

For Authors Who Abandon Their Publishers: Give Me A Break - cwan
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/29/self-publish-and-be-damned/

======
patio11
There are a lot of authors who seem to have Stockholm Syndrome.

(I'm still fuming at about a half dozen of them who filled my inbox after I
made a blog post about my love for Kindles and total, comprehensive lack-of-
care for publishing houses. One of them explained, at length and with much
profanity, that her publisher was her customer and I was just some slackjawed
idiot allowed to read the book. I can only assume that she was saying what
many think, because otherwise the "write a paying customer and tell them they
should not be allowed to buy your product" trick those folks were pulling was
just freaking bizarre.)

~~~
_delirium
I could see that being true from a certain perspective. Many authors see
themselves as being in a strange B2B market, where they function as manuscript
producers, whose job is to sell manuscripts to manuscript-consuming
businesses. The fact that the manuscripts are then used as raw-material inputs
to manufacture products for a different market (printed books sold to readers
via bookstores) isn't irrelevant, but can feel a bit disconnected.

------
derefr
The article's only alternative to a publisher is to "do everything
yourself"—but that's not at all realistic. Most non-publisher-affiliated
authors today _contract_ their editor and marketer, just like they contract
their agent. This is the future for publishers: turning into talent agencies
authors hire from for market rates, rather than "owning" a stable of authors
(and their works) and paying them peanuts off those works' earnings. This is
what publishers really fear: not being made irrelevant, but being forced to
the other side of the table.

~~~
dnautics
Agreed. I'm not sure why these days, a writer can't find themeselves an
editor. I was publishing a website and it wasn't so hard for me to find a
friend that I paid for three progressive sessions of editing.

~~~
roel_v
Sure they can find them, but at what cost? Having a full-length book (200
pages in 9 by 6) edited is going to cost $5000. Plus $500 for a jacket design,
$5000 for marketing, a 1000 in expenses left and right - before you know it
you're out 10k _before you even sold your first copy_ , and not counting the
hours you put in.

Compare that to a published author: if you're an OK writer (no superstar but
still sellable) you get a 10k advance (so that you can actually, you know, buy
food and pay rent while you write), don't have to spend the 100's of extra
hours in coordinating all the other tasks (during which you can work on your
next book...) and generally live a much more secure life, with (much?) less
risk.

Most authors are just regular people who want to put their kids through school
and live a good life, not ball-to-the-wall entrepreneurs who are 'going to
make it big of crash' or whatever business bravado strong talk is in style
this week. I don't understand where this hate against publishers comes from -
don't people see that they're being used by people like Godin who, once they
themselves have become successful the traditional way, are going to tell
people that that's not the way to do it, and oh buy my book on how you should
do it nowadays?

PS no offense but if your frame of reference is 'I was publishing a website',
let's say you weren't quite in the same spot most authors are (depending on
the website, but when I assume your was 'average'...)

~~~
dnautics
no offense taken... sounds like there is a market need for some web based
disintermediation? calling ycombinator...

------
teilo
I love Paul Carr, but he's wrong on this one. He may indeed love his
publisher, but I have seen, far too often, struggling authors fighting with
their publishers just to maintain control over their own works, much less get
proper remuneration. Certainly, the problem is not as bad as it is in the
music industry, but unless you are a fabulously successful author, you
essentially enslave yourself to a publisher, and give up the copyright to your
own creative works.

Sorry, but the world is changing. It hasn't yet hit the publishing industry
nearly so hard as it has hit the recording industry, but it will. Two things
in particular almost guarantee it:

First the digital revolution. The Kindle / Nook / etc., are not fads anymore
than the iPod was a fad. The publishing world is going digital.

Second, the publishing world will always have real ink and paper books (this
is my industry, BTW) - but the technology is shifting rapidly toward print-on-
demand. Lulu.com, with their fleet of Xerox iGen presses and web-to-bindery
workflow has led the way giving everyone the ability to publish hard and soft
covers one at a time, and make a profit doing so. I am already seeing mainline
publishers doing similar for older works which are not economical to print on
conventional presses. These works used to go out of print. Now they are being
made available once more, because the publishers suddenly are able to print
them at a profit, even if it is just one book for a single customer. But
ironically, the more they embrace this technology, the more readily available
it will be to smaller and smaller shops.

