Well, guys … here’s the deal on upcoming books.
I mentioned that the Duffys discovered a layout error on Hardyville Tales. Throughout this entire printing of the book (3,000 copies), the text runs farther than it should into the gutter. (And I mean that in the printer’s sense of “gutter,” meaning the center of the book; no, I haven’t taken Hardyville into the metaphoric dregs.)
The tales are still quite readable (I’ve got an advance copy and I’m having a good time with it). You just have to hold the book a bit wider open than usual, and your hands might need some rest now and then. Had Dave not told me, frankly I probably wouldn’t have noticed.
ADDED: Here’s a scan, courtesy of Dave, to show you what we mean. Not so bad.
Still, Dave’s unhappy. And he’s right because the book isn’t perfect. But Dave’s unhappiness might be your gain — if you want it to be. He tells me that BHM will reduce the price of these slightly flawed (but still very handsome) books. They were going to sell for $14.95 plus postage. Now he’s going to offer them for $6.95 plus postage — less than half price. And if you happen to attend shows where BHM has a table, you might even get a free copy.
Obviously, that’s going to kill my royalties. I’ll earn nothing on the giveaway copies and less than half what I was expecting on copies BHM sells. Chances are, I’ll never see any royalties beyond the advance I received last winter. And that, as you can imagine, is long gone.
But Dave and company have been more than generous. Instead of giving me a few dozen free author’s copies (which is already more than usual for publishers), they’re shipping me one thousand free copies to do with as I wish.
So very shortly, I’ll be selling autographed copies of Hardyville Tales for $10 apiece — and that price includes media-mail shipping.
So buy a copy or two, please. And if you like what you see, consider buying a dozen or a gross from me — all autographed. Give ’em for gifts. Resell them at gun shows or political events. Paper your walls with ’em.
ADDED: Here’s BHM’s updated order page for the book. I’ll have more on how to order autographed copies once I receive my first book shipment.
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At the top, I did say books-plural. And the word from Paladin Press this week is that The Bad Attitude Guide to Good Citizenship (which I just turned in a bit over a week ago) is all laid out, being proofread, and still on track for an October 15 release. (Yes, having your own in-house print shop is a wonderful thing and Donna, Peder, and Jon are amazing.)
So I might be making some combo deals on Hardyville Tales and The Bad Attitude Guide. Details to follow when I know more.
After no new books for, what?, five or seven years, this is a bit dizzying.
I don’t want to be nosy, but who owns the ebook rights to all of these books of yours, Claire?
‘Cos if it’s you all you need to do is to amble over to Kindle or Smashwords.com and upload ’em and Kindle will pay you over $2 on an ebook you price at $2.99 and Smashwords are about the same.
Disadvantage to Kindle is you need a US bank account to get paid by them whereas Smashwords pay (quarterly) via PayPal. Smashwords can also push you ebooks through in to Apple’s iBookstore and on to Barnes & Noble and Sony as long as you follow Smashwords formatting guidelines.
Joe Konrath has sold about 80,000 copies of his ebooks on Kindle alone and is doing about $500 a day in sales. You should go read his ‘A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing’ blog where he breaks all the figures/royalties down. His last post broke down how much better he was doing with ebooks than his print books were doing from mainstream publishers.
As I say, if you have the ebook rights just stick ’em up online and get all the international sales without any printing hassles.
Or, hey, how about a ‘two for one’ sale with J’s books?
Mike — and everybody who has urged me to publish ebooks — for now that’s an issue you’d have to take to Dave Duffy. Sorry. I’m definitely not opposed to ebooks, but I understand that Dave is leery of them.
These will make great christmas presents.
Randomly thinking out loud ~
….how ironic, another company (publishing) example of not doing it’s job correctly pops up.
…based on the scan, it looks like no words are lost & the content remains readable.
….the content is where the value is, not how “normal perfect” it looks.
….and I like being able to hold (cds and) books in my hands, the old fashioned way…where the only failure to see them lies in my eyesight and/or hand gripping abilities and not technology-failures.
…taking into account how this all came about, the “faith is greater than the financials” way of doing business, the spirit of this book’s creation and the content overrides all else. And it wasn’t your end’s fault that screwed up (I hope the publishing co made proper corrections to the money part of this).
…Adding all these thoughts up – – I think when I order this, which won’t be fancy either, I will just send a money order for the ORIGINAL selling price. It’s not that huge of an amount, and no matter what it looks like, as long as the content is readable, the real value is still there.
Please IM me when your get them. I’ll take a few sets. It’s good to see new books. Keep writing.
Wow. I didn’t think the print looked that bad in the scan. I was imagining much worse. I will definitely be ordering when you get your signed copies ready.
We like to have a Kinkos cut the spine and ‘spiral plastic binder’ some of our soft-back books to avoid breaking the spine. I can’t tell from the jpeg, would this be possible?