I’m still working on my Bouchercon wrap up, but I wanted to talk about something first.
Earlier I mentioned that I’d earned out – that is I’ve sold enough books that the print run and other expenses like the advance have been paid for. That’s a pretty big deal even for a small press author.
You see, most authors don’t earn out – they don’t make as much or more than the money the publisher has spent on them.
That’s to be expected though. Most publishers have authors who sell out their whole print run, who at least earn out and then authors who for whatever reason don’t earn out. In theory, the ones who make money for the publisher pay for the ones who don’t. And the ones who don’t do not necessarily fail to get another book published – their publisher may have confidence (more likely faith) that the writer will eventually come up with a breakthrough book.
But with a tough market and changing readership, that’s increasingly rare. It’s better to earn through.
With larger publishers, there’s usually a significant advance to pay for. The advance is meant to help the author live through the time when they’re writing the book or books and selling them too. That means they don’t get another dime until the advance is paid for. But when it is, the royalty checks start to flow.
For someone like me, there wasn’t much of an advance and it’s a typical small-press press run so it’s nothing compared to a mass-market book.
Still, it was a personal goal and I reached it in about seven months. I feel pretty good about that.

The majority of people who have read my webcomics series, Odd Jobs, have not compensated me in any way. Many have, but quite a few websurfers dip in, enjoy my work and then flit off to their next fix – whatever that might be.
I mention this not to make anyone feel guilty (although if you are feeling guilty, please click here), but to point out the predominant philosophy still permeating the web is that “information wants to be free,” and therefore it’s useless to try and get people to pay for things.
The flaw in that, of course, is the title of this post: Information is not alive. It cannot want anything. When someone says information wants to be free what they’re really saying is that they don’t want the hassle of paying for something on the internet.
You know what? That’s fine. Anything I want someone to pay for I’ll either put behind a subscription wall or take it off the internet and make people pay for it. Meantime I’ll use the internet to connect to potential customers while understanding that the internet is just what is here now, that there will be other ways to deliver information in the future.
The reason I’m writing about this is because of the news from Diamond distributing that everyone in the comics industry is talking about. The changes mean small publishers of comic books (the monthly pamphlets) are going to have a far more difficult time getting comic book stores to know about their products and for those stores to order them.
But I’m not just thinking about that, but also about the challenge in making money from the internet. Kevin Drum talks about a study that showed how narrow people’s focus is becoming, where google and wikipedia are becoming dominate sources for people’s information. We’re seeing that with news, where big websites rule and it’s almost impossible to drag advertising revenue from those sites and onto local news sites.
Small comics publishers are the latest group that’s finding they need an internet strategy, at least until things change again.
What I described above is my strategy right now. Create the content and have it ready for that time of change, when the way for people like me to make money through digital delivery happens.
I think the Kindle is a step in that direction – something like that but able to handle technical manuals with diagrams, newspapers with photos, graphics and advertisements and – of course – comics. Stuff that people will pay for in the same way they pay for music now, in some kind of format that allows everyone to deliver their product to those devices. Like mp3 does for music.
Something will happen, but in the meantime if you want to make money, just remember: People on the internet want stuff to be free. So if you want to earn money from something, chances are putting it on the internet for free isn’t the way to do it.
And buy my book, dammit.

Well, not exactly. But I am now a Vice President. Sure, it’s only for the Midwest Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, but that’s still pretty cool (I was the only candidate, and they had blackmail information to make me run BUT STILL…)
In addition to the web duties, I’ll be working on scheduling meetings and on the MWA booth at the Printer’s Row book festival. Yay me!

In other news, I’ve updated my EVENTS page with stuff for 2010. Check it out!

There are two things that really raise my blood pressure – to the point that my head might explode: driving in traffic and computer problems.
Saturday, my family tried to combine the two.
I was driving home when I got a call from my one of my daughters. Apparently we were having printing problems so severe they needed to call. As calmly as I could, I said I couldn’t do anything for them while I was on the road, and hung up.
Now, I hate it when things don’t work the way they’re supposed to so I didn’t mind the call.
But when I got home, I couldn’t solve the problem. In fact, the next day, I found I couldn’t launch photoshop to finish up the page I’d been working on or any of the Adobe suite products I own.
At that point, I’m thinking that I really don’t want to purchase a new computer – the cost would be painful, but the amount of work transferring all our crap would be worse. Fortunately, we have backups of all our files.
Eventually I had to reinstall the system after running disk repair. Everything seems to be working OK now, even printing.
Tonight I try to reinstall my Adobe suite and if I’m successful the way I’m attempting to be, I’ll have done this without my usual bad habit of swearing and general computer rage.
So far, I’ve taken it all pretty calmly, and if i keep that up I’ll call that a win.

Update: All’s well and reinstalled. maybe even post the new comic tomorrow.