Sell the e-books yourself, keep everything. You don’t NEED a publisher for ebooks. They’re screwing you. But that’s what tradtional publishers do to authors.
Except you won’t sell anything. I know; I’ve been there. E-books sell to a limited market, and self-publishing is mostly a waste of time as far as getting product out. You want to sell, and potentially sell big? You still need a publisher.
Edit: I could say a few words about their business model myself, and their general lack of appropriate marketing. But that’s not the same thing as saying they screw the writer. They don’t.
So what? Let the readers go through the slush pile and decide what they like, not some frustrated Lit. major. The real problem is that trad publishing or ebook publishing, marketing is the key to success, not neccesarily good writing. Imagine if Hemingway had to search engine optimize his novels:
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:56, topic:598680”]
New model: Author pays for editing/copyediting/proofreading (although I believe the overwhelming majority of self-published authors skip this step); author pays for cover design; author pays for layout; author pays for website; author pays for advertising; author pays for advance/review copies; author pays for format conversion; author pays for POD setup; author pays for indexing; author pays for catalog listings; author pays for posters promoting book signing events; author pays publicist…
[/QUOTE]
Most writers who do the self-publishing route, I’ll wager, never think of all this. Or, if they do, they become so discouraged that they’ll either let their book fester into the great wide unknown or pull it completely from publication. There are very, very few Amanda Hockings out there, AFAIK.
As I mentioned above, I’ve gone both routes. I am happy to let the publisher do a bunch of the work, freeing up my time so I can write more. I like writing more than I like marketing & sales, and I’d rather have a smaller percentage of a much bigger pie.
The real problem is that the readers won’t go through the slush pile and pick the best; it’s too much work. They’ll pick something based on the title, the cover, the author’s picture, or what happened to show up in the Facebook ad.
Instead of the publishers picking the best, and then throwing their resources behind making it even better (proofreading, for example), we’ve turned sales into a marketing contest at best and a crapshoot at worst.
Absolute Write is a fabulous resource. I check in the forums over there several times a week. You’ll find a lot of professionals generously willing to share their hard earned knowledge with you. Very cool. I recently went to my local library, picked out a book from the shelves and realized quite happily that I had interacted with the author at AW. I met Voyager’s wife there. We worked out an agreement where I took over one of her old print assignments because she didn’t want to continue writing for the publication.
I don’t think most people really want to read through the slush pile. I’ve done slush pile reading. It’s not exactly a pleasureable experience. Most people assume that when they start to read something it won’t completely and utterly suck.
And here’s an example of what a real publisher can do for you. My wife wrote 3 books for Scholastic, for the junior high market. Somehow they got her on the California Writers Calendar for last year. And somehow one of the books, which got reissued, took off last year, and made back the advance and more. We don’t know how - maybe they got it on a recommended reading list for junior highs or something.
It is not a book that is going to show up at B&N, though it is on Amazon. But there are other markets that can make you money. Not a lot, but it is fairly tiny and so didn’t take years to write exactly.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:65, topic:598680”]
The real problem is that the readers won’t go through the slush pile and pick the best; it’s too much work. They’ll pick something based on the title, the cover, the author’s picture, or what happened to show up in the Facebook ad.
Instead of the publishers picking the best, and then throwing their resources behind making it even better (proofreading, for example), we’ve turned sales into a marketing contest at best and a crapshoot at worst.
[/QUOTE]
Right. Here is the think about the internet - it can make it easy to publish something, but it makes it harder to get someone to actually read it. Sure, your self-published book can turn up with 500 other self-published books as the result of a search, but unless it appeals to a very specialized audience people burned by paying for garbage are going to avoid it unless it gets recommended by someone - like a publisher.
For fiction it is editing. For nonfiction it is editing and also the ability of someone with an advance to do research.
Anyone can put almost anything up on YouTube, but that doesn’t mean movies and TV are going away any time soon. The relative quality between a YouTube video and a movie is just more obvious than that between a self-published book and a real book.
They are most certainly not screwing me; I am very happy with my publisher. Do you think the NY Times, The Wash. Post, The NY Post, The London Times, Vanity Fair, are going to review a vanity-press or eBook I sent them? My publisher has gotten me into all those publications.
Exactly. All you need do is look around and see what the good authors do. They go with traditional publishers. What do the powerful authors do, the ones with fanbases and clout? They go with traditional publishers. What do the top new writers do? They go with traditional publishers. What do experienced writers do? They go with traditional publishers. Not necessary the Big Six NY publishers, but traditional publishers nonetheless.
This has nothing to do with e-books. E-books are now as much part of traditional publishing as print books. Only people who don’t understand the industry make this mistake. The question for authors is whether, for any given book, they submit it to a traditional publisher or self-publish it. The answer could go either way for any individual book. I know many writers who take advantage of the distribution and marketing clout of traditional publishers for some books and take advantage of the ease of creation for other more specialized books. Me, for one.
When people post threads asking whether authors get edited anymore, they are recognizing that publishers add quality to books by providing professional-qualify checks on the overworked individual’s inabilities to do everything perfectly. When people post threads about the latest Ken Burns documentary, they implicitly praise the publisher that ensured that Daniel Okrent’s book on Prohibition got into every store. When we have a compilation thread about recommendations for books on particular subjects it’s unlikely that somebody’s self-published book on the Norman Conquest will on those lists. I’ll bet that 99% of all the books ever discussed on the Dope are traditionally published books.
