Midlist Writer: (Mostly) good times for ebooks

Saturday, 28 November 2009

(Mostly) good times for ebooks

Things seem to be on the up for electronic publishing. One of my publishers is expanding into ebooks and wants to renegotiate my contract to include an electronic edition. We're currently haggling over the royalty rate. As is typical with print publishers new to electronic publishing, they're offer a rate far less than market standard. The math is different for electronic editions, since there's much less overhead, and the author thus deserves a bigger share.

In other news, my short story is almost out from Damnation Books and I've found out that one of the distributors will be Shortcovers, which among other devices offers ebooks for the iPod and Blackberry. i didn't even know you could read ebooks on those! Shows how much I still have to learn.

In more general news, romance giant Harlequin has opened up a new epublisher called Carina Press. Harlequin already puts many of its print books into ebook format, but now they've made a separate imprint just for ebooks. Their first catalog will be Spring 2010 and they'll feature not only romance, but other genres as well. They're wide open for submissions at the moment. I'm curious to see just how their acceptance policy will differ from their parent company.

But not all the news is good in the world of digital publishing. Arkham Tales, a fine electronic magazine specializing in horror, is closing its doors after only its fifth issue. It garnered quite a lot of attention and readership in its short life, but sadly became yet another victim of the economic downturn. All five issues are available for free on their website. Yup, free! They relied on advertisers and donations, and apparently neither of these two sources were sufficient.

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The Case of the Purloined Pyramid

The Last Hotel Room

He came to Tangier to die, but life isn’t done with him yet. Tom Miller has lost his job, his wife, and his dreams. Broke and alone, he ends up in a flophouse in Morocco, ready to end it all. But soon he finds himself tangled in a web of danger and duty as he’s pulled into scamming tourists for a crooked cop while trying to help a Syrian refugee boy survive life on the streets. Can a lifelong loser do something good for a change? A portion of my royalties will go to a charity for Syrian refugees.

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