Mary Sisson's Blog, page 120
April 10, 2012
Autobots, Decepticons, and publishing
Today I was driving and I saw someone with a Transformers sticker on the car. That struck me as being so much lamer than when people actually replace the logos on their car with Transformers duplicates.
Were I to do that to my car, I would use a Decepticon logo.
Why? Lemme tell you. I am old enough that I watched the Transformers show on television when I was a child (shut up). I never much cared for the show--it was boring and annoying and mostly about selling toys, something I recognized even as a wee lassie.
The thing that really annoyed me about it was how passive the good-guy Autobots were, and how they spun their passivity so that it was somehow virtuous. The evil Decepticons would come up with some awesome new technology (which they did all the time) and the Autobots would say, Oh my stars! The Decepticons have come up with new technology, like the evil creatures they are! This is a completely unexpected turn of events, even though it happens all the time! Gosh-darn those Decepticons! They are so bad! They are always up to something! And we never are!
And then they would go whine to Optimus Prime about it, instead of taking a blowtorch to him for allowing them to (once again!) face a new Decepticon technology completely unprepared. Eventually, Optimus Prime would slowly crank out some pathetic me-too response. And everyone would act like this was some form of real leadership, when in the real world all the Autobots would be constantly calling up Megatron with offers to defect.
Anyway, I realized (and I am fully aware that this probably means I'm spending too much time thinking about this) that something similar is happening in publishing. There has been a big technological change (e-books) and a company (Amazon) has positioned itself to take maximum advantage of it. And the response of the traditional companies has been to say, Gosh-darn that Amazon! They are so bad! They are always up to something!
The thing that irritated me about Transformers when I was a kid and stuff like this now is this assumption that doing something = being bad. Action = evil. Change = evil. Progress = evil. People who do things mess stuff up. They disrupt the status quo. They complicate life. Everything was nice and predictable until the Decepticons/Amazon came along and threw a wrench into the works!
And you see that attitude among writers as well. I just finished reading Darcie Chan's Mill River Recluse. It's fine if you like sentimental books (which are not really my thing), and I don't remember finding a single typo--the manuscript was obviously very clean. The e-book, however, is a hot mess: no table of contents, the chapter ornaments are all over the place, and it feels like no two paragraphs are formatted the same way.
The book has been up for almost a year. It sold 400,000 copies before Chan started getting national press coverage, and I'm sure it's sold many more since then. Even though it's still priced at 99 cents and she's still getting a crappy 35 cents per copy, she's made six figures on it. Yet she can't be bothered to format the damned thing, and of course there's no paper copy available.
I feel like, here is somebody who is really and truly committed to certain ideas about publishing. For starters, there's the notion that writers shouldn't concern themselves in the slightest with anything other than writing--they shouldn't even stoop to hire out work. There are also two other concepts in play, which are closely related to each other: e-books aren't real books, and self-publishing isn't real publishing. Since they aren't real, it doesn't matter if your product sucks--and even if they were real, having a product that sucks is OK, because your little piece of it (the writing) is fine!
It's like these people live in a world trapped in amber, where writers are under no obligation to learn, understand, and adapt to the realities of publishing. All the changes happening are just the Decepticons running around, like the pesky little critters they are, doing their evil nonsense because they just can't leave well enough alone. You can be like Optimus Prime and kick back, satisfied with yourself because you have done the bare minimum to adjust--or because you haven't.
To which I say: All hail Megatron!
Other funny links!
25 Reasons I Hate Your Main Character. Very funny and true.
And this shirt makes me feel like such a failure. I've been sick! And busy!
The Rejection Generator!
April 9, 2012
E-book subscription sites
F+W Media and Sourcebooks are both starting e-book subscription sites. F+W is focusing on specialty titles--you get unlimited access in return for a hefty ($199 per year) fee, so it's basically like a paid research library. Sourcebooks is focusing on romance novels, and it's much cheaper ($9.99 for six months), but the number of titles you can access is quite limited--it's more like a book club, with a discount program thrown in.
Both services rely on curation to appeal to readers. F+W is appealing to a fairly thin slice of deep-pocked institutions and businesses that feel they must have access to these books. Sourcebooks is appealing to fans of its writers.
Whether these services are going to work or not, I don't know--that's going to depend on whether or not enough people think they provide a good value. But they are both examples of the experimentation going on with online e-book retail.
If you were having problems getting here....
Squarespace was dealing with a denial-of-service attack earlier, so things weren't loading properly. They tell me it's all OK now....
April 8, 2012
How to be edited
One reason I've seen people put forth to stay away from self-publishing is the need for editing. People believe that they must be edited before they can put something out. This ties into a question new writers often have—how do you know when something is ready?
I used to be an editor, and I still wouldn't put something out that hadn't been edited (and I mean edited, not copy edited, although obviously I've seen the light on the latter as well). The question is not, Should I get edited? The question is, How can I find a good editor?
