63 thoughts on “More from Tooley”

  1. Charles Band is apparently doing an in-person national tour this Halloween season. Tickets are $27 bucks, though. Have to look closer at what is being offered.
    Was talking with a friend about the self-publishing thing. What we couldn’t understand is why, if you were going to do it, you didn’t find some other writer friends and become a micro-press for each other’s works. You could start with a themed short story anthology, so that you aren’t just publishing yourselves, and go from there.
    But then I realized that the point of self-publishing for many is the avoidance of criticism and rejection, which might be harsher coming from friends rather than strangers. And there would be a potential second round of books, even if everyone liked the first ones.
    When I was in the screenwriting world, one indie producer’s advice stuck: Don’t film a screenplay that generated no interest. Wait until your writing excites people with money, but the subject is too niche or small. But films can have festival screenings, or at least local four-walls. The indie model just doesn’t seem to work as well for fiction books.

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  2. Charles Band is apparently doing an in-person national tour this Halloween season. Tickets are $27 bucks, though. Have to look closer at what is being offered.
    I know, but none are in my area! Looks like I have wait for WonderCon 2006 to finally get a chance to meet the man behind Full Moon Entertainment.
    Ticket prices for the road show (which feature guests, clips, and a contest to be victim in an actual Full Moon Movie) have gone down to 12.00 bucks a pop. I can’t tell if that is a good or bad thing. 😉

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  3. I keep telling myself to just stay out of Lee’s self-publishing crusade and I’m not actually going to come out for or ag’in it, but to repeat a comment I have made to writers groups when I give talks on “how to get published.” That is to say, the definition of a publisher is “someone with money who publishes books.” It’s like a line from Ross Thomas’s “Voodoo, Ltd” about the billionaire who moved to L.A. and said, “I’m a movie producer,” and everybody said, “Yeah, with two billion in the bank, you’re a movie producer.”
    There’s no school for it. No requirements, no accreditation, no licenses. Anybody with money can call themselves a publisher and voila, publish. After all, the Putnams, Berkleys, Scribners, etc., at one time or another were just people with money who published books. Did they publish their own? I don’t know, and that’s probably the question.
    I’ve met Sandra Tooley and I’m a little surprised to find that she’s a self-published author, but since I haven’t handled or read her books I can’t speak to their quality. I would be slightly more impressed with the “I run a publishing company” if she published other author’s works from time to time as well. That’s the wonderful, wacky world of small presses as we know them today, and their quality varies enormously, but there are some excellent small presses such as Poison Pen Press and Intrigue Press and Five Star that more or less started as somebody with money wanting to publish books.
    So am I for it or ag’in it? I don’t want to get involved in this argument at that level. My first book, Catfish Guru, was published via iUniverse (long story, but it was a reasonably satisfying experience until I tried selling copies of it). My second book, the novel “Dirty Deeds” was published by High Country Publishers, Ltd., a small press. I recently signed a 2-book contract with Midnight Ink/Llewellyn Worldwide, and although you might call Lewellyn Worldwide independent, you wouldn’t call it small.
    We run the risk of defining “legitimate” publishers out of New York as “any New York-based publishing house which is a completely owned entity of a communications conglomerate, ie., Random, Inc (Bantam, Doubleday, Dell, Delacourt, etc) is owned by Bertellsman; Warner, Mysterious Press, Little-Brown, etc is owned by AOL/Warner; Hyperion is owned by Disney; Morrow and HarperCollins is owned by Rupert Murdoch…
    I’m done, I’m done, I’m done…
    Best,
    Mark Terry

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  4. Well Mark you defend it because that’s all you’ve been able to do at this point. Those conglomerates, and there’s no evidence this title impedes acceptance by anyone, are the companies that define the business of producing and selling books to mass audiences, but just anyone who thinks they have publisher, doesn’t.
    This is a tired argument indeed, but your defense fails on its face.

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  5. I think Mark (err, Terry that is) has a point, namely that the New York publishers don’t have all the answers. But the course of action isn’t to self publish – it’s to start your own publisher.
    Look at UglyTown. They don’t have much more than good taste and they’ve put out some terrific books. Or Hardcase Crime. Of course, they had some real money behind them, but they’ve been both critically and commercially successful.
    But this is a lot harder than self publising.

