Today I play devil’s advocate. Meredith and I are big fans of indie-publishing, or self-publishing, for lots of writers under lots of circumstances. But since we let the case for self-publishing be made in good style by guest bloggers Kaitlyn Davis and Aaron Pogue, we need to speak for traditional publishing now.
I’ll address points made by scores of writers I’ve seen on the internet and spoken with during my recent gig as visiting prof at the U. of Oklahoma.
So down to it.
WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING?
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE COMPLAINTS ABOUT IT?
You Get Your Ticket Stamped. Of the hundreds of thousands of books published by new writers this year, print will get you noticed as one in a thousand or less, depending on your reviews. You didn’t get published because you think you’re good, but because a team of experts in publishing thinks so. Don’t kid yourself. This seal of approval makes an enormous difference. Your reviews will be in real newspapers and reputable magazines, not on amazon by your family and friends. You’re vetted—truly a writer.
You have a much better chance of getting a writing career. You’re right, achieving a career will still be a struggle up a steep hill. But starting as an indie writer is taking on an Everest.
So what’s the problem? Getting through the door.
HOW TO GET STARTED
Getting an agent to represent you and an editor to buy your book takes forever, and you’re avalanched by rejections. That’s probably because you’ve chosen the long way around. I can think of almost nothing less effective than submitting dozens of unsolicited queries to agents and editors and waiting for lightning to strike. You end up in what is called the slush pile, the stack of anonymous manuscripts that litters the office of every agent and editor. It should be called the outhouse, because it stinks.
My agent says he gets thirty such submissions every day. He has an employee paid to do nothing but look at them (and at the rate of thirty a day, that look is very, very brief) and show him the rare one of promise. Not good odds to hope to be the one in several hundred that gets picked.
So don’t do unsolicited submissions. Instead, go to writers’ conferences where you can meet agents and editors who are interested in the kind of book you’re writing. You can easily find these conferences, and the names and interests of the agents and editors, with a quick google or thumbing through Writer’s Digest.
Meet the agents and editors in person. Pitch them verbally. Some will agree to look at a few chapters, and now your submission is solicited. This is an investment that’s essential to a traditional publishing career. A student of mine went to Thrillerfest, the primo conference for selling thrillers, and got about fifty requests from agents and editors to see a few chapters.
The other effective route is to publish enough good writing in newspapers, in magazines, or on the internet to get publishers to approach you.
I got my start by getting noticed in newspapers. Meredith got hers at a writers’ conference. Neither of us spent any time in a slush pile.
You get an advance. You’re right. Royalties won’t start coming in for at least a year after publication, compared to a few weeks if you’d published digitally. An advance however, is usually a decent chunk of money. If you subsidized your first book by waiting tables, your advance should finance a few months of writing time to get your next book going.
WHAT ABOUT THE NASTY STORIES YOU HEAR?
Traditional publishing is slow. This is undeniably true. When you finally make a deal with a publisher, you’ll find that the contract gives him eighteen months to publish your book. And it could get worse, if your editor moves to another publisher, becomes an agent, retires, etc. Finding a new editor to bond with can take time.
On the other hand, as we all know, you could begin today and get your book up on Kindle or Nook tomorrow. What a difference!
But then you’re one in a million instead of one in a thousand.
You lose control: Yes, when you sell a book to a publisher, you give up some control. Lucky you. I’ve had editors (and agents) who handled writers like Robert Jordan and Orson Scott Card (note, you sci-fi and fantasy writers), Laura Lippman and Sue Grafton (note, mystery writers), and so on. My present agent used to be CEO of New American Library. I could make this list of expert helpers a lot longer. Don’t you think such people know how to make books sell? That they know some things that I don’t?
You say you’re a control freak? Gimme a break. That’s a personality quirk. Have a glass of chardonnay or a shot of Irish whiskey, relax, and listen up.
Instead of grabbing for control, you ought to be hollering, ‘Yes, please give me a steer, tell me how this works, I want some guidance here.’ Because your publishing pros have been there, done that.
Editing. Your editor (not your copy editor or proofreader) has walked the path with scores of writers. She knows the creative and emotional struggles writers go through. She has a feel for when a story is cooking with gas and when it’s not. She’s wise about the expectations of the audience for your kind of book. And—remember!—as your career blossoms, hers does too.
Also, she knows a lot more successful writers than you do, and has a better chance of getting blurbs from them. She’s written jacket copy for a hundred books, approved a hundred covers, and is a pro at these tasks. Your editor is your biggest ally.
