Showing posts with label publishing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label publishing. Show all posts
Wednesday, 6 July 2011
Print is Dead
Tweet
I noticed this the last time I watched Ghostbusters, but then my boyfriend found this and sent it to me on Facebook. As I'm a devout Egon fan, I thought I'd share it with you to prove that all these bloggers who think they're so clever by predicting the end of print have actually been outdone by a character from a movie that came out in 1984. Suck on that, Konrath.
Thursday, 15 July 2010
Smashwords vs Scribd
Tweet
One of many things that I love about the blogosphere is that it promotes discussion, and information sharing. People with experience and knowledge can pass it on to others, who can then in turn pass it on again.
Some people already know that the first phase of my web serial, Tales from Vertigo City, is almost over. Within a few weeks, The First Tale will be finished - and you'll all know what happens! Well my plan from there, aside moving onto The Second Tale, is to tidy the serial up, and make it available as an e-book. Some people don't have the time to sit in front of their computer to read the serial in dribs and drabs, but I still want them to be able to read it. I know that as e-readers become more popular, I'd like for more people to be able to read, and hopefully enjoy, The First Tale.
This is where the plan becomes a tiny bit more epic, because I'm not exactly known for making things easy on myself. I know that e-books that are available across many formats are text-only affairs, and that's fine. I want to put The First Tale out as a text-only version, so people can read it wherever they happen to be with their e-reader. Inspirational self-published author J. A. Konrath advocates Smashwords for selling e-books for iPad, Sony, Kobo (Borders), and Barnes & Noble, and up-and-coming writer Emma Newman used Smashwords for the release of her collection of short dark fiction, From Dark Places. She talks here about the minefield of pricing.
Thing is, there is a lot of supplementary material I want to include, things which I hope will expand or explain a few points about this particular incarnation of Vertigo City. With a background in graphic design combined with a passion for comic books, I'd like those things to take a more visual format, which precludes their inclusion in an e-book in the traditional sense of the word. Smashwords is therefore useless to my purpose, and as printing hard copies would end up being too expensive, I’ve now been considering Scribd.
As far as I can tell, both services have their advantages and disadvantages, and this is where things get interesting, as my Net friend Benjamin Solah is having the exact same dilemma! He has both a project to be released as a text-only e-book, and a magazine he wants to keep in graphic format. It's all very exciting, and you can check his post on the subject here. It's at this point that we're both going to throw open the floor to anyone who either has experience of services like Smashwords or Scribd, or anyone who has any advice they'd like to share regarding e-books.
Come on, get involved!
Image by AJ Leon.
Some people already know that the first phase of my web serial, Tales from Vertigo City, is almost over. Within a few weeks, The First Tale will be finished - and you'll all know what happens! Well my plan from there, aside moving onto The Second Tale, is to tidy the serial up, and make it available as an e-book. Some people don't have the time to sit in front of their computer to read the serial in dribs and drabs, but I still want them to be able to read it. I know that as e-readers become more popular, I'd like for more people to be able to read, and hopefully enjoy, The First Tale.
This is where the plan becomes a tiny bit more epic, because I'm not exactly known for making things easy on myself. I know that e-books that are available across many formats are text-only affairs, and that's fine. I want to put The First Tale out as a text-only version, so people can read it wherever they happen to be with their e-reader. Inspirational self-published author J. A. Konrath advocates Smashwords for selling e-books for iPad, Sony, Kobo (Borders), and Barnes & Noble, and up-and-coming writer Emma Newman used Smashwords for the release of her collection of short dark fiction, From Dark Places. She talks here about the minefield of pricing.
Thing is, there is a lot of supplementary material I want to include, things which I hope will expand or explain a few points about this particular incarnation of Vertigo City. With a background in graphic design combined with a passion for comic books, I'd like those things to take a more visual format, which precludes their inclusion in an e-book in the traditional sense of the word. Smashwords is therefore useless to my purpose, and as printing hard copies would end up being too expensive, I’ve now been considering Scribd.
