The new guardians of what you read…
[I apologize for the length of this post. I wanted to clearly lay out why I cannot support Joe Konrath’s new “Ebooks Are Forever,” or EAF, initiative. This proposal allows public libraries to peruse and purchase from a list of indie novels, a list controlled by Joe. Skip to just after the *** if you want just the bottom line, and go back and fill in background material as needed. This initiative will affect all readers who check out ebooks from public libraries! It also negatively affects most indie writers.]
In my first sci-fi thriller novel Full Medical, the Guardians enforce the conspiracy by keeping the clone children in their compound and feeding them the lie that they will be a special crew for a non-existent starship. Controlling readers’ actions and attacking their freedom of choice is like that, only more nefarious. Traditional or legacy publishers spend oodles of money doing just that. Enter the indie writers to save the day! Well, sometimes…. You see, dear reader, control and greed is just as much a part of some indie writers’ genetic makeup as those manipulated, selected, and copycat genes were in the clone children of Full Medical. A writer, traditional or indie, might start out with noble intentions, but greed and an obsession with control can rear its ugly head. Some indie writers are very successful, so they want more. They will cheapen the indie paradigm and try to control what you read.
Persons who read my posts about writing, especially “News and Notices from the Writing Trenches,” know I’m an indie author. I blog against the old traditional or legacy paradigm, mostly because that bloated bureaucracy is so out of step in this digital age. This is a bureaucracy of agents acting as gatekeepers who think they know what publishers want and excuse themselves by pretending to work in the interests of readers, when they’re just sycophants to major publishers; and of staffs of different varieties of editors, cover artists, and PR and marketing gurus in those major publishing houses—all neatly tucked away in NYC or some other metropolis, trying to control what people read. It’s an expensive paradigm that can no longer compete on a fair playing field, so they try to hedge their bets with old stable horses like Douglas Preston and Lee Child, even soliciting to fight their battles, and pay less attention to new voices (new writers and undiscovered authors)—and they will tell you to bet on those old stable horses too because they will always win the race for you, don’t you know? For those of you who love tales about conspiracies, traditional publishing supplies a real-life one.
In this new digital era of book publishing, though, we readers are lucky. While our numbers are diminishing and demographics are changing, as survivors who still love to read we have many excellent reading choices available. It’s a buyer’s market, if you will—we have so many choices that, if you’re like me, it’s almost euphorically overwhelming. But we should demand even more. As consumers, both you and I are probably looking for good entertainment at reasonable prices. While traditional or legacy publishing can often provide the former, it often fails at the latter. Indie writers can often provide both and certainly increase the options available to an avid reader. I’ve always been the latter, so I know something about what “avid” means.
“Indie” is confusing to some. “Indie” means “independent.” However, indie writer and indie publisher are very different creatures. Traditionally, “indie publisher” is simply a small publisher that usually still follows that legacy paradigm but maybe foregoes the agency gatekeepers (editors are overworked by doing double duty); possibly treats its authors a wee bit better than a big publisher (its authors most likely are “midlist,” meaning not big names), at least in having a more personal relationship and in giving those new voices some TLC; and struggles to be relevant and not swallowed up by some publishing conglomerate. Writers attached to any of these companies that follow the legacy model aren’t indie writers—they’re midlist, have signed contracts, receive advances, and thereby lose control of their art. That’s a choice that writers can make, and I respect their choice, but it’s all pretty irrelevant to the reader who just wants a good book to read, except for price.
“Indie writer” is, in fact, none of the above. S/he has made the choice to maintain control. Often called DIY- or self-publishing, the indie writer still might hire other people for editing, formatting, cover art, and/or PR and marketing (and probably should in many cases), but s/he is in absolute control of her/his destiny. An ebook from an indie writer is like that CD recorded and sold by a musician, or a video a small production group might sell on their own. It’s the same idea. An indie writer enjoys many production economies s/he can pass on to the consumer—good entertainment for a reasonable price. In short, the consumer doesn’t have to pay for all that bloated bureaucracy. Hence, “indie” is good for the reader!
