Why I went independent as an author
From The BookBaby Blog:
[Warren Adler has published more than 30 novels and short story collections, including The War of the Roses, which was turned into a major motion picture and is currently in development for a Broadway production.]
I went into the e-book and Print on Demand mode in the nineties convinced that the new technology would radically change the future of book publishing, and would allow an author a chance to control his own destiny.
By then I had published 27 novels with major traditional publishers; many had been translated and published in various languages.
I had also sold or optioned a dozen of my books for film adaptation; three were made. One was “The War of the Roses,” which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner; another was “Random Hearts” with Harrison Ford and Kirstin Scott-Thomas; and a third was a three-hour trilogy on the PBS network titled “The Sunset Gang.”
. . . .
I made the decision to become an independent publisher of my own work before the Kindle and other devices had made their debut. At that time there was a growing movement for digitization and various brave entrepreneurs had jumped on board with a similar vision. The history of that period is littered with failures.
. . . .
The motivation for my own authorial decision to turn my back on traditional publishers was both psychological and entrepreneurial. The psychological was purely personal. I am a Depression baby. My father was hard hit during the Depression and it was difficult for him to get and hold a job. He was always at the mercy of others, and I vowed early on never to be beholden to others to make my living. Controlling my own destiny has always been one of my principal obsessions.
I forced myself to learn the ropes of being my own boss. I learned to be entrepreneurial by starting various businesses. I had another overriding obsession, the need to write, to be an author, to tell stories, to write novels, plays, short stories, essays, poems, the whole caboodle.
It took me 25 years to get my first novel published.
. . . .
Beyond moments of joy and fulfillment of which there have been many, the obsession of control lingers. Technology offered me the gift of independence and self–sovereignty, and I jumped at it. I quickly discovered that I had hurled myself from the frying pan into the fire.
I have been both very right and very wrong in the way the digital book publishing business is playing out. I was right to believe that technology was a disrupter to the traditional publishing business. Amazon has proven that conclusively.
. . . .
It has been only seven years since the Kindle was introduced. In another seven years traditional print publishing as practiced today will be a cottage industry worldwide.
. . . .
The traditional big-time publishers, merged and consolidated by corporate bean counters over the last few decades, are shell-shocked survivors of a by-gone age.
Link to the rest at The BookBaby Blog and thanks to Randal for the tip.
, Amazon will pay Passive Guy a small affiliate commission on any of your purchases. 
I vowed early on never to be beholden to others to make my living. Controlling my own destiny has always been one of my principal obsessions.
If that’s not an indie mentality I don’t know what is
If your read the whole piece, he seems too cynical and snobby for indie mentality. He sounds like he needs a hug.
I agree!
I like his attitude. Forethought, hard work, and buisiness savvy. I like.
This gentleman reminded me to give thanks every day that I’m in my thirties right now.
I have a long time to watch my indie sales grow. Even at a mere ten sales per month, my sales will recoup my time/sunk costs within seven years — and I’ve got many decades and at least a hundred more titles ahead.
Amen.
And a copyright law of life+70 years. Your descendants will thank you.
I don’t know this has ever happened here. I don’t think I can disagree with anything Mr. Adler said.
I was with him in the main article until he jumped into the tsunami of swill.
As a reader. I’ve found so many new authors that I love! Even if I stopped writing, I would still rejoice this new age of publishing!
For me as a reader, there was always a vast sea of stuff I wasn’t interested in that I had to wade through. And yet I managed to always find something to buy. I just couldn’t afford to buy as many back then.
This
I vowed early on never to be beholden to others to make my living. Controlling my own destiny has always been one of my principal obsessions.
An entrepreneurial outlook will help any indie writer.
I agree with a lot of what Warren has to say in this article, except for this:
“At the moment, the financial future looks bleak for working authors, especially the fiction writers, even those presently enjoying best selling notoriety in print publications and the brick and mortar bookstores. As the shelving space declines along with print newspapers and magazines, more and more authors will lose publicity traction and be quickly forgotten at an ever-accelerating pace.”
I think this is the best time for writers in my lifetime, and perhaps Warren’s, as well. There are more opportunities now than there have been in a long time. The options for self-publishing offer much better chances to be discovered than the traditional publishing model where you had to endure the query-go-round in order to get a chance at ever being published. Most authors never had a chance to build a following because their books never made it out of the slush pile that eventually wound up in the dumpster.
With self-publishing you can also give your novel or series time to find its audience, as opposed to the traditional model where it gets pulled off the shelf in a few months and the series is dropped unless the first book is an almost immediate success.
Not to mention the manuscripts that spun around the query-go-round and then were trunked by their authors because a small group of editors/agents/gatekeepers rejected them for any number of reasons, but which caused the author to assume the story wasn’t good enough.
How many great voices and stories have already been silenced? Granted some stories should be trunked, but now an author doesn’t have to accept the judgement of a few to get their work available to readers.
