Much as I like Hugh Howey, I disagree with just about all of this recent post of his
From veteran publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin, a response to a post by Hugh Howey discussed here:
I need to say couple of things at the outset here. The first is that I really like and admire Hugh Howey and the fact that I disagree with almost every paragraph of this post of his shouldn’t suggest that I don’t. That’s not snark or irony; it is sincere. I think it is both noble and natural for people to defend the entities and circumstances that make possible their commercial success and it is just human nature that those who have benefited from a paradigm reflexively want to defend it. I only wish that Hugh would exhibit the same respect for that tendency when it is exhibited by authors who have done well with publishers.
. . . .
The other is that I don’t see the “Amazon versus the publishing establishment” battle as a moral choice, just a tug of war between competing business interests.
. . . .I continue to believe that self-publishing is a useful tool that most authors should employ at one time or another but that, still almost all of the time, an author who is offered a publishing deal from a major house willing to pay an aggressive advance is better off to take it than go it alone. (If you’re not offered a substantial advance, the calculus shifts, but there is a lot of work involved in self-publishing that is not described in much detail in this post, even though Hugh Howey knows much better than I do how much work it is!) And I think that generalized advice to authors to eschew publishers in a world where print still matters and stores still matter remains, as of today, unwise. That may well change in the future, but it hasn’t changed yet.
. . . .Publishers are trying to keep a print book physical distribution infrastructure alive. That’s not irrational. It is rational. And it is the crux of the difference in objectives between a publisher’s strategy and Amazon’s strategy. The more bookstores fade, the better it is for Amazon and the worse it is for publishers. This is a problem you could have read about on this blog a long time ago.
. . . .I agree that ebook royalties should be higher. But, in fact, only authors who sell their books to publishers without competitive bids (which indicates either “no agent” or “limited appeal generated by the proposal”) are living on that 25% royalty. The others negotiated an advance that effectively paid them far more than that. And guaranteed it before the book hit the marketplace. Publishers are making a massive PR error not raising the “standard” royalty since they effectively pay much more than that now, but the authors signing contracts with them know the truth.
Link to the rest at Mike Shatzkin
PG has the impression that Mike and Hugh are looking at two different worlds.
PG’s experience, through people who email him and leave comments on The Passive Voice, as well as via his clients, is a lot closer to Hugh’s world than Mike’s.
If Mike’s world is the one that the management of Big Publishing sees (and PG suspects it is), then, with respect, they really don’t understand the talent drain that’s siphoning off their future income.
Look at Author Earnings which, despite all the rocks that legacy publishing throws at it, is the best picture available (outside of the inner sanctums of Amazon) of ebook sales on the only ebook market that really counts.
PG suspects that Big Publishing is heavily focused on its own Amazon numbers and the reports that the AAP, Bowker, etc., produce. Those numbers miss the indie ebook sales that AE is able to highlight.
Indie authors are making serious inroads into the ebook fiction bestseller lists. Not only does every indie bestseller bump a tradpub bestseller down lower on the list, every indie bestseller is an author that tradpub missed and (50 Shades notwithstanding) is not likely to get. Ever.
The fantasy that a publisher can always snag a bestselling indie author with a big advance is simply not true any more and becoming more untrue with every passing month.
EL James and Amanda Hocking are old, old news. Perhaps he’s forgetting someone, but PG can’t think of a top-selling indie who has gone exclusive with a trade publisher during the last twelve months. And there have been more than a few gonzo-selling indie authors who have been selling at a seven-figure-per-year pace during the last twelve months. Indie bestsellers are turning down seven figure advances these days.
Many industry publications have promoted the hybrid author – someone who has both indie books and a publishing contract – as evidence that tradpub still has its attractions even for authors who don’t want to go steady.
The unfortunate reality is that a whole lot of hybrid authors are telling their friends that they’re only with their publishers to help build their personal brands with short-term publicity and book store exposure and are still making more money from their indie titles. These authors are also calculating how much more money they would be making if they had self-pubbed the books they sold to publishers and vowing never to make that mistake again.
But that’s the way it looks in PG’s world. Obviously, Mike doesn’t live here.
, Amazon will pay Passive Guy a small affiliate commission on any of your purchases. 
So between his usually “bad contracts are the authors fault” and head in the sand mentality regarding author perception of the industry this sure looks like Mike’s standard article. Remind us again, why does anyone listen to him?
Entertainment value?
I was wondering how to summarize my reaction–and then I saw that Dustin has already summarized my reaction.
The upsetting thing is, to my knowledge, that so many myopic authors who have been ensnared by publishers as well as those still in the love gaze of publishers still do.
He tells people in nice offices that they’re right, they’re still in charge, and their future is bright.
People have been making money doing that for a long time.
