Tag: publishing trends

Good things are coming

…I can feel it.

I got my tax return today, and it was significantly more than I was expecting.  Between that and the money I’m getting from my current temp job, I may have enough to last through this month and the next.  The last time I took a month off to focus exclusively on the writing, I accomplished quite a lot; I’m hoping I can do that again.

My current job is a 40 hr/week data entry position at a local alarm company.  The work is kind of tedious, but I can read blogs and listen to my mp3 player while I do it, so it’s actually kind of nice.

The workplace is pretty laid back, the people are way cool, and the work looks to be steady at least for the next few weeks.  A 20 hour or 30 hour job would probably be more conducive to writing, but for a short term gig this is pretty good.

Also, I’m seriously considering releasing Genesis Earth as an indie ebook if it doesn’t make the next cut in the ABNA contest.  Recent developments in the publishing industry make me think that this might be a better path to go with my career.

In February of 2011, ebooks surpassed all other trade categories (hardback, mass market, etc), taking ~30% of the market.  Just a couple of months before that, ebooks were around 8%.  At the same time, Kris Rusch has evidence that traditional publishers may be under-reporting ebook revenues (and underpaying authors) by as much as 90%.  I can’t go the traditional route without giving up my ebook rights, and with the current climate and royalty rates (14.9% of cover price for the (indefinite?) life of the ebook), that’s looking like a worse business decision every day.

So here is what I’m thinking of releasing, in the order (more or less) of when I plan to release them:

Journey to Jordan: Basically, a combination of blog posts and private journal entries from my experiences in Jordan.  It’s non-fiction, not a novel, but I think it’s the best project to practice on (probably because it will require the most formatting work).  Besides, I put a lot of myself into it, and it deserve to find an audience.

Genesis Earth: This is a full length novel, and has received a lot of positive feedback from friends, reviewers, and people who’ve picked up the free excerpt from the ABNA contest.  If it doesn’t make the semi finals, or (better) if it makes the semi finals but doesn’t win the grand prize, I’m seriously considering releasing it as an ebook.  It would certainly be a leap, but honestly, what have I got to lose?

Sholpan: This is a novella based on Stella’s story from my novel, Bringing Stella Home.  I haven’t shopped BSH around the traditional markets much yet, and I think it could find a home there, which would certainly give my career a terrific launch.  At this point, I’m looking to build my career more than earn a living, so I probably won’t release BSH until after I’ve shopped it around…but Sholpan, I think, would be a good way to test the waters and build things on the indie front.

Bringing Stella Home: At the same time, if Sholpan does well, and things start to take off in a surprising way, I’d seriously consider releasing Bringing Stella Home as an ebook.  I don’t anticipate releasing it any earlier than August or September, but you never know.  Also, this one has an advantage in that it’s part of a series; Genesis Earth is just book one of an unfinished trilogy.

So far, my short stories aren’t doing spectacularly well, but that’s okay–my goal with them was mainly to get some practice, not to make a ton of sales.  And even so, they are selling at a modest rate, though it’s too early to notice any definite patterns.

I’m curious, though, because it seems that readers are drawn more to novels and full-length books than short stories.  Will things be different when I release a few novels?  There’s only one way to find out.

Overall, though, this is very exciting.  As Kris Rusch says, I’ve got nothing to lose, and everything to gain.  I definitely feel that good things are coming my way.

More thoughts on indie publishing

Since my last post on indie publishing, I’ve been thinking a lot about this subject.  I haven’t decided to take the plunge into self published ebooks yet, but I have decided to make some changes in my writing and my career strategy, in order to position myself more favorably if/when I choose to do so.

Basically, my new strategy is something like Japan or Saudi Arabia’s approach to nuclear weapons: they don’t have an explicit nuclear program (since that would violate the nuclear non-proliferation treaty), but they have gathered the equipment, resources, and expertise together so that if they decided to go nuclear, they could do it in a year or less.