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  6. If you’ve got a publishing house that is bringing in enough income for you not to have to work a second job, I’d call that a success.
    Based on the interview, Sandra Tooley’s not there. She’s still working another job.
    As for her writing, I spent about as much time reading her sample chapter as an agent, and I wasn’t interested in reading any further.

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  7. but there are some excellent small presses … that more or less started as somebody with money wanting to publish books
    I think the crucial difference is: is someone with money willing to publish a book that they didn’t write. Or, from the perspective of the prospective author: is a company willing to put up the money to publish your book.
    If you own the company that publishes your book, then all that shows anyone is that you have faith in your work. That’s great, but it’s not particularly convincing.
    If, on the other hand, someone else is willing to put up the money to publish you, that shows that someone else has faith in your work — and is willing to back it up with cash. That is much more meaningful and a very different thing.
    From my perspective as a critic, I don’t care how good an author thinks his or her book is. Every author thinks his book is great. I need some type of selection process, though, to weed through the hundreds of books I get in order to find the few I can read and the fewer I can review.
    It’s the same way for readers. There are too many books published to keep up with even a fraction of them. One sensible way to winnow down the list is to eliminate anything that only has the imprimatur of the author, with no third-party vetting or investment.
    If a book says Random House (or UglyTown) on the spine, you can be assured that it meets at least a minimum level of competence and professionalism. If the spine says Joe Bob’s Books, you have no such guarantee.
    Obviously, any reader is still free to consider the latter’s books, assuming they ever encountered them, but why would they? Sure, a self-published book could be wonderful. But the chances are great (and even greater than with a book from a traditional press) that it will not.
    So caveat lector — and caveat scriptor as well.

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  8. I agree with David’s assessment. I’m a book reviewer for a Detroit area daily newspaper, but before that I was a book reviewer for ForeWord Magazine, which is aimed at indie presses, and the quality is all over the board. I’ve read two books by UglyTown authors–Sean Doolittle and Victor Gischler, and they’re both pretty amazing authors. But I was under the impression UglyTown started as a way for the founders to publish their own books, then branched out? Right or wrong? I don’t know, but they’ve certainly picked two winners with Doolittle and Gischler.
    Best,
    Mark Terry

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  9. Agreed, but Gischler was picked up by a real house, which is the goal of any self-published book. The bottom line is if the so-called small press is using POD exclusively, no one will ever see the books.

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  10. UglyTown is definitely not a vanity press or self-publisher press. I think it’s true that Jim and Tom did print their own book as their first title, but they’ve since gone on to publish some of the best new talent in crime fiction, including Victor Gischler, Sean Doolittle, Nathan Walpow and Mark Conard. (In addition to doing reprints of Eddie Muller and Gary Phillips.)
    The point is that UglyTown isn’t an interesting press because they once published Fassbender & Pascoe (i.e., the owners). If that’s all they did, no one would care. They’re an interesting press because they seek out exciting new voices, cultivate wonderful books, and produce them as handsome, quality products.
    Once a press can do that, regardless of how it began, it’s much more interesting, relevant and legitimate.

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  11. Other people have mostly covered the point of my original post, but to restate: self-published authors are correct that the big publishing houses sometimes turn away good books.
    BUT the solution is NOT self-publishing through iUniverse or whoever, because then you have to play by there rules as far as returns, discount, etc. If you start your own publisher you can make whatever rules you want.
    This model has its own “gatekeepers”, as it requires much more time, dedication, and skill than self-publishing. Not to mention money.

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  12. Uglytown is not a POD press — and they produce some of the best looking trade paperbacks I have ever seen. They could teach the major publishers a thing or two about cover design and, for that matter, book copy design as well. The Uglytown edition of GUN MONKEYS, which got nominated for an Edgar, was far better looking than the mass market paperback version or his subsequent Delacourt novels. You can occasionally find Uglytown titles in your local B&N or Borders but, like many legitimate small presses, they have some distribution woes.
    I don’t know how Uglytown started…perhaps it began as a vanity operation for the two founders to publish their own work. But unlike Sandra Tooley or Jim Hansen, they are publishing a wide range of authors and that is their primary focus. The Uglytown founders regularly attend trade shows and book festivals promoting their authors and their line of books…and are recognized as legitimate publishers by the major author organizations. I doubt, for instance, the same can be said of Sandra Tooley’s Full Moon Publishing.
    FWIW — I believe Intrigue Press also began as a vanity operation — to publishing Connie Shelton’s books — but has since grown far beyond that, publishing a wide range of authors (including acclaimed mystery writer, and very tall guy, Steve Brewer).

