Earlier this month, I told you about a scam called "Beneaththecover.com," which purports to offer authors inside news and expert advice about the publishing industry when, in fact, it’s just a front for a bunch of vanity press and book promotion hucksters selling their wares. This point was driven home the other day when one of their so-called "experts," vanity press publisher Yvonne DiVita, offered this outrageous lie in a post she had the chutzpah to title "POD Myths Dispelled – Get The Scoop Here":
In today’s
emerging digital world, if you truly want to attract that big name
publisher, use a professional POD firm to self-publish because the big
name publishers are watching.
The best way to attract a publisher is to write a good book, not blow thousands of dollars having it printed in POD form by a vanity press. If anything, printing your book in POD is more likely to prevent a publisher from taking you or the book seriously.
DiVita is one of a pack of POD vanity press hucksters who prey on the gullibility, desperation, and ignorance of aspiring authors. She argues that vanity presses aren’t merely printers but real publishers because they pay more attention to their authors than real publishers do. What she neglects to mention is that vanity presses like hers make the vast majority of their money off their authors, not from booksales, and that all that attention they slather on their clients (not authors, ladies and gentlemen, clients) is to convince them to spend even more on their worthless services. She writes:
IF authors don’t sell enough books with their publisher, POD
or otherwise, the author isn’t trying hard enough. I’ve worked with
traditional publishers, and they require an extensive marketing plan
from authors before they will consider publication. And research shows
that books published by traditional publishers sell around 150-300, on
average.
That’s right, blame the author for the fact that their POD vanity press books aren’t sold in stores and are unlikely to sell to anyone but the client… and then back it up with pointless "facts."
I’ve had over two dozen books published by real publishers. No editor has ever asked me for an "extensive marketing plan" before considering my books.I’ve also asked a few published friends…and they have never been asked for marketing plans, either. But they are novelists, and perhaps they would be asked for one if they wrote non-fiction. So let’s give DiVita the benefit of the doubt and say publishers want marketing plans along with non-fiction book proposals. To which I say… So what? How is that a persuasive argument for going to vanity-press instead of a real publisher? You’ll need a marketing plan either way. The key difference is that a real publisher will pay you and a vanity press will ask for your credit card number.
I’ve scoured the web and I can’t find any "research" that backs up her outrageous claim that most books published by genuine publishers sell only 150-300 copies.
The closet statistic I could find to her numbers was a 2004 Bookscan study that tracked sales of 1.2 million books sold that year. According to their figures, the average book of any kind published in 2004 sold 500 copies. The study noted that only 25,000 titles sold more than 5,000 copies each,
500 sold more than 100,000 copies and only ten sold more than a million
copies. But the figures are controversial, because the sales were not broken down by genre, like fiction or non-fiction, nor did they differentiate between titles from large
publishers or small ones, traditional publishers or vanity presses.
But lets pretend her figures are right. How is that an argument for going to a vanity press? Authors published by real publishers whose books only sold 500 copies in 2004 were still paid to be published. They earned money, though not as much as they’d hoped.
By comparison, most vanity press authors will lose money because they paid to be published. But don’t take my word for it, let’s look at the 2004 sales figures from iUniverse, the biggest name in self-publishing:
18,108: Total number of titles
published792,814: Number of copies
printed14: Number of titles
sold through B&N’s bricks-and-mortar stores (nationally)83: Number of titles that sold at least 500
copies
Out of 18,000 titles and nearly 800,000 copies printed, only 83 authors sold more than 500 copies. Good God. Think of all the money that authors lost …and how much iUniverse made. That’s the business that DiVita is in…and it’s a profitable one. For the printer, not the author.
So what is the truth about POD self-publishing companies? It’s obvious. Vanity presses are in the "author services business", not the publishing business which, in a rare bit of candor, even DiVita concedes on her vanity press website:
Windsor Media Enterprises specializes in author services. We offer idea development, manuscript critiquing, editing, proofreading, formatting and cover design, for new and existing authors.
And for that, they charge you a price and that’s how they make their money. That is their business. And if your book, by some miracle, manages to sell a few copies, they make a little more.
A vanity press will tell you any lie they can to convince you that they are real publishers (when they are merely selling editing and printing services), that self-publishing is the route most successful authors take (it’s not), and that you have as much of a chance to sell books with them as you do going with a traditional publisher (you don’t).
Is Yvonne DiVita really someone qualified to give writers sound advice? Or is she someone with a clear conflict-of-interest hoping to coerce naive authors into buying her product? The answer is obvious, and it came right from the founders of Beneaththecover.com when they tried to solicit my brother Tod into being one of their experts:
Beneath the Cover is a cooperative venture for building marketing platforms of everyone involved.
That’s what should be written on the masthead of their home page, not "Where book industry professionals who know almost everything go to discuss news, insights, and evolving industry issues." And it should be stated in big print on each and every piece of "advice" that they give.
Bookscan covers about 70 percent of the book market. It obtains sales results from retailers such as WalMart and Costco and Barnes and Noble, but does not cover sales made through distributors such as Anderson News and the Levy Company, which stock the grocery and drug store and airport racks. That means most mass-market sales are not recorded by BookScan. If commercial publishers in New york sold only 150 to 300 copies on the average, they would be out of business. To put matters in perspective, one of my mass market titles, Badlands, sold over 80,000 copies net.
“DiVita is one of a pack of POD vanity press hucksters who prey on the gullibility, desperation, and ignorance of aspiring authors.”
Mr. Goldberg, three things:
1. Would you slam DiVita to her face? One of the good rules of conduct in blogging is to write what you would say to someone’s face.
2. I’m not gullible, desperate or ignorant – and I may “self-publish” more than one book this year. Why? Marketing. And, thanks to the Web World, I don’t have to jump through traditional publishing hoops to get my work out there.
3. Be careful in quoting snips from someone’s blog post. Taking things out of context and then slamming them is misleading, to say the least.
As Yvonne (who – yes – is a friend of mine) noted in her post, “I will be the first person to admit that not all POD publishers are created equal. Some are more reputable than others. Some offer more services than others. Some call themselves publishers when they are really just printers. And some go above and beyond in service to their authors. So, please, don’t think we all use “duct tape and coat hanger wire” to create your book. We don’t.”
Just as there is a huge difference in authors and their books (Example: Michael Cunningham and The Hours versus writing television series adaptations) so there are differences in POD. Just as you label Yvonne a “huckster” – in reviewing your credits, I could label you a “hack.”
Thanks again, Lee, for this well-researched even deeper discussion of some statements of certain vanity press groups that seem to be quite misleading for the unwary authors who pay to have their books published. If 18,000 books were published by iUniverse in 2004, and if they netted $1,000 per book, then they earned over $18 million dollars. Meanwhile how much did the authors earn? No where near that amount.
But two things are bothering me. First, suppose a vanity press group did not mislead an author? Suppose all the statistics were shown upfront, all the costs, all the risks. In other words, no scam was involved. In such a case, can self-publishing or POD work for a particular writer? If you offered your own books as ebooks, paid for on-line by credit card, and downloaded to the client’s laptop, and let’s say you did very well with sales of !00,000 — is this not a legit use of the technology? And is it not better than making the reader go to a bookstore and loading up on 20 physical books when they could be on a hard drive? I don’t know the answers. These are just questions I’m turning around in my mind.
Secondly, it just seems there’s something not quite right with the publishing world. It’s hard to get an agent, if not impossible. There seems to be an awful lot of “commercial” books published that really aren’t of very high quality. And the average person can’t do anything about it. Therefore, could these be some of the reasons for the increasing use of the vanity press? Could the Publishing World provide the same services and run it all as an ebook download for unestablished writers? (Because maybe the Publishing World is not meeting the aspirations of an awful lot of writers who are turning to the vanity press.)
Anyway, your exposee performs a real public service. It could emailed to Members of Congress to get their take on it. Me? I’m still recovering from the freezing rain we had yesterday. Your life was in danger if you just took one step forward.
Hmm, while there are certainly POD companies that do take advantage of inexperienced authors are you saying that there are no services that Yvonne offers that are of value to a new author? That all authors show up on publishers doorsteps with their precious “first book” that is in perfect shape and ready-for-publication?
Yvonne believes (and many other people do too) that the internet will fundamentally change how books, music and other media are published, purchased and consumed. If you don’t believe this then you’re hiding under a rock.
I think you’re underestimating the impact that POD will have in the next few years. It’s a serious threat to both books-and-mortar atores, and to publishers in general – and they’ll fight it tooth and nail no doubt. Publishers, like music producers, have had a lock on what the public sees and buys because they control the advertising and marketing dollars and dissemination of the printed book as part of their stranglehold on authors. Do you believe that in your relationship with your publisher they are NOT extracting a huge amount of money from you to pay for those marketing, production and distribution costs? They don’t demand it up front – they get it in the back end by paying you a pittance for each book they sell.
In the music world it’s been easily shown that their equivalent of “print on demand” which is “download the mp3” CAN make an individual artist money – when they do a good job of promoting and selling their work. There are tons of music artists out there now who make all thier money through downloads. They don’t need a music producer to “promote them” or their talents. And guess what – if they get famous enough that they do – well the producers are all clamoring for them to get contracts.
Why is POD any different? In the old days of real printing presses there was signficant setup costs to POD and they demanded you print and pay for a certain number of stocked books to make the cost of setup profitable for the. No longer so for POD – you can have just one book printed, or none until someone buys, and for the most part the cost to the provider is the same. POD <> Vanity press.
Are there still POD vanity presses out there that take advantage of authors – almost certainly. But lumping Yvonne in without knowing her and speaking with her authors is perhaps a bit of vitriolic misassignment of blame on your part.
You repeately point out in YOUR POST that Yvonne is straight up and unapologetic about how she makes her money – and that she doesn’t pull punches or hide her goals. You then go on to describe her as a huckster. Hucksters lie. In my experience with Yvonne – she doesn’t. Her points may certainly be argued but attacking her professional credibility and her ethics is not justified by the quotes you took.
I’d suggest that you owe Yvonne personally an apology, and that you consider responding in the future with a more reasoned approach backed by facts, and leave out the personal attacks.
No offence, but it’s odd that you question her “facts” while using only your subjective experience as a basis for your “facts”.
Having had 2 books published by mainstream publishers (total of more than 100,000 copies sold worldwide, thanks), I’m biased towards them. Having seen dozes of friends land book contracts with “real” publishers (including Penguin, McGraw-Hill and O’Reilly) due directly to their POD (new term to me) books to me means that perhaps there’s some truth.
Obviously Yvonne is espousing her viewpoint. She’s a POD publisher and author and believes in it. She does it *because* she believes in it. In the same way, you’ve obviously considered POD books, but decided that mainstream publishing is the way you’d do your future books.
Fine.
But that doesn’t make POD, or Yvonne, an idiot, liar, charlatan, etc. She’s just someone trying to make the magic happen.
Anyways, it’s Family Day here in Canada, and this vitriol isn’t making me any smarter.
Thank you for continuing to blow the whistle on these phony “publishers.” I’m about ready to cancel my subscription to WRITER’S DIGEST. I started counting the big colored ads in there for vanity and subsidy presses, and it makes me angry that they are helping their readers get duped.
Lee – While I can’t tell what your intentions are with this post, it’s clear you’ve read only the headlines of Windsor Media and not dug deep. While I have not published with them, I have spent plenty of time talking to Yvonne and her team about one day partnering up to create a book I can be proud of. Some of the services WME offers includes blog coaching, editing, coaching, marketing help, connections to those who might be interested in your work, and much more. It’s like getting a designer, an editor, a book coach, a blog coach, a PR firm, AND a book published, all in one.
I would agree that many of the firms like an iUniverse or an AuthorHouse may not be out for the best interests of the authors, but to lump WME in with this grouping is silly at best, ridiculous at worst.
Additionally, the non-fiction market is VERY different from the fiction market. If you don’t have a platform, you’re not getting published with a traditional publisher. Your platform gives the traditional house the comfort that you have a chance to sell enough books to earn your advance back. With such a glut of business books, many cost the publishers money, and they don’t invest as much as they could on a marketing plan. Sure, 5 years down the road, when their backlist sells 10 copies of your book to your high school class president for giveaways at your reunion, you’ll get your $5 in royalties.
Last point: in a traditional publishing house, the most money you will ever make is because of your advance. If you print on demand, you could potentially sell 500 copies of your book when you’re out speaking at a profit of $3-$7 per book, vice $1 or potentially less per book if you went with the traditional house. Sure, you COULD get more exposure with the big house and sell more books, but how many books at Borders or your local B&N have a print date of 2004 or earlier? I’d guess few, if any.
If the bone you have to pick is with the POD (focusing on the PRINTING of your book), please put your attention there. You make some great points, but by personally attacking and lumping Yvonne DiVita and the team at WME in with the POD houses, you’ve lost any credibility you might otherwise have had with me, and no doubt with many others who would otherwise enjoy your work.
Lee, your diatribe would have a lot more credibility if it were backed up with accurate information. Sadly, it’s not. It would have been had you taken a minute, picked up a phone, and spoken to Yvonne. Instead, you chose to make assumptions and present them as fact.
I have written five books, all published with legitimate publishers. (For the record, these are Ziff-David Press, AMACOM, Kaplan Publishing, and McGraw-Hill. My next book will be published by Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint.) Why do I mention this? Because for my current book and my last one, Yvonne has been my agent. That’s right, Lee; she represents authors who publish with “real” publishers. I’m not sure how she can have that conflict of interest you allege when she’s making money off of genuine advances and royalties.
Your inaccuracies don’t end there, however. You write fiction, which means you are knowledgable about the FICTION publishing world. I write business books and every single proposal I have submitted was required by the publisher to include a marketing plan. Maybe that’s not a requirement for novels. It most certainly is for non-fiction.
Also, I know many, many non-fiction authors who pay publicists to help move their books. Every agent I have had has recommended this based on the certain knowledge that if you’re not Tom Peters or Malcolm Gladwell, the publisher will do little to publicize your book; you’re filling out a catalog and marketing is up to you. That’s a fact in the business book world. Knowing the fiction publishing business does not, evidently, make you an expert on the publishing business at large.
Finally, I would point out that the world of publishing is changing dramatically, regardless of how mired you are in the past. Take a look at Blurb.com and Lulu.com, where people are self-publishing — and they can include their books in the bookstore, where some have achieved enviable sales (with solid content to support reader demand) — all without a traditional publisher.
Bottom line, Lee: Yvonne (through Windsor Media) has represented me well with mainstream publishers, ironing out a lot of little issues in the publisher contract. She is fair and honest and did not deserve the attack you leveled against her…something you would have known if you had done an iota of research rather than shooting first and asking questions later….if at all.
Holy cats!
If it walks like a cheating vanity press, talks like a cheating vanity press, and swindles people like a cheating vanity press, it must be–
In reading this entry, I was highly amused with the amount of similarities Mr. Goldberg has shown between Beneaththecover (Ms. DiVita) and the tripe PublishAmerica baits the unsuspecting aspiring writer with.
Even in my experience publishing short stories, I’ve gotten paid for that work, not the other way around.
Lee Drake,
If Yvonne was “straight up” and “unapologetic about how she makes money” she wouldn’t write bullshit like this — “In today’s emerging digital world, if you truly want to attract that big name publisher, use a professional POD firm to self-publish because the big name publishers are watching.” And if she was straight up she wouldn’t dare call herself a publisher because she absolutely is not.
Lee you missed this gem from Yvonne in an earlier blog of hers entitled “Yes, Virginia, Self-Publishing is a Respectable Way to Go” —
“Like traditional publishers, we expect author participation in sales and marketing, but, unlike traditional publishers, we don’t desert our authors and expect them to “go it alone,” which we’ve seen happen again and again with big publishing houses.
So, Virginia, I understand your confusion and reluctance. Self-publishing is a risk, but, in the end, it’s a risk that most POD (Print On Demand) firms will partner with you on, and which you can manage far better than the risk of sending off the final result of your sweat and tears to a publishing house that has already moved on, once they have accepted your work.”
You are so right Lee– all of her advice seems aimed at convincing people that the best thing they can do for their career is to write her a check.
Like you said, when an author goes with a real publisher, the risk isn’t with the author IT IS WITH THE PUBLISHER. When an author goes with a real publisher, the author GETS PAID UPFRONT. When an author goes with a real publisher, he gets all the editing services Yvonne’s sells FOR FREE. When an author goes with a real publisher, the publisher doesn’t expect them to go it alone, they have a sales force putting the book in stores nationwide.
I am not sure why you keep fighting these print-on-demand vanity presses, Lee. As far as I am concerned, anybody who gives them their money is an idiot who deserves to have their bank account emptied.
Shel,
You wrote: “for my current book and my last one, Yvonne has been my agent. That’s right, Lee; she represents authors who publish with “real” publishers. I’m not sure how she can have that conflict of interest you allege when she’s making money off of genuine advances and royalties.”
She’s an agent AND runs a vanity press AND sells editing and promotional services? My God, talk about a raging conflict-of-interest. How can you not see that, Shel? It’s shocking. I can’t think of a single reputable, respected agent who also runs a vanity press operation…and I know a lot of agents.
I wonder how many of her clients she steers towards her vanity press… and how many of her authors were her vanity press clients first.
If, for example, she gets paid to publish an author’s books through her vanity press AND also gets a commission acting as the author’s agent when selling the sub-rights to outside parties, then she is double-dipping, which is highly unethical to say the least.
I will agree with you that print-on-demand is a technology that could change publishing. I have nothing against the technology, but I do have a problem with POD vanity presses that try to scam authors by claiming to be genuine publishers.
For the record, Shel, I know a thing or two about non-fiction as well.
My first book, UNSOLD TELEVISION PILOTS, was published when I was 18 years old by McFarland & Co, a very small publisher in Jefferson, NC.
What did they charge me to publish my non-fiction book? Not a penny.
What did *I* risk? Nothing.
What have I earned from the book? I have made well into six-figures in royalties, sub-rights sales, TV options, and writing & producing fees on two network specials (on CBS and ABC) based on the books.
Since then, I have written many non-fiction books and novels. Not once have I ever had to pay a penny to get them into print.
I even have some experience with print-on-demand — iUniverse reprinted my early books UNSOLD TELEVISION PILOTS and MY GUN HAS BULLETS when they fell out-of-print and the rights reverted back to me.
What did it cost me to reprint them through iUniverse? Not a penny.
They were published for FREE through the Authors Guild’s Back-in-Print program or I never would have done it.
Bottom line, you are throwing your money away going to a vanity press. Real publishers pay you, not the other way around. DiVita offers a printing service (and, apparently, agent represention!).
—————
Phil,
You wrote: “Additionally, the non-fiction market is VERY different from the fiction market. If you don’t have a platform, you’re not getting published with a traditional publisher. Your platform gives the traditional house the comfort that you have a chance to sell enough books to earn your advance back.”
I am familiar with the non-fiction market through personal experience with my books, like SUCCESSFUL TELEVISION WRITING.
In my opinion, the ONLY way going the vanity press route makes any financial sense is with a non-fiction title AND an existing platform for selling it.
For instance, if you are a sought-after motivational speaker, who regularly speaks to packed auditoriums, then having a book to sell in the lobby afterwards makes sense. Or if you teach a class and have a regular stream of students who can buy your work as “required text,” then it can be lucrative (I’ve sold hundreds of copies of my traditionally published SUCCESSFUL TELEVISION WRITING at seminars and classes here and abroad). But without such a platform, you are doomed to failure, especially if you go the vanity press route.
So in that regard, the demands of self-publishing and traditional publishing are the same…and hardly an argument for going to a vanity press.
Lee
Phil,
You wrote: “I would agree that many of the firms like an iUniverse or an AuthorHouse may not be out for the best interests of the authors, but to lump WME in with this grouping is silly at best, ridiculous at worst.”
There is no discernible difference between what iUniverse is selling and the services that DiVita is offering, except that she probably charges a hell of a lot more for them.
Lee
Mary,
You wrote:
“1. Would you slam DiVita to her face? One of the good rules of conduct in blogging is to write what you would say to someone’s face.”
Yes, I would. In fact, I posted my comments first on her blog before posting here.
You wrote:
“2. I’m not gullible, desperate or ignorant – and I may “self-publish” more than one book this year. Why? Marketing. And, thanks to the Web World, I don’t have to jump through traditional publishing hoops to get my work out there. ”
That makes no sense at all and it vividly shows your lack of experience and naivete about publishing.
If you are published by a real publisher, you have ALL the same marketing opportunities on the web that you would have going to a POD vanity press. What makes you think you would have *more*?
There are no “hoops” to jump through in traditional publishing “to get your work out there” that you won’t face in the vanity press world. In fact it is far, far HARDER to “get your work out there” when it’s published by a POD vanity press than a traditional publisher. Plus, with a vanity press, YOU have to pay for EVERYTHING, from printing through publicity.
And yes, you’re right, Michael Cunningham is a far better writer than I am. But we share something in common. We didn’t pay publishers, they paid US.
Lee
Their so-called work isn’t out there. That’s the part they refuse to see. A pdf file wating to be printed isn’t published. Even for free it sucks.
Hmm. I’m bewildered by your post, Lee. Publishers’ Weekly recently declared 2008 “the year of the author,” and named Lulu.com, a self-publishing company, as one of the best ways for people to publish. Self-publishing and subsidy publishing are among Publishers’ Weekly 2008 Top Trends — and their list highlights big gains in using print-on-demand technology to target niche audiences.
Industry stats are readily available. Raintoday.com reports that the MEDIAN number of copies sold by a first-time author penned book is 5,000 (12,000 if you use a book agent), and the average author royalty if you sign with a big publishing house is $1 a book. Do the math. Woo-hoo. Don’t expect to get rich.
Consider two additional limiting facts:
— Less than 1 percent of manuscripts submitted to trade publishers are accepted.
— Most authors have to hire and self-fund a book agent ANYHOW, especially if they hope to be picked up by a big publishing house.
