"three-quarters of your manuscript stripped of formatting, printed in rose-gold ink on watercolor paper with a holographic Lisa Frank unicorn sticker centered on the top of each double-spaced page" THAT made me laugh out loud! I gave up on publishing my book about the need for Christians to default to grace (much researched non-fiction) when a Christian publisher with whom I had a connection told me they would publish it for $10,000--and I had to do all the marketing. It isn't even controversial, but no one knows me and I don't have a million followers, so I'm not worth the risk!
Ten grand! Wow, now that's bold. Good luck with your series! It sounds like the kind of book people might like to have in print too. Maybe worth looking into self-publishing on Amazon, since it doesn't cost a thing. Design a cover on Canva and you're up and running!
Wow, thanks for sharing all of that! What a sucky industry. I stuck with my querying for several years, but I regret it. It has really sunk in to me that this is what happens when you commercialize art. Publishers have to chase the zeitgeist and make money. The upsides are low and the downsides are guaranteed for things that outside of what is deemed "acceptable" by a loud minority. I don't know any publishers who are strong enough to stand up to that. It's why I wrote my post about being done with the industry. And I hate to say it, but as a privileged white male (on the surface, anyway) writing about evolutionary philosophy, shopping a novel full of characters as diverse as the world, the possibility of success seems extra, extra, extra, extra remote. As I said in my post about this, I've found my own forms of patronage, and I have to move forward with that if I really want to share my artistic ideas. Hopefully you can too. Good luck and thanks again for sharing your insights and experience!
Thanks, but it's not published yet. I need to finish some other philosophy projects and then dive back in to the fiction world to self-publish it now that I know that is the route I'm going to take. A description and free preview are available here, though:
I know, right?! : ) I've heard that from so many people outside of the publishing industry. And trusted readers have loved the whole thing. I figured *someone* would bite. Just gotta get this out there on my own and see what happens. Thanks for the push!
Watching all this from the sidelines has made me glad I never tried to be an author! I'm sure I'd be much more prone to finding it all too much. Besides the cultural changes you mentioned, there is also the sheer glut of content, which makes it very hard to be seen, let alone to stand out. There is also the commodification of the process, which is rarely in the direction of quality.
It is weird, though, that the hunger for content doesn't make publishers more willing to buy manuscripts just to feed the beast.
The glut of content is definitely a big barrier to getting seen, even for the big publishers. But they do buy manuscripts to feed the beast, it's just that the vast majority of the manuscripts they buy don't make them money. It's the Michelle and Barack Obama memoirs and the Harry Potters that keeps the lights on.
The big publishers have scouts, of course. It's far easier to prowl around looking for successful writers than to take a chance on a nobody. Of course by that point the publisher had better have something good to offer an already-successful author...and they usually do. That's where the bigger advances go, though the bigger advances will go to celebrities. Then again, this is nothing new. Wait for the cream to rise.
On the other hand, they can get it wrong even then!
Back in the early eighties, Neal and his friend went around to gas stations and convenience stores and cutesy shoppes (note the spelling) around Vermont hocking a self-published restaurant guidebook called "The Interstate Gourmet". The idea was to help travelers avoid McDonald's by telling them about all the interesting and at least decent restaurants that they wouldn't know about because they aren't visible from the highway. This idea would never work nowadays, obviously. But back then, before smartphones, this seemed like a hot concept to the big publishers. They approached Neal and his buddy and gave them a big advance to take the concept national. So Neal and his buddy toured around the country doing TV and radio all while they got fat eating at various ma and pa restaurants across the country. It got to the point where they actually hired writers to do different regions of the country.
Guess what happened? The books were a flop! Turned out to be a concept that sold well in Vermont, but not so much for all of America. Surprise surprise! People like McDonald's! Anyway, it didn't matter much to Neal and his buddy. They got their fifteen minutes of fame and nice check to boot. I don't think either of them thought it would get them that far when the decided to write the original book; they just thought it would be a fun way to make an extra buck.
So, even in authoring there is an upper 1% living on Olympus. The rare particles with the energy and luck to transcend the energy barrier. Art is a tough gig.
How cool is it to have an old book of yours for sale on eBay? Only just mildly awesome!
This matches just about everything I've heard about the publishing industry. There is an aspect of quality involved in what gets accepted, but a whole lot of other factors only tangentially related, most of which are hopelessly outside of the author's control. The advice I've read said to attend writers conferences and network, network, network, because in the end, editors are much more likely to publish from their friends, or at least from people they know.
It's why I if I ever do write a book, I will almost certainly self publish. Maybe nothing will happen. (I know in most cases it doesn't.) But at least it will be in the world and I'll be able to move on.
Interestingly, the one advantage that publishers *sometimes* provide is guidance in marketing a book, having the author go to bookstores in multiple cities. I've long wondered why book tours are worth it anymore. I've never been to a book tour event, and don't know many who have. Just learned that publishers have insights on which bookstores are polled for the bestseller lists, and are gaming the system, having events at key locations to juice sales at those locations. Which sounds like a racket. Now I know not to put too much faith in the bestseller lists. (Not that I had before.)
