Category Archives: Michelle Gagnon

The Chicken Guy

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by Michelle Gagnon

Excerpt from THE TUNNELS:

“So what do you think?”

Kelly looked up from her notes to find Morrow watching her, rocking back and forth on his heels with a half-smile.

“Not our guy.” She rubbed her eyes with a thumb and forefinger and suppressed a yawn.

“Told you. Long day, huh? Where’d they pull you in from?”

“Jersey.”

“Oh, right, the chicken guy. Nice work on that one.”

“Thanks…”

In my debut thriller THE TUNNELS, I made this oblique reference to FBI Special Agent Kelly Jones’s previous case. Over the years I’ve received several emails from readers curious to hear more about “The Chicken Guy” (although as we here at The Kill Zone know, by all rights that title belongs to Mr. John Ramsey Miller, who is currently breeding a chicken army for world conquest).

So when it came time to submit a story for our anthology, I thought this would be great material to mine.

I’ve probably only composed a few dozen short stories total over the course of my writing career. With this one, I decided to focus on a single setting, the scene that would mark the climax if it were a full novel. I wanted to write something that was almost pure action, where you really got to see Kelly do what she does best.

I enjoyed exploring my heroine through a prequel. Part of the story laid the groundwork for crises she’d face down the line, tests of her moral code that over the course of my series have become increasingly challenge for her to pass. Hints of that popped up as I was writing The Chicken Guy. Knowing where she ends up made it much easier to figure out where she started.

As I was editing, I caught myself wondering if I would have written the story the same way if I’d tackled it immediately before writing THE TUNNELS. And as I’m putting the finishing touches on my fourth novel featuring the same characters, I was struck by how much Kelly in particular had been forced to change. What I love about writing a series (and about watching a well-made TV series, as opposed to a film) is that it enables a much greater story arc. A character grapples with different challenges in each book, challenges that shape how they’ll act when faced with new situations down the line. I’ve put Kelly through the wringer over the course of these four books. She’s emerged far more damaged than when she started, but in a way stronger than she was at the outset. It was interesting for me to look back on her through this lens, to see how far she’s come in so many ways.

We’re discussing assembling another anthology later in the year. For that one, I’m toying with the idea of delving further into the life of a more minor character from the series, one I haven’t had the opportunity to really explore. What I’ve discovered through this process is that short stories can be a great tool for character development, a chance to see how a tangential story line can have an impact. As Joe said, this is a great format to do that kind of exploration.

The anthology is available on Amazon and at Smashwords for the bargain price of $2.99.





Music to My Ears

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by Kelli Stanley

First, I gotta thank my hostess, thriller author extraordinaire Michelle Gagnon, and the rest of the fiercely fabulous Kill Zone team.

So I admit it. I’m old enough to remember the days before the Sony Walkman, let alone the iPod. The days before music and entertainment because so personalized, so catering to both whim and instant gratification, that you waited around listening for “Jack and Diane” to play on the FM station. It usually did, in between the Go-Gos and Pat Benatar.

Of course, the irony with all this personal cocooning is that people now have an even greater need to socialize and share … but instead of playing a boom box, you can post an iTunes play list or even pretend to be a DJ on Blip.FM.

And, of course, if you write books, you can share what you listen to through your writing.

Quick poll for authors—raise your hand if you’re influenced by music when you write. Do you listen while you type? Does it set the mood, the tone, the pace for your scene? Do you channel Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho for your serial killer segments and switch to Bach for your upbeat ending?

This is one way to use music, and I’ve heard other authors claim that they like writing with the volume up. Me, I’ve never been able to hear my words and Gershwin at the same time, so I don’t actually listen when I write. But to sort of set the stage, to get in the mood … that I can do. I’ve always been a fan of jazz and the Great American Songbook, an affinity that served me well with my latest novel.

Y’ see, listening is particularly helpful when you’re trying to lose yourself in time. Because City of Dragons is set in 1940, I immersed myself in a lot of music from the era—and had to be very careful to not access something anachronistic. I wanted to hear what my characters did, and I was writing about a period in American culture when music was truly a mass medium of popular entertainment … and when our entertainment—thanks to radio drama—was more audio than visual.

