On Self-Publishing and the Hugh Howey / Data Guy January 2015 Report

(Parts of this post originally appeared on my Google+ page and in the comments on Mike Reeves-McMillan's post on the report.)

You may be aware that Author Earnings, a data analysis site run by Hugh Howey and someone called Data Guy, recently released a report on ebook sales and the market share of those sales by the various publishing methods.  There is a lot of interesting information here, so I do recommend checking it out if you have the time.

As you may expect, I have some issues with the report and with responses to the report -- and to my questions regarding the report.  I should start by saying that I haven't bothered with the self-publishing vs. traditional publishing debate in any serious sense for years because I find the entrenched positions on either side to be, in light of the current publishing climate, monstrously stupid.  There are too many pundits out there trying to prescribe the "right" path for publishing while rejecting any alternative as viable; yet, so few of them have much in the way of hard, objective data to back up their arguments.  As it stands, most of the debates about which method is better are based almost entirely on anecdotes or reports like the one I'm going to talk about here.  Unfortunately, that invariably means these arguments are fundamentally faulty.
 
While I don't doubt that a lot of the data here is accurate (and interesting), there are two immediate problems that come to mind:

Self-Published Books vs. Literary Awards: In Response to Linda Nagata

I'm a little late to the party, but Linda Nagata kindly rebutted my original post on the logistical issues of literary awards as a rationale for the rejection of self-published books from the consideration lists.  Here, I'd like to respond to some of her arguments.

First, I'll say that I don't disagree with most of what Nagata has to say.  As an author who has traveled in both publishing camps, she of course understands the issue on a different level, and thus has valid points to make about the value of literary awards to SPed authors, etc.  My main point of contention surrounds this quote:

Self-Published Books vs. Literary Awards: A Logistical Problem?

Back in August, The Guardian posted a column by Liz Bury entitled "Why is self-publishing still scorned by literary awards?"  The article doesn't exactly make an argument about the apparent snubbing of SPed books in the literary awards circuit, but Bury does essentially imply in the body of the article that the inability of these awards to address the widespread consumption of SPed books will not work on their favor.  I'm not sure that's true either, to be honest.  These same literary awards are just as relevant as they were before SPing became normal (lots of relevance or no relevance whatsoever -- depends on your view).

I, however, have a different perspective on this problem.  As a podcaster (The Skiffy and Fanty Show) and blogger, I get a lot of requests for reviews, interviews, guest posts, and so on.  On the

My Current Thoughts on Self-Publishing / Traditional Publishing Gurus

To all the people out there telling me how I should publish my first book: please take your advice and shove it. You have no frakking clue what you're talking about. Anyone who says "there is only one way to do it" should be discounted as idiots. 

J.K. Rowling got rich publishing the old fashioned way. Amanda Hocking got rich self-publishing (and now she's got the old fashioned thing going). Lots of people have got rich doing it either way. Anyone who says "but my way is the only way" is full of shit. WTF do you know? Sometimes there is no right way. You just do what feels right to you and hope for the best.  Publishing is a crapshoot. Some of us make it. Most of us don't.

The only sure advice anyone can give is this: if you really want to make it, don't give up. Keep improving your writing and write better stories.

Meh.

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That more or less sums up how I feel about it all now.  My thoughts have changed a lot in the last few years.  Such is life...

(Originally posted on Google+)

"The book market be flooded with bad books," said the Bookstore Man!

The following comment was left on John Ottinger's Grasping For the Wind.  Specifically, I left it on a guest post by R. L. Copple entitled "Wading Through the Crap," which is an interesting take on the "there will be so much crap" anti-self-publishing argument.  I take some issue with the logic, even if I now also take issue with the anti-SP argument being refuted, but the post is interesting enough to check out on your own (which I expect you all to do; go on, leave some comments!)

Here's what I had to say:

This post is just as riddled with fallacies, which is ironic when you argue that the post linked at the start is equally plagued by them. 

Two examples: 

1. You say: “Now let’s say with the explosion of indie books, it adds 20,000 new titles to the pile each year, giving the reader a total of 30,000 new books to browse through. And let’s say the average reader will only like 2% of those books, meaning among those 20,000 indie books, they would have 400 books they would enjoy reading if they came across them. That means among the 30,000 books they could wade through, there would be 900 they would pick up if they came across them, which amounts to a 3% chance of finding a book they like instead of 5%. If that scenario was true, it would mean it grew a tad harder to find a book the reader likes, but only by 2%.” 

While a 2% decrease seems minor, in the grand scheme of book “finding,” it’s not. When you take into account the time, energy, and other variables that go into book “finding,” that 2% decrease is substantial, particularly since it represents a 40% reduction in possibility. That’s nothing to scoff at. You’re using numerical trickery here to suggest something that isn’t such a big deal, but you leave out the primary thing that makes readers very unlikely to buy anything whatsoever: wasting their time. Even a 1% (or 20%) decrease would put off a substantial number of readers who simply can’t be bothered to put in the extra effort to find something they may or may not like (which, let’s face it, even when you take into account the various ways readers come to books, and, thus, choose them, that doesn’t include the time and effort it takes for that reader to actually discover if they got the right book; this implies that your model must take into account the percentage of occurrences in which a reader found a book, but discovered upon reading that it wasn’t to their liking — contrary to popular belief in self-publishing circles, most readers aren’t willing to read huge previews and the like; if you’re lucky, they’ll read a page or two, which explains why publishers are so adamant about those first few pages, even today). 

2. You spend a lot of time talking about slush piles and how readers see the demise of the slush pile as something good for them, since it means there will be more good books to find. The problem with this is that you earlier argue that the publication form is one of the least relevant methods by which readers come to books, and, thus, a direct contradiction of your earlier sentiments. 

Now, setting aside the lack of statistical support for most of what we’re talking about (nobody really knows how many readers care about the publisher and how many don’t, etc. only anecdotal evidence that suggests they avoid SPed books in bookstores), you still have the problem here of turning readers into slush readers. I hate everything to do with this concept, because the moment you make it my job as a reader to do a job other people should be doing and getting paid for (publishers, reviewers, editors, and related people, some of which may be related to non-traditional publishing models) is the moment you take all the joy out of reading, after which I’ll simply stop buying books. I’m not kidding. I will stop buying books completely, with the exception of things printed from the previous era of publishing. I have no incentive as a reader to participate in a system that wants me to do extra effort to find what I want. Most other markets don’t do this to me; in reality, most other markets have made it *easier* for me to find what I want to consume (think super stores, malls, online music stores with really good recommendation features, online music sites for streaming music, etc. etc etc etc etc etc). Yet it’s only in the book publishing world that we talk about making the consumer the worker. 

I wouldn’t be going out on a limb if I said a lot of readers who have recently come to routine reading would be equally inclined to leave the whole thing behind. Easy access isn’t necessarily a good thing (at least, it comes with consequences). It’s all about coupling easy access with tools that help the consumer find what they want without creating additional effort. The fact that SPers (and indies, trads, and other publishing models) are talking about a future which makes the consumer an unpaid intern is the most bizarre kind of archaic logic to me…

Don't tell me what you think on this post, though.  Go respond to me and Mr. Copple on John's blog.  It's an interesting discussion to have, methinks, even if I have made similar arguments elsewhere on this blog.

Why I'm Going Indie: An Anti-Self-Publisher's Perspective

Longtime readers of this blog will be aware of my harsh opinions about self-publishing.  The title of this post is intentionally inflammatory to highlight a point which I hope will be clear by the end of this post.

I consider myself exceedingly critical of the concept of self-publishing, not because I think SPing is inherently wrong or improper, but because the field of self-publishing, if one can call it that, is flooded with people who lie or misrepresent traditional- and self-publishing.  This is not something you see on the other side of the scale; there are so many writers and authors and editors writing about how hard it is to be traditionally published, and what you have to go through to get there -- it's a gruesome process, after all.  I have a tag devoted to these issues.

Perhaps this is why some of you may be surprised that I am doing an indie/self-publishing project (namely, podcasting the rewritten version of The World in the Satin Bag and putting together an ebook version to be released later).  Why would I put my feet into the self-publishing bucket when I've been so critical of it in the past?

There are a number of reasons for why I've gone indie with WISB.  I've never been interested in sending it to a traditional publisher, for starters.  The book has been sitting on this blog for years, and traditional publishers are generally averse to blog novels, unless it's extraordinarily popular (some podcasters have had their books picked up, but you already know that).  But I also don't

Shooting Themselves in the Foot: A Brief Reconsideration of Traditional and Self-Publishing

Anyone who reads this blog, or has in the past, knows that I am hypercritical of self-publishing.  In some respects, the entire industry deserves it, since it is full of shady practices, shady "gurus," liars, scammers, and so on.  In a way, self-publishing is an industry that allows for such problems to grow and fester -- not because SPing is evil, wrong, or whatever detractors want to call it, but because it is decentralized (there is no standard, no vetting, no gate-keeping, and so forth).  Traditional publishers have always been a centralized authority on "artistic" matters, determining what should and shouldn't be put on shelves, rejecting anything deemed "unpublishable," and maintaining a kind of minimum standard of production (though there is some flexibility here).  For the most part, this opposition was a no-brainer for people like me, who appreciate quality work, low-risk consumption, and so on.

And then I read this (about cuts of editorial positions at traditional Canadian publishers):

The Best Liars: Self-publishing and My New Dilemma

I've become tainted against self-publishing. That is probably clear to those of you who read this blog, since I've written a number of posts about self-publishers (see this label for others), but it has now become clear to me on a different level. I've said numerous times in the past that there are good self-publishers out there who produce good books, have honest production practices, and are friendly. But they are an astronomically small minority when set against all of the rest who are effectively some of the best liars and manipulators of any stripe (they give FOX News a run for their money in the spin department); the good folks are like the Maldives in a global warming world--the more the sea keeps rising, the more likely those tiny little islands are going to get buried under water. (Bear with me on this. I'll get to my fully-developed point towards the end; I need context first.)

For me, this is a huge problem, because I want to be able to trust that self-publishers can all be honest people. My experiences, however, have shown that the opposite is true. I've been approached too many times to count by people claiming to be traditionally published,

Self-publishing Fail: Achieving Weak Goals is Meaningless

I'm still on my anti-self-publishing kick, primarily because there has been a lot of really crazy things popping up on the Internet as of late, such as B&N's decision to get their hands into the self-publishing pot. One post that bothered me the most recently was The Book Designer's 26 Ways to Win At Self-Publishing. Overall, the list is quite poor, with the majority either failing completely as praise-worthy goals or falling short of being impressive, and only a few falling into the "good goal" category. Some of the "wins" seem to have more in common with the 40-year-old man who still lives in his mother's basement who is going nowhere fast than with the guy who tries to run for President. They're not goals so much as really sad ways to feel good about yourself when you've essentially achieved nothing. It's sort of like saying I am proud of myself for waking up and breathing today, an action that, for most people, requires no effort whatsoever, and which pretty much everybody else did today.

The list starts pretty much on the lowest scale possible and jumps around from meaningless to semi-praise-inducing. Take, for example, the first item:

You finally get the book finished, printed and in your hand: you win.

Explain to me why this is something to be proud of. Anyone can do this. I can waltz over and print out a book from Lulu and have it in my hands in five days, with very little cost to me (in effort or cash). Unless you live in a country without the Internet, or you have no arms and legs and had to type your whole novel with your nose, then I fail to see what is impressive about this goal. It's a non-starter. To get excited about printing out the book that you self-published is like getting excited about finding your seat on the airplane. It's on your ticket, dear...The only thing praise-worthy about this is that you wrote a book. That's it. But even that is becoming less impressive these days, because anyone can write a book. Most people can't write a good book, though, and if you manage that, then maybe you can get a little excited.

The list doesn't get better after the first item either, with the second being just as meaningless:

At last you have a chance to fully explain the ideas you’ve been thinking and talking about for years: you win

Couldn't you have done this before you self-published? Why do you need to have a self-published book to tell people about your ideas and thoughts? There's no magic barrier that can't be crossed without SPing a book. Unless your family and friends don't listen to you, in which case I'd wonder why you hang out with them, then really there's no reason why this goal is even worth mentioning.

And then there's the fourth, eleventh, twelfth, fourteenth, seventeenth, twenty-fourth, and twenty-sixth:

You send a copy of your book to your ex mother-in-law: you win
You gift wrap a copy and hand it to your mother, watching her unwrap it: you win
You send an autographed copy to your 8th grade English teacher: you win
You overhear coworkers talking, and one mentions that you’ve published a book: you win
Your dad pulls you aside at the next family gathering and tells you how proud he is that you dedicated the book to him: you win
A friend at a party asks if you’re still looking for an agent, and for a moment you don’t understand the question: you win
You start to think about other books you’ve always wanted to write and can now publish: you win

So, if this list is getting at anything, it's that you should be really proud of yourself for gift wrapping or sending your book to people, or proud that people you know paid attention to you long enough to soak up the fact that you "published" a book. This is starting to sound like a list for the underachiever, someone with very few serious goals in life. If this is what makes you happy to exist, then maybe you need to reassess your priorities. Children find these kinds of goals exciting, not adults. Why? Because these are the kinds of goals that children try to achieve. They don't know any better.

But perhaps most pressing and most misleading is number fifteen:

Every one of the people you care about tell you how much they love your book: you win

If American Idol has taught us anything, it's that praise from the people who care about you (or that you care about) is not always reliable. Look at all the idiots on American Idol whose family didn't have the heart to tell them that they sucked. We know they suck, but they didn't because their family never bothered to be honest with them, thus sending them out to be crushed by the judges and the public (who gets so much pleasure out of their misery). If everyone is telling you they love your book, then maybe something is wrong. Even if they all are being honest, praise is meaningless if it isn't accompanied by constructive criticism. If all you're told is "this is wonderful," how can you ever expect to improve?

If you cut the list down to ten items, it's not a bad list. There are some good goals, but, for the most part, the list is dominated by awfully pointless and plain stupid goals. Having low standards for success doesn't suddenly make you a winner. You don't see football players saying "if I manage to hold onto the ball for three seconds, I win." Why? Because there's nothing about that goal that is remotely impressive. It's a weak goal, and weak goals are worth about as much as non-existent goals. Short of impressing your cadre of weak-goaled friends, saying you win and doing something that pretty much anyone can do is a waste of energy and time. Achieve something real, and then start jumping up and down.

Self-publishing Lies and Myths: Deception and Unethical Practices

I've railed against this idea before in smaller form, but I wanted to address this particular self-publishing issue directly. A whole lot of self-publishers and the people that support them have been advocating the practice of creating individual "imprints" to market one's book. Sue Collier recently blogged about this very concept, albeit rather briefly, in response to another blogger's rejection of self-publishing. While I agree with Collier that self-publishing is a better route for non-fiction than fiction, I take issue with the "imprint" model that so many self-publishers have now begun to use, and for good reason:

In addition, if you self-publish properly—start up your own imprint, purchase your own block of ISBNs, and have the book well edited and well designed—as opposed to going the subsidy route (often incorrectly called “self-publishing”), reviewers should have no idea you are self-published. Your book is simply a title from a new independent publisher. And there is no stigma there.

The problem with this very idea is actually its goal: "reviewers should have no idea you are self-published." That, obviously, extends to consumers of all stripes, and the practice is woefully unethical. The idea that a self-published author should go the extra step to essentially trick the consumer on the foundational level into thinking that a particular book was published by a real publisher is nothing short of deceptive. Why?

Of all of the self-published authors I have seen doing this, none of them are open about the fact that they are self-published. They play the "I'm published just like *insert NYT bestelling author here*" role, despite having done nothing remotely similar. Some of them even lie when confronted about it, so desperate to keep up appearances that they won't even admit the lie when all the facts are laid out in front of them (I'm looking at you zombie lady, whose "publisher" has a website made by her husband and thinks I'm too stupid to put two and two together).

The problem with pretending to be traditionally published is that it is disingenuous. People who do this are not traditionally published. Yes, they might have produced a good piece of fiction in a nice exterior package, but they did not submit the manuscript to a publisher or an agent or go through any of the numerous processes involved in traditional publishing. Nobody sat with the manuscript and decided it deserved to be in print. Consumers are not always aware of the processes, but they do know that there is a difference between traditionally published and self-published, even if they don't always get those differences correct. Most consumers would avoid a self-published book, perhaps to the detriment of an author who actually produced something of value. But that's part of the game.

Misrepresenting what you are is quite literally a deceptive act. I would liken this to putting a science fiction book in a romance novel package. When a customer buys that book, they expect a romance novel, not a science fiction one. It's one thing to create a nice product, but it's another to pretend that that product is something it is not. I would even go as far as to say this is no different than lying directly to the consumer, and consumers really don't like to be lied to (as we've seen before with authors who have lied, such as that fellow that Oprah endorsed, and Sarah Palin--although, perhaps people liked Palin's lies due to the hilarity they created). As far as unethical business practices go, this is one step from the top of my list--right below flat-out lying by self-publishers to authors about self-publishing and by companies who do the same. Publishers publish other people; self-publishers publish themselves. It's a simple distinction.

The solution to this practice is perhaps not as radical as one might think after reading all of the above. Creating an imprint is entirely plausible, if done right. I think the best way to do it without reaching into the unethical/deceptive spaces is to create an imprint that is your name. Consumers are smart enough to put two and two together. But, I doubt anyone will buy into that solution. There's so much fear over the legitimate stigma attached to self-publishing that, for some, being deceptive and lying is much easier than trying to battle for respectability--stealing it is quicker and less painful.

What this has all taught me is to be very cautious about the books I buy. If I've never heard of a publisher, I look them up, and dig. I do this because I don't appreciate being lied to or deceived. Ever. It's a pain in my backside, but I'm not willing to throw my money on something unless I know who the publisher is and that said publisher is legitimate. Self-publishing can make purchases of books a risk to the consumer, and I know a lot of people, right now and in the past, who don't like to risk their money. And nobody wants to risk their money on something that was presented to them as a lie.

Thoughts? Let me know in the comments.

Self-publishing Lies and Myths: Short Fiction and Poetry

Every couple of months I open a search list on my Tweetdeck for "self-publishing" and let it run for a few weeks before cutting it off again. I do this because it's difficult to stomach the lies, misinformation, and overly optimistic nonsense that tends to flood that channel. I'm in another one of my phases and an article over at the Self Publishing Review grabbed my attention: "Self-publishing For the Short Fiction Writer"

I have a lot of problems with this article, most of which has to do with the author's lack of information about her experiences with publishing. For example:

As a short story author, usually you are paid on a cents-per-word basis and a couple free copies. Unless you sell your story to one of the bigger, well-known publications you won’t make more than 1-5 cents per word. Some pay nothing (and I do have a whole separate rant on non-paying markets; One of several pet peeves.)

I’ve made a whopping $20.00 off of my shorter works. WOW! I really got rich doing things “the traditional way” didn’t I?

For anyone who knows something about short fiction markets, this raises a lot of red flags. Where was this author submitting to? Why was she rejected if she submitted to major markets? What places did she get published in? Were they low-paying, but prestigious locations, which sometimes bring more to the table than money anyway? We have basically no information about this, and her post, thus, seems like more of a bitter "I could only get published in the lower end stuff because nobody liked me" rant than any sort of legitimate discussion about the short fiction market. Not to mention that there is no mention of how much she has made from the self-published collection of her work, which seems to me to be a very important thing to mention when you're complaining about the pay rates of traditional venues. How many copies has she sold? No idea. My guess is "not that many." She says she has made more that way than she ever had going the traditional route, but I have no idea how much that is on either end. Her argument is as devoid of substance as most anything I have seen in this anti-traditional vein.

Oddly enough, it doesn't stop there. She then gets a little uppity about the fact that her work is no longer in print, which, again, raises red flags. There are reprint markets out there. Lots of them. And many of them pay. Why didn't she attempt to get them reprinted? I don't know. She doesn't say. Maybe she didn't know (which raises another red flag, because anyone who wants to talk about the faults of traditional publishing should at least know how that system works).

Perhaps the only grain of truth in the whole post is her very brief discussion of poetry. While there are good paying markets for poetry, it's not unheard of, nor necessarily a bad idea, for poets to create their own collections and do "well." By that, I mean that they may sell some copies, may get a little notice, but that might be the end of it. Self-published poetry collections don't have an influence within the broader academic literary community, as told to me by a friend in the creative writing department at the University of Florida. If you're wanting notice from academics, you really have to find a traditional publishing or an academic publisher (that's not universal, but close enough to it). But poetry tends to have a better relationship to self-publishing than other form, and I think that works well enough for that particular literary genre. You won't get rich either way, but I don't think anyone becomes a poet to get rich.

But where do the myths and the lies come in? Well, first things first, the post is disingenuous. By leaving out contextual information, the post is little more than a "you're going to get paid like crap so you should do it yourself" myth. Maybe you won't get paid like crap. Maybe you'll sell a story to the New Yorker or Subtropics or one of the top genre markets like Clarkesworld or whatever. You don't know. She doesn't know either. Nobody knows. Likewise, getting paid $20 for a short story isn't something to scoff at. That's money you didn't have before and now you have a publication under your belt.

But the most pressing issue here is the assumption that not getting published by major avenues should act as the catalyst for self-publishing. The author is creating a very skewed and ridiculous picture of reality, one that discourages you from trying by intentionally leaving out seriously valuable information about traditional publishing (i.e. actual pay rates, which are sometimes in the thousands, depending on the market). If you care about your craft and the magazines you're submitting to, then it should do the exact opposite. You should ALWAYS be working on your craft. Period. A rejection should never stop you. If you truly care about writing and having your work in print, then you should keep working at it, and hard, until you get there. Getting $20 at a smaller market for a work that didn't cut it at a higher paying place isn't something to be upset about. Use that as the vehicle to push you forward. Keep trying. And if you still can't get published, reassess. Maybe your work is good and you've come a long way, but it's not what XYZ publishes. If so, maybe self-publishing is okay, but don't jump to that path just because you've failed or because you're afraid you won't get paid well. Get there by working hard and becoming a better writer. Rushing is stupid.

The problem I have always had with so many self-publishers is the defeatist attitude: so many of them couldn't take the rejection, on any level, and decided that somehow they're too brilliant to not be in print. Maybe you're not brilliant yet. Work on it. Ray Bradbury had over 800 rejections before his first sale, and look where he is now. He has more clout than any 100 self-publishing authors combined. His books are classics; they're in schools, in almost every bookstore, in movies, and so on. He didn't get there by twiddling his thumbs. He worked and worked and worked. So many classic SF/F authors did.

Can self-publishing do your short fiction some good? Maybe. It might do nothing whatsoever, or maybe make it worse. The one thing I do think is great about short fiction is that it is so easy to share with people, and now with online magazines playing a prominent role in the short fiction community, that is even easier than it ever was before. But any time you leave out reality, you're producing a myth--one that gets recirculated like Washington's cherry tree, but does more damage than it does good. Self-publishers need better arguments and a lot more reality.

P.S.: If you wanted to add more missing contextual information, then just try to figure out how much time and money she spent to self-publish. She doesn't say. Time is money. Stephen King tried the self-publishing route, and while it was moderately successful, he stopped because he would rather spend that time writing than doing marketing and so on (presumably because he was making more money from his actual writing than the other path). That's something to always think about.