Shot Out of a Cannon
I’m told that there are people who find the holidays restful. I have yet to meet one of these extraordinary creatures, but I think they would find holding the publishing industry’s first grand-slam conference of the year in the second week of January to be a dandy thing. Bright-tailed and bushy-eyed, they’d dash out, we must assume, tinsel still in their hair, ready to take on the rigors of Digital Book World’s (DBW) day-and-night glad-handing and info-processing with “Happy New Year!” energy.
Those of us who find the holidays something less than restful are cheering the news that Digital Book World next year moves to March 7 to 9.
[pullquote]What do we expect in return for heavy investment in our work? What do we expect a publisher to invest?[/pullquote]
For now, the sixth annual doing of Digital Book World in New York City — the 2015 edition — has just closed, with the Avenue of the Americas’ face-freezing winds to slap us out of The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.
Expertly mounted and run like clockwork at the Hilton Midtown by David Nussbaum’s F+W Media staff — led by David Blansfield, Gary Lynch, Beth Dean, Taylor Jacobs Sferra — Digital Book World drew more than 1,200 attendees this year, plus a lot of industry folks who needed to meet those attendees. I can’t remember a conference with so many requests for private chats with start-up personnel and key services outfits. Many of them “surround the conference,” as one observer put it, meeting harried attendees for coffee and a deal on West 53rd, 54th, 56th. We gave nearby cafes, restaurants, and lounges a lot of business.
Mike Shatzkin once again programmed the event, somehow achieving 12 keynote events, a DBW record, I believe, including an impressive conversation with Amazon’s Russ Grandinetti and a rare sighting of an Apple exec, the iBooks chief Keith Moerer.
[pullquote]Is it possible that we assign a causal effect — “the more I invest, the more I’ll get back” — to this kind of work, more as a common way of thinking than as an accurate view of market conditions?[/pullquote]
#DBW15 to its Twitter friends is an industry conference, not a writers’ conference. That distinction may not be the one everyone would prefer, but the event — focused on business movements, trends, and perspectives — throws off all kinds of energies and implications for writers, of course.
One annual element that directly involves writerly talent is the delivery of the Digital Book World author survey. This year it has a small novella of a title: Authors Facing the Industry: Data and Insights from Authors on the Publishing Business, Author-Publisher Relations, and Marketing. It’s for sale, as you can see, but I’ve talked with DBW editorial director Rich Bellis, and he’s going to be making available some insight articles about its details soon, from the survey’s author, the sociologist Dana Beth Weinberg.
My close colleague and WU icon Jane Friedman — also known as Porter’s Brain — was with us this year at DBW, looking good in her cannon helmet and ably moderating a panel discussion that was prompted by the new survey.
Can We Survey Our Own Expectations?
I had been provided with a copy of the executive summary in advance and I’ve written up some of the key points of what turns out this year to be a very thoughtful bit of work.
You can read that piece here at The Bookseller’s The FutureBook: Digital Book World surveys authors — ‘Risks, Rewards, Commitment.’ If you’re not familiar with it, The FutureBook is our no-paywall, read-it-free digital-publishing-community site. You’re always most welcome to join us there.
The DBW survey is voluntary, meaning that the 2,545 authors who answered its questions were responding to a call for input, not selected in a controlled sample.
The report that Weinberg has produced puts its attention on the 1,879 published authors included in that survey universe.
To quickly recap here some of the more interesting components of that group, and quoting from Weinberg’s commentary:
- More than half of this author sample group has only indie-published (55.8%, n=1,049).
- 13.0% have only traditionally published (n=245).
- Close to a third (31.1%, n=585) have done both.
- The sample includes a mix of both experienced and relatively new authors as well as a mix of prolific and less accomplished authors.
- Compared to the other two types of authors, the hybrid authors in the sample tend to be older and to have had longer and more prolific careers.
- The vast majority of authors in this study reported that their latest book was fiction, with romance representing the most popular category both for traditional and for indie publications. Thus, the results of this report will be most applicable to genre fiction publishing.
