So, the other day I saw these tweets from a fine and funky fellow I met at the Crossroads Writers’ Conference in Macon GA — here, I’ll let Mike tell the sordid tale:
Just sat in on a local writers group. Good grief, the fabricated truths these people tell themselves about trad publishing are astounding.
— Michael Woods (@mrmikemyself) March 2, 2013
“They just want to steal your ideas.” “You may not know this but they always ask you for money upfront.” Wait, what? Their opinions on trad.
— Michael Woods (@mrmikemyself) March 2, 2013
“Unless you live in NY, Boston, or LA you’ll never get a publisher to buy your manuscript.” “You have to know somebody to sell your work.”
— Michael Woods (@mrmikemyself) March 2, 2013
Then, the other day, a comment at this very blog suggested that publisher non-compete agreements could stop a writer from authoring blog posts and that agents (who would arguably protect against such draconian clauses) were all in the pockets of publishers anyway, and so on.
Here’s the thing:
This entire writing-and-publishing thing is shot through with pulsing black veins of misinformation. That’s not good for anybody, writer or publisher.
So, here’s my proposition:
I want you to tell us all about your experiences in getting published. That can be through traditional means big or small or through self-publishing. Feel free to drop it right into the comments or in a separate blog post (though hopefully you link back here). Tell us as much as you care to share: agent yes or no? Good? Bad? Did you get screwed? Do you have warnings to pass along? Are you happy? Rich? Poor? Fucked? Triumphant? We need to start painting a picture for people — now, this will be an incomplete picture, for we’re talking anecdotes here, not data born of some official survey. Just the same, we need more authors, I think, to start planting signposts in this hard and alien earth. And I’d like for this post to help start sketching a map.
If you want to use the comments anonymously, you most certainly can.
I don’t want to hear about someone you heard about. If it’s not an experience you personally have had, then forget it. Primary sources only please — no friend-of-a-friend fuckery.
This is also not a place to stage the “self-pub versus traditional” bullshit battleground. Let us assume that both options are equal in the Eyes of the Publishing Gods, kay?
Tell us whatever it is you feel is valuable about your experiences getting published. No need to restrict it to information from just authors or self-publishers, either: small presses, agents, employees of big traditional publishers, IP/copyright lawyers, whatever, whoever.
Jump in.
Please share.
Let’s spread around some real information to help undercut the misinformation.
Thanks in advance.
A Traditionally Published Writer says:
I was published by a Big Five Publisher (one of the two that just merged) back in 2007 and again in 2009. The genre: YA. I lived in AZ at the time, and I met my editor face-to-face in 2010 (everything was done by e-mail or over the phone). I did not have an agent for the first book.
How did I get published? By never, ever thinking I couldn’t. By writing awesome query letters/synopses (an art that must be mastered for those wanting traditional publishing) and by listening to the industry (YA was the one with the most slots needing filled at the time, and hey, I was young at heart!).
They sucked noogies at promoting me and 98% of the other writers at that imprint. So for me, publishing a book is not hard. Promoting it by myself and getting it to do well? That’s the hard part.
March 4, 2013 — 12:12 AM
hopeclark says:
Well said. It’s a mindset. You never think you can’t.
March 4, 2013 — 12:29 PM
mrsm says:
I have no connections in the publishing world, no MFA, and no impressive awards or publication history. Yet, a few months ago, a wonderful agent offered me representation and promptly sold my novel at auction to one of the big publishing houses (and to a handful of foreign publishers as well). From my limited experience, these few key things helped me get published: a query letter decent enough to get plucked from the slush pile; a manuscript that delivered what the query promised; an agent with drive and industry knowledge; and certain uncontrollable bits of luck and timing and magic.
March 4, 2013 — 12:44 AM
hopeclark says:
Chuck, I’ve done it all, I think. I did vanity press way back (14 years?) when it first started, and quickly learned that I was a number and of no interest to them except for the value of my check. A few years later I self-published with Booklocker.com, that did a lot better than pure vanity and was very honest with me. It was limited but served me well at the time. Those first two books were nonfiction, and I’ve pretty much buried that first book as far down as I can dig. The second book sold several thousand copies.
When I focused on my fiction, I stuck with traditional, knowing it might take me a while. It did. Once I seriously started shopping the book, it took me 5 years to land the agent and get published. I know…that sounds horrendous, but it was worth it. I kept editing the entire time, even doing two entire rewrites, which made my voice shine so much brighter. This month I’m releasing a self-pubbed book that I designed, formatted and hired the cover done. Self-pubbing pretty much from scratch with distribution via BookBaby.com for ebook and CreateSpace for print. (The Shy Writer Reborn) And in April, the second mystery book in my series (Tidewater Murder) out from the same traditional press that published the first fiction book (Lowcountry Bribe), Bell Bridge Books. (www.hopeclark.blogspot.com)
I find it liberating that authors have so many options! And I see no reason authors can’t do both. You match your collected platform, type of book, and type of audience to the publishing method. Self-pubbing isn’t all right or all wrong. Neither is traditional. But at the risk of sounding ignorant, which I hope I’m not since I try hard to stay on top of the business, I am not interested in the Big Six at the moment. I don’t want traditional at that level. I enjoy my mid-level press. While they are crazy busy, they still think of me as a partner. Not so sure I want the flash-in-the-pan treatment of the Big Six. I think that world is not for the novice and not even for the mid-list author anymore. I see mid-level and even some small presses dominating, and they most assuredly can be a good thing for the debut author.
I too have listened to the myths . . . those sour-grape-veiled comments. It’s what people do when they aren’t quite sure of where they stand. They are trying to convince themselves more than anyone else of their lot in life and that’s sad, because they have so much more available to them now. Without a doubt, this is the Golden Age of Publishing.
C. Hope Clark
http://www.chopeclark.com
http://www.fundsforwriters.com
March 4, 2013 — 1:02 AM
Casz Brewster says:
Wish I could jump in. But, other than a few articles, and anthologies, I haven’t gotten any big-project publishing successes (read: novels).
How I did that? I finished my shit. I wrote lots and lots and lots. And sent it out.
Beyond that, I don’t think there’s a secret formula. It’s a numbers game. Like Ray Bradbury said, “Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you’re doomed.”
I don’t plan to be doomed.
March 4, 2013 — 2:07 AM
Tiffinie Helmer says:
My agent actually told me to write a short story and self-publish it last year. I’m so glad I did. I am still with my brilliant agent, and still hope for a traditional deal. But in the meantime, I’m not waiting around.NY takes too long. I have lots of stories, and what I have put up so far have been received very well. Writers have more options than ever before.
So far I have 4 short stories out, a bundle (with those same shorts that is doing really well), and a full length ready to be released in 3 weeks.
Personally, I want to be in both worlds, Indie and traditional publishing. The best thing about Indie publishing is the control. The worst thing is that I am the one doing all the work or in charge of hiring it out. I take the greatest risk, but then I also receive the biggest gain. It’s a lot to take on and not the right fit for everyone.
I freely admit that when I put up my first book, I ended up in the ER with what I thought was heart issues and turned out to be an anxiety attack. I’d never suffered anxiety before I published and I’m a commercial fisherman on the Bering Sea of Alaska. I thought I was a badass. So if you do decide to go the self-publishing route, a prescription of Valium might come in handy.
March 4, 2013 — 3:31 AM
Kort says:
Well, I wrote a few short stories and sent them out to the magazines and anthologies that I thought would like them. I got back a lot of rejections that read along the lines of “This is awesome! Tell us where you eventually sell it and we’ll buy a copy. Not a good fit for us, though.” Eventually, I ran into one of the editors at a local writing convention and he asked about the story I’d submitted to him a few years earlier. He’d rejected it because it was too long and too good to cut anything out. When I mentioned I’d struck out with everybody I could find, he suggested I put it up on Amazon. I did. I have another one up and plans to put several more up throughout this year. Some are older stories that need a massive overhaul and some are new ones.
I had a fantasy series that I had shelved as too weird to submit but I’d sent a couple chapters off to a friend who owns a small press because she wanted to know if I’d ever pursued the idea I’d told her about. She offered to publish it. I’m not happy with parts of it so I’ve promised to hand her the finished manuscript in October and it should come out some time next year.
So, that’s my story. I know the myths on both sides and I’ve always been a bit leery of traditional publishing houses because I’ve seen how the sausage was made, so to speak. But, of course, that’s just me.
March 4, 2013 — 5:33 AM
Anthony Ryan says:
I’m a newbie to the whole publishing thing so I’m not sure how typical my experience is. I was offered my three book deal with Ace when my self-pubbed fantasy novel, Blood Song, got noticed by the editorial team after a contact at a bookstore read it and passed it along. I live in the UK and my contract is with a US publisher. Apart from my current editor and a few writers I’ve exchanged emails with since selling a few books, I know no-one in the publishing industry. At no point have I been asked for money upfront (or downback, if that’s a thing). Given the challenges facing publishing at the moment I think the days of publishing a novel because your dad went to college / public school with the editor are long gone, if they ever existed. My experience indicates publishers could care less who you are, where you live or who you know. They care about whether they can sell your book in appreciable numbers. As for stealing ideas, I used to worry over nefarious editors taking my precious plot and rebranding it under another name, cackling madly as they rolled around in the royalties they’d stolen from me – however, as the rejection slips piled up, it became apparent that new writers should worry more about getting someone to actually read their idea rather than steal it.
