Category Archives: Publishing

Mary’s Writing and Publishing Browsery for June 14 2011

June 14, 2011 By in Independent publishing, Odds and Ends, Publishing, Self publishing, Websites for writers, Writing Process Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Here is an (annotated, of course: I rarely keep my opinions to myself) accumulation of interesting items about writing and publishing that I’ve come across (or been referred to by others) in the past few weeks:

  • For the inside track on the appalling impact of previous sales figures on book-publishing decisions, check out Steven Henighan’s amazing article “The BookNet Dictatorship” in Geist. If you’re a mid-list writer who can’t get an agent or publisher to read your manuscript, maybe this is why. And this happens everywhere – in the UK and US, for example, as well as in Canada;
  • In this YouTube video, Margaret Atwood displays her drawing talents in a presentation to the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference in New York in February. I love her “Change Isn’t Good For Everyone” slide in particular (it is so Atwoodesque), but I think the half-empty glass she sees may also be viewed as half full it. Many of the problems she raises re: technology and books are caused by publishers, not by technology, and imho the structure that links writers (and editors!) inextricably with publishers and agents is already outdated. The United Artists model she suggests is relevant, and many groups of “indie-minded” writers are now banding together to apply that model to books;
  • Unbound is an independent publishing initiative where interested readers can pledge financial support to bring a writer’s work to press, helping to support the writing process of specific books in exchange for rewards such as lunch with the author and a mention in the acknowledgements (Kickstarter is a similar initiative that encompasses the range of creative projects.);
  • An item in Business Insider, “This 26-Year-Old Is Making Millions Cutting Out Traditional Publishers With Amazon Kindle,” profiles Amanda Hocking, the young author who is fulfilling the wildest dreams of legions of self-published writers by selling hundreds of thousands of her books and keeping 70% of the profits;
  • Another Business Insider article, “Suddenly, Amazon Starts Competing With Its Biggest Suppliers,” introduces Amazon’s latest initiative: its own publishing division. As fellow Writers Union member Art Slade pointed out, perhaps this will encourage other publishers to pay their authors more of (their own) money on electronic books. Otherwise, to me—an author who is looking with interest at the stripped-down model of getting good books to readers in which publishers are superfluous—this move by Amazon makes no sense.  Why not add an editing imprint, rather than a publishing imprint??
  • Finally, to mid-list author Neal Pollack’s article in the New York Times, “The Case for Self-Publishing,” I can only say “amen.”

For those who are not familiar with The Militant Writer blog, I direct your attention to two of my own recent articles: “As Publishers, Agents and Booksellers (unfortunately) (for them) Go The Way of the Dodo, Writers Learn To Fly” and “The Author as Publisher.” More articles in this series will follow as I have time to write them.

In the meantime, I encourage you to let me know if you see items on book publishing and writing that might be of interest for future Browsery columns. You can email me at marywwalters at marywwalters.com

Thanks for leads to the articles in this edition of The Browsery from Larry Anderson, Dwight Okita, Gerry Riskin, Marion Stein and a panelist at a Writers Union forum whose name eludes me.

The Author as Publisher

May 30, 2011 By in Editors, literary, Independent publishing, Publishing, Publishing, Electronic, Self publishing 6 Comments

(Second in a series of articles about the new realities for writers and readers.)

It seems inevitable to me now that unless they take up the sideline manufacture of weaponry or bath salts to subsidize themselves, the major publishing houses are going down. There will certainly be a role for niche publishers in future (literary presses that focus on poetry or esoteric fiction among them, teetering on the brink of expiration as they always have, and non-fiction houses that specialize in such limited areas as the flora and fauna of Paraguay or the battles of World War II), but for the majority of mainstream fiction and non-fiction book writers, independent publishing will soon become the norm.

In this post, I examine the “services” publishers have traditionally provided to writers and their books (and therefore to readers, I suppose), and then I look at how I believe these same functions can be managed—often in a more effective manner—by the authors themselves when they publish their own books. The post examines five specific areas:

  • manuscript selection
  • editing
  • production
  • promotion/sales
  • distribution

There are other areas that publishers have traditionally managed for writers, often with the help of agents. Most of them relate to subsidiary rights—e.g., translation rights,  dramatic rights, merchandizing rights, and so on. Publishers have traditionally taken a chunk of the money that accrues when a book has been translated or made into a movie. They have argued (with good reason) that after a manuscript has been accepted by a publisher and turned into an attractive book, it becomes more appealing to rights purchasers. Publishers have at times facilitated the process by presenting their books to prospective foreign publishers at the London and Frankfurt book fairs, for example, but for the most part they have simply secured some portion of the subsidiary rights without actually doing much to encourage an income flow for either themselves or the author from such sources.

So, on to the “services” they have offered and fulfilled.

 Manuscript Selection

Looking Back

Most readers and many publishers have always believed that publishers performed an invaluable role in the book-production process by making the initial selection from the thousands of manuscripts that were submitted to them every year of the books that would reach the marketplace. These selections were made, at least ideally, and perhaps twenty years and more ago, on the basis of writing quality, uniqueness of voice, and a variety of other subjective criteria that only highly trained, well read, passionate, experienced and discerning editors could make.

However, publishing companies have realized increasingly in the past decade that they are businesses. Senior bean counters have required the editorial departments to make decisions about which books to publish on the basis of how many copies of those books are likely to sell. Sales departments have increasingly had veto power over book selection . . .  and the sales department of a publishing house is itself directed in large measure by the buyers for the major booksellers, who are the ones who ultimately choose which books are going to end up on the shelves.

To attempt to ensure sales, publishers release books that are just like the books that sold like hotcakes last year—hence the proliferation in recent years of vampire books and in future years, I am guessing, of detective stories starring androgynous computer geeks with photographic memories. They also want books that are written by people whose last books sold like hotcakes. When publishers do pick up a new writer, they want her or him to be sexy, well-spoken and distinctive. Sometimes they will even go and get her, if she is famous enough: watch for the book by Lady Gaga which is sure to be out soon.

