Blog Chain - It Ain't all Doom and Gloom

After a little hiatus from the blog chain, I'm glad to be back and would like to welcome all our new, awesome members.

This chain is brought to us by Sandra who asks:

Have the recent changes in the publishing industry affected your writing plans/career? If so, how? 

Way to start small ;)

I touched on this some a little bit ago, but I wasn't particularly coherent.  I don't think I'd ever make it as a journalist because it takes me so long to formulate my thoughts.  I have to pare off the emotion, and organize my argument.  Luckily, I've had some time to think about my future.

I don't think the changes in the industry are responsible for altering my plans, I think reality is.  When I first got an agent, I thought it would be all gold bars and dollar bills.  The reality has been shocking.  Selling a book isn't the key to instant success.

Certainly e-books and Amazon have changed the playing field, but my main goal was and is to get my books out there.  My secondary goal is to get paid to do it.  I still think that traditional publishing is the best way to achieve my goals.  I'm intrigued by some current trends (such as writers withholding e-book rights the same way they withhold foreign rights) and would also like to try self-publishing something under a pen name to test the waters.

But traditional publishing, in my opinion, is still the best way for me to be my best.  I'm a terrible self-editor.  I'm too in love with my own vision for my book to see its flaws well.  I love revising, but I need great people during the process to point things out that I miss.  Recently, I was revising a book and a wonderful friend who agreed to edit it for me pointed out such a huge flaw in one of my characters.  It was so simple and fixing it altered the book in a profoundly amazing way.  I'd gone through a dozen drafts in 13 months and never caught it.  Frequently in self-publishing, unless the author has access to a freelance editor that they trust, their work will be as good as it could have been.

So the short answer is no.  I still plan to write books I love and try to get them published.  Because that's what I'm here for.

Enough about me.  If you haven't read Margie's answer, go find out how all the changes have affected her plans (and hope she doesn't get blown away by Irene!) and then tomorrow head over to new member Jon Arnston's blog to get his take.  Until next time!

Quantum Mechanics is people

People are photons.  They exhibit a particle-wave duality.  When no one is watching, they act one way, they act many ways.  Their actions are unpredictable and varied.  The possibilities are endless.

Observe them, and they act uniformly.  It's in their nature.  When a person knows they're being watched, they become governed by the rules that govern society.

Characters are like that too.

Until the moment we write them down, their possibilities are endless.  They can act in ways that are both contradictory to what we know about them, and completely in line with who they are.

Two Sides

When I was around nine or ten, I loved Judy Blume's books.  Super Fudge was one of my favorites.  I remember playing sick so that I could sit with my stack of books and read them all day long.

I remember reading ARE YOU THERE GOD?  IT'S ME, MARGARET? when I was just on the cusp of understanding sexuality.  I was old enough to know that these things were serious, scary business, but young enough to still find it all hugely funny.  I laughed when the girls said their little chant to increase their bust size.  It gave me a greater understanding of what girls go through.  But I didn't really understand it.  It was a book I read and discarded.

Then I read THEN AGAIN, MAYBE I WON'T.  It tackled puberty with the same care and sensitivity that ARE YOU THERE GOD?  IT'S ME, MARGARET? did, but I could relate to the main character.  The book spoke to the experiences that I, as a boy, was going through.  Suddenly, I felt like I wasn't the only person in the world going through these things, being afraid of them.  I read that book a hundred times.

Boys and girls experience the world in different ways.  They each need books that speak to those experiences.  Judy Blume proved that a man doesn't have to write a "boy book" for it to be effective.

When people call for books that speak to boys, they're not trying to diminish the role of books aimed at girl or at female writers.  They're not saying that the experiences of girls are somehow less important than those of boys.  All they're saying is that boys need to know they're not alone.  They need to be able to see, through eyes like theirs, that they're going to be okay.

Denying them that isn't a victory for feminism, it's a defeat for us all.

This Article - Boy is not a four letter word

Here's another BOYS DON'T READ article.  I'm sure you saw it all over the internet.  Lots of people had a ton of things to say about it.

Sadly, most of it was crap.

Here's what I'm sick of:  people getting up in arms every time someone suggests that we need to do more to get boys to read as if somehow that diminishes girls.

Here's a fun fact:  boys and girls are different.  They have different likes and dislikes.  They're turned on by different things.  They view the world in different ways.  They approach situations differently.  You can't deny that.

No boy will ever know the fear and joy of getting pregnant.  No girl will ever know the supreme embarrassment of popping a boner in front of her English class during a presentation.

There are some books that will appeal mostly to girls, some that will appeal mostly to boys, and a whole freaking slew of books that will and should appeal to everyone.  Who does it harm to try to sell and market books to both genders equally?  Why do so many people feel that a call for more books with boy appeal is automatically a call for fewer girls?

