Breaking my longer than intended silence to announce that shortly I will be posting some exciting news. I can at least say that while I have been delinquent in keeping up this blog, I have at least been productive.

Besides my writing life, I am now nearing the end of the first year of my MBA program. It might seem odd for a writer to be going to business school. However, I strongly believe writers should have a solid grounding in good business practices. After all, writing is a business if you intend to make a profit. If you don’t, then you are writing as a hobby, which is also fine in and of itself. But, if your goal is to be widely read, to be known and respected as a writer plus earn a living then you must take the path of professional writer rather than that of the hobbyist.

As a business person, you need to watch many aspects of your business at once. First, profits. Have you set the right price (high enough to cover your variable costs like office supplies as well as your fixed costs, if any, such as rent)? Is your price low enough that a sufficient number of people will pay that price? Your profit essentially is the volume times the price you sell at minus your costs (variable and fixed). Remember- your time is a variable cost. You have to include a salary for yourself to be considered a working professional. If you are giving away your books or charging so little that you’re losing money then you have violated the first rule of business- to make a profit. No company exists for long while losing money. Often I hear writers (and even some readers) tell me- what I (or the writer) really need(s) is readers. The old idea of “build it and they will come”. For writers this translates to “if I give enough away, people will start paying me one day.” Think about this though- have you ever received a give-away that when you didn’t get the item for free you wanted so much that you finally started paying for it? How about most Internet content? When a web site (like say the New York Times) converted to a pay model, did you start paying? Or were you annoyed that now you had to pay so you stopped visiting the site?

“Hey,” you say, “I got a free spoonful of ice cream the other day then I bought a whole cone. That’s free switched to pay.” Actually, you just got a sample, not free product. I agree free samples can encourage purchases. Many products are sold with this approach. Even Amazon allows you to sample books before buying.

I’ve thought a lot about the psychology of the “free to pay” concept. I believe the reason people refuse to pay for things they’ve gotten for free in the past is that they’ve been taught the item has no value. After all, it’s free, right? If it was worth something, the company would charge for it. With capitalism, an item is worth whatever someone will pay for it. Free = worthless in our minds. That doesn’t mean no one wants the item. Think of how you feel on being handed a free pen or free bookmark or balloon for your kid. Right at that moment, you say, “Cool! What a nice ______.” Five minutes later the balloon is popped, the pen broken, the bookmark lost and you don’t give it a further thought. Why should you? You didn’t pay for it anyway.

I believe writers should re-evaluate their approach of giving away their work in hopes that someday they will be paid for it. Free samples, yes. Occasional small free give-aways in combination with a larger size purchase, yes. But not totally free all the time. The only exception to this is if you have electronic works on a web/blog or in print with enough traffic to earn good money from advertising (the favorite tech company model.) Even then, this strategy is risky and often doesn’t work as illustrated by the many failed tech companies.

It’s official, last week e-book sales surpassed those of paper based books for the first time.

The Financial Times (April 15, 2011 by Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson) reported that in February 2011, e-books sales tripled reaching $90.3 million compared with adult paperback book sales of $81.2 million. That means 9.1 million more e-books were sold than paper back books.

The numbers also showed that in January and February, e-book sales increased 169% compared with a decrease of 24.8% in paper based book sales.

The trend looks firmly entrenched especially given the ever increasing types of devices that readers can now use to view e-books including new tablets as well as the Kindle, Nook and others. RIM just announced a new tablet to compete with the iPad and a Sony tablet.

These changes will ripple throughout the publishing industry and all book related organizations. Even libraries are struggling to keep up. My library just sold off their entire CD collection in a move to digital. One wonders if books are next and if so, how will libraries transform?

Any change is sure to be gradual. One road block is that Amazon allows only limited sharing of books on the Kindle. Thus libraries can’t share books for the Kindle currently.

Even if books are eventually primarily digital, I think libraries will survive because they are so much more than book lenders. My library, like many others, is a community hub. Students meet with tutors, citizens come to hear lectures by authors or attend computer training classes, or teens just hang out.

