{"id":8109,"date":"2013-02-22T20:57:02","date_gmt":"2013-02-23T03:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=8109"},"modified":"2013-02-22T21:02:37","modified_gmt":"2013-02-23T04:02:37","slug":"why-i-am-not-afraid-of-the-noise-part-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/why-i-am-not-afraid-of-the-noise-part-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I am not afraid of the Noise part III"},"content":{"rendered":"

These days, it seems as if everyone is terrified by the fact that anyone can publish a book.\u00a0 Indies, self-published writers, authors with traditional book contracts–it doesn’t matter.\u00a0 Everyone is mortified by the sheer volume of crap books coming out nowadays, as if Sturgeon’s Law<\/a> is a new thing.\u00a0 The assumption is that all this noise is making it harder to get noticed–that readers have to slog through all the crap to find the good stuff.<\/p>\n

I’ve blogged about this twice before, here<\/a> and here<\/a>.\u00a0 My views haven’t changed–I still think that the flood of crap ebooks is nothing for writers or readers to fear.\u00a0 However, I’ve found a new way to think about it.<\/p>\n

\"Message<\/a>It’s been almost two years since I tested the waters of self\/indie publishing.\u00a0 Since then, I’ve learned that an ebook is like a message in a bottle, floating in the midst of a stormy sea.\u00a0 Readers make up the ocean, and the vicissitudes of the market are the storms that rage across it.<\/p>\n

A good book will tend to float, whereas a bad book will tend to sink.\u00a0 Gimmicks like Select freebies and other promotional activities may pull the bottle back up to the surface, but they won’t make it float.\u00a0 And maybe, if a bottle sinks to the bottom of the ocean, someone will come trawling for sunken treasure and haul it up, but more likely than not it will just stay there.<\/p>\n

Most readers don’t go to the bottom of the ocean to find their books.\u00a0 They go to the beaches, where the bottles eventually wash up. These represent communities like book clubs or Goodreads, or just groups of friends who like to talk about books.\u00a0 When a bottle does wash up on a beach, that represents a book coming into its natural audience.\u00a0 It might take years, but if the book is good enough to float, eventually it will wash up somewhere.<\/p>\n

As long as the bottle floats, it doesn’t matter how deep the ocean is beneath it.\u00a0 Similarly, as long as a book is selling a handful of copies a month, it doesn’t matter that there are ten million bazillion crap ebooks on Amazon, or Smashwords, or Kobo, or wherever.\u00a0 Those books are all at the bottom of the ocean, where the waters are calm and cold.<\/p>\n

When I was a kid, I was terrified of deep water.\u00a0 Then I had a swimming instructor who told me that it didn’t matter how deep the water was–so long as I could swim, the ocean could be a mile deep and it wouldn’t matter.\u00a0 Since then, I’ve swum in some pretty deep waters, and I can say with complete confidence that my swimming instructor was right.<\/p>\n

Discoverability and visibility are challenges for authors everywhere, but the problem is not the flood of crap that everyone always worries about.\u00a0 It doesn’t matter how deep the ocean is, or how many ebooks are being published.\u00a0 Instead, the problem is making sure that your writing is good enough to float.\u00a0 If it is, then with enough courage and perseverance, you’re going to make it.<\/p>\n

Right now, I feel like most of my books are floating on the face of that stormy ocean.\u00a0 A couple of them have sunk, mostly the short stories.\u00a0 I’m not much of a short story writer, though, so that makes sense–I still have a lot to learn in that area.\u00a0 But the novels and novellas are all selling, with no promotion other than the first title in the series set to perma-free.\u00a0 That tells me that they aren’t crap.\u00a0 So long as I can keep telling good stories, I’m confident that my books will find their audience.\u00a0 When and where they’ll wash up, I have no idea, but one thing is certain: all the crap at the bottom of the ebook ocean isn’t going to keep me from making it.<\/p>\n

Image taken from this site here<\/a>, which I recommend checking out.\u00a0 Interesting stories!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These days, it seems as if everyone is terrified by the fact that anyone can publish a book.\u00a0 Indies, self-published writers, authors with traditional book contracts–it doesn’t matter.\u00a0 Everyone is mortified by the sheer volume of crap books coming out nowadays, as if Sturgeon’s Law is a new thing.\u00a0 The assumption is that all this… Continue reading Why I am not afraid of the Noise part III<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Why the flood of crap ebooks isn't anything for writers to fear. #amwriting #ampublishing","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[577,515,529,801,555,599],"class_list":["post-8109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ebook-revolution","tag-ebooks","tag-indie-publishing","tag-marketing","tag-promotion","tag-thoughts-reflections","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-26N","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8109"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8115,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8109\/revisions\/8115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}