Candice Hughes

It felt a bit like peeking at my horoscope, which I admit I do once in awhile for a lark. I’m talking in this case about a writer’s mysterious black box- “I Write Like”. Everyone’s doing it, I thought, why not me?

So who do I write like (according to “I Write Like”)? Drum roll- envelope please. The answer is….JD Salinger.

Since he passed away, perhaps he won’t mind that I write like him. Particularly that I’m a woman who writes like a man who writes about what it’s like being a boy growing up to become a man. If that makes any sense at all.

Now I’d better go and begin scouting remote towns in New Hampshire for a cottage.

Because the frightening thing is that both JD Salinger and I have lived/worked in New York and Connecticut. But then he fled deep into New England to Cornish, New Hampshire. And I wonder if that is what “I Write Like” noticed- something in the Yankee words spiced with New York attitude. Then again maybe it’s just a mysterious black box like whatever generates the fortunes in Chinese fortune cookies.

Not long ago I posted a summary of comments on the cost of book production by Lee Child.

Here’s another source showing how little it actually costs to produce a physical paper-based book (just in terms of printing).

“Printing a 9-by-9-inch, 334-page hardcover book in China costs about 44 to 45 cents now, with another 3 cents for shipping, says Goodwin. The same book costs 65 to 68 cents to make in the U.S.” He goes on to explain that US printing obviates the need for an additional 30 days of shipping time- plus the extra 3 cents cost.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100708/ap_on_bi_ge/as_china_cheap_no_more

Thus, the cheapest cost for China is 47 cents versus the most expensive cost for the US 68 cents. Will an extra 50 to 70 cents more or less  prevent anyone from buying a paper book (over say an e-book version)? Because that ‘s the real cost difference unless vendors artificially lower e-book prices by cutting pay for writers or publishers or sell at a loss to themselves. In fact, the difference is likely even less because there is still a cost for programming to develop and maintain software allowing e-books to be uploaded and viewed.

These numbers further demonstrate that most of the cost of a book is content development (ie: the writer sitting in the chair fingers to keyboard for months or years and the editor polishing the text up) plus some marketing/sales costs so that readers can find and obtain a copy of a new book and don’t have to hunt the Internet for obscure web sites to buy a poorly or non-promoted book. Thus, most costs do not change regardless of whether the book is delivered in electronic or print format.

E-books are a great option, but keep the price honest.

I just love my local library. Our librarians put together a fantastic slate of authors every year. This year, they wrapped up the lectures with a bang by inviting Lee Child to speak. The substantial auditorium was jam packed, spilling out into the hall, so clearly our librarians made a good choice.

He was witty during his lecture about his publishing career. During the numerous questions, of which I’m sure he’d heard a few many times, he came across as honest and patient, giving thoughtful answers.

One topic that interested me considerably was e-books. The publishing industry has been in an uproar over e-books for the past couple years. Lee Child gave the clearest answer I’ve heard yet about what price e-books should have and why. First, he said consider that his standard hardcover sells for about $28. The cost of printing and shipping the hardcover is about $5. That means the value of the story (content only) is about $23 for those receiving it first (hardcovers come before paperbacks if there are paperbacks).The $23 covers the cost of all the publishing staff (editors, marketers, etc) plus the very important author- everyone who helped create the story and make it visible to it’s audience (I’m adding this bit, Lee Child didn’t go into this detail).

E-books, contrary to popular perception Mr Child said, do have a cost for creation and delivery. After all, someone had to create the computer program used to format and deliver the book. Estimate that cost at $1 per book. That means the e-book cost is $23 + $1= $24 (or the cost of the story plus the electronic formatting and delivery). Obviously at the much bandied price point of $9.99, someone is losing money.

There were many questions about Reacher, but I’m not going to go into all of them here. I do recommend that if you have a chance to hear Lee Child speak, you should take it.

Summer is traditionally a time when people think of kicking back on warm sand under a blue sky with a great book. The Wall Street Journal (this past Friday) published the largest print runs of the season (which clearly indicate what the publishing industry believes large numbers of people will be reading).

