Burning Questions About E-Publishing

With the emergence of the e-book market, I have a few burning questions, in no particular order:

1. Where do agents fit if an actual sale isn't involved?

2. If you're offered a contract from a publisher, what sort of provisions do you want in the e-book clause? When Amazon is offering 70% to the author , and allowing prices as low as $2.99 in order to achieve it, what are publishers offering? And does it make a difference to you?

3. How long do you intend to continue your pursuit of traditional publication? Is there a point where you will get tired of leaving your fate up to the whims of others?

4. Does knowing that much of the marketing is left to you whether you make pennies on a sale of a traditionally published book or dollars on an e-published book make a difference?

5. Is there an opportunity here for small presses that the large houses can't (or won't) take advantage of?

6. What about the unpublished author with no reader base? Is the Sales Hill the same climb the e-pub route as the traditional one?

7. Do you see the time coming when e-pubbed books will have the editors name on the front as well as the authors? Or some kind of Better Writing Seal of Approval because it's been professionally edited?

Here's a terrific tie-in blog post from Michael Hyatt, the CEO of Thomas Nelson: http://tinyurl.com/2ut8s7d.


What are your questions? Do you have any answers, or even guesses? What do you think about this as an author? A reader?




CR: Racing the Devil by E. Michael Terrell, and wondering why I let it sit in my TBR pile as long as I did.

It's all better with friends.

Agent Quest

I've got my list and I'm checking it twice.

Gonna find out which agents are naughty, and which ones are nice.

But seriously . . .

I want to personalize my query letters. Partly because I want a personal relationship (not just a business relationship), and partly because showing that I've done the least little bit of research might set my query apart from the generic slop they must get inundated with every day.

I have 14 agents on my hit list. One of my cp's advises that I probably need 50 (try to envision personalizing 50 query letters to people you don't know personally . . .). The other one landed her agent on her third try.

And I've already mentally revised the first sentence in my query letter. Ugh.

What I'm about to say is snotty and I would never want to be responsible for ripping away someone's dream, but this is my blog so this is my fantasy . . . If all of the writers who haven't studied craft, who haven't done their research, who haven't finished a manuscript, who are ego-centric and/or narcissistic, would just turn their attention to other endeavors (I dunno—Interior Design? Auditioning for American Idol?), the battle for attention might just shift.

A well-balanced (mostly) writer with an open mind for improvement, and a disposition for mission, would simply have to announce the completion of her manuscript—the genre and the word-count—and agents would be sitting on her Internet Doorstop waiting to make (me) an offer. They'd be bearing flowers and chocolate and fine, red wine.

Wouldn't that be cool?

And I really, really want to get back to my next project. Although this agent quest is necessary, it's a bit of a distraction.

Advice, anyone?



CR: The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner.

It's all better with friends.

Buried Agents

I've been reading a few agent's blogs, as well as following some on Twitter.

(If you want to get some real-time information and glimpses into the life of an agent, I highly recommend Twitter. There's less of a filter, and even though there's a character limit, there isn't a tweet limit.)

What I see happening almost every day is that people who have completed a manuscript, think their work is ready to publish. Or, at a minimum, ready for an agent to shop it. I don't get the idea that there are any large number of submissions where the agent feels the writer has taken time to re-write and edit their manuscripts. To work with a critique group or a private editor. To fine-tune and hone their craft.

To even complete the most rudimentary research as to who the agent is and what they're looking for.

I get the feeling that writers who have completed a manuscript, without even doing a cursory read-through, throw a net into the waters to see if they can snag an agent. Any agent.

Am I the only one bothered on many levels by this?



CR: 212 by Alafair Burke.

It's all better with friends.