Mary Sisson's Blog, page 73

How things have changed

Lindsay Buroker has been doing some excellent posts on building a fan base--well worth a read.

But I was most interested in the post where she reveals her sales numbers for the first month for each new release: 2,000 copies of the fourth book in her Emperor's Edge series, 2,500 copies of the fifth book, and 3,000 copies (and counting) of the sixth book.

Why was that so interesting? Because those numbers really suck!

Or at least they suck by traditional publishing standards.

If Buroker was with a large, commercial publishing house, she'd have to sell between 20,000 and 30,000 copies of each title to get a contract for her next book--and she'd have to do it within a few months of release.

I've said this before, but I'll say it again: This is what makes me happy about self-publishing. A niche novelist with a relatively small audience can make a living on writing alone--writing fiction, no less.

Oh, and I get to read her books!

I didn't really expect anything different

This is an interesting post on Passive Voice (original post by Brian DeFiore--awesomely titled "E-Books and Profitability: What We've Always Said and Publishers Have Always Denied"--here)--it's a breakdown of how much HarperCollins makes off of hardcovers vs. e-books, and it includes how much the author gets.

The bottom line? HarperCollins does way better, and writers get royally screwed. Quoth DeFiore:

Look at Harper’s own numbers:

$27.99 hardcover generates $5.67 profit to publisher and $4.20 royalty to author

$14.99 agency priced e-book generates $7.87 profit to publisher and $2.62 royalty to author.

I will point out that I make more than $2.62 every time I sell an e-book copy of Trust. Just saying.

Ugh

Just letting everyone know that 1. I am still here, and 2. I am hoping to be able to get back to work sooner rather than later. The situation is not nearly as bad as the one Dean Wesley Smith found himself in, but I shall note that the past three days have been spent...wait for it...filing. Yes, FILING. As in putting pieces of paper into some kind of coherent order. I've got at least another day of it coming up. Yup! Bachelor's degree from Harvard University, master's from NYU, writing awards, two novels done, and I'm a full-time secretary now--and not even one from this decade! (So you don't get the wrong idea about my brother, these are not his papers. This is just one of the things he was in the midst of doing that I have to take over now.)

You know, if you're going to use Twitter...

...you might want to take 30 seconds or so and learn how it actually works. I keep having people respond to or favorite retweets as though they are things I wrote myself--that "RT @somebodywhoisn'tme:" actually does mean something, OK? It's like misspelling words or using bad grammar: You might have a point, but you've just made yourself look really ignorant, which isn't going to help your credibility.

Bitchy rant over--sorry about that. I'll make it up to you with my new favorite song....

Some interesting links from May

Kris Rusch had an interesting post about work habits--I'm particularly interested in the fact that she doesn't mind it when her time is all chopped up (which kind of kills my writing). Something to think about....

I think it's pretty awesome that Amazon has figured out a way to legally publish and monetize fan fiction. YouTube does something similar, and I'm all for it. I realize that makes me a bit of an outlier, but the fact is that people have always written fan fiction (in fact, there's an entire genre of fiction called the Robinsonade, which is basically Robinson Crusoe fan fiction--The Swiss Family Robinson is only the most famous example). In addition, some of my first fiction was fan fiction (a Firefly fanfic, and years before, a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode), and I think writing fanfic is a great way for people to learn to write novels--basically the character- and world-generation have been taken care of, so you just focus on plot and dialog and develop those skills. It's like training wheels: Eventually you get confident enough to create your own characters and world, and then you're off!

And this spoof is not actually about publishing, but it does underscore how you can spin data to mean anything you like. I'm particularly fond of #20: Electrification rates have stagnated since the 1960s. Just like the way the rates of e-book adoption are slowing!

Do you want people to enjoy your work, or build a shrine to it?

So, I'm back home, and I'm going to try to get gradually back into the swing of things. Emotional issues aside (because those are so very easy to ignore), as a practical matter my brother's death puts quite a bit of responsibility on me, so let's just say I don't expect to be brilliantly focused. And I may just need to switch projects for a while--like I said before, Trials is kind of a rough book with a lot of loss in it, and it may just be too much right now. I really, really, really do not want to produce my very own version of Accordion Crimes.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago Dialectrix, who is an Australian hip-hop artist who I happen to like a lot (listen here), posted this rant about how people should not buy his music digitally, because then you'll listen to the songs out of order and ignore his beautiful cover art and won't be able to display it on your shelves so that all your friends can see it.

And wow, the whole thing is both totally misguided and coming from a place I can totally understand. The minute you finish a major project, be it an album or a novel, you feel really entitled to some serious love! You don't want to think about, say, giving it away for free (a strategy, I should note, that has been working just fine this past month despite receiving zero attention from me), or people ripping your songs out from their careful order and mixing them up with a bunch of other music like they were some kind of radio DJ or something!

"I see the convenience in newer technologies," writes Dialectrix, but he's kidding himself. What he doesn't see is that if the technology isn't convenient, I won't use it. At this point, if the music is not on my iPod (which I can plug into both my home and car stereo), I simply don't listen to it. And that actually predated my getting the iPod--I increasingly was not bothering to buy CDs or to listen to the ones I bought because it was kind of a pain. (Just like I was increasingly not buying paper books, come to think of it--it's the clutter factor.)

The way things are now, I listen to Dialectrix all the time--in fact, I listen to him even more than I really want to because my iPod has fallen in love and plays his music every other song. (Easy there, iPod--he's a married father. And I think he may be a little prejudiced against your kind.) If I did what Dialectrix wanted, I would never actually consume the media he produces, which seems rather counterproductive

And of course, Dialectrix is risking pushback from fans who feel insulted and put upon by these sorts of demands. At least Dialectrix is still making his work available digitally (unlike Stephen King who seems to be actively wooing pirates). Nonetheless, it's easy to get pirated digital media for free, and I think the last thing you want to do is tell the people who do pay for your digital media that you don't appreciate it.

Very sad news

My brother, age 46, passed away quite unexpectedly this morning thanks to a massive heart attack. Obviously, things are going to go dark here for quite some time....

Progress report

Like I said, life is rearing its ugly head again, so today I just edited the rest of the first half of Chapter 8 of the Trang audiobook and compressed it.

Nurturing vs. community

Life is once again getting very much in the way of productivity. But Jaye Manus has a great post on the perils of publisher "nurturing" vs. the benefits of being part of a community of writers.

Hate and the Internet

Today isn't a work day for various reasons, but I thought this was an interesting article on trolling that also pretty much applies to reviews in general. Something to keep in mind:

But sheer experience is also altering the landscape. After you've been through one or two of these hatestorms, you recognize a very simple reality: They change nothing.... Everybody knows there is a vague climate of hate surrounding everything that is distinct in any way. So who cares?