READING IS NOT A ZERO-SUM GAME.  It's not boys versus girls out there.  Acting like boys are these vicious monsters because they're embarrassed to be seen with a mermaid girl on the cover of their book is ridiculous.  I hope that the next generation isn't as scarred by the bullying that they endured in middle school as I was and is more open to things that challenge their masculinity.  But this "take it or leave it" mentality when it comes to books is, quite simply, fucking ridiculous.

I'm not even going to address why boys aren't reading and what we should do about it problem.  If you want boys to read, give them a book.  If they don't like it, give them another.  If they don't like that one, give them a gift card and a Kindle and tell them to buy their own.

I simply find it sad and ridiculous that for a community that prides itself on openness and acceptance, there is this instant backlash against the idea that we bring more boys to reading by trying to meet them where they are.  It's petty and childish and selfish.

I thought the YA community was better than that.

For the record, here's a great post: http://novelnovice.com/2011/08/20/lets-get-guys-reading-no-matter-what-okay/

About Tomorrow

I seemed to have missed a day.  Whoops.

So here's my take on publishers right now:  They're essential.

There's a disconnect between how many people view publishers and the people who actually work for them.  Many (if not most) major publishers are now owned by huge media conglomerates.  They're being forced to do more with less.  They have to make money and don't have as much time to nurture the careers of writers as they may have had in the past.

Books have a couple of months to make it, after which they disappear.  There are exceptions (Thirteen Reasons Why springs to mind) but for the most part, books that don't sell well right out of the gate go away.

Because of tightening budgets, a lot of the responsibility for marketing falls to the author.  For Deathday, I built my own websites, had my own bookmarks printed, and spent a lot of time networking to get the word out.  And these were difficult for me.  I work a full time job, plus I was writing, AND I suck at all that small talk nonsense that some people seem to excel at.  Don't get me wrong, I love people.  The people I met through all of this are amazing, but I'm rubbish at hob knobbing.  I'd rather eat a bowl of razor blades than engage in small talk.

My publisher did a lot of work too, but it was mostly behind the scenes stuff.  Sending my ARCs to reviewers and doing the cover art, etc.

The thing is that advances seem to be shrinking and writers are expected to reinvest a significant portion of those advances back into marketing their own book.  After all was said and done, I questioned this practice.

I wondered if publishers were becoming irrelevant.  Obviously, they're not now.  But what about in 5 years?  I could hire an editor, hire an artist to design a cover, send my own book to reviewers.  Right?  Or is that just hubris talking?  Having never worked at a publisher's office, I'm sure there are a million things that go into making books of which I'm unaware.  But if I did it, the rewards could be substantial.

I'm not talking about making tons of money.  I'm talking about being able to control my own destiny.  One of the things that's bothered me about Deathday is that the e-book is priced one dollar less than the paper book.  I've harbored suspicions that if the price dropped to say $4.99, it could help spark interest and increase sales.  But I'll never know.  I haven't got control over that.  If I'd self-published, I could give it a whirl.  If lower pricing had no effect, I could lower it more, play with it, experiment.

I talked to my best friend and she broke it out into pros and cons for me.  In the pro list, I'd be able to publish some of the quirky projects that I seemed to come up with on a regular frequency.  Maybe they'd sell, maybe not, but the same could be said of any book published traditionally.  I'd also receive a much larger cut of the books I sold.  I'd be in control.

In the con list, I'd have to do all the work.  I'd never be able to find my book in a Barnes and Noble.  I'd never be considered for an award or get the kind of professional recognition that most people crave.

Maybe someday soon, there will be a merging of traditional publishing and quality self-publishing.  But that day isn't here yet, and self-publishing almost guarantees failure.  A small percentage make it.  Some do modestly well.  But I think most do not.

I don't know where things in the business stand now.  They're in flux.  Most writers I know are barely hanging in there.  Amazing books are being passed on by the big chains, book contracts are being cancelled, great authors are considering themselves failures when that couldn't be further from the truth.  What is true is that publishers are taking fewer risks.  They are taking some.  I was a risk.

So I don't know what the future holds.  For now, I've decided to keep trucking on in the traditional world.  Agents are amazing folk who do great work.  All the editors I've met are hard working, brilliant people.  For now, I think that sticking with them is the best way to produce the best work.

But I've also decided to try going it alone.  Under a pen name.  With a different kind of book than I usually write.  Just to see what's going on out there.  I can make all kinds of predictions but until I've gone through the process, it's all conjecture.  And as I go through that process, I'll document it all here.  This blog started as a means to track my journey from unpublished slob to published slob.  It's been an amazing journey that I hope lasts forever.  We'll see.

Happy Friday.

