I feel like the Publishing Wars went from cold to hot recently — culminating in the recent Author Earnings site championed by one Mister Hugh Howey, who deserves credit at the very least for shining a light on the various nooks and crannies of both sides of publishing (seriously, the resultant conversation growing out of this is many-headed and more robust than I’m used to — far less us versus them and far more here are my thoughts and actually they’re kinda smart). Whether you consider the data helpful or horseshit is up to you (my inexpert opinion is that the truth, like with nearly all things, hovers neatly toward the middle).

That said, if you’re an author, you might be revisiting the question:

Should I self-publish?

You’ve got a whole barnload of metrics by which you might measure the question and find an answer. Do you want your book out fast? Do you want money now as opposed to money later? Do you want the guarantee of an advance, or the risk of acting as your own publisher? Do you love Amazon, or hate Amazon? Do you want to retain your rights and your control? Do you want on bookstore shelves? Or are you comfortable existing predominantly on e-readers? Do you care at all about film rights? TV rights? Foreign? Reviews in major outlets?

And so on, and so forth.

Lots of reasons big and small.

Money. Time. Rights. Independence. Access. Discoverability.

Lots of fulcrum points on which the argument wibbles and wobbles.

And just to get ahead of any of that us versus them-ism lest it rear its braying donkey head: at this exact moment in time authors have plenty of good reasons to choose either path.

All these fulcrum points are meaningful. And nobody should tell you any different.

But, first, there’s one question worth asking.

One question that may precede all others.

That question:

Do I want to be a publisher?

If YES, then act as your own author-publisher.

If NO, then do not do that.

If OH SHIT I DUNNO, then take something small — a short story, a novella, a riskier story that won’t find a market — and then publish that on your own as kind of a… test case.

That’s it. That’s the first — and maybe, really, the only — question.

Because if you want to be a publisher — meaning, you have the inclination and interest to worry about directly handling or delegating your own book design, cover design, editing, marketing, and boozy publishing cocktail lunches — then you should jolly well up and fucking do that, stat.

But if you don’t — and oh, guess what, many authors do not want to do this or absorb these responsibilities — then you really, seriously, honestly, truly, fucking shouldn’t.

Because I don’t want to read books put out by publishers who don’t want to do that job or don’t know how to do it in the first goddamn place. Readers don’t, either, just as we don’t want to look at books written by writers who don’t care about or know about writing.

This is true in all careers, by the way.

You might want to work in advertising. Or you might want to start your own ad agency. You might want to learn to ride a horse or run a whole goddamn stable. Maybe you’re a lawyer. Maybe you’re best suited to become the head of a whole firm. Maybe you’re a entrepreneur, or a venture capitalist, or an inventor. Maybe you like freelance. Maybe you like being kept by a company with all the benefits a company affords. The trade-off is nearly always the same, in general terms: do I want to set aside some risk for stability and potentially smaller gains, or do I want to accept and absorb more risk to handle my own work and go for potentially larger (but again, riskier!) gains?

That’s it.

You’re either into that.

Or you’re not.

No shame in either path.

Nor is there shame in using data to determine which side to walk. But, again, for me, before you start worrying about all those other things, before you read the latest round of conversation and start thinking, I might need to do this, I might want to see if there’s gold in them thar hills, the round of questioning always has to start with that one fundamental question.

You either want to be an author. Just an author.

Or you want to be an author-publisher.

Or you wanna do a little of both.

End of story.

Choose.

Enjoy.

And whatever you do, do it well.

So well, in fact, that nobody can see or care about or criticize the choice you made.

