Me On Joe Konrath's Blog

EBook guru Joe Konrath gave me the honour of posting on his blog yesterday - then the gremlins at Blogger promptly took the whole posting down for twelve hours! Anyway, it's back up now - CLICK HERE TO READ IT.

Joe and I will be working on a project together late summer - all very hush hush but I'm very excited about it!

Just in case the gremlins get to work again, this is what I posted on Joe's blog. I was pleasantly surprised at how supportive the comments were from Joe himself, and from his readers. There were 81 comments within a few hours, almost all of them favourable, but you'll have to take my word for that because the Blogger gremlins wiped them all!

Anyway, this is what I wrote -

I stand in awe of Joe and his success selling eBooks. And I’m no slouch myself – I’ve sold more than 250,000 eBooks on Kindle alone since Christmas, almost all of them in the UK. (I’m sure you remember the UK – we’re the guys whose nuts you pulled out of the fire sixty-six years ago, for which many thanks!)

Joe is at the vanguard of ePublishing, shouting from the rooftops that traditional publishing is dead and the self-publishing is the way to go. Long live the revolution!

Is he right? You know, deep down I think he probably is, but I’ve just signed a new three-book deal with my UK publisher for close to $500,000. Could I make more money doing it myself? Yes, probably. So why don’t I? Here’s the thing. I love books. Real books. I always have done. And one of the biggest kicks I get is to walk into a bookstore and see a shelf-full of my books. I’ve got more than twenty ‘real’ books in print so often I get a shelf to myself. And I get an even bigger kick if my 12-year-old daughter is with me and she can see for herself the results of Dad locking himself away on the laptop for hours on end. I never get the same kick when I see someone reading a Kindle. It’s just not the same. So I’ll be sticking with real books, for a while longer at least!

But for most writers, a traditional publishing deal just isn’t possible. It used to be that a writer could send his work off to pretty much any publishing house and someone there would read it. I came up through the ‘slush pile’ and so did most of the writers of my generation. But one by one the publishers stopped accepting unsolicited manuscripts and agents became the new gatekeepers.

Literary agents in the UK are actually quite nice people, but they are a totally different animal in the US and I do understand the frustrations writers face when trying to get an agent in America. I’ve been writing for almost a quarter of a century and in all that time I’ve only met one decent human being working as a literary agent in the States – the rest have been horrible, self-centred, arrogant shits. Pardon my French. They seem to take pleasure in denying writers access to publishers and I for one hope take pleasure in the fact that the new ePublishing route cuts them out of the loop. Good riddance, hopefully.
So I do understand why so many writers are embracing Joe’s philosophy and turning to self-publishing eBooks. But there is one cold hard fact that I don’t seem to see anywhere on the blogs and forums devoted to ePublishing. You probably won’t like hearing it, especially if you are one of the new wave of “Indie” writers. But I’m going to say it anyway. Here goes. The vast majority of self-published eBooks are bad. Worse than bad. Awful. There, I’ve said it.

By “bad” I don’t just been badly formatted or lacking originality. I mean badly written. Bad punctuation. Clichéd descriptions. Clunky dialogue. And here’s the thing. When I hear “Indie” writers talking about their books, all they seem to talk about is how they go about marketing their work. How they blog, how they work their Facebook contacts, how they post on the forums. I never hear them talking about how they want to improve their craft. For most of the ones I come across it’s all about the selling. I get emails all the time from “Indie” writers asking me what the secret is to selling a lot of eBooks. I don’t get any asking how they can become better writers.

Here’s another home truth that I always used to tell wannabe writers. A good book will be published, eventually, by a traditional publishing house. A bad book almost certainly won’t be. The fact that Amazon and Smashwords have no quality controls in place mean that home truth no longer applies. Any book can be published. The floodgates have opened. And I don’t think that’s a good thing.

I think of writing a book as being akin to running a marathon. Anyone who finishes a marathon deserves kudos. It’s a long haul. It’s hard work. But just because you’ve run a marathon doesn’t mean you should be running at the Olympics.

