A PROCLAMATION TO MY WRITING FRIENDS: TO HELL WITH PRO PUBLISHERS!!!
I'm about to give you a (hopeful) peptalk so ebullient that you'll think it's one of those nauseating, never-ending sales pages with a Paypal link at the bottom. But it's not ... it's all just my stupid opinion but it is informed and it's all given for free.
You know why movie and music companies are really terrified of the internet? It spells their end as companies and not for the reasons they suggest. The middle man between artist and audience is seeing the end of his days of profitability. Artists no longer have to go through marketers to find their audience. We can do it directly ourselves. This is one example of why Paul McCartney is a frickin' genius and multi-kajillionaire (other than his musical gifts). You know what Macca did thirteenyears ago? He started a massive website with direct downloads and a delivery system that went straight to his audience. He had an entire web concert (Standing Stone) five years before anyone else even thought of doing this. He released songs and then whole albums over Itunes (and tossed quite a few boots onto the bit torrent networks as marketing tools). He's a music publisher (he owns the rights to tons of songs) but he's also Steve Jobs' good friend (and yes, he has Macs). He saw that the end of an intermediary was at hand.
Most people see writing for a living as being a really cool job (and it is) but the reality for most of us is that writing for a living is only "really cool" if you can live on $10,000 a year. Publishers make most of the profits. And it doesn't matter how good you are. I have several friends on my flist who are every bit as good as any of the big name novelists out there. But there are only so many golden tickets in the Wonka bars and they are overseen by Slugworth... in this, he's not rehabilitated at the end as Wonka's employee ... he really is a cold-hearted, brutal bastard who cares only about the bottom line. Art? They don't give a damn about art. There's a very popular writer whom they know sucks beyond the sands of time but they don't care ... the writer makes money for them.
My friend Tamara Thorne (who is a very well-known YA horror writer) lives in a desert house about the size of mine. And she's published dozens of books. She makes about what my husband does a year and that's not a fortune.
You know what else pro publishing is? It's often degrading and annoying. I had a kinda cool (if I do say so myself) pirate romance novel (hey, that's what sells) called "Rival to the Rose" (the Bloody Rose being the name of the pirate's ship). I was rather proud of it. But then in walks Pammy, an editor at a romance specialty publisher (I won't say which one but I imagine you can figure it out on your own). Pammy plays tennis, golf, and all manner of other sports. What Pammy doesn't do ... doesn't like to do ... is read. That's right, guys, she hates to read. She does it because it's her job. She only got into the field because her father was in it already and he got her fast connections to good positions.
One day, Pammy called me and said, "We can't have (insert name of pirate) make someone walk the plank." I gasped only for several seconds and then asked why. "He's a pirate," I said. "Yes, but he's a (FILL IN NAME OF PUBLISHING COMPANY) pirate! And (PUBLISHING NAME AGAIN) pirates don't make people walk planks. That's murder." They also didn't swear too much nor were they ever unkind to children or animals. Push the lead female character to the edge of rape? Oh, sure they do that. But walk the plank? Nope. "Why do they call him a pirate then?" I asked. "Think of him as a self-employed marketer," she said, "really, pirates were just early profiteers".
No, I'm not kidding. I wish to an infinite pantheon of eternal gods I was kidding. Although it gave my friends and me many moments of hilarity discussing the ludicrous profiteer pirate ("Ay, shiver me timbers, we will not be undersold!"), it also marked the end of my being paid bullshit money to write tripe. Yes, the novel was published with my beloved title yanked and replaced with some majorly stupid one. It was also pubbed under a pseud, thank heavens. And no, I'm not posting the title publicly (I'll tell you via email if you ask). It's long, long out of print -- thank god. I made about, oh, $22,000 that year. I'd rather work at Bed, Bath and Beyond than do that again.
So, tomorrow I will continue my peptalk (I'm nothing if not long-winded) with ideas about self-publishing and some further prattle.
I will leave you with this last bit:
Do you know what the following people have in common: Margaret Atwood, L. Frank Baum, William Blake, Ken Blanchard, Robert Bly, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lord Byron, Willa Cather, Pat Conroy, Stephen Crane, e.e. cummings, W.E.B. DuBois, Alexander Dumas, T.S. Eliot, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Benjamin Franklin, Zane Grey, Thomas Hardy, E. Lynn Harris, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Robinson Jeffers, Spencer Johnson, Stephen King, Rudyard Kipling, Louis L'Amour, D.H. Lawrence, Rod McKuen, Marlo Morgan, John Muir, Anais Nin, Thomas Paine, Tom Peters, Edgar Allen Poe, Alexander Pope, Beatrix Potter, Ezra Pound, Marcel Proust, Irma Rombauer, Carl Sandburg, Robert Service, George Bernard Shaw, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Upton Sinclair, Gertrude Stein, William Strunk, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoi, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Virginia Woolf.
They all self-published. All of them.
Think that's all in the past? Think again. Think it's only non-fiction? Think again again. David Brody self-published his novel Unlawful Deeds. Amanda Brown POD'd her first novel Legally Blonde (which was made into a film). ReShonda Billingsley self-published her novel to great success. All these novels were purchased by big publishing companies after they had first been self-published. (HERE'S A SECRET: PUBLISHING HOUSE READERS NOW SEARCH THROUGH POD AND SELF-PUBLISHED BOOKS FOR TITLES TO BUY)
Self-publishing isn't vanity press anymore. Even back when it was, there was an easy way around the taint of "vanity press" -- it's called "starting your own publishing company". That's for tomorrow or the next day (if anybody wants to hear my thoughts on it).
