|
|
|
|
So, based on the latest email from Book Country, the site has changed focus, and now, rather than acting as a resource for hopeful writers is focused on self-publishing. And since skill—or even full literacy—isn't a prerequisite for self-publishing, there seems little reason for a discussion on the skills needed for writing professionally.
Personally, I'm upset. I've been coming here for some time, to try to help new writers get a better understanding of the professional and business end of writing fiction. I've met some nice people, too.
Ah well. This too, shall pass.
|
|
Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
|
Don't tell me you haven't been expecting it, Jay. I have. But if that's what it takes to keep this site going, that's fine with me.
There's always been that Publish tag over on the left, that we all do our best to ignore. The management is only trying to make the publishing services option more prominent. Can you blame them?
I enjoy your point of view. I'm trying to get it, though I haven't managed to do so, other than very superficially, yet. Start your own discussion site and I'll be the first to join up.
I haven't read the email yet. Are other changes in the works, that I might not accept so cheerfully?
|
|
Joined: 2/27/2011
Posts: 353
|
Just to clarify, Book Country has offered self-publishing services since November of 2011. This doesn't detract from our commitment to this writing community; it merely opens up some choices for writers who want options to the traditional pathway toward publication.
We are in the process of rebuilding the entire site on a new platform that is less buggy and offers more functionality. The Publish tools were the first to be rebuilt; Community is being rebuilt now and will be relaunched sometime in late summer. It's a more complex project that the Publish tools, so it will take longer. We think you'll like the changes we've got planned for the Community, some of which were outlined in the letter you received.
The email served three purposes: 1.) to inform you of our changes to the self-publishing services (ie, that there is now a free option for ebook publishing), 2.) to let you know about future planned enhancements and new features to the writing community, and 3.) we are required by law to notify users when we change the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, which we did. The TOU and PP were changed to reflect the information we must now collect from writers who wish to publish with Book Country. Previously, authors were paid via PayPal. Authors will now be paid via direct deposit, so we need to collect additional information from them in order to make this possible.
At no point in the letter did we give the impression that our focus was moving away from educating writers. But there's also nothing wrong with finding a way for us to make the site earn its keep so that we can keep the Community free for all of you.
All the best,
Colleen Lindsay
Book Country Community Manager
|
|
Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
|
Jay, I'm curious as to what you expected the business model for BookCountry.com to be. As helpful and fulfilling as the forums and the review functions might be for striving unpublished authors, there's no revenue stream for the company from those parts of the site. Now, I'm all for people and organizations doing things out of the goodness of their hearts, but I can think of a great many potential recipients of charity whose need exceeds that of unpublished writers who want to learn their craft. So if a corporate entity has extra resources that it wants to put to charitable use, I wouldn't expect a site like this one to rank high on the list of priorities.
Given that a commercial site has to pay off somehow, what would your recommendation for BookCountry.com's business model be?
|
|
|
|
• Just to clarify, Book Country has offered self-publishing services since November of 2011.
Colleen I hear what you’re saying, but you’re doing more than providing that service to those members who decide to go the do-it-yourself route. You’re soliciting those who intend to self-publish almost exclusively. Twice today I logged on, and twice, the first thing that hit me was that the site is a great place to be self-published.
Given that self-publishing requires no writing skill, craft, or knowledge of the chosen genre’s norms, the aim of those companies providing the service is to attract customers—and by that I mean the self-publishers, not readers. You go into it with a business model that says it’s better to have a million writers who will sell twenty books than twenty writers who will sell a million books, because you have no editors to pay, no advertising, and no sales force.
You go into it knowing that the average self-pub will sell less than a hundred copies. So by no stretch of the imagination are you going to attract serious writers, and those who would help them, into forums dominated by your chosen clientèle.
As I’ve already noted, the keywords you provide for search engines are slanted almost exclusively toward self-publishing. And when that change was made the number of drop-ins, here, fell to almost zero. Last year at this time there was a constant stream of new members and lots of activity in the forums. Now, many days pass in which no one posts. Most days when there is traffic only one or two people post, in perhaps three threads.
I did a Google search on “writing community,” to see how likely a hopeful writer would be to find us. Book Country, as a name, doesn’t show up within the first hundred responses. It’s mentioned in an article on the change to self-publishing, linked to in the 400-500 group, but the site doesn’t show up under that term or any other a writer might use. In fact, it didn’t show up under any search term I thought someone might use. Even a search on “self publish” showed this site name only as part of that article I mentioned.
But on that first page, alone, a hopeful writer would find hits from: WritersCafe, The Next Big Writer, Authonomy, WritersBeat, Scrobophile, The Word Cloud.
So yes, self-publishers might find this site via that article, but it looks like you need to have a long stern talk with your website designer, because this site seems to be a well kept secret from both self-publishers and serious writers.
|
|
|
|
• Given that a commercial site has to pay off somehow,
This isn't a commercial site. It's a good will site run by Penguin.
Absolute Write is probably the premiere writing community on the Internet. They don't seem to have to sell a product to survive. Nor does Scribophile, or Harper Collins site, Authonomy.
|
|
Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
|
Jay, your points in your response to Colleen are excellent (although it's possible Colleen has equally excellent counterpoints to make regarding them).
But your response to me doesn't fly. Who gets to decide whether Penguin is running this site as a commercial site or as a goodwill site? I'm pretty sure the answer is, "Penguin." And it's obvious from their actions that they're expecting to eventually get some kind of return out of the site. One can contend that it would be much better for them to run it as a goodwill site, and that doing so is demonstrably possible (as evidenced by your examples). But I don't think one can look at the facts of the site and then insist that it is a goodwill site.
