New Year, New Thoughts

I hope this will be a two-parter where I come back later today and say I published Burning Daylight.  I wasn't even close yesterday.  I'm 1/2 way thru the final pass where I add illustrations.  Then I reformat and do another pass.  The book is over 300 pages long, it takes time.

Last month made me think this epubbing is a real thing for me.  Sure it's a very real thing for people writing in other categories.  Gee,  It's been a really long time, years, since anyone has wanted to read what I wrote.  Then to see the sales.  I thought well Christmas Day is an anomaly.  But the anomaly persists and yesterday Dream Horse outsold Summer Horse by 2 copies.  And I think the total was 50 books.  BN accounting is weird and can take 48 hours to rectify all the numbers.  I don't know what the total for the month was--something under 900 between BN & Amazon.

Bad Apple sold 10 yesterday.  This says there is hope to reach a niche audience.  This also suggests there is hope for the series.  I'm okay with doing BA3 Rise With the Wind and having no one read it.  I've been writing for years and having no one read any of it.  But to think people might at some point be waiting for it, excited about it.  Wow.  Just Wow.

I've talked about niche markets before.  And that article from the WSJ I pointed you to a couple days ago talked about niche markets in the music world.  Damian Kulash said that bands were getting sponsorship.  Some years back I think it was the jewelry company Bulgari that had an author do product placement in her book.  That was shocking to some degree.  But the world has changed.  I'd be perfectly happy to say Fender guitar instead of just guitar if Fender would pay me.  I would not be perfectly happy to say Tru drank a Diet Coke instead of milk.  Would I insert an ad at the end of the book?  It depends, doesn't it?  It depends on whether I think the product is good and helps the reader and doesn't conflict with the book.  I may not be saying that in a year's time, things may have changed so much.

Is the writing on the wall? Joe Konrath isn't "predicting" the end of traditional publishing as we know it but he's scrying it.  Maybe at some point all, or most, books will be POD (print on demand).  A couple years ago I purchased from Amazon a book on a Jewish town in France in the Middle Ages.  It probably sells 3 copies a year or something.  When I received it, it was obviously POD.  Maybe in the future, you won't say it looks POD (even if that's the accepted form of publishing everything).  If you're already formatting and designing the heck out of a book, the POD will look great, instead of a hastily thrown together cover for what's not a "book" but a manuscript.  I don't think we're at the point where books go away.  Yet.  In a hundred years?  Maybe so.  It's only 50 years ago (don't hold me to the exact numbers) when you bought music on vinyl.  You bought singles, 45s.  Then it was 8 tracks.  Then cassettes.  Then CDs.  Now I don't want to be searching for John Rutter's CD--where did I put that?--I just want it to be on my hard drive.  Maybe that's how we'll feel about our libraries as well.