Reviewing reviewers

I didn't get enough sleep last night, so I went to work on a B project--soliciting more reviews for Trang from review blogs.

Oh my God. I mean, I realize that in this brave new world, review blogs are necessarily run by amateurs, doing this in their spare time. But seriously:

1. It is unethical to ask for payment in return for a review. I don't give a fuck if you think you are super-special and would never be swayed by money--that just proves what a deluded idiot you are. If you feel you need to be compensated for your time, sell your reviews to a reputable publication (you know, the kind that fires you if you take money from the people whose work you are reviewing) or run ads on your blog, OK?

2. It is pathetic to ask for an ass-licking in return for a review. I'm all in favor for a zero-tolerance policy regarding abusive and pestering e-mails, but I would hope that your review of my work would depend on the quality of that work, not on the fact that (per your suggestion!) I told you in my e-mail soliciting a review that I thought you were super-duper and I loved you and followed you everywhere because you are just! so! awesome! and now we are best friends!!! Honestly, what are you thinking? Why not be even more open about what you're actually reviewing, and title your blog "How Well Do You Lie and Suck Up?" Instead of stars, you could use [redacted for obscene imagery].

Also, it's nice if people actually write, you know, reviews. I really don't get it when people post the publishing information and something vague like, "Writing: Used words." You do realize you can get books for free from the library, right? There's no need to go through this "I'm a book reviewer!" charade.

Not that they're all like that, of course, but I'm amazed to see people openly doing what I would have gotten fired and blacklisted for back when I was a reporter (and, yes, I did occasionally write book reviews).

Taking a deep breath (I am calm, I am calm) and looking at this from the perspective of a writer: Just having the publishing information (you know--the book length, the description, a picture of the cover) posted on a Web site was of no use to me. And I have to question the credibility of a review site where your money or your ability to [redacted for obscene imagery] is of paramount importance. People may fool themselves that they aren't affected by payment or a good [redacted for obscene imagery], but I doubt they fool a lot of readers.

Which brings me to the larger point of why I don't see the point of gaming the system. I've written a niche book. It appeals to a certain audience. Positioning it as something else was a mistake.

I can't see how doing something like paying/performing [redacted for obscene imagery] in exchange for a "totally unbiased, really!!!" review would help me reach my target audience. I feel the same way about gaming Amazon by having all your friends buy your book on a particular day--one of the reasons that site sells so many self-published books is because of its suggest-to-sell features (you know, "People who bought THIS also bought THAT" and the like). If, say, my sister, who does not like sci-fi and prefers a cozy mystery, bought Trang off Amazon because I asked her to, that would simply trick the algorithm into suggesting the book to lovers of cozy mysteries. I have no idea what they would do with it, but I doubt it would fall in the category of "bought it/loved it/told all my friends."

What are publishers bringing to the party?

The Passive Voice has a bunch of stuff about the Digital Book World Conference today. (Apparently the conference motto is, "Learn Why You Aren't Profiting from Digital Ebook Publishing." Very up, guys, very up.) And it's all about how traditional publishers need to be more like self-publishers, what with getting books to market faster and building communities around books and lowering prices and selling short stories individually and not having crappy formatting.

And all that may be a good idea. But as traditional publishing becomes more and more like self-publishing, authors really, really need to ask themselves, Is it worth paying a premium to have a publishing house do what I can do myself for far less money? Because, hey, if the arrows in their quiver are labeled "sell short stories individually" or "toy with pricing" or "don't mess up the formatting," you have the exact same arrows in your quiver, and you don't have to pay for them.

It's not really any different than when some digital publisher asks your for half your royalties or $3,000 to do something that just isn't that complicated.

The problem isn't only that you're getting robbed blind (although that is definitely a problem), the larger problem is that you're getting locked into a business model where your books cost people an arm and a leg. Occasionally bringing the price down to 99 cents (and you really take the shaft) isn't going to help that much when the rest of the time, your book is $10 more than everyone else's.

One of the reasons why even writers who self-publish will take traditional-publishing contracts is because they perceive a value in the distribution networks and marketing programs traditional publishers have. But the vanishing of Borders and the downward spiral of Barnes & Noble means that that network is becoming less valuable (and apparently publishers are cutting sales forces, meaning they're not going to be in a good position to uncover new brick-and-mortar markets). Marketing of course costs money--the question is, can you do it yourself (or even hire someone to do it for you) for less than what a traditional publishing contract will cost you in royalties and lost sales? If you really, really think a particular publisher has excellent marketing, then you might want to go for it. But I think it would be wrong to assume a publisher has such excellent marketing that they can get people to buy $13 e-books, especially one written by someone who isn't a huge name, because evidence indicates otherwise.

Social media, blah-blah-blah

I'm not anywhere near focused enough today to edit. It's a rebound issue from being trapped in the house for a week--you want popcorn kittens, I got 'em big time. I went out to lunch today! Because I could! And I went for a walk! Because I could! (And saw two otters--wow, I wasn't expecting to be able to do that.) I'm going to go buy a pizza for dinner! Because I can! Maybe I'll invent an errand and run it later! Because I can!

Yeah, it's B project time, and Lindsay Buroker's many, many posts on using social media convinced me--well, they didn't convince me that I wasn't using social media to its full potential, because I already knew that, but they did convince me that I could better utilize social media without having it be this huge, time-consuming pain in the butt that distracts me from actually writing books.

One thing she recommended with Twitter was to use TweetDeck, because that way you can follow a gazillion people and still have a vague handle on the resulting flood of tweets. So I downloaded it, and promptly discovered that someone had put some of my blog posts in a newsletter--the person had very considerately notified me of this fact via Twitter, and Twitter never told me because I wasn't following them already! Oy, vey. I'm sure following them now!

What's also funny is that one reason Buroker thinks it's worthwhile to become something of a Twitter ho is that if someone with a lot more followers than you likes one of your tweets, they'll retweet it to all their followers. And I decided to follow Buroker, and she liked one of my tweets, and...let's just say she puts her money where her mouth is, and I'm getting more followers and retweets as a result. So that was nice--I don't think it's necessarily going to get me a ton of new fans of Trang or anything, but I do think it is important to get the word out about how self-publishing works and what to avoid.

I also set up a Facebook fan page (for myself. That's not egocentric or anything) and linked it to Twitter, so when I tweet my blog posts, the links should also show up there, too. (ETA: Argh. I thought it went from Twitter to the Facebook page, but it actually goes the other way. OK, I can make that work, too.) It's just another way that people can follow what's going on here (with, you know, the all-important minimal effort on my part).

OK--gotta go get some pizza! Because I can! (And I've got the kid tomorrow--this may shock you, but we're probably going to go out--so don't expect meaningful output until Wednesday....)

My point about the economics of self-publishing, made for me

This is a story in The Wall Street Journal about how traditional publishers are looking at the kind of sales self-publishers are having by selling low-priced books, and deciding to do that themselves.

How nice for them. But how does it affect the writer? George Pelecanos spills the beans (thank you, George):

 

"It's a gamble, but I want to be read," said Mr. Pelecanos, who stands to earn all of 17 cents on each 99-cent sale. By comparison, the digital edition of Mr. Pelecanos's most recent novel, "The Cut," a new series featuring a former Iraq war veteran turned investigator, retailed for $12.99. Mr. Pelecanos's cut was $2.27 on each sale.

 

OK, so on a 99-cent book, he's making 17 cents--which is half of what he'd make putting that sucker onto Amazon himself at that price, but that's not the scary bit.

The scary bit is that he gets $2.27 on a $13 e-book! !! !!!! !!!!! He could get that kind of money for a book he self-published on Amazon and priced at...wait for it...$3.25.

That's almost a TEN DOLLAR DIFFERENCE to the buyer! And a ZERO DOLLAR DIFFERENCE in profits to the author!

See, this gamble Pelecanos is making is unnecessary. He wants people to discover him, to realize that they are his fans--and obviously the much-vaunted marketing and distribution to bookstores provided by his publishers haven't really helped with that. So he's cutting prices and taking a hit. But by self-publishing he could drastically slash his prices and find new readers and all that good stuff without losing a dime.

There's a mini-hiatus going on

If you've noticed that I've gotten a lot less productive over the past couple of days, that's because it has thawed (yay!) and my time has been spent purchasing toilet paper, reuniting with long-lost relatives, washing the blood out of the carpet in front of the elevator doors, and the like. I should be back on track tomorrow...probably. I have power and not everybody does, so there may be some unanticipated demands on my time.

Is self-publishing like playing the lottery?

It's probably not going to shock you to hear that I think the answer to that question is no.

Traditional publishing, I would argue, is at this point very much like playing the lottery. I do not play the lottery, or roulette, or any game of chance that requires my money--or my time and effort, which also cost money--where the odds are stacked against me. (I like fire, so if I want to throw my money away to no purpose, I can always take it out back and light it up--I know I'll enjoy that.) My attitude towards lotteries is why I avoided creative writing for a long time and why I gave up on traditional publishing--any field where someone can write "I look forward to reading this as a published book.... It will be a welcome addition to the literature on slavery" in a rejection letter and not be hauled off to an insane asylum is a field I want to avoid.

Traditional publishing is not a meritocracy. It is a lottery.

Self-publishing--well, that, I feel is much less driven by luck. It seems like there really is a formula: Produce a large number of decent titles, actually put them on sale (crucial step!), and market them appropriately; see a payoff. You don't have to sell a ton of copies (because relying on writing a blockbuster is even dumber than relying on buying a winning lottery ticket).

You might notice that that is not at all what I'm doing--I'm slowly cranking out these loooong novels one at a time and not really marketing at all (although I'll market more once Trust is out. Probably). And I have the puny sales to prove it! It's all kind of academic to me, since my income comes from elsewhere--and yes, I used to hate people like me when I wrote for a living! God, they were all, blah-blah-blah never mind the market, don't you have a trust fund/fuck buddy who works on Wall Street to support you? I wanted to punch them in the face so bad!!!

Ahem. Anyway, I haven't lost an appreciation for being able to actually make a living just from your writing. So just because I'm not doing the things that would help you make a decent living self-publishing, that doesn't mean they aren't things you should be doing, if you want or need to make a decent living self-publishing.

Who is actually doing these things? Well, let's take a(nother) look at Lindsay Buroker's blog! She'd never been traditionally published. She did write for a living, but she wasn't writing fantasy fiction, so it's not like she had this built-in audience. She started in December 2010 with a novel and has been adding titles ever since. And hey, as she puts up new titles, the sales of her old titles grow, and while she's not a gazillionaire, she's doing pretty well. It helps that she's a savvy marketer, but she's more than happy to share her ideas, and they don't look like things that are impossible to replicate.

Under the old system, you could write a great book, and it just didn't matter. It would never see the light of day, and you wouldn't make a dime. Now it's definitely going to see the light of day, and while your sales might not be enough to interest traditional publishers, they may be plenty enough to satisfy you.

Progress report

Finished editing up to chapter 24, which is another problem chapter, so I figured I'd start fresh on it tomorrow. There are 26 chapters plus an epilogue, so I'm getting close to done with this editing pass, yay.

CreateSpace is changing

Oh, FYI, CreateSpace is discontinuing its "Pro Plan," which let you price your paper book more cheaply and distribute it to bookstores and libraries. Now everyone gets the cheaper price for free, which is nice, and Expanded Distribution is $25 a title, not $39. I don't know if there's an annual fee attached to Expanded Distribution now--there used to be a $10 annual fee to maintain Pro Plan after its first year.

ALIVE (and thinking about bestseller lists)

Yeah, I'm still here and still snowed in. I needed to take a break yesterday, so I took a hatchet and chased the cats around the hedge maze out back. Good exercise, but a bit chilly.

Anyway, this post (via PV) provides a breakdown of self-published books among the Kindle bestsellers in 2011. It's interesting data, although it also really points out the limitations of bestseller data, which I think the author of the post is a little blind to. As he notes, a book could sell as well in December as it did in June and not be on a bestseller lists because books in general tend to sell more in December. The other thing to remember about bestseller lists is that they're only good for the period they cover. So, you can wring your hands about the fact that John Locke basically fell off the monthly bestseller lists in June, or you can see that he wrote 7 of the 100 titles on the overall 2011 bestseller list and realize that he's doing just fine.

The author of the post also seems oddly worried that there won't be more news stories about self-publishing, while at the same time noting that news stories don't always boost sales. I agree that there will eventually be fewer news stories, for what that's worth: The sun coming up in the east and going down in the west is not news, so as self-publishing becomes more and more mainstream there will be less news coverage of it, because it will just be the way things are done.

But that doesn't mean that self-publishing will lose its appeal. Bestseller lists not only don't give an idea of absolute numbers, they offer zero information on how much an author profits from sales, and the 70% royalty rate is the secret sauce of self-publishing. Barbara Freethy is probably making more money now than she ever has in her entire life. Why would she turn to a publishing house, even an indie publishing house? Why would she start her own publishing house like John Locke, unless like John Locke she is a serial entrepreneur?

When people worry about who is where on some bestseller list, I feel like that's the habits of traditional publishing talking. In that world, yes, you did have to sell a gazillion copies to make a living--that's why it sucked. You basically had to win the lottery in order to pay the rent. The world of self-publishing is so much more exciting to me because you no longer have to do that. It doesn't matter if you're topping the bestseller list or not, you can still make good money on modest sales.

It is not unethical to give customers what they want

OK, fine, sometimes it is unethical--if your customers want snuff porn, or child prostitutes, or crystal meth, I do encourage you to seek another line of work.

But lately I've read several incidences of people wringing their hands over selling short stories.

Now, I don't write short fiction--don't ask me why, everything just seems to come in at book-length for me. But I like short fiction, and from a business perspective, I sure wish I wrote it. If you write it, please consider yourself lucky, and take advantage of that fact.

The hand-wringing around selling short fiction seems to focus around two issues.

ISSUE #1: 99 cents is too much to charge for a short story!

Um, hey, not to sound all laissez faire, but why not let the readers decide that one?

I realize that there's this whole campaign against expensive e-books, but those people are upset about books that cost north of $10 or $15, not a penny less than $1.

I know, I know, if you look at it at a per-word basis, 99 cents for a 4,000-word short story is like charging almost $25 for a 100,000-word novel, but guys, it's 99 cents!

Why would someone happily pay 99 cents for a short story? Convenience.

Think about buying a can of Coke from a vending machine. That 12-ounce can probably is going to cost you more than an entire 2-liter bottle of Coke you buy from a grocery store. A small bag of chips? Again, at the price you pay a vending machine, you could get a HUGE family-size bag somewhere else.

Why do you pay so much to the vending machine? Because it is there when you need it.

The same thing is true of an electronic short story. Think of the last time you realized that "painfully boring" could be a literal expression--you were stuck in line at the post office around Christmas time, your dentist made you wait 90 minutes in a room with only a few old copies of Gum Disease Today to entertain you, your flight was delayed...and delayed...and delayed....

You would have gladly paid 99 cents for some relief, right? I mean, hell, you paid way more than that if you hit the lounge at the airport.

You could be offering that relief to your readers.Trust me, they would thank you for it. But instead, you're too afraid. As a result, you are driving your readers to drink. At the airport lounge. How can you look at yourself in the mirror knowing that?

OK, I'm being a little facetious. (But just a little. Honestly, given the way some people bitch and moan about waiting in line at the post office, I would pay 99 cents just to shut them up.) Of course you need to indicate in the book description (and possibly the subtitle) that you are selling a short story--give the word count, be very up-front about what the reader is getting.

But realize that you're not warning the reader--a lot of people don't want a huge novel, they are just looking for something quick to read on their phone. There is a real, honest-to-God market for short stories. There is nothing wrong with providing to that market.

ISSUE #2: I can't sell a collection of short stories and then sell the same stories individually!

Why the hell not? Konrath does it. Lots of people do it! And of course, the more titles you have available, the more likely it is readers will discover your work.

I assume this stems from the deep-seated fear many creative people share: They don't want to turn into George Lucas. They don't want to repackage and repackage the same content over and over again, because they know that they have a really crazed fan base that will feel obligated to purchase each and every new package, no matter how crappy it is, and they don't give a damn about anything except extracting as much money from those people as possible.

But you're not George Lucas! Not everyone's a fan--some people don't even know who the hell you are!

In fact, you have two separate markets here, and there's nothing wrong with serving them both. On the one hand, you have the fans and the bargain lovers. They will buy your collection, which you have considerately priced at a discount to buying your stories individually. Think of them as the people who do plan ahead and do go to the grocery store and do buy that 2-liter bottle of Coke and the HUGE family-sized bag of potato chips and do save money.

On the other hand, you have the people I described above, who are desperate for a quick read. They could probably use a vending machine too, if you have one.

One group is not better than the other. One group is not more deserving of your care, attention, and words than the other. It is perfectly ethical to serve both markets. You are making more people happy. That is a good thing.

Yes, let them know what they are buying. Yes, tell them in the description of the collection what stories are there, and tell them in the description of the story that it's available in a collection--knock yourself out! But don't be afraid to offer your wares as many ways as you can. People pay for convenience all the time, because it's worth it.

And you know, if it totally blows up in your face and everyone thinks you're a money-grubbing whore, 1. I'm sorry I steered you wrong, and 2. you can always take the story down.

Good point!

I'm reading through Lindsay Buroker's blog--she's got a lot of good ideas about marketing, which you know is an area I need help in--and in one post she makes a very good point about self-publishing as a form of entrepreneurship. She's Q&Aing herself in this post:

 

Aren’t you devaluing yourself and your work by pricing a novel at $0.99? At $0.35 earnings per sale you’ll never even make minimum wage….

I always scratch my head when people bring hourly wages into this. We’re entrepreneurs, guys, not hourly or salaried workers, and we’re creating intellectual property that can pay us in perpetuity — we’re not trading an hour’s work for an hour’s pay.

Just one of those days

I'm snowed in. I HATE being snowed in. I guess it's too many years in NYC (where I could just hike through the snow to the grocery store or the subway, so snow was no big deal), but the idea of being cut off from civilization by the icy hand of Nature is just upsetting to me. I keep waiting for the wolves to arrive.

So I didn't edit, because I was too buggy. I took care of little stuff, like finally getting that teeny error fixed in the e-books. Also I mentioned in the comments to that PV post that, hey, yeah! I put stuff helpful to newbies on my Web site! And someone came over here and was like, Your Web site is actually kind of hard to navigate. Which makes sense, because this thing has just grown without any planning on my part.

To make it a little easier, I tagged a few more things "helpful (I hope) hints." I changed the title of the Blog Navigation section to Search Blog and moved it up. That involved actually learning how to do that, and I'm glad I know now. The person also didn't like the fact that the content is on a subdomain of the hosting company--I'm assuming that affects Google searches, or maybe it just looks amateurish. I did some digging, and it looks to me like it would be a pain to fix that, so it's going into the "maybe later" pile. I don't really have any ambition to Dominate the Web, although setting things up so that visitors can actually find what's useful matters (not as much as, you know, writing books, but some).

I feel like I need a B project now that I'm done with the large-print edition. The next big project coming up is writing Trials, and let's face it, if I can't get it together enough to focus on editing Trust, I'm not going to get it together enough to write another book. I can still do work on the cover and description of Trust. (It was so nice when I went to do the large-print edition cover, and I opened the files, and they were already done!) There's also a home-improvement thing that might move into the B project slot--we'll see.

Great resources for self-publishers!

Passive Voice sent me to this awesome post by David Gaughran on self-publishing scams. It's a great read: If you're a newbie, it explains why you really, really, really don't need to spend a mint on production and distribution. (Short version: That's the easy part!) If you're an old hand, he suggests that you make information about production and distribution available on your blog or Web site. Obviously, I could not agree more. Don't be shy because you're no kind of tech whiz and your computer is ancient and your software is not really appropriate for the task and you don't really know what you're doing. Plenty of other people are in the exact same boat!

Gaughran links to this equally awesome post by David Burton, which contains all sorts of great links to a sold ton of information. Like, wow, that's a lot of information. I've read maybe a fraction of the stuff he lists, so if you read it all (and the vast majority is free), you'll be way more expert than I am!

Why grammar and spelling matter

(Thanks to circumstances beyond my control, I'm not editing today.)

I've noticed a tendency among writers who haven't worked in publishing to be kind of dismissive of stuff like grammar and spelling. This is in strong contrast with those who have worked in publishing: That's a field where the term "functionally illiterate" (say it with contempt!) is applied to those who make these types of errors, no matter how many PhDs or billions of dollars they may have. It is also a field where cover letters containing errors are marked up with red pencil and hung on the wall in the break room for the amusement of staff.

Outside that world of hedgehogs, less-experienced writers sometimes regard grammar and spelling as mere details (because when it comes to writing, details don't matter). I have even heard proofreading disparaged as "technical editing," with the implication that grammar and spelling are mere technicalities that a true artist can dispose of. You know, the way Michelangelo disposed with learning how to paint. (In addition to being bad in concept, that is also a misuse of the term: Technical writing and editing is what you do when you produce technical documents--user's manuals and the like.)

The fact of the matter is, errors interfere with the reader's enjoyment of the story. Trying to read a story that is riddled with errors is like trying to carry on a meaningful conversation in the middle of an artillery range. You're reading along, hoping to get into the story, when BANG!

"Jane looked at Mark, and then at Fred. Suddenly, he hit her."

Wait, what? Who hit her? Was it Mark or Fred? What's going on?

"I really hope it's leg isn't hurt."

I really hope it is...leg...what? Oh, they mean "its leg." Got it. Now where was I?

"At this rate, he'll probably catch a venial disease."

A...what? Oh, ha-ha, they mean venereal disease. Someone didn't get much sex ed.

You get yanked out of the narrative. (If you notice an error in this post and go, "A-ha! She's so high and mighty, but she screws up, too!" you've just made my point for me, thank you.) The more exciting things are--it's an action scene, blood's flying everywhere--the worse it is, like hitting a speed bump when you're going 70 miles per hour. Not to mention that if the errors are bad enough, you literally cannot understand what the person is trying to say.

It's a problem once you publish, obviously. But I also think it's important that your work be at least somewhat polished if you're giving someone a draft to look over. I feel like it's a real waste of everyone's time if you give me something in hopes of getting meaningful feedback, and the only feedback I can give you is, "Please fix the grammar and spelling, and then I can actually focus on your story and tell you something of value."

Thinking about the future

So, if you haven't figured this out yet, I definitely think the LibraryThing giveaway was well worth doing. There are not only some fab reviews on LibraryThing itself, but more are trickling out onto Amazon and Goodreads, and of course I now have enough reviews to have a reviews page (plus the psychological boost of knowing that some people actually liked the book). In addition, once the early LibraryThing reviews were posted, a number of other people put the book on their "to-read" list, plus several e-mailed me to get the book. And I think I finally got a second Book Rooster review. I assume that the fact that the early reviews were so positive encouraged people who might not necessarily read a book available for free (because who wants to spend their time reading something that sucks?) to pick it up and read it. And, you know, the LibraryThing giveaway didn't cost a cent.

That, plus the content of the reviews--even the people who thought it was just OK want to read the next book--makes me very comfortable with the idea of Trang as a loss leader. It's something that I assumed I would do once I had more books out (like, two more books out--Trust and Trials--not just Trust).

But now there's that new program with Amazon, where you list your book exclusively with them for three months. If you do that, people who pay for Prime membership can borrow your book for free, and you can offer your book to everyone for free for five days.

That's like sticking a toe in the free pool, as opposed to jumping all the way in. So I may give that a try once Trust is out.

Love this

From an interview with Elmore Leonard.

 

You're 86 and still writing every day. What keeps you working when you could easily retire?

I still like to write. I might as well do it. I can't just sit here and look out the window. There's a lot of snow out there right now.