Are Books Dead and Can Authors Survive?

[Stephen Palmer]

Sign as many copies as you can. Apparently, that helps

Signed copies can't be returned to the supplier.

Anne - the Waterstones centralised buying policy may subtly change in months to come, apparently. Because of the new owner.

 

[Anne Lyle]

Signed copies can't be returned to the supplier.

Indeed. Sometimes a shop will let you sign copies if you ask nicely, but it's inadvisable to just sneak in there and do it!

Anne - the Waterstones centralised buying policy may subtly change in months to come, apparently. Because of the new owner.

One can only hope. My OH is a non-fiction sales rep, so I'm generally kept up-to-date on the gossip

 

[Anne Lyle]

I really don't understand the revulsion some people have over that. You've poured months and months of work into a novel, and potentially years of thinking, planning, research into it. You deserve the chance to make money from your work, even if it isn't much.

Why do some people think that is so wrong?

I think it was the way it was put:

I'm sorry to shoot you down here, but people don't publish for the bragging rights. They do it because it is a business.

Most writers write for the love of it and hope to make money by publishing their work. The emphasis being on hope, because there are no guarantees in any creative endeavour, and lovely as it would be to be able to earn a living through writing, it's not something you have a huge amount of control over.

If you get a commercial publishing deal, you will make a modest amount of money - but it's not enough to live on unless you have a book that publishers think will earn them a shedload of cash. The amount of money that most published authors make (trade or self-pubbed) is not one that any standard commercial business would consider adequate. Hence for most writers, publishing is a side-business at best, and hardly their primary motivation.

ETA - And whilst bragging rights may not pay the bills, who wouldn't want to see their book on the shelves alongside the greats they grew up with? Or have fans tell them how great their book is and that they stayed up all night reading it? We write to connect with readers, and the money is just reasonable compensation for all the hard work.

 

[Susan Boulton]

Thank you for making my point about the current shortsightedness of the industry, the agent will only take on what will sell, although the authors first novel may not sell many copies, as the vast majority don't, but it might be a series of novels, and, let's just say in 5 years time, he could be selling a lot of copies. The agent will still drop the author, and wave good bye to that future profit. This is exactly what I meant.

Err... that is not quite true, some agents see their clients as long term investments and push them to produce work of a quality that said client never dreamed they could write.(This is not hearsay, but personal experience.)

 

[Anne Lyle]

Err... that is not quite true, some agents see their clients as long term investments and push them to produce work of a quality that said client never dreamed they could write.(This is not hearsay, but personal experience.)

It used to be that publishers would take chances on uncommercial writers because they could fund those books with the bestsellers, but megacorps and the bottom line have made that model increasingly untenable.

Nowadays it's the agent who is in a position to do the same. A good agent has a mix of clients, some of whom need nurturing but will hopefully be worth it in the long run, others (like me) just need him to negotiate an existing contract.

 

[Templar]

If everyone is writing books and self publishing them ...?

The agent/publisher filtering process ensures that what ends up in print is at least half decent, etc. If everyone is writing a book, and writing their own jacket blurb, then the achievement of having written a book and seeing it up there on the shelf (whether real or virtual) is going to mean nothing.

My comment - that people don't publish for bragging rights - was in response to this part of RJM's post. To me (and maybe only to me) it reads as if it is quite disparaging to those that DO self publish (myself included, though not with much luck so far). To me it puts a very negative light on self-publishing eBooks, but not for any solid, economic reason, purely because those who self publish are apparently ruining the sense of satisfaction of being published. I still believe that the sense of satisfaction in getting published (which I referred to as "bragging rights") is not the primary motivator of someone who pushes to get published.

I agree that people write for a whole lot of reasons, but when they publish it the primary aim is to make money. Whether they make a lot of money or a little, or indeed any at all, they publish in an attempt to make money.

I utterly agree that there is a sense of pride in being published, and speaking as a self-published author there is still pride in doing it on your own, I just don't think it is a primary motivator, and I don't think people should be looked down upon because they published a book themselves. They certainly aren't ruining the satisfaction of others by publishing.

I know full well my book is not the greatest piece of literature ever. I wrote it because I was living alone with no TV or internet, and I needed both to stave off boredom and prove to myself that I CAN write a book (for various long and tedious reasons). At the end of writing it I had a whole new understanding about what it takes to sit and churn out 120,000 words that you believe in. I felt that even if I never managed to get published traditionally (and I never really tried) it wouldn't matter, because I had done something that only a tiny percentage of people in this country have ever managed: I had written a novel. The fact that you guys have also written them does not do down my achievement, and the fact that I have published it myself doesn't either.

