About Independent Publishing

So now that the Belmont Stakes is history, I can turn my attention, such as it is, to the interesting moment we are experiencing in the world of writing and publishing.  Just five or six years ago I was noting and dreading the way that the publishing industry, in the grip of multinational capitalism  was becoming a Soviet style institution, with fewer and fewer companies amassing greater and greater power.  Ever burgeoning advances might seem like good news for writers, but the opposite is actually the case.  As advances grew, fewer and fewer writers got them.   Writers, agents, editors, etc. had been pissing and moaning and doing absolutely nothing about this for years.  My mentors, Norman Zollinger and Tony Hillerman were dead and I missed their wise guidance. I began to avoid conversations with other writers because the chatter created a dampening effect on my natural Sponge Bob type enthusiasm.

Distractions came up.  My parents (now dead) went into a deep decline and needed my help and it was easy to ignore the whole miserable business that dealing with the publishing industry had become.   Recently, when I looked up again and began to think that I ought to do something to get back in the game, I found out that much had changed.  Responding to the urgings of friend and fellow writer Steve Brewer, I decided to get my rather scanty backlist into e-book form and to consider independent publishing as a legitimate direction.  And I have acted.  I have a new book, BUTTERFLY KISSES, that I’ve published independently through CreateSpace and (so far) Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.  And I’ve got OSTRICH, my best selling novel  ever, into e-book form.

This is quite a different endeavor from the conventional approach to publishing that I was used to.  In most ways, this is great.  I am spared the indignities of the ambivalence and hand-wringing of agents and editors.  I stand to make much more money per book sold than I make via my contracts with publishers.  I no longer have to deal with the feeling of impotent frustration when I find that just when there is a consumer buzz about a particular book, the publisher has not managed to get them into the stores.  I no longer have to wonder whether a given publisher is doing anything to support my book.

But there are drawbacks.  If I want any editorial help on a particular book, I have to arrange it myself.  If I want reviewers to review the book, I have to convince them to review it or resort to the poorly disguised sham of paying for reviews.  Worst of all, in the chaos of the e-publishing revolution, I have to set my poor book afloat on what Steve Brewer calls “an ocean of shit.”  As the world now stands, there is no vetting of independently published books, whether they are e-books or print-on-demand paperbacks.  No institution has yet evolved to offer the reader, the book buyer, guidance in the matter of recognizing the good books that are swimming with the seemingly endless word vomit that people are able to so easily disgorge into the market.  One thing about conventional publishing is that the consumer knows if he or she buys a book from Viking or Little Brown, etc., he or she can do so with the security of knowing that the writing is competent.  The major publishers have all published some really terrible books, but even their worst books, sentence by sentence, are competent. This is by no means the case with books that people publish independently.  At this point, about all that one can do, as the writer/publisher of a given book is to find ways to let people know that your book is worth reading and keep it cheap enough that newbies will be willing to take a chance on it.  It’s all about building an audience.

Getting people to review the book on Goodreads and Amazon is one way to do this and through Amazon, the writer has the option of creating promotions that allow people to download one’s e-book for free.  The idea is that people will then read the book and if it is any good, they will tell their friends, write consumer reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, etc. As word spreads, more people will read and like the book and recommend it, etc.  I am uncertain as to how well this works.  I have done such a promotion. 110 people downloaded my book and to date one person has reviewed it.  And this person’s review is based on the paperback edition, not the e-book that people were able to get for free.  And then there are readings, signings, launch events, etc.  I sometimes wonder if I need to be there and present at every sale,  providing needed support for people working up the confidence to buy the book and read far enough into it to either continue or live with the bad feeling of having wasted four dollars or ten dollars or twelve dollars on a lousy book.  Should I be there to say, “Yo , bro, so you never pissed away ten bucks before?”

Something will develop.  There is a niche in the world for a company that can figure out a way to dredge the ocean of independently published books, locate the good ones, and inform readers as to the results.  Probably someone is coming up with ways to do this at this very moment.  Until then, all I can do is ask my readers to tell their friends, review the book(s) on Amazon, Goodreads, etc., share their responses on social media, get their salon groups to take up the book, etc.

I am feeling my way through this.  It is gratifying to be taking more responsibility for creating a cadre of readers, a following.  This is probably going to be a slow process, but I don’t need to have hundreds of thousands of readers and I don’t plan to abandon conventional publishing.  When I have a new book, I will get an agent and attempt to peddle it to the big or the boutique presses depending on what it is. If that doesn’t work out, I will take the independent route, and work on nurturing a readership. BUTTERFLY KISSES ran into some very bad luck in its run at the major publishers.  I had an offer to publish from a major company but the editor who made the offer got fired before I had a contract.  At this point, I figure that it’s better to have the book around and available to people rather than taking up hard drive space.  It’s a very entertaining read and what do I have to lose by making it available.