The one thing anyone in the ecosystem between authors and readers needs to be doing is providing discoverability. Promotion. Visibility. And most of them do not realize this. Do not make it their...
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The one thing anyone in the ecosystem between authors and readers needs to be doing is providing discoverability. Promotion. Visibility.
And most of them do not realize this. Do not make it their focus. They've continued like publishing is still in the twentieth century, where access to a press that can roll off bound copies, and an apparatus that can warehouse and ship them, is the secret sauce a writer needs. That's what a lot of them think they're selling, access to a store shelf with a bound physical copy, when what authors need to be paying for is putting their name and story in front of readers for awareness.
As the article noted, self distribution is still a huge uphill climb. What it didn't note is that's because the traditional side of publishing has spent the last twenty years pushing hard to keep indies out. They don't want any discoverability channels open to indie authors, and the usual routes such as industry magazines (which are used by librarians, and used to be the primary source for bookstore buyers though that channel is far less important these days) are kept closed because of this.
There are a lot of great authors writing great books. But books are a drop in the entertainment flood of options available these days, and the books that readers might like they often never hear about. Marketing books is hard because the market is small.
Brandon Sanderson, after having run a podcast for about fifteen years that made him aware of indie publishing while ignoring it to stick with his trad publisher, finally broke away. He opened his own company that does everything his trad was taking that cut for. And, surprise surprise, he's pocketing more money even after all the expenses. Even while carrying a payroll of people who operate the company for him so he can write and do stuff like press and teach and so forth.
Sanderson is the trads' nightmare finally come true. The biggest names don't need the trads nearly as much as the trads need them, since the business model the trads operate on relies on milking those big names every year to bring in the bulk of the bottom line.
The industry, traditional, small, or indie, needs to stop stalling and realign with a more twenty-first century model. What an author, any author, needs is to be visible. That's what anyone hoping to do business with an author can offer, and if they can do it well that's worth a fee. If they do it very well, they might deserve a cut of each copy, but they'd have to actually be moving copies (and most will not be actively looking for how to do that; key word active, rather than passive).
Most of them don't do it at all, much less poorly. They're clinging to the old ways, and the old ways don't work anymore.
The value of a radio station used to be in the DJ. You could get to know the DJ's taste, because the DJ was curating his or her playlists. They chose what went on, how often, and when it went away. The DJs would introduce you to new music, and you'd give it a listen because you trusted the DJ's musical recommendations.
Then the corporations took over, and used national metrics to push the same twenty songs on a weekly basis. Don't need DJs when you can just pay a couple to record loops that get sent out across the entire country, and the computers handle the playlist part. Presto, most radio stations no longer have DJs.
Funny how radio's no longer a touchstone for most people. I wonder why that could be?
Someone, individual or entity, who can slide into a DJ role for books will have value to both authors and readers. Classic win-win. And the "big players" in the industry, on the traditional side, don't realize it, and aren't interested in becoming that. They just want to cling to their presses, keep sifting through submissions from people desperate to have that one month window where they can walk into their local store and see their book on the shelf, and that's it.
Meanwhile, on the indie side, there are a lot of people only interested in being passive. They want to collect email addresses and charge authors to add a title to an email blast, and that's most of the marketing available on the non-traditional side.
I love books, but they're harder and harder to find these days. A big part of that is how authors are treated. Everyone (who doesn't write) thinks you write a book, and you're then both rich and famous. That's not the case at all. Those handful of big names are rich and famous, but even most of them aren't really that rich. They have "level of fuck you" money, but they don't have fuck you money.
Writing is hard. Writing well is very hard. Then, when you do the hard thing, you have two other hard things to figure out. One, get it in front of readers who might like it. Two, get some money for it since that's how our world operates (thing is liked, thing should have value, and things like food and roofs have value).
Neither of those two other hard things are done by the industry for authors. Mostly, they just sucker newcomers in and graze off volume. Sure pubs ship thousands of books each month to the remaining bookstores, but many of those come back to make room for the next month's slate. They expect readers to trek in to those stores every week or two and pluck a book off the shelf to buy.
And they hate Amazon for implementing not just shipping of physical copies, but also for enabling an independent distribution channel available to anyone.
If someone or something makes you angry, and you don't harness that anger to a purpose, you're letting them win. They hate Amazon, but haven't harnessed their anger except to just sulk that the US or EU won't make Amazon to get out of books so the trads can go back to being in charge.
So this whole article gives me mixed feelings. Sure it's about small presses, but so many of those are just as bad as trads. Only on a smaller scale since, you know, they're smaller. Most of them don't do anything to nurture or promote, they just skim through submissions, make arrangements to ship books, and expect money to roll in.
Until it doesn't, and suddenly they're surprised at bankruptcies being announced.
I am, I'd say, one step removed from this decision, running a literary magazine that publishes primarily online, with two print offerings throughout the year, which does not rely on SPD. This is...
I am, I'd say, one step removed from this decision, running a literary magazine that publishes primarily online, with two print offerings throughout the year, which does not rely on SPD. This is going to be catastrophic for the indie book world. The way this fell apart was without notice and left so many publishers and authors in the lurch, when they themselves are already barely hanging on. This is only going to consolidate the market for Ingram/Amazon and you'll see more independent publishers fold or be absorbed by larger companies. For most people, this probably will go unnoticed but it is a very big deal for those authors and editors out there trying to make a living.