Just my tuppence worth ‘o nonsense.
March 4, 2013 — 6:13 AM
Ken T says:
“downback”? Ha! Lovin’ your attitude, style & well-earned swagger. More power to you! 😀
March 9, 2013 — 5:02 AM
Sam Sykes says:
I wrote a book.
I showed it to an agent.
An agent said: “This is good. I will show it to some publishers.”
Some publishers said: “This isn’t for us.”
Some publishers said: “I like this a lot.”
We chose the one that we liked the best (they also offered the most).
Sometimes a publisher doesn’t like your book. Sometimes they give you reasons. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you can be published and it still doesn’t work.
But sometimes it does.
This is not a helpful post. You read it, anyway. In a way, that means I win.
March 4, 2013 — 6:26 AM
Sean Cummings says:
I live in the middle of the frozen Canadian prairie. I’m about as far from NY or LA or London for that matter. My first three books were published by Snowbooks in the UK. My latest book is published by Angry Robot Books YA imprint Strange Chemistry Books. Location means nothing – it’s whether you’ve got a good enough story and that’s it.
March 4, 2013 — 6:35 AM
Ghostwoods says:
I’ve had many books trad-published, both fiction and non-fiction. One of the hard things you learn quickly is that your ideas are never in danger, because ideas are ten a penny, and everyone thinks their own are better than yours. I have all ready got a file of ideas so long that I could fill two lifetimes with it, each of them good and workable, and more keep coming all the time — and I’m absolutely typical. Publishers want stuff that they can sell. Product. The problem you face is having to persuade other people why _your_ puny ideas are worth an investment of time and money.
Getting a book placed with a major (or a skilled agent) takes three things: A great book, an even better pitch, and luck with your timing. The latter often involves persistence. It will never, ever take money — if it does, you’re being scammed.
My experience is that promotion is a matter of total luck. The marketing departments I have known are laws unto themselves; something catches their eye, and they rally behind it. Otherwise, it’s largely down to you. Money? Hmm, don’t give up the day job just yet, eh? Some new authors get massive advances, but these are usually because the publisher/s involved want lots of press for a target segment, so they find some appropriate incoming book and dump a ton of cash on it to generate thousands of column-inches of the “Random House signs YA self-pub star for six figure jackpot!” type.
March 4, 2013 — 6:41 AM
jjtoner says:
I wrote 2 books. Then, in 2007, I (foolishly) contacted one of those bogus “agents” who said they wanted to represent me. They went on to charge me $1,200 for an “edit” of one of my books. As soon as I realized what was going on I cancelled the contract. Bad experience. But it got me writing again. I went on to write 3 more novels, all self-published. The latest one (The Black Orchestra) I rewrote twice under instructions from a (real) agent in London before he decided to pass. That cost me a year (2009). I’m happy self-publishing (eBooks only, so far).
March 4, 2013 — 7:20 AM
Paul Anthony Shortt says:
I entered a competition on the website of an editor of WiDo Publishing. The top prize was for the winner to pick between having their manuscript professionally critiqued or considered for publication. I chose the latter and haven’t looked back since.
With no agent, and no experience in the industry, I completely lucked out and landed a contract, for my very first queried novel, with a great company who gave me the best editor I could hope for. I could not have asked for a better start to my career.
As for having to live in New York or Boston? Well, I live in Ireland and my publisher is in Salt Lake City. My book is available all over the world. Geography is no longer a limitation on your prospects.
In terms of time, it took me a year to write the thing, another year to get my book deal, and then it came out the following year. Three years to go from zero to published is a win in my book!
March 4, 2013 — 7:20 AM
guyhaley says:
Yo Chuck,
I’ll wade in here, if I may. I’ve had a fairly broad experience of publishing. I’ve two books out with Angry Robot (Reality 36 and Omega Point), two with Solaris (Champion of Mars and The Crash), a whole bunch coming out from The Black Library over the next two years. I’ve have had short stories in Hub Magazine, Interzone, and the odd anthology or two. I’ve had a comic published, and written quite a lot of gaming background. But perhaps more interestingly, I did a kind of inside job. But, the fact is, people always suspect some kind of chicanery when it just isn’t there. Here are some bullet points for you lovely American people on the pertinent parts of my experience…
i) It kind of helps who you know, but not that much.
I’ve been trying to get published since I was 18. I didn’t succeed until I was 34. I was a journalist on a scifi magazine called SFX for six years, I edited gaming mag White Dwarf, then I edited another magazine called Death Ray. Bottom line is, I got to meet a whole load of publishers, writers and other associated industry types. The wordage part of the genre was always my thing, so I always kept up with these people. I schmoozed and tickled their ears with risque babble. Some of them became my pals. This meant that they were more than willing to look at my stuff when I bashfully said I wished to write.
This does not mean they took it. That you do the secret handshake and air kiss and bare your arse at the hungry would-be writers outside who can’t see you through the silvered glass of word-heaven central as laughing nymph girls slip five thousand pound notes into your author’s jockstrap. It means they might look at it, when they get round to it.
This can take a very long time. Years. I had one book that I sent in. It took six months to be rejected. I sent another. Another six months, and there was interest. Two years of writing, and toing and froing, then resubmitting, then a meeting nearly a year after that… To be told it wasn’t what they wanted. The whole process took *four years*. This was to someone I had met many times, and who liked me, and who had seen my writing and liked that too. Basically, if it’s not good enough, it doesn’t really matter who you know.
And then there’s taste. I’m quite friendly with one of the UK’s biggest agents. He won’t represent me, seven published or about to be published novels or not, because my stuff isn’t to his taste. So there you are.
Sure, I know who to write to, who to talk to, and I stand a good chance of getting to speak to them. But all that took conscious effort to establish. I went into journalism specifically to build these contacts up. I tell all the other aspiring writers I neet that YOU TOO CAN MAKE THESE CONTACTS. Go to conventions, events, author signings. Nowadays, you can comment on blogs, be tweet buddies. Be nice, be charming, don’t attack them with rolled up manuscripts howling your brilliance in their terrified faces in hotel lobbies. Yes, it does help to know people, so then, get to know them. It’s not an exclusive club. It’s not like all my old colleagues are now novelists. Oh, hang on, none of them are, while I have seen dozens of people without contacts plucked from obscurity. See? No guaranteed entry.
ii) Trad publishing is very slow…..
We are talking glacially slow, mind-numbing, awfully, horribly slow. The slowness that sees years flicker by in time-lapse haste, and the rise and fall of entire phyla of organisms. They’re not being haughty, a lot of publishers are ridiculously overworked. Getting to know them helps. An agent helps a lot more.
I submitted something to a contact six months ago who said they wanted something off me, and they haven’t got back. I submitted something else to an actual friend, and our conversations trailed off over a year ago. Bear in mind, I am already published.
I was known to Games Workshop, and worked for them. A lot of them are my genuine “Hey! How’s it going? Let’s play Warhammer right now!” friends. It took me six years of pitches to get published by them.
iii) …and then is impatient for success.
If you do get published, and your first book is not a success, you’ll be out. There are a roughly a bazillion-trillion writers who want your job, so publishers can keep popping exciting fresh product out on the shelves with minimal outlay until one of them is a raging success. The days when a publisher loved an author, and had the time and money to nurture them into a success are mostly gone. They’re under a lot of pressure to achieve instant success. The world of publishing is currently in a brutal phase. On the other hand, there is more opportunity available for everyone now. Swings, roundabouts, all that.
iv) Trad publishing is not going anywhere.
People will always want filters. Trad publishing is a filter for readers. An agent is a filter for publishers. Reviews are filters for everyone. We all use filters, all the time. Google does, our brains do, our coffee does. If a publisher rates it enough to publish, you know it must be at least okay. That’s not something you get through self-publishing. Self-pub is undoubtedly going to get a lot more important, and the industry is changing. But look at music. That took an earlier and much harsher battering than publishing is taking now, and the big labels are still there. It’s sticking around, it will change, use it to your advantage, don’t spurn it.
v) But the internet really is where it’s at.
One thing I’ve noticed is that the new writers who have been the most successful are those with an established internet constituency. Good old Chuck here, or Adam Christopher. Doing cool, engaging stuff on the internet can help, nay! ENSURE, success when you are picked up by a trad publisher, or if you self publish. This is a lot of work in itself. God knows how much time the likes of Mr Wendig or John Scalzi spend blogging. When do you guys eat? It’s a constant struggle for me – write something for guaranteed repo-men repelling monies, or spend valuable time-units connecting with the world. Gah! My head acheth already at the merest contemplation of it.
vi) Trad publishers are only human.
