
The Very Rich Indie Writer - shadowsun7
http://www.novelr.com/2011/02/27/rich-indie-writer
======
patio11
As someone who reads her genre but not her books (saw a few paragraphs,
decided to pass), I'd say:

1) The quality was noticeably worse than authors in the genre I enjoy but,
critically, difficult to distinguish from at least some New York books that
I've paid money for.

2) I did not find myself thinking "Dang, you know what this excerpt needed? A
_publisher_. I mean, look at it, it's so... not _published_."

3) I wish her every success, and strongly hope that authors I enjoy adopt the
model themselves, because continuing the current model adds no value to me
and, in fact, subtracts it when I have to deal with territory lockouts or "The
book is ready -- you can read it next year."

~~~
lionhearted
The value traditional publishing adds is a variety of professional staff
(editor, copyeditor, designers, etc), potentially fronting advance money to
cover costs for writers to devote full time to writing, and to some extent as
a filtering mechanism (you know a published book usually isn't going to have
egregious spelling/typesetting errors that make it unreadable).

That's legitimately valuable, but the quotes by Konrath in the article are
spot-on: If you don't need the full traditional staff to put out a good
product and don't need the advance money, traditional publishing becomes less
and less useful to you.

I'm a little more optimistic about the traditional model than most people are
- I think with some basic adjustments and modernizations, they've got another
pretty good 10-30 years in them doing things similar to how they're done now.
But it's definitely more viable than ever to go outside the model, especially
for people able to put out a polished product without help.

~~~
patio11
The professional staff is dirt cheap and already almost 100% outsourced by the
publishers. That's a barrier like not having Photoshop skills is a barrier to
selling on the Internet: pay somebody money, problem solved.

~~~
lionhearted
Hiring a professional editor and copy-editor is probably going to run you
four-figures for a feature length book. Considering most books don't sell
well, the first time writer takes a significant risk eating those costs.

Some people can write/polish well enough without those roles, and they stand
to gain a lot from the new models. But it'll be a while before traditional
publishing is no more. Actually, the biggest worry they should have is that
bestselling authors go off on their own after one or two wins, like how Seth
Godin just announced he's not doing any traditional publishing any more.
That's got to be a little scary for the industry.

~~~
true_religion
> Hiring a professional editor and copy-editor is probably going to run you
> four-figures for a feature length book. Considering most books don't sell
> well, the first time writer takes a significant risk eating those costs.

If you're an author, your first book is like a startup.

You have to either beg your friends and family to do copy-editing for you, do
a lot of it yourself, or somehow raise funds to get a pro copy-editor.

------
nicolas_t
As an aside, I find that thanks to online web fiction and self publishing I
found some works I really enjoyed but probably would never have been published
by any publisher... I think that whenever you have gatekeepers like this, they
can get a bit too conservative and tend to only accept work that is similar to
successful works.

For example, An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom
<http://www.meilinmiranda.com/intimate-history> An erotic (but not the main
focus) coming of age story in a victorian world. It's really good and
original, but it mixes so many genres and is so different from what I'm used
to that I wouldn't expect any mainstream publisher to publish it...

The other big example of this is some works of fanfiction like Eliezer's
Yudkowski Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality which is popular here...
It would never be published because it's fanfiction but it's original and is
quite different from what I'm normally used to by mainstream publishers...

------
csomar
In my opinion this applies to the "find a niche" strategy. She found a niche,
a particular audience that want a particular service. They are not looking for
professional writing, at least most of them (look at the forum, someone
mentioned it but the others don't seem to be too much bothered).

Amazon helped her, the Internet too. She blogs, people get attracted with her
stories. After that, She releases a book, cheap like $3, people buy. Her blog,
Amazon, word of mouth... all of that bring her sales. She makes money.

Find a niche, figure out what your customers want, make the product and
profit.

------
reeses
I have a feeling the young adult fiction area (where this author is focused)
is where much of the ebook money is coming from in general(but it's going to
balloon everywhere). I can see how serial authors who get kids hooked on their
series can have a nicely incrementing revenue stream. I'm sure you can think
of a couple examples of traditionally published YA fiction that have long
lines of fans loyally paying top dollar for hardcover versions of the newest
volume.

There was an article earlier this month in the NYT (web version:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/books/05ebooks.html>) with some
observations on children consuming ebook content.

"At HarperCollins, for example, e-books made up 25 percent of all young-adult
sales in January, up from about 6 percent a year before — a boom in sales that
quickly got the attention of publishers there."

And that's from the publishing 'house' example.

The NYT article also observes that a lot of kids are getting ebook readers as
gifts. When a grandparent/aunt/uncle can't think of a specific book to give a
kid for their birthday or whatever, rather than give them a piece of junk toy
or unwanted clothes, they can buy an ebook reader, maybe with a small Amazon
gift certificate or a DVD full of formatted Gutenberg texts.

I can only imagine it will be a short time before the author's age falls even
further for some of these stories of young writers making money. I could see
the clever goth girl in junior high pounding out a thin book a month and self-
publishing for $.99.[1] Ebooks have disconnected the feeling of "value" and
"heft" of a book, which publishers have been inadvertently reinforcing for
years with the hard/soft cover versions of books.

