In other words, you can write a novel, novella, or shopping list and get it out in the world with very little monetary investment on the authors part. And it doesn’t even need to be as eBooks as physical, print on demand, has gone from strength to strength.

And readers are responding to this availability of gatekeeper free material by supporting those writers with sales though as we saw the other day those sales may not replace a full or even part-time job.

One thing that just isn’t  happened for self-published authors on a large-scale is to break into the various circles of critics and reviewers of which I’m one.

Now when I posted Where do authors get their validation in an age of self-publishing? I touched on but didn’t fully address why I don’t review self-published fiction (though I read and buy a lot of self-published non-fiction) so I thought I’d come up with a list. Not all these reasons are mine but are indicative of the issues.

I’m going to use ‘we’ as I think this list is more universal than personal though I’m sure people will let me know if it’s just me.

We don’t know who you are.

This is a biggie and probably the toughest as it’s a bit of a self-fulling prophecy due to the gatekeeper nature of the circles of critics and reviewers.

Logically there should be no good reason why independent critics/reviewers (e.g. those who blog about books) don’t feature a wide range of books from all difference sources. Self-published to big six can easily get review copies out there in some sort of form. So it’s not availability. It’s from the reasons for this post. So I’m going to come back to it at the end.

We don’t know how you’ll react.

The erratic behaviour of the author focused on in Where do authors get their validation in an age of self-publishing? is a strong illustration of why we don’t read self-published authors. We don’t have a firewall between us and the writer. Books from publishing houses that don’t have any self-published books give a level of detachment between what we write and the reaction we’ll get. Sure publishers don’t want negative reviews but they do need to know if they are publishing something that isn’t selling because it’s awful or because it’s good but not reaching the audience. Publishing is a crap shoot.

We’ll feel guilty when we don’t read it.

We have the best of intentions on reading books we agree (and in some cases begged) to look at and of those we get sent by publishers who know us send us unsolicited. It is however physically impossible. And publishers are realistic. I’m sure they are disappointed and do calculate the returns on their investment in certain reviewers and in sending out books for certain authors to certain people but that’s why they have marketing and PR departments that balance those risks with the chances of books catching imaginations and starting word of mouth with is second only to money in raising awareness of books (see back to we don’t know who you are.)

But if we’re approached directly we may have to explain why we haven’t read your book that you wrote that you spend your time talking to us about and getting us to agree to read it only for us to come back with some lame to you excuse like ‘real-life got in the way’ or ‘I got this much better book’.

We know you’re not going to generate hits.

We have several and varying different reasons for spending hours of our free time and reviewing books that aren’t going to attract anyone is a serious consideration for some bloggers. Have you noticed how many reviews of the new Hilary Mantel there are? Everyone likes to be popular unless they are going for underground cult status I guess. You see it’ll attract hits from people who already know about a book and will get redirected via searches to a blog and they might come back. It’s ‘buzz’ content. So you might get bumped when that big buzz book lands.

I’m breaking my ‘we’ voice for a second as I’m been blogging far to long to solely chase hits but doesn’t stop me from being tempted.

We don’t read cute bunny love stories set in Ancient Rome…

… or whatever genre you’ve written in.

Now this one is odd. You’ve gone through all that self-motivation to put your work into a package that you consider is something worth paying for and then you start trying to sell it to someone who doesn’t read it. Again it goes back to ‘we don’t know who you are’ but not only that you’ve waisted both our times by spamming up. See the dilemma you make a connection with us and we probably won’t review it but if you spam us we might not read it either so why not just spam us and save yourself some time?

With bloggers especially it isn’t always about the fixed reviews on their websites. It’s about the conversations that happen elsewhere. You’re planting that seed of awareness. You know of the phrase all publicity is good publicity – being negative not a route I’d recommend btw as it’s a small world – but publicity is about getting out their something as I said before publishers pay a lot for.

But not even that is not enough as even their writers are being asked to promote themselves. You can no longer write a book and let your publisher do all the work. It’s easy for most books that aren’t by established names to get buried. And even then they can fade away if they don’t have fuss made when they come out.

We don’t understand why you don’t like what you’ve written to get introduce it professionally to the right readers, readers who have published their taste over many many blog posts for you to see what kind of books they like.

