Latest Posts in the Sanity Bubble

Mental Health for Writers has moved here to the Sanity Blog. New posts worth your while include:

On Giving Up My Land Line (July 15)
I've Had Enough of "You" (Second Person Plural) in Poetry (June 16) (gosh; this one's really popular!)
Two "Things" That Will Improve Your Poems (June 9)
What's "A Rhetorical Poem"? and Why Nobody Tells You About Them (June 7)
A Rare Look Inside the Writer's Cabin (June 4)
"Blue" Material (May 29)

Touring a Bookstore

Every writer should tour a bookstore in the company of a manager. Did this yesterday for a class. The manager had 24 years' experience in the business. Bookstore facts:

• A new book's lifespan on the displays "up front" is seven to 21 days. The book then moves to "the stacks" or regular shelving.
  
• A new book's lifespan in the stacks is 90 days.
• After 90 days the bookstore and publisher begin the process of returning the unsold books to the publisher for credit.
  
• The bookstore's "bestseller" rack may be the bookstore's bestsellers, not the NYT's.
  
• New hardcovers can be priced at 20 to 30 percent off the cover price because the publishers have given the bookstore a promotion subsidy.
  
• Today's big-box bookstore carries about 95,000 titles. At peak in the 1990s, it carried an average of 135,000 titles. What got cut? Books from small publishers.
• At a chain bookstore, the displays at the ends of aisles, called "endcaps," are subsidized by publishers.
  
• On the shelves, some titles are displayed facing front, while others show only their spines. The publishers of the full-front books have paid the bookstore for the privilege. "It really sells books."
  

Are You a Writer, or an Author? Part I

Common sense says an author is a writer who's published a book. But according to the national Author's Guild (AG), "authors" are those who've published a book "by an established American publisher" who gave them an advance.

I know someone who joined AG because it excluded people like myself whose books were not "legitimate" but still somehow a threat. Mine were published by my choice and with my money -- that is, with courage and confidence. But with my fourth book I qualify for AG now, and if I needed to feel better about myself I could cough up $90 dues and join.

But I feel fine, and won't join a club whose point, apparently, is to exclude the riffraff: the vast majority of American writers. The AG makes further fine distinctions: Writers having a contract with an established American publisher but no book yet may apply for Associate-level Authors Guild membership. Freelancers qualify if they've published three works in periodicals commonly found at newsstands, receiving in return "significant" payment.

In my 35 years of writing, I have never received a "significant" payment. (I once won a "significant" prize, but it wasn't a publisher who gave it.) My guess is that you, like most writers, haven't received "significant" payment either. It's always been peanuts.

How about we forget all this hierarchy business -- it's too D.A.R. for me -- and respect and help each other, especially to get paid what we are worth.

Electronic Rights Means More Money for Authors

It sure do, honey. Check out NYT story on how upset Simon& Schuster is that one of their biggest authors (Stephen R. Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) & sequelae) has sold his electronic book rights to a company that'll give him 50 percent when people buy electronic versions of his books. You think Amazon.com taking 50 percent is outrageous? Well, Simon & Schuster would have taken 75 percent.

"Ever since electronic books emerged as a major growth market, New York’s largest publishing houses have worried that big-name authors might sign deals directly with e-book retailers or other new ventures, bypassing traditional publishers entirely." (Poor publishers; now they suffer they way WE did when THEY bypassed fairness to writers!)

I specifically claimed all electronic rights to the text of Meet Me just for that reason; and when you sign book contracts -- be a highly effective person and do the same!

Insanely Low-Cost Self-Publishing

Last night attended a St. Louis Publishers Association meeting at Mira, a midtown-St. Louis digital-printing company that sustains itself on self-published books. I kid you not. Cut to the chase: Here is their pricing chart for the printing of paperbacks (pricing is per book, from a print-ready PDF file; full-color cover with gloss lamination, b/w interior and perfect [glue] binding):

Across: Book Quantity Down: Number of pages in book	25	50	100	250	500
50	3.00	2.75	2.50	2.00	1.80
100	3.93	3.61	3.29	2.88	2.47
150	4.80	4.49	4.09	3.67	3.16
200	5.84	5.36	4.88	4.39	4.02
300	7.75	7.11	6.47	5.67	4.92

My meaning is: Don’t be tempted, or let your friends be tempted, by a self-publisher who wants $3,000-$8,000 to publish your book. Save your money and publish it yourself. Mira and other competing printeries in the area also have design and editing services; bizcards, posters, banners, etc. are printed there too. If you are or want to be self-published (hey, poets) or small-press, the world is now your oyster.

Scribd.com

Scribd.com is where writers post their work for readers to download and get 80 percent of any sales. It's an alternative to Amazon.com which takes 50 percent. I've priced my poetry book, Fierce Consent, at Scribd's suggested retail of $5, in PDF format. And I'll see if my experience at Scribd.com is at all different than, or more trafficked than, lulu.com. I'm always looking for ways for writers to get more from what they do.

Read the NYT article about Scribd here.

Rod Blagojevich Has a 6-Figure Book Deal

. . .and you DON'T? Me either!

Read all about it in USA Today. . . Rod says his book will "expose the dark side of politics."

LOL. I'm dyin'. LOL. Let me pour shots of slivovitz (knock-your-socks-off plum brandy, Serbia's national drink) and you and I drink to Rod's nose job, hair job, makeup job in that photo in the link, and his book deal. My stepfather, a foundry worker, now 89, met Rod's father, a steelworker, back in the day, when they both were new in America, about 50 years ago. My stepfather said, "Good he's dead; he would be so ashame' of his son."

Just what we Serbs need -- more good P.R. . . .Rod's real first name is "Milorad," in Serbian meaning "good work."

I actually drank the shot in this photo. . .and said, "Ziveli!" (a Serbian toast: roughly translated, "Let's seize and enjoy the life force while we have it.") Happy writing, Rod!

Keep Up Your Confidence

Read this "How Successful Writers Keep Up Their Confidence." Wise words from a book editor. Link acquired through Tricia Grissom's writer's blog Coffee and Critique.

NYT: Self-Publishers Flourish as Writers Pay the Tab

Good article about reasons writers self-publish. Yes, the writers pay the tab, but they get exactly the book they wanted (see "The Book the Poet Wants") and also get 100 percent of the cover price when they sell their books. If someone's book is nothing but "an enhanced business card," well, golly, he or she can write it off as a business expense. Go, writers! Be fruitful and multiply! Did you know that 90 percent of the books published in the U.S. are published in editions of 99 or fewer copies?