And don't forget when you're costing out to include stationery/postage costs for books sent to wholesalers/booksellers, as they won't expect to pay for those. Amazon are generous in the postage they add for books they don't stock - £2.75 for UK items.

There's an excellent article on SP by our very own Richard Brown here.

And Emma, grab that copy of The Bookseller and get out there...

Nell.

Yes, go for it, Emma - people need to know about your book before they can read it!

It's not impossible to do - if we SPers can do it, so can you. You have nothing to lose but your reading public!

)

A
xxx

Thanks for the encouragement, Nell and Anne.

Actually, with a trade dinner (the team from Headline meets the team from Ottakars, Tommy Docherty and briefly Nigel Havers also attended along with eight other mere mortals like me) behind me, I'm realising that booksellers actually want to hear from authors, that I'm not the humble supplicant that all those years trying have made me feel. If I can go into a bookshop feeling that they'll be pleased that I've bothered, not fed up that I'm interrupting their business, it becomes a bit easier to contemplate.

Emma

Definitely! That's the spirit!

A
xxx

that I'm not the humble supplicant that all those years trying have made me feel.

As a newcomer to the world of writing, and seeing things very much as an outsider -though with some experience of other creative industries- I have been struck by the sheer passivity of writers, their dogged, alomost proud acceptance of certain (unchallenged) business 'realities', and a culture of kow-towing in relation to a supposedly insuperable status quo... It's been like walking into a town where everyone's a Stepford Wife accepting that they simply must work harder, longer, more pleasingly, and accept less power and status, and all simply because that's what the big clever men tell us, for who are we, mere [i[creative artists to challenge them??? I mean who has ever told writers about these 'realities' except the agents and publishers themselves. Any one of us ever take a olookm at the books? I mean, doh! That such a collection of intelligent, perceptive people as writers generally are seems unable to see the publishing set-up for what it is i.e. highly exploitative of and disempowering of writers, seems bizarre to me. I find it quite sickening the way a writer is signed up and immediately required and pressurised to produce another and then another and another work in quick succession, like a horse put to the plough, because 'that's how the system works', and how poorly renumerated writers are, what an absurdly tiny proportion of a book's sale they accept as their due when you consider the disproportionate amount of work and skill they have contributed (because no matter what people say in the publisher's defence about marketing and networking, by far the most effective marketing tool (from this reader's point of view) of a competent writer are the books themselves). Forget Stepford Wives, it's more like Animal Farm with the clever, oh so clever, pigs taking us all for a ride. Long live self-publishing, it seems a fine way forward, especially with the burgeoning internet and POD outlets. I would like to see editors and writers rewarded, and indeed it seems to me that editors are the key to this, people with a sharp eye, taste, perpicacity, market sense and a guiding role who can take up a stellar position alongside the writer in the hieracrchy of people who contribute towards the creation creates an enjoyable, saleable book...

So speaks an ignoramus with his admittedly possibly erroneous first impressions of this world. Does it ring any bells for anyone?

Pete

<Added>

Apologies for typos.

Hear hear!

I liken it to third world workers churning out their crafts for 10p a time, only for it to be sold in a chic London street for hundreds of pounds, and the wholesaler defending the exploitation by quoting distribution costs.

There should be Fairtrade for writers. WE produce the goods. WE put in months, sometimes years, of work to create a manuscript. Why the hell do we then allow some middle person to take the majority of the returns and feed us morsels of leftovers once or twice a year when it suits them?

Crikey, Pete, you seem to have hit a tender spot there!

Dee

Yes, yes and yes. I agree entirely with Pete and Dee. The whole thing is utterly ridiculous. We really do need to take back some of the power ourselves. A fairtrade deal for writers is a fantastic idea, and this is surely why we need to set up more writers' co-operatives and make the system work for us.

Power to the Writers, indeed!! - to paraphrase Wolfie Smith (does anyone remember him?)

A
xxx

Pete, I agree that in some ways the publishing world is skewed against the writer, but I'm not sure what one can do about it. I want people to read TMOL, and until I can find a sure-fire way of selling as many copies as Headline intend to, (not to mention translation rights, foreign sales, US rights...) without taking up my entire writing time, I shan't be self-publishing.