More importantly, Lee, if you define success in terms of book sales, your thinking is myopic. A book helps build credibility, particularly for small business owners. Self publishing and subsidy publishing is a good alternative to a traditional publishing house. While you may not recover your investment in book sales, as a small business consultant with a book (even a self published or subsidized book) you may substantially increase your billable rates and speaker fees.
On a final note, hiring Yvonne does offer folks one irrefutable advantage. Unlike most book agents or big publishing houses, Yvonne is an expert at online marketing and SEO-PR — and as such she can help folks effectively promote their books to search engines, delivering an captive audience far beyond friends and family.
p.s. amazed you’ve been allowed to blog during the writers’ strike. isn’t that kinda like crossing the picket line? 😉
K.O,
The Publishers Weekly article you refer to, “15 Trends to Watch in 2008,” was actually an opinion piece by Mike Shatzkin, who isn’t on the staff of the magazine (he is founder & CEO of the Idea Logical Company).
It was Shatzkin who called 2008 the year of the author, NOT Publisher’s Weekly, and neither he nor the magazine cited Lulu as the best way for people to self publish.
What he wrote was predictions, and here is what he actually said, verbatim:
“5. Christmas 2008 will be the first one in which sales of customized books, enabled by the Internet and print-on-demand, will become substantial. Make-your-own books have been creeping into public consciousness for a couple of years: Apple has made it easy to produce one-off picture books and author-services sites like lulu.com have enabled author-generated books for some time. Travel book publishers have played with the concept. What is new is that technologies like SharedBook are moving make-your-own and assemble-your-own into consumer areas like food and sports. So far, this is outside the mainstream of the book business, but consumers will buy enough of these to create interest among publishers and online booksellers.”
Hmm. Seems to me you miss-characterized not only who made the comments (Shatzkin rather than PW) but what was actually said. I’m sure it was an accident.
You wrote: “Consider two additional limiting facts:
— Less than 1 percent of manuscripts submitted to trade publishers are accepted.
— Most authors have to hire and self-fund a book agent ANYHOW, especially if they hope to be picked up by a big publishing house.”
I don’t know if that statistic is true, but let’s say that it is. All it means is most of the manuscripts suck and are unsaleable. You would have to PAY someone to publish that slop. And that’s where the vanity presses come it.
And here’s the truth about agents, K.O. Authors don’t “hire and self-fund” agents, at least not reputable ones. Legitimate agents charge authors NOTHING…no reading fees, no submission fees, NOTHING. The agents make their living off commissions on what their authors earn from advances and royalties…THAT is the agent’s incentive to get authors great deals.
You have obviously been drinking the vanity press industry Kool Aid.
As far as the “Raintoday” numbers….from what I can gather, their report is based on interviews with 200 authors of business books, hardly representative of the business as a whole. And while I couldn’t verify your figures, I found this:
(http://www.whillsgroup.com/pages/6932_how_many_copies_do_business_books_sell_.cfm)
//”We asked authors how many copies of their first business books sold. Here is some of the data we found:
4,500 Median number of copies sold of the first book that an author wrote where the author did not use a book publicity or marketing service
5,000 Median number of copies sold of the first book an author wrote where the author did not use a book agent
10,000 Median number of copies sold of the the first book an author wrote where the author did use a book publicity or marketing service
12,000 Median number of copies sold of the first book an author wrote where the author did use a book agent//
Book agents typically don’t represent authors on vanity press deals because there’s no commission in it for them (since vanity presses don’t pay authors, authors pay them) and their clients will get screwed (vanity presses make most of their money from selling services to authors, not from selling books to the public).
You wrote: “Self publishing and subsidy publishing is a good alternative to a traditional publishing house. While you may not recover your investment in book sales, as a small business consultant with a book (even a self published or subsidized book) you may substantially increase your billable rates and speaker fees.”
Anybody with a credit card can have anything printed as a POD book. It’s hardly an accomplishment. It’s no different than going to Kinkos. Your audience or clientele would have to be pretty stupid and unsophisticated to be impressed by that!
PS – The WGA Strike ended last week.
Lee
I’ve just completed revisions to my novel that were requested by a veteran New York editor with life-long experience and an amazing record of successes. He is with a commercial publisher. Like other commercial publishers, mine subjects manuscripts to content editing, line and copyediting, proofing, and skillful packaging. Most of the time they succeed in creating a respectable and marketable product.
Distinguished commercial publishers don’t fear the flood of vanity material; on the contrary, their product’s presence in brick-and-mortar publishing and Internet locales is more secure than ever because they offer quality. Can readers and customers sort it out? You bet.
Vanity presses may churn out tens of thousands of booklike objects, but nearly all of these are just a waste of paper and the public knows it. That is why places like Barnes and Noble do a lively trade, and vanity presses are not a cloud on their horizon.
You must be confused. I have never published with a vanity press. The rights to several of my early books have reverted back to me, allowing me to resell them. Fortunately, the book for which Yvonne served as my agent is in its third printing and doing just fine.
You may call it “conflict of interest.” I call it offering a turnkey operation.
But that’s neither here nor there. You’re still making assumptions (a lot of “ifs” in your comment) and you still haven’t picked up the phone to ascertain the truth. It’s just something in which you clearly have no interest — it’s far more lurid to speculate.
Lee,
You say it cost you nothing to publish. Oh, really? Do you have an agent?
If so, then the publishing of your books is costing you $15,000-$20,000 on the back end for each of those “100s of thousands of dollars” you brag about.
Did you hire a proofreader before submitting your manuscript to an agent or “real” publisher, as almost every professional in the industry advises?
Same for a professional copyeditor?
Depending on how those professionals charged and the length of your manuscript, those would have run you another $1000-$5000.
Oh, and those prep costs are upfront, before you found out whether your work would be published.
If you’re claiming your first book got published by a “real” publisher without an agent and without any of those other prep costs, then congratulations, you won the lottery.
But if you’re running around claiming that every author who writes a worthy book will have that same experience, who’s the one misleading aspiring writers?
We’re very open about the services we provide and the investment that’s involved in our publishing model. With POD, as we practice it, that investment goes into quality editorial, design, and pre-press values, instead of printing thousands of books that may or may not sell.
Have you looked at any of our books? Susan Reid’s wonderful new book, Discovering Your Inner Samurai? God Spare Life (the autobiography of the first black female orthopedic surgeon in the U.S)? Leadership: Thinking, Being, Doing (New and Revised Edition), by Lee Thayer? (Dr. Thayer has multiple previous books published by “real” publishers; he brought Leadership to us after he self-published the first edition at xLibris.)
We also don’t use the xLibris/Lulu model that accepts any book an author offers us. We don’t use a small number of design templates and we don’t charge extra for true editing. Each of our books is unique, customed designed for that author’s message.
In fact, one of the major benefits we offer that you cannot get from your “real” publisher is direct author input and ultimate control over the creative process of going from manuscript to book.
Not that the simpler POD models are inherently wrong (as you seem to think about every approach but yours), but from the beginning we’ve limited ourselves to providing individual service, including full editorial, layout, and design. That commitment, sadly, means not all authors can afford us. But we’re very proud of the work we produce and the people who choose to work with us.
Returning to your back-end costs (yes, one could find a double entendre there), your “real” publishers paid you, what, a 5% royalty on the first book? Maybe, 1/2-1% on the sub-rights?
Sticking to the book royalties, if you’ve made $100,000 on the 5% royalty, you’d have made $600,000 on our 30% royalty system if you’d had the entrepreneurial stomach to self-publish.
That money went to your “real” publisher; that’s what they charge for their publishing services.
So your book actually cost you half a million dollars in lost-opportunity costs. If you don’t think that’s a real cost, check with any competent investor.
(You might say, oh but it wouldn’t have sold so many if you self-published. Your book? What happened to your claim that all you need to do is write a “good” book to have it immediately recognized and snapped up?)
Lee, you really do live in lottery-land if you actually believe that all a writer needs to do is write a good book and a major publisher will offer him/her a deal. You don’t do authors any favor by spreading such nonsense.
And you don’t do yourself any credit with your dogmatic, reactionary attitudes toward new publishing models.
Join us in the new millenium, huh?
Tom
Lee,
I didn’t say “post on her blog” – I said, “say to her face.” Big difference.
As for my being naive – unfortunately, it’s you who is naive about how the Web is changing the world, including for the “real” publishers and authors (as well as movies, music and television.) I can publish right now, today and not have to look for an agent, hope a “legitimate” publisher has interest, then hope I get marketing help and so on. (I’ve read that unless you’re an “A list” author, your chances of being promoted is slim to none. Far less titles are being published every year and small presses are struggling.)
And, I know published authors (not “vanity”) and have been approached by a “real” publisher in the past about writing a book, so I do have some idea of how the process works (or doesn’t.)
Question for you: Where does someone like Seth Godin fit into your world view?
As for POD books and clients being pretty stupid about being impressed – we’re not going for “impressed”(at least those of us who want to deliver value) – we provide something they can use in a readily accessible format. And that product is also marketing tool for us – just like one of your screenplays – even unpublished – may get you another gig.
Certainly there is a ton of misleading crap published by POD companies – but the same could be said of any publisher. If Jackie Collins, Joan Collins and Ann Coulter – to mention just three – can be published by “legitimate” publishers – well there goes that credibility. (I loved the judge’s statement in the lawsuit Joan Collins’ publisher filed against her. “You knew she couldn’t write when you paid her the advance.”)
Lastly, if Yvonne’s clients feel she has delivered value, then she has. Why does she upset you (and several of your commenters here) so much? Really?
Tom,
You wrote: “You say it cost you nothing to publish. Oh, really? Do you have an agent? If so, then the publishing of your books is costing you $15,000-$20,000 on the back end for each of those “100s of thousands of dollars” you brag about.”
I didn’t pay him anything out of my own pocket, Tom. He got a percentage of what I earned from the deals he found and negotiated for me. He got paid by the publisher and so did I. I didn’t pay him.
There is a HUGE difference between giving an agent 15% of the $15,000 advance that a publisher is PAYING ME to publish my book than to PAY a vanity press $5000 up front out of my pocket to publish my book that will probably never earn back my investment.
In the agent scenario, I am MAKING MONEY. In the vanity press scenario, I AM LOSING IT. The agent gets paid when I get paid. I am not taking ANY financial risk.
You wrote: “Did you hire a proofreader before submitting your manuscript to an agent or “real” publisher, as almost every professional in the industry advises? Same for a professional copyeditor?”
You should cancel your subscription to Writers Digest, they are miss-leading you. I have never, ever, hired a proofreader for any of my books. Why? Because I have this newfangled software called Microsoft Word that has a spell-check and a grammar check. And my agent also reads the book. And the publishers, the ones who PAY YOU, also have a team of copyeditors and proofreaders.
My Microsoft Word came bundled with my computer, so what have I spent on proofreaders and copyeditors?
Nothing.
I don’t know of any authors who hire professional proofreaders to read their books before they submit them. Because most writers I know can write.
You wrote: “Depending on how those professionals charged and the length of your manuscript, those would have run you another $1000-$5000.”
Only if you have been suckered by the horde of vultures who prey on the gullibility and desperation of aspiring authors. The vanity press industry thrives on the ignorance and credit card limits of their clientele.
You wrote: “Oh, and those prep costs are upfront, before you found out whether your work would be published.”
The only “prep costs” an author might have are:
+ Time spent writing the book
+ ink cartridges for a printer
+ reams of printer paper to print out drafts
+ travel, book purchases, etc. associated with researching the subject matter of the book.
+ phone bills (calling your agent and/or editor and/or looking for one, a broadband connection for surfing the web)
+ stamps and envelopes (for sending your manuscript to agents and editors)
+ coffee, Diet Coke, and large quantities of junk food (to keep the creativity flowing)
Lee
The Iron First Of Self Published Fucktards
It’s always fun when Lee engages the fucktards (especially when I don’t have the proper time or available words to do so myself this week), particularly the ones who trumpet self-publishing as the wave of the future. They are an
The other important difference, Lee, that Tom doesn’t quite grasp, but which I’m happy to illuminate for him, is that your books are available in stores, whereas if you self-publish your book, it’s available out of the trunk of your car.
Tom wrote: “Returning to your back-end costs (yes, one could find a double entendre there), your “real” publishers paid you, what, a 5% royalty on the first book? Maybe, 1/2-1% on the sub-rights?”
I got 12% royalty on my first book and split the sub-rights, if memory serves, 50/50 with the publisher. I owned 100% of the TV & Film rights. The publisher earned — and deserved — every penny they made from the sale of the book because they took the initial financial risk of publishing and distribution (my book wasn’t POD, by the way, it was a hardcover…so the publisher actually did more than create a PDF file). The book was also unagented, I made the sale by sending the manuscript to the publisher myself. (The subsequent TV options, producing deals, and script fees arising from the book were agented)
So there goes your silly “back end” costs argument for blowing your cash with a vanity press.
Whether you want to believe it or not, most vanity press books don’t sell anywhere near what even a poorly performing, traditionally-published book does.
It would have been foolish and costly to have gone the vanity press route with my first book instead of signing with a real publisher…I never would have made the money that I did nor had the national exposure that I received.
Lee
Shel wrote: “You may call it “conflict of interest.” I call it offering a turnkey operation.”
I refer you to the Association of Author’s Representative’s Canon of Ethics:
(http://www.aar-online.org/mc/page.do?sitePageId=10337)
Here are some relevant excerpts:
————
5. Members shall not represent both buyer and seller in the same transaction. Except as provided in the next sentence, a member who represents a client in the grant of rights in any property owned or controlled by the client may not accept any compensation or other payment from the acquirer of such rights, including but not limited to so-called “packaging fees,” it being understood that the member’s compensation, if any, shall be derived solely from the client. Notwithstanding the foregoing, a member may accept (or participate in) a so-called “packaging fee” paid by an acquirer of television rights to a property owned or controlled by a client if the member: a) fully discloses to the client at the earliest practical time the possibility that the member may be offered such a “packaging fee” which the member may choose to accept; b) delivers to the clients at such time a copy of the Association’s statement regarding packaging and packaging fees; and c) offers the client at such time the opportunity to arrange for other representation in the transaction. In no event shall the member accept (or participate in) both a packaging fee and compensation from the client with respect to the transaction. For transactions subject to Writers Guild of America (WGA) jurisdiction, the regulations of the WGA shall take precedence over the requirements of this paragraph.
6. Members may not receive a secret profit in connection with any transaction involving a client. If such profit is received, the member must promptly pay over the entire amount to the client. Members may not solicit or accept any payment or other thing of value in connection with their referral of any author to any third party for any purpose, provided that the foregoing does not apply to arrangements made with a third party in connection with the disposition of rights in the work of a client of the member.
8. The AAR believes that the practice of literary agents charging clients or potential clients for reading and evaluating literary works (including outlines, proposals, and partial or complete manuscripts) is subject to serious abuse that reflects adversely on our profession. For that reason, members may not charge clients or potential clients for reading and evaluating literary works and may not benefit, directly or indirectly, from the charging for such services by any other person or entity.
————
Most reputable literary agents are members of the AAR and abide by their canon of ethics. I checked to see if Yvonne is a member. She’s not.
Tom says to Lee that “you don’t do yourself any credit with your dogmatic, reactionary attitudes toward new publishing models.” But it’s not a new publishing model, that’s the lie. It’s an age-old way profit-making model for the people who make their money off of writers who can’t sell their books to real publishers. Vanity presses are nothing new; the only thing that has changed is the technology.
Hey, Lee, Yvonne Divita’s book was published by the notorious vanity press 1st Books/Authorhouse in 2004 (“Dickless Marketing: Smart Marketing to Women Online”). She must have learned something from the experience because then she started her own vanity press.
Lee,
To be fair, Yvonne only represents 2-3 authors per year as an agent and the AAR requires that an agent represent 10 authors in 18 months directly quoted from AAR:
To qualify for membership, the applicant for membership in the literary branch of the AAR must have been the agent principally responsible for executed agreements concerning the grant of publication, translation or performance rights in ten different literary properties during the 18-month period preceding application.
I personally know several agents who represent A level authors who don’t qualify because they don’t represent 10 authors in 18 months.
Your initial posts and comments, while intended to do good, are, if nothing one sided.
You have intentionally left out details that don’t support your position.
Matt,
Is that any reason for her not to abide by those same basic ethical standards?
And if you believe I have left out details that don’t support my position, I encourage you to share them here.
Here is my position — that the “advice” and “news” offered by beneaththecover.com is actually aimed at steering people to the marketing and self-publishing services of their so-called experts. In Yvonne’s case, she’s hyping her vanity press, so when she advises writers about the wonders of self-publishing, she’s actually trying to sell her product. It’s a sales pitch masquerading as advice and news…which, in my opinion, is an attempt to fool aspiring writers for personal gain.
I also believe that it’s a mistake for authors to pay to be published (because 9 times out of ten, they are simply throwing their money away), and that it’s miss-representation for any vanity press to claim to be a “publisher.”
Unlike Yvonne, who gives biased “advice” to sell people on her vanity press, I am merely sharing my opinion.
Lee
A writer is an independent entrepreneur who brings to publishers a product that was completed at his or her own expense.
These costs of maintaining an office, doing research, etc., are not usually considered publishers’ expenses. They are costs of doing business, and I deduct them from my gross writing income to determine my net income from writing.
It is nutty economics, or sheer ignorance of the way commercial publishing operates, to argue that traditional publishers “charge” or “load” these expenses on authors, and thus are little different from vanity publishers.
Lee (and Richard),
Okay, you don’t like thinking about the back-end costs, lets get real about your front-end costs. Here’s what you fork over to your “real” publishers for their publishing and marketing services: the present dollar value of your copyright in your manuscript.
Now, Lee, in a moment of clarity above, you mention that you believe your publisher “earned — and deserved — every penny they made from the sale of the book because they took the initial financial risk of publishing and distribution.” As you’ve seen from the comments by people who actually know us, our authors are equally convinced that they got good value for the publishing services we provide.
Do you recognize the risks you undertook by signing over your rights for $15,000? Are you truly unaware of what would have happened to your books (and happens to many authors who sign away their rights) if your book had not sold enough copies when the initial marketing budget ran out?
Everything worked out for you. Again, great and congratulations. But please don’t pretend that signing with a “real” publisher under the old model is a realistic possiblity for most authors or a smooth road to riches for all who get deals.
You won’t hear us maligning those traditional publishers we’ve all been calling “real” here. They have a business model and they work it for their profit. Lots of folks have pointed out the problems with the “blockbuster” mentality and the whole area of “remaindering” 40-60% of most books they print.
I may not agree that’s the best way to publish in this millenium, but I sure won’t go around calling them — or even you –names.
Tom
Lee said:”Unlike Yvonne, who gives biased “advice” to sell people on her vanity press, I am merely sharing my opinion.”
Lee also said:”Having had 2 books published by mainstream publishers (total of more than 100,000 copies sold worldwide, thanks), I’m biased towards them.”
Hmmmmm…
Marea,
You wrote: “Lee also said:”Having had 2 books published by mainstream publishers (total of more than 100,000 copies sold worldwide, thanks), I’m biased towards them.”
I never said that. You have me confused with someone else.
But for the sake of argument, let’s say that I *did* say that…what’s your point? Yvonne’s bias is that she’s got a profit motive behind her “advice” — she wants to get people to pay her to publish their books. What would my bias be? That I made lots of money through traditional publishing? That I want to see my fellow writers MAKE money rather than SPEND it?
I am not selling something with my opinions, Yvonne is.
Lee
Tom,
You wrote: “Do you recognize the risks you undertook by signing over your rights for $15,000? Are you truly unaware of what would have happened to your books (and happens to many authors who sign away their rights) if your book had not sold enough copies when the initial marketing budget ran out?”
No, I don’t recognize the risks.
In your scenario, if the book doesn’t earn out, it goes out of print and the rights revert back to me. If I want, I can take the book to another publisher, or to iUniverse (which, because it’s a reprint and I am a member of the Authors Guild, will make it available as a POD title for free), or do whatever I want with it. I am not out a penny. My initial publisher took the financial risk…and absorbed the losses.
I might have a hard time getting a big advance next time, but it doesn’t prevent me from staying in the game…and getting PAID for my next book.
If I went to a vanity press, I am taking ALL the risk. And the odds against me succeeding are even greater, because POD titles are not backed by a national sales force, are rarely reviewed, are not respected (meaning I can’t join professional organizations that might increase awareness of me and my books), and are not available nationwide in brick-and-mortar stores, etc. And if the book fails, which is extremely likely, I lose everything I paid to the POD company.
The POD company makes money, but I lose big time. Because the fact is, POD vanity presses make the majority of their money off authors, not from book sales to outside parties.
Not only that, but I have probably burned any prospects for the book with a real publisher…and emptied my bank account doing it.
Tom wrote: “Everything worked out for you. Again, great and congratulations. But please don’t pretend that signing with a “real” publisher under the old model is a realistic possiblity for most authors or a smooth road to riches for all who get deals.”
Of course it’s a realistic possibility…if your book is any good. One of the big reasons writers go the POD route is because they have written unsaleable crap that no agent or publisher will get near. But all the vanity presses care about is whether or not your check will clear and the writer can pretend that his book has been “published.”
First time authors are published every day by real publishers. Every author I know was a “first time author” once…and I know hundreds of them. And they all got PAID for it.
But I will agree with you that going with a real publisher doesn’t guarantee a smooth road or riches. There are many obstacles in your way. Going with a real publisher, however, won’t cost you anything and will give you a much better chance of achieving success.
Lee
“if you self-publish your book, it’s available out of the trunk of your car.”
Of course Tod you left out after they buy copies of their own book. You have a kind streak tonight. It’s not warranted. These folks are farther afield than the PA crowd!
Lee,
I will do my best to show you that you don’t even half of the facts. The
problem with this is that it has required me to spend several hours
reading,
and rereading your several posts and comments, and then researching the
facts, as they are publicly available.
It irritates me—I shouldn’t have to do this because you shouldn’t be
giving such erroneous, knee-jerk reactions to people and things.
