The Very Rich Indie Writer
novelr.com
novelr.com
1) The quality was noticeably worse than authors in the genre I enjoy but, critically, difficult to distinguish from at least some New York books that I've paid money for.
2) I did not find myself thinking "Dang, you know what this excerpt needed? A publisher. I mean, look at it, it's so... not published."
3) I wish her every success, and strongly hope that authors I enjoy adopt the model themselves, because continuing the current model adds no value to me and, in fact, subtracts it when I have to deal with territory lockouts or "The book is ready -- you can read it next year."
That's legitimately valuable, but the quotes by Konrath in the article are spot-on: If you don't need the full traditional staff to put out a good product and don't need the advance money, traditional publishing becomes less and less useful to you.
I'm a little more optimistic about the traditional model than most people are - I think with some basic adjustments and modernizations, they've got another pretty good 10-30 years in them doing things similar to how they're done now. But it's definitely more viable than ever to go outside the model, especially for people able to put out a polished product without help.
Some people can write/polish well enough without those roles, and they stand to gain a lot from the new models. But it'll be a while before traditional publishing is no more. Actually, the biggest worry they should have is that bestselling authors go off on their own after one or two wins, like how Seth Godin just announced he's not doing any traditional publishing any more. That's got to be a little scary for the industry.
If you're an author, your first book is like a startup.
You have to either beg your friends and family to do copy-editing for you, do a lot of it yourself, or somehow raise funds to get a pro copy-editor.
Do you have evidence that outsourcing this will actually cost that?
An editor will make an author take a book through several drafts, and often have the author make major cuts and additions. A good editor will force the author to make the small changes that make a book have a compelling emotional arc. The difference between "moving" and "flat" is often just a few sentences. A good editor actually has the power to demand a better performance out of the author--like a good coach on a sports team.
"Pay somebody money, problem solved." Is this like programming? I need someone to build a web app, so I just pay somebody money, problem solved?
I'm not trying to say that the publishing industry isn't going to undergo big changes, but your comment seems to me dismissive of a profession requiring dedication and creativity.
My only point is that the editorial process is important and finding a good editor just as difficult as finding a good designer or programmer. It's not a problem you just throw money at.
For this purpose you could even argue that going freelance is better because you get to choose your editor and have control over choosing a new one if that person leaves the profession or isn't any good.
Of course that is part of why bubbles in publishing pop so hard, people get burned out on the crap put out to "fill the need"
And until I actually investigated it, I wouldn't claim that editing and such takes a four-figure outlay. I would defer to patio11 there.
Most of my reviews of ebooks on Amazon are driven by a pedantic hatred of poorly edited written material.
I did read an ebook recently[1] where the author credited a couple online editing services in the acknowledgements. However, they missed a number of places where the author forgot to put a verb in a sentence, or forgot a preposition, or misspelled a proper name. I highlighted (thank you Kindle) passages such as"The table about ten feet away from the fence I planned on coming over,"[2] because it stopped me from "flowing" through the book while I tried to figure out what just happened. Wait, what about the table? Did it do something? Did someone do something to it? I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE TABLE!
[1] Because the author asked me to give me a bad review of his book after reading my review of another book in the same genre. http://www.amazon.com/review/R19V93VWMFZB8W/ref=cm_aya_cmt?i... -- I'm a sucker for the post-apocalyptic wish fulfillment junk. Dissatisfied with my life? Don't get personal.
[2] Some more examples: "The curved angle of the claws in this position would actually help guide the spears into chest," "He said it take much extra effort," and "People can get used anything especially if their lives depend on it."
This is why sampling is so important, unless they got someone to edit the first part but not all of it, the grammar/etc issues should be obvious within 5 pages.
This wasn't ''bad'' per se, and as an aspiring indie author I've faced the same issues so can empathise.
But an excerpt full of constant "I" and "He" really trips up the flow and is a classic newbie author mistake (the first novella I wrote had an identical problem and was almost unreadable). Plenty of issues with sentence structure too; random example "Mr. Meade suggested, and I groaned." (stuck between two pieces of speech by Meade).
There is a strange and magical skill to making the words of a story flow properly. She doesn't seem to be there yet, but it takes time.
