KYRA DAVIS

New York Times bestselling author of Just One Night

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Self Publishing...Could It Be Better Than The Alternative?

I spent the bulk of last week researching; not a novel but my new entrepreneurial adventure: self-publishing the sequel to Vows, Vendettas & A Little Black Dress.  I'm hardly the only published author who has looked into self-publishing.  Currently Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez is in the process of publishing her chick-lit novel, The Clubhouse Diaries.  Alisa has a New York Times Bestseller under her belt and yet if you read her blog it's not hard to pick up on her frustration with the publishing industry. J.A Konrth has six published books but will be publishing his seventh book with Amazon. No traditional publishing house will be involved.  Another New York Times bestselling author (who wishes to remain unnamed until closer to launch date) is also turning her back on the publishing houses in order to publish ebooks for the romance genre.

It sort of feels like the beginning of a revolution.

Maybe I'm overstating things.  Maybe self-published novels will never be the money makers that books which are published by New York publishing houses are.  Maybe readers won't embrace ebooks and print-on-demand novels the way they embrace various HarperCollins novels.  But it certainly seems to be going that way, particularly with e-books.  The key with ebooks is that authors keep a HUGE percentage of their profits if they self-publish them.  For instance, right now I get less than 10% of every book I sell and my agent gets 15% of that.  If I self-publish a book for an e-reader like Kindle I get to keep 70% of the profits and no agent is needed to broker the deal.  Of course the bestselling books on Kindle are VERY cheap.  Many of them are free stories uploaded by authors who hope a free read will drive people to buy their for-profit books.  But a lot of ebooks are selling for $1.99, $2.99, $3.99 and so on.  Right now if you look at Kindle's top 10 bestselling books you will see only one is currently on the NY Times Bestsellers list: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo That book is a HUGELY popular right now but why aren't ANY of the other hugely popular books making it on that list? Could it be because Random House decided to sell the e-book of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo for $5.50 rather than the standard $9.99? Probably.  The truth is people are hurting right now.  I know that we are theoretically coming out of this recession but in my state's unemployment is still at 13% and since California is the most populous state in the country...well that's a lot of people who would like to save $5.49 on their next book purchase. 

More and more midlist authors are reporting making more money by self-publishing ebooks than they are publishing with a New York publishing house.  I think it's fair to assume that their ebook success was facilitated by the fact that their traditional publishers already helped them build a name and a fan-base.    But still, it seems to me that there's something wrong with these figures.  It's not that I'm questioning the legitimacy of the claims authors are making about the amount of money they're bringing in but I am wondering how a book published in ANY format can earn an author more money when he/she is getting no marketing support than that same author was making when they had the weight of an entire professional marketing team behind them.  That's a little messed up.

Of course that's the thing, there IS no marketing for mid-list authors.  All those marketing and publicity dollars go to big named authors and books that the publisher thinks have a big enough concept to become an instant blockbuster.  For every book that gets a marketing/publicity budget of even twenty thousand dollars there are about a thousand books that never see a cent of support.  Those books are just sort of thrown out there in the hope that someone strolling through the bookstore will be attracted by the pretty font on the books spine (because you know those midlist books don't usually get faced out). Amazon on the other hand has told J.A. Konrath that, come launch time they will target market to every single person who has ever bought one of his books through their site. 

It feels like Amazon is trying to lure authors over to them with high royalty percentages the same way they lured readers over to Kindle books with cheap prices.  Right now the vast majority of published authors are sticking with their publishing houses but if Amazon, or any self-published author, produces a blockbuster there might be a bit of an exodus. 

Maybe it won't go down like that.  But it's something to watch.


