Selling to writers or selling to readers - further reflections on the Legend Press seminar

Having depressed myself yesterday with the realisation that the publishing world seemed to be lacking almost any objective facts and seems to delight in not making available or even collecting much in the way of data, I usually manage to recover myself by deciding that a few truths can perhaps be discerned in the fog. Not writing, guarantees not being published. Obsessing on a particular book, sending version after version to the same agent or publisher is probably doomed as well. Several speakers at the legend seminar said as much. Actually, they joked about it. They also appeared to sincerely believe that giving any meaningful feedback would be doomed. Stories were told where an author was told about a particular fault, and a new version would soon be winging its way back with that bit fixed. They also felt that so much material was sent to them that they simply did not have time to say anything more than a stock response like ‘this is not for us’.

There was some encouragement to the notion that one should expect to send material to many agents, simply because any given agent may be over committed or simply come to a subjective decision that they don't like your stuff, however good it is. Sending to multiple agents at once was also acknowledged as common sense, life is too short to wait six to ten weeks for agent after agent to say no.

This suggests to me that there is an unexplored territory. Somewhere between not submitting too early and not sending out to enough people, there must be a happy medium, a nirvana that may of course only be identifiable with hindsight. Where that place lies, will of course be different for every writer and will change as the economy and the book market shift up and down. Successful writers obviously find where that place is for them. It is clearly not necessary to wait until something is perfect, what would be the point in publishers having editors if there were nothing to edit?

Another dimension that was illuminated to some extent was the issue of marketing. A naive view is of course that self-published writers do their own marketing and published ones have it done for them. There was a clear message from the panel that this is not true. Most writers do their own marketing. Agents market to publishers; may help with editing and are supposed to be good at dealing with contracts. Publishers publish, and often do little else, or at least concentrate their marketing on a small number of books or authors who they think will sell best.

As the seminar progressed it became clear in my mind that there are two markets in the writing game; one is concerned with selling things to readers; books, e-readers etc. The other is selling things to writers; creative writing degrees, vanity publishing, editorial services and everything in between. To put it a more cynical way, one market seeks to make money from readers and the other makes money from writers.

When you make that distinction the real difference between vanity publishing and traditional publishing becomes clear. If the main thrust of the business model is to make money from authors, then it is a vanity press; if the main thrust is to sell books to readers then it is a trade publisher. Simple as that, you pay your money and take your choice. What about when a writer does the publishing themselves? Well it is obvious enough that they are seeking to make money from readers, so you have to think of them as publishers.

What about agents? It seems clear to me that their market is writers; they may be helping a writer to make money, but fundamentally they are selling services to writers not readers. That seems to suggest that when agents start doing publishing, as some are with e-books, then they begin to look suspiciously like vanity publishers, unless they charge no up front fees and make their money from a percentage on sales. Then they really are middlemen, selling to writers but making money from readers.

I may be guilty of a rather narrow view in this. If one took a historical perspective, it could be argued that agents only gained their current traction as middlemen when publishers downsized and got rid of a lot of staff that previously spent time nurturing authors. After the net book agreement disappeared, the industry went though a period of vertical disintegration, creating a sort of middle ground between writer and reader in which a range of models have been tried. In effect by narrowing the portals of entry into the publishing business, the industry created an incentive for the 'selling to writers' market to increase. Ironic really, because the publishers who were in the best position to sell information and service to writers left themselves out of the market. Creating a market and letting someone else exploit it, seems to be foot shooting of a high order.

Clearly running seminars for writers, as Legend Press are now doing, is a smart move; who better than a publisher to tell writers how to sell to readers, apart from readers themselves of course.

Now of course, e-books, Amazon, iBooks etc. have thrown the whole thing into meltdown. Writers can put their stuff out as e-books very simply. Readers can in theory find the material with a few clicks of the mouse. The only problem is that there are half a million books on Amazon and many millions of readers looking for those books. Readers are bound to ask the question, what is the best way for me to find the book I want?

Other readers are one obvious source, particularly readers who write reviews. Book bloggers are a more sophisticated version of such readers. Advertising must have a place too. So where do agents fit into this? In their current form, my guess would be nowhere. Publicists may have a role, especially if they have expertise in knowing what readers want, but agents whose knowledge is only about publishers may have painted themselves into a corner. Tom Chalmers, the Managing Director of Legend Press, who spoke at the seminar, clearly believes that one of the roles of publishers is to help readers by only publishing material that he thinks is worth reading. As a publisher he has one source of useful data, he knows how many books he has sold.