The music was key to me feeling like I could capture the past. And then it became about character, too, about my protagonist reacting to that world, particularly the irony of achingly romantic big band swing juxtaposed to the atrocities of war.

So I found myself becoming immersed in the music, actually using it in the book. And I felt confident about being able to, since some writers I greatly admire—like George Pelecanos and Ken Bruen—reference music and lyrics in their works.

The rub, of course, is the permissions phase … something I didn’t know much about. But warning, all you Springsteen fans who want to include “The River” in your latest novel … the author is responsible for either acquiring permission or rewriting the scene.

In my case, I found out too late and had to rewrite certain scenes, retaining a line of lyric and hopefully the flow and rhythm and emotion of the original draft. But—like a DVD director’s cut—I was able to link up a City of Dragons playlist on my website, so that, whenever possible, you can listen to the music my characters do.

It’s a cool way of sharing not just what I like to listen to, but what became an intrinsic element of the book, and a kind of instant time machine back to February, 1940.

So … how do you respond to music in books? And what’s on your playlist today?

Kelli Stanley’s second novel, City of Dragons, has received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and Booklist, is an RT Book Reviews Top Pick, and an Indie Next Book for February. Kelli’s debut novel, Nox Dormienda, won the Bruce Alexander Award and was nominated for a Macavity. She lives in San Francisco, and frequents old movie palaces, speakeasies and bookstores. You can find out more about her and her books at her website: http://www.kellistanley.com.




Marketing Recap

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by Michelle Gagnon

So the smoke has finally cleared from my latest marketing efforts for THE GATEKEEPER, and I thought I’d share a bit of what I learned.

First of all, Google Analytics is vastly superior to other stat counters. With my older one, ninety percent of the traffic sources were listed as undetermined. Not so with Google Analytics-finally I have clear information as to which links brought visitors to my site, and which didn’t.

And here’s the funny thing: I spent a significant chunk of money on blog ads, Facebook ads, and Goodreads ads this time around. Each of these generated a fair amount of clicks- but nothing even came close to what I received from random sweepstakes sites. Because I was offering a big ticket item as a prize (a MacBook Laptop computer), a lot of contest sites picked up the link. And I received hundred of hits a day from those sites, significantly more than from any other source.

The question is, are the newsletter subscribers elicited by those sites actually interested in reading the book? Although I received fewer hits from the other sites, they were geared toward a more targeted readership. So it’s tough to say which worked better. But in terms of getting the word out there about a new book, offering a major prize definitely didn’t hurt. Next time around I’ll probably stick to a shorter time frame for the ads I’m paying for, and will count on the sweepstakes sites to balance things out.

I’ve also decided to more or less avoid touring next November when RACING THE DEVIL is released. Mind you, I love meeting booksellers, and had a wonderful time visiting Seattle, Phoenix, San Diego, and LA, among other cities.
However with a mass market paperback, the reality is that most of my sales occur in big box stores, supermarkets, drugstores, airports, and newsstands. The touring is always grueling, expensive (since most of it is on my own dime), and it doesn’t have much of an impact on my overall sales. I’ll still visit a few local stores, but after seeing the results of marketing three books this way, I simply can’t justify the cost in both money and time anymore. I won’t be attending as many conferences, either, for the same reason.

Social networking: I primarily logged on to FaceBook and Twitter this time around. That investment definitely produced some sales, and based on my experience the fans those efforts yielded tended to be much more enthusiastic about me and my books. I also did an exchange with some other authors, promoting THE GATEKEEPER on their pages the days of its release. That generated a few sales, but not a significant number as far as I could determine. However it was fantastic for prompting people to attend events.

I find it frustrating that there’s no way to get ebook sales totals yet (at least according to my publisher). I suspect that those have jumped considerably now that there are more eReaders out there, especially after Amazon’s report that for the first time on Christmas Day eBook sales trumped physical books. Once again, I’ll have to wait months for my royalty statements to arrive before I have a completely accurate picture of my sales this time around. It seems a little silly to me that in a computerized age this information isn’t more widely available.