But “indie” is also a slog for the writer. The “pros” associated with DIY and being your own boss have to be weighed against the “cons” that, no matter who s/he hires and how much s/he pays them, the indie writer will be fighting an uphill battle—traditional publishing is out to destroy her/him, for one thing; many libraries and bookstores, run by wizened harridans living in the past and vicariously through all those big-name geniuses, still don’t understand indie can mean exciting reading (like traditional publishing, it can also mean crap); and s/he is always fighting that stereotype, propagated by traditional publishing, many libraries, and a dwindling number of bookstores, that indie equates to inferior.
The indie writer has to jump through many hoops and over many barriers to maintain her/his independence. Becoming successful—whatever that means—is always a lottery in both the traditional and indie paradigm. The odds are probably about the same for both in the big picture, and a worry for any writer, but for an indie writer putting some books out there, often at great financial sacrifice, they can be more daunting and depressing. S/he is writing because she loves to write and is willing to make sacrifices to keep writing, but the reader should try to understand that having that person writing books for them is better than the alternative.
Amazon, for the most part, is the friend of all writers, but especially indies. They sell books—any book! The reader can sort through all that wonderful world of reading available at the Amazon site using their sort button—sorting choices are provided like relevancy (based on her/his previous selections), number of reviews, average review grade, price, and a few others I don’t remember. S/he can “peek inside” most books to read excerpts s/he selects, before purchase, an experience I find much more useful than browsing in a huge B&N book barn. You generally have a blurb from the author and one from Amazon. You have the Amazon sales ranking of the book. In other words, Amazon allows the reader complete freedom to choose the books s/he buys (or borrows, for that matter) by providing a wealth of information s/he can never have access to in any bookstore, Kirkus Reviews, the NY Times, or anywhere else.
Control of information is a major tool of tyrants everywhere, in the corporate or business world as much as in geopolitics, or in that clone compound of Full Medical. Amazon does a pretty good job of freeing up information for readers. Ironically, there are people who thwart their efforts. I’ve railed against review sites which require N 4- or 5-star reviews on Amazon in order to submit my book for review (that’s obviously creating a daunting vicious circle). This limits readers’ choices. (Same goes for PR and marketing sites who do the same.) These sites thwart Amazon and attack the indie paradigm; the latter tries to remove the barriers between readers and writers, thus empowering readers to make their own choices, and, at least, for now, Amazon has gone along with that (and, of course, made tons of money). These sites, in fact, owe their existence to the indie revolution and often thump their chests as supporters of that revolution, so their attempts to thwart it seem ironic, at best. They have joined the traditional publishing conspiracy, becoming the new guardians out to control what you read. (Some indie writers publish lists of groups like Publish America who have egregious business practices; maybe I should publish my lists of websites to avoid?)
***
All of this explains why I’m so disappointed in Joe Konrath and his recent “Ebooks Are Forever” proposal. Konrath, maybe one of the most successful indie writers, has come up with a plan to service public libraries, a plan that will create his own special club, make him a mountain of money, allow him to control the public library market, and eliminate the competition. In other words, this man, who’s become famous championing indie, has become a gatekeeper or guardian himself. He who’s always railed against gatekeepers now says he never did. In other words, he rails against traditional or legacy publishing but has become part of the problem that most indie writers face. That’s hypocrisy. It’s a sad day in Mudtown; Mighty Joe has struck out!
Most indie authors like me are trying to solve the “discovery problem.” We don’t have readers because readers don’t know we exist, even if we’ve written a number of books that might provide hours of quality entertainment for them. Any obstacle between us and readers is a negative. Traditional publishers use their gatekeepers, the agents, and their editors with their slush piles, to keep that successful authors’ club exclusive and thus minimize competition. This is done in many places—the AMA controls the number of medical doctors to minimize competition too—and it all harks back to the old guild concept from the Middle Ages. Old nags in the traditional publishers stables like Preston and Child support that, of course, because they’ve solved the “discovery problem” many times over. Joe’s plan is to add to the hoops and barriers discussed above, and for the same reasons. It’s nefarious, controlling, and exploitative.
