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January 26, 2006
A Million Little Retractions
Well, James Frey is on Oprah today and Oprah is angry after all. That's more what I would expect. She can't very well sell her show on the premise that her guests are probably lying.
Still, I wouldn't go so far as to sue Frey and Doubleday for "lost time," as some folks in Seattle are doing. C'mon, it's a book. We all should lose some time in books. These readers just want to get on TV themselves. Sheesh. Write your own book. If you want to sue someone, sue the government for violating our civil liberties, sue big tobacco, sue somebody worthwhile.
I'd file both episodes under "not cool."
Posted by matt at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)
Cool, and Not Cool
We use a white board in the kitchen to practice spelling words, equations and to remind our boys about the house rules. You can probably tell we're California parents when you see behaviors listed as either "cool" or "not cool."
Helping is cool, hitting is decidedly not cool, as in
"Hey, that's not cool!"
Asking is cool. Throwing fits is not so cool.
Listening is very cool, and highly underrated, arguing (at least for the sake of argument), is not.
"Uncool" means something entirely different and our kids aren't big enough to know that we're uncool yet.
These are also good tips for getting along with your editor. Taunting, hitting or throwing fits is not cool.
Posted by matt at 8:48 AM | Comments (0)
January 23, 2006
Bummed out with "Grossed up" 1099s
File this one under Naked Conversations. We all live and learn in our first year of business, and I'm happy to share.
This post is for any agented author who in the past received 1099 amounts based on "net" receipts paid to the author by their agency. I know that many agencies have reported only net payments and that some may continue to do so, but in 2004 the IRS ruled that middlemen such as agents must report the "gross amount of royalties received from the publisher."
Therefore, each 1099 I send out will report gross amounts received from the publisher and will include a short note detailing total commission charged.
When you do your taxes you will have to deduct the cost of commissions or expenses paid to your agency from the gross amount reported on your 1099-MISC. I know that some of my clients have already experienced this.
Of course, like many IRS rulings, this seems to be a waste of time (accounting software is geared to net payments of checks actually cut) that creates more paperwork for everyone for little purpose.
As a sole proprietor, and even after talking to my accountant, I believed that I might simply be 1099ed by the publisher and in turn 1099 my authors on their net receipts, but once I got into the nitty gritty of creating my 1099s I learned that we must add another 1099 from the author back to me for any commissions deducted ($600 and over).
Every author who paid me more than $600 in commissions will receive a short email statement in the next day, ahead of their 1099, so that they can plan to 1099 me. I'm not overly concerned that I receive these before January 31 since everything's accounted on my end already, but the government must receive the 1096 form accompanying the 1099 by February 28.
I'm truly sorry for this inconvenience, and for anyone who has to 1099 me (or anyone for that matter), Gail Perry sent me this link to Filetaxes.com where you can submit a single 1099 with a 1096 at a cost of $3.79. For any of my clients who aren't generating 1099s already and that want to take this option, I'll repay you for any associated costs.
I was already planning to incorporate as an LLC after my first year and once the business was well established (it is) so this won't recur in the future.
If your agency or agent is incorporated, you needn't worry about reporting the commission payments.
Happy taxes everyone, and thanks for your patience.
Posted by matt at 3:55 PM | Comments (1)
Congrats to Gail Perry
Congratulations and thanks to Gail Perry, C.P.A., whose new book, Quicken All-In-One Desk Reference for Dummies has shipped from Wiley. I'm really pleased to have repped this title as it takes advantage of the longer form All-In-One Dummies model and allows Gail to go beyond the "how" of Quicken into the hows and whys of utlizing Quicken for financial planning.
Gail's previous books include Surviving Financial Downsizing: A Practical Guide to Living Well on Less Income (Adams) and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Doing Your Income Taxes (Alpha).
Posted by matt at 9:12 AM | Comments (0)
January 18, 2006
Liars and Fraudsters
I don't have much to add to the voices chattering on about James Frey or "JT Leroy."
Both come off as performance artists to me. Of the two I'd say the Leroy fraud is more appalling to me in the sense that he/she/they took advantage of many supporters who were there for "JT" for reasons totally unrelated to literature. It's the same kind of fraud as practiced by those folks down the hill in Sacramento who pretended to be from New Orleans in order to scarf up on the relief funds.
Re Frey, I'm surprised that Oprah defended him on Larry King. I thought that authenticity was her hallmark. If I were Oprah, I'd be pissed.
A Million Little Pieces is number two on Amazon's bestseller list as I write this, so the controversy hasn't seemed to hurt sales yet.
The deeper problem for publishers and authors is that many other modern memoirists now become suspect.
It's a shame, but in fact the list of literary pranks and liars is quite long.
Remember Hitler's Diary? Howard Hughes's autobiography?
Fraud of a different sort caught my eye last week, something that's probably more insidious and dangerous than "memoir fiction" or imaginary authors: science fraud and fudging aided and abetted by Photoshop.
Perhaps everything we read and every picture we see should come with a disclaimer.
Posted by matt at 10:06 AM | Comments (1)
January 16, 2006
Peachpit has a new blog
Find it here.
They've also linked to a few of their author blogs, including those of Ben Willmore, Adam Engst, Maria Langer and Jim Heid. Nice start.
Every publisher should have an author blogroll.
Wiley's Jim Minatel has done a good job with this. So have APress and O'Reilly.
