Edit this out...

Someone made this comment on my LJ (http://davefreer.livejournal.com/ the one I write about writing and politics and stuff on, not the one I write about emigrating to a remote island and self sufficiency etc on - http://flindersfreer.blogspot.com/ - honestly, this social media is killing me ;-))

"since editing basically means having another literate person look your stuff over and correct your myopic mistakes. He needs cover art, too, but this is available for under $500. Anyone literate enough to write a book should be able to proof (as opposed to editing) it himself."

Um. Now there is truth (this is the way things sometimes are), and falsehood (this is not the way things should be) in that statement.

Editing is a tough job to do well. There are probably less good editors than there are good writers of humorous fiction, and those are the very rarest kind of writers (one man's funny is another man's boring or tragedy - and this often applies to editing too). Sometimes great editing is, of course, leaving it alone. And sometimes editing can turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. Editing - to my limited understanding of the subject comes at two levels -- Structural editing - ie where the editor, taking a look at the book from the outside and as whole as it were, sees areas which need change. In my case that's often been needing additional POVs. Very small changes -applied in the right place and with skill can change a book entirely. The great editors of legend - Campbell, Jim Baen, tend to be this kind of editor. They're very very rare. It's quite easy to get outside a book and say that something is wrong with it. It's another matter entirely to be able to tell an author (in such a way that they listen and understand) how to fix it. Eric Flint is very good at this - maybe his union organising experience stands him in good stead. At the next level (and in some ways this is more difficult than seeing the entire picture), you need a good line-editor -- that is someone who goes through your book, line-by-line and makes sure there are no places in which it can be misinterpreted, that contuinity is correct, that there are no anachronisms, and additionally picking up bad writer habits (ellipses in my case) or things like too much use of passive tense, or repeat word patterns. That's hard, tedious work and requires a very special kind of mind and dedication. I'm exceptionally lucky that Barbara is very good at that. You also of course get editors who aren't good at either of these aspects but try to do them anyway. I've never been that unfortunate, but a few of my friends have.

Anyone who thinks editing is just getting a literate friend to read over your work should read one of my early unedited drafts! They're aweful.

Proof-reading... is something you CAN'T do yourself. Trust me: you cannot do it yourself. That too is a skill that requires dedication and an ability to divorce oneself from the content (story) and merely focus on the words.

So: what are we going to do in our new and wonderful world of e-books? If Joe's internet gateway decides to offer e-books what will they need? DIY editors, proofing, covers, publicity (after all these are the things big 5 publishing houses seem to think are worth around 55% of gross). What are they worth to you? Are the big boys giving good value?

Sunday Wrap-up

What a strange couple of weeks it has been in publishing, whether you're a reader, a writer or work in the industry. The Kindle-Macmillan (now Kindle-Big 6) kerfluffle has dominated the news and rightly so. It has also become the third topic you don't talk about at the dinner table, especially if you have two or more writers, a reader and -- gasp -- a publisher present. Unfortunately, what folks from all sides seem to be overlooking is the fact that the Big 6's issue with Amazon selling e-books for $9.99 isn't really the central issue, imo. It's part of it, but not the real issue.

The real issue is control and the fall-out has been bad will toward the Big 6, Amazon and a bunch of writers who have been very vocal in their stand supporting their publisher -- understandable -- and badmouthing the reading public that they saw as feeling entitled and ungrateful - very bad. Even if you feel that way, you don't tell the folks who buy your books. It just makes them mad and buyers, when made mad, quit buying.

Let's look at the facts. To begin with, Amazon doesn't sell all e-books at $9.99. Never has and never will. Those books in question are the ones hitting the New York Times best seller's list. The same books that in their hardcover version are sold for $9.99, not only at Amazon but at Walmart, Target and a lot of other stores. Now, does anyone here not see a problem with the statement, paraphrased, that the $9.99 price for e-books devalues the hardcover book? Excuse me? How can it devalue the price when they are the same? Yet that's not something you see the supporters of the Big 6 and their new agency model addressing.

