Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

A friend of mine referred me to a blog post today on “Why Some E-books Cost More Than The Hardcover” by Nathan Bransford.

The article is worth reading because it explains why an e-book can now cost more than a p-book (a paper book). It shows how, until about a year ago, Amazon actually sold some e-books at a loss in order to gain market share. At that time, Amazon would buy an e-book at a wholesale price that was typically 50% of the retail price set by the publisher. Then Amazon would sell the e-book at $9.99, which in some cases cost them several dollars per book.

When Apple announced the iPad and the associated iBookStore, they promised to sell books on an “agency model” in which the publisher would set the retail price and Apple would sell an e-book for that exact amount and then pay the publisher 70% of that price, keeping 30% for itself.

Soon after Apple made this announcement, Amazon made the agency model an option for e-books. 5 of the 6 major US publishers took the agency model option then, and now all of them use this model.

Amazon still sells paper books using the wholesale model, while selling e-books using the agency model. This can lead to cases where the hardcover edition of a book on Amazon is about the same price as the e-book (or possibly even cheaper).

Bransford backs this up with some calculations, but the results are misleading because in most cases, the assumptions are incorrect. Quoting from the article:

Well, here’s the thing that’s kind of wacky about the wholesale model vs. the agency model: the publisher made more money per copy with the wholesale model. 

Again, napkin math for a $24.99 hardcover. Let’s say the e-book would have sold for $9.99 at Amazon in the old days but now the publisher charges $12.99:

Wholesale model e-book:
Publisher: $12.50 (roughly 50% of $24.99 hardcover retail price)
Amazon: - $2.50 (selling at $9.99)

Agency model e-book:
Publisher:  $9.09 (70% of $12.99)
E-bookseller: $3.90 (30% of $12.99)

Randy sez: The napkin math would be correct, if its napkin assumptions were correct. But one of those assumptions is usually wrong. E-books are NOT usually assigned the same retail price as a hardcover these days. E-books are usually assigned a retail price no higher than the retail price of the trade paper edition, which is typically close to half the retail price of the hardcover.

[Note added on 3/15/2011 as a result of a comment left by Nathan: Even when there is no trade paper edition of a book, the e-book version is generally sold at a price point no higher than a typical trade paper book. I looked at today’s Amazon Top 100 Kindle list and found only 3 e-books priced as high as $14.99. A few were at $12.99 or $11.99. Most were at $9.99 or less. I can’t recall seeing any recent e-book on Amazon in which the retail price for the e-book was anywhere close to the retail price for the hardcover. There are some cases where the retail price for the e-book is about the same as the heavily discounted price for the hardcover, but the retail price for that hardcover is close to twice the retail price of the e-book.]

Let’s wipe off that napkin and do the math again and let’s also figure in the author’s cut, assuming 25% of the publisher’s net, which is the absurd standard royalty these days:

The hardcover price is $24.99 and the trade paper price is $12.99. We’ll assume the e-book price also gets a retail price of $12.99.

Wholesale model e-book:
Publisher: $6.50 (50% of the $12.99 e-book retail price)
Amazon: $3.49 (selling at $9.99 and paying $6.50 to the publisher)
Author: $1.30 (25% of publisher’s take of $6.50)

Agency model e-book:
Publisher: $4.55 (35% of the $12.99 e-book retail price)
Amazon: $8.44 (selling at $12.99 and paying $4.55 to the publisher)
Author: $1.14 (25% of publisher’s take of $4.55)
[Note added 3/15/2011: This is a revision of figures I showed in the original post, where I was using a 70% royalty rate. An alert reader reminded me that Amazon pays only 35% to the publisher for e-books priced above $9.99.]

Clearly the agency model benefits Amazon, costs the publisher and the author, and screws the consumer, who ends up paying $3.00 more for the book and therefore ends up buying 23.1% fewer books because if the consumer has a fixed number of dollars, those dollars will only buy 9.99/12.99 as many books at the higher price point.

