Think

Opinion pieces offering commentary on various aspects of book culture, publishing and self-publishing.

Lessons From The Traditional Publishing Model Part One: THE BOOK, THE BOOK, THE BOOK!

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This post by Susan Malone originally appeared on her Malone Editorial Services site on 8/6/14.

Traditional publishing is in the toilet. Big news flash, right? I lined out some of the whys in my recent guest blog on Authorlink.com.

But what can we learn from big publishers’ successes and failures?  A lot.  So let’s dive in and today talk about the thing new writers are missing all over the place—putting the product, the book, first.

This really does seem like a no-brainer.  I mean, we’re writers, right?  It’s what we do—we write, we hone our craft, we study, we get critiqued, we write some more.  At least, that’s the way it used to be!

One of the issues new writers (and many seasoned ones as well, although they handle it differently) have with the Traditional folks is that this takes f o r e v e r.   Yep, it does.  At every single stage of the process, writers get to hurry-up-and-wait.  Hurry up and produce exactly what that agent, editor, etc., requests, and then sit on their hands for months and wait on responses.  It can drive a sane woman batty.  I’m in the process of getting one of my great YA writers agented, and of course, as it’s August and all of publishing is on vacation, my writer is frustrated that the agent won’t read his work until September.  Hey!  That’s actually quick!

 

Read the full post on Malone Editorial Services.

 

Adjusting To Being A Full-Time Author – Part 2

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This post by Michael Hicks originally appeared on his site on 1/30/12.

In this second installment of my musings about moving from a full-time day job to writing for a living, let’s take a look at some of the financial issues you need to be aware of in the rapidly evolving industry of self-publishing…

 

Keep The Faith, But Don’t Count On Next Month’s Income

Between February and August 2011, I made a ton of money, around $105,000, from my book royalties. Not like the big authors, but more than the “modest car payment” amount I’d been making before from month to month. I had stars in my eyes and money burning a big hole in my pocket. We already had some hefty financial obligations (I’d been a well-paid federal employee, remember, and had the payments to go with it), and made some financial decisions based on “projections” that, in hindsight, maybe weren’t such a good idea.

Because in September, a month after I left NSA, sales took a nosedive after Amazon (which is where I get over 95% of my royalties) apparently changed some of its algorithms. The royalties for that month were about $7,000. Yes, that’s a lot of money to a lot of people, but in terms of our existing financial commitments, that was not good at all. Even if Amazon hadn’t changed anything, eventually your bestsellers are going to drop off the list. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be any books in the top 100 except King, Koontz, and Patterson, right?

 

Read the full post on Michael Hicks’ site.

 

Charlie Hebdo Offends — And We Must Defend Its Right To Do So

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This post by Bill Durodie originally appeared on The Week on 1/7/15.

The motive behind the tragic shootings at the headquarters of satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris has not yet been confirmed but it seems clear that there is a link between the publication’s stance on controversial content and the decision by several masked gunmen to launch such a murderous attack against the staff.

The perpetrators of the attack, in which 12 were killed and several more critically wounded, must be apprehended — but, more broadly, we also need to reaffirm the importance of absolute freedom of expression in an open society — regardless of how offensive it might be to some and, on occasion, how puerile it may become. The solution to bad ideas — as the enlightenment philosopher John Stuart Mill noted — is not censorship but more speech with which to counter them.

By all accounts Charlie Hebdo has certainly been scurrilous and provocative in the past and hasn’t relented in its approach since 2006, when it republished controversial cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, or since 2011 when its offices were fire bombed. Recent front covers have poked fun not just at the Muslim prophet, but the pope, Jesus, Jews, various world leaders, and celebrities. Infantile as some of this may seem, it is also a reaction to an increasingly censorious society.

 

Read the full post on The Week.

 

The Indie Author's Guide to Rights

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This post by Daniel Lefferts originally appeared on Publishers Weekly on 12/15/14.

