 [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] |
Last week, I saw a lot of authors linking to “Free” Books Aren’t Free, a blog post by author Saundra Mitchell talking about the costs of book piracy. Let me state up front that illegally downloading books is stealing. If you’re doing it, at least have the guts to admit you’re committing theft instead of spouting off excuses. With that said, I disagree with some of Mitchell’s reasoning. She argues: If even HALF of those people who downloaded my book that week had bought it, I would have hit the New York Times Bestseller list. If the 800+ downloads a week of my book were only HALF converted into sales, I would earn out in one more month. Yes, and if my dogs pooped gold, I could quit my day job. But it ain’t going to happen. Author Scott Nicholson guesses that 10,000 illegal downloads equates to maybe 5 lost sales. I suspect he’s underestimating, and the true numbers are somewhere between his and Mitchell’s, but I don’t think there’s any way to say for certain. I’m just not buying the argument that half of those downloaders would have actually bought Mitchell’s book (particularly since we’re talking about a hardcover.) She goes on to say: [M]y book is never going to be available in your $region, not for lack of trying. My foreign rights agent is a genius at what she does, and has actively tried to sell it everywhere- UK, AU, China, France, you name it, she tried to sell it there. SHADOWED SUMMER will only be coming out in Italy, because that’s the only place there’s a market for it. The implication being that piracy killed her chances at foreign sales? I’m confused on this one. Does the availability of a pirated English book really reduce demand for a Chinese edition of said book? I suppose it’s possible … most countries are more multilingual than the U.S. But it’s a stretch, and I’m not convinced. [T]he sales figures on SHADOWED SUMMER had a seriously detrimental effect on my career. It took me almost two years to sell another book. I very nearly had to change my name and start over. And my second advance? Was exactly the same as the first because sales figures didn’t justify anything more. The thing that makes me hesitate here is that piracy is an across-the-board problem. Every commercially published author’s books end up on torrent sites. Some authors are still doing quite well. Others, not so much. So does it make sense for struggling authors to blame book pirates for low sales when other authors are selling well despite said pirates? Mitchell says a lot I agree with, too. If you can’t afford books, go to the library. Try to get review copies. Or maybe if you can’t afford the books, you just don’t get them. Wanting a book doesn’t give you the right to steal it. I agree with her that, “People who illegally download books are more interested in their convenience than in supporting the authors they want to read.” I’m NOT saying book piracy is harmless. (To authors or to readers either, for that matter. Laura Anne Gilman recently pointed another example of a torrent site which was installing malware with downloads.) Bottom line, it’s a dickish thing to do. And it does hurt authors. How much, I don’t know. I suspect it will hurt us more in coming years, as electronic reading becomes more widespread and book scanning technology improves. Lost productivity alone is a serious cost for authors who try to keep up with DMCA notifications to various sites. It pisses me off when I find people illegally sharing my books online. And I think it’s important to educate readers. But I don’t think it helps our cause to distort or exaggerate the problem. Discussion welcome and appreciated. I expect some disagreement on this one, and as always, I reserve the right to change my mind. Update: Sullivan recently responded that the errors were part of Konrath’s introduction, and were his mistakes, not hers. Konrath’s post was edited within 24 hours of my post, but looking at it now, it does appear that the mistakes I pointed out are Konrath’s, not Sullivan’s. My apologies to Sullivan for that. Robin Sullivan had a guest post at J. A. Konrath’s blog recently, wherein she presented a list of successful self-published authors, asking, “Are you ready to be blown away?” She listed a number of authors who sold anywhere from 2500 to 100,000 books in December, 2010, and adds, “MORE WRITERS THAN J.A. KONRATH ARE DOING WELL SELF-PUBLISHING, AND THEY DON’T HAVE PUBLISHING BACKGROUNDS … On this list, only five people had previous print novels. The rest did not.” If you’re curious, those five people are: Scott Nicholson, J. A. Konrath, Lee Goldberg, Stephen Leather, Aaron Patterson, Beth Orsoff, Blake Crouch– Okay, admittedly, I was an English major, but that seems like more than five to me. You could argue for the