MSI Press Blog

It is Tuesday. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side.  Today's topic asks (and answers) I question I see underlying a number of authors' organizations posts on the Internet that do a great disservice to authors. The question: Do publishers cheat authors out of royalties? The short is that traditional publishers are honest; there is no reason not to be. Scammers are everywhere, and many would-be published authors get sucked in by being told how wonderful there book is when a traditional publisher will not take it (because it is not wonderful). Let's look first at why traditional publishers have to be honest, and then let's look at why authors question their royalties. (To set the st...

  It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side. Today's topic  is a real conversation that I had this morning with one of our authors, but I have changed the numbers and other information to keep identities private. It is not unusual; I have this discussion often with new authors, concerned with low volume of sales who are certain that the distributor's numbers are not right. The discussion in this case is about paperback book sales. E-book sales would take a separate column. Author: I asked you for my sales stats for the year, and you told me that I had sold no books last week, but my friend bought a book and sent me a copy of the Amazon packaging.  A book p...

(photo by  Frank Perez) It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side. Today's topic is about figuring out your book sales. Many authors try to figure out their sales based on some inaccurate thinking or assumptions.  Amazon posts a sales ranking. If you look at your ranking, it can appear that your book is selling more (the number is lower than it was a few minutes ago) or selling less (the number is higher than it was a few minutes ago). Actually, that number does not tell you anything about the number of books sold. A higher number could mean more books were sold, fewer books were sold, or no books were sold. The number is a relative one based on recency of purc...