That reduction in sales volume needs to be accounted for too. The simplest way to do that is by subtracting 23.1% from the Agency model computations:
Publisher: $3.50 (76.9% of $4.55)
Amazon: $6.49 (76.9% of $8.44)
Author: $0.87 (76.9% of $1.14)

Comparing these to the wholesale model for books priced at $9.99, we see that the publisher and the author come out behind and Amazon comes out ahead.

However, the story changes pretty dramatically when we look at the agency model for books priced at $9.99, where the publisher’s royalty rate goes up to 70%:
Publisher: $6.99 (70% of $9.99)
Amazon: $3.00 (selling at $9.99 and paying the publisher $6.99)
Author: $1.75 (25% of the publisher’s take)
This is why most of the e-books on Amazon are priced at $9.99 or lower. The publisher does considerably better at this price point than it does at higher prices. [Amazon’s royalty is 70% for price points between $2.99 and $9.99. The royalty is 35% for all other price points. The last time I checked, the 70% royalty was paid by Amazon US only for sales to US customers; it was 35% for sales outside the US. I have not checked on royalties paid by Amazon Canada, or Amazon UK. The situation, as you can see, is complicated, and of course it is subject to change.]

What is missing here is the same set of calculations where the author self-publishes the book and prices it at $2.99, where it will sell many more copies because it is now an impulse buy:
Publisher: $0.00 (because the publisher is out of this picture)
Amazon: $.90 (30% of the price of $2.99)
Author: $2.09 (70% of the price of $2.99)

Assuming the consumer will now buy 3.341 times as many books as the wholesale model priced at $9.99 (this is just 9.99/2.99 and it assumes that the consumer only has a fixed number of dollars to spend on books and will spend them on as many books as possible), the real advantage to the author becomes clear:
Publisher: $0.00 (because the publisher is still out of the picture)
Amazon: $3.00 (3.341 times $.90)
Author: $6.99 (3.341 times $2.09)

It should be clear that low-priced e-books with an agency model massively benefits the author and the consumer (as compared to the wholesale model priced at $9.99), slightly costs Amazon, and massively crushes the publisher.

This is why we call the thing happening right now a “revolution.”

What role will agents play in the not-so-brave new world of publishing which is evolving rapidly? Does a novelist still need an agent? If so, what will that agent do? If not, where will all the agents go?

Charles posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

First I would like to thank you for the work that you are doing to help newbie writers like myself to delve into the world of fiction writing. I must say if it weren’t for your website and your snowflake method of writing, which in my structured and incredibly anal opinion is pure genius, I would still likely be flailing with the first few chapters, or more likely burning them in the nearest fireplace in frustration.

All that out of the way, the question I have is probably painfully obvious to anyone in the business but has become more and more confusing to me. I have been reading your and several other blogs about publishing and the way the business is turning away from printed books and more toward digital versions. My question however, has less to do with which direction I should go than how to get there. I understand the importance of agents and publishers if I am able to go the route of the typical printed author but what about going in the direction of e-books. Should I still look for an agent and if so what is that he/she would do. Does an agent handle the editing and promotion of a digitally published book? If an agent handles such things then do certain agents specialize in this area or would any agent be open to doing it? I guess what Iím saying is what exactly does an agent do that I couldn’t do for myself if I self published in the digital realm. I for one am excited about the way publishing is going, probably because I have no idea of what I’m talking about, but none the less, if my book turns out to be a decent story, I hope to be able to take advantage of this new turn in the publishing world.

Well that was my incredibly long winded and probably overly vague question. I hope you will excuse the lavish butt kissing in the beginning but truly your methods have helped me to do something I have always wanted to do but never had the courage to start. Thanks to you I have one scene left to write in my rough draft and then God willing I will edit and start looking for that way to get my preverbal foot in the door. Thanks again for all you’re doing and I look forward to your response.

