Now Amazon's Whining Like a Little Girl

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, I received an e-mail from Amazon KDP. (The Passive Voice reprinted the full text of the e-mail sent to KDP authors.) It was a request to e-mail Michael Pietsch, the CEO of Hatchette Book Group USA, and tell him why he's wrong. Amazon even thoughtfully provided suggested language and provided Mike's e-mail address. Amazon also asks that they be copied on the e-mail the KDP author sent to Mike.

My initial reaction was the same as Selena Kitt's. Except with a lot more swear words.

So of course, when PG posted the letter on his blog a few hours later, I put my two cents in:

I read this shortly before I went to bed. I shouldn’t have checked my e-mail because I ended up tossing and turning as I composed a response to Jeff Bezos. 

I didn’t appreciate Hatchette’s efforts to pull me into their little war. And I know I’ll be in the minority here at TPV, but I don’t appreciate Amazon’s either. 

Yes, I’ve watched Hatchette harm friends’ careers over the years. I don’t agree with their pathetic propaganda campaign. And it makes me sick that Hatchette and their one-percenters spread their elitist BS across the world when it’a all about how many extra Benjamins they can collect. 

On the other hand, Amazon isn’t innocent, and they have caused me direct harm when they’ve removed my books from their retail site by arbitrarily and randomly changing the rules of what’s acceptable erotica. They also froze my account for several hours in December because I dared to question their policies even though it was a polite, professional e-mail. Frankly, I don’t trust Amazon any more than I trust Hatchette. 

So my question becomes why should I support either of these multi-million dollar companies in what amounts to a public schoolyard fight? 

There’s no reason to. Hatchette already lost the e-book/change war when they entered into a conspiracy to price-fix with four other publishers and Apple. As for Amazon, someone else will replace them as the top U.S. retailer in twenty or so years. 

My only concern here is my own company and my own bottom line. Because it’s just business, right? Or at least that’s the line both companies have dished out when they screw over someone. 

So here’s my answer to both Michael Pietsch and Jeff Bezos: When you pay me, I’ll do your company’s dirty work. Until then, leave me out of your playground slap fight.

I hoped that someone would pick apart my points, show the flaw in my logic. The regular commenters at TPV are a bunch of really smart people.

What did I get? A list of people who agreed with my points. And it unsettled me.

Then Barry Eisler popped in, and his take unsettled me even more. He talked about the "revolution in publishing" and "becoming a victim in someone else's war." When Toni McGee Causey disagreed with him, Barry ripped into her for using flamboyant, over-the-top language.

So of course, I had to jump in the middle:

Barry, I respect your opinion and normally, I agree with you on how things are developing in the publishing industry. 

But “smart alliances” for you is not necessarily a good choice for me. Amazon treats you very differently than they treat me. If James Patterson walked up to another Hatchette mid-list author not as well known and said exactly what you said here, how would you take it? Because to me, it sounds like a subtle threat, even though I sincerely doubt that’s how you meant it. 

I’ve learned an important lesson from the Big 5, and that’s not to put all my eggs in the one basket. Thankfully, I learned that lesson before the Kernel Pornocalypse last fall. Who stood up for the erotica writers then? It sure wasn’t Amazon. 

As you and Joe Konrath have said numerous times, we don’t know the exact terms Amazon and Hatchette are fighting over. Oh, we can guess, and I have a suspicion about which guesses are correct. But right now, I have to wonder if Anonymous B. is also correct in his/her comment above. Why do supporters need to CC Amazon if they write to the Hatchette CEO?

I fully expected to be ripped into as Toni had been. I got a bare acknowledgement of my points and that the effect on KDP authors wasn't his "primary interest." In other words, this has turned into an ideological battle for him as much as it has for James Patterson and Douglas Preston. And he avoided my specific questions, something he often rails at Patterson and Preston for doing.

I thought Barry Eisler was better than that. I'm disappointed at finding out yet another hero has feet of clay.

Through all of this, no one's asking the bigger question: Why the hell does Amazon think they need the help of a bunch of indie authors, whom Hatchette is going to ignore anyway?

Why Traditional Publishing Is Having Problems Defending Itself

Considering what we call "traditional publishing" has been around for roughly seventy-five years, you would think they would know what they bring to the business table. If folks in the publishing houses do know, they are having a very difficult time articulating those points.

