L’esprit d’escalier

I’ve spent enough time hemming and hawing over whether to get a netbook.  Tomorrow, I place the order.  My hesitation came from a few things: wanting a bit of a buffer in my bank account, first and foremost, but also the worry that I just wanted one for the shiny factor.  I mean, I have a desktop and a laptop at home.  Do I really need a third computer?

I’ve come up with a big ol’ yes to that.  While I can take the monster that is the Alienware with me on trips, it’s also, well, a monster.  It’s big and heavy, which makes it Not Fun to lug around an airport.  Also, since most of my travel is business travel, chances are I don’t really have time to do much more than poke around the internet when I boot it up.  If my choices between meetings come down to “nap or play WoW,” I’m going to nap.  So, while a machine with an internet connection and a word processing program is pretty vital to me during those days, my sweet gaming rig isn’t.

As for more local usage, I can absolutely see myself using a netbook during my commute to and from work.  On the train yesterday, the beginning of a story started clicking into place.  I’d managed, in cleaning out my bag o’tricks, to take my college-ruled notebook out, but never put it back in, so the writing down of thoughts had to wait another half hour until I could get to my desk and some scrap paper.  What’s there on the page isn’t exactly what was in my head originally.  Still decent, but I feel like I’ve forgotten some turn of phrase I’d really liked.

It’ll also be good to have if the weather here ever gets nicer.  Not just for getting outside and writing during lunches, but taking advantage of our backyard in the summer, as well.

Now, there’s still a little voice hollering at me that I can do all this with pen and paper, and that’s very true.  But I type faster than I write, and have already discovered during NaNo that pen-and-paper writing on the train is an exercise in frustration — awkward position, holy ow my wrists, and handwriting made illegible by the movement of the train.

So, there it is.  It’s going to take a couple of weeks before it’s in my grimy little paws, but I’m pretty excited about it.

A note on the story that I mentioned above.  See poor, neglected Night Owls over there on the sidebar?  I think this new tale might be set in the same universe.  The good thing is, the tone of the new thing is much closer to the tone I wanted with Night Owls from the start.  I’m hoping the time I’ll be spending with the short story will help me figure out what I need to do to bring that voice to the novel.

Onward!

The weekend took forever.  I kept waiting for the calendar to tick over to March so I could tell you this:

My flash fiction story, “Pomegranate,” is in the Spring 2010 edition of flashquake.

Go!  See!  And take a peek at all the stories there.  If you’ll pardon me, I’ll be over here /happydancing.

The short version: this past Friday night, after everyone who could respond had gone home for the weekend, Amazon.com pulled the buy button from all Macmillan titles on their site.  This includes Kindle editions and print editions.  You can still purchase them from third-party resellers, but not directly from Amazon.  If you are a customer and had any of their books on your Amazon wishlist, guess what, those are gone, too.

There’s not much I can say about this that hasn’t been said in better and smarter ways by people more directly affected by this than I am, so I’m going to keep this short and send you off to see what the professionals are saying about it.

As James D. MacDonald said in his comment on the Making Light thread:

To my way of thinking, that makes three times Amazon has pulled this kind of crap.

First, they decided to delist any POD publisher that didn’t print their physical books at CreateSpace. Then they made all gay books vanish from searches. Now this.

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”

Other commenters pointed out that if you add in their yanking of 1984 from the Kindles of those who’d purchased the book and a similar incident to the Macmillan situation at Amazon UK (this time against Hachette UK), we’re up to five rounds of shenanigans.

Now, does Amazon have to sell Macmillan’s books?  No.  Nor, by the way, does Macmillan have to sell their books to Amazon to redistribute.  But the ones who lose in either scenario are the readers and, especially, the authors.  Could Amazon have perhaps pulled just the Kindle editions instead of all print ones as well?  Certainly.  Still not a great solution, but at least one that makes the point without kicking the authors in the teeth quite so hard.

And hey, if 50% of all their books sold are Kindle editions, as Bezos likes to claim — without providing any evidence to back it up, mind you — then wouldn’t removing the eBook editions still make Macmillan take notice?

That said, I think yanking all editions — print, Kindle, or crayon-on-wall — is a shitty solution no matter what way you look at it.  You’re a bookseller.  Your job is to provide books to readers. I can’t help but feel it’s unprofessional to drag your readers into your dispute with the publisher.  Which is probably also part of what Amazon’s doing, by the by:  telling their customers that Macmillan’s the bad guy here, because they want to charge more money for eBooks, so it’s the publisher’s fault.

But if you look at what Macmillan actually wants to do, which is start eBooks off at a higher price when they’re first released, but eventually lower the price, similar to the way prices go down as print books go from hardcover to trade paperback to mass market editions, that’s hardly a bad thing.  The people who want to read something on release will pay the higher cost.  Others will wait until it goes down a few dollars.  Others will just borrow it from their local library in its physical form.  The same way we do with dead tree books.  The same way we do with just about any product, really, be it clothing or gadgets or movies.

I’m guessing Amazon’ll be putting Macmillan’s buy buttons back tomorrow or early this week, having “shown them” what going against Amazon’s wishes can do to them.  I’m hoping that Macmillan will stick to their guns on eBooks, and that other publishers will back them up.  (Hint:   I’m looking at you, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Random House and HarperCollins.)

Before I let you go, might I recommend you show some support for the Macmillan authors and for your indie bookstores?  Click on over to IndieBound and treat yourself to a book!

Right, so.  Linky time.  Go refill your coffee and get clicking.

Let’s start off with a primary source.  Amazon’s not commenting, but Tor.com has A Message from Macmillan CEO John Sargeant that was sent to the publisher’s authors, illustrators, and the literary agents that work with them.

SFWA is hosting Tobias Buckell’s post about “Why My Books Are No Longer Available on Amazon.com” – if you read no other articles about this situation, read Buckell’s. He makes his point in a clear, calm way.  He also explains why producing an eBook isn’t all that much more expensive than producing its print equivalent.  I’ve said it here before: the price of printing and binding a book is between $1 and $3.  Everything else goes to what Buckell lists: editing, copyediting, design, marketing.  He mentions that the publishers’ offices are part of that cost, but I’d add a little more to it: the paychecks of the customer service department, the finance department, the IT group.  All those departments that every company anywhere has exist at a publisher, and their operation comes out of whatever’s left after you subtract the bookseller discount from a book’s cover price.

