For your Kindle, a few offers courtesy Happy Reader Joyce:
- RX from the Garden by Kathleen Barnes. Price: $0. Genre: Food as Medicine, Healthy Living, Natural Health. No Reviews Yet.
- Let’s Go Europe 2011: The Student Travel Guide by Harvard Student Agencies Inc. Price: $0. Genre: Travel, Travel in Europe. Rated 4 stars on 8 reviews.
- Becoming a Talent Champion: Refocusing Executives on the Five Talent Activities That Matter by Corporate Executive Board. Price: $0. Genre: Business, Talent Focus, Executive Guidance. No reviews yet.
- Generation Rising by Andrew C. Thompson. Price: $0. Genre: Methodist, God’s call to live in love and connection, Gen X Christianity. No reviews yet.
- The Network Imperative: Community or Contagion? by Yoram Wind and Paul R. Kleindorfer. Price: $0. Genre: Wharton School of Business, Not Space Opera, Business & Investing. Novella? Chapter? Please note that this is the first chapter of a book – packaged as a $2.99 document, and then made free.
Next, we get a few deals:
- Mister Slaughter by Robert McCammon. Price: $4.99. Genre: Thriller, A Serial Killer and a Contemplative Problem Solver, A Fledgling Nation Reinventing Itself. Rated 4.5 stars on 41 reviews. Robert McCammon’s Swan Song is considered his swan song and one of the best post-apocalyptic novels ever written (it won the 1988 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel). Mister Slaughter sounds like it might be another excellent book. It’s only available in Kindle edition ($5) and in Hardcover ($13). Please note that this is the third book in a series featuring the protagonist but it seems like it stands well on its own.
- No Good Deed: Book One (The Mark Taylor Series) by Mary McDonald. Price: $1. Genre: Political, Cassandra with a Camera, Thriller with Fantasy & Romance. Rated 4.5 stars on 53 reviews.
The Joys of Signing Up with Publishers
John Rector did really well with his indie novel. The Grove used to be around #300. Perhaps it even hit the Top 100 (not 100% sure as didn’t track it). People really, really loved it.
He got a book deal. Everyone was happy for him.
Now he has -
- The Cold Kiss. Price: $7.99. Sales Rank: #12,726. Reviews: 4.5 stars on 25 reviews.
- The Grove. Price: $7.99. Sales Rank: #26,038. Reviews: 4 stars on 80 reviews.
There’s no other way to put it – Signing a book deal was a huge mistake. John Rector could have been a Top 100 Kindle Store Author. He could have had multiple books in the Top 100.
Instead, his very good books (as is clear from the reviews) are stuck at #12,726 and #26,038. If you’re an artist, people appreciating your art is worth a lot more than Publishers giving you the ‘stamp’ of Publisher-approved author.
Kindle owners had already chosen John Rector and made him quite successful. By signing a deal with a Publisher he moved away from focusing on readers, and is now paying the price.
The current crop of indie authors should pay very careful attention to what happened to the successful indie authors from 1 or 2 years ago. Why aren’t they dominating? Why aren’t they in the Top 100?
Perhaps it’s because they stopped focusing on readers and started focusing on Publishers.
It’s because they turned their backs on the opportunity to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a month as ‘for the people’ indie authors. Instead, they chose the option to earn $50K a year as ‘gatekeeper approved’ Publisher’s Authors.
Everyone in the Publishing industry needs to realize that readers decide everything now. Readers are very smart and aware of reality. They know that there’s no logical reason for an author doing well with $1 and $2 indie books to move in an anti-reader direction and start selling $7 and $10 Publisher published books.
The crutch of ‘we need to sell physical books’ has no legs because ebooks are beginning to become a huge market and because physical book rights can be sold separately.
Filed under: free books Tagged: | free kindle books
John Rector – never heard of him.
Are you aware of any examples yet of authors selling their physical book rights separately from their ebook rights?
Pretty much all the big authors going through Rosetta Books and OR Books and Open Road.
However, they are authors who signed physical book contracts when ebooks weren’t big – so they had never sold ebook rights. So, for their back list, they can now sell ebooks separately.
It’s a good question – Would Publishers now sign physical book contracts without ebook rights? Probably not.
Publishers stopped accepting physical-only rights a long time ago. Previous contracts from before then could include ebook rights or not depending on which standard wording was employed — most do include ebook rights, because they have some variant of “all rights including” or “all rights except” somewhere in there.
Didn’t John Rector sign on with Amazonencore?
I don’t see how authors who publish with publishers are making bad decisions. They can always self publish again if they decide that’s the way they want to go. It’s not like the door is closed now, and we all know nobody needs permission or a pass to do upload a book to Amazon, so why not do both?
I wish I had the decision to make, too.
Good question. I’m not sure whether he signed with Tor or Encore.
Wait, you don’t even know where he published his books? Do you know how much he was offered to publish with his publisher? Do you know how many copies he’s sold and how much he’s made since going with a publisher compared to self publishing, because it sounds like you’re basing this cautionary tale on nothing but your own assumptions and old sales rankings on Amazon. Have you considered doing some research, or are you too worried that might hurt your argument?
I went out to Rector’s website and saw that he’s had several foreign deals and a movie option, so it doesn’t sound like he’s doing too bad for himself. Did you think about talking to him about his experience with self publishing and traditional publishing, or was creating a straw man argument based on no real information your goal?
