Indie Publishing

The Allure of Fast-Track Publishing: Have a Little Respect

Posted by Lora Maroney on December 19, 2011
Posted in: Books, Indie Publishing, Rants, Writing. Tagged: , , . 7 comments

Editing? But what if I reread and find out my book sucks? Better send it off now!

I’d just like to start by saying I am not aiming fingers at any particular demographic. I have noticed this with self-publishing, POD publishing, and people who want to get into brick & mortar publishing as well. I’ve noticed it with writers and readers. It’s an epidemic, and it needs to stop. What am I talking about? This attitude:

Who cares about quality? It’s just an ebook. It’s what, 99c? Just be proud I had the guts to put my work out there. I’m published, and that’s what counts.

Say it with me, baby-Vader: NOOOOOOOOOO!

The problem is, we — readers, writers — don’t respect the art enough anymore. Yes, I know, I’m an elitist jerk who sits around in turtlenecks and drinks imported coffee while bemoaning whatever it is these people do (spoiler: I do none of these things). But honestly, we really, really don’t. In my previous posts on ‘sales over story’, I pointed out that discussions in the book industry are revolving a lot on who made it big, and not so much about whose stories are changing the world. As a spinoff of this, I’m noticing a rather worrisome trend that it doesn’t matter if it’s good, or if you’ve worked to make it the best it can be, or if you just let your cat walk all over the keyboard and exported to PDF — that doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s out there.

This is absolutely insane.

What I don’t understand, as someone who writes and edits and struggles with knowing when a book is good enough to send it out there, is how anyone can have so little respect for themselves and their work that they think this is okay. How anyone who calls themselves a writer, anyone who claims to love books (I am talking to YOU, million-copies-on-Amazon guy who I still refuse to name and give more press) can be happy with churning out what they know is a sub-standard product. Do people not have pride? Do people really think they can’t do any better? Do people not want to make their book a worthy addition to the already overflowing pool of literature, or do they just want to urinate over the side and say that counts? I don’t get it.

What does get my goat is that if I attempt to have this conversation with those people, their trump card is, “Yeah, but I’m published, and you’re not, so who cares what you think?”

This is wrong — so unbelievably, excruciatingly wrong. The idea that releasing a bad book online, and perhaps making a few dollars from it, somehow trumps taking time to create a good story, and being proud when it’s released, is hurtful.

Rushing out your unedited manuscript and saying quality doesn’t matter is like thinking the fastest possible orgasm is the best way to have sex.

Yes, I know that bad books will eventually fade into obscurity while good books will rise to the top. Unfortunately, I think this attitude gives those people too much slack. I’ve recently seen a spate of posts on various writing forums where people are directly uploading their unedited manuscripts into Smashwords or Amazon or wherever else, and demanding praise. Other writers are then applauding them for their ‘courage’, and praising their ‘effort’. If someone does try to bring a little realism to this party — that this isn’t publishing, this is making a photocopy and then tossing the pages over the side of an overpass into the street below and hoping someone else can make sense of the mess — then the original poster and the other hand-shakers pounce on that person, calling them a big ol’ meanie poop-face who just doesn’t want other people to taste success.

Because it’s not just about these writers; it’s about a general culture of approbation that’s developing. Readers are being conditioned to expect nothing from ebooks. No wonder readers don’t want to pay more than $3.99 for a book — they’re not going to read it again, or treasure it, and if it has typos and grammar errors, or myriad plot holes, or unbelievable characters, or a hackneyed plot, eh, whatever, it was just a dollar. Who cares?

What ends up happening is that writers will use this as an excuse for their bad writing — by saying, “I wrote this in 24 hours”, or “I didn’t edit this at all”, it’s as good as saying, “You’re buying this car as-is. If the transmission quits when you’re halfway down the street, don’t blame me!” It’s hiding behind obvious — fixable! — flaws so that anyone who points out said flaws must be some sort of jerkfaced pedant. This is not a good attitude for writers to have. It means they will accept no criticism, constructive or otherwise, because they “know” the work isn’t good. It means that other readers will leap in and say “It’s 99c, what did you expect? If you want quality, go find some elitistly-published elitist book, you elitist!”

When people leap over all the middle stuff — editing, revising, making a book better — in order to get the “I’m published!” badge, it shows disrespect to themselves and their work, but also to the readers — that readers deserve no better. When readers shrug and buy the book because, eh, whatever, they’re agreeing.

