I wish I'd self-published sooner
blog.alexellis.io
blog.alexellis.io
When I sent the book proposal to Brockman, he told me bluntly: "I can't sell this. You can't write". Three months later, the story found its way to the front page of the NY Times. First person who called (at 3AM Pacific time): John Brockman. "Lemme sell your book!"
So he went ahead and sold the book proposal. Didn't just sell it. He auctioned it amongst publishers. End of the day, there was a $40,000 advance (wow - more than I was making on my job!)
I started writing: got through the first 5 chapters. Then my friend, Guy Consolmagno visited (he was joining the Jesuits). I showed him the manuscript, and as he read it, his face dropped. After 30 or 40 pages, he looked up and said, "Cliff, this is terrible. It's all about computers."
"Of course, I replied,"I'm writing a book about computer security,"
Guy answered: "Every computer jock in the world will want a copy. Doubleday will probably sell 600 copies."
"Yep, that's the book proposal that they bought!"
"You idiot! They don't want to sell 600 copies," Guy said. "They want to sell 6 thousand. Maybe 60,000. You gotta do better than this..."
"Look, Cliff. Don't write about computers," Guy continued. "Write about people!"
"It's not about people," I replied. "The book's about the Arpanet, about crypto systems, about os holes, about how to manage a Unix system."
"No it ain't," he said. "It's about those hackers in Germany. The bureaucrats in the FBI who have never touched a computer. The NSA people who listen but won't lift a finger. The CIA agents who pester you in Berkeley. It's about the long-hair computer jocks you work with. It's about the nutty living situation you're in. Most of all, it's about you."
Well, I listened to my friend. Tossed those chapters and rewrote 'em. Told my story in first person.
Today, many of you now know me because of that book.
Editing? Mainly my sister Jeannie (who's a professional editor) and David Gernert of Doubleday.
Brockman? He's still running a literary agency in New York. Brother Guy? He's now the director of the Vatican Observatory. Me? I'm still in the Bay Area, wondering how I ever wrote a book.
Perhaps the highest compliment that you say to an author is, "Tell me more!"
Oh I just remembered, I need to pick up one of your Klein bottles, and perhaps another as a Christmas gift.
"Three months later, the story found its way to the front page of the NY Times."
I don't get this part of your comment.
What story? Any links? And how did it make it to the nytimes?
Having said the obvious, yes I would publish in print (hey - my feet are firmly in the 20th century). Moreover, I didn't write to make money, nor to make a name for myself, and certainly not to become well known. At first, I simply wanted to teach. Computer security. After talking with Guy, I realized that I had a story to tell.
Today, if I had the liberty to choose, I probably wouldn't self-publish. Partly because there's so very much to do: I don't want to become an expert in fonts, page-layout, paper, cover-art, distribution, promotion, and press-runs, etc. These are the important things that a publisher does. More important, I need the feedback that only an editor can give me.
I see my editor as the one person who represents my audience. An editor wears many hats - most important is a quality meter: I expect my editor to say, "This chapter isn't any good. Rewrite it." or "These paragraphs confuse me" or "You've said this twice!" In short, I expect red ink all over my manuscript, just like in high school and college English classes. Yep, I may scribble STET in the margin, but I take every red mark seriously -- it's my editor speaking on behalf of my readers.
Of course, for someone writing to make money, my comments probably are of little or no use.
Warm wishes to all! -Cliff (under a starry sky in Oakland, California)
Your friend was so right
The description of your original plan for the book sounds great too (just as interesting to me), and I would buy it. There are not that many great computer books out there.
1. Successful people need help from others.
2. Successful people make the right personal choice on who to listen to.
Two that stood out in that aspect were "Unix: A History and a Memoir" by Brian Kernighan and "Not All Fairytales Have Happy Endings" by Ken Williams (of Sierra, Space Quest, etc.)
Had really high hopes for both and they were an absolute chore to read. The "Unix" was excruciatingly boring, despite the underlying material. The "Sierra" was just over-board quirky and poorly structured, more like a collection of random notes stapled together and padded to target thickness. Both could've been much better given a bit of professional editing attention.
