From Self-Pub To Trad-Pub – Indie Author R.J. Keller Crosses The Line

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This post, by Kristen Tsetsi, originally appeared on her From a little office in a little house blog on 10/16/10.

R. J. Keller, author of Waiting for Spring and the forthcoming The Wendy House, my partner in the PaperRats writers’ relief YouTube series Inside the Writers’ Studio, Backword Books member,  and obsessive Star Wars fan, has recently had her independently released novel, Waiting for Spring, picked up by Amazon’s Encore imprint. Here, she answers some questions about going to the dark side.

Congratulations on Waiting for Spring‘s move to Amazon’s Encore imprint! What kind of day were you having when you heard from them, and what was the rest of your day like after that?

Thank you! The truth is I was having a rather shitty day (pardon my Bulgarian). The rural convenience store where I work, in the very rural town where I live, had recently burned down and I was transferred to a location in the city of Bangor (“city” is a relative term in Maine). My first shift was fairly hideous. The store is busy beyond belief and patronized by a rather rough crowd. Customers without proper IDs were refused alcohol and tobacco. Obnoxious kids spilled sticky Slush Puppy beverages on the counter, then burst into hysterical laughter. Insults and objects were hurled (not at the kids, although they deserved it). After ten hours of chaos, I was physically and emotionally drained, but by the time I got home – at shortly after midnight – I was too wound up to sleep. I checked my email and found a letter from AmazonEncore acquisitions editor, Terry Goodman, in which he offered to take on Waiting For Spring.

My first reaction was shock. It was one of those moments you hear about when you literally can’t believe what you’re reading. Then, of course, I “squeeeed!” a little. Or maybe it was a lot. Then I got nervous. I was afraid it might be a scam and I didn’t want to be taken in like an idiot. I’d heard of AmazonEncore, of course, but as I sat there in my Slush-Puppy-stained convenience store uniform, it seemed a little unreal that this email could actually be from them to me. Finally, I sent a copy of it to Craig Lancaster, whose novel The Summer Son had recently been acquired by Encore, with a note that asked, in part, “Is this the real AmazonEncore?” His response was, “This is the real deal! Congratulations!” After that, the Slush Puppy and obnoxious customers faded from memory.

For a while it seemed you were pretty committed to retaining control of your projects. Was it difficult to make a decision about whether to allow a publisher to assume control? And what is it that made you say yes?

To be honest, saying yes to Encore was both a no-brainer and a difficult decision. I really do like having control over my book. For example, the week before Encore contacted me I had updated Waiting For Spring’s cover and interior design. I had only just got my proof copy back from CreateSpace when Encore’s email arrived and I was very proud of how well it turned out. But the opportunities Encore could afford me, in terms of reach and budget, were very tempting. Ultimately, it was the knowledge that I would still retain a great deal of creative control over my novel, and that the people at Encore would work so closely with me, that convinced me to go with them.

 

Read the rest of the post on Kristen Tsetsi’s From a little office in a little house blog.

Athena Club Presentation Over

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For just a few days, I imagined a well thought out plan for what I was going to do to promote my Civil War book at the Athena Club meeting in Belle Plaine, Iowa last night. That all changed last Tuesday with a sizable dent in my car’s driver door. My door won’t open until the repair work is done so I’m stuck with driving the car like it is. Until that happy moment when I can get in and out of my car like any other driver, I’m getting in on the passenger side and squeezing between the gear shift lever and arm rest one leg at a time. There went the idea of wearing my full skirted, floor length homesteader dress. It’s hard enough to double up and maneuver myself into and out of the driver’s seat in slacks. Not that this little inconvenience dimmed my enthusiasm for talking about my books. I slipped on my pioneer bonnet and told the audience I wore it to get in the mood. That got me a chuckle from everyone which put them in a good mood as well I hope.

But I didn’t go to the meeting with just a bonnet and my book. I took the Vernon County Missouri 1887 history book that tells about the Mayfield family Bushwhackers, pictures of Bushwhackers, tombstones I’ve taken and death certificates. Also, I have a picture of my Great Grandfather Charles Wesley Bullock, a Union soldier, sitting beside a former bushwhacker, a picture of my Great Grandfather’s drug store and information that tells that my Great Grandfather was probably in Sherman’s March To Atlanta and a copy of his discharge paper. I tied Vernon County’s connection to Iowa together with the fact that Iowa Calvary was sent to Ft. Scott, Kansas to catch all lawbreakers which included Jayhawkers as well as Bushwhackers. I had a 1903 plat map that showed the sections around Montevallo and a terrain map that gave the audience an idea about the rugged timber, caves, rolling hills and creeks that made it easy for the Bushwhackers to hide from the soldiers.

I can’t imagine how girls in the thirties had any freedom to be adventuresome, wearing dresses. My mother-in-law was a teenager in Arkansas at the time. Mom assures me I’m wrong. Women wore dresses no matter what they did on the farm. They didn’t know any different. In fact, when the first two women in the area dared to put on slacks, they were considered sinners. However soon after that the fad caught on and northern Arkansas had many sinners wearing slacks.

In the middle of my struggle to get from one seat of my car to the other, it reminds me of sitting on a horse’s saddle while I sit on the hump with the gear shift lever in front of me. I asked Mom if she ever rode a horse in a dress. Turns out at fourteen, she was riding one of her father’s work horses bareback with a bit and reins. She is only 4 feet eleven inches tall but could grab the horse’s mane, give a leap and straddle that large animal. I asked, "How did your dress work out for you then?" She said it wasn’t a problem. Dresses were longer in those days. Was she adventuresome? Oh yes! She met up with a group of boys from school at a little used country road and together they raced to the other end. Now I know this lady likes to be the best she can at anything she does so I asked if she ever won the races. She smiled cagily when she told me it wasn’t that kind of race. They just ran the horses for the fun of it. Sounds like a smart woman to me. At fourteen years old, she had figured out to let the boys win the race.

