Some established authors no longer intend to submit their manuscripts for publication. With the advent of new print-on-demand and digital services, they are going to publish books themselves. The Los Angeles Times cites one big factor for the shift: authors get to keep a bigger percentage of royalties. “Joe Konrath can’t wait for his books to go out of print. … That way he’ll be able to collect 70% of the sale price, compared with the 6% to 18% he receives from Hyperion.”
The gates and the gatekeepers, says the LA Times, are beginning to fall.
For more than a century, writers have made the fabled pilgrimage to New York, offering their stories to publishing houses and dreaming of bound editions on bookstore shelves. Publishers had the power of the purse and the press. They doled out advances to writers they deemed worthy and paid the cost of printing, binding and delivering books to bookstores. In the world of print, few authors could afford to self-publish.
The Internet has changed all that, allowing writers to sell their works directly to readers, bypassing agents and publishers who once were the gatekeepers.
Maybe Joe Konrath can go direct to his audience. But he’s got a reputation. Authors without an established readership base face a chicken and egg problem. Nobody buys their books because nobody knows about them, and nobody knows about them because nobody has yet bought their books. New print on demand services like Createspace and Amazon’s Kindle have only solved the self-publisher’s logistics and distribution problem, but they have not solved the self-publisher’s more fundamental problem, which is marketing.
The fact that an author can get his title listed on Amazon achieves surprisingly little. It is simply the equivalent of getting your website spidered by Google. Any damned fool can do that. You wind up on the list all right. But just as in the Google search, unless you are is on the first page of items returned by the engine then to all intents and puposes you are not visible users of the engine at all. Sites ranked 15,719th on a Google search are not better off than those ranked 157,190th. They are equally obscure.
From the readers point of view the market-making problem consists of finding the good books in a mountain of new material. How do you find the good stuff. Answer: you watch Oprah or go to the bookstore and buy the stuff displayed in front. The LA Times says, “with millions of titles potentially flooding the market, readers will have to rely more on external cues to guide their purchases, whether it’s a favorable review from a celebrity, a tip from a social-media contact or the backing of a major publisher.”
But from the author’s point of view the market-making problem is somewhat different. Extending the Google search analogy, the author’s challenge is to find that combination of search terms for which their book goes to the top rank of results. In the world of the Long Tail, the producer’s problem is finding his niche. In other words, given a book, the author’s problem is how to find the market that likes it and reach out to it.
Indeed, the challenge in a world where anyone can publish a book is getting people to pay attention.
In a blog post titled “Moving on,” about his decision to self-publish, Godin wrote that “my mission is to figure out who the audience is, and take them where they want and need to go, in whatever format works.” …
Last year, Bear and another bestselling science fiction author, Neal Stephenson, teamed up to create “The Mongoliad,” a subscription-based historical novel based on the conquests of Genghis Khan. The authors, along with about half a dozen other writers, take turns writing chapters, which are published weekly on http://mongoliad.com/ and on Apple’s iPad and iPhone devices.
One of the services missing from the Createspace and Kindle platform are reports that allow an author to do that. That is a major limitation. A technical architect for a major software company asked me over the Christmas if I was happy with the customer information provided by either platform. I said “no. They provide only aggregates. You don’t even get to see the geographical distribution of your buyers.” He nodded sagely. And you can see why. The great benefit to starting something like the “Mongoliad” is that Stephenson and Bear get to track their customer preferences. They get to understand their market and in a sense, get a chance to own it.
Compare that to an author who cannot get that information. He’s blind. But don’t worry, Amazon is now handing authors a shotgun.
Recently Amazon wrote to say that persons who purchased Kindle editions of books were eligible to legally lend them to other readers. “We are excited to announce Kindle book lending (http://www.amazon.com/kindle-lending). The Kindle Book Lending feature allows users to lend digital books they have purchased through the Kindle Store to their friends and family. Each book may be lent once for a duration of 14 days and will not be readable by the lender during the loan period.” Interestingly enough, those who opted for the 70% royalty program could not opt out of the lending program. Those who were on the 35% program could however, refuse to participate. That’s because the lending program essentially creates a “buy one take one” sales situation and halves the price of the book (i.e. 70%/2 = 35%). But the upside for budding authors is that it can potentially double their readership without permanently marking down the price of their books. That means their marketing reach potentially doubles. They still can’t focus, sniper-like on their market. But at least they’ve got a blunderbuss and with any luck, will hit something.
And that’s a help. For starting authors volume, not immediate dollar royalties, is arguably the most important long term factor in determining the long term prognosis of a book. If a piece of music or written work is ever going to “go viral” it is volume that is the critical element. Without volume you are dead in the water — permanently. Unfortunately for those on the Amazon platform, it is the publisher, not the author, that will capture the all-important information about the market’s preferences from the blunderbuss. It is Amazon Kindle and Createspace that will know the answer to the question, “what are the search terms that float this book to the top of the pile”. Unless you are Greg Bear and Stephenson, then you’re S.O.L.
Yet despite these problems the Fall of the Gatekeepers is probably a good thing. Enterprising techies and entrepreneurs will eventually find ways to solve the problems of allowing the audiences and authors to find each other. Competition may eventually force Amazon to share its data. But even now the immediate effect has probably been to increase the absolute amount of quality product available to the consumer. There’s a lot of good stuff out there, even if it is had to find. The quality standards of the pros and the amateurs, is in certain limited sectors, beginning to converge. It is not that the pros are getting worse but that the amateurs are getting better.
Tools which until recently were the exclusive preserve of studios and high-end publishers are now migrating downwards into consumer hands. Whether the field is music, writing or video, the potential for mass art was never greater than it is today. The irony is that it will have come about not as a result of grants to “artists” but through the operation of crass consumer capitalism. Consider one amateur, for example. John Gawkowski, “being a totally amateur musician, but a professional “lover of music,” thought he would record an album of cover songs and put them on the Internet. That’s essentially like a home movie. But today’s home movies ain’t what they used to be. Gawkowski
decided to embark upon a personal project of recording an album of cover songs. I wanted to select a few of the songs that had meant an awful lot to me back when I was learning how to play guitar and record them as a gift to my family and my friends, especially for those folks who so many years ago, had endured countless hours sitting in cheesey bars dutifully telling me “you sound really good tonight john!!”
That’s all he meant it to be, but in so doing he demonstrated something else: how perilously close to the Real McCoy an amateur can come in the first decades of the Twenty First century. “Art,” Karl Marx wrote, “is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.” Che Guevara believed this high achievement could only be achieved under Communism. “The individual will reach total consciousness as a social being, which is equivalent to the full realization as a human creature, once the chains of alienation are broken. This will be translated concretely into the reconquering of one’s true nature through liberated labor, and the expression of one’s own human condition through culture and art.”
He would have been astounded to learn that it would have been achieved, not under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in Cuba, but on YouTube.
embedded by Embedded VideoYouTube Direkt
Link to Wretchard’s novel “No Way In” print edition
Link to Wretchard’s novel “No Way In” Kindle Edition”
I cannot help seeing an opportunity here for someone to develop a commission based marketing solution for new authors who will self publish but need assistance with the marketing aspect of their book.
Another Groupons type success story is just waiting to happen.
This is like the new bands who are eschewing record companies and selling direct to consumers and reaping the profits thereby. New media is going to free us from the evil that is the MPAA and RIAA before the new decade is out. However, like buggy whip makers, they will try any amount of court suits and bribery to elected officials to try and keep us hostage to them.
That was from when Cat Stevens was still a cat and not an Islamist. “Tea for the Tillerman” for those who still remember. Sad Lisa comes from the same memory space that contains the Tumbleweed Connection. “And I’m getting to thinking if she’s comin’ at all.”
That is, I suppose, the least common denominator. “Sad Lisa” was one of those songs that went round and round in the magical days of youth before possibility became memory. Young people hear music differently from the old: they hear them when they’re still angels, magical creatures who have possibility before them. In retrospect the magic is in the recollection. And it is, for those who think on it, the same thing.