A few things occur to me:

I was a humble supplicant for so long because my writing wasn't good enough. When it was, I got a deal. It's only the speed and scale of the reversal which is disconcerting me at the moment.

I don't think writers are necessarily exploited. We are producers, and we offer our work to the market, which buys or doesn't buy it according to economic reality as they see it. No one owes us a living; we choose to do this. I agree that it's a shame when terrific writers don't sell well (or at all), or we suspect that individual editors could be more daring, (though they do all comb the slush pile in the hope of finding the next Longitude or Curious Incident) but 'twas ever thus in the arts. Societies have always imposed implicit or explicit conditions on artists before they'll support them. For us it's the condition of writing something that a publisher things won't lose them money. (You'd be suprised how little money they make on most of their books, but they still publish them). Other societies do it differently: Haydn had to wear a uniform as a servant of the Esterhasy court, and Shakespeare and his men had their theatre forcibly closed every time the Plague got going, and wore the badge of the Lord Chamberlain so as not to be arrested as vagrants, so I think on the whole things have improved. These days there are such things as Arts Council grants, for both writers and publishers, which are the equivalent of such patronage with rather fewer strings attached. Anyone who doesn't think things have in some ways got better could do worse than read Gissing's New Grub Street, and also study the annals of the Society of Authors.

I've got a 2 year deadline for the next novel, which I negotiated, and am happy with, and extensions are perfectly possible. And after that novel it's up to me. No one's 'insisting' on me writing another one, they're just (I hope) offering me money if I do, and I will make a judgement based on their - and my - economic realities when that day comes.

It's the publisher who takes the economic risk, and their first duty is to stay in business. I don't think the standard royalty rates are unreasonable. If you want to blame anyone, blame the 'high discount' buyers, who want to offer the £16.99 books for £4.99 and the 3-for-2s that some WWers are so pleased to buy, which feeds back to miserable returns for publisher and author. It's Fair Trade Week, dare I say it, and by extension, anyone who wants decent royalties for authors should buy one less bottle of wine a week, and put the money towards a buying a full-price book or four in an independent bookseller.

Of course the books themselves are an effective marketing tool, but you have to get people to open them. It's the nature of a book that it's harder to convey its content than it is, say, to convey that of a film. That's where authors promoting their work comes in. I don't think I have a right to expect people to read my work; it's a perfectly reasonable for them to ask me to explain why they should.

Emma

<Added>

Dee and Anne nipped in while I was still answering Pete's post. Fair Trade for writers does sound good, doesn't it!

Emma, I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that you are lucky in your deal with Headline, because you are clearly an accomplished writer and you’ve earned the right to be published. It isn’t luck, it’s down to years of hard work on your part.

However, what I’m seeing in the publishing world, is the big guns spending the majority of their budgets on people like Charlotte Church and Wayne Rooney. They are not writers, and yet they are handed massive contracts to put their names on the front cover of books someone else will write.

I know I'm not alone in being told by a mainstream publisher that they would love to sign me up but they don’t have the budget to promote a new writer. For that, read: for a new writer who is not a celeb. In other words, they have the money but they're not willing to take a risk when they have a dead cert as an alternative. I've been banging on their doors for years now and, quite frankly, I'm not sure I want to get inside any more.

Dee

Anne, (and anyone else following this thread) what would be the chances of some of us, spread across the country as we are, working together to successfully create an outlet for SP books?

Dee

the big guns spending the majority of their budgets on people like Charlotte Church and Wayne Rooney

I know, it's maddening, but in some ways (see the thread in the Lounge) I'm less annoyed by this. If someone wants to read that information, there's nothing wrong with putting it in a palatable form, which CC and WR's own writing might not be. I feel it's a bit like objecting to a publisher spending lots of money on the next Collins DIY guide; it's something that people want, and it needs to be properly done. It's feeble novels by people with attractive names/looks/relationship with the MD that I mind about. (Though on the name thing, I fear I'm not entirely innocent, but you do what you must).

But it's worth remembering that publishers do these big deals because they want to make money. In theory, that ought to mean more money for the likes of us, not less.

I think we need a central marketing/clearing house so that people know where to go for SP novels, and someone is in charge of group promotions. Did I say like Spar for independent grocers, earlier? That kind of thing.