I got some very stern advice from one publisher about never, ever writing spin-off fiction, that I’d waste my talent, that I’d never be taken seriously, that I’d not develop as a writer if I yoked my meagre portion of creativity to the every-hungry franchise monster.
This was very bad advice. It was well-meant, and it was true in some respects – people still do look down on tie-in fiction, and I’ve a few examples of this – but it’s not as true as it was. Plus, I need to pay the bills. Franchise fiction offers an instant audience, and a guaranteed return which original fiction does not. On top of that, franchise stuff can lead others to your original fiction. Writing shared-universe material is not hack-work, it’s as hard as and can be as rewarding as spinning out your own world. BUT the same publisher did give me lots and lots and lots of very, very good advice too. You are the arbiter of your fate, not some “gatekeeper.” So, follow your own head.
vii) Trad pub can work for you
I’m dubious of the utopian claims of some pundits who herald the collapse of trad pub and the emergence of a creator culture, as trad publishing provides stability to the whole ramshackle edifice of storytelling, primarily by allowing writers who aren’t bohemian whizzkids with a ton of time on their hands and/or an enormous trustfund to eat by paying advances up front. I pray this does not go away, or I’m out of work.
viii) They’re generally not bastards
Publishers are nice people who love books. I have never had any ideas stolen, or been mocked, or been otherwise humiliated or even discomfitted (outside the soul-crush of rejection). Sometimes books come out with suspiciously similar ideas to your own, but that’s almost certainly coincidence (like, I’ve had a lot of ideas I’ve told no one about, and this has happened several times). The publishers I have met have all been lovely, lovely people. Authors, on the other hand… Sheesh. Kidding! They’re pussycats too.
ix) A lot of it is down to you
Every time I do a seminar, I get a crowd of (metaphorical) pitchfork waving people hailing self-publishing as the new god, and about how trad pub deliberately keeps them out. I get the feeling they are impatient (see above comment on slowness). You have to: Keep writing. Keep schmoozing. Keep positive. And be humble. I’ve met more than a few “They don’t recognise my genius!” type aspiring authors. They are generally rubbish, as well as annoying. If you don’t at least listen to the advice many publishers give you in the bar/rejection letter/on the net, you will lose. Listen to criticism, talk to your friends, join reading/ writing clubs, read tons of books, don’t follow the one path, follow them all! And read this blog – Chuck’s advice is among the very best. All these things are surer ways to publication – by whatever means – than whining about traditional publishing houses and their status as Illuminati puppet-theatres. We’re all people, trying to do our thing. Evil rarely enters into it.
Does that help? I hope so.
March 4, 2013 — 7:22 AM
Elspeth Cooper (@ElspethCooper) says:
I’m trad published, and it went down like this:
Been writing stuff for oh, thirty-odd years (took me over 20 to admit even to myself that I was writing a book). In 2009, to stop my husband nagging, I made a list of agents in the UK who handle SF&F, and sent them a submission. Second agent to read asked for a full, and representation followed. Within six weeks I had a 3-book offer from a Big 6 genre imprint for world rights. I accepted, and am now published in six languages (number seven to come this summer).
It all happened very smoothly for me, no fuss, no drama. No real struggle either, which makes me feel rather guilty, or that I’ve missed out on some rite of passage by not wallpapering the downstairs loo with rejection slips. Um. Why is everyone staring at me?
March 4, 2013 — 7:23 AM
Chris says:
Okay, I started writing a comment and it got long. Basically, here’s how my book got published: http://chriswritesapocalypses.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/how-i-got-published.html
The TL;DR version: Redrafted the hell out of it. Submitted it everywhere. Got rejected by almost everywhere. One agent and then publisher picked it up. No inside contacts or industry secrets used at any point.
March 4, 2013 — 7:25 AM
blankenshiplouise says:
I’ve been writing for a long time and letting opportunities pass me by — but along the way I picked up 15 years’ experience as a graphic designer and worked in small publishing. So I knew what I was in for when I decided to self publish.
I hired an editor and a proofreader. And a cover artist. Did all the layout and design, generated the ebooks, myself. I’m just another small fish in a big pond, that’s true, but there’s a little knot of people who like my book AND I was fortunate enough to be offered in Storybundle.com’s holiday bundle. The money from that is helping me keep going.
I published in November, I’m doing it again April 1st, and I’m going to keep on trucking. I still make more money as a freelance designer, but hey. I’m not letting opportunities pass me by anymore.
p.s. Check out the current Storybundle.com offering — it includes SWORD AND CHANT, which is by a friend of mine. And I did the cover. 🙂
March 4, 2013 — 7:46 AM
islandeditions says:
I’ve worked in the Canadian bookselling/publishing biz my entire life – no one among my writing friends is better connected. I knew the publishers and editors personally (although not the agents). I took writing classes, attended conferences, submitted my work to publishers and literary contests (I even created a contest myself to encourage other beginning writers), won a couple of small prizes and had two short stories published. Meanwhile, my novel was being rejected, because – I was told – it just didn’t fit, or finding a market would be too difficult. I was a publishers’ sales rep, for crying out loud! I knew it would fall back to me, anyway, to find the market for this series of murder mysteries I had written. Finally, an editor at one of the publishers I sold for told me she had read the novel, liked it, and suggested I fix up one chapter before the publisher considered taking it on. The publisher then recommended I work with an editor – at my own expense. I’m friends with a very successful Canadian mystery writer with 14 novels under her belt. She agreed to take on this editing job, and I wanted to pay her the going rate for doing so. I couldn’t afford that cost, so I applied for a provincial writing grant. My grant application was turned down, because what I had applied for was considered to be a service that “the publisher should be paying to provide.” I was back to square one.
I decided that, since I was going to have to pay for editing the novel myself, and I was well-enough connected to know other professionals in the business, including a designer, an eBook formatter, as well as a professional editor, publicist, and the very best marketing/promoter (me!), I should just go ahead and publish the novel myself. Besides, I had theories I wanted to test on the direction this entire publishing business was heading. It’s been a year now since the novel was first listed online for sale and I have few-to-no regrets about my decision. Five months after the eBook was published, I printed copies for sale through bookstores, to place in libraries, and to sell in my target market – the Caribbean island where the novel is set (although most tourists now seem to carry eReaders).
I currently consult writers on how they may best get their work out there, although I do not act as an agent. With the fluctuation in the business right now, my best piece of advice to any writer is that they should first find out about the entire publishing industry – traditional and self, print and electronic – and discover what works best for their writing.
And I would say that the biggest hurdle I’ve had to overcome in publishing my own book (and this probably holds true for all writers, no matter how their work is published) is “discoverability” – finding new readers. I continue working with other published authors, helping them find readers, and I’m constantly testing new methods, both online and off. Some work, some don’t. But the promotion and marketing part of the process is proving to be far more work than the actual writing of the novel or submitting it to publishers. I hope to build on this novel, however, so when the next one is published as an eBook later this year, I plan to have a solid foundation from which to launch.
This has all taken time – and a great deal of patience. Patience is the key.
March 4, 2013 — 7:58 AM
Joe Hart says:
I’m a self-published author. I’ve been writing for a long time but only buckled down and got serious about 4 years ago. I published my first collection of stories a year and a half ago. I contemplated going the agent/traditional route and found that I was impatient at the time. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:
It’s all about the story. If you can write a great story you’re well on your way to where you want to be, whether it’s traditional or self-publishing. If you don’t write well you won’t get a deal with one of the big 5 and your self-pubbed attempts won’t sell.
My personal goal is to make a living writing, plain and simple. Right now the best way for me to do that is to self-publish, and so far it’s been great. But until that happens I won’t take time off from writing and publishing to query an agent and wait for a response. When I’m making enough to take a small hiatus (write something and send it out for submission instead of publishing it) then I probably will. I’m not against the idea of traditional publishing, and I think it has an enormous amount of power, but for me self-publishing is excellent as far as time wise and control goes.
March 4, 2013 — 8:10 AM
Trystan Vikar says:
I like to think I’m in a weird middle ground. I’m a print published writer, in a magazine sense, not a book sense. I went through a quasi-similar method to the traditional publishing model as a freelance journalist until I got a staff position at a magazine. I didn’t write fiction, I wrote about fashion and lifestyle. But I still had to send out query letters to various editors looking for work to get me started. I had rejections of course and I think what actually launched my career wasn’t any of those letters at first but being headhunted by a web publication that contacted me out of the blue and asked me to come join them. It was something on my CV that I could show editors at that point. After that I got more work.
In the fiction world, I’m brand spanking new to the process. I’m technically self-published, as I’ve launched my book on Smashwords for distribution, but I’m not blowing on the horn of self-pubbing yet. I’m conducting a social experiment with this project and in tandem with the digital release, I’m using my website to run the experiment as an understanding of what self-publishing is capable of when you start with only a concept. So I can’t really endorse self-publishing one way or the other yet, but I’m still more of a fan for the traditional model. I’m not filled with illusions about the traditional industry being filled with evil and crazy stuff, I understand the model, I understand the hazards and the benefits. My choice to go the route that I have is simply to follow up on a curiosity and a challenge. It’s yet too early to say if I’ve made a poor choice or not.
