Today’s the last day of April. A third of the year is over. Wasn’t yesterday New Year’s? At least while time’s flying, I’m having fun! Hope you are too!
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know I’m a reader. I prefer reading to TV, movies, video games, boardgames, you name it. Reading takes you to a million different worlds without leaving the comfort of your own home. Reading’s my favorite way to travel. Reading also stimulates the imagination like nothing else. And that’s a good thing.
Earlier this month, on Twitter, someone started the hashtag #IndieApril. The goal was to get people to buy, read, and review books written by independent author/publishers.
Being an independent author/publisher and reader, I was excited to jump on the bandwagon. After all, reading is a good wagon to jump on.
I ended up buying 7 books. Here they are:
The Tainted Dollar by Chris Derrick
Hotel Obscure by Lisette Brodey
Voyager by Carl Rackman
The Monkey Idol by KD McNiven
A Brother’s Secret by Andy Graham
Connor’s Gambit by Z Gottlieb
Into Armageddon by Jeff DeMarco
As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is a good book in the eye of the reader. And just as there is a lot of beauty out there, there are a heck of a lot of good books that just don’t get the press.
The editors who work for publishers are mere mortals. They put their shoes on the same way you and I do. They are biased and opinionated individuals whose job is to make money for the publisher, the businessman, they work for.
The stories are legion of editors who passed on the eventual bestseller. The stories are legion of editors who thought book X was the next Gone With the Wind — and it didn’t even sell 10 copies.
Why is this? It’s because publishers aren’t interested in art. They’re interested in money. How many bucks will they make on Book X versus Book Y? This makes sense if we understand that publishing is a business. The publishing house’s sole purpose is to make money for the owners.
Businesses exist to make money. It’s why Jeff Bezos started Amazon — to make money. To get rich if possible. It’s why Random House exists — to make money for their German and British owners. Publishers only see books as dollar signs.
For the last 50 plus years I’ve read in writing magazines and now on the internet, that bestsellers keep publishers afloat. On virtually all of their other books they lose money. The likes of Patterson and Rowling and King, enable publishers to publish the likes of you and me — if we can get past the gatekeepers (editors). And there were other bestsellers who allowed the publishers to gamble on Patterson, Rowling, and King.
As much as I don’t like the monopolistic mindset of Amazon, I’m forced to say that it was the Kindle that changed publishing forever.
Suddenly, overnight, not a single writer needed an agent or a publisher. Writers were free at last. There were no more gatekeepers to prevent our voices from being heard.
Publishing had suddenly become a true democracy. Publishing became as easy as buttering a slice of toast.
Of course, people have this proclivity to make easy things difficult. And so now we see indies themselves setting up all manner of roadblocks to prevent the newbies from entering the ranks of the august.
I hear constantly that one has to have an editor, maybe several! I was told by one nobody author that if I didn’t have money to hire an editor, I should hold a garage sale to raise the money to hire one. What idiocy! As if I have enough stuff I don’t want to make even $10.
Here are more must haves. One has to have a professionally made book cover. That one has to pay a formatter for a professionally formatted book. And one has to pay for lots of marketing.
What’s going on is simple. In the first place, all those editors that publishers have let go in the last 30 years are seeking to feed off of the indie revolution. Quite honestly, indies don’t need professional editors. We are our own publishing house of our own books. We don’t need someone who doesn’t know us to tell us what our books should or shouldn’t be.
In the second place, indies themselves — to eliminate competition — set up barriers to new writers. Of course there are no barriers to publishing today, so these people play the traditional publishing mind game and make gullible newbies think they need all the above mentioned crap.
The indie publishing waters are filled with sharks and piranha — let the newbie beware. I say ignore those naysayers and shysters. Just write and publish your book. Then learn how to market it.
Every day I’m amazed at the good indie writers I discover. Writers who’s books languish at the 500,000 or one million rank in the paid Kindle Store. Writers who are usually better than the indie bestsellers — most of whom are of no better quality than the traditionally published crowd.
