From Kevin J. Anderson’s Blog:

Publishing is changing faster than the tide can go in and out, and authors are climbing to higher ground, building boats, or getting washed out to sea.  Many of us are putting up backlist titles as our own indy eBooks, while writing frontlist titles for traditional publishers. Much has been posted about do-it-yourself eBook publishing for ambitious authors, but we’ve been out of the loop on the eBook versions of our titles from major publishers.  Until now.

I am pleased to be one of the test authors on a new program, Cunable, managed by John Grace, formerly of Brilliance Audio. Cunable arranges for authors to sell their eBooks from major publishers directly on their own site.

. . . .

Normally, publishers sell their ePub and mobi files through the major online retailers, amazon, b&n.com, etc.—who take 30–35% of the sales price for themselves.  The publishers get their cut, and a percentage goes toward paying back the author’s advance, but the author is not likely to see much, certainly not for quite some time.  With Cunable, though, the same eBooks are sold directly through the author’s website for the same price.  The 30–35% cut that would normally go to the big retailers is split between Cunable and the author.  For the first time, a portion of the eBook sales from a major publisher goes directly into the author’s pocket.

Link to the rest at Kevin J. Anderson’s Blog and thanks to J.M. for the tip.

From The Huffington Post:

When I published my first book, there was no Internet that we could search to see how our books were doing and where our careers might be headed. There were reviews in print, and that was it. By a certain point after a book was published, there wasn’t much to read anymore about yourself or your book, unless you were touring and there were interviews or features along the way.

Today, we’re drowning in information.

. . . .

And we authors now have endless opportunities to make ourselves miserable by insatiably reading every last Amazon, B&N, or Goodreads review; checking whether our Facebook author page is getting likes; worrying about whether our tweets will get re-tweeted; obsessing over comments on our blogs; setting up Google alerts for every mention of our names and books; worrying that our web sites aren’t getting enough traffic; obsessing about our presence in the blogosphere.

Some authors, begging for attention, even go overboard and live too much of their lives in social media, recording every twitch of consciousness as if the fate of publishing depended on it.

Link to the rest at The Huffington Post and thanks to Randall for the tip.

From Publishing Perspectives:

[D]ue to the decline in library purchases and the closing of bookstores over the last few years, publishers have devoted more of their marketing budget towards building a direct relationship with their customers. The creation of online communities has been central to this.

With the recent sale of the social networking site GoodReads to Amazon for a reported $150 million, it is clear that an online community around books and storytelling is a valuable commodity that could help publishers react better to reader interests. But, is it worth publishers investing in the creation of their own branded online community?

Publishers think so. According to our study, conducted by Bowker Market Research, the number of publisher-owned online communities is set to more than double over the next two years. The study, which focused on US and UK publishers in both the trade and academic markets, found that two-thirds of responding publishers currently host reader communities, and that this number is set to rise to over 90% over the next two years.

Link to the rest at Publishing Perspectives

Passive Guy predicts that participating in the publisher’s online community will be added to traditionally-published authors’ homework assignments at some time in the future if it’s not there already.

This post caused PG to think about the significance of the location of an author’s online brand. If it’s on a publisher’s site or even on Goodreads, it’s not entirely under the author’s control and changes to the site can have an adverse impact on the author’s visibility.

Unlike many, PG is not a fan of Goodreads and hopes Amazon completely rebuilds it. If an author has a big presence on present-day Goodreads, it’s lost on PG and those like him.

How valuable is a community of readers an author builds on a publisher’s community site if the author switches to a new publisher or goes indie? Publisher A isn’t likely to allow much promotion of an author’s books from Publisher B.

If the author builds her own community around her blog or newsletter or Twitter stream or Pinterest board, she can take it wherever she wants to go.

From author Catherine Ryan Howard:

We all know I love publishers. I still hope, should I ever finish The Novel, to be published by one of them. Say silly things like legacy or gatekeepers, or use something as serious and tragic as the Irish potato famine—or rape or Stockholm Syndrome, for that matter—to describe the relationship between the author and the business that has risked its money to get that author’s book to market, and you go straight onto my Naughty List.

