Self Publishing

December 12, 2008

Yesterday Jude and Zoe went off on a bit of a tangent in this blog's comments section about self publishing. Zoe, who self-publishes, is a proponent; Jude is not.

Me, being wishy-washy, I suppose, thinks they're both right. This post will probably be long, so be prepared. I will say that I have self-published, basically. "Catfish Guru" was published by iUniverse. The difference was that I didn't pay a dime for the privilege. iUniverse was just getting going and had a 6-month program where if you were an active member of Mystery Writers of America you could get a manuscript published for free. At that point, as it turned out, I had a contract with Write Way Publishing for a novel called "Blood Secrets." As a way of promoting it, I wrote a 12-chapter prequel novella, which I was publishing a chapter at a time, one each month for a year leading up to the novel's publication.

Except WWP went bankrupt and canceled my contract about 6 months in. Then iUniverse announced their program and I thought, "What the hell?" and write another novella, also a prequel called "Catfish Guru" and published the two of them as "Catfish Guru." (They hold up. They're good. I stand by them, despite their quirky history). Would I do it again? Maybe, as a last resort, a way of saying, "Hell, I admit failure in the traditional methods, so here's the books." Or not, who knows?

Here's a bit from one of my favorite novels, "Voodoo, Ltd" by the late Ross Thomas. He's describing a character, Billy Rice the fourth, who inherited a ton of money. Ione Gamble is speaking:

"Billy the fourth hung onto everything for eight years, then sold out in early eighty-six at the top of the market. He walked away with at least a billion, maybe more. Then he moved out here and announced he was an independent motion picture producer and, with a billion or so in the bank, everybody said, 'That's right, you are.'"

I have given talks on getting published and one of the things I usually say is that a publisher is a person with money who wants to publish something. There's no particular school for it, no credentials, no test you have to pass. You just pony up the money, pay to have something published, jump through the various hoops to get your books distributed, and voila, you're a publisher.

This supports Zoe's point of view.

Once upon a time, publishers weren't nearly as organized as they are now. Many novels were published by friends of the writer, who often tended to be a wealthy person who wrote under a pseudonym so he or she wasn't embarrassed by what was perceived as a low calling. There's also a significant history of self-publishing. I may be wrong, but I think Mark Twain did a fair amount of it. If not him, it was someone else famous from the same era.

Today, when everyone has access to computers and publishing is relatively easy and the only thing you need to get onto Amazon.com is an ISBN, it's pretty easy to get published. A way to weed out any hack with a computer and someone with talent and skill (presumably) is the convoluted process of getting an agent, then getting somebody with a bunch of money (Bertelsman, et al) to publish your book.

This pretty much supports Jude's point of view. In other words, the industry sets the bar and by being published that way, you've proven you have a certain level of proficiency. You've passed the entrance exam, so to speak.

I've wondered over the years and more and more so recently as the publishing industry appears to be eating itself and focusing more and more (and more) on blockbuster novels and pre-sold concepts (tie-ins based on movies, TV shows, or sticking names of famous authors on books written by someone else ala James Patterson, Janet Evanovich, Robert Ludlum, VC Andrews, Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, etc), whether by necessity we're going to see a shift in the publishing paradigm.

We might be already. As Borders goes bankrupt and publishing houses all over the US lay off staff and freeze lines, independent and small publishers are flourishing, as is e-publishing, which apparently has grown about 500% this year.

A couple years ago I interviewed bestselling author David Morrell, who had shifted to Vanguard Publishing (I think it was Vanguard, correct me if I'm wrong), which was a new model. They offered no advances to the authors, but gave them higher royalties, but more importantly, contracted in what they would do to promote the novels. As David said to me, and I'll paraphrase, "The trend in publishers is to not promote books, but authors increasingly have to ask themselves, with how easy it is to self-publish and get your books available on Amazon.com or even sell on your own website, if publishers aren't going to do promotion, what do writers need publishers for?"

The answer to that, still, I think, is "distribution." It's tough for small presses and self-published folks to get their books into brick-and-mortar bookstores unless they're published by the big houses. That may be changing, and if Borders actually goes bankrupt and out of business, we might see more and more changes in distribution.

I would--and do--also often point out that for certain types of nonfiction, self-publishing is the way to go. If you've written a book with a niche audience--a guidebook to the wildflowers of the northeast, for instance--then you might be better off self-publishing. It's just not going to be that interesting to publishers who are looking for national distribution. If you teach classes or give tours or have a relationship with the park system in the northeast, even better. You've got distribution.

Have I thought of becoming a publisher? Yes. For fiction? No f***ing way. I'm too much of a hard-nosed business person for that. I'm still a believer in finding an unmet need and filling it. I have, as a matter of fact, two solid ideas for potential newsletter or book markets. I even went so far as to discuss in a general way, the nature of newsletter publishing these days with one of my largest client, who is the VP and group publisher of a publisher that publishes a lot of newsletters. His comment was that it was a horrible time to be a publisher, of newsletters or anything else. He noted that newsletters went through a big boom in the 1990s, but it was contracting now, which was why they had added a lot of specialty reports and events--conferences and web seminars, etc--to what they offered.

I also think newsletter distribution is in a shakeout period right now (as are newspapers, etc) and the costs of printing things on paper and mailing newsletters is putting all the emphasis on e-newsletters and websites and PDF distribution via the Internet. That's all well and good, but it's a different revenue model than print publications (as well as distribution). As a friend of mine who's retired from the newspaper business (as a publisher and editor) told me just this week, "When newspapers started online editions, they got Internet advertising, but it was 5 cents on the dollar compared to what they were getting from their print editions."

Before this goes on forever with no conclusions, I want to direct you to author Jeremy Robinson's website. 

Jeremy's latest novel, "Antarktos Rising" is terrific. One of the better novels I read in 2008. A tech thriller that's well written, thought provoking and a lot of fun. Perfect? No.

Jeremy ran a small press for a while, publishing his own books and those of other people. Then a company came along and bought his small press. They continue to publish his books. Successfully, from the looks of things.

He notes another writer, I think the name is James Alten, who is a bestselling author ("Meg" and "The Trench" as well as others), who made a boodle of bucks being traditionally published, then decided (for whatever reasons) to open his own publishing house to publish his own books.

I've been waiting for this to happen, actually. For about ten years. Alten's not really a brand name. What I'm curious to see is if Stephen King or Dan Brown or Mary Higgins Clark or some other rock star writer one day says, "You know, I'm tired of getting 15% of the profit off these books when I can self-publish it myself and get 40%. Instead of $5 million for this book I can get $15 million and I don't have to deal with all those morons at the publishing house."

I fully expect it to happen.

So, conclusions?

Nope, don't really have any. When I give my talk on publishing and getting published, what I usually say is this:

It depends on what you want. If you want a book published and to have it on the shelf and be able to give or sell it to friends and relatives, then self-publishing is a great way to go. If you want to start a career as a writer, then most of the time self-publishing doesn't do anything for you. Agents and editors won't pay much attention to it unless you sell 25,000 copies or more. If you sell 100,000 copies self-published, don't worry, the editors will find you. But if you self-publish and sell 500 copies or even 1000, well, you're doing good, but no one in traditional publishing is going to notice.

So it depends on what you want.

Cheers,

Mark Terry