Publishing

We all know what happened when the music industry coupled digitization of music formats and the internet: Chaos. (From a business perspective). Napster. File sharing. Torrent. College kids going to jail for sharing their music collections over the web. Anarchy. But the publishing industry seems to have eased into both digitizing books and the web in a little more orderly fashion. I'm not talking about Amazon, or other distributors of paperbooks on the internet, but rather digital publishing and distribution of 'ebooks'. (Which Amazon had a hand in with the kindle, of course).

In the 'olden days' (last year) authors would write a book, seek representation (an agent), find a publishing house, work with an editor and the marketing department, the book would be launched and sell hundreds of thousands of hardback copies, followed by hundreds of thousands more copies when it was released in paperback. Now, not every book went down this path, but this is more or less the Rube Goldberg process. I went down this same road, got really positive feedback from agents (but no representation) shopped my book at the big houses (positive feedback, but no thanks), the medium houses and then small presses (more than one offer to publish each book from small presses). Both STG and GOB were, as you know, published by small presses.

In order for a publishing house of the Old Guard to invest in a book they have to really believe that it will make them money. Cold hard truth; it isn't about literary merit, or the story that is told, it is about being able to move merchandise. (Most celebrity kiss and tell books have very little merit for instance, and their 'authors' rarely actually write much of the book- but... everyone wants a copy of Justin Beaver's autobiography, right?) Every rejection letter I received contained a phrase related to not being able to sell many copies. No sour grapes on my part, they were right. My books have sold in the hundreds of copies, not thousands (combining print and ebook sales). Now with stronger marketing support they might have sold more, but ...

There are other publishing venues. 'Vanity presses' for instance have been around for years. These are publishing houses that you pay to publish your book through. Some authors have done this with the thought selling their books (and there have been commercial successes). I didn't want to go down this path because I think it's easy to get myopic about your own work, and I wanted an external gut check. My Mom liked the book, my friends liked my book, I believed in it and it was the best book I could write at the time I wrote it, but how did it fair as a subjectively ranked, competent work of genre fiction?

Hey guess what? They did fine. Almost universally positive reviews (one guy really panned STG due to the editing- which has been fixed), consistent sales (though not super high) volume, and the people I meet that have read it say they really enjoyed the reading experience. Which is what I was shooting for. Now don't get me wrong, if Baen or Random house wanted to give me a big fat advance to stay home and write books I would be sorely tempted (and externally validated), but most likely I wouldn't quit my day job, as I believe in the work I'm doing in Georgia (but this is a blog about my writing life, not about being a program manager on an assistance program- so I'll get back to my writing point...maybe... perhaps...).

So, dear reader, what does all this have to do with digital publishing you ask? I have told you in previous posts to be patient, I will eventually meander back to my point.

Publishing a print book costs a lot of money. With POD (print on demand) technology it's much cheaper, but there is still a cost involved. With electronic publishing the costs are negligible. So now writers don't have to meet an agent's or publisher's subjective quality threshold (sales being the metric). But they don't really have to meet any threshold, do they? And oh my goodness, there are some self-deluded people out there publishing some real ebook stinkers. But there are also a number of competent writers who have decided to go into ebook publishing on their own, with low prices points, no middle man, and they're doing quite well, in terms of sales (which is a metric), reviews, etc.

Novlr is blog that delves into these issues in much greater detail.

So my point is that I am flirting with the idea of going it alone with my current WIP. I am a member of 'Goodreads', (part of my 'online presence') an online community for book readers and writers and I am being inundated with ebook offers, many free (the idea being to build a fan base just like Randolph Lalonde did).

So I don't know how that would work out in terms of getting my own work out into your hands (or on your eReader device). My motivation is not necessarily maximizing ROI, or sales volume, though I think running off copies of my work and passing it out on the street corner for free wouldn't meet my self-imposed vision of being a competent genre fiction writer. Hmmm, I'll have to ponder that one.

There are many examples of authors who have written competent books and are getting them out to readers with this POD/eBook/Indy renegade author directed publishing movement. Smashwords is an ebook publisher that makes it almost painless... Most likely I will give this a trial run. I have seven short stories that I have sold to various anthology markets, online publications, etc, that I have thought I might like to collect into a small (40K word) anthology of my own. All have my signature hard-boiledish, and mostly manly action-oriented prose, and like I said they were good enough to sell once...(though one sold three times- and funny it was my only short story with a female main character. What does that mean? Do I need to spend more time in the gym? Tell me the truth, do these sweat pants make me look fat?)

The accidental Opera

I have mentioned before my challenges buying tickets for Georgian venues. It's a challenge finding out about things because there's a big word of mouth component here (and I don't really understand the words too well). Then there is the challenge of communicating at the box office (as I will explain).

I saw a poster for the Georgian Symphonetta hosting a dutch oboe-playing soloist. I fortunately also found an English language version of the same poster near the Tbilisi-State Conservatory. I went to the box office on Friday, to buy the ticket for Saturday night's performance. Well, having thought I achieved success, I looked down at my purchase...it was for an opera on Friday night. That night. I went back, and knowing that an exchange was beyond my communicative talents, I opted to buy another ticket. The box office lady clearly thought me daft, but I was successful. Two tickets...So what did I do with the opera ticket? Well, I went. No idea what it was, who wrote it, but it was Italian, and cute. I am calling it the Accidental Opera.

I also made it to the Symphonetta and saw the oboist perform his solo. Mozart, Bach, Gluck and Boyce. Good seats; I sat right behind the First Lady of Georgia. (Should have figured she might come, as she's dutch).

I can also report that I have put the Thanksgiving holiday to good use, and pushed well through the middle of the WIP. Sitting squarely at 56K words, it feels like when you're on an old wooden roller-coaster and you're clank-clank-clanking up to that first big drop, the first car is nosing over the edge, the last car just finished with the chain and you get that slowly-speeding-up-as-you-go-over-the-top feeling...knowing it's going to be a wind in your face, stomach-losing dash...that's what getting through the middle feels like.

Out of place at the ballet?

I went to the Georgian National Ballet last night. I know, me at a ballet? Well truth be told, I have gone to more ballet's than I care to admit. The vast majority were to watch my post-toddler daughters in cutsie little ballet recitals, but some grown up ones too. When I told one of my staff here in Tbilsi that I was going, the response was 'what's a troglodyte like you going to a ballet for?' 'Well,' I responded, 'I'm a knuckle-dragging manly man on the outside, but on the inside...well, I'm sensitive, and I've got feelings. Really. So shut up.'

The ballet I went to was actually a dance troop that performs traditional Georgian dances from the dozen or so sub-groups and regions of Georgia. It was actually really fun, and the ulterior motive was background for my WIP.

If you've never seen them you can check them out on a plethora of You Tube videos. Like this. And FYI, ballet with daggers is certainly troglodyte approved.