addition of folks like Selena Kitt, whose first book was published by StarDust Press. That’s an e-publisher, which to me counts as publishing background, even if she didn’t have a print novel. It’s frustrating. Knowing Sullivan got that part wrong makes it difficult to trust that the rest is accurate. The sales numbers quoted are self-reported by the authors in the Kindleboards, collected by Sullivan and another blogger. One problem – and this isn’t Sullivan’s fault – is that there’s no outside source. There is no Bookscan for e-book sales, so we just have to trust them. And I do trust that some of these numbers are correct, but overall? I’m … skeptical. Konrath himself presents another list of authors selling more than 1000 e-books a month, “none of who had any traditional publishing background (no deals, no agents).” Authors like Aaron Patterson– Wait, didn’t we hear that name before? He also lists William Meikle, who published with KHB Books. I can’t say for certain, but KHB looks like small press–are we counting that as publishing background? Then there’s Bella Andre. You can check out one of her early books from Simon and Schuster. This post took about an hour to put together, and I didn’t check every single author on the list. I’m not writing this post to bash e-publishing. I want to learn more about how e-publishing is evolving, and how I might be able to take advantage of it as an author. But I want facts, not cheerleading. Reliable data, not hearsay cribbed from other blogs. How am I supposed to trust these wonderful numbers if the people putting them forth aren’t fact-checking their own claims? I’m not going to warn people away from e-publishing. It’s growing, and while I’m personally happy with DAW, I do believe electronic self-publishing is becoming more of a viable option for some writers. Neither of the lists above were entirely accurate, but they do include successful e-publishing authors. Just be careful. And don’t believe everything you read on the internet. # Two random notes from perusing the lists: 1. Many of the authors mentioned as selling all of those books in December had released one or more new titles in December. I.e., in some cases this may reflect an initial sales spike, as opposed to long-term sales. (For comparison, I sold well over 1000 copies of Red Hood’s Revenge in the first week it was out.) 2. A number of these authors were selling e-published books about how to succeed with e-publishing. I’m not drawing any conclusions from this, but it was an interesting pattern. I get asked about cover art fairly often. How is it designed, how much input does the author get, etc. I spoke to Scott Fischer, the artist for books one, two, and four in the princess series, and he generously agreed to let me share his sketches and the finished art. The process started late last year, after my editor Sheila read the manuscript. During our chat about revisions, she took a few minutes to discuss possible cover ideas. I should note that this doesn’t always happen. I had no input into my first few covers, and not all editors want authorial input. My contract gives me zero control over cover issues, which is the norm. (See here for a very different, very painful publishing tale which includes cover problems.) In early November, I e-mailed Sheila some notes about the characters and setting: not a set of instructions, but brief descriptions to help the artist. For example: Talia: Talia hates the cold. She’s wearing a heavy jacket, but keeps her hands bare for fighting. She’s darker skinned, with black hair she keeps pulled or tied back. At one point near the end, she carries a [REDACTED]. She’ll be in boots, and possibly a scarf as well if that doesn’t obscure her too much. Being Talia, she also carries half an armory on her person. Scott mentioned that these have been helpful. In his words, they’re “detail specific, but not too controlling.” On Monday, January 4, Sheila sent me the first sketch. Have you noticed a pattern here? There’s no direct author-artist communication; everything goes through the editor, and I suspect that’s for the best. I might be the brilliantest writer o Here’s sketch number one. Click for a larger view. Sheila didn’t like the stars, and wasn’t happy with the poses for Danielle and Talia. I pretty much agreed with her, though I liked the overall layout, and thought this had the potential to be the best cover in the series. I also suggested that the castle wasn’t quite right for the book, but this was a minor nitpick. Snow’s sword isn’t precisely accurate to the book either, but you know what? I like it. I think it’s more important to have a good, attractive cover than it is for that cover to be 100% accurate. (I’d fight over major errors, or the whitewashing of a cover, but not something like this.)