It’s offensive to me, it’s offensive to readers,  it’s offensive to every self-published author who worked their butt off to write a great book and get it out there, only for everyone else to compare them to these people, and it’s offensive to people who went through the soul-sucking process of querying and getting an agent. I don’t care if people publish with an agent and an editor and a publishing house, or if they print off the book at home, bind it by hand, and walk it over to every bookstore in town. I honestly don’t. What I care about is whether the book is good. Anyone who doesn’t is spitting in the face of everyone else who actually works to create something worth reading.

I know I sound like a raging traditionalist, and maybe I am, but I know way too many people who are genuinely talented, and who are working to get their books published — whether through brick & mortar or through other means — for me to be proud of someone who vomits up breakfast, dumps it on a plate, and calls themselves a chef.

EDIT: All right, this is funny –

u mad, bro?

Overcoming Stigma: Indie Publishing’s Biggest Mistakes, Part III – Word of Mouth Devaluation

Posted by Lora Maroney on October 26, 2011
Posted in: Books, Ebooks, Indie Publishing, Rants, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 9 comments

Part III in my series: Overcoming Stigma: Indie Publishing’s Biggest Mistakes.

Part II talked about the quantity-over-quality focus, and how in many cases it undercuts books and story in order to sell small chunks to easily-distracted readers. You can read it here.

The third thing indies need to do is change the nature of the community, because right now, it’s a snake eating its own tail.

Let me first say this: I enjoy being on the periphery of the indie author community, even if I want to be published traditionally myself. I enjoy talking with authors on Twitter, reading their blogs, engaging with them in discussions about writing on various social networking sites. I love the friends I’ve made in this community, and hesitated to post this series not because I thought it would explode the Internet (ha!) but because I didn’t want to lose those friendships. I’ve been unfollowed a few times already, and this makes me sad.

However.

The indie book community loves itself a little too much, and if it’s not careful, it’s going to go blind.

That’s not an off-colour joke, by the way (or, at least, not entirely). The indie book community, with its wonderful sense of inclusion and friendship and reciprocity, is doing something horrible every single day, and no one seems to see it:

5-star reviews.

Indie writers love their 5-star reviews, and indie writers love giving them to each other. If I peruse Goodreads, for example, a known haven for indie authors, I see a slough of indie books with ratings of 5 stars — checking the rating details will show a ratio of something like 35 5-star ratings, 15 4-stars, 2 3-stars, and no 2s or 1s. Checking the profiles of people who left those high ratings almost always reveals another indie author, complete with 5-star-rated books.

Indie authors love these reviews, and will post to their blogs or to twitter every time it happens. “I got a good review! Read it here!” And why shouldn’t they? 5-star-rated books have to mean the book is amazing, right? What a recommendation!

Not necessarily. Since I started noticing this phenomenon a few months ago, I started looking to see what indie authors rate other indie authors, and I have, not once, seen anything less than 5 stars. Not if they know each other.

The reviews and Twitter promotions are likewise gushing, even hyperbolic. I don’t know how many times I’ve been told a book will be THE BEST YOU READ ALL YEAR. THE BEST BOOK OF THE SUMMER. THE BEST BOOK OF 2011. THE MOST CHILLING HORROR YOU’LL EVER READ.

Now, when I see a book rated 5 stars on Goodreads, I think two things: 1) This book says nothing real, because otherwise it would attract negative opinions, or 2) This book was rated exclusively by the author’s friends and/or other indie authors. 5-star ratings are no longer an indicator of quality; they’re now expected, kind of like how even the most mediocre theatre performance will receive a standing ovation because audiences now feel like jerks if they don’t.

5-star ratings have become a devalued currency. Think of Syndrome from The Incredibles, and his plan to sell his superpowers to the public — “When everyone’s super? No one will be!” Or, if you want a more grown-up analogy, think of the photos of post-WWII Germany, where people lugged suitcases of money to the corner store to buy a loaf of bread.

Reviews aren’t much better. Where a good review delves deep into a book, talking honestly about its good points and its flaws and its impact on the reader, 5-star reviews often do nothing more than write a back-cover blurb of the book, with some marketing buzzwords — you get a summary, followed by some superlatives, and a promise that this book will BLOW YOUR MIND. It rarely does. In a climate where the quality of books is slowly decreasing — and is in fact encouraged to decrease, and to condition readers to expect that decrease — the praise of books is climbing dramatically to compensate.