March 4, 2013 — 8:24 AM
Sarah Bewley says:
I run a small writers conference, Carolyn Haines’ Daddy’s Girls’ Weekend (www.daddysgirlsweekend), and we have both a traditional publisher (Ben LeRoy of Tyrus Books) and an editor (this year Mallory Kass of Scholastic Press) at our conference. One of the things I love about that is we get to dispel the myths by having them there to answer the questions of the writers. It’s crazy the things people believe, or have been told.
The thing about ideas being stolen is always one of my favorites. I used to get that a lot from people who wanted to hire me to edit their work. They wanted to know how to protect themselves. It was good to be able to assure them that this was probably the most unlikely thing ever.
March 4, 2013 — 8:35 AM
Shiloh Walker/J.C Daniels says:
I’ve done it all… digital first, traditional and self publishing. I was doing digital back before it was ‘cool’, when a lot of the traditionally pubbed authors would give the ebook authors the side eye, because ya know… ‘those aren’t real books’… yep, straight-up was told that.
And none of it is any easier than the other and none of it works any better than the other and anybody who tells you that self publishing is the easy way to riches doesn’t know what they are talking about.
I do all three because all three still work for me, but I’ve yet to strike it rich. I have to work my butt off to promote myself in all three venues and I have to work my butt off period, but i work ten times harder with self publishing.
I’ve had the questions with traditional publishing… ‘How much did you have to pay…’ and ‘Who helped you…’
I never paid a cent. And… um, nobody? Traditional publishing is a business and they look for people who have books they think they can sell. If you have a book they think they can sell, they will buy it. And they want YOU to write it.
March 4, 2013 — 9:20 AM
Gary Gibson says:
My publishing history reads like a textbook example of how to get a deal. I wrote a first novel. It got me an agent on pretty much the first try (I once told this to a room full of a hundred people when I was lecturing at a writing conference and got a kind of collective indrawn breath). I got a book deal not for my first book (never published and with good reasons), but my second, but I had to wait five years for that offer to turn up. I’ve published maybe eight books since then with the same publisher and so far still going strong. But I still hear so many idiot stories about how you need to know people, etc, etc.
These are simply lies people tell themselves to make themselves feel better. The reason most writers don’t get published is they’re not good enough, and I know this because I’ve seen – and had to read – many while working as a book doctor. Here’s how you get published: write a good book. That’s pretty much it.
March 4, 2013 — 9:25 AM
kendraelliot says:
I wrote a manuscript. Then I wrote another and another. I stacked up my pile of agent and editor rejections over five years. My third book finaled in a big contest. I connected with an agent on a personal level at a conference, because she loved the scent of my hand cream. She loved the third book. She shopped it for a year in New York without success. She connected with an executive at Amazon Publishing in a BAR at a conference and pitched him my book. They offered me a two book contract with NO advance. I accepted because I bought all my books at Amazon and figured they had the marketing power. They’ve published two of my books in the last seven months and the third comes out this month. I’m close to 200K in number of books SOLD. Quit my job.
March 4, 2013 — 9:31 AM
John McFetridge says:
Back in the mid-80s when I was living in Montreal I wrote a private eye novel set in Montreal and sent query letters to agents in New York. A few wanted to see sample chapters and a couple wanted to see the whole manuscript. They all said the same thing – it’s not literary enough to be hardcover and not hardboiled enough to go straight to paperback. I wrote another novel and received pretty much the same response. I then wrote a bunch of screenplays that didn’t sell and had a radio drama produced.
In 2003, by then living in Toronto, I tried another book and wrote a crime novel set in Toronto. By then there were a lot of small presses in Canada publishing crime fiction so I sent query letters to them and a few wanted to see sample chapters and a couple wanted to see the whole manuscript and one offered to publish the book. My fifth novel with that publisher will be coming out later this year.
So, pretty much the old-fashioned, by-the-book method. Query, sample chapters, manuscript, lots of rejections, an acceptance.
March 4, 2013 — 9:31 AM
Jim Cangany says:
I’m a new author who will have my first novel, a contemporary romance, e-publishe don June 14, 2013. It wasn’t unitl my 17th revision that I thought my novel was ready for submission. I had no previous contacts with agents and/or publishers and I had to survive over two dozen rejections before a small press, e-plblisher offered me a contract. After going through two rounds of editing, I wouldn’t do it any other way. I’ll have to do a lot of work in promotion, but I knew that going in.
March 4, 2013 — 9:36 AM
Amber Scott says:
I do mainly contract writing at the moment. I work in the roleplaying games industry; my first book was for the Dungeons & Dragons line, published by Wizards of the Coast (3.5, for those of you who do this kind of thing). I freelanced for WotC for a few years, did a project or two for White Wolf, Arthaus, and Giant in the Playground Games, and now I write almost exclusively for Paizo Publishing (Pathfinder line).
Contract writing isn’t like regular fiction writing. I generally receive an outline from my developer, although my feedback is always welcome and sometimes I’m given an idea or concept rather than a detailed outline and asked to generate my own. When writing for Paizo’s fiction line, I pitch concepts until one finds a home. I get paid by the word and don’t retain the rights.
This method has been great for me. I’ve gained tons of experience and refined my writing skills with encouragement and support for the companies I’ve written for. I’ve found the editors and developers care a lot about helping freelancers succeed (and not just because they rely so much on freelancer work, and want it to be good work!) There’s a lot of moving around in the industry and how you work with one publisher can open doors to other publishers. Although I too live in the midst of the frozen Canadian prairies, I go to conventions every year and that’s a fantastic way to meet people and make contacts. Many of my friends at various RPG publishers are also published fantasy/science-fiction writers and introduce me to their publishing contacts.
My dream is to publish my own original fantasy/sci-fi and I’ll probably go traditional because I have this networking system built up. I sold my first original short story this year to On Spec magazine and I’m halfway through my novel, so things are looking bright.
March 4, 2013 — 9:36 AM
hccummings says:
My experience with traditional publishing is limited. I wrote a couple of manuscripts, sent out a bunch of query letters and received far fewer rejection letters than I thought was appropriate for a business to be considered “professional.” In my opinion, there’s something wrong with a business model that strongly suggestions its bad form to submit queries to more than one agent at a time for the same manuscript, yet give no guarantee that you’ll receive a reply. Most of the agents to whom I submitted said it could be 3-6 months before they reply (one said 6-9 months). Some were good enough to say “Assume you were rejected if you haven’t heard from us by then.” Most did not.
The courtesy of a reply (and yes, I know how “busy” these people are; I’m busy at my day job, too, and I always make sure I do not ignore potential clients/vendors even if I know there’s no chance in hell I’m going to do business with them because it’s RUDE), is something far too many business eschew these days.
Anyway, after getting a couple of explicit rejections and a lot of implicit rejections, as well as one from any open call, I was ready to give up. Then I started to hear about how easy the self-publishing marketplace was to enter. My second wife (first one died, long story, but the fact that my second encouraged me is important if you know the WHOLE story) read one of the manuscripts I was querying and liked it, but agreed with me it needed work (esp. the ending…which no agent saw because I never got that far). I was still doing NaNoWriMo because, though I was close to giving up, I hadn’t yet. I wrote another one and she LOVED it. She said she would help me in any way she could to get this story published, one way or another.
After sitting in a lot of Mike Stackpole’s seminar’s, we decided to go with the self-publishing route. I narrowed avoided the trap of Xlibris and found my own editor and cover artist and published Wings of Twilight in Oct. 2011. I’ve since written and published a sequel and started a YA sci-fi series.
My current process is to write the manuscript, then pass it to my wife. She give it an Alpha read, proof read, and does a content & copy edit on it. I then find an editor that I pay to go through it. My wife does a final edit & proofread on it (sometimes it gets two passes here). Sometime between the Alpha Read and the Final Edit, I find a group of Beta Readers to give me feedback on the story & characters (I’ve met with mixed results here…sometimes getting feedback is like pulling teeth and usually results in “I didn’t have time to read it”). I also commission some cover art. I do the page layout myself (I do page layouts all the time in my day job) and create the eBook files myself. I’m still learning that process and haven’t quite figured out how to get a ToC in my Kindle/ePub files (though I’ve been assured with fiction its not as critical as it is with non-fiction). Once everything is together, I put it up on Amazon for the 90-day Kindle exclusive period, then to Smashwords, DriveThruFiction, and Kobo Writing Life.
Have I been successful? I suppose. The people who have read my novels like them, but my audience is very small. In total, between 3 titles (with a 4 coming later this spring), I think I’ve sold maybe 150-200 copies. It’s definitely not paying any bills. It’s not even paying for production costs. So, it’s a good thing I a have a day job. A decent portion of my income goes to paying for editors and artists (I don’t want to skimp or compromise on either of those). I’m not a good salesman (nor a good publicist), so it’s hard for me to grow my audience. There’s only so much I can do while I work all day, then have a long commute home, then have things to do around the house (my wife is disabled, so I can’t just do nothing all night every night). Finding time to market my books is a balancing act I’m know I haven’t mastered yet. My wife helps, but our reach is limited and finding that core audience has eluded us so far.