I expect that you will fully publish and respond to this post, as I
didn’t
waste several hours of my day to for you to lipstick my comments.
But before I get into the details of my research, let me first commend
you
— you have a unique way of generating traffic to your site.
It’s worked — by picking fights with sites with greater traffic than
your
own, you have successfully generated more traffic to your own site.
Bravo, I commend you for a great marketing ploy.
But what’s really interesting to me is that, if, as you claim,
beneaththecover.com is of no consequence, that you would pay attention
to
them at all.
If anything, your “rants” (as some have called them) simply bring
attention
(and publicity) to a site, and its contributors that you would prefer
not to
be promoted. But the mere fact that you’re addressing it at all is
helping
to promote their site and their cause.
Which is why, if you’re being honest, your only reason for criticizing
and
harassing contributors to beneaththecover.com is to create traffic to
your
own site.
From what I can tell, the purpose of beneaththecover.com is to create
conversations around book industry issues. Your willingness to dive head
long into a discussion about POD and self-publishing is only furthering
their cause.
So, do you intend to help them accomplish their goals, by engaging in
conversation? If so, to what end? You accuse beneaththecover.com of
existing
for purely marketing reasons. Are you not doing the same by engaging
them,
and their followers in discussion?
Let’s examine the facts that you have misrepresented—
Beneaththecover.com,
by my count, has 19 contributors and a half dozen guest contributors.
Of those 19 contributors, 1 contributor, Yvonne Divita, specializes in
self-publishing. 1 set of contributors — the Greenleaf Group — is a
“co-publisher,” a hybrid of traditional publishers (able to generate
distribution akin to any New York publisher) but paid for at the
expense of
the authors (which you may call a “vanity press” if you insist, but
for an
entrepreneur or business owner is a perfect model, in fact, according to
their website they had 2 New York Times best-sellers in 2007—how
many POD
or supposed “vanity presses” can claim that?).
Thats 2 out of 19 contributors that could potentially be construed as
POD or
self-publishing experts.
Let’s look at marketing and PR service contributors. By my count,
there are
three Publicists/PR firms on the site. Rick Frishman has one of the
oldest
and largest PR firms in the book industry, PTA (Planned Television
Arts);
the fact that you don’t recognize his name is irrelevant, though it does
show that you are not very conversant with heavyweights in the book
industry. And the lesser known but successful Annie Jennings. Third, you
have Nessie Hartsock who does PR specializing in blog and online PR.
Nettie’s background and list of credentials is incredible — you want
to be
critical of her because she contributes educational articles to a
site, and
the only payment she expects in return is hoping to get a client?
It’s interesting that you haven’t attacked either Rick, Annie, or
Nettie —
is it because you know that they are established experts and you don’t
wish
to pick fights with someone you know would knock your block off?
Let’s look at marketing — there’s the site’s founder, Michael Drew,
who,
according to his bio, formerly was a publisher, and in his current
business
is responsible for helping 36 authors become New York Times best-
sellers. So
he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about (though, let’s take your
position at face value that the site only exists to get him clients — I
would ask you, so what? Is it wrong for a business owner or consultant
to
use education to get more clients? The authors he’s worked with appear
to
have been published by New York publishers, so he’s apparently not
targeting
self- published or POD authors).
Then there’s Jim Barnes. He’s the editor of Independent Publisher,
one of
the largest trade publications for small and independent publishers. I
suppose you would discount him because he doesn’t discuss industry news
about New York publishers but, rather, focuses on small and independent
publishers. Did you know that he runs the IPPY awards at BEA? The IPPY
awards is one of THE largest book award ceremonies and everybody,
including
New York publishers, attend. In fairness, Independent Publisher is
owned by
the self-publishing company the Jenkin’s Group, and they clearly use
their
publication to help promote their services. Again, I’d ask you, so
what? Kim
Dushinski is a co-owner of Marketability (which has been in business for
more then 10 years), a Colorado firm that specializes in educating
authors
and “directing” authors to other industry experts.
Out of the 19 contributors, 6 are involved in PR or marketing and 2 are
involved in self-publishing. At this point, less than 1/2 of the
contributors on the site have anything to do with self-publishing,
POD, or
marketing and PR. On its face, your assertion that the point of this
site is
just to generate clients for PR/Marketing firms or POD or self-
publishing
vanity press is, at best, inaccurate, and, at worst, intentionally
misleading.
At this point, more then half of the contributors have nothing to do
with
vanity publishing or marketing.
So, what do the rest of the contributors do? What is their purpose?
This,
to me, is where beneaththecover.com gets impressive.
In your comment on beneaththecover, you said there were no published
authors. Wrong, hotshot! Just goes to show that you didn’t take the
time
to read the bios of ANYBODY on beneaththecover.
First, though, let’s look at journalists—beneaththecover.com has three
journalists, including a pulitzer-nominated business investigative
journalist, Dean Rotbart.
First, there’s Evan VanZelfden, whose claim to fame is writing about the
video game industry. Why he chose to write on beneaththecover.com is
beyond
me, but I can’t see what he possibly has to benefit from writing on this
site. Then we have Dean Rotbart, an investigative business journalist
for
the Wall Street Journal who was nominated (albeit in the 1980’s) for the
pulitzer for an investigative piece he did. I suppose you could argue
that
Dean’s reason for contributing is that he offers consulting advice to
business owners about how to get media (though this seem like a stretch
because everyone knows that a publicist is only as good as his/her
contacts
and Dean’s contacts in the media for business owners won’t easily
translate
to PR for book authors).
Finally, there’s Andrew Grabois, a book industry insider for 20 years.
Until
the summer of 2007, he was the journalist and research on staff for R.K.
Bowker, the company that issues ISBN’s. Andrew doesn’t own his own
consulting firm, and has no products or services to sell, Lee, so what
is
Andrew’s reason for writing for the site? The mere fact that Andrew is a
contributor to beneaththecover.com adds huge credibility to
beneaththecover.com within the book industry. The fact that you may or
may
not know who he is, is irrelevant (except, of course, that it shows you
don’t know or recognize important people in the book industry), as you
are
merely an author, not a publisher or a publishing industry insider.
Then, we have two agents (albeit I don’t recognize their names), one of
which is formerly a publisher at major New York houses in Judy Katz
and Paul
McCarthy ( Paul is a former New York publisher). I suppose you could
claim
they are looking for clients, but as we both know, it’s tougher to get
an
agent than it is to get a publisher, and I truly doubt that they are
trolling for clients (again, having agents on this site only boosts its
credibility).
Let’s move on to authors.
There’s Bryan Eisenberg, Roy H. Williams, Ivan Misner, and Bill
Stephens.
Bryan Eisenberg, along with his brother Jeffrey Eisenberg, is the New
York
Times bestselling author of two books, Call to Action originally
published
by a tiny publisher in Austin, Texas, owned by Roy H. Williams (I can’t
confirm this, but it may just be a self-published book) called Wizard
Academy Press. Their second book, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, was
published by Thomas Nelson, the 5th largest publisher in the US and a
Christian publisher (apparently they made a big enough splash with
Call to
Action to justify a major publisher picking them up). As far as I can
tell
from their business site futurenowinc.com, they offer a high-end,
super-expensive website service that they call Persuasion Architecture
(which I could barely understand), and it appears corporations spend
hundreds of thousands of dollars for. I don’t see any reasonable
applications to authors, and unless they’re developing some less
expensive
products or services specifically for authors, I don’t see any reason
for
them to contribute to beneaththecover.com, except that they believe they
have something valuable to impart to authors and publishers. Future
Now Inc.
also has one of the top business blogs in the market place today with
grokdotcom.com, so apparently they care enough about authors hearing
their
message that they not only write on their blog, but on
beneaththecover.com,
as well.
Roy H. Williams also has two New York Times best-sellers, Secret
Formulas of
the Wizard of Ads and its sequel, Magical Worlds of the Wizard of Ads.
This
book was published by some tiny publisher in Austin, Texas, called Bard
Press (sounds like it should be publishing plays and fictional
literature,
not business titles). Roy owns an advertising agency called Williams
marketing and a non-profit educational organization called Wizard
Academy.
From all I can tell, Roy’s business is helping small and medium-size
retail
businesses with their advertising campaigns. He is known as the king of
radio advertising. It appears his passion is writing and communication,
which is why it appears he launched this non-profit Wizard Academy. From
what I can tell, his only benefit for contributing to
beneaththecover.com is
promoting his ideas on communication and writing (how many authors and
wannabe authors own small-to-medium-sized retail businesses, not many,
and
it would be a waste of his or anyone’s time to hope to get clients
from the
site). The only conclusion I can come to is that he is passionate about
what he does.
Ivan Misner owns BNI (Business Network International), a business
networking
organization whose goal is generating sales leads for its members.
Ivan is
also the New York Times best-selling author of Masters of Networking
(a Bard
Press Book), Masters of Success, and Masters of Sales (both published by
Entrepreneur Press), and Truth or Delusion by Thomas Nelson. It also
appears
that members of BNI contribute to beneaththecover.com. I suppose you
could
argue that both Ivan and his BNI members who contribute to the site are
contributing as a way to generate members to their various chapters. The
problem with that assumption is that selling books, POD or
traditionally, is
not very profitable, and, according to their own site, is highly
regimented
(they charge for membership, and if you don’t generate leads for
members of
your chapter they kick you out).
Thus far, these three authors account for 8 New York Times best-sellers.
Sounds like they have more credibility than you do, Lee (how many New
York
Times best-sellers do you have?).
Then you add in Bill Stephens, who has one of the top 10 blogs on
Publishers
Market place (which is well-read and accepted by book industry
professionals). He is a world-renowned food and wine columnist, and his
novel Horizons Past is currently being considered for adaptation by a
major
Hollywood studio. No, he’s not a New York Times best-seller, but, like
you,
Lee, he makes his living as a full-time writer. In your earlier post
about
beneaththecover.com, you mentioned that no writers were contributing —
what about Bill?
These are the facts, Lee. Anybody who goes to beneaththecover.com and
reads
the bios can confirm them. Gee, I think maybe even YOU could confirm
them
— that is, if you were honest enough to do so.
So, out of all of these contributors you pick on Yvonne? Why, because
she is
one of the lesser known contributors with a smaller business than the
other
contributors? Less likely to sue you? Less likely to destroy you in the
blogosphere?
You pick on Drew because he invited you to contribute to his site?
Clearly you didn’t do any research into the site—you simply had a
knee-jerk reaction and dismissed it out of hand. As my detailed
analysis of
the contributors to beneaththecover.com demonstrates, you would be so
lucky
to have your name considered along most of the contributors on the site.
As for the Association of Author’s Representative’s Canon of Ethics,
first
off, who are they? Who runs them? Who died and made them king? Are
they an
association sanctioned and run by the New York Publishers, or by the US
government? Or, are they “old school” agents, who created a system, 25+
years ago before the digital revolution? I don’t know, I’m asking you.
But
my real point is, your setting up phony straw men. That is to say,
you’re
looking for other industry insiders to support your position. You’re
being
intellectually dishonest. Instead of having an open intellectual
conversation, you’re making accusations without any substance and
picking
fights.
It is clear to anyone who reads your blog that you are a successful
fiction
writer who makes his living writing. You tout this as your proof that
POD
publishers are incorrect. You point out your success as an author who
was
published at the age of 18. After further research, I discovered your
first
book was published in 1990, 18 years ago. To tout this example as
living
proof that POD doesn’t work is ludicrous. According to R.K. Bowker, in
1990
there were 90,250 books published, one of which was yours. In 2007
roughly
296,000 books were published. Essentially, there were 3 times as many
books
published last year than when your book was published. According to R.K.
Bowker in 1990, roughly 2,000,000,000 books were sold. In 2007, roughly
2,000,000,000 books were sold (exact estimates won’t be available
until BISG
releases the data at Book Expo in June in LA). In both 1990 and in 2007,
roughly 80% of all sales were backlist titles. Which means that newly
published books both in 1990 and 2007 accounted for the sale of
100,000,000.
In 1990, that’s an average of 1,108 copies sold per new book
published, but
in 2007 that’s an average of 338 books sold per book published.
Furthermore, the average retail bookstore only carries 100,000 titles,
and,
the distribution of those titles reflect actual sales numbers, 80% are
backlist titles, 20% are new titles. In 1990, of the 90,250 books
published
20,000 books had significant retail distribution. This didn’t change in
2007, but what did change are the number of books that had little to no
distribution. In 1990, 70,250 books had little to no distribution, and
in
2007, 276,000 books had little to no distribution.
Additionally, any New York publisher will tell you that for every one
book
they publish, they turn down something like 100 manuscripts. Certainly
there
is duplication between publishers, but if you take the number of books
published multiplied by the number of rejections by New York
publishers, the
number of “wanna be” authors, each year, is a staggering 29 million
authors.
I bring this up to point out that the number of people writing in
today’s
market place is more than three times what it was when you were first
published. The fact that you attempted to be published and
successfully were
published in 1990 is no small feat, but it pails in comparison with the
daunting task of any current first-time author.
You have already broken into the industry, they have not.
What advice would you have for the 29 million wannabe authors out
there who
can’t possibly get published by a traditional publisher?
Would you tell them to give up?
As you yourself point out, POD exists to serve very specific needs
(you kept
your first book in print through IUniverse).
While there are disreputable POD publishers out there, you’re simply
writing
off the entire POD industry for a few bad apples?
The issue you’re not addressing is the barrier to entry — by your
logic,
any author who fails to find a traditional publisher shouldn’t be
published
and should just give up.
In reality, in today’s market place, publishers are looking for author
platforms first, and the authors writing ability second. You’re a proven
writer (and your screen writer friends have an existing platform, so
their
situations are not indicative of the industry as a whole) who has proven
yourself, publishers already know that your books will sell.
What about the author who doesn’t have a platform, or doesn’t have a
proven
track record, and who isn’t attractive to publishers?
Lee, your welcome to sit up on your high horse and judge authors, and
POD
and self publishing firms, but, your judgement is based on your own
pride
and not on the realities of the market place.
So, either you really don’t know what the hell you’re talking about —
which goes hand-in-hand with the fact that you certainly
misrepresented the
contributors and the purpose on beneaththecover, as I’ve shown above,
here,
is so — or your an elitist who would tell wannabe authors to not even
attempt to get published. In either case, you just lost any
credibility on
this matter.
Matt Knox
You say that Michael Drew “is responsible for helping 36 authors become New York Times best-sellers.”
“Is responsible for helping.”
Wow. That’s a nice, meaningless phrase, one that even Michael Drew doesn’t use.
In his bio, he says he has “played a key role in creating 36 national bestsellers.” What role? Marketing, probably, since that seems to be his gig. His website is created to do just that as he said in his emails to Lee and his brother.
Are you saying Drew is lying about himself when he says the site is designed to create marketing platforms for the contributors??
He is a book marketer/promoter, just as Lee says, and his site is designed to further that enterprise. And contrary to your post, no where in his bio does Drew claim to be a publisher, only that he worked for one in marketing:
“Michael R. Drew, a veteran of the book industry, joined Executive Excellence in 1997 as Publicist and Special Sales Coordinator. In 1999, he moved to Bard Press, where he served as Publicity, Special Sales, and Events Coordinator. When Bard Press was sold, he became Marketing Director for Bard Press/Longstreet Press. As Marketing Director, Mike most recently worked for Entrepreneur Press, which is owned by the publisher of Entrepreneur Magazine.”
You a hell of a lousy researcher, Matt.
You say that Lee is using the fact he sold his first book when he was 18 as “living
proof that POD doesn’t work.”
Um, that’s not how he used it. Go back and read his comment. He used it as an example of how being paid by a publisher to paying someone to publish it.
Get your facts right.
“You’re a proven
writer (and your screen writer friends have an existing platform, so
their situations are not indicative of the industry as a whole) who has proven
yourself, publishers already know that your books will sell.”
Um, you got that wrong, too. Lee was talking about the writers he knows and how they sold their books. Lee wasn’t talking about his “screenwriter friends.”
If you did even the slightest research into Lee, or just browsed his blog, you’d know he’s on the Board of Directors of the Mystery Writers of America and is Chairman of the Edgar Awards. He was also President of the Southern California Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America. I think he probably personally knows a hundred novelists, I dare say more than you.
I am a bad typist. I left a word out of one of my paragraphs:
“Um, that’s not how he used it. Go back and read his comment. He used it as an example of how being paid by a publisher COMPARES to paying someone to publish it.”
Matt, you say this — “What advice would you have for the 29 million wannabe authors out
there who can’t possibly get published by a traditional publisher? Would you tell them to give up?”
I think I can answer with a post from his brother Tod Goldberg’s blog that was in response to a similar comment that iUniverse CEO Susan Driscoll gave in an interview with Lee:
“I don’t believe all authors deserve to be published. This is a sentiment I run into frequently in classrooms and writer’s conferences — and sometimes right here — that the ability to put words on a page is validation enough for those words to be published. That’s not to say all the books that are published deserve to be either, though the vast majority of self published books I’ve read, be they through iUniverse or any number of other outlets, simply are not good books. The writing is poor. The story is poor. The characters are poor. Not of professional quality, in essence.
Publication is not a birthright. If you are being rejected by every agent and publisher in the land, save for those who want you to pay them for your work, it’s time to take a hard look at what you’ve created. Art for art’s sake is fine, but if this is the career path you choose, at some point you have to ask if what you’re creating is, indeed, marketable. I write for the love of it, first and foremost, but I also write because that is the only job I ever wanted to have. That doesn’t mean everything I write deserves to be published, or even printed. Some of it sucks. Poor story. Poor writing. Poor characters.
iUniverse, admittedly, is the best of the bunch. They don’t hide behind what they can and cannot accomplish. Writers would be smart to do the same.”
But my favorite comment came from novelist J. Steven York:
“There is no more gullible, self-delusional, fog-headed being on the planet than an aspiring writer. So predictable and common are their delusions that an entire industry of crooks, con-men and scam artists exists to exploit them, and such a sweet deal it is for them, too. Not only are most of their scams perfectly legal, their marks are actually grateful to be scammed! It doesn’t get much better for a predator than that. It’s like the entire herd of antelope crowding around the lion shouting, “Eat me! No, eat me!”
As an article in Book Standard about POD self publishers pointed out —
“hopeful writers are led to believe that using these companies’ services is no different from getting a traditional publishing deal in terms of instant prestige and reaching the marketplace. Could self-publishing—and the authors who use POD—improve their reputations with an industry-sponsored code of ethics?
Ron Pramschufer, publisher of RJ Communications (which provides services for self-publishers but isn’t a POD company), proposed the concept. “If POD companies see themselves as “the little brother” or outgrowth of traditional publishing, as they all claim, a code of ethics is necessary,” he says. “The realities of marketing efforts and probable sales outcomes need to be made absolutely transparent.” Pramschufer elaborated on this theme in the October issue of his monthly newsletter for small and independent self-publishers. In it, he called on POD publishers to “clearly point out the odds of being successful. An average number of books sold would be a start.”
As of yet, no clear steps have been taken to bring about any sort of industry-wide standard. If this were to happen, Driscoll contends that it should ideally extend beyond the POD industry. “Remember, POD is just a printing technology,” she says, referring to the digital printing process by which on-demand publishers have traditionally been defined. “The code of ethics should encompass all the areas of self-publishing. There are a lot of agents, sales and marketing services, and small presses that have unethical practices.” Ultimately, the world of self-publishing remains something of a “Wild West” and authors need to keep their eyes open
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, traditional publishing is the worst system for publishing ever devised, but it is still better than any other system.
If self-publishing is such a great entrepreneurial opportunity for writers, why don’t James Patterson, Tom Clancy or John Grisham avail themselves of the tremendous benefits to be accrued by cutting out the intermediary agents and trade publishers and publish themselves?
Tom: You accuse Lee Goldberg of calling Yvonne DiVita names. I have just read through all of the comments here and, unless I have missed something, I don’t see any instance where he has done this, nor has he called any of her clients names. He disagrees with her and questions her motives but I didn’t see any name-calling. You may be confusing him with his brother Tod Goldberg, who didn’t call her names but alluded to those who defend her as being “fucktards.” Your beef may be with Tod and not Lee on this score.
Nice try, Peter. You list three best-selling authors and ask if they “avail themselves of the tremendous benefits of” self-publishing?
Well, yes, as a matter of fact John Grisham self-published A Time to Kill to get his start.
Lee and his friend the Captain would, I guess, call his writing “unsaleable slop” — until it magically transformed into best-seller material when the “real” publishers finally annointed it.
As to cutting out the intermediaries, I’m not advocating that, but isn’t it what Stephen King is experimenting with? Lawrence Lessig? Cory Doctorow? Many artists in the music industry? Why are they doing so, if the traditional publishers are there solely for the benefit of authors and artists?
Captain,
Yes, Lee did call Yvonne and her busines several “names” and I posted a comment about that last night which he seems to have declined to publish. That means he probably won’t have the guts to publish this one either so I’m not going to repeat myself here.
Lee, you’ll at least see this, so you (and if you do post it your readers) will have to go back over to Beneath the Cover if you want a chance to answer what I’m going to post there regarding your name-calling.
Tom
There are many flaws in the arguments made here by those who seek to defend the vanity press “publishers.” But one of the most striking ones is this:
They (rightfully) point out that traditional publishing is a difficult business to make money in and that many writers fail at it.
They then (wrongfully) counter that those same authors would reap a windfall of success if they would instead “publish” their work through a vanity press.
Think about that for a moment. If a book published by Random House fails, what do you think is going to happen to that same book put out by a vanity press? (Setting aside for a moment that the latter is nearly always of lower quality than the former.)
The Random House book will be professionally edited, designed and printed. It will be supported by a national sales force, given some (probably limited) amount of marketing support and stocked in B&M bookstores. It will possibly be reviewed by trade and consumer publications. It will have the imprimatur of being published by a reputable and respected publishing house.
