The Future of ebooks - Anecdotal Evidence Files (Plus a little bit on pricing)

I got a Kindle Fire for Christmas. So did my 11-year-old. I gave my 75-year-old mom a Kindle for her birthday. Yeah, you say, so you got a Kindle, big whoop. But in a way, it's a snapshot: three generations of inveterate readers and how they react to a new reading format. You see, we are a family who loves books. I grew up surrounded by piles of books. We loved the library, loved Okie's Used Book Hut in Manitou Springs, loved the indie Chinook Bookstore (which along with the Chief Theater and Levine's Toys is now just a melancholy memory), loved to come home from someplace with a towering stack of new places to go inside our heads.

Well, in the past month, I've really been thinking about the question of ebooks and how they fit into publishing and consumption of books as a whole. Last year, kid #2 asked me if I'd thought about getting a e-reader. Well, yes, I had thought about it, but it didn't seem like an imperative at the time, even though I was sticking my toes in the swirling pool of e-publishing. Fast forward to the release of the Kindle Fire. Now that was something I really DID want. We're not Apple people by nature, even though we are gadget people, so the iPad seemed expensive and, well, really Apple-y. I could wait. I didn't wait that long, because midway through December, the S/O came home and thrust a box into my hand, saying, "You're not going to have anything under the tree, but you seem like you could use this now." Apparently I'd been a tad whiny about the number of things I had to read, and the difficulty I was having in reading them on the computer when I spent so much time sitting in my car.

I love my Kindle Fire. More importantly, I love reading on it. It's quick and effortless and if I want to switch streams and stop reading the novel I'm on and switch to a short story, with a few flicks of my fingers I'm there. I have enough books on my Kindle to fill 4 shelves and they're with me wherever I go. I've sampled a ton of free works, and, yes, reading a good free work has induced me to buy a paid book from an author I never would have tried if I didn't have my Kindle.

But here's what got me really thinking: I received a request from one of the big six publishers to review an upcoming book. I could get a bound galley or an e-galley or both. This week I got the bound copy in the mail a day before I got the e-galley. Given the choice, I started reading the e-galley.  Then I thought back the week before, when I'd started a paperback from an author I really liked. Well, I was busy and running around, and to read it at night, I had to sit up with a hooded light so I wouldn't disturb the S/O. I set the paperback down and promptly lost in the stack of paperbacks that I have waiting to be read. Instead, I read 3 books on the Kindle. Yep, that's right. I forgot all about the paperback I had been looking forward to and read three books by authors I hadn't read before on the Kindle. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, traditional publishing.

OK, but I'm a technology adopter, what about my mom? Conventional wisdom says that older people are going to be less likely to make the switch. Well, my mom LOVES her Kindle. She can change the type so it's larger, her cats don't shred the pages trying to get her attention while she's reading, she can borrow from the public library with almost no effort (and as soon as a book on a waiting list is available, she's got it right there), and she can get loads of free books (she reads 3 or 4 books a week), low cost books, and find new authors when she's exhausted the supply trickled out by trad publishers. Plus, when she does find an author she really likes, she doesn't have to go hunting for their backlist. It's right there.

But what about kids? It's hard to get kids to read, right? The most stunning revelation for me was the adoption of ebooks by middle schoolers. My son immediately began reading on the Kindle. They have a program at his school called AR (Accelerate Reader -- most parents will be familiar with it) where you need to read such-and-such a number of books worth so many points. He spent his Amazon gift certificate on books. And when school was back in session he came home and said, "I need to take my Kindle to school." It seems the majority of the kids in his class had gotten Kindle Fires. (There were a few Nooks too, but 90% Kindle Fire) and that's how the majority of kids in his class are now reading. (You see, you can't take an iPad to school, but the administration views the Kindle Fire as not a multimedia platform but as a BOOK platform. This may change the first time they find a kid playing Angry Birds or Stupid Zombies instead of reading, but for now, the Kindle is the must-have accessory.) But the most important thing is this (and listen very carefully): kids see ebooks and paperback books as totally equivalent. There is no "but that's not a 'real' book" stigma attached. In fact, they think ebooks are superior to paper books in some ways. My takeaway from this is that ebooks are going to be the dominant book format as time goes on. Kids growing up now are going to see ebooks as the dominant form, NOT paper books. (For proof that the Kindle Fire is helping spur book sales, see here.)