Another excellent post is over at Charlie Stross’ blog: “Amazon, Macmillan: an outsider’s guide to the fight.” It takes a good look at Amazon in regards to the supply chain for books.

John Scalzi has two articles over at the Whatever: “A Quick Note on eBook Pricing and Amazon Hijinx” and “It’s All About Timing.” The second article takes a look at why Amazon would pull their stunt on a Friday evening as opposed to a Tuesday morning.

Making Light, home of Tor editors Teresa and Patrick Nielsen Hayden, has a short post, “Amazon and Macmillan,” but that’s because the commenters are brilliant people, and the discussion is one to follow.

Jay Lake’s title says it all: “Bug off, Bezos.  And take your damned bookstore with you.”

Jackie Kessler has a great analysis of the situation at “Amazon vs. Macmillan, part 2.”

More quick links:

Laptop Magazine: “Amazon, Macmillan, and the eBook Price War”

Laura Anne Gilman, “AmazonFail, part 2?”

I’ll update as more comes up.  I’m equally anticipating and dreading Amazon’s official comment, when it comes.

Update 1: Amazon’s finally responded, and, as predicted, they’re trying to make Macmillan into the villains here. I’m frothing too hard at the mouth to even really respond to it right now, except to say that while they “don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan,” I hope they do.

Update 2: Laura Anne Gilman does a line-by-line of Amazon’s response better than I ever could.  “Holy shit. Amazon, seriously? Sulky 5-year-old much?”  ahahahaha

And Tobias Buckell has a brilliant idea: “Together, Let’s Break the Amazon Monopoly on Kindles.”

I haven’t been around much, mostly because we went to Ireland at the beginning of the month, and I’m taking my sweet time getting back into the swing of things.  We took a lot of pictures, which you can see here.  I was reminded, while snapping photos, that I’d really like to take a photography course at some point.

Of course, on seeing the Long Room at Trinity College in Dublin, I also declared that I shall become a bookbinder, and spend the rest of my life restoring old books.  We took two steps inside and I stopped, gazing up and gaping, and wishing the ropes didn’t block off the books because I wanted to just plunk myself down on the floor between the shelves and breathe them in.  Of course, that’s precisely why they’re cordoned off, so that people can’t reach out and touch the books with oily fingers and do damage to them.

But oh, I could be very happy among those books.

So, other things I’ve done in the last month:

Nin got cleaned up, edited, and passed along.  It’s an exciting first step, but of course, now comes the waiting.  The person who has it has other duties, and the person she’ll show it to has other duties, both of which I understand take priority over reading the manuscript.  Doesn’t stop me from biting my nails.   So, while the method of passing it on isn’t exactly your typical querying process, the waiting part is about the same.

Still trying to settle on a project.  Grailchild makes me go argh when I open it.  Night Owls would be the less frustrating one to go with, but man, part of me says, “Dude, the market is glutted with vampires.”  Then of course my practical voice argues back that writing for “the market” is pretty ridiculous.  What’s big now might not be big in three years.  Or maybe it will still be going strong, or maybe it will have seen a lull and a resurgence.  Then there’s poor Karris, who needs some serious worldbuilding before I go back to him.  Also, “Kate.”  Also, Lil’s story.

And, even less helpful, this morning I had the idea for what I think could be a clever little story, if done right, but I’m afraid it’s gimmicky, or trite, or both.

I should probably just shut up and write it.

I’ve done some reading, though not nearly as much as I’d like to.  The pile of books is ever-growing.

I finally read The Gathering Storm, and loved it.  Sanderson’s an excellent writer.  What struck me, even in the first few pages, was this:  of course I didn’t go into it expecting Robert Jordan’s voice.  I expected Sanderson’s, and wasn’t disappointed.  What I didn’t expect was to feel like I was coming home as I read the prologue.  Sanderson has often said that he was a WoT fan from the start, so I was fairly certain he’d do a respectful job at finishing the series.  Maybe it was simply reading about places and people I’ve been wondering about in the back of my mind for so long, but I think it’s more than that.  He got it.  I’d go so far as to say he nailed it.

Obviously, since there are still two books to go, not all of the loose threads have been tied up.  The ones he did focus on, however, had me cheering.  I don’t want to get all spoilery on people, so I hope I’m not spilling too much when I write holy shit, Verin!

I’m still on my first play-through of Dragon Age: Origins, and having a blast.  There’s so very much story here, I don’t want to miss a single thread.  Which of course means I’m maybe 2/3 of the way through the game (I think? Maybe?) and I don’t want it to end.  I know I’ll play it through at least once more, as a different race and class, and probably rotate out more of the characters.  I’ve mainly kept Morrigan, Alistair and Leliana in my party, and when I put Sten and Thrall in for a little while the other day, there were suddenly even more interactions I realized I’ve been missing.  (Yes, I stop and watch the idle back and forth between my party members when we’re wandering around, even though it’s less plot-progression and more comic interactions.)

I’ll probably also pick some of the meaner answers next time through, since I’ve gone the “I want you all to think I’m awesome” route this first time.

There are RP plots afoot in WoW, which means a good chunk of writing on that front for both Threnn and Annalea.

So, pen in hand, butt in chair.  My only real goal for 2010 (aside from paying off bills and saving money) is to get something published.  Which means I need to get things submitted.  Which means I need to get them finished.

Which means I ought to close out this post.

If you participated and won NaNo this year, you might have seen the offer from FastPencil for a free bound copy of your NaNo project.  Sounds pretty keen, doesn’t it?  Write a book in November, see it published in December?

Yeah, not so much.  Printed in December, sure, but not published.

Look, you’ve just written at a brain-breaking pace for thirty days.  What you’ve got is a good start — you wrote something!  That’s amazing!  But it’s not done.  It’s not polished, it’s not the best story it can be.  It’s not ready to be published.

And when it is — when you’ve gone ahead and made your changes and made sure it’s ready to be published, why not shop it around first?  Why not give it a chance to get the kind of distribution that gets books into bookstores?

I’m a little alarmed to see Galleycat’s post today, “Fast Pencil Sees National Novel Writing Growth.”  While FastPencil’s not doing the exact same thing DellArte is, they certainly marketed themselves to a similar audience — people who’ve just finished their books, who are excited and passionate and hopeful about it — but people whose books are just not ready.  And people who, it’s very likely, aren’t very savvy about the publishing industry and how it works.

