You can be too even-handed

So I'm all jet-lagged and kid-weary and my nose keeps bleeding, but I'm going to post here anyway because when I came back I caught up on all my blog reading, and a couple of things stood out to me.

The first was a post by Dean Wesley Smith where he suddenly gets all agnostic and says that traditional publishing isn't so bad after all. (I guess that's true provided you can find a publisher willing to give you a decent contract--the only problem is that Smith can't.) This was written to agree with a post by Nathan Bransford, who seems to have decided that this is a good thing to harp on.

The other is a post by Robert Bidinotto (via PV) on the many, many advantages of self-publishing.

Compare and contrast! What bothers me about this whole, "Hey, guys, let's not harsh on traditional publishing; it's a big world and there's room for all kinds of people in it" thing is that it implies that the many, many advantages of self-publishing don't exist. Everything's groovy, everyone's special, everyone's children are above average.

Bullshit. There are serious issues with traditional publishers, not the least of which is that many of the industry leaders are being sued by the federal government and several state governments. Which happened because they looked at the future and couldn't see themselves in it. That is A Bad Sign.

One of the reasons why I liked Amanda Hocking's thought process about accepting a traditional-publishing contract was that she was very aware of what she was risking by doing so. She wrote (emphasis added):

[L]et's be honest - if I self-published the Watersong series on my own, I could probably make $2 million within a year or two. Five years tops. I am fully aware that I stand a chance of losing money on this deal compared to what I could make self-publishing.

She also noted that she probably wouldn't have taken the deal if she didn't have the safety net of several self-published books. She's not deluding herself that it's all going to be puppies and ice cream and unicorns: She's got enough income from self-publishing and her advance was large enough that everything could go to hell with her publisher and she'd still be fine.

Does that describe you? Does it describe most writers?

What troubles me about talking about traditional publishing vs. self-publishing like it's six of one and half-a-dozen of the other is that the people who will actually believe that are the new writers who know nothing about the industry. And new, non-celebrity writers are the most likely to not get anywhere: They are inherently undesirable to agents and publishers because they have no track record, and they're not the ones who will be getting the decent contracts.

I was a "new" writer when I started. I spent some six years trying to get something published traditionally. And I had absolutely nothing to show for it in the end--not a single thing. It was a complete waste of my time and money (and yes, it does cost money). And I've been writing professionally since 1992.

I decided to self-publish in Christmas of 2010. By January 2011, I had a book up. It was kind of a mess, and I had to fix a bunch of stuff, but fix it I did, and it now looks pretty good.

It's a year-and-a-half after I put up my first book, and I'll have another book up in a couple of days. So: Two books down in a quarter of the time it took me to get absolutely nothing done in the traditional model. Yeah, I haven't had big sales (nor did I expect them), but I have had some, which is better than having absolutely nothing.

And I have a book out. That's not just good for the old ego--since I have that book out, I can leverage it to sell my second book. Trang is a tool in my toolbox that I didn't have before. I'm in a better position now than when I released Trang a year-and-a-half ago, and my position will only improve as I release Trials and then Tribulations.

Hopefully that won't take six friggin' years, but even if it does, it will be six years that produce four books, not six years with absolutely nothing to show for them.

The thing is, as a new writer, even if you have your sights set on being traditionally published, you should skip the damned agents and self-publish! Again, look at Hocking--hell, look at the example Bransford cites as proof that it's all One Love in the world of publishing. The traditional process did absolutely nothing for these people. They got their contracts by self-publishing.

Self-publishing is productive. When you self-publish, you produce books. These books have value in the market--maybe not a lot of value, but still a lot more value than a fistful of complimentary and conflicted rejection letters. These books will sell your other books. These books will get you a contract, if that's what you want.

The rejection letters where people talk about how much they're looking forward to reading your book when it comes out? Amusing or irritating, depending on your mood, but totally worthless.

I'm back!

I'm back from the vacay--kind of exhausted right now, but anyway. Tomorrow I have the niece, but Wednesday I should be able to get the e-books up. I got the proof for the paper edition of Trust when I came back today and approved it.

Oh, honestly, Goodreads

So, you know how I was going to do a giveaway on Goodreads as soon as I got that cover problem sorted out?

Well, they're not going to sort it out. They can't possibly do that. I am, however, welcome to do a giveaway on Goodreads using the cover that got me my one and only one-star review. And to promote a giveaway that is sure to get me many more one-star reviews by people who feel mislead about the book's contents, I am very welcome to buy an ad campaign on Goodreads!

