Excuse me, but if Franklin, Jefferson and Adams had believed that, you and I would be singing “God Save the Queen.”

Just so you know, that book you’ll get back from LSI won’t be the one the bookseller returned. They’ll trash that and print you a new copy. So, you won’t have to worry whether it will be fit for sale, it will. On the other hand, the original book has not only added yet more to the carbon footprint but the resources used to create it will have been wasted.

Are we really SO desperate to receive the grudging acceptance of booksellers that we aren’t willing to band together and say “not on your life?” It’s one thing to agree to accept returns on a small, individual order if it means the difference between an author being able to hold a signing or not, but I do not and will not contribute to the appalling waste that is returns.

And anyone who agrees with me is welcome to contact me at zumayabooks(at)gmail.com to discuss how we small publishers CAN start a movement.

As Franklin said back when the colonists were giving Parliament the kiss-off, “If we do not hang together, then we shall surely hang separately.” Returns are an abomination, both environmentally and with regard to the economic impact they have on inventory-free publishers whose COGS is higher than that of traditional, offset-using publishers.

Booksellers aren’t required to order ten copies of a book when two would do. They’ve just gotten so addicted to being able to do it and ship the excess back for credit they can then apply to their next order they’ve come to accept it as a reasonable way to finance stocking. I’m not prepared to subsidize their business at the expense of mine, and most particularly at the expense of the authors who trust me to see they are fairly compensated for their hard work.

The rules of the old guard are barked at us indie authors and publishers constantly, yet time and again I find mainstream books whose quality doesn’t come near to these supposedly high ’standards’. Still, traditionalists will dismiss an indie book as an instantly recognizable, sub-par effort merely because it doesn’t hew to industry standards for layout, fonts and other immaterial details—never mind how good or tightly-edited the content is, because they’ll never go so far as to read it.

In my how-to reference book on self-publishing, I tell it like it is: the only people who know or care what industry standards are with respect to layout and typesetting are people in the mainstream publishing industry. There are just a handful of acceptable fonts, for example, and they’re nearly all holdovers from the old days of moveable typesetting machines. Any graphic artist can tell you that fonts are, in and of themselves, design elements that can enhance the content they convey. I say, so long as your text is easy to read, why not use Euphemia for your sci-fi epic? Why not go with Garamond for your romance? I myself use Tahoma all the time. And why not set your gutters wider than industry ’standard’? I think the industry standard for gutters is too narrow (probably to reduce page count and save money on material costs), because I’ve ruined many a thick paperback’s binding when I had to forcibly flatten it so I could see the characters running right up to the gutter. I suppose a mainstream publishing insider would immediately diss and dismiss my books as ‘vanity’ dreck based on my font and layout choices alone, but who cares what publishing insiders think? My target audience is readers among the general public, and I’ve gotten very positive feedback from them about the superior readability of my books.

It’s at least a little maddening to read excerpts from Frey’s book, and knowing his history, see him once again a publisher’s darling, while we indies are out here slaving away, striving to exceed the quality of the mainstream, and still getting so much scorn. Oh well; you know what they say: you can always spot the pioneers, they’re the ones with arrows in their backs.
http://www.aprillhamilton.com

You’ve also mentioned the stigma attached to books published any way but traditionally, and this too is unfortunate fallout from the subsidy/fee based arena. I hope authors will continue to stand up for themselves so that we can finally get the same kind of respect that indie scriptwriters, musicians and artists have achieved without apology.

Cheryl Pickett

Mainstream publishing–the whole gammit–agents, editors, booksellers, etc. go for the dollar and path of least resistance. As an Economist, I understand to some extent, but I think quality and not just celebrity–the easy out–can generate profits.

Sadly, publishing has gone the way of most things–money first, quality/value last. Which is one reason this country is fast becoming a third world country.

I suspect many of the old school will fall away in the next two years. Face it, books are discretionary in a recession and library’s budgets will be cut with tax (real estate!) revenues. The shake-up of traditional agents, authors, and editors will be a positive for the industry. It will weed out the old school and make room for the new.

For me, I’m publishing my paper back of the first book with Dog Ear in a month, and my total cost per book will be $4.52 ($1.28 base + $0.02 per page). Selling price is $14.95 Retail, $8.99 through Amazon and several other distributors who I have worked out a special price agreement with.