So we come full circle, my thanks to Legend press for closing some of the loops and making me think, and all for a less than £60 for the day with a chapter review thrown in. Anyone who wishes a similar experience can find the dates of future seminars on Legend’s web site www.legendpress.co.uk.

Better write better

I’ve been reading Nicola Morgan’s rather good blog for some while (http://helpineedapublisher.blogspot.com). She did a series of posts about how to use Twitter, so, following on from my last post I decided to take the plunge.

I’ve installed Tweetdeck, again as a result of various comments. Seems like a good idea, especially as it has a column of newsfeeds so that I pick up friends Facebook updates at the same time – on the Iphone too.

Then the wierd stuff starts. I wrote a tweet saying I’d slept in my campervan on the way to a conference in London. Somewhat inconsequential information for the world in general, but one has to start somewhere. (More of the conference in a moment.) Next thing I know I have a new follower on twitter – some campervan / motor home site in the USA that claims to offer everything motor home, is now following me. Obviously they have some software that is chewing through all the tweets in the world and hitting on words like campervan, motor home etc. The mind boggles. I wonder what the package is and where I can get it?

The conference was the writer’s workshops do, in London, about getting published. It came with a one-to-one book doctor session thrown in, which seemed like a good idea since I hadn’t had one since the last update. OK so I am selling the book on Amazon, Smashwords etc. but maybe it still needs work. Plus one has to book up for these things so far in advance that I hadn’t taken the e-book plunge when I signed up.

There is a temptation to Iphone a tweet while sitting in the audience. Risky though, because if a camervan site in the USA can follow me off the back of one word, then who knows who else. If I imply that it is bizarre to listen to “Two drably dressed publishers with boring voices talking about how they want to have their socks knocked off by new submissions.” People whose presentation style seems to suggest that they have never been excited in their lives, but who may nevertheless be monitoring every word in some crafty way. These people publish books. I don’t want to offend them do I? So I thought it, but didn’t say it.

Maybe the drab presentation was part of the act. If it looks as though one would have to work very, very hard to get these people excited, maybe it gives you some idea of what you are up against. As far as I can tell from the figures bandied about at the conference, for the average writer, the odds of getting picked up by a publisher are about one in a thousand. So to a first approximation all authors are failures. Harry Bingham did let slip that three percent of the people who have been through the Oxford Writers Workshop process get picked up. So that must be seen as a huge success – to go from 1 per 1000 to 30 per 1000.

I find it slightly tedious that Harry keeps implying that the only reason you book does not get picked up is because it is not good enough. Has he never read Fred Hirsh on social limits to growth? “If everyone stands in tiptoe, no one sees any better.” If we all get much better at writing but the number of authors stays the same and the book market stays the same then still seems likely that 1 per 1000 will still be the norm.

Of course there is another problem, namely that some pretty dreadful books that appear to disobey everything the book doctors say, still seem to get published. Maybe Harry’s advice should be rephrased along the lines that for most of us the only obvious way to improve our chances of getting published is to write a better book. There may be other ways, like luck, inside contacts, or whatever, but the chances are that the people who get through by those means either don’t know how they did it, or are never going to say. So shut up and keep trying to write better.

I guess Harry’s sales pitch worked to some extent, because I now have a signed copy of his book on how to get published (Getting Published, Harry Bingham). I’ll get Nicola Morgan's book (Write to be Published), when it comes out, but chasing around to see if I can pre-order got me to Snowbooks and their rather wonderful Open Rejection Letter (http://www.snowbooks.com/openrejection.html.) It says it all, and it’s worth reading, but here’s a little quote, which I hope they don’t mind me using – it does say open after all.

“What it comes down to is that publishing companies aren't really the people you want reviewing your work. If you think about it, we have a financial incentive to put as little thought and effort into sifting through submissions as possible. We've got a lot of submissions to get through and not enough time. Plus, many publishers aren't looking to take any chances with new material; they want obvious, commercial successes, ideally from authors with a track record.”

So, while hiring a witchdoctor, bunging it on Kindle etc. may be worth a try, trying to write better still looks like the only game in town.