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  13. Someone told me that Grisham self-published his first book, A TIME TO KILL, and ended up buying most of the copies (on the first run) himself – anyone know if that’s really true or not?

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  14. Ditto. Urband legend spread by believers, which only proves some folks are willing to believe anything that suits them. Wynwood Press of New York was the now defunct company. 5000 print run.

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  15. I did hear that it was a five thousand run and Grisham bought a thousand of them himself –
    You guys want to read a pretty good book online? One that’s unpublished and free (nope, not mine) – I heard about it via Kung Fu Monkey, who raved about it (John read the whole thing) – it’s called Dingo –
    http://dingonovel.blogspot.com/
    He’s posting a chapter a week, make sure you start at chapter one, it’s pretty fun.

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  16. I’ve read A LOT of self-pubbed books—I judge the bi-annual Writer’s Digest Self Published book award. As a result, I’ve paged through over a hundred titles.
    The majority of them weren’t good. But about 2% were good enough to have been picked up by a NY house.
    Well, maybe less than 2%.
    But the point is, some self-published folks are good enough, at least in my opinion.
    I’ve read Sandy Tooley’s books, and I’ve read Jim Hansen’s NIGHT LAWS. I can honestly say I’ve enjoyed them more than a lot of the product NY is pumping out.
    To assume that a book published by a major publisher meets a certain objective standard, and that nothing self-published meets that standard, doesn’t allow for exceptions in either case–and there are always exceptions.
    Opinion is subjective, and no opinion is wrong. Sandy has many fans. Are they all deluded? Or are they any less deluded than James Patterson’s fans?
    I believe that self-publishing is a gutsy move. It’s putting your money on the line, along with your reputation. It’s showing a great deal of faith in yourself, and your book. And it’s fighting prejudice slung by booksellers, the media, and your peers.
    I had many books rejected before landing a publishing deal. I never seriously considered self-publishing, because it seemed a lot harder to do that successfully than to find an agent.
    Jim and Sandy have had to learn a lot about the publishing business–more than most traditionally published authors know. They aren’t giving a vanity press $400 and waiting for the press to phone. They’ve started their own businesses.
    That’s a lot harder than mailing out a few query letters, and this is from a guy who has mailed out over 500.
    If you don’t like their writing, that’s fine. But to draw the conclusion that they aren’t good writers, and that’s why they self-pubbed, isn’t a very good arguement.
    There aren’t many truths in publishing, but here’s a few I’ve found:
    Talent has very little to do with success in this business.
    No one knows what will sell.
    Just because something is publishable, does not mean it will be published.
    Sometimes the unpublishable gets published.
    The writing business has more than its share of pettiness.
    We tend to think of our successes as things that were earned, rather than the result of luck—but it actually is luck.
    Overestimating your own importance, or underestimating the importance of others, doesn’t do anybody any good.

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  17. “Opinion is subjective, and no opinion is wrong.”
    Truth is not relative. Exceptions don’t make the rule either. They are aberrations by definition.
    I recognize the self-pubbed difference with stock vanity presses and the standard slushpile odds of a few being good and deserving of the regular commercial treatment. Very few will be able to pull out of this muck though. I know that from experience. My nonfiction first entries went to vanity presses for no fee. They may well be the best first person journalism around, but no one will ever know it because they’re vanity press products: POD and never seen by anyone.
    “Sometimes the unpublishable gets published.”
    Have any examples?
    Why can’t people understand this process without the “either or” fallacy always popping up?

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  18. I’ve read A LOT of self-pubbed books—I judge the bi-annual Writer’s Digest Self Published book award. As a result, I’ve paged through over a hundred titles.
    The majority of them weren’t good. But about 2% were good enough to have been picked up by a NY house.
    Well, maybe less than 2%.

