Read the essay that shook the foundation of a publishing giant!
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
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Showing posts with label Self-Publishing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Self-Publishing. Show all posts
Monday, November 3, 2014
Amazon Blinks!!!
Have to take a victory lap after The Nervous Breakdown published this piece of mine last week about Amazon treating Badge unfairly with ship times, and Amazon changed the ship time! Because of the piece!
Read the essay that shook the foundation of a publishing giant!
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Read the essay that shook the foundation of a publishing giant!
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Monday, October 20, 2014
My One-Day Self-Pub Seminar Runs in Less than Two Weeks!
If you plan on self-publishing in the near future, you will not regret taking my one-day seminar, where I show you the path through the murky waters of contemporary self-publishing to the Land of Book Success and Fulfillment. And who doesn't want to go there?
It takes one Sunday at The Attic, November 2nd, from 10 AM to 4 PM.
I bring cookies.
Sign up now!
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
It takes one Sunday at The Attic, November 2nd, from 10 AM to 4 PM.
I bring cookies.
Sign up now!
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Monday, October 13, 2014
Strike it Rich, Or Not: The Business of Self-Publishing in 2014
You’ve written a book, and you’re wondering which mode of publishing—self- or traditional—is most likely to lead to a career in writing. Good. You should be wondering. It’s a new century, and new ways exist to get your book to buyers that can be at least as rewarding as the traditional publishing model.
Despite all recent innovation, the easiest road to the land of a book publishing career still passes through the traditional publishing house. Here’s the way it works: either you or your agent finds an editor at a publishing house who wants to publish your book, and the house (usually) writes you a check for it. That check is called an advance, and it isn’t free; you get it up front against future royalties of your book. You don’t receive any more money from the publisher until your book sells so many copies—when it “earns out” your advance—and then you start to bank your dollar or whatever in royalties for each book sold.
While not without its drawbacks, this is the easiest path to financial success for the writer because you collect money months or years before your book comes out. Think about that. You get paid before anyone in the book-buying market even knows you’ve written a book, much less decides they want it. It’s now in your publisher’s best interest to do a great job editing, proofreading, designing a cover, printing and marketing your book, or it might not see that advance money again. The risk is all theirs.
Moreover, your publishing company could do a great job publishing and marketing your book and, for whatever reason, people still don’t buy it. In that instance, the company absorbs the loss while you keep the advance money. Finally, if your book sells well, you still have a chance to earn royalties well beyond the advance. These backend royalties are how many of the writers in the world make their living. Welcome to the big leagues.
And if I were writing this piece twenty years ago, that would pretty much be the end of the story. But in 2014, an argument can be made that self-publishing your book is a legitimate business model as well. What’s changed?
The biggest advent to the business of self-publishing is the proliferation of ebooks and ebook devices. Writers now have a way to get their books distributed to millions of readers all by themselves. The self-publisher of a couple decades ago falls to her knees and weeps at the mention of entities like Kindle Direct Publishing and Smashwords. From the time your book is finished, you can have it available to a large buying audience in less than 24 hours. For free. Unprecedented.
Second only to ebooks, the advent in the last decade or so of print-on-demand publishing has also changed the game for the self-publisher. As late as the mid-1990s, if a self-publisher wanted to create an affordable edition of his work, he had to call a book printer, who usually had to print a thousand copies or more to bring the book’s price-per-unit to a reasonable level. This meant the self-publisher had to pay at least $3,000 to the printer before anyone could buy a single book. Then he had to find a place to store them, which often amounted to a home stuffed with boxes of books. A common scenario involved the self-publisher never being able to sell all of them. Can you imagine being forced to choose between space in your garage or several hundred copies of your book? Some gave their extras away to libraries for tax write-offs. Others, after years of futility, drove them to the dump.
With print-on-demand technology, you can publish an actual book, and the old issues of high cost and storage space need never darken your (garage) door. Print-on-demand companies like Lightning Source and Createspace charge as little as $25 to have your book in their database, where it’s ready to be printed and distributed. Then they charge a reasonable fee per book (about $3-10, depending on many variables) to print them. In other words, self-publishers don’t have to buy 1,000 copies of their title to have a few copies on hand, or to have it available to customers at places like Amazon and Powells.com. You can buy just one copy if you want. Print-on-demand companies are happy to oblige.
Because of all this new technology, self-publishing is at least in the ballgame now. And there’s one more issue I haven’t yet mentioned.
Take, for example, the case of Hugh Howey. Howey self-published his post-apocalyptic novel Wool as an ebook in 2012. Things went very well for Howey and Wool, which sold a half-million copies in electronic form. When Simon and Schuster approached Howey, wanting to purchase the rights to Wool, Howey was all for it—until he heard the company wanted his ebook rights too. “I had made seven figures [selling Wool as an ebook] … so it was easy to walk away,” he said. Eventually, he sold just the book-book rights to Simon and Schuster, and I saw Wool prominently displayed at my local bookstore this past Christmas season.
Or the case of Jenny McGuire. McGuire self-published her new adult romance Beautiful Disaster in 2011, which went to number one on the New York Times bestseller list. The book was later sold to Atria Books, with the movie rights sold to Warner Bros.
Or the case of Amanda Hocking. Hocking made millions in her first year self-publishing her young adult paranormal romance and urban fantasy novels as ebooks. She then went on to sign a $2.2 million contract with St. Martins Press.
The successfully self-published author who later decides to go the traditional route has more leverage than those writers with nothing but a manuscript and their good looks. She can bag both the writer’s and publisher’s share while self-publishing, then use that success to get a far more favorable deal with a major. Win-win.
To be clear, these mega-success stories represent only the smallest fraction of those who self-publish. The vast majority wind up with less remarkable sales (that’s me), or none at all. Still, no one but the willfully blind could argue this phenomenon doesn’t exist.
Perhaps more relevant than hitting pay dirt, because of ebooks and print-on-demand technology, many writers now make modest livings self-publishing their works. This list includes Meilin Miranda, who self-publishes Victorianesque fantasy and science fiction; Shanna Germain, who has one self-published book that yielded $32k through a Kickstarter campaign; or Aaron Shepherd, whose how-to books about self-publishing are staples of the genre. I didn’t have to go to the edges of the earth to find these folks. They’re friends, or friends of friends, or people I’ve run across when searching for practical help with self-publishing. My guess is none of them will be sailing to Bora Bora anytime soon on their self-publishing earnings, but each manages at least to sustain themselves through the model. How many more of them are out there? Hundreds? Thousands?
While the get-rich stories get more attention, what the ascendance of self-publishing technology in 2014 really means for the aspiring writer is she can realistically hope for a new, freer path to a writing career. If you can write a book people want to read and market it well, you may not hit pay-dirt, but you just might get a life.
Ready to self-pub? Take my one-day seminar in early November at The Attic.
Despite all recent innovation, the easiest road to the land of a book publishing career still passes through the traditional publishing house. Here’s the way it works: either you or your agent finds an editor at a publishing house who wants to publish your book, and the house (usually) writes you a check for it. That check is called an advance, and it isn’t free; you get it up front against future royalties of your book. You don’t receive any more money from the publisher until your book sells so many copies—when it “earns out” your advance—and then you start to bank your dollar or whatever in royalties for each book sold.
