A revolution is brewing that will topple Big Publishing as we know it.
At the heart of every revolution is a loss of faith in the prevailing regime.
In Egypt's case, a number of catalysts precipitated the revolution; chief among them an oppressive political environment that offered little opportunity for democratic participation, freedom of speech and economic opportunity.
The catalysts for the Egyptian revolution are remarkably similar to what's driving the author uprising against Big Publishing. By "Big Publishing," I'm referring to the old system in which the publisher serves as the author's judge, jury, gatekeeper and executioner.
For authors, if Big Publishing approves of your book, they acquire it.
Post-acquisition, you can die happy knowing you're a published author with all the esteem, respect and future possibilities embodied in this blessing. At least, that's the myth you've been trained to believe.
Frederick Nietzsche wrote, "God is dead." I recall how my philosophy professor at U.C. Berkeley 25 years ago explained the quote beyond its immediate religious connotation. It was a metaphor for the power of faith. When we believe in something, our faith powers that in which we believe.
Faith is the single most important force-of-nature driving all human experience. If we lose faith in an institution, a regime or a belief system, the very survival of that institution is imperiled.
Authors are losing faith in the institution and religion of Big Publishing.
Has the Allure of Big Publishing become a Mirage?
It's tough to find a traditionally published author today who waxes eloquent about their post-publication experience. It's like the published author goes to heaven and reports back via John Edward (the guy who talks to dead people) that they discovered famine on the other side of the pearly gates.
More and more talented writers - including authors previously published by the Big 6 - are losing faith in the old system of publishing.
Big Publishing, although it employs thousands of talented and well-intentioned professionals, is built upon a broken business model.
Ask Not What Your Publisher Can Do for You
Two questions and their answers are driving the author uprising against Big Publishing:
Ten years ago, the answers to these simple questions validated the need for Big Publishing. Why? In the old print world, Big Publishing controlled access to readers. They controlled the printing press and the access to retail distribution.
Yet these same questions asked today yield mixed results.
Self-published authors, a.k.a "indie authors," now have the power to produce, publish, price and promote books that are as good or better than those put out by Big Publishing. Indie ebook authors earn royalties of 60-70% of the list price. Traditionally published authors earn 5-17%.
Indie author sensation Amanda Hocking, in her recent interview with USA Today, was quoted as saying, "I can't really say that I would have been more successful if I'd gone with a traditional publisher."
No doubt, much of Hocking's success is because she's an indie author. She writes great books her readers love. She prices her series-starters at only $.99 and the rest at $2.99. Great books plus low prices plus enthusiastic fans plus an author directly engaged with her fans equals viral readership. Few big publishers are prepared to play by these new rules while paying authors 60-70% of list price.
Every week we hear of self-published authors - previously rejected by Big Publishing - finding success with self-published ebooks. Brian Pratt, profiled here at HuffPost in December, is one such author. Ruth Ann Nordin is another. Nordin's An Inconvenient Marriage is the #3 best-selling romance title today in the Apple iBookstore's romance category, and #57 among all paid titles at Apple. At Kobo, she's #9 today.
Two or three years from now when ebooks account for more than 50% of the book market, the same two dangerous questions above will yield a more unequivocal answer in favor of self-publishing.
The major ebook retailers - Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and Amazon - have embraced indie ebook authors and grant their works equal shelf presence alongside Big Publishing authors. Readers, not publishers, have become the curators.
Do authors still need publishers in this new world order? I think it all goes back to my first question. To survive and thrive, publishers big and small must do for authors what authors cannot or will not do for themselves.
The next chapter of this revolution may very well be written by progressive literary agents. Literary agents, responsible for protecting the best interests of their author clients, are encouraging the very best authors to consider the potential of self-publishing. 60-70% royalty, or 5-17%? The math is not difficult when ebooks rule the roost.
Welcome to the revolution.
Mark Coker has created a Slideshare presentation to accompany this post. Click here to access The Uprising in Book Publishing.
Follow Mark Coker on Twitter: www.twitter.com/markcoker
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When writers work with a book publisher, they get stuck with the in-house team which may include an enthusiastic acquiring editor with little editing ability (it's not as if they teach that skill on the corporate dime), a publicist who doesn't really get the book and whose press releases can be summed up as "It's a book! Aren't you excited?", or a jacket designer whose design is awful (publishers rarely give jacket and title approval to the author). It's much too easy for a publisher to murder a book through the incompetence of someone on the team. It's a painful truth publishers need to admit to if they're going to remain in business.
