THE STATE OF THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY & WHAT IT MEANS TO US

[Sandy]

Hi. I haven't posted before. I never considered myself a Sci-Fi/Fantasy author until a Midwest Book Review of my book came in calling it that. Fine with me! Some great books in those genres.

I'm writing about something different than genre definition. I'm writing about our future and that of the publishing industry.

I recently posted an article to my personal blog in response to a young literary agent's blog post about what the financial meltdown means to the publishing industry and young agents in particular. He is located in San Francisco, CA and his compatriots were in NYC.

This sort of thing excites me: My first career was in economics; I hold a BA and an MA in the subject and was a doctoral student at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. I also worked for a professor at the GSB for 18 years, helping him with his Negotiations course, and I held a few other plum jobs, like Economic Analyst of Santa Clara County.

We're in real shakedown of our economy and industry. As writers, authors, and readers, we need to concentrate on this more than the old, "I sent a query and no one answered." Or, "How do you punctuate a …" The issue I write about dwarfs this micro thinking.

Well, I wrote my heart out on my post and linked it to the young agent's site––a link to my blog hopefully follows, AN ECONOMIST’S LETTER TO YOUNG LITERARY AGENTS The last time I checked, the only response on the agent's site was another reader working out something a mean editor said to her.

No! The problem is: How are readers going to get the type of books that they really want if the publishing industry responds to the downturn by "turtling up"––going for what worked in the past and continuing the trend to Mega-authors in genre fields. How are new authors going to debut and authors of non-mainstream works going find shelf space? And what are discriminating readers going to do if all they're fed is mush?

How are we as a community going to respond?

I thought this group might have a more spirited response to my blog post, one that recognizes that we're in a time that requires a re-thinking of the industry and our roles in it.

If you click the link above (which I hope I did right), you'll see my article. We need to think on these things. I just got an email from Meg Weaver's Wooden Horse Magazine News, a comprehensive database for US magazines. (Wooden Horse Magazine
This link should take you to Meg's website. You want the October 19 2008 Newsletter.) To lift a line or two from that newsletter:

"Dear readers,

"Read this newsletter at your own risk. It may cause major depression.

"News from the magazine industry is so gloomy that Hearst not only closed COSMOGIRL* but the company-wide holiday party is canceled.

[She continues in this vein for a long time.:]

"Meg Weaver"

We readers, writers, and authors need to think on these issues, not the little issues which have beguiled us.

I put a radical and (partly) tongue-in-cheek solution to the inefficient querying process in the post on my blog.

I'd like to get this around goodreads as widely as possible. I'm a novice on posting and social interaction sites, so if you have tips as to how to spread the word, please send them or spread away yourself.

All the best to each and all of you,

Sandy Nathan
Numenon

[Leslie Ann]

Hi Sandy,
My first series of novels is being put out by a small press, and when I heard all the bad news about the financial meltdown, I felt a momentary surge of panic. Fortunately, my publisher assures me they are still in good shape, but I still worry about the future.

We as authors are going to have to realize that it is up to US to promote our works. Our roles have always been thus and won't change. Whether one is self-published, with a small press that has no promotional budget to speak of, or a lesser/unknown author with one of the majors, self-promotion is most often the only way to get info about our works out to our target audiences.

It's very hard work, but absolutely necessary, and the core of any promotional strategy in this day and age has to be the Internet. It's where the vast majority of people will buy their books in the very near future. Having a presence on social networking sites is mandatory, as is having a well-designed website.

As long as we writers aren't afraid to embrace the Internet and don't limit ourselves to thinking that we can only succeed within the traditional publishing paradigm, then we will prosper, even through hard times.

Leslie Ann Moore

Leslie Ann Moore

[Sandy]

Hi. I wrote at long response to you, had to change screens, and. returning to this screen, find my response is gone. Yipes.

Fast recap:
I agree with you. We have to do the promotion ourselves. The basis of promotion is reaching out and saying,"Hi! This is who I am," to others. It's pretty easy, actually. I really like people, most of them. Writers.

On that vein, I just put up a new piece on my blog about the importance of winning. It's written about winning in horse shows, and pitched to writers as well. Here's a link:
WHAT WINNING MEANS Lots of photos from our ranch and the shows.

All the best,
Sandy
Numenon