Review of Zoe Winter’s badass writing book, Smart Self Publishing: Becoming an Indie Author.

Posted on | August 17, 2011 | 1 Comment

 

It’s much harder to review something that’s excellent than something that’s terrible.

 Generally the better the book the longer it takes to write the review*.   It took me three weeks, two read throughs and an interview (which will be up tomorrow) with Zoe before I managed to write this review for Smart Self Publishing. Hopefully this gives you an idea of just how good this book is.

 It took a bit of consideration, since there are so many great writing books out there, but if you’re only going to buy one book on the business side of self publishing and being a writer then I’d make it this one.

 Winter’s is exceptionally good at imparting information in a way that is both easily digested and sticks in your memory. She’s also very up front about what it takes to make it in self publishing.

 It’s so easy to screw up as a self published writer, and often we don’t know what we’ve done wrong until we do it. Winters gives her readers a literal step by step guide through everything from cover design to editing, and she gives you advice on all the options that she’s had experience with. She’s also very good about explaining what she did, why she did it and what she learned from the experience.

 If you were hoping for the magic bullet book, this isn’t it**. Winter’s advocates hard work, marketing nous, business plans and editing (and then more editing. And then some editing). I particularly recommend re-reading the sections on business plans and social media marketing.

 I thought I knew about these things…turns out I was wrong***.

 Something I will suggest is that you read Smart Self Publishing through first once, then go back to the start and implement things as you re-read. Winter’s has a good big picture view of what self publishing is all about and it’s well worth getting that idea of the whole process before you start making decisions.

 I also want to give special mention to the section on cover design. If Smart Self Publishing only contained this chapter and everything else was a meditation on the metaphysical nature of sponge cake the book would still be a bargain. Winters covers how you can do a cover yourself, and how to go about hiring an artist to do it for you. She also gives the name and contact details of her cover artist if you’d like to use the same person she does. I have never come across someone doing that in an advice book before and I wish more people would share who they use for things like that.

 In short is the best book I’ve read on self publishing and I’ve read some great ones. Buy one for yourself and one for a writer buddy.

 

You can get Smart Self Publishing from Amazon here and you can visit Zoe at her website here.

 

  

* It’s not always true though, I wrote the review of the excellent The Crown Conspiracy in 7 minutes.

 

** The thing about magic bullets is they tend to kill things. In writing anything that claims to be a magic bullet can kill your career. Be glad this isn’t a magic bullet book; if it was I wouldn’t have reviewed it.

 

*** Then again I’m a muppet, and not even a cool muppet like Animal, so you may know this stuff already.

 

Book Review – Quarter Share by Nathan Lowell

Posted on | August 8, 2011 | 1 Comment

 

 

In my continuing quest to read everything Ridan Publishing produces I thought I’d take a look at Nathan Lowell’s Quarter Share, part of the Solar Clipper Trader Tales series of science fiction books. When I first mentioned that I was planning on reading it Nathan got in touch and warned me that pretty much nothing happens in Quarter Share.

 I informed him that I considered that to be a cruel and terrible lie.

 But it wasn’t; Nathan Lowell speaks the truth*.

 In Quarter Share there are no massive space battles, no heinous (nor sexy) alien races determined to blow us up or broaden our horizons and no lost magic princes wanting to pummel their Dads. So for that value of nothing, he’s right, nothing happens.

 Yet Quarter Share manages to be awesome not merely despite this, but in many ways because nothing apocalyptic happens.

 

“Call me” Ishmael Wang is a young man who finds himself in desperate need of transport off a corporate planet in the far future after his literature (and coffee) loving mother dies in a flitter crash. He finds himself on the space freighter Lois McKendrick and wins himself a job in the kitchen by improving the ship’s coffee from near undrinkable to caffeine nirvana.

 

It’s the first in a long list of genuine triumphs by Ishmael that come from him being a smart, determined and genuinely likable character. Ishmael doesn’t get anywhere with combat prowess or ancient magics, he just makes a fine cup of coffee and gets on well with people.

 

It’s refreshing to see the perspectives and lives of characters that in a normal sci-fi novel would only appear on a casualty list. It makes for very real, very relatable characters that are easy to identify with because any one of us could find ourselves working in this sort of environment if we lived in the far future.

 

A big part of the book’s is Lowell’s skill at writing dialogue. The conversations flow in a way that illustrates each character without ever seeming unnatural or forced. Reading Quarter Share is very much like being dropped fully formed into Ishmael’s life and sharing his adventure with him.

 

It took me awhile to read Quarter Share, the narrative invites a leisurely reading pace, but at the end I found myself wanting to read the next one so I could spend more time with the crew of the Lois McKendrick**.

 

Highly Recommended.

 

 * Please inform local law enforcement.

 

** Which I can, since the series continues with Half Share

Second EPIC Interview With Robin Sullivan

Posted on | August 2, 2011 | 3 Comments

This is my second interview with uberpublisher Robiun Sullivan of Ridan Publishing. You can find the first interview here, and this one flows on from that one. Robin has been incredibly generous with her time and her knowledge, and I hope to talk to her again soon.

A short bit of background: Ridan Publishing is the e-publishing house behind Michael J Sullivan’s Ririya Books (just about to come out from Orbit after massive success as an indie), Nathan Lowell’s Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series and, among publishing works many other super talented authors, Ridan also publish the ebook version of Joe Halderman’s Forever War.

Robin is determined to share what she knows about publishing, which turns out to more than enough to fill several books. I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did.

 

Interview:

 

What do you think is the single biggest mistake self published authors make?

Well I’m going to start by assuming that the book is already a quality product. That it is well written and edited and therefore “ready” to be published. I don’t want to give the impression that ANY book can be successful. You have to start with quality first as there is nothing that can save a bad book.  But if you indeed have a quality product than I think that the biggest mistake is a pretty broad one and has to do with mindset. It is imperative for the author to take off their creative artist hat and start to think like a businessperson. This has a trickledown effect to all aspects of their book rollout – pricing, cover design, title choice, back of the book blurb, and so on.

Let’s look at something as simple as title. Most authors come up with their book’s titles very early in the process with no thought about marketing. You have to think about things such as “search engine optimization” which basically means how likely is it to find your using Google.  For instance, one of Michael’s early books had a working title of “Wizards” but I would never release a book with that title. It is much too broad and would be nearly impossible to get dominance. If you type Wizards into Google right now there are 81,500,000 results. We selected the titles for Michael’s books very carefully. For instance if you type Nyphron Rising, it returns 19,000 links and while I’ve not gone through all of them I looked through the first 10 pages (100 entries) and each one was relate to Michael’s third book. This title has great SEO. Even if all you remembered was the Nyphron part you still get all entries related to Nyphron Rising.

The other issue with title selection has to do with what it conjures in people’s mind. I’m currently reviewing a great thriller by a new author. It is a about a female CIA agent who is after a criminal who starts off with a simple crime and escalates the stakes with each one. At each crime scene a card is left behind saying, “This was my xx crime, the next one will be bigger.” Taped to the card is a stick of gum (the first crime was stealing that pack of gum). The author’s title is, The Bubble Gum Thief. but this makes me think of so­­me kind of Scooby Doo or Encyclopedia Brown Boy Detective book where an eight year old is investigating some mystery. So I would definitely re-title this before release.

Title choice is just one of a myriad of issues that has to be thought of from a “publishers” standpoint and not a “writers.” So if you don’t start out by changing your mindset early you’ll make a ton of small mistakes along the line that will all add up in the long run.

 

 

Conversely, have you seen any moves made by authors or publishers that you thought was brilliant and adopted it into the way you do things?

Oh, all the time. I’m in a constant state of learning and believe in standing on the shoulders of giants. I’m always incorporating new techniques and ideas. One of the great things about the Internet, and indie authors in general, is that they are willing to share what has made them successful. In general we are a community of underdogs all pulling together and in blogs, and forums like Kindle Board’s Writer’s Café information flows very freely. In my talks (I regularly give free lectures to writers in the DC area) I’m always telling them to watch people who are successful and copy them.

I’ve been at this for years so the list is too large to fully talk about here so I’ll just pull a few examples off the top of my head.

Todd Fonseca  - did a fantastic job with opening my eyes to the advantages of tagging books on Amazon. This was not an area that I knew much about until I ran into him and after learning from him I saw just how beneficial this could be.

Joe Konrath – does a great job of leveraging “like authors”.  He does a lot of co-authoring, which introduces his fans to other writers and vice versa. He also puts excerpts of other authors in his books to give author friends of his exposure.

John Locke – recently wrote a great book, How I sold 1,000,000 ebooks in 5 months. I was pleasantly surprised by this little gem of a book (a steal at $4.99) because I thought he was going to tell me that his “trick” was write a bunch of books quickly and price them at $0.99 – I was so very wrong and I love his whole approach.