The vanity press book will probably not be edited. It will not be professionally designed and it will be poorly printed. (Have you seen these POD books? I’ve gotten scores of them from every one of these companies. And they look like they were put together as a 3rd grade art project.) It will not be supported by a sales force. It will not be stocked in bookstores. It will not be reviewed. It will not be respected (everyone with even a limited knowledge of the industry will know that author paid to have it printed.)
And THIS is how these people expect to achieve success?
Assuming that both books are failures, as so many books are, in the first scenario the author at least gets paid. In the second, the author loses money.
David,
You set up another straw man. The proper comparison is not with a book that Random House publishes, but it fails. The correct comparison is to the many books the “real” publishers fail even to look at, or wrongly decide are not worthy. Many examples out there, besides the Grisham one I mentioned earlier.
Are you familiar with Edward Tufte? His series of books on information design are among the most beautiful ever produced. All self-published, in part because he was not about to give up control to a “real” publisher. Of course, he’s a design genius and was willing to go out and learn Quark and manage the entire process himself.
Our authors simply choose to outsource many of the publishing tasks to us and focus on their roles in writing and marketing their books.
And then you too, David, express your opinion about the quality of POD books. Lee, has repeatedly refused to answer my question whether he’s ever looked at one of our “profesionslly edited, designed, and printed” books. Have you?
Go to our website and “Look Inside” some of our titles, before you such strongly held opinions on things you know nothing about.
Tom
Publishing is nothing more than a mechanism to tranfer a MS into something that can be purchased by the public, if the public is so inclined. There is no one “right way” or one “only way” to do it.
New means of publishing, especially electronic publishing, are on the rise and are the wave of the future. For example, Borders is investing an incredible amount of money to begin to revamp stores to accommodate and facilitate downloading electronic books.
Amazon’s Kindle program is taking off like a gangbuster and it only represents the initial stage of a revoluntary new book era
Even in traditional book form, “self-publishing” is easy and can result in tremendous success. All you need is a good book. Then print it, get it into the distribution channel where stores and libraries can order it (and return it), and market it. If you indeed have a good book, people will find out about it and will buy it.
You will see an ever increasing avalance of incredible talent that is waiting in the wings and will find new ways to reach readers.
John Grisham didn’t self-publish his first novel. He published it with a small press (Wynwood Press), then tried to sell it out of the trunk of his car. It wasn’t very successful.
He then published his next novel (The Firm) with a traditional publisher (Random House) and went on to sell millions of copies, make millions of dollars ($9 mill in 2007 alone) and become a literary celebrity.
Yet another argument for the traditional publishing model.
John Grisham did not self publish his book. He sold his first novel, A Time to Kill, to a small press (I believe it was called Wynwood, or something akin to that) and then, after it was remaindered, continued selling the book himself. So, maybe he self sold it, but didn’t self publish it.
It’s a popular myth. Just like spending thousands of your own dollars to publish a book no one will ever see is akin to having a literary agent take a percentage of your earnings to sell your work to reputable publishers who will then publish your book for no charge at all, will in fact pay you, will in fact continue to pay you, will market your work (albeit poorly in most cases) and will, oh, right, pay you. It’s essentially the difference between being a fucktard and not a fucktard.
“And then you too, David, express your opinion about the quality of POD books. Lee, has repeatedly refused to answer my question whether he’s ever looked at one of our “profesionslly edited, designed, and printed” books. Have you?”
I hope they’re better edited than your little plug there. I’m a book critic and I’ve seen a wide variety of POD books from many different companies. (We’re talking hundreds of books.) And in terms of the physical product, they were all of inferior quality to a traditional, offset printed hardbound book like you’d see from any real publisher. Even POD books from major publishers suffered by comparison, although at least they had decent cover art.
(Tom, I looked at some of your covers: God Spare Life, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Bottom, Discovering Your Inner Samurai, Square One at 51… They’re horrible.)
If a person is going to self-publish, at least do it like Jim Hansen does. Start your own company, be a professional and act like a businessman. Don’t waste your money on vanity press fairy tales.
A reader pointed me to this stunner…
Apparently, Yvonne’s vanity press and her agency representation business are one in the same…Windsor Media.
This is from Yvonne’s WME blog:
“We also have a connection to blogtalkradio, John Havens (VP of Business Development). John is co-authoring a book on business transparency with another of our clients, Shel Holtz, for Jossey-Bass and it’s IABC book series. WME is acting as their agents.”
http://www.businessbloggingbootcamp.com/2008/02/blog-to-book-to.html
In my opinion, this is a huge conflict of interest and a breach of the ethical code that reputable agents follow.
Lee
Tom,
I have posted every comment that has been made in this discussion. And I just went back and double-checked the list of comments posted to my site in the last 48 hours to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Are you sure your filled out the CAPTCHA before logging off?
Lee
The comment below is from Tom Collins — I have gone to the Beneaththecover page and cross-posted it here.
Lee
————————-
Posted on February 20th, 2008
Good morning, Matt. What a pleasure to wake up to your point-by-point dismantling of Lee Goldberg’s rants, along with whatever shred of crediblity he had left.
One point, however, needs further demolition work: his accusations of dishonesty against Yvonne and her business — starting with his assertions that she engaged in “a raging conflict-of-interest” and ethical violations of the AAR Canons of Ethics.
You and others have pointed out that the AAR doesn’t really apply to the small amount of agent work we do. But Lee’s accusations are false and libelous and require correction. I attempted to post the following on his blog last night, but he seems to have declined to publish it:
“Lee, Just to be really clear, as you dig yourself deeper, your chosen excerpts from the AAR Canons and your earlier statements that Yvonne (snd thus WME) are guilty of ‘a raging conflict-of-interest’ are claims of fact that in acting as Shel’s [Holtz] agent on two deals with different publishers:
– we have represented both buyer and seller in the same transaction (Canon 5);
– that we have received a secret profit in those transactions (Canon 6); and
– that we charged Shel reading or evaluation fees in connection with those transactions (Canon 8).
“Those claims are false and you could not have any reasonable basis for believing them to be true.
“More to follow. Tom”
Both of the deals where we acted as Shel’s agent involved books solicited by major publishers. The first, How to do Everyting with Podcasting (McGraw-Hill 2007), came when an editor asked Yvonne if she had any other book ideas similar to Jeremy Wright’s Blog Marketing (Yvonne served as technical editor on that one). Yvonne suggested that podcasting was the next logical step, connected with Shel and his co-podcaster, Neville Hobson, (For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report), and became their agent. Coming at it from that end, we felt obligated to shop the idea around and got 2-3 contract offers, from which Shel and Neville chose McGraw-Hill.
The second deal came directly through Shel being asked about writing a book on business/media transparency. But since the majors won’t deal with an un-agented author, Shel asked us to fill that role again. The deal got done and he’s working on the manuscript with co-author John Havens, of BlogTalkRadio (check out their blog about the book, http://www.transparencybook.com).
In neither case did Yvonne or WME commit any of the ethical violations Lee accused us of. His accusations of business dishonesty are false and constitute libel per se.
We’re wondering if he has any capacity at all to recognize and admit when he’s wrong and then act to correct it.
On to the “more to follow”:
Lee, here are a couple more examples of the false, malicious, and libelous statements you’ve been making about Yvonne and her business.
In your main post on your blog and initial comment here, you label Beneath the Cover as a “scam” and offer Yvonne and her business as your example. The word scam is defined and commonly understood as being “a fraudulent business scheme” (American Heritage Dictionary). Thus, you have accused Yvonne and WME of fraud in our business dealings.
Such accusations are false, malicious, and libelous. You had no reasonalbe basis for believing them to be true.
As several commenters have pointed out to you (people with first-hand knowledge of Yvonne and our business), we have never misled anyone about the nature of our publishing model, the investment involved, or the services we perform.
You can form an opinion about whether our publishing model is the best (or worst), though I don’t know how you could do this credibly without considering the individual needs and publishing goals of a specific author.
But claiming that Yvonne’s business is a “scam” is a statement of fact about the honesty of the business and, applied to Yvonne or WME, it is absolutely false, malicious, and libel per se.
Once again, do you have the integrity to admit you are wrong and post the correction prominently, everywhere you’ve published and republished it?
One more example of your false accusations and then on to some things you may need to consider worrying about.
In your main post on your blog and initial comment here, you accuse Yvonne of telling “an outrageous lie” when she notes that self-publishing with a “professional POD firm” is a way to get noticed by a “big name publisher.”
Again, you may have an opinion about whether self-publishing is the best route, or whether hiring a professional POD firm like ours to produce a better quality book is worth the money. (Speaking of which, for the third time, have you ever actually looked at the quality of the books we produce, either in terms of our authors’ writing or the books themselves?)
But self-publishing has proven the ONLY route to getting picked up by a “real” publisher for the likes of John Grisham, James Redfield, Richard Paul Evans, and many, many others. I doubt you can be unaware of that fact, which makes your false accusation that Yvonne was “lying” all the more malicious.
Are you capable of admiting your error, Lee?
Doubtful. I really enjoyed Matt’s list of the industry heavy-weights who write here and how he pointed out your lack of courage to take on any or all of them.
Roy Williams provides, through Wizard Academy, services to “improve the results of advertisers, architects, artists, authors, businesspeople, educators, entrepreneurs, inventors, journalists, ministers, musicians, salespeople and speech writers.” When he’s helping authors, since he’s not a major publisher, are you saying he’s engaged in a scam? Not your style to take on someone like Roy, is it?
No. You pick on Yvonne. You cast out false and libelous accusations.
So here’s what you ought to do, Lee: Take it back. Publicly. Prominently.
I suggest that what you’ve done on your blog is prohibited by your TypePad Terms of Service:
7. Content and Conduct Rules and Obligations
…
You agree that you will not:
(a) upload, post, transmit or otherwise make available any Content that is … abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory … libelous … hateful … or otherwise objectionable ….
Probably the same goes for Amazon. I’m guessing your publishers and producers require you to “represent and warrant” that nothing you write for them is libelous. I wonder if they might be concerned by your malicious accusations and, at the least, reckless disregard for the truth.
On your blog, you go on about the AAR Canons of Ethics and someone suggested that the POD industry could benefit from adopting some (a good suggestion, by the way). Does your profession have a code? Does it say anything about libel? About checking facts before you accuse someone of dishonesty? Do you care?
Time to step up, Lee. Be a big boy and admit you are wrong about Yvonne and have no basis for your accusations about her or her business. Is it in you?
Tom
To be a an F-tard or not to be? This is the question.
Tom Collins wrote:
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact John Grisham self-published A Time to Kill to get his start.”
I laid a trap and you fell right into it. Here is an excerpt from Slushpile.net’s interview with Grisham, which took me less than five minutes to find online:
“Slushpile: I recently read a claim (inaccurate, I believe) that you self-published A Time to Kill. Can you please set the record straight on how your novel came to be published by Wynwood Press?
Grisham: Wynwood Press was a new, small unknown publishing company in New York in 1989. Everybody else had passed on A Time to Kill, Wynwood Press took the gamble. Printed 5,000 hardback copies, and we couldn’t give them away. Wynwood later went bankrupt, or out of business.”
http://www.slushpile.net/index.php/2006/03/01/interview-john-grisham-author/
Addendum: Even after several commenters refuted you, Tom, you repeated this urban legend in your comment defending Yvonne Whatsername. “But self-publishing has proven the ONLY route to getting picked up by a “real” publisher for the likes of John Grisham.”
Repeating this canard destroys your credibility.
Asking people to actually look at your books, Tom, is not a great selling tool. The graphic design you are using for the covers and inside pages are simply attrocious. I don’t know what you charge, but having read your bio just now I see you’re the man responsible for the graphics, so I presume you are the creative decision maker that led to the cover of Darryl’s Daring Deed, which is truly terrible — whatever you charged the author for that should be returned and then everyone who has been forced to view the cover should get a little something for their troubles, too. Something from the back end, perhaps.
But let me ask a more important question, since you seem to be most concerned about what is and what is not ethical behaviour: How many people do you represent at WME as their official literary agents that then go on to publish their books, for a price, with your vanity press?
You’re a big boy, Tom, so perhaps you can answer this, too: Why, if POD (and by extension, really, self-publishing) is the launching pad to the major presses Yvonne suggests are you even the least bit concerned that we don’t believe that claim to be true? If it is true, there’d be some empirical evidence to back it up. There’d be a huge sample group of authors who went from self-published POD books to deals with Random House. There would be, of the, say, 400 friends I have with books in print at least, what, 5 who came up that way? 10 maybe? To make it statistically relevant, Tom, wouldn’t that seem likely, just out of the pool of people I know? So then why is that not the route any have taken? Why, in all of my dealings with editors and agents over the years has no one said, The best way to break in is to self-publish because we, the editors of FSG, are trolling through the waters of crap that people selfpublish looking for that one gem?
Well, there’s probably several reasons — not the least of which is that it isn’t based in fact — but perhaps there’s also the point that major publishers will not look at unagented submissions, and if the agent doesn’t adhere to AAR rules, they are woe to even open an email. So why would they be looking through the slush of self published work for unagented books, already in print, that no one wanted to represent to begin with?
Argue for the limitations of big publishing all you want, scream libel and lies until you’re blue in the face, but recognize fact from truth: the fact is, publishers are categorically not looking at what is being self published, at all, ever. The fact is that you’re in the business of self publishing. Great. I have no problem with that. If people want to give you money to publish their books, bully for them and too bad for their pocketbooks. But to claim that self-publishing is the road to traditional publication is mere folly at best. It might be your truth, what you believe to be the case, but nowhere is it backed up.
Is Tom Collins a lawyer? If so, his stammering about libel is doubly laughable. Nothing you have said remotely constitutes libel and he probably knows that. Yvonne Divita published an article and you disagreed with it. You have provided a forum for her and others to state their opposition to your views (a forum Collins and her clients have clearly and repeatedly availed themselves of at length). There are laws and organizations that protect you from harassment like Collins is threatening. Are you aware of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (aka SLAPP)? Companies and individuals have tried to shut up critical bloggers with lawsuit threats but the cases have been thrown out because anti-SLAPP laws protect critical speech from this kind of harassment. Here’s more information for you.
http://www.casp.net/index.html
http://www.casp.net/slapps/cyberslapp.html
http://www.thefirstamendment.org/antislappresourcecenter.html
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/about.aspx?id=13565
http://www.lawlib.state.ma.us/slapp.html
http://www.spj.org/antislapp.asp
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070506/185214.shtml
From Techdirt
If you’re unfamiliar with them, anti-SLAPP laws are designed to protect individuals who are sued by companies who are simply trying to shut up the individual. The idea is that a big company can just file a libel suit against someone they don’t like (even if there’s no libel), and since it’s so expensive (and scary) to be sued, the individual will be forced to quiet down. Anti-SLAPP laws give the individuals a quick way to fight back and stop such bogus lawsuits.
Tod,
You really are an even greater piece of work than Lee.
Darryl’s Daring Deed is completely the work of an autistic teenager.
You would have seen that had you actually taken a moment to look with anything other than a deep and disturbing need to demean another author you regard as beneath your elevated station. All we did was scan his art, put his own words into a commercially printable file, and provide places for him to sell his work with a trade ISBN and barcode.
In most cases, I do the inside book design and layout and we have professional designers do the covers. So you’re still shooting at the wrong target(s) — and not very responsibly, at that.
Tom
I think the final word on this should be: with a few exceptions, writers only self publish when they cannot publish otherwise. That pretty much tells you which path they would choose, if they had a choice.
“All we did was scan his art, put his own words into a commercially printable file, and provide places for him to sell his work with a trade ISBN and barcode.”
How does that qualify as publishing?
Artistic criticism aside, “words into a commercially printable file,” is not publishing. Like all POD-based vanity presses, it bears no resemblence to commercial publication in the known sense of the term.
“All we did was scan his art, put his own words into a commercially printable file, and provide places for him to sell his work with a trade ISBN and barcode.”
And how much did you charge for this invaluable service? Anything more than $25 and I’m afraid I’ll need to see an exact itemization of your fees. And moreover, what’s is your excuse for the shoddy artistic quality of the books not written by an autistic teen? Dickless Marketing, for instance. You can’t find clip-art like that just anywhere…or, well, you can.
I don’t have a need to demean other authors below me or above me or of my equal (though I am saddened to learn I am worse than Lee – I’ve always held myself to a higher standard there) — I do have a need to question the work of someone who claims to be putting out commercial quality work that is causing traditional publishers to stand up and take notice.
Steve,
By the time I got around to writing my blasted post, I was both tired and
irritated about Lee’s prior posts.
That led to me paraphrasing and being directionally correct in my writing,
but inaccurate in my word choices.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Yes, you are correct, Drew’s bio does indicate that he “played a key role
in.” And, yes his job is in marketing books—so what? Do you have a problem
with an author marketing a book? The fact that Michael worked for various
publishers as marketing director somehow negates his role working for a
publisher (which Lee hasn’t, and I’m guessing you haven’t either)? My guess
is that Michael knows a hell of a lot more about publishing and the
publishing industry than anyone commenting on this site (I’m going to email
him and urge him to comment, I’m surprised that he hasn’t).
Again, I ask you, what’s wrong with anyone being a book marketer or book
promoter?
You are correct about Lee using his own book to “prove” that first-time
authors can get paid to publish with traditional publishers, but he is using
that as an example with the purpose of trying to devalue POD or
self-publishing.
In reality, as I pointed out in my original post, Lee’s first book is not a
good example of what other authors can expect.
Your post failed to address my valid points and focused only on
“inaccuracies.” Why don’t you try addressing the rest of my valid points?
Not up to that? Doesn’t fit your real purposes?
As for Lee (and your contention) that Drew’s purpose in the site is to
generate leads, first, let me say, so what? What’s wrong with that?
Secondly, go back and read Lee’s post carefully. Todd asked Drew how much
the site paid for writers. Drew’s response, let’s quote directly from Lee’s
post “and they said not a dime because “Beneath the Cover is a cooperative
venture for building marketing platforms of everyone involved.”
Wow! So what? Drew is saying isn’t that the site is set up for the sole
purpose of creating leads, that the “payment” contributors received was in
brodening their marketing platforms, not financial compensation.
Excuse me — what is the difference between being paid to write an article,
and getting leads which generate sales? Have either you or Lee actually read
the articles on beneaththecover.com? Lee’s posts have actually resulted in
me reading a lot of articles on beneaththecover.com, which has proven
enlightening to me. They are educational, and not promotional. As far as I
can tell, the only things that might–by a stretch–be considered marketing
pieces on the site are in the contributors’ bios.
Again, beneaththecover.com doesn’t pay its contributors to write; the only
benefit, beyond having your words printed by a publication, is the chance
that a contributor might eventually get a client. My gosh–people are
building their fanbase, their marketing platforms! Horrible! Look around,
Steve — why do you think Timothy Ferriss has a blog site? For the fun of
it? Mr. 4-hour workweek blogs for the fun of it? C’mon! If you believe
THAT–what can I say.
You’ll find the same with every other successful writer, too — they have
blogs or websites to increase their marketing platforms so they can
encourage people to buy their current book and their next books. Same as
beneaththecover.com and the people who contribute to it. In fact, there are
hundreds — actually, probably thousands — of book publicists out there
that recommend doing that very thing — build your marketing platform
through giving away free content in a blog or website. Many give away free
e-books. Horrible thought! And they just might, thereby, encourage people
to buy their books. What do you say to that fact of marketing on the
Internet? I know what you’ll say–nothing. Because you can’t cherry-pick
the truth of that, can you? Haven’t you noticed that going on? Apparently
not, which is a commentary on what you DON’T know about what’s going out
there in the book industry, or even on the Internet. In fact, just about
EVERY industry has some sort of
give-something-away-for-free-in-order-to-attract-customers program. Can you
deny that? C’mon! Get real! You gonna take on every industry that gives
things away in the hope of encouraging people to eventually buy from them?
Good grief! Get real!
Furthermore, as I pointed out in my post last night, most of the
contributors to the site don’t seem to have any easy or obvious way of
getting clients from the site. You failed to address this point.
If Drew’s only goal is to get him clients, why then does he have 19
contributors? Why do more than half of those contributors contribute when
they apparently have nothing to gain, except broadening their fanbase? Why
would Drew allow so many contributors on the site, when it “dilutes” the
attention he and his posts receive (from watching the site the last couple
of weeks, Drew’s post goes up like everyone else’s and gets no preferential
treatment). Lee’s answer was to add credibility to his site. There may be
something to that, but, again, what’s wrong with that? You have something
against people adding credibility to their sites? You and Lee don’t do
things to add credibility to your sites? And, besides, there is a point of
diminishing returns, and it sure does appear at 19 posts Drew has already
surpassed that point.
Now, while it may be true that Lee is on the Board of Directors of the
Mystery Writers of America, his only comments of talking to other authors
recently (in his posts) have been about screen writers. But I’ll concede the
point that he may have spoken to “traditional” authors. What you’re not
addressing is the history of those authors. Who are they, what type of book
did they write, when were they published, what is their marketing platform?
In reality, you dismissed my point because of a potential inaccuracy of
Lee’s. In reality, my point still stands — for most authors, especially
non-fiction authors, getting published is incredibly daunting. Lee’s past
comments have shown that he doesn’t really understand the book industry —
at best he has a sliver of an idea about fiction writing, but not much more.
His opinions aren’t based on facts, and they’re not based on the realities
of the book industry. Why don’t you go back and address the factual details
I point out about the number of books published and sold each year, and how
the industry has greatly changed since 1990 when Lee was first published?
Doesn’t fit in with your cherry picking, does it?
Why don’t you and Lee address the fact that beneaththecover.com is credible
because of the content they create and based on the authors and writers that
are contributors to the site?
Why don’t you and Lee admit that he was wrong about there not being a single
published author on the site? There are, in fact, several published authors
on the site, with 8 bestsellers among them. Lee admitted that he didn’t
recognize any of them and so he concluded that none of them were published
authors. He didn’t bother to do a simple Google on them or a query in
Amazon.com. Either of those would have taken, what, about 45 seconds? Naw,
that wouldn’t help the cherry-picking, now, would it? If Lee had any real
knowledge, expertise, or experience in business, he would at least have
noticed Ivan Misner, who has been called “The Father of Modern Networking”
by CNN. Misner is world famous — and Lee didn’t recognize him? And
Misner’s got several bestsellers, too, which somehow escaped Lee’s notice.
