Dave Freer at Mad Genius Club:
We have, thanks to the Internet, thanks to online retail, and thanks to our own websites, and blogs, a chance to do so. We’re actually BETTER off than I was in 1999, because that book still had the dead weight of the publishing industry to carry with every sale the author worked his butt off to add to the very small catchment you got ‘given’. I look at my bookscan figures (which weren’t for the likes of us authors once upon a time) I know that my distribution as a reasonably established author… shall I put this politely? Stinks worse than two week dead basking shark’s gut contents — that being the worst thing I have ever smelled. As a new author now — unless you’re one of the darlings (and they still exist, publishers spend a million on a new author, send them on publicity tours, make sure there are adverts in every trade paper, get their distributors to push it, get book dumps and end displays, and trailers and laydowns of 100′s of thousands. It might be you. Or it might not be) put you at $3-4K advances and piteous distribution.
So: unless you’re a darling-bud-of-may then you’re going to have to promote hard yourself. You can count on a ‘given’ of maybe 2K of sales, which won’t earn your advance or get you a next contract, if you want it.
Or more likely, you will find yourself not finding an agent, or, if you find an agent, not finding a publisher. And in this you will be joined by thousands of authors whom you like and respect.
And now the struggle really begins. Because even if you have access to the Internet marketplace, so do tens of millions of other writers. Being visible is going to be hard. And if you can’t do that, making a living, impossible. But if you’re doing this yourself, remember that you will have to sell 1/10 -1/5 of the volume to make the same money. If you can sell the same volume, or more, those daiquiris are calling you.
The problem, as I was writing three years ago, is that there are still some useful things for publishing companies to do. Now, that article was directed more to print-on-demand, so in this table the “pages printed” lines go away too. On the other hand, I’d add in a line, needed by both, for “book and cover design”.
| Old model | New Model |
|---|---|
| Author writes content | Author writes content |
| Content chosen by editors | ? |
| Type set or cast by hand | Manuscript translated to type by machine |
| Type installed in press | No need |
| Thousands of pages printed | One copy printed |
| Thousands of copies bound | One copy bound |
| Thousands of copies shipped | Bound copy mailed or delivered to buyer |
| Book tours, advertising, promotion, PR by editorial staff | ? |
| Unsold copies returned | No unsold copies |
| Remaining print run stored | Printable form stored on computer |
| Unsold books disposed of | No need |
A Kindle book that’s being widely read among my friends is John Locke’s How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months. The short version is “I wrote several series, developed a ‘brand’, and then plugged the hell out of the books and the brand.”
What Dave seems to me to be saying is “where can I find someone else who can do the ‘plug the hell out of the brand’ part?”
OLD MODEL:
Publisher chooses manuscript at random.
Tells author, “We’ll take it from here.”
Cuts out the “obscure stuff no one’s gonna get.”
Sends it to a packaging agency to have some sequels written by a roomful of hacks.
Slaps the author’s name (now a “corporate property”) on the covers of the sequels.
Sells it to a movie studio that uses the book “as a springboard” for a vaguely similar story with the same title… maybe.
NEW MODEL:
Author writes book.
Posts it on Internet.
Drives down to Dock Street to see publishers sleeping under the bridge.
So is the value center now the editor? What would you (a budding sci-fi author) have paid to have John W Campbell give you a workout? Are there other notable, not-dead editor sorts out there whose imprimatur could make (or break) one’s bottom line? How might one become one of these beasts?
What would you (a budding sci-fi author) have paid to have John W Campbell give you a workout?
Hell, I just wish I had my copy of a reply from JWC.
But seriously, yeah — an editor with a “brand” like JWC had should be able to do quite well for him/her self, and ebook publishing means never having to say “we’re full up”.
Hi Charlie, look, no offense taken, but my first recommendation was that you read John Locke’s book. It’s not going to work for everyone. Plugging the hell out of the brand requires 1)as much of innate talent as boxing or running. Yep, coaching can improve the average guy’s ability, but if you have the body of a tubercular chicken you’re never going to be even the champion of the local boxing club, let alone a world-class heavyweight. The inability to sell a glass of water for five cents to a millionaire who is dying of thirst… doesn’t make you a crappy writer (you might be, but you could also be good). 2)It’s a long process, which takes a lot of time. It’s hard, real work (and do I ever respect that). Which, if you’re trying to juggle a full-time job, writing, AND promotion… can mean something has to get hind-teat. If that promotion, it’s not going to work well. If it’s writing, well, then you have nothing to sell, and if it is the day job you could end up with a lot more time and less money to spend on promotion. So, yes, like any small business (and that’s what writers are)sometimes if you can outsource these things without giving away 94% of the income, it’s worth doing. And if can find more and better ideas, I’m listening. Dead keen, trying hard. Willing to give most things a go.
Quite a lot of what I said applies to authors/ people with a following, who need cash-flow/bridging finance in order to do this, and you’ll find I’ve put my money where my big mouth is in quite a few of them.
cheers
Dave