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Posts from the ‘Authors’ Category

Feb 11

Authors Might Not Drive Change | A fine romance? | FutureBook

Nice counterpoint to my arguments earlier, but two thoughts in response:

1) This is the beginning, give the folks a few months, they may get the hang of it
2) Even if this fails it represents a loss of earnings for the publisher, even if the results are only 2/3 or half as good as with a publisher, the estate may get more revenue from it

But there’s the problem. A poorly written press release sent unaddressed to The Bookseller’s newest reporter, backed by a quite ludicrous web-page “news flash”, which does not even appear on the site of its publisher partner “M-Y Books”, does not strike me as the sort of marketing campaign the initiative merits.

In short, there’s a reason why publishers do the jobs they do, and why they are mostly successful at it. We should not think that just because it is easy to do something digitally, it should be done with only facile attention to the basics. And as Wendell’s speech made clear, these are readers that are worth nurturing for the long term.

via A fine romance? | FutureBook.

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Feb 11

Authors Driving Change | Barbara Cartland is latest author to be wooed by digital | TheBookseller

Aside from the unfortunate puns, this is a fascinating story. It marks a real danger for publishers as ebook publishing for estates and the backlists of successful authors becomes much, much easier.

As it does and as the royalties offered to authors who go direct to AMazon, B&N and Apple remain more attractive than working with a publisher, estates and authors will sacrifice their relationships with publishers to gain revenue. It’s a sensible decision but one that further increases the pressure on publishers and peels away at the basis of their business model:

The estate of the romance writer Barbara Cartland has fallen to the embrace of digital, in a move that sees her print publisher suffering a painful rejection. About a quarter of Cartlands extensive ouevre is to be published digitally in e-book format by her estate for the first time on Valentines Day.

The deal has echoes of the decision by Ian Fleming Publications to release the writers James Bond books as digital editions, but not through his current publisher Penguin. The works, part of the Pink Collection, comprise 160 titles and are being made available through a partnership between Barbaracartland.com and M-Y Ebooks

via Barbara Cartland is latest author to be wooed by digital | TheBookseller.

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Jan 11

Authors Will Drive Change | Crime Always Pays: Word Junkies; Or, The True Cost Of Writing

One of my favourite bloggers, Declan Burke, writes about the real cost of writing. I think it’s a smart read for anyone thinking about writing as a career!

The rates for freelance journalism have changed over the last decade, not always upward, so it can be hard to put an hourly figure on earnings. These days I can write a feature in two hours and earn €200 very rare, but my hourly rate, when I’m being honest with myself and factor in the daily commute, is usually closer to €20.   Now let’s extrapolate, and apply that hourly rate to writing fiction. At two hours per day, five days per week, 48 weeks per year, at a rate of €20 per hour, that amounts to €9,600 per year ‘spent’ on writing fiction. Multiply that by the ten years I’ve been writing seriously, we’re looking at the guts of €100,000, or €33,000 per book published. And that’s presuming that I’ll have a book published in 2011, which is a pretty big presumption; if I don’t, we’re looking at each book I’ve published costing me €50,000. Meanwhile, the largest advance I’ve ever received is €10,500, a figure that’s roughly ten times what an author scrabbling around at my level is likely to receive if he or she is lucky enough to see a book land on a shelf.

via Crime Always Pays: Word Junkies; Or, The True Cost Of Writing.

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Jan 7

Authors Driving Change | Making a Marketing Plan for the New Year | Self-Published Author’s Lounge

Fascinating post this from Ruth Ann Nordin, outlining her success in self publishing via Smashwords and her thinking about how she moves forward with it.

So anyway, that got me thinking about my marketing plan as I go into this new year.  I don’t plan to ever ask $0.99 long-term for any of my full-length novels again.  I only made $18,400 last year and believe one of the reasons I didn’t make significantly more was based on two factors.  1.) everything was free and 2.) everything was $0.99 on Kindle.

Now, since I upped the price to my full-length novels to $2.99, I’ve had a drop in the number I sell, but I’ve made the same amount of money.

via Making a Marketing Plan for the New Year | Self-Published Author’s Lounge.

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Jan 7

Authors Will Drive Change | A Very E-Book Christmas « Catherine, Caffeinated

Well done to Catherine Ryan Howard whose Moustrapped has gone from strength to strength. She self published the book through Amazon’ s Digital text Platform and Createspace (for the print version). She had an impressive haul in December driven by huge ebook sales.

As ebooks become a more and more viable option (with POD picking up the slack in print sales) many more authors will adopt this route to market. It is only sensible.

That said, Catherine does remind us that she herself is no ebook fan!

While there was a spike in print copies in the lead up to Christmas, starting December 24th e-books went off on a course of their own. I’ve averaged about 180 sales per month since September but in December I sold 411 books. Of these, 365 were e-books and of those, 203 were sold between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve alone. And that is only e-book sales from Amazon Kindle’s US and UK stores – I won’t know how I did on the Sony’s, Barnes and Noble’s, Kobo’s or Diesel’s stores until Smashwords updates my sales data in a month or two’s time. 411 books is about what I sold in my first five months of sales, so that’s a pretty significant bump. Thank you, New E-Reader Owners!

via A Very E-Book Christmas « Catherine, Caffeinated.

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