Posted by matt at 8:39 AM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2006
Non-fiction publishers love "roadies"
I never heard this term before, but I must have just missed it because it's so obvious. One of the publishers I met with at MacWorld this week said he was particularly interested in "roadies."
Inside, I went "huh?"
And then I realized, he was talking about those speaking pros that jet from conference to conference and speak to thousands of potential readers throughout the year. I said, "oh, you mean the authors who don't really have time to write but somehow get it done in hotels, on airplanes and in cabs?"
Yeah.
If you have the inclination and talent to become a roadie, by all means do so. You can start small. Start with user groups, special interest groups, your chamber of commerce, Learning Annex, or teach extension courses if need be, but the better salesperson you become, and the more shows you attend, the richer you'll be.
This is maybe a tough deal for shy authors who may not feel comfortable with public speaking. For those folks, at the very minimum, I encourage you to at least set up online and find communities where you can participate and contribute.
Posted by matt at 1:47 PM | Comments (1)
January 6, 2006
The most shop-lifted book is...the Bible???
Via Publisher's Lunch -- this article from the Detroit News is worth reading.
Makes you think about those used books sales on Amazon, which cause some publisher and author consternation already. Although I'm sure that the great majority of them are legitimate, I've heard of a few cases recently where thieves were hitting stores and stealing books "to order" for online sales.
Posted by matt at 10:15 AM | Comments (1)
January 4, 2006
Tech publishing trend for 2006 -- Up
We finally experienced new growth in the tech book market in 2005, driven in large part by emerging markets (Ruby, Ajax, Digital Lifestyles), strong series (Dummies, Head First, and Missing Manual) and the consolidation and focus of a few publishing programs (Sybex seems to have settled in very well as a strong Wiley imprint).
And many thanks go to Apple for continuing to push new products out the door (now hopefully Steve Jobs will get over iCon).
I think that 2006 will shape up to be even better. After a year where we saw few big software releases (outside of open source betas at least), we're going to see a year driven again by Microsoft updates of Office and, hopefully, Vista too, not to mention a probable Adobe CS release later this year.
This should mean we'll see a bigger title count, so it's a great time to hit up your editors for wish lists. That's what I'm doing.
It's also a good time to review what's working in the market -- books that people can use to improve their lives, lifestyle, or bank account.
Security remains interesting and I'm curious to see what will happen with the Vista release.
Vista will be big and publishers are still keen to hear new ideas for Vista titles.
I was slow to understand the draw for web services titles, but if you look at the bestseller list you can see that select Google and eBay titles are still selling very well. The problem is that every market we attack becomes crowded at some point, so you need to look for unique entry points into any bestselling category.
Tech publishers also continue to expand their programs -- look at what O'Reilly has done with titles like Mind Hacks, or how the tech "for Dummies" folks are starting to publish non-Dummies branded books (see Before and After for instance).
I think this is great news for everyone and helps to breathe new life and initiative into these programs. Tech publishers have a great infrastructure to build upon, so I expect to continue to see them taking advantage of their editorial and marketing resources to push the envelope outside of their core imprints and roots.
Tech publishers are acting more like trade publishers in other ways too these days, they're focused more and more on finding authors with the right platform, which can create a challenge for those authors who consider themselves generalists. I suggest that if you're going to focus on more than a few technologies or topics, try to keep your focus very tight and keep in mind that each category you tackle may require its own marketing angle and maybe its own author web-site and/or blog.
Here's what's on my wish list for the tech market this year:
Let's get better at selling books to new bookstore buyers: for online commerce and eBay titles, let's work to get those books onto the business shelves; for digital photography techniques titles, let's get more titles on the photography and art shelves; for digital music titles, let's get on the music shelves and make sure we're represented in the right book clubs. Some of these categories themselves are mature markets.
Cross-shelving is a chore and doesn't really work, but with the right books we might find more dedicated category shelving and with enough books and publishers knocking on the door we might stretch these categories some. Let's face it, the computer book section is often a mish-mash and sometimes just a plain mess.
Let's get better at marketing our books to the general consumer; we need more reviews in the Sunday papers, more reviews in lifestyle magazines, and some sense of how to exploit serial rights like most trade publishers do. When there's tech news, let's make sure our experts and our authors are the ones being interviewed.
Posted by matt at 9:40 AM | Comments (0)
January 3, 2006
Happy New Year
This is my one-year anniversary under the Fresh Books banner, and I'm pleased to announce a few new titles that are shipping in January. My list this first year has been about two-thirds tech and one-third reference and business. The tech titles come to market most quickly but I'm looking forward to adding many more tech and reference titles to this list in the coming year.
Congratulations to Andy Rathbone on the publication of PCs: The Missing Manual, from O'Reilly.
I'd like to thank Harold Davis for my first animal cover in a few years, Google Advertising Tools: Cashing in with AdSense, AdWords, and the Google API's, also from O'Reilly.
Kudos to Photoshop Guru, Taz Tally, on his forthcoming Photoshop CS2 Before and After Makeovers, from Wiley.
Another big thank you and congratulations to John Paul Mueller on his new book Mastering Visual Web Developer 2005, shipping later this month, from Sybex.
And congrats to Bill Loguidice, hard at work on his first book, who is quoted in this article on retro gaming from the Las Vegas Review Journal.
I've had a wonderful year and it wouldn't have happened without my clients. I extend my deepest thanks to everyone who took a chance and worked with me. Here's wishing you a great New Year, healthy sales, and a long shelf life.
Posted by matt at 1:22 PM | Comments (2)