The Times They Are a-Changin'
from the single by Bob Dylan recorded October 24, 1963 at Columbia Studios, New York City
It has taken me four and a half years to finish this book of mine, and in that time, technology and this ebook tide has risen so fast that we'd all better start swimmin' or we'll sink like stones.
I remember when my last book WRECKERS' KEY came out in early 2007. I took off in my car on book tour around the states of Florida, Georgia and Alabama all on my own dime. I had to take personal leave from my job in addition to paying for all my own travel costs. To save money, I rigged up my Honda Element with an inflatable air mattress in the back, 900-thread count sheets, and my itty-bitty booklight. I camped out every other night in Walmart parking lots next to Winnebagos from Quebec with my watchdog and sailing partner, the Intrepid Seadog Chip. I did scheduled talks and signings at mostly independent stores and drop-in signings at every bookstore I could find, although I soon learned that Books-a-Million and Borders never, ever had any copies of my books. Only Barnes and Noble did because my publisher had essentially paid for shelf space (co-op). However, they carried none of the back list books from the series. It was all exhausting and frustrating.
Essentially, my publisher outsourced all other publicity to me. I printed up book marks and I produced and recorded my own audio book sampler with the first chapter of the book and put it on multimedia CD's along with drop-in newsletter articles, hi-res photos, shelf-talkers, Q&A, etc. I mailed out packages with the CD's and ARCs of the book to over 150 independent bookstores. I said yes to every book club or library that asked me to speak, often driving from Fort Lauderdale to Vero Beach or Clearwater and back in one day in order to put in an appearance to speak to a handful of people. In one year, I attended Bouchercon, Left Coast Crime, SIBA, Sleuthfest and Thrillerfest.
Here are the sales of that book through March, 2010 in hardcover, mass market paperback and ebook. The first two columns are the numbers of books sold and dollars for the previous year, the last two columns are cumulative overall for three years, first number of copies and then dollars.
For the last several years, I have been struggling with a severe case of self-doubt. The usual wisdom says that the cream will rise to the top. If you write good books and you get out there and bust your tail to promote, you will succeed. Yeah, I got published. I know that was a huge step. But the only conclusion I could draw from my dismal sales was that I didn't write good enough books. It must have been some fluke whereby I slipped by the crap detectors. But I loved being published, and I didn't want to quit. Since my Seychelle books obviously weren't selling the way I wanted, I decided to go off and try to do something totally different. I would reinvent myself.
And what happened instead was, the world of publishing reinvented itself while I was off writing.
Amanda Hocking, the 26-year-old writer of paranormal YA novels who has never been published by a traditional publisher posted screen shots of her sales for the month of December here. She closed her blog with this: "My total sales for the month of December as of 8:30 PM, 12/30/10 are an absurdly even 99,000. Which brings my total books sold, since April 15, 2010: 148,887 books." Amanda was offered a print deal by a big NY print publisher and she turned them down because they wanted her to wait until 2012 for the release of her next book in print and ebook at the same time. She knew her fans did not want to wait, so she said no.
There has been a power shift. That one item that authors have never had any control over — distribution — is now available to anyone. Authors are no longer dependent on publishers to get their books onto the shelves so that readers can find them. Many publishers (though not mine) had already outsourced much of the editing to agents, they definitely outsourced the publicity to authors, and I don't think their art departments were working too hard since Randy Wayne White and I both had covers based on the same stock photos. I do have to admit, I like Randy's much better than mine.
So now the tide is rising up around me, but I'm in the middle of a bay and I don't know which shore to swim for. Should I strike out for the shiny new E-town or head over to the more traditional P-town?
Anyone out there who has been following these changes knows that this is the choice confronting every author today. The world of print publishing did not produce a big success for me last time around, so is it reasonable for me to believe it will be any different this time? If I do try to go with print, I may spend months trying to find a publisher only to fail in this market or if I do find a publisher, it will be late 2012 before I will have my new book available at the earliest.
And maybe, it isn't that my books were so bad, but rather that they were so high priced. So much of what is driving these ebook sales are the low prices. Perhaps I won't ever sell books at champagne prices — but I could find more sales at the beer-budget level.
Though our e-authors here on the blog like John Urban and Mike Jastrzebski have been discussing and showcasing their plans for promotion (like Mike's Kindle Giveaway Contest here), I haven't heard a one of them talking about driving around three states and sleeping in the back of his car in Walmart parking lots. Like Dylan said, "If your time to you is worth savin'."
So how much have the times changed? What do you all think I should do? Any suggestions? Recommendations?
Fair winds,
Christine