For authors these are roller coaster times. The challenge is to adapt to e-books. Yet still profit. Perhaps e-books can even improve profit for authors. Perhaps authors will simply be lost in a tsunami of content. It seems too early to tell. The exciting part is to be in early on change and hopefully to shape change into a helpful, rather than mischievous sprite.

Welcome to spring in New England. Woke up to snow-coated evergreens and a sugar-dusted lawn. By noon, there was barely a trace of snow and the thermometer had hit 40 degrees F with a warm sun and blue sky.

Interesting article on self-publishing. So often self-published authors sell only a few hundred books to the family and friends crowd. This article highlights one of the rare success stories. Clearly this woman worked hard. She studied the market and went about her writing in a dedicated and directed manner. She has been rewarded with success in selling her paranormal romance teen novels. I’m posting a link here to the article.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110324/ap_en_ot/us_books_amanda_hocking

Enjoy!

Yes, it’s that time of year again…Banned Books Week. The Net is full of festivities. For example, visit the American Library Association for information, activities and souvenirs. http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/bannedbooksweek/index.cfm

However, as a recent Wall St. Journal article reveals, banned books may be the least of our worries. With the slow dissolution of the current system for bringing worthy novels and books to the public’s notice, there may be few books to ban. Books will join the maelstrom of “news”. There is now so much “news” with much of it of dubious origin and veracity that one is overwhelmed and in the end pays little attention to most of it. With the upsurge of e-books, novels and non-fiction are headed in a similar direction. E-books allow for a huge quantity of books (even those posted directly by authors), however, many are likely to be unvetted by professionals and of unknown quality. Even for e-books of excellent quality, breaking through the noise of all these newly available books will be extraordinarily difficult.

That’s the initial view. In the long run, many authors may rethink their dedication to story-crafting when they realize the rewards may be slim to none. According to the WSJ, e-books offer authors half or less of the money they make from hardcover books. At a revenue of only a couple dollars per e-book, with sales of debut authors being only a few thousand copies, it’s easy to see that devoting a few years (say 5,000 to 10,000 hours) to crafting a great story could easily yield anywhere from a dollar or so to pennies on the hour. Federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour so one can see writing, for debut or lesser known authors, could easily fall far below minimum wage.

The best solution is for authors to continue to press for fair prices for their work. Other more inventive solutions include moving to a low cost of living country or, sadly, ceasing to write. There’s the rub- with low wages, all books could essentially become banned as writers can no longer afford to write.

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.

“It’s all right. I came back.”

Sorry wrong play. In this one, it’s Anne Writer, in a black shift, moaning and pulling her hair out (while rocking on the floor surrounded by fluttering pages thick with type). Anne Writer turns to her mother (in slinky gold gown with black lacquered cigarette holder causally dangling from her exquisite hand). “Why won’t any one read my 500,000 word epic poem on the atomic bomb?”

“The slush pile passed on in 1991, darling. Stop throwing paper into the coffin. It makes you look mentally deficient.”

“JK Rowling was rejected 12 times. I think I can…I think I can…publish.” Anne glares at her mother with a wild look in her eye.

“She had an agent, darling. Now rub the ink stains off your fingers, we’ve a nice young man coming for dinner.”

And there’s the crux of it…Thank you Wall Street Journal for telling us writers we need an agent. Many more thanks for the lovely interviews with Joshua Ferris and Joyce Carol Oates.

By now many of you have woken up hearing the cacophony of  Book Wars. Amazon and WalMart battling it out.

Book Wars can help authors by placing their products (books) front and center in the news and in people’s minds. Think of books, see books, buy books. At the price of $10 or $9 (or who knows, maybe the price has dropped further since this morning), readers can afford to buy stacks of books. Think about it- how many Christmas gifts can you buy that will last hours and only cost $10 (or less)?

Of course on the down side, authors may make less money with their books being sold half off (or more). But sales depend on price and volume. So selling more units at a lower price could yield similar revenue.

So, which is Darth Vader and which is Luke Skywalker? I’ll let you decide.

All readers of this blog know that it is absolutetly the best writing blog out there (ahem, wink, wink).  But I thought in these tough times, we all need as much help as we can get so why not share blogs (even if PR gurus consider redirecting readers to be akin to seppuku).

