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Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing… #6: Put The Book Up and Leave It.
Myths ignore facts. Myths are often beliefs built from fear or past actions. In this series, and in the previous series of Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing, I call the myths that control writers “Sacred Cows.” Writers hold onto myths like lifelines that are keeping them from drowning in a raging river of information. Sometimes sane people in the normal world will follow a publishing myth that makes no sense at all because it has something to do with the publishing business. And they follow the myth without thought. So this new series is an attempt to help the new world of indie publishing with the growing…
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The New World of Publishing: What Should Indie Publishers Be Called?
We have indie publishers, self publishers, specialty-press publishers, small-press publishers, and so on and so on. Are there any differences and does anyone care? Well, it seems some people care. Those people with far too much time on their hands, in my opinion. But alas, I have been asked questions about the differences now for some time and I figured it was about time to lay out my opinion on the subject. So here is how I break it down…. (I will not defend this because, honestly, I have too much actual work to do. And I honestly don’t care. But for the sake of future articles, let me be…
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Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Writers Compete With Each Other.
This myth in the old days (meaning more than three years ago) used to get knocked out of young writers early on in their careers, so it had little or no impact on writing careers as young writers came into the field and got help along the way from older, more experienced professionals. In fact, for the longest time in publishing, the apprentice system was a main way in. I know I got fantastic help coming in from major superstars of fiction writing and I feel fantastically lucky they spent the time to give me advice and help. So I’ve tried to do the same now that I’ve somehow managed…
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The New World of Publishing: The Scams
As we ramp into 2011, I figured that besides all the goal-setting talk, it might be a good time to give a few warnings as well. And maybe set a clear work goal as well. Electronic publishing is the hot topic and traditional publishing is struggling to change to the new world. Indie publishing is becoming the term, and indie writers are vocal and all over the web. Us old-timers who are paying attention to the changes are rushing to get up our lost backlist and reverted novels at the same time as traditional publishers are moving quickly to get all their inventory into electronic form. And everywhere I look…
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The New World of Publishing: The eRace
A long time ago, in a magazine I did for fun for writers called The Report, I came up with an idea to try to add numbers and quantify the mysterious process of submissions to traditional markets. For some reason it got the name of “The Race” because it was a race against ourselves as writers. And it worked in so many ways, I was stunned. First off, it was a clear number that many of us could hang onto to show progress in a business that often doesn’t give a sense of progress. And secondly, it gave a yardstick measurement of the writers who were pushing hard and those…
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The New World of Publishing: My Goal for the New Year
A couple years back in December I did a series of posts here about writers setting goals for the new year. And last year I brought some of the old posts forward. But frighteningly enough, the publishing industry has changed so much and so fast, those posts from just two years ago felt dated. The basics are the same, sure. Things like knowing the difference between a goal and a dream. But even with the basics still being solid in the posts, I don’t feel good enough about those old posts to even link you back to them. So I’m going to talk about writing goals a little again as…
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New World of Publishing: Small Press Ego
Self-publishing writers think that big publishing will collapse because the self-published writers now find it easy to put up their own books. That belief is so silly that I wasn’t sure if this should be a Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing chapter or a New World of Publishing post. The belief is certainly a new myth. But since it is not hurting too many people yet, I figure it’s not enough of a myth to make the “cows” book yet. Here is the thinking: I can get my own book up now and not have to fight the traditional-publisher’s mess of outsourcing slush to agents and cost-cutting trends, therefore…
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The New World of Publishing: It Ain’t So Easy
So far, in a number of these chapters in this topic, I’ve talked about the differences with this new world and the old traditional publishing. And then in the last post I talked about just one of the decisions that writers publishing their own books in their own publishing company must face. Pricing decisions, and that chapter caused all kinds of fun conversations. And as many writers have learned already in this new world, being a publisher these days is easy COMPARED to what it used to be. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy in general. It’s just easier than it used to be. So for a moment I thought…
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The New World of Publishing: E-Book Pricing
On a number of different email lists over the last four or five months there have been discussions on ebook pricing. Joe Konrath is a defender of the $2.99 novel price, while traditional publishers are keeping their prices in the $7.99 to $15.99 range depending on how new the book is. And on these lists what we all read over and over is personal examples of how it worked for that person, or that person’s sister, or mother. So I thought I would try to just lay out some facts and where we stand on this subject right now in the fall of 2010. FACTS 1) We have no real…
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Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: New York Works as a Quality Filter
Very few of these chapters has dealt with the editor and publisher side of publishing. I know that in fiction publishing there are lots of problems with publishers, and right now picking on them just seems to be like kicking dirt onto a person who is struggling to even figure out how to stay alive. Besides, I have been an editor over the years and I know that stuff just flat goes wrong in publishing houses that is often no one’s fault. But for the most part, even though writers hate to admit it, most of the problems in this business are firmly planted on the writers’ side of the…