An editor is not an accountant or a doctor—an editor goes through no specialized training and does not get licensed. New writers tend to think of an editor as "the person who makes your writing good," but honestly, that's not the editor's job. The editor's job is to make your writing consistent with their employer's standards, whatever those standards might be. You might write a great mystery novel, but to the editors of both Highlights and Penthouse Forum, your work is unacceptable. And unfortunately writers and editors both can get into some very bad habits working for places with lousy or peculiar standards.
Also, some editors just aren't very good—they want changes that make your work less entertaining and harder to read. I had a particular animus against editors who were vague. They would ask, "Could you make this better?" which got them an instant, "Could you be more specific?" Vagueness to me indicated both laziness and a cover-your-ass attitude—an editor who expressed a vague dislike for whatever you turned in felt like they were insulated from failure (which they weren't).
To be of any use, an editor must have opinions—clear opinions about how to improve a piece of writing. They are just opinions, even when they are gatekeeper opinions, which is why so many bestselling books first went through endless rounds of rejection. But opinions are an editor's stock-in-trade, and a good one has lots of them that they can express clearly to you.
How do you find someone with opinions about your writing? Obviously, I am fond of critique groups (free!), but writing classes and workshops are also good places to go. But don't just get the group read of your first chapter: Treat these places as editor auditions.
You want to find people to edit your work who are not afraid to be brutally honest—no, it's not fun at first, but you will come to value it. (Maybe it's just me, but I think that my feeling vaguely insulted is a sign of a quality edit.) That said, you want to avoid sociopaths, abusive and insecure writers who will screw with you to make themselves feel better, and people who hate your genre. Look for someone who shows some enthusiasm for your work, even if they are critical of the specifics—if they love your kind of book, they'll be more likely to help you create something that appeals to people who love your kind of book.
And take feedback seriously. I think everyone has met the wanna-be writer whose work would be a thousand times better if they would just drop bad habit X and embrace good habit Y, and they never do. No matter how many people tell them the exact same thing, no matter how many times they hear it, they exist in an impermeable field of delusion—they would rather write badly than work at it. That's them; it doesn't need to be you.
Other ways to find editors are to hire people or to sign away your rights and a chunk of your future earnings to a publisher who will hire people. That might be what you have to do, but remember, just because you're paying for it doesn't make it good. All the horrible, crappy editors I had over the years—all of them—were professionals. Respected professionals with years of experience (goldbricking). They all got paid to go, "Could you make this better? No, I can't be more specific right now—I have to go get a manicure." It was always a crapshoot with the professional editors because I was just a working stiff and I could not audition them. Nowadays, I just don't tap the horrible amateur editors.
Speaking of horrible amateur editors—try to make sure you're not one. If you are able to find people who are willing to edit your work for free, guess what? You're going to be paying them back by editing their work for free! (Nothing is really free, sorry.)
But guess what else? You're going to get paid back a second time. That's because as you develop your editing skills on other people's work, you become a better editor of your own. If I notice in three manuscripts that the opening drags because we don't get to the main plot until chapter 15, I'm going to cut to the chase in my own book. If I read a bunch of repetitive descriptions that drive me crazy, the next time I look at my own prose, I'm going to be chopping excess adjectives.
Eventually, if you edit enough, you may even reach the exalted state where there is no difference to you between something you write and something somebody else writes. That kind of distance from your own work is precisely what you want—it's like writing Nirvana. (You've heard about how you should stick a manuscript in a drawer and forget about it for an eon or so? That's an exercise to help you develop this distance.) If you can get there—or at least close to there—then of course you'll know when your work is ready, because you'll be judging it by the same standards as you do everyone else's.
April 6, 2012
Google was going to save indie bookstores, but it changed its mind
Google is going to stop providing e-books to indie bookstores.
I'm not shocked, because they were going at this in a totally half-assed way. I mean, if you can't be bothered to set up your Web site so that an author can actually upload a book, how committed can you be?
And honestly, I think this is probably good for indie bookstores. The whole idea of making it so indie bookstores can compete more directly with Amazon is, in my mind, completely wrong-headed. If you are a bookstore, you don't want to compete directly with Amazon. Barnes & Noble is competing directly with Amazon, and it's not exactly working out for them. You want your own niche--let Amazon have theirs. Maybe you can sell e-book cards, if they fit in your niche.
April 5, 2012
Be aware of everything you can do
I like this post by Dean Wesley Smith--being Smith, he characterizes it as long-term thinking about self-publishing, which is GOOD, and short-term thinking, which is BAD.
That's his opinion--I feel like Smith sometimes doesn't recognize that people without a backlist of 200 books are going to have to do things a little differently than he does. But I think it's important to keep in mind that this is a long game and that there are many different outlets for your work. Even if you're not selling directly off your Web site or to bookstores or selling audiobooks or even paper books now, that's all stuff to keep in mind as a next step.
April 3, 2012
Amazon needs a new media-relations department
Yeah, I'm on a blogging tear today. Mostly because 1. I am feeling better, and 2. an out-of-town relative has decided to execute one of her trademark no-warning week-long visits starting tomorrow, so I'm screwed as far as doing anything except looking after Her Highness for the next several days.