"The advice I've read said to attend writers conferences and network, network, network, because in the end, editors are much more likely to publish from their friends, or at least from people they know."
That is so true. That's true for all of life really. If you have great people skills, it will get you far. And that's why writers move to NY.
The common wisdom these days is that self published literary fiction won't do well, but I don't think that's true for sci-fi. Especially since you've been blogging for a while and have people reading your writing. Anyway, there's no risk involved these days. Gotta love print on demand! Why not give it a try?
You're right. Big publishers have a lot of advantages in terms of marketing. Not sure about the smaller ones, it depends. Really the whole point of not self-publishing is marketing, at least in my view. The other stuff is easy by comparison.
From what I hear, the big tours don't go to mid-list authors necessarily. At least the big publishers aren't going to spend big money flying authors everywhere when the authors could just do a podcast or a zoom interview with a big influencer. That's a hell of a lot cheaper and probably a lot better than doing bookstore events. I guess it probably depends on the author and what genre they're writing in.
Interesting info about the polling. I'm not surprised they're gaming the system. And yeah, I wouldn't put too much stock in the bestseller thing. A lot of that stuff is a racket, although maybe less so than being an Amazon bestseller. (That's so easy to game it's not even funny. Hell, even I managed to do it! (Neal's book hit #1 in a few obscure philosophy and linguistics categories for a time.)
I'll be surprised if my (very limited) blog following translates into much with selling fiction. For sure, there's some overlap, but I suspect a lot of the people I talk with won't necessarily by interested in the kind of stories I'd be writing. I'm assuming I'd mostly have to build readership from scratch.
On gaming the system, there's some solace in something else Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham (my source for the gaming info) noted. Being on the bestseller lists doesn't really move the needle much anymore in terms of long term sales. The best thing for that apparently are reader reviews.
Of course, marketing increases the initial number of reviews. But for a niche book, that can be a mixed bag. Marketing that attracts the wrong readers could lead to an avalanche of negative reviews. Seems like the trick is marketing to the readers who will appreciate the book's niche.
Podcast and zoom interviews sound a lot less onerous to me than flying to a bunch of bookstores for readings and signings. Although honestly, even doing that would fill me with dread.
I don't know about 'from scratch' for your readership. It's true that if they come for the nonfiction, they might not be interested in the fiction, but since you have people engaging with you, they'll read whatever you write because they know you. Now that may not necessarily get you to the top of the sales charts, but it won't be nothing.
I hear you attracting the wrong readers. I think some of that can be about writing appropriate copy on the cover and so on, but there are some readers out there who don't really pay attention to what they're picking up and will take anything so long as it's free. It's hard to filter them out in marketing. The reviewer in this article had pressure to write a review, since from that platform readers are evaluated too, and those who give reviews get priority on the freebies. When there's no pressure, people generally won't leave a review if they don't like a free book.
Yeah, I'm with you on the virtual interviews. I don't like doing that sort of thing either. Especially since you wouldn't know the person interviewing you. I'd find that pretty awkward.
My friend who is a gay white male genetics researcher at a major university told me the official policy of that university is to no longer hire any white men for any future professor positions, regardless of their qualifications. I also know for a fact, from someone else who was a grad student at this university, that despite being a publically funded uni on the west coast, they basically have a default policy to not hire their own graduates for faculty positions, and only to hire people who have post docs from Ivy Leagues.
There’s so much absurdity that gets lost in these initially well intentioned procedures to make society more equitable. And it’s so fascinating going through your story, I feel like I want to just sit down and go through a whole bottle of wine going through this type of stuff with you, there’s so much to work with! It you can’t cry, laugh 😀
And interesting to hear your take and experience too as someone who is 1/2 Asian but I guess, not really leaning into that or using it in your favour, if you want to say..vs I definitely know people who are 1/2 Asian or 1/2 black and have absolutely capitalized on those labels to the maximum, irrespective of actual life experience or socioeconomic experiences in some cases. It’s weird. Meanwhile, according to modern labelling, I am merely a “white man” despite having close to 0% central/or northern European DNA, not resembling most Caucasian people in N America too much, and having grandparents that didn’t speak English, (to make no mention of the significant work I’ve put into living abroad, learning languages to a degree, and teaching mostly black and Latino students for a few years in the past in some pretty harsh areas).
Rare is to find a human who sees other humans in all their full evil-good-weird-ape-multicultural complexity.
I'm not surprised by the hiring of only Ivy League graduates, but to make it a policy not to hire white men is pretty bold. It's one thing to choose the minor applicant all else being equal, but that's just flat out nuts. And discriminatory. Funny, Asians are in the same boat as white men when it comes to higher ed discrimination, at least when it comes to the Ivy Leagues. We make things super awkward for those wanting to box us in!
The point about socioeconomic experiences is really key. The friends I grew up with were racially diverse, but only somewhat economically diverse. I can think of only one who was seriously poor, my best buddy—a white guy. The spectrum was mostly working class to middle class with all being in basically stable home situations. The differences came down to: did you get a brand new BMW when you graduated or did you get a jalopy?