The days when literate editors fell in love with new literary voices and argued successfully to publish their books is long gone. If there is no research evidence (i.e., last year’s sales figures) to justify the company’s taking on a book, it isn’t going to happen.

In the initial post on this blog (“How Literary Agents Are Destroying Literature…”), and in others since, I have described at length how the book selection process is skewed away from quality literature and toward shlock. For additional and truly eye-opening discussion of how books are selected for publication, I also direct all readers, and particularly mid-list writers, to an article by Stephen Henighan that appeared in Geist –“The BookNet Dictatorship” — which discusses how book-sales data affect the selection of book manuscripts for publication (the article is about the Canadian industry, but the same system applies where you live).

Looking Ahead

In the brave new world of publishing, the worthwhile books (and the standard for what is “worthwhile” has infinite variation) are selected after they are published. The sorting is done by the readers and reviewers. They are the ones who decide which books will be popular and critical successes. No more gatekeepers who are “more knowledgeable” than readers about which books will sell, or even be of interest. If a book has an audience of three, now it will find that audience: and a few other people might pick it up as well.

This democratization of the manuscript-selection process is in itself cause for huge celebration and excitement among both writers and readers, although the haughty “I know literature better than you do” types see it as the greatest drawback to the proliferation of self-publishing. The great books will still be there, folks, and—thanks to on-line resources that you will come to rely upon the way you do now on the New York Times Review of Books or the Times Literary Supplement—you will still be able to find them.

Editing

Looking Back

Traditionally, once a manuscript was accepted for publication by an established press, it would be assigned to either an in-house or a freelance editor who would work with the writer to improve the manuscript substantively. This “substantive” or “content” editor would suggest areas where more information was needed, sections that could be cut, even whole new passages that needed to be written. The writer would then do the revisions (or—at least, ideally—the ones he or she agreed with).

After the major revisions were complete to the satisfaction of the writer and the publisher, the whole manuscript would go to another editor for copy-editing. This final editing step would get the manuscript into a clean format ready for the printer, free of spelling and grammatical and punctuation errors, and adhering to the “house style” of the publishing company (often a variation on the guidelines set out in the Chicago Manual of Style, although books in certain disciplines use other style guides).

To my mind, and that of most other writers, the editorial phase was probably the most important step of the book-production process. An editor worth his or her salt, working closely with the writer, often turned an interesting manuscript into a truly spectacular, award-winning novel or non-fiction book. Despite this, in-house and freelance editors didn’t get paid very much and often received no acknowledgement at all.

Looking Ahead

Really good editors are already leaving the publishing houses because their love for turning good into great books is even less valued than it has ever been in the industry. Many of them have started taking on freelance clients (and charging what they are worth).

In future, certain editors will become so well known that having their name appear on the self-published book as editor will be enough to guarantee the book attention from the media and readers. The participation of certain outstanding editors will become a new way of sorting out the quality books from the crap that proliferates in a world where everyone can publish.

Self-published writers who do not invest the time and money in good editing are going to pay the price. Within a few paragraphs, readers like me put aside a poorly edited book: it is simply not worth the effort to read a novel or non-fiction work that is riddled with typos and factual errors, or where the point of view doesn’t work or the flashbacks are too choppy—no matter what the underlying quality. A poorly edited book means the writer doesn’t understand the value of an editor, and I am not impressed with writers who don’t value editors. We can live without publishers, but we cannot live without editors. (See my related post on the rise of the literary editor from May 2009.) In this world, “Look Inside The Book” options on booksellers’ sites become the friend of the wary reader,  and the enemy of the sloppy, unedited writer.

I can hear writers moaning that they will not be able to afford to hire good editors, that their access to publishing companies in the past meant that they had access to good editors at no cost to them, and that this possibility is now lost. Keep in mind that the vast majority of writers never had access to top-quality editors because they never had their books accepted by any of the publishing companies where these editors worked.

If you need a good editor, and your aunt is an English teacher, explore that possibility for copy-editing. Do that at least. If you really care about your book, get quotes from substantive/content editors on line and save up to pay for one, the way you would a car. The publishing collectives that are springing up offer editing services to their writers, and I am sure that editors who love great writing will occasionally take on pro bono work (No. Don’t ask. I don’t mean me. I can’t afford to do that yet.)

Please note IMPORTANT: No credentials are required in order to set up shop as an editor. Most editors’ organizations do not require any track record from their members, so membership in an editors’ association is not in itself a credential. There are people setting themselves up now as editor/publishers who can’t even spell their Twitter posts correctly or deliver them grammatically.

Ask for names from writers you respect. Check references of those you find on-line. Demand credentials. Remember, you are the creator. You are the talent. And now, you are also the employer.

 Production

Looking Back

When your manuscript had been edited to perfection, it was submitted to the layout department where the pages were set. A careful in-house editor working in cooperation with the layout department would make sure that all chapters started on the right (usually the right-hand) side of the page, that there were no pages with just one word on them, that there was an appropriate running head across the top of the page, that paragraphs had not accidentally run together, and that all the other details were adhered to that made for a professional-looking book. If you had included figures or tables in your manuscript, they would be laid out and proofread at this stage. Captions would be checked, illustrations inserted where appropriate, double-spaces and fluerons would be added where they should be, and again checked. If there was an index (usually created at the author’s expense), the typeset pages would be printed off to be given to the author, who would then insert the page numbers.

The cover design would be completed and the text for the back cover and any other promotional inside notes would be created, set and proofed. Tables of Contents would be created if necessary, Forewords inserted, Acknowledgements checked and placed.

When all of this and other related bits of work had been completed, the page proofs would be sent to the author for final checking. Then the laid-out version of the novel and the cover would be sent to the printer.