Ahem. Customer Service 101: DO NOT ask someone to give you their money in the EXACT SAME E-MAIL in which you tell them you don't intend to help them out. You have to give to get, got it?

Honestly. I see a Web site that has two major potential sources of revenue. #1 Advertising campaigns, which are bought by publishers and self-published authors, and #2 e-books sold on the site. If they can't update my cover (and not for nothing, but some people spend hundreds of dollars on custom art--and Goodreads is saying, No, you can't use that for promotions? You have to use the crappy placeholder art that didn't work, so you changed it?), what are the chances that they are going to effectively address my concerns if I purchase advertising from them or list a book for sale on their site and there's a problem?

So, yeah, long story short--not doing a giveaway on Goodreads. Sorry about that.

Your very own honeyguide

Jaye Manus has a great post on the competition among books. Obviously, there's a hell of a lot of books out there, so how are you going to stand out?

Well, as Jaye points out, you really aren't competing with all those books:

You might have written the very best ghost story in the history of the world, but if the reader is looking for a how-to book on plumbing, your ghost story will go unnoticed. Even if the reader can’t find the right how-to book, you’re still out of luck. They want plumbing advice, not ghosts. The how-to book is NOT your competition.

So, the key is to identify your actual competition, i.e., books like yours, and then start hustling.

I agree completely, and I would add that, once you find your actual competition, you should stop thinking of them as competition.

Think of them as honeyguide birds and yourself as a honey badger (seriously, click on the link and watch that video, it's awesome). Honeyguide birds are actually more than one kind of bird, but they all eat honey and other bee products. That's a lot easier to do if some other honey eater has ripped open the hive first, so they find hives and then lead other animals to them.

Terrific, huh? It's a symbiotic relationship--everybody gets more honey. Well, except the bees, who do kind of lose out in this scenario.

Readers who like your kind of book, however, are going to benefit. And, yeah, that's where I'm going with this analogy: Let's say you write Stephen King-like horror novels. So you market them to people who like Stephen King--he is your honeyguide! The readers benefit; you benefit.

Does Stephen King benefit? Well, maybe not, because he's been around for a while and has probably already saturated his market. But it's not going to hurt Stephen King--this isn't a parasitic relationship--because people can read Stephen King's books waaaaay faster than he can write them. He can saturate his market audience-wise--he can find every one who likes his kind of book. But he can't saturate it book-wise.

Even after he's eaten his fill of honey, there's some left for you.

Follow your passion...how, exactly?

A couple of interesting articles in the Wall Street Journal today about choosing to start a small business. Both are focused on the question, Should you follow your passion? And both note that there's not a simple yes/no answer.

The first article was written by a reporter who decided to start teaching tennis, a sport he loves. Unfortunately, it turns out that a lot of the people you teach tennis to don't actually love it--especially kids who are being forced to take the lessons. So....

When I was offered another newspaper job, I took it. I now understand that for me a dream job must feature creative tension and commitment. I'd rather be yelled at by an editor who cares about the quality of a story than ignored by a student who doesn't care about tennis.

The second article is more analytical (emphasis added):

People thrive when they find the work challenging, feel recognized for their abilities and have control over how they fill their time, [Professor Cal Newport] says. Adjusting the work to maximize those factors will rekindle passion better than matching your job to a pre-existing inclination.

Sometimes you can also discover new aspects of the job that you're passionate about. Mr. [Josh] Frey[, who started a baking business and was unhappy,] realized a lot of what he had enjoyed about working in a bakery had nothing to do with baking, such as connecting with people. So he saw that he could refocus the business and still be passionate about it.

He moved into an area that promised better and more reliable profits: promotional items and corporate gifts. He also began cherry-picking the parts of the job he liked and discarding the ones he didn't.What's more, he tapped into his love of mentoring with a side business that teaches entrepreneurs how to launch a career in the promotional-products industry. "I've never felt so aligned with what I'm doing," Mr. Frey says.

Of course he still bakes, and the author of the first story still plays tennis. And a career coach in the second story suggests people try "pursuing their passion part-time.... That way, they don't have to depend on it to pay the bills and don't risk losing their love to the daily grind."

I think this is all good advice, and it's important to remember that there is no one right way to go about being a writer.

I DIY with self-publishing. But I DIY with all sorts of things. I replace my own toilets. I do my own landscaping. I make my own lotion.

