Those of you who haven’t read Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Writing Like It’s 1999, do so.
For those of you who read my blog this might seem like I’m harping on a theme, or like I’m getting repetitive. Well I’d think so too, truly. Except… Except…whenever I’m at a con, someone – usually someone much less published than I am – comes back with a variant of “I’m going to keep my eyes shut tight and in the morning, this will all go away.”
Disruptive change is very scary and most people would rather pretend it will all go away, and we’ll be back to the familiar landscape and the familiar certainties. Even if those are horrible. Freed lions will often pace as though in the confines of the cage. Those few of us who are awake and exploring every possibility, looking in every corner, searching for the way things will be are a small minority.
At cons, I still run into authors who look down on self-published authors. I still run into authors who parrot the line about how much the publisher is investing in them: when it is patently obvious they’re lost in mid-list hell; I still run into authors who say “if you want to make a living at this, you have to publish with the big six.”
I had the dubious privilege of hearing a mid-press published author telling a self-published author whom I happen to know makes more in a month on one book than the mid-press published author has made for any two or three of his books that “most of what’s self published is crap and no one would buy it. The future is finding a publisher and convincing them to accept you. In two years, all this e-book stuff will be gone.”
It was breathtakingly bizarre. Kind of like, in a fantasy novel, standing next to the hidden prince and watching the false king parade down the street looking down on everyone. Like Saturnalia, with the fools reigning.
And then I catch myself – occasionally – thinking the old thoughts, too: “Well, what does he/she know. He/she is small press published.” Or perhaps thinking that some of my fledgelings will of course, eventually, follow the route I have. And then I stop. Because there are few things I know, but I do have some certainties.
These are the things I know:
Even if e-books all went away tomorrow, it wouldn’t go back to the way it was
Not the way it was in the early nineties, or even the way it was in the late nineties when I came in. No way, no how, never. Because there’s this thing called Amazon. The publishers no longer control what’s on the shelves and what gets seen. And even if Amazon died tomorrow, there would be other e-tailers. Trying to control shelf space is not a winning strategy. That bell has rung.
E-books aren’t going away
You can’t put the e-book genii back in the bottle. I’m reading on kindle. My kids are reading more on kindle than on paper. So is my husband. So are most of my friends. Barring some planet killing type of event, this is not going to go away. No, the economic crisis won’t kill it. Kindle books published by indies are cheaper. The tighter life gets, the more likely we’ll buy those instead of the agency-modeled-to-death.
The hierarchies of prestige are gone
Because the big six no longer control access to shelf space (except in Barnes and Noble, and it no longer has the influence it once had) the safe hierarchy of self-published, small press, medium press, big press is gone. We used to assume someone who self-published hadn’t even been able to get a small press to accept him/her. We approached their work expecting it to be awful. It often was. That certainty is done. A savvy author with time on his hands can decide he has a better chance going it alone. Be careful how you talk to other authors. That person with a single indie book out might have a larger readership than you could dream of.
Most authors have had a taste of freedom
I’m one of them. Look, I’ve done next to nothing Indie. A Touch of Night and a few short stories through Naked Reader Press. Interesting results but inconclusive. However, just knowing I can write whatever and if it doesn’t sell I can put it up on Amazon and it will sell a minimum of x – plus be in print forever – has given me massive freedom. I no longer feel like I’m blindfolded in the cattle car of a train over whose destination I have no control. Even if indie proves to be less than half of my income, the ability to put out there what I think should be out there is slowly molding me into a different person: a much less fretful and worried one. It’s likely to lengthen my life. It will certainly make me easier to live with. I don’t know how it’s taking other authors, but I don’t think it’s that bad.
We’re scared, but we’re not stupid
I know, I know, Dean says we’re stupid. And he’s right in a way, but we’re a very specialized kind of stupid. Also, he’s not seeing the pressures on my generation – those who came in after 2000 when the publishing houses looked at things ONLY through agents, and the publishing houses’ decisions could make or break your career, regardless of how good your book was. We had to learn to shut up, no matter how stupid we felt what was happening was. Not anymore. And we’re losing the habit of silence – slowly. The chances of a mass exodus back to publishers on the old terms because we don’t want to do everything ourselves is about … oh, look, do you see that flying pig? Yeah. Some of us will go back, of course – most of us who have made our name and can dictate terms, or the really small ones who couldn’t make it on their own.