At minimum, I’ll make $4.47 off each book as profit. Try that kind of “Royalty” with a traditional publisher! So I don’t understand why I would to give up my rights to my work, and loose money just so my book can be printed by some big excuse for a company that could care less about me, and care all about themselves.

So it may be true that most self-published authors don’t make as much money as one who publish through a traditional press, but its not because of the cost of the book or you getting cheated in royalties, its a matter of # of books sold.

It the same argument made in the film industry with Indie films vs. big budget studio films. Sure, most Hollywood film suck royalty, and quit a few indie films rock, but few will point out how nice it is to be an indie filmmaker!

Indie Filmmakers are shunned by hollywood, and most movie watchers carry some stigma toward them.

My view for the reason this is (in both industries) is that since Both Non-Traditional presses and Indie film have there very, very bad (but very few) apples they make the rest of us look bad to the general audience. Traditional Publishers and Hollywood studios carefully screen what they release, and most of the time if its bad, it either gets fixed or sent away, something that usually does not happy in the Non-Traditional and Indie Film community.

My argument on profits from books published with Non-Traditional publishers is this: While it is true that an offset printers cost’s much less to print, cost of the book is not the only reason people don’t make money in non-traditional publishers. What does make the difference? Advertising! The reason traditional books make more money and sell more copies is because Scholastic has millions of dollars to market a book, Self Publishers don’t. It had nothing to do with where it came from, its a matter that no one knows it exists to buy!

Look at it kind of like the Film industry, The little Indie guys makes a movie for $1 Million. Hell, this movie is the next Lord of the Rings! However, since he doesn’t have $132 million to market that film, it will never reach the potential of Lord of the Rings. Sometimes, however, word of mouth and good reviews is enough to skyrocket the films (or books) into better standing than most traditionally published books.

My view on getting your books into shops: IMHO (I don’t have any evidence to back it up) most people buy books online anyway. They are #1 Cheaper and #2 Easier to find and order. Let me tell you a true story here: 3 Days ago I wanted to buy the 5th books in the “Dripping Fang” series by Dan Greenburg. Available on Amazon for $9.99, but I couldn’t wait to get it. So I got out in my car, drove 25 minutes to Borders Bookstore. I walk in this giant store with hundreds of thousands of books and begin my search for Dripping Fang. I started with the info desk, where I asked the clerk if he could tell me where it was located. “Over in either the YA or Children’s section” was his reply. Okay, where at exactly? “I Don’t know for sure, its over there though!”. With that, I made my way to search through the thousands of books in the YA and Children’s section. Turns out, they don’t shelve there books by title or author, but by “Genre”, and then within the genre they are in no specific order. Weird thing is, they don’t even have the “genres” marked on the shelves! So I end up looking through all the books in YA, with no results. Then all the books in children’s with no results. By now I was 1 1/2 hours into my search, and very tired of it. I finally asked to talk to a manager who had no issue with typing several keys and bringing up on there computer that they did not even have it in stock, even thought there website said it was.

He did offer to place an order for me though, and it should arrive in 1-2 weeks!!! HAAA, right. So I went home, sucked it up, and placed an amazon order (which took me all of 8 minutes from the time i logged on to the final checkout page) and ordered my book. I’m expecting the book to arrive tomorrow, and I still saved money by ordering it online.

This is the reason that most people buy books (and most everything else) online. So to me, if my local Borders don’t want to carry my book, its no loss to me. Not like anyone could find it if they wanted it anyway!

Those are my views. I know some of them are strong, but it is my opinion on the matter. Does anyone else agree with me?

Thanks,
Landon Parks

I think your story says a lot more about the readers than it does about the publishing industry. As they say, there’s no accounting for people’s taste (or lack thereof).

Something strange is happening in this country. Being sloppy, stupid, and uncouth has become a fad. The popularity of the ridiculous reality shows currently on the air is one symptom. The success of, by your description, a virtually illiterate book is another. It is almost like people have given up on having standards, and to feel better about themselves, they celebrate those who contribute to the “dumbing down” of our society. It’s all quite depressing, really.

The books that my wife and I have self-published may not be literary works of art, but we did our best to create quality products that contribute positively to the markets they target.

