As you may know, I live out in the Boondocks, the sticks, Woop Woop (or pick your own quaint phrase meaning “the middle of nowhere”). The main industries here are fruit growing and wine making.  They play country and western musak in the local supermarket and the churches outnumber the pubs about twenty to one. In this week’s local free rag – which is actually a half-way decent local paper if you can stand the unrelenting right-wing political bias – the front page story (and when I say front page, I mean it fills the whole front page, including a half-page photo) is about a local writer who has had a book published. The story wasn’t just that, of course, although the very existence of a local writer would have been newsworthy enough, it focused on the scale of the bloke’s success. His book has been published internationally, you see. Not only that but he has never had a rejection letter. The first publisher he approached snapped it up.

Of course, I was amazed, not to say a little miffed, that my own publishing success has gone completely unremarked in the local press. I read the article again, thinking I might find out who the bloke is and maybe look him up some time. It would be nice to have another writer to talk to whom I could meet in the flesh from time to time. It was then that a comment near the end of the piece caught my eye. The journo referred not to the man’s publisher but to his “investor”. In a trice I was onto the Web. The publisher of the book turned out to be a vanity press. Judging from what was said in the article, the author had bought their deluxe package at about $2,000 – no doubt this also included a carefully-worded press release to send to the local paper. And that, of course, explained why this writer had not received any rejection letters. (How would a rejection letter from a vanity press look? “Dear Mr. X, Thank you for letting us see your manuscript. We receive thousands of excellent manuscripts each year and, unfortunately, we are not able to take your $2,000 at this time. We wish you more success with giving your money to another publisher.”)

Still, I do know a few people who have used vanity publishing services over the years and in at least one case, their books are as good as any you might find from a major publisher. In fact, better than the bulk of them. And the article had said how amazingly well this particular book was doing. So I went to Amazon, to see what the fuss was about. There was no opportunity to read a sample, unfortunately, but I did notice that it had been out for six months but had only one customer review (albeit five stars) and its sales rank was around three million. (In case you’re new to the mysteries of Amazon, a sales rank of 1 is good. A sales rank of 3,000,000 means nobody is buying. I have no idea what any other number means.) So not really the success the article was making it out to be. In fact (and I have no idea whether the work deserves it, but) it seems to be languishing in obscurity. Perhaps the article in the local paper will improve its fortunes.

A number of thoughts occur to me about all this.

The first is that the journalist and editor who put this on the front page didn’t do even some minimal fact checking. This seems to be par for the course with journalists these days – even on newspapers you have to pay for. If they had checked the facts, they might not have printed such a breathless accolade, or described anything as surprising as a first time author who hasn’t had a rejection letter. On the other hand, the bloke might just be a relative of the paper’s owners or editor. Nearly everybody around here is related to everybody else.

The second is that the journalist, the editor, and perhaps even the author himself, simply do not understand the difference between a publisher and a vanity press. Maybe it is only people in the business who have learned to make this distinction. Maybe the rest of the world hasn’t cottoned on yet. The thing is, paying someone to publish your book is not the same as someone paying you to publish your book. Honestly, I don’t mean to be snobbish about this. I have self-published a few books (although I have not used a vanity press). Self-publishing and even vanity publishing are not bad things – as long as it is clear to the reader what they are getting. Like it or not, being published by a “traditional” commercial publisher (large or small) is the reader’s implied guarantee of a minimum level of quality. Self-publishing and vanity publishing mean there is no implied promise of a minimum quality level and the reader must take pot luck (or insist on reading a free sample before purchase).

The third is that I really ought to be more aggressive and mendacious about marketing my stuff.

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?

Well, it was a long and strange journey, but my time travel thriller, TimeSplash, is now available as an audio book – thanks to my newest publisher, Iambik Audiobooks. So, as we speak, TimeSplash is on sale as a self-published ebook and as a commercially published audio book, and it is in production at eMergent Publishing to appear soon in a print edition. Talk about a hybrid publishing model! Iambik has the audiobook rights, eMergent (almost, almost) has the print rights, and I have the ebook rights. (And, if a big-budget film producer would like to make my day, I have not yet disposed of the film or merchandising rights. So drop me a line, OK?)

But let’s talk about that audio book for a minute. I first published TimeSplash as an ebook with a publisher called Lyrical Press. Which is how my friend Emma Newman got to read a copy. She and I had become pals via our blogs. She was agonising over whether to self-publish her novel ‘Twenty Years Later” at the time and I was just agonising. Emma started podcasting her novel, reading it one chapter at a time and putting it up on her blog. She had a surprising reaction. Not only did people like her book (which was not surprising at all) they loved the way she read it. I mean, really loved it. These podcasts changed Emma’s life in all kinds of ways. Firstly, she built a large following, and, when she started Twittering, that grew even larger. Then she signed a three book publishing deal for “Twenty Years Later” and two sequels (so no more agonising – she’d made it!) . Then she started looking for work as a voice artist, recording other people’s books – and has been finding it.