I would like to make a livable income from my writing. I don’t know if it’ll ever happen, so I won’t quit my day job until it does. Until then, I’ll just keep trying to write the best stories I can. I knew it wasn’t going to be a get-rich-quick situation when I started. At some point, I may have to find a cheaper way to do covers without compromising my artistic vision, and I think that’s going to be my greatest challenge in the next 5 years. I just know I have certain expectations of fantasy and sci-fi novels, and I’ve always associated evocative cover art with them. I’m not going to compromise on my editing, though. I cringe every time someone points out a typo that got passed us in the books that are out now; I cannot imaging putting out a story that I’ve only run through Word’s spellchecker. I never want to see a review say that one of my novels was riddled with typos and grammar & continuity errors.
I’ve heard people say all the things Chuck mentioned about traditional publishers, and I know that it’s all BS. I do think that getting in with an agent does require a certain amount of skill in knowing how to sell yourself and your ideas and that’s a different skill set than being able to craft a good story. I’m not at all worried about a publisher stealing my ideas. Heck, I’m not even scared of the public doing that. I had one guy rant at me, adamant about how by publishing electronically, I was going to fall victim to all sorts of digital piracy (especially when I mentioned that I did not enable any kind of DRM on my novels) and they were going to put me in the poor house. I laughed him off; I’m already not making money on any of my novels, so if someone does go through the trouble of stealing my works and putting them on torrent sites, the worst it could do is increase my exposure and possibly introduce me to a wider audience (I suppose someone could take one of my stories, change a few bits, publishing it and get rich via movie deals and then I’d have to take them to court ala Eddie Muphy, Art Buchwald & Coming to America, but I only write fantasy…I don’t live in a fantasy world).
March 4, 2013 — 9:45 AM
Martha Wells says:
I went the old fashioned method too. I wrote my first novel in a critique group with Steven Gould (who I’d met through a writing class he taught through my university’s community education program), Laura Mixon, and Rory Harper, and I also went to a Turkey City workshop with Bruce Sterling and got a lot of good advice. Steve recommended me to an agent, who contacted me and read my book when it was finished, took me on as a client and eventually sold the book to Tor. Now I’ve had thirteen books out through traditional publishers, two more on the way, also from trad publishers, and I’ve self-published the first four books of my backlist as ebooks when they went out of print. I’m on my second agent now, who I found by getting recommendations from Rachel Caine and then querying using the instructions on the agent’s web site.
March 4, 2013 — 9:52 AM
Christian Schoon says:
I can only echo much of what’s been posted so far. I spent several years, off and on, writing my first novel. Lots of time with butt in chair, writing. Re-writing. After several “not quite right for our list” notes from agents, I tweaked it and sent out again. Ended up with an agent who saw something worth pursuing and, of critical value, understood my genre and the market for it. He helped me tweak further. The novel, part of a YA science fiction series, sold in a two-book deal to Angry Robot’s new Strange Chemistry YA imprint (I see a few fellow AR/SC vets have already posted here; all seem well satisfied with their trad-pub deals). The book will be distributed in North America by Random House, so I’m an author w/ feet in smaller house/big-ass house. I got a fair deal from the publisher, and they’re giving me all the marketing help/advice/hand-holding they can as we approach the May launch date. I’m a little surprised at the sort of mis-info that people seem to be buying into. Mostly because the truth, as we know, is out there…. One of the very lessons anyone learns who does even the most elementary research is: Never Pay to Publish. Not a cent. Not if you define publishing as having your work marketed on the basis of its intrinsic worth. If your new “agent” contact asks for money, you now know what to say. But: hiring a pro editor to help you out? Or proof-reader if you’re at that stage? Or cover art designer? Those are different conversations. Idea theft? Not very likely. And, if that’s what’s holding you back from taking the literary world by storm… why hasn’t your idea already done this storming for you? Also a good idea: have more than one idea. I think there’s a fair amount of defensive “the bastards are out to kill my bookbaby before its born!” gnashing of teeth from people who’ve had a few rejections and are disappointed that this being an author thing can be frakkin’ HARD. As others have said here, whether you go trad or self publish, the first thing you wanna have is a good book. And for most authors, that’s something that doesn’t come on the first draft, or fifth, or tenth.
March 4, 2013 — 9:57 AM
Michelle Knowtlon says:
In 2007, I started shopping around a paranormal erotic romance novel. The first e-publisher I contracted with went under half way through the process. In 2008, the manuscript was picked up by another e-publisher who asked me to re-write the entire novel. I did with the help of an editor who disappeared halfway through the project. Published in 2009, my novel has sold 30 copies (electronic and print on demand) in three years. I did some ground work to get reviews that were fairly encouraging. However, my novel was a mediocre drop in the ocean of e-pubs.
My late novel has gotten no interest whatsoever.
Take away? Be careful about who you sign with, promote endlessly, sex sells, getting published is very hard, just writing a manuscript doesn’t make you an author.
March 4, 2013 — 10:00 AM
Matt Debenham says:
Hi! Longtime listener, first time caller.
My book of short stories was published in 2010 by a college press, after winning a national contest held by said press. I mention this mainly because when people find out where I’m published, they ALWAYS say, “Oh, so did you go to [name of institution]?” And I have to say, “No, and they’re a real publisher.” And they are! In all the good and bad senses of the term.
I attended Sewanee as a scholar a few years before the book. At that point I had a full manuscript of short stories — basically what ended up being published in 2010 — several of which had been appeared in lit mags. I had more than one opportunity to talk with agents and editors there, and when I mentioned that I had a collection and that several of the pieces had been published, every single one of them said, “Stories? Hm. Do you have a novel?” As if I’d just forgotten to pull out the novel I had hiding in my pocket. “Oh, how silly of me! Of course, here it is!” Ditto for the agents I queried on my own, who were mostly people I’d been referred to by their clients. Sometimes it’s really not who you know, it’s what you’ve got. I don’t think a single person actually read my collection. The word “collection,” I learned, was enough to put people off.
Here’s what I tell my students, because my students (like the people in those tweets) already feel an adversarial relationship to publishers: Don’t blame the publishers*. My students get mad at the agents who didn’t want my collection. Don’t blame the agents. First-time, standalone collections (vs. collection-and-a-novel packages) are selling for basically nothing. Well, what’s 12 percent of nothing?
Right now, yes, it’s almost impossible to make a living solely by writing (literary) fiction, but the playing field’s a lot more level. We’re all just as fucked. I don’t personally know a single author, big or small, who’s not doing other stuff to supplement her income. Unless I’m wildly misinformed or mistaken, the average advance for a first novel is around $10K or under. This is also what a lot of indie presses are paying, and it’s what some of the higher-dollar novel contests are paying. It’s much, much lower on both ends for a first collection, but again, that’s the reality. Stories are not as widely read as novels, story collections don’t generally make any kind of money. Oh, and in all cases — major publisher or college press or self-published — you are now responsible for the bulk of your PR & marketing.
– Matt Debenham
author of The Book of Right and Wrong (2010, Ohio State University Press)
P.S. On my publisher: Because their fiction comes via an annual competition, I think they were used to people just being grateful for publication. So when I got bossy about things like pricing and Kindle editions, they were alternately bewildered, obstinate, annoyed. But they worked with me, and we got shit done. I’ve seen a lot of my friends be told by their bigger publishers, “Yeah, no, here’s how we’re doing it,” and there the conversation ends.
*Do maybe blame the editors at those publishing houses who were handing out six-figure advances in the mid-90s to first-time authors of story collections. How the fuck were any of those books supposed to recoup?
March 4, 2013 — 10:30 AM
hierath says:
Publishing – 2000 – 2013 – I wrote a book and sent out a LOT of queries. While I was querying I wrote another book. I signed a three book deal with a small American publisher, and wrote another book. Then I wrote another book. My publisher folded – I say folded, the two women who mainly ran the company died withing three months of each other, and the business was wound up. I wrote another book. While I was shipping around for a publisher I wrote another book. I signed with Kristell Ink, a slightly-bigger small press based in the UK, and my fourth book is coming out at the end of June. Three things – no money has ever passed from me to a publisher, I have never stopped writing the next book while I waited to see what happens next, and even after triple-digit rejections, I have never given up. This is either heroic, or bloody-minded to the point of stupidity, depending on your view.
March 4, 2013 — 10:46 AM
Sarah Wynde says:
Traditionally published in non-fiction, about 15 years ago. I did know someone (a co-author who invited me into the project), did have an agent, was published with a major publisher. The book blended subject areas and bookstores didn’t know where to shelve it. It tanked.
I did the math, decided writing for money was entirely too impractical, so got a job as an acquisitions editor at a minor imprint of a Big 6 publisher. Signed many authors: some with agents, some with connections, most without either. Watched a lot of authors work very hard for what turned out to be very little money. Saw a few authors leverage their writing into other opportunities. Had one author — literally, one, out of what had to be over a hundred before I left — earn enough from writing a book to live comfortably.
