Lately, four of the self-published authors I follow (on their blogs and Twitter) have said that they are giving up. Some are giving up writing altogether, some are giving up their attempts to be successful. Four is quite a rash and I wonder if it is a sign of things to come. The three that gave reasons, said it was because they are tired of putting their books out there and working so hard at marketing their work, only to be ignored by the buying public. They weren’t actually “tired” you understand, they were heartsick, they were miserable, they were defeated and broken.

Those of us who write and submit our manuscripts to the judgement of agents and publishers know the pain of rejection. Some wear the terrible number of rejections they have accumulated as a badge of pride (although that happens mostly after they’ve been published). It is gruelling and it is soul-destroying. Most writers hate it and wish it could stop. Some writers make it stop by taking their hats out of the ring.

In recent times, self-publishing has been seen as a way around the dreadful and often arbitrary judgement of the “gatekeepers”. Why should a writer go on suffering the rejection of publishers and agents, they reason, when they can simply and cheaply publish their own work and “get it out there”? While some see subjecting themselves to the judgement of the gatekeepers as “paying their dues”, others see it as an artificial barrier, erected by an old and crumbling system that no longer has the respect of the people of whom it sits in judgement.

But when you self-publish, you offer yourself to the judgement of a higher court: The Market. And don’t think for a moment that The Market is the court of public opinion. It is not. The Market is a whore, a gigolo. It has favours to offer, but only at a price. And the price is this: you must woo it, thrill it, entertain it, seduce it, plead with it, and subjugate yourself to it. If you don’t catch its fickle eye, its gaze will pass over you and find another, more willing to please it.

There are many panders who will offer the self-published author advice on how to succeed in The Market, but most of them are charlatans or fools. And, besides, so few writers are prepared to make the deals that really work, the ones that are made over buried bones at a crossroads. So the average self-published author sells a book or two a month on Amazon and keeps on writing and hoping – because the panders say you need lots of “inventory”.

But for some the awful truth hits them; The Market is ignoring them. And then they know a pain worse than rejection. A pain that squeezes at their hearts every day of their lives, for every book they publish, twenty-four seven. The Amazon KDP report mocks them. The Smashwords dashboard laughs in their pathetic faces. Self-publishing, for so many, becomes a nightmare of disillusionment and self-torment. The world just isn’t interested. They’re not being rejected because nobody even knows they’re there. They’re being ignored. Their life’s work, their hopes and dreams, they themselves, are beneath notice.

Beneath notice.

How long before this trickle of surrenders becomes a stream? How long before the stream becomes a torrent? I don’t know, but I do know I will continue to face rejection until I can face it no more. The alternative may be far worse.

That's me, near the middle, waving.

Courtesy of the very kind Marilee Brothers, I had the chance to blather about the three-ring circus we call publishing on her most excellent blog. If you’re interested in what I think about small publishers, self-publishing, and the Big Six, you should hop over there. If not, you should go there anyway as there is a wealth of fascinating posts by far more knowledgeable and interesting people, all on your favourite subject*.

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*Books and publishing, of course. What did you think I meant?

Yes, it’s that time of year again. For the many people who weren’t around on May 4th 2008 when I posted my first “hello world” from my brand new writing blog – that is, all of you – May 4th 2008 is the date from which I reckon my writing career began. So as 3 GWC (Graham’s Writing Career) draws to a close, it’s time to take stock once more and reflect on all that has happened since 2 GWC drew to a close.

Well, maybe not. Oh, alright, but just one paragraph. It was a busy and complicated year – essentially the first year of my first novel – and it ended (near enough) with me having found a wonderful literary agent (Ineke Prochazka) to call my own. There were a few story sales along the way and lots of other writerly stuff. In all, it was a year of good, solid progress. I started writing three novels in 3 GWC too – and finished one of them. I hope to finish the other two in the coming year. It was also the year that Jodi Cleghorn and eMergent Press came into my life and Big Bad Media came and went (literally – it has now wound up). I went to Worldcon. I went to Supanova. A couple of my friends did amazing (publishing-related)  things (that’s you, Emma, Marianne, Joanna and Joanne) and I got two new computers!