I bring this up because last month I was doing a lot of research on book bloggers and book review sites (to be addressed in a future column). I was mainly looking for sites and readers who wanted to see ebooks as opposed to paperbacks, because most self-publishers at least start with ebooks exclusively. I found lots of reviewers who did not accept ebooks, or accepted them reluctantly. These reviewers/bloggers fell into two categories: those who said, "I can't afford an e-reader yet" and those who said, "Egad, I would NEVER read an ebook, I want a REAL book, one I can hold in my hands. This stupid ebook phase will never catch on, at least not with discerning readers!" (And to be clear, I'm really not disparaging people who prefer paper books; it's perfectly legitimate and cool. It's just that a lot of their protestations take on this kind of shrill air of semi-hysteria, as if even considering an ebook somehow shakes the foundations of decent society.)

Which, in a way, may have a kernel of truth, at least as it concerns traditional publishing. Like any big industry that has held a monopoly on content delivery, the book publishing industry is moving at a glacially slow pace in adopting smart epublishing practices. They seem to shoot themselves in the foot given the slightest opportunity. In an attempt to squeeze everyone into paper sales, they price ebooks too high for the market. The DRM them. They don't put out ebooks at the same time as paper books to reach a broader market. They offer authors the same lousy royalties as they do on paper books, but now with less transparency and slower payment.

They may well adjust (in fact they'll have to), but in the famous words of Simka from an old episode of Taxi, that's like "locking the barn doors after the horses have already eaten your children." Authors are wising up. Slowly, but they are. The balance of power is shifting. Ebooks are here to stay, and perhaps to dominate. Paper books aren't going to become extinct, by any means, but they're also not going to the only "real" books forever.

Which brings me to the bit about pricing I promised. I've been playing with pricing and studying the numbers released by authors regarding free, 99 cent, $2.99, more than $2.99, and the high prices asked by trad publishers (Anything over about $9.99 for my purposes).  Again, I'm planning a future column on that.

But there are two things to think about here, and this goes back to the "real" versus ebook argument. First of all, I want you to think about how much a book is worth and who deserves the lion's share of that compensation. One of the best things about self-pubbed books is that most of the royalty goes to the author, the person who produced the actual product. This is important because publishers are greedy. Yep, greedy. If you want to argue that with me, I'll give you some change and you can call someone who cares to argue that fact with you. Compensation to authors is crappy. (Leave out the bestsellers who make a gajillion dollars and then sometimes don't earn out their advances -- they are the exception and not the rule.)

So I think that complaining about high prices for ebooks published by big pub companies is totally on target. You're just shoving more money in their pockets and not into the pockets of authors. Screw that. Until publishing companies offer better royalty splits on ebooks, scream louder. (In fact, until they offer better compensation on ALL books, scream louder. Maybe they'll hear you before they lose their stable of writers and go bankrupt.)

But I want you to forget that fact for a minute and join me in a thought experiment. What is a book? Is it the paper it's printed on, or is it the story, the characters, the emotions it makes you feel, the joy or discovery or entertainment it brings to your life? Answer that honestly. Does the same book written by the same author have any less or more intrinsic value because it is ink on paper than pixels on a screen?

I ask this because a really good writer, one who is self-pubbed and very savvy about both writing and publishing, recently said something to the effect of: "I would have bought that book if it was in paperback for that price, but since it was an ebook, I thought it was too expensive." (I have changed that quote enough so that the the author's identity is oblique -- I'm not really picking on them.)