Can Lee admit he was wrong?
Stop cherry picking inaccuracies — by doing so you’re either implicitly
conceding you were wrong or you’re just trying to “win” a “fight,” which is
childish.
Captain,
It is true that most books published POD are garbage — but, you know what,
most books published by traditional publishers are also garbage. It’s the
old Sturgeon Law — “90% of everything is crap.”
Saying so proves what? That none of the books should be published?
Writing, first and foremost, is a labor of love. What you, and apparently
Todd, are saying is that, “Your baby is ugly, so let’s kill it”. Literally,
to most writers, writing a book is like having a baby.
Now, I agree, most books shouldn’t be published by traditional publishers,
and most books don’t deserve shelf space, but thats a far cry from not ever
being published.
Does it cause you some problem, does it hurt you some way, that poorly
written books are published, POD or otherwise? Is that not the perfect
vehicle for those authors?
Also, you’re assuming that all the best written books sell, which simply
isn’t the case — the best-marketed books sell, and sometimes well-written
books. POD or traditionally published books can create a life of their own.
But the quality of writing has nothing to do with how well a book sells, or
whether a publisher should publish a book.
Books should exist, simply to exist as an outgrowth of an author. But the
current barrier to entry into the book industry makes it difficult for even
the most succesful writer to break in. POD and self-publishing is not the
end-all, be-all — it is simply a solution for some.
Again, the fact that you think a book should or should not be published is
not the question. The question is, what would you tell those 29 million
wannabe authors? Out of those 29 million wannabe authors, how many are
authors that are the next John Grisham (not implying he self-published or had a book POD), or authors who simply need to build
their marketing platform, and their POD book is their first step in doing
so?
To assert 29 million wannabe authors should just stop writing is insulting,
and, frankly, wrong — are you some sort of elitest, Captain?
Perhaps everything you have written doesn’t deserve to be published by a
traditional publisher, but does that mean it shouldn’t exist at all? What
does it hurt you to make your writing available as ebooks, or POD?
Couldn’t one of your stories touch or move a potential reader in ways
unknown to you? Aren’t you then depriving readers of the magical worlds you
create? That brings up another point, ultimately, isn’t writing books about
meeting some want/need/desire of readers?
Also, your post asserts that Yvonne DiVita hides what she does and doesn’t
do. This isn’t fair — have you gone to her site, have you spoken with her
clients? How do you know she isn’t better than iUniverse? She’s had several
clients comment here indicating that they are more than happy with what she
has delivered. No comment from you on this, right? But you’re not
interested in being fair, right? You just get a kick out of kicking other
people.
Lee, Steve, Captain and Tod
My point is, you’re all making broad, unsupported generalizations about an
industry, and you’re taking those broad generalizations and indiscriminately
applying them to beneaththecover.com, Mike Drew, and Yvonne DiVita.
And, when you actually take the time to investigate each, and look at what
each are doing, none of your contentions hold any water. It simply comes off
as, at best, insulting hyperbole, at worst, intentional deceit so you can
parade yourselves as “experts” in order to build your own marketing platform
at the immoral expense of others.
I don’t expect any of you to address the actual details of either of any of
my posts, as it doesn’t “fit” your worldview.
Just understand, that makes you bigots. Anybody who reads your comments can
plainly see that.
Matt Knox
Matt says “Your post failed to address my valid points and focused only on
“inaccuracies.” Why don’t you try addressing the rest of my valid points?
Not up to that? Doesn’t fit your real purposes?”
No offense, but that’s because I don’t think you’ve made any valid points. I think most of it is hooey.
Matt says “Lee’s past
comments have shown that he doesn’t really understand the book industry at best he has a sliver of an idea about fiction writing, but not much more.”
Come on, Matt. That’s just silly. We will have to agree to disagree there. I have been reading this blog for many years and there’s no question that Lee not only understands the industry, but is a respected part of it. The guy has been in the publishing business for a couple decades, has written twenty-some books for real publishers, and seems to have earned the respect and admiration of his peers, enough (as someone else pointed out) to have been voted to the board of the Mystery Writers of America and chairperson of the Edgar Awards. I’ve also seen him quoted talking about the publishing industry in the Los Angeles Times, The Writer, Publishers Weekly, and a number of other highly respected publications. They obviously see him as knowledgeable.
Your disrespect for Lee’s obvious experience and accomplishments in the publishing field lead me to ask the obvious question:
What are your qualifications? What experience do you have in the publishing industry? What books have you published (and I don’t mean “paid to have printed” by a POD press)?
Matt says “As for Lee (and your contention) that Drew’s purpose in the site is to
generate leads, first, let me say, so what? What’s wrong with that?”
Nothing, but you seem to be the one taking umbrage at Lee mentioning that. Lee’s contention is that the majority of the site’s contributors are selling PR or self-publishing services and that it taints the objectivity of the advice they offer. Seems to me all you have done with your lengthy comment is prove Lee’s point for him. You haven’t demonstrated any inaccuracies on his part.
Matt, there’s nothing wrong with 29 million people wanting to write books. The fact is, as I’ve said before, and as someone quoted above, it’s not a birthright. Just because you want to be an orthopedic surgeon that doesn’t mean you’re skilled enough to be one, either. Selling a service that allows these 29 million people to publish is fine. If they want to spend their money on that, great. But to tell them that that is the launching pad for traditional publishing success is not just sleazy, it’s factually incorrect. You want to talk about being immoral? Telling someone that if they give you X dollars (really, any amount) to publish their book that they’ll be in position to attract a big name publisher makes me want to vomit into my mouth. I mean, really: “In today’s emerging digital world, if you truly want to attract that big name publisher, use a professional POD firm to self-publish because the big name publishers are watching.” Who? Which ones? Where are all these people? Tomorrow, if you like, I’ll call all the editors I know at big name publishers and ask them: Are you looking at delf published books for your next big find? Hell, at BEA in May, you and I can meet for lunch Matt and go booth to booth.
I don’t need to deceive or denigrate anyone so as to become an expert in anything. I write books. That’s what I do. I don’t have a marketing platform or revenue stream predicated on telling people that they’re fucktards. (Well, I did sell t-shirts for a time, but that was different.) What is this barrier you speak of that prevents successful writers from breaking in? In the last 8 years, I’ve had at least a dozen students sell books. Maybe more like 20. These are people who no one has ever heard of. In my immediate family alone, six of us have published books…multiple books…and none of us used the other to get our deals. The majority of my friends are writers. Most were completely unknown when they sold their first book. How did they do it?
The only barrier is talent and persistence. You need both. If no agent wants to represent your work and no one wants to buy it, there’s a reason, and it’s not that there’s a secret cabal working against you. Sell your services, but don’t intimate that it is going to get your writers closer to a big time publisher. Because it isn’t.
Steve,
Cherry picking again, eh.
Your post proves that you neither read my first post, nor my second post, and that your intellectually dishonest with yourself and everyone reading these comments.
You are either to slow or to lazy to read posts in their entirety, so, I will repost what I stated in my first post which directly addresses both Lee’s contention about the purpose of the site and your latest contention. Namely that the majority of the beneaththecover.com’s contributors are selling PR or self-publishing services. As you will see this is not the case, and your post only shows your laziness:
“Let’s examine the facts that you have misrepresented—Beneaththecover.com,
by my count, has 19 contributors and a half dozen guest contributors.
Of those 19 contributors, 1 contributor, Yvonne Divita, specializes in
self-publishing. 1 set of contributors — the Greenleaf Group — is a
“co-publisher,” a hybrid of traditional publishers (able to generate
distribution akin to any New York publisher) but paid for at the expense of
the authors (which you may call a “vanity press” if you insist, but for an
entrepreneur or business owner is a perfect model, in fact, according to
their website they had 2 New York Times best-sellers in 2007—how many POD
or supposed “vanity presses” can claim that?).
Thats 2 out of 19 contributors that could potentially be construed as POD or
self-publishing experts.
Let’s look at marketing and PR service contributors. By my count, there are
three Publicists/PR firms on the site. Rick Frishman has one of the oldest
and largest PR firms in the book industry, PTA (Planned Television Arts);
the fact that you don’t recognize his name is irrelevant, though it does
show that you are not very conversant with heavyweights in the book
industry. And the lesser known but successful Annie Jennings. Third, you
have Nessie Hartsock who does PR specializing in blog and online PR.
Nettie’s background and list of credentials is incredible — you want to be
critical of her because she contributes educational articles to a site, and
the only payment she expects in return is hoping to get a client?
It’s interesting that you haven’t attacked either Rick, Annie, or Nettie –
is it because you know that they are established experts and you don’t wish
to pick fights with someone you know would knock your block off?
Let’s look at marketing — there’s the site’s founder, Michael Drew, who,
according to his bio, formerly was a publisher, and in his current business
is responsible for helping 36 authors become New York Times best-sellers. So
he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about (though, let’s take your
position at face value that the site only exists to get him clients — I
would ask you, so what? Is it wrong for a business owner or consultant to
use education to get more clients? The authors he’s worked with appear to
have been published by New York publishers, so he’s apparently not targeting
self- published or POD authors).
Then there’s Jim Barnes. He’s the editor of Independent Publisher, one of
the largest trade publications for small and independent publishers. I
suppose you would discount him because he doesn’t discuss industry news
about New York publishers but, rather, focuses on small and independent
publishers. Did you know that he runs the IPPY awards at BEA? The IPPY
awards is one of THE largest book award ceremonies and everybody, including
New York publishers, attend. In fairness, Independent Publisher is owned by
the self-publishing company the Jenkin’s Group, and they clearly use their
publication to help promote their services. Again, I’d ask you, so what? Kim
Dushinski is a co-owner of Marketability (which has been in business for
more then 10 years), a Colorado firm that specializes in educating authors
and “directing” authors to other industry experts.
Out of the 19 contributors, 6 are involved in PR or marketing and 2 are
involved in self-publishing. At this point, less than 1/2 of the
contributors on the site have anything to do with self-publishing, POD, or
marketing and PR. On its face, your assertion that the point of this site is
just to generate clients for PR/Marketing firms or POD or self-publishing
vanity press is, at best, inaccurate, and, at worst, intentionally
misleading.
At this point, more then half of the contributors have nothing to do with
vanity publishing or marketing.
So, what do the rest of the contributors do? What is their purpose? This,
to me, is where beneaththecover.com gets impressive.
In your comment on beneaththecover, you said there were no published
authors. Wrong, hotshot! Just goes to show that you didn’t take the time
to read the bios of ANYBODY on beneaththecover.
First, though, let’s look at journalists—beneaththecover.com has three
journalists, including a pulitzer-nominated business investigative
journalist, Dean Rotbart.
First, there’s Evan VanZelfden, whose claim to fame is writing about the
video game industry. Why he chose to write on beneaththecover.com is beyond
me, but I can’t see what he possibly has to benefit from writing on this
site. Then we have Dean Rotbart, an investigative business journalist for
the Wall Street Journal who was nominated (albeit in the 1980’s) for the
pulitzer for an investigative piece he did. I suppose you could argue that
Dean’s reason for contributing is that he offers consulting advice to
business owners about how to get media (though this seem like a stretch
because everyone knows that a publicist is only as good as his/her contacts
and Dean’s contacts in the media for business owners won’t easily translate
to PR for book authors).
Finally, there’s Andrew Grabois, a book industry insider for 20 years. Until
the summer of 2007, he was the journalist and research on staff for R.K.
Bowker, the company that issues ISBN’s. Andrew doesn’t own his own
consulting firm, and has no products or services to sell, Lee, so what is
Andrew’s reason for writing for the site? The mere fact that Andrew is a
contributor to beneaththecover.com adds huge credibility to
beneaththecover.com within the book industry. The fact that you may or may
not know who he is, is irrelevant (except, of course, that it shows you
don’t know or recognize important people in the book industry), as you are
merely an author, not a publisher or a publishing industry insider.
Then, we have two agents (albeit I don’t recognize their names), one of
which is formerly a publisher at major New York houses in Judy Katz and Paul
McCarthy ( Paul is a former New York publisher). I suppose you could claim
they are looking for clients, but as we both know, it’s tougher to get an
agent than it is to get a publisher, and I truly doubt that they are
trolling for clients (again, having agents on this site only boosts its
credibility).
Let’s move on to authors.
There’s Bryan Eisenberg, Roy H. Williams, Ivan Misner, and Bill Stephens.
Bryan Eisenberg, along with his brother Jeffrey Eisenberg, is the New York
Times bestselling author of two books, Call to Action originally published
by a tiny publisher in Austin, Texas, owned by Roy H. Williams (I can’t
confirm this, but it may just be a self-published book) called Wizard
Academy Press. Their second book, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, was
published by Thomas Nelson, the 5th largest publisher in the US and a
Christian publisher (apparently they made a big enough splash with Call to
Action to justify a major publisher picking them up). As far as I can tell
from their business site futurenowinc.com, they offer a high-end,
super-expensive website service that they call Persuasion Architecture
(which I could barely understand), and it appears corporations spend
hundreds of thousands of dollars for. I don’t see any reasonable
applications to authors, and unless they’re developing some less expensive
products or services specifically for authors, I don’t see any reason for
them to contribute to beneaththecover.com, except that they believe they
have something valuable to impart to authors and publishers. Future Now Inc.
also has one of the top business blogs in the market place today with
grokdotcom.com, so apparently they care enough about authors hearing their
message that they not only write on their blog, but on beneaththecover.com,
as well.
Roy H. Williams also has two New York Times best-sellers, Secret Formulas of
the Wizard of Ads and its sequel, Magical Worlds of the Wizard of Ads. This
book was published by some tiny publisher in Austin, Texas, called Bard
Press (sounds like it should be publishing plays and fictional literature,
not business titles). Roy owns an advertising agency called Williams
marketing and a non-profit educational organization called Wizard Academy.
From all I can tell, Roy’s business is helping small and medium-size retail
businesses with their advertising campaigns. He is known as the king of
radio advertising. It appears his passion is writing and communication,
which is why it appears he launched this non-profit Wizard Academy. From
what I can tell, his only benefit for contributing to beneaththecover.com is
promoting his ideas on communication and writing (how many authors and
wannabe authors own small-to-medium-sized retail businesses, not many, and
it would be a waste of his or anyone’s time to hope to get clients from the
site). The only conclusion I can come to is that he is passionate about
what he does.
Ivan Misner owns BNI (Business Network International), a business networking
organization whose goal is generating sales leads for its members. Ivan is
also the New York Times best-selling author of Masters of Networking (a Bard
Press Book), Masters of Success, and Masters of Sales (both published by
Entrepreneur Press), and Truth or Delusion by Thomas Nelson. It also appears
that members of BNI contribute to beneaththecover.com. I suppose you could
argue that both Ivan and his BNI members who contribute to the site are
contributing as a way to generate members to their various chapters. The
problem with that assumption is that selling books, POD or traditionally, is
not very profitable, and, according to their own site, is highly regimented
(they charge for membership, and if you don’t generate leads for members of
your chapter they kick you out).
Thus far, these three authors account for 8 New York Times best-sellers.
Sounds like they have more credibility than you do, Lee (how many New York
Times best-sellers do you have?).
Then you add in Bill Stephens, who has one of the top 10 blogs on Publishers
Market place (which is well-read and accepted by book industry
professionals). He is a world-renowned food and wine columnist, and his
novel Horizons Past is currently being considered for adaptation by a major
Hollywood studio. No, he’s not a New York Times best-seller, but, like you,
Lee, he makes his living as a full-time writer. In your earlier post about
beneaththecover.com, you mentioned that no writers were contributing —
what about Bill?
These are the facts, Lee. Anybody who goes to beneaththecover.com and reads
the bios can confirm them. Gee, I think maybe even YOU could confirm them
– that is, if you were honest enough to do so.
So, out of all of these contributors you pick on Yvonne? Why, because she is
one of the lesser known contributors with a smaller business than the other
contributors? Less likely to sue you? Less likely to destroy you in the
blogosphere?
You pick on Drew because he invited you to contribute to his site?
Clearly you didn’t do any research into the site—you simply had a
knee-jerk reaction and dismissed it out of hand. As my detailed analysis of
the contributors to beneaththecover.com demonstrates, you would be so lucky
to have your name considered along most of the contributors on the site.”
Now, lets examine what I pointed out in my latest comment, which you conveniently failed to address:
“As for Lee (and your contention) that Drew’s purpose in the site is to
generate leads, first, let me say, so what? What’s wrong with that?
Secondly, go back and read Lee’s post carefully. Todd asked Drew how much
the site paid for writers. Drew’s response, let’s quote directly from Lee’s
post “and they said not a dime because “Beneath the Cover is a cooperative
venture for building marketing platforms of everyone involved.”
Wow! So what? Drew is saying isn’t that the site is set up for the sole
purpose of creating leads, that the “payment” contributors received was in
brodening their marketing platforms, not financial compensation.
Excuse me — what is the difference between being paid to write an article,
and getting leads which generate sales? Have either you or Lee actually read
the articles on beneaththecover.com? Lee’s posts have actually resulted in
me reading a lot of articles on beneaththecover.com, which has proven
enlightening to me. They are educational, and not promotional. As far as I
can tell, the only things that might–by a stretch–be considered marketing
pieces on the site are in the contributors’ bios.
Again, beneaththecover.com doesn’t pay its contributors to write; the only
benefit, beyond having your words printed by a publication, is the chance
that a contributor might eventually get a client. My gosh–people are
building their fanbase, their marketing platforms! Horrible! Look around,
Steve — why do you think Timothy Ferriss has a blog site? For the fun of
it? Mr. 4-hour workweek blogs for the fun of it? C’mon! If you believe
THAT–what can I say.
You’ll find the same with every other successful writer, too — they have
blogs or websites to increase their marketing platforms so they can
encourage people to buy their current book and their next books. Same as
beneaththecover.com and the people who contribute to it. In fact, there are
hundreds — actually, probably thousands — of book publicists out there
that recommend doing that very thing — build your marketing platform
through giving away free content in a blog or website. Many give away free
e-books. Horrible thought! And they just might, thereby, encourage people
to buy their books. What do you say to that fact of marketing on the
Internet? I know what you’ll say–nothing. Because you can’t cherry-pick
the truth of that, can you? Haven’t you noticed that going on? Apparently
not, which is a commentary on what you DON’T know about what’s going out
there in the book industry, or even on the Internet. In fact, just about
EVERY industry has some sort of
give-something-away-for-free-in-order-to-attract-customers program. Can you
deny that? C’mon! Get real! You gonna take on every industry that gives
things away in the hope of encouraging people to eventually buy from them?
Good grief! Get real!
Furthermore, as I pointed out in my post last night, most of the
contributors to the site don’t seem to have any easy or obvious way of
getting clients from the site. You failed to address this point.
If Drew’s only goal is to get him clients, why then does he have 19
contributors? Why do more than half of those contributors contribute when
they apparently have nothing to gain, except broadening their fanbase? Why
would Drew allow so many contributors on the site, when it “dilutes” the
attention he and his posts receive (from watching the site the last couple
of weeks, Drew’s post goes up like everyone else’s and gets no preferential
treatment). Lee’s answer was to add credibility to his site. There may be
something to that, but, again, what’s wrong with that? You have something
against people adding credibility to their sites? You and Lee don’t do
things to add credibility to your sites? And, besides, there is a point of
diminishing returns, and it sure does appear at 19 posts Drew has already
surpassed that point.”
Steve, at this point, I’m not going to continue to rewrite the points I’ve already made. You seem hell bent on ignoring the obvious and being equally lazy, so, I’m going to be equally lazy, and I am simply going to post comments by copy and pasting the portions of my past comments that neither you nor Lee have addressed.
As a side note, it is interesting that Lee hasn’t directly responded to my comments. Perhaps he’s intellectually honest with himself and knows I am correct and simply doesn’t want to acknowledge that he was wrong.
Lets see if you or Lee have the balls to respond to my FACTS.
Matt Knox
Matt,
Other people here have made a lot of the same points I would have made regarding your comments, so I won’t repeat them. Let’s just say that I agree with what Steve, David, Captain Bingham, and my brother Tod had to say and the inaccuracies they’ve raised. Other than that, you’ve pretty much made my points again for me, and I would like to thank you for it.
Drew says his site is designed to create a marketing platform for his contributors, and that is exactly what they are using it for, so I’m not sure who you are arguing with…him or me?
And as you have confirmed, rather vividly, most of his 19 contributors are selling self-publishing, PR or marketing services…as I have said all along. But let’s recap what they are selling:
Yvonne DiVita – vanity press services
Rick Frishman – marketing/PR services
Michael Drew – marketing services
Annie Jennings – marketing/PR services
Jim Barnes – vanity press shill
Kim Dushinski – marketing services
Dean Rotbart – marketing/PR services
Bryan Eisenberg – marketing services
Roy H. Williams – marketing services and business seminars
Ivan Misner – marketing services (through business networking service).
Judy Katz – ghost-writing, marketing and vanity press services (if you’d done anything but cursory research, you would have discovered she runs, in her words, “an innovative, full-service public relations agency that specializes in book collaboration through its ghostwriting arm, Bookinis, Inc. and its publishing arm, New Voices Press.” She also writes: “The majority of the 13 well-received books ghostwritten by Katz Creative have been self-published through its publishing arm, New Voices Press.”)
The fact that all of these folks have something to sell (and that is why they are on the site) doesn’t mean they are dishonest, or that their advice doesn’t have value. But when they offer advice about something they also sell, you should be wary.
For instance, if Judy Katz were to rave about the pluses of paying someone to ghostwrite your book and “publish” it for you through a POD vanity press, I’d say she had a conflict of interest in pushing that POV as “advice.”
