Should Writers Run the 26.2-Mile Publishing Marathon or Join Rosie Ruiz and Take the Subway to Success?
Two hundred thousand titles published each year in the United States, 40,000 publishers with books on shelves at Barnes & Noble. And you wonder why YOU can’t find a literary agent or an editor?
Two hundred thousand titles is a staggering number. To put it into perspective, visualize the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge spanning New York Harbor between Staten Island and Brooklyn, NY, at the start of the world’s biggest marathon. More than 36,000 runners are stretching and running in place, waiting for the race to start. Now take a look at this photo from the Runner’s World 1997 Calendar and in your mind’s eye multiply that figure by FIVE and you’ve got the size of the crowd of freshly published authors an unpublished author is up against. That’s how many people got published last year and the year before and the year before, and will be published next year and the year after.
The front runners in publishing get preferred positioning based on track record. By dint of previous book sales, Lisa Scottoline (Daddy’s Girl), Maeve Binchy (Whitethorn Woods), James Patterson (Step on a Crack), Danielle Steele (Sisters), Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) and John Grisham (The Innocent Man) will sprint out ahead of the unproven masses, easily maintain the lead and skip merrily to the big payoff—reimbursing the publishing houses’ coffers for the advance against royalties. Yes, the occasional upstart and unknown first-time author will also breathe the fresh air enjoyed by the lead runners, but not the majority of authors. No, in the “win, place, or show” of racing, mid-pack (if they are lucky) or end-pack (more than likely) will be the only place for them.
Do you really want to join the 200,000 writers who will get published this year and run the publishing marathon cheek to jowl or would it be smarter to pull a Rosie Ruiz and take the subway to the finish line?
Why Not Generate Book Sales the “New”-Fashioned Way?
Why try so hard to be just 1 of 200,000 doing it the old-fashioned way. The world of publishing and how the job can get done have changed.
If I had it to do over again, meaning starting off as an unpublished writer with no contacts with whom I could “do lunch,” no arms I could twist, no editor or literary agent at whom I could bat my eyes and smile fetchingly, rather than wandering around the dark and scary halls of the publishing industry, clutching my blankie, I would:
Launch a Web site on the cheap. Geocities’ templated Web site at $10/month would work for me. Paypal, anyone?
Take my tattered manuscript to some “out of the box” marketing places, strike some “out of the ordinary” deals and wait for some advance orders before going to press. (That’s a neat little trick a publishing house I know is reputed to use before going to press. I believe the law allows 4-6 weeks for delivery. Got enough orders, go to press. Not enough orders, return the money.)
Look at this advertisement for “The Glenlivet” and “The single malt that started it all.” There’s no reason if you are a Scottish author whose characters live in Scottish villages, that you can’t also approach the marketing department of The Chivas and Glenlivet Group and introduce yourself. Alan Warner, author of Morvern Callar, These Demented Lands, and The Sopranos has pryed open the door already. Come to think of it, an even smarter move might be to approach The Chivas and Glenlivet Group’s competitors!
ALL the copy is about Alan Warner and his books! The final two paragraphs:
“When asked whether he starts his creative process by first establishing the story or the voice, the writer purrs, “I start with a large glass of The Glenlivet.
We’ll drink to that. The Glenlivet salutes Alan Warner, the fiction world’s powerful, provocative originator.”
The Wicked Witch of Publishing will drink to that, too, though she is not sure about the purring part!
You’d be surprised how the Wicked Witch of Publishing can kick down a barricaded door with a Do Not Enter sign if she’s got a good idea and the right pitch and can get to the right person. Doors fly open for the right idea. You don’t need an agent and you don’t need an editor.
You Can Look Fresh in YOUR Photo Op, Too! Ask Rosie Ruiz!
“On April 21, 1980 Rosie Ruiz, a 23-year-old New Yorker, was the first woman to cross the finish line in the Boston Marathon. She had achieved the third fastest time ever recorded for a female runner (two hours, thirty-one minutes, and fifty-six seconds), which was made all the more remarkable by the fact that she looked remarkably sweat-free and relaxed as she climbed the winner’s podium to accept her wreath.” Yes, Rosie took the subway!!!
