Category: Book publishers

Posted in Book publishers, Publishing, Self-Publishing

Are writers back in control? The electronic rights challenge

Posted on by Patricia J. Parsons

About two years ago I received an email from a former student who had stumbled upon one of my books – online.  The book was not published as an e-book.  Far from it.  In fact, when it was published in 2003, no one was even considering anything but the hold-in-your-hands, paper-between-covers kind of book.  However, it was a professional reference handbook that had continued to sell in dribs and drabs so was evidently still useful.  My student posed this question: Was I aware that it was available electronically through Questia?  I most assuredly was not.

The book I sold to a ‘traditional’ publisher after publishing the first edition myself. Then the publisher made it available on Questia without my knowledge.

I contacted the publisher (a large American textbook publisher that had since been acquired by a yet larger American textbook publisher) to try to find out how it got there, and why I wasn’t being compensated for its online use.  I got exactly nowhere.  And this is the story that came to my mind this morning as I read Simon Houpt’s article in the Globe and Mail.  He tells the story of the new e-book about (God forbid that we should need to know any more about her) Karla Homolka, accessory to brutal rape and murder a few years back.

Houpt describes the 14,000-word book Finding Karla that author and journalist Paula Todd decided to release as an e-book last week for a variety of reasons – the primary one was that since she found Homolka alive and well and living in Guadaloupe, she feared the story might be scooped by others on her trail.  Add onto this the idea that 14,000 words is more than a magazine feature and less than a “real” book and you have a writer seeking a new publishing model.  And no editor standing in front of you saying that 14,000 words are not enough.  Evidently readers beg to differ with those editors.

What’s interesting about this story is not the content of Todd’s book; rather it’s the story of how publishing models are changing.  I’ve talked about this previously, trying to figure out where all of this is heading.  But Houpt make an interestingly provocative observation of what might be happening: “…for the first time in decades, some of the power in publishing is shifting back to writers, who are trying to grab the electronic rights that publishers have been taking for granted…”[1]

It’s these electronic rights and the on-going difficulty we have with publishers who seem to think they have the right to be the sole beneficiaries of the material that we slaved over.  Of course, these days a contract is likely to contain reference to electronic usage (I await my contract from the University of Toronto Press as we speak and I’ll be looking for a fair division of rights), but it still seems that unless we take matters into our own hands, we are the last ones to be paid – rather than the first.

I still haven’t figured out what to do with things I’m working on – apart from the final revisions on the UTP manuscript.  Will I dive back into the traditional publishing model; or will I go right to Kindle?  I’m thinking about it!

Posted in Book publishers, Self-Publishing

Holding self-published writers to account for quality

Posted on by Patricia J. Parsons

At the same time as I was contemplating what to do with my book that has reverted to me from a [now-defunct] publisher, I was preparing for my spring semester of teaching at MSVU.

One of the courses I’m currently teaching is related to my original area of specialization in communication: namely health communication.  I’ve written a lot in that area – including some four or five books – and had included a magazine health feature writing assignment for the undergraduate students in the course (there are also some Masters-level students who will do an analysis and critique rather than write a piece).  Since it’s been some years since I personally did medical feature writing, I thought that I’d update my reference materials so that I might be able to offer to the students a selection of recommended resources.  To that end, I began my book search where I usually begin: Amazon.  To my surprise, the up-to-date offerings are slim.  Of course, that always makes me see a trade literature gap; which makes me consider how to fill that gap; which makes me wonder if I have the expertise to write such a book…but I digress.

As I made my way through the list in search of what might be a useful book, I came upon one titled Popular Health & Medical Writing for Magazines.  I thought, well, that sounds just like what the students might need, so I ordered a copy to review it.  I evidently was remiss in my usual vetting of online book offerings.

I usually “look inside” reviewing the title page, table of contents, copyright page to see who published it and author bio to check for credentials.  I failed in my due diligence.  Published by iUniverse, the book turns out to be one of many (and I do mean many) books that this author has self-published.  Now, I’d be the last one to dismiss a book simply because it was self-published – many very worthy books have been published by the authors themselves over the years and I have dabbled in it myself as I’ve revealed in earlier posts – but when I began to look closely at the credentials of this “popular science journalist”  (as per the book description and her web site which I have sadly subsequently perused), I was hard-pressed to find those credentials that would lead me to recommend her work.

Her other books include such things as How to write plays, monologues, or skits from life stories, social issues, current events: For all ages, How to start personal history and genealogy journalism businesses: Genealogy course templates…, Creating family newsletters and time capsules: How to publish multi-media genealogy periodicals or gift booklets, and Middle eastern honor killings in the USA (a novel, I believe), among many others.  In fact, at the top of the author’s web site it says that she has published 80 paperback books, and half way down the front page it says 65+.  Okay, I guess that could mean 80.  Hmm…

I have no quibble with writers having wide interests – I suffer from that myself, so can identify – but I think that there needs to be some area of expertise that can be identified if we look closely.  And for someone to be writing a book about how to write health and medical pieces for popular media – well, let’s just say that I expect to be able to see that they have a grasp both of medical science and of journalism.  That was not evident – and I’m very sad to report that the self-published book that I paid for is bewildering at best.

