The Great Amazon KDP Select Experiment

I'm doing a bit of an experiment.  What's new, really?  Separate Worlds has always been a bit of experimental fun.  It's told from two perspectives, it's a novella in a world of novels, and I threw it to the wolves in an attempt to learn the brave new world of self-publishing.  In that regard, I already consider it a success.  It's hardly a bestseller, hardly selling well at all.  After all, exposure is everything; just ask Snooki.  At least my book's coherent.  But I feel I learned more than if I'd taken the money it cost to publish it and spent it on a college course on self-publication.

And it's still a learning experience, still teaching me things about the business that I'll use, no matter if I self-publish again or not.  There are so many things to be learned about this business, and pecking out words in solitary hardly scratches the surface.

Marketing is one aspect many authors lack experience and expertise in.  It's not their forté; slinging words onto the page and conjuring images in readers' minds are.  But in spite of that - and more and more in today's publishing age - they have to learn it.

And that's where programs like Amazon's KDP Select come in.  Foremost, it's a marketing ploy by Amazon, a way to gather more attention to their products and sell them.  If you're an author, with books available for purchase online, that means it's your marketing ploy as well.

Essentially, when an author enrolls a book in the program, they allow Amazon to lend it to Amazon Prime members for free, while making a small percentage of the monthly fund allocated for it.  Using numbers from their FAQ page - not mine; I wish I had such numbers - we see that:

"... if the monthly fund amount is $500,000, the total qualified borrows of all participating KDP titles is 300,000, and if your book was borrowed 1,500 times, you will earn 0.5% (1,500/300,000 = 0.5%), or $2,500 for that month."

Now, it would be fantastic, downright amazing to reach numbers even close to that, but I'm going to assume the book won't be nearly that popular.  Its success is bound by the number of people who see it and choose to borrow it, and there we come back to that pesky exposure thing.  It will be an interesting experiment, though, and at worst it will offer my book for free to a large number of readers, who will hopefully find a great little story, a great escape from this world through a portal into another, at least for a while.

It's exclusively on Amazon for the duration of this program, as exclusivity to the Kindle is one of the stipulations of the program.  Enjoy, spread the word, share it with friends.  In fact, please consider writing a review on it. You can also spread the word by tweeting or sharing the following blurb:

Separate Worlds, by Jonathan Dalar. When worlds collide, perspective can mean the difference between life and death: http://goo.gl/fb/ohzLf

Hopefully I'll have some positive results to pass along in a few months.

Cooking up a Good Story

*** Warning: the following post contains a lot of gratuitous food porn! ***

The other day I was perusing Twitter, trying valiantly not to get sucked in for too long while taking a break from editing, when I saw a few tweets by literary agent Victoria Marini ‏ (@LitAgentMarini), comparing book revisions to baking cookies.  She's one of many literary agents I follow, and often has great advice.  This is what she said:

"Revision is not just addressing some comments in the margin. It's a lengthy, pensive process in which you look at your WHOLE work again.  If you baked cookies and I said 'they're too light,' you wouldn't just add flour to the same left over dough. You'd make a new batch!  Most of the recipe would stay the same, but you'd need to revisit the whole process to get the new batch right."

Great advice!

Magic Marshmallow Crescent Puffs (with wholesome nutritious filberts). © Ryan Schierling

And it got me thinking, which is rarely a good idea.  It also got me hungry, which is never a good idea, but we'll get to that later on.  Anyway, so many parallels between cooking and writing raced through my mind at reading that, I decided to share them here.  Enjoy.  And wipe that drool from your bottom lip.

Sweet potato fries w/ gravy and over-easy egg. © Julie Munroe

Don't leave it in the oven too long.  Nobody likes that hunk of meat that's been baking for an hour too long, and they certainly won't like your overcooked novel.  It's overdone, dry, and nasty.  If it drags on and on, it's going to bog down, and your readers will put it down at some point.  And if it's dragged on long enough, they're not going to pick it back up because it isn't interesting anymore.  It doesn't matter if you have complex, flawed, and interesting characters, or if your plot is wildly unpredictable and original, if it drags on too long, readers will lose interest.  Cut it, trim it, season it, and pull it out of the oven at precisely the right time.  Do it right, and you have a mouthwatering dish that readers won't be able to put down until they scrape the last crumbs and morsels from the plate.

Sauerbraten, with semmelknodel and rotkohl. © Ryan Schierling

Know the proper measurements.  A dash is not a tablespoon.  A pinch will not suffice when the recipe calls for a cup.  There are limits, but you can get away with adding more or less of something, or using a suitable substitute.  To a point.  Similarly, an author can usually get away with an extra 20,000 words in an epic fantasy or science fiction story because of the world building, but when writing young adult, there is a much shorter word-count constraint to work with.  There are general word count boundaries that are accepted by most in the industry, and they vary by genre.  Words are not like bacon; they're like onions.  There is a limit on the amount you can add to a story and still keep it palatable.  Know the boundaries for the genre you're writing, and the lengths a literary agency or publishing house accepts; they're not always the same.

Root vegetable-creamed linguini with bacon and parsley. © Ryan Schierling

Use the right ingredients.  There have been many great pieces of advice on creating realistic, believable characters, such as this helpful blog post by literary agent Vickie Motter (@Vickie_Motter).  Thing is, you have to put in the ingredients best suited to the dish (or character) you're creating.  If you're making steak in an upscale New York restaurant, you're not going to use a low grade chuck or round cut.  Conversely, if you're going for the flavors and textures of a greasy soup kitchen meal, you're not going to use cuts of Filet Mignon or Châteaubriand.  It doesn't matter what you're making, but you have to use the ingredients that give it exactly the flavor, smell, and texture you're looking for.  The ingredients for tacos come in a wide variety of shapes and tastes, but in the end, they still make tacos.

Crock pot chicken tinga tacos. © Ryan Schierling

Create a brand and cater to that specific consumer base.  In a similar thought to the one above, a customer must be able to associate a specific product with a producer.  People go to In-N-Out Burger, expecting delicious, no-frills burgers 'n fries, and that's what they find there.  People buy a William Gibson novel expecting edgy, futuristic science fiction, and that's what he delivers.  We want to get what we expect.  If we don't know what to expect from something, we're more hesitant, especially if obtaining it costs us our hard-earned money.  Creating a brand, and sticking to it, allows readers to readily identify whether or not they'll be interested in the book.  And a brand can't be a smorgasbord.  Trying to please all of the people all of the time never really works, especially with readers.  It's possible to write in several genres, especially if they're closely related, but many authors who switch genres, or write in more than one, do so under a different pseudonym for a reason.

Now I give you everything. © Ryan Schierling

Understand and cater to known tastes.  There's a reason why certain foods are paired with specific beers and wines: the flavors work well together, complement each other.  The same principle applies to books.  There is a reason why things fall into categories like genres and sub-genres, and why those genres are standard lengths, with standard elements in them.  A strong female main character works well in women's fiction.  A larger-than-life hero works well in fantasy and stories with heavily action-oriented plots.  For the same reasons lemon and rosemary go well with baked salmon, ornery dwarfs and mysterious elves go well with high fantasy.  It just works.  You don't always have to stick with the tried and true, as you'll see below, but stereotypes and standards exist for a reason.  Understanding that will help you create an original story that still falls with the bounds of consumer taste.

