Randy Ingermanson's Blog: Advanced Fiction Writing, page 18

What's a Newbie Novelist to Do?

The publishing world is changing so fast that a newbie novelist can't help feeling confused by all the options out there. Now that e-books are hot, hot, hot, should an unpublished writer try to self-publish herself or should she go with a traditional publisher?

Lisa posted this question on my "Ask A Question For My Blog" page:

Randy I want you to pretend you are a new author and would have your first book completed and ready to submit in six months to a year from today. Would you go the traditional route of getting an agent/publisher or would you self publish as an ebook and why would you choose that route?

This is the timeframe I am looking at and since the market is changing so rapidly I am concerned about going one way or the other and having it be the wrong decision. If I go the traditional route and ebooks take an even larger chunk of the market I may waste precious time marketing a book that no publisher will take because I am not a proven comodity.

If I go the ebook route and am not able to market it effectively my book could fail due to my lack of marketing abilities.

Lastly most of us dream of getting one of our creations turned into a movie, if don't go the traditional route have we made this dream impossible?

I love your ezine and like so many have writen my novel using the snowflake method and can't thank you enough!

Randy sez: Wow, Lisa, that's a tough decision. Two years ago, I'd have automatically said, "Go with the traditional, royalty-paying publisher, because your odds of making it big as a self-published novelist are roughly one in ten million. Whereas your odds of making it big with a traditional publisher are roughly one in a hundred thousand."

That was then. This is now. Now I'd say that your odds of making it big are about the same, either way: About one in a hundred thousand.

Of course, it's not necessary to "make it big" to be a happy, successful author. I define "making it big" to be this: Your first novel earns you more than $250,000.

A disclaimer is in order here. I don't know the real odds of making it big. One in a hundred thousand seems to be about the right order of magnitude. It's a guess. Might be high. Might be low.

What about if you lower your sights just a bit and think about earning, say, $5000 on your first novel? That's a lot easier, but it's still no cakewalk. Hundreds of novelists are going to be able to hit that level of success this year. Probably more than 1000. If we assume that there are 300,000 wannabe writers out there who want to publish their novel, then your odds of earning a $5k advance are probably one in a few hundred. It's doable.

Now the big question: What if those writers avoided the traditional publishers and went the e-book route? How would they do?

Absolutely nobody knows the answer to that question. My best guess is that some would do better, some would do worse, but on average, they'd probably average about $5k. With $2 royalty per book, they'd only have to sell 2500 copies in a year to do that. That's a couple of hundred copies per month. Maybe 7 per day. It's doable. A lot depends on their willingness to market themselves. Those willing to work hard could do Xtremely well.

What about the rest? What about the hundreds of thousands of wannabe writers who aren't yet writing well enough to sell to a traditional publisher? Would they do better by e-publishing?

That's easy. Of course they would. For these authors, the traditional route would earn them $0, and you can't do worse than that. Whereas by e-publishing, they could easily earn dozens of dollars.

So if your writing is not yet up to snuff, you can get in the game by e-publishing and you can earn a few bucks. You will almost certainly not earn very many bucks. But you will earn something.

Should you go that route? Here's my opinion: If you're not yet good enough to get published by a traditional publisher, then self-publishing won't hurt you, but it won't noticeably help you either. Your best bet is to put your energy into improving your craft.

In my view, self-publishing is most advantageous for the A-list authors. Authors whose name alone sells zillions of copies of their books. An author like that who self-pubbed at a price point of $2.99 would (I believe) see much higher sales than he would by publishing with a traditional publisher (who would want to price the hardcover at $26.99 and the e-book at $14.99.)

I'm guessing here, since I don't have hard numbers. Very few people have hard numbers. We'll know more when Barry Eisler's next novel comes out. (Barry recently turned down a 2-book deal for half a million dollars in order to self-publish.)

Self-publishing would also be a big advantage for a midlist author whose publishers haven't ever quite figured out how to market her. (There are tens of thousands of these authors out there.) Publishers do their best, but they have a lot of authors, and if they can't get a handle on how to market them all, you can hardly blame them.

A midlist author who took the time to market herself well would very likely do much better by self-publishing. How do I know that? Because there are a fair number of midlist authors who are very quietly doing exactly that RIGHT NOW. Read the last several months of Joe Konrath's blog to see interviews with a number of them, and references to many more.

