E-book authors' royalties on the rise?

As you may have gathered, dear reader, I have been busy on a variety of projects lately that leave me little time for blogging. However, something rather fine happened last week which made me think more general thoughts about the book-publishing world ...

It was confirmed to me a few days ago by Cambridge University Press (CUP) that my royalties on the e-versions of my Cambridge English Reader titles would be 20% rather than 15% of receipts, as originally agreed.

This feels very much like a step in the right direction, though a few more steps would be welcome! My other publisher, Trifolium Books UK, pays me a much larger percentage of the receipts from e-books, and I hope that, as publishers come to grips with new e-markets, this practice will become more widespread.

 

Long ago (!), when books were only paper, I worked in publishing and experienced all the steps in the procedure as a commissioning editor, a publisher, and a writer. I know that book budgets were then based on the estimated sales receipts. Development costs of the content had to be within a certain proportion of the overall projected receipts. This budgeting model must by now have changed, as the number of e-copies grows and the number of paper copies, upon whose price the budget was based, shrinks.

And yet many e-books cost the same as the paper version. The development section of any book budget will still be necessary, but the paper, printing, transport and warehousing of the paper books must be a far lower part of the overall costs for most books by now. With this in mind, it is strange that the e-version of so many novels is the same price to the consumer as the paper version, and that the authors are still getting such low royalties.

From my experience in the independent publishing sector, this is unjust. If the e-book is priced logically (i.e. lower), far more copies sell. The receipts rise and the profits with them. There’s more for the publisher and more for the author. Why are so many mainstream publishers still not adjusting their prices to the e-book market?

It seems that, as part of their huge internal re-organisation, CUP and their collaborators have in fact been working on this and begun to adjust. I thank all those concerned for this, and hope it is just the beginning of a general trend…

One head, 12 voices!

On May 1st, I took a break from promoting The Boy with Two Heads. My latest short novel for Cambridge University Press Cambridge English Readers was recorded at ID Audio in London. The actor who read it is Nadia Albina. She was dealing with more than 12 characters with accents from South Africa, Greece and Egypt. She had to distinguish between when a character was speaking in her or his own language and when they were speaking in English. A tour de force! I have spent 10 months on and off with my two teenage girl protagonists and it was a wonder to hear them come alive. Thank you, Nadia. Now I know why we are limited in the number of characters we can include in our stories!

My thanks also to John Green and the engineer (who I think is called Nick).

The book is called Better Late than Never and is scheduled to come out in the summer. So I look forward to the cover design expected soon.

Trafalgar Square, May 1st 2013.

After a day indoors, it was glorious to sit in Trafalgar Square and soak up some sun before calling it a day. Even Waterstones could not tempt me back indoors ... 

How many heads to make a book?

Yesterday I sent off the final proof of my latest Reader for Cambridge University Press (CUP) to the editor. 

Qaitbay Fort, Alexandria

It is a thriller about two teenage girls that begins in Alexandria in Egypt and ends in Athens in Greece. I started thinking about it this time last year. It is only 25,000 words, but in the past I have spent quite a lot longer than that working on stories of similar length. It will be called Better Late Than Never and should be out in the summer. The cover blurb will be something like:

"Alexandria, Egypt. Anika and Zaphira are sitting at a seafront café. Suddenly, there is a huge explosion which knocks them over and changes their lives for ever. Both teenage girls learn a lot about each other as they struggle to survive and to understand what has happened and why. And their combined strength is a surprise to the men they come up against."

In view of the Boston bombs, this is uncannily and tragically topical ...

Many heads (not just two!) have been involved in the creation of Better Late Than Never, and continue to be - two freelance editors, the publisher and her staff in-house at Cambridge, six people consulted about facts and settings, the staff of the recording studio and the actor who will read for the CD. And there will be all the marketing and legal staff at CUP from now on.

But I am now under doctor's orders to do less and relax more. How delightful!

And there are new reviews of The Boy with Two Heads on Amazon. Thank you to the two reviewers!