- The “average” respondent to the survey (based on median results) is a college-educated woman in her mid- to late-forties who indie-publishes genre fiction, most likely romance, has published three books and began publishing in 2011.
- In all, a total of 830 respondents provided information on their most recent traditional publishing experiences, and 1,634 respondents provided information on their most recent indie-publishing experiences.
And the issue I’d like to pull out for you today — your bit of Porter-provocation — is the sensible question Weinberg is able to extract from the mass of data produced by the survey: How does your investment in your work affect its performance in the marketplace?
This is an intelligent framework for weighing questions of traditional- and self-publishing, in that the “risks and rewards” context Weinberg is using lets you think of the main available pathways to market in light of how much they require — how much expense, in other works, in many terms: financial, time, impact on lifestyle, health, energy, outside support, internal fortitude…investment. It takes a lot.
Print and Digital, Time and Money
Weinberg, in her executive summary writes:
Within the different modes of publishing there are also differences in the level of investment on the parts of both authors and publishers.
For example, even when publishers absorb the bulk of risk, as in the advance-paying model, there are still wide variations in how much money a publisher may invest in any given book, starting with the amount of the advance itself.
Within indie publishing, there may be differences in how much the author invests in producing and distributing their books. In addition, authors who start their own companies commit to the investment of legal fees, above and beyond the costs of producing and promoting their books.
In that last point, Weinberg is referring to the LLC or other incorporation that some authors use to handle the business side of their work. She’s careful to count that step as part of the expense, the investment, that a writer may make during a career tilted at the marketplace.
But without going into the full sweep of her study — I’m extracting only one of its points of emphasis — it’s interesting to consider this “investment” element of her findings. ROI, return on investment, is a common factor in much business calculation. But in creative work, and even in relation to selling creative work, I wonder how clear our heads are at moments we should consider any number of ROI dilemmas.
Weinberg:
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Authors whose books are selected for print distribution tend to earn more on those books than authors whose books are not—a median of $1,000–$2,999 for digital-only and print-on-demand books and $5,000–$9,999 for books with print distribution.
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However, for advance-paying publishers in this sample, the majority of whom invested in print distribution, this factor is not as predictive of book earnings as advance amount is
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The findings clearly suggest that the investments by publishers and indie authors in their projects directly relate to sales and earnings. Moreover, these findings suggest that the difference in expected outcomes for an author’s books correspond not only to publishing mode but also to the level of investments made in a given project.
A hybrid author, herself, Weinberg is sensitive to expectations, which is where I think so much of this discussion is richest for authors:
What do we expect in return for heavy investment (of whatever type) in our work? — for our own investments? — for a publisher’s investments? — an agent’s investments? — even a family’s investments of support for a writing parent or child?
- What would you say are your key investments in your work?
- Can you expect them, realistically, to affect the outcome of that work in the marketplace?
- Is it possible that we assign a causal effect — “the more I invest, the more I’ll get back” — to this kind of work, more as a common way of thinking than as an accurate view of market conditions?
- Does your experience, if you have it, with publishing houses seem to reflect what Weinberg is saying? — print drives better returns?
- Let us know.
About Porter Anderson
@Porter_Anderson is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives, the international news medium of Frankfurt Book Fair New York. He and Jane Friedman co-own and produce @The Hot Sheet, the essential industry newsletter for authors. Anderson previously was The Bookseller's Associate Editor for The FutureBook in London. Formerly with CNN, CNN.com and CNN International–as well as the Village Voice, the Dallas Times Herald, and other media–he has also been a featured writer with Thought Catalog in New York, creating as a longtime arts critic the #MusicForWriters series. More on his consultancy: PorterAndersonMedia.com | Google+
The key “investment” for any author is the writing itself. Over the course of time, that’s the one thing they control and should care about most. The secret here comes from another business maxim: Keep the main thing the main thing.