So in my view, out of 19 contributors, only Paul McCarthy, Bill Stephens and Andrew Grabois seem to be the real deal, blogging just for the sake of educating their readers and not to sell something. If I were them, though, I would hesitate to lend my legitimacy and good name to what in my opinion is a blatant marketing ploy masquerading as “advice” and “news.”
———————-
Tom,
For a guy who offers author services, you might consider using an editor. You’ve used a lot of words to bluster, stomp, and threaten… but ultimately you’ve said nothing that refutes my points, which are summarized as follows:
1) I believe that Yvonne’s advice to aspiring writers regarding the virtues of POD self-publishing is biased and self-serving because she is selling vanity press services herself.
2) Within the publishing industry, it’s widely considered unethical and a conflict-of-interest for a literary agent to run a vanity press and sell editorial services.
3) I believe POD vanity presses – whether it’s yours or anyone else’s — take advantage of the gullibility and desperation of aspiring writers, especially when those presses portray themselves as publishers.
4) I believe that Yvonne’s published statement that “ if you truly want to attract that big name publisher, use a professional POD firm to self-publish because the big name publishers are watching” is untrue. Last time I checked our constitution, disagreeing with someone’s published opinion is protected speech. You might want to check, too…it’s easy to find, it’s that amendment at the very top of the list.
5) I believe Beneaththecover.com primarily exists, as its founder says, as a marketing platform for its contributors and that the “advice” they offer should be viewed with a boulder of salt. The majority of the site’s contributors are selling self-publishing, PR and marketing services, which in my opinion makes their “advice” on those topics highly suspect…a marketing tool for their personal gain. I believe that Yvonne’s post purporting to offer “the truth” about self-publishing typifies all those concerns.
Lee
Matt,
Speaking of cherry-picking, I direct you to your description of Judy Katz as a NY Publisher and literary agent…and neglecting to mention the the vanity press and ghost-writing services she offers and touts prominently in her biography.
Lee
Matt,
Steve asks a good question. What is your experience in the publishing industry? Mine is obvious…yours, much less so.
Lee
Tom wrote — “In neither case did Yvonne or WME commit any of the ethical violations Lee accused us of. His accusations of business dishonesty are false and constitute libel per se.”
Here’s the problem with that comment, Tom. Lee didn’t accuse you of any wrong-doing or business dishonesty. Re-read his post. Here’s what he actually wrote:
“She’s an agent AND runs a vanity press AND sells editing and promotional services? My God, talk about a raging conflict-of-interest. How can you not see that, Shel? It’s shocking. I can’t think of a single reputable, respected agent who also runs a vanity press operation…and I know a lot of agents.
I wonder how many of her clients she steers towards her vanity press… and how many of her authors were her vanity press clients first.
If, for example, she gets paid to publish an author’s books through her vanity press AND also gets a commission acting as the author’s agent when selling the sub-rights to outside parties, then she is double-dipping, which is highly unethical to say the least.”
Note that Lee Goldberg didn’t say that she steered her literary clients to her vanity press, he said he +++WONDERED IF+++ she did. He didn’t say she double-dipped, he said +++IF, FOR EXAMPLE+++ she did those things, it would be wrong.
You should be a lot more careful about your accusations before you start accusing people of libel. It makes you look like a foolish bully.
Lee,
What I do is irrelevant, I’m not touting my industry expertise. I am simply using simple research to indicate your bigotry (what else is your opinions, but open bigotry. It is clear from your original posts that you did little to no research on beneaththecover.com and you simply had a knee jerk reaction, that amounted to bigotry, and only now, are you making feeble attempt to justify that initial knee jerk reaction).
Your claiming to be a book industry expert beyond your actual expertise. Your background is in fiction publishing, and your opinion beyond that is nothing more then an opinion and no more valid then mine (or anyone elses for that matter). And, in today’s world, its very easy to find industry data and facts. As I have already shown, using industry data readily available from Bowker, your experience with Non-fiction writing is not a good reflection on an authors experience in the book industry today, especially non-fiction authors.
If you were to be really intellectually honest I would suggest you call Andrew Grabois or Michael Drew to have an honest conversation about Non-fiction books. It is clear from both of their bios that they know a hell of a lot more about non-fiction publishing then you do.
Furthermore, lets assert that Judy Katz is also POD/Self Publisher, that accounts for three on beneaththecover.com. Out of 19 contributors thats a very small percentage of the number of contributors on the site.
To assert, as you have in past posts that beneaththecover.com exits primarily to promote POD or self publishing, is absurd.
Your assertion that most contributors are in PR or marketing is only directionally correct, and not accurate in the details.
By your logic, because the majority of contributors on beneaththecover.com own a business and the goal of their business is to sell a product or service, and because their only benefit for writing is potentially (albeit in most cases not reasonably) getting a client you must treat their advice with a grain of salt?
So, by default, we must then treat what you have to say with a grain of salt? Using your logic, anyone with a blog, who owns a business,or sells a product must be taken with a big grain of salt.
So, in essence, we should discount what your saying, because your blog is set up to help you promote yourself, this is apparent by what you write about and whats in your navigations.
Furthermore, this means that any blogger who owns a business or who is a published author must be discounted, people like Tim Ferris and Seth Godin.
I’ll be sure to post a little comment on their blogs letting them know, along with all of the other contributors on beneaththecover.com that you are attacking their credibility in writing on their blog because they might benefit from being a blogger.
Finally, you still are distorting Tod’s communication with Drew. Tod asked how much he would get paid, Drew, said nothing, that the only financial benefit received would be from the sites promotional value to the contributor.
Drew is not saying the site is set up just for promotional purposes, all Drew is stating is that there is no payment to contributors, and if a contributor asked “What’s in it for me” the answer is the promotional value of being a contributor to the site.
Stop twisting the facts to serve your point (please address this very specific issue)
Again, if someone benefits from writing articles or blog posts to any site, whats wrong with that? Why is that any less a conflict of interest then your writing this blog.
Matt Knox
Matt wrote:
“Your post proves that you neither read my first post, nor my second post, and that your intellectually dishonest with yourself and everyone reading these comments.
You are either to slow or to lazy to read posts in their entirety.”
Damn, I hope they don’t have you editing those books over at the vanity press. If so, you really need to learn the difference between “your” and “you’re” and “to” and “too.”
Usually they teach that stuff in the 4th grade.
I am not a book industry professional, so I have no position on POD, self publishing, or traditional publishing.
However, I would like to point out the hypocrisy of Lee’s statements regarding the supposed conflict of interest that he is paranoid about at Beneath the Cover.
The fact of the matter is that most people talk about themselves in their biographies on their blogs and websites. Another fact is that people write about what they know. My question for Lee is, what are those contributors supposed to talk about other than what they know? I think it would truly be unethical if they tried to pass advice that was beyond their professions.
Next point, Lee, your blog is much more blatant in selling your wares. You are a writer who sells books. You feature quite a few books here if you hadn’t noticed. Is that wrong or does it cause a conflict of interest when you write a blog post? Of course not!
The principle is the same at Beneath the Cover and any other existing blog. People use blogs and websites to promote themselves and their wares. They are not a scam any more than your website.
You may argue that it’s a scam because you disagree with POD. You and your supporters say that POD is garbage and that anyone who goes that route is wasting their money.
Well, does that make you a scammer because I disagree with fiction? I think fiction is garbage and that people who buy it are wasting their money.
By the way, do you really think that all the people who contribute to Beneath the Cover would EVER be involved in a scam? Each of them is an expert in their field. Do you honestly think that they would put their careers on the line to support a scam or that they are too stupid to see a scam?
Scammers are criminals. You might write fiction about solving crimes, but you are not a criminal investigator. You write FICTION. It’s amazing that anyone would take your word for it when you are merely a writer of FICTION.
Okay!
Now I think we got enough denials, retractions, corrections, and revisions of everyone’s accusations against Yvonne and WME that we can just agree to disagree about our “beliefs” and “opinions” and get on with the real work of publishing, whatever role you play in the industry.
Lee, Tod, and many of your readers despise self-publishing in general and those of us who work to make it a real option for many authors in particular.
We and our authors find it a useful, valuable way for them, among other benefits, to get published, keep ownership and creative control of their books, get to market a lot faster than most “real” publishers can, and earn a much bigger share of book sales (and no, we are not going there with you, it’s none of your ___ business).
Tod, however, is a special case:
Aside from your inability to even acknowledge, let alone apoligize for, your classless attack on the work of an autistic teenager, your response did prove two things about you.
First, you have not the faintest, foggy notion of what it takes to scan original artwork and process the digital files for placement in InDesign, nor of the layout and design work that goes into turning text into a book.
Your flippant remark that it’s worth $25 makes it clear you envision sliding a piece of paper through your desktop all-in-one phone/fax/printer/copier/scanner and then pasting the resulting file into one of those un-proofread, un-edited (but carefully spell- and grammar-checked by the infallible software in Word) manuscripts that Lee apparently spews out.
If you have any interest in understanding what those parts of publishing are all about, I recommend Marshall Lee, Bookmaking (3d ed. 2004) (see chs. 2, 6-8). An even closer, more hands-on examination of the process can be found in Dr. Douglas Holleley’s beautiful book, Digital Book Design and Publishing (2001) (written from a Mac/Quark viewpoint, but easy to translate to InDesign).
Second, you seem unable to focus on or respond to more than one sentence at a time. You pull out the brief, grossly oversimplified sentence about what we did for the author of Darryl’s Daring Deed (obviously not in our publishing niche) and generalize as if that’s how we handle all our books.
I know it’s beyond your ability, but you’d benefit from just one day with Lee Thayer (we’re on our third book for him). But only if you could let go of the notion that you know everything, as he does not lightly suffer folks like that.
If you could ever get to the place he starts (“it’s what you learn after you know everything that matters”), he’d then be able to walk you through this inescapable logic about humans:
“Everything we thought we knew will eventually be proven wrong.”
So I’ll sign off and get back to work and let you Royals get back to your emotional and intellectual in-breeding.
Tom
If the so-called agent is connected to a vanity press no more evidence is needed. This whole operation is more like an open book than beneath any sort of covers albeit bad ones apparently.
Matt,
So in other words, you don’t know shit. You have the gall to question Lee Goldberg’s credentials and lecture him about publishing when you have no experience in the field at all. You should not only be ashamed of yourself, you should be deeply embarrassed.
I also am astonished by your double-standard. You write in a response to Steve “That led to me paraphrasing and being directionally correct in my writing,
but inaccurate in my word choices.”
And then you accuse Lee of this. “Your assertion that most contributors are in PR or marketing is only directionally correct, and not accurate in the details.”
Your lack of knowledge and experience, combined with your pitiful “research” skills, have had the opposite effect of what you intended. You have only proven Lee correct and underscored the experience from which his opinions are derived.
LOL, no, I don’t work in the book industry.
I have never written a book.
Feel free to criticize my grammar or spelling, makes no difference to me.
Your simply deflecting from the validity of what I am saying, and by default accepting what I say as truth.
So, thank you for agreeing with me.
If you’d like to disagree with me, do so, but attacking my spelling and grammar is not an argument, its grasping at straws.
Matt
One of the posters above makes an excellent point, although it’s not the one he thinks he’s making.
Lee Goldberg is an author of novels. He has a blog where he writes about, among other things, those novels. One of the primary purposes of the blog, one assumes, is to help promote those novels. If Lee were to make a post that said, “I wrote a new novel. It’s great,” we would certainly all be advised to take that statement with a large grain of salt. After all, he’s trying to sell us something. We’d be fools simply to take his word for it.
Similarly, a group of aggressive self-promoters has started a website to promote themselves and their wares. One of the posters on that site is the proprietor of a vanity press. When said poster writes articles saying, “Vanity presses are great! They’re the way of the future and everyone should do it,” we take that statement with a huge grain of salt. She’s trying to sell us something, and we’d be fools to simply take her word for it.
Of course, one of the crucial differences is that Lee doesn’t post his own statements about how great his books are. When he mentions them it’s usually to cite the statements of other people — often respected industry professionals — in praise of his work. Does the vanity press proprietor similarly cite the statements of respected industry professionals in support of her work?
Bottom line: When someone has a product to sell you, and they write an “article” telling you how great that product is, it’s not an article. It’s a sales pitch. And it should be taken just as seriously as any sales pitch.
Matt — you say “Your simply deflecting from the validity of what I am saying, and by default accepting what I say as truth.”
It has been proven there is no validity to what you’re (not “your”) saying, that you clearly have neither the experience nor the education to back up your opinions or claims, and that you twist the truth to suit your own, uninformed and ignorant point of view.
You are the prime example of the sort of person the vanity presses prey on and why they are so successful at it. Once again, you are consistently proving Lee’s points with each of your posts.
Yvonne DiVita finally speaks up. I have reposted her comments in their entirety from her blog:
——————
Thanks for the support, Holly. It is uncanny, isn’t it, how Lee knows me and my business so well? And, how, in his purist world, my authors should either spend years languishing on some mainstream editor’s desk, hoping for a contract (that will steal all rights to their work), or just go home and forget about it.
(Angela Hoy of Booklocker, a site I recommend to authors looking to self-publish, says this about it: “There is a long and impressive list of authors who were rejected over and over again by traditional houses, who self-published and were subsequently successful. And, the list gets longer each year! If authors like James Redfield (The Celestine Prophecy) and Beatrix Potter (The Tale of Peter Rabbit) had simply put their manuscripts in a drawer instead of pursuing their dreams on their own, we might never have heard of them.”)
BTW, Angela Hoy also says to never pay to have your book published — and yet, I recommend her routinely! Why? Because I want writers to have all the facts.
Now, common sense tells me that, being the intelligent folks they are (the writers Angela talks about) they may have actually hired editors and proofreaders before going to the printer to print (publish) their books. Maybe not. We’ll never know.
It’s also uncanny how the folks at Lee’s blog do not give credit to intelligent people, like my authors, for weighing their options – my services are just one – and making a choice. I certainly have never lured anyone into using my services. And, I don’t *sell* them on Beneath the Cover. I talk about them.
The comment about mainstream publishers looking at self-published books comes from editorial advice given to several authors I have talked with – the mainstream editor said, “Self-publish and if you do well, we’ll look at it again.” No, I did not write down the name or the publishing firm – so, my honor is once again on the line. But, as so many people have attested, I don’t lie to get authors to sign with me. In fact, I discourage them if they have unreal expectations – because, it’s true, I cannot get their books into Barnes and Noble. Of course, I don’t have to – I can get them in Amazon, and…that’s really the distributor to use, in today’s world.
Why is it wrong for an author to admit that he or she is not a copyeditor, not a page layout professional, not a cover designer … and really doesn’t have time to master those skills so…would rather pay someone else to do them? Is it wrong for me to have just such people on my team, available to help interested authors create professional books?
Dan Poynter advises authors to “self-publish” — he’s the reigning guru in the space. And, like Angela, he says don’t pay anyone. Well, except him. He writes books on the topic and does speaking engagements – where he sells his books! By golly! Sort of like writing for a blog or newsletter. (I send people to Dan Poynter, also – because he’s an expert at helping them self-publish, without using an author services company. It’s another good option for them).
Why, I wonder, do Tod and Lee think it’s wrong for business writers – most of our books are business books – to choose to create what Fast Company magazine calls “the Ultimate Calling Card”… http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/83/callingcard.html
(Of course, the article highlights Jenkins, a company Lee and Tod denigrate along with the rest of us.)
Choosing to publish using author services is not wrong. It’s absolutely acceptable and honorable. Lee and Tod should take on Jerrold Jenkins. He was here long before I — doing exactly what I do. And, he’s the reason I’m comfortable in my skin. Those of us who are author-centric recognize the great writers mainstream publishing dismisses.
Maybe the boys would like to read this article about self-publishing and making a profit, and comment: http://money.cnn.com/1999/11/03/life/q_publishing/
To quote from Marilyn Ross’s website (she, too, has been doing this self-publishing thing far longer than I), “Can self publishing be an “Open Sesame” to fame and fortune? You bet it can!” Does she mean mainstream publishing ‘might’ pick up your book – maybe, maybe not. But, she uses the words “fame and fortune,” something I never did. She’s quoted in the bible of Lee’s and Tod’s world: Publishers Weekly!!! OMG! (just look it up, why do I have to do all the work for you?)
If Lee or Tod tries to say mainstream publishing doesn’t produce garbage, on a regular basis, well…they’re deluding themselves. I’m an avid reader and I read a lot of books with horrible cover design, dismal page layout, and lots of mechanical errors. Not to mention truly lousy writing, fiction and non-fiction, alike. AND…in their world, errors cannot be fixed! Nope, sorry. IF, as one author I know had happen to her, the publisher misspells your name on the cover – too bad. 10,000 copies were printed. Better to go to court and change your name. In my publishing business, we fix it before the next book gets printed.
As for my writing here being “an attempt to fool aspiring writers for personal gain”… how so? How can I be fooling anyone when…in the first conversation with would-be authors, I openly state that I’m a POD firm, and the author will be considered self-published. And, I tell them they will pay for all the services that go into creating their book…and I give them my pricing! Not to mention that I routinely send them to sites that advise them NOT to use my services! And still, some of them sign with me!
Why? Because I support my authors after their books are released. I’m a VERY small business. I do not yet have the funds to support them the way mainstream publishers do – but I’m making gains. We are on track for some exciting things in 2008.
Now…in honor of my authors, I must bow out of this conversation, though it has been enlightening.
p.s. One last little detail, Lee and Tod also don’t address the number of bloggers snatched up by mainstream publishers in the last few years. Yes, boys, it happens. BTW, blogging is most assuredly self-publishing. It’s a way to create a platform. And, it’s why we suggest (and help) our authors do it.
Oh, yeah… unless you’re using a FREE blogging platform, which Lee isn’t, you’re paying to self-publish. You’re paying for the tools. At WME, we supply the tools for print publishing, and folks pay us for it. Clear and simple.
Let me share one last story – a good friend who blogs was approached by a mainstream publisher – very big name (will not reveal it as the blogger wishes to remain anonymous). Create a proposal, the blogger was told. We’d like to publish a book for you. The blogger did so. The publisher asked for a more detailed marketing plan. The blogger complied. The publisher said, “This is great! Now, how many books can we be assured you will buy?” Buy, Tod and Lee. Buy!!! They wanted this blogger to BUY 1000 books!!! Holy cow – I think that’s…vanity publishing!!!
For more info on the blogger gets book deal, do read here: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/15/books/15blog.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
and, here: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/31/040531ta_talk_radosh
Yvonne DiVita claims, “Let me share one last story – a good friend who blogs was approached by a mainstream publisher – very big name (will not reveal it as the blogger wishes to remain anonymous). Create a proposal, the blogger was told. We’d like to publish a book for you. The blogger did so. The publisher asked for a more detailed marketing plan. The blogger complied. The publisher said, “This is great! Now, how many books can we be assured you will buy?” Buy, Tod and Lee. Buy!!! They wanted this blogger to BUY 1000 books!!! Holy cow – I think that’s…vanity publishing!!!”
She then refers readers to two three-year-old stories, giving the misleading impression that they prove her story. They don’t and I would say, holy cow!, the story DiVita relates, especially as it is bereft of any details that can be verified, is apocryphal and about as reliable as the third-hand hearsay from someone’s cousin who cleaned the latrines at Roswell that they once caught a glimpse of alien bodies there.
Yvonne DiVita and her defenders here continue to try to make vanity publishers look better by emphasizing the worst examples and practices of traditional publishing, a fallacious and dishonest exercise.
I challenge them to provide one example of a vanity press or POD firm that consistently gets authors’ books into bookstores and libraries and gets them reviewed by major periodicals. Of course they can’t, because no such animal exists.
I tend to look at the variety of publishing avenues as various means to certain ends. Part of the problem is with writers who won’t take time to learn their craft, let alone the understand the industry they hope to invade. I see little patience. A draft is done, a few revisions are made, and the manuscripts are rushed off. The writers wait with unrealistic expectations, and at the first negative spin, he or she spins toward the PODs, the epubs, the anybody-who-will-publish-me venues. They want the book in their hand. And they want it now.
There will always be people waiting, ready to offer these writers the fulfillment of their dreams for a price. Who wants to wait 13 years to get a book contract? Who will wait 3 months?
Some of the venues offer a way for “writers” to get their work into print and into the hands of family and friends. Like anything else, it’s buyer beware. You have to do the due diligence. Ya gotta know the nature of your pig in a poke.
Too many people today seem to think there’s an automatic response to writing that results in publication. (You know, that’s why writers are pre-published not unpublished.) Hard as it is to accept, writers are not guaranteed publication. Editors and agents do not have to like the work or have to represent everyone who produces a manuscript. Many writers aren’t willing to accept that reality or do the work required to make their dreams happen.
The impulse to write and publish is driven by a lot of factors that may not have anything to do with a desire to be a published writer in the traditional sense. On way hand I see the argument that the POD people and others are preying on the innocent. But some of them do serve a purpose and not all are evil. Writers need to back up and breathe deep before they take off down Publishing Row.
Few writers would admit that their need to see their name in print may be, after all, due to nothing more than a tryst with Vanity.
By the way, I haven’t seen as much talk about one aspect of traditional publishing that is a plus. Distribution.
New writers expect the E-pubs, PODS, vanity press groups and small independents to be able to sail in those deep channels like the Big Boys. Well, they don’t. Most of them don’t even have a boat. The uneducated writer and now “new author” is exasperated when their local bookstores don’t have the books on the shelves. Even more so is the surprise and even anger by the friends and family. Booksellers are assaulted. Managers accosted. Why not?
And even if the new author has some understanding of the process, try explaining the byzantine labyrinth to normal, everyday people. Expectation slams into reality quicly and the author’s long-awaited shoot-the-moon happiness is crushed.
Distribution is a rather big key to success.
Wow, I love the Hypocrisy.
Have you seen Lee’s post today?
According to Lee, Tod and their “gang” Lee should have prefaced the post with “Self Promotion Alert” because thats all it is.
You accuse Beneaththecover.com and Yvonne Divita of existing for self promotional reasons, and use this as a reason to devalue what they have to say.
