I’m not against self-publishing, and believe it’s here to stay. I’m seriously considering it for my own works, but under specific circumstances. My personal approach is to make a concerted effort at going the traditional publishing route for my stories, however, before trying self-publishing.

I’ll list some pros and cons. I’ll probably miss some—I’m not exactly an expert.

Traditional publishing pros:

• Publisher has access to varied distribution channels
• Publisher has marketing and PR muscle
• Publisher has internal departments for editing, copy-editing, and cover image generation

Traditional publishing cons:

• Publisher and distributors take a large piece of the revenue
• Long lead time from sale of novel to novel sitting on shelf and generating sales
• Difficult for author without an agent to find the appropriate market for a book

Self-publishing pros:

• Little to no lead time between completion of novel and novel earning revenue
• Author keeps a higher percentage of revenue
• Easy way for established authors to keep backlist earning revenue

Self-publishing cons:

• Author in charge of entire publishing pipeline, including editing, and cover images. This is a lot of work, but one can pay independents to do this.
• Author must handle all PR, marketing & distribution. This isn’t for everyone. But if you can’t do it yourself, readers will have a hard time finding you in the crowd.
• Author may be tempted to release a work before it is ready.

It’s that last point that has so far kept me from jumping into the self-publishing pool. I’ve had my fair share of rejections. Some of those indicate the work I submitted wasn’t good enough yet for prime time. Some of those simply indicate my work didn’t match the editor’s taste, not that it’s unpublishable. However, given the terse nature of most rejections, it’s often hard to differentiate between the two cases.

Here’s my plan.

For short stories: I don’t write many of these, but the ones I have I’m submitting to pro markets. Once I’ve exhausted my options there, I’m considering going the Kindle Shorts route, or if I can gather enough stories together, self-pubbing an anthology. The other idea I’m toying with is giving the shorts away free on this site. I just don’t have a large quantity of them, so they won’t be what drives my career.

For novels: I told myself I’d take my first novel to a certain count of rejections before giving up on it and putting it in a box under my bed. I haven’t hit that count yet. I’ve also received enough professional positive feedback (“professional” is the key word here) about it to make me believe it’s not unpublishable, so I started thinking once I reached my rejection limit, I’d turn to self-publishing.

But now I’ve finished a second novel. I know this novel’s better. My more experienced eye tells me so. Does that mean the first one’s bad? No. But I’m enough on the fence about it to hold off on self-publishing the first one until I get a better bead on the prospects for number two. Should I happen to interest someone in my second book, I believe it’s safer to ask that stakeholder (whether it be publisher or agent) if they think self-publishing the first will hurt the second.

The other reason I’m holding off on self-publishing is it seems the very successful self-published authors are quite prolific. They generate new novels at a pace that exceeds my current output levels. I believe this pace contributes enormously to marketing and PR: by generating a book or more a year, the regular release cycle keeps reader interest high in that particular author’s brand. If I want to do this, I believe I need to get a few more novels under my belt, and manage their release cycle in such a way that it continually renews interest in my backlist. I’m not there yet, but I’m working on it.

Authors and publishers are taking a lot of flack for pricing eBooks comparably to hardcovers. Self-published authors have been running experiments on the ideal price point to set for maximum sales/income.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t know what the ideal fair price for an eBook is, but I suspect it will vary quite a bit depending on the author, publisher and book itself.

What I do strongly believe is that one star reviews given to a book over a perception of unfair pricing regarding delivery format are pure bunk.

When I buy a book, I am buying the story, not the paper that story is printed on. The inherent value I pay for is the work of the writer, editor, and publishing support staff. If I wanted to simply buy paper, I’d buy a brick of it for $6.99. I’m actually a reader cheapskate: I rarely pay the premium for a hardcover, choosing instead to wait for the lower cost paperback. But as a consumer, I don’t perceive that the paperback costs less because of the binding, or quality of the paper itself. It costs less because I waited for it. To me, the hardcover and even trade paperback price premium is more about being able to read the story immediately. Which is why it makes sense to me that eBook pricing is similar to hardcover pricing: it’s not about the cost of materials and all about instant gratification.