The problem right now is the pricing is way off. The marketers (erroneously in my opinion) think that because readers will buy a discounted physical hardback for $15 they’ll buy a DRM-crippled ebook for $15. Ebooks should be priced closer to $5. 70% of $5 is greater than 15% of $15. It’s very hard to attract wary buyers at $15, but for $5 many more buyers will take a flyer on your book, which is what budding artists really need (eyeballs). Add a small $1-2 premium for a DRM-free version.
As a musician/songwriter, I’m excited by the propects. However, getting anyone to listen and then spend a buck is the real trick. Maybe you could posts daily videos Wretchard?
JD #1:
“I cannot help seeing an opportunity here for someone to develop a commission based marketing solution…”
Possibly, but I see an even greater opportunity for editing services. Few things are more difficult than reading something you have written, finding the factual and, grammatical errors and judging the overall “flow” of the writing.
Wretchard’s writing is outstanding because of its “flow.” He seems to do it quite naturally. In contrast, a book I bought several years ago on helicopter missions had such poor flow and so many grammatical errors in the form of split infinitives and the like, that about 1/3 of the way through it I put it down and never picked it up again. The authors had a great topic, access to personal accounts, and a subject that has not suffered from overmining. But they blew it because of their own underdeveloped writing skills and what appeared to be nonexistent editing.
A recent alternate universe novel by two highly experienced and very successful authors, Newt Gringrich and Willam Foreschen, had a great story but numerous grammatical errors, confusing syntax, and a few factual errors. I found myself saying things like “Okay, so do you mean that the British spy and his batman invaded Singapore or that they there observing when the Japanese did?” Or, “Which one of these two guys sitting on the park bench at Pearl is speaking now?” And “When did the USAAF start flying Brewster Buffalos? Is this part of the ‘alternate universe’ aspect?” It appears that the reputation and sales record of the authors overwhelmed the publisher’s processes; or at least one would hope that was what occurred.
As for promoting sales, I have not spent much time perusing Amazon and only go there when I have a definite book in mind. But they might emulate the way it is done it at Half.com. There, you can go to a seller, and select “Books, science fiction, alternate history” and see everything that fits that category. Richard Fernandez might have written a terrific book on a Chinese invasion of the Philippines in 1950, and maybe I love that kind of stuff, but how would I know about it if I had never heard of him?
Wretchard, I read “No Way In” in the paperback edition and enjoyed it much. I live in Ohio and I am in the 24-74 age group. I hope this helps you with your marketing.
thanks for the Gawkowski link, that version is better than the original. Of course someone needed to grab hold of those forgotten songs and give them life, since poor Cat Stevens tragically died in 1977. (the sad creature that inhabits that body today has nothing in common with Cat Stevens)
I see the cultural world transforming into a loosely connected collection of inward looking interest groups. Finding a market will be done by one’s affiliation with one of these groups, but any kind of cross-pollination will be quite difficult to achieve. The lamentable part is that there is going to be no such thing as a common culture or common values anymore, and so the long term cohesiveness of society is probably at risk.
Baen Books uses a ‘snippet’ format to entice readers. After a book has been in print a while they will place the first few chapters online.
This is a variation on the ‘loss leader’ marketing plan. In the car biz we called it the ‘lost puppy’ close. Try the ________ ( fill in blank) for XX days and return it if you don’t like it. It works but leaves the issue of letting them know you have puppies in the first place.
http://www.baen.com/
Jim is dead now but Flint is moving forward with Baen. They do mostly Sci Fi so there is room out there for a different gen’re.
I was banned from Amazon after turning them in to ICANN for spamming. I was a regular customer, ordering at least once a month for several years. Then they went to a ‘push marketing’ plan and loading my box with ‘suggestions’ for me. My spam bot is interactive and since I was ordering from that site once a month it let the Amazon spam thru. So I asked them to stop, then I told them to stop. They ignored me so I dropped a dime on them. Next time I tried to order my monthly fix, I was 402′d ( access denied, I think. Maybe 502). So for me Amazon is a thing from the past.
That’s cool, Discount Books doesn’t have the selection but I can live with that better then the spam.
I too have read your book and enjoyed it. I also have sent a link of this blog to my family member who works for Amazon.com. I also live in Ohio and I am in the over 50 age group. I read your blog daily and appreciate your insight into the world we currently live in. I have told my children and grandchildren that they will face some of the most difficult moral and ethical decisions related to our healthcare system, privacy, and the developments in science that are coming. Thanks so much for your blog and to the many comments posted here. Happy New Year everyone.
In retrospect the magic is in the recollection. And it is, for those who think on it, the same thing.
Sounds like a quote from Master Po instructing young Grasshopper. Yet another reason to visit BC daily.
Maybe part of a commission based marketing system could be like ‘linking blogs’ such as Instapundit but reviewing self published electronic books. It couldn’t just review books that paid for an advertorial – it would have to have the readers interests at heart and make money (a commission) when it sold a book. If it can attract a lot of readers because it has good reviews it should generate a lot of commissions. I could see a voracious reader monetizing their reading habit by doing reviews that effectively got good material and readers together. An army of English majors might turn it into a decent business. I think we need more gatekeeping or curation than the current net provides authors but overall I think it will be great for writers (and musicians)when the marketing kinks get worked out. One clue is that photographers have largely solved the marketing problems of selling their work on the net because consumers like magazines, corporations, or even small web based business have a need for stock and custom photography. Because you can search many possible images quickly thanks to well organized photo collections and recognize the image you want quickly, individual photographers are doing well on the web. My son does small business websites and I have watched him find and buy a photo for a customers website in a couple of minutes.
I see this as being similar to the rise of blogs on the internet. Of the millions out there, how do you decide which ones to read? Some of it is pure chance, but most of it (at least in my case) is that you are directed there by someone (i.e. another blog, a columnist you like to read) whose judgement you trust. I suspect that as these publishing changes occur, there will be an increased reliance on using the recommended book lists of your favorite bloggers.
Yep, some amateurs are good and some are bad. Most benefit from the services of an editor. Readers benefit from screening services helping to point their attentions in worthwhile directions.
Publishing on demand and ebooks creates _more_ need for a publishing industry, not less. It chances exactly what the publishing industry is, but it doesn’t remove it.
It seems like the interesting questions are who becomes the new publishing houses and how are they organized? Personally, I don’t think the wikipedia/facebook solution — people editing each other for free and “likes” linking books — will win out. It might, but I think people like being pointed towards what is good too much. I expect someone will start hiring editors — probably distributed piecework — and providing a menu of polishing, packaging, positioning and printing services.
Pretty similar to McGraw Hill in many ways, but without the big building in NY. (Not that McGraw Hill still uses that building anymore.)
(Edit: #12, yes, I agree)
As a voracious reader, I read several books per week, I find that filtering queries is the most difficult part of “googling”. And my preference for tactile input makes buying online books difficult. The digital equivalent of the ability to peruse the contents is vital to me. If I can’t see the actual writing style and storyline/synopsis of a book it had better be close to free for me to buy based on title alone. My Googlefu has become quite strong and I still get a lot of by catch. This is most likely due to Google’s ranking system which is corrupted by those who will pay for ranks. And those “marketers” who will use popular search terms to falsely describe their content.
I would like to see a search engine that is moderated for pollution. Like Lexus/Nexus. I think I will do some research on search engine creation.
This week, a friend of mine, who has published via Kindle, and I, were talking about self publishing (I must confess that I too am in the process of writing a book to be published on Kindle when I have finished). It occurred to us in the classical Monty Python fashion (“…there are four requirements…”) that, indeed, there are four requirements (at least) for publishing any kind of written work that were heretofore addressed by the brick and mortar publishing firm that need to be addressed by the cyber author. They are: 1) Editing and proof reading, 2) formatting, 3) marketing, and 4) legal and contract advice. In some cases, for the author, writing is the easiest part.
My friend and I were part of the huge tsunami that was desktop publishing in the ’70s. We both have done well in the business that resulted from that wave and are now semi-retired. However, as we look at the building swell of opportunity for individual content production, it all looks familiar and we are taking down our old surf boards and getting ready to stake out our place on the new wave a’building.
So when I stop in for my daily read of Belmont Club, guess what, I find this discussion. Seems like my friend and I are not the only ones. Thanks, Wretchard.
