Best Selling Authors and Self Publishing

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by dickloraine

But keeping rights is not publishing. If he wants a movie, he has to find a movie publisher (or more likely a studio asks him for the rights). Maybe there is somewhere an author who actually produced a movie himself, but I don't know of one. Same regarding audio-books. The author could produce it himself or let his publisher handle it. One is self-publishing, the other isn't.

I can't think of their names off the top of my head but I know at least 3 authors that are doing their own audio books.
I also know several hybrids.
So it is not an either/or. It can be either published by someone other than yourself, some are both with publishers and have some self published (either with or without paid help), some self publish but hire editors and others and then there are the "I did this all by myself" authors.
There are also ghostwriters and co-authors.
Also the kindle world writers. Not sure where they fit in.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

I understood your point and that number has been thrown around for 2 years. I am pretty sure the BPH know what percentage of e and p books they sell on the fiction side. I would also bet it would be about 50/50. Just a guess on my part there.

But to me just throwing out that 65% figure without context makes very little sense. I know science textbooks and needlepoint books do not translate well to ebooks.

That would be like me saying 10% of my facebook friends are good authors. The next logical question would be how many of your Facebook friends are authors.

Absolutely agreed. I would like to see some realistic figures. But what does seem to be apparent is that there is a significant segment of the market which only traditionally published authors are reaching.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

A point to consider is that Indies these days *can* get into print and B&M so the only strang/lehold the BPHs hold is on the payola front tables.

Indie authors, taken as being authors signed with smaller traditional publishers, have as I understand it always had some access to B&M stores through their indie publishers who provide the traditional services including arranging and paying for printing and distribution. There are also many stories about self-published authors, even in the days of the so-called "vanity" press, going door to door convincing individual stores to stock their books. I have no doubt at least some Indies, except of course Amazon imprints, can find places in B & M stores. Self-published authors, whilst not subject to a boycott, simply do not have the logistics in place or the resources to get their books into any meaningful number of these stores.

I don't like the conclusion any more than I like the Big 5, but it seems to me that to have a serious presence in those stores you essentially need the Big 5. If I am wrong on this I will be delighted.

[dickloraine]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Michael Crichton use to produce and direct the movie versions of his books. It's pretty unusual, I will admit.

I can think of a few authors who produce their own audio books.

If you really want to be technical, Pottermore is the publisher of the Harry Potter ebooks, Pottermore is a limited liability privately held company that started as a partnership between Rowlings and Sony. So Rowling has a publisher for the ebooks, she just happens to be the owner of that particular company. I'm pretty sure that she had people who did all the work of publishing the ebooks. That's quite likely the case in most big name/big money authors who "self publish". They set up a limited corporation and hire people to do the work.

If we exclude authors who own the publisher or who don't do everything by themself, then of course we will never find a big author who self-publishes in this strict sense. As long as print is important and big authors get good conditions for their contracts, hybrid is all we will see.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by darryl

Indie authors, taken as being authors signed with smaller traditional publishers, have as I understand it always had some access to B&M stores through their indie publishers who provide the traditional services including arranging and paying for printing and distribution. There are also many stories about self-published authors, even in the days of the so-called "vanity" press, going door to door convincing individual stores to stock their books. I have no doubt at least some Indies, except of course Amazon imprints, can find places in B & M stores. Self-published authors, whilst not subject to a boycott, simply do not have the logistics in place or the resources to get their books into any meaningful number of these stores.

I don't like the conclusion any more than I like the Big 5, but it seems to me that to have a serious presence in those stores you essentially need the Big 5. If I am wrong on this I will be delighted.

Well, your definition of Indie isn't quite the one we are using here.

Indie these days is the general term for all the variants of self-publishing from the "lone wolf" author to the "single author publishing house" and hybrid authors.
If it's tradpub it's tradpub and size doesn't matter; the author is still surrendering control. And income. For life of copyright.

With that in mind, yes, access to B&M for indies is recent, dating to changes Ingram and B&T made to their catalogs in 2014 to stop listing POD titles differently from tradpub titles. It levelled the playing field to the extent that a bookstore ordering a selfpubbed title from an author can't tell if it comes from a small tradpub or an Indie. Which means that, as I said above, the only remaining difference is the paid front table presence.

