Picking Up the Gauntlet

So because of my post last week, I received a lot of spirited defenses of self/indy publishing, many of which struck me as missing the central point I was making: that agents and editors dig through a lot of crap to find the things they publish.  Several people argued that "people aren't waiting for publishers to tell them what to read, they're listening to reviews and recommendations from friends."  What this fails to recognize is that traditional publication is, in essence, a powerful form of recommendation: someone said, "I think this book is so worth reading, I'm financially backing it." 

So powerful that many reviewers and sellers take notice.  It is on that recommendation that most reviewers will accept the book to read.  (Most will not review self/indy books.)  It is on that recommendation that the sellers-- bookstores-- agree to stock it.  (Many will not stock self/indy books.)  And the individual people who work there will give their personal opinions to the customers.

So don't tell me that no one is listening to publishers for recommendation, because that is literally what the traditional model is.

The other argument I heard boiled down to, "Thanks to indy/self publishing, so many amazing books that wouldn't have seen the light of day are now available.  Readers can decide for themselves."

This may well be true.

I'm game.  I'd like to know what some of these amazing books are.  So, I'd like to hear some recommendations.

But wait!  I've got some rules.

1. You can't recommend your own book. The main reason for this is I think recommending your own book undermines the point of "so many amazing books are now available".  If you just tell me about your own book, what you're telling me is that you don't really care about all those amazing books, other than in the abstract sense of how promoting the idea helps your own book.  You're not telling me how indy/self helps readers "decide for themselves", you're telling me how indy/self helps writers sell their books.    If the system really is for the benefit for the readers, I want to know how it benefited you as a reader. 

2. No recommendations that started indy/self and then were picked up by a traditional publisher.  Because they've already received that recommendation bump.  I can find them in the traditional market, even if their path there wasn't entirely traditional.  Recommend something that I can't find on the traditional market.

So let's hear some recommendations!  Put my money where your mouth is.

Blessed are the Slushdivers

I don't want to bag on people who self-publish. There are good reasons to do it, and there are people who do it very well and have found great success doing it.  That's excellent for them.

That said,  I've got a big problem with the zealots who don't merely preach the gospel of self-publishing, but scream from the mountaintop how traditional publishing-- or "legacy" publishing, to use their attempt at a backhanded term-- is doomed to die.  That's it's already dead, and its proponents just don't realize it.

This is, of course, crap.

The big argument they like to make is that readers don't need publishers to make decisions about what's worth reading for them, they can find what they like for themselves.  That the people can be their own gatekeepers.

This is an argument made by someone who has never read through a slushpile.  Which is a shame, because it is something that every aspiring professional writer should do at least once.  To get a little perspective, if nothing else. 

So, for perspective, this is what agents and editors do:

Imagine a river of shit.  Roiling, torrential rapids of hot shit.  And careening through the eddies and currents of this river, there are diamonds.  And rocks.  Mostly rocks, but some diamonds.

And a few brave souls DIVE IN THERE and swim through that festering flow of feculence, searching for a couple diamonds.  They come out with what they find, sort out the rocks from the diamonds, and clean those off and sell them.  And by the nature of how things are, yes: some diamonds will not be found.  It's a shame, but that's a reality. 

This is a metaphor, but I'm really not exaggerating.

Really, really not.  I've read through slush submissions, and it can really be that bad.

Now, if you're game for diving in and finding your own diamonds: power to you.  Seriously. It isn't easy.  I'm pretty amazed that agents and editors are still constantly doing this to find new work. 

And I'm glad they do.  Because, on the whole, I'd MUCH rather go to the stand by the roadside with cleaned-and-polished diamonds then listen to the guy on the riverbank screaming that there's diamonds in the shit river and anyone can get.  He might be correct, but that doesn't change the fact that I appreciate the work that the divers do.  And if I resent anything-- as a reader-- its the assumption that I should want to dive in and find the diamonds myself. 

I leave that to the professionals.

The Cult of Self-Publishing

I’m not going rail against self-publishing, in and of itself.  If you honestly think it’s the best choice for your project, fine.  I’d urge you to do it well, but still: fine.  Enjoy!  If you want to put out a poorly-written bit of nonsense with a cover that looks like a World of Warcraft screenshot, hey: that’s your name on it, not mine.  It doesn’t hurt me.  And if you put out something outstanding that becomes the Next Big Thing: great!  It still doesn’t hurt me. 