The other bit of enduring wisdom comes from the Stoics. My rough translation of the Greek is: “Expectations are for chumps.”
And: “Don’t worry about the things you can’t control, for that way lies madness and lack of sleep.”
So my investments are primarily in writing the best I can, getting good feedback, revising and sending the works into the world, and not letting the fluctuations affect me. When good things happen I’m pleased, and when they don’t I keep working so I increase my odds of … good things happening.
I’m happiest when I’m working on a new project.
You know, Jim,
At this rate, you’ll have more aphorisms out there than Werner Erhard. (“It’s easier to ride the horse in the direction it’s going.” And the immortal: “Understanding is the booby prize.”)
Thanks for this. I think that in many ways your career structure — by which I mean the high level of output, the multiplicity of genre/type and mode (self- and traditional), the pedagogical element — play well into what Dana Weinberg’s interpretation of the DBW survey data is saying.
It’s no secret, of course, that this survey’s 2014 doing led to a lot of very controversial comment in the author community, and I’ve found it interesting that Weinberg this year has floated such an instructive and thoughtful tack on such once-troubled seas.
She doesn’t stop at the “risks and rewards” angle of the title. Instead, she presses on to a concept of the effect investments (of many kinds) might have ON those risks and rewards. And — per your communion with the Stoics — the attendant expectations that seem to turn up so quickly for people when “risk and reward” questions come down the pike.
Some of the harder-line points she finds are fascinating — for example, the input of from the field (and this survey is voluntary, we have to remember) suggests that a print component in the contract will make a big difference in the return. But how odd is it that this trend seems NOT to hold as well when it’s part of a deal that includes an advance??
You will know — you always do — who said this one (and I’ll give it the family edition): “Nobody knows anything.” Who is that? — somebody in Hollywood about which films might work and which might not. This wasn’t Goldwyn, was it?
It’s how things look at the moment in publishing, and especially for authors trying to select a way forward, really. For all this kind of good survey work, it’s as if nobody knows a thing, really. The “surprise hits” are, inevitably, just that.
And boy, can that keep a chump’s expectations soaring, huh?
Thanks, Jim, as always — and sorry for the late replay. Friday was something out of Dante, and I won’t be translating the precise line for you: I can never tell when Dan Brown is listening in.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
It was William Goldman, Porter. The famous screenwriter. By which he meant, no one in Hollywood really knows what will guarantee a hit, which is why so many duds are made.
Sam Goldwyn, of course, was famous for his malaprops. Every now and then one of them was quite sound, such as this timeless advice for writers: “I don’t think anybody should write his autobiography until after he’s dead.”
I knew you’d know, Jim.
Yes, I love Goldwyn. Especially on the one about color television: “I won’t believe it until I see it in black and white.” :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
This is a good provocation, Porter. It’s a question I’m sure all writers (and authors) ask themselves, no matter their level of involvement in marketing. We spend hours stretched often over months–sometimes years–invested in crafting something for readers. Some, such as myself and many others here, write what we are truly passionate about, rather than what we’re told will sell, yet we still invest those hours to make a story that we intend will seize a reader’s attention.
Do you get out what you put in? If it’s money, then perhaps not. But for me I’m not there for the money–I’m there because I realize in a few (hopefully several) decades I will be dead and there are stories in me begging to be expressed. I feel if I don’t write them–do whatever it takes to unveil them, to get them right, to strain against my braces until I’m strong enough to burst free–then my existence on this earth has been pointless. And so I write.
Money doesn’t have to factor into that, but inevitably it will. I truly believe that all stories can make it. Failure is the result of giving up before you succeed. True, some things aren’t worth sticking it out for, but the things we yearn for the most we never give up on. Rooting for those things make us who we are.
And so I come back to my stories again and again. Call it an act of faith. The bar is high. Very, very, very high. The market is saturated. It is not enough anymore for a book to be good. Even great will not cut it. A book must be relentless, compelling. But I trust that what I’m doing is going to add up.