While not without its drawbacks, this is the easiest path to financial success for the writer because you collect money months or years before your book comes out. Think about that. You get paid before anyone in the book-buying market even knows you’ve written a book, much less decides they want it. It’s now in your publisher’s best interest to do a great job editing, proofreading, designing a cover, printing and marketing your book, or it might not see that advance money again. The risk is all theirs.
Moreover, your publishing company could do a great job publishing and marketing your book and, for whatever reason, people still don’t buy it. In that instance, the company absorbs the loss while you keep the advance money. Finally, if your book sells well, you still have a chance to earn royalties well beyond the advance. These backend royalties are how many of the writers in the world make their living. Welcome to the big leagues.
And if I were writing this piece twenty years ago, that would pretty much be the end of the story. But in 2014, an argument can be made that self-publishing your book is a legitimate business model as well. What’s changed?
The biggest advent to the business of self-publishing is the proliferation of ebooks and ebook devices. Writers now have a way to get their books distributed to millions of readers all by themselves. The self-publisher of a couple decades ago falls to her knees and weeps at the mention of entities like Kindle Direct Publishing and Smashwords. From the time your book is finished, you can have it available to a large buying audience in less than 24 hours. For free. Unprecedented.
Second only to ebooks, the advent in the last decade or so of print-on-demand publishing has also changed the game for the self-publisher. As late as the mid-1990s, if a self-publisher wanted to create an affordable edition of his work, he had to call a book printer, who usually had to print a thousand copies or more to bring the book’s price-per-unit to a reasonable level. This meant the self-publisher had to pay at least $3,000 to the printer before anyone could buy a single book. Then he had to find a place to store them, which often amounted to a home stuffed with boxes of books. A common scenario involved the self-publisher never being able to sell all of them. Can you imagine being forced to choose between space in your garage or several hundred copies of your book? Some gave their extras away to libraries for tax write-offs. Others, after years of futility, drove them to the dump.
With print-on-demand technology, you can publish an actual book, and the old issues of high cost and storage space need never darken your (garage) door. Print-on-demand companies like Lightning Source and Createspace charge as little as $25 to have your book in their database, where it’s ready to be printed and distributed. Then they charge a reasonable fee per book (about $3-10, depending on many variables) to print them. In other words, self-publishers don’t have to buy 1,000 copies of their title to have a few copies on hand, or to have it available to customers at places like Amazon and Powells.com. You can buy just one copy if you want. Print-on-demand companies are happy to oblige.
Because of all this new technology, self-publishing is at least in the ballgame now. And there’s one more issue I haven’t yet mentioned.
Take, for example, the case of Hugh Howey. Howey self-published his post-apocalyptic novel Wool as an ebook in 2012. Things went very well for Howey and Wool, which sold a half-million copies in electronic form. When Simon and Schuster approached Howey, wanting to purchase the rights to Wool, Howey was all for it—until he heard the company wanted his ebook rights too. “I had made seven figures [selling Wool as an ebook] … so it was easy to walk away,” he said. Eventually, he sold just the book-book rights to Simon and Schuster, and I saw Wool prominently displayed at my local bookstore this past Christmas season.
Or the case of Jenny McGuire. McGuire self-published her new adult romance Beautiful Disaster in 2011, which went to number one on the New York Times bestseller list. The book was later sold to Atria Books, with the movie rights sold to Warner Bros.
Or the case of Amanda Hocking. Hocking made millions in her first year self-publishing her young adult paranormal romance and urban fantasy novels as ebooks. She then went on to sign a $2.2 million contract with St. Martins Press.
The successfully self-published author who later decides to go the traditional route has more leverage than those writers with nothing but a manuscript and their good looks. She can bag both the writer’s and publisher’s share while self-publishing, then use that success to get a far more favorable deal with a major. Win-win.
To be clear, these mega-success stories represent only the smallest fraction of those who self-publish. The vast majority wind up with less remarkable sales (that’s me), or none at all. Still, no one but the willfully blind could argue this phenomenon doesn’t exist.
Perhaps more relevant than hitting pay dirt, because of ebooks and print-on-demand technology, many writers now make modest livings self-publishing their works. This list includes Meilin Miranda, who self-publishes Victorianesque fantasy and science fiction; Shanna Germain, who has one self-published book that yielded $32k through a Kickstarter campaign; or Aaron Shepherd, whose how-to books about self-publishing are staples of the genre. I didn’t have to go to the edges of the earth to find these folks. They’re friends, or friends of friends, or people I’ve run across when searching for practical help with self-publishing. My guess is none of them will be sailing to Bora Bora anytime soon on their self-publishing earnings, but each manages at least to sustain themselves through the model. How many more of them are out there? Hundreds? Thousands?
While the get-rich stories get more attention, what the ascendance of self-publishing technology in 2014 really means for the aspiring writer is she can realistically hope for a new, freer path to a writing career. If you can write a book people want to read and market it well, you may not hit pay-dirt, but you just might get a life.
Ready to self-pub? Take my one-day seminar in early November at The Attic.
Monday, September 8, 2014
Begging for It: Crowd Sourcing Badge
By the third week, I’m in hell.
I’m managing a Kickstarter campaign to fund the self-publication of my third novel Badge. I need to accrue $6,000 in donations in a total of 25 days or I get nothing. For me this means hitting up Facebook friends, the 400 or so people on my email list, friends and family, telling them about my book and the campaign. By this third week, things have stalled. The tally is just above $3,000—over half way there—but it’s been slow for over a week. I’ve already hit my contacts hard. I have no idea what else to do.
When it became clear my third novel Badge wasn’t going to get publishing traditionally, I decided to crowd source its self-publication. I was familiar with Kickstarter. I’d helped promote the Kickstarter campaign to fund the film version of my first novel Stuck Outside of Phoenix, which met its goal, and the film is now in the can awaiting distribution. I didn’t care much for the roller coaster process of crowd sourcing, but I liked it a lot better than not having a film version of my first novel in the can.
I could’ve just published Badge on the cheap—say, as an ebook with no money for promotion—but Badge was my best book yet, the culmination of seventeen years of novel writing. To publish it solely as an ebook—or to watch myself go into debt with it as I had with my first two self-published novels—wasn’t what I had in mind. Three novels into my writing career, I felt the least I could ask for was not to lose money on publishing my fiction.
I wrote up a business plan—proofreading, publishing, printing and review copy submissions of Badge, plus a five-city West Coast tour. The bottom line came to about $5,000. It wasn’t an ideal plan; I considered it the minimum of what I wanted for Badge. Figuring I was probably underestimating expenses, I decided I needed $6,000 for the project.
At the time I set up the campaign, there were a couple of main companies you could go through to crowd source. Kickstarter was one. A Kickstarter campaign’s most distinguishing feature is that the artist has to reach or exceed her goal to get any money. If your goal is $10,000 and you raise $9,999, you get $0. Indiegogo, the second major way to crowd source, allows you to choose whether your campaign is all-or-nothing or not. If the example above were earned during a non-all-or-nothing Indiegogo campaign, the artist would keep $9,999 (minus fees).
On the surface, getting to keep whatever you raise looks like a huge asset for the artist. Can you imagine doing all that pleading for nothing? But that’s not the whole story. Something about all-or-nothing campaigns are more exciting than ones that merely have a suggested goal. The drama of $10k-or-the-highway is real, and people tune in, check to see how you’re doing, root for you, share your campaign with friends and, of course, donate. It must be harder to keep people interested over the course of a weeks-long campaign if they aren’t wondering if you’re going to make it. Donors want to win just like you do.