BTW, I'm typing this quickly so I'm sure there are many annoying typos. Please pardon them.
You know why movie and music companies are really terrified of the internet? It spells their end as companies and not for the reasons they suggest. The middle man between artist and audience is seeing the end of his days of profitability. Artists no longer have to go through marketers to find their audience. We can do it directly ourselves. This is one example of why Paul McCartney is a frickin' genius and multi-kajillionaire (other than his musical gifts). You know what Macca did thirteenyears ago? He started a massive website with direct downloads and a delivery system that went straight to his audience. He had an entire web concert (Standing Stone) five years before anyone else even thought of doing this. He released songs and then whole albums over Itunes (and tossed quite a few boots onto the bit torrent networks as marketing tools). He's a music publisher (he owns the rights to tons of songs) but he's also Steve Jobs' good friend (and yes, he has Macs). He saw that the end of an intermediary was at hand.
Most people see writing for a living as being a really cool job (and it is) but the reality for most of us is that writing for a living is only "really cool" if you can live on $10,000 a year. Publishers make most of the profits. And it doesn't matter how good you are. I have several friends on my flist who are every bit as good as any of the big name novelists out there. But there are only so many golden tickets in the Wonka bars and they are overseen by Slugworth... in this, he's not rehabilitated at the end as Wonka's employee ... he really is a cold-hearted, brutal bastard who cares only about the bottom line. Art? They don't give a damn about art. There's a very popular writer whom they know sucks beyond the sands of time but they don't care ... the writer makes money for them.
My friend Tamara Thorne (who is a very well-known YA horror writer) lives in a desert house about the size of mine. And she's published dozens of books. She makes about what my husband does a year and that's not a fortune.
You know what else pro publishing is? It's often degrading and annoying. I had a kinda cool (if I do say so myself) pirate romance novel (hey, that's what sells) called "Rival to the Rose" (the Bloody Rose being the name of the pirate's ship). I was rather proud of it. But then in walks Pammy, an editor at a romance specialty publisher (I won't say which one but I imagine you can figure it out on your own). Pammy plays tennis, golf, and all manner of other sports. What Pammy doesn't do ... doesn't like to do ... is read. That's right, guys, she hates to read. She does it because it's her job. She only got into the field because her father was in it already and he got her fast connections to good positions.
One day, Pammy called me and said, "We can't have (insert name of pirate) make someone walk the plank." I gasped only for several seconds and then asked why. "He's a pirate," I said. "Yes, but he's a (FILL IN NAME OF PUBLISHING COMPANY) pirate! And (PUBLISHING NAME AGAIN) pirates don't make people walk planks. That's murder." They also didn't swear too much nor were they ever unkind to children or animals. Push the lead female character to the edge of rape? Oh, sure they do that. But walk the plank? Nope. "Why do they call him a pirate then?" I asked. "Think of him as a self-employed marketer," she said, "really, pirates were just early profiteers".
No, I'm not kidding. I wish to an infinite pantheon of eternal gods I was kidding. Although it gave my friends and me many moments of hilarity discussing the ludicrous profiteer pirate ("Ay, shiver me timbers, we will not be undersold!"), it also marked the end of my being paid bullshit money to write tripe. Yes, the novel was published with my beloved title yanked and replaced with some majorly stupid one. It was also pubbed under a pseud, thank heavens. And no, I'm not posting the title publicly (I'll tell you via email if you ask). It's long, long out of print -- thank god. I made about, oh, $22,000 that year. I'd rather work at Bed, Bath and Beyond than do that again.
So, tomorrow I will continue my peptalk (I'm nothing if not long-winded) with ideas about self-publishing and some further prattle.
I will leave you with this last bit:
Do you know what the following people have in common: Margaret Atwood, L. Frank Baum, William Blake, Ken Blanchard, Robert Bly, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lord Byron, Willa Cather, Pat Conroy, Stephen Crane, e.e. cummings, W.E.B. DuBois, Alexander Dumas, T.S. Eliot, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Benjamin Franklin, Zane Grey, Thomas Hardy, E. Lynn Harris, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Robinson Jeffers, Spencer Johnson, Stephen King, Rudyard Kipling, Louis L'Amour, D.H. Lawrence, Rod McKuen, Marlo Morgan, John Muir, Anais Nin, Thomas Paine, Tom Peters, Edgar Allen Poe, Alexander Pope, Beatrix Potter, Ezra Pound, Marcel Proust, Irma Rombauer, Carl Sandburg, Robert Service, George Bernard Shaw, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Upton Sinclair, Gertrude Stein, William Strunk, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoi, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Virginia Woolf.
They all self-published. All of them.
Think that's all in the past? Think again. Think it's only non-fiction? Think again again. David Brody self-published his novel Unlawful Deeds. Amanda Brown POD'd her first novel Legally Blonde (which was made into a film). ReShonda Billingsley self-published her novel to great success. All these novels were purchased by big publishing companies after they had first been self-published. (HERE'S A SECRET: PUBLISHING HOUSE READERS NOW SEARCH THROUGH POD AND SELF-PUBLISHED BOOKS FOR TITLES TO BUY)
Self-publishing isn't vanity press anymore. Even back when it was, there was an easy way around the taint of "vanity press" -- it's called "starting your own publishing company". That's for tomorrow or the next day (if anybody wants to hear my thoughts on it).
BTW, I'm typing this quickly so I'm sure there are many annoying typos. Please pardon them.