Protect Yourself: Some suggestions for writers in the age of Agency reborn

Now that the 100-Years-War between Amazon and Hachette has drawn to a close, writers can do what they should have been doing the entire time (and what many of us indies have been saying, repeatedly, over and over and over again the whole time): stop worrying about a publisher’s deal with a retailer and start worrying about your own deal with the publisher. And to kick off, here is an example of a way not to do that:

“Speaking on behalf of the Authors Guild, president Roxana Robinson called the end of the standoff ‘great news for Hachette authors.’ Robinson said it was ‘heartening to see so many writers rally to the defense of their colleagues’…Robinson said that while terms are said to be favorable to authors, the Guild has no way of knowing at the present time if that is the case.“

Bold emphasis added by me. Yup, great news! We don’t actually know that it’s great news or that the “heartening defense of colleagues” wasn’t actually a publisher-coordinated stroll down the garden path, but, hey, the war’s over and it looks like we won! The problem is that winning the war (if, in fact, that’s what happened. She just said they don’t know) isn’t the end, it’s winning the peace that matters now. Then there’s this:

“Robinson added that she hopes the ‘display of communal spirit played a part in bringing the negotiations to an end’ and ‘will prevent authors from being dragged into corporate disputes in the future.'”

Communal spirit?!? This is a high level, billion dollar corporate negotiation. Bezos and Pietsch didn’t burn one and sing Kumbaya to settle this. This is a serious business, sunshine, and you’re the President of a guild of professionals not a neighborhood bake sale. And this:

“‘It is our hope that Hachette, in light of the loyalty its authors have shown throughout this debacle, takes this opportunity to revisit its standard e-book royalty rate of 25 percent of the publisher’s net profits.”

Sweet Jesus! Tell me you’re not that naive. Loyalty?! What part of “billion dollar corporate negotiation” don’t you understand? You hope, in light of your “loyalty”, that they take this opportunity to revisit that standard? What opportunity would that be? The one where they’ve settled up with Amazon, already have you all under contract at that standard, and don’t need to name-drop you morons in an obviously coordinated PR assault on a rival anymore? The opportunity to do a hell of a lot more than “hope they revisit the standard” was the past seven months when Amazon had Hachette over a barrel and the other publishers were all worried they were next. The only opportunity you have now is for them to laugh in your face. Again. Just like they’ve been doing ever since you first started saying “we hope (insert publisher here) will rethink the 25% of net standard” back in fucking 2009! Hope is nice and all. Effective action is a little more useful. And you just pissed away a great opportunity to get something real done for authors in exchange for loyalty and hope. Good job, good effort. In other author news:

“Douglas Preston, who founded Authors United, said he was ‘relieved’ to hear about the agreement…he hopes that in future disputes between Amazon and publishers, ‘Amazon will never again seek to gain leverage by sanctioning books and hurting authors.'”

Of course he’s relieved. But guess what, Doug? Now you can’t blame Amazon for not discounting your books anymore. That’ll be your publisher doing that. And you’ll possibly be getting paid even less per high price book now than than you were before. Congrats on the big win! This guy’s a joke. Hachette’s only business with Amazon is selling books through them. The only leverage Amazon has is those books. Not only will they do it again, anyone in their position would as well, including the company he just spent six months shilling for while pretending to be a man of the people.

So, given the fact that the leadership caste of authors is woefully lacking, (my Dad would say “useless as tits on a bull”) here’s a couple things I’ve noticed about the state of things and a couple helpful suggestions.

1. 25% net ebook standard isn’t going anywhere

Despite Robinson’s hopes and dreams, I see no reason to believe this is even on the table. In fact, I’m suspicious this supposed price control of ebooks publishers are getting now won’t be used in ways that minimize author compensation and/or manipulate reversion clauses to retain rights they’d otherwise lose. I’d be willing to bet that if, by some chance, we see publishers willing to go up en mass, it’ll be because they’ve already gotten back twice as much by manipulating the revenue underlying the percentage. They have no reason to change in this respect and all the authors who showed their blind loyalty only reinforced their position. Here’s Penguin/Random House CEO Tom Weldon on the matter:

“Questioned on author earnings…Weldon said that PRH was always looking at how much authors were being compensated, but for the moment the 25% digital royalty rate would not be changed.”

And in this tweet from Porter Anderson about Weldon from Futurebook 14:

“Tom Weldon says that on the whole, the average royalty is 17-18%, so 25% on ebooks carries some logic.”

Nope, not gonna happen. But I’m sure your loyalty will be rewarded in other ways, like consideration in your next contract…

“Simon Lipskar, president of the literary agency Writers House, whose clients include a number of Hachette authors, welcomed news of the agreement. ‘Our writers have been suffering terribly because their sales have been significantly diminished as a result of this dispute,’ Mr. Lipskar said. He said it was possible that there would be long-term consequences for some authors because of diminished sales when it comes to negotiating new contracts.”

Oops, nevermind. Have a look at The Bookseller’s Digital Census:

“More than half (51.2%) think (ebook royalty) rates should be the same as for print books, but just over a third (36.6%) think they should be higher, and the rest (12.2%) lower.”

As our friend Mr. Weldon helpfully pointed out above, print rates are already lower than ebook rates. That means that 63.4% of publishers who responded to this census think 25% of net on ebooks is too high. The other 36% said higher than print, which they already are. It doesn’t say 36% think they should be higher than the current standard. In short, you’re not getting any movement on this without some major leverage. The kind of leverage AG and AU just gave away for loyalty and hope. Aww, isn’t that just precious? Too bad this isn’t a Nicholas Sparks novel. Come to think of it, you’ll be lucky if they don’t cut these rates. If somebody gave me 2 to 1 odds, I’d lay a c-note right now on that being exactly what will happen.

2. Authors could get really screwed on these new agency type deals

Here’s Michael Pietsch, Hachette CEO, explaining why I think this will be the case:

“Importantly, the percent of revenue on which Hachette authors’ ebook royalties are based will not decrease under this agreement.”

No, that percentage will decrease in the new standard terms in their contract language resulting from this agreement and in the contract riders you all are about to get between now and when this agreement takes effect in a couple months or so. All I know is that when a large corporation is assuring you about percentages, it’s total dollars you need to be looking at. When you read a missive from a large corporation, it’s not what they say that matters. It’s what they don’t say and how they go about not saying it. All he’s saying here is that the percentages they’re calculating your royalties on won’t change under this agreement. He’s not saying they won’t change under your agreement with them or saying your revenue itself won’t decline. There’s a second more subtle issue here too. He’s conflating their deal with Amazon to their deal with you. I’d say on purpose. One of my main complaints with the author response to this dispute was that many of them showed a lack of understanding about who was actually responsible for what to whom under these contracts. Odds are, the publisher likes it when you don’t know and will try to keep it that way.

So what does Amazon have to say about this?

“We are pleased with this new agreement as it includes specific financial incentives for Hachette to deliver lower prices, which we believe will be a great win for readers and authors alike,” said David Naggar, Vice President, Kindle.”

Specific financial incentives for lower prices? The prevailing wisdom is that means a tiered, KDP-like system with a lower cut at higher prices. But then Pietsch’s statement to their authors would seem to contradict that, but for two things. Without seeing an actual Hachette contract, we don’t how he’s defining what that “percent of revenue” as. And, as I mentioned above, the phrase “under this agreement” is problematic. There’s also another option; perhaps instead of creating a tiered system with lower rates at higher prices, this is the opposite; higher rates at lower prices. That would satisfy both Amazon’s claim of “specific financial incentives” and Hachette’s claim that revenue the author’s cut is based on isn’t decreased. Or it could be something else altogether.

My concern is the capacity Hachette (and presumably S&S) now possess over retail pricing. Publishers have shown before they’re willing to leave specific financial incentives on the table (the Apple collusion was a worse deal for them than they already had). They seem hellbent to protect the print market at all costs. Whatever those financial incentives are, they’ll leave them sitting on that table, at the very least as a windowing action for a hardcover release, to suit those ends. As an aside, you may want to check on print discount clauses in your contract and see how many of those constitute your hardcover sales. Jacking up your ebook prices to restrain sales of a format that pays you more to encourage discounted hardcover sales that pays them more (and, not coincidentally, you less) is a decided possibility here. Look out for it.

There’s an underlying assumption that if, in a vacuum, print and ebooks were allowed to compete unrestrained by and irrespective of the other, that ebooks would take sales away from print. But remember, it’s an assumption. One that hasn’t really been born out by any hard evidence, at that. But it’s the basic assumption being used to justify current thinking in ebook pricing by most publishers. The ebook must be priced high enough that it doesn’t cannibalize hardcover print sales. The higher yield on an ebook sale doesn’t matter in this context. To you, though, it sure as hell better matter. We don’t even know for sure that, if allowed to compete organically, ebooks would even cause the damage to print they claim. They’re really two separate entities; different presentations, different cost structures, different primary sales channels, even a different audience to a significant degree.

Now I do think print sales are going to decline, probably dramatically, but it won’t be ebooks causing it. It’ll be the loss of brick and mortar shelf space from the influence of online commerce, and related elements. By using price to emphasize one format’s sales over the other, they’re inherently handicapping sales of the format that, even at miserly trad rates, pays you better relative to cost to the reader. You often hear how authors make more on a hardcover than an ebook (something true largely because they’re under-paying you on the ebook) but consider, with the hardcover sale, your readers have to basically drop another $10 so you can earn an extra $1 in royalties compared with the ebook. That’s not good for anyone but the publisher and, maybe, the book stores. And it’s clearly their preferred option, one they now, reportedly, have even more power to put into action.

So what can you do to protect yourself and make certain you don’t fall into this trap of what I’m certain will be declining revenues? Well, I have a few suggestions.

Stop selling ebook and print rights as a bundle

I’ve suggested in the past that writers who’d like to prevent their publisher from handicapping one format to benefit another have a simple means of doing so; don’t sell both print and ebook rights as a bundle to the same entity. They can only coordinate if they have full rights to both. Don’t give it to them. Another option would be try to separate the contracts; go for totally separate deals for print and ebook rights. And when I say separate, I mean it; separate contracts, separate advances, separate royalty structures, reversion clauses for each independent of one another (with no pesky non compete provisions than would stop you from using reverted rights elsewhere for one if the other didn’t revert). In this way, the publisher couldn’t link the two formats, they’d have to fully exploit both formats, not limit one to prop up the other without risking losing the one they’re limiting.

Publishers will tell you they need all these rights so they can spread costs across all formats and maximize revenue with dynamic pricing. Linking two sets of rights with such divergent cost structures will inevitably lead to one getting the short end to favor the other. If publishers won’t go 100% on both, you lose. Don’t give them the option to do so. Make it clear if they want both print and ebook rights, they have to exploit both to the fullest, not prioritize one over the other. Publishers will say that supporting bookstores is crucial to them and justifies hamstringing digital. For them, maybe. For you, not so much, especially in the long term. Separate accounting and reversion clauses is one way to create a barrier that prevents them from prioritizing one over the other. A better way is don’t sell them both to the same publisher.

Will publishers do this? On the whole, hell no! So the shorter answer here is probably “self publish”.

Refuse to accept any 25% of net contracts

In the immortal words of Nancy Reagan, just say no. The 25% of net standard is far too low. If they won’t budge on it, take ebook rights off the table. If that’s a deal breaker for them, so be it. Grow a pair and walk away. Taking a bad deal is not better than no deal at all. You will regret the bad deal later. The Authors Guild can talk all it wants about loyalty but that’s not going to get any movement on this. Only actual pressure will. The Guild obviously doesn’t have the will to bring that pressure to bear. As for Doug Preston, who makes his money on big advances and willingly admits he’s not one who watches his sales, he had a lot to say about how crucial advances are in his various AU missives but jack shit to say about royalties. There’s no help coming from there and his band of jolly, powerful, influential writers, either. If 25% of net is going to go up, the only way it’s happening is if writers individually simply hold the line and refuse to sign over their rights for that price.

Will publishers be amenable? Almost certainly not but there are some who might. So, again, self publish is probably the shorter answer here, too.

Refuse to sign any life of copyright contracts

If you must sign on with a publisher, having a hard deadline they must produce in is probably a good idea. I like the notion of a five year contract. You can work in provisions for renegotiation or what have you, but if publishers want to keep control of the rights, make them actually have to pay for that privilege. As it stands now, publishers are basically paying you nothing for lifetime control of your IP. There’s not one tangible thing in these contracts that would change if they had a 5 year limit rather than forever plus 70. You’re throwing in lifetime control for essentially free. Stop it!

These kinds of contracts do exist and are becoming more common with smaller publishers. The big guys though, they treat your IP like the girl who doesn’t want you but doesn’t want anyone else to have you either. Once they get your signature, they’ve locked your IP in a box where anyone making money from it will have to go through them for the rest of your life. They’ll squat on your rights before they risk giving up on them and you finding success elsewhere. But you have to be willing to walk away, which again likely means self publish.

