Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

From My Amazon.com Front Page Today

While I manage to use Amazon for a lot of things, whether for good or ill, I was rather taken aback by this:

Dear Customers,

"Did I cry over some of these rejections? Absolutely. Did I feel inadequate, untalented, hurt? Yes. Did I doubt my ability to craft a story that readers could fall in love with? You bet."

That's Jessica Park, who hit road block after road block trying to get her book Flat-Out Love in front of readers. You can read her incredible blog post on IndieReader (also picked up by HuffPost) detailing her perseverance and how she finally succeeded by doing it herself with Kindle Direct Publishing. It's heartwarming and tells a powerful story about what KDP makes possible.

Kindle Direct Publishing empowers serious authors to reach readers, build a following, make a living, and to do it on their own terms. Readers get lower prices, authors get higher royalties, and we all get a more diverse book culture (no expert gatekeepers saying "sorry but that will never work"). KDP is already meaningful--22 of our top 100 best-selling Kindle books so far this year are KDP books--and more great stories are being published every day.

You can find Flat-Out Love here. Thanks for being a customer.

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO

Here's The Thing

Yes -- there are people making money selling e-books. And there are people making money selling their books to traditional publishers. And some published authors have gone the self-publishing e-book routine with certain books. So? There are also people not making money selling e-books. And there are people not making money selling their books to traditional publishers. And some unpublished authors have gone the self-publishing routine and lose money in the deal.

The thing is, this sort of gushing broadcast letter I don't think is aimed at the successful published author. I think it's to trap writers who haven't sold or haven't tried to sell their work -- hey I can act like a Big Name Successful KDP Author, too! And without necessarily doing the hard work of, oh, actually writing a successful book. Remember that line "22 of our top 100 best-selling Kindle books so far this year are KDP books"? There are no qualifiers there. How many of those 22 are previously unpublished? How many are established writers either playing with KDP or putting their backlist up? Am I supposed to surprised that Amazon's powerful merchandising system manages to sell KDP titles for the Kindle to Kindle users? Without context, there's no reason to leap in, sign up and expect the riches to roll in for any manuscript.

Read Jessica Park's blog entry. It's whiny self-congratulations, as far as I'm concerned, and acting all hurt about those mean big, nasty, clueless, thieving and mean big publishers, despite claiming traditional publishing credits. So she couldn't sell a YA book about a non-YA protag to a YA publisher. Color me surprised. Get a better agent.

Sorry, Jeff. You're not yet the savior of the American book industry, though you are a powerful and useful force. We just don't yet where this is all going. Your trumpet cries are not yet justified, especially when I feel they'll lead to unrealistic self-publishing dreams of the vulnerable. Yet I am conflicted in the sense that as a possible route to failure, going the KDP route is probably better than Publish America and other scammers.

Dr. Phil

Grokked From Scalzi's Blog

John Scalzi's Whatever today has an article on James Frey preying on MFA writing program students with a really lousy book packaging contract, referenced from a New York Magazine article about the YA novel packaging mill Full Fathom Five -- you can read the details there.

Yeah, we're talking about turning your work over to another person, who will control it, not you. And losing one's copyright. For up to a big $250-$500 payday. Plus promises of more if there's a media deal for TV or film. Makes one wonder what the hell they teach in MFA writing programs. Apparently, there's not much publishing business being taught. And to re-write James Frey, "a crappy deal is still a crappy deal, not an opportunity".

One of the commenters wanted to know if, after the Cooks Source scandal about plagiarism, has this become something like National Kick Authors Month? Sadly, no. People have stolen other people's writing and come up with massively unjust contracts for a long time. Another commenter suggested that people would be "better", for very poor values of "better", going the self-publishing route than with this contract. The only good news is that these things usually only affect a few writers.

As for James Frey, he's not a stranger to controversy and questionable ethics. You can read in the Wikipedia article about his A Million Little Pieces, which had been an Oprah featured book. This new deal isn't going to polish his starry little luster very much, IMHO.

