Size Does Matter

One thing I love about publishing is it’s so deeply rooted in The American Way. Almost everybody starts out as a dreamer.

That dream can turn out worse than a hard night of tequila and puking in a smelly Mexican bar. Waking up in a Tijuana alley ripped off down to your colored shorts.

Or maybe without those shorts.

God, there’s nothing worse than a Mexican vasectomy. They usually do it with a dirty switchblade.

That doesn’t happen to everybody. Hey, Benny Franklin ran ink and did very well with it and so did the folks at Random House.

The thing is that they weren’t always household words. Most small publishers today start with a couple of books in their inventory. Too often they are their own books. Lightly edited, and their only critics have been their sisters or the mailman.

It’s hard to predict how a publisher will do once they start out. Most small publishers start off with a writer in charge. That writer may move commas around as well as Charlie Watts beats the bongos, but most of them can’t balance their own checkbooks.

That’s why most small publishers die. Publishing is a game of nickels and dimes for a small press. Most writers don’t understand that.

Bean counters do. They sit at the wheel at most big presses even though they can’t tell the difference between a comma and a semicolon. It’s so hard to bring one of those guys in because they don’t understand art.

Bean counters suck. Screw art. Some of these guys don’t care what they sell. They just understand spreadsheets.

Small presses run by writers and managed by bean counters are a great marriage. I believe in them and have done a lot of work with them.

That loyalty may pay off if the press grows. Gee, look what happened to the guys who believed in Microsoft when they were down to binary code. Now it’s all swimming pools and movie stars, as Jed Clampett would say.

Don’t put off the small guys when you’re begging companies to move your writing. They can believers in the trade and work their asses off. A whole lot of them don’t see a paycheck at first. The money goes into paper and ink. And they scramble like all get out to get on the shelves.

You shouldn’t be ashamed to work with a small press. Many writers are.

It’s like I always say; the future is an awfully big space. It always starts out with a dream.

Welcome Home Ed

Hey, let me get serious for a moment.

I know those moments are few and far between, but this is one of those.

It's been a while since I posted on Blogger. The fact is that I yanked almost every blog and reference to me on the web that I could find. They weren't doing much for me other than gather dust.

The hitch is that the Web never forgets, so if you want to know all about the crawly things in my basement, just Google me. Google me hard.

A lot of my publishing work in this millennium has been like a freight train missing some of the stops, and if you'd like to know, here's my publishing status at this writing:

My paperback work had spooky accounting. My publisher and I opted to part ways. You can still buy that work on e-Bay, Amazon and Barnes and Noble. You're not supposed to be able to.

I have yet to see a dime after we parted ways. My books are sold in Hong Kong and Munich but my royalties really suck. Suck like they don't arrive here. Suck like the check must still be in the mail.

But shit happens, it just does.

I moved everything to e-books. I thought e-books were a lousy reading format. Who was, for example, going to drag their $1,000 to $3,000 laptop out the beach? You'd take a paperbound version.

I'd cry if I soaked my Mac Book.

Even so, I moved them so they'd stay in print.

Kinda sort of.

You can find my work on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. Just look up E.D. Easley. I'm the guy at the bottom of their sales lists, the guy listed at 2,375,000. The publisher looked honest enough, he seemed like a really nice guy and the editor appeared to be working her ass off.

I couldn't find any crap on them like they'd have served much prison time.

They are evolving. They hope to go into print soon, but print publishing is getting dicey. Even the big guys are offering books up as e-books and on memory sticks.

I've contracted for quarterly royalties. So far sales have sucked.

I blame that on a number of things:

--Nobody reads e-books. There's been a lot of talk about how they're the format of the future, and they may be. They still aren't. Nobody really buys them. But me, I've got my fingers crossed.

--Nobody knows about them. Hey, I learned to read and write four decades (and change) ago. I hadn't heard much about them until 2006.

--They're overpriced. C'mon, $7 for a download. Yeah, right. And nobody can copy them? Sure thing. I find mine on Ebay all the time.

--Their royalties bite. When somebody slaps down that $7, you don't get the $3.50 to $4.00 you may think.

You get paid after everybody else does. The folks who sell them, the nerds who make them, taxes, marketing, and whatever crap the publisher can dream up. Then surprise, you, the last guy in the food chain, gets paid.

But then that's nothing new. The union pressmen at a print publishing firm usually make more than a writer.

This sucks the most because no one would have a job without the smuck who made the product in the first place.



I pulled Crimes Against Commerce from the e-book mix. Many print publishers have an attitude against e-books.

I still see Crimes Against Commerce as the most commercial book in my stable. It's drawn great reviews and did very well in the development stages where it was market tested.

I love that book, but the sequel, The Lost Generation, is a better book I believe. I've been hoping it will get a better showing with publishers if it ever makes it to paper and ink.

My magazine sales have been terrible. I haven't sold much for forever. Part of it may be that I write crap. Most of it maybe I'm not just doing well in the market.

An aside (I get to do this because it's my blog):

Most writers don't realize how tough it is to get into a publication of any size. The market is crowded and cut throat.

God bless the editors at any magazine. Most are swamped with queries. They have piles of them and the piles often get bigger every day. It's hell to get to the top of those piles.

You'd best check your ego at the door when you get into this business. It's usually not how good you are. It's a complex combination of factors.

--God help you if your manuscript reaches the top of the pile on a Monday when an editor has a serious hangover.

--Hope your submission doesn't arrive the day an editor gets divorce papers.

--Hope the IRS treated that editor well and the editor gets a refund check.

--Then too, dogs die. Damned if your stuff is reviewed after the funeral.

Funny thing about me and gambling. I might as well just throw my money at the door. It's going to end there anyway.

Welcome to publishing.

So that's where my work is at this juncture. Hope yours is doing better.

God I love this business.