Preaching The End Of The World

I'm off to Belgium at the weekend for three days. That's just far enough away to see exactly lightly I can travel - regular readers will have figured out by now exactly how much I dislike carrying luggage. Here's what I'm thinking: Personal hygiene materials (including socks and pants) - buy them when I get there and throw old stuff in the trash before I come back.

Books - this one was proving tricky but for the relatively short trip that it is, Rankin's new Rebus offering - Standing In Another Man's Grave - as an audiobook seems like an excellent travelling companion.

Clothes - figured I would wear a suit, meaning I don't need only need two shirts, one of which I shall be wearing. A man can find a white shirt in any city on any world if he needs to buy another.

This more or less means I can get by with just my phone and a bottle of water (the ultimate in instantly disposable items), but I always think this. Worst case scenario? The old Scaramanga bag. I don't mind that so much at all. The hard part is the fight with yourself that says if you really have to take a bag, you might as well fill it with stuff - which is wrong.

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Blogging is a little sporadic at the moment due to - wait for it - actual words being written. The schedule says two more books by Christmas so that's what I'm aiming for and there's nothing like having a deadline hanging over your head to sharpen the pencils. I was talking to an author friend yesterday about his latest book and how it was faring internationally. The word came back that sales, although respectable, where not as good as his previous novels resulting in something of a 'pay-cut' from his publisher. I like hearing things like this because the temptation is to always look at King/Gaiman/Koontz for business models but they are the exceptions and not the rules. That's not taking anything away from them because Lord knows they deserve everything they have but even though they may be the ideal, it's always good to know the reality of any likely situation from the guys in the trenches.

I know he won't mind me quoting him here - particularly as I haven't said who he is - but this was a good reality check for me:

"Well, there is a really scary thing happening with a lot of us mid list authors right now. Publishers are not editing our books. They are not backing them with much, if any, marketing or advertising. They are fighting us over titles and cover art and pigeon-holing us. And for that privilege we allow them to take 85 cents on the dollar."

85 cents in the dollar? That leaves you with 15 cents that one would presumably have to share with ones agent. My number skills are pretty poor, but let's take a simple example. Let's say a book is ten dollars. Your share of this using this model would be one $1.50. Let's take a simple sum that I can work out and say that you have to give your agent 20% of that - which is 30 cents - you are now left with $1.30 per book sold. Let's quickly move that model to the UK and say that if a book is £10 on the shelf, your share eventually becomes £1.30. Let's take a ballpark salary of £30,000 that is probably an average wage to live off these days. You would need to shift 24,000 copies of your book to make that grade - and that's not factoring in taxes etc either.

Now, I don't know if this is typical of the industry or not but it doesn't sound great. I also assume that most authors sell remarkably less than this. If it is a reasonably typical example, it's small wonder that a self published kindle/ibooks author goes down that route, as it tips the percentages on its head in your favour. By my (probably bad maths) you would only need to sell in the region of 3,500 books to make your £30,000 salary. That even seems achievable - and even though you would probably be insane to try and sell your book digitally for £10, the numbers are at least something you think you might be able to deal with. I even forgot to add the money back on that you would give your agent.

The fly in the ointment in this is that a good publisher can get your books in front of people. People buy books that are in front of them in a book store. I am 'people', so I know. Digitally, I tend to hunt very exactly with sniper crosshairs. How do you get your book in front of people to sell that many of a digital device. You might think social networking is a great place to start but as I have always said about networking online, it's like being at party with a million people all of whom are looking out for nobody but themselves.

I am genuinely intrigued as to how an author can make this work properly for them and break the traditional model once and for all - and I'm not talking the lower than low sock puppet tactics recently in the news. Did I say everything that was in my head on that? I think so... possibly some edits to come.

COMMERCIAL BREAK:

Meanwhile, I meant to post this quite some weeks back now. My friend Mr Downes came up with this and I loved it - and now you may love it too because he couldn't find anywhere online he wanted to post it.

I feel that we must finish the day with something from the music library that kicks royal ass with total agreement from all. Thus, I present to you, this:

Publishing: A Game of Thrones.

The weekend came and went without incident - more or less. I'm not sure where those days went though. Nor yesterday. Probably in a haze of copy-editing, proofing, scratching the head and hoping that pretty soon, like the schedule says, this issue of the magazine will finally go to print. Work continues to get this site figured out before the end of the year. For those that missed it, many months ago, I moved here and built the site straight out of my head, live onto the page so that I knew when things weren't right and thus would be fixed pretty damn fast out of shame. The idea was - and still is - to call myself out on the projects that are going somewhere and identify the ones that were simply a good idea at the time but didn't have enough legs to take them anywhere special. The stone is being chipped away at fast and things are starting to feel like they're a little more achievable - then again, I did give myself a list from hell.