Simon Sinek – is not an author, but he has a fantastic talk on TED (ideas worth spreading*)  that really solidified for me something that I knew but had never articulated before. In a nutshell he explained why certain people or organization inspire and it is because they think, act, and communicate in exactly the opposite way of everyone else – which is to say they start with “why”, rather than “what”. It’s a great presentation and well worth the 18 minutes it takes to watch it.

 

I just finished John Locke’s book and I can vouch for it too. Something I’ve heard you speak about before and we touched on in the last interview is e-book pricing. John Locke is all about the 99 cents, even if his sales strategy isn’t and he’s clearly done well for himself.

Do you think all authors should try a period of 99 cent pricing, or is it better to go higher? Clearly you can make more money in the 2.99-5.99 bracket, but I’m thinking in terms of marketing as well as pricing. 

 

Pricing is, without a doubt, the most highly contentious issue in ebooks among various indie authors.  I do think there are two wildly different demographics of readers…some who only buy from the low-end and those that buy books that they are truly interested in, as long as they are reasonably priced. Each author needs to decide for themselves which of these pools they want to draw their readers from. I fall into the second camp so I’m one of the few indies that routinely price my books at $4.95 and this price point works very well for Ridan.

I personally think many authors choosing the $0.99 and $2.99 do so because of a lack of confidence in their own work. I hear over and over again statements like, “Well I’m a new, unknown author so I have to price at that level to give people an incentive to buy my book.” All authors are new to a specific reader at some point, and I think it is a better strategy to market yourself, such that people are interested in buying your book, then they won’t balk at $2.99 or $4.99. I think those pricing at $0.99 are sending the wrong message, saying to the world that the author doesn’t value their own work, which makes me wonder why the reader should value the product.

I also worry that using $0.99 routinely could create a self-imposed self-published ghetto. The types of numbers required to generate a living wage at $0.35 a book is huge, and if you can produce those kinds of numbers, then your books will have a word-of-mouth following and a higher price (again as long as it is still reasonable) won’t dissuade readers.  Many say that it is the buyer that dictates what a book is worth, but if $0.99 is the only price we give them then it is the seller who is training the buyer on what to expect.

One last thing to mention about the $0.99 price is that a sale may not translate into a reader. Some people buying at the low end are collecting books like seashells on the beach. They have huge to be read piles of these low cost bargains, most of which will never be read. Some authors are just fine with that, others are more concerned with building a fan base and when your book is priced higher the likelihood of it being read goes up

To obtain a higher price point I think all indie authors should put their work out under a publishing imprint label (even if they are the only author on that label). I priced all Ridan books (except book #5 of my husband’s very popular Riyria Revelations series – which is priced at $6.95) at just under $5.  Books from large established publishers are routinely priced at $6.99 – $14.99 so in this playing field $5 is a bargain but still indicates a quality product.  I position my books not with other self-published authors but with established professionals.

Now, that being said…I track a lot of stats on the Amazon top 100 and have done pricing experiments of my own, and I can say that $0.99 and $2.99 can work to sell a lot of books. In fact in the 8 or 9 month’s I’ve been watching, only one fiction title has hit the top 100 at anything above $2.99, and that was the third in J.R. Rain’s Vampire series at $3.99.  I’ve had a few Ridan authors come close (Michael hit 102 and Nathan 112) priced at $4.95 and there have been a few non-fiction books who have done this, John Locke’s book I mentioned earlier and a title by Seth Godin who is a marketing superstar. But most of the titles that have been in the Top 100 did so at $0.99 for a first book and $2.99 for subsequent books. But even when you are not in the top 100 you can sell a ton of books.  Soldier of the Legion sold 6,300 books in June with rankings of 200-240. Full Share sold 4,400 books with a ranking from 150 – 650.

My best advice is to watch your timing, track the results, and adjust as necessary. You SHOULD experiment with different prices. If you use $0.99 to get high in the Amazon ranking, don’t leave it at that price too long.  Think of it as a “sale” to get some attention, but then return it to a more profitable price while it is still generating good volume.  Remember to think like a businessperson, which means working to maximize income. As long as you analyze the results at various levels you’ll find the “right price” for your particular books – but keep in mind that price may vary with time and season and again, adjust and analyze.

 

 

Given that the majority of Ridan’s promotion is done through blogs, reviews and sites like Goodreads, what do you think of the idea of paid advertising, such as ads on other websites?

 

As someone who used to own and operate an advertising agency that managed paid advertising budgets for many companies, I should say that it is an excellent idea, but alas I don’t. (And didn’t even when I was placing ads on the behalf of my clients, but I couldn’t convince them of this).

The big problem with paid advertising is that you can’t dip your toes in it. Advertising is all about impressions, and it takes 6 – 10 impressions before you start to make a dent into a person’s buying decision consciousness. So you have to make a pretty substantive investment over a pretty extended period of time (3 – 6 months). All that can add up to big dollars. In marketing we are always looking for ROI (return on investment) and most ads will have a negative ROI and we chalk up the dollars spent to “mindshare building” that may get sales that we can’t measure to it. Because a well thought out paid advertising strategy has a high investment the chances of you earning back are slim.

 

 

Other than writing a good book, what do you think represents the best ROI for an author as far as paying for help goes. For example paying for a pro editor to look at the manuscript, or a pro artist to make the cover?

 

That’s a tough one because it really depends on the writer and where they have strengths or weaknesses. Let’s first look at the production tasks that would normally be handled by a traditional publisher: developmental editing, copy editing, print book layout, ebook layout, and cover design.  The short answer is you need to spend your money on whatever of those tasks you aren’t good at, would take too much time, or you can’t learn.

Let’s take the easiest ones first.  Print book layout and ebook layout.  At one time I would have said hire a freelancer to do print book layout, but I recently ran across a good set of videos on the web that shows you how to do this yourself pretty easily.  For those that are interested you can find it here. Ebook layout is ridiculously easy. (I’m going to do a similar video above one of these days) If you type in kindle formatting to the Kindle store you’ll find more than 100 books (some priced at $0.99 or $2.99) that will show you how and since it only takes an hour or two I say do this yourself as well.

The toughest ones are editing, because it depends on how self-aware an author is about his/her writing. I happen to consider myself an exceptional developmental editor. I can take any book and immediately see if it is “good to go” or whether it needs restructuring. I find plot holes and notice character motivations problems and in most cases they can be fixed very easily. There have been many times where I’ve substantially added to a book, but the reality is that it would have been okay to go to market without what I did to it. In other cases, the books would have failed without the rework.

There are many times when writers, who I’ve come to know online, will send me their books asking for an opinion.  In many cases these books, that the author thought were ready for prime time still need substantial work. And in some cases they’re unfixable…mainly because the author just hasn’t mastered the skill of writing yet. These are the books that shouldn’t be self-published but the author is not self-aware enough to know that is the case.

Finding a developmental editor is difficult and expensive. If your book needs substantial developmental editing then it’s probably not worth investing dollars in because it will just take too much heavy lifting to get it where it needs to be.  Knowing whether you need it or not is the trick.

That leaves us with cover design and copy editing. By copy editing I mean little grammar nits like comma placement, verb noun agreement, missing words, repeated words, and homophone errors.  There are many ways to get this assistance at a reasonable price so I think that this is worth the investment. But again think about ROI.  Spending several thousand for this is going to make it really hard to earn that money back.  Spending a few hundred is probably money well spent.  The big issue with this is you can edit until the cows come home and there will still be a nit here or there.  There is a point of diminishing returns where the cost to find one or two errors is not worth the herculean efforts to find them.  Some readers of self-published books are VERY critical of minor grammar infractions. Where a so called “professional” book from a traditional publisher can have one or two typos that are dismissed, a self-published book with the same typos could be ridiculed as “poorly edited.” I think in many ways self-published books have to twice as good because many people are looking for them to fall short. So that’s a long way of me saying a “reasonable” expense for copyediting is a good thing, in my opinion.

As to cover design, again it depends on whether you have any skill in this area.  Again, you have to set a high standard here and bottom line is you need to make a book that someone could not recognize as “self-published”.  My husband did all the covers for his books, and many people have said they like them more than the “professional” covers done by his big-six publisher.  No one suspects these books as being self-published from looking at them. But most people don’t have the graphic talent of Michael.  But, you don’t need to. If you look at other covers in your genre and “mimic” what you see then you can probably produce something on your own.  A great example is Christopher Smith’s Fifth Avenue. There is essentially no “graphic” on this book – just the hint of a NY skyline but the color and font treatment mirrors what you’d see on a James Patterson book. If you are doing something on your own – I suggest that “less is more” and the most important aspect is the font treatment for title and author’s name.  If you study a bunch of books you like – you may be able to produce something similar. If you simply can’t make that jump, and no matter how hard you try your results look “self-published” then yeah you should hire someone to do this. Again, there are ways to do this “on the cheap”. You need to keep the cost down so $200 – $400 would be the most I would spend on this.