As self-published works grow in popularity, indie authors are increasingly in a position to market their book to foreign publishers or to agents and producers working in film, TV, and theater. But before authors can do that, they need know their rights.

Copyrighting Your Work

Without the guidance of literary agents, indie authors have to take extra-special care to protect their rights—including copyright—when negotiating with a self-publishing service.

Seth Dellon, director of new product development at PubMatch, a rights management resource for publishers, agents, and authors, says that, while indie authors technically own the copyright to any original work they produces automatically, it’s worth it for them to register their copyright. “You want to make sure that you register everything that you do,” he says, adding that the act of publishing itself constitutes “proof that you [own] it.”

 

Read the full post on Publishers Weekly.

 

The Truth about Content-Writing Mastery

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This post by James Chartrand originally appeared on Men With Pens on 1/5/15.

We all know how we’d like to feel when we write.

We want to be transcendent. We want to craft breathtakingly compelling content that brings us piles of comments and eager new clients. We want words to flow from our fingers and magically appear on the page, dashing genius from our brows after four hours of taking dictation from gods on high.

We just don’t want to do the work it takes to get there.

 

That’s the problem with writers.

 

I can’t tell you how many people in my writing course, Damn Fine Words, tell me that they want to use the class to elevate their writing. To master it. To bend words to their will.

They want to be completely unique. They want to write something new and exciting. They want to find a voice that’s all their own. They want to succeed.

There’s nothing wrong with that ambition. In fact, I encourage it. But it’s often painfully clear that some people are trying to tackle a level of mastery that’s far above their current capabilities.

They’re trying to skip the first step – the boring one, the one where you have to learn the basics and fundamentals. They want to cut to the head of the line, where they get to try cool new things.

Here’s the truth about writing:

There are no shortcuts. You can’t leapfrog your way to mastery.

You have to put in the work.

 

The 4 Stages of Mastery

 

Read the full post on Men With Pens.

 

The Four Essential Stages of Writing

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This post by Ali Luke originally appeared on her Aliventures site on 2/12/14.

In last week’s post, 7 Habits of Serious Writers, I mentioned the importance of actually writing, plus the need to redraft. I thought it’d be worth putting those stages into context – because they’re not all you need for an effective piece.

Every finished piece of writing passes through four stages:

Planning
Drafting
Redrafting
Editing

Sure, you can publish a blog post without doing any planning, or any rewriting and editing. Unless you’re very lucky, though (or writing something extremely short), you’ll be lacking a clear focus, the structure won’t quite work, and there’ll be clumsy sentences all over the place.

I wouldn’t call that “finished”, myself. I’d call it a draft.

The four stages don’t always have to be tackled in order. Sometimes, you’ll find that they can be combined – rewriting and editing, for instance. They don’t even have to be carried out by the same person. (I’ve written blog posts to other people’s plans, and I’ve had my work edited by others.)

But it’s crucial to be clear about what each stage involves. If you’re struggling with a particular piece of writing, there’s a good chance that you’ve skipped a step somewhere – or that you’ve tried to do everything at once.

 

Stage #1: Planning

 

Read the full post on Aliventures.

 

On Being “Discontinued”

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This post by Deb Baker originally appeared on bookconscious on 12/17/14.

I’ve been writing The Mindful Reader column for The Concord Monitor since April 2012. Thirty-three columns, one a month on the Sunday book page, reviewing dozens of books, all by New Hampshire or northern New England authors, many published by small presses. It’s been a wonderful experience.

People often stop me when I’m out and about to tell me how much they liked a column, or to ask my opinion about some aspect of one of the books I read. They come into the library, where I am the librarian in charge of adult services, and our local indie bookstore, where I was once event coordinator and bookseller, to ask for the books. That’s been a thrill — there is nothing better for a writer than knowing your work not only reached someone, but moved them enough that they wanted to participate in the thing you’ve written about. And the authors I’ve heard from who are so grateful to get a published review, when so much book publicity is focused on a handful of “it” titles — that’s been great too.