A few weeks later, the printer would send back what was known as a “blue line” (this can be imagined sort of like a negative of a photograph, although it isn’t really a negative), which would show exactly how the pages were going to look when the page was produced and what order the pages would appear in. The in-house editor would give this blue-line a final check, and would also check all the colour separations with the art department for the cover and any illustrations.

The order to print was then issued to the printer. Within a certain defined period of time (which was almost always exceeded by the printer, meaning that books were often late for important events such as book launches), 500 or 2,500 or 3,000 or 10,000 or whatever number of copies of the books had been ordered would be delivered to the publisher for warehousing and distribution.

Looking Ahead

With self-publishing, the writer submits the edited manuscript to a layout artist (paid or a relative, depending ;) ) and/or does the layout himself or herself, and then submits the laid-out version of the book to the publishing company, according to the page specifications that are provided by the company.

The author also arranges for a cover to be designed and prepared in the manner required by the publishing company.

Depending on the knowledge/skill of the layout artist/typesetter and the cover designer, this step makes the difference between a book that “looks” self-published and one that does not.

Most self-publishing houses and publishing partners now deal only in print-on-demand books, rather than running off 2,500 copies using an off-set printing press. This means that when someone orders a copy of your book, one copy of that book is created on the spot, packaged and delivered to them immediately. Since 2,500 copies of your book are not sitting in a warehouse somewhere, waiting for someone to order them, trees are saved and many middle-people are eliminated. Customers don’t need to wait any longer for the bookstore to take their order and then to contact the publisher, who then contacts the warehouse department, which waits until enough books have accumulated for shipping to one address to justify the delivery charges, before the order is fulfilled. (By which time your customer has forgotten that he or she ordered the book, has no money left in his or her account, and refuses to purchase it.)

The one drawback to the print on demand (POD) system today is that the books can look flimsy and the covers don’t always get stuck on straight or properly. But before too long the technology of self-publishing partners like CreateSpace will become increasingly refined so that books that are self-published will be harder and harder to tell apart from those that have been designed and typeset by traditional publishing houses using big printing presses. And, of course, e-books make this step much simpler; far fewer quality-control steps are required in the production of an electronic book than in the production of a “real” book. However, real books are always going to be desired by many readers, so this part of the process should not be ignored by self-publishing authors–at least for literary works that someone might want to hold.

 Promotion/Sales

 The primary sales tool upon which most traditional publishing houses rely is the catalogue. As an author, you and your book receive top billing (usually along with five or six other writers/books) in the season in which your book is actually published. For a few months you and your book are featured in the front pages of the publishing company’s catalogue, and then your book falls farther and farther back in the subsequent editions until it forms part of the company’s “backlist.”

I have heard from booksellers that one of the most important ways they have to discover which books in a publisher’s catalogue they might want to stock is the enthusiasm of the sales person when he or she comes around to the bookstore. If the publishing company’s salesperson has read the book and really likes it and can talk about it, the bookseller (we’re talking primarily independent booksellers here) will likely be convinced to stock a book that he or she has not heard about before. Unfortunately, the sales reps from many publishing companies have not read all the books (or at least may not have read your book) and so you just become one of many new voices in one of many catalogues the bookseller receives. Some sales people never even go around to booksellers any more, apparently. So the bookseller gets your publisher’s catalogue in the mail or on–line about the same time that he or she gets an avalanche of catalogues from other publishers, and often that is that.

In addition to the catalogue, most publishers will send out review copies to newspapers and magazines, but unless there is some unique way of getting the attention of the book-review department, your book is likely to languish in a pile of other newly published books that reaches to the ceiling and is soon shunted off to a backroom somewhere. Many traditional outlets will not review ebooks. Or POD books. Even if they are published by traditional publishing houses.

Many writers make very poor interview subjects so there are legions of radio and television hosts who do not want to talk to writers. Apparently we just don’t know how to capitalize on and entertain audio/visual audiences — our preferred medium is print! — and since so many of our number have bored viewers and listeners to death in the past, even if we are ourselves great guests on tv or radio, we will need to overcome established prejudices before we can have our moments in the sun. . . either that, or we will need to do something newsworthy that interviewers can talk about with us, like robbing a grocery store or walking 2000 miles in our bare feet.

Another unfortunate bit of news: publishers and booksellers have found that hosting book-launch parties and readings are not very cost-effective, so this happens far less often than it used to.

Looking Ahead

When it comes to promotion of self-published books, the sky is the limit. I have a bunch of crazy ideas and some more time-tested ones, and I’ll be doing a whole column about that in future.

At the Writers Union meeting I attended this past weekend, there was a panel discussion on promoting one’s own work through blogs and social media, and aside from the fact that everyone agreed that blatant self-promotion was more off-putting than attractive, there were a range of ideas that I’ll be happy to present here at some point before long.

Stay tuned.

Distribution

 Looking Back

Publishers have always had huge problems with book warehousing and distribution.

If you print 10,000 copies of a book and ship 3,000 of them out to bookstores when the print run comes in, what do you do with the other 7,000 copies? On the other hand, if you only print 3,000 copies and they sell out quickly, what do you do about the fact that it’s going to take a couple of months to get more copies printed? Or what happens if the author’s book wins an award, and you don’t have enough copies available to fill the orders that result (this happens all the time, in fact). Where do you situate your warehouses? Near the editorial and sales offices, or out in a lower-rent district where the shipping department becomes like a whole separate entity. Do you combine forces with other publishers to reduce duplicate costs of distribution? How can you be sure your books are being rushed out to customers if the other publishing companies with which you have combined resources have a run on a particular title?

The craziness of the book business also means that if retailers don’t sell the books they order, they can return them to the publisher. So publishers need somewhere to put returns – unless they plan to simply shred them (which also happens).

Looking Ahead

The age of technology has resolved many distribution problems in ways that benefit writers and readers more than they do publishers and traditional booksellers. With Print on Demand and electronic books, readers can press a button and the book is on its way to them –either in the mail or electronically. No warehouses are necessary.

