Better or Worse

by She Who Shall Not Be Named AKA She With More Names Than She Can Keep Straight

Lately, I’ve gotten sucked into some discussion on how – or whether – self-publishing is better than traditional (AKA ‘legacy’) publishing. With that in mind, I thought we’d have a little discourse on the various options available to authors today, and some of the benefits and drawbacks of each.

I started out in traditional publishing, with a Big Six publisher, so we’ll start there. The Big Six, by the way, are Hatchette, HarperCollins, McMillan, Penguin, Random House, and Simon and Schuster. Just so you know.

A contract with a Big Six publisher is many an author’s dream. There’s a lot of prestige in being able to say, “My new book with Penguin is coming out next month.” (Believe me, I know; I’ve said it.) The Big Six have a lot of clout, a lot of money, a lot of connections. The advances are almost always better than with a smaller publisher (although royalties tend to be standard across the board). The distribution tends to be better. The name opens a lot of doors that are closed to smaller publishers or the self-published. There’s the assumption that if you’re published with a Big Six publisher, your book must be worthwhile. You can expect to get professional cover art, professional editing, and professional support. You might even get co-op, which is money your publisher pays to bookstores to secure special placement for your book when it’s released, in the front of the store. It doesn’t happen for every book, but it does for some, and it’s costly, so mostly only the really big publishers can afford it.

On the flipside, the author is a very small part of the giant machine of a big publisher. Most of us are tiny cogs and screws, easily replaced if we show signs of wear and tear. Some of us are a little more important – the New York Times bestsellers, say – but the machine will continue on without us, even so. The world has enough of those too, to carry on, and new ones are made all the time. There’s very little personalized attention to be gotten, since even your editor is working with a bunch of other authors, and you might feel lost in the shuffle.

Beyond the Big Six, there are a lot of smaller, independent publishers. Some are big and fairly well known in the industry, some are tiny and most people have never heard of them. Some have been around for ages, and are very well regarded. Some haven’t had time to prove themselves yet. Some are e-presses only, and since I have no personal experience with those, I’m going to leave them alone. If you’ve got info regarding the ins and outs of e-presses, please leave your helpful hints in the comments. The one immediate drawback that even I can see, however, is that if you decide to go with an e-press, there’ll be no hardcopy books available anywhere.

Moving right along: I placed two books with a small indie publisher a couple of years ago. Small publishers are different from big publishers. There’s still the fact that you’re traditionally published instead of publishing yourself, but beyond that, small publishing has more in common with indie than it does with Big Six, I think.

Assuming the editor is competent, you’ll get professional editing. Sometimes it can be hit and miss, since not all editors are competent. In my case, I was lucky, and the editor was very good at her job. They’re not always that way. (The same goes for independent editors, by the way, if you’ve ever considered hiring one for your WIP.)

Same goes for the cover artist. Some covers from small publishers are awesome; some not so great. The advance is often minimal, or non-existent. Distribution can be difficult, since a small publisher doesn’t have the same clout as the Big Six, and they almost never have the money for co-op, so even if your book makes it into the store, it’ll be on a shelf in the back, with less chances of being discovered by someone browsing for something new to read.

On the other hand, you get lots of personal attention. Small publishers work much closer to the bone than big ones, and they usually only take on books they really love. Where a Big Six publisher might feel fine about using you as a tax write-off if things don’t work out, a small publisher almost desperately wants you to succeed, and what they can’t provide financially, they do their best to make up for in other ways, like attention and effort.

Finally, there’s DIY. Self publishing. Indie publishing. Or (thank you, Jennifer Crusie!) author originated digital publishing.

Traditional publishing, whether Big Six or indie, is a private club. You might get in, but a lot of people don’t. A lot of those people are the ones who are now self-publishing and feeling that tradipubs (don’t look at me, I didn’t coin the phrase) have done them wrong. They’re very vocal in their admonishments to publishers to wake up and smell the decaf. E-books are here to stay and traditional publishing is as dead as the dodo; it just hasn’t realized it yet. (I don’t think so, but that’s a blog for another day. This one is already long enough.)

There are a lot of benefits to DIY, if you’re wired that way. I’ve self-published three books, and I have to say I enjoy the fact that it’s all up to me. I’m control-freaky enough to get off on being in total control of every word, every period, every semi-colon. I don’t have to listen to an editor tell me that such and such isn’t appropriate for the genre and has to go. Nobody messes with my prose but me.

On the flipside, nobody messes with my prose but me, and most of us can benefit greatly from an unbiased eye on our work. Some of us are lucky enough to have critique partners/groups and beta readers who catch our flaws, but if you’re not one of those, you’ll probably want to hire an independent editor to look over the book before your hit the publish button. The biggest reason self-publishing has gotten a bad rep, is because the quality is often inferior. Not always, but enough that the stigma has attached itself. Hiring an editor is something you’ll have to pay for out of pocket, that a traditional publisher, big or small, will do for you free of charge.

