I'm Late for a Very Important Date!

Today's post is late because I've been struggling to get the final edits done for A Modicum of Truth. A scene I thought I'd written wasn't in there. I went through notes and spread sheets, and I finally realized I'd thought about the scene while doing laundry, and when I went back to my computer, I picked the story with the following scene. *facepalm*

Then the rhythm of the climax was really off, and I didn't note something super important that had happened in the climax in the final chapter. My endings usually are a lot tighter, but then I realized it's technically the middle of the trilogy.

Add in my usual tendency to accidentally leave out articles and prepositions, I'd added nearly 10K words to the novel by the time I finished.

Just in time for the new episode of Samantha Bee tonight, thank Goddess!

In the meantime, chaos is running through Indie World. Data Guy put out the latest iteration of his Author Earnings report. And he greatly underestimated the level of anger Indie World has concerning trad pub.

Sort of like the men who don't get the #MeToo movement.

Even though a lot of indie writer will talk money, they are revealing their own numbers, not someone else's. Data Guy made the mistake of naming names and counting Benjamins. Publicly.

How gauche!

Then he made the second mistake of revealing that he's selling info he's scraped from Amazon to the bigger publishing companies. Basically, if you make $10 million or more, he'll sell you a copy of his data.

*facepalm*

A lot of indies gave Data Guy their personal information in order to calibrate his 'bots back at the beginning. And now they're feeling a little betrayed. Especially after they were named on Author Earnings.

There are already calls for a class action suit.

I can't comment on the legalities, or lack thereof, on who did what. But I will say there's nothing more fearsome on Earth than a bunch of romance writers with their panties in a wad.

Alternative Facts

Copyright 2017, Author Earnings

Author Earnings' latest report came out via Data Guy's presentation at last week's Digital Book World '17. This was more of an overall view of the industry and included not just Data guy's spiders, but also information from Nielson and Bookscan.

Yes, there was some pretty significant information. Such as the strength of indies in underserved markets such as African-American-themed books. Or that the print book sales surge was actually a test by Amazon offering consumers steeper discounts on trad published books after post-conspiracy debacle contract negotiations were resumed. Or that e-books have plateaued or shrink and instead are up 4%.

What's more telling to me though is that the same people, who derisively dismissed Hugh Howey and Data Guy's efforts when they started Author Earnings a little over three years, are now listening attentively. Yeah, the same people, who screamed from nearly every online venue that DG was a liar and his data was false, are now inviting him to their conferences, sitting raptly at attention and soaking in the numbers.

I know there's at least one of you out there thinking, "But, but, but digital was growing 100-200-300% back 2010-2011. 4% is awful!"

No, it's isn't. Let's say you sold 1 e-book in 2010. Not a lot, but a good start. In 2011, you sold 2 e-books. That's a 100% increase. In 2012, you sold 20 e-books and that's a 1000% increase for you.

Compare that to total e-books available on Amazon (because I'm trying to make this easy to follow). When I first started publishing, there were roughly 3 million e-books available. Staying in the top third, i.e. your rank was above #1,000,000, was fairly easy.

Now, there an estimated nine million e-books available. My books are generally ranked roughly around #2,500,000 mark. That's still the top 30%. However, there's more books to choose from so it doesn't mean I'm making anywhere near the amount of sales I was before.

(And no, I'm not blaming Amazon or anyone else. I only started publishing again last June after a nearly three year hiatus due to personal issues that I enumerated extensively during that time period. I still hold to the belief that the best way to market your books is by producing more material for your readers.)

So the money pot is actually growing. There just happens to be more people dipping into it. However, there's still room for indie growth.

How so?

Beyond numbers, there's something more telling. Trad publishing is leaving a hell of a lot of money on the table. Remember the African-American themed books I mentioned above? 96% of those sales were e-books, and guess who controls that market? Trad publishers like to claim that certain portions of our country don't read, but the numbers say otherwise.

The best thing indie writers can take from the latest AE report is that trad publishing is leaving a lot of genre territory for us to claim. So get out there, find a niche genre you love and start writing it!


P.S. Yes, I stole Data Guy's Pac-Man slide. It's cute, and it's a generational thing.

Data Guy Strikes Back and Other Important Info

I was going to talk about my projects this morning, but Data Guy released the Author Earnings Report for May 2016 yesterday.

HOLY FUCKING CRAP ON A CRACKER!

If you want or have a career as a writer, you need to read this report. It shows the marked changes in the publishing industry.

Another important blog to read is Kris Rusch's current series on contracts. There's lots of scary (and career ruining) contracts these days, and indie writers aren't immune. She focuses on some problems with the now-defunct Booktrope.