If you have written a book then you deserve a pat on the back. Well done you. But just because you’ve written a book doesn’t mean it’s good enough to be published. And just because you’ve been published doesn’t mean that people will buy it. It seems to me that the rush to embrace self-publishing means that the quality of the work has become secondary to the marketing of it.

Every “Indie” writer now has a blog, mostly pale imitations of Joe’s, they have a Facebook presence which they use to constantly push their work, (a quarter of my Facebook “friends” are writers who do nothing other than post about their books) and they spend hours on the various eBook forums. It’s all about the marketing. They ask for other writers to tag their books, they get friends and family to post favourable reviews (it’s amazing how many self-published eBooks start of with half a dozen five-star reviews on Amazon, mostly from readers who have only ever reviewed the one book) and they share Tweets with other writers. Every “Indie” writer is following the same formula. Sell, sell, sell. The quality of the work seems to have got lost in the process.

A very wise friend once told me about the Rule Of Ten Thousand. Basically he took the view that it takes ten thousand hours to acquire any skill. That’s about how long it takes to learn a foreign language, or play the piano proficiently, or play pool expertly, or become a good poker player. It applies to almost everything (except maybe free-fall parachuting).

My first book was published, by Harper Collins, but by the time I had written it I had been working as a journalist for more than ten years and so had been writing for at last 10,000 hours. To be honest, I didn’t hit my stride until my fourth book.

Let’s say you write for two hours a day. That means you hit the 10,000 hours after 5,000 days, which is what, thirteen years? And yes, that’s probably how long it has taken most writers to reach the stage where they get published. Writing for the most part is a craft. A skill that has to be learned. Very few writers published the traditional way see their first book in print. It’s often their fifth or sixth that is good enough to be published. Jack Higgins famously wasn’t published until after he’d written more than a dozen novels and he didn’t achieve any real success until his 36th – The Eagle Has Landed.

EPublishing has removed that learning curve. Now any book can be published, no matter how awful. And I think that’s bad for writers. The one or two times I have suggested that a writer spend some time improving their craft I’ve had abuse heaped on me so these days I don’t bother saying anything. Yes, “Indie” writers need to sell their work, yes marketing is important, maybe vital, but let’s not let the medium become the message. My advice to any writer who has finished their first book is to relax, take a deep breath, and start the next one. Send your first novel out to every agent there is, and see what happens. You will probably be ignored, you might get a one-line rejection, but the fact is that if the book is good then it will be picked up. Eventually. And if you can’t get an agent, maybe consider that the book isn’t very good and make the next one better. And make the one after that even better.

Once you’ve done your ten thousand hours you can consider yourself a real writer and at that point you can go back and examine your early work. You’ll probably realise how much it can be improved, or maybe that it’s simply not publishable. And if after you’ve done your ten thousand hours you still haven’t got an agent or a publishing deal, then maybe you should think about self-publishing.

Even as I write this I can feel Joe at my shoulder saying ‘What about the money?’ Yes, I know that as a self-published writer you get to keep a bigger chunk of the profits. Yes I know that it’s ridiculous that the traditional publishers keep up to 85 per cent of the money they make from selling eBooks. Yes, it is a fact that you can get an eBook up within hours but a real books takes up to a year from delivery to being on the shelves. But for me at least, being a writer is about producing quality work. Work that I can be proud of. And that takes time and effort. I’m a better writer now than when I started because I have been traditionally published for more than twenty years. I really believe that if the Kindle had been around twenty years ago and I had rushed into self-publishing I would probably have made a lot of money but wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good a writer as I am. And for me, it’s the writing that matters.

My First Sale on Amazon.de

I made my first sale on Amazon's Kindle Germany store today. I put the German translation of Private Dancer on line about two weeks before the German store opened but sales couldn't have been slower. Make that sale. One sale. And it cost me almost £2,000 for the translation so at this rate I'll never get my investment back!

I'm also geared up for the opening of the French Kindle site, which I think will be fairly soon. I have already had Private Dancer translated and it's up on Kindle and Smashwords. I'll be doing the same with Bangkok Bob and The Missing Mormon fairly soon.