(Well, there isn’t actually a Naughty List. Who has the time? I will roll my eyes at you though.)

I don’t believe for a second, for instance, what is pretty much an accepted ‘fact’ by the majority of the self-publishing community: that traditional publishers don’t publicize and/or care about the books they publish. I’ve seen for myself that this is simply not true. The bad publishers might not, but it’s up to you not to sign contracts with them. (Or at least not sign contracts with them twice, or tarnish all publishers with the same brush just because of one experience.) Even if I took away what I’ve seen firsthand, there would still be the evidence of logic: publishing is a business, and any business that isn’t run by morons wants to recoup their investment, i.e. any advance paid, printing and staff costs. They market and publicize and support their product as much as they can because it’s in their interests for it to sell.

. . . .

Anyway, I tell you this because I want to make it clear that despite my self-publishing background, I ain’t a publisher-basher. But there is one area where some of them do need a stern talking to, and that’s their attitude towards using social media to promote their books. The Big Ones are all over it (that’s probably why they’re The Big Ones) but others aren’t even making an effort, which is crazy as they’re the ones who stand to benefit the most on the internet’s level playing field.

. . . .

Do any of these statements sound at all familiar?

• ‘But does Twitter really sell books? So-and-so has 10,000 followers and he only sold 500 books…’
• ‘Ugh. I can’t be bothered with Facebook and all that silly stuff.’
• ‘Why waste your time on that when books have sold fine without all this rubbish until now?’
• ‘There’s no evidence social media does anything except suck away time.’
• ‘I have NEVER bought a book because someone on Goodreads recommended it to me. NEVAAAH!’
• ‘Is this over yet? Call me when Twitter is gone.’
• (From the writer) ‘But I want just to WRITE!’

. . . .

But Wait… Does It REALLY Sell Books?

Yes, it does. It sold mine, it sells the books of my self-published friends, and it’s worked wonders for countless traditionally published titles. But most of the time, we can’t prove it. No one listens to self-publishers because for some reason self-published success is still treated like a total fluke. Even when the author says ‘Well, I did this and then I did this and then sales really picked up when I started doing this’, no one listens. They just think wasn’t he lucky?! And publishing houses use lots of different methods to sell books, so they can’t reallysay for sure why a certain book was a bestseller, only that, as a whole, the campaign worked. The other problem is that it doesn’t sell all the books, and the skeptics latch on to each Twitter-flavored failure and hold it up as high as they can. If it fails, it means they don’t have to worry about it.

Link to the rest at Catherine Caffeinated and thanks to J.M. for the tip.

From Smexy Books:

Recently I read a short story that I quite enjoyed, and when I went to the author’s website to find out if there would be more (it was an Urban Fantasy type world), what her plans were, and if I could expect another installment soon I found nothing. No information at all other than the fact that the book in my hands was coming out.

. . . .

Right off the bat I must state that I do not ever believe any author owes me anything. I understand that things happen and life can change and that sometimes a book is delayed, or cancelled even. That said, I also know that somebody who is an author is publishing their books, most likely, as a means of income. It is a profession, authors create a product to sell, and I am a consumer of stories.

So as a consumer, I do like to know what I’m getting into. If I’m thinking about starting a series, trying a new book, or especially when I read a book I really like, I immediately visit the author’s website. I want to know if they have books I’m not aware of, what they’ll work on next, and generally any information I need to make note of for future reading goodness.

. . . .

This could be done by having an “about” page for the series, a FAQ page, or just a “thanks for visiting my site, here’s what I’m working on…” type paragraph or two that you keep as up-to-date as possible. Even if the note is “I’m writing the next book, expect it in a 2014”,  or “at this time I am developing a new series, more information to come this summer” this is information I want.

