The Changing Face of Publishing · 5:50pm Dec 9th, 2015
Cross-post excerpt from Unusual Things. Check there for the full post.
I had some thoughts crystallize themselves over the last few days, as I’ve poured over page after page of Unusual Events, tucking sentences here and trimming typos there. Thoughts that stemmed from a conversation with a family member of the weekend, and then pulled themselves together around a single, central point as Monday morning Penguin made what was probably another (I say because I don’t follow this that closely) announcement about e-books ruining the industry, this time laying the upcoming loss of 255 warehouse jobs on the humble electronic manuscript.
Yes, they’re still beating that tired, old horse. Probably will for a time to come to.
The thing is, though, that in a way they’re not wrong. At least, to say that e-books are part of the cause. Now, are they part of the blame? Well, no. There I say no. But in mixing my last few weeks of Alpha and Beta editing with the aforementioned conversation I had over the weekend and then seeing Penguin’s announcement, everything sort of came together for me in a crystal clarity.
Right, too many words. I’ll just get right to it: Yes, e-books have changed the industry. Forever changed it, mind. They’re not going away anytime soon.
But they’re also not the cause of the troubles so many of the big publishers are facing right now. They are a part of the cause, certainly, but as I said, they cannot take the blame. No, that blame rests solely elsewhere.
With the publishers themselves.
That was both enlightening and gives me a little more hope regarding my future publication chances.
Now if I can just stop writing fanfiction long enough to write original material.
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It should give you even more hope to know (if you didn't already) that the success stories have already happened. The Martian was a self-pub, bereft of any publisher (and the author's first book). So was Wool. We've entered into an era where self-published, independent authors can have a Hollywood blockbuster.
Meanwhile, the New York Time bestseller list recently changed its standards so that self-pubs like The Martian are no longer eligible for the bestseller list if they aren't affiliated with a big publisher. A blow, yes, but a desperate one aimed at trying to hold back the floodgates.
Self-pubs are here to stay, and they've proven to be just as excellent, if not better, as anything the publishing houses have put out there.
There's one thing I can say without any doubt regarding me personally:
I don't buy nearly as many books simply because I find fanfiction more engaging, more surprising, and more fulfilling these days. It had gotten to the point where published and printed books had become so formulatic for me that I was able to predict plot developments halfway into the book, where I would lose interest and find something else to do.
With fanfiction, though, there are times where I am legitimately surprised by what happens in a story and I'm often stuck up until 2AM reading because I just can't put it down. In my eyes, fanfiction is a lot like the indie game dev phenomenon from around ten years ago. You had little start ups doing insane things that the big labels wouldn't dream of, and they were amazing!
Of course, I don't know how long this will last. We'll see.
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I would actually expect them to be better. I've heard far too many horror stories from friends who saw their hard work turned into a literary turd because whatever publishing company they signed an agreement with demanded they make drastic story changes as a requirement for publication.
Of course, for every golden testament to independent literature one finds, there's going to be a hundred independently released pieces of junk. That's really the only downside to me; the ease of self-publication suggests anyone can do it regardless of literary worth. How, then, is a reader to locate the gems among the trash? And if you're the writer, how do you make sure your gem is found?
Yet I can't help thinking it's just like putting a story on FIMFiction; know how to present yourself and hope people take notice. I plan to be prolific.
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I can see where you're going with that. There's definitely a lot of formulaic fiction out there coming out of the big publishing houses, and it can be frustrating to pick up a story and find it doing the exactly the same thing as the last one, or diving right into cliche (for example, Ancillary Justice's ending, which was infuriatingly cliche without cause. A dozen great ways to solve the problem, and the author went right for the most Hollywood-action blockbuster popcorn she could think of).
At the same time, I think going solely one area or another may not be the best solution. Going with nothing but fanfiction can give you some real gems, like The Enemy of My Enemy, but it can also cause you to miss out on some real gems of non-fanfiction, published for profit stuff (such as Terry Prachett's Raising Steam). Not everything that comes out of a publishing house is poor—in fact I think most of the time you could argue that the majority is just average. But there are some real gems out there, just as there are in fanfiction or self-published works. I don't think publishing houses are going to die completely any more than I think people should stop reading books. There are wonderful books out there (and in your case, Arad, might I suggest checking out Timothy Zahn's The Icarus Hunt, or if you can track it down, The Conquerers? You might enjoy them for the number of clever twists).
There's gems in both areas. Obviously I'm endeavoring to do what I can to contribute to gems in my area, but I still spend plenty of time at my local library checking out books in large numbers. Sometimes even an average book can be an acceptable use of my day, and plenty of times I've picked up what I thought would be an average book only to find that it's pages held so much more.
