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Old 08-23-2008, 01:14 PM   #61
SandySchwab
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SandySchwab, I hadn't heard that editors go through the slush pile in their free time. However, I'm guessing they're salary? So there's sort of a fuzzy line dividing free time from work time in their case anyway...
I don't think the line is all that fuzzy, Neko. It's just that during their work time they have to work on the manuscripts they have already acquired, go to meetings, write cover blurbs and what not. Parts of the gigantonormous slush pile is probably also read by editorial assistants.


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Software writing was far more lucrative: a program I wrote further back put me through university with plenty left over.
Wow. That's pretty cool.

All in all, I got about $ 2000 for my debut novel -- and all of it went back into promotion. When I accepted the offer, I knew the advance and the royalties were below what is considered standard, but I decided it was a good chance to break into the market. Besides, I figured that not every editor would take the risk to acquire a newbie writer who lives on the other side of the planet and isn't even a native speaker.
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Old 08-24-2008, 01:51 PM   #62
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Couple of points. It's all driven by market economics, in one way or another. I would not still be writing novels (probably) if my wife didn't have a steady job. I've got 16 SF novels published, and I'm not unusual in being in that economic situation. The push in recent years to emphasize bestsellers over midlist has certainly hurt many midlist writers, and driven a lot of them out of the market altogether.

In the U.S., most writers get a royalty of 6-8% cover price on paperbacks, and 10-15% on hardcovers. Most (or at least many) books never earn out their advances to pay additional royalties. (That doesn't mean the publisher isn't making a profit, but they might not be making a large profit.) For most midlist writers, sales have gradually been declining over the last decade. When I was a new writer, it wasn't unusual for a new writer to sell 50,000 copies in pb. Now, short of a breakout, it's more like 10-20,000. It sucks. We all hate it, and are all searching for other business models.

I don't know that ebooks will change the equation very much. (I hope it will, but I'm not counting on it.) You still need editors, art design, distribution, marketing, etc. Everyone thought print-on-demand would solve the problem of books going out of print. Now there are a million PoD titles that no one will never see on a bookstore shelf, though maybe they'll see them listed online. Some of my older books are available in both ebook and PoD formats, and they sell in the single digits in a quarter.

Another factor is the easy availability of used books online. If someone can buy my new book for regular price or a used copy for $.01 plus shipping, which will they do? Granted, that also helps writers pick up new readers, which is all to the good. Just like free ebooks. But it's helped kill the reprint market for books that have gone o.p.

All of which goes to say that the phrase "earn a living as a writer" is an oxymoron for way too many good writers.
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Old 08-24-2008, 02:09 PM   #63
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re: 'All of which goes to say that the phrase "earn a living as a writer" is an oxymoron for way too many good writers.'

That makes me so sad. I read all the time. My family teases me about it, if I walk into a room and do NOT haved a book in my hand, they demand to know if I am ok.

I'd be so lost without new books to read. My favorite day of the week is Tuesday because that's when the new releases come out. 8-)

It makes me so very sad to think that the authors who produce this precious stuff cannot even make enough money to live on.
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Old 08-24-2008, 08:45 PM   #64
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Yah, me too.
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Old 08-25-2008, 07:12 AM   #65
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Another factor is the easy availability of used books online. If someone can buy my new book for regular price or a used copy for $.01 plus shipping, which will they do? Granted, that also helps writers pick up new readers, which is all to the good. Just like free ebooks. But it's helped kill the reprint market for books that have gone o.p.

All of which goes to say that the phrase "earn a living as a writer" is an oxymoron for way too many good writers.
This is interesting, as there are obviously a number of factors to consider when eveluating new models that could work. So internet searches make used books a revenue-reducer, by reducing the demand for reprints. I hadn't considered this one, but it sounds plausible.

How could the sales impact of PoD and ebooks be improved? Do well-linked websites with book-oriented search engines such as Amazon make up for the lack of hands-on browsing? This may just be shifting the balance betweeen cover art / shelf space and Web content of the seller. Maybe publishers could somehow help enhance Web content at selling websites by supplying links to search engines and databases. This would then come under the same heading as marketing, cover art, and distribution.

Perhaps large catalogs of available books on demand (ebook or PoD) will also reduce impulse purchases of books that are never actually read. I know I used to go into aocal bookstore with a huge (> 10 aisles) of SF and select books based on author, title, cover, thickness, and a quick flip-through (in that order). I'd buy a number of books that never got read, and early parts of series to be read when the last part came out,as pbooks can also tend to be "volatile" on the shelf and even big bookstores rarely have all parts of a series or trilogy at one time.