I still find it staggering that any writer could be anything but happy that another writer has found readers who like their work, whether they have impressed the traditional gatekeepers enough to allow them in, or have beaten their own path. Maybe my response was borne out of a sense of frustration at a post that appeared to suggest that some writers were selfishly harming others by reducing their sense of achievement in being published.

 

[Ursa major]

And whilst bragging rights may not pay the bills, who wouldn't want to see their book on the shelves alongside the greats they grew up with? Or have fans tell them how great their book is and that they stayed up all night reading it? We write to connect with readers, and the money is just reasonable compensation for all the hard work.

Exactly.

 

[The Judge]

Templar, I'd suggest that you have misinterpreted RJM's post.

An achievement is devalued when the path to achieving it becomes available to many who do not have the same rigorous approach.

In England, "A" levels were once considered a good standard of achievement, but decades of over-marking have resulted in schools having to look for something else as a marker of intelligence/education. Obtaining a place at university was once considered a real achievement, an incredible achievement for those, like me, who hailed from a working class background, but it is now seen almost as routine since many more students attend all kinds of establishments which 50 years ago did not have the status of universities. Climbing Everest was not just an achievement, it was thought to be impossible, and now we have tours escorting hundreds, possbly thousands, of people up there.

It may be that there are other benefits to the proliferation of "A"-level successes and university graduates, and even Everest-climbers, not least that those who in the past might not have been able to participate, now can. But to me it is axiomatic that it does devalue the whole experience and that the achievement is much less than was originally the case. So it is with publishing.

If person A take 10 years of real effort to produce a book to attract the attention of an agent and a publisher, and his two next door neighbours each knock off novels and publish them on Lulu inside 4 weeks, do you really think that people who are told X and Y are also published will see any difference between them? Won't it rather be "X and Y said it's really easy, so why has it taken you so long?" and "There's no need to brag, X and Y have done it."

I'm sorry you feel you are being looked down on, but the simple fact is that self-publishing allows for the illiterate to be published just as easily as the literate, and those of us who think that literacy is actually a prerequisite to writing a book tend not to be overwhelmed at the prospect. It's therefore inevitable that even good self-published books get a little tarred with the same brush of opprobium.

Incidentally, I find it telling that your response to RJM is to complain that

To me it puts a very negative light on self-publishing eBooks, but not for any solid, economic reason

Perhaps because RJM -- along with many others, I'd suggest -- doesn't consider economic reasons to be the most important.

 

[RJM Corbet]

... because I had done something that only a tiny percentage of people in this country have ever managed: I had written a novel. ...

I felt like that too, then I found out that to get published I'd need an agent, so I searched google for 'UK Literary Agents who accept SFF' and was directed to this site, where I discovered a lot of other people who have also written at least one book.

Now I look back at my first efforts (the result of years of work) that I sent to agents and that I was quite satisfied with at the time, and regret sending it out like that BECAUSE, although the criticism around here can be fierce, the people know they're not helping by saying: 'That's fine, yeah, send it off' when they know, often from their own hard experience, that it's not at least to the entry level required by the Great Publishing God. It's not because they're trying to keep me down or bruise my ego.

It is a business, in the end ...

 

[Templar]

Judge (and RJM), I think it was the phrasing that rubbed me up the wrong way, more than anything. I felt it was a little snobbish towards those that are interested in self-publishing, and certainly looked to blame those participating in it for bringing standards down across the board. Just because something has been rejected by a publisher doesn't make it badly written, badly edited or indeed make the writer in any way "illiterate". In the same vein, just because a book has been accepted for publication doesn't mean it is a good book, or that it has a tight storyline, just that the publisher thinks for some reason that they can sell it (perhaps because it has a famous name attached to it). Some fantastic books were rejected by many publishers before being put to print (I'm sure many here would point to the Harry Potter series, personally I'd point out "A confederacy of dunces" as being the perfect - and tragic - example. Everyone here will be able to name a handful of great books that nearly didn't make it). Not all of the rejected books were rush-jobs, and not all the published books were works of art, nurtured for years prior to publication.