Do editors take control and keep you from writing the kind of story you want to write? Or talk you into a style that isn’t yours? Very, very seldom. Through three dozen books Meredith and I have run into one editor like that. It was a travel guide series. He came aboard after the series was going and openly advocated a different basic concept. We just took the book to another publisher.
I was a Macmillan editor (TOR) for fifteen years. Sometimes writers were assigned to me, or they asked for me, or an agent pitched them to me. It wasn’t hard to see what each of them was striving to do. I always tried to help them achieve their vision. None ever thought I was imposing mine.
Every editor I know had the same goal, or was wise enough to choose writers who wanted to write the kind of book he liked. Though I remember a lot of small complaints about editors, and have made them myself as a writer, I can’t recall a single writer who claimed that the editor was trying to make him write the editor’s kind of book instead of what the writer loved.
Attention here: The good news is that you can always change editors at the drop of a hat. At almost any publishing house you can have a new editor with one phone call. Our principal publisher makes it a rule to give a new editor to any writer who wants one, no questions asked. But if you’ve done your job well, that won’t be necessary. You’ll have talked the book or series over with the editor in some detail, you’ll have the same vision of it, and he’ll be trying to help you along the path mutually chosen. If that’s not the case, you dropped the ball by not making sure the two of you had the same view of the book, and you need to change editors.
The cover. Do you have an artist’s eye? Can you design a better cover than someone who’s been to art school and has designed a thousand covers, including the covers of mega-sellers? And do you really want to do that work, instead of writing? Do you have first-rate PhotoShop skills? Do you want to pay an artist yourself?
True, the answer is occasionally YES, you can create a better cover. Meredith can do that. Take a look at the covers she did for my books in the RIVERS WEST series, and see how much better they are than the publisher’s original covers. But that’s a rarity.
How do you protect yourself against getting a bad cover? In your contract, get the right to consult on the cover. When you see a preliminary sketch and don’t like it, enlist the help of your agent and your editor. Usually, they’ll go to bat for a different cover. Sometimes, after hearing their words, you’ll change your mind.
Marketing and sales. Do you know more about this than a marketing director who’s been doing it professionally for twenty years? Do you know the Barnes and Noble’s buyer for mysteries personally? Can you get him on the phone easily? Can you make a date for lunch with him and pitch your new opus? Your publisher’s point man for Barnes and Noble can do all that, and does. Do you know the owner and buyer at every independent book store in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado? Know what they like personally, and what their customers like? The sales reps for that region at the Big Six publishers do. Can you sell the foreign rights to your book to a German house? Your publisher can.
(Actually, especially if you’re young, you may be keener and more in the groove on social marketing than your publisher’s veteran. But you’ll have to do the social marketing regardless, whether you go indie or traditional.)
In sum, for the most part, let the pros help guide the ship of your publishing (not your writing). You can be at the wheel, with their counsel.
THE PUBLISHING CONTRACT
Yes, contracts can be noxious. Also full of traps. But the good news is they’re negotiable. Your agent knows the boilerplate contract of every big publisher inside and out. He probably even has a standard agreement for his clients which the publisher already knows and expects.
Wait! Making a deal with a traditional publisher without an agent? Then you’re out of your gourd.
Google will give you heaps of info about contracts and their perils. Taking a look at the Authors Guild article “Improving Your Book Contract” and checking out publishlawyer.com and copylaw.com would be a beginning.
You fear the option clause? Don’t go there. Options exist to get the publisher a chance to continue something good you’ve birthed in collaboration with him. But not just any next book, only the next one with the same main character and kind of story. If you switch from YA to narrative non-fiction, from one series to a different one in YA, or from sci-fi to romance, the option clause doesn’t apply.
And all the publisher gets is a look. He can make an offer, but you can turn it down and hunt for a better one. If no other publisher is willing to do as well or better, maybe you want to stay with your original publisher.
The non-competition clause? True, if you’re writing a series about an antiquarian bookseller who is an amateur sleuth, your publisher won’t want you to bring out a book with the same character from another house in the middle of the series. And why would you want to do that?
If you truly think you need a different publisher, submit your next book to your old publisher, get his offer, say no to it, and go elsewhere.
Otherwise, hey, if you’ve got a good paranormal romance series going, your publisher won’t care if you publish a novel about ancient Rome, and the non-competition clause won’t stop you.
If you want to write two or three books a year and your publisher thinks that’s over-exposure, use an old trick to write that other book—a pen name. It’s a time-honored dodge.
Enough. That’s the short version of the case for going the traditional print route.
Soon Meredith and I will point out the difficulties of indie publishing, and then the advantages that make indie publishing a route no writer should ignore.
