Publishers Weekly has a piece looking at literary agents’ thoughts on J.A. Konrath’s decision to publish his next book through Amazon Encore. (We mentioned Konrath’s decision here.) Under the deal, the book will be released as a Kindle e-book this summer, then a paperback next year.
Update: Konrath himself responds here.
A number of agents seemed skeptical about whether this move has implications for the publishing as a whole. PW points out that Konrath’s sales had been steadily declining, which is why no publishers were interested in the latest book in his series. (Though Konrath explains in his response, mentioned above, that this is not true and the figures PW cites don’t tell the whole story.) In that light, they say, Amazon Encore was simply an alternative to self-publishing.
In his response on his blog, Konrath notes that his participation with AmazonEncore was far from “settling”, and indeed if they had been around in 2008 when he first shopped the book around to other publishers, they would have been his first choice, not his last.
It’s also worth noting that Amazon is going to do a helluva lot more than simply emailing people who downloaded my last book, but my NDA won’t allow me to discuss it. I can say it is more than ANY of my other publishers have done for any of my books, and I’m thrilled to be working with them.
Back in the PW article, some agents see the deal as pointing to a new, possibly lucrative opportunity for the midlist writers who are getting squeezed out of the blockbuster-hungry mainstream publishers to publish their works at a level between the big houses and self-publishing. Scott Waxman’s new publishing house, Diversion Books, is based on this model. It offers publishing in both e-book and print-on-demand forms, with an emphasis on e-books.
Waxman said Diversion Books will take on authors who cannot sell books in numbers that make financial sense for the major houses. "If you have an author with a platform who can sell books, we’re happy selling 5,000 to 10,000 copies," he said. While Diversion isn’t paying advances, it’s not taking everyone who comes in with a manuscript. "This isn’t self-publishing," he went on. "[With us] you get real publishing support. I know you don’t get that with self-publishing. This lives in between."
It’s interesting to see just how much the Internet has changed the nature of publishing, and is changing it more year by year. Before the advent of the web and, more recently, social networking, smaller companies simply couldn’t hope to reach as many consumers as the companies with the large advertising budgets. But the ‘net has leveled the playing field and made it possible for these companies to find their audience.
Related: The Konrath Effect: Will New Technology Ruin Talented Authors?
Publishers Weekly points out that Konrath’s sales had been steadily declining and suggests, well, Amazon is better than self-publishing, we suppose…not that they have a dog in this fight or anything. 😉
Sure, maybe his books don’t quite sell the numbers the publisher wants in exactly the way the publisher expects — big initial sales in the first couple of months. But Konrath clearly has an audience eager to scoop up his books and his books are good backlist.
Just because Konrath’s sales patterns don’t fit into the business plan of a specific company or a segment of a dinosaurian industry, it does not mean that Konrath’s business plan is a failure. Quite the contrary.
Mr. Konrath has noted that at current sales rates, he is on track to bank $170,000 this year from ebook sales…on ebooks that his publishers couldn’t be bothered to offer to the public. He already is making a lot more money off his ebooks than most authors do with the “major publishers.”
This is just a case of “it’s not *real* publishing because we say it ain’t.” But the numbers clearly show that J.A. Konrath is pioneering a path for the future that works for authors.
Bill Smith
http://www.billsmithbooks.com
Joe responds here. I’ve known Joe a while and there’s no one more open than he is about his career. PW’s story is lazy reporting at best and a hit piece at worst.
Fair enough. I’ve updated the piece.
I enjoyed reading Konrath’s blogspot take on the article. It’s good to know he’s successful. I think that print media tend to be biased against digital publishing so they tend to slant their articles in a negative way.
I’ve recently discovered Konrath’s Jack Daniels series and have purchased and read the first two on my Kindle. I plan to buy and read the whole series. When I was still buying books, at Barnes & Noble, I somehow missed him. So I guess he’s right when he says Amazon has done a better job of promoting him than his print publisher.
PW really did botch that article, if we believe Konrath (and I tend to, accounting for a little looking past the acceptable chest-thumping).
What comes out of this tale for me is that Konrath can make a fortune (by his terms) on books that would be money-losers, or not-worth-its, for the big publishers (by their terms).
Konrath only has his personal bills to take care of, and his blog costs him nothing. Self-publishing through Amazon DTP has only an additional cost to Konrath of paying an illustrator for a cover; here again, Konrath probably pays less for the illustration than the big publishing houses would. (Konrath only has to pay the guy who makes the picture; the publisher would have to pay that guy, plus their in-house art staff.)
Bottom line: Konrath’s hugely smaller expenses means he can make money on books that the big publisher can’t; what’s more, any given profits from a book are proportionally larger to Konrath than to a big publisher.
— asotir
I am keenly interested in J.A. Konrath’s move, as a mid-list author who is just beginning to make a name for herself with small, independent publishers. My short story collection, “Hellfire & Damnation” (www.HellfireandDamnationtheBook.com) has been extremely well-received, but the publishers that are putting me out (also, 3 volumes of “Ghostly Tales of Route 66”) are not set up to do e-books (et. al.) and that seems to be where the industry is heading. J.A. Konrath is a very good writer, and simply putting out a book because the author is already a name for reasons as spurious as being one of “Hef’s” girls in-house, or being a former TV celebrity (regardless of ability to write or having actually written the book at all) is bogus. I will watch J.A.’s trajectory with great interest and it sounds like he is forging a new path for good writers who deserve to be read, but can’t get a deal unless they are Fergie or Julie Andrews, etc.
Something corporate publishing has forgotten: the “American Dream” has always been achieved through the right mix of talent, hard work, ideas and innovation. JA Konrath has obviously found that mix. I applaud him! “The Dream” is often found by paddling upstream and/or paving a brand new path through the tangled forest that everyone else said couldn’t be traversed. Go, Mr. Konrath!
~Donna~
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002ZNJL78
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/9466
http://www.DonnaFasano.com