Mark Coker, in an interview on NINC said the following thing when asked about self publishing or vanity publishing:
“The height of vanity, in my opinion, is perpetrated by authors who refuse to publish their works unless those works are blessed and published by a traditional commercial publisher. These folks should really ask themselves why a publisher’s validation is so important to them. Isn’t a reader’s validation more important?
Readers typically don’t pay attention to the name of the publisher on the spine of the book. They pay attention to the author and the story.”
I agree with that completely and wish I had said it that way. Wow, perfect and right on the money.
Interesting interview and worth the read.
Thanks for pointing that interview out, Dean.
I’ll admit when I first read your note, even before following the link, my initial thought was, HUH???? Since when does Dean knock New York. He always says start at the top, go there first, etc., etc.
But then it dawned on me what you’re really saying.
At least I hope I got the point right. Magic Bakery and all that. As long as money flows to the writer, the writer should pursue *all* avenues, not just NYC.
*grin* At least it seemed to me that’s why you posted it.
Deborah, that’s exactly right!! And with this new world, writers have vast freedoms.
I am a long ways from supporting only New York traditional publishing. I have written two books this year so far and NONE of them have been for traditional New York publishers. Working on a third also not New York at the moment. Huge world, folks. Open your eyes and enjoy the wonderful freedom.
Dean, I’m going to be honest and admit that I’m one of those who has come to crave the validation of the “powers” in traditional publishing. I’ve avoided vanity and self-publishing for years, precisely because these methods were not “real” in the eyes of the establishment, and I didn’t want to be one of those (too typical) writers who dumped thousands into a vanity book that was not quality enough to pass muster in New York City.
This new era of do-it-yourself e-publishing has me somewhat spinning in circles, because all of a sudden a lot of people — mainly the midlist, but not always — are rushing to commit the “sin” of self-publishing in electronic format, and whatever stigma used to be attached to that seems to be eroding.
Next month I will be starting a serial project on my blog and web site — I am stealing the idea that you and Kris have been using — as an experiment in self e-publishing. This comes after my novelettes in WOTF and Analog are out, so I can claim just a smidgen of “establishment” cred.
Depending on how that works out, I might devote some time each year — some, not all — working on a web serial or other ‘vanity’ electronic publishing project — probably something I’ve had simmering for a long time and which might not find an easy home in New York, such as cross-genre stuff.
Still, this makes me very nervous because my instincts are to look down my own nose at my own ‘vanity’ project(s) and conclude that I am trying to take a shortcut when I should be doing the hard chore of doing everything possible to send it through New York first.
Kris says not to give up and e-publish without trying more traditional roads first. What’s your opinion?
Brad, to be blunt, the problem is in your own head. Electronic publishing and even paper publishing is spreading out. Why? Partially because New York publishing has caused this issue with the agent problem, partially because the technology has allowed it to happen suddenly.
Over the next few years you are going to hear both sides of this in screaming fashion. One side will be the writers, editors and agents who want to hold the old system in place with all their might. The other side will be the writers and start-up publishers in innovators such as the man who invented Smashwords who are shouting on the other side.
My opinion: The road is whatever the writer wants to walk. The key is not let anyone, including me, tell you what the right way to walk for you is.
Kris’s wonderful article said nothing about not e-publishing, she just didn’t want beginning writers “giving up” and not learning their craft and going to simple online publishing because it is easier than breaking into traditional publishing. She believes that the fight into traditional publishing is a schooling of craft and ability and business. I mostly agree, but to be honest, I don’t think it’s going to matter in the long run. The writers who don’t learn their craft, think their crap doesn’t stink, and put it up online with no business sense will make no sales and the crap will sink. Good writing will rise to the top just as it does in a slush pile. Readers will find good writing and push it and will ignore stuff that doesn’t work. So those writers who have decided they don’t need to learn and are too good for traditional publishing will fade away, just the same as the writers who make it into New York traditional publishing and can’t handle the business and the agent stuff. They also fade away.
After 30 years in this business, one thing I do know for sure is that the business cleans itself nicely of the crap and the writers who can’t make the grade. It will be no different in electronic and print self-publishing.
And I love the stupidity of the people who think that because something horrid and poorly written is published by some poor beginning writer online, it’s going to hurt them. Wow, talk about ego.
So, the answer in short is do what you want and get the problem out of your head. You have issues like that and you’re going to make decisions based on what others think, not on what’s best for you and your writing.
Thanks for the shout out, Dean! I’m honored.