And I thought, the hell? What's the difference? This is the kind of thinking that marginalizes good writers who have adopted ebooks. It makes self-publishers into the kind of not-really-writers that the trad publishing industry is trying to convince you they are. In other words, if I'm willing to pay $8.99 to read a really good book by a self-published author in paperback, why should I not be willing to pay $8.99 for a really good book by a self-published author when I can have the added convenience of reading on my Kindle?  (You can insert your own numbers in here -- I'm trying to get at the reason behind the basic sentiment.) I'm purposely ignoring production costs. Everybody knows it costs more to produce and distribute a paperback than it does an ebook. What I'm trying to get at is the book is the same, regardless of the medium used to transport it into your head. You, the reader, are paying the same price and getting the same book, it's only the writer who's making a little more money.

Part of the new paradigm in publishing is to actually pay the writer instead of the publisher. If paying the same amount of money for an ebook as you would for a paperback allows a good writer who you enjoy to make a living and continue writing, I would think a reader would find that a bargain. Of course, I'm a writer, so I may be biased.

Whatever your thoughts, go buy a book, or even download one for free. Because, to put words in the mouth of the 11th Doctor: Books are cool.

The Space Wars are Over, or HTML is a Harsh Mistress

There’s only one subject more contentious than politics or religion: single spacing versus double spacing at the end of a sentence. Think that’s hyperbole? Google it. There is no better example of literary internecine warfare than sentence spacing. (For a pretty concise history of the conflict, go here.)

For years, I’ve been vocally in the single space camp. Having gone to high school and college in the ‘80s (before personal computers), I learned to double space at the end of a sentence. But subsequently, in every publishing/writing job I’ve held (newspapers, magazines, publishers, advertising) I’ve been required to single space. It took me the better part of a year to retrain my finger/brain connection, but I finally managed it. And as a freelance editor, you have to pick a bible. Mine is the Chicago Manual of Style, which – along with the AP Style Guide and the MLA Style Guide -- state that single spacing is the norm. But – and this is a big but – style guides also state that double-spacing is okay. You’ll probably never get a rejection based on your sentence spacing. Still the war raged on.

I’ll readily admit to my participation in the war. If you ask me to explain why, I can’t. Maybe it’s the deep-seated need to be right. Maybe it’s the desire to control my environment by making everybody follow the same set of rules. Maybe it’s the fact that editors tend to sometimes act like petty fascist dictators. I really don’t know. But I discovered something yesterday, something simple and right under my nose, that showed, at least from a writer’s standpoint, what an idiot I was to argue about it.

I want you to do something for me. Go to your bookshelf and pull down any 10 books published in the last 60 years. Now get a ruler. (Go ahead, I’ll wait.) Flip open a book to any page and measure the distance between ending punctuation and the beginning of the next sentence. Repeat until this becomes clear to you: there is no single or double spacing. Yep, you heard me. There isn’t any. Books are typeset with proportional spacing. Each character is given its own spacing in relation to the characters around it. Sometimes it’s a fraction less, sometimes it’s a fraction more.

Example from the first book I pulled off my shelf, the novel Crime School by Carol O’Connell, paperback edition published by Jove, page 97: between a period and the top of capital T is 2mm; between a period and the bottom of capital A is 1mm; between a period and the bottom of capital N is 2mm. You don’t have to trust me on this, do the experiment yourself.

“That’s fine” you say, “but I’m self-publishing my novel. I don’t care what publishers do.” Well, if you’re publishing for Kindle, at some point your manuscript will be converted to HTML. And the thing I learned yesterday was that HTML doesn’t care about you and your spacing. HTML laughs at your spacing. (Actually HTML seems to always laugh at me, but that’s another issue.)

In HTML there’s this thing called “whitespace collapse.” What this means is simply that HTML ignores any spacing that isn’t coded for in the underlying CSS. Whether you single space or double space at the end of a sentence, HTML will ignore it and space it how it sees fit. You can single space, double space, hell, you can put 27 spaces in, and the HTML will still follow the algorithm and end up with the same space, the one judged to give the best readability for the medium.  (As an aside, you can code to preserve spacing, but it takes a pretty high proficiency with HTML.)

Now let me be clear: HTML did not pick single spacing or double spacing. It doesn’t care. Nobody won the war, the war just ceased – from a publishing standpoint – to matter. It’s like trying to decide whether the rooftop aerial or the rabbit ears gives you better TV reception and suddenly realizing you’re hooked up to digital cable.  Or maybe a better analogy: you and a friend are making smoothies. You insist that you should chop the bananas before putting them in a blender, while your friend insists, no, no, you must slice the bananas first. You know what? Once you put the bananas in the blender, they all come out a uniform consistency.

