| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| The Sh*t Volcano From An Indie Author's Perspective |
| 2014-02-07 |
| By Chris Covert Rantburg.com Both of the referenced posts profanely express misgivings for the glut of books by indie authors, of which I am one. One of the authors of the posts suggests a means of clearing the glut, one which make sense for publishers: deny indie authors space to sell their wares. I guess if you can't compete in the marketplace, you can always use a hammer to break it up. This issue reminds me of a story I read, I don't remember where, of a Soviet apparatchik who was deposed and forced to work in the mines for a living, after a long career of overseeing mining operations. The exchange between this individual who had held sway over other miners' lives was instructive about how he saw himself in the Soviet and now the post Soviet world. I can't quite recall exactly what was said, only that the miners, whose lives were no better in the post Soviet world, were a constant reminder of how much things have changed, not so much better for them, but better for everyone now that an oppressive system had disappeared, practically overnight. What the arguments against indie author boil down to is quality. Some commenters have said you can always tell an indie book because of the poor quality of the cover image and the poor content. Perhaps so with issues such as typographical errors and grammatical errors, they exist even in books released by publishers, though not as pervasively. The solution in some of the comments was simple: hire a book editor, then your book could sell if you follow the editor's advice. But I think the real issue here is the same issue that confronted the Soviet miners. It may be you are part of the hoi poloi, and you have no business publishing works of fiction that do not conform with the best practices in publishing, but you are still a low life who has no business publishing anything, and if I had my way (channeling commenters) I would get Jeff Bezos to pull your book, sacrificed all on the alter of sales. No question when it comes to sales, publishers win, every time. They can't compete, but they can sure use their hammer to destroy a market. And such talk makes it possible now that Bezos owns one of the most leftist rags in America. Destroying markets: that's what liberals do. They are doing it in the medical field and it will happen in publishing. But think about how much music has changed in the last 100 years. Do you really think that Slipknot's music would have been published back in a time when recordings were expensive, even assuming that tastes have changed, when music publishers at the time refused to allow some artists recording time even if they could afford it for reasons other than quality? Think about how much the market for music has changed. Do you realize that jukebox plays were considered a factor in a musician's popularity as recently as the 1950s? Do you realize that only 100 years ago not everyone could or even would buy a recording, spending their hard earned money just to listen to music? Now anyone can record and sell music, and like publishing, a narrow band of musicians can get their recording distributed by large recording companies. Why would anyone devote time, energy and effort into making and selling music that would sell to only a tiny number of people. Imagine the outcry had people in the music business said, 'Let's rid ourselves of musicians who do not sell many recordings!' And in all of this what the issues boil down to is one of quality on the one hand, and the other in which an author breaks traditional strictures in publishing and selling a work of fiction publishers would not even consider. And the market responds, as it should. My books do not sell very well. They are probably not particularly well written and they are probably rife with grammatical and spelling errors. I work as a machinist full time, so I can't afford to devote the $5,000 to a professional editor that they say it would take to get the book into better condition. And for all that I am truly sorry, my station in life does not permit me to expend the resources to edit the book, but my reply is that I do the best I can with the resources I do have, which is my ability to spin a a yarn and to at least put together more than two sentences. I like to see the glut of books by indie authors, the glut of which affects me as well, as a bunch of people who went to the gate the publishing gatekeepers are suppose to watch and spray paint on it: "Kilroy was here!" Publishers think all they have to do is to paint over the vandalism, until the next time. At some point that gate is coming down. Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com and BorderlandBeat.com Chris can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #10 What a lovely sequence of rants. Inspired by this thread, my next book of poetry will be entitled, Sturm und Drek. I will edit it myself. |
| Posted by: rammer 2014-02-07 23:48 |
| #9 #8 Sgt. Mom - Amazon also allows customers to borrow a book (1 per month, IIRC), and the author still gets paid. You have to sign up for this, and there are some other requirements, but I actually get a little more for a loaned book than a sold book. (How much depends on the money pool Amazon has for that month to pay authors for loaned books.) I signed up at first just to get the book "out there," but I'm still signed up since they're paying me. ;-p |
| Posted by: Barbara 2014-02-07 18:45 |