Disclaimer–I’m not reading Shatzkin anymore, but I read PG’s comments.
Tradpub had its thumb on the scale. They think they still do but they don’t.
+10
I agree, Barbara. PG’s analysis is always more even-handed and realistic than The Shatz’s.
I find it very amusing the poor Hugh has replaced Joe Konrath as the indie whipping boy du jour for The Shatz and his ilk. To me, it means Hugh’s words and numbers are hitting far to close to home.
Also, Konrath is merciless. He can and will actively make you look stupid, if you act stupidly. Howey is a little more polite. So he’s less risky to engage.
Even worse when Joe and Barry Eisler double-team.
However, Hugh and Data Guy became far more of a danger to the BPHs and their consultants thanks to the Author Earnings Report.
This is the thing – many of these sites you don’t need cluttering your bookmark bar anymore. I recently removed Konrath and Hugh won’t be far behind. Anything worthwhile they or others have to say will be put here.
I save the unsuccessful sites for my bookmark bar because I know they push boundaries and don’t look at things from just one side.
But then if you have big sites like PG picking you up all the time you really don’t need to do that, right?
“This is the thing – many of these sites you don’t need cluttering your bookmark bar anymore. I recently removed Konrath and Hugh won’t be far behind. Anything worthwhile they or others have to say will be put here.”
Yeah, kinda like Drudge.
Thanks, PG.
Dan
I initially read your disclaimer as, “I’m not Shatzkin anymore.”
And I thought, WOW, that’s a whole side of her we didn’t know…
“I continue to believe that self-publishing is a useful tool that most authors should employ at one time or another…”
Provided they aren’t constrained by a non-compete clause in their contract with BigPub.
“…a whole lot of hybrid authors are telling their friends that they’re only with their publishers to help build their personal brands with short-term publicity and book store exposure and are still making more money from their indie titles. These authors are also calculating how much more money they would be making if they had self-pubbed the books they sold to publishers and vowing never to make that mistake again.”
A thousand times this.
In all the posts we’ve been seeing this year from self-styled pundits–Shatzkin is just today’s sampling–they appear to know absolutely nothing about writers.
I know many full-time writers who’ve left traditional publishing entirely. I know many others who are preparing to do so–they’re working on getting their indie income to a level that replaces their trad income. Others are cutting back their trad schedules to focus more on the indie work. Others like doing both–and won’t sign a deal that prevents their doing both.
Holly Ward has posted multiple times about why she won’t make a deal with a traditional publisher–they have nothing to offer her. Here’s one of those posts, and it’s a direct ground-level contrast to Shatzkin’s abstract claims:
http://blog.demonkissed.com/?p=1387
PG posted an article here a month or two ago about a fantasy writer who’s buying back his contract so he can go indie full-time rather than have more books released by his trad house, Tor Books.
Bestseller Maggie Shayne announced in media this year that she has ended her longtime and very successful trad career to go indie full-time.
Bestseller Stephanie Laurens announced earlier this year she’s left her trad house and has made a deal with another house which will allow her to indie epublish some of the contracted print titles.
Bestseller Barbara Freethy left trad publishing to go indie full-time, where has has been hugely successful.
Any number of writers report making more money self-publishing the digital and audio rights of old backlist than they’re making from their new trad publishing deals. Many also report making more money now with those old titles than the books made when traditionally published as new releases.
Hugh Howey became an indie bestseller, held out for an exceptional trad deal, and his experiences with traditional publishing have made him a highly vocal proponent of self-publishing.
As is well known, Barry Eisler, Joe Konrath, and Ann Voss Peterson have all left trad pub, and Konrath has an immense following of indie writers who regularly post their successful experiences–as do PG’s readers (see the massive comments list when PG asked how many indies are earning enough to write full-time–a LOT are, including writers who never earned enough from -trad pubs- write write full-time before).
That’s a LOT of successful writers who don’t deal with traditional publishers and who will never accept 50%-of-net digital–which is, in any case, a =hypothetical goal= that’s DOUBLE the digital royalty rate where the big houses have -actually- drawn the line and are holding firm.
I also know writers walking away from deals because publishers refuse to remove -or- fairly/narrowly -define- the non-compete clause. And because that clause is widespread, it’s yet another factor driving writers into indie careers (rather than indie sidelines).
A lot of writers who do NOT publicly blog about their incomes and career choices are making six figures annually from their indie publishing (not blogging about it isn’t synonymous with not sharing figures frankly with colleagues).
I met recently with two writers who have each lately bought back under-contract books because their indie experiences have convinced that writing those books for a traditional house instead of self-publishing would be a bad business choice. The week before that, I got an email from another writer who was doing the same thing. The month before that, ditto.