What's intriguing about this "thing" that I'm doing, is that I'm still torn between doing everything myself or working with a publisher - or rather, starting the long task of finding one. I made contact with an author that I haven't spoken to for about five years yesterday who had a bad experience with a large publishing company and only through being smart, managed to rescue himself and his canon from oblivion. He seems happy now with a much smaller publisher - we must talk further. Insider info can be invaluable. That was closely followed by this article I found, in which a novel, despite great things being said by email from the big guns themselves, appeared to remain in development hell for over ten years. Ten years!

Nobody has ten years to spend waiting around to decide if your book is good enough to publish or not. I don't care who you are or how big - that's nothing more than being shit at your job and you should be handed your papers and told to never come back again. Apart from it being incredibly lazy and oh, the lies you must have spun over that period, that's somebody's life being played with. Which is a good a reason as any to have an agent, but there's nothing written in law to say that the agent will do any better either.

I know a published author who doesn't live so far away from me who can't even get her agent to respond to her emails. Genuinely important emails about touring, money and what the status is of the book she submitted over six months ago. With a little research, we discovered that he was probably sleeping with one of his other female authors who is selling books at a good rate. Which all goes to prove one thing regardless of where you stand in life. When you're on the up, everybody wants to know you and be associated. When you're on the way down, they scatter like crows. The solution so far as I can see, is to do everything yourself (and I mean everything) and remember not to be a dick to anybody whether you, or they, are on the up or down. Nobody will ever care about your product as much as you do. Somebody will always take a bigger cut for the privilege of working on it than you will and you will forever be wondering when the axe will fall when your new one sells a little less than the last one.

It's harsh out there.

Then again - having your book in front of millions of shoppers every day is damned priceless. Such is the need for a publishing company - actually, that's not true. "Such is the need for a distribution company" would be more like it. It will change. I know it will because I know how the distribution points work and in a digital age, the stores are struggling to make it work on a daily basis. I just don't know when.

Now, you're probably feeling like I am. Sitting there thinking that yes, "Smith is correct. I must do it all myself because nobody else cares but me" - but the idea of selling a ton of books via a real store never goes away. Maybe that's a good thing. I'm just going to keep moving forward as best as I can - that's all any of us can do.

Also noteworthy out there this week is the appearance of Rowling's new book which has replaced 50 Shades as the "item of the week to pimp to death" in all stores across the land. No idea what it's like - it's not about a boy who is a wizard so I don't really care, but if you're a published author who wants to sell millions, that's what you're up against. I haven't even seen James Herbert's Ash in that many places since it (quietly) appeared last week - and The Wrath of Angels from John Connolly in even less places. That's sad - but not as sad as being a moth eaten hare on the end of a couple of sticks:

COMMERCIAL BREAK:

Talking of making it, which we kind of were, I'll leave you with the trailer for The Runaways movie. Much under-rated, highly enjoyable and if you've not seen it already, please go and sit in the corner.

Was It Something I Said?

Over the last three weeks, I've had three requests from authors - in not that much of a dissimilar position to me so far as I can see - to review their books and maybe hook up on their 'blog tour'. They all seem like great people and I'd really like to do this with them... and I will. Trying to figure out where to drop it into the run of things though is another matter entirely. The most obvious place to drop it is as a big feature within the regular blog posts but there's something at the back of my mind (as usual) that says if it's going to become a regular thing, it should have a space of its own here. So - three great people who are probably reading - I will get back to you shortly (later tonight) to figure out just where it's all going to live. On which subject, I picked up a copy of a new little magazine out here in the UK at the moment called How To Publish Your Own eBook. I bought it to double check on some of the more correct options for the formats I'm not so familiar with - but my problem with it is that it includes material such as "what should I write about". Big trashy filler stuff that's really not necessary. Before you know it, the next book will be "How To Release An Album On The Internet", the first chapter of which will be called "Learning to Play the Guitar". Come on guys... I know it's kind of hip right now but seriously? I don't know if it's badly approached but there's some advice in there about structuring. ie: Structuring your book to fit what the eReader can do. It's practically saying 'fuck the story - make it look good'.