There are going to be NaNoers who take advantage of the offer as a novelty — it’s a souvenir, a bit of tangible proof that they cranked out fifty thousand words in a month.  Maybe they wrote the book just for mom or grandpa or their BFF, and they have no intentions of trying to get it commercially published.  To those people, this is a neat deal.

But to the writers who have dreams of being the next Nora Roberts or JRR Tolkien, well… This isn’t the way to go.

FastPencil offers packages that are very similar to the ones you see at DellArte or AuthorHouse, though they certainly offer more information about pricing — there’s a calculator that lets you see the base price of your book, much like Lulu.com has.  They even break down some sample pricings so you can see what your royalties would be.

One thing that makes me a bit uncomfortable:  the information on how you get paid is buried waaaaaay the hell down at the bottom of their FAQ:

How and when do I get compensated for my publications sold through the FastPencil MarketPlace and third party retailers?
FastPencil accumulates author royalties by calendar quarter, and then pays them out to authors using NET30 terms. You must have accumulated 100.00 USD in royalties to generate a payout; otherwise it continues accumulating into the next calendar quarter.

So, let’s look at this a bit.  (Oh god, she’s mathing again.)

If you want to sell your book exclusively through the FastPencil Marketplace — no distribution or listing with other online retailers — that’s not terribly expensive.  The cost of one “proof” of your book or $19.99 for an eBook.  (Digression the first: paying for a proof seems strange to me.  The whole point of a proof is to make sure everything is laid out properly and to catch typos before the book is released to the masses.  Why charge for that?)

But, well.  Why would you want your book’s only exposure to be on their site?  Don’t you want it to be out there, sharing the same virtual space as other books from other publishers?

Of course you do!  And you can do that for the low low price of $149.99 — $199.99 if you want an eBook format, too — plus the cost of one “proof”.

What you’re paying for there, essentially, is your ISBN, and FastPencil releasing your ISBN/title info into ye olde data feed.

Ahem.

Through R.R. Bowker, the ISBN agency in the U.S., a block of 10 ISBNs is $275.00.  That’s $27.50 per ISBN.  So what exactly is FastPencil doing with rest of the $121.50 ($151.50 with the eBook option!) they’re charging you?  Surely, it doesn’t cost that much to enter your title info and make it go live.  That’s not even an hour’s work, surely.  (If there’s someone out there getting paid $100+ an hour to enter that data, someone send me an application!)

Let’s go with their numbers here.

They offer two choices, targetting a retail price or targetting a profit margin.  In both examples, the book in question is a 5×8, 200 page trade paperback.  Going with a $14.00 retail price obviously gives you a smaller profit than setting the price at $17.12.

(Digression #2:  As was pointed out to me in the comments to one of the Harlequin Horizons posts, retail price and cover price aren’t always the same thing, since retailers can take discounts off of the cover price.  Royalties should always be based on the cover price.  I’m going to try to use the term “cover price” from here on out, but “retail price” is the phrase that FastPencil uses to describe the price set by the author.)

Experiment with me!  Go to your bookshelf.  Pull out three commercially published trade paperbacks.  Count how many pages they have and tell me their cover prices.  (If you have a ruler, check the trim size, too!) My results:

Book 1: 365 pages, $13.99 5×8
Book 2: 208 pages, $12.99 5 1/4 x 8 1/2
Book 3: 312 pages, $13.99, 5×8

See the start of the problem here?  Setting the price of the book at $14.00 is the more competitive option, even though the other two $14.00 books have 100 more pages than the FastPencil sample.  The 208 page book is a dollar lower.  Do you have a 200-page book on your shelf?  Go pick it up.  See how skinny it is?  Would you pay $17.00 for that book in trade paperback, or would you move on to something cheaper?  ($17.00 in hardcover, sure, but trade?  Really?)

I’ll do the math on both prices.  Let’s assume our eager NaNoer goes with the print and eBook option, since she’s hip to this whole eReader thing.  That’s $199.99.  A proof of her 200 page 5×8 book will run her $7.80.  So she starts out $207.79 in the red (I’m not counting tax and shipping, but they do charge both.)

With the “Target a Retail Price” Method:

Her book has a cover price of $14.00.

Sales of the printed book through FastPencil’s Marketplace earn her $4.96/book.
Sales of the printed book through Amazon/B&N/Ingram earn her $0.48/book (and doesn’t that come close to the Harlequin Horizons/DellArte math?)

Remember how they send out payments?  No payment until you’ve accrued $100 in royalties.

Before she receives a royalty check, she will have to sell:

$100/$4.96 = 20 copies through the FastPencil Marketplace

OR

$100/$0.48 = 208 copies through Amazon/B&N/Ingram.

Before she’s earned back her initial $207.79, she will have to sell:

$207.79/$4.96= 42 copies through the FastPencil Marketplace

OR

$207.79/$0.48= 434 copies through Amazon/B&N/Ingram

With the “Target a Profit Margin” Method:

Her book has a cover price of $17.12.

Sales of the printed book through FastPencil’s Marketplace earn her $7.46/book.
Sales of the printed book through Amazon/B&N/Ingram earn her $2.00/book

Before she receives a royalty check, she will have to sell:

$100/$7.46 = 14 copies through the FastPencil Marketplace

OR

$100/$2.00 = 50 copies through Amazon/B&N/Ingram.

Before she’s earned back her initial $207.79, she will have to sell:

$207.79/$7.46= 28 copies through the FastPencil Marketplace

OR

$207.79/$2.00 =  104 copies through Amazon/B&N/Ingram

With the “Sell Your eBook” Method:

Let’s say she goes with the eBook price everyone is used to, kindly set for us by Amazon (yes, that’s sarcasm): $9.99.  Through their Marketplace, FastPencil takes a flat $2.00/eBook.  The other $7.99 goes to the author.  Through Amazon/B&N/Ingram, FastPencil takes $1.00, then the reseller takes $6.49. The author gets $2.50.

Ready?

Her eBook has a cover price of $9.99.

