JUST THE FACTS

JUST THE FACTS
by Sunny

I gave two speeches this week on alternative publishing. The first was with Marilyn Meredith in Temecula, the second at Willow Bridge Books in Oakhurst.

It's hard to look at the excited and expectant faces of aspiring authors and have to lay the facts on them.

The facts, the stats of the publishing industry are not pretty. Add in the economic crisis the country is facing and the outlook is downright dismal. You can't eat books, your car cannot run on words, and I suppose we could all start burning our libraries to heat our homes, but I hope it doesn't come to that.

Fact: 132 million manuscripts are submitted yearly. 1% will be published.
Fact: 3,000 manuscripts are published daily
Of those published, only 2 % sold more than 5,000 copies.
16% sold fewer than 1,000 copies.
82% sold less than 100 copies.

IF a manuscript manages to get through the slush pile, 90% will be rejected after the first page is read.
98% will be rejected after the first chapter is read.
30-50 will get through to serious consideration.
In a good year, a publisher can put out 10 books. In a bad year, maybe 5.

New York used to be the center for publishing. Now the publishing industry is governed by 6 conglomerates, most based in Europe. Publishers know that 70% of the books they publish will never earn back their advances. The system is as archaic as the Guttenburg printing press.

There are diehard authors out there who want to believe they are the exception to the norm. They know the formula: Query letter, synopsis, the dreaded outline, the first three chapters. There is a reason this is called “submission.” The author goes through all the steps, kowtowing to the powers that be, which may be a 22-year-old with a red pen who just got out of college.

I'm a glass-half-full type of person. I don't get discouraged by any of this claptrap. If life hands me lemons, I'm making a meringue pie.

Small publishing outfits have filled the void. Computer technology means there doesn't have to be huge print runs. With Kindle on the scene, a writer can be author, publisher, editor, promoter and banker. We can finally sell our imagination without selling our souls.

It's good to have hopes and dreams and to set goals. I just hate to see writers remain unrealistic and inflexible. Stories are lost because the writer can't take another rejection. Is it really the world that rejects our efforts or are we rejecting opportunities within our reach?

Team Sunny and Marilyn and Erle Stanley Gardner

Last Saturday, Sunny Frazier and I gave two presentations at the Erle Stanley Gardner Mystery Weekend, writers conference.

We were scheduled to give separate workshops, but decided it would be more fun to do them together. In the morning we talked about promotion and the fact that all publishers expect you to have a marketing plan, many wanting it submitted right along with your query.

In the afternoon we talked about alternate means of publication--covering submitting to agents and New York publishers, small press, electronic publishers--and Sunny gave a great talk about publishing on Kindle (Amazon's hand-held reader.)

I've been giving presentations for the Erle Stanley Gardner Mystery Weekend since it began. I love going to Temecula because I have two married grandchildren with families who live in the area. We spend one night with one and the second with the other.

I've been a fan of Erle Stanley Gardner for years beginning with reading Perry Mason when we lived in Oxnard (where many of those mysteries occur) and of course, watching the TV show. When I found the ESG Mystery weekend on the Internet, I knew I had to be a part of it.

I've also been a friend of Sunny's for a long while and we've given other joint or back-to-back presentations and I think we compliment one another. In any case, I think we both had fun and our audiences learned something.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

RE-KINDLE READERSHIP

RE-KINDLING READERSHIP

When Oprah speaks, people listen. On Friday, she talked about her favorite new toy: Amazon Kindle. Of course she gave them away to the audience, downloaded her favorite books to get them started, and hosted the man who made Kindle possible.

Everything I hear about Kindle seems to be a one-way street. This $359 gadget will replace books. I know I won't be able to afford one until the price comes way down. I'm the type who loses cell phones and digital cameras. I like the feel of pages and yes, I dog-ear pages when I can't find a bookmark.

What I'm not hearing is what is most important to me as a writer. For the first time I can conceptualize, execute and publish my work any way I choose. I don't have to pay anyone and Amazon assures me I will get a good share of the profits.

I have an instruction phobia. I was prepared to be circumvented by Kindle's step-by-step guidelines. However, I'd volunteered to do a speech on alternative publishing options at the Erle Stanley Gardner Festival in two weeks. I had to figure out this new form of publishing.

