The End is Nigh. Is Indie Publishing's Mother Lode Tapped out?

Is it just me, or has the Indi Publishing movement turned into a modern day reincarnation of the 1849-1855 California Gold Rush? I don't mean in terms of authors getting rich - like the "forty-niners" of old, very few of us will hit the mother lode, a percentage might break even, but most end up broke and stranded.

When I published my first novel, The Third Revolution, in 2004, self-publishing (publish on demand, as we called it then) was largely a do-it-yourself endeavor and print only; the first Kindle e-reader was still a good three years away. I would order a couple of dozen of my own books, send out review copies to the relatively influential bloggers of the day who I hoped were sympathetic to my themes, cobble together some funny ads with Photoshop and run them on some of the more affordable, demographically relevant blogs using a service called BlogAds (apparently still in business today!).

I think I sold over 1,200 copies of that first book (at $16.95 for a soft cover!) before ebooks started taking over the world. My marketing formula continued to work well when I released Middle America in 2007, and, to a lesser extent, Little Birdies! in 2009. By the time I released The Last Bartender in 2010, the methodology seemed tapped out, probably because the audience for that story was less tightly defined than for the previous books, hence harder to target market in an economical way. In addition, AdBlock made its debut in December of 2009, and Adblock Plus in December of 2010, dramatically lessening the effectiveness of (simple banner) online advertising.

It may just be my visionary grasp of the obvious, but it seems like, on Twitter, at least, there are more publishing support services and consultants than readers. They're certainly easier to find. Just send out a tweet with a #amwriting, #kindle, #ebook, #author, or #freeebook hashtag and see who follows you. Hint: they won't be asking you for books, they'll be asking you for money.

If I didn't have that mute option, my Twitter feed would be one nonstop onslaught of book advertisements, book promotional services, new media campaign services, "platform" building services, $5 per thousand Twitter followers, bots all, most masquerading, in their present incarnation, as other "authors" ("helping" other authors, of course...).  Consultants and support services have become the forest; the readers are tiny chipmunks, skittering around the forest floor and hiding under rotting logs. Good luck trying to find (much less capture) them.

So what about that opening Gold Rush analogy? Famously, after the first initial, successful claims were settled and worked, the floodgates opened to hundreds of thousands of prospectors, each seeking his personal fortune. Returns diminished rapidly, to the point where the adventure cost most people money instead of making them rich. So who cashed in?

The merchants. The outfitters, the equipment, tool, food, clothing and service providers. The landlords. If you had something to sell, rent or lease to a prospector, you could likely count on a steady income stream, as long as the starry-eyed dreamers kept pouring into the state. The prospectors became the suckers, the marks, and ended up providing the start-up capital for the industrial titans of the new century (Armour Meatpacking, Studebaker automobiles, Wells Fargo Bank, and, of course, Levi Strauss all got their start during the Gold Rush).

In this present day reincarnation, for every person who's willing to give you a few bucks for a book, there are scores who are asking for your money in exchange for "expert" advice on how to find the next buyer. I suspect that the publishing gold rush will finally grind to a halt when every last failed or frustrated Indie author finally gives up writing and hangs out their shingle as a new media publishing consultant. Then we can all write free ebooks directing each other to our websites, where we'll offer each other paid advice on how to drive even more of us to each other's websites.

Maybe that's what they mean by the "new economy."

P.S. ~ I'm writing another damn book anyway...

Literary Comfort Food for a Fed Up Citizenry ...

How to sell books. That's the question, isn't it, at least for those of us who've chosen to commit stories to print in the hope that another will pay for the pleasure of reading them.

I've always marched to the beat of my own drummer when it came to the stories that I've chosen to tell. I've written two pretty straightforward novels of libertarian political suspense (The Third Revolution and Middle America), a soft sci-fi/adventure about a young girl and her runaway pets (Little Birdies!), a sort of speculative political thriller about a new alcohol prohibition and a group of neighborhood friends who decide to go another way on the matter (The Last Bartender), a soft sci-fi, archaeologically-themed action/suspense/political farce (The Cenacle Scroll) involving the political and religious chaos that follows the unexpected appearance of the (assumed) Holy Grail in the US, and a soft sci-fi mystery/adventure (Aqua Vitae) about a wildlife biologist who accepts a too-good-to-be-true job and ends up having to unpack several puzzling ecological mysteries before finding herself targeted by the government agency whose failed experiments have gone native.

This eclectic portfolio has been, as you might guess, marketing suicide. You don't need an MBA to see that the smart move here would be to pick a lane (i.e. a literary genre), and stick to it. Become the political thriller guy, the sci-fi/adventure guy, the dystopian future guy, the detective/crime procedural guy, the medical mystery guy, the vampire/zombie/time travel guy. Pick a lane!

Targeted advertising is easier if you pick a lane. Building a unified reader base is easier if you pick a lane. Finding a traditional agent/publisher is easier if you pick a lane. Using an outside marketing service is easier if you just pick a damn lane!

The truth is that I have picked my lane, though I've chosen to go with theme, rather than the more easily marketed concept of genre. If I may:

Ben Kane finds that he bit off more than he could chew when he takes over the Governor's office in Montana, and finds himself arrayed against the might of the US federal government, but is simply unable to back away from his principles.  

Young Mandy Grant finds it impossible to accept the death sentence demanded by a nervous public and their government representatives for her runaway pets, and plots their rescue.  

In the aftermath of a newly imposed prohibition on the production and sale of alcohol,
Justin Gardiner and his friends just want a damn beer, and they're prepared to do what they have to do to get one.

