Spotted by haikujaguar in <lj site="livejournal.com" user="crowdf

[alexandraerin]

An established writer who blogs on the business side of writing makes a strong case for why new authors might want to self-publish rather than seeking success through Big Publishing.

She seems entertainingly reluctant to come to this conclusion. There are some points I wasn't aware of/hadn't considered in my previous spiels on this subject, including the fact that publishers will use the electronic rights to keep a book "in print" indefinitely at a low cost with the result that the rights never revert back to the author.

I've been of the opinion that most authors who never hit the mid tier and even many who do are better off taking control of their back catalog and marketing their out of print books directly to the audience as e-books... seems publishers agree that this is where the easy money is.

Look at this quote:

Once a book sells into traditional publishing, it will remain a part of traditional publishing. Which means that, eventually, the writer will earn out his advance, and will make $10, $20 or $30 extra dollars per year on that book.

$10, $20, or $30 dollars a year from a book. Yeah, that's after you've earned your advance so it's not like it's the only profit the book gives you, but what kind of recurring income is that? People enjoy books for years, shouldn't they earn money for you for years?

One needs a big publishing house to produce thousands and thousands of dead tree copies and distribute them across the country, but there's absolutely no reason to be giving the lion's share of e-book profits to an army of middlemen. Is the publisher shouldering the hefty cost of electrons? No. And any talk about the big publisher having resources that we don't for promoting and getting the book into stores is just that... the whole point of these kind of slow lingering death deals is that most books will never bring in the big bucks that justify that kind of individual attention.

These are catalog fillers we're talking about, as most books are. Joe Blow's Self-Published E-Book #11 won't stand out from the crowd any less than Joe's Blow Generic Never-Broke-Out Non-Hit Book.

Now the thing that seems like a major blindspot in the post... and maybe somewhere in the series of posts preceding it this is addressed or explained... is that there seems to be a bit of a false dilemma between succumbing to the allure of Big Publishing or self-publishing with no examination of the options in between. If a weight loss company could figure out how to make an expansive middle region disappear as quickly as this post does, they could print their own money.

This blog series has actually been nominated for a Rose And Bay Award in the "Other Project" category. I'm probably going to check out the rest of it, by and by.

Comments

[doctoreon.livejournal.com]

Have you been keeping up with the story about Diane Duane's failed crowdfunding venture?

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

I have not. I believe I may have caught the beginning of that venture, but I haven't paid attention since then.

[doctoreon.livejournal.com]

They talked about it on io9 and BoingBoing.

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

Ah, I just checked out her blog and got the gist from the most recent post.

I think she hit the nail on the head when she mentioned communication being the problem. I honestly believe there are times I've come very close to losing my audience's patience and trust because I was reluctant to talk about what's going on in my life.

2010 in particular was a very low year for me in terms of career productivity, but I believe because I was talking about what was going on in my life to improve things I didn't lose my readers' support.

[doctoreon.livejournal.com]

I wonder if there's also a sort of feeling of "we paid you for this, you must write this...and quick!" People have a more direct link to your writing than if it were first funneled through a publisher, you know? I'm not really sure - just brainstorming.

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

My experience is that I felt that way more than my audience as a whole did, and I imagine the same is true of Diane, and that probably contributed to her problems (guilt and shame are not effective muses for more than a very few particular types of writing.)

[doctoreon.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, that feeling of pressure must be awful. I've always wondered how you deal with that.

[imaginedechoes.livejournal.com]

That article is an eye-opener. Thanks for the link!