C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

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05/14/2010 • 12:37 PM 0

Self-publishing pros and cons

Self-publishing is easier than ever and it’s only becoming easier. The problem is, what to do with it once the printer delivers all those boxes to your garage?

1. Most self-published books look self-published. Between bad printing, poor design and an absence of proofing and editing, they often don’t look impressive.
2. Many bookstores won’t carry them. Publishers have access to a distribution network self-published authors do not.
3. Self-publishing still wafts the stink of stigma.

And yet, self-publishing can be successful. When it is successful, it’s because the author has a business plan to combat 1,2, and 3. The author hires an editor, isn’t shy about promotion, gets a website and/or podcast going and builds a platform to call a congregation.

The Wealthy Barber was an early winner in self-publishing. Publishers have offered to publish that book. The author turned them down since he likes to sell his own book, retain all the rights and keep the profits. Now he’s publishing a very successful line of cookbooks for other authors as well.

A few weeks ago I chatted with an author at her book signing. Lorina Stephens has 30 years experience in publishing and decided to publish her own books. They looked great. Now she’s become a publisher, as well. Next year her company, Five Rivers, will publish a bunch of authors.

It can be done well. The problem is that the vast majority are not done well.

Filed under: publishing, publishing, self-publishing

05/13/2010 • 10:52 PM 0

Querying Agents, Blagents and Checking Out Their Blogs

Email has made querying is easier than it used to be (and the same with rejection.) There are still a few ancient agents still murdering trees but generally we’re firing off our missives in pixels and saving stamps. Presumably the agents and editors who insist on snail mail ride to work on horseback. As for the rest, there are numerous agent blogs so you can take their temperatures and read between the snarkiness to divine where they fall on the bonehead/human being/transcendent genius maven index.

They all have two things in common: they complain about getting lousy manuscripts to evaluate (as if we all don’t have aspects of our jobs that suck) and they are all looking for a book to fall in love with. (Maybe yours! Well, not yours, but somebody’s!)

I’m working on an agent query now. It’s a mammoth exercise in second-guessing that goes beyond editing. It’s more like looking for the tiniest excuse for the query letter to be laughed at, denigrated or misconstrued. And then blogged about. (I’m also naked in the paranoid fantasy that ensues and it’s really, really cold.)

We were all happier before the Internet and the wave of agent blogs. We did much the same submission for everybody back then and didn’t see the sausage getting rejected and thrown on the slaughterhouse floor. Now the agent blogs are there for us all to see the sausage not getting made in ugly detail.

BONUS:

Don’t believe me. Go to their blogs and form your own opinions. Best thing? They all have their individual quirks and guidelines laid out somewhere in their blogs. Look it up before submitting. They’re looking for any excuse to say no. Don’t give it to them.

*About the term blagent. It means a blogging agent and no, I cannot recall who coined the term first.

Filed under: agents, publishing, agents, querying, writing

05/13/2010 • 4:48 PM 0

Johnny Carson, ebooks and Promotion

Everybody watched Johnny on late night, largely because there wasn’t much else to watch. Yes, he was a talented entertainer, but there weren’t nearly as many channels then. Johnny had market share. Now all information and entertainment markets are fragmented. There’s lots to do. I listened to a Joe Rogan podcast while I browsed for books today (and bought a Writer’s Digest and got meta with a book of clever Twitter quotes.) I wrote 2,000 words so far today (while listening to a brainwave app to stim my creative juices.) I updated my website while listening to Defcon Radio and Stephanie Miller. Later I’ll have lunch while watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I’ll get to reading two books I’m into now, but with all the options, I can’t really say I’m concentrating on those books, can I? I’ll read fewer books this year because I have more options and demands on my time.

Ebooks and the rampant development of self-publishing is democratizing publishing, destroying publishing or reinvigorating publishing, depending on who you listened to last. All that choice. All that stimulation. We are living in an age of wonders…if getting everything for free doesn’t screw it all up. We’re seeing it most clearly with newspapers and magazines. How will we monetize to sustain the publishing industry?