We know it’s going to be rubbish

Call it a sixth sense or sense of smell or culmination of years of experience but where ever it comes form it’s not usually wrong. We can tell if someone is worth reading is a professional standard after a few pages though even then it might not be a good we want to read or enjoy but at least we won’t be foaming and ranting within second of settling down. Authors can be deluded. Self-published authors doubly so. Not only have your compiled your opus without being consciously aware what you’re written needs to be re-drafted or thrown away as it’s obvious that you’ve not yet mastered the craft of storytelling to an engaging degree. But you’ve got an ego that makes you think that someone else will not see your flaws. The reverse in fact that we will se your genius and wonder why you haven’t got a six-figure publishing deal. We don’t want to break your delusions as mentioned we don’t know how you’ll react but we won’t be guilty we haven’t finished reading you and we are really sorry we now know who you are and hope never to read you again.

Now I know it’s full of sweeping generalisation and I’m sure there are exceptions to every point raised but if self-publisher writers want to be ‘taken seriously’ by those that have ‘respected opinions’ they are going to keep coming up with default opinion that the issue of quality of their work isn’t going to be as good as those that have been through agents, editors, publishing committees, copy editors, book buyers for retailers – most of whom they have needed to get past in order to get published.

In other words reviewers/critics should never be the first critical person that gives feedback on a work. Neither should your friends or relatives unless they are also able to be professionally critical to a high enough standard that upon opening your creation.

This all sounds a bit negative though it’s meant to be realistic as harsh as that sounds. And at some point I want to do a post on why we should review self-published authors though I’m struggling beyond we’re missing out on some great stuff as wading through all the slush to get there doesn’t seem a fair exchange.

Comments?

Half the respondents failed to reach $500 in royalties in 2011, and a quarter of the books are unlikely to cover the direct costs of production. “Sobering” news, wrote Cornford and Lewis. “Who’d come back for more?”

Stop the press: half of self-published authors earn less than $500 – the guardian

But if you’re traditionally published you are made for life right? 

You think writers live in garrets? Think again. Carl Wilkinson introduces the Millionaire’s Club, an exclusive band of authors whose books have sold more than a million copies.

The Millionaire Authors’ Club – The Telegraph

And it’s not as many as you think. 68 authors (some of non-fiction) in the UK have sold 1million copies since 1998.

Of course there is a middle ground – authors on average according to The Telegraph – made £4000 a year in a UK.  

Also see: 

Not a Gold Rush – The report of the Taleist Self-Publishing Survey 2012
Self-publishers fail to earn a fortune shock!

On the 12 July 2012 Bitter Seeds is finally going to be released into the UK. I tend to wait for the UK versions of books if I can this is partly as I’m shallow and like UK design over those of the US (different markets = different covers) but also I like the paper used over here a little more too. In the case of Bitter Seeds it’s had a fraught publishing history in the US even though it had some great reviews on its release. So I’m chuffed it’s coming here.

The year is 1939. Raybould Marsh and other members of British Intelligence have gathered to watch a damaged reel of film in a darkened room. It appears to show German troops walking through walls, bursting into flames and hurling tanks into the air from afar.

If the British are to believe their eyes, a twisted Nazi scientist has been endowing German troops with unnatural, unstoppable powers. And Raybould will be forced to resort to dark methods to hold the impending invasion at bay.

But dealing with the occult exacts a price. And that price must be paid in blood.

What do you think? Exciting?

Detective Inspector James Quill is about to complete the drugs bust of his career. Then his prize suspect Rob Toshack is murdered in custody. Furious, Quill pursues the investigation, co-opting intelligence analyst Lisa Ross and undercover cops Costain and Sefton. But nothing about Toshack’s murder is normal.

Toshack had struck a bargain with a vindictive entity, whose occult powers kept Toshack one step ahead of the law – until his luck ran out. Now, the team must find a ‘suspect’ who can bend space and time and alter memory itself. And they will kill again.

As the group starts to see London’s ancient magic for themselves, they have two choices: panic or use their new abilities. Then they must hunt a terrifying supernatural force the only way they know how: using police methods, equipment and tactics. But they must all learn the rules of this new game – and quickly. More than their lives will depend on it.