As for self-publishing, the more you rail against it, the more you sound to my ears like a radio writer or playwright from last century prophesying that the advent of television is going to ruin dramatic writing. There's no question that self-publishing has the capacity to wreak great harm on the traditional methods of writing and publishing books. But there's also no question that it's here, and here to stay.
I think we would all do much better to find ways to shape the self-publishing phenomenon toward something useful and worthwhile rather than insisting that it is exclusively catastrophic and trying to bury our heads in the sand.
Youtube manages every day to distribute excellent amateur videos to massive audiences worldwide. Surely some aspect of that success could be emulated or adapted to enable the tiny minority of quality self-publishers to rise to the top of the morass that currently exists.
|
|
Joined: 2/27/2011
Posts: 353
|
Jay -
The reason that we're redesigning the community site is precisely because of those kinds of problems you noticed. However, we do not have a staff of developers on hand to work exclusively on Book Country. When changes are made here, they need to be added to a larger rebuild, and then scheduled as a relaunch. This takes time, and because the site does not generate revenue, it cannot be the priority of our internal tech team. That's just common sense. The great guys who maintain this site for us are actually supposed to be working on internal business systems for the whole Penguin group, so when they have time to help us, they do.
I agree with you that Absolute Write is a great forum for writers. But I know MacAllister Stone, who runs the site; she's a good friend of mine. She will tell you that it costs money to run that site and they rely on income from advertising as well as donations from their community to pay for servers and upkeep.
Likewise, it isn't free to run Book Country.
I would also argue that the slow-down in conversation on the discussion boards has more to do with the lack of functionality on those boards, making it difficult for members to follow conversations easily. Fixing the discussion boards is a priority for us for the relaunch in the summer.
The fact that you are seeing the splash page more than once (the one that tells you about the self-publishing services) tells me that your browser settings are wrong. If you have your cookies enabled, you should not see the splash page more than one time. (Unless you go in through a new browser, or a different computer.) Please check your settings, because most people only see that page one time.
All the best,
Colleen
|
|
|
|
• Who gets to decide whether Penguin is running this site as a commercial site or as a goodwill site?
You missed the point. Penguin can do anything they care to. I was simply giving my reaction and saying that I am not going to waste time on people who want to call themselves writers but aren’t interested in actually becoming one.
• I think we would all do much better to find ways to shape the self-publishing phenomenon toward something useful and worthwhile rather than insisting that it is exclusively catastrophic and trying to bury our heads in the sand.
We can’t. Anyone can self-publish anything they care to. All you need to do is send in a file and sign the contract. That makes it impossible to find the gem that's buried in the swamp. In the bookstore, for every book you see on the shelf there were a thousand rejected. And you sample and reject hundreds before you make your choice. Self-publishing says you have to sample more than a thousand to find even the ones you reject in the bookstore. It is catastrophic.
I’ve been reading samples of self-published work since it first began appearing via iUniverse et al. Not once have I found work that an agent would call readable. And by that I mean something that wouldn’t be rejected before the end of the first page—usually before the end of the second paragraph. The reason for that isn’t obvious, but it makes sense. Those who have taken the time to learn the craft of the writer are working on making it “over the hump.” They know the realities of the business and of the self publishing world. The others believe success is a matter of a good story idea, "natural talent," and luck.
I once did a study. I went to Lulu, one of the most reliable and straightforward of the POD houses, and took the first fifty books they were offering in a given genre, to gather a random sampling. Of that number none were written well enough to garner a request for the full manuscript from an agent/publisher. Only two had sales ratings that were better than one million from being number one.
A publisher can make money from those people, but if you look at any of the self-publishing sites it’s obvious that they’re focused on being attractive to people who want to self-publish, not people who might want to browse the books they’re offering to find something to read. And that pretty much says it all. Having work appear on Amazon, B&N, and lots more only matters if people are seeking your name when they go there. So presenting the ability to have your work appear there, as if that might increase your sales, is hype, not a real sales advantage, because in reality, the only people who will end up on your sales page, on any site, are those you personally send.
For every person who makes a success of the DIY route there are a million who take self edited crap, written by someone who’s still using their high school writing skills, and have it self-published. I owned a manuscript critique service, and spent my time reading that kind of work—which is a good part of why I gave it up. There’s sameness to it. The words change. The plots differ. But the read breaks down into two types: a) a transcription of the author speaking the story aloud. b) a report of plot-point events, presented in the form, “and then…and then…and then…and…”
Here’s the problem, and the reason I made my original comments. Penguin cannot afford to alienate the people they’re hoping will use their service, so they must cater to them. There is no way in hell they can tolerate someone like me telling a customer that they’re not going to sell to anyone but friends and relatives, or that to write on a professional level takes as much time, study, and effort as becoming professional in any other field. They can’t. They have to present the illusion that the customer just might have written the next, Fifty Shades of Grey, and will sell lots and lots of copies if they only promote the work with enthusiasm.
More power to them. It’s their football and their back yard, so they make the rules, and can do anything they care to. I’m not trying to start an argument, just explaining why you won’t be seeing me much in the future.
|
|
Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
|
Okay, so we need to stick exclusively to the traditional publishing scheme (even though doing so is impossible now that Pandora's box is open). And the reason we need to stick to the traditional publishing scheme is because publishers know what they're doing and the great majority of writers do not.
