The More Things Change, the More they Stay the Same

Source Copyright Square-Enix

E-book (or is it ebook? or eBook?) sales are on the rise.  No doubt, this is causing self-publishing to become an ever more intimidating presence while the publishers are scrambling to stay in the game.  Are publishers on their way out to make way for the new and hip self-publishing?

Allow me to insert and inspect a hypothetical situation here.

Let’s say, in about thirty to forty years, no more physical books are sold.  And more than that, there are no more publishers, and every author self-publishes their books.

That would mean that the market opened for more people (what with no “gatekeepers”).  The editors, book designers and marketers that worked for the publishers before will probably have gone into the freelancing business, selling their services for the self-publishing authors (or flipping burgers if business is tough).  There will be a massive amount of books released every day, of which most will be pretty bad (see my next point).  A lot of people will either have no money or just not feel like it and therefore refrain from hiring an editor or book designer.

Let’s look at the cost of self-publishing an e-book.*  Say $400 for a book designer and $400 for a proper editor.  You can buy an ISBN for $100 via Lulu.com.  Then comes the marketing and promotion.  Let’s be very conservative and say good marketing would cost $500.  So, adding it up, you come to $1400 to self-publish.  But let’s be reasonable, giving competitive prices, the prices could come down to $1200 or so.  And maybe the marketers, book designers and editors even join forces and start a company that does all three in a package deal.  So let’s say that brings the price down to $1000.

With that in mind, there would be little chance for a budding author to publish a book unless he’s got a well-paying job (Stephen King and his wife worked for minimum wage and struggled to make ends meet, so they didn’t have a thousand dollars to spend on publishing a book) or financial backing.  So maybe a rich businessman sees the manuscript of a friend and agrees to pay his publishing costs in exchange for a return on whatever the author makes.  I.e. Royalties.

After this happened, someone might see an opportunity and make a company that connects financial backers to authors (with a small usage fee, of course).  Some rich people think that it could be a good investment, but know nothing about books, so they hire an editor/ex-literary agent/old man who reads a lot to tell them if the book is worth investing in.  Because they are desperate to be published, the budding authors send their manuscripts to the financial backers to be scrutinised by the literary experts and given a place in the world via the financial backer’s money.  Maybe the rich man sees another opportunity, calling his old friends, the marketer, the editor and the book designer to join his team.  Together, they form a company and they decide to call themselves a publisher.

In another part of the world, a woman sees the opportunity to make money.  There are so many books out there, and people don’t know what to buy, so she decides that she will get a team who will read books and review them, making a list of good books.  People stream to the website to avoid buying yet another badly written book.

The publishers see this and notice that the woman and her team often miss some of the books they publish and thus create a loss in sales.  To fix this, the publisher asks to get a certification of sorts for all their books so that it is automatically a part of the list (for a fee, of course).  Because of the brilliant editor and all the good books they had published in the past, the woman agrees and puts an entry on her site that says, all books by Publisher X.

End of hypothetical situation.

Though the sequence of events is a bit unlikely, the core of it remains.  You cannot have anarchy in publishing (except for already well-known authors of course).  It will always be a business and there will always be people who need money and people who have money.  Any change in the publishing industry will circle back to a new version of the same thing.

The same equilibrium, but at another level.

* These prices are based on present currency values, so ignore the possible changes in monetary value that may or may not occur.

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Should You Play Small?

Ever since Michelle spoke about her small publisher, I’ve thought about them.  Small publishers are, I think, often looked down upon, like an ugly cousin of the big 6.

So I did a bit of digging (okay, more like brushing sand off) and here are some of the pros and cons for small publishers:

Pros

More control

I think the most famous benefit of a small publisher is this.  You get more control, thus allowing the author more say in things like the cover, the edits and so forth.  Big publishers might not be so flexible.

Bigger chance of acceptance

Not because a small press has lower quality, but because of the number of submissions.  If there are fewer submissions, your manuscript will probably get more attention.  Plus, small publishers are more likely to help you fix your manuscript up.

Build a backlist

If you want to move to a larger publisher later on, having books published might make it easier to get an agent/publisher than if you’re an unknown writer.  This is nowhere close to a guarantee, but maybe that small step up can help.

Sell books for cheaper

This may seem like a con, but new authors will benefit from having cheaper books.  People will be more willing to take a chance on you and therefore you have a better chance of building a reader base.

Higher royalties

In counter to the previous point, small publishers will often have a higher royalty percentage for the author.

Can keep books in circulation

Because a lot of the small publishers use a print on demand system, the book will often stay in circulation for longer.  A big publisher could pull a book after a few weeks because it wasn’t doing well enough.

