Online Book Review

Online Book Review Readers,

We are especially proud to bring to you today an interview with crime fiction author and literary agent Allan Guthrie. Al has very recently published three books online as Kindle books: Two-Way Split, Kiss Her Goodbye, and Killing Mum. As a literary agent at Jenny Brown Associates, Al has negotiated major book deals for some of the best young crime fiction writers in the world. In the following interview, Al discusses his writing, agenting, and thoughts on recent book publishing trends. He also offers up his thoughts on the state of book publishing and where it’s likely to go in the next 5-10 years.

Thanks so much, Al, for taking the time to chat with us at the Online Book Review. And thanks to all of you for stopping by the Online Book Review to read his interview. Enjoy!

–Stacey Cochran

ALLAN GUTHRIE

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: Thanks so much, Al, for joining us at the Online Book Review. So tell us a little bit about your decision to publish Two-Way Split, Kiss Her Goodbye, and Killing Mum. What ultimately was your reason for getting your books on Kindle?

ALLAN GUTHRIE: As well as being a novelist, I’m also a literary agent. One of my clients is John Rector, who wrote an excellent novel called The Grove, which he decided to make available on the Kindle. I confess I was skeptical at first, but it quickly became evident that he was absolutely right to have gone ahead with it. Being completely wrong is by no means a new experience for me, incidentally. Another of my clients is Stona Fitch, who founded the Concord Free Press, a company that publishes original fiction in trade paperback and gives away the books for free – they don’t even charge postage. I was extremely skeptical when Stona informed me of his plans there too. But that was (and continues to be) a huge success as well, having generated close to $70,000 dollars for charity. The book he launched the press with, Give And Take, is being published in hardcover in April next year. So what do I know? Not much, clearly.

Anyway, having seen John’s success with The Grove, I started to look into the market a lot more closely. And I liked what I saw. Not only does it expose an author to a new readership, but I did some calculations and discovered that a book that sells at $1.25 on Kindle would pay almost as much in royalties as a typical mass market paperback at $5.99. I wasn’t sure that there was a huge readership out there, but on the other hand, the chances are that anyone who spends a few hundred dollars on an e-reader is going to be a heavy reader and liable to buy a lot of books. So I thought maybe they’d take a chance on an author they haven’t tried before, especially if the price is kept low.

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: Tell us a little bit about each of your Kindle books.

ALLAN GUTHRIE: Two-Way Split is my debut novel, which was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger in the UK and went on to win the Theakston’s Old Peculier (peculiarly enough, that’s how it’s spelled) Crime Novel Of The Year. The book is in development as a movie with Plum Films and Scala Productions. It’s a crime novel about Robin Greaves, a clinically psychotic ex-concert pianist who turns to armed robbery. On the day of a planned heist, he finds out that his wife is sleeping with a fellow gang member. Which is enough to tip Robin over the edge and headlong into his own brand of insanity.

Kiss Her Goodbye is my second novel and has been nominated for a few awards (all in the US), including an Edgar for best paperback original. It’s about Joe Hope, a man who works for a loan shark. Joe’s a violent man trying hard to remain calm while the pressure on him to revert to type increases by the page. It opens on the day he discovers his teenage daughter has committed suicide. The book is about his attempt to find out why.

The third book is a novella called Killing Mum, commissioned by Five Leaves Publications as part of their Crime Express series. The story is about Carlos Morales, who arranges contract killings from a tanning salon. The day the story starts, he receives an anonymous contract to arrange a hit on his own mother.

If it sounds as if they’re all a bit dark, well that’d be true. But there’s also a lot of black comedy in them.

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: Two-Way Split is published in the U.S. by Point Blank Press. Is there any plan to Kindle-ize more titles at PBP that you’re aware of?

ALLAN GUTHRIE: Two-Way Split was published by PointBlank until a few weeks ago. The rights have now reverted to me. The Kindle edition is currently the only edition available in the US. There may be a few copies of the trade paperback version still in stock but once they’re gone, that’ll be it. Incidentally, the designer of the original cover for PointBlank is the guy who designed the Kindle version, the multi-talented JT Lindroos – he was also my first editor, the man responsible for acquiring Two-Way Split for PointBlank.

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: As an agent, how are you now negotiating e-book rights for your authors? How does it factor into a typical book deal in 2009?

ALLAN GUTHRIE: I’m not sure there’s such a thing as a typical book deal. Contracts vary from publisher to publisher. Ideally, I’d retain e-rights for the author unless the publisher has a good pedigree in this area already or has smart, concrete plans for imminent e-publishing. And as always, I’d push for the best split I can get. It’s certainly something that comes up a lot more as a major deal point these days.

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: What kinds of discussions have you had about e-book rights with folks at Jenny Brown? Specifically, how has interest in this area changed (if at all) for negotiating in the past 3-5 years?