Reynolds occasionally links to review roundups. Perhaps thats part of the solution. Specialized sites for say WWII Nonfiction, VietNam fiction and non fiction; those could cross link with alternative history, SciFi, Aviation, etc. Amazon uses customer reviews but they arent exploitable or organized.
A majority of the books I got this year were selected from the WSJ reviews. Paper copy and editor filtered but usually reliable. I got a couple others by friends and other odd contacts. Its pretty random.
That guy did a bang up job of sad lisa. Yeah and Cat Steven’s Tea for The Tillerman was an lp must have when I was a junior or senior in HS. Great album cover too. These guys give immense dignity to this cover. What the teenager understands however is just the immense sadness. But for a teenager its unearned sadness. And there is a metaphysical sadness in this tune that teenagers won’t get at all. They’ll only know its really really sad. Add some blow and a couple teenagers have a real pity party. You get a bunch of callow kids.
A similar sound like the tune “The Riddle Song,” also known as “I Gave My Love a Cherry,” was one that John Beluchi Lampooned in animal house.( I would have loved to post the utube of the scene but the studio blocked it for copyright reasons.)
While I loved these tunes for a time, I don’t think they do much for the character of da youts. Because they make such an indelible impression. Similarly, consider the buzz saw whine of Neil Young. Its tough for a young impressionable soul to get that sound track out of their head.
These days I tell teenagers and their parents to be very careful of the music they listen to because what they hear as teenagers –they’ll remember for the rest of their lives. Better to find some biblical words set to music. Those words are very helpful all the time. Its a joy to have those words in your head when you wake in the morning.
Bedtime reading chapter 3 of Julian Jaymes “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”; he makes the point that consciousness is a relatively modern thing; something of only the last 3-4 thousand years. That its based on language. That is, no language. No consciousness. But its not just language that make for consciousness; its the metaphors embedded in language that make for consciousness.
I do search marketing for a living. Facebook has exceeded Google in its audience this year.
The business model for pajamas media and any of the the many portals around is to draw in eyeballs and then to put up advertising. The network that feeds pajama media the ads on the upper right when you come here looks like pulse360. (There are a lot of different networks so I could be wrong on that.) The networks make money. The affiliate media buyers who work through the networks–to feed the ads outlets like pajama media– make money as well–and significant money. This video shows examples of the latest and greatest techniques for media buyers(If you know any young web designers who can do the kind of stuff demonstrated in the video–have them contact me.)
Typically, the best media buyers are totally unassuming. They don’t stand out in a crowd. We talked about Chinese and Japanese herbs. That’s what they look like only they’re of all races. The difference is that they are totally computer literate and they work it. They run their businesses on their laptops seated at the local coffee shop–or under a highway overpass–where ever.
Well if ipads and their imitators become more functional there may be migration away from laptops–something that’s currently happening for the suits in corporate
It’s the old stand-up comic perplexity. Most stand-up comics perform for a couple of drinks and maybe some help with the cab fare home; a very few of them get late-night TV gigs and make millions. The last few highly debatable fractions of a point on the International Humor Scale make a huge difference to the reward. As with comics, so with authors — and musicians, and most anything else.
Let’s step back and confront an uncomfortable question — How deep is the high-end talent pool really? Any talent pool?
To get away from books for a moment, take football. (The real thing, not soccer).
Every year, unnumbered thousands of young US males take to the field, hoping to prove that they really are among the best. Only an insignificant fraction of them ever get to play as a professional. When the USFL started up in the 1980s as a competitor to the NFL, there was thus no shortage of eager players, keen to show what they had. But the USFL failed — and some have argued that the failure was a consequence of the players not being quite good enough. Fans could tell a player at the 100% mark on the distribution of talent from one who was merely at the 99.999% mark — and they were not prepared to pay for Mr. 99.999%.
As with football, so with literature. Despite all the great writers working today, we still read Homer and Shakespeare and Dickens.
Since our gracious host brought it up, let’s discuss marketing of cyber books, etc.
Off the top of my head, the following low cost (as in free) marketing techniques occur to me:
1) Facebook (take advantage of all your friends and their friends, etc.
2) Twitter – take advantage of all your friends…
3) YouTube videos
4) Create a self published web site for marketing purposes
5) Get all your friends who have web sites to create a link (hmmm…I notice a pattern that begins “take advantage of your friends…”)
Any other ideas???
“I cannot help seeing an opportunity here for someone to develop a commission based marketing solution…”
Those “In the mail …” posts by Glen Reynolds that always link to Amazon could be just such an arrangement. Hard to believe a man as savvy as him is devoting space to product recommendations without some money making arrangement in place. Look out Oprah.
21. Boyd
Any time you see a product recommendation–the link to the product page will have the affiliate code of the recommender so as to commission that person.
books, whazzat?
if you want keywords, Google or Charles will give you keywords, but then they will charge you for the honor, and you’re right back to the problem of rent-seeking channel owners.
marketing remains an activity requiring work, the entropy of the customer sitting on his wallet still requires the expenditure of energy to get it on the desktop and pried open.
maybe books isn’t the channel for getting information to flow from author to reader while generating revenue.
–
meanwhile, the Rose Parade is on, including a flyover by a B-2 batbomber, a 500-strong Texas band, sponsorship by Honda, and cold (for California) weather. No search terms required.
Congratulations to Wretchard on finding a topic that pulls in the lurkers.
If I follow this means that Publishers are being transformed from manufacturers to advertisers. The content provider will no longer be paid by their distributor but instead will pay to have their product recommended to the consumer.
Progress.
#19: Let’s step back and confront an uncomfortable question — How deep is the high-end talent pool really? Any talent pool?
An excellent point, but it begs the question — is the publishing business a meritocracy or is it driven by connections (within the industry) and past successes that have no direct bearing on current work. To use your example, in the NFL (a meritocracy), what you accomplished as a QB in 2009 will help little this year if your current quarterback rating is 42.5.
In publishing it seems that there are many, many mainstream authors who are weak and yet very successful. They got a break, developed an audience, and now sell millions of books. The problem is getting the break and building an audience, and that will remain no matter who the gatekeeper is.
BTW, I do have some experience in this matter. I have about 1.5 million books in print (although they’re college textbooks). When I wrote my first novel I couldn’t find a legitimate agent (or publisher) so I POD’d and Kindled it. The results were disappointing.
As other posts have noted, the core problem is marketing. Content and quality matter, but marketing matters more. I’ve just finished my second novel and have gotten a legitimate New York literary agency to take it on. For the uninitiated, that is no small feat in itself. We’ll see what happens, but at the end of the day, the arts are a very subjective business and success is a true crapshoot.
“Congratulations to Wretchard on finding a topic that pulls in the lurkers”
Ok, so you sucked me in after all these years. Lest anyone think I might be insinuating he is a shill for Amazon, I’m not. I can’t read the refferel code but as a 40 year businessman I would be really disappointed if he didn’t have an arrangement of some kind. Everything about markets leads to more information, choice and freedom. And that’s always a good thing.
Internet based and electronic self book publishing sounds like a great idea. My brother in law has a Kindle and loves it. Obstacles always abound in new ventures and this one will be no exception, especially in light of the “leaks” that would multiply like fleas on a camel.
Several challenges come to mind. The current publishing houses aren’t going to simply roll over. They’ll bring in their lawyers to “help” Congress in its attempt to take over Internet content by writing restrictive legislation (nowhere based in law but hey that hasn’t stopped the Federal Register from growing like crabgrass, specious “laws” from getting the Presidential imprimatur.
A different but substantial challenge will be weaning those of us who enjoy holding a book, referencing a book, etc away from the tactile to simply the ether. Yes, electronic storage is cheap but have a EMP and poof, bye, bye library. Others may have thoughts on other challenges, those were just initial reactions.
I hope it works out. It’ll save the spotted owl.
For those who haven’t tried this new form of “hyper writing”, one of the neat things that is available within some of the Kindle formats (IPod, IPad, IPhone, Kindle for PC, etc.) is the ability to hyperlink not only to internal bookmarks, but also to external targets as well, given a wi-fi or 3G connection AND appropriate browser availability. For example, rather than provide a glossary, just hyperlink to Wikipedia. There is also the capability in some of these “alternate Kindles” to embed videos. As far as I know, the embedded video is not available for any of the actual Kindles yet, but it is supposed to be under consideration for futures.