The publishing industry is on the brink of the chasm the music industry fell into. Unfortunately, it’s clear an awful lot of publishers haven’t learned a darn thing from the mistakes made by others. Part of the reason is that the lessons are not transferable. Unless you’re David Sedaris, you aren’t going out on a whirlwind concert tour to read to the masses. Musicians are earning less than before from CDs (what’s a CD again?) so they tour and sell merchandise. ZZ Top made millions from selling key chains at their concerts. Musicians have made more from selling their songs as ringtones than from selling them as songs!

Some publishers are resisting guerrilla marketing tactics, like serializing books on the web. Authors are twittering more and Facebooking, using social media themselves because some pub’s publicists aren’t helpful in regard to new technology. Many publicists are doing what they always did (and as a former publicist, I can tell you press releases and review copies are not hard. Still, many authors are neglected or bumph goes out late to the media.) Increasingly, authors are expected to have their own platform first. There’s a lot more DIY involved than ever before and publishers expect you, the author, to do it all. Fine.

It’s the author’s business and they should be more involved in promotion and publicity. No writer can afford to hope publicists who work for publishers (and all their books, not just you) are going to be much help. With all your social media options, authors have to take responsibility to make sure that gets done. Yes, it will be at your expense.

Don’t think your advance on your first book is going to pay for a new dryer. Buy a clothesline and put the rest of the advance back into promotion. And DIY! At least you’ll know the publicity chores get done.

BONUS:

Hire your own publicist, one who works just for you. The publisher’s in-house publicist can coordinate with your publicist (not the other way around.)

MORE ON EBOOKS and SELF-PUBLISHING TOMORROW

Filed under: publishing, ebooks, monetizing publishing

05/13/2010 • 2:04 AM 0

This is refreshing

Read Rick Sheehy’s Weblog for his take on how ebooks could be a good thing.

Filed under: publishing, ebooks, publishing

05/12/2010 • 2:34 PM 0

Here’s one of my favorite websites on publishing

We focus on the upside of the writing business for the same reason we focus on lottery winners. Literary Rejections on Display reflects the nitty-gritty kick in the teeth that is publishing.

Filed under: publishing, publishing, rejections

05/12/2010 • 12:30 AM 0

Keep submitting (but where, Spock?! Where?!)

At a recent writers conference I saw a sci-fi author extraordinaire speak about what it takes to be successful. One key point he made was to keep your work circulating. I have fallen down on this one. I have sent short stories out once or twice and left it at that. Some of them have won some contest mentions but I really haven’t been keeping up with submissions. My main focus is my writing business and my novel, but it’s time I took Sawyer’s advice and submitted my backlog of short stories. They’ll be a hit with someone somewhere and may help land a book contract in the future.

Today I submitted a piece to Writer’s Digest. I’ve won prizes from them before so it’s a logical place to return.

BONUS:

One question that comes up is: contests or literary journals? Here’s both barrels:

There are definitely some journals I would consider for submission, but very few. Read some to decide what fits your tone and sensibility. Many academic literary journals are a waste of time. Plotless, wishy-washy time. Watch those endings, for instance. They far too often seem to be designed to leave you confused with a vague sense of ennui. I’m a fan of plot over pretense and I don’t want to get lost in a sea of description (e.g. I don’t-can’t-won’t read Annie Dillard.)

And who’s reading all these stuffy lit journals, anyway? Does their readership outnumber the number of whipped cream foot fetishists of the world? Hmmm…(Oh! Oh! And incestuous! Did I mention incestuous? That or by some uncanny freak of the odds, all the very best literature emerged from the editor’s cohort in their MFA class.)

I have spoken.

Filed under: publishing, academic literary journals, writing contests, writing rant

05/10/2010 • 8:41 PM 1

Conflicting Writing Advice

Writing Guru #1:

Start with a hook. Come into the action late, leave the action early and finish each chapter with a breathtaking cliffhanger to propel the reader into the next chapter! All scripts need more and more tension!