Even if you have the bones of a good story, even if you're a talented writer, a good editing process can transform your work from an unreadable mess to an actual solid novel.
Also, there’s nothing stopping someone self publishing from getting an editor to polish their manuscript before publication.
The truth is that most authors who self publish are simply not good at writing.
I am generally a fan of self publishing, it’s great for good writers as they get to keep more of the money and for the ones on the border it allows them to get something out there that might be good enough for a small audience.
It seems to me there has been a decline in the quality of editing by major publishers in recent years – though it may be that I have become better at noticing prose that would benefit from editing. Self-published stuff is normally worse, but it’s no surprise: hiring an editor would turn many self-published books from a modest profit to a heavy loss.
The thing is that writing can be bad in a multitude of ways, and a good editor can fix at least one of those — and, at the very least, help ensure that the ideas on paper are written according to the norms and conventions of the language.
They may have made more profit from hiring an editor, or engaging in regular book publication, but that's not 100% guaranteed.
Also, they may have self-published just for fun.
There's more than one way to do it, and I don't think we're qualified to judge ex-post if what Brian Kernighan chose to share his memoirs was the best way.
Self-publishing can cover both. Quality might be a constraint for either, but again, it's not guaranteed
Of course, in practice, this doesn't seem to happen very often. I'm not sure why. It's not like your average self-published author is poor (they're generally the type of people who are well-off enough to dedicate a good fraction of their time to writing!)
I assume many people just don't realize that "hiring an editor to help you fix up your own book" is something you can do. Or maybe they've never cultivated a "spend money to make money" mindset.
A lot of the books you'll find from 'real' publishing companies are just peer-edited by a group of people who were told they'd get their name stamped in the imprint if they read through an advance copy. Not much better than self-editing, but still...
And the piece of paper did nothing to help them become an editor, either; people seem to do just as well getting editing gigs with no degree at all. Which means, more than likely, no particular education in editing at all!
I don't think this is true of people who work for the big publishing houses. I've watched podcasts talking about it - there's a lot of fancy school names and knowing the right people involved, but 1 year programs aren't really whats going on there.
I know someone whose an editor-in-chief at an imprint of one of the major publishing houses. He majored in English as an undergraduate at a major university and has worked in the field as an editor for twenty years.
1-10 thousand for hiring someone to edit.
That could be the entire profit of most self published books.
Someone like Brandon Sanderson has not only an editor but continuity staff to make sure his plot lines aren’t full of holes and timelines make sense. But he sells millions.
I always thought that’s an important part of what an editor does. I've edited, typeset and generally helped develop a couple of books for a friend who self-publishes fiction. I look out for stuff like continuity errors right down to seemingly petty ones, such as a TV being turned off twice. Maybe some readers wouldn’t notice, but I do.
I first read over to get a feel for the book, then I discuss any high-level improvements — little things like suggesting re-ordering chapters to maintain suspense. Sometimes it means breaking bad news gently, such as song lyrics in a work of fiction not falling under the doctrine of fair dealing[0] and licensing fees that make an editor look cheap.
In the self-published space, achieving 9th decile in terms of cover art, editing or typesetting doesn’t seem like much of a challenge. It’s really nice to see a draft become a finished product and be a part of that.
[0] Fair dealing is like fair use but in the UK.
By analogy: all that $5 plastic junk on Wish/AliExpress/etc. The no-name manufacturing companies responsible for this dross, charge so little because they have no idea how to make quality products. Nobody will pay more than they're charging for the low standard of quality they're capable of putting out, so that's what they have to charge.
But when one of these companies figures out how to make higher-quality stuff, they do start selling it for more, and begin creating a trustworthy brand, and begin marketing that brand on more trustworthy marketplaces, and so they end up with higher profit margins, despite the increased CapEx.
I'd assume for books of his scale authors use specialized software to keep track of plot lines and characters.
You say that like most people who self-publish could get their work past a publisher's slush pile.
As someone who's in the middle of it right now, I keep being surprised by how much more work there is to do, even on a "polished" manuscript. It's a long process and I'm not surprised most people don't have the stamina to get through it.