Okay, okay, in a marathon, riding the rails is not considered the honorable way to win, though I’m sure more than one competitor has eyed the increasingly beckoning subway entrances throughout the city at about the time he or she has “hit the wall.” Rosie got in big trouble. Tsk, tsk. For a writer, however, avoiding the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and taking the subway would translate as recognizing the fixed positions of the top runners and acknowledging the perils of an overcrowded race. Generate book sales the new-fashioned way—100& by yourself, 100% for yourself.
April 15th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
It seems so obvious that only writers able to market their product will get that product to market.
What about the great writers who can “only” write?
April 15th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Lynne,
I don’t doubt you can kick down some doors, much more efficient use of one’s energy than running the traditional
publishing marathon. I once had a boss who said, “If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’ hard enough.” The moral threshold is always moving. Steroids? Oral sex? Doorbusting isn’t cheating. It’s the new roadwork for the human race.
After years of the seemingly never-ending uphill treadmill, I jumped off and took a different bus (as a non-New Yorker the only subways I know are sandwiches) to a regional publisher and struck an ‘out of the ordinary’ deal–sort of a hybrid between published and self-published.
If I had to do it over, I would have first struck some deals with liquor companies for product placement in my memoir, to subsidize its costs. Subsequent to publishing I have worked toward creating my own brand and have trademarked a few drinking-related items, including the phrase Will Dance For Margaritas. I now have a sponsor, Twang Margarita Salt.
In my next book, not only will I have authentic product placement, I will also sell ads for the back pages. Honorable? Writing is both an art and an ultra-competitive business. Shameless marketing? Forgive me for being new-fashioned.
Wickedly Yours,
DC
Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM): The real crime in all this is that DC’s book is terrific and warrants much more exposure than it is getting. What idiots turned this book down? I know, I know, I don’t review books and I’m not doing so here, though I did add my comments to Amazon.com because I couldn’t get over how surprised I was to like the book so much. I read the book over the course of three evenings and then quickly passed it on to a friend of mine. She LOVES the book. And the book is not all yucks by any means.
April 15th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Heaven forbid if the above should be V.S. Naipaul, the great and formidable
Trinidadian writer! Heh.
Ivan
Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM): Ivan is Canadian. He has written and self-published four novels using the Island Grove Press imprint. He has been the recipient of an Ontario Arts Council grant.
April 15th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
I’m listening. Look at my Web site. All I need now is a finished product. Of course, first I have to finish my radio
adaptation in time for the BBC radio play competition deadline. In the meantime, any of your jaded agent friends are welcome to approach me to join my First Look Sweepstakes.
April 15th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Writers should relax. I wish they’d relax and have some fun.
In a world of 6.5 billion people, few are going to extend too awfully far beyond their home towns and circle of friends and associates and a small audience beyond that, whether self-published or picked up by someone who claims to be a “traditional publisher,” whatever that is, these days. We impact the part of the world we can. And even those who hit the “traditional publisher” get a limited run—and then vanish.
I saw one estimate that, worldwide, 600,000 books are published each year. Yet “Everyone is reading the same 20 books,” Paul Slovak, associate publisher of Viking, once complained.
Do what you can. Enjoy it. Self-publish and do some creative marketing on your own if “breaking down doors” doesn’t appeal to you. Life is short—and is your writing really worth breaking down doors? I didn’t think so.
“…the writer purrs, “I start with a large glass of The Glenlivet.” Oh yeah, right. And he wears a beret and sits at a cafe jotting notes on the human condition. Gimme a break.
April 15th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
I see the publishing industry from a different market perspective. As opposed to the ABA, I see it from the CBA (Christian Book Assoc.) side, which alleviates those kind of competitive numbers.
The CBA has grown to a 6 billion dollar a year business, and competition is fierce, but nowhere near as fierce as it is in the ABA.
While I don’t see product placement in the CBA like there is in the ABA, (*snort* I could see the Chivas going over like a lead balloon)I have seen creative marketing like Brandilyn Collins is doing with the Scenes and Beans character blog for her fictional Kanner Lake book series.
We also have creative marketing strategies like the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance that I direct. We literally reach thousands of people a week with our book tours, and get our books weekly placement on Technorati’s poplular book list.
I feel that thinking outside of the proverbial box is the key, and you are only limited by your imagination. Although I don’t think that the, “If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’ hard enough…” philosophy works for us
April 16th, 2007 at 8:15 am
I have to agree with V.S., most writers don’t know how to market themselves and some writers don’t even want to! The latter are still stuck in the mindset “I don’t write for money, I write for the love of writing” blah, blah, blah.