Trad pundits keep holding out the theory that maybe self-publishing is right for you if you’re the sort of “excess baggage” that publishers don’t want ANYHOW, but if you want to be a big name, then you need -them-! Yet what does the above list I’ve just run through–off the top of my head (so if I bothered to research this like an article, there’d be a lot MORE names)–tell us? It tells us that many major names coming up via self-publishing are choosing to stay in the indie world, and more than a few bestsellers in trad publishing are choosing to leave it. How MANY do there need to be before publishers and pundits even -notice-, let alone recognize that these aren’t isolated anomalies?
If you’re paying any attention to what’s actually going on, to what writers are doing, the “you need us to be a major name!” trad pub platform is already revealed as just hot air. There are ALREADY examples of mega-sellers (see Holly Ward’s eye-opening blog, linked above) finding that trad pub can’t (or won’t) serve them better (or even competently). As print continues declining and digital continues growing, why on earth do trad pub pundits think that the trend AWAY from trad pub will halt or reverse instead of expanding? (Well, they think it because, as we have seen multiple times this year, they don’t acknowledge the trend even exists, and they stick their heads in the sand when you point it out to them.)
And when you’re a writer living neck-deep in this phenomenon and personally knows dozens and dozens of established traditional writers moving AWAY from traditional publishing… it’s eye-opening JUST how ignorant of the changes and movements in their own industry that trad pub pundits are.
(Finally, by way of disclosure: I self-publish my old backlist, and most of my attention is currently on my traditional publishing career, where I am under contract at a house that pays me well, publishes my work well, treats me well, and does not include non-compete clauses in its contracts. As Barry Eisler has said many times, this is business, not ideology. I support making good deals with publishers that do business well, as this one does. The problem with publishing is that so many do not.)
Excellent post.
This should be a blog post somewhere. Too good of info to disappear.
And add me to the list of people who has never been rejected by a publisher but has rejected his fair share. 6 and 7 figure deals.
Funny that Mike was posting about me while saying something true of me that he doesn’t think has ever happened.
The problem for his clients is that it’s happening more and more. And we’ve only gotten started.
“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong.
When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance.
And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize,ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
(I don’t have a blog. I’m in the middle of switching my really old website software over to WordPress…. but it’s a slow process. Because I am slow.)
Laura, this sums up what I’ve been reading about publishing lately and says it far better than I ever could. Thanks for posting it.
I don’t have any friends or contacts in the traditional publishing world, but I read lots of stuff about what’s going on, and I think about what I should do with my career. At this point, I see nothing a traditional publisher can do for me that I can’t do for myself (or that won’t soon be available for me).
The literary agents siphon off 15% so I don’t know how much better those ‘better than 25% net royalties’ Shatzkin mentioned really are. That’s a cost the vast majority of self publishers don’t have.
Hypothetically speaking, I’m not against print only deals but I read on kboards, the publishers are no longer keen on offering this. I’ve certainly haven’t read any print only deals lately, and I think that’s why we haven’t heard that many indie authors sign with publishers. Indie authors want to keep their digital rights above all else.
A print only deal would be fine. But the publishers know that’s not where the money is.
To put it crudely, the best thing the publishers can do is go after self-publishers that don’t know the value of what they have, and convince them to give away as many rights as possible while the publishers do as little work as possible. And it sounds like this is exactly what they are doing.
Of course, back in reality, people who don’t do much work tend to stop getting paid. So while this strategy may work for them for a while, it’s a bad idea to use it long term.
It wasn’t that long ago that Hugh Howey posted a comment here stating that he couldn’t wait to get his print rights back from his publisher and use createspace again. So a print only deal might not be worth it after all.
“The literary agents siphon off 15% so I don’t know how much better those ‘better than 25% net royalties’ Shatzkin mentioned really are.””
We’ve seen these blinders on Skatzkin before.
I’m still traditionally published, and my advances went UP when I ceased letting literary agents “negotiate” my deals–because I ask for more money than they did. (Agents not only consistently refused to send out work that I then sold when I bypassed them and sent it out myself; they also repeatedly undervalued my work in deals that they “negotiated.” In fact, one agent who I still regularly see described as “brilliant,” etc., told an editor that the book I had in submission was crap and should not be published. I’m not guessing or fabricating; I learned this directly from the editor, after I subsequently fired the agent. I also learned from other editors that this was not a one-off instance, but rather a habit that this supposedly “top” agent had. As you may have already guessed, this strategy tended to LOWER clients’ advances, not raise them. Go FIGURE.)
My contract terms also IMPROVED SUBSTANTIALLY after I stopped letting literary agents “negotiate” the clauses and instead started working with a literary lawyer.