Cedar-planked Alaskan King salmon, ready for some heat. © Ryan Schierling

Stick with a recipe.  People also want to know what they're getting when they buy something.  If people are in the mood for prawns or crayfish, they're not going to look in the steak section of the menu to find it, and if they're in the mood for science fiction, they're not going to browse through romance books looking for it.  Understanding elements common to the genre you're writing and sticking with them will create an identifiable, quantifiable work, something that can easily find its proper place on a bookshelf.  If you identify your story as "more of a literary science fiction mystery, but with elements of romance and chick lit", a publisher is going to have a devil of a time finding a place on a bookshelf for it.  And guess what - if they can't find a place for it on the shelf, readers won't find it there either.

Crawdads, no. Crayfish, no. Crawfish, yes. Pot pie. © Ryan Schierling

Experiment, but do so correctly.  Although I'm quite the adventurous foodie, I'm not an especially good cook.  I experiment far too much, and usually my creations (using that term loosely here) end up mangled and often garbage-bound.  Luckily I don't have to be.  The wife is a supremely talented cook, and we eat quite well in the House of Dalar.  It's good to push the envelope, though, try things a little outside the box.  That's what gives us those new, exciting, discoveries that suddenly become the next big trend everyone tries frantically to copy before it becomes old.  That's a great thing in both writing and food.  But you gotta do it right.  You can't just add ingredients without knowing what they'll do to a dish, and you can't play around with story elements, grammar, and perspective without knowing what you're doing either.  A little tweak, a dash of daring, and suddenly your creation is refreshingly new and original.  You can play around with a baked potato, but the main ingredient is still going to be a potato.

Potato pavé w/ bison Texas red chili and smoked cheddar. © Ryan Schierling

Phew, that's a lot of food porn.  You had forewarning.  And now you're hungry; I know I am.  I'm going to saunter down to the kitchen to wrangle up something to eat.  And you can saunter on over to Foie Gras Hot Dog and find the recipes where all these wonderful photos came from.  It's run by my friends Julie and Ryan, a couple of great cooks, and adventurous foodies themselves.  You can also follow them on Twitter (@FoieGrasHotDog).

Papaquiles (the imaginary friend of chilaquiles). © Ryan Schierling

By the way, one of their uniquely crafted recipes - Papaquiles - is being served by the Today Food crew's food truck at this year's SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas, which starts today and runs through March 18th.  If you're in the area, be sure to check it out!

Grilled peach cobbler. © Ryan Schierling

Oh, and dessert.  Can't forget dessert.

Query Hell

Back to the obligatory pit of author despair known as Query Hell.  In other words, everything is back to normal.

Except for me, it's not really all that hellish anymore.  I've done it too long.  I've been at this game, off and on, for the better part of several decades.  To put it in perspective, when I submitted my very first short story to a magazine, skinny ties, pastels, and leg warmers were in style - everybody wanted to look like they'd come straight off Miami Vice.  The publishing world looked much different than it does today, mainly because of the online accessibility of information to authors.

Back in the day, I'd get out my well-worn Writer's Market guide and pour over it 'til I was half blind.  After compiling a number of submission-worthy candidates, I'd carefully print out the material I'd polished and crafted, stick it carefully inside a Manila envelope with an S.A.S.E., and take my submissions down to the post office.  Then I'd go back to writing, and one by one, the rejections would trickle in.  It was always an adventure getting the mail, wondering if that would be the day I'd find an actual acceptance.  I usually didn't, and became quite calloused to getting rejections.  I filed 'em all away, collecting them like trophies, keeping the giant stack like some badge of honor.  I figure I have well in excess of a couple hundred now.  I did get an acceptance finally, got the galleys and everything.  And then nothing.  Don't know if the magazine abruptly folded or what, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

Of course, there were times, jetting around the world courtesy of Uncle Sam, that this just wasn't possible.  It's hard to mail submissions out and collect rejection slips if you're not home.  Long hiatuses from the submissions game have been pretty much the norm.

And things have gotten much easier with the advent of e-mail submissions.  A whole lot easier!  I never query via regular mail now.  I have no reason to.  Yes, there are still agents out there who do not accept e-queries, but at this point in time, wouldn't you be a little hesitant of an agent who hasn't caught up with technology enough to operate that way?  Hell, a lot of agents accept only e-queries.

It's far easier, too.  There's tons of information on agents out there.  What they're looking for, how to query them, what to include, pretty much anything an author would want to know.  It's a lot quicker, too.  No complicated envelope, S.A.S.E., trip to the post office, and waiting on the postman.  Just zip it off and watch your e-mail.  You already do anyway.  Now there's more time for writing.

Except that there's not.  That time has been replaced by blogging, and tweeting, and all the other endless forms of social media out there.  Most agents want an author to have a good online presence.  They want to see the author is engaged himself, has worked to market himself as much as possible already.  It makes their job all that much easier.

Looking back, things haven't gotten any easier, but I've gotten better at it.  The one thing that jumps out at me right away is how much better I understand the publishing industry.  Publishing Separate Worlds was a tremendous learning exercise for me.  This blog has been too, especially with all the research I've put into the Literary Agents tab and sidebar.  I know better how to find what I'm looking for, and how to write better what they're looking for.

So it's back to the trenches for now, writing, editing, pouring over submission guidelines and then trying not to mix 'em up with I send the queries out.  It's still frustrating at times, but I've gotten as jaded to rejections as literary agents are to bad queries, so it's all cool.  And hey, it's not personal, it's the way things are.

Separate Worlds

Atlantis and Earth have encountered one another before, so long ago that neither retains more than faded legends from the event. Now the rift between them has opened again. A collision is inevitable.

For the crew of the Olive Branch, the mission is a venture into never-before-charted territory. Theirs is a voyage to finally connect with intelligent life in space.

For the Atlanteans, the rift brings the actualization of something thought inconceivable - an alien invasion.

The possibilities for bridging the two worlds are virtually endless, but fate has a way of choosing its own outcome. Will harmony result, or will Earth and Atlantis be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past?

Separate Worlds is an 11,000-word novella.


It's finished, folks!  After long last, and more time and painstaking work than I'd like to admit, it's done, and the House of Dalar is ready for a release party.  Champagne is in order tonight.  But before that, my sincere gratitude goes out to several people, without whom this story would not be nearly what it is.

First, I'd like to mention my graphic design artist, Todd Bréda.  He took my random thoughts and ideas and crafted them into a beautiful cover, which very aptly conveys the concepts and feel of the story.  He was also a pleasure to work with, and things went rather quickly once he got the idea of what I wanted for my cover art.  I've heard nothing but praise for the cover art.  Thank you, Todd!

The second person that deserves many thanks is my editor, Karin Cox.  She not only took on the extra workload during an especially hectic time, she not only provided excellent editorial advice and corrections, but did so more quickly than expected.  She also commented on some structural areas in the story, pointing out that the story would be better if I'd flesh them out a bit more.  And she was right - I'm far happier with the result now than I would have been without those edits.  Thank you, Karin!

I'd like to thank David Gaughran, whose blog (and advice) I found extremely helpful.  He's really been a pioneer in the self-publishing world, cutting through some of the stigma and misconceptions, and setting the record straight on a number of different areas.  He's also made it very easy to understand the process, and learn what's really necessary to produce a quality e-book that separates itself from the deluge of others out there.  Thank you, Dave!

I'd also like to mention Guido Henkel, whose incredibly helpful blog series on ebook formatting helped me get through the coding process and turn Separate Worlds from a word document into an actual ebook.  After pouring through his step-by-step advice, I was able to produce a book of far better quality than I otherwise would have been able to.  Thank you, Guido!

I also had a lot of help from family and friends to acquaintances to Navy colleagues, to some wonderfully intelligent folks over at Seahawks.NET.  Without your help and support, this book wouldn't be nearly what it is.  Thank you!