I'm sure there'll be more about this on the web. But my point is basically that if you want to be a published writer, that doing a little research on your part and asking people about the business side of writing will go a long way to cut down on the odds of you being taken advantage of. And some people will allow themselves to be taken advantage of, because they either buy the deal or don't know any better.

Really.

Dr. Phil

A Horrifying Development

Lots of people read romances. And the paranormal romances are clearly a cousin of genre writing -- and sometimes it is a pretty artificial division. I read Marjorie Liu's stuff, and Meljean Brook -- these are authors I know from Clarion and online, respectively.

Growing up, the brand name Harlequin seemed synonymous with Romance to me -- I guess in terms of sales, for good reason. But recently Harlequin decided to announce a new venture, essentially mining their slush pile for an in-house vanity press operation. For God's sake, Publisher's Weekly ran a news flash with a straight face. I heard about this first via Nick Kaufmann via Nick Mamatas.

But now Scalzi and Making Light have lit in, because -- Thank God! -- the RWA (Romance Writers of America), MWA (Mystery Writers of America) and SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) have all condemned the move. In particular, RWA is to be commended, seeing as they have the most to gain and lose in this effort:

One of your member benefits is the annual National Conference. RWA allocates select conference resources to non-subsidy/non-vanity presses that meet the eligibility requirements to obtain those resources. Eligible publishers are provided free meeting space for book signings, are given the opportunity to hold editor appointments, and are allowed to offer spotlights on their programs.

With the launch of Harlequin Horizons, Harlequin Enterprises no longer meets the requirements to be eligible for RWA-provided conference resources. This does not mean that Harlequin Enterprises cannot attend the conference. Like all non-eligible publishers, they are welcome to attend. However, as a non-eligible publisher, they would fund their own conference fees and they would not be provided with conference resources by RWA to publicize or promote the company or its imprints.

Sometimes the wind of change comes swiftly and unexpectedly, leaving an unsettled feeling. RWA takes its role as advocate for its members seriously. The Board is working diligently to address the impact of recent developments on all of RWA’s members.

So far, it sounds as if Harlequin sounds hurt, but has removed the name Harlequin from the new venture. It has not, however, decided to skip becoming "Romance Publish America".

Why This Is Evil

Self-publishing is when you hire someone to print your work -- it is very useful for certain limited interest publications, gifts and small runs of things for family & friends. Vanity publishing is when you hire someone to pretend you're a professional author -- they make you believe that your book is "just like" something which has been vetted and marketed by a real publisher.

As annoying as rejection is and as big as slush piles get at real publishers, you really can't judge your own work all that fairly. For someone else to say, "hey, this is good, we can work with this, and we'd like to pay you this much to publish your work", is setting the minimum bar level.

In real publishing, money goes to the author.

If I put up a story on this LJ or on my website, http://dr-phil-physics.com , I'm doing this for fun and/or to give people a taste of my writing for free -- especially given that some of my real publications are hard to get. And I've been using unpublished stories so as not to interfere with those who have published me. But I know these are not vetted, edited works. They are my words and I can give them away if I feel like, provided they're not under contract elsewhere.

For you to pay Harlequin, or its minions, hundreds or thousands of dollars to produce books that likely will not sell and will never get promoted to "the real publishing arm" is a scam. The bait-and-switch aspect of slush piles and rejection letters is just too vile to support. Harlequin's management should be ashamed of themselves and grovel at the feet of their authors, their readers and the writers' organizations like RWA and beg their forgiveness and vow to sin no more forever. Period.

So far, no. Clearly we are misunderstanding Harlequin.

And this has to be CRUSHED IN THE BUD, lest in these dangerous financial times, other legitimate publishers begin to start thinking -- hey, I've got this fucking big slush pile, too, and maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't be so bad if I followed Harlequin's lead. And don't get all sanctimonious that hey, it was Harlequin that did this, one of those Romance publishers, complete with the eye rolling of superiority. Because it could happen to anyone in any genre. No, really. It could happen elsewhere.