 

When you first started Ridan, when was the point where you thought that you and Michael could do it all (covers, editing, publishing etc)? Was it a gradual realization that you had the skills between you or was it something you set out to achieve just between the two of you?

 

We knew from the start that we were in good shape because of our combined backgrounds. In many ways, all the jobs we had held up to that point had provided the tools required.  For instance, Michael’s graphic skills came from doing thousands of graphic arts jobs for various clients at our advertising agency. He already was in an expert in the various programs: InDesign, Photoshop, etc.  We had created hundreds of websites for clients so making one for ourselves was easy.  I had a lot of knowledge about online selling because I had been a product manager for a software company that created tools for people to sell online.  And of course we were already highly knowledgeable about branding, marketing, and how to reach an audience.

The things I had no clue about were, distribution for print books and  file formats for ebooks. The good news is there are many people who have come before and are more than willing to share their experiences with. I read Dan Poynter’s Self-Publishing Manual  (free at the library) and this, while a bit dated because it was pre-ebook revolution, really helped to get me to see that it really wasn’t as daunting as would be expected. For ebook formatting – I just started with Google and followed my nose. That was many years ago and today you can find dozens of books on ebook formatting just by going to the Kindle store.

The one thing I knew I would need outside help for, was copy editing. My background was in Software and Advertising, not English and grammar. Developmental editing wasn’t an issue, because as I mentioned before I’m really good at dissecting a story and knowing how to restructure , trim, or add, to make it the best it could be.

The good news, is there are a lot of freelance people out there that do this type of work. The bad news, if it seems that no one single person gives me the results, at the standards I want. What I mean about this is some people are good at catching one type of problem, while someone else is good at another. I’ve run extensive experiments (with more than 100 editors at a time) where I give them all the same 5 pages to edit/return and believe it or not no two are ever alike.  Some miss something like a closing quotation mark, others overlook missing words, some are great at finding misused words (further vs farther) but no one got a 100% on  my test by finding “all the errors” I inserted – regardless of the price I was willing to pay.  I think a lot of it comes down to how much attention to detail you have and whether you are the type of person that errors jump off the page at you.  In many cases, I’ve found avid readers to be more successful at finding errors than seasoned professional who make a living from copy editing.

I also became frustrated because the “so called experts” would disagree with one another.  Especially on hotly debated issues like the serial comma, or when to offset an introductory phrase with a comma (Some say always, others say that is “old school” and excessive and should be removed except when absolutely necessary to avoid confusion, still  others  will decide on the number of words).

In the end, a lot of it comes down to attention to detail and how passionate you are about eradicating the mistakes. While Michael’s big-six editors are VERY good, I would still find errors during proofing that they missed.  I think it is nearly impossible to find all the problems, but in order to minimize editing errors I’ve done a lot of self-education and now do a lot of it myself. I’ll still pay freelancer’s to do a “first pass” but then I find myself having to go over their work as a safety net to prevent any little things from getting through.

 

My next set of questions will be around Michael’s move to Orbit and where you see Ridan going next. Is there anything else you’d like to say on self publishing/indie publishing? 

 

For self-publishing/indie publishing…the bottom line is I think it is an exceptional opportunity for anyone with the following:

 

a) talent b) skill (notice these are two different things), and c) an entrepreneur spirit.  Writing in general takes a lot of persistence and perseverance. Whether it’s making it through the mass rejections of the query-go-round. Or fighting to get some mind share in the self-publishing world. There are no quick and easy answers, but for those willing to roll up their sleeve and work hard – there are great opportunities.

 

Michael (Michael J Sullivan)  is very lucky to have you in his corner! Speaking of Michael, he’s just sold his six book series the Riyria Revelations to Orbit books and the six books, now three larger tomes, are due to start being released in November. How has the process been for you, moving from having a lot of control over the books to sharing that control with Orbit?

Thanks.  I think he is pretty aware of that by this point. As to Orbit…well considering what control freaks both Michael and I are, one would think that it would be a nightmare waiting to happen but the opposite is actually true. I think there are several reasons for this. First Orbit has been a great choice.  Our agent actually had several publishers interested in the series and we chose Orbit because of the books and authors they have selected in the past and what they have done with them. They seem to “choose well” and have had several New York Times Best Sellers as well as books that have won many of the industry awards, even though they are a relatively new imprint (from a big-six parent company – Hachette Book Group).  The fact that they don’t produce as many titles a year as say, Tor, was very attractive…again going back to that whole “being selective” stand point.  But they really got my attention when they said they wanted to fast-track the books and put them out in three consecutive months. Usually you have to “wait in line” as the production schedules are already full and follow-on books can take six months or more to get scheduled.  When we first went looking for a publisher we figured it would take a long time to find a taker and we thought the last book would have been released before we got any nibbles. That turned out not to be the case and as we were very anxious to get that last book out we’re glad to have the series fast-tracked and the time between books so negligible.

The one thing I was really concerned about was editorial changes. I had heard over and over again most authors NEED substantial developmental editing of their books and I wasn’t so sure how Michael was going to take criticism as was really happy with how they had come out. What if Oribit wanted to replace Royce with a female thief? Or decided certain characters had to go? What if they put some “new editor” on the book with far less expereince than Michael? There were so many potential pitfalls. As it turned out Orbit put their senior editor on the project, Devi Pillai, and I had heard fantastic things about her from other authors who are much more knowledgeable than I am about who the good editors are. This gave me some encouragement that any changes would have a good foundation. We were amazed when the edits came in as there were so few changes and what there was, was very minor and easy to implement.  Devi’s comments were that Michael’s books were very “clean” which basically meant they were structurally sound and as such really didn’t require much work at all. We added a new first chapter to book one, and added some clarification to certain people and places but all in all the two editions are almost identical.

As for releasing control for things such as cover design, marketing copy and the like. Michael really just abdicated all this to Orbit. They have a good track record and terrific people working on the team so there was no reason for him to muck with those aspects. The fact that he had already had the opportunity to get the books out “his way” (i.e. with his covers, layout design, icons, etc) certainly helped with that regard. In many ways he felt that he had already got what he wanted so as far as he was concerned they could do whatever they thought was best in those regards.

All in all Orbit has proved to be an incredibly flexible partner. They even are allowing Ridan to put out a version of Percepliquis with Michael’s cover/design so that those people who have the first five books in the series can complete their sets. This isn’t something they had to do, but the fact that they are willing to is just more proof that they were a good choice.  Another example…they were hard at work on the books even before we had actually signed contracts. They invested in editing, cover design, ARC’s and the like while the legal department and our agent fiddled with specific language clauses. If they hadn’t done that, the books would not have stayed on schedule but they were willing to accept up-front risk to make the deadlines. For a time there was a little hiccup with some boilerplate language that would have technically limited Michael’s future writings, and I thought he wouldn’t sign. But once again, they proved a perfect partner and we finally got changes made and it is all official now. The contract does what it should, which is fits the needs and desires of both parties. I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about working with big-six publishers but we’ve had none of that with Orbit.  I guess it all comes down to picking a good partner and everything flows from that.

 

 

Considering that publishing contracts in general seem to be becoming more restrictive rather than less that’s actually a remarkable step by Orbit, especially in allowing a Ridan version of Percepliquis (I for one am pretty happy about that). 

For those that don’t know, can you give a quick explanation of what boilerplate language in a contract is and what authors should watch out for? 

 

 

So, let me say that I’ve read a lot on the subject, but I’m not inside any publisher’s legal department, nor have I ever acted as an agent,  so I’m going to give my “best” understanding, realizing that I could be completely wrong.  If any of your readers can confirm or deny what I’m about to say I would appreciate it. From my understanding, every publisher has a legal department that has developed certain language for various clauses of a contract. For large agencies the agency and the publisher might have established their own template and that is the basis for each contract and then they adjust based on the potential of the author. (Stephen King for instance does not have the same provisions in his contract as Michael Sullivan for instance).  If your agent is from a smaller agency, or independent, then they start with any number of “standard contracts”.  For some clauses there might be several variations (some more “author friendly” than others) and they develop the initial contract weighted in the publisher’s favor.  The agent then looks at the contract, and taking into consideration other contracts that they have negotiated, tries to pull the language back in favor of their clients.  In general, the publisher doesn’t want “one-off” contracts they want to have the language match one of their pre-approved choices as it were. In some cases, certain clauses are set by an entity further up the line – for instance Hachette Book Group may have similar clauses for all their imprints so Orbit (an Imprint of Hachette) can’t easily change language that corporate has dictated.

As for what to look out for…that’s a little bit hard because each author is going to value different things. For instance someone who has no qualms about writing under a pen name, may not be so concerned about wording in a non-compete clause because they’ll just create a separate identity. Those that have written something that they think has a high probability to be made into a movie will want to retain those rights (or have the subsidiary share between author and publisher be very highly weighted to the author).  For some, it might be under what circumstances rights revert.  Someone else might be very concerned with changes to their work so they might have an eagle eye on any wording about abridgement or statements that say “based on the work”.  The bottom line is there will probably be  a lot that you aren’t happy with in a contract but you have to choose which battles you’re willing to pick and which you’ll have to let go of.

