Jared Sandman

Next Saturday (March 19th) I’m attending an author fair at the Land O’Lakes public library on Collier Parkway.  I’ll have all my books on hand to sell and sign, as will over a dozen other writers.  It starts at 10:30 AM and goes ’til, I think, about 12:30 PM.  Stop by and say hello.

Amazon has my novel THE WILD HUNT on sale for $10.80, over 25% off the cover price.  Don’t know how long the promotion will last, so pick up a copy today.  They also have LEVIATHAN on sale for $13.50, a 10% discount.  And the e-book versions of both are a bargain at $3.99.

If you prefer signed copies, I sell trade paperbacks of all my novels through the website here, under the “STORE” banner.

Short film courtesy of Greg Nicotero, special effects mastermind behind TV’s Masters of Horror, Fear Itself and The Walking Dead, not to mention a slew of horror/sci-fi movies.  This gem is packed with genre cameos from the worlds of horror and comedy.

Click here to watch it.

Yesterday morning Borders Books filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  They plan to close roughly one-third of their 600 stores.  See if your neighborhood bookstore is among the casualties:  http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/st_borders0216_20110216.html.

While there are many contributing factors that lead to a drastic move like this, let me highlight an important aspect that is so fundamental it’s often overlooked:  prices.

Years ago I worked for a Big Box mega-chain (not Borders).   The most frequent complaint I heard from customers was that books were too expensive.   Countless times I witnessed people read the bookjacket of the newest Stephen King novel (or James Patterson, John Grisham, et al.) and saw their noses wrinkle as they noted the cover price, after which the book went back on the shelf as the would-be buyer remarked, “I’ll just get it from the library.”

Ten years ago publishers gave bookstores a 40% discount, the difference between wholesale and retail price.   Let’s say, for example, you bought a book at Borders.  You paid $25 for it, the cover price.  The distributor “bought” it (on credit) from the publisher for $15.  After selling it to you, they pocketed $10.

Over the years these distributors have consolidated, allowing fewer businesses to apply more pressure on publishers.  As a consequence of this, in the past decade that 40% discount has increased to 60% or more.  (Diamond Book Distributors, for instance, requires 62%.)

This forces publishers to pass higher prices to the consumer. 

According to the School Library Journal, between 1990-1995 book prices jumped 9.5%.  From 1995-2000 that number rose to 12.3%.  Then 14.4% from 2000-2005. 

I’ve heard Amazon demands a discount increase of two percent every eighteen months, which means in the near future average trade hardcovers will top $30 to compensate.

Sometimes this benefits the consumer, as with steeply-discounted bestsellers.  Because the bookstore gets 60% off from the publisher, they can give you a 40% discount and still take 20% profit.  However, this works in your favor only for bestsellers, the fifty top-selling books in the store.  Because these discount policies are in place for all titles, the amount you saved on John Grisham’s latest is offset by higher prices for the other two hundred thousand titles in the store.

It’s rare for me to pay full price for a hardcover novel.  I did it once in the last year, for Robert McCammon’s Mister Slaughter.  Most volumes in my personal collection are either limited editions or out-of-print titles I picked up from a used bookstore. 

Recently I’ve noticed prices for small-press publications skyrocket from $40 apiece to $50, $60 or even $75.  I don’t think that is a sustainable business model either, but that’s a rant for another time.

I haven’t posted in a couple weeks because I’m deep in the final proofing stage for DREAMLAND.  There’s light at the end of this tunnel though, and the book should go on sale in the next couple weeks.  As always, check back here for updates about when and where you can purchase the latest book.

In the meantime, entertain yourself with this:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwx9dl_fb50.

-j.s.

So what is this object?  Some sort of horrible alien eyeball?  Perhaps a multicolored breast?  No, these are your odds as a writer.  This graph isn’t perfectly to scale, though it serves my demonstrative purpose.  I’ve always taken Sturgeon’s Law to heart, that “ninety percent of everything is shit.”

Hence a diagram of the Law in action.