Why? Because I love it. My sister and I joke about it: If you're a little bit of a control freak and a little bit cheap, you will DIY everything you possibly can.

But I know other self-published writers who hire everything out. They're not stupid about it--they don't throw great gobs of money at the nearest flim-flam artist or anything. But they'd rather pay to have someone format their e-books than do it themselves. And that's totally fine. In both cases, we're cherry-picking the parts of the job we like, just like that former baker up there.

There are people like me who are going to be writing books from here on out. But there are people who like their day jobs very much, thank you, and also enjoy writing, so they'll crank out fewer books or write short stories or whatever. Once upon a time that was kind of a problem--publishers didn't want someone who just had one book in them. Now, who cares? Write what you like, switch genres, do fiction and nonfiction--it's all good. The work may be more difficult to market, but it's not like you get blackballed and your writing never sees the light of day, which was how things worked before.

It's so much more flexible nowadays. And I think in some ways that's disconcerting--after all, when that one fellow figured out that he didn't want to be a baker, that was probably pretty upsetting. It also means that there's no blueprint--you don't lock-step your way through steps 1-6 and voila! You are happy! But life doesn't work that way in the first place.

Progress report

I have finished proofing the large-print edition, entering text corrections and the art-corrections-that-cause-more-art-problems to the large-print edition, and entering text corrections for the regular edition. Then I uploaded the files for the regular edition to CreateSpace! Whoo!

Progress report

Some progress and some prioritizing.

I read through half the large-print edition--unfortunately, because it got laid out twice, there are art mistakes, and art mistakes are very time-consuming to fix properly. After taking a look at the calendar and my planned trip, I decided that the thing to do was to prioritize getting the regular edition and the e-books out ASAP, and to fine-tune the large-print layout last of all. I also realized that, because of the way the books are formatted, it would be easier to take the e-book text from the regular edition rather than from the large-print edition.

So, I input the text corrections to the first half of the regular edition, and the text and art corrections to the first half of the large-print edition, but I didn't bother to fix the new problems caused in the large-print layout by inputting the art corrections--again, I'll fix those later. (I'll probably have to print the whole thing out again--ugh.) Since the fixes to the regular edition were just text corrections and didn't screw up the layout, those chapters are good to go!

Progress report

I'm done laying out the large-print edition! Whoo-hoo! Barely under the page limit, too--with the front matter, 814 pages.

My upper back has really been bothering me, which has been happening every time I do a layout (and has been exacerbated this time around by a couple of landscaping projects I've been doing). I've been thinking that it's because my monitor is just not that big, and doing a layout requires really peering at the text, so I tend to hunch forward. When I get a new computer, I'll get a bigger monitor, but that probably won't happen until next year. Today I realized that I could also just move the screen closer to me--that's helped some.

Why it's good to look beyond Amazon for marketing

Both David Gaughran and Lindsay Buroker have guest posts from Edward Robinson about how Amazon calculates the rankings on its popularity lists. Both posts are worth reading, and if you're really interested, you should also read Robinson's many blog posts on the subject.

The gist? Amazon has changed its popularity rankings so that you get less of a boost from giving away free books via its exclusivity program. Also, cheaper books may get less of a boost than more expensive ones.

I was wondering if something like this would happen, because one of the things Amazon does very well indeed is enable book discovery. Compromising that to promote books from its own or allied publishing houses (like Barnes & Noble did for Macmillan) or to promote its exclusivity program is the kind thing that can really backfire with consumers. If Amazon's book suggestions are perceived as being unreliable or junky or skewed by some corporate agenda, consumers will just ignore them--and maybe if they're really annoyed, they'll go find another Web site that makes better suggestions.

Authors, I think, need to get wise to the big picture here: AMAZON'S ALGORITHMS CHANGE. They may change in a way that helps you, they may change in a way that hurts you, but they have always been changing and they will always be changing.

Focusing your attention on gaming the Amazon system is, at best, a short-term strategy. Expecting Amazon's algorithms to take care of all your marketing needs is a really bad idea.

You don't want to be like those companies that become utterly dependent on their Google ranking, and then Google tweaks the algorithm, and their entire business collapses.

And there's no need for it. If Amazon is helping you right now, that's great--it works and it's free and it's really easy. I can totally see why people get into the habit of thinking that this is the only thing they need to do.

But if you don't diversify, the rug can get pulled out from under you in an instant. If you don't make the effort to try out other forms of marketing, then if Amazon's algorithms stop helping you, you will know nothing useful. You will have no Plan B.