Last night at the meeting, I talked about another woman with a competitive nature. During the Civil War, Ella Mayfield, lady Bushwhacker, was determined to fight to the end for her cause. Not only was she a crack shot, she rode her horse better than most men. While hiding from Union Soldiers in the Ozark timbers of Vernon County, Missouri, a messenger found Ella to deliver a message from a friend that lived near Ft. Scott, Kansas. The doctor needed to see Ella right away. It was a matter of life and death. This was 3 in the afternoon. Ella raced west and arrived at the friend’s house at dusk. She found out the problem was the doctor had sent her mother a picture of a Union soldier that killed Ella’s two brothers. One brother’s widow had put a bounty on that soldier’s head. Now the rough men in Kansas wanted that picture so they would know who to shoot for the bounty. If the doctor didn’t give them the picture in 24 hours, they were going to kill him. Ella rested an hour, got back on her horse and headed back to Montevallo, Mo. She arrived at her mother’s cabin, explained the doctor’s dilemma, secured the picture and raced back to the doctor’s house. She made it in the 24 hour time limit and had rode at break neck speed for 125 miles with only two hours break. As well as Ella knew the land, traveling at night had to be dangerous for many reasons. What if her horse stumbled in a gully or stream? What if the Union patrols, camped all over the area, were alerted by their horses knickering at Ella’s mount? Her only warning when she came near a camp was smelling smoke or seeing the flicker of a campfire. If Ella came too close to a cabin in the dark, she could have gotten shot by a homesteader that thought she was a murderous Jayhawker. Wild animals were plentiful such as wolves, bobcats and mountain lions. Those night predators could have easily pounced on Ella. Not only was she in good shape physically, but her horse must had very good stamina. However once Ella rejoined her Bushwhacker band in the timber camp, I can imagine she and her horse took a well deserved rest. Oh yeah, and she did all that in men’s trousers.

That’s just one of the stories I told last night about Ella’s brave deeds from the book Ella Mayfield’s Pawpaw Militia – A Civil War Saga In Vernon Co. Mo. It was a fun meeting with a very interested audience. I enjoyed myself, and I hoped the Athena Club did, too.

 

Now I have to get back to my November writing contest story. I’m doing all right so far with word count, but the month is young.

Judging The Quality Of Your Writing

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In the previous post I said there’s no relationship between writing quality and publication. Book deals are made for economic reasons, not because great writing makes the world a better place. If a prospective but marketable writer stinks, the industry will hire a ghostwriter, treating content as just another part of the manufacturing process.

I said the same thing in a recent spat with Jane Smith. I said the same thing when Sarah Palin’s book was announced. I’ve pointed to, and will continue to point to, incidents where publishers have failed to meet the same standards they routinely accuse unpublished and independent authors of failing to meet.

I understand why publishing wants to promote itself as the sole judge of quality and merit. Such status equates to power, and power in the marketplace equals money. But publishing’s credibility is so completely corrupted by its own actions that nobody in their right mind would take the sole word of a publisher, agent or editor when it comes to judging writing on the basis of quality, any more than one would try a case if the presiding judge had a vested interest in the outcome.  

On Being Blind
There’s no disputing that most people who attempt to write — and particularly those who attempt fiction — falter in their initial attempts. Complicating the problem is that almost everyone who tries to write is truly blind to the quality of their output. (The only people who aren’t tend to be egomaniacs, but you can’t reason with them so we don’t have to worry about them here.)

I talked about the problem of blindness in a series of posts on writing workshops. While ego is always present in a workshop, most workshops have no profit motive associated with them. If the workshop is in a scholastic setting, the teacher gets paid whether the students are good or not. Contrast this with the marketplace, where agents, editors and publishers rely on the output of writers for their mortgage payments. In a workshop there’s no motivation to lie and no motivation to pass over good writing simply because it won’t sell. The emphasis is always on quality and effectiveness, not marketability.

On Being Free
The collective relief that I and other writers feel — including people who have been working professionally in other mediums for years — comes from the fact that the publishing industry can no longer control access to readers. From a quality standpoint, however, the ability of anyone to publish anything (on the web or in print) means there is no longer even a self-interested bureaucracy insisting on a given level of authorial competence. People who can’t write a convincing line of dialogue or an emotionally moving sentence have the same access as people who can carry a literary tune. Because the industry’s gatekeeping apparatus was the only game in town, it did function as a qualitative filter, occasionally plucking a wonder from the constant influx of muck, while generally rejecting people who didn’t have the chops — even as it also rejected people with amazing but non-commercial chops, or points of view that wouldn’t sell to mainstream audiences.

The question now is, who gets to decide? Who sits in judgment of writers who want to be judged today?

Sitting in Judgment
The answer is both simple and complex. It’s simple in that no writer should be asking the publishing industry to judge the quality of their writing. If you do not know how good your writing is, do not send it to an agent or editor or publisher. Their job is to judge marketability, not quality.

The question is complex in that every writer’s needs, abilities and goals are different. If a writer is writing for personal enjoyment, then their writing needs to be judged on that basis. If a writer is trying to tell a story that others will enjoy, or communicate information to others, then that’s the test: is the writing enjoyable and informative; is it powerful and clear or muddy and confusing? Similar questions should also be asked before a writer tries to take a work to market, and that includes the new online, world-wide marketplace we call the internet.