And all the other things that I forgot to mention.

On the agenda for next year are another novel sale – or two – (which is now your department, Ineke), more shorts sales, finishing my comedy sci-fi novel “Cargo Cult” and possibly a couple of other books, maybe going to the Brisbane Writers Festival (haven’t quite decided yet), and seeing “TimeSplash” finally appear in print (and maybe audio – how’s that going, Em?) I think it will be another busy and complicated year. At least I hope so.

There are a couple of shorts of mine appearing soon in anthologies for you to look out for (please!)

In Situ – a spec fic anthology from Dagan Books, ed. Carrie Cuinn. It contains my story “Salvage”. Expected publication date is 15th May – pre-order it via Goodreads.

Hope – a spec fic anthology from Kayelle Press, ed. Sasha Beattie, with a great cast of Aussie writers. It contains my story “The God on the Mountain”. Expected publication date is “real soon now”! I am especially stoked that two of the other contributors are friends who shared the QWC/Hachette retreat with me in May 2008 – the event that I believe kicked off my professional writing career.

Nothing but Flowers: Tales of Post Apocalyptic Love from eMergent Press, ed. Jodi Cleghorn. It contains my story “Two Fools in Love” – the first time I ever sat down to write a love story and actually did it. This is already available as an ebook but should hit the streets as a paperback any second now.

You all have a good 4 now. Happy New Year.

Happy New Year everybody!

First off, thanks to everyone who took advantage of my publisher’s Holiday Special and snagged a cheap copy of TimeSplash. Astute shoppers will notice that the offer has now closed. Personally, I’d like to keep the price that low all year round but it’s not up to me. Instead, I hope you’ll find it is still good value at the price the publisher sets. You’ll still find it discounted on sites like Amazon, and Fictionwise – just not quite so much.

New Year’s Resolutions

I’d like to tell you about my resolutions, but I didn’t make any. I never do. I have enough plans and goals to keep any anal retentive happy, I just don’t set them at the turn of the year. My Big Push for the year is to get an agent. Hopefully, I’ll achieve this before all the book shops (and then all the publishers) go out of business, otherwise my exciting new agent won’t have anyone left to sell my books to. In a way, it would be nice if all the book shops (and publishers) stopped yelling at the tide to go back and just quietly turned up their toes. At least then the market would be nice and simple again. We’d all be self-publishing because there would be no other way to get a book out.

It’s nice that the agents I’m approaching tell me I write very well and so on, but it would be nicer if they didn’t also say things like “but I’m getting out of the fiction market before I starve,” or “but I can only take on one new client per decade now and their books have to give me an orgasm whenever I touch the title page.” When the book shops have all gone broke, and the publishers have all gone broke, the agents will have to get jobs as freelance editors or book publicists for all the self-publishing authors who are also going broke.

Work In Progress

Meanwhile, I keep on tapping at the old keyboard. My current WIP is tentatively called Mindrider and is based on one of my short stories of the same name. It’s dark. The protagonist is an alien parasite who lives in people’s brains and it’s sometimes just a tiny bit difficult to make him a sympathetic character. But I like a challenge. It’s all written in first person from the parasite’s POV too. Another challenge. I’m enjoying it so much, I can easily see me doing a whole series based on these characters. I’m 50,000 words into it, with maybe another 40,000 to go. Then I can get back to the space opera this book interrupted – about a 10,000-year-old robot who is helping humanity fight off an alien invasion. You know what? Being a writer is like being a kid in a toy shop. There are so many wonderful things to play with, you don’t know what to pick up next. There are a couple of anthologies I’d like to do stories for too (actually, four) but I’m so much into novel-writing these days that I write very few short stories.

2010 In Review

Not shabby at all.

Concluding Remarks

By for now. I’m looking forward to chatting with you all in 2011. So don’t be shy now, and don’t be a stranger. There’s plenty of space in the comments section below for everybody. I hope you all have a good and successful year too.

Graham.