Producing a book of any size requires not only a lot of time, effort, and attention to detail, but it requires more than just the author alone.  After going through this process, that is more glaringly obvious to me than it had been before.  I realize this post has started to sound suspiciously like an Oscar acceptance speech, but I felt it had to be said.

And now I'm throwing the book out there to the wolves, out there for anyone to read.  I've tried to ensure it's as good as I can possibly get it, and that's all I can do.  Look for it from a variety of digital booksellers available soon for 99¢.

Update: Available now at Barnes & Noble for the NOOK eBook reader or on a PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, or Android smartphone enabled with their free NOOK eReading software.

Available now at Smashwords for Apple iPad/iBooks, Kindle devices and apps, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, Palm, most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions, PCs, and others.  ISBN: 978-1-4658-4084-4.

Available now on Amazon for Kindle readers and apps.  ASIN: B0074U3LTQ.

Why do I even have a blog?

As you can see from snooping around this blog even a little, I'm not yet published.  I mean, I'm an author, but only because I say so.  You can't yet buy my stories, and I haven't yet made any money from them.  So why does a guy like me have an author's blog?

Well, to be fair, the foremost reason is because that's what the industry experts suggest.  They say to get your voice out there even before you're published, and that's what I'm doing.  So why would they advise this?  Why would an author with nothing to sell be advised to have an online presence?

First, establishing myself, however obscure, as a presence on the Internet before I'm published means I'm already ahead of the game when I do eventually publish.  I'm already ahead of the author who starts to blog, tweet, and otherwise connect at the same time his or her book is published.

Second, it shows that I'm already willing to work on publicity myself, to do what I need to do to get my stories visible, away from the dark claws of obscurity.  If I'm willing to work on things on my own, they know I'll work with them however they need in order to promote my books.  It's the sign of a good investment, and with the risks agents and publishers take with new authors, that's a good thing.

And third, it gives everyone - readers, agents, editors, publishers - a taste of my writing.  Sure, it's not the same as fiction, but it gives them a snapshot of the quality, style, and attention to detail that I likely (assuredly, actually) give my stories.  They can see my typos, or hopefully lack thereof, my grammar, my style and my voice.  Anything that allows a preview into what someone is getting makes it more enticing.

Aside from that, it allows anyone at a glance to see what type of stories I write.  It's right up there at the top: science fiction, horror, and fantasy.  You know instantly if you like the genres I write, and you know what to expect when you pick up one of my stories.

If you've been following my blog for any amount of time, you probably realize I intend to self-publish two novellas.  And you realize I'm behind my targeted schedule.  There are a couple reasons for this.  The first, and probably biggest reason is that a fractured ankle in the household has left me playing caregiver rather than maniacal wordslinger for much of the last couple of months.  I haven't been able to work nearly as much as I'd expected, but priorities being what they are, I'm fine with that.

Also, in talking with my amazingly cool editor, Karin Cox, I came to the conclusion my first story had a thread or two that needed more fleshing out to make it a much better story.  Every piece of quality advice I've found out there for self-publishers tells me the two things I had better get right are the cover and the editing process. Both are absolutely vital in producing a quality product, worthy of your hard-earned money.  And an author can't do that alone and be completely successful.  If my editor says my book would be better a certain way, then I'd damn well better listen.

Both these things, coupled with the normal family-centric holiday season, have left me woefully behind schedule.  It grates on me, knowing that schedules and deadlines are absolutely necessary in this business.  I'm still learning the ropes, but I should be able to function within the parameters I do know.

Whether I call these excuses or reasons, it all amounts to the same thing.  I'm working on it, I promise.  In fact, I've wrapped up the editing process and have begun the formatting.  Correctly formatting an e-book is a bit complicated, and involves a bit of HTML and other types of magical computer tomfoolery.  Sure, any idiot can zap a word document into the right format and have it uploaded and ready in an hour.  The problem with that is not every type of e-reader works well with formatting it the easy way, making it a very unprofessional looking product.

So bear with me just a while longer, while I wrangle through the correct way to format the book for all the major e-readers.  After all, if I'm taking your hard-earned money in good conscience, I want to make sure I have as professional a product as I can.

Welcome to the Commercial Age

Several controversial bills have been making the rounds in U.S. legislative circles lately, one of which, H.R. 3261 Stop Online Piracy Act, otherwise known as the "SOPA bill", stands to cause the most impact on our every day lives.

We've seen the anti-piracy campaign since our childhood.  It's an old tune.  Piracy is the same as stealing, and stealing is wrong and illegal.  On the surface, it's a pretty simple concept, and one that's easy to get behind.  It's also a concept that strikes close to home with me.  I'm an author, and as such, I stand to be affected by the piracy of my own work.  I've invested some time and effort into studying the topic, and if you're an author, I suggest you do the same.  It's in your best interests.

While the anti-piracy stance seems on the surface to be a no-brainer - full of justice, integrity, and the maintenance of good law and order, it's not so simple.  Of course, nothing ever is.  There are two sides to this, and the flip side is as compelling, or more so, once you dig a little deeper into the topic.

Piracy is a Crime, © Stephen Dann

If piracy is stealing, why would anti-piracy laws not be necessarily a good thing?  How could one condone such illegal behavior with good conscience?  How could one advocate against something that supports the laws of the land, especially laws that ensure the creator of something gets a fair share of the profits gained from its sale?  Because most people don't really even understand the issue.

Part of the problem is understanding Digital Rights Management, or DRM, and what it prevents and causes, and more importantly, what it doesn't.  DRM was created with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to fight copyright infringement online and help the copyright holder maintain artistic control and keep earning money from their work.  At least that's how it's supposed to work.

The virtual world has created problems we're often unfamiliar with because of what it is and how it works.  When I was young and I wanted to buy music, a movie, or a book, I'd go to the store, part with my hard-earned money and return with a physical copy of what I wanted.  It was mine, and I was free from that point on to do with it what I wished.  I'd given the author his cut of the profits by purchasing the item.  From there, if I wanted to read it, give it to my sister to read, and then legally sell it to a friend for whatever he wanted to pay for it, I could.  The book was mine because I'd purchased it.  It didn't matter how many times it was sold, traded or given away after the initial purchase.

Complications arise in the virtual world when we purchase a book because it isn't physical, and therefore needs a place to reside.  Further complications arise when we understand that moving anything digital isn't moving it at all.  It's copying it.  Even if we destroy the original, we've still copied it to move it.  And that's where DRM becomes an issue.  To a computer, there is no difference between copying a file from an old computer to a new one, retaining possession of the work, and duplicating it to another person's computer for their use.  DRM attempts to curb the illegal distribution of virtual works, but at the expense of taking away rights the owner would have if it were a physical copy.  Furthermore, the point can be made that publishers are actually encouraging piracy with their anti-piracy efforts.

This discussion gets even more interesting when we learn that many authors are against DRM, because in clamping down on the illegal distribution of their work, it limits accessibility and arguably doesn't stop people from stealing it anyway.  And several authors have pointed out that encouraging people to pirate their works has boosted sales, not stifled them.  After all, obscurity, not piracy is an author's worst enemy.

So how does this relate to the SOPA laws the government is trying to pass now?  Well, the two are loosely affiliated, guided by the same goal, and that goal is commercialism.  The entertainment industry, including commercial television, motion picture, music, and cable and satellite distribution entities, has spent a collective $2.5 million dollars so far lobbying congress to pass this bill.  And it's all in the name of controlling content, and as a result, money from that content.

