How to Try in Publishing Without Really Succeeding

I've never been a big one for giving out advice. What the hell do I know? I mean, yeah -- I can recite the Green Lantern oath and list every Tom Baker episode of Doctor Who in chronological order. But what do I know that anyone else actually wants to know?

Well, now I can tell you, because I've finally mastered something. I have become a publisher. An e-publisher, to be specific. And that's the kind to be these days, my friends. I am not now nor have I ever been a business-minded person, yet I've managed to put out electronic editions of two short story collections entirely on my own. And what's more, I expect to sell literally dozens of downloads over the course of the rest of my life.

Interested in replicating that kind of success in the brutal dog-eat-baby (yes, it's that brutal) world of e-pubbing? You know you are! So read on and get ready to watch those nickels and dimes add up...into quarters!

Step 1 on the Road to WINNING: Write a great book. This can take anywhere from one month to 30 years. A very rare minority of authors -- your Pamela Andersons, your William Shatners, your Snookis -- can even pen an entire novel in literally no time at all. It's as if the books simply write themselves! Before wasting any time on yours, give it a cool name then don't touch it. Oh, maybe do some outlining or create character bios or something. But for god's sake don't actually write anything. If at the end of two years your title and character sketches haven't magically grown into a 500-page manuscript, you'll have to face the sad truth: You are not a celebrity and will therefore have to write the book your own damn self one ever-lovin' letter at a time. I suggest starting with "T."

Step 2: Show the first draft to your most trusted confidantes, then completely disregard their advice.This is good practice for the day when your book is published and you will have to rise above the petty jealousy of your so-called "friends." Start ignoring them now. It's not like they'd have anything helpful to tell you anyway. They just read your book. You wrote it. How could they know something about it you don't? That's crazy talk. This applies to editors and proofreaders, too. "Why is your heroine named 'Susan' in the first half of the book and 'Suzanne' in the second half?" "Didn't the cop who rescues Susan/Suzanne in chapter 30 blow up in the fireworks factory in chapter 12?" "Do you know what 'spell check' is?" Blah blaw blaa. Here's a question for the wisenheimers with their fancy dictionaries and style guides and "logic": "If you're so smart, why don't you write a book? Oh? Because you're not a writer, you say? Then why are you trying to tell me how to write mine? SNAP!!!"

Step 3: Create a cover for your book. That's right. I went straight to the cover. No "Find an agent." No "Sell your book to a reputable publisher." We can skip all that now. The e-pub revolution is upon us, baby, and agents and publishers are bound for the dustbin of history. Along with graphic designers, if they don't watch out. Designer Rick Forgus created the cover for Dear Mr. Holmes: Seven Holmes on the Range Mysteries, while designer/old buddy/hipster home owner Brian Trost did the honors for Naughty: Nine Tales of Christmas Crime. And they both did terrific work that I love love love. But you know what? I had to pay them to do it. Real money! Why would I do that? I've got my own computer. (What do you think I'm doing this blog post on -- a chalkboard?) After a 30-second Google image search and five minutes in Photoshop, voila: I've got the 100% free cover that I could have used for Dear Mr. Holmes if I weren't such a rube. Check it out. That's it to the left. Maybe it's not as slick as Rick and Brian's designs, but since when did "slick" count for anything in marketing and sales?

Don't make the same mistake I did, friends. It's a DIY world now.

Step 4: Hire somebody to format your book for the Kindle, the Nook, Kobo, Gloobarfi, Phlimphlam, the Zazzmat and whatever other crazy-sounding "platforms" are out there. You know what I said a minute ago about this being a DIY world? Well, that's still mostly true. But some I's you can't D Y. Or at least I can't D them. So I paid the knowledgeable, efficient and very, very patient Steven W. Booth of GOS Multimedia to handle all the techno-crap for me. Steven's rates are extremely reasonable, but I'm still wondering if next time I should save myself a little dough. The high school kid across the street seems pretty computer savvy. Or at least he knew that they're called "Macs" not "Micks" when we were talking at the neighborhood barbecue last summer. I wonder what his rates are...?

Step 5: Slap that puppy up on Amazon and hype the crap out of it! E-book marketing can take several forms. There's the social networking approach, which relies on popular websites such as Facebook, Twitter and michigancelery.com to connect writers with readers. There's the pray-Joe Konrath-plugs-you approach, which involves sacrificing small animals and even loved ones to the Dark Lord of E-Pubbing in the hope that he will, with a wave of his black-gloved hand, take your book from an Amazon rank of #1,056,721 into the top 10. There's the popular "Marketing? What's marketing?" approach, as well as the increasingly common "Aww, screw it -- I give up" method.

