New Author Website!

I’m moving to http://www.jaowenby.com where I will continue to blog and much more. If you realize your missing posts, just check your subscription. We tried to assure everyone moved over. If you need to sign up again then, just click the blog button and on the right side, you can subscribe again.

Don’t miss the other exciting features including a newsletter, giveaways, and autographed copies of my new novel.

I can’t wait to share the journey! Thank you for all your support and I’ll see you there!

Until Next Time…

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Independent Authors Are Starting to Outsell the Big Five

Great article from The Writer and great news for indie authors!

Today, a six-figure income – or at least a full-time writing career – is actually a possibility for independent authors.
By Patrick Walsh | Published: August 18, 2016

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Can self-publishing really become a lucrative full-time endeavor? Can indie authors ever begin to rival the income of traditionally published authors? A “yes” to either of these questions seemed but fable a few years ago. But today, a six-figure income – or at least a full-time writing career – is actually a possibility for independent authors.

Recently, an “Ask Me Anything” Q&A on Reddit caught my attention. It was hosted by independent author Chris Fox. Fox has been very successful in his career – so much so that he claimed to have earned $65,000 off his self-published books in 2015, and hopes to triple that in 2016 (meaning a six-figure income based on his eBook sales alone). In fact, he recently quit a six-figure salary in the software industry to write full-time. For a few hours, he answered a variety of questions from fellow writers and aspiring authors. (See the full Q&A here.) So I wondered: Is Fox an anomaly, or is this a rising trend?

 

Credit: AuthorEarnings.com

 

AuthorEarnings.com has published a report on this very subject, so I jumped into the data. Their May 2016 report reports 1340 authors earn over $100,000 per year on Amazon.com. The striking fact here: “Half of them are indies and Amazon-imprint authors.”

Surely this is just for eBook sales, right?  Brick-and-mortar print sales from the Big Five will most certainly bridge the gap and make up the loss in sales. Not true, Author Earnings finds.

“The author earnings gap between publishing paths is so wide among these six-figure-earning authors that once again brick-and-mortar print sales and the like cannot significantly alter the picture,” the report says.

Interestingly, Big Five-published authors make up a significant portion of the 100k-earners if they’ve debuted within the last 100 years. But if you narrow the timeline to those who’ve debuted within the last decade, indie authors make up an overwhelming amount of the big earners – see the figures here. The amount of high-earning, traditionally-published debuts dwindles as we get closer and closer to the present day.

This trend is also true for authors earning over $250,000 per year and over $500,000 per year. The data shows it: Independent authors are threatening the traditional model. It’s certainly an exciting time to be an independent author.

A bit about how these figures were discovered: Author Earnings use a software spider that crawls across Amazon’s bestseller lists, links to also-bought recommendations and through each authors’ full catalog. This resulted in a million-title dataset. You can download the raw data used to compile the statistics on Authorearnings.com.

Patrick Walsh is a serial entrepreneur and the owner of PublishingPush.com, which specialises in PR and book marketing. 

Keep writing! Until Next time…

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What is Hybrid Publishing? Here Are 4 Things All Writers Should Know

Fantastic article from Writer’s Digest!

By: Brian A. Klems | August 11, 2016

Hybrid publishing is an emerging area that occupies the middle ground between traditional and self-publishing and therefore includes many different publishing models— basically anything that is not self-publishing or traditional publishing. “Hybrid publishing” is not a term all publishers or authors in this space use; other terms that describe this type of publishing include “author-assisted publishing,” “independent publishing,” “partnership publishing,” “copublishing,” and “entrepreneurial publishing.” But right now, because it’s a catchall, “hybrid publishing” is the umbrella term I’ll use throughout this book to refer to this middle ground.

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This guest post is Brooke Warner. Warner is publisher of She Writes Press, president of Warner Coaching Inc., and author of Green-Light Your Book, What’s Your Book?, and How to Sell Your Memoir, and the co-author of Breaking Ground on Your Memoir. Brooke’s expertise is in traditional and new publishing, and she is an equal advocate for publishing with a traditional house and self-publishing. She sits on the board of the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), the Bay Area Book Festival, and the National Association of Memoir Writers (NAMW). She blogs actively on Huffington Post Books and SheWrites.com. She lives and works in Berkeley, California.