Randy sez: I believe agents will play a crucial role in the evolving book market. The reason is simple: Agents are industry pros who understand the complex blend of craft, marketing, and career planning that writers so desperately need. Your agent is on your side. The more money you earn from traditional, royalty-paying publishers, the more your agent earns.

Having said that, what about the e-book thing? Does an agent get a cut of your self-published e-books?

The answer depends partly on your agency contract and partly on exactly what sort of self-publishing you’re doing.

If you have an out-of-print book that you and your agent agree isn’t marketable as a paper book, then you are probably free to self-publish that as an e-book with no money due to your agent. You should of course check with your agent and look at your agency contract to verify that.

Likewise, if you have an unpublished book that you and your agent were just never able to sell, then probably the same situation applies, but again you should check with your agent to make sure.

If you have an unpublished book that your agent hasn’t yet had a chance to sell, then your agent probably has the right to try to sell it for you and take a cut of the profits. Your agency agreement should specify that sort of thing.

If you don’t have an agent, then before you sign on with one, you should discuss your plans for self-publishing e-books, (if you have any such plans) and be clear in advance what books are your agent’s job to sell and which ones are off the table.

If you don’t have an agent, should you get one? That depends:

Do you plan to exclusively self-publish your work and are you willing to do all the grunt work to make that happen (or hire somebody to do so)? If so, then you don’t need an agent. You might need a marketing guru or a freelance editor or a graphic artist or a career planner or some mix of all of those. But you don’t need an agent, because an agent sells your work to publishers and receives payment for that hard work.

Do you plan to first publish your work through a publisher and let the publisher do all the e-book stuff? If so, then you definitely need an agent. The publishing contracts are becoming increasingly slanted to benefit publishers. An agent will get you a much fairer deal than you can get yourself, in much less time.

I have believed for several months that agents are going to shift towards the e-book business. There are two main reasons for this:

• Publishers are not currently giving a fair deal on e-book royalties. The almost universal royalty rate paid by publishers is 25% of monies received. This is ridiculously unfair to authors. I think everybody in the industry agrees with me on this point. I believe that a fair royalty for e-books is AT LEAST 50%, and probably a bit higher. If publishers won’t budge on this, then agents can and will provide an e-publishing service that pays the author a much higher royalty rate.
• Many authors have books that are out of print and earning nothing. They would love to put these back into print as e-books, but they’re daunted by the technology. It takes time and effort to put out a good e-book. It may require hiring a graphic artist to create a new cover. Many authors would be happy to give their agent a cut of the profits to just “take care of the problem” and get those out-of-print books back on the market.

The obvious question is, “What about a conflict of interest?” If an agent has a choice between e-publishing an author and selling the author’s work to a publisher, won’t the agent take the option that earns him the most money–even if it doesn’t earn the most money for the author?

Randy sez: Yes, I suppose there is that possibility. An agent gets a 15% cut of an author’s earnings when sold to a royalty-paying publisher. If the agent were to also earn a 15% cut on the author’s e-books, it seems to me that the whole question would become a moot point. In that case, the agent’s self-interest exactly coincides with the author’s self-interest. I might be wrong here, but that seems plausible.

It’s worth noting that agents have ALWAYS had an implicit conflict of interest whenever they represent more than one author. After all, if two authors have similar work and are both represented by the same agent, then the agent has a vested interest in promoting the more salable author harder. And furthermore, an agent may hesitate to be a jerk with a publisher on behalf of one author if that would damage other authors. In both these cases, the conflict of interest is actually pretty minor, and agents have many years of experience in dealing with them. I haven’t heard that either of these issues has caused authors major grief. Again, I might be wrong, but I just don’t see that it’s ever been a big problem.

Frankly, I’m not that concerned about the potential conflict of interest of an agent who also does e-publishing. The agent is on the author’s side, more so than anybody else.