The whole “an eBook is cheaper to produce” argument is a red herring. When I buy a movie, I pay for the entertainment, not the piece of plastic it comes on. When a new format comes out, whether VHS, DVD, or Blu-Ray, the overall cost for owning and watching that piece of entertainment in my home has stayed pretty comparable over the years. Sure, Netflix is cheaper, but that is a subscription model and not ownership.

When I buy music from a download service, even though the format is entirely digital and I’m no longer paying for the plastic of a record or CD, I’m still paying $14.99 for a new release album. I don’t see people giving digital albums one star reviews because they’re P.O.’d that they cost more than $10.

Ultimately, as a reader, I do not feel it’s my right or prerogative to dictate one-size-fits-all pricing of a story. These days, a high-end dark chocolate bar I buy and wolf down in less than 5 minutes costs more than what some books are selling for. The complexity of publishing business models notwithstanding, for me, because I’m also a writer, it’s about the sheer work involved. Yes, I have not purchased books because the price didn’t fit my budget for any given month. But who am I to tell a writer who spent 1 year, 5 years, or even 10 years writing a great story that their book sucks because of how it’s priced?

However, I do know how much work I put into creating stories, and how much time it takes me to develop a novel or short story. And that’s a non-insignificant portion of my time.

I’m currently reading the Nebula Awards Showcase 2010. It includes various articles about the history of Science Fiction and Fantasy. In Robert Weinberg’s article “Early SF in the Pulp Magazines”, he states:

Clayton Magazines began publishing Astounding Stories in January 1930 and attracted top authors with their word rate of two cents a word…

Which got me thinking. SFWA’s 2011 qualifying word rate for professional story sales is five cents a word, $50 minimum. This seems low, compared to the rate 80 years ago. I decided to find out what that word rate should be if professional payment had kept up with inflation. Wolfram tells me that number is 26 cents per word.

Now, granted, inflation isn’t the only pressure on pay rates, so the picture is not black and white, but it seems clear that SFF short story writing today is simply not valued as highly as it used to be. I can’t say that about writing in general, since freelance non-fiction pays north of 50 cents to $1 per word. Here I’m just talking SFF short stories.

I’m getting all my numbers off the Internet, and I’m not a statistician, so my analysis below is most likely flawed, but a couple of sources tell me that the average annual salary in 1930 was $1368. If that number had simply risen with inflation, the average annual salary in the U.S. would be $18105 (again based on popping $1368 into Wolfram). A quick search reveals that in 2010, that number is actually somewhat north of $30,000. Where I’m going here is that salaries overall seem to have outpaced inflation since 1930.

So the qualifying pro pay rate for SFF stories not only is five times less than where it should be had it kept pace with inflation, but somewhere between eight and nine times less than if it had kept up with salaries in general (assuming my numbers above are somewhere in the right ballpark).

I’m fully cognizant that market pressures dictate the price that publishers can charge for SFF magazines and anthologies, and thus what they can pay writers. What does seem clear is that it is many times harder to make a living being a SFF short story writer today in 2011 than it was back in 1930. This is why you won’t see many short story writers without day jobs.

Since I post the occasional book review and also sit squarely in the “still working at breaking in” portion of the writing camp, I have an opinion here.

I made the choice long ago to not (or at least rarely) post negative book reviews. Some will probably see this as an argument bolstering the “you’re afraid for your career” side. I don’t see it that way. I’m not a professional reviewer, I’m a reader and a writer. I don’t view myself as a taste-maker. I like what I like, and that’s sometimes not what other people like. [Updated 9AM] So it’s not that I’m worried about hurting MY career. I don’t see it as my place to hurt another writer’s career.

The problem with a negative review is that many perceive it as an attack on the writer, and I haven’t really figured out how to write one so that it clearly isn’t. My perspective is that just because a book doesn’t resonate with me, it doesn’t mean it won’t resonate with you. Or that it’s a bad book. My taste is not yours. So if I don’t like something, I simply don’t comment on it. The tricky bit is that the reverse isn’t necessarily true: just because I don’t comment on a work, doesn’t mean I don’t like it. I just didn’t have anything to say about it. Or I was in a rush to put out my reading log post and couldn’t come up with something pithy. My reading log is just that: a log.

