direct publishing | MORIAH JOVAN

An idea for RWA!

December 9, 2009Moriah

Publishing is changing, the latest clue being Torstar’s vanity publishing line, DellArte (clever me, I said Torstar instead of Harlequin)*.

But we all agree on this one point, right? I mean, publishing can be DOOMED, or it can be METAMORPHOSING, or it can be LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!! but something’s going on.

And we all know MWA, RWA, and all those types delisted Harlequin, which won’t make a damn bit of difference to Harlequin (or Torstar, hee!).

Mrs. Giggles and Karen Scott both get it about the DellArte thing: Say somebody wants to pay to play.

So what?

But then on Karen’s blog the thread turned to what RWA should do about it and she said (I’m sure mostly tongue-in-cheek):

Since the RWA took the step of delisting HQN, they may as well go the whole hog and have a fulsome ‘Vanity Press Is Evil’ programme that informs authors about the pitfalls of going the vanity/self-pubbing route, rather than leaving it to the likes of Writer Beware. Merely delisting HQN is far too much of a passive-aggressive way of tackling this potentially world-altering, humanity-defying problem.

You know what I think RWA should do instead of having a Vanity Press Is Evil program? I think the RWA should have a program to inform, instruct, and help those members who are interested in self-publishing, provide a publishing punchlist, which publishing services cost what (and what’s reasonable), how to do it right, with the understanding that no matter which self-publishing route you go, you are going to pay to play. The opportunities for information mining (read: conference workshops read: ka-ching) are endless.

DellArte would be cast as the devil by default, just on their prices.

But then, that would be a proactive thing to do.

The RWA is reactive. This is an organization that grits its teeth when forced to acknowledge the fact of successful e-publishers like Ellora’s Cave/Cerridwen Press, Samhain Publishing, Loose Id, et al.

Oh well. It was an idea.

UPDATE: Well, this is what I get for not waiting a day on new Publishing Doom news to post this. Some more clues might be:

Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Harper Collins have decided to withhold ebook release for some months to give the hardcovers a chance to earn some money. That might not sound like such a bad thing until you realize that a lot of money (read: people) would not have bought the hardcover and so by the time the ebook comes out, the money (read: people) will have forgotten about the book.

Some money (read: person read: me) had this problem last night when Smart Bitches feature “Bookmatch,” which is a type of internet handselling from a pro at Powell’s recommended a book. I wanted it. RIGHT THEN!!! And, uh, well, it’s not in E. I’ll forget about the book in another couple of days.

And then Kirkus Reviews (the chichi book review rag) closes.

Oh yeah. I think we can all agree publishing is changing, can’t we?

You wanna know how I came to self-publishing?

December 7, 2009Moriah

I’m camping out at KatieBabs’s blog today, spilling my guts.

There is no such thing as royalties

November 20, 2009Moriah

…in self-publishing.

Self-publishers do not “earn royalties.”

Stop thinking in terms of royalties.

It’s called “profit.” There is overhead. There are COGS. There is revenue.

Why? Self-publishers manufacture a product*; they have not licensed a product.

Sales – COGS = gross profit.

Gross profit – overhead = net profit (aka ka-ching)

There are no royalties.

Royalties do not exist.

Say it with me now: Self-publishers do not earn royalties; they have profit. Now put all that “royalties” BS out of your head.

And Amazon? I know you know this, but you use the term deliberately to blur the lines between your retail business and your POD service. You know very good and well you don’t pay royalties. You give us a rebate on our rental fee for your stalls, you know, like at a flea market.

*A lot of authors don’t like having their babies compared to widgets. A lot of authors don’t like having books compared to babies. My books are my babies. They are also my widgets.

The unmentionable alternative

November 10, 2009Moriah

I am constantly struck by the idea that writers “give up.” What does that mean, exactly? They stop writing? They stop submitting? Or they stop writing because they’re so disheartened by the submitting? My bet’s on that.

Keep on submitting and you will get published.

By “writer,” I mean good, unpublished novelists who don’t, for whatever reason, catch an agent and/or editor’s eye. I’m not talking about the people who don’t hang out on agent and editor blogs, learning every query trick in the book (some of which are flat wrong to some agents and golden to others). These are the writers who assume that the problem is with them, not with the odds.

