Christopher D. Schmitz's Blog, page 21

Small Publishers: Pros and Cons

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We’re continuing our conversation about small publishing houses. This week: Pros and Cons.

Let’s start with the pros. Chiefly, as a smaller publisher, they ought to have a greater vested interest in you as an author. If you are just another cog in the machine, chances are, you are with a vanity publisher masquerading as a real publisher.

Secondly, they are in business and want to stay that way—that said they want you to succeed and they’re going to try their hardest to stay afloat—when you make money, so do they… that’s how this business is supposed to work.

Perhaps the biggest Pro is that they are more likely to publish books that are outside current norms, risky, or difficult to read, and thus represent unlikely commercial ventures for larger publishers who only want to produce commercial gold.

Small publishers play a vital role in the development of materials that may end up going to larger publishers in the future. Essentially, this is the minor leagues of the publishing world. Just like in pro sports, many big-leaguers spend some time learning the ropes and being developed before they get called up. Click Read More for the Cons.

This Cons list is admittedly a much larger list than the Pros.

Small exposure-

Limited budgets and limited experience translates into smaller distribution and fewer sales. Their books are not always, or not often, on brick and mortar shelves. Many have little more way of moving books than the same avenues available to the authors and rely solely on their website plus social media.

Upstart-

Because the tools necessary to become a publisher are free or cheap and readily available, many people will set up their own small press. Usually these fresh companies rely more on their authors than vice versa and the companies rely on them to build their mailing list, social media, and following.

Instability-

Jumping into the publishing world is not as easy as expected and there is work that goes with it. This can mean that small publishers come and go on a whim. Signing with newer small presses includes no small degree of uncertainty and risk. These small presses are necessary to the industry, and I’m not saying to avoid them, but understand that there are always risks with publishers who are not well established.

Lack of Competence-

I said in a previous blog that I felt I knew more than one of my publishers. That may have very well been the case. Oftentimes, because of the low threshold for talent required to setup a publisher, these presses simply don’t know the ropes. Industry standards are often ignored—not from malice or intention, but sometimes people just don’t the expectations. Newer presses fix these issues as they come up, but until they’ve had some time to get established they will commit a few gaffes.

Shark Infested Bookshelves-

I know I talk a lot about scammers, but so many author mills and vanity presses operate under the guise of being a legitimate small press. Did they charge you any fees, did they solicit you, or were you required to buy anything (even copies of your book)? Those are all red flags that this may be a predator and not a publisher. At the very least, they would be a hybrid press rather than a small press, and those have some notable differences you should be aware of.

For more reading on the topic, I recommend checking out the SFWA’s post about small presses. Also, here is a good post about predatory publishing practices and “author mills.

Review-Wild Hearts: The Coming Night

[image error]First of all, I’m totally digging this cover for Andrew Wichland’s new book, Wild Hearts: The Coming Night. Not just the cover, but the themes, too. Cyber suits and alien invasions? This is the kind of book that there ought to be more of: high intensity slugfests with supercool tech. It reads like Power Rangers wearing Iron Man suits!

My only real complaint is that it’s first person POV, which I historically hate (mainly because it is so hard to get right)… but it’s got such cool tech and an engaging story that it overshadows that complaint. The suits have a more innocent feel than Warhammer 40k’s terminator armor, and the story doesn’t suffer the gloomy pall that one finds in that universe—but neither is it the kaiju fighting mech armor from Pacific Rim. Wichland strikes a chord somewhere in between , all while managing to focus more on the characters in the suits rather than on the tech that they wear.

He also does a great job crafting a unique world and throws in enough backstory (especially character backstory, like a missing wife, etc.) to develop something substantial.

This story is fun! I got a free copy in exchange for a review on my blog, Inside the Inkwell, but I think you ought to pick up a copy. You can check it out by clicking here.

State of Writing

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I may have cooked my brain. My nonprofit group runs two annual peach sales where I sit by the side of the road and sell peaches. Heat indexes where 105 and up for two days and I’m sitting on blacktop for 6-9 hours each day. Despite that, I managed to finish my paranormal detective story, Bridge of Se7en. I’m pretty excited about it; I’ve wanted to write my paranormal investigator series for years now (I started one several years ago that a windows update/forced shut down destroyed.) I hope to write a few stories in the series. The Vikrum Wiltshire stories actually bridge a gap between the Hidden Rings of Myrddin series and my Wolves of the Tesseract series.

Now onto editing! I’m planning to work the story to completion this week and maybe outline some new stuff. I have 2 or 3 other projects before I begin the next Hidden Rings novel, but I have a deadline for Bridge of Se7en in order to submit it to a publication whose window closes at the end of the month and their submission call was what prompted me to pen this story when I did.