Emma

<Added>

I know people felt that a WW Press would be divisive and I agree, in that some kind of selecting would be going on rather than the all-welcome spirit we have at the moment. But would a link to a page of 'Work self-published by WW Members' work? Maybe having an ISBN would be the simplest criterion. It would give a bit of exposure in a place full of likely buyers.

Emma

I appreciate the range of your answer. But without meaning to be rude (honestly) I hear in your arguments the passionate believer in the status quo, the a,b,and c responses of a conservative mind intent on defending a system which has many, many wonderful aspects to it but which is nonetheless faulted at certain key points. I am the initiate here (if that), as well as the apostate and so I feel myself on shaky ground talking with not as much information as I would like. I suspect the difference between our positions would need more space to get argued out than is available here. But I stand by my newcomer's impressions.

That somebody working, for example, at your own level of experience and expertise should not expect to make a living from what they do just seems to me astonishing.

It's like everyone's wearing blinkers and just can't bear to take them off.


Pete

I can accept not making a living from writing. Most writers don’t. What I do object to is wanting to put my writing out in the public forum, and being prevented by one individual who doesn’t feel like reading it, or big companies who put their money on a safe bet rather than take a risk on someone new.

Dee

But would a link to a page of 'Work self-published by WW Members' work?

Emma,

That sounds like a sort of apartheid of publishing. Why mention self-published? What possible revelance could it have on such a page? Why not simply Work Published by WW Members? We used to have an option of flagging up any published work on each piece of work uploaded to WW with a link to the Amazon info, but I always felt that it was somewhat in-your-face and never used it. On a site where the majority of members haven't had a book published (by whatever means), and are doing their damndest to improve their writing and chances of doing so there could be a distinct danger of promotion overload. We don't come here to buy books so much as to write them.

Dee mentioned something that had never occurred to me before - the fact that readers don't give a damn who published the book they've picked up. So then, it's simply (or not so simply) a matter of getting books on shelves or into readers' hands. I think there's something well worth following up in that thought.

Re. a marketing/distribution co-operative, I believe some of the better self-publishing firms claim to offer this as part of the publishing package, but they tend to be expensive, and it's difficult to ascertain exactly how much they do. Pen Press is one I looked at when I was considering that route, but in the end decided I wanted to go it alone.

Nell.

Nell, since promotion seems to be one of the less easy parts of the self-publishing process, I was simply thinking of WW as a good place to help make SP books visible. I agree that if we flagged everything and anything published, then there is a danger of overload (as well as definition). Maybe we just need to start a thread about it that would be picked up by a search, as we did listing members' websites.

It's certainly true that readers don't notice who publishes a book (with the possible exception of the old stripy Penguins). All the endless talk about lists and imprints within the trade is purely about trying to transmit what kind of book it is to the trade itself. It's the getting the books into the hands of readers that's the difficult bit, because you've got to tell them the book exists somehow, either by (traditional route) persuading the bookshops to stock it, or (innovative route) by getting directly to readers themselves.

It can be done. Betsy Lerner's The Wood for the Trees talks about how an African-American writer, fed up with being told by the trade that African-Americans did't buy books about African-Americans living/loving/working, self-published, loaded up his (I think it was a he) station wagon, and went out to barbers and coffee bars and clubs: places where his customers actually were. And bingo - he did really well. Several titles in he was taken up by a major publisher, and is credited with single-handedly 'discovering' a whole new market.

Though I have to say (thinking of Pete's post) that if all authors had to do that, it would be if anything more onerous than what publishing companies ask of them by way of promotion.

Pete, I'd like to make a living, I'm just not banking on going on doing so from just writing books, because I'm determined to write the books I want to write. I could do it if I wrote 6 Mills and Boons a year, but I don't want to. Realistically, I need other strings to my bow.

I see what you're saying and I do realise that there's nothing absolutely inevitable about the publishing industry we have. But I'm a realist, operating within the status quo, and can't help seeing how the sums add up within the trade. Any system will continue to grind along until something happens to change enough conditions at once, and then system starts to work in a different way. For myself, I can't see which conditions need to change, and which are most easily changed (not necessarily the same thing). If anyone can, I hope they will. I'm not sure just urging individuals in the trade to try harder is enough, any more than it was enough for poor Boxer in Animal Farm to work himself to death.

Emma