Seth Godin: How To Change Your Luck

Seth Godin writes, "One of the biggest distinctions between old publishing and new is the nature of luck." Giving your book to a traditional publisher was often like spinning a roulette wheel and hoping your book would get lucky and be the next surprise bestseller.

Independent publishing doesn't rely as much on luck, or perhaps relies on a different kind of luck, one more tied to people and to building a culture, a tribe. (For more on this, watch Seth Godin's TED talk, Seth Godin on the tribes we lead.)

Building a tribe is not a matter of a miracle, instead, it’s about converting tiny groups of people at a time, leading them, connecting them, building an audience. When a self-published author does this, she has a new job. Not the author part, the publisher part. She’s not putting a book into the universe and hoping it will be found. She’s not even putting a book in a journalist’s hands and hoping it will be hyped. No, she is engaging in a years-long journey to build a platform. It might take a decade to become an overnight success, but if you keep it up, if you keep building, the odds keep getting better and better.

That’s why it’s silly to compare the two ways of making a book happen. If you can get a great deal from a publisher and you’re into the spin, go spin! If you want to control the building of the platform, get your hands dirty and avoid the whims of fate, then the other path makes a lot more sense, no?

Read the rest of the article here: Are you feeling lucky?

Thanks to Passive Voice Blog for the link.

Self-Publishing Will NOT Hurt Your Chances Of Being Traditionally Published

So says agent Rachelle Gardner. She writes:

Self-publishing probably will not hurt your chances of traditional publishing.
....
[T]he lightning-fast turnaround of the “perception” of self-publishing is nothing short of astonishing. Most of us in “traditonal” publishing no longer think of it as a negative thing ...

You can read the whole article here.

Thanks to Passive Guy for the link.

The Agency Model on Steroids

The French National Assembly has voted into law a bill that allows publishers in France to not only fix the pricing of books inside France but in other countries as well.

Unfortunately—or fortunately?—the cross-border clause "contravenes European law," according to TheBookseller.com.

Writer Beware: Contracts

I consider myself relatively knowledgeable about the business of writing, which is why Kritine Kathryn Rusch's post this week shocked me. I used to think of an agent as a writer's advocate, someone who would, among other things, help the writer negotiate her contract with a publisher, someone who would have the writer's best interests at heart.

In Advocates, Addendums, and Sneaks, oh my! Kristine writes that, for the most part, this is no longer true. For example:

I hadn’t realized until a few months ago that the adversarial relationship that sometimes existed between writer and publisher had moved into the agent/author relationship.

My first glimmer came when I looked at a former student’s agency agreement. Honestly, when the student contacted me to look over a contract clause, I thought the clause was in a publishing contract—at least that’s how it read in the e-mail. Then I saw the entire agreement and realized who had issued it.

The agreement called for the agent to have the right to represent the writer’s work in all forms for the duration of the copyright of the work, even if the relationship between the agent and the writer was terminated. I blinked, damn near swallowed my tongue, and told the writer not to sign the agreement. Even though the agency was a reputable one, this clause was horrible.

Too late, though. The writer had signed the agreement a year before I looked at it, and something had happened between writer and agent to call that clause into question.

I would urge anyone who is considering getting an agent to read Kristine's article. As I understand it, she isn't saying, "Don't get an agent," as much as she is saying that writers need to learn how to read contracts and then read them. She gives several examples of clauses to watch out for, as well as some rather nasty tricks that might fool even an experienced writer.

The Business of Writing

There are some wonderful blogs about the business of writing. I've already mentioned Dean Wesley Smith's blog and Joe Konrath's blog. Thanks to Dean, I've discovered another rich source of information on the state of writing and publishing: The Author's Guild, specifically their series on e-books and the difference between the economics of e-book publishing and traditional publishing.

Here are the Author Guild blogs, in order:

How Apple Saved Barnes & Noble. Probably.
E-Book Royalty Math: The House Always Wins
The E-Book Royalty Mess: An Interim Fix

Enjoy!