Why I Like Being Hybrid

Happy Mother's Day to everyone, whether your mom was good or terrible, still with you or not, and whether anyone's ever acknowledged your own mothering. Special love and gratitude to both my own mother - the blonde in our family photo there - and to my second mother, my aunt sitting next to her. I'm blessed to have you in my life!

Secondly, we have a winner in the WORD WHORES REBRANDING BAKEOFF! Okay, no pastry items were involved (more's the pity), but we sorted through name suggestions from numerous sources and voted on our favorite.

The new name?? THE SFF SEVEN.

I like it a whole bunch! The change will kick in next Sunday, May 15. We'll keep you apprised!

In the meanwhile, we have seven winners! People who kindly brainstormed name ideas are:

Sullivan McPig
Stacy McKitrick
JanetLee
Heather
Kevin Reitz
B.E. Sanderson
Lynne Facer

You get to pick any book from any of the SFF Seven! Comment here to let us know the book and format preferred, along with a way to privately contact you to send it. Thank you, everyone, for playing!

In other news, to celebrate the upcoming release of THE PAGES OF THE MIND (and the concurrent release of THE CROWN OF THE QUEEN), Book One of the entire series, THE MARK OF THE TALA, is on sale for only $2.99. If you've been thinking about getting caught up on the series, now's a great time to get started!

Amusingly (or not, really) I saw a customer review somewhere that said they'd bought the book at the sale price, but then "the author raised the ebook price to $9.99 for the subsequent books." So, yeah, I know that MY PUBLISHER, Kensington, has the standard ebook price set at $9.99, which is a lot for the current market. I can't do anything about that. That's a drawback of traditional publishing - which is having a publisher, like mine in New York City - that was established before newer publishing models, and focuses on print book production, distribution and sales.

It's kind of interesting to me that self-publishing has become so well-established and prevalent these days that readers assume the authors set prices. But I also understand that these things are not transparent to the average reader. 

This week, we'll all be discussing the different forms of publication and which work best for us. We've got a variety of publishing paths in this group, so there should be a nice variety in the discussions. 

For my part, I consider myself to be hybrid at this point - which means I have books both with my traditional publishers and that I self-publish. I'm ever so grateful that I have the option to do both. A lot of authors who've been successful in the traditional publishing model had difficulties with the drawbacks there - price-setting, yes, but also long lead times, corporate politics, books going out of print, never to be resurrected, etc. With self-publishing so much more accessible and acceptable these days - and here I'd like to tip my hat to the intrepid writers who truly blazed this trail and made it so smooth and even for later-adopters like me - being a hybrid writer makes a great deal of sense to me. 

There are a lot of things I do like about traditional publishing, and I'm forever glad I both took that path and had the opportunity to do so. That's something important to remember - many authors who self-publish took that path because the doors to traditional publishing remained firmly closed to them, for a variety of reasons. For them, it wasn't a "choice" so much as the most viable alternative.

Similarly, however, authors who did take the traditional path are not stupid. And I feel I have to say this because I've been told to my face by more than one person that I'm stupid for going with traditional publishing instead of self-publishing, where I could have more control and make more money. I have many good reasons for making the decisions I did. One of them is that money isn't everything. It's not even the most important thing. 

Also, we decisions we do for complex reasons, many of them in the privacy of our hearts and minds. Chuck Wendig once said that, when people criticize him for going with traditional publishing when he could be making more money self-publishing, he feels like they're saying he should have married someone other than his wife.

I asked him if I could quote him here on that because that's a perfect analogy of how it feels. Nobody else can make these choices for us, these powerful decisions that affect the course of our lives. Second-guessing those choice, particularly by someone who hasn't been inside our skulls, hasn't walked in the quiet of our hearts, is simply inappropriate.

So, this week, as you hear each of our seven weigh in on the various publishing paths, keep that in mind. The kind of publishing that will work best for you is the one that works for YOU. Educate yourself. Weigh the options. But choose according to your heart, mind and gut - not someone else's.

After all - you'll be the one married to your decisions. 

Jeffe's Spotlight on Ellora's Cave

In honor of Veronica Scott, #1 Jackson fan, joining the Word Whores - a photo of said kitteh working on his plumbing apprenticeship. I'm told he's more of a hindrance than a help, but I don't see how this could be.

This week we're all doing a spotlight on one e-publisher. Since the aforementioned Veronica is the only other Carina Press author in the bordello, I'll leave that one to her. Aren't I nice?

We've never really done this before, so I guess I get to invent a style.

E-Publisher: Ellora's Cave

A little bit about them: EC is one of the oldest e-publishers out there. I remember back when they started in 2000, well before I considered writing fiction, much less romance. A colleague and I traded romance novels frequently and we were intrigued by the concept of e-books, which we'd read on the computer, since this was before e-readers. We were also interested that they promised to be very hot. She bought one as a trial and shared it with me. Amazing to look back at that. They were recently the subject of a CBS Sunday Morning segment on "Mommy Porn."

Ellora's Cave started as a way for the gal who wrote as Jaid Black to publish what she called "Romantica." In fact, up until just a few months ago, the URL for EC was jasminejade.com. Thankfully they fixed that. You can read the history here, if you're interested.

This Word Whore's Experience: I've done two books with EC, Feeding the Vampire and Hunting the Siren. They are part of my Blood Currency series and both take place in a post-apocalyptic world where vampires have been driven out of deliberate obscurity and into the open by the dearth of humans to feed on. Drinking blood involves lots of good sex. My editor is Grace Bradley, a lovely woman who actively recruited me to write for her.

What I like: EC is committed to getting a lot of books out very fast. They publish 150-200 books/month. The turn-around time between sending a story to Grace and seeing it on the virtual shelf (I call it my sub to pub number) is the fastest of all my publishers - 69 days for one, 115 days for the other.

EC also has a built-in audience. Because they've been around for so long, they have many loyal readers who routinely buy every new title.

They're working hard to promote the books and the press. EC has a high visibility at conferences like the RT Booklovers Convention, where they sponsor a big party and authors walk across the stage escorted by handsome men. They have their own convention, Romanticon (I've never been, but I'm told the authors are treated like rock stars) and have been setting up booths at sex expos across the country. I signed at one in Toronto and it was a totally different - and very fun - audience of readers than I've encountered at *any* other signing I've done.

What I don't love so much: EC is quite corporate and insular. They want to cultivate exclusive relationships with their authors. Thus their contracts are quite draconian about rights to worlds and characters. They don't allow me to mention books with other publishers in my bio, making cross-promotion pretty much moot.This frustrates me greatly. EC does not use Net Galley and does not allow us to distribute copies for review - everything must go through them. This can really limit the opportunities for review.

While I love my editor, she has a much more circumscribed role than any of my other editors do. She cannot answer most of my questions and instead refers me to a contact list EC maintains. This list is insanely long and determining who to address my question to can be a painfully long process. Then when I have emailed the correct person, they usually refer me to an article in their internal newsletter or to FAQs. I asked them if they'd like to participate in a special deal with me and I was referred to an article that basically said "No." Carina Press on the other hand, created a special rights dispensation for me, to allow me to take advantage of this particular publicity opportunity. This is not a place for flexibility.

All that said, I understand many EC authors do quite well there. The have grown intensely loyal followings and make excellent money. My feeling is that EC is clinging to an old business model and they are not keeping up with innovations in the e-publishing market. But that could be me. Working with my lovely editor is really the best part for me.