A writing friend recently sent a new “publishing opportunity” to me. I’m not going to name-and-shame the particular company, because I don’t think they’re being malicious in this case, merely naive, but it’s a great example of a terrible trend in this industry. Here’s the opportunity, scraped from their site (non-relevant information cut):

 Enter our competition for the opportunity to have your book published in 2012. [...] Should your entry be successful, a publishing contract will be offered to you. [...] The books will be published through Lightning Source Australia and distributed through Dennis Jones and Associates. Morris Publishing Australia will handle all cover design and setup for printing, and develop a marketing campaign for the book, all at no cost to the author.    We are looking for books in the following groups:  Confident readers (7+) - generally between 8000 and 20,000 words. Independent readers (9+) - generally between 25,000 and 50,000 words Teenage readers (12+) - generally between 40,000 and 80,000 words Young adult readers (14+) - generally between 40,000 and 80,000 words.  Adult fiction.

 Can you see what’s wrong with it?  

 

So, there's crazy drama in the publishing world right now. Bestselling author Barry Eisler has walked away from a half-million dollar book deal to self-publish. Cue several hundred blog posts on this being a huge wake up / nail in the coffin / natural-disaster-of-your-choice for the publishing industry, including one very interesting though overlong (really overlong, guys. Nobody has time for a thesis on the internet. But most of the good stuff's in the first half or third) conversation between Eisler and self-pub-king Joe Konrath on the publishing industry and self-publishing. 

Barely two days later, news breaks that self-publishing-darling Amanda Hocking has been shopping one of her novel series around to traditional publishing, with bidding reaching over $2 million before she signed with St Martin's Press. And an avalanche of blog posts condemning, supporting, analysing and foretelling springs forth before Amanda posts her own reasons for her decision.

I followed a chain of "X has a post abut Y's psot about Z's post about..." to find a great little article by Stephen King on writing. Originally written in 1986, the advice still holds (although the jury's still out on #11 - but to be fair, when this was written, agents were for legal things and self-publishing was for people with more money than sense.) It's lightly funny and it's to-the-point, a good read.

Joe Konrath has another post about ebook pricing, this time explaining why he thinks the new ebook price is $2.99, and why that's a good thing. I'll admit, having considered buying vairous ebooks, the near-paperback price of most of them has always turned me away. I think he has a number of good points, there.

As for pricing, how about free? Michael Stackpole has a great post on Project Gutenberg (Philip K. Dick? Yoink.), and the number of classic sci fi authors that can be found there for free - and what publishers should be keeping in mind with their pricing models.

Speaking of free, Jane Friedman on Writer Unboxed has a few words to say about giving your work away for free (as promotion, natch) - what to consider. Like anything, really, it's not a matter of just throwing things around and waiting for magic to happen - it needs careful strategy and follow-through behind it.

And finally, a great post on how to answer that question that we all hate (except if it's from an agent): "So, what's your book about?" without sounding like you're reading from the dullest plot in history.

Following up from previous links to Henry Baum's experience with the Kindle Nation (and the subsequent delisting thanks to Amazon's draconion price parity policy), Smashwords CEO Mark Coker ventures his thoughts on the impact of Amazon's enforcement of their policies. In essence, it works to Amazon's steep advantage, discouraging authors from even listing with other retailers lest said retailers drop the price below Amazon's, and works against authors' interests. Coker calls on Amazon to review their policy, but unfortunately fails to provide a reason that it would be in Amazon's interest to do so. Still an interesting read, though.

Still on Amazon, S. G. Royle has published a great guide on some of the tax and legal issues for foreign authors wanting to publish on Amazon (so many forms!), while Steve Saus examines some key factors to success in digital publishing, and another Steve from York Writers is rebutting Phillip Goldberg's article (Huffington Post) about what writers really need. Steve has some great points to make about the illusions of advances, and how they might not be such a healthy thing after all.

And on an unrelated note, some posts I enjoyed on the worldbuilding-vs-story issue that seems to crop up far too often in SF texts.