For Michael, he values his freedom over all things so the sticklers with his contract revolved around what he could and could not write in the future.  In addition there was a little statement about performing promotional activities that basically said…if Orbit says go…you go.  For the promotional language it was the matter of adding “and the author agrees” to language such as “If the publisher decides”.  This would seem like a minor point to many but to Michael it made all the difference in the world as he really doesn’t want to feel like someone else can control what he will and will not do.  For another author, they might think to themselves…hey if my publisher is willing to send me across the country on a book promotion tour – I have absolutely no problems with that.

If you were to ask me, as a business person, what I think you should be concerned with it should be the following:

• Under what conditions do the rights revert: If you have a contract that has a limited time period (say 3 years) then in many respects I don’t care as much about what the other clauses related to reversion say, because I know there set date where I get control back. Many contracts, however, are written for the life of the copyright,  which means 70 years after the authors death, and that is a LONG, LONG time. So for those contracts I want to see reversion language such that when the book is no longer producing for the publisher it goes back to the author. In the old days this was generally that the book was “in print”, which meant as long as there were copies in the warehouse the contract was in effect.  But in today’s POD and ebook world, you can keep books in print forever…so in this environment it is important to have language such that when the books earn less than a certain $ figure per royalty period it is essentially “dead” and should revert. What that $ is will be the point of contention.  If it is too low, then again you are back to “essentially forever”.
• What rights you are transferring: Basically you want to give away the least amount you can. For instance you want to hold back foreign language, movie rights, merchandising, enhanced ebooks, audio, etc, etc. Nowadays I think the “minimum” you can hope for is to transfer print and ebook rights for English North America distribution (Basically US and Canada).  A slight step down from that would be “English speaking” rights which would extend sales to England, Australia, etc.  What you want to try not to give is “World Rights” as that could substantially limit your income from foreign income.  One author friend of mine was very excited because they had foreign sales on a book and it essentially earned out their advance before the book was released -  but as I pointed out if they had sold only English rights – they essentially would have had twice the advance because the foreign sales would have been additional money in the pocket not just counting toward the advance.  In regards to rights, I hear many “inexperienced” authors say…well I’ll sell the print rights but I’ll keep my ebook rights. I think that is a pipe dream. No “responsible” publisher today will take just one without the other, and if they do only want print…I have to question their business acumen.

 

• Restrictions on other books: There are three things that will restrict other writing.  One is the option clause (granting your publisher the “first crack” and future works). You just need to make sure this is a pretty simple arrangement – such as I show it to you…you get xyz time to review…if we don’t agree…I can do whatever I want with it.  I’ve seen some option clauses that have language such as…if another publisher makes an offer we can match that offer and get the work back.  While this wouldn’t sound like a “bad thing” think about the situation where you are having disagreements with your publisher or are unhappy with how they treated your first work. Such language could FORCE you to put out the next work with them even though you don’t like their treatment of you.

 

Another thing that is usually buried in the author warranties section is language to the effect that the work under contract will be the “next book released”.  If this is there, and the contract gives the publisher several years to produce the book then the author is cut off from any income in the meantime. For a prolific author, this could be a huge problem, but for one that takes several years to finish a book it could be a moot point.

 

I would carefully examine any non-compete clause and interpret it in the narrowest terms that you think could apply to it. In other words, think of the ‘worst case scenario’. In the language of Michael’s original contract it could mean that he could never put out another medieval fantasy, including prequels and sequels to the Riyria Revelations. This was, not surprising, a deal-breaker.  Once that language was further clarified we were able to proceed.

• Ebook Royalty Escalation: The industry standard is a 25% royalty on net-receipts for ebooks. Which generally means a share as follows: 30% to Amazon (or other retailer), 52.5% to publisher, 14.9% to author, and 2.6% to agent.  This 52.5%/14.9% split is not one that will hold up in the future (IMHO). So I would make sure that if the publisher starts offering higher %’s then your contract should automatically adjust to the higher rate.
• Copyright Infringement: It should go without saying that you want to protect your characters and the worlds you create. You should ONLY assign the right to produce your work, not transfer any copyright or give the publisher the right to create other works based on your writing. If you enter into a “work for hire” arrangement you probably don’t own the character or world but if this is an original creation of yours you want to keep it yours.

These are just a few of the most important things to look at. When reading a contract think about it in terms of what “could” happen if the relation went sour and always have remedies in place. Think about things such as the following: What if they don’t pay their royalties? What if they go bankrupt? Do they have a time limit in how long after you give them the final work before they have to put it for sale?  What if they don’t? The contract should address these kinds of things and specify penalties if they don’t (contract nullification, rights reversal, etc).

 

Ridan has had a stellar year so far, what are you excited about that’s coming up for you and Ridan?

Wow, where to begin with that one, as there is so much to be excited about.

 

I’m not sure when it will “hit theaters” but Ridley Scott (director of Blade Runner & Alien) is adapting Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War for film. I’ve never had a book with a movie tie-in before and after seeing the skyrocketing effects this has had for other books it will be VERY interesting to see how his Ridan ebook will sell when this is released. I actually re-watched Blade Runner just last night and I can see why Mr. Scott is attracted to The Forever War – it will be a great film in his hands.

 

Nathan Lowell recently completed the sixth and final book in his Trader Tale of the Solar Clipper Series (in audio book version). Ridan released the third book in ebook/pbook in May and I’m hard at work editing number four, Double Share.  I want to ramp the release schedule of the last two after that so they come out just as soon as humanly possible. Both Marshall Thomas and Leslie Ann Moore are receiving really good sales from their completed series and I expect having the ‘final’ book in this Trader Tales will do incredible things for Nathan’s already stellar sales.

 

There are three projects that have been at Ridan for a while now that I’m finally getting close to completion. I’m finally getting them to the state where I see the end of the editing tunnel on these. First is the second book in Todd Fonseca’s Time Cavern series. This is our only entry in the “juvenile” market (9-13 year olds). For anyone who has read the first one they know how charming the Time Cavern is, and what a talent writer Todd is. It will be great to have another book in this series out.

 

The second project is Cluck: Murder Most Fowl. This is an extremely entertaining book by Eric Knapp and is about…of all things…undead chickens, a sentient farmhouse, an automobile obsessed with 007 novels, and a fowl exorcist. I know that sounds utterly ridiculous but trust me it is brilliant and if you like Terry Prachett you’ll love this.

 

The third project is by a never before published author (the only one I’ve pulled from the slush pile) writing under the pen name Jackson Archer. He’s actually going to be published by Ridan and another publishers and I’m excited at the competitive aspect of seeing how the book I have with him will sell against the other one. The first line in his query was, “There are only a handful of things that scare Michael; the fact that he’s about to die isn’t one of them.” Doesn’t that just grab you? For those of you writing queries – take note of what a really good first line can do for you.

Another interesting thing is we’re partnering with a company to bring out app versions of our books for tablets, ipads, iphones, and Android phones. Book Apps are really in their infancy but I’m really excited to be on the cutting edge of this technology and have a ton of ideas for how to further enhance standard ebooks.

Although I’ve not announced it yet, here’s a scoop for your readers:
Ridan is going to expand our genre list to include mystery/thrillers.  I’ve got nine titles in various developmental stages and their all excellent. I’m starting to think a Ridan author is like a Lake Wobegon child in that they are all above average. But seriously I love finding such great books and helping them to find an audience. As to “other lines” I’m also seriously considering a one for short stories but that is not as firm in my mind as the mystery/thrillers which is a “done deal” at this point.

Last but certainly not least is that Ridan is getting the attention of a number of authors that are already well established and like what we’re doing and want to be a part of it. I’m actually writing up a contract today for a well established science fiction writer to bring on seven books from their backlist. I don’t want to announce it as they’ve not signed but I had a great phone conversation with them today and they are 100% on board.  I also had an author from overseas that received a $600,000 advance for a three book deal and he wants Ridan to be the North American publisher of that. The fact that I have such noted authors willing to put their trust in Ridan is really a signal that I must be doing something right.

 

 

 

 

* She isn’t kidding. Go watch it.

Book Review: The Crown Conspiracy by Michael J Sullivan

Posted on | July 20, 2011 | 1 Comment

Note: The Crown Conspiracy is the first book in Michael J Sullivan’s six book series The Riyria Revelations. I’m writing this after reading all the way up until book five and this review is for the Crown Conspiracy as part of the wider series.

I’d almost given up reading fantasy by people not named Terry Pratchett*. I’d read too much once upon a time, and I was burned out on 1000 page tomes that stripped of their world descriptions would have filled a decent sized pamphlet and no more.

