The Kindle and Nook elves must be working around the clock this time of year: I uploaded Forever His late last night and it went live at both sites this morning. No three-day waiting period this time around! I guess they’ve decided to trust that I’m really me.

I’m beyond excited about this new edition. Forever His is my personal favorite of all my books, and Avon did a truly underwhelming job of publishing it when it first came out. The Avon cover was deadly dull, the print run painfully small, the promotional budget somewhere between zero and zilch. Forever His vanished from bookstores almost as soon as it was published, and it’s been out of print ever since — until now.

It’s a genuine joy to get this book back “in print” with a red-hot cover by Kim Killion. I hope it will find its audience at last.

Forever His is a time-travel romance that readers have compared to the work of Jude Deveraux and Diana Gabaldon. A mini-synopsis: Medieval knight Gaston de Varennes wants a docile bride who’ll fit into his plans for vengeance and justice, but a trick of time finds him married to a thoroughly modern American lady who turns his castle, his life, and his heart upside down. Will her desperate secret tear them apart after only a few bittersweet weeks of stolen passion — or will they conquer mistrust, treachery, and time itself to discover a love that spans the centuries?

Reviewers have called Forever His “moving, magical” and “a masterpiece” and the Detroit Free Press named it “one of the best romances of the year.” It also won the National Readers Choice Award for best historical romance of the year. The All About Romance website gave it an “A” grade and named it one of their Desert Isle Keepers.

I hope you’ll give it a try. Forever His is Book 1 of my Stolen Brides series of medieval romances, and it’s on sale for just $2.99 for a limited time. I’ve also lowered the price of Book 2, His Forbidden Touch, to 99 cents. Yep, we’re talking 2 books for less than 4 bucks! My little Christmas gift to say thanks for helping me launch my new e-publishing career.

Happy holidays, and may 2012 bring much joy & prosperity to all!

Looks like the Kindle Elves were hard at work last night, because I woke up to a nice surprise this morning: my e-book debut His Forbidden Touch is now live on Amazon. I have officially joined the digital revolution. Today is 11-11-11, which I’m choosing to interpret as a sign of good luck, rather than an omen of the end of the world as we know it.

I actually uploaded the book to Amazon and B&N on Tuesday, so the official pub date is 11-8-11. It went live on B&N within 24 hours, but there was a three-day delay at Amazon. Seems they’re being extra-careful about copyright these days: they requested documentation that I own the rights to the book before they would proceed. I was not only happy to comply, I commend them on their caution. We authors take copyright seriously, and I’m glad they do, too.

I’m already enjoying one of the happy differences between being an indie author and being a trad-pubbed author: real-time access to my sales numbers.

When it comes to sales figures, New York publishers treat their authors like mushrooms: keep ’em in the dark and feed ’em a lot of…organic fertilizer. In my trad-pub days, getting sales figures required repeated demands by my agent and months of patience. Even when we did pry loose a number or two from my publisher’s cold, hard grasp, we had no way to verify the accuracy of their figures.

But now I’m an indie. And we indies have live, 24/7 access to our sales figures. No agent required, no months of waiting — and no more manure. One click, and I’ve got my exact sales numbers. I’m already addicted to hovering over that Month-to-Date Unit Sales page and hitting “reload.” I’m hoping the novelty will wear off. Maybe in a week or so. I’ve got books to write.

Meanwhile, I want to share every nitty-gritty twist and turn on this indie road — and that includes hard numbers. So here’s where I’m at on Day One of this new adventure:

Number of titles on sale: 1 book priced @ $3.99
B&N sales: 3
Amazon sales: 3
Total royalties earned so far: $16.15
Twitter followers: 174
Facebook page “likes”: 44
Newsletter subscribers: 10

Hmm, this is hardly what anyone would call a splashy debut. But this isn’t the trad-pub world where an author has to go big or go home. E-books are all about the slow build, the “long tail” of sales over the long haul. Right now, I’m just happy to be back in the game. It’s a genuinely joyous feeling to have my work available for readers again, after years of gathering dust on the bottom shelves of used bookstores. I just have to find ways to help readers find me, one book at a time.