C’mon, if we writers really aren’t concerned if anyone reads our stories then we would be content with a drawer full of manuscripts.
Therefore, for writers who want readers, I agree Lynne; door busting is the way to go. Thank you for highlighting what other authors are doing. Some self-published authors here in Chicago have received grants from the large corporations to subsidize their publishing efforts. This is the first time I’ve seen an author collaborate with an advertiser. Impressive.
Mel
April 16th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Lynne:
Publishers at one time always advertised other series and other authors at the back of books, both hardcovers and
paperbacks.
Associated or story related products might not be a stretch.
Bernita
Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM): Bernita is from Ontario, Canada.
April 16th, 2007 at 11:50 am
Publishing and marketing is easy, Glenlivet-drunk composing, difficult. How can we drink on the job?
April 16th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
What evidence do you have that Warner approached Glenlivet with this idea? I suspect that this was all after the fact of his novel’s publication.
I’d like to see someone with no agent or publisher approach the head of marketing with a tie-in conceptand succeed. If they could even get them on the phone, the first question they’d be asked would be, “Who is your publisher?”
Then you answer, “Well, I don’t have one yet…”
“Well, what’s in it for our company to be associated with you book?”
“Well, I uh, er, well, that is, I think that …”
CLICK! Dial tone time.
This strikes me as a desperate last chance tactic, not a place to start from. Further, most writers fiction or nonfiction probably doesn’t even contain elements that would be amenable to a tie in.
Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM): Hi, Peter. You are right: in all probability the publicist or special sales person associated with the publishing house struck the deal, though the contract would have, ideally, been signed about three to six months before pub date, when the ARCS were going out. I disagree with you completely, however, when you say an author could not get past “go” with the head of marketing. Yes, the author has to have his or her “pitch” down and be able to articulate what’s in it for the other guy—because that’s what it is all about, believe me! Email subject line: ”Glenlivet Promotes Scotch with Scottish Author.” If I were a Scottish author I could fire off that email to Glenlivet (or one of Glenlivet’s competitors), and if I were a Bahamian author, I could send the SAME email to the head of marketing for Bacardi’s rum, and the text of my email would be read. Of course, I would have embedded The Glenlivet ad. No, elements of the content of the book do not have to be a direct tie-in to the company.
April 17th, 2007 at 9:07 am
Peter does have a valid point. This is young Warner’s fifth novel, and I’m not sure this strategy would have gotten off first base had it been his first with no publisher. Probably impossible even if he’d been a previously unknown writer with a publisher.
I think a writer is far better off to try and establish a local connection (with a point of interest that they can market themselves) than to try and put a Rambo character into it and trying to sell it as Humvee ad potential. Mr. Warner had a big jump with his established reputation and I suspect this was merely added income for him.
Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM): Well, sure, if you’ve got a local connection, I’m all for capitalizing on that and blogged about taking advantage of “the hook” a few months ago. Why The Memory Keeper’s Daughter was a Shoo-In for a Best Seller. Why One Book Takes Off through Word-of-Mouth and Others Fizzle. Show Me…The Hook! However, look how DC Stanfa is doing. (See her comment above.) And I just recommended to her that she get hold of the marketing folks at matchmaker.com or match.com and show them her book. Her book would make an excellent premium for singles (age 30 to 60) who sign up for a year. Thinking, thinking, thinking.
April 17th, 2007 at 9:56 am
Visitors are dropping by The Publishing Contrarian in record numbers from 55 countries!!!
From the UK: London, South Kyme, Halifax, Manchester, Gateshead, Reading, Kingston Upon Hull, Sidcup, Cramond + …
From Canada: Toronto, Kingston, London, Ottawa, Montreal, Leaside, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Burlington, Greenfield Park, Richmond, Beloeil, Caughnawaga + …
From Israel: Tel Aviv-Yafo, Kefar Shemaryahn
From Brazil: Sao Paulo, Diadema, Sao Jose Do Rio Preto, Belo Horizonte, Sao Jose Dos Campos, Anapolis + …
From Poland: Poznan, Krakow, Warszawa, Czestochowa
From Norway: Oslo, Bergen
Monico, Nigeria, Mexico +++ ….