As far as I can tell, both services have their advantages and disadvantages, and this is where things get interesting, as my Net friend Benjamin Solah is having the exact same dilemma! He has both a project to be released as a text-only e-book, and a magazine he wants to keep in graphic format. It's all very exciting, and you can check his post on the subject here. It's at this point that we're both going to throw open the floor to anyone who either has experience of services like Smashwords or Scribd, or anyone who has any advice they'd like to share regarding e-books.
Come on, get involved!
Image by AJ Leon.
Monday, 14 June 2010
Is writing really worth the trouble?
Tweet
I apologise for the recent lapse in blogging - aside from my Friday Flashes and my foray into vlogging, I simply haven't been posting as much as I would like. Allow me to rectify this forthwith by having a little discussion about publishing. This is a writer's blog, after all! Well this evening, I came across this article ( via the Dystel & Goderich blog) by Erin Brown, that aims to unpick various publishing myths.
Now, I love to read these articles by 'insiders'. The information is invaluable, but in a lot of cases, it can also serve to beat down the spirit. Is it me, or does writing sometimes seem like a truly monumental struggle? It can be difficult to simply enjoy the act of creating, since the difficult task of actually getting something written is not the end of it. If anything, that's only the beginning. Next comes repeated revisions, not to mention queries and submissions. Can you really ever stop to enjoy your writing if you've always got part of your brain going "Will this sell?" Writing has become as much of a commodity as anything else.
It is a peculiar state of affairs. In this post, thriller writer James Scott Bell advises that writers don't necessarily have to write from the heart, but they should at least "find the intersection of the market and [their] heart, then get that heart beating". Would you ever go up to an artist and tell them NOT to make the art that inspires them, but rather make something that would sell? No. You'd let them get on with the art, and let the buyer decide if they're interested. Of course, art and writing aren't ideal bedfellows in this sense, since a work of art is a one-off product, available to only one owner. Writing is aimed at a mass market, available for consumption by many. In this way, writing is a lot closer to design than it is to art - the function, its marketability, becomes more important than the form.
I am not for one moment suggesting this is actually wrong. After all, publishing is a business, and like any business, it seeks to make money. It needs money in order to function. I am not going to condemn it for doing so, any more than I would condemn many other industries for making money. The only thing that does concern me is how discouraging I think all of this is to new writers. I understand that editors, agents and publishers are looking for new work, and that agents especially have an incredibly tough, often thankless task in sifting the literary wheat from the chaff. They want to encourage writers to keep going - after all, they need writers otherwise they have nothing to sell - but they also want to introduce an element of realism to proceedings. They don't want to peddle false hope.
But the pain doesn't even end with the querying process. If you're lucky enough to get representation, and your agent manages to sell your book, you then find that even the marketing and promotion is left to you. Again, I can understand this because publishing houses simply don't have the time and resources to devote to the work of untested, new authors any more. But at the same time, how can an author new to the world of publishing, who probably also has a day job and maybe a family to juggle, possibly know enough about marketing or promotion to make a success of their book? Obviously most authors are quite savvy, realising that it's vital to build a platform before they even begin the querying process, and the wealth of blogs and advice available online are probably a great help, but the point remains. (By this point, I'm beginning to see why e-books are such an attractive prospect. But that is a subject for another post.)
Chances are, you aren't going to be the new JK Rowling. Your book won't attain dizzying Twilight-esque levels of success. It'll probably take the better part of your patience, not to mention sanity, to even get an offer of representation, if that happens at all. You'll need to be marketing savvy as well as an accomplished writer even if you do get published.
But you know what? Don't let any of that stop you from pursuing your writing dream. I know I won't.
Now, I love to read these articles by 'insiders'. The information is invaluable, but in a lot of cases, it can also serve to beat down the spirit. Is it me, or does writing sometimes seem like a truly monumental struggle? It can be difficult to simply enjoy the act of creating, since the difficult task of actually getting something written is not the end of it. If anything, that's only the beginning. Next comes repeated revisions, not to mention queries and submissions. Can you really ever stop to enjoy your writing if you've always got part of your brain going "Will this sell?" Writing has become as much of a commodity as anything else.