Moreover, since I no longer donate 15% of my earnings to an agent, I now pocket thousands of dollars every year that would INSTEAD be pocketed by a literary agent if I were still shackled to that business model. For example, on my most recent deal, the difference between what I paid my attorney and what I =would= have had to pay a literary agent for the same deal (a false construct, since I would not have gotten as big an advance or as good a contract with an agent “in charge” of the deal–but let’s play this out anyhow) was close to $15,000.
So, yeah, that whole claim of Shatzkin’s that having an -agent- in charge of your business is some sort of magic elixir, one so powerful that it makes 25%-of-net digital royalties (rather than the indie 65%-70% of gross digital royalties) irrelevant… isn’t an argument; it’s a demonstration of ignorance.
I’m so glad you’re doing better now, Laura. All the horror stories you have shared have just made me feel so much better about completely bypassing trad pub and going with self-publishing from the get-go. It really sucks that you had to go through that. I hope the new system will shake out all the dead weight agents that have been collecting their unearned paychecks for screwing their clients over all these years.
And all your horror stories, Laura, have made me glad that I never made it past all those this close submissions.
Ditto. Although I would definitely submit to a very small handful of publishers – Laura’s included – to go hybrid.
Sharon, yes, there’s a handful of publishers where most or all of the writers I know there are happy. My house, DAW Books is one. In sf/f, Baen Books is another. I know a number of Baen authors, and they all like working with Baen. In both cases, these are small, privately owned houses which have the ditribution reach of a big house, so you get that kind of distribution–but in a personal, well-run business where there’s immediate access and accountability, rather than a maze of corporate hierachy, incompetence, and disengagement.
I submitted my first novel to DAW and found them courteous and it felt like I was dealing with real people. Based on what you and others have said about them, I will submit again when I think I have something that will interest them.
It hinges on that substantial advance. If you are offered anything in the 6-7 figure range, you should accept. The publisher will protect the investment and give you the exposure self-publishing cannot. Also, if your book is so tempting to the publisher, they will cut you any number of deals (here an agent is helpful) on percentages and contractual restrictions.
Very, very few authors are in that category.
(I honestly do not understand what all the fighting is about and the general hostility toward Shatzkin and that other recent author (forget his name)who posted here and tried to defend his views in the comments.)
Most of the anti-Shatzkin sentiment is generated not by his views – which are wrong, IMO, but not irrational – but by his patronizing attitude and treatment of traditional publishing as a choice which authors are failing to make.
There was an article on Chuck Wendig’s blog today from a guest poster who’s with Angry Robot, a small publisher, and he at least was honest about the fact that no, you don’t choose tradpub, tradpub chooses you. He spun it really well (and reasonably so) but he didn’t treat it like a choice, which was refreshing. I actually thought it was pretty good although I did post a long critical comment.
I read the article, although I did skim a few of his points. I found it…okay…but the whole “you’ve got an ARMY fighting for you!” to be a real crock. It’s not exactly an army if you can fit your entire publishing company around a modestly-sized conference table (Angry Robot’s website shows a staff of six. Apologies if there’s more – might want to feature those folks on the website). Six isn’t an army, it’s more like half a squad.
But they’re a really good squad. They’re one of the few I’d love to be published by.
I’ll have to disagree I.J. If you’re offered a 6-7 figure advance as a self publisher, you’re probably already making that much or more. HM Ward said she turned down a $1.5 million dollar advance but they wanted everything. She even called it insulting since she could make that much in a few months and she wouldn’t be encumbered by lower royalties and other bad provisions.
The thing an author in that situation needs to decide, with the help of a rights lawyer, is if that 6-7 figure range offer is worth the likely non-compete clause, “out of print” reversion clause, and other terms that WILL come with it.
Exposure is nice but, if you’re getting 6-7 figure offers, you probably don’t need it. What else do they bring to the table?
“If you are offered anything in the 6-7 figure range, you should accept. The publisher will protect the investment and give you the exposure self-publishing cannot.”
Nope. I did a six-figure deal and got zero promotion or any other benefit except their distribution channels. At one point I asked the head honcho why the publishing house wasn’t protecting its investment. Result? Crickets.
Sobering, if not particularly surprising.
You also (as we all know–but just pointing it out) can get that huge advance and then not meet expectations and never get another contract again, even though you are a talented writer.
My friend got a six-figure NY deal for his last novel a few years ago. I asked him about how that went recently. He said that they didn’t edit his book in any way, they didn’t even *proofread* it — leaving typos and repetitions for him to catch in the proof stage — and they did absolutely NOTHING to promote it. And it didn’t sell. It was a bomb.
A six-figure deal is no guarantee of anything.