Graduate student Jennifer Goodwyn makes one ill-considered decision regarding an ancient relic and finds herself swept up in a religious and political maelstrom of her own making. It needs to be fixed, and she needs to do so without getting caught, and without anyone else getting hurt in the process.

After a string of career setbacks, wildlife biologist Jackie Bannon takes a leap of  faith, unintentionally stirs up a mystery that was better left untouched, and needs to extract herself and her friends from a sudden and dangerous game of "kill the messenger."

All of my protagonists want the usual things out of life, and take seemingly rational steps to reach those goals, modest or otherwise. Other people, more organized people (say, local, state or federal government agencies, for example) sometimes take exception to individual needs, wants or circumstances, and do what they can to thwart individual action. Some individuals (say, the ones I choose to write about) feel they have no choice but to follow their conscience and do what they have to do to get where they need to get, regardless of the forces brought against them.

So if you don't mind veering out of your literary comfort zone just a bit, I believe you'll find that at the heart, my stories have what you're looking for: regular people, who for whatever reason, suddenly find themselves up against it and, along a few close friends, choose principle over authority.

As always, thanks for your support...

War of the Three Hats...

In what is likely a continuing conversation with myself, I've posted a LinkedIn article, commenting on the insightful Why Authors Should Think Like Publishers by Allen Taylor. From the article: 

"You may be a writer, but as soon as you decide to publish your own writing you have also become a publisher. That means you have to think like a publisher. If you are not ready to do that, then you should reconsider the idea of publishing your book. It's not as easy as some people make it appear to be. Here's a simple way to think about what a publisher's job is versus an editor's or a writer's:

A writer crafts a story or manuscript and puts it on paper. An editor reads the manuscript to judge its literary merit and works with the writer to improve it to make it publication-ready. A publisher is responsible for ensuring the process is carried out efficiently while ensuring the writer's manuscript is a reasonable financial risk and maximizes the profit opportunities from the publication of the manuscript.

In other words, as a writer, your job is to ensure you tell the best story you can and to improve the manuscript as much as you can before the editor sees it. As editor, your job is to ensure the manuscript meets all the publisher's specifications and the manuscript is improved to the point of near perfection. As publisher, your job is to manage risk and make money. If you opt to self-publish, whether digitally or in print, then you'll serve in all three of these roles unless you outsource some of it."

 Read the whole article. 

 

This description of the three hats that a self-published author may choose to wear is spot on. I would only add that those different jobs, when embodied in a single person, can frequently lead to the same conflicts that one might expect if we were dealing with two separate professionals, the author and publisher—specifically, where the creative process bumps up against rational business goals and requirements.

Learning to edit your own work is hard, but it's a known skill set that can be mastered with time, maturity and determination. Successful publishing is a whole different can of worms.

Successful publishing takes business savvy, intimate market knowledge and an eye for talent. It also entails—like any business endeavor—taking the occasional calculated risk. This becomes apparent when a genre-bending story becomes difficult to pigeonhole, hence much tougher to target market. Most traditional publishers will pass this work by in favor of more reliable commodity fiction. 

So when the creative muse takes an independent author/publisher in the direction of an unconventional genre mashup, things can get tricky. Do you plow ahead with a work that you know is going to be problematic to market? Or do you slip on your publisher's hat, and send the poor author a rejection letter: "Interesting idea, but I have no idea who'll buy it..."?

The creative process demands risk-taking, and very frequently, hell, most frequently, that means failure in the marketplace. Traditional publishers are free to evaluate those risks on the business merits; independent publishers face a more difficult task—to stifle their own creative impulses in hopes of reduced market risk, or to continue chasing the muse over what will likely turn out to be the steep edge of a cliff.

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

A Film is Made in the Editing Room. So is Your Novel...

I'm not one to talk a lot about the sausage-making of creative writing, preferring to leave that to the, well, sausage-makers. Lots of writers know what the rules are, and most writers aren't great storytellers, so one has to assume that there's a bit more to it than just working the rule book.

That said, a short while ago I commented on a LinkedIn article (The Hardest Revision, by Taylor Rees) and thought I'd share it with you here. It's an analogy that I've found useful in my own work, especially when it comes time to "kill your darlings."

It's been said that a film is made in the editing room, and it's been my experience that much the same can be said of writing. 

    A director will typically shoot 12 to 20 hours of film during the production of a two hour motion picture, possibly running as high as 200 hours of (digital) video shot for a two hour documentary feature. No director would seriously consider shooting two hours of film for a two hour feature and call it a day. 

    All of the various camera perspectives, the wide-angle vs close-up shots, the tinkering with exposure or lighting, and the multiple emotional interpretations of the same scene by the actors all get sorted out in the editing room. The 20 or so hours of raw film is cut down to the two hours that best tells the purest version of the story ("Director's Cuts" aside).

    The same applies to writing, especially to creative writing. Nobody buys a novel to revel in the genius of my unconventional stylistic quirks. They're not there for my breathtaking description of a sunset, for my emotional rendering of a tender moment, or for my powerhouse construction of an action scene. They're there for the story. Period. End of argument. Step down, next case.

    Anything and everything that doesn't serve the story should be considered fair game for the editor's pen. Like most writers (as reflected in the author's article), it took me a while to figure that out, to understand that my 20 hours of raw film needed to be boiled down to the two hour feature that I intended to create. 

The first draft manuscript is the block of marble; the statue appears only after the editing is done.

Enjoy the sausage.