Watch those fuckers like a hawk

If the first three suggestions here don’t play out, which is entirely possible, there’s always a compromise. The great American philosopher Meatloaf said it best, two out of three ain’t bad. You’re likely not going to get everything you want, but you can get something better than what we have today, something you can live with. Life is all about compromise. Just don’t compromise yourself in the process.

But if you do end up signing on the dotted line, you must watch what they do with a fine tuned eye. Start tracking your books on every platform you can think of, compile data on how they’re being priced, when and where. Compare any sales data (and monies) you get from them with your own data. Get an idea of exactly where your sales are happening and how that relates to how they’re being priced. More than that, scour your contract and make certain you understand exactly what each format actually pays you (and them) and work that into your data. Basically, pay close attention.

Now what to do if you actually find something screwy, like sales being pushed to formats that pay them better and you less? I’m not sure what recourse you have, especially if you’re on a life of copyright deal. Probably none. But just showing them you’re aware of what’s going on can have a positive impact. A car mechanic has a more difficult time padding their bill when a customer comes in showing knowledge about what the problem is and what the costs to fix it should be. Publishers aren’t stupid, they adhere to the adage “You can screw all the people some of the time, or some of the people all the time, but you can’t screw all the people all the time.” The more you present yourself as educated and aware, the better your chances of avoiding the pitfalls that get those who toil in willful ignorance.

Does this sound like a lot of work just to keep a company you should trust to do right by you on the clear path? Yes it does. Will publishers appreciate you being a pain and questioning their actions? Most definitely not. But honestly, you should be doing this stuff already. The only person who’s always going to watch out for you and your interests is you. Don’t ever forget that.

Of course, you could be devoting all that time you’re spending to double check them by self publishing, but what do I know? I prefer not to get ripped off in my contractual dealings. Maybe you don’t mind about that. Do you? Prove it.

Dan Meadows is a writer living on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay. Follow him on Twitter @watershedchron

Can I Raise the Dead with the Amazonium Codexorum?

Now, back to where I started when i was so rudely interrupted by Kathleen Hale and her “light stalking.” I’m still not sure where light stalking rests on the hierarchy of criminal complaints; somewhere between a dash of armed robbery and a smattering of homicide, I think. But enough about her ridiculousness. This is what I was working on when I was sidetracked. Anti-climactic, I know, but then being sane and rational is always more dull than batshit crazy.

I got into a bit of a pissing contest in the comment section of a pretty solid piece on how crucial (or even accurate) the advance system used by publishers truly is by author William O’Neil on The Digital Reader site a couple weekends back. Normally, I let these things go, but in the last comment left by author Rick Chapman, in response to the moderator admonishing him for being too confrontational, he conveniently left a bullet point list of areas where he thinks I’ve been misled or not properly informed. Personally, I do so enjoy a good confrontational argument, so let’s go through it point by point. The discussion, by the way, bounced back and forth across various comments to the post. Feel free to go check out the entire thing at the above link, if you’re interested. Here’s the full comment, in italics, with my thoughts interspersed in plain type.

“I have been completely factual in my statements. Facts aren’t confrontational. Facts and dispassionate analysis are always acceptable. Dan, on the other hand, has made repeated misstatements of fact. I believe he has read too many times on too many sites assertions about Amazon that are misleading and untrue. These include:

* Amazon pays royalties. Amazon pays no one royalties except with the exception noted. Amazon should immediately stop making that claim and accurately describe what it’s charging you. A “retail usage fee.” A “download fee.” I’ll let them define it. But it’s not a royalty.”

I didn’t say anything about whether it was a royalty or not. I’m not sure it really matters, though. Generally speaking, a royalty is a negotiated percentage paid from the revenue (or some version of net) generated when you license a work for use. When I put something up on Amazon, I am licensing them to sell, reproduce, distribute, etc, the work. For that, under the terms of the license, I get 70% of the gross in defined price ranges and 35% of the gross in others. You can make a case that it is, at least, a form of royalty.

I don’t think it matters what you call it, however. The important thing to remember is the difference in the type of payment you get from a publisher and what you get from Amazon. With Amazon, the payment hasn’t had any production expenses incurred backed out or accounted for. It’s up to me to determine how to use that payment, in what percentages, to recoup my expenses. In this sense, I agree that it’s not always made clear and can often be presented as an apples to apples comparison when it’s not. Arguing whether or not it’s a royalty, a fee or whatever is a semantic exercise that has no real bearing on the facts at hand. Amazon’s payout is before production expenses are backed out or accounted for, one from a publisher is after. This could be made more clear and the 70% to 12.5% (or what have you) comparison is not strictly accurate.

To use a somewhat imperfect construction analogy, Amazon’s payment is like the check a contractor gets for work from a homeowner. The contractor has to pay labor wages, materials, etc, from that. A publisher’s payment is more like the paycheck a laborer receives from the contractor. You can make a good salary as a skilled laborer, but everyone in construction knows the real money is in being the contractor. I saw this phrase the other day and I like it, so I’m gonna co-opt it here. It’s called “Controlling the Capital.” Call it a royalty, call it an expense, you get a cut of the gross and you retain your IP. The cost of that is 30% and you cover production expenses (which you also control).

“* Amazon complains about agency pricing but imposes a modified version of it on indie publishers. Their margin is locked in a la agency; you have very limited pricing flexibility as I’ve noted. Accurately. And not every author is writing a book about the Zombie Apocalypse. Or Vampire Love. Or Dating Werewolves.”

Amazon still retains ultimate control over the pricing. As such, any price flexibility I have is at Amazon’s discretion. I’m not sure how much “agency” one can exercise when their actions are entirely at the discretion of another party. You can call it modified agency but when the modified part serves to restrict the agency part, it seems to be a bit of a misnomer. But again, it doesn’t really matter what you call it. I have no right to tell Amazon what to do, Amazon retains that power in total in its agreement with me. A big part of Agency type agreements is that the supplier has some or all of that control. I don’t. Amazon encourages me to price within a certain window by offering a higher cut of the gross in that range. I have limited freedom to price how I choose, even outside that range where I’d incur a lower cut of the proceeds.

But Amazon could change it at any point and I’d have no recourse to stop them, other than to pull my material. That’s an option not available to me if I’m under contract to a publisher, by the way. Can’t just pull my book from them if I don’t like what they do for me. That’s another benefit you’re paying for in that 30% cut, too. Flexibility is underrated and can be expensive if you give it up. Call it modified agency if you like, doesn’t matter. It’s not the same thing as a deal where the publisher can restrict or prevent discounting or otherwise dictate terms to the retailer. What it is is far more important that what it’s called.

“* Amazon is attempting to create a pricing codex. It says so on its website. I note that no one here will address that truly remarkable statement. If you would like to, I would like to hear your speculations on how the codex will be created, maintained, and enforced.”

(First off, here’s a link to the author’s piece about the pricing codex he believes Amazon is trying to impose, as background.)

I’m not sure what you’re point is here, that Amazon is trying to set up a pricing framework for different types of ebooks within its store? Why wouldn’t they? And how’s that tangibly different from the pricing structure publishers have put upon books forever now? Or is it just sheer random coincidence that books of similar style and form all seem to be priced within a few dollar range of one another? In fact, I’d argue that most of the more dramatic swings in pricing you see come from the retailer discounting or otherwise setting their own pricing. In this way, it could be said that the retailers ability to control prices has prevented publishers from establishing a hard and fast pricing codex, as you call it, of their own. The healthier, more competitive market, in my opinion, is when the retailer has more power over the consumer-facing prices rather than the manufacturer.

“* Amazon buys MOST of its E-books via wholesale, not agency. Amazon wants to stop agency pricing because it want to gain control over the E-book pricing structure. I neither condemn nor approve them. This is business. But their pricing box is part of that strategy. Again, I describe the motivation of both sides on my blog.”

I think you’re missing my point here. I’m not disputing whether Amazon is getting ebooks from publishers under wholesale, agency or any other terms. My point is that when you say they’re buying ebooks wholesale, that’s not correct. You could get me to agree that they’re buying licenses wholesale or they’re paying an agreed wholesale price with each license they sell, but they are not buying the ebooks. Ebooks aren’t sold, they’re licensed for use. You say they’re buying ebooks wholesale like they’re buying a pallette of print books and that isn’t the case. It may amount to the same ends but the difference between a sale and a license has huge implications for use and buyers’ rights. Amazon is clearly getting some sort of right of resale but they’re not getting it through first sale like they would if they were buying physical books. They’re getting it as part of the terms of the contract or the license they are acquiring to sell the end-user ebook licenses to consumers. What no one at any level is doing is buying the ebooks; wholesale, retail, agency or otherwise.

I think too many people play fast and loose with the term “sale” when discussing ebooks (myself included, sometimes). A sale has implications of title transfer and relating use and resale rights. None of that exists with ebooks. Now I’ve often argued that they should because the ways ebooks are distributed through retailers is nearly indistinguishable from a genuine sale. I think the licensing arrangement is a bit of a scam designed to both give the supplier more power and restrict the rights of consumers. But right now, that’s how it is. That doesn’t mean the basic differences between a sale and a license should be conflated. Especially when it directly impacts the rights one party in the transaction has with respect to future use.

“* Amazon’s pricing box HURTS indies. I’m not going to break it down in detail here; I’ll do that on my own blog. But you don’t have to be a marketing genius to figure out what’s wrong with a seven dollar pricing box.”

I’m not sure I agree with you here. There is a case to be made that heavily researched nonfiction work combined with Amazon’s pricing strategy can be problematic. Even Amazon said so. That sentence from them seems to be the basis for you codex theory. I just said it too. Am I tying to institute a pricing codex? It’s a fact that seems self evident. Ebooks are an extremely young market. Not every sector or contingency is properly served as yet. This is one of them, in my opinion. There are situations where $9.99 may not be adequate.

However, for the vast majority of writers, a $7 per book cut is more than sufficient and in most cases, downright great. In fact, that number amounts to several dollars more than a traditional author will be bring in per book on a $25 hardcover. That’s more than adequate. When you subtract the actual physical production/distribution costs with print, it’s more than most publishers’ take on that same $25 hardcover.

The $7 box you refer to constitutes a sizable range with margins from $2 to $7 per book. Indies writing strictly fiction aren’t harmed by that at all. In fact, it’s the range many of us, independent from Amazon, feel that the books should be priced. Even if I had total pricing control at 70% up to any list price I want, I still wouldn’t be putting up $12 or $15 works of fiction. That barrier at $10 isn’t even relevant to me because exceeding that price isn’t a consideration. It’s not harming me because it’s not even a factor.

I believe you could argue that by encouraging indies to stay in an optimal pricing range, they are actually increasing your overall margins on a book with the multiplier effect of increased sales at lower prices. For some nonfiction works, I agree, this can be problematic. For fiction, though, the $7 box isn’t destructive or harmful. It’s what most of us would be doing anyway.

“* The big publishers DO NOT have to live in that pricing box. Only indies do.”

Yeah, so? They have infinitely more influence, money and leverage than your average indie does. They can negotiate out of it. Or not, possibly, from what I hear. There’s some speculation that the S&S/Amazon deal has some sort of descending cut at higher prices. Still very likely better than having your take cut in half at $10, but enough to be a serious consideration in pricing. Besides, the “ceiling” of that box doesn’t matter when your best case for maximizing revenue doesn’t even approach that figure. If and when that factor changes, the discussion does too.

“* 30% points to use a downloading service is a very steep price to pay. Amazon’s NET margins on indie sales is close to 30 points because E-book publishing and distribution are electronic. No warehousing and shipping. Now, of course, you are free to not use their service. But it is accurate to note that 30 point margins are incredibly wonderful in most channels, never mind book channels. 65 point margins are beyond awesome but for an indie, ruinous.

Fortunately for the publishers, none of them are paying 65 point margins. Only indies face it. How nice for us.”

Fortunately for us, we’re not paying any kind of marketing fees or anything like that. Is 30% too high? Not really. Is 65%? Yes. I’m in complete and total agreement with you on that. As I said in one on my comments, I’d rather see a sliding scale where the percentage declines gradually in proportion to the increase in price in a way that still serves as an inducement to generally keep prices low but also allows for books like what you describe; higher production costs, a limited less-price sensitive audience, not likely to get a low price multiplier bump; to be able to collect a larger per book total revenue figure.

Amazon is providing access to millions of potential customers on by far the most popular ebook platform in the world. That’s worth something. I’m in the minority, though, who isn’t concerned that that percentage will drop. I actually think it will increase over time for two simple reasons. One, it’s a volume business. Higher volume means more sales means more revenue. That’s Amazon’s core belief. And two, anyone who wants to compete with Amazon in this space and attract quality work is going to have to offer a better cut, and that will drive an increase in the percentage available to indies. Don’t underestimate subscription services, either. If it comes to show that Kindle Unlimited makes some kind of dent in sales, Amazon may well have to sweeten the pot to keep writers and their books in the program.

