Hugh Howey's Blog, page 46

Don’t Anyone Put Me in Charge

By my count, half of the top 10 bestselling science fiction authors on Amazon right now are self-published or published with Amazon. Leading the pack is A.G. Riddle, who has been killing it the past few months with two novels that hang around in the top 50 overall on the paid Kindle store. B.V. Larson has been among the top sellers for two years. What’s important to note about these rankings is that it reflects overall sales across all titles in that particular genre. Since Amazon is the #1 bookstore in the land, it’s a great way to do some guestimating. Without transparent data, it’s all we can really do.

What really strikes me about the top 10 is the absence of any new traditionally published science fiction author. I’ve read some great books this past year by Ted Kosmatka, Max Barry, and the like. I also adore some recent debut authors (past few years) like Ernest Cline, who wrote Ready Player One. But what I’m seeing above is extremely established authors with massive backlists (Card, Atwood, Weber) and indies.

This means something, I’m just not sure what. I think it means that a sustained and profitable career as a science fiction author is more likely, these days, to have its origin in self-publishing. I don’t think traditional publishers can foster the sort of release schedule an author needs to really break out in a big way in the popular genres. It should be noted that an author can rank on this list with a single bestselling title, as with Rysa Walker, who has a title in the top 25. So a massive new release could crack this list. Right now, we aren’t seeing that from the big houses.

Part of the problem is that the major publishers ignore the genres that sell the best. This is a head-scratcher, and it nearly caused a bald spot when I was working in a bookstore. I knew where the demand was, and I wasn’t seeing it in the catalogs. Readers wanted romance, science fiction, mystery/thrillers, and young adult. We had catalogs full of literary fiction. Just the sort of thing acquiring editors are looking for and hoping people will read more of, but not what customers were asking me for.

I don’t think it should come as a shock that indies are killing it in these underserved genres. The supply simply can’t keep up with reader demand. And this list hints at something else: It might be that publishers need to re-think how best to launch a new writing career. One book a year probably won’t cut it, maybe never will again. Look at what Random House did with E.L. James last year: All three books came out and buttressed each other. If they would have spread those out, the novelty may have worn off before readers got to books 2 and 3.

It also helped THE HUNGER GAMES that book 3 was right around the corner when the first two hit critical mass. And in the UK last year, Random House launched all three of my Silo Saga books in a 12-month period, and they did gangbusters, selling more print copies there than Simon & Schuster was able to sell here in the States, party because of marketing efforts but also because of the amplification of new and speedy releases.

I recently posted an audacious claim that major publishers are bound to emulate indies, which would be quite the reversal. I want to now explore how publishers could actually do this, how they could learn from self-published authors. Because I want publishers to do well. I want them to help new authors break out. I want them to keep bookstores open and readers happy. So what I’m going to do, in a very rambling fashion, is pretend that someone just put me in charge of a major publishing house. Let’s say HarperCollins (just to pick one at random). Here’s how I would blow the doors off my competitors and become the #1 publisher in the land (overtaking indies, which I estimate now rank #1 in total sales).

Each of the following would be fairly simple to implement. Each one highlights an advantage self-published authors currently own. This is me giving up state’s secrets. I’m able to do this, because nobody really listens to me (thank goodness!)

1. The first thing I would do would be the most important, and that would be to form a community among my stable of HarperCollins authors. I haven’t seen this discussed anywhere else (makes me wonder if it’s a daft idea), but I think the #1 advantage self-published authors have right now is a sense of community. We hang out in the same forums (usually KBoard’s Writers’ Cafe); we chat with each other on FB and in private groups and through email lists; we congregate at conventions and conferences; and we share with one another. We share sales data. We share promotional tools and ideas. We let one another know what works and what doesn’t. If there’s a glitch with a distributor, we point it out. If there’s a way to increase visibility, we tell everyone. If we stumble upon a secret, we broadcast it.

