Are Gatekeepers Necessary?

Occasionally I read a post by an author and they not only nail what I have been thinking and feeling about a subject but they express it more eloquently than I ever could. Kristine Kathryn Rusch has done just that with her article, "The Business Rusch: Slushpile Truths", a response to Eric Felten's article, "Cherish the Book Publishers—You'll Miss Them When They're Gone", that appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

She writes:

Let me tell you, Mr. Felten, as a person who read slush for a decade, discovered lots of new writers, and won both a World Fantasy award and a Hugo award for her editing work, the slush pile isn’t some growing, breathing, horrible thing to be avoided. It’s a tower of hope, of dreams, of writers who want to do something with their lives.

Yep, there’s bad stuff in it. But the bad stuff is less common than the dull stuff, the mediocre stuff, the unoriginal stuff. The bulk of the slush pile is boring, not terrible. You start reading one of those manuscripts, your eyes glaze, and you set it down, and move onto something else.

Sound familiar, readers? Of course it does. The slush experience mimicks your own reading experience with traditionally published books. Yep, you folks do it with books that have already been published. [Italics in original]

Go Kris! She nailed it. "The bulk of the slush pile is boring, not terrible."

I have heard folks say things like: Indie authors write crap, just pick up 10 indie published books, you're lucky if you find one you'd want to read. I don't disagree, but the same is true for traditionally published books. The books I'm not interested in reading are not terrible books, they just failed to grab my attention.

One last quote:

Why am I taking this guy on? Primarily because so many of you sent me this silly piece, which just goes to show how many of you read The Wall Street Journal as opposed to the more obscure bloggers on the NPR website. (They covered this issue last summer.) I think a bunch of you also sent it to me because you agree with him, because you’ve bought that piece of swampland in Florida with the sign that says “Professional Gatekeepers Necessary.”

That was my much needed laugh of the day. Thanks Kris. Looking forward to next Thursday.

When is a book crap?

Joe Konrath blogged yesterday that

Some people believe the ease of self-publishing means that millions of wannabe writers will flood the market with their crummy ebooks, and the good authors will get lost in the morass, and then family values will go unprotected and the economy will collapse and the world will crash into the sun and puppies and kittens by the truckload will die horrible, screaming deaths.

Or something like that.

This is bullshit, of course. A myth. A fabrication. One rooted in envy and fear.

He titled his blog, "The Tsunami of Crap". It is a good and very funny read.

Antoher good read on the same subject is Michael A. Stackpole's blog, "When is Crap, crap?" He writes:

So, how does a writer know when what they are writing is crap—not relatively, but purely and deeply?

I think every writer knows, in his gut, when he’s put his heart and soul into a story. If he hasn’t been working hard; if he hasn’t been making the tough choices; if he doesn’t love the characters enough to let them grow; if he’s thinking more about the paycheck than the story—then chances are that what he’s turning out is crap. The story won’t have heart. It won’t have characters that readers will want to follow, or shed a tear over. If a writer thinks of a story as just a little “fluff” piece, or has to resort to the invocation of literary criticism to identify and justify the story’s worth, it’s crap.

As Joe says, Don’t. Do. That.

....

If, after ... working as hard as you can on a story, you’ve made the story the best you can possibly make it, it isn’t crap. It might not be the most polished story in the world—developing your skills and voice may take some time—but it’s a better story than you started out with. And if you keep working hard, the next story will be better, and the one after that better still. By offering potential patrons free samples of your work, you let them decide if they want to read you; and they’ll be able to come back and chart your progress to the point where their desire to read and your skill at delivering a story coincide.

If you do that, your work will never sink. It will be good. Folks will notice. They’ll share their discoveries with others. Again, this is not a sprint, this is all about longevity. Keep working, keep writing stories that you’d love to be reading, and you’ll do just fine.

I like that. If a writer works on a story and does the best they can, if the writer has poured her heart and soul into it, then it isn't crap. Nice definition.

Joe's article
Michael's article

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.

iA Writer for the iPad

I am always on the lookout for a cool new app for my iPad, but for a writing app to tempt we away from Pages it would have to be darn good. iA Writer looks like it may be that app.

What has me particularly excited is the two finger swipe, right and left, for the "do" and "undo" functions. Also very nice is the keyboard extension bar which lets you, among other things, advance word by word either backward or forward as well as character by character. Also, no longer do iPad users have to tap the ".?123" button to get to the ";" and ":" keys. A little thing but oh so very nice.