Of course, booksellers don’t make any profit from e-books, or at least they haven’t figured out how to do so yet, so they don’t like them. And they don’t like Print on Demand books, because they can’t return them after they have ordered them. Booksellers and publishers both look down (with good reason) on the poor quality of many POD titles, and don’t want them in their stores.

The whole area of book distribution is evolving as rapidly as any other area of book publishing, but the bottom line is that the changes are good for writers and readers—the latter can actually impulse-buy our books!—and for that among many other evolutions in our business, we can look at our futures with a new optimism, even knowing that our role as publishers or at least publishing partners is going to mean a lot more work for us.

So there you go. Poof! You’re a publisher.

E-books and self-publishing are NOT THE SAME THING!

May 27, 2011 By in Publishing, Publishing, Electronic, Self publishing Tags: , , , 6 Comments

I am currently working on a blog post tentatively entitled, “Why do We Even Need Publishers?” which I hope to have posted by Sunday night, but in the meantime I want to clear up a rampant misconception that I’ve noticed among writers AND readers.

Yesterday I was discussing the issue of self-publishing (or “independent publishing”) with another widely published writer, explaining how I felt that the writers’ organizations to which we both belong were not doing justice to the dramatic way in which the new opportunities for publishing were affecting our industry and improving opportunities for writers in the future. The friend said, “Well, [one organization] did have a few really good sessions on e-books last year.”

And that reminded me of a problem I have noticed over and over again in writers’ and readers’ forums and even in articles from some established media outlets. For some unknown reason, there seems to be a confusion among many people between electronic publishing and self-publishing. They are not the same thing at all, and aside from being co-incidental in that they are both arising in the past few years, and that they are part of the same transformation, they are entirely unrelated.

Electronic publishing refers to the production of an electronic version of your book. That is all it refers to. It doesn’t matter if you are self-publishing or if you are being published by Simon & Schuster (are they still in business?), there can be a print version of your book and there can be an electronic version of your book. There can also be softcover and hardcover versions of the print edition, and there can be an audio-book version. These are merely different formats: they do not indicate different publishing paradigms.

The confusion has arisen because many of those who self-publish choose to publish ONLY in an e-book version, which is short-sighted on their parts as I will explain later. But that doesn’t mean that e-book publishing and self-publishing are synonymous in any way.

If you are publishing with ANY established press, you must make sure that they are going to make an e-book version available at almost at the same time as the print version appears, that the e-book will be available to the different reader platforms that are now available: Kindle, Kobe, iBooks, Sony Reader, Nook, etc.

There is a big argument going on about how much writers should get in royalties on e-books, which is an issue I intend to explore as soon as I finish this series on the death of the traditional books industry. But in the meantime, don’t get locked into any particular royalty for e-books in your contracts with established presses for the time being. The Writers’ Union of Canada recommends that you allow for renegotiation of the clause in your contract that relates your e-book rights/income in two years or so when this issue has settled down a bit, and I agree.

More soon .  . . .

As Publishers, Agents and Booksellers (unfortunately) (for them) Go The Way of the Dodo, Writers Learn To Fly

May 6, 2011 By in Publishing, Self publishing 18 Comments

(First in a series of articles about the rapidly changing book-publishing industry.)

I.

There are a lot of chickens running around these days trying to convince us that the literary sky is falling—and that if we don’t somehow find a way to slow or at least manage the digitization of book publishing, good writing is going to disappear forever.

Well, guess what, kids and pundits? You can stop reading (and writing) those articles, and you can also stop debating the issue: the traditional world of books has already all but vanished, and it isn’t coming back.

And guess what else? Writers and readers have begun to realize that the sky was not falling after all: what collapsed and shattered was only a glass ceiling.

While these are desperate times for most publishers, booksellers and agents, they represent the dawn of a new era for writers and readers (not to mention editors, publicists, book designers, and those bloggers who write coherent book reviews). After hundreds of years of trying to wrestle our way into (and then survive) uneasy alliances with the publishing industry, writers have—with no real effort on our parts—been unshackled, unbound and freed.

Almost overnight (at least in story-telling years), an entire infrastructure of walls and ceilings that prevented us from reaching our intended audiences have simply fallen away. Suddenly, unexpectedly, fantastically, we find ourselves with room to soar. No longer are we merely the authors of our books: we have become the authors of our destinies as well.

I have been writing fiction and nonfiction, both short and book-length, for thirty years. I have published four books with established presses and hundreds of articles and short stories in books, magazines and journals. Despite the good experiences I have had with various established presses, and the knowledge about book publishing I have gained by working as an editor and editor in chief with traditional publishing houses, I have never been more excited about the future of our art form—and our industry—than I am right now . . .  in fact, I find myself almost unable to get my head around the endless possibilities that lie before us. (Think product placement on your cover as a way to subsidize production and guarantee some sales: ”There are no sacred spaces left” – Morgan Spurlock, Director, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.)

A whole host of components of the traditional book-business continuum are being dramatically altered as the literary landscape changes, raising challenges (and opportunities) that include:

  • how readers will find outstanding writing in the growing pile of crap that is being published every day;
  • how to outsource the contributions that quality publishing houses have traditionally made to the book-production process (from pre-selection to editorial intervention to design to promotion, and more);
  • how writing awards, prizes, grants and reviews will be managed in a world where not only new writers but also those with strong track records are choosing to publish their own books (see, for example, Dean Wesley Smith and Barry Eisler;
  • why the future is still as bright as ever (whatever that means) for niche publishers and small literary presses;
  • why it is ridiculous to think that only rich people will be able to afford to self-publish.

Over the next several blog posts, I will deal with these and related issues in detail.  I will also talk about the upsides of independent publishing—such as the significantly higher proportion of the cover price writers receive on each sold copy of their books, and their ability to get their out-of-print books back on the market cheaply and easily.