That palace was still nagging at me. Sheila said she thought it had too much of an SF feel. But we were close! I’m a little curious where the cover text will fit, but I figure that’s DAW’s problem to figure out. At this point, I really couldn’t wait to see the finished version. Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long. Scott turned in the finished art on Monday the 10th. I’m still talking to my editor, and there may be some minor tweaks, but this is pretty much final:
What do you think? I’d love it if other authors could weigh in on the cover art process. — My thanks to Scott, both for producing yet another awesome cover, and for permission to share his work. Check out his web site or his Facebook page. He’s also got a children’s book out called Jump [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy], which — in addition to being available at the usual outlets, was packaged with boxes of Cheerio’s. And he’s a musician. This is a man who’s clearly exceeded his quota of coolness. There are an awful lot of myths and misconceptions about writing, and one of the biggest is that writers are all rich, hanging out in their mansions and sipping champagne and role-playing with dice made from etched diamond. So for the past few years, I’ve been posting my writing income and expenses to provide what I hope is a more useful data point. Posts from previous years are here: 2007, 2008, 2009. I ended 2010 with a last-minute check from my agent for the French on-signing advance for Red Hood’s Revenge. With that added to the total, I made $25,718 in writing income in 2010, down about $3000 from the previous year. Here’s the graph going back as far as I have data for:
2008 was a fluke. A nice fluke, but a fluke nonetheless, with a big spike due to the success of the goblin books in Germany. The princess books haven’t been as popular, and I think the ongoing decline of that particular income stream is part of the reason for the drop from 2009 to 2010. But let’s break down the 2010 numbers a little further: Novels (U.S. Sales): $9297 I still make the majority of my income through foreign sales (Thank you, Joshua!), but the balance shifted a bit this year. Foreign sales were a smaller percentage of the overall income, with the money from DAW here in the U.S. climbing a bit higher. I have no idea what this means for the long term, but it’s interesting. That foreign income includes novel sales to France, Germany, and the Czech Republic, along with royalties from Germany and Poland. In general, individual foreign sales tends to be less than their equivalent U.S. deals … but those foreign sales add up. Expenses were about $2000, with more than half of that going into conventions. Of course, this is all before taxes. I have a higher deduction at the day job, which balances out a lot of the self-employment taxes I owe for the writing, but even so the numbers here don’t exactly represent the amount I put in my pocket at the end of the day. So that’s 2010. A pretty good year, and I’m expecting 2011 to be even better, at least with the U.S. income stream. No clue what to expect with the overseas sales. And to answer a commonly asked question, no I am not planning to quit the day job any time soon. Questions and comments are very much welcome, as always. Last week, GalleyCat reported on the possibility of Borders buying Barnes & Noble. I don’t give a lot of credence to rumors, and I’m doubtful this one will actually happen. But the idea scares me. Let me tell you a story from years ago. Tobias Buckell and I were in Chicago for Windycon, along with my then-agent Steve Mancino. When we weren’t conventioning, we headed out to various bookstores to sign stock: Crystal Rain for Toby, and Goblin Quest for me. Within an hour, we had the routine down: When we went into a Borders, I would run to grab my goblin books, autographing like a fiend. Toby got to sit around twiddling his thumbs. When we went to B&N, it was my turn on thumb-twiddling duty while Toby did his autographing thing. There were a few exceptions, but we hit a lot of stores, and the pattern was obvious. Borders liked the goblins, but wasn’t interested in Caribbean steampunk space adventure. B&N liked Crystal Rain, but wasn’t excited about goblins. In each case, the chain’s buyer had looked at our books and decided whether or not to stock our books. How much better would Goblin Quest have sold if the B&N buyer had liked it? How much worse would I have done if the Borders buyer hadn’t? These are the two biggest brick & mortar chains in the United States, meaning a good portion of book sales go through these two businesses. Imagine this hypothetical merger actually goes through. Now it’s one chain. One buyer. One person’s opinion will have an even greater impact on your sales. One person determines which books you find on the shelves, and which ones you don’t. It scares me. I imagine some will see this as yet more proof that brick & mortar stores are dying, and online sales/e-books are the wave of the future. Amazon has millions of books available, after all. (Aside from the ones they ban for being too naughty.) But that means your book is one among millions. I know Amazon is working to help readers find new books/authors they’ll like, but I don’t think they’re there yet. I believe there is a need for a gatekeeper function. Physical stores have to rotate stock, emphasizing new releases, popular titles, and books they believe customers will buy. They go through those millions of titles to find the ones they believe their customers are most interested in. So if your book gets into the stores, it has a better chance of being seen by random browsers. Let me put it this way. Amazon has a listing for every single Publish America title. Your local bookstore might special order a PA title for you, but you’re not going to find them eating up shelf space. When you have a lot of bookstores making different choices, I think this model can work. Particularly when stores have the autonomy to buy and stock books that will be popular in that region. When only two chains dominate sales, the bookstore-as-gatekeeper model develops problems, but it’s better than a single big chain. The idea of merging the two, or of Borders simply going out of business . . . either way, you’re left with one giant. One gatekeeper