Screw the Gatekeepers
I grabbed this screenshot from the Amazon Kindle store last week when looking at the top-100 bestselling travel reference books.
First of all, thanks to everyone who has ever bought a Kindle copy of The World’s Cheapest Destinations! (Or for that matter, a paper one or PDF one or iBookstore one).
For writers, there’s a whole big batch of lessons in that little picture.
The first book has had massive publicity, plenty of promotional funds, and a well-known New York publishing house behind it. The second has had me, the mom-and-pop business in Maine known as Booklocker, and close to zero in promotional money behind it. I believe this is what they call “leveling the playing field.”
The funny thing is, I’m probably making three or four times the royalties on my book that Patricia Shultz is making on hers, even though we’re both doing the same amount of work. Actually she probably works harder than me on promotion because she’s got a whole line of related products to sell. But most of her book revenue is actually going to the publisher. Same deal with the majority of the 98 books behind mine on that list (and the 1000 after that) that are put out by well-known publishers.
In most traditional book publishing contracts, the author is only getting 10% or 15% of the net earnings—of the wholesale cost, after accounting for returns.
That whole arrangement seems antiquated. And just plain unfair.
Screw the gatekeepers. If you’ve built up a following and/or have something worthwhile to share, you probably don’t need them as much as you think you do. You certainly don’t need them as much as you did in the last millennium, when these awful publishing arrangements almost made sense.
About Author
Tim
Tim Leffel is the author of Travel Writing 2.0 as well as several other successful books. His work has been recognized by SATW, NATJA, and the Solas Awards. He has contributed to more than 50 publications as a freelancer and is the editor of four websites and blogs, including the "Best online travel magazine" and the popular Cheapest Destinations Blog, established in 2003. He served six years as Conference Director for TBEX and five years as co-chair of the NATJA Advisory board.
What freelance writer or photographer could fail to give at least a little hopeful cheer on reading that post?
Of course the magic words are: “if you’ve built up a following and/or have something worthwhile to share”.
Disintermediation and opportunity go together.
Enjoyed the post.
Jill,
Yes, there’s always a catch. And seldom a shortcut. It’s hard work turning an idea into a success no matter what platform or media method is around. It’s just a quicker process now and a potentially more lucrative one for the creator. Still, if it’s a bad book (or bad book idea) with no marketing plan, nothing has changed. There has to be an audience for what you’re writing or your audience is yourself. No money in that…
Tim –
I was telling myself exactly the same thing last night when I noticed this on my print book:
The top 10 books this hour on Amazon for Budget Travel:
3 Frommer’s Guides
4 Lonely Planet guides
1 Rough Guide
1 by the editor of Budget Travel magazine
… and me at #5.
The last three weeks I have been in the top 10 of all 4 of my categories – often
at #1 – Senior Travel, RVing (Transportation category), and North American
Travel. Three of the 4 are different search paths – and I’m there in all of them.
Disintermediation is happening everywhere!
Good Job Tim.
Carol
Great job Carol! Keep rocking it.
Congratulations on this, Tim! :)
This post is a service to wterirs everywhere. Thank you. I wrote my first book recently after years of magazine pieces and went through my own phase of wrenching can-I-really-write-a-book self-doubt. It passed, sort of, when I got too busy and immersed in the research and writing to think about it anymore. Then I somehow emerged on the other side. I’m sure you’ll write a terrific book, and I look forward to reading it.On Scrivener I tried it and can see why a lot of wterirs like it, but I eventually ditched it. I used Devonthink instead to keep the research organized and recommend it highly for any research-intensive proejct. Devonthink does have a learning curve, but it’s one that’s worth climbing. I also use a Mac program called Freedom that shuts down Internet access for as long as you tell it an hour, two hours, whatever. I am weak willed when it comes to the Internet, and this program did the job for me. And, I second Maryn on taking good care of your physical self. It will keep you healthy, sane and energized. Good luck!
I’m currently working on a book for a major publisher. The reason I’m going that route is not because of money (although that would be nice) but for exposure and publicity. Because I own my own property online, I have the opportunity to convert any publicity I get.
Once you reach a certain point however, you can pull a Seth Godin :)
Gary, that assumes your publisher really gets behind it and the result is real publicity. That only happens with about 1% of the books from the major publishers, less from the mid-sized ones. Walk into any B&N superstore and you’ll see what I mean. How many have you read about or heard of? Unless it’s on an endcap, they’re probably not putting much into it in the way of resources.
Many book publicists I correspond with at Perceptive Travel are working 30-40 books at one time. The best they can do is react to requests. So that leaves prestige…
I have two close friends who are book authors with well-known publishers. They are constantly moaning that nobody does anything for their books. After it’s packaged and out the door, that’s the end of the support. They have to do close to 100% of the promotion, so it seems lopsided that they only get 10% of the proceeds. The successful authors are subsidizing the unsuccessful ones in this system.
A belated cheer for this! I’ve just about decided on self-publishing The Elastic Waist Entrepreneur for exactly the reasons you’ve given. I do the work, I want the pay. Congrats, Tim.