As a side venture, Emma started recording my novel, TimeSplash, suggesting that she jointly self-publish it with me. I was flattered and very keen on the idea, so we worked on it for several months. Which is to say, Emma worked, I simply listened to the chapters as they emerged and said, “Wow! Cool!” and so on. By the time it was over, Emma had made contact with a publisher who wanted her to read some of his books. She let him hear some of TimeSplash and he wanted that too. This was an outfit called Big Bad Media, based in Denmark. Not long after I signed contracts with them for a print and audiobook edition of TimeSplash, they went out of business. It was a bit of a shambles and looking like a complete flop until eMergent Publishing (based just up the road in Brisbane, of all places) said they were interested in the print rights that BBM had forfeited (yay, eMergent!).

And that was an outcome I was reasonably happy with. The downside was that all Emma’s work on TimeSplash might go to waste. And that would have been a terrible thing. Her reading of the book has a strange effect on the story, you see. When I read it – when most people read it from the text – it seems as if there are two protagonists, Jay and Sandra. This young man and woman are caught up in the events of the story and whirled along. They sort of fall in love as they hunt down the timesplashers and fight their personal demons. But, when I wrote it, it was mostly about Sandra and her terrible struggle against fear and her crushed self-esteem. And the miracle was, when you hear it read by a woman, by Emma, suddenly it’s clear as day that this is Sandra’s story above all else. So I really wanted Emma’s telling of this tale to survive.

That’s why, when she made contact with Iambik Audiobooks as part of her ongoing rise to stardom as a voice artist, and she sold them the idea of publishing TimeSplash, I was over the moon. That was almost exactly five months ago and my head is still reeling from the surprise and delight of it all. The path from the first idea for the story (in May 2008) to this day, with the audio book sitting on the shelf at Iambik, has been long and tortuous and filled with kind and talented people like Emma who have pushed and promoted TimeSplash with incredible generosity (and ultimate success!)

What can I say but “Thank you”, to Lyrical Press, to Greg McQueen at BBM, to Jodi Cleghorn and Paul Anderson at eMergent, and to Gesine Kernchen and the team at Iambik, and, especially, to Emma Newman, for keeping this sometimes sputtering flame alive for so long? I could not have done it without you.

And that's my very talented daughter's artwork on the front!

Before I go on, let me just squee* for a moment. The second edition of my time travel thriller, TimeSplash, is out today (on Smashwords - out tomorrow on Amazon), It has had a bit of an overhaul, too: new cover, slight re-edit, and two new ISBNs. That’s it, on the left of this post. The blue one. Feel free to stroke and pet it.

The audiobook and print editions are out soon too (from proper publishers) but the ebook (2nd edition) belongs to me. I’m also squeeing because I successfully steered the MS through the increasingly rigorous requirements of Smashwords and Amazon to end up with a book in both the major ebook markets of our time: The Amazon Kindle Store and The Rest.

Pricing was interesting. This was the first time I got to set the price for TimeSplash. Before now, my publisher had set the price at $5.50. Now the responsibility is mine and I had to think long and hard about it. In theory, the cheaper an ebook is, the more you will sell – but the less you will make on each sale. But that is only if you believe ebooks are price sensitive. I know that Joe Konrath says they are (and has evidence to back that up) but my own experience is that there is an area, somewhere under $10 where it really doesn’t make much difference. Free is very different, and I have discovered that you can shift ten times as many books in a week as you can in a year if you’re giving them away, but let’s not go mad. I have a starving Airedale to feed. So I decided to peg my book to the price of a cup of coffee at my favourite coffee shop – which is $4.50 for a large cappuccino – which is what I always order. That seems to me to be about the right price/value point for a full-length novel in ebook format.

And, finally, to the point about geographies. I’ve never used Amazon to sell ebooks before and I had heard they take 30% of the sale price of a book, leaving 70% to the author. This isn’t actually true. They take 30% in some countries (eight or ten, maybe) but in the rest, they take 65%, leaving just 35% for the author. As it happens, one of the countries outside their 30% zone is Australia – where I live, and where I might expect to make the most sales**. Does anyone have any idea why this is? The whole formula for determining price on Amazon is so baroque you would need a lawyer to help you understand it, but it’s easy to see that they’re trying to fix the market so that they don’t get undercut. Yet this different royalties in different geographies thing has me totally confused. What is that all about?

And your take-home messages? Self-publishing is possible but all publishing is weird. And you can buy TimeSplash at Smashwords for exactly the price of a cup of coffee.

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Update 21-8-11: TimeSplash has finally appeared on Amazon too. 

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*Squee v. The rare emission of joyous noises by authors, who may have waited many years to make them.

**In fact, I make most sales in the US and the UK, and almost none in Australia. Possibly because Australians don’t like science fiction (as an Australian publisher said recently) and they don’t like ebooks (talk about late adopters!)

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.