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 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.
Read the rest at Independent Publisher magazine.