Wednesday, September 26, 2012

And Then There is This ...


So, the bound galley for Ramal. It is officially a January, 2013 release, which means it should be on the racks Christmas Eve–and there is terrific marketing, hey? 

Need a last minute gift? Over here! Over here–!

Maybe gift cards to book stores will cause a major surge in sales between Christmas and New Year's. And, of course, Spielberg, looking for a new space opera project, will get into a bidding war with George Lucas for the movie rights ...

Look at the picture. You don't see me holding my breath waiting on that one ...

Though I am onboard the e-train and copacetic with the idea of reading more stuff on my iPad than in treeware nowadays, there is something to be said for having a tangible, no-batteries-needed paper book in your hand that makes it more real. If I had to guess, I'd say that however many copies it sells, it will probably move more in the e-realm than in paper; the biggest thing there being that once it goes up into the electronic markets, it stays there, no strip-the-covers-off and returns.

Well. Whatever. The "First in a New Series!" it says on the cover, and there will be at least two, because I've already written that many. A third is contracted, and barring sudden illness or accident, I'll get that one done. After that? Depends on how well they do, I suppose.

Probably Ace will let me put up a chapter or so up here for promo as the pub date draws nigh.

Yeah, yeah, I'm still working on the next Matador book. Slowly ...

4 comments:

  1. Where do you do better on your end? Nook or Print? (I'm pretty sure you have discussed this before, but my memory sucks today) I want to be sure to go with the one that is best for you ( at least initially.. its yours so I will eventually probably do both. Damn, I'm such the geeky fan-boy)

    Looking forward to it!

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  2. Up until, print has made me more than electronic sales.

    Of course, I was a print-only writer for what? thirty-some years or so. Ebooks haven't really been around very long -- I put my first one up on Amazon.com in 2009, only a bit over three years ago, even though it seems like a lot longer.

    Only a few of the ones published by New York have e-editions that I can track -- and the tie-ins and WFH stuff I don't see at all.

    If I got standard royalties, I could sell half as many ebooks as print and still make more.

    All my out-of-print titles together don't sell that many copies in any given month, but if you total them up over a year, it's a tidy sum, and I have no idea what the half-life of an e-title is.

    A paperback gets pulled after six or eight weeks in a lot of places, and might keep a few copies on the racks in some of the bigger stores longer.

    E-books put up when they started doing it years back are still there. All of mine are, and most of them sell dribs and drabs every month.

    Royalty rates are much higher for these, from 35% to 70%, depending, so every six buck book I sell nets me $4.20 at the higher rate, and $2.10 at the lower percentage, and since they are out-of-print, it's free money.

    My next Matador novel will go straight to ebook, and then we'll see how it sells compared to the sales I got when the most recent one came out back in 2006.

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  3. My next Matador novel will go straight to ebook, and then we'll see how it sells compared to the sales I got when the most recent one came out back in 2006.

    You're just bound and determined to make me go out and buy a Kindle, aren't you...

    ;)

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  4. Nah, you can read it on your phone, computer, laptop, iPad, all kinds of readers.

    ReplyDelete