The other project I am working on is a workbook for my Indie Author’s Bible. I’m talking with a library network to teach a series that follows the book’s methods and helps writers move into the publication realm (or at least foreshadows what is to come if their manuscript isn’t yet ready.) It’s a grant funded thing that is still in discussion with the powers that be, but at least one library has already said they want to do it. More on that later (after my brain recuperates from sunstroke… and that’s no joke. I was not well after the first day.)

Small Publishers and Ethics

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This month, we’re going to have an honest talk about small publishing houses. The good, bad, and ugly.

Every writer starts with a dream: get published, have their books on shelves across America, and be famous/die rich. Or some version of that… nevermind that bookstore chains are dropping dead left and right. As we wade deeper into the literary community, that dream tends to wither and shrink and we cry out, “my book is worthy—why won’t someone give it an honest read?”

Market saturation and competition means that publishers don’t care about good stories. They are a business. They care about SELLABLE stories; it’s all about the cash flow for them. It may sound heartless, and it is. It’s also good business… apparently business is good.

After your dreams erode enough, writers are thrilled when somebody, anybody, shows interest on a publishers end. That’s why there are so many scam publishing companies: they prey on our desperation to cling to that dream. I’ve written extensively about scammers, but what about legitimate small publishers?

I’ve had some experience with them. My first book was published with a small publisher which was sold to another publisher and then shuttered, leaving me in limbo. That may have been for the best. That publisher was a micropress didn’t really seem to know what it was doing, in retrospect. Their closure, and then my continued desire to write stewed for a few years and inspired me to start again, in earnest.

Additionally, I’ve been published by some other smaller publishers. So far, it seems like I do the best when I am at the helm of my books’ destinies. Honestly, I often feel like I know more about the publishing industry than most of them, and my desire to capitalize on my own efforts oftentimes puts me at odds with small presses because of ethics.

Ethics:

Small publishers want to stay in business. As your distribution line, you need them to stay afloat so that your book remains on the market. They need to make money… but often, they don’t do anything worth paying them for (many small presses don’t edit in earnest and don’t provide a quality cover—they also don’t do promotion.) Many do things right, but also, many just slam your manuscript through a boilerplate Print On Demand wizard, tack an extra percentage onto the sales price, and then hold your book hostage.

Hostage?

Yes. Now that they have a contract, you can only get copies of your book through them, and it will cost you extra. This is a standard practice, and always has been… but it’s different when the company’s primary model is molded around the POD structure and then you become the primary customer, knowing that you will need books if you’re going to shake some trees and create ground-level sales.

They are in the game to make money—just like the big boys, but they will often play fast and loose with the rules.

I was under contract with a company who tried to redefine a few things on me. I threatened to sue when they wouldn’t simply release me from contract and things turned ugly. Eventually, we calmed down, but I kept an eye on them. They made a number of questionably ethical decisions, including how they handled their royalties.

I am no longer under contract with them. Crazy thing is, everyone learns to do math in grade school and I reverse engineered the money. While I worked my tail off and spent cash on ads, etc. because of little things they charged to me that are typically the publishers responsibility (and were not otherwise noted in the contract) they still took liberty with how they handled royalties and charged them to me. If I received any royalties at all, they were tiny. After hundreds of sales, I made perhaps fifty dollars over a 2-year contract (they made money when I did… and they made money when I didn’t since I was the only one paying for returns—net royalty arrangements are bad news.)

In the end, I did the math again and realized it would cost more money to do anything other than wait out my contract… so that’s what I did.

Learn from my mistake: go into a contract with eyes wide open. Yes, being able to say “traditionally published” is a huge step… but it can come at a huge cost. Measure it before you sign on the bottom line.

If you are reading up on small publishers, it may be handy to have a field guide to the Independent publishing world. Click here to check out my book, the Indie Author’s Bible.

Review/Plagarism Alert: To Kindle and Beyond

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I’m going to sound overly harsh, probably, since you guys are used to seeing such positive reviews from me. Sometimes, however, there are books like this where somebody does not ask “does there need to be a book about XYZ” but instead they ask “can I make do a cash-grab and get in on the XYZ market?” That is exactly what this book looked like (from its non-industry-standard cover, to the poor language in the first few pages of the book).

[image error]First of all, it’s clear from early on in the book that the author doesn’t know much about the publishing industry except what he may have lifted from vanity publishers’ websites. As I read, it kept seeming like he’d just copied and pasted pieces from adverts posted by those kinds of places (text made to get you fired up and put your trust in the agency/advice they were about to give you/sell you even though it’s not really how the industry works.)

I had some problems with the editing and very poor language. As a native English speaker it was almost painful to read. It felt like an obvious “cash grab,” meant to insert a book into the market stream and earn some kind of passive income off of sales—despite having no publishing credentials/talents in that area (i.e. make money for nothing. It’s actually in the author’s bio on Amazon and the book’s backmatter.)

