By Bob Mayer
Bob Mayer has written more than 40 books, many of them under pseudonyms.
In January of 2011, just six months ago, I sold a total of 347 of my books for the Kindle. Last month I was able to sell 2,100 e-books in a single day and sales are increasing.
What changed?
My focus.
Two years ago I hit a milestone in my career as an author. After twenty years and over forty books, I’d written myself out of my last contract. It was a good news, bad news situation. The good news was for the first time in two decades I could really sit down and think about what I wanted to write. The bad news is, that in traditional publishing, an author without a contract is unemployed.
It was more than deciding what I wanted to write. Because publishing was changing, I had to consider how I wanted to publish. Hard to believe, but in January of 2010, e-books were only 3% of the market. Most people were predicting it might hit 5% by the end of the year.
However, I had a treasure chest of backlist to which I owned the rights — over 40 titles. Some of these titles had never been released in e-book format. Many had hit the print bestseller lists. I knew there was a market for them so with the help of Jen Talty I launched Who Dares Wins Publishing and we started loading my books, starting with my bestselling Atlantis series on various platforms, like Kindle. My primary focus, though, was still on NY and traditional publishing. I was working on a new thriller and a new historical fiction. My plan was to go to my agent and go through the traditional publishing process, just as I had for the past 20 years.
Through 2010, I kept the same focus, but as the year came to a close, I was accepting that publishing as I had known it was going through drastic changes. I didn’t base my decision using what was happening now, I projected out what would be happening a year, two years, three years down the line. I knew getting a book deal in early 2011 would give me a pub date of perhaps fall 2012. Where would publishing be then? How would books be selling? What I predicted was an exponential (not linear) rise in e-book sales compared to print, far exceeding what 95% of the pundits were predicting. So after selling a few hundred books in January of this year, I made a decision: I would publish my new titles through my own imprint under the publishing company I created. I would commit one hundred percent to being an independent author.
However, let me add this. I was able to do this because I’d been a traditionally published author and have an extensive backlist. I also had a lot of help through my business partner with the technical side of going independent. This gave me a solid base from which to launch. I call this being a “hybrid” author. It works one of two ways: an author with rights to their backlist goes indie; or an author under contract with a traditional publisher, who also owns some backlist, self-publishes that backlist while keeping their frontlist traditional. Even if they don’t own backlist, they self-publish something, usually a short, like James Rollins recently did. Either way, it’s a win-win situation.
I accelerated the publication of my backlist and published my first original title, Chasing The Ghost at the infamous .99 cent price. Chasing soon hit the top 500 overall on Amazon and top five in Men’s Adventure. After two months, we upped the price to a more realistic $2.99 and it didn’t lose any traction.
My Atlantis series was similar. The first book is priced at 99 cents. The next five are $2.99. Atlantis became the #3 science fiction bestseller on UK Amazon behind Game of Thrones. And because I got such traction with Atlantis among those readers, when I published the first Area 51 book a last month, it started strong and continues to accelerate in sales. It’s doing particularly well on the Nook and was mentioned recently in a press release from B&N as one of the top bestsellers along with Amanda Hocking. I’m releasing a new Area 51 title at the pace of one a week and have five more to go.
So where do I believe publishing stands? The author-reader relationship is key. Publishers focused so long on distribution to their consignment outlets, they never really focused on selling to readers. And because authors were mostly seen as replaceable parts, they were also not valued until they were a brand name. There would always be another writer willing to step in.
That’s no longer true. The writers who are being successful now are those who understand promotion is an integral part of their success. Authors must connect directly with readers via social media. The published author with a strong backlist has the potential to connect to a whole new generation of readers and they don’t need a publisher to do so.
So what do these changes mean for the unpublished author? It’s a question I’m asked frequently and I’ve put a lot of thought into. For the unpublished author, my suggestion is they consider writing at least three manuscripts before leaping into self-publishing. Few traditionally published authors had the craft down so well on their first manuscript that they were able to sell it, I don’t believe it’s changed for new writers. The number one promotional tool for a writer is great content and having multiple titles available.
The bottom line is that the distance between authors and readers is shorter than it’s ever been, both in terms of getting the book to the reader and for promoting. All the others involved, agents, publishers, bookstores, etc. must shift their focus from their traditional business template to one that puts authors and readers to the forefront.
Bob Mayer is the author of more than 40 books. His latest, Write It Forward: From Writer to Successful Author, is out this week. You can read more on his blog Write It Forward.
