Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free, People Want Other People to Work for Free
on January 27th, 2010An awesome post by romance writer Shiloh Walker, which is a must read for anyone who may be tempted to plunk down big bucks on one of those self publishing schemes. I have several prose author friends who have been scammed by companies like this, or who made the terrible mistake of pre-printing thousands of copies of their books before they had received a single order.
Had I gotten involved with a place like Author Solutions/Dellarte back then, here’s likely what would have happened… I probably would have wasted money I didn’t really have to waste-just out of college, getting married, already in debt-not the ideal way to start life.
I doubted I would have sold more than 10-15 books, because I am not a salesperson, and with self-pub/vanity pub/assisted self pub, you have to be and none of your marketing choices change that. So after I spent all that money and sold less than nothing, watched as my dreams crashed and burned, I might have given up. Who would be at fault? Me. For seeing a shiny, sparkly promise of a shortcut. It would be my fault, and mine alone, and I acknowledge that.
But the thought of that shiny, sparkly thread of a promise being offered to another gullible, hopeful writer who has a lot of promise? Turns my stomach. Fourteen years later, I’m published, with 50+ books out. So while I often think my work sucks, I guess it’s safe to say that kid I was at nineteen had promise, and some people might consider it a shame if I had given up when my dreams were smashed.
Warren Ellis self publishes his work as a POD collection, and here are the numbers. Sobering info.
Easy access to images and pirating makes for hard times for graphic artists and photographers:
The chief executive of one of America’s biggest newspaper chains told me a couple of years ago he feared readers would accept this “culture of good enough” as much as anything, not noticing the difference between blog slop and thoroughly vetted news and analysis.
My friend Blue, an ace with graphics and art reproduction, told me how his field has been beset: Amateurs produce Photoshopped pictures that once wouldn’t have made it out of a darkroom. Workers in India draw corporate logos for pennies on the dollar and e-mail them stateside.
Must read: Malcolm Gladwell of The New Yorker takes on the “Information wants to be free” utopians and leaves nothing behind but a smoking crater:
Free is just another price, and prices are set by individual actors, in accordance with the aggregated particulars of marketplace power. “Information wants to be free,” Anderson tells us, “in the same way that life wants to spread and water wants to run downhill.” But information can’t actually want anything, can it? Amazon wants the information in the Dallas paper to be free, because that way Amazon makes more money. Why are the self-interested motives of powerful companies being elevated to a philosophical principle?
WORD.
Funny this should come up now. I just posted on similar issues over at my blog:
http://trosper-ignatz-gentlegiant.blogspot.com/
It’s a different issue for me as I am primarily a teacher and not a very aggressive freelancer. But I do believe that in time the model will bear out and people will pay for content. At least as much as they ever did.
My housemate is a sculptor who works full time in graphic design. She once had a client tell her, “you should work for free because you like what you do.”
The mind boggles.
My point is that undervaluing creative endeavors is not unique to the Interwebs, as The Hand Puppet called it. The Net just makes it easier to do so.
My hope (conceit?) is that we are slowly finding ways to be remunerated for our creative efforts in this marketplace.
In the meantime, of course, we gotta eat!
LOL! I send you an internet hug!
I am making the internet work for me by figuring out how to get advertisers and unique ways to sell product: like my big garage sale!
But in the GRRRR department, I just found out that a publisher with whom I have no contract has put a print book for which I did illustrations on the Amazon Kindle. In the absence of a contract, the only right transferred are First North American rights. The book is now out of print.
So, there’s an hourly rate I have to pay to my lawyer.
But because some goober sees an easy way to make a buck, my name is plastered all over the book, and I was never informed and never made a dime beyond the $500 flat fee for which I was paid to do about 2 dozen illos.
Amazon is making money, the publisher is making money, and presumably the author is making money.
But not the artist from whom all of the above neglected to get a signed release for electronic rights.
I am sure they will have no trouble removing my illustrations from their Kindle book.
and then there’s me. When I started Pont-au-Change I took the POD path for it because I was sure (and other people, who I probably should not have listened to in retrospect, assured me) there was no way I was going to sell this huge 6 book literary sequel thing on just a sample chapter and an outline.
Of course when I started it only cost me $100 a title to prep the thing, I made back the startup money and within a year. Now the company I started with (iUniverse) charges $500 a title and I’m not going back to them for the rest of the series; I think it will go to Lulu or something (where I can set my own value to it, thank you) and I can control the production value of the cover (if I’m paying for it I want more than really bad Photoshoopin.)
I entered this Faustian arrangement knowing it wasn’t going to make me a lot of money. But it’s building me an audience, anyway, and I make enough profit every year to be able to file a schedule C and deduct like crazy.
The other things I’m working on? Definitely going for professional publication. Or in the absence of that, I can buy my own ISBN block and build an empire muahahahahahaha… oh, wait XD
Yeah, people really need to be careful about the choices them make in going the POD route.
This last weekend, I basically got chewed out by a literary agent for going POD with THE SCRIBBLER’S GUIDE. It’s probably not a choice I’d repeat, but I don’t particularly regret the choice to go with BookSurge (now CreateSpace). I do regret paying for the PR package, since I got absolutely no traction off the list they sent my Press Release to. But the postcards/bookmarks/business card package is high quality stuff. Yeah, I might have found a printer who would do them cheaper, but that was almost six of one and half a dozen of the other.
Self-marketing is indeed the key, and the idea of paying someone to tell me where to go is silly. All you have to do is look around, and you can see the popular places are free. You just have to spend the cyber time building your audience.
Because THE SCRIBBLER’S GUIDE is such a specialty area, that’s one reason I don’t mind it being POD. At least this way I know it will always be “available”, as I do the slow business of