The flip side is that if I loved something, I like to share that love with the world. Why not? There’s still no guarantee that you’ll like it too. But if someone blows me away with their work, they deserve to have that shouted out across the virtual rooftops.

So back to this YA mafia thing. I’ve met dozens of professional writers over the last few years, and this is how many have actively tried to ruin my career:

ZERO

Sure, some of them have been indifferent to me at best. And why shouldn’t they be? They’re busy people, who don’t know me from Adam. They don’t owe me anything.

But more impressive is how many of them have been welcoming, supportive, willing to donate their time, answer questions when they didn’t have to, and tolerate a total noob trying to act cool in their midst.

I mean heck. I can’t count them all. The ones that have pointed me at online resources I didn’t know to look for. The ones that, having published dozens of novels, go to a Con and agree to critique the uneven work of unpublished writers. For free. The ones that let me e-mail them questions, AND ANSWER THEM, even after the paid workshop is long over. The ones that exchange critiques. Of whole novels. The ones that simply say: don’t give up.

I’d name them all but then I’d just look like a grubby name-dropper. You know who you are.

And I say THANK YOU. I can’t say it enough. You are beautiful people.

If you think you’ve been done in by a YA mafia, then you’re hanging out with the wrong crowd.

Note: not a license. You forfeit your rights. Writer beware.

YouTube

For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your Content. However, by submitting Content to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and YouTube’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels… The above licenses granted by you in video Content you submit to the Service terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your videos from the Service.

See here, the key point? I retain ownership. I’m granting a license, which has a termination limit.

AFV

All submissions become the sole property of Producer and may be used in any manner, commercial or otherwise, in any and all media and/or technologies now known or hereafter devised throughout the universe in perpetuity.

The writer in me, who has had the necessity for careful negotiation of rights assignments drilled into her by any and all writing business-oriented workshops she has ever been to, took one look at the above and said, WTF? What kind of idiot do you take me for, “Producer”? That is one seriously grabby and onerous copyright clause. And you are not even guaranteeing to pay me for my content. Neither does YouTube, but at least they don’t turn around and say my content belongs to them forever and ever, unless I plan to show it in a quantum parallel universe. It’s not clear to me that the “return” clause at the link actually gives me back ownership, either. Just a way to get the cassette back.

I wouldn’t accept terms like that for a novel, short story or article (with the exception of certain types of work-for-hire – the key difference being that work-for-hire usually entails fair compensation). Why would I accept them here? The fact that this is a contest doesn’t justify a sweeping grab, either. Just take a look at the ABNA Grant of Rights terms for comparison.

I guess I won’t be winning $10,000 anytime soon. I think I can live with that.

What happens when the book you start out to write isn’t the book that keeps prodding you in the middle of the night, whispering “Write me! Write me!”? KatTales welcomes Elyse Mady to tell us all about how this exact situation turned into her debut novel, The Debutante’s Dilemma.

To celebrate, Elyse has kindly offered to give away a free eBook. Leave a comment with this post before noon PDT on November 4, 2010, and I’ll randomly draw from the commenters and announce the winner on November 5, 2010. One entry per person, please. The winner will need to provide primewriting at katrinaarcher dot com with their e-mail address so Elyse can deliver their prize.

An enthusiastic and voracious reader of everything from 18th century novels to misplaced cereal boxes, Elyse Mady has worked as a freelance magazine writer for the past several years, specializing, in all things, in sewing and embroidery.

Her first work of fiction, The Debutante’s Dilemma, will be published by Carina Press November 8, 2010.   She is also working on a number of contemporary romance manuscripts as well as a full length historical novel set in the 1780s.

With her excellent writerly imagination, she one day dreams of topping the NY Times Bestseller’s List and reclaiming her pre-kid body without the bother of either sit-ups or the denunciation of ice-cream.

Elyse Mady:

I’d like to start out by saying that I had no intentions of writing, let alone publishing The Debutante’s Dilemma.

None.

Really.

Except, of course, that I ultimately did write it. And then sold it to Carina Press, thereby marking my debut into the world of fiction. All factors that makes Kat’s request to write a blog posting about the book and what went into its conception something of a challenge. However, since sending off a big old page of nothing doesn’t sound all that enticing and public humiliation is an excellent motivator for productivity, I’m going to give it a stab.