I had two feelings upon making this realization. First of all, I was appalled that I didn’t know this. How could I not know this? It’s discomfiting when you consider yourself knowledgeable about a subject and then realize you didn’t even consider the underpinnings of your argument. The second feeling I had was one of…relief. I never have to make the argument again. I never have to try and convince someone I’m right and they’re wrong. If I like Mumford and Sons and my daughter likes Lil’ Wayne, it’s a waste of breath me saying, “Lil’ Wayne sucks” while she yells, “Yeah, well Mumford and Sons is for wannabe hipsters.”  It all comes down to personal taste. Neither of us is right or wrong, and we can program our iPods however we want. (And no offense to Lil’ Wayne – I don’t think you suck, really. And I’m not a hipster, so shut up.)

So, this being a blog about self-publishing and all, what does this mean for you as writers? It’s simple: if you’re submitting a manuscript, format it exactly how the publisher/editor wants it submitted. (Which was always good advice anyway.) Don’t waste your breath arguing about it. If you’re used to doing it one way and they want it the opposite way, find/replace is your friend. For your own manuscript formatting or personal correspondence, do what you like. Whether Simon & Schuster gives you a six-figure advance or you’re publishing your first novel for Kindle, it’s all going to come out looking the same. The war is over. Nobody won, but nobody lost either.

(P.S. Many people blame typing teachers for starting the war, but if you research the history of typography and publishing, the truth is far more complex. Still, I did an unscientific sample around here and found that anyone over 30 was taught to double-space, while anyone under 30 was taught to single space. When I asked my 20-year-old daughter, who’s a junior in college, she replied something to effect of, “God, mom, single space. It’s not the stone age.” So I suspect that double spacing will disappear about the time that gay marriage finally becomes legal in all 50 states and marijuana is sold in grocery stores. Why, when I was a girl, we had to type THREE spaces at the end of a sentence. Now get off my lawn.)

The Amazon Slushpile?

Some quite interesting news this week, as first-time indie author Traci Hohenstein has signed a four-book deal with the Amazon mystery/thriller imprint Thomas & Mercer. David Gaughran has more info on his always-interesting blog.

As I said, this is an interesting development. Unlike the majority of authors Amazon has approached and signed deals with, Traci Hohenstein is truly a newbie fiction author. Burn Out is her first novel, only published to Amazon in April, and she has no backlist and no traditional publishing background. In addition, the novel is short (clocking in at 170 pages), and has some mixed reviews, the bad reviews mainly a retread of what you often see with new authors: poor editing, typos and grammatical mistakes, lack of development.

First of all, let me make myself crystal clear: this is not a discussion of the merits of Ms. Hohenstein's book or her writing ability. I haven't had a chance to read the book yet and will not comment on it until I have. (And as far as the discussion of reviews, we all know to take reviews, either good or bad, with a grain of salt.) In fact, I wish her a hearty congratulations and great success in her career. (Really, Congrats!) This post is strictly using the basic known facts of her deal as a jumping off point for discussing what we can possibly extrapolate about the coming future of self-publishing, specifically as regards Amazon.

If you've read David Gaughran's piece, he lays out a lot of the specifics as to who's being "published" by Amazon. Mostly somewhat well-known writers with a strong following, a history in traditional publishing, and a backlist of books. Ms. Hohenstein doesn't have any of these indicators. What she does have is sales. She has been kind enough to share her numbers on David Gaughran's blog, and they're quite impressive for a new self-published author (selling 10,000 books in August).Kudos!

