There are times I feel a bit like a dinosaur, wondering what all these furry little bastards running around underfoot are up to, and where’d all the food go.
I’m not speaking about life in general; I’m doing okay at keeping up with the world, even if I still don’t have a smartphone or iPad. I’m talking about writing for a living.
For about thirty years, I thought I had a handle on it. I wrote novels, and publishers in New York bought them and paid me reasonable advances, and everything went pretty smoothly. There were a few disappointments along the way, when a story I wanted to tell didn’t sell, or a series got dropped, or whatever, but I made a living at it, and was generally pretty happy with my situation. I made adjustments to suit the market, but wrote more or less what I wanted to write. I did some experimenting now and then, but my bread and butter was always the fantasy novel. I spent fifteen years writing primarily for Del Rey Books, then switched to Tor for the next fifteen or so.
Then a couple of years ago, Tor declined to make an offer on the third and fourth books in the “Fall of the Sorcerers” series. No big deal, I thought; I’ll just switch to another publisher again.
Except so far, other publishers don’t seem to be interested. I keep hearing about all the wonderful new ways to get rich as a writer — paranormal romances, steampunk, urban fantasy, straight-to-ebook self-publishing, etc. — and can’t see how to make them work for me.
I don’t think it’s just me, either. I seem to remember that back in the 20th century, the annual summaries in Locus would report about 1,400 new titles being published annually in SF, fantasy, and horror; well, for 2010 they reported 508. (They don’t count small press or self-published titles.) The book market seems to have undergone a massive contraction — not necessarily in total sales, but in number of titles in the genre.
So these things happen. I’m not going to try to keep the buggy-whip factory running when everyone’s driving Fords. My wife’s grandfather was trained as a blacksmith, but became an auto mechanic when blacksmithing dried up; my own grandfather was a carpenter’s mate on a tea clipper, but realized that was a doomed occupation and put himself through engineering school. One must change with the times.
But I can’t figure out what to change to.
I was told urban fantasy was a hot genre, so I wrote an urban fantasy. It hasn’t sold — it’s too emotionally cool, I’m told, and male protagonists don’t sell unless they’re named Harry Dresden.
All these damned mammals underfoot…
I don’t like the frame here.
There are a lot of people who would like to spread the meme that old ways of doing things are “dinosaurs” but that’s entirely self-serving self-promotion.
Have you been reading the Dean Wesley Smith/Kristine Kathryn Rusch blog entries? They’re a weird mix of smart analysis and over-the-top condescension (or pearl-clutching, depending). It’s become tough to tell the sensible advice from the revolutionary zeal.
Additionally, I suspect the main cause of the reduction in Locus numbers comes from the recession and the employment slump.
Anyway, you should talk to Sherwood Smith. She’s been doing pretty well self-pubbing her backlist. And I’ve been told that same thing about urban fantasy and Jim Butcher. I may be trying second-world fantasy after I finish this next project.
Hey, what happened to the post I just wrote? Does it need approval?
Sorry about that; my spam filter was a bit over-enthusiastic. If anyone else has been caught, e-mail me and let me know, okay?
Gotta go cook dinner right now, but I may have more to say later.
Okay, now I have time.
I find it downright impossible to tell good advice from revolutionary zeal, and it’s not my backlist I’m worried about. It’s what I should be writing now in order to keep publishing.
I don’t really consider myself a dinosaur; I know I have marketable skills. I’m just not sure how to market them in the present publishing environment.
I could probably make a living just writing Ethshar serials, but unless I attract new readers it wouldn’t be much of a living, and it would be a lot of work. I’d really like to find a way to reach a larger audience than that.
Mind, I don’t really need to work. I’ve invested enough over the past thirty years that I could (just barely) live on the income from my stock portfolio and backlist, and that’s not even mentioning that my wife’s a GS-14 with twenty years seniority at the Treasury Department and her own healthy retirement funds. But I like being a writer, entertaining readers, and I’d like to have an income larger than just barely enough to live on.
I just don’t know what to write, as the genres I’m familiar with aren’t selling right now.
I hear you. I’m not sure that *anyone* knows which way to jump next. I’m writing an urban fantasy that’s almost anti-commercial, but I have no idea whether to go with 20 Palaces (either through Del Rey or not if they drop the series) or to try my hand at a more traditional second-world fantasy.
Frankly, I think the Ethshar books would do pretty well as self-pubbed efforts. You already have a fan base for them, and you’re prolific enough that you can maintain market presence. It’s worth trying, at least, until the NY publishers figure out how to grab that market.
A friend of mine insists that there’s an ebook gold rush going on and that it’s going to run out at some point soon. I’m not sure I’m positioned to take advantage (I’m a damn slow writer, for one thing) but I strongly suspect you could.
There’s a lot I could say about the alleged ebook gold rush, but it boils down to, it’s already 1851. The big strikes have already been made.