What does a novelist need from a publisher? The question might sound a bit daft but, when publishing your own writing is so easy and so cheap, and finding a publisher is so hard, a writer really needs a good answer to this question. A related question is, what does a novelist need from an agent? Again, finding an agent is a lot of work and there is no guarantee of success, so the sensible writer really should be asking whether it is worth it. I want to tackle each in turn, looking at the services each provides and the costs and benefits of each compared to self-publishing. So, today, let’s look at what it takes to do it yourself.

Going It Alone

First, to establish some kind of baseline, let’s say you are interested in having your novels appear in print, in English, in all the main markets (US, UK, Canada, Australia) and you’d also like an ebook edition, available globally from all the major online retailers, and, in the future maybe, an audiobook edition (on disc and by download)  and sales in translation in various other countries.

You need professional editing. I’m sorry, you do. I don’t care how good you think you are. Try it just once and you will be convinced. You could pay for this outright or do a royalty deal with an editor. Let’s say it costs you US$1500 to get the editing done. (You can probably get it done for much less if you shop around.) You will also need cover art. This is much cheaper and you can probably get a good job done for US$100 or so. If professional graphic designers are too expensive, find a starving student. There really is no way to avoid these costs so, if you’re self-publishing, you must just suck it up.

After that, setting up and publishing an ebook is essentially free, and very easy. If you use a service like Smashwords (and are happy to say they are your publisher) you can even get a free ISBN.  They take 15% off the top of every sale but handle all the ecommerce side, don’t ask for any rights, and are non-exclusive. They have distribution deals with many large players so global distribution in mutiple formats is covered.

For print, you would probably go print-on-demand (POD) and there are many services that will let you do this with no set-up costs. Print books (unlike ebooks) don’t just format themselves. You will need to design the book – choose the fonts, the layout, the size, and so on. Book design is a skill that some people believe is essential to create a high-quality printed book. I absolutely agree. However, most books you read could have been put together by anyone with a copy of Word and a couple of hours to spare. My advice, unless you have an artistic bent and a good eye for aesthetics, find a book you like the look of  and copy it’s style. It’s an area where an amateur with decent word-processing skills can get results that are quite acceptable. The POD company will effectively sell you each copy for the cost of production plus a profit margin. You can then add your own margin and resell the book (through Amazon, say.) Some are affilliated to retail sites. You will probably want an ISBN (which enables listing in catalogues) and the cost of these very much depends on where you live. Some countries issue them for free, some charge you a small fortune. Are they worth it? If you want to try to sell through (physical) bookshops, and many of the big online outlets, then yes. If you’re only selling through your own website, then no. If they’re free or cheap where you live, get one.

So far, you’ve spent less than US$2,000 and your book is on sale in print and electronically around the world. Is anyone buying it? Almost certainly not. Figures (which are a couple of years old now) show that the average self-published print book sells 150 copies. That includes the enthusiasts who do print runs of thousands of books which then fill up their garage forever (still counts as ssales as far as the printers are concerned), and the few, the very few, successes who sell a thousand or two thousand copies. Sales in double-digits are quite normal. If you’re selling at a $5 markup on the printer’s price, you are probably going to spend four times more on production than you recover in sales.

So you need to think about promotion. You need to print at least 50 copies of the book to give away free to reviewers (another unavoidable cost which just pushed your outlay up past US$2,500.) If you’re lucky, you’ll get a handful of reviews out of this. Most of the reviewers you want – the big newspapers, the literary magazines, the genre magazines, the big websites and blogs – will not even look at a self-published book. So you’re left with the small-fry, and your social networking buddies. Work damned hard, do the blog tours and the blog interviews and the Twitter and Facebook promotions, pester your local book shops to hold a book signing or two, run a launch party, send out press releases, and so on and so on, and you might make a few thousand people aware of your book. Maybe one per cent of those people will buy a copy. If your book is really, really good, this is where it has a chance to take off, because now you have done all the promotion you can, and it’s down to other people to mention your book to their friends, write about it on their blogs, and generally spread the word. If it’s anything less than excellent, this is the point where your book flops. You spent $2,500, you sold 150 copies, you lost nearly $2,000, and spent every spare minute you had for the best part of six months on publishing and promoting it.

Better luck next time.

In a future post I will come back to the questions of what a novelist needs from a publisher and an agent.

