Collaboration
April 1, 2011
The anthology I organized and edited, DEADLY BY THE DOZEN, has been "in print" now for about 5 weeks, maybe 6. Today marked the day that I did that most important of publisher duties, doled out the checks and payments. I won't discuss details here except to say nobody got rich and I feel like they were, Joe Konrath and Amanda Hocking notwithstanding, fairly typical sales of an e-book.
One of the interesting aspects of e-book sales, at least at this point in time, is how they seem to continue to sell or even grow in sales. That tends to be quite different than a typical paper book, which typically sells well (if at all) in the first couple weeks, then dribbles off to nothing, then is pulled from the shelves and pulped, never to be heard from again.
Barring Armageddon or some new paradigm of publishing (always a possibility), DEADLY BY THE DOZEN, will remain on sale forever in a variety of formats. Forever would seem to be a very long time.
But, as the title of today's post suggests, I just want to point out that this was, for me, an interesting project and very satisfying and enjoyable in its own way. I got to focus on the art of things, on a sort of strange collaborative process, directing an anthology to publication. I was so pleased with the content and the creativity of everyone involved and satisfied, as I said, in an unexpected way. If you haven't picked this up, I hope you'll check it out. Lots of cool stuff there.
posted by Mark Terry at 6:58 AM
7 Comments:
I blogged on this yesterday, as you know. I think the chance to flex creativity with short stories and novellas, for which there is virtually no traditional market for, is one of the coolest things about e-pubbing independently. I still LOVE my traditional contracts. But this project was VERY fun for me.
Erica,
In a lot of ways, since I didn't actually expect to make much money off it, I found that kind of freeing. Over time it'll pay for itself from my perspective and seems to have given my other e-books a slight boost, and I imagine over a couple years we'll all be able to look at the money and say, "Y'know, spread out over a couple years, we did OK on a short story sales." But mostly it was just fun.
I bought this a couple weeks ago, and recommend it highly. Nice job, Mark, and all involved!
Thanks for putting the anthology together, Mark. Fun stuff!
I'll put this on my 'must buy when the car is paid off' list.
I think that the always-for-sale and never out-of-print nature of e-publishing is really the key thing. An e-book that sells twenty or thirty copies a month is obviously nothing compared to the sales of whatever current top-of-the-charts bestseller but twenty or thirty copies a month every month of every year for the rest of your life and beyond, that's different. And then think of five or ten (or more) books or stories out there, bringing in money every month... Would that be a living? Well, no, not at the $2.99 to $4.99 price points people keep talking about, but it would be a nice supplement to retirement. (Think of it as paying for an annual cruise...)
I love the idea of it being on sale forever. I am hoping that one of the contributors becomes a massive bestselling author then we can all rake it in as the millions of fans race to buy said bestselling author's must-have short story.
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