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Until recently, if you were self-published virtually any agent or book editor worth her salt didn’t want to hear about it. Many of them would want nothing to do with you at all, as if your self-published status might rub their own cachet off or something. But given the tenor and content of the sessions at this year’s Writers Digest Business of Getting Published Conference, I predict it won’t be long before agents and editors will routinely respond to queries by asking what you’ve self-published, and how it’s doing. That’s right, and you heard it here first: I predict that within 5 years, self-publishing will no longer be an option, but a prerequisite for unknown, aspiring authors hoping to land a mainstream publishing deal. It’s the logical, inevitable next step in author platform.
At the conference, the prevailing message was that authors, both aspiring and already published, need to be getting themselves and their work out there in front of the reading public at every opportunity. And guess what? If you’re blogging or making your writing available for download in ebook or podcast formats you're already self-publishing. As for those who aren’t doing these things for fear of intellectual property theft, in numerous sessions attendees were reminded of Tim O’Reilly’s now legendary quote: that for anyone trying to build an audience, “Obscurity is a greater threat than piracy.”Seth Harwood and Scott Sigler, both of whom broke through to mainstream success after building an audience for their podcasts, advised conference attendees that the best way to get publishers to sit up and take notice is to demonstrate your ability to build an audience and move your material on your own. Social media guru Chris Brogan said the easiest way to get a book deal is not to need one---because you’ve already established your own platform and have your own audience---, and proposed that rather than follow established roads, aspiring authors should go where there are no roads and create their own. Writers Digest Publisher and Editorial Director Jane Friedman reminded us that here in the 21st century there are no longer any rules in publishing, and reiterated the notion that for aspiring authors, platform comes before the book deal. Be The Media author David Mathison hammered away at the importance of connecting with your readership directly. Booksquare’s Kassia Krozser urged authors to push out into every available channel to enable readers to find them, and as for The Writer Mama Christina Katz, the title of her most recent book is Get Known Before The Book Deal ('nuff said!). So, how do you intend to enable readers to find you, or build an audience, or connect with readers directly, or get known before the book deal if you’re not publishing or podcasting any of your work? You can’t just tell your site or blog visitors your writing is great, they should trust you on that, and then expect to hold their interest with what amounts to a lengthy series of hang-in-there-I-swear-when-the-book-comes-out-you’ll-love-it messages. As we all already know, a manuscript’s content is only one piece---an increasingly small piece, unfortunately---of the decision-making puzzle when it comes to convincing a publisher to make an offer. When the editors, marketing wonks and other decision makers get together to consider which manuscripts to acquire, Risk is the name of the elephant in the room and mitigating risk is the key to a sale. When you approach an agent or editor with a quality manuscript, you may convince them you can write but you’re doing nothing to reduce their fears about the eventual book’s performance in the marketplace. If you can approach those same people with a book that’s already in the marketplace and already has a fan base, you’ve already answered the question of how the book will perform post-publication. You’ve reduced their antacid intake by half and given them some very good reasons to invest in you and your book.Don’t let anyone tell you self-publishing is a desperation move. It’s a power move.
By now, most any writer on Twitter has heard of #queryfail and the subsequent #agentfail. For those of you reading who have no idea what I'm talking about, #queryfail was a collection of Twitter posts made by literary agents in which they variously railed, joked, complained, and talked about failed queries from writers. Writers shot back with their own Twitter stream: #agentfail, in which they mostly railed and complained about how agents fail the authors who query them.
There have been many, many postmortem articles and blog posts on the matter, and when I come across them I'll generally leave a comment noting that indie authors aren't dependent on agents at all. Following one such comment, on a Guardian UK article, I got the following response:
Could we have a reality check here?
April forgot to mention that self-published and vanity published books don't sell, don't get distributed, don't get reviewed, and don't get recognition. The writer has to take on all sorts of admin and PR duties that should be left to the publisher. It's a waste of money you almost certainly don't have, and time that could be spend reading and writing.
And here's my reply:
1999 called; it wants its attitudes about self-publishing back.
My indie books DO sell.
My indie books are distributed by Amazon, the #1 bookseller in the world. I could also get them stocked by independent brick and mortar booksellers if I wanted to, and in fact have done so in the past, but I've found it's much harder to move those brick-and-mortar store copies than to simply keep selling online.