This week I received a brief reply to my monthly invoice from the Monitor’s editor, who has been with the paper a few months and had never communicated with me previously. He let me know my column is discontinued and invited me to chat with him about the direction the paper would be taking. I cried — I admit it. But the next day I called him and he called me back and we had that chat.

 

Read the full post on bookconscious.

 

How “Sacred” Is A Print Book?

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This post by Alexander M. Zoltai originally appeared on his Notes From An Alien site on 12/30/14.

The raging argument over print vs e-books—carried out, still, in some of the media—perhaps igniting physical confrontations on a few campuses—a false argument, in my experience…

I read both—both have value to me…

But, there are differences—I can underline a print book but only highlight an e-book—different actions, in my experience.

The New York Review of Books has an article by Tim Parks about underlining and writing in the margins—A Weapon for Readers.

As is my usual reportorial practice, I’ll give you a few excerpts, hoping you’ll read the full article:

“This extravagant regard…is reflected in the treatment of the book itself. The spine must not be bent back and broken, the pages must not be marked with dog ears, there must be no underlining, no writing in the margins.”

 

Read the full post on Notes From An Alien.

 

Smashwords Year in Review 2014 and Plans for 2015

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This post by Mark Coker originally appeared on the Smashwords blog on 12/31/14.

Each year I provide Smashwords authors and publishers a review of our progress in the year as well as hints of our plans for the coming year. So here goes.

2014 marked another exciting year for Smashwords as we create new ebook distribution tools and capabilities that give our authors and publishers a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

If you’re new to Smashwords, a brief introduction to Smashwords is in order.

I founded Smashwords in 2008 to empower writers to become professional self-publishers. I wanted to transfer the power of publishing from publishers to authors. Back in 2008, large publishers controlled the printing press, the knowledge of professional publishing, and the all-important access to retail distribution. Publishers had the power to determine your fate as an author. No more. I wanted to make authors the captains of their own destiny.

Over the last six going on seven years, Smashwords introduced our free ebook printing press, Meatgrinder, which made it possible for any writer anywhere to publish an ebook in minutes; we opened distribution for the first time to major retailers and library partners that were previously inaccessible to self-published authors; we developed sophisticated yet easy-to-use publishing tools that help writers and small indie presses publish with pride and professionalism; we worked to actively educate our authors and publishers how to leverage best practices to publish with greater success; and we’ve been fierce (but friendly!) advocates for the rights and long term interests of the indie author community.

We exist to serve our authors and publishers, and we serve you by developing tools and relationships that help you publish faster, smarter and more effectively. Our time-saving tools help you spend more time writing and producing and less time managing multiple upload platforms.

In the years since we launched, Smashwords has grown to become the world’s largest distributor of self-published books. To the extent we’ve been successful is entirely thanks to the continued support of the authors, publishers and retailers we serve. You’re running a business, and we realize you work with Smashwords by choice, not by necessity. Through continuous improvement of everything we do, we will always work to earn and deserve your continued business, trust and partnership.

So let’s take a look at our progress for the year.

 

Read the full post on the Smashwords blog.

 

Living The Stuff Of Novels: The Ghostwriter’s Lot

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This post by Roz Morris originally appeared on her Nail Your Novel site on 12/14/14.

In this season of the notorious Zoella ghostwritten novel, I’m getting deluged with questions from people who know I ghostwrite. What’s it like? Who have I done? Well, I can’t tell you that because it’s a trade secret. Also because to divulge the details might get me shot. (Though I can give advice on how you get into it – here’s my recent post on that.) As the nation sings Zoella, Zoella, I thought you might like this piece on ghostwriting, originally penned for Authors Electric.

Write what you know? Ho ho ho

An acquaintance from my dance classes read My Memories of a Future Life last month and has since been seeing me in a whole new light. I can tell by the thoughtful looks he gives me as we wince through stretches and wobble through pirouettes; an expression that says ‘I never knew you had that weird stuff going on…’

After class the other day he said to me: ‘that freaky scene with the hypnosis in the underground theatre… you must have been to something like that?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s research and imagination.’ He looked a little disappointed.