So the question becomes why. If Amazon is taking a hit on selling e-books for $9.99, you know it is on hardcovers sold for that very same price. And yet Macmillan says it pushed for this new agency model even though it would make less money so Amazon can make more. Excuse me??? Somehow that just doesn't ring true.

Okay, before you guys start jumping all over me and telling me I'm missing the point here, I know I'm simplifying things. But Macmillan isn't acting out of the goodness of its heart. Nor is it acting in the best interest of its authors. If it was, it wouldn't have lowered their royalty payments a few months ago. And again, I know they say they are going to change this...but you notice the open letter didn't say how or when -- or by how much. IF, and this is a very big IF, the price increase really did go to to the author -- without whom we wouldn't have the book in the first place -- I might pay more for an e-book than I tend to now. However, not more than the paperback price and especially not the same, or more, than the hardcover.

Things to ask yourself about this issue and then I'm leaving it until there is new information:

• how often do you buy a hardcover book these days;
• when you do buy a hardcover, do you pay full-price for it, or do you purchase it at a discount or as a used book;
• if you are looking to buy a hardcover book, do you comparison shop;
• would you pay the same for a softcover book as you would for a hardcover of the same book;
• would you pay the same for an electronic version of the book than you do for the softcover? More? How about hardcover prices?
• if hardcover prices return to suggested retail prices and not discounted prices for best sellers, will you buy as many books?
• now, for the big question, has your purchase history of e-books had an impact on the number of hardcover books you've bought and will an increase in the price of e-books make you buy more hardcover books?

For me, I'll keep singing the praises of Baen Books and others who realize they can sell e-books, released on or BEFORE the hardcover/paperback version of the book for a discounted rate and not savage the dead tree version of the book. In fact, many times the sale of an e-book leads not only to the sale of a dead tree version of that same book but also sales of dead tree copies of other books by that same author.

On a non-Amazon v. The Big 6 topic, agent Janet Reid has a great breakdown on what you need before you query. She has it broken down between fiction, non-fic and memoir. Go take a look and tell me what you think. The only issues I take with her list -- which is geared toward her own agency -- are where she says you don't have to have a marketing strategy for a fiction query nor do you need to be able to compare/contrast your book to others. Unfortunately, too many agents -- and publishers -- are now asking for your marketing strategy right off the bat. It's the same with the question of what books is yours like and what makes it different. In fact, there are agency that require you to answer those two questions on their online submission forms right now. So, what's the answer? Research. Find out exactly what the agency you're querying wants and the best way to answer it.

Okay, guys, the floor is now yours. What do you think about all this?

eBook Pricing

"The inn at Harty Ferry, the Isle of Sheppey, yesterday."

Here we go again. The lunatics are now running around the asylum with pitchforks and flaming torches.

Hatchette is about to follow Murdoch-owned Harper Collins in jacking up the price of eBooks,
http://ow.ly/14l85
in order to protect the price point of hardback editions.

It is quite clear that Murdoch sees eBooks simply as a threat to traditional publishing and, along with other publishers, is convinced he can hold back the new technology. It is quite amusing when one considers how Murdoch made money originally, by using new digital technology to break the print unions who were trying to, um, hold back the new technology to preserve their traditional income stream.

I refer to my previous post about replication. The print workers lost and were destroyed because they tried to block new, more efficient, technology rather than working out how to exploit it. They were destroyed - by Murdoch. Now he has adopted their model.

There is an interesting article here:
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100202/news-corp-beats-earnings-revenue-estimates/

A key quote is:

"Again, it’s impossible to stress how scarring the music labels’ experience has been for Big Media. And they’re determined not to repeat the experience. Their takeaway, though, seems to be that they can stave off digital distribution by keeping prices high and inventory relatively scarce. Hard to believe consumers are going to go for that."

Well? What do you think? Are you going to go for that?