Mark
More than welcome, Mark. It was a great interview. Keep doing the great work. Kris and I have under WMG Publishing about sixty stories and books and novels up with you. Great fun.
Dean,
The question for the aspiring writer under this new system then becomes “how do I know when my work is at a professional level of quality?” As you have said in your other posts, writers are the worst judge of their own work. What we think is good may be crap, and what we think is crap may be good. Under the old system, our course of action was really mindless: we slap it in the mail and let the editors decide. We know when we “graduate” from the schooling Kris was talking about because graduation is defined by our work being accepted in New York. There is an independant validation before the work is published.
When we self-publish, the validation (in the form of sales) doesn’t come until after we publish. And if what we thought was great turns out to be crap, it is exposed to the world with our name attached. A reader who picks it up will think “Hey, this author is horrible. I’m not going to read anything else by him or her ever again.” And we thus lose potential readers for our good books down the line when we have better learned our craft.
Of course you can’t turn away too many readers, because you could only turn off people who actually read it, and if it’s crap no one will.
The problem would then shift to when you put out a second book that is great. It could rise to the top, readers love it, and think to themselves “I love this author, let me search for his or her other books.” And then they find your first crappy book, think your other one must have been a fluke, and vow to never read you again.
So is the way around this to put a book out, see if it sinks or swims, and if it sinks take it down before you put the next one out? Or release your books under a different name until one swims? Or just have faith that readers will forgive the crappy books you were cutting your teeth on?
Andrew and everyone along this line. The question: How do I know if a story I wrote is good enough to do me any good if I publish it?
Answer: You don’t.
But there are clear indicators that will function for a long time.
You are fine when book editors start giving you personal rejections regularly, when you have sold some short fiction to good markets meaning Queen or Asimovs or Analog or major mainstream markets. Then your overall writing is up to craft quality and from there it is just story by story opinion and you can’t hurt yourself with crap writing. A reader might not like the story, but they won’t look at the writing and ignore you forever because you are a beginner.
But if you get just form rejections from short fiction editors, have never gotten a personal rejection from a book editor, and have only written in your entire life less than 500,000 words total, I’d say stay away from self publishing. You are not ready.
Again, you can’t tell with your own work, but editors can tell and if your craft is up to professional publishing standards, you’ll be getting personal rejections from traditional editors and selling to short fiction editors. It really is a simple test.
The next question this morning is this: How much will a bad book hurt me published online?
If your writing quality is clearly professional, none. All readers know we like some books and don’t like others. A well-written book won’t hurt you even if it isn’t the taste of the reader.
A beginning level craft book, meaning someone who doesn’t understand a passive verb if it bit them, someone who can’t like pretty sentences into a story, someone who thinks sentences are more important than story telling, someone who can’t spell or use a comma correctly or in voice, someone who hasn’t written enough words yet of practice to clear out all the garbage. Readers spot those writers instantly. Again, we are not stupid, and those books can hurt you. Especially if a reader bought it.
So you, the writer, think “I’ve finished my masterpiece and I hate the idea of New York, so I’m going to publish it. Here is the example I use.
Take one violin lesson and then walk onto a stage with 30,000 people in the audience and play a concert. Would you do that????
If you would, put up that very first masterpiece. But if you wouldn’t take one lesson and then play a concert, you might want to write more words before stepping out onto the stage.
In the past editors have played the stage hand or director roll, keeping you off the stage until you were ready. But now with electronic, the stage is open to walk out onto. But you drive that audience away by trying to do a concert with your violin after one practice session and guess what, they won’t come back. And your first novel is only one practice session. Sorry, it might have seemed harder, but it was only a practice session.
I’m looking at putting up my first PUBLISHED novel and having second thoughts, because over a hundred novels later and hundreds of short stories later, that first novel looks pretty lame and beginner level. AND THAT WAS MY 4TH NOVEL WRITTEN and I had also written about 250 short stories to that point.
The choice is yours, folks. But I for one don’t want to listen to your concert after one lesson. That million words of craft work first isn’t really a myth. It’s a guideline and until you’ve reached it and have proven yourself along some traditional lines, caution.
Of course, no one will listen to me on this one, but shrug. The nice thing about electronic format, I don’t have to read the crap any more than I had to read it as an editor. I just glance and move on. You can play all the concerts you want to empty chairs. But you put enough crap across that stage, no one will come back when you can finally do it well.