Sales of the eBook through FastPencil’s Marketplace earn her $7.99/book.
Sales of the eBook through Amazon/B&N/Ingram earn her $2.50/book

Before she receives a royalty check, she will have to sell:

$100/$7.46 = 13 copies through the FastPencil Marketplace

OR

$100/$2.50 = 40 copies through Amazon/B&N/Ingram.

Before she’s earned back her initial $207.79, she will have to sell:

$207.79/$7.99= 26 copies through the FastPencil Marketplace

OR

$207.79/$2.50 =  84 copies through Amazon/B&N/Ingram

Now, if I knew someone looking to go through FastPencil, and if they refused to listen to my “Oh god, clean it up and shop it around first” advice, and further refused to listen to my “Dude, Lulu.com” advice, well…

/sigh

I’d have to say their best bet here is to go for the retail price method and encourage everyone who’s purchasing a copy to buy it in eBook or printed form through FastPencil.

Which, y’know, covers friends and family.  Maybe.

There are, of course, other services available through FastPencil, much like the ones offered by AuthorHouse/Harlequin Horizons/DellArte.  FastPencil’s line editing is $0.006 cheaper than DellArte’s.  FastPencil’s “advanced editorial,” however, is only $0.001 cheaper than DellArte’s.  Of course, FastPencil touts their community as a great way for their authors to have peers edit their books for free.  From their “Example Scenarios“:

Barbara writes a 200 page personal memoir and enlists the reviewing and editing help of her friends Clara and Frank. The three friends use FastPencil’s free online writing tools.

and

Jose writes a 300 page history book and has his colleague Minda review and edit his work in FastPencil for free.

Well, that’s great, but what kind of editing experience do these friends and colleagues have, precisely?  They sound much more like beta readers to me — infinitely valuable to any writer, definitely able to help find flaws and weaknesses in a work and offer suggestions for improving it (if they’re good beta readers, that is, not just friends who are going to say “OMG I LOVED IT OMG!!!!”) — but beta readers are very rarely also editors.

There are more services available, of course — formatting and layout, illustrations of varying quality, cover design, etc.  And all of which, when you add on to your package, makes you that much farther from turning a profit.

Also, all of which are done for you by your publisher, if your book is published by a commercial house.  And did I mention that if that happens, you get paid?

Do I think FastPencil’s doing something shady here?  Ehhhhh.  Not exactly, or at least not in the same way others have.  They’re not luring people in using a respected name, like DellArte did in its fledgling days as Harlequin Horizons, or suggesting that their books might get picked up by another house, or even that you’re headed for bestsellerdom.  Their prices are all laid out (though if you want to use them to market your book, you need to call for details, so I can’t speak to the reality of what they’ll do for marketing and publicity).

What makes me uncomfortable is the NaNo offer, because so many of the participants are new to publishing.  They’ve just finished a book!  Many of them probably haven’t done that much research into the whole business of getting published.  So, here’s this offer dangled before them, telling them they can be published without ever having to get rejected.

As FastPencil’s VP of Sales and Marketing, Steve O’Deegan, told GalleyCat:

“We’re extremely pleased. We’re just now starting to see submissions coming in. About five percent of our total user base came in over the last 30 days of the NaNoWriMo campaign.”

and

“It’s growing substantially, and NaNoWriMo was a big part of that.”

Is that a savvy business move, offering a free trial during NaNo?  Definitely.  They know their audience, and know that November is the time to get the word out and get noticed.  But I can’t help but wonder how many writers who use FastPencil’s services could — given some time and revision — have sold their books to a commercial publisher, where not only would the books be available via online bookstores, they’d be on the shelves of actual, physical bookstores, too.

Le. Sigh.

Hoo boy, did I ever not make it.  I broke 10k, which was good, but I let myself get distracted by other things, which is bad.  Other things being: work-travel, Under the Dome,Thanksgiving, and frothing at the mouth about Harlequin Horizons/DellArte.  I’m proud as hell of the posts about that fiasco, and intend to do a follow-up or two and expand upon a few points that came up.  But, time spent writing them was time not spent working on my NaNo.

So, I didn’t finish, didn’t even come close, and I’m okay with that; I was from the start.

But what have I learned?

Well, a few things:

• I really ought to outline. Not as in rigid, scene-by-scene bullet points and Roman numerals.  Just a more structured looking-ahead.  Hill and I checked in every so often on where we were with Nin: what happens in the next few chapters?  How far do we have to go and what needs to happen on the way?  I’ve never done it with my own writing, because, well, that’s a pretty one-sided conversation.  Have to find a good way to start.
• I probably get more done in the mornings. I’m still training myself to unplug while writing — setting gtalk to “Leave me alone, I’m writin’ here,” resisting the urge to see what the internet is up to when I get stuck on a phrase, etc.  But I’m also more prone to cat vacuuming at night, for some reason, both in meatspace and in the virtual world.
• Worldbuilding, worldbuilding, worldbuilding. I have this terrible habit of not committing to NaNo until the last week of October, which means I spend time on infodumps in the plot that are going to be cut out later, to the tune of “Oh god I suck.”

Now, my stalling out on NaNo doesn’t mean I didn’t do other writerly things in November.  Matter of fact, I dedicated the time that would’ve been spent on the NaNo stuff to editing Nin this past week.  I started a bit of a character bible for us to refer to, since it has a pretty big cast.

I’ve also been doing a lot of heavy thinking about Grailchild and whether or not it’s the book I should be writing right now.  (The sequel to Nin is a given, that’s in the works already.)  I’m talking more about solo projects, and trying to determine whether my feelings about this book are just general silly jitters about Getting it Right, or whether the fact that I’ve been waffling about it for the better part of six years is a sign that I ought to concentrate on something else.

Another way to ask the same question: have I managed to intimidate myself with the scope of it? I love the characters and the concept.  I know what needs to happen.  So am I disinterested, or just plain lazy?

I’m not quite sure how to answer that, yet, outside of seeing how I feel during Butt in Chair time.  I mean, writing is still happening.  There are other things I’m excited about and working on.  I just feel incredible guilt over the idea of abandoning this particular project yet again.

Enough whining from my camp.  How did the rest of you NaNoers do?  What did you learn over the last month that will carry through while you finish your current projects and start the next ones?  Yes, that’s right.  Writing doesn’t just happen in November and then go away until next year’s NaNo.  Keep writing!

