Tag: self-publishing

Posted in Book publishers, Publishing, Self-Publishing

Self, main, hybrid, co-op: Publishing may be publishing but you have to follow the money

Posted on by Patricia J. Parsons

booksI’ve come to the conclusion that the single most important defining feature of each of the publishing models that I’ve personally tried, or that I’ve explored, comes down to one important question: Who is paying?

Way back when vanity publishing was that icky, underbelly of the publishing world (at least that’s how mainstream publishers and many I-wouldn’t-stoop-that-low self-described literary writers thought), the main defining feature of the genre, if you will, was the question of who pays.  And of course, as we all know, in vanity publishing the author pays.  So, if it is vain for a writer to pay for his or her work to be published, and self-publishing smacks of the same defining feature, they are one and the same – we’ve just sanitized our vocabulary for the sake of appearances.  And the truth is if you begin to protest that there is a difference: availability of editing blah blah blah, you’re really missing the point.

Good ideas, followed by good writing, followed by good editing, followed by good marketing is the formula for a really great piece of writing and getting it into the hands of readers who might appreciate it/learn from it/ be entertained by it.  There is no reason at all why this formula can’t work – and work well – regardless of who is paying.  It’s just publishing snobbery.  The problem of course remains that many indescribably bad books are published by mainstream/traditional publishing models where the manuscript is acquired by a publisher who pays for the publishing (there is no guarantee that the publisher knows a good book from a bad one, nor is there any guarantee that the editing will be done well); just as many unspeakably ghastly volumes are published by authors who are paying out of their own pockets.  The digital age with its consequent ease of publication is what has contributed to the sheer volume of bad books regardless of who is paying.  So, I got to thinking about this notion of following the money.

Last month The National Post’s Mark Medley published an article “Words from their sponsors: Can authors cash in on crowd-sourced funding sites?”[1]  In it he explores the vast new world of online crowd-sourcing for funds for a variety of projects zeroing in on writing.  I had been peripherally aware of the phenomenon – evidently even the saintly and storied Margaret Atwood has used crowd-sourced funds – but I had never really taken the time to look closely.  I think that if you are the funder, there may just be a lot of money to be made on the backs of people with hair-brained ideas who can persuade others to give them seed money.

In general, here’s how it works: you, the writer sign up for one of these funders online (indiegogo, for example), describe your project in a way that entices others to believe that it’s a project that should see the light of day, and wait for the money to flow in.  You then use the money to make it happen.  You can hire an editor (if you want), hire a book designer (if you want), hire a book publicist (if you want), and if you have enough money.  I suppose you could also offer the money to a traditional publisher to defray the cost of publication – but of course since that would be like marrying traditional publishers with the author-pays, vanity approach (there’s a word in academic publishing for that: co-publishing), you’ll probably get an icky I’d-never-touch-that-project kind of response – unless, of course, the project is fantastic and the publisher can see past the end of his or her metaphorical nose.  But there’s another kind of crowd-sourced funding publishing model that I found more fascinating.

I’m talking about the UK online funder Unbound.  Here’s how they work:

“… instead of waiting for [writers] to publish their work, Unbound allows you to listen to their ideas for what they’d like to write before they even start. If you like their idea, you can pledge to support it. If we hit the target number of supporters, the author can go ahead and start writing (if the target isn’t met you can either get your pledge refunded in full or switch your pledge to another Unbound project)…”[2]

When a selected project is funded, the writer then completes it and Unbound designs, edits and prints the book.  The funders get copies and even sometime lunch with the author.  So, the author doesn’t pay.  So it’s not vanity publishing and it’s not self-publishing.  It’s a new model.   In my view it’s an innovative idea that adds to the richness of the publishing approaches.  But does it make for better books?

In the end, I doubt very much that it is the publishing model that has much to do with the success of a book project.   It has more to do with a book that resonates with its readers that is somehow is able to connect with.   Just look at 50 Shades of Grey and its story.  When it comes to commercial success in book publishing, sometimes the writing is fantastic, and other times it’s epically flawed.

But it’s really the writer who is at the heart of it in any case.  If the author pays, what difference does it make?

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?