The first major problem is how publishers and editors regard writers. They say they treasure writers, but in reality, they view us as needy, whiny pains-in-the-ass. Even Kris Rusch mentioned writers who go into hysterics over changing a comma, and she's an author so she's very much PRO writer.

Another example is a discussion over at The Passive Voice when a Kensington author anonymously mentioned that her editor didn't edit her books. Rather than checking out the writer's story, publisher Steven Zacharius castigated Anonymice on the public blog, which kind of proved why this writer didn't go to him in the first place.

This brings me directly to one of the major services publishers claim they provide--editing.

Barry Harbaugh, an editor at HarperCollins, was trying to refute an essay by Andrew Martin in The New Yorker that talked about MFA vs. NYC. He really stepped into steaming pile when he insisted that editors do edit, but added that he only edited about fifty to one hundred pages a week. Of course, it's all Amazon's fault that editors get a bad rap.

I'll give Barry credit that he does do some editing, but the amount?

Excuse me? The night before I saw Barry's piece, I had edited a fifteen-page short story that I'm about to submit and twenty pages of novel prior to posting the sample online. All of this was done the forty minutes while I ordered and ate dinner at a local Mexican restaurant because I needed to get out of the house and away from Alter Ego's current wip.

Many more trad authors are coming out of the woodwork and talking about no editing, or even worse, abusive editors. In the same link to Kris Rusch's blog above, she talks about an editor who was downright psychotic and gives good advice for dealing with difficult people in the industry.

So what about cover art?

This is the notorious cover for Barry Eisler's book, Fault Line, issued by the French trad publisher. All cultural differences aside, does this look like an international, jet-setting thriller?

And if the writer gets a bad cover, can they do anything about it? Generally, no. The publisher complains about the cost (if the writer is lucky), or simply ignores you.

Not too many writers can turn a bad cover into a plus, but Christina Dodd did. Go ahead. Count how many hands the lady on the cover has. Dodd used the screw-up as a marketing gimmick. But a bad trad cover can't always be changed into gold so easily.

One of fabulous pluses as an indie is the ability to change your cover on a moment's notice. Like when several retailers decide out of the blue that your erotica covers are too risque. *wink*

Another factor is that the writer is blamed for the editing and the cover art, not the publisher, because it's the writer's name on the book.

The publisher doesn't care. There's a million writers banging on their doors, so they'll chuck the one that complains and grab another serf writer at the gates.

So what about promotion, publicity, and marketing by the publishing company? These should be the publishers' biggest strengths, right?

Fuhgeddaboudit! Seriously. Nearly every mid-list writer I personally know who signed a contract within the last ten years spent their entire trad pub advance on getting word out about their books. And with advances getting smaller and smaller and costs rising, that means more money out of a writer's pocket.

Even worse, trad publishers seem to have no marketing savvy in today's world (though they will command the writer to participate in every social media known to humankind).One of the selling points they brought to the table when they tried to woo H.M. Ward was their 2K e-mail list. Ms. Ward has a much bigger e-mail list already. MUCH bigger.

And heaven forbid if you ask the trade publisher to put specific marketing efforts in the contract!

These are the three big things that trad publishers could bring to the table for writers, but they refuse to do so. Here's the thing--it really wouldn't cost them a lot to do even one of these three. Do it cheap. Do it right.

Because indie writers are doing it every freakin' day!

When an Agent Sticks the Cow Hoof into His Mouth

Wednesday was a train wreck writers just couldn't look away from.

Agent Donald Maass wrote a post over at Writer Unboxed. It was controversial. It was contradictory. It was derogatory. And at times, the Donald was out-and-out lying or woefully misinformed.

Initially, the Donald said indie stories weren't worth the electrons, much less the paper, they were written on.

One sentence started the cow bells clanging over at The Passive Voice, particularly, this phrase: "...print publishers have the luxury of culling the prize cattle from the herd." The Donald is referring to indie writers doing all the work, then folks like him swooping in to...

Do y'all have any idea what "culling" is? That's when the farmer/rancher separates the animals not needed for breeding or sale purposes and takes them to the slaughterhouse.

In other words, writers need to be culled for slaughter to keep the publishers fed. *facepalm*

The Donald's diatribe about the worthlessness of writers went downhill from there. Comments from opposing views were often blocked at Writer Unboxed. As writer Marc Cabot, who in his day job is an IP attorney, said, "It’s a rare glimpse of complete honesty as to how authors are usually viewed with a bonus Voltaire moment. Be grateful for it."

