Charles Anderson Books

We are a small press dedicated to publishing SFF and Western e-books through various distribution channels and trade paperbacks through our imprints CAB, Anderson Land, Cattle & Publishing, or Mad Cow Books.

NO SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS

If we like your first three chapters, we will want to see the rest your book. That may take a month or so for us to read. After that, we make an offer or reject it. If after two months, we haven’t emailed you, email us back.

CONTRACTS

We pay 70% net on all forms. No advance. It’s that simple, and we’ll let the author leave the contract with us at anytime.

FORMATS AND EMAIL

Email subs only. Times New Roman 12 pt or something similiar. Double space. Use Italics. RTF files preferred. Contact information in the file, including phone number and email. Be sure your book is clean, edited and professional. Have your book vetted by a critique group. Make sure it is of a quality you’d be proud to see in print. Novels must be more than 60K words.

Email us at: cksanderson@gmail.com

The Role of the Author in New Publishing By Robin Sullivan

Robin Sullivan knows what she is talking about when it comes to publishing. As the founder of Ridan Publishing she has her finger on its pulse.

The Role of the Author in New Publishing
The two “big” things at BEA this year (well besides all the announcements about Amazon’s move to publishing and the two big bombs of Larry Kirshbaum being brought in and Barry Eisler signing with their Thomas and Mercer line.) were
Discoverability
Author Platform
I’ll talk more about the first in a future post but I wanted to talk a bit today about Author Platform. Let’s start at the beginning..what actually is it? I did a quick Google search and found this.
The author platform is how you are currently reaching an audience of book-buying people, or how you plan to do so. It is your influence, your ability to sell to your market.
If you are self-publishing then the need to create and build a platform is obvious, after all you are a one man/woman business and you are responsible for everything from start to end. For those that are either pursuing or have a publisher don’t think you’re off the hook.

I hear the following all the time from writers:
I don’t want to market my book…I want to write. I’m not good at sales and it makes me uncomfortable

Marketing is the responsibility of my publisher. That’s why I didn’t self-publish
Let’s dispel some myths. First off ALL authors, regardless of how they are published need to help get the word out about themselves and their writing. Publisher’s marketing plans are not about getting readers – it’s focused on wooing corporate buyers and acquisition librarians to get your books into brick and mortar venues. They work on getting your book “available” so it can be discovered. Yes, they’ll send out ARC’s and maybe setup signings, but once again that is more about working on “influencers” they aren’t equipped for selling one-on-one to individual consumers. (More on this in a future post).
For those pursuing a publisher, a platform is a huge bargaining chip. There are some agents that look at platform first, and others who won’t consider an author without one. When an intern at Ridan Publishing brought Nathan Lowell to my attention, I went out to podiobooks.com and saw he had an extensive platform of followers. As a businesswoman I was immediately interested. After I listened to the podcast of his Quarter Share there was no question I wanted to sign him.
Historically, publishing contracts are very weighted toward the publisher. I’ve been shocked by some of the clauses that friends of mine have signed. When confronted, they all say the same thing, “It was the best I could get, they held all the cards.” If you have a platform you have power that can be leveraged to swing the pendulum to a more author friendly partnership.

In today’s publishing environment, writing a good book is not enough. We live in a digital age and readers love, and expect, to connect with authors. This is a good thing. You want “stark raving fans” (More on this in another post). It is now a requirement of the profession and if you are not willing to participate then you’re chance of success will take a substantial hit. It’s like being a salesman that sells high priced products not being interested in playing golf or having drinks with clients. Can he sell without doing this? Probably? Is it expected that he’ll do these things? Yes. Will others that do wine and time the client sell better? On average they will.
I’ll talk more in future posts about how you go about building your platform but here are some teasers to get you started.
Everyone starts from a platform of none. It takes time to build, it won’t happen overnight so don’t be discouraged if you have none now.

Don’t think of building a platform as selling. Think of it as making connections and helping others. It’s about being a member of a community.

Successful platforms are built on reciprocality—Give and you shall receive. The more generous you are toward others, the more people will gravitate to you.

Platform building is like laundry. If you do it a little at the time you’ll be less likely to be overwhelmed.
That’s it for today. I need to get back to editing. But I’m trying to keep the posts frequent as it seems as though you guys are getting something out of them.

by Robin Sullivan posted on her blog Write to Publish

Here is what my Web-Guru Matthew Wayne Selznick says about EBook pricing. The original article can be found here:

A Last Word On E-Book Pricing
Posted on May 4, 2011 by Matt

There’s been a lot of discussion in certain niches of the Internet on the subject of e-book pricing. Like most passionate debates, it’s very important to a very small number of people: mostly independent authors or wanna-be authors who are excited at the possibilities offered by inexpensive electronic publishing. The subject was made even more compelling when the high-dollar paydays of a few authors became big news in the publishing industry.