As with the Twilight (although, not so much with the Harry Potter) books I
mentioned earlier, our idea of "quality" isn't necessarily important to hook
kids. If it's escapist literature with a character with whom a kid can
identify, you could pull a George Lucas (oh look, another one) and use Joseph
Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces as a money-printing machine.

[1] What a perfect time, too: take the last few years of your livejournal
blog, put it into chapters, and format it for the Kindle.

~~~
patio11
_If it's escapist literature with a character with whom a kid can identify,
you could pull a George Lucas (oh look, another one) and use Joseph Campbell's
Hero with a Thousand Faces as a money-printing machine._

This is quite similar to the formula which prints money in urban fantasy,
whose core market is grown women. They're often shlocky, but that is part of
the appeal.

Anecdotally, from reading reviews prior to purchasing, a lot of my fellow
Plucky Mechanic Dating Brooding Vampire Lord readers love their Kindles to
death, despite being neither juvenile nor obviously tech savvy.

~~~
reeses
Hah, you just described my wife, who is a very well educated attorney and
international policy expert. If it has a vampire in it, she'll read just about
any book.

Before, by some strange twist of fate, she finds me talking about her online,
she did not read or endorse the Twilight books. She did want to watch the
movie "with the vampires fighting the werewolves" but was rather put out that
the fight was so short, cramming seventeen seconds of action in a twelve-hour
movie.

~~~
gjm11
Any HN readers who like books with vampires in and also enjoy "Harry Potter
and the Methods of Rationality" might want to be aware of _Luminosity_
(<http://luminous.elcenia.com/all.shtml>) and _Radiance_
(<http://luminous.elcenia.com/all2.shtml>), which bear something of the same
relationship to Twilight as MoR does to Rowling's Potter (and are written by
another prominent LessWrong'er). They contain both vampires and werewolves,
and a certain amount of fighting. I haven't read the Twilight books myself,
but my understanding is that although most of the characters are taken from
Twilight canon the plot and style are distinctly different.

------
smoody
Her Kindle books are $3 per copy, not $9 as the article states. But no matter
how you slice it, she's making north of $1M per year.

~~~
zdw
Per this article, in about 9 months she's sold 185k books:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tonya-plank/meet-mega-
bestsell...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tonya-plank/meet-mega-bestselling-
ind_b_804685.html)

At $3/each, with 70% going to her, that's $388k. Not bad, but not >1M.

~~~
runevault
Her books are a mix of .99 (35% royalty rate) and 2.99+ (70% rate).

Also she sold something like 450k books in January alone.

------
ggordan
I am curious to see what will happen to the major publishers in the next 5
years. I'm not saying that sales of physical books will plummet to their death
(I don't see this ever happening), but perhaps the publishers will be forced
to offer the authors a much better deal than the current 30%.

One thing that might happen is that the volume of books being printed will
decrease dramatically. Maybe they'll implement a JIT inventory strategy.

[edit: Although such an inventory system would only be plausible online. Print
on-demand.]

~~~
runevault
Actually, while I can't remember the name, there are machines that have been
built where you could basically tell it "I want book x" and it prints you a
copy and you pay for it right there, in a reasonable amount of time, if it's
in the machine's system.

~~~
reeses
I remember reading about ten years ago that authors were unhappy about print-
on-demand systems because quite often, their contracts included rights
reverting to the author a number of years after the last printing date. With
POD, that can just keep dragging on as people snatch up a copy here and there.

------
gamble
Anyone know where her sales figures are coming from? Are they self-reported?

She's obviously doing pretty well based on her Amazon rank, but I'm a little
skeptical of the 100-450k per month number.

~~~
rationalbeaver
There's a bit more info in one of the articles he linked to. Specifically, in
the HufPo piece ([http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tonya-plank/meet-mega-
bestsell...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tonya-plank/meet-mega-bestselling-
ind_b_804685.html)) she's quoted as saying:

"AH: As of Tuesday, January 04, 2011 at 9 PM, I've sold over 185,000 books
since April 15, 2010."

~~~
gamble
Thanks! That interview is much more interesting and informative than the OP.

------
spinlock
OK, I read her last blog post and ... she just doesn't read like a serious
writer. Maybe I'm bitter but I've read comments in hacker news that have a
better literary style.

~~~
keefe
it's worth noting she writes young adult fiction, so she has a different
optimization target than what a typical college educated adult would call
good.

~~~
reeses
In addition, the blog just needs to be good enough to keep people buying her
books. The best is the enemy of the good.

------
davidw
I'm currently working on something regarding Kindle publishing. If you're
interested in having an early look, or maybe even interested in contributing,
get in touch with me. Hopefully I'll be able to do a 'Show HN' in a week or
two.

I'd be especially interested in a quick email chat with people who have
written content for it, even though you and other HN readers are most likely
not my target market.

~~~
jseliger
A quick heads up: you might want to put your e-mail address in your "about"
section. I clicked the link to your name and only see a bunch of websites.