Here is a perfect example of YOU using your blog site to promote yourself.
The fact that I am not a book industry insider is irrelevant when it comes to pointing out the obvious and re-searching facts.
With this post you are doing exactly what you accuse beneaththecover.com contributors of doing.
Hypocrite.
Matt Knox
Interesting how Yvonne DiVita’s statement “In today’s emerging digital world, if you truly want to attract that big name publisher, use a professional POD firm to self-publish because the big name publishers are watching.” gets explained later by her as:
“The comment about mainstream publishers looking at self-published books comes from editorial advice given to several authors I have talked with – the mainstream editor said, “Self-publish and if you do well, we’ll look at it again.” ”
There’s a tiny grain of truth in that–if someone were able to sell a large number of copies of their self-published book–probably at least 5,000 or more copies–it would attract the attention of a mainstream publisher. And what are the odds of someone doing that? Close to zero. So what Divita is doing is hyping a strategy that has almost no chance of success for any of her potential clients.
Lee, when I see you starting these discussions about venity/self-publishing presses, I wonder why you bother. If people want to be suckers and throw away their money that’s their business. But when I see the relentless, tireless assault of common sense by these people, my thought now is keep doing it. These people are truly vile, praying off the desperation of these wannabe authors, and putting out all this happy horseshit and misinformation to as nothing more than a smokescreen. But they sure as fuck are proving to be tireless!
Matt,
The difference between what Yvonne is doing with her “advice” on Beneaththecover.com and what I am doing here is considerable…and obvious.
You are right, I am using MY BLOG to promote MYSELF.
I am not going on another site and posting advice that says “the very best mysteries written are the ones published by Penguin-Putnam.” You see, that would be a conflict of interest, since they publish my books and I have a financial relationship with them. It would be a huge ethical no-no.
But Matt, as you rightly point out, I am here on MY SITE, the one with my name and picture across the stop. This site is quite clearly all about me and my books. You may have noticed all the book covers running down the right-hand column. Clearly, me posting a link to a positive review is self-serving, self-promotional, and nothing else. And that’s the difference. It CLEARLY is. That is the expressed and obvious purpose of my website, of which this blog is a component.
My “advice” on the other hand, like staying away from vanity presses and to be wary of those who run them, is something I have no stake in. I have no hidden profit agenda, no conflict of interest. I am simply warning aspiring writers to avoid being suckered. My advice can be taken, or ignored, at face-value.
If Yvonne was sharing her self-serving advice full of falsehoods on her vanity press website, that would be one thing. But doing it on another site that claims to offer “news” and “advice” is something else altogether.
Beneaththecover is presenting a falsehood, that they are simply a clearing house of news and advice when, in fact, the news and advice is slanted to sell the products and services offered by their contributors.
Lee
I haven’t had a chance yet to comment on Yvonne’s hilarious and amazing litany of equivocations, fantasies, and bizarre logic (a blog is the same thing as self-publishing!?). I’ve been busy working on my book (you know, those thing publishers pay authors for), but I will get to it this weekend.
http://www.beneaththecover.com/2008/02/21/a-note-from-admin-the-editorcontent-director
You made them change their comments policy. They sure
don’t want to be called on their bullshit.
————–
We thank visitors for coming to our site.
Whether you’re involved in publishing, editing, retail, marketing, or writing, we appreciate your coming here to learn and to participate. We hope that every visitor has gained valuable knowledge and insight into the book industry. Perhaps we should add: We sure have! And we expect to learn even more!
We also thank all our contributors for taking the time and effort to share their expertise, experience, and opinions. We hope that you, too, have learned from each other’s postings.
We especially want to thank Yvonne Divita for her posts, which have been compellingly insightful and informative about the self-publishing and Print On Demand industry. We salute her as an outstanding expert, a true professional in every sense of the word. We look forward to many future scintillating posts from her on self-publishing and Print On Demand.
We are also taking this opportunity to establish clear ground rules for comments on our site:
1. We draw the line at comments that question anyone’s integrity.
2. We will not tolerate any misrepresentations or slander, nor will we countenance any malicious or libelous statements—nor will we tolerate any comments that come close to such kinds of statements.
3. Personal attacks and anything of an incendiary or emotional nature will not be allowed. Period.
Within the next few days, we will post our complete Guidelines for Comments on our HOME page. In the meantime, what has been said here will be rigorously enforced.
That being said—Let’s shake up the book industry
“Let’s shake up the book industry.” Just don’t challenge our credentials or motives. ‘Cause, you know… That’s not fair.
Fight the power!
Lee, congratulations on your new book. I saw that and then I noticed this dent in the blogosphere.
It took a while, but I read the comments on this post. I was curious, so I went to see that site you were talking about. I think it’s interesting how people on both sides are so emotionally involved in this “blog war” on both blogs.
Personally, I like books and reading. I don’t care much about how books are made or who makes them. I just don’t see the point in this whole battle between commenters.
Well Miles the commercial market cares who makes books and what they are. The vanity industry doesn’t, only that customers are naive enough to go along. And foot the bills!
Matt – Dude! Think before you shoot your mouth off. Lee is absolutely right, and I don’t often agree with him. It’s his blog about his work and his life, etc. I’ll go even further … he could go on other sites and say is publisher is publishing the best stuff out there. This could be absolutely true … and why shouldn’t he say it? He isn’t trying to dupe desperate people out of their money or exploit their hopes and dreams. Use a little critical thinking there, Matt.
Tom says “Darryl’s Daring Deed is completely the work of an autistic teenager…All we did was scan his art, put his own words into a commercially printable file, and provide places for him to sell his work with a trade ISBN and barcode.”
You took money from an autistic teenager simply to put his manuscript into PDF form and get him an ISBN number? How much money did you take from this poor child? Did you tell him that he was now a published author? I know vanity presses are desperate to make money from aspiring writers but this is a new and contemptible low.
Having worked in publishing, with actual editorial experience at three “big publishing” houses, I thought I’d dispel a few myths that have been bandied about here. In my five years in editorial, I acquired both fiction and non-fiction. I’ve sat in hundreds of editorial meetings, and gotten thousands of submissions from reputable–and disreputable–agents. This is not to toot any sort of horn, but merely to offer proof that I know what I’m talking about. Anyway:
1) Amazon, despite what Yvonne says, is not a distributor. They are a retailer. There is a huge difference. A distributor buys x number of books from a publisher, then “distributes” them among their sales channels. Levy is an example of a distributor. Ingram is a distributor. Distributors have a financial stake in the success of the book. If it does not sell, they lose money.
2) Amazon is ‘not’ the preferred distributor, or retailer, or anything like that. They are a piece of the puzzle, sure, but as of today only about 3%-5% of that puzzle. Brick and mortar stores, with few exceptions, are the most important part of the puzzle (though big box stores, like Sam’s Club and BJ’s are growing in importance). It costs Amazon nothing to put up a page for a self-published book, and it certainly doesn’t mean they have to order any copies. If a self-published book doesn’t sell any copies on Amazon, they lose nothing but the time it took to post the page.
3) There are authors who benefit from self-publishing, but they are extremely rare. They are, with very few exceptions, non-fiction authors who have either a substantial platform or take part in many speaking engagements at which to sell their books. In this case, they benefit from increased royalties. Many NF authors that publish with traditional publishers actually negotiate to buy back a certain amount of copies–at a large discount–in order to both sell at their lectures as well as in B&M stores. Though yes, it is true that sometimes publishers do acquire a book solely because the author commits to a substantial buyback. Yes this is cynical publishing, but publishing is a business, and publishers do what they need to do to stay in business.
4) Big name publishing is only watching if you make them watch. The fact of the matter is, when a self-published novel comes in on submission, it is assumed, often correctly, that the novel could not find a mainstream publisher. Yes, there are self-published novels that are well-written and do eventually land contracts, but again they are exceedingly few and far between. Anyone who thinks self-publishing is the best route to getting a mainstream contract, give me a ring, I have some real estate to sell you…
5) “Big Publishing” generally takes longer to publish books because it takes months to properly sell and promote the book to their accounts. Any publisher, if they wanted to could, put out a book out lickity split. In fact, those books are called “crash books,” and they’re only done if a book is especially timely and/or publicity driven. But if you print a book in a month just because you can, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon, etc…wouldn’t take diddly squat because they’d have no reason to.
6) Publishers do drop the ball. That’s the way it works, unfortunately. Good books go unread and don’t get the promotion they need or deserve, and bad books become monster bestsellers. Hell, “Fools Gold” was #1 at the box office.
7) There’s no doubt publishing is changing, though change is certainly taking its time. The Kindle might be doing well relatively, but ebooks are such a small fraction of book sales (like 1% of 1%) that it’s far too early in the device’s release for it to have made anywhere near a dent, or even a smudge, on the market.
Just a few thoughts.
Peter and Jason did a great job of tackling the fallacies in Yvonne’s post, so I won’t go over the same points. (Thank you, guys, you saved me a lot of work!). I’ll just point out a few things they didn’t touch on.
Yvonne wrote: “the mainstream editor said, “Self-publish and if you do well, we’ll look at it again.” No, I did not write down the name or the publishing firm – so, my honor is once again on the line.”
I don’t think the conversation ever happened but hey, for fun let’s take her at her word. Sure, a publisher will look at a self-published book *if it does well,” which would mean selling several THOUSAND copies. How many POD vanity press books do that? In fact, how many POD vanity press books even earn back what the author has spent?
Yvonne writes: “As for my writing here being “an attempt to fool aspiring writers for personal gain”… how so? How can I be fooling anyone when…in the first conversation with would-be authors, I openly state that I’m a POD firm, and the author will be considered self-published. And, I tell them they will pay for all the services that go into creating their book…and I give them my pricing!”
But you also tell them, at least in your “advice” on beneaththecover.com that if they want to attract a traditional publisher, that POD self-publishing is the first necessary step — and we both know that isn’t true.
Do you tell them you make most of your money from authors and not from booksales? Do you tell them what percentage of your clients ever earn back in sales what they spent to have you print their book? Do you tell them they won’t be reviewed by respected publications? Do you tell them they won’t qualify for membership in any professional writers organizations (or be eligible for the awards those organizations give)? Do you tell them their books will not be available in bookstores? Do you tell them that once a book has been printed in POD, most real publishers will never consider it for publication unless it sells thousands of copies?
Yvonne writes: “p.s. One last little detail, Lee and Tod also don’t address the number of bloggers snatched up by mainstream publishers in the last few years.”
Um, we also haven’t addressed cloning, Swanson TV Dinners, or Lindsay Lohan’s nipples because they have nothing to do with this discussion. We are talking about your conflict of interest when you give “advice” about self-publishing and about how vanity presses prey on the gullibility and desperation of aspiring authors.
You close your post with an anecdote to “prove” traditional publishers are vanity presses. But I believe your unattributed story is just that…a work of fiction. You might consider going to a vanity press and seeing if they will publish it for you. I hope you haven’t maxed out your credit card, though…
Lee
The only thing that surprises me about the new comment policy at beneaththecover.com is that it took them so long to impose it.
The one thing vanity press hucksters can’t stand is someone shining a light on their outrageous claims. Knowledge is their enemy. Ignorance, gullibility and desperation are their friends. Writers are their prey.
Lee
Cleavon,
Do you think that any vanity press — whether it’s Windsor, Airleaf, Tate, Jones Harvest, or Authorhouse — cares if their customer is autistic or not? All that matters to them is whether the check will clear.
Lee
I just saw his text ad over at the Huffington Post and couldn’t resist posting it, it’so spot on.
I Got Scammed 27 Times
Avoid Work At Home Online Scams! I Will Show You The Ones That Work.
Well, why *haven’t* you discussed Swanson TV dinners yet? Is there something you’re trying to hide here? Do they even still make those?
Actually I have discussed those blogs to books…but in a bunch of places called newspapers and magazines, because, you see, I’m an expert…
Has everybody seen Amazon.com’s, “Kindle”? It’s offered on their homepage. It’s an electronic reader that uses an ink-like print that “is like reading a book.” The price is $400 dollars and, according to Amazon, it’s sold-out.
One of it’s features is that it logs you on to different news and blog websites (although the details are not given.) The relevent point, though, is that books on the New York Times bestseller list cost only $9.99 and the book is downloaded to Kindle and can be stored on a memory card. 200 books can be stored on Kindle.
I’m trying to imagine how this could play out in the future as a type of POD. One scenario is jumping into my mind. Suppose that a TV series goes off the air, but still has, say, 2 million loyal viewers: is it possible for a writer to write novel tie-ins just for these fans and avoid the physical printing costs of a book, it’s transportation, warehousing, and handling costs, and the lugging by the reader, so that books are cheaper and more are sold? And could the owner of the franchise licences fans to write fanfiction for a small fee per each copy they sell, and could that be a good business move?
Anyway, the proverb “the more, the merrier” was always one I liked. And with this new, emerging technology it seems that more and more opportunities exist for writers who are able to reach their fans directly. Regular publishing will still go on and now writers can be paid for ebook downloads too.
But I suppose scams will creep in and will need to be monitored as well. But I like playing with these ideas for the future.
Has everybody seen Amazon.com’s, “Kindle”?
Dan, by now everybody knows about the Kindle. I hear that even Osama Bin Laden has one in his hideaway in Pakistan.
Mr Winkler, I wonder what titles Osama has on his Kindle. (Several inappropriate and, frankly, shameful jokes spring to mind, none of which I will expose you to.)
Actually I’m a bit alarmed by the way Amazon are muscling in on the ebook phenomenon. It seems they take a 60% slice of the price of self-published ebooks; and what happens if Amazon suddenly go belly-up?
Peter, yes, you’re right, many have heard, but I wasn’t one of them. But still, it’s interesting to imagine how this technology is going to play out in the future for the writer?
Can markets that now exist but are too small for NYC publishers to serve, be served via Kindle downloads? Say, mystery books about Canadian snowbirds in Miami? The market might be half a million Canadians during winter months. Is a regular publisher going to publish a book to reach these people? Or is it too small a market? If an author writes such a book and offers it on Kindle for $3.99, would there be sales of 10,000 to 40,000? Or not?
Anyway, sorry if I’m not so up-to-the-second. You blink and some new technology gets past your notice. I bet some smart NYC publishing exec is busy identifying as many sub-markets as possible that Kindle can reach and lining up offerings for them. Or not. 🙂
“You blink and some new technology gets past your notice.”
And none of them will change how publishing is done.
Kindle is opening up new doors for authors like never before. In fact, ANYONE can open an account and make a book available for download. You don’t even need an ISBN number. People who don’t see the change in technology as a change in the publishing landscape are simply shortsighted. My books, for example, have been selling very well on Kindle, and there is nothing the publisher/author has to do except open an account and download the work one time to Amazon. Very cool, both for the author and for the readers.
Jim,
I don’t mean this to sound snarky in any way — but what does “selling very well” on Kindle mean? How many copies/downloads have you had? And what sort of royalty do they pay?
I have had a story on Amazon shorts for some time and I’d say, despite many downloads, I haven’t made more than pocket change (well into the TWO figures!)
Lee
Lee: Amazon keeps 65% of the gross amount of the sale and passes 35% on to the publisher/author. My books sell for $4.95, meaning the gross profit is $1.73 per download. The gross profit on a Kindle sale is also the net profit, since there are no expenses associated with the sale. Nor is there any labor or effort.
That might not seem like much until you compare it to the “traditional” publication model. There, my books sell for $13.95. They get purchased by the wholesaler (Baker & Taylor) for 55% off, meaning I get $6.27 per sale (this is basically the same for all publishers, including yours). The cost of the book is approximately $2.00, and shipping is $.50 to $1 per book. Thus the net profit is about $3.50, and there is labor involved (packing, post office, etc.)
I don’t know exactly how many downloads I’ve had on Kindle but do know that I’ve been in the top ten sellers in a number of different categories a number of different times. Yesterday, all five of my books were simultaneously in the top 10% of ALL sales.
My point is not that I’m paying my mortgage through Kindle. My point is that the technology and the methods by which writers can reach readers is expanding. The more it does, the less relevant the “traditional” publishing model will become.
The youth of today like things electronic. In 5 or 10 or 20 years when they’re the principal buyers of books, the electronic model will be king. I’m not saying the paper book will go away, obviously it never will. That form of book, however, will have to share the reading market with electronic books. Phrased differently, technology is expanding the role of who can publish books and reach an audience.
So, writers out there, have hope and go for it. There’s a whole world out there outside NY if you’re smart enough to see it and self-starting enough to go for it. I will point out, however, as I have since my first post more than 2 years ago, you need to start with a good book. If you don’t have that, there is no form of publishing that will bring any significant sales.
Jim,
That’s very interesting. Did you set the selling price of your book or did Amazon? And in what form did you provide your book to them…a pdf?
Lee
I answered my own questions by going to Amazon and clicking on their Quickstart link for providing content for the Kindle…
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/digital/otp/help/Amazon_DTP_Quickstart_Guide.pdf
That’s the bigtime alright. Every writer dreams of being downloadable.
JMH: “In fact, ANYONE can open an account and make a book available for download.
And then be totally ignored by readers.
“You blink and some new technology gets past your notice.”
And none of them will change how publishing is done.
Touche, Mark.
So, writers out there, have hope and go for it. There’s a whole world out there outside NY if you’re smart enough to see it and self-starting enough to go for it.
That’s naive at best and idiotic at worst. You sound indistinguishable from the vanity press bullcon salespeople Lee assailed in his post here.
1. The average self-published book sells 200 copies.
2. Ebooks represent a tiny fraction of the book market.
3. A self-published book available for the Kindle is still a self-published book, subject to all the pitfalls associated with self-publishing, except printing and shipping costs.
4. Most significantly, The Kindle does nothing to help an author build a market and create a demand for his book (see #4).
“That’s very interesting. Did you set the selling price of your book or did Amazon? And in what form did you provide your book to them…a pdf?”
The publisher/author sets the selling price. New bestsellers all go for $9.95. Most TPs and older books are listed in the $3-6 range.
Amazon accepts a number of different formats and the upload process is easy and painless. I think they accept Word, PDF, and several others. No matter what format the publisher/author has the book in initially, it can always be coverted to a TEXT document and then inserted or saved into an acceptable Amazon format. It’s really very easy and you only have to do it once.
Jim, thanks for your information. As Lee said, it was very interesting and opens up a lot for the imagination to dream about.
Peter, it’s good of you, of course, to quote hard statistical facts but I can’t agree with your sample. You are using stats based on the AVERAGE of ALL self-published books but you are not comparing the results with the average of ALL regularly published books. As you know, in regular publishing, let’s say there’s about 200,000 or so books published a year. And out of this number there are, say, a thousand or less that are hits or bestsellers. So the road to success is not any better or worse than self-publishing (assuming little or no marketing effort by the publisher due to such high numbers of books published.) It’s the same for both and that’s one reason why new technology is so exciting — it cuts costs and thereby lowers prices for the reader which will increase demand, and the technology will also raise the percentage and the absolute amount for the writer. This is the promise of it, as I understand it. But the writer will still have to do a marketing job somehow. (And there’s nothing to say that a regular publisher couldn’t do a marketing effort for a self-published novel or ebook. Lot’s of new possibilities are opening, right? The publishing could be one thing, the marketing another, maybe.)
And Mark, no, new technology doesn’t always change a previous technology’s practices. The advent of the car didn’t change the way saddle-makers do their work. The newer technology just opens up additional capabilities, but this is the reason it’s worth a look, right? Again, TV didn’t change radio all that much but it sure opened up a lot of new opportunity for writers. Maybe ebooks have a similar promise by increasing the reach of the writer/publisher.
Anyway, how about writing a book that’s a hit in China? It’s an ebook download. Price is $1.99, and so the number of copies sold soars to 30 million, and the writer receives 35%. Yes, the AVERAGE writer won’t do so well. But the TALENTED writer has something new to look forward to. This is one possibility I’m not blinking about. 🙂
I’m still laughing at whomever wrote:
“I was directionally correct in my writing but inaccurate in my words choices” or something like that.
WTF!? LOL!
Basically you’re trying to say, “I’m still right even though you proved what I was saying was wrong?”
LOL! I couldn’t get past it.
Man, talk about channelling Tony Snow!
“So, writers out there, have hope and go for it. There’s a whole world out there outside NY if you’re smart enough to see it and self-starting enough to go for it.
That’s naive at best and idiotic at worst.”
Really? Here’s a printout of just one of my books at one library system, for one day. My books are in hundreds of library systems, many of which have 20 copies or more.
Library Shelving Location Electronic Link Call Number and Holdings Request Status
Arapahoe Library District Koelbel Fiction HANSEN In Transit
Arapahoe Library District Smoky Hill Fiction HANSEN 1 HOLD
Denver Public BEAR VALLEY BRANCH FIC HANSEN J DUE 03-25-08
Denver Public ROSS-CHERRY CREEK BRANCH FIC HANSEN J DUE 03-12-08
Denver Public EUGENE FIELD BRANCH FIC HANSEN J DUE 03-08-08
Denver Public CENTRAL LIBRARY – HOYT FIC HANSEN J DUE 03-16-08
Denver Public PARKHILL BRANCH FIC HANSEN J DUE 03-20-08
Denver Public SCHLESSMAN BRANCH FIC HANSEN J DUE 03-16-08
Denver Public ROSS-UNIVERSITY HILLS BRA FIC HANSEN J DUE 03-18-08
Jeffco Public Belmar Library M FICTION HANSEN 1 HOLD
Jeffco Public Arvada Library M FICTION HANSEN DUE 03-04-08
Jeffco Public IN PROCESS M FICTION HANSEN DUE 03-17-08
JMH: “In fact, ANYONE can open an account and make a book available for download.
And then be totally ignored by readers.”
Or not. Here is a very recent ranking of one of my books.
#2 in Kindle Store > Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery > Hard-Boiled
#19 in Kindle Store > Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Police Procedurals
#31 in Kindle Store > Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery > Women
Encouraging numbers. How many sales does that represent? Are we talking 2 or 3? Or 200 or 300?