If you’re not ninety-nine percent sure that what you wrote is good, either as a result of long experience or direct confirmation from trusted readers, then the last thing you should be doing is banging on an industry door and demanding a response, let alone publication. To the extent that this advice necessarily decreases the workload of editors, agents and publishers — who are constantly inundated with bad writing — that is a byproduct of my intent. My desire is not to make life easier for people in publishing, but to make sure that no writer allows the publishing industry to invalidate the quality of their work when industry judgments are almost always made based on marketing criteria (assuming a minimum level of literary competence).

Taking Responsibility
If you want to set the literary bar as high as you can, go for it. If you want to have your book published by a mainstream publisher, I cheer you on. But before you make that attempt you need to know — not just think, but know – that your book is good. And if you’re an honest and humble writer, having as much confidence as possible in the quality of your work before you send it out should be critical to you.

Unless your spouse or relative is a writer in their own right, and unless you have incredible trust between you, asking people close to you to validate your work is not a good idea. Beyond the fact that family members probably won’t have the reading or writing chops to comment with authority, the main reason you shouldn’t ask people close to you to judge your work is that they love you and don’t want to crush your dreams. If you live in the same house, the prospect of blow-back or unending anguish will almost certainly corrupt the feedback process.

If you can find or start a workshop, that’s a good option. If you already have trusted readers, listen to them and ask them to be honest about whether your work is ready. If you are all alone on an island with broadband, reach out on the web and ask friends or peers for feedback. If you work in a large company, find the marketing department and ask if anyone is a writer along your own lines. Wherever you can, seek out readers who are interested in providing feedback — as long as no money changes hands.

Take on the responsibility of judgment yourself, but don’t do the judging. Get a second opinion, and a third, and a fourth. Make it impossible for the industry to reject you on any basis other than marketing.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk.

Ebooks & Ebook Readers

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From here it looks like the world is inexorably headed to a time when almost all reading will be of digital text, either alone or in mixed media products. As the numbers come in, ebooks sell more and more compared to other editions. Recently Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com announced that ebooks for his Kindle platform sold more copies than hardcover books in the Amazon store.

Many industry commentators have been predicting a move to ebooks and digital readers for some time, but the tide may be turning under our feet. Changes across the publishing industry are massive and affected by both technology and the recessionary environment of the last couple of years.

Every week we hear announcements of authors “going digital” of publishers abandoning print, and you know that change is afoot.

Self-Publishing in the Digital Age

While book lovers may mourn the printed book as the main unit of text consumption, the growth of ebooks has been a real boon to self-publishers.

Online marketing through social media networks has allowed a whole class of authors to go directly for a readership platform. Their entrepreneurial instincts and willingness to take risks have paid of well for some pioneers.

The playing field has been leveled to an unprecedented degree. Like early bloggers who have built massive traffic online, authors of all kinds of books have the opportunity to find their own audiences, and ebooks just make that whole effort more direct and more efficient.

But it’s still early days on the digital frontier. All self-publishers need to make allowances for their books to be distributed in every format in which readers would like to buy them. Planning for digitization in the various formats required by different equipment is quickly becoming an accepted part of the workflow.

Here are some articles on the “magical” new hardware from Apple that’s changed the landscape for ebook readers and tablet computers alike.

Apple iPad

iPad’s ePub: The “Book” of the Future?
iPad, iBookstore, iBooks, iAnticipation
Apple iPad: The Future of the Book Starts Now
Apple iPad: E-Book Reading, Kindle-Killing, Business-Saving Product of the Century?

There are lots of other ebook formats and readers on the market, and you’ll want to find out more about Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader and all the others we’ll soon see for sale.

Amazon Kindle

Amazon Kindle vs. Apple iPad: Could Chris Brogan Be Wrong?
Kindle for Mac: The Calm Before the Storm

General eBook and eBook Reader

How Apple’s App Store is Changing Bookselling
A Look at the Nook: No, It’s Not a Book!

Luckily for self-publishers, there is more information and automation coming to the creation of ePub files. Although as designers we might chaff at the restrictions on typography, fonts, and overall design, we can do a creditable job with the tools we have now.

Creating EPUB Files

Liz Castro: EPUB Straight to the Point
Storyist Software Offers Easy ePub to Self-Publishers
Managing Your eBook Library with Calibre

You can bet that this is the most dynamic area in publishing and self-publishing right now, and will continue to be crucial for publishers going forward. You can expect to see a lot of coverage on the design, conversion, creation and marketing of ebooks as the months unfold.

 

This is a reprint from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

A Lesson From Comic Books

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Comic books. I’ve been known to read one on occasion. I even enjoy them, especially the newer ones like Yak’s Pub. And yet I never gave any thought to the indie spirit behind the comic book phenomenon. At least not until reading Jaebi’s post “What Can Self-Publishers Learn from Comics?“

It seems that many comic book artists began as independent authors of a sort, pouring themselves into creating a quality product and then selling it directly to their readers. Today that same go-getter attitude is still active in the world of graphic novels as market savvy entrepreneurs like Questionable Content‘s creator J. Jacques move into online comics with numerous hard-line products such as t-shirts. For authors this would be similar to serializing a story on a blog and offering books and other products on the side. Not such a bad marketing technique in my opinion.

So what can independent authors learn from these quirky people telling their stories with pictures? A solid product, hard work, and some creative marketing can pay off on The Road to Writing.

 

This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s The Road to Writing.

The Dumpster As A Metaphor

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This post, by Pete Morin, originally appeared on his blog on 10/26/10. It invites comparison between the "fat" in a piece of writing to the excess material goods sometimes accumulated in life.

Over the past week, I have been distracted by the excruciating task of emptying our parents’ house in Florida and preparing it for sale. I’d been on a pretty good writing jag for several days before, but came to a screeching halt the minute I got off the plane in West Palm Beach.