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The hybrid publishing space is somewhat controversial, in part because it’s new and in part because there’s no universal agreement about what it is. Because hybrid models almost always involve the author paying for some or all services (and always in return for higher royalty rates), some assert that hybrid publishing is the same as vanity publishing. For people who like to think in black-and-white terms, the hybrid publishing space upends their sense of order. Without hybrid, there are’ just traditional publishing and self-publishing. Black and white. You get paid to publish or you pay to get published. The hybrid publishing space is not for black-and-white thinkers. There are a number of models, and in my experience what sets them apart from vanity presses is that they’re run like publishing companies. Many of them have a submissions process, control their own cover design and editorial process, and have publishers calling the shots and curating the lists. There are also traditional publishers that are cutting hybrid deals, in which authors pay for some services in exchange for higher royalties.

The payoff for the author in hybrid publishing comes from having more control. The author is investing in their own work, or perhaps raising money through crowdfunding to finance their work, and then keeping the lion’s share of their profits, rather than giving it all away. Authors retain creative ownership and are treated more like partners in the process, instead of being at the whim of their publishers.

The following are four main kinds of hybrid publishing:

1. Traditional publishers that have been brokering hybrid publishing deals for years.

The precedent for hybrid models goes back years and years. A number of publishers have cut deals with authors for what might have been qualified as “distribution deals,” “hybrid publishing arrangements,” or “copublishing ventures.” All this means is that the author pays up front in some capacity. This might be for part or all of the print run or the cost of production. In exchange, the author is usually negotiating a higher royalty rate, since they’ve invested in their own work. The only downside to this variation of hybrid publishing is that it’s not transparent. Most of the traditional publishers who do it don’t talk about it, because the concept of authors paying to publish is so heavily stigmatized. In fact, it’s still the case that authors who subsidize any part of their work are barred from submitting their work to some reviewers and to many contests. These authors do not qualify for membership in certain writers’ associations. (Thankfully, many review outlets, contests, and associations are changing their tune on this, but not enough of them and not fast enough.)

[How To Write Novels When You’re A Parent]

2. Partnership publishing models.

Models like these include my own publishing company, She Writes Press. Our authors absorb the financial risk of their publishing endeavor in exchange for high royalties. We offer traditional distribution (which we’ll explore in detail in Chapter 6) and all the benefits that brings.

Partnership publishing models like She Writes Press are exciting in that they offer authors access—to review sites, to a sales force selling their books into the marketplace, and to a partnership with a publisher that has a strong reputation with booksellers. The downside, however, is that there’s a real financial risk. Publishers mostly don’t earn out their investments on books they acquire, and partnership publishing is no different. You are assuming the financial risk for access and for the possibility of a high reward. However, it’s a competitive marketplace out there, and I always encourage authors to go into this option with their eyes wide open. It’s not a foregone conclusion that your investment will be recouped. Other presses like ours include Ink Shares, Booktrope, BQB Publishing, and Turning Stone Press.

3. Agent-assisted publishing models.

Many agents are starting their own publishing companies in order to publish the works of authors whose books they cannot sell. For the most part, these efforts are valiant. Agents feel strongly about the work they’re seeing and want to find an outlet where these authors can be published. They’re hybrid because the authors are being published under the agent’s imprint. What these models lack to date is any kind of effective distribution method. Where they excel, and what makes them like the other two models above, is in understanding publishing and putting out quality books that their authors can be proud of. One asset here as well may be on the foreign-market side. If your agent continues to represent you and has published your book, it’s likely they will make strong efforts to sell foreign editions of your work, so be sure to ask. Examples of agent-assisted publishing include Reputation Books (a division of Kimberley Cameron & Associates) and the Curtis Brown Group out of the UK.

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4. Other assisted publishing models.

What makes assisted self-publishing models different from the partnership and agent-assisted models is that they may or may not be run by someone who knows about books. In these cases, you are paying someone to help you publish. You are not working with a team that is going to publish your work under their imprint. This model really qualifies more as self-publishing than as hybrid. However, I believe it’s important to include these models here, more as a caution to aspiring authors than anything else. Just because you are working with a company does not mean that it is a good hybrid company with services that will help your book succeed. The market for book publishing has exploded, and as a result a number of companies have cropped up to deal with the pain points unique to authors—namely, that getting a book from manuscript to publication is a complicated process. Many of these companies have given the word “vanity” some propulsion because they’re not vetting and they don’t care about editorial quality. That’s on the author, which is why I believe this is somewhat dangerous territory in which you need to be careful. This is basically expensive self-publishing, and some of these companies outright take advantage of authors. The company with the most notoriety in this space is Author Solutions (home of iUniverse, Balboa, WestBow Press, and Archway, to name a few). Not all assisted publishing models are bad, but some of them have a reputation for exploiting authors, so you want to be careful. Do your homework.

Until Next Time…

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The First Few Pages

The Truth She Knew is now available on Amazon for pre-order! Just click here while it’s on sale. If you’re interested in reading the early reviews on Goodreads, click here. I have to admit the reviews have been overwhelming and humbling.