“That’s the bigtime alright. Every writer dreams of being downloadable.”
Actually, 98% of every CURRENT bestseller is available at Kimble. So, yes, Patterson dodn’t mind being downloaded.
Also, did you know that Borders is totally revamping it’s stores to bring downloading to the brick and mortar market?
JMH:
The Los Angeles Public Library, with dozens of branches, has exactly one copy of each of your two novels, Shadow laws: a novel and Fatal laws.
It’s no surprise you quote listings from the Arvada library, since they are in Colorado and the LAPL system lists your books’ publisher being from Golden, CO. So you did a nice sales job with the local librarians or maybe you donated several copies and pressed them to take them.
You’re not fooling anybody except yourself. BTW, putting the subtitle “a novel” on a novel is the mark of a clueless amateur.
“Encouraging numbers. How many sales does that represent? Are we talking 2 or 3? Or 200 or 300?”
David, probably under 10, but in a compressed time period. So much of the “ranking” is luck of the draw. You can get a buying streak, shoot into the top ten, then be down to 10,000 in a couple of days.
I’ve sold hundreds of books through Amazon, but not on the same day.
My point remains, however, that there is a way to succeed, and have fun doing it, that doesn’t have to involve NY.
“The Los Angeles Public Library, with dozens of branches, has exactly one copy of each of your two novels, Shadow laws: a novel and Fatal laws. You’re not fooling anybody except yourself. BTW, putting the subtitle “a novel” on a novel is the mark of a clueless amateur.”
You’re right. I feel like such a fool. Thanks for setting me straight. You rule, dude!!!! Keep on rocking with that special charisma of yours!!!
Okay, all this talk about the Kindle was interesting, but that’s not the topic of this post (nor is Jim Hansen-bashing). Please stick to the subject at hand…I will not publish any further off-topic comments in this thread. Thanks!
Lee
Well none of us is Patterson. “So the road to success is not any better or worse than self-publishing (assuming little or no marketing effort by the publisher due to such high numbers of books published.)”
High numbers of books published is the realm of vanity publishing. When crap floats this is the MO. I’ll take a bad day as a midlist author to a vanity any day. My memoir is in a library in Missouri. Let’s party!
Lee, the topic of this post was how bad vanity press is, and the people who sell its services. To prove your point, you quoted stats on the TOTAL number of books published by iUniverse in 2004 versus sales. But this proves only that the publishing business can be difficult to break into not that regular publishing is better (or more honest). To prove your point you have to contrast the vanity press figures with compatible figures from regular publishing — and the vast number of flops in regular publishing in a given year will no doubt dwarf the vanity press numbers.
But you will say that what matters is that the writers got paid. But here there is a problem with your argument that you are not acknowledging. The regular publishers are making money off of your talent, and making more money than the writer does, although they pick up their money on the back end. So what if it’s the back end or the front end? For you that’s all that counts! But for me the landscape is broader and more complex. That is, for writers of average talent, they don’t make money either through regular publishing or the vanity press. If they pay $3,500 to the vanity press or get $3,500 as an advance from a reguler publisher, it’s peanuts either way and you are over-reacting against the vanity press. But what if the book is a hit? It might not be, the odds are against it, etc, but what if it’s a hit? In regular publishing the publisher cashes in big time but in vanity publishing the writer cashes in big time. And, to extend the argument, which is what happened when Kindle came into it, with ebooks the writer has (or will have in the future) the best chance of a bigtime payday.
Finally, you are right to say that vanity press doesn’t sell the book whereas regular publishers have some kind of marketing push. But smart vanity press companies will develop marketing skills, if they want to succeed. However, whether it’s regular publishing or vanity press, it’s up to the writer to market his book. It’s got to be a great book, yes, but there’s got to be some good to great marketing as well, if a success is to result.
Anyway, maybe only NYC publishers really know the market and what works and what doesn’t. But if Borders sells ebook downloads within their bricks-and-morter stores, than the Mystery Writers of America may find themselves having to consider ebook-only published books for an Edgar! I see that you are fighting against scams, but you also seem to be fighting the creeping in of new technology, why? It can give your work new ways to reach audiences you can’t reach now. You are one of the persons who will benefit.
“and the vast number of flops in regular publishing in a given year will no doubt dwarf the vanity press numbers.”
On the contrary, all of the vanity press books were flops! That’s the point.
“The regular publishers are making money off of your talent, and making more money than the writer does, although they pick up their money on the back end.”
The vanity presses are making money off the writers and GIVE NOTHING BACK.
Traditional publishers pay an advance and, if your book sells well enough, then pay royalties. Of course publishers take a percentage of the income generated by a book’ sales. If they didn’t, they’d have no operating revenue with which to stay in business and make a profit, just like other legitimate corporations.
You continue to repeat arguments previously made and debunked by others.
Why don’t you answer the challenge I made to the other proponents of the “advantages” of self-publishing. If self-publishing is so potentially renumerative, why don’t authors with huge established audiences avail themselves of it?
Mark, yes, you have a point. All of the books in the sample Lee quoted from iUniverse were disappointing flops. But I don’t blame the printing technology for this while you and Lee and Peter do. I blame the book’s quality and that these are first novels and that the writers didn’t market themselves very well. It’s tough to break in. But can the ability to print books at the local level be a way for a writer to break into a local market? (The idea being that 1,000 books sales would be a success.)
Do you know the book, “Movie Money: Understanding Hollywood’s (Creative) Accounting Practices”? The authors are Bill Daniels, David Leedy and Steven D Sills. Mr. Leedy wrote the book in 1980 and had it self-published at his brother-in-law’s printing press. The book generated a lot of buzz in Hollywood. People were clamouring to get a copy. The book sold 5,000 copies but the real payoff was that he became known as an accountant in Hollywood. In other words, the book became the platform he could build his career upon. Yes, he only sold 5,000 copies, but he earned, say, 75% of the gross. Can you do as well in NYC?
And Peter, when you say that self-publishing doesn’t give you anything back, well, this story proves that it can. It can be the way into a career for a talented writer, with a great book, and modest initial goals.
But this story is only one very smart guy, what about all the others who don’t do so well?
What about the writers who don’t do so well in regular publishing? Yes, they have a modest advance, but it’s peanuts, it’s not worth talking about. The money a person spends on self-publishing is peanuts. It’s small. It can be done for a thousand bucks. So if a writer wants to take a chance on self-publishing, knowing all the risks and rewards, why not? If the book does well, it can be published by regular NYC publishers, and this is what self-publishing writers are REALLY aiming at – it’s a calling card, a spec script, but taken one step further so the writer can distribute it himself around town. Peter, Mark, Lee, you guys are jumping up and down over peanuts while not acknowledging how regular publishers make more profit from your book than you do, and while not having any imagination over how self-publishing CAN help an individual writer. Scams are bad, but not all self-publishing is bad.
So if NYC doesn’t want to publish my book, and if I believe in it with passion, I’ll scape up the bucks to self-publish. Might not you guys do the same?
Oh, and Peter, the reason for repeating an argument is that you did not get the distinction between scams and non-scams, and between publishing and marketing the first time. And also because writers are hard-headed, stubborn, ornery types. 🙂
If a self-published author spends $10,000 to publish his book (a reasonable figure), he’d have to sell 2857 copies (at $3.50 net profit each) to break even.
That’s assuming, of course, that the author doesn’t value his time as worth anything. (One assumes that the labor involved with running a self-publishing operation is considerable.)
Obviously most self-published books can’t accomplish that sales figure. But if it could, the author could more than likely sell it to a traditional publisher, and probably expect to get an advance of at least $10,000 (minus an agent’s commission, for a net of $8500).
In order to recoup the $10,000 investment and match a $8,500 advance, the self-published author would have to sell 5286 copies.
Of course, if the author can sell 5286 copies, that same book, traditionally published, would earn royalties of approximately $15,858. Net of an agent’s commission, that comes to $13,479 paid to the author.
In the self-published scenario, the author invests $10,000 and has a profit of $8500. In the traditionally published scenario, the author invests $0 and has a profit of $13,479 — 59% greater with no financial risk involved.
Consider two more factors: the self-published author is spending considerable time operating as a publisher, rather than a writer, in this scenario. In addition, any book that can sell 5000 copies as a self-published novel could likely sell many more with the support of a traditional publishing house — thus making the author even more money.
(This doesn’t even consider those authors who reap advances greater than $10,000, which is a lot of them.)
So even if a self-published author can hit one out of the park and sell 5k copies, the numbers just don’t add up.
(Before someone points out: “Yeah, but what if you can’t get a traditional publisher to take your book.” If a novel is marketable enough to sell 5k copies self-published, I believe in nearly all cases that a traditional publisher would take it.)
“If a self-published author spends $10,000 to publish his book (a reasonable figure), he’d have to sell 2857 copies (at $3.50 net profit each) to break even.”
David, your math is a little off: Here’s a 2000 book hypo where the books are priced retail at $13.95.
Total retail value: $27,900 (2000 x 13.95)
Less 55% disount to wholesaler: (15,345)
Net: $12,555
Less printing costs: (4000)
Less shipping costs: (1200)
Net profit per 2000 books: $7,355.
Sell 3,000 books and the net profit is over $10,000, which equals or exceeds most NY publisher advances.
Also, the above assumes a 55% discount selling to a wholesaler. End users (Borders, BN etc) buying directly from the publisher generally only get a 45% discount, so the actual number is probably closer to 50%.
So I can sell 3000 books and make about what a mid-list author will get from a NY publisher. Selling 3000 books is not that hard. A good review in Library Journal or Booklist is good for at least 1500 sales right off the bat. My second book has been sold out for some time and the other three released books are fast approaching that mark.
Also, keep in mind, that the real money is still down the road when the books will be released in Mass Market format. To that, also add profits from electronic sales, foreign rights, etc.
To me, being a lawyer, all these numbers are trivial. Obviously I’m only doing it for the fun of it. But there is money to be made if someone wants to get into it for that aspect.
Jim,
What about the costs of creating the cover art, producing the dust-jacket, typesetting, proof-reading, and warehousing? I imagine there are also accounting & billing expenses, too. What about advertising and promotion costs? If you factor those expenses in, how does that change the math? Oh…and what about the cost of returns? That must impact the final profit as well.
Lee
I was basing my calculations on your figures from an above post, Jim ($3.50 per book net profit, not counting labor).
But if we accept your revised figures, it still doesn’t look very attractive to me. Of course, as you say, you’re just in it for the fun — which is a perfectly valid reason to do it.
“What about the costs of creating the cover art, producing the dust-jacket, typesetting, proof-reading, and warehousing? I imagine there are also accounting & billing expenses, too.”
Cover art: 5-10MB royalty free photos from http://www.istockphoto.com, downloaded instantly to your computer. Average price: $10 each. Manipulate them as you want in PHoto shop, insert them into MS Publisher, overlay the text, save it as a PDF and you have a cover. Email it to the printer. Simple and free.
Dust jacket: None for TP. For hardback, that’s included in the printing cost.
Typesetting: I create my books in MS Word, insert that document into MS Publisher, and then save the MS Publisher as a PDF, which is what the printer wants. Simply email the PDF to the printer which takes a couple of minutes. If you don’t have PDF convestion software, Office Max will covert Word or MS Publisher to a PDF format for about $2.00
Proofreading: I have tons of people who volunteer to do it for free and generally send each MS out to five people for careful proofreading. The quality of my books matches NY any day of the week.
Accounting and billing: Simple using Quick Books. The only cost is a stamp and piece of paper.
Warehousing: My garage at first, then the books disappear pretty quickly.
Returns: Some, of course. They then get sent back out in future reorders if they haven’t been trashed. If they have been trashed, I give them away as ARCs, give them to BN/Borders staff during booksignings, etc. No one cares if a book isn’t perfect if they’re getting it for free. So in the end, every single book ends up somewhere
So, there really aren’t many other costs. There is work, obviously, beyond writing the book. But for me, it’s pure fun. I spent a couple hours today designing the cover for VOODOO LAWS which will come out next year. There’s nothing quite like getting a cover exactly the way you want it.
“I was basing my calculations on your figures from an above post, Jim ($3.50 per book net profit, not counting labor).”
The $3.50 is net, meaning the amount left AFTER recooping all expenses (printing, shipping, etc.) Therefore, roughly, 3000 books yields $10,000 NET PROFIT ($3.50 x 3000).
It might not look too attractive financially, but how many people spend a thousand hours writing a book, get it rejected by NY, stick it in a drawer and get zero? All my books get published. I don’t have to sit around and worry about what something thinks of it. What’s that worth?
Every book I write will net at least $10,000. I’m currently working on book nine (1-8 have been written, b ut only 1-4 released). My NET PROFIT for books written in under a 3 year timeline will be over $100,000. Not much, I agree, but at least its Saturday night fun money.
Jim,
Thanks for sharing all that information. It’s fascinating. You are clearly one of the exceptions to the rule…but you also are truly self-published and didn’t make the mistake of going to a POD vanity press. You took a big risk and it appears that you succeeded.
I’m curious — what made you decide not to go with a POD vanity press
Lee
“You took a big risk and it appears that you succeeded. I’m curious — what made you decide not to go with a POD vanity press.”
I want to emphasize that any success I get in the end is the product of a lot of people beyond myself. Lots of people have volunteered their time and efforts to proofread, critique covers, etc. A dozen or so authors let me send them my Night Laws MS and blurbed it, two years ago when no one in the world had ever heard of me or Bryson Coventry. Many dozens of book reviewers have given me the opportunity to send them my books over the last two years when they had hundreds to choose from. Borders and BN have opened their doors wide and have collectively let me hold 60-80 signings. It’s all a building process and a lot of people have been doing the building besides myself. I don’t thank them enough so I hope you don’t mind that I took the opportunity to do it here.
I never considered POD or NY for that matter. I just decided, from day one, to publish my own books and see what happened.
“It’s tough to break in”
Yes Dan it is, particularly when the printing method is designed so that not a single copy ever sees a shelf not in the author’s garage.
True self-publishing has a handful of success stories. Eragon being one.
Still if for Super Jim here, big mainstream reviews are few to none as David says.
Just when I think the discussion can’t get any more interesting….
Jim, thanks. Lee was right to say your comments were fascinating and you have so clearly connected all the dots that, for me, you have outlined a Business Model. It is amazing how beatiful the logic behind the Model is. I worked in the marketing department of a life insurance company for four years. Don’t know all that much about it, but they did a lot of their advertising in magazines rather than newspapers. The thinking was that magazines are around longer (a month rather than a day) and magazines reach a more committed reader. That said, I notice that the Toronto Sun is running a half page ad for the autobiography of the former Toronto police chief. They charge $47 dollars and the client sends in a cheque or credit card number. I’m thinking the ad is free (because the paper wants to support the police) but I’m wondering how an ad might help your books, especially if they were priced as, say, 4 for the price 1? That would be a terrific deal for the reader and might motivate a large number of sales. Or not. 🙂
David, your figures were interesting and added a nice NYC perspective for me. Lee and Mark and Peter have also added a lot of cautionary ideas I didn’t have before. And Jim, you rock. It’s nice to see how you are building up your career, and you also have the possibility of making a documentary to spread the word about your books.
Wow.
Oops. Sorry, Jim. Didn’t mean 4 books for the price of 1, but an ebook download of 4 for the price of 1.
I’ll try again to get it right. 🙂 (I’m trying to see forward, to the next step for Jim’s books.)
The idea is how to spur Jim’s sales for the period of one month, using a print ad and offering an ebook download or CD sent by mail to the client. The offer is four great books for the price of one.
So a software program is written to prevent copying and is bundled on the CD with the four novels. And a website is set up to give information about the series and the offer.
A print ad is placed in a magazine for Writers, say, directing them to the website. On the website is, basically, a YouTube-like video commercial, and other videos that share advice on writing. But the videos are really interesting and entertaining. As well, there is the order-taking page: the client can enter their Visa number and do a download, or have a CD sent in the mail.
As well, Jim could write a Saturday seminar series on an aspect of writing and publishing. I went to one such seminar. 40 people paid $35.00 dollars each, it ran from 9 AM to 4 PM, with an hour out for lunch. And the CD could be included for these clients. This seminar could also be put on video, and a bunch of them bundled into the 4 for 1 CD offer at a later time. The process is really building up the value for the client by giving so much more for ten bucks that the bookstore maybe does, giving just one paperback for the same price.
The offer ends at the end of the month. It’s a test offer to see what reaction results.
Anyway, I’m not sure, Jim, if you are interested in doing anything like this, I’m sort of trying to connect some more dots, here. Lee, with your Ian Ludlow books, I’m wondering if a similar offer makes sense, to see what interest develops. The offer is meant to reach persons who don’t want to lug around physical books or pay ten bucks for a book, but who would pay ten bucks for three books stored on a CD or hard drive, and maybe get a video by the author.
Dan: Thanks for thinking of me but Dark Sky Publishing only sells to wholesales and distributors, because of tax and liability issues.
If anyone is interested in seeing one of my books, however, send me an email at hansenlawfirm@aol.com and I’ll send you a free, signed ARC in the mail. Such a deal. Limit 20. Thanks, Jim.
A couple of things. first, I am a friend Of Yvonne –she was one of the first bloggers who I contacted when I started my blog in 2004.And we have stayed in touch as blogging buddies ever since.
Second, I am a professional journalist and I have written an article about POD for Women’s Business Minnesota.
I have also interviewed authors for my blog who have gone through traditional publishers and discussed the pros and cons of that relationship.
As others have stated, there are reasons other than profits for having a book published. Just last week I had two people tell me that I needed to write a book –for credibility and as a entry to speaking opportunities at conferences.
In talking to my friends who have gone through traditional publishing, it is a brutal process. There is a sense of “selling your soul” that many writers just don’t want to do. And, given the fact that when you are an unknown author you are expected to do your own marketing, there are some real advantages to self-publishing. It’s called control.
For people who want a book as a marketing tool, POD is a great option. And the $10,000 investment is less than the cost of a website.
My issue with your post is the words you used to describe Yvonne. Using terminology like “so-called” expert and saying her comments were an outrageous lie is not professional.
Disagree with Yvonne. Have a different point of view than Yvonne but to coin a popular phrase these days, SHAME ON YOU.
Oh, an a public apology to Yvonne would be a nice thing.
Elana says “just last week I had two people tell me that I needed to write a book –for credibility and as a entry to speaking opportunities at conferences.”
So write a book and have it published by a real publisher. A POD title won’t get you any “credibility” unless you are dealing with fools. Anybody can go to a POD press and have their book “published.” it’s no different than going to Kinkos. Having your book published by a real publisher will give you genuine credility as a published author.
Elana says “for people who want a book as a marketing tool, POD is a great option. And the $10,000 investment is less than the cost of a website.”
No, it isn’t! You think it costs more than $10,000 for a typical website to market yourself!? Are you nuts!? You can get a slick, professional for far, far less than that. No wonder you think a vanity press is a good idea. Well, here’s another news flash for you, honey…you can get your book published in POD for far, far less than $10,000! Check out Lulu.com or even iUniverse. Your post shows why people like you are easy pickin’s for vanity press scammers (and apparently web design con artists) as well.
If you’re paying 10 grand for a website, you’re beyond naive.
“And the $10,000 investment is less than the cost of a website.”
LOL! I’ve seriously underpaid.
Elana,
You’re not going to gain credibility by going to a vanity press in order to hoodwink people into thinking you’ve had a book published.
You gain credibility by HAVING credibility… and you won’t establish any by trying to fool people.
I am astonished that you think it costs more than ten grand to market yourself with a website. Look at mine — http://www.leegoldberg.com — it was professionally designed and cost considerably less than $10,000.
I agree with Cleavon. Your naivete makes you a prime target for vanity press hucksters. Educate yourself a little and you will not only start to gain some genuine credibility (instead of trying to buy it from a vanity press!), you might also save yourself a lot of money, too.
Lee
Thank you so much! Okay, as a wannabe writer, I can’t help but CRINGE at what I just read here: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2008/10/6-ways-authors-can-succeed-by-self-publishing-books298.html. AND ON PBS- OF ALL PLACES! In this desperate world where people are being turned out of their jobs, returning to school to keep their job or get another, and HOPING that their “creativity” will provide a “safety net”. And this opens the door to charlatans like self-publishers (POD/vanity presses). Publishing is a business, and like any business you get your foot in the door by making connections. In other words, you’ve got to KNOW someone. I tried that route five years ago when I sent my finished manuscript to a professional editor through a college professor. I’m not a writing diva, and I expected a LONG turnaround and at least a quarter of my 400 pages to be hacked off. As a student editor, I have lots of experience and it’s not easy telling SOME people, “It’s not good enough.” Three months later after I contacted her first she sent me a short note telling me I had talent, but wasn’t marketable.
If anything it was character building. But I cannot sit down and abide by corporations telling desperate people lies like this. You cannot steep yourself in debt (or further in debt) by providing a credit card number to pay for several hundred to several thousands of dollars of service to get a few copies of an unpolished, unprofessional, self-edited book that will predominantly be sold to friends and family. I’ve had to stop my best friend from doing this- and she’s an accountant!
Blogging, video blogging, a snazzy website with your own dot.com IS NOT an alternative! If you’re a person (like me) who can’t sell a horse to glue factory, you’re dead in the water. There’s a reason as to why pseudonyms were invented: to keep your private life private as you make money- hopefully. I’ve seen “authors” on the street in Downtown Brooklyn hawking their books on little tables trying to make a small markup that will take a little pressure off the interest that’s crushing their credit score after paying God knows how much to get “printed”.
So keep it real, you’ll have to wade through the muck as doors slam in your face, an empty email box, silence deafening you, rejection letters, and you may have to chuck your latest creation for a new one that parlays to trends to get money-hungry agents and REAL publishers attention. You also might want to post on fictionpress.com, get reviews, and get back to your fanfic roots and hook up with a reliable beta. Your editor is right there- and all for free. I mean, look at that hack Stephenie Meyer, she wrote total garbage and is a millionaire. There’s hope right there.