predictions about agents?

[minervaK]

Anyone?

All the wonks are predicting The End Of Publishing As We Know It -- but then there's that 22% increase and the wonks say authors will do all right. My question is whether or not we'll need agents, in the New World. What do you guys think?

[I. J. Parker]

They pay 70 % on an exclusive. I'm taking some other books to Kindle (et al), but this one I still have print plans for.

[Camille LaGuire]

It doesn't have to be exclusive. It will have to be priced between 2.99 and 9.99, and it can't be priced (list priced) lower someplace else, and if there is a print version, the price has to be lower on the ebook (I don't recall off hand how much.) This starts in july.

However, other publishers will not necessarily be as attracted to a book that's already been published on Kindle.

[Eric Christopherson]

Yes, the new royalty scheme starts July 1.

But whether other publishers would be more or less interested in a novel published on Kindle depends on sales. Ask Boyd Morrison or John Rector how much their sales on Amazon helped them get deals with a major publisher.

[John McFetridge]

Are these royalty rates for novels or would it be the same for a novella or collection of short stories?

[Jim Thomsen]

Many, many authors have gotten trad-pub deals based on their Kindle sales ... which were based on their self-promo savvy and hustle. I'm kinda hoping to go this route myself.

[I. J. Parker]

I'd like to see some figures on market share -- after the iPad craze dies down a bit.

[Eric Christopherson]

You can charge whatever you want to for a novella or collection of short stories and they'll still give you 70% if it's within the price guidelines for it, but I have noted on the Kindle boards readers being pissed when they buy a short book (i.e., novella) and pay a novel-like price for it. Not sure the common reader knows what novella means.

[John McFetridge]

Thanks. I could see people feeling $2.99 is too much for short book if full novels are the same price. Still, books are weird. I just paid twenty dollars for a new trade paperback edition of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and it's only 214 pages. But a great book.

But e-books seem really well-suited to shorter works. I've been thinking of self-pblishing short stories with some of the characters from my novels but it is tough to find the right price.

[I. J. Parker]

Dear God, there must be a gazillion copies of THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, used and otherwise, for little more than postage. Remember, writers don't make enough money to buy books.

[ms.pamila]

I think the dream that an agent is the gatekeeper to a fat advance from one of the big publishing companies has begun to look like, just get the house however you can, real estate will always be the best investment. The american landscape has changed on every level, and it's not even close to done yet.

All signs point to digital as the emerging market. That being said, about self publishing, have any of you guys looked into what it takes to get a book up on kindle or in the ibookstore for apple? It's a lot of damn work. Not that it isn't doable, but if you're not the sort of person who loves combing through your text for errors, learning a new kind of software app to convert the regular text into the epub format, etc... probably you won't dig it. And it's not totally free, there are fees, not huge as far as I've seen, but not free.

Still, I'm considering it. Mostly because I feel exactly like you Minerva, so bewildered by the mixed messages out there about how to get an agent or why to get an agent, or worse - the agents attitudes toward new authors trying to sign on with them, that velvet rope guest list who do you know mentality, that the whole thing just makes me tired. I write fiction - a lot of fiction, my word counts are ridiculous, which means I have a lot of material. I have faith in my writing, I think there's an audience out there. I'm finding the idea of putting my writing out there and dealing directly with my readers more and more attractive, while the thought of trying to beg an agent to just read my query letter, please... less so.

[Erich R. Sysak]

A big round of applause. If you're confident in your work, why not?

Everything is twisted around. Frankly, the agents should be begging you...

[Eric Christopherson]

There's no fee to upload to Kindle and it's easy to format. Just save a Word doc as html, for example.

If there's a fee for Apple I haven''t heard about it, although they require an ISBN number, which'll cost you a bit, and they want the document in epub.