I’ve sold e-books since 2005, but I’ve remained mostly quiet on the subject. I wanted to watch what other others — particularly friends and colleagues — had to say. The more I read in blog posts or heard on podcasts, the more convinced I became that e-book pricing is almost entirely an arbitrary matter of personal judgement and philosophy.

So. Here’s my last word on e-book pricing.

My e-books are / will be priced as follows:

Flash fiction (up to 1,000 words): $0.50
Short stories and essays (1,001 to 7,500 words): $0.99
Novelettes (7,501 to 17,500 words): $1.49
Novellas (17,501 to 40,000 words): $1.99
Novels (40,001 to 100,000 words): $2.99
Anthologies: $2.99
Book-length non-fiction: $4.99

What’s my reasoning? Not surprisingly, entirely arbitrary and personal. I don’t believe price denotes quality. I do believe that word count = time spent creating. I’ve got various calculations connecting words written per hour to copies sold to recoup that time… you should see the spreadsheet, it’s ridiculous.

I also believe that non-fiction should be more expensive than fiction, either because non-fiction has repeat value as reference material or because it requires more rigorous research — take your pick; I told you it was arbitrary. Finally, anthologies (regardless of length) have to be at least as much as novels because the profit is split between the contributors.

Make sense? That’s okay; it barely does to me.

So that’s my last word on e-book pricing. Until such time as I change my mind, that is.

This is an interesting piece about ebook pricing I found the other day about what to price your ebook from Frankie Robetson’s blog.

What Price will the eMarket Bear?

Her website can be found here: http://frankierobertson.wordpress.com

What Price Will the eMarket Bear?
By
Frankie Robertson

June 2, 2011

I had a well known fact slap me in the face last night. I’ve been aware for some time that the ebooks that come from legacy publishers are over-priced. Most of the ebooks I’ve bought up til now have been either self-pubbed or from ebook publishers. But lately I’ve become all too aware of how crowded my bookshelves have become, and last night I thought I’d buy Patricia Briggs most recent Mercy Thompson novel, River Marked as an ebook. I love these books. I absolutely ate them up on my recent vacation. But I balked at the $12.99 price.
I really want to read that book, and sooner than next January when the mass market edition is released and the ebook price comes down to $7.99. I can go to the library, yes. But the point is, by pricing the ebook so high, Ace has deferred my purchase, and risked losing income. Do they think that by pricing the ebook unreasonably high at $12.99, that I’ll be more likely to say, “Well heck, I might as well spend three dollars more and get the discounted hardback from Amazon for $16.17?” Really? Hardbacks are bulky, heavy, and take up too much space. Or perhaps they believe that getting it now rather than later is worth the $5 premium?
Obviously, that works for some people. Some people do buy ebooks at that inflated price. But if you’ve been following any of the authors I’ve mentioned here in the past (Konrath, Eisler, Stackpole, Rusch, Smith), they’re all pretty much united in the opinion that lower prices for ebooks result in greater sales and greater income.
J. A Konrath likes the $2.99 price point for his ebooks, Dean Wesley Smith recommends $4.99 for a full length novel. Michael A. Stackpole charges $4.99 for his backlist ebooks. Ebook publishers like Samhain, Loose-Id, and The Wild Rose Press typically charge from $4.50 to $7.00 for full novels.
Much less than what legacy publishers charge.
Some have suggested that self-pubbed books and epublishers have to charge less because the quality of the product is just not up to legacy publishing standards. Legacy publishers edit their books better than self-published authors or small presses do, the argument goes. They spend more on book development and production, they deserve to charge more for their product. However, the amount traditional publishers spend and what they spend it on is pretty much irrelevant to the customer. It’s all about perceived value. Legacy publishers are competing for my entertainment dollars. If I think spending $12.99 is a rip-off, I’m going to spend that money on something else that I think is fair value, whether it’s another book or renting a movie. As a consumer, I don’t care what happens behind the curtain. I just want value for my money. And my Scot blood says $12.99 is too much for an ebook when another author’s traditionally published, professionally edited, backlist books are available digitally for $4.99.
This (along with other business practices) is hurting publishers. Ebooks are increasing their market share daily, but traditional publishers aren’t fully taking advantage of the trend. They’re trying to maintain print books as the more attractive product by pricing ebooks unattractively. Instead they should be using ebook profits to keep their companies afloat and their balance sheets healthy (while paying their authors a competitive royalty so they don’t jump ship and scurry over to Amazon’s new imprints).
This follows a well-established historical pattern, however. In almost every industry, when there’s been a big shift in technology, there have been early adopters and those who want to stay with the familiar old ways. Sometimes early adopters jump on the new train too soon, and fail. But more often it’s the ones who wait until they can’t ignore the fact that the world has changed anymore that get left behind.