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| SFReader Forums > Writing > Print On Demand & eBooks > The pros and cons of self-publishing | Forum Quick Jump
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Firlefanz
Sage
      
Date Joined Mar 2007
Total Posts : 1206
| Posted 5/6/2007 5:03 AM (GMT -4) |   | | | |
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Anthony G Williams
Greybeard
Date Joined Apr 2007
Total Posts : 406
| Posted 5/6/2007 10:22 AM (GMT -4) | | | | |
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Mike Lynch
Acolyte
Date Joined Mar 2007
Total Posts : 319
| Posted 5/7/2007 1:52 PM (GMT -4) | | Tony, I very much enjoyed reading your article about the advantages/disadvantages of choosing between the TP & SP markets. Very concise, easy to read, and quite informative. I'm in the process of getting my website up and running, hopefully soon. Would you mind if I created a page where I could post this article?
Mike | | Back to Top | | |
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Anthony G Williams
Greybeard
Date Joined Apr 2007
Total Posts : 406
| Posted 5/7/2007 6:40 PM (GMT -4) | | | | |
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Alan of The Word
Stablehand
Date Joined Aug 2006
Total Posts : 37
| Posted 6/18/2007 10:22 PM (GMT -4) | | | | |
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4503
| Posted 6/20/2007 5:12 PM (GMT -4) | | Nathan,
The mid-list author link was hoot! Did you spot the early mistake that practicly assured the eventual outcome?
She quit her day job. Right at the start. I'll admit, the hefty advance was certainly an incentive, but did this person have no one in her life to set her straight about these things? Without that one, glaring error she might feel very differently about her writing carreer.
Until you can no longer afford to keep your day job, until you have contracts you can not possible meet without the extra writing time, contracts with your income for the next several years clearly spelled out, writing isn't your day job. Its your second job.
Second job may be a mystery to upper-middle class working moms with college degrees and aspirations to becoming the next Nora Roberts, but they are very familiar to working class joes who only get paid for the hours they actually put in on the job, who have to streatch to cover the kids braces and the house payment while keeping the car from being repro'd. Its what you do when you can't glean any overtime, the job you do friday and saturday nights because the extra hundred bucks every two weeks means you keep the chevy. And for writers without sales figures and multi-book contracts, its what writing is-- a job but not -the- job. And if you pull in a nice six-figure advance every year or two, great. Even a lowly, substandard advance of ten K is great, because you aren't tied to it for the rent and groceries.
But the fact is this woman ripped off publishers for more than two hundred and fourty thousand dollars From what I can tell, only one of her books ever earned out. She's crying about the money she's not being offered anymore for the books she writes that have never earned anywhere near the money she's been paid.
If she had approached things differently from the start, she might feel very different about things. Obviously she was expecting to make a hell of a lot of money, and thats just not realistic. If she had recieved a ten K advance for her fist book and earned it out, built up sales and a following of readers, kept her money away from publicists and concentrated her efforts on writing, adjusted her income expectations to match what she was actually earning, she might be very happy with her carreer. Certainly she wouldn't have "Mr. Big"'s axing her projects because of all the money they've paid out with no return.
She seems to think the world owes her a living, that she should be kept in the lifestyle she imagines she deserves until she manages to earn out the publishers trust. Like a young actress who wants the mansion and the yacht and will make the box office smash later. Does she imagine shes that special? That the money that trickles in from the bulk of the publishers offerings (and a good chunk of the flow from established sellers who are earning their cash) should go to support her while she works up?
Her problem is one of expectations. Hers are high, and so were her publishers. She didn't meet theirs, they didn't meet hers. The difference is, she's not out a couple of hundred grand.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Dutchman Rescue"in Continuum SF #6
www.continuumsciencefiction.com/orders.htm
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises:
www.fantasistent.com/books/anthologies/BASH.php
www.fantasistent.com/books/anthologies/BASH.php | | Back to Top | | |
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Silverdrake
Stablehand
Date Joined May 2006
Total Posts : 49
| Posted 6/20/2007 5:44 PM (GMT -4) | | Most telling line from the midlist author's article:
"What will we lose if writers like me stop writing?"