Link to the rest at Smexy Books

From Tobias Buckell:

I think there are two dangers from repeatedly reviewing (or reading critically) a lot of books. And, as I said, it’s a danger that we writers also face (heck, struggle with, as well).

1) When you get to a point where you’ve read an amazing number of books, you change. You’ve read so much that what may seem new or interesting to most (and even to the writer of the book you’re reading) is just a variation to you. Your expectations regarding the work change.

Due to subjectivity being what it is, many writers can mistake what’s happening and view it as the books getting worse, not their own aesthetic changing. Two things can happen. One, despair at what they perceive is the dying of quality. You see this a lot with people who hit a certain number of books read: they begin to rail against the dreadfulness of everything. It can lead to bitterness, cynicism, and outright hatred of something they previously loved.

. . . .

2) If you’re able to either unconsciously or consciously navigate the above, what you’re left with isn’t a raw, initial passion for reviewing what you love, but a more craftman’s-like examination of the book for an audience you may no longer really be a part of, but can remember being a part of. It’s easy to slip into this vein, by will or luck, because it does allow you to keep reading a ton while reporting back on the basics of what you read.

What those reviews are basically covering is “If you like X sort of thing, this hits X okay, with some additional Y and Z, if you also are into that.” Do they feel sucked dry of a bit of the reviewer’s authorial voice? Yeah, probably, because the reviewer has had to step back out of necessity in order to report back to a larger audience.

. . . .

Over time, I’ve been able to move back into a place where I can focus on what works about a book, and focus less on what doesn’t. Author C.C. Finlay has a quote he uses that runs something like: “A novel doesn’t excite readers because you took all the bad stuff out of it, it excites them because of all the good stuff that’s in it, regardless of the bad.”

At a workshop not too many years ago a newer writer began to condemn a best selling novel, pointing out all its flaws and jagged edges. I listened for a long time, nodding.

“All those things are true,” I said. And gave him the C.C. Finlay quote. “But until you learn what the good parts were that excited the reader, you’re always going to be bitterly upset about what is wrong with that bestseller. Learn to spot what worked in that book, and you’ll be able to move forward. And you’ll be a lot less upset all the time as well.”

Link to the rest at Tobias Buckell

From author Anne R. Allen:

I spend a lot of time here telling writers how and why to use social media, but I don’t often address the dangers. Yeah, they exist. I don’t know why, but otherwise sensible people can morph into irrational brutes when they’ve got their fingers on a keyboard and a connection to the Interwebz.

. . . .

The easy anonymity of the Interwebz is usually blamed for the nastiness—and I admit things have felt safer here since I disabled anonymous comments—but I think the most egregious abuses spring from something far more dangerous: mob mentality. A gang of self-righteously indignant “groupthinkers” can do more damage than one lone anonymouse, even a sociopathic one.

. . . .

Writers new to social media need to be aware that anybody can become a target of one of these groups—often people who have done nothing wrong—and we all need to be careful not to jump into online dogpiles of crazy, no matter how righteous the cause appears to be.

Unfortunately, it’s easy to be sucked into mob behavior. Somebody says something that doesn’t conform to the majority opinion in a forum or comment thread and suddenly you’re part of a frenzied mob going after Mr. or Ms. Nonconformist with the digital version of torches and pitchforks.

I’ve seen Twitter version called “Twitchforks” —great word.

. . . .

It happened to me in 2011. I endured a month-long barrage of threats and insults after somebody misunderstood one of my blogposts. I got hit with real world consequences: panic attacks, disordered sleep and stress-related illness. I thought I was taking it in stride, but the trauma of a death threat stays with you.

Thing is: most of the people who attacked me thought they were doing good. I’ve even made friends with some of them since.

. . . .

A minor, but significant attack by a cybermob with Twitchforks happened recently at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference. A bunch of agents, objecting to a keynote speech by author Barry Eisler, set off a swarm of nasty Twitter barbs against Mr. Eisler during his presentation.