In the comments on my rant about the Amazon/Wal-Mart/Target price war, my friend Eric and I digressed a bit into eBook pricing, and book prices in general.  Specifically, if you take the cost of printing and binding and shipping out of the equation, why shouldn’t eBooks be cheaper than dead tree books?

In today’s post, literary agent Nathan Bransford breaks down the costs associated with producing a book, including how much the publisher actually makes off of the cover price.  As he points out,

Unit costs (i.e. producing the actual book) also varies anywhere from $0.75 to $3.00 depending on the format, quantity of the print run, etc.

He figures in bookseller discounts and author royalties, and then gets into some expenses that are less obvious to readers:

But you have to deduct all marketing costs (ads, sending out copies for review, bound galleys/ARCs if any, co-op), other production costs (cover, seasonal catalog, etc.), and overhead (salaries, health insurance, rent, etc.) before you get to the profit.

How much does all the rest of that cost? I don’t know, I’m not a publisher. But my guess is that all adds up to a pretty good chunk. And let’s not forget that historically most books don’t earn a profit and those have to be paid for as well.

This is the part I want to touch on, both looking at the author’s side and at the publisher’s side.

First of all are the advantages to authors.  Commercial publishers market your book for you.  They put the titles in their seasonal catalogs, and sales reps go out and present those titles to book buyers all over the country.  Even if a book isn’t getting a full-page ad in the New York Times Book Review section, it’s still getting far more exposure than books put out by a vanity press.

Also included are the costs of galleys and ARCs.  Now, not every book will have these, but a lot of times, publishers will make them available, especially for debut authors.  Why?  Because the best advertising isn’t something you can fit into a newspaper ad.  Getting the book into readers’ hands is.  When booksellers are talking up a book before it’s released, that’s what we call buzz*.  This enthusiasm passes from bookseller to readers — the book’s pub date arrives and booksellers start handselling.  “Hi Mrs. Murphy.  Remember how much you loved The Case of the Pilfered Plotbunnies? We just got in this new book called The Plotbunny Detectives and I think you’ll like it.”

Galleys and ARCs are expensive to produce.  They tend to cost more to print than the final version of the book itself.  This is because the print runs are far smaller, so you don’t get as much of a bulk discount.  (Though, with several publishers launching e-galley programs, I’m hopeful that we’ll see even more books getting into booksellers’ hands early.)

Co-op is short for co-operative advertising.  It’s money publishers make available to booksellers for the purposes of advertising their titles.  This could be a mention in a store’s newsletter, a table display featuring certain titles, a newspaper ad highlighting certain books, or a spot on local radio stations.  It helps booksellers mitigate the cost of advertising, and it’s win-win on both sides:  the bookstore gets people to come in and shop, and the publisher sells some books.

Somewhere in that publisher’s cost are the salaries of the editorial staff, and the people designing the cover art, and the people setting up the book’s layout.

Which segues nicely into the publisher’s side.

Something to consider: the only way a publisher makes money is to sell books.  I know it seems kind of obvious, but there are so many costs associated with actually making a book a success that we rarely take into account.

There are all the positions at a publisher that the average reader might never come into contact with:  the customer service reps, the finance department, the sales force, the people working in the warehouse who put the books in boxes and ship ‘em out to bookstores.  Their salaries have to be factored into the cost of the books.

Then there’s the last line that I quoted from Mr. Bransford: “And let’s not forget that historically most books don’t earn a profit and those have to be paid for as well.”

Which means that the books that don’t earn a profit get paid for by the books that do.

Is that fair?

Hell.  Yes.

It’s part of what gives debut authors a chance to shine.  The money made by the bestsellers lets editors take a chance on an unknown and lets the marketing and publicity departments get the word out, the buzz started.  Maybe it lets them give that midlist author whose books they love another solid push.

There’s a lot of talk about how commercial publishing is an old, creaky, clunky model.  There’s days it feels like shiny new gadgets and technologies are coming so fast, publishers can barely keep up.  They start figuring out how they’re going to deal with today’s invention knowing that in a week or a month, it might be obsolete.  But for now, it’s the model we have, and it still gets books into readers’ hands.  It still gets writers paid.  Money flows towards the writer, remember?

That’s not to say that we should turn up the stereo so we don’t have to hear the creaking and clunking.  There are brilliant people out there, taking a good look at changes that can be made, at new ways of selling books.  I think we’re going to see some very cool and unconventional things coming that will work, and will challenge the way we think about publishing and distribution (or continue to challenge, might be more accurate).  But neither do I think we should just scrap the old way of doing things.  It’s so hard to get rid of because it works.  It’s imperfect, yes, but publishers and booksellers are going to be looking for ways to merge the old and the new to make something that works even better.

It’s going to be interesting as hell to see what they (we?) come up with.

*Funny thing, I’ve never liked the word.  It probably has something to do with my inexplicable fear of bees.  I see a bee flying around and it’s all oh god get away run oh god HALP. So I hear it referring to stirrings about a book and I cringe.  Hey, some people hate the word “moist.”  Language is awesome.

I had this book when I was little, called This Farm is a Mess! (Okay, yes, I had a lot of books when I was little.  This was one of many.)  Anyway, in the book, Farmer Woods was notoriously bad at cleaning up around the farm.  As you turned each page, the mess piled up — dirty dishes everywhere, towers of clutter leaning more and more precariously as the book went on.  Finally the farm animals got fed up with it (even the pigs, if I remember right!), and took it upon themselves to clean.  I remember an illustration with all the dishes stacked in the back of the tractor or a pickup truck, getting washed clean in the rain.

It’s probably out of print now, though there seem to be a bunch of copies available on alibris.  What I remember most about the book was the way my mother would read the signature phrase:  This faaaarm is a mess! (Only, with her Boston accent, it’s probably more accurate to say she said, This faaaahm is a mess!)  It sent me into giggles every time, and of course the phrase lived outside the pages of the book.

When my room a disaster area and my grandparents were coming over, she’d stand in the doorway, hands on hips, and declare, “This faaaarm is a mess!”  It was my hint to get cleaning.  Was the house in need of tidying the day after a party?  “This faaaarm is a mess!”

I don’t even remember the last time I thought about that book, but looking around at my cluttered desk just now, eyeballing all the filing I really ought to get done, I had to fight a sudden urge to declare aloud that this particular farm is a mess.  Only, my coworkers probably wouldn’t know what to do with me if I broke into the inevitable giggles, so I refrained.