It is a peculiar state of affairs. In this post, thriller writer James Scott Bell advises that writers don't necessarily have to write from the heart, but they should at least "find the intersection of the market and [their] heart, then get that heart beating". Would you ever go up to an artist and tell them NOT to make the art that inspires them, but rather make something that would sell? No. You'd let them get on with the art, and let the buyer decide if they're interested. Of course, art and writing aren't ideal bedfellows in this sense, since a work of art is a one-off product, available to only one owner. Writing is aimed at a mass market, available for consumption by many. In this way, writing is a lot closer to design than it is to art - the function, its marketability, becomes more important than the form.
I am not for one moment suggesting this is actually wrong. After all, publishing is a business, and like any business, it seeks to make money. It needs money in order to function. I am not going to condemn it for doing so, any more than I would condemn many other industries for making money. The only thing that does concern me is how discouraging I think all of this is to new writers. I understand that editors, agents and publishers are looking for new work, and that agents especially have an incredibly tough, often thankless task in sifting the literary wheat from the chaff. They want to encourage writers to keep going - after all, they need writers otherwise they have nothing to sell - but they also want to introduce an element of realism to proceedings. They don't want to peddle false hope.
But the pain doesn't even end with the querying process. If you're lucky enough to get representation, and your agent manages to sell your book, you then find that even the marketing and promotion is left to you. Again, I can understand this because publishing houses simply don't have the time and resources to devote to the work of untested, new authors any more. But at the same time, how can an author new to the world of publishing, who probably also has a day job and maybe a family to juggle, possibly know enough about marketing or promotion to make a success of their book? Obviously most authors are quite savvy, realising that it's vital to build a platform before they even begin the querying process, and the wealth of blogs and advice available online are probably a great help, but the point remains. (By this point, I'm beginning to see why e-books are such an attractive prospect. But that is a subject for another post.)
Chances are, you aren't going to be the new JK Rowling. Your book won't attain dizzying Twilight-esque levels of success. It'll probably take the better part of your patience, not to mention sanity, to even get an offer of representation, if that happens at all. You'll need to be marketing savvy as well as an accomplished writer even if you do get published.
But you know what? Don't let any of that stop you from pursuing your writing dream. I know I won't.
Monday, 31 May 2010
Do e-books promote piracy?
Tweet
I've been following J A Konrath's blog, A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, for some time now, and it's been interesting to see the modest levels of success that can be attained while operating outside of the traditional publishing paradigm. Konrath repeatedly states that his way might not be suitable to all, but it is certainly quite an encouraging prospect, that even if an agent or editor might not 'click' with your book, it doesn't mean that a wider audience won't either.
The phenomenon of the e-book has dragged literature into the piracy debate. Naysayers argue that if people can download a book, they can also pirate a book. No one will buy e-books because they can rip them for free as torrents. Really? So how do you account for the fact that the publishing industry still exists after all those years of public libraries, secondhand book shops and Amazon Marketplace?
Bearing these arguments in mind, Konrath is giving away an e-Book of his short stories on his blog. You can download it for free from his blog, you can download it for $1.99 for the Kindle or the Nook, or you can download it for free and send him a donation of $1.99. He's going to track the downloads, donations and rankings, and hopefully come up with some kind of evidence to back his argument that piracy doesn't harm sales as much as many believe it will.
The phenomenon of the e-book has dragged literature into the piracy debate. Naysayers argue that if people can download a book, they can also pirate a book. No one will buy e-books because they can rip them for free as torrents. Really? So how do you account for the fact that the publishing industry still exists after all those years of public libraries, secondhand book shops and Amazon Marketplace?
Bearing these arguments in mind, Konrath is giving away an e-Book of his short stories on his blog. You can download it for free from his blog, you can download it for $1.99 for the Kindle or the Nook, or you can download it for free and send him a donation of $1.99. He's going to track the downloads, donations and rankings, and hopefully come up with some kind of evidence to back his argument that piracy doesn't harm sales as much as many believe it will.
Posts