On this last day of #IndieApril, I encourage you to pick up a book or two written by an independent author/publisher. Here are 10 suggestions:
Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!
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Got to agree with Brenda, a great deal of truth here. Every place there is a potential for money to be made, there is also a sea of parasites lined up with a hand out and a snake-oil pitch. These people used to have to travel from town to town showing their worthless tripe to 100 people a week. Now, thanks to the internet, they can reach billions in seconds, but that doesn’t make them any more honest. Caveat emptor is still valuable advice.
On the other hand, the other sad truth I’ve learned is that if you don’t have a traditional publisher pushing a campaign for you, then you will have to do it yourself, and a worthwhile campaign, one that’s going to generate a meaningful amount of sales, is going to cost tens of thousands for TV, magazines, radio… If Hemingway were starting out today, he could indie-publish The Old Man and the Sea, and if he didn’t have that ad money to spend, he’d go to his grave with no-one having read it but his wife and kids. Case in point: I’ve put my entire signature series, Beyond the Rails, on writing-dot-com, and promote it there and on other SM, and in the week-and-a-half since the whole trilogy has been available for a mouse click, one person has clicked on the folder to see what’s in it. *sigh* I often wonder what one national TV spot would do for sales…
So, thanks for doing your bit to promote your fellow indies. As you know, I used to do this too, but I guess everyone has their point of diminishing returns, and I hit mine a while back. Best of luck to you with everything; I really hope you catch that break and make it big, but I have too many Xbox games I haven’t seen the end of, and I’ve tired of shouting in an empty auditorium.
Give ’em heck, brother, great piles of heck!
I agree, Jack: the parasites are out there in droves. We’ve talked and written about this at length, and I’ll continue to do so.
However, the sad truth is nobody is in the writer’s corner. Not even the traditional publishers. The Big 5 want to know the size of your platform before they’ll even look at you. They want to know what you will bring to the table. These days, Hemingway wouldn’t have gotten to first base with a traditional publisher. Back in his day, there were hundreds of publishers. Today there are 5. The small press is basically worthless.
A couple years ago, I read a tradionally published fantasy private detective novel. The writer and I chatted on Twitter. I asked when the next one was coming out. He said there won’t be a next one because the book didn’t make enough money for the publisher. He was moving on. Pity that. The book was very good.
There is only one low cost way to build your audience and that is the mailing list. Patty Jansen, an indie sci-fi and fantasy writer from Australia, has shown how to do it. Without being a bestseller or award winning writer. It’s a lot of work. But no one ever said being an author was easy.
Erle Stanley Gardner back in the ’20s was writing a 100,000 words a month and 90% of his stories got rejected. He’d write back to the pulp magazine editor and ask what he could do to improve the story so the editor would buy it. Then he had to re-learn everything when he graduated to novels, because the mainstream publisher didn’t want the pulp approach. So he did, and Perry Mason made him huge piles of money. And much of that time he also worked a full-time day job. He was a partner in a law firm.
It’s all work. Hard work. The snake oil salesman wants to feed our fantasy of getting something for nothing. And the gullible line up.
So far this year I’ve sold 42 books and had 2756 KU page reads. To the best of my ability I’ve followed the indie maxim of write lots and publish often. I’ve promoted the heck out of other authors, and had a few return the favor. My mailing lists, so far, are next to worthless. Now that I’ve learned a few more tricks of the trade, I hope to be able to engage more and turn those next to worthless lists into a team. But that will take time. Thus far, anyone sane would’ve thrown in the towel. Five years and only 563 books sold and 30,700 KU pages read? But I love what I do and when someone tells me they loved one of my books, that comment is worth far more than the money.
I resent the snake oil salesmen not because they make money, but because they sell a pack of lies that eventually discourage writers from pursuing their dream. And that goes for the traditional publishing snake oil salesmen as well, because traditional publishing is rife with hucksters.
