Samhain Publishing is winding down and will close

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Five books, ten bucks. Not bad.

Are the authors getting screwed over by this last minute sale?

Authors are getting paid. They will get less as the books are on sale but no one can say how long it will be before (or even if) those books will be back available to buy. I bought 14 books to complete series's.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by issybird

Jon, I think people get the concept of a loss leader, where you get to try a series for 99¢. What constitutes a reasonable price for later books in a series is, of course, the issue. As for high-priced new releases, that also make sense; it's classic price discrimination (a discrimination which isn't immoral). Some people will wasn't to read it NOW, price be hanged. The rest will wait on the price to drift down to the $5.99 level established for earlier books. But I think readers are mostly rational and are not pissed off either by loss leaders or by high-priced new releases.

Yes, I do agree that most do know what a loss leader is. But, I've read many posts with complaints about the price of the latest eBook in a series being rather expensive. So yes, a lot of people are bothered by high prices.

The problem is the prices don't exactly drift down these days. The hardcover comes out at say $25.99. The eBook comes out at $14.99. The pBook comes out at $12.99 and the eBook drops to $12.99 which is still too high. That's how things work these days when the publisher can get away with it.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That's how things work these days when the publisher can get away with it.

I honestly don't knew what getting away with it means. The publisher is trying to maximize revenues (there may be ancillary goals also, but that's the main one). Getting away with it means that people are buying at that price! So how can you say it's too high?

No one is owed a specific book at a specific price, no matter what other books in the series cost, what comparable books cost, or what the book itself used to cost.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by issybird

I honestly don't knew what getting away with it means. The publisher is trying to maximize revenues (there may be ancillary goals also, but that's the main one). Getting away with it means that people are buying at that price! So how can you say it's too high?

No one is owed a specific book at a specific price, no matter what other books in the series cost, what comparable books cost, or what the book itself used to cost.

Exactly.
The proper response to prices you don't like is to walk away.
If enough people do it then the publisher will notice.
If enough people don't walk away and they keep on buying the books at those prices then, yes, "they'll get away with it".

The whole point of being in business is to make as much money as possible; some (Amazon, many Indies) believe in maximizing total revenue while others (like the BPHs) believe in maximizing per unit revenue.

It is up to consumers to vote their wallets in support of the strategy they favor.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

I'd agree that Amazon is no longer courting indie writers. They offer advertising for us, but not the most lucrative ads.
...
.

Discover ability is the great bugaboo for most quality authors these days. (for the not so quality author, their bugaboo is that they can't write well) Back in the day, discover ability was pretty easy. Most major bookstores had a new books shelf in each section, so just go to the shelf, and scan for books that looked interesting.

There were also publishers who specialized in genres, so just find a publisher with similar taste as yourself. I was fortunate in that I am a SF&F fan and Jim Baen started his publishing company right about the time I got out of college. That's how I found a lot of my favorite authors.

Part of Baen's success during the mid 90's is that he set up a website with forums and had authors who were willing to invest time and effort interacting with the readers on those forums. Authors would post snippets of up coming books and he had enough top authors that he had at least one major release every two to three months.

Of course, what happened was the usual. Over time, it was no longer new and various authors dropped out of posting. The forums started to became somewhat cliquish and eventually Baen died. While I do still read some Baen authors, the new publisher doesn't have the same taste and eye for talent that Baen had.

So far, I haven't seen anyone else capture the magic that Baen had during the late 90's and early 2000's in that regard. Tor has a pretty decent news letter that comes out on a regular basis, so it's easy to see what new stuff is coming out, but the other part of the formula is stuff that I'm interested in, and there are only a couple of Tor authors that I like.

I really expected discover ability to be much further along by this point. I figured that people would have web sites and news letters and the ebook stores would have tools that made it easy for me to find what I wanted to read. I expected like authors to start to band together in communities, kind of like the old Baen's Bar. I think I missed the boat on two points.