The Devil’s always in the details, so here’s Joe’s plan: Libraries, if you believe Konrath, will gladly stock indie ebooks (read: ebooks written by indie authors)…if they have an effective and easy way to do it. Currently, they emphasize traditional publishing’s bestsellers, but he thinks they would buy indie ebooks…if there were an easy way to circumvent traditional publishing’s greedy claws now controlling library ebook purchases. Joe has that all wrong, of course. While I’ve been able to donate some pbooks here and there to libraries, my experience with libraries is that they are too often controlled by snooty old librarians with an archival mentality who live in the past and have no idea that an indie thriller that might take them beyond the often formulaic crap that comes from the NYC publishing moguls and their old warhorses (Preston and Child included)…and that might just have a wee bit of social relevance too.
That’s only my opinion, of course. The facts? To join Konrath’s exclusive EAF club, an indie writer needs to have sold 1000 ebooks and accumulated 100 reviews, integrated over his or her entire catalog. That doesn’t sound like much, right? Actually, it’s pretty much my minimal definition of being a successful writer, whether indie or traditional, although you can (and maybe should) quibble about the numbers. Here are the fallacies in this arbitrary requirement (beyond that it’s arbitrary): The number of recorded sales, whatever the number might be, might not correlate well with the number of readers. Amazon and Smashwords already have lending programs (every KDP Select author participates, and one chooses to participate on Smashwords, but has to opt out of KDP Select to even be there)—can an author count those as sales? They certainly count as readers! Does an author get to count the ebooks s/he’s given away in Amazon promos? Some number of these (maybe 10 or 20%?) might actually be readers too (I bet the percentage continues to dwindle, in lock step with the dwindling number of downloads).
Does s/he get to count the ebooks s/he’s given away for reviews and other PR and marketing purposes? A reviewer is certainly a reader. And those PR and marketing people do something with the ebooks they receive. Does s/he get to count all the public library readers s/he’s had of books s/he’s donated to libraries? Does Joe weed out all those reviews written by family and friends? Does he only count those reviews that actually say something beyond “atta-boy,” “atta-girl,” or “this sucks” (does the latter even count as a review for EAF?)? And why is Joe making the determination about club membership anyway? Who elected him the royal guru who vets indie writers? At least, some agent or an editor will read or scan an MS in the traditional publishing paradigm. Joe will only use the same arbitrary criteria that those nefarious websites I mentioned use. (In his defense, I suppose his API experts aren’t as numerous as Amazon’s, but then he shouldn’t try to play the game!)
Bottom line: This proposal creates yet another exclusive club that most indie authors cannot join and eliminates them from competing with Joe and other “successful” indie writers. Of course, that’s the idea! Control readers’ choices and direct them to the ebooks they want you to read. Writers who can join EAF, especially Konrath and his “successful” friends, don’t deserve to be called indies any longer, because these Dr. Jekylls will have morphed into Mr. Hydes, the very gatekeepers they’re so quick to criticize! It’s just another way to stifle competition to the detriment of readers everywhere! They have become the new guardians determining what you read.
One can argue that libraries will only be interested in indie bestsellers. Fine. Let them be the gatekeepers, not Joe and friends. Why should the latter exclude any indie writer from participating in EAF? Amazon presents all the choices to all readers and lets them decide. Joe wants to decide for the libraries. If you search for “mysteries and thrillers” on Amazon, you can select for “average customer review” (I do well there) and “most number of reviews” (I don’t do well there). Is that too complicated for Joe and friends to add to his damn API? Let the librarians be free to select the ebooks they want to feature in their catalogs. They have acquisitions staff to make those decisions, yet Joe wants to make the decisions for them. If I were a librarian making acquisitions decisions, I’d resent Joe’s high and mighty attitude, because he can’t possibly know my library’s reading public!
