Lulu.com

I love this quote from Publishers Weekly's August 6, 2007 issue:

"'We publish a huge number of really bad books,' admitted Bob Young, the
Canadian enterpreneur who founded the digital tbook publisher Lulu.com in
2002."

The title of the article? "Turning Bad Books into Big Bucks."

As Jim Milliiot of PW explains,

"But that's in keeping with Young's original vision for Lulu, which he sees
as democratizing the publishing process. Rather than publish hundreds of
thousands of copies of a few books, Lulu's mission is to publish 100 copies of
100,000 books."

Apparently to great success, with a projected revenue figure of $30 million for this year.

Uh, thanks but no thanks. While companies like Lulu serve a purpose and I don't begrudge them their sales, there is still a level of acceptance to be met. Until the books are heavily reviewed (and not by shills on Amazon, ie family and friends), there's no way for potential readers to judge, other than by the author (if a known author chooses this route) or by the rep of the company. And if the company will *publish* anything, why should I trust I'll enjoy the reading experience?

At least, Lulu doesn't charge fees upfront for their services, the way many other companies do, but the costs are paid by the author, with a cut going to Lulu. And with its Published by You program, for a $50 fee, they'll get the ISBN for the book.

So, if POD/self-published is how you want to go, this is the better of the companies to try. But I'll wait til I've exhausted the traditional houses. Twice over. I still like the idea of getting paid and having someone else do all the work. After all, I did all the work to write the thing!

DIY Publishing

An article in Thursday's NY Daily News covered "Do-it-Yourself Publishing." Some interesting statistics.

In 2005, the 4 largest POD (print on demand) companies -- which according to the paper are iUniverse, AuthorHouse, Xlibris, and Lulu.com, which all btw, have different reputations, AuthorHouse being the one I've heard the worst about and Lulu.com the best -- printed 17,000 which is a 31 per cent increase from 2001. Bowker's Books in Print database is cited as the source of the info.

The usual frustrations are given for reasons: Agents don't take on books or even respond to queries, agents can't place books with publishers after years of trying, authors can't place books after years of trying. But at least, the pitfalls are realistically discussed.

Mark Gompertz of Simon & Schuster says:

"If you believe in your work, it may be possible that we're all wrong." Self-publishing gives authors "the opportunity to prove it."

But, "'Build it and they will come' does not work in publishing," according to Diane Gedymin, editorial director at iUniverse, which is refreshingly realistic given all the furor over self-publishing by POD services. She says, "You have to hustle." Well, d'uh, but not all, or very few self-published authors get that this is still hard work.

iUniverse stats show first-year sales of their books average 125-150 copies, hardly worth boasting about. The figures show that barely covering the printing costs. And, the article notes,

"A wide range in quality means self-published books still carry stigma, and most reviewers won't review them. Bookstores also shy away from stocking them because they typically can't return unsold copies as they can with a traditional publisher."

This quote from Bowker consultant Andrew Grabois is both pertinent and another d'uh statement:

"The reality is, there's a difference between being published and being sold."

But the quote that really caught my attention, because in an era of YouTube and other consumer created content, it might indicate a future for publishing that really does end up breaking with tradition, though I doubt it will happen on a large scale for quite a while. The quote is from Michael Stadther who put up $3 million (would we all have that kind of money to spend) to self-publish a book, then start a POD service called Everyone Gets Published.

"You're letting the buyer determine the quality of the material rather than some intermediary. There are huge groups of people out there that deserve to get published."

Well, yeah, maybe. But that intermediary is better trained than most people, including authors and their family and friends who are enamored of their words to discern what really is publishable. Sure, they can be wrong, but probably are less wrong than the average newbie writer.

And let's face it, as is mentioned in the article, a pro book deal coming from a self-published book is the ideal, the holy grail. We all like to think we're good enough, not just to be published but to earn enough readers to keep putting out books. We'd like affirmation of our skills, be it from reviews or sales or simply an agent or editor saying, "Wow, this is great." We bypass the latter by self-publishing and need to work extra hard to get the former, requiring our time, money, and energy.

I've been of mixed feelings on this topic for a long time. Sure, I print up my little spy stories, written with a couple of friends, but the most readers we've had at our peak is 35-40. That's not even enough to be a blip on the radar. And I certainly don't have time to really promote a novel. I understand having so much faith in your writing that you'll put time and money into getting it to readers, but which is the better option: Doing it yourself or selling it to a publisher who will do a lot of that other work for you? Will they promote your first or even second book as it deserves? If it's good, either can work. If it's not good, nothing is likely to work.

It always comes down to quality, quality as perceived by the many, not the few.

POD

POD publishing, aka Print on Demand, has its good and bad points. Here's a reposted entry about my thoughts on the subject.
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From "Publishers Weekly," 1/30/06 issue:

"The advent of POD has given authors who have been bypassed by traditional publishers or who are interested in keeping control over their work more opitons than ever for getting into print.Now, a number of publishers that provide more services than traditional vanity presses or their POD counterparts have sprung up. Literary Architects, based in Indianapolis, and Syren Book Co., based in Minneapolis, are j8ust two examples of these new companies that charge a range of fees to publish a book."

