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Pre-AWP Notes

It's 2 o'clock in the morning where I am, and I hear the freezing rain outside. It doesn't sound very nice. In fact, it sounds rather angry.

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My wife and I watched Red tonight. Not the movie based on the Jack Ketchum novel (though that's one on my instant queue, and both star Brian Cox, who is always great in everything he does), but the one starring Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman and John Malkovich and a bunch of other well-known actors. It's a fun action-packed movie that is what it is. Definitely worth my $1 from the Blockbuster kiosk.

The movie is based on the graphic novel by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner, though I don't know how faithful the movie is to the original story. Either way, I like that Hollywood is realizing they don't have to remake everything and are taking graphic novels more seriously.

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Speaking of graphic novels, tonight I just finished reading American Vampire by Scott Snyder, Stephen King, and Rafael Albuquereque. I've had the first volume since November and just started it yesterday. I don't know what took me so long. I loved it. Each chapter is broken up into two interconnecting stories, one that takes place in 1925, the other in 1880. Scott Snyder -- the series creator -- does the 1925 storyline, while Stephen King takes up the 1880 storyline. At the back of the book is a section that includes two pages from each writer's script with the corresponding art to show the differences between the two writing styles. It's really interesting, especially if you, like me, are fascinated by the world of graphic novels. It's a medium I'd love to try my hand at someday, but for some reason it seems so intimidating. I'm definitely looking forward to the second volume, scripted solely by Snyder, which comes out in May.

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Do any of you writers out there carry business cards? I was at a party a few weeks ago where someone found out I was a writer and, as the conversation came to an end, asked for my business card. It felt weird. I've never seen the need for them, but maybe that's because I normally don't attend big conferences and conventions. Yes, I'm on Twitter and Facebook, but that's as far as my networking goes. Still, my wife has been pressing me to get some, especially with AWP coming up, and while it's now way too late to have some professionally made, I broke down and did a few myself. I did two versions, a serious one and a not-so-serious one. Can you guess which one this is?

Who knows, maybe in the future I'll have some "real" business cards made up. Ones that would even impress Patrick Bateman. Though, you know, I wouldn't want to piss him off too badly. (Below I would have embedded the "business card" scene from American Psycho, but YouTube won't let me. So instead, I have embedded a different kind of psycho.)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YBxeDN4tbk

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I still hear that freezing rain outside. It's taunting me. Tomorrow hopefully the sun will come out and melt some of the ice, as I have to drive down to D.C. and would prefer not to skid off the highway into a tree. I'll try, as always, to tweet my adventures. Hopefully there won't be any tweets about an accident. Wish me luck.

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E-Book Royalties: Agents vs. Publishers

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Agents and publishers have very different ideas about what royalties for eBooks should be. Agents think that 50% is a fair royalty, while publishers think that 25% is a fair royalty. This finding is according to research from Mike Shatzkin, CEO of the Idea Logical Company and Constance Sayre, principal at Market Partners International. The two presented their survey at the Digital Book World conference yesterday afternoon. Despite the discrepancy, a third of agents claim to have negotiated deals for 50% royalty rates. According to Sayre, a few years ago Random House was offering a 50% royalty rate which may have influenced these numbers.

According to their survey, half of agents think the overall impact of eBooks is favorable for authors on backlist titles and 25% think eBooks are favorable for new books. Publishers aren’t so sure and have yet to answer the question.

Interestingly, 2/3 of agents think that a non-compete clause would not prevent them from doing an eBook outside of a contract. Publishers disagree. “But they are not interested in turning this into a fight, they’d rather negotiate than sue,” said Shatzkin.

The study also found that 90% of agents have author clients who have expressed interest in self-publishing, but publishers aren’t scared. “Publishers don’t think authors want to do the work themselves and they think they have the edge because they have the advance,” said Shatzkin. “Print is still heartiest sales and self-publishing is not good for print.”

I find it interesting that "publishers aren't scared" about authors self-publishing. Maybe that's just big talk and they're actually terrified. An advance is always nice, yes, but the larger the advance, the less chance the author will ever see royalties. In fact, most publishers are making their advances pretty modest these days. So 50% royalties on e-books? I do like the sound of that. 25%? No so much. Because 25% on a high-priced e-book isn't going to make you hardly anything; even 50% on a high-priced e-book isn't going to make you a lot if the sales aren't there. It's looking like authors and publishers may be headed toward an ultimate showdown. The question is, who is who in this clip:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t2GgN_RC7M