Meanwhile, I was having fun writing fiction. I wrote a novel that would never be traditionally published — any sensible acqusitions editor would immediately question where a bookstore would shelve it. It doesn’t follow the rules, it’s quirky and weird, and — IMO, anyway — it was only going to appeal to a tiny niche audience of geeky romantic girls who like both science and ghosts. So I self-published it, breaking all the rules of self-publishing, too.
Fast-forward a year and a couple months, and it’s got over hundred 4 & 5 star reviews on Amazon. I’ve learned that geeky romantics are not all female, but are an enthusiastic and appreciative audience. I’ve also made several thousand dollars and figured out that the math of self-publishing is a heck of a lot better for the author than the math of traditional publishing. I’m not sure how many copies I’ve sold — a couple thousand probably. In traditional publishing, that would be a major disappointment to the acq team and definitely spell the end of my career. But in self-publishing, it means that I’m just getting started.
I have plenty of respect for traditional publishing. We worked really hard. We did our best to help authors put out terrific books. Our editing team, book designers, cover designers, marketing team — all of the work that we did had value. It also costs a lot of money to support that kind of team. As a result, traditional publishers like sure things, and they have to be really selective about where they take their risks. There are also pragmatic issues — like where a bookstore will shelve the book — that publishers have to care about but most authors aren’t even aware of. Fundamentally, though, writing & publishing are simply hard, competitive businesses.
March 4, 2013 — 10:50 AM
Steve Miller says:
I’ve been selling my writing since 1969, starting with reviews, poetry, and newspaper features and moving on to short fiction in semi-pro zines and eventually to Amazing Stories and then “trad” novels. At the moment my co-author and I have 18 or 20 in print novels in English (paper, ebook, and audiobook for most of them) and 30 or 35 electronic chapbooks through our Pinbeambooks outlet, not to mention overseas editions.
Our first book, Agent of Change, sold after about three years and nine submissions — it led to a contract for two more to ballantine/Del Rey. A change of editors at Del Rey led to us having a hiatus in sales, but we eventually got rights back. When we did get rigths back we explored self-publising, or co-publishing with an established press, but then got a phone call asking us if the right were ours and sold all 3, and 4 more instantly, to indy press Meisha Merlin where we expanded and sold a few more, not all in the same universe. When they got in trouble the books went to Baen after a short round of confusion. We’ve also sold work-for-hire to a couple other publishers along the way, and our own chapbook press (started in 1995, well before the curve on such things) kept us in our house when Meisha Merlin went under by covering our mortgage. We’d also started experimenting with ebooks (in 1988 and 1989!) and later went with Embiid in the Rocketbook era — again we had years where half the household income was from ebooks well before Amazon came along.
The key for us was to never undervalue the work we’d already done — for years the big novel publishers had but a brake on the sale of out-of-print books and downgrades the importance of short stories — in fact while we were working as writers fulltime we had part-time writers putting us down because we’d reprint previously published stories in our own chapbooks. Several of our paper chapbooks made more for us than out initial novel sales.
The industry has changed much since we started, but I think many writers are rushing into electronic print while their work is immature and thus they’ll never improve and will think sales of a hundred or two hundred ebooks is a big deal. After the current WIP we have a contract for 5 more novels, which should all go to ebook and audio as well as hardback/mass market — and that doesn’t count the collections of short stories Baen is also doing.
The key to longevity is to keep producing professionally, be an active part of the community, and watch your back.
March 4, 2013 — 10:57 AM
Steve Miller says:
Ooops .. .forgot to mention that our first placement came by ouir efforts — once we had an offer we got an agent to vet the contracts and that agent stayed with us for several more books. We then got another agent, who didn’t click in the long run, and then again had an offer which put us in spot to go to a new agent (hey, we have a 7 book deal, you want a piece?) and so if agents were not responsible for our success they’ve helped us avoid ptifalls.
March 4, 2013 — 11:01 AM
Rachel Keslensky @ Last Res0rt says:
I’m a webcartoonist, and the expectations are a lot different — it’s basically a given that people want to self-publish, because there’s very few houses out there for comic publishing to begin with, to the point that it was considered a novel innovation for DC’s Zuda comics imprint to actually consider outside ideas. Smaller publishers for various niches exist, but the benefit there is small compared to just doing it yourself.
In other words, if you’re in comics and you have your own IP, you’re probably going to have to self-publish it.
So far I’ve self-pubbed three books (one volume and two annuals), but if I’ve sold a hundred copies I’d be amazed. Then again, the books are mostly available online (another anomaly compared to most publishing efforts!), where there’re probably a couple thousand regular readers, only a handful of which actually participate / purchase in any capacity.
March 4, 2013 — 11:10 AM
Lee Robson says:
Self publishing comics is just ONE option to explore in that scene, I feel. Admittedly, I’m looking at it from a non-US perspective (the comic scene here in the UK is a very different beast), so please feel free to take my story with a pinch of salt.
Speaking personally, I’ve never self published a comic. At first, it was largely down to not knowing any artists to step up and work with me and partly down to financial considerations (and, y’know, not having a clue about where to go or what to do to actually get one printed), but I ended up pitching to a lot of small press anthologies in the UK and wrote a lot of stuff for them gratis. That led to me being put in touch with artists and making a lot of new contacts and friends in the process.
One of those artists was my partner in crime Bryan Coyle. I don’t want to re-hash the sordid tale of how we got our graphic novel, Babble, out into the world (there’s a potted history of the whole story here: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/12/24/a-towering-babble/), but we did, in January this year.
Our publisher, Com.X handled pretty much everything, from production to PR – something we’d never have got if we’d self-published – and even managed to get the book onto Comixology. It’s been met with rave reviews, but it’s it’s pretty shocking how difficult it’s been to make people aware of the books existence – although, that’s probably down to the market domination by Marvel and DC. Or that’s what I’m telling myself, anyway… 😉
March 4, 2013 — 3:15 PM
Rachel Keslensky @ Last Res0rt says:
Also worth note that it’s only VERY recently — like, the 90’s — before “Artist’s Rights” in comics had a real foothold. Even now you hear stories about the family of Jack Kirby suing for the rights to some of Marvel’s bread and butter, or various iterations of how the rights to Superman were basically sold for a song, or hell, here’s a real gem about a guy who signed an “exclusive work” contract to DC, who then proceeded to give him little to no work and no way to work for other people: http://ordstersrandomthoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/life-over-fifty.html
Comics are a very different publishing beast from the rest of the market. Japan may be a slightly better situation just because it’s a much more respected medium (as far as the money goes, anyway!), but it’s hard to port that kind of model out to the rest of the world at a time when print is “dying” elsewhere.
March 5, 2013 — 11:05 AM
Jenna says:
First, I spent about ten years learning how to write for an audience. Then I wrote the rough draft for my first novel for Nanowrimo 2005, and spent 2006 rewriting and revising, as well as researching publishers who might be interested in my genre (and the current state of publishing in general). I submitted the novel to an epublisher on the recommendation of a friend who’d done some cover art work for them, and was accepted. They have since published three of my novels, with number 4 due out in April, as well as several short stories and novellas.
It’s not big money by any means, but I do have readers and fans and that’s a start.
I think about getting an agent sometimes and testing the waters elsewhere. We’ll see how that goes.
March 4, 2013 — 11:15 AM
Gareth Skarka says:
Strange edge-case here, too. I started twenty years ago in the tabletop games industry (D&D, etc.), where one the normal ways to get started was to self-publish — to launch your own company, usually with a group of friends, in order to produce a game that you’d all worked on. Very much a “hey, kids — let’s put on a show!” niche industry.
Anyway, self-publishing our first game got us to the big conventions as an exhibitor, selling our game, which got us invited to the after-hours parties, where we met other publishers, designers, writers, etc. Those connections led to freelance writing and design work for other publishers. Pretty soon, you have a fairly large body of published work, and a network of friends and acquaintances familiar enough with your work that when they’re in the position to hire, they know enough about you to assign you.
I continued in the game industry, freelancing and consulting for others as well as running my own small publishing company — multitasking became my stock in trade. All the while, I parlayed the skills that I had learned during this time — writing, editing, graphic design, etc. — into securing work in the traditional publishing world. I worked as a production editor at a text book publisher, a slush reader, a graphic designer for a small-press magazine, and as the managing editor for another magazine.
In the early days of ePublishing (2000-2003), my small gaming imprint had moved into the digital realm, and had begun to earn enough that I could concentrate on that full-time. ePublishing had yet to hit mainstream, but coverage of the “coming thing” led to me and my company appearing in an Associated Press article on the topic which appeared everywhere from Money, to CNN, to the Washington Post, to the South China Morning Post.
Once digital publishing hit mainstream, I realized that in my case, there wasn’t much point in going through the traditional route for fiction any longer — I had already done twenty years of legwork building the framework and skill set to do it independently: I had the production chops, the marketing experience, and a network of freelance editors and artists for hire.