For more information about iA Writer for the iPad, click here.

On the con side (it can't be completely great, nothing ever is) some users have lost formatting (line breaks, etc) when emailing files.

For anyone interested in reading reviews of minimalistic word processing programs, head on over to The Book Designer and read his post on 7 Distraction-Ree Writing Environments for Authors.

Writers Despair

Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes:

[W]hat I've seen this past month from established writers is an abundance of despair. I got a sad phone call from a friend, had a lot of sit-down conversations with writers who were ready to give up their dreams, and a nine-page single-spaced e-mail from a hell of a writer of dozens of published books, wondering whether or not to quit altogether.

What are these writers despairing about? Lots.

Books that would have sold five years ago don’t sell now. Series that are growing are getting bounced from their publishers for not growing enough. Agents, unable to sell product, are telling their mystery clients to write romance novels and their romance clients to write thrillers. Other agents are starting backlist e-pub companies and robbing their clients blind. Still other agents are blaming the writers for the fact that nothing is selling well and encouraging them to sign terrible book contracts.

Bookstores don’t carry paper books any longer. New York Times bestsellers can’t find their backlists in stores. American authors with bestselling novels overseas are being told that foreign countries never pay the promised royalties, only advances.

Traditionally published bestselling writers look at their royalty statements, see that their e-books sell only 30 or 100 or 200 copies in six months, and wonder how the hell upstart self-published writers whose books have ugly covers and whose interiors need copy editing manage to sell tens of thousands of e-books each month.

Editors who once had to tiptoe around their biggest authors are telling those writers to change what they write because their sales have decreased, and clearly, their writing has gotten worse over the years. Writers whose rabid fan base numbers 10 or 20 or 50K get told that their books no longer sell to that fan base even though the writer is constantly getting e-mails from that base and is signing brand new books for that base.

Publisher sales figures are impossible to get. An estimated laydown of 50,000 becomes an estimated 17,000 one month later. On the royalty statements issued six months after that, that laydown then becomes 5,000 books with another 5,000 in the reserve against returns. But, that same book, tracked by Bookscan (which only covers 50%-70% of the book market [and maybe less now]), shows sales, sales (not books shipped), of 30,000.

But even if Bookscan’s numbers are true, the book’s editor says, thirty thousand is pretty insignificant for that genre or for that particular series or for that particular writer. The writer will have to take a smaller advance and accept worse contract terms. Or the writer doesn’t get offered another contract period.

And of course, of course, it’s the writer’s fault. The writer misread the numbers, wrote down the wrong amount in the initial phone call with the editor on the laydown. Oh, it wasn’t a phone call, but an e-mail? My bad, the editor says. It was a typo. I didn’t mean 50,000. I meant 5,000.

So, the writer says, if you only printed 5,000 and I sold 5,000 and the book is still in print and still being ordered, then my book is doing well, right?

Wrong. We overpaid your advance, the editor says. We never ever should have paid that much money on a book that would only sell 5,000 copies.

What's the solution?

First: Know that

It’s not you. You’re fine. Your writing is as good as ever. The business is changing and you’re caught in the crossfire. It’s not personal, even though it feels personal. You are caught in the middle of a nightmare. The rules are changing, and no one knows where any of this is headed. Talk to other writers. You’ll see. It’s happening to all of us.

Second: Read Kristine's article.

Photo credit: "Between life and death" by Kathryn under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Stockholm Syndrome for Agents

Passive Guy has written another article about contracts, this one focusing on the question: Why would a good agent, one who knows how to read a contract, let their client sign a contract that contained one or more 'gotya' clauses in it?

PG writes:

Ultimately, for an agent, publishers are more necessary than any author.

When a publisher says an obnoxious clause like the Non-Compete Clause we discussed a few days ago must be in a contract and explains why the publisher needs the clause, how does the agent explain this clause to her client? Probably using much the same rationale as the publisher does. “I know you don’t like it, but the publisher needs this because . . . .”

After explaining the obnoxious clause 100 times to 25 authors, will the agent have a tendency to accept the clause as “the way things are done these days” or “the new standard?” Will describing the clause as something “every publisher is requiring in new contracts” be a better way to get a publishing deal and advance for the author and the agent than trashing the clause?