This comment by Mike says it all. It is a reply to one of his commenters
Well, I guess I have to decide whether the CEO who said they are competing for 95% of the deals or the leading NYC agent who said publishers have to compete on two-thirds of the deals or YOU, who are quite certain that “the vast majority” of agented writers have to settle for their deals, is the most credible source. Guess what? I’m not picking you
It illustrates exactly who he is listening to and why he is so out of touch with the average author.
Heh. And that is why Mike doesn’t really convince many people with his arguments these days. He’s more impressed by people who have money rather than logic. To me he just sounds like a typical bull*hitter.
I’d become sporadic about following links to him right up until the one post wherein, in the comments, when asked for a citation for some BS about the vast majority of “self-published” books being crap, he basically said “You can cite me.”
And done. Fin.
There’s no point to him anymore, and quite frankly, if the corporate publishers want to keep paying him, I’m happy about that. They’re just spending more money on things that aren’t producing better books, and that’s why they’re losing relevance so damn fast.
hubris
noun \ˈhyü-brəs\
: a great or foolish amount of pride or confidence
It’s a matter of semantics. I expect what the CEO considers competing, what the agent considers competing and what a knowlegible indie author considers competing are three very different things. I also suspect his notion of what constitutes an aggressive advance is a much smaller number than what that knowledgeable indie author thinks it should be. The six or seven figure advance is even a Catch 22. Even if the best case scenario happens, that just means you’ve left even more money on the table. You could argue you wouldn’t have that success on your own but a publisher’s not offering a 7 figure advance to a writer who’s not already showing significant success. I’ve often said access to print is the one benefit to signing with a publisher, but as I look at it now, considering they have to take such a high cut of ebook revenue just to compensate for what they’re not making in print, I think we may have reached a tipping point where that is no longer an advantage either. It seems like the only people who it makes any sense at all for to sign with a publisher are the writers who are ok with a small cut and lack of control because they only want to write and pass everything else. I’m not of the opinion that those types are who new, emerging writers should be emulating.
There’s no way publishers are competing for 2/3rds of the offers made. Maybe if that’s a superstar agent, but that’s CERTAINLY not the industry norm.
Does Shatzkin actually get paid for his opinion? Because in my opinion it’s often lopsided or flat out wrong. Maybe I’m crazy.
Breaking News!
Two-thirds of book deals are made based on competitive bidding.
My question is: two-thirds of what?
If it’s two-thirds of ALL deals, then many of them get really low bids.
I can’t imagine agents shopping around for bids of under $100,000 (I made that up off the top of my head. Someone with more information, help me out). It should be enough trouble to get one publisher to accept any manuscript.
I am more inclined to believe that authors with multiple best-sellers are likely to request numerous bids and be taken seriously.
Actually, this happens. I know an author who received 4 offers on her book, 3 of which were from Big Five houses–and the highest advance offered was only $1500. Incidentally, book became a bestseller.
Thanks for sharing Amy. It’s a nice morsel of anecdotal evidence. I was under the mistaken assumption that the lowest bids were for closer to $5,000.
The more I find out, the scarier it all sounds.
Wow that sounds low. Is it really even worth it? That almost seems like an insult.
It is low, no it’s not worth it, and yes it’s insulting. I know quite a few authors who had those $5-8k contracts for their first few books because that, at the time, seemed like the standard new/rookie author rate. There’s a reason so many older authors sneer at writers who expect to make a decent paycheck in this industry, because it took them years to do so.
From the comments;
“In the situation you are in, if you are being offered $20k take it or leave it by one publisher, you have a real choice to make. If this is your FIRST book, I’d almost certainly go with the publisher. If it is NOT, then I’d ask if you ever earned out the $20k before. If not, I’d stick with the publisher. If you have, then maybe you have enough of a platform to follow Hugh’s advice and self-publish. But doing that is a LOT of extra work you won’t have to do for the $20k.”
First of all, its not 20k, its 17k after the servicing by the agent.
17k? OK. For a book priced at $3.99 that equals about 5500 books sold. If the book is good enough to attract the attention of a Big 5 publisher, (lets be gracious and say that automatically makes it good) and sells 12 copies a day it would take about 16 months to earn that 17k.
Yet Mike tells us that the publisher is the better choice? Why is he under the impression that this is way outside the reach of the average indie author? Where does he get these ideas?
He says at the bottom of his post that he’s visiting a conference soon. Might I suggest that while there he talk to some actual indie authors instead of surrounding himself with publishing robots? Maybe print off the” Indie Authors Quitting Their Day Jobs” thread and read it on the plane.
Those indies quitting their day jobs? Pfft! They are all lying, Randall.
Outliers, Suzan.
All 459 of them.
Well, technically, given the large population of indie authors, I think 459 actually would be outliers.
Though I admit I don’t know what the cut off would be. 10%? 1%?
Further, though, given that agents reject 99% of the manuscripts they receive authors published by corporations are the true outliers of the publishing world.
