Finally back from the Paris trip and settling back into the swing of things.

While I was away, author and fellow audiobook podcaster Seth Harwood launched a Kindle Rush for his short story collection, A Long Way From Disney. Seth is offering the collection as a special priced e-book for only $.99 in order to make a charge for the Kindle bestseller list. You can show your support and download a copy here. And remember, now that Amazon has a desktop reader and an iPhone app, you don’t need to own a Kindle to read the collection.

The single-story e-book crusade continues with the second installment of my special summer releases available to readers for only $1.99 each. You can now download “The Metronome Winds Down” in PDF, Kindle, ePub, Mobi, Palm, or Sony reader format. Just think: for less than the cost of a cheap bottle of beer, you get yourself a nice gritty piece of storytelling.

Here is the plot: What would you do to keep your wife alive? If Pat can scrape together ten grand, he can buy his wife two more months. But he doesn’t have the cash. So he comes up with a scheme to get the money. But at what price?

Now that you know the setup, click on these links to buy and download:
LuLu (PDF format) | Amazon Kindle | Scribd (PDF format) | Smash Words (PDF, ePub, Palm, LRF/Sony format) |

As with “Job in Williasmburg,” this is part of my little experiment to test the idea of single-story e-book downloads. I’ll be releasing a single-story e-book download each month, all priced at $1.99. I’ll eventually release most of them in a single trade paperback collection. But with publishing models being stood on their head in the digital age, I don’t have to wait to get these stories into your hands (or hard drives in this case). Enjoy.

And if you’ve never read an e-book before, click here for a quick “how to.”

A brand new short story, available for $1.99.

Who says storytelling can’t survive in the digital age? Presenting, for your reading pleasure, a brand new, never before released short story titled “Job in Williamsburg” now available for a measely $1.99.

It’s the tale of Ramón, a poor painter who wants nothing more than to be a great artist. He talks to paintings. Sometimes they talk back to him. A pariah on the local art scene, who thinks he’s just painted a masterpiece. But things do not go as planned. Go ahead: skip a cup a coffee, plunk down some change, and you’ve got yourself one hell of a short story. It’s available in PDF, ePub, LRF (Sony eReader), Palm, or Amazon Kindle format; think of it as a damn good punk single.

Click on these links to buy and download:
Scribd (PDF format) | Amazon Kindle | Smash Words (PDF, ePub, Palm, LRF/Sony format) | LuLu (PDF format)

While I’m still hard at work on the next book, “No Tears for Old Scratch,” I decided to try a little experiment. I’ll be releasing a single-story e-book download each month, all priced at $1.99. I’ll eventually release most of them in a single trade paperback collection. But with publishing models being stood on their head in the digital age, I don’t have to wait to get these stories into your hands (or hard drives in this case). It’s all part of my firm belief that as e-books, portable reading devices, and universal e-book file formats will be good for authors. Shorter content will become more popular again. Short stories will come back in the same way that singles came back for music, and the old pariah of the publishing world might just regain its luster.

A brand new short story, available for $1.99.

Over at M.J. Rose’s Buzz, Balls, & Hype blog, author Barry Eisler has been making the case that e-books will soon replace paper ones in a series of posts titled “Dead Trees is a Dead Model.” While I agree with some of the things Barry says (especially the need for authors, agents, and publishers to finally view e-books as important), I don’t believe the printed book will go away, in spite of my embracing of all things digital when it comes to publishing.

Barry’s first post sparked a healthy round of debate, including a nice response from Lee Child. As a man who has sold enough books to make us all look like fools, Lee had some great points about who the majority of book buyers really are and how they buy books.

In his next installment, Barry addressed some of Lee’s points directly, which then led to further counter-arguments from Herr Child. Not having the basic common sense to keep my opinions to myself, I couldn’t help but chime in on the issue. As I said, I agree with Barry on some points and Lee on others, but in my own stubborn way, disagree with both of them on a few key issues. Needless to say, it is a great debate and one that I think needs to be kicked around more often within the publishing community.

I won’t rehash the arguments here, but you can read Barry’s original posts along with good comments from Lee Child, myself, J.A. Konrath, and a slew of other folks at Buzz, Balls, & Hype via the links below:
Dead Trees is a Dead Model, Pt. 1
Dead Trees is a Dead Model, Pt. 2

It’s tough being a starving artist…. Or a starving writer for that matter.

Then again it always has been. Publishing seems to go through this cyclical lament of the loss of the glory days every other year or so. “The market is fragmented!” “People are too occupied with TV, video games, and DVDs!” “Even the big authors are not selling!”