 

Read the full post on Nail Your Novel.

 

The Death of the Artist—and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur

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This article by William Deresiewicz originally appeared on The Atlantic on 12/28/14.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it?

Pronounce the word artist, to conjure up the image of a solitary genius. A sacred aura still attaches to the word, a sense of one in contact with the numinous. “He’s an artist,” we’ll say in tones of reverence about an actor or musician or director. “A true artist,” we’ll solemnly proclaim our favorite singer or photographer, meaning someone who appears to dwell upon a higher plane. Vision, inspiration, mysterious gifts as from above: such are some of the associations that continue to adorn the word.

Yet the notion of the artist as a solitary genius—so potent a cultural force, so determinative, still, of the way we think of creativity in general—is decades out of date. So out of date, in fact, that the model that replaced it is itself already out of date. A new paradigm is emerging, and has been since about the turn of the millennium, one that’s in the process of reshaping what artists are: how they work, train, trade, collaborate, think of themselves and are thought of—even what art is—just as the solitary-genius model did two centuries ago. The new paradigm may finally destroy the very notion of “art” as such—that sacred spiritual substance—which the older one created.

Before we thought of artists as geniuses, we thought of them as artisans. The words, by no coincidence, are virtually the same. Art itself derives from a root that means to “join” or “fit together”—that is, to make or craft, a sense that survives in phrases like the art of cooking and words like artful, in the sense of “crafty.” We may think of Bach as a genius, but he thought of himself as an artisan, a maker. Shakespeare wasn’t an artist, he was a poet, a denotation that is rooted in another word for make. He was also a playwright, a term worth pausing over. A playwright isn’t someone who writes plays; he is someone who fashions them, like a wheelwright or shipwright.

A whole constellation of ideas and practices accompanied this conception. Artists served apprenticeships, like other craftsmen, to learn the customary methods (hence the attributions one sees in museums: “workshop of Bellini” or “studio of Rembrandt”). Creativity was prized, but credibility and value derived, above all, from tradition. In a world still governed by a fairly rigid social structure, artists were grouped with the other artisans, somewhere in the middle or lower middle, below the merchants, let alone the aristocracy. Individual practitioners could come to be esteemed—think of the Dutch masters—but they were, precisely, masters, as in master craftsmen. The distinction between art and craft, in short, was weak at best. Indeed, the very concept of art as it was later understood—of Art—did not exist.

 

Read the full article on The Atlantic.

 

Business Musings: Things Indie Writers Learned in 2014

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This post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch originally appeared on her site on 12/23/14.

I’d love to say nothing, but that’s not true—if we’re discussing indie writers who have remained in the business for several years. There will always be new indie writers who know very little, and there will always be those with “experience” who turn a year or two worth of sales into a know-it-all platform.

However, those indie writers who’ve been at this since the beginning of the self-publishing revolution in 2009 have learned a lot in 2014. Like last week’s piece, “What Traditional Publishing Learned in 2014,” this week’s will be my opinion. Next week, I’ll examine what I learned (or relearned) in 2014, before moving to brand-new topics.

A few bits of organizational business: Unlike my previous two blog series, The Freelancer’s Survival Guide  and The Business Rusch, Business Musings will appear irregularly. Sometimes it’ll show up in the old Thursday slot like last week’s, and sometimes it’ll show up on a different day like this week’s. Sometimes it’ll be long (like this week), sometimes there will be two or three posts in a week, and sometimes there will be none. If you worry that you might miss one, check back and look at the tab Business Musings under either the Business Resources or Writer Resources in the header.

Also, please note that, as in the past, I’ll be using “indie writer” instead of “self-published writer,” following the music model. I’ll also talk about “indie publishing” instead of “self publishing,” because so many writers who are not with traditional publishers have started their own presses. It’s not accurate to lump all writers who are not following the traditional route into the self-publishing basket any longer, if it ever was.