Carly has one focus in her life: to return home to her terminally ill younger sister. When she learns that a Darkon traitor possesses gateway maps to Earth, she uses all her skills to track him down. But capturing the charming star pirate turns out to be trickier than she anticipated…

Volkar is determined to prove his innocence to those who drove him to a life lived on the Outer Rim, and he will overcome anyone who gets in his way. But his surprisingly sweet captor has some skills that will come in handy, so he strikes a deal: the maps for her help. Neither expect their partnership to turn into more, but as dark secrets are revealed, their lives become forfeit — and the relationship blossoming between them nothing but a starburst of happiness in the deep shadow of the sky… 

DON’T ALWAYS GO WITH YOUR FIRST IDEA

You know that wonderful sparkling moment when an idea pops into your head and you go, OMG that would make a great story! It’s quite possible it will, but I’ve found if I brainstorm my initial idea, really throw a bunch of ideas into my hat (and some are way out of the box) and mix it all up, I can come up with a stronger storyline.

Once I have my initial premise and my major characters, I like to list down 25 things that I want to happen in my story (note this doesn’t mean I’ll go with every single one of these ideas). Then, I’ll list down as many ideas I can think of that MIGHT happen using 10 as a minimum number. I’ll brainstorm all the major characters’ worst fears and their secrets and decide how I can use one or both as the major climax or turning points. For example; in this book, Carly’s worst fear is she’ll never find her way back to her ill sister. So I had the gateway maps snatched from her fingers and now out of her reach.

I did also, initially, have everyone achieve their HEA then I threw that idea out the window too.

I’ll leave it up to the readers to decide whether that was a good decision or not.

I’M A RESEARCH JUNKIE

Writing spec fiction gives you the perfect excuse to spend literally days researching (in other words procrastination) if you’re not careful. There is so much fascinating material out there and all available at the press of a key. Then there are all those DVD documentaries to purchase. And did I mention the books? See-I’m addicted to research.

Speaking of which, did you know scientists are working on the feasibility of making a space elevator? Recent theories are the use of carbon nanotubes and laser technology. We could hop on the elevator and get off on a space station then board a ship to….?

PHYSICS MAKES MY BRAIN IMPLODE

Don’t get me wrong, science fiction is king. What I hate is me burbling excitedly about a new idea (well, new to me) of say, space travel only to be shot down in flames with a physics lecture by my youngest son. “That isn’t possible, mum….” And he goes on to explain why and I go, “Damit, I thought I was onto a good thing.”

It’s hard keeping up to date with recent discoveries, especially if you’re like me starting off on the hind foot with basic knowledge and with limited writing time in the first place. But what happens if you write something into your story and THEN find out it’s not feasible?

I used space stealth technology in my book, Star Pirate’s Justice. And apparently it’s technically impossible. The radiation the heat of a space ship gives off can be detected. So to make my idea more plausible I’ll spin it a little further in my next book which I’m currently writing. I’ll give my alien race the know-how to funnel this heat radiation into another dimension. And when someone points out it’s too far-fetched? Chocolate and wine sound like a good fall-back position.

LOVE WHAT YOU WRITE

I love reading an action adventure book and I’m totally addicted to sci fi TV series. Often though, I’d wonder why the writer or producer didn’t spice the story up with more romantic interests and hefty doses of spicy sex. The first story I wrote was a 50k word contemporary romance which basically had girl meets boy, falls in love, argues then has a HEA. This story had no fire, no depth and no voice. Plus it interested me about as much as shopping for groceries. (And I’m certain would have sent the world into a coma.)

I had my light bulb moment – I’d write what I love to read and watch: a sci fi romance where I could have fun, make up my own rules and make my protagonists face confronting issues. And that story, Legend Beyond the Stars, became the first in my sci fi series and my first published single title. This current release, Star Pirate’s Justice, is definitely more action orientated with slightly less emphasis on the romance. So I’m finding that with each new story I write, I’m morphing more towards an action romance type of genre. And I love it!

DEVELOP A THICK SKIN & DON’T BUY A GUN

Not everyone is going to love your book, the baby of your heart, the story you poured over almost twenty-four hours a day and wrestled with in the sleepless stretches of the cold nights.