A heady mixture ...

Last year, at the IATEFL conference in Brighton, I was one of four speakers at a symposium on Extensive Reading for learners of English as a Foreign Language. I had prepared a talk with a Power Point Presentation and I was nervous. I hadn't spoken at a conference for years. 

This year, however, at IATEFL in Glasgow, I was at the conference to receive my Extensive Reading Foundation Language Learner Literature award for Dragon's Eggs. So it was a heady mixture of congratulations and reminiscence with ex-colleagues. The ceremony was in a huge auditorium, with podium, banners and spotlights on stage.  

While we waited for it to begin, I discussed creative writing with a colleague from Nepal in a wonderful pale pink sari. On my other side, a complete stranger agreed to take photographs as I was given my certificate. Thank goodness I had prepared a tiny 'Oscar speech' to thank everyone involved. Our enthusiastic and revered MC, Jeremy Harmer, ushered each of us to the microphone to say 'a few words'.

There was a riotous party hosted by Macmillan on a boat on the Clyde later. People from all over the world were learning to dance the Gay Gordons and music and voices rose to incalculable decibels. I and four others left to look for food. We were all of a certain age, and so happy to pass up the younger people's habit of dancing until the wee hours. We found a delicious Indian curry house 20 metres from my hotel where we celebrated my award and the election of the new vice-chair of the IATEFL committee who was also with us. Everyone was interested in The Boy with Two Heads, who came up in conversation, of course. Two or three of the other award winners also write main-stream fiction.

Next morning, the only uncomfortable moment arrived. I was to be interviewed on the British Council's IATEFL channel. 

However, both my interviewers were relaxed and easy to talk to. I read three pages of Dragon's Eggs, about a football match that ends in tragedy when six-year-old Amos treads on an unmarked landmine. This happens near the beginning of the story, which is set in Zimbabwe. It led us into discussing serious issues in language learner literature, and how I came to live in Zimbabwe for three years (my husband was posted there). 

And then it was all over. Phew! 

I had a sandwich with some colleagues from Chile, and then set off to enjoy a few hours in Glasgow in the unexpected sunshine.

I salute Cumbria Libraries

I heard today from the Cumbria County Library Reader Development and Stock Manager that she had been responsible for the purchase of 12 sets of Cambridge English Readers now available throughout the country. She says that 'whilst they are clearly written for ESOL students, I felt that they also had a purpose to serve in relation to the wider basic skills agenda ... The series fills a very important gap in our provision.' 


So good for her! for realising that the series can be used in support of literacy and Life Skills programmes. And good for us that all our efforts are appreciated by our own UK libraries, as well as language schools all over the world. 


Cambridge English Readers have never included the kind of exercises that make controlled language fiction so obviously part of a school curriculum. The idea has always been that they are simply novels that can be read in the same way as novels in the reader's first language. What with that, their genre specific stories, and their full-colour covers, they are easy and attractive, even to people who are not habitual readers.

Luck at the Library!

Today I went to Penrith to start my library visits in the place where Suzanne in The Boy with Two Heads lives and almost dies. It turns out that the county leader of Young People's Services is based there, so we had a long chat about the kind of library event she might be able to slot The Boy into. 


And during that chat I discovered that the Cambridge English Reader (CER) series has been installed in some of the libraries in Cumbria! The editors and authors of CERs have been trying to persuade the powers that be that these short but pithy novels would be good for UK readers (as well as for EFL students all over the world) for years.

Some of the 90 or so CER titles in 7 levels of language

In Penrith, they are in the section that helps people with literacy, whether they are native English speakers or people for whom English is a second or foreign language (EFL).  I found Nelson's Dream among them!! And they told me that Dragons' Eggs was out on loan (even more exclamation marks!). On the same shelves were a plethora of Quick Reads, too.


I was thrilled that in fact the whole series of CER titles are now available from a library. I had a short chat with two librarians about them and dashed home to write a mail to the central office of Cumbria's libraries to find out how this came about and thank them.