I ran into a few problems, I overlooked a button I was suppose to click and I jumped the gun on the title and now I don't know how to remove it. What I accomplished gives me hope. I took seven of my flash fiction mysteries and I'm formatting them by putting them in one document with colored titles in bloody fonts to separate the stories. I'm saving the download into HTML as recommended. I'll be previewing it to see how it looks on Kindle. I think I'll charge about $1.75 for the download. I will look into getting a separate bank account for the money that flows from sales.

What if it doesn't sell? I'm out nothing but my time. All of my work has been published before and I have my rights back. Those stories aren't making me money collected on a flash drive. I've also done a bit of detective work to find ways to let Kindle owners know I exist.

My mind is going into overdrive with ideas of other projects I want to tackle: a collection of longer stories, a version of my Guerrilla Writers workbook, my Caribbean poetry, and my novel FOOLS RUSH IN. I'm trying to talk Kathleen into serializing her vampire novel.

Kindle can be a two-way street. I wonder how long it will take novice writers to figure this out.

*Guest Blogger Alert*

Today the KC Crew would like to welcome Sherman Lee.
Sherman is a local friend and supporter of the KC Writers who is with the Kings County Library.

Amazon Kindle: The Writer’s Friend
By Sherman Lee

Part One: Backstory
Developed in Cupertino, California, this wireless reading device hit the market back in November 2007. Customer demand was overwhelming. Amazon’s supply of Kindle’s sold out within five and a half hours at a price of $399.00 a unit. The price was later reduced to $359.00 in May 2008. The internal memory should hold at least 200 titles. The Kindle’s closest marketplace rival is the Sony Reader which appeared in September 2006. Other electronic reading devices on the market are the ECTACO JetBook and the iRex Reader 1000 ($650.00). The Sony Reader needs to be connected to a computer before titles can be downloaded. The Kindle requires no such connection to purchase books. But you must connect the Kindle to a computer if you wish to download music or audio books from Audible.com onto your Kindle.

There is no getting around the fact that the Kindle is expensive. Not everyone is going to go out and buy one. At this point in time it is still too early to tell if this will be a costly mistake for Jeff Bezos and the crew at Amazon, or if this is the spark that will ignite the e-book market after so many failed starts in the past. Sources vary as to the number of unit sold. Amazon is cagey about releasing such numbers. Guesstimates range from 10,000 to 30,000 units sold to 240,000 (a number that even Amazon claims is high).

Amazon will be targeting colleges and universities with a “student” version of the Kindle. The Kindle 2.0 is to be introduced in October 2008. Another Kindle with an 8 1/2” x 11” screen may be introduced in 2009. The two new Kindles might be introduced at the same time to take advantage of the 2008 Christmas shopping season. This time around, the consumer would be able to purchase a Kindle in a color besides white.

As with any discussion of the Kindle, I have heard many comments such as; I like real books, I don’t want to do my reading on an electronic device, and the Kindle is too expensive. I could buy a lot of books for that price. This is just a fad. I don’t want to have to buy my reading material from Amazon. All of these are good, valid points.

Perhaps in five years’ time, people will talk about the Kindle the same way people talk about old TV shows like “Fantasy Island” or “The Love Boat”—“Hey, do you remember that old….” I’m not here to predict the end of paper books. I’m not here to predict the future. I’m here to tell you, the published or soon to be published or would like to be published author, short story writer, essayist, poet, non-fiction writer, that you might want to look into the world of e-publishing using the Kindle as an introductory jumping off point. The Amazon Kindle could be a “game changer” in the publishing world.

Part Two: E-Publishing-The Kindle Advantage
In order to publish your work on Kindle, you must do two things: Have an account with Amazon.com and fill out a contract with them that requires some financial and tax information from you.

Why should you even bother? Perhaps you have a hard copy of a novel or short story sitting in a drawer or on a bookshelf somewhere collecting dust. Or you have months of work sitting in your computers hard drive. Why not get your work out to potential customers. Okay, maybe some of you are not computer savvy and don’t want to go through the hassle of uploading and formatting your work. But if you want to give it a try check out this site for more info http://www.amazon.com/ and go to Help and then click on Digital Products. This site was very helpful http://www.patbdoyle.com/?p=169

There are no guarantees in life. While it is possible to sell your work to Kindle customers, chances are you will not make a lot of money but you will reach a new source of readers and isn't that what we want.

Have you had an experiance with the kindle reader? Is it as easy as it seems?