Same thing with formatting and cover. I formatted my own books – the trick is to start with a clean manuscript – but if you’re not technically inclined, and you’re not sleeping with a techie, you’ll probably want to hire that out, as well. It’ll run you a couple hundred bucks, which also comes out of your pocket. Then there’s the cover. Your traditional publisher takes care of that for you. When you self-pub, you have to do it yourself. Again, if you’re inclined that way, you can make your own. If you’re not, you’re better off hiring a cover artist. It’ll cost you, but it’s worth it. An amateurish cover will mark you as a DIY’er right off the bat.

And after you’ve uploaded the book, it’s still all up to you. Nobody is there to give you a hand with publicity. There’s no co-op, and no book signings. No catalogue, no one telling the book buyers at Barnes and Noble or Amazon that they need to stock your book. It’s ALL. UP. TO. YOU.

So there you have it. The pros and cons of traditional vs. indie publishing.

There’s a whole lot more I could say about all the options, and the nitty-gritty of making them work for you – or not, as the case may be – but we’re at over 1300 words already, and at this rate I’ll probably get a prize or something for the longest Working Stiffs blog this year.

So whatcha think, fellow Stiffs and readers? Is there a ‘better’ option? Or does it just come down to ‘better for you’?

Since I'm in Florida this week, you'll have to debate amongst yourselves, I'm afraid. If I have time between the sun, the sand, the dolphins, and the hot guys, I'll try to stop by, but don't count on it.

Oh yes: Contract Pending is now available as an ebook on Amazon, BN and Smashwords. Anyone looking for a freebie review copy - I'd love a review in return, please! - email me and I'll give you the coupon code.

The debate rages on

The debate on pricing in indie publishing, that is.

If you have a Kindle or Nook, or for that matter a Kobo, Sony, or iPad, and you read e-books at all, you’ve probably noticed the wide disparity in pricing. The price of a newly released e-book of a hardcover bestseller can be as high as $12.99 or more. On the other hand, there are plenty of $.99 e-books to be had, as well.

Mostly, those 99-centers are from indie, i.e. self-published, authors. Publishers have too much overhead to price their books that low. Amazon pays 70% royalty on e-books listed at $2.99 or more, but only 35% on those below that magic divide. Most of the time, you won’t find a traditionally published e-book much lower than $4.99. That seems a fair price to me, for a book that’s been professionally written and edited and that has professional cover art. There’s a certain sense of legitimacy in the traditionally published books: whereas I may not like the content, at least I’ll know that the product itself is pretty good.

As you know, I have a few traditionally published books out there. They’re released in mass market paperback for $7.99, which is a pretty standard price for a mass market paperback of 90,000 words. The electronic versions of those same books are also priced at $7.99. Same as the paperback. This also seems like an industry standard, and in polls, that $6.99-$7.99 price point is comfortable to a lot of people. Anything above that, and people start to complain that prices are too high.

So that’s the traditional e-books. In indie publishing, there’s no real standard. We’re all just trying to figure out what works. And we all seem to have different ideas. There are people like John Locke, who’s making a ton of money selling all his books at $.99 each. He has lots of titles that people can choose from, and that probably has something to do with it. When you have a lot of inventory, you’ll make more money than if you have just a little, regardless of price.

Some people, like golden girl Amanda Hocking and e-publishing guru Joe Konrath, as well as our own Stiffs buddies C.J. Lyons and L.J. Sellers, take a more staggered approach. They offer some of their books as $.99 titles to entice people to try them out, and then the rest of the books are priced at $2.99 or higher. Those $.99 titles are sometimes called ‘loss leaders,’ because you know darned well you’re going to lose money on them, but you hope you make up for it in volume and in sales of your other books. Some authors switch their $.99 titles out regularly, while others keep the first book in a series, for example, at a steady $.99 to get readers to try the series.

On the other hand, you have Michael Sullivan, another bestselling indie author of fantasy novels. His books are priced at $4.99-$6.99 – a deliberate choice on his (or his publicist’s) part, to align him with traditionally published authors and get away from the indie/self-published stigma. It seems to have worked: Michael sells more than 10,000 e-books per month, and when he tried to drop his prices, sales dropped, too.

Some of it comes down to perception of value. Some readers think they’ll get a more professionally written and presented product if the book is traditionally published – or if it appears to be. Some readers don’t care about professional; all they care about is price. Some authors have it as their main goal to sell lots of copies while some would rather sell less copies for more money instead of more copies for less. Some feel that the book they spent six months or a year on, is worth more than $.99. Others – and I quote Konrath here, as well as Bob Mayer – say that value has nothing to do with the cover price; value is about how much money the book makes for the author.

And then there’s the question of the devaluation of the book as a whole. Perpetuating the idea that books should only cost $.99. Setting the bar so low that there’s nowhere to go – except free – if you want to run a promotion, and so low that the public’s perception of value is skewed forever.

I could go on, but I won’t. It’s a tough issue, with many facets and good points on either side of the argument. I have to confess to being on the perception of value side myself: I’ve priced my Cutthroat Business mysteries at $3.99. Half the price of my Berkley e-books. It seemed fair. I make more per copy than I do the traditionally published books, and they’re still priced below that magical $5 mental mark, where everything supposedly is an impulse buy. They’re selling, but not like hotcakes. Then again, this stuff takes time.

