When Worlds Collide
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The Situation
This is an interesting* time to be a writer.
Publishing is in upheaval. Self-publishing is gaining popularity.
The grand chasm of the internet magnifies and projects the voices of thousands of bloggers brandishing, “The end is Nigh! Repent, authors, or perish!” signs and self-publishing rockstars strumming their electric guitars and screaming songs about the evils of “The Man” in publishing.
All the while, we timid writers sit back with wide eyes and wonder what the hell we’re supposed to do next.
Traditional Publishing
Not that Query -> Agent -> Editor -> Publishing was EASY, but it was a formula. Formulas are comforting. Predictable. Arranged in a neat and tidy little box with a bow of desperate hope wrapped around it. A polite, impeccably-suited butler stands at the forefront, asking if you would like a glass of white wine and perhaps a cheesy cracker while you wait to hear from the lady of the house.
Self-Publishing
By contrast, self publishing is messy, unexpected, exciting. It’s passion and color and seductive – like a gambling hall run by smiling circus performers offering silver platters of brownies that may or may not be spiked with weed and punch that almost certainly IS spiked with vodka.
The un-aligned writer stands on the line dividing these two worlds and despairs.
“I just want people to read my writing, and to love it,” we cry – and both worlds take a step back because neither can honestly promise that their path will lead to this end.
Breathless
The publishing world stands on the edge of a precipice and holds its breath.
Will publishing perish, a fat, wealthy stegosaurus choking on mouthfuls of dead-tree books?
Will the fragile ivory palace of self-publishing collapse under the weight of millions of self-published “books” whose authors scrabble for fame and fortune without even once consulting a spellcheck?
I do not know. My best guess is based on hopes rather than hard facts.
I want both the tidy boxes and the crazy gambling hall to survive this collision. I want ebooks to open doors to new possibilities for writers, and I want readers to have the ability to choose a traditionally published book and feel confident that it will be a GOOD book, because it went through quality control a self-published book probably did not.
I want readers to discover amazing new authors previously overlooked by traditional publishing. I want authors to make enough money at their craft to quit their day jobs and work full time at their passion.
Right now, standing on the outside and looking in, neither world promises that utopia for me. Furthermore, things that were true a year ago are now laughably wrong. Where will the publishing world be when I have a completed novel in my hands and I must make that choice to step into the gilded doors of traditional publishing or dive into the jello-filled pool of self-publishing?
Watching
I don’t know, but I’m WATCHING. Lots of us are watching – the unpublished, the uncertain, the timid. We’re paying attention. We’re following the blogs from both worlds, and we’re paying attention.
Our choices will shape this future, will tip the balance. It’s not politics, but it’s voting – voting with our time, our books, our passion, our future.
I hope both worlds can look out and see US, just as we’re looking in and seeing them. We stand in the empty dark, clutching our laptops to our chest, eyes wide and unblinking as we silently watch the collision.
I hope they can see us … and I really hope they realize how important we are.
I hope WE realize how important we are.
I hope YOU realize how important YOU are.
Are you Watching Closely?
What are you seeing? What are you hearing? Do you already know which doors you’ll step through, or are you still waiting to be convinced?
What could either side do or say to change your mind?
Do you have any predictions or hopes?
*Remember Lackey’s Shin’a'in curse, “May your life be interesting.”
I’m with you, I really hope both avenues of publishing survive, and FWIW I think they will. Self-publishing is an awesome adventure and one many people do very well at (Wil Wheaton and Amanda Hocking to name 2 off the top of my head) but it does tend to be less polished. Anyone read Amanda Hocking’s stuff? It’s not very good, typos and spellos abound and it’s highly derivative, unoriginal work (in my opinion, at least). She probably doesn’t have an editor and it really shows. Though I can’t argue with her success… I’ve read at least 7 of her books myself so clearly there’s a career path there. Not an easy path, since all the publicity and leg work has to be done by the author all by their lonesome.
On the other hand, I appreciate a book with excellent writing and editing. I enjoy traditionally published books much more and will therefore pay more for them. I paid $17 (maybe, can’t remember) for the Kindle version of the latest Dresden book, devoured it in 2 days, and found it worth every penny. I wouldn’t pay more than $2 or $3 for an Amanda Hocking book.
I see there always being a market for books on both paths. I really hope it stays that way because I enjoy books from both paths.
I don’t read nearly as widely as you do (clearly!) and get most of my stuff through the library (which doesn’t carry self-pubbed works).
I don’t want just one option, though. Monopolies are bad both in a business sense, but also in a conceptual sense. One truth path is a dangerous, dangerous premise.
This gave me goosebumps. And I heard ominous music in my head.
For me, as a writer who craves validation, I still lean towards traditional publishing. If nothing more than for the validation. “I AM a good writer! Mr. Editor on High says so!”
It may be silly but after being told repeatedly by writing professors that your genre is crap, you start clinging to anything that may allow you to one day return and thrust it in their face.
As far as I am concerned, the genre snobbery that you’ve been subjected to doesn’t touch me. I read “vampire porn” and I write “silly little fantasy twiddles” and I love it and I’m not ashamed of it. If someone wants to judge and label me for it, then at least it’s an accurate label, and one that I am passionate about owning.
Writing is an INTENSELY personal activity and everyone’s so eager to seem part of the in crowd that they don’t realize how many hearts they trample along the way.
