Zoe Winters did a great post today about how this new world of indie publishing seems like a gold rush, and some people are treating indie publishing as a gold rush that will pan out, but it’s not.
This is a change in an industry that normally moves very slowly. Sure, things are moving quickly now (for publishing), and some companies will not survive and new ones will grow into the picture, but reading and writing and selling writing will not vanish from the planet.
So I agree with Zoe. Slow down and do what’s right for you. Get out of the “I’m in a hurry” mode. The readers will still be there if you write the good books. And I agree with her last statement about not giving your stuff away, but you all know that.
Worth the read.
http://zoewinters.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/slow-down-the-tortoise-won/
Worth reading, thanks for the link, Dean. Good reminder for me to go into e-publishing and self-publishing with a plan. I do have to chuckle at the writers who complain about their daily sales results; take the long view on sales and just write the next story.
Hmmm, interesting. I have been reading all of your posts and most of the links like this one but have refrained from reading the comments-mostly- and from commenting myself. Both takes too much time from my writing and I’m behind on all my writing. But the article on the other side of this link made me go “Oh”. I had no thought or desire to give away my ebooks, if I go that way, or sell them for as low as Ninety-Nine cents. I might give away a couple of stories since I’ve done that already on my blog, but not a whole novel. I don’t think I’ve heard of that being encouraged but it would not be something I would go for. Hmm, come to think of it I might I have heard of something like that discussed on a certain writing site but I didn’t pay that much attention to it.
But this is something for me to be on the look out for. I’ve never thought of epublishing as a “gold rush” type of thing but I can see how some writers would feel that way and get trapped in that thinking.
Even before reading this post I thought the same as what Dean said about readers will be out there waiting for good books. And I just happen to have three I’m working on. And I won’t hurry them just to try to find some gold in thar them hills when I’m or the books aren’t ready.
And I add my thanks for this link and the previous series, wonder when you find the time to find them all but glad you do.
I think there is definitely that feeling of “oh my god I’m missing it!” going on out there in some areas. But people aren’t going to suddenly stop reading, a year from now. I really like the tone you set, Dean, in many of your posts – to take the long view, to look not at this book, this year, but to keep an eye on the “where do I want to be in ten years, or twenty, and how do move in that direction right now?” angle.
Thanks, Kevin. I do think the long term is the only sane view. Not being in a hurry and just learning slowly and working toward long-term goals is the best solution. And keeping up with the changes, but not worrying them too much.
While I agree that the long view is the way to go for a long career, and that you shouldn’t worry about online presence/market/mindshare landgrabbing, am I the only one seeing people mistaking slow career building for slow writing?
(or rather, the other way around)
Holy crap! Great minds do think alike. I wrote a similar blog post this afternoon recommending writers take a long view and develop something like a 5 year business plan in which they grow their name and product like a garden.
I wouldn’t expect to be able to feed myself in the next year on my writing…but 5 years down the road? Maybe, because by then I might have grown an audience and following.
I’ve run businesses and run them through bankruptcies. Most bankruptcies happen because a business was not heavily capitalized enough to avoid bad times or the officers did stupid, often criminal, things. An author’s capital is comprised of two things – his work and his audience.
You have to grow both and that takes time.
I’m in, as Robert Chase once wrote for Analog Magazine “The Long Stern Chase”. I may not be fast, I may not be prolific, but I have the endurance to persevere.
G.W. said (or quoted), “I may not be fast, I may not be prolific, but I have the endurance to persevere.” Spot on the money. Spot on. Too bad many indie publishers don’t take that approach.
Yeah, I’ve read a number of blog posts over the last few days advocating the “gold rush” mentality. I was tempted to get all hyped the way those folks seem to be, but my rational mind stepped in and stopped me. The Gold Rush was a rush, of limited duration, because there was a limited amount of product, namely gold, to be had. In this case, the product is the whatever an author’s imagination can create. That is, at least theoretically, unlimited.
Those who advocate the Gold Rush seem to be, from what I’ve seen, expecting the other shoe to drop, where Amazon et al decide to lock indy writers out of kindle and the rest. Since the corporations will inevitably screw us all, we’d better get in while we can…or that seems to be the suspicion. Maybe it’s my MBA talking, but I highly doubt that will happen any time soon, if ever. What would it profit these ebook sellers to do such a thing?
If indies won’t get locked out, then what’s the rush? It’s not like folks will suddenly stop reading or something. Methinks the future is bright, for a while.
Folks need to calm down and generate an actual business plan. Project out their desired cash flow. Determine how much they need to produce each year to get that cash flow 5 or 10 years from now, and then get to it. Myself, I’m looking ahead 6 years, to when I can retire from the Navy. The ideal would be to retire and not work for anyone else but me again. We’ll see how it works out. And if I end up continuing to enjoy writing enough to stick it out long term. Maybe I’ll decide after a couple years that I’ve accomplished the goals I wanted to and move on to something else. We’ll see.
G.W., you got the initials right, but “The Long Stern Chase” was by Rick Cook (if you mean the science fact article circa ’86). I only remember that because Rick and I were working on a couple of things together about that time that came out.
But you’re right, of course. Or as Asimov put it in a bog-awful Feghoot: Sloane’s Teddy wins the race.
Alastrair, Asimov never wrote a Feghoot that was actually a Feghoot. The author of almost all Feghoot stories starring Ferdenand Feghoot was a friend of mine named Reginald Bretnor who wrote under a bunch of names and made his living writing fiction for a very long time. The first Feghoot came out back in the early 1950s in F&SF and they ran there for a long time. He wrote them occasionally up to his death, sometimes publishing them in F&SF‘s sister magazine Venture and later in Asimov’s as well as F&SF. At Pulphouse I did the entire collection of all his Feghoots but he only saw a proof before his sudden death. The term “Feghoot” for a time came to mean bad pun story. But actually Reg has the copyright to Feghoots and the character and even trademarked the name Feghoot for a time.
Reg was a very nice and true gentleman and I was lucky to know him and spend many wonderful hours with him learning about the business and how to be a freelancer.
Weirdly enough, a number of years earlier when I was writing a column for Orson Scott Card’s magazine about the new writers of the year, I saw a new author in F&SF and called Ed (Edward Ferman). He laughed and said that was just another of Reg’s many pen names and wasn’t a new writer at all. I met Reg two years later.
Sorry, my bad for calling it a Feghoot. You’re right of course, and I went and did just what I was complaining GW had done.
My older sister discovered F&SF before I discovered Analog back in the mid-60s, and I remember reading a few real “Through Time & Space With Ferdinand Feghoot” stories when they first appeared. Great fun, they were usually the first thing I went to. Well, after the Gahan Wilson cartoon.
I should have known better. Boy do I feel stupid.