Eldon Farrell's Blog: The Writer's Craft - Posts Tagged "publishing"
Should Indies be regulated?
This week's topic promises to be, I'm certain, a little controversial. Let me state right off the top that I don't have an answer to the question. It's just one that came up on a discussion thread a few weeks back and I found interesting. So let's get into it shall we?
If we can remember just 20 years ago there was really only one way to be published and that was with the Big Four Publishing Companies. You'd write your book, get an agent interested enough to take you on, and then they'd sell it to the publisher on your behalf.
Now if you were lucky enough to get that far, then your book would go through an editing process to clean up minor and major errors and generally make it more suitable to what the Big Four felt readers wanted to read.
Of course I don't want to discount independent publishing back then; it did exist, just not in any form we'd recognize today. Back then to publish independently meant you as the author, had to front the costs of printing your book and if it didn't sell...well it didn't matter to the publisher. Because the costs of entry were so high, many authors stuck to the road travelled by the Big Four and had their masterpieces end up in mountainous slush piles.
Fast forward to today and it's all different. The arrival of the ebook meant that those barriers to entry vanished. Now, it costs next to nothing to publish your book online. Amazon, maybe the largest online publisher, charges nothing to the author to get their book published. And unlike years ago, if it doesn't sell, the author is not out a small fortune.
Print on demand models have also removed the barriers to getting your words physically in a reader's hands. All of this sounds like great news to every Indie author out there, including myself.
The question though becomes...is it great news?
If you'll allow me a parallel for a moment. When regulations (or standards of quality) were removed from our financial systems everything was great for a time but calamity eventually came home to roost in 2008. By removing the barriers to entry into the publishing world, did we not create a similar calamity?
While it was exceedingly frustrating for an author to have their book wither away on a slush pile, such piles did protect the reader from poor quality writing. Once removed, and an author could just publish their own book, that aforementioned step regarding an editing process, was also removed.
The market was wide open and flooded with books of varying quality. Many of which, to be honest, represented very poor writing.
As an Indie myself, I believe indie books can be of the same caliber as the Big Four puts out; no question. Unfortunately though, without a formal editing process in place, they can also be suspect. And this hurts us all.
Over the past 20 years a stigma has arisen in the mind of many readers; if the independent novel was really good it wouldn't need to be independently published. Every Indie has heard that at least once in their career.
As much as I would like to say this viewpoint is unfair; it's not without some merit. Indie's flooded the market themselves with books that readers took a chance on and were burned by.
So back to the original point; should we as Indie authors succumb to a regulated editing process? I've no doubt the capitalist system would provide us with companies to fill this need. Perhaps it could be a seal of approval that we could place on our covers; stating they've been professionally edited. In that way, we might regain some faith from the wary reader.
Now, this would mean cost to us of course. These companies are not likely to provide their services for free and nor should they. Some barriers to entry could help us all.
But then again, the rating agencies seal of approval on wall street stocks didn't exactly help that calamity so who knows if regulated editing would help us.
I've enjoyed the freedom that's come from this independent revolution but at the end of the day, publishing is only half the story. You still gotta sell the books. Perceived higher standards may or may not help with that. As I said at the start, I don't know the answer.
Do you?
If we can remember just 20 years ago there was really only one way to be published and that was with the Big Four Publishing Companies. You'd write your book, get an agent interested enough to take you on, and then they'd sell it to the publisher on your behalf.
Now if you were lucky enough to get that far, then your book would go through an editing process to clean up minor and major errors and generally make it more suitable to what the Big Four felt readers wanted to read.
Of course I don't want to discount independent publishing back then; it did exist, just not in any form we'd recognize today. Back then to publish independently meant you as the author, had to front the costs of printing your book and if it didn't sell...well it didn't matter to the publisher. Because the costs of entry were so high, many authors stuck to the road travelled by the Big Four and had their masterpieces end up in mountainous slush piles.
Fast forward to today and it's all different. The arrival of the ebook meant that those barriers to entry vanished. Now, it costs next to nothing to publish your book online. Amazon, maybe the largest online publisher, charges nothing to the author to get their book published. And unlike years ago, if it doesn't sell, the author is not out a small fortune.
