A bedtime story (about the publishing industry) | Hacker News Reader

A bedtime story (about the publishing industry)

jakonrath.blogspot.com

42 pointssteveklabnik17 comments

This blog, which I've devoured for months, is the best writing about online business I have read this year. Seriously. Listen to the $2.99 serialized serial killer man: he knows his stuff.

Your recommendation on HN is how I actually found his blog, even though I somewhat seriously write as a side thing and follow lots of other writing blogs. Somehow I'd missed it before.

So a kudos to you for sharing it way back when.

You're how I found this blog. I went back and read a lot of the archives, it's really, really good.

Is there any way to get a rss feed with his entire archive?

Get his book here (PDF, free): http://www.jakonrath.com/TheNewbiesGuideToPublishingBook.pdf

That's amazing (the WordArt and typography not so much). I've always held the belief that most blogs should ask themselves if their site could ever be published in book format. If it can, it should, and if it can't, it's worth reconsidering whether you should keep writing it.

To me the most interesting part is how people who haven't traditionally published are supposedly starting to see solid sales numbers for self-pubbed ebooks. He's somewhat of an outlier but not as much as many expected him to be when he first started really preaching the ebook self published religion.

Guess I should start polishing my novel and see what I want to do with it ;)

Two things are interesting in this story. One is that this guy is doing extraordinarily well, much better than the vast majority of traditionally published writers. He is, indeed, an outlier. The other interesting thing about this is how much more money this outlier can make by self-publishing. If that is true for other outliers, that should strike fear in the hearts of traditional publishers, who make most of their money from these outliers.

Note when he traditionally published, he was only an outlier in how much he busted his ass to get in front of people and help make sales.

His level of being an outlier in the ebook publishing many feel is tied to all the people who already read him from his traditional publishing days.

An outlier that wrote like...10 books.

How hard is it to write 10 books and not be successful?

I suppose it's hard, but by the amount of books that use derivative themes from other books it's hard to imagine. 4 or 5 sure, but 10 seems a little ridiculous. He says he got 500 rejections, which seems a little low for 10 books. That's 50 rejections per book, which seems absurdly low given the number of publishers and the vast number of agents.

I mean as a last ditch when you've got 50 rejections you might as well spend a weekend and write an email or letter to every agent in the AAR(US) and AAA(UK) directories to begin with. That'll land you a 100+ rejections if you only do the AAR.

I know a lot of authors have problems doing other things than writing, but if you can't sell yourself then why do you expect others to? Obviously this guy didn't figure out how to sell himself until way late into the game.

Did he not try short stories or even getting a side job in a newspaper in that decade that could have at least lent him credibility as having publishable talent?

Honestly, FTA, it looks like he has a problem dealing with people. He rejected his publishers suggestions and got denied because of it - after he had his foot through the door. If the person paying my bills says "agree or you're fired and may never work again" I'll say sure, whatever, fuck it pay my god damn bills and I'll sell my next book elsewhere.

I'm wondering why he changed his name multiple times, did he breach multi-book contracts?

I'm sorry, but this sounds an awful lot like the music artists who said "fuck you man, that's not how we roll" to their label and got black listed for a decade because they forgot they had a 5 disc deal and broke contract.

Regardless, he's laughing his $22,000/month straight to the bank, so it sounds like "fuck you man, that's not how we roll" is working out, eh?

10+ years later... If he'd 'rolled' and is as talented as he obviously is, he could have been sitting where he is now years ago.

Look at J.K. Rowling, she got a 1,000 book release and told "get a day job". She rolled when the US wanted to make changes, even to the name or face rejection. Now she's virtually a billionaire. I'm not saying he'd be a billionaire, but he could have been making more money than he is now.

Literary careers either seem to fizzle out or just keep growing. Look at John Scalzi, it took years before his literary career beat his day job, but it kept growing. The same can be said for dozens of sci-fi and fantasy writers, including many of the greats.

Depends, if you just wrote books without bothering to REALLY study how fiction works, anything is possible. Writing well is stupid hard, and just writing more won't necessarily teach you how. Though if one's willing to put in the time to write 10 books one would hope the same person could put in the other effort studying the craft side of writing... Not impossible though.

How hard is it to write 10 books and not be successful?

Not very, depending on your definition of "10 books." It's a commonplace that writers need to write about a million words of bad fiction before they start writing fiction others might want to read. I think the curve is about as steep in nonfiction. You can read more about my own adventures in this field via this post: http://jseliger.com/2010/12/09/why-unpublished-novelists-kee... .

I'm excited for a time when it's mainstream to use self-published college textbooks too.

A neighbor of mine is involved in the publishing industry... while I was walking her dog I tried to get an explanation for for why textbooks are so expensive and why they publish new versions every few years. The reason I got was "we put a lot of work into making the books, so the publishing companies need to get money somehow".

A great story -- with a happy ending!

Excellent points about the business model advantages to self-publishing. Of course there are plenty of challenges as well, and relatively few authors support themselves that way. Then again the same's true with the traditional route.

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