    JA, here’s the difference between you and me: No one is sending me free books. I’m spending limited resources and I don’t have the time or the inclination to page through self-pubbed novels looking for that “less than 2%.”
    I’ve certainly read books from NY publishers that I didn’t care for. No one (that I’ve noticed) is saying that all books from professional publishers are good and all self-pubbed books are bad, so please leave that straw man in your backyard.
    Is it a gutsy move to self-publish your book? Maybe. To me it seems more like mixing your own book in with all the crap that gets put out by vanity presses. If more than 98% of self-published books are bad, why would you want to put that label on your own work? Especially when authors are so famously unable to judge the true quality of their own stuff?
    Frankly, I think it would be smarter to take that widely-rejected book and put it into your bottom drawer. Then you take the second one–the one you wrote while the first one was sitting in slush piles in NYC, and submit that. Repeat until you find a publisher.
    Once that happens, (well, if that happens) you’ll have a couple completed unpublished novels to sell. Give them some tweaking and see what you can do with them.
    But to draw the conclusion that they aren’t good writers, and that’s why they self-pubbed, isn’t a very good arguement.
    Since, by your own admission, less than 2% of self-pubbed writers are any good, I think it’s a useful generalization (speaking as a reader about my process for choosing books).
    Imagin someone puts a big barrel of apples in front of you and says: “On average, one of these apples is going to be delicious. The rest are rotten.” How many bites are you going to take? And what sensible apple-seller is going to toss his perfectly good apple into that mess?

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  19. >>>Truth is not relative.
    Of course it is. Interpretation and perspective make everything subjective. The law. Things experienced by the senses. Everything.
    >>>Exceptions don’t make the rule either. They are aberrations by definition.
    Exceptions don’t make the rule, but then the law they are exceptions to is not a law. Are there any exceptions to gravity?
    >>>>”Sometimes the unpublishable gets published.” Have any examples?
    I have many examples of crap on my bookshelf. You’ve never read a bad book and thought “Why did this get published?”
    >>>>Why can’t people understand this process without the “either or” fallacy always popping up?
    I understand the process, and choose to disagree with it. Wholesale dismissal of all self-published books doesn’t make sense. I know that certain prejudices were earned–certainly I think that a lot of self-pubbed books are crummy–but I don’t understand why folks are so quick to jump on someone who self-publishes.

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  20. >>>Imagine someone puts a big barrel of apples in front of you and says: “On average, one of these apples is going to be delicious. The rest are rotten.” How many bites are you going to take? And what sensible apple-seller is going to toss his perfectly good apple into that mess?<<< Good point. But that's why, at the grocer, you select fruit rather than one you see and dump it in the cart. This applies to all books, not just the self-published. When you go into a bookstore, do you assume every book in there is terrific, because they were published by bug NY houses? When I'm buying a book, no matter who publishes it, content is all that matters to me. If it looks interesting, I'll plunk down my money. Big press, small press, vanity press--it doesn't matter. But several in this thread seem to think that the content of a self-publised book is automatically going to be lessor, by definition. I don't agree, and don't understand all of the holier-than-thou attitude aimed at putting those untalented self-published authors in their place. Lee mentioned he had a hard time selling The Man with the Iron-On Badge. Funny mysteries are a very tough sell. Had he self-pubbed it, rather than gone with Five Star, would the book be any less funny or readable? Now you can argue that Lee has already proven himself, having published many books traditionally. But the book still has to speak for itself, regardless of the format it is published in. TMWTIOB would be good no matter the imprint.

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  21. Joe those answers fail en masse. Truth is not relative. Period. People’s pereptions of it are all over the map but the reality of the facts dictate the result whether some believe it or not.
    I haven’t read a bad book published by the process. They jump on them because for the mostpart they’re self-deluded. I’m self-published author myself and no one evers me any slack for it. I just don’t advocate it because it means failure. Lee’s book would fail as a vanity press book for that reason alone. Just like all the rest.

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  22. Although I have a different view on some of the aspects of this topic, Konrath is absolutely right on two points: There are crappy books from mainstream commercial publishers (a lot of them) and good books from self-publishers (a very few). To argue against either of those points is simply ludicrous.

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  23. “Funny mysteries are a very tough sell.”
    I guess someone forgot to tell Hiaasen. Either that or the word is out that only he can write them in the commercial market.
    The missing words in the previous post are due to lack of coffee.

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  24. Well one isn’t. I haven’t read a bad book on the level of a vanity press from a regular house, but then I haven’t read “all” books, so unless you can name one with examples it’s a bit too generalist to count.
    Slushpile odds are in effect. Good books at vanity presses go in and out with the crap and into the same black hole. I know. I have two of them.