Anyway, IMO the brick-and-mortar chain bookstore in its current incarnation is an endangered species, and investing heavily in brick-and-mortar distribution is a waste of money for all but the biggest-selling mainstream books. To be clear, yes, I AM saying that it's a waste for MOST mainstream-published books, not just indie books. I blogged about it: Big Chain Bookstore Death Watch.
My books get reviewed on Amazon and elsewhere, and they get recognition in the form of personal recommendations, recommendations on Twitter, blogs, and Facebook, and mentions in publications as well known as The Wall Street Journal, Business Week and The Huffington Post.
Today's indie author is a far cry from the "vanity" author of yesteryear. Today's indie author is an entrepreneur who realizes he's running a business and acts accordingly. It's actually not all that difficult nor expensive to promote yourself and your books in today's web-centric Western culture, but mainstream publishers still seem to be taking a wait-and-see attitude, as if the web may yet prove to be a temporary fad.
It's no secret that the publishing industry is dragging its feet when it comes to new technology, and given that new technologies are the best ways to reach and meet readers, authors who have signed with mainstream publishers are actually at a disadvantage when it comes to fully leveraging all that the web and related technologies have to offer. Even if a given mainstream author is willing and able to leverage those technologies himself, he's hamstrung by his publisher, who controls not only his work but his image.
Come, Max. Join us here in 2009.
Okay, I'm delaying the next installment of the series from The IndieAuthor Guide one more time, but I don't feel too bad about it since my previous entry provided a means to get a free copy of the entire book. I'm afraid there's something I'm feeling pretty fired up about, and I've been encouraged to blog on it. Read on.Bottom Line It For Me, Baby Version (200 Words or Less)In this year's Amazon Breakthrough Awards contest, first round eliminations will be on the basis of a 300-word marketing pitch---not even a synopsis. No entrant's actual writing will get a look-see unless the entry passes the marketing-trial-by-fire elimination round. This is reflective of the sweeping, and to my mind, catastrophic changes currently revolutionizing the publishing industry to both readers' and writers' detriment. There was a time when the whole thing was about passion: a writer pouring months or even years of his life into a story or idea that wouldn't let go of him, then connecting with an agent who was so touched by the material that she was willing to risk her reputation on it by forwarding it on to editors, one or more of whom would be so inspired by the material to champion it up the chain of command. Now, passion has nothing to do with it. Books are sold to big publishers on the basis of a sales pitch, the same way screenplays are sold to studios. To all those who've doubted the viability of, or necessity for, an indie author movement to match those in music and film: can you hear me now?Go On An' Run Yo Mouth, I Ain't Got Nuthin' But Time Version (Can't Promise It Won't Go On Forever):The fact that the first round of eliminations in this year's Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest is based on a 300-word-maximum marketing pitch, not even a synopsis, and no one's actual writing will get a look-see unless it survives the pitch round, is downright depressing. The contest will accept up to 10,000 entries and whittle that pool down to 2,000 on the basis of a pitch, which is described in the contest FAQ as follows:"The pitch is more than just a summary, it needs to be a well written explanation of what the book is about. Talk about your novel's strengths with respect to how it is being evaluated; Think about the elements chosen on which to judge your novel for the purpose of this contest; its overall strength, plot development, character development, originality of idea, and writing style or prose. Take the time to study your intended market and make sure your pitch demonstrates that you understand how your book fits within this market and how it will identify with your audience. Remember the book should resonate with who your readers are. The Pitch should be a concise explanation of your book and why the reader would want to read your novel."Considering the fact that my 'Bottom Line It For Me' section above is 199 words, 300 words doesn't seem nearly adequate to squeeze in all the pith the contest organizers are demanding. What the ABNA contest seems to be asking for is an 'elevator pitch', which is the hated yoke of the screenwriter. The idea is, if you're in an elevator with a movie exec, how can you convince the exec to request your script in two minutes or less? All there's time for is a logline and a thumbnail market analysis, like this:
[Title] is a [genre] that's like [recent hit movie or all-time classic movie] meets [recent hit movie or all-time classic movie]. When [what happens?], a [who or what? - species, job title, gender, other concise descriptive] must [do what?] to [accomplish or avert what outcome?]. My research shows [statistic or researched factoid], and according to [reference magazine, well-known website or other authority], [genre or other important aspect of story] is very popular with [demographic]. [Industry person or other respected icon] read it and said [rave review remarks].