Anyway, I'm interested; if you see this, find me at seligerj [[AT]] gmail
((dot) com.

~~~
davidw
Those websites will give you my email address with one or two clicks. Email
sent.

------
maxharris
Here's an excerpt from an interview with the author:

"TP: Do you have any "training" as a writer? Did you take any workshops or
college classes?

AH: I've taken every writing class I've had available. I took classes in high
school, and I took English and writing classes in community college, but I
dropped out of college. I also attended a local writing workshop two years
ago."

------
6ren
Disruption has three parts I believe:

1\. incumbent, customers, and an offering that is high quality along a
dimension valued by the customers. The dimension might be: how entertaining,
how educational, how clever, how escapist, etc.

2\. entrant, different customers, and an offering that is _crap_ along the
above dimension, but better than nothing for their customers. They can't
attract the incument's customers, so they instead attract people who currently
have nothing (and to whom "crap" is therefore delightful). It serve them, but
the incumbent can't, because it is cheaper and/or more
convenient/accessible/customizable.

3\. over time, the entrant improves. The incumbent's customers don't actually
want perfection along that dimension, just good enough (like a small meal, you
want it bigger, but eventually it's big enough, you are satiated, and you
don't want any more). The entrant doesn't need to beat the incumbent; it only
needs to be good enough. But it's also cheaper/more convenient etc, so the
incumbent's customers switch: disruption.

notes: Disruption might not happen, e.g. if the customers aren't satiated; if
the entrant can't improve enough. In considering the dimension, it's important
to consider not just want the company provides, but what the customer is
trying to achieve (benefit, not feature).

For indy writer's, the product seems to be clearly inferior. But it's cheaper
and more convenient (on a kindle - though many books are too). It seems to
have already found an audience who doesn't mind that (who is that audience?).
Dedicated, intelligent people get better at whatever they work at; so it's
reasonable to assume that these indy writers will improve.

Is there any reason to think they won't improve enough to meet the needs of
readers of traditional books? One issue is that they have no editor, and an
editor can help tremendously. Not just in proof-reading, but also in
direction, even plot ideas, character issues - and marketability. It's hard
for the one person to be both creator and objective appraiser. But perhaps
there could arise a new "indy editor" position? Or writers can persuade their
spouse to be their editor (osc does this). Or (who knows) crowd source it
(webpage?)/mechanical turk it.

[EDIT _But I cannot edit properly myself. It's just not possible._ \-
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tonya-plank/meet-mega-
bestsell...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tonya-plank/meet-mega-bestselling-
ind_b_804685.html)]

But note that _it doesn't need to be as good as traditional books_ \- it just
needs to be good enough for what the market wants. That's enough to disrupt
the incumbent publishers. I will note here that many page-turners that sold
very well were decried by critics. It seems almost a truism that popular books
are "trash" - til the author's dead, anyway. (Though I note that these
sometimes are based on savvy market reading - for example,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hardy_Boys>) Therefore, it seems quite
plausible that indy writers can eventually become _good enough_ to disrupt
traditional publishers.

~~~
shadowsun7
I wrote the article linked-to above, and I'd like to add a couple of things to
your (great!) comment:

I agree with your analysis of incumbents and entrants. I think it's a clever,
really clear way of looking at it.

RE: your 2nd point: Novelr.com is about writers who are posting their fiction
online, in a serialized, once/twice-a-week format, and then turning their work
to ebooks for sale on the various ebook stores. That's one trend to watch out
for, and I can say with confidence that there _is_ a market, however
inconsistent the quality may be. There are customers out there for the
entrant, and they _are_ biting.

(Plus there's also fanfiction, and sites like Fictionaut, where writers read,
comment, and suggest (mostly grammatical & spelling) edits on each others'
work. I've been seeing trends like this for about four years now.) It's pretty
cool stuff - dynamic, engaging fiction, some good writing (see:
<http://webfictionguide.com> \- for the good ones).

RE: Your 3rd point: we're building Pandamian (<http://pandamian.com>), a tool
that attempts to make this write-online/publish-to-ebookstores thing
accessible to all writers. It's mostly a response to the community's needs -
with the mantra that 'writers should not need to read a single line of code'.
Our hope, at least, is that the app would allow all kinds of writers the
ability to write a book online, get a community of readers around their books,
and then publish to the Kindle/Kobo/Smashwords store.

We launched on Tuesday, and now have a small group of very vocal users.

~~~
Mz
Since you are here: Is pandamian intended to be just for fiction? I have a
book idea that I actually want to work on and I only want to do e-books. I
haven't started in part because I didn't really have a vehicle/format for it.

~~~
shadowsun7
Sure, you can use it for whatever book you'd like to write. We've got one or
two users who're using it for their poetry (which really gave me a problem,
since I designed the text to be suited for prose).

Do note, however, that proper ebook conversion isn't ready yet. This is more
minimum-viable product than anything else - if you log in you'll see a
UserVoice forum filled with feature requests, which we're working on.

~~~
Mz
No big. I am currently just looking for a means to start writing and
organizing my thoughts and all that. Nowhere near the "let's publish it!"
stage.

Will check it out.

Thanks.

