WOULD YOU TURN DOWN $500,000 TO EPUBLISH YOUR BOOK?

“A smile is the shortest distance between people.”

                                                                 Victor Borge

I want to welcome my new followers. I will be linking my blog with yours and hope that my articles spark something creative in your writing/publishing experience.

Last night I watched the PBS special on my favorite side-splitting pianist, Victor Borge. One of his routines that he performed dealt with punctuation. As new writers we often struggle with the correct usage of punctuation. His world famous, “Phonetic Pronunciation,” makes it all clear. If you have never heard this before please take four minutes and listen…you will laugh.






The eBook revolution is gaining momentum and many published authors are turning to this means of mass communication. New authors are also jumping on the bandwagon. Only a small percent of their books make a large splash in the reader community. Some are poorly written with little or no editing, bad plot, weak characters and redundant story and a few are brilliant.

I read an article on a published author who turned down a $500,000 advance on his most recent book. Randy Ingermanson has a discussion with James Scott Bell and discuses the pros and cons of the author’s decision. Click the link to read the full interview, http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/blog (Scroll down halfway to find this article).

A year ago I would not have thought of self publishing my own manuscript much less only doing it through the eBook medium. What are your thoughts on only self publishing as an eBook?

HAPPY NEW YEAR

This past year has seen many changes in the publishing community such as a tightening of the belt in the numbers of novels agented and advances that authors dreamed of getting smaller and smaller every day. Now an author must step up and make his/her presence known to the readers, touting their book(s), drawing in customers and driving sales (building platforms is crucial to a published author’s success). We have also seen many authors who believe in their work go the self-published route.

Self-published authors are increasing in number every month. When I took up the call to be a published author I read that agents would not count any self-published novel as a plus in a query letter. Even the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) contest excluded self-published novels. The self-published novel has come full circle and is now included in the ABNA and other contests throughout the year.

Many authors have turned to publishing their material in eBook format. This is a bold move because digital books are taking off in total sales. They are driving a publishers bottom line and in many cases saving a company from going into the red. We live in exciting times and I ask you are you ready to meet the challenge of becoming either an agented or a self-published author?
HAPPY NEW YEAR

EBook sales do not influence your hardcover book sales.

Penguin USA says eBook sales rose by more than 300 percent, and as projected; they had 10,000 titles available electronically by the end of the year. Rather than cannibalizing hardcover sales, Penguin's current inference is that low-priced eBooks are most attractive to readers who previously were primarily paperback buyers. "If we're right about that," Penguin CEO, Makinson said, then "the author is really not disadvantaged by the transition" from print to digital. What do you think of this statement? Are authors who have a hardcover book for sale losing money because of the low eBook prices? To read the full article, go to http://www.publishersmarketplace.com and sign up for the free newsletter. Publisher’s lunch brings you the latest in publishing news. This is where many top agents get their current information.