Also; copyeditors you don't know (i.e. not family & friends) are crucial :D
For example, An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom http://www.meilinmiranda.com/intimate-history An erotic (but not the main focus) coming of age story in a victorian world. It's really good and original, but it mixes so many genres and is so different from what I'm used to that I wouldn't expect any mainstream publisher to publish it...
The other big example of this is some works of fanfiction like Eliezer's Yudkowski Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality which is popular here... It would never be published because it's fanfiction but it's original and is quite different from what I'm normally used to by mainstream publishers...
Amazon helped her, the Internet too. She blogs, people get attracted with her stories. After that, She releases a book, cheap like $3, people buy. Her blog, Amazon, word of mouth... all of that bring her sales. She makes money.
Find a niche, figure out what your customers want, make the product and profit.
There was an article earlier this month in the NYT (web version: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/books/05ebooks.html) with some observations on children consuming ebook content.
"At HarperCollins, for example, e-books made up 25 percent of all young-adult sales in January, up from about 6 percent a year before — a boom in sales that quickly got the attention of publishers there."
And that's from the publishing 'house' example.
The NYT article also observes that a lot of kids are getting ebook readers as gifts. When a grandparent/aunt/uncle can't think of a specific book to give a kid for their birthday or whatever, rather than give them a piece of junk toy or unwanted clothes, they can buy an ebook reader, maybe with a small Amazon gift certificate or a DVD full of formatted Gutenberg texts.
I can only imagine it will be a short time before the author's age falls even further for some of these stories of young writers making money. I could see the clever goth girl in junior high pounding out a thin book a month and self-publishing for $.99.[1] Ebooks have disconnected the feeling of "value" and "heft" of a book, which publishers have been inadvertently reinforcing for years with the hard/soft cover versions of books.
As with the Twilight (although, not so much with the Harry Potter) books I mentioned earlier, our idea of "quality" isn't necessarily important to hook kids. If it's escapist literature with a character with whom a kid can identify, you could pull a George Lucas (oh look, another one) and use Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces as a money-printing machine.
[1] What a perfect time, too: take the last few years of your livejournal blog, put it into chapters, and format it for the Kindle.
This is quite similar to the formula which prints money in urban fantasy, whose core market is grown women. They're often shlocky, but that is part of the appeal.
Anecdotally, from reading reviews prior to purchasing, a lot of my fellow Plucky Mechanic Dating Brooding Vampire Lord readers love their Kindles to death, despite being neither juvenile nor obviously tech savvy.
Before, by some strange twist of fate, she finds me talking about her online, she did not read or endorse the Twilight books. She did want to watch the movie "with the vampires fighting the werewolves" but was rather put out that the fight was so short, cramming seventeen seconds of action in a twelve-hour movie.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tonya-plank/meet-mega-bestsell...
At $3/each, with 70% going to her, that's $388k. Not bad, but not >1M.
Also she sold something like 450k books in January alone.
One thing that might happen is that the volume of books being printed will decrease dramatically. Maybe they'll implement a JIT inventory strategy.
[edit: Although such an inventory system would only be plausible online. Print on-demand.]
(My local bookshop, the Harvard Book Store, has had an EBM for a few months, proudly placed so you can see it in the windows. They're doing a pretty steady business --- mostly self-published stuff, but there's also a steady run of academics ordering obscure out-of-copyright stuff through Google Books.)
[1] http://waltshiel.com/2011/01/17/your-book-investment-marketi...
She's obviously doing pretty well based on her Amazon rank, but I'm a little skeptical of the 100-450k per month number.
"AH: As of Tuesday, January 04, 2011 at 9 PM, I've sold over 185,000 books since April 15, 2010."
Finally, her blogging style isn't for everyone. Some people want to come across as "not phony" and tailor their writing style to that ethic. Maybe you don't have the patience for a non-professional tone.
A story is cheaper to write than a movie is to make, perhaps 100 or 1000 times cheaper. That matters to the reader because, each year, there are many more stories to chose from than there are films. The reader can find the particular kind of story that they especially like, which makes up for the fact it is only writing and not a film.
I'd be especially interested in a quick email chat with people who have written content for it, even though you and other HN readers are most likely not my target market.
Anyway, I'm interested; if you see this, find me at seligerj [[AT]] gmail ((dot) com.
"TP: Do you have any "training" as a writer? Did you take any workshops or college classes?