“Amazon’s pricing strategies undercut the entire theme of your article. Let’s say you do want to write a piece of “literature” or perhaps a specialized history on a topic most people find obscure. That means you have a far more limited audience that someone writing about Vampire Love. Or Dating Werewolves. Or Bondage with Billionaires.

Yet, the time and effort to produce that work will be as great, if not far greater, than that required to do your research on the best way to flog a besotted masochist.

And then you are stuck in Amazon’s pricing box trying to sell a book that can’t pay back your time and effort at $9.99. The audience isn’t big enough to make up in volume what you’ve lost in revenue. And, of course, since you are an indie, you’re going to have pay for ALL the expenses incurred by having to market and sell your book. And you will have 30 points less revenue to do it because you will be paying that money over to Amazon right up front (and don’t forget the transmission fees, which you also pay).”

Here’s where I can see your point. The problem, though, is that if you have a book with an inherently limited market, good luck getting a publisher to fork over a sizable advance or do any marketing at all for it. If it’s a captive audience at a high price point who will pay $15 or $17 or more for the ebook, the assumption you’re making is that a lower price point isn’t going to increase your overall market. I’ve seen this argument from writers before with the notion that anyone who will pay $8 a book will pay $12 and you’re just leaving money on the table. I didn’t buy it then and I don’t buy it now, with very few exceptions. And those exceptions, in my mind, are almost entirely complex scholarly work. I don’t think that’s reasonable. That doesn’t mean I don’t think higher prices are justified for some work, just that I’m not sure that high prices combined with a publisher getting 70-80% of the proceeds (or more) is going to pay back your time any more than you keeping 70% at a lower price point. As for 30% percent being too much, remember, that’s the number the publishers themselves imposed on Amazon with their collusive agency deal. If it’s so egregiously wrong, why did they break the law to Institute it themselves?

“Indies in these markets are driven, by necessity, back to the major publishers who may be able to price your product at a level you hope will make your time and effort somewhat profitable. And relieve you of the cost of marketing. Because they don’t live in the box.

Or, maybe, they can apply to be a member of Amazonium Codexorum. If they can demonstrate the “legitimate” reasons to be on the approved list.”

I love the phrase “Amazonium Codexorum” by the way. Every time I see it, I can’t help but think of some dark tome bound in human skin and written in blood that Jeff Bezos is using to cast his evil black magic to raise the dead and dominate the world. You seem to be thinking that Amazon is planning to create some beurocracy that gives thumbs up or down like a Roman Emporer on a case by case basis on whether they’ll be allowed to price above $10. I don’t think that’s the case. I believe it’s far more likely that they’ll try to institute a pricing range, much like KDP, that aims to find an optimum price for maximizing revenue for these works and incentivizes it by paying higher percentage in the preferred range. Amazon won’t be deciding anything. Publishers will be self-segregating in those ranges because it’s in their best interest to do so, making the granular case by case decisions on their own, just like indies do.

As for high-cost-to-produce nonfiction, I’m not sure why you assume $9.99 isn’t sufficient to generate a good return unless you’re presuming a market with a hard ceiling, i.e., a strictly limited potential paying audience. But if that exists, publishers aren’t exactly going to be lining up to dump resources into it either. You’ll still be doing most, if not all, of the marketing and getting a far smaller payout at the end of the day.

But here’s the kicker, if what I have to do to be successful doesn’t fit with what’s available to me through Amazon, I won’t use them, or I’ll adapt what I’m doing in some way so what they offer serves my ultimate ends. Amazon is known for its commitment to low prices. If you have a project that needs high or, at least, higher pricing, the low price store may not be the way to go. If I had a high-end designer clothing line, I’m not trying to cut a deal to get my wares stocked in Dollar General unless I’m prepared to sell them at $5 a shirt. I’ll look to outlets that support my needed price and can produce the customers who will pay it. It’s entirely possible that neither Amazon in its present form nor the publishers in their’s are the best choice for this kind of work.

As I said, ebooks are an extremely young market. This is a potential class of books that’s underserved by what’s currently available to them. I’d dispute that you can’t make a good return on $9.99, considering you still retain the IP (control the capital). Maybe you can’t make it all from Amazon, but nothing is stopping you from exploiting that property in multiple ways. In my opinion, Amazon is best used as one stream of many. Some trickle, some roar, some are steady year round while other others run high and low seasonally. And some do inevitably dry up. If the pricing structure for one particular product form for your IP at one particular retailer, no matter the size, can make or break you, you need to get more baskets and spread those eggs out a little.

Dan Meadows is a writer living on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay. Follow him on Twitter @watershedchron

Conflicting Notions of the Value of Conflict

Typically in this space, I go to great, rambling lengths to point out and discuss matters I thoroughly disagree with. I’m a confirmed cynic, and on top of that, I tend to hold opinions that aren’t necessarily popular. In some circles, certainly, but not always. I believe we should have first sale rights including resale on digital goods. That’s not a particularly popular opinion in any circles. I couldn’t possibly care less about piracy and, in fact, I’ve said many times that I don’t even think it is piracy nor do I think it’s harmful in the slightest. Another not particularly popular opinion. I’ve openly defended publishing pundits like Mike Shatzkin, and caught some hell for it. Doesn’t change my mind. I don’t always agree with him, even with most of what he says, but I do usually get something to consider out of it. I also think he’s one of the more vocal critics of traditional publishing, one from the inside, and I think those voices are important to consider. Nobody knows everything. Your perspectives may vary and that can color any beliefs. You don’t have to swear allegiance to them, just try to understand where they’re coming from.

But what I absolutely can’t stand is naiveté. It’s why I was so bluntly mean to Doug Preston last week. He’s got name recognition, a large platform and the support of some sizable names amongst authors. To me, that makes it all the more disappointing that he’s using it on nonsensical arguments, pointless shaming actions and industry fairytales of nurturing publishers and literature exempt from commercial pressures (particularly galling to me coming a guy who’s made bank simply because publishing is a commercial entity).

I read this piece on the value of conflict by Barry Eisler yesterday. In it, he talks about an interaction he recently had with someone who doesn’t care for the tone some vocal self publishing supporters take. Here’s a quote from that person:

“Instead of being a force for change, self-publishing appears to be a force that creates conflict, makes people feel defensive or unwilling to speak publicly, and is, I believe, getting in the way of change.”

First, change doesn’t happen without conflict of some form or another. There’s also the matter of the frequently dismissive tone toward self publishers that turns up in many of these pieces, such as the Bush League reference by author Janet Fitch I talked about yesterday. Those kinds of things necessarily set people like me on edge. And we react. We aren’t out here serving any masters other than ourselves, and we are free to speak our minds. I don’t believe many traditionally published authors feel they are free to criticize their publishers. Whether they actually are or not is debatable, but I don’t believe they think they are. Otherwise, wouldn’t there be more of them out here raising hell? Where’s the Hachette authors throwing a fit at them for dragging their feet and not negotiating in good faith while their writers’ careers burn? Don’t tell me they don’t exist. They do, but the industry, with implied and often self-inflicted pressures, keeps them silent.

So when someone comes into what’s essentially a discussion of business models and commercial approaches with some nonsense about books not being products, that gouging readers with higher prices is crucial for the furtherance of literature and all kinds of ridiculous, unsupportable accusations about Amazon’s conduct while totally ignoring or whitewashing the conduct of their own publushers, in this environment, you’re going to get a smack down. And, in my opinion, you’ll deserve it.

Bring logic, facts and rational arguments based on the immutable reality that we’re all discussing a many-billions of dollars commercial enterprise here populated by various multi-billion dollar profit-seeking conglomerates and not some mythical philanthropic exercise and you’ll be okay. I may not agree with you, and I’ll probably argue if I do disagree, but I won’t ridicule you like I did Preston. If you want to discuss literature in the cultural sense detached from commercial concerns (and to be clear, I do believe that’s a worthy discussion) don’t frame it in the context of a business negotiation between the largest retailer going and one of a small handful of the largest publishers in the world. There’s a place for that discussion, just not in the middle of a purely commercial dispute amongst purely commercial enterprises.

The attacks you see come about because, when someone does that, they come off as naive. Worse yet, in not reflecting their lens of criticism at the publishers as well as Amazon, to many of us out here, they can come off as ignorant and a bit clueless. There are more opportunities for writers to get their work, and their ideas, out there to the public today, completely irrespective of commercial concerns than ever before in human history. If that weren’t the case, you wouldn’t be reading this right now. In fact, you wouldn’t be reading 99% of the criticisms of the traditional industry that exist today because mainstream media outlets are inbred with the media conglomerates and don’t often take them properly to task. Just ask Bill Simmons of ESPN how willing these supposedly independent media companies are to brook serious criticisms of their corporate fellow travelers. The voices of opposition have been silent too long, in my opinion, and the megaphones we use to shout our concerns to the masses is an extraordinarily valuable development and it is directly and indirectly responsible for the much-needed reform that’s currently gripping the industry.

So educate yourself before you speak. Bring a thoughtful point of view to the table, wherever on the spectrum your opinions lie, and you’ll be all right. You might even learn something. Better still, some of the people reading you might learn something, too. Everyone has their own perspective and there is clear value is seeing and understanding perspectives different from your own. There is also value in engaging with your critics, as well as your supporters. But you can’t just spout nonsense that flies in the face of the reality many of us see every day and not expect to be called on it. It’s not 1988 anymore. Everyone has a voice. Use them wisely.

Dan Meadows is a writer living on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay. Follow him on Twitter @watershedchron

Choices

Who says we can't handle choices? Here's the absurd array of drinks available in one small town grocery store alone.

You know what I like most about publishing? That every two or three days, like clockwork, someone will say or write something that’ll get me all fired up. Today, it’s Michael Kozlowski at Good eReader with this missive “Self Publishers Should Not Be Called Authors.”

As soon as I saw the headline, I instantly had flashbacks to a couple of years ago when I wrote about how ridiculous it was to complain about self publishers calling themselves indies. It was much the same argument; “this term is reserved for your betters, how dare you self publishers presume to define yourself by a term that is clearly accurate and doesn’t convey your rightful position as an industry doormat!” I’m not going to spend too much time refuting this clear and obvious perversion of the term “author” but there’s a greater point to be made here, I think. If you really want my full position on labels, and how limiting I believe even the best of them are, go read my indie-term article.

Being an author is about the act of creation. Nowhere in the dictionary does it list a requirement for your earnings to deserve such a title, nor should it. The only people for whom “author” means something else are those purposely looking to impose a class system or hierarchy of some sort. We see this from certain corners because readers are no longer “respecting” the previous class system in the ways those benefitting from it are used to. Traditionally published authors aren’t being placed on a pedestal by readers appropriately high enough above the self published interlopers, apparently, so let’s parse some language to make it clear to these uninformed people that self published work is dreck and you’re destroying literature by buying and, gasp, actually enjoying such sub-standard fare.

Clearly, the people who pen this material can’t be real authors, they’re simply writers. Authors are a higher class unto themselves. And, according to Kozlowski, the only way to properly earn that title is to make a lot of money. Unless you’re traditionally published, of course, in which case you’re an author by default, recognized as such by organizations that require as little as 1/5 the income of self publishers for the same membership. Ack! Double standards make my brain hurt!

A decade or so ago, I worked for a free distribution boating magazine on the Chesapeake Bay here in Maryland. Our primary competition was another free boating magazine and our racks of magazines would often be set up in places right next to their’s. We did it that way on purpose. We found the best advertisement for our work was to sit it side by side with their’s and let the reader choose which they found more valuable. On average, we moved 4 or 5 copies for every 1 of theirs even though both were free for the taking. If you’re so convinced self publishing work is vastly inferior, why the interest in drawing distinctions with prejudicial labeling? Why not simply trust readers to recognize that quality, or lack of it, and act accordingly?

I’ll tell you why, because readers aren’t seeing self published material as vastly inferior in large enough numbers to suit their assumed hierarchy. So now they must resort to discriminatory labels, artificial class systems and demonization to get their preferred message across because readers aren’t reaching that conclusion by, you know, actually reading the stuff and using their own judgment on what constitutes value or quality. Rather than adapt and compete, they’d rather segregate. Here’s an earlier piece from Kozlowski suggesting just such a course for the major digital retailers to deal with self published material.

His call is in response to some indie erotica turning up in children’s book sections and the rather extreme over-reactions of some retailers. (W.H. Smith, to be specific, shut down their entire online ebook store as a response.) But look closely at his “solution” to this problem. He’s not suggesting retailers need better filters or categorizing ability, he wants to throw all self published material into a digital ghetto, as it were. How does that solve the miscategorization problem? Who cares? Let’s just cram them in a corner and forget they exist. That way, they don’t clutter up the traditional book market or steal sales away from “real” authors.