So to recap:

Google Analytics: great
Touring: not so great
Social networking: moderately helpful
Big ticket prize: definitely worth it

I’m curious to hear if other authors have a similar rundown. Or if you have any marketing questions, feel free to fire away…

Are Happy Endings Necessary?

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by Michelle Gagnon

I’m currently guest blogging over at Criminal Minds. It’s a very cool site, sort of a virtual panel where every day for a week I answer a different question posed by the blog group. The only downside is that I’m a bit blogged out. I know, we just had a two week hiatus. My blogging muscle should be well-rested, but between surviving the holidays, trying to finish book four in my series, and fighting off a nasty cold and laryngitis, I’m tapped out. Which is my overly-long explanation for why today’s Kill Zone post will be on the short side. So if you just can’t get enough of my rambling ruminations, and you want to find out more about my illustrious career as a Russian supper club performer, mosey on over to Criminal Minds.

As I mentioned, I’ve been battling illness all week. I rarely fall sick, and this was one of those colds that completely derails you for five days. Three of those days I was too knocked out to read, which meant I was forced to subject myself to a string of truly awful films (DO NOT, under ANY circumstances, rent “Land of the Lost.”)

But I did manage to read a thriller on day four. I loved the book, but one thing struck me, especially as I’m currently retooling the end of my next book:

Does a thriller need to have a happy ending?

Mind you, I’m not panning happy endings. It’s just that at the end of the great ride this book provided, everything was wrapped up so patly it struck me as false. None of the good guys had suffered so much as a serious injury. The bad guys all died horribly. There was even a marriage proposal. All that was missing were bluebirds flying down from the trees a la Snow White.

And to be honest, I felt a little let down. Not that I wanted something terrible to happen to any of the characters, but I wondered: must all thrillers end like this? Because as I started to review the list of bestsellers over the past few years, I couldn’t recall many with unhappy conclusions. (Although I’d love to have someone jog my memory).

Crime fiction films seem less leery of this: I’m not entirely certain that “The Departed” qualifies as a thriller, but it certainly doesn’t have a happy ending. Same with “Seven” and “The Usual Suspects,” two of my personal all-time favorite films.

I understand that there is a level of comfort in having everything tied up neatly at the conclusion of a book, and that happy endings are inherently satisfying.

But notable exceptions like “Sharp Objects” and “In the Woods” really stuck with me after I finished them, since they dared to end on dark and/or ambiguous notes. Neither of those is truly a thriller, however.

So what do you think? Does a thriller need to end on a high note to be satisfying?

The Veil of Anonymity

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by Michelle Gagnon

Happy New Year, everyone! Did you miss us?
This week Clare and Joe have already covered New Year’s resolutions and the looking forward/looking back aspect of the change in decades. So I’m going to leap into a different issue…

In December it was announced that Kirkus Reviews was falling victim to the same fate as many other review sources, and that parent company Nielsen was shutting them down (although today there were claims that it might be resurrected. Time will tell).

The closing of Kirkus was met with both cheers and dismay—dismay because the number of book review sources (outside of proliferating blogs) continues to diminish. And cheers because Kirkus reviews tended to be notoriously snarky. (One famous example: on Dave Eggers’ bestselling memoir, “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” Kirkus proclaimed: “It isn’t.”)


In the aftermath of the announcement of their demise, many writers seized the opportunity to gloat online, posting their worst Kirkus excerpts in chatrooms and on social networking sites. The response was at times as harsh as the worst Kirkus reviews. Esther Newberg, an executive vice president at International Creative Management, went so far as to say that she was, “Sorry people were losing their jobs . . . but it’s never been a publication worth anything. . . . . Good riddance.”


But for me, the worst thing about Kirkus was that their reviewers had the latitude to be as nasty as possible precisely because they were allowed to hide behind the veil of anonymity.