This is such a tease! Sadly it’s not published until December

I am not a small press. I am an author with 18 titles for sale. That is more titles that some big publishing houses. I have advertising currently running in Locus, Publishers Weekly, Fantasy and Sci Fi, and Revolver magazines. I have blog advertising across the entire blog-o-sphere. I am not a small press or even self published. [REDACTED]’ books are PUBLISHED by [REDACTED] and should be treated no differently that any big named publishers title.

via my tumblr

The quote above is from a whirlwind surrounding a forum moving a post from one section back into their small press section where it belongs under their rules (for the curious you can read a good summary here: The Man Who Thought He Was King). I’ve [REDACTED] the author and their press as I don’t want to focus on just one author but more a principle that presents itself:

Where do authors get their validation in an age of self-publishing? 

In the case of this author sales aren’t enough. They clearly want that particular forum to recognise and validate that should be seen in the same light as a big-six publisher, which they can’t be. As an individual author they are successful but they don’t have the scale to be anything but a small/inde press. I could go as far as saying they are no more than a self-published author who is very good at what they do (I’m taking their word for it that they are successful). 

Personally I have issues with a self-published author with no platform  apart from being self-published as, at the moment, my instant thought is that it’s not going to be better than the quite high pile of books I already have to read. And I’m sure there are examples of authors who excel but I don’t have to the time to filter out the ones that excel to the ones that are OK. I have a hard enough time doing that with books that have already been through the hands of professionals. 

And before you start saying that books today aren’t edited yadayadayada it’s not going to change my mind. I’ve talked to plenty of editors and writers to know what influence they have. It’s also a straw man. 

Books that go through the whole gatekeeping process that is modern publishing does give those authors a platform to launch themselves. And I’m not limiting that to say Orbit or Tor. I’m including Immanion Press and PS Publishing because they have teams (or one person) that has experience in spotting excellent writing and willing to risk their money and reputation on it.

Now if you’re bigger houses you can take that risk more often or if you’re a smaller press you specialise and build a loyal reader base. But if you’re self-published you’ve created a book and hit upload. That isn’t to say that writing a book isn’t an achievement but I’d be lying that just because you’ve written one you should share it with anyone. Agents and publishers call it a slush pile for a reason. 

Yes they get it wrong, yes the miss great books, but overall they tend to publish books that attract readers. But when I say readers I’m thinking thousands, maybe tens of thousands for most published books. Most writers I know don’t solely write as they just don’t earn the same as they do doing something else. 

So if you do press upload and sit back you’re probably not going to get the money rolling in. You might. I’m not sure how readers will find out about you. But these things happen. Now people write I think because they want to recognised, praised and most importantly read. 

Which brings us back to; Where do authors get their validation in an age of self-publishing? 

If you’re picked up and published the people who recognise and praise you are your agent and your publisher and they validate you before you get to raw readers – for me this make those chosen interesting and exciting. 

If you’ve published yourself you could turn to those groups that seem to be their to pat each other on the back to raise each others profiles but I’m not convinced that they increase the quality of the work that comes out of them.

Even shorter fiction writers are need validation and getting into the right magazine makes them interesting. When I say magazine I’m pleased to see that online magazines have gained themselves a reputation for quality fiction. 

Now some publishers let authors go and they turn directly to their audiences to continue their career and this is where self-publshing makes sense – they have a fan base – they’ve honed their craft even if they haven’t gained a sustainable audience (in a publishers eyes). And authors are choosing to mix self-publshing and more traditional routes, which is really exciting as they can experiment for their core fans and keep drawing in a wider audience with a bit of luck.

But after all that I still can’t really answer: Where do authors get their validation in an age of self-publishing?

Can you?

I haven’t physically been away though a potential house move could have meant I was but I have been mentally elsewhere (and potentially moving certainly didn’t help my focus).

Mentally I’ve been gearing up for The Readers Summer Book Club, which is a bit more of a challenge than I thought. We have The Last Werewolf episode in the bag ready for Monday (I’ll have a review on here on Monday too). Simon and I’m are like swans – graceful on the top and franticly kicking underneath. I wouldn’t not do it though as it’s great fun.

So much fun that I’m launching another one soon:

SF Shrapnel - A Short Short Speculative Fiction Podcast

I’ve got a pile of pretty covers that I want to share. Hopefully that won’t get boring when I start sharing.

I’ve been watching the reaction to a post by John Scalzi on Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is. And the exploring idea of writing about the other (the other being works that centre on cultures or characters that don’t share the writer’s background). I’m hoping to get some thoughts together about those and other topics for a few blog posts.