Yep, we writers are cattle to be culled for slaughter.

The fabulous commenters at TPV started having fun with it. The cow jokes flew.

The Donald also said, "...print publishers instead are now gratefully relieved of the money-losing burden of the mid-list."

Wait a minute. Publishers are glad to get rid of us, but they still plan to cull us?

Now, I could go over the entire list, but Joe Konrath and Barry Eisler stepped in and royally fisked the Don. I needed a box of tissues when I was done reading because of the proverbial tears from laughing so hard.

One of the few opposing comments that got through at Writer Unboxed mentioned Dean Wesley Smith and Kris Rusch and their support and entrance to the indie world. The Donald claimed in the Writer Unboxed comments that he's buds with them, and that he'd have to talk to them. DWS had an interesting response. Make sure you read his comments as well. Later on Thursday, DWS made a point of updating one of his posts on agents.

Here's the kicker: if someone asked me for a recommendation on the basic elements of storytelling, I would, and have, recommended the Donald's book, Writing the Break-Out Novel. I've changed my mind about the re-writing until your fingers bleed section though. I don't think that really helps a writer to learn and grow. YMMV.

As for the rest, I think the Donald's statement is endemic of the state of traditional publishers. In other words, they are starting to panic. I'm hearing from more and more writers with the micro-press and smaller publishers that submissions are down, and what the editors are seeing is of lesser quality than before. These people are talking to me because they are looking to switch to indie publishing.

If this is the case (and I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the people I spoken with), then agents and the Big 5 are going to have the same problem soon, if not already.

When people start flinging insults and use fear-based marketing for their services, it is usually coming from their own internal fear. And that's what I'm hearing from the Donald.

No route to publishing is easy. Success isn't guaranteed on any path. But I'll be damned if I'll be a cow led to slaughter.

Because I'm an Angry Sheep.

Baaaaa!

Lessons Learned: Return on Investment - Part I

In all the hubbaloo over The Passive Voice, Steven Zacharius of Kensington, Barry Eisler, Robert Gottlieb of Trident Media Group and the infamous Writers Digest poll, people are trying to frame the issue as traditional publishing versus indie publishing.

People are asking the wrong damn question. If you are writer who wants to be published, you should be asking, "What's the return on my investment?"

The return on an investment is when you divide the gain of the investment minus the cost of the investment by the cost of the investment. Or

ROI = (GOI - COI)/COI

I'm going to walk through two examples: one to show my ignorance as a indie publisher in the beginning and one to show how I did it right. I'm going to simplify a few numbers for math clarity.

Example 1
Seasons of Magick: Spring was the first book I put up as an indie author.

It's approximately 20K words. At the time, I wrote about 500 words per hour, so it took me 40 hours to write the story. Let's say I, the publisher, paid me, the writer, $10 an hour.

I paid a friend's teen daughter $25 to create a Photoshop file for my cover.

A friend and I edited each other's novellas over coffee, so throw in $10 for my Starbucks card.

I know just enough HTML to be dangerous so I formatted this myself using freeware.

My costs of investment? $400 + $25 + $10 + $0 = $435.

I priced the book at $0.99. 99 copies sold the first year it was on the market. Again, for simplicity's sake, let's say I made Amazon's rate of $0.35 for all the copies (which really isn't far from the truth). My gain on investment in Year 1? 99 X $0.35 = $34.65

Therefore, my ROI for this book is ($34.65 - $435)/$435 = - $0.92

Now the nice thing is this book will be available (hopefully) for the rest of my life plus seventy years. Odds are it will eventually earn a positive ROI.

Example 2
A year after I started indie publishing I wrote a BDSM erotic romance. Since I'm not ready to reveal Alter Ego, we'll call it Sluts in the City #1.

Again, this novella was 20K words so my costs as a writer remained the same. So did my editing costs.

By now, I'd learned my lesson about having a decent cover. I'd bought the picture to the left for $8 with the intention of using it for the cover until I saw how many covers, both indie and trad, used it. So I bought a different cover at Romance Novel Covers for $15.

I used freeware to tweak the picture and add the title and author's name by myself. (I had a lot of fun experimenting, too!) Again, I did my own formatting.

