Indie v. midlist?
First, let’s clear away some misconceptions. Traditional publishing means the old publishing business model of finding an agent, hoping that agent finds you a publisher/editor, said publisher/editor hands you off to the staff (other editors and cover artists), and maybe sets up a book signing or two when your book is finally out (it can take a year or more). You could even enjoy seeing your book in a Barnes & Noble book barn for a few months after it’s published and get your local bookstores to order a few copies (but not the ebook versions). Once you find an agent, you can pretty much wash your hands of the rest, right? Wrong!
Unless you’re an old mare or old stallion in the Big Five’s stables of bestselling horses, or have a lot of leverage (your father was an author, your uncle owns an imprint, and so forth, what my Latino friends call la palanca), you’re pretty much on your own after your book is published. You’re now a midlist author, even if you’re publisher is one of the Big Five. They place only safe bets on those old horses—new voices are generally ignored and the bulk of all that PR and marketing aid you thought you were going to get, and especially those expensive video trailers in prime time and full-page ads in the NY Times, go to the old authors who grind out their formulaic bestsellers.
That means that you have to promote your own book, just like an indie. The main difference with your fellow indie author is that s/he reaps a lot more for money invested and time spent on promo efforts than you do, 35% or 70% versus your 10% or 15%. Over time (sometimes as short as a month), bookstores will no longer stock your books and your publisher won’t even want to talk to you—unless your book wins the lottery, of course, and the publisher moves you temporarily into the winners’ stables. And, if bestsellerdom doesn’t smile on you, oh the hassle when you want your rights back so you can go indie. That’s life in the publishing world of the 21st century.
“Midlist author” is a misnomer, of course. These authors living in the nether world of traditional publishing aren’t just authors published by small publishers or imprints, they’re authors who never are coddled by traditional publishers and are ignored for the long haul. This class of authors is more akin to indie writers than they are with those Big Five favorites. Their lives in the nether world are the same as the lives of indies.
I started down traditional publishing’s yellow brick road 10+ years ago. In spite of 1000+ demeaning rejections from agents and agents sitting on a MS for months with no results, I still think there are well-intentioned agents out there who work well with authors. (If you found one, be nice to her—they’re clearly an endangered species.) I also still believe that small publishers and imprints exist that treat their authors well to the extent they’re allowed to—they haven’t all been swallowed up by the Big Five. That said, traditional publishing’s business model needs to change. Midlist authors are more likely to help bring that change about if they join forces with indies, not work against them.
The reverse is also true. Consider this: indie is not all DIY anymore. The days are long past when we can be 100% DIY. In fact, by the time most indies pay for editing, a cover, and maybe some PR and marketing at book launch, they’ve become a one-author small publisher with a sizable investment in their books. Better said, they’ve become a small publisher where the author is the 100% stockholder. In this sense, indies and midlist authors are kissing cousins, and the Big Five have become the evil uncles who want to keep them in their place.
How does this affect readers? Maybe a lot! While many readers follow favorite authors, whether indie, midlist, or coddled Big Fivers, many also like to discover new voices with fresh stories. Readers won’t find many of those among the coddled Big Fivers as they die off (even James Patterson won’t live forever). They sell a lot of books, of course, but many are formulaic, mimicking previous books—“you have a good thing going, do more of it” is the Big Five’s credo. In other words, fresh stories are harder to come by the longer an author is with the Big Five, and it will even get worse with time as those old mares and stallions go off to that big glue factory in the sky. The major publishers used to recognize this and invest in the next wave of new writers. Now they prefer an immediate return on their money and forget that any business must also invest in the future to survive.
Of course, prolific readers are a dying breed too, as streaming video and video games turn the reading public into passive zombies. Who knows how it will all turn out? Will traditional publishing disappear and midlist authors become indies? The way things are going, there’s a high probability for that, although indies might disappear too. Right now publishers and authors following the traditional business model can’t really compete with indies. When their trade paperbacks are in the $15 range and their ebooks are over $10, indies have the price advantage. They also have the advantage that the new voices and fresh stories are in their dominion too. Traditional publishers and traditional readers will eventually go the way of the dinosaurs. What will be left is anyone’s guess.
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Rogue Planet is now available for all reviewers on Net Galley.
The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan. This novel, which is a bridge between the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” and the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy,” considers the following question: how will the U.S. government in the future handle all those old people with classified secrets in their head? This is just a Smashwords sale. The book will be priced at $0.99 until June 1, reduced from $2.99. The coupon code is MP45S (type that in when you order—be sure and specify the format you want). Pass the word to your relatives and friends.
In libris libertas….