Now finally, I'll answer Lisa's question, which was intensely personal. What would I, Randy, do if I were just starting out as a novelist? I'm going to assume Lisa means, what would I do if I had my current set of skills, which include the ability to write an award-winning novel and the ability to market myself online.

See, the answer to that is easy: I'd self-publish myself. Every publisher I've worked with has had a hard time figuring out how to market me. (Except for the publishers of WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES, who had no trouble at all figuring out how to market me, because I told them how.) I can't blame my other publishers. I didn't know how to market myself either, so I could hardly expect them to know. I'm a weirdo, and weirdos are hard to figure out how to market.

But now I do know how to market my work. Here, my weirdness actually helps. Weirdos are Xtremely easy to market, once you've figured out exactly what they are and why they're different from everybody else on the planet. So it makes perfect sense to e-publish myself in the current climate.

What do I mean by the "current climate?" I mean simply this. Currently, traditional publishers are paying no more than 25% royalties on e-books. (That's 25% of the money received from retailers, not 25% of the retail price of the book.)

Most authors consider that 25% rate to be unfairly low. Insanely low. I know that the publishers have their reasons for keeping the royalties at that level. But I still don't think it's a remotely fair royalty rate, and I don't know a single published author who thinks it's fair.

Eventually, I believe that publishers are going to raise their royalty rates on e-books. I have no idea when, but I think it'll happen. I don't know if they'll raise it to a fair level (which I would define to be somewhere north of 50% of what they receive.)

In the meantime, I think a midlist author can simply do better by e-publishing herself (if she has any marketing sense at all). That's the "current climate" in the publishing world. That could change tomorrow, or it might take ten years.

Here's something you probably learned in kindergarten which is still true: You can't make people play fair, but you can choose to play in a different sandbox.

So if you think you'll do better by not going the traditional publishing route, then you can try riding the e-ticket. And if you think you'll do better with a traditional publisher, then do so. You have options. Act in your own best interest, whatever that is.

Lisa also asked about movies. The fact is that your book has a vastly better chance of being made into a movie if it sells a lot of copies. So if you can sell a zillion copies of your book with a traditional publisher, then that's your route to moviedom. If you can sell a zillion copies by self-publishing, then that's your ticket. Either way, let's be brutally honest, a movie is a long-shot. Probably won't happen. Try not to have an aneurysm if it does.

If you've got a question you'd like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my "Ask A Question For My Blog" page and submit your question. I'll answer them in the order they come in.

What If You Think You Might Be a Mediocre Fiction Writer?

Every novelist hits the point, sooner or later, where they think they just might not actually have any talent. What do you do in that case? Should you just throw in the towel? Or muddle forward? How do you know if you're any good?

Camille posted this question on my "Ask A Question For My Blog" page:

I've decided a novelist must produce amazing writing AND an interesting story to continue pursuing novel publication with any real, honest hope of succeeding. Even amazing writing must be interesting or it's not all that amazing.

If a wannabe novelist can be very honest with herself and accepts that she may be a good writer but a mediocre story-teller, and can perfectly picture the finished product she desires but realizes her execution of that goal falls painfully short, and she is beginning to tire in her efforts to improve, what do you suggest she do at this point in her life? I can make it easy on you and give you some multiple choice answers.

Take a vacation to somewhere other than Boring, Oregon.
Take more workshops and read more craft books. While setting your toenails on fire.
Take another vacation but don't start making a habit of it.
Grit your teeth and keep working on the wretched novel.
Put noveling aside and write something that makes you smile and gets lots of positive feedback from people because beneath the fiction fatigue, you know you were created to communicate something of value and encouragement to others and you miss that.
Get some cheap c-4 and blow your computer to Jupiter. Pop some corn and invite the neighbors to watch, but make room for the S.W.A.T. trucks.

Randy sez: Well, Camille, you're about due for some angst. You've been writing now for three years or so (or is it four?) And you still haven't sold your novel, and you're thinking it's maybe all just some sort of pipe dream that you've been smoking for the last few years and maybe you're a no-talent wannabe that ain't never going to make it to the gonnabe stage.

This is a valid question. I've been writing fiction for 23 years now, and I've seen plenty of writers who just didn't get published. Loads of them. I've also seen plenty of writers who did. Some of them went on to win awards, hit best-seller lists, and all that good stuff.

If you're a discouraged writer, how can you tell whether you're mediocre or destined for glory?

The bottom line is that you probably can't. You're too close to your own career, and you can't see what's obvious to other people.