Goal for this afternoon: stuff put away and organized so I can come back to neatness on Monday.

Less-tangible goals that are still housekeeping:

• Get back to the NaNoing, noreallyImeanit.
• Take those red pens I bought and get started on the edits to the Nin manuscript so Hill and I can be one step closer to shopping this bad cat around.
• Also, we need to give the poor book a title already.
• Suck it up and revise “Kate.” I think I know how to fix it.  Then figure out a home for it.
• Suck it up and send “Pomegranate” out again.  I stopped after three rejections, which is silly.
• /eyes the poor story about Lil, still running from that demon.  /sighs
• No less than three posts for WoW stuff that I owe, probably more. (Annalea post-Wrathgate, Bittertongue plots, Lyr-and-Yva scheming)
• I have a ficly story sitting in draft-form that I’d really like to finish.

I think that’s quite enough of a laundry list for this weekend.  I’ll be happy to check off even half of it.  Sadly, I don’t have a bunch of helpful farm animals to help me knock it out, so it’s all me on this one.  (No, my cats are lazy, they wouldn’t lift a paw.)

(Apologies to Judith Viorst and the Alexander books for the title.)

I’m seeing some new traffic because someone on the Smart Bitches comment thread linked to my “Repent, Harlequin?” post, so, um, hi there, new people!  Pull up a chair, because (drumrolllllll)…

Finally, the number-crunching post!

However, before I start throwing math at you (I know, I’m such a tease), I want to go over a few terms regarding the different kinds of publishing out there.  I’ve seen a lot of people equating self-publishing with vanity publishing, and while sometimes vanity presses try to sell their services as self-publishing, they’re unfortunately smearing their bad reputations all over the people who have truly self-published.

SFWA has an excellent page devoted to it, and the Writer Beware team puts it far better than I ever could, so first I’m going to point you here.

You might have noticed here that I try very hard not to use the term “traditional publishers” when I’m referring to what SFWA correctly defines as “commercial” publishers, as “traditional publishing” is a phrase coined by a scam publisher who I’m not going to link to here.  So, Random House, Tor, Little, Brown & Company, HarperCollins, and, yes, even the advance-paying, editorial-having, books-on-bookstore-shelves part of Harlequin, those are all commercial publishers. So, SFWA’s defintion of commercial publishers:

A commercial publisher purchases the right to publish a manuscript (usually together with other rights, known as subsidiary rights), and pays the author a royalty on sales. Most also pay an advance on royalties. Commercial publishers are highly selective, publishing only a tiny percentage of manuscripts submitted. They handle every aspect of editing, publication, distribution, and marketing. There are no costs to the author.

Next, let’s look at self-publishing — true self-publishing, that is.  SFWA again:

Self-publishing, like vanity publishing, requires the author to bear the entire cost of publication, and also to handle all marketing, distribution, storage, etc. However, rather than paying for a pre-set package of services, the author puts those services together himself. Because every aspect of the process can be out to bid, self-publishing can be much more cost effective than vanity publishing; it can also result in a higher-quality product. All rights, the ISBN, and completed books are owned by the author, who keeps all proceeds from sales.

Is self-publishing easy?  No.  It requires a whole lot of work from the author that chooses to go that route, and I’d venture that the more successful self-published titles are put out there by people with an idea of how the industry works.  Author Teri Woods went the self-publishing route, selling books out of the trunk of her car.  Brunonia Barry, author of The Lace Reader, self-published and sold her book in and around Salem, MA, where it takes place.  Both Woods and Barry sold enough of their books to make major commercial houses take notice and offer them book deals, but neither success story happened overnight.

Also, they self-published.

Still Alice author Lisa Genova (who commented here once omg /fangirl /squee), published through iUniverse knowing she’d have to do all the marketing and publicity legwork herself.  She used their services for printing and shipping the books, period, the end. The rest, she did on her own, with an eye towards being picked up by a commercial publisher:

It’s important to know that a self-published book was not my goal. I self-published because I couldn’t make any headway on the conventional road to a book deal. My self-publishing goal was to demonstrate that Still Alice had an enthusiastic and sizeable audience. I wanted to give my book a chance to wave its arms in the air and yell at the top of its lungs, to create a buzz loud enough for the literary agents and publishing houses to hear. And at the end of my self-published day, I still wanted a book deal from a traditional publishing house.

Again, someone with an idea of how the publishing industry works, making the model work for her.  While normally I’d put iUniverse squarely in the vanity publisher category — their “editorial services” echo Harlequin Horizons’ in a lot of ways, and surprise, they’re owned by Author Solutions, too — Ms. Genova used them as a self-publisher.  As she said in her reply to my previous post (/re-squee!):  “I fully realized that I was not going to make a living off of the self-published version of Still Alice.”

So what is a vanity press, precisely?  What differentiates them from honest-to-god self-publishers?  Back to SFWA’s definitions:

A vanity publisher relies on its authors as its main source of income–whether by charging fees for publication or other services, or requiring authors to buy or pre-sell their own books. It often presents itself as a publisher (sometimes claiming to be a “traditional” publisher and concealing its fees) rather than a self-publishing service, claiming to be selective despite employing little meaningful quality screening. Adjunct services (editing, marketing, and/or distribution) are generally minimal or of dubious value. A vanity publisher claims various rights by contract, and owns the ISBN and the completed books, which remain in the publisher’s possession until sold. Payment to the author is in the form of a royalty.

See that bit about claiming to be a “traditional” publisher?  From Harlequin Horizons’ “Our Advantages” page:

Harlequin Horizons is a division of Harlequin Enterprises Limited, a global leader in romance and women’s fiction. The intent behind creating Harlequin Horizons is to give more aspiring romance writers and women’s fiction writers the opportunity to publish their books and achieve their dreams without going through the submission process with a traditional publishing house.

However, we understand you may aspire to be published with a traditional house – a noble aspiration. While there is no guarantee that if you publish with Harlequin Horizons you will picked up for traditional publishing, Harlequin will monitor sales of books published through Harlequin Horizons for possible pick-up by its traditional imprints.

Bolding mine.  Four counts of “traditional publishing” in two paragraphs.  Awesome. Though, I do have to concede that Horizons isn’t claiming to be the traditional publisher here — they’re using the term to describe commercial publishers.  It’s still frustrating that they’re perpetuating a phrase coined by a scam publisher, though.