I don’t consider myself a *self* publisher, per se — I consider my company to be a small independent, who publishes the work of a bunch of folks, including my own.
March 4, 2013 — 11:43 AM
Riley Hill says:
So back in the late 80s I wrote my first, a 110k novel for the Wounded Knee Centennial. It took three years to research and a year to write, including travel, interviews, and LIBRARY (no internet then) research. After selling my bookstore to write full time, I was on fire, churning out stories, screenplays, teleplays, and had my sequel half written during this time. I submitted the novel to the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference and it was a finalist. I queried some agents and publishers back east and a couple in California, and received personal rejections or suggestions from each. To trim out the book, I put it in a screenplay format to get to the “bones.” Since I had a screenplay, I sent it to Disney and Universal, using my sister as an agent, since I didn’t have one. Because I had a computer and most people back then didn’t, I was able to set up everything in a professional manner. After a few weeks, Disney passed, but Universal said they were considering it. Then after a few weeks more, Universal passed. The next year, a movie was produced by a producer who was present at Universal while they had my screenplay. His movie was a blend of my screenplay and some other matter, and was a hit the weekend it opened. I couldn’t sell my novel after that as it looked like I had plagiarized the movie–my screenplay that was stolen. a few years later, I met a gal who worked for one of the big movie studios. Her job was to cull the slush pile for good ideas to pass onto their writers. I guess that’s what happened to mine. But this story doesn’t end here.
Naively, I contacted the FBI for copyright infringement, and they said to go to the Attorney General. I contacted the Attorney General (of the United States!) and he said to contact the FBI. Neither would help, because the lawsuit didn’t come via “channels.” That’s when I learned those copyright notices you read “protecting” movies, etc., are bull. During this era, “Coming to America” and “The Lion King” were also ripped off, but their lawsuits were successful as the true authors had enough money to sue.
I decided to sue as I had the contest and numerous submissions to reputable publishing houses proving my material was mine and the copyright was a given. I tried to locate some entertainment attorneys who would take it on contingency, since I was earning a measly $8/hour back then and had $2k saved. No one would touch it because it was up against two big houses: Universal and Tristar. I finally found a guy who had just graduated law school to accept it on contingency. His idea was for me to give him my $2k to him (which he used to contact *my* witnesses to prove I had written my screenplay), then, when he went aboard a law firm he was joining, he’d take my case as his first contingency case. So when he started with that entertainment firm, he denied ever telling me that. I took him to the bar, which seemed like a “good ol’ boys” club as the judge and he greeted each other as buddies. I did manage to get back $225.
In addition to losing my virginity and naivety as an author, I lost years of work and opportunity costs. I had a stress breakdown and couldn’t write (except for technical writing) for twenty years. In recent years I’ve been cranking off the rust (and there’s plenty), to get my chops back.
Since I had a couple decades doing software development, I decided to self-publish when I got back in the mode. After talking to Nat Sobel back when he was alive about agenting, I found out that nobody needs training to be an agent, and finding a good one can be as risky as what I did with Hollywood. So I’ve been self-publishing, but there are some definite downsides. The entire review thing with Amazon is full of holes. Nefarious authors use sock puppets to drive your review statuses down so you won’t get picked up by the promoters (I have one of these from a woman who is friends with competing authors right now). Without promoters picking up your books, it’s difficult to get seen. The one thing the trad publisher do is put your book into a pipeline of visibility. Yeah, it’s a rigged system and good luck to you if you can break into, but since they have “reviewers” lined up for you and stores that will automatically take your book, you have a better chance of selling books. I’ve put my novel into libraries and bookstores, in addition to selling on Amazon. Right now I’m working on a sci-fi/fantasy thriller series that I’ll self-publish. But this is a rags to raggier story. I don’t even earn the $8/hour I did in the 1980s.
March 4, 2013 — 11:47 AM
Janet Reid says:
Nat Sobel is still alive and still selling good books.
March 4, 2013 — 12:55 PM
Riley Hill says:
Wow! I’m happy to hear this! He must be as old as me by now.
March 6, 2013 — 5:53 PM
Elspeth Cooper (@ElspethCooper) says:
>>Yeah, it’s a rigged system and good luck to you if you can break into, but since they have “reviewers” lined up for you and stores that will automatically take your book, you have a better chance of selling books. <<
I've heard this before, this idea that publishers have reviewers lined up for their authors, with the implication that a good review is somehow guaranteed. It just isn't true. Publishers have publicists who have lists of bloggers and review sites that they can send ARCs to, *but the review is at the blogger/reviewer's discretion, may or may not happen, and a good review is in no way a certainty*. How do I know this? My publicist offered my debut novel to a well-known genre magazine, someone who could have given me a serious sales boost and they *hated* it – and their reviewer wasn't afraid to say so.
And stores that will automatically take your book? Er, no. The publisher has to *sell* the author and their book to the store's buyers, to persuade them to take you on. That's kinda why big bookstores have buyers, and why publishers have sales departments.
March 4, 2013 — 2:13 PM
chulaslim says:
I started out with the hybrid approach, had self-published one book and written two others. Shopping the two books around to publishers, I was I was dismayed by the lengthy turn-around times. So even though I’d had one respond with critical feedback, I realized this process could go on forever before I landed a book deal.
I examined my motives, questioning whether a traditional deal was what I really wanted and found that self-publishing suited me just fine. I’ve done all right with self-publishing, since 2010, six novels, one short story, and two more novels in the pipeline.
Therefore, I’ve not had much to do with the traditional route. However, I do have two legitimate complains about traditional publishers based upon my own experience.
First, they’re far too slow. For a young person just starting out, maybe time isn’t an issue but for an older person like me time is of the essence.
The second issue is the question of rights. I love owning complete rights to my books. No one can tell me what to do with them. I can change any aspect of the work at any time that suits me for strategic reasons to increase sales, or just because I want to.
I’d argue that one has to have more courage and self confidence to self-publish. You’re putting yourself out on a limb and you sink or swim on your own merits. (Yeah, I know, three cliché phrases in a row, but I’m in a hurry to get this done and get back to writing my two new novels.)
March 4, 2013 — 12:04 PM
cathschaffstump says:
Chuck:
I’ve published a book exactly once. I was approached by a small press publisher on the strength of a reading she heard, and she waved a reasonable advance at me for a 40K middle grade book. The small press was Cats Curious, and I’m not sure what happened to the editor/publisher, because she seems to have disappeared, but the book is still out there selling.
The process took longer than the average long time, so I was given about the advance cost again in books that I could use however I wanted to. I was very pleased with how I was paid, the support the book had, and the cover. I would write another one under the same circumstances, should I ever hear from the editor/publisher again.
Now I’ve attended a couple of writers workshops (Viable Paradise and Taos Toolbox) in my ongoing effort to improve my writing. I focus on writing novels, and I am keen to get published traditionally, as I have a very full career as a professor, and I only have time to write, not to do the rest of the stuff that all self-pubbers do (and they have my admiration for doing it.) I am making headway, seeking representation and submitting.
I have every hope in the future that I will be traditionally published. It will just take some time. But it took me 15 years to find the perfect professorial position, so I understand that patience is the long game.
March 4, 2013 — 12:13 PM
matt blissett (@mattblissett) says:
I self published on Amazon last April, a series of episodic erotica(The Love We Make) and you realise very quickly that you are competing with a lot of other writers. I am finding that even getting noticed takes a tremendous amount of effort, I use twitter and tumblr to post links and excerpts, the former rather than the latter. However I do balance that with just being me on there, as I feel that I need to be me as much as possible. Some feeds are frighteningly mechanical in terms of self promotion, and it is disconcerting.
I haven’t made any money, but it has given me a tremendous amount of purpose and focus, I am now 200 pages into the first draft of a novel and The Love We Make is with an agent since the last week in December, which means it’s either being considered or being laughed over 🙂
I won’t begrudge anyone their journey, just that being a lone wolf sometimes leaves you vulnerable to snake oil salesmen who can promise you the earth, there are a great many people who seem to have built careers on telling people how to market their work without having achieved anything themselves.
@amandapalmer did a talk on TED about asking people for help, and I am working out how to do that in case things with the agent don’t pan out. All to play for, and I will keep writing and learning.
March 4, 2013 — 12:18 PM
Anonymous says:
I’ve sold short stories for years. My sales have almost entirely been to editors who have no reason to know of me. I have no MFA (entirely math-and-science college track) and never attended a writing workshop of any kind. Takeaway: nobodies can make sales.
Recently I was able to place a reprint collection with a small press. I considered self-publishing, because I think reprints are ideal for that route, but what I gained from a small press was: a great cover, formatting, editorial input, a surprisingly robust publicity mechanism, “sister” titles under the publisher’s umbrella, and I do think a hair more legitimacy–although I think that was conferred by the first publications as well. (I didn’t bother seeking a major trad press for this project because it’s a niche chapbook that’s super short and half poetry.) I have other reprint projects in mind, so the numbers for this will help inform my choice between trad and self for future projects. So far I’m happy with my choice for this book.