You’re not alone in this lazy style of rants, but I for one would love to hear some of these writers talk about their experiences. I just signed with an agent, and she’s shopping my novel to NYC publishers. I have a few reservations, and hearing from those who’ve gone before me would be great. These articles based on no facts are a total waste of time, and they’re everywhere. Why not do something original and unbiased?
Tie, let’s consider the words you’re throwing at my post -
assumptions, straw man argument, lazy style of rant, total waste of time, unoriginal, biased.
Thank you for your comment talking about the supposed lack of hard figures in my argument while providing ZERO hard facts in your comment.
Here are the only two hard facts that are needed -
1. The Cold Kiss. Sales Rank: #12,726.
2. The Grove. Sales Rank: #26,038.
If you’re really an artist then perhaps your readers, people who admire your art, should matter more to you than how much money some Publisher will give you as an advance, or how much money you can make from movie rights. Those sales ranks mean that hardly any readers are reading the books.
What’s the point if your books aren’t being read?
The crux of my argument is – As an indie author you can make lots of money and also have lots of people read your books. Provided you focus on readers.
You seem very affected by the fact that the post discusses this – that readers control everything now. It doesn’t really matter what either of us thinks. Reality has a way of overpowering wishes. Readers have all the power and they will reward authors who treat them well and prioritize them. Authors who don’t make readers their #1, #2, and #3 priority are going to pay the price.
Finally, it isn’t meant to criticize any writer. Boyd Morrison and John Rector and other authors went with Publishers and ended up worse off in terms of sales. Amanda Hocking is going off with a Publisher and we’ll see how her sales do.
It’s their free choice and no one is against them.
However, the underlying act, i.e. prioritizing publishers over readers – that’s what readers dislike. If you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a month from indie books (at a time when ebooks are just 10% to 15% of the market) – Why go with Publishers?
Why not wait for 1.5 to 2 years when indie authors will be making millions a month?
From Amanda Hocking’s post it seems she wants to do paper books, see what Publishers can offer her, and reach the level of authors like James Patterson who make tens of millions of dollars a year.
Perhaps John Rector and Boyd Morrison wanted similar things.
It doesn’t matter.
All that matters now is that readers decide everything and any author asking readers to pay $10, when she/he could offer those same books for $3, is gambling with her/his career. It’s the French Revolution and the aristocracy is going to get slaughtered. Now is the worst possible time to aspire to the ranks of nobility or to side with the nobility.
I’m not sure that it’s fair to say that he stopped focusing on readers — there’s no evidence of that.
What there is evidence for is that he may have misjudged the market. Readers’ perception of value have radically changed in the past 12-18 months. Whereas once they may have been happy to pay $7.99 or even $9.99 for an e-book, they no longer are. Not when there are so many good and even great alternatives at $2.99 and even $.99.
The irony is that the very publishers from whom writers seek validation are the ones who inadvertently hastened the above-described change by jacking up prices on e-books. They provided an opening for indies to undercut them and now $2.99 is the new $9.99
It’s tough. On one hand it’s not like authors have not thought about readers. On the other hand they seem completely oblivious to the fact that the middle-men never have the creators’ best interests or the people’s best interests in mind.
The very act of signing up with a Publisher is the equivalent of saying – I’m going to focus less on readers. Everyone thinks they aren’t going to be distracted and that they will be the first author ever to become even more focused on what’s best for readers even after linking their financial future with Publishers. Truth is, the minute an author’s financial success is linked with a Publisher he’s less reader-centric.
With regard to the Amazon nod to Germany, I have a potential insight…at least a decent maybe. Here at home in Chattanooga, TN, we are now home to Vokswagen’s new Passat, & the most recent addition to the huge land tract parcel that VW is occupying is Amazon’s newest distribution facility… Enormous corporate neighbors literally sharing the same gas stations, restaurants, & neighborhoods. May be a bit of corporate good neighborship in a ” foreign land” (the South). They’ve both moved into what had been essentially rural space surrounded by a city. That would make sense on the German deal for Kindle…our school system in this county is having to jump through hoops.
Thanks a lot for the insight.
It may well be that his books are getting good reviews because he worked with a talented editor at his publishing company. Financial success is not the only kind of success, and a change in his Amazon rankings doesn’t mean he turned away from his readers.
There are many pros and cons to working with publishers, even with all the changes we’ve seen. It’s not an open-and-shut case either way, and you certainly can’t say that he made a mistake just because his ranking is now lower at one store, however large.
I speak, by the way, as someone who publishes both with a traditional publisher, and as an indie publisher with my backlist. I’m far from alone in pursuing this avenue; just take a look at http://www.backlistebooks.com to some well-known authors who are going indie and traditional at the same time.
I look at it this way (having done both). As an indie, you are working directly for your customers, the readers.
As a big-league author, you are a temporary contract employee for a company or corporation whose decisions are primarily driven by the needs of the entity, which often means the shareholders.
Writers should do what makes them happy, which isn’t necessarily the most money or even the most readers. But one thing I absolutely agree with is that many e-book readers are now fully aware of their power and influence and freedom of choice.
Scott Nicholson
rX from the garden is NOT free.
Offers come and offers go. If you subscribe to the blog (top right – there’s a button/link) then you can get informaed when new offers come out. Some offers go in a few hours and some stay for weeks.
I’ve known John for a few years now, hell, I even read The Grove in its infancy. He is nowhere near being a sell-out and dodging his readers. I wished we all could have his luck.
Nothing against him. Just his strategy.