I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating: The world of publishing is changing incredibly fast. E-books are giving authors power they’ve never had before–the power to cheaply publish a book and market it effectively on a global scale without interference from “gatekeepers” who decide what the market wants.

Will agents still be around in 5 years? I am very sure they will, and I believe the best agents will be earning more than ever. I do think some agents are going to transition to other ventures, such as free-lance editing, book development, and e-publishing. But I see most of them continuing on as agents.

Will publishers still be around in 5 years? I believe they will, but they’ll be smaller and leaner, earning less revenue but higher profit margins. I believe they’ll be forced out of the e-book business, though. I foresee publishers being willing to die on the hill of 25% royalty rates for e-books. I foresee that authors will simply walk away from that deal. By the time publishers cave in and offer higher rates, authors will have found better, faster, and much more lucrative deals elsewhere. And authors won’t come back to publishers, except to say, “I’ll sell you the rights to the paper edition only. Take it or leave it.”

Will chain bookstores still be around in 5 years? That’s an open question, but I suspect they will. Again, they’ll be smaller and leaner, assuming they survive. They’re an endangered species, but if they can learn to sell e-books effectively, they’ll survive.

Will authors still be around in 5 years? Now THAT’S a no-brainer. You can’t have books without authors. As long as people want story in text form, we’ll have authors to write them.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

If you self-publish your work, do you risk anything? Will publishers consider you damaged goods?

Andrew posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Thank you for all the great information provided on your site! I’ve recently signed up to receive your emails.

I have one quick question that has come to mind while reading your “The Future of Publishing” article.

My question is this: As a amateur writer with a book self-published on Lulu.com, do you think it is valuable to use this self-publishing site to begin to get my name out there, or would paper publishers potentially look down on the fact that I’ve self-published and already reaped sales?

Thanks for your answer!

Randy sez: The publishing industry is changing rapidly. The correct answer to this question three years ago would have been, “No, self-publishing almost always won’t help you in your venture to get published — unless you’re one of those very rare few who manage to sell a few thousand copies of your self-published book.”

Even a year ago, most authors, agents, and editors would have felt this way.

But a funny thing happened in the last year or so. A lot of self-published authors started doing extremely well on Amazon with their e-books.

If you want to see the honor roll of authors who’ve managed to do Xtremely well, I’ll refer you to Joe Konrath’s blog, where he’s been interviewing them practically daily.

Joe himself earned $42,000 in January from his self-publishing efforts. You read that right. Those aren’t yen Joe earned. Not lira. Not pesos. Those were dollars.

It’s easy to blow off Joe’s success as the result of his “platform.” After all, he’s got a very widely read blog and he published a number of books in the past with New York publishers. Joe’s got a name. He’s an established writer. So way too many people say, “Sure, yeah, Joe’s easy to market, because he’s Joe. I’m not Joe. I’ve never been published. I have no blog. So I can’t sell near as many copies as Joe.”

The problem with that is that it’s nonsense. Several of the folks Joe has interviewed lately are writers who haven’t been published by traditional publishers — or writers who just didn’t fare well with traditional publishers, even though they did get a book or few out. Some of these good people are selling better than Joe.

And there’s the case of Amanda Hocking, 26 years old, never published by a traditional publisher, who sold about 100,000 copies of her books in December. Way more than Joe did.

You might believe that Amanda benefitted from the Christmas shoppers in December, that there’s no way she could repeat those kind of numbers in the dead month of January.

Heh, heh. Amanda sold about 450,000 copies in January.

The moral of the story here is that all the rules changed sometime in the last year or so. If you want to self-publish, you can make an amazing success of it — if your stuff is good. If it’s not good, then that’s a problem and you aren’t going to sell thousands of copies, but that’s always been true.

What has changed is that authors can now make an end-run around the “gatekeepers” — the marketing people who decide what will sell and what won’t. Increasingly, readers are becoming the new gatekeepers. That’s the way it should be. The market should decide what sells and what doesn’t.