What I love about Indiegogo is its independent status. Kickstarter is deeply entrenched with Amazon, which handles all of the company’s money transactions, and Amazon gets a percentage of every dollar raised on Kickstarter. If you’ve followed the publishing industry for the last couple of decades, you know Amazon’s goal is to pretty much destroy independent bookstores. I find neighborhood indies vital to my own sanity, so I go out of my way not to support Amazon.
Still, I went with Kickstarter for Badge for one reason: many of the folks in my social circle gave to the Stuck the Movie Kickstarter campaign, and I didn’t want to scare them away with a crowd sourcing method that was new to them. In the end, I couldn’t afford to be too precious about not giving one thin dime to Amazon. If I wanted to publish Badge well, I needed this thing to work.
As I prepared the Badge page at Kickstarter, I had to pick a block of time for the campaign. Kickstarter recommends one month. I remember from the Stuck the Movie fundraising that a month seemed too long, so I opted for 25 days. That was four full work weeks, which I think is a healthy arc for the story of your campaign to build momentum.
From my experience, Kickstarter campaigns follow a certain trajectory. The first few days bring lots of excitement and donations. By the second week, the campaign feels like old news, and there are few donations. The third week often rekindles energy and donations, and the fourth week brings great drama and (hopefully) pushes you over the line. Patrons seem not to want to end these things before the clock ticks down or they’ll kill the arc. I also think they want to wait to see if you’re going to be successful before they donate. It’s a weird synergy. You need people to donate to encourage others to donate, but no one seems to want to donate if there aren’t already donations. It becomes a chicken-or-egg scenario. During the Stuck the Movie campaign, I got excited when donations came during the days when nothing else was going on, or when larger sums were donated that clearly encouraged others to give at more modest levels. The former kept me hopeful, the latter helped create a winning vibe. Everyone involved needs a jolt here and there.
I started my Badge campaign on May 19th, let everyone in my social network (Facebook and Twitter) know about it, and sent an email to my email list. To complicate things, my wife and I don’t have the Internet at home, so much of this online work was done at the library, or in my truck in the McDonald’s parking lot up the street, taking advantage of their wayward wifi signal. Not the way I’d choose to spend my time, but it was working. A couple of large donations got things rolling, and I was thrilled to make it to $2,500 by the end of the first week.
During the second week, I kept it up on Facebook and Twitter, but incoming donations were much slower going. I had to post like crazy to eke my total above $3,000 by week’s end. Halfway there at the halfway point wasn’t bad, but the constant marketing had me doubting myself. I remembered a Faulkner story called “Spotted Horses” in which the unsavory Flem Snopes comes to town with a batch of wild horses. Snopes announces they’re for sale, and the townspeople laugh. No one would buy such a worthless bunch of animals. Snopes is undaunted, sets up shop in the middle of town, creates a temporary corral. Eventually, in a skillful tap dance that would make any used car salesman proud, Snopes sells every last horse, some to the same townspeople who’d laughed at him. The theme is clear: Hang around long enough, present yourself with enough authority, and eventually you’ll sell. My weeks-long Internet barrage had me feeling vaguely Snopes-ish, but I reminded myself I wasn’t selling something worthless. I was selling a novel that took seven years to write, and it wasn’t going to see the light of day unless people donated. If it didn’t make the goal, I wouldn’t waste any more of my or their time, but I wasn’t going to get sheepish now.
I count on week three to reinvigorate my campaign, but the trickle continues. At this point, I’m desperate. I email my largest donors, ask them politely what I could do to entice them into a higher bracket. I even create a new $1,000 donation level with a reward I hadn’t thought of before. When the third week comes to a close, I’m at $3,700. One week and $2,300 to go. I regret tacking on that extra grand to my goal in the beginning. Still, I accrued $2,500 in the first week. There’s nothing to do but keep slogging.
More Facebook posts, more emails, more Tweets early in the last week bring some curious folks out of the woodwork, and I wind up at $4,500 with one work day to go. The only answer seems to be to hang out in the McDonald’s parking lot all day, making sure folks understand the end is nigh. I’m betting the whole McMuffin on the drama factor making people feel generous at the end. At this point, it’s my only play.
That afternoon, a big donor puts me above $5,000, and I feel a weight lifted. I announce all over Facebook I’m within $1,000 and that there are only a handful hours to go. Then I get a $125 donation, then $75, then $50. I’m over $5,500 with two hours to go. Five hundred lousy bucks! I post, I tweet, I email. The last hour brings a flurry of smaller donations, and with mere seconds to go I wind up at $6,031. By the skin of my teeth, Badge will happen the way I want it to happen.
The campaign was pretty much all I thought about for 25 days. I was always online, checking my donation status, posting updates, sending emails, thanking patrons and constantly wondering if that was enough.
And it was worth it. It’s hard to overestimate how much having money to start a publication project means to me. I’ve self-published two novels over the past decade, and I have yet to profit from either. In the end, there was a minimum amount of dignity I wanted for my work on Badge, and that dignity cost $6,000. I’m grateful to all 87 of my Kickstarter donors who helped get me there.
Crowd sourcing is a relatively new tool that allows self-publishers more opportunity to make a living as writers, or at least not to lose money on their projects. That might not sound like much, but for those of us who need to do this, it beats the hell out of the alternative.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
I’m managing a Kickstarter campaign to fund the self-publication of my third novel Badge. I need to accrue $6,000 in donations in a total of 25 days or I get nothing. For me this means hitting up Facebook friends, the 400 or so people on my email list, friends and family, telling them about my book and the campaign. By this third week, things have stalled. The tally is just above $3,000—over half way there—but it’s been slow for over a week. I’ve already hit my contacts hard. I have no idea what else to do.
When it became clear my third novel Badge wasn’t going to get publishing traditionally, I decided to crowd source its self-publication. I was familiar with Kickstarter. I’d helped promote the Kickstarter campaign to fund the film version of my first novel Stuck Outside of Phoenix, which met its goal, and the film is now in the can awaiting distribution. I didn’t care much for the roller coaster process of crowd sourcing, but I liked it a lot better than not having a film version of my first novel in the can.
I could’ve just published Badge on the cheap—say, as an ebook with no money for promotion—but Badge was my best book yet, the culmination of seventeen years of novel writing. To publish it solely as an ebook—or to watch myself go into debt with it as I had with my first two self-published novels—wasn’t what I had in mind. Three novels into my writing career, I felt the least I could ask for was not to lose money on publishing my fiction.
I wrote up a business plan—proofreading, publishing, printing and review copy submissions of Badge, plus a five-city West Coast tour. The bottom line came to about $5,000. It wasn’t an ideal plan; I considered it the minimum of what I wanted for Badge. Figuring I was probably underestimating expenses, I decided I needed $6,000 for the project.
At the time I set up the campaign, there were a couple of main companies you could go through to crowd source. Kickstarter was one. A Kickstarter campaign’s most distinguishing feature is that the artist has to reach or exceed her goal to get any money. If your goal is $10,000 and you raise $9,999, you get $0. Indiegogo, the second major way to crowd source, allows you to choose whether your campaign is all-or-nothing or not. If the example above were earned during a non-all-or-nothing Indiegogo campaign, the artist would keep $9,999 (minus fees).