UPDATE:
Electricity storage breakthrough at Imperiel College, London University, will revoltionise ebooks (and other things).
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/5177559-scientists-have-invented-a-waferthin-plastic-that-can-store-electricity-in-it

Setting Goals in the Land of the Unknown

One of the frustrating things about writing – or any area of the arts – is the difficulty of being concrete about achieving success. There are any amount of motivational gurus who can fire you up with your unlimited potential and assure you that anything is possible – Anthony Robbins or Christopher Howard to name two. These fellows will happily sell you CD sets that include short hand instructions on how to rewire your brain and change your belief systems (so they claim) and also include various sessions in the way of Goal-Setting Workshops or ‘Strategic Visioning’ exercises. But this is where things get tricky.

When it comes to setting out goals for something like making a business more profitable, or to say learn a new language, there are concrete steps to take that will get you to the chosen goal. They contain elements that are quantifiable. For example, having decided you want to increase profit by a certain percentage, you can go in search of new customers using a range of media. Letter drop-off and business cards might net a 1% response, other forms of advertising might be more effective. But you can quantify all that. Advertising costs a certain amount, you know you need a certain amount of time to write the add etc.

Switch this to writing. If your goal is to get published by GoYouGoodThing Publications, the elements might run as follows: 1)plan book, 2)write book, 3)get feedback on book, 4) re-write book, 5)send book to publisher and 6) get GoYouGoodThing to accept it. Now you can use any goal-setting process on the planet for steps 1) to 5) (lets forget for one moment you spend two years repeating 3)&4)), but once you hit step number 6) – IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PLAN.

People like Anthony Robbins or Christopher Howard might waffle on about ‘putting energies out there’ or ‘manifest futures’ or perhaps it’s the attraction principle of The Secret. It seems to me that these people have a lot to gain (i.e book and CD sales) in whipping people up into a state of belief, but in the end the hopeful aspirant is left to pick themselves up of the floor. The fact is getting to the far off future called ‘Publication’ or ‘Successful Publication’ involves the judgement of other people which most writers do not have the ability to influence. This last step – is the land of the Unknown.

Slinging your best efforts into this mysterious zone may yield sporadic success, years of stony silence, or a sudden spectacular success. The result remains unknown. I guess the only thing you can really say for sure is that the likelihood of success goes up the more you sling, and that if you sling nothing into this strange Unknown zone then you can be absolutely sure NOTHING will come back.

So – have I got this all wrong? Can someone give me the formula for 6)? Failing that – how do you cope with the Great Unknown.

It'll take a miracle

Or: the general inadvisability of burning one's bridges while one remains on them.

I should probably start with a general apology: work remains insanely busy, and every time I think I might be getting back to more or less normal loads, a new pile lands. I feel like the victims of the Foo bird (long story, based on spoonerism and "if the shoe fits". If you still want to know, say so in the comments). At any rate, I've got a fair idea what I want to say, but what happens along the way could get interesting.

So. Back to the approximate topic. You've probably guessed, it relates to Amazon vs Macmillan and the hordes of related issues that are even now merrily spawning tribes of issues of their own. Given the situation, those tribes of issues are probably already at war with each other. It's also got a rather sideways relationship to Sun Tzu's Art of War.

He - and probably many others - advised burning the bridges after crossing them, so that there was no retreat for the troops: once you burned the bridge, you could defeat the enemy or die trying. If you won, you could always rebuild the bridge.

Right now, it looks to me like the publishing industry is on the bridge. Behind them is the way things have been for ever and ever amen, and in front is the 'enemy' - readers, Amazon and its ilk (oh, heck, might as well just go for the internet, since I think some of these places are still trying to get a handle on pocket calculators, having reluctantly abandoned the abacus and quill and ink some time in the last 20 years or so).

Except, "I do not think it means what you think it means".

Amazon also acts as though it's on that bridge, and the enemy ahead is publishers. The territory is where all those nice fat peasa...er... readers live, and Amazon wants to be the new overlord and control everything they've got access to.

Readers and writers? We're actually the bridge.

And that's where it gets fun, because Amazon and Macmillan just set fire to the bridge, while they were still on it. The likely result is that both of them will take a bath, but we'll all get burned.

And there won't be any kissy stuff.