But self-publishers themselves can be highly annoying, at least the ones who have made themselves into a cult as far as their faith in self-publishing.

From what I've seen, it really is a cult.  I see the advocates preaching articles of faith, telling others that their path is the one true way, reciting verses of dogma, and attacking non-believers.

And that's where I have a real issue with it.  Often they treat it like publishing is some zero-sum game, and that in order for them to get respect as self-publishers, they have to TEAR DOWN the traditional model.  It's not enough to do well on their own.  They have to prove that going the traditional route is the way of the dodo.

A lot of this is based on bad numbers, statistical analysis of only the successful end of the outliers, and a soupcon of good, old-fashioned bitterness.  Yes, bitterness.  Because much of the tearing down of the traditional publishers (or "legacy" publishers, as they like to say) is based on the idea that since they couldn't get through the gatekeepers (or, perhaps, didn't really try because they bought into the impossibility) it cannot be done.  It shouldn't be done, and all you're doing by trying is buying into the system.

I've even seen it going so far as telling people whose success came from their traditionally published book that they should have self-published, because it clearly would have done just as well, and they would have made more money or something. You know, you can make your own webshow on YouTube or Blip.TV, but you never see anyone tell someone who has a show on USA or HBO, "You should have put that on Blip.TV instead!"  Of course not. 

This all comes from wanting self-publishing to be taken seriously, and they feel that can only happen if the traditional industry is supplanted by their method, rather than supplemented.

It's really quite simple: if you want to be taken seriously, do great work.  Period.   The rest will take care of itself.

The Path To Publication: The Journey Always Goes On

So, I have to confess something: I'm not very pedantic.  In fact, I frequently use the phrase "begging the question" in the "wrong" way.  If you're not familiar with this particular bit of pedantry, here is the "wrong" use:

"So the job went without a hitch?"
"It did, but it shouldn't have.  Jake went through before Stark was able to disable the alarms."
"But the alarms didn't go off." 
"Exactly.  Because the alarms were already disabled.  Which begs the question: who disabled them?"

This is wrong, but I use it this way all the time.  And I think it's fine, because while being "wrong", it makes perfect sense.  That something happens, or an argument is raised, that makes the follow-up question so obvious that it begs for it to be asked.

The "right" use, on the other hand, makes little sense to me.  To be clear, what it means makes sense to me as a logical fallacy-- namely, to form an argument in which the conclusion is assumed as evidence of itself.  The idea that this concept is a logical fallacy makes sense, and that it should exist as a typical logical fallacy isn't something I have an argument with.  I just don't get how the phrase "begging the question" breaks down to mean that, and I've yet to see a discussion of this correct use that adequately addresses why it should.  Though from what I've seen it involves taking the original Ancient Greek phrase and translating it English.  But that's really not important.

This is all my very long-winded way of saying that the typical arguments I see for self-publishing-- but more specifically against traditional publishing-- beg the question in the "correct" sense of the term.

Namely, the argument is that one ought to self-publish because it's a given that getting through the gatekeepers of traditional publishing is impossible.  Since it can't be done, why do it that way, when you can go around it?*

Except it can be done.  It isn't easy, but it can be done. 

Other arguments are similarly flawed.

As I've said in the past, I've nothing against self-publishing in and of itself, but I don't think it's some sort of panacea or revolution.  And more to the point, it's not for me.  It never was, because it involved different fights and struggles that I wasn't interested in.  I had plenty that I wanted to fight, I didn't need more.

More to the point, now that I'm here, with two books that will be published, will be actual physical books that you can buy in bookstores, as well as e-books that you can get on your kindle, and who knows what else in the future... I'm glad I didn't take the other route.  This was my path, and it wasn't an easy one, but it was the one that I needed to take.  The one I'm still on, and will continue to walk as I write more and more.

But, as with all things, your mileage may vary.   Walk the way you need to in order to get where you need to go.

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*- The other big "begging the question" argument I've seen involves statistics of sales from self-published e-books, where it takes the sales figures of best-selling self-published e-books to demonstrate that best-selling books make money.  I don't doubt that, but that's still using Olympic running times to prove that everyone can be an Olympic runner.

Path to Publication, Part III: The Terrible Dread of NaNoWriMo

OK, so, I've knocked on NaNoWriMo before.  I honestly think it's a good exercise, a way to learn your writing habits, figure out how to write a novel, and understand the way you work.