Guys, you might want to market that a little better

So, as I was noodling around with my (now delayed) Goodreads giveaway, I realized that...they sell e-books.

Like, they've been selling e-books for a year now--really explains the problems with Amazon, no?

I Googled it, because I was wondering if this was new. No. It's not. It's been around since before I joined Goodreads. I've been listing and rating the books I read there, and I had no idea they sold anything.

Most of the articles Googled turned up were people saying, "Did you know that Goodreads sells e-books? I had no idea!"

Brain no worky so good

Yeah, I didn't sleep well at all last night. I managed to lay out a couple of chapters, but...yeesh. I'm exhausted, I keep forgetting stuff, and I'm afraid if I keep at it I'm just going to have to redo it all later. I should be able to get everything done before I leave anyway, so I'm kicking it down the road to tomorrow.

I'll put together the large-print cover at least.

Hey, indie bookstores have options!

And since he's always a helpful fellow, Passive Guy also has a link to this neat article about indie bookstores actually (gasp!) working with self-published authors, instead of boycotting their books!

And by golly, it turns out that carrying books by local authors regardless of publisher helps distinguish the store from places like Amazon! The writers' friends and families love you, and you can get a lot of free publicity and even win awards.

Even better, according to Heather Lyon, who owns Lyon Books in Chico, California, "For self-published books, there isn’t the pressure to compete on price, so Amazon isn’t much of an issue."

Lyon goes on to say:

I’m on a soapbox about this, because I know a lot of bookstore owners and managers don’t like to work with self-published authors. I think they’re missing out on the big picture ... and profits. Once you embrace it, it’s really not difficult.

Where do the profits come in? Most of the time these books are sold on consignment, so there's no cost to the bookstore other than staff time. In addition, some of these bookstores are basically selling promotional services to authors--you pay to have an event at the store, or you pay to be included in a large newspaper ad.

There's just so many better ways of dealing with the changes in publishing than trying to slavishly copy Amazon or being some boycotting reactionary.

CreateSpace in Europe!

Passive Guy is being his usual helpful self today: He discovered that CreateSpace is now offering POD books for sale in Europe. This is a free service, not the Expanded Distribution you have to pay $25 for. You check a box and your paperbacks become available on Amazon's UK, German, French, Italian, and Spanish Web sites. Nice!

I did it for both editions of Trang--you can either set the price in pounds and euros or have CreateSpace calculate it from your price in dollars. You do have to price slightly higher in the European market, so with Trang I raised the price in dollars, calculated the pound/euro price from that, and while I was at it I put it back on Expanded Distribution--why not, dropping the price hasn't done anything for it. The large-print edition is already pretty expensive, though, and I would have had to price it above $20 to break even on a pound/euro basis. So with that one I just set the prices independent of each other.

Where's that line?

Naturally the Passive Voice blog has been keeping up on the DOJ's antitrust lawsuit (PG is a lawyer). There's been some new stuff coming out, and it's been interesting to me to see all that is being revealed about Barnes & Noble and its very tight relationship with the larger publishers.

Obviously, they've gotten into trouble for that before. They haven't been named as a defendant this time, but...very tight relationship.

For example, according to the new state lawsuit--PV has the whole document here; there's a summary here--during the whole Macmillan/Amazon kerfuffle, the CEO of B&N told Macmillan he would "go to the mat" for them and moved Macmillan books up in the search result on B&N.com. (Because, you know, people typically buy based on publisher.)

And then when Random House wouldn't join in the little price-fixing conspiracy, B&N played enforcer! Yeah, the complaint states that the Penguin CEO went to B&N and asked them to stop featuring Random House books in their advertisements, and B&N eventually complied, thereby forcing Random House to get with the program!

While you could claim that B&N had to go along to keep publishers happy, apparently it's a two-way street. According to the judge's denial of the defendants' request that the class-action lawsuit be dismissed:

Prior to December 2009, the Publisher Defendants’ standard practice was to release eBook and hardcover versions of titles at the same time.  After a key meeting with an important industry executive, however, this practice changed abruptly.  In late November 2009, representatives from a number of publishing companies met with the Chairman of Barnes & Noble, a major chain of brick-and-mortar retail bookstores.  During the meeting, the Chairman of Barnes & Noble complained about the potential for Amazon’s low prices to hurt hardcover sales.   This meeting spurred a sudden and dramatic change in the business practices of most of the Publisher Defendants. 

Wow.