Self-publishing - long an expensive proposition - is quickly becoming the norm
for new authors, and it is only a matter of time before the marketing of such
books will move to the web. Authors already tend to form their own
communities, critiquing one another's works and encouraging them to improve
and advance their art. The ability to do this on the web gives them a natural
platform from which to market their works to a worldwide audience, without a
publisher of any sort playing middle-man.

~~~
cstross
_but unless you are a fabulously successful author, you essentially enslave
yourself to a publisher, and give up the copyright to your own creative
works._

No you don't. In fact, if your publisher asks you to assign your copyright to
them, what you _should_ do is walk away, very fast, and let the appropriate
folks know that there's a scam artist on the loose. (Unless you're in a work-
for-hire agreement, which is a whole different kettle of fish -- but not
something you should stumble into by accident.)

As for self-publishing becoming the norm for new writers ... you may be right:
but that doesn't mean self-publishing will become _a successful career path_
for those who take it. There are some fundamental differences between the
music biz and writing which weigh the dice heavily against authors going it
alone. (For example: bands can make money off live gigs and merchandise while
using CDs and MP3s for promotion -- but when was the last time you went to
hear some middle-aged guy read from his latest novel? And _paid_ for the
privilege?)

The real rent-seeking middle-men in the publishing business aren't the
publishers, but the distribution chains and customer-facing retail outlets --
of whom Amazon and Lulu are two. They chow down around 60-70% of the revenue
in the retail book trade. My reading of the "why not publish it yourself?"
propaganda is that it's promoted by POD imprints and folks like Amazon, who
anticipate getting much more favourable terms from sole traders and clueless
wannabes than they can currently obtain from the major publishers. _Sure_ you
can self-publish -- but you're still going to have to deal with the retail
distribution supply chain. And there be dragons ...

~~~
patio11
Can I recommend JA Konrath's blog to you? He is big on self-publishing,
primarily because his one-man backlist is currently paying him six figures
just on Kindle profits, a sharp improvement over a decade of miflist published
authordom.

Ironically, I am writing this having tasked switched from one of your books on
my Kindle. I love Amazon. They gave me the Kindle, from which springs joy and
happiness and space Nazis. Your publisher? Meh, adds less value to me than the
hosting company for a blog I'm reading. (I understand that they edit, whee,
but it matters nothing to me whether the editor works on salary for them or on
contract for you.)

------
lsc
eh, honestly, I think the publisher-hate is as much from non-authors than
authors.

Now, of course, if you are an author, and you don't need what a publisher
provides, by all means, go at it without a publisher. Modern technology now
means that many of the things that were the exclusive domain of the publishers
are now available to even us little guys.

But, speaking as an author, I /do/ need what the publisher provides, therefore
I went with a publisher rather than going it alone. And this is common and
valid as well.

Now, in my field, Technical books, very few authors expect to more than pay
for the pizza consumed while writing. Anyone remotely qualified to write a
technical book can likely make a lot more money in less time consulting.

You write a technical book to educate people, and to give yourself
credibility. Really, trading away the bulk of the money in exchange for that
credibility would be a good deal by itself; the fact that the publisher also
takes care of all the minutia of actually manufacturing the books and getting
them out to the stores is just gravy. Hell, in my case, the publisher talked
me in to writing the book in the first place, and rode me until I actually
finished it; something I almost certainly would not have done on my own.

I mean, to give you some idea, "The book of Xen" took me and a guy who is
better than I am three years to write. We've sold something like two thousand
copies. Even if we kept $30 a pop (about what amazon sells the thing for)
that's only $60,000; maybe half a year's pay for one of the two people doing
it (counting benefits, etc...) Now, we wern't working three years full time,
but it was more than 6 months full time, and this ate some of our best and
most productive hours.

Now, of course, in reality, my friend and I split 15 percent of the wholesale
price, which is something like half the cover price, so we earned considerably
less than we would have if we could have moved that many books on our own and
paid zero for printing.

Yeah, if you are Knuth, you move a lot more books than I can. But, if you are
Knuth, you can also make a lot more money doing other things. Would you give
Knuth a cut of equity to sit on your board? I would.

So yeah; money (at least money directly from book sales) is not the reason why
anyone writes a technical book, so it doesn't really matter that the publisher
takes a cut.

The number one thing a publisher brings is:

Credibility.

Next time you are at a cocktail party, mention you are working on a book. I
guarantee, the first thing someone sizing you up will ask is "do you have a
publisher?"

I mean, there are many other useful things my publisher did for me, but the
credibility is at the top of the list. Even assuming near superhuman levels of
perseverance, enough to hire and supervise a good editor, etc... I still
couldn't gain that credibility by myself.

Figure out how to replace the credibility function of publishers, and you will
have a reason for technical authors to publish indie.

------
kevinh
This article was interesting, but it didn't present any particularly novel
points of view. Yes, I know publishers provide services for authors, but it
seemed as if the author repeated the same points over and over and completely
glossed over the counter-arguments. He mentions the greater freedom that self-
publishing allows, but then completely dismisses it and doesn't mention it
again.

For a persuasive piece, I thought it was weak. Personally, I would have rather
had him interview a few people who were self-publishing and a few
representatives for publishers and gotten both sides out there, rather than
just the publisher's point of view.

------
jrockway
Publishers are hit or miss. I wrote a tech book for Packt a few years ago, and
while I wouldn't use the expression "disaster", I do have trouble finding any
value they added.

I got lots of complaints about the typesetting. I was required to write the
book in _Word_ , and that's what they used for typesetting. The book looks
like a big Word doc printed out. If I had self-published, I would not have
made such an elementary mistake.

