The RT14 Clusterf**k

I was going to avoid this topic. I really was. But I'm reading and hearing too much not to comment.

First of all, RT stands for Romantic Times. The magazine RT Book Reviews started in 1981 as a "tabloid newspaper" called Romantic Times that was for and about romance books and their readers. Over the years, RT Bookclub expanded to review other genres. In 1982, the founder of RT, romance writer Kathryn Falk, launched the RT Convention.

RT is NOT affiliated with RWA (aka Romance Writers of America). Personally, I'm annoyed that all manner of bloggers and commenters cannot differentiate between the two organizations. There is a lot of crossover simply because of the nature of the romance community.

For the record, I had an RT Bookclub subscription for five or six years, but I have never been to an RT Convention. But I've heard stories from friends who have gone.

Oh, boy, have I heard stories!

But this year, the stories that were normally private over margaritas and Tex-Mex went public. Well, that's not true. They went viral among the publishing industry. And for our size, we're really very small and insular so things get around.

This year wasn't like the time a well-known author did a striptease on a tabletop. (P.S. At business functions, limit your alcohol intake. And make no mistake, the RT Convention is a business function for writers.)

Nope, there were a series of problems that irritated both readers and writers:

1) Record attendance in a too small facility

RT14 had a record attendance (no official number yet, but I've been hearing unofficial numbers in the 2500 range). These were just the registered attendees, and does not include people off the street since the Book Fair was open to the public.

This means they surpassed the RWA conference which has had 1700-2000 attendees over the last ten years. And RT held its conference in the Marriott in New Orleans, a place RWA already knew was too small for them! (Remember, lots of crossover between RWA and RT people.)

FYI - RWA has had a contract with the Marriott chain for the last fifteen years, and there's a limited number of their hotels that can handle 2000 guests. Only one time in that fifteen years was the RWA conference held on a non-Marriott site. That was when flooding destroyed the Nashville Marriott a couple of months before the conference. Only Disney World could handle that size of a conference on that short of a notice.

The New Orleans fire marshal was at the Book Fair, keeping a close eye on the situation. Several attendees mentioned that he threatened to shut down the Book Fair, but hey, his job is to keep people safe.

Now, these weren't all people off the street. I had checked into attending RT14, and a month after registration opened, the Marriott was full, and the RT organizers needed a spillover hotel. It's not like all these people showed up the morning the first day of the conference, so RT had an inkling from the get-go that space was going to be a problem.

Possible solutions for RT:
- Find a bigger facility.
- Limit registered attendees.


2) Separation of authors and long lines at the Book Fair itself

So RT already has a space issue, and they knew it, but they didn't notify the attending authors that space had been reduced for their signing tables until they arrived. Many writers bring signage, displays, and swag to give away to readers, and there wasn't enough room for everyone's. A lot of writers were miffed because they would have been more conservative in their packing if they had known.

RT needed two ball rooms to accommodate all the signing authors, but they placed all the trad published authors in one and the small press, e-press and indie authors in another. There was also the major issue with the square footage of tables. Supposedly some authors got extra. If RT provided some authors less than others when every writer paid the same amount and was promised the same size of facility to participate in the Book Fair, RT is looking at a potential breach of contract lawsuit.

This bring us to the second major problem. A lot of writers are hybrids(TM Bob Mayer). RT organizers forced them to chose whether they wanted to sign their trad published books or their non-trad published books. Major fail here because readers follow authors. Sorry, Big 5, but it's true.

This made a lot of authors, including NYT bestselling writers, feel like second class citizens, which I'll get into a little more in Point 3 below.

The third major problem is the bookstore providing support for the Book Fair did not bring electronic scanners or POS cash registers to the conference. All paperwork was done by hand, which resulted in long lines in the hotel's hallways and rankled the fire marshal. This is the 21st century. Hand tallying went out with the horse and buggy.

I don't know which retailer this was. I've heard both Barnes & Noble and Anderson's mentioned. Either way it's no excuse for not bringing adequate equipment to a major conference.

Supposedly the separation of the two groups of authors was due to returnable vs. non-returnable books at the request of the bookseller. Makes me wonder how long this particular retailer will stay in business.

Possible solutions for RT:
- Writers need to be notified as soon as a potential problem is known so they can adjust whatever promotion they have planned.
- RT needs to research the booksellers they use during the Book Fair more thoroughly, i.e. can they provide adequate staff and equipment? If not, find someone else.
- Indie writers who publish print need to consider the return option since it can be a make-or-break deal with booksellers.
- RT should arrange signing seats alphabetically to make it easy for readers to find their favorite authors. The only authors who need a separate room are those whose lines are difficult to manage (Nora Roberts and Sherrilyn Kenyon come to mind.)