Now, Publishers Weekly stands as one of the only remaining publishers of anonymous reviews. And today I’m going to argue that allowing PW reviewers to retain that anonymity is downright wrong.


Before the advent of Amazon.com, Publishers Weekly was mainly a trade magazine. A starred review in the publication was something that might propel library orders, and could potentially spark more attention among store buyers. However, by and large the only exposure the public had to those reviews was the positive book cover excerpts.


Not anymore.


Now, the Publishers Weekly review is usually the first- and sometimes only- review posted on your book’s Amazon.com page. It’s also heavily featured by nearly every other online site, from Barnes & Noble to Powells. And that review sits there in perpetuity. It’s the first thing a reader sees when they’re considering purchasing your book online. As the industry continues to shift toward eBook consumption, those reviews will only gain prevalence.


Shouldn’t something that has more of an impact than ever before at the very least contain some attribution? Doesn’t an author who gets slammed by a PW review have the right to know who’s slamming him? Perhaps he could take comfort in the fact that the reviewer was clearly a cozy lover, and he wrote a horror novel. Or perhaps it’s someone she cut in line in front of at a convention. Or accidentally stabbed, and this is the reviewer’s means of extracting payback (mind you, I’m not saying any of that has happened. But until we see some names, it’s certainly within the realm of possibility).


The downside of the internet is that it’s provided a forum for people to hide behind anonymity when writing things that they would probably never say in person. We see it here sometimes, the most vitriolic comments tend to be posted anonymously.(This is a tremendous pet peeve of mine. Everyone has a right to their opinion, and because we don’t believe in censorship here at TKZ, we agreed long ago to let every comment stand. But it really irks me when someone lashes out, yet doesn’t have enough courage in their convictions to claim them.)


I believe that allowing one of the few remaining seasoned review sources to participate in that trend damages everyone. If a reviewer really hated a book, let them go on the record saying so. Those reviews are too important now for the veil of anonymity to persist.

The eRights Grab

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by Michelle Gagnon

So to end the year, I thought I’d close with yet another issue confronting the publishing industry: eBook rights. Ten years ago, these were rarely included in contracts, since the prospect of reading books in this format was still fairly far off on the horizon.

But we’re about to enter a whole new decade, by the end of which I suspect at least half of all books will be enjoyed on some form of eReader (and that’s a conservative estimate). Which makes the move by Random House last week pertinent to all of us, especially authors who have backlist books where eRights weren’t spelled out.
Here’s what happened, as detailed by the Author’s Guild:

“On Friday, Random House CEO Markus Dohle sent a two-page letter to many literary agents regarding e-books. Much of the letter is devoted to Random House’s efforts and investments to market traditional and electronic books.

On the second page, Mr. Dohle gets to the point. After noting that most of Random House’s backlist titles grant the publisher electronic book rights (we agree, since most backlist titles are from the past ten years, a period in which authors have generally licensed electronic rights in tandem with their print rights), he writes that “there have been some misunderstandings concerning ebook rights in older backlist titles.” He then proceeds to argue that older contracts granting rights to publish “in book form” or “in all editions” grant electronic rights to Random House.

The misunderstandings reside entirely with Random House. Random House quite famously changed its standard contract to include e-book rights in 1994. (We remember it well — Random House tried to secure these rights for royalties of 5% of net proceeds, a pittance. We called it a “Land Grab on the Electronic Frontier” in our press release headline.) Random House felt the need to change its contract, quite plainly, because its authors did not grant those rights to it under Random House’s standard contracts prior to 1994.

A fundamental principle of book contracts is that the grant of rights is limited. Publishers acquire only the rights that they bargain for; authors retain rights they have not expressly granted to publishers. E-book rights, under older book contracts, were retained by the authors.

There’s no need to take our word for this, however. A federal court in 2001 examined this precise matter in Random House v. Rosetta Books. Judge Stein of the Southern District of New York was unequivocal in his 10-page decision: authors did not grant publishers the e-book rights in the old book contracts at issue. Judge Stein specifically dismissed notions, raised by Mr. Dohle in his letter to agents, that the non-compete clauses of these old contracts in some manner acted to grant Random House electronic rights to the works, saying that this “reasoning turns the analysis on its head.” The court pointed out that the license of rights comes solely from the contract’s grant language, not from the non-compete clause, and that non-competition clauses, to be enforceable, have to be narrowly construed. Using the non-compete clause to secure future rights is unsustainable. An appellate court affirmed Judge Stein’s decision.