controlling a frighteningly disproportionate number of books. My agent has posted his thoughts about the state of Borders and the two big U.S. chains. NPR recently published an article talking about how the changing nature of bookselling could actually strengthen the independent bookstore. What do you think? Amber Stults tweeted a link to an article in the L.A. Times, announcing that Amazon is now offering access to Bookscan data through the Amazon Author Central program. I’ve checked my Author Central page, and what do you know — I’ve got pages and pages of shiny, wonderful sales data. This appears to be pretty much the full Bookscan data for all of my books, not just the Amazon sales. ETA: Amazon is providing a four-week window of sales data. Meaning you’ll be able to see how your books are doing over the past four weeks, but won’t be able to check back to see sales from six months ago. They’re also providing more information about Amazon ranks tracked over time for your books. If you need me, I’ll be having a datagasm… Over at Making Light, James MacDonald explains How to Get Published. Before I go any further, let me state for the record that MacDonald knows his stuff. He contributes good writing advice at Making Light, Absolute Write, and elsewhere. That said, I’m gonna argue with a few of his points now, ’cause what fun would it be if we all agreed with each other? To be a writer, you must write. Absolutely, 100%, yes! However, MacDonald goes on to give the oft-repeated advice, “Write every day.” Good advice, but not an iron-clad rule. I write five days a week, but generally don’t write on weekends. I believe writing every day is a good goal, but ultimately, it’s important to find the schedule that works for you. The important thing is that you’re writing. On the day you reach THE END, put the book aside for six weeks. Let me put it this way: I wrote, revised, and started submitting Goblin Quest [B&N | Mysterious Galaxy | Amazon] over the course of six weeks, and that seems to have worked out pretty well for me. Distance can be a very good thing, and these days I usually try to do a short story or something else between drafts/books as a palate-cleanser. But once again, writing is like the Matrix: some “rules” can be bent, while others can be broken.1 Now find a publisher. This is exactly what I did when I finished Goblin Quest, actually. It’s not the path I’d follow if I had to do it all over again today. Publishers are slow to respond (2.5 years in one case), and they ask for exclusivity. Personally, I would go directly to querying agents, and let them submit to the publishers. Authors have sold books both ways, as you can see in that First Book Survey someone did earlier this year. I remember being a new author trying to break in, and assuming that Advice = Law. If a pro said I had to sell short stories before selling a novel, then by Asimov’s Sideburns, that was what I must do! It messed me up more than once. So while I think it’s incredibly important to listen to authors who have this sort of knowledge and experience, it’s also important to remember that none of us have the Gospel of Getting Published. (And I don’t believe MacDonald is trying to preach Publishing Gospel, but I know how easy it is for new writers to take things as such.) That said, MacDonald gives some good advice, and those working to break in could do much worse than to take a few minutes to read his post. —
I’ve updated the Reporting Sexual Harassment in SF/F page with a link to the Geek Feminism Wiki’s Sample Convention Anti-Harassment Policy. I particularly appreciate the internal guidelines for convention staff. # Months ago, when I was talking about how my e-book sales were about 3-5% of my print sales, a champion of self-publishing said my problem was that my $6.99 e-books were too expensive, and if I dropped the price to $2.99, I’d have better sales.
I posted my first week’s results, and said I’d follow up in a month or so. Well, over the past weekend I came across a post that mentioned the “great success” authors like Jim Hines and others have had putting their own work out through Amazon, which told me it was definitely time for a follow-up. I’ve got about six weeks worth of data now. Are you ready to see what my great success looks like? B&N doesn’t give a nice week-by-week breakdown, but here are my weekly Amazon Kindle sales.
All total, I’ve sold 21 copies through Amazon. Add in the 4 copies sold through Barnes & Noble, and I’ve made about $70, selling an average of about 4 copies a week. For those keeping score at home, this would not even cover the conversion costs for having the files prepped. (You can do this yourself, of course, if you have the time and the know-how. I suspect I could have taught myself the tech side, but time is another issue…) I should note that I’ve done nothing to promote this particular book. I’ve been busy attending cons, working on short stories, revising Snow Queen, and also doing the day job and taking care of the family as my wife recovers from knee surgery. But it’s pretty clear to me that simply putting a book out there isn’t enough. By contrast, I haven’t really been promoting my books with DAW very much these past weeks, either. In those same six weeks, my books with DAW sold around 2000 print copies (averaging about 300/book), which translates to about a thousand dollars in royalties … $850 for me after my agent takes his cut. (I have no access to the weekly e-book sales for the DAW books.) I know there are people making self-pubbed e-books work for them. My friend Sherwood Smith has been successfully selling some books this way. I suspect that if I released one of my fantasy titles, either a reprint or an original goblin/princess book, I’d do a lot better. But Goldfish Dreams is a mainstream title, so doesn’t necessarily tap into my preexisting audience. I also know that an ongoing, persistent sales effort can drive sales. I have friends who keep up a pretty constant sales push to sell their e-books, and it does seem to help them sell more books. But I barely have time to keep up with the blog. I’d rather keep writing new books and the occasional short story, and let my publisher do most of the work to actually get my books into the hands of readers. I’ll keep checking in with further data, but my conclusions so far?
