A few years ago, I was working for a publisher here in St. John’s, and there was an email in my inbox, about how places like Indigo and Amazon have started letting anybody upload their manuscripts for sale as eBooks. I knew, within a few years, that the little blip it made was going to bloom into something much bigger and harder to ignore, and before long there were not-so-subtle campaigns to “Cut publishers out of the equation.” It started a small frenzy of an obvious retort from publishers and industry insiders: the importance of a proper edit, effective marketing, and distribution. Critics and award jurors relied on publishers, etc.

The publishers had a point and I agreed: No matter how great the book, an author is not going to get very far if their book isn’t in stores, getting reviewed, eligible for awards, and getting promoted amply by their very own publicist. No one buys a book they haven’t heard of. And, as a writer, I want to benefit from a skilful editorial eye.

But here’s what I don’t like about the current regime, and what many people are shocked to hear: author royalties are only 10% of the price of their book*. Ten percent. That’s about 2 bucks a book, 3 for hardcover. Forget about things like advances, multi-book bookdeals, and film and foreign rights sales for a second. And forget about the Stephen Kings and the Margaret Atwoods who sell a hundred copies every time their eyes blink. For most writers, we’re getting about 2 bucks a book, so, my book can be a national bestseller, but at 10,000 copies sold, that only puts 20 grand in my pocket. Good money off something I enjoy doing, sure, but it means the vast majority of writers, even the great ones, need side jobs. In fact, it could be said most writers make as much money off of being a writer as they do off their books, through things like writing grants, awards, festival gigs, freelance writing, temporary teaching gigs, government funded mentorship programs, etc. You add it all up and you can live as a writer, maybe, eventually, but not as well as you could if book royalties weren’t capped at 10%. 

So of course my ears perked up when I read that some of these e-retailers are not so secretly encouraging writers to “cut out the publisher” and split royalties 50-50 with them. 50% royalties. That’s five times what the traditional means offers you. Five times the money off your book. Imagine.

And now Amazon are offering writers a 70-30 split in their favour.

Will I ever self-publish? No, absolutely not. The best thing for my career is a good publisher. Nothing does more for a writer than a good publisher, it’s what they do: Make books go big. I just write them. My novels will do far better if properly edited, marketed, and distributed, and branded with the logo of a reputable publisher with ins in media, etc.

But do I expect more from my publisher now, knowing Amazon would give me 70% of my book’s sales instead of 10%? Yes. There are Canadian publishers who should be ashamed of how little they do for their writers. Some publicists don’t even respond to emails, or they neglect to submit books to awards, what good are they? (Some, not all. Luckily most publishers gush enthusiasm.)

The reality is, the current booktrade is changing, in the ways I predicted three years ago. Just last week, two good, publisher-published authors with multiple books just did two things that surprised me, and yet didn’t surprise me.

Michelle Butler Hallett, a unique and prolific Newfoundland-based author just launched a new website, called Aether Punch, to “spark and ignite a more intimate, immediate and conversational rapport with my audience.” She’s giving away short stories and novel excerpts, and selling, directly, some short fiction and novellas, for “coffee-money costs.”

On the other side of the country, the talented Peter Darbyshire of The Warhol Gang fame, uploaded his debut and ReLit-winning novel Please for sale for a few dollars on Amazon. I asked him why, and apparently I wasn’t the first writer to react to what he did. He said “the other writers just wanted to know how I did it. And that's something that should make everyone pay attention.”

He said, “The answer is simple: because it was easy and I had nothing to lose. Please went out of print a while back, and I wanted to make it available to readers again. I'll probably try to find another print publisher when I have the time, but I figured I may as well try the e-book version myself, as I can put it on Kindle as easily as a publisher. It's just a matter of a little file conversion and putting together a cover. You can handle the whole process in a day -- a lot better than the usual months or even years it takes a print edition to hit stores. And when I sell the book on Kindle myself, I get to keep more of the profit -- 70%, in fact. So why not? It's another option for writers, and we need all the options we can find these days.”

If selling your novel for a few dollars sounded crazy to someone before reading this article, it shouldn’t anymore: remember that me and Michelle and Peter only get two or three bucks for a book sold the standard way, even though the book costs 20 bucks. So, what’s the difference? Nothing. In fact, if Michelle Butler Hallett successfully sells a short story for 2 bucks, that’s as much as she’d get in royalties for the sale of a full collection. She’s not crazy, she’s brilliant. She’s also, like she said, “igniting a more intimate, immediate and conversational rapport with my audience.” She’s branding herself, letting people sample her. And something about buying direct feels good. Her website is a personal blog + personal bookshop in one.

Darbyshire’s “Simple reason” for why he uploaded Please for a few bucks is more than a simple reason. It’s a reflection of how the current book industry benefits writers last. How ironic, because where is the writing industry without the writers? Darbyshire’s ReLit-winning novel is out of print? And if it wasn’t out of print, I doubt many bookstores would be carrying it because it’s more than a year old, and if they did stock it, and a copy sold, he’d see less money from it than anybody.

Traditionally, in the days of yore of print books, there was a way things worked and no one knocked it, because knocking it wasn’t an option: Publishers did everything for you and gave you 10% of your booksales. But now we’re entering this strange new world of infinite possibilities in how things work

- Upload your novel to Amazon and take in 70% of the selling price.

- Stick with your publisher, for a proper edit, distributional chain, marketing, etc

- Find the middle ground: Freelance an editor and designer. Promote yourself somehow.

- Think outside the box like Michelle Butler Hallett just did.

And there are a dozen more options I won’t get into. (In fact, I have a wild idea that’d take me two years and 10 grand to pull off, but it’d be to the industry what Facebook was to social media. You can ask but I won’t tell.)

My point is, for the first time in hundreds of years, reputable authors are going to have a chance to consider what they do with a book when they’ve finished it. That alone is a big new thing. Yes, as it stands now, you’re shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t publish with a great publisher, because a great publisher is the key to literary success. I’m just saying, there are options, if only for your books that have gone out of print. Please is a great and award-winning novel. Or for your short stories that don't fit with a collection. For example, I heard that there were some short stories cut out of MacLeod'sstellar collection Light Lifting, because they didn't fit. That makes sense, some stories don't fit with a collection. But I would have liked to have seen the MacLeod shorts that were cut, "sold sepreately" somewhere. 

The industry is changing, and this eBook revolution is still in its infancy, as far as I am concerned. Writers have always been society’s big thinkers, they say, so they should be bringing their brains to the table as the industry evolves. They should be involved in the industry. They should be players. I don’t think anyone can predict where things are going, yet, but I think there’s room for writers to start benefitting more from their work, so I found Peter and Michelle’s moves last week mildly revolutionary. I hope it’s only the start of action and ideas.

* 10% royalties refers to print book sales, not eBook sales, which are 20-25%

Disclaimer: I wasn't knocking publishers here. I hope that was clear. A good publisher is a writer's best friend, and they work just as hard as writers, and many of them don't make much themselves. I was just saying that things are changing, and writers should feel like they can be part of that change, if they want.