Since the book hasn’t been released yet, and a preview isn’t available, I wanted to share the first few pages. I know I always like to preview before ordering. I worked with an amazing editor from HarperCollins, and she will also be editing book 2 in the series which I just finished the rough draft yesterday.

This series is contemporary fiction and new adult. It’s 17+ due to language, sex, and some violence.

Copyright © 2016 by J.A. Owenby

Chapter 1

Mama didn’t want me. In fact, she would’ve traded my soul back for someone different if God would’ve let her, but he didn’t, so she was stuck with me. She reminded me of this on a consistent basis, and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t change her mind. Finally, I had to make a choice: her or me.

My heels clicked against the cold tile floor of the hospital and my heart fluttered as I searched the room numbers.

I rubbed my clammy hands against my jeans as I saw the ladies’ restroom and hurried toward it. I needed a minute before I reached her room. I pushed the door open and scanned the bathroom for anyone else. It was empty.

My purse landed with a thud on the bathroom counter. I turned the cold water on, splashed it on my cheeks, and wiped my face with a paper towel.

“Breathe,” I muttered. “She can’t hurt you anymore. You’re grown.”

My pep talk wasn’t working. Fear was gnawing at my stomach.

I reached into my bag, grabbed my powder compact, and touched up my makeup. My green eyes shone brighter against the redness left from my tears. I ran a brush through my long, blond hair and dabbed a hint of gloss on my lips, more out of habit than need.

“Let’s do this, Lacey. Suck it up,” I said to my reflection. I released a slow, deep breath and headed out of the restroom and down the hall toward the ICU.

My hand trembled as I approached her room and reached for the door handle. I didn’t know what to expect. What would it be like, seeing her after all this time?

The door opened and closed behind me without a sound. I pulled the curtain aside and tried to comprehend what was in front of me.

The room was silent except for the rhythmic whoosh of the breathing machine. The ventilator had left its mark on Mama’s face, and her upper lip was swollen and bruised.

As I pulled the chair closer to her and sat down, I half-expected her eyes to flutter open and her lips to whisper what a bitch I was. But she lay still.

My goodbyes had been said years ago, but this was different; this was final. There were no more second chances, or third. None, ever again.

I stood up and paced around the tiny room. I should have been holding her hand and begging her to wake up so we could forgive each other, but I couldn’t. It didn’t matter how many years we’d been apart—every time I thought about her I remembered how she had cost me everything. And not once did she ever utter the words I’m sorry. In her mind, it had all been my fault.

I leaned against the wall and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. In spite of my resistance, tears pooled in my eyes.

“Are you happy now?” My voice quivered and only the sound of the ventilator responded to my question.

It amazed me how I could love her and hate her at the same time. I knew I was supposed to love and honor my parents, but how could I when she had almost cost me my life?

My mind raced with dark memories and then I realized that for the first time in my life I was minutes away from being free. Relief washed over me as the tears flowed down my cheeks. I pushed the memories away. With freedom just around the corner, I needed to say what I felt even if it was locked away deep in my heart.

I approached Mama and brushed her thin, brown hair away from her forehead. I stared at her, her image burning into every part of my mind. Her eyes were closed with no movement and there was no response to my touch. She’d already left—her body only remained breathing due to the machines.

“I’ve missed you, Mama,” I whispered. “As much as I hate you, I love you more. I wish things had been different. I wanted you to love me so badly. Maybe now you finally will.”

I kissed her forehead and stepped back, wondering if death would finish the job quickly. Knowing Mama, she would hold on as long as she could to capture everyone’s attention for her grand finale. The doctor thought it wouldn’t take any longer than a few hours for her body to stop breathing on its own. I hoped it would happen sooner.

I left Mama’s room and walked down the hall to the ICU waiting room. My older sister Krissy, the golden child, was leaning against the wall as she stared out the window.

“Krissy,” I said as I approached her.

She turned toward me, her eyes rimmed with redness. We stared at each other for a few moments, and then I nodded.

“Lacey, are you sure? You don’t need any more time?” Krissy asked.

“I’m sure.”

She pushed herself off the wall, wiped her eyes, and turned away to find the doctor. It was time to disconnect the machine.

With my goodbyes said, I walked toward the exit to the hospital. I burst through the sliding doors and came to a quick stop as the fragrance of the spring rain filled my nose. The walkway was lined with bright green grass and an abundance of red and pink tulips. The last drops of rain slid off the tree leaves as I breathed it all in. It was breathtaking.

I was finally free.

Thank you all for your support!

Until Next Time…

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