After reading David's blog and checking out Ms. Hohenstein's Amazon listing and her blog, a thought popped into my head. Since Amazon announced its new imprints and began approaching authors to sign with them, a lot of people have wondered about what Amazon's designs are in grabbing a bigger piece of the publishing industry. As with any news about Amazon, a lot of the details are shrouded in mystery. Smart authors know that it's great to come to Amazon's attention; it can do great things for an indie author's career. But you can't query Amazon for a book deal. As an indie author, you also can't take advantage of a lot of the marketing possibilities available to big publishers: you can't set up a pre-release sales page, you can't offer a short story or book for free. (Amazon does list books for free, but no one really knows how or why they make those decisions. First, you have to have a book listed for free on another site, but beyond that it's all a black box.)

So how do you get Amazon in your corner? Previous to Ms. Hohenstein's success, it was a general consensus that you had to have an established name and a history to build on, and a stable of books to go with it. In other words, no first-time authors need apply. But that applecart has been, if not overturned, pulled around a corner really fast so that some of the produce has spilled onto the thoroughfare.

So this is my theory. If Amazon does want a bigger piece of the traditional publisher pie and wants to establish a cadre of authors to promote, but doesn't want all the dreary work of the query-go-round and the slushpile, what better way than to have their self-publishing service work AS the slushpile, and let buyers work for free as readers? In a mercenary world where a publisher wants at least a semi-sure product, this is a brilliant strategy. You buy a property that's already selling. You don't need to agonize over whether a brilliant author is marketable or rely on the whims of an editor. You already know that the property will sell and all you have to do is HELP IT SELL MORE.  Amazon can wait until any author hits some internal limit in sales, and then offer them a deal. I have no idea if Amazon offers any kind of advance. I've only heard that they offer very a very favorable split, help with mechanics (such as editing, formatting, covers), and great publicity. So they really have very little to lose if an author tanks, unless they are eventually known for publishing bad books.

Should that be true, it's both horribly depressing and wildly exhilarating. Horribly depressing in the sense that you may be a great writer and a terrible salesman, and Amazon will keep their thumb on the scale to help great salesmen while great writers languish and are further shunted aside and kept in the basement. In other words, nobody at Amazon is going to say, "I read this wonderful book absolutely nobody knows about, let's make it a bestseller!" Instead they'll say, "This may be a mediocre book, but look at those sales! Let's make sure people see it!" (And you find that grumbling already -- just read the Kindle boards and any number of indie blogs).

But conversely it means that Amazon may be more willing to help first-time authors who can do a lot of the heavy lifting themselves. If you believe in yourself, get out there and find readers (as Ms. Hohenstein has apparently done quite successfully) get your sales, and you too can get the key to the executive washroom. At least now instead of a few mercenary editors being the gatekeepers, readers will be the thing that pushes you up the ladder to success, which, after all, is what indie writers have been arguing should be the paradigm all along.

The Importance of Rewrites and Edits

I have been scarce -- really scarce. That's because I have found that the mental fortitude to get these novels ready has become a slippery thing. Not because it's hard to rewrite, to edit, to proofread, to format -- oh, it's hard. But more because I'm dealing with the prospect of actually finishing these books and putting them out for public consumption. That, my friends, is pretty scary. No changies, no take-backs. They will be finished. They will be ex-projects, they will be things that stand out there on the stage by themselves so that passersby can throw overripe fruit at them.

Which brings me to the lesson for today. In reading blogs about self-publishing (both pro and con) a constant theme you see brought up is that a lot of the books that are self-published are bad. I definitely don't disagree with that. Most of them shouldn't be published. I can't give you a percentage, but I am rock-solid positive it's over 50%. Probably way, way over 50%.

There are a lot of reasons these books shouldn't be published. First and foremost, they're written by people with the delusions that they're writers. But they won't ever be writers. It takes both talent and practice to be a readable writer. BOTH. Some people can't do it, but they're sure they can.

Then there are the group that has the talent, but haven't practiced enough. People throw around the "10,000 hour rule": you're not going to be really good at something until you've spent 10,000 hours doing it. People don't want to hear that. They want to be just good enough. They don't want to have towers of pages that are unpublishable. But unless you're a savant, there's a lot of hard work that goes into being a good writer.

