So, you’re traditionally published. And you like being traditionally published. And you don’t want to not be traditionally published. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t care about self-publishing, because there are four ways that self-publishing is complementary to–not contradictory with–traditional publishing.

1. You can use self-publishing as a threat in contract negotiations. Up until now, you go into contract negotiations and say, “I want a pony! And a better e-royalty rate!” They have patted you on the head and said, “Or else what?” You now have an “or else.” You won’t use it, but they don’t have to know that.

2. You might have backlist titles, and you can get the rights back to them and self-publish them. Yes, there’s still work involved–you’ll need a new cover and you’ll need to perhaps scan the titles in, proof them, and format them–but you won’t have to deal with editing.

3. You might want to write a novella, to bring in new fans to your series–or potentially, to tide your fans over while they wait for your next.

4. You only sold North American rights to your novels. Did you know that on Amazon, you can put up books and restrict the territories to the other 283 countries that are not in North America? You can get your books in front of an international audience. Next time someone e-mails and says, “I can’t get your books in ____!” then you can let them know they can.

In a few weeks, I will be at RWA’s 2011 conference. I’m really looking forward to this for a number of reasons.

What does that mean? First, if you live in the vicinity of New York, I’ll be signing books at the annual “Readers for Life” Literacy Autographing. I’m not the only one (of course)–there will be hundreds of other authors there. It’s a wonderful event, full of readers and authors and energy. The publishers donate the books, and the proceeds all go to local literacy efforts. So I’ll be there, signing copies of my print books. If you already have a copy and just want to drop by to say hi, that’s cool, too.

Second: Many people have noticed that there is nothing on the official RWA schedule about self-publishing. I don’t blame RWA for this; the call for workshops went out at a point when self-publishing was barely on the horizon. But I do think it’s a shame there’s nothing out there. So a group of us are putting together an informal breakfast meeting to chat about self-publishing. It will be at 7:30 AM on Wednesday, June 29th. The info:

We’re a little unsure whether there is a continental breakfast included in the conference price this year (I’ve heard a rumor it’s not), but if there is, then let’s meet in the breakfast area. If not, we’ll meet at Starbucks.

Feel free to spread the word to others who might be interesting in the topic. This will be a very casual discussion, nothing formal.

I’m looking forward to this.

Finally, if you’re attending the conference, I am on a panel entitled “The Seven Deadly Sins of Second Books,” talking about why the infamous “sophomore” book is so infamous. Also with me are Tiffany Clare, Kris Kennedy, Susan Gee Heino, and Susan Sey. I’ll be talking about Trial by Desire, a book I spent so much time on that even today, the thought of having to look at one word of it make me feel ill to my stomach. Everyone else on the panel has lovely, awesome second books, and naturally I have no idea what they will have to contribute, since obviously, boring.

Our workshop will not be recorded, mostly because we cannot talk about our second books without using profane, obscene language. This is on Wednesday, 3:15 PM, in Chelsea/Gotham.

In the last 24 hours, I have heard not one, not two, not three, but five separate tales of woe about agents attempting to wrest certain concessions from authors. I’m not going to go into the details; those are private.

So this is an open letter to agents who are thinking that they need to get authors to sign away as much as possible, RIGHT NOW.

I know some of you are worried about how you will make money in the future. It shows, because some of you are claiming you have rights to things that you really shouldn’t have rights to. Others of you are setting up business models that, frankly, suck for authors.

How do you think your author is going to feel when they discover that you’ve screwed them over? Are they going to want to do business with you in the future when you try for massive land grabs?

Who do you think is going to win? Every commercially viable author has a lot of choice as to who her agent is. I know that some of you believe that you are in demand, and you are–but an author who is commercially viable is also in demand. There are not enough commercially viable authors to go around to all the agents who are in business today. You know it. We know it, too. We have choices.

If you are so focused on getting the maximum number of dollars out of an author today, you are going to lose tomorrow, because nobody will want to work with you. If your business model actively harms an author’s best interest, you won’t be her agent tomorrow.

Here’s the reason you make money today as an agent: Because you zealously represent your clients’ interests, and because she knows she will make more money working with you than she would working on her own. See that? It’s perfectly obvious: If your business model doesn’t make the author more money than she could make on her own, you don’t have a business. The worse your terms are for the author, the faster you will not have a business.