NO. It'd be BAD. It's not RIGHT. And you people all know it. Preying on the wallets of those with hopes and dreams of becoming published authors is WRONG. And EVIL.

So just STOP IT. NOW.

And please, PLEASE, PLEASE... Don't Fall For This Shit Yourself.

Dr. Phil

Keeping On Top Of Things

Yesterday I posted on my three favorite monthly non-fiction SF/F publications. There's always gold to be mined from these sources. For example, at the end of David Langford's Ansible 264, there was this little tidbit:

Novel Competition. SciFiNow and Tor UK offer publication with 20% royalties (but no advance) to the winning sf/fantasy novel -- whose 80 to 150 thousand words must be available by the closing date of 20 August 2009. Lionel Fanthorpe could probably do it in a couple of weekends, but previously published novelists are barred ...
http://tr.im/novelcomp

Well, I'm an unpublished SF novelist, so let's check this out.

More Details (after the cut)
( Read more... )

Be sure to follow the links and read the whole rules.

So... Is This A Good Deal Or Not?

Worst case -- I have a finished manuscript and it gets tied up for a couple of months. But I'd be on the shortlist. If I don't even make that, then I'm in and out in even less time.

Best case -- I win the damn thing. So the contract is non-negotiable. We're talking about real British publishers, Macmillan and Tor U.K., and getting a novel fast tracked. Surely getting a novel published and the publicity of winning the competition is worth something, right?

As for the money. Yes, they get to dictate the terms. That part seems fair. I mean, why go to all the trouble to pick the best SF novel from this competition and then fail to reach an agreement with the author? The rule is, money goes to the author -- there are no entry fees and with electronic submission, no direct costs to submitting an entry. Yes, I know that with no advance and getting paid a piece of the royalties only means that it will be a long time before getting paid. Okay, eyes open, but if I were to do a traditional novel sale, we're a long way from getting a check of any amount by that method, too. And without an advance, there's no problem with ruining my career by not earning out said advance. (grin)

Twenty Percent

Since short fiction pays not a lot and I've never done a novel contract, there's a lot I don't know. Is "20% royalty on net receipts" a good deal or not? Back in April, noted Goblin & Fighting Princesses author Jim C. Hines wrote on How Many Books do you Have to Sell?.

Sticking purely with mass market paperbacks for the moment, let's say you get royalties at 8% (fairly standard but not universal for an original mass market, I believe) and a cover price of $7.99 (also standard U.S. cover price for mass markets). So you're earning $.64 per book. Juggle the numbers, and a $5000 advance means you're going to need to sell roughly 8,000 books (7,812.5) in order to earn out. In my case, I'd guess the publisher probably did a print run between 10,000 and 15,000 books, but that's a total guess, and hopefully more experienced publishing folks can speak to that piece. (ETA: ramblin_phyl points out that there's also a break-even point in the cost-efficiency of first print runs, which might mean the numbers on that run were a little higher.)

Hardcovers and e-books add more variables, as the royalties are different, but I'm trying to keep things as simple as possible for this example.

So I read that and figure 8% of one sort of pie and 20% for another sort of pie -- at least it tells me that the 20% figure isn't a nasty low ball pitch to naive newbie novelists, like moi. (grin)

And I Have A Project

One of my stories is now at 47,000 words -- it has grown too large even for the one or two novella markets and I have started work to take it to a novel anyway. It has a sequel story, which could also be expanded -- that would take care of the mythical second novel clause in the contract. In other words, this is work I was going to do this fall on my sabbatical anyway. And you know I like deadlines.

Yes, I only have five weeks to get this done, but I have the story. We're just rebuilding it. I can do this.

So the next question is -- are you sitting on any finished or nearly finished SF novels? (evil-grin)

OAS Project


Dr. Phil