The amplification of all of our efforts cannot be fully appreciated, I don’t think. And no publicity team at any major publisher can hope to compete. They can’t. I was sending emails to one of my publishers to explain what was basic knowledge to me (because of KBoards) but esoteric to them, as it turned out. This was one of the largest publishers in the world. It took six emails, and I still don’t think the publicity team understands what I was getting at. They don’t understand today. Every one of their authors would benefit greatly from this knowledge, which I assumed any publisher would know about. So my highest priority would be to create the same sort of sharing and caring among my authors that self-published authors enjoy. A private forum for HarperCollins authors. Email blasts that went out weekly, detailing the things they can do to drive sales. Book exchanges within genres. Meet-ups in major cities. I would help these authors form an identity as a HarperCollins author. I would encourage the bestselling authors to serve as mentors. I would leverage the drive and enthusiasm of debut authors to keep the community humming. No one would feel ignored, because they would have each other to converse with. All the emails we at HarperCollins currently get with basic questions? Now, they are being answered across the group.

2. Related to the above, I would henceforth require that my publicity department spend at least an hour a day on the popular self-published forums, interacting with authors, reading posts, and learning from the people who in just a few short years have overtaken us (Harper Collins) on the bestseller charts. Both of these points (and several to come) rely on a loosening of ego. They require that publishers see authors as valued assets and publishing experts in their own right. Crowdsourcing is the key. Treating each member of that crowd as a replaceable widget or a dunce incapable of understanding what it takes to forge a bestselling book is not the answer. It’s the opposite of the answer. Glance up again at the top selling authors in science fiction if you need reminders.

3. Every format, as soon as it’s available. Here’s another reason that WOOL was one of the only fiction debuts to hit the Sunday Times list in the UK last year: The e-book was out first. That’s the new rule at HarperCollins. As soon as that puppy is ready, it goes live. Readers are the ones who build buzz, on their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. On their review blogs and on Goodreads. Forget Publishers Weekly. Forget Kirkus. That’s trying to fashion bestsellers through bookstores. Bestsellers happen through readers. Through social media. So we are going to get them the ebook immediately, and price it low enough ($6.99 or less) that they’ll pick up a print copy if they love the work.

When the print version is ready, we’re going to release the hardback and the paperback at the same time. Heresy, I know, but that’s what my HarperCollins is now doing. Libraries and collectors will order the hardbacks. Everyone else will get the paperback. It never ceased to amaze me, working in a bookstore, to see all the promotional money spent while the least-desired format (the hardback) was released. And then a whimper when the paperback came out. It’s a lost opportunity as publishers clamor for the higher margins on the hardback and get lower sales as a result. GIVE READERS WHAT THEY WANT. That’s what my HarperCollins is doing.

4. Related to this, we are bringing back the mass market paperback. Readers love them. I have also discovered that readers love the paper-on-board hardbacks like Random House UK did with the Silo Saga. No dustjackets to get destroyed or misplaced. Just a beautiful hardback that is CHEAPER TO PRODUCE. A better product that readers prefer and costs less? That’s a no-brainer. Except that the people who work in publishing houses have a nostalgic and aesthetic affinity for the dustjacket. Not anymore. This is the New HarperCollins, and we’re gonna give readers what they want. Hardbacks for $15.00. Mass market paperbacks for $8. Special collector editions (really gorgeous books. Faux leather and stitched bindings. Ribbons. Embossing.) for $40. Print needs to appeal to the high end and the disposable end. Right now, they’re aiming for a target that nobody wants. The trade paperback becomes our lowest initiative.

5. Hardbacks come with free ebooks. The method we use to make this happen is simple: Readers download the new HarperCollins Kicks Ass app on their phone. They take a picture of the UPC code on the back of the book. They take a picture of their receipt. They enjoy the ebook downloaded to their phone or any device of their choosing.

How do we work this magic? At New HarperCollins, we have a super-secret computer dohicky algorithm . . . Nah, what we have is a mix of common sense and trust. If ten people wanted to sit around and take pics of the same UPC code and the same receipt, all ten of those people would get an ebook. We don’t worry about that (just like we no longer worry about ebooks being available at libraries). You see, at New HarperCollins, we understand that your time is more valuable than your money. Reading one of our books to completion is the best gift you can give us. Which is why none of our books employ DRM. It’s why we don’t combat piracy; we celebrate it. At the end of all of our ebooks, you’ll find a brief bio about the hardworking author who wrote the novel, written by the author herself. The bio will also thank the reader for their time, recommend a similar HarperCollins novel, list that author’s other works, and ask that the reader help spread the word or write a review.