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I can't deny that there are instances where this happens, because it does, but at the same time I think it's worth pointing out that while there are books where this does happen, there are also plenty of cases where the editor truly is improving the story and the author just doesn't like it. The publishers are outdated, but they're by no means imbecilic.
That said, there is also the problem of publishers pushing very heavy political agendas on their authors. By nature, most of the publishing houses have been very liberal, to the degree that some authors that have been discovered to be *gasp* even slightly conservative have found themselves blacklisted from the industry as a whole. Books are edited to alter political or societal views, or to push a message that the editor or publishing house finds favorable. Trying to fight back against it gets you blacklisted.
Sad, but it happens. As does publishing houses deliberately killing authors careers so that they don't have to deal with them. The story that was told to me as an example of this concerned one wherein a woman wrote a very good book and got a contract which required her to sell 4000 copies in the first year to continue. The publisher only printed 2000 copies. They all sold to great reviews, but the publisher declined to continue her contract to another since she hadn't sold 4000. Worse, her contract for the first book stipulated that she could not publish any other books through anyone else for something like seven or fifteen years, thereby killing her chances of just going elsewhere.
That's just murder of a career.
With the rise of so much crap, I think time will be the solution. Right now many see it as a cheap buck (hence the proliferation of 99-cent 10 page "books" with no editing and a stock cover on Amazon), but as the market grows wise to that, I think it'll slow down. Those who want a quick buck will be weeded out, and while they'll always persist, I think they'll be less and less of a bother as the market moves on.
As far as being noticed, well, I don't have a good answer for that. I'm still trying—and I'm getting there, make no mistake—but it's an uphill battle. Having written high-quality fanfiction has certainly helped the sales of my books. Getting these next two books out will certainly help too.
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I'll take a gander at those books you recced.
Now, I normally avoid politics in booKS like the plague. I remember one of the Ghost recon books where the main character is under investigation for running off the book ops. When the firebase comes under attack by insurgents, one of the main characters squad mates shoots the investigator in the back in cold blood.
The main character didn't restrain his teammate. He didn't report him either. No, the main character concluded that the investigator was a socialist cog in the government machine that had to be removed.
I put that book down and never touched it again.
I -hate- it when politics like that appears in books, doubly so when it's so blunt.
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Andy Weir mentions in interviews that The Martian was actually his third book. All three began as experiments in writing and digital self-publishing as a hobby with a small online audience from whom he got feedback and encouragement. The first book he wrote was apparently so bad (his own words) that Andy scrubbed all copies of it from his site. The second was "merely bad". He wrote The Martian as a serial, publishing it chapter by chapter and getting feedback from his audience as he went (even resulting in rewrites of some of the earlier material).
His full story serves as even stronger evidence in favor of the digital publishing you discuss in your blog post than what you mentioned here.
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The caveat, then, should be that it was his first sold book, as those first too, to the best of my knowledge, were only freebies he put up on his site for others to see. By that same token, One Drink was not my first book either, but something like my 3rd or 4th.
It comes down to what you want to define as "first." I generally go for "first one you actually publish for money/attention."
I remember when I was back in school in '06-'08 seeing another area that was starting to also really change a lot of the publishing industry and aiming to hit the big publishers from the opposite direction link a pincer with the e-books. The whole massive increase in quality of digital presses and on demand printing.
I did two jobs publishing and doing a couple small print runs of a pair of small paperback books written by one of my professors for them. Like e-books the whole process was totally digital between me and the author, then also from me to the printer. Laid everything out, generated two PDF's, one for text, one for the front and back covers and spine, then uploaded that to the printer then two days later I had a proof on hand. Just had to pay for the initial setup, but then each copy printed was dirt cheap (cheaper if you ordered enough for a bulk discount) with the same quality you'd expect from a traditional offset press if not better some. The printer I was using was also a part of Ingram so could have even had them listed in their distribution catalog as well if we'd wanted to.
Ouch now that is just plain evil... and something I'm sorry to say not too surprised to hear.
Definitely have to agree with you there. I think something hit the stock photography market a while back when cheaper, but still good resolution digital cameras started really hitting the markets, but it seems to have leveled off a bit now.
This.
So much this.
I have just finished "alpha proofing" a chapter for another author here on Fimfic. Whilst on shift break at $WORK. On my phone of all things. The big publishers have absolutely lost the game.
I do not know if you have mentioned it in a previous post, but it occurs to me that the low, low barrier to entry for ebook publishing is a two edged sword: on the one hand you have a veritable tsunami of mindless, clichéd, drivel that you have to weed out ("make it easy enough that any idiot can do it an many will"), but on the other, more exciting and interesting hand, it allows authors to experiment with new ideas. A literary laboratory of sorts.