Where they do hit the vanity-press criteria, though, is just about everywhere else.

Relies on authors as its main source of income?  Check.

Presents itself as a publisher?  Check — they have a page dedicated to “The Five Chapters of Publishing” and while they call their business “Assisted Self-Publishing,” they tout the ability to “retain more control over the editing and artistic process” as a perk.  Guys, it’s not.  If you’re the average first-time author, chances are you know precisely jack and shit about the editorial and artistic processes.

Adjunct services of minimal or dubious value?  Big gorram check.  Minimal in the packages, dubious in the add-ons.

They don’t seem to be claiming rights (though I haven’t seen the “non-exclusive contract” they offer, so that’s still up for interpretation).  However, I’m uncomfortable with the way they spin it:

When you self-publish with Harlequin Horizons you only pay for the services and packages you need and you retain all the rights to your book. Retaining the rights to your book is a big difference between self-publishing and traditional publishing. With traditional publishing, a publisher will buy the rights to your book up front and then print your book. With self-publishing you, the author, remain in control through the whole publishing process. You can also continue to market your book to other publishers and outlets at your own pace.

There’s that “traditional publishing” thing again.  Yes, a commercial publisher buys the rights to your book, but sweet flying spaghetti monster, that’s not a bad thing!  When a publisher buys the rights to publish your book, you get paid. And if someone wants to buy the rights to produce it as an audio book, you get paid again. And if a publisher in Spain wants to translate it and publish it there?  You get paid again. Also, let’s look at the weasel-wording here:  the author retains the copyright, always, always, always.  If anyone asks you to sign over your copyright, run the fuck away.

What commercial publishers buy is the right to print and sell your book.  So you can get paid.  Go to your bookshelf and pick up a book published by a commercial publisher.  Turn to the title page.  See the copyright line?  Does it say “Copyright <author’s name here>” and the year?  It should.  Why?  Because authors retain their copyrights. I can’t help but feel that Harlequin Horizons is counting on new writers not knowing that, and intentionally helping them to confuse copyright with rights to print and sell.

Okay, I’m done digressing. Last couple of checkpoints:  It’s not clear whether or not Harlequin Horizons owns the ISBN that you “buy” with your package.  I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume the author owns it at that point, but there’s a big ol’ question mark beside it in place of a check mark.

And, since they only print on demand, they’re not housing the completed books. They are, however, largely controlling how information about the books gets sent out to online stores.

Lastly, of course, payment to the author is in the form of a royalty.  Check!  This royalty is, of course, based on net sales, not off of the retail price, as it would be at a commercial publisher.

So, after a very long way to get to it, let’s talk about what those royalties might actually look like, shall we?

I’m going to put the math behind a clicky here, because I know I’m already looking at my own scrollbar and cringing.  So, go refresh your coffee, grab a snack, and click on through for fun with math!

Continue Reading »

In yesterday’s post, I got my rant on about Harlequin Horizons, the new vanity press arm of one of the largest romance publishers in the world.

At that time, Romance Writers of America had made a bold move, declaring that because of this, Harlequin was no longer eligible for the resources granted to publishers at their conventions — if they wanted to participate, they’d have to pay for floor space and signing space, and other kinds of facilities access that helps connect publishers to authors.

Kristin Nelson at Pub Rants posted the response from Harlequin’s CEO last night.  It was, uh.  A wee bit condescending:

It is disappointing that the RWA has not recognized that publishing models have and will continue to change. As a leading publisher of women’s fiction in a rapidly changing environment, Harlequin’s intention is to provide authors access to all publishing opportunities, traditional or otherwise.

That, after a list of ways that Harlequin has financially supported the RWA conferences (sending editors and participating in panels, throwing a party).  As John Scalzi puts it: “you are nothing without us!!!!”  (Go read Scalzi’s post on it.  I’ll wait.

The RWA wasn’t the only group to voice their disapproval of Harlequin’s practices and (here’s the important part, cats n kittens) act upon it.  Mystery Writers of America released a statement yesterday afternoon, objecting to Harlequin Horizons and the eHarlequin Manuscript Critique Service (which is heavily promoted on their forums and website, encouraging aspiring authors to pay someone to edit their manuscript.  Someone, presumably, at Harlequin.)  From the MWA statement:

Mystery Writers of America (MWA) is deeply concerned about the troubling conflict-of-interest issues created by these ventures, particularly the potentially misleading way they are marketed to aspiring writers on the Harlequin website.

It is common for disreputable publishers to try to profit from aspiring writers by steering them to their own for-pay editorial, marketing, and publishing services. The implication is that by paying for those services, the writer is more likely to sell his manuscript to the publisher. Harlequin recommends the “eHarlequin Manuscript Critique Service” in the text of its manuscript submission guidelines for all of its imprints and include a link to “Harlequin Horizons,” its new self-publishing arm, without any indication that these are advertisements.

That, coupled with the fact that these businesses share the Harlequin name, may mislead writers into believing they can enhance their chances of being published by Harlequin by paying for these services. Offering these services violates long-standing MWA rules for inclusion on our Approved Publishers List.

In other words, “Hey, Harlequin, you’re acting like a scam publisher.  Cut it out.”  They’re giving them until December 15th to respond and change the practices.  At that point, if changes aren’t made, books published by Harlequin will not count for writers seeking active membership in the MWA.

Also stepping in: Science Fiction Writers of America.  SFWA didn’t give Harlequin the deadline that MWA did; as of 11/19/09, Harlequin is no longer an approved publisher for authors seeking active memberships in SFWA.

SFWA calls on Harlequin to openly acknowledge that Harlequin Horizon titles will not be distributed to brick-and-mortar bookstores, thus ensuring that the titles will not be breaking into the real fiction market. SFWA also asks that Harlequin acknowledge that the imprint does not represent a genuine opportunity for aspiring authors to hone their skills, as no editor will be vetting or working on the manuscripts. Further, SFWA believes that work published with Harlequin Horizons may injure writing careers by associating authors’ names with small sales levels reflected by the imprint’s lack of distribution, as well as its emphasis upon income received from writers and not readers. SFWA supports the fundamental principle that writers should be paid for their work, and even those who aspire to professional status and payment ought not to be charged for the privilege of having those aspirations.