Personally I think the democratization of publishing away from formal publishers is one the best things to happen to publishers. The gatekeepers kind of suck.
It is probably twofold.
One is that you might simply don’t know what you don’t know. Maybe what the author really needs is a developmental editor (one who goes through with them the big structure of the work) but if the author thinks of editors as glorified spellcheckers that is what they are going to seek and pay for. The editor might have an opinion about the structure, but if they are not paid for that they won’t get into the details enough to help.
And that leads to the second problem. In a self-publishing context the author has all the money and therefore all the power. They decide when the editing process is done, and every extra week they spend editing comes out of their own rapidly dwindling funds. In a traditional publishing context failure is an option. Many books don’t get published. If the pitch is not good enough, it gets dropped. If the first few chapters is not good enough it gets dropped. If they can’t polish it to satisfaction with an editor the work gets dropped. I’m not saying that quality is the only rubric the publishers use to judge when to drop a book vs when to publish, but it is heavily judged at every step of the way at multiple gates. In contrast the main and only selection force on self-publishing is if the author has the funds and the gumption.
Is it possible that someone has the time to write a book and the talent to be good at it? Furthermore is it possible that the same person also has enough money to not skimp on the editing? And furthermore that they find the right editor for the right job and has the wisdom to give enough time to the process? Certainly. But of course more often than not one or the other is going to go awry from this. And i believe that is the answer to your question. This is why well edited self-published books don’t happen as often as well edited traditionally published ones.
Maybe I come from a different writing "culture", but most of the books I see being self-published are restructurings of works previously published online in serial format (if nonfiction, as blog posts; if fiction, as several-times-weekly mini-chapter serial fiction), where the popularity of the output is effectively pre-determined, as the creation and publication of a standalone purchasable book is entirely being driven by demand for such by the existing audience of the source material.
Further, those serial publications are often, these days, being sponsored via Patreon, or published via apps that charge to unlock chapters and give some of that money to the author, and so forth — so the author already has an income stream from their work, that they can reinvest into their work (through editing) to multiply the amount they're making from their work.
In that sense, "editing" for their books becomes exactly the same as "editing" for e.g. a YouTube channel: something where there's a direct proven correlation between "production values" and "attach rate", where that and a steady existing revenue stream will be enough to get you a business loan from any sensible bank.
https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/09...
You might be the most correct entertaining writer ever but if you can't convince a publisher that they should publish your book, your book is going to have a hard time ever getting published.
At least, that used to be true, until self publishing online came about and the entire publishing model was tranformed by it.
I think this author is writing about publishing a book, not having a book edited, which are very different things. The mistakes a good editor (or beta readers, etc) would have caught. Boring writing would never have made it through the slush pile at a publisher. But it would also be accompanied by many great books the publisher doesn't think are in style or didn't hook the editor in the first 5 pages so will never get published...
Isaacson is really good - his Jobs' biography, the Innovators, the Code Breaker - all are firmly footed in facts, but very easy and interesting to read.
"Kitchen Confidentials", "Blind Man's Bluff" and "Seizing the Enigma" are really good in the same sense.
Level down there are "Skunk Works" and "The Soul of a New Machine" - interesting, but dense and sluggish.
At the bottom, to me at least, there's "Unix" and "Most Secret War" - very difficult to get through with all joy lost to being buried in facts and no connective tissue.
Secondly, I also noticed that Kernighan book on the web, and my first thought was "that is such an amateurish cover!" It does not sell the book at all, and I'm not at all surprised that the writing is equally weak.
Third, the Reedsy site is invaluable for finding good professionals. But you have to be the judge of what's good. If you don't have good taste, then you'll just need to be very lucky.
Lastly, Clifford: your friend who said the book was about the people you interacted with did you a tremendous favor. That's what the readers want, even in non-fiction, unless you're writing a purely how-to book.
I think anyone with even a passing familiarity with Kernighan's work would be surprised by an instance of weak writing.