I firmly believe that having the ability to self-publish in the way we now have democratises publishing. Those with a slap-dash approach are bound to fail, and those with talent and an eye for detail are very likely to succeed. Why should someone who stands to profit from the process get to say which books readers are allowed to buy? Surely a better way to measure success is not in being able to convince a publisher that you are a safe bet, but in convincing readers to read your work and come back for more.

I have no issues in people criticising my work - indeed the preface to my book includes a link to my blog to allow people to critique it, for without genuine criticism you're never going to improve as a writer - but I do think a reflex response to criticise a whole publishing subculture is unfair. I would be interested in seeing the correlation between a person's views towards Kindle-pubbing and the number of books they have had trad pubbed. I would bet that the majority of the naysayers (as it were) are multi- trad- pubbed authors. I still think the major success is in writing a book in the first place, more than getting a faceless suit to agree to sell it for you.

Incidentally, I see Kindle as a great proving ground that will help a lot more authors to improve their writing by allowing them to make their mistakes under an assumed name. Almost everyone I know who has written multiple books agrees that their second, third or even fourth book was the best, because of what they learned from the previous ones. For the film buffs out there you could liken it to the director Robert Rodriguez, who made his first film (El Mariachi) very cheap, with the intention of selling it to the Spanish home video market. He wanted to use the money to make another film, do the same thing, and after 3 films then break into Hollywood with an amazing "debut" feature, with all his mistakes conveniently forgotten where they would never be found again. People can now do this in Kindle, prove their writing talent and (for the publishing houses) their sales success before being published "properly", and at the same time readers get more books to read, and cheaper to boot.

Anyway, I suspect my forthrightness is rubbing a few people up the wrong way, and that I should probably shut up about now. And get back to writing books 2 and 3 (In which I plan to make good the mistakes of book 1...)

 

[RJM Corbet]

1) ... I firmly believe that having the ability to self-publish in the way we now have democratises publishing. Those with a slap-dash approach are bound to fail, and those with talent and an eye for detail are very likely to succeed ...

2) ... Surely a better way to measure success is not in being able to convince a publisher that you are a safe bet, but in convincing readers to read your work and come back for more ...

3) ... Incidentally, I see Kindle as a great proving ground that will help a lot more authors to improve their writing by allowing them to make their mistakes under an assumed name ...

4) ... Anyway, I suspect my forthrightness is rubbing a few people up the wrong way, and that I should probably shut up about now ...

1) Yes, but it places on the writer the task of selling the book, which may not be the writer's skill, so he 'pays' an agent/publisher to do it all.

2) Absolutely true, but you still have to get your book to the reader, so back to the previous point.

3) I can't afford that. Life's too short. I've worked to long on it. As soon as I e publish, I basically lose the chance of ever getting it printed.

4) No, have your say. This game quickly weeds out anyone with a thin skin ...

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I think point 2 is the most important one above - getting your voice heard above the noise...

 

[Anne Lyle]

I think point 2 is the most important one above - getting your voice heard above the noise...

Quite so. I could, in theory, earn more money through self-publishing - but I would have to do a lot of work to bring my book to the attention of readers, and I just don't have the time right now. As I see it, I'm paying my publishers handsomely to handle editing, cover art, marketing and publicity - I still have to do some of the latter myself, but I'm riding on their coat-tails to a certain extent. By myself, I couldn't make half the splash that Angry Robot are making right now!

One of the main reasons Amanda Hocking accepted a publishing deal was that she was spending so much time promoting her books, she had no time to write. She says she expects to make less money from the commercially published books than if she had self-published them - but you can't sell a book you haven't written.

I admire anyone who can make a success out of self-publishing - but the odds of doing that are about the same as the odds of getting a big fat advance from a big publisher.

 

[j d worthington]

A (perhaps) minor point concerning publishing for money. While this may (or may not) be the reason someone publishes a fiction book, it is much less likely that it is why someone publishes a nonfiction piece... especially shorter pieces. Speaking for myself, my purpose in attempting (and now succeeding) in getting published has nothing to do with money. I never expect to earn a great deal, under the best circumstances, with the sort of thing I write, which is nonfiction (literary scholarship); yet I am very interested in getting published, and pleased as punch when it happens. To find what I have to say, what I have worked so long and hard at honing to the best of my ability, is taken seriously and regarded as being worthwhile to stand in company with some of the best, most thought-provoking people in the field, is much more important to me than earning a paycheck from the writing. I want what I put out there to promote discussion and thoughtful examination on the part of those who read what I write, because I value literature as one of the highest forms of human endeavor.


