Stephen Leather at Harrowgate

[fjtorres]

http://publishingebooks.blogspot.com...-thickens.html

It seems some people do like their books to be expensive.
(Or maybe the audience was full of ringers? )

Interesting. Odd publishing math and all.

I’m just back from the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival – three days of talks and events involving some of the country’s top crime-writing talent. Why was I there? Truth be told, I’m writing a short story called Inspector Zhang Goes To Harrogate where my Singaporean detective solves a locked room mystery in the Old Swan Hotel where the festival is based.


While I was there I appeared on a panel called 'Wanted for Murder: the e-book', where a group of us discussed ePublishing, a subject I do know a fair bit about.


It turned out to be quite a surreal experience. Fun, but surreal. Running the festival this year was Mark “Scaredy Cat” Billingham, one of the best writers in the business as well as a top stand-up comic. Mark came over to me in the green room before the panel and had a quiet word with me. Basically there is a danger of the panels turning into a luvvie love-fest and he wanted me to take a view and be a tad confrontational if at all possible. He wanted the panel to be the talking point of the festival. I’m never one to duck a good argument so I said I’d go for it.

Brave man.

The most surreal moment for me came when the President of the Publisher’s Association, Ursula Mackenzie, was trying to defend their policy of maintaining eBooks at a high price. Basically she was saying that books needed to maintain their value and that 20p and free eBooks needed to be stamped on.


I understand her view, but I’m a big fan of selling eBooks at lower prices providing you can get high volumes of sales. And I’m happy enough to give books away if it helps to bring in new readers.


So I explain to Ursula – and the audience – that I can write a short story in five days and am happy to sell that at the Amazon minimum of 72p which generates me an income of 25p. At this point Ursula – who runs one of the biggest publishing houses in the UK – asked me “so you’re happy to work for 5p a day, are you?” The audience laughed and clapped, and I was frankly gob-smacked. I couldn’t understand why they hadn’t seen the fallacy in her comment. She was assuming that I spent five days writing a story and then sold one copy. She can’t possibly have believed that, could she? Of course I don’t work for 5p a day. My Inspector Zhang stories sell about five or six hundred copies a month. Each. So one story sells 6,000 copies a year. So over the next ten years it could sell 60,000 copies which means I’d get £15,000, which is £3,000 a day and that’s probably more than she gets paid.


It was all very strange and I wasn’t sure what to do. Part of me wanted to go all Jeremy Kyle and leap across the stage and shake some sense into her but I just smiled and listened to the audience applaud her. I did find it all very worrying.

I think he means he can take in 3000 pounds daily from his entire catalog.

Sounds like Mr Billingham owes him a keg of beer for that roasting.

Via: http://www.thepassivevoice.com/
Good site to check out.

[tubemonkey]

At this point Ursula – who runs one of the biggest publishing houses in the UK – asked me “so you’re happy to work for 5p a day, are you?” The audience laughed and clapped, and I was frankly gob-smacked. I couldn’t understand why they hadn’t seen the fallacy in her comment.

Ahhh, ignorance is bliss. One day she'll wake and see that the world has passed her by.