The Barry Eisler Decision

If you're not a reader or writer, perhaps you don't know about the Barry Eisler Decision. I capitalize the phrase because it's akin to a historical event, like a major battle in a war.

You can read about the Barry Eisler Decision for all the details, but, succinctly, Mr. Eisler turned down a $500,000.00 advance from print publishing for his next book. Why? Because he has decided to self-publish his next book.

Ripples

Since this happened and has been reported all over the Internet, I've heard a lot of authors say that Barry Eisler is just a mid-list author as if they agree that the decision might be right for him. The inference being that an A-List, best-selling author would never consider it. You'll probably be reading a lot of blogs about this.

Personally, I wasn't aware that mid-list authors received half a million dollar advances. Who knew? (Hey, where's my half mil?)

Why?

I suspect Mr. Eisler did the math, based on his recent self-publication of a short story which stands to make in excess of $30,000.00 if it continues selling at its current brisk pace. I believe that it will. I think he'll make much more than $30K, and that's just a short story! I don't know of any market where he could make that many bucks for a piece of short fiction.

It's certainly easy to see that with a novel, never before published, this popular author will make far more by doing it himself than he would have made with traditional publishing. The added benefit is that he controls the entire process.

Takeaway Truth

I have seen the future, or at least a glimpse of it. If you're following the self-publishing revolution, you're seeing it too.

(Also published on Joan Slings Words, my other blog.)