It’s also my motto for the current state of publishing.  My mantra lately has been:

Authors produce the product.

Readers consume the product.

Everyone else is either helping or in the way.  So lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.

This is my first post here so I’ll ramble a bit and I’ll get back to my view of the state of publishing.

First, the military is always a great backdrop for a story because it’s high stakes and people are under extreme pressure.  Want to find out who someone really is?  Put them in a crisis.  That’s the reason Ranger School, Special Forces Qualification Course, Delta Selection, BUDS, all of those schools are so stressful.  They want to find out if you just want to wear a Green Beret or be a Green Beret.  Big difference.

All my books, across a variety of genres, have had a military hero/heroine.  Psst, BTW, the hero in my next collaboration with Jennifer Crusie, WILD RIDE, due out 16 March, is a retired Green Beret, medically discharged with a bullet resting right next to his heart.  So, of course, he ends up in an amusement park that’s a prison for demons.  Can’t catch a break.

If you don’t want to go get shot at, some good resources for the military:

Blackhawk Down.  I knew the Delta CO and the TF-160 CO on that op.  Book and movie both very good.

Inside Delta Force by Eric Haney.  A lot of little ‘real’ touches in there.

The Commandoes.  A good book about training for all the branches Special Ops.

Now, back to publishing.  I really think things are changing much faster than most people anticipate.  Most people are reacting, rather than acting.  A tenet of my Warrior Writer program is to be successful we must act, not react.  As part of that, I started bringing a bunch of my backlist into print.  Mostly military thrillers or military type science fiction. Somehow, that evolved into starting my own company:  Who Dares Win Publishing.  The key to success in the future market is to find a niche and become known as the person who does THAT thing.  The internet is making things narrower rather than broader.  So I’m specializing in military fiction and non-fiction.  Even that’s a little too broad and we’re in the process of narrowing it down.

Publishing is currently working on a business paradigm that is over a century out of date.  If we want to avoid what happened in the music business (grossing 12 Billion 10 years ago– grossing 6 Billion now, even though more people are listening to music than ever before) we need to wise up.  Publishers trying to hold off eBook pub until four months after hardcover are fighting a losing battle.  Saying the eBook market is only 3% is sticking one’s head in the sand.  Things are changing exponentially, not linearly.  Laugh at the iPad.  But remember, it’s only the device.  When Apple opens it’s online bookstore, can we say iTunes for books?

I predict the big 6 in NY will go more toward a Harlequin business model, breaking down their imprints even further to become brands for certain types of book.

I also predict a key tipping point when a major fiction author (Steve Covey, a non-fiction author has already done this) goes direct to Kindle, and all the other ebook platforms, skipping a publisher altogether.  This is happening in England already.

Because in all the furor over MacMillan-Amazon, no one was talking about increasing royalty rates for authors.  In fact, Random House was trying to reduce electronic royalty rates for authors.

Ok– and looking at the categories here, how come SEALs have their own but Special Forces doesn’t?  Hmm.