Yeah. At this point, America, while more technically ethnically diverse/multi cultural than most other developed countries, is significantly more economically striated and unequal than all of them. Canada is even more diverse, but still much less socio economically far apart, even if it is more so than say, Germany.
And I didn't get a car, nor have I ever owned one! (But did go to an expensive private college, as yours was I assume, which my dad paid for, so OK. :P)
My dad's parents were immigrants from Greece and came as adults, I never knew his dad; he died when my dad was a kid--my grandma never really learned much English, and it makes me sad that my dad never cared to teach me Greek, which was his first language, so that I could properly communicate with her before she died. My mom's dad was also from a Spanish family and he was either born in or spent the first years of his life in Colombia, I'm not quite sure which, but he emigrated to New York as a kid, so I'm sure his first language was Spanish, although he did become a fully naturalized fluent English speaker, but I still remember him as a fairly dark-skinned, aggressive New Yorker-type who was usually wearing some type of gold chain around his neck. My mom's mom was the only one of all of those who came from a more "traditional" White-Germanic type background, which is basically what most people think of when they think of how white North Americans look, and who was born in the US.
My husband's mother was the first in her family born in the States; her elder siblings were all born in Portugal. She told me once that her greatest regret was not teaching her children about their Portuguese heritage and language.
Interesting. So your dad came as a young child? Or was he born in the States? I imagine that must have been hard for your grandmother losing her husband and forced to get by in a foreign country. I imagine she relied on your father quite a lot.
I think 1st generation immigrants back then—and it sounds like your father would probably count, even if not technically—just weren't all that interested in preserving their culture the way we might be. They want to assimilate and give their children the best shot at making it. Maybe they don't want to be reminded of what they left behind. Look forward, not back. At least that was the case with my mother.
You've never owned a car? Do you know how to drive? This is amazing to me, coming from Oklahoma. It's the most boring place on earth if you don't have a car. If you're 15 years old living in Oklahoma, you're counting down the days to freedom.
My brother works in the gaming industry and they have a similar ban on hiring white men. I ran into similar attitudes in higher ed--unless the person had the Ivy League or was already a "name" from something else.
Networking has always been the key to advancement, but it is beyond ridiculous now.
Amazing that a "leftist atheist weirdo" and a "just-right-of-center Jesus-follower who has traveled, but never lived abroad can agree on something!!! (tongue firmly in cheek)
In the true original sense--weird, utopian, commune-ities, of interesting people all helping and enlivening each other--a great way to live, when you can find it.
That's a very touching story, Tina. You're very courageous author--and an excellent, exciting author too. It's a terrible shame that woke culture has replace real literature. I'm horrified to hear Joyce Carol Oates say that young white males are wholly ignored by editors today. I, for one, am greatly looking forward to your next novel.
Thanks Mostyn, I'm glad you liked my novel well enough to read the next one! It is horrifying to hear that such discrimination is happening. I hope things change. Maybe self-published authors will change things up...we'll see.
I'm looking forward to reading the next draft of your short story!
This is really similar to my experience with the US publishing industry. That said, there are a lot of people I know who are succeeding or at least breaking even by ignoring said gatekeepers, and none of them care one way or the other about gay ethnic genders.
A great but profoundly disturbing story! It is not just about the perils of being an author in a rapidly changing industry. It has implications for freedom of speech in the academy and beyond. When we think of censorship, we imagine the state-sponsored Big Brother. That had been the case for my mother, a Soviet dissident, who could not have her writings published in a country where all presses were under the surveillance of the KGB. But even there, self-censorship was more effective than outright prohibition. People would not say or write anything challenging because of their commitment to the communist ideology or because it just "wasn't done". And nowadays, self-censorship si strangling freedom of expression and critical thinking more effectively than the clanking Soviet state machinery could ever do. I normally only read speculative fiction but I will read your novel (which I assume is realistic) just to challenge the Big Brother lurking in people's hearts and minds.
Thanks for commenting! You're so right about the implications for self-censorship. I think that must be going on at some level. In fact, I think someone wrote a post about that here on Substack a while ago, but I can't remember who. Your mother sounds like a very brave person! I bet she had some interesting stories too.
Thanks for crossing genres to take a chance on my novel. I hope it doesn't disappoint!
Hate to say it, but everyone here has it wrong. It makes no difference how well you write, or what you write. The industry doesn't need writers. They have piles of writers, writers they've already published. These writers are waving even more manuscripts at them all the time.
If you are new, the ONLY thing the industry wants is a big social media following. Or a celebrity. Or someone who can advance a decision-maker's social or professional career. If you're not having lunch in NYC with an insider, don't waste your time querying. Sorry, someone has to speak the truth.
That's largely true, but the quibble I'd have with this are the writers who didn't earn out their advance. Maybe they got a nice advance, but disappointing sales. They could have a harder time getting another contract than a debut author who checks all the right boxes. Debut = no horrible sales track record. So there is a need for some churn, a wee bit of fresh blood.