The interesting point to me is the straw man he uses to illustrate the problem he thinks needs correcting:

“…parents who buy innocently sounding books like “Daddy’s Playtime” might scar their kids for life.”

There’s that popular meme, the one about the reader/consumer too stupid to comprehend what they’re doing. In this case, one so oblivious that they don’t spend even 10 seconds vetting something they’re buying for their children, one who clearly doesn’t take that picture of the girl in a thong on the cover of Daddy’s Playtime as a clue that this isn’t really a kids book. These readers/buyers don’t exist in any sizable number out here in reality but they do in the minds of the traditional world and it’s defenders. In fact, we’re all this kind of consumer in their eyes, easily swayed by keywords and oblivious to matters of quality and judgment unless someone else explains what we want to us. Where our boating magazine’s practice of side by side competition relied on respecting our readers, this is the polar opposite. They want segregation precisely because they don’t respect reader’s judgment.

Lately, the publishing world is rife with complaints about “Tsunami’s of crap” and calls for the reinsertion of gatekeepers and some kind of minimum standard of “quality” abound. Who defines those standards of said “quality” is left vague, but you can bet your ass it’s not going to be readers they suggest for the task. Readers might decide “quality” is not what they want them to think it is. Someone else has to create this gold standard, then they can educate readers on what they should consider books worth buying and books that should be shunned. Better yet, they’ll shun those unworthy books for you before you even know they exist, thereby saving you the trouble of having to use any pesky independent judgment.

The big argument in favor of these sorts of things is that there’s just too many books out there, readers are overwhelmed and they need help finding good books before being drowned in the tsunami of crap. Sounds somewhat reasonable until you consider that none of it is true. More than that, this notion of readers overwhelmed by choices flies directly in the face of virtually every other aspect of 21st century life. People want choices, more, more, more, it’s never enough. We see it in everything from food to movies to music to television to pretty much anything that exists on the internet, which means just about everything.

Yet somehow, we’re supposed to believe books is the sole area remaining where consumers can’t handle choices and would prefer to have someone else limit them? Bullshit! The consumer overwhelmed with options is from the same meme as the ignorant or oblivious one. They don’t really exist in large numbers, only in the minds of people in the industry in who’s interest it is to limit those choices. But no one wants to be seen as condescending or insulting, even to themselves, so they paint the effort as a means of “helping” readers.

The truth is readers aren’t having trouble finding good books at all. In fact, they’re finding them at a far greater rate than they can consume. And as for quality, well, they seem to be doing just fine sussing out books they might enjoy from one’s they likely won’t, just as they always have. Their judgment seems to be working perfectly for them and their particular tastes. Which is the real problem here. When given a vastly larger menu of options, people will inevitably make choices of personal preference that don’t synch with those that the supposed tastemakers expect of them. So the tastemakers’ answer to that isn’t “maybe we should pay attention to the readership and what they’re actually showing us they want” but “they’re too distracted and ignorant to know what they’re doing and we need to show them the proper decisions they should be making to protect them from all these difficult choices.”

I think there’s a sizable number of people within publishing who truly believe the tech industry is driving the heavy consumption behavior we see in today’s readers, but that’s precisely backwards. This behavior was emergent long before the tech caught up. The shift in consumer behavior is what created the atmosphere for this tech in the first place, and it happened because a few other someones had the vision to see what regular people truly wanted and created platforms and devices that played directly to that. (Amazon, anyone?)

The tech industry isn’t driving this behavior, it’s a response to it. Big publishing, however, is still operating under the increasingly false assumption that they can, in fact, drive reader behavior in the directions they choose. The problem with that is readers no longer want to be driven, if they ever did. They’re saying, in no uncertain terms, “What we really want is more choices. Give us that and we’ll tell you what we want more of, not in a poll or survey or some social media data mining effort, but by where we spend our money.”

I’ve been around the block a time or two, and I’ve put in more than my fair share of time within publishing. One thing I can say with very little uncertainty is that, when your business model requires you to fight against or change the behavior your customers want to engage in, barring extraordinary measures like government intervention, you are going to fucking lose. And if you’re fighting that behavior while simultaneously acting as if those same customers would stop breathing right now if you don’t text to remind them to inhale, you’re the one who comes off looking ignorant and over-bearing.

The audience isn’t a passive one anymore, it’s no longer a one-way conversation, and they’re certainly not ignorant and uninformed. Arguing in favor of class systems, hierarchies and narrowly-defined labels doesn’t convey anything other than your own bias and pettiness. Personally, I’d prefer a world with no labels, one where “author” is an action and not a defining characteristic. But until then, call me whatever the hell you want. Odds are, at some point, I’ve been called much worse.

Dan Meadows is a writer living on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay. Follow him on Twitter @watershedchron

The Editor Fallicy…Falacie…Fallacy…yeah, that’s it, Fallacy

I’d like to take a contrary position to the whole of the literary establishment for a moment, if I may. Much has been written, and will continue to be, on the rift between traditional and indie publishing. Hell, many traditional supporters throw a little shit-fit with just the use of the term “indie” as a moniker for self publishers. Some days, it seems like World Peace is a more attainable goal than bridging the gap between the established and emerging segments of the publishing industry.

But there is one area where both sides are in complete agreement. That is the absolute, irrefutable necessity of having any and all writing vetted by an honest to goodness editor. And who could argue with that, you ask? (If you didn’t ask, I apologize for putting words in your mouth but I kinda need that rhetorical response from “you” to keep the narrative flow going. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to do this next thing) Who could argue with that, you ask? I can!

Now before you get all up in arms and pissy, nostrils flaring, uppity defensive of something everyone seems to agree on but the implications of which very few people actually consider, let me explain. If you can’t or won’t edit your own work, both for polish and content, you’re not only lazy, but you’re not a complete writer, either. Three…two…one…ok, now you can get all beside yourself with righteous indignation. I mean, come on! Everybody knows that even the best writers churn out barely literate crap until the sainted editor gets his/her red pen into it. Plus, who would want to live in a world where writers are able, or even *gasp* encouraged to release their work bypassing the filters of the all-seeing, all-knowing editor? I shudder to think of the implications of seeing the raw, unfettered power of the writer’s creative muse. I imagine it would be a little like looking directly at an angel, their transcendent light far too bright, burning mere human eyes right out of their sockets. Our minds would turn to jelly without editors to properly harness all that writerly power.

Seriously, though, I am really sick of reading about how writers can’t possibly string together so much as a tweet, let alone an entire novel without someone else hanging over their shoulder steering the course. That’s what editors do, after all. Were you fully aware of that? Editors take other people’s material and structure it to suit either their own preconceived notions or the fiscal necessity of the platform they’re editing for. That’s the gig. Book editors are a little different than periodical editors in that they tend to shape the content to their perceived needs in their particular market sphere rather than a homogenized “style” or publication “brand.” Same difference to the writer in the end, though. I’d still like someone to explain to me how an editor who steeped within the structure of traditional publishing is going to be all that helpful to an indie. Sure, they can shape your book up into something that might resemble something else that once worked in the traditional realm, but if you’re an indie, you’re not really selling into that distribution area. You know how much real world market experience those former and current trad editors have selling digital independently? About as much as my great grandfather, and he’s been dead since 1954.

Then there’s the little matter of whether many editors are even qualified to dick around with an actual creator’s work in the first place. Let’s not kid ourselves, the phrase editor, in some circles, might still hold a bit of prestige, but from my experience, that editor you’re working with is, more often than not, a result of the “those who can’t, teach” school of thought. People become editors for one of three reasons, generally: 1) they’re a failed writer and had to pay the bills somehow, 2) they don’t have the balls to be the writer and it’s much easier–and usually pays better–to manipulate the work of others than produce it yourself, or 3) they are a successful writer who developed their own skills after years of dealing with semi-competent half wits who likely suggested adding some foreshadowing to the table of contents or some other such absurd idea at one time or another. There may be other ways to get that editor title next to your name (some folks go to school for it, I hear) but those are the three big ones. If you’ve got a #3, then you’re golden, but the other two are sure-fire paths to fucking up whatever artistic vision you lacked confidence in so much you turned to a stranger who’s primary claim to career fame is “I fixed some typos in so-and-so’s #1 bestseller back in 1996.”

Editor is the very definition of a fallback career option. Just like nobody ever says, “I wanna be a junkie when I grow up,” nobody says, “I wanna be an editor when I grow up,” either. Editor is the consolation prize in the literary job market. Ask yourself, is that the kind of person you really want impacting your career, someone who slid into a position filled with tedious shit-work just because it was kinda sorta in the same neighborhood as the dashed and discarded dreams of their misspent youth? Not me and you shouldn’t either.

The editor fallacy is willfully perpetuated by the traditional industry. It’s a ruse designed to keep writers down. I’m not kidding, read some of the criticisms floating around. You would seriously think writers turned out little more than random chunks of directionless text that no mere mortal could possibly make sense of if an editor didn’t mold it into shape first. Are you gonna take that? I mean, you fancy yourself a storyteller yet you don’t know if the story you’re telling sucks or not without third party involvement? Why should I plunk down my hard earned cash for the offerings of your literary vision when you don’t even understand or have confidence in it?

My point is that the notion of the infallibility of the editor, and their necessity in shaping a writer’s efforts can be an insidious one. It devalues the writer. If a book is a house, it makes the writer’s output akin to raw lumber and lifts the editor to the role of carpenter. The traditional industry thrived on this relationship dynamic for years, it helped keep writers in their place at the bottom. Otherwise, they, as a group, might have wanted something outrageous like being fairly compensated for work that produces every single dollar in industry revenues.

It’s a new world now. You are the raw material, the carpenter, the plumber, the electrician and the painter. At best, the editor is the day laborer who comes in and sweeps up the leftover dirt off the floor before you move in. Do you think carpenters ask the advice of a broom jockey on hanging joices joists? Would an electrician appreciate getting notes from the sweeper detailing how he could run the wiring to the ceiling fans more efficiently? Don’t get me wrong, writers aren’t infallible by any stretch, either, but there’s one key difference…you’re the fucking writer!

In the old model, the perception in a lot of ways, was that the writer works for the editor, true or not. In the new model, the editor unquestionably works for the writer. Big difference. Now, when your editor suggests that you rewrite chapters 8 through 14 and add a talking sewer rat as comic relief to break up the tension in your drama about an unjustly convicted man’s experiences with prison rape, you can feel free to snort coffee out your nose, laughing hysterically as you work on cancelling the check you paid him or her with. The old way, you’d laugh a bit then cringe at the inevitable realization that you’ll probably end up doing it if you ever wanted to retain any hope of seeing that book in print.

Look, it’s your book, it’s your story, no one on the planet knows it better than you. If you’re going to be a storyteller, believe in the stories you write. That doesn’t mean don’t seek out input or listen if somebody offers up some interesting ideas. But even then, ideas are just that. You’re the one who has to take the grains of inspiration from those ideas and shape them into the story you want to tell. You can’t rely on anyone else to do that for you, otherwise, it’s not your story anymore.

I’ve been a bit harsh on editors here, unfairly so in some ways, but I’m making a point. The editor is no longer among the gatekeeper class you need to appease. You don’t have to do everything they say, and you definitely don’t work for them. Editors are a tool for indie writers that, if properly utilized can be beneficial. Got that? The editor is at the service of the writer. And even then, they’re still only one tool of many. And don’t ever forget that they work for you now.

A truly great editor is almost worth their weight in gold. My descriptions of editors in this piece are obviously exaggerated, but make no mistake, those people exist. Very likely in far greater numbers than anyone will openly admit. Where a great editor can add quite a bit to your efforts, a lousy editor can do just as much, if not more to destroy and detract from your work. And there are an abundance of lousy editors out there, more than not, I believe. Editors are no different than any other field of endeavor. There’s four or five bad to mediocre ones for every good one, and out of every 50 or so good ones, you might see one reach exceptional status. The key is to recognize the difference. If you’re not confident in your storytelling prowess, if you can’t defend the merits of your work and the artistic choices you make, you’re actively making your work susceptible to the heavy hand of a bad editor.

Despite what you might think with my prior insults, there are quality editors out there available for hire, and in the right circumstance with the proper context, they can help polish your work. But any old editor isn’t necessarily a good editor. One of the worst things that can happen to a person is to fail on someone’s terms other than your own. Giving an editor, any editor, even the good ones, carte blanche to screw around with your story is setting yourself up to fail through no fault of your own. Unless, of course, you consider changing key elements of your story against your artistic judgment to appease an editor a fault of your own. I do.