We are sympathetic with the difficult position the publishing industry is in at the moment. The recession has been tough on book publishing, as it has been on many industries. And everyone with knowledge of the dynamics of the industry properly fears that Amazon’s dominance of the online markets for traditional and especially e-books will give it a chokehold on industry profits. Difficult times, however, do not justify this attempt at a retroactive rights grab.

It’s regrettable and unhelpful that Random House has chosen to try to intimidate authors and agents over these old book contracts. With such a weak legal hand, it would be well advised to stick to its strength — the advantages that its marketing muscle can provide owners of e-book rights. It should also start offering a fair royalty for those rights. Authors and publishers have traditionally split the proceeds from book sales. Most sublicenses, for example, provide for a 50/50 split of proceeds, and the standard trade book royalty of 15% of the hardcover retail price, back in the days that industry standard was established, represented about 50% of the net proceeds of the sale of the book. We’re confident that the current practice of paying 25% of net on e-books will not, in the long run, prevail. Savvy agents are well aware of this. The only reason e-book royalty rates are so low right now is that so little attention has been paid to them: sales were simply too low to scrap over. That’s beginning to change.

If you have an old book contract in which you haven’t granted e-book rights, patience is likely to pay off. The e-book industry is still young — there’s no need to jump in. And we strongly suspect e-royalty rates are at a low-water mark.”

I feel the same way- can a publisher really justify a 75/25 split when the costs involved with bringing an eBook to market are dramatically less than those incurred by a mass market paperback? The fact that initially 5% was offered is almost laughable- clearly someone saw the writing on the wall. The question is, with the entire market beginning to shift in this direction, how can authors protect themselves? How do you prevent your backlist from being exploited? Since eBooks tend to retail for $5-$15, a more equitable distribution of the royalties means that even with this seismic shift, writers could still manage to earn a living from their work.

It’ll be interesting to see how this issue in particular shakes out. No matter what, I think that despite all the doom and gloom, this is an exciting time to be involved in the publishing industry. The world is changing rapidly, and the publishing industry is now being dragged into the modern millenium. It’s impossible to foresee exactly what the future will bring, but no matter what, the times they are a changin’.

Happy holidays to all of you. Thanks for taking time out of your lives this year to rant, discuss, and debate with us. I’m looking forward to more of the same in 2010.

Best,

Michelle

The Point of it All

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by Michelle Gagnon

The last few weeks have easily been among the most challenging of my writing career. I’ve been on tour, which sounds like great fun until you actually have to spend the greater part of a month away from your family, surviving on granola bars and coffee since events invariably take place at dinnertime and I haven’t yet figured out how to work meals around that.

Plus for the first time I had an event where no one-not one person- showed. I realize that happens to most authors at one point or another, and I’m not claiming to generally draw crowds. But still-it was disheartening.

My publisher announced a new vanity-publishing imprint that caused quite a bit of furor (more on that here). And the ensuing back and forth consumed time and energy that I really couldn’t spare.

Especially since I’ve been juggling the marketing of THE GATEKEEPER while rushing to meet an extremely tight deadline for my next book.

And, for the first time in my writing career, I stalled out.

One of my main characters was trapped in a very dark, hopeless place. And I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to extricate her from such a desperate situation. Not outlining had suddenly come back to haunt me for the first time. I was fairly certain I’d written myself into a corner.

As I dragged myself out of bed to catch a 6AM flight, it struck me as an apt metaphor. I’d spent years of my living striving to get to this point in my career, and for the first time since signing a writing contract, I wasn’t enjoying it. I know that before I was published, listening to writers whine about their hardships always induced a snort- but there are occasional drawbacks to getting what you want. And as I shuffled through security yet again, it all seemed pointless. I felt trapped by deadlines, tour dates, and all of the ancillary nonsense that sometimes goes on in this industry. I was mired in the same place as my character.