So think twice before you screw your authors. It might make you a few bucks today, but it isn’t going to last. If you want a business in the future, the question you need to ask yourself is: “How can I make my author money?” The question you shouldn’t be asking yourself is: “How can I make money off my author?”

So, I talked earlier about the whole notion of paying percentages.

I want to mention one last thing about it, and that’s the notion that everyone other than the author provides “day labor.” What do I mean by “day labor”?

This post by Dean Wesley Smith is instructive:

Everyone who reads my blog knows how I feel about giving a percentage of any kind of your property for day labor. (Like giving the gardener a percentage of your house for trimming a hedge.)

Oh, the word “day laborers.” It’s implied that you could go down to the street corner and hire anyone to do precisely the same job. And it may be true that some of the people in publishing do work that is noncreative and fungible. But…all of them? Really? Getting your book edited is like getting your hedge trimmed?

Let’s be more specific. You think that a good substantive editor can’t act as a true creative partner?

Look, I get that some editors are crap–I don’t have the longevity that Kris and Dean do, but I do keep my ear to the ground, and I have friends who gossip. I know that there are editors who don’t edit. I know there are editors who edit badly. I know there are editors who suggest changes just so they can feel like they did something.

But I also know there are editors who can work with an author, not against her, to help produce the best book possible. (I had one.) I know that there are editors who are so magical, authors will take paycuts to work with her. (I don’t know this personally, but based on available evidence, I’d be willing to bet good money that Angela James is one.)

Many editors, in fact, edit late at night or on the weekends. They edit when they’re visiting their families over Christmas (personal experience again here). They do so carefully, methodically, and with an eye toward helping the author write the best book she can manage. I’m kind of offended on behalf of some of the amazing editors out there—people who are vastly underpaid and underappreciated. I get that I’m supposed to disrespect traditional publishing at this point, but I can’t stomach talking like that about people who spend 60-80 hours a week making almost nothing, while living in one of the most expensive cities on the planet.

They do that because they really, truly believe in making amazing books. That just makes me angry.

You can talk about authors being underpaid, but editors are underpaid, too–and the very first person I could see myself paying a (time-limited) percent to is an amazing editor. These people may be attached to a business model that doesn’t make a lot of sense to you, but that’s no reason to denigrate what they do.

And maybe I’m just showing my colors here. Because here’s the other thing—I am okay with not maximizing my income. It’s totally fine with me if I make a little less money, if that means I’m paying someone enough that they can earn a living wage. I don’t need all my business deals to cut the other party to the bone. I don’t want to screw anyone. Just because I won’t be the frog doesn’t mean I have to be the monkey.

I’m being very careful with how I spend money now, because I don’t know how much I’m going to make. But if I start making reasonable profits, I don’t mind sharing them with the people who are most vital to my success. Maybe that’s crappy business sense, but whatever. I didn’t take this step so that I could replicate the things that most bug me about the industry.

Okay. Rant over.

So I’ve been thinking about print copies.

Print copies of full-length books will be available as soon as I can make them available–hopefully only a few weeks after the digital version. (The delay will mostly be a matter of Lightning Source approving the material and making it available in their catalog.)

I haven’t yet made a print version of Unlocked, because hey, it’s only a little over 111 pages. Since these will all have to be printed POD, I don’t see I could make it available for anything except around $5.99 or so–which to my ear sounds way too expensive for 100 pages. But I know I will be writing more novellas (I really like the form!) and had planned at some point to release a print anthology combining three of them (probably at a price point closer to 10.99–I can’t be sure until I know the length). But this probably won’t be until 2012 or so, and I hate to leave my print readers out for so long.

So this is a question for those of you who only read in print, or who prefer to read in print: Would you want to buy a print copy at $5.99, available sometime in the next month, knowing that it will be available in an anthology form next year, or would you hold off for the anthology. What do you want?

At some point in the future, I’ll have another post for indie bookstore owners about terms.

EDITED TO ADD: What do you think about the possibility of having the novellas combined with full-length editions?

E.g., putting Unlocked as a bonus at the end of the print edition of Unraveled?

I don’t like categorical statements. I mean, aside from that one–the one about not liking categorical statements. I especially don’t like categorical statements about a class of people. I never have, and I don’t think I’m going to start now.

