Thursday, January 22, 2015

Checking Up On Business, and a Quick Update

A blog post to keep me from what I should be doing: fixing Connections. Probably needs a new title and cover, too, to accommodate the change in direction my beta partner has pointed to.

There are advantages. The word count went from  115k to 75k, though I fear some, perhaps most, of those 40k words will either recur or be replaced. May end up around 90k or so, though, which would be good.

I’m a little behind in referring you to Kris Rusch’s postings on the business of writing, but I recommend you look at her recent post, Business Musings: The Rise of the Backlist. Even if, like me, you have no backlist to speak of, she still has useful comments and information. things to be aware of. If you are lucky enough to have a backlist, you should be aware of the ideas she lists near the end of the post, regarding actions you could and should take to make good use of your assets.

Among other things, she writes:
In that first week, Publishers Marketplace went deeper into the numbers than Publishers Weekly did and came out with some fascinating information, some of which I’ll deal with in the next week or two. But here’s the take-away: All of the year’s gains and then some came from backlist, however, not newly-released titles. Frontlist unit sales fell 2 million units to 276 million, while backlist sales rose 17 million units to 359 million…
Read more at Kris Writes.