I remember reading an article close to 10 years ago that changed my perception of publishing entirely. It was about the annual New York City “slush-burning” party. I had never heard of this tradition until then. I remember looking at the accompanying picture, the smiling faces as interns and agents and editors tossed thousands of pages of manuscripts into the flames. I saved that picture on my computer for years, but eventually lost it in a crash. I still remember it though, and the gut-wrenching sickness I felt looking at it.
I don’t know if any of my manuscripts were on that bonfire, but it doesn’t matter. Those were the hopes and dreams of people just like me going up in flames. I wondered how many of those writers had sent out dozens of manuscripts and partials -just like me- to never hear a word in response. Did those gatekeepers even read the first page of those books, much less a chapter before consigning them to the flames?
The people burning those manuscripts thought it was funny. I wonder what they think now.
Not sure what the rules are about posting old links, but this might have been what you read-
http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.php?id=950
In light of recent happenings, I couldn’t help but laugh when I read “”All of the manuscripts with no merit other than the tag ‘Member, SFWA’ on the cover page.”
Nice, and almost instantly! Thanks! I think the article pretty much speaks for itself. I feel a lot of the same emotions looking at it now. They drink wine and sing songs when they do this (or did, anyway). Yet the tone of the article is that we, those obnoxious authors who learned to write by throwing a cat at a keyboard, should feel sorry for them.
I suppose I do, in the same way I feel sorry for a plumber who has to work in a muddy crawlspace or a roofer who gets a sunburn. Do all other professionals get to burn the extra work in a bonfire when they don’t like it?
Party on!
ETA: Did anybody else notice the statement about all those manuscripts that have been sitting around since 1968? Surprise! They didn’t go into a black hole guys, they were just waiting for the right weenie roast.
I know they think it’s hilarious, but it’s so snide. Especially aimed at a genre, Science Fiction, that’s made them all a good chunk of money over the years.
You have quite a memory!
It did seem the rhetoric singled in on sci-fi, didn’t it. As Big Al noted, the shot at SFWA is extremely ironic in a modern context. But I thought they had very specific requirements about prior publication and such? I’m sure those requirements were even more rigid then.
I’ll leave others to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of an SFWA membership, either twelve years ago or today.
WOW! That was just…awful. Nope, definitely don’t feel bad about these publisher people losing their jobs in the changing market.
Not sure which order this reply will appear in the reply thread above, so it’s not really directed at or specifically replying to anyone, but just to comment on that linked article re RevolutionSF …
Err, it was the April 31 date quoted plus the fact that the guy can’t write from an Aussie POV in the final paragraphs (among other things) that immediately tipped me off as to it being a (not so well executed) humour / joke piece.
And quickly confirmed at Asimov’s Science Fiction online in a James Patrick Kelly column here:
http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0210_11/onthenet.shtml
(scroll down to almost the end where the RevolutionSF paragraph is for mention of that site plus that specific ‘article’) This joke piece was pitched at the SF genre audience / writers hence the SF focus and themes, to answer the other q’s above.
I’m a humour writer myself, so I know how difficult it is to translate humour and sarcasm and irony etc etc not only online but also to International audiences and to hit the right note and perfect funny bone pitch with a reader …
Same with comments, sometimes it’s difficult to read if a person is mucking around or is serious, I took you all as being serious re this link, but sorry if that’s not the case …
Also, probably best not to speculate on whether publishers have actually done this mss burning thing with the slush pile! They’re not big into recycling and green ways from all we know about them, re return system, so what do they do with all the mss that don’t have return postage encl. ?!?
I knew it was meant to be some kind of satire, but still found it incredibly mean spirited. But you have a point that it could possibly be aimed AT the editors. I hadn’t thought of that.
Nice find Lita. I feel a little silly now, knowing that I got hoaxed lol. Oh well, the thing is it didn’t really come off as a hoax (shouldn’t a hoax strain credulity a little?)and apparently I’m not the only one, since I originally picked it up from a legitimate news site. I suppose I owe an apology to the target agents, editors, and interns for believing they’d really do this. Cause they never would, right?
I have friends in publishing. This really is how they feel about the majority of submissions. Without the attempt at humor.
They do WHAT?
I’m German. Book burning has quite the connotation here, and it’s definitely not a good one.
I agree with you, burning the hopes, heartblood and dreams of authors with glee seems very callous to me. It also seems that attitude towards writers hasn’t changed much since then.
Turns out it was a hoax, Hannah, I think. I’m either too gullible or too cynical (or both). I fully believed some editor or agent out there had a box of manuscripts from 1968. Of course, I’m still waiting to hear back on submission chapters and manuscripts requested by agents back in 2002…
I had always thought that PG’s editing was for ease of use/ size on a blog of this nature.
Now I see that, in fact, PG has distilled the best parts for our consumption.
I agree with those who read the whole article and commented: these are the best “bits”.
PG: nice job editing this piece. Please keep it up.