In Joe’s defense, he recognizes (1) that libraries might prefer to buy in quantities and don’t want to stock stuff no one reads, so he’s trying to appeal to their desire to save time and money; and (2) that their EAF might exclude ebooks and authors who suddenly “take off” (winning that lottery is so random that not even Joe in his infinite wisdom can make predictions, of course), or those new voices (new authors and undiscovered ones). He’s just beginning, but I’m expecting that his club will become even more exclusive. It has to do so. That API has to be fine-tuned to eliminate anyone who can compete with Joe and friends, after all.
For (1), we all know libraries have limited budgets, but they also have many books, pbooks or ebooks, that NO ONE borrows (all pbooks I’ve donated are dog-eared and worse for wear, though), they know about that problem, and Joe can’t pretend to know a professional acquisition librarian’s business (well, he can, but he’s wrong about trying it). In one fell swoop, Joe has limited the choices for librarians and readers, controlling both. Talk about Machiavellian attitude!
(2) is the key point. Winning the lottery is more difficult than solving the discovery problem. One ebook in an author’s catalog can suddenly resonate locally or with a small niche readership and pull other ebooks in the author’s catalog, especially those in the same series, along with it. Happens all the time. I’ve seen it, and it keeps me going, because I love to entertain—the more readers, the merrier. (I’d give my ebooks away after recovering expenses if I thought you’d read them. In fact, I do so…to libraries!) In the pbook world, librarians will feed and respond to a local demand. Can they in Joe’s controlled ebook world? Or, will they become the clone children in that compound, beleaguered by traditional publishers on one side and Joe and friends on the other, still pretending to be faithful representatives of indie writers?
I have many novels set in the NYC area, for example. Tri-state area libraries might be more interested in those than, say, novels set in the West or the South. Why does Joe have to continue the traditional practice of constructing barriers between readers and writers? I know why. He’s successful and eliminating the competition guarantees even more “success.” That sounds a lot like Douglas Preston and Lee Child, two authors Joe has criticized as part of the traditional publishing world. This is why I’m so disappointed in Joe and friends. They have become self-serving while maintaining their disguise as indie loyalists. At the very least, they’re failing to be helpful to the indie writer who is struggling to make a go of it. And they most certainly are limiting readers’ choices.
Note that I’m not calling for a boycott of Joe and friends. That’s silly. In fact, outside of this post, there’s little I can do, because I’m nobody. The phrase “you can’t fight city hall” has now become “you can’t fight Mighty Joe Konrath.” I’m not saying that Joe can’t write either. I’ve even read a few of his ebooks. Polished and professional but not my cup o’ tea, in general—he doesn’t ever deal with anything controversial, for example—but that’s all subjective. I won’t boycott him for his politics either (becoming a gatekeeper or guardian is clearly a political decision, even though he denies it). If a writer tells a good story, his politics should never matter. Every reader should be free to choose his entertainment. Joe and friends don’t allow that decision, though–at least, not for library patrons.
As an avid reader, I abhor that. As an indie writer, I’m disappointed, but hypocrisy and desire for control is rampant in this publishing industry, just like everywhere else. Why should some indie writers be any different? Arguing it’s just a business and that’s the way the cookie crumbles is just wrong. Amazon doesn’t take that view and makes a ton of money by giving ALL writers a chance. Writing is literary art and reading is appreciation of that art—no matter if it’s genre fiction or a biography of Churchill (by the way, EAF doesn’t accept non-fiction—many readers, including library patrons, read that exclusively). Caving into a desire to control the market and calling it just a business decision is cut-throat and merits bad karma. Joe has earned every bit of the latter. So has every indie writer who supports this.
In elibris libertas….