The problem is marketing. A lot of 'Indie' writers from the US and the UK rushed over to the German shop and began touting their books, either in English or using Google's automated translation service - which isn't perfect by any means. I'm not sure that will pay off, frankly, especially as in almost all cases they're not offering German translations of their books.

What is the answer to selling on the German site? I'm not sure. I'm trying a Facebook advertising campaign that targets men living in Germany with an interest in Thailand, which is where the book is set, but it's not been very successful so far. To be honest, my plan at the moment is to just wait and see. Which isn't much of a plan, really! I was planning to get The Basement and Once Bitten translated into German but that has been scrapped - I can't tell you why unfortunately, but it's part of a wider scheme involving Amazon...

On the horizon is China, of course. Amazon always plays its cards close to its chest, but my spies tell me that the Kindle people are getting very busy in China and if and when that market opens up it will be huge. I'm already looking at getting my books translated into Chinese.....

Amanda Hocking Reaches A Million!

EBook rockstar Amanda Hocking has just passed the one million sales mark! So far as I know she's only the fourth writer to sell a million eBooks - Stieg Larsson was first followed by James Patterson (who doesn't really count because he's a brand now rather than a writer). Nora Roberts, a romance writer, was third.

Amanda is the first Indie author to hit a million and she's still selling fast - at her current rate of sales she should hit two million well before the end of the year!

Here's what she's just posted on her Facebook Page - "I've officially sold at least 1,030,758 books (not counting the books sold through Apple, Kobo, Sony, and some Barnes & Noble that haven't reported to Smashwords yet)."

That's great news, and gives hope to Indie writers everywhere!

Article About EBooks On The Crime Time Website

An interesting article on self-publishing eBooks has just gone up on to the Crime Time website, which is run by my old mate Barry Forshaw. I'm mentioned, and quoted.

CLICK HERE to read the Crime Time article.

The writer of the piece did a detailed Q&A with me but didn't use much in the article so for anyone who is interested, here are my answers in full -

If you were starting out today, would you still follow the traditional publishing route or would you go fully indie?

Definitely the traditional route. There's a lot of excitement about what's happening with the eBook market but the simple fact is that the vast majority of eBooks being sold were written by established writers with the backing of big publishers. Before Kindle and eBooks came along there were very few real Indie writers and an awful lot of unpublished authors. Now there are almost no unpublished authors because anyone can put their work online as an eBook. In effect what has happened is that the slush pile has gone on line and unpublished writers have become Indie authors There are exceptions, of course, and there are some very good Indie eBooks out there. But they are the minority and it seems to me that a lot of so-called Indie writers would be better off honing their craft and really making an effort to get an agent and a publisher before rushing to put their work up for sale as an eBook.


Can you recommend any excellent indie crime novels or authors that you've discovered?

Allan Guthrie's novellas Bye Bye Baby and Killing Mum are good, but he was already an author (and agent) before his eBooks took off. That shows in both the quality of his writing and the covers of his books. Joe Konrath in the States has some great books that he's self-published as eBooks but again he was already an established author. One true Indie who has a quality product is Saffina Desforges with her paedophile thriller Sugar and Spice. A book called Remix by Lexi Revellian is receiving great reviews (far more five star reviews than I get!) and Mel Comley's two crime books Impeding Justice and Final Justice are climbing the Kindle bestseller list. But the majority of Indie books out there would benefit from a good editor being involved, both in terms of the writing and the production values.



The Kindle bestseller lists are dominated by crime and thrillers (9 out of the current top 10 as I write). Why do you think this is?


I wish I knew, because you are absolutely right. I think it might be something to do with the type of person who is more likely to buy a Kindle, maybe. But it is fascinating that the eBook bestseller list has so little in common with the regular bestseller list. That is partly down to price, of course. The Indie writers are selling their books for as little as 71p (equivalent to 99 cents in the US) and sometimes Amazon reduces the price even further to 49p. But cheap comedy fiction doesn't seem to do well, and while there are a lot of cheap vampire and horror books out there they tend not to get into the Top 20. My vampire book Once Bitten is an exception but I guess that is more of a thriller than the run-of-the-mill vampire story. Science fiction is generally the poor relation of the book world and they don't sell, even at 71p. My science fiction book Dreamer's Cat is doing well, but again that is also a thriller. I don't seem to be doing a good job of answering this question, do I?

