Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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

Posted by Soulskill on from the six-of-one,-five-hundred-thousand-of-the-other dept.

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."

4 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. big diff: editors are actually important by decora · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:big diff: editors are actually important by MoonBuggy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  2. Was wondering when this would happen by argStyopa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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....

    --
    -Styopa
  3. ebook pricing too high by Deb-fanboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.