Good Chance of Rain
The Detachment, the latest novel in Barry Eisler’s John Rain series, follows Rain and a ragtag team of stone-cold operators more accustomed to working on their own while they work on the “natural causes” demise of three ultra-high-profile targets dangerously close to launching a coup in America. The real plot driving the assassinations is even more sinister than Rain and his team can possibly imagine, and they’ll have to survive each other before even considering completing their mission.
A former CIA agent himself, Eisler bases much of the tradecraft in the John Rain stories off what he was taught in spy school, but also on how an operator views the world. He also tries to make the actions of the CIA as an agency realistic, commenting that the media portrayals of the CIA as a ruthlessly efficient organization are laughable at best.
“It’s like the Post Office but with spies,” Eisler said, emphasizing that the CIA is just like any government organization with a tight bureaucracy and extensive regulations. Eisler takes care to say he means no disrespect to the post office, just that government organizations are never the most efficient of places.
The Detachment bears this out, and showcases the unique characters that Eisler created in the personas of John Rain, his partner Dox, Ben Treven, and Larison. Each has their own motivations and secrets, and each shows their story through their widely divergent characters. Eisler said he spends a lot of time walking and thinking about who his characters are and what their formative experiences were to differentiate them. In the case of The Detachment, that extensive planning pays off in a big way.
Fans of John Rain are sure to be excited by the subsequent story in the series, as Eisler says we’ll next see Rain fresh out of the Vietnam War and living in Tokyo. He won’t be the tactically experienced John Rain readers have come to expect, but rather a greener and less-in-control-of-himself version of the character. It’s going to be an origins novel, taking place long before Rain Fall, the first novel in the series. No matter what, the next adventure of John Rain will be as well-written as the previous one.
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Feature
Pragmatism Reigns: A Conversation With Barry Eisler
NY Times Bestselling Author Talks Amazon, Self-Publishing, and the New Publishing Landscape
Barry Eisler made headlines last year when he walked away from a $500,000 two-book deal with St. Martin’s Press in favor of self-publishing his next book. He made headlines again in the spring when he announced a deal with Thomas & Mercer, the new mystery/thriller imprint crafted by Amazon.com, to release his latest novel in the John Rain series, The Detachment. This newest novel has since been released, first in eBook form on September 15, 2011 as an Amazon exclusive, and then in trade paperback on October 15.
The seemingly backwards release schedule, sending out the eBook prior to the paper version, is something Eisler has advocated for some time. Releasing a paper version of a book and getting it into the hands of readers can take a minimum of four months, according to Eisler, and that’s a lightning-quick pace to go from finished product to being placed in bookstores available for sale.
“My thinking is OK fine, paper takes longer,” Eisler said, “let’s make digital available first.” Eisler equated publishing a digital version of a book to posting a photo on Facebook, commenting that once the book is done and formatted you can have a digital copy available the next day as opposed to four to six months down the line.
Every New York legacy publisher Eisler brought this idea to balked, saying they couldn’t make the digital version available before the paper one because “that’s not how things are done.” Eisler rejected the idea that paper books had to be available first for a few reasons. The first of these is that even if you hold back the digital edition, the paper version doesn’t come back in a form which justifies the lag. The second, and more pragmatic reason, is that the sooner a book becomes available the sooner Eisler can make money off his work.
This ability to make digital editions available quickly is one of the three reasons Eisler made the initial leap to self-publishing. Had he signed with St. Martin’s, Eisler said The Detachment wouldn’t have been released in any form until the spring of 2012. Eisler was unwilling to delay the novel by that much, and the quicker time to market afforded by self-publishing a digital book very much appealed to his business sense.
The second reason Eisler walked away from legacy publishing was the desire for greater control over the packaging of his books. Books have been slaughtered by what Eisler calls “lazy, incompetent packaging.” This can include a terrible cover, an inappropriate author biography, and even a bad title that doesn’t engage the reader the way it should. Eisler was never able to attain any control over the packaging decisions of his previous books, and has in fact written about the damage a bad title or bad cover can do (see article links below). He wanted this intense control over his title, cover, and other packaging decisions, and self-publishing provided that.