My parents were exuberant consumers of … stuff. When my father went out for something, he came back with three. He once went out to purchase a new pants presser and bought four – and sent one each to his sons. I used mine at most a half-dozen times. He took me hunting on the Eastern Shore of Maryland once years ago. On the Annapolis side of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, we stopped at a sporting goods store to pick up hunting licenses and ammunition. We walked out with that, plus two shotguns worth about $1200 apiece. Several years after my mother had her stroke, he thought it would be nice for her to get around, so he bought one of those JAZZY electric wheelchairs. On her first test spin, she ran into the butcher’s block and took a chunk out of the door frame. Ol’ Jazzy sat in the corner of the guest room for the next four years.

In light of this, you can imagine what a daunting task it was for me and my brothers to start opening cabinets and drawers. Four flashlights. Countless “extra” batteries. Owner manuals for appliances long since discarded. Cuisinarts, blenders, knife sharpeners, juicers, salad bowls, Woks. It was like the domestic version of clowns in a Volkswagen.

 

Read the rest of the post on Pete Morin‘s blog.

Achieving Your Dream Of Writing And Publishing A Book…At Any Age

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Writing a book is a dream that many people talk about but few actually achieve. Some figures suggest that 80% of people want to write a book, and even though we read of the thousands of books published every month, many people die with their book inside them.

One of the driving passions behind this website is to help people get their book into the world, by whatever means they can. That’s why I share everything to save you time, effort and heartache on the way. It is amazingly rewarding when I hear the stories of how this information has actually resulted in a newly published book!

A few weeks ago, I received a wonderful email from Jeanne Scott and I wanted to share some of it with you as an inspirational story that you can write and publish your book at any age.

Jeanne is now 81 and has just published “Out of Order” on Amazon.com through Createspace. She has also created a website, has YouTube videos of her media interviews and is also on twitter which just proves that digital publishing and online marketing can be used by anybody who wants to share their message.

“Two years ago, I completed my 40 year effort – describing the life of a “misfit” nun – only to find myself facing the economic depletion of big publishers’ willingness to consider new writers as potentially profitable risks. On top of that, I came down with Shingles on my 80th birthday! Moan and Groan! All this effort down the drain? Lo and behold, a former student of mine, also an aspiring writer, e-mailed your masterpiece, Author2.0 Blueprint, to me!…  I was inspired to apply your recommendations at a snail’s pace. Thank you for being such a staunch, dedicated resource for struggling writers! I must express my sincere appreciation for your encouragement! Not only have I persevered to the point of self-publishing on Amazon.com through working with CreateSpace; but also obtaining some excellent assistance in creating a website, thegreennun.org to share concepts re the “conventizing of women” as a means of subjugating them to second class citizenship socially, economically, etc.”

I hope this inspires some of you who just need that extra push to get your book out there. It’s almost time to start goal setting for 2011 and with print on demand technology, there is no excuse to keep that book inside any longer.

Remember that not everyone writes and publishes a book in order to get a NY Times bestseller. Some people just want to get their story out there. For others, it is a life goal that is entirely achievable now. Please don’t let anyone hold you back!

Congratulations Jeanne! You are an inspiration.

You can buy “Out of Order” at Amazon for just $14.95

 

In the below interview, Jeanne is interviewed about her former life as a nun.

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

Will Juvie Publishing Remain A Book Business As Tablets Take Over?

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This article, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on the Idea Logical Company blog.

This post will discuss a realization I had even before this morning’s news about the developing e-products scene. I’ve always been a skeptic about enhanced ebooks, based on seeing my hunch that they wouldn’t work come true 15 years ago with CD-Roms. But it is increasingly obvious that CD-Rom type thinking will work very well for kids’ books. In fact, I’m beginning to think that enhanced ebook or app-type delivery could overwhelm books as a container-of-choice in a pretty short time. Single digit years.

The reasons that I’m skeptical about enhanced (or enriched, a recent term I’ve heard that might be better) ebooks is because most adult books are written as narrative reading experiences not intended to be interrupted and now being read by people who value the immersive experience. (Not all. But most of the kind we think of as bestsellers or literature.) My guess is that it is going to be hard to shift many of the hours of consumption now devoted to immersive reading to something quite different. And I see that as a qualitatively different challenge than moving immersive reading itself from one delivery mechanism (paper) to another (screens.)

The reason that kids’ material didn’t survive the CD-Rom period 15 years ago was the complexity of the delivery mechanism. You had to be at a computer, which usually meant a desktop computer. You had to load the CD-Rom, which on most computers (because few then were Macs) required additional navigation before they would play. These products just weren’t really accessible to kids, even if the programming they contained was designed for them.

But those reservations just don’t hold for kids’ “books” (if that’s what you call them) migrated to the iPad, a smartphone or, now, the NOOKcolor (which, I think, is how its owners would like us to spell it.)

The degree to which you can immerse yourself in a book is directly proportional to the fluency with which you read. That means that the younger you are, the more likely you are to accept the interrupted reading experience.

 

Read the rest of the article on the Idea Logical Company blog.

Antellus reissues NAGRASANTI Illustrated Vampire Anthology

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Antellus – Science Fantasy Adventure and Nonfiction Books and Ebooks
http://www.antellus.com

Antellus reissues NAGRASANTI Illustrated Vampire Anthology

Antellus, a private independent publisher of science fantasy adventure and nonfiction books and ebooks, has republished NAGRASANTI, an illustrated anthology of vampire short stories by author Theresa M. Moore through a second supplier, with an expanded title and revised cover.