I don't think it's a good way to get great work.

This, of course, took first-hand learning.

The three years after the failed project fell apart involved several false starts for novels, most of which were connected to the worldbuilding work I had done in the fantasy setting.  I had done tons of detail work and history work-- work that still stands, as it is the world that Thorn and Mages is set in.  And I think a big part of the challenge I had to get over was understanding that just because I had done all that worldbuilding work, it didn't mean I had to share it all.

What I had kind of settled on was the idea of writing a series that was the proto-Crown of Druthal, though it was set in an embassy instead of a ship.  But the "Explain All The Things" part of my brain felt I had to properly set things up.  That readers would need to know the WHOLE STORY to make sense of things. 

I think this is a trap fantasy writers often fall into. 

Anyhow, this became the central idea behind what I would make my 2003 NaNoWriMo project: The Fifty Year War.  A novel which would flesh out the history of the war between Druthal and Poasia.  You know, the stuff that readers would be dying to know.

Now, I did succeed as a NaNoWriMo, writing around 53,000 words in November.  And the "finished" first draft was around 60K. 

But it was horrible.

It was a novel in which I had clearly absorbed all the wrong lessons from Isaac Asimov and David Weber.   It was a novel by the way of interconnected novellas, like Foundation, but unlike Foundation, there was no central theme or core to carry it through.  And certainly no core characters.  The closest thing to a central character wasn't a character, but a series of descendents in the same family who serve in the war.     It was a novel in which, like Weber's Honor Harrington books there are several meetings, in which people you never met before and won't meet again tell each other things that you don't care about. 

Fifty Year War was a book with no heart, no soul, and certainly nothing resembling a proper plot.   It comes across as a bad prequel to a thing that didn't exist yet, hitting the notes to set things up in a perfunctory way, without any sense that those set-ups existed for any organic reason beyond "set things where they needed to be".

IF I HAD SELF-PUBLISHED AT THIS POINT:  At the time I really believed in Fifty Year War, though for the life of me I don't know why I thought that.  It isn't an interesting work, but if the means had been a bit more convenient at the time, I might have convinced myself it should be self-published.  And I would have been wrong, because it is awful.  Further revisions made it less awful, but it is such a mess at its core, no amount of editing could save the patient.  So, if I had put it out there, it would have failed, and it would have felt like a toxic albatross on my name and the world I had built. 

BUT DID I LEARN ANYTHING BY NOW?: At this point, the main thing I had learned was-- roughly-- the discipline behind writing a novel, the level of planning that needed to go into getting it done.  But even then, I was still untempered.  I needed to figure out what a novel was beyond "a whole lot of writing".  But reaching the point of sitting down and writing a novel-like-object to completion was something of a milestone.

The Path To Publication

I've been asked, especially recently, why I chose the path of traditional publishing over trying one of the avenues of self-publication.  Frequently in the past, I was more or less told I was making the wrong choice. 

Once I was even told, "You just want to see your book in bookstores." 

I found this a fascinating rebuke.  Of course I want to see my books in bookstores.  That's where people buy books.  I mean, yes, the digital models have made the methods of distribution more diverse, but they haven't eradicated the old ones.  The old ones are still pretty vibrant.  The old ones are still how quite a few readers acquire their books.  Why would I want to deliberately exclude those readers?

Now, I won't say that self-publishing is wrong in a vacuum, in that every person's situation is unique. There can be really good reasons to do it.  However, I think there are also very wrong reasons to do it.  This is the sorts of argument I see:

"Unfortunately there are thousands of us out there who can't even get a publisher to look at our work so it's self-publish or nothing!"

I find this either/or look at it interesting.  "Self-publish or nothing!"  Why is "Try to write better" not a consideration?   I wonder how many of these people declared defeat before really trying.  They bought into the myth that it can't be done, so they didn't bother.




It isn't easy.  John Scalzi just recently compared it to playing in major league baseball, and I think that's pretty apt.  It's long, hard work, and it takes patience and perseverance.  

So over the next few entries, I'm going to talk about my path to this point.  As part of that, I'm going to include "If I had self-published at this point" along each step of the journey.  Because, as I said, I don't think self-publishing is definitively the wrong path to take... but it would have been the wrong path for me.