My Thoughts on Agents

Agents play a huge role in publishing.  Because fewer editors at fewer houses are reading more material, they rely on agents to be the gatekeepers.  There are few editors who will read unagented material.

But more than that, agents are your first serious reader, sometimes providing editorial guidance, your sounding board, your advocate, your foreign rights representative, your contract negotiator.  A good agent shepherds you through the process.  Some are more willing to hold your hand than others, some offer more editorial advice, but that's all a matter of style and preference.

As I rejoined the ranks of the agentless, I began crafting a list of agents that I thought would better suit me. I wrote my query letter and did all the things you're supposed to do.  Except I began to wonder why...

Think about forever.  Most books have a limited shelf-life.  They go into print.  Then they go out of print.  Rights revert back to authors when books go out of print.  Agents earn money from books sold, so when a book goes out of print, an agent is no longer earning from it.

But an e-book never needs to go out of print.  Which means, that your agent is essentially getting a cut of your book forever.  Like their children and their children's children.

I know that a lot of these issues will be ironed out and resolved as time goes on, but it's something to think about as we begin to shift from focusing on paper books to focusing on e-books.

There's been some hoopla on-line about some agencies starting e-publishing services in addition to agenting.  I can't stress enough that I think this is  a huge conflict of interest.  If you read Courtney Milan's posts on conflict of interests than you'll understand.  Even the POSSIBILITY of impropriety is problematic.  Safeguards would have to be put in place.  Such as a rule stating that if the agency e-published for someone, they couldn't also act as their agent, and vice versa.

I get that with things changing, agents need to come up with other sources of revenue.  I even applaud their innovation.  In my opinion, it seems like a waste of money to pay someone to do something you can do yourself, but I have lawn maintenance people not because I can't mow my own lawn, but because I freaking hate doing it.  And people will feel the same way about finding an editor and formatting their books for the different e-reading devices.

As I was thinking about all of this, I asked my friend Rach if I was being a knob for considering not going with another agent.  We talked about it and some things became clear:

Agents are still immensely valuable. Their roles are changing and I think that when I'm ready to query, I'll have to really have a conversation with any interested agent as to how they see the future working.  Because I don't know.  I'm not sure whether agents are going to be useful in this new future.  I think that agents are smart people and will find ways to be useful.

But as to whether or not I need an agent this time around?  I'll answer that later.  First I want to talk about publishers.  And I'll do that tomorrow.

Monday Is For Sleeping

Last week I read a really great blog post about the ethics of literary agents becoming gateways for self-publishing.  Courtney Milan wrote a really wonderful bit about it that I linked to from Friday's post.  If you haven't read it, you should.  Then on Sunday, I read about an agency that was going to do something similar.  And earlier in the week I'd heard from another agency that is doing that.  I questioned how an agency could justify 15% of the monies over the lifetime of the book (which is forever for an e-book) for helping a client publish an e-book.

I have a lot to talk about when it comes to publishing and agents and all that crap.  I started writing this post and then realized two things:

1.  I haven't had enough coffee to write intelligently.

2.  This is going to take more than one post.

I'll keep it short this morning.  Mondays suck too hard to deal with a long rambling post.

So, yes, in June my agent and I parted ways.  It was amicable.  He's a stand-up guy, an outstanding agent, and that's all I'm going to say about that.  If you were hoping for drama, you won't find it here.

The interesting part is what happened next.  I have a book I've been working on for over a year.  It's just about ready to go out.  A friend is giving it a really detailed read-through.  I'd prepared query letters to agents that I thought would be a good fit. 

Then I wondered why.

I questioned the role of a literary agent, the role of a publisher, and wondered whether self-publishing was maybe the way for me to go.

Whether we want to admit it or not, publishing is changing.  I'm not going to hide in a corner or cry to the heavens that publishing is dying.  It's not. People freaked out when YouTube came on the scene.  People were worried that if easy to upload, free videos were all the rage, that no one would want to watch TV.  TV was going to die.  Oh noes!

That didn't happen.  What did happen was that TV continued to thrive, YouTube remained a niche, and the two met somewhere in the middle.  Sites like HULU and Netflix began streaming quality shows on-line.  Those who wanted to remain tied to their TVs could, and those who wanted to watch on the internet did.  Experiments came and went, web shows haven't really taken off but experiments like Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog proved that they could be great AND profitable. 

I think the same will happen to books.  The medium of a paper book is too deeply ingrained in our collective subconscious for them to simply go away.  People who want books will get them, people who want e-books can have them, and people who want free, user created content (book versions of YouTube videos) can have those as well. 

But like it or not, it's all changing. 

Wednesday, I'll share some thoughts about where I see the role of the agent going and how I see the role of the agent in my own personal journey.

Happy Monday.  First person to bring me more coffee wins a pat on the head.