AH: I've taken every writing class I've had available. I took classes in high school, and I took English and writing classes in community college, but I dropped out of college. I also attended a local writing workshop two years ago."
1. incumbent, customers, and an offering that is high quality along a dimension valued by the customers. The dimension might be: how entertaining, how educational, how clever, how escapist, etc.
2. entrant, different customers, and an offering that is crap along the above dimension, but better than nothing for their customers. They can't attract the incument's customers, so they instead attract people who currently have nothing (and to whom "crap" is therefore delightful). It serve them, but the incumbent can't, because it is cheaper and/or more convenient/accessible/customizable.
3. over time, the entrant improves. The incumbent's customers don't actually want perfection along that dimension, just good enough (like a small meal, you want it bigger, but eventually it's big enough, you are satiated, and you don't want any more). The entrant doesn't need to beat the incumbent; it only needs to be good enough. But it's also cheaper/more convenient etc, so the incumbent's customers switch: disruption.
notes: Disruption might not happen, e.g. if the customers aren't satiated; if the entrant can't improve enough. In considering the dimension, it's important to consider not just want the company provides, but what the customer is trying to achieve (benefit, not feature).
For indy writer's, the product seems to be clearly inferior. But it's cheaper and more convenient (on a kindle - though many books are too). It seems to have already found an audience who doesn't mind that (who is that audience?). Dedicated, intelligent people get better at whatever they work at; so it's reasonable to assume that these indy writers will improve.
Is there any reason to think they won't improve enough to meet the needs of readers of traditional books? One issue is that they have no editor, and an editor can help tremendously. Not just in proof-reading, but also in direction, even plot ideas, character issues - and marketability. It's hard for the one person to be both creator and objective appraiser. But perhaps there could arise a new "indy editor" position? Or writers can persuade their spouse to be their editor (osc does this). Or (who knows) crowd source it (webpage?)/mechanical turk it.
[EDIT But I cannot edit properly myself. It's just not possible. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tonya-plank/meet-mega-bestsell...]
But note that it doesn't need to be as good as traditional books - it just needs to be good enough for what the market wants. That's enough to disrupt the incumbent publishers. I will note here that many page-turners that sold very well were decried by critics. It seems almost a truism that popular books are "trash" - til the author's dead, anyway. (Though I note that these sometimes are based on savvy market reading - for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hardy_Boys) Therefore, it seems quite plausible that indy writers can eventually become good enough to disrupt traditional publishers.
Hiya. Plucky Quilt Maker Wooed By Exotic Half-Dragon pretty much has me at "Hello." If it turns out to be terrible, oh well, $4/$7/$10 isn't much money. I watched Green Hornet, too. It was bad, but it is not so bad that it will scare me away from the cinema forever... and it cost three times as much as genre fiction for a fraction of the enjoyment. (Semi-relevant: like many genre fans, my consumption in 2010 was above that of 20 average US households.)
I agree with your analysis of incumbents and entrants. I think it's a clever, really clear way of looking at it.
RE: your 2nd point: Novelr.com is about writers who are posting their fiction online, in a serialized, once/twice-a-week format, and then turning their work to ebooks for sale on the various ebook stores. That's one trend to watch out for, and I can say with confidence that there is a market, however inconsistent the quality may be. There are customers out there for the entrant, and they are biting.
(Plus there's also fanfiction, and sites like Fictionaut, where writers read, comment, and suggest (mostly grammatical & spelling) edits on each others' work. I've been seeing trends like this for about four years now.) It's pretty cool stuff - dynamic, engaging fiction, some good writing (see: http://webfictionguide.com - for the good ones).
RE: Your 3rd point: we're building Pandamian (http://pandamian.com), a tool that attempts to make this write-online/publish-to-ebookstores thing accessible to all writers. It's mostly a response to the community's needs - with the mantra that 'writers should not need to read a single line of code'. Our hope, at least, is that the app would allow all kinds of writers the ability to write a book online, get a community of readers around their books, and then publish to the Kindle/Kobo/Smashwords store.
We launched on Tuesday, and now have a small group of very vocal users.
Do note, however, that proper ebook conversion isn't ready yet. This is more minimum-viable product than anything else - if you log in you'll see a UserVoice forum filled with feature requests, which we're working on.
Will check it out.
Thanks.