No judging. No treating paying customers like criminals. No making demands that anybody pays for anything. A thank you and a call to action. Links for more great books. Here at New HarperCollins, we don’t worry about how people get our books, only that they read them. We’ve seen what indies have done with perma-free and giveaways. We see that the authors who shun DRM, who trust their readers, who embrace pirates, sit up there on the top 10 lists. Now we’re doing the same.

6. We are tearing up the favored nation clauses. This is one of the darkest secrets in the publishing industry. The reason major publishers can’t offer more than 25% of net on digital sales is because of  clauses in contracts with bestselling authors. These clauses state that the moment another author gets more than 25%, they also get this higher percentage effective immediately. These asinine and selfish clauses — agreed to by shortsighted agents and authors — have hurt debut writers while helping absolutely no one. Publishers are hamstrung. They can’t compete with the 70% that Amazon and others pay. Which is why one of my highest priorities as the CEO of New HarperCollins will be to have some hotshot lawyer strike down every one of these clauses. I would sue myself, as CEO of HarperCollins, for gross incompetence. I’d take myself all the way to the Supreme Court if I had to. Or . . . I might simply go to these authors and their agents and explain how dumb we were (and how selfish!) to think this was a good idea. “No one is ever getting a higher royalty because of this,” I would say. “Agree to strike it, and then we’ll be able to negotiate freely with your next book. And we’ll be able to entice new authors over to HarperCollins.”

Agents and authors will readily agree. Not just because this is logical and humane, but because of the community I’ve created up with #1 on this list. Suddenly, every author and agent worth a damn wants to work with HarperCollins. Suddenly, we are acting as if we are competing with the other publishers rather than playing along with their wishes. We are the new T-Mobile, scaring the pants off AT&T. This is New HarperCollins.

7. Hey, non-compete clauses. You’re history. This one is simple. Like DRM, we wave goodbye the moment I take the job. We’ve learned from indies that more releases boost the sales of all books. So publish as much as you want, when you want, however you want. Got a short story in the same universe as a book we own? Please publish it. Thank you.

Publishers should be encouraging their authors to do this, not forcing them to sign clauses preventing it. Hell, they should be PAYING them to write more and publish more. At New HarperCollins, we are turning this trend right around. Yo, indies, wait up!

8. Same with release schedules. If we like a book, and we know it’s going to be a trilogy, we’re going to hold back until we have the second book in the can and the third book scheduled. This is serving readers, not working against them. Readers don’t want to wait so long that they forget what happened in the last book. Now, the trilogy is going to release with a month between books. Yeah, bookstores are going to hate this. It means a lot of ordering. It also means when readers show up and browse the shelves, all three books are there! No more seeing the third book come out and not being able to find the first book. Besides, at New HarperCollins we understand that the #1 source for your books is online. Release schedules won’t be dictated by bookstores and sales reps but by reader demands and buying habits. Speaking of sales reps…

9. They’re gone. Sorry. I know a lot of these people, and I love them. I also love the many other people who are losing their jobs at publishing houses. Like the editors. We’re going to save the editors (and hire more) and get rid of the sales reps. Yes, our books will have lower orders at bookstores. They’ll also have lower returns. I’ve been there, at the bookstore, going through a catalog with a sales rep. You want to know why sales reps sell more books? Because we like them. Which means buying more books that we know we won’t sell, books we know we’ll return for a full refund (minus shipping). We’re going to let our authors and our books stand on their own, fair and square. We’re going to concentrate on our readers, who are the best sales reps. And we’re going to concentrate on our online distributors. If bookstores want to blacklist us for being pro-reader and pro-online, we’ll use that PR boost to our advantage. And they’ll lose our sales.