I did occasionally come across one that I like (such as Pip Ballantine’s Geist) but for the most part the only fantasy I read was urban.

Cut to me looking at The Crown Conspiracy on Amazon. I’d already heard good things about Michael J Sullivan’s work through Goodreads and I figured that I’d give it a try. After all, five bucks isn’t a huge price to pay, and since it was an ebook, I could get it right then and there**.

This isn’t Tolkien. It’s high fantasy but it’s high fantasy written in the same style as most urban fantasy.  Imagine The Hobbit crossed with Lethal Weapon crossed with Ocean’s Eleven with a dose of The Princess Bride thrown in to round out the experience.

The Crown Conspiracy follows the adventures of two master thieves, Royce and Hadrian, as they try desperately to be amoral mercenaries and fail so hard they end up being the heroes. Heroes who save the Crown Prince Alric from the assassination that killed his father and along the way get framed for the murder of his Father.

In their defence they achieve this by kidnapping the prince and carrying him out through a sewer so they get to keep a little street-cred.

The plot isn’t formulaic by any means, and it does fit well into the wider story of The Riyria Revelations, but that’s not what hooked me. It was the characters that yanked me into the world, in particular the relationship between Royce and Hadrian is amazingly well realized.

Sullivan’s writing style is light and easy to read, meant to fun rather than overbearingly serious. He does give you plenty of world building, but instead of presenting you with brick like chunks of description he slips the world in behind the characters. I love this way of doing things, and it’s something I hope to work into my own writing.

The story, the characters and the plot all lend themselves well to a series of books. By the time I’d finished The Crown Conspiracy I desperately wanted to spend more time with the characters (even snotty Prince Alric grows on you). I truly enjoyed the Princess Arista’s story arc in this book, and looking back from the end of the fifth book the beginnings of her character’s path are planted here. She is quite literally a self rescuing princess.

Sullivan is also very good at using Chekhov’s gun to hint at the wider world (goblins? What goblins? What’s the deal with the elves? How is it that Hadrian knows a style of fighting that’s all but forgotten by the rest of the world?). Tiny seeds planted in The Crown Conspiracy bear fruit in later books, especially in book five.

It isn’t for everyone; if you prefer your fantasy books to be 400,000 words of lovingly crafted agricultural descriptions then Michael J Sullivan’s work might be too light for you. However, if you’re down for a fun, fast romp through a fantasy world that keeps getting better, then I highly recommend The Crown Conspiracy.

 Buy two and give one to your grumpy misanthropic friend.

P.S Michael J Sullivan has recently signed a deal with Orbit Books to bring out the six Riyria*** Revalations books as three combined volumes. If you want to buy them in their current format you’ll need to get in quick. I’m not sure of the exact day the Ridan versions go offline but I’ll update this as soon as I know.

 

 

* I personally think Terry Pratchett deserves a genre all of his own.

 

** Never underestimate the power of the “one click” buying system on Amazon.

 

*** Riyria: It means “two”.

 

Required Reading: Ten Sites Every Writer Should Visit

Posted on | July 16, 2011 | 1 Comment

I Should Be Writing

 

The first writing podcast I ever listened to is not only as good as it ever was then, it’s even better now. Mur Lafferty approaches ISBW with honesty and good humor. This isn’t a techniques podcast/website (although they get mentioned), what Mur excels at is discussing the emotional side of writing.

 

It’s well worth signing up to her Society Of Ink Splattered Fabulists too, for uncut interviews, more personal posts and the odd interview you won’t get otherwise.

 

Write 2 Publish

 

So, I know I’ve  been a on a bit of a combined Robin Sullivan/Ridan Publishing/Michael J Sullivan* kick of late, but there’s good reason for that. Robin, in the space of three weeks, five podcasts and an interview with me managed to turn my thoughts on publishing on their ear.

 

Robin is amazingly honest and forthright about everything she does to promote Ridan’s books and her blog should be read by anyone and everyone thinking they want to write for a living.

 

The Newbie’s Guide To Publishing

Joe Konrath’s epic, seemingly endless blog about publishing that stretches back into the distant mists of time when self published authors where looked on with the same favor as flesh eating proto humans.

 

I haven’t always agreed with Joe**, but it doesn’t matter, because he was saying things about ebooks and the future of publishing that seem prescient now. You don’t have to like him, but Joe’s gotten so many things right that you do need to listen to what he has to say.

 

Writing Excuses

One of the best writing podcasts out there, period. Howard Taylor, Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells and May Robinette Kowhal talk about writing for fifteen minutes per week, each time covering an aspect of writing technique or marketing in an almost unbelievable amount of depth for a fifteen minute long show.

 

Consistently awesome, now even more so that Mary is on board. She’s a professional puppeteer as well as an author and that may be one of the coolest jobs ever.

 

 

Museum of Mysteries

M J Rose’s blog. M J is the powerhouse behind AuthorBuzz, and the author of eleven books, including the excellent Reincarnationist series. I’m getting M J on for an interview next week to talk about book marketing and writing as an indie author.

 

Adventures In Sci-Fi Publishing

AISFP are a bunch of pimps. I mean this in the nicest possible way. AISFP conducts podcast interviews, gives writing advice and generally puts out consistently good content. A LOT of consistently good content. When I first discovered AISFP I listened to almost nothing else for three weeks.

 

Dead Robots Society

More podcasting! Started by Justin Macumber and co hosted (currently) by Eliyanna Kaiser and Terry Mixon. Dead Robots has a very relaxed, easy to get into style for their podcast and they conduct a damn good interview.

As much as you should be listening to DRS for their content, they’re also a great example of how to interact with the writing world as a whole. They’re professional, yet relaxed  enough to seem like people you’d actually like to hang out with.

 

Terrible Minds

 

Chuck Wendig’s blog, website and general land o beard. Chuck regularly dispenses advice that can save you from wasting huge amounts of time. Occasionally Chuck dispenses advice that will get you banned from four different states in the USA.

 

Either way, you can’t afford not to be reading Terrible Minds, because not reading what Chuck is doing would involve not knowing what Chuck is doing.

 

That would just be wrong.

 

 

Amazon Kindle Boards

 

Some people will object to this one, but I think you need to at the very least be lurking around on the Kindle Boards just to see what’s going on with the other kindle authors, reviewers and the like.

 

 

Thesaurus.com

 

No I’m not kidding. Sometimes you need to know if there’s another word for underpants.

 

Of socks. As far as I know there is no other word that sufficiently encompasses general sockiness as much as socks. If anyone knows another word for socks, let me know in the comments!

 

 

 

* Michael is currently going through some posts on writing advice which are well worth a read.

 

** For the record, more often than not, I was wrong.

Keeping Your Promises To Readers

Posted on | July 15, 2011 | 2 Comments

***NB I originally came across this concept on the excellent Podcast Writing Excuses. This is my take on the same concept.

 

I remember going to see Hancock awhile back. It was an OK movie all things told, but I left the theatre a bitter human being.

 

Not because Hancock was bad, it wasn’t.

 

I left because whoever made the Hancock trailer lied to me. Lies! The trailer promised a superhero comedy with some dark undertones. What I actually got was a dark, somewhat depressing movie with comic moments and superhero undertones*.

 

What I wanted from Hancock and what the trailer told me I was going to get was a funny movie. While there were undoubtedly funny moments, it wasn’t a funny movie.

 

How does this relate to writing novels?

 

Think about the promises you make in your opening chapter, your blurb, your sample chapters on Amazon. Do you promise a dark and twisted tale of horror? Do you promise a light, fun bash through a fantasy world? Then you have to follow through on that promise. Promise a tale of horror and you can include humor in it, but the soul of your tale still has to be one of horror. That light fun bash through a fantasy world can have world building, but it has to be slipped into the story and not be forty pages of text at the beginning of your tome that describe the sanitations issues facing a medieval city**.

 

The promises you make have to be kept.

 

If you don’t you’ll be hurting future sales of your books and cheesing off your existing fans. But these one’s I’ve mentioned are only the obvious ones. There are implicit promises you make in your writing that readers might not consciously notice, but they will be disappointed if you break them none the less.

 

For example: If you’re writing an urban fantasy where the hero is somewhat hapless at the start, yet slowly gains in power and confidence throughout the story… I will be disappointed if you end that story by killing your character, or turning him into something far worse than the things he was fighting. This happened recently reading a book that I was enjoying right up until the end, but it ended with the main character becoming a heartless, soulless monster.

 

I was so disappointed by the ending it colored my feelings about the whole book.

 

If you’re reading literary fiction, or Lovecraftian horror, then a downer ending isn’t a broken promise. However a downer ending in a romance novel will piss off your readers no end. We all read a particular thing for different reasons and matching those reasons is part of what you need to do to satisfy your readers.

 

There are exceptions of course, and I don’t mean you can’t use twist endings or surprise endings. However the best twists make sense in context with all that has gone before.