Anyway, the Seattle Times is doing an entire series on how Amazon is the Antichrist. Amazon doesn't pay taxes. Amazon doesn't give back. Amazon is destroying publishing.
The last one caught my eye, of course, and it was very interesting. I'm the first to acknowledge that Amazon (or really, e-book technology) is destroying publishing, or at least the traditional publishing industry. The question boils down to, is that a bad thing?
Now, if you're the New York Times, and you're based in New York City, where the traditional publishing industry is headquartered and where it employs many, many people, the answer is: Of course! On the face of it, it is clearly a very bad thing!
But the Seattle Times is based in (you guessed it!) Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered and where employs many, many people. If Amazon eats traditional publishing, that's probably going to be a significant net benefit for the Seattle area--more jobs, more construction, more money.
And the Seattle Times doesn't follow the talking points: There's no mention of Amazon destroying indie bookstores or literary culture. There's some talk of Amazon's potential to have a monopoly on e-books, but it's much more balanced than what the New York Times has been offering.
Yet the article is very negative. The focus is on Amazon's disputes with publishers and IPG. At least the article focuses on players who are in fact losing out as a result of the changes in publishing, which is more than one can say about the New York Times articles, but (and this is very strange) these losers aren't local. One company is in North Carolina, one is in Chicago, one is in Massachusetts, and the experts are all from NYC or New Jersey. No one is from Seattle. Seriously, when I was reading the article, I kept looking for the Associated Press byline, it was that non-specific as to locality.
And Amazon refused to comment for the article.
Sigh. OK, as a former reporter, I'm going to explain something to Amazon:
Dear Amazon,
When you don't talk to the local newspaper, the editors get mad. They get mad because they feel like you don't appreciate them--you could be pals (or as palsy as you can get with newspaper people), they could help you, but you treat them like dirt instead! It pisses them off! When they get mad enough, they decide to do things like run an entire series on how you are the worst thing ever. (Seriously, have they gotten your attention yet? The next step is mooning.)
And when you don't talk to the reporters on the local paper, you lose your chance to tell your side of the story.
Yes, Amazon, you are destroying publishing. The key to getting a positive spin in stories is to explain how you are replacing it with something much better!
There is one author and no consumers in that story--and the one author is, of course, enormously positive, because that's someone who is benefiting from the new order. You need to feed the Seattle Times more people who are benefiting from these changes--ideally people located in or near Seattle. If the members of your media-relations department weren't all too busy buffing their nails and drinking their lunches, they could have hooked that reporter up with quite a few more authors. Local authors. Local authors who have created self-supporting writing careers almost instantly because of e-publishing--I can think of one right off the bat, and I'm sure there are more.
I know your media-relations staff are right now telling you that they didn't have a chance, the Seattle Times is so mean and biased, boo-hoo-hoo. Seriously, fire those idiots. When I was a reporter, I covered a company that was convinced that the publication I worked for was out to get it (they had a very elaborate conspiracy theory going on--seriously, I was concerned). I covered a company that deliberately concealed good news about itself, and then they pitched a fit because my psychic powers did not enable me to see through their lies and write stories about it.
This was never constructive. It never resulted in positive coverage. What results in positive (or at least more balanced) coverage is talking to the fricking reporter. Make her life easier. Help the nice lady out. Give her access, and tell her your side of the story. She can't pass your story on if you don't tell it to her! (All those complaints in the story about how Amazon doesn't communicate? She found those plausible for a reason!)
Just can the whole department and start afresh. Let's put it this way: You can't possibly have worse media relations than you do now.
(You know, I was thinking when Amazon swanned Joe Konrath & Co. around like kings that they were very savvy public-relations players. But I guess they were just very savvy author-relations players.)
How much is Meyer worth?
The addendum to my last post got me thinking about comparing Myer's paycheck to what she's earning her publisher. As I said, Forbes estimates that Meyer made $21 million between May 2010 and May 2011. That would be from all sources--movie money and what have you.
That sounds like a lot, but Lagardere estimates that the Twilight books made the company $160 million in 2010.
Oh, I'm sorry--they're not saying that, in total, the Twilight books made the company $160 million. No. They're saying that when the Twilight books were selling exceptionally well, they were bringing in $160 million per year more than they brought in in 2011, a year when Twilight sales fell to more normal levels, whatever those may be.
We don't know the baseline of Twilight sales here. They could still be bringing in $160 million, and in 2010 they brought in $320 million. Maybe they're just bringing in a paltry $21 million, and in 2010 they brought in $181 million. We have no idea.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that there was only (or "only") $181 million of Twilight money sloshing around in 2010 (and we'll pretend the Forbes figures run from January to January, not May to May). $21 million went to Meyer; $160 million went to her publisher.
She made less than 12% of what her publisher did. Probably much less, because we're pretending that Twilight didn't sell a single copy in 2011, and Largardere doesn't claim that.
Something to think about, eh?