But if publishers know what they're doing, and one of the world's largest and best-respected publishers creates a site that welcomes and encourages self-publishing, how are we to reconcile that?
We live in a democratic, distributed, socially networked world now, Jay, and that is only going to increase with time. You can say, "The old way was better," all you like, but you cannot stop the new way from birthing itself and growing forth into the world. Our choice is not between remaining in the world of traditional publishing and leaping into the world of self-publishing. It is rather the choice of whether we allow the rampaging behemoth toddler that is self-publishing to go untutored, undisciplined, and uneducated, or find instead some way to guide it into a civil adulthood that can coexist with the wise but weakened elder that is traditional publishing.
If left feral, self-publishing may well be as destructive as you say. Just be aware that in attempting to deny it, you are contributing to its untempered chaos. The man who says, "There is no hope; there is nothing that can be done," perpetrates an active harm upon the world -- because some will listen to him, and refuse to try to change the world for the better.
If you can suggest to me any way that the genie of self-publishing might be put back into the bottle, then I'll gladly acknowledge the utility of your perspective in this matter. But lacking that alternative, it seems to me that our only hope lies in using the democratic capacity of our networked world to find a way of domesticating self-publishing, since there seems to be no way of slaying it.
|
|
Joined: 6/7/2011
Posts: 467
|
Personally, I had at least as many problems with the old model as I foresee with the new. Yes, it was, ideally, a good idea to have gatekeepers (agents and editors) to try and keep the standards high, or at least assure that basic standards were met. But the modern traditional publishing house seems so focused on the bottom line that books aren't even evaluated in terms of quality of writing or story, but more on some mystical market place where writing the next Twilight is more valuable than penning the next genre-busting masterpiece. The traditional query letter has been reduced to a log-line and an explanation of what sort of market platform you can provide.
I agree with a lot of what Jay has to say, but I don't see the harm in trying this more crowd-sourced model. Sure, there'll be a lot of dreck, but there already is (and it is often (Shades of Grey, Twilight) the most successful stuff out there.) There's still a lot to find out about what e-publishing will ultimately look like. My guess is that there will be a lot of popular (and unpopular) chaff and a smaller amount of serious work by writers who do care about craft and quality and want to do something important and beautiful. In other words, it might look a lot like it does today. Junk is still junk. At least self-publishing allows serious writers (along with everyone else) the opportunity to put their product in the public eye.
|
|
Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
|
Well said, Atthys. The gatekeeper model is invaluable in keeping standards up, no doubt -- and that's why I doubt it will ever fully disappear. But if it is to compete in today's world, it needs to do its job well, and actually keep those standards high.
Along those lines, I'd like to make one more point to Jay. Your study of the first 50 books on Lulu intrigues me, but no study is worthwhile unless it uses a control group for comparison. I'd be highly interested in seeing the results if you were to do the same study on the first 50 books in Amazon's Kindle store for the same genre you studied on Lulu. My guess would be that at least 10 to 20% would fail your test for "Would an agent or publisher get past the first page?"
Now, obviously, a 10% failure rate is much better than a 100% failure rate. But the fact is that there's a hazy borderland between "publishable" and "unpublishable," not a bright line. Authors who are within that borderland might get lucky (or choose topical plot hooks that appear more marketable in the moment) and get published with their first or second novel. Or they might write ten books within the borderlands, all of them with the potential to sell thousands of copies, yet never get picked up by an agent or publisher. In your world, those borderland authors should simply lump it and keep writing and submitting without ever reaching an audience -- even the authors who are really good, but choose to write material that's not easily marketed in today's bestseller-driven (and often cookie-cutter) publishing world.
I have a Facebook friend who recently self-published a novel, and he should never have done it. It's terrible. But the existence of authors who should never self-publish does not mean there are no authors who should ever self-publish.
|
|
|
|
- I would also argue that the slow-down in conversation on the discussion boards has more to do with the lack of functionality on those boards, making it difficult for members to follow conversations easily
That's certainly why I haven't been around here as much. It's just difficult to find and keep up with everything. - There is no way in hell they can tolerate someone like me telling a customer that they’re not going to sell to anyone but friends and relatives, or that to write on a professional level takes as much time, study, and effort as becoming professional in any other field.
Sorry to hear you're not going to be around as much - I say as if I've been around much, myself. But yeah. I'm the same way. Every time I see someone talking about self-publishing, I react the same way you stated above, and it always, always goes over like a lead balloon. I'm not popular HAHAHA in the self-publishing circles at all. As well, I won't take self-published work from anyone I don't know and don't have a clear, established professional publishing record. That may make it hard for me to get materials to review and editing jobs, but I've been burned far too many times going that route. Look, if a person doesn't have a grasp of basic English grammar, he shouldn't be writing, let alone self-publishing. I got a book for review last summer that was so horribly done, I couldn't publish the review. The person lives here in the same town I do and according to her biography, grew up here. But according to her writing, she has no grasp at all of her local area. That wasn't the only thing wrong, either. Most were simple things that even a brief glimpse at Wikipedia or some such could have cleared up/fixed. I won't even discuss her spelling and grammar. I ended up with something like ten pages of notes that I couldn't use; I ended up putting them in the recycling.
|
|
Joined: 11/11/2012
Posts: 13
|
Jay: It would be a shame to lose you on this site. Though I have not had the honor of a review from you, I have read your feedback on other works and it is so darned good.
A guy's gotta make money, you know. That seems to be what Book Country is thinking. I can't say that I blame them. I am figuring that they have a deal with the "publishing company" that will pay them a percentage of whatever business is generated by this site. In return, Book Country will publicize the self publishing offerings. It creates a win-win situation.
