Firstly, my virtual blog tour starts 
today! I’m starting the 4 week tour at Christine Young’s blog. Yes there will be prizes, very cool gift baskets with an assortment of items for all your post-apocalyptic needs.
Second, and this probably isn’t new to some, but I wanted to share it nonetheless. It’s about the ongoing DOJ vs Big Print Publishers lawsuit. You can read all about it all over, but I also want to share a post from J.A. Konrath mostly because I find Joe’s take on things to be hysterically sarcastic and completely dead on.
Quite possibly my favorite passage from the (very long) post is this:
Simon says:
Absent demonstrable consumer harm, there is no competitive reason for the United States to punish the alleged collusion in the manner suggested by the settlement; rather, the terms mandated by the settlement should have focused on the collusion itself, not the damages from it, since there are none.
Joe sez: I agree. No damages, except for those readers forced to pay more for ebooks, and your clients, who got paid less. Other than that, a victimless crime.
Which brings me to my next bit of publishing news, also from J.A. Konrath’s blog–an even more interesting post by a former Harlequin writer on why she can’t afford to write for Harlequin any longer and has gone the self-publishing route.
I think the most depressing passage in this post is about royalties. I give Ann Voss Peterson tons of credit for not only going public with this but doing so with her name, books, and actual monetary amount.
Let me share with you the numbers of a book I wrote that was first published in January, 2002, still one of my favorites. My life-to-date statement says this book has sold 179,057 copies so far, and it has earned $20,375.22. (bold text by Joe) That means the average I’ve earned is a whopping 11 cents per copy. If you use the cover price to calculate (the number used in the contract), which was $4.50 at the time of release, I’ve earned an AVERAGE of 2.4 % per copy.
If you’re as depressed and disgusted as I, good. If not, I have nothing more to say.
