Hugh Howey's Blog, page 54

Take it easy. People write around here.

A comment from Jill the Librarian on yesterday’s It’s the Reader, Stupid post:

Self-publishing is going nuts right now. Bowker says that “148,424 print books were self-published in 2011, and 87,201 ebooks were self-published. … So as a librarian (or bookstore buyer) with extremely limited staff and resources, how do we choose? We don’t yet have any real volume of ebooks being reviewed by known review sources. In my library, we do try to grab books once they clearly rise to the top of the heap — like WOOL– but that leaves an awful lot of perfectly respectable books flying under our radar.

 

I, for one, WANT to represent independent authors in my collection. I want to bring new voices to readers. I want to provide access via print, ebook, audiobook, cuneiform manuscript, or any other format anyone wants. But it’s hard to make it happen in the current model.

Jill brings up an issue that is affecting distributors (both bookstores and libraries), as well as readers and aspiring authors. There isn’t one perfect solution, but I think one place to start is local. Every library and bookstore should have a section for community authors. We had one at our bookstore. Authors came in all the time to pitch their book to us, and we would invariably agree to carry a copy or two. Here’s what I noticed from my info-desk perch:

Some authors would go on to hand-sell their book to friends, family members, and strangers in the community while directing them to our bookstore for the transaction. These authors would check in regularly to see about our stock, and we would re-order. We provided respectability and a cashier. They acted just like sales reps from publishing houses . . . but for their own books.

All of the local authors, I noticed, were given pride of place. Most just wanted to know that their book was on a shelf, somewhere, available. Local authors would pop by and scan the section, see their books next to those from their writing groups, and smile. I can tell you that I used to do the same with my own books in that bookstore. It was like peeking into a crib to check a sleeping baby. It was motivation to continue writing. To have more of them.

The most important observation, though, is seeing what customers did. It wasn’t the majority, not by a mile, but there are shoppers who want to support local artists. These are the same people you see at art crawls and local art fairs. They came to our shop because they knew we had not only a local interest section but a local author section. And they would take a chance on a book based on the cover and blurb.

If every bookstore and library had a section like this that someone cared about maintaining, it would give tens of thousands of aspiring authors at least a small chance of being discovered. A tiny chance, but still a chance. And the psychological rewards are enormous. What this does is distribute the burden of selecting which indie books to carry. You are guided by hometown loyalty. Each town carries a small number of books. All it takes is one reader being blown away and telling their friends. Or one bookstore or library employee discovering some local and hidden talent and arranging a talk or a signing.

It can be overwhelming, seeing how many books are published every year. But how many books were published by authors in your town? Do they have a public, physical forum for celebrating their achievement? Does any bookstore or library have a twice-yearly Book Release Party where community authors come together to toast their accomplishments and swap copies of their books? Why not?

We have art fairs and craft fairs. We have music festivals, and bars and restaurants do a great job of giving musicians some kind of start. Yes, there are book festivals, but very few local authors get to attend in any way other than setting up a table in the dealer room. I think those of us who love books can be more involved in nurturing the local variety. I have enjoyed participating in writing groups and working with NaNoWriMo here in Jupiter as well as back in Boone. Geeking out about books and writing just fuels more writing.

Authors are a passionate lot. It might be a good idea for bookstores and libraries to focus a little more on the creation side to go with the consumption. Writing groups to go with reading groups. Mix local authors with young writers on Saturday workshops. Turn November and NaNoWriMo into a national holiday. Encourage young writers to self-publish and put their works on display (we do this with their artwork, don’t we?). Have a bio with headshots to go with staff picks in these sections. Set up meeting times for writing workshops and critique groups. My mother’s yarn shop was built on a foundation of local knitters who spent a lot of time in her shop, stitching and bitching, teaching classes, forming the base of a creative community. I would love to see bookstores and libraries reach out to local authors, making them feel welcome, giving them some shelf space and a place to meet their peers. I think it would be good for everyone.

It’s the Reader, Stupid

I’ve got a 3,000 word essay sitting here that I’ve been fiddling with for a week. It starts off with a history of the 1992 presidential election and the formation of a meme by James Carville (The economy, stupid) and how it can be useful to condense a complicated situation down to its bare essence and insult the listener at the same time to make sure they pay attention.

It’s a great essay, but then I saw this speech by Kevin Spacey this morning and realized it would be redundant.

The essay is a call to arms for everyone in publishing to focus on the reader. Because right now, you have this mess:

Publishers treat bookstores as their customers, not the reader. That means high e-book prices to protect print; releasing hardbacks and withholding paperbacks; needlessly high audiobook prices; and not working with libraries on e-book prices and lending practices. They also treat bestseller lists and review outlets as their customers, which means holding finished books back from the reader in order to have blockbuster launches.

Large bookstore chains treat publishers as customers by charging for merchandising rather than stocking and shelving what the reader wants. I watched my publisher here in the US get entangled in this mess. A large chain was leveraging the publisher for money rather than make it by, you know, selling books.