I mean, I decided to try a quick little gimmick book, How to Prosper During the Coming Zombie Apocalypse, figuring that at .99 it should do okay as an impulse buy, and that anyone searching on “zombie apocalypse” would see it.
Wrong. I did a search for “zombie apocalypse” in Amazon’s Kindle store, and my title came up as #102 on the list. Everyone and his aardvark is putting out ebooks, and getting one noticed is just as tricky as getting anything noticed on the web.
I’m going to be meeting with my agent next week, and intend to have a serious discussion about this stuff. Depending how that goes, I may well see whether I can make a go of self-publishing.
I’m going to be visiting NYC in mid-June, and I’ll be talking to my agent about the same thing.
BTW, you should ask your agent about pen names. I don’t think it helps you to use them, although I understand you have your reasons.
Anyway, I tweeted about it, along with a “What traditionally-published author do you think is using this pen name?”
It only took 5 mins for someone to puzzle it out, but maybe it was worth a tiny sales bump. Who knows?
I’ve been Nathan Archer since 1993. It hasn’t been much of a secret.
If you can’t figure out the market, then rather than writing a book that you think will fit the market, maybe you should just write what you think is the best possible book that you think you can write, and try to sell it afterward. Your best books have been very good, and also sold well. If you write one that’s as good, I suspect some publisher will eventually decide to buy it. And maybe then you’ll just happen to be ahead of the trends instead of behind them.
1) I never knew you were Nathan Archer until now, although you’ve been on my “buy-new-releases-from” list for at least 15 years now.
2) I bought “How to Prosper During the Coming Zombie Apocalypse” after reading this discussion, but in general I avoid 0.99 books after a few disastrous experiences (better to pay 9.99 for something that passed a few filters than 0.99 for slush).
Sorry for the delayed response; I just got back from a trip to New York, where our hotel did not offer free wi-fi.
Peter, I’ve tried writing what I wanted to write, in the form of a novel entitled Vika’s Avenger, and at least so far it has not sold. Likewise, Tor turned down the next two books in the series that started with A Young Man Without Magic and Above His Proper Station. The publishing business has gone through truly drastic changes in the last couple of years, and stuff that used to be a sure sale for me isn’t selling.
There are things I’m not saying here, but believe me, I’m not imagining these shifts. As I mentioned above, I saw my agent last Thursday and had a two-hour conversation about this stuff, and before I had a chance to say a word about my own evaluation of the situation, he gave me his, which was much the same. He said he wasn’t sure I still had any use for an agent in the present market, because I’m simply not going to be able to make a living doing what I’ve been doing for the past thirty years.
(His saying that was a great relief, because it meant I didn’t need to ask whether I still needed him.)
Small presses and self-publishing could work. Or maybe writing “young adult” stuff. But not selling fantasy novels for adult readers to traditional publishers.
Richard, I originally didn’t tell anyone I was Nathan Archer, though Locus leaked it even before Nathan had published anything. I wanted to keep it quiet until Nathan published something that wasn’t a tie-in, but then I never had time to write anything like that. I’ve gradually gone from not denying I was Nathan, to admitting it, to saying it, to (just recently) announcing it. (Something else Russ mentioned was that it’s impossible to keep a pseudonym secret in the modern online world.)
The theory behind “How to Prosper During the Coming Zombie Apocalypse” was that it would be a short little gag item that would be an impulse buy. I priced it accordingly, and the blurb mentions that it’s under 6,000 words specifically so no one will think they’re buying some desperate would-be writer’s novel.
Unfortunately, I haven’t yet figured out how to market it effectively; sales have been disappointing.
While the blurb may say that “How to Prosper During the Coming Zombie Apocalypse” is under 6,000 words, I’m never going to make it to the blurb from recommendations for $0.99.
Re: male protagonists in urban fantasy – hasn’t Simon Green done two separate series there now (Nightside and The Secret History) that are urban fantasy with a male protagonist? Not to mention Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles? And those are just the non-Dresden ones I’ve read recently.
I never heard of the Iron Druid Chronicles until you mentioned them just now.
Oh, wait — yes, I have. My wife picked up a copy of Hounded at this year’s Nebula weekend and read it on the ride to New York last week. She liked it. That’s all I know about the series.
Simon Green was already an established author at Ace when he started the Nightside and Secret History books, and the “urban fantasies with male protagonists not named Dresden don’t sell” idea had not yet become part of publishing lore. Even so, I strongly suspect his sales are a tiny fraction of what equivalent female authors with female protagonists are doing.
What I do know is that every publisher we’ve approached with my urban fantasy novel (and series proposal) has rejected it, most of them without reading it, on the grounds that middle-aged guys writing about men don’t sell. At least one other male author of male-protagonist urban fantasy I know has reported severely disappointing (and declining) sales.
Granting that I’m at the far end of the notability spectrum, at the far end of the amateur-professional spectrum, etc, so this may be worthless.
