How to use this Page

I recently put together a blog I considered necessary to fill a need. I am sharing information about the new blog here at Acme --Book-E-Leaks is here! Leak info. about YOUR books here! This is just the kind of blog all writers and readers need - a place where writers are encouraged to speak freely and openly about their favorite titles created by THEM without being attacked but rather appreciated for appreciating their own works and favorite lines and ideas and methods used as well as news of new book launches, signings, sales strategies that worked or failed --- anything leaking from your book from inception to completion and publication....whether an ebook or a paper book. Post your news and great feelings of completion and closure right here at Book-E-Leaks. Share great blurbs, quotes, snippets from reviews here as well. All without fear of being attacked or having your book called SPAM. Don't know about you, but my life's work is not SPAM.


To get started here I will go first since I have bragging rights here just as you do. I will post a great line from Titanic 2012....and you do your best to add a great line from YOUR book so that readers will have a BookEleak to go by....you may also want to leak such lines on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere with a link to Book-E-leaks.

So come on over to http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=2476000364646494559

do too leave a comment!
Rob Walker
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/ (order direct)

I am going to keep this short and sweet and to the point. If you are like me and sick to death of having perfectly good work rejected or a series character killed off by your publisher(s) due to nothing foreseeable or reasonable (had two series cut that were both earning good money via one phone call to my agent once), then you may want to join me in Indie Publishing via Amazon.com kindle bookstores. You will find a kindle bookstore in just about every home in the country now...a kindle bookstore near you.

But you say publishing in hardcover with Random House or Penguin is so prestigious. Fine, then go seek your prestige while I sell books, far more books than I ever sold in either paper or hardback with Penguin, working out of their bargain basement line--Berkley Books. The same foolish folk who killed off my Jessica Coran Instinct Series and my Lucas Stonecoat Edge Series same day. Cut me to the quick they did that day. For no apparent reason, and none given. Nothing that held water at least. Myself, I believe it was in-house politics and I had a guilty editor to scaffold my suspicions.

But like a terrible, rending divorce, in the long run it may have been the best thing to ever happen to me as since have discovered how to publish my own work at my own pace in my own time with my own title attached along with getting to make all the decisions involved in publishing work in a professional manner. In essence, although I was rejected by traditional publishing, perhaps even black-balled (certainly felt so), I can now say without impunity that I REJECT them...and reject their whole way of doing business. You know the type of business wherein you are expected to be professional, to be ethical, to be loyal and such but the company owes you no respect, no professionalism, no loyalty, no ethics as they don't need to be honest with you, despite thier expectation of all of the above from you. Sound familiar? That's cause it is not just in publishing but in a myriad of businesses across America.

The sweeping upside of all the accumulated rejections I have gotten over the years is that now I am the only one in a position of such authority over this writer (employer) to reject or fire me as I am also the boss (as kids say, "The boss of me!"). In my other life as one of the stable of mid-list authors for NYC publishers, I was held accountable for the win or the loss while not given any of the responsibility to make that win or loss a reality. In other words held accountable for actions I could not be a party to. Not so with Indie publishing with Amazon.com/Kindle books. Win or lose, all decisions will have been made by me, and I cannot tell you how freeing up that is, being my own boss, running my own book show. I feel like Barnum and Bailey at this digital platform age of publishing.

Rather than even attempt to read a publisher's royalty statement now I read a daily, hourly, minute-by-minute sales report telling me precisely how many units have sold with returns already figured in or out as it were, with returns hardly worth mentioning as to number, and a readable report at that. I can tell at a glance what titles sold how many in a given day, week, or month. It is the opposite with the infamous author's royalty statement which one sees only six months to a year depending on publishing house, and even then the numbers are unreliable and downright confusing.

In addition, in Indie publishing with Amazon.com/Kindle the percentage on every book is seventy percent to the author, thirty to Amazon. Amazon is not acting as publisher but rather giving you--as publisher--the wherewithal to distribute and or display your wares on a platform seen by millions. The dynamic is absolutely new and different and has traditional publishers crying in their pillows at night.

If you have thought of placing up an ebook, first go with Amazon.com -- as this is where all the action is -- but by all means do it yourself or hire some expert to do it for you for a one-time fee. Turning it o

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/2631716,alligator-chicago-river-caught-082410.article

Well, today they captured a baby alligator that was swimming in the Chicago River. What made this event so unusual is that alligators are not common to the Chicago River. Anyway, the poor critter will be watched for about three months, then hopefully released somewhere it can adapt. They say it was probably somebody's pet, since it looked well fed and in good shape.

I like to use everyday examples and tie them to my writing experience. Many writers swim around, do their best to follow the rules and try to get somewhere, yet all along they're swimming in the wrong place. The problem is how to know where the right place is. Is it better to go with a small press, a traditional press, or perhaps strike out on your own by self-publishing through ebooks, or print on demand?

All of us alligators need to make that decision. We can't expect someone to scoop us up and make the decision for us, as happened to today's gator. Take heart, though, you can always change your mind if needs be, or do a combination. Right now, I have two novels with a small press, one is self-published, and all are also in ebook form. I've submitted a partial to a traditional house, but am undecided what my next course will be. When the time is ripe, I'll take action.

Now, where do you swim? Or, aren't you sure yet?

Recently, I read this line on a chat group I hang with:  An editor who does not charge is not a true editor.  That sort of logic if taken to writing would say that an artist or writer or composer is not a true WHATEVER unless he or she is making money at it; unless and editor is making money at editing, he or she is not a real editor.  This sort of snobbery has existed in NYC book business forever as they pay editors so well (HA!).  I have had many many editors, some who woud place a comma between many many and some who would not, and I have as yet to find one properly compensated by anyone.  I have also operated my own editorial services (Knife Services) from my website, and I charge half or a third of what some editors charge, and lately, the business is slow as molasses.