Terrific interview, thanks for pointing it out. I’m thrilled with the opportunities coming for writers. At no other time in history have we had the chance to get our work out to readers in so many different ways. I admit I had the stigma of “vanity” publishing in my head for quite a while but now I believe if it’s good, a book will find a market. If not book A, then book B, C, D and so on. I also choose to think it’s not an either/or situation, it’s both. I want to pursue print AND ebook publishing on my own. I want to sell to NY and to the smaller presses. I want to write enough that I can take advantage of all the options.
I’m so excited to be a writer right now and to think it’s really just starting. When ereaders get to even 25% of the market, things will explode. I always envisioned bookstores where you could go in and buy the book your way: POD in an hour (a la the old photomat – that’s showing my age!), beamed to your ereader, on a disk, as an MP3, whatever. Choice is the future and it’s bright for all of us. Bring it on!
Rebecca, I’m with you on that one. I think this future is fantastic and wonderful for writers!! Wow, have we gotten lucky with this new technology hitting now, as New York with its agent silliness is shotting itself in both feet.
Dean, as always, thanks for giving me some things to think about.
If I understand the core of your point, it’s that a professional writer has to have the confidence to chart his or her own course. For those writers who have done the hard task of putting in the so-called “million words” of craft-building — in order to reach basic competency — there are many options now.
As noted earlier, I’m going to put my effort into several avenues at once: self e-publish (serial novel), traditional NYC novel houses (3 books a year), and of course the usual pro short markets (at least 12 stories a year.) To include non-SF, non-Fantasy markets, as it’s screamingly apparent — based on what you and Kris have said, and the deals going on out in the world — that there is a ton of money to be made if a writer can write about things other than spaceships and dragons. (grin)
I will be interested to see, if after 5 successful years of working all these “lanes” and meeting all my production goals, what things begin to yield the most dividends? That will be a fascinating experiment. I should also be a much better writer, too.
All sounds good, Brad, and you have the writing chops to pull it off. Fire on.
I’ve been debating this issue for over a year now. My techie side believes in the power of “crowd wisdom” but my business side believes I should wait for the best deal given a reasonable time horizon.
Right now, as an unpublished writer, I’m thinking I should put my novel out to the various publishers and at the end of some time period (not sure what that should be just yet and I’m not to that point) decide to go the Smashwords route.
One thing I must keep in mind is that I have to be able to determine the level of my writing and not damage my brand with a crappy novel. I would consider the Smashwords route with my third and fourth novels, but not my first two which I now look upon as learning exercises.
However, if I couldn’t find a publisher, I think I would go to Smashwords, because the book might not be good enough or the right marketable concept for a publishing house to invest in my product (because that’s what they’re doing… and hoping for a good ROI), but it would be enough for me to invest my time into completing the last few steps to put my product out under my name.
Anyway, this is where I’m at with this problem, *today*. I’m sure I’ll change my mind on it next week as new information becomes available. Which it will. Because it has been.
Thomas, you said…”Right now, as an unpublished writer, I’m thinking I should put my novel out to the various publishers and at the end of some time period (not sure what that should be just yet and I’m not to that point) decide to go the Smashwords route.”
You got it in my opinion.
Write a book, mail a submission package (query letter,three chapters,synopsis) to New York editors, and while out, write the next book. You can do five to ten editors at a time with a book. So say after twenty or twenty-five rejections, look at the book again. By then you will have written the next book or even two more and have more practice and understanding of novel form. Do the same for those books, and keep writing.
At some point you’ll start getting personal rejections and maybe sell a novel to New York and you will know your craft level is up to snuff and you can self publish safely with the hope of getting readers and building an audience.
So I agree with your thinking, give a book twenty or so rejections first and keep writing new books, then look at the book to see if it’s worth putting up or not. If you still like it, put it up.
Fantastic quote from Coker.
Considering I believe digital publishing, self publishing and traditional print publishing can work together to the benefit of all, and considering I self-publish as well as have a print contract, I generally try to not take sides in this whole argument.
I don’t want to take sides in this situation, especially when I see the benefits of all sides. But more and more I’m running across folks online who want to pigeonhole everyone into “this” camp or “that” camp. Geez, it’s almost like U.S. politics.
Ty, for that reason, I haven’t been out pushing all this like Stackpole and Konrath and others. I believe the best place for writers is to use it all. Don’t be afraid of the new technology, but don’t be afraid of New York and traditional publishing routes either. Down the middle brings in the most money and the most audience and the readers are what it is all about.
Good question, Andrew. That’s been the other part of my internal debate.
And thanks Dean for the answer to Andrew’s question and the guidelines (not rules!) on when an aspiring novelist is ready. That helps me organize this mess in my brain.