Now let’s assume the outermost red circle represents everyone who has written a book.  To make these numbers nice and round, we’ll say one thousand people finish what they start.  (We’re going to ignore those who say they want to write a novel yet somehow never get around to doing the work.  A circle that size wouldn’t fit in this space.)  Most of those books are gonna be pretty terrible by default, especially the first-time novels.  But at least the project’s completed, and that counts for something.  Good for those folks, pop the champagne in celebration.

The next circle (blue) comprises those who’ve written a pretty solid book.  This would be about a hundred decent novels, as per the Law.  Some first-time novelists in there, no doubt, but more than likely writers who’ve been to that rodeo before.  Doubly great for them, pop the champagne and light a cigar. 

Now the green circle’s made up of those who actually sell that novel to a Big Six publisher.  They’ve gone through the query-go-round, probably retained a literary agent or miraculously landed the book through the slush pile.  Of our original thousand, we’re down to ten.  Pop the champagne, light a cigar and kiss the wife.

See that black dot smack in the center?  That’s the one book that actually makes the publisher some cash.  I’m not talking about breaking even, or earning out an advance and posting a tidy profit.  Serious money.  The kind most bestsellers can’t touch because the author’s advance was simply too large.  These are pop-the-champagne-light-a-cigar-kiss-the-wife-and-sacrifice-your-first-born numbers.

One in a thousand, a 00.001% shot.  If you want to not only be a writer but stay a writer, that’s the bull’s-eye you have to hit.  Every time.  Because if your sales slip, you’re toast. 

Maybe you’ll disagree with my numbers.  Personally I think they’re a touch conservative.  I believe the odds are worse than that in this economic environment.  And they’re likely brighter for non-fiction over fiction.  Since I write novels, we’ll stick with that.

The advice I’ve seen bandied about recently, usually when another writer’s first book comes out, is that the author is wise to spend his or her entire advance on marketing.  Promote the hell out of the book and pray it sells enough copies for the publisher to justify making an offer on Book 2.

Does this strike anyone else as being completely batshit insane counterintuitive?  That’s a slippery slope that leads straight to the poorhouse.  What happens when (if) Book 2 comes out?  Do you also spend that advance check to ensure you can publish a third book?  And when Book 3 is on sale, you piss away all your money for a shot at Book 4?

You see how this is an exercise in Sisyphean futility, right?  The whole of your career spent chasing a paycheck that will never come.

So how does this fit with the current changes to the publishing industry?  E-books will allow more writers more opportunities to make more money.  Instead of that ever-shrinking pinprick at the heart of the chart, e-books will widen that aperture.  Soon anyone who writes a solid book will be on even footing with the vast majority of Big Six authors.  Rather than one person in a thousand making decent money, there might be a hundred (the difference between the black and blue circles).   

If ninety percent of everything is shit, this gives that other ten percent the means to achieve success.  Welcome to the digital arena:  your odds just improved a hundredfold.

Last month there was talk of Borders potentially purchasing Barnes and Noble.  I find this confusing in a couple respects.

A)    Barnes and Noble is the larger company with a greater share of the bookselling market.

B)     Borders doesn’t have two nickels to rub together. http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/credit/the-bleeding-continues-another-quarter-of-dismal-earnings-for-b/19754354/?icid=sphere_copyright

If these two did merge in the future, I would consider it monopolistic.  There are other retailers who sell books as ancillary items — Walmart, Costco, Target, etc. — but the only strictly “bookstore” chain that would remain is Books-A-Million, which are more regional stores in the south.  (There are a couple others, but those are specialty stores.)

As these box chains suffer from too much overhead, this will allow Mom and Pop bookstores to flourish in their wake.  This is good news.  Right now local booksellers account for 10-15% of a book’s total sales.  They’re largely unable to compete with the larger chains because they can’t afford to discount bestselling titles so steeply as the big stores.