First, though, I attended Brandon Sanderson’s class lecture this Thursday, in which he had some very interesting things to say about ebooks and the publishing industry.  This was part I of his “how to get published” lecture, and here are some of the more interesting points he made:

  • Almost all the indie writers who are making it big have at least one loss leader ($.99 or less) on their list.
  • No one really knows whether indie publishing will be viable for large numbers of writers, or whether authors like Amanda Hocking and Joe Konrath are outliers.
  • Successful indie published books are typically:
    1) short (70k to 80k words)
    2) written in a pulp genre (thriller, romance, paranormal, sword & sorcery, etc)
    3) promoted very well through social networking
  • We have not yet seen any indie successes in epic fantasy, young adult / middle grade, historical fiction, or non-fiction.
  • The produce model vs. unlimited shelf space argument for going indie doesn’t apply as much to science fiction & fantasy as other genres, because:
    1) sf&f stays on the shelves in bookstores longer than other genres
    2) sf&f series grow better with a big push on the first book
    3) sf&f makes a lot of money on hardcover, unlike other genres

A lot of these points tend to mesh with what I’m hearing from my other sources–and Brandon really represents the last of the successful writers to make it big on the old model, before the ebook revolution began to take off.  He doesn’t make as big a deal on the current 25/75 split on net ebook sales as I would make, but then again, he’s making most of his money through print.

So anyways, here is what I plan to change about what I’m doing in order to better position myself to best take the ebook plunge, if/when I decide to do so:

1) Write at least 2 polished novels per year

Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith make very good arguments about how being able to write well quickly is a huge asset for a writer these days.

There are many good reasons for this:

1) Writing faster gives you more practice with craft, which tends to improve quality.
2) The best way to promote  your books is to constantly write new books.
3) The limited shelf space argument against writing quickly is now moot with ebooks.

In particular, I want to increase my writing speed in order that I can have a larger list to put out if/when I decide to go with indie publishing.  It’s much harder to be successful if you’ve only got one book available for sale; if/when I decide to take the plunge, I want to have at least three.

So far this year, I’ve finished one (Bringing Stella Home), but that’s because it was already sitting in the queue and only needed a quick touch up.  I would like to get Worlds Away from Home polished before the end of the year, and possibly one other project, such as Edenfall.

2) Reduce production time to as close to one year as possible

Right now, it takes me on average about two years to write a polished, salable novel.  That’s not a problem, because I have a lot of projects in the queue, but it’s not as fast as I would like.  I wrote Genesis Earth and Bringing Stella Home while I was still a journeyman writer, figuring out my craft.  I should be able to produce a lot faster.

Towards that end, I’m going to try to get Edenfall finished and polished within a year.  Since it’s already March, that might mean getting it polished by February of next year, but I still want to try.

My biggest weakness is first drafts; I always tend to get stuck midway and drop the project for a while before I feel ready to finish it.  That’s something I would like to change.  Then again, that might just be part of my writing process, and shouldn’t be forced.  However, I certainly could go through my revisions much faster.

3) Write out the direct sequels while the first book is still unpublished

Previously, I thought it was a bad idea to write out all the books in a series or trilogy before the first one is ever picked up.  After all, a rejection from a publisher on the first book is a rejection on all the other books in the series as well.  Using this reasoning, it was much better to write the first book of another trilogy, in order to maximize how much I could submit at any given time.

With indie publishing, however, it’s much better to release the whole trilogy all at once, so that readers who finish the first book can immediately pick up the others.  Again, the paradigm here is that the best way to sell books is with other books; if they loved the one, they’ll buy the others, especially to find out what happens next.

Of course, the best model is probably to have an open series with several indirect sequels with recurring characters in the same world.  With the Gaia Nova books, that’s exactly what I plan to do: Worlds Away from Home is set in the same universe as Bringing Stella Home, but with different characters and different story arcs.