—Win
About Meredith and Win Blevins
I published my first novel in 2009 traditionally, and have published six more since, with three more to be published this year and next. It took me a long time to publish with a traditional house, and a lot of rejection slips, but that didn’t stop me. Nothing could have. I wanted to be a published writer, and considered the effort my apprenticeship. But the world changed just as I walked in the door, along with the rules, the delivery systems, and the way to achieve any kind of quantifiable success. It seems now, according to a good percentage of writers going the indie route, that I am a fool for giving up so much, for staying with the evil, corporate publishers, and being used by them. I disagree. I didn’t spend a huge chunk of my adult life learning to be a marketer, a cover designer, a layout tech, proofreader, editor, or any of the other skills required to publish a book. I didn’t spend one iota of my time learning how to be a publisher. If I had wanted to be a publisher, that’s what I would have done. Instead, I was, and am continually, compelled to write, to tell stories, and trying to learn how to be a better writer. That’s my focus. If I take on all of the tasks required to be successful as an indie writer, a self-publishing writer, aren’t I leaving behind the one thing that matters the most? The writing? The story telling? Can you really do it all, and do it well? I’m not convinced that it’s possible. I know you have to change with the times or risk being left behind, but if it means having to do it all, well, I just might have had the luck of bad timing.
Larry, I share exactly the same concern. Social marketing works, no question, but it takes learning and then takes a lot of time every day. So I’m unwillingly violating the three rules of becoming a professional writer 1) Write every day. 2) Write every day. 3) Write every day. (Don Coldsmith gave us these.) Still, do take a look at the case for indie publishing, which I’ll put up on Sunday
Thanks, I’ll take a look. Great advice from Don Coldsmith. I follow it myself.
Dear Win,
Thank you for the great article. I’m not sure if you remember my mother, Sylvia Cross? She used to work at Nash Publishing. My father, Jim Cross forwarded your article to me, and I’d like to receive your future ones. I recently self-published my first book, SKYLAR ROBBINS: THE MYSTERY OF SHADOW HILLS. It’s getting terrific reviews and I’ve done several interviews to promote it. I’m wondering how to approach a traditional publisher now that it is already out, to try to take it to the next level.
Looking forward to your reply.
Best wishes,
Carrie Cross
http://www.carrie-cross.com
Hi, yes, I think we corresponded before about your mom? She was absolutely terrific, and Meredith gave our granddaughter your YA mystery for Christmas. It’s a unique book, and our granddaughter loves the projects that are intertwined with the stories.
Go to http://www.meredithandwinblevins.com. At the top right, just under the header, is a subscribe rectangle. Put in your e-mail, and everything we publish is on its way to you.
All best to you, Carrie — Win
Very good summary. Definitely getting a book published by the big six is always a dream. Since I am starting a little later in life, still not sure yet which way to go. Thanks again.
Excellent article, Win. You nailed it! Confirms the view from the other side of the editor’s desk.
Best wishes,
Chris
Don’t Murder Your Mystery (Agatha for Best Nonfiction; Macavity and Anthony finalist; Writer’s Digest Book Club alt. selection)
Hey Win, how many years has it been since I did your two covers:” Charbonneau, Man of 2 Dreams”, and “The Misadventures of Silk and Shakespeare.” So it was a great surprise to get this in my email from you!
I’ve often wondered how you and Meredith were doing! AND to see all the books you have published…wow!!
I haven’t been to a mountain man rendezvous for years…which i attended frequently, for good friends, but also to get out of the city…now I have a home, 30 miles from my post office box, on 10 acres, at the end of a dirt road in the mountains SW of Sandpoint Idaho!
Glad you have my email…and hope you get a chance to view my work on line: http://www.billupsfineart.com And also visit my significant others web site: http://www.robertwalton.com…Robert Walton use to climb the mountains of the NW, and that is where his heart still lies…being an artist, he has captured many of these NW Pacific peaks…and also the Tetons, out of Jackson Hole WY…And should anyone you know, still need artists to create covers for their books, drop us a line. Or murals for that matter! We both have worked on many in the Washington town of Toppenish, and I did a 16 foot mural for a southern California college: Mount Sac!
Take care! And hope to hear from you again, some day! Betty
Well, take care. And may 2014 be great for both of you!!! Love ya, Betty
Betty, thanks for writing! Great to hear from you.
Yes your covers were terrific! Meredith does all the covers for our e-books, and enjoys doing it. I just want to write. And then write some more.
Best to you, Betty, glad we’re staying in touch.