Janet Evanovich’s upcoming novel, Sizzling Sixteen, came out on top with a print run of 2.5 million. When you consider that a successful book sells 5,000 copies, the print run for Sizzling Sixteen is astounding. Of course, the article goes on to mention that Janet’s summer 2009 novel in her Stephanie Plum series sold nearly a million copies. Clearly her track records suggests outstanding sales this summer.

I had the pleasure of hearing Janet speak at last year’s RWA National conference. She gave the audience snippets of her journey as a writer that were both witty and touching. She was passionate about writing, thrilled to have many fans, yet humbled by her view from the top. All this as she hobbled around the stage on a broken foot. Imagine what she’s like when not weighed down by an appendage encased in a cement-like block.

Janet’s new book comes out later this month.

As part of my current summer reading, I’ve finally gotten my hands on the third and last Stieg Larrson book. I will be happily devouring it, while despairing all the while that there will never be another one.

Spring has been bursting out over the past few weeks. Every year it reminds me of one of my favorite poems by a favorite poet, Robert Frost, a fellow New Englander.

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

In this photo I tried to capture in colors what Frost describes.

Spring has been here for several weeks now, with the usual crazy New England weather- shorts and tee-shirts one week then back to sweaters and coats the next.

Besides the changing but consistently wacky weather, the publishing industry continues as well, changing but expectedly so.  Publisher’s Weekly reported that e-books were up 177% for 2009 while sales of most other books were flat or slightly lower than the year before. All forms of entertainment have been moving digital for a number of years. Yet things rarely move entirely digital or, if they do, convert in their original form. I still listen to the radio periodically. I often listen to the radio online. It’s still the radio, just a different delivery system. I envision paper-based books sharing the world with digital books- reaching an even larger audience.

Spring is a great time for writing- full of energy and bursting with ideas! So now it’s back to a writer’s main job…writing.

The agency model for e-books is out of the gates and off and running as of yesterday. As many expected, there have been some bumps in the road. Some publishers are still working with Amazon. This is all to be expected given how quickly deals had to be put together.

My main concern is communication with customers. This morning I checked the Amazon Kindle blog and noticed a number of customers complaining about the price changes. Some felt that publishers were price-gouging, getting more because they could, etc. To quote one customer “I’m really tired of these publishers jerking me around. Ebooks are almost pure profit since they don’t have to pay anyone to print or ship…”

Very few customers posting recognized or understood that authors need to be paid fairly for their work. The focus was heavily on publishers and lawyers writing up contracts as well as the low costs of producing an e-book versus printing. The truth is that without authors sitting in a chair, fingers to keyboard for months or even years, pouring their heart and imagination out onto their hard drives, there would be no e-books (or any other form of books). The truth is that like other products (cars, jewelry, clothing) some products may have a higher intrinsic value than others.

I believe most people are willing to pay fairly for what they buy when they understand the value of what they’re buying. Few expect to buy a shiny new BMW car for the same price as a Kia.

Of course, why should readers realize or understand the monumental effort that goes into writing a book unless authors, publishers, agents and others in the community engage them in conversation? We are not explaining our side of the story. We’re letting Amazon and others put their side of the story out leaving readers feeling confused.

Yes, e-books are cheaper to produce. But they are part of the set of products an authors produces. In fact, an ever greater part. The pay (or salary, if you will) that an author receives in exchange for sitting at their computer for months and years is based on what all these products (e-books, hardcover, paperback, etc) earn. Artificially lowering the price of e-books to “one low price fits all” means that no matter how hard an author works, no matter how good they are in crafting a story, they’ll earn the same base amount.

Naturally, Amazon and other companies that make the hardware needed to read e-books want low priced content. They want to sell their hardware (e-book readers) for as much as they can. In order to do that, they need to offer customers a carrot. The carrot is low cost content. Their pitch to customers is, “yes, you’ll pay hundreds of dollars for this reader but after that you’ll hardly pay anything at all for using the device.” Fair valued-content brings up the total cost proposition of owning the e-reader. Some customers may then want to pay less for the reader.

E-readers and e-books need each other. Like any relationship, there are ups and downs as well as power-struggles. I believe the agency model is basically fair to both sides. Readers also win because they will keep getting fantastic stories to read in any format they like (print books or e-books).

A good marketer always wants to know the competition. For aspiring authors, how much competition is there? The numbers are closely held and hard to pin down. However, I decided to take a stab at it.

In 2004, one source gives the number of books published in the U.S. as 190,000. For 2006, another source (citing BEA statistics) gives the number of books published in the U.S. as 172,000. Sounds like stiff competition so far, right? In fact, out of the 172,000 books, 93% sell fewer than 1,000 copies. A successful book should sell at least 5,000 copies to earn out a modest advance.

More recently another source indicates that in 2007, about 62,000 fiction books were published. This seems to suggest that more than half the earlier totals were mostly nonfiction with some other categories.

The numbers suggest that the number of books published by traditional publishers probably hasn’t changed much or has even declined in the past 6 years.

Self-published books count for a large number of total books published. They haven’t been included in the above numbers, but offer some competition. Lulu claims it publishes 4,000 books a week, which comes to an astounding 208,000 books a year! That’s just for one self-publisher. The vast majority of self-published books only sell a hundred or two hundred copies to the author’s friends and family. For fiction, self-publishing is useful if all you want to do is see your name in print. Most people shouldn’t consider it a money making venture since self-publishing costs anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000 and up.

For more on self-publishing challenges, see http://reviews.cnet.com/self-publishing/

For new authors, these are sobering facts. I have seen estimates that between 700 and 1,000 people in the U.S. make their living as novelists. Some will write more than one novel per year. Let’s assume that 1,500 novels each year come from full-time novelists. That leaves 60,500 novels to be written by those not making their living as novelists. This is good news in that it means there’s some chance to break into the field. But not so good in terms of earnings or a long term career.

So where to go from here? I highly recommend any aspiring novelist join a writer’s association to learn about the industry. Also, think deeply on your writing goals.

After completing “The Woman in White” by Wilkie Collins, I spent some time thinking about the techniques Collins used to create this early thriller/suspense story. CAUTION: May contain spoilers.

First, it was helpful that the novel was serialized. This likely pushed Collins to provide a cliffhanger ending for each installation. When read as a complete novel, the reader still enjoys the roller coaster ride where the hero and heroines are pushed into a tighter and tighter box by one disaster after another. With each set back, the villains gain until the hero and heroines have lost nearly everything and absolute success seems assured for the villains.

While the pace is slower than is currently in vogue and some circumstances could not occur with today’s technology, the plot twits and turns still hold the reader enthralled, pushing on and on to see how the “good guys” could possibly get out of their dilemma. Collins gives the hero and heroines no rest, driving them in one case to the brink of insanity. His characters are well drawn and realistic. His portrayal of society in the 1800′s and of the physical environment seems authentic and sufficient for the reader to feel settled in that time period.

One unusual aspect is Collin’s use of numerous narrators. This technique allows him to give the readers knowledge of the unfolding plot even when none of the heroines nor the hero are present. The alternative would be an omniscient narrator. I believe the unusual choice gives the story more immediacy. In Collin’s hands, these narrator switches are not distracting.

Collins is also adept at understanding the psychology of his characters. This is particularly evident in the “villains” self-justification for their misdeeds.

The only potential flaws are a few situations that one could argue are a bit too coincidental. However, these never stretch the boundaries to the point where the situation would be judged absurd. They are more than balanced out by the novels relentless destruction of the hero and heroines, which progresses from the beginning to nearly the end of the novel.

Bookmarked: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

In New England, we’ve had several spectacular snow storms this year. It makes up for several years running where we were barely dusted by an inch or two the whole season. Those years I heard many complaints about the cold, the snow, shoveling, grumble, grumble. I assumed those were all transplants from parts south or the extreme south west. I feared they might not survive the system shock when we had a real New England winter with a foot of snow whipped into a frenzy by howling winds.

If you get up early enough after one of these bruisers, you will be treated to a fairyland of sugar frosted trees against a bright blue sky. A perfect scene for a novel. I’ll have to think on that….

For now, here’s a photo- New England in winter.