What will I get? Satisfaction. This is really what I want to do with my life. In fact I want to do it so much I’m even willing to live in near poverty so I can invest the needed time in my work. Money, recognition, happy readers–those are great rewards, but not my motivation.
Hey, John,
I think you’re in a very lucky position is your work is really something you’re doing for the satisfaction of expressing yourself and not, as you tell us, for money.
I’m never in the mood to tell people to write what will sell, and I’m rather put out, frankly, with the people who keep telling our genre writers — especially on the self-publishing side — to get out five and six books a year, just crank them out, because a volume of titles is what works in online sales. (You watch — a volume of titles will, at some point, fall apart as a sales approach, too. All our “sure thing” approaches so far have crashed, gone limp, or dried up.)
At the same time, I’m there for the money. :)
Well, not entirely, no, but to be perfectly honest about this, I worry that we’ve made it very hard for people to own up to the fact that money is a motivating factor for many. Certainly, it’s getting ridiculously hard to make any money in writing. Our industry’s rush to the digital stream has panned it out. They’ve trampled the lawns, eaten up all the oxygen, eclipsed the sunlight, and trashed the joint. Far too many people who have no business in the books business seem to have taken the arrival of digital tools as their cue to jump in and “become writers” without the paying of any dues to craft or quality or industry knowledge or, in many cases, talent.
If anything, I’d assign the “relentless, compelling” phrase you’re using just as much to the marketing mandate as to the writing mandate.
I join you and Jim Bell in saying that a book needs to be as good as it can possibly be. I’m not sure that ever was not true, but I think now it’s mandatory. However, that won’t sell it. At least — let me qualify this — that won’t get it started.
Unless you’re already successful and have a strong following of readers, your high quality can sit right there and be passed by for the rest of time.
I think you need to think about taking that “relentless, compelling” thing to the marketing side of what you’re doing.
That is, unless you actually don’t want to sell a book. If you want to just write it, put it in a drawer and leave it behind, no worries, and there’s nothing wrong with that goal.
I believe, however, that most people — not you, most — are not telling us the truth when they say they’re not interested in money, in sales, in being awarded and appreciated as a writer. Actors who tell you they never think of the Oscars are lying. (I have been a professional actor, I can tell you this.) So are writers who tell you they never think of selling a book. Most. Not all.
I can take you at your word, and happily. But you’re the exception. And as such, you have a clearer, easier to define relationship between investment and outcome — your outcome needs to be your best, your investment, then, is in terms of time and care. Fantastic. Others have a much larger marketplace to conquer, and for them, these are pressing issues.
Thanks, as ever.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter–
I think it was Flannery O’Connor who said (I’m paraphrasing) that she wrote in order to discover what it was she thought, or meant. She was also very ambitious.
Even so, there’s truth in the notion of writing to unearth what’s on your mind. But I absolutely agree with your comparing writers to actors who insist they never think about winning an Oscar. Uh huh.
But with this variation: the Oscar for writers is readers. Actors are motivated by an internal imperative that drives them to control/hold audiences through self-expression. I’m convinced writers are driven by a fundamental need to be heard, and to be recognized for what they say. This recognition can take no other form than that of readers.
I myself want to be read more than I want to sell books, but the only way to know I’m being read is through stats related to sales.
Unless I’m alone in making this distinction, I suspect a great many writers would agree with me: we want to be read, to be heard, because we aren’t navel gazers. And we know of no other way to measure whether or not we are read, except in terms of books sold.
Exactly, Barry. I seriously believe in the exploratory and clarifying value of writing, itself. Like talking something out.
But, as you say, the metric we have — and seem to be stuck with — is the idea of sales, eventually, for any understanding of how much (or not) we’re “getting out there” with something.
The real irony, of course, is that what most writer seek is to be read. But even a sale doesn’t mean something has been read. Just bought.