Now we are in the business of helping other non-fiction, self-publishing authors do the same thing. I wrote an article this week for our Publishize Newsletter called Write the Right Book. Our main business goal is to help self-publishing authors produce books that they can be proud of, that people want to read, and that they aren’t ashamed to hand to their sister the English teacher. Perhaps that goal is misguided in today’s market, but I’m sticking to it.

Of course, James Frey would just thumb his nose at us and say “I just made 1.5 million dollars, so I must be doing something right,” or perhaps “The people have spoken.” Okay, well, consider the source.

That being said, I find it appalling that really great fiction gets looked over and ignored in favor the Pap of the Month. Sorry - all of our editors are tied up pouring over Paris’ new book trying to make it sound like coherent English. Check back, say, never.

Part of me really wants to believe that HC published this book as is as a poke in the eye for Frey.

Traditional publishers wonder why they they’re losing sales, why people aren’t buying books, believing it’s the subject matter so they chase the next big thing. It never occurs to them that people are tired of reading crap written for those with room temperature IQ.

I’m finding the niche of YA to be just another dumping ground for authors who can’t crack the adult market. I’m reading more books as they flood the YA section and over and over again I’m reminded of John Saul’s books - formulaic and trite.

You spend what could be years honing a novel with an original idea with tight writing, only to be ignored by the next “Davinci Code”.

Those editors don’t have anymore standards than the “copy kids” working the desk at AH.

Thank goodness I write for the love of the craft.

Now if you have a niche product, fine, that’s another story.

Most aspiring authors seem to be unaware that getting published by a major house no longer means any of the things it once did. For all but bestselling and prestige clients, advances are paltry, promo budgets are nonexistent, there’s no guarantee the book will be shelved at brick-and-mortar stores, and on top of everything, if your book doesn’t sell well enough to ‘break through’, you’ll be dropped by your publisher and viewed as damaged goods by all the other majors—in terms of getting another book sold, you’ll be worse off than if you’d never published at all! Having learned all this, for me the decision to go indie was a no-brainer.

I once had the good fortune to attend seminars by Dick Haab, an excellent organizational communication coach. One of his guiding principles was the concept of being “at risk” versus “at stake.” When you are “at stake,” you are working hard toward a specific goal, often overcoming obstacles along the way. Once you have achieved your goal, you try to hold the ground you gained against an ever-changing environment. At that point, you are “at risk” of losing what you achieved. Your mental process and motivations while you are “at stake” are generally positive and energizing, but become equally negative and draining once you are “at risk.”

My point here is that traditional publishing is effectively “at risk” now. The major publishers are well-established and resisting changes that affect their business model. Their decisions are based on fear, and they try to project that fear onto their suppliers (authors) and customers (book stores and readers). The problem is that, as someone wise once said, nothing is as constant as change.

The good news for us self-publishers is that the scare tactics only slow down the inevitability of progress in the marketplace. Smart publishers are “at stake” right now figuring out how their organizations will fit into the current and future publishing environment. As discussed recently in this blog (Mainstream Publishing Takes a Giant Leap), HarperCollins is one of those companies. I doubt that they have figured out the best solution on the first try, but at least they are trying. As Dick would say, the path to your goals is not usually a direct route, but rather a zig-zag path of lessons learned along the way.

Let the nay-sayers have their way. Our job as self-publishers is to prove them wrong by creating high quality books that stand toe-to-toe with traditionally published offerings. The more we do that, the more their credibility erodes and the more the market trusts our work.

The other thing that I suspect has done a lot of damage is the policy of some companies (the Xlibris, Lulu and iUniverses) to print anything that lands in their inbox. So we have had an influx of badly written, poorly edited books with amateurish covers and suddenly there is a new whipping boy: POD = crap. It will take a while for that damage to be undone which is why a lot of people are marketing their books as ’self-published’ emphasising that they are only utilising print on demand technology. Still they get tarred with the same brush despite the fact that many now famous authors have, for one reason or another, opted to self-publish.

One of my goals with my site and forthcoming book is also to help writers understand that there are options in publishing, this is a good thing, and it’s okay to be proud independents just like artists, fashion designers etc.

Hopefully, if more and more of us support the idea of using whichever option fits your book/project best, the old influencers will soon fade away and take the fear with them.

Glad to hear you’re busy, hope it’s in a good way. Look forward to hearing from you when the time is right.

Cheryl Pickett
publishinganswers.com