–Win
Meredith & Win:
Loved the article. I’ve been trying for years to become a legitimate writer. But it takes so long, and sometimes I wonder if I’ll have time left to get the job done before I kick the can, but I plan to keep trying. I used to say that there’s no way I would ever self-publish. But after years of failure in finding an agent, I took the CreateSpace route. It turned out exactly as Mr. Wheeler said above, you are really on your own with the self-publishers, and if your editing skills are not up to speed, the book will turn out junky, to say the least. My book, I think was about average, perhaps a little above in respect to the editing, but even so, it didn’t sell. Unless you’re some sort of marketing genius no one will even know you have a book for sale, outside of your friends and relatives. That great book of yours will laze around on Amazon until you become ashamed of the low sales and take it down.
I really enjoyed the post by Mr. Wheeler. It was filled with good information.
Thanks,
Sumner Wilson
This is a terrific column, and I endorse every point, Yes, I am aware of Kindle millionaires, but electronic publishing should always be the last, not first, resort. My professional career was largely generated by attending Western Writers of America conventions, meeting agents and editors who flocked to them. That’s where I met Sara Ann Freed, a Walker and Company editor, who bought seven or eight novels from me. She went on to become a senior editor of Mysterious Press and a Warner VP. Others followed. Agents followed. Some of the criticism of traditional publishing is valid. Books appear in print, barely edited, and ignored by company publicists. But overall, I’ve had great editors, especially at Forge, who made me redo my work, sometimes over and over, asking me for more that I thought I had in me; I was sent out on numerous author tours across the country. I was given serious support. I’ve written nearly eighty traditionally published novels, and am still at it as I approach eighty years. My old friend Win Blevins has been a serious, dedicated book editor for many years. Trust what he and Meredith say. Anyone who wants to know what the publishing process is truly about should read a biography, Max Perkins, Editor of Genius, by A. Scott Berg. Learn what Perkins, editor of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, Margorie Kinnan Rawlings, James Jones, and many others of that caliber, did to help the authors he was editing. It is one of the most luminous books I’ve read. Learn something about American publishing, not just from the Internet, but from its old friends and critics. What you learn will shape what you write, and how you approach a career in literature.
I can attest to the fact that the number problems and difficulties with traditional publishing is legion. But speaking as one who has published in e-publishing venues over the past decade, I can also attest to the fact that there is almost no reason I can think of to e-publish. Whereas it’s true that a book from a traditional publisher may not be properly publicized, or publicized at all, and it may be hard to find, expensive to buy, difficult to acquire, and it won’t remain in print for very long unless all of those problems are resolved to some degree, the fact remains that it is still a book. Publishing with an e-publisher is about the same as standing on a street corner in a less-than-busy intersection and reading your work aloud to what few passers-by may come into earshot. Some may actually stop and listen, but it’s a safe bet that no one will seek your work out, excepting friends and family. Most astute readers are aware that much of e-publishing has not involved any sort of serious editorial adjudication of the initial manuscript; it’s seldom edited; almost never copy-edited, and fundamentally goes out as it was drafted. This isn’t always true, of course; but it’s impossible to tell which books have been through something like an editorial process and which have not. So why spend money on a pig in a poke? If you buy a hardbound book with an ISBN number from a reputable bookseller, a book that has the name of a physical publishing house on the spine, you can be reasonably certain that somebody, the publishing house, ponied up the money to bring it from typescript to printed page. As neither of these things exists in e-publishing, then the product one has stored in bytes on a hard drive may not ever have seen the light of a physical day. That may not matter. Or it might. But if it’s your hard-earned money you’re shelling out, then that may determine your decision. I am quite gratified that all of my fiction, all originally published in hard-cover books, is now available via e-editions. But these are reprints–they’ve been re-copy-edited, provided with new covers, and reissued. And they can exist in perpetuity, so long as the publisher (a physical publisher, by the way, that also does hard-cover books) continues to maintain the process. But I don’t think I’d bother handing over a new, unpublished manuscript to an e-publisher. I’ve spent enough of my life on a street corner shouting at people (metaphorically speaking) without adding to the total.
Clay–
THANK YOU so much for your well-written, and informed, comment.
And, as we’ve talked about here, yes… You’re right, especially on one front: Editing is often a nightmare for a self-published writer. It can also be a nightmare for their reader.
Stay with us as we go through the ups and downs of indie publishing and take each issue you raised, plus many more, on a one-to-one basis.
Surprises are in store.
Best — Win and Meredith
Clay–THANKS for these very acute remarks. You have the experience and credentials, so please give us more.
–Win
Very informative. I’ll look forward to the one on indie publishing.
Stay with us Sandy — we have a lot to say about indie publishing. Quite a tsunami, isn’t it!
Best — Win and Meredith