Kyra Davis
Bestselling Author of:
The Sophie Katz Mystery Series
and
So Much For My Happy Ending
Order Vows, Vendettas & A Little Black Dress today! Vows, Vendettas and a Little Black Dress
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10 comments :

  1. Salimah J. PerkinsThursday, May 20, 2010 at 4:08:00 PM PDT

    Kyra, I'm so glad you're open to this option. I know it's not ideal; but I have to say that as I've been weighing your predicament over the last several days, self-publishing has crossed my mind [on your behalf], too. What we need here is a groundswell of activity and a grassroots campaign! Who knows? Maybe in 3-5 years, publishing houses will be struggling to stay relevant in the face of a sea change.

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  2. kyradavisThursday, May 20, 2010 at 5:24:00 PM PDT

    Thank you epub and your right a groundswell is EXACTLY what I need. As for the publishing houses struggling to stay relevant...MUCH stranger things have happened

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  3. UnknownThursday, May 20, 2010 at 7:04:00 PM PDT

    Okay! I'm on board, as long as I can read the e-book version on my sony pocket reader....please consider this. I couldn't afford a Kindle, and usually their e-books aren't compatible with other devices. Maybe that will one day change. I don't know. Anyway....I actually have bought and will continue to buy e-books that cost up to 19.99. I actually find that if I spend the money, the quality of writing and story is better. You see...the free stuff usually isn't that great, and if it is, it's probably a free classic that I can get from google books. Anyway...to say it in short, whatever the price, I'll buy your book! I love your series!

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  4. kyradavisThursday, May 20, 2010 at 9:06:00 PM PDT

    Thank you, Katie! I think that ebooks sold by different vendors (books sold for B&N Nook, Amazon Kindle and whatnot) may increase in their universality. In other words I think that as more and more e-readers are available the booksellers will find that it is more profitable for them to allow their ebooks to be uploaded onto a different company's ereader as well as their own just as you can download LaLa, iLike and Pandora tunes can be downloaded with iTunes. But that probably won't happen until each business' ereader has established a strong base of patrons. I also think that Amazon is ATTEMPTING to solve the pricing/quality issue you're referring to by hand selecting the "best" self-published ebooks and publishing them under their new imprint "Amazon Encore." Those books will be promoted by Amazon and listed separately from the other ebooks and will also be sold for aprox. $2.99. Again, this is all new and it will be interesting to see how everything plays out on an industry level.

    On a personal level...well again, thank you : ) The support and loyalty of readers like you are the very things that are giving me the motivation to pursue this

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  5. KimberlyFriday, May 21, 2010 at 6:54:00 AM PDT

    Hi, Kyra.
    The one thing you haven't mentioned and you have to watch out for with e-books is piracy. I read a lot of romance genre e-books and just recently two of my favorite authors have had their books posted to a group website free. People do no understand that it is unethical and illegal. Copyright means nothing. One of the authors asked the poster not to post her book on free website, but she was only given a rude response by the poster who said that since she paid for the book it was now hers to do with as she pleased. Ummm, no, you paid for a copy of the book. I know other authors who will put their readers on blast on author blogs and grops if they get busted posting or getting books for free from some of these pirate websites. It totally stinks.
    On another note I enjoy having immediate access to e-books especially if the local Borders or library doesn't carry what I'm looking for. The easiest is to offer differnt formats including good old PDF. I don't have an e-reader so I just read on my laptop for now. Also with Lulu.com which I mentioned on FB you can also sell paperback versions of your books as well as e-versions. So for those who are still scared of e-books they do have the option of a hard copy to read. Best Wishes, Kimberly

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  6. Stephanie ZiaFriday, May 21, 2010 at 8:03:00 AM PDT

    I'm so sorry to read you've had such a devastating blow thrown at you by your publishers. I've been struggling in the hinterland for a while now, published, not published, published, not published, & currently experimenting with the ebook route. I wish you the very best of luck with it. It'll take a while to become widespread, especially here in the UK, but I'm sure it's going to be the way forward for authors.