8 Comments
By pricing his backlist titles so low, I’m wondering if Mayer is not creating a problem for himself and other authors down the road, as this practice will only increase public expectations about pricing of ebooks generally, since the public will not understand that the “first copy” costs have already been accounted for by the sale of the print editions of the backlist titles whereas they have to be factored into the pricing of new ebook titles if they are to recover their costs.
Each writer is in a unique position. The reverse argument could be made that by pricing eBooks so high, traditional publishers are driving readers away from their authors’ titles.
The public has no clue what costs are and don’t care. The reality is I’m not running my publishing company out of the Flatiron Building in New York and doing a lot of other things not directly related to the book being published. My overhead is considerably less than most.
I release my new titles all under $5 and we usually recover our first copy costs within the first month.
The public can’t be educated by pricing in any abstract way. If you read any of the research over the last 30 years in behavioral economics (Dan Arielly’s Predictably Irrational or William Poundstone’s Priceless), you’ll see that people’s view of price/value is highly unstable or manipulable. This is not to say that pricing low is THE solution, any more than it is to saw that pricing high is THE solution—but to saw that everything is contextual, more contextual than any of us would have believed possible.
One thing that is certain is that it is insane for a person who would optimally benefit from $2.99 prices to increase her prices and decrease her revenue to benefit a totally unrelated third-party. Its’s hard enough to run a pricing cartel amongst five folks, to try to run it amongst millions of writers and tens of thousand of publishers is delusional.
If there is value from editorial activity, a way will be found to pay for it. If there is value to be found from housing such activity in expensive Manhattan real estate, a way will be found to pay for that. The former is likely to prove easier than the latter, for most books.
I still feel the quicker way to a writing CAREER (earning a living) for an unpublished writer is Traditional publishing which of course now entails e-pub too. For my debut romance, the exposure I’ve had through reviews and blogs which I’d not be invited to as a self-pub, has raised my sales and profile faster than I would have done purely self publishing. It’s all about the brand – your name. You have to build one and that takes time and money. I feel sorry for traditional publishers. They’ll build an authors brand and then are no longer needed.
Bronwen, does the “quicker” time period count the amount of time it takes to get an agent, go on submission, negotiate a contract and await release? During those three years (to be fair), you could have sold more copies of your debut than your first print run. And if you’re talking about earning a living, you’ll net more from your SP ebook sale than from your traditional book sale. Will the platform of traditional publishing make it all worthwhile? Depends on who’s assigned to brand you, doesn’t it? And what their budget is?
Bob, congratulations and thank you for this post. I’ve seen a number of stout-hearted devotees of the traditional route aver that any writer who is willing to sell his work for 99 cents must not be too confident in himself. Of course that’s ridiculous (and not a little arrogant) – and I wish you (and so many of the mid-list authors who’ve been dumped by their publishers) all the good fortune that comes your way.
Hi Pete
Sorry – I forgot about that! You are right. I had not considered the time to get an agent and get published.
I hate to say it but I’m one of the lucky ones. I finished my first full book in November 2009 and got an agent on 3 January 2010 and sold it in a two book deal by 7th January (from my own submission). However, it will be interesting to see how quickly book 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 sell – if they do sell! That’s where my agent comes in.
Very interesting article, Bob, and I’m not surprised at your success. I’ve always maintained that e-publishing will work best to sell the backlist of traditionally published authors who’ve known success in the real (non digital) world! That’s clearly the case with J:A: Konrath and with you, and I’m sure many more!
I noted with interest your advice for newbies: have at least 3 titles up there for sale on the e-platforms. You’re absolutely right on that one! I got impatient and put up the first book of my Fear of the Past trilogy before finishing the 2nd book or even writing the third for that matter! Now I’m really pressed for time, and I’ve got readers already asking me where is the second book?!
So, yes, it’s terribly important to have multiple titles up there before embarking on a DIY career. Some people have commented here that going traditional with a publisher and agent has worked for them. I suspect they’re in a tiny, tiny minority of the blessed, lucky ones! For most people, that doesn’t work and it’s not just a question of being impatient. It really does seem that the traditional publishing industry is in total upheaval, rocked by the digital revolution with no exit solution yet in sight…
I have to point out the other extreme to Browin’s “quick” jump into traditional publishing. It took me nearly 20 years to find a traditional publisher, and even after two books with that press, I never made any money. I also have to point out that my novels that were once rejected by major publishers are selling well and getting great reviews as indies. I’m also making a nice living as a novelist, mostly from my Detective Jackson series, which is selling as well in the UK as it is in the US.
There is no “one true path,” but anyone who’s still waiting six months to hear from an agent or publisher is not paying attention.