And I’m not saying publishers are going away
Of course they’re not. Though a few of the houses will vanish and almost certainly a few of the imprints will vanish. What I’m saying is that the majority of the writers are NOT going to go back on the old terms. You want us back, you’re going to have to do things for us that we can’t do for ourselves or hire someone to do for us. I’m thinking this is the true “demise of the midlist” and not in the fake way you tried to do it before, where you simply announced the midlist was gone and kept changing midlisters’ names and paying them as beginners and not allowing them to build a following. No. I think the “midlister” the “shelf filler” the “person we print but don’t do anything else for” is gone. You’ll have to treat every author as if he/she matters. You have to make it better for them than they can do by throwing it up on Amazon. I’m thinking good covers, publicity, limited contracts.
Make it worth my while
Or at least, don’t use aversion therapy on me. You can’t keep me in the dark and feed me on shit anymore. If the book is not selling, sure, I need to know, but don’t tell me it’s because it’s not a good book, when I know you did nothing to market it, not even get it on shelves. And don’t, then, treat me as if it’s all my fault. Because if you make things unpleasant enough and treat me like a serf, I’m going to think “well, I don’t need to work for you anymore” and I’m going to go Indie.
Give me a public
I’m thinking more publishers should look at Baen books, instead of turning up their noses. Baen commands loyalty among its writers and gets dedicated readers who look for the brand. Some of this is (good) marketing gimmicks: buttons saying “I read baened books”, book bags given out at cons, a slide show where upcoming releases are announced, a forum where fans can meet and geek out on their favs. Part of it, though, the most important thing, is what none of the rest in sf/f or mystery has (I don’t know enough of Romance): a brand. A unified taste. For the big houses with multiple editors, this is difficult, of course. But you can no longer be all things to all people. Baen chose and does plot. It does plot really well – whether it’s in sf/f or any of the variations. “Things happen in Baen Books” would be a great tag line. Mind you, if it’s one of my books (or Dave Freer’s, too, or a half dozen others) the books also have characters and feelings – but the “things happen” and “adventure” aspect MUST be there for it to be a Baen book. When I started being published by Baen I immediately “slotted” into a pre-made public. This, as a newby, gave me something to put my back against, as I grow the rest. So, what can the big houses do. I don’t know. I don’t know under what constraints they operate. BUT if I owned one, I’d give each editor an “imprint” and then give them the resources to publicize that imprint. “Okay, Jane likes craft mysteries. She can specialize in that. We’ll call it Golden Brush books, and…” Have them appeal to a segment of public, but appeal to them very powerfully. It’s better to command 50k loyal readers and grow them slowly than to have most of your books bomb, except for a mega ultra blockbuster a year – which these days might not materialize. (No power to push, remember?) And meanwhile tell the editors that the house does… oh, pick one. Beautiful, doomed adolescents. Or perhaps more generally “character” or “angst” or “Beautiful language.” and unify that across your “imprints” which will maximize the chance of people reading the brand, not just the imprint.
Will there be a new equilibrium? Of course there will. And I think it’s about two years out, too. But will things be the way they were?
E-books. E-tailing. Soon, the book printing machines in every bookstore. Writers who’ve taken the bit between their teeth. Will all that vanish?
No way. You can’t put humpty dumpty together again. And you can’t unring a bell. So publishers and writers both will have to stay alert and change to survive.
UPDATE: Ask not for whom that bell won’t unring… I think what you’re hearing today, loud and clear, are funeral bells. Or perhaps the woosh of the meteor falling to Earth. The dinosaurs will never be the same: http://www.thepassivevoice.com/09/2011/amazon-launches-79-kindle-and-99-kindle-touch-ereaders/
According To Hoyt 
I suspect that if we’re honest with ourselves, any change is scary because it involves the unknown.
Some can see beyond the scary part to see the positive that can happen with change.
Making predictions is HARD. Particularly about the future. Oh, and Cassandra, pace Heinlein, didn’t get half the beating she deserved.