Let's suppose there is a new book publishing model where authors (and editors/publishers) get paid by the actual read. A short browse is free, a partial read ("so bad I couldn't finish the book") pays partial, and a full read pays a fixed amount, say $1.00 to the author for a new book and less for an older book. This would solve out-of-print and used-book issues, but might reduce revenues that would have been gotten from purchased but unread books. However it might get some additional revenue from re-reads. If I really like a book, I'll read it at least twice over the course of a few years.
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Old 08-25-2008, 09:26 AM   #66
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Let's suppose there is a new book publishing model where authors (and editors/publishers) get paid by the actual read. A short browse is free, a partial read ("so bad I couldn't finish the book") pays partial, and a full read pays a fixed amount, say $1.00 to the author for a new book and less for an older book.
The only part of this I would not agree with would be the small payment for a partial read. Not that I have a problem awarding money to authors, but a plan like that would be rife with "authors" flooding the markets with crap, in the hope of making the partial-pay minimum on enough books to make a good living. A pay-per-sale system is better, and if so desired, an author could put up a website with a "satisfaction donation" option on it... if you really, really liked my book, feel free to donate...
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Old 08-25-2008, 12:27 PM   #67
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Couple of points. It's all driven by market economics, in one way or another. I would not still be writing novels (probably) if my wife didn't have a steady job. I've got 16 SF novels published, and I'm not unusual in being in that economic situation. The push in recent years to emphasize bestsellers over midlist has certainly hurt many midlist writers, and driven a lot of them out of the market altogether.

In the U.S., most writers get a royalty of 6-8% cover price on paperbacks, and 10-15% on hardcovers. Most (or at least many) books never earn out their advances to pay additional royalties. (That doesn't mean the publisher isn't making a profit, but they might not be making a large profit.) For most midlist writers, sales have gradually been declining over the last decade. When I was a new writer, it wasn't unusual for a new writer to sell 50,000 copies in pb. Now, short of a breakout, it's more like 10-20,000. It sucks. We all hate it, and are all searching for other business models.

I don't know that ebooks will change the equation very much. (I hope it will, but I'm not counting on it.) You still need editors, art design, distribution, marketing, etc. Everyone thought print-on-demand would solve the problem of books going out of print. Now there are a million PoD titles that no one will never see on a bookstore shelf, though maybe they'll see them listed online. Some of my older books are available in both ebook and PoD formats, and they sell in the single digits in a quarter.

Another factor is the easy availability of used books online. If someone can buy my new book for regular price or a used copy for $.01 plus shipping, which will they do? Granted, that also helps writers pick up new readers, which is all to the good. Just like free ebooks. But it's helped kill the reprint market for books that have gone o.p.

All of which goes to say that the phrase "earn a living as a writer" is an oxymoron for way too many good writers.

I'd like to expand on Mr. Carver's comments about the used book market. The one thing that hasn't expanded is time. Particularly free time. Yet the choices on how to spend that free time have continued to expand. So not only are Out Of Print books now much more readily available than they used to be (with the general access of the interenet), leading to greater competiton with new books, but new forms of entertainment continue to encroach upon existing forms of entertainment. And even they are subject to the "used book" competition problem.

For example, TV has always been thought of as a "disposable" entertainment form. But with DVD's today, you can buy many old TV shows relatively cheaply. So today's new shows aren't just competing with each other (and other entertainment forms), but their own "O.O.P." shows as well. And it shows on the ratings.

You see the same thing in movies and music. It's not just "piracy" that hurting sales, it's all the existing, durable product that already exists that squeezes sales. And as sales get squeezed, so do revenues to the creative content porducers.
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Old 08-25-2008, 12:33 PM   #68
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All of which goes to say that the phrase "earn a living as a writer" is an oxymoron for way too many good writers.
I think this phrase cuts to the heart of the matter. What is a "good writer"?

Consider the explosion in publishing in the last several years - of course as Mr. Carver pointed out most of those titles are pod's that may sell a hundred titles and make the author happy - I think that 75 sells is the new break-even point in the Amazon POD's world as I saw in an article documenting the price structure

To me the publishing crisis as it is - I do not believe that there is that much of a crisis overall - is due to uncontrolled supply, whether by easy 4$ used books - .01 p +3.99 sh - or tons of new titles, or tons of POD's...

So how do you control the supply? Many people write for other reasons than profit - our society being wealthy, it affords to support that - and now they can put out their work cheaply for them if POD, sometimes even relatively free- there are still server costs and so on - if only e

Think of us here and in so many forums/blogs around the world - we write for free too, because we enjoy this or that subject and while from blog/forum posts to novel writing there is a large gap, it's much smaller than not writing for fun - which for example I never did before the Web - to writing.