Absolutely Tina! (Or is it Tina Lee?) : ) Advances really aren't anything. Don't forget that if you get a $25,000 advance, you don't see any money until your novel sells up to that advance. Publishers know what they're doing. I doubt they lose very much, even if the book doesn't "earn out".
I'm on the writer's side, always. But that means telling the truth. I think : ) Cheers and good luck with the serial. I'm thinking of doing the same thing. Let me know if I can help in any way.
Ah it’s just Tina. I’d be doing the Roger rabbit if I got a 25k advance. Of course that’s not exactly a living. I could probably make as much doing the Roger rabbit on a street corner.
Yes, to the truth!
Let me know if you decide to publish your serial. Are you thinking here on Substack? Good luck!
Yes I'm going to publish a short, serial novel on Substack. Not sure when, but no later than January 2025. A lot of decisions have to be made. Will it take the place of, or be in addition to, my column? Will previous chapters be paywalled? Do I publish the whole book right away on Amazon KDP, or wait? I'm so confused : )
I know, it is confusing! There are a million different ways to do it. I would just take a look at other people doing it on Substack and see what you think. And also how much work you're willing to put in, because it can go on and on and on...Good luck with it!
Depressing, but thanks! :) Tina, do you think that in future there could be a role for AI to play in evaluating new authors? Seems to me at least one's draft could be read and assessed in its entirety (within seconds); so stuff with plot failures and crappy syntax could be whittled away with no human intervention — kinda shortlisting stuff that's fit for human consumption and giving *some* sort of qualitative assessment. Every submission could be AI-assessed and the *impartial* results made available within the public domain. The model you valiantly fought and describe above seems destined to fail, and yet the self-publishing route provides no definition between writers as everyone can do it (including AI itself, of course). Could AI eventually prove to be the technological bridge between each side of that river of separation? As a loose parallel, I hear that around 70% of trades placed in financial markets are now totally automated; humans cannot assess all the necessary micro and macro data in a timely enough manner so no longer pick the winners and losers. Where there is an excess of data (such as with creative writing and financial news flows), then why not automate the filtering process?
As AI stands today, meh. I doubt it. I tried using Chat GPT to proofread—just to look for typos and missing articles—but it proved to be absolutely worthless. Maybe there are better options out there. I don't know. I've also used Claude AI, though not to proofread. It did seem slightly better, but I don't know that I would ever be able to trust something like that, which would make it redundant.
Sure, as I said, 'in future'. AI is as unreliable today as the internet was in the 90s. But look what happened in the following 15/20 years. I use Perplexity myself, and it's brilliant on even some pretty oblique enquiries, though can still occasionally stumble by feeding stuff into its models which shouldn't be fed in. I'm not suggesting you're doing this, Tina, but a lot of people have decided AI is crap and wrongly assume it will always be so. Anyway, in the meantime we're all stuck in similar situations to yours, and until some solution (likely technological imo) comes about, only lucky breaks and/or the right connections can free us up. So I just write for the process, for the creative expression, and also to keep my mind exercised. Anything more than that would only be fantasising.
It can already produce better pop music than (say) 98% of amateur musos, so the commercial competition could soon be between the remaining 2% of human musos and AI (even as it is today). It's not hard to envisage the same level of metrics applying within the creative writing sphere. That means AI cleans out all the dross, leaving only the best human writers to compete with it. That could be a good thing, maybe — a bit of the old Marxist creative destruction, anyone? Pretty much everyone today fancies themselves as either a musician, or as a writer, or as a painter, or as a poet, or as a whatever-creator, and we've all been told we can be whatever we want to be, so many believe it to be true, and of themselves in particular. A big cliché in advertising has been: 'Limited only by your imagination', and none of us believe our own imagination has limits. Well, perhaps a lot of us are going to get found out, so let's keep practising!
Publish your novels yourself. Traditional publishers don't have as much power as they think they do anymore. We've been able to self-publish on Amazon for years now. Only those not in the know still think self-publishing is beneath them Traditionally published authors are now independently publishing too because the royalty payout is a lot higher. Granted, there are a lot to learn to sell and promote. But you already have a following. You can start by selling your books to them who want to read what you write.
Thanks for commenting! I think I'll end up self-publishing my next novel. I might reach out to a few agents, but I won't waste much time on that. Besides, there's something to be said for having control over your work.
"three-quarters of your manuscript stripped of formatting, printed in rose-gold ink on watercolor paper with a holographic Lisa Frank unicorn sticker centered on the top of each double-spaced page" THAT made me laugh out loud! I gave up on publishing my book about the need for Christians to default to grace (much researched non-fiction) when a Christian publisher with whom I had a connection told me they would publish it for $10,000--and I had to do all the marketing. It isn't even controversial, but no one knows me and I don't have a million followers, so I'm not worth the risk!
Sad state of affairs. I'm planning to release bits of it as devotionals here on Substack starting in 2025. (https://stephanieloomis.substack.com/)
Ten grand! Wow, now that's bold. Good luck with your series! It sounds like the kind of book people might like to have in print too. Maybe worth looking into self-publishing on Amazon, since it doesn't cost a thing. Design a cover on Canva and you're up and running!