Print on demand models have also removed the barriers to getting your words physically in a reader's hands. All of this sounds like great news to every Indie author out there, including myself.
The question though becomes...is it great news?
If you'll allow me a parallel for a moment. When regulations (or standards of quality) were removed from our financial systems everything was great for a time but calamity eventually came home to roost in 2008. By removing the barriers to entry into the publishing world, did we not create a similar calamity?
While it was exceedingly frustrating for an author to have their book wither away on a slush pile, such piles did protect the reader from poor quality writing. Once removed, and an author could just publish their own book, that aforementioned step regarding an editing process, was also removed.
The market was wide open and flooded with books of varying quality. Many of which, to be honest, represented very poor writing.
As an Indie myself, I believe indie books can be of the same caliber as the Big Four puts out; no question. Unfortunately though, without a formal editing process in place, they can also be suspect. And this hurts us all.
Over the past 20 years a stigma has arisen in the mind of many readers; if the independent novel was really good it wouldn't need to be independently published. Every Indie has heard that at least once in their career.
As much as I would like to say this viewpoint is unfair; it's not without some merit. Indie's flooded the market themselves with books that readers took a chance on and were burned by.
So back to the original point; should we as Indie authors succumb to a regulated editing process? I've no doubt the capitalist system would provide us with companies to fill this need. Perhaps it could be a seal of approval that we could place on our covers; stating they've been professionally edited. In that way, we might regain some faith from the wary reader.
Now, this would mean cost to us of course. These companies are not likely to provide their services for free and nor should they. Some barriers to entry could help us all.
But then again, the rating agencies seal of approval on wall street stocks didn't exactly help that calamity so who knows if regulated editing would help us.
I've enjoyed the freedom that's come from this independent revolution but at the end of the day, publishing is only half the story. You still gotta sell the books. Perceived higher standards may or may not help with that. As I said at the start, I don't know the answer.
Do you?
The Last Word
As the title indicates this will be my final entry here until some time in the new year. I've enjoyed these blogs and done my best to keep to a weekly schedule (though it's faltered as of late) but now time constraints are forcing me to go on hiatus here.
While I'm away I'll be reworking my next novel to remove a plot thread that will no longer work for me. It's tedious work, as all authors know, and will require much of my time and concentration.
Before I go though...one final entry.
This past year I have seen the very best and the very worst that independent publishing can offer and everything in between. I have been amazed by the singular talents of authors and appalled by the lack of care from others. It's like the dirty little secret of the business...we all know there are terrible books out there that should never have been published yet we never speak of them.
I want to speak of them today.
I've heard from reviewers I know that they won't review independent books because the quality is not there in a lot of cases. Worse than that, the author's themselves have been known to personally attack a reviewer who didn't rate them the way they wanted. Let me be clear; this behaviour is reprehensible.
Reviewers need the freedom to rate and review as they see fit for the practice to have any worth at all. They may not like your book. You may not like that. But that is the business you enter when you click publish. Many, many authors understand this but the few that don't do damage to us all. Every reviewer who closes their doors to all indie authors because of these bad apples is one less avenue available to all of us.
It's time to stop not talking about it. It's time to stop fearing reprisal and start telling it like it is. It's hard to slam an author; I know. I've found myself in the position this year as well. I've lost contacts over telling the truth. It isn't easy to review someone else's hard work and have to tell them that it just isn't good.
But it has to be done.
And I'm not talking about subjective opinions here. What one person likes another won't. We all get that. But show me the reader that likes to read poor grammar, typos, spelling mistakes, and other editing gaffs. These are not subjective...they're factual. It's hard to write and hard to hear but a prerequisite of this business of publishing is a thick skin. You won't survive without it.
And just so you know, I'm certainly not above it all. A Goodreads friend of mine, Joanna Elm, read and reviewed Stillness this year. She was my first 3 star review. She wrote in part that I had a "grammatical blind spot which is found throughout the book of confusing plurals with the possessive." Did I like to hear this? What do you think?
My kneejerk reaction was that she was wrong; there's no way. Did I lash out at her or break off all contact? No I did not. I decided to see if she was right and by God you know what...she was. I had no idea that I had that blind spot. If Joanna was a less honest reviewer I still wouldn't know. But because she told me the truth I was able to go over my story again and (hopefully) fix all those errors.