So overall, I think that while more and more material will be available, the revenue pie will split much wider and much more unequally without increasing noticeably.
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Old 08-25-2008, 07:40 PM   #69
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To expand a bit on what my friend Jeff Carver said above, many major US publishers pay the following royalty rates, or similar amounts:

Hardcovers: 10% on the first 5,000 copies; 12.5% on the next 5,000 copies; 15% thereafter

Trade (large-format paperbacks): 7.5%

Mass-Market paperbacks (beginning authors): 6% on the first 100,000 copies; 8% thereafter

Mass-Market paperbacks (established authors): 8% on the first 100,000 copies; 10% thereafter

Note that these royalties are on the list (cover) price, not on what the bookseller actually charges. If Amazon sells a $25 hardcover at $16, the author still normally gets $2.50 (although there are conditions when the discount to the bookseller has been so deep that special lower royalty rates kick in).

Most ebook retailers, on the other hand, pay royalties as a percentage of the actual price paid by the consumer, not the suggested list price (so although the percentages are higher, the actual royalty amount isn't as good as it appears at first blush).

First novels from major publisher normally have advances against royalties of $2,500 to $7,500, although there are exceptions; advances go up for later novels, if sales warrant.

A great many genre-fiction writers stall for their whole careers at around $20,000, though; few authors are getting $50,000 or more per book in genre fiction.

Note that the advances above for the principal licensed territory (in many cases, just the US and Canada). Authors may get separate advances for the UK (often bundled with Australia), and for foreign (translation rights). Some authors, however, sell World English Rights to the same publisher (Tor, the largest SF publisher in English, tries to buy those rights, for instance).

SF author Mike Resnick did a rough-and-ready back-of-an-enveloped calculation some years ago that suggested that of the 1,2000 or so active members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, maybe 100 make $100,000 or more per year. Change that figure to $500,000 or more, and it's probably 25 members.

(But even $100,000 isn't as good as it sounds -- you have to buy your own office equipment, pay your own health and other insurances, get no pension, etc. etc.; a standard yard stick is that you need to make twice as much if you're self-employed as you do as an employee to enjoy the same standard of living and level of security.)

All best wishes.

Rob

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Old 08-25-2008, 09:18 PM   #70
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Just a quick interjection...

Best...thread...ever!

The knowledge and experience that has volunteered itself here is both an eye-opener and an education. As someone who also considers this from a "One day I'd like to write" perspective (yeah, me and forty million others, I know), I'd like to thank you. Thank-you.

Interjection over; onto on-topicality again...

Cheers,
Marc
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Old 08-26-2008, 09:16 AM   #71
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I think some people put too much faith in publishers. Many Many years ago in the days of our great grandfathers, anyone could write a book, be it fiction or not and organise thier own printing and distribution and retailing. If the book was any good people probably wrote to the author and asked for more or new material. If on the other case the material was bad, well the author either tried again from scratch and hoped people would give them a second chance at it. Of course if they failed again they had to get a real job. What this all meant of course is the good authors did ok for themselves. Nowdays we all seem to have this idea that we need publishers to tell us what is good or not as we obviously cant think for ourselves. Yes, if we want to have a worldwide print distibution in the hope we can be millionares overnight, look after copyright, pay royalties, you need a publisher to set it all up.
Now of course there is the world wide web and ebook readers. The advantages are immense. The idea of the Writers forming thier own Co-op while still fraught with dangers is a good one. If they are any good they will charge a price for their work that they think is fair. If they are a new writer I would guess the price would be set at a rate to encourage people to examine the work. Of course they would need to get thier own copy editors. I would imagine that some of the authors would have to learn to do it themselves or use friends or family to do it for them as in the past.
I for one would love to see these authors that feel that they have some good work that has been rejected submit their stuff and let the public decide.
A central co-op type of site would be perfect as they could get exposure and of course the better authors would probably get their one or two thousand sales. I mean we have paypal nowadays.
I hope I see something like this one day.

Cheers
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Old 08-26-2008, 09:19 AM   #72
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I think some people put too much faith in publishers. Many Many years ago in the days of our great grandfathers, anyone could write a book, be it fiction or not and organise thier own printing and distribution and retailing. If the book was any good people probably wrote to the author and asked for more or new material. If on the other case the material was bad, well the author either tried again from scratch and hoped people would give them a second chance at it. Of course if they failed again they had to get a real job. What this all meant of course is the good authors did ok for themselves. Nowdays we all seem to have this idea that we need publishers to tell us what is good or not as we obviously cant think for ourselves. Yes, if we want to have a worldwide print distibution in the hope we can be millionares overnight, look after copyright, pay royalties, you need a publisher to set it all up.
Now of course there is the world wide web and ebook readers. The advantages are immense. The idea of the Writers forming thier own Co-op while still fraught with dangers is a good one. If they are any good they will charge a price for their work that they think is fair. If they are a new writer I would guess the price would be set at a rate to encourage people to examine the work. Of course they would need to get thier own copy editors. I would imagine that some of the authors would have to learn to do it themselves or use friends or family to do it for them as in the past.
I for one would love to see these authors that feel that they have some good work that has been rejected submit their stuff and let the public decide.
A central co-op type of site would be perfect as they could get exposure and of course the better authors would probably get their one or two thousand sales. I mean we have paypal nowadays.
I hope I see something like this one day.