Any way, we are not talking about “books” any more, we are talking about “hyper media”. This is a whole new ball game, IMHO.
Stoicheion #9:
Baen books does something else quite innovative. For the 1634 series of alternate history they allow people to write stories, post them in the “bar” and let regular readers and enthusiasts evaluate them. If they give it a thumbs up it gets published, first on-line, dead electron style, and then finally in print, dead tree style.
I have written a short story for that series, all in my head, but have not put it down yet because I would first have to essentially dig out their tech manual and figure out if the story fits with the rest of the universe. And it is more complex than that, because since the stories are moving thorough time you have to figure out where it would fit with the “current” view of what happened “then.” Rather like writing for a TV series, I would guess. And based on my reading of that series I am at least a few years behind the times.
And of course what you write affects what other people can write. If you wrote a story where in 1638 they develop nuclear weapons, and that is accepted as part on the established “canon” of the series, the other writers will have trouble ignoring that development.
Anthony Burgess came to believe that the real relationship in the book world was between author and bookseller. That’s how it was in the beginning when the printing press was considered an eccentric start-up business, before it got professionalized. Perhaps we are heading back to that model with online publishing. I always thought, however, that book publishers had great advantage in being able to sort out schlock. It could be argued that publishers deal in schlock mostly. They get large truckloads of it every week. They develop an eye and a nose for it. There is a sense in which all publishing is self publishing but sucessful publishers know how to cut through the scholck. Just take a look at the novels set up at online sites. Most of them are bad, most of them eveade the basic rules of storytelling and grammar. It is painful to think that vast stretches of your countrymen sit around composing unreadable schlock. That is the secret knowledge of publishers.
Among the other problems that authors face is competition from ghosts. Jerome K Jerome, Joeseph Conrad, P.G. Wodehouse, Ross MacDonald, not to mention even older authors like that Spearshaker guy, are generally more enjoyable to read than a mediocre modern fiction author. Heck, they’re stiff competition for even a really good modern author. Non-fiction is a little different depending on the particular market.
I used to review products for Amazon.com. Did it for years and I was pretty good at it. I eventually got to #28 in the ranking system. Once you got in the Top 50 you would get all kinds of offers for free books and the like. Once you got into the Top 30, you got even more. I quit reviewing several years ago and my e-mail still overflows with free book offers from authors trying to make a name for themselves. A lot of these books were (and are) total crap. But I stumbled over more than a few diamonds from people you’ve never heard of, and likely will never hear of because they don’t have the marketing mojo to pull success out of a hat.
RWE, yes and some are pretty good. Other stink, to be kind. I thought “Canon law” and “RAM rebellion” made good doorstops. I felt ripped off after buying them. 1636 is out at Baen and I will get the paperback when it hits the local store, I don’t see many Baen books on Discount so I have to wait for them to get to Book Star. I’m waiting for”Much Fall of Blood” too. Wondering what Erik does when he finds out he is married. Prince Manfred will hurt his self laughing, of course.
I’m tempted to cut ‘n paste Flint’s monologue on this very same subject. He has pretty much thought it all through and is actually making money at it.
Theory is nice but practical experience is nicer.
Absolutely, positively OT.
Free at last, free at last, thank the Lord I’m retired at last.
Effective, today.
Now I will be less a semi-lurker with pithy comment to a full time
something or another.
Happy new year to all…
Stoicheon #33
Can’t say I was all that impressed with canon Law and Ram Rebellion but they were not bad. The Ring of Fire and Grantville Gazette series are pretty good, although of somewhat spotty quality, which I guess is inevitable given the territory.
You can buy them in digital format on line long before they hit the shelves, and that can be in HTML format as well. I PDF them on the computer. However, I usually print out the parts I really want to read. It helps to have a high speed laser printer handy at the office!
Stoicheon:
Have you tried looking for books on Half.com?
Usually the best place to buy them, I have found.
I have a different take on why writers go POD, and that’s because self publishing is the only way to get your stuff in print without going the former vanity house way where you paid someone to format your book and do a cover, and were expected, after that, to buy a couple thousand books. Never went that route and never would. But Amazon CreateSpace allows you to do all that for free as long as you do your own formatting. I started putting my novels on CreateSpace, doing my own formatting and covers, with no expectation of selling a single copy, but with the intent of buying enough copies to put into boxed sets to give to family, so that a future great-grandchild might come upon the dusty books one day and say, “Hey, isn’t that great-grampop?” and pick one out to read. Immortality of a sort.
When Wretchard suggested to me that I go on Facebook and expand my market, I did, a few days ago, and already have a few sales, which is entirely satisfying. It isn’t the royalty money, which is insignificant, it’s the fact that someone has looked you up on Amazon, opened the book and liked it well enough to buy it and read it. All a writer wants is for someone to read his stuff. That’s why he writes, or one of the reasons he writes. Most of us would write even if nobody ever read the stuff, though most of us dream, on occasion, of writing a best seller, knowing how truly improbable that is.
Walt Erickson
Barely on topic, but let me put in a plug for a website I have found to be valuable, in case anyone is not aware of it:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/fourmilog/
John Walker is a scientist with eclectic tastes who reads prodigiously and documents his assessments in well-written reviews. His blog is a great source for suggestions on reading material that one might otherwise miss — provided one’s tastes intersect with his in a few places.
Walker’s blog is a reminder that Word of Mouth is one of the best forms of marketing and probably will remain so, even if technology changes the form in which that Word of Mouth reaches us.
I’ve been buying eBooks on Baen.com for a while. For 6 bucks, I get my DRM-free book in zip format, on the same day the hardback comes out. I can put it on my laptop, on my Kindle, or whatever. No muss, no fuss. I like their approach.
Every year, unnumbered thousands of young US males take to the field, hoping to prove that they really are among the best. Only an insignificant fraction of them ever get to play as a professional.
Someone remarked to me that our dataset was skewed by the fact that we rarely heard from the losers. “There would probably be ten books entitled ‘How I Lost Ten Million Dollars’ for every one titled ‘How I Made Ten Million Dollars’, but nobody writes them.” My guess is that there are far more duds than Steven Kings even in the regular publishing world, that the world of traditional publishing is just as littered with a trail of bleached bones as any other enterprise.
We hear about mega-authors in connection with famous publishing houses. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that if you can get a book published by a big publisher, you’ll be another Steven King.
If writing is one of these bimodal professions where a small percentage make it big while the bulk languish in obscurity then the distribution will afflict both those who go traditional as well as POD. Basically most authors are not going to become the next JK Rowlings.
The attraction of POD is that you don’t have to invest two years of your life sending manuscripts to publishers for the right to be disappointed on the market. Even granting that a successful POD isn’t going to be as successful as a traditional success, there may be much to recommend this route to the first time author.
First, if you sell anything more than a hundred books to anyone besides your friends, it will provide real feedback on whether or not you can write passably at all. An author should be glad not only of favorable reviews, but unfavorable ones too, provided they are genuine and not troll-produced.
Second, a moderate POD success is a valuable indicator of marketability even if you do decide to go the traditional publishing route later.
Third, there is always the chance it will go viral, or get picked up and become a success in its own right. That chance, however small, is still much greater than the zero percentage it would have faced had it remained unpublished. Just as the “best gun is never the one you left at home”, the best chance of literary success is from the book you have published, never the one that is in the bottom of some editor’s in-box.
POD is a relatively cheap way of trying out your fiction-writing skills.
Congratulations to Wretchard: his book as a GOOD book! I bought it out of loyalty, really, because I read this blog all the time. Thus, I was expecting disappointment. But I’m not! His technical detail reminded me of Stephen Hunter’s approach. But the characters, and the background are more interesting to me. I had no idea that Marcos’ dictatorship was so terrible. And the description of the Tondo Foreshore is, I have to say, a stunner. And the character of Ramon is neat: a man became a compleat American by watching and memorizing every word of every TV show beamed to the Philippines in the 50s and 60s. Ramon never moved to the US because he had in effect become an American in his soul!