Then you get to the group that's almost there. They have the talent, they've been toiling, they're getting close. At that point, you're talking about rewrites and edits. (This are sometimes interchangeable terms. For my purposes, a rewrite means you need to make substantial changes, sometimes structural changes, to a manuscript. And edit means you've got it mostly where you want it, but it needs to be streamlined or better fleshed, you need to add or subtract a few things. You need to check you're not using the word "massive" as a descriptor in 17 different places, you're two main male characters don't have the exact same speech patterns.....use your imagination. Proofreading is just for errors and continuity.)

Some writers stall at this point. They don't know any good beta readers or trustworthy critics, they can't afford an editor. Maybe they're just tired. Maybe they just want to move on. (And sometimes you DO get to a point when you've edited as much as you can and you're just scared. I'm not to that point, but I can see it out the window. The changes I'm making are still important ones.)

I struggle a lot with the "okay" versus "good enough" versus "really good" versus "perfect." There is no perfect. Good enough is not good enough. We should all shoot for really good. Before you publish, try your best to look at your work with a critical eye. Have others look at your work with a critical eye. Beg, trade, or save your pennies for some help here.


Darker By Degree has been agented, has been in editorial committee, has been accepted by an initial editorial committee at a respected publishing house, but ultimately vetoed. Editors and agents have said good things about it. But no one took the ultimate plunge. Since this happened several times, we took a step back and looked at the book. We had other people read it. When they came back with the same weaknesses, we decided it was worth ripping the book apart and rewriting. It's been a process of several months, but we've cut whole chapters, introduced new characters, strengthened motivations, really looked critically at making every word written work. By the end of this week, the final edit will be done.


If you want to be noticed in the flood self-published books that are becoming available, you've got to be brutal in your assessment. You've got to find people who will be honest and have the knowledge and experience to tell you what's good and bad. And then you have to put in the hours. I've sampled a lot of books that are at that "almost" stage. They have the potential to be really good, but the writers have settled for "okay." Settling for "okay" is not going to garner you an enthusiastic following or enhance your skills as a writer.

I also want to add something that people don't say often enough when giving advice to writers. READ. You can take classes and workshops and join critique groups and exchange chapters and pay an editor, but the thing that is going to contribute most to your growth as a writer is reading books. Read in your genre, especially. But also read out of your genre. Read good books. Read bad books. What's the difference between the two? Pick things apart. Watch. Listen. Find your voice. And then write, write, write, and rewrite. Don't settle.

Self-Publishing: the Same Arguments, Repeated

The apparent fight between the self-pub camps and the trad-pub camps shows no signs of abating. I think that's a shame, because there's no putting the self-publishing toothpaste back in the tube and the sooner people realize that, the sooner we can all go about the business of making both the e-publishing platform and the traditional publishing platform better for both writers and readers.

Jane Friedman's There Are No Rules blog had an interesting post: The Self-Pub is Crap Debate. The comments there are interesting and led to a follow-up post: 8 Things Readers Want From Self-Published Authors.   I also came across a nice little post by  by David Gaughran: The Biggest Mistakes Self-Publishers make. I have to say I'm pretty much in agreement with Jane that there is no winning side in this debate, and I still am sometimes amazed that the pro and con camps are so vehement.

The arguments go on. There's an interesting guest post on Konrath's blog by author Stephen Leather  in which Leather tells the old lie that anything with merit will eventually be published. No judgment on the rest of the post, some of which I agree with, but that is a sentence filled with breathtaking bullshit. (And bullshit almost always promulgated by people who have been successfully published.) Another interesting post by Konrath outlines move to boycott the new Amazon mystery imprint by indie bookstores.  Um, what?

One thing that I find undeniable is that there IS a ton of self-published crap. It's like having the entirety of a slush pile published. A) I don't think there's a way around that. B) I don't think it's going to kill self-publishing as a vibrant pathway for authors to publish.

As far as I can tell, the anti-self-publishing crowd is incensed at letting the hoi polloi into the secret circle. Apparently the riff-raff will soon be drinking out of the finger bowls and cleaning their ears with the seafood forks. They have made the mistake of believing that editors are the only arbiters of  "merit." As I have previously said, editors don't so much care about art as they do commerce. Given a choice between a fantastic book that's hard to market and a terrible book that'll make a mint, they'll pick the money EVERY SINGLE TIME.  Thankfully it's not usually that either/or choice, but really, kids, grow up. Publishing is now, more than ever, a bottom line business, not a happy little gated community where your gorgeous metaphor is going to let you sit at the grown-up's table.

Traditional publishing isn't dying, but it will change. It can't not change. Whatever truths you hold self-evident today will likely change drastically in the next 20 years. I'm not sure how, and anybody who tells you they know how is a two-bit con artist, but they will change. It behooves you to keep an open mind.

Now back to that nasty slush-pile of crap that storms through the un-kept self-publishing gates every day. Yes, probably 80%, if not more, of what gets published shouldn't be published. It's either not yet ready or it's produced by people who are totally delusional about their abilities. If you've spent any time in the publishing/writing business, been part of writer's group, critique groups, attended conferences and workshops, you know the delusional people. Sometimes you can see them a mile away, sometimes they look just like you and me. On the downside, it's hard to convince the delusional that they're delusional. On the upside, they tire easily.

For years and years, the delusional people have been relegated to frittering away their life's savings to vanity publishers or scrawling tear-stained missives to cruel editors who just can't see their genius. Now, everyone's got a free coupon to publish anything they want! Yay! Er, Boo! No, wait...

See, the thing is, you can't control what other people are going to do. In a perfect world people would be self-aware and reasonable and have self-restraint and good judgment. If you find that world, please leave a detailed map for the rest of us so we can visit there.

As a writer, you have one responsibility: don't be the one of the delusional people. Be self-aware and reasonable and show good judgment. Work at your craft. Don't take the easy way out. Work hard and be honest about your capabilities. Seek help when you need to. There is nothing that I or anyone else is going to say that is going to stop the delusional people from publishing their work right alongside yours. The fact that they're doing so should not stop you. The only thing you're ever going to be able to control is your own work. And that, kids, is the beauty of self-publishing.


One more thing: one thing I've heard a lot of whining about lately is the fact that what you see mostly on self-publishing blogs is chit-chat about mechanics and marketing and how to self-publish, and you rarely see people discussing improving the craft. There's lots of good reasons for that. Improving your craft is not something you should go looking through blog posts to do (unless of course, you're delusional). If you're reading people's blogs to learn how to write, best of luck. Rather than try to explain that, I'm going to be lazy and refer you to Evelyn LaFont at The Keyboard Hussy on This Is Why I Don't Read Your Writing Advice Posts.

Now go read a book.

Sweet Dreams Are Made Of Teeth

I am here to report that, if anything, publishing a novel with Smashwords is easier than a short story. I was #6 in the queue, and had it uploaded in moments. AutoVetter is reporting no errors, and now I await Premium Catalog evaluation and, with Keri's help, try to figure out how to get the world to know it exists.

Speaking of which... no, one more thing. For me, the formatting was easy. What took so long? Cover art. Take this as a lesson: Every writer will have slightly different resources and priorities, and you do the best with what you have. I know a number of artists, but I felt that the cover is my book's 'face', and I wanted a cover that was the best I could possibly get and suited the book itself. For my short stories a cover that is merely good will do. I was lucky enough to know Carolyn Laplante just well enough that she gave me a heavy discount on what you see below. It was well worth waiting and paying for.

And now, without further ado:

Sweet Dreams Are Made Of Teeth, by Richard Roberts
Available from Smashwords.

Have you ever had the nightmare of being chased by a beast? Then you've met Fang. He'll be the first to admit that he's a very simple nightmare. All he knows is hunting your dreams and dragging them into the Dark. He's not ready for his life to get complicated. He's not ready to be dragged into his best friend's schemes to make dreams so terrifying they break people. He's not ready to love, or to be loved, or to meet someone who makes him happy. He's definitely not ready for those to be three different girls.

He's not ready to grow up.

When he does, one thing will stay the same. He'll stay an artist, and he'll paint your dreams with fear until they're beautiful.