The acquisitions director for Literary Architects comes from traditional publishing houses and the company is currently accepting about 25 per cent of submitted proposals, though that's expected to decrease as more people start submitting.

Both companies offer editing, design, production, do fulfillment and marketing and both pay royalties, same as traditional publishers. The difference between them and traditional publishing is that they give authors the final say and the authors retain all rights. Both companies focus on non-fiction, which I suppose, is no surprise, since that tends to lend itself to authors publishing on their own and carving out a niche market.

The main difference between the two companies is internal, it seems. Literary Architects outsources most of its services, while Syren provides everything in-house. And though they don't have sales departments, their books do get listed with Ingram and Baker & Taylor.

Just another option to consider, especially if you're writing non-fiction.
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I have no problems with POD as a concept. For people who want to do small print runs of nice looking books for family and friends (family cookbooks, family histories) or for publishers looking to keep backlist titles in print without having to deal with stock, the process of print on demand is very attractive. And some authors have had success with self-published books, either using POD services or traditional printing houses, but as with any technology, POD is neutral and can be used for both good and evil.

Unfortunately, there are people out there looking for shortcuts (or, failing to find the magic formula, decide to make their own) or who are paranoid that the traditional publishers won't see the brilliance of their prose out of some prejudice against newbies. These people either fail to get their mss edited or if they do have someone edit it, they don't get a proper edit. Instead of an honest appraisal, they get what they want to hear. And then they publish their brilliant story. They might publicize it up the wazoo and they'll probably sell a bunch of copies, but unless they're one of the very few who actually wrote something brilliant, and maybe are lucky enough to attract the attention of the traditional publishers and get a distribution deal or a book deal for their next brilliant ms, they're doomed to be just more in a growing list of people whose opinion of their writing is not shared by most of the book buying public.

But I don't blame POD. I blame the companies using POD who firmly believe in the sucker born every minute concept and seek to exploit it. Then again, maybe the people whose eogs outstrip their common sense just get what they deserve. Which leads me to this: We can do our best to educate folks, make sure they know what they're getting into, the hard work involved, the highly specialized work that might best be left to experts in those areas, etc. and if they still want to go ahead, let them.

In this case, the writer got so much wrong, education wouldn't have made a difference. I've encountered enough self-published or vanity-published writers on writers boards, some of whom are trolls, to know that. The bit about wanting to control everything including the cover design, well, once you see it, you might feel, as I did and apparently so do others, that perhaps the cover should have been left to the experts. It sure wouldn't make me want to pick it up in a store and read it, and especially not on an online listing.

Plagarism and Fanfic

From Publishers' Weekly.
From the May 1, 2006 issue:

Sara Nelson's editorial on Little, Brown and the Kaavya Viswanathan (How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life) plagarism scandal mentioned something I hadn't seen about it before, not that I was reading the articles and blog entries all that carefully because the whole subject of plagarism these days is getting tedious and almost too commonplace, which is rather depressing. But in her editorial, Nelson mentioned that the copyright is shared by Alloy Entertainment, a known book packager. She says, in conclusion:

"We've known for years that publishers, probably including Little, Brown, have long employed freelance editors and 'book doctors,' of which packagers are just an institutional version. But Little, Brown has to resort to this? Realizing that a major house is willing to pay major money for a book that executives knew was going to require major works smacks of something majorly disturbing. It suggests that even the most well-bred publishing houses are not as desperate to find promising writers and great novels as they are to find attractive authors (preferably with interesting backstories) with whom they can match up test-marketed, packaged stories. And then they can take all the credit.
"Or blame, as the case may be."

And then, on the following page, I saw this headline: "'Star Wars' POD Fan Fiction Flap." Yes, my dear fl and other readers, Lori Jareo, who has been the subject of many a blog post re: her Another Hope, SW fan fic novel, made Publishers Weekly!

Not much new here, and PW did a nice job explaining fan fic in brief (though they said it comes from fans of "fantasy empires," which, I suppose is accurate since all fiction can be called fantasy, even cop shows). But I enjoyed this item:

"The book was published via Jareo's own print-on-demand company, WordTech Communications, which previously specialized in poetry. WordTech's books are available through Ingram, which is how Another Hope ended up on Amazon."

And this, re: Jareo's claim her book wasn't commercial and only her friends and family knew about it:

"Lucasfilms thought otherwise, and asked for the book to be removed. Before it was taken down by Amazon, the book at one point ranked at #13,371 in sales."

Wow, that's a lot of family and friends (oh, and acquaintances). Sheesh.

I especially like this quote about fan fic from Keith R.A. DeCandido, author of many a tie-in novel:

"I think it'll hae a much bigger effect on POD publishers. Book distributors and book vendors now have to be more careful with the product they get from them."