Thursday, March 7th

The Daily Report

Well, the snowstorm that was expected to paralyze our city ended up petering out in the early afternoon, and a forecasted second wave never hit us. By the time it was apparent that it was well and truly over and not just holding its breath it was a little late for us to resume our plans, but oh well. We'll probably be going out tonight.

I'm going to be trying something slightly different with the schedule of Tales of MU, which is going to be a precursor to trying something very different with it, but this is not turning out to be a good week to mess with that because of the snow-related schedule uncertainty. Next week might not be great either, because it's my last week here before traveling. But you might recall that during my last schedule re-jiggering, I hinted that it might be step one in getting the groove back for more frequent (yet still regular) posting. Well, the next step is not going to involve more chapters per week, but it'll get us one step closer.

The State of the Me

Doing okay.

Plans For Today

Kind of loose, because my most productive period according to my body and brain's natural rhythms is the late afternoon and that's the most up in the air part of today.

The high cost of publication.

Two years ago in a panel at Wiscon, I made the provocative point that all publishing is vanity publishing. That isn't to say that all publishers have the same lack of standards of a traditional vanity press, but all publishers are essentially asking authors to pay for the service of having their books printed.

When you write something, you own 100% of the rights to it. You are entitled to 100% of the revenue it generates. But you don't know what to do with those rights and you aren't in a position to monetize them, so you go to someone who says that they can. And you agree to pay them. With a vanity press, you're paying them the cost of the print run plus their profit margin. You end up with books, they end up with money, and the chances that you'll recoup your investment are low.

With a self-publishing service, you're entering into a partnership. You pay little or nothing up front, you have to market your book (though if you reach a certain point of popularity, they might recognize a good thing and get behind it, but you can't count on that), but they provide the publishing technology and the sales platform, and you split the money. In general, you can terminate this business relationship at any point you choose. You can walk away and do business with someone else. You're paying a portion of the profits your book generates, but you still essentially own it. (In general, I repeat. Check the terms.)

Now, what about traditional publishing? The conventional viewpoint is that unlike the other alternatives, a "real" publishing house pays you. And that's certainly how they frame their dealings. But the deals they offer increasingly provide little that authors cannot get on their own... authors are expected to provide for their own editing, marketing, etc.... and unlike the one-time transaction of vanity publishing or the partnership of self-publishing, they take in exchange for the services they provide the lion's share of the book's profits and the ability to tie up the rights to it, sometimes effectively in perpetuity.

And as they move to compete in the electronic arena, it's getting worse. Trad author John Scalzi has been hammering Random House for the terms they offer in their e-book imprints (here and here).

At the same Wiscon (though a different panel), I said that if a trad publisher makes an offer that includes exclusive e-book rights that don't have a solid expiration date, authors should decline. I said this in response to the then-current practice of having a "renegotiation" date that resulted in the rights basically falling into limbo unless the author and publisher both agreed. I.e., unless the author re-ups or the publisher agrees to release them, the book can't be published electronically anywhere. That's a hugely lopsided deal that allows a publisher to hold onto the rights to a book forever.

Someone who was more industry connected spoke up to say that my advice amounted to "don't take any deal", because no publisher would give a first-time or small-time author the kind of deal I was looking for.

And my response to that basically amounts to: well, alrighty then.

If you spend months or years of your life writing a book, you need to protect your investment in it. The lure of a big-money advance and the perks that can go along with success in traditional publishing are not to be sneezed at, but seriously, be sure you know what price you're paying. If you're confident that your book has a market and you know how to connect to it, you don't need to pay an arm and a leg to get it published, and that's often what's on the table with traditional publishers.