Write a better book next time.

Oh, fuck that. It’s odds, folks, whether you want to believe it or not—and the odds get worse every week. And that write a better book bullshit? How do you know the one you just wrote is bad?

You don’t.

And then some of you will crack under the discouragement and say, “I write crap.” And you’ll stop submitting. You may even stop writing.

I did that.

I didn’t write crap, per se. I wrote slightly off-tick that didn’t hit the romance formula bullseye exactly right. Yeah, I said it. There’s a formula. I couldn’t hit it, and the misses were near enough that it was sickening.

willworkforfood243x301 This is not an anti-traditional-publishing rant. This is about writers, about you and your work and how much faith you have in it.

Why are you basing your goals on decisions someone else has to make? And, by extension, why are you waiting for validation based on odds that aren’t in your favor? And why are you acting like a job applicant?

You’re not powerless.

But somehow the idea of taking control of your work and presenting it to the public/the readers/the (gasp) curators is “giving up.”

Because “money always flows to the author.” Fuck that, too.

Yeah, you’ll have to assume some risk. Deal with it.

It pains me to see good writers on agent blogs talking about “when I’m published someday,” because “it will happen if I submit enough and don’t give up” and “I just have to write a better book next time.”

Stop thinking that way and start believing in your product.

Stop thinking you have no power.

Stop thinking like an employee and start thinking like an entrepreneur.

Go make your own damned job.

Update: To clarify, I’m using the term “curators” to describe the self-appointed task of the people who consume the work, like it, and recommend it to others, i.e., the readers/fans, the people who make being The Lone Artist all worth it. I’m not using the term as it has been tossed around the internet for the last year.

Everything is still biased against the lone artist.

November 4, 2009June 22, 2015Moriah

I didn’t say it. Someone who shall remain nameless said that to me, and it started me thinking about The Lone Artist.

I’ve been to New Orleans, Paris, Venice Beach, New York, London, Amsterdam, and other places where The Lone Artist sets about attempting to earn a living or at least approbation from a crowd of strangers walking by.

Paris, France --- A Street artist draws the face of the Mona Lisa on a sidewalk in front of the Louvre to try to earn money. --- Image by © Owen Franken/CORBIS — In Paris, it was the Ecole des Beaux-Arts students drawing Mona Lisa in pastels on the sidewalk, their hats out for coins.

amsterdam — In Amsterdam, it was the scantily-clad prostitutes in the plate-glass windows along the canal. (Okay, as “artist” and “lone,” that one’s questionable, but it’s vivid, ain’t it?)

london — In London, it was the—what is this guy? Is this classified as pantomime? Definitely performance art. (Shut up. I like mimes.)

newyork — In New York, it was the oddball music played by street musicians.

venice — In Venice Beach, it was a dude who charged $5 to create origami magic with one strand from one palm frond. I knew it was a living sculpture that would die in an hour, but I bought it anyway because it was so different and . . . unexpected. I admired that he could do it in seconds right in front of my eyes, I admired the work itself, and I kept it for the hour it lasted, then threw it away. That $5 was very well spent.

In a lot of ways, I like being a lone artist. When I go to authors’ websites and read about the difficulties they have working with a publisher, I’m glad. When I go to readers’ websites and read about how sad they are when a favorite author gets cut off mid-series, I’m glad. When I sit down to write and realize that I can do anything I want without having to account to a sales staff, I’m glad. When I know that the readership I’m gathering one by one, to whom I am ever so grateful, now has enough faith in me to go where I take them, I’m glad.

There is one respect I really don’t like it. I don’t like the near absence of distribution. But . . . that’s about the only way I can think of that I don’t like it. After all, a street performer can only play to the audience that walks by.

It’s not easy. Some days it’s damned depressing. I count on the readers to talk to me and remind me that there is something of worth in what I do, and believe me, I remember it. I count up those emails and screen shots and snippets of conversation here and there, and I keep them, put them in my hard drive bank like coins in my hat.

So when bedtime comes (if it comes) and I fall in bed exhausted from everything I have to do to be a lone artist, it’s the good kind of exhaustion.

Howard Roark laughed.