Life is just damned unfair, huh? LOL
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter–and Barry,
You’re absolutely right in that, while the innermost yearning may be to capture the story true, ultimately we still have a desire to succeed, be that through getting read or getting wealthy, recognized, prosperous.
Let me add though that when my story is ready I’ll be thinking about what comes next–turning that “relentless, compelling” to publication and marketing as you suggest. I want to be published. I want to be read. I want to spread my stories far and wide. Keeping them in a drawer would be as much a sin to me as keeping them in my head. I suppose I will turn the energy which right now I pour into writing into that broader pursuit, but of course when the time is right. For the present, I have bones to knit. The flesh will come, the organs, eventually birth. I’m sure there will be agents, editors, collaborators, marketing gurus to brainstorm with, readers who will becomes my friends. But right now I’m knitting those bones, and they need my attention.
And that’s the right focus, John.
You have to put your mind’s resources onto creating the thing first. Just be aware as you go of passing thoughts that relate the work to other things out there. When the time comes to shift focus to distribution, you’ll be glad you kept a little list of places that might be hand-holds.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter-
The time, effort and financial investment of indie authors in promotion is considerable. I wonder whether that returns as much, in unit sales, as simple bookstore distribution does all by itself for print authors?
It would be interesting to quantify. Take a book and indie publish it with full effort; take the same book, re-title it and trad publish it with no effort other than shelving it in stores branded with a Big Five logo, copy and look.
I have heard informally from many authors what has worked for them. It seems to be different for everyone. Even authors in the same genre reach their readers in different ways, depending. No one thing works for everyone…except writing a great book.
Love the idea of the test, Don.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that even the Big Five logo (of an imprint, presumably) on the bookstore edition is unimportant in such a test. Maybe the Penguin is ubiquitous enough to mean something vaguely about quality or familiarity to reader-buyers, but I doubt that S&S’ Johnny Appleseed (is that who that is? or just a generic sower of seed?) would move the needle, let alone Harper’s flame, etc. The presence in a bookstore just might do it, I agree, and with much less effort.
The problem, of course, is that bookstore shopping is changing and gradually diminishing and this won’t be reversing over time. The digital train has left the station. Woo woo, chugga chugga. :)
At B&N, you might have to move the director’s chairs and beach towels to one side to find room to display that book, right?
And should the promise of the new NLP-generated algorithms that Trajectory is working on in Boston come to fruition and be deployed (here’s my story on that, in case you’re not familiar http://tcat.tc/1yqX1ob ), then online shopping for books could take on a whole new dimension of potential and efficiency and pleasure that physical bookstores can’t touch. These are not sales algorithms (“those who bought this also bought that”) but algorithmic comparisons of actual textual, narrative elements. Sentiment indices, intensity indices, complexity indices…AI at its best. (And why did that Spielberg film do so badly? I have to go back and remember.)
I’ve actually never enjoyed shopping in bookstores. Before we had online capabilities for buying books, I found it a terrible waste of a few hours each weekend, staggering up and down aisles of books in stores, stepping over people reading on the floor, trying to find something I needed or would like in a decent amount of time and get out of the place. For me — and I readily concede that I may be The Only Happy Online Book Shopper in the World — the online approach to finding and buying books is fantastic. I love it. I wish every physical bookstore and bookseller nothing but success. And I will be busy buying books (including yours) online.
The general public, however, is still going in and out of bookstores to some degree, if more out than in, and not in the same numbers and regularity as in the past. The transition to more-digital-than-not will be measured in years, not months. There’s time. And I do think your test would prove its point.
The other point, lol, however, is that in a changing world, authors need to start looking around for what’s going to work in five and 10 and 15 years. Particularly with supply and demand so completely over on its side in terms of books, being able to punch through the pile and actually grab the attention of a reader is fast becoming the new alchemy of our dreams.