I had this problem for a long time, and I solved it, ultimately, by just slogging through and getting published. But it meant that I spent about eight years in misery.

There's really an easier way. Ask an experienced published author (one who knows your work) if you've got the talent to make the grade. After you've been writing for a few years, you either have it or you don't, and anyone with some experience in the publishing world can tell if you do or don't.

I happen to know Camille and her work pretty well, since she's in my local critique group. So I'll make this Xtremely easy.

Camille is going to get published. I don't know when. Not sure if it'll be that first novel she finished awhile back that's been making the rounds. Not sure if it'll be the one she's working on now. I think either of them could sell. Or maybe her third book will be the winner. But I know for sure that Camille's got the goods. So I just plain don't see how she can fail.

Oh yeah, sure, there's one way. She could quit. But Camille's not a quitter, so she's not going to.

I'll bet a number of my Loyal Blog Readers are in the same seat Camille's in right now. You've been writing for a few years. You've had some near misses and plenty of kudos but no contract yet. You're frustrated and tired and angry.

I've been there. It wasn't any fun. I spent 10 years writing fiction and the only thing I sold in that time was one short story to a local computer magazine for $150. That's $15 per year. I worked it out once–it was three cents an hour. And I didn't get paid a dime until Year Ten. That really sucks.

Then in the eleventh year, I sold a nonfiction book. And a novel. Yes, both in the same year. Funny how that worked out.

My story is pretty common. A lot of writers took years and years to break in. I know plenty of novelists who took longer than I did. And of course I know a few writers who sold the first thing they wrote with what looked like hardly any effort. I don't feel superior to the ones who took longer and I don't hate the ones who got there quicker. The publishing life is one dice throw after another.

If you want a safe, easy career, then you're going to have to go into something that safer and easier. Try lion taming. That looks safer to me than fiction writing. Or try brain surgery. That takes about the same amount of training as writing a novel, but I have this weird hunch that it's easier.

Nothing I can do will change the fact that fiction writing is hard and unsafe. I wouldn't change that if I could.

Because maybe that's part of what makes it fun.

Camille, you're going to get published. If I turn out to be wrong by some unlucky chance, and you don't get published in the next ten years or so, then you can come and slap me silly. But I have a good track record of spotting winners, and I know you're a winner, so I'm just not worried.

What's a writer to do when she's in this boat? Carry on. There are three basic things that every novelist has to do to keep improving:

Keep writing.
Keep getting critiqued.
Keep learning by reading those pesky how-to-write-fiction books.

I don't know ANY writers who are improving who don't do all of these things.

Carry on, Camille. When you sell your first book, we'll do an interview here on this blog. Remind me when that happens.

If you've got a question you'd like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my "Ask A Question For My Blog" page and submit your question. I'll answer them in the order they come in.

Is Publishing Turning Into the Wild West?

The publishing world has changed radically in the last couple of years, thanks to those pesky e-books. Do the old rules still apply? Does chaos rule? Or are there ways to survive and thrive in the new environment?

Jonathan posted this question on my "Ask A Question For My Blog" page:

I've been reading what you have been posting regarding self e-publishing with a lot of interest lately. It seems like it's almost creating a "wild west frontier" type aspect in literature, in which a lot of the traditional "rules" are being thrown out because there are simply better ways to do things.

My question regards the writing itself- with this new freedom for authors to publish what they want, how they want, do you see any trends towards fiction that might have been considered "unmarketable" in a more traditional situation? In this new system that seems to be developing, are there any forces besides market that will dictate what fiction is now? For instance, if I want to write something crazy and experimental (but hopefully entertaining) is there a better chance that I will find a market willing to read it in an e-publishing situation where I am taking most of the marketing onus upon myself?

Randy sez: It's an exciting time to be alive, if you're an author.

For the last five hundred years or so, the process of publishing a book was a very expensive process. (In today's world, despite massive improvements in personal productivity for editors and their colleagues, it can still cost more than $50,000 to produce and publish a book, and that's not counting the advance that must be paid to the author.)

That meant that large corporations needed to underwrite most books. Corporations who had a high priority to not lose money.

Big corporations aren't bad people. They aren't people at all, at least not people who bleed when you poke them. They're organizations. Their goals are different from yours. When you go to a big corporate publisher to get your book published, you have to take their interests into account, or there's no deal.