This is the thing for me: Given how laughably public these guys were with their price-fixing, an activity that is pretty much guaranteed to get you in trouble, I have suspected that there's been a hell of a lot of...shall we say...cooperation going on in the publishing business. You don't cross a line in public unless you've been flirting with it for a long, long time. You see this when shock-jocks like Don Imus finally step in it and genuinely, truly, really, sincerely, deep-down-in-their-hearts do not understand why people are so upset. So Imus insulted African Americans! He does that all the time! He does that and people love it! What's so different about this time? It's baffling!

And again, there's this notion that everybody who deals with books is in the same business. Not the same industry--the same business. Agents are authors and authors are publishing houses and publishing houses are, apparently, retailers. B&N complains about a rival retailer, and publishers jump to fix it! They don't say, Hey, you are in trouble--how can I benefit from that?

I'm guessing that Microsoft is going to bring a very different perspective.

And I'm guessing that there is a lesson here for indie writers. You are not anybody else in this business. Your interests may coincide with, say, Amazon, but they are not identical. Don't make someone else's problems your problems. In fact, if you're really smart, you'll figure out how to make their problems your opportunities.

Progress report

I laid out 14 of the 28 chapters today, as well as making the changes (like resetting the margins) that had to happen in all the chapters. It went well--I'm halfway through and the book is 16 pages shorter than it was, which bodes well for getting the large-print edition in under 820 pages.

I've noticed that if a change needs to happen in every chapter, it's easier and more reliable if I open them all up and make all the changes at once. In the past I've tried making a list for myself and then checking it off before I lay each chapter out, but if you skip something (and I have), then all your laying out is for naught and you have to do it again.

Ugh

You know how sometimes you know that something needs to be fixed, but you figure it doesn't matter, so you don't fix it--and then OOPS you should have fixed it back when you noticed it?

Goodreads has this cover for the paperback edition (and only the paperback edition) of Trang. I'd noticed that before, and thought about doing something about it, and hadn't. Of course I realized this after I set up the giveaway. Ghastly!

I've delayed the giveaway for a couple of days and am trying to get that fixed. If you were hoping for a paperback copy, it actually has this cover--the one without the art on the back and spine. A little more boring than the current cover, but you know, potentially a collector's item!

Plus, I'm signing them. You'll just have to take my word for that, because my handwriting is completely illegible.

Informative and annoying links about money

The informative:

Courtney Milan did a great post comparing the costs to her of self-publishing vs. being traditionally published (via PV, and she provided more financial detail in the comments).

So, what's the bottom line?

But for those who are looking for information, the bottom line is this: As an author, I spent 50% more on a traditionally-published novella. And I made half as much in twice the time.

That is something that people who are worried about the out-of-pocket costs of self-publishing need to think about. In theory there are no costs to you (other than that pesky lost revenue) when you publish traditionally, but in reality, if you want the book to succeed and you want publishers to think of you as someone who is willing to support your own work (i.e. someone it's worth signing a second contract with), you have to pony up.

And of course, that's after you get published. Remember, I spent more than $400 in postage alone trying to get published.

The annoying:

One of the things that really irritated me about yesterday's dumb agent post was that he said:

Needless to say, she is off to run and “self-publish” her books and be able to now essentially retire with the amount of money she will make on her own.

And then Konrath found another agent who decided to piss all over Ann Voss Peterson because she wants to be able to afford braces for her kid. This agent says:

Multiple clients sent me Peterson’s “Harlequin Fail” article and wanted my opinion. My first thought is that this was the typical “a publisher is ripping me off” fodder.

The sneering--that is what gets up my nose. A writer wants to be able to retire! Writers get upset when their publisher rips them off! What silly expectations they have!

I'm curious--does Scott Eagan hope to retire one day? (Actually, the way things are going he may have to do that a lot sooner than he thinks.) What kind of retirement does he hope to have? The kind where he eats dog food because he can't afford anything else?

Is Steve Laube OK with it when his mechanic rips him off? Does he enjoy it when the bank that owns his house pulls a fast one that costs him a bunch of money? Does it make him feel all warm and fuzzy inside when someone takes advantage of his ignorance and desperation to screw him to the wall?

I'm curious--how long did it take? Most agents at least pretend that they started agenting for a living because they wanted to help writers. How long did it take before these guys became completely desensitized to the fact that these writers are being ruined? At what point in their careers did they decide that it was OK for writers to be miserably poor and constantly taken advantage of? How do you get to the point where the biggest problem with all the thieving is that writers whine about it?