Traditional authors treat publishers as their customers, because that’s who pays them for manuscripts, rather than focusing on the reader, who wants to pay for the book. That means agreeing to higher prices for their products, signing egregious contracts that limit output, agreeing to write works of set length, in limited genres and styles, and also keeping the finished work unavailable for months. Authors also treat agents as their customers.

For so many people in the publishing biz, the reader is the last link in a long chain. The exceptions are independent bookstores, which do much to cater to readers. The two places they fall short is in not carrying more self-published works that are in high demand or of high quality, fostering the discoverability of new talent, and in refusing to carry Amazon Publishing works that readers want. But still, the indie shops are seeing growth because they largely concentrate on the reader.

Indie authors are maniacally focused on the reader, almost to the exclusion of anything else. Low prices, fun and interesting genres and styles, a direct relationship, frequent output, you name it. Indie authors are doing well because they know it’s all about the reader.

And Amazon. Amazon continues to blow me away with how many areas they are revolutionizing all at once. Just this year, they figured out how to monetize fan fiction, which allows readers to become writers (paid writers, at that!). And today, they announce a program that I’ve been screaming for as a bookseller, a reader, and a writer. It’s called Matchbook, and it allows authors and publishers to agree to give e-books away at a huge discount to anyone who bought the physical book. As soon as the program goes live, my e-books will be either 99 cents or free to anyone who bought the paperback through Amazon. You could buy the physical book for a gift and get the e-book for a buck!

It shouldn’t surprise me that Amazon is pulling this off. Anything that makes sense for the reader, they’re working on it. Yes, these programs hurt bookstores and they sometimes hurt publishers, and they can leave agents in the lurch. But it’s the reader, stupid. How many people on my flight yesterday used a travel agent to book their tickets? My guess is zero. Does that suck for travel agents? I suppose it does. Just as we can feel bad about one-hour film processors and music store employees being out of jobs. But none of these professions engender the outrage and sympathy that we feel for those who work in bookstores, because we have a romantic attachment to books and bookshops. Well, don’t worry. The kind of bookshops worth loving are doing okay. The kind that sell more board games and coffee than actual books … they aren’t going to be around forever.

My attitude, even as a bookseller, was that we should celebrate what’s good for the authors and the readers. Self-published authors seem to get this. Indie bookshops are right there, with room for improvement. And no one understands this quite like Amazon. Good on them for revolutionizing the way we buy books. For what, the seventh or eighth time?

Thank you, Marriott!

I just got back to my hotel room from the Hugo Awards, which meant two hours of pre-party, three hours of award ceremony, and another hour of post-party, to find that the fine people of the Riverwalk Marriott have left me a surprise.

This morning, I searched all over for a New York Times to verify the incomprehensible: DUST is #7 on the main bestseller list. The front desk was quiet at the time, and suddenly there were three people calling around and checking with other hotels and local shops until they tracked a single copy left somewhere. I thanked them profusely and went off to retrieve it.

Meanwhile, they found another copy, framed the list, included a print-out of the book’s cover from Amazon, left a bottle of champagne on ice and some large, chocolate-covered strawberries, and basically just blew me away with their generosity, thoughtfulness, and kindness.

Thank you, awesome folks at the Marriott. I hope I get a chance to thank you in person tomorrow morning. And thank you to the readers who put DUST in this position. After a night of seeing fan-voted awards handed out, it was amazing to come back to my room and have this small celebration of how wonderful you all have made my life.

The Work is the Work. The Path is the Path.

You’ve written a novel. You keep hearing all this buzz about self-publishing, but you’ve always imagined going the other route, getting an agent, landing a publishing contract, having that book hit store shelves. You’re not sure what to do. You get conflicting advice and all these anecdotes from friends and strangers online. What to do?

I’m seeing this conundrum a lot at WorldCon. I’ve met a lot of authors weighing their options, seen a ton of hands shoot up in panels hoping for that one last piece of advice to push them off the fence one way or the other. There’s a path on both sides of that fence, and writers can see crowds beating the grass flat. They can see the books that lie along either way. My advice, for what it’s worth, is to stop looking at those crowds and those books. Look at the work in your hand.

One of the greatest fears with self-publishing is that your book will be crap. Well? Is it? Look at it. Stop looking at what you see out there on store shelves and on e-bookstores. The path will not greatly shape your book. It simply won’t.

Sure, you will get some editing and some advice either way you go. The book will change a little. But that’s true along either path. Because you take this seriously, right? You aren’t going to publish a rough draft any more than you are going to query an agent with a rough manuscript. There are those people out there, but that’s not you. Stop looking at them. The work is the work.

If you send a rough draft to an agent, it’s going to get rejected. That thing better be polished almost to the point of self-publication. That means you workshopped it, had it critiqued, had some beta reads, have done seven, eight, nine full passes through the work on your own. You’ve read it aloud, looking for typos. You’ve had a text-to-speech program read it aloud, listening for typos. You haven’t done this? Neither path will lead where you hope.