I know, I know; it is a shame. The responses have stated that self-publishing is a legit business opportunity. It takes next to nothing for them to print up your book for you and their profit margin is set. If you got the cash, they've got the ability to make your work a nice looking book. They don't care how good the writing is inside of it...
And neither should we. If this website requires that I make three additional clicks on my mouse, then so be it. This site is made by folk like you. You have forgotten more about writing than most of us will ever know. You will go to other sites, and they will probably let you down as well. Until then, I hope you stay here for a while....And read my stuff.
I enjoyed our interaction regarding "Posse".
All the best,
Dave
|
|
|
|
• I'd be highly interested in seeing the results if you were to do the same study on the first 50 books in Amazon's Kindle store for the same genre you studied on Lulu.
Self-published is self-published. You send them your file and they put it out. It makes little difference if it's POD from Lulu or download from Kindle, other than the price.
The sequence when you send it to a publisher who accepts submissions:
1. A first reader looks at it and writes up a quick analysis, along with their opinion. Assume they say it looks good enough to perhaps ask for the full manuscript. This happens about three times per hundred submission (For an agent the combined agent/publisher rate is the same).
2. An editor looks at it and probably drops two of those three because they’re not right for that publisher. So we’re down to 1% of what’s submitted. And it’s worth noting that it’s not a lottery. Literally 75% of what’s sent in is deemed unreadable and the reader made that decision before the end of the second paragraph (as would a reader in the book store). Of the rest only those original three qualified as professionally written.
3. The editor must decide if it’s better then the pros s/he has available at the moment, because the pros already have an audience. That new writer has none and must get great reviews so as to generate enough interest to pay the cost of bringing it to market.
Assume that the editor says yes, and requests the manuscript.
4. Of ten manuscripts requested, nine are rejected as being close, but not the best of the bunch. So we’re down to .1%. But that was several years ago. It’s worse now. It’s worth noting that these people have worked long and hard, making the work as perfect, and as acceptable to that editor, as possible. The average writer posting on the various writer community sites isn’t even above that 75% deemed unreadable because they’re not yet aware that there’s more needed than sincerity, dedication, natural talent, and a good story idea. And these top people will almost never self-publish because they know the market. They’re the serious writers who will react to rejection by digging deeper and raising their skill level through study and analysis.
5. Assuming the editor is excited, s/he brings it and several others into the publisher’s meeting, where everyone has a shot at it. Marketing and others will chime in, and other editors are backing their own choices, so some more winnowing takes place.
So, when you go into the bookstore, every book you see went through that process, plus several edits. Yet you reject that one in a thousand due to personal selection, by another one out of a hundred, or more.
The sequence when you send it to a self-publishing house:
1. You fill out the forms, sign the contract, and send the manuscript file. That’s it
The self-publishing house invests nothing in your work. They do no marketing and their name on the cover as publisher generates neither interest nor confidence.
The publisher does no editing. If you avail yourself of their editing services you’ll pay for the service, and you can be certain that you will not get an editor who is professionally trained, or who belongs to a professional association. The people who are self publishing can neither afford that nor would they be able to make the fixes needed (editors for the most part only correct spelling and punctuation. They point out the problems for the rest, and the people who are self-publishing wouldn’t understand the editor were they told something like, “This section is written passively.” So damn few self-published books have seen the hand of an editor, and that editor couldn’t get a job at a real publishing house. I’ve looked at the result of such editing, at one of the self-pub presses and from the editing suggestions it was obvious that the “editor” knew nothing about writing fiction.
Added to that no real reviewer will look at self-published work, so no one is going to learn about your novel by reading anything but what your relatives write on your Amazon page, and the worst crap out there somehow has five star reviews.
Most bookstores will permit you to order a self-published work, but only on a pay in advance and no refund basis. They won’t carry them unless you talk your local store into carrying a few copies. (It helps if the store manager has the hots for you)
- - - - - - - -
Sad but true: through no fault of their own, the average writer who comes on a site like this isn’t aware that there’s more to writing fiction than our schooldays writing techniques because no one ever tells us that. And we think we can learn writing technique because we love to read, and will pick it up by “reading the greats.” But that’s like thinking you can become a great chef by eating out. And the same people who buy a cookbook in an attempt to become a good cook won’t think to buy a book on the techniques of fiction writing. We should, but we don’t. And since the people “reviewing our work, are praising it, and convincing us that we’re pretty damn close to being ready…
So we go the Kindle route, and see our name on the cover. And damn, it looks like a real book. But it’s not. And even assuming that our book is unique, and deserving of fame, it’s buried in a flood of crap.
In the bookstore we’re among thousands of other books, and we’re there for perhaps two months. But on Kindle, we’re among millions of other offerings, none of which will ever go out of print. We have no sales force. We have no way of telling people we exist. And what little we can do sits among pleas to buy for a million pieces of dreck, all sporting five star reviews.
Who, in their right mind, is going to sift through ten thousand stories that would be rejected by a publisher in a page, just to find the ten books they would have chosen from in the bookstore? And remember two things:
First, is that what they’re getting in those “gems” is an unedited version.
But of more importance, remember when I said that the people who are getting requests for a full manuscript won’t be self publishing? That means you’re, at best, getting the runner up, not the one that would have gone on to be published.
