Writers on Writing: Ray Bradbury RIP

To start a series of instructive and inspirational posts about writers on writing I decided to begin with the pugilistic titan that was Ray Bradbury who passed away in the last couple of weeks. He was a massive personal inspiration and will be much missed by generations of readers. His classic Fahrenheit 451 still resonanates today as society shifts its focus from printed forms of learning and culture, to electronic mobile technologies. Enjoy this terrific video.

Coming Soon: Writers on Writing: Amanda Hocking and Marketing Advice for Self-Publishers

How to Self-Publish: Quality Matters!

Just found a blog by Dionne Lister, a self-publishing fantasy writer in Australia. The particular post that caught my eye (here) started by relating the (positive) real world experience of selling her own book to a Sydney independent bookshop. And it worked! Some chutzpah to add to her writing skills! But her real point was the need for quality in self-publishers because the shop owner was automatically dismissive of the poor quality of many self-published books.

And of course, we know that's true in many cases. The benefit of self-publishing is also the problem: anyone can do it! But I have a sense that the message is getting through. There is so much advice online, in blogs, forums, on Twitter, Facebook etc, that it's hard to write without bumping in to a blizzard of specific advice, all of which says it loud and clear: make sure your book is edited by someone who is not your affectionate mother/auntie/cousin.

I happen to be writing as fiction book. I won't bore you with the details because I'm not ready to market it yet, but it's 162,000 words long and I'm on the fifth and final edit (I've already cut back 10,000 words and deleted most of those nasty adverbs). It's been read by two literate friends/heavy readers and I've gone about as far as I can. Now I have to find an appropriate editor and suffer the humiliation of allowing an objective professional correct my grammar, sense and (probably) spelling. I have a degree in English Literature, I've worked in publishing for 28 years, I've written nearly 40 non-fiction books under various nom-de-plumes, so you'd think I would know what I'm doing! Well I do, that's why I'll find a decent editor to pull my text apart where necessary and improve it! By the time the book makes it to market it'll be as well edited as any traditionally published title. And yes, I am going to self-publish, either through KDP or Smashwords because the author experience through these thoroughly modern, quick-thinking, author-curating facilitators (ie not publishers), is excellent.

As a final mention for Smashwords, their style guide is fantastically helpful for all writers, especially those looking at ebook publication for the first time.

Coming Soon: How to Survive a Book Launch and Finding a Good Editor
Image courtesy of ima/Shutterstock.com

How to Self-Publish: Madison McGraw

Have just come back from Bookexpo in New York and am writing a blogpost about how slick and swift Amazon Kindle Publishing is, just after a post about greedy publishers. Well, here's Madison McGraw, a voice from today's world, please take a few moments to listen. It made me laugh at the pomposity of my own industry!

Coming Soon: How to Publish: Amazon KDP and How to Publish on the Nook

How to Self-Publish: Greedy Publishers?!

Have consumed a large amount of bile and invective over the holiday period (mainly at the BookExpo in New York)! Actually, have been looking at the blogs and web sites of successful self-publishers to see what they do, how they do it, why, how and what advice they have to pass on to others. Almost all of them are generous to a fault, but quite a few are also voraciously anti-publisher. If you check the sites of successful self-publishers (such as the mighty J A Konrath and the industrious Kristine Katherine Rusch) you’ll find they really do hate the bricks and mortar publishers, regarding them as greedy, self-serving, crooked and above all, anti-author.

I’ve worked in the industry as a writer, publisher and marketeer for a long time and I think there needs to be a clearer understanding about what’s going on.

It’s true that publishers do not give enough to the authors, it’s also true that authors can now go direct to market in a way that was impossible even five years ago. But that doesn’t mean that publishers are instrinsically bad, but they are slow, out-of date, stuck in their ways and too reliant on the ‘old boy’ network! That makes them an easy target for those who can now break free from the old thinking.

What’s really going on here, is the creation of a fairer system, because there are genuine choices to be made, informed choices for both readers and writers, a new system and quickly evolving system.

The key word here is informed.

A traditional publisher is basically a business that has made its own choice to create or distribute products which happen to be books. Some people within publishing love what they do, others perform straightforward business functions such as administration, accounting, sales, marketing or straightforward management tasks. That’s a long list of job functions: the bigger the publisher, the larger its infrastructure. It has to make money from its activites to pay this long list of staff. It also has to satisfy investors, owners and bankers. It has to make a profit to do this. Within this structure the author plays as important, but not necessarily defining part. Of course, without the author the traditional trade publisher would not exist, but up to a few years ago, an author could not be successfully published, without a publisher. For over two hundred years an ecosystem of publishers and literary agents has developed both to feed itself and its authors, a sympathetic parasitic structure which has achieved an uneasy truce within itself for the sake of long term self-interest.

