No surprises, plenty of confirmation:
Publishers say Amazon is aggressively wooing some of their top authors. And the company is gnawing away at the services that publishers, critics and agents used to provide.
Several large publishers declined to speak on the record about Amazon’s efforts. “Publishers are terrified and don’t know what to do,” said Dennis Loy Johnson of Melville House, who is known for speaking his mind.
“Everyone’s afraid of Amazon,” said Richard Curtis, a longtime agent who is also an e-book publisher. “If you’re a bookstore, Amazon has been in competition with you for some time. If you’re a publisher, one day you wake up and Amazon is competing with you too. And if you’re an agent, Amazon may be stealing your lunch because it is offering authors the opportunity to publish directly and cut you out.
As regular readers know I’m no fan of Amazon. But if the choice is between a provider who charges up-front fees for a-la-carte services and an industry that demands editorial control while banking unsubstantiated percentages, I’ll have to go with the former.
It’s also worth noting, again, how intimately related the industry’s gatekeeping practices and economic stability were. Controlling access to publication and stigmatizing self-published writers created an industry that could dictate terms like a price-fixing cartel. At least until the entire question of self-publishing was revealed to be an industry-perpetuated fraud.
To be sure there are still big problems, chief among them the question of sifting and curating. There exists no reliable self-publishing review site to which one can appeal. The New York Times Book Review does not accept self-published titles for reasons that reveal the rag to be little more than a hometown front for the New York-based industry:
Our thinking, which may be old-fashioned, is that with so great a volume of books being published each year by traditional publishers, and with so many imprints available, every book of merit is almost certain to find a home at one or another of those presses.
Translation: if you self-published a book it has to be crap. But that also means that if your book was traditionally published then it must have been a book of merit. Is there anybody not drawing a paycheck either directly or indirectly from the publishing industry who actually believes that to be true? And wouldn’t that mean the New York Times Book Review doesn’t need to exist, because all traditionally published books are good? Does anybody in publishing ever think this stuff through?
As a writer I would rather write than manufacture books. But I’m not willing to sit outside the gates of a corrupt industry waiting for a shot to mold myself into whatever literary shape the gatekeepers think will be hot next week. If Amazon or anybody else makes it possible for me to produce a completed work that’s who I want to be in business with. Given that publishing long ago offloaded marketing responsibility for most books onto authors themselves, I’m not actually sure what the benefit is of going with a publisher who won’t even let you help design the cover of your own book.
Nice post – that Times quote is hideous, and instructive. The gray lady is getting grayer.
You’re right about there not being a reliable self-publishing review source. This has bothered me with Self-Publishing Review. So…I’ve decided to charge for reviews. My feeling: this will bring in more reviewers, and actually curb the gatekeeper aspect of review sites – writers being turned away.
I wonder your thoughts. It’s something I grappled with and put off for a long time:
http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/blog/2011/10/spr-is-now-charging-for-reviews/
Hi Henry,
I touched on the question of, and problem with, charging for reviews in this post:
https://ditchwalk.com/2011/09/03/ditchwalk-at-year-two/
The credibility issue is nothing you haven’t debated or anticipated yourself, but I think it’s still the critical component of the review process. As you know, in advertising-driven mediums (newspapers, magazines, TV, the internet) the problem is generally dealt with by segregating sales and editorial at all levels of management. That is, I think, what you and many well-intentioned site owners have also tried to do, but the economics of free content simply can’t support that strategy.
You’re not wrong to try paid reviews, but I see no way that the process doesn’t inherently corrupt the stated goal. Which means we’re really talking about two different questions.
The first question involves the best method by which credible independent book reviews can be facilitated. It’s a community question and one necessarily predicated on credibility and integrity.
The second question involves the best business model for presenting reviews in a credible manner. How can a revenue stream be developed to support the process? (It may well be that there’s an issue of scale here, and that bootstrapping a site with enough start-up money could allow it to pull in additional funding and/or sustainable advertising dollars.)
I have some thoughts on how these two objectives might be profitably joined (both figuratively and literally), but it’s going to take a little time to sort them out. I’ll try to post a follow-up in the next week or so.
Well said, Mark! There’s a lot of things I question in the self-publishing market, but I would rather have outlets for authors to produce and share their work than an entire industry telling me what I can have access to.
Not all traditionally-published books are good and not all SP books are bad. What I think is good, someone else may think bad and vice versa. I do like the excellent job the traditional industry puts forth on editing, most of the time. At the same time, I get both sad and frustrated when self-publishers share their work before it is actually ready to be published, such as no professional editing, self-made cover designs, front and back matter missing or incomplete or just wrong. There are so many inexpensive ways to correct all those problems.
Bea,
Editing is obviously important. I’m not convinced that the traditional publishing industry really pays that much attention to editing these days, but on the whole the extant process ensures a more consistent result when compared with self-publishing. (People get excited by their own stuff and rush the process for all kinds of reasons.) Still, if costs can be managed by charging authors for services that aren’t actually delivered I’m sure that’s being done on an industry-wide basis to satisfy quarterly earnings reports. (Compare, in your mind, what you think a quality-oriented editor should do on a given title, and what a profit-motivated editor could get away with not doing.)
The term ‘editor’ is both a squishy title and a squishy function. Because every project and author is different flexibility is necessary, but how many people in the editing pipeline are really qualified to say anything about the merit of a particular book? The idea of a sage editor like Robert Gogglieb, Rust Hills or Thomas McCormack saving us from our own failings is both incredibly appealing and extremely unlikely in today’s climate.
So I’m a big advocate of writers accepting responsibility for their own editing. That doesn’t mean you can or should do it all, but it does mean you’re responsible for getting it done. In general, the more eyes you have on your work the better. And proofreading tops the list because nobody can find all their own mistakes. After that, a good round of feedback from trusted readers and you will probably have a passel of fixes to consider and make — provided you’ve steeped yourself in enough craft to know which notes to listen to and which to ignore. (Even as you are ever thankful for all of them.)
Bottom line, you’re right: self-published authors should slow down and get the help they need.
These are really timely, worthy thoughts. However, the shift towards self-publishing, mirroring the music industry’s shift, is not without perils for authors, especially the huge burden of self promotion which does reduce productive writing time. In my experience, if I work on my W.I.Ps two hours a day, I’ll be working on the marketing aspects another four to six. It’s about 3:1, and I’m still climbing!
Amazon or no, this is the new fact of publishing. To be attractive to an agent or traditional publisher, an author must prove they can create a brand, attract readers and promote non-stop.
Richard,
I’m dubious about the ability of anyone to actually drive success. I’m not saying it can’t be done, just that the obligation — as you point out — quickly becomes all-consuming. Which leads to the idea put forward by marketing types and gurus: if you’re not successful it’s your own fault, but if you pay for my seminar I’ll give you all the tools blah blah blah.
I say: write. Write, write, write, write. Get your stuff out there but don’t give your life over to pushing on your literary string. Instead, get better as an author, build a body of work, and figure out how to keep going even if you’re making no money. If you can do that then nobody can shut you up. 🙂
How right you are. Write, I mean.
Success as a writer comes in a bunch of variations, from selling block-busters to a major studio, all the way down to receiving your first, unsolicited, good review. While the money would be nice (I play the Lottery regularly, but harbor no illusions) I really want to work towards finding more readers and doing a good job entertaining them.
Full-time marketing as touted by lots of successful writers online, is so suffocating and self-deluding that I’ll keep trying to push it to the side and get on with what I actually do that works!
Yes, the old industry is in its death throes, but what will replace it? Right now, I am having trouble surviving in the digital jungle. No-one knows I am here and my great books languish for want of publicity. As the jungles at places like SmashWords and Amazon’s CreateSpace get more and more congested, how are readers going to find me at all?
I am not giving up on my day job…
Jacqueline,
Divorcing dollars from the process and end of writing is a really healthy thing to do. What too many would-be writers imagine is that being an author is like being a Broadway diva, when in fact it’s more like committing to pottery making. The best way to make money in publishing is by leveraging your already established celebrity. You can be a blithering idiot but as long as you’re famous the publishing industry will fall all over themselves helping you cash in — for a percentage.
Keeping your day job is a good idea, but I’d go a step farther when the injustice of it all starts getting to you. In my experience there’s nothing like buying a one-dollar lottery ticket to provide relief. Not only does it give me proper context for fantasizing about what I’m going to do when I’m preposterously rich, it leaves me open to writing as honestly as I can while I’m waiting for that day.
Seriously: try it. 🙂
I know exacty what you mean. Amazon is such a huge entity that it’s hard for me to like them. However, they offer “ins” to the little guys at the same time. It’s a weird phenomenon, actually. Liked your post. Found it from The Book Designer.
Hi Lois,
Amazon is an aggressive and at times abusive for-profit company. It’s to their advantage economically to democratize and devalue the publishing industry, and that cuts both ways for self-published authors. On the one hand, words are now effectively worth nothing, so few if any authors are going to get rich (or even make a profit) whether they self-publish or publish traditionally. On the other hand, if you target your words (friends, family, a small group of dedicated fans) you can get your writing ‘out there’ for very little cost, and that’s a game-changer compared to how things used to be.
I agree with sentiments in the previous comments that self-publishing authors need to pay more attention to editing, and that marketing and reviews are a big problem. Still, given that those problems exist only because writers are now free to enter the marketplace on their own, I think those are good problems to have. And I think they will be solved in time by other free-market solutions.
Hell Yes! and Halleluja!
I’ve spent months trying to decide if I wanted to try and scale that most hallowed wall of the traditional publishers, but recently decided to go it alone.
I’m busy writing my heart out without a thought about slush piles or staid mentalities; all I’m doing is creating and getting on with it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Long Live the Revolution and Death to the Stodged Gatekeeper!
Hi Greg,
The most important thing about the validation of self-publishing is that it removes a barrier. Yes, some people will jump the gun and publish writing that needs more work, but I’d rather have that problem than good writers being shut out because they aren’t famous or aren’t writing the trendy literature of the day.
I don’t know how many good souls were crushed by the fraudulent idea that good writing will always find a publisher, but you can start with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. If it hadn’t been for Persig’s doggedness, that’s a work that never would have seen the light of day. Yet the lesson we’ve always been encouraged to take from that personal nightmare is that good writing always wins out.
No. I don’t know what drove Persig to submit his work to 121 publishers, but a normal human being would have been damaged by that process. And I don’t for a minute think that it validates the literary world back then, or what’s left of it now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance
I’m on the side of writers, and anything that helps writers write and realize their own dreams.
https://ditchwalk.com/2010/10/11/the-lost-tyote-queries/
Great post. I absolutely agree.