Perhaps, perhaps not. Keep in mind that most of the big authors we worship as the giants upon which the industry is built starved just as much as today’s small-to-midlist authors. Hell, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book royalties for 1932 and 1933 combined equaled out to a measly $50. That sucks even by Depression standards. And keep in mind that he had already published The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise by then. Bukowski, for all his bravado and debauchery, made sure his ass was at the post office everyday, on time, so he could keep a steady paycheck rolling in. Kurt Vonnegut worked in a PR firm in Schenectady, NY while writing Player Piano. He quit in 1951 to write full-time but still worked day jobs that included running a car dealership and the lowest of the low for an author — writing ad copy. Whenever I hear someone complain about not having enough time to write or not having a means to “focus on the art,” I love to throw “Yeah, but Vonnegut wrote PR copy” back at them.

To be even-handed, Publishing in many ways has become its own worst enemy. The advances being paid for horrible non-fiction books, faux-memoirs (that wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny from a five-year-old), and irrelevant scribblings by bloggers who are great at duping publishers into thinking they have an audience are sickening.

Apparently Harper Collins agrees. That’s why they are launching a new “publishing studio” (bloody ‘ell, just call it an imprint and don’t get creative with the buzz words). The new imprint under the control of Robert S. Miller, founder of Hyperion, will pay either low advances or no cash up front at all. They will however set up a 50/50 profit split with its authors.

In essence, Harper Collins is saying authors are a problem. A bit like a crackhead saying his dealer is the problem. Publishers have been just as guilty at the rise in advances for shoddy books as agents and authors themselves. But in some cases they do have a point. Authors have become greedy over the past few years. So have agents. And these huge advances usually have more to do with agent egos than with the quality of a manuscript. Even worse, often these multi-million dollar advances are signed off on before word one is written. Someone is deemed as “having an audience” or “industry contacts,” and boom, in rolls the check. The new Harper Collins model puts the onus on selling books, rather than just supporting writers with blank checks.

Part of the problem is that the industry is struggling. It missed out. As television, movies, and music went digital, Publishing held fast to the idea that books don’t need to be digitized. Then once they realized that their audience was switching over to the digital world, they took half-assed steps to try and stop the bleeding. The lack of sales for eBooks has as much to do with the lag (or complete lack) of catalog digitization as it does with readers not adopting the technology. At best, most publishers have only 45% of their catalog available as eBooks. To be fair, one of the biggest hold-ups in books that would be instant top-sellers in an e-book format: authors or author estates who either don’t grasp the shift towards digital books or simply fear it.

Being an author who has openly embraced podcasting his novel and making the full text available as PDFs (both completely free of charge), I’m not so worried about living large. I have a day job, it pays me well, I’m really good at it. I think I’m a hell of a writer, but that’s debatable depending on who you ask. Do I hope to be a successful writer someday? Sure. But if Jimmy Lerner were here, he’d remind me, “You’ve got nothin’ comin’.” Simply put, I’m not greedy. I’m just happy writing. Beats the shit out of playing golf. That’s why I published my book under a break-even business model. Anything extra is gravy to feed the cat and spoil my girlfriend.

Already, some of you are probably crying foul. “Writers shouldn’t have to write on spec!” Anyone who has tried writing a screenplay or been caught up in the Hollywood system knows that. And the new Harper Collins imprint model assumes that they actually know how to market a book. There is a toilet paper roll millions of miles long with a list of books that were grossly misunderstood by their publisher and ineffectively marketed. For many books, the extent of the marketing plan is to publish the book. Don’t count on print ads, PR work, or even (cue the laughter) banner advertising or blog outreach. Writers these days cannot stick their heads in the sand and hope for book sales. They have to market themselves using everything from book sharing sites to podcasts to free PDFs to Facebook ads.

But hear me out. The simple fact is that good writers, writers whose books sell, will still get advances. Simply put, they’ll have the sales to back up their paycheck. New writers or independent writers will have to keep struggling and pay the bills by any means necessary. Vonnegut, Bukowski, and Fitzgerald found a way. Why not us?

However there are always options. Take my good friend Tim Hall. He just launched a program called Author Shares. Think of it as an independent National Endowment for the Arts solely dedicated to authors. People buy shares, for as low as $1, and the money goes to independent authors or small presses that want to finance print runs or PR campaigns or merely pay the damn rent.

The point of this very long ramble is this: authors always find a way. If you love writing, you’ll do it regardless of the paycheck. Last time I checked, Motorhead are still making albums.