This book, though, attempts to be something different. Writing history that's accurate and making it interesting is not easy. If it's non-fiction and a long time ago, you find that most people can't remember much of anything, and certainly not any dialog.
I found from my book's reviews that a couple people wanted something more like Kernighan's. Oh well. That's not what I wanted to do, so I'm not sorry. Other people have done that.
Like one of the reviewers said (a 5-star review):
There’s no doubt that this book has a limited audience. In my opinion, to find the book interesting, you need to have a pre-existing interest in computer history, Unix, and programming (in that order). If you already have some familiarity with using Unix (or its derivatives) from the command-line, that will certainly help you understand the significance of many of the items that Kernighan discusses. If you have no prior experience with Unix, then I don’t know why you picked up this book or read this review!
It's unclear to me whether you're applying this statement to Kernighan's Unix history, which I haven't read, but he's given some good talks on the matter in recent years that serve as counterexamples to the notion that he doesn't remember anything.
Whether he knows enough to write something that's compelling... I mean, seriously, I don't even know what it would take for a history of Unix to be compelling. I see that your book is a historical novel. Maybe that's the way to go.
> K&R was a real masterpiece.
He has written a number of very good books.
(It occurs to me that the guy is in his late seventies in addition to working without an editor, but I'm not going to jump to any conclusions about the writing without looking at the book)
I'm sure Kernighan remembers certain things that he did, and that's fine for a memoir. Usually, though, if you ask someone else who was there, they either don't remember it at all, or have a completely different set of facts. Or they've died or otherwise become unreachable. One of my podcast interviewers said he'd talked to three people who were at the Jobs-PARC meetings, and gotten three different stories about what happened.
The stories we've all read about Hitler's last days were established by Hugh Trevor-Roper [1], and he talked to hundreds of people, comparing their stories to each other, and making sure they hadn't coordinated their stories. He did it so well that the facts have never been seriously challenged. (unfortunately, he fell for the fake "Hitler diaries" story much later, which kinda damaged his reputation.)
I had some documents to go on (thanks to bitsavers), and I guess Brian must have, too. But I didn't go nearly into the level of thoroughness HT-R did.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_TrevorRoper#Investigating...
As mentioned in the article by Alex, having a following/email list helps a lot. I've also had good experience creating bundles with fellow indie creators, since it helps to reach a wider audience.
[0] https://learnbyexample.github.io/my-book-writing-experience/
I used Latex for the editing (giving me a very polished final look, something where most self-published books fail at), did the illustrations myself (drawings, done using photographie and a vector drawing program: the result has fooled some professionals into thinking I am great at drawing), had an army of proofreaders (almost a dozen with various degree of knowledge on the subject matter, paid with a copy of the book, all of them found numerous mistakes) and even a lawyer (for advice on some copyright fine details as the book contains translations from other authors).
Overall I would reommend the experience and will likely do it again (the next step is being in control of the marketing aspect).
(out of stock at the moment but the editor tells me they will refill the stock shortly)
My only regret is I didn’t start sooner.
2. If your book is open source then perfect technical content first and then edit it
3. Have loads of examples rather than information dump
4. Curse of knowledge is real. What knowledge you consider as common sense will blow a newbie's brains. So we have to read the book in "reverse" kinda way. Every sentence and word has to make sense to anyone and their grandmother.
5. Leanpub is really good for self publishing and your book gets good audience if you make it "pay what you want" rather than a completely paid book.
We might think that paid only is the only way but if your book is free to download then you don't lose paying customers. Those who couldn't afford/don't want to pay are just not able to download.
But if it is free & optional to pay then you get a higher audience.
Leanpub allows you to have a DL kind of thing. Please use it.
Post on related subreddits to get advice. You'll not get such a great advice from anywhere else
Do DM me if you have any questions. I'll love to help!
I can't see your email on HN nor DM functionality, is there any chance I can know your email?
This is my temp email id. Please email me there and I'll reply from my primary id.
I also see some people distributing self-published physical books themselves. Would love to know the hows and economy of it.
See https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/jqx39c/rfantasy_to... for success stories.
Been considering throwing my books in a repo on github and just let people have them free.