10. Finite terms of license. This is a biggie. A MONSTER. We will no longer buy your book forever. We will instead license the rights to your work for a set period of time. Probably five years. That means, no matter how well your book is doing, you get the rights back in 5 years. All the rights. Even the cover art we created and the edits we performed. And we hope you’ll sign with us again (knowing you’ll get the rights back again). Granted, this will mean a lower advance (which more and more authors are begging for, believe it or not). You are a publishing partner. We want you to believe in this work and invest in the long-term health of this work. So see it as something you still own. See it as something you’ll have the rights to again. The extra push and energy this will create will offset the loss in sales we currently enjoy on backlist titles. It’ll also mean our choice of debut authors. Every other publisher gets our scraps. This is why New HarperCollins is now the #1 publisher in the land (if we manage to overtake the indies. It’ll be tough). Finite terms of license also means that we negotiate fair contracts based on sales history. If the book is no longer doing all that great, we offer a little. If it surprised us, you get the contract you deserve. No more treating everyone like crap in the hope of hitting the jackpot with one author, and treating them like even more crap. That way of doing business is over.

11. No more advertising. Our money is going into editors and into acquiring new authors, not into merchandising dollars at bookstores and not into ads that don’t sell books. No more mailing out scads of ARCs to reviewers. Readers are the only reviewers we care about. And instead of fighting Amazon, we sign up for every promotional idea they come up with. Matchbook? Absolutely. Lending Library? Yes, please. Kindle Daily Deals? Take our books, now. Related to this:

12. Goodbye, New York City. We’ll miss the expensive lunches on the business accounts, but we won’t miss the rent. We’re looking for a low-slung building in an industrial center near a nice airport. Houston would be a good choice. More of our employees will be working from home. Business will be conducted much as it already is: by email. We’ll see our friends at all the major conventions. The money we save will go into higher royalties, which means our authors want to stick with us. When we get up to 50% of net, which is doable, that self-publishing royalty is no longer causing the leak it once was. Once again, we have our pick of every single manuscript out there. The other publishers are feasting on our crumbs.

13. Monthly payments and speedy sales data. Authors enjoy money and they enjoy metrics, and right now they have to wait too long for both. At New HarperCollins, we pay royalties every 30 days. And whatever sales data we have, you have. Simple as that. If self-published authors can have this, then our authors should have this. No more waiting six months to pay people. That’s history. No more wondering how your book is doing; you have access to all the data we can cull. Share your results in the HarperCollins Author forums.

That would be my first month at the job. My second month, we would really get busy.

 

Number 5 is Alive!

The SAND saga is complete. I should have the collected edition up in a week or so. Until then, if you don’t mind paying $1.30 or so more for the pieces, you can get all five right now. (Think of it as getting more Jason Gurley artwork for your dollars).

Sand Part 1

Sand Part 2

Sand Part 3

Sand Part 4

Sand Part 5

Two Months to Publication

A friend of mine suggested this blog post to me. She is one of a handful of people to have read SAND all the way through (I sent early copies of part 5 to some betas), and as both a writer and a reader, she is fascinated in how quickly I wrote and published a full-length novel that doesn’t suck all that much. This is also something that comes up in the KBoards forums. There are threads devoted to systems of publishing many works in a year and more threads devoted to how these books must not be any good.

I subscribe to the Blake Crouch theory of book production, which says that a novel takes a set number of hours to write, revise, and edit. How you distribute those hours is up to you. Some purists will claim that it takes five years to write a novel, four and a half of which are spent in a deep depression because no writing is getting done, six months of which are spent actually writing and even then for only an hour or so a day.

The first novel I ever published, MOLLY FYDE AND THE PARSONA RESCUE, was written in a week. I was out of work at the time (paid work. I was writing reviews and serving as the book editor for a website my friend and I started). Twenty years of wanting to write and putting it off exploded out of me. This was a story I’d been daydreaming about for a long time, so I knew my characters and I knew a very, very rough outline of a plot. I started writing at six in the morning and wrote until eight or ten at night. Ten thousand words a day for seven days, and I had a 70,000 word rough draft. I spent a week revising this up to 100,000 words, sent that manuscript around, and was told by friends and family that I had to get it published.