You’re kidding me right? How dare they criticise my characters, my story, my writing style? Don’t they realise I’m the writing guru of the world?

Okay, back to planet Earth. People are going to say, I don’t like it and sometimes not in a very nice way. My first bad review depressed me for days; I felt like a failure, that my writing sucked, that no one else would ever buy my book. I felt as if the entire world pointed its collective finger at me. I never wanted to write again. Then came the anger…what do they know anyway?

Please…time to grow a thick skin and suck down a healthy dose of reality.

Focus on the readers who do like your book and your writing style. (And yes, I do receive great reviews too.) I know some writers never read their reviews but I do; I like to see what resonated with readers, what worked and what didn’t. I read the reviews because I want to learn and improve my craft.

Because in the end, the reason I write is to entertain and whisk a reader away from everyday mundane life, if only for an hour or two.

And don’t buy a gun.

***

S. E. Gilchrist can’t remember a time when she didn’t have a book in her hand. Now she writes stories where her favourite words are …’what if’ and ‘where’? She lives in urban Australia and writes in the genres of futuristic/sci-fi, fantasy, pre-medieval, post-apocalyptic all with a ‘hot’ flavour and sweet, contemporary rural romances.

S. E. Gilchrist is published by Momentum Books and Escape Publishing and is an indie author.

S. E. Gilchrist: Website | Twitter

Star Pirate’s Justice: Amazon | Amazon Australia | Amazon UK |  iBooks | Barnes and Noble | Kobo

Isabel, Lady Wilde, a mistress to King Charles II, has a secret: she makes her living disguised as Mistress Ruby, a fortune-teller who caters to London’s elite. It’s a dangerous life among the charlatans, rogues and swindlers who lurk in the city’s dark corners, but to Isabel, the risk is worth the reward.

Until magistrate Sir Edmund Godfrey seeks Mistress Ruby’s counsel and reveals his unwitting involvement in a plot to kill the king. When Isabel’s diary containing dangerous details of his confession is stolen, she knows she must find it before anyone connects her to Mistress Ruby. Especially after Sir Edmund’s corpse is discovered a few days later…

Isabel is sure that whoever stole her diary is Sir Edmund’s killer—and could be part of a conspiracy that leads all the way to the throne. But as she delves deeper into the mystery, not even the king himself may be able to save her.

RUNNING A MARATHON CONVINCED ME THAT I COULD WRITE A NOVEL

For thirty years, writing a novel was something I dreamed of doing, but could never imagine myself actually doing it. Somehow, I thought that if it were really something I could accomplish, it would be–I don’t know–easier. Not so much work. That the words would magically flow out of me, all brilliant and shiny, that the muse would take over and voila, I’d have a novel. Over the years, the idea took on a sort of mystical, unattainable quality, like winning an Oscar or becoming a racecar driver. Other people did it, but not me.

For a long time, running a marathon was also on my list of impossible goals. Only in this case I knew training for one would be work, it wouldn’t be easy, and that the only thing that would flow out of me was sweat and bile as I dry-heaved at the 2-mile mark. Then, the summer I turned 38, I decided I wanted to get in shape. I started running regularly, lost some weight, and found myself with a good base to actually give running a marathon serious consideration. I told myself I could do it or not, my only caveat being that if I did to commit to it, there would be no turning back. That marathon would get run no matter what it took.

And you know what? That marathon got run. It took sixteen weeks of training, followed by five hours, seven minutes, and thirty-four seconds of actual race time. I walked, off and on, about five miles of it and I burst into tears at the end. They were not tears of pride, they were tears of utter and complete exhaustion.

I figured that after all that, I could probably commit to writing a novel. I used the same approach: do it or not, but if you commit to it, finish it. The summer I turned 40, I did just that, and three years later I had the completed novel (including re-writes and revisions), that would eventually become Mistress of Fortune.

Now, when people tell me they want to write a novel someday, I say, if that’s really and truly the case, then why aren’t you writing it already? It’s a hell of a lot easier than running a damned marathon.