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  25. >>>Truth is not relative. Period. People’s pereptions of it are all over the map but the reality of the facts dictate the result whether some believe it or not.<<< What dictates truth if not our perceptions of it? For you to posit that there is an objective reality, you'd have to posit how one can differentiate between objectively and subjectively viewing said reality. What of the tradionally published books that fail (lose money, don't earn out, get remaindered, etc.) Sandy Tooley has made money. She has over 20,000 books in print. I know, personally, many authors who have not earned out their advance. Authors who have been dropped by their publishers for low sell-trhough numbers. Who is the success? Who is the better writer? What if I sold a book to a large publisher, who printed 50,000 copies. It sold 15,000. A dismal failure, by any standard. What if I self-published the same book, and printed 5000 copies, selling all of them? Is that a failure too?

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  26. To assume that the large publishing houses don’t publish books they shouldn’t is to assume that they never make mistakes. And anyone who knows anything about publishing knows that isn’t true. They make mistakes all the time.
    I see a lot of books. Most of the mysteries and thrillers that get published cross my desk. I would say that, conservatively, 10% of them are mistakes. Books that should not have been published. Books that will not sell. Books you would not read. Happens all the time.
    As for the contention that comic mysteries aren’t a hard sell because Carl Hiassen is successful… well, that’s just plain stupid. This pointless conversation is taking place on the blog of a gifted writer who has busted his ass for years trying to sell comic mysteries, only to be frustrated continually by the near-impossibility of doing so. Haven’t you been paying attention?

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  27. Well if if’s and but’s were beer and nuts we’d have a hell of a party. But they aren’t. They’re portals to a fanatasyland that’s devoid of reality.
    What dictates reality? Facts and the preponderance of evidence. It’s why evolution is a fact and religion isn’t. Perceptions would dictate something else for some but ignoring facts won’t make them go away. It makes those who do ignorant. And possibly stupid, but we can debate that one point.
    I didn’t detect an example: Title and author?
    You posit an equivocation fallacy. Failing in th big time is not the same as failing in the ditch. You aimed low and hit it. The only way a self-published author will sell 5000 copies is if they buy them themselves as is ususally the case. Publishamerica’s biggest seller Neo Cantu Franco did just that. Self-publishing is a ruse.

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  28. I have been paying attention and any book is hard to sell. Are you saying Carl Hiaasen is the only one who can do it? Hint: there’s room for more than one. I love Hiaasen’s books. He’s the only one in that genre I read, but there has to be others, and room for them.

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  29. While I don’t agree with some of the points my friend Joe Konrath raises, he’s absolutely right on some others:
    1) a lot of bad mysteries and thrillers are published by big, reputable houses. Some sell exceedingly well despite the fact they are jaw-droppingly bad. Happens all the time.
    2) humorous mysteries are incredibly hard to sell. Using Carl Hiaasen as an example doesn’t wash — the guy is the exception and he had a very popular newspaper column to build from. MY GUN HAS BULLETS and BEYOND THE BEYOND got terrific reviews, from the Los Angeles Times to Entertainment Weekly, but still didn’t perform well enough to merit a mass market paperback sale…which is why I didn’t write a third in the series. I’m hoping THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE doesn’t suffer the same fate. BADGE probably has a better shot…it is far more serious and grounded-in-reality than GUN or BEYOND, which were broad comic capers in the Hiaasen mold.
    By the way, I would never have self-published BADGE. It would have certainly failed…and I wouldn’t be getting all these great reviews because the book wouldn’t have been reviewed at all. Besides, it would have cost me money, and I am in this to make money, not lose it.
    Although Five Star’s commercial distribution is more limited than I would like, they sell widely (and well) to libraries, so I went into this knowing that I would sell a certain number of copies. I also know I was likely to be reviewed by respected publications and eligible for consideration for the Edgar, Shamus, etc. And it wouldn’t cost me a cent to see the book in print (with the exception, of course, of the cost of gasoline getting to and from my signings, events that would be very hard-to-come by with a self-published title…particularly POD).

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  30. >>>What dictates reality? Facts and the preponderance of evidence.<<< Who determines what constitutes facts and evidence? People, through their perspectives. Go to an apologeticist website to see how Xians interpret fossils and evolution. Evidence is in the eye of the beholder. Is the glass half empty, or half full? There is nothing intrinsic in half a glass of water--through language we embue things with traits. Is a circle round? Is that trait inherent? No. It's ascribed, through persepctive. If viewed at a sub-atomic level, the circle would not be round. Language is an invention, not a discovery. Equivocation fallacy doesn't apply, because the concept of 'success' is means the same thing in respective catagories. Sandy regularly sells 4000 copies of each new title. Most self-published books sell less than 100 copies. Those are facts. If a new author at a big house has a sell through of 40-50%, that's considered decent. Anything less in not considered successful. That's a fact. I can take these 'facts' and conclude that Sandy is successful, whereas someone who sells 15k of a 50k print run is not, even though they've sold more books. As for title and author--I don't bad mouth my peers, but I'm on record for saying how much I hated HANNIBAL by Thomas Harris. The book was a huge success, and many love it. But I found it to be bad writing, on many different levels that I'd be happy to detail. >>>The only way a self-published author will sell 5000 copies is if they buy them themselves as is ususally the case.<<< Perhaps that's true with vanity publishing. Sandy is not with a vanity POD press.

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  31. “I’m in this to make money.”
    Would you mind saying what you received in advance royalties, and how many hours it took you to write the book, so that we can calculate your hourly rate? My suspicion is that you’re really in the business because you love to write, not to make money. Just like the rest of us.
    BTY, read your interview in Mystery Scene Magazine and really liked it. Regards, Jim.

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  32. Facts and evidence determine the conclusion. The evidence against self-publication in any form are staggeringly against the author choosing this route. That’s the only percetion you need to make a prediction from a hypothesis. As a scientist I do this for a living.

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  33. I write for a lot of reasons, but one of them is certainly to make money. That’s why all of us do this. And surely it’s why you do it as well. (If not, why don’t you just post your book as a free PDF download on your website?) Who the hell would do this otherwise?
    I didn’t become a critic to get rich, obviously, and I’m not writing a novel to make a ton of dough either. But I want to make a living at it. That’s not the only reason, of course, that I write. I also write because I feel moved to do so, and because it’s cool. I gave up a pretty good job to write full-time, though, and I’d like to replace that income.

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  34. Sandy regularly sells 4000 copies of each new title.
    Is that so? And how do you know this? Because she told you? C’mon, Joe. Use your head. I thought you were a bright guy.

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  35. Please, folks, if you are going to use HTML in your comments, please be careful and proof before posting. Luckily, I logged on shortly after “Not A Moron’s” post and caught his error (otherwise the next post would have been in bold, too).

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  36. I dispute those numbers too. Sounds way too high to me. That’s a gutsy move David. I hope it works out. My jobs end of their own accord so there’s less guilt in being unemployed and fooling with books than making such a real sacrifice. Hemingway quit the Toronto Star to write The Sun Also Rises so there’s plenty of precedent.

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  37. Would you mind saying what you received in advance royalties, and how many hours it took you to write the book, so that we can calculate your hourly rate? My suspicion is that you’re really in the business because you love to write, not to make money. Just like the rest of us.

    Jim,
    You’re wrong. Of course I love to write. But I also like to eat and have a roof over my head. I make 100% of my living as a professional writer, therefore I try very hard to get paidfor what I write and not pay to get published.
    From what I gather, you are a lawyer by trade and while you may love to write, you don’t do it to support yourself. I do. To get published, you’ve written a check. I prefer to have people write me one…otherwise, I can’t pay my bills.
    You make a valid point about what I’m getting paid for my books. I’m primarily a television writer. I couldn’t live off what I make writing books…at least, not in the lifestyle my family currently enjoys. The sad fact is, that most authors I know aren’t able to survive solely on what they make from their books.
    Self-publishing is, 99.9% of the time, a bad investment for a novelist. All you end up with is your manuscript printed in something vaguely resembling a book. If that’s all you want, that’s great. But I believe if you want to make money, be taken seriously as a writer, and have a wide audience, self-publishing is not the way to go. It’s called vanity publishing for a reason…whether you pay a POD company to do it or you shoulder all the costs yourself.

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  38. “Facts and evidence determine the conclusion.”
    No. Interpretation of the facts and evidence determine a conclusion.
    Facts and evidence don’t speak. There is nothing intrinsic within them. The subjective perception of the observer can lead to a hypothesis, but surely a scientist knows that not all hypotheses turn into theories or laws.
    I’ve known Sandy for a few years, and we’ve talked about this many times. While those talks haven’t involved me going through her invoices, I’ve seen ample evidence to believe her numbers. Library sales account for many of them.