If I get monetary recompense for that, fine. If I don't, fine. It would be great to be able to make a decent living at this, but the likelihood of that is close to nil, I expect. Yet I keep at it, because a) I love what I do; b) I enjoy sharing these things with others; and c) because, when I see my work sharing space with those whose own work I respect and admire greatly, then I experience a glow of having done my work well, and having earned their recognition. And that addresses the query of why such people wouldn't be out there handing out free books: they wish to earn the recognition and approbation of the best in their field, and this can apply to writers of either nonfiction or fiction.


I may well be in the minority; probably am. But no, money is not the only reason someone publishes. There are many others as well, and they shouldn't be discounted.

 

[Templar]

1) Yes, but it places on the writer the task of selling the book, which may not be the writer's skill, so he 'pays' an agent/publisher to do it all.

2) Absolutely true, but you still have to get your book to the reader, so back to the previous point.

3) I can't afford that. Life's too short. I've worked to long on it. As soon as I e publish, I basically lose the chance of ever getting it printed.

4) No, have your say. This game quickly weeds out anyone with a thin skin ...

Been to the pub, so probably should shut up, but apparently can't...

1) Paying someone to help publicise the book is not the same thing as placing an imagined premium on being picked by a publishing company. If you aren't good at marketing (I'm crap at it) then pay an agent or company to do it for you, either at a percentage or a fixed rate. It's not the same thing at all as becoming "published".

2) There are a dozen ways to get your book to the reader right now, and I refer again to the internet as the proof that a million choices doesn't mean that everything is lost in a quagmire of crap. If the reader can't find you then you simply hire a company to do the heavy lifting for you. Or possibly it means the reader doesn't want to find you (Or that nobody is recommending you, which isn't great).

3) Right now being printed IS worth more than being e-published, as paper outsells ebooks by quite a lot. But when (and I believe it is when) they swap places, will you be quite so concerned then about being hand-picked by a publisher? Or will you publish on the most popular format and hope you hit it big on your own? (And just to be a pedant, that should be "I've worked too long on it". Sorry!)

4) Thanks! I think it is important to have these discussions, and to be frank about everything. I may well be wrong (Though you might find it hard to credit that I'm convinced I'm right!), and the only way to try and divine the future is to discuss it openly with not-entirely-like-minded people.

Other people may place a premium on being able to write, and let the business be done by others, but I guess I'm a bit of a control freak, in that I like to do it all myself if I can. And if I can't, I try to learn it. Trusting other people to do the business for you seems an easy way to get ripped off to me.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

3) I can't afford that. Life's too short. I've worked to long on it. As soon as I e publish, I basically lose the chance of ever getting it printed.

Why do you say that? There are multiple examples of authors who were self-published and subsequently got a publishing contract. It can help get you 'noticed' by the industry.

I don't think e-publishing disqualifies you from getting into print. It is a risk, yes, because if you have had books out there that haven't sold much, then that becomes a sort of red flag to the publisher. They start wondering if your books are simply not what the market wants.

On the other hand, if your book does do reasonably well, then that serves as evidence to publishers that it is a commercially viable product.

 

[Anne Lyle]

Other people may place a premium on being able to write, and let the business be done by others, but I guess I'm a bit of a control freak, in that I like to do it all myself if I can. And if I can't, I try to learn it.

Fair enough - we all have our own needs and ambitions. As long as one goes into it with a clear idea of what the prospects are, that's fine.

Paying someone to help publicise the book is not the same thing as placing an imagined premium on being picked by a publishing company. If you aren't good at marketing (I'm crap at it) then pay an agent or company to do it for you, either at a percentage or a fixed rate. It's not the same thing at all as becoming "published".

And who are you going to find with experience of publicising books, if not a publisher? That's what being published commercially is - finding a company with a track record in successfully printing, distributing and promoting books.

Trusting other people to do the business for you seems an easy way to get ripped off to me.

I don't think any reputable publisher is ripping off its authors - you're paying for years, maybe decades of experience, which does not come cheap in any line of work.

Besides, you're talking about outsourcing your own marketing, which is trusting other people to do part of your business for you. It seems to me that self-published authors are quite likely to be ripped off, because they have to find their own freelance editors, publicists, etc and trust that these people know what they're doing.

At least with a commercial publisher, they are taking all the financial risk up front - if the book fails, they lose money (and I get to keep my advance). If I hire the wrong person for a self-pub project, I lose money.