In the wake of new publishing options offered by CreateSpace, NAGRASANTI, the third installment in the SF/vampire fusion series Children of The Dragon by Theresa M. Moore, will be made available through both CreateSpace and Amazon in the coming weeks. The anthology is a large paperback volume at 8.5" x 11" and 342 pages, with a list price of $22.95.

"We had been waiting for this for a long time," Antellus owner and CEO Theresa M. Moore said. "The limitations of the publishing options for trim sizes offered by CreateSpace prevented us from being able to present the book in its original size to Amazon for some time. This is a great opportunity for us and we look forward to making this project searchable for Amazon shoppers."

The print version of the anthology, and its ebook version, are already available for purchase from the Antellus detail page and on Amazon as a Kindle edition.

The Children of The Dragon series of SF/vampire books is the epic chronicle of the Xosan, living vampires from the planet Antellus who were once human but were transformed by a dragon’s blood. They are stories of science fiction, fact and fantasy, myth and history, romance, tragedy and triumph; linked together by the theme of the vampire as hero.

About the author: Theresa M. Moore has many years of experience as a writer and  fantasy artist. Her work reflects a love for imaginative and speculative fiction, ever with the mission to educate as well as entertain. She has been a member of The Count Dracula Society, The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, the Cartoon Fantasy Organization and various other genre associations, and continues to maintain an interest in science fiction, fantasy, adventure and anime. In addition to works of fiction, Moore also has a keen interest in history, mythology and science, as well as a skeptical interest in the workings of pseudoscience.

James Bond Novels Go Digital, Cutting Out Penguin

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This article, by Henry Wallop, originally appeared on the Telegraph UK site on 11/3/10.

The fears were raised after the estate of Ian Fleming announced that all the Bond novels are to be made available as e-books in the UK for the first time this week. But they are not being released by the author’s print publisher Penguin.

Industry insiders suggested that blockbusting authors including JK Rowling, Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie would be looking at the deal closely.

The digital versions of the 007 books will be published by Ian Fleming Publications, which administers the rights to the Bond books. The 14 titles, including Dr No, Moonraker, and Diamonds Are Forever, will launch on November 4, and will be made available via online e-booksellers such as Amazon.co.uk and Waterstone.com.

The deal has come about because Penguin did not own the digital rights to the Bond novels – a concept that was never considered when Ian Fleming was writing.

There are many authors still working that have not signed away the digital rights to their books, allowing them to cut out their traditional publisher if they chose to. Agents said they had grown increasingly irritated by the low royalty rates offered by publishers for digital rights.

Philip Jones, the deputy editor of The Bookseller, the industry publication, said: “This has big implications for the established publishing houses, which are already under threat from internet retailers, who are pricing very aggressively.

 

Read the rest of the article on the Telegraph UK site.

Blocking Your Access

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This post, by Zoe Winters, originally appeared on Indiereader on 11/1/10.

I experienced my first bit of genuine discrimination as an indie author recently. I’m not talking about some silly jerk on the Internet heckling me. Those people are a dime a dozen. I’m talking about someone who is supposed to be running a business, determining that my money isn’t good enough for them because of how I published.

So why is this on the reader blog and not on the author blog? Because readers often go along fairly oblivious to much of what goes on behind-the-scenes in the publishing war zone.

I don’t know how it is in other genres, but I can talk about mine as just one example. The romance genre has a lot of backbiting and drama to the point where I really don’t like associating with the community as a whole. It’s part of why I’ll never join RWA (Romance Writers of America).

While I do know some awesome ladies who write romance, both indie and traditionally published, as a whole, I avoid the community because it’s too much meanness in one cesspool for me, thanks.

Romance is one of the most discriminated-against genres. Many in the general public snub their nose at it. I remember when I was in 8th grade, my literature teacher encouraged my writing dream and told me about one of her friends who wrote romance novels.

And in the 8th grade, I thought to myself: “Romance? Those aren’t real books!” Oh God, please let me have just thought it, and not said it out loud. Even as a kid, I didn’t have a very big filter. Pretty much whatever floated through my brain, flowed out my mouth. So I might have actually said it.

This is just to give you some idea of how deep this romance stigma runs. I was a dinky little 8th grader with an opinion about what constituted a “real book”. Readers who don’t care if a book is self-published, will often still snub romance published in any way. So in some ways the stigmas with regards to romance and with regards to self-publishing are about six of one, half a dozen of the other.

 

Read the rest of the post on Indiereader.

Writer's Digest Q&A With April L. Hamilton

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This interview originally appeared on the Writer’s Digest site on 11/2/2010.

What piece of advice have you received over the course of your career that has had the biggest impact on your success?
 
This is a difficult question to answer, since my career has taken some unexpected twists and turns. I don’t think I’ve received career advice pertaining to writing or publishing from any specific person along the way, but there are three guiding principles I’ve tended to follow. The first is, “Nobody knows anything,” which is a quote from William Goldman.

This interview originally appeared on the Writer’s Digest site on 11/2/2010.

What piece of advice have you received over the course of your career that has had the biggest impact on your success?
 
This is a difficult question to answer, since my career has taken some unexpected twists and turns. I don’t think I’ve received career advice pertaining to writing or publishing from any specific person along the way, but there are three guiding principles I’ve tended to follow. The first is, “Nobody knows anything,” which is a quote from William Goldman.

 
The second is that there’s nothing mysterious or sacred about publishing. Publishing is a business, nothing more or less. The last is that most of the time, what seems like luck is actually just preparation meeting opportunity. 
 
I’ve taken the Goldman quote to mean there’s no fixed blueprint for success in any endeavor; at some point you have to stop trying to figure out the secret handshake and just focus on doing the best work you possibly can so you’ll be ready when a door opens for you at last.
 