On the surface, getting to keep whatever you raise looks like a huge asset for the artist. Can you imagine doing all that pleading for nothing? But that’s not the whole story. Something about all-or-nothing campaigns are more exciting than ones that merely have a suggested goal. The drama of $10k-or-the-highway is real, and people tune in, check to see how you’re doing, root for you, share your campaign with friends and, of course, donate. It must be harder to keep people interested over the course of a weeks-long campaign if they aren’t wondering if you’re going to make it. Donors want to win just like you do.
What I love about Indiegogo is its independent status. Kickstarter is deeply entrenched with Amazon, which handles all of the company’s money transactions, and Amazon gets a percentage of every dollar raised on Kickstarter. If you’ve followed the publishing industry for the last couple of decades, you know Amazon’s goal is to pretty much destroy independent bookstores. I find neighborhood indies vital to my own sanity, so I go out of my way not to support Amazon.
Still, I went with Kickstarter for Badge for one reason: many of the folks in my social circle gave to the Stuck the Movie Kickstarter campaign, and I didn’t want to scare them away with a crowd sourcing method that was new to them. In the end, I couldn’t afford to be too precious about not giving one thin dime to Amazon. If I wanted to publish Badge well, I needed this thing to work.
As I prepared the Badge page at Kickstarter, I had to pick a block of time for the campaign. Kickstarter recommends one month. I remember from the Stuck the Movie fundraising that a month seemed too long, so I opted for 25 days. That was four full work weeks, which I think is a healthy arc for the story of your campaign to build momentum.
From my experience, Kickstarter campaigns follow a certain trajectory. The first few days bring lots of excitement and donations. By the second week, the campaign feels like old news, and there are few donations. The third week often rekindles energy and donations, and the fourth week brings great drama and (hopefully) pushes you over the line. Patrons seem not to want to end these things before the clock ticks down or they’ll kill the arc. I also think they want to wait to see if you’re going to be successful before they donate. It’s a weird synergy. You need people to donate to encourage others to donate, but no one seems to want to donate if there aren’t already donations. It becomes a chicken-or-egg scenario. During the Stuck the Movie campaign, I got excited when donations came during the days when nothing else was going on, or when larger sums were donated that clearly encouraged others to give at more modest levels. The former kept me hopeful, the latter helped create a winning vibe. Everyone involved needs a jolt here and there.
I started my Badge campaign on May 19th, let everyone in my social network (Facebook and Twitter) know about it, and sent an email to my email list. To complicate things, my wife and I don’t have the Internet at home, so much of this online work was done at the library, or in my truck in the McDonald’s parking lot up the street, taking advantage of their wayward wifi signal. Not the way I’d choose to spend my time, but it was working. A couple of large donations got things rolling, and I was thrilled to make it to $2,500 by the end of the first week.
During the second week, I kept it up on Facebook and Twitter, but incoming donations were much slower going. I had to post like crazy to eke my total above $3,000 by week’s end. Halfway there at the halfway point wasn’t bad, but the constant marketing had me doubting myself. I remembered a Faulkner story called “Spotted Horses” in which the unsavory Flem Snopes comes to town with a batch of wild horses. Snopes announces they’re for sale, and the townspeople laugh. No one would buy such a worthless bunch of animals. Snopes is undaunted, sets up shop in the middle of town, creates a temporary corral. Eventually, in a skillful tap dance that would make any used car salesman proud, Snopes sells every last horse, some to the same townspeople who’d laughed at him. The theme is clear: Hang around long enough, present yourself with enough authority, and eventually you’ll sell. My weeks-long Internet barrage had me feeling vaguely Snopes-ish, but I reminded myself I wasn’t selling something worthless. I was selling a novel that took seven years to write, and it wasn’t going to see the light of day unless people donated. If it didn’t make the goal, I wouldn’t waste any more of my or their time, but I wasn’t going to get sheepish now.
I count on week three to reinvigorate my campaign, but the trickle continues. At this point, I’m desperate. I email my largest donors, ask them politely what I could do to entice them into a higher bracket. I even create a new $1,000 donation level with a reward I hadn’t thought of before. When the third week comes to a close, I’m at $3,700. One week and $2,300 to go. I regret tacking on that extra grand to my goal in the beginning. Still, I accrued $2,500 in the first week. There’s nothing to do but keep slogging.
More Facebook posts, more emails, more Tweets early in the last week bring some curious folks out of the woodwork, and I wind up at $4,500 with one work day to go. The only answer seems to be to hang out in the McDonald’s parking lot all day, making sure folks understand the end is nigh. I’m betting the whole McMuffin on the drama factor making people feel generous at the end. At this point, it’s my only play.
That afternoon, a big donor puts me above $5,000, and I feel a weight lifted. I announce all over Facebook I’m within $1,000 and that there are only a handful hours to go. Then I get a $125 donation, then $75, then $50. I’m over $5,500 with two hours to go. Five hundred lousy bucks! I post, I tweet, I email. The last hour brings a flurry of smaller donations, and with mere seconds to go I wind up at $6,031. By the skin of my teeth, Badge will happen the way I want it to happen.
The campaign was pretty much all I thought about for 25 days. I was always online, checking my donation status, posting updates, sending emails, thanking patrons and constantly wondering if that was enough.
And it was worth it. It’s hard to overestimate how much having money to start a publication project means to me. I’ve self-published two novels over the past decade, and I have yet to profit from either. In the end, there was a minimum amount of dignity I wanted for my work on Badge, and that dignity cost $6,000. I’m grateful to all 87 of my Kickstarter donors who helped get me there.
Crowd sourcing is a relatively new tool that allows self-publishers more opportunity to make a living as writers, or at least not to lose money on their projects. That might not sound like much, but for those of us who need to do this, it beats the hell out of the alternative.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Who's Ready to See Their Book In Print?
Big congrats to Rebecca Pillsbury, who took my one-day self-publishing seminar last November at the Attic, and now her memoir, Finding Ecstacy, is available to everyone.
See how that works? Are you ready to get your book out there? Sign up for my Attic seminar this November, and you'll be ready to go pro in 2015.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
See how that works? Are you ready to get your book out there? Sign up for my Attic seminar this November, and you'll be ready to go pro in 2015.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Amazon, Hachette: Two Paths to the Same Waterfall
Take my one-day intensive on self-publishing at The Attic, and I'll teach you how to publish your book in a way that not one thin dime goes to a shareholder.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
New Piece on Self-Publishing at Nick Belardes's Site!!!
It's a foregone conclusion you're signing up for my self-publishing seminar at the Attic at the end of this month, but I am also publishing essays on writing and self-publishing in April. The first popped up today at fab writer Nick Belardes's site, so after you sign up for the class, go here.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Take my One-Day Self-Publishing Seminar this Month at the Attic!!!
In six hours on a Sunday, I will cram your head full of my decade of self-publishing knowledge, and you'll like it. If you're thinking about self-pubbing in 2014, you don't want to miss this. Space still available. Sign up now at the Attic.
On the Badge front, you'll want to take a look at this exhaustive review by Rob McNelly of all three of my novels. I respond at length at the end. Topics include what's fiction and what's non-, the endings of all three books, and much more. Read it here.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
On the Badge front, you'll want to take a look at this exhaustive review by Rob McNelly of all three of my novels. I respond at length at the end. Topics include what's fiction and what's non-, the endings of all three books, and much more. Read it here.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
New Essay On Self-Publishing up at Word Riot!
An essay of mine on self-publishing just went live a Word Riot. Read along as I start to get cocky about this whole thing.