The Debutante’s Dilemma tells the story of Miss Cecilia Hastings, a diamond of the first water on the cusp of receiving offers of marriage from two of the most eligible bachelors in England. But Cecelia doesn’t want to settle for a chilly, proper marriage, she wants love and passion with any man she ultimately marries. So she issues a challenge to her suitors: a kiss, so that she may choose between them.

Jeremy and Richard have been friends since childhood, and compatriots on the battlefields of Spain, but falling for the same woman has set them at odds, and risks destroying their friendship forever. But a surprising invitation to a late-night garden tryst soon sets them on a course that neither of them could have anticipated. And these gentlemen quickly discover that love can take many forms…

Now, I’m going to admit that I’m very catholic in my reading tastes: fiction, non-fiction, romance, classics, pretty much printed material in all forms. But when I read romances, although I dabble in paranormal and suspense and Presents type stories, most of my keepers tend to be contemporary or Regency. Yet when I embarked upon a career as a writer, I gravitated instinctively towards writing contemporary romances. I’d sent off a 70,000 word contemporary to Carina in December of 2009 and was gearing up to write my next book (a contemporary) in the interim.

It honestly never occurred to me to give my stories in a historical setting, despite the fact that I’m an ardent reader of 18th and 19th century fiction and history alike. I’m a little slow, I suppose, but if I were to articulate my reluctance then, it would be the question of how can you take a genre as venerable, as well-established, as Regency romance, whose parametres are so clearly delineated and make it your own? Jane and Georgette pretty much laid down the law, and all an author who follows in their footsteps can do is tweak it, right?

Hah! So much for that line of reasoning. Because I’m pretty sure Dilemma takes the elements of a Trad Regency: the virtuous heroine; the wealthy, titled peer, the attraction, the adherence to duty and society and family, and turns them at least 180-degrees! And it all started one night, as I was just on the edge of falling asleep, and the opening line of an entirely different story than the one I was planning to write popped into my head.

“Miss Cecilia Hastings was the luckiest girl who had ever lived to draw breath.”

And there she was, my next heroine. Graceful. Elegant. The epitome of tonnish charm. A lovely young lady with a very serious dilemma: should she settle for a marriage based on mere liking or should she dare to seek out the passion she craves, even if it threatens to derail her placid and well-ordered life?

A snarky, supercilious voice informed me of what everyone in London was saying about Miss Hastings and I found myself sitting up in bed, scrawling it into a notebook as fast as I could get it down. The men who loved her. Jeremy, Earl of Henley fun-loving, quick to anger, quicker to forgive. Richard, Duke of Wexford, introspective, clever and fiercely loyal. Two men in this story, committed friends, admitted rivals. Good, honourable, wealthy men who would make reaching her decision that much harder. And then my husband rolled over and asked me to turn off the light, and didn’t I realize he had to get up the next morning for work? So I shut off the lamp, but I couldn’t shut off my imagination, images and flashes of conversation flooding my mind and I knew, career plan or no, I was writing my first Regency.

I think that that is the lesson to take away from my experiences. Not the bit about annoying your significant other with unwieldy writing habits. You can ignore that bit. The bit about embracing spontaneous ideas fully. Writing is a creative process – you can plot and chart and plan but ultimately the process of imagination is an alchemical one. You need to foster your imagination and give yourself opportunities to hear yourself think, and let your thoughts wander free-form without imposing expectations or limits on your musings. There’ll always be time enough to prune and edit and shape – but trusting and embracing the unchecked flow is an important part of my writing process.

Freeform thinking is an integral part of the writing process for me. It’s how I work through many of the plot points and character issues I need to address in my manuscripts, by tucking the idea away in my unconscious until I can find time to simply ponder. It recharges me and helps foster a genuine sense of excitement about writing when an ‘a-ha!’ moment bursts upon me – that perfect turn of phrase, that cutting retort, a description or word choice that just hums. And those moments are the moments I try and hold on to as a writer, because, and let’s be honest here, writing can be a lonely, self-doubting, editorial quagmire far more often than it’s a sunny-field-of-daisies-and-fluffy-bunnies experience!