However, Genesis Earth has serious trilogy potential, and with Edenfall I’ve decided to actually write the other books.  If/when I decide to take the plunge, I want to be able to release at least the first two books in that trilogy at the same time.  In fact, Genesis Earth is perhaps the biggest reason why I’m thinking so seriously about going indie, but that’s a subject for a whole other post.

4) Experiment with pulp genres such as space adventure stories

When Brandon said that the pulp genres tend to do better, I wasn’t sure whether that includes what I write.  I write primarily science fiction, but not the kind of stories you’d read only for entertainment and promptly forget once you’re finished.  If anything, I want to write more like Ursula K. Le Guin, whose stories are so meaningful they stick with you long after you’ve finished them.

Then again, there tends to be a lot of overlap in science fiction between the thoughtful, meaningful stuff and the pulps.  Ender’s Game and Starship Troopers immediately come to mind as awesome, entertaining stories that also have a lot of depth.  In his lecture, Brandon made it clear that “pulp” does not necessarily conflict with high art–just that the primary purpose of the story is to entertain.

I can live with that–and I actually have several story ideas that would translate well with the pulp mentality.  I’d like to do a novel (or a series of novels) with Danica from BSH and her mercenary team, perhaps as a sort of origin story for Roman, Anya, Artyom, and the others.  I’d like to revisit the Hameji as well, with a sort of “Ain Jalut in space” involving Sholpan’s son (BSH was basically the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in space).  I’ve already started an “Odyssey in space,” as told from a female Telemachus character–that’s To Search the Starry Sea.  All of these are, at their core, space adventure stories, and might translate well as pulps.

5) Commit to releasing one book every 6 months if/when I take the plunge

This is related to the first strategy on the list, but it’s more of a business plan than a personal writing goal.  Basically, if/when I take the plunge, I want to:

1) have at least 3 finished, polished books to put out at first,
2) know that I can put out one book every six months at least.

This not only means developing a backlist, it means doing some soul searching as a writer to find out how difficult it is to keep up with this pace–and adjusting my writing habits accordingly.  I’m optimistic that I can, but it’s something of a paradigm shift, and I want to make sure I’ve made that shift before I take the leap.

Anyhow, these are my thoughts on how to alter my current writing strategy.  I haven’t yet decided to go indie, but when the time comes, I think that these things will help me to maximize my potential if/when I decide to do so.

Of course, what do any of us really know?

Paradigm shifts and finding balance

Yesterday, I was going to write a post about how pathetic this past week was: I only wrote about 1.5k per day (while unemployed), and spent most of my time on the internet reading blogs.

However, after reading some more of Dean Wesley Smith’s blog series, Kililng the Sacred Cows of Publishing, I have to admit that this week wasn’t a total loss.  Because of what I’ve read this week, I’m starting to have a major paradigm shift about the publishing world, and that likely will have a huge impact on my writing career, hopefully for the better.

If I can sum up how my views have changed into one statement, it would be this: that in order to succeed in this business and avoid the common pitfalls, I need to learn how the entire publishing system works as a whole, so that I can game it to my advantage.  A lot of the hard and fast “rules” of the industry are actually myths that make for bad business, for writers as well as editors and agents.  But when you look at the system from a rational choice perspective, the flaws become obvious.

Take, for example, the “rule” that editors only accept unagented submissions.  What does that do for the industry?  It turns agents into the first tier of gatekeepers that new writers need to get past.  But agents don’t pay writers; they get a 15% commission off of the books they manage to sell (which, according to DWS, is excessive, but that’s another topic).  And they don’t get paid at all for reading slush.

So agents are spending more of their time doing things that pay less money, pressuring them to take less risks and work only with what they “know” will sell.  This leads them to ignore the fresh, unconventional voices that turn the tropes on their heads and have the power to take the market by storm.

Furthermore, because of their newly christened gatekeeper status, they make their writers rewrite their manuscripts until they read just like clones of Harry Potter or The Davinci Code.  And when the agents’ three or four closest buddies turn the book down, they come back to the writer and tell them to write something else.

