Teresa!!

[Devil's Advocate]

Hello. How are you? You might be wondering about my exclamatory title. I just wanted to see if a thread with such an emphatic title would be more likely to get your attention than if it merely said, "Hello."

Well?

In any case, I had a(nother) question. I've noticed that there were ebooks available for your current series, which is great. But I couldn't find any of your back-catalogue. I've checked on Amazon, the Sony ebook store, ebooks.com, etc. Any chance that they will be made into ebooks?

I've become interested in ebooks recently as I fequently have trouble finding novels I want in bookstores here, particularly in fantasy. The market here is so small, fantasy titles aren't the easiest to find. How difficult is it? Well, the fact that it's hard to find even George R. R. Martin says a lot...

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

It did catch my attention. Whether my name alone would have done it will have to remain a mystery even to me.

As for my back list, it is simply out of print. Rights for the Green Lion books reverted to me and I sold them to Meadowhawk Press. It would be up to them to decide on an ebook version, and I don't even know if they do them. This is something I should probably look into, just so that I can let people know!

I also asked for (and was given) the rights to Goblin Moon and The Gnome's Engine, which I am in the process of bringing out myself. I don't know how much effort goes into bringing out the various ebook editions of something, and what you have to do to make the book work on all of the various different devices -- there must be something different for each one, because with my current series there is a different edition for each one. But for all the different ebook versions on these books -- and with a major publisher behind them -- the combined royalties are absurdly small. For comparison: with The Hidden Stars the book earned back all the money paid me for the advance and in addition I received two or three royalty checks in the thousands of dollars afterwards. This was on the basis of the print editions. I don't have my royalty statements at hand, but if memory serves me, the combined royalties for all the ebook editions was less than $100.

For that sort of return (and it would probably be much less for a self-published reprint), it doesn't seem like it would be worth the effort to format Goblin Moon for so many different editions. Maybe if there were one, but then I would have to decide on which one. Right now I am focussed on bringing the book back into print. Then, maybe, I'll look into the ebook question, although at the moment it doesn't look like an enticing prospect.

As for my other books, I don't have the rights to any of them at the moment, but since the publishers let them go OP quite some time ago, I don't anticipate that they will be reissuing them in any form. (Because they are OP, I could get the rights reverted and sell them elsewhere, perhaps to a small press that offers ebooks, but that's for the future. I have so many other things to worry about now.)

So, no plans right now, unless Meadowhawk intends to offer electronic editions. I really should ask them.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Thanks for the reply.

Those are some pretty startling royalty numbers. I suddenly understand why there are so few novels available as ebooks, versus print.

Regarding which format to publish as ebook - the Kindle is a popular device, but the ebooks might be limited in appeal, as it only reads Amazon's proprietary format (.azw). The two widely used standards are EPUB and MOBI. Of the two, it seems to me that more devices seem to support EPUB, so I would say that's the one to go for if you were only choosing one.

That is, however, just the impression I get from looking at various ebook readers in the market. I haven't seen any hard data to confirm the same, but I think I'm right. (Doesn't everyone?)

 

[Tinsel]

I will pick up one of TE's books because there are not many female authors in my current library and I just noticed that this avatar is a published author. I actually have Mary Shelley's book to read first, but if I were to pick up one of TE's books, which is it? I need to know.

I can order it on Amazon dot ca or dot com or else the Reader Store.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

The Hidden Stars is the first book in the current series (under the pseudonym Madeline Howard). Everything before that is out-of-print, although a new edition of Goblin Moon will be coming out in the fall.

 

[Tinsel]

I'll have to look it up tonight. I did try reading a fantasy novel written by one of the male writers but I stopped, so now I will try a female voice. I think that this might work out. We will see about these hidden stars too. That is exactly what I was wondering about in fact, so now you have done me this service by providing me with your guidance, kind Princess.

 

[Tinsel]

In conclusion, The Reader Store had "The Hidden Stars", so now it is on my Reader and it has my attention! There is a second book there as well, waiting. Look at that nice cover, and it says, "Book One Of The Rune Of Unmaking".