Novelist Explains the Book Business

Veteran novelist Catherine Ryan Hyde, author of Pay It Forward and 15 other books wrote two great articles on the book publishing business on DailyFinance.

In the first, The (Paltry) Economics of Being a Novelist, she describes the monetary underpinnings of the novelist's business. She talks about things like advances, royalty checks (apparently authors get only two a year), the shelf life of a novel, and other such things. The inevitable conclusion is, of course, don't do it for the money.

In the second, The (Unlikely) Economics of Your Book Becoming a Movie, she described how novelists (theoretically) profit from their books. She tells about her experience from when Pay It Forward was adapted to film. No surprises here either: if your name isn't J.K. Rowling or Stephen King, there's mostly no money and definitely no creative control.

Great articles for anyone ever entertaining the thought of being a novelist and wondering about the process, the business side of things, the journey, etc.

Scribd -- a friendlier self e-book publisher for authors

I seriously don't know much about self publishing. All I know is that it's definitely getting more attention.

Today I read on NYT about Scribd, an Internet start-up that introduced today a way for anyone to upload a document to the Web and charge for it. Already Scribd is the most popular document-sharing site, the Times say, as it takes a YouTube-like approach to text.

But now there's a store too, which allows authors or publishers to set their own price for their work and keep 80% of the revenue, which apparently is a much higher percentage than higher services (I really don't know, does anyone know how much Lulu.com charges for example?)

Other features include security measures, or unprotected PDFs, which gives them the ability to be read on any device (not just the Kindle).

The Times writes:

So far, no major publishing houses have signed on to the store, though the company says it is talking to them. The independent publishers Lonely Planet, O’Reilly Media and Berrett-Koehler will add their entire catalogs.

The Scribd store will also give unpublished authors, or authors who are in a hurry, a well-trafficked Web forum on which to post their books, charge for them and see immediate results.

There have been some success stories of self publishing, although not many. Regardless, I definitely it's exciting there's another service for writers in the Internet age.

Anyone with some self-publishing experience can give a better insight into the new service?