Recognizing publishing for the business it is reveals the fact that signing with a publisher is simply a business partnership, there’s nothing magical about it. If a publisher chooses not to partner with this or that writer, it doesn’t necessarily mean the writer’s work has no merit or commercial potential. All it means is that the partnership didn’t look like a profitable one to that specific publisher at that specific time.

It’s easy to get caught up in emotions when things don’t work out as you’d hoped, but emotion has nothing to do with it. There are no white hats and black hats here, just businesspeople making business decisions.

 
What message do you find yourself repeating over and over to writers?
 
Forget the so-called “rules” of writing. Sometimes prologues work, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes shifts in POV work, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes an adverb really is the best word choice. If you must have rules, I’d say these are the only two you need:
 
1. If it weakens, or adds nothing to the work, change it.
2. If it strengthens the work, leave it alone.
 
 
What’s the worst kind of mistake that new writers, freelancers, or book authors can make?
 
I hate to repeat myself so soon, but I have to go back to treating publishing like a business: most aspiring authors don’t. If you intend to approach an agent or trade publisher, you need to be able to make a compelling case for why they should take a risk on you and your book, why you and your book are likely to be profitable.
 
If you’re going to self-publish for profit, you need to go into it expecting to run a small business because that’s exactly what you’ll be doing. And if you’re going to try and support yourself through freelance gigs, again, you must accept that you’re running a business and operate accordingly: maintain records, keep an eye on the competition, track income and expenses, and so on.

 

Read the rest of the interview on Writer’s Digest.

Editing Costs

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This article, by Marc Johnson, originally appeared on the Longshot Publishing blog on 10/20/2010.

Unfortunately, a lot of indy authors don’t pay for editing. I think the primary reason for this is most people don’t know how much it costs. I’m here to help people with that and tell you how much my experience cost. I believe you should edit your manuscript before you publish, but before you decide you should know what you’re getting into. At some point, I’ll talk about choosing a good editor and my experience in working with her.

On a thread on one of the forums I frequent, the prices people thought editing was varied greatly. For your standard 300 page manuscript, people thought it was as little as $100. Others thought it was as much as $50,000. Most people thought the price of editing as at least $10,000. To be fair, the $100 quote was someone who thought that was just basic copyediting, but most of the people either grossly overestimated or underestimated how much editing was.

The type of editing I was looking for my 90,000 word manuscript was a developmental edit. That type of edit dealt mainly with the structure of the story. There was also some light copyediting involved. I emailed about a dozen editors to get their quotes. To the eight or so editors that could take me on, their prices were as low as $1500 to as high as $6000. The average ranged from $2000 to $3000. The editor I chose cost me $2000. You don’t have to pay all at once. You put a deposit down, about a third of the price, then pay the rest when she’s finished.

The one thing I’m not sure about is if prices are different based not only on the type of editing you want and how long it would take, but also on the genre of your work. I’m working on a fantasy series. Would that be harder to work on because it’s based in a made up world than working on mystery series set in today’s world? In any case, I emailed editors that worked in my genre.

Read the rest of the article on the Longshot Publishing blog.

Reassemble Or Be Damned (or how humpty-dumpty publishing should be put back together again)

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Last week PC World ran an online article entitled, Why Book Publishing Needs the Silicon Valley Way, by Mike Elgan. There is a great deal in this article and Elgan’s basic premise is that the current model of publishing—by which he means traditional publishing houses—is broken and it is now time for publishers to look to Silicon Valley and adopt their approach and apply it to the publishing industry.

 

“The reason is that the industry is clinging to an obsolete business model. And the whole process of discovering new talent is broken beyond repair.


Like the book publishing industry, Silicon Valley is in the business of cultivating, nurturing and funding intellectual property. The difference is that the Silicon Valley approach works, and the book publishing industry’s doesn’t—at least not anymore.”

 
Elgan goes on to describe the book industry as ‘unique’, and at their essence, ‘a publisher is above all an investor’. There are plenty of industry analysts, consultants, journalists, bloggers, self-published authors who were rejected at the gates of Eden or simply chose from the word go to give the established path to publishing the two fingers—happy that the publishing industry is broken and its funeral march is just around the corner.
 
I’m not sure I would go along with many naysayers in describing publishing as ‘broken’ or that the ‘whole process of discovering new talent is broken beyond repair’. Elgan seems to be specifically addressing the New York publishing establishment, and if there is one thing we have learned over the past ten years, it is that the publishing machine is made up of many complex parts, and right now, few of those parts are working well together. Publishing is not so much broken, it’s disassembling itself in a very public manner. In so doing, it’s showing itself to be a machine that has pretty much worked the same way for several hundred years.

Let us not forget that some of the oldest and most established publishing houses started out in the book industry as printers, where the production and publication of a book was much more of a co-operative effort between author and printer/publisher. For a printer, the quality is in the paper book as a physical product. For a publisher, the quality is the intellectual content of the paper book. The whole publishing machine was built on the foundation that the paper book was sacred. Digitalization in the publishing industry has for the first time challenged that core belief. This is a major sea-change for publishers—akin to the first explorers discovering that the earth was round and you wouldn’t fall off the edge if you pushed your boundaries of belief. So publishing at its core hasn’t really changed from its inception—and it’s hard not to understand an attitude of ‘if it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it’.

 

“Much like a Sand Hill Road venture capital firm, a publishing company plays kingmaker by discovering, guiding and, above all, investing in the right talent.