So, back to the topic at hand. What did indie writers learn in 2014? I wish they all learned the same things simultaneously, but they didn’t (and won’t). I also wish that there were indie writer financial statements, like there are financial statements for the big traditional publishers (which is what I based much of last week’s piece on).

Even if indie writers have formed corporations, those corporations are privately held, and therefore the quarterly financial reports are not public. Privately held companies do not need to list their earnings to anyone outside of the company (except the IRS), and therefore the smart ones do not.

So, in this blog post, I’m piecing together a lot of other people’s blog posts, anecdotal evidence, and just plain common sense. In other words, good old journalist me feels a bit uncomfortable, even though this is an opinion piece, because I don’t have as much quantifiable information as I’m used to for these blogs.

What have indie writers learned?

 

Read the full, very lengthy (and very much worth reading in full) post, which goes into detail on 15 specific lessons learned, on Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s site.

 

Amazon Offers All-You-Can-Eat Books. Authors Turn Up Noses.

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This article by David Streitfeld originally appeared on The New York Times on 12/27/14.

Authors are upset with Amazon. Again.

For much of the last year, mainstream novelists were furious that Amazon was discouraging the sale of some titles in its confrontation with the publisher Hachette over e-books.

Now self-published writers, who owe much of their audience to the retailer’s publishing platform, are unhappy.

One problem is too much competition. But a new complaint is about Kindle Unlimited, a new Amazon subscription service that offers access to 700,000 books — both self-published and traditionally published — for $9.99 a month.

It may bring in readers, but the writers say they earn less. And in interviews and online forums, they have voiced their complaints.

“Six months ago people were quitting their day job, convinced they could make a career out of writing,” said Bob Mayer, an e-book consultant and publisher who has written 50 books. “Now people are having to go back to that job or are scraping to get by. That’s how quickly things have changed.”

 

Read the full article on The New York Times.

 

Do We Live In A Post-Plagiarism World?

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This post by Derek Murphy originally appeared on his CreativIndie site on 12/9/14.

Today I read two articles.

The first is the plagiarism case indie author Rachel Ann Nunes raised against Tiffanie Rushton, an elementary school teacher. Tiffanie allegedly took Rachel’s self-published book, added some sex scenes and republished it as her own.

Rachel has already spent $20,000 in court fees and is using PRweb.com to get the word out so she can raise $100,000 extra to continue the lawsuit.

The article laments that, while traditionally published authors are backed by publishers with deep pockets, for indie authors there is nothing they can do.

But I’m not taken in by this sob story.

Yes it sucks.

It’s brutal to have somebody steal your work and try to sell it as theirs.

But it’s also pretty simple and easy to get Amazon to remove the book in question.

A couple of emails and Rachel could have gotten Tiffanie’s book removed from Amazon and from other online ebook stores.

So what’s the lawsuit for?

 

Read the full post on CreativIndie.

 

Finding Your Genre: An Epiphany

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This post by Christa Allan originally appeared on Jamie Chavez’ site on 12/22/14.

If you’re not from New Orleans and you find yourself plopped in the Big Easy one day, it’s likely one of the first questions you’ll hear is “Where did you go to school?”

Here’s a “quirk alert” that will navigate you through this disarmingly simple question. If you answer with the name of a college or city or state, we’ll know you’re definitely someone who lives outside the greater New Orleans area.

When locals ask that question of one another, we respond with the name of our high school. You may have attended Harvard, been selected as a Rhodes Scholar, or graduated from the University of Paris-Sorbonne. To us, those distinctions provide little, if any, information about the real you.

But a high school? Say a name and we’ll know if it’s public, private, religious, the demographics of the neighborhood in which you were raised, where you shopped and ate, your friends … For the most part, our high schools defined us and were reference points for those who didn’t know us well. And there were anomalies, like the kids awarded scholarships to private schools or the ones who transferred to schools whose football teams won championships.

So finishing my first novel and being asked about genre was as disarming as a tourist being asked about school.

 

Read the full post on Jamie Chavez’ site.