April 17th, 2007 at 10:58 am
Lynne, You are provocative as always. I do think we’re tangled in a virtual Absurdistan when it comes to marketing writing through the traditional agent to publisher method aka the Rythym Method in which no one seems to understand how babies are conceived and what do with them after they arrive. 200,000 babies! 600,000 babies. The obvious midstream opportunity here is waste management or the renewable disposable diaper with author photo.
Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM): David Thayer is a book reviewer for January Magazine and The Philadelphia Inquirer.
April 17th, 2007 at 11:34 am
WW:
What constantly astonishes me is not so much who doesn’t find a way to get published as what books do get
published by established houses. I look in PW and NYT Book Review and elsewhere and see titles that only the author’s mother might read yet they are being spewed out there like millions of sperms cells in the seemingly desperate hope by publishers that a few will “get through” to a wide-enough audience to allow for a successful, popular pregnancy—and a best-seller will be spawned. The decision-making by editors continues to puzzle me.
Small advances could mean that many of these books ultimately don’t lose money or at least nothing catastrophic financially occurs, but doesn’t the industry as a whole realize it’s choking on its own self-gratification as groaning book shelves can’t take one more onslaught? The industry, ironically, is forcing [so many books] on consumers that only the storage capacity of the internet is up to the task of keeping track of it all and offering some sensible selection. How many more biographies of Lincoln do we need?
The galloping horse is out of the barn and determining where the carriage goes, and publishers frantically try to keep grasp of the reins. They should be good Catholics and practice restraint or go blind.
April 17th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
But no visitors from Omaha?
Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM): Hi, Andy. Since you asked! According to Google Analytics, 46-states, including Alaska and Hawaii, are represented in the traffic. Nebraska? Yes, Omaha, Fullerton and Lincoln! And I just discovered part of the source of the traffic—a link from RealityCarnival.com, “News that shatters the ice of our unconsciousness!” to The Publishing Contrarian. Wow, what a different and terrific Web site.
April 18th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Lynne:
BTW, Rose Ruiz’s “success” was very short lived. Ultimately, it was a spectacular failure. She’s certainly not a good example of a clever, valid shortcut.
April 18th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
I liked the Marathon analogy and the Verazzano Bridge start photo – blow-up to 200,000 authors with laptops?
Too many voices crying in the wilderness, but the consensus seems to be that those who are heard will be the strong, self-marketers and the already established blockbuster writers – add Jeffrey Archer to the list, proving that potboilers can be page-turners. And yet, you and I and everyone knows that occasionally a quiet, small, serendipitous voice rises like cream to the surface, e.g. Lady Ranfurly’s memoirs!
Keep up the good work.
April 19th, 2007 at 10:49 am
My first book was traditionally published. Billy the Butcher MacDougall’s Guide to Pirate Parenting: Why you should raise your kids as pirates and 101 ways how to do it, is my second book.
I wrote a book proposal for Guide to Pirate Parenting, and think I could have sold it to a traditional publisher. I was getting good feedback on the proposal. The problem was I wanted to launch Guide to Pirate Parenting before the movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, came out on May 25, 2007. I realized that wouldn’t be possible using a traditional publisher. The publishing process was going to take way too long.
So I wrote the manuscript and had printed copies of the book in less than three months, using Cold Tree Press, a POD company. I did most of the publicity for my first book and figured I’d have to do the same with my second, regardless of whether it was traditionally or self-published. And my royalty rate is a lot higher, too.
I have nothing against getting a good traditional publishing contract, if you can, but don’t believe it’s going to happen for most authors.
Tim
Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM): Tim’s parenting advice has been published in dozens of newspapers, magazines and Web sites, including the Christian Science Monitor, Atlanta Parent, Big Apple Northwest Family, FathersWorld.com and ParentingHumor.com. His first book, In the Beginning…There Were No Diapers, was a 2006 Foreword Best Book of the Year finalist. Tim is also the director of the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop. Tim’s “Anatomy of a First Book”: http://www.timbete.com/FirstBook.html. .