Easier to get obscure books published

A lot (all?) of the big publishers want fiction that fits into the categories that sell.  A small publisher is more likely to take a chance on that weird novel you wrote that doesn’t seem to fit in any specific category.

Cons

Self-promotion

With a small publisher, chances are that they won’t have a big marketing budget.  You’re going to have to do a lot, if not all of the promotion yourself.  If you’re anything like me, blowing your own horn is like eating hot aeroplane propellers.  This would have been a pretty big drawback, except that these days, unless your Stephen King, you have to market your book anyway, even at the big publishers.

Circulation will be smaller

Bookstores won’t easily buy a lot of books from small publishers, for in case they don’t sell and the publisher can’t buy the books back.  Maybe the budget of the publisher is also an issue.  However, with the (rapid) growing success of e-books, getting the book into bookstores might not be high priority anymore.  Some people (like me) like having an actual book with them, but most conform to the new e-book regime.

Scams

If you publish with one of the big 6, you’re pretty much guaranteed that it’s not a fake company.  Little Hamburger Press might not be a real publisher though.

Might get skipped because of your publisher

Some people might see the logo of a little-known publisher and decide not to buy your book, thinking it is bad quality.  It used to be the same with self-publishing, but with the rise of this particular publishing method, people are getting over that mindset.  However, if a potential reader sees a new writer by an unknown press and a new writer by a big 6 press, chances are that he’ll take the big 6 one.

Conclusion

A small press has a few downsides (less money being an important one, if you plan on living off your writing), but especially in the age of e-books, it is becoming a more and more attractive option and I think one that needs to be seriously considered, instead of simply discarded.

(My information came from here and here.  Great information if you’re thinking of going the small press route.)

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Why I don't need Publishers to Approve my Work

Yesterday, I made a post as to why I need publishers to validate my work. In response to that, I got a whole lot of comments. Firstly, thanks to Michelle, Mood and Chancellor for your comments. It really got me thinking and changed my opinion somewhat. Here is my conclusion.

At first, I had thought that publishers are, as Mood said, arbiters of quality. That they can judge the worth of something better than I can. Therefore, they would tell me when my work has become quality (by publishing my book).

Mood tried to tell me that it was wrong, but I didn’t quite grasp it. Then Michelle made a comment (that got eaten) saying something that switched on a lightbulb. I don’t know if it’s the right one, but here it is:

Do you honestly think a Big 6 publisher would publish some of the experimental classics now if they had never been written and published before? Hell no. That doesn't mean they aren't some of the most amazing things ever written - it means they are basing things on what sells NOW, or what they think will sell now.

Publishers (especially successful ones) will publish what they believe sells. But, as Mood tried to point out, they don’t know what will. They can look into the past and see what sold, but they can’t tell us what will sell. They follow the tried and trusted recipe rather than taking a risk. Therefore, by trying to get validated by publishers (who look at what worked, rather than at what could work) I would be writing backwards instead of forwards. I would be trying to replicate what other authors did instead of doing what could work in the future.

So, with this revelation, I started to wonder, where does my validation come from? If it didn’t come from publishers, would it then come from readers? In a sense, yes. But then I thought, readers are just as biased as publishers. There will be people who will not like what I write and I can’t use them to judge the worth of my work.

The only option that is left (and suggested by everyone else) is myself. Now, the thing here is that I still have the problem that I can’t tell whether I’m good or not. I don’t trust myself to validate my own work, but I’m the only person who can do it (since the other options are already ruled out). That leaves only the option that I need to find a way to trust myself to make judgements about my own work. The general fact is that I don’t. As a person, I’m very fact orientated. Subjectivity seems like a bad way to judge things (it leaves a giant margin of error), but maybe it’s a necessity. Some things can’t be judged objectively (or at least, shouldn’t be).

I have no idea how I’ll manage to do this, but at least it’s a start. I’ll try to wrap my head around subjectively validating my own work and get back to you.

Thanks for all the comments yesterday, and I would appreciate some for my conclusion as well. Just to see that I didn’t miss the boat again.

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Why I need Publishers to Approve my Work

I’d recently commented on Michelle D. Argyle’s blog, on a post about whether publishing is the end all (or something like that). I mentioned that publishing is a must for me because I need the publisher to validate my work. Michelle had made a post about validation some time back, I think, and in her answer to me she also mentioned the same viewpoint. She says that it is not a good idea to rely on publishers (and agents) for ALL your validation. Because they are financially orientated and might have other goals than to publish great fiction(namely, to publish SELLABLE fiction). Either way, I decided to expand my comment into this post and explain why I think SOME writers need to get a publisher’s approval.

I don’t trust my own judgement.