Funny how life works sometimes. I opened my inbox to find this email:

My husband was a fan of yours. He entered one of your contests a year or so ago and won the book “Tunnels”. You autographed the book and it meant a lot to him. He was reading the second book “Boneyard” when he was placed in hospice. He was very sick and he so desperately wanted to finish the book. I tried to read to him but he wanted to read it himself. He never got the chance to finish your book but I just wanted you to know how much he enjoyed them. Thank you for sending the autographed book. I, too, am reading your books and looking forward to next one’s debut, Thank you for making the last months of his life just a bit happier.

I really can’t express how much this email meant to me. It’s easily the nicest thing anyone has ever said about my work-and it’s absolutely more than it deserves. So the next time I find myself descending into that dark place, I have this lovely note to serve as my reminder. I am so very fortunate to be healthy and whole, doing what I’m doing.




The Real Losers in the Harlequin Horizons Debate

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by Michelle Gagnon

So for those of you who don’t know, last week Harlequin announced that they were linking up with a vanity publisher (although they called it “self-publishing.” More on that in a bit).

The initial announcement promised that for $600, an aspiring author could publish their book with the “Harlequin Horizons” logo on it (although after weathering a week of criticism for including the Harlequin name in the new imprint, it was renamed “DellArte Press”). For another $342, that book would receive an “editorial review,” (which actually will only cover the first chapter, or roughly 1700 words). The packages spiral upwards in cost to the whole enchilada, including email blasts which come in at just under $12,000 (just for the email blast, mind you–that doesn’t include any of the other costs).

Whoa. That’s a lot of money. And should your manuscript actually sell a million copies, despite the fact that you paid for the publishing, marketing, and editing, you’ll still share profits with Harlequin—to the tune of 50% of the net (and there’s an excellent, and very funny, post about that on Jackie Kessler’s blog).

Which brings us to the difference between self-publishing and vanity-publishing. With self-publishing, an author keeps any and all profits made from sales of their book. With vanity publishing, those profits are split with the publisher–you pay them to print the book, then they take a cut of the earnings.
Hence, the new Harlequin venture is undoubtedly vanity publishing. As the MWA said:

“It is common for disreputable publishers to try to profit from aspiring writers by steering them to their own for-pay editorial, marketing, and publishing services. The implication is that by paying for those services, the writer is more likely to sell his manuscript to the publisher. Harlequin recommends the “eHarlequin Manuscript Critique Service” in the text of its manuscript submission guidelines for all of its imprints and include a link to “Harlequin Horizons,” its new self-publishing arm, without any indication that these are advertisements. That, coupled with the fact that these businesses share the Harlequin name, may mislead writers into believing they can enhance their chances of being published by Harlequin by paying for these services.”

I’m guessing the executives didn’t anticipate the firestorm this would incite. Almost immediately, the RWA responded by saying that in the future, Harlequin would be treated as a vanity press, and would no longer be eligible for certain amenities at the annual conference that they’ve received in the past. They were shortly joined by the Mystery Writers of America and Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, who also officially demoted Harlequin’s standing to a vanity press.
Mind you, this is across the board, not just for authors published under the new imprint.

Harlequin was “surprised and dismayed” by the reaction (their words, not mine) and so they backtracked–a little. In the next announcement, they said, “we are changing the name of the self-publishing company from Harlequin Horizons to a designation that will not refer to Harlequin in any way.” (hence, DellArte Press). No word yet on whether or not this compromise will change anything in terms of their standing with the various author associations.

One thing that’s been lost in all this is the impact on authors who were already under contract with a Hq imprint (myself included, as MIRA is their thriller imprint. So consider me biased). When I received the initial press release announcing the new line, I honestly didn’t think much of it–after all, how could this possibly affect me?