And then there are the schmucks who just blog about it.

UPDATE: Good buddy and time-tested publishing industry vet J. Steven York has taken the bait and posted his response to this blog post here. Stay tuned for my response to his response. And, of course, his response to my response to his response. And then perhaps...you get the idea....

Comments

[J Steven York]

Unfortunately, when I tried to post a comment, I got the every helpful and informative error message: "We're sorry. We cannot accept this data." So I put the comment on my blog instead:

http://www.yorkwriters.com/2011/04/response-to-how-to-try-in-publishing.html

[Steve]

Well, I can accept your data even if my website can't. You wrote a great response that's packed (much more so than what I slapped up) with clear thinking and good advice. Check it out, folks. Then come back here in a spell for round #2.

[epicblackcar]

I dig your blog, Steve the Hockensmith, and will be back to pick epic literary fist fights in the comment section. PREPARE YOURSELF.

[Steve]

Ditto on the blog digging, EBC. I checked yours out, and you have a real knack for cutting through pop culture BS. I tremble at the prospect of brawling with you, yet I recognize that it would make for good television. (By which I mean there would be blood, and people would stop to watch.)

So bottom line: BRING IT ON!!!

[Jeff Q]

When will we be able to get our hands on that special limited edition cover for your Holmes on the Range stories?

[Steve]

You can have it now, Jeff! Just order Dear Mr. Holmes in paperback via Amazon, print out the Special Limited Edition Collector's Item Author Original Cover above, tear the other cover off when the book arrives and replace it with the SLECIAOC using Scotch tape. Voila! Of course, you might want to order multiple copies in case it takes a few tries to get it looking just right....

[nightlife tel aviv]

How do I publish a book?

[Jeff Q]

That picture is just how I envisioned those two brothers...

On a related note, just read "Gustav Amlingmeyer, Holmes of the Range"and was impressed by what a nice piece of mystery writing that was. Interesting characters and all of the clues laid out right in front of you just begging to be put together. I'm sure someone smarter than me could figure it out, but you had me fooled until the end.

I hope you realize that two Holmes books in a couple months leaves us very spoiled. I hope we'll see another in the not too distant future. The idea of "An American Cowboy in London" seems too perfect to pass up...

[Steve]

Nightlife! Dude! Everything you need to know is in my blog post! Why aren't you a Kindleillionaire already?

Thanks for the kind words about "Gustav Amlingmeyer, Holmes of the Range," Jeff! For those of you not in the know, it's one of the stories in my new collection, Dear Mr. Holmes: Seven Holmes on the Range Mysteries. It shows a direction the Holmes on the Range series almost went: For a little while, I was thinking of having the guys stay put in one town, with all the mysteries happening there. So "GA, HotR" introduces several supporting characters for an ongoing series. I quickly decided that all that would be too Murder, She Wrote, though, so I had the boys move on in the very next story.

As for the *next* Holmes on the Range book, I'm afraid you're going to have to wait a lot longer than a couple months. For the time being, I'm focusing on other projects, but I'm sure the boys will be back one day. I've already got an idea for a story that would take them to "the Continent," and of course they'd have to drop by London before they came home again. But that's probably fodder for books #11 and #12. If folks want book #7, well, all I can say is get more people to buy Dear Mr. Holmes!

[laurah]

Mr. Hockensmith: are you going to release an audio version of the HOtR short-story collection? I love the other audiobooks (and even pay for them!).

[Steve]

Hey, Laura! Thanks for checking in. Sorry, though -- there are currently no plans to do an audiobook version of the Dear Mr. Holmes collection. But if you follow the link below, you'll be able to hear me perform one of the stories with an assist from my old friend Mike Wiltrout:

http://eqmm.podomatic.com/entry/2009-12-31T06_18_33-08_00

And thanks for actually paying for the audiobooks! Alas, not everyone out there on the Wild Wild Web is so conscientious....

-Steve

[Lee Nelson]

I've managed a mystery book club for about eight years now...and I hate to say this but Steve's publishing advice veers very close to the truth.

I recently received an e-book from a new author who really needed someone to say that aliens fighting Hitler on reality TV was a really bad idea for a so-called mystery novel. Really, really bad idea.

Really bad idea.

Really.

[Steve]

Oh, you must have been reading The Mysterious Case of the Aliens Fighting Hitler on Reality TV. That one was a bit of a stretch. You might want to try one of the author's other books. The Guy Who Went Back in Time and Became His Own Grandfather Mystery isn't half bad....

[Bill Dunning]

Steve Hockensmith....................