April 24th, 2007 at 10:44 am
In the past 6 months I’ve had rejects from agents, most say: “I love this book, but don’t think if can sell it.” My intention was to donate all royalities to help in the rebuilding the public libraries of New Orleans. The book is the first in The New Orleans Trilogy – The Beatitudes -Traditional publishing will take too long. What do you think about my going with IUniverse and making sure all royalities (20%) go directly to the library system (www.nutrias.org for photos of the destruction) and I can be assured of distribution and availability on many book selling sites like amazon, etc. I will go on tour, and I already have support from many great authors on my blog -www.beatitudesinneworleans.blogspot.com. I grew up in New Orleans and my area (not far from Fats’ house) is now gone – it was near the levee. Thanks
Lyn LeJeune
Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM): Hi, Lyn. Just because proceeds from a book are going to charitable organizations doesn’t mean anyone will buy the book. Why exactly do the literary agents and editors whom you’ve approached feel they cannot sell the book, even though they loved it. That’s the kind of comment you need to address BEFORE you approach another literary agent or editor and hear the same thing.
April 30th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Lynne:
Having published our first book to moderate success, we highly enjoy your often controversial posts, and have subsequently nominated you a Thinking Blog.
Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM): Well, thanks!!!
April 30th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
Hi Lynne,
Two days ago I learned that the Picton Castle, the ship central to my narrative nonfiction adventure, Fair Wind and Plenty of It, is currently the set of a major new CBS reality show, called Pirate Master.
http://www.cbs.com/innertube/player.php?cat=135999&vid=136003&format=&auto=1
How do I make the most of this opportunity when the publisher’s publicity departments seem reluctant to return calls? It’s an older book (2 years) but it actually still sells in niche markets. Most West Marine stores carry it, for instance.
Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM): Rigel, your publisher needs to rejacket your book right now and include references to this show. It’s only been two days so give it a week, then call again. You have to give the people in the pub house time to meet and get organized. They should contact the reality show. If Fair Wind & Plenty of It is publicizing a TV show on the book jacket, there may be some co-op advertising money to be had. (There should be!) Keep me posted. Loved your book, Matey!!!
May 19th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
I’ve already taken step one… the website, which a computer genius friend helped me set up. I’ve given a year towards getting the traditional publishing set-up, but from your post I can see the odds-against very clearly. I’m resigned to going POD with it in the fall and market it myself, since my enthusiasm for the book (and the enthusiasm of some fans who have read the manuscript) far outstrips that of the three agents who have seen it.(And turned it down) I can see doing the same with the next book, too (I do historical novels)… and marketing it to a couple of local museum bookshops.
What kills me about the genre stuff that does get published is how dreadful much of it is! I couldn’t read past the first chapter of a recent big-name blockbuster because I kept running into sentances that sounded like entries in the Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing contest.
OTO, there’s home for me… if they could make it big with that kind of dreckage… then there is still hope for me!
August 8th, 2007 at 10:04 am
[...] After perusing a collection of blook-blogs, including this one, I am wondering if it isn’t the wave of the future, or at least a jolly great shake-up to “the way things have always been done”. Sort of like how the news and comment blogs were a shake-up to the news media complex over the past five or six years, come to think on it; which gives me cause to wonder if the literary-industrial complex isn’t on the same Titanic-vs-Iceberg track. Writers who have way more experience than I have also been wringing their hands in lamentation at sclerosis of the literary-industrial complex, and venturing all sorts of reasons. Like the torrents of manuscripts flowing upstream towards their traditional spawning grounds, at traditional publishing firms. [...]
April 4th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
[...] Standing back and taking a long look, and considering other developments though – as the release of the handy-dandy-Espresso Book Machine and perhaps this kerfuffle-du-jour is just one more of those harbingers of change in the world of books and publishing. Everything changes, nothing stays the same for long. Having been hanging out in among the book blogs and in the author discussion groups for the last two years has been enlightening. Many of the other writers in the IAG have been in and around the writing game for years . They don’t have the five-figure royalty checks – if they did, they wouldn’t be hanging around in the discussion group skulling out ways to market their books if they did. But what I picked up, over and over again was a feeling that for most writers, the way the literary industrial complex is set up… it just was not working, and not working in a big way. This guy (now on hiatus, unfortunately) was a shrewd and extremely knowledgeable insider. This blogger is another: and what they were saying was confirmed by the writers that I met in putting together the IAG; which is that it is nearly impossible for interesting, genuinely original books with niche appeal to even slip in over the transom at traditional publishers. [...]