It’s not true that every self-published book is crap, nor that every traditionally published book is good. It is true that traditional publishing is an insane industry with huge numbers of flaws, since I’ve said that myself here multiple times. But I’d have to be infinitely more insane to want to do anything with my next big book other than submit it to a traditional publisher. The advantage there is all mine.
For nonfiction, the difference is HUGE. My last nonfiction tech book went through eight peer reviews - and then went through the publisher’s fact-checking, proofreading, and copyediting (I had already fact-checked it myself before submission, of course). People in the trade know that publisher and they know the care that publisher takes to make sure their books are accurate.
Any schlub could throw something together and put it out through a vanity press, and caveat emptor.
They’re screwing you on the ebooks if you’re only making a few pennies on each copy. I publish on Amazon, I get 75%. Unless your books have REALLY been marked down, they’re giving you a very small percentage.
Just like with recorded music, some writers will thrive and others will be worse off. Like with music, the ones who will do best will be the ones who are best at dealing with doing their own editing, publishing, marketing and promotion, while the ones who are good at writing and have no talent or inclination to the publishing end of the business will suffer. Like with music, the ones for whom the new system will be the ‘best outcome’ are likely to be the ones I couldn’t give a fuck about, while the ones I respect and admire will quit because there’s no money in what they are doing.
Well, I got the Kindle 3 on its release date, I think Sept. 1, 2010, and haven’t bought a single book for it. I have read a bunch of public domain books on the Kindle. And I pay $1.99 a month for something called the New York Times latest news blog. It gives me about as much of the Times as I have time to read. Years ago, I had home delivery. So not only is the Kindle, at least in my case, bad for authors, it is also bad for reporters.
As for Kindle library borrowing, I’m probably going to finish a book right after I’m done this post. Now, personally, I still read a lot of print library books. But when readers don’t have to get off their duff and actually go to the library, this surely will mean more library borrowing and less out and out purchases. That’s likely why Amazon put off offering library borrowing for as long as they felt they could, from a marketing standpoint, get away with it.
Even in the good old days, my impression is that few people could make a living writing books. But I don’t see how eBooks can fail to make it worse for them – as authors I am honored to share this thread with have shown.
75% of zero is still zero. OTOH, five cents a copy if you sell 10,000 copies is a pretty nice chunk of change.
Obviously, you have no idea what the slush pile is like. Publishers have to pay people to read it, since 90% of it is unsuitable for publication by any standard you care to name. Ask anyone who’s ever done slush reading – it’s a tedious, mind-numbing process to have to read tons of mediocrity (Shawna McCarthy once said that that’s the big problem – there are a few “so bad they’re good” submissions that are good for a laugh, and a few submissions that are worth serious consideration, but the vast majority of the slush pile are things that are just plain mind-numbingly mediocre).
No one reads slush without getting paid to do it. No one is going to read slush for free – they’re just going to stop reading after a few pages. And no one is going to pay for slush.
Marketing is the key for any writing success. Even if you’re self-publishing, you have to market your book, good writing or not. The publisher is just able to do a far better job of it than you can ever hope to.
If you think that the big publishers aren’t necessary, try this experiment. Count all your books (electronic and print). Count how many were published by traditional publishers. Figure out the percentage. I would expect that at least 95% of the books you have bought were published by traditional publishers (large and small press).
Now, if you’re not buying vanity press books, or self-published books, what makes you think others are rushing out to buy them?
True, but it’s still change. You can’t make a living at $500 per book.
Have you visited this place called the Internet lately? It is CRAMMED with bad writing. Much of the troves of fiction on the Internet IS a slush pile equivalent. People are spending their precious time wading through it, if nothing else, because a lot of it is priced at its true value: it is free.
Well it’s true that writers have to market their books, however they are published, but from what I have read of publishing, marketing help is the ONLY major advantage that publishers offer authors any more, and that is less and less true for mid-list authors. It’s increasingly a crapshoot, with a few top authors getting all the marketing help and the rest left to fend for themselves, except of course for getting shelf space.
Oh, by FAR the majority of my books are print. But for most of my life, there has been no ebook market. MOST of my reading is on the Internet now, and the few books I have obtained have been ebooks that I can read on my Itouch. Especially Hottitude … er, can’t cite that one … (looks about slyly).
I don’t have the time to go through the slush pile, dammit. The few times I’ve been tricked into getting some self-published ebook crap from Amazon, I have felt betrayed. I think self-publishing hurts writers: the good writers get lost in barrage of words, and the bad writers have no incentive to either improve or give up. The upsurge in self-publishing (fiction moreso than non-fiction) has hurt readers even more, because there is more dreck than ever to wade through before finding something good.
Agreed. A friend of mine, who is a good writer, self-published her first book. Bookstores won’t carry it, (for reason Wombat mentioned above), and it hurt her credibility tremendously, and, I believe, made it harder for her to find an agent for the next one.
My sister really loves vampire fiction and apparently there isn’t enough being published by traditional presses for her liking (I know) so she’s started seeking out self-published fiction. Apparently there are groups on Goodreads devoted to this kind of thing. She says one of the reasons she likes the self-published stuff is that you get a lot of interaction with the authors, i.e. “they make corrections to their books with spelling errors and stuff like that that the fans find.”
What I took away from this discussion is that even the more popular self-published authors apparently can’t even be bothered to run spell-check before posting their stuff. I have less than zero interest in wading through that stuff trying to find a rare gem.