One part of this uneasy truce was the author contract. 

It may not be obvious now, but the hit rate of published books is very low. When I first entered publishing (an embarrassingly long time ago) I worked for a while at a large conglomerate. Only one in twenty books made its advance back. The imperfect process of commissioning new books, picking the "gems from the dirt", was an art at best, guesswork for much of the time. So while many books were left in the slushpile, even those that did make it onto the Publisher's list rarely made any money for publisher or author.

In such circumstances the author contract was designed to give the publisher all rights in case something could be made from a book: TV, book club, electronic, audiovisual, serial rights all would be considered if not tried, but again, only a small percentage would be successful. Part of the problem was the volume of books published each year by each publisher.

But along came Amazon, then ebook formats, then the iPad and a revolution fuelled by smartphones and tablets. The old model really is, suddenly, out of date and turned on its head. And the entire structure of the traditional publishers is being forced into a complete rethink. Technology has overwhelmed the book industry, it's a Great Deluge and just as potent.

So, the traditional publishers are engaging in a massive landgrab. As businesses, they are complicated systems of vested interests and will try everything they can to survive, including the aggressive chase of electronic rights in old contracts. At their best, the publishers are also trying to assert their historical skills in editing and marketing (although spread very thinly, more on this in forthcoming post), to allow an author to focus on what traditionally they are good at, writing. But you’ll notice that the most successful authors are also very good at marketing. J K Rowling, James Patterson, George R R Martin – these people know their market, they keep in touch with the different facets of it, they engage in many different ways, through videos, films, magazine articles. The top authors are top marketeers, whoever publishers them.

But now, back to the choice. 

A self-publisher too must be good at marketing, in fact you must be a good business(wo)man. The big difference between you and a traditional publisher is that you only have yourself to feed (perhaps a family, or two!), but a publisher still maintains its structure of staff and buildings. It's an unequal battle which is begining to make the publishers seem more like the dinosaurs wiped out by the comets that struck the earth 65 million years ago. The insects and the mammals survived because they were more adapable. Publishers are beginning to walk the Dinosaur Road.

Self-publishers need to understand that the traditional publishers are trying to find their place in this new world, and that in order to survive, keep employing people and buildings they make different choices than motivated individuals. Understanding this doesn't make it acceptable for you, but it does help make a credible choice because now you can self-publish, do the marketing yourself and reap the full rewards of your hard work.

Coming soon: New Markets for Short Stories and Take Your Time.
image courtesy of imageegami/Shutterstock

How to Self-Publish: Review Other Writers!

In the modern world, with social media networks, online retailers, ereader devices, smartphones and tablets the job of a writer, any writer, is more rewarding than ever before. Your work can be published more quickly, you can engage directly with readers and the community of writers is vocal and supportive.

In the last week or so I’ve been taking a good look at online reviews, particularly those of writers on writers (take a look at this site by Jade Varden (author of the Deck of Lies series), for instance which has both a terrific post on this subject and a range of useful comments from many different writers). 

With the explosion of self-publishing the competition between authors to gain those rare places in lists of the traditional trade houses is greatly reduced, because anyone can, and many are, doing it for themselves! The number of indie publishing houses, author co-operatives and self-publishing blogs has blossomed into a huge eco-system. The liberating effect of the internet and the obvious need for all writers to seek advice has created a supportive framework that celebrates the fact that the community of writers is part of the greater community of readers, participating and engaging with each other –  helping, commenting, critiquing.

This is considerably more healthy that the competing network of professional reviewers whose views we all seek for the kudos and authenticity, but whose job it is to entertain, often by taking a negative or deliberately contrary view. 

On the whole, writers are cultured people, with considered (often wildly differing) views, who work hard and juggle their daily lives with the joy and pain of writing. Anyone who writes often or regularly, understands the efforts of another writer. We might dislike the subject, the story, the angle or the characters, but we take a fundamentally empathetic view of the effort. And that leads to a degree of compassion that can turn constructive criticism into a powerful force of good.

So, if you read a book and have something to say about it, go to Amazon or your blog, or the author’s blog, and say it. It doesn’t have to be long, but make it constructive, useful, think about how you would respond to a comment, how you might use it to make your next book better. Dictatorial comments are not required, but genuine responses are very helpful to an honest writer and the mirrorball of comment in the form of multiple reviews can be the most helpful teacher for all of us.

Perhaps this is the great liberation, the great release of the Internet, not just that anyone can publish, but that anyone can comment on anything that’s published. Of course, we have to write well, submit ourselves to editing, to market ourselves and our books well, but ultimately we can now listen to the wide range of comments of our fellow writers and our readers. It's a virtuous circle that benefits us both as readers and as self-publishers.

Coming Soon: Audiobooks for Promotion and Podcasting for Fun!