The third reason Eisler switched to self-publishing, beyond better time to market and control over the packaging of his books, was that he wanted a higher royalty on his digital releases. According to Eisler, the highest royalty on eBooks from a New York legacy publisher is 17.5%, unless you happen to be a mega-bestseller like Stephen King and can demand a better split. That Amazon.com offers a 70% royalty on eBook sales for self-publishing didn’t escape Eisler’s notice.
When Amazon heard about Eisler’s headline-making move of walking away from St. Martin’s, they offered him a partnership. Eisler inked a hybrid deal with the Seattle-based company consisting of what he wanted from self-publishing, and also placing the full weight of the Amazon marketing machine behind his work in a way that no legacy publisher could ever match. In fact, every time Amazon gets behind one of his titles, like it has with The Detachment, Eisler said he sees an increase in sales for all of his books.
Since signing with Amazon, Eisler has experienced a bit of a backlash from self-published authors. This has come mostly from the self-published authors who are very ideological in their reasons for wanting to self-publish their books. Eisler doesn’t see self-publishing as an ideology; rather, it was a means to an end for him. That end of course being greater control over the packaging of his books, an improved time to market, and a better digital royalties split.
“People who say ‘oh my god you wanted to self-publish’ are missing the point,” Eisler said. “Publishing for me is a business, not an ideology.”
And in true businessman form, Eisler has refused to limit himself to one distribution model. He’s signed with Amazon imprint Thomas & Mercer for The Detachment, but makes it very clear that he will probably self-publish something else in the future. Eisler makes clear that his decision about how to publish is made for each book, not from a career standpoint. Any contract he signs is for a particular book, he says, and doesn’t lock him into publishing with only one company for the rest of his writing career.
“I would like to do some of my books with Amazon and some self-publish,” Eisler said. That he’s able to do this, and more importantly is given the choice to make such pragmatic business decisions, is a function of the digital revolution of the last ten years.
Five years ago, Eisler said his first question to someone looking to self-publish a book would be about their paper distribution model. Publishing in the legacy form has a massive start-up cost, and because of this the legacy publishers in New York City created a monopoly on getting books to market; no single person had the money to hire a sales force to connect with brick-and-mortar book stores, or contract with a printing plant, or hire truck drivers to ship their book, or do any of the other things necessary with paper distribution.
Digital, on the other hand, doesn’t have these barriers to entry. Because of this, Eisler says the digital revolution cracked the quasi-monopoly of the New York legacy publishers wide open. He believes there aren’t any more distribution questions to answer since writers have been able to self-publish through Amazon and other services.
“There’s no longer a distribution problem to solve,” Eisler said. “It’s been solved.”
Now the question Eisler would ask the perspective author is what their marketing plan is. Especially since only one in five books published through the legacy houses in New York makes any sort of money; based on this number alone, the NY houses aren’t terribly good at marketing in Eisler’s estimation. However, Eisler acknowledges that effective marketing is a challenge no matter what industry you happen to be in.
This is a new path for Eisler, having a combination of self-published works and those released through Thomas & Mercer in a more traditional model. But, like the hero of his John Rain thrillers, the precarious path is something he thrives on, and he has no intention of ever limiting himself again.
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The Detachment: A John Rain Thriller
by Barry Eisler
312 page paperback; $14.95; ISBN 9781612181554
Published by Thomas & Mercer, an Amazon Imprint (October 2011)
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Eisler on choosing a book’s title: http://mjroseblog.typepad.com/buzz_balls_hype/2007/03/titles_the_reso.html#tp
Eisler on book packaging: http://mjroseblog.typepad.com/buzz_balls_hype/2005/08/4_from_guest_bl.html#tp
Eisler on book cover design:
http://dearauthor.com/features/letters-of-opinion/lets-give-them-something-to-talk-about
Press release about Amazon’s launch of Thomas & Mercer:
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?ID=1565091&p=irol-newsArticle&c=176060&highlight=%23
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Matthew Delman has ten years of experience editing and writing for newspapers. He has penned articles on travel, business, education, and health, which have appeared in publications such as The Gloucester Daily Times (Gloucester, Mass.), The Salem News (Salem, Mass.), and websites owned by Hello Metro. Matthew’s short fiction has been published in FISSURE Magazine (November 2010) and by Nevermet Press (April 2011).