Also, Badge's book trailer went live last week.
Moreover, you now can buy Badge from my website during its presale.
Finally, if you do buy Badge during its presale, I'll email you the mp3 of Badge's theme song "Calypso" as a bonus!
That's what I've got.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Also, Badge's book trailer went live last week.
Moreover, you now can buy Badge from my website during its presale.
Finally, if you do buy Badge during its presale, I'll email you the mp3 of Badge's theme song "Calypso" as a bonus!
That's what I've got.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.
Buy Badge.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
New Adventures in (Rock) Writing and (Self-)Publishing
One of my favorite parts of putting together the promotion for Badge has been writing essays for the Internet. I've finished eight or ten of them ready, and I'm working on another ten or twelve now. These essays deal with my favorite subjects: writing (esp. rock fiction), publishing (esp. self-publishing) and music (esp. the music of my youth). So you can expect one or two short Internet pieces from me each month in 2014.
The first popped up over the weekend at The Nervous Breakdown. It's called Thirteenth Note and explains the name of Kel's and my new publishing company, and why rock fiction characters don't have to be David Lee Roths.
The second is at writer extraordinaire Nick Belarde's website, and it deals with a recent visit back to the bookstore of my literary youth, Changing Hands in Tempe, Arizona. Or is it the bookstore of my youth?
Most all of my Badge-related events are booked through March, and they involve stops in Portland, Seattle, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Final details are still coming together, but know each event will be special in its way. I can't wait for this part.
Finally, Badge pre-sales start in less than two weeks at my website! If you missed the Kickstarter fundraiser, this will be your first chance to get your copy of Badge, which goes on sale worldwide on Feb. 4th.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Read the blurb of Badge.
Or read an excerpt of Badge.
The first popped up over the weekend at The Nervous Breakdown. It's called Thirteenth Note and explains the name of Kel's and my new publishing company, and why rock fiction characters don't have to be David Lee Roths.
The second is at writer extraordinaire Nick Belarde's website, and it deals with a recent visit back to the bookstore of my literary youth, Changing Hands in Tempe, Arizona. Or is it the bookstore of my youth?
Most all of my Badge-related events are booked through March, and they involve stops in Portland, Seattle, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Final details are still coming together, but know each event will be special in its way. I can't wait for this part.
Finally, Badge pre-sales start in less than two weeks at my website! If you missed the Kickstarter fundraiser, this will be your first chance to get your copy of Badge, which goes on sale worldwide on Feb. 4th.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Read the blurb of Badge.
Or read an excerpt of Badge.
Monday, November 4, 2013
Badge Back to the Printer
My week of checking the proof of Badge is over, and the revised version is again in the hands of the printer. The next step is to order advance reader copies, which will go out to reviewers, and of course to read the thing again. If all is okay with it, I'll place a bigger order in January to fulfill my Kickstarter rewards.
I have to say I feel very lucky to have gotten a chance to work for this long on this thing. I think the book will be worth your time.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in May 2013.
Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $10.
Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.
I have to say I feel very lucky to have gotten a chance to work for this long on this thing. I think the book will be worth your time.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in May 2013.
Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $10.
Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.
Monday, October 7, 2013
I'm Teaching a One-Day Self-Publishing Seminar at The Attic in November!!!
Hey, current and future self-pubbers!
I have a self-publishing seminar going down in November at The Attic. The difference from my summer course? It all happens in one day. That's right. In eight hours on a Sunday, you will go from someone with a manuscript, a lot of questions, and a will to do it all yourself to someone armed and ready for the fun if murky waters of self-publication. Sound good? Come hang with me on a Sunday! It'll be fun!
Click for more details.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in May 2013.
Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $10.
Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.
I have a self-publishing seminar going down in November at The Attic. The difference from my summer course? It all happens in one day. That's right. In eight hours on a Sunday, you will go from someone with a manuscript, a lot of questions, and a will to do it all yourself to someone armed and ready for the fun if murky waters of self-publication. Sound good? Come hang with me on a Sunday! It'll be fun!
Click for more details.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in May 2013.
Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $10.
Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Quick Update on Badge
I'm in the process of putting Badge into book form. When I thought of getting a traditional publisher for the novel, this is the part I most looked forward to handing off to them.
Still, it's going well enough, and I hope to send Badge to the printer on Monday 10/14, two weeks from today. I'll be glad when it's done and I can start focusing on some of the promotional aspects of its launch, which at this moment is slated for 2/18/14. People who donated to Badge's Kickstarter campaign will get their copies in January.
Okay, back to it.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in May 2013.
Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $10.
Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.
Still, it's going well enough, and I hope to send Badge to the printer on Monday 10/14, two weeks from today. I'll be glad when it's done and I can start focusing on some of the promotional aspects of its launch, which at this moment is slated for 2/18/14. People who donated to Badge's Kickstarter campaign will get their copies in January.
Okay, back to it.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in May 2013.
Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $10.
Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.
Monday, August 26, 2013
Book Blurbs
Right about now is when I should be getting blurbs for Badge. You know what blurbs are: those quotes from various writers on the backs of novels telling you how great the novel is. Getting blurbs involves going out into the world and asking writers to read and blurb your novel. I got a few for Ghost Notes. They're an industry standard. If you want to do everything you can to sell your novel, you get book blurbs.
But I'm not getting blurbs for Badge.
Why Not? Three reasons.
1) I don't want to waste favors with my writer friends on blurbs.
Writers never have enough time to do what they want to do--which is write--and I don't want to exhaust these folks with my requests. I'd rather ask them to help promote Badge in other ways, should they be inclined, by reviewing it, or by doing a reading with me when I'm in their town.
2) Many argue blurbs don't help sell novels.
Hey, if you know Stephen King and can get him to blurb your book, go for it. I know many writers more successful than me who could probably be cajoled into blurbing Badge, but I don't know if their seals of approval will generate enough sales to merit bugging them in the first place.
3) There's something about blurb culture that's tired.
Maybe it's me, but whenever I see a writer's blurb on a novel, all I can think of is this poor writer having to drum up enthusiasm for this work out of loyalty or guilt or because she doesn't know how to say no, and not because she's genuinely interested in the work. That might be my projection, but it also might contain some truth. I've never blurbed someone else's book--self-published writers typically aren't sought after for their opinions--but should I have to do it someday, I can't help but imagine it as a kind of task. I tend to read slowly, so maybe that's part of the reason why it seems cumbersome. The temptation to read just the first chapter and scare up a quick sentence or two must be pretty strong.
Anyway, deciding to forgo blurbs is another great argument for self-publishing. If Badge were being traditionally published, I don't think I'd have a choice.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in Tempe in May 2013.
Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $10.
But I'm not getting blurbs for Badge.
Why Not? Three reasons.
1) I don't want to waste favors with my writer friends on blurbs.
Writers never have enough time to do what they want to do--which is write--and I don't want to exhaust these folks with my requests. I'd rather ask them to help promote Badge in other ways, should they be inclined, by reviewing it, or by doing a reading with me when I'm in their town.
2) Many argue blurbs don't help sell novels.
Hey, if you know Stephen King and can get him to blurb your book, go for it. I know many writers more successful than me who could probably be cajoled into blurbing Badge, but I don't know if their seals of approval will generate enough sales to merit bugging them in the first place.
3) There's something about blurb culture that's tired.