Editor skills aren’t some magical capability that’s unattainable to writers. Anyone with the right motivation can learn quality editing. It’ll surprise you how much improvement creeps into your work just by having an editor’s mentality in the back of your mind. This isn’t to say you should do everything yourself, although I am one of the apparently few people who believes you can successfully do it that way if you’re willing to be meticulous and put in the time. It’s always better to have multiple sets of eyes go over your work. Just don’t ever forget that you’re in charge. It’s your story, your world, you make the rules.

I’ve said before that many people, probably most, don’t truly understand the dynamic shift going on right now. Many of us still approach the new possibilities as simply an extension of the way things were always done. It’s not. Digital is a genetically different business than traditional, though they may appear similar today in the early stages, they really are quite divergent, and growing more so as time and technology expands. Old models can be adapted and find a niche, but nothing translates easily and without effort. Don’t hold to any particular dogma, and that especially includes slavish devotion to an editor.

Tell your stories, the way you want. It’s been a long time since writers have had that ability on a wide scale. And don’t listen to the naysayers screaming in comments sections all over the web about having your work “properly vetted”. That’s a holdover from a past that, quite frankly, limited and exploited the writer. It also served to homogenize much of the content. You ever wonder why so many cookie cutter books, both in substance and tone, exist? That, my friends, is the work of editors. Nobody can steal a writer’s voice more effectively than an editor. Nobody can suck the life out of a story better than an editor. That’s not to say editors don’t have a place, they do. It’s just a far less influential one than it has been.

Editors are not higher on the literary food chain than writers. They are little more than a hired hand to provide a specific service on the writer’s terms. They are your employee. You’d do very well to remember that, even if you have to block out the shouting of those who don’t yet see that things have changed.

Oh yeah, about that “lazy and not a complete writer crack,” sure, I was shooting over the top, just trying to get your attention, but I’m sticking to it. Prove me wrong. Please.

Two Theories: Why can’t we in publishing all just get along?

For a while now, I’ve been trying to understand the resentment toward self publishers by some in the traditionally published writing community. I get why publishers don’t like it–it’s opened up massive amounts of new, lower-priced competition that threatens not just their sales figures but the entire cost structure of the industry their large infrastructures depend on. Simultaneously, it’s also given writers, who were essentially a captive supplier, leverage to fight against potentially onerous contract terms and even the capacity to walk away from a deal, which was virtually unthinkable even five years ago. I totally get the rhetoric from publishers.

Writers who dismiss or otherwise demonize self publishing, on the other hand, I don’t get at all. These are new opportunities for you to make money. They are opportunities that can get you better terms in your contract, or more money if used properly. It also has the potential to drive the industry toward more writer-friendly terms for a change. There is more access to more readers the world over than ever before and it can all be done keeping most of the proceeds in the actual creators’ pockets, something else virtually unheard of on a wide scale until very recently. As a writer, it makes very little sense to me to fight against this tide.

So I figure there has to be a reason for this. I’ve had two somewhat conjoining theories bouncing around in my head lately and I can’t decide which is more likely. It may well be both, or it could just be as simple as abject fear of change.

My first theory is of the writer’s ego. One of the most commonly referred to benefits of traditional publishing is the validation factor. In some circles, being chosen by a publisher is worn as a badge of honor and used equally as a bludgeon against those who either haven’t yet achieved that contract or who eschew that entire process. Imagine all those years of effort trying to convince the gatekeeper set of your worth, all the mountains of rejection, humiliation, restrictive contract deals you’ve subjected yourself to just to get inside those walls.  Then one day, very suddenly, a whole bunch of other writers start skipping that path altogether, and worse yet, a significant and increasing number of them are selling books and making money at rates only the upper echelons of traditional writers exceed.

What good is that validation you slaved away earning when another writer who doesn’t have it can sell books right next to yours with almost no definable difference from the reader’s point of view? The strength of that validation certainly isn’t what they’d been led to believe it was their entire working lives. Even more, the new ways are much more democratic. It doesn’t matter what school you went to, or if you even went to school at all. It doesn’t matter how many prestigious writing programs you’ve been involved in or how many literary awards you’ve won. A poor housewife from Nebraska who penned her first novel eight weeks ago has a (relatively) equal chance of being a best seller as the most critically acclaimed writer out there.

The writing world has always had an ugly elitest side to it. That was never an issue when virtually all the successful writers were part of the same pipeline, born of that shared experience. But now that large numbers of writers outside of that framework are finding success, it’s not only threatening the business model of their publishers, it’s threatening their very self image.

When outside validation becomes crucial to your worldview, anything that undermines those doing the validating becomes a target. So theory number one is that some writers are resentful because self publishers are finding ways to avoid the crap they were forced to subject themselves to, and their memberships in the exclusive traditional publishing club no longer carry the same cache they once did, and may well be declining by the day.

The second reason is simply laziness. Well, not laziness, exactly, but complacency and a lack of desire to try new and different things. Given the proliferation of comments I’ve seen coming from trad writers characterizing self publishing as a short cut and a lazy choice (Google Sue Grafton for the most recent example) I am beginning to believe they’ve got it backwards. Look, the stark reality is that it’s much more difficult to do this stuff essentially by yourself than with the backing of a giant corporate publisher. To suggest otherwise is to be purposely naive. If you happen to be one of the fortunate writers inside the gates who moves books, you get lots of support the other 95% of traditional writers don’t even get, let alone self publishers. The notion of tossing that off and self publishing is to take on significant responsibilities you currently pass on. In that respect, it’s the traditional writers who are shying away from extra work. Not saying they’re wrong for doing that, given their situation, they’re not. My problem comes when they cast aspersions on the work ethic of others when they, themselves, stay away from these activities because of the added risks and extra effort necessary.

Let’s be honest here. Writers like Grafton, Ewan Morrison and Scott Turow do little more than just write. Even the smallest one-person self publishing operation is doing much more than just writing. Criticizing other writers as lazy or taking shortcuts looks like sour grapes when their paths are far more ambitious than yours, requiring more effort in numerous directions than simply writing a book and sending it to your editor (I know, I’m oversimplifying, but just look at the bitching by trad writers about publishers making them actually, god forbid, promote themselves more to readers. Self pubbed writers accept that as a matter of course).

For serious self pubbed writers, it’s not simply about writing the book. It’s also about publishing the book. And it’s about selling the book. Three inter-related but very different activities. And, to top it off, writing the next book and starting over again. That’s a lot of interconnected hats to wear, and the ones who do it successfully wear them all very well. Lazy’s got nothing to do with it. Lazy writers who flock to self publishing will find themselves discouraged, overwhelmed and out of the picture soon enough. Self publishing is not an easy answer, a shortcut or the lazy way. It’s incredibly difficult to do well. For top tier trad writers to point fingers and call self publishers lazy shows their ignorance of what’s actually involved. Or maybe it’s not. One of the oldest political tricks in the book is to accuse your adversary of the very weaknesses you fear in yourself. But why are we adversaries in the first place? It doesn’t have to be that way. And you certainly don’t have to be openly resentful to those looking to blaze new trails you have no interest in, and willfully taking on the extra work that entails.

Do these writers have a point that there are a lot of shitty self published books out there? Do some writers take the relative ease of getting something live and for sale now and abuse it? Absolutely no doubt. But in case you didn’t notice, there are people like that in every industry and every walk of life, even traditional publishing. I’ve read a lot of shitty books, seen a lot of shitty tv shows and movies, heard a lot of shitty music on the radio over my lifetime, and you know what they almost all have in common? They were vetted by a media company gatekeeper. Shitty work happens in all creative pursuits, no matter how big the bank account of the producer. No one is immune to it. The ratio of great work to crap is always gonna lean heavily on the crap side, no matter the system. Basic human taste and subjectiveness guarantees that.

I think the problem can be illustrated with a simple mental image. Imagine Grafton, Morrison and Turow kicking back catching some rays by the pool inside the gated publisher walls. Suddenly, the gates swing open, and all the outside rabble comes pouring in, doing cannonballs, splashing water everywhere, their shouts and laughter almost deafening. Just generally throwing the relaxed, exlusive poolside scene into chaos. Now, those three are no longer the fortunate few who get the pool to themselves, but just a couple folks in the big crowd diving in. If I were in their shoes, I might resent that kind of development, too. Ah, who am I kidding? I’d be grateful for the company. I’m sure the conversations at that poolside were getting kinda stale before those gates burst open.

Moaning and Groaning: Publishers’ supporters get more hard line after being shot down by the DOJ

So I’m catching up on my reading of industry news and I noticed that, since the DOJ pretty much laughed off the anti-settlement brigade’s rhetoric, the tone in some circles has gotten even sharper, more filled with doomsaying than it was before, and it was already pretty severe. Personally, I found a lot to like about the DOJ’s response to comments, which is something I very rarely say about any government agency. I especially appreciate that they weren’t swayed by the 10 to 1 ratio against that the traditional publishing backers’ letter writing campaigns generated.

I still believe there was a fatal flaw in their logic. In encouraging people to parrot the anti-Amazon party line, it created a raft of letters that failed to address the principle matter of law in the case, worse yet, it may have vindicated it. Very few, if any, of the letters substantively refuted the claims of collusion, instead using unsubstantiated claims of Amazon’s predatory pricing as justification for the publishers’ actions. In this way, many of the comments, while attempting to defend the publishers, essentially admitted collusion took place. It’s like saying, “Yes, your honor, we did it, but we’ve got a really good excuse.”

It doesn’t surprise me in the least that this kind of approach carried no water with a group of prosecutors. If anything, the arrogance of it seems to have further emboldened and entrenched the DOJ in its beliefs. This could end up being extraordinarily bad news for Penguin, MacMillan and Apple if they actually force an annoyed DOJ into court.

But that’s an issue for a later date if the holdouts don’t come to their senses and settle before they end up spending absurd amounts of money defending a pricing scheme likely to be obsolete before the first witness is ever called.

I’ve got two articles I read this week that, I think, illustrates both the attitude of superiority and the over-the-top, end of days hyperbole that’s making the rounds now that the industry seems to be realizing Uncle Sam isn’t going to do their bidding, no matter how many campaign contributions they make to Chuck Schumer. It’s a sad commentary on the state of things these days when buying a congressman is an easier accomplishment than competing in the market.

I’ve taken five points from each of these two articles to discuss. The first is a particularly single-minded post by Dennis Johnson, co-founder of the publisher Melville House, a staunch traditionalist.

Before I begin, let me say that I find it odd that such a virulent supporter of publishers founded a company named after Herman Melville, a man who largely had a tenuous if not outright bad relationship with publishers. Most of his books had to be published in London initially because American publishers wouldn’t touch them, and even then, they were never able to generate significant sales despite the fact he wrote some of the greatest works in the English language.  Rather infamously, Melville was paid a grand total of less than $600 for his masterpiece Moby Dick. I’m sure if he were to rise from the grave today, Melville would have more than a few choice words for publishers, particularly considering his actually burnt the unsold copies of an epic poem he wrote after he couldn’t pay for them. Comforting to see some things never change, like publishers’ contempt for writers.

1. “At the start of agency, for example, Amazon controlled 90 percent of ebook sales. There’s nothing “highly speculative” about calling that a monopoly.”

Except for the fact that Amazon’s large share came about because they took a then-under utilized ebook market and drug it into the mainstream essentially by themselves. No major publishers paid much heed to it at the time, very few competitors showed any interest in jumping in before Amazon charted a course, and certainly none on their scale. Once Amazon started making real money, though, that 90% share dropped significantly, just as you’d expect a trendsetter would when a previously empty playing field started filling up. It wasn’t like Amazon entered a thriving ebook market and swiped that giant share of business from others. They essentially created the market when almost no one else had the interest, desire or the balls to do it. He’s right, though, partly. It’s not “highly speculative” to call Amazon a monopoly in that instance, it’s outright bullshit to do so.

2. “The Sherman Antitrust Act, and its descendent the Robinson-Patman Act, clearly define loss-leader under-pricing as a predatory tactic rather obviously intended to “drive out competition and obtain monopoly pricing power.”

So when does the DOJ actions start up against every retail business in this country? Loss Leader pricing is so commonplace we barely even notice it any more. Its use is far from being “rather obviously” about driving out competition, either, far more commonly used on a day to day basis virtually everywhere things are sold, as a means of bringing customers into your store.

On the other hand, what the publishers did with the agency scheme was retail price maintenance, which up until 2007, was illegal in essentially all its forms. A Supreme Court decision (which overturned damn near a century of precedent, by the way) granted a limited allowance for the behavior under the “rule of reason” which Apple and the publishers flaunted by colluding pretty much in public and gloating about how their plans were going to screw Amazon, inhibit the ebook market and raise prices on ebooks. The publishers are only in legal trouble today because of their egos, stupidity and total lack of discretion. That and, unlike Amazon, they actually broke the law.

3. “The DOJ cited arguments from David Gaughran, writing on behalf of 186 self-published authors who thanked Amazon for ‘creating, for the first time, real competition in publishing by charting a viable path for self-published books. But when was it, exactly, that publishers prevented authors from self-publishing?