I’ll keep giving ’em heck. I love what I do. I hate to see good writers throw in the towel — because then we all lose.
Besides I haven’t figured out how X-box works. 😉
You plug it in, turn it on, and follow the instructions. Games aren’t just mindless shooters like DOOM anymore. You follow a convoluted storyline with plot twists, deal with characters of dubious character, and are often surprised out of your socks by the ending, which may be one of a number.
But, yeah. You’re practically a best-seller next to my stats. I have four books in print under my own name (anthologies belong to someone else), and in that same five years, I’ve sold 98, two of them this year. The lion’s share are the first two, and I suspect that was because Goodreads was still offering their free giveaway for new books. Using that, I generated five to six hundred people who were at least aware of their existence. After that, they started charging more than the book is likely to make in royalties to post a campaign. Corporate snake-oil salesmen. . . I enjoy the process of world-building, character creation, and all that goes with it, and if I had, I don’t know, a dozen readers, I’d keep writing to support their enjoyment, but the numbers speak for themselves. You know how much work it is to create these worlds, and when the only person living in them is me, well, I can do that without spending three hours a day to write it all down. I’m known for a phrase over at WdC: Writing is hard work. If it wasn’t, we’d all be best sellers. Give yourself a chance, and do the work.
My working days are about over, though I do have an offer for a series in an anthology mag. 1920s horror, and whatever I submit has to meet their standards, but I’m going to submit and try to get that gig. . . But that’s my last hurrah. If that doesn’t pan out, Skyrim looms ahead.
Once again, best of luck to you, brother! I’d love to know a best-seller, and why not you? Keep giving them heck!
Writing is hard work. I grant you that. But it’s a different hard. It’s not like pounding rocks.
Third-parties, like Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Bookbub, and the like, change their rules all the time. That’s why when I see writers locking themselves into things like Facebook groups, I ask myself, “What if I did that and then Facebook changed the rules? I’d be screwed.” So I don’t lock myself in. More than ever I’m convinced indie writing is more like a mailorder business than traditional publishing.
I wrote poetry for 15 years and got a bit of reknown amongst at least the editors and a handful of big shots. There is no money in poetry and no hope of money. Poetry is a pure love game. To be honest, I never knew if anyone, other than editors, ever actually read any of my poems. Hopefully someone did.
Now I write fiction. Perhaps that poetry experience influences my attitude towards an audience and money. Because other than someone telling you they like your book, sales are all you have to go on. But if you aren’t creative in getting those sales, then you aren’t giving yourself — or your potential reader — a fair chance.
I’ve seen numerous people start reading one of my books on KU and then stop. That can be mighty discouraging. I simply tell myself, that person wasn’t in my audience. I have several hundred people on my mailing lists. I know of one, because she wrote and told me, who loves Justinia Wright. One out of several hundred. And the others aren’t buying books. That can be mighty discouraging.
The best way to make money and get a following is as a friend of mine keeps telling me: write hot romance, or start a cult. 🙂
Years ago, before indie publishing, a friend of mine failed at fiction. No editor would buy his books. He turned to non-fiction, because he wanted to be a writer. He earned a decent living writing biographies and giving talks. Flexibility is the name of the game.
In the end, my friend, we will each carve our own paths. I write because I love writing. Even if I am my own audience. As Chesterton supposedly said, “When I want to read a good book, I write one.” But I know I’m not the only one out there who likes what I like. Which means I do have an audience. I just have to find them — and that is very hard work. Plus, every book I write is a legacy. My heirs just might be better marketers than I am. And if they are, though dead, yet will I speak. That too is something to think about.
In the meantime, there are a few snakeoil salesmen folks need to be warned about. 🙂
I hope that gig comes through for you. Hate to see another good voice go silent.
Good article CW. There’s a lot of truth in it!
Thanks Brenda! Glad you think so!