I read yet another blog post recently about writers not following submission guidelines. This one was by a publisher, but I’ve also read them from agents and magazine editors. Well, yes, writers should follow the submission guidelines. The fact that every agent and editor in the whole world has ever-so-slightly different requirements notwithstanding, it is impolite and just plain self-destructive not to do that extra bit of work if they really want you to.

The interesting thing about this particular complaint – which, again, I find occurs quite often – is that the publisher used the ‘job interview’ metaphor to describe what goes on in the initial contacts between publisher and writer. In the publisher’s mind, they are interviewing applicants for a job. Since there are many applicants for each ‘post’, these applicants had better take great pains to present themselves well, they said. They ought to ingratiate themselves. The publisher even used the phrase “asking a favour” to describe what a query letter is about, which is a rather extreme view even for the publishing world. Even job applicants are not supplicants.

It doesn't have to be like this.

It really won’t do. My own reaction to publishers and agents who display this kind of attitude is to step back sharply and keep my distance. As a writer, one has to remember that signing with a publisher is the beginning – you both hope – of a long and successful business relationship. You are not applying for a job. You are agreeing to a mutually beneficial commercial arrangement in which the other party will also have obligations, will also be expected to contribute their time and skills, and will need to perform to your satisfaction. It is hardly likely to be a professional or satisfying relationship if one party considers that they are doing the other a favour by participating in it.

Over the past year or so, wisdom has been accumulating in the blogsphere about who should self-publish, what they should self-publish, and when. The advice seems to amount to this:

• If no-one else is going to publish it (because, say, it was commercially published once but is now out of print, or it’s new but your agent can’t sell it) AND
• It is good (which you can tell because it was once commercially published, or your agent has been trying to sell it) AND
• It has been professionally edited (this is harder to judge, but if you paid someone who works as an editor and you both agonised over the text for weeks or months, getting it to the point where the editor was satisfied, you’re probably OK) AND
• It has a good cover, designed by a professional AND
• You are willing to spend hundreds of hours promoting it, or thousands of dollars paying a professional to promote it THEN
• You should self-publish.

OR

• If no-one else is going to publish it (because, say, it would only be interesting to your immediate family) AND
• The quality doesn’t matter (because your immediate family will only be looking at the pictures anyway) AND
• You don’t care at all if only five people ever see it THEN
• You should self-publish.

Nevertheless, with self-publishing being so easy these days, and ebook publishing not necessarily having any up-front costs (except cover design) it is very tempting to give it a go.

Strangely, the temptation is probably higher for published authors than for not-yet-published ones. Published authors have already had (on average) ten years of being rejected by agents and publishers. They have already felt the frustration of having the publisher, agent, and retailer between them take 90% of the sale price of each book. They have already felt the strain of running themselves ragged to promote a book when no-one else in the food chain seems to care. They have already gnashed their teeth over their lack of control over the pricing, positioning and presentation of what used to be their own property, the product upon which their whole future depends.

Yet commercial publication is still the best option for the new writer. (Joe Konrath may be demonstrating that, for established writers, or writers with a huge ‘platform’, it no longer is.) If it all goes well, it is by far the best – and easiest – way to make sales and establish a reputation. If it all goes well.

And this is all by way of a preamble to the announcement that I have just self-published a small collection of short stories. Some of them have already been published in magazines, some have not. What links them is that they are all set in the same ‘world’ and all belong to the unfolding story of a group of transhumans who inhabit a virtual world called Placid Point.

The collection is called “Placid Point: Tales from the History of Transhumanity” and is available in all popular ebook formats from Smashwords (over the next few weeks, it will also be available through Amazon, B&N, the iBookstore, and other major retailers.) I’ve set the price at $1.99, which I hope you’ll agree is reasonable. I don’t actually intend to sell bucketloads of this collection (unlike my debut novel, TimeSplash, which I do want to sell lots of) but I want these stories out there because they are in the same world as the novel I have just finished writing (The Credulity Nexus) and, if that is ever published, it would be nice to be able to point readers to a book of related short stories.

Placid Point: Tales from the History of Transhumanity - A collection of short stories by Graham Storrs