Is he kidding? Certainly, anyone with the money could publish a book, but getting that in book stores or retail outlets dominated by traditional publishing was an entirely different story. Publishers’ entire business model was one of dominating the channels of distribution. What good was publishing a book if you were essentially locked out of the principle sales channels?

Preventing writers from having any access to the market was their stock in trade, creating a ready supply of material they could pay as little as possible for, which is why writers get such a low portion of revenues today when they are principally responsible for the product. And, really, anyone who thinks there was anything close to a viable path to self publish pre-Amazon is either dangerously ignorant of reality or purposely being disingenuous.

4. “The process of public involvement was, apparently, meaningless. But there are better things to remember right now. For one, take this for what it is: The DOJ has found its own case sound. The good guys, meanwhile, have yet to have their day in court.”

So the DOJ was supposed to take a vote and ignore the law because a large number of traditional publishing’s disciples said so? The truest thing in the DOJ’s response was that the overwhelming majority of anti-settlement comments came from people and businesses profiting directly from the price fixing scheme. Like I said, I’m actually impressed they saw through it.

In truth, I think the public involvement stage was very useful. It illustrated the biases of those supporting the publishers who, despite their numbers, produced no compelling arguments for a lessening of terms. It also showed that the truly independent voices who, not coincidentally, are finding success without the need to break the law, were heard even though they could have been swamped by traditional publishing’s comment generating machine. If anything, unlike many other areas of life these days, this looks like the powerful corporations flaunting the law will be held to task while consumers, innovators and legitimate competitors in the market will win the day.

5. “The ludicrous charges, the fact of such paltry and pitiful support for them, the wide variety of opponents — the entire industry and then some — roused to speak out — all provide reason for hope.”

Yeah, reason to hope you guys hurry up and go bankrupt. Seriously? Ludicrous charges? Pitiful and paltry support? No and no. The charges look pretty damn sound to me. And evidently, those of us who choose to disagree don’t matter. Hell, we’re not even in the industry, apparently, despite selling books professionally. For money. To actual readers. See, it’s not that public input didn’t matter, it’s that public input he disagreed with didn’t matter, and it certainly shouldn’t have mattered enough to beat back their superior numbers and unsubstantiated inflamatory rhetoric. How dare the DOJ side with the law and actually aggreived parties who have paid tens of millions more for ebooks than would have been possible without collusion! They sent 800 carbon copy, Amazon-is-evil letters, didn’t the DOJ get the memo? Won’t somebody please think about the culture?

Shortly after reading that piece, I read this one by John Barber of the Globe and Mail. The hits just keep on coming in this one, including cameos by everbody’s favorite bitchy traditional writers, Ewan Morrison and Scott Turow, proving that even the Atlantic Ocean can’t keep arrogance and stupidity apart.

1. “Authors are losing income as sales shift to heavily discounted, royalty-poor and easily pirated ebooks. Journalists are suffering pay cuts and job losses as advertising revenue withers. Floods of amateurs willing to work for nothing are chasing freelance writers out of the trade. And all are scrambling to salvage their livelihoods as the revolutionary doctrine of “free culture” obliterates old definitions of copyright.”

Being as he made several points here, I’ll address each in order. First, ebooks are only royalty-poor because publishers want them that way. And, to be fair, print books are pretty damn royalty poor in most instances, too. Next, do you know who’s not seeing pay cuts and job losses as advertising flees newspapers? The CEOs, who are “suffering” with giant bonuses and golden parachutes for all those job losses they’ve instituted while simultaneously playing the fiddle on any kind of digital transition as their industry segment burns to the ground.

Third, as conglomerates bought up any and every publication they could find during the acquisition rush years ago, many publishers began getting tight with freelance budgets. Even at the height of profitability before the bottom fell out, prices paid to freelancers were stagnant or negative. Once the advertising revenue started to fall, they used it as a convenient excuse to put the screws to writers even more than usual. The flood of free content he refers to was largely spurred on by publishers looking for ways to spend as little as humanly possible on content, quality be damned. The issue isn’t that there’s work out there available for free, it’s that publishers refuse to pay even modest wages for quality writing despite the fact that content is the only reason they have the ability to attract any advertising at all.

And, finally, who’s perverted the concept of copyright more, the “free culture” people, as he calls them, who advocate sharing and the rights of consumers or the media companies, who lobby for laws like DMCA and SOPA, and push through things like the Mickey Mouse rule that now has copyright extended to life of the creator plus 70 years?

The extensions and increasingly stringent punishments for even minor infringement has created an atmosphere where it makes a lot of sense to argue that copyright needs to be looked at anew. The parts of copyright law that support derivative works and allow creators to build off of the progress of those before, fair use and the first sale doctrine, and the public domain and furtherance of culture have all been imperiled by the steady rights grabs of media companies who have been engaging in a systematic effort at maintaining copyright in perpetuity for decades now. If you’re going to cry about copyright being broken, don’t do so while advocating for those who actually broke it.

2. “(According to best-selling UK author Ewan Morrison) The result will be the destruction of vital institutions that have supported “the highest achievements in culture in the past 60 years.” In short, he predicts, “There will be no more professional writers in the future.”

I’m sure when Morrison uses the term “professional writers”, he’s referring to people like himself. We can only hope for a future with as few of those kinds of “professionals” as possible. It’s not his writing talents I have issue with, I’ve never actually read any of his work, it’s that he has some ridiculously backwards, elitist ideas along with a generous helping of contempt for anyone who circumvents the traditional getekeepers.

Morrison has said some pretty crazy stuff, for instance, this piece in the Guardian where he argues against social media but makes some larger points about traditional and self publishing. Be sure to read the comments because he has numerous additional points there, including a rather entertaining discussion with Joe Konrath. My favorite part is when he excoriates Konrath for daring to encourage others to eschew traditional and embark in self publishing by saying, “It is unfair and cruel to propagate a model for others which can only ever work for the few.” After I stopped laughing and wiped the tears from my eyes, the full audaciousness of that comment really sunk in. After all, Konrath has a long, long way to go to rate with traditional publishers in propagating models that only work for the few. The sad part is that it seems Morrison doesn’t even get the rich, creamy irony.

These statements are what I’m talking about when I say the rhetoric has gotten more severe. The highest institutions of culture will crumble and working writers will totally vanish. Talk about self-important! Publishers largely gave up their mantle of cultural protectors, if they ever had one in the first place, when they became little more than profit engines for larger conglomerates. It’s pretty obvious, too, yet Morrison seems to believe that writers should willingly accept lousy royalties so these publishers can keep exploiting them to the benefit of their parent company’s bottom line. Being self published and actually keeping a fair share of what your work earns is selfish, according to Morrison. Of course, he just might see it that way because more and more writers earning outside of traditional may jeopardize his next advance. Besides, if publishers weren’t portrayed as purveyors of culture, then there’d be no moral argument for their survival, and that would make for even more specious rants, if that’s possible.

3. “(Author Scott Turow) has drawn heavy criticism from digital partisans for defending the diminishing rights of “legacy publishers” currently under U.S. Justice Department investigation for allegedly fixing ebook prices.”

Diminishing rights? I wasn’t aware publishers had the right to colluded and fix prices. Didn’t know they had the right to rip off authors through shady corporate finanglings like Harlequin just got sued for. Wasn’t aware they had the right to snatch digital rights from contracts signed 30 years before anyone had ever heard of an ebook. Most of all, I didn’t know they had the right to operate largely free of genuine competition.

If publishers are diminishing, it’s likely for two reasons; writers have other choices now and are sick of being treated like chattel and paid slightly worse; and they’re clinging to a business model that is servicing a shrinking percentage of their customer base. But that’s the common denominator in the anti-Amazon camp, the stark refusal to admit publisher’s culpability for their own problems because it’s so much easier to make excuses for your own failings when you can pretend to be a victim.

4. “Nor is self-publishing profitable for the majority of authors, according to a recent British survey. It found that half of the writers – many no doubt lured by well-publicized tales of spectacular success achieved by a handful of fellow novices – made less than $500 a year for their efforts.”

No one was ever lured into traditional publishing by the tales of success of other writers, right? I’m sure that’s never happened. And let me just reiterate an earlier point: Herman Melville made less than $600 in total on Moby Dick. Using dollar figures in this way, especially with no context in comparison with traditionally published writers, makes for compelling soundbites while providing very little actual insight. Besides, there are a whole lot of self published writers. That survey means half of them made more than $500 a year. I’d be willing to bet that percentage isn’t far removed from traditional but I’m sure we’ll never hear about it.

5. “The livelihoods of serious writers will continue to depend directly on the health of traditional publishers, “the venture capitalists of the intellectual world,” according to Turow.”

So only writers with traditional contracts are serious? The rest of us are just dicking around out here then, huh? Writers like Turow and Morrison may have their livelihoods depend on the health of traditional publishers, but there seems to be a large and growing infrastructure that’s circumventing their control. That means the health of said publishers isn’t really a major concern in that segment. In fact, it may be just the opposite.

With fewer market obstructions from the traditional end, and less product from that side, it could well increase opportunities for success amongst those who aren’t dependant on them. But that doesn’t matter because those people won’t be serious, of course. Everyone knows you can’t be a serious writer unless you give up most of the proceeds, all creative control and any conceivable rights to your work until your great, great grandchildren are old and gray. It’s just crazy talk to say otherwise.

Sunday Randomness: Thoughts on DOJ suit, indie poaching and writer autonomy

Over the past few weeks, my mind has bounced around several issues relating to the book industry without settling on any particular one long enough to formulate a blog post, so I thought I’d patch a few thoughts together in semi-brief snippets.  Well, brief as much as I do brief, which is to say probably not very.  Here we go:

1. The defenders of the price fixing publishers in the DOJ antitrust case are totally full of shit.

On a few instances, I’ve directly broken down what I felt were the misguided defenses of the allegedly collusive agency pricing agreement of the largest publishers and Apple. At this point, it seems a futile exercise because the rationalities used to defend the action have become increasingly rigid and pertaining of such twisted logic that they’ve ceased to even make enough sense to try and honestly refute.  Just in the past week, I’ve read numerous letters from the Author’s Guild, the American Booksellers Association, the Association of Author’s Representatives, Barnes & Noble and numerous pundits to the DOJ decrying the proposed settlement terms for the three accused publishers who want to get this overwith and move on.  I’ve also read the responses from Apple, Penguin and Macmillan–the three principles left defending the case.

Somehow, no one involved in this case knew anything about the actions of anyone else involved yet they simultaneous knew that agency wouldn’t fly, and they personally wouldn’t have entered into it, if everyone wasn’t on the same page.  So we’re left to believe that all of these various large corporations independently took actions they knew required others to take identical actions to work, yet none of them knew what the others were doing.  Yeah, ok.  Totally reasonable.  I’m more convinced now than I was before that those who fight this all the way are screwed.

As for the settling defendants, how happy do you think they’ll be if all that impassioned anti-settlement rhetoric coming from traditional publishing interests works and they get thrust back into the roles of active defendants?  The folks arguing to kill the settlement may, in effect, be giving a death sentence to one or more of these publishers.  Besides, given the fairly obvious collusion, settling this and moving on seems to be the best possible approach.  Fighting this will be a long, drawn out, expensive war of attrition that Amazon and others will feast on by continuing to reshape the market while they waste precious time, coin and focus defending a failed price fixing scheme that, really, only served to benefit the upper, upper echelon writers and publishers anyway.

Those fighting the settlement are still harping on about the diverse literary ecosystem arguments, as well as the death of literature, choices for readers, copyrighted expression, vibrant competition and numerous other doomsaying phrases, despite the fact that there’s ample evidence that none of those things are true.  Somehow, according to them and some numbers from B&N that I find just slightly fishy, agency pricing has caused ebooks to drop in price now, even though it actually upped prices 30-50% in many cases, and despite the small matter that the scheme was put in place with the specific intention of raising prices. 

The part I like best, though, is the one where some anti-settlement mavens have decided it’s ok to punish the collusion (if any existed, of course) just so long as the DOJ doesn’t end the resulting agreements from that collusion.  This is a great precedent, and I say bring it on!  How awesome would it be to be able to rob a bank, get caught, be punished for the crime but you get to keep all the money?  Hell yeah!  I might even consider doin a couple years for auto theft if I knew the $150,000 Maserati I stole was waiting for me on the outside. 

This is an absurd argument. Agency in this case never, I repeat, never could have been instituted the way it was without the collusion of publishers.  It could not have happened.  In what alternate reality does it make any sense at all to let the results of an illegal conspiracy, that could not have existed without said conspiracy, stand?  Sorry guys.  I know you all are pretty desperate for someone to step in and check Amazon so you won’t have to be inconvenienced by, you know, having to compete or anything, but there is simply no logical reason for these agreements to be left in place.  Besides, they’re only locked out of agency for two years.  That doesn’t sound aggregiously irresponsible. Actually, it sounds like a fitting punishment to me, being barred for a time from the very actions you colluded to bring about.