Okay, Will “the nitpicker” Entrekin,
How about; 459 = a fraction of the outliers.
Either way, I don’t think 20k is out of reach. It certainly isn’t enough to make ME consider a trade deal for even a second.
I self-published my first novel and earned $20K from it in just over a year. Then I expanded it into a four-book series. By the time I’d completed it, the series had earned me $50K more, and now, halfway through 2014, it looks like it will earn more than that this year (possibly by a wide margin.) Just from one series.
This year, I will release four more historical novels and at least five romance novels. Nine new books.
If I’d been offered a $20K advance for my first book, the money would be gone by now, my book would most likely be out of print and earning me no new royalties, and I’d almost certainly be locked into a non-compete clause that would prevent me from publishing nine new books in a single year.
I would most definitely NOT be a full-time writer like I am now.
If your book is any good at all, you’d be a fool to take $20K for it and to sign a Big Pub contract that will only screw you hard in the end. Even if it’s your first book. Even if nobody knows who you are. Nobody knew who I was, either.
I hope some of the commenters who suggested authors with first books go for a lame advance and an evil Big Pub contract read what I wrote here. But they probably won’t, or they won’t believe me. Oh well! You can lead a horse to water, etc.
Heh.
Was it Dorothy Parker who said you can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think?
I hope they’ll read what you wrote, too, Libbie (and see you GIFs, which I love, if I haven’t noted that already).
And I hadn’t meant to nitpick, Randall. I think Hugh’s right; I think the real story of indie publishing is as much complementary and supplementary income as it is income that replaces day jobs.
And don’t forget the *secondary* story of indie publishing, which is all the other service providers who are ALSO now making a living – designing covers, editing (often former tradpud editors), copy editing, formatting, author-assisting, etc. There’s a whole vibrant industry out there, fueled by successful indies.
The vast majority of books don’t sell, no matter who publishes them. How are you going to be different?
Greg, looks like you’ve got some good-looking titles. Let me recommend to you Let’s Get Visible by David Gaughran. You might benefit from doing some smart marketing of your titles, including running sales (which should be advertised [often there are free listings] at the bargain book sites) and considering a loss-leader or two, as well as querying book bloggers for reviews.
“…only authors who sell their books to publishers without competitive bids (which indicates either “no agent” or “limited appeal generated by the proposal”) are living on that 25% royalty.”
Mr. Shatzkin is either ignorant of the fact that the majority of books are acquired without competitive bidding, which seems unlikely, or he’s being disingenuous, which is just unnecessary, like so much of his attitude towards our shadow industry that’s undercutting his clients’ cliffside position.
“The others negotiated an advance that effectively paid them far more than that.”
Really? “The others” represents every author whose book attracted competitive bids. And they ALL negotiated fat advances that made up for a crap royalty for the life of the copyright? Evidently Mr. Shatzkin is privy to information available to no-one else in publishing. Must be why he gets the big bucks.
HA. Shatzkin clearly believes all the industry-generated hype about how hard agents always work for all of their clients. What a load of b.s.
More of the same smoke blown up more of the same tailpipes. Perhaps everybody working for the Big Five ought to invest in hookahs.
Tea-spitting warnings in future, please, Libbie!
I see the name “Libbie Hawker” and it’s an automatic “carry beverage to other side of room” moment.
Either that, or “scroll past tl;dr rant” moment.
I may be wrong, but I have the feeling that competitive bids are quite rare. Presumably, this would be for a new author or a new series, because established authors already have a stable, so to speak. The spark that generates competitive bidding happens only to famous people or books with extraordinary ideas.
I used to wonder what the color of the sky was in Shatzkins world.
Now I wonder what Dimension he occupies…
Dav
The color of the sky in Mikes world?
Rosey…just like the tint on his glasses.
There are however some serious storm clouds on the horizon.
Every time I read Shatzkin, I see Kevin Bacon at the end of Animal House:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDAmPIq29ro
Apart from his skewed reasoning, has anyone else noted the breakdown in his English? His syntax is all over the place. His headlines make no sense. And you often have to read the sentences twice to figure out what he’s trying to say.
I’d wager that the closer this whole thing gets to the cliff, the more he (and the execs at the Big 5) are drinking. Less and less koolaid, more and more vodka.
The entire failure of Big Publishing is summed up in this line:
Physical book publishing should welcome the death of the stand alone book supermarket. They are horrible business partners. The survival of Big Pub is dependent on Costco and WalMart for physical distribution.
Legacy publishing would be far better off if they could envision a future where bookstores were the equivalent of jewelry stores. Physical books (other than the bestsellers) are becoming premium products hand sold by real experts. Nothing can stop that. The U.S. likely only needs a few hundred bookstores. We have a few thousand.