Maybe it's me, but whenever I see a writer's blurb on a novel, all I can think of is this poor writer having to drum up enthusiasm for this work out of loyalty or guilt or because she doesn't know how to say no, and not because she's genuinely interested in the work. That might be my projection, but it also might contain some truth. I've never blurbed someone else's book--self-published writers typically aren't sought after for their opinions--but should I have to do it someday, I can't help but imagine it as a kind of task. I tend to read slowly, so maybe that's part of the reason why it seems cumbersome. The temptation to read just the first chapter and scare up a quick sentence or two must be pretty strong.
Anyway, deciding to forgo blurbs is another great argument for self-publishing. If Badge were being traditionally published, I don't think I'd have a choice.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in Tempe in May 2013.
Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $10.
Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Badge Kickstarter Successful, plus New Class on Self-Publishing
We did it.
Thank you all for making it so I won't lose money publishing and promoting my third novel Badge. I think Badge is worth your time and contribution, or I wouldn't have bothered you with this Kickstarter stuff in the first place. It's taken me seven years and many drafts to write it, and I can't wait for you to read it.
To that end, I will spend July and perhaps August getting Badge ready for the proofreader. Then it's off to the printer. I'll also be planning events in the West for February/March 2014, hopefully with events in other regions later in the year. I'm dedicating all of 2014 to Badge, so I'll be trying to make it to your neck of the woods. Stay tuned.
Also, I'm teaching a class on self-publishing at The Attic this summer. This class was designed to get those interested in self-publishing past the rocky, unknown stuff and to the point where they're ready to publish and promote their title well. We'll talk nuts and bolts for a couple of hours every Sunday, figure out about how they apply to your project, have some fun, and by the end of the five-week course you'll have the hard questions about your self-publishing venture answered, a plan in place, and be ready to take your book to the world. Let me know if you have any questions about the class, and please share or forward this class link to anyone you think might be interested.
It's a brave new world out there.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which will premiere in Tempe in early 2013.
Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $5.
Thank you all for making it so I won't lose money publishing and promoting my third novel Badge. I think Badge is worth your time and contribution, or I wouldn't have bothered you with this Kickstarter stuff in the first place. It's taken me seven years and many drafts to write it, and I can't wait for you to read it.
To that end, I will spend July and perhaps August getting Badge ready for the proofreader. Then it's off to the printer. I'll also be planning events in the West for February/March 2014, hopefully with events in other regions later in the year. I'm dedicating all of 2014 to Badge, so I'll be trying to make it to your neck of the woods. Stay tuned.
Also, I'm teaching a class on self-publishing at The Attic this summer. This class was designed to get those interested in self-publishing past the rocky, unknown stuff and to the point where they're ready to publish and promote their title well. We'll talk nuts and bolts for a couple of hours every Sunday, figure out about how they apply to your project, have some fun, and by the end of the five-week course you'll have the hard questions about your self-publishing venture answered, a plan in place, and be ready to take your book to the world. Let me know if you have any questions about the class, and please share or forward this class link to anyone you think might be interested.
It's a brave new world out there.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which will premiere in Tempe in early 2013.
Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $5.
Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.
Monday, October 15, 2012
A Note on Badge
As we await news on Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, I thought I'd take this opportunity to address the situation of my third novel, Badge.
Last year I promised Badge would be released in 2013 at the latest. My thinking was, if nothing else, I'll self-publish it, which is what I did with both Ghost Notes and Stuck Outside of Phoenix. I've proudly self-pubbed for about a decade now, and I believe deeply in it as a means of communicating from writer to reader. If you don't believe that, look at the subheading of this blog.
Still, I've decided I will not self-publish Badge.
There are a number of reasons for this, which you'll no doubt be reading about in future essays, but let me outline the main one for you.
Whenever a book goes out into the world, there are three basic tasks:
1) Writing the book (Writer)
2) Publishing the book (Publisher)
3) Promoting the book (Publicist)
As a DIY publisher, I've worn all three of these hats for both of my published novels, and by and large I've loved it. I've loved the challenge of trying to be a good publisher, which involves editing and proofreading and formatting the book. I've also loved booking readings and getting reviews and working social media, things ideally done by a publicity person. I've had some success, found some readers, won an award, sold some books. I don't regret any of it. It was an amazing way to learn the publishing industry.
But after a decade, I've come to realize that, while I did a good job for someone who is basically an writer wearing publisher and promoter hats, I'm really a writer who wears those other hats out of necessity. These past few months, as I've gotten closer and closer to having to address some of the publisher/promoter tasks associated with Badge, it's become clear I don't have the energy to wear all those hats anymore. I know exactly what it takes to make a self-published book go, and I'm past the point of being able to do it. (And short the $ to have others do it for me.)
So, what does that mean for the publication of Badge?
It means I have to find others to help me with these tasks. Finding these special folks could happen tomorrow, or it could happen years from now. Either way, it's my only real option at this point; I'd do Badge--a novel I've worked on for six years--a disservice if I didn't feel I could give it my all in every facet of the game. This novel (and every novel I write) means too much to me, so I'm not going to start shortchanging them now.
Know that I'm constantly looking for others to help me publish and promote Badge, and that I will loudly update you--here and elsewhere--when I know more about its eventual publication. Until then, know I'm searching.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $5.
Last year I promised Badge would be released in 2013 at the latest. My thinking was, if nothing else, I'll self-publish it, which is what I did with both Ghost Notes and Stuck Outside of Phoenix. I've proudly self-pubbed for about a decade now, and I believe deeply in it as a means of communicating from writer to reader. If you don't believe that, look at the subheading of this blog.
Still, I've decided I will not self-publish Badge.
There are a number of reasons for this, which you'll no doubt be reading about in future essays, but let me outline the main one for you.
Whenever a book goes out into the world, there are three basic tasks:
1) Writing the book (Writer)
2) Publishing the book (Publisher)
3) Promoting the book (Publicist)
As a DIY publisher, I've worn all three of these hats for both of my published novels, and by and large I've loved it. I've loved the challenge of trying to be a good publisher, which involves editing and proofreading and formatting the book. I've also loved booking readings and getting reviews and working social media, things ideally done by a publicity person. I've had some success, found some readers, won an award, sold some books. I don't regret any of it. It was an amazing way to learn the publishing industry.
But after a decade, I've come to realize that, while I did a good job for someone who is basically an writer wearing publisher and promoter hats, I'm really a writer who wears those other hats out of necessity. These past few months, as I've gotten closer and closer to having to address some of the publisher/promoter tasks associated with Badge, it's become clear I don't have the energy to wear all those hats anymore. I know exactly what it takes to make a self-published book go, and I'm past the point of being able to do it. (And short the $ to have others do it for me.)
So, what does that mean for the publication of Badge?
It means I have to find others to help me with these tasks. Finding these special folks could happen tomorrow, or it could happen years from now. Either way, it's my only real option at this point; I'd do Badge--a novel I've worked on for six years--a disservice if I didn't feel I could give it my all in every facet of the game. This novel (and every novel I write) means too much to me, so I'm not going to start shortchanging them now.
Know that I'm constantly looking for others to help me publish and promote Badge, and that I will loudly update you--here and elsewhere--when I know more about its eventual publication. Until then, know I'm searching.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $5.
Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Life at the Top
I heard an interesting story last week from a writer in response to my last post about indie presses.
This writer, call him Bill, said he knew of another writer who was out promoting her memoir. Her publishing company was demanding that she submit her finished novel immediately even though a) it wasn't finished and b) she was in the middle of promoting the memoir--another work published by them!