What I Saw At The Revolution

This ties in with Kate Paulk’s post on Thursday. I’ve been giving it some serious thought which was deepened and made more serious by discussions at Cosine in Colorado Springs last weekend.

When it comes to publishing, everyone can agree that the times they are achanging. How they are achanging and where the change is going, though, seems different for every person who looks at it.

A long established, very smart author on one of my panels told us the reading population is simply declining, and that there will be no book readers in the future. He might be right. On the other hand, I know that people who read for fun in current times are the same percentage of people who read for fun in Shakespeare’s time. And, looking back, we consider that time a wonderful revolution, a flourishing of culture. Now you’ll say there are for more writers today than then. This is true, but I doubt the percentage of writers trying to make a living from this is any greater than in that day.

Oh, yeah, and as in Shakespeare's day more people are learning to read well because of the new technology used in jobs -- in his time printing, in ours computers. Until that talking computer is invented, our kids will have to be literate.

As in Shakespeare’s day, copyright is in flux. We won’t go there. Not this time.

Instead, let’s look at part of what’s causing the confusion. Ebooks. We’re told ebooks are selling very well indeed. Perhaps they are. No author I know sees this in his statements, but then the only reason that Mark Twain didn’t say "There are lies, damn lies, and publisher’s sales statements" is that things were done differently in his days. Let’s assume that ebooks and esales and the proliferation of electronic – much of it unbranded – material is what is making paper books not sell. (We’ll forget other reasons, such as laws that cause publishers not to keep books in inventory. Such as the fact that chain bookstores set what will be in stores over a tri-state area, regardless of what people in each city want to read. Such as... many other things that will make me reach for the Scotch if I start thinking about them.)

So, ebook sales – great, right? Anyone can publish him or herself. Amazon will soon be offering a 70% for the author deal, thereby beating anything any other house has ever done. Joy and dancing on the streets, right? Authors can publish themselves, or come out with small presses, or anything they want to. They can form cooperatives, perhaps, as has been aired in this forum, and so propagate their names and their readers....

Maybe. Before I go into it, let me give you full disclosure of what I know of this matter.
I will grant you I’ve never epublished – or epublished exclusively. However, I’ve been surfing the world of blogs, observing, since almost the very beginning. In 1998 I started writing Jane Austen fan fiction and posting it for free. Perhaps it’s being married to a techie or perhaps it is that I have a fascination with the future, but I’m very much a creature of the internet. And I’ve deduced certain things, which I’m about to pass onto you, right or wrong.

The Austen fandom experience is probably the most relevant to e publishing. As I said I started in 1998, at two places. http://republicofpemberley.com/ and http://austen.com,/ in its Derbyshire writers league.

These two places were very different. Being a purist, I was was at first fonder of ROP simply because it tended to publish more traditional stories. Its idea was to publish only stories in period, no fantasy, no modern day stories with Jane Austen characters. I liked that, because it gave me security. I knew what I would find. ROP had editing and quality control. It had a "brand assurance."

However, when I tried to write a funny/silly story – very popular with the readership, btw – that implied but didn’t show some strange – but not out of question for the time – sexual practices, I got banned. I got banned without explanation and without so much as a by your leave.

That left me with the Derbyshire writers league, which is the best example of an "open environment." You can post anything – even though you might get yelled at for it. When I started posting there, you often got ten/twenty post installments per day.
And I discovered several heartening things.

a) Even though there was no editor, cream tended to rise. Cream being defined, at least, as those things that interested the audience. Meaning, you could have horrible melodrama, but it would be popular, if well written enough and hitting the right buttons. People consistently asked for the stories I also considered "best."

b) People were willing to sift through a lot of crud. Read a few lines, move on. Till something caught. The function of the editor would seem to be usurped that way.

c) People were willing – even eager – to give money for this supposedly free material. When five friends and I started our own just-for-fun website with our fan fiction, people kept emailing to ask HOW they could donate.