I’m not positive even King would’ve become the powerhouse he is today if Brian DePalma hadn’t made Carrie into a movie. That film is iconic and helped King sell subsequent books.
42. Dack Thrombosis
There ya go. Some guy named Seagull(sp?) went from a poor writer to a mediocre screen writer to a real bad actor and made millions en route. Remain positive and driven and success is inevitable. At something.
I guess what I find most surprising is this:
“Godin wrote that “my mission is to figure out who the audience is, and take them where they want and need to go, in whatever format works.”
This is not about “art” – this is about marketing. This guy does not want to become like Hemmingway; he wants to become like Toyota.
I guess I am glad I don’t have to write like that. And I don’t think that Wretchard writes like that either. But I will admit that I have written some fiction not to sell but because I wanted to read something like it and there was no suitable product out there. In some ways it was a Make Or Buy decision, and I have no idea if that produced “Art” or not.
I hope these authors will at least take the trouble to make their work e-friendly. My biggest beef with Kindle books is the horrible formatting of some books, the dropped footnotes and other failurs to leverage the technology.
#20 emrys “4) Create a self published web site for marketing purposes”
My question is could one create a website “I need a good book” or something, which contains reviews of several authors’ works? All the reviews could be written by their moms. They could even declare a book “voted best book of April” etc because the moms could take a vote each month on the books they review. Happily the site would have a secure commerce section for buying these good books.
When someone googles “I need a good book” – bingo!
Not entirely O/T -
Trying to remember a youthful adventure in order to write about it:
“I must bore through this indifference which erases, disfigures and kills, and recover the verve of that time, the elasticity of spirit, the flexibility, the nuances, the ripples of life, the rich chances, the way music fell on the ear, the precious relationship with the material world and the pleasure one took in it.
Instead of which: this desert space my head has become, the corrosive silence of memory. . . .”
- The Way of the World; Nicolas Bouvier, tr. Robyn Marsack
Incidentally, The Way of the World was originally self-published, in 1963. It has become a travel classic although I don’t know how it made the passage.
westerncanadian@46:
Absolutely! In fact, the reviews wouldn’t need to be by their moms, necessarily, although that is a good marketing technique
. Great idea! A group of authors (and their moms, of course) could form a loosely knit consortium using such a concept to form an open source publishing company based around the web site. Crowd sourcing authors!
“Art” was definitely not a goal I set out to achieve, though I hoped that if I were very lucky, a moment or two low art might appear in parts. My goal was not to become another Hemingway. It was literally to simply tell a good story.
The basic architectural problem in writing No Way In was twofold. First, how to convey a sense of locale without rendering the whole thing “exotic”, because the characters and their problems had to be universal and common and not peculiar to a place and time. The second grew out of the first: since many of the situations essentially had philosophical and in parts, religious undertones and nobody except maybe Umberto Eco sets out to write a book on philosophy as fiction, the difficulty was how to make it entertaining.
The approach to the first problem was to discipline the scenery, which as I promised, contains landscapes I do not believe have ever been explored in English language fiction before. The landscapes are as real as memory can make them. The Tondo Foreshore and Mindanao really did look like that. There was even a lucky Green Couch and a Boteng Umiilaw. But the reader had to be protected from too much it; or it would turn out to be one of these turgid travelogues beloved of those who like to dote on exotic places simply because they are strange. To people who lived in those locales, they were home. The locales had to serve the story without overwhelming it. The landscape has to content itself for the present with these brief sketches until a better hand and superior scholarship can give them full justice.
The second problem, that of conveying the consciousness of the characters was fixed — sort of — by imposing a John Buchanesque (39 Steps, Free Fishers, Greenmantle) chase/adventure structure on it. That allows the characters thoughts to intrude on the situation and probably gives it an antique flavor, which may turn off those who prefer the slow discoveries, dark undertones and slow-drip revelation of more modern thrillers. The upside was that it gave a “cracking good tale” flavor to it which many still like. Most of the Amazon customer reviews have called it a page turner, and if that’s representative, the gamble came off.
But of course that does not wholly disguise what it is: an exploration of The Life, with its philosophical and moral issues, in the context of a not-too-implausible problem. And that I hope is what certain readers get from it. The problems of The Life, that kind of existence which people who lead ‘colorful’ careers partake in, are miniatures of the human dilemma. The issues of honor, faith, fear and sacrifice are there not just because they are distilled and intensified in The Life also because they are common to all human experience.
Looking back on No Way In, I can see the faults are in all the expected places. But it worked in parts to degree that surprised me even as I was writing it. I think this is because it dredged up feelings and situations I thought I had forgotten. It was almost as if someone else had taken up the keyboard and wrote through me. I believe the reader can actually sense where this happens. In the end I think the book was worth writing because it gave me a chance to remember, and in so doing, capture some of those years through a kind of collective recollection, not as it literally happened, but certainly in a way that anyone who had been there would instantly recognize.
#19: Let’s step back and confront an uncomfortable question — How deep is the high-end talent pool really? Any talent pool?
I would ask this question not only where it concerns writers, but also editors and the publishing staffs. I grow more and more weary of spending good money for a book by a well-known author only to find it full of typos.
I’ve been doing business on the internet since 1996. What I’ve seen in that time is that the internet generally cheapens the arts — whether writing, photography, or music — offered on it. There seems to be a strong feeling that bar is set so low that it must be crap if you had to put it on the internet. Yes, things can go “viral” but at an overall depressed price. A lot of people who love you on the internet, only love you for free.
On the other hand, getting a real paper book published, or your work in print magazine or brick-and-mortar gallery, or getting picked up as a writer by a print publication, is a big feather in your cap.
The internet works well for artists who have made their reputation off the internet, but is very tough on those starting out becuase it tends to undermine, not establish credibility. If someone with non-internet credibility doesn’t pick you up, expect to labor in obscurity, no matter how good you are.
I think the gate-keeper are still there and paradoxically have gotten more powerful, not less so.
#51: I think the gate-keeper[s] are still there and paradoxically have gotten more powerful, not less so.
The gatekeepers are there for a reason, even if they are maddeningly fickle and often miss high quality writing. They act as a filter that assesses story line and literary quality long before the story or the writing reaches the public. You might argue that the story line and the writing should have an opportunity to reach the public on their own, and you’d be right. The problem is that without the filter, the perception (and often the reality) that the “bar is set so low that it must be crap” pervades the POD world.
Getting a book published in the traditional manner requires an author to navigate through the filters, beginning with an agent, then the publisher, and finally the public. It’s frustrating, often humilitating, and wholly subjective, but it’s worked reasonably well for a very long time. As the book travels through the traditional filters, recommendations are made to make it better (at least from the point of view of the recommender). The story and characters are tweaked, the writing is tightened, and the flow is strengthened. It’s been my experience that without these recommendations, an author produces a weaker product (and it is, afterall, a product).
Is there a viable alternative? I’m not sure, but I do know that every author who creates a book thinks it has merit, even if in the eyes of every other reader, it’s really not very good.
51. Owen
Yeah, 96 was my start year too. In 2002-2006 we used to talk about the 90′s on the internet as the wilderness years. The possibilities were very vivid to anyone working on the internet but
the actual payoff was not so much and explaining to anyone made you feel like a jabbering idiot.
There have been some immense changes in the last couple years. Search marketing for example has gone from 80% of the affiliate market revenue to something like 10%. The percentage that search occupies of the addressable market now stands at something like 2%. The rest goes to media buyers. (If you want to see what the best guys are doing there–see the link I put up at post 18.) From 2008-2010 google booted off 10′s of thousands of affiliate marketers from their network…including me several times. (I’ve figured out how to get back on.)The new generations war stories will be about getting booted off google and bouncing back.)
As I get older and my ability to learn fast slows, I too think
that the gate keepers are getting stronger. But I’ll go to the
affiliate summit next week in Las Vegas. And see hundreds of newly minted millionaires–young guys mostly who working from home figured out a new angle. Its always amazing and always new.
The consumer electronics show in vegas this coming week will attract over 100,000 people. Whereas the affiliate summit the week after will only bring in about 4000 people.
What kind of online marketing do you do?