The book itself makes great observations like, “Once you click Publish, your eBook can be for sale within 24 hours, sometimes it’s up in less than 4 hours. So, you can publish and have a book earning you money before lunch.” As Jeff Goldblum’s character says in Jurassic Park, “they were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

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This works out the same way. Remember the giant dinosaur turds from the film? That’s what we get… but in print. (This is the kind of language pushed by vanity publishers.)

The first fifteen pages simply describe the Kindle upload steps. It literally says things like, “The Book Title box. This is where you put the book title.” And then it goes from there about what books are and how to market them, but in highly detailed English and with suspiciously familiar prose that appears to come from a native English speaker. I googled passages. The author has committed forgery. Mayank Saxena stole them wholesale from good blogs like mine. Taking what I’ve learned or even said and crediting me with it is great, or saying the same things in different words is also cool, but Copy+Paste and then publishing pages and pages? Totally not cool.

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There is no excuse for plagiarism and I’m not quite certain how Mayank Saxena thinks he’ll get away with it.

If you want an actual book on this topic, check out the Indie Author’s Bible, which I wrote as a collection of articles that I published on my blog, Inside the Inkwell. Mr Saxena sent me a free copy for review. Don’t pay him a cent for this; not only did he steal his work, but my blog is free.

I did locate the original author and notify him of the plagiarism so that he can  open a dispute with Amazon… and for some reason, Saxena keeps trying to get me to drop my bad review. My responses were brief… and then I simply blocked him. There is no excuse for that kind of behavior.

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Story development. After some conversating about this guy I peeked at his other book using the Look Inside Feature. The fact that he puts his name on it certifies him as an F grade A-hole, the book is about how to be unethical for profit by “life-hacking”. Hack#1 is to go to High School parties and offer to buy booze for kids and then steal all their money. “What are they going to do… call the cops?” He goes on to mention that sometimes he does this but doesn’t steal it if the chance for recurring profit is there. He also claims to write papers for university students for cash… and get this page:

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Dick move. I did a quick Google search based on the text from this page. Saxena didn’t write this either. He stole it from Reddit (along with the rest of the book) and claims that he wrote it.

Now I have a moral quandary… he stole something teaching how to profit by being evil/unethical in order to profit by doing something evil/unethical… do I bother reporting it or sit back and let this cosmic irony play out?

Regardless… plagiarism is still wrong.

…please share this post and drop your personal plagiarism stories in the comments! I promise not to steal em…

State of Writing

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I’m feeling okay! I wrote about 4,000 words and a detailed outline for a new short story, plus got some things ready for upcoming shows, although my 4th of July sale I was scheduled to be at got rained out mid-week. I also wrote a large number of future blog posts and read a few books for review.

Hopefully I can complete my newest short story by this weekend and then edit. It’s a paranormal detective story that I’m hoping to submit to an anthology by the end of the month. Once that’s complete, on to my next two projects!

If you’re in the metro area and looking for something fun to attend this coming Sunday, I’m going to be a guest at a Minnspec meeting at Lunds & Byerly’s Minneapolis (event details here: https://www.meetup.com/MinnSpec/events/250818399)

New Reason to Lose Book Reviews at Amazon

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Amazon has reportedly begun a new wave of review take-downs, from what I’ve been told.

Firstly, in an effort to kill off phony reviewers, anyone posting a review to a book used to abuse the KU rules and “skim the till” at Amazon (see my older article when scammers started doing this) are getting shut down. Amazon isn’t just deleting the review on that book in question… they are deleting every review that person ever posted. Hack and slash baby, Amazon isn’t messing around.

The second reason is more insidious. It may be just a rumor, but reviewers must spend at least $50 per year for the privilege of reviewing a product. I’ve been told that spend-deficient Amazon accounts are first notified of the policy, “and then [Amazon] deletes review privileges along with every review posted by that person.”

I’ve previously lamented that focusing book sales so heavily within Amazon is a little like making a deal with the devil. I guess that sometimes, the devil comes to take his toll.

Are You Using Social Media Correctly?

Hey Indie authors of all stripes, we need to keep this in mind… especially when it seems tough to find your tribe, don’t opt to start spamming people on social media (and yes…that’s exactly what it is.)

Have you ever been having a great conversation with friends and had a very loose acquaintance interrupt and try to sell you all on Amway/whatever pyramid scheme is currently popular? That’s an exact parallel to “using social media as a sales channel.” Read this article for more!

Marketing Christian Books

Contrary to popular belief, social media is not a marketing channel.

You are probably thinking, “What?! I thought social media is how you build an audience for books.”

