Kris did a great post this week, a long one, about how so many writers think in such a small fashion.
It has been a topic here at times as well. And why I think it is so damned funny that people watch numbers every day.
I would suggest every writer read her article. It’s a great one this week.
Then start thinking long term.
http://kriswrites.com/2012/09/26/the-business-rusch-watching-the-numbers/
Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith published traditionally more than one hundred popular novels and well over two hundred short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he co-wrote The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom. He writes under many pen names and ghosts for a number of top bestselling writers.
Dean wrote books and comics for all three major comic book companies, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, and wrote scripts for Hollywood. One movie actually saw film.
Dean also worked as an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books. He now plays a role as an executive editor for Fiction River.
WMG Publishing Inc. is now my major publisher of all my coming novels, collections, and short stories.
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Going to read in a second. And I’m pretty sure you don’t want to start another checking numbers discussion, but I would like to put forth two reasons for taking just a few minutes out of the day to check at least the best sellers on your primary distribution channels.
(1) Glitches in reporting can otherwise go undetected, at least into the next billing cycle. This month BN wasn’t rolling numbers over into MTD for 3 days. Probably a lot of writers who don’t pay attention to their numbers benefitted from the vocal few who check their numbers often enough to spot the glitch and sent a “WTF BN?” email to support. I don’t want to leave it to someone else spotting errors in their numbers for my numbers to be correct.
(2) You write erotica and paying attention to your sales # or rankings lets you know when the distributor is being “underhanded” for lack of a better term. In September, several best selling erotic romance writers had BN dock their rankings to keep their titles off the overall top sales list. BN admitted to having done so, apologized and reversed it (i.e. that a human responsible for applying BN policy to the top sales list manually made the books disappear from that list by negatively impacting the books’ ranking). I’m sure everyone can guess at the effect of being intentionally excluded from top lists. This resulted in the loss of thousands of dollars per writer over the week or so the books were being erroneously penalized for their content.
What writers most definitely shouldn’t do is obsess over the numbers or any other matter (I’m looking at you incomprehensible one-star review) and thereby negatively impact their productivity. Numbers down and it’s not a glitch? Then get your butt back to writing because that’s the best way to fix it!
flutterby, whatever you need to do to justify it. Every writer is different. I just make a general long-term survival suggestion here to not do as you suggested and write more.
But every writer is different.
Read Kris’s article, folks, about scale and thinking small.
As of today WMG Publishing Inc has 280 titles. We sell thousands of copies per month and that’s growing quickly. I would have to hire a full-time employee to do as some of you suggest and check numbers for that level of titles every day. And when we get to 1,000 titles and Fiction River and other anthology series are running at full speed, it would take two employees to do it every day.
When looked at in that fashion, you can start seeing how really silly it is for any reason.
Terrific article, and a good reminder to keep the eyes focused on the “long tail”. Thanks for posting it.
I haven’t read the entire article, but what I’ve read of it is fantastic. Don’t think small, don’t think all eggs in one basket. Could not agree more.
Kris said, “I put my opinions out here so that you can understand them, not because I’m trying to make you into me.”
Very wise words. There are scads of folks giving advice about indie publishing. The bottom line is to listen, learn, and ultimately do what’s best for *you,* not what’s best for somebody else.
On a tangential note, I finished backreading (This is a word I made up: it means, ‘Starting from the beginning of a chronological blog and reading forward to the present.’) your blog last might.
Man, what a ride!
When this blog started, Borders was still a major factor in book sales, and ebooks weren’t. And then Everything Changed. It was like watching it happen in real time. (Which I kinda did anyway: my wife worked as a manager for both Crown Books and Borders, though thankfully she had not worked there for years when they went under. She still had friends there.)
Anyway, going to be sending you a donation here in a few. Please give some to your partner in crime, as I also sort of hopscotched my way through her blog through your references.
I consider it very richly deserved both for entertainment value and practical advice. You’ve already shamed me into putting up three books POD and increased the quality of my epublishing product by quite a bit.
And, finally, a question: given the enormous backlist WMG has available to it, may I ask why you haven’t hired a few hungry recent English grads, given them a lesson in The WMG Approach To Epublishing, and turned them loose on it? It seems like this could be quite a good investment, especially if it was made clear that this was a limited-term engagement and that they would then be able to take wing and fly on their own? *I* would consider that a pretty da*n good resume point either for tradpub jobs or starting their own businesses.
Marc, wow that must have been a ride through the recent history of publishing. Some of those early posts became very dated very quickly with things changing so fast in the business. Stunning.
And thanks for the kind words and support. Very much appreciated.
Actually, on our published backlist, we are working our way through it with proofreaders we have hired, and we are working through all the books branding them and putting professional covers on them. We’re at 280 books up now, but have another 700 to go at least when all is said and done, maybe more. Inventory of fiction at that scale is difficult at best. (grin) And that’s not counting all the new stuff. As I climb on the challenge again after clearing up this deadline this week, and Kris writes new novels and some of her short fiction comes back from being published in Asimov’s and Queen and such, then the number gets bigger. So we have years to go.
And WMG Publishing Inc. already has three employees, not counting me. With more coming on over the next year or so. Great fun.
Again, thanks.
Thanks, Dean. I could use a lot less stressing over numbers and promotion (although that one still bugs me), and a lot more writing. Keep up the good work. Sometimes, we just need to hear it one more time.