It’s an extreme view, for sure, but it has a few good points.  The incentives are all in the wrong places, with too many opportunities for the gems to fall between the cracks.  And while the response from everyone in publishing is to cling to the myth and scream “the system works!” I have to wonder, does it really?

This comment from one of the threads struck me with particular force:

“The biggest mistake you can make is giving complete power over to someone who will never care as much as you do.”

Youch.  And yet, it makes so much sense.  How many writers’ careers have been ruined by doing just that?  Ceding too much power to people who simply don’t care as much as they do, all in the name of some “rule” of publishing?

Of course, that’s not to say that the publishing industry is full of cheats and sleazebags.  I’ve spent some time with professionals at World Fantasy and other conventions, and I’ve been very impressed with all of them.  It’s just to say that writing is a business, and that writers need to approach their careers in the same way as anyone who’s self-employed.  Certainly it’s important to work with other professionals, but that doesn’t mean handing over the fate of your business to them.

So anyways, what with all the business research I’ve been doing, I suppose the last week isn’t a total loss.  However, I definitely feel a need to get back into writing.  My deadline for WAFH is in two weeks, and the next 40k are going to require the biggest changes.  So here’s my plan for the next two weeks:

  • Get up at 7 am every day.
  • Write at least 2.5k words per day (500 during LTUE).
  • Fill out at least 5 job applications per day.
  • Take a week-long Halo fast.

Probably the single biggest thing killing my creativity right now is the angst that comes from money woes.  I redid my budget yesterday and realized I can get by this month without dipping too deeply into reserves, but still, that’s no substitute for a reliable source of income.  Trouble is, it’s hard to find motivation to apply for jobs when most employers don’t even respond to your application, but hopefully a concrete goal will make that easier.

As for Halo, as much as I love the game, I just don’t have time for it right now.  Personal writing deadlines are coming up, LTUE is just around the corner, and I’m falling too far behind to spend my time on video games.

I’m also going to make a concerted effort to get up earlier.  If I stay up past midnight, I’m usually just dicking around on the internet, whereas my mornings are almost always productive.  Plus, I hate sleeping in–hate it.  Gotta get up earlier.

So anyhow, that’s the plan.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some writing to do…

World Fantasy Day 3

Saturday at the World Fantasy convention was awesome. Tons of amazing panels, with excellent advice and some very interesting insights.

First, I attended “The Story Cycle vs. The Novel,” which was moderated by L.E. Modesitt.  The panelists talked about the evolution of a series and the difference between a cycle of novels vs. a continuation.  In a story cycle, there may be many books, but one ending, whereas in a more loose series, every novel is a standalone with an ending.  In another panels someone used the analogy of an avalanche vs. skipping stones, which I found quite useful.

Next, I attended “The Continued Viability of Epic Fantasy.” The panel started out by defining epic fantasy (as opposed to heroic / sword & sorcery), which they more or less agreed has the following characteristics:

  • Takes place in an alternate world
  • Is large in scope, rather than personal
  • Involves characters who are trying to save the world
  • Has a multi-strand plot with many viewpoints
  • Has an extended story arc

David Drake then blew the premise of the panel out of  the water by arguing that epic fantasy is still selling well–in fact, that the market has been expanding over the past ten years.

Drake also pointed out, however, that when you’re successful, the normal commercial rules don’t apply; first, you have to prove your chops, realizing that the publishers will lose money on your first couple of books.  That’s just a fact, and anyone who denies it is arrogant and stupid.

The next panel was “Slaughtering the Evil Hordes,” about the barbaric hordes trope in fantasy and whether it’s disturbing or a good thing.  I asked the question: “how can you have the hordes win and still make it work?” and Tom Doherty pointed to Modesitt’s Magic of Recluse as a good example of this.  Basically, you have to show the good in each side, sometimes by a shift that makes the reader suddenly and unexpectedly see the hordes in a new light.