Exactly! Social media is an audience building tool, not an advertising tool. Unless you are purchasing ads on social media sites or offering your followers an announcement or special on your books, the information you share via social media should not be broadcast marketing messages.

Many authors don’t understand this concept. These authors use social media to shout about their books. Recently, an indie author had the courtesy of asking if she could post about her book on Christian Small Publishers Association’s (CSPA) Facebook Page.

This author wrote:

“Good evening! I’d love to post a blurb about a faith-based children’s book that I wrote and published on your Facebook page. Is this something you allow publishers to do?”

I wrote her…

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Knowing the Difference Between Types of Publishers

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This month, we’re going to talk about small publishers. As a primer, it might be handy to know that there’s a difference between types of small publishers. Here’s some handy terminology guide for you so you can tell the difference:

Hybrid press: (not to be confused with “hybrid author” which is a writer who has self-published and traditional published books.) There is no universal agreement about what it is, except that it’s not traditional publishing and it’s not self-publishing. Author’s invest in their own work, or perhaps raising money through crowdfunding to finance their work, and then keep the lion’s share of their profits rather than give it away. Authors retain creative ownership and are treated more like partners in the process, instead of being at the whim of their publishers. See also, Subsidy Publisher.

Independent Publisher: Indie publishing has taken on two meanings. It can refer to a small press publisher or it can refer to self-publishing. Authors are solely responsible for all publishing costs but also retain full creative control and all ownership and rights to the work. Indie authors are solely responsible for writing, editing, proofreading, cover design, formatting, distribution, and marketing. They are both author and publisher.

Micropress: a small publisher that keeps all of its work in-house. What differentiates this from a small press is that it does all of its physical printing/binding on-site, whereas many small presses outsource the physical production.

Self Publish: Decades ago, before the advent of Print On Demand technology, this only referred to vanity presses. Now, it can refer to either course. It is adviseable to always use the term Independent/Indie published to avoid the Vanity-Press confusion. See Independent Publishing.

Small Press: A small press is technically defined as a publisher with annual sales below $50 million, after returns and discounts, or as those that publish an average of fewer than 10 titles per year. They function just like the Trade Presses and are often genre/niche specific and earn profits from book sales, not from fees or services charged to authors.

Subsidy Publisher: Subsidy publishers enter a partnership with authors. Under this model, authors keep most (or all) rights and ownership of the work. Whereas traditional publishers pay authors an advance, in subsidy publishing, authors must make a financial investment in the cost of publishing. Subsidy publishers (like traditional publishers) earn profits from book sales. Perhaps the only difference between this and a hybrid publisher is that hybrids are in a “partnership” type of relationship than a client/publisher one.

Trade publisher: The term “Traditional Publisher” has found regular use, though the definition is still rather fluid; it was actually invented by a 1990s vanity publisher/author mill that tried to put the industry in a negative light in order to solicit writers. A Trade Press is what we often call a “Traditional publisher.” The “Big Five” publishing houses (who control most of the industry) are Trade Publishers. They include Hachette/Lagardère, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster.

Traditional publisher: See Trade Publisher.

University Press: These presses are nonprofit, usually print academic works, and are run by universities and colleges. They often publish literary magazines and journals as well as textbooks and creative works. They sometimes operate on the micro-press model, depending on the scope of their distribution.

Vanity Press: A vanity press charges a fee to produce a book, or requires the author to buy something as a condition of publication, such as finished books or marketing services. This is also a condition of Subsidy and Hybrid arrangements, but those presses are more selective than Vanity publishers who have no selection criteria as opposed to the others. Authors simply pay to have their books published and are often solicited for “publication”.

Review: The Worlds Next Door

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C.E. White’s The Worlds Next Door is a fun genre blender of all the things that I love… and if you like Sci Fi and Fantasy books, then you probably will too! In the first couple of pages, White references some of the Janie (the protagonist’s) frames of reference: the TARDIS, and Hogwarts. I think that’s a perfect setup for a YA/MG adventure.

The Worlds Next Door gave me a very real sense of nostalgia for so many great pieces that mind pulled from. I kept imagining this creepy house in the beginning as the Klopek’s house from The Burbs (Janie has a similar kind of obsession as Tom Hanks’ character in the beginning,) but when Janie befriends Reggie, the story reminded me of the later Narnia books (Magician’s Nephew and The Silver Chair, both because of the alternate worlds connection, but also because of the moral underpinnings and the friendship between the main characters as they fight against great odds in an alien world.)

White’s writing is tight and well-thought out and her world building is both accessible and flavored with enough of the fantastic to make it an easy read for its younger target audience but also interesting enough for an older one, too.

While I got a free copy in exchange for an honest review on my blog, Inside the Inkwell, I recommend picking up this great tale. You can get a copy of it by clicking here.