I never wrote that fast again. I doubt I ever will. But it doesn’t take as long as you think, not if you are prepared and dedicated. I saw John Grisham interviewed in person once, and he said writing is neither as difficult as authors make it out to be nor as simple as non-writers assume it to be. He writes for TWO HOURS A DAY and then goes fishing. This is enough to produce a novel a year, and I guarantee you he doesn’t write every single day. He tours and vacations and takes his weekends off.

I have a traditionally published friend (Harper Collins, 6-figure advances) who can’t force himself to write. As his deadline approaches, he goes off to various internet-free rentals and cranks out a master-quality novel in about a month. I suspect this is more common than most readers know. I also suspect not many authors care to admit how fast they end up writing their books, fearing that the time involved will be equated to a lack of quality.

Last month, I had the incredible pleasure of meeting and hanging out with Elle Casey, an online friend of mine and one of my heroes. Elle is a full-time self-published author who publishes A BOOK A MONTH. That’s the deadline she sets for herself. These are full-length novels with intricate plots and across various genres. She has a legion of fans who wish she could write faster. How does she do it? She writes every single day, hours a day. She treats this like a job. And like me, she is very passionate about what she does.

So let me tell you how SAND went from blank page to 90,000 word published novel in two months. It started with NaNoWriMo (which was denigrated in the New York Times yesterday, much to my chagrin and the editor’s shame). NaNo is Elle Casey month for hundreds of thousands of writers. 30 days to write a 50,000 word rough draft. This year, I was on the road for NaNo. I spent 7 1/2 weeks in Europe on book tour, and I was nervous that I wouldn’t meet my writing goal. This was going to be my fifth year participating, and I didn’t want to break that streak, nor did I want to miss the chance of getting all that writing done.

This is part of the motivational magic of NaNo, but it’s also the attitude that allows me to write several novels a year. No excuse is good enough to NOT WRITE. Being on book tour? Not a good enough excuse. Having a day job, a family and house to take care of, meals to cook, a dog to walk and exercise? Not good enough excuses. The people who make this work find the time. I told myself, even knowing that my days were blocked up with interviews and bookstore events, that I would find the time.

SAND was written on trains and in airports. It was written in Finland at five in the morning before I went to the Helsinki Book Fair. It was written on the stoop of my hotel while I waited in the freezing cold for my publicist to pick me up. It was written in the back of the cab on the way to the fair. It was written at the fair while I waited on interviewers and while between interviews. When I wasn’t writing, I was thinking about the plot, my characters, having conversations, making notes in my cell phone.

I flew to Amsterdam where I wrote more. Every day, I wrote at least 2,000 words. I had a few 3,000 and even 5,000 word days. These were crucial, because my mother was meeting me in Italy to spend 10 days of my book tour on vacation with me. When she arrived, it meant getting up a little earlier every day and writing before we set out to see the sights. It meant writing at night before I went to bed. I wrote in a laundromat in Venice while I refreshed my single carry-on of clothes. When I got to 50,000, my mom and I toasted with glasses of wine and had a nice meal. And then I powered on, knowing this wasn’t enough.

When I felt stuck — as happens to most every writer — I went back to what I’d already written and cleaned it up. I would start at the beginning and work my way to the end, and then find that I knew what happened next. This meant SAND 1 had six or seven passes by the time I was writing SAND 4. I shared SAND 1 with my newsletter subscribers. The first part of my work was ready to publish before NaNoWriMo was even over. By the time I got home (just a couple days before Thanksgiving), I had the rough draft of a novel with just a dozen or so chapters missing (I’d written the end, but I’d left out most of SAND 4).

December was for revising. My plan was to publish each part with two weeks between them. When I felt good about a section, I sent it to David Gatewood, who would work on his editorial suggestions while I was finishing the next part. It went faster than I had anticipated (it always does. I set insane deadlines, and then I work like a beast and beat them). I also realized SAND 4 was going to be too long and that it had a natural break point, so SAND 5 was born. (There was also the pleasure of mimicking WOOL, which SAND is the antithesis of in at least a dozen ways. More on that much later). I had hoped to have the final part out at the end of January. I was done with the writing on January 1st. It is now 6 in the morning on January 6th, and my formatter is working on putting together SAND 5, which will be published this week.

