The Word Cloud

This is a link to an excellent post from Jane Smith's How Publishing Really Works blog (read the comments too) about whether mainstream publishers are becoming extinct.
http://howpublishingreallyworks.com/?p=3211#comment-29321

Thanks so much for the link to this excellent blog, Debi. It has highlighted several things I've been thinking for a long time, including the desire of some aspiring writers to say that trad publishing is dead and buried simply because they can't get a trad publishing deal.

Jane Smith's blog is an excellent source of wisdom and common sense from someone with enormous experience of the industry (and who also happens to be an all round Lovely Person).

Yes, it does seem as if most of people proclaiming the death of traditional publishing are people who don't ever actually set foot in a bookshop, and people who don't actually know any writers of the sort who continue to be published by publishers... and there are plenty of those, as Debi and Spangles and Harry and I and a good few other Clouders do.

People who actually know about both sides of it - such as book trade people who go to the FutureBook seminars - can see where the changes are, guess more informedly than some about what they'll mean. And what they don't mean is that the traditional structure of author-agent-publisher-distributor-seller is going to change any time soon, however the balance shifts over the next few years between p-book and e-book.

Emma

I guy I know from the Legion, Alex Lochrie, who published a book via a traditional agent/ pub and had significant success with it. but he learned enough from that process that he self published his next three books as Ebooks only.

Oddly or significantly, he is most proud of his first book, but he has made more money from each of the follow on self-pubbed ebooks than he did from the original.

He fully admits that his ebooks wouldn't have sold as much without being linked to his first book but I found those marketing dynamics very interesting.


I watch, I read and I occasionally learn...

In the end, self-publishing works if you have a way of finding the people who might buy your book, and persuading them that it's something they want. In your friend's case, Prop, the publisher did that for him.

Indeed, while much huffing and puffing (some legitimate, some daft) is about how little publishers put into any titles which they decide aren't leads this season, it's perfectly possibly to argue that it's extremely nice and generous - not to say economically daft - for them to put any money at all into establishing an unknown writer, when they don't own the brand beyond the end of the current contract.

And yes, you might make more money self-pubbing in one sense; since there are fewer parties to the equation, you'll almost certainly make more money per copy, especially if you don't cost your time to make it all happen, as well as your writing time. Although I would always question whether, given the book has found an enthusiastic market, whether he could have made more money by the much, much bigger sales a conventional publisher could have got him. It's still virtually impossible to get into the bestseller lists sustainably if you're not on the supermarket shelves, and to get in at all if the publisher - whether it's you, or MegaPub Books - doesn't have the pockets to get you onto the front tables in the bookshops.

I suspect that a lot of writers are proudest of their first book in some way, however many they go on to write, since it was the one which got them the deal, found readers, was responded to. In lots of ways my later books are, or I hope will be, better than my first. But The Mathematics of Love does have a special place in my heart.

Mathmatics of Love?
Sounds compelling.




You make the critical point about the publicity which a publisher can provide. From all of what I have read about the industry which is loads recently, that is the critical component, not talent sadly.

I think though that the traditional publisher is not accesable to the vast majority of authours and you are deservedly in a good position inthat you are alread on their lists.

Many people will only have self pub as an option and the psychologocal protection mechanism of rationalization may compel some of those to expound self publishing as the better option simply because that is the only option for them.


The one fact I have discovered is that the writting is the only fun bit of this whole process.

Well, I'm not sure it's publicity as much as marketing: you can get all the coverage in the broadsheets that you like, and be a Book at Bedtime to boot, and have the funkiest website on the planet, but if your novel isn't in the bookshops all over the country, you stand very little chance of achieving sales worth the mention. (The only time my agent's stood me up for a lunch date was because another of her authors was in just that position: the publisher had fallen down on distribution, and she and the author were going in to the publisher to Sort Things Out. I was sorry not to have lunch but glad to think I had an agent whose priorities were the right way round...)

And that's where the big publishers really win out: marketing. Even small indie publishers know that what marketing/publicity spend they have must go on getting you into the 3 for 2s...

"the psychologocal protection mechanism of rationalization may compel some of those to expound self publishing as the better option simply because that is the only option for them."

I think this is very true, and worth bearing in mind when you hear someone singing the praises of self-publishing. Not that they're necessarily wrong - there are good reasons for doing it. But you may not get from them a realistic picture of the pros and cons of BOTH routes to the reader. Including, indeed, the impossibility of getting your book taken on by a real publisher. It's not easy: the bar is set high, and narrow. But it's not impossible - new writer are published every week.

And I'd always be very, very cautious of taking advice about self-publishing or indeed anything else about writing and the book trade from someone who's just published a few stories on an e-book, or wizzed up the Kindle rankings by selling their work for 50p. That's not being a published author, and it's not publishing: it's essentially no different from putting up a free website and writing some stuff for it.

This is The Mathematics of Love, by the way.

Emma

Had a look at your amazon link and read the synopsis and reviews. not at all what I expected from the title. Still, it does get amazing reviews. I am not familiar with the genre but it looks the part.

The fact that this and your other works have given you the measure of commercial success in the professional printed publishing may reduce your understanding of the view we smaller entities here at the bottom. I don't know the timings or dynamics of your success but maybe self publishing andE books were not the viable option for you in your early days as they may be for me and others now.

Still it is good to read reasoned views from both perspectives. Whether all the self publishing nowadays "clutters up" the field and makes things more difficult for better works by first timers is something to ponder.



OFP

Well I spent about fifteen years "at the bottom" and wrote six novels and had them royally rejected from many quarters, while I was there, so I have been there, and have plenty of friends and online acquaintances who still are, as well as all those I meet through teaching and doing workshops and writers' festivals like York, and so on.

It is true that self-publishing's got a lot easier in the interim, because of print-on-demand technology, and to some extent things like Amazon, and the practicability of building a web presence relatively cheaply. But I know a lot of poets, who've always had self-publishing as a possibility because getting your collection published by a legit publisher makes getting your novel pubbed look like a walk in the park. And most of them don't, for all the same reasons as novelists don't...

But as far as fiction and memoir is concerned it's made zero difference to whether an actual publisher will take you on, because self-publishing for fiction and general non-fiction is completely below their radar. It's like asking them whether you and your fishing rod is cluttering up the supply chain between the trawlers and Sainsbury's...

Which isn't to say they don't know it can work: my own agent suggested it to me for a mildly specialised non-fiction book which I want to write. "The right people will find it," she said, "and you'd probably make more money than with an academic press." And when I next get my head above water, I might just do it.

Emma

Hi EmmaD

Well I spent about fifteen years "at the bottom" and wrote six novels and had them royally rejected from many quarters, while I was there...

Your trials and tribulations echoed in this sentiment is, to me, very inspiring. Bottom line, every potential author needs an apprenticeship to become qualified. I have heard similar experiences from now established authors. One million words (as quoted by Hemingway) to learn the trade.

Yes, some will be stars, and need less time, but for most of us it's a long slog to attain a modicum of success, even with the self-publishing opportunities opening up. I admire your determination - a never say die attitude in spite of numerous rejections - and very motivational.

Thanks for posting.
stephen