Slowness and Ebooks

All right, I know, I’ve been slow to get back to the blog. What with the time spent writing, there’s just not been enough time to write regularly. I’m hoping that will change a little soon, but there are still too many distractions, culminating last month in the death of my lovely old Bernese. The house is a much quieter place without her.

So, what’s been happening?

My Lovely Old Berner, Dori.

A couple of years ago I wrote a modern spy story. It was, according to the folks I sent it to, really pretty good, although there were the odd typo and so on. Nothing major. My agent was very impressed with it, and saw a means of making some cash, so he sent it off to publishers he knew, full of the optimistic belief that he (and I) would soon get a deal. Sadly, he was mistaken.

The book, Act of Vengeance, was good, according to all the comments on the rejection slips, but in the present market – well, I wasn’t known for modern spy thrillers, and setting me up as a spy author rather than a medievalist was just too hard. Especially in the current climate. So, thanks, but no.

The new cover

It’s not something for which I can blame them. Those editors have to take a book and then sell the idea of the book to their colleagues. That isn’t easy in any market. To take a book from a man known for a very different genre, no matter how good, is far more work than taking a book from an unknown and selling that. The unknown is a guy who can be moulded to suit the marketing campaigns, whose name carries no additional junk with it. It’s plain easier to sell.

And the editor would have to be very convinced about the book in that market. And let’s face it, the market’s pretty full of good thriller writers. Grisham, Child, Deaver, all are known for their taut writing styles and page-turning abilities.

There is another aspect to it, as well. When you look at modern thrillers, sales are tough. When I began looking into it, I was appalled to see an article that said the sales of many conspiracy, Dan Brown style books have collapsed by 80 percent or so. An ever smaller number of writers are making money at that game.

It’s a phenomenon that has hurt all authors, not only thriller writers. Authors of all types (including those whom I most admire) are seeing their sales drying up, their profit per book shrivelling and their incomes dwindling to a fraction of what they used to enjoy. Even authors who have kept up their sales have seen the amount they’re paid per book reduce to a pathetic number of coins. It’s not now strange to be offered a pittance – six pennies – for a book sold on a major internet site. At the same time, the market for second hand books has blossomed, meaning that many sales an author could once have expected are now lost. Ebooks are coming across strongly – but they have their own risks. The value which people place on books is reducing. People who see an ever-increasing number of titles for free now baulk at the thought of paying eight pounds or nine pounds for a new novel. I’ve even had a complaint from one man because my collection of four short stories was too expensive, in his view, at under  a dollar per story. How cheap did he expect his entertainment to be, I wondered?

After all, when I received another complaint today, saying that £5.99 was too much for a novel, I started thinking. People will pay more than that to go to a cinema or buy a DVD. Yet a film will last a mere two hours or so. A book for that money will entertain the reader for at least two or three days. For value, a book is far better. And if the price is cut, that means work must also be cut. You don’t get the same work if you pay less, because writers won’t be able to sit and write. They’ll need to work more in other fields to maintain any kind of living standard.

Publishers are finding the new world difficult to navigate. How do you sell books in a market in which the majority of buyers think that books should all be priced at under a dollar? There is no money there for the publisher to make a profit. Certainly not for an author, who sees the royalties reducing to an infinitesimal level. So many authors will give up. They will have to take on full-time work, and stop writing in the hope that they will be able to make a living from their writing, because there will not be one. The only possible way to make money will be from writing directly to internet, and hoping that the sales there will add up, in time, to enough to keep the authors ticking over.

Modern Short Stories

I don’t like that thought. Publishers are too valuable. It is publishers who take a poorly written but imaginative book and turn it into something wonderful. It’s the teams of editors who make this transformation, the copy editors, the proof readers, who convert dull prose into grammatical, correctly spelled works of brilliance. Authors have the initial ideas, but without the folks in the offices who create gorgeous covers and the sales teams who go out and tell the world about the stories, most authors would never break out.

The next few years will be tough. There are glimmers of hope in the way the market is going, but all too few.

So, I thought I may as well try the market myself. Act of Vengeance is now out on Kindle. And I’ve my collections of short stories, No One Can Hear You Scream and For the Love of Old Bones, both of which you can buy today for your Kindle. All are winning great reviews, thank goodness. Go and look. Act of Vengeance has the brilliant  “An instant classic British spy novel … mature, thoughtful, and intelligent … but also raw enough for our modern times.  Highly recommended.” from Lee Child (I owe him a scotch for that)!

But the good thing is, my main books are going from strength to strength.

The first thirteen have now been snapped up by Simon and Schuster as well, and they are already uploaded as ebooks. With luck the rest of the series will soon join them. And then there is the latest book: Templar’s Acre, which will be out next summer.

It’s a new diversion for me: a prequel that tells the story of Baldwin’s early years, and how he came to join the Templars. It was enormously good fun to write, and I’m hoping it will explain a lot about him to folks who’ve enjoyed his stories so far!

So, in the run up to Christmas, I am hoping that my latest ebooks will attract some interest. If you have missed any of them, take a look when you get a chance and see how you feel.

And now, I’m going. I have more work to do tonight … well, I’m off Morris dancing, to be honest. I look forward to a few too many beers to keep me warm!

Tagged: ebooks, literature, publishing, Templar series, writing