 

The movie Fight Club has an epic twist that’s very tough to see coming, yet makes perfect sense when you think back on the movie.

 

 

What promises do you make when you write? How are you going to fulfill those? Let me know in the comments!

 

 

 

 

 

* I’m exaggerating for effect here.

 

** Of course if you promise a tome with ALL the detail on your fantasy world that’s fine.

Legacy Publishing vs Self-Publishing: Can You Do Both?

Posted on | July 13, 2011 | 8 Comments

Can you be a self-published author and a published author?

 

I sure hope so…because this is the path I’ve decided on. Before I get into this though,  I have to admit I was wrong about something.

 

You see I’ve been following Joe Konrath’s blog for awhile, I’m a fan of his Jack Daniel’s series of novels, and his epic interview with Barry Eisler should be required reading for everyone…

 

But I’ve resisted what he was saying about e-publishing and self publishing for a long time.  I’ve never abused him online or anything stupid like that* but I have been open about the fact that I haven’t always agreed with what he was saying.

 

Yeah, turns out I was wrong.

 

Hate it when that happens.

 

The thing is that Joe is looking damn near prescient now. He was predicting the rise of the indie author almost before it was a twinkle in Amazon’s eye. His predictions that more and more e-book authors, authors with no prior history in publishing, could make a living have not only come true but they have even surpassed his initial estimates.

 

Self-publishing, if you’re a good  (and prolific, smart and motivated) author is a viable way to make money, and good money at that, from your writing. It won’t work for everyone but it will work for a LOT of people, and as the number of Kindles, iPads, Nooks and other e-readers grows that number will grow. An grow.

 

It’s hard to imagine where it will stop.

 

I doubt he’ll read this, but if he ever does; I’m sorry I doubted you Joe. ** I freely admit to grinding my teeth when I’ve read some of your articles, but damn man, you were right.

 

On to the main topic :

 

Self publishing/Legacy Publishing… can you do both?

 

Six months ago I would have said probably not. Sure there were a few people making the cross over, but it was still regarded as the death knell for any author’s hope of making the big time.

 

That’s changed.

 

Author’s like Amanda Hocking and Michael J Sullivan have parlayed their success in self-publishing into major publishing deals. If you read the interview I did with Robin Sullivan, you’ll see that she actively seeks out self-published authors and shoulder taps them to see if they’d be a good fit with Ridan.

 

So why the change?

 

I think it’s because the publishing industry isn’t quite as moribund*** as it’s made out it be. A self published author with a quality book, an established fan base and serious self marketing drive represents an excellent investment and one with very low risk.

 

Amanda Hocking doesn’t just have a legion of fans, she has an army ready to kick in the doors of bookstores to buy her books (they may or may not then rampage through the city).

 

I know for a fact that when Michael J Sullivan’s sixth Riyria Revelations book, Percepliquis is released by Orbit in December, I’m going to buy it. I may even do a short dance.

 

There are a lot of people who are going to do the same thing.

 

Buy the book, I mean. I think I may be alone in the dancing.

 

There will always be those who are against self-publishing, and conversely there will always be self-publishing evangelists who consider  any kind of legacy deal to be a terrible idea. I think the fact that you can now do both and make some money on your work and potentially attract a publisher is the best news I’ve heard in a very long time.

 

Publishing is changing, and at a pace that means my thoughts on this could be wrong by noon tomorrow, but I think the future is in this model. Indie authors put up their own work, attract an audience and then publishing comes knocking, offering better marketing, professional services and a wider audience.

 

This of course assumes your book is actually good. And that you’re at least a little lucky and a lot smart, but the odds are improving for writers, not getting worse.

 

I should say that I was inspired to write this by Chuck Wendig at www.terribleminds.com who is in fact having a shot at both right now. His book Confessions Of A Freelance Penmonkey contains all the writing advice you will ever need.

 

It also contains equal measures of profanity, liquor and beard.

 

 

I also need to thank Robin Sullivan at Ridan Publishing for opening my eyes to the publishing world’s changes. Sometimes you catch the right words at the right time. I have a follow up interview with her coming up in the next two weeks.

 

What do you think? will you give both a try? Just one?

 

 

* No matter what, don’t go abusing people. It never makes you look good.

 

 

** I’ll try to get Joe on for an interview to talk about where he thinks this e-book business is going.

 

*** Moribund. Great word.

More on Robin Sullivan of Ridan Publishing

Posted on | July 10, 2011 | No Comments

Hi everyone, I’m beavering away here on my book so I can’t post today, but I’ve had a huge amount of interest from people wanting to know more about Robin Sullivan from Ridan Publishing. If you’d like to know more about Ridan there’s a link just above my blogthat you can click on.

As to Robin, she’s been very busy lately helping us bloggers and podcasters out by doing interviews, and I thought you might like to check them out.

Mur Lafferty did an excellent interview with Robin on I Should Be Writing. You can find that podcast here.

The Dead Robots Society Podcast did two interviews with Robin which are both well worth a listen. The first is here, and there is a follow up show here. 

 

I hope you enjoy them, and I’ll be back next week to talk to you about covers.

 

 

An EPIC interview with Robin Sullivan of Ridan Publishing

Posted on | June 30, 2011 | 18 Comments

***UPDATED WITH WINNER***

Congratulations to VDGriesdoorn, I’ll let Robin know that you won and I’ll get them to send the signed copy of The Crown Conspiracy by Michael J Sullivan out to you as soon as possible.

 

Thanks to everyone who commented. I’ll be doing a follow up interview with Robin in two weeks time.

 

Robin Sullivan, the founder of Ridan Publishing, was nice enough to do this interview with me. Ridan is a small press, although considering their success this title doesn’t really do them a lot of justice. Ridan represent Michael J Sullivan (Robin’s husband, who on top of selling thousands of e-books has just signed a six figure deal with Orbit), Nathan Lowell (who does the excellent Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper series), Leslie Ann Moore and Marshall S Thomas among other high selling, top flight genre writers.

 

Robin has been a programmer, a business leader, the founder of an advertising company and she started Ridan from the ground up.  When I heard her on Mur Lafferty’s podcast I Should Be Writing I knew I wanted to talk to her about publishing and about Ridan’s success.

Ridan’s success isn’t down to just one factor, and from what I’ve seen they’re at the forefront of a new movement in publishing that’s going to become the next big thing.

 

By the time you read this they might already be there.*

 

One last thing; Robin has been nice enough to let me give away a signed copy of Michael J Sullivan’s book The Crown Conspiracy. If you’d like to go in the draw to win a copy just leave a comment after the interview.1

 

Andrew: Can you tell me why you started up Ridan Publishing?

Robin: In many ways it was serendipity.  My husband’s first book, The Crown Conspiracy, had been published through AMI (Aspirations Media Inc, a small publisher in Minnesota), and they had scheduled the second book, Avempartha, for an April 2009 release. When we hadn’t received proof copies in March we became concerned, and AMI confessed they didn’t have enough money to get the books on the press. We had book club appearances and bookstore signings setup in April that we didn’t want to miss, so the only option was to retrieve the rights and put it out ourselves…thus Ridan was born.

To maintain our desired release schedule (one every six-months), we had to continue to put the books out by Ridan. I had learned a lot about publishing and thought that most had been going about it in a way that made no business sense. I developed an unusual model and started looking for quality titles by authors who had self-published books but weren’t selling well. I thought that with my marketing expertise I could change that. I’m glad to see that I was right as I’m passionate about the notion of authors making a living wage off of their writing. Ridan’s June bestseller is Marshall Thomas and he’ll sell close to 20,000 books just this month (across six titles) and Nathan Lowell is right there with him and will do about 10,000 books over his three titles.

 

I’m glad to hear you’re keen on writers making a living wage, I think every writer in the world is with you on that one!

You say you went looking for self published authors with quality books, yet who weren’t selling well. That certainly isn’t the norm for publishers, small or large. What were you looking for in the authors you signed?

First and foremost is the genre. A lot of why I’m successful is being able to target market. So I concentrate on books in fantasy, science fiction, and horror. I’m about to open a mystery and thriller line as I think that is another area I can market well. Next I look at the reviews on Amazon and GoodReads, both good and bad. In most cases there will be comments about the story being great but perhaps points taken off for editing. That’s easily correctable. Issues about pacing or characters may mean a bit more work but that’s not a deal breaker. Essentially I look at these reviews like a market group giving me valuable feedback into what may need to be addressed at the editing stage.

If I had my choice, I’d prefer authors with more than one book – especially if they are in a series. It’s so much easier to build a following this way and each new release sparks interest in the books that came before it. A bonus is if the author is already doing some marketing, even if they aren’t hitting on all cylinders. This is usually the thing that accounts for the low sales and again I’m confident that I can bring value to them here. If someone is already selling gangbusters my chances of making a significant impact is lessened. In those cases, the author is probably better off staying self-published.