I am a very subjective person (as most humans are). When I was younger, I used to draw a lot. When I was happy with it, I would proudly show it to everyone in my family. If I go back now, I can see that whatever I drew was pretty much trash. To put it mildly, I sucked at drawing. But my younger self thought it was brilliant. Maybe this is being over analytical, but I don’t trust my own opinion about something I made. I don’t want to look back after five years and see that this piece of fiction I thought was amazing actually sucks. Therefore, I rely on the opinion of a completely objective source (they have to make money, therefore they will not spare my feelings).

I don’t trust my own judgement (part 2)

To further my story, when I drew these things, I used to show it to my brother and ask him what he thought. He always replied with the same general answer. “It’s good.” At first, I was ecstatic, to receive such kind words from him. But later on, I started to suspect that he was simply sparing my feelings. I tested this by drawing something VERY badly, then showing it to him. “It’s good,” he said. This conditioned me to believe that he was not giving honest feedback. Somewhere in there, I started to create the mentality that everything I did was bad. I would go to him and probe and probe him, trying to get him to tell me what was wrong with it. I don’t think he ever did.

Anyway, the point is, I have a natural tendency to assume my work sucks. I have no way of knowing if any beta readers are telling the truth. But, I can’t rely on my own judgements (that it’s bad) either, for they may be biased. Therefore, a publisher again provides objective feedback.

My goal and the publisher’s goal is pretty much the same

The publisher wants to make as much money as possible. I want as many people as possible to read my books. In the end, our goals are the same. Thus, if a publisher rejects my book, the chances are that the book wouldn’t have sold much. Therefore, I can judge how well my book fits my goal by how much the book fits the publisher’s goal. The publisher knows better than me. I can say this because I know nothing about public demand, marketing or any other publishing related information. They have done this for who knows how long, so why should I doubt them?

That’s the main reasons why I believe I need a publisher’s approval. However, there are other factors to take into account. Sometimes publishers make bad decisions. Sometimes publishers reject masterpieces (Dune was rejected with a letter "I might be making the mistake of the decade, but..."). Also, it is impossible to know how the public will respond (as with Harry Potter that sold far more than expected).

In conclusion, I still think that a publisher’s validation will always be an important part of the writing process for me, but perhaps I should start finding a way to validate my own work. I can’t rely on publishers alone to tell me if what I wrote is acceptable. Sometimes, you have to judge your own worth, subjective or not.

Is a publisher’s validation important to you as a writer? Or are they simply a tool to get your book out there?


Edit: After the discussion in the comments, I've come to a different conclusion.  See this, here.

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Scrap Plan B

I recently read a post on Michelle D. Argyle’s blog about self-publishing. Something she mentioned rang very true and I managed to warp it so that it fits other areas too.

In the first point she makes, she suggests not to self-publish as a last resort. I couldn’t agree more. Like she said, using your last resort means that there was another resort that was better.

Somewhere else, (in an unrelated incident) I read of someone that said you should not have a plan B in careers. Such as a mother’s son studying drama for example, and she tells him that he should make sure he has a plan B in case the drama falls through.

Doing that, creating a plan B, enables you to think that it’s okay to give up. You’ll always have the backup plan.

I’ll take myself as an example. I started to study accounting early on, but then the numbers started an insurrection and I let that go. (Needless to say, I’m never going back if I can help it.) I have virtually no skills other than being able to speak English and Afrikaans. If this whole writing thing fails, I have no future. I’d probably be stuck working a job that I hate and die of heart failure before I’m thirty.

So every time I get stuck in writing and ask the ever-present question “Who are you to think you can be a writer?”, I push on, because I know there’s no other path. No plan B. That’s what gets me through the hard parts.

Accept only the best.

The same applies to publishing a book. If you write a book and you know that you want to publish it through a publishing house, that’s your plan A. Don’t, after a hundred rejections, create a plan B and decide to self-publish. Rather find a way to get to plan A.

Self-publishers are often seen as people who don’t get traditionally accepted, but that’s a wrong perspective. Some of them are, yes. That is what I don’t like. They went to plan B instead of going on with plan A.

I thought a bit after reading Michelle’s post, and I realised that it works the same the other way around – though it doesn’t happen as often.

If you have a book and you have specific reasons for wanting to self-publish, that’s your plan A. Don’t chicken out later and decide to publish that book traditionally (unless there is a GOOD reason, as in you’re broke and can’t pay self-publishing costs, but even then, you’d be better off waiting for a time when you can afford it). That means you’re going to plan B.

Plan B is the plan you don’t want to follow. You want plan A. Don’t accept anything less than the best.

Plan A is your dream. Plan B is giving up.

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