I may just try that! :)
Wow, thanks for sharing all of that! What a sucky industry. I stuck with my querying for several years, but I regret it. It has really sunk in to me that this is what happens when you commercialize art. Publishers have to chase the zeitgeist and make money. The upsides are low and the downsides are guaranteed for things that outside of what is deemed "acceptable" by a loud minority. I don't know any publishers who are strong enough to stand up to that. It's why I wrote my post about being done with the industry. And I hate to say it, but as a privileged white male (on the surface, anyway) writing about evolutionary philosophy, shopping a novel full of characters as diverse as the world, the possibility of success seems extra, extra, extra, extra remote. As I said in my post about this, I've found my own forms of patronage, and I have to move forward with that if I really want to share my artistic ideas. Hopefully you can too. Good luck and thanks again for sharing your insights and experience!
It's funny how 'surface' the ID police are in their thinking. One glance is enough to convince people they know everything there is to know about you!
Why don't you share a link to your novel here?
Thanks, but it's not published yet. I need to finish some other philosophy projects and then dive back in to the fiction world to self-publish it now that I know that is the route I'm going to take. A description and free preview are available here, though:
https://www.evphil.com/the-vitanauts.html
Oh man, just read the teaser for your book. Now that's a great hook. Can't wait to read the Vitanauts!
I know, right?! : ) I've heard that from so many people outside of the publishing industry. And trusted readers have loved the whole thing. I figured *someone* would bite. Just gotta get this out there on my own and see what happens. Thanks for the push!
Watching all this from the sidelines has made me glad I never tried to be an author! I'm sure I'd be much more prone to finding it all too much. Besides the cultural changes you mentioned, there is also the sheer glut of content, which makes it very hard to be seen, let alone to stand out. There is also the commodification of the process, which is rarely in the direction of quality.
It is weird, though, that the hunger for content doesn't make publishers more willing to buy manuscripts just to feed the beast.
The glut of content is definitely a big barrier to getting seen, even for the big publishers. But they do buy manuscripts to feed the beast, it's just that the vast majority of the manuscripts they buy don't make them money. It's the Michelle and Barack Obama memoirs and the Harry Potters that keeps the lights on.
The big publishers have scouts, of course. It's far easier to prowl around looking for successful writers than to take a chance on a nobody. Of course by that point the publisher had better have something good to offer an already-successful author...and they usually do. That's where the bigger advances go, though the bigger advances will go to celebrities. Then again, this is nothing new. Wait for the cream to rise.
On the other hand, they can get it wrong even then!
Back in the early eighties, Neal and his friend went around to gas stations and convenience stores and cutesy shoppes (note the spelling) around Vermont hocking a self-published restaurant guidebook called "The Interstate Gourmet". The idea was to help travelers avoid McDonald's by telling them about all the interesting and at least decent restaurants that they wouldn't know about because they aren't visible from the highway. This idea would never work nowadays, obviously. But back then, before smartphones, this seemed like a hot concept to the big publishers. They approached Neal and his buddy and gave them a big advance to take the concept national. So Neal and his buddy toured around the country doing TV and radio all while they got fat eating at various ma and pa restaurants across the country. It got to the point where they actually hired writers to do different regions of the country.
Guess what happened? The books were a flop! Turned out to be a concept that sold well in Vermont, but not so much for all of America. Surprise surprise! People like McDonald's! Anyway, it didn't matter much to Neal and his buddy. They got their fifteen minutes of fame and nice check to boot. I don't think either of them thought it would get them that far when the decided to write the original book; they just thought it would be a fun way to make an extra buck.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/256089651472
Ha...I just found an article written by someone the publisher must have hired to do Texas (Neal doesn't recall the name): https://texashighways.com/travel-news/the-interstate-gourmet/
So, even in authoring there is an upper 1% living on Olympus. The rare particles with the energy and luck to transcend the energy barrier. Art is a tough gig.
How cool is it to have an old book of yours for sale on eBay? Only just mildly awesome!
This matches just about everything I've heard about the publishing industry. There is an aspect of quality involved in what gets accepted, but a whole lot of other factors only tangentially related, most of which are hopelessly outside of the author's control. The advice I've read said to attend writers conferences and network, network, network, because in the end, editors are much more likely to publish from their friends, or at least from people they know.
It's why I if I ever do write a book, I will almost certainly self publish. Maybe nothing will happen. (I know in most cases it doesn't.) But at least it will be in the world and I'll be able to move on.
Interestingly, the one advantage that publishers *sometimes* provide is guidance in marketing a book, having the author go to bookstores in multiple cities. I've long wondered why book tours are worth it anymore. I've never been to a book tour event, and don't know many who have. Just learned that publishers have insights on which bookstores are polled for the bestseller lists, and are gaming the system, having events at key locations to juice sales at those locations. Which sounds like a racket. Now I know not to put too much faith in the bestseller lists. (Not that I had before.)