Of course, I also don’t happen to believe that the death of their price fixing scheme will result in the dire consequences some predict. Actually, I believe just the opposite. Agency pricing, used as it was by the parties it was, had a negative effect on the ebook market as a whole. I think it slowed adoption, slowed growth in the sector, limited any pretense of actual retail competition, and took a pretty good sized chunk out of the wallets of readers unnecessarily. But again, all of that is what they wanted, and it’s exhibit A for how and why they had to collude to get it. Don’t buy the B.S. line about agency fostering competition or protecting a vibrant bookselling ecosystem. This was nothing more than a poorly executed scam to protect the print ecosystem they control by way of hindering the real competition from the digital side, nothing more.

As a side note, the DOJ has apparently been eating their Wheaties. Now, they are also pursuing an investigation into most favored nation clauses in cable tv contracts and looking into whether data caps instituted by ISPs, many of whom also sell cable tv, specifically target streaming services to protect their cable bundling packages. Yet again, here’s an industry–cable tv–that would rather keep its customers paying more to stay locked in to what they want (bundling) rather than give those paying folks what they want (unbundled pay to watch only what they want when they want.) The ebook antitrust suit along with this new effort are, alone, reason enough for me to vote Obama even though I’m not a big fan for many reasons. A Romney DOJ, I don’t hesitate to say, would drop these efforts like a bad habit and that would be an enormously bad thing for anyone not a corporate titan or busying themselves suckling at the tit of one.

2. I don’t really understand why indies would sign traditional deals once they start finding real success.

Call it the Hocking Effect, or the Fifty Shades of Greed, whatever, but it seems like the hot new thing in traditional publishing circles is to poach self published writers once they begin to show some serious sales. I understand why publishers are doing this; they’re struggling, losing ground, their power base is fading, and their ability to produce new literary superstars is failing. What I don’t understand is why the self published writers, having generated their own success stories, are turning around and handing that success over to a corporation under pseudo-exploitative terms before they ever realize the full benefits of their efforts. Upfront money is the obvious answer, but to me, that seems short sighted. There’s also the “I wanna be in bookstores” excuse, but that’s just as short sighted as the money angle, if not more so.

The only way this makes sense to me is if the writers in question didn’t really want to be in business in the first place, and only entered self publishing out of necessity. I’d just like to know what degree of low self esteem do you have to suffer from to hand over your own, independent, hard-earned success to corporations and bookstores who wouldn’t have given you the time of day before you busted your ass to earn your own way?

Now, I don’t want to begrudge anyone making this choice, everybody’s got their own reasons for the decisions they make, but if I get to the point where I’m finding enough independent success that publishers come calling, they’d better have hat in hand with contract terms where I’m in creative control, I make most of the profit, and my rights are only limited to the book(s) in question and then only for a limited time, five years tops. The industry is simply changing too much, too fast to sign lifetime copyright agreements. In short, I’m trying indie for real, not as a backdoor for a contract. My intent is to find success. The very last thing I’ll be doing is sacrificing my rights, my freedoms, my money for corporate free riders who wanna piggyback on my hard work. Not gonna happen.

There are some indie champions out there who’s work I respect very much, like Dean Wesley Smith, for instance, who believes the bookstore system can still thrive and ebooks will top out at about 30% of the total market. As much as I love his writing, and agree with much of what he has to say, this is one area I have a very different view. I just don’t see how bookshops have much of a life left. Digital isn’t going to stop at a third of the market. In the long term, I believe it’s going to be the market. If print somehow manages to hold on to 30%, I’ll be surprised. Technology is pushing hard in the wrong direction for purveyors of paper and ink. It’s really just a matter of time before print is winnowed to two categories–print on demand and the high end specialty craft books that are more display objects than reading material.

How far are we, truly, from book kiosks like redbox video rental machines? Yes, we have the Espresso machine today, but it’s still in the early stages and still very expensive. The cost of that is only going to fall. And once we can buy a print book or two at reasonable prices from a boundless catalog during a trip to the grocery store, what’s the point of dedicated book shops on a wide scale? Make no mistake, POD is the future of printed books. That makes the bookstore argument from indies ring a bit hollow to me. I’m not convinced bookstores on any significant scale will still exist in 10 years. From a business standpoint, the last thing I want to do is have my work locked up in a system designed and built to exploit a sales avenue that is on the way to obsolescence. Maybe I’m wrong and bookstores will be thriving for years to come, but that’s even more reason to limit the length of any traditional contract. I just don’t know. And if they’re still there in five or ten years, nothing’s stopping me from signing another contract. But if they’re gone, or severely diminished and I’m in a lifetime copyright contract, I’m screwed. I’d prefer not to be screwed.

The book selling market we have today was close to unimaginable five years ago. What will it look like five years from now? Can anyone say with any degree of certainty? Stay flexible, my friends, and don’t get locked into long term deals with anybody. Unless, of course, they’re handing you a truckload of no-strings-attached money. Then all bets are off. And when I say truckload, I’m talking well into seven figures, paid in full, up front. Probably not gonna happen, so my original point stands. Build for your own success, and when you find it, don’t sell it out for short term gain, especially in a market changing as rapidly as this one.

3. Does anyone represent the interests of writers?

The Authors Guild sure as hell doesn’t. Neither does the literary agent group AAR. Bookshops don’t. Publishers don’t. The DOJ antitrust suit is about readers not writers. About the only group that actually gives a damn about writers is readers, and then only so long as you’re producing work they want to read. For the one absolutely essential class of participants in publishing, writers sure do get shit on quite a bit. We’ve been turned into fodder used and tossed aside to provide a living for any number of middlemen. Yet somehow, we don’t get to benefit from our work until all these other groups get theirs. Whatever tablescraps are left over, then we might see some. Maybe.

We’ve been infantalized, conditioned to believe that we’re dependent on these hangers on or else our work would never be good enough to see the light of day. We can’t edit, we’re told. We don’t have the skills to recognize quality design, they say. We would never sell anything without a publisher marketing it for us, so I’ve heard. Many writers have even allowed themselves to be sold so far down the river that they actually accept the “validation” of being published as a badge of honor rather than the condescending slap in the face it actually is. Even higher education ingrains in us the belief that we don’t deserve or simply won’t earn a good living, perpetuating the starving artist model.

When so many writers simply don’t believe this is a business first, last and always, and that we are the fuel it runs on, and that we deserve fair treatment and to be paid on par with our level of importance to the industry, we’ll continue to be second class citizens, fresh meat for the publishers’ grinder, as it were. I can’t say this enough…digital has flipped the script. Writers and readers are all that matter, everyone else is in the process of being marginalized. They’ll fight it tooth and nail, of course, but that doesn’t mean we have to help.

Writers are the publishing industry, period. Everything else about it built up around us and our work. Over time, we became trapped inside this framework of termites that continued to eat away at our creativity, freedom and bank accounts to the point that many of us actually still believe publishers positions should be higher than writers in the ecosystem. They’re not and they shouldn’t be. The changes going on today have given us the opportunity to leap back to the forefront. We gave that position away once, we shouldn’t waste this second chance.

The fact that there really are no institutions that represent writers ahead of the ecosystem that exploits us should tell us all we need to know. There are none because we controlled ourselves, we willingly abdicated our proper position in the industry and allowed others to dictate how, or even if, we work, live and survive. Nobody’s looking out for us because we’ve never demanded it, and we stopped looking out for ourselves long ago. In the digital future, the cliche “Content is King” is more true than ever. And he who makes the content should be wearing the crown. We’ve got a chance to usurp the throne we once abdicated. Let’s not waste it.

What’s an Indie?

Lately, there’s been some hard talks and consternation floating around the net decrying the chip on some self publishers’ shoulders. The self versus traditional publishing conflict is juvenile, counter productive and mostly pointless, we’ve been told. And you know what? In many ways, those folks are right.

Just as an aside, given that I did it right there in that last sentence, I read an interview with a supposed prominent book reviewer who said one of the things he hates is when writers use conjunctions to start a sentence. I say “supposed” because I’ve never heard of him and, frankly, I care about as much for the pet peeves of critics as I do for the pie in the sky throwback dreams of publishing executives, which is to say, I don’t. I love starting sentences with conjunctions! If used judiciously, they can add pace to a narrative flow. Is it grammatically correct or technically proper? Absolutely not! But you know what? (there, I did it again) About 99.9% of readers aren’t sitting there with your novel in one hand and the little green style book from a college grammar course in the other. Narrative writing is about rhythm and pacing much more than technical perfection and, if the voice is compelling, most readers don’t care if your work would be thrashed with a red pen by an English teacher.  Besides, I don’t see anyone quibbling about the grammar in a Bob Dylan song. This is art, folks, not a technical writing essay. The rules don’t always apply.

Anyway, back to my original point, those people who tell us to knock off the hatin’ war of words between self and traditional publishers are right. There’s no percentage in it, as an old boss of mine used to say. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t criticize. Traditional publishing and its defenders do an ample job of providing fodder for criticism. And I’m sure self pubbed writers provide ample grounds for the traditional folks to attack. In saying that, however, there’s one point of contention I just can’t get past. (By the way, I could’ve started that sentence “But there’s one point…” Quicker, more concise, makes the same point without the roundabout language and punctuation…sorry, I’m just carping now. Bastard! Disparaging my use of conjunctions! Who does he think he is?)

The reason I can’t simply say enough is enough with the self-trad conflict is that traditional publishers would, by and large, wipe us out if they could, and roll back all the progress, freedom and leverage writers have gained over the past few years. There’s no question that self publishing is a threat to their established business models, which have long been built upon an exploitative relationship with writers. It’s kind of difficult to play nice and polite with someone who you know would kill you and all you stand for if they had their druthers. While many self pubbed writers, myself included on occasion, have voiced opinions to the effect of hoping the traditional dinosaurs die off and quickly, I don’t hesitate to say most of us really only want some modicum of freedom and equitable treatment. I believe most of us would happily work with publishers offering those attributes. They, on the other hand, would sooner see us rot on the vine before they deign to offer more favorable terms to writers. Admittedly, they’re not going to have a choice in the matter before much longer, but that doesn’t mean I have to accept or turn a blind eye to mistreatment. Hopefully, someday soon, these conditions won’t be as they are today, and the giant pissing contest will well and truly be over with. But today, too many publishers still don’t respect writers and would still rather put us back in the cubby holes they’d carved out for us than to welcome us to the table as partners or equals. That’s barely grounds to form a mutually beneficial business relationship, let alone a lasting friendship. Show us some respect, and you’ll have it returned in kind. Keep dissing us, and the battle will rage on unabated.

There’s one issue I’d specifically like to address because its been on my mind since I read this missive by literary agent Sarah LaPolla. In it, she does seem very supportive of self publishing in some ways, although a bit condescending in places. Then again, that could be my biases showing, reading a slight where none was intended. Like this line, for instance:

Now, self-publishing really can be the way toward a career in writing, albeit a modest one.

Did she have to toss that “albeit” qualifier in there? I read that and felt like a little kid being patted on the head by his kindergarten teacher. “Sure you can be anything you want. You might even grow up to be a baseball star. Or President of the United States.” Really felt dismissive. Like I said, though, her piece read much more supportive of self publishers than most coming from that side, so I’m willing to accept my biases as my own and not take offense.

However, I will take on one particular statement she made:

AND STOP CALLING YOURSELVES INDIE. You’re not that either. Using “indie” interchangeably with “self” only confuses people who want to self-publish and pisses off actual independent publishers. There is a clear difference between publishing with a small press (“indie”) and using a vendor (“self”). Misusing/stealing pre-existing terms doesn’t give you credibility; it makes you look unprofessional.

To begin, she started her sentence with a conjunction. Some people hate that, so I hear. Plus, ALL CAPS? Really? Why are you yelling? Let’s use our inside voices, please. My problem with this is that, just like the traditional publisher side no longer gets to tell us how high to jump unless we allow it, they also don’t get to tell us what we can call ourselves.

“Real” indie publishers are pissed? Aw, now I feel bad. Some self publishers are confused? “I want to self publish. But wait, that guy there said it was indie publishing. But this guy over here calls it self publishing. I’m so confused! I give up!” The way I look at it, when small presses started co-opting the term indie, self publishing wasn’t a viable or realistic path. Hell, it wasn’t even called self publishing, it was given the dismissive moniker of “vanity publishing.” In that environment, the small presses unaffiliated with the giant conglomerates were the independents.

Today, however, that dynamic has changed. The giants still roam the Earth. The small presses are still small presses but the independents have changed. The individual self published authors have become that. The problem isn’t that self publishers have stolen a label from someone else, it’s that the circumstances where it made sense to call a small press “indie” have changed. Logically, it makes much more sense to label the independently published author indie than a small publisher. One is clearly more “independent” than the other.

