BARRY EISLER: PUBLISHING'S RUNAWAY BRIDE

 Barry Eisler's amazing walkaway from a $500,000 advance to self-publish electronically seems to have left the publishing world gasping for breath. ( http://bit.ly/enaJUP ) As for me, I'm not merely astounded, but aghast. As a publisher of ebooks, I guess I should  be rubbing my hands in glee, but instead I'm just not. I feel like I'm watching publishing as we know it commit suicide. Slowly and deliberately, like Virginia Woolf filling her pockets with rocks and walking into the river. (Did she really do that? I don't think I've ever seen it actually written down.)

I don't know. If I said this to St. Martin's, the brand-new publisher he left at the altar as the Wedding March was starting, maybe they'd shrug and say, so what, he's only one guy. But he isn't. He's about the third guy that everyone knows about. (There might be others. But the other two I mean are J.A. Konrath and Seth Godin.)  Godin's a best-seller; that had to hurt. If SMP was willing to offer Eisler half a million dollars, that had to hurt too. Not to mention the shock of  making the offer, going through the negotiation, and...well, getting stuck with a runaway bride. And his poor agent! All that work for nothing. Is he or she getting a cut of the ebook revenue? If not, I bet he'd like to kill Mr. Eisler.

 Not, to be clear, that I actually think Eisler did the wrong thing. His figures add up. It seems a smart business decision. It just seems so sudden. He said he did it because publishing changed so radically in the three months since he accepted the offer and the "paperwork" was competed. (Meaning, I presume, the final negotiations.) Looking behind the scenes, it probably wasn't sudden at all. I expect Mr. Eisler  asked for a better percentage of his electronic royalties than SMP was willing to give and they've been arguing about it the whole three months. If you look at what Mr. Eisler says are the figures (http://bit.ly/f1yhj0 ) , the other guy in the negotiation had to see this coming.

So it's St. Martin's I'm horrified at. I think. Couldn't they have picked up the pace if they wanted the deal? Why were they so intractable? (I don't know what he asked for--but couldn't they just bend a little?) No, I bet they'd say, that would set a precedent. Well, maybe it's time. Does Big Pub really want to bet the ranch it can bully writers into the tiny percentage of electronic rights they're offering?

They'd probably say, "We need to. Economics demand it. Our overhead and all." I'm thinking they better think of ways to streamline their overhead and accept reality.  I used to be published by St. Martin's, and I love them. I  sure don't want to see them go down. But, hello? Is it possible they're being unrealistic here?