E-publishing and Leaving the Traditional Publishing Track

I'd like to get this off my chest. I've heard a lot of people talking about the easy way to get published: E-publishing on Amazon, self publishing with Kickstarter, e-publishing on Smashwords, self publising through __________, e-publishing through _________. You get the picture.

I am not opposed to any of these methods. They might work. They might be great. I've heard anecdotal evidence supporting each one of these routes to a writing career.

But what I am a bit agitated about is the attitude I'm seeing about this kind of publishing. We're vilifying the traditional publishing industry and trying to pretend like we have found out how to turn lead into gold. Some things may need to change in the publishing industry. Your route to being published may be different than those of a writer 30, 20, or even 10 years ago.

But don't eat the crap with the cupcake.

There is no EASY way to publishing.

The traditional publishing market rose up by a bunch of people working hard to make money in publishing. Can you trust them? I don't know. Are they just up there trying to steal all of your money and make an easy profit from your work? Maybe.

But they've been around a while and some of the things they're doing is because they gets results. Lets take a look at what does work.**

• Starting with a good book - No amount of hype will cover up for a terrible book. If people don't like it now, they won't like it just because it's in a pretty dust jacket. Trad-publishers don't always get it right, but the best thing you can do to get lots of people to read and buy your book is to write something they will enjoy.
• Editing - Get your book edited professionally. 
• Lots of books - Look at all your favorite authors. If they make a living from their works they have a lot of them. In Sci-fi/Fantasy you won't likely make a living off of one book, and you won't have a big following until you've got a few books out. You can make money off the first book, but if you want to make a living you've got to keep writing. J.K. Rowling was popular, but did you hear about her after book 1? Book 2? Book 3? How many books until you break out?
• Advertising - No matter who you are you've got to let people know about your book. Even if you want to be successful on Kickstarter or Amazon you'll need to tell people about your book. Marketing is important.
• It takes time - You might get picked up by 10 billion people the day after you upload your text to Amazon. But be realistic. How many books do you buy a day? How many books do you read a day? If you give a copy of your manuscript to your best friend and it takes him three months to get through it, it might take that long for other people to read it too. It will take time to get your book around. Advertising will help, but it will still take time. Don't be afraid of it, just be ready for it.
• It takes money - No matter what you think about Traditional Publishing, they've been the ones to front the cash for many years. It takes money to advertise, edit, design a cover, get the layout done, market, and more. There are many ways to get this done with less money now, but don't dream. It will take some money to publish a book. If you can use someone else's money that's better, but then you'll need to find someone to give you that money (here's where kickstarter and the sort come in).

I'm not talking bad about any route to successful publishing. I have my preferences, but if you found a different route that you prefer then take it. But don't imagine it will be easy. Learn from the old ways, and take what the did learn. Put in the work, get lucky where you can, have fun, live the dream, and don't give up. Be in it for the long haul. Get rich quick schemes are bad news. Keep your eye on the prize, and put in the work. I'll see you on the other side.

**I'm talking about Sci-fi/Fantasy. If you are a motivational speaker, if you are writing poetry, children's books, or if you're writing non-fiction it still takes work, but you may have other routes open to you. Research what has worked in the past and then decide how to put that to work for you.

To Agent or not to Agent?

Once you've written a book and you want to get someone to read it (besides your kid sister) and possibly give you money for your hard work and tears. So what now?

There are plenty of proponents for e-books, self publishing, and doing everything yourself. Should I try to get published with a big publisher? Should I get an agent? Should I submit directly to the publishers? Should I sell my book online and forget about both agents and publishers? Should I publish myself and spend my time selling the book on street corners? Should I start up my own publishing company?

These are some common questions. Though the last two may be less common. Today I'm going to share my views on the agent question. Should you get an agent?

For starters we should figure out what an agent is. The very idea of an agent means someone who does your work for your. A literary agent is someone who will do just that, in theory. Currently a literary agent will go out and represent your book to big publishers. A literary is not giving you a product, they are providing you with a service. In the current market you shouldn't be paying your agent up front. Instead you pay your agent a percentage of the money they get for you (Usually anywhere from 10-15%). In this sense an agent is good because they'll be trying to get more money for your book.

A publisher, on the other hand, is not an agent. A publisher is also a connector, but they aren't just representing you. A publisher is providing a product, the hard bound or electronic version of the book. They are licensing (or purchasing) the right to use your words. With a publisher it's also a joint venture. They want the book to succeed as well. The difference is that the publisher usually pays the writer, you, a portion of what they make off of using your words on their paper. And just like you don't want to give all of your money to the Agent, the publisher doesn't want to give all of their hard earned money to you. Usually the publisher has the upper hand here, so an agent also represents you in bargaining with the publisher.

In both cases, the agent and publisher, one of the things you are paying for is connections. Theoretically you could do all of this yourself, but the publishers and agents are levying their specialization to take the workload, and some of the money, off your plate.

Let's look at it this way. For my chosen genre, sci-fi/fatasy, it is highly recommended to get an agent. Many of the bigger publishers won't accept submissions without agents, and even when the do it goes to a slush pile. If you want to see a movie and you've got 5 to choose from but you've never heard of any of them the choice becomes much easier if you have a friend recommend one of them. If you've taken that friend's recommendations a number of times and been pleased every time then even more so. Now take that list out to 1000 choices and you see what a publisher has to face. As a writer you're like the movie company trying to get the publisher to check out your stuff. A good agent is like the friend that makes the good recommendations. I still send to some publishers, but mostly I'm looking for an agent.**

Why?

For one thing I don't have the same connections. For another I don't have the capitol to print 1,000,000 copies of my book. With the advent of the internet e-book and e-readers I may not need either. That's still up for debate with some heavy hitters on both sides. So the question still stands.

Why an agent?

Well, here's the one thing that I can't get. An opinion. I mean I've got plenty of opinions. But professional validation of my work means a lot to me. An agent who reads and represents books to publishers for a living knows something about what makes a book successful. A publisher who buys and sells books in a desperate gamble to make some money also needs to know something about quality, or else they are soon an ex-publisher.

I can e-publish my book and get validation from the readers (which is the end result I want anyway), but I have to convince a thousand people to read my book and respond. If I can get the half dozen people from agent to publisher to read my book and respond positively then I have professional validation. To me that means the same thing, but I didn't have to wait for 1000 people to find and read my book. Publishers and Agents may make mistakes, but if I have their validation then I can have some idea that I'm on the right track. (Again, this might be undermined by the e-book phenomenon, but I still hold publishers and agents in esteem for now.)

I have currently chosen to pursue publication with a traditional publisher, and I am seeking the representation of an agent. I don't want to send out my work unless it is good. I don't want the whole world to read my book if it doesn't meet a basic level of quality. Don't get me wrong. There are crappy books published both traditionally and as e-books. Proponents of e-books use this to downplay the importance of traditional publishers as gatekeepers. I'm not talking about other books. I want my book to be the best it can be. Could I e-pub? Possibly. That's a question for another post.

**I should of course make the qualification that Agents can also be that bad friend that Publishers duck behind the copier to avoid. Good agents have a good network and publishers that trust their recommendation (and so they will only recommend you if they think your work is worth publishing). Good publishers will only publish something they think will sell. You can be your own agent if you want to go to the conferences, keep up on publishers weekly, make your own connections. It's a personal choice, but I've made mine.