Next, I attended “The Moral Distance Between the Author and the Work.” This panel was quite fascinating.  One of the interesting questions that was raised was whether you can deduce an author’s morals from reading their work.  At first, the panelists said that in good art, you can’t, but then Scott Edelman and Eric Flint pointed out that if you read an artist’s whole corpus, usually you can.  Nancy Kress compared artists to dandelions; over time, you grow and mature, but when you send out work, where it goes and what happens to it has nothing to do with you as the artist.

One of the best panels, however was “Authors and Ideas,” which happened the next hour.  The panelists started by agreeing that as an author, your most deeply held personal beliefs will always show up in your work, whether or not you know you believe it.  The stuff we believe most firmly, we never even think to question because it is invisible to us.  Most aliens in sci fi are less alien than the Japanese, and our own great great grandparents are more alien to us than anything else.

The panel then got on to how writing is a collaboration between the author and the reader, where the writer has no control over what the reader will take from it.  Even though your art will contain your beliefs, in order to be great it must also convey what you don’t believe–the “opposition in all things” element.  Done well, the author “shakes hands with the reader over the character’s head.”

After the panels, I had dinner at the con suite–and let me just say, the convention organizers went WAAAAY out of their way to make the con suite awesome.  They literally provided every meal, and enough of it to feed everyone who came in, which really surprised me.  A huge thanks to everyone who volunteered with organizing and running the con.

Anyway, I got into a HUGE discussion at dinner with an amazing couple who runs a used book business out of Massachusetts.  We talked about artificial intelligence, the physical limits of computer circuits, and whether it’s possible for us to one day emulate the human brain on a computer system.  Gained some very interesting insights for my novel Genesis Earth, as well as just a general fun time.  Conversations like this are one of the things I treasure about these events.

And then I bounced around the parties for the rest of the night.  Had fun, talked with Tom Doherty and a handful of authors (though not as many as last year), but probably most importantly made a bunch of awesome writer friends, with whom I will be keeping in touch after the convention.

I might not have met a bazillion agents and editors this year, but I did make a ton of friends among the aspiring writers and editors, and that definitely counts for something.  I look forward to staying in touch and supporting everyone as we break in and make our mark; we’re the next generation of an awesome literary tradition, and we’re definitely going to keep it going!

World Fantasy 2010: Day 2

Wow, what a tiring day.  I feel drained, mentally and physically, and I didn’t even spend all that much time at the parties tonight.

I got started a bit early, prowling around the book-swap table, where I was rewarded with some books that look really good.  If you know what you’re doing, you can totally get the price of your admission ticket in free books (and then some).  I packed super light for that exact reason.

The convention started out with an awesome panel titled “Fantasy Gun Control,” where the panelists discussed why fantasy tends to favor swords over guns, even though guns have existed since the 1300s.  Funniest quote from the panel: Walter Jon Williams asked what if Samuel L. Jackson was one of the Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers from Harry Potter, and Charles Gannon quipped “do I have to get magical on your ass?”

The other panel I attended was “The Tension Between Art & Commerce,” an excellent panel which very quickly evolved into a cage fight between Nancy Kress and her publisher, Tom Doherty.  It basically went something like this:

Tom: I don’t think there is any tension; the best art always sells the best.

Nancy: No way!  Just look at Danielle Steele: her writing is CRAP, yet she sells like crazy–and that’s the norm!

Tom: But true art endures beyond its time and sells much better over the long run.  After all, just look at Homer and the Iliad.

Nancy: Homer? Are you serious? He’s been dead, what–2,000 years?

Tom: Yeah…but my point is, if you’re a writer, you need to write what’s in your heart and not chase the market.  If you do try to chase the market, your writing will be crap, AND it won’t sell.

Nancy: True, but what about my apocalyptic novel about a plague that turns domestic dogs feral?  I got four rejections that all said: “this book is great, but it would offend dog lovers so much that we can’t publish it.”