3) Issues with volunteers

I've done volunteer work for a lot of different organizations. It's an exhausting, thankless task at the best of times, but you need to keep a positive face because you represent the event.

There were several reports of the registration desk opening early late and closing late early. One writer who was trying to confirm something was bluntly told she couldn't ask anymore questions. And then there was the volunteer that raised hackles by stating the people in the small press/e-press/indie room were "aspiring authors."

Everyone who witnessed this particular incident agreed this was the only incident and the volunteer was quickly and firmly corrected. But with the pressure of the book signing, the feeling of packed sardines, and the long wait to check out, the comment was a match on the pool of stress oil.

That in turn set off a firestorm of blog posts this week, ranging from Hugh Howey, who didn't attend RT14, to Jennifer Bray-Weber, who did.

Steven Zacharius, president of Kensington Publishing, jumped on Hugh's blog and pretty much made an ass of himself. I understand he felt the need to defend RT CEO Kathryn Falk because he and his father have been friends with her for years. But Kathryn's a big girl. If she can handle her own company, I'm sure she can learn from and fix the problems for next year's RT Conference. But considering Stevie Z.'s own stance on the separation of trad and indie books, he's the last person Kathryn needs defending her.

Possible Solutions for RT:
- An apology to all writers for the muck-up that was the RT Book Signing.
- Full training for volunteers, preferably in person the day before the conference starts. Online training prior to the conference if logistics for in-person training are impossible.
- Hire an outside conference organizer who has plenty of experience with large events.
- A ball gag and fingercuffs for Stevie Z. With friends like this, Kathryn Falk doesn't need enemies.


Personally, I think RT needs to go back to the basics of what it did best, facilitate interaction between writers and cover models and their fans in a fun atmosphere. Leave the publishing politics out of the equation. If Kathryn and her people want to promote classes for the business side of writing and publishing, then make that a separate event.

But the writer/fan interaction? That's where I've always heard terrific things about RT.


P.S. Stevie Z., you really need to let go of your hard-on for Hugh Howey. I don't think he swings that way.

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!

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!

When a CEO Has No Concept of Social Media

For the record, I have nothing against traditional publishing. My regular readers know that I advocate READING AND UNDERSTANDING YOUR FUCKING CONTRACT before you EVER SIGN IT! But that's the former lawyer in me talking.

I also have nothing personal against Steven Zacharius, CEO and President of Kensington Publishing.

But apparently, Mr. Zacharius has something against me as an indie published writer according to an article he wrote in the Huffington Post. His diatribe about how I don't make any money, how I don't have any editing done, how I can't get quality cover art felt pretty damn personal. But I let go because I had a deadline...

Until a Kensington writer crafted a blog post aimed at readers saying how she was not rolling in gold. Apparently, she was being hit up quite a bit for free books. I would link to it, but within four hours of her post going live, it was taken down.

And that one big difference about indies. We talk money. We talk business. We give each other recommendations on services. But then we have our big girl and big boy panties on. I've got friends who make a lot more than I do. I have friends who make a lot less. And frankly, y'all know what I made last year.

Trad publishers don't want writers talking about their contracts. The scary part is they treat their writers like employees when they are independent contractors. Unfortunately, many writers accept this treatment because they are afraid they will be blackballed. And shunning was a real problem when trad publishers were the only game in town.

But the game has changed, folks. Big time.

Why did the Kensington author take her post down? I can only speculate in my own warped mind, but there's another problem.

Whatever you post on the internet takes on a life of its own. Even though she took the post down, it was cached. And copied. And spread. And discussed. Including at The Passive Voice.

And Mr. Zacharius responded at TPV.

All I can say is if I were Kensington's PR person, I wouldn't have any hair left after he was done. He apparently didn't know who hangs out at TPV. Sure, we're all writers. But we are also attorneys, doctors, psychologists, accountants, game designers, military vets, and teachers, just to mention a handful of the occupations. And a great many of us have been trad published.

One person published at Kensington was brave enough to comment though she did it anonymously because she's trying to get her rights reverted and fears retaliation. PG posted her comment as a main post because he felt it was important. And it is important because it shows Mr. Zacharius isn't talking to the people he needs to--those already under contract with his company.

However, J.A. ("Joe") Konrath took the questions Mr. Zacharius posed at TPV and crafted his own answers on his blog. Mr. Zacharius has said in Joe's comments that he's sending a reply to Joe, and Joe has said he will post the reply.

Can Mr. Zacharius have a meaningful dialogue with writers, or will he stick his other foot in his mouth? It should be a very interesting and entertaining Monday indeed.