ALLAN GUTHRIE: It’s something of an on-going discussion and I suspect it will be for some time to come. There’s certainly more of an awareness in the industry that e-books are making an impact, and the more impact they make, the more value those rights have. What’s definitely changed is that e-books were once seen as cheaper alternatives to their paper cousins. The argument these days is that the costs for e-books are very similar to the costs for hard-cover editions – there are editing, typesetting, marketing, cover design, etc., expenses to factor in – so the average publisher seems to be less generous than when I first started agenting. On the other hand, when I first started, a lot of contractual e-rights discussions were theoretical, as it would later transpire. There’s more likelihood of e-books sales actually happening these days. It’s a matter of striking the right balance and, as always, getting the best deal for the author. But, as I say, it’s an on-going conversation.

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: What was your process like for writing for Two-Way Split? How long did it take? Did you outline? What was your revision process like for the novel?

ALLAN GUTHRIE: Two-Way Split was a long time in the writing. Literally years. I’m one of those writers who will keep banging away at a book until I’m ordered to stop. Revision is a constant process. If I have six months to write a book, I’ll take six months. If I have six years, I’ll take six years. With Two-Way Split it took a long time to find a publisher so I kept re-writing while it was out on submission. I even have a post-publication version lurking somewhere. I didn’t outline the book. I have outlined others, though. If I have a deadline, it feels safer to have an outline, but if not then I prefer to wing it.

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: Do you start with a character, plot, or something else entirely when you first conceive of a novel?

ALLAN GUTHRIE: Usually character. The idea for Killing Mum, for example, came from existing characters from one of my other books (Savage Night). I found myself wondering what had become of them since the end of that book, and I answered the question by writing Killing Mum.

Kiss Her Goodbye came from having read one too many books where the criminal protagonist was a nice guy. I wanted to try writing something where the lead was a bit of a bastard and see if I could get the reader to empathize nonetheless.

Two-Way Split came from the idea of a character talking to his dead mother in a book I’d been reading. I remember thinking I wanted to recreate that kind of mood. So you could say that Two-Way Split came from atmosphere rather than character – there’s a definite surrealistic element to the book.

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: Kiss Her Goodbye was published in the U.S. by Hard Case Crime. How did you communicate with your publisher about your decision to publish the book on Kindle?

ALLAN GUTHRIE: Pretty straightforwardly. Hard Case hadn’t acquired electronic rights, so I just said I was thinking of Kindling KHG and they said they thought it was a great idea. That was it. I’d like to think that having the book available in a new format will give a boost to print sales as well. The Hard Case jacket is an absolute gem and well worth the money regardless of what’s between the covers. That applies to the entire range. As with the Crime Express series, which are the only books of their kind: small paperbacks with French flaps. I was so impressed when I first saw them that I asked the publisher if I could write one. Which is how Killing Mum came about.

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: What are your thoughts on writers first building a readership via online books before trying to find a traditional publisher?

ALLAN GUTHRIE: If you can establish that there’s a market out there for your books, it can help. It worked recently for Boyd Morrison. It also worked on audio for Seth Harwood. Again, it does depend on the publisher. But there’s no doubt that having some kind of publicity hook or ‘platform’ can help. And existing sales can be a strong platform. Selling ten thousand copies, say, gives you a proven readership as well as providing an obvious marketing angle. Also, if you have a good number of sales through your own efforts, a potential publisher is going to know that you’re not shy about marketing yourself.

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: I’ve always been curious about your decision to agent and write. Why not just choose one or the other? What are the advantages of doing both? What do you like most about each?

ALLAN GUTHRIE: The most pragmatic advantage of doing both is that it enables me to keep a roof over my head! I handle crime fiction, mainly, and given that the average advance these days for a crime novel is around $5000, and I’m not salaried as an agent, then I’d need to sell 25 such novels a year to earn what I was making when I was working in a bookshop. Just as well I’m not in it for the money. But then, no one’s in publishing for the money — not for long, anyway. The good thing about writing and agenting is that they fit around one another pretty easily. Prioritizing is rarely a problem. Although I often wish there were several more hours in the day.

What do I like most? With writing, I enjoy revising. I struggle getting the first draft down and it’s always a total mess but I like the process of turning it into something a little more palatable. I enjoy working with other writers in almost any capacity (I love co-writing) and the editorial aspect of agenting can be fun (difficult too, sometimes). But as an agent, the best feeling, hands down, is when an offer comes in and you know that the author’s hard work is going to be repaid. That’s the really hard part of being a novelist. Unlike non-fiction, if you’re not under contract, it’s almost impossible to sell a novel on a partial and synopsis. So you can spend a year writing a book nobody wants to buy. There’s nothing more soul destroying than that.

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: Does self publishing help or hurt most authors?