I’m thrilled with the how Dilemma ultimately turned out – who knew that sarcasm would be a genuinely beneficial authorial trait – and my steel-trap of a brain, famed for its ability to retain totally useless historical and grammatical information, a genuine asset? Embracing that radical creative moment showed me strengths as a writer I didn’t know I had and helped me create a story whose ending surprised even me. Hoorah for imagination!

___

The Debutante’s Dilemma: November 8, 2010. Carina Press | Amazon

Elyse Mady blogs at www.elysemady.wordpress.com about writing, research and romance novels, both historical and contemporary.  You can reach her by email at elysemady@cogeco.ca or find her on Facebook for updates and upcoming titles.

Let’s get this out of the way right now: no, I have not been offered a publishing deal. Quite the opposite: I got a rejection this week.

On the sometimes seemingly infinite road to publication, if as a writer you’re anything like me, it can feel like you toil away forever with little input regarding the quality of your work.

Sure, there are critique groups, workshops, and conferences and courses in which you can get your work examined by professional writers. But these are so often focused on improving the work presented, that often it becomes hard to tell where the work currently stands. At least, it does for me; maybe I’m just hard on myself.

Don’t get me wrong. I love critiques. I learn an incredible amount from critiques. They always make my stories better. Without critiques I’d be nowhere.

I made the decision to take a serious stab at a writing career six years ago. In six years, I’ve read up on craft, learned how to give and take feedback, and slowly gotten better as a writer. But in six years (friends & family, I know you love me, but for the purposes of this exercise your opinion has to be taken with a grain of salt  :-), what I haven’t been able to figure out for sure is if my stories entertain.

Until this week, when several people I respect told me in no uncertain terms that they were entertained by something I wrote. And different stories too!

So here’s the takeaway: if you’re a writer, keeping going. Keep plugging away, even if you’ve been at it for years, because in and among the form letters and rejections, you never know when just around the corner you might find someone standing and waving your pages, saying “thanks for a good story”.

And isn’t that what makes it all worthwhile?

I’m not published. I’m not an industry insider. I’m a reader, and as a hope-to-eventually-be-published writer, an interested party.

I don’t dispute Amazon’s right to not sell certain product. I don’t have a strong opinion either way about the value of Macmillan’s proposal, because I don’t know enough about the industry. I do know that a lot of authors I know and respect are now having their income streams slammed by a dispute in which they have no voice at the table.

I disagree with readers who say “Amazon is protecting the consumer by demanding a $9.99 price point”. As a reader, I did not understand the costs associated with a) writing a book b) publishing a book. But if one takes the Macmillan statement below at face value, Amazon is actually turning down potentially lower pricing. This is not consumer protection. From this consumer’s perspective it smells of oligopoly price-fixing. At what point does it veer into anti-trust?

This is not a case of authors being greedy. Most authors don’t even control the sale price of their books – once their contract is signed with a publisher, that control is out of their hands. If your sales numbers are in the four figures (not uncommon), you’re not making much as an author. Especially if the book took you more than a year to write.

In my opinion, this is a case of a near-monopoly distributor putting the smackdown on someone they are negotiating with, and in the process hurting a lot of authors who have absolutely nothing to do with the dispute.

In a free market, Amazon is perfectly within their rights. I also have the right not to purchase products from a company whose negotiating tactics I find distasteful. I will never buy a Kindle. I will be placing book orders elsewhere. In support of the many hard-working authors I know whose livelihoods have been impacted by Amazon’s heavy-handedness, I will be taking my business elsewhere.

Link roundup:

Macmillan statement

John Scalzi

Tobias Buckell

Charles Stross

Jay Lake

Robert J. Sawyer

A legal take by C.E. Petit (via Charles Stross)

Andrew Wheeler (also via Charles Stross), points out this isn’t the first time.

Updates:

[1:45 PM] Edward Champion with more links to monopoly & price discrimination resources

[4:35 PM] An update from Amazon.

[8:30 PM] Scott Westerfeld

[10:15 PM] John Scalzi’s highly entertaining evisceration of Amazon’s PR failures.

Can’t say I really blame her. I’m not sure I’d call that particular settlement “satisfactory”.

Is it just me or does the Guild’s response seem completely defeated? They seem to essentially be saying “it’s this or ‘completely gutted’ so roll over and take it”.