Just substitute the word "book" for the word "movie" in the above template, and you're good to go for your book pitch. I have some experience writing these things from my screenwriting days, but the fact that you have to write them at all, or be rehearsed in 'elevator pitching', was a big part of the reason I gave up on screenwriting. It's a soul-killing exercise in taking something you've poured your heart and soul into over months or even years, and boiling it down to an assurance of how much money can be made selling it. Once upon a time the screenwriter's job was to craft a touching or compelling script, and the producers were the ones who came in and bastardized it and dumbed it down for maximum marketing and profit. Now, they expect the script to come to them pre-dumbed-down and pre-bastardized, already packaged like a commodity they can immediately use to forecast sales. Sadly, the same thing is now happening with books.
As anyone reading this blog knows, a typical writer must feel a great deal of passion about a given story or character to invest the necessary time and effort in writing an entire book about it, then edit and polish that book in round after round of revisions. Yet when the time comes to try and land an agent or sell the manuscript to a publisher, the writer is supposed to just shut that passion off like a water tap, adopt the cold detachment of a marketing wonk and focus exclusively on his book's prospects for commercial success. The only ones who do it well are writers like Nicholas Sparks, who BEGINS with brainstorming about what will sell in today's market and works backward from there to come up with a story and characters. Writers like him are focused on the book's commercial prospects from the beginning; they don't write stories, they engineer them. That's why there are so many soulless, forgettable books these days, and why I've gone indie. In an October interview in Entertainment Weekly, Mr. Sparks describes his "process" thus:''After every book I feel like the well is dry,'' he says. ''Well, that's it! Got nothing. Done. Washed up. Don't know what I'm going to do. Maybe I'll write a cookbook.'' But then he practices his standard method of formulating the skeleton of his next love story. ''Okay,'' he says, getting excited, ''I just wrote The Lucky One. So the next one won't be a military story. I know that right off the bat. These characters were in their 20s, okay, so the characters are not in their 20s. Okay, so if you're in your 40s, what are the dilemmas? Oh, wait, I've got Nights in Rodanthe coming out, and that's a love story with characters in their 40s, so if I come out with a book just like that, people will think I'm not original. Okay, what are the dilemmas that typically face 30-year-olds that I haven't done? Are we dealing with a woman who has put herself on hold for the sake of her career? Very common for women. See, you want something universal. So, hmmm, where does that go? Could be anything. Hmmm, let me do her biological clock. Hmmm, maybe she goes to her 20th high school reunion? Ah, yes, maybe she had a boyfriend? Was he ever married? Was he divorced, is he widowed? Does he have kids? What if this, what if that, what if this...''
Now, I don't know about you, but my own writing process does not begin with market analysis, theories about "dilemmas that typically face 30-year-olds", issues "very common for women," or "something universal". I tend to begin with characters or situations I feel passionate about, then work very hard to do them enough justice to inspire my eventual readers to feel as strongly about them as I did when I sat down to write. Apparently, I am part of an outmoded breed by today's publishing standards. My silly notion of beginning with something I find personally inspirational must appear downright quaint to a bestselling technician like Mr. Sparks.Clearly, the book business is breaking down into the same two camps as the movie business, with the mainstream dominated by disposable projects and celebrity vehicles that got made on the basis of a marketing pitch, and the independent path being the only route left to people who got into the whole thing because they wanted to tell a story they felt passionate about. To me as a reader, it's depressing, because mainstream books of real quality and depth are few and far between anymore. But to me as an indie author, it's further reassurance that I'm on the right path and that an indie movement in authorship is both viable and inevitable.If you're an engineer of stories, capable of successfully working backward from market demographics like Mr. Sparks, you no doubt have a fine future ahead of you in the 2009 ABNA and with mainstream publishers. Otherwise, ask not for whom the indie author movement calls: it calls for you.