The one thing anyone in the ecosystem between authors and readers needs to be doing is providing discoverability. Promotion. Visibility.
And most of them do not realize this. Do not make it their focus. They've continued like publishing is still in the twentieth century, where access to a press that can roll off bound copies, and an apparatus that can warehouse and ship them, is the secret sauce a writer needs. That's what a lot of them think they're selling, access to a store shelf with a bound physical copy, when what authors need to be paying for is putting their name and story in front of readers for awareness.
As the article noted, self distribution is still a huge uphill climb. What it didn't note is that's because the traditional side of publishing has spent the last twenty years pushing hard to keep indies out. They don't want any discoverability channels open to indie authors, and the usual routes such as industry magazines (which are used by librarians, and used to be the primary source for bookstore buyers though that channel is far less important these days) are kept closed because of this.
There are a lot of great authors writing great books. But books are a drop in the entertainment flood of options available these days, and the books that readers might like they often never hear about. Marketing books is hard because the market is small.
Brandon Sanderson, after having run a podcast for about fifteen years that made him aware of indie publishing while ignoring it to stick with his trad publisher, finally broke away. He opened his own company that does everything his trad was taking that cut for. And, surprise surprise, he's pocketing more money even after all the expenses. Even while carrying a payroll of people who operate the company for him so he can write and do stuff like press and teach and so forth.
Sanderson is the trads' nightmare finally come true. The biggest names don't need the trads nearly as much as the trads need them, since the business model the trads operate on relies on milking those big names every year to bring in the bulk of the bottom line.
The industry, traditional, small, or indie, needs to stop stalling and realign with a more twenty-first century model. What an author, any author, needs is to be visible. That's what anyone hoping to do business with an author can offer, and if they can do it well that's worth a fee. If they do it very well, they might deserve a cut of each copy, but they'd have to actually be moving copies (and most will not be actively looking for how to do that; key word active, rather than passive).
Most of them don't do it at all, much less poorly. They're clinging to the old ways, and the old ways don't work anymore.
The value of a radio station used to be in the DJ. You could get to know the DJ's taste, because the DJ was curating his or her playlists. They chose what went on, how often, and when it went away. The DJs would introduce you to new music, and you'd give it a listen because you trusted the DJ's musical recommendations.
Then the corporations took over, and used national metrics to push the same twenty songs on a weekly basis. Don't need DJs when you can just pay a couple to record loops that get sent out across the entire country, and the computers handle the playlist part. Presto, most radio stations no longer have DJs.
Funny how radio's no longer a touchstone for most people. I wonder why that could be?
Someone, individual or entity, who can slide into a DJ role for books will have value to both authors and readers. Classic win-win. And the "big players" in the industry, on the traditional side, don't realize it, and aren't interested in becoming that. They just want to cling to their presses, keep sifting through submissions from people desperate to have that one month window where they can walk into their local store and see their book on the shelf, and that's it.
Meanwhile, on the indie side, there are a lot of people only interested in being passive. They want to collect email addresses and charge authors to add a title to an email blast, and that's most of the marketing available on the non-traditional side.
I love books, but they're harder and harder to find these days. A big part of that is how authors are treated. Everyone (who doesn't write) thinks you write a book, and you're then both rich and famous. That's not the case at all. Those handful of big names are rich and famous, but even most of them aren't really that rich. They have "level of fuck you" money, but they don't have fuck you money.
Writing is hard. Writing well is very hard. Then, when you do the hard thing, you have two other hard things to figure out. One, get it in front of readers who might like it. Two, get some money for it since that's how our world operates (thing is liked, thing should have value, and things like food and roofs have value).
Neither of those two other hard things are done by the industry for authors. Mostly, they just sucker newcomers in and graze off volume. Sure pubs ship thousands of books each month to the remaining bookstores, but many of those come back to make room for the next month's slate. They expect readers to trek in to those stores every week or two and pluck a book off the shelf to buy.
And they hate Amazon for implementing not just shipping of physical copies, but also for enabling an independent distribution channel available to anyone.
If someone or something makes you angry, and you don't harness that anger to a purpose, you're letting them win. They hate Amazon, but haven't harnessed their anger except to just sulk that the US or EU won't make Amazon to get out of books so the trads can go back to being in charge.
So this whole article gives me mixed feelings. Sure it's about small presses, but so many of those are just as bad as trads. Only on a smaller scale since, you know, they're smaller. Most of them don't do anything to nurture or promote, they just skim through submissions, make arrangements to ship books, and expect money to roll in.
Until it doesn't, and suddenly they're surprised at bankruptcies being announced.
I am, I'd say, one step removed from this decision, running a literary magazine that publishes primarily online, with two print offerings throughout the year, which does not rely on SPD. This is going to be catastrophic for the indie book world. The way this fell apart was without notice and left so many publishers and authors in the lurch, when they themselves are already barely hanging on. This is only going to consolidate the market for Ingram/Amazon and you'll see more independent publishers fold or be absorbed by larger companies. For most people, this probably will go unnoticed but it is a very big deal for those authors and editors out there trying to make a living.