Ultimately, I don’t care for labels on the whole. I’m a writer. I’m also a publisher. I’ve worked for small publishers, large publishers and myself through self publishing. If you put a gun to my head and forced me to label one of those “indie” it would have to be self publishing. This opinion comes not from pre-existing terms, but from genuine first hand experience. And maybe some of us wouldn’t try so hard to escape stigmas if there weren’t people out there equating self publishing with a giant steaming pile of unreadable crap.

Ultimately, labels, whatever they happen to be, are limiting. We’re not self publishers or indie, we’re just publishers. The end process is the same: produce work, refine work, sell work. That’s what publishers do. Traditional, small press, indie, self, what have you, all are publishers. A label, even one as seemingly cool or edgy like indie, eventually becomes a defined ceiling for what you are. Personally, I much prefer not having that ceiling, certainly not giving it to myself. So, if I were to re-word her point, I’d do it thusly:

AND STOP CALLING YOURSELVES ANYTHING. Labels are meaningless and self-limiting. The work is what’s important. After all, what’s to be gained by having to listen to a bitter rep from some small press somewhere bitching and moaning about you stealing their term “indie”? Nothing, I tell you, nothing at all.

And stop using all caps. Using all caps doesn’t provide added emphasis to get your point across. It make you look screechy, angry and unprofessional. Conjunctions to start a sentence, however? I’m totally cool with that.

The Five-Tool Player: Writers should break with tradition to become the industry’s versatile superstars

For writers these days, many things have changed. We all know it. More opportunities exist now than ever before and many of them necessitate acquiring and putting to good use skills we’ve never had to really consider before. This can be seen as a liberating development or a very concerning one, depending on your point of view. If you’re a newbie looking to break into publishing, these new skills may be seen as simply an essential part of the process. If you’ve already had a 30-year career, and developed a process that you’ve got down cold, it may well be that the new realities seem like just an added pain in the ass, extra work you never had to worry about before now dumped right in your lap screwing up the system you’ve been perfecting for decades. But that doesn’t change the way things actually are. To quote a fairly popular sci fi property, as many writers and publishers are learning every day, resistance is futile and getting more so every day.

There are an ample number of writers out there on the web more than willing to share their knowledge, insights and advice to anyone who will listen. Hell, you could spend ten hours a day reading up on all the different takes on what new writers need to do to find success these days and not run out of material for weeks. Yet even with many of these writers steeped in the new order of things, a few long standing beliefs about the role writers should play continue to be perpetuated. These notions, while rooted in some legitimate facts, I believe are holdovers from the previous regime where writers, in many cases, allowed themselves to be underestimated and infantalized. It’s understandable, as we could avoid tasks that sometimes included drudgery we didn’t want to deal with and it simultaneously allowed the publishing industry to build up additional layers of “necessary” assistance helping to cement their self-proclaimed central positions in the content creation process.

While writers today have the potential to be freed from the shackles of the traditional industry in many ways, we also can be freed from the layers of unneeded outside “help” that have been accepted, largely, as weigh stations between writers and readers over the years. Here are my opinions on three of the biggest, and often most controversial, myths of the writing process that, thus far, seem to be tagging along into the new reality.

Marketing is too time consuming for writers

It’s too time consuming to promote yourself and your career? You know what else is time consuming? Getting up and going to a job for eight to ten hours a day every day for your entire adult life. You want to build a career in the entertainment industry, you’re going to have to do some heavy self marketing. You can’t expect someone else to do it for you, no matter how much they claim it as an advantage of throwing in with them. To be sure, publishers have an ample history and the resources to take care of promoting your works. That’s not at issue. What is at issue is whether or not you, personally, will be graced with any of those resources or efforts. Far too frequently, the answer to that question in no. Besides, one of the first things publishers are looking for these days in an author is a platform and/or a following. If you don’t already have one, you can be damn sure they’ll require it of you. Don’t care for blogging, tweeting, facebooking, pinteresting or what have you? Too bad because you’ll be doing it anyway, either for yourself or at your publisher’s behest.

You don’t have to fight it, however, and it doesn’t have to eat up all of your time. Blog once in a while. Tweet occasionally, leave some comments on other sites. And write. One of the truest statements I’ve seen come out of self publishing thus far is that the best marketing you can do for a book is write another kick-ass book. Everything else can be handled in increments.

You don’t have to spend eight hours a day pouring over Twitter, just a little time and effort when you can. Remember, everything you do online, no matter how large or small, adds to your digital footprint. That footprint is where fans and customers are ultimately found. A blog post once a week or so, a few tweets a day, a comment or two on any articles of interest is all you really need. Do those things consistently and, before you know it, you’ve built yourself a platform.

Once you have that, everything else you do simply adds to it. Do a blog tour, create an online site for direct sales, do a Goodreads promotion, etc. Whatever you come up with, and there are nearly infinite means of exposing your work to new potential readers, it all adds up. You don’t need 12 hours a day of marketing, just consistency. You’re books aren’t on a limited time schedule any more, you’re promotion doesn’t have to be either. And don’t ever forget that each new piece you publish is, in effect, part of your marketing efforts. Overlapping duties is a great way to save time.

Writers can’t design professional quality covers or art for their work

I like graphic designers. Some of my best friends are designers. They each have a certain artistic flair and approach uniquely their own, and many of them do magnificent work. But one thing I’ve learned is that the real artistry in design for publication is knowing how to manipulate the software. It’s not an unreproduceable skill, it’s a learned one that experience helps grow. Maybe you can’t draw, but that doesn’t mean you can’t manipulate art, images and fonts into a compelling piece. And that goes doubly for layouts for ebooks and print. Learn a little html, and you can easily crank out well formatted books in any digital file-type you like. Learn InDesign, or some other page layout software, and you can do print layouts for POD quite easily. You’d be surprised how easily.

Design seems like such an intimidating process, particularly if you’ve never tried. But once you get the hang of it, you soon find yourself stretching the basic skills and pushing yourself to figure out how to do some cool effect or other that you’ve got envisioned in your head. As your skills grow, you’ll be amazed how many things you can pull off on a professional level of quality that you had always thought was unreachable to you.

Developing the basic skills is the easy part. Learning to fit various design elements together seamlessly and effectively is tougher. Practice, practice, practice is the only way, and believe me, you will be glad you did. Adding an artistic-execution eye to your work also helps fully develop your understanding of a piece and can aide you in better marketing for it. Just as great writing is an important element in promotion, so is great art, particularly a stellar cover. Learning design isn’t impossible, far from it, and it can add to your overall package, improving both your understanding of the work and how it should be promoted.

Writers can’t edit their own work

This is a big one. You see it repeated everywhere, from the most jaded traditional publisher to the most optimistic indie. To that, I say, “Nonsense!” This, to me, has never made a lick of sense. You’re the writer, you crafted these sentences yet you can’t properly copy edit them? Absurd! Of course you can. More than that, you should. A writer who relies on others to produce clean copy free of errors is only doing half the job, in my opinion. One caveat to this is that it is always better to have multiple sets of eyes look a piece of writing over before it is unleashed on the world. Is it better enough to justify dropping some heavy coin down for it? That depends. If you develop the patience and skill to produce clean, grammatically sound copy, then it may not be in many instances. But this isn’t something that just suddenly happens. You aren’t born with magical typo-seeking editor skills. You have to work at it, but once you do, you can eliminate or seriously cut down on the need for extensive outside copy editing.

Now, what I’m talking about here is strictly editing for mistakes. Typos, grammatical problems, perspective errors, etc. Editing for plot and story content is an entirely different matter. For that, you absolutely need extra points of view. But, and here’s the crucial thing, you don’t need a professional editor for the content side of the equation. All you need is a beta reader or two or three. Someone you trust to read analytically and take notes. They don’t have to pour over the manuscript word for word, just for overall concepts, plot flow and character issues. I would even argue that having content reading done by actual readers is preferable to professional editing in that sense. Your target audience is regular readers, after all.

The two largest justifications for the belief that writers can’t do their own editing are that you know what you were trying to say with your story so well that you can’t see what you actually said, and that typos will slip by because your mind tends to be too familiar with your intent so it fills in whatever blanks you may have left. These two occurrences, while somewhat related, do have merit from a certain point of view, but there’s a solution to each. For content, beta readers will see what’s actually on the page (or the screen, if you will). If there are flaws in your logic, portions where characters acted against type or unrealistically, or holes both large and small left in your plot, your beta readers will point those out. For the technical side, there’s a straight forward solution as well. Write the story, do a thorough read through or edit and then put it aside. A couple weeks or a month later, pull it back out and pour over it nice and slowly, word for word. With a bit of practice, the distance you put between drafting and copy editing removes the familiarity blunders and lets you see what anyone reading the piece would see.

A good editor can be worth their weight in gold, but they can also be rare. An average or mediocre editor doesn’t bring very much to the table you can’t do for yourself and costs you extra money. No one knows and understands your particular style like you do. No one can properly follow the pace, tone and feel of your sentence structure better than you. If you have an editor you’re comfortable with, both in terms of what they bring to your work and what it costs you, by all means, use them to your full advantage. But don’t confuse any editor for a good one. And the more capable you are of crafting and polishing your own clean copy, the less you need to rely on outside help that may or may not truly be all that helpful.

Remember that editing a manuscript is a two part process–technical and story. The better you become on the technical side, the less hassle you will encounter preparing a work for publication. The notion that writers can’t adequately copy edit their own work is just wrong. Editing is a crucial part of the writing process. Without possessing those skills, you’re not fully developing your writing powers.

Defenders of traditional publishers like to tout the benefits they bring to the table, foremost among them are marketing, art design and editing. As such, a system has developed over the years where each of these three areas has been gradually taken away from the writer’s control and we’ve had it ingrained in us that it’s in our best interest to do things that way, that we just don’t have the skills to do them ourselves. Writers have been both underestimated and purposely sheltered by those beliefs for the sake of someone else’s self-interest for a very long time.

Editors, designers and marketers introduce layers of separation between the writer and their work, making the finished book more a product of the publisher than the writer. This is the mechanism used to justify keeping the writer’s share of the proceeds underneath the publisher’s share, despite what you might hear about writers being the costliest part of the publishing process. Don’t believe it. The publisher’s cut and the infrastructure costs used to justify that cut are the greatest expenses in publishing. Remove the necessity of some those infrastructure costs and that removes the justifications to keep the writer’s cut from actually becoming the highest expense in publishing, as well it should be.

It’s wonderful that we now have the opportunities we do, but this added potential also carries added responsibilities. We must expand and improve our skills if we are to truly circumvent the established process for getting work to market, and continue to cultivate new, profitable models for selling our wares. It’s great if you have the relationships and money to acquire first rate design and exceptional professional copy editing. But that doesn’t mean we can’t fill in some of those gaps on our own. Writers need to understand that we, now and increasingly in the future, are more in the position of publishers. As such, we must truly grasp the implications of every aspect of the process between first draft and publication. The more of those elements we can do ourselves at a high level, the better our understanding of the underlying reasons for those skills and how they contribute to the whole, and the better our chances of finding success.

We don’t necessarily have to do everything alone, nor am I advocating that in all cases, but we should at least know how. Don’t let anyone, however good intentioned, tell you that you can’t do it because, with some few exceptions and a modicum of effort, you can. Specialized skills are nice, but the level of specialization that has developed over the decades in big publishing happened because the financial framework existed to allow it, and it served publishers’ ultimate ends to make writers but one link in the chain of production they lorded over rather than a partner in the process.

The real question you have to ask yourself is what kind of writer do you want to be? In baseball, prospects are often given the highest ratings for being five-tool players, or players whose skill sets are diversified across the spectrum of abilities (power, average, speed, defense and arm). Writers in the future have the ability to be five-tool players in our own little field of dreams, those five tools being writing, editing, design, marketing and distribution. When one of those prospects finds success on the diamond, they quickly become the cornerstone under which a winning franchise can be built. If writers in large numbers cultivate all the tools needed to get from writing to reader, we, too, have the potential to become cornerstones of our own winning enterprises. Otherwise, we remain one-dimensional players better suited to remain as one of several specialized contributors to a lineup rather than the centerpiece and driving forces we all now can be. Should we strive to be the versatile, all-around great player or the power hitting DH who is slow on the bases, can’t play the field and puts up almost nothing at the plate but home runs and strikeouts? Which player do you think has the greater opportunity for lasting success?

Don’t allow long-standing prejudices about what you are and are not capable of underestimate your worth, value or potential as a writer. The one thing publishers fear more than Amazon is the thought that writers of all stripes will one day figure out that we are just as capable of successfully taking on all the tasks that have been made to seem insurmountable. Ignore the propaganda that says you can’t do something, and you may well discover that you absolutely can. What could be more liberating than that?