At this point I have a “candidate” and I usually talk to the author and explain my unusual business model, if they are still interested, then I read the book. To do so prior to this stage could be a waste of my time, and I have precious little of that. I’m very picky when it comes to what I’m willing to put the Ridan brand on. In some cases I have to do major developmental editing, other times the books are in really good shape from the get go and will only require minor line editing. Books that need more work have to be really strong, but I’m not afraid to tear them down to the studs and rebuild them from the ground up—assuming of course that the author agrees with my assessment of the required changes.

 

You mention an unusual business model, of which getting the self-published authors is the first step, what else can you tell me about Ridan’s business model and how it differs from what we’ve come to expect from the mainstream publishers?

 

I previously mentioned AMI, my husband’s first publisher. They were a small press that was selling books in the traditional model. They printed up a few thousand books, put them in a warehouse, then used a distributor’s sales force to get them into bookstores.  This doesn’t make sense to me because it meant they were essentially acting like venture capitalists. Each book produced requires an outlay of several thousand dollars. This almost guarantees that some books will fail miserably, and a company would need at least one or two breakout books to succeed. If they didn’t get those breakouts they could be in serious trouble.

For Ridan, I use emerging technology, namely ebooks and print on demand. I perform the editing and ebook formatting. My husband does the cover designs and print book layout. This means that our investment in each book is practically nothing from an out-of-pocket standpoint. All we risk is our own sweat equity. With this model, it allows me to write a contract that is unprecedented in the publishing industry. First, I pay authors 70% and keep 30%. (Traditional publishing contracts give 6-8% on paperback, 10% on hard covers, and 25% of net on ebooks). Secondly, I allow my authors the ability to leave anytime they want to. (Traditional publishing contracts are written for the length of the copyright, which runs 70 years after the author’s death.) My feeling is that if an excellent opportunity with a bigger press comes along, or I’m not producing high sales, then the author should have the right to leave Ridan.

When setting up our POD titles, we make our books non-returnable and offer a very small reseller discount (20%). This almost guarantees that our books won’t be on bookstore shelves. (Bookstores typically require discounts of 40%-55% and return between 50%-80% of the books they order, again a business model with huge risk.) With our model, the only sales from a bookstore will be from someone special ordering.  So, if seeing your book at your local Barnes and Nobel is important to you as an author, then Ridan is not for you—and I make this clear before reviewing their books.

It is because of my low investment, low risk business model that turns publishing on its head. With Ridan a title is profitable essentially immediately and all books are profitable. I don’t need one or two breakout novels, each title makes both myself and the author profit.

 

Wow, that seems almost opposite to where normal publishing contracts are going at the moment. If you can tell me does your business model incorporate an advance for authors or does the high percentage of the profits you pay make up for that?

No, we don’t offer an advance, and this can be a turn-off for some, so again another reason why Ridan may not be “right for a given author.” But think about it. If I offered an advance, I’m right back into the same position that, in my opinion, gets the big publishers in trouble. What I mean is that a large “up front” investment of cash makes it so that some books will fail. The trick in marketing is to maximize ROI (Return on Investment). The best way to have a large ROI is to have a low I (investment). Also, giving an advance would mean I’d have to give up my, “author can walk anytime” stance. To protect my investment I’d have to put in a restriction that they have to stay until after the advance is earned  back. But, let’s say the book isn’t selling…it could be because I’m not doing my job well, which is a legitimate reason for wanting to leave, but now my contract prevents that.

Ridan is about partnership, and partnerships work best when the two parties are on even footings. Giving an advance sets up a hierarchy…the one who pays the piper gets to call the tune and so forth. It’s natural that when you have risk you want to control more. That’s why the current publishing contracts are looking to “lock up” an author for not just the work under contract but limit future activities as well. Lack of freedom is a terrible thing, in my opinion. In my business model, both parties have invested the same thing…time and energy… I like that kind of balance.

You mentioned when we were chatting earlier that you think now is the best time ever to be an author. Some people seem to think that the apocalypse is nigh for writers everywhere. Can you tell why now is a good time to be writing?

In the old, old days (about a year ago ) the only potential for a writer to make a living wage was to get picked up by a big-six publisher and sell above the level of the midlist. This was a very small target to hit and an author’s chances to do so were very slim. Outside the big-six, no one except a few outliers were making any serious money through self-publishing, and those published through a small press would be lucky to make $2,000 or $5,000 over the life of a book.

In October/November of 2010 there was a significant increase in ebook sales. I saw this in my top selling authors. Michael had been selling about 1,000 books a month and jumped to over 10,000 starting in November. Nathan Lowell went from 1,150 books sold in September to 6,200 books in January and he could hit 10,000 in June if his sales continue as they are. What is even more important, however, is that this surge wasn’t isolated to just Ridan authors.

The Writer’s Café on the Kindle board forum has a history of authors sharing their sales data. At that time there were not just one or two writers reporting extraordinary sales but dozens. In fact Oct/Nov was the first time that Konrath, Locke, and Hocking really saw their sales take off. Seeing so many authors reporting more than a thousand (and sometimes 5,000 or even 20,000) books sold made it clear to me that the skyrocketing increases were being seen “across the board.”

In the even older days, (pre-Amazon, and online branches for Borders and Barnes and Noble) big-six publishers held a virtual monopoly on book distribution and there were only a limited number of “slots available.” Now, ecommerce and ebooks has leveled the playing field. I watch the Amazon bestsellers lists and there is a blossoming ebook midlist forming with hundreds of authors who, unlike their traditional published counterparts, are making five and six figure incomes. The number of “wage earning slots” has grown exponentially due to the success of small presses and self published authors agility and ability to make changes in the industry work for them.

But it’s not just those going solo or through small presses that are benefiting. Traditional big-six publishers will be forced to create more “author friendly” contracts in order to retain writers or attract new ones.  When there is no competition, an author has no choice but to sign a bad contract. They have no leverage. Some people don’t think big publishers will ever change, but I’m already seeing a shift. I look at the new Amazon imprint, Thomas and Mercer, who has signed Joe Konrath, Blake Crouch, and Barry Eisler. All of these authors know what a terrible contract looks like and are capable of making enough money on their own such that they don’t “have” to sign.  The mere fact that all of them have put pen to paper tells me the T&M contract is very author friendly.

So bottom line, all three paths: self-publishing, small press, and big-six are now providing viable options for making a living wage. The power is shifting from the publishers to the authors. Barriers of entry have eroded. There are more “slots available” than any time in history. The apocalypse is not nigh it truly is the best time ever to be a writer.

If you were an author starting out today, what would you do? How would you pursue your career?

That’s an easy one… I’d self-publish. But that’s not to say that I think everyone should. It’s simply the right choice for me. There was a time in my life where I was very comfortable with a “day job with a steady income”. My father wanted me to switch to consulting engineering as it made so much more money, but at the time I was the sole breadwinner and the fear of being between jobs with no salary made that totally unappealing. Since that time I’ve run a multi-million dollar software company, started my own advertising firm, and now I run a small press. So I’m a dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneur, and more than just a little bit of a control freak.  I wouldn’t have the patience for the big-six and I would feel I could do better than any other small press.

If I were to make a recommendation to someone it would be to list all the various attributes of publishing: time to market, income, being in a bookstore, control, ability to look at your work objectively, ability to market, ability to learn new things, confidence, work ethic, and on and on. And see where you align with them.  For me my answers would be: faster the better, I want a big cut, don’t care, full, confident, confident, confident, high, strong.  These answers point straight at self-publishing. If the answers were: unimportant, unimportant, Important, unimportant, not really, none, limited, limited, good…then it would point to big-six.  Each author should make their own list and weight their desires and abilities against that list.

 

So you believe that for most writers who are prepared to do the work (I know that’s a huge assumption) the income will be better from self publishing than from legacy publishing? (I’m leaving indie publishers out of the mix for the moment because I think this is an interesting line to follow).