Perils of the Writer: Failure vs. Defeat

Last week I talked about failure, and how to find value in failing.

I should point out that failure is not the same as defeat. 

Failing is when you get knocked down.  Defeat is when you don't get back up.    And, reader, you're going to get knocked down plenty.  Plenty.  The process of having your work critiqued, of querying for an agent, of submitting to publishers is brutal.  Bone-grindingly brutal.  Getting up after, say, receiving ten it's-not-you-it's-me style rejection letters and saying, "All right, let's send out ten more" is not easy.

But it's what you need to do.

Now, let's dovetail this into self-publishing.  Or indie-publishing.  Or whatever you want to call it.* I'm not going to say it's bad or wrong or misguided.  Sometimes it is absolutely the right path for a writer to follow.  It's not a bad thing to do, but it's an easy thing to do badly.  And one of the biggest way it's done badly is for the wrong reasons. 

For example, let's look at a few phrases that may sound familiar:

"The gatekeepers aren't interested in new authors."
"You can't get an agent without being published, and you can't get published without having an agent."
"The 'traditional' publishing industry is going to die, so I'm not going to bother."
"I don't have time to do that sort of thing, I need to get this published now."

I've heard this sort of thing a lot.  Usually from people just starting out.  From people who haven't even finished one novel.  From people who haven't made a concerted effort to acquire an agent or get their work published. 

People who've admitted defeat before they even got in the game.

There's no value to that.  None.  Point to the fences and swing as hard as you can, and if you strike out no one can tell you it was from lack of trying.  And to me, that's a hell of a lot better than letting yourself get beaned just so you can say you got on base.**

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*- I'm personally fond of Chuck Wendig's "Author-Publisher" term, as it emphasizes what you need to do to do it right: wear two distinct hats. 
**- I'm really not one for baseball metaphors, but here I find them apt.

Is It About Books, or Is It About Novels?

The ground is shifting under our feet, as the publishing industry is still dealing with the biggest shift in production and distribution since Gutenberg.  This is not news, of course.  We all know that Things Are Going To Change.  It's just anybody's guess as to exactly how.

Rachelle Gardner wrote an interesting piece today touching on this point, comparing where the book industry might be headed to the recently-filed-for-bankruptcy Kodak.  Her main point was Kodak focused on selling the physical printed image of a photograph, and not on the real content people were most interested in: the image itself.

The same applies for novels.  While there are, and will continue to be, die hard real-printed-book lovers, the important product is the content, the novel itself.  People who want to read a novel will read it in the format that is most convenient to them, period.   If that's in a printed book (purchased at brick-and-mortar, shipped via website or borrowed at a library), or a Kindle or Nook or other reader, it doesn't REALLY matter.  The thing that matters the most is the content, and as long as the content-delivery system is convenient, the reader doesn't care as much.

Does this mean I'm saying Real Books are out and E-Books are in, so everyone should get with the program?  Not at all.  As of right now, my primary goal is "traditional" publication.  That means printed books in book stores. 

Is that out of some sort of psychological need to, say, have a real printed book that I can hold in my hadn?  I won't deny there's an appeal to that.  You work hard to make something, having that thing you can actually hold, point to on a shelf, hand over to another person-- that physicality has meaning.  Impact.  But that's not the only reason.  It's not even the primary reason. 

At least right now, E-Books are only 5-10% of the book sale market. (From what I understand- please correct me if I have my numbers wrong).  So putting out your book exclusively in a format that ignores 90-95% of the current reading market is ridiculous. This is the key reason why I'm not so keen to stampede over to ePublishing my work.

Now, these numbers may change, and when they do, the industry needs to be moving with it.  One has to ride the wave of the sea change or drown. 

Impatience: The Writer's Worst Enemy

I've written before about how e-publishing comes off as too easy, but what it really comes down to is impatience.

We're at the beginning of December, which means that NaNoWriMo (aka National Novel Writing Month) has just ended.  I don't have any figures or statistics, but I do know that agent querying spikes in the beginning of December, as people who have JUST FINISHED their sprinted masterpiece immediately try to put it to market.  And I would bet a minor appendage that e-pub "indie" books spike right around now as well.

And this is because people are impatient about getting their book "out there".  "Out there" now is more important than getting it right later.  And I know why.  You can't write a book without it being a labor of love, and then you have this thing that you have such deep and abiding love for, and you want to share it.  Right away.  Whether it's ready or not.