The Big 5 have a clear path to a sustainable future, but they won’t take it. They should trim their trade book list to a few hundred titles a year total (for all 5). They should jettison their distribution networks and deal directly with existing general purpose retailers. Of course that would mean massive layoffs.
Someone once said that when a disruptive technology triumphs, the old technology becomes an art form.
“Publishers are trying to keep a print book physical distribution infrastructure alive. That’s not irrational. It is rational.”
If it’s a sustainable business model, why do publishers need to work so hard to keep it alive? And if it’s not a sustainable business model, what’s so rational about preserving it?
Short-term cash keeps it going. It’s going to get harder and harder to generate cash if bookstores are dwindling in number and fewer quality manuscripts come in the door.
The only thing the big publishers can offer is…I really had something, but already dismissed it. Seriously, what they have to offer is talent in marketing, cover design, etc. Before the digital age, they owned it. But now three or four indies can combine their talents and do exactly what publishing houses used to do. Or we’ll just pay other indie artists and marketers to do it for us. This is how the free market is supposed to work. The old and slow get replaced by the new and quick. And, by a show of hands, how many trad published authors out there write full time? My guess is there are less of those than full time indies (run the numbers PG, that’d make an interesting post). As any businessman will tell you, though, you will never get rich working for someone else. And that’s essentially what you’re doing with trad publishers.
I think the only thing a traditional publisher can offer is a guarantee of money. It may end up being less money than that author would make in the long term, it may be split into ridiculously small chunks and spread out in ridiculous ways, but it is still a known amount of money coming in at a known time.
Honestly, I think that’s why so many authors still accept traditional deals — they’re risk averse. They want to know how much money they’re going to make and when. And I think that’s why publishers are trying to implement such strict anti-comp clauses — they don’t want authors to indie pub on the side and realize that they can succeed at it.
I’m a full time writer who makes the majority of my income from trad publishing. Most of the authors I’m friends with are full time with trad books as well (which gives me a skewed view of things). However, a majority of them are, like me, using this time to build an indie platform so there will be little risk shifting from one to the other.
Today in the publishing business there are two paradigms, the Paper book publishing and the eBook publishing. An Indie Author has no chance competing in the paper book arena. POD is good but it is more expensive than 20k paper books printed in China, transportation included.
However, the Trad-pubs have no chance competing with Indie Authors in the eBook arena. Sounds impossible? I wrote a comment on Hugh Howey’s blog giving advice to Trad-pubs to move to Iowa to cut their costs. They can move to Haiti and they’ll never make it. Here is the simple economical reality. I gave an example of how much it costs me to e-Publish an 50k words eBook. It costs me $1,535. A Trad-pub will never be able to match my and every Indie Authors’ low cost. And we keep 70% of the sales prices. Sure a Trad-pub may get more than 70% from Amazon, but they’ll never be able to pay their authors the same percentage.
I understand that I’m not comparing apples with apples, but that’s exactly the issue. The paper books and eBooks are two different business animals. One is expensive and slow, the other is quick and inexpensive. The Trad-pubs cannot operate and make a profit in the quick and inexpensive eBook model. I realize that they do it now, and thrive in both business models, but that’s just because of the momentum they have and the authors they have under contracts. The eBooks model will cannibalize the paper books model. It is just a matter of time.
Besides the eBooks being a superior delivery mechanism for literature, there is an even more important factor that will undermine the Trad-pubs. There are more best-writers unpublished by the Trad-pubs than there are trad-published best-writers. The belief that Trad-pubs are selecting only the best writing is Bogus. A big lie. The only thing the Trad-pubs are doing is regulate the supply of books to the market so they can dictate the high prices for books. From ten good books they publish only one, let’s say. What happens to the other nine good books today? Their authors can self e-publish them and for a lot lower price than the Trad-pubs. In the eBook world the market will have plenty of good books priced inexpensively, and that’s why the Trad-pubs are as good as extinct. Not today but soon enough.
The belief that Trad-pubs are selecting only the best writing is Bogus. A big lie. The only thing the Trad-pubs are doing is regulate the supply of books to the market so they can dictate the high prices for books.
. . . and that’s the truth.
Shoot. So many, many things wrong this this.
I wasn’t able to read all the comments, because I’m *this close* to finishing Tidewater and I REALLY WANT TO GET THIS BOOK OVER WITH so I need to spend almost every moment writing today. But I wanted to say a few things:
1) Mike, if you ever read this, there are far, far more authors who are offered crappy advances and even worse contracts than there are authors who are offered “aggressive” advances. And while you’re twiddling your thumbs waiting for an advance — aggressive or otherwise — to be offered, two years have gone by in the glacially slow business of legacy publishing.
