Cover thumbnails

Here are two thumbnails from cover designer Brian Sasville.

The obvious one.

 

The subtle one.

Why Genre Won’t Matter

If you’re old enough, you may remember going to a record (CD) store and you’d find three sections: Classical, Jazz, and Rock and Roll. Within those sections, everything would be found alphabetically by the artist’s name. Much later, just before Tower Records went belly-up, you would have found a zillion micro-mini-sections of categories separated out to the Nth degree: Trance was next to house which was next to ambient which was next to industrial. I remember wanting to blow my brains out trying to find where they put “Portis Head.” (It was in Acid Jazz.) Ten years prior it would have just been in good ol’ Rock and Roll.

Record stores did that because they knew their audiences were granularizing. They knew because they were looking at the internet. On the internet, when you bought a Mazzy Star CD they would know that you might also like Portis Head. So Tower Records started granularizing their categories to create this effect. They were trying desperately to “be like the internet.” It didn’t work.

Today musical categories don’t exist for any practical purpose. You go to Pandora and say “I like Boards of Canada” and they will start playing them and then toss in an “Aphex Twin” based on massive amounts of listener behavior. There are no genres or niches in music anymore.

The same exact thing is happening now with books. Borders is already gone. Have you been to Barnes & Noble lately? They are starting to get micro-mini categories on their shelves. The similarities are so exact it’s hilarious. So in my estimation, Barnes & Noble will be gone, or it’s business model will transform into something different. As the last retail book stores effectively go away, so will genres and niches. Amazon has an abysmal categorization scheme. What they do have are tags, and an even more lucrative model that once again utilizes buyer behavior. If you buy Tom Robbins’ “Still Life with Woodpecker,” Amazon will suggest Jennifer Egan’s “A Visit From the Goon Squad.”

So don’t worry from niches. They were tools of the past that helped publishers sell books, but they won’t be in the future.

The Paradigm Shift in Publishing and the New Business Models that Will Result

The new paradigm of self-publishing stands to eradicate many huge flaws of the previous model. However, it will also create new flaws not previously experienced by book buyers. It seems certain that new types of businesses will arise to resolve these issues and capitalize on the massive trend toward self-publishing.

The Previous Paradigm

Traditional publishing had a number of valid constraints, and the entire model evolved out of the prudent measures enacted by successful publishers.

1. Books were sold at bookstores.
   1. The book needed to appear substantive (long) enough to warrant the cost.
   2. The book needed a cover that would allow it to stand out from the other books on the shelves and to attract the target market.
   3. The book needed a price point that would ensure a profit.
   4. In order to sell enough books at bookstores, they had to be printed in large quantities.
   5. In order to protect the capital required for the printing and shipping, the publisher had to be able to “guarantee” a certain number of sales. They would protect their investments by ensuring excellence in the following ways:
      1. The avoidance of “risky” books that tried something new, or were thought to be difficult to market
      2. The propensity toward books that were like another book that just sold well.
      3. Investing in cover designs that were sanctioned by marketing experts.
      4. Investing in developmental editors who understood at a deep level what would make a book desirable to readers.
      5. Investing in copy editors and proofreaders
      6. Investing in layout artists
      7. Investing in publicity (i.e. radio/TV spots, merchandising gimmicks, free copies to book reviewers, etc.)
      8. Using the services of agents, who tended to be a “bozo filter” and winnow the myriad of hopeful authors to only a select few.

What resulted was a royalty scheme that gave the author about 10%-15% of the revenue from sales. This wasn’t evil profit-mongering as much as it was a natural outcome of the existing business model. The paradigm, which existed for a few hundred years, created a standard of excellence that many burgeoning authors take for granted. People are accustomed to reading books whose covers accurately predict their contents, are free of spelling, syntactical, or factual errors, and tell stories that “work” on a very basic level.

The Problem

The disadvantages in the above paradigm are not well hidden.

1. Authors do not make much money. Authorship is a less lucrative way for the world’s greatest minds to spend their valuable time.
2. Book lengths were an imaginary constraint created by financial needs, and not necessarily based on what would make the story its most satisfying to the reader. This meant a story told best in 200 pages would contain 100 additional pages of fluff. It would work on a merchandising level at the expense of the story’s quality.
3. Published books tended to follow well-trodden tropes and storylines. New ideas that may have been perfectly profitable were unproven in the market, so a risk-averse publisher would turn them away. Additionally, “Information bubbles” tended to push out ideas that were objectionable to the majority of book buyers. Who knows how many great novels were never published because of these problems.
4. A writer would have to surrender a significant amount of creative ownership over to the publisher. Sometimes this was good, sometimes not.
5. The time between the completion of a novel and its arrival on bookstore shelves could sometimes take years, making books a less relevant medium of information.
6. Recently, many publishers have foisted the responsibility and cost for much of the quality, as well as the publicity, back on the author.
7. For readers, the author seemed like a celebrity far away, untouchable. They would love to be able to interact with the author, ask questions, etc. But they can’t.

The Solution

Electronic self-publishing has exploited these disadvantages. The new paradigm can involve all of two people: the writer and the reader. A writer can upload his book to an online bookseller via an online service and single-handedly publish his novel without any oversight, editing, fact-checking, cover or page design, marketing, or publicity. It can be about any topic, regardless of how controversial. The book can be 25 pages long, and can be free. Or it can cost $1,000. As long as one reader buys it, the author stands to make 70% of the revenue. He can set up a web page or use social media to interact with his readers. Ideas are not constrained, and will be accepted or rejected by the populace without an intermediary.

The simplicity and the creative freedom are gorgeous. The new model of self-publishing is an obvious choice for many writers.

The New Problem

A writer can get a huge rush when finishing a book. Believe me, I know. The writer gets an overpowering feeling that the world MUST read it NOW, and that his new book is amazing. With today’s model, he can scratch that itch. But rushing to a virtual press makes the author vulnerable to several pitfalls:

1. Bad covers. When scrolling through the myriad of self-published books, the thing that immediately stands out are the horrible covers. Writers are far too frequently discounting the importance of a well-designed book cover, or inflating their own ability to create covers, or both. They ask their friends, who have untrained eyes and who want to encourage their authorial aspirations. The results are often humorously bad.
2. Inferior stories. Developmental editors are the unsung heroes of literature. They will help an author squeeze his lump of coal into a diamond. Unless you’ve seen it in action, you may not fully grasp how this works. Without substantial editing from an outside expert, a novel may suffer from major issues that are not visible to a myopic author.
3. Typos. This is a kiss of death for many buyers (including me). I will read the opening page or two, and if I see a typo, misspelled word, or even a vague pronoun reference, I will pass on the book. Guaranteed. An author who lets one slip into the first few pages is not concerned about quality, and I have no interest in reading such an author.
4. Bad page design. This is less important, but can also detract from the professional look and feel of a book.
5. Publicity and Marketing. Putting a book up on Amazon and telling all your friends on Facebook is not enough to make a dent. It requires a lot of work, creative marketing, press releases, free copies to reviewers, etc. A writer who ignores this will quickly fall into obscurity.
6. Credibility. Seeing a book on the shelf at Barnes & Noble lends it a great deal of gravitas. It was selected by an agent and publishing house, had advanced printing and looks good. We expect quality, and we will get it. With a self-published book through some online service, you may expect quality but you will quite possibly not get it.

And Here’s the Point:

The traditional publishing industry lulled book buyers into a sense of complacency and trust. They are going to quickly learn, however, that self-published books lack the same bozo-filters that they took for granted with the previous paradigm. This may (but probably won’t) result in a backlash to the huge spike in sales of self-published books. To the chagrin of many terrible writers, new filters are going to replace the old filters, and new business will rise to fill the gap that will give book buyers methods to protect them from buying terrible books.

The New Solutions

Seems obvious, doesn’t it? A growing number of writers will be turning to a suite of services to doctor, edit, design, lay out, market, and lend credibility to their books. Or, they will use a single service that does it all. The writers who use these services set their books apart from the books that look like they were put together by third graders. And the talent base for all these services exists at the current publishing houses.

Many new companies have already sprung up to help writers convert their books to digital format. A scant few of them are seeing the deeper need already, and are adapting a new model that offers no advances, publishes digitally, and provides publishing services while giving the author a much higher percentage of the profits. I guarantee that many existing traditional publishing houses will continue to offer their services, but adapt a more streamlined paperless model. Their royalty tables will either have to change, or all their authors will be chumps.

I will opt to self-publish and do my damnedest to make my book as good as it can be before publishing it.

Apprehensions

It’s hard to express how much apprehension I have about publishing this novel.

While I’ve had enough confidence to write it, and invest some money in the design, editing, and publicity, etc., the cacophony of voices in my head are often loud enough to drown out whatever self-encouragement I’m able to muster. What if I’m just a crazy guy who has written a book? What if my message is lost in all the minutiae? What if my Christian friends and family are so repulsed by the book that it harms those relationships?

But the loudest fear of all is this: what if I listen to those voices and don’t publish it? The debate ends right there. I would rather go to my grave knowing that I tried, even if I fail.

Status update: the rewrite is completely done, and I’m exactly 50% done with the final proofing. Then I will be sending it off to a few readers to get one last round of feedback. One more round of editing after that, then it’s off to the designer. I will be employing my good friend Stephen to do the graphic design. I should have a few covers to post soon. I’m doing research into publicists now, and if I have any money left over, may hire a professional editor.

Onward!

 

Welcome to my Blog

My novel “Zealot” will be published in 2012. My second rewrite is complete, and I am currently applying the finishing touches.

“Zealot” is a novel that focuses on a devout Christian named Paul who is attending a contemporary “mega-church” in Southern California. Paul believes he has received a special assignment from God, and devotes himself to its completion. As we see him interpret his reality through the filter of the Bible and its historical interpretations, we come to understand how his viewpoint can ultimately introduce danger and chaos into our society.

I have special insight into the character of Paul because I used to be almost exactly like him. I was once a devout attendee of a mega-church in Southern California. I went on mission trips, witnessed in the streets, led Bible studies, and attended seminary. The voice of God within me seemed as real as my own breath. At age 32, however, my cognitive dissonance reached its peak and I de-converted. After years of rumination, study, and growth, I’ve re-emerged as an atheist and written this novel.

I will occasionally post updates here, but you can expect some lively conversation after the book is published.