Already we're seeing the effects of a bill not yet even passed into law.  Courts are already imposing online crackdowns, much like what we'll see happening with this bill.  Because of the bill's general and ambiguous wording, entire websites can be shut down virtually at will, and indeed the popular, user-driven content site Reddit has already warned this bill would likely be the end of the site.  And if Reddit, a site owned by a parent company with a good deal of resources to deal with SOPA-generated claims, fears it won't survive, smaller sites don't have a chance.

It's been said SOPA will kill the Internet, or at least kill the Internet as we know it.  Many people are echoing this sentiment; it's not a knee-jerk reaction by a few on the lunatic fringe.  Many are voicing concerns against it, loudly and repeatedly.  It's a legitimate concern.  Unfortunately, corporations, driven by profit motives, and not wanting to adapt old fashioned business models, are throwing money at this bill hand over fist.  And because congress still seems to have the intellect of a five-year-old regarding such newfangled technology such as teh interwebz, they're going to take money and run, passing this bill along the way.

I'm scared of this bill.  I blog here, and share virtual content in part to build my online presence and let people know about my writing.  It's how many authors and artists battle the obscurity that threatens to stifle the sales and promotion of their books.  Most just want a voice.  We want our books out there for people to read.  It's not about the money, but we know the originators deserve compensation for their work.  I know if this blog disappeared, it would be a lot of extra work and time lost, and it would cost much more to get back to even where I am now.  I try diligently to use only work that's labeled for reuse, and I always credit the originator to my best ability.  But it would only take getting it wrong only once to make all this disappear, and that's scary.

In spite of huge advances in user-driven content everywhere you look, society is driven more and more by commercialism.  Big business is behind almost everything, and is going strong no matter how loudly folks like OWS scream about it, or how quickly anti-corporate sentiment trends on Twitter.  Big business is good.  It provides a lot for society - a lot we don't often even see.  But in some cases, it's driven by goals that ultimately work against it's own long-term good.  "Make the money now and get out" is the mantra repeated by those in charge.  And they repeat that because what's good in the long run for business often is contrary to their own short-term good.

Some, like those behind the "DeSopa" Firefox add-on, are already hard at work to combat the effects of SOPA, which is a good thing.  Technology is largely misunderstood because it's always changing.  It's always a step ahead of you, even when you're the one creating it.  It will survive, even against such draconian measures as the SOPA.  In the meantime, hunker down against the inevitable, watch the Internet crumble around your ears, and then stand by as those short-sighted enough to enact the bill struggle to reverse their self-destructive decisions.

Semper Gumby!

"Semper gumby".  That's Latin for "always flexible", or at least it should be.  While I learned that phrase in the Navy, it's as applicable to writers as it is to sailors.  Every writer should have it as their unofficial motto.

Why do I bring this up?  Well, because things haven't gone according to plan, and I have to adjust.  I'd promised you my novella, Separate Worlds, would be available sometime in October.  October has come and almost gone already, and it is still not ready for publication.

Things happen in this business, like any other business.  And because they do, things often don't go according to plan or schedule.  They call an endeavor like this "self-publishing", but that's really a misnomer.  At least it is if the author does it right.  There is more to it than simply writing a book and throwing it out there for folks to read.  There is a process that involves much more than that, including several types of editing and proofing.  More people are involved than just the author.  Fellow author David Gaughran blogs about this process, and is one of the better resources for this I've seen on the Internet.  Reading through his blog gives one a very clear picture of everything involved.

Suffice it to say this has been a learning experience, which is exactly what I wanted it to be when I decided to publish Separate Worlds as an e-book.  It's a foray into a world I haven't explored yet, and it continues to teach as I go along.  It's an interesting and educational look into the relatively new phenomenon that is e-publishing.  It's the wave of the future for publishing, whatever that future ends up being.

I expect to be back on track before long.  I'll get out there, but not before it's as polished as it needs to be.  In the meantime, you'll just have to enjoy a shot of the cover, designed by my genius graphic design artist, Todd Bréda.

Separate Worlds, © Jonathan Dalar

Fear, Uncertainty, & Doubt: Guest Post by David Gaughran

I've been wanting to branch out and do something a little different for a while, and one of those things was to invite another author to do a guest blog here.  I think it brings a lot more to the blog than just another opinion or perspective.  It also gives me a chance to showcase someone else here and introduce you to them and their work.

Today's guest post is by David Gaughran, an up-and-coming author, blogger, and self-proclaimed proponent of self-publishing.  He has so far published two shorter works of fiction and a nonfiction book on self-publishing, which I have read and highly recommend.  Here are his thoughts on self-publishing, with some good advice based on his own experiences.

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There is a lot of disinformation out there about self-publishing. I chose that word carefully. Some people are consciously spreading inaccurate information about self-publishing to steer writers away from it.

In the software industry, they called this FUD: fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The idea was that you would create enough question marks about a competitor's product so that the customer would stick with yours.

Those who are vigorously defending the status quo, you will find, are those that have the most to lose from it changing.

However, I'm not interested in assigning blame. I'm interested in writers getting accurate information about all the new opportunities that are presenting themselves.

Prior to 2007, a writer had one viable choice: pursuing a publishing contract. Self-publishing existed, but publishers had a lock on the distribution system. Self-publishers found it next-to-impossible to get their books in stores.

Also, to publish a print book at a price that could compete with publishers meant taking the risk of splashing out on a print run, storage space for all those books, and coming up with some way of selling to customers directly. Not easy, and a lot of people lost money.

That all changed when Amazon launched their digital self-publishing platform. Suddenly, publishers no longer had a lock on the distribution network. Plus, e-books were far cheaper to produce. There were still some costs, mainly cover design and editing, but those costs only had to be covered once - there was no extra fee for going back to the printer.

When e-books really took off in November 2010, a lot of writers began to consider self-publishing for the first time. While the first people to make real money were those that previously had a successful career in trade publishing, such as Joe Konrath and Scott Nicholson, new stars such as Amanda Hocking, John Locke, Mark Edwards, and Victorine Lieske emerged.

In addition to them, writers such as Louise Voss, J Carson Black, and Bob Mayer, switched from trade publishing to self-publishing and started to make more money. A lot more money.

By now, self-publishing has proved itself as a viable career path for unpublished writers, those who have had a successful trade publishing career, and those that haven’t.

Bob Mayer, for example, made the NYT Bestseller list twice, and shifted over 1 million copies of his Atlantis series alone for his publishers. He is making more now on his own. In July alone, he made $100,000 from self-published work.

Some people might say that all of these people are exceptions to the rule, that only a tiny percentage will succeed. But isn’t this true of trade publishing? What percentage of any agent’s slushpile will make it onto the bookshelves at Barnes & Noble? What percentage will get any kind of deal at all?

One of the more common tactics to scare people away from self-publishing is to tell them that no agent or publisher will ever touch them if they go that route. Someone should really mention that to all the agents hunting in the Kindle Store for new clients.

I know of ten self-publishers that have been approached by agents in the last few months, just from hanging out on Kindle Boards. One agency alone – Trident – has signed five self-publishers that I know of this year. Every few weeks, I hear of another self-publisher that has been approached directly to sell foreign rights to their work.

I think we can say that it’s clear that self-publishing is a viable path. But is it the best path for you and your work?

That is a question that each writer will have to answer for themselves. But what writers need to understand is that it’s not either/or. Many self-publishers I know also have trade deals for some of their work. Many in trade publishing are self-publishing “side projects” such as reverted backlist titles, short stories, or novels they were unable to place.