The scary correlation to this relates specifically to indie YA,  a huge, booming industry at the moment. Unfortunately, many indie YA books are being bought, read, and reviewed by other indie YA authors, not by actual young adults. This is partly to do with the issues in Part I (many teens not having access to ebooks or Amazon), but also because the indie book industry hasn’t figured out how to market outside its own circle yet. Some writers have begun to discuss how to reach readers as well as writers, but not as many about how to reach teens.

And because of the stigma, indie authors can sometimes be defensive and attack ‘outsiders’ who ‘just don’t understand’, despite the fact that no one will understand if the circle doesn’t open. Indie authors often argue that the world of traditional publishing is an exclusive, gated community, but so, too, is the indie world.

Wrap-up:

I do think that the future of indie publishing is an exciting place, and I would like to see a time when books published through non-traditional means do not carry a stigma. I’m excited for a future where I can buy digital copies of any book to go along with my print copies, when ereaders and internet are not the hallmark of the economically privileged, when libraries carry ebooks and ereaders for people to borrow free of charge, when all authors are paid freely and fairly for their work, and when the biggest, most influential, most life-changing book of the decade comes from someone who published on their own.

Unfortunately, at this point, I think that the stigma on the community — not necessarily individuals, be that people or books, but the overall machine that is indie publishing — is partly justified. With the denial of privilege inherent in insisting on digital-only books, the focus on marketing over content, and the devaluation of honest feedback, the current indie book world still has a way to go.

I want to see indie publishing thrive, but not the way it is now. In order for it to survive, it needs to take a step back from the numbers and look, really look, at what it’s doing to the world of books that it professes to love so much.

Overcoming Stigma: Indie Publishing’s Biggest Mistakes, Part II – Sales over Story

Posted by Lora Maroney on October 23, 2011
Posted in: Books, Ebooks, Indie Publishing, Rants, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 16 comments

Part II in my series: Overcoming Stigma: Indie Publishing’s Biggest Mistakes.

The first looked at the problem of an industry that claims to be “the little guy”, while ignoring and discounting an economic class made of billions of people. You can read it here.

The second thing the indie industry needs to do if it really wants to take off is make a choice: either admit that it doesn’t care about telling stories, or actually mean it when it says it does.

Before I get flamed, this series is not pointing fingers at individuals. It’s not actually about individuals at all. It’s about trends I’ve noticed in indie publishing, which aren’t necessarily dominant, but which still need to be eradicated in order for the indie publishing world to be respected in its own right.

Here’s the thing. Something scary happens when writers become their own marketers and publicists: they often lose sight of the story.

In this post, Cat Valente makes an excellent argument about the current climate of indie publishing, and why this is a problem: discussions about indie books — particularly ebooks — are not about story, they’re about sales. Amanda Hocking is amazing not because she writes stories that work their way into people’s hearts and twist something inside them; she’s amazing because she’s made a million dollars. People freely admit that her writing is not that good, not that memorable, but they don’t care, because she stuck it to the big guys and made the world work for her, and THAT’S what’s important.

This is, I think, a byproduct of what happens when creation and publicity are under control of the same person; wires get crossed. I’ve scrolled through a few guides to being a success in the indie world, and they’re all about marketing, all about finding your brand, all about selling yourself — because then people won’t care what you write, they’ll want to buy you, buy your angle.

The emphasis is on quantity over quality — and anyone who speaks up against this is instantly branded an elitist. Well, call me elitist, because I think this is a problem. Writing should not be about churning out book after book so your name is constantly on everyone’s lips — not because you’re good, but because you’re constantly producing, and you wow them with your prolificness. “Wow, ANOTHER book? They must be really talented!”

Time and time again I have heard people say, “I could spend a year writing and editing one book, sure, but why do that when I could publish TWELVE?” Those twelve don’t have to be amazing — they just have to trick people into buying more. Write cliffhangers. Redefine “novel” to mean 40,000 words, so you can split your book in three, call it a trilogy, and sell more copies. The idea is that if you only publish one book a year, people will forget about you; you have to keep producing, constantly, so that they don’t.

Well, yes. If you only produce one mediocre book in a year, people will forget you — and they have every right to. But the idea that a good author, who writes good books, will be forgotten after twelve months is absolutely ridiculous. Fans are happy to wait a year, sometimes more, for the next book when they know the extra time guarantees extra quality — and in the meantime, they’re recruiting new people. “Her next book isn’t out for another eight months, but it will be worth it!”