Sorry this was so long. And I’m not usually this blunt, either, but three things have ruined the publishing industry, and it’s a hot-button issue for me:
First is the plethora of sites where beginners advise beginners on how to be published. That’s bad because people who otherwise might have educated themselves and gone on to be published will never realize that an education is as necessary in fiction writing as any other profession. Combine that with self-publishing, the second thing, and the flood gates are open.
And finally, the Kindle, Nook, etc. reader are a disaster for publishers. Combine that reader with the ease of piracy and it’s easier and faster to steal a book than to buy it. A day after a Nora Roberts book comes out you can download a pirate copy in under a minute, including the time for your torrent reader to establish connection. And most people don’t look at that as stealing. They feel they bought the right to do that when they bought their Kindle. So, for far too many people, if they buy a $75 basic reader they’ll never pay for a book again. And that’s killing the publishing industry.
|
|
Joined: 8/13/2011
Posts: 272
|
Jay, do you realise how much of that argument sounded like the recording industry during the advent of file-sharing? Oh, we can't have people downloading music! It'll ruin the industry! Nope, didn't happen. The music industry had to change instead.
Jay, what you're arguing for is gatekeeping and that really doesn't happen on the internet. Basically, to you, writers should pass a series of fundamental barriers (submission, editorial control, etcetera) before they're allowed to have their book published. That's not going to happen, not any more.
Book publishing has irrevocably moved to a market driven model from the gatekeeping model you're arguing for and, frankly, it's better for it. Why? Because now what floats to the top is what people want, not what publishers think they want.
I don't like Fifty Shades of Grey, but what publisher would have picked it up and sold it? Umm, no one but the cheap fly-by-night smut merchants who'd have slapped it on the top shelves of train stations and truck stops where it would have mouldered. Now, we have a whole different method of publication and it's doing many people proud.
Now here's the thing. Most self-published novels sink like stones, but some don't. Either thanks to decent advertising, good press or simple flash-in-the-pan luck, they get popular. How's that different from the publishing model? Most books get lobbed out there and the publishers have to cross their fingers that it's going to make their money back. Talk to the publishers of all the Harry Potter wannabes and see how that went for them.
These days, the real power lies not in the hands of the publishers, but in the consumers. I can go out, grab a book on Kindle, read it and review it. So can anyone else. If a book is bad, we can say so and everyone knows. Yes, there's going to be people who praise dross and criticise gold, but that's democracy.
Now you have some points. I'm not a huge fan of paying for assistance, but, if I'm gambling on other people thinking that it's worth spending money on my writing, shouldn't I do the same? Is it a con or an investment? That depends on the company providing it. As to your point about lousy editors, how many traditional books have you read where the editor should have been tarred and feathered? I can point to a few.
Jay, publishing is market driven, it's really that simple. If people are willing to circumvent the traditional publishing model for their reading fixes, then it's up to the publishing houses to change. People aren't going to change themselves to suit the publishers.
What you really should be working towards is a more robust criticism model as that's the only kind of gatekeeping that's going to last at the moment and that's how it should work. Linking those five stars to a decent statement of the reviewer's credibility would make a world of difference.
|
|
Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
|
Jay, that was a very long post packed full of information that I already knew.
Here's a piece of information you didn't already know: As a matter of fact, I did get a request for a manuscript from a major fantasy publisher. I was delighted, and sent it in immediately. It then spent nine months at the second reviewer, and when I wrote to ask if it was still under consideration, they very apologetically told me that there was a "logjam" at the second reviewer, and they had no idea how long it would take to get the logjam unjammed. They said that the book remained under consideration, but that they would release me from their policy of no simultaneous submissions if I wanted to submit it elsewhere while their process remained bogged down.
Now, I probably should have taken them up on that offer and dashed the book off to another publisher. But I found myself in possession of evidence about two things: first, that at least one major publisher was having significant internal problems getting the traditional system to work, and second, that there were numerous high-profile success stories within self-publishing, where a limited window of opportunity existed to get into the arena before everyone and his dog did so.
As it turns out, I jumped in too late and/or with too little preparation and understanding of how to market myself, and the results have been very disappointing. But it's not because my work isn't ready to be considered for publication: a major publisher has already informed me that it is ready for such consideration. Aside from yours, all of the feedback I have gotten suggests to me that my books are fit for public consumption. And that's not just feedback from friends and family and one editor at a publisher; it's lucid reviews from complete strangers on Amazon.com.
The problem with self-publishing is not the lack of gatekeepers to keep the drivel out. It is the lack of informational systems that would allow reasonably good books to rise to the top. That lack certainly is a problem, and it's highly aggravated by the sheer volume of self-publishers who have no business self-publishing.
But to pretend that the traditional publishers are capable of finding and publishing 100% of the worthwhile fiction that gets written is in its own way as delusional as pretending that 100% of what gets written deserves to be published.
|
|
Joined: 3/7/2011
Posts: 55
|
The simple truth is that most people who are going to self-publish are going to do it. Many who do it, do it without any introspection. "This book is awesome and everyone will buy it! Editing? Spellchecking? Plot structure? That stuff's for squares, who are stuck in the system. I'm better than all that!" Griping about it is like complaining about a tidal wave: not going to change anything.
However, with Book Country being a critique site as well as a self-publishing site, there is potential for other Book Country users to act as gatekeepers, at least for those willing to listen. And those who aren't, well... they'll probably fail anyway. Can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped.
|
|
Joined: 10/14/2012
Posts: 229
|
Scenario 1.
