Best-Selling Author Refuses $500k; Self-Publishes Instead

Last week we discussed an IT book author's adventures in trying to self-publish. Now, an anonymous reader points out an article examining another perspective: "Barry Eisler, a NY Times best-selling author of various thriller novels, has just turned down a $500,000 book contract in order to self-publish his latest work. In a conversation with self-publishing aficionado Joe Konrath, Eisler talks about why this makes sense and how the publishing industry is responding in all the wrong ways to the rise of ebooks. He also explains the math by which it makes a lot more sense to retain 70% of your earnings on ebooks priced cheaply, rather than 14.9% on expensive books put out by publishers."

Comments

big diff: editors are actually important

[decora]

editors, working for publishers, are behind a lot of the great literary works of the united states.

philip k dick's "a scanner darkly" comes to mind. there are many others.

publishers also deal with libel and defamation lawsuits for you.

they also set up junkets so you can market your book.

im not saying theres no point to self publish, but there are many differences between music industry and book industry.

Re:big diff: editors are actually important

[MoonBuggy]

Absolutely, and for someone new to writing and/or short of capital, the only reasonable way to afford editing, marketing, and so forth is to go with a publisher; thing is, the author is then beholden to the publisher - it's a very old fashioned, paternalistic relationship. Not to mention the fact (brought in to evidence here) that they take a bloody substantial cut of the sales.

If the author has some cash behind them already, and an established 'brand', then paying for an editor and a PR firm up front may well be far easier, more pleasant, and more profitable in the long run, than signing their creation away to someone else. The publisher is just a middle man, working between the retailers, the editors, the printers & distributors, and the author - not to say that a middle man with knowledge and experience doesn't provide value, but they need to learn that they are employed by the author to provide a service, and not a patron to which the author is beholden. Of course, the fact that publishers traditionally act as initial 'investors' in the process muddies the waters a bit, but as I said, that only applies in the case that the author needs that investment, and even if that is so, there's no reason it needs to come from the publisher, nor are the upfront expenses quite so onerous now that the need to predict the market, print, and ship large amounts of physical inventory is diminishing.

Re:big diff: editors are actually important

[Anonymous Coward]

Publishers also give advances, which lets authors concentrate on writing their book rather than working at a different job while they try to finish the book in their spare time.

The whole conversation/interview/article seems to entirely ignore the new author perspective and focus solely on the perspective of authors that have an existing fan base, connections to one or more editors they're comfortable with and enough of a bank account to focus on writing full-time.

But the similarities to the music industry are there. For quite some time, the largest music acts have setup record labels of their own to publish their music and that of performers they discover. Labels like Maverick Records, No Limit Records and Bad Boy Records were all started by artists that were big enough to use their own releases to establish a successful label.

There's some differences, but in both cases, enough success through the traditional system enables you to have the freedom to go around the existing players.

Was wondering when this would happen

[argStyopa]

I should have figured it'd be a tech-savvy writer.

When I realized that Neil Gaiman was getting perhaps $2 out of that $20 new book, I thought, 'hell, I wish I could just buy any book he writes directly from him - I'd pay him $6, he gets triple times as much and I get it for 1/3 price'.

Kudos to him, I hope he's successful against the publisher blacklisting he's going to suffer....

Publishing houses aren't Record labels

[Anonymous Coward]

Editors are a necessary part of any form of writing that isn't purely artistic (poetry, etc). Creating a piece of writing is a two-step process: first, you come up with the idea that you want to convey, but then you need to convey it in a manner in which people can understand. Even the best writers can be great at the former, but less so on the latter. It's the editor's job to think of the reader, and to put himself in the shoes of the public. Ironically, the same eccentricities that some great writers have that allow them their original viewpoints on their subject matter can be what prevents them from being able to relate to the "normal" reader.

Yes, there are some geniuses out there. Most of Twain's work is unchanged and Hunter S. Thompson's famous for his ramblings; but really, that's not the yardstick you should be going by.

ebook pricing too high

[Deb-fanboy]

Barry: This is a critical point. There’s a huge data set proving that digital books are a price-sensitive market, and that maximum revenues are achieved at a price point between $.99 and $4.99. So the question is: why aren’t publishers pricing digital books to maximize digital profits? Joe: Because they're protecting their paper sales. Barry: Exactly. Joe: It's awfully dangerous for an industry to ignore (or even blatantly antagonize) their customers in order to protect self-interest.

This is one thing that puts me off buying ebooks. At the moment they are overpriced.

Another problem is that they come with DRM, and running a free operating system I cannot read them and have to resort to other methods to obtain a free copy. I would much rather purchase a reasonably priced ebook with no DRM so that some money goes to the author.

We are left with the same untenable situation with ebooks as there was with the music industry, that is that you get a better ebook for free which is flexible and can be read on any ereader than you get by purchasing for £12 from an official ebook retailer.