Rethinking traditional publishing…
Authors have many choices these days, but the end result is always the same: if you want readership, you have to (1) let people know you write books and (2) promote individual ones wherever you can. With notable exceptions, you won’t win the lottery, rise to prominence, and receive fantastic marketing like Higgins Clark, Patterson, Grafton, King, and other old mares and stallions in the Big Five’s stables. Big publishers only bet on sure horses as far as PR and marketing money goes. The majority of indie or traditionally published writers need to push their books out to readers—no one will do it for them.
Given this current state of affairs in the publishing world, most fiction writers have a lot in common JUST BEFORE AND AFTER their books are published. They are all looking to win that lottery, a bestseller, by whatever definition you want to give (selling 10,000 copies of a book? A million? Appearing in the NY Times book review?). IT IS A LOTTERY, no matter how much you wish it to be or delude yourself in thinking otherwise, and it obeys the familiar rule: you can’t win if you don’t play. In that sense, buying that lottery ticket or tickets is where the hard work lies, no matter how you publish. But this post isn’t about what happens after a book is published. It’s about rethinking traditional publishing and its one unique advantage which is a tremendous disadvantage in the indie world.
There are many ways to go indie, from complete DIY to paying for most services. Given that you have written an MS for a book, you can do your own editing, in all its variations that are needed; you can create your own cover; and you can do your own formatting. I do all my content editing (for me, that’s just part of the writing process, so it’s done by the time I have the MS). I do most of my own copy editing and proofreading, but my beta-readers have made valuable contributions in both areas (some suggestions for content editing too). From thereon I hire a publisher that obtains all the ISBNs and does other logistics as well as an excellent job on the formatting, and I hire someone to do the cover art. That’s trading money for time, but I’d also rather have the pros do the things I’m not very good at, even though the DIY is possible.
Except for the editing, a traditional publisher does all the stuff I pay for completely pro bono for a share of the royalties, whether exclusively an ebook publisher or mixed ebook and paper publisher. That’s the important difference with full DIY in the indie world. “So what?” the newbie with a fiction MS might say. “I can do it DIY for little cost. It’s not like the old days. I spend some time after producing the MS, and I produce a book. I don’t have to spend a lot of real money.” I’ve moved beyond that simplistic attitude. Let me try to explain myself to those indie naysayers out there.
That attitude is OK if you’re thinking about just one book. But guess what the best marketing ploy is? Almost all PR and marketing gurus say that it’s proving you’re not a one-book wonder. Or that failed first book won’t really determine that your others are equally bad. (Maybe that’s my problem—all my books are failures—but I’ll only listen to that critique if you read every book and write a few yourself.) Maybe you think you’re the next Harper Lee or Truman Capote (they were basically one-book wonders too) or Weir in the indie world (also a one-book wonder so far), but most authors’ success is incremental. Success with book #2 helps find readers for #1 and so on. That’s especially true for series, but it’s also true in general. Every Big Five author I named above fits in that pattern, whether they like to admit it or not. One orange tree’s fruit might satisfy family and some friends; a whole orange grove might make you rich (California metaphor).
Can you see where I’m going? If you’re doing 100% DIY on each book, you’ll go crazy even as you become more efficient at it. Moreover, you have to tend to the other trees in your orange grove or they’ll stop producing fruit. Translation: That’s promoting ALL your books. Books on sale here and there, book clubs and book fairs, some paid PR and marketing, whatever. It’s all time consuming, and you’ll start rushing that DIY process. My answer? Offloading some of it by paying for the services. Now it’s money as well as time. I think that should be your answer too.
If you have traditional publishing contracts, you’re also paying for those services, but they are PRO BONO payments: You’re paying them with future royalties. Your publisher is gambling on you generating those royalties, i.e. having an increasing readership. It’s a gamble for them and you; indie is only a gamble for you. (And you can argue that the traditional publishers take too many of those royalties, but they’re peanuts unless you win the lottery, and then you might not give a damn!) In my case, after so many books, I’m thinking I’d like someone else to take the gamble with me. I won’t make as much money per book, but I won’t be paying for services with money that’s becoming scarce either—I’m always running in the red. And no one will make any money if I can’t find readers for my books. With a traditional publishing contract, I won’t lose my monetary investment when a book is a dud, for whatever reason.
Smaller imprints and publishing houses hedge their bets by screening what they publish, with or without the help of agents, but they’ll bet on the new horses more than the Big Five publishers. They also play the numbers game. They might not win the jackpot in the lottery for any particular book—they can’t afford to pamper any author like Patterson with his streaming videos and full-page NY Times ads—but if their authors win a small part of that lottery on the average, they’re successful. Call it spreading around the risk or spreading around the pain, either way the individual author wanting to write many novels can do so with less personal investment. Think of it as buying insurance—it can be costly, but there’s safety in numbers.
I’ve come full circle almost. When I started 10+ years ago, I became frustrated with agents and editors’ rejections (more than one thousand) and turned to indie in the form of POD (that was before ebooks became the rage). Those first books represented a small investment on my part, mostly time. Going indie allowed me many freedoms; I took advantage of them, knowing as a prolific reader that my books were just as good as anyone else’s, if not better (I might be an introvert, but I can judge my own work because I have a lot to compare it to). And I could crank them out one after the other to satisfy my storytelling addiction. (Check out that photo of Blarney Castle on my website.)
But now, after buying all those lottery tickets and not winning the lottery, I’ve decided that maybe what I did wasn’t such a good idea. POD certainly wasn’t—I’m still saddled with those old PODs that are no longer competitive price-wise. And the “ebook revolution” has sort of fizzled too—there are readers who still like print, so I’ll have to work on that. Choosing traditional publishing might have resulted in fewer books (my writing business is pretty efficient except for making money), but I might not be as far in the red.
Readers tend to find the new voices in indie and in these small imprints and publishing houses. Another advantage for readers is that these small outfits guarantee a minimum of quality—at least one good editor has taken the time to peruse the MS, and the formatting and cover art won’t be terrible (it might not be as good as mine either—my current cover artist is very talented). There is absolutely no guarantee of that with indies, which is why I always advise using Amazon’s “peek inside” feature (of course, readers should use that for ANY book they’re thinking of buying). But the real advantage of traditional over indie is that pro bono contract for producing the author’s books. That’s why I’m rethinking traditional publishing, although it might be too late.
***
The “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries” are on sale. Mary Jo is inviting you to celebrate with her for leaving Amazon exclusivity and appearing on Smashwords too. She’s an ex-USN Master-at-Arms who manages to get into a lot of trouble as a civilian; she also manages to beat the odds and survive, though. Muddlin’ Through (Smashwords coupon code KY27A) is an international thriller where she works to clear her name and pay back the group that framed her. In the process, she discovers the MECHs, Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans, and romance as she runs around the U.S., South American, and Europe. Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By (Smashwords coupon code VT64E) takes place almost exclusively in the Silicon Valley where she has two government groups pursuing her, one U.S., the other Russian. She also has a stalker on a revenge mission. Both books, normally $2.99, are $0.99 on Smashwords, using the coupon codes, until August 1—lots of entertaining summer reading for $2!
In libris libertas!