Note this piece on tradpubbed mythical marketing prowess:

http://451words.tumblr.com/post/8919...ney-never-wins

Mythical because tradpub doesn't do proactive marketting worth beans. What they are is good reactive promoters of books and authors that succeed in striking a chord with buyers. Once the book succeeds on its own, they flog the heck out of it and put money into it. Otherwise it is sink or swim.

As the entrepreneurial types say: the first million is the hardest.
Tradpub is good for the second and tenth million. The first? Not so much.
And the first 50k sales?
Not. A. Clue.

Patterson became Patterson doing his own promotion because the publisher didn't want to spend on his book. Grisham couldn't even find a publisher until he had selfpublished and sold thousands of books out of the trunk of his car. They made themselves.
Tradpub support came later.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by darryl

Mike Shatzkin recently posted ...., "No major author of recurring bestsellers has stepped up to take charge of his or her own output."
...

Why should they? They are the big dogs, they're making the money, they want to write not publish.

/thread

[darryl]

@fjtorres. Interesting. But is this access more theoritical than actual in the case of a self-published author, given the economic barriers. Book stores need to be convinced to stock your book. Printing and distribution needs to be arranged and paid for. Perhaps some promotion. Such costs come out of someone's pocket. If not the authors, an investor who will want their pound of flesh. Like, for instance, a publisher.

I agree totally with your comments on the promotional prowess of big publishers.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by darryl

@fjtorres. Interesting. But is this access more theoritical than actual in the case of a self-published author, given the economic barriers.

Book stores need to be convinced to stock your book. Printing and distribution needs to be arranged and paid for. Perhaps some promotion. Such costs come out of someone's pocket. If not the authors, an investor who will want their pound of flesh. Like, for instance, a publisher.

I agree totally with your comments on the promotional prowess of big publishers.

It is very real and not just theoretical.
The thing most tradpub apologists would like people to forget is that selfpub authors aren't a bunch of rejects and novices but are often longtime veteran midlisters with a following who were either dropped by their publisher or who chose to walk away. There are many who made their name as indies but there are also many who came to success by recovering the rights to mismanaged titles the tradpubs saw no profit in.
One of the reasons romance went Indie so fast is that Harlequin readily reverted older titles without a thought; they had plenty of new ones in the pipeline and no shortage of dreamers begging to get into it in the worst way.

So a lot of Indies are known quantities to bookstores.
People like Lawrence Block, Terry Goodkind, Kevin Anderson, and Kate Wilhelm have no trouble getting their books into stores. Plenty of others with track records under a variety of pen names.
You won't find Patterson or King in those groups but there are a lot of mid-list genre writers known to the bookstore buyers. It is not unheard of for Indies to get into B&N stores.

And no, it is not terribly expensive at all to get books printed and distributed.

Again, Ingram and Baker & Taylor handle POD (a good starting point for writers new to selfpub, investment is near-zero) just fine; the books get listed side by side with those of tradpub. More successful authors can contract with small presses or big Chinese presses for print runs in the hundreds or thousands to be delivered and warehoused at the distributor. Again, the costs are in the low thousands (figure around $2-5 per copy). A typical newcomer can start out digital only, add POD after some success, and add audio and batch printed pbooks once they hit six figures a year. And there are thousands of authors in that general territory. A lot more in the high 5-figures.

The infrastructure for Indie publishing by now goes far beyond Amazon and ebooks; once the money got big enough most of the distribution system opened up. With "big enough" happening in 2013.

The main trick to it is the Indies savvy enough to get into pbookland do it by setting themselves up as actual publishing companies. Kinda like Indie musicians set up their own labels and Indie game developers set up their own studios. They msh be single person businesses but they *are* businesses, incorporated, paying taxes, contracting freelancers, often dealing with international publishers for foreign print rights.

Indie publishing may be a shadow industry still to many but it is already selling well over a billion dollars a year in ebooks, pbooks, and audio books.Some have been optioned for movies and TV. )(Heard of WAYWARD PINES on FOX?)

Turns out you can have a successful (and profitable) career as an author without front table payola or being a celebrity.