Okay, that’s the good side. Then there’s the bad side.

a) Over time there is fatigue. Unless there is a serial I’m following, and unless I’m in a cheerful, enthusiastic mood, I don’t wade into the board because it’s too much trouble to read a bunch of beginnings.

b) It’s not just me. People seem to burn out on the board in two to three years.

c) I don’t know what the money situation is. This was the early days of the internet. Since then, both competition and the sheer volume of free and easily accessible fiction has increased. Why should people troll the board when there’s free romances for the kindle every day at Amazon?

So, that’s for fan fic. But what about those free books on Amazon?

Well... I’ve been downloading them for a while too. Let’s just say that – so far – I have yet to buy a single second book in a series where the first book is small press or self-published. In fact, after looking through... oh, a dozen small press or self published books where the beginning was FRIGHTENINGLY bad, at this point I hesitate to download small press or self-published. In fact, in this medium, my experience has correlated with that of reading small press or self-published paper books. They tend to be what couldn’t cut it with big publishers.

Oh, there might be a few gems in the dreck, but after a while you despair of finding them.
By the way, the experience of friends who have fallen off publishers’ lists and gone to self published or e-published seems to corroborate this. Their downloads and sales immediately become too small to count. Satisfying if you’re retired, the kids are out of the house and you have no other hobbies. But as a job? No.

Are there exceptions? Sure there are. The romance market seems to be better and the erotica market even better, in e publishing. I think – I could be wrong – that anything whose covers might embarrass you in public or at your place of work will do better on e-readers. Thus, romance, which smart women have been afraid of reading in public for years because there’s such a prejudice against it; erotica because it’s best enjoyed privately; and possibly religious books, because they too invoke prejudice. From what I understand you can make a living in epublishing in all of those. But I haven’t tried, and I’m not a great reader of any of those genres.

So it’s all hearsay.

So... what did I see at the revolution? Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. Your best bet for a successful and long publishing career is STILL traditional publishers, no matter how addled.

If we’re lucky, they’ll get a clue and get it soon enough. If we’re lucky, they’ll realize the way of the future is for them to become sort of imprimaturs of quality. Branding companies, if you wish. "So and so stands behind this book." Kind of like the funny labels on Port Wine bottles saying "Purveyor of Port to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II" yeah, like that.

If we’re lucky, a few celebrities – oh, I don’t know, Bill Gates? Stephen King? With culture-wide recognition will start their own brands.

Publicity should be part of the publisher’s job in the future. Easy enough. They won’t be PRINTING books, or not many of them.

I’m not reassured by the fact most big houses are offloading publicity to the author. Frankly, it would make more sense for them to offload paper-printing.

And what happens if they don’t get a clue soon? Well... we’ll all be writing the romance between two very religious people who like to have explicit sex...

UPDATE -- I wrote this last week but after the whole Macmillan/Amazon Kerfuffle, I have come to the conclusion this is not a rooster fight over two companies -- it's a rooster fight between two business models -- ebook and paper book, bottom up pull and top down push. And I've decided to add some thoughts to this:

First, Baen has it largely together on the ebook model. (The publisher has been heard to say "We sell stories. The physical means of delivering them is irrelevant." A button on Amazon and other esellers for the Baen ebooks would help. OTOH I have no clue how that works money wise, so I'm NOT sticking my big nose in.)

Second, I’m a Kindle owner/reader. I am NOT going to pay hard cover prices for an ebook. Not a DRMed, already out one at any rate (earcs are different). Frankly, though, I'm not paying hardcover prices for hardcovers these days. I'm either not buying them, buying them used or waiting for the paperback. Things are tough all over. And when I buy hardcovers, I do so because I already read and love the e-version. (Sigh. Unfortunately for my budget this happens far more than it should. Then I get the hc signed and have to buy a pback for the boys to maltreat.)

Third, yeah, yeah, paper books will be with us forever. In SOME form. (Just like snail mail is still with us, but most of us don’t use it that much anymore.) The question is... what form? Books have quite outstripped the reasonable price (defined as a chicken or a six pack of beer. Heck, some DVDs are cheaper.) I buy hard cover only when I like the ebook, and only for "love and cherish" purposes. This -- I think -- will continue to happen at least for a while. But our kids are comfortable with e-only. And the kindle is easier on my eyes than real books (or glowing screens which for me personally is the ipad’s downfall.) And I don't read many books with illustrations. And I read not just books but news on my kindle while traveling.

