Sell-Sell-Sell!

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Riddles and Validations

M.E. Hydra

Riddle me this:

What’s the difference between a self-pubbed author who sells X copies and a trad-pubbed author who sells X copies?

(I haven’t, by the way, but if you’d like to help me achieve this goal and have a liking for weird, kinky horror, please feel free to mosey on over here…)

It’s easy to be insecure as a writer. There aren’t finishing lines to cross first, opponents to punch out or teams to score more points than. As with most creative endeavours, where quality is subjective, it’s hard to tell if you’re any good or not.

Acceptance with a publishing house gives validation, or so the argument goes (although Joe Konrath refers to it as an example of Stockholm Syndrome). It’s a stamp of approval. Get that deal—and the advance—and a writer can say with authority, “Yes, I am a real author!”

The problem with self-publishing is the ‘published’ part is always going to come with air quotes. If any old oik can shove their badly written mush up onto Amazon, then ‘being published’ no longer feels like an achievement. For that reason self-publishing is often pushed aside and treated as a special case. If the author had to do it themselves, they probably weren’t good enough to be published in the first place. I think many of us have held this view at some point and some almost certainly still do. Check the membership guidelines of professional writers' organisations like the HWA and SFWA and you’ll see very clear stipulations on what does or doesn’t count as a valid publication for obtaining active membership.

Now that the ebook explosion has burst the dam, how important is the traditional stamp of approval?

As validation goes, that stamp is only a proxy when you think about it. To use a simple fantasy analogy, it’s an entrance exam granting permission to go and slay the dragon. Congratulations! You passed. But you still have to go and kill that dragon…

If someone else decides to skip all those stupid trials, goes straight to the dragon and hacks its head right off, are they any less of a dragonslayer?

In this case the dragon—and true validation—is finding an audience, whether it is small and distinguished or massive and lucrative.

What happens when more and more writers choose to go it alone, not because they aren’t good enough, but because it makes more economic sense than signing away a huge chunk of their royalties? Clauses like this (from HWA’s active membership requirements)

With the sole exception of comic books, self-published work can not be used for qualification purposes. "Self-published work" is defined as written material disseminated by the author (for example, email or electronic publications, publication on the author's Web site, or printed publications sold on consignment or solely by the author), or written material whose basic publication costs are defrayed in whole or in part by the author.

will cease to make any sense. As will references to 5¢/word rates and minimum advances.

Riddle me this:

Person A gets a $5,000 advance from an accredited publisher, but only goes on to sell a couple of hundred copies. Person B makes $10,000 a month selling 99¢ self-published ebooks on Amazon. Which one is the professional author?

(I’m not trying to bash the HWA, by the way. I was a fresh-faced wannabe member a while back and I found them helpful in terms of market information and discovering new writers I hadn’t read before.)

Which leads us back to the original question:

What’s the difference between a self-pubbed author who sells X copies and a trad-pubbed author who sells X copies?

My gut says the answer is this:

Self-Pubbed Cinderella

Hi everyone, I'm erotic author Mia Natasha, and today is my first post here on The Self Publishing Revolution.  Apparently the erotica I write is very explicit, more so than the average.  Which means that I have few options for publishing the work unless I do it on my own.  I was lucky to find a fit with Selena Kitt and Excessica.  Cinderella Club is actually doing well on Amazon.com right now because it is in the top 20 bestsellers in the category of rape.  I know, I'm not sure if I should be embarrassed about that or not.  I don't consider non-consent rape, because in my world the men are handsome and sexy and the women are unwilling at first but only because they  feel too guilty to be willing.  It's just a fantasy as all fiction is. 

There are plenty of women who share the reluctance fantasy.  I had read an article in Glamour magazine that said about 65% of the readers polled enjoyed daydreams involving capture-bondage.  It's a way for we independant new millenium women to relinquish responsibilty in our heads.  Not in real life.  The problem is that the book lists under the BDSM spectrum and  there are people who actually live that lifestyle who upon reviewing my book for content are all yuck, yuck.

Not everyone, thank god.  It was a book that took two years to write - from one scene in a dream to 140,000 words of epic novel.  Epic in the sense that I'm not a writer.  Not even an English major.  First generation American from an old country foreign family who has an art degree and paints for a living, thank you very much.

I'm living a dream, quite frankly, and self publishing is a big part of that.  These reluctance stories have always circled my head.  Shamefully, I was only thirteen when I wrote short stories in my room about girls who got kidnapped and boys who rescued them.  There was no sex, mind you, but the content was always there.  Is that weird?  I always knew I would be a writer one day, even though I never pursued it until now and I had never been encouraged so that obviously made it harder.