Which reminds me, I need to get back to work on my next book. Right after I go hit “reload” on that Unit Sales page one more time.

Pricing is a hot topic of conversation among e-book authors and readers right now. There’s a lot of myth and misinformation bouncing around on some reader forums, and I’d like to address three mistaken beliefs I’ve seen out there:

“Authors should tell their publishers to end agency pricing.”
This is never gonna happen. It can’t happen. In the traditional NY publishing world, publishers have all the power and writers have none. Zip, zero, zilch. Publishers have the exclusive right to set a book’s price, a right that’s spelled out in black-and-white in every publishing contract. When it comes to pricing and royalties, publishers decide the “industry standard” and writers are told to take it or leave it. More and more of us are leaving it. The only real power we have is the power to say no to crummy contracts.

“Authors keep quiet about agency pricing because they’re getting rich.”
Even I used to believe this one, but it’s 100% untrue. Authors get almost no benefit from agency pricing. Seriously. Here’s why: on print books, most major publishers pay an “industry standard” 8% to 10% royalty on the cover price. For ebooks — the ones they charge those over-inflated agency prices on — publishers pay an “industry standard” 25% net royalty. They consider this generous, compared to the scanty royalties they pay on print editions.

But wait, what was that little three-letter word in there? Oh yeah: net. “Net” means that the publisher deducts Amazon’s 30% cut from the author’s share of the profits. And then the author’s literary agent takes another 15% of what’s left. So even though you’re paying an over-inflated agency price, the author only earns a small amount on that e-book.

How small? Thriller author Joe Konrath has done the math and calculated that authors actually pocket just 14.9% on e-books released by their NY publishers. Yep, they’re getting just a few pennies more than they earn on their print editions. (And sales of their dead-tree books are dropping like…well, like dead trees.)

So every time you buy an agency-priced book, the bulk of the profit goes straight into the coffers of the NY publisher. Publishers created the agency pricing scheme because (1) they want to persuade readers to keep buying print books, to delay the demise of their dead-tree business and (2) the high profits they’re making on agency-priced e-books enable them to stay afloat as their dead-tree business dwindles. Long story short: agency pricing benefits publishers, not authors.

“Authors go indie because they’re greedy.”
Authors choose to go indie for a lot of reasons. We want the freedom to write the books we love. We want freedom from insane deadlines. We want the freedom to choose our own editors. We want the freedom to create covers we actually like. And yes, we want the freedom to earn a living.

Amazon pays authors 70% royalties on the cover price of books priced between $2.99 – $9.99. That means, for the first time in the history of publishing, it’s possible for mid-level authors — not just the superstars — to earn a decent living. Most of us won’t get rich, and we know it. The reason why millionaires like Amanda Hocking make news is because they’re rare. Unusual. Newsworthy. Most of us just hope to follow our muse and still manage to pay the rent and send our kids to soccer camp. The good news for readers: because we’re earning decent royalties, we indie authors can keep our prices low, usually under $5.

So here’s the most important point readers need to know: every time you buy an indie e-book, 70% of your purchase price goes directly to support the author — not to a big NY conglomerate. Every time you buy an indie e-book, you’re sending NY a message that you’re sick of agency pricing. And you’re saying it in the only language they can hear: money.

It’s easier than ever to find great indie e-books, thanks to the Backlist eBooks site. BeB lists genre novels (romance, mystery, suspense, SF/fantasy, etc.) from indie authors who used to write for NY publishers. The site includes authors who have appeared on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists and received major awards such as the Hugo, Nebula, Edgar and RITA. Many of their books are priced in the 99 cents – $3.99 range, and some are even free.

Go buy a few today, and tell New York what you really think of agency pricing.