Owen says:
“If someone with non-internet credibility doesn’t pick you up, expect to labor in obscurity, no matter how good you are.”
In a sense, you are correct. The mere act of putting your work of art, be it a novel, a photograph, a web site, or whatever; on the web does not guarantee success. It might happen, but probably not. Which brings us back to one of Wretchard’s original musings and my original comment (of agreement with W) that each of the identifiable functions of the brick and mortar publishing house needs to be replaced by either the personal effort of the “self publishing author”, or by some sort of open source support group. IMO, this will happen. Those who seek or need the approval of some pre-existing gatekeeper before purchase are dwindling away and being replaced by those who are constantly sifting cyberspace with their iPhone, iPad, or iWhatever, spotting a new shiny thing and making the purchase decision on their own and then using their iBankAccount to make the purchase. It is not a “brave new world”, in my humble opinion, but just the opposite, a great new world of freedom of choice and opportunity, for as long as it lasts.
emrys @ 54: “Those who seek or need the approval of some pre-existing gatekeeper before purchase are dwindling away”
Anecdote does not equal data, but I don’t think I can back up that assessment. On the occasions when I walk into a good university library, I feel overwhelmed by the endless shelves, the sheer volume of information & analysis that the human race has generated. This drives a very humbling feeling that I can never learn more than a tiny fraction of what humanity already knows.
The great limitation we each face is Time, Lack Thereof! We each can never sample more than a statistically insignificant part of the outpouring of human creativity. How do we select those few books we have time to read? Practically speaking, we all turn to gatekeepers of some kind, whether it is a friend’s recommendation, John Walker’s blog, or the Wall Street Journal’s book reviews.
In a sense, this is the same problem as that faced by the young swain — Out of the millions of young women in the world, how can I ever find that One True Love? Should we channel Whiskey and write them all off? Or should we love the one we’re with?
We are all destined to go to our graves without having read many of the books we would have most enjoyed.
Kinuachdrach says,
Anecdote does not equal data
Touche. My observation about the “dwindling” of the gatekeepers is just that, an observation reported in anecdotal form, nothing more, nothing less.
But, (and you knew one was coming, didn’t you), you ask, “How do we select those few books we have time to read?” My response is, “Google”. Which implies that instead of permitting the current gatekeepers to hinder the scanning of all written work into some open source data base or other where it can be accessed by all, we, as a people, need to get with it and start scanning. But then, of course, we would have no time for creating new ideas, new innovations in thought. We need to find a safe, healthy way to “overclock” our brains.
And I will confess freely, that in my enthusiasm for making all the intellectual content of the world available for surfing, I have avoided entirely the “market forces” that tend to drive intellectual invention and need to be addressed. But then, that is after all the real purpose of the entrepreneur in the grand scheme of things. To make a new endeavor useful, available, and profitable.
Edit added: Obviously, all above is untested opinion.
I think the gatekeeper aspect is important, and if it has been eroded over the last ten years or so as we’ve all splashed around in the new media, well, things go in cycles. I think gatekeeping will rise again.
If the MSM is falling apart, meaning the NYTimes and ABC television, I say it’s in some part because of technology changes, and in at least equal part because they have abandoned or abused their gatekeeping functions. The technology is not going away, but if they wish to recover, it’s by recovering and *innovating* in the gatekeeping area.
For years now I’ve been kicking around (mentally) ways to do this involving, rather than avoiding, the Internet. Not to mention, it also comes down to – marketing. How can the MSM hope to succeed, appealing to only the most leftoid 1/3 of the market (not to mention actively *offending* the most rightoid 1/3 of the market)? Well, traditionally – that’s a 1945-1985 period – a newspaper’s editorial position was mostly visible on the editorial page, and maybe in the main headlines. The local, sports, cooking, classifieds, comics and whatnot should appeal to everyone. And, major papers mainly tried to hew to the middle of the road, with more or less a nod in one direction or the other, or at least presenting serious arguments on each side. Gatekeeping as a *primary* responsibility. Well, by somewhere in the Clinton period that all went away, and conservative media moved off to Rush and AM radio, and the Internet. Maybe this was a good thing? But Rush makes his money to a large degree as gatekeeper. He does it in his own charming way, but that’s what it is he is doing. And blogs like this, exist with a particular perspective – gatekeeping. Most media sites today support registered user comments, twitter shadows and facebook pages and the like. These are good moves. I’m afraid Belmont Club doesn’t really scale to a participating audience of 25,000,000. Yet, Google does, Facebook does. How to scale things up, in a way that serves useful purposes, and maybe generates a little cash flow? That is the question, but the answer, I assert, involves more, not less, gatekeeping.
“It was almost as if someone else had taken up the keyboard and wrote through me.”
I have had that happen to me, and it is remarkable. It is EXACTLY like reading but the words flow out of your fingertips instead. There is no “Uhhhh, What happens next? Lessee…” because it just happens.
The first time this occurred I found myself P.Oed. at every fiction writer I had ever written. “Those crooks! It’s THIS easy and this much fun and they get paid for it!?!” Unfortunately, that does not happen every time, far from it. And you have to go through a bunch of background and buildup just so you can get to the good parts; just like reading.
As I said, one of the reasons for writing a good tale is so you can read it once you are done. Maybe that is even the main reason.
So here is a service that could be offered by people who have reviewed many books in the past (and there are some well known such people):
Offer to review self-published books and if the book sells well, charge 2% or something of the net revenues generated.
It should be relatively easy for a reviewer to review quite a lot of books in a year, and if, as a result, a book sells 100,000 copies at a net of around $5 per copy, the reviewer has made a tidy sum for maybe a week’s work (part time), but more importantly, the author has made a lot more than they otherwise would.
The power of people working together.
There are reviewers out there who have established themselves in particular genres on the internet already.
Joe Konrath. Yes, but, you should be talking about Amanda Hocking. 26 years old. Unpublished, dissed by agents. Self-published in April 2010. Now has sold almost 150,000 books. She was selling over 10,000 books a week last month. If you’re in the right genre, the right category, this is easier.
I’m in a not very hot category. Most of my books are backlist middle reader books. The final numbers just came back from B&N and between Nook and Kindle, I sold an unbelievable 915 copies. I was outselling Louisa May Alcott and C.S. Lewis in the category for most of December.
I didn’t do it with reviews, or publicity or a neat website. I was too busy writing the book I’m publishing today to help the old books. Of all ebooks at B&N, one of mine reached #422. For a book aimed at 9-12 year olds. I think that’s great.
Readers will find you. Give them a good story, well edited and a sharp cover. You can do it better than a traditional publisher. If you could only see the cover for my last traditionally published book coming out in a couple months, you would confirm I can do it better than they can. Their cover is an embarrassment. It took me ten minutes to improve it by deleting the “cute little yellow airplane” that was lost against their baby blue sky and putting a bright red Dreidecker in its place with Photoshop.
Ebooks won’t kill the publishing business, they’re committing suicide.
L @ 60: Amanda Hocking
Hmm. And she hasn’t even sold the movie rights yet? Pretty good! I like to hear that “readers will find you”, if you put out product, … and tweet, and a facebook page, etc.
http://www.amazon.com/Amanda-Hocking/e/B003H4L762
Do I personally want to read “young adult urban fantasy and paranormal romance”? Probably not. But hey, I consider it moderately good news these days if anyone wants to read anything.
Had enough vampires as of, I dunno which came last, Forever Knight or Angel? Googling … Angel, now aka Agent Booth.
Josh @ 61
I don’t tweet and I’m a Facebook virgin. I don’t even hang around the ebook forums. I do have a blog, though, which is current.
The early adopters of the technology liked violence, police procedurals, vampires, erotica. Romance came next. Juvenile lit had no activity. I sold 10 books in Sept. (Pre B&N) Niche markets are huge when you talk about the world. When people get readers, they buy books. People like to read. Ebooks are cheap entertainment and cost less than tradpub books. Other categories will rise in the coming months.
Numbers? Who’s got the numbers? Does Amanda Hocking really sell 10,000 books per month? Are NYT bestsellers really doing well on the market. I don’t know, but it is perfectly plausible to believe that books about cannibal unicorns and vampires can do well among a young urban demographic.