This is not to put down those marketing folks. In the past, they were necessary because publishing was an expensive venture to get into. A mistake could be enormously expensive.

With e-books, that is no longer the case. No need for a big production run, a big laydown on launch day, and big returns if the book doesn’t sell. Returns for e-books are almost non-existent. Shelf space is unlimited, so there’s no reason for a bookseller to return unsold copies, so the only returns are those from disgruntled customers who bought a book they didn’t want.

But the need for gatekeepers is fizzling. Soon there will be no need at all.

So no worries, Andrew. Market that book. If it catches fire, it’s all good. If it doesn’t, it’ll be lost in the flood. You can always withdraw the book, or rewrite it, or write something else.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

How old is too old when you’re a fiction writer? Is there an “age bias” in the publishing world?

The last week has been busy with travel and all that, so I’m just now catching my breath.

Martha posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hi Randy, I’m a fan, needless to say, and I read your blog daily. This morning’s question brought up one that has been bothering me for some time and that is, when is a writer too OLD to be considered by agents and publishers? One hears all the time that agents/publishers want to develop a career novelist, one who will produce book after book and make the agents and publishers rich. But what about those of us who are seniors. Should we keep mum about our age in our queries or just wait and cross that bridge when and if it comes up? And how about meeting and pitching an agent at a conference? No chance hiding one’s age there, so do you have any advice for what to say or do to mitigate any prejudice they might have about oldsters?

Randy sez: I’m told that age bias is a serious problem in screenwriting. I wouldn’t know, since I don’t do screenplays.

In the world of novel writing, there may possibly be an age bias, but it’s really the least of your worries.

Your main worry with fiction writing is “craft bias.” Agents and editors are massively biased against poor craft. They are massively biased in favor of excellent craft.

It’s that simple. There are any number of examples of fiction writers who’ve published novels in their 70s. Fiction is about life, and the longer you’ve lived, the more you probably know about life.

If you were extremely old, your age might even be a selling point, as it was for 88 year old Helen Hoover Santmyer’s novel “… And Ladies of the Club.”

This is a good time to mention the “Fiction After 50” blog, by my friends Ron and Janet Benrey. They published their first novel after the age of 50, and their blog is about the advantages of being an older writer.

Martha, my advice is to not mention your age at all in your queries. It’s essentially irrelevant. What matters is your craft. Great writing is great writing. If you write well, you can get published at any age.

Go to it.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

If you’re writing a novel, is it OK to use a pseudonym? Is it wise?

Maree posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

The only thing that’s holding me back from publishing my book sooner than the next few months is finance but otherwise I am extremely serious and more serious that ever. I want to use a psuedonym for personal reasons and have fun finding one with heaps of belly laughs to go with it. Could you please give me some pros and cons about the subject?

Randy sez: I can think of a few reasons why you might want to use a pseudonym:

• Embarrassment. Your book contains material that you don’t want your parents/spouse/children/grandmother/friends/minister to know that you wrote. For example: you write erotica or your characters have potty-mouths.
• Libel. You say things in your book that could get you sued.
• Fear. You’re afraid that you’ll offend some terrorists or government or big corporation and they’ll come after you.
• Privacy. You just know you’ll become famous after your novel hits it big and you don’t want to be bothered by all those pesky groupies who’ll be beating a path to your door.
• Moochers. You’re certain that your novel will make you wealthy beyond all imagination and you want to avoid the gold-diggers, especially your freeloading brother-in-law who is such a horrible mooch that you’ll never get him off your couch if he thinks you’re stinking rich.
• Dweebishness. Your parents saddled you with the world’s most dweebish name, such as Throckmorton B. Grieselheimer the 23rd, and you really don’t want that loser on your covers.
• False fame. By horrid chance, you have the same name as somebody who’s already famous, such as Richard Nixon or Monica Lewinsky, and you don’t want to be confused with That Guy or That Girl.
• Unpronounceable. You have one of those names that people can never pronounce, such as Grzsazg, and you suspect that isn’t going to help on the word-of-mouth thing for your book.
• Almost dirty. Your name looks for all the world like a dirty word, such as, um, well I can’t put a name like that in a family-oriented blog like this, but you’ve seen names like that and your worst nightmare is having to introduce somebody like that for a speech, because you just know you’re going to say it wrong.
• Cool. You just know in your gut that “Mark Twain” will be a lot cooler name for an author than “Samuel Langhorne Clemens.”
• Sexism. You’re a woman writing military technothrillers or you’re a man writing romance and you fear your readers won’t take you seriously.
• A fresh start. Some writers with weak sales adopt a pseudonym so the bookstores won’t hold their past track record against them. Yes, really.
• Overproductivity. Some authors write so many books that their publisher fears that they’ll saturate the market. So they write some books under their real name and some under a pseudonym.

Any of those is a decent reason to use a pseudonym. I bet there are some other excellent reasons. Maree, if you have a good reason to use a pseudonym, then do.

I can think of a few disadvantages to using a pseudonym:

• Confusion. You need to remind your publisher to make your checks out to you, not to your pseudonym. You may also have some explaining to do to the tax authorities when you claim all that income for books written by somebody who apparently isn’t you.
• Fame. So you’re a best-selling author and you pay for your meal in a restaurant and that darned waitress looks at your Visa card in your real name and DOESN’T say, “Oh my gosh! You’re that famous author! I love your books! I feel like I know you! I want to bear your children!” Sometimes it really is fun to be recognized, (although it can also be weird.)
• Credit. When you go to your high-school reunion and tell all those meanies that you really did make good and publish a novel, do you think they’ll believe you if you wrote under a pseudonym? Uh-uh. Jim-Bob and Mary Sue will still mock you for being a hopeless geek.

Maree, if you can live with those downsides, then writing under a pseudonym should work just fine for you.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

If you publish a book, are you allowed to choose your own title? Or do you sell your soul to the publisher when you sell your book?

Tim posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I was wondering how much control do authors have over the title of their books. I have read from authors like J.K. Rowling and D.J. MacHale that they picked their titles for their books, I have read from Bryan Davis that his editor changed the title of his trilogy from what he was calling it. You even mentioned you have had your editor change the title of one of your books. So could you help clear this up for me, thank you.

Randy sez: Many titles get changed by the publisher. Remember that when a royalty-paying publisher buys the rights to your book, they’re investing a substantial amount of money — typically several tens of thousands of dollars. If you were investing that much money, you’d want to make sure you did everything possible to recoup that investment. That’s why publishers think they should have a say in your title. Of course, they’re right.

My own titles have often been changed by the publisher or at the request of my publisher, generally after consulting with me. Here is a list of all my published books, with their original titles:

1. WHO WROTE THE BIBLE CODE? (a nonfiction book on what was then a controversial topic). My original title was GOD, STATISTICS, AND THE BIBLE CODE. The publisher thought that was a so-so title (they were right) and made a number of suggestions. I felt that none of them really worked any better, so I made some suggestions of my own, and the publisher accepted one of them. (It was a takeoff on Richard Elliott Friedman’s bestselling book WHO WROTE THE BIBLE?).
2. TRANSGRESSION. My original title was AVATAR, which the publisher felt sounded too New-Agey. It’s possible they were right, but I always thought that my title fit the book better. My publisher gave me four alternative titles to choose from. I chose TRANSGRESSION from that list. Personally I still like AVATAR, but now that James Cameron has done a blockbuster movie with that title, I don’t think I can ever republish the book under its original title.
3. OXYGEN. This was my first book co-authored with John Olson, and his original title was O2. That is the chemical name for the usual form of oxygen that you breathe and we thought it was a very cool title. Our editor knew it wasn’t a good title, and he quickly convinced us that OXYGEN was a better one. I believe he was right. He also made sure that we got a really good cover for the book and he worked hard to make sure that it was a commercial success. I may as well thank him publicly here, because he did a great job on the book. Steve Laube, thanks — you made OXYGEN fly.
4. THE FIFTH MAN. Again, I co-authored this with John, who wanted to call it FIFTH MAN. Our publisher wanted to add the word “the” in front of that. So far as I’m concerned, either title is fine.
5. PREMONITION. The original title for this book was QUEEN OF HEAVEN. My publisher thought this carried some implications they didn’t want, and they asked me for some alternatives. I gave them several, but none of us were excited about any of them. Then, because this book was a sequel to TRANSGRESSION, I decided to go for phonetic similarity and I suggested the title PREMONITION. My publisher liked this and I think that it was a good title and fit the storyline well.
6. RETRIBUTION. This was my original title and my publisher thought it worked well, especially since it was a sequel to PREMONITION. This was my first book published with the exact same title that I gave it at the outset. My publisher also gave it a really nice cover, for which I really ought to thank them. Thank you, Zondervan!
7. DOUBLE VISION. This was my original title for the book and the publisher liked this one so we kept it. The book was about quantum mechanics and ambiguity and it also featured a love triangle in which an engineer with Asperger’s syndrome has to choose between two women, each very different, but each very appealing to him. The title was suggested to me by the song “Double Vision” by Foreigner. (What can I say? I grew up in the 1970s.) Each of the 5 parts of the book bore the name of a song: “Point of Know Return,” “Bridge Over Troubled Waters,” “Dust in the Wind,” “The Grand lllusion,” and “Double Vision.” Remember that titles can’t be copyrighted, but lyrics can, so I took care to quote no lyrics in the book.
8. WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES. This was the original title suggested by the publisher when they asked me to write the book. There is a slight ambiguity in the title. Is it a book to help dummies know how to write fiction? Or is about writing “fiction that dummies will like”? Plenty of people have pointed out this ambiguity. My view is that the “for dummies” line of books is so well known that there really isn’t any ambiguity. In any event, the book was their idea, so I thought they should get to write the title. When we mapped out the book, my editor and my co-author and I were completely agreed on one point — we wanted it to be the highest quality we could possibly make it. We didn’t want a dumbed-down book, whatever the title might say. We gave it our best shot.

Those are all my published books. As you can see, most of them got their titles changed in transit. In some cases, that was an improvement. In other cases, it was a wash or possibly a slight disimprovement. I don’t think any of the changes made things clearly worse. In talking with other authors, I am pretty sure that most of them have had similar experiences.

So, Tim, you might as well get used to the idea now that your editor might not like your title. She might insist on changing it. She might be right.

This is one reason why my one-time mentor, Sol Stein, strongly recommended AGAINST putting the title of your book in the header of your manuscript. As Sol said, suppose you have a perfectly dreadful title for your book. (I think the example he gave was ARKHOPPER or something like that.)

Imagine your editor is reading your manuscript and is really getting into your story, but every time she flips the page, she sees ARKHOPPER right at the top. If your manuscript has 400 pages, that is 400 negative jolts to your editor’s system.

Why do that to her? Why do that to yourself? Just put your last name in the header of your manuscript. That’s enough. (If your last name is “Arkhopper” you might want to consider changing it.)

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

Blog of the Day: For those of you interested in my recent column on The Future of Publishing, you might be interested in the posts on Steve Laube’s blog for today and yesterday. Steve raises a lot of interesting issues, and one of them that I hadn’t thought about at all has to do with foreign rights and how to respect those in a world where an e-book can technically be delivered anywhere on earth, but perhaps not legally. (Yes, this is the same Steve who once acquired several of my books. He’s now an outstanding agent who represents several of my author friends.)