Closed Circle - CJC
Last Updated on Saturday, 03 October 2009 01:46 Written by CJC Friday, 26 June 2009 17:44
Closed Circle CJC Page
Past
Why Should Authors who've got Paper Books be Issuing E-Books?
Because like the nautilus, we are capable of change in changing circumstances...and the New York market is changing.
In the old way of the book business, a publisher printed 50,000 copies, planned to ship 40,000 out to the distributors, to take back the stripped covers on unsold copies...well, it was wasteful, but it worked. And there sat the 10,000 copies in warehouse, ready to fill orders for re-supply. There they could sit for years, or---if needful, they could print another 10,000 and keep them sitting there.
Nowadays the IRS taxes anything in a warehouse, and taxes it annually, no matter if it's been taxed before, so along with the rest of the industrial world, publishers suddenly want low stock, almost nothing in warehouse, and everything sitting in someone else's hands. This means they print only what's ordered, and that means if, say, a big house like Amazon decides to cut its order of a book to near zero, the book can actually be canceled after all the work of writing it, doing the cover, etc.
Even so, print runs are more like 10,000, or smaller, now, with the notion of printing just as many books as absolutely necessary to fill orders and have about 500 copies left on hand. So rather than being, say, 40,000 shipped and 10,000 in warehouse, they're shipping low numbers, and keeping maybe 500 in warehouse. The model isn't working well for anybody. The distributors are now telling the publishers what they'll take, ergo what the publishers can buy or print, and the distributors first want to look at the cover---if they don't like the cover, no sale. If they see a movie angle, or a newsy title, they buy more. If they don't like the title of the book, they cut their order in half, or force the publisher to change the cover or title.
So the publishers are no longer in control of the market they're selling to, and, being the ones who actually know books, they're losing money and trying to squeeze in a good book where they can. They're obliged, however, to play it safe. They have to pick books that satisfy the crazy demands of the distributors. And they can't sell backlist any longer. The distributors, who are, after all, business majors, not writers, don't want 'old' books. They want something new-new-new---but just like that vampire movie that's big right now. Think it's crazy? It's crazy.
Closed Circle is us. Three authors who are tired of this craziness, who don't want to spend their careers writing formula dictated by a distributing company, and who are determined, first, to get our backlist (older titles) back into readers' hands, not priced sky-high and sold on Ebay as rarities. Second, if that gives us the funds to live a decent life on while we do it, we're going to experiment with some brand new items, fiction going directly to e-book.
Our policy is---Closed Circle itself makes no money at all. Every penny you spend on a Closed Circle book goes directly to the author. Who's doing the writing, the editing, formatting, even the covers? The writers are. We're working ferociously long hours, but we're loving it. For the first time in our careers---it's us. It's our way. It's the editing we want. If we want to spell 'grey' as 'grey' instead of 'gray', we can. If we want a comma there---we can. And if we have a notion how our cover should look---we can do it. And we can write stories you'll get to read that would never sell in the current New York Market.
Because this is our income, piracy hurts us directly. If you accidentally got a pirate copy and feel badly about it, we have an Absolution Button, where you can use Paypal or a credit card to 'sanctify' your copy, after which you can enjoy it with a clear conscience. We are the source: we are the only source of the e-books we offer: we do not franchise them out to anybody, so if you spot them offered anywhere else, that's a pirate. Don't patronize them. If you spot titles of ours that are offered by companies that do not look to be the sort to deal officially with our paper publishers, those are pirates. Avoid them, and warn others. For one thing, and just to make it hurt that much more, the quality of a pirate copy is usually really, really bad. You just don't know when a critical paragraph is going to be flat missing.
Our best defense is your loyalty and the quality of what we put out. We're proud of both.
Present
Where I am at the moment...
CJ Cherryh...
Right now I'm working on another Foreigner book, title yet to be decided.
I'm trying to reconstruct my genealogy project, which crashed bigtime.
And I'm trying to actually move into the house we moved into two years ago. How time flies!
If you'd like to keep up with our crazy life, join us either at my website: http://www.cherryh.com
or, following the handy splashpage link on that site, drop in and join the group on the interactive blog, Wave Without A Shore. We talk about everything: history, science, fish, each other, ponds, science fiction, fantasy, the publishing business, genealogy, archaeology, and the everlasting questions about computers.
We're a friendly lot. And everybody's welcome.
Future
Upcoming appearances by CJ Cherryh
Look for me next at Radcon 2010, in Pasco, WA, February 13-15, 2010; then Condor, in San Diego CA; maybe MidSouthCon 2010, in Memphis TN, in March, and definitely MISCON 2010, in Missoula, MT, next Memorial Day.
Contact me via my website, at http://www/cherryh.com. From there you can also reach my interactive blog, via the link on the splash page. The name of the blog is Wave Without a Shore.
Upcoming book projects:
I have rights to e-book some of my older books, including the ones that were once with Ballantine. I am working on conversion of the Rusalka trilogy, including Rusalka, Chernevog, and Yvgenie. Following those, I will work on Goblin Mirror.
I have applied to recover other rights, but have not yet received an answer from that company. I will keep you posted.
I will be offering some of my short fiction. I have not figured which to do yet, and if you want to make requests, ask away. I do not think I would have trouble getting permission for my Thieves' World stories from Lynn Abbey, on the other hand---but wait for her, and you may have all of those.
I also have a new Foreigner book, Deceiver, coming from DAW in, May 10, 2010; and in July or August 2010, a short story---I honestly can't remember what I called it---ah! A Wizard In Wiscezan: a sword and sorcery piece (10,000 words) in what is currently called Conquering Swords, coming from Harper Collins, but which may be under some other title by the time it comes out. Six months after that, I will put that story in e-format, and that time gap will generally be my habit with short stories.
I will also be thinking about doing some new short fiction directly for Closed Circle. First I have to get some spare time. Winter is good for things like that