So I’m going to sleep on it. Grateful, as ever, for your input and raising my Campari to you,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter–
As is always true of your WU posts, today’s requires–and deserves–careful reading and reflection. But as someone recently said here, the digital world’s shoot-from-the-hip emphasis on immediacy and impulse is at odds with seriousness and reflection. That said, if I’ve read your piece too hastily, and my response reveals a lack of full understanding, please forgive.
You are inviting your readers to think about ROI, return on what they invest in the work they do. My experience as a published novelist is very limited: one commercially published thriller (Berkley), one small-publisher mainstream novel (the costs for which I was partially responsible), and one recently self-published suspense novel.
This is not much of a data base on which to come to conclusions, but my experience confirms in miniature what I understand you to be saying: my one print-only, commercially published, commercially distributed book did much better.
For that book I invested many hours in reading authors I admired, especially Graham Greene and Elmore Leonard. I wrote my book, and then invested in a conference, for the purpose of working with a noted executive editor (not another writer: I wanted a publishing insider’s advice ). He showed me what my novel needed, I made changes, and with his intervention my book was taken on by a successful agent who sold it the following week.
Then the stage went dark for a long time–another story.
But for any of this to be meaningful, I have to add something: Years later, neither my small-publisher novel nor the one I self-published had any distribution or marketing.
True, I can’t prove that being an Internet wizard and a gifted self-promoter would have made a big difference for those two books–but I’m pretty sure it would have. I think so, because my commercially published thriller was a successful first novel–it made back my advance, and then some. It proved I could both write and sell. That is, when a publisher was marketing and distributing my work.
But with my later two books, along with time invested in reading and writing, I also spent heavily. I financed an expensive (for me) marketing plan that did not succeed, probably because I was responsible for implementing it, and didn’t know how. For book two, I also shared costs with the publisher (now sadly deceased) for professional editing, book designing, cover, printing, etc. The book’s few reviews were very good ones, but without distribution and marketing, it sold only a handful of copies. Same with my wholly self-published suspense novel.
In terms of investment on my part, what’s this got to do with your article’s topic?
I haven’t stopped investing in myself, or abandoned hopes of commercial success. But I’ve put worldly ambition on the back burner. I’ve decided to ignore the various, ever-changing digital bibles of “best practices” for self-publishing novelists, in favor of pleasing myself. This means trusting my many years invested as a reader and writer, and developing suspense stories in a series that I’m proud to put my name on. And I mean my name, not a pseudonym, or my initials. I’m writing principally for women, and research says I should mute my male identity, because both men and women mostly choose books written by writers of their own gender. Perhaps this is so, but pleasing myself means using my own name.
It’s still possible I will finally learn how to promote my work before I go to my reward. Or find someone reliable and clever who can help me do it. The odds aren’t good, but the New Age affords me a couple of important advantages: Print On Demand, and a “shelf life” for self-published books that stretches to the horizon.
I suspect these two aspects are important to understanding those indie writers who face disappointment, but don’t quit. And it may well be a chimera, a sense of future possibility that obscures the here-and-now facts of life.
But I’ll just keep investing in the pleasures of writing, working on my series. After all, it’s not impossible that the flood of genre titles will eventually incline readers to seek out stories that break rules and can’t be pigeonholed. In other words, my kind of stories. But unless I solve my distribution/marketing problems, it won’t make much if any difference.
Hi, Barry,
I think you’re right in tune with what I’m proposing writers consider here. And in fact, you have a wealth of experience to bring to the table when you sit down to consider what makes sense and what doesn’t in terms of investment in your work. You’ve seen marketing work and not work, you’ve seen distribution drive sales and you’ve seen the lack of distribution have the opposite effect. Many authors have nothing like such background and first-hand background, congratulations.
I have a lot of respect for you as a man writing for women, too. The bias against that, which you perceive well, is a form of reverse discrimination that is rarely mentioned. (It’s considered common knowledge — I believe this is apocryphal — that men won’t read women authors, hence the rash of initials for first names that now almost always mean a woman author at work. But try saying that women don’t like to read male authors and the response is usually very hostile. Nothing like a good gender inconsistency to clear the room, is there?)