EDIT - And because I'm here to help other writers and not just sell myself, let me add a funny story! Always download and check your final file. I found out that the funny little fat . that was showing up in my .doc version was... well, I have no idea even now what it was. But in .epub it made every line of my table of contents a new page. I have no idea how it got there, but I reformatted that text from scratch and it's gone and life is good!

Art and The Unpublished Writer

I've read with both consternation and amusement the back and forth on blogs lately about "legacy" publishing versus self-publishing, which occasionally devolves into armed camps lobbing grenades at each other over their firewalls. There are some, like Joe Konrath, who are untiring cheerleaders for self-publishing and some on the other side who sound like grim grade school teachers warning the hapless kiddies about the dangers of crossing the street into a bad neighborhood.

I think that legacy publishing and indie publishing are going to coexist, and while the equilibrium and the models will be constantly shifting for some time to come, there's going to be a new balance, a new paradigm, that emerges. I think that one of the most likely outcomes is that authors will take advantage of both as their needs shift. We're in early days, and what lies ahead is going to be a new frontier.

One of the things that has struck me, though, is this idea that is held by a group of those firmly in the legacy camp that if you go the self-publishing route you're either a hapless noob, a talentless hack, or an unserious dabbler.

I read a post on a blog yesterday that went something like this (and it's not an exact quote, because I really am not picking on the poster): "I suppose that e-books have their place, but they're never going to be art."

WTF? For one thing, by its definition, all writing is art. If it's crappy writing, it just means it's crappy art. In art -- and by that I mean visual arts, music, literature -- what's good and bad is totally subjective. One person's masterpiece is another person's litterbox liner.

I think what the poster was getting at is that anything that's self-published can't have "merit." And again, I say WTF? Hate to break it you, sweetiekins, but merit is not what the publishing business is about in the main. It's about commerce. (Not to say that great books aren't published, and that there aren't small presses whose main concern is merit, but those often fold like cheap suits.)  You can write a masterpiece that makes the angels weep, but if a publisher thinks they can't sell it, back to the workhouse with you. Conversely, if you're the reality-show flavor of the week, you can snap your fingers and have an instant publishing contract.

True story: many years ago I was at a publishing conference and was lucky enough that my manuscript got me a sit-down for 10 minutes with a rep from Random House. (I still have his business card). He read my sample package and said, "Hey, this is a great story. If your name was Stephen King, we'd buy it." Translation: we can't market a horror novel by an unknown, so trot along now.

We can go round and round the Eisler/Hocking debate, but seriously, is what either of them publishes "art" or not depending on if it's got the imprint of a publishing company on the cover?

The funny thing is, most of the comments like that come from people who are new to what Robin Sullivan calls the query-go-round. They're working on their first novel, or are planning their first novel, or they've been querying for under 4 years. They still live in that world where an acquisitions editor is going to ride in on a white horse and slay the dragon that is the publishing committee, and they're going to live happily ever after in a little turret where all they have to do is tap away at the keys while an unseen legion of serfs takes care of the editing and proofing and artwork and marketing.

We have a phrase for that kind of thinking 'round my house: Congratulations! You've just been named ambassador to Candyland!

Now, sometimes that knight does ride in, but very rarely, and only during a blue moon occurring on leap day. And even when the knight scoops you up onto the back of his charger, most published writers don't make enough to live on and write full time. The scales of traditional publishing are weighted against you (although I think a day of reckoning is coming when that will change). It's not all hearts and flowers when you get that elusive contract, and often that contract goes away when you don't sell through.

Which is not to say that legacy publishing is worthless. It's not. I just think it's fair to point out that both legacy and indie have merits and drawbacks. You need to be armed with the facts, gauge your expectations and abilities and guts, and choose the path that makes sense for you. Or choose BOTH paths, which I think will become the default for good writers when this all shakes out down the road.

But for dog's sake, don't fool yourself into thinking that they only way you'll ever produce something of merit is if some bean counter in a corner office pushes the beads around on his abacus and says you're worthy. That, my friends, is definitely not art.

Playing with Covers

At the risk of oversaturating the whole cover angle, here's an enhanced cover for Running Red

and the original. We started a PhotoShop tutorial last night and are learning the tricks. The new cover has a little more pop.