The incident reverberated through the book community and serves as an embarrassing example of how even respected professionals can morph into a mob through the magic of the Internet.

Link to the rest at Anne R. Allen’s Blog and thanks to Mira for the tip.

From The New York Times:

With the release of “Side Effects” earlier this year, Steven Soderbergh’s retirement from filmmaking (at least for the big screen), announced in 2011, finally took effect. Liberation might be a better word, since his recent activities seem to belong to a restless person newly freed from the constraints of his profession, rather than a used-up man at rest.

. . . .

[A] hard-boiled suspense novella called “Glue” began to appear, 140 characters and an occasional photograph at a time, in the Twitter stream of @Bitchuation, known to be Mr. Soderbergh’s handle. (Seven chapters have appeared so far).

. . . .

“The smart move is to pull up stakes and head for the nearest cliché. But you don’t.” That brief passage, from the second chapter of “Glue,” might stand as a typically self-deconstructing credo. The first sentence, after all, is composed almost entirely of the clichés that the second sentence pretends to brush aside.

. . . .

Twitterature is more like T-ball: The risks, the stakes and the degree of difficulty are all gratifyingly low. And “Glue,” which takes about 20 minutes to read and which was “published” within a 24-hour span, has laid its modest claim on the public’s attention with more stealth than hype. @Bitchuation, which Mr. Soderbergh has acknowledged as his but which does not bear his name or the blue-circled check mark of Twitter authenticity, has around 6,300 followers.Which would be a not-bad readership in the world of letters right now.

. . . .

The point of his experiment seems to be to isolate the minimal elements of a story. There is a protagonist — “you” — who has witnessed his own funeral, and who is involved in the globe-trotting pursuit of a mysterious object or substance identified as #&%#. Hopscotching among European capitals (London, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome) you encounter various colleagues and enemies, all of them identified by a single letter (can’t waste characters!) including a femme fatale known as D.

Link to the rest at The New York Times and thanks to Jeff for the tip.

From Dave Farland:

In my posts, I prefer to concentrate on storytelling, rather than talking about the art of creating powerful prose or talk much about the business side of writing, but today I’m going to make an exception.

Yesterday, I noticed that a fellow writer (she’s young, she’s hot!) put up a note on Facebook that said, “Will marry for health insurance.” It’s both funny and sad.

Here in the United States, health insurance can be hard to get, and if you can get it at all. In fact, my friend Kris Rusch has said that the single most frequent cause for a writer’s career to become derailed is that the author has inadequate health insurance.

. . . .

So what is “adequate” insurance? That’s hard to answer. In 2003-2004, my wife and I were living in California. We purchased the best insurance that we could possibly get.

However, that insurance didn’t cover everything. When our daughter needed help, we chose to spend an extra $40,000 for services that weren’t covered. We knew that it would put our financial health in jeopardy, but made a tough choice. After all, what’s more important, a few thousand dollars, or the life of your child?

In fact, it turned out that the insurance didn’t cover what we thought it did. A few months later, our insurer refused to pay for services that their policy did appear to cover. They left us in the lurch. I contacted a good lawyer, looking to sue, and he spent a couple of days researching the case. As he put it, “The things that they offered on page 4, they took away on page 33. They’ve had an army of lawyers working on this document for years, and it’s pretty ironclad. A lot of people have sued, and if you do, you’ll just waste your money on legal fees. I’m sorry.”

These excessive health costs caused a domino effect, and eventually we lost our house, our car, and our life savings, narrowly avoiding bankruptcy.

. . . .

Now we’re facing another health crisis. We moved to Utah in 2004, and we were able to keep our insurance until early 2006. But when we went shopping for insurance in Utah, we found that we weren’t able to buy it at all. We tried. We couldn’t get personal insurance for my family because I have type II diabetes. My condition is not bad—I don’t take insulin. In fact, as my doctor put it, I’m one of the “lucky few who seemed to have beat diabetes” through a combination of exercise and diet. But private policies won’t cover me, and when I tried to get a group policy, that didn’t work either. No one wanted to have a diabetic in their group, raising their rates. We tried a number of approaches, until my insurance agent just said, “Give it up, Dave, you just can’t get it here.”