Find others who think the way you do and surround yourself with them. *hugs*
And I totally get your Mr. Editor On High comment – I feel the same way, and yet I’m still scared when I read blog posts from authors detailing all of the crap they go through just to get their book out. And by “crap” I mean non-writing things.
It’s scary, no matter which way I look at it, but I AM watching. =]
In theory, I believe that self-publishing is great. It allows more people to get their writing out, helps prevent some of those dreadful roadblocks you hear about. There’s certainly an element of pure random luck in traditional publishing. The first couple editors J.K. Rowling approached turned Harry Potter down. Steven King couldn’t replicate his original success when he tried to publish under a pseudonym.
In reality, however, I’ve never seen a self-published book that was anywhere near as good as the books I buy from traditional publishers. They have, without exception, been poorly written. The best were interesting crap.
One of my mom’s friends is an avid self-publisher. He’s published about a dozen books, each under a different pseudonym. I believe he changes his name each time because he knows that very few people would voluntarily buy a second book from him after seeing how poorly he writes. He writes like my grandmother talked — after she got Alzheimer’s. His books contain lines like, “So I found the original papers in the library and — surprise, surprise! — there was completely, totally, NOTHING to support the New York Times’ version of the incident not that that will shock anybody who’s familiar with… well, we won’t go into that now, will we? Wow wow wow!” (That’s not dialogue, incidentally. That’s the omniscient narrator of a non-fiction book, the author actually describing his own research.)
And yet I’m glad he can self-publish. I’ve bought three of his books. I’m about to buy a fourth. He researches obscure topics, things you’d never find in another book (eg, a couple of murders that took place in my home town back in the 1800s). Reading his prose may feel like flossing with barbed wire, but he digs up information that fascinates me — and I’m happy to pay him for that effort.
Self-publishing would never be my first choice. I’ve never seen an author who didn’t benefit from an editor, and I have no reason to suspect that I’ll be divinely graced with impeccable prose. Even experienced authors improve with editing. For instance, it often seems like the last books in a fantasy series are the most poorly written. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was fractured. George RR Martin’s A Dance With Dragons was rambling and unfocused. Why? Because the authors have gotten “too big to edit.” Their editors let them do as they wish, lest they “kill the magic goose” with too much meddling. I love George Martin, but I wish to gawd he had an editor at his elbow as he wrote, chanting, “Stay on target! STAY ON TARGET!!!”
Jenny
Quality control on self-published books is a huge (and very real) issue. You’ve got folks who have put up thousands of ebooks on Kindle this year alone – website crawler scrapings.
And yet that book will get put up just as seriously as the next Nora Roberts novel.
Self publishing lacks good marketing most of the time. If an author can get their book into the hands of the right people, and those people tell other people, and the book starts showing up on “people who bought THIS also bought THIS” on Amazon, that’s where the wildfire begins.
The problem is one of money. Traditional publishing pays badly unless you’re a total rockstar of an author (which, as you noted, backfires when authors become too big for their editorial britches) … self publishing actually pays better. Not just on a per book basis, but by a landslide. Instead of getting pennies for every ebook sold, authors get dollars – almost the entire cost of the sold book. You can be a mid-low list author with low numbers and still be making more than the mid-high list author through traditional publishing who actually has pretty decent numbers.
That’s a problem for traditional publishing to tackle, I think. The reward for the AUTHOR for jumping through all those traditional publishing hoops should be just as good as the reward for the READER, who gets something that has presumably been edited and gone through quality control.
The reward for the AUTHOR for jumping through all those traditional publishing hoops should be just as good as the reward for the READER, who gets something that has presumably been edited and gone through quality control.
Presumably, although speaking as someone who was a proofreader in a former life, I’m rather appalled at the lack of quality control that makes it through the traditional process these days.
And, boy, do I agree with you about the reward to the author thing. That’s another part of it that pushed me towards self-publishing. A niche book like mine isn’t worth messing with if all I’d get is pennies on the copy. Which is also why I won’t be doing print unless I do pull an Amanda Hocking [g].
Presumably, indeed!
May your book find readers who love it!
Funny you should ask [g]. I just self-published my first book (a paranormal historical adventure set in 1870s Yellowstone National Park), after about five years of banging my head against the wall of traditional publishing. I finally realized that as with my day job as an independent museum curator, I’m much happier doing everything myself. If my book doesn’t sell, then I have no one to blame but myself, and I like it that way.
I fully intend to keep self-publishing, too. I have no expectations of becoming the next Amanda Hocking, but each person who doesn’t know me personally who reads my books is a victory, from my point of view.
All I’ve ever wanted was to be read…
“All I’ve ever wanted was to be read…”
Gads, it sounds like something on the gravestone of every unpublished author, doesn’t it?
Congratulations on the self-publishing!! I remember you mentioning that you were working on that project, double congrats on FINISHING and moving forward!
*high five*
It does [g]. And thanks. *high fives back*
Also, link! Never know who might read the comments and click it!
Yes, ma’am. I didn’t want to seem like I was barging in and promoting all over your blog, but here’s the links:
To Amazon, for the Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005E8S8UM
To Smashwords, for about eight other formats: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/76672
And to the book’s page on my website, where the entire first chapter is available for free: http://www.nwlink.com/~megj/fictionrepeatinghistory.html
Thank you so much for letting me post this here!
<3 I figured as much, but it's my blog, and I can ask you to advertise on it if I want to. *winks*
I like your attitude [g].
Dude, I read your synopsis and your sample chapter – it sounds awesome and reads REALLY well!
Thank you! I’m glad you liked it.
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