First, the amount of work involved and the ability to monetize the effort. Sites like authoralert do a pretty good job of letting me know when new books are coming out by favored authors. But they rather obviously are having money problems and they don't do a good job with ebook only releases. It's a lot of work and not much money. For it to be effective, it has to be up to date and have new content every day.

The second is that I expected there would be a lot more competition among ebook stores. At one time, we had four major corporations in the mix (Amazon, Apple, Sony and B&N) plus a lot of small companies. I figured you would end with at least two major competitors from that mix. The publishers tried to encourage that competition much like the music industry did, but Amazon with the help of the US government managed to stop the effort while both Sony and B&N showed themselves inept. So Amazon, having achieve an overwhelming share of the market and having set up some pretty big barriers for entry into the market, has little motivation to innovate with regards to their ebook store. It hasn't changed much from a function point of view since 2010 and their recommendations seems more oriented towards what they want to market rather than what I want to read.

I do think that eventually, someone will enter the fray, if only from a different angle. Apple's iTune didn't lose market share to another iTune's like store, but rather to music streaming companies. To a certain extent, companies like Pandora, Spotify and now Apple Music, solve the discover ability issue in various ways. Apple has currated playlists (some pretty good), while pandora uses internal algorithms plus the thumbs to fine tune the playlist. I suspect that something similar will happen with ebooks. I'm not sure what it will be, but there is enough money in ebooks to attract some attempts.

[BearMountainBooks]

It hasn't changed much from a function point of view since 2010 and their recommendations seems more oriented towards what they want to market rather than what I want to read.

Some insightful points and I quoted my favorite. Yes, Amazon's rec's are marketing tools and most are paid for indirectly or directly via the rules they choose when showing books.

I was on Baen's bar!!! I think it is still around in some form or another, but yes, things did change after Jim died. How could they not? He was one of a kind. Toni does a good job and has a lot of the old timers helping her, but one of the issues for me is that they can't afford to publish much "new blood." There was a Baen post about it years ago (about the time I left the forum). Basically they generate enough revenue to publish x books per year and because of long-running series, most of that money goes to established authors. Of course, some of us outgrew those series...or the authors morphed them over the years into something not the original...or the authors moved on to different things because we can't all write 44 books in a series!!

Anyway at the time, Toni mentioned that there was generally only room for one, possibly two new authors and that didn't happen every year. (Much depended on submissions and schedules for other authors, etc). What I saw was that one and sometimes none was more common. At that time, Baen's bar had pushed Under Witch Moon up to her desk for "give this a look." I was soooo excited...until I read that post and began to realize that there were MANY of us on that desk waiting to be read and possibly win the lottery and be chosen. I left Under Witch Moon on that desk for 4 years before I pulled it. I doubt it was ever even read just due to lack of time/monies to select and publish any of them. I checked back on the forum now and then and I saw one poor guy who had had three manuscripts on her desk -- none had been read, but she said she had just received the fourth (my numbers may be off--it might have been two and the third--memory is a bit hazy on the exact number.)

All publishers have a pretty set number of books they intend to publish during a given year. They allocate monies for various genres. A recent example is Carina Press put out a call for submissions for "Books with thieves as a main character." In the past they've asked for urban fantasy with shifters at the main and so on. They decide on a "hot category" based on sales (or the phasing of the moon?) and they go after it for a while. (They have more than one category at a time. I noticed the Thief one in particular because I read that type of fiction--ie Patricia Briggs When Demons Walk -- a mix of thief, adventure, romance and fantasy. )

I think Baen will continue to morph. We all have to do that to answer what readers like. Since their model worked in the past, they've tried to stick to it, but that won't last forever. And remember, we change as readers too. Sometimes the old stuff we used to love doesn't have the same magic as we age...

At this time there is probably the most growth opportunity with audio books for those authors who can afford to create them. It's not as crowded a marketplace (but is almost completely controlled by Amazon and they do not share the revenue as generously as they do with ebooks because there is little to no competition) but it is expensive to join!