I have a diamond, clear and bright. My right to own this diamond is refuted. I'm not a celebrity, nor a relative of an existing member of the establishment, I did not go to school with a diamond merchant, and cannot gain an appointment with a reputable trader to authenticate my diamond, prior to sale. Like others working the mines, my diamond is lost to light and will never feed my family.
Scenario 2.
I have a diamond, clear and bright. I take it to market where rare diamonds are sold from within a multitude of vast vats, each holding millions of what at first impression look like diamonds, but are known by all to be glass beads. At a competitive price for a quality gemstone, customers are passively offered the opportunity to take one piece from the vat, bereft of any way of establishing which type of bauble they may get. They decline this opportunity in their disdainful droves.
Scenario 3.
I have a diamond, clear and bright. It slips through my fingers and falls to the ground. My diamond shatters...... I did not think diamonds did that!
|
|
|
|
• However, with Book Country being a critique site as well as a
self-publishing site, there is potential for other Book Country users to
act as gatekeepers, at least for those willing to listen.
Harper Collins set up the Authonomy site with that idea. They hold a monthly contest, where everyone on the site votes for the best work. When last I checked it had been going on for several years and they had yet to buy one single voted manuscript. That pretty well shows that having people who cannot sell their own work judge what will, doesn't work. After all, if they knew, wouldn't they be selling their own work?
But forget that, The simple fact is that people who will come here with the intent to self-publish aren't looking for someone to tell them that the average writer creates, edits, and discards about a half million words before they're able to sell a manuscript. They've finished their first novel and now they want to be published, now. And because Penguin wants to be the ones doing that publishing they cannot encourage more than lip service to writing craft in the forums.
Truthfully, I'm surprised that Colleen hasn't pulled this thread, or at least my posts.
But as I said, I wasn't trying to start an argument. I'm disappointed to hear that the focus is now on attracting customers rather than creating a community of writers. And my comments aren't helping, so I'll bow out now,
Scribophile, another writers site talks about how helpful and useful the critiques the members give each others is, But they have a folder for brags, and lots of people go there happy that because of the site they've been published, In truth, Not one of them reports a contract with a real publisher. They talk about free web magazines and anthologies put out by site members,
|
|
Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
|
"Truthfully, I'm surprised that Colleen hasn't pulled this thread, or at least my posts."
Jay, I'm surprised that you can't see the contradiction between this expectation of tyrannical, closed-minded behavior on the part of a publishing entity and your insistence that publishing entities can be trusted to put forward all of the meritorious work that gets submitted to them.
Which is it? Are firms like Penguin merely rapacious bottom-line-minders who will suppress anything that doesn't fit their vision of what the market should look like? Or are they trustworthy guardians of the literary interest who make decisions about their publishing activities based on their well-informed understanding of what the market is like?
|
|
Joined: 2/27/2011
Posts: 353
|
*hands Herb a chocolate chip cookie*
|
|
|
|
Here. This fits in with this topic:
http://www.jamiechavez.com/blog/permalink/2013/01/just-do-good-work/
|
|
Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
|
Thanks, Colleen. Chocolate is soothing, and I am obviously more worked up about this subject than I ought to be.
|
|
Joined: 2/27/2011
Posts: 353
|
Actually, I think it has been a great conversation, with a lot of varying opinions. But nobody has stepped over the line, or initiated any personal attacks, so by all means, keep on chatting!
*sits back, shovels more popcorn in mouth*
|
|
Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
|
This is a very difficult topic.
Everything Jay say is true ... to a point.
Everything the other side says is true ... with (I'd say) more reality on their side. This train is chugging down the track, and nothing is going to call it back.
And, God knows, we all think that our work will emerge, sooner or later, maybe years later, from the slush pile of on-line offerings or from the traditional route of assistant readers, readers, five minute summations and sixty second up-or-down votes from an expert panel, etc.
*sits back, takes another gulp of wine*
|
|
Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
|
Exactly so, Mimi. And it's worth stating that I agree with Jay about the state of self-publishing: for the most part, it is a reeking sump of abjection. I just happen to think that it's a hair likelier that someone will accept the advice of, "Don't self-publish until you're sure you've learned your craft and you have several worthwhile novels complete and fully edited," than the advice of, "Never self-publish, because if you're willing to self-publish it means you can't judge your own work well enough to determine whether it's publishable."
|
|
Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
|
As for the warning of books promoted with positive reviews from friends and family, that won't go far. You can bet that anyone who makes a purchase on the basis of unwarranted praise will be telling the world about the con before long. That's a losing strategy, and we all know it.
Or am I clueless? There's always that possibility.
|
|
Joined: 4/30/2011
Posts: 662
|
I believe Mr. Wendig wrote a blog post about publishing recently:
http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2013/01/22/25-hard-truths-about-writing-and-publishing/
|
|
Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
|
Mimi, I think the review thing is mostly a numbers game that gets you noticed more easily by whatever algorithms the online stores use. I can tell you from experience that having nine reviews of 4 and 5 stars seems to have virtually no impact on the sales of my first book.* But I'm pretty sure that when you've racked up a couple dozen of them, it makes a difference.
If a buyer is browsing and sees "customers who bought X also bought Y," and Y is displayed as having 35 reviews with a cumulative rating of 4.5 stars, it's much more likely that the buyer will click on Y than on Z, which has no reviews or only 3 or 4. If the buyer is then incautious enough to buy the book based on cover, blurb, reviews, etc., without reading any of the sample, the mindless algorithms proceed to elevate its prominence still higher.