Thoughts and comments are welcome, as always! Reminder - tomorrow is the last day to enter to win books by Tanya Huff and Marie Brennan! # Joshua (my agent) e-mailed me after Monday’s blog post to tell me I should really stop calling myself a midlist author. Personally, I’d rather call myself Segway Ninja and Tribble Juggler Jim C. Hines. But his e-mail got me thinking, and I realized I don’t even know what “midlist” means.
Years ago, I remember Elizabeth Bear commenting that to be a midlist author, you have to have five books in print. This isn’t an official Law of Publishing or anything, but it stuck with me. Getting my fifth book into print was a nice little milestone. But am I a midlist author now? I have six books in print, so maybe I’m upper midlist? Lower frontlist? Joshua said my sales continue to improve and my backlist is selling well, and these things propel me past midlist status. Maybe I should start calling myself a Future Frontlist Author? It was also pointed out that, at certain publishers which will remain anonymous, the fact that I’ve made the Locus bestseller list with my past four books would get me billed not as a midlister, but as National Bestselling Author Jim C. Hines. Pardon me while I choke on my Diet Cherry Pepsi. I know this much: I’m not about to start slapping “Bestselling Author” onto my business cards. While technically true, it feels deceptive. Like certain self-published authors who make it into the top 10 of some obscure Amazon subcategory and immediately dub themselves “Bestselling Author Spock T. Pizzatrousers” or whatever. In some ways, this is pointless navel-gazing. Who cares what I call myself, as long as I keep writing, selling, and enjoying it? But the discussion brought something into focus: in certain respects, midlist feels like a relative term, a comparison of your own success to that of other authors … and I have no clue where I fall on that continuum. I know I’m not selling like Gaiman or Rowling or Harris, or any of those NYT Bestselling authors. But that only tells me I’m not in the very top percentile. Am I in the top ten percent? Twenty? At least in the upper half? Again, in some respects, it doesn’t matter. I’m not trying to compete with my peers (except maybe that Anton Strout fellow), and as long as DAW keeps buying my books, I’m happy. But I feel like I’m in the dark here. If I’m future-lower-front-and-slightly-off-center list, should I be pushing for larger advances or better/bigger deals? How confident should I be in my long-term career? It reminds me of karate. In Sanchin-Ryu, I’ve never been told what the requirements are for any given rank. I had to teach myself not to worry about it, and to just concentrate on improving. Let my sensei decide when I’m ready for the next rank. But then, I’m not trying to make a career out of Sanchin-Ryu… What do you think midlist really means? Who do you think of as midlist authors? And for the published authors, am I the only one who feels clueless about how successful (or not) I really am? Nifty First Book Friday news: Harry Connolly’s piece has been picked up and reprinted at Black Gate. Congrats, Harry! # I’ve talked a bit about e-books and self-publishing. There are folks like J. A. Konrath who claim to make it work. When I posted about my electronic royalties, Konrath was one of the first to jump in and say flat-out that $6.99 was too much, and I would make more if the books were cheaper.
I intend to be 100% transparent about this, sharing sales and royalties and the rest. I’m as curious as anyone to see what happens. Here are the advantages I believe I have, going into this:
On the other hand, this is a mainstream book, so I’m not sure how much my stature as a fantasy author will help. And as a reprint of an out-of-print book, I lose the initial friends & family sales, because many of them already have the printed book. My investment so far:
I honestly don’t know what to expect. I imagine there will be some initial sales, but how many? I couldn’t say. And what will happen in the long term? Will sales grow over time or die off? I keep reading arguments about how e-books can be so much more profitable for authors. Will I actually see a significant profit? Your guess is as good as mine. I am not going to start going all-out on advertising and self-promotion. For one thing, I don’t have the time. For another, that sort of thing gets annoying fast. I’ll post updates about the experiment, but I’m not going to become That Guy. Let the experiment begin! Where to purchase:
Description: Eileen Greenwood’s first year at Southern Michigan University means freedom: freedom from the brother who molested her, freedom from the father who refused to believe her, and freedom from the sister who turned her back on it all. Eileen desperately wants to escape the past and live her life, but nightmares and flashbacks make it impossible to forget what she endured. Instead, she becomes obsessed with learning what transformed her brother into a predator. In the effort to understand, she risks her health, her friendships, and her future. She will face both her own memories of the past, and a monster far worse than her brother … if she can find the strength to confront him. |
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Copyright © 2012 Jim C. Hines - All Rights Reserved |
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So in mid-October, I put my mainstream novel Goldfish Dreams 
Oh, I know the term originates from publishers’ catalogs. The Big Names are there at the front of the list. Older and poorly-performing books get tucked away in back. The rest get tossed somewhere in the middle of the list, ergo midlist.
I decided to experiment. I’ve taken my mainstream novel Goldfish Dreams and have released it in 