I’m not sure if this is what my friend wanted to see, this rough timeline of events from first words to final publication, but that’s how the novel was put together and published. I don’t think it’s all that unusual, to be honest. Elle Casey would think me lazy. Another of my author friends would claim that this is only possible after ten months of agonizing procrastination. I think anything is possible. It’s Monday. I spent quite a bit of my weekend writing, signing and packing up books, editing for an upcoming anthology, writing a piece of flash fiction for another anthology, responding to emails, etc. This morning, I’m up at 6 to put together this blog-post-upon-request. And then it’s off to the next story I want to write. Even if I had a day job, I would get my words in for the day. Every day. That’s what I did for three years while at the bookstore. I got up and I wrote.

Maybe SAND would be a better book if I spent five years on it and revised every paragraph dozens of times. Perhaps. But I don’t hate what I’ve written, and I think the story and writing would only be marginally better with all that time and re-working. What would be lost are the ten other novels I would write in that five years. That’s more important to me, staying energized and excited, keeping it diverse, not wallowing in a story until I’m sick of it, but writing at the pace in which good reading occurs. Every writer needs to find their own system. This is mine. The only wrong system of writing is to not write. And now . . . I turn to a blank page and start something new. Or maybe I look at that Molly Fyde manuscript and try to wrap it up. Finally. It has taken me three years to write that book!

The Day the World Turns Upside Down

Just read this awesome comment from a KBoard member, DDark, in a discussion about dropping the word “indie” when referring to self-published authors:

I love being Indie. It’s like saying I’m an entrepreneur and I’ve never personally felt a negative connotation with it. To be honest, that tide is changing with readers, and in the past year, I’ve never seen so much “indie awareness” among readers who love to support the indie community. It could be genre specific, but they are falling in love with indie books and are letting go of those old stereotypes, realizing ways they can support the community. I love the label in other areas because I intentionally seek out indie movies and indie music.

And it reminded me of a blog post I put up a couple months ago where I predicted that we would soon see a day when traditional publishers do things with books to make them appear self-published.

Let that sink in for a moment. I’m saying that major publishers will do things to make their books look indie in order to appeal to readers who enjoy discovering new and underground works, who like supporting artists directly, who enjoy being part of a movement and a new cultural trend. It’s because of what DDark is saying about a changing tide with readers. It’s happening. I know people who read almost nothing but indie books. Their number is growing. That’s a demand, and major publishers will (another 2014 prediction?) start working to satisfy that demand.

We will have gone from the day when self-published authors tried to blend in with the big boys to a new era where the major publishers attempt to emulate us. We’ll see lower prices, perma-free, faster publication, e-book first windowing, more print-on-demand, cribbing our covers and fonts (!!), making shelf space for genres we invent (NA, anyone?), and urging their authors to “act more like a self-published author.”

Heresy? I don’t think so. I think it’s inevitable. Look at what major food producers do to make their products appear to come from a smaller, more intimate source. Look at Etsy and the rise of the maker movement. Look at the desire to “shop local.” Or the love of things hand-made. We are seeing a return to the roots of art where music can have pops and static and films can have a few sloppy cuts and books can do a little head-hopping, because it’s all about finding something new and exciting and ours.

The thread asked if we shouldn’t drop the “indie” label and just think of ourselves as authors. I’m going the other way. I use the word indie a lot, but I try to remember to use the word self-publishing. Why? Because I’m damn proud of what I do. Sure, I enlist others to help me make the best product possible, just as a small business owner can rarely do everything on their own. Just as a painter needs someone to manufacture their brushes and their paints. But I’m at the helm of this sad-looking ship. I can run it on a reef or discover some land nobody ever dreamed of. I’m a self-published author. Watch out for the pretenders.