Within a matter of days, I found out. First of all, any author who publishes with Harlequin will lose their standing with nearly every organization. That means that New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham will no longer be considered a published author. Neither will Debbie Macomber. Neither they, nor anyone else who signed a deal with Harlequin (myself included), will be eligible for any future Rita Awards, Edgars, or Nebula Awards.

Crazy, right? As one commenter said in a forum, “It must feel like they (Harlequin authors) showed up to work and found out that the boss had decided to open a bordello.”

I’ll admit I’m not thrilled with the way that Harlequin has handled this from the outset.
However, I’m equally offended by the way the organizations have responded. Groups that I’ve faithfully paid membership dues to for years, whose boards I’ve served on, were just as quick to kick me and my work to the curb. The Harlequin authors are getting it on both ends. We’re being penalized for a decision made by our publisher that we had absolutely nothing to do with. And we’ve also been summarily marginalized by organizations we considered ourselves to be an intrinsic part of.

So what happens now? Perhaps renaming the imprint will satisfy the concerns of the various organizations. If not, perhaps Harlequin will make another concession—or they won’t, which will force some tough choices down the line.

And I suspect that many Harlequin authors are reconsidering their relationship with their publisher. Should some of Harlequin’s bread-and-butter authors like Graham and Macomber jump ship once their contracts are up, I doubt the profits from the new vanity line will offset the loss.

Pirates Ahoy

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by Michelle Gagnon

I received a Google alert last week for a website called, “Plunder.com.” I clicked on it, and lo and behold, it led to a file sharing site. And there were all three of my books, in their entirety, available for free download. Including THE GATEKEEPER, which was just released two weeks ago.

Obviously this is not a rarity, I know plenty of other authors who have been the victims of piracy. And to the site’s credit, as soon as my publisher’s legal department contacted them, the files were removed. But still–who knows how many free copies were downloaded during the few days that the files were posted? Ebook downloads still constitute a small portion of overall sales–but did the free files make a dent in my Kindle and/or Sony Reader sales? Impossible to say.

The publishing industry is entering a new phase. They’re now confronting issues that the music industry has been wrestling with for the past decade. Year after year, total music sales have declined, and industry insiders attribute much of that loss to the continued popularity of pirated songs. According to a report issued in January by the IFPI, fully ninety-five percent of all online music downloads were unauthorized.
The statistics are much lower for pirated books, but it’s only going to get worse. As eBook readers come down in price, chances are they’ll become as ubiquitous as iPods. And when that happens, this type of piracy will become more and more prevalent.

Most authors who renewed contracts in the year since the financial meltdown saw their advances slashed by thirty percent or more. Combine piracy with the impact of the book price wars, and it’ll become nearly impossible for most writers to eke out a living from their work.

Last week Declan Burke posted a poignant message about why he’s decided it’s no longer feasible to pursue a career as a writer. Unfortunately, there’s a chance that more and more authors will be forced into making the same decision. Our own John Ramsey Miller recently posted about the difficulties writers face today, and how it only seems to be getting harder.

Some people argue that self-publishing ebooks will fill this void. To be honest, I have my doubts. First of all, the benefit of an advance is that it enables an author to pay the bills while writing the book. You also receive editorial assistance, marketing help, and distribution. I can say for a fact that without that editorial help, all of my books would have suffered. Sure, I could hire an outside editor–but that would involve more money out of pocket. Throw in cover design, formatting, marketing materials…and my ebook would enter the marketplace down a few thousand dollars. So I’d need to earn at least that to see a profit.

And if the marketplace is flooded with self-published books (which is already happening), how does an author stand out among the crowd? Even if you manage to claw out a niche for yourself, how do you sell enough books to earn a living? I know authors who are garnering a few thousand dollars a year from their ebooks, but that’s clearly not enough to survive on. And it’s only going to become more difficult.


Sorry to be all doom and gloom, but the truth was that seeing my work posted for free struck me as a harbinger of worse things to come. I spent a year of my life on each of those books. If you factor in the total hours worked on them, I earned less than minimum wage for their creation. And now someone was giving them away, completely disregarding all of that effort. Someone was basically saying that they were worthless, so people might as well have them for free.