Book Printing in every bookstore . . . How about a bookstore with samples, lists and blurbs, and a POD machine. No other stock?
Once upon a time the head of the U.S. patent office suggested closing down, for everything that could be invented had been invented. Once upon a time the automobile was a novelty item, subsequently the ‘Big Three’ were the unquestioned unshakeable kings of the industry. Once upon a time Big Blue knew that there was no market in home computers, and Mr. Gates saw no reason any one would need more than …
Overall human nature does not change. This one reason we still read Jane Austen today. For the great majority of people, at some point in their lives they are inclined to think they have it figured out. From then on their world view is set, for as you observed recently most people would rather dies than think. Industry, technology and commerce keeps moving on — and it seems that sometimes all the changes are faster than even people who think can keep up with.
Well said. I was disappointed by the amount of talk in support of the status quo I heard from some writers at Fencon. Fortunately, there were saner folks there, such as you and Toni.
One of the young writers at fencon — so new, she still had the new-writer smell — not only talked about how much her publishers had “invested” in her, she didn’t seem to know the fact she’d been asked to submit something completely different meant her series had been dumped. Was I ever THAT clueless? (Don’t answer that.)
Though I’m a fanboy of all this indie hope and change, I suspect we cannot so easily walk away from the traditional publishers. I suspect Baen’s branding you described will be more significant than we realize. And that’s because with everyone putting out $0.99 self-published works, there’s a sorting problem for the reading public. How to find the gems among the dross. Not a problem for the midlist author with a publishing history, because folks can say, “Oh, that is Sarah Hoyt, I read her book with the sexy girl on the cover. This will be a good read.” Conversely, everybody who’s never heard of Steve Poling will know whether my $0.99 story is good or bad because the $0.99 brand isn’t there and is being deprecated by the big boys. Though the $0.99 price is quite reasonable, it costs me TIME to know whether I’ll enjoy this deathless prose.
The buying decision is predicated upon money and time. We offer a product that requires a time investment by the customer. Though our production and distribution costs allow us to profitably lower prices, the buying public often uses price as a delegate for quality and may discriminates against indie brands as a result. What we need are a new set of trust-cues and credentials we can attach to works to provide assurances to our readers that their time will be well spent in our worlds.
Steve,
I’m not answering EVERY comment today, because I’m working very hard on finishing the third book in DST verse. But I must address this, because I have addressed it before, on this blog, and because it is the sort of thing people keep coming up with, and something that seems to have every beginner writer in a flap. And it’s dead wrong.
Look, I don’t expect you to believe the new market place will give you a fairer chance than the old one, and yet it’s true. Part of what you’re saying VERY MUCH does not apply. How do they know your 99c book is worth it? Well, they don’t. But if they’re like me and on vacation and consuming 10 books a day they will start browsing at free and draw the line at about 2.99 PARTICULARLY for unknowns. Will I buy Pratchett’s new book at 9.99? Oh, sure thing. And unknown… um… no. HOWEVER I will download your sample at 99c. And that means you have three chapters to convince me to buy your book.
And look, honestly? the choice is NEVER unlimited. Even a reader like me who reads everything, pretty much, and whose kindle is loaded with sf/fantasy/romance/mystery/thriller and — massively! — non fiction which ranges from science to history, doesn’t want to read everything at any given time. I don’t know how other people work, but I’ve never gone “I want a book, any book” just like I’ve never gone “I want to eat and I don’t care if it’s an entire roast wild boar (Asterix!) or a cucumber sandwich. For instance, while working on a book, I can’t read anything remotely similar, or it impinges. So this year I’ve been reading regency romances as I work on mystery and sf and fantasy. That immediately limits my reading choices. Add to that I prefer non-explicit sex. It limits it still more. Once I filter out — as I would in a real bookstore — the things I’m not in the mood for or simply won’t read, I have about ten books (if I’m lucky) any time I browse, twenty if you put my price point up to the outrageous 14.99 that agency model charges. And I only do that for authors a) I know I like b) — more difficult — have NEVER disappointed me in the past. Downloading twenty samples to pick a book might be excessive, but it’s not. See, I’m not slush reading. I don’t feel I have to give everyone a “fair shake”. My only criteria are “do I want to read this.” Most of the books, the answer is no by end of page two. My attention is drifting, or whatever, or I’m not in the mood for an oppressed heroine, or… Most of the samples get deleted at that point. A few get saved under the “not in the mood now, might love it later.” There will be one or two I buy and read on any given “shopping trip.”