March 4, 2013 — 12:28 PM
Shoshanna Evers (@ShoshannaEvers) says:
I started out being e-published by a small (well, big, but not the Big 6/5) publisher, Ellora’s Cave. After a bunch of books, I sold another book to another small pub (Wild Rose Press), and then I self-published and became an Amazon Erotica Bestseller. I was making so much money with the self-pub books that I put a hold on going through publishers, until I met an agent at an RWA meeting and she asked me to send her a book. I did, and she signed me.
Getting an agent when I had numerous other books already published wasn’t hard, but having an agent doesn’t mean you all of a sudden get huge. She spent almost a year shopping The Pulse around, with no luck. I was told the book was great, but they wouldn’t know how to sell it. It was a weird mash-up of genres.
Then the market changed and suddenly the idea of a post-apocalyptic dystopian erotic romance didn’t seem so crazy, and she sold it as part of a 6 book deal to Simon & Schuster’s Pocket Star imprint. The first trilogy, a BDSM billionaire erotic romance – Enslaved – releases next month so I don’t know how sales will be. But I do know they gave me an advance and excellent editors, which is awesome.
I’m still self-publishing, but I’m also going full-steam ahead with traditional publishing. I’m also publishing short stories in Cleis Press anthologies, which is a nice way to get my work in front of readers who might not have read my work yet.
As for “knowing people in the industry” – yes, I know a lot of them – NOW, anyway. I didn’t when I started writing! I joined RWA, I went to conferences, I made friends on Twitter, and kept up on publishing news. So a few years ago I didn’t know anyone, and now I feel very much a part of the romance writing community. I figure it can’t hurt to publish both traditionally and independently.
Oh, and it took me ten years from when I wrote my first book to the time I got published. That’s because the first few books I wrote were really bad. I’m very grateful that self-publishing wasn’t an option to me then, because I would have definitely skipped all the hard stuff and querying to put my book out there. Instead I was forced via rejection letters to take a long hard look at my craft and get better. Now when I self-publish, I know it’s because I’m making a business decision, not because the book isn’t “good enough” to be traditionally published.
That said, I know some amazing authors who decided to not even try traditionally publishing, and are now NYT and USA Today bestsellers with their self-pub books. They make a lot more money than I do, lol. So I won’t say making that decision to self-pub your first book is wrong, it just wasn’t right for me when I started. 🙂
March 4, 2013 — 12:57 PM
Cat York says:
Here is my post about self publishing from a commissioned illustrator’s perspective. I’m still working on that traditional deal. 😉 Which will come. I’m on the right track now. http://catyork.weebly.com/1/post/2013/03/my-experience-with-self-publishing-and-why-it-didnt-work-for-me-then.html
March 4, 2013 — 1:03 PM
debradunbarnbar says:
I researched trad pub, and sent out 4 queries before I had a heart-to-heart with myself concerning my writing/publishing goals and went self-pub. I wanted the control of hiring my own editing team, etc., and I wanted to get my books out now, now four years later. Plus I realized that as a virtual nobody, I’d need to do just as much promotion myself with either route.
One of my renters was asking my advice as he has an outline for a novel and a set of poems he wants to get published. He too kept going on and on about how he didn’t want agents or publishers to steal his work, and how he’d only sign a contract where he retained all the rights to his novel, etc. No idea where people get these ideas!
March 4, 2013 — 1:24 PM
Martyn Waites says:
Here you go. Here’s my story.
I started writing with the serious intention of being published in 1992. Like most people in South London, I was an actor at the time. I had moved to London after college to help me get acting work. But I wanted to write. And I loved crime fiction. So I wrote a crime novel. I thought it was brilliant. No one agreed. So I bought the Writers Yearbook and went about tracking down an agent. I started at the ‘A’s and worked my way through, phoning them up, asking if they’d like to see it. Not being pushy or mental about it, just calm and (hopefully) interesting and engaging. Some said yes, some didn’t. The ones who said yes I sent some sample chapters to along with a covering letter. I think it took me longer to write the letter. One eventually said yes. I sent her the full book and she hated it. Said it was one of the worst things she’d ever read in her life. Back to square one. Back to the Writers Yearbook, starting from A.
Another agent wanted to read it. One who had read it before, incidentally. I told her I had completely rewritten it. She read it, liked it and agreed to represent me. Long story short, my first novel, Mary’s prayer, was published in 1997. Five years. During that time it went round every publishing house in London, both big ones and small ones. During this time I was constantly rewriting and editing. It was my first novel. I could always make it better. Eventually an editor read it, liked it, but thought it needed work. I asked her what she meant and whether she could show me. She edited a couple of chapters, showing me how she wanted it done. It was the most valuable thing anyone has ever done for me as a writer. I spent six months editing it like she had shown me. I sent it back. I got a two book deal. That was it, my foot was in the door.
I switched publishers for my third novel. It did better than the first. I also got to know other crime writers. I got invites to launches and parties. I went and networked. I talked to people in publishing, became friends with some of them. At no time did I present myself as desperate or ambitious. I also went to support other writers and their work. This is a community. We all have a part to play.
I moved publishers with my third book for a substantial hike in money too. I wrote two literary novels that while being critical successes, weren’t commercial ones. After ten years I switched agents. It was a wrench but I felt it was the right thing to do. I’m still with the agent I switched to. I wrote The Mercy Seat, the first of the Joe Donovan novels. It was nominated for a couple of awards. Didn’t win, but people began to hear about me. I wrote (so far) four in the series but I couldn’t stay with that publisher any longer. I’d kept in touch with my old editor from my previous publisher. He’s now deputy publisher at one of the biggest houses. He asked me to write a commercial thriller under a female pseudonym. I asked my wife to help. Tania Carver, the internationally bestselling author, was born. There have been five Tania Carver novels to date. I’m now published all over the world. With varying degrees of success, it has to be said. I’m also about to write a novel under my own name again. Hammer Books asked me to write the sequel to Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black. I couldn’t turn that down. And that’s where I am now.
So, as Jerry Springer used to say, what have we learned here? I don’t know. I wanted to be a published writer. I wouldn’t take no for an answer and kept going. I worked bloody hard to get it right, to improve, to make my work good enough to be published. Bloody hard. I was lucky enough to find two agents who’ve believed in me. I got out and met people. I networked. I wasn’t pushy or desperate because I’m not pushy or desperate. In all my dealings with my agent and publishers I’m thoroughly professional. I listen to what they have to say and generally act on it because they know their job better than I do. I’ve never been precious about my work. I know it can always be improved.
There are some people I haven’t got on with, of course. But there are plenty that I have. I have never met anyone from a publishing house or an agency, large or small, who want to steal a writer’s ideas or who won’t let them blog if they’re published (they usually say the opposite. Blog, tell as many people about your work as possible), or ask me for money upfront. Never.
It’s a business, yes. A publisher wants to make money, as does an agent and a writer. I want to make money from it and I’m fortunate enough to be able to do that. I’m not super rich or even plain old rich. But it’s enough to pay the mortgage and to provide for my family so that’s OK. Plus I don’t have to get a regular job. I know it could all change tomorrow. But at the moment it seems to be working.
But the other important thing is – it’s also my life. I love being a writer. My best friends are now other writers and other publishing professionals. It is, as I said earlier, a community. One that I’m proud to be a part of.
Sorry. I’ve rambled on too long and I don’t know if this’ll help anybody. Or even if anyone will get to the end before expiring. But there you go. It’s how I did it.
March 4, 2013 — 1:26 PM
Anonymous says:
Here’s my one piece of advice. Follow your gut. The first time I talked to my then-agent, I had a bad feeling. But she was a big deal agent at a big deal agency and she didn’t actually say anything that was “wrong.” It was literally her tone of voice I didn’t like. She was so pretentious that she sounded like somebody doing an impression of a pretentious person. But, her story notes were amazing, she had a great reputation, and I thought I’d be insane not to sign with her. So, sign I did. On the plus side, she did teach me a good bit about story. On the negative side, she really turned out to be pretty astonishingly disappointing in the human being department. I wished I’d held out for an agent that felt right to me, instead of jumping on board with the agent the internet said I should be excited about.
March 4, 2013 — 1:45 PM
Amy says:
I’m being published for the first time in two months, with a Big 6 (Big 5?) publisher. It’s a YA novel, and I got published by querying, getting an agent, and going on submission. I didn’t know anyone, I just wrote a book and queried widely. It was the second time I’d tried querying; the first time about 70 agents rejected me (most didn’t even request any pages).
Interestingly, I did know someone the first time I queried. I was working for a major talent agency in Los Angeles, and they had a publishing division in NY. I contacted one of the junior agents and she had me send her my manuscript. I never heard back. So knowing someone in the publishing industry did nothing to help me.
My experience with a traditional publisher has been awesome so far. They paid me an advance that allowed me to quit my day job, my editor is wonderful, and the marketing team seems to be planning some great stuff for my book. My agent is a rockstar with sub-rights – my book was optioned for film by Fox, and it’s sold in 8 countries so far.
March 4, 2013 — 3:11 PM