ALLAN GUTHRIE: What hurts, I think, is putting out sub-par work. You need to learn to write and it’s a very bad idea to publish your practice novels. I have a couple in a drawer and they’ll be staying there. Also, if you do self-publish, I’d recommend that you get your book professionally edited. Editors don’t get anywhere near enough credit for the jobs they do. You need an editor. I don’t care who you are. And get a good cover while you’re at it. You will be judged on it, whether you like it or not. To answer your question: if you know what you’re doing and your expectations are reasonable, self-publishing might be a good enough option. Especially if you write niche fiction. Or if you’re prolific.

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: What are your thoughts on the business model of traditional publishing? Does it work, is it fundamentally flawed? How is this likely to change in the next ten years?

ALLAN GUTHRIE: You don’t like asking easy questions! I think publishing has been eating itself for a long time. I don’t believe you can blame the business model entirely for that, though. If it was fundamentally flawed, we’d have seen signs before now. But the industry is by no means perfect and there are a number of factors that concern me.

We’re leaking readers rapidly. We’re told that men (particularly young men) don’t read much fiction any more. I’ve seen figures claiming that as much as 80% of fiction is bought by women. Rather than try to tap into this huge potential market, most publishers seem to prefer to fight for a share of the existing one. Which seems counter-intuitive to me. I’m fairly confident that the figures reflect the fact that the kind of fiction young men like to read just isn’t very visible. It needs to be marketed properly, strongly branded, targeted.  And the content needs to be right. I think the rise of the graphic novel will help. But quite apart from the issue of young male readers, I just think that readers in general are far more sophisticated than they’re given credit for and we’re losing a lot of them to TV, which is where so much of the challenging material is to be found nowadays.

Another concern: Bookscan. With Bookscan, everyone (who pays) is able to see an author’s sales figures (how reliable those figures are is a matter of some debate but that’s another matter), so if the author hasn’t sold well, an outstanding new book might fail at the acquisition stage on account of the author’s previous figures. There’s little taken into account for the quality of the book, the fact that authors improve over time, that they build an audience, etc. The sales people look at the figures and shake their heads. Those same sales people would have missed out on Ian Rankin, of course, who sells rather well these days. It takes time to build a readership. And Bookscan makes it hard for an author to get that time. If Bookscan was around 20 years ago, I’d bet that some of the bestsellers we’ve seen over the last couple of decades would never have happened.

Moving on: discounting. It’s back-to-front. The books that get promoted are the ones that don’t need it. They’ll sell anyway. And if you sell sure-fire bestsellers at full price, everybody in the industry makes money: margins are maximized for retailers and publishers, and authors don’t find that their deep discount clauses have been triggered. Supermarket mentality (loss leaders) results in supermarkets. Bookstores that expend their energy chasing supermarkets are simply going to get tired and go bust. They don’t have the legs to compete. Why not introduce readers to new writers by promoting titles other than the latest blockbusters? Something the supermarkets, with their limited range, can’t do. The Waterstone’s chain in the UK used to have a monthly recommends section that pushed new writers – very popular it was, too. It was a genuine recommendation by a group of employees. I miss that kind of thing.

And my final gripe: the returns system. Unlike almost every other form of retail, books are sold on a sale or return basis, which means that what a bookstore doesn’t sell, it’s allowed to return for credit. For a chain store, the credit is likely to be 50% (or higher) of the retail price. Fine, I’ve no problems with returns per se. What I’ve never understood though is why there’s no attempt at selling returnable books at a discount above the credit price. For example, say a book costs $10. If you’re going to return the book for credit at 50%, then you’ll get $5 credit added to your account. So before you make the effort of gathering all the paperwork together and boxing up the books (or covers) to send back, why not lower the selling price of the book by a dollar each month for the next five months?  You’ll very likely shift a number of extra copies and make more money than you would if you sent the books back for credit. As well, you’ll extend the book’s shelf-life (which is often pitifully short). And if they still haven’t sold once they’ve reached the credit price, then you can send them back. It involves some additional price stickering but so do 3-for-2 promotions and that never stopped anyone.

Is publishing likely to change in the next ten years? Without question. It’s changing all the time. I suspect that the ready-made publicity that comes with celebrity involvement is going to be around for a while. I envisage more collaborative writing. And not just between authors, but between author and publisher. As a result, I can see a bigger role for book packagers. And more interaction with readers. Which I suspect will lead to stronger branding — targeted imprints that are very specialised. E-books will become more prevalent and I hope traditional publishers won’t see them as a threat to print editions but as an additional revenue stream. The smarter publishers will discover that offering a backlist title or two at very low prices will create new readers for established authors. Likewise, I can see a lot of cross-advertising of the ‘if you like x, you’ll enjoy y’ variety. Something that’s currently under-exploited by publishers – often you’d never know that two complementary authors were published by the same company. I could go on. And on. And on.

But as I said earlier, I’m frequently wrong. Come back to this interview in ten years time and you’ll most likely find yourself saying, “So what did Al Guthrie know? Not much, clearly.”