To whet your appetite, here’s a rundown of some of the benefits I see for independently published writers (and their readers):

  • Elimination of the gatekeeping role of agents, and of those acquisitions editors who are required to get approval from the sales department before they make book selections;
  • Higher royalties paid to self-published authors (50% or more compared to the traditional 10%);
  • Expanded marketing opportunities (nobody knows a book like the author does);
  • Instantaneous reports on sales and royalties;
  • Creative input by authors re: book covers and layout;
  • Copies of books and reprints when you need them instead of when the system can afford to spit them out;
  • Inventive co-publishing opportunities;
  • The ability to do short-run publications of such books as memoirs intended only to be read by family and friends without having to store 500 copies in your basement—and the capacity to fulfil orders when your memoir suddenly goes viral.

In the post that launched The Militant Writer blog, “The Talent Killers: How Literary Agents Are Destroying Literature and What Publishers Can Do to Stop Them,”  I managed to alienate most of the literary agents on the continent — not to mention the acolytes who’d been hoping to snag said agents as their representatives. This time I’m likely to incur the wrath of publishers and booksellers.

Aside from not really wanting to antagonize people in these fields who are my friends, I’m not concerned about that. Nor am I worried about the comments I’m sure I’ll get again from people who will warn me that I am shooting myself in both feet — that no publisher will ever take my books after what I’ve written here, and no booksellers will stock my titles.

I am now preparing to self-publish my next novel, The Whole Clove Diet. I assure you that if the book sells well, publishers will be asking me for the opportunity to re-publish, agents will be sending me emails inquiring about representation, and booksellers will be making exceptions regarding their policy re: stocking at least one self-published book.

And if my book doesn’t sell like hotcakes: well, at least it will be out there—which it is not right now-—and I will be free to move on to my next book.

I no longer need the publishers, or the agents, or the booksellers.

Neither do you.

The Greek Seaman phenomenon: A strangely effective marketing strategy by a writer who knows no better

March 29, 2011 By in Self publishing Tags: , , , 8 Comments

A self-published writer has caused (it appears) everyone in the universe to denounce her by responding (very) inappropriately to a review of her book that she didn’t like.

Welcome to another facet of the new world of publishing! In my opinion, the people who are getting in a twist to defend the reviewer are wasting as much time as is the sadly semi-literate author — on the other hand, she is apparently selling quite well right now as people clamour to have a look at how bad her book is. So if the bottom line is monetization, who cares?

And six months from now, people are going to forget the uproar, but remember her name and the title of her book somewhere in the backs of their heads, and contrary to all the doom and gloom from posters on this thread, her career will be launched.

BigAl’s Books and Pals: The Greek Seaman / Jacqueline Howett
booksandpals.blogspot.com

“You obviously didn’t read the second clean copy I requested you download that was also reformatted, so this is a very unfair review. My Amazon readers/reviewers give it 5 stars and 4 stars and they say they really enjoyed The Greek Seaman and thought it was well written. Maybe its just my style and…..”

I am becoming a staunch defender of self-publishing by the way. More on that soon. I have several blog articles in mind but haven’t had time to write them. :)

To my mind, the funniest (and most off-base) comments on the blogspot thread are the ones that say that the author is giving self-publishing a bad name. The rep. of self-publishing is already several floors below the basement. It will be up to some of us stronger writers to improve its credibility. It’ll happen, but it will take a while.

 

authonomy: One writer’s experience

August 1, 2009 By in authonomy, Publishing, Websites for writers Tags: , , , , 66 Comments

by Mary W. Walters

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Update Sept 8, 2012: Four years after this post was written, it appears that very little has changed on autonomy. A reader of this blog recently wrote me to ask if things had improved, and since I rarely go over to authonomy any more, I decided I would ask the people who still did. Click on this paragraph to read the responses and watch me get sucked into yet another authonomy flame war.

____________________

In theory, authonomy is a perfect way for writers to get their book manuscripts read by editors at a major publishing house without the intercession of an agent.

After reading about what authonomy is intended to do and why, a writer might decide that if her manuscript isn’t good enough to get the kind of positive reception from the other writers on the site that it needs to rise through the ranks to the top five (aka the Editor’s Desk)—where it will at least receive professional feedback from one of the finest editors in the English-speaking world, and at best be snatched up for publication—perhaps it isn’t as good as she’s been thinking that it is.

But is that a logical conclusion for her to draw when after several months on the site she does not, in fact, reach the Editor’s Desk and realizes that she probably never will?

For the benefit of other writers who may be weighing the same questions that I considered six months ago when I decided to post my novel, The Whole Clove Diet, on authonomy, I here offer a summary of my experiences and observations so that others may be better equipped than I was to assess the potential value to their writing careers of participation in the site.

What authonomy is

authonomy (the “th” is pronounced as in “author”) is an on-line community of writers that was established in 2008 by HarperCollins Publishers. Although the site is based in the U.K., HarperCollins offices around the world participate in evaluating manuscripts, and the site is open to writers, published or unpublished, living anywhere—as long as their manuscripts are in English.

On authonomy, participants read excerpts from books by other writers on the site, and they “shelve” or “back” the ones they find of merit. They are also encouraged to provide the authors of the books they read with some feedback in the form of comments. Those with the most backings (subject to an algorithm that recognizes users’ reviewing experience on the site) rise to the top and when they reach the top five, they are read and provided with an evaluation by a HarperCollins editor.

The authonomy site is still in beta format, but as of this writing it has more than 3,000 users–each with at least one and sometimes as many as three books posted on the site. Some users are very active (a recent forum question was “How many people spend more than five hours a day on authonomy?” and several people actually raised their virtual hands, albeit a little sheepishly). Many writers spend at least an hour or two a day on authonomy, reading, critiquing, commenting and sometimes contributing to the forum. Other writers show up only occasionally, and still others have not been on the site in months.