Sand and Signed Books

100 Percent!

And not an ounce more. Because it’s impossible to give 110%. Believe me, I’ve tried. Check it:

Here’s the freaky thing, and I’ve had numerous people ask me about this, and I really don’t have a good answer, but the word count came out exactly where I anticipated yet again. Not sure what’s up with that. I put 0 / 80,000 words on my site a while back. These things always end up within 10% of my estimate. I totalled up the word count across all 5 parts, and it comes to 87,832. So weird. I wish I knew what that was all about.

Anyway, the entire work is now in draft. I’m going through my lovely and hilarious David Gatewood edits on SAND 4 for the rest of the day, and then I’ll do my passes on SAND 5 over the weekend, get them edited next week, and we could see this puppy wrapped and published by the 15th. That’s two weeks earlier than I’d expected. It also means, if you want to read the parts individually (which I think is the best way to read these), you could start this weekend and not have to wait long — if at all — before the last piece is out. Or you can wait for the Omnibus at the end of the month.

The Omnibus, by the way, is going to be the most gorgeous book I’ve ever produced. A lot of secrets to reveal about this work when it comes out. I’ve never been so excited for an unboxing. Trust me, you’re gonna flip. All these editions will be available on my site in case you want signed copies. Probably not until February. I have two big trips coming up, which is why I’m holding off.

Cheers, everyone. Thanks again for making this adventure so much fun.

Two New Things

If you look down the left hand side of the site, just below the pro-piracy button, you’ll see two new handy features on the website. The first is my Indie Toolbox. These are the artists, formatters, and editors that I personally use and swear by. Top quality for the best price. I can’t recommend these peeps highly enough. If you want your work to shine, use them.

Just beneath this is a list of blog posts that I get requests for. Rather than search for them over and over, I thought I’d put them in one place. I’ll update the list if I find more non-sucky blog posts in the archives. These are mostly geared to writers, since no one reads any of my other ramblings.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone. I hope all your dreams come true in 2014. Thank you for making mine come true in 2013. I hope you discover and read some great books this coming year. And to all the writers: congrats on getting your thoughts down and getting your stories published. You all mean the world to me. You’ve turned my life upside down. I can’t thank you enough for the kindness and support.

Screw Predictions. What the hell just happened?

There has been a slew of 2014 predictions this past week dealing with the ever-changing publishing biz. One or two (like J.A. Konrath’s) have dared to be audacious. I know of a few of the things Konrath is working on, and they really are going to be game-changers. But most of the predictions feign newness while describing past and current trends. You can read the headlines of 2013 in these posts that pretend to be about the coming year. Random House and Penguin merged, blowing collective minds, which means the next thing we’ll never see coming is another two publishers joining forces. Cue the collective yawns.

As someone who just returned to South Florida, it reminds me of hurricane predictions. If we have an active year, the forecast for the following year is dire. If we have a quiet year, the forecast is quiet. These people are in the business of describing yesterdays as if they were tomorrows. And really, it’s hard to blame them. Predicting the unpredictable is best left to desperate gamblers. What I want to know is this: Does anyone have any idea what in the world took place in 2013? I’m thinking the answer is “no.”

It’s not just that the industry is changing so fast, it’s that our data for what is occurring isn’t available. We see reports on ebook sales everywhere that don’t include self-published authors, who might possibly account for 25% or more of total ebook sales. (Really). We see reports on the number of books published in a year based on Bowker’s ISBN purchases, even though many e-book authors (such as myself) don’t use them. We see earnings reports based on surveys that somehow slipped the notice of those of us who geek out on all things publishing and all things survey. Nobody knows what’s going on because nobody knows what’s going on. Simple confusions abound. We can’t intelligently discuss the past, and yet people are going to predict the future.

Who saw BookBub’s rise to prominence this year? No one. But plenty of prediction lists for 2014 include the emergence of “some as-yet-unknown marketing tool.” Gotcha. Who saw e-book sales slowing for major publishers this year? Nobody. The forecast for next year? More flat sales. Why? Because it already happened.

