Read some of the latest reviews from readers posting their thoughts about The Midget’s House on Goodreads and Amazon:

*****
Five Stars:

“Ms. Bartholomew did complete and thorough research into times, lives, and yes, into the actual house described within this wonderful historical fiction novel.

“I hope to read more novels by Ms.Bartholomew in the future” 

*****

Five Stars:

” The story just pulls you in. I could see it on bookshelves at big chain bookstores; I could see it as a book club pick; in other words, some big publisher should take note of this book and make a lot of money off of it! Thanks for a wonderful read!”

*****

Four Stars:

“I *loved* this book. Had great difficulty putting it down.”

*****

Five Stars:

“I really enjoyed this look at the mystery, history, and background to the famous circus sideshows.”

*****

Five Stars:

“Love! love! love!”

You might have read (or if you haven’t, you should) the Authors Guild’s (AG) latest blog post, in which it condemns Amazon and blames it for the sorry state of the traditional publishing industry.

Amazon (and digital bookselling, in general) is a threat to publishers, for the reasons mentioned. Amazon is also a threat to authors, but mostly for different reasons than mentioned in the post. The attempt by AG to link authors’ and publishers’ interests really just reflects the AG’s interests. If traditional publishing disappears, so does the reason for the AG’s existence. That doesn’t mean it’s completely wrong, however, just wrong to conflate the interests of authors and publishers.

For example, other than the comment about plummeting advances, this statement makes little  sense:

It’s new authors who lose out if browsing in bookstores becomes a thing of the past. Advances for unproven and non-bestselling authors have already plummeted, by all accounts. Literary diversity is at risk.

New authors are going it alone, and creating opportunities for themselves that traditional publishers never would have given them. Diversity isn’t at risk. There’s more of it. There are ebooks about everything. Most of these would never have been published, if not for the ease of Amazon, Smashwords, and other digital publishing platforms.

The reality is that there’s no way to stop the shift to online buying, nor should we want to stop it. Whether in print or in ebook form, buyers know they’ll get better deals online, and they’re taking them.

This would be true whether we were talking about Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble or some other entity.

Newer authors’ self-pubbed books aren’t in danger of being remaindered six weeks after hitting the shelves. And, given that traditional publishers expect authors to do most of their own publicity, and have cut advances to the bone, when they publish new authors at all, Amazon comes off looking more hero than villain to most indie authors.

Indeed, some of us chose the indie route over traditional publishing because we saw it as the inevitable future, and figured we’d better get in early and learn the ropes.

That’s not to say that Amazon really is the hero to authors it currently appears to be. The danger to authors from Amazon is that, once the company has thoroughly marginalized the competition–and the AG is right; it’s doing just that–it will start changing contract terms, such as the formula for compensation to authors.

So, the story about Amazon both is and isn’t what the AG suggests. It’s more complex.

But we do need to be aware that if Amazon can steamroll major companies, it can definitely steamroll publishing companies consisting of one person and his computer.

- Anita Bartholomew

I’m delighted to report that after giving a brief reading at the last meeting of the Indian Beach-Sapphire Shores book club in Sarasota, FL, the group selected my novel, The Midget’s House, for its February read.

Most of the book club members opted for the paperback, but it’s also available as a Kindle edition at a great, low price. 

I’m so excited that I’ll repeat the gist of the headline: The Midget’s House just made it to #94 on the Kindle Paid Bestseller list in Literary Fiction.

It’s the imagined history of my home in Sarasota, known as one of the two “midget houses” because local legend says John Ringling built it for little people in his circus (just a legend — probably untrue).

On Monday, the ebook was free for a day, and made several lists, but this is its first paid bestseller day. Kindle ranks change by the hous, so it might be there later or it might not. But it’s a great feeling to see it there now.

The paperback, which has been delayed due to printing errors, should be available next week.

The blog tour to launch the paperback edition of THE MIDGET’S HOUSE: A Circus Story… A Love Story… A Ghost Story has begun (although the paperback has been delayed a few days).

The novel is currently available as a Kindle ebook and the paperback should be on Amazon’s “shelves” by Monday.

Here’s Susan Blexrud’s interview with me on Embrace The Shadows. More coming soon.

- Anita Bartholomew

This big and powerful (posted with permission of FrugalDad.com:

Source: Frugaldad.com

Kaplan, the publisher of Something To Prove, a book I co-authored with Dr. Yvonne S. Thornton, decided to get out of the trade book business–but never told its trade book authors or their agents.

Rather than go into all the gory details here, I’ll let Erik Sherman’s article tell the tale. Here’s a snippet:

…when Thornton, working with co-author Anita Bartholomew, wrote a second memoir in 2009, the new title, Something to Prove, had multiple publishing houses bidding for it. Thornton actually turned down St. Martin’s Press to work with Kaplan Publishing for a significantly smaller advance, as she told CBS MoneyWatch…

Something to Prove came out late last year. Unfortunately for Thornton, so did the decision at Kaplan that the trade publishing division was a waste of time.