My book is doing well.  And so I've caught the bug.  I have three other novels finished, two will be published  later this year, one of which I have one chapter to go on.  I should get back to it now so that I can make the deadline.  Since Excessica is currently closed for submissions, the other one, Cinderella Thyme, Cinderella Club's sequel waits in limbo.

I'm not worried.  I believe that everything happens when the timing is right and it will all work out.  If you are the type of person who gets into ruts and doesn't think things will work out, I want you to think of me.  Because this dream of mine shouldn't have happened.  I wasn't even thinking about writing until I had that daydream of a woman (who looks like me, natch) sitting in a limousine.  It came out of nowhere like a magical summons to get back onto the right path.

Now writing is here in addition to everything else I do, not instead of.  Knowing that people all over the world are reading my book is such an unbelievable high, it really makes it all worth it.  Getting a check every three months for a dream come true is not bad either.  It certainly gets me motivated to write more.  That and I have a sick work ethic.

Pleased to meet you.  I plan to make this a regular gig so I'll pop off my glass slipper now and come back for it later - because that's what independant multitaskers do.

Here is the link to my blog - http://mianatasha-erotica.blogspot.com/?zx=418a7ac0ef1a045b

Selp Publishing For A Cause

I'm going to blatantly blow my horn (heh) for this lovely book put out by a fabulous and talented self-pubber, Alessia Brio.

I didn't self-publish this one, but it was released through her kick-ass Coming Together series.

So, this would be one of those self publishers working together for the greater good dealios. Working together is rarely a bad thing and in this case it was a great thing. An I wash her back, she washes mine kind of thing. Or vice versa. Either way, close the door on your way out while we finish washing um...each other...or see the below shameless self promotion.

Coming Together: With Sommer

Went live today :) Book benefits LLS. The foreword was written by the amazing William Patrick Tandy, editor extraordinaire (of Smile, Hon fame) and the whole book was made possible by the unstoppable Alessia Brio.

If you go to the book's ARe page, you can read the author's note and see just what this book means to me. Now that's steamy sexy paranormal for a good cause! :)

XOXO
Sommer

A Short, Sharp Dose of Reality

Last week I got my first real quarterly royalties cheque. At the princely sum of $84 I think the appropriate comment is “ouch!”

Oh well, we can’t all be Joe Konrath or Amanda Hocking.

If I take the perspective of wanting to be a full-time writer, it's fairly terrible. There's no way I'd ever be able to live off that.

Thankfully, I don't have to take to take that perspective. I'm fortunate enough to already have a full-time job, one I enjoy and is relatively well paid. I can take the other perspective. I'm doing something I like (writing stories) and receiving money for it.

$84 is still $84. That's the second half of the kindle I already bought with money from a Literotica contest plus some books to load it up with. It's more than I ever picked up trying to slog through the old fashioned route of submitting to horror/sci fi magazines and certainly $84 more than the manuscript would have got languishing forgotten on a slush pile somewhere.

It's not all. My first book is still out there, still picking up the same trickle of sales. That means in another three months I'm going to get another $84 or so. Actually, there's two months of the second book's sales on top of that, so it's probably going to be more than eighty bucks. And then later in the year I have a third book coming out. It's easy to see how it can start to mount up. I can't live off it, but on top of my regular salary it's a nice extra to put towards a vacation, or a new TV.

One of the points I've seen raised is the current explosion of self publishing and 'race to the bottom' in terms of pricing will kill writing as a viable profession for all but the already wealthy. I don't really see this. A lot of authors had to start off juggling other jobs with their writing until they made enough to leave the day job behind. An advance can help with this sure, but it can backfire horribly if the first book tanks and they aren't picked up for a second. This is even assuming they make it through the gatekeepers. The vast majority don't and won't ever see a single dime for the manuscript they spent a year or two lovingly putting together.

With self publishing a writer can start to see a return as soon as the book is finished and use this to tailor their life accordingly. I go into work every morning and I write on my spare time. I won't need to think about changing this unless my income from book sales starts to outweigh my regular salary, or my spare time suddenly becomes a lot less spare. And of course, even being comparatively unsuccessful in the meantime still generates a bit of extra cash for a few luxuries.

I enjoy writing and it makes me a bit of extra money. Can't really complain about that.

And I even got my post in on the 17th this time.

M.E. Hydra

#6 Do You Play Well with Others?