I think this kind of “mixed portfolio” will become more common, not less common, and in fact I think it’s a prudent approach as you will get the best of both worlds: the higher royalties from self-publishing, and the audience expansion into print that’s so hard to achieve on your own.

Barry Eisler walked away from a huge trade deal to self-publish. He released three titles, then signed a trade deal with Amazon, for one book, and has indicated he will be self-publishing further titles in the future. J Carson Black just signed a 3 book deal with Amazon. She will be releasing two self-published titles in the Fall. Amanda Hocking signed a huge trade deal with St. Martin’s Press. She will be continuing to self-publish other work. Michael J Sullivan signed a six book deal with Orbit. He will also be self-publishing.

The point is, they are not mutually exclusive paths. You can self-publish some work, and pursue trade deals for other projects.

Back in March, when I was really struggling to decide whether to pull my novel from the remaining agents that were considering it and self-publish it, I didn’t know this. It was only when I realised that I could self-publish a couple of stories – as an experiment – that I broke the impasse.

And that’s exactly what I did. I didn’t have to pull my novel. It remained with the agents. And I self-published. Two months later, I had sold over 200 books. I pulled the novel.

So for anyone unsure about self-publishing, for anyone that doesn’t know if it’s something they would enjoy, or something that could work for them, I suggest doing the same. Self-publish a short story. See if you enjoy the process. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t.

If you do, then you can consider publishing your novel that way. If you don’t, you’ve lost nothing other than the minimal cost involved in publishing a short, and you will at least have learned something.

I’m a huge convert to self-publishing. If you had asked me about it six months ago, I would have thought it was only viable for writers with a sizeable backlist of reverted titles. I don’t think that anymore.

But, like most self-publishers, I wouldn’t say no to a trade deal if the terms were right. However, the difference now is that if I am approached by an agent or publisher, I will be dealing from a position of strength. I made $425 last month. From self-publishing. It’s only my third month. I haven’t even got my novel out yet.

And if a publisher approached me tomorrow, and made an offer on my novel, I know exactly what the minimum terms I would accept are. I have sales records. I have built a platform. I have a rough idea of how many books I could sell.

When I was in the slushpile, I would have taken anything. Now, instead, I know the value of my work. I’m making money. And I’m writing more than ever because the joy is back.

Chasing an agent is such a grind. It’s such a negative experience. Self-publishing has been nothing but positive. I’m back in control of my life and my career. And I’m having a blast.

Self-publishing might not be for everyone. But I think even that is looking at it the wrong way. You aren’t making a career choice which is tying you down for life, closing doors. You are making a decision on one book, or story. It’s not binding.

And if you do it right, you might find that it opens doors.

- David Gaughran

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Many thanks to Dave for sharing that post here.  He's got a few things figured out that authors, self-published or otherwise, would do well to heed.  I wish him the best of success in his own endeavors.  His blog, Let's Get Digital, is a great source of information for both writers and readers alike, and consistently has news and current information on the world of publishing.  You can find his books on Amazon.com, as well as other digital book sources on the web.

Focusing on What's Important

A Twitter chat session with the folks at Book Country, including former literary agent Colleen Lindsay got me to thinking about the focus of my blog here, and what I can do to make it better.  Of course, that's exactly what the session was designed to do, and the hosts certainly gave out some excellent advice on the matter.

Colleen shared fourteen points on making an author's blog better, and I thought I'd share those points with my readers here.  They're well worth repeating, as they tie into not only producing a better quality blog, but into marketing oneself as an author.

There has been some concern about the ability of authors to successfully market themselves, and that is a topic close to my heart.  After all, if I can't successfully market myself, I can't find the audience to read my books.  I'll have turned myself into that metaphorical tree in the forest.  If I make a noise, will anyone hear me?

In fact, one of the arguments against self-publishing is that authors don't know how to market themselves, and as such will get lost in the masses.  But there is a completely opposite point of view out there, and with the success of a noted number of independent writers, they do have a point.  Really, the whole business is much too young yet to understand what is going on, where we're headed, and the actual individual factors for success.  There are definite indicators, but it's still largely a wait-and-see issue for some of the largest players, and their moves will definitely impact how things evolve in the future.

I think a more critical issues is the fact that a large number of them are marketing themselves to the wrong audience - to other authors, and not to readers.  Granted, authors are potential readers as well, but if one is blogging about writing, the blog will appeal to writers and not readers of the material one writes about.

So that brings me to the points Colleen Lindsay brought up last night in the Book Country chat.  They're all pretty self-explanatory, so I'll simply list them and you can form your own opinions.

Practical tip #1: ALWAYS have contact information on your website or blog (and not one of those contact forms).

Practical tip #2: Create a downloadable press kit for your site, w/ high-res photos, book jackets, bio & press clippings.

Practical tip #3: Don't make it hard for readers to leave comments and engage you in conversation. Allow use of Open ID, etc.

Practical tip #4: Have a separate area on your site for appearance information, and make sure it's up-to-date.

Practical tip #5: HIRE A DESIGNER. Make an effort! It's not super-expensive these days to hire a blog designer.

Practical tip #6: Don't be afraid to take control of your comments and delete the assholes. It's YOUR blog.

Practical tip #7: Make sure your agent and publicist's contact info is on your blog/website.

Practical tip #8: Avoid graphic-heavy landing pages; they add nothing and just piss off people with older browsers.

Practical tip #9: For the love of GOD, don't put auto-play music on your blog or website!

Practical tip #10: Make sure you add links to all your (public) social media presences on your blog/website.

Practical tip #11: Add your bibliography, in the order that the books were published, so new readers can read in order!

Practical tip #12: List any and all awards you've won, whether you're a NYT, USA Today bestseller, etc.

Practical tip #13: Write about other writers you love to read. Pay it forward, especially if you have a strong platform.

Practical tip #14: If you're going on vacation or need a break, ask a friend to guest-blog for you so content stays fresh!

Excellent tips, all.  A big thank you goes out to Colleen Lindsay and the rest of the great hosts and contributors of the chat!  They do this on a regular basis, on varying topics, so if this is the type of advice you're looking for, I highly recommend tuning in to them.  The next one is scheduled for August 11.  @Book_Country has the latest info.

So now, looking over these tips, there are a few things I see I'm doing right, and some I'm not.  The thing that concerns me most is not reaching my target audience.  I'm a writer.  I write science fiction, horror and fantasy.  Readers of these genres are the folks that should be reading my blog.  I should be sharing great news, stories, pictures and information relating to these genres.  Starting in a bit, I will be.

For fellow authors out there, I'll still share content that interests you, and I'll continue to add to the links and resources I've put on here.  But my main focus will shift, as I feel it should, to a more appropriate forum.  So for you sci-fi, horror, and fantasy buffs, stay tuned.  Great stuff coming your way soon!

Exciting Times to be a Writer!

The world of books as we know it has turned upside down.  For those living under a rock lately, Borders is officially done.  Barnes and Noble, while not done (yet), has been in trouble very recently.  Unless they turn their strategy around, they could well be following in Borders' footsteps.  Regardless of what happens, the fall of Borders is seen as a boon to Barnes and Noble.  For now.  Folks have been saying Barnes and Noble did it right, while Borders did it wrong, but that too can change quickly.  Especially for a struggling company that received an artificial shot in the arm for business.

Further shake-ups could be likely.  Books-A-Million tried to buy out the inventory for 30 of those Borders stores, but couldn't do it in the end.  More buy-outs or attempted buy-outs will probably happen.  In the end, it will be death by attrition and survival of those who adapt to the changing times the quickest.

Some are bemoaning the future of reading, that it's the death of new writing for some reason.  Whatever will we do if we don't have books?  Well, it's never going to be that bleak.  Books have been here to stay since their inception.  Their form may change, and the opportunities for writing them may ebb and flow, but they'll remain as strong as ever.  People may lament the fact that e-books don't give them that same special feeling that "real" books do, but it's not about feelings.  It's about numbers.  And the bottom line for publishers involves numbers, not feelings.

Enough bad news.  Remember, I said it was exciting times to be a writer, and I truly believe that.  The shake-ups have only begun to begin and there's more than we could ever imagine just around the corner.

We've already seen figures for the first half of this year, and digital books are going through the roof while other forms are in decline.  The comparison between the two shows just how fast the digital revolution is happening in the world of books.

E-books are here in a big way, and they're here to stay.  Self-publishing was once looked at as nothing more than an ego-boosting outlet for hopeless hacks but is now a viable option with e-books.  More and more agencies, such as BookEnds, LLC, are coming to terms with self-publishing, and are forming strategies to adopt it into their business plan.

And many more new opportunities are springing up - new, interesting forms of publishing that until a few short years ago were completely unheard of.  One such example is University of Michigan's foray into digital publishing by serializing two novels for free on Facebook.  Interesting concept.  Whether it will take off into something viable is not really something I care to debate.  The fact that it is happening, and adding to the shake-up of the publishing world is the important part.

For a talented writer, there is always a market.  Yes, it's always going to be tough.  There will always be competition for publication and readership.  There will always be naysayers and holdouts to whatever has been tradition.  But there will always be those on the cutting edge of the industry.  Authors would do well to be a part of that.  After all, it's their future.  Our future.  And I'm happy I'm a part of it.

Sneak Peek: Separate Worlds

The cover for my novella, Separate Worlds is done, and as promised, it's magnificent!  It was created by graphic designer Todd Bréda, and meets all my expectations for a cover.  He's set the bar high, and it's up to me to make sure the content matches what the reader expects when viewing the cover.

The story itself is a fun story.  It's not terribly upbeat, nor is it comedy or satire.  It's fun because it offers alternate views of an alien encounter - one from the perspective of space travel to a distant inhabited planet, and the second from that of a society facing a sudden alien invasion.

The two views contrast our own space race and constant search for intelligent life out there in the void with the legends of ancient Atlantis and the magnificent city that might never have existed.  Hearkening back to those legends, the story assumes that neither world has quite forgotten the encounter, and as such, the tales of it on each are drastically different.

At approximately 14,000 words, it's not a novel.  It's not a short story either, which is why e-publishing seems to be the right venue for it.  Few stories are published at this length, as it's neither cost effective to publish as stand-alone hard copy books, nor short enough for inclusion in most periodicals.

While it's not a terribly long read, it is entertaining.  It doesn't force you to think about any deep philosophical subjects or question why were here at all, but it lets you if you so choose.  It simply takes a few what-if questions about the myths of Atlantis and relates a tale based on those questions.

It's still in editorial stages, but it's getting closer to publication.  I hope to have it available as an e-book within a month or so.  It was tremendously fun to write, and I only hope it will be as fun for you to read.

Update:  It's finished.  Details and links to where it is available can be found in this post.  Enjoy!

Learning the Other Side of Writing

This venture into e-publishing has already been an adventure, and it's only getting started.  I'm starting to see the business side of things.  You know, the parts that aren't just you and the story, sitting there together in total solitude, hammering out how it's going to end.  The parts where you interact with others who have an impact on the story too.  The parts that make it more than just your own personal baby.

It's all a little scary, but like a roller coaster, it's also a lot of fun.  It's scary because at this point, there's no backing out.  I've already committed to doing this, and I know I need to get it right.  I need to get it right at least for my own sense of accomplishment, according to my own standards, no matter how well it sells.  Selling it of course it the ultimate goal here, but I understand how the business works.  I realize that it's a tricky one, often influenced by factors outside anyone's ability to control.  There are things that can be done to increase its chances, but there are also a lot of intangibles.

Although I'm experimenting with e-publishing Separate Worlds on my own, I can see where certain aspects of the business would be the same, no matter how it was published.  I'm starting to see the interaction between all the people necessary for it to be released to the public, and I know this is only the beginning.  I can see once this is finished and available for sale, I'll have a lot of experience to share in the area.  I won't be an expert, not by a long shot, but at least I'll be able to talk coherently on the subject.

I just signed off on the final design of the cover. My cover artist and graphic design genius, Todd Bréda, was wonderful to work with.  He took my ideas and crafted them into a great looking cover that really displays all the concepts I was looking for in a very professional way.

I wanted to start out with a background portraying space travel, other galaxies and planets, and especially the other world where the story takes place.  Setting it against a backdrop of space would automatically give it the feel of a science fiction story.  I also wanted the concept of space travel and a rift between galaxies on it.  That's a lot to ask, but after a little work tossing ideas back and forth, Todd came up with something that very subtly did both.  And it worked within the constraints of the area we had to work with on the cover.

I also wanted the title, subtitle and author byline font to let the reader know this book was science fiction, so I sent a half dozen images of some of the pure science fiction covers out there for him to use as inspiration.  What he came up with melds classic science fiction with a more modern touch, and it does so very nicely.  Together, the elements work perfectly.  The cover cannot be mistaken for anything other than that of a science fiction tale, and it very accurately portrays the story I've written.

Ironically, while I was in the middle of this, fellow author David Gaughran blogged about his own experience coming up with a book cover.  And although we didn't do things in quite the same way, there have been definite similarities.  It was very interesting to read his experiences, especially as someone who was doing the exact same thing at the time.

One of the differences between David's experience and mine was the input from others he got during the process.  So far, the only others who have seen the work aside from Todd and me are my immediate family.  I've gotten some good critical advice from them, and they approve of the final copy, whether they needed to or not.  I could have sent it to more people and gotten advice along the way from potential readers, but I chose not to.  I don't think I needed to.  I felt that between Todd's abilities and input, and my own artistic sense, we could come up with something that would work beautifully.  And we did.  The cover will be up on the blog before too long, and you'll be able to see for yourself.

It may seem like I've put the cart before the horse in finishing the cover before I get the story professionally edited, and indeed I've thought that a time or two.  But I don't think so.  For one thing, it allows me a longer lead time to promote the story with a beautiful piece of cover art before it's finally out for consumption.  Another thing it's allowed me to do is tweak the story just slightly as I'm doing my final edit to more closely mirror the picture the cover puts into the reader's mind.  Doing it this way allows far more artistic license to meld the story better with the cover art.  I wouldn't have nearly the ability to do this otherwise.

I'm now in the final stages of perfecting the story.  It's polished and edited a number of times - I've kind of lost track by now - and it's ready for one final, professional edit.  I've chosen a couple of editors I feel I'd be comfortable working with, and I'm confident that whichever one I end up working with will do a marvelous job.

I still have to work out the technical aspects of the story, but I'm not as worried about that.  That is simply a matter of formatting files correctly and uploading them as required.  That's just a bit of research and some careful attention to detail on my part.  I think I can handle that part.

All in all, it's been incredibly interesting and educational to say the least.  It's a gamble.  I'm not only investing monetarily in doing this, I'm also putting my work out as published, risking myself as an author in the hopes it will be successful.  Like I said, it's a gamble, but it's less about that than it is about the educational experience of it.  It's already taught me more about authorship and the publication business than ever before, and that has to be worth something in the end.

Progress on Publication

I've been working on publication for a long, long time now.  I believe my first short story rejection is dated sometime in the 80's.  Yea.  A long, long time, indeed.

There have been hiatuses from time to time, when I either didn't feel anything was good enough, or I was between duty stations in the Navy, or I was just plain too busy or away too much of the time to constantly send things out in the mail.  This was especially hard before the advent of e-queries.

I've also recently been thinking a lot about epublishing.  It certainly seems to be the way of the future.  I've been doing copious amounts of research on the subject, and it's frankly quite intriguing.  The royalty margins are better, that's for sure.  I also have more creative control over what I'm putting out there, and while that may not always be a good thing, at times even the pros don't get it as right as they could.  And, perhaps the most enticing part, it allows publication of stories that might never otherwise see the light of day.

It's a lot of work, though.  If I'm to do it right, there's no cutting corners.  There's no putting out a less than quality work.  If I'm in, I'm all in.  And that means editing it and refining it until I'm sick and tired of it, and then handing it over to a pro to do the same.  Then back for additional edits and tweaks.

And it means getting a professional cover for it, one that will hopefully set it apart from the other self-published stuff, and help it compete with the big boys.  Which brings us to the progress I noted in the title.  I'm pleased to be able to say last night I got a sneak peek at what the cover for Separate Worlds is going to look like.  I won't give away too much, but the digital designer who's doing the cover mailed me the initial base from which he's making the cover, and I was much impressed!  It's a work in progress, but so far it looks excellent.  It's going to be a great one, and a critical part of the publishing process.

I've said before there are only a few things needed, besides a great story of course, to propel book sales.  Marketing is an obvious one, and we'll talk more about that later.  Another is the jacket blurb.  That's often the only real snapshot of what's inside the book a reader gets before buying it or putting it back and walking away.  I'm working on that part.  The other thing is the cover.  People are drawn to professional-looking covers, because it suggests a professional book.  And even if the book isn't produced by one of the big six, having a professional cover does a lot for it.  Not only is it harder to tell it wasn't published in New York, it suggests that care and professionalism were put into the book.  It suggests the author took the time and effort to put out a quality product, and that's what readers are looking for.

So it appears I'm well on the way to solidifying one of those areas with exactly the professional quality I was looking for.  We'll see about the rest.  For now, things are looking good.  I have a long way to go, but in the end I will be confident about the product I'm putting out.

The e-Pub War has Begun!

Indie authors outselling traditionally published authors, literary agents jumping on the publishing gig, e-Books taking a huge chunk of the bookselling pie, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria!  It's nuts out there in the publishing world.

There's more news on this subject, and I bet it's only the tip of the iceberg.  Literary Agent Kristin Nelson, of Nelson Literary Agency, LLC has had some interesting observations on the publishing world's reaction to the e-book phenomenon.  Last Tuesday, she broke down Harlequin's move to 25% of net receipts for single title romances starting January 2012.  Yesterday, she continued with this theme, with a post on Random House's sudden (random?) and arbitrary move to do the same this April.

What do these moves signify?  Not sure yet what they mean in the long run, but they're certainly the next volley of shots fired.  And while for the most part, big publishing houses and indie authors have a relatively amicable relationship, I think we need to look at the underlying causes for not only this relationship, but for the moves the industry is taking in the future.

First, the indie author wants to stay in good standing with the traditional publishers.  They're the ultimate goal, after all.  They're roughly the equivalent of his future employers.  The indie author, for the most part, would love nothing more than to pick up a nice contract with a major publisher.  And publishers are always looking for that next breakout bestseller.

But the bottom line is money.  Always has been and always will be.  This industry is no different from any other in that regard.  The author wants his cut.  The publishers line up their business models to maximize profit.  If you think otherwise, compare commonly given advice that no publisher will take a debut novel of over about 130,000 words (and that's stretching it) to the success of books like Stephen King's The Stand, and countless others that push the boundaries into epic territory.  They understand they're not likely at all to make up costs on your gargantuan debut novel, but they know King can easily break into the profit column no matter what he writes.  It looks like hypocrisy, but in fact it's just the bottom line.

The e-book has been turning those profit margins and well established industry norms upside down.  GalleyCat recently referenced agent-turned-author Nathan Bradford's poll on e-book price points in their own breakdown of the various opinions of the subject.  The paradigm has shifted, and nobody knows just yet where it's settled.  The reality is that it hasn't settled yet, and it probably won't for some time.  It's going to take a while for the industry norms to balance.  As evidenced by GalleyCat's post, there is a wide range of opinion on just how much an e-book should cost.  Nobody agrees, and nobody knows who's right or wrong, if there is even a right or wrong now.

This is all about author royalties as well as what percentages agents and publishers are getting from books.  With Amazon's royalties at 70% for books priced between $2.99 and $9.99, and their traditional 35% for all others, it's no wonder in such a hard-to-break-into industry, so many authors are going this route.

The publishers of course, want a piece of that pie.  Not only don't they make any money off those independent sales, but those sales cut into their own.  A reader is only going to spend so much on books, and if he buys an independently published book, that's one less book publishers are going to profit from.

I'm still on the fence about indie publishing as a whole.  I think it's changed dramatically from where it began, and I also think it's going to become a sizable portion of the industry.  It's here to stay.  There are indie books out there that are just as professional as ones produced by traditional publishers.  If and when I publish a book this way, you can know for damn sure it's going to look every bit as good as something you'd buy from one of the big guys.  I won't settle for less, and that, I believe is the key to success in the indie publishing world.

Price points are something I'm still very much unsure about.  My first endeavor will most likely be a roughly 13,000-word science fiction novella.  One of those in that nebulous no-man's-land of "unpublishable" lengths.  I've seen all lengths of works priced all over the board.  Kindle phenom John Locke proudly publishes all of his novels at 99 cents.  Others price theirs on up, even over the $9.99 threshold Kindle has tried to set for the majority of its fiction.  I've seen short stories for the same price as Locke's novels, and even higher.

An author needs to find that sweet spot for pricing.  Too high and he scares away potential readers who don't want to pay as much as he's asking.  Too little, and folks start to suspect it's in the bargain bin for a very good reason.  Besides the cover and the jacket blurb, the price is really the only thing people can look at when contemplating a book.

Writing is an art.  Writing is fun.  It's the sheer exhilaration of crafting words into entertainment without a thought about how much exposure it'll get or how much money you'll make off it.  It's done for the pure craft of storytelling.

Publishing, however, is a science.  Hitting that correct supply and demand balance to ensure maximum sales.  It's all about the marketing, the publicity, getting word out there and getting your book to move.  It's my least favorite aspect of the whole thing, by a wide margin, but I realize that to be successfully published, you can't have one without the other.  You can't write and ignore marketing and sales any more than you can try marketing a poorly written book.  You may see some success, but you won't have reached your potential, and to me, that's not doing it right.

Maybe I'm a perfectionist.  Maybe I'm just hesitant to really take a chance.  But my bottom line is doing things correctly, whatever correctly is.  I'm working on it every day, and that is why this subject is so interesting.  Hang on, folks, we're only getting started.  There's a lot more craziness in store for the industry!

Story Length, e-Books, and the Salvation of the Novella

This interesting topic has come up again recently for me, and it's one that has seen quite a lot of heated debate since well, about as long ago as when stories were first published, or even invented.  How long is too long?  How short is too short?  What's the right length for a publishable work?  I feel like Goldilocks and the three bears just thinking about it.