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  39. Joe for Christ’s sake, facts and evidence tell a story. Interpretations are not created equal, and that sadly seems to be what you’re arguing for. I’m not a relativist that concludes a wacky view is just as valid as a well-reasoned one an objective judge would determine to be valid based on the rules of logic. Apparently you are. You have my sympathies.
    Only the tested hypotheses hold up to rigorous testing. Self-publishing has failed 99.9 percent of the tests run to date. Keep divining success via minutia.

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  40. I hate, hate HATE the writing of JAMES PATTERSON – he sells really well. HANNIBAL was Hemingway compared to Patterson.
    I have a friend who had a novel published through a small publishing house and got good reviews, I loved the book but it didn’t sell a lot – he cannot find a home for his second novel.
    As someone said S**t Happens.
    But seriously, guys, if you want to read a really cool, well-written book that’s unpublished and being revealed a chapter at a time – go read DINGO (I listed it above) – I am and I’m really enjoying it. No, it’s not my friend, it’s someone I don’t know but he’s good.

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  41. Marky48, if “exceptions don’t make the rule,” then Hiassan’s success doesn’t prove there’s a market for humorous mysteries.
    Also, if you want bad books that shouldn’t have been published, you can’t go wrong with David Weber’s early work. They’ve been made available in the years since their release on the web for free (as a promotional gimmick). Oath of Swords
    Joe (do you mind if I call you “Joe?” “JA” sounds weird in my head), it should be obvious that some self-published books would be good, just as some professionally-published books would be bad. I’m trying to make a different point.
    Self-pubbed books are just a slush pile run through a printer–some small percentage of what comes out of there is worth reading, just as some small percentage of what comes through the slush is worth reading.
    And editors and publishers are fallible human beings (the infallible kind seek other careers, I understand). Of course some pro-published books are bad.
    One important thing that needs to be said is that the bottom ten percent of the pro-published work is light-years better than the bottom ten percent of self-pubbed work. I’d much rather be trapped on a desert island with Oath of Swords than Night Travels of the Elven Vampire.
    So I think it’s misleading to say that pro publishers put out bad books, too. Pro dreck is not, thank God, raw slush. Self-pubbs are.
    Would Lee’s book be the same if he’d gone with iUniverse? Of course. Vanity publishers are perfectly content to publish good books with the bad. Would he also be giving himself extra hurdles? Hell, yes.
    Because, Joe, you’ve missed my point about the barrel of apples. Of course all that matters is the quality of the apple, and of course everyone examines the apple as best they can before they buy. But how far are you willing to dig through that barrel searching for the good apple that statistically speaking, ought to be in there somewhere? How far is any reader? Especially when there are so many other barrels (Borders, B&N, Books-a-Million) where, as David assures us, only 10% are bad.
    Hey, if 9 out of ten at Borders are good, but one in a hundred at iUniverse are good, why do I need to look for my reading material at iUniverse? Or any self-publisher?
    That’s the biggest problem with self-publishing–you’ve thrown your book in with the raw slush. Your book has a stigma attached to it, and that stigma is deserved. 99 times out of a hundred, the reader is looking at a bad book! Sometimes a very bad, almost crazy book.
    As you say, some very good authors at pro-publishers have a hard time finding an audience. Self-publishing makes that even harder.
    Jeez, why do I keep posting and posting in these threads? I have so much other reading to do.
    Like vent about copyeditors. I’m still reading it, but the author’s editor has written a very interesting comment or two in there.

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  42. My last post was cross-posted with Joshua’s, or I would have responded in one post.
    I think self-publishing a novel on a website is a much better idea than paying to have a book to sell. John Scalzi and Cherie Priest both landed publishing contracts from books they’d stuck up on the web. Ms. Priest’s experience was with a small press and was not a happy one. She’s since sold the same novel to Tor. Mr. Scalzi went straight from his web site to Tor Books.

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  43. Carl’s kind of talent is rare. David who? My contention is the worst commercial book is 100 times better than anything from from a vanity press or self-published from home. There has to be something wrong with it technically, not that you just don’t like it.

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  44. “Night Travels of the Elven Vampire” Heh. I know her. In the early days of the Publishamerica campaign she was only one to dare to challenge PA and file complaints. I was the other one.
    She had copyright issues with the cover and if I was on an island with her book I’d use it as a fire starter. That’s a typical offering from a vanity press fee, or not.