These are more likely to be unknowns than while shopping brick and mortar. Why? Smaller investment. Also, if you grab me I’ll read all three chapters. Bookstores have issues with people standing there and reading 1/4 the book, which it sometimes amounts to. And if I buy at three chapters and book goes down hill? Meh. 99c. or 2.99. or 3.99 even.
Now, compare this with when I first came out. Shakespeare books. Hardcover 16.99 for people to even consider it. On an unknown. Plus, two books (if they were unpacked, which most of them weren’t) per store. Often located in art (because of cover) or Shakespeare bio (because cover didn’t even say FICTION) or local interest (I wouldn’t even ask) or general fiction or… And there was no way to browse by “new” or “price” so even if my books had been a bargain (they weren’t) no one would find them. The chances of people who were actively looking for the book (having read one of the ads I put out and paid for!) finding it in any given store, or getting the store to order it (our local borders kept insisting it wouldn’t order, because it was SOMEWHERE in the store. They couldn’t find it, but that didn’t matter.) were maybe 1 in 10.
TRUST me, please, the new system is MUCH better for beginners, provided they do write a good book. Mind you, it will take longer for beginners to launch since online is heavily slanted to “word of mouth” and that takes, on average 3 years. BUT your books will still be in print, then, which they hardly ever were with trad. publishing (that’s changing, and it’s not a good thing, as it means they’re holding onto rights they shouldn’t be, but that’s something else.)
Thank you for pinning my ears back. I’ve been thinking the search for new reading material is rather painful, but you’ve demonstrated that it is indeed feasible to find the jewels in the $0.99 bin. I hope EVERY reader follows your approach. Your buying process should get wider play.
One aspect to consider: as economist Herbert Stein (Ben Stein’s father) once said “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop,” The idea of a market for books that consists of one giant slush pile is such an instance; the market, given opportunity, will solve that problem. Sarah describes one approach to such a solution, but only one.
Anytime I walk into a typical bookstore I am aware that there are probably five books I’m not interested in for every one that does interest me (and my tastes in reading are very broad – for others the ration is more likely 10:1.) But I have never had a problem finding a book to read. E-books may change the ratio, but not by all that much.
The greater threat is that people like me will someday conclude that what is being offered for my reading isn’t worth my time or attention — a situation far more likely in a world dominated by the literary tastes of the mainstream publishers.
They will NOT know whether my $0.99 story is good or bad…
This too will be solved by the new e-economy. You think those illustrators and book designers and marketers like working for the big six? Heck no. They hate them as much as the authors do, and they are getting screwed as much as you are.
They will go indie too. They will form their own co-ops, enjoy working directly with authors instead of having to get a few scant excerpts from some clueless publisher.
The good authors and good illustrators and marketing people will find each other and eliminate the middle men.
I know DOZENS of talented artists who can’t get gigs that want them. And since coming here, I realize that there are dozens of writers who know not thing one about marketing or design who need their services. What we need is a website, a sort of craig’s list of creative people who can come together, collaborate, make their own contracts and come away with more value than they can do on their own that will set them above the crowd.
All it would take is a few guys with server and web experience, some start up cash for the servers and ISP, and some creative marketing people to advertise it…hang on… I think I need to write up a business plan and loan application.
No seriously, I am already trying to do exactly this. I hope to have it online soon. The first book is mine, but I already have another book lined up with myself providing visuals.
I already have a composer lined up to do original music for the videos to promote my book. Dead serious. I am drawing up lists of names right now in every area, photography, illustration, music, video-editing, marketing. If you are interested in some indie artists at reasonable prices, then contact me, because we are definitely trying to bring creative people together.
Dang. Forgot the business card.
Travis Lee Clark
tclark@sulross.edu
http://jonahhewitt.blogspot.com
I think you’re right about authors with an entrepreneurial bent going forth and creating jobs for unemployed illustrators and editors. In fact, my illustrator is prodding me to get an anthology of my short stories into the market.