Furthermore, even if you do find a publisher to publish your book, typically you sell it rights to publish in a limited geographic area, such as North America. Getting a book with North American rights into the hands of Australian readers means either an expensive mailing of the printed book from North America to Australia, or selling the Australian rights to an Australian publisher, where it may not have the same economies of scale that it does in the larger US market.

E-publishing changes all that. For a few hundred bucks, you can get a graphic artist to make you a decent cover. For a few thousand dollars, you can get a full-service edit by a really good freelance editor. For a few hundred more dollars, you can find somebody to convert the book to the usual e-book formats. Everything else is free in the e-book publication process. Many e-book authors prefer to do it all themselves, so it's possible to do the entire book at no cost (other than the cost of a computer, which is a one-time expense.)

So now just about anybody can e-publish their novel. But that doesn't mean that anybody is going to buy it.

Certain of the old rules still apply.

Quality matters, just as it always has. Excellent writing is more likely to sell than crummy writing.

Marketing matters, just as it always has. If nobody knows about your great novel, nobody is going to buy it.

Luck matters, just as it always has. The nice thing now is that there are more ways to get lucky.

In the old days (before last year), getting lucky meant finding the right agent and the right editor at the right publisher at the right time with the right book, the right title, the right cover, and the right marketing.

If you screwed up on any of those, then your luck wasn't likely to be all that great. And not all of those were under your control. If your publisher screwed up any of the things that it controlled, your luck was just as bad as if you, personally, had screwed up. Authors didn't control their own destiny.

That road to nirvana is still open, and a few authors are getting lucky all the time. Hooray for them! We should all wish to get lucky that way.

But there's a new road to nirvana, e-publishing. Now you need the right e-book at the right time with the right title, the right cover, and the right marketing. And all of those are under your control.

You have fewer things that you must get right with e-publishing, and if any of them get screwed up, it'll be your fault. Which can make you long for the bad old days when you had "Big Corporate" to blame.

It's interesting to see how many disaffected authors are out there, eager to "stick it to The Man" by doing an end-run on big corporate publishers. I'm not one of those disaffected authors. I have many editor friends who work for big publishers (although it's been disconcerting to see so many of them lose their jobs in the last couple of years). I don't hate big publishers. They've produced great books over the years. They're now trying to drive an aircraft carrier through the rapids, and if they're slow to react, that's the nature of the beast.

In the old days, big publishers had numerous editors, sales-people, and marketing folks who functioned as "gatekeepers." Their job was to make sure that a book didn't lose money. Most of the time, they succeeded, although in most cases, the book in question didn't actually earn much either. The few big winners paid for the entire party.

That is one of the things now changing with e-publishing. There is no gatekeeper. Not really. (Unless you're writing something so irredeemably evil that the online publishers refuse your book.) Only market forces determine what will sell.

In the old days, every publisher had its own rules for its gatekeepers. Part of the hassle of getting published was finding a publisher whose gatekeepers would sign off on you.

So yes, Jonathan, if you've got something wacky and experimental and you want to try it, go right ahead. The categories are blending. If you want to write an Amish werewolf erotic western with Zen overtones, go right ahead. No gatekeeper will stop you, and the market will tell you if that's a viable category.

But remember that you still need the Big Three: quality, marketing, and luck. Without those, your books won't sell.

I teach quality and I teach marketing, but I've not yet figured out how to teach luck. So all I can do is wish you well, along with everyone else who sits down to write the next great Amish werewolf erotic western with Zen overtones.

Have fun!

If you've got a question you'd like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my "Ask A Question For My Blog" page and submit your question. I'll answer them in the order they come in.

Is Your Novel Required to Have a Villain?

When writing your novel, do you absolutely have to have a villain? Can the "bad guy" be society? Can it be the environment?

I went out of town a couple of weeks ago to go to a writing conference (had a wonderful time, saw many of my friends, made a number of new ones) and have been in recovery since then. Conferences are great fun, but they're exhausting.

Nicole posted this question on my "Ask A Question For My Blog" page:

I just finished reading your e-zine article about villains. Thanks. Sort of. I don't have a 'person' who is a villain in my book, I've just called 'society' my antagonist. I'm confused about whether I 'need' a person to thwart my MC, or…well, maybe I've missed the boat (it's ok, only a first draft is done…loads of opportunity for writing in stuff during the editing process!). I have loads of conflict and disaster and whatnot (I DO pay attention to what you tell us!), but no 'villain'. Do I need to make up someone in particular who causes pain? Thanks!