It could be that the type of reader who is buying the Kindle at the moment is more adventurous than the average reader and is keen to experiment, especially where a book is competitively priced. If that's the case then as Kindle use starts to spread more widely the eBook bestseller list will begin to more closely resemble the regular bestseller lists. Or it could be that thrillers and crime novels are easier to read than more serious novels and so are better suited to the Kindle. I hope that's the case because then the spread of Kindle use will increase sales of thrillers, which would obviously be great news for me!




How do sales of your Kindle books compare to your print books?

I have three true Indie books up on line - The Basement, Once Bitten and Dreamer's Cat. At the moment I'm selling an average of more than 1,100 copies a day in total, more at weekends. Since I put them up in November last year I've sold more than 150,000 in total. One of my Spider Shepherd or Jack Nightingale thrillers would probably sell about 100,000 copies a year of the hardback, trade paperback, mass market paperback and eBook combined.



Could you foresee a time where you only wanted to produce ebooks and not bother with print books?

Definitely not. I love to hold a real book in my hands, I love to have them on my shelves. If I'm feeling depressed I take all the books I've written, more than 25 in all, put them on my coffee table and look at them while drinking a bottle of good wine. It never fails to cheer me up. And I love going into a book shop and seeing a whole shelf of my books on sale. You can't do that with eBooks.


You've written that you knew ebook sales were going to explode last Christmas so you positioned yourself to be ready. But did you do anything in particular to attain such high positions in the bestseller lists? Were sales driven by your existing fans?

I think I was definitely helped by my existing fan base, but the feedback I was getting over Christmas and the New Year period was that probably 90 per cent of the buyers of my three self-published eBooks were readers new to my work, which is great. And a good many of those new readers have gone on to buy my Hodder and Stoughton published books, which is also great! I did spend some time on various forums promoting my work up to and over Christmas, and still do from time to time. But I'm not sure how effective plugging on forums is. Most forums only have a few hundred visitors and maybe just a few dozen regulars, so forum posting will get you a few sales but not the hundreds every day that you need to get into the Top 20. I see some Indie authors trying to plug their books several times a day but without any real sales, and there are many authors who sell really well without ever posting on a single forum! I do get asked a lot about how I managed to get four books (Hodder also cut the price of my first Spider Shepherd thriller Hard Landing to 49p) into the Top 20 so quickly and frankly the answer is timing and luck! Coupled with a low price, of course!


I'm flat out writing my new Jack Nightingale book so haven't had much time to blog. Haven't had much time to shave or shower either!

And A Piece On Bloomberg

My pal Richard Vines, who I worked with on the South China Morning Post some twenty-five years ago, has just written an article about me for Bloomberg. Richard has one of the best jobs in journalism - he's Bloomberg's food critic and eats in all the world's top resrtaurants!

CLICK HERE to see the Bloomberg article

Article About Me In Der Spiegel

If you can read German, there's a pretty cool article about Amanda Hocking, and me, in the German newspaper Der Spiegel.

CLICK HERE to see the article.

I haven't blogged much this past month because I'm flat out writing my new Jack Nightingale book. Hopefully I'll be done in a couple of days!

Article About Me In The Observer Newspaper

I'm featured in The Observer newspaper in the UK today, along with US eBook star Amanda Hocking. It was written by the paper's books editor and it was clear from talking to him that journalists are as confused as everyone else about where the publishing world is going! I suggested that the paper starts to review books that have only been released as eBooks which is something that doesn't happen at the moment. The papers seem to think that a book only exists if it has been published by one of the big firms and really that's no longer the case and there are some great eBooks out there that don't exist as a physical edition!

A very cute photographer spent an hour taking my picture around Dublin but on the online story they used a photograph of a blonde lady holding a Kindle! I'm off to buy the paper to see if they used my picture in it!


CLICK HERE to see the article!