China Mieville’s Railsea is out tomorrow and I really can’t let too long go without uploading a review. Fingers crossed it’ll be early next week.

I’m going to be popping back more often to keep the dust away and I think the next post is a good way of giving the blog an airing:

Where do authors get their validation in an age of self-publishing?

Orbus is the third book in the Spatterjay series – I know this as William Gaminara reminded me when he started narrating Neal Asher’s return to Sniper and Vrell. This time we the switch in focus to Captain Orbus as he takes us away from the planet Spatterjay and out to the Graveyard, border between the Polity and the Prador Kingdom.

But before we continue I highly recommend reading The Skinner and The Voyage of The Sable Keech  first as Orbus is not a good jumping on point, being the last (so far) in this loosely connecting series. I guess you could read it in isolation but you’d miss a lot what makes Orbus a brilliantly imagined book. If you’re continuing to read I’m including spoilers form now on in. So with that in mind…

Spoiler Warning

Asher has been keeping secrets, the virus of Spatterjay isn’t all that it appears. It is so much more. And the evolution to its true nature is one part of what makes Orbus a crackling read.

At the end of the last book Vrell had entered Vrost’s ship but it’s what he does there which causes the viruses true nature to be revealed and causes the Prador King personally to arrive to finish the job that Vrost has so far failed to do. And you can see why a Prador who is infected with the Spatterjay virus shouldn’t be allowed to leave. Asher also introduces us to the Golgoloth, a myth and a story to scare young Prador, and a creature is that is very real.

Together they create a mix and a direction that I wasn’t expecting after the low level storytelling of the first two as this time the stakes could not be higher for King personally as well as the Kingdom and probably the Polity if the virus manages to get loose, which sounds dramatic, and it is.

Asher gets to stretch himself writing a grand space battle which he handles with fineness as he winds back time to see events from different views and plays out smaller dramas along with the big battle.

Orbus, being an old sea captain, infected with virus and very much mentally tainted by the Polity/Prador war on Spatterjay as explained in The Skinner and The Voyage of Sable Keech makes him a darker hero to follow. And his struggle with killing or saving Vrell at several points makes great reading.

Not that Orbus was expecting this mission when he signed up to Captain the trade ship Gurnard but Asher uses this book to demonstrate the the Polity AIs are quite manipulative and forward thinking.

End Spoiler Warning

The thing I like about Asher is that he’s always pushing and exploring his creation (the Polity). For example I’m going to read The Technician as soon as I can and that is supposed to feature a black (as in magician) AI. Now they might feature in his Agent Cormac series, which after The Technician will be the only books in the Polity I’ve not read, but I know it’s generated a sequel, Penny Royal, that he’s writing now.

But back to Orbus and a question: what should science fiction do? In Asher’s case his science fiction tells a great roller-coaster story and explores survival, genetics, societies, technology and other themes should be present in science-focused fiction. And he manages to show deep thinking without derailing the story he’s chosen to tell.

Though the voice telling this tale is that of William Gaminara who also lifted The Skinnerand The Voyage of Sable Keech off the page. It’s staggering to think that not only does Gaminara have to read for 14 hours plus but he also has to keep up with what voices he’s given to each character and it’s so smoothly done that when he slips (and he did only a handful of times) do you realise how effortless his narration feels.

For me Asher is a master craftsman and makes the Polity one of my favourite storytelling environments. It’s a universe that I’d urge any SF fan to explore right now.

Orbus is out now in paperbook, ebook and audiobook.

Presented without comment

Robert Jackson Bennett – A Sexual Experience from Jake Sam on Vimeo.

I’m sure you’ve already listened to this weeks episode of The Readers but if not here it is!

28th May – The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
4th June – Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
11th June – Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
18th June – Bleakley Hall by Elaine di Rollo
25th June – Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
2nd July – Now You See Me by S.J Bolton
9th July – Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord
16th July – Pure by Andrew Miller

I’m really looking forward to recording these – not only do I get to read a few books away from the norm for me I also get to speak to the authors and then chat about the books with other readers. Very much looking forward to it!

Alright it’s a trilogy of anthologies. No TOC yet but looking forward to seeing the whole list. I’m dipping into the first Book of Cthulhu atm and enjoying it so can’t see why the new anthology would be different.

Coming October 2012 so plenty of time to catch up!