For young authors out there looking for how to handle criticism, I would suggest trying to learn from it. I would suggest subjecting your prized manuscript to an editing process before hastily clicking publish.
I would submit to all authors out there that for every terribly formatted and poorly edited book that somebody reads, we all lose at least 5 potential readers because you know they'll tell people all about that terrible book they read.
Keep that in mind before you publish. Sure you may be able to coax your friends and family and maybe even a few others into giving you the reviews you want but in the end, nobody knows enough people to keep the truth about your book from rising to the fore.
So don't blame the person who tells you the truth for telling it to you. Thank them...more importantly learn from them. Reviews can help you a lot more than just getting your name out there.
If you're going to publish then take the time and do it right. Do yourself a favour and polish your book before publishing it. Do us all a favour because we are all in this together. If we ever want people to look at independent novels as having the same quality as traditionally published novels then we need to make sure they do.
Every. Last. One. Of. Us.
While I'm away I'll be reworking my next novel to remove a plot thread that will no longer work for me. It's tedious work, as all authors know, and will require much of my time and concentration.
Before I go though...one final entry.
This past year I have seen the very best and the very worst that independent publishing can offer and everything in between. I have been amazed by the singular talents of authors and appalled by the lack of care from others. It's like the dirty little secret of the business...we all know there are terrible books out there that should never have been published yet we never speak of them.
I want to speak of them today.
I've heard from reviewers I know that they won't review independent books because the quality is not there in a lot of cases. Worse than that, the author's themselves have been known to personally attack a reviewer who didn't rate them the way they wanted. Let me be clear; this behaviour is reprehensible.
Reviewers need the freedom to rate and review as they see fit for the practice to have any worth at all. They may not like your book. You may not like that. But that is the business you enter when you click publish. Many, many authors understand this but the few that don't do damage to us all. Every reviewer who closes their doors to all indie authors because of these bad apples is one less avenue available to all of us.
It's time to stop not talking about it. It's time to stop fearing reprisal and start telling it like it is. It's hard to slam an author; I know. I've found myself in the position this year as well. I've lost contacts over telling the truth. It isn't easy to review someone else's hard work and have to tell them that it just isn't good.
But it has to be done.
And I'm not talking about subjective opinions here. What one person likes another won't. We all get that. But show me the reader that likes to read poor grammar, typos, spelling mistakes, and other editing gaffs. These are not subjective...they're factual. It's hard to write and hard to hear but a prerequisite of this business of publishing is a thick skin. You won't survive without it.
And just so you know, I'm certainly not above it all. A Goodreads friend of mine, Joanna Elm, read and reviewed Stillness this year. She was my first 3 star review. She wrote in part that I had a "grammatical blind spot which is found throughout the book of confusing plurals with the possessive." Did I like to hear this? What do you think?
My kneejerk reaction was that she was wrong; there's no way. Did I lash out at her or break off all contact? No I did not. I decided to see if she was right and by God you know what...she was. I had no idea that I had that blind spot. If Joanna was a less honest reviewer I still wouldn't know. But because she told me the truth I was able to go over my story again and (hopefully) fix all those errors.
For young authors out there looking for how to handle criticism, I would suggest trying to learn from it. I would suggest subjecting your prized manuscript to an editing process before hastily clicking publish.
I would submit to all authors out there that for every terribly formatted and poorly edited book that somebody reads, we all lose at least 5 potential readers because you know they'll tell people all about that terrible book they read.
Keep that in mind before you publish. Sure you may be able to coax your friends and family and maybe even a few others into giving you the reviews you want but in the end, nobody knows enough people to keep the truth about your book from rising to the fore.
So don't blame the person who tells you the truth for telling it to you. Thank them...more importantly learn from them. Reviews can help you a lot more than just getting your name out there.
If you're going to publish then take the time and do it right. Do yourself a favour and polish your book before publishing it. Do us all a favour because we are all in this together. If we ever want people to look at independent novels as having the same quality as traditionally published novels then we need to make sure they do.
Every. Last. One. Of. Us.