What I like best about your comment is its last line. While you clearly know the importance of perseverance — something writers chant to each other day in and day out — you also are clear-eyed enough to know that distribution and marketing simply are integral to success for all but strict hobbyists. So many of our writers are in a form of denial on this point. They cling to the idea that really, really, really good writing will succeed no matter what. And this is untrue. Quality guarantees no such rise to the surface of the swamp of content in which our marketplace now is deeply submerged.
What I can suggest is the kind of good thinking being done by people like Peter McCarthy in counseling writers to look for “adjacent” markets — communities that focus on the issues in your books — and learn to develop a trusted presence in those communities. Because the days of just throwing a book out onto the open market and expecting it to find traction are simply gone.
As great as the investment in writing and persistence is, much more now is required of everyone.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter–
Thank you. When I consider how much time and attention you’ve “invested” here, to reply thoughtfully and at length to people who are in no position to serve your own professional interests, it’s quite something. The only motive I can see is a strong wish on your own part to be understood, and clear. I will certainly look into what Peter McCarthy has to say, I’ve never heard of him. Thanks again.
Hi, Porter! I think return on investment when you’re talking writing/publishing is personally defined, and often redefined when expectations shift.
It would be nice to be able to say, “When I do this, that will happen and my expectations will be met.” But, that doesn’t seem to be true. Whether indie or trad published, it’s hard to predict what will yield the best results for selling your work.
Some investments give personal fulfillment (ie. writing a good story), and should lead to sales, but that isn’t necessarily what happens. One would think spending money to hire an editor (or having an editor, if you’re trad pubbed) would ensure you’re writing a good book and therefore would lead to sales, but again, it’s not assured and, in my opinion, often doesn’t happen. One would think spending a lot of money up front to publicize your great, edited book would lead to sales, but…not necessarily. It’s a crap shoot, and all you might end up with is a bigger bill for writing, editing and publicizing your great book.
So, when the return on investment is too little, I think that’s when either expectations change or writers quit. I agree with James Scott Bell above – the only thing a writer can really control is writing the great book to start with. Then it’s up to each person’s tolerance level to determine how much they’re willing to invest in time and money to try to sell it.
Sounds right to me, Lara.
I agree that meaningful investment is defined differently and individually and so is whatever returns are wanted and required.
The important thing is to think about this. Lots of writers seem to run right into walls of their own confusion. And a lot of times, this may be simply because thinking ahead, questioning their process, might seem to painful or tedious. To understand the potentials requires considering the chance of failure, after all.
There’s nothing but truth in Jim’s assertion that what the author can control is the writing.
What lies beyond that, however, is an understanding that the best writing simply may not be enough. And even very strong material will need help to find an audience drowning in books already, many of them extremely good.
Thanks much!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi, Porter! I sincerely apologize if this double-comments. I don’t know what I did with the editing thing, so I’m just going to re-submit the comment.
I think return on investment when you’re talking writing/publishing is personally defined, and often redefined when expectations shift.
It would be nice to be able to say, “When I do this, that will happen and my expectations will be met.” But, that doesn’t seem to be true. Whether indie or trad published, it’s hard to predict what will yield the best results for selling your work.
Some investments give personal fulfillment (ie. writing a good story), and should lead to sales, but that isn’t necessarily what happens. One would think spending money to hire an editor (or having an editor, if you’re trad pubbed) would ensure you’re writing a good book and therefore would lead to sales, but again, it’s not assured and, in my opinion, often doesn’t happen. One would think spending a lot of money up front to publicize your great, edited book would lead to sales, but…not necessarily. It’s a crap shoot, and all you might end up with is a bigger bill for writing, editing and publicizing your great book.
So, when the return on investment is too little, I think that’s when either expectations change or writers quit. I agree with James Scott Bell above – the only thing a writer can really control is writing the great book to start with. Then it’s up to each person’s tolerance level to determine how much they’re willing to invest in time and money to try to sell it.