Too short, and your story isn't publishable.  There's just not enough profit to be made over such a small story and it won't cover the costs it incurs.  And while short stories and flash fiction can be combined into anthologies and collections, with some exceptions, even those are not terribly popular and are difficult to sell for all but the most popular authors.

Too long, and your story is again not publishable.  No one will touch it because it will cost too much to put into print.  They won't have the profit margins they need to make the money they need to off the book.  They have strict guidelines in place to maintain profitability, and they need to in order to continue publishing.

But the problem lies in the stories themselves.  A good writer can tweak the story some to control the length of the work he produces, but a story is really exactly the length it needs to be to be told.  If the story is told as it should be in 30,000 words, then so be it.  That's the length it needs to be.

But how to you sell the thing at that length, especially if you don't want to pare it down to a short story magazines will buy, or pump another 20,000 words into it to market it as a novel?  After all, at those lengths, changing the story by that many words is essentially taking half of it away or nearly doubling it in length, and that changes a story to the point where it's essentially a different story altogether.

That's exactly my latest quandary.  I'm still toying with the idea of putting out an e-book, to experiment with the new market, and to gain more experience and a better understanding of the moves the publishing industry may be making in the near future.

I don't really want to put one of my novels out there.  I just don't feel it's the right move to make at the moment.  I thought about bundling 50,000 words of my favorite short stories and putting them out as an anthology, but I don't know about that either.  It might be a good idea, but I'm hesitant to put so many of them together and publish them all at once.  I don't really know why, other than the fact that I'm obsessed with doing things the right way the first time.

Which leads me to my novellas.  I have two of them so far that are sweet middle of the road lengths that are too long for almost every magazine and too short for publication as stand-alone books.  But e-books change the dynamic on things.  There's no length restrictions with e-books, because it takes no more resources to crunch a novella to the proper format as it does an epic novel.  Maybe a few more bytes of memory, and maybe a little more time to save the thing, but really, in today's age of gigabytes and terabytes, that's not an issue.

There may be additional editing expenses for longer works, but for a novella that's not the case.  On the surface it seems like the perfect solution.  If I want to push the envelope on my writing a little further and explore the e-book experience, novellas may be the perfect way to do it.  I can put those stories out for people to read in a medium that allows it, while saving shorter and longer work for the more traditional methods already established in the industry.  And if I ever want to go back and put the novellas in print, I might have a better shot at doing that by bundling two or three of them together as an anthology once I get my career off the ground.

I really, sincerely hope the advent of e-books have changed the dynamic of publishing so much that an entire market for novellas and novelettes has been created.  I hope the floodgates open for these mid-length stories and sales prove they're just as viable as works of other length in the marketplace, and just as important for the reader.  It would be nice to see that, because there's something to be said about a story of that length.  They're fun to read.  They let you in a little more than a short story does, and a lot more than flash fiction.  They allow you a little closer than just the quick peek of shorter fiction, but yet don't take the time and emotional commitment of a novel.  After all, when you buy a novel, you're committing both time and emotional energy to something you don't even know you you'll like.  With a novella, you can get pulled into a really great story without investing the time and energy necessary for a novel.  It's a happy medium.  It's not the day trip, nor is it the two-week family vacation, but the weekend getaway of reading, and I think there's a need for that.

We'll see how things turn out, but for now it looks like the evolution of the publishing industry may have taken a turn for the betterment of stories.  After all, if it allows the publication of those stories stuck in the no man's land of "improper" length, that's a win for readers and authors alike.

Playing the Devil's Advocate

I just wrote a post contemplating the benefits of self-publishing e-books against sticking with the more traditional methods of finding an agent, getting a contract with a publishing company and eventually seeing the book in print.  I'm still considering it, but I'm not entirely sold either, and the reason is that doing things the traditional way does have its advantages.  Big advantages.

First, as author and former agent Nathan Bransford writes, traditional publishers bring a lot to the table that the author simply can't do himself.  They provide editing and copyediting, and both are invaluable to a writer.  One of the quickest things that will turn me off a book, especially one written by an unknown author is a slew of typos, bad writing, and poor editing.  You don't want that as a new author.  You need every advantage you can to sell your books.  Well established authors will sell millions of copies just based on the fact they are who they are.  Stephen King sells books based on name recognition alone.  Jonathan Dalar, with the possible exception of a handful of friends and family, does not.

Another thing publishers provide is professional design, printing, and packaging.  They make the book look pretty - prettier than I'd be able to do as an author, or at least without spending the family fortune, however much that may be.  They have these services in house, as part of their standard package of doing business.  It's all part of the process, not something I'd have to figure out on my own and hope I got it at least semi-right.

Publicity is yet another area that publishers are well versed in.  They use their own already well established vehicles of marketing to push your book.  They help set up the tours and reviews and all the other work necessary to get your book out there, stuff that usually resides well below the radar to the average reader.  They're the ones who buy space on that highly visible rack right inside the door of the bookstore that you see when you walk in.  They're who determines which books get put on the end caps of the shelves, at visible eye-level locations, or stuffed spine out along with the rest of the books.

And speaking of those bookstores, the publisher is the one who gets your book into the stores.  Most bookstores, and virtually all the larger ones, will not even consider stocking a self-published book, no matter how well it's doing.  The publishing companies have a long, well established track record with them, the bookstores know they're going to get good titles when they buy their books, and there is far less to gamble on doing business with them than with an unproven author on his own.  The previously unpublished author who's going it himself can't begin to compete with a similar author who's backed by Simon & Schuster or the Penguin Group.

This doesn't even cover the advance.  As I said in my previous post, you can earn a lot more of a percentage with royalties doing it yourself.  And selling enough books, you can earn above and beyond that advance by a lot more than with the 15% traditional methods offer.  But that's the catch.  You've got to sell those books.  And $10,000 advance from the publisher is money you don't have to give back, no matter if you only sell a handful of books.  That's pretty damn enticing.

As I've said, self-publishers can break into the market in a big way, as evidenced by Amanda Hocking and others.  It's an incredible long shot though, and it still took a lot of hard work and a ton of luck.  To sell a lot of novels, you have to have several things going for you.  You have to have a lot of exposure to people likely to buy your books.  You have to create a large, growing audience of dedicated readers - people who will go out and buy your next book just because your name is on the front cover.  You have to be not only a great writer, but a great marketer as well.

There has been some very interesting news along these lines recently.  The poster child for indie publishing, Amanda Hocking herself, just signed with St. Martin's Press.  That's right, she's switching to traditional publishing when she had already made a solid name for herself (and a lot of money) by publishing on her own.  And doing almost the exact opposite, author Barry Eisler, who has been quite successful publishing the traditional ways, tuns down a $500,000 advance to self-publish.  Yes.  A five followed by five zeros.  What to make of this?  Which one is right?  As David Gaughran explains better than I could, each appears to be making the right decision for themselves.  For more on this subject, author Tracy Marchini weighs in, guest blogging for Nathan Bransford.

But where does that leave me?  What's the best option for me?  Sadly, I have no $500,000 advance to turn down and try my hand at self-publishing.  I also don't have the massive success in the indie market to garner such attention from the large publishing houses.  I'm starting from the bottom here, and it's a long, tough road.  In spite of the odds, traditional publishing may indeed be the best way to go.  They just have so much to offer, it's hard to overlook it all.  We'll see.

The fact of the matter is that times, they are a-changin', and nobody knows exactly how.  No matter what the future holds, it's important for us authors to get in on the change because it's our future too.  Like my old granddad said, "I dunno where we're goin', but there's no sense bein' late!"