One blog I enjoy reading is the BookEnds literary agency blog http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/. This blog covers all sorts of topics for writers at all stages of their careers, especially newer writers. Recent posts covered writer’s block (a concept I struggle with) and writer’s rules (wouldn’t it be nice to find a secret formula just like the elixir of life?)

Another blog that this blog has linked to for some time is PubRants http://pubrants.blogspot.com/. Agent Kristen Nelson has fantastic advice for writers and good publishing industry information. A recent post was about a Florida Attorney General suing a guy scamming writers by posing as a literary agent. Just the sort of information writers need to know.

A third blog that has an edgy feel is Evil Editor (http://evileditor.blogspot.com/). If you post on this blog, be sure to have a healthy ego with lots of self confidence. Don’t expect ohs and ahs over your wonderful prose. I must admit, sometimes the posts have me scratching my head and saying, huh? Or simply a drawn out, OKAY….. But, there’s plenty of amusement to be had in reading it, as well as  plenty of solid writing advice.

Hope you enjoy getting to know these awesome blogs! Bernacke has now declared the Great Recession of the 21st century to be over so it’s time to start smiling again (and buy books, lots of books)!

Bookmarked: The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin

Warning- This post has absolutely nothing to do with Michael Jackson (despite his having recorded an album called Thriller).

I was sitting here typing my thriller when I suddenly wondered, just how popular are thrillers? I decided to conduct a completely unscientific review of thriller popularity. Logging into Amazon, I found some interesting information about thriller popularity.

Here it is:

The number 1 most popular book tonight in both the literature/fiction and the mystery/thriller categories is (unsurprisingly) The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. The number 6 position in literature/fiction is taken by Alex Cross’s Trial by James Patterson and Richard Diallo. This book is number 3 in mystery/thriller. Next at number 11 in literature/fiction and number 4 in mystery/thriller categories is The Shack by William Paul Young. After that comes the number 13 book in literature/fiction and number 5 in mystery/thriller categories is Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. (The number 2 thriller didn’t place in the overall bestseller list.)

These numbers suggest that mystery/thriller novel popularity compares well to that of other types of books. The overall best seller list has a good number of mystery/thrillers in it with the current number 1 book being a mystery/thriller. (Granted, it’s not every day that a new Dan Brown book comes out but he’s got plenty of colleagues on the overall bestseller list).

What beat out thrillers in the bestseller list? Several political nonfiction books (one a memoir of Ted Kennedy), a book on french cooking, and the manual of the American Psychological Association. Suggesting that if you want to write a book that really tops the charts you should write a thriller with a hero who is a liberal Senator and a heroine who is an insane french chef, both of whom should go on a religious quest.

Now that I’ve told everyone the best selling plot of the year, I’d better call it a night.

CraftFest and ThrillerFest is over for another year. This year’s meeting was as enjoyable as last year’s. I am continually astounded by how generous leading authors are with their time in teaching up and coming authors the tricks of the trade. Today I will highlight a few tidbits that stuck with me from the conference.

Andrew Gross gave tips for how to keep readers turning the page. One tip was to focus on the essentials of each scene. Don’t get bogged down in unnecessary description, explanation or character definition. Short focused chapters also help. With that said, there is also a spectrum of “pace focus” in thrillers. Some authors voice will call for more description/characterization/atmosphere than others. Writers through exploring their work will find their comfort level in the spectrum. But at the same time writers must realize that the more the book focuses on atmosphere, etc, the more the pace will be slowed down. Readers will gravitate toward authors whose pace is comfortable for them as well.

James Rollins advised writers to set a target number of pages to be completed each day and do it. I find myself that if you focus on a large project in it’s entirety, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. So I agree with his focus on daily small goals to achieve a larger goal.

On marketing of thrillers, attendees heard from Robin Cook about his innovative “prequel” movie that was released in installments before his recent novel (Foreign Body). (Note, this is not an inexpensive undertaking so you may not want to try this at home!)

That’s the wrap up for ThrillerFest. I better get to work on my target pages!