Tom: Well, those were just stupid editors.

Nancy: Uh, Tom…one of those was from your publishing house!

Of course, those aren’t exact quotes, and Nancy was very quick to make it known that she loves Tom and appreciates him for publishing so much of her work, but that was more or less how it went.  It was hilarious.

At the  same time, the panel was quite useful as well.  Everyone mentioned how a writer’s willingness and ability to learn the craft and accept criticism is key–especially after getting an editor.  Without this capacity to learn, aspiring writers will almost never succeed, whereas those who have it have a chance.

The rest of the time I spent hanging out and shmoozing with various people.  I interviewed both Dan Wells and Peter Ahlstrom for the Mormon Artist article on BYU’s “class that wouldn’t die,” and those interviews went very well.  Those two guys are seriously awesome–way down to earth and easy to talk with.

I also pitched to a couple agents, and I think it went very well.  For one of them, I thought I saw her eyes light up as I described the characters in my novel from last year, Genesis Earth.  It might just be wishful thinking, but her response was enough to convince me that I need to give that story a thorough revision and send it out to her before the end of next month.

I worry, though, that there’s not as much demand for the kind of fiction I write.  My writing falls very solidly into science fiction (space opera, to be more specific), but everything I see here at the con is fantasy–epic fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal, steampunk.  No science fiction, except from a couple small presses.  Just fantasy.

In the art vs. commerce panel, Ginger Buchanan claimed that science fiction was never a popular genre–that the popularity was all due to a handful of specific writers and a handful of specific works.  I’m not sure I agree with that, but it is a bit discouraging.  Speculative fiction is a fairly niche corner of the publishing world to begin it, and to see and hear people within that niche treating science fiction as ANOTHER niche…it doesn’t bode well for someone who wants to make a full time living writing it.

But then again, maybe my stuff is good enough that it’ll find a home anyways–and not just a home in a small press, but with a big enough publisher that I can actually be a full time writer.  I don’t hold any illusions about my books making me fabulously rich and famous or somehow spawning a new sub-genre unto itself, but I do think my writing is good enough that I can shoot big and hope to get somewhere–perhaps even expect it.  I don’t know, but I feel that the hope is justified, at least.

Anyhow, that’s probably more angst than you cared to read.  World Fantasy is going great, and I’m exhausted, so I’m going to hit the sack.  Good night.

Is Inception the new cyberpunk?

WARNING: This post contains spoilers for Inception and Neuromancer.

So I just saw Inception for the first time today, and I couldn’t help but notice the uncanny similarities between between it and Neuromancer by William Gibson.  It made me wonder if Inception represents some kind of reincarnation of cyberpunk.

Before I go on, I should confess that I’m not an expert on cyberpunk.  I’ve read Neuromancer, seen Blade Runner, and read a couple of books that are on the borderline (such as On My Way to Paradise).  That’s about it.

However, Inception and Neuromancer have too many parallels to be just a coincidence.  For example, in both stories:

1) the main character is a “hacker,” or someone with an uncanny ability to control or manipulate the virtual reality,
2) the main character gets entangled with hostile corporate entities that threaten his life and are far more powerful than himself,
3) the main character agrees to work for the corporate entities in an illegal, high-stakes heist involving private interests,
4) the main character is haunted by memories of a dead love interest from a past relationship and ultimately confronts that love interest in the virtual reality,
5) the main character rejects the objective reality for the virtual reality.

There are other, broader similarities as well: the near future dystopian setting, corporations weilding more power than governments, significant portions of the population abandoning the objective reality for the allure of the virtual reality, etc.  In particular, the ending of Inception reminded me of the ending of Neuromancer, in terms of ambiguity as well as the emotional twist.

So what does all this mean?  I see I’m not the only one to notice this–apparently, the discussion is already underway.  Is this the next incarnation of cyberpunk, and if it is, what can we expect to see come out in the next few years?