Craft is important. Yes, output is, too — not everyone can be Harper Lee, set for life after writing To Kill a Mockingbird. But there’s a reason why indie publishing is still not taken seriously by many, many consumers, and it’s not because “legacy publishing” afficionados are elitist monsters who think the path to “author” should be gated, with a membership card signed in blood. It’s because indie publishing champions the notion of producing more over producing better — and openly derides those who think otherwise. A writer is often a failure in the indie world if he spends 10 years trying to write a book — even if it turns into The Lord of the Rings, he could have sold 100 not-bad, almost-amazing books in that time and made more money, made a name for himself.

People want lots of books, yes. But people also want good books. The indie idea is that writing one amazing book is fine, but if no one buys it, you’re a failure. I see the point. But the paragon of success in the indie world is a man who sold a million copies on Amazon of books he openly, freely, unashamedly admits are not good books. And this is what people are trying to emulate.

In a world this obsessed with sales and branding and constant production, there is no place for a new Tolkien, a new Tolstoy; no place for a new book that will tear its way into people’s hearts and minds. Only a desperate, scrabbling world where you have to produce, produce, produce or people will forget you — because you’ve given them nothing substantial to remember you by.

Traditional publishing, as everyone knows, is not the mecca of quality. I know this. Everyone knows this. Bad books get published every day, good ones get bypassed, and new authors feel pressure to start on their next novel in order to maintain buoancy in the publishing world. As the world of traditional publishing is much bigger, it’s terrifyingly easy for authors to get buried and sink into mediocrity, never earning back their advances. However, with traditional publishing, the idea still exists that an author can take time and write a long, substantial book.

The way the indie publishing industry is moving, it’s creating a world where books are the equivalent of a fast-food hamburger — satisfying enough for now, but ultimately forgettable, and leaving you craving something more within the hour. And because the 99c price tag of an indie book comes piggybacking on a $50/month Internet connection and $300-or-more ereader, they can’t even use fast food’s excuse of being cheap and accessible.

This may be the future of books, but I really, really hope it isn’t. I believe that the indie world has possibility, and a glorious one — but not like this.

Overcoming Stigma: Indie Publishing’s Biggest Mistakes, Part I – The War on Traditional Publishing

Posted by Lora Maroney on October 20, 2011
Posted in: Books, Ebooks, Indie Publishing, Rants, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . 20 comments

I’m going to commit the blogging equivalent of suicide: I’m taking on the indie book publishing industry. I have seen the future of books, of reading, writing and publishing as championed by this industry, and it is not a nice one. In fact, it’s one that I would like to run away from — very far, and very fast.

As a disclaimer, I would like to say that I believe in the future of indie publishing as an abstract concept, but I do not support it at this moment. That is, I support indie publishing, the idea, the possibility, and I support indie authors, but I am not in support of a few of what I see as the core principles of the indie book industry as it stands right now.

This is not a post about business acumen, or marketing, or the legitimisation of indie vs. traditional. I have no business schooling, and no real understanding of marketing; this is merely a collection of some of the issues that I have with the indie publishing world as I see it — as a writer, a reader, and social activist.

That said, I hope that everyone — indie, traditional, whatever — can stay civil. I have a small readership, but this is the Internet — it’s gotten ugly before with only three people (me included), so let’s just toss that out there.

There will be three posts in this series: essentially, three things I think the indie book industry needs to examine about itself before it can be a real contender in the world of books.

First, the indie book industry needs to stop calling itself the David to traditional publishing’s Goliath, and — more importantly — needs to stop extolling the death of the traditional publishing industry.

Indie book pundits love to bandy around this image of the great “dinosaurs” of publishing — brick-and-mortar publishers, bookstores, even libraries — falling to their knees and crumbling to death, while indie publishing — the future, the next stage in evolution, Charles — stands triumphant. This image drives me crazy.

There is no reason to create a dichotomy between traditional and indie publishing; both are two sides of the same coin, with benefits and detriments on both sides, depending on what people (authors, publishers, readers) want. Traditional publishing does not “need to die” or “make way” for digital publishing. Many things — including the way authors get paid, particularly for electronic rights of their books — need a serious revamp, but the answer is not for it to disappear.

The good thing about traditional publishing, from an author standpoint, is that authors get paid to write, they don’t pay to write. Money flows toward the author, not away. With indie publishing, an author must fund everything themselves — sure, you could just plunk your un-edited, bad photoshop-cover novel into Amazon and go for it, bang, no overhead, but you’re not going to sell anything because your book will be terrible. Indie publishing takes money, and it takes work — to make your book up to standards, and to promote it once you’ve written it.