A heck of a lot of whining and sniveling.  This author refuses to accept that publishing is a business, has been for centuries, and that her first advance was unusual for that business and caused her problems down the road. Instead of accepting this and getting back on-track for the business she's in, she insists on holding to a "dream" that had about as much chance of actually happening as having a huge jewel fall from the sky and land gently at one's feet. Then to count her one successful book as a "loss"? Wah, wah, wah. She needs to grow up.
In answer to Anthony's remark:
"I don't know what percentage of aspiring novelists fail ever to find a publisher, but I suspect it's quite high."
From my reading on Baen's Bar, about 3% of the slush pile gets sent up the line to editors. About 1% of that gets contracts. So figuring about the same triage ratio coming from agents, you're looking at 0.03% publication chance for any given novel.
Among this, you have what happened to an acquaintance just recently: He received the standard form rejection with an added note saying that the story was very good, but it just didn't quite make the cut. A publisher has only so many slots to fill in a given timeframe, so even good stories will fall short.
As the technology advances, POD and ebooks should start opening more slots for these works by removing, or at least widening, the current print publication bottleneck. The problem of sorting the good works from the garbage will remain just as it is now, with that lack of pre-screening being the main complaint against self-publishing.
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum. | | Back to Top | | |
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Dragon Angel
Lord Dragon
Date Joined Sep 2004
Total Posts : 1066
| Posted 6/21/2007 1:12 AM (GMT -4) | | | | |
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Anthony G Williams
Greybeard
Date Joined Apr 2007
Total Posts : 406
| Posted 6/21/2007 6:49 AM (GMT -4) | | It would be interesting to learn, from those of you who have worked in SFF publishing, what percentage of submitted mss are "publishable" - i.e. achieve a minimum threshold standard in terms of quality of writing, competently-handled plot, characters you can relate to etc. And then, how many of those get published, and to what extent are the editors' decisions based on what they personally like to read?
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4503
| Posted 6/21/2007 2:44 PM (GMT -4) | | Well of course any given editor is going to put out books he or she personally likes to read. Who'd want or be able to labor over a Ms, bring out the best the author is capable of giving, with a work that they personally didn't like? Lots of writing is "publishable", meaning it is technically and artisticly capable of being put out.
But it doesn't mean that any given publisher will want to publish it. And there is little benifit to being published by a company that thinks your work just "meets minimal standards". You want the editor that likes _your_ work, the publisher who will know how to market it so the readers that will like _your_ book will find it, so it will thrive. You want it listed next to other titles from that publisher that also appeal to your audience. Thats the point of the ads you see in the backs of paperbacks, if you liked this book, try one of these others . . ..
If you are pushing a fast-paced military SF novel, you want Baen to be your publisher, because they all ready have a large pool of readers of that kind of book, who are likely to try yours and likely to like it. There are other lines that move that sort of book as well-- Warner Aspect for one. But you don't really want to be the only one in the line up, because you won't get the "walk by" advertising you will with them. OTOH, a light fantasy- modern fairytale adaptation (which are pretty popular right now) would sort of be stuck out on its own with Baen, but would fit right in with Daw, Tor or Luna. The same book would do better from those houses-- and thats what editorial boards and publishers have to watch out, its not enough to bring out a hodge-podge of genre fiction, no matter how well written, you want a line up that will work together, leading the customer from one offering to another. You want books that will help you sell other books.
And as an author you want that too. Heck as a reader you want that, so you can find more of what you like in less time.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Dutchman Rescue"in Continuum SF #6
www.continuumsciencefiction.com/orders.htm
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises:
www.fantasistent.com/books/anthologies/BASH.php
www.fantasistent.com/books/anthologies/BASH.php | | Back to Top | | |
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PK Lentz
Neophyte
Date Joined Jun 2007
Total Posts : 102
| Posted 6/21/2007 4:51 PM (GMT -4) | | Anthony G Williams said...
It's certainly better to win awards than not win them, but I've heard a few people comment that their award-winning work failed to find a publisher or, if it did, failed to sell well.
That's me! 