"The advice I've read said to attend writers conferences and network, network, network, because in the end, editors are much more likely to publish from their friends, or at least from people they know."
That is so true. That's true for all of life really. If you have great people skills, it will get you far. And that's why writers move to NY.
The common wisdom these days is that self published literary fiction won't do well, but I don't think that's true for sci-fi. Especially since you've been blogging for a while and have people reading your writing. Anyway, there's no risk involved these days. Gotta love print on demand! Why not give it a try?
You're right. Big publishers have a lot of advantages in terms of marketing. Not sure about the smaller ones, it depends. Really the whole point of not self-publishing is marketing, at least in my view. The other stuff is easy by comparison.
From what I hear, the big tours don't go to mid-list authors necessarily. At least the big publishers aren't going to spend big money flying authors everywhere when the authors could just do a podcast or a zoom interview with a big influencer. That's a hell of a lot cheaper and probably a lot better than doing bookstore events. I guess it probably depends on the author and what genre they're writing in.
Interesting info about the polling. I'm not surprised they're gaming the system. And yeah, I wouldn't put too much stock in the bestseller thing. A lot of that stuff is a racket, although maybe less so than being an Amazon bestseller. (That's so easy to game it's not even funny. Hell, even I managed to do it! (Neal's book hit #1 in a few obscure philosophy and linguistics categories for a time.)
I'll be surprised if my (very limited) blog following translates into much with selling fiction. For sure, there's some overlap, but I suspect a lot of the people I talk with won't necessarily by interested in the kind of stories I'd be writing. I'm assuming I'd mostly have to build readership from scratch.
On gaming the system, there's some solace in something else Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham (my source for the gaming info) noted. Being on the bestseller lists doesn't really move the needle much anymore in terms of long term sales. The best thing for that apparently are reader reviews.
Of course, marketing increases the initial number of reviews. But for a niche book, that can be a mixed bag. Marketing that attracts the wrong readers could lead to an avalanche of negative reviews. Seems like the trick is marketing to the readers who will appreciate the book's niche.
Podcast and zoom interviews sound a lot less onerous to me than flying to a bunch of bookstores for readings and signings. Although honestly, even doing that would fill me with dread.
I don't know about 'from scratch' for your readership. It's true that if they come for the nonfiction, they might not be interested in the fiction, but since you have people engaging with you, they'll read whatever you write because they know you. Now that may not necessarily get you to the top of the sales charts, but it won't be nothing.
I hear you attracting the wrong readers. I think some of that can be about writing appropriate copy on the cover and so on, but there are some readers out there who don't really pay attention to what they're picking up and will take anything so long as it's free. It's hard to filter them out in marketing. The reviewer in this article had pressure to write a review, since from that platform readers are evaluated too, and those who give reviews get priority on the freebies. When there's no pressure, people generally won't leave a review if they don't like a free book.
Yeah, I'm with you on the virtual interviews. I don't like doing that sort of thing either. Especially since you wouldn't know the person interviewing you. I'd find that pretty awkward.
My friend who is a gay white male genetics researcher at a major university told me the official policy of that university is to no longer hire any white men for any future professor positions, regardless of their qualifications. I also know for a fact, from someone else who was a grad student at this university, that despite being a publically funded uni on the west coast, they basically have a default policy to not hire their own graduates for faculty positions, and only to hire people who have post docs from Ivy Leagues.
There’s so much absurdity that gets lost in these initially well intentioned procedures to make society more equitable. And it’s so fascinating going through your story, I feel like I want to just sit down and go through a whole bottle of wine going through this type of stuff with you, there’s so much to work with! It you can’t cry, laugh 😀
And interesting to hear your take and experience too as someone who is 1/2 Asian but I guess, not really leaning into that or using it in your favour, if you want to say..vs I definitely know people who are 1/2 Asian or 1/2 black and have absolutely capitalized on those labels to the maximum, irrespective of actual life experience or socioeconomic experiences in some cases. It’s weird. Meanwhile, according to modern labelling, I am merely a “white man” despite having close to 0% central/or northern European DNA, not resembling most Caucasian people in N America too much, and having grandparents that didn’t speak English, (to make no mention of the significant work I’ve put into living abroad, learning languages to a degree, and teaching mostly black and Latino students for a few years in the past in some pretty harsh areas).
Rare is to find a human who sees other humans in all their full evil-good-weird-ape-multicultural complexity.
I'm not surprised by the hiring of only Ivy League graduates, but to make it a policy not to hire white men is pretty bold. It's one thing to choose the minor applicant all else being equal, but that's just flat out nuts. And discriminatory. Funny, Asians are in the same boat as white men when it comes to higher ed discrimination, at least when it comes to the Ivy Leagues. We make things super awkward for those wanting to box us in!
The point about socioeconomic experiences is really key. The friends I grew up with were racially diverse, but only somewhat economically diverse. I can think of only one who was seriously poor, my best buddy—a white guy. The spectrum was mostly working class to middle class with all being in basically stable home situations. The differences came down to: did you get a brand new BMW when you graduated or did you get a jalopy?