A LITTLE NAIVETE GOES A LONG WAY

I’ll be honest. If I’d have known when I began writing Mistress of Fortune that it was going to take nearly five years to write, re-write, revise, and publish, I might not have had the chutzpah to start writing it in the first place.

Oh, I knew how much time it took most other writers to get their work published. I was aware that many authors have one or more novels in their desk drawers that never see the light of day. I even knew the odds were that I’d never get published at all (unless I published myself, which is another topic entirely that I’ll not address here).

But here’s the deal: I’d somehow convinced myself that none of that applied to me. I was certain that once I finally finished it, my novel would get an agent straight out of the gate, that I’d get a great publishing contract with one of the big six publishers, and that my career as an author would flourish.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Of course it didn’t happen that way at all. I saved every rejection, only one of which was on paper (which my dog, Stella, subsequently chewed a hole in. Good girl). All the rest are emails that reside safely on my backed up hard drive.

Sure, I’d set myself up for disappointment, but being unrealistic kept me going. I’m not sure when I realized that my publishing story was more or less the same as everybody else’s. But by that time I had too much skin in the game and there was no way I was going to quit.

DON’T TAKE THE ADAGE “WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW” AT FACE VALUE

Mistress of Fortune is set in 17^th century London and features a mistress to King Charles II who moonlights as a fortuneteller. Being female is pretty much the only thing I have in common with my protagonist.

The thing is, my existence has been pretty uneventful. While I personally enjoy the life I lead very much, there is nothing particularly interesting about it to use as fodder for fiction. In getting started, I found the advice “write the book you want to read” and “write the book only you can write” much more useful. Mistress of Fortune is, in all ways, the book I wanted to read and if there is such a thing, it’s the book I was born to write.

That said, it seemed ambitious to take on a setting and situation so far from my own reality as a first project. The novel is based on a real life, unsolved murder that spurred a complicated political crisis in England and as a novice who’d never plotted a book before, I often felt overwhelmed and frustrated during the writing of it. I asked myself many times whether I should put it aside and write something less demanding.

Ultimately, however, I learned that I actually did know everything I needed to in order to write this book. I could study the historical details. I could visit London and trace my protagonist’s footsteps from one end of the city to the other (which I did). And hell, I could even make shit up if I had to (which I definitely did). But the essential thing—what it means to be human—I already knew that. The painful burn of being rejected by a lover. The bitter anger of being betrayed by someone I trust. The useless torment of envy and the exquisite pull of lust. These are the elements that make a book worth reading and I knew how they felt. All I had to do was bring them to life in my characters.

Easy-peasy, right?

MARKET YOURSELF EARLY, AND OFTEN

I like to joke that I started selling Mistress of Fortune as soon as I started writing it. I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing at the time, but that’s the beauty of social media when it’s done well. It doesn’t matter if you have a book to sell or not. The idea is to slowly build relationships, giving and taking as appropriate, and when the time comes for you to overtly promote yourself, people will accept it (and even help you) because you’ve earned it. Just don’t over do it, ‘kay?

While high self-esteem is not generally my strong suit, I do pride myself on my strong social media presence. While I’m not as popular as say, Mr. Wendig here, I have amassed a solid following of friends and contacts that have helped me immensely throughout the process of writing and publishing of Mistress of Fortune.

If that sounds cold and calculated, let me assure you that the key to social media success is actually sincerity. Talk about what interests you. Promote projects you love, whether or not they directly benefit you. Support others. Have real conversations. And when the opportunity arises, take it off line. Many of my online friends have become very good friends in “real life.” To say that social media has made my life richer is an understatement. I wouldn’t be where I am now without these people, and more importantly, I’m not sure I’d want to be.

