Michael Gallagher's Blog - Posts Tagged "current-state-of-publishing"

I’m back! Or perhaps I should say: my back! It’s still giving me problems, sitting for any length of time to write being just one of them. But I couldn’t ignore this post for it marks my website’s fifth birthday. Yes! Now we are five! My enforced inactivity has given me plenty of time to read however (and I have read some particularly good thrillers of late and discovered some truly wonderful authors). It also gave me time to think about the current state of publishing. It’s never been easier to publish your novel yourself and see your own words in print. Nor harder to find anyone who is prepared to read it, let alone shell out good money for the privilege. Why? Over the next few months I’ll be reflecting on this and other matters to do with publishing in an extended series of posts.

When Amazon launched its digital publishing arm, Kindle Direct Publishing, a little over a decade ago—followed swiftly by its indie-friendly competitor Smashwords—it signalled the start of a publishing gold rush. A shaky start, admittedly. In the first seven months Smashwords had published a meagre 140 titles. But within four and a half years E. L. James’s self-published Fifty Shades of Grey became the first ebook to sell one million copies on Amazon. Suddenly anyone who could put finger to keyboard imagined they might do the same!

But now it’s six years on and we’re no longer at the start, but mired somewhere in the middle—with the market not just flooded but drowning. Up-to-date figures are hard to come by, but a reasonable estimate is that approximately 2 to 2.5 million new titles (both traditional and self-published) are released worldwide each year. New titles! Each year! The majority hail from China (440,000 in 2013, or approximately one-fifth of all new releases) and presumably appeal to a market specifically limited by language—but even so! It’s a frightening prospect, but with self-publishing and distribution made so easy these days there may now be as many authors as there are regular readers (or, rather worryingly, even more authors than there are regular readers!).

With these odds, how is the reading public to judge the worth of any given title? How can they know that someone’s lovingly-crafted title even exists? It used to be they could rely on the good reputation of the legacy publishers. So-and-so published it, so it must be good…or at least of a certain quality. Join me next time to judge whether that is still the case.

This month’s special offer is for Big Bona Ogles, Boy!: Octavius Guy & The Case of the Mendacious Medium (#3). There’s a new woman in town, recently arrived from Boston, who claims to be able to contact the dead. Need it be said that our Victorian boy detective remains unconvinced? Offer ends on April 30th 2018 and, no, there are no strings attached. Why shell out good money if you don’t have to? You’ll find links and details on my website.

“My favorite Victorian boy investigator sets off to solve a new mystery…Words cannot describe just how much I enjoy Octavius.”—Bethany Swafford (The Quiet Reader) Goodreads Reviewer (5 stars)

Happy reading!
Michael

Find me on my website Michael Gallagher Writes
on Facebook
follow me on Twitter @seventh7rainbow
and visit Murder Most Cozy for a round up of the coziest Crimes & Thrillers reviews

Last August I attended a wedding where, for the first time, I met two people who are or were involved in the world of traditional publishing. One was Fiona, a former manager at a large prestigious publishing house, who, it turned out, commissioned a report fourteen years ago on an early draft of my first novel, The Bridge of Dead Things.

It “quickly establishes itself as a remarkably assured, well-written, funny and complex Victorian Gothic,” the report read. “It is at the very least extremely good, and quite possibly exceptional…but it’s definitely not a HarperCollins children’s book. More Wilkie Collins than The Diamond of Drury Lane, in other words.”

Prescient, no? I’d never thought of it as a children’s book, but as rejection letters go, they don’t get much better than that! It went on to recommend I find myself a literary agent, which I did, though it took a further four years. I mention all this to establish my credentials. Although I may now be an indie author, at one time or other I have had my feet in both camps. It used to be that the reading public could rely on the good reputation of legacy publishing houses. They would be spared the spelling errors and ragged grammar that supposedly typify an indie author’s work. But is that really still the case?

Hands up those of you who have come across multiple typos and poorly-spaced text (where five words are strung out across a line like a few bits of pegged-out washing) in any of the traditionally-published hard-copy books you’ve read lately? Ah. All of you then. In one I recently came across, a sentence petered out halfway through. Cut off in its prime. In another—or possibly the same one—one character started speaking before miraculously transforming himself into another (the one who should have been speaking all along). The arts of typesetting and proofreading aren’t dead; they’re just no longer guaranteed.

And it’s not as if traditional publishers seem especially au fait with the genres we read. One claimed that their author was famed for his “comic book series”. Presumably they meant “graphic novel series”, and not some unintentional put-down. And I’m not sure any of them knows what a “cozy mystery” is (but we know, don’t we, readers?).

Nor is their disservice limited to readers. Authors get it too. A three-book deal with a big, fat advance? If your first title fails to make back that advance, the remainder accrues to the second title, and then the third. Royalties used to be based on the selling price of your book. Where books were discounted, this led to proportionately lower receipts. Children’s author Nicola Davies (@nicolakidsbooks) sold over 13,000 copies of one of her titles and received just £800. That’s about 16 pence per copy. But more and more, royalties are being based on the publisher’s net receipts—not on the book’s retail price—after all of their costs are deducted. And I’m sure this will have a knock-on effect for the 25-40% of your royalties that go to your agent. They won’t be much pleased. My biggest bugbear at the moment, however, is to do with publishers’ territorial rights, and the short-sighted, parochial unwillingness for their counterparts in other countries to take on a title if they don’t think their readers will accept the colloquialisms it contains. Case in point: Charlotte MacLeod. She’s virtually unknown here in the UK. And that truly is a crime!

While it’s true that, at a time when the market is flooded, brands stand out, as readers and authors we cling to this cheery notion very much in the sense of “between a rock and a hard place”.

This month’s special offer is for The Bridge of Dead Things. A working-class Victorian girl discovers she has a unique if unwanted power and is soon drawn into a world of seances, ghost grabbers…and murderers. Definitely not a HarperCollins children’s book! Offer ends on May 31st 2018. You’ll find links and details on my website.

“I absolutely loved it! I don’t give out 5 stars very often, but I did for this book! Mysteries abound and Gallagher does an amazing job creating an atmosphere of rising fear and creepiness…I hope that there are many more additions to the Lizzie Blaylock series because I now consider myself a firm fan!”—Suzy Schettler LibraryThing Early Reviewer (5 stars)

Happy reading!
Michael

Find me on my website Michael Gallagher Writes
on Facebook
follow me on Twitter @seventh7rainbow
and visit Murder Most Cozy for a round up of the coziest Crimes & Thrillers reviews