Cheers
Sort of like Steve Jordan's business plan, with access to others.
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Old 08-26-2008, 10:51 AM   #73
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Nowdays we all seem to have this idea that we need publishers to tell us what is good or not as we obviously cant think for ourselves.
I can think for myself just fine, thanks. But there are only so many hours in a week, I work full-time, attend graduate classes, and my husband and kids would like to see me occasionally, and if I want to get any good reading done (i.e. I actually enjoy the experience), I'd have to sift through an awful lot of slush if I started just trying to read every book a self-proclaimed author posted to the web (free or not). Frankly, I don't have time. This is one of those cases where I'd rather pay someone to do something I don't have time to do... in this case, I'd pay a "finder's fee" to a professional editor with tastes relatively similar to mine to find books I'd probably like to read.

The publishing "gate" is probably too small right now, but that's partly because there's very little money to be made in publishing midlist books. Despite the fact that many of the costs would still be the same for ebooks as for pbooks, I think there are a lot of inefficiencies in the pbook system that could be eliminated and might rescue the midlist catalog, e.g. paper/printing/binding, shipping, "stripped" returns, etc. I don't happen to think that good editorial services are one of the processes that ought to be eliminated. Your mileage may vary, of course.
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Old 08-26-2008, 10:59 AM   #74
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Gandor,

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Many Many years ago in the days of our great grandfathers, anyone could write a book, be it fiction or not and organise thier own printing and distribution and retailing.
Of course, you could get something privately printed in the 19th century, but in these cases the print run would have been very, very low indeed. If you wanted to have some commercial success, you needed a publisher / write for a magazine even back then. At least in the UK, that is.

Quote:
Of course they would need to get thier own copy editors. I would imagine that some of the authors would have to learn to do it themselves or use friends or family to do it for them as in the past.
You need more than a copy editor who's supposed to spot grammatical and factual mistakes. You really need somebody who ruthlessly tells you what's wrong with your story. Family usually don't do that. And non-writer friends don't do it either because they don't want to hurt your feelings.
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Old 08-26-2008, 11:35 AM   #75
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....
I don't know that ebooks will change the equation very much. (I hope it will, but I'm not counting on it.) You still need editors, art design, distribution, marketing, etc. ....
As dsicussed book preparation can be done using many different models.

eBooks will lower your "barrier to entry" as I was thought in economics. The problem is we have a smaller numbers of big brands, well known authors. These get stocked in book stores and are prominently featured on Amazon. Thus you and other less known authors simply get no exposure. I never heard of you as I always went to my local bookstores and their SF shelves keep shrinking.

Now I am VERY keen on eBooks as long term I'll have access to much more content then in local Chapters store. However, just throwing a bunch of books onto a big pile offered by MobiPocket and other online stores still doesn't help me discover new authors. I use Amazon's ratings and user comments to find out what I should try, but ....

The real power of eBooks to provide a level playing field for *ALL* authors and give you a fair chance is unleashed when you have online communities that discuss, rate and recommend books *WIHTOUT* any commercial motivations. You will note that publishers have very strong commercial motivations so they don't qualify. You need a strong community of readers (this site is a beginning, but still needs to grow, to add more stuff) that can exchange ideas, recommend for/against books/authors, etc. Being open and not commercial, such communities would consider your books the same as any big selling author.

Say I am interested in cyber fiction. I may hear of few big stars in the genre from media, I may stumble upon one of his books in Chapters store, etc. I only get exposure to big starts of the genre.

Say we had a number of forums here, one for each genre. Now I can simply go to this forums and examine the recommendations. You can even assign multiple tags, like dark cyber, or techno cyber, or whatever. Using indexing engine I could quickly search huge library of recommendations and fine tune for my taste or mood. Again, so long as it is an open forum not controlled by commercial interests then all authors have the same treatment; as opposed to what publishers decide to promote, or media decides to write about.

In summary, the more obscure authors have a much better chance with eBooks to be noticed because the eBooks, WWW and other technologies have the *POTENTIAL* to promote and provide access to many more authors then any older system in the existence. Of course, whether we will exploit that potantial and realize it is another issue.
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