Sure, publishing companies employ brilliant book designers, editors and others who collaborate to produce high-quality products. But they don’t have a monopoly on those skills. Any author can hire great book designers, editors, printers, marketers and everyone else in the creative chain. What most authors can’t do is invest $150,000 to produce and market an untested book. Ultimately, the ability to invest — and the experience and wisdom to invest wisely — is the only uniquely valuable thing about publishers.”

 
In many ways, Elgan—certainly for me—is not describing modern publishing houses, and I think, in a roundabout way he acknowledges this. He is describing publishing as it was 30 to 40 years ago, when large publishers were still prepared to take a risk with a new author or unproven author—happy for a period of time to pass while they invested and worked with the author until they wrote ‘that book’ which broke them into a large market. It might take publishing two of the author’s books, or it might take five books. This approach rarely happens with large publishing houses now, certainly not without the active presence of a dedicated literary agent. The ‘business of cultivating, nurturing and funding’ may exist in Silicon Valley, but it does not exist inside the doors of large publishing houses. Those tasks were long pushed out to literary agents, and if the truth be known, many of those agents would probably say their time is far too restricted to spend cultivating and nurturing authors. Literary agents, like publishers, want a good marketable book as close to final publishable product as possible from the get-go.
 
Elgan describes the Broken Model as he sees it: (The bold is mine)
 

“Here’s how book publishing is supposed to work: Joe Author decides to write the Great American Novel. He bangs out a couple of chapters in his spare time, cobbles together a polished book proposal and goes hunting for a literary agent. Most real agents are maxed out with clients, but after six months of dedicated searching, he finds one, who then spends weeks or months shopping the proposal to major publishing houses.”

 
I’m not sure book publishing ever really did work quite that way. From my experience, no literary agent or publisher today would bother looking at a synopsis, three chapters and proposal submission for a novel unless they knew the book was actually completely finished by the author.
 

“The result of this disconnect in the talent discovery system is that the quality of books is declining fast.”

 
I agree with Elgan here, but, and it’s a big but, quality is entirely subjective. Someone is still buying those celebrity and template-driven books churned out by publishers.
 

“Browsing a bookstore is like picking through trash in a garbage dump looking for something of value.”


I’m not sure where Elgan is doing his browsing, but I’d suggest he try another store, perhaps some of the independents. Ultimately the retailers still hold a great degree of power over the publishers, and their buyers decide what goes on the shelves, but there is no doubt, certainly in the large retail chains, that inventory lists are shrinking fast, and it is only the sure-fire sellers that get premium space.

 

“And that’s why the industry is dying. The content is skewing toward trash. The public is becoming less enthusiastic about books not because they have other diversions but because books are becoming less exciting.”

 
I know the point Elgan is trying to make here, and I equally sense his passion as well as his frustration, but there are more books being read now than ever before – more books being published than ever before, but the combination in a recessional downturn, deep discounting, the ludicrous returns policy operating today in the publishing world doesn’t help matters, and ultimately, it has led to profit share being squeezed everywhere. Fundamentally, I disagree with his assertion that the public are becoming less excited by books – the real problem is going to be the acceptance of the fact that there will not be any significant growth in books as paper products anymore – it’s going to become a diminishing circle. The ‘diversions’ are actually the key itself to the future of publishing and the ability for publishers to identify and harness the mediums and platforms of those very diversions.

Remember, the book is no longer intrinsically a physical paper product. Its strength is now it’s rebirth as a piece of digital content – capable of dissemination into a multitude of delivered channels. Publishers need to acknowledge they are going to have to do what they did hundreds of years ago when they moved from being simply printing presses to being publishers. Now, the real adjustment and challenge is for them to alter their models of business and move from being publishers to providers of ‘content’ products – be that digitized or paper. To be fair to them – that’s a very big challenge.

 
The real question here when the dust settles is the core of Elgan’s concerns about ‘discovering talent’, and who the remit will lie with. Elgan pretty much answers the question when he says that if Silicon Valley worked the way publishing does, we would never have had Google, Facebook and Twitter. He is right. And there’s the answer. The single most fundamental reason books sell remains word of mouth – personal recommendation. Networking platforms are simply the modern road word of mouth has advanced to.
 
Here is how Mike Elgan believes publishing should work if it follows the nod from Silicon Valley:
 

“Every new author would forget about seeking an agent or an advance, and instead self-publish. This is what software and cloud-based start-ups do: They use their own money — and the inexpensive tools available — to build something on the cheap before they go asking for outside investment.


New services should emerge where authors could post links to their books, with samples, commentary and opportunities for reader reviews. A Digg-like voting system could surface the most popular titles.”

 
If you substitute the opening word of the above piece, ‘Every’ to ‘Many’, then you are pretty much describing things as they stand now. All of the above is happening and new as well as established authors are going directly to services like Lulu, CreateSpace and Lightning Source – cutting out much of the middle-men in between them and their readers. They are using publishing platforms and online communities like Smashwords, Wattpad, Fictionwise, Amazon Kindle, IndieReader, and many, many more.
 

“Meanwhile, authors would try to get meetings to pitch to the publishing companies. Agents, rather than reacting to authors beating down their doors, could instead act more like sports agents and go out and hunt for new talent using Web 2.0 tools and the Internet in general to find brilliant authors.”

 
I think the above piece reflects what most fundamentally needs to change in publishing – agents. As more and more authors reject the gate keeping policy adopted by the publishing industry, agents may decide to be happy with their lot and deal exclusively with established authors and lucrative deals. Alternatively, for the first time, they may actively seek the higher quality independent authors and work for them, or act as scouts for the larger publishing houses and independent publishers. We may quickly approach a time where there is no such thing as a midlist author. You are either a full time author earning a reasonable living with an established publishing house, or you are publishing independently and contracting services, be it agent, editor, designer or distributor.
 