My costs of investment? $400 + $10 + $23 + $0 = $433

I priced the book at $2.99. My income per copy ranges from $1.05 to $2.68, so once again, let's use $2.00 for ease of math. The first year I sold 1,481 copies so my gain on investment was 1481 X $2.00 = $2962.00.

Therefore, my ROI for Sluts in the City #1 is ($2962 - $433)/$433 = $5.84

$5.84 versus -$0.92. See the difference?

Two erotica novellas. Same length. Same amount of time they were on sale. Little to no marketing.

The two big differences were the covers and the price. Both had a significant impact on my income.

On Monday, I'll talk about determining ROI for an indie published project, an assisted publishing project, and a trad published project.

On Wednesday, I'll talk about why using a picture like the Handcuffed Girl above will hurt more than help you thanks to the Kernel Pornocalypse.

Until then, stay toasty this weekend!

Did You Hear. . .

. . .about agent Ted Weinstein's joint interview of Amanda Hocking and Barry Eisler?  If you haven't already read the transcript, go check it out.

My $0.02--

It was nice to hear that Amanda and Barry have the same opinion I've had all along--there's no one perfect path for every writer.  My crit group is a perfect example.  Faye and Christie have gone the traditional route.  Teri signed with an e-publisher.  I'm planning on indie publishing this year.  And Jody, who had a couple of short stories published through traditional methods is taking a long look at all her options, but first she needs to finish her mystery.

And that doesn't mean we won't change up our choices down the line.  Keep your options open, folks, and do what YOU deem best for yourself.

And the Analysis Just Keeps on Coming

Today starts one of my rare weekends off from the Day Job.  I plan on writing during the morning before heading over to Joyful Jody's house for her incredible pesto cheese spread on cracked pepper crackers and some brainstorming.

In the meantime--if you're not tired of the Eisler/Hocking/St. Martin's hoopla, check out Jason Pinter's interview of Barry at The Daily Beast and Kris Rusch's take on Amanda and Barry's decisions.

Then there's Amanda's reasoning in her own words.  This is a woman wise beyond her years.

Once again, I repeat my writing mantra:  Every writer has a different path, and no particular path is the right path for everyone.

Right now, I'm just freakin' ecstatic that I was able to successfully convert Blood Magick to MOBI format.  I can now read it on my Kindle for PC app.  Woo-hoo!  Not much longer, folks!

Did You Hear. . .

. . .about Barry Eisler turning down a $500,000 advance last week?

For the details, check out Barry's talk with Joe Konrath at both Barry and Joe's blogs.

Dean Wesley Smith gives his own thoughts on the significance of Eisler walking away from such a deal.

Then a few hours after the Eisler confession, the New York Times broke a story that Amanda Hocking allegedly has a four-book deal in the middle of an auction.

My $0.02:

Contrary to other opinions I've seen on the interwebs, I doubt Eisler is making a mistake.  Something both my business and tax professors tried to ram through my head is that money in your hand is much preferably to money you're waiting for.  By indie publishing his next book this spring, Eisler can have that $500,000 in his hands much, MUCH sooner than if he waited until his traditional publisher pays him the typical thirds over the next two years.

As for walking away from a New York deal, I watched several midlist friends and acquaintances explore the indie route over the last four months.  I'm talking about people who hit the the NYT list and were nominated for Ritas.  So far, I haven't heard anyone complain about the chance they took.  And folks like Angie and Colleen already have a platform to springboard into indie publishing.  So I can't see a major NYT author like Eisler doing worse than my mid-list pals.

Then there's people like Melissa Ohnoutka and me who are starting from scratch.  Melissa has already made Faithful Deceptions available in both electronic and paper format.  I've already had two people ask if I'll have paper versions of Blood Magick and Zombie Love, and the books aren't even out yet.  *grin*

While I find the NYT story a little suspect (ex-attorney speaking:  you don't leak this kind of stuff without hoping to twist something in your favor and that's assuming it's not an out-and-out lie), I can see the Big 6 wanting a slice of Amanda's $2 million pie.  (Edit:  Publisher's Weekly confirmed the NYT story this morning.)

Personally, I have to side with Dean Wesley Smith on this one.  Print is not disappearing over night.  And indie publishers may be performing the same disservice to their readers that traditional publishers are guilty of by not having multiple formats of their products.

Sooooo. . .

Does that mean I'm giving up the indie plan?  No, I'm too niche for NY.  But I need to spend a little more time than I planned exploring POD options.  And yes, I think it'll be worth it.