I’d love to hear what you think. Is $.99 the sweet spot for lots of sales? Or is $2.99? Is anything below $5 really an impulse buy? (It isn’t for me.) Is Michael Sullivan selling so well because his books look like a bargain compared to the traditionally published fantasy books he’s aligned himself with? Or doesn’t price have a lot to do with it when it comes right down to the nitty-gritty, in your opinion?

Inquiring minds want to know.

PS – Hot Property, the sequel to A Cutthroat Business, is available for Kindle and Nook. If you’d like a free digital review copy, email me and I’ll tell you how to get one. If you do get a review copy, I’d appreciate it if you’d actually get around to writing a review at some point. Unless you absolutely hate the book, of course. Then you can feel free to keep your opinion to yourself.

Till next time!

Start spreading the news...

by Jenna Bennett

Yes, it’s me. I have a new name. And to go with it, I have... well, not a new book, exactly. Just a new edition of an old book.

It’s a long story, but the short version is that the publisher who published A Cutthroat Business last year, decided not to publish the sequel, Hot Property, this summer. They gave those rights back to me, and for a couple of different reasons, none of which matter to this blog post, they threw in the subsidiary rights for A Cutthroat Business as well. Subsidiary rights meaning audio, electronic, foreign, movie and serial rights. Anything except print.

What that means is that I can now self-publish A Cutthroat Business in electronic format, along with all the other books in the Savannah Martin mystery series.

So that’s what I’m doing. What you’re looking at is the new cover for A Cutthroat Business, which is available from Amazon.com, BN.com, Smashwords.com, and maybe a couple of other sites, for the low, low price of only $3.99.

(Yeah, I know there are people out there who sell their books for $.99. But this is 88,000 glorious, beautiful words that I spent a year of my life crafting, and believe me, they’re well worth $3.99. Library Journal said so. “Will delight fans of chick-lit mysteries and romantic suspense.” And if Library Journal says it, you know it’s gotta be true. Besides, $3.99 is only half of what the DIY e-books sell for, and I have it on good authority – I did a poll – that my readers would pay more.)

In another month, I’ll be publishing Hot Property, and the month after that – that’ll make it July – I’ll be throwing book 3, Contract Pending, out there. Book 4, Close to Home, is written but not yet edited, so I don’t know if I can get it ready by August – I’m a third of the way through writing DIY-6, and that’s the priority right now – but I’ll be able to get Close to Home out sometime this fall. If I’m super-focused and really, really lucky, I might have book 5, which has the tentative title of A Done Deal, written by Christmas, although that’s probably pushing it.

Anyway, for the next couple of months, my posts will most likely be focused around this brand new adventure I’m trying on for size. If you’re not interested in e-publishing and the skinny on my journey through the twisted maze of doing it myself, feel free to tune out the first Friday of every month.

If, on the other hand, you find the new frontier to be as exciting as I do, stick around and answer a few of the following questions for me:

1. Do you buy/read e-books?

2. Does it matter to you whether an e-book is self-published (by the author) or traditionally published (by a publisher)? Do you even know whether it is or not when you buy it?

3. Do you think the e-book revolution means the end of the printed word as we know it? How does that make you feel, one way or the other?

4. Does it piss you off when people show almost malicious glee at the thought that print books are on their way out and traditional publishing may go the way of the dodo? (You can probably tell where my feelings are on this subject.)

5. If you’re into e-books and I offered you a free download of A Cutthroat Business, would you read it and do me the favor of posting a review somewhere?

Thanks, y’all! I’ll see you next month with an update.

Gazing into the Future

By Martha Reed

As I get closer to finishing my manuscript, I’m starting to move my focus toward selling it. This presents some new ground to cover since the publishing business is in such turmoil lately. I’m not even sure which business model to follow since I’m not sure which one is going to survive.

Being a writer nowadays is a little like living in a contested village during a civil war when neither army is particularly friendly. I’m in the middle still trying to feed the chickens and milk the cow while praying the soldiers don’t burn down the barn.

All around me I see bricks and mortar bookstores closing at both the national and local independent level. I read of traditional publishing house editors getting down-sized to become agents and of agents transitioning to become freelance editors. I even know of one editor who became a writer who is now an agent. Shazooey! No wonder I’m confused.

I think the trick here, as I gaze into my crystal ball, is to keep your eye on the technology. Technology will tell us which direction “progress” is going to go. It’s an historic pattern: faster, cheaper, easier, successful. The younger generation has already adapted to it; quite possibly the Baby Boomers may be the Last Generation of paper book readers.

But that doesn’t mean doom and gloom.

I like to think publishers may migrate back to an older business model my grandfather knew: quality acid-free paper versions of books with marvelous engravings and fine bindings. I think there will always be a market for the reader connoisseur who wants a fine copy of a favorite novel. Illustrators have been starving for more than fifty years. Maybe this is their turn to re-enter the book-making marketplace?

So what do I see? Ebooks, trade paperbacks for under $15 and luxury bookmaking. That’s my best guess.