AussieCon runs this week, Thursday to Monday, with about a bajillion panels on everything from fantasy cities to cyberpunk feminism. I've gone through the program, marking the panels I want to attend (and wishing that I had a few shared-mind clones to see the ones that clash), and wondering how the whole process is going to work for people who can't take an entire morning off to register tomorrow... eek. Ah well.

In actual news, Wylie's lost his fight against Random House for the ebook rights. The rights return to Random House - a strong reminder to read your contracts carefully for which rights revert when and why.

Jessica at Dystel and Goderich muses on intellectual property vs creative commons. There's long been the argument that IP exists solely to protect a wealthy nation's ability to make money at the expense of poorer nations. While the argument's obvious with pharmaceutical companies, it also covers authors' copyright. While I'm a strong advocate of copyright, there does seem to be an issue to resolve, here.

Joe Konrath is musing on some of the possibilities that self-publishing grants in terms of creative control - releasing different versions of books, for example, or revitalising the 'choose your own adventure' style of novel into a more literary concept. I'll admit, I'm intrigued by the notion of playing with the format like that.

Henry Baum gives us a brief impression of his day on Kindle Nation - complete with supposed SNAFU by Amazon. Amazon disabled his buy-button in the middle of the promotion because Kobo had undercut the price of the book in a way that wasn't in Baum's control. Mini-Macmillian-dummy-spit all over again.

And on a completely unrelated note, because someone asked me the other day: Nathan Bransford explains to us what 'High Concept' actually is - and it's not what it sounds like.

So the publishing industry's wobbled again. This time, with Andrew Wylier and Odyssey Editions. Essentially, an agent publishing his client's backlist titles exclusively with Amazon, and the Big Boys are less than impressed, saying it's against the interests of everyone from the author to the man who makes the coffee down the road - a little hard to fathom, really, given the current deals offered by the Big Six for ebooks, and their habit of sitting on intellectual property that could be making money for both them and the authors, but alright. Mike Shatzkin has an excellent post on the issue over here.

At the same time, we have IndieProse, a site that's claiming to be the gatekeeper for self-publishers. Definitely a wait-and-see, in my book - the authors pay to be listed on the site, and as Henry Baum points out on SelfPublishingReview, with no costs other than bandwidth, and no financial consequences should they back a less-than-stellar title, it's difficult to see how they're resist the temptation to accept that sign-up money from all authors regardless of quality.

Lastly, colour e-ink capable of displaying movies is edging closer, with the development of electro-wetting, a concept that uses coloured oil droplets suspended next to a water layer that move within 10 milliseconds in response to current directed through said water layer. I think I've mentioned this tech before - I've certainly seen it before, but unfortunately there still doesn't seem to be a working demonstration available, for all the claims on liquavista's site.

So agents are turning publisher, new gatekeeping models rear their heads, and the technology marches on. It's going to be a fascinating few years.

There's been some hooplah lately in the blogs I read about giving your work away for free. Arguments for, against and sideways abound, and it's getting so that use emerging authors feel totally lost when it comes to advice about promotion and free stuff.

As I see it, there are two basic arguments, and a whole host of nonsense:

Giving stuff away for free can raise your profile, help build a following, get people interested in your work. It lowers the cost of entry for people to try your stories and writing, which will (assuming you've given them the good stuff) lead to more readers, and hopefully paying readers. Giving stuff away for free snarfs your first publiaction rights, so your chances of a traditional publishing deal with that material are pretty much lottery-level.

There's been a lot of carping that the idea of 'first publication rights' is antiquated, and doesn't fit with today's online era. That we authors need to show publishers the error of their ways in adhering to this outmoded idea. Excuse me while I snort into my coffee.

 

Following yesterday's post about what publishers really offer in the quasi-digital age, let's take a look at what you can manage without a traditional publisher behind you. There've been some excellent and inspiring posts out recently. So, what benefits can you gain from going solo?

 I've been reading Holly Lisle's watch-me-work novel Talymania, where readers sign up to receive emailed chapters hot from her fingertips. It's not the first time an author has tried a new method of publishing on the internet (think back to the start of the century, and Stephen King's failed e-serial experiment) but most authors aren't willing to spotlight their scruffy first drafts for the world, and with good reason.