The followng is a guest post by Grant Piercy. Check out Grant’s previous guest post, Quoting Lyrics and Dodging Copyright Issues. Want to submit a guest post? Read our overview and drop us a line!
It might interest you to know that even though I consider myself a writer and an author, I’ve never submitted a manuscript to a legacy publisher. Neither have I ever attempted to get an agent for representation. This might seem like a strange approach for a so-called writer and author, but this is the way of the world now. It’s not just the state of the publishing industry, but the state of most mass media outlets.
Over a decade ago, Napster was forced to close down by a U.S. District court, and was only truly active for about two years in its original form. By then, the damage was done. Napster exposed an unfair pricing model for the music industry. People wanted music, single songs most of the time, but were always forced to purchase entire albums (usually with sub-par content) for anywhere between $13 and $20, depending on the chain store (most of which are now out of business, after having put many small, independent record stores out of business themselves). Napster showed the true power of the Internet — sharing information and media content between a host and thousands of users. And it was all free.
This all seems like ancient history now — a mere reality of a zeitgeist that’s been in upheaval since the start of the new millennium. Music was just the beginning. With increased networking capabilities and the availability of high-speed, broadband internet in the years since, enormous files are downloaded in mere seconds — where megabytes in the old Napster days used to possibly take hours. Music, movies, radio, television shows, podcasts, books — they’re all available from anyone who wants to give them away.
Then there’s the legacy distributors: music labels, movie studios, and book publishers. It started with music, which already had a nice free component in radio and television distribution (at least when MTV played music). Movie studios and television networks got scared (rightly) that it would soon be as viable to pirate movies and shows as it had been to pirate music. The RIAA and MPAA began to go after these pirates pretty hard. What they really did was show the contempt they had for people who were fans of their products, and here’s why: they were prosecuting people for being fans.
All of this changed the way people looked at consuming mass media. Whether they wanted to admit it or not, the model for marketing any kind of media product to consumers had changed. Book publishers were unphased to start — the first generation Kindle e-reader didn’t hit the market until 2008. And Amazon and the Kindle are really the reason most of us are so ready to dive into the self-publishing pool instead of going through the tedious process of legacy publishing.
I remember researching the world of legacy publishing after I’d completed my first manuscript, which thankfully I’ve never taken it upon myself to publish. No, it wasn’t a good manuscript, and would’ve been rejected outright by pretty much any legitimate legacy publisher, probably while laughing. The process of submitting my work to both publishers and agents seemed overly daunting and humiliating. How many rejection letters would I have to endure before I’d get the answer I was looking for? Truth is, with the work I had, I’d never get an agent, or a publisher… and if I did, how long before the book actually went on sale? After signing a contract, it still usually takes an ungodly amount of time until you’re published. That manuscript sits on my shelf still.
But I’m not the only one. Far more talented people than me had manuscripts sitting on their shelves when Amazon asked for people to publish books independently with them. Put it on sale in our Kindle store! they said. I also remember reading about Amanda Hocking when her e-books were blowing up. She’d never attracted legacy attention — then she self-published through Amazon and various other outlets and became a pretty big success. I follow her on Twitter because she’s hilarious and I want her to be my best friend, but that’s beside the point. Beyond that, she’s the golden example we all look to – – the model we aspire to: the successful, self-published nobody.
Around 2009, I read a post in a forum that really changed my vision of what I wanted to accomplish in a career as a writer. That post is here — and it’s from one of the most forward thinking musicians of the past three decades, of whom I am an enormous fan. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails (okay, he IS Nine Inch Nails, not just OF Nine Inch Nails) had already experimented with a few models of new marketing. Before leaving his label, he partnered with 42 Entertainment out of his own pocket to create the Year Zero experience, an alternate reality game centered around his 2007 album of the same name. After jettisoning from his label and going the indie route, he made a collection of instrumental music called Ghosts that he put out for $5 – about 2 hours of music. Only about a month or two after that release, he gave away an album called The Slip for free, as a thank you to fans who supported him throughout his career.