Fourth - Overall, the important thing to remember is that you can't put the genie of tech back in bottle once you take it out. History is littered with the corpses of industries that tried. Right now most publishers -- Baen excepted -- are busy trying to corral the genie and or throwing away the baby and rocking the bath water to sleep. So much the worse for readers and writers because for now we still need publishers as "brand guarantee." As noted above most – not all, and there are specific exceptions – self published ebooks are at the same level as most self published books. Not very good. But if publishers keep thinking their importance lies with printed pages and not the branding/publicity (both of which they seem to be cutting back on from already really low levels) this will change. Companies that adopt a model of branding/publicizing and keep the print only as "on demand" (or perhaps leather-tooled really prestige editions) will make it. Again, you can’t un-invent and un-disseminate tech. Coulda shoulda wouldluvta is great, but it’s not realistic. If wishes were horses, we’d be up to our necks in manure.

If I had to guess, some big publicity agency or even literary agency will get the idea of what’s needed sooner or later, and get HUGE by filling a vacant niche that fits with the "way of things to come." (Heck, Baen might do it. If I had a million bucks lying around right now I'd stake them and try to convince Baen to do it) The traditional publishers (Baen excepted) will be left to jump on the bandwagon or flail around helplessly till they die (and some will do one, some the other.)

[Oh, and on Amazon controlling distribution and this being a downside for epublishing. Oh, my stars and garters. Right now, this function is being filled by distributors and big store managers and (to an extent) by publisher "push" -- i.e. how many books they are willing to print and PUSH onto store shelves by a variety of means. (Hint, have you noticed there aren’t many "surprise bestsellers" anymore? They used to happen all the time. Not so much now.) Many, many reputable, big-publisher-accepted and printed books get almost no distribution. The distributor not thinking it will sell is the main and most frequent reason but accidental skipping happens too. (The month my first Baen book came out, the entire line of Baen books was accidentally "skipped" by a major distributor.) One man’s decision. (And I'm not saying it's a wrong decision, btw. Distributors and big traditional publishers need economies of scale. They need to think x amount of widgets will sell. Of course, in the normal course of things, they would be wrong, some times.) One accident. A whole set of books that never sells because it’s not on the shelves to sell. Right now we have one of the most top-down distribution models ever for books in possibly the most "taste and style" fragmented society in human history. Which is why we’re ripe for epublishing. That and because it's easier to make money on "small printruns" with epublishing. So if you and a thousand of your closest friends want to read about zombie vampires with an udder fetish there's a chance a writer can make decent amount writing those (not me, please. Ew.) Also, ask some author about tax laws on inventories that result in books being pulled out of print before they have time to catch via word of mouth. You’ll get an earful. If ebooks did nothing else, they would circumvent that and give the "surprise bestseller" a chance. (Perhaps vampire zombies with udder fetishes -- ew ew ew ew ew ew -- is an idea whose time has come.) So you see, sometimes it’s a good thing that the genie can’t be put back.]

Thoughts? Opinions? Rotten tomatos? Greasy cloaks? Orange peels? Don't just sit there.

Terry Prartchett, so sad ...

We've all mentioned how we admire Terry Pratchett and how outraged we were when we heard he had been diagnosed with Alzheimers.

This is the latest.

'Terry Pratchett: my case for a euthanasia tribunal

Should those with incurable illnesses be allowed to choose how and when they die? In his Richard Dimbleby lecture, author Terry Pratchett, who has Alzheimer's disease, makes a plea for a common-sense solution'

Terry puts a wonderful case and I recommend you read what he has to say. Measured, well thought out, and sensible with just a touch of that wonderful wry humour we have come to know and love.

As someone who shared a dinner table with Terry at World Con in 1999, it strikes me as intrinsically unfair that someone with a mind as sharp as his, should have to face what lies ahead for him.

Here's thinking of you, Terry!