Yes, without question.  I’m a number cruncher (background in Engineering & Marketing) and no matter how I do the calculations self-publishing always comes out ahead because the author gets so much more of the income and they beat legacy in time to market.  Here’s some data to consider:

• Once finished self-published books can get to market in 3 -  6 months, legacy will take 12 – 18
• Royalties on hard covers 10%, trade paperback 7.5%, mass market paperback 8%
• Typical first time author print runs: Hardcover 2,000, Trade 5,000, Mass Market 25,000
• Royalties on self published ebooks 70% for books priced $2.99 – $9.99, 35% for all others
• Royalties on legacy published ebooks 25% of net (14.9% for author, 52.5% for publisher)
• POD will yield $3.50 for books sold through stores  and $6.00 for direct but very low volume
• Typical self ebook price $0.99, $2.99, or $4.99
• Typical legacy ebook price $6.99, $9.99, or $12.99
• Typical legacy print book prices $6.99 (mass market), $12.95 (trade), $25.00 (hard cover)
• Legacy requires 15% cut to agent (unless through small press)

 

If I take a conservative ebook sales profile based on a $2.99 price which would be as follows:

• First month’s sales 200 ramping to 1,000 at 6 months
• Maxing at 1,500 at 1 year
• Falling to 500 at end of 2 years
• Falling to 200 at end of 3 years
  • Maintaining 200 after that

Working from the assumption the self-published author takes 6 months to get the book to market and the legacy 18 months we see the following ebook sales:

	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5	Year 6+	Total
Self-pub	3600	15,000	6,725	2,775	2,400	2,400	32,900
Legacy	0	3600	15,000	6,725	2,775	2,400	30,500

Assuming the following about ebook pricing:

• Self: $0.99 will sell 5x more books that $2.99 = $57,575 ($4,200 ongoing)
• Self:$2.99 will sell at table rates above = $68,761 ($5,016 ongoing)
• Self: $4.99 will sell at 30% less than $2.99 = $80,375 ($5,863 ongoing)
• Legacy: $6.99 will sell at 40% less than $2.99 = $22,326 – 15% = $18,977 ($1,756.80 ongoing)
• Legacy: $9.99 will sell at 50% less than $2.99 = $26,688 – 15% = $22,684 ($2,100 ongoing)
• Legacy: $12.99 will sell at 60% less than $2.99 = $27,694 – 15% = $23,540 ($2,179 ongoing)
• Legacy Hardcover = $5,000  –  15% = $4,250
• Legacy Trade Paperback = $4856  –  15% = $4,127
  • Mass Market Paperback = $15,980 – 15% = $13,583

So depending on price for ebook and binding select for print you wind up with:

• Self-publishing:  $57,575 – $80,375(no print)
  • Legacy Publishing: $23,227 – $27,790 (hard), $23,104 – $27,667 (trade),  $32,560 – $37,123 (mm)

If you don’t like the assumptions I made you can plug in your own numbers. Keep in mind that I was VERY conservative. Others who have done $0.99/$2.99 tests have seen as much as 30 times more sales and I think 32,000 ebooks in six years is ridiculously low. That number is actually more of what I would expect in 1 year or 6 months for a good seller, but I thought people would balk at higher figures so I low-balled them. Keep in mind that if the ebook sales are greater, the disparity gets worse because the author is essentially making 14.9% instead of 70%. You can also see that the “real money” is in ebook – not print.

 

Is it too much to ask if you now look at the numbers if the same writer decided to go with Ridan or another small publisher?

For Ridan this is very simple. We price at $4.99 and we normally have a release schedule similar to self-publishing (except at the present time we have a few delayed projects because they were unscheduled and are trapped behind already in process work).  As I mentioned already, we share 70% with author. Because of our increased marketing efforts I anticipate we’ll sell 50%-75% more than an author will sell on their own.

As for other presses, it’s nearly impossible to estimate for them, as they each have their own policies. Some will be aligned with big-press and some aligned with self-published techniques. You need to find out the following for each then you can calculate earning potential:

• Time to market (how long after signing you can expect to be for sale)
• Ebook royalty share (I suspect common numbers will be 25%, 35% or some even 50%. I doubt you’ll find others at 70% but I may be wrong).
• Selling price of ebooks (again some are using “self-publishing pricing” others aligned with big six). You can simply look at other titles they have for sale to determine this.
  • What Amazon ranking are their books at compared to Ridan’s or a big-six – this will help you determine the % increase (or decrease) to attribute to them based on their marketing ability.

One thing I didn’t take into consideration on the previous question, which in fairness I should have,  was cost incurred by author, that’s because Ridan does it all ourselves and so we have $0 outlay. Some will also go the “all on my own” approach, although I suspect most will have to hire out one or more of the following:

• Editing: $350 – $750
• Cover Design: $150 – $400
• Ebook formatting: $150-$200
• Print book formatting: $350-$500
  • ISBN/Proofs/Setup Fees:  $85

So your costs will depend on what services you do yourself and what you outsource. But in general most people can get an ebook for $500 – $1000 without editing assistance. (Print is not necessary. I’d start with ebook first, then bring on print once you have some profits).  Most self-published authors will use the $0.99 or the 2.99 price point; I see very few doing $4.99 so I would suspect the following:

• Self:  $56,575 – $67,761($1,000 in cost accounted for and standard self-publishing pricing)
  • Ridan $4.99 and assuming a 50% increase in sales: $84,394 (all costs incurred by Ridan)

Going with a small press obviously has several advantages because you don’t have to do any of the production and can concentrate on writing. Of course, if the one you pick is not very good at their job, and they lock you in, then it could be a huge mistake. I would say investigate what others they represent are making to help in your decision making.

 

 

I would like to thank Robin for taking the time to do this interview with me, we’re going to do a follow up in a few weeks because I had so many questions I wanted to ask her. In the mean time Robin has an excellent blog at www.write2publish.blogspot.com that I can highly recommend.

 

As I said at the start Robin has been kind enough to let me give away a signed copy of Michael J Sullivan’s Crown Conspiracy to one of my readers. So let me know what questions you’d like me to ask Robin in the next interview in the comments and I’ll pick a commenter at random to get the book.

 

* You might be reading this only minutes after I posted it. I stand by my comment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why Going Without An Advance Might Be A Good Thing

Posted on | June 29, 2011 | 4 Comments

It’s becoming more common to see authors being represented by e publishers and indie presses who aren’t getting advances. It’s by no means the norm, but it’s a growing movement.

 

Initially a lot of my writing buddies reacted with the kind of horror normally reserved for finding a decomposing corpse at the foot of your bed, but on further review, it seems like for some* writes this might be the best thing they’ve ever done.

 

One thing to consider is the fact that having no advance typically means you’re going to get the lion’s share of the royalties. The number I’ve heard quoted is  (and this is backed up by an interview I’m going to post later this week) anywhere from 35% to 70% of the royalties go to the author from e-book sales.

 

Considering that the norm for publishing contracts was to give anywhere from 15% – 25% of the e-book royalties to authors, this is a pretty huge jump.  Potentially you stand to make a lot more money by signing on at this higher rate.

 

But more money isn’t really the reason this might be a good plan for you. It’s nice, sure, but the real reason has to do with risk.

 

Let’s say I sell my book to a publisher, and they give me a fairly typical advance of $10,000 USD. That’s a $10,000 risk that the publisher is taking that my book is going to be a success, and that comes in before they have paid for advertising, marketing**, cover design and editing.

 

Now if I earn out my advance (I sell enough books that the royalties that would have been paid to me exceed the initial $10,000 advance) then that’s awesome. I’ve got a shot at a career and hopefully some nice royalty checks coming in every month to pay for Ramen noodles.

 

If I don’t earn out my advance?

 

That might be the end of my career. There are ways around having the “didn’t earn out” black spot against your name, such as writing under a pseudonym, but no matter what, not earning out isn’t going to do your career a lot of good.

 

Now imagine the publisher’s initial outlay on you is more like $1000 and some sweat equity***. That means that instead of taking a gamble on whether or not your book will be a success, the publisher can afford to take risks in other areas, such as bringing on new authors and taking chances on unusual projects.

 

It also means that if your book doesn’t sell, it’s a FAR smaller loss, and your career has a far better chance of being resurrected when you write your next book. In fact, even if your first book bombs, if your second, or third, or fifteenth book is a hit then your entire backlist is sitting there, beckoning at your new fans.

 

There are downsides of course. If you were hoping to quit your day job, it’s going to take more time to get to that point (probably, there are exceptions) than if you were paid a stonking big advance.

 

You are probably not going to see your book in a bookstore anytime soon. Getting books into shops is a HUGE expense, far more than you might think, and under the no advance/indie publishing model that’s represents far more of a risk to the publisher.

 

You might get less kudos.  There’s is a certain amount of pride some writers attach to the size of their advance. I think sales are a better indicator of success, but that number can be hard to pin down.

 

You will almost certainly be better off writing more than one book. This kind of deal, when it has really worked well, has almost always been in connection to a series of books.  This isn’t necessarily a downside. I personally hope my book series goes on to at least six if not ten or more books.

 

No matter what though. The no advance higher royalty option is a very real publishing option that manages to neatly sit between big six traditional publishing and self-publishing. It won’t be for everyone but it is a serious alternative you owe it to yourself to consider it as you’re planning your career.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* Some. In other cases an advance might be much smarter way of doing things. For others, self publishing.  Every author is a different beast (in some cases, a hairy, ornery beast).

 

** Advertising and marketing aren’t the same thing. Advertising is part of marketing, but not as big a bit as you might think.

 

*** I love the term sweat equity. I don’t know why, but I do. Sweat equity means that the cover, editing, marketing etc is handled in house by the publisher, and while they have to spend time and pay staff to do these things, they’re not cash outlay.

 

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