What languages did your grandparents speak?
Yeah. At this point, America, while more technically ethnically diverse/multi cultural than most other developed countries, is significantly more economically striated and unequal than all of them. Canada is even more diverse, but still much less socio economically far apart, even if it is more so than say, Germany.
And I didn't get a car, nor have I ever owned one! (But did go to an expensive private college, as yours was I assume, which my dad paid for, so OK. :P)
My dad's parents were immigrants from Greece and came as adults, I never knew his dad; he died when my dad was a kid--my grandma never really learned much English, and it makes me sad that my dad never cared to teach me Greek, which was his first language, so that I could properly communicate with her before she died. My mom's dad was also from a Spanish family and he was either born in or spent the first years of his life in Colombia, I'm not quite sure which, but he emigrated to New York as a kid, so I'm sure his first language was Spanish, although he did become a fully naturalized fluent English speaker, but I still remember him as a fairly dark-skinned, aggressive New Yorker-type who was usually wearing some type of gold chain around his neck. My mom's mom was the only one of all of those who came from a more "traditional" White-Germanic type background, which is basically what most people think of when they think of how white North Americans look, and who was born in the US.
My husband's mother was the first in her family born in the States; her elder siblings were all born in Portugal. She told me once that her greatest regret was not teaching her children about their Portuguese heritage and language.
And that’s a difference between the US and Canada—people are much more likely to keep their culture in the latter, and encouraged to do so.
Interesting. So your dad came as a young child? Or was he born in the States? I imagine that must have been hard for your grandmother losing her husband and forced to get by in a foreign country. I imagine she relied on your father quite a lot.
I think 1st generation immigrants back then—and it sounds like your father would probably count, even if not technically—just weren't all that interested in preserving their culture the way we might be. They want to assimilate and give their children the best shot at making it. Maybe they don't want to be reminded of what they left behind. Look forward, not back. At least that was the case with my mother.
You've never owned a car? Do you know how to drive? This is amazing to me, coming from Oklahoma. It's the most boring place on earth if you don't have a car. If you're 15 years old living in Oklahoma, you're counting down the days to freedom.
My brother works in the gaming industry and they have a similar ban on hiring white men. I ran into similar attitudes in higher ed--unless the person had the Ivy League or was already a "name" from something else.
Networking has always been the key to advancement, but it is beyond ridiculous now.
Yeah; and I'm a leftist atheist weirdo who has lived abroad in multiple countries--but I still agree it's ridiculous.
Amazing that a "leftist atheist weirdo" and a "just-right-of-center Jesus-follower who has traveled, but never lived abroad can agree on something!!! (tongue firmly in cheek)
Yeah, but I don’t live in America anymore, so I’m over all these splits.
That just makes you a commie. ;)
In the true original sense--weird, utopian, commune-ities, of interesting people all helping and enlivening each other--a great way to live, when you can find it.
Yeah, the name thing trumps all, doesn't it. You can be a white man if you're already in with the in crowd.
That's a very touching story, Tina. You're very courageous author--and an excellent, exciting author too. It's a terrible shame that woke culture has replace real literature. I'm horrified to hear Joyce Carol Oates say that young white males are wholly ignored by editors today. I, for one, am greatly looking forward to your next novel.
Thanks Mostyn, I'm glad you liked my novel well enough to read the next one! It is horrifying to hear that such discrimination is happening. I hope things change. Maybe self-published authors will change things up...we'll see.
I'm looking forward to reading the next draft of your short story!
This is really similar to my experience with the US publishing industry. That said, there are a lot of people I know who are succeeding or at least breaking even by ignoring said gatekeepers, and none of them care one way or the other about gay ethnic genders.
Yeah, some indies are doing well, especially those with good head for marketing. (Not me)!
A great but profoundly disturbing story! It is not just about the perils of being an author in a rapidly changing industry. It has implications for freedom of speech in the academy and beyond. When we think of censorship, we imagine the state-sponsored Big Brother. That had been the case for my mother, a Soviet dissident, who could not have her writings published in a country where all presses were under the surveillance of the KGB. But even there, self-censorship was more effective than outright prohibition. People would not say or write anything challenging because of their commitment to the communist ideology or because it just "wasn't done". And nowadays, self-censorship si strangling freedom of expression and critical thinking more effectively than the clanking Soviet state machinery could ever do. I normally only read speculative fiction but I will read your novel (which I assume is realistic) just to challenge the Big Brother lurking in people's hearts and minds.
Thanks for commenting! You're so right about the implications for self-censorship. I think that must be going on at some level. In fact, I think someone wrote a post about that here on Substack a while ago, but I can't remember who. Your mother sounds like a very brave person! I bet she had some interesting stories too.
Thanks for crossing genres to take a chance on my novel. I hope it doesn't disappoint!
Hate to say it, but everyone here has it wrong. It makes no difference how well you write, or what you write. The industry doesn't need writers. They have piles of writers, writers they've already published. These writers are waving even more manuscripts at them all the time.