I get it.  A few years ago, I would have declared Fifty Year War or Crown of Druthal "ready", and had my impatience not been tempered with a strong desire to succeed via the traditional publishing path, I might well have forged ahead and gone straight to the indie publishing method.  And I would have failed with those, because those books were not ready.  They are now deep in a drawer.

Most of the time, when I read books for critiquing, I can tell they aren't ready, on a fundamental level of pure craft.  And I know of two that have been indie published recently, both times because the author insisted that they "didn't want to wait any longer". 

Added to this is what I call the "cult" of Indie Publishing.  There are success stories in indie/e-publishing, but then you get these proselytizers who insist since someone has succeeded doing it, that EVERYONE should do it and throw away the traditional publishing industry.  I'm just not on board with that.  But these cultists feed the beast of impatience.

But you know what?  Prove me wrong.  If you've got an indie/self-pubbed book that you think is FANTASTIC and will turn me around that this person was right, they didn't need to wait and grind the book through the system, than show me.  Let me know, and I'll give it a read, and talk about it on here. 

The Latest in Self-Publishing Scandals, aka The World vs. BookCountry

"You remember when I said how I was gonna explain about life, buddy? Well the thing about life is, it gets weird. People are always talking ya about truth. Everybody always knows what the truth is, like it was toilet paper or somethin', and they got a supply in the closet. But what you learn, as you get older, is there ain't no truth. All there is is bullshit, pardon my vulgarity here. Layers of it. One layer of bullshit on top of another. And what you do in life like when you get older is, you pick the layer of bullshit that you prefer and that's your bullshit, so to speak."
                                               -Bernie LaPlante (Dustin Hoffman), Hero

Last week BookCountry launched from public beta to being fully open.  They also launched their self-publishing services.  This second aspect has gotten a lot of attention in the author blogospheres, especially from successful self/indie publishers.  Here and here are two prime examples.  There are plenty of others.  The main argument being made is that BookCountry's self-publishing services are charging MUCH TOO MUCH for what they offer, and therefore are a scam and a rip-off.

You know, that may be.

But so is every other self/indie-publishing service, to one degree or another.  The successful self/indie authors out there who are trying to get everyone to Join the Movement (or Cult, depending on your POV) might want to pretend otherwise, but that's the basic gist of it.  Every self/indie service wants to make money off of you selling your writing.  That may be with an upfront fee, or a percentage of sales, or both, but that's what they want to do.

And that is all right as well.  Of course all these services want to make a profit.  I don't begrudge them any of them for doing that.

Before I continue, some disclaimers.

1. I have been involved in BookCountry since early in its private beta, specifically in its primary function as a peer review site.  In that capacity, I think it's quite excellent and I recommend it.  
2. I have had several exchanges with Colleen Lindsay at BookCountry, including testing out their self-coding-for-ebook instructions.  My main purpose in doing this was helping them confirm that their instructions were clear and easy to follow.  My main take-away is that Colleen Lindsay is a good egg in this business who genuinely loves books and wants to help writers with tools to succeed.
3. I, personally, have little-to-no interest in self/indie publishing.  I currently have no intentions for doing it myself, nor do I begrudge anyone who decides that it's the best choice for them. 

What I find kind of fascinating is why some of the Indie Pub Pushers consider BC more of a scam than their Self-Pub methods of choice.  To which I say, eh.  I don't see Amazon or Smashwords operating on altruism. 

The premium package at BC (the one that gets their dander up the most) offers hand-coding of e-book/printed book layout and distributing it to various sellers.  Apparently, all you have to do is send the MS Word doc, and they do the rest.  The argument against, made by the Indie Pub Pushers, is that everything they are offering are things you COULD do by yourself with a minimal investment of time and money.

I can see their point, but on some level it's the Auto Mechanic argument.  Yes, I COULD save money by taking the time and effort to change my own oil and filters and rotate my tires.  But I don't want to do that.  I'd rather give it to a professional and pay him and not worry about that.  There are some that would say that's a bad attitude about car maintenance, and I should be more self-reliant.  But that's not for me.

Does BookCountry charge Too Much for it's particular form of Indie/Self Publishing?  Possibly.  But I find it kind of funny that the argument against is more or less, "Their rip-off is horrible.  You should use the rip-off I use.  It's much better."  Find the bullshit you like, and leave others to their own.