity

The New York Times reports that print-0n-demand publishers are flourishing...even if their customers are not.

As traditional publishers look to prune their booklists and rely increasingly on blockbuster best sellers, self-publishing companies are ramping up their title counts and making money on books that sell as few as five copies, in part because the author, rather than the publisher, pays for things like cover design and printing costs. 

[...]“It used to be an elite few,” said Eileen Gittins, chief executive of Blurb, a print-on-demand company whose revenue has grown to $30 million, from $1 million, in just two years and which published more than 300,000 titles last year. Many of those were personal books bought only by the author. “Now anyone can make a book, and it looks just like a book that you buy at the bookstore.” 

[...]Author Solutions estimates that the average number of copies sold of titles published through one of its brands is just 150. Indeed, said Robert Young, chief executive of Lulu Enterprises, based in Raleigh, N.C., a majority of the company’s titles are of little interest to anybody other than the authors and their families. “We have easily published the largest collection of bad poetry in the history of mankind,” Mr. Young said. 

It's sad that there are so many suckers out there. That said, the New York Times piece should be required reading for anybody thinking about going to a vanity press...and is a sharp counterpoint to Lev Grossman's inane opinion piece in Time Magazine this week.

(Thanks to Daniel Powless for the link)

Is Free, "Ravenously Referential" Fiction the Future of Publishing?

A lot of folks have sent me a link to Lev Grossman's essay in Time Magazine that proclaims that:

Saying you were a self-published author used to be like saying you were a self-taught brain surgeon. But over the past couple of years, vanity publishing has becoming practically respectable.

He's the only person, besides a vanity press huckster, I have ever heard voice that opinion. He tries to back it up by citing a couple of the extraordinarily rare examples of self-publishing success. He neglects to mention, just like the vanity-press hucksters do, that these are extremely rare cases that represent a miniscule percentage of the self-published books printed every year.

But I'm not surprised he neglects that fact...and so many others in his essay. He's the same guy who thought Lori Jareo, the dimwit who self-published her STARS WARS fanfic and sold it as a novel on Amazon, was some kind of "unsung hero." He's also notorious for trying to jack up the rankings of his novel on Amazon by posting scores of fake, five-star reviews.

He believes that publishing books on paper, paying authors advances and giving booksellers the opportunity to return unsold books are old-fashioned practices that are so "20th century" and will soon become extinct in favor of  -- drumroll please -- fanfic.

Put these pieces together, and the picture begins to resolve itself: more books, written and read by more people, often for little or no money, circulating in a wild diversity of forms, both physical and electronic, far outside the charmed circle of New York City's entrenched publishing culture.

[...]Not that Old Publishing will disappear--for now, at least, it's certainly the best way for authors to get the money and status they need to survive--but it will live on in a radically altered, symbiotic form as the small, pointy peak of a mighty pyramid. [...]The wide bottom of the pyramid will consist of a vast loamy layer of free, unedited, Web-only fiction, rated and ranked YouTube-style by the anonymous reading masses.

And what will that fiction look like? Like fan fiction, it will be ravenously referential and intertextual in ways that will strain copyright law to the breaking point.

Only someone who thinks Lori Jareo is a pioneer, and who wrote a novel about a "Boston slacker who has trouble distinquishing between reality and Star Trek," could make that prediction with a straight face. 

He's looking at publishing from within the insular world of science fiction and fantasy fandom, which bears little resemblance to reality. I don't think the majority of book-readers today-- the millions who can't speak Klingon and never heard of Joss Whedon -- would embrace the "ravenously referential" and poorly-written world of free literature that he desperately hopes the future of publishing will become.   

I agree with him that publishing is changing, and I suspect that ebooks and print-on-demand will be a big part of the future of the industry, but I doubt that wide popular and critical acceptance of self-publishing and fanfiction will be the ultimate result. To put it in terms Grossman would understand, I think commercial publishing, brick-and-mortar bookstores, and authors being paid for their work are practices that will "live long and prosper" in the face of new technology and new means of communication.

Vanity Consolidation

First the vanity press Authorhouse bought iUniverse, which was one of the few "reputable" players in the largely disreputable print-on-demand, self-publishing industry. Now Authorhouse has gobbled up xlibris, too. Can Lulu be far behind?

Other rivals in the print-on-demand space include closely held Lulu Enterprises Inc.'s Lulu.com, based in Raleigh, N.C. Last October, Lulu laid off 24 employees, including its president, or nearly 25% of its work force. "It was less about the state of Lulu and more about the economy," said Gail Jordan, a company spokeswoman. "We pared back to ride out the storm. Our company is actually doing well."

Yeah, right.  But in her comment lies the good news: the consolidation of the vanity press business means that the sleazy little fly-by-night vanity presses (like Jones Harvest)  are probably doomed. If the big-boys of sham publishing can't make it on their own, it's unlikely these tiny, far less capitalized vanity presses will be able to stay alive for long. I say good riddance.

On the other hand, Victoria Strauss fears the lack of competition among vanity presses will lead to more, and costlier, abuse of the aspiring authors who use those services.