I realize that “Rachell” probably didn’t have all this in mind when she converted the files so they could be shared. But think of it this way. You can’t leave a restaurant without paying for a meal, otherwise the next time you go, the restaurant will likely have closed since they couldn’t pay their bills. A good meal costs money to produce; so does a good book. If you don’t pay for things, down the road they won’t be there for you. So if you love books, and want to continue enjoying the same wide selection down the line, for God’s sake buy them. If you want to read them for free, get a library card. Anything else just makes you a thief, and in the end you’ll be stuck eating mac and cheese.



The Book Price Wars

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by Michelle Gagnon

I stumbled across this article yesterday:

“The cost of John Grisham’s “Ford County,” officially released Tuesday, moved up and down like stock market shares as rivals Amazon.com and Walmart.com extended, then rescinded, their high discounts for top-selling pre-orders. Early in the day, Amazon was selling Grisham’s book of short stories for $9, the same price it had offered for “Ford County” before publication and a sign that Amazon was ready to continue the cost competition beyond the release date. Walmart.com was selling “Ford County” for $12 early Tuesday, then cut the price to the pre-order discount of $8.98.”

The larger booksellers like Amazon did something similar for Dan Brown’s last release. While most hardcovers retail for $24.95, chances were you could find The Lost Symbol on Amazon for $16, or even less.

But cheap books are a good thing, right?
Wrong, and here’s why.

BYE BYE INDIES:
This type of price fixing devastates independent booksellers, who can’t possibly compete with those discounts. Already under pressure from the big box stores, this trend of offering the most popular releases at huge discounts almost guarantees their demise. I spoke with one independent bookseller the other day who confessed that for some books, she sends her staff to Costco or Wal-mart, because the discount there is far greater than what they receive from their regular distributors. Wal-mart and Amazon are slowly but surely tightening their grip around the throats of the indies with this practice. Although there will always be some consumers who are willing to spend a bit more to support their local bookstore, in a tight economy, it’s unrealistic to expect people to spend two or three times as much for the same product they can order from the comfort of their home.

THE AUTHORS
Right now, the publishing industry has quite literally put all their eggs in one proverbial basket. Fewer than fifty authors are currently propping the industry up. Their books already receive the lion’s share of the marketing budget, and now those books are being offered at previously unheard of discounts. So a typical consumer wanders into a bookstore. What’s the likelihood that they’ll purchase a hardcover by an author they’ve never heard of, when the latest James Patterson opus at the front of the store is selling for half the price? The top of the pyramid will continue to shrink, as the publishers place all their bets on a few proven writers. The likelihood of breaking out, or building an audience, in the face of that is daunting to say the least.

In addition to that, here’s another excerpt from the article, “Authors, publishers and rival booksellers worry that cutting the price so low will harm competition and force down the cost of books overall, leading to a reduction in author advances.” Advances have already shrunk by up to a third this year for many authors. While the writers who are considered “bankable” will still receive six and seven figure advances, most authors will end up working for less than minimum wage. Which means that fewer people will be able to afford pursuing a publishing career, shrinking the talent pool even further.

THE PUBLISHERS
I’ll confess to not knowing exactly how much it costs to produce a hardcover once editing, marketing, typesetting, printing, and distribution costs are factored into the equation. However, now that Amazon, Walmart, and Target are conditioning consumers to expect lower prices, the margins for publishers will shrink. They simply won’t be able to afford to publish as many books each year. Titles that might be viewed as riskier will be avoided entirely. So there will be fewer options out there for readers. Grisham himself acknowledged as much in a recent interview with Matt Lauer, in which he criticized predatory pricing and said it was going to make it much more difficult for aspiring writers to be published, and for publishers and booksellers to survive.

Last week, the ABA sent a letter to the Justice Department requesting that they investigate the predatory pricing practices of vendors like Amazon, Wal-mart, and Target.
Price fixing is never a good thing. The bookselling industry is facing an impending monopoly, with a few retailers gradually eliminating the competition. And if they succeed, it’s bad news for everyone.