In late 2009 Borders UK filed for bankruptcy protection.  http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/11/27/business/20091127084505&sec=business  American operations haven’t been much healthier, and the Hail-Mary pass they’ve come up with in the interim has been . . . wait for it . . . teddy bears.  I’ve seen this implemented already in certain Waldenbooks (which is owned by Borders).  Rather than redoubling efforts to sell more books, Borders has instead launched a partnership with Build-A-Bear Workshop to bring outside merchandise into their stores.  I’m all for diversifying, but where is the line drawn?  These are bookstores, yet they rely increasingly more on other products:  indoor cafés, office supplies, board games, electronics, greeting cards . . . and teddy bears.  How soon until blue jeans, tires, groceries and jumbo packs of diapers are included?  I’m being facetious, of course, but my point remains valid.  When does Barnes and Noble transform into Sam’s Club?

These companies spent the last two decades buying up competition and putting others out of business.  I fondly remember bygone chains like B. Dalton’s or Media Play from my childhood.  Those that survived are dealing with the excess of success.  They’re simply too monolithic for the recent realities of publishing, the tectonic shifts incurred from moving into the digital age.  To stay viable they will need to be far more nimble (and probably a good bit smaller). 

Of the three top retail chains – Barnes and Noble, Borders and Books-A-Million – none is doing great financially.  On a good year the publishing industry limps along with anemic profits; in this economy these resellers are being hammered relentlessly.  There will be casualties.  Any profits they have posted in the last couple years have been from cutting costs rather than selling books.

The latest development in this saga has come to light over the weekend.  News has broken that Borders is unable to pay its vendors.  http://www.businessinsider.com/borders-debt-problems-now-hitting-payments-to-publishers-2010-12  Certain publishers won’t be paid money they’re owed.  What happens next decides whether Borders really has a future.  Some publishers have halted sending them new stock, what I assume is a ploy to make sure those same houses are among those compensated.

If Borders goes under, this will put untold stress on the entire distribution pipeline, which would set off a vicious cycle.  Author J.A. Konrath calls this a “death spiral” and has forecast something similar for months now.  I can’t explain it more succinctly than him, so as Joe puts it on his website:  http://jakonrath.blogspot.com

1.Borders withholds payments.
2. Publishers demand to be paid.
3. Borders returns books.
4. Fewer books means fewer sales, which means smaller profits.
5. Publishers tighten their belts and don’t buy as many books.
6. Fewer books published means fewer books sold.
7. Bookstores close, meaning fewer books sold.
8. Fewer books sold means fewer books bought by publishers.
9. Authors, unable to sell to publishers, decide to self-publish.
10. Self-pubbed books means fewer books sold in bookstores, and fewer sales for publishers.
11. Repeat.

And the entire house of cards comes toppling down.  Will it happen so dramatically?  I doubt it.  Keep in mind the Big Six publishers long ago abdicated their corporate independence.  Nowadays they merely serve as the publishing arms of global media conglomerates and are being propped up with profits from their parent companies.

Eventually those parent companies will realize how much money is being lost, hemorrhaged away on these investments.  And the next logical step is . . . another post for another time.

Happy New Year and so forth.  In honor of 2011, here’s the cover for my next book.  Look for it in late winter or early spring.

The figures on the front are called the Silencers.  You might know them better as the Men in Black.

As you can see, this site has undergone a facelift.  Same information, new layout.  There should be several minor tweaks over the coming weeks, so look for that.  Plus check back after the new year for news regarding my next book.

It’s a sci-fi thriller titled DREAMLAND.

I’m typing this on my brand new Toshiba laptop.  Best Buy had it on sale for a price I couldn’t pass up, about $350.  I purchased it the day after Black Friday.  As I expected them to sell out quickly, I made sure to be at the store when it opened.  It comes with a webcam, Windows 7 and a lot of other crunchies I haven’t yet explored. 

I’ve been looking at getting a new computer for the past six months or so.  My old one — another Toshiba — was ten years old and still ran on Windows ’98.  I put a lot of words through it (a few screenplays, a few novels and a couple dozen short stories), and it was slowly breaking down.  It could no longer play DVDs or music, and it had a tendancy to freeze and crash.  The new computer doesn’t take floppy disks though, and all my work from the past twelve years is collected on about 10 disks.  That means I’ll have to upload everything to a server and pull it from there.