[pwalker8]

With audiobooks, the reader is as important as the writer. One of my favorite books of all time (Brian Daily's Coramonde series) was ruined as an audiobook for me because I found the reader's "female" voice so annoying. I suppose I could have lived with it if I really liked his male voice, but I didn't. I don't mind voice talent that reads without a separate voice for each character, though I think that a good voice actor is best, but either way you live and die with the reader, regardless of how good the original work is. (just my two cents)

I agree that audiobooks is a huge growth market, at least based on what I read authors who are willing to discuss where their money comes from. I think that the "but it ought to be free or at the most $1" mindset hasn't made it to the audiobook market. Plus, there is enough upfront cost that it keeps out the scammers, which makes books more discover able (though I will say that it's getting worse).

[BearMountainBooks]

From blog sales there is a broad range of price acceptance for audio up to about 25 dollars. Obviously more sell when Amazon marks audio down to 1.99 or 2.99, etc (they control prices for indie audio unlike with books where the author decides on price). They also only offer a flat 50 cents to 4 percent for associates for audio so there are not a lot of sites vetting audio or even mentioning it when it's available.

And yes, I've heard the voice actor makes a big difference. The good ones are a lot more expensive to hire, of course. Because it can be so difficult to earn back the expenses, there are not tons of indies rushing into that market. The Big 6 don't rush in either. Sales have to be doing very well with a book before they will consider an audio expense.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

From blog sales there is a broad range of price acceptance for audio up to about 25 dollars. Obviously more sell when Amazon marks audio down to 1.99 or 2.99, etc (they control prices for indie audio unlike with books where the author decides on price). They also only offer a flat 50 cents to 4 percent for associates for audio so there are not a lot of sites vetting audio or even mentioning it when it's available.

And yes, I've heard the voice actor makes a big difference. The good ones are a lot more expensive to hire, of course. Because it can be so difficult to earn back the expenses, there are not tons of indies rushing into that market. The Big 6 don't rush in either. Sales have to be doing very well with a book before they will consider an audio expense.

It varies. For many major books, the audiobook comes out at the same time as the hardback/ebook or comes out within a couple of weeks. For example, Gaiman's Norse Mythology, all three were released at the same time. John Scalzi's upcoming book, The Collapsing Empire, is also a same day release (Wil Wheaton again, should be good). Wen Spensor's latest came out in ebook/paper this week and will be released as an audiobook in a couple of weeks. It looks like that is going to be a Baen full cast audio type. Some of the others I suspect that its a combination of waiting for the voice talent to free up and waiting to see how the book does in paper/ebook. For example, the previously mentioned IIona Andrews (the reason I get ads for Romance novels, which isn't exactly my cup of tea) had a new sweeper novel come out late last year and the audio book is coming out next week.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

It varies. For many major books, the audiobook comes out at the same time as the hardback/ebook or comes out within a couple of weeks. For example, Gaiman's Norse Mythology, all three were released at the same time. John Scalzi's upcoming book, The Collapsing Empire, is also a same day release (Wil Wheaton again, should be good). Wen Spensor's latest came out in ebook/paper this week and will be released as an audiobook in a couple of weeks. It looks like that is going to be a Baen full cast audio type. Some of the others I suspect that its a combination of waiting for the voice talent to free up and waiting to see how the book does in paper/ebook. For example, the previously mentioned IIona Andrews (the reason I get ads for Romance novels, which isn't exactly my cup of tea) had a new sweeper novel come out late last year and the audio book is coming out next week.

Those are all established higher-earning authors, so the decision to do audio is probably made before the book even comes out. Although the Ilona Andrews Sweeper one is her self-published one I think--Innkeeper series? (She has some sort of company that helps with some of the overhead tasks) so she may handle the audio decisions/casting on her own. I don't read her blog enough to know...