The publishing world has similar stories from names like Barry Eisler and J.A. Konrath. These two are fascinating to follow — they both turned away from the legacy publishers to make fortunes on their own. Now they constantly berate the legacy publishing industry with good reason. Barry Eisler recently tweeted about the crux of the problem with the industry: “It’s not just the general falsity of legacy publishing’s perseverated claim to ‘nurture’ authors that baffles me. It’s the implicit notion that authors are infants or children in need of ‘nurturing’ in the first place. We nurture children. We support adults. Authors, you know how legacy publishers view you. How do you view yourselves?”
The reason I bring up the Reznor post is to really get you to think about your goals as a self-published author. He puts it this way for independent musicians just starting out: “If you are looking for mainstream super-success (think Lady GaGa, Coldplay, U2, Justin Timberlake) – your best bet in my opinion is to look at major labels and prepare to share all revenue streams / creative control / music ownership. To reach that kind of critical mass these days you need old-school marketing muscle and that only comes from major labels. Good luck with that one. If you’re forging your own path… Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales. Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY. As an artist you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters.”
Reading that, almost a year before Amanda Hocking even published her first novel, before Eisler turned down half a mil advance, and around the time Konrath went the self-publishing route himself, Trent Reznor told me what I needed to hear. So I spent several years painstakingly crafting another story I wanted to tell, followed every self-publishing blog, and tried to make the best piece of art that I could. Because honestly, the money, the success doesn’t matter.
Late last year, Amazon, the same company who revolutionized e-books with the release of the Kindle, started helping self-published authors give their books away using a program called Kindle Direct Select. Thanks to this program, my piece of art is in the hands of far more people than I myself could’ve marketed to, and probably more than I could’ve sold to had I gone the legacy route — waiting another two years to be published. But that comes with its own set of problems.
Publishing a book now is just a drop in the sea. So many people have seen the model work for Hocking, Konrath, et al that it’s difficult to get noticed. Even using the Direct Select promotional days that help you give your book away for free doesn’t do much unless you’ve had some kind of exposure elsewhere. That’s where blog tours and book reviewers come into the mix. Don’t just think that giving your book away for free for a few days will be enough to help you get noticed. Remember what Reznor said — “As an artist, you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters.”
It’s difficult as an artist to think of your work as a product, but that’s what you’ve got to start doing, and you’ve got to make that product as polished as possible. Distinguish it somehow. What makes your story unique? Focus on your craft, but also focus on what’s going to make people click through the download link. But most of all, do this for you. Forget thinking you’re going to make any real money on book sales. Some people are going to be opposed to just giving their art away for free, thinking they’re entitled to profits from sharing their work.But remember also that the people who get your book for free probably were not people that you were going to sell to anyway.
And that’s really the main point. Getting people to click through that download link is a lot harder even if you’re charging only 99 cents for your book. If it’s free, it’s free. They may never read it, or they may see it on their Kindle and decide, “Hey, I might as well give it a try.” Whether or not we want to admit it, there is a stigma to being a self-published author — that’s why I bring up the fact that I’ve never submitted to a major publisher. The stigma is that we’re somehow not good enough for the legacy publisher, so are we even considered good enough to read? Because we’re cheap?
But who are they to dictate that anymore? They overcharge for e-books anyway. There’s so little overhead that even a 9.99 e-book is absurd to me. I think the Justice Department might agree with me — Apple and the Big 6 legacy publishers are in trouble for keeping e-book prices high to fight Amazon’s “stranglehold” over the publishing industry. Another great response from Eisler, via Twitter: “Cracks me up when legacy publishers complain about Amazon ‘bullying’ them. Ever seen the contents of a publishing contract?”
No. And I hope I never do.
Grant Piercy recently published his debut science fiction novel, The Erased, about a wrongfully detained prisoner tasked with repairing a broken android. It’s currently available as an e-book through Amazon’s Kindle store. He grew up in north central Illinois, but currently lives in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and two dogs. He also enjoys discussing topics related to his writing on his blog.