My novel ms won $2,500, which is more than most first timers get for an advance, if they even manage to get an advance. I first shopped it to agents, and I'll say I think the win probably got me looked at. But once the sample or full ms is in their hands, and it isn't what they're looking for for any reason, then that's it. Even if it deserved the award in artistic terms, it has to be "right" for their personal taste and for the present market. Especially the market. I guess I wrote a decent space opera, but why should an agent bother to take a chance on that when s/he can probably make more $ with a non-award-winning urban fantasy instead? Now I'm on to trying publishers directly, the ones who accept unsoliciteds.
In the end (aside from the check), the contest win for me was just proof I was doing something right. Which is a good thing, and helps you to keep going.
EDIT: I should also add I was amazed by the number of agents who didn't even want to look at my work even though the contest judges used the words "Herbert" and "Asimov" in their description, which I naturally quoted in my query letter. | | Back to Top | | |
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Jim C. Hines
Goblin Herder
Date Joined Feb 2007
Total Posts : 88
| Posted 6/22/2007 10:13 AM (GMT -4) | | "My novel ms won $2,500, which is more than most first timers get for an advance, if they even manage to get an advance."
Actually, the average advance from a commercial publisher for a first time SF/F novel is about $5000. Small presses pay less in many cases, of course.
If agents aren't interested in reading your manuscript, that could just mean you need to revise the query letter. Queries are as much of a skill as short stories or novels. (I hate writing the things, myself.)
Good luck with the book!
In the history of grand adventures and heroic quests, goblinkind has never been more than a footnote. That's about to change.
Goblin Quest -- November, 2006
Goblin Hero -- May, 2007
Goblin War -- March, 2008 | | Back to Top | | |
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Jordan Lapp
ppaL nadroJ
Date Joined Sep 2006
Total Posts : 2585
| Posted 6/25/2007 3:01 AM (GMT -4) | | | | |
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H.P. Lovesauce
Necronomicondiment
Date Joined Jul 2007
Total Posts : 585
| Posted 8/13/2007 11:51 AM (GMT -4) | | I liked your article, Tony. It lays out the issues surrounding self-publishing quite cogently.
The biggest eye-opener for me was that link you posted from that place explaining why they don't review self-published books. Their dismissive vitriol insists that if you haven't yet received your holy orders from a traditional publisher, it's your own damned fault. Still, their basic point--there probably is something wrong with your writing--is one to definitely bear in mind.
I confess my perspective is skewed from a non-fiction perspective as well. The idea of writing an entire story--let alone a novel!--without a go-ahead or implied contract seems a little backwards. I mean, yes, one often does shop around finished articles, but primarily these are previously-published pieces modified for secondary markets. Writing on spec means you've taken the time and care to create and polish a finished product as a craftsman would, say, a chair, and now must go about trying to find a buyer. At this point, rather than becoming a supplicant to the handmade-woodcrafts distributors and hope they're buying chairs this season, it makes more sense to sell the thing myself. | | Back to Top | | |
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4503
| Posted 8/17/2007 8:49 PM (GMT -4) | | They (and I) look at self publishing differently. You couldn't get a single solitary publisher of any sort to go with your book? Not just the big houses, but the small press market either?
I'd figure that either you;
a). Don't want to be edited and thus are hard to impossible to work with or
b). You got rejected once and couldn't ber the long wait times involved to try another publisher-- meaning you won't take well to the elongated times between royalty checks either and are thus hard to work with or
c). You couldn't bear the long wait to get your Ms. looked at by anybody and just charged ahead. Skipping over every aspect of publishing that occurs between the writing and having the book come out-- like editing, or
d). You tried everyhwere and nobody but you thought your book was any good, except you.
I don't read much self published fiction and I've never read any stunningly original, riviting oh-my-god I can't wait for the next one self-published fiction. I've read my share, perhaps fifty books handed to be by aquaintences or aspiring newbies, some I paid for. A few could have been fairly decent books with a good editor to focus the writers efforts. Most just sucked.
There are a lot of publishers between Random House and Flying Pen Press( a pod publisher I'm associated with in a minor way). Going it alone is usually a sign of impaitence | |
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