The key distinction in judging quality may not be literary merit but market fit. If some books that made the NYT list did so partly for ‘artistic’ reasons it is possible that some are now languishing in piles in book warehouses while stories about teen-age werewolves are selling like hotcakes.
If one can put aside snobbery for an instant, isn’t it possible to accept that a book can be too “well-written” to survive in a particular marketplace? That I think, was the philosophy underlying the Mills and Boon love novel series. They are really all the same novel, or small set of novels which reappear in slightly altered guises. Boy meets girl, some trifling difficulty occurs, they reconcile and the course of true love runs straight. Only the names change and yet this kind of story will probably be sold in its millions until the end of time. To say then that the publishers were gatekeepers of quality is really to make an assertion about brand management. They ensured the reader got what he expected. If Leo Tolstoy accidentally wrote a better version of War and Peace and Mills and Boons accidentally published it, it would be management’s solemn duty to fire Tolstoy.
But this is what markets are all about. It does no good to say this is ‘crap’ or this is ‘artistically brilliant’ outside the context of an audience. The main purpose of the marketplace is to make sure that things meet their match. And it may be the case that authors fail or succeed commercially not so much on the basis of the strength of their promotion as in the choice of their subject and focusing what resoures they have on the market they truly serve, rather than the market they think they serve.
Wretchard@63 says,
… this is what markets are all about. It does no good to say this is ‘crap’ or this is ‘artistically brilliant’ outside the context of an audience. The main purpose of the marketplace is to make sure that things meet their match.
Critics and reviewers that argue artistic merit always seem like figure skating judges to me. My knee jerk reaction is always, “Who died and left them in charge?” My unsophisticated take on the new world of marketing for publishing on demand is to present a work for sale where a lot of potential customers can see it, with sufficient information about it to entice the customer to click the “Buy” button. Then work at fanning the flames of “word on the tweet.” One way to do that is to ensure that you, as the author, have done the very best that you can do.
# 49: The basic architectural problem in writing No Way In was twofold. First, how to convey a sense of locale without rendering the whole thing “exotic”, because the characters and their problems had to be universal and common and not peculiar to a place and time. The second grew out of the first: since many of the situations essentially had philosophical and in parts, religious undertones and nobody except maybe Umberto Eco sets out to write a book on philosophy as fiction, the difficulty was how to make it entertaining.
Wretchard, I appreciate your comment and insight concerning your approach. My father served at Mindanao in preparation for the invasion of Japan which, thankfully, never materialized as originally planned. I’m thinking he might enjoy reading your story and would recognize the general locale, if perhaps not the precise time you relate.
On a related point, your description of the challenge you met in conveying a sense of universal appeal while dealing with a particular time and place reminded me of The Pepper Garden by John Slimming, dealing with the 1941 Japanese invasion of Malaya and the outbreak of Chinese communism that followed after the war. It is for my money a very good book, even incorporating a memorable love story. Sad to say, I believe the book is now long out of print. It’s a shame, really, that such good writing has so small an audience. But I suppose the same could be said of all the more recognizable classics as well.
Its time for new paradigms to evolve. Its only a hazy vision in my head, but imagine something structured like open source software. Imagine if you will an Internet army of critics. If you want to join the golden horde you can. You first take a survey regarding the genres of books you wish to review and then have to rate a number of well known books in that genre. Anyone looking for a recommendation (customers) would set up their own profile by rating the same core set of books. They would be matched by a set of volunteer critics whose lists of ratings most closely matched theirs. The users of the service could then, after the fact, rate those same critics whose reviews enticed them into buying the book. If the critic said “Zapper” was a ten star book and the customer/reader thought it was a flop they could send in that information to indicate their displeasure (or delight) with the review, and the stats on satisfaction would be available on line. The critics would be entitled to a certain percentage of the books sales in general, not in regards to any book they reviewed, but as to the total aggregate sales of all the authors who submitted their work to the organization. And if the customer’s ratings of the critic fell too long–goodbye sucker.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be practical, but it might create a new sort of gatekeeper who is not the master but merely a doorman who can be fired for incompetence or arrogance.
Re: the Pepper Garden
There are a lot of books which are now rarely read. From the Second World War period, close enough to be remembered and long-ago enough to be forgotten, I can think of “Boldness Be My Friend” or the “Wooden Horse” which was made into the Great Escape. The subject of the immortality of books, or the lack thereof, was originally part of the dialog in No Way In but it was excised to smooth the narrative. Some of it still survives in the parts where it was originally located, in this case in the cheap beach dinner scene.
The most realistic ambition of an author is to play his part in the world he lives in and change it slightly for the better.
I don’t grok open source. I only barely grok social networking. I’m not sure that I have yet seen either one do anything interesting – though at least the latter has made a handfull of people very rich.
wretchard, I was going to add something in my last post about (lack of) quality in popular fiction, but decided what the hey, that wasn’t really news. I mean, just who is this J. D. Robb anyway, 209 novels? I’ve never read any, but watched one person reading a new one every week for the past year – and now see she’s nowhere near done? Maybe I’m missing something, hey, but I was disillusioned young, when I discovered the endless series of Hardy Boys novels was written by a stable of authors under one name. Sniff. I was going to mention in particular the Harry Potter novels, unfavorably. The term “potboiler” goes back a long way, and some of my favorite authors have participated.
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but really, I just click back here to post an OT:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110102/ap_on_re_af/af_zimbabwe_numbers_game
Teachers reported the printing of bank notes from millions to billions and then trillions skewed their pupils’ sense of numeracy, making them fail to grasp the realities of numbers.
On one geography field trip, students scoffed at being told granite rocks swept over Zimbabwe by ancient glaciers were 700 million years old. That time frame seemed insignificant.
Back then in 2008, 700 million Zimbabwe dollars bought a loaf of bread.
Scientists and physicists estimate the number of atoms in the universe at 10 to the power of 80 — 10 followed by 80 zeros.
During the worst of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown and hyperinflation, Zimbabwe’s highest money denominations were logged at 10 to the power of 25 — 10 followed by 25 zeros.
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I am so afraid that this has already happened to us here in the US with these trillion dollar porkulus bills.
Back in the day when Senator Dirkson joked about billions, well, that’s pocket change, mere spillage, anymore. Though somehow not for me personally.
27. Habu
Hey man, what’s up with bring up EMP in a discussion about people who want to rely on electronic publishing in the ether. What are you some atavistic buzz kill.
Now if the thread were about EMP’s then you’d see an abundant cornacopia of end of the electronic world comments.
This is just a warning but don’t link electronic publishing with EMP’s and loss of entire works. I mean it took a damn fire in the Ancient Library of Alexandria, in Alexandria, Egypt, 50BC to destroy the largest and most significant great library of the ancient world. Many works were lost forever……are you trying to imply that EMP’s couldn’t do the same thing?
What a buzz kill …someone needs to school you friend.
Habu, some of us here do actually like actual books.
The parts that no one remembers in our lives are the magic.
Ah, Wretchard, exactly. But isn’t the memory of those same parts the impetus to put them down in some form that might, at least for a time, be memorable?
Wretchard @ 63. If the question is verification of Amanda’s numbers, not 10,000 a month. That’s a week in Dec. Go to her blog. She has the screenshots because she knows people will doubt it. (Can you photoshop it? Why bother, but if you’re insane I suppose you would bother.) http://amandahocking.blogspot.com.
Can books be too well-written? I think they can be off-genre because I’m there and that’s why there was no fit any longer in traditional publishing. There’s no chance to find an audience for an off-genre book in tradpub but there is in ebooks. I am still perfectly happy to bide my time until my audience comes on board and it’s happening faster than I expected.
If the accounting department can’t see a property selling 20,000 copies, it’s rejected in tradpub. (Don’t ask how I know, it’s an ebook now.) Everything works against the midlist author. They will not market you, they are uninterested, bored by midlist. They love the big selling authors du jour. That’s not anyone but a handful. You might be able to find an audience but they don’t give you the time (books are pulled off the shelves in 6 weeks if the sales aren’t there–I can’t believe I’m talking about this here). The days when the editor Malcolm Cowley would take a chance on Jack Kerouac don’t exist anymore.