If you are new, the ONLY thing the industry wants is a big social media following. Or a celebrity. Or someone who can advance a decision-maker's social or professional career. If you're not having lunch in NYC with an insider, don't waste your time querying. Sorry, someone has to speak the truth.
That's largely true, but the quibble I'd have with this are the writers who didn't earn out their advance. Maybe they got a nice advance, but disappointing sales. They could have a harder time getting another contract than a debut author who checks all the right boxes. Debut = no horrible sales track record. So there is a need for some churn, a wee bit of fresh blood.
Absolutely Tina! (Or is it Tina Lee?) : ) Advances really aren't anything. Don't forget that if you get a $25,000 advance, you don't see any money until your novel sells up to that advance. Publishers know what they're doing. I doubt they lose very much, even if the book doesn't "earn out".
I'm on the writer's side, always. But that means telling the truth. I think : ) Cheers and good luck with the serial. I'm thinking of doing the same thing. Let me know if I can help in any way.
Ah it’s just Tina. I’d be doing the Roger rabbit if I got a 25k advance. Of course that’s not exactly a living. I could probably make as much doing the Roger rabbit on a street corner.
Yes, to the truth!
Let me know if you decide to publish your serial. Are you thinking here on Substack? Good luck!
Yes I'm going to publish a short, serial novel on Substack. Not sure when, but no later than January 2025. A lot of decisions have to be made. Will it take the place of, or be in addition to, my column? Will previous chapters be paywalled? Do I publish the whole book right away on Amazon KDP, or wait? I'm so confused : )
I know, it is confusing! There are a million different ways to do it. I would just take a look at other people doing it on Substack and see what you think. And also how much work you're willing to put in, because it can go on and on and on...Good luck with it!
Depressing, but thanks! :) Tina, do you think that in future there could be a role for AI to play in evaluating new authors? Seems to me at least one's draft could be read and assessed in its entirety (within seconds); so stuff with plot failures and crappy syntax could be whittled away with no human intervention — kinda shortlisting stuff that's fit for human consumption and giving *some* sort of qualitative assessment. Every submission could be AI-assessed and the *impartial* results made available within the public domain. The model you valiantly fought and describe above seems destined to fail, and yet the self-publishing route provides no definition between writers as everyone can do it (including AI itself, of course). Could AI eventually prove to be the technological bridge between each side of that river of separation? As a loose parallel, I hear that around 70% of trades placed in financial markets are now totally automated; humans cannot assess all the necessary micro and macro data in a timely enough manner so no longer pick the winners and losers. Where there is an excess of data (such as with creative writing and financial news flows), then why not automate the filtering process?
P.S. I of course understand the argument in whether humans are required to assess what is genuine art as against fakery, plagiarism, and so on.
As AI stands today, meh. I doubt it. I tried using Chat GPT to proofread—just to look for typos and missing articles—but it proved to be absolutely worthless. Maybe there are better options out there. I don't know. I've also used Claude AI, though not to proofread. It did seem slightly better, but I don't know that I would ever be able to trust something like that, which would make it redundant.
Sure, as I said, 'in future'. AI is as unreliable today as the internet was in the 90s. But look what happened in the following 15/20 years. I use Perplexity myself, and it's brilliant on even some pretty oblique enquiries, though can still occasionally stumble by feeding stuff into its models which shouldn't be fed in. I'm not suggesting you're doing this, Tina, but a lot of people have decided AI is crap and wrongly assume it will always be so. Anyway, in the meantime we're all stuck in similar situations to yours, and until some solution (likely technological imo) comes about, only lucky breaks and/or the right connections can free us up. So I just write for the process, for the creative expression, and also to keep my mind exercised. Anything more than that would only be fantasising.
Or, if AI becomes that good, we might want to worry about being replaced by its superior creativity and organization!
It can already produce better pop music than (say) 98% of amateur musos, so the commercial competition could soon be between the remaining 2% of human musos and AI (even as it is today). It's not hard to envisage the same level of metrics applying within the creative writing sphere. That means AI cleans out all the dross, leaving only the best human writers to compete with it. That could be a good thing, maybe — a bit of the old Marxist creative destruction, anyone? Pretty much everyone today fancies themselves as either a musician, or as a writer, or as a painter, or as a poet, or as a whatever-creator, and we've all been told we can be whatever we want to be, so many believe it to be true, and of themselves in particular. A big cliché in advertising has been: 'Limited only by your imagination', and none of us believe our own imagination has limits. Well, perhaps a lot of us are going to get found out, so let's keep practising!
Publish your novels yourself. Traditional publishers don't have as much power as they think they do anymore. We've been able to self-publish on Amazon for years now. Only those not in the know still think self-publishing is beneath them Traditionally published authors are now independently publishing too because the royalty payout is a lot higher. Granted, there are a lot to learn to sell and promote. But you already have a following. You can start by selling your books to them who want to read what you write.
Thanks for commenting! I think I'll end up self-publishing my next novel. I might reach out to a few agents, but I won't waste much time on that. Besides, there's something to be said for having control over your work.