 

[Templar]

And who are you going to find with experience of publicising books, if not a publisher? That's what being published commercially is - finding a company with a track record in successfully printing, distributing and promoting books.

Big difference between outsourcing to a company to promote your work, and presenting it to a company in the hope of allowing them to publish it for you. The first is hired by you to do a job, the second is betting on you making it big enough to be profitable for them. I'm not trying to do down those who have been hand-picked by companies - well done to you all - I just believe that in the future it will become less of a concern thanks to Kindle (wrestles this thread back on topic).

I don't think any reputable publisher is ripping off its authors - you're paying for years, maybe decades of experience, which does not come cheap in any line of work.

Besides, you're talking about outsourcing your own marketing, which is trusting other people to do part of your business for you. It seems to me that self-published authors are quite likely to be ripped off, because they have to find their own freelance editors, publicists, etc and trust that these people know what they're doing.

At least with a commercial publisher, they are taking all the financial risk up front - if the book fails, they lose money (and I get to keep my advance). If I hire the wrong person for a self-pub project, I lose money.

I'm not suggesting that publishing companies are ripping people off at all, just that the attitude that "I write, others do the business" is one that leaves you open for being ripped off on the business side of life. There are numerous stories of it happening in a great many artistic areas, not least the music business (I once made a TV show called "Who got the Bay City Rollers' Millions", in which the same thing happened to them).

I personally am not looking to outsource my own marketing, but mention it as a suggestion for those who say it will be impossible to find an audience without a publisher. As for the freelance editors, artists etc, well we'll end up hiring the same people that the publishers hire (and they do mainly hire in people, as in-house staff are too expensive these days), just paying once for it.

There may be a bigger financial risk in paying a few hundred dollars to improve your work with professional editing (Erm, something most people do before they send it in to a publisher anyway?) and a cover, but the vast majority of people will never get published "properly" anyway, so all their time writing the book will be wasted. After a year of writing a book I'd much rather put it out there and get it seen (and yes, make a few quid from it) than leave it to languish in a drawer for eternity. Actually, I'd personally get it out there and take my chances than have it spend years in slush piles and never actually get read.

Right now I will agree that the smart option is to try and get published "properly", because pBooks outsell eBooks by so much. But in the not-too-distant future that will change, and when it does it will, in my opinion, help writers reach their audience without the constraint of having to go through a publishing company. It will allow writers to control many more aspects of their work than they can right now, and will bring a whole new range of choice to the reader. I'm trying to get in there early, and yes, it will be harming my chances of getting published "properly", but I really don't mind. I think it is a more valuable 2 years spent learning the ins and outs of self-publishing than writing endless submission letters in the hope that one day I'll be able to call myself a "proper" author.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Just a couple of points. First Amazon reported a little while ago that they are selling 242 (I think) ebooks for every pbook.

Second epublishing may either help or hinder an author's chance of later becoming trad published or picked up by an agent. Certainly the book that was epublished almost certainly won't be trad published (though there are exceptions to even this rule of thumb), but if your epublished book sells well then you have a track history to take to an agent if that's your wish. If it does badly, then you're probably screwed.

Incidentally there are stories out there of epublished authors turning down publishers and agents to make more money through their own efforts, or to retain greater control of their work.

Cheers.

 

[Anne Lyle]

I'm not trying to do down those who have been hand-picked by companies - well done to you all - I just believe that in the future it will become less of a concern thanks to Kindle (wrestles this thread back on topic).

(snip)

I think it is a more valuable 2 years spent learning the ins and outs of self-publishing than writing endless submission letters in the hope that one day I'll be able to call myself a "proper" author.

Maybe I'm biased, in that it took me a handful of submissions and a grand total of five months to get a book deal (which included two months of rewrites). Frankly, if it had taken me two years, it would have meant I was doing something wrong!

I also don't think you can draw direct parallels between books and music. Musicians can perform live as well as make recordings, and are starting to fall back on performance for their earnings to replace CD/MP3 sales. Writers don't have that, because readers don't generally want to pay money to hear them recite their work or whatever (there are exceptions, but they're few and far between).

And whilst band managers have a long and inglorious history of ripping off bands - probably because huge sums of cash are so often involved - this very rarely happens to writers. Vanity presses like PublishAmerica aside, I'd like to hear a genuine story (preferably from the past thirty years) where an author signed a bad contract with a major publisher and lost all their money.