A few months back, I did a column about being orphaned as a
writer. To rehash the incident without boring anyone, I’d been publishing with
Avalon for about twenty years and Leisure, an imprint of Dorchester, for about
seven or eight.
Then bing, bang, and
bong!
Avalon sold out to Amazon and the next week, Dorchester went
on the block. Amazon put in a bid for Dorchester and around the end of
September, won the bidding.
So now, my snug little writing homes were blown sky
high. My security blanket was rudely jerked away with the same alacrity that
Snoopy employs when he yanks away Linus van Pelt’s blanket.
Old Charlie Brown was right when he said, ‘happiness is a
warm blanket.’ I can tell you, it is mighty cold out there in the publishing
world when your blanket is abruptly taken away.
Some of my friends say it’s getting colder. On the surface,
it might appear as such. Traditional mortar and brick bookstores are being
forced to rethink the way they do business.
One thing is certain. Publishing today is a heap different
than fifty years ago, than twenty years ago.
Now Amazon did say they were going to publish all of our
backlists in paperback and ebooks.
And they have. At least, they’ve started. My first with them
is ‘Murder in a Casbah of Cats,” a Tony Boudreaux cozy on the edgy side. I say
without shame I posted an image of the cover on my Facebook
page.
The beauty of Amazon is they offer the books in Kindle at
around four bucks; in paperback at around eight; and hardback for around
fourteen or so.
In all the years I was with Avalon, I had no paperbacks, only
hard cover. You see, Avalon’s primary subscribers were libraries, so all of our
books were hardcover with accompanying prices.
And who could blame any reader for not wanting to fork over
twenty plus bucks for a writer they didn’t know. Even if they knew a writer,
most would prefer a six-dollar paperback to one three or four times the cost.
Then seven-eight years ago, Leisure bought one of my
westerns. They put out one a year for the next five, all paperback. I was on a
roll. I figured within a few years, I’d have ten, fifteen soft covers out there
selling and reselling, drawing those royalties.
Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”, drawn from a Robert Burns’
poem, said it better than I, ‘that the best laid schemes of mice and men often
go astray.”
My dreams of royalties from fifteen or twenty books went up
in smoke as Dochester went down in flames. My sixth western with
Dorchester/Leisure was caught up in the bankruptcy and has yet to see the light
of day.
The old world of publishing is
changing.
Do I like it?
I’m like all old codgers. Not crazy about change as some of
my faithful critics will testify, but I’m smart enough to know everything
changes. This last presidential election made that clear. It’s like I always
taught not only my own children but those hundreds in the classroom during
forty-one years in education. “If you’re not moving forward, then you’re going
backward.”
I still prefer the physical book that I can dogear, crumple,
stick in my back pocket, toss up behind the seat or level a
table.
But electronic books are coming
fast.
Last year I put three young adult books up on Kindle just to
see what would happen. They were the kind I grew up reading, but they haven’t
done too well. I guess that tells me something about how I fit in today,
huh?
I did make contact with a European publisher with whom I
signed a contract for several books, all electronic. I kept all other rights. My
first one comes out in March. It is another Tony Boudreaux mystery titled,
“Galveston.”
Here in the United States, I have three or four under
consideration with the brick and mortar publishers.
And who knows what lies ahead. I’m like that blind dog
looking for a bone. Maybe I’ll stumble on it sooner or
later.
In my writing classes in Continuing Education with Lamar
before the last Texas legislature cut funds, I always started my classes by
telling students that if they had a choice between writing and bullfighting,
they’d be smarter to take up bullfighting.
But then, as writers reading this little opinion piece are
aware, writing gets in your blood—for better or
worse.