It sounds (to me) like you’re trying to approach the problem like a new writer trying to break into the field. The biggest fight most self-publishers have is respectability and notability. You have a name, and the things you do make some noise just by virtue of that name. Sure, you don’t have the name some people writing right now do, but you do have a recognized name. People actually search your name on google and amazon. Your article on Wikipedia was mistakenly tagged as non-notable and the immediate fix to the proper tag came with the edit note “there is no question of notability.” You’re not out at the end of the long tail.
All of this is by way of asking one question;
Why, if you have books that are complete and that you’re confident in, are they sitting on your shelf and not out in the market?
Some random quasi-related questions;
Do you see a difference in traffic on the rest of your site between when you run a serial and between them?
We’ve discussed donations before, but when you run serial does your site traffic stay steady or build?
While I’m on the thought process, the trick to the internet is capturing people’s attention. There have been articles upon articles written about this and I’m not nearly enough of a guru to add anything to that. But, I caught a story a while back about Facebook’s advertising feature. Guy managed to put together an ad that only showed for his wife. I’m not sure what the cost is, but it might be an interesting thing to experiment with. With How to Prosper selling at $.99 the cost v sale conversion probably isn’t worth it, but it’d be interesting to see what an ad targeted on the phrase “zombie apocalypse” and maybe liking “Shaun of the Dead” did to your sales.
Who says they’re not out to market? I said “at least so far” Vika’s Avenger hasn’t sold, because it hasn’t, but it’s not sitting on a shelf, my agent’s sending it out.
If it doesn’t sell fairly soon, though, it’ll be going to a small press.
Same with One-Eyed Jack.
Yes, when I’m running a serial, traffic to my site does go up. And that traffic vanishes again when the serial’s finished, there’s no permanent increase.
Marketing is the tricky part in all this. I haven’t put very much effort into it; I don’t think I’m particularly good at it. I may need to give it a more serious shot, though.
My misunderstanding with respect to the books not having sold versus not *yet* having sold and still being worked.
Everything else, though, yeah; it seems like about marketing. It’s about “brand” recognition, exposure, and generally attention economics.
I buy most of your books pretty much as soon as I see them, or at least I did when I still frequented bookstores. I now buy ebooks almost exclusively, and that makes it harder to buy your books.
At one point in time, I bought a new mass market paperback every week, often with a Borders discount coupon, other times devouring them in stacks. This ran about a hundred bucks a month just on F&SF. Space, though, started to run out. I have thousands of books in my house, and had to cut back. Rather than get rid of my long-out-of-print Gordon R. Dickson, or signed Modesitt, or, for that matter, the Dusara books, I started buying ebooks instead.
The vast majority of my buying has been at Baen, because they sell DRM free epubs that Just Work on my ipad. Further, I can grab the mobi and pdf files, so if epub fails, I can move to a kindle or to some other device. I refuse to be unable to read my books because some publisher has exited the business. That said, Baen is not known for its fantasy selection. (Though I just picked up some Dave Duncan I had been looking forward to…)
So, if you want to catch more of that thousand or two a year from me, please consider e-publishing in a form that is DRM free. Whether you go with Baen, or with a self-publishing route depends on what you think serves your needs the best. From where I sit, though, being able to read what I buy in a decade or two really matters.
The other big problem is that I have to hear that your books are available in a form I can read. It used to be simple – hear of a book, go to Borders with a coupon, go to Amazon, call Tattered cover or Powells and decide how much extra I am willing to pay for the sake of a well stocked store. The end result, though, was the same book.
Now, I either have to use different apps to read a book bought from Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Borders, or I have to find a way to convert it, and it is not easy. It is far easier to only buy the ones that meet my DRM-free requirement, but then I have to somehow find out that a favorite author has a book in that form. Lois Bujold has not released Spirit Ring DRM free yet, and I hope I hear about it when she does.
I suspect that the conventional New York publishers are in too much of a panic to do their jobs just now, which may be contributing to the smaller number of titles, but it sure makes it difficult to buy. I hope you find a way to survive until they get their act together, and find a way to let me trade money for stories without grief and drama.
Scott
I think if you look, you’ll find most of my books published by Wildside or FoxAcre are available in e-book form without DRM. Look at the B&N Nook editions, or the Fictionwise multi-format ones.
Tor, well… they’ve published five titles as e-books, but I think they do have DRM. I’m not really sure.
I am probably mistaking my own preferences for “the market”, but what seems to be moving off the shelves right now include: everything Charlie Stross and John Scalzi kick out; doorstop after doorstop (I refer to bulk, not usefulness) from Alastair Reynolds, and of course Iain Banks is getting shelf space.
I’m seeing a thread there of grand space opera as background, and some pretty heavy body counts. In short, they remind me of the movies that are hauling in hundreds of millions of dollars with monotonous regularity.
I don’t think you can call that the triumph of cheap action-adventure over complex characters and plots, however, none of the above are lame in that department.
I’ve liked your writing for a quarter-century now; I don’t think it would be diminished if you set some of it against some grand backdrop and bumped off a few thousand hapless victims in some ugly fashion in the course of the festivities.