Why I didn’t look at the first chapter title and get a clue is beyond me: “Making medical language specialists; Turning medical transcribers into medical writers and editors.”  The idea that all you need to be a medical writer or editor is to have experience as a transcriptionist made me see red.  Then sandwiched between a chapter titled “What to emphasize in medical writing…” and “Writing the self-help article” is a chapter titled “Writing about DNA and gene hunters.”  This made me begin to question both the framework and the agenda of the book.  Then the last chapter in this medical writing primer puzzled me even more: “Medical writing about pets: Care, food, travel, adventures, history, genres…”  What the h***?

So, I decided to actually read the book.  If I thought that the framework didn’t make a lot of sense, the individual chapters had something of a flight of ideas as well.  Then when I came upon this particular piece of advice: “…medical writers can also sell (or represent) the product discussed in the research and writing…” I slammed the book shut, realizing that there was a serious dearth of ethical considerations among the pearls of wisdom.   This led me to consider the following question:  Should I write a review on Amazon to save other bona fide budding medical writers from buying this book?  Or should I just let it go?

I had a sense that I didn’t want to hurt the writer’s feelings.  Where did that thought come from?  If self-publishing is to be thought of as a legitimate route to authorship, then writers need to be held to the same standards and measured by the same yardsticks as those published via the more traditional routes.  In these days of “everyone is a writer” and “everyone is a publisher” we do need some quality controls and if writers themselves are not prepared to do this, then writing and publishing is doomed to mediocrity or worse.

Clearly, the self-publishing model as it stands now is in serious need of reconsideration.  The problem is that the really well-written and edited self-published books do hold their own against anything that a more traditional publisher can produce.  Sadly, there is no way to figure this out unless you do what I did – and you buy it.  By then it’s too late.

So, it’s back to the drawing board to find another book for my students.

Posted in Book publishers, Publishing, Self-Publishing

Publishing trends: The good, the bad and the really ugly

Posted on by Patricia J. Parsons

I’ve been on vacation for the past month and decided to go on hiatus from this blog during that time.  (I did continue to blog at www.thediscerningtravelers.com because that’s my writing practice for fun – and did seem relevant since I was in LA and Hawaii!).  This pause did give me a chance to reflect on the future of publishing in general and on my continuing participation in it in particular.

hawaii
The view from where I was sitting when I was thinking about all of this. Waikoloa, Hawaii.

In early 2009 Time published an article by Lev Grossman titled “Books Gone Wild: The Digital Age Reshapes Literature.”  In that article, he recounted the now-familiar story of neuroscientist Lisa Genova who couldn’t get her novel published after pursuing all the traditional approaches: agents, queries, submissions etc.  Blah, blah, blah – those of us who write books of any kind have been there.  Done that.  Sick of it.

Well, most of you will already know the rest of the story.  She took matters into her own hands and went to iUniverse, published the book herself and was subsequently offered half a million dollars from Simon and Shuster.  And you’ve probably all read Still Alice (I have not).  That’s becoming like an urban myth.  And it does speak to our continuing need to be validated by “real” publishers as opposed to those do-it-yourself approaches.  I think that most aspiring novelists would welcome this kind of outcome in any case.  I’m probably among them: traditional (aka “real”) publishers seem to want only my non-fiction.  But what is so different about fiction and what lies in the future for how those stories get from writer’s head into reader’s hands?

Grossman put it this way in his article: “We think of the novel as a transcendent, timeless thing, but it was shaped by the forces of money and technology just as much as by creative genius.”[1]  There is likely no doubt in your mind that money and technology are important in publishing – I submit that they are also part of the good, the bad and the really ugly.

Obviously writers need money to be able to continue with their habit.  How much money seems moot since most writers these days do it for love rather than money.  Making a living at it is a whole different issue, and that’s what makes money a good part of publishing.   Publishers are clearly in business to make money – that’s good for their employees, but bad for writers, since writers are typically the worst paid contributors to the process.  Full stop.  That’s when the money part gets really ugly.

Technology is a really good part of publishing.  It first started with the word processor back in the dark ages.  I remember when I had to make corrections on hard copy page proofs and any changes after that were very costly indeed.  Technology has changed all that.  That’s a good thing.  Further, technology has advanced to the point where books are more accessible than ever (of course you might need to revisit the definition of a book – but I digress).  Technology has also allowed all of us to be publishers (to wit: you’re reading this blog now, aren’t you?).  This is good?  Maybe.  But it is also bad, since there are no editors, no filters, no quality control.  And that’s where it gets downright ugly.

You might have the best possible piece of literature and if a “real” publisher takes it on, it gains credibility.  If you publish it yourself, it is suspect in some, perhaps many, circles.  That’s ugly, since the number of poorly written, unedited, crappily designed self-published books gives everyone a bad name.  And there are some truly bad pieces of work around.  We live in an age where everyone seems to think they’re really good, even when they’re not.  Just take a look of some of those so-called reality talent contests on television and you’ll see the negative reactions of people who can’t carry a tune in a bucket, yet are personally insulted to be told this; whereas others who are truly talented are the most modest.  (See the interview with Martin Short in this months’ issue of Toronto Life Magazine.).

So, where does all of this ranting leave me?  It leaves me questioning the direction of my future writing.  I know I write well – at least I know that I write some things well based on external review (Huh, see the Martin Short reference above).  Objectively, I have a good command of the English language; I have a track record in traditional and non-traditional publishing; I’ve been reviewed positively for several different kinds of work.  But I’m pragmatic enough to understand that it is much more difficult to get fiction than non-fiction published, both in general for everyone and in particular for me.

Maybe it’s time to suck it up and stick to what I know I’m good at.  Or maybe I’ll just surf on over to Pinterest and start a pin-board of writing ideas.  Want to join me?