Their statement is the most blunt of them all so far.  The bolding is mine.  In one paragraph, SFWA states clearly the things that Harlequin Horizons obfuscates in all of their rah-rah-ing.

And, SFWA ups the ante a bit more:

Further, Harlequin should be on notice that while the rules of our annual Nebula Award do not expressly prohibit self-published titles from winning, it is highly unlikely that our membership would ever nominate or vote for a work that was published in this manner.

While the statement refers to the “self-published” Harlequin Horizons titles, I’m pretty sure it’s also saying that regular Harlequin titles are looking like long shots for the Nebula Awards while this is ongoing.

Now, here’s the thing — at the end of their initial chiding response to the RWA, Harlequin makes a tiny concession (again, via Pub Rants):

Most importantly, however, we have heard the concerns that you, our authors, have expressed regarding the potential confusion between this venture and our traditional business. As such, we are changing the name of the self-publishing company from Harlequin Horizons to a designation that will not refer to Harlequin in any way. We will initiate this process immediately. We hope this allays the fears many of you have communicated to us.

Part of the objection — but only part of it — to Harlequin Horizons was the misleading way they were using the Harlequin brand to lure authors in.  See, these writers forking over their money were under the impression that Harlequin was letting them into its exclusive club.  I mean, if you publish through a company called “Harlequin Horizons,” you’d think that’s what it would say on the spine, right?

Wrong.  What they fail to mention is that, once the books are published, Harlequin would distance itself from them.  The books might get the logo on the spine (take a look at it here, while it’s up), but the word Harlequin wouldn’t appear.  But, if you take a look at the cover templates they have, well, gosh-golly, those still look an awful lot like the standard Harlequin series titles. (.pdf link)  I’m pretty sure that cover template #3 there very closely resembles the style of one of the monthly series we carried back in my bookstore days — Harlequin Presents, maybe.

Adding insult to injury if you go read the letter Harlequin sent to its authors over at Jackie Kessler’s blog (read her whole post, it’s brilliant), it reads a lot like, I don’t know, like they’re winking conspiratorially at their authors, saying, “well, you and I know they’re not good enough, but no one has to tell them that.”

Harlequin reassures:

Horizons books will not be distributed by Harlequin. They will not appear in stores next to your book. Self-published books are generally distributed through large online catalogs.

Um, which online catalogs, precisely?  What, a link to a Harlequin Horizons store?  This is not the same as the seasonal catalogs that publishers send out to bookstore buyers.

Horizons books will not have Harlequin branding. Horizons is a separate brand and will carry the double-H Horizons logo on the spine only, NOT the Harlequin brand.

and

Readers will not be confused. Harlequin is the gold standard for romance. Readers purchase Harlequin because they trust Harlequin to provide a great story. There will be no ‘dilution’ of quality. Horizons is a separate imprint with no Harlequin branding.

What’s that about protesting too much?  As Ms. Kessler says:

See the subtle dig here? Harlequin offers top-notch stories…and Horizons isn’t that. So if you choose to go the Horizons route, Harlequin has already said your story isn’t up to par. Despite the “Harlequin” name in Harlequin Horizons, you would not be a Harlequin author. And what’s more, Harlequin itself is saying that if you choose to print your book with Horizons, your story **isn’t good enough to be published by Harlequin.** So rather than encouraging authors to sharpen their skills and become better writers, they’re instead offering a way for aspiring authors to pay to print a story that isn’t ready for prime time. Yes, this is pay to play.

A-frickin’-men.  Harlequin knows exactly what they’re doing here, and they don’t. care.

Even worse, Harlequin’s rejection letters to people who submit manuscripts in hopes of being, y’know, paid for their work and getting a real publishing contract will point those people to Harlequin Horizons.

See how this just gets worse and worse?  Also, they offer the false hope that they’ll actually be watching the sales from Horizons authors.  From the “Our Advantages” page:

However, we understand you may aspire to be published with a traditional house – a noble aspiration. While there is no guarantee that if you publish with Harlequin Horizons you will picked up for traditional publishing, Harlequin will monitor sales of books published through Harlequin Horizons for possible pick-up by its traditional imprints.

Yeah. Sure. Most titles from vanity presses sell less than 200 copies. Most sell less than fifty.

There’s a lot of frilly talk about making dreams and visions and aspirations come true over on the Horizons page.  It turns my stomach.  It’s preying on the hopes of writers who probably don’t know better, and reels ‘em right in.  Harlequin Horizons sounds just like the scam publishers and scam agents out there, and honestly, I can’t see any difference right now.  Even their responses to the criticism read a lot like the weasel-wording you can find when the scammers show up trying to defend themselves on the Absolute Write Bewares and Background Checks forums.

The sheer abuse of trust is what has me the most infuriated here.  Harlequin is a well-known — probably the best known — name in romance publishing, and it’s using that reputation to lure writers into a terrible, terrible deal.  It’s using writers’ hopes and dreams to line its own pockets.

Now, is the information out there for savvy writers to give Harlequin Horizons a wide berth?  Absolutely.  The unfortunate thing is, though, not everyone knows where to look for the information they need to make better decisions for their careers.  It’s very easy, when searching for “how to get published,” to stumble onto the page of a scammer.  And they sound so very, very trustworthy.  I’ve seen two people from Chris’ boards get taken in or nearly so.  Last week my dad called me on behalf of a friend of his, asking if I’d ever heard of a certain publisher that had the friend thinking he’d be stocked in every B&N in the country.  It was a vanity press; I warned him off.

These three people are all pretty smart.  Problem is, they didn’t know the right questions to ask, and even when I said “OH GOD NO RUN AWAY,” they liked what they were being told.  Because it sounds easy.  Because it sounds like you’re going to get all kinds of exposure and help from these places, but when you look at it up close, you’re not getting anything near what they let you think they’re offering.

Have you seen the commercial for Ally Bank with the little girl on the bike?  Here, go peek.  Poor kid, thinks she’s going to go for a spin around the room, but really, she can’t go out of the red lines.  That’s what Harlequin Horizons is doing to people who sign up for their program.

By the by, I know I promised a breakdown of Harlequin Horizon’s  “services,” and you’re still going to get one.  It’s going to be in its own post, though, since I spent this one trying to recap the last 24-hours or so.