Since agents and attorneys who work for agents are not regulators, we don’t have Regulatory Capture here. How does Agent Capture sound? Joe Konrath talks about authors succumbing to The Stockholm Syndrome in their dealings with publishers. There may be something like that going on with agents as well.

Here is a link to PG's blog post, it's a good read.

Pottermore: Harry Potter Digital Books and Audio Files

It looks like JK Rowling has set up the site, Pottermore.com, to -- among other things -- publish her own ebooks and audo files of the Harry Potter books.

Having an ebook copy of the Harry Potter books will be wonderful! Unfortunately, it seems as though the site won't be open to the general public before October but I'm sure we will be receiving more news about what Rowling has in store for us before then.

More links:

JK Rowling Will Self-Pub Harry Potter Ebooks
(Post by Joe Konrath at A Newbie's Guide to Publishing.)

Physical bookshops frustrated with Pottermore
(Thanks to JM Cornwell for posting this link.)

J.K. Rowling, Indie Author – Roundup
(Passive Guy's Links on this topic.)

Non-Competition Clauses in Contracts

Passive Guy goes over the non-compete clause in a contract an author sent into him. Here is part of his analysis:

PG thinks a reasonable interpretation of authorize publication would prevent the author from signing a publishing contract and receiving an advance for an entirely unrelated book until six months after publication of the first.

So, even if you’re writing up a storm, either make that advance last or go back to being a barista until you’re free to sell another book.

Passive Guy makes contracts interesting, I would encourage anyone interested to read his blog post.

Selling Stolen Books on Amazon.com

Two of Ruth Ann Nordin's books have been stolen and are, as of this writing, currently on sale at Amazon.

Here is a link to Ruth Ann Nordin's website and her blog where she is keeping readers up to date on her attempts at getting the fraudulent copies removed. She also wrote an article for the Self-Published Author's Lounge that gives the details of the thefts.

It is my understanding that the thief uploaded a copy of Mr. Nordin's books onto Amazon using Ruth Ann Nordin's name and is now receiving royalties on the sale of those books.

My sympathy goes out to Ms. Nordin and I hope that this situation is resolved quickly. I will keep this blog post updated as more information becomes available.

Thanks to Passive Guy for blogging about this.

Update (August 16, 2016):
The links from the Self-Published Author's Lounge no longer work so I've removed them.

Edit (June 22, 2011)
Ms. Nordin has left an update on this situation at the Self-Published Author's Lounge.

It is well worth the read but, as I understand it, Ms. Nordin says that, as of today Amazon has taken down the copies of her stolen books.

This is excellent news and I am glad that Amazon acted so quickly on Ms. Nordin's behalf.

Book Contracts

I have been enjoying reading about contracts lately. I know, I know, that claim may seem less than plausible, but I think that book contracts may be infinitely more fun to read about than to read.  At least, if you're not a lawyer.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Passive Guy (from The Passive Voice) -- a retired lawyer -- have been blogging about book contracts and, generally, helping to raise the awareness of new writers on the subject.

In that spirit, here are some links to posts about contracts that made my jaw drop.  I had no idea what rights certain agents were trying to retain for themselves.  On that note, if you are a writer who has signed a book contract lately, Passive Guy is collecting them, trying to get an idea for what's going on in the industry these days.  I'm eagerly awaiting that series of blog posts (or, hopefully, ebook!).

From the blog of Kristine Kathryn Rusch:
- The Business Rusch: Writing Like It's 1999
- The Business Rusch: Advocates, Addendums, and Sneaks, oh my!

Kristine Rusch has many more excellent articles on the business of writing, but her website is well laid out so if you go there they should be easy to find.

From the Passive Voice Blog
- How to Read a Book Contract - Agency Clause
- How to Read a Book Contract - Agency Coupled with an Interest If you are a writer with an agent and, like me before I read this blog post, you have no idea what agency coupled with a interest means, this is a must-read post.

Here is what Kristine Rusch had to say about these two posts:

If you have an agent, please read these two posts even if you think you understand the agency clause. It is my experience that most writers do not understand what they’re signing in their book contracts, and some agents have been misleading writers as to what these clauses mean.

Also of great interest to me were:
- How to Read a Book Contract - Somebody's Gonna Die
- You Just Signed with a Big Agent? Oh, I'm So Sorry.

See also:
- Self-Publishing Basics: The Copyright Page