Feb 06 2010
All writers who are looking to a future in publishing should be reading Mike Stackpole’s current series of blog posts. You can find the latest here.
Questions about it and my opinion about what he is saying are welcome here.
Cheers, Dean
Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith has written more than ninety popular novels and well over 100 published short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he is the coauthor of The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom. He writes under many pen names and has also ghosted for a number of top bestselling writers.
Dean has also written books and comics for all three major comic book companies, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, and has done scripts for Hollywood. One movie was actually made.
Over his career he has also been an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books.
Currently, he is writing thrillers and mystery novels under another name.
Dean’s Latest Tweets
Dean, I thought that I’d mention that Mike has an amazing newsletter called the Secrets that is just jammed packed with info. I consider the Secrets one of the best investments I’ve made in my writing career. Mike only charges twenty six dollars for a year’s subscription. I’d say aspiring writers definitely owe it to themselves to sign up.
Alright end of plug, I now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.
Cheers,
Steve
I’ve been reading Mike’s blog too. Both of you are on RSS feeds.
One thing you could comment on in relation to digital self-publishing, is what are your thoughts on Smashwords.
In case you’re not familiar, it is a self-publishing site for creating digital books in several formats “automatically,” along with the ability for people to download samples of the book. The formatting isn’t as good as what I can do myself, but sufficient (with promises that in the future authors/publishers will be able to insert your own versions in place of the automatically generated one).
Have you heard anything about these guys? I placed my novella up there as a test. So far, so good.
R.L., I’ve sort of been following Smashwords and a few other sites like them, including the original, Fictionwise, which my wife has about 40 stories on. My only problem with sites like that is that they take a percentage of a percentage. If I put my own book or story up on Kindle or other direct to readers distribution sites, I get the full percentage.
In essence, Fictionwise and from what I understand (I may be wrong) Smashwords and a dozen other sites like them are functioning as publishers, just as book publishers do, only these new sites figure your percentage from what they get, not from the cover price as paper publishers do.
So (using round and not accurate numbers…check these as they vary from site to site), an author puts up a short story on Kindle for $1.00. By the time the fees and such are done, author gets about 40 cents. Or 40%. Nice profit margin by any business standard. And very little work and no upkeep at all.
But if that same story is give to Fictionwise or some such site, Fictionwise does the minor work and puts it up and gets the 40 cents from a Kindle sale. But then they turn around and give the author 30% of that. So author now gets 12 cents for each Kindle sale instead of 40 cents.
Again, these numbers are not accurate but just used for illustration. But they are in the ball park. So that said, I’m not much of a fan of those sites.
And, as Mike and I have been saying over and over, you give too much control away. And have you ever tried to find a single author on Fictionwise anymore? Stunning number of authors are there, making the noise factor fantastically high and the ability of Fictionwise to give any one author or story attention less than you would get in New York. Better to never let the control go unless you have to. But that is just my opinion.
Thanks, good info. I’m not familiar with how Fictionwise works, but at least according to the Smashword’s FAQ on how payments are calculated:
Quote:
How are royalties calculated?
Smashwords pays the author, or the author’s designated publisher, 85% of the net sales proceeds from the work. Estimated proceeds are clearly disclosed during the publish process in a pie chart, and are calculated as follows: (Sales price minus transaction fee) multiplied by .85 = proceeds to author/publisher. The royalty rate for affiliate sales is 70.5% net. For most retail distribution partners, Smashwords pays the author/publisher 85% of the net proceeds to Smashwords, which works out to 42% or more of the suggested list price you set for your book.
So it sounds compared to Fictionwise that the author gets more of the money. I don’t recall if they actually put it up on Kindle or not, which would change that picture some. It does work like you mentioned, but perhaps they take a smaller portion of the net than Fictionwise.
So far since I put my novella there (Infinite Realities), 15 people have looked at it, but no sales so far. Probably standard for an author few have heard of. I priced it at $2.49 whereas the paperback book’s list is $9.99. So I can’t verify the numbers they give with actual sales yet.
I guess the advantage they give you is distribution for sacrificing 15% of your net. But, like a lot of places, the number of people there with this or that published makes it hard to get noticed.
So I’m up in the air about throwing my other book on there. I’m still debating it.
I am now becoming a control freak after a long story involving six novels and five unsold books and blah blah too long a story. But I started self-publishing on Jan. 1, something I never thought I’d do. And you know what? My only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner. Like before I ever sold my first novel.
Based on six weeks of Kindle sales, I am probably going to make more on my first novel this year than I did from its original advance. I am so confident I will make more than NY will pay me that I’m releasing an original novel on March 1, a novel that somehow the (former) agent never seemed to remember.
Smashwords–they supposedly get you into a lot of outlets eventually and handle different formats, so I am trying them. And many outlets don’t want to deal with an author directly, preferring an “aggregator” like Smashwords or Fictionwsie.
Fictionwise: I had a deal with them in 2002. I got checks a few years but didn’t get any for the last three or four years, plus they kept selling my stuff long after the contract expired. Literally six months and 30 emails later, I finally got them to pull my books. Still no checks. They really went in the crapper after they sold to B&N, proof that B&N is really behind the curve on ebooks.
On this day, I am convinced Amazon is the best and most generous publisher on Earth. Especially when they start the 70 percent royalty. They take no rights, you put up your own cover and categories, and you can leave at any time. Your vision. Your reward for your work.
Control: I am thinking of buying back the rights to my NY novels because Kensington isn’t making them available in any format. I can wait the 7 years for all the licenses to expire, but I will lose thousands of dollars.
Moral: I now know what my work is really worth. And it’s not what NY tells me it is.
Scott Nicholson
http://hauntedcomputerbooks.blogspot.com
Scott, I agree that control is becoming a key more and more, one of the big changes in publishing. Thanks for the comments. Very much appreciated. Keep us informed on how it’s going when you get a chance.