But you’ve done all this if you are pondering this decision. You’ve got that perfect work. Is it good enough for an agent? For a publisher? They are more discriminating than readers. For them, it can’t just be a good work, it has to be marketable. Shelvable. It has to fit a mold, an expectation, a time and place. It has to be like that last thing that sold well, but not too like all the other things that are about to go on sale from the same people.

The reader just cares if they like it. The agent and the publisher can love it and still reject it.

The work is the work. Whichever path you choose, it won’t become drek just because you self-published. Books don’t rub off on each other like this. If anything, you will shine by comparison. And along that other path, where the books are all professional and polished, you can’t see the ones that didn’t make it. The slush pile is buried. It’s behind those bushes, out of sight. The work is the work.

We fear self-publishing because of the stigma, but it is rapidly fading. We fear it because there are so many bad books out there, but those aren’t your books. We gaze longingly at the beautiful hardbacks lined up in the store windows, but those aren’t yours either. And the path didn’t make them that way. Not all that way.

This is the great barrier, I think. There’s the dream that someone will accept a manuscript that isn’t done and they will somehow turn it into a bestseller. There’s the fear that somehow the awesome book that blows the minds of everyone who reads it will become rubbish as it is dragged through the muddy track of self-publishing. My advice is to worry about that work in your hand. And pick a path with zero expectations that the ground will magically move beneath your feet. How far you get is up to you and the work you put in, either way you go.

San Antonio Meet-Up!

Okay, we have a place and a time. This Saturday, the 31st of August, at 7:00PM at Sazo’s. Here’s the website for the joint. It’s right at the Marriott Riverwalk, which is very close to the site of WorldCon. We’ll hang out for a couple of hours, and if anyone is up for it and there for WorldCon, A CABIN IN THE WOODS is playing at 9:15 back at the convention center. But we’ll play it by ear.

Comment below if you can come. If it looks like we’ll have a dozen or so, I’ll see about getting a large table or a room reserved. Spread the word!

Party Crashing!

The most exciting part of this adventure was hanging out in a playground outside the restaurant while I waited for them to get seated. There was a train there for the kids to ride and jungle gyms and what-not. So there I am, creeping around in a blue jumpsuit with a camera, hiding behind trees and buildings, and looking suspicious as hell. After a few minutes of this, I realized parents were clutching their children and looking at me suspiciously. Luckily, I got in the restaurant before the cops came.

More Thumb Drives!

Okay! Uncle! I give!

I’ve had a slew of emails about the thumb drives, which sold out recently. There was such a run on these last week that I only had a handful to take with me to Tampa Comic Con (I kept them under the table and only whipped them out for those in the know who brought them up). I still have a handful left to take to WorldCon, but I just broke down and ordered another batch. The link on the sidebar is now working again. I set the inventory to 350, and these will have a bonus file on them. It’s the issue of Lightspeed magazine that contains my short story DEEP BLOOD KETTLE (and other awesome stories). John Joseph Adams gave me permission to toss it in there. I think he wants you to get hooked on the finest science fiction ‘zine on the market.

Off to San Antonio and WorldCon!

It’s almost WorldCon time, which takes place in San Antonio, Texas this year. I’ve had a few requests for a meet-up, so throw out some ideas for where we should go and chime in if you can make it. My only requirement is that it be a stone’s throw from the Marriott on RiverWalk. There’s a ton of places near there. And Friday night or Saturday night might be the best for me.

One thing I noticed about the panels at WorldCon, as I figure out my schedule, is a decided lack of self-publishing discussion. As this is primarily a literature event, that seems strange to me. Last year, there were a few panels on self-publishing, but they were relegated to small rooms in far-off locations. People packed in anyway. But maybe in the future a few of us should see about getting a self-publishing track added, kinda like what Liliana Hart did at RWA this year (she’s my hero). I think the response would be resounding. Maybe not next year, as WorldCon moves to London. Something to think about, though.

What am I most looking forward to this year?

Learning from my peers. Last year, a fellow indie lit a fire under my ass to work on audiobooks. That led to a hectic schedule of transferring all of my works into ACX. The results have been incredible. Picking up tidbits like this can change everything. WorldCon is such a great place to learn about the industry changes occurring outside of our little bubbles.
Seeing old friends again and meeting cyber friends in the flesh. I’ve got quite a few people I look forward to seeing. I won’t name-drop, because I don’t want to exhaust you with bouts of envy. But John Joseph Adams. And Ernie Cline. Oh, and . . .
Michael Bunker’s daughter is making me cinnamon rolls. Yeah.

What I’m not looking forward to this year:

Panels where people are trying to sell me something. Teach me! Don’t pitch to me.
The anti-Amazon vibe. I experienced a ton of this last year. It made me feel lonely.
Connecting flights. Yuck.

Are you coming? Chime in!

Sneak Peek(?) at the DUST Audiobook

Available for Pre-Order Here

Times Square Ad Featuring SHIFT!

This is running in Times Square right now!