Barry Eisler and Stephen Leather ride the indie charts in U.S./UK

Yet another self-published Kindle writer makes a killing

  In mid-March we had Barry Eisler turning down a $500,000 advance, which he explained in his long interview with J.A. Konrath.

  As the Daily Finance's Martin Cloake reported:

  ' At the heart of both authors' reasoning [Konrath and Eisler] is the publisher's advance. Traditionally authors received a lump sum advance against sales which they would use to write the book. But that money has to be earned back once the book is published, and at a royalty – between 10 and 15% – of the sale price.

Insurance policy
This can be seen as a loan, an insurance policy, even a bet. Konrath says: "Signing with a big publisher is like signing a life insurance policy, where the payments keep getting larger while the payoff gets smaller as time goes on."  Taking that loan, argues Eisler, only makes sense if "the loan is so big that you don't think you'd ever be able to make that much on your own". '


Stephen Leather - UK
A British thriller writer, Stephen Leather (U.S.)  (UK) sells his ebooks for as little as 71 p (US $1.50) and has enjoyed the #1 spot on Amazon UK's ebook bestseller lists for "90 percent of the last three months" and that's from selling "somewhere in the region" of 2,000 ebooks a day.

' Leather enjoys a successful parallel career writing "big international thrillers" for Hodder & Stoughton.

But last August, when Amazon.co.uk opened its Kindle store, he saw an opportunity: "I was lucky, in that I had three novellas Hodder had turned down because they were in a different genre from my other books and too short to work as conventional paperbacks.

"But I realised they might work for the Kindle." '

He realized the Kindle (UK: K3) was going to be very big on Christmas Day and that after people downloaded the ebooks they'd always wanted, most of them relatively (or absolutely) expensive, they'd start looking for cheaper books.

"I knew the wave was going to break on Christmas Day.  I got myself in position to take advantage, I got on and I've been riding it ever since."


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's),   DX Graphite

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Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

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New 70 Percent Royalty Option for Kindle Digital Text Platform - Update

Today AMAZON announced, through Business Wire, its new 70 percent royalty option for the Kindle Digital Text Platform (DTP) that will enable authors and publishers to earn more royalties from every book sold.  For now, this is "available only for books sold in the United States."

I imagine this must be a fast response to Apple's offer to give publishers and authors more of a cut than Amazon has in the past - though the option is for publishers and authors who submit books through Amazon's Kindle DTP.  I don't know how that works with the big companies like Harper Collins, but ZDNet opines today that this would "throw them a bone" while still trying to keep prices down and reader-popular features intact.

  The option of course comes with an agreement that publishers and authors agree to allow several features such as text-to-speech for the book (well done!).

  The new option is "70 percent of list price, net of delivery costs" and "will be in addition to and will not replace the existing DTP standard royalty option.  This new 70 percent royalty option will become available on June 30, 2010."

  In addition, Amazon explains:

' Delivery costs will be based on file size and pricing will be $0.15/MB.  At today's median DTP file size of 368KB, delivery costs would be less than $0.06 per unit sold.  This new program can thus enable authors and publishers to make more money on every sale.  For example, on an $8.99 book an author would make $3.15 with the standard option, and $6.25 with the new 70 percent option.

"Today, authors often receive royalties in the range of 7 to 15 percent of the list price that publishers set for their physical books, or 25 percent of the net that publishers receive from retailers for their digital books," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content.  "We're excited that the new 70 percent royalty option for the Kindle Digital Text Platform will help us pay authors higher royalties when readers choose their books." '

And here's the important part:

' ... Books from authors and publishers who choose the 70 percent royalty option will have access to all the same features and be subject to all the same requirements as books receiving the standard royalty rate.  In addition, to qualify for the 70 percent royalty option, books must satisfy the following set of requirements:

 * The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99
 * This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book
 * The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights
 * The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-to-speech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store.
 * Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. Amazon will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70 percent royalty will be calculated off the sales price.

The 70 percent royalty option is for in-copyright works and is unavailable for works published before 1923 (a.k.a. public domain books).  At launch, the 70 percent royalty option will only be available for books sold in the United States.

The Kindle Digital Text Platform is a fast and easy self-publishing tool that lets anyone upload and format their books for sale in the Kindle Store. To learn more about the Kindle Digital Text Platform, visit http://dtp.amazon.com/ '

Excellent analysis by Silicon Vally Insider. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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Japanese-language Kindle? Int'l expansion in self-publishing

I was startled the other day to see The Mainichi Daily News article a couple of days ago that said "Major publishing firms are set to form an electronic book publishers' association next month in a bid to counter the expected launch of Amazon's Japanese-language Kindle e-reader."

  Where did that come from?  Haven't seen it anywhere else though I waited a couple of days after reading it.  They go on to say "With the e-book market expanding rapidly and the Japanese version of Kindle e-book reader expected to hit store shelves sometime soon, publishing companies have decided to come together to cope with the anticipated competition."

  Whether this is just a horror they're dreading or whether they have received word of such a device or not is not known where I sit.  But I do think it's an eventuality though not easy to implement for so many countries.

 In the meantime, in another step toward internationalism, Amazon has announced that its digital self-publishing arm is no longer limited to authors in the U.S. and the English language.  Its digital text platform "will support books written in German and French"

CNet's Lance Whitney adds "The Digital Text Platform enables writers to publish without the middleman (i.e. a book publisher) by uploading PDF, text, Word, or HTML versions of their books. Authors can set their own prices and in return grab 35 percent of sales."

That's it for now. Will have a bit more late tonight. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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