“If authors get their own deal, they could use that fact to attract the best agent, whom they would need as a guide and as a negotiator of the contract.”

 
There is a mindset here Mike Elgan is inadvertently challenging. I’ve always believed that the publishing industry has a kind of attitude – almost a class structure – ‘this is the way it is and has always been done’. That has to change, whether publisher or agent, survival and earning a crust will always be the great leveller. Publishers will have to accept that just because there is more ‘self-published crap’ out there, flooding ‘their industry’, the books they publish should in that case stand head and shoulders above that ‘crap’. They are easily achieving that now, but in five years, independent authors may very well have the knowhow, platform and network to easily rival them. In a few notable cases, it is already happening now. Agents will have to accept, more and more, when they enter a contract with an author, it is the agent who is working for the author, and not the other way around.
 
Mike Elgan concludes his piece by presenting some suggestions as to what he believes publishers should do. I quoted a lot from his article because I happen to think it one of the most significant articles I have read on…well…if you like, the future of publishing. I think it is clear, I don’t agree with all Mike’s points and conclusions, (yes, I think advances should go, but I still believe in the basic fundamentals of established publishing houses, and the death knell is not sounding just yet.) though, Mike Elgan might prove me wrong if it all goes tumbling down.
 
Here is why I don’t think it will.
 
Many of the people operating small presses, author solutions services, independent publishers with new models of business, came from the belly of the beast itself. They got out, or were spat out, for a variety of reasons. Maybe some of them really were breezing it, and hadn’t a clue what they were doing from they off. But the fact is, there is a vast wealth of talent in the publishing industry. Some of them are starting to do it within the beast itself, and many others have kissed the beast goodbye and prefer to do it on their terms and their chosen model. What is clear to me is that no one model will win out. No one has it right or wrong. We are entering a time when a whole host of publishing models will suit the needs of author, publisher and reader alike.
 
Publishing is not broken by a long, long way, but the key is how we disassemble the components of the machine and reassemble it all back together without forgetting the core elements that make it work.

This is no longer a question of how publishing really works, but rather, how it now needs to work combining all the components of publishing, all that the established fraternity have learned and all the independent and self-published fraternity have learned. To believe that one doesn’t need the other and the two cannot exist under the one umbrella of the publishing industry, is to speak ignorance and write the words of your own publishing demise.

 
[This was a general free-flowing article and I have deliberately avoided few links, citations and references outside of Mike Eglan’s PC World article.] All quotes used are copyright of PC World.

 

This is a cross-posting from Mick Rooney’s POD, Self-Publishing and Independent Publishing.

Timing Is Everything

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This phrase is common to many aspects of business, which includes book publishing and marketing. There is a definite set of cycles in the book publishing world of which you need to be aware. The timing of release dates is critical.

This phrase is common to many aspects of business, which includes book publishing and marketing. There is a definite set of cycles in the book publishing world of which you need to be aware. The timing of release dates is critical.

First, there is the copyright date listed on the copyright page. Many bookstores and librarians want the latest works. If you release your work during the last quarter of the calendar year, you would best be served by listing the copyright year as the following year. That gives you 15 months of exposure as a work for the next year and therefore the latest version. If you list the current year, you’re only getting 3 months of that exposure before you’re considered ancient history. That’s such a minor point you might say. You’d be very surprised.

The next big event in the industry is Book Expo America. This is a huge book marketing event of international proportions. Many major publishers time their releases for this late May event for that either advanced reading copies (ARCs), if not the actual books, are available to be given away and displayed at the show. Many book industry buyers go to this trade show specifically to see the latest offerings. Ordinarily following within a month of the BEA is the American Librarian Associations bi-annual trade show, although there have been rumors lately that these two trade shows may be combined.

The next important time frame is early fall when bookstores are making their final purchases for the upcoming holiday season, which is the busiest time of the year for bookstores. Tied to this are the regional bookseller associations’ trade shows in late September/early October. These are known as book buying shows, unlike the BEA, which can be too overwhelming in scope to provide much time for book ordering.

Finally, a relatively new event to consider is the American Booksellers Association’s Winter Institute held in January. Of all the yearly events, this is one that has increasingly become the most important for our bookstore. It’s a traveling show, held in a different city each year. It comprises three days of intense seminars, workshops, and dinner speeches filled with the latest information and techniques independent bookstores need to survive and thrive. There are large displays of ARCs free for the asking.

There are also sessions dedicated to publishers’ sales reps presenting their companies’ current and upcoming releases with info about targeted readerships, awards, and marketing aids. The audience is limited to 500 attendees and folks start reserving slots months in advance. This coming 2011 January Winter Institute (19-21 January) will be held at the Arlington, Virginia’s Crystal City Mariott, just down the road from the Pentagon. It is almost booked up already. Information about this, the BEA, and the regional trade shows can be found at http://bookweb.org for your information.

There you have the top American display and buying opportunities. In addition, there are other international trade shows such as London’s and Frankfurt, Germany’s that publishers either attend or pay to have the wares represented by various display companies. The primary purpose of these for publishers is foreign rights deals. In other words, there are major book events scattered throughout the year. This doesn’t count the many book fairs scattered around the country and throughout the year.

The important lesson from this article is choose an event and/or a buying cycle and focus on it for your release It used to be spring and fall were the only buying cycle milestones one need consider. That has changed, as you can see from this posting. There are many more marketing opportunities throughout the year these days; however, it’s better to be selective as to when your target retail market’s buy to most and structure your marketing plan around that. You authors also need to be aware of these cycles so you’ll know when it is best to approach agents/publishers with your book, especially if it’s seasonal in nature.

 

This is a reprint from Bob Spear’s Book Trends blog.