. . . .

In any case, we then looked at finding a job that would allow us to get insurance through an established group policy. My wife found such a job and worked at it for nearly two years, but the company laid her off at the height of the recession. Since she is hearing impaired, getting a job is difficult for her. After searching for 18 months, she took a new job for the State of Utah, helping to teach handicapped children, but people in her position don’t have any benefits at all. So health insurance isn’t an option through work, either.

. . . .

With our son Ben’s longboarding accident, which happened three and a half weeks ago, we are approaching $700,000 in medical bills for the month, and our overall bill, once we get him through rehab and his future brain surgery, should run well over a million dollars. Obviously, we are checking into programs to help cover costs, and we’ll look at negotiating the prices down as low as we possibly can, but this is grueling.

. . . .

[G]etting insurance is a must. At some time in your life, you will probably need it. Buy a smaller home if you have to, or get a used car instead of new. But make insurance a priority.

Link to the rest at David Farland and thanks to Eric for the tip.

When PG was still doing litigation, he banged heads with a big health insurance company twice. Won both times. Two of the best days of his life.

Following are details about another way of helping Dave with his son’s medical bills. May 4th is the magic day:

Star Wars Twitter Bomb: Tweet, RT, and share throughout the Twitterverse and other social websites! The goal is to get #helpwolverton and #davidfarland trending on Twitter and Google+ on May the 4th (Star Wars Day) and encourage the kind people online to donate and help.

Please encourage people to participate on other social media websites, primarily Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, blogs, and anything else. Several independent studies show that spreading the word will significantly increase your midichlorian count.

The twitter bomb fundraiser is for David Farland’s son.Dave has written many Star Wars novels and contributed to anthologies such as Star Wars: The Courtship of Princess Leia, Star Wars: Tales from Mos Eisley Cantina, Star Wars: Tales of the Bounty Hunters, and Star Wars: Tales from Jaba’s Palace.

We’d like to celebrate Star Wars Day by letting their family know that “the force will be with them” in their time of need. Donate and spread the word! Share with everyone you know and on all social networks.

Suggested Tweet (Feel free to improvise):

Help Star Wars author’s son on Star Wars Day! Visit http://www.helpwolverton.com to learn more. #davidfarland #starwarsday #helpwolverton

From Paid Content:

The trend among social networks to produce original content often ends badly, as Tumblr’s shuttering of Storyboard showed. Here’s where other big services, from Facebook to YouTube, are going wrong – or, in the case of LinkedIn, going right.

. . . .

Community-inspired initiatives, much like journalism, need a sense of purpose, passion and objective urgency – the ability to look unflinchingly at a subject and capture it in a way that’s surprising and insightful. With that in mind, here’s how some of the most popular communities and social networks are experimenting with original content — and what works and doesn’t.

. . . .

The greater  problem with Facebook Stories has been one of approach. It publishes monthly, a bizarre strategy that utterly defies the very best characteristics of the site and is obviously in direct conflict with the online ethos. Content on Facebook is instantaneous and reactionary; it’s about celebrating small moments not just milestones, and any editorial effort should mirror that.

. . . .

The career-oriented network is oddly the rare success story of implementing original content. Even before LinkedIn’s $90 million acquisition of popular news-reader Pulse, the professional network was making all the right moves in terms of content creation and curation with a leadership board in the form of LinkedIn Influencers and a daily news feed that distributes third-party content selected by users.

Where the company has invested in original content, it’s done so by popular demand, tapping proven influencers like Virgin CEO Richard Branson and ex-FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski for exclusive articles that cater specifically to the network’s business-savvy audience. As Jennifer Van Grove noted for CNET, “content is quickly becoming the new connection on LinkedIn.”

Link to the rest at Paid Content