Randy sez: The short answer is no. You don't have to have a villain to make a novel work. It's perfectly OK to have society be the cause of all your lead character's ills. It's perfectly OK to have the environment be the "villain." It's OK to have your protagonist be his own worst enemy.

Having said that, let me suggest that evil becomes more Evil when it's personalized.

It's one thing for Katniss Everdeen to be battling the Evil System in THE HUNGER GAMES. But the heat goes up a notch when the Evil System crystallizes in the person of President Snow.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS would be a powerful story of the battle between good and evil if all the bad guys were orcs, wargs, trolls, balrogs, and dark-hearted men. But by personalizing Evil in the form of Sauron, J.R.R. Tolkien gave us a more intelligent and dangerous foe.

Likewise, the Death Eaters in the Harry Potter series are vile enough, but they are stronger Death Eaters because Lord Voldemort stands behind them. Destroying Voldemort then becomes the tangible goal that symbolizes the victory over all Death Eaters.

So Nicole, you don't have to have a villain if you don't want to. But your readers may find your story more powerful if you find a way to bring your evil society to a sharp point, in the form of one person who symbolizes all that's wrong with your society.

If you've got a question you'd like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my "Ask A Question For My Blog" page and submit your question. I'll answer them in the order they come in.

For Novelists Who Hate Outlining

What if you tried outlining your novel and it doesn't work? What if it freezes you so you can't write? Are you defective as a fiction writer?

Molly posted this question on my "Ask A Question For My Blog" page:

I've been writing for a little bit now, but I hardly ever finish what I begin. When I come to a block in my writing I either put it aside or try to outline what happens next. Thinking that if I know what happens next, the story will flow better. But in eality, it's the opposite. It's like as soon as I know what's going to happen I can't write it. I physically can not write. The entire plot crumbles and I'm left with half finished stories. Once I know what happens I can never return to those days when I simply wrote what came to me. When my characters told me the story as I went. It's like knowing how the story unfolds eliminates all desire to actually write it, and nothing I do can ever bring me back to where I previously was. No matter how long I wait, how hard I try to forget the outline, I just can not get the story to flow again. The few times I have tried to force the writing, it sucked.

I've known about this for a little while now, and I do try to stay away from outlining, but sometimes I forget and do it anyway. And then I end up where I am now. Unable to move forward with my novel and so frustrated that I contemplate throwing everything I have. Any suggestions for how to fix my problem, or how to prevent it?

Randy sez: You don't have a problem, Molly. You can write fine by the seat of your pants. What's going wrong for you is that you're trying to use a solution you don't need for a problem you don't have.

That solution is preplanning your fiction. It's designed to help writers write when they get frozen by not knowing what comes next.

For many writers, that is a GREAT solution. I hear all the time from writers who came across my Snowflake method of designing a novel and it liberated them, because their brain just isn't wired to write by the seat of the pants, and they had simply assumed that all writers write that way. (Some do, including Stephen King, Jerry Jenkins, and many, many, many others.)

But that solution is not for you, Molly. I've been in this business too long to believe that we're all wired alike. We aren't. Write the way you were made to write.

Write by the seat of the pants. Don't plan. Just write. That's your natural style. That's your creative paradigm. The worst thing you can do is to try to write using a creative paradigm that doesn't fit you.

Having said that, let me add that you're still not off the hook on building a story with great story structure. My Snowflake method is designed to help you find a strong story structure and well-formed characters before you write your first word. If you're a seat-of-the-pants writer, you need to do that hard work AFTER you write your first draft, not before.

If you need help in figuring out all that, let me selfishly recommend my book WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES, which explains all about story structure, characters, and a whole lot more. I'll unselfishly recommend STORY ENGINEERING by my friend Larry Brooks, which will do exactly the same thing. Also, PLOT & STRUCTURE, by my friend James Scott Bell. Also . . .

You get the picture. There are a pile of books out there that explain what your fiction needs to be like in its final draft in order to get published. Be aware that when you write by the seat of your pants, your first draft is almost certain to not be in publishable form yet. You'll have to work hard to clean it up. That's no problem. Plenty of writers work through 5 or 10 or 20 drafts to edit a horrible first draft into shape.

It's that simple. Not everybody should outline or Snowflake. Some people are just destined to write seat-of-the-pants. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Good luck, Molly, and shoot me an e-mail when you get your novel finished, so I'll know you got it done and I'll know that I was right.

If you've got a question you'd like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my "Ask A Question For My Blog" page and submit your question. I'll answer them in the order they come in.