Whether that incautious buyer then tells a hundred friends is immaterial, because there are a million other shoppers out there who aren't friends with that buyer. And the buyer probably won't remember the title and author well enough to tell a hundred friends anyway, because s/he probably won't read much past the first page or first chapter before giving up. Truly incensed buyers might then write a negative review, but my impression is that people are far more likely to write positive reviews than negative ones, especially if they didn't invest much time or money on their bad reading experience.
So if someone recruits 35 friends and family members to write glowing reviews, and gets 100 legitimate sales due to those reviews, it's unlikely that more than a handful of those sales will result in bad reviews -- too few to drag the average star rating down very far.
One solution to this, of course, is for the typical reader to become much more active in reviewing what she or he buys. I imagine there might be technological solutions that the online merchants could institute to lessen the impact to fake/biased reviews and other guerilla marketing techniques, but if so, they don't seem to be in a rush to implement them.
These kinds of issues are, I suspect, exactly why Penguin is experimenting with BC: they know self-publishing can't be gotten rid of, but they're hoping to find a way to help guide it into something more constructive (or at least less destructive).
*Full disclosure: two of those reviews are family members, and a third is a former coworker who was recruited by another former coworker for the purpose of giving me an unbiased reader. The remainder, so far as I know, are all complete strangers.
|
|
Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
|
Interesting blog post, LeeAnna. Thanks for the link!
|
|
Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
|
Yeah, I'm clueless. I'm going to get on Amazon and look at the ratings or whatever they have there (I never noticed, I type in my info, for instance, Tycho Brahe ... and presto, I see everything they have on old Tycho).
I'm a long, long way from being finished with my book (if I ever get there at all) so I guess I have plenty of time to figure it out.
Thanks for the explanation. I'll have to read it a few times to get it, I'm out of it, literally. I'm not on Facebook, Twitter, any of that. Algorithms, rankings, OMG!
|
|
Joined: 2/27/2011
Posts: 353
|
Guys, this is a great discussion that I want to keep going but I'm going to move it into the self-publishing area of the Discussions board. Just a heads up!
Cheers!
Colleen
|
|
Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
|
Thanks, Colleen. I think it really belongs here, although at a guess, I'd say Jay put it under General Writing Challenges instead of The Business of Writing because the majority of self-publishers (arguably) have not developed their general writing skills and therefore have no business publishing.
|
|
|
|
LMAO Coleen  May you never run out of popcorn.
|
|
Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
|
Herb, or anyone who knows about this stuff:
I've gone on Amazon. I see that under fiction there are over a million entries, I see the navigation tool at the bottom, the arrow to next page, but no 'Go To' to take you, for instance, to page 1200, full of unknown titles/authors.
What if I want to see the obscure stuff, I don't have a name to plunk in, I just want to see what's available by the nobodies? Maybe I'll find something grand there.
How do you do that? Are you able to?
Amazon should have a virtual bookshelf, (perhaps a graphic of stacks of books, each with a title on the spine) you hit a name and a box with a synopsis pops up, like on Netflix. A quick in and out action would be a boon to browsers.
|
|
Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
|
Yeah, for such a mammoth and successful behemoth, Amazon does not have especially good browsing features. So far as I know, you're reduced to having to click a hundred thousand times to get through those million entries.
My understanding is that there are external sites devoted to listing all the free ebooks on Amazon, and other sites devoted specifically to self-publishers, but I've not taken the time to investigate.
One thing you can do is find some indie author and look at the "customers also bought" section under one of his or her books. People who buy self-published books often buy a lot of them, apparently, so Amazon's machinery recommends more of the same.
|
|
Joined: 10/20/2011
Posts: 350
|
http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2013/01/where-kristin-discusses-importance-of.html
A literary agent discusses what she thinks publishers and agents need to learn from the self-publishing industry.
|
|
Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
|
Interesting link, Alexandria. Now I have to go and check my tagging.
|
|
Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
|
A quick update:
Amazon offers a program called Kindle Select, through which publishers can offer their books for free on 5 days of each quarter. The last time I did one of these free offerings, I moved 36 copies over the course of two consecutive days. The previous time, I moved 124 copies in a day.
Yesterday, I changed the tagging on my books, having forgotten that I'd scheduled a free day for one of them today.
As of 4:30 p.m., the free book has moved almost 400 copies, and the two that aren't free have sold two copies each. Four paid copies in one day may not sound like a ton, but it's the same number that those two books have sold in the course of the past three months combined.
So I'd say Kristin knows what she's talking about.
|
|
Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
|
Herb, and everyone,
Here is a link to an extremely interesting article that I just ran across:
www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2013/jan/25/piracy-yesterdays-worry-artisan-authors
___________________________________
Piracy is yesterday's worry for today's artisan authors.
File sharing and self-publishing are becoming the norm for a generation of writers looking beyond a moribund publishing eco-system.
There is some very valuable information here. Check it out.
|
|
Joined: 4/27/2011
Posts: 608
|
Heh-heh! Glad as hell I stayed out of this one . . .
:::shovels handful of dark-chocolate almonds into mouth; takes swig of Negra Modelo:::
|
|
Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
|
Mimi, thanks for the link. It reminded me of a study I recently read about that found that people who use file-sharing software purchase more music than people who do not. In other words, a large proportion of the "thieves" are actually bigger spenders than the non-eyepatch-wearing customers.