HarperCollins (HC) states that the purpose of authonomy is to “flush out the brightest, freshest new literature around” and on the last day of each month, authonomites gather around to see which five books will be whisked away for review by the HC editors. Approximately one month after starring them for selection, HC editors deliver critiques of the five top manuscripts to their respective authors. These evaluations ideally include suggestions for revision and some indication as to whether HC might be interested in seeing the manuscript again after the author has worked on it.

A word or two about the Golden Goose

The hope of almost all of those who officially join the site and post a book is that that HC will recognize their work of fiction, non-fiction or (less frequently) poetry for the masterpiece it is and want to publish it. Subsidiary hopes include that, as it is rising to the top but before it actually reaches the top five, the manuscript will be discovered by an agent, another publisher or even HC itself. This has, in fact, happened once or twice–although it hasn’t happened very often. Nor, to my knowledge, have any books that have actually reached the top five yet been selected for publication by HC.

Since getting an agent or a publisher is pretty much a crapshoot in this day and age no matter how you go about it, a more significant problem than the dearth of publications from the site is one that anyone can see who reads the HC editorial responses to books that have reached the Editor’s Desk in the past. (This feedback is almost always posted by the authors who’ve received it, although they are not required to make it public.) The problem is that while some of the editorial feedback is constructive and helpful, even insightful and brilliant, some is next to useless. The site administrators have said that HC editors for each book in the top five each month are selected on the basis of its genre or subgenre (young adult, for example, historical romance, or literary) and the location of the writer—but clearly, some HC editors are better readers and feedback-writers than are others.

I have read HC evaluations on authonomy that were little more than summaries of the excerpt. Others have contained errors that could only have been made if the editor had not read the submission very carefully, or had not consulted the “pitch” which is also a required part of the submission. Several comments from HC editors have been marred by typos and even grammatical errors, which seriously undermined their credibility.

After waiting months and months to obtain feedback from the powerhouse publishing giant that is HarperCollins—which is one big dream of a lifetime for many—to  receive a less than professional evaluation on one’s excerpt is more than discouraging. The recipients of such evaluations are upset when this happens, and so are the other authonomy community members who have also read the excerpt. Contributors to forum threads disgustedly point out the flaws in various HC reviews every month, sometimes out of loyalty, but often also on the basis of solid evidence.

My authonomy history

I joined authonomy in February of 2009, posting my novel in its entirety (at the outset) on the site. The Whole Clove Diet rose steadily albeit slowly toward the Editor’s Desk, garnering many positive reviews along the way. In the first few weeks I learned from comments left on the forum by site administrators and other users that by the time I reached number 50, particularly if I also maintained some visibility on the forum, I could feel fairly well assured that HC had seen my novel. If they had not by that point contacted me by email, I could assume they were not interested in it.

By then I had begun to appreciate how hard it was to reach the Editor’s Desk/top five and how small the advantages might actually be to getting there. I decided that if HC and other publishers and agents were trawling the top 50 on a regular basis, I would set my sights on reaching the top 45 or so.

In fact, I only made it to about 110 before I quit. Although I developed some rewarding on-line friendships at authonomy in the four months or so that I was a regular participant, and received some useful input that was helpful in the revision of my novel, and discovered a few writers who I really think are going to make strong literary contributions in the future, the experience of being on the site nearly drove me crazy—several times. And so I removed my novel, although I am still a member of the community and enjoy popping in from time to time to exchange comments on the forum with my friends and colleagues (and fellow-sufferers) over there.

authonomy intention vs. authonomy reality

authonomy has been described as a “do-it-yourself slush pile” in which readers (mainly other writers) do all the work for HarperCollins by finding the best books on the site and pushing them toward the top. This is fine: times are changing and most writers are willing to do a little work in order to attract professional attention to their manuscripts.

The only problem is that the way the authonomy system works does not contribute to finding the “best” books, no matter how you define that term.  It appeared to me that at least 90% of the writers on the site have joined with one goal in mind, which is getting themselves to the Editor’s Desk. (The others insist they are there only to receive feedback from other writers that will help them improve their work.) This means that the primary motivation for most people who will read and back other people’s manuscripts on authonomy is not to find good books for HC to publish—but rather to find other people to read and back their own books.

If a writer who joins the site decides to stick to the stated guidelines and her own ethical principles, refusing to back other people’s books if she feels they are not very interesting or well written (or worse, if she points out such major defects in her comments on those books), the writers of those other books are not likely to be inclined to back her book in return (are they? Remember that we are dealing with human beings here). The new writer quickly learns that in order to get a backing on your book from someone else, you really need to give that other writer a backing first.

As a result, on authonomy you can almost never trust a backing to mean that someone likes your book, since almost everyone on the site backs almost everything. The books that rise most quickly to the top are not those that are the best or the most fun to read, but rather those whose authors spend most time on the site, networking with other people, raving over everyone else’s books, backing everyone in sight, and thereby attracting hundreds of backings in return. The more quickly the determined writers can read and back an excerpt, the more they can read a day, and these speed demons may sometimes be accused (and sometimes are) of skimming only a few paragraphs before passing judgement. And the judgement is almost always favourable.

authonomy is not about excellence in writing. It is about becoming as popular as possible as quickly as possible. As a result, and ironically, rather than a supportive writing community authonomy can often seem to be a dog-eat-dog arena where you can’t trust a soul. Those who aren’t showering you with false praise are slamming you for your reviewing tactics.

Getting to the top 120 is the easy part. After that it gets much harder—mainly due to those algorithms I mentioned earlier. Trying to get to the top five requires hours and hours of commitment every day. On average, to get into the top fifty or so and not fall back again within a reasonable period of time (four months, let us say), you have to start by reading about three or four excerpts a day, commenting on them, and backing them. (I read about two excerpts a day, three chapters each, almost every day. After three months, I had not yet reached the top 100.) Those who have risen higher than I ever did have reported that when you get into the top ten you have to read eight or ten excerpts every day to get into the top five and stay there. At about 45 minutes per excerpt, this means that for at least a month out of your life, and probably more, you are doing little else but authonomy readings. If you happen to go away for a week, you start sliding backwards. Before long, rather than looking for the best books, you reach a point where if you find a book you think is terrible you are heartbroken because it means you are either going to have to lie your head off or give up the possibility of getting a backing in return.