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  7. kyradavisFriday, May 21, 2010 at 8:53:00 AM PDT

    Kimberly: I'm afraid piracy is a problem that we're all going to be stuck with for a while, if not forever. I'm sure that as this market becomes more popular there will be a crack down on book piracy the way there was a crack down on pirated music...and just like the crack down on pirated music it will only be minimally effective. At this moment two of the several publishing options I'm looking at are Lulu and Createspace. Both offer packages that involve both actual books and ebooks so for those who don't want to read on their computer or on their Nook/Kindle/Google e-reader they will have the option of buying a good old fashioned book (which is how I like to read).

    Stephanie: I'm not entirely sure if it's going to take a very long time before ebooks become a big thing, particularly here. We Americans love our gadgets ;) Also the iPad changes the dynamic. Before Kindle was almost a Geeky-techie thing but the Pop-Culture Gods decided a long time ago that everything Mac is cool so I suspect the iPad is going to attract a much younger market. I also just got my latest royalty statement and was really surprised to see that my ebooks are selling even better in France than they are here so the phenomenon is clearly spreading. Best of luck with your next book! I of all people know how tough it can be out there and I know that perseverance is key : )

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  8. Becky LeJeuneSaturday, May 22, 2010 at 7:38:00 AM PDT

    Konrath is going with AmazonEncore, isn't that less a self-pub route and more regular publishing through Amazon? I've read one of their books and the quality was pretty good. Looked like it had some editing and design involved and the binding was better than some self-pubs I've come across.

    I work for a small house and I can say that I've crunched the numbers and for a motivated author, there's certainly a chance to rake in the buck with self-pub as an option. What worries me is that the big houses are dropping midlisters left and right. And I've always complained about why the BIG books get the BIG marketing dollars. Something like a Stephen King and a James Patterson doesn't need a huge marketing budget, people are going to buy it anyway. Those funds should be used in the way they're intended, to market books.

    I could rant for days. I wish I was in a position to do something about it. I'm blogging to make up for the fact that I can't hand sell in the bookstores anymore. I hope that readers see your books there and decide to try them themselves.

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  9. kyradavisSaturday, May 22, 2010 at 8:46:00 PM PDT

    Becky, it's readers like you who are keeping my options open. Without the kind of word-of-mouth publicity that you're generating with your blog the Sophie series would have been dropped LONG ago. I think what's going on now is that since the bookstores are dramatically cutting back on their inventories pub houses have decided to just try to get as many of their blockbusters stocked as possible (because those are the easy sales) and are ignoring, and dropping, the rest. I bent over backward promoting Lust, Loathing & A Little Lip Gloss and Mira didn't do ANYTHING to complement my efforts. It is so discouraging but if I'm going to do it all myself then I really should do it all myself.

    AmazonEncore isn't exactly "traditional publishing." They basically take self-published books and prop them up with marketing support. Most of the sites that help you self-publish these days (Lulu, Amazon and whatnot) have copy editors available to help you out and they all promise to deliver a professional looking book. It's becoming increasingly rare to find a self-published manuscript that doesn't look like every other book you'd find in a bookstore on the outside. Of course there is still a quality issue at times in regards to content which is why Amazon now has AmazonEncore, to differentiate the best of the books that are self-published through Kindle and Amazon's Createspace from the rest.

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  10. AnonymousSunday, June 13, 2010 at 6:58:00 AM PDT

    Also, what about libraries? Will they be able to place print orders? How about ebooks? My library lends out ebooks in Adobe Digital Editions and Mobipocket using Overdrive: http://www.overdrive.com/

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ALSO BY KYRA DAVIS

Just One Night Trilogy

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Seven Swans A'Shooting

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So Much for My Happy Ending

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Lust, Loathing
and a Little Lip Gloss

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ABOUT KYRA DAVIS

I'm the internationally published author of the Sophie Katz mystery series, and So Much For My Happy Ending. My first Erotic Fiction Trilogy will be released in January 2013.

Aside from that, I'm a single mom; I'm addicted to coffee and True Blood (the show, not the drink). I'm happy with who I am yet I’m always striving to be better; I have more bad hair days than good ones, I love a challenge but I am not fearless, I’m….well…just me.