I got lots of complaints about various grammar/spelling issues. Guess what
guys, those were "edited" into the final version without my approval. _I_
don't use expressions like "do the needful".

I got lots of complaints about the overall flow of the book. I had technical
reviewers, but nobody commented on this part. The technical reviewers were not
instructed to do anything but check that I spelled "sqlite3" as "sqlite3" and
not "sqltie3". They did that, but some deeper insight would have been helpful.

Finally, I noticed the book was up on TPB before it was actually published.
Can we say, "leak"?

So anyway, there are lots of publishers out there that are happy to take 95%
of your income. This is a poor deal in most cases.

(Best part is, there was a second edition of my book that came out not so long
ago. I asked to have my name removed, and I'm glad it was. The new edition is
basically my original text, with occasional mis-grammered boxes that say
things like, "The above advice is wrong." It's like someone published their
superficial notes, and called it a second edition. LOL.)

------
danbmil99
The system works for him, he's got his. Why would someone who's won the old-
boy-network lottery want to tear down that edifice?

------
edanm
My summary: Publishers do a lot of things authors need. They're like companies
that "hire" programmers in a way - they give programmers a more direct route
from "writing code" to "making money". Sure, some programmers could go and
create a startup, but the vast majority prefer working for someone else.

In a similar way, publishers provide authors with a few important things:

* Editors

* Fact-checkers

* Marketing

* A filter for the public against bad books

* Legal help and protection

* Most importantly, _an advance_. This means guaranteed money for the author, regardless of the book being a success. Publishers can afford this by "funding" lots of authors. Without this, a lot of authors could probably never keep working long enough to make a decent living.

My biggest takeaway is that there are a lot of problems going from the old
world of publishers, to the perhaps-inevitable future. Startups which attack
any of the things above which publishers provide authors, but do so in an
innovative way, could become huge and successful, and help define the future.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
It's suddenly struck me how important an advance is. It seems that there's
lots of money to be made by giving people who aren't good with money a small
slice of future income right now, see the music industry, publishing and
payday loans.

That last one just strips away all the pretence and is a usually fairly bad
deal loan. The others build up a whole industry to justify the money they
take.

Maybe there's a future in VC for authors/musicians?

------
acabal
My startup is a site for aspiring writers so I get to hear different sides of
this argument a lot. I, for one, am completely certain that e-books and self-
publishing will not sound the death-knell of big publishing houses. Once the
publishers get used to the concept of digital, it'll just be another avenue of
sales for them.

I say this for most of the reasons Paul lists in this article, but the big one
is this: Publishers act as gatekeepers to quality. If anyone with a pulse can
publish an e-book and sell it online, it's impossible to tell if the book is
good. The only way to find out is to read it, which to many is a huge time
commitment. If you're going to commit a few days of your time to something
that you hope will entertain or enlighten you, you sure as hell don't want to
waste that time on a sub-par book. Buying a book from an established publisher
guarantees that _at least_ an objective third party has read this book and
thinks it's worth other people's time, and that same third party has edited
the book to ensure a certain level of quality in the writing, grammar, and
spelling.

On the other hand, spending $19.99 on a PDF file called "Eternal Moonlight:
The Vampire Chronicles" that you downloaded from a random guy's blog has no
guarantee that anybody but his mom signed off on it. Does anyone want to waste
a weekend reading that when they could read something that at least a small
committee (the publisher) has decided is worth your time and money?

Finally, the marketing and legal aspect is huge as well. I interact with many
authors every day. They don't understand that writing the book is only half
the battle. As with any business venture, _marketing_ is just as, if not more
important than, the act of writing. You can write The Great American Novel but
it'll die in a landfill if nobody knows they should read it. Writers assume
that if they write something truly incredible that cherubs will descend from
the heavens and magically lift their book into the hands of the slobbering
masses without any effort on the author's part. This, of course, is a fantasy,
and publishers provide the incredibly important marketing muscle to promote a
great book to an already media-saturated public.

So, in short, having spent the last few years surrounded by authors,
publishers, and web 2.0 entrepreneurs, I'm totally confident in agreeing with
this article because I've been making these exact same points for a while now
myself :)

~~~
wccrawford
I think your 'a committee approved this book' bit is completely wrong. I have
seen a TON of really, really bad books that got published through large
publishers. I've also ready really, really good books that got rejected for
them.

Publishers don't publish what they think is good. They publish what they think
will -sell-. It's quite a bit different.

------
wyclif
I wish the author had divided the market into fiction and non-fiction for
purposes of comparison. I don't have numbers, but I suspect non-fiction titles
will be relegated to dead tree pulp in far greater numbers than fiction. I
think Amazon eBook sales figures reflect this.

------
postfuturist
Publishers are damn thieves, at least as far as educational textbooks go. A
decent portion of a student's budget is in books. It's a waste of money and
tree pulp. Full disclosure: I teach a programming course or two at a local
university.