This is what I've always suspected about life at the top echelon of publishing. (Again, I don't pretend to know what goes on there.) At a certain point, a writer has an agent, an editor and a publishing house all waiting for this work that the writer claimed would be done at a certain time. Throw life into the mix, and any writer will find that those expected writing goals, under even less tense circumstances, get pushed back and back. I imagine writers are so excited to make it to the big leagues they overestimate their rate of productivity, and once they realize how far off they are, they start making concessions with the work. Submitting the thing will make her agent and her editor happy, and it will net her a check sooner. What's not to love?
This is probably not what unpublished or self-published writers want to hear, but succeeding in big publishing is no magic elixir to increasing your productivity, and it certainly isn't going to solve all of your problems. Quite likely, it will take away from your productivity and bring more problems. You will have more demands on your time, more pressure to succeed, less time for the rest of your life, and more of a need to get that check from the publisher as soon as possible. While getting a check from a publisher is great--I hope to get one someday--all of these circumstances may not add up to the best possible environment in which to write novels.
So, while being self-pubbed or un-pubbed has its drawbacks, it also has its advantages. You have all the time you need. Take advantage of it, and make doubly sure that novel is absolutely pristine before it goes out the door.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Try Ghost Notes, the award-winning novel, in print form for just $5.
Try Ghost Notes the Audio Book as an unabridged digital download.
Or try Ghost Notes the Ebook.
This writer, call him Bill, said he knew of another writer who was out promoting her memoir. Her publishing company was demanding that she submit her finished novel immediately even though a) it wasn't finished and b) she was in the middle of promoting the memoir--another work published by them!
This is what I've always suspected about life at the top echelon of publishing. (Again, I don't pretend to know what goes on there.) At a certain point, a writer has an agent, an editor and a publishing house all waiting for this work that the writer claimed would be done at a certain time. Throw life into the mix, and any writer will find that those expected writing goals, under even less tense circumstances, get pushed back and back. I imagine writers are so excited to make it to the big leagues they overestimate their rate of productivity, and once they realize how far off they are, they start making concessions with the work. Submitting the thing will make her agent and her editor happy, and it will net her a check sooner. What's not to love?
This is probably not what unpublished or self-published writers want to hear, but succeeding in big publishing is no magic elixir to increasing your productivity, and it certainly isn't going to solve all of your problems. Quite likely, it will take away from your productivity and bring more problems. You will have more demands on your time, more pressure to succeed, less time for the rest of your life, and more of a need to get that check from the publisher as soon as possible. While getting a check from a publisher is great--I hope to get one someday--all of these circumstances may not add up to the best possible environment in which to write novels.
So, while being self-pubbed or un-pubbed has its drawbacks, it also has its advantages. You have all the time you need. Take advantage of it, and make doubly sure that novel is absolutely pristine before it goes out the door.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Try Ghost Notes, the award-winning novel, in print form for just $5.
Try Ghost Notes the Audio Book as an unabridged digital download.
Or try Ghost Notes the Ebook.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
The Audio Book Revolution
With all the ebook hype out there, I can't help but notice that few are writing about what I think of as the most exciting new medium for fiction. Yes, you guessed it. I'm talking about texting the contents of your novel from a rooftop while wearing a white suit.
No, not that (although I think there's potential there, too). I'm talking about audio books.
Few commercially-published novelists and non-fiction writers have audio book versions of their works. I feel very lucky to have stumbled into one myself.
I love that The Nervous Breakdown's new book publishing arm will give the audio book the dignity it deserves. That's forward-looking, in my opinion, which is what we've come to expect from The Nervous Breakdown.
If you've never tried an audio book, the beauty of them is as follows:
1) You don't actually have to "read" the book. You just sit there and it reads itself for you. The experience, for me, falls somewhere between reading a book and listening to a play of the book. Unbelievably cool if you've got a long journey ahead of you, especially a driving journey, when your eyes need to be occupied elsewhere.
2) Unlike ebooks, you have more latitude with where you can experience an audio book. Specifically, you don't have to be tied to a computer to listen to your book. If you follow this blog, you know how I feel about being tied to a computer (short answer: it's the biggest downside of ebooks). I usually listen audio books in my truck, but any CD player works, as do iPods.
3) Like ebooks, you can get an audio book right now. Yes, NOW. Many, if not most, audio books are available somewhere on the internet for download. There's no waiting for your CDs to arrive in the mail, no driving to the bookstore. My audio book is download-able at CDBaby for the excruciatingly low price of $4.99. Never tried an audio book before? This might be the cheapest one you'll find anywhere. Give it a shot, and make your next long car, train, or plane zip by.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Try Ghost Notes the Audio Book as an unabridged digital download.
No, not that (although I think there's potential there, too). I'm talking about audio books.
Few commercially-published novelists and non-fiction writers have audio book versions of their works. I feel very lucky to have stumbled into one myself.
I love that The Nervous Breakdown's new book publishing arm will give the audio book the dignity it deserves. That's forward-looking, in my opinion, which is what we've come to expect from The Nervous Breakdown.
If you've never tried an audio book, the beauty of them is as follows:
1) You don't actually have to "read" the book. You just sit there and it reads itself for you. The experience, for me, falls somewhere between reading a book and listening to a play of the book. Unbelievably cool if you've got a long journey ahead of you, especially a driving journey, when your eyes need to be occupied elsewhere.
2) Unlike ebooks, you have more latitude with where you can experience an audio book. Specifically, you don't have to be tied to a computer to listen to your book. If you follow this blog, you know how I feel about being tied to a computer (short answer: it's the biggest downside of ebooks). I usually listen audio books in my truck, but any CD player works, as do iPods.
3) Like ebooks, you can get an audio book right now. Yes, NOW. Many, if not most, audio books are available somewhere on the internet for download. There's no waiting for your CDs to arrive in the mail, no driving to the bookstore. My audio book is download-able at CDBaby for the excruciatingly low price of $4.99. Never tried an audio book before? This might be the cheapest one you'll find anywhere. Give it a shot, and make your next long car, train, or plane zip by.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Try Ghost Notes the Audio Book as an unabridged digital download.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Steve Almond Self-Pubs!!!
Steve Almond, who once sneezed and the residual "At-choo" found its way into a mid-tier literary magazine, just self-published a short work on writing, and he goes into his reasoning for the decision here.
With John Edgar Wideman, that makes two established literary writers self-pubbing so far in 2010.
"So what?" you contend. "These writers are both well established players in the game. Of course they can self-publish. They already have a readership."
Very true, but ten years ago, few literary writers would consider self-publishing, at least publicly. The commercial publishing world had developed--for some good reasons, some others not so good--a bias against self-publishing. (There are these things called vanity publishers who charge the writer way too much for...Oh, you've heard this one.) And despite self-publishing's honorable lineage that includes names like Joyce and Austen and Twain, most literary writers were afraid of the contemporary stigma of self-publishing. They wouldn't dare dip their toes in that pool for fear of some catching some E. coli-type virus that might contaminate their entire literary careers.
Scary stuff, but in the late 1990s/early 2000s, with the advent of print-on-demand technology, all of a sudden there was a way to self-publish without dealing with vanity vermin, and without a huge up-front investment in books. And while there were still plenty of companies that charged too much for this new service, there were others that didn't. The world was developing a new way for a writer, at least financially and at least on the front end, to go it alone.
While writers of other genres started publicly experimenting with this new form of publishing, much doubt still persisted in literary circles. For many in this group, a deep mistrust of anything that cost a writer money ruled. How little money and how good the product were of no consequence. If it was self-published, it was evil. Nice and clean, black and white. (Oddly, the opposite of the nuance and complexity literary fiction is known for.)
So, a decade removed from the democratization of publishing, at least two literary writers--tired of the narrowing perspective of commercial publishing and craving a chance to design their own books--have publicly taken the self-publishing plunge. Minds can change after all. It just takes a while.
Will these literary writers make self-publishing any easier for those who don't bring a huge readership and a cadre of cred with them to their project? I don't know. I like to think it bring us closer to a day when every book will be judged by its ability to engage rather than by its method of publication.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Try Ghost Notes, the award-winning novel, in print form for just $5.
Try Ghost Notes the Audio Book as an unabridged digital download.
Or try Ghost Notes the Ebook.
With John Edgar Wideman, that makes two established literary writers self-pubbing so far in 2010.
"So what?" you contend. "These writers are both well established players in the game. Of course they can self-publish. They already have a readership."
Very true, but ten years ago, few literary writers would consider self-publishing, at least publicly. The commercial publishing world had developed--for some good reasons, some others not so good--a bias against self-publishing. (There are these things called vanity publishers who charge the writer way too much for...Oh, you've heard this one.) And despite self-publishing's honorable lineage that includes names like Joyce and Austen and Twain, most literary writers were afraid of the contemporary stigma of self-publishing. They wouldn't dare dip their toes in that pool for fear of some catching some E. coli-type virus that might contaminate their entire literary careers.
Scary stuff, but in the late 1990s/early 2000s, with the advent of print-on-demand technology, all of a sudden there was a way to self-publish without dealing with vanity vermin, and without a huge up-front investment in books. And while there were still plenty of companies that charged too much for this new service, there were others that didn't. The world was developing a new way for a writer, at least financially and at least on the front end, to go it alone.
While writers of other genres started publicly experimenting with this new form of publishing, much doubt still persisted in literary circles. For many in this group, a deep mistrust of anything that cost a writer money ruled. How little money and how good the product were of no consequence. If it was self-published, it was evil. Nice and clean, black and white. (Oddly, the opposite of the nuance and complexity literary fiction is known for.)
So, a decade removed from the democratization of publishing, at least two literary writers--tired of the narrowing perspective of commercial publishing and craving a chance to design their own books--have publicly taken the self-publishing plunge. Minds can change after all. It just takes a while.
Will these literary writers make self-publishing any easier for those who don't bring a huge readership and a cadre of cred with them to their project? I don't know. I like to think it bring us closer to a day when every book will be judged by its ability to engage rather than by its method of publication.
Yours in laying down the law,
Art
Try Ghost Notes, the award-winning novel, in print form for just $5.
Try Ghost Notes the Audio Book as an unabridged digital download.
Or try Ghost Notes the Ebook.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Have You Ever Revised A Novel and Made it Worse?
This may come as a surprise to many, but I have a big, big problem with self-publishing.
Many of you have gone--or are going--through the process of writing a book. It's quite a journey, even if the journey is one of those quiet ones that happens only in your head...and on your computer screen.
And if you've written a novel, you've also probably revised a novel. It's part of the process. You want to make it better and better.
Here's my question for you: Is novel revision ever a bad thing?
I've been writing novels, daily, seriously, for something like 14 years. In that time I've completed two novels, and I'm just about finished with a third. I don't count the number of drafts I do on each one, but I tend to go through a novel at least six times changing big-ticket items--plot, character, character motivations, etc. Then I read through it many times, my focus getting more and more narrow, until I'm fixated only on grammar, spelling and typography issues. That's when I call it done.
I have to admit there is no such thing as "too many" when it comes to passes through my works. In my opinion, they could always use one more. My work never tells me it's done. It's usually something I have to tell myself. "After four, five, six years, isn't it time to get it out there?" "Can I really justify dedicating any more time to this thing without knowing if anyone wants to read it?" These questions speak more to my emotional state than to anything within the work.
With each novel, there is a draft that I sense is the final one, and I try to make the thing perfect by the end of that draft...and then I give it one more quick draft, just to make sure...and then I read it--just read it--for any last-second issues.
And then I have to stop, save the work as "MyMasterpieceFinal," and send it out into the world.
And therein comes my problem with self-publishing.
Self-publishing allows many writers to call their final draft their final draft, whereas commercially published writers still have, at minimum, an editor, and probably an agent, who will go through that manuscript at least one more time with a keen eye for its weaknesses. This process, I gather, can take months--even a year sometimes--and it can't help but make those final manuscripts even more final. Extra-final. Super-final. FINAL-final.
Of course, self-published writers can hire their own experts to edit their works, but most don't. We'd rather save that scratch for book design, or marketing. We need to watch every penny if we expect to profit. Editing is one thing we should be able to do ourselves, so we try our best.
But how about you? Are your novels ever finished, even when they're "finished"? Or do you agree with William Faulkner, that great works are never finished, only abandoned?
Try Ghost Notes, the award-winning novel, in print form for just $5.
Try Ghost Notes the Audio Book as an unabridged digital download.
Or try Ghost Notes the Ebook.
Many of you have gone--or are going--through the process of writing a book. It's quite a journey, even if the journey is one of those quiet ones that happens only in your head...and on your computer screen.
And if you've written a novel, you've also probably revised a novel. It's part of the process. You want to make it better and better.
Here's my question for you: Is novel revision ever a bad thing?
I've been writing novels, daily, seriously, for something like 14 years. In that time I've completed two novels, and I'm just about finished with a third. I don't count the number of drafts I do on each one, but I tend to go through a novel at least six times changing big-ticket items--plot, character, character motivations, etc. Then I read through it many times, my focus getting more and more narrow, until I'm fixated only on grammar, spelling and typography issues. That's when I call it done.
I have to admit there is no such thing as "too many" when it comes to passes through my works. In my opinion, they could always use one more. My work never tells me it's done. It's usually something I have to tell myself. "After four, five, six years, isn't it time to get it out there?" "Can I really justify dedicating any more time to this thing without knowing if anyone wants to read it?" These questions speak more to my emotional state than to anything within the work.
With each novel, there is a draft that I sense is the final one, and I try to make the thing perfect by the end of that draft...and then I give it one more quick draft, just to make sure...and then I read it--just read it--for any last-second issues.
And then I have to stop, save the work as "MyMasterpieceFinal," and send it out into the world.
And therein comes my problem with self-publishing.
Self-publishing allows many writers to call their final draft their final draft, whereas commercially published writers still have, at minimum, an editor, and probably an agent, who will go through that manuscript at least one more time with a keen eye for its weaknesses. This process, I gather, can take months--even a year sometimes--and it can't help but make those final manuscripts even more final. Extra-final. Super-final. FINAL-final.
Of course, self-published writers can hire their own experts to edit their works, but most don't. We'd rather save that scratch for book design, or marketing. We need to watch every penny if we expect to profit. Editing is one thing we should be able to do ourselves, so we try our best.
But how about you? Are your novels ever finished, even when they're "finished"? Or do you agree with William Faulkner, that great works are never finished, only abandoned?
Try Ghost Notes, the award-winning novel, in print form for just $5.
Try Ghost Notes the Audio Book as an unabridged digital download.
Or try Ghost Notes the Ebook.
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