I like to base my opinion of people on the basis of things like how they act, how responsive they are to others. I decide if they’re good people and worthy of my trust based on what they do. Not how they look. Or what religion they follow. Whether they’re male or female. Black. White. Fat. Skinny. Ugly. You name it, I don’t believe in judging people on the basis of broad-based classifications.

I also don’t judge people on the basis of what they do for a living. There are some telemarketers out there who are good people, just trying to get by. There are some pediatricians who are probably awful. No one class of employment is all good or all bad.

And so while, yes, I will say that you should fire an agent who starts a 50/50 publishing venture, I don’t believe that all agents are bad. Far from it. To say otherwise is prejudice, plain and simple. Judging someone on the basis of their actions is fine–that’s not prejudice, it’s postjudice (to borrow from Carl Sagan). You are supposed to be able to make decisions on the basis of things you actually know about someone. I can figure out pretty quickly that a 50/50 venture sucks.

But you know what? A lot of agents haven’t proposed anything remotely like that. And so before we excoriate them as a class, let’s think about all of the agents who haven’t immediately rushed to exploit their clients. A lot of them are passionate about doing what is right for their clients. To say that they’re all a bad lot is just prejudice.

And think about this: before you respond to this post to explain to me why all agents really are bad, ask yourself this: Do you have proof that all agents really are bad, or do you just have evidence that some agents are bad? Because I don’t believe it is right, fair, or moral to judge all members of a class on the basis of evidence about some of them.

No, it’s not anyone’s birthday–at least not that I know about.

Almost two full months ago, I promised you that if I beat Loretta Chase in DA BWAHA, I would give you a short scene between Richard and Smite, one that disclosed all kinds of secrets, some of which you would not be able to glean from either Unveiled or Unclaimed.

Through some miracle, I won that round.

And I have not forgotten my promise. I just delayed it a little…actually, a lot, because what worked perfectly well as a scene to establish what had happened in a key scene between two important players actually needed a ton of research and various other details to make it fit for public consumption.

But fit for public consumption it is now! Here you are: Birthday Gift.

First, I’m over at Not an Editor today talking about my philosophy for reading other writer’s work & critiquing.

And second, if that piques your interest, I have two critiques for charity up. One is at Brenda Novak’s Diabetes Auction here. The other is Kat Brauer’s Crits for Water, where I’m donating a critique for a first scene (about 2500 words, give or take). My crit for Kat Brauer should go up on May 4th, so watch for it!

I’ve agreed to match a donation for Kat Brauer’s auction, so bid high and make me squirm.

I may not have mentioned this particular fact about me before, but my family is amazing and wonderful. I remember this most often on days like today.

Today being Easter.

Ah, Easter. In my childhood, Easter was a fabulous holiday. We dyed eggs the night before and then decorated them.

The dyeing phase was all about bragging rights. How many distinct colors could you dye your egg, given 12 mugs filled with different color dyes? It was also entirely irrelevant, as the dyeing phase was followed by the decoration phase, and the decoration phase was so elaborate as to generally cover up the dye.

We made eggs into sheep by gluing cotton balls all over. Because my family has no sense of propriety, we’ve had Santa Claus eggs (this was quite rude–as everyone in my family knows, the Easter Bunny is jealous of Santa Claus and has been plotting his downfall for years). Eggs became horses, space shuttles, bullets, and guns. They were strung together into multi-segmented dragons.

An egg–carefully dyed a mottled green and brown–could be turned into a tank with some wheels and a gun turret. Black construction paper and a pipecleaner, all painstakingly cut, turned the peach-colored egg of the dying Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader with lightsaber. I remember one time I built an eight-inch high gallows out of cardboard just so I could have an egg hanging from a noose. Do you have any idea how HARD it is to make a noose hold an egg? Eggs have no necks. They’re not really designed for hanging. I was inordinately proud when I got it to stay.

My mother praised me. How she managed to do that with a straight face, I’m still not sure. In retrospect, my subject matter was probably a little grisly, and more than vaguely inappropriate for the holiday, all things considered.

After we decorated everything, my parents hid the eggs in utterly inaccessible spots. Eggs were stashed inside smoke alarms and ceiling fixtures. They were buried deep in fifty-gallon containers of wheat. Disassembly of furniture and electrical components was often required; it was a boring Easter if nobody needed a screwdriver. One year, my Easter basket was hidden in the toilet tank. Another time my mother hoisted my sister’s up on ropes behind the curtains in the living room.