| #8 Oh, yes - Sarah Hoyt has heaps to say regarding The State of Mainstream Publishing Today. Just for jollies, I went and read some of the linked essay and some of the ones linked it it ... sigh, yes, I'd guess that 90% of the indy/self/published books are cr*p. So are 90% of the mainstream pubbed - I mean, Snookie? For real? The nicest thing that Amazon did for readers was to enable the 'look inside' feature. Yes, dear people - you can actually look at the first chapter or two of a print or e-book, and decide yourself if it is a book that you want to read. There is no one pointing a gun at your head forcing you to buy the book and read the whole darned thing. The numbskull demanding that Amazon do something about the so-called sh*t volcano strikes me as a lazy sod demanding that Amazon do his book selection for him. |
| Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2014-02-07 17:49 |
| #7 Sarah Hoyt --- who has the experience, has quite a few things to say on the subject |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2014-02-07 16:54 |
| #6 Problem with publishers is they hate the fact an indie author can sell for $1 to give folks a taste. Yes it might be a foul taste but then you've only lost a $1. Publishers can't afford to do that, they work on the other end of paying mass cash to advertise the big tent pole books hoping to subsidize the losses they make on everything else. Sooner or later they will end the everything else line and just try to buy out successful indies to be tent poles but ... and here is the thing, a number of successful writers have decided to go indie now that they have name recognition they can also have control and all of the profits. Normal publishing is nearly dead and they know it. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2014-02-07 14:57 |
| #5 That bloviated word muncher would have all cooking done away with which wasn't done at a name brand restaurant. Or imagine a college basketball scout going to a high school game and demanding that only players 6'5" and taller be able to play. Same as football; Russell Williams - too small for the NFL, no need to check him out. SIT volcano indeed, but from that keyboard pounder, "Don't follow your dreams because it interferes with my search of what might be trendy and I won't be able to say read it first." I have an original board game, and two variations on a popular established board game where their variations do not even come close to. This star sniffer is saying that because Wallyworld isn't interested I should be banned from attempting to sell my games. Eat my knuckles asshole, because this is the very point of America. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2014-02-07 12:19 |
| #4 My new-ish hobby is finding and reading indie e-books. Much of it is drek, but even in those there's a gem or two (like the imagery of five overweight Boston golfers "warming up' in the club parking lot to disco music.) At the worst, I'm out a couple of bucks and maybe thirty minutes of my time. This is all in its infancy, or rather, a rebirth of what it was like back in the 18th century. The support infrastructure will grow to meet the need provided, as you said, that the elites don't try to kill it off. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2014-02-07 12:18 |
| #3 *clears throat gently* Why, yes, as a matter of fact, AH - editors are free-lancing their services. The woman who founded the Tiny Bidness that she is retiring and handing over to me earned a very nice living as a free-lance editor ... and in fact, the Tiny Bidness does editing as a sideline, and for a heck of a lot less than $5,000. The last edit-only job that we had, we did a substantive and a line edit for $1,600. (The reviews of the book are very positive, and yes, I think we did a good job of nudging the plot development into something tight and orderly.) No, indy publishing is not going away, and although quite a lot of the products (especially the e-books) are pretty awful, there is too darned much good stuff that would have been consigned to a slush pile at an establishment press and never seen the light of day otherwise. Some books - especially non-fiction - are intended for a specific and small audience. The figures for the sale of an average book (everything from the mega-huge best seller to the little memoir which only sells to family members) is estimated somewhere around 2-300 copies. Sell more than that, you're ahead of the game, even if you're not in Harry Potter territory. As one of the commenters on the rant linked to, Amazon would just as soon have a cut of a million books selling one copy each, as they would a cut of a million copies of a single book. Amazon also has a self-publishing house of their own, so I honestly can't see them dropping the ban-hammer on indy authors any time. |
| Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2014-02-07 09:06 |
| #2 I do the best I can with the resources I do have I was raised on an axiom from the depression days. "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without" Chris your attitude is the only way that a free, individualistic society can prosper. All too often the prevailing mood is that of rent seeking greed heads, from crack hos, to Fortune 500 CEOs it's all about what the gov't. will give you or take from others. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2014-02-07 08:09 |
| #1 This makes me wonder if editors will start to free lance the way authors have obviously started to do. Link the two together & this puzzle just might be solved. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2014-02-07 01:16 |