Here’s a series of articles on writing, by the two-time Hugo Award-winning author, Robert J. Sawyer.
The columns focus on practical advice, solutions and problems faced by beginning science fiction writers–and most of it is applicable for writing in any genre. Good stuff.
Another Sky Press is an example of how print-on-demand, internet distribution and alternative payment models might be changing the face of publishing. First, all their books are free for download online. Sure, you’re thinking, but according to litfarm, that’s practically mainstream. Well, they also sell hard-copies of their books at cost, plus an optional “contribution”, and that contribution goes to paying the author. From their site:
We want people to read our books, even if they read them for free. This isn’t anything revolutionary – unless your local librarian is a subversive of the highest order.
To best accomplish this goal we release all of our books online for free. Because we know how good ‘real’ books feel in your hands, we also price our trade-paperbacks via a sliding scale system in which the base price is the cost for us to ship you a book (we don’t make a penny) and you set the final price by choosing what you’d like to contribute (if anything) to the creative team behind it (most of which goes to the author). You can’t ever be ripped off. We call this pro-artist, pro-audience system neo-patronage.
There are a whole bunch of reasons we are doing this. Some of them are idealistic (we trust people!). Some of them are economic (we want everyone to be able to afford our books!). Some of them are philosophical (we believe it is a better system!). Some of them are technological (flow with technology, don’t fight it!).
You can read more on their philosophy of publishing at their site, but in effect, they’re happy enough if someone downloads and reads their books. They’re even happier if someone orders a book at cost and they make nothing, since again someone is reading their books. If the person wants to pay more, it goes directly to the creative team behind the book–which they mention means mostly the author, but presumably includes the designer, editor, etc.
The whole thing reminds me of the 1,000 True Fans idea I blogged a while back, and could be a great way to establish a following that could take you into the mainstream. Or who knows, could support you outright.
I’m currently listening to a podcast of the first chapter of Ash Dogs by Justin Nicholes, a novel about a recently discharged marine, looking to get back the parts of himself that he lost in Iraq. Check it out.
(Thanks, Groundswell Collective.)
Ack! I’ve been neglecting the litfarm lately–things are crazy at my day job–and I apologize for that. I’ve got over a dozen posts in the queue, but they all need some attention first. In the meantime, to hold you over, The Guardian has an article about the boom in the self-publishing industry.
While definitive figures on sales generated by self-published books are hard to come by, there are estimates that they could be well into the billions of dollars. A report, Under the Radar by the Book Industry Study Group estimated that non-calculated sales by smaller publishers and self-publish companies could be as high as $14.2bn (£7.3bn) in 2005, the last year statistics were available.
A quick look at Lulu’s list of best-selling fiction has an author who turned his self-published novel into a book deal with St Martin’s. Admittedly, he writes somewhat Christian fiction, which is a market that’s been under served by traditional publishing houses, but even so it’s encouraging.
Another interesting site mentioned in the article is Wowio.com, an online store that sells nothing but ebooks.
So go read that. When you’re done, there ought to be some more posts here.
A lot has been written about the long tail, and how internets is workin’ for businesses like Amazon, who make a good deal of their money off niche sales that are possible because of the large number of customers they can reach with internets. Good old internets.
But you’re probably wondering, What Can Internets Do for Me? Kevin Kelly’s recent blog post 1,000 True Fans aims to find out. The short version:
A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.
His argument is compelling. He says that the True Fan is someone who will read everything you write, go to all your concerts, buy the t-shirt, everything. If you figure that a True Fan is going to spend $100 per year doing this, that’s $100,000 of income for you, the artist. This works especially well for musicians, who have concerts, t-shirts, mp3s and related swag, but check out the angle for an author. Say your novel is selling for $15. Whether you’re providing a print-on-demand title or have a publisher, if you can get the word out to your 1,000, that’s $15,000 in sales at the cost of keeping a blog, an email list or a forum. That’s enough to make a first-time author significantly more attractive to a potential publisher.
And one thousand is a relatively small number. If you managed to get a few hundred a year, you’d have your thousand in under five years. As I mentioned in an earlier post, word of mouth is still the number one way publishers sell books. That’s 1,000 words. Of mouths. Or just mouths.
It’s a lot, is what I’m saying.
The article also talks about Street Performer Protocol (a term I was familiar with as “ransomware”) and other alternate methods of funding creative projects, including Fundable, a site built to handle the tricky business.
The CBC’s 2008 Canada Reads series started yesterday, with the following books and their celebrity champions, girded for battle in a no-holds-barred… you get the idea.
* Singer-songwriter Dave Bidini defending Paul Quarrington’s hockey novel, King Leary.
* Astronaut Steve MacLean defending Thomas Wharton’s Icefields.
* Newfoundland author Lisa Moore defending Mavis Gallant’s From the 15th District.
* Hip-hop poet and community worker Jemini defending Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring.
* Little Mosque on the Prairie star Zaib Shaikh defending Timothy Findley’s Not Wanted on the Voyage.
I love the Canada Reads series, because the books aren’t current hot titles (or even always in print–King Leary got a new run when it was announced), hot authors, or anything except what the panelists like. Plus, all the books get a bump in sales from the publicity, and even though there’s bragging rights, there’s no prize. It’s all fun.
In this age of desktop publishing, internets and other fast… things… um, why is there such a long wait between signing a publishing contract and seeing your book on the shelves? Turns out that in spite of, and in some ways because of, our fleeting relationship with news and current events, the number one way of publicizing a book remains word-of-mouth. And building that sort of buzz takes time.
The bad news is that marketing budgets are small, especially for authors who don’t have a best seller in their backlist. The good news?
Much to the anxiety of midlist writers clamoring for attention, chain stores determine how many copies of a title to buy based on the expected media attention and the author’s previous sales record. Which is why publishers say it’s easier to sell an untested but often hyped first-time author than a second or a third novel.
This sort of news makes me optimistic for first-timers. Sure, you may not be hyped, but your competition is also starved for marketing attention, so viral marketing makes more and more sense, even before you’ve signed with an agent or a publisher.