And in case you haven’t noticed, we decorated a great many Easter eggs (close to 50). My parents never made a list of where they hid them. Easter eggs were the gift that kept on giving, sometimes years after the fact.

But there was always another part to Easter, of course. This was the part that wasn’t about the crass commercialism of finding eggs and ransacking Easter baskets. This is the sweet, sentimental part, the part that touches my heart and makes me think of family togetherness. This is the bit where I share really important life lessons, ones that I will carry with me for ever and ever.

You see, once my siblings and I had found our Easter baskets and given up on the last six eggs, we would all get together and…and….

And what did you think I was going to say?

Of course we gambled our Easter candy. We invented truly elaborate gambling games and machines. Naturally, we did our best to hide our perfidy from my parents, who abhorred gambling, violence, and any number of other truly fun activities. But that just meant that there was no arbitrator in times of dispute.

So when I think of Easter, I think of that really heart-warming time I won 72 jellybeans from my sister. That’s when she learned this very important rule: the house is only guaranteed to win if its bank vastly exceeds the coffers of the players.

Happy Easter, everyone!

When discussing the rejection of the settlement agreement by Judge Chin, Scott Turow, the head of the Author’s Guild, had this to say:

“Regardless of the outcome of our discussions with publishers and Google, opening up far greater access to out-of-print books through new technologies that create new markets is an idea whose time has come,” said Mr.Turow. “Readers want access to these unavailable works, and authors need every market they can get. There has to be a way to make this happen. It’s a top priority for the Authors Guild.”

This is either deeply disingenuous or deeply ignorant. Mr. Turow, let me introduce you to Kindle Direct Publishing. And PubIt. And Smashwords. And iTunes Connect. These are places where authors can monetize their backlist. You’re right–the time has come for this one. In fact, it’s already here, which is why it is happening at an incredible pace.

So, how’d the Author’s Guild do on negotiating the royalty rate? Let’s see.

Kindle: 70%.
PubIt: 65%.
Smashwords: 85%.
iTunes Connect: 70%.

And the Author’s Guild got us…. *drumroll*

70%! Not bad, Author’s Guild.

Except, wait. That’s 70% of net. There are costs that will be deducted–like the cost of the transaction and financial services fees, so this is at least something less than 70%. Still, it’s not terrible.

But the terms that are most damaging to authors are buried after the royalty rate. Those are the terms that allow Google to set any price it wants, so long as it pays you the royalty on the List Price you have set internally. Yes, you can set your price to any price point. But Google has the right to discount off the price that you set.

Why is that worrying? Because in order to get Amazon’s 70% revenue, you have to let Amazon match prices online. So if Google had rights to your backlist titles, and you put your books up on Amazon, and Google lowered your price (as it was allowed to do), Amazon could match that price lowering. And if Google lowered its price below $2.99, Amazon would match… and you’d get bumped from the 70% royalty to the 35% royalty.

How much does that hurt? Just ask Lee Goldberg, who through a technical glitch had his prices on Kobo slashed to 99 cents, and therefore his prices on Amazon cut to $0.99 from $2.99. He’ll lose thousands in a week.

So if you were a member of the class of the Google Books Settlement, and you think there’s a chance you might bring out those backlist titles on your own, breathe a deep sigh of relief. If the Settlement had gone through, it could have cost you 35% of your revenue through Amazon forever.

One of the reasons I opposed the Settlement was because it makes no sense to set terms over electronic distribution forever when the landscape is changing on a monthly basis. We didn’t know what Amazon’s new terms would be when the settlement was negotiated. We don’t even know what its terms will look like in 6 months. But in light of the massively changed digital environment, if the Authors’ Guild truly represents authors, they need to back away from any settlement that purports to give an author’s backlist to a third party for the life of the copyright.

So look at what Goldberg is losing because someone is cutting the prices to his books: he’s losing thousands in one week because of an error. Now multiply that by the backlist of every author covered by the Google Books Settlement, times the number of authors, times the number of weeks until the work goes out of copyright. Add in corrections for decreased sales over time, if you want, but I think you see the problem quite quickly: This is a massive loss, and had the settlement gone through it would have required authors to preemptively set their prices on the Google Books Site so prohibitively high, to prevent Amazon from price-matching a discount, as to render the Google Books site useless.