Escaping Stockholm

[mizkit]

By reader request, I’m posting Judith’s entire Escaping Stockholm essay as one post, too, for ease of linking and perhaps ease of discussion. I shall, however, put it all behind a cut tag straight off, in order to not re-flood the friends’ list. :)

If you wish to break it out and read each section individually, here you go:

Part One | Part Two |

Comments

[la_marquise_de_]

She's talking a lot of sense, at least for those writers who have the career backlist. I do wonder, though, what becomes of the writers like me -- the ones who took forever to sell, who write slowly, who haven't hit the magical button of either success or Important Critical Darling. I am hugely lucky in my editor, who is hugely tolerant of my weaknesses. But if that should change... I guess I go back to writing for myself, because I fail at that modern two-books-a-year-self-promote-be-everywhere mode, and Locus don't think I'm worth anything.

[dancinghorse]

Author co-op. We need more Book View Cafes.

[la_marquise_de_]

I'm never sure I have much to contribute, alas, but they are fine things.

[dancinghorse]

What do you do for Eastercon? The list of women writers? The writers you help and support and signal-boost? That's a huge contribution.

[haikujaguar]

I remember when Broad Universe first started over a decade ago (eef, when did that happen), I offered to table-sit during WorldCon. I met a lot of fantastic and excited women that way, and we talked about our plans and our stories. I eagerly went home and looked them all up, and read and read and it was fabulous.

At least half those women have vanished off the shelves. Some of them have vanished entirely off the internet. I have to wonder if their careers were casualties of Publishing-as-it-was. Did they not sell enough? Did they lose heart because they couldn't get the next contract? Did they give up, or were they run out of town?

So much lost. Modern publishing can be just as harsh in its own way, but I can't help but think that it might have saved a lot of those people. That they'd still be writing now, and I'd be behind a table now, chatting with them about their latest and greatest, a risky story they decided to tell because they wanted to.

[dancinghorse]

I almost went down with those writers. What saved me was BVC and my network of amazing friends and colleagues, who pulled me out of the quicksand and smacked me around a bit till I woke up to the new reality. And saw opportunity instead of ending.

Maybe those writers are still writing. They just don't realize there's anyone out there who cares.

[haikujaguar]

I know you almost went down with them, and I am so glad you didn't. I loved your work when I first found it in bookstores, and it drove me crazy when I couldn't buy it anymore.

I wish there was a way to find some of those people. I've tried, and managed to contact a couple, but both of them were... just... crushed flat by what had happened to them, and had no heart to try--not then, anyway. Listening to their grief made me crazy with anger at what had been done to them. They were good artists, with something to share, something that mattered, and they'd been cracked open and left to bleed dry on the ground, like so much useless merchandise.

Gosh, it riles me up now just talking about it.

I remain aware of the bullet I dodged by having my first book orphaned. I think some people did well in the old system. I am entirely sure that I wouldn't have. The scars I have from my near misses tell me that plainly. :/

[dancinghorse]

Thank you so much.

What's needed is a support network for shattered authors. Especially those who didn't master the internet, and/or who were so crushed that they couldn't use it even if they knew how. Someone to show them how to survive, help them get backlist out and new list written, and generally do what BVC did for me but with more TLC.

When you first went indie, I remember thinking in my blissful arrogance, "Oh, she couldn't make it, so she didn't stick with it. She took the easy way out."

Yes, do thwap the me I was then. Little did I know. You were a forerunner. You figured out how to survive before just about anyone else realized there was a need. And now you're an established pro in the new paradigm, and many of my and Catie's peers are the newbies.

I miss the ease of "You write, we worry about the rest." But I also love the range of options we have now, and the fact that a book doesn't have to die. If it's loved, it can stay alive for as long as its readers and author want it to.

[dancinghorse]

You are a different category. You need what publishers can give at this point. Take it with both hands and let it work for you. What's good about this is that while it's scary and tough and massively insecure, it's always been that way--but now, once you have that foot in the door, that list of books and the readership that comes with them, you don't have to vanish forever if they don't hit the NYT list instantly. You have options. And power. We didn't have those when we were starting out. Publishers were all there was, and if that didn't work, that was it for us. For you it's just a starting point.

[ellenmillion]

This has been a terrifically interesting series to read. It definitely reinforces my ideas (mostly gathered through the art end of thing, rather than writing) that we are all stronger together as creative peers than we are pitted against each other.

[dancinghorse]

Oh, indeed.

BVC is thinking about artist-members. Or artist-writers. Knowing that original work must be paid for, but wanting to move beyond stock images and into original cover art. That's a model we haven't figured out yet--with writers, it's simple enough: apply, get accepted, join, put 5% of book sales back into the co-op. Art would need a different set of specs, and a different payment structure.

[ellenmillion]

Just cover art, or black and white interior illustration? (She asks innocently...) I would be on that like dirt on a toddler!

And it IS a little tricky - would you want only pre-existing artwork, or to open it for commission work? For pre-existing artwork, how exclusive do you want to be? Clearly, you wouldn't want a bunch of novels with the same cover, but is it problematic if the artist has sold t-shirts and prints? These are a few things I'm toying with as I'm working on a re-tool of Portrait Adoption, so things off the top of my head. The payment structure is its own pickle.

[dancinghorse]

Let me do some thinking, and asking around within BVC. We've talked about this but in the way of groups with a lot on their plate, it's been in and out of the general view.

Probably primarily cover art. Stock images or commissions, depending on budgets and projects. Designers we have in-house, but artists, not yet.

I don't think the images would have to be exclusive, and certainly not if they appear elsewhere than on book covers. More like how we license an image off dreamstime. The designer will do his or her own thing with it anyway, and brand it with fonts and layout.

[mikaela_l]

“I have to write six books this year. And revise eight more. And write fifteen short works. And freelance. Because I can’t afford the bills otherwise. Nobody can afford to pay me more because advances are falling across the board because bookstores are closing and distributors are imploding and sales are dropping and and and.”

I have been thinking about the effects on publishing books ( almost)monthly from a reader perspective. And the conclusion I have come to is that it isn't necessarily a good thing. Why? Since it removes the " Ooh. New Shiny from fave author. Buy!" feeling. Instead it becomes more " Oh, she has a new book out again. I'll buy it when I have money."

At least that's the case for me.

[dancinghorse]

That's a really good point, and comes back to what my agent said about saturating the market. She told me the same thing, back in the early Eighties, about how readers would react to too much of one good thing.

How does that square, do you think, with the speed of everything now, and the feeling in many quarters that writers can't write enough, or fast enough, to satisfy an insatiable online market that expects new content every single day, multiple times a day?

[lenora_rose]

I have nothing bright to say but I just want to like this comment hard. Because for every author where I weep because there will be no more books, or whine that they write so slow, there are several these days where I do feel saturated - actually, more, inundated - with their tons upon tons of books. And for all but the very top tier, the urgency can fade entirely. Some people can write that fast on the top of their game, at least for a while, but then, burnout, or falling into repeating patterns, or releasing insufficiently edited work. (actual edited, not copyedited - though that's an issue these days too).