Michael Stackpole is out on the front edge of the new sides of this business and has been for a few years, talking logic and basic common sense. And he’s not only trying to wake up writers to the coming changes, but publishers as well.
His new blog is very well reasoned and if you haven’t been following him, you should be. Read the blog here and see if I’m not right. And if nothing else, start learning about this new world coming in publishing.
By the way, I’ve been buried in book deadlines (a good thing) and will have a new Sacred Cows post in a day or so. Also, sometime this month I will start posting here some fiction content as I get a few things set up. Stay tuned.
Hi Dean,
Wow, thanks for the pointer. That is a great post by Mike. (As usual, but still . . .) It is scary how what is so self-evident to one person can be so totally overlooked by another. Speaking of Mike being cutting edge, he is also running chainstory.stormwolf.com with the idea of using ePublishing and free sampling to up traditional *and* electronic sales. It’s a very cool idea.
Deborah
(Full disclosure here: that was *also* a shameless plug, as story #7 out of the 8 is mine.
So if you don’t want to post an ad, I totally understand! No worries.)
No problem with a shameless plug on that, Deborah. I’m going to have a story in the chain as well as soon as I can get past these novel deadlines. (grin)
Mike is doing some great stuff. He’s on a major list of bestsellers, many around for decades, and I think he is pretty much leading all of us into this new future with just simple logical posts like this one.
Glad to here you have a story coming up in the chain, Dean. I was wondering about that since Mike said that they had sent out invites to several pros. Definitely looking forward to it.
Thanks, re: post. Re your story: COOL! I always look forward to seeing just who is going to show up next, so I’ll keep an eye out for your story.
D.
I’ve been reading him since his first BattleTech novel – Stackpole writes some great books.
It seems that this technology provides an opportunity for an author to cut out publishing houses entirely, or at least initially in an author’s career.
That would be a great opportunity for new writers, and I can see why publishers would want to play dumb about their changing market.
One major point of difference between this and the Napster phenomenon a decade ago: .mp3′s have to be played on .mp3 players, and the consumer’s experience is rather passive. You can drift into and out of awareness of a song playing very easily. Books, on the other hand, contain software that plays in your head. You either engage with the material or you do not experience in it, speech synthesizers notwithstanding.
At this point in history, I discourage writers as much as I can on going epub before giving New York and major markets a try first.
Lots of reasons for this, and I do mean a lot. First off, as I have said a hundred times in these chapters, writers are the worst judges of their own work. Putting up a poorly written piece of junk is not how to attract long-term audiences. Major editors are trained and paid to find the quality in the rough.
Blunt point here that I haven’t said this bluntly before: If you are mailing your work a lot to New York and major editors, (and I don’t mean one story or one novel, but more than fifty short stories in the mail and six or seven novels) and keeping at it and no one is buying, it means your story or craft skills are not up to snuff. You are doing something wrong somewhere, either in your pitches, your craft, your openings, something. Take responsibility that you are the problem and figure out what it is and fix it. Don’t look for a short cut around those “evil big publishers.”
New York and major publishers are still how to get your work to a larger audience right off. Sure, writers can make more money per sale doing it on our own, but New York publishers can get your work to thousands, if not millions of readers.
This thinking that new writers can build an audience in epub before going to major publishers is coming close to myth status already. It worries me I might need a chapter on it.
My suggestion on epub at the moment is this, put bluntly.
1) Try every story or novel you write first with major publishers. (A bunch of them over a number of years.)
2) Put up your back list on epub self-pub, meaning stories already sold and published (after your contract allows). (I am starting to do that now on Kindle, Smashwords, Scribd.)
3) Watch for paying electronic markets, good new ones popping up all the time.
4) Maybe run content on your own web site, but caution, it is considered being published if you run the entire thing. My Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing will have already been published if I go to send it out to nonfiction markets and I will have to explain that and it might stop a sale.
Sigh, I’ve been trying to warn people off of this path now for almost a year. This is how a myth is born, I’ve watched it dozens of times in thirty years. For new writers, self-publishing first before trying major markets is not a magic bullet or a short cut. But it can hurt you. At least in 2010. And 2011. We shall see after that if this hits full myth status or reality creeps in to make it partially true or completely false. Jury way out on this one.
But let me tell you the signs in general of a myth.
1) Seems easy.
2) Seems too good to be true
3) Feels like a short cut
4) Cuts down on time and work for early writers
5) Makes people angry when you tell them it’s not true.