Writing Guru #2:

Hooks are hokey. Take your time to build tension. Cliffhangers get tiring. I don’t want to see a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter. I want a feeling of satisfaction.

I’d feel some satisfaction if Writing Guru #1 and #2 duked it out in a naked Jello-and-broken-glass cage match. Who will win? Ooh, cliffhanger!

BONUS:

What do agents and editors want? They want to “be delighted!” What does that mean to you in any practical sense? Shit, man. It means shit. Write to delight yourself and hope that you find someone who agrees with your take. It’s your only hope.

Filed under: publishing, publishing, writing, writing advice

05/10/2010 • 5:04 PM 0

The Writer’s Trial

First they tell you your manuscript sucks, but genially. Form rejection. You chalk it up, along with all the others, as paying your dues just like everyone else.

Your next manuscript is also not for them. Or anyone else. Your family asks what happened to that book you were writing. You mumble and start drinking because that’s what writers do. Now you know why.

Someone tells you rejection is good for you. Someone else says it’s part of the process. You fantasize about murdering these people with ballpoint pens.

Another year passes and you submit again. This time they make fun of it in their agent blog. You question your raison d’etre but somehow you climb in off that ledge. You keep writing because…well, let’s face it, you are otherwise unemployable. You have always self-identified as a writer and if you aren’t that, what are you? (Uh-oh…you shove that dangerous and dim realization back into the dark because that way lies existential oblivion.)

Time passes. You’re grayer. You give up drinking for your health. Somehow you keep writing. The starter wife is out the door. At 20, yours was a romantic aspiration. Past 30 and still nothing? Pathetic. Don’t worry about her. She’ll find a nice safe accountant/lawyer/landowner.

Worry about you. A lot.

Another vampire manuscript is rejected because it’s a vampire novel…or they didn’t read it or they read it but they just graduated from a MFA program so obviously, no way. You’ll never really know.

More time passes. You take up drinking again, this time for your sanity. Your writing group loves your new book–except for the guy who hates everything. But who cares? They aren’t publishers or agents. They’re a bunch of unpublished losers. Just. Like. You.

They want to promote you at the dead end job that was supposed to be temporary…when was that? How many years ago? You turn it down so you can stay focussed on the next manuscript which doesn’t seem to have a thrid act. Or a second. Or maybe it’s the alcohol on top of the pills.

You send in the first manuscript to the first place by accident. (You’re forgiven a clerical error. After all, you’ve sent out a ton of these over a long time. And vodka may have been involved. You’re doing better though. You don’t have a problem as long as you don’t start drinking before noon.)

Surprise! Somebody thinks you’re a genius! (Same bonehead who turned you down as laughable years ago.) Now they want to publish all your manuscripts.

Huh.

ALTERNATE ENDING:

Publishing? That’s so over. You build a website and give your stories away and maybe sell some t-shirts. Now you start the day with lots of vodka. You can take that promotion now.

Finally your life is on track. Finally, you’re happy. You gave up. You’re free.

Filed under: publishing, Writers, publishing, querying

05/09/2010 • 11:03 PM 0

More Writing-related Fun

Over at Book Fox there’s a ton of links to agents and writers and all things literary. The post on calls for submission to all things weird and wonderful will make your day.

Filed under: publishing, weird litmags

05/09/2010 • 10:52 PM 0

By the time you’re published, trees may not be involved

Many publishers are dragging their feet, squeezing the last drops of inky blood from the Gutenberg press. However, Japan is leading the way (in e-publishing and the robots who will all one day rule us.) How do I know? Because in Japan, there are already bestsellers that have never been published on paper!

Click here to check out an interesting discussion of the future of book publishing. I believe e-readers are just transitional tech, like the Palm Pilot you don’t use anymore. It makes perfect sense that we’ll be reading books on the same device we always have with us. That’s right. Our sex toys phones.