{"id":1022,"date":"2010-05-23T11:06:50","date_gmt":"2010-05-23T16:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/?p=1022"},"modified":"2010-05-23T11:06:50","modified_gmt":"2010-05-23T16:06:50","slug":"konrath-sieges-the-castle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/23\/konrath-sieges-the-castle\/","title":{"rendered":"Konrath Sieges The Castle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Konrath<\/a>,\u00a0\u00a0author of the Jack Daniels thriller series<\/a> and of the new resource for indie writers - The Newbies Guide to Publishing<\/a><\/em> - has inked a deal that sieges the Publishing Royals' Castle<\/a>.\u00a0 It also\u00a0charts the course, showing\u00a0the Royals, authors and agents where the future lies.\u00a0 The deal itself and the fact that it is with the biggest, baddest ebookseller AND bookseller on the planet has traditional publishing Royals hunkering down in the castle in the futile hope that they can survive the coming indie siege.<\/p>\n

Konrath signed a publishing deal<\/a> with AmazonEncore<\/a> for the newest JD thriller, Shaken. Under the deal, Shaken will be available in the Kindle store this October and will then be available in print about four months later, in February 2011.\u00a0\u00a0 The deal turns the traditional arrangements around 180 degrees and has the Kindle version released first with the print book following several months later.\u00a0 Some of the Royals have been trying to kill the\u00a0 upstart ebook industry by releasing their \"big\" books only in paper form for several months.\u00a0 That would force loyal fans to buy the paper version and discourage the fans from investing in the future.\u00a0 Or so the Royals thought and the Royals are used to deciding what we will read, when we will read it and how we will read it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Castle Dwelling\u00a0Royals, their\u00a0Acceptable Authors, and many of the Chosen Intermediary literary agents\u00a0have been particularly disgruntled by this deal.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Well, first of all, the deal was done with Konrath and his literary agent.\u00a0 No doubt, the Royals were convinced that the agent should have known better.\u00a0 See, Konrath had marketed the book to the Royals.\u00a0 Between his efforts and those of his agent,\u00a0even if the Royals were too good to bother to Google it for themselves, the Royals were\u00a0surely advised of Konrath's killer numbers on Kindle for sales of all of his ebooks.\u00a0 But, as usual, the Royals knew more about what America wanted to read than Americans did, so they rejected the book.\u00a0 Why would they encourage one of those<\/em>\u00a0 people anyway?\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Amazon\u00a0is not fettered by the Royal Superiority Complex.\u00a0 The rebel company offers a platform for all authors to put their work out there and let\u00a0readers decide for themselves whether or not to hit the buy button.\u00a0 The Royals (and a few jealous indie competitors) might believe Konrath was inflating his numbers, but Amazon knew better.\u00a0 And Amazon knows that the digital future is better served by getting it out there electronically first.\u00a0 So, Konrath and his agent refused to take the Royal NO for an answer and signed on with a company sailing for the future, rather than with one mired in the past.<\/p>\n

Konrath's agent\u00a0deserves some big kudos for having the courage of his or her convictions.\u00a0 It may have cost the agent a prime parking spot at the Castle, but it very likely will make that agent one\u00a0of the few that future indie authors want to work with.\u00a0 It shows that agents who are willing to buck the system will still have a career in a digital future. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The whole deal has caused an uproar.\u00a0 Rival thriller author\u00a0Jason Pinter writes for\u00a0The Huffington Post and he wrote a piece for them on the deal.\u00a0 Read the piece<\/a>.\u00a0 Pour yourself a big glass of your favorite beverage (Jack Daniels would\u00a0work fine) and then sit down and read the piece.\u00a0\u00a0The writer telegraphs his position in the first paragraph when he tries to denigrate Konrath based on (his version) of a Twitter exchange.\u00a0 Then he basically says, how dare Konrath claim to be a great thriller writer when he's never been published by a TRADITIONAL publisher.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pinter's whole trajectory in the piece is that the Konrath deal is dangerous because it\u00a0encourages\u00a0indie authors and indie publishing.\u00a0 Pinter thinks Konrath should have known that if the Royals decreed his work wasn't good enough, that meant he should've thrown it in the garbage and written something else.\u00a0 Pinter clearly drank the Royal's\u00a0Kool-Aid and now believes that if the Royals say you're not good enough then you're not good enough.\u00a0 The opinions of all those people around the globe who've hit the buy button to purchase one of Konrath's works on Kindle?\u00a0 Meaningless.\u00a0 They're only the intended audience, after all, and the Royals have never catered to such rabble.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Konrath did a blistering and hilarious rebuttal<\/a> to the Pinter piece which also ran on HuffPo.\u00a0 Konrath doesn't descend to the gutter level of Pinter.\u00a0 Instead of addressing the personalities, he addresses the subject.\u00a0 As Konrath points out - PRINT IS DEAD.\u00a0 Or if not already dead, then it is certainly suffering from a terminal illness.\u00a0 And the industry can't recover until it restructures in a way that recognizes that it has nothing to do with whether a book is good or bad.\u00a0 Print can't survive until The Royals return the Castle to its rightful owners - the buying public.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I've not had the success on Amazon or elsewhere that Joe Konrath has, but that doesn't mean that I'll stop trying.\u00a0 Joe is the embodiment of the American Dream which will never come true for anyone unless the dreamer has American Guts.\u00a0 He or I or any of the scores of indie writers could've crawled in a hole with our rejection letters in our quivering hands and nursed our wounds until we felt strong enough to try again.\u00a0 He or I or any indie author could do as Pinter advocates and keep writing until we produce Pablum acceptable enough to the Royals.\u00a0 In the past, that hole was a writer's only option.<\/p>\n

Today, thanks to the valiant efforts of amazing authors like Konrath and of the astonishing and farsighted efforts of the good folks at Amazon (and Smashwords and others) the Royals don't get the final word.\u00a0 The buyers get the ultimate veto.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Konrath's siege of the Castle has the Royal minions throwing the only weapons they have left - muck and mud, condescension and innuendo.\u00a0 But besieging forces captained by indie champions like Konrath have the Castle surrounded.\u00a0 The Royals are demoralized and hungry and even when they manage to sneak out a communication like Pinter's - it gains them no support.<\/p>\n

To Pinter, I'd say -\u00a0 I'm an indie author and I don't need permission or approval (or anything else) from the Royals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To Konrath, I'd say -\u00a0 Congratulations.\u00a0 I hope you and your agent and Amazon sell millions of copies and put the final nail in the Royals' coffin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I only have one other thing I'd say to Joe Konrath - THANK YOU VERY MUCH.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Konrath,\u00a0\u00a0author of the Jack Daniels thriller series and of the new resource for indie writers - The Newbies Guide to Publishing - has inked a deal that sieges the Publishing Royals' Castle.\u00a0 It also\u00a0charts the course, showing\u00a0the Royals, authors and agents where the future lies.\u00a0 The deal itself and the fact that it is ...continue reading \"Konrath Sieges The Castle\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1022"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1026,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022\/revisions\/1026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}