Notice how all that applies to just about every myth I have talked about so far in the book?
Ah, crap, I have to do this as a chapter in the book. No doubt in my mind, now that I have written this.
You folks will see parts of this again shortly. (grin)
Another sign of a myth in progress is the claim that big evil publishers (or big oil, or Wall Street, or the government) “don’t want you to know this secret.” I find it helpful, whenever someone talks about something “they” don’t want us to know, to put my hand over my wallet and back away.
Yeah, that is a sign, and I have heard that from new writers, but never from anyone actually working in New York.
What about, hypothetically, a newb writer who happens to be rather prolific doing both? Ie putting up work (separate, unrelated to the other stuff, possibly under another name) as e-books at the same time as submitting (stuff completely unrelated to the ebooks) to NY publishers?
How would this hypothetical writer decide which story went one way and which would be buried online? My gut sense is that because the big money and big exposure is with major publishers for the near future, giving work a chance to be “discovered” by major publishers who can pay major money is the logical first step. If no one bites after a year or more, then bring it back to epub routes while keeping it out at the same time. Getting in a hurry in publishing is always a road to disaster.
Again, math on this. I’ll be back on this part soon, but the math makes it clear.
I was thinking more things that might be of a length most NY publishers aren’t interested in, or something more experimental in form or content. (there are things you can do with ebooks, especially on websites and now with better technology like the iPad that wouldn’t work in print, for example). It was more me musing about how to exploit all markets rather than trying to use e-books to jump the line or hurry things up so to speak
I suppose there are always reasons. How many mainstream publishers can you imagine wanting Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing? Seems like no one would, but I’m going to go find out once I have the thing written. But since the only reason it is getting written is online, I’m starting that way. Will it hurt my chances? Or will the content hurt it? Not a clue. Guess I’ll find out when I finally get the thing wrapped enough to market it.
I think this definitely needs to be addressed. I get the impression that Joe Konrath is a huge proponent of skipping New York for the most part and going straight to epub. The fact that he talks a lot of sense makes this even more attractive to those of us who remain unpublished.
I admit, it’s tempting no matter how you look at it; what makes matters worse for those of us like me, we are constantly inundated with stories of people who have never published with someone before suddenly making lots of money via Kindle and epub.
As for myself, I think your blog posts have done a great job of grounding me firmly in reality – I’m not going to take the epub route at all until my writing is sufficient enough to make a sale through traditional means.
I do worry about judging my craft though – I’m looking forward to the forthcoming workshops to refine that aspect!
Thanks, Alexander. What’s interesting about Konrath posts is that people tend to skip the parts he writes about on his sales and stuff through New York, his bestselling novels published through New York, and just pay attention to his activities online. And notice New York turned his latest book down, which is why he went this way with the series. And also, he’s publishing not only online, but through Amazon’s new regular publishing programs, which is just another publishing company jumping into the major publisher’s fight.
Readers reading Konrath’s blogs and updates seem to skip all that.
Joe Konrath has always — at least up to a month or so ago, and I don’t think it has really changed — recommended going the traditional route first. He knows that most newbies early work is (in Harlan Ellison’s words) crap, and self-pubbing crap doesn’t do anyone any favors, least of all the author.
I think he would be among the first to say that if you do decide to go the self-epub route instead of traditional publishing, make sure you get your work vetted by someone who will perform the same roles as an editor and copy-editor, and get professional-level assistance in doing the layout/conversion and cover. (If you’re epubbing a back list, then the editing has already been done.)
Dean’s right, a lot of people reading and commenting on Konrath’s blog are missing the details, thus creating a myth.
Oh, and as for stories of newbies making small (actually quite small) fortunes via Kindle or epub — sure, it happens. People also win lotteries. Do you hear about the losers, or the winners? (Not that doing well on Kindle is luck the way that winning a lottery is, you have to have skill, but that the reporting is filtered in a similar way.)
LOL, Alastair.
In Connecticut, for a long time the motto for the state lottery (it might still be this; I don’t remember) was “You can’t win if you don’t play.”
More than a decade ago, I was working at a nuclear power plant and a group of us old Navy folk were discussing the lottery, and one guy was adamant that playing a lottery was a complete waste of time and money.
Someone else in the group said, “Oh, Shipmate!” (Shipmate is a corny term they make you use in Navy boot camp to build a team environment, and then the entire fleet uses it as either a corny joke or an insult thereafter.) “Shipmate! You can’t win if you don’t play!”