To top off the recent spate of writers not getting paid, Barnes & Noble's NOOKPress managed to fully fuck up payments for the month of May. I've counted nearly 300 indie writers including myself who did not receive payment on May 31st. And these are just the folks who bitched. Goddess only knows how many others are in this boat.

Sadly, it took B&N over forty-eight hours to issue any kind of statement. I'll update this post if/when I receive my payment.

Needless to say, I've pulled all of my books from B&N after this fiasco. I'd previously pulled my books from Smashwords, Apple, Kobo, etc. in preparation for the new book covers and updated back matter. Now, I'm wondering if I should try Kindle Unlimited since I have a fresh slate. I'm already researching some other retailers like All Romance eBooks.

The whole incident really bums me out because the original Nook was a decent product. But no, the short-range thinking of Len Riggio, his board of directors, and B&N executives torpedoed their potential before they even got off the ground. And they wonder why Amazon is crushing them.

After all that, I promise more positive news next week!


UPDATE: My payment from B&N/NOOKPress arrived in my business bank account this morning. I received an answer to my e-mail I sent to them on Tuesday at noon today.

Unfortunately, this fix doesn't alleviate my deep concern over B&N/NOOKPress's professional behavior of late, or their lack thereof in this case. This isn't the first time they've had a problem paying authors who indie publish through them. Therefore, my e-books will remain unavailable through Barnes & Noble's website for the time being.

Which means I need to spend tomorrow updating a zillion links. URGH!

The World Is Mad I Tell You! Mad!

DH's dad is still in the hospital (complication from his surgery Wednesday) so this is a round-up of stuff y'all may be interested in.

First off, my self-editing post got a few comments yesterday. Just a reminder that there is no "right" way to edit. If you can proofread your own stuff, more power to you! Honestly, I proof my own short stories. However, it's the only area of where I think money can be wisely spent, just like it's overall cheaper and faster for me to hire out my formatting these days.

Ironically, Kris Rusch posted about the nightmares of dealing with trad publisher editors.

In that same blog, Kris also talked about the recent bloodbath at Penguin Random House. The layoffs included several editors.

And that led to this little bon mot my friend Angie e-mailed me this morning. Just how bad are things at PRH that la Nora jumps ship?

Are publishers in that much trouble? Yeah, they are. Data Guy's recent talk at the Digital Book World Conference shows trad publishers are sort of acknowledging that they sail in iceberg infested waters, but they still believe the icebergs pose no danger. *sigh*

On the other hand, anything that improves DG's scraping and analysis of book sales can help us indies in the long run.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

Trad Publishing Is Bonkers Over the Author Earnings Report

The ninth quarterly Author Earnings Report came out Monday. For those who've been sailing around the Caribbean for the two years (oh, wait! that's one of AE's authors, and it's only been for the last couple of months), AE is a project put together by SFF writer Hugh Howey and his partner Data Guy.

Basically, these two gentlemen have developed spiders that crawl through the Amazon book data and scrape info concerning the sales of genre books on a given day. They then spreadsheet and smoosh and extrapolate whatever's happening in the wilds of Amazon to the book industry. The really cool thing is they make the raw data available for the public so we can also spreadsheet and smoosh and extrapolate to our little hearts' content, too.

The first report came out with very little fanfare except among indie writers. It showed that we were selling a pretty decent chunk of e-books on Amazon. It reassured us that this e-book self-publishing thing wasn't a flash in the pan.

As more reports came out, trad publishing pundits first made fun of the reports. They called it wish fulfillment. But with each successive report, the laughter died, and the complaints about their collection methodology began. As more reports rolled in, the complaints became shriller.

With the latest report (mind you, this is all being done by a couple of guys as a hobby), certain insiders are calling for AE to be audited. So what's behind all the mockery and complaints?

Fear. Simple unrelenting fear.

More and more of trad publishing's normal news channels are reporting falling sales. Let's face it--the savior over Christmas for the trad publishers was the popularity of adult coloring books. There hasn't a major fiction blockbuster since Fifty Shades of Gray in 2012.

The AE report shows where those missing sales are going, the pockets of indies. And this terrifies the Manhattan literati. So much so that Porter Anderson is calling for the duo to be audited and Lee Child mocks them for inaccuracy.

If indies were as inconsequential as many in trad publishing believe, then there is no reason for the uproar. But that screaming gets louder with each successive report. The fear has gone from general unease to full-blown panic.

What does this all mean?

To me, not a damn thing. I've played with their raw data enough to confirm what I already knew. I've gone from making a week's worth of groceries in my first year of publishing my work to paying for my son's oral surgery out of pocket.

Now. if you will excuse me, I need to write and publish a few more books because GK needs his wisdom teeth out this summer.