Which brings me to my next lesson:

I FINALLY FOUND WHERE I BELONG

I was about thirty when I realized I have no real marketable skills. Fortunately, I have a husband who does and for ten years this enabled me to drift from hobby to hobby, searching for my bliss. Most notably, I was a jewelry maker and a pet portrait artist, both of which gave me some joy but ultimately, not enough satisfaction to wholeheartedly pursue them as careers. The desire to write kept rearing its ugly head and kept me hungry for something more.

In writing and getting Mistress of Fortune published, I’ve never worked harder for less financial gain. I’m the first to say that I’m in this business to get paid, but the reality is, I’ve made exactly $10 from my fiction writing thus far. So what is it, Holly West? Are you in this to make money or are you in it for love of the craft?

The answer is that I’m in it because I can’t not be in it. I hate writing, but I hate not writing more. It’s like this damned itch I can only scratch by, well, scratching it. Writing a novel didn’t satisfy the urge and neither did writing a second novel. I’m now plotting my third and that prickly rash is more powerful than ever.

If I make it sound like misery, well, it kind of is for me, yet I love it more than anything I’ve ever loved before. And so I say, with resignation and relief, that I’ve finally found my place in life—if not my bliss, exactly.

Holly West: Website | Twitter

Mistress of Fortune: Amazon

Saw some toolbag “horror author” this morning on my FB feed post this thing about how some WOMEN IN HORROR group is advertising itself using an image of a vampire woman (replete with fangs) licking blood from her lips.

And said toolbag whipped up an image that put this banner image next to the anatomical image of a woman’s vagina and from there proceeded to explain how it was silly for this feminist group to advertise their efforts using what was effectively a woman’s ladyparts. He also explained that women paint their lips red in order to simulate flushed labia. Translation: he sees every woman’s mouth as a place for him to, erm, stick it.

In the comments, which were a delightful circus act of dipshittery, he went on to explain that OH IT’S OKAY because he took a writing class taught by a lesbian once (why is it that lesbians are the token “black friends” of misogynists everywhere?) and he was the only man in that class and it was cool to have to defend the male gender from all their misinformation.

I don’t have much to say here except, goddamn. What the fuck is wrong with people?

I want to excise all this toxic stuff out of genre. Because most genre authors are awesome.

And this was decidedly not awesome.

And we wonder why women don’t feel welcome at the table.

Indie-pub wunderkind and author advocate Hugh Howey released this:

Author Earnings dot com.

It aims to provide (admittedly self-selecting) data about author earnings — a subject that has made a lot of hay in the last month or two — and further seems to want to shine a stronger, more data-driven light on the earnings of self-published authors in particular.

I am all for more data, and in this, I respect the effort mightily.

Every piece of data an author has is better than having no data at all.

That said, it’s also important to have some scrutiny of that data.

Data — er, “data” — after all, is easy to come by on the Internet.

Less easy is data that is true, and meaningful, and supports conclusions.

So: is this data all that?

Answer unclear, ask again later.

I’ll note a few things here, and then turn it over to you to let you folks (translation: someone smarter than me please take a look at it and offer your thoughts, willya?).

a) This data is entirely about Amazon, which remains the apparent leader in e-books, is by no means the entire picture in terms of bookselling in general. That skews this as being useful data regarding e-books and e-publishing (and author-publishing in particular), but maybe less so as a big picture than hoped? Point is: Amazon is a big fish, but not the only fish.

b) This data is extrapolated — meaning, no actual numbers, right? It’s taking data from (do I have this right?) a single day’s worth of rankings and from that deducing sales numbers for that day and then, by proxy, a whole year? (Graph here. Text: “The next thing we wanted to do was estimate yearly e-book earnings for all of these authors based on their daily Amazon sales.”) In my experience, those websites that attempt to extrapolate sales data using Amazon ranking numbers have been faulty. Hell, even Bookscan numbers are kinda fucked up (which is, itself, fucked up, BUT HEY WELCOME TO PUBLISHING WHERE NOBODY HAS VITAL INFORMATION).

