Publish Thyself

By Susan Kuchinskas

Editors at various traditional publishing houses, including two top Manhattan firms, loved Melisse Shapiro's first novel, Lip Service, the story of a homemaker turned phone-sex worker, but their marketing executives didn't. (Too sexy for our readers, they said.) That nixed what would have been her first big publishing deal.

So Shapiro decided to find her own audience. In June 1998 she set up a website to sell a download of her book for $12.95, under the pseudonym M.J. Rose. Then she began offering a printed version. Lip Service sold 1,500 copies online, and was picked up by the Doubleday Book Club and Literary Guild. It went on to sell more than 12,000 hard copies by September, and Shapiro became the poster girl for a new phenomenon--e-publishing as a cottage industry.

Chalk another one up to the Internet. Anyone with a computer and a novel can become a published author, bypassing the conventional North American publishing industry. More and more authors are taking the electronic route. California e-publisher iUniverse.com expects to publish 15,000 to 25,000 new works in 2000, and competitor Fatbrain says 5,500 authors have signed on in just four months.

The ability of Web content to reach niche audiences makes e-publishing especially attractive to authors who don't fit a mold. Leta Nolan Childers of Fort Pierre, S.D., writes novels she calls "comedy romances" that combine the passion of conventional bodice rippers with a dose of silliness. In 1998 she turned to e-imprint DiskUs Publishing, then a tiny operation run by free-lance journalist Marilyn Nesbitt out of her house in Albany, Ind. Childers' submission, The Best Laid Plans, was accepted within weeks and went on sale in January 1999. She became probably the top-selling e-author in the U.S.--and possibly the world--by selling more than 6,000 copies of The Best Laid Plans at $3.50 for a download and $6.50 for a CD. Since then, she has churned out five kids' titles and nine adult books.

The speedy turnaround time of e-publishing appeals to established authors as well as newbies. "I'd turn a book in, and two years later it would come out," says Douglas Clegg, a New York City horror writer with nine published novels under his belt and two more in the hands of Dorchester Publishing. So Clegg got Dorchester to sponsor an e-mail serialization of his latest work, Naomi, a "haunted love story." Four thousand people signed up to receive free weekly chapters last summer. Clegg plans another e-mail serial in June. The money Dorchester kicked into the project went to designing a Doug Clegg website and some banner ads, so e-Naomi was not a moneymaker for the author. The real payoff, Clegg says, was "connecting with readers in a personal way." He invited readers to give him feedback via e-mail and discussion lists, and hundreds did.

There's a financial upside for e-authors as well. Those who self-publish get every penny of sales, while those who work with e-publishers typically get royalties of 40% to 70% of sales. Compare that with the less than $10,000 the average author gets as an advance on a conventional first novel. Angela Adair-Hoy of Booklocker.com an e-publishing firm in Andover, Mass., says sales of the three nonfiction titles she has self-published average $4,000 a month.

There are some innovative payment methods as well. David Saperstein, author of Cocoon and seven other novels, sells his online thriller Dark Again through CyberGold, an Oakland, Calif., company that rewards people with tiny amounts of money for looking at ads; they can buy Dark Again when they accumulate enough. Clegg picked up an even better sponsorship deal for his e-mail horror romance Nightmare House, getting a five-figure sum he says is pretty close to his typical paperback advance.

E-publication may be a good deal for authors, but what's in it for readers? In a nutshell, time and money. E-books typically cost $3 to $10 each, while it's hard to find a paperback for less than $7. And the insomniac who finishes reading a thriller at 2 a.m. can log on and download another almost instantly. E-books can also be enjoyed on PalmPilots and devices such as the Rocket eBook and the Softbook.

Still, no one believes e-books will replace the "real thing," at least not anytime soon. Shapiro, whose Lip Service was purchased by Pocket Books for a high five figures, has a print deal for her next novel. Nevertheless, Childers and Adair-Hoy say they will never go back to hard copy, especially since many publishers these days expect to keep the electronic rights for themselves. Adair-Hoy has been offered a couple of print-publishing contracts for her how-to books on writing and electronic publishing, with $5,000 advances for print and electronic rights. She says she turned thumbs down. "I can make that much myself in a month," she asserts. "Why should I give the money to them?"