No one wants to pay for editing services.  To this I can attest.  To qualify that, few want to pay for editing services, but one way or another every author needs a great editor or two or three in order to truly get a MS to sing.

An editor for your work is worth his or her weight in gold, even if he or she edits your work for nothing but the opportunity and "privilege" and charge you nada...for no charge. Despite the line this blog began with, there are capable and surprisingly fine editors among those who do not charge a fee; I know because I have availed myself of some excellent editorial help at no charge over the years.  These people are my early readers.  People I have cultivated a strong friendship with as a result of our making great books together, people who wind up in my acknowledgment pages.

It may upset some pricey editors (some priced at ten dollars a page if you can imagine it) to hear such talk from a professional writer and published author, but I have relied all my life and career on people who have a sixth sense about what works and what does not work in a manuscript, items you want OUT before the MS goes to press or release to Kindle or Smashwords or wherever you are publishing nowadays.

My Children of Salem, my highest grossing Kindle title, was put through the grist mill by two editors in particular who suffered and struggled with me like Jonah and the Whale until we GOT it.  My work in progress, Titanic 2012 has had the tremendous help of two editors in particular who have wrestled that one to the mat where they MAKE me wring out rather than ring out the right words and save me countless embarrssing moments as well as point out plot weaknesses and sags. They are simultaneously copyeditors and developmental editors these folks.

I go back as far as 1965 or 6 working with my Wells High School managing editor on the school newspaper for editorial advice, and damn but she was good with langauge and writing; one lesson she taught me then stayed with me all my writing career - Acitve over Passive. I get cudos for making my work "compelling, fast-paced, a page-turning roller-coaster ride" etc. etc. due in great part to my editorial board -- and now that I am a writer turned publisher putting out Original to Kindle titles, I rely even more on my early readers, my editorial board. They have recently truly impressed me, digging damn deep to make the work the best it can be to the point it is no longer about me but the novel itself that comes first.  Of course, it helps that the publishing industry has long, long ago beat the living ego out of me.

My apologies to those who consider themselves legitimate editors because they charge a fee, whether fair or exorbitant, but sorry as I am, I must say that there are people who are not just willing to be early readers for an author but who become invaluable editors an author can and does TRUST, often just as much as he trusts an editor within a publishing house or with a logo.  I love editors, love them all, and feel they all deserve a raise but the practice of authors cultivating two, three, four early readers is not likely to stop but increase as we go to press as Indie au

Why Go All Independent Author on Us, Rob?
  (Part I)

E-books and the electronic readers like the kindle are suddenly legion at schools, at writers conferences, even at ironically enough bookstores. I will never forget at a book signing when a lady pushing a baby carriage by stopped long enough to reach into the carriage to pull out her kindle to proudly flash before me to ask my wife, Miranda and I, “Are your books on Kindle?” We were ready for her, both of us replying, “Yes indeed.”

THREE Million plus kindle e-readers have been sold since December of this year, and Mother’s Day is likely to see a huge number sold as well—perhaps more; at least this is the number I keep seeing in articles in The New Yorker and Newsweek. In other words, the future is upon us and traditional publishing has reason to be concerned even if they don’t know it. More and more authors are taking control of their content and making decisions that impact the content—what they create.

Traditionally, the working arrangement between publisher and writer has always been one of you turn over your creation and the publisher “takes all the risks” as if you are taking no risks in spending months if not years on a manuscript. However, since you are taking “no risks” like those faced by the publisher—business risks—the notion is you are now passive cargo and worth about 8 to 10 percent of each “unit” sold after costs incurred such as an advance.

Now all decision-making is out of your hands, and you are supposed to go write another book in the event the first one sells well. Meanwhile, the publisher’s team—all of whom have pensions and paychecks—make the important decisions of pricing, placing, marketing, packaging, title, down to the font and colors on the cover.

In other words, all decisions made by committee, all of whom are making more money on books being pushed than the author. Think totem pole and the author is at the bottom, and wasn’t a camel a horse designed by committee? My point is when the book fails, the guy at the bottom of the totem pole is the one blamed as his/her numbers of unit sales is too low.

So the business model for the author is pretty bleak, and has been since Guttenberg’s invention of the printing press; ninety nine percent of all novelists in the world cannot live on what they earn as writers. Could you live on eight percent of what you sell without health benefits or pension?

That said, let’s turn now to the business model for the author who is now an Independent Author/Publisher—and for starters, the Kindle contract is not an 8-10% cut but a 70/30 split with the 70 going to the author! Aside from this, the author makes all the decisions to package and price the book, no title fights, no arguments over hardcover vs. trade vs. mass market as none of these designations apply in e-books. The added attraction to doing e-books is control and a sense of freedom.

Publishers are as interested in change as glaciers, and for good reason—as they “take all the risks” and they take the lion’s share of the profits. This is no more evident than now with the sudden growth of e-readers and e-readership as the big houses like Random House and Penguin and others are warring with Amazon.com over price-setting. They have always controlled the prices, and now suddenly millions of avid readers, rabid readers if you will (as kindle readers can go through forty books in a week) want their books at less than ten dollars—as Bezos, the head of Amazon promised them—“You buy a kindle, no kindle book on Amazon for more than 9.99.”

Fact is, Bezos wants the world to have access to any book you or I want “at the moment” or as close to NOW as Whispernet can make it happen. This is why Bezos named his device “Kindle” to “kindle the passion in readers and non-readers alike.” An altruisitc-based business model; imagine that!

By using the A-B-C directions at www.dtp.amazo