What I want to know is this: How many authors are now making a living because of the explosion of e-books? How many are making a living self-publishing? Amazon is loathe to part with numbers, but they dropped us a crumb this week. According to their sales data, 150 self-published authors sold more than 100,000 copies of a single title this year. That’s freaking amazing. A small percentage of published books sell that many copies in their lifetime. Many books are deemed a success for selling 10,000 units.

But what I would love to know is how many writers are earning $50 a month from their craft? How many are making $100 a month? Nobody knows. As I argued over on Salon, the real story of self-publishing isn’t really being covered. That means the most important developments in all of the publishing industry might be completely unknown. And since we can only predict for tomorrow what we know happened yesterday, this means the true changes that are afoot won’t be on a single prediction blog you’ll read in the coming weeks.

And yeah, I know I said we should screw predictions, but I’m going to toss some really crazy ones out there anyway:

1. This data I’m complaining does not exist will get better. Amazon might even tell us how many authors are making $100 a month. I’m dying to know!

2. DBW will do a better survey in 2014 than the one they did in 2013. Because they’re just as interested in the truth as I am. The last one, and the way it was parsed, was not so good.

3. Tools for self-published authors will get better. We’ll see real-time e-book editing from within dashboards. More sales data. Apps for mobile to track and manage books (even modify metadata, keep up with new reviews, make quick edits, etc.) Daily and monthly reports will get much better.

4. A book club or subscription-based service will be announced. This will feed you a free story a week based on what you’ve read to completion and rated highly in the past. This will not be like the All-You-Can-Eat models that launched this year, which I predict (4a) will be a complete bust (the finances just aren’t sustainable). This will be more like a magazine or comic book subscription, but for e-books. (There’s an equivalent for shoppers these days called Stitch Fix that would be the perfect model for e-book delivery. Send five books a week based on your preferences. You only pay for the ones you read more than 20% of. You have your own personal bookstore shopper who knows what you like and what you want to read next).

5. Barnes and Noble won’t go bankrupt in 2014! (It’ll be 2015). Just trying to be different here. Most people have them walking dead right now. I’m a naive optimist — what can I say?

6. Someone will come up with a REAL bestseller list. Not many readers know this, but the NYT list is mostly bunk. It’s not their fault. They don’t have true sales data. They have to go by relative sales rankings on various outlets and the handful of stores that report sales (which are gamed by publishers with book tours) and incomplete bookscan data. Oh, and a room of people sitting around debating placement like American Idol judges (I think). It doesn’t have to be like this. There are enough indies scattered all across the various distribution outlets that their combined data could create a true list. We could know at any moment what the #10 and #20 and #7 books on the Amazon charts, B&N charts, ACX charts, etc. are selling. Have that data anonymously parsed by a company like BookTrakr, and make weekly and monthly sales data completely transparent. Readers could see what was really selling and how much. Imagine that.

7. A big-name author will move to self-publishing, and everyone will be shocked. I’m surprised this didn’t happen in 2013. Jim Carrey’s children’s book doesn’t count, as he isn’t a big-name author. This will be a perennial NYT bestseller who realizes how much better they would do, how much happier they would be, and how much freedom they would have with their art if they just appealed directly to their fanbase. For the big shocker of 2014, this is the one I’m going with.

8. Most of the 2014 predictions will not come true. But there will be exceptions, like this one.

Some Sand News

SAND is coming right along. The first two parts have been up for a couple of weeks, and despite telling people to hold off until the Omnibus, they are selling and getting some great feedback. It’s cool. I’m used to being ignored.

Part 3 should hit on Tuesday of this week. I might have part 4 out a week later. And in a not-very-big-surprise, a part 5 is now needed, which will wrap the story up with a bang. I hope to have that out by the middle of January, which is pretty crazy considering I had planned on releasing part 4 at the end of the month. Really getting absorbed in this story, which is always a good sign.

The feedback for the individual covers has been off the hook (Here’s part 1 on Amazon. And part 2). More of that Jason Gurley magic. Now I’m pleased to reveal the cover for the looming Omnibus, which I hope to have ready to go by the end of January. Gorgeous, eh? I would totally pick this up to see what it was about. And I would caress it. And hug it. And pet it. And squeeze it. And call it George.