This is OT, but my home town Grand Rapids, MI is currently having a contest called ArtPrize. This has literally hundreds of artists vying for a $1/4M first prize. Downtown is awash with art. It’s wonderful. But the biggest thing I think it does is it makes guys like me who’d never think of engaging an artist say, “hey, this would look good in my house.”
Steve, they may not know if the ENTIRE story is good or bad, but they will know if the beginning of it is good and grips their attention because they will download the sample. What I’m seeing now is that more and more readers are checking out downloadable sample excerpt before buying that “indie” short story or novel. This is especially true if they have never purchased anything by that particular author before. It’s like skimming the first few pages of a book in the bookstore. The real key is going to be letting them know your story is there. But then, that’s the key now, whether you are published by a legacy publisher or Joe’s Corner Publishing and Coffeehouse.
besides, you NEVER know if the entire story is good or bad. I’ve bought some bestsellers whose previous dozens of books I loved, and not been able to finish the book… Bookstores REALLY are very averse to letting you sit there and read the whole book before you decide whether to pay or not. Given that uncertainty, I’d rather spend 99c than $9.99… or more.
“In two years, all this e-book stuff will be gone.”
Dear defender of the ancien regime, you’ll get my ereader when you pry it out of my cold dead hands. And they’re more likely to be *your* cold, dead hands, because I believe in the Second Amendment.
I went from “I love the feel of real books” to “I have 95 books in my purse” in the space of less than a year. I’m a book buyer, with a habit that matches a crack addict’s–and now I can afford to feed it. My elderly mother is a book buyer–and she’s getting a kindle for her next birthday. If I know her, and I do, she’s headed for book-crack land as well.
Why don’t they understand freaking economics? I am much more willing to spend money on unknowns and uncertains when I don’t have to loot my childrens’ education funds to pay for them. Ebooks are the salvation of publishing.
E-books are going to get even bigger. Where I work, we just announced a $79 Kindle. That’s only $20 more than a new-release video game. It’s going to cause a huge influx of new readers looking for content.
You work for Amazon? 🙂
That’s the one I just ordered for Mom. Except I paid $109 to escape the advertising.
Funny – back when I was in High School the critical metric in choosing something like a new jacket was whether its pockets could contain sufficient paperbacks. Only recently I was confronted, after grousing about a 1,000 page paperback (Damn you, George R. R. Martin) that NO paperback book should exceed 300, 350 pages (Heinlein only needed 300 pages for Moon) that with an e-book page count doesn’t matter — 200 pages or 2,000, the book is always the same width and bindings never give out.
Related to that, the reason I used a PDA and, more recently, an iPod Touch as my ereader of choice is that they fit in my pocket–shirt or front pants–easily.
I don’t think a brick and mortar store with no shelf space of books would work, because some readers like to browse, but you could certainly minimize it and put in the computers readers can use without the interference of staff…computers that would have conglomerate, mid-sized, small press, and self-published all available to be printed on the in-house printers and searchable by author, title, series, keywords, publisher… You could further integrate the online and in store features, so a reader could order from home or work and pick up the finished order on the way home or order from home and have a LOCAL STORE deliver instead of cross-country UPS shipping or have a reader order in store and pick up at the front… Or have gifts ordered in store or from home and sent from a local store close to the recipient. Do you see how versatile this entire process would be? And everyone on a level playing field?
I remember being at a conference for the VRA (Visual resource association, the professional organization for slide librarians, visual resource assistants etc.) I was working as a visual resource assistant at Bryn Mawr college at the time, filing and cataloging slides mostly. This was the late 90’s. Kodak had just announced that they were going to stop making slide projectors. Slide film was going to be stopped soon too.
At the conference, everyone was excited about the new digital age and everyone was dead wrong about it. Some thought it was a fad and that slides would always be preferable, superior. Others thought the new technology would be a boon to the profession. Not one guessed what I had surmised. That the profession was over. That no one needed them to handle or mask or file and catalog images anymore. No one needed their pink and faded outdated slides when they could go to google images and find a dozen better images themselves. And they didn’t need them to put those digital images into Powerpoint files either. They could do that too.
I left that job in 99. I went over to digital slide shows in 2000. I haven’t touched a slide since. The slide library at Bryn Mawr is closed, the old slides are in storage. It’s now a public computer lab for people to find and make their own images. And the staff of eight has been reduced to one student worker. Everyone is happier. The VRA still exists, but it’s no longer a professional organization because there are so few of those professions left. It’s now an advocacy group with an entirely different focus. It had to change, it had no other choice. It’s primary mission had been completely destroyed by technology.
The change will come quicker than you think. In ten years, dead tree publishing will be for gift books and coffee table fodder. Anything anyone basically wants to read for fun or profit or training will be e-books. Schools are already figuring out that buying each freshman a kindle or a ipad is a sound investment. Trust me, it’s over, and secretly, they know it.
I hope all those slides were digitized and live on a server somewhere.
When we started, we were scanning them to resolutions of 1mb and everyone thought we were insane. Now those 1mb files are all rotting on Jazz drives in some landfill. 1mb was just too small.
By the end it was clear most of what we had was just not that unique. We decided to focus on our image collections that were unique, like lantern slides of archaeological digs in the 19thC. No one else had those, so those were worth scanning. Scanning a bunch of pink and faded slides that showed the center page gutters from the book they were originally shot from? not so much.
Sarah, you said it better than I ever could have, and this is a subject I have harped upon for years. Way back in the 1990’s I worked for a software publishing house that published high school and college texts on CD-ROM for most of the double-barreled publishers. Even then we had a “Global Library” on the internet to sell digital books and set up several for a half-dozen universities here in the States. Even then we were talking about 1-hour publishing kiosks in book stores, grocery stores and big-box retail outlets.
Yes, it will happen, and there will be a leveling of the playing field for authors and publishers alike (and I’m an indie author). I look forward to it.
People should realize that this game is changing TODAY.
Amazon has announced, today (their servers are locked up because of traffic load) a Kindle for $79.00. This brings the price of a dedicated eBook reader under $100 and will expand the potential market of buyers by at least the square of the previous number.
I gotta admit, as a lover of the physical book, I am saddened by this development. However, as a wannabe author of fiction, who longs for the kind of liberty of choice Sarah describes, I am as eager as all get out for this development to continue.
I like the person I am better now, that I can be WHO I am and not mind my every word. I think you would too. And absolutely on what is happening TODAY — the Passive Voice has pointed out that the point is not that ebooks completely overtake paper books. No, the point at which all is lost for trad. publishing is the point at which it doesn’t become feasible for anyone to print anything but the major bestsellers — and that’s MUCH lower. I know this because I used to publish a small press mag. (Okay, one issue, then I got ill and killed it.) printing 100 mags, you couldn’t make it cheap enough to sell for any amount people would pay. Printing a 1000 mags was much cheaper per issue. 20k mags, and you could really make money. If you sold them all. And this is what I mean, if the average book print run — even with advances — goes to 500 or so, the traditional publishers can’t afford to print. Their overhead IS massive and POD alone won’t keep them afloat.
And Mark, everyone I know who tries the eink readers — okay 9 out of 10 people I know — even those who “love paper books” end up loving the e ink too. Some of us with aging eyes love it more than paperbooks. It’s just easier to read. I just wish they’d make it truly “wipeable” and water proof, so I could use it in kitchen. But… trad books aren’t wipeable either.
And it’s easier to stick an e-reader in a clear ziploc bag (they make gallon-sized bags for freezers!) and “turn” the pages than to do the same with a paper book!
(I actually hate e-ink because of the inversion when it “turns” pages. It makes the back of my head all screamy. But all the more e-ink devices for other people! I’ll stick with my iPad; self-lit screens don’t seem to bug my eyes.)
I’m ordering one today. I’m only waiting to ask my wife if she wants one, too. Can’t see much reason to wait.
M
I want to get at least one, which realistically will be my husband’s if I can find the money (I’m thinking of selling the boys. Ransom of Red Chief, yeah!) Just taking it on vacation for streaming video would make the price worth it. But I’d dearly love to get one too, to browse blogs.