Maybe you're just a romance reader waiting to happen????

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Those are all established higher-earning authors, so the decision to do audio is probably made before the book even comes out. Although the Ilona Andrews Sweeper one is her self-published one I think--Innkeeper series? (She has some sort of company that helps with some of the overhead tasks) so she may handle the audio decisions/casting on her own. I don't read her blog enough to know...

Maybe you're just a romance reader waiting to happen????

Not particularly. I like Iiona Andrews (husband and wife team) and Patricia Briggs. I also use to read Laurell Hamilton's Anna Blake until it became mostly romance and cookie cutter (first 5 books, I think). That's about as close to romance as I get. Well written stories are hard to find and there are a lot of cross genre authors out there. I've never been a purest.

Yes, I believe the Innkeeper series is self published. There are a number of hybrid authors like that (Larry Correia is another who has audiobooks for his self published works). I did go ahead and buy your Under the Witch Moon book, just to see what I think of your writing style. I buy a lot of books on whims, especially during the slow periods. That's how I discovered Andrews. I haven't tried the other Andrews series, the one described as mostly romance.

[BearMountainBooks]

You are very cool! I hope you like it! And Thank you.

I like Larry Correia, although his stuff gets a bit repetitive. Can't read one after the other. Have you tried David B Coe -- Father's Eyes is the first, I think. Good stuff. I may start the third book here pretty soon. I have one of his others from a different series, but haven't started it yet.

I think the first 3 or so in the Kate Daniels series have enough action and non-romance that they are pretty good for most readers. I timed out on the series after maybe book 4 because it went a little too off the rails logic-wise and the focus did become more and more romance/entanglement. The first book in that series was probably the best. Her/Their Edge series is pretty much romance and she/they have another one out that is romance.

I liked the Laurell Hamilton books for about 3. I kept hoping it was going to turn around and read a couple more...gah.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Not particularly. I like Iiona Andrews (husband and wife team) and Patricia Briggs. I also use to read Laurell Hamilton's Anna Blake until it became mostly romance and cookie cutter (first 5 books, I think). That's about as close to romance as I get. Well written stories are hard to find and there are a lot of cross genre authors out there. I've never been a purest.

Yes, I believe the Innkeeper series is self published. There are a number of hybrid authors like that (Larry Correia is another who has audiobooks for his self published works). I did go ahead and buy your Under the Witch Moon book, just to see what I think of your writing style. I buy a lot of books on whims, especially during the slow periods. That's how I discovered Andrews. I haven't tried the other Andrews series, the one described as mostly romance.

After book 5 on Laurell K Hamilton, I would not classify those as romance. Anita went WILD. And by I think I stopped at 15, there wasn't even much of a plot.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

After book 5 on Laurell K Hamilton, I would not classify those as romance. Anita went WILD. And by I think I stopped at 15, there wasn't even much of a plot.

I'm certainly not the best person to say if something is romance or not.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

You are very cool! I hope you like it! And Thank you.

I like Larry Correia, although his stuff gets a bit repetitive. Can't read one after the other. Have you tried David B Coe -- Father's Eyes is the first, I think. Good stuff. I may start the third book here pretty soon. I have one of his others from a different series, but haven't started it yet.

I think the first 3 or so in the Kate Daniels series have enough action and non-romance that they are pretty good for most readers. I timed out on the series after maybe book 4 because it went a little too off the rails logic-wise and the focus did become more and more romance/entanglement. The first book in that series was probably the best. Her/Their Edge series is pretty much romance and she/they have another one out that is romance.

I liked the Laurell Hamilton books for about 3. I kept hoping it was going to turn around and read a couple more...gah.

I have David Coe's book as part of a bundle, but never tried it. I'll give it a whirl.

I suspect that they realized that they went a bit to far with the Kate Daniels series, which is why they kind of reset it with a new story arc. I thought the last one was pretty decent.