I'd like to see publishing hubs, where you may find a marvelous professional who can refer you to other top professionals, a few in each category, so that YOU, the author, can choose which you feel the most confidence in.
http://www.nancypeske.com
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/leningrad
Awesome! That is good news. My agent needs to hear about you and your friends as he is pretty pessimistic these days. He's pitching my novel to UK publishers so I still have another shot. He said UK publishers are more comfortable with a thriller that has a bit of violence in it.
Would you be willing to say the title of your book?
When people hear that a book was self-published they automatically assume it was rejected by publishers and therefore a bad book and will most likely not buy it. If a book is self-published it is better not to mention that it's self-published.
I think the bigger issue for publishers considering self-published nonfiction is, "Did the niche audience already purchase this as a self-published book, making it impossible for us to get the kind of sales we need to justify our investment?"
http://www.nancypeske.com
Traditional publishers have extremely high standards for platform except when they don't...when they overreact to an essay in the New York Times magazine that they and their three closest friends were talking about this past weekend, and then they decide this book simply has to be published. Alternately, there may be a hole on the list for a particular type of book, one comes in from an agent, and it will fill that spot. It's a lot less logical than you might guess. If you're lucky, you hit the right editor at the right time.
Their demands for platform aren't entirely ridiculous. They really don't know how to sell books to readers and their publicists are often unable to get you on TV or in print "off the book page" of a newspaper or magazine. They need all the help from you that you can give them. But if you have a great platform, and can make gobs of money each self-published eBook, and they won't consider letting you keep electronic rights...do you need them?
http://www.nancypeske.com
"Lean Publishing" (bookshaker) for "Debt Hope: Down and Dirty Survival Strategies" in order to have first rate cover work, well-laid-out typesetting etc. Happy I did.
Bernard Starr
http://www.nancypeske.com
Alex Olchowski
www.slowbookmovement.com
http://emergencyincome.net
http://www.nancypeske.com
Reporters who cover fiction, if there are any left!, would be quite different from lifestyle or health reporters.
Have you tried commenting on health blogs? Writing free articles for free articles sites? There are many ways to get the word out but you do have to have credibility, even if it's just the credibility of one person's experience combined with research. The idea has to be fresh, too.
http://www.nancypeske.com
I still worry about literary and experimental fiction though - novels whose primary purpose is to make readers think (which often means making readers uncomfortable), or experiment with writing, and not purely to entertain. They're probably going to be a harder sale. I also still believe in the goodness of small literary presses. But I still know authors who've had negative experiences with them. Maybe authors will self-publish such books as well and the role of professional critics, bloggers and awards committees will increase with regard to those books. Maybe with the public's renewed interest in reading and ebook buying, some of those laid off critics will be re-hired. They'll just be reviewing self-published books as well. Maybe the small presses will transition into curated online bookstores. I don't know but thinking about the future is fascinating!
My own business strategies are inappropriate to Mr.Coker's purposes here, but I know indy writers who use their books to generate the credibility needed to get lucrative speaking engagements. One sells 5000 books a year in person and less than a dozen through channels like Amazon et al. Others write nonfiction books to support their less-profitable fiction-writing compulsions.
You're correct that fiction books are a tough sell, but that doesn't mean self-publishing is a bad business. It's really a matter of thinking beyond the bookstore to find a way to do what fiction writers love doing the most.
Thanks for bringing this up, Tonya. The same technologies allowing writers to self-publish also allow independent publishers of experimental literature like me to create a "play space" for adventurous writers that heretofore did not exist -- plus, bring visual artists and musicians into the mix to broaden the audience and conversations between all creators. The market for experimental literature was limited by big publishers fixated on big revenues and small publishers not particularly savvy at marketing. As I stated in a recent Forbes interview, social networking, blogs and the enormous crop of creative writing majors makes today's new writing tomorrow's required reading.
Thanks Mark for another encouraging article
http://www.sprigmediagroup.com
Fiction is all about brilliant writing, getting to the right editor, and marketability based on previous successful similar books AT THAT HOUSE (you could be the next Terry McMillan, but if you send your book to a house that's never done commercial fiction well, you're probably wasting your time).
http://www.nancypeske.com