People in low income brackets, who don’t have $300 to shell out on an editor, on a copywriter, on a cover artist, who work several jobs to feed their families and can’t afford to spend all their time marketing their books, who may not be able to afford the Internet at all… In traditional publishing, these people have the chance — not the guarantee, mind, but the chance — to spend no more than time and postage and get a book and solid advance out of the deal. In the indie industry, these people “just aren’t willing to put the work in” and don’t deserve success.

However, my main point is about the industry’s effect on readers. Frankly speaking, indie publishing cannot meet the needs that traditional publishing fills, because it is not about readers at all. Readers don’t benefit either way from traditional or indie published books — they buy, they read, they move on. Indie publishing is all about the author; the reader is a means to an end — a way to pay the bills, to get well-known — but indie publishing does not care about the reader.

I’m not saying that indie authors don’t — I’m saying the industry does not. If indie book publishing cared about the readers, it would not be calling for the death of brick-and-mortar publishing. It would not be celebrating smugly when Borders goes bankrupt, when libraries close, when new authors have trouble getting agents and book deals. Because indie publishing can only reach — and is only interested in reaching — the smallest, most infinitessimal fraction of possible readers. Until that changes, indie publishing should not — and does not deserve to be — the top dog, and definitely not the only dog. Especially when indie publishing actually hurts many, many potential readers.

No industry that ignores millions of readers and dismisses an entire economic class — that is, in fact, so steeped in its own privilege that it refuses to acknowledge these people exist, or are important — should be allowed to set itself up as “the little guy” up against evil corporations.

Indie publishing is a rich person’s enterprise. Every person who argues that indie publishing is the future has essentially spat on the face of anyone with a low income. Whenever I hear someone say “Traditional publishing should die — digital is the way of the future!”, all I hear is, “Poor kids don’t deserve to read.”

Because here’s the thing: you can’t read most indie books without an expensive ereader — whether it’s a Kindle, a nook, an iPad, or even just a laptop. You can’t buy indie books without the Internet and a credit card. Even most physical-copy indie books (a rarity) aren’t found in stores — you need to use Amazon or something similar. You can’t find most indie books in a library or second-hand store.

I asked someone, once, how indie YA hopes to reach teens when most don’t have access to credit cards. The response was a baffled, ‘I can’t believe you’re asking such a stupid question’, “They can borrow their parents’.” I had to leave before I started strangling things.

The indie book industry apparently has no idea how many people in the first world live without reliable Internet (or any Internet at all), without credit cards, without the luxury of “impulse buys”. How many people have to choose whether they want to live without electricity, heat, water, or food this month. How many kids live in homes where “borrow your parents’ credit card” could be in an alien language, for how relevant it is to them.

The indie book industry does not realise how many kids cannot afford to buy ebooks because they’d have nothing to read them on — even if they bought an ereader, they’d be afraid to use it because someone would steal it. It does not realise how many kids cannot buy books, period — how many parents cannot afford to buy books new from anywhere, even at what the indie community calls a “steal” ($3.99 plus shipping on Amazon).

The indie book industry has forgotten how many children live for libraries. I did not come from a poor family, but we were not well off — if my parents had credit cards I didn’t know about it, because they never used them to buy things for us. We had dial-up Internet because high speed was not available in that area — and still isn’t, in 2011. Yet our house was filled with books — books we got at Christmas, birthdays, and once a year, when our local library had its 10c sale.

The rest of the year, we went to the library and devoured the books there. My town was extremely small and had no malls, department stores, or clothing stores, but we expanded our library when I was 10 because the town understood its kids needed it. If our library had closed, we would have had nothing to read. There were no bookstores available for almost an hour’s drive in any direction.

I am not an isolated case. Millions of people got their start at libraries, which are populated by traditionally published, “dinosaur” methods. Without these books, without this industry, millions — literally millions, and I am not referring to the deeps of Africa here — of children would not have books to read.

The indie book industry, as it stands, would rather these children not read, because they can’t afford to buy indie books. It may protest, but if it honestly thinks that traditional publishing deserves to die, then this is what it’s really saying.

If the indie book industry actually does care about kids, then it needs to change its attitude, right now. When indie publishing can put book after book after book in the hands of kids who can’t afford to buy one, then we’ll talk about levelling the playing field. But right now, indie publishing has some very, very big shoes to fill, to match its too-small britches.