firstblood Self-publishing author Joe Konrath has interviewed David Morrell, the author of First Blood and the novelization of its film sequel Rambo, about Morrell’s recent decision to offer nine backlist titles (including First Blood) and one never-before-published novel exclusively as Amazon Kindle e-books.

Morrell notes that a lot of publishers these days are interested in committing to backlist title publications mainly so that they can lock up the e-book rights. Publishing through Amazon let him keep the rights while also taking advantage of Amazon’s marketing muscle.

Konrath also asked Morrell about the decision to include color photographs in the back of the new novel The Naked Edge. Morrell replies that one of the reasons he made the book available as an e-book was “to experiment with what an e-book can be.” The illustrations were of knives that a character in the book, a master knife-maker, replicated.

If the 18 examples I selected were put into a printed novel, in color, the price would be extreme. But it doesn’t cost anything to include photos with an e-book, so I decided to tailor THE NAKED EDGE for an e-book format.

Konrath and Morrell also discuss the problems inherent in some of the experimentation publishers are doing (why create “video e-books” when they can’t be sold on the #1 e-book platform, the Kindle?) and the way that e-books make it possible to include alternate versions of books without increasing the printing cost. (Morrell bundles both the heavily-edited version of his werewolf thriller The Totem he had to settle for publishing when he was starting out and the 550-page version he originally wrote in one e-book package on Amazon.)

They also talk about the problems inherent in going e-book-only—Morrell is catching “a little heat” for it—compared to the benefits that e-book publishing has for writers.

Konrath writes:

But even if some readers hate the thought of Kindles, ebooks are allowing writers more freedom than ever before. We’re no longer beholden or bound to the whims of editors, sales reps, distributors, coop, marketing dollars, chain-store buyers, and corporate folks who ultimately decide the fate our books. For the first time, we can directly reach readers without any gatekeepers or middlemen who impose their ideas on what works and what doesn’t, and we can make 70% royalties, compared to the 8% royalties we’ve gotten for paperbacks.

Morrell agrees that e-books are a “gamechanger”. He believes the current print publishing system is “broken”, with a number of troubling inefficiencies and wasteful practices: chain stores charging publishers to display their books, uneven distribution, short shelf-lives of printed books, and marketing departments overriding editorial decisions.

It seems to me that if any practice makes publishers “obsolete”, it is not going to be independent web fiction (as the subject of the piece I posted the other day posited) but e-book stores like Amazon (or E-Reads) offering better terms to writers to e-publish not just backlist titles but also original works that would otherwise have gone to the publishers. What writer would not prefer a 70% royalty?

Granted, the e-book market is only a fraction of the size of the print market at this point, but this will not always be the case. And the more big-name writers go exclusively e-book, the more incentive readers will have to follow them. And e-readers are finally starting to reach the magical $100 threshold that will make them appeal to significantly more people.

3 COMMENTS

  1. When it comes to backlist ebooks, I expect to see a *lot* of TOTEM-style editions. It’s not unlike Director’s cut or Special Edition DVD releases; a chance to see what the author intended, free of the constraints of the treeware industry.
    Several SF&Fantasy “Series” come to mind that might benefit from this “indulgent” approach.
    Just another reminder that ebooks really are *not* simply print books-minus paper; they are a super-set medium.

  2. It is interesting to see how Morrell jumped at the illustration factor, (verses lamenting possible distribution drawbacks) taking time to note that his costs to include the pictures–that he’d envisioned in the first place–in paper would simply be too high.

    How true, and yet how sad that the traditional publishing industry missed out on Morrell’s new title.

  3. As readers we need to battle against this growing trend toward exclusive rights being sold to individual eRetailers such as Amazon. This is creating anti competitive pricing structures where were the readers are going to get increasingly screwed and have no choice where we buy our eBooks.

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