If I’m writing something simple, and I write for 50 hours a week, I can get two novels done in a month. If I’m writing something complicated, at 50 hours a week I can get a novel done in two months. Let’s split the difference and say that I can complete 12 novels per year. In the time an author like me spends jumping through a bunch of stupid hoops like finding a useless agent, signing a terrible contract with a standard non-compete clause, and then waiting for that book to actually become available to readers, I’ve just *not* written and published 24 novels.
During my worst month of self-publishing, my books earned me an average of $450 each in a month. So let’s be very conservative and say that all 24 of those books I DIDN’T write while I hoped for an “aggressive advance” could have earned me at least $10,800 per month. For two years.
Now, obviously the math doesn’t line up exactly (a novel I write today will earn me more money by Future Date X than a novel I write much closer in time to Future Date X, etc.) But as a simple illustrative exercise, it’s revealing.
The choice for authors is: dick around earning nothing and hoping you’ll be an EXTREME outlier who gets an “aggressive advance,” but know that you’ll probably be an average person who gets maybe $5,000 and a truly abusive contract, OR possibly earn at least $260,000 during the same timeframe.
Again, the math is imperfect, but you see how quickly the speed of indie publishing very rapidly outstrips the alleged benefits of legacy publishing, even when “aggressive advances” come into play. And they SELDOM do.
2) Even authors who are unusual enough to get an aggressive advance are not treated with any kind of consideration by their publishers. I know somebody who received a nearly-seven-figure advance on a three-book deal for her first novel. The first novel was published, and then…nothing. Her second book should have been out more than two years ago, but it never appeared, and no word on the third. My friend has dropped off the face of the internet, probably out of extreme depression over the loss of such a promising livelihood.
Is an “aggressive advance” that gets your hopes up that high worth it if your career gets destroyed for reasons beyond your control? Oh, I know many legacy professionals love to slam those rose-colored glasses over hopeful authors’ eyes and tell them how wonderful things are if you get a big advance, but that’s one enormous IF, and the truth is, things AREN’T all that wonderful for most authors, even with the huge advance.
The fact is that legacy contracts SUCK. They have always sucked, but the difference today is that we don’t have to SIGN THEM anymore. And we’re not.
As PG pointed out, there hasn’t been any news lately about indie authors signing with Big Pub. That’s not because the pool of awesome indies has shrunk. In fact, it’s expanded. It’s because authors are realizing in ever-increasing numbers that IT’S NOT WORTH IT to work with big publishers.
3) Like so many others, I too know many hybrid authors who are not planning to renew the tradpub contracts, and are reverting to all-indie as soon as they are able. Even when you manage to catch a few of us, you still don’t understand how to treat us well.
Authors are not cogs. You’re losing us, and as the indie book movement continues to gain steam among energized and interested readers, as it becomes more and more “cool” to read indies, you will even lose those authors who know you’re going to screw them, but who line up to sign contracts with you anyway because they need to be seen as “cool.”
We are the cool ones. And now you know it.
I can’t wait for the Joe Konrath fisking of Shatzkin’s latest screed. It will be epic, like a Trey Gowdy rant.
I love Trey Gowdy.
I’ve been thinking for a while now that this will be what eventually sinks trad pub.
Oh, sure, there will always be (or will be for a long time) writers who want to be published by a “real” publisher, but as indie publishing becomes more mainstream and writers become more informed, I think those writers will become fewer and farther between. And as writers become more educated, not only in the art and craft of writing, but also in the business, I think trad pub will see the quality of submissions go down.
Yanno, if it keeps heading in this direction, savvy and competent authors may all jump to indie and the Big Two (it may be whittled down to two by then) will be left with a tsunami of swill.
The problem with Shatzkin is that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. So, instead of realizing he doesn’t know anything about the indie publishing biz and educating himself about, he dismisses it as irrelevant.
I agree, though his ignorant dismissal of indie publishing isn’t the only problem I see. Although he positions himself as (and evidently gets paid as) an expert on traditional publishing, he also seems to have big patches of ignorance about that, too. Very little of what he says about writers, editors, and agents in traditional publishing is accurate or realistic.
This pretty much sums up the problem with Mike Shatzkin and the publishing industry:
I don’t have a figure for “the industry”. There is no figure for “the industry”.
PS – And he’s the one who attacks Hugh Howey for the reliability of his data. Meanwhile, Mike doesn’t have anything that’s not anecdotal.
I’ve pretty much written off anything Bullshatzkin has to say about anything.
“still almost all of the time, an author who is offered a publishing deal from a major house willing to pay an aggressive advance is better off to take it than go it alone.”
Evidence?
Besides, who gets an “aggressive advance” from big publishers? Proven sellers, that’s who. And if they’re proven enough for a big publisher to bet on them, it’s enough for them to bet on themselves.