There are a lot of writers out there who want the control of indie publishing but don’t want the learning curve. For those, there are alternatives. You can hire freelancers to do the parts you don’t want to do. You can learn (Kris and Dean have fabulous classes in Oregon — worth at least double the price they’re charging), or go with a fee-based press (the kind that doesn’t take a piece of your sales). I happen to like Lucky Bat Books because I’m a co-owner of it, but there are others. There are enough options out there right now that every writer can find their place in this new world. Be the revolution!
Good point, Cindie. AAMOF, I’m thinking of hanging out a shingle as a cover artist. Once I get my own cover(s) done. Might’s well leverage my experience as a designer if I can. I suspect we’ll all be cottage industrialists bye-and-bye.
Absolutely right.
Three years ago my art teacher told me with two years serious application I could be cover-art ready. I haven’t put in the two years, but I think I might start seriously applying myself. Just having “control” over covers would help, for this control freak.
Exactly. And you would best know how to market your stuff better than anyone else.
well, not always, but we WILL learn. Fast. I know nothing as thoroughly dedicated (or insane) as a professional writer — one who stays hungry. (Sometimes literally) We’ve taken the shocks of the publishing industry and managed to survive. We keep battling back. Six books a year? If that’s what it will take to survive, I’ll do it. I won’t sleep and my family will become strangers, but I’ll do it (I did it. Though never to the last. But I did, I think, destroy my health for a while.) Do my own publicity? I’ll learn it, I’ll do it.
Compared to those, self-publishing, indie publishing, etc? Pieces of cake. And individuals, by definition move much faster than big organizations, private or governmental. We will learn. We will do what it takes.
FWIW, Sarah, you learn a lot by doing. In my day job, I probably turn between 5,000 and 10,000 designs a year. Of course, the vast majority of them aren’t used, but just the sheer volume exercises muscles you won’t get a chance to use otherwise.
M
I know that. No. Honestly, I know that. The most “growth” I had in writing was the year I spent writing a short story a weekend and two novels (during the week) Some of those stories (and one of the novels) had to be fixed years later, but just the VOLUME helped. The problem has been that I haven’t practiced art. Weirdly, it helps the writing, too. It’s like I use a different muscle for each, and the balance is good. Like, I only understood the need for “dark shading” in writing after seeing what the lack of it does to art.
Actually I think you oversell the value of marketers. I was once in marketing. Trust me, they are all BS artists.
The creators of the product were far better in tune with the customer their product was suited for, 40yr olds, professionals. It was the marketing “geniuses” who decided to sell it to 17 yr olds.
Yes there is a learning curve, but the learning curve for your product is much shorter than for one you don’t know.
We’re always looking for artists, cover artists (and editors, designers, etc). Check us out at LuckyBatBooks.com. And we’re not the only ones. I think this new wave of publishing is going to be good for artists as well as writers..
High School.
Traditional publishing is (was) High School, with its hierarchies and cliques and faux validations. Success came from pleasing the teacher, or the editor of the literary mag or whoever. You received awards for attendance, most improvement, whatever — the thing is, none of that had more than coincidental correlation to success in the world outside the school.
For many people, leaving the confines of High School was wrenching. In there you knew the rules (written and un) and the players and the appropriate courtesies required (and to whom you could be rude.)
Within the publishing houses the game was simple, too: please the editor, please the publisher, and it would be nice if you also pleased the public, but that wasn’t really important if you wrote “prestige” books.
Well, boys and girls, as Alice Cooper sang: School’s Out – FOREVER! Schools been blown to pieces.
A fun chart that is relevant.
http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-amazon-kindle-book-sales-2011-9
Well written. Yes, I’m behind on my email again 🙂
I’ve got three ebooks up on Amazon (non-fiction). I have a book of poetry that I’m editing for my mother-in-law which will be published as an ebook only. I have a couple of non-fiction books in progress, along with a fantasy trilogy.
As you said, we have a level of freedom that we’ve never had before. It is the same sort of freedom that musicians developed when Apple opened the ITunes store to everyone, and a lot of musicians abandoned their publishers, the same way that writers are abandoning their publishers now.
Wayne