Call me a Luddite, but I don't think the E-book is ready for prime time (=posterity) just yet. It's still a gimmick, like the wire recorder was once (or the 78-rpm record, 8-track tape or beta video, for that matter).

Okay, here's the thing.

I very much want to buy and read "Naughty" because I am, in a seasonal alter ego, Santa Claus (real beard, etc. at a local mall) and I collect the literature on old Nick -- yeah, several shelves in a house full of books.

I don't do Kindle, or Nook or any of those. I don't do them because they are all -- all! -- stabs in the technological dark, like the 16-2/3-rpm audiobook and the 45-rpm record. Ten years from now, they'll be forgotten, and a Kindle book I buy will be a museum piece.

Well, sir, as Old Red might say if he could read, I collect books to read, not exhibits for a literary technology museum. Some day, when the DRM disappears and electronic books, like compact discs, become generic, I'll have a reader for them, and I'll happily buy those old classics from the beginning of the 21st century like "Naughty." I'll enjoy them over and over and pass them on to my great-grandchildren to do the same.

(DRM, for readers who may have stumbled on this correspondence, is Digital Rights Management, an electronic "lock" in e-books and similar things that prevents copying (or pirating) and also prevents reading a Kindle e-book on a Nook and vice-versa. It's like having headphone plugs that only fit your company's radios, instead of a standard plug that fits any phone jack in the industry, and I say it's hen-house fertilizer. Just today (March 28, 2012), the AP has a story by Peter Swensson about Pottermore, Jill Rowling's e-publisher, issuing the Harry Potter books electronically, *without* DRM, so anybody can read them on any reader. This is being hailed as a step forward. A small step for Harry fans, a giant maturation for e-publishing.)

The rub is, of courses, that once you casat your lot with Kindle, you can only buy Amazon's e-books, and once once you cast your lot with Nook, only B&N. You have to invest in both, or more, to be able to access all the books you want. Imagine needing a separate TV set to receive each station: one for ABC, another for CBS, and so forth. But that's what the magnates of e-publishing insist we have to do.

Books printed on paper, by contrast, are generic. They may be different sizes, some hardback and some paperback, but I can put them all side-by side on the shelf. More importantly, I can pick any of them up and read the thing ... assuming I read the language and haven't misplaced my reading specs. Details like typefonts, color or black-and-white illustrations, or none at all, don't negate the reading process.

Is simplicity too much to ask? I don't think so, and I suggest that it's the ultimate way to get books usefully into the hands of readers. Yes, technology does move forward, and we no longer read everything on scrolls of parchment (though we still could if we had to). I have replaced a few paperbacks that have fallen apart, and I have even replaced some 78s, 45s and LPs with CD updates, and given away VHS tapes after replacing them with DVDs. But, yes, I still have players for all those audio media, and use them when I must because there are no new-tech versions.

But Nook? Kindle? or Whizzbang? Trial runs at technology, like the 12-inch videodisc or the clay tablet. Now, where can I get a generic copy of "Naughty" and one of "Dear Mr. Holmes" to put on my shelf next to all the Amlingmeyer saga, some 350 Holmes pastiches and parodies, and about 100 variations, editions and take-offs on "A Visit from St. Nicholas"?

Wishing you well...................

Bill Dunning
(reader and writer you never heard of, but here I am anyway)

[Steve]

Hey, Bill! Thanks for dropping by! Wow -- you make a lot of very, very good points, man. I'm with you on early adoption of new technology: It's usually not worth the risk. That's why I stopped buying movies and TV shows on DVD and haven't bothered with Blu-ray at all. Everything's going to be available via instant streaming sooner or later. Buying high-end DVDs now would be like stocking up on 8-tracks in 1979.

I do think ebooks are here to stay, though. But you're absolutely right about all the competing formats and readers. It's a mess, and I don't blame you for steering clear of it. Which is why I think you'll like hearing this: A print version of Naughty is on its way, as is a new short story collection that'll be available both as an ebook and a print-on-demand book-book. (Of course, there's already a POD version of Dear Mr. Holmes.) I'll be releasing details in a few weeks. (A heads up: I'll announce everything via my e-newsletter first, and folks signed up for it will get the chance to score freebies for pre-ordering or posting reviews. Hint hint.)

In the future, I'm going to make sure everything I put out myself has a print version. I can't guarantee the POD stuff will be available at the same time as the ebook, though. In the months ahead, I'm going to be experimenting with e-novellas, KDP Select (a temporary Amazon exclusive, basically), etc., and it's not clear to me yet what's going to work best. All I can say for sure is it's going to be interesting...and a little confusing.

Please bear with me while I figure out this crazy publishing thing, everybody!