No. Story first, then make it look good. The End. Although I of all people should know why it's been written like that.

Anyway, ten years ago, pdf was going to be the format to end all formats for the sort of future we have now and it still could be in my opinion, but somebody took their eye off the development ball, didn't they adobe...

PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED.. WHICHEVER WAY YOU SLICE IT

I don't feel very festive yet and I think I should. The kids have got their Christmas tree up already and I'm being pestered to get one up this coming weekend and I think I will give in gracefully. I guess I had better finish off some Christmas shopping too. I still haven't got a clue what to get Eleanor for Christmas - she says I'm hard to buy for but that's the pot calling the kettle out for sure. Something has been bugging the hell out of me this last week and it's taken me a while to figure out what it is. It finally dawned on me last night that it was the cover of The Monster Magnet - it is weak to say the least, so if you happen upon the site/blog while I'm changing it, apologies for any confusion but it deserves a better cover than a spooky looking tree. How many times have I sat here and slated publishers for going down the 'spooky tree' road? Harlan Coben, Michael Connelly, Linwood Barclay - and those are off the top of my head. If I went and looked I could probably find at least a dozen more. Anyway, I've got a real bee in the head over it as well, so I've sourced images for the entire series all at once. I guess this is the beauty of doing it yourself. Can you imagine how much carnage that would cause if you were in the hands of Harper Collins? Then again, Harper Collins wouldn't have let it go out looking second rate, but you know what I mean...

About a week ago, I read a fantastic blog post "Reasons Not To Self Publish" over at The Millions. While I disagree with about as much of it as I agree with, it's the wealth of knowledge, hatred and disbelief that follows in the comments that yields the good stuff. There are no answers to be had there. There are as many haters of self publishing/digital publishing as there are those that love it. There's all kinds of squabbling going on, but much of it appears to be about being validated as an author by a publisher putting money into you or how people view published books as real and ebooks as not. Money, money, money...

I thought about this long and hard. It really made me question my own motivations for writing at the moment.

1. I write because I have stories in my head and believe other people would enjoy them

At which point, the list ends because having talked to other authors/writers, there are two roads we can down at this point. The first is that I can either write because I have a story to tell regardless of commerce, the second is that I can write because I believe I can make a living out of it.

Regardless of the fact that I write for a living - because running a magazine has about as much in common with writing a book and washing cars does with building them - I fall into the first category. I don't believe I have the 'right' to be published. I would like to be pubished but I don't have any rights to it at all. That's not for me to decide. Publishing is a money making business and I'm sure if a publisher thought they could make a success story and some money out of me, I would be the first to know.

Meantime, I also don't expect a publisher to pay any attention to me at the moment. Why would they? I have nothing. Buying into a first time author with no track record is akin to taking on somebody ho left school last week and leaving them in charge of an entire department (yeah, it does happen, but they are few and far between). My own thinking on this is about the same as it was when I was playing in a band. If you haven't got a demo of your music for people to listen to, all they have is your word for it.

Am I the only one looking at digital publishing like this? I mean, every day above ground is a good day right? Why would you want to sit on something you had written until somebody paid you for it? Wouldn't you rather some people read it and then told some other people about it. Sure, getting paid is great but it can't be the end-game anymore - not in this climate.

Which begs the question that it must be time to differentiate, not between published authors and self published authors/hard copy books and digital books but between story-tellers and commercial writers. Those, I feel are the two categories we should be looking at. I think then, the word of publishing would make a lot more sense to people.

Following on from this, I thought I would go back in time and check out Amanda Hocking's blog posts from the beginning of time. From the era before she had sold a million. Her grammar and spelling are terrible but that didn't stop millions of people from buying her material. I find her a bit of a whiner and I also feel like she plays some bizarre sympathy cards a little too often as well, but hey, she is the one that shifted all of those books not me. She obviously knows her audience well and they identify with her.

The end result, she has gotten herself a decent deal and a good team behind her - there's even movie talk these days. She gets a raw deal when really all she did was grow up in public. It's no different from making indie movies until you know what you're doing. Look at Del Toro and Tarantino. It's no different from demoing songs until you're a fantastic songwriter and recording artist. Back in the seventies and long before that, music artists where given time to develop. Nobody expected anybody to sell a million on your first album. Everybody took some knocks to get the job done.

So answer me this, why isn't everybody playing nicely together? Why aren't the big six publishing companies using self published sales data to fuel their risks for the future? Or have I missed something?