And this guy replied, “Yes, but I can’t LOSE, either,” and smiled. The conversation was over. Best closer to a conversation I’ve ever heard.
Of course semantically, the idea of “playing” a lottery is a bit silly. Playing something implies a game or sport of some kind, that requires some skill or talent to participate in. A lottery requires nothing but a good guess or buying the right ticket. And you don’t even have to make the guesses now; the machines will do that for you with their “Quick Pick” options.
And that’s why while we hear about the winners of lotteries, most of them end up broke within a few years. My wife used to know a guy who won the Powerball lottery around 1995. He took the annuity option, which netted him about $820,000 per year for twenty years. Within five years he was married, divorced, and bankrupt. Too common a story, unfortunately. And that’s because lotteries are designed to accomplish the same goal as a casino: to make the proprietors rich, not the customers. (I still buy a ticket now and then, so I’m not condescending anyone.)
But the idea of a lottery strikes me a little bit like the idea of self-pubbing when New York becomes too hard. One of those “too good to be true” scenarios. Much better to learn how to become a successful entrepreneur than to just be handed millions of dollars. Good way to disaster.
Another ridiculously verbose digression. I’m always good for one of those.
I have played a lottery exactly four times in my entire life. Why would a person like me who does not believe that any game should be played unless the odds favor me, even slightly, play a lottery? Because in those four instances, the lottery jackpot had grown to the point that the odds were better than the payout. If you don’t understand odds and payouts, stay out of casinos. They build those big buildings on people like you.
For example, if the odds of winning a lottery are 1 in 9 million, and your payout, after taxes, is 3 million, it’s a bad bet. But if your payout after taxes is 10 million, then the lottery is laying you decent odds and you should play a buck or two. It’s still 1 in 9 million shot at winning, but at least your payout is correct for the risk you are taking and thus a decent bet.
Just taking Jeremy’s off-topic post and moving it even father off topic. (grin)
Okay, since we’re talking about the lottery, I have to trot out the only lottery story I have and that I always tell when the subject comes up. Because, hey, let’s go even further off topic. Here goes:
I have beaten the odds. I have won every time I’ve played the lottery. Which is all of twice. On my twenty second birthday. I lived in a small town in upstate New York and my roommate and I were totally broke. We went to a convenience store with our last twenty dollars (I don’t remember why it was a conveince store, I think maybe we worked late and that was all that was open but I’m not sure). Since it was my birthday he said I should take my last two dollars and buy one of the scratcher tickets. I thought it was a waste of time but gave in (there’s really only so much Ramen and candy bars one person can eat).
I scratched off the first one and won two dollars. We chuckled and I gave the scratch off ticket to the clerk and he said I could get another scratcher if I wanted. I said sure. I scratched off the second one and won twenty freakin’ dollars. I know it sounds stupid but I was totally floored. I was so happy. We’d doubled our grocery money off the stupid little scratchers. My roommate wanted me to keep playing but I decided to quit while I was ahead. I was so broke at that point in my life, this was actually a pretty good birthday. Weird, huh?
Now, if anyone else tries to get me to play, I say no. I don’t want to ruin my perfect record.
Yes, sorry about that. It’s way off-topic. Again, I’m stricken with the terrible affliction of digression-itis.
You make good points though, Dean. But I just wanted to illustrate that if it seems too easy, it usually is. I could easily write some crappy stories and self-pub them, and then I could spend the rest of my life telling people I’m a “published” author. Of course, I could do that now, since I have a blog, and I’ve published a few short pieces in my old community college literary magazine.
But there are two problems with that. First, none of that really counts for me. Unless I’m published by New York, it’s sort of like trying out for an NFL team and not making the team. Sure, you can call yourself a professional football player, but you’re really not. (No offense to anyone who’s tried out for a professional sports team and not made the cut; you’re far more athletically gifted, or were, than I ever was.)
Secondly, I think that if I did that, it insults authors who have been published by New York. I don’t lump myself in with anyone like that, because I’ve not graduated, so to speak, and I’m pretty humble. Even after publishing several novels, I probably still will be one of those people that says, “Oh well, that’s certainly nice, but I’m really just writing stories. I’m not nearly as good as X and Y over there.”
I like keeping my ego in check. It’s a very healthy thing. As Kris wrote though, we can’t keep it so far in check that we feel like a failure and quit.