Is something you might want to decide when you are self-publishing. I’ve had a few people mention poor sales for anthologies, and I have so say—I don’t see it. The anthologies I’ve put out for December Ink don’t seem to sell any worse (or better for that matter) than anything else. But I digress! The point is, do you want to do an anthology or a “bundle” or a collaboration Do you want to work with other writers? Can you get along?

For the longest time I said no, no, no! I often say no to things that make me nervous. For about two years I said no to writing paranormal, now it is damn near my bread and butter—so go figure. The point is, don’t listen to your fear when it talks. Listen to what you want to try out and be brave enough to do it.

On a whim one day I put out a short call—it started on twitter. What resulted was not one—because I had too many for one—but two short anthologies (Dirtyville: 13 Tales of Small-Town Dirty and Kinkyville: 13 More Tales of Small-Town Dirty). Dirtyville has hung out a great deal on the Kindle Gay/Lesbian Erotica Anthology list. It was just there this week. Almost a year later both are still selling and I still get to pay out writers (though small bits because it’s a 26 way split!). I also still get to see us pop up on random lists here and there. We were even a top seller on All Romance ebooks in the beginning.

Doesn’t that sound exciting?

Now here’s just a few of the things you need to consider when working with others. I learned these along the way and am still putting out fires from time to time.

1. Editor? Yep, that would be you. Unless you go ahead and ‘hire’ someone else. I did the two anthos but once I had done my three million reading run throughs, I sent the pdf’s to the authors and asked them to read their own work. Once in a while you get some really good eagle eyes reading who will send you general errors they spotted in the whole book. And then once you fix all the reported issues—yep, you get to read it again.
2. Paperwork: get their permission in writing to use the author’s work. Even if it is one paragraph that basically says: ______is legally mine to sell, I am the sole author of this work, I agree to let ____________ use it for_____________ amount of time at the pay rate of_________________. And then their signature and date.
3. Pay out with a flat rate out of pocket or pay out a percentage of the work? That is the question. With no one bankrolling you but you, flat rate payouts may be iffy. I go with option number two because it saves me from having to put out money up front and in this instance, I saw the ‘ville books as “our” books. A group effort. So to me, contributors were getting just as much or just as little as me, it seemed only fair.
4. Paperwork is quarterly or however you spell it out in your agreement. I do quarterly because most of the vendors I use (ARe, Smashwords, Bookstrand, 1 Place for Romance…) pay out quarterly. So my antho writers don’t get paid until I do.
5. All the other stuff. Questions, emails, spreadsheets, paypal addresses, juggling. It can be a lot and often I still feel overwhelmed when I sit down to do it. Which is why you see that DI isn’t swimming in multi-author works. However, it is also awesome to share the success of those little books with a group of people and I adore having put something together that included lots of orchestration, time and love.

So what about you? Do you play well with others?

As a final note I’d like to add, take a look at the anthologies in your own possession as models. And follow the direction! Meaning when you put these works up on sites. Smashwords is a prime example of spelling out the copyright page and all that jazz. They put the rules there for a reason, use them. Most of all, have fun!

XOXO
Sommer

Double the fun, double the money

And the 17th sails by yet again.

In my defence, my second book, “A Succubus for Valentine’s Day and other tales of Perilous Pleasures”, came out on the eleventh of February and most of my attentions have been spent on hyping that. Or rather, quietly whispering it’s out there if any kind soul would be so good as to purchase a copy.

Here’s a simple tip. If you want to boost sales of your first book, write a second. January was largely dead for my first book, which was a little unfortunate as this is the time of year most people load up the shiny new kindles they received as Christmas presents. Then my second book came out and the first suddenly started to pick up sales again.

Actually, the first book started to pick up sales even before the second came out. I think this might have been because I spent the two weeks leading up to the second book’s release putting excerpts from the new stories up on my blog. In building up interest for the second book, I also built up interest in the first book for anyone that missed it first time around. This was very encouraging. I’ll do the same for my third book when that comes out later this year.

Also encouraging was to see both books come up in each other’s ‘Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought’ lists. That means someone liked them enough to go back for the second. Always a good start for anyone hoping to have a lengthy writing career.

Damn, I still have to work harder at the whole making them run away screaming thing.

I’m still in the bits’n’pieces section of Amazon’s rankings. That’s fine. I wasn’t intending on quitting the day job for some time anyway. I’m thinking long term. Maybe it will pan out, maybe it won’t. Doesn’t really matter so long as I still enjoy writing the stories.

M.E. Hydra