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  45. “The worst commercial book is 100 times better than anything from from a vanity press or self-published from home.”
    In my experience this is not true. I have read a few vanity books that were good enough to be published by anyone and better than a lot of trade books — a very few, mind you, but they nontheless existed.
    One of those books (Brian Wiprud’s Pipsqueak) was subsequently published by Bantam. Same thing happened with Jennifer Colt’s Butcher of Beverly Hills, which was published by Random House, I believe. There have been a couple others I’ve read that were likewise good enough to be commercially published.
    So while it is true that most vanity and self-published books stink, horrible drivel that no one would read, some of them are pretty good. And a lot of commercially published books are horrible as well. (You should see the books I get. Well, no, actually you shouldn’t. You’d cringe.)
    Making such absolute statements as the one quoted above is pointless.

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  46. Making such absolute statements as the one quoted above is pointless.
    I agree.
    David who?… There has to be something wrong with it technically, not that you just don’t like it.
    Have you gone to the link I provided? It shows you what sort of writing Weber was doing, at least at that point in his career.
    And David Weber sells very well. He’s not highly regarded, but lots of people buy his books.

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  47. Look this equivocation doesn’t wash. In fact it’s the same one vanity press writers use. We know that slushpile odds exist for a good book in the pile of vanity press books. I’ve stated this repeatedly: slushpile odds. Keep in mind I have two of these so am I calling my own books crap? You’re damn skippy I’m not, but unlike most of the company they’re being submitted to real agents now. The real point is this: it won’t matter how good the books are because as a vanity press product no one will see them.
    So no one is saying this David. You read absolutism when none is there.
    I still fail to buy that there are that many bad commercial offerings. Just because you didn’t like them doesn’t mean they’re bad on merit.

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  48. Yeah Harry I went there. Science fiction just leaves me blank even when it supposedly is good.
    And like I said it isn’t an absolutist statement. In fact I think it will stand many rounds of testing. Care to volley with real data?

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  49. “Joe for Christ’s sake, facts and evidence tell a story. Interpretations are not created equal, and that sadly seems to be what you’re arguing for.”
    So trials aren’t ever needed, because the outcome is always predetermined and obvious?
    Interpretation is all we have.
    “But how far are you willing to dig through that barrel searching for the good apple that statistically speaking, ought to be in there somewhere?”
    I’m not saying, “Pick through the barrel to find a good apple.” I’m saying, “Here’s an apple that I enjoyed, and I got it from the barrel with all the rotten ones in it. Don’t discount it for that reason.”
    It’s not like I don’t understand all of your points, guys. But I think that certain self-pubbed books have merit, and that discounting something because it is self-published is wrong, even though the odds might be on your side that it will be bad.

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  50. I just read your comments about Sandy’s article, Lee. You make some very good points, and Sandy does contradict herself.
    But in the article, Sandy also said some smart things, including:
    “If this were any other business–filmmaker, home builder, software creater, recording artist–where the person chooses to learn the business and do everything on his own, he would be heralded as an innovative, self-motivated, free-thinking individual.”
    Sandy is aware of the stigma, and wrote the article to try to counteract some of it.
    While her arguement is flawed, her intentions are pure. She’s not interested in deluding herself or others, or even making excuses for her business. After seven years and eight books, she doesn’t have anything to prove.
    Sandy didn’t go to a POD house, plunk down her $400, and then wonder why she wasn’t on the NYT List.
    Sandy works her ass off, following her dream. And she’s been able to sustain that dream for almost a decade.
    Jim Hansen is doing the same thing. And I think it’s gutsy, and admirable.
    It’s not the route you or I took. But it isn’t comparable with Xlibris or I-Universe either.

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  51. It’s not like I don’t understand all of your points, guys. But I think that certain self-pubbed books have merit, and that discounting something because it is self-published is wrong, even though the odds might be on your side that it will be bad.
    Joe, just the fact that you said this means you don’t understand my point. Note: I’m not Marky, and I’m not making his argument.
    Frankly, I can’t see how I can be any plainer with you, so let’s just drop it.

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  52. It’s understandable should anyone care to. But they don’t. Trials? She’ll flunk the trial and the reason test too as that article clearly showed. How many so you need before the results count?

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