Another Money-Making Scheme

One more thing: I actu­ally think the idea Quinn floated on SBTB to offer these epis free to new read­ers who buy some epack­age of the orig­i­nal nov­els is a pretty good con­cept. THAT really strikes me as both smart and a good deal to read­ers (you know, like buy­ing a foun­da­tion and get­ting a free mas­cara or some­thing). In terms of being courted as a new cus­tomer, I tend to be taken in more read­ily by strate­gies that appear to offer me some­thing free so I don’t feel so bad about part­ing ways with more of my money than I oth­er­wise might. I know that ulti­mately the man­u­fac­turer or ven­dor prof­its more than I do (mon­e­tar­ily speak­ing), but I’m way more amenable to it that way.

Reply

I’m not [yet] an e-book reader, and I’d got the impres­sion that Quinn was the only author doing this, and had there­fore assumed that your points were per­force directed at her.

I agree with you that any indi­vid­ual epi­logue could dis­ap­point read­ers, either in terms of qual­ity or price; where I get stuck is on the jump to con­clud­ing that the phe­nom­e­non is there­fore a Bad Thing.

She seems to be the first to do these 2^nd epi­logues like this, but she’s cer­tainly not the first writer who has tried (and is try­ing) to expand her mar­ket share through var­i­ous pub­lish­ing, sales, and media strate­gies (even Nora Roberts was talk­ing on SBTB about mak­ing her new PBs appeal­ing to new read­ers). What frus­trates me is when authors who are try­ing to expand their sales want to make it *all about* the char­ac­ters and the writ­ing and the fans. We all know it’s not *all* about those fac­tors — so at least be straight about that part of it. I under­stand the dou­ble bind authors can feel in here — how do they keep from look­ing greedy — and I sym­pa­thize. But I also don’t think it’s all about the love of the game, so to speak, espe­cially when an author is already highly suc­cess­ful. And I can tell you that if the Quinn exper­i­ment takes off, I wouldn’t be sur­prised if it becomes a trend. Check out the fol­low­ing: http://​news​.mon​ey​cen​tral​.msn​.com/​t​i​c​k​e​r​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​asp?
Feed=PR&Date=20060606&ID=5774024&Symbol=US:NWS (I split the URL to fit, so you have to copy both lines to access the article)

As I’ve said else­where, I wish more authors/publishers would offer their short sto­ries and novel­las in e-format so that I woudn’t have to spend the money on an entire paper anthol­ogy — THAT would be great, IMO. As for the epis, I don’t know if it’s a bad or good idea. I *do* think, though, that if authors want to sell them, that they really need to approach craft­ing them with the same cre­ative energy they give to writ­ing a full-length novel; oth­er­wise, this phe­nom is going to look like noth­ing *more* than a money-making, mar­ket­ing scheme. It will be inter­est­ing to see what the read­ers’ ver­dicts are after all of Quinn’s 8 come out, though. Right now impres­sions seem mixed.

Reply

Robin — colour me baf­fled. I nor­mally hugely respect your opin­ions, but if you’re com­ment­ing on the qual­ity of a piece of writ­ing you haven’t read, you’ve lost me.

I can see now how it may have seemed unclear, but I was actu­ally just mak­ing some gen­eral points about the whole epi­logue at a cost phe­nom, NOT about Quinn’s epis in gen­eral. I’ve read sev­eral com­ments from peo­ple who were dis­ap­pointed by them, which I’m guess­ing adds to their frus­tra­tion over the strat­egy as a whole. I’m sorry for the con­fu­sion, but my point is sim­ply this: for die hard fans, epis will likely see a great deal no mat­ter what the cost. For other read­ers, they won’t, either becuase the epi doesn’t live up to the price or because read­ers feel the author/publisher is try­ing to take them, or because the read­ers don’t like epi­logues, or because read­ers already feel over­charged for their enter­tain­ment (or some com­bi­na­tion thereof). I think these issues hold regard­less of the writer and the reader in ques­tion. And where I don’t use Quinn’s name, I’m not refer­ring to her. I think I’ve made it clear in the past that I don’t have a prob­lem being direct re. spe­cific authors and my opinions!

Reply

I don’t think it’s even dis­putable that at least part of Quinn’s inten­tion was to make money; oth­er­wise, why not just offer free epis on her web­site (espe­cially if, as she says, she owns the rights to her characters)?

The big ques­tion, to me, any­way, is what that means. For die-hard fans, it seems to mean that Quinn’s desire to fur­ther mar­ket her­self and her ‘brand’ is com­pletely aligned with the fans’ desire to read (con­sume) her prose. Prob­a­bly no con­flict there.

But for those who are not in that die-hard camp, or who are not really fans at all, the overt mar­ket­ing can appear crass, I think, because despite the fact that MM fic­tion is so much about profit, it’s still nice to think of authors as more con­cerned with what they write than how they sell, espe­cially if the qual­ity of the extra writ­ing appears to be less rig­or­ous than the energy with which the extra mar­ket­ing is approached. I don’t think it helps when an author protests to the nines that it’s not about money (please!), because that intro­duces an ele­ment of disin­gen­u­ous­ness into the mix. And I think that many read­ers frankly resent it when a pub­lish­ing indus­try that already seems to priv­i­lege quan­tity above qual­ity and sales above cre­ativ­ity wants yet MORE of our money for less.

In Quinn’s case, I don’t like her full length books, so I won’t be buy­ing these shorts. If Laura Kin­sale or Judith Ivory or even Jo Good­man put these things out, though, I likely would, because I am a die hard fan of their writ­ing, and in that case, my inter­est in read­ing would very much match their inter­est in mar­ket­ing. It’s all a ques­tion of what some­thing is worth to each of us, I guess.

Reply

Quinn did say (on Sybil’s blog) that it was her idea to pub­lish the epi­logues: “First, it might inter­est you to know that I was the one who brought the idea of the sec­ond epi­logues to Avon, not the other way around. And in fact, I had to talk them into it. As far as it being released elec­tron­i­cally, I can’t really go into the details, but there was a lot of back and forth before it was decided that this was the best way to release them.”

Here’s the link: http://​red​wyne​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​6​/​0​5​/​f​o​r​-​q​u​i​n​n​-​r​e​a​d​e​r​s​-​t​a​k​e​-​i​i​i​.​h​tml

I’m one of those peo­ple who doesn’t get the whole Julia Quinn thing (I tried a novel and a short), but she def­i­nitely strikes me as some­one who is both dri­ven and savvy about mar­ket­ing herself.

Reply