In the race for the top, honesty flies out the window.

Nasty, nasty

In order to be visible and attract readers on authonomy, most participants find it useful not only to read and comment on other people’s excerpts but also to participate in the forum. As is true of most writers’ websites, there are several very witty and knowledgeable people there, and the forums can be great fun. (I found myself inclined to read the books of those who impressed me on the forum—they didn’t need to plug their actual books to me; their forum comments made it clear that I would be interested in what they’d written. I was rarely disappointed by such hunches. By contrast, some people never do anything on the forum beside promote their own books: the number and character of some of the “shameless self-promotion” threads grew so nauseating that I put several of these authors on a mental blacklist and never did read their excerpts.)

Unfortunately, the forums are not always fun. People can be nasty, small-minded, offensive, arrogant, self-serving—even racist. If you begin to work very hard on getting to or staying in the top five, you are likely to start attracting verbal abuse on the forum. As Ambrose Bierce once said, “Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.” Some people have found the comments against them so demoralizing that they’ve left the site even as the summit came within their sights.

There are also huge multi-participant battles—mainly at the end of the month when tensions start to run high and those who don’t like the tactics of the writers who have made it to the top five start trying to overthrow them. At other times, writers have what has come to be known as “authonomy meltdowns” from all the stress of trying to get to the top five and stay there: they go verbally ballistic.

While I was there, it seemed to me that most of the battles (and there were several) concerned how the authonomy site itself either works or does not work. Almost always you can find at least one active thread discussing the mechanics of authonomy and how the operation of the site could be improved. One day one of the forum participants started a “backing” thread that encouraged authonomites to back as many books as possible by people who were also on the thread within a specified period of time. The instigator did this as a protest against “the system,” but many others on the site clearly leapt at the chance to get ahead of others without having to do all the work of reading excerpts. Still others protested loudly about the lack of ethics of those participating in the backing thread (I was, of course, one of those. Taking the ethical high ground, and voicing my opinion when doing so can only be compared to shooting myself in the head? That’s me every time). Mayhem ensued.

Feedback from other writers

You will get some good feedback about your writing from several people on the site. I made hard copies of all the comments I received, and several of them were very useful when I did my final revisions. However you will also receive many comments that are utter drivel. (You can see examples of good comments and totally useless ones by reading any excerpt on the site, and then reading the comments under it.)  In general, many of the compliments are hollow and meaningless, posted only to attract a return read. Some people come up with the equivalent of a boilerplate response and post it with small variations on every excerpt they “review.” Others tailor their remarks more carefully, but still lean heavily toward the positive to ensure their own survival. (Some on the forum insist that they really did love reading almost every book on the entire site and would buy them all in an instant if they had the chance. I think those people are dishonest. Either that or they have no standards and are careless with their money.)

It is certain, at least to me, that those who insist on being honest with their evaluations ultimately pay a heavy price. There are of course many writers on the site who appreciate constructive criticism, but there are many others who do not. The latter group will call down those who have criticized them–usually on the forum rather than privately–and will even occasionally attempt to organize counterattacks and boycotts. (authonomy can be instructive to those who wonder how well meaning human beings ever get involved in wars.)

Once I realized how the authonomy system works, I stopped taking any of the compliments and rave reviews I received seriously, although they were nice to get. I also ignored comments from people who clearly had no idea what I was doing with my fiction (many are reading outside their genres and don’t understand or like what they have to read in order to move ahead. Threads that pose such incisive questions as “Why do writers have to use big words?” and “Conflict… or not?” often make for illuminating and amusing reading.) In short, the people who say they are on authonomy for the great writing advice they get from other writers, and insist they aren’t interested in getting to the Editor’s Desk at all, are for the most part in the wrong place as far as I can see.

