TAB030: Turning Away from Big 5 Publishing, with Harry Bingham

Bestselling Author Harry Bingham is the guest for Episode 30 of The Author Biz Podcast.

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Imagine you’re the best-selling author of a highly regarded crime fiction series published by one of the world’s largest publishers, and you notice that most of the sales of your novels are as e-books. When it came time to negotiate the next contract with your publisher what would you do?

Harry Bingham

My guest today is Harry Bingham. He’s been an author for 15 years, and in that time he’s had two agents, four publishers, seven editors and 13 books. That’s another way of saying he’s been around the block as a traditionally published author.

As you’ll hear in the interview, Harry saw how his Fiona Griffiths crime fiction series was being marketed and sold in the United States and suggested a change to the ebook royalties from his big 5 publisher. They disagreed, and Harry made the remarkable decision to walk away from a publisher that he enjoyed working with, and one he felt was doing a good job with his books. He chose to self-publish his most recent book, THE STRANGE DEATH OF FIONA GRIFFITHS in the United States.

Harry joins us to explain why he walked away from his US publisher and the opportunities he sees available to authors today in what he calls the fourth era of publishing.

In this 45-minute episode Harry and I discuss: 

• The writing style that goes into making the Fiona Griffiths series so unique
• The response to Harry’s guest post on Jane Friedman’s blog, Why
  Authors Walk Away from Good, Big 5 Publishers
• The hardcover pricing dilemma facing authors who don’t automatically jump to the top of best-seller lists
• Harry’s solution to the hardcover pricing dilemma
• Why Harry publicly shares his sales, advance and royalty numbers
• Harry’s thoughts on the print market for crime fiction in today’s world
• The four eras of publishing
• Transitioning a series from traditional publishing to independent publishing without owning the backlist
• Harry set up his author website, by himself in an afternoon
• His thoughts on the Amazon pre-order feature for authors
• Harry explains why he purchased a Kirkus review
• Is it possible to get big 5 quality editing done outside of big publishing?
• Why Harry launched The Writers Workshop over a decade ago
• The process and the prices for formatting and cover design for The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths
• Harry’s thoughts on the inherent advantages Indie publishers have when it comes to pricing and audience connection

Links:

Harry’s Author website www.harrybingham.com

Harry’s Big Publishing and Me Blog Series

Harry’s Amazon Author Page

The Writers Workshop website

Agent Hunter website

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