What credibility does any member of the elitist class/intelligensia have? My books have a Chassidic component. Religion (except islam) is like Kryptonite to these people. The NYT lies about everything, why would I want my book anywhere near them. I don’t need critics, I just need readers to click on those stars and write a review saying “I hope everyone loves this book as much as I did!” like someone did last month. Read it for plot, read it for meaning, I don’t care, just read it.
Josh, JD Robb is Nora Roberts.
Lucy, do you have any tradpub rules of thumb for academic texts, like the stuff MIT Press, Routledge, AP, or Oxford University Press puts out? 20k would seem high for those (hardback then softback) market, though the number might work over a five or ten year shelf life.
I know they often publish PhD thesis as hardcovers, even when they are only going to sell a handfull at library-only prices.
OTOH, I have some academic texts that were published cheap as an experiment twenty years ago in POD, using the then-new big honking Xerox machines for the first time hooked to computers and disk drives. Guess that just has not caught on.
–
re Nora Roberts I realized the pseudonym(s), but my real question is what are the odds she actually writes all those novels by herself? Piers Anthony of SF genre is another maybe a little bit too prolific author that pops to mind. Though Edgar Rice Burroughs put out a lot of potboilers, and as far as I know had no help, nor even word processor!
68. Josh
I don’t grok open source. I only barely grok social networking. I’m not sure that I have yet seen either one do anything interesting – though at least the latter has made a handfull of people very rich.
Nothing interesting? How about the Linux OS? It drives a huge portion of the Internet. And because it does, what impact does it make on the pricing of the “for pay” server software? Get too expensive and there is an alternative; if you ask for too much you’ll get nothing at all.
And as far as social networking goes it is having a great impact with the emergence behavior it is creating. The traditional gatekeepers of information are excluded from the loop. That is significant. The fact that most of the traffic on the social networks consists of insignificant crap is immaterial. They can just as easily contain vital information that the traditional gatekeepers would never allow to be propagated, but once out, simply cannot be ignored by the traditional gatekeepers unless they wish to whither away on the vine of history. MSNBC comes to mind.
One of the genres I am attracted to are medieval historical novels. Now this is an interesting universe. The authors use facebook, twitter, blogs and websites. For example: Elizabeth Chadwick, whose beat is the 12th century, has just finished her new book, “Lady of the English.” I could pre order this via Amazon (.com, ca, or co.uk). ALSO, she goes on so-called “blog tours” to flog her work, ie, she is interviewed in a succession of blogs that focus on historical romances. Her works are published by “Sphere”, etc. She makes video clips featuring noble knights and romantic heroines, and puts them up on her various outlets. Her publisher and agent must love her.
Then, I found a remarkably funny and interesting book, one I would NEVER EVER have purchased, except that the author’s video clip on Amazon was so great: Simon Winder’s “Germania, in wayward pursuit of the Germans and their history”.
So, it seems to me that ‘marketing’ is a huge job, but a lot easier with canny use of the outlets provided by the internet.
#75. heathermc
Yes its amazing how the internet can lead you down roads that you never would have traveled, or even dreamed exist.
For those of you who are interested in fantasy and/or science fiction, I might recommend to you the Baen Free Library, where a good number of novels may be read online at no cost to you at all. It may only appeal to my own twisted sense of humor, but I was utterly delighted to find and read The Rats, the Bats, and the Vats. The title put me off, but the content IMHO is pure gold.
heathermc @ 75: “So, it seems to me that ‘marketing’ is a huge job …”
Indeed! There are willing sellers of all sorts of books & willing buyers of many different kinds of books, but how to bring the right ones together?
Amazon, abebooks and others use pattern recognition software to suggest — ‘you might like this’. But our past interests are not necessarily a guide to what we really would be interested in, if we knew enough to be interested.
I had never given the Mongols a moment’s thought until a business trip across the steppes fired my interest and changed my reading patterns. Then there are uncategorizable books like Adam Nicholson’s ‘Sea Room’, which is absolutely fascinating and moving, but which I would never have read, had it not been for a very strong recommendation from a friend who almost never recommends books. Pattern recognition misses the mark, because it does not expand our horizons — only life does that.
In a way, the marriage broker who imports Russian brides has it easy: the customers know what they want, and the brides know what they have to bring. In contrast, bringing book buyer & author together in a crowded universe is a non-trivial challenge.
tc @ 74: but the only thing interesting or novel about Linux is its free price, if you use only open source, and older versions of unix were also free so even that isn’t novel, just more cleanly reestablished.
And I’m afraid that that is exactly my point, that “most of the traffic on the social networks consists of insignificant crap”. At best it’s a redundant channel, to speech, telephony, email, IM, www, blogs, whatever. It’s an old medium with a lower cost of entry. Now, I’m sure that in all of these channels, most of the traffic is crap, that’s life, Sturgeon’s Law and all that, and it doesn’t condemn the channel, it simply fails to distinguish it. If someone writes yet another love song and makes a pretty penny off of it, that’s nice, but it’s not novel or significant – except for the writer, of course.
I guess one does want to use the new channels, just as one does want to hear the newest love song, or have another hamburger, I guess, see another sunrise. And every sunrise is significant to everyone, and if this is the best of all possible worlds then maybe tomorrow will be a little better, hoorah.
But I may never get used to people walking alone and talking to thin air, and not being psychotic just cellular and bluetoothed. Resistance is futile.
Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action
70. sirius
Habu, some of us here do actually like actual books
Yep, count me in on that. I’m no literary Luddite I was just pointing out that electronic publishing has some huge challenges. No one seems interested in confronting them. Its like:
“Honey where is our manual on surviving an EMP assault?”
“Its on the computer”
“Yes dear but it’s toast, where’s our book on it?”
“On Kindle”
“Ah, honey, the Kindle is fried too. Where did we put the old timey book ?”
“Well we gave it to the retirement home for a tax write off”
“Oh, well now we’re screwed”
“Seems that way”
“Oh don’t worry just call 911 …. wait it’s a goner too”
“Pooh”
80. Habu
70. sirius
Habu, some of us here do actually like actual books
Yep, count me in on that. I’m no literary Luddite I was just pointing out that electronic publishing has some huge challenges. No one seems interested in confronting them. Its like:
“Honey where is our manual on surviving an EMP assault?”
“Its on the computer”
“Yes dear but it’s toast, where’s our book on it?”
“On Kindle”
“Ah, honey, the Kindle is fried too. Where did we put the old timey book ?”
“Well we gave it to the retirement home for a tax write off”
“Oh, well now we’re screwed”
“Seems that way”
“Oh don’t worry just call 911 …. wait it’s a goner too”
“Pooh”
FOUL,FOUL…Habu you come terribly close to intellectual copywrite laws
“Yeah, how?”
“You referenced Mr. Sirius’ comment. I’m sure that falls under the US Governments new laws on Internet copywrite infingement”
“darn”
http://tinyurl.com/yvyb39
Habu, if it helps your legal situation at all, I’m more than willing to offer you a one-time waiver or absolve you of responsibility for any such transgression. Of course, I realize that may not help you at all, inasmuch as I have absolutely no pull with those who would seem to want to act on my behalf. (place smiley face here)
I meant that message for the other Habu.
I think.
I like Science Fiction but I can’t stand the modern stuff. It is full of women doing shit that women just don’t do, in my experience. I work in tech and have done open source and there are very few women at the hard end of the business, and those that there are tend to be Chinese or Indian women.
When I go to the range (not the one with little white balls) there are very few women there practising their gun handling skills, and when I go to handgun classes there are very few women …
I want to be able to read books of the calibre of my favorites from the past without any of the politically correct shit we see in modern stuff, and I have money to spend that today does not get spent on reading fiction, rather it goes towards FPGA dev kits and bullets because none of the books are worth buying.
82. sirius
You’re tops man. I really appreciate the bye on putative intellectual rights that I’m sure the next Internet Czar will burden our freedom of the press rights with.
The Habu to Habu was just to keep Possumtater off the thread. So what’s he do?…yep do-do in the library …so apropos.
Thx
H
One of the valuable things a publisher can still provide is a good editor, something developing writers usually need badly.