I remain powerfully ambivalent about the idea of someone downloading my work without my knowledge and without any proceeds going to me. But at this point, I really am more interested in gaining readers than in selling individual copies.
|
|
Joined: 4/27/2011
Posts: 608
|
Shssssh, Herb! Harlan Ellison will hear you . . .
|
|
Joined: 6/7/2011
Posts: 467
|
Gotta go with Herb on this one. In the long run, I'd rather people were stealing my book than ignoring it. At the moment, of course, they can't really do either one since it isn't published.
|
|
Joined: 8/21/2011
Posts: 394
|
Self-publishing, I think, is a natural progression from traditional publishing - something incubated and hatched by probably one of the most influential inventions since the printing press: the Internet.
It's a paradigm shift and while I agree that self-publishing fills the virtual (and to a much smaller degree, physical) shelves with, to put it bluntly, crap, it's here to stay. Traditional publishers, like Penguin, can either sit off to the sidelines wringing their hands and grinding their teeth or get into the game. Publishing is, while one of the "nicer" industries out there, big business and unless individual publishing houses decide to become non-profit or not-for-profit entities, they have to make a profit.
I've worked in scholarly and academic publishing my entire professional life and I liken the self-publishing "threat" to that of open access publishing. When the OA movement started, traditional STM publishers were quaking in their boots. "What do you mean by encouraging authors to self-archive in institutional repositories and publish their papers [especially their papers generated by federally funded research] in open access online journals? What about us? What about our tried and true traditional [and in many cases woefully overpriced] journals?"
My former employer (a ginormous indexing and abstracting company) also was in a state: "What about volume and issue numbers? What about peer-review? What about a rigid publishing schedule? How do we index this stuff with our traditional 8-bit bibliographic data capturing methodology? How do we capture and count citations to these articles?" And so on.
Well, OA didn't go away. The Directory of Open Access Journals currently contains some 1270+ publications from the United States alone. My former employer, while working with one of the pioneer organizations in the OA movement was able to figure out a way to index these publications AND capture meaningful citation data.
My current employer - a scientific and medical publishing behemoth - currently produces 30+ open access journals and 1500 'hybrid' journals. They knew they had to get into the OA game and dove in (maybe a bit reluctantly, but dove in nonetheless).
There are many different business models in OA - the common characteristic being that subscribers don't have to pay to read the material. Authors pay to get their work published (usually out of their grant money or institution's budget), and there may be restrictions on use. Some journals are purely open access; some are 'hybrids' containing OA material and "traditionally" published material. Some publish versions of articles; some only publish what is considered the final paper. Many, if not most, of these scholarly OA journals follow the tradition of peer review (at least now).
So, at first, there were many concerns among publishers, authors, indexers, and readers about open access publications. A lot of the concerns focused on the quality of the material. Ultimately, things balanced out. Top-notch authors don't want to publish their work in a dud of a journal. Top-notch editors and ed board members don't want to be associated with a dud journal. So the good OA journals survive and thrive; the bad ones fail (just like with traditional journals).
With self-publishing, readers ultimately determine which books get bought and read and which ones never are. I don't really care if people self-publish. When I'm looking for the next book to read, I tend to read stuff by my favorite authors or get recommendations from friends and family members with similar tastes. Gone are the days when I used to go to a bookstore (there aren't that many now, alas) and take books off the shelf, read the back cover, the author's note, and maybe a couple of pages before deciding to buy. Now, right or wrong, I read through suggestions sent to me by Amazon based on my Kindle purchases. Should the day come when a self-published work is suggested to me by either friends, family, or Amazon, I'll probably check it out like I would any other publication. If I like what I see, I'll buy it. If I don't, well, there are a gazillion books out there to read. I'm pretty sure I'll never be in the position where I won't be able to find something to read.
With respect to whether or not the self-publishing portion of Book Country will affect my usage of this site? It won't. There are so many aspects of this site that long ago captured my attention; the people participating on the site at the top of that list. And, I have to say, I am most excited to see what the next release unveils (Colleen - I hear you about getting the attention of developers. And I work on a for-profit publication!).
And, of course, if people truly are unhappy with the changes on Book Country then they can decide whether or not they continue to use the site. I'm sure folks would be missed if they left the community, but just like with our writing, Book Country has to evolve. If not, well, we all know what happens to things that don't evolve.
|
|
Joined: 4/27/2011
Posts: 608
|
Thanks for giving us a peek behind the curtains into the world of academic and scholarly publishing, Angela! I found that fascinating.
|
|
Joined: 4/27/2011
Posts: 608
|
Does anyone out there have an opinion as to whether P.O.D. (print on demand) books are accorded better, worse, or exactly the same status as self-published books?
Is this a necessary option to offer your customers if you're thinking about going the self-pub route, or would it be better to attempt to claw your way into a traditional publisher's arms and then let them POD you after your first printing gets remaindered? (I'm a realist.)
|
|
Joined: 8/21/2011
Posts: 394
|
Carl - My understanding of print-on-demand models is that not all works printed in such a fashion are self-published or books that have already been printed. Small presses tend to use this publishing model for the books they produce that have gone through the traditional publishing model (submission/hand-wringing/editor review/more hand-wringing/contract/editing/publishing). It saves them a lot of money with respect to production/printing costs and storage. And it is a much greener business model. Why waste resources to print a few hundred or thousand copies of a book that may not sell all that well?
Of course, as someone who has worked in publishing for a long time, I've seen an awful lot of production folks lose their jobs as digital publishing has become the norm (well, digital publishing and out-sourcing jobs).
|
|
Joined: 4/27/2011
Posts: 608
|
Thanks for the clarification, Angela! Print-on-demand sounds like it's both economically smart and environmentally friendly: green in both senses of the term.
|
|
|
|