I haven’t had a chance to thoroughly digest the ruling, but many of the points Judge Denny Chin made in rejecting the settlement were taken from arguments made by objectors to the Google Books settlement, and by the Department of Justice.

Just as interesting, many if not most of Judge Chin’s reasons for rejecting the Google Books settlement are mirror images of the arguments made to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals by the Objectors to an earlier, uglier writers’ class action settlement, Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick, (aka “Freelance”). For more about that case, see Irv Muchnick’s excellent blog on the topic.

Here’s a snippet from Judge Chin’s ruling:

“While it is true that in virtually every class action  many class members are never heard from, the difference is that  in other class actions class members are merely releasing  “claims” for damages for purported past aggrievements.  In  contrast, here class members would be giving up certain property  rights in their creative works, and they would be deemed — by  their silence — to have granted to Google a license to future  use of their copyrighted works.”

If you were to substitute the names of the defendants in the Freelance case for the name Google, above, you’d have the identical situation. This is why, several years ago, I filed an objection to the Freelance settlement, and joined the other objectors in appealing its approval. I hope the same fate befalls Freelance as did Google. Writers’ future rights should not be taken from them and handed over to those who are accused of past infringement. That’s not a settlement. If approved, it would amount to legally sanctioned theft.

- Anita Bartholomew

A bestselling author, Barry Eisler, decided he’d have more upside potential as a self-publisher than with a traditional publisher that offered him a $500,000 advance. The traditional publisher pays a 25 percent net ebook royalty. By publishing his books himself, Eisler could earn a 70 percent ebook royalty.

If enough top authors follow Eisler’s example, the publishing business, as we know it, will cease to exist. That’s not to say that all bestselling writers will go off on their own. But if Eisler isn’t an anomaly, he’s the first domino.

Publishers probably can keep most of their top authors in the fold, and survive the digital revolution, by splitting profits on ebooks with authors evenly (which is roughly how profits are split on a hardcover, after factoring in all the publisher’s costs). But it’s unclear how many publishers will see the light in time and be willing to do that. It seems more likely, at this point, that most publishers will refuse to give authors enough of a share in ebook profits until it’s too late, and most of the top names have discovered that they, too, will do better on their own. For the sake of the entire business, please hope that I’m dead wrong.

As Eisler explains in a long discussion, posted at JA Konrath’s blog:

Barry: All signs that publishers are aware of the potential for digital disintermediation, but that they don’t understand what it really means.

Joe: Because they still believe they’re essential to the process.

Barry: I would phrase it a little differently. They recognize they’re becoming non-essential, and are trying to keep themselves essential–but are going about it in the wrong way.

Joe: You and I and our peers are essential. We’re the writers. We provide the content that is printed and distributed.

For hundreds of years, writers couldn’t reach readers without publishers. We needed them.

Now, suddenly, we don’t. But publishers don’t seem to be taking this Very Important Fact into account.

Barry: Well, again, I think they’re taking it into account, but they’re drawing the wrong conclusions. The wrong conclusion is: I’m in the paper business, paper keeps me essential, therefore I must do all I can to retard the transition from paper to digital. The right conclusion would be: digital offers huge cost, time-to-market, and other advantages over paper. How can I leverage those advantages to make my business even stronger?

Joe: We figured out that the 25% royalty on ebooks they offer is actually 14.9% to the writer after everyone gets their cut. 14.9% on a price the publisher sets.

Barry: Gracious of you to say “we.” You’re the first one to point out that a 25% royalty on the net revenue produced by an ebook equals 17.5% of the retail price after Amazon takes its 30% cut, and 14.9% after the agent takes 15% of the 17.5%.

Joe: Yeah, that 25% figure you see in contracts is really misleading. Amazing, when you consider that there’s virtually no cost to creating ebooks–no cost for paper, no shipping charges, no warehousing. No cut for Ingram or Baker & Taylor. Yet they’re keeping 52.5% of the list price and offering only 17.5% to the author. It’s not fair and it’s not sustainable.

Barry: I think what’s happening is that publishers know paper is dying while digital is exploding, and they’re trying to use the lock they’ve always had on paper to milk more out of digital. In other words, tie an author into a deal that offers traditional paper royalties, which are shrinking, while giving the publisher a huge slice of digital royalties, which are growing. The problem, from the publisher’s perspective, is that their paper lock is broken now.

Joe: I feel all writers need to be made aware that there is finally an option. Not just an option, but an actual preferable alternative to signing away your rights.

Barry: It’s inevitable that more writers will be realizing this is true. It’s being demonstrated by more and more self-published authors: you, Amanda Hocking, Scott Nicholson, Michael J. Sullivan, HP Mallory, Victorine Lieske, BV Larson, Terri Reid, LJ Sellers, John Locke, Blake Crouch, Lee Goldberg, Aaron Patterson, Jon F. Merz, Selena Kitt, hopefully me…