How to survive on authonomy – for a while, at least

  1. Set your sights for the top 25 or 50, not the top five. A few writers who have made the top five have said that they were approached by agents once they reached that stage, but if I were a canny agent visiting the site, I’d be scanning the top 50, trawling for the best books on a regular basis—not leaving it until the writers of the best books were on the Editors’ Desk and likely to be scooped up by someone else. Once you reach your initial goal, you can always decide to continue if you want to, but my best guess is that you reach maximum benefit from the site when you reach the top 45. (If you can hang in there that long.)
  2. Read enough of others’ manuscripts before you make a call on them that you’ll still respect yourself in the morning, even if others aren’t playing by those rules. I felt it was only fair to other writers to try to read at least three chapters of their books, or the equivalent. Despite my initial determination to back only books I felt were publishable, ultimately I did find that in order to survive, I had to play the game and back almost everything that was not truly awful. My standard for myself became that I had to be able to find at least one thing in the excerpt on which I could genuinely comment positively; if the writing was so bad that I could not do that, I would not back the book or comment on it. Instead I’d pretend I’d never seen it. (Please note that I admit to having high standards: I have been referred to often as a literary snob.) Sometimes in addition to the positives, my comments included suggestions for a change the author might want to make to improve the first three chapters, always keeping in mind that I was reading only the first few chapters, and that the book could get much worse or much better after the section I had read.
  3. When you really do like an excerpt, say so clearly — or the author won’t be able to tell your kudos from the garden variety he or she receives every day from everyone. When I loved a piece of writing, I really raved about it in my comments—being very specific about the strong points and saying, for example, that the book was sure to find its way into print (I never said that if I didn’t mean it). I also created a thread of my own where I listed my favourite books, which was fun.
  4. Say “thank you” when someone backs you or leaves a comment.
  5. Forget the “friends” option and ignore invitations to become friends with others unless you have a very good reason to accept. This has nothing to do with politics or human kindness, but only practicalities. On authonomy, you get emails from the site administrators if you get a comment on your book, but not if someone backs you. You have to watch your “news feed” for that information. You also see your friends’ activities in your news feed (“Writer X backed Book Y,” “Writer A commented on Book B,” “Writer F revised his book”). If you add too many friends, you will get so many notices in your news feed that you may miss a notice that someone has backed you. You don’t want to miss your backers, because they deserve a thank you message and you may in fact want to consider backing them. So adding friends can cause problems. There is no real advantage to “friending” someone anyway, as you can send everyone messages whether they are friends or not.
  6. Remember that all messages on authonomy are public.
  7. Make a list in a notebook somewhere of who has backed you, and who you have backed or decided not to back. By the time you get to 50 or 100 reads, it gets really really difficult to try to remember whose excerpts you’ve read and whose you haven’t. A lot of people on the forums say, “How I wish I had started keeping track at the beginning!”  By the time you start forgetting who you’ve read and who you haven’t, it is almost impossible to go back and make a list. I recommend keeping track from the outset. (And if someone changes a title of a book you’ve already read, which happens surprisingly often, make a note of that as well.)
  8. When people I didn’t know from the forums sent me a message suggesting we trade reads, I usually ignored them. Some people send out such notices in spam-like quantities. I therefore don’t recommend sending such messages to others. Like the shameless plugs on the forums, requests for reads can rapidly grow tedious and irritating and turn people away from you rather than attracting them.
  9. Don’t post the whole book. I posted my entire manuscript when I first went on. Then a few people on the site warned me that some agents and publishers avoid books that are posted in their entirety on-line, believing (erroneously) that this contravenes copyright or (even more erroneously) that everyone in the universe will read it on authonomy and no one will need to buy it. So I took down most of my novel. However, I made a big mistake when I did this. First I took down all but the first three chapters, and then I added back a few chapters. While I was doing that, my word count fell below 10,000 and when it did, I lost my position on all the shelves and watchlists I’d been on. That set me back a couple of weeks at least. So after you’ve posted your manuscript don’t ever let it drop below 10,000 words again unless you are sure you want to lose your ratings.

Not an entire waste of time

authonomy has its benefits. It is a good way of keeping your manuscript “out there,” building an audience for your book, and getting to know a few more writers. You will get to know some of the authonomy regulars, several of whom are characters as diverting and eccentric as those you’ll meet in their (or anyone’s) fiction. (These include: a writer who appears to deliver intelligent pronouncements from a horizontal position on a couch—he maintains he’s dead, and as under-appreciated as Chatterton, after whose post-mortem portrait he has modeled his own avatar; a man with a blue face who expounds literary theories and criticizes others’ approaches to writing while maintaining that he never reads a book; at least two divas who’ve been on the site forever and pop by with witty or snarly comments from time to time; a hot young lawyer who is swooned after by most of the female writers on the site; and several young women who keep taking more and more clothes off their avatars in an apparent attempt to attract more readers. There are lots of warm and welcoming people on the site who will go out of their way to make you feel at home, and there are several insular cliques. Strangers conjoin on authonomy in unexpected ways: I watched with amusement one evening as a thread involving three apparently quite drunk authonomites devolved into highly graphic cybersex; unfortunately the posts weren’t well-enough written to have made my voyeurism the least bit titilating. Also unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, after about noon the next day I was no longer able to send a link to the thread so that a few of my non-authonomite friends could have a laugh, because it had been taken down. There are also a surprising number of wiccans on the site; be forewarned: you do not want to mess with wiccans. :) )

While you are on authonomy, you may indeed be discovered by an agent or a film company. There is always the possibility that the authonomy system will actually work in your favour–that you will reach the Editor’s Desk and, despite the odds against you even at that point, be offered a contract by HarperCollins. All of those things are possible, if unlikely.

In the meantime, if you are in it for an evaluation as one of the top five, eat your Wheaties, give up either your day job or your family and social life, and prepare for a long, disorienting haul from which it may take you several months to recover.

Agents out, editors in?

May 3, 2009 By in Editors, literary, Literary Agents Tags: , , , , , , 13 Comments

Predicting the rise of the literary editor

by Mary W. Walters

In addition to the potential to reach a wider audience, my major reasons for wanting to get to the desks of the major publishers are two-fold.

First, the major publishers employ many of the world’s finest books editors (yes. They do so. Granted those editors are usually busy with a million other unrelated tasks, but they can also edit! I am not talking about the publishers or the business managers. I’m talking about the editors).

The other reason is looking after all the hassle of the business end of things–warehousing, distribution and some of the promotion (a job that is increasingly shared by the writers, which is a relief to me. And I am not talking about writing jacket copy, but about dreaming up and executing unique and interesting sales and marketing approaches.)

Most literary writers know that trying to edit one’s own work is as potentially fatal as is trying to remove what appear to be superfluous organs from one’s own body. If these writers are unable to find publication by the world’s major publishers, they are going to self-publish. They are going to hire editors first, and they are going to hire business managers next, and they are going to take on the marketing of their own books with a passion no agent can equal. They are going to do it all themselves.

And this means that the best editors will leave the publishing houses and become self-employed, finally earning what they are worth (I charge $80 to $100 an hour for writing and substantive edits, and I never made anywhere near that when I was employed) and they’ll be able to focus on editing–which most of them love–and forget all the crap like sorting out contracts with agents.

Editors will set up boutique shops of their own. The best will become well known and highly sought. It will be a brave new world indeed.

Note: Amazon is hastening this process by promoting its own self-publishing arm, CreateSpace. Have you noticed how impossible it is to find out who published a book on an Amazon posting lately? Self-published or Random House? It’s not easy to figure that out. Coincidence? I think not.