c) It’s only pulling from bestseller lists on Amazon. This means we don’t have data on everything that isn’t… bestselling, right? Still useful to know and see what it means for those books up there at the top in terms of how many are indie and how many are not — it’s more indie than you think.

d) Because of limited scope, fails to capture ways that authors can make other money with a single book — foreign rights, film/TV rights, etc. That’s true on both sides of publishing, though likely moreso in traditional. If you looked at a book like my own Blackbirds and used a single day’s worth of sales at Amazon, you’d have almost none of the picture of a) how it really sells and b) the money I’ve made from the book beyond just the book.

This is interesting, so far. Be curious to see where it goes from here, and if it starts to include more robust data. At present it seems like an interesting start, though one offering a limited timespan of data (a single day) that captures not so much actual data as it does an extrapolation of data. (Though again, maybe I’m misreading, here. Smart people: jump in.) Either way, good for Howey for getting this out there. One assumes over time the data here will start to sharpen and present something cutting. In the meantime, worth poking through this with a few sticks and seeing if we can get other folks to verify the data and conclusions from the data.

Your thoughts?

Chat it up, folks.

Those are the days you have to write.

Even if it’s nothing, even if it’s crap, you’ve got to carve the words onto the page. Even if it’s only a hundred words, even if you only get to move the mountain by a half-an-inch, you’re still nudging the needle, still keeping that story-heart beating, still proving to yourself and to the world that this is who you are and what you do.

They say you can’t get blood from a stone but squeeze a stone hard enough, you’ll get blood.

Blood wets the gears. Blood makes the grass grow.

Effort. Work. Movement. Motion.

The days you don’t want to run, you have to run.

The days you don’t want to get out of bed are the days you must get out of bed.

The days you don’t think you can fly are the ones you gotta jump off the cliff.

Writer means writing. Even if it’s just a moment in the narrative, even if it’s just one thought orchestrated and set gently on the page. An avalanche is snowflakes. An ocean is all droplets. Our life is measured in seconds, our work measured in words, and so you have to put the words down.

The act creates momentum. Writing begets writing begets writing.

The lack of act has its own momentum, too — don’t write today, and tomorrow you wonder if this is really who you are, if this is what you’re meant to do, and so the next day you think it’s just not happening, the Muse isn’t there, the inspiration hasn’t lit a fire under your ass yet, the rats don’t feel like they’re gnawing at you and oh, hey, other writers — well, they’re all talented and driven and they’d never think of sitting down and not writing and maybe that’s who you are, not a writer but rather, Not A Writer, and so the gap in your effort cracks and pops and widens like a broken jaw, a yawning mouth, and soon all you see is the broken teeth of your efforts, broken dreams there in the dark of the mind and the back of the throat, and what you Want to do is lost beneath the illusion of what you Didn’t — or what you Can’t — do.

We fight that inertia, we fight the fear and the doubt by writing.

The words you write right now are words you can fix later.

The words you don’t write today are a curse, a hex, a black hole painted white.

You think that forcing it is counterproductive, that it means nothing, that you’ll just spit mud and blood onto the paper — and you might be right, but you might be wrong. Might be gold in them thar hills, might be a cure for what ails you in those droplets of blood. You don’t know. You can’t know. You’re you — your own worst judge, your own enemy, your greatest hater.

If you’re dying in the snow, no matter how much it hurts, you’ve gotta get up and walk.

If you’re drowning in the deep, no matter how hard it is, you’ve gotta hold the air in your lungs until your chest feels like it’s on fire and you’ve gotta swim hard for the surface.

Writing is the act of doing. Surviving. Living. Being.

From nothing into something. The word of the gods spoken aloud and made real, signal in noise, order in chaos, Let There Be Words and then there were Words.

On the days it’s hard to write are the days it’s most important to write.

That’s how you know who you really are.

That’s how you know this is what you’re meant to do.

Wake up.

Get up.

Write.