[darryl]

@fjtorres. Thank you for clearing up my misconceptions in this area. Things for the Big 5 are even worse than I thought. And their tactics still seem to consist of trying to put off the inevitable as long as possible. Where is their vision for the future?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by darryl

Where is their vision for the future?

So far?

Raise ebook prices.
Reduce royalties.
Blame Amazon.
Scream for government action.
Hope Patterson, King, et al, live to 200.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

So far?

Raise ebook prices.
Reduce royalties.
Blame Amazon.
Scream for government action.
Hope Patterson, King, et al, live to 200.

You forgot conspire, reduce author royalties/payouts/rights....increase contract length, territories...add additional author costs for marketing etc. require authors to do their own marketing and travel and promotion....

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by darryl

@fjtorres. Thank you for clearing up my misconceptions in this area. Things for the Big 5 are even worse than I thought. And their tactics still seem to consist of trying to put off the inevitable as long as possible. Where is their vision for the future?

You do understand that there are two sides of the story. As with all things, one can find the one or two exceptions that prove the rule. Quite a few authors have been heavily publicized by the big publishers, including most best selling authors. Those best selling authors don't just magically appear on Oprah, or any of the other multitude of tv and radio shows. Sure there are those who automatically dismiss the idea that anything good can come from the big publishers and sing high praises to Amazon's "independent" program. But the flip side is if Amazon's program is so wonderful and the big publishers so bad, why do so many authors who start out as indies, turn to the big name publishers and why do so few big name authors go purely indie? These facts are pretty hard to explain if you buy the narrative being pushed. They are pretty easy to explain if you accept the idea that publishing houses do provide value to authors.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Why should they? They are the big dogs, they're making the money, they want to write not publish.

I guess the idea is that they are also making a lot of money for the big five, and could retain some of that if they owned their own publisher.

The original United Artists AFAIK wanted not just more money, but also more artistic control. If the big five pretty much let their name authors produce whatever books they want to, without unwanted editing, then there is less reason for incorporation of a literary United Artists. Less reason, but still some reason.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

You do understand that there are two sides of the story. As with all things, one can find the one or two exceptions that prove the rule. Quite a few authors have been heavily publicized by the big publishers, including most best selling authors. Those best selling authors don't just magically appear on Oprah, or any of the other multitude of tv and radio shows. Sure there are those who automatically dismiss the idea that anything good can come from the big publishers and sing high praises to Amazon's "independent" program. But the flip side is if Amazon's program is so wonderful and the big publishers so bad, why do so many authors who start out as indies, turn to the big name publishers and why do so few big name authors go purely indie? These facts are pretty hard to explain if you buy the narrative being pushed. They are pretty easy to explain if you accept the idea that publishing houses do provide value to authors.

Here is another question or two for you.
How many authors do the Big 5 publish every year?
How many of those authors are heavily marketed?

Hint: they only promote those that are already lining the publisher's pocket.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Here is another question or two for you.
How many authors do the Big 5 publish every year?
How many of those authors are heavily marketed?

Hint: they only promote those that are already lining the publisher's pocket.

Obviously, it varies quite a bit. Most authors have book signing tours. That's marketing. Most publishers use to pay for the positioning of books in the book store. That's marketing. Many publishers line up interviews on radio talk shows. That's marketing. The bigger authors get the bigger stage, spots on afternoon TV talk shows and the like. I ran across an interview of David McCullough right after the Wright Brothers biography came out on the Stuff You Missed in History Class podcast, that's marketing (effective too, I bought the book because of it). I've seen a number of political authors on various Sunday morning political shows. That's marketing.

Most get some form of marketing, though obviously, how much marketing and what form can vary quite a bit. Tor puts out a weekly email newsletter to anyone who signs up. So all their authors get marketing. Some new authors who haven't sold a book get pretty big marketing if the publisher thinks that it's a potential best seller. I remember when the first Wheel of Time book came out to a pretty big marketing campaign.

Of course, a secondary point is how does an indie get even the lowest level of marketing, i.e. book signing tour and book placement? Answer, for the most part, they can't. They just don't have the contacts to put it together, nor do they have the up front cash to pay for book placement. Book placement (and good cover art) can make a big difference in book sales.