No worries, I’ve had this happen on this site before, myself!
-p.
Ugh, it did. I hate technology sometimes.
No one can tell you no. They can reject your manuscript, but they can’t tell you no. The only person who can tell you no, is you. Take it out of the dream state and put it in the goal state. You want to be a published author? Then write it down and start aligning all your supporting goals to help you achieve that goal.
There once was a young man who had been playing the violin since he could first pick one up. He dreamed of being a concert violinist. One day, the great master who he respected came to his town for a concert. After the concert, the young man met the master and told him of his dream. The master asked the young man to play something.
The young man played his heart out.
When he was done, the master was silent for a few moments, then shrugged and said: “Not enough fire.”
Then walked out.
The young man was crushed. He put his violin away and never played again. He went into another career. Years later the master came back to town for a concert. The man met the master at a party and reminded him of that audition so many years ago and how it had crushed him.
The master was surprised for a moment, then shrugged. “I tell everyone that. If what I said was enough to stop you, you truly didn’t have enough fire.”
Love this, Bob!
Right, Bob,
And thanks for commenting.
I’ve enjoyed your story about the master and his trick question in comments before, always a good one.
If anything, I worry when I see writers who — unlike you — don’t see beyond the writing to what they’re going to need to do in order to move it around (to not say no). I like your line: “Write it down and start aligning all your supporting goals to help you achieve that goal.”
That alignment of the supporting goals, part of what I talk about as “adjacency” (having stolen that from Peter McCarthy), is critical.
No one can tell you no, indeed. Isn’t it a remarkable thing how many naysayers we seem to have on all sides these days?
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
You don’t mind being provoked, I’m told. Okay if I take you at your word? ;) To be honest, I’d take any of this data with a kilo of salt. You’d have to do what Don’s proposing to establish any causality between investment and results and you’d have to do it repeatedly across multiple genres to establish any sort of enduring principle. Otherwise, how would you begin to make accommodation for differences in platform, a novel’s topicality, quality of blurb, chance, etc.?
But let’s assume you’re looking for a relationship between investment and financial gain. You could have:
a) Increased investment being a driver of increased income. (Then I’d want to know at what point does that relationship cease, because it couldn’t be forever. Would a $1-million marketing campaign help me sell my quiet novel about snails by a significant absolute amount? Or would my results peak after $30,000, for instance.)
b) Increased investment being a *marker* of increased professionalism and/or recognition of a novel’s commercial appeal. In other words, you have publishers, whether self- or traditional, who are astute enough to identify when they have a more commercial product on their hands who invest more and then reap more because of the product’s suspected superiority. Or you have writers with a professional mindset who are willing to spend on their incorporation, invest in craft workshops, etc. who work until they write novels with superior commercial appeal.
My bet? It’s a combination of a + b, with b being predominant for the typical novel.
Also, it’s not surprising that a book being available to more readers via more media in more locations will sell more copies.
Sorry for being so negative, Porter, but I’d hate for people to spend their limited professional investment money on a study ($99) which is extremely unlikely to advance their career.
Hi, Jan.
This is actually no provocation whatever, although I certainly thank you for taking the time to read me and write your comment. (And you’ve written to my comments many times — you need no one else to tell you that I “don’t mind being provoked,” lol.)
I didn’t say to take the data here without your kilo of salt. By all means. I pointed out, in fact, that this is drawn from a self-selected sample. It’s not a scientific survey. That, of course, doesn’t mean that the input of some 2,500 people is of negligible value. Did you take the survey? I think your contributions would have been valuable to it.
No quarrel with your two scenarios re: the relationship between investment and return.
And just to be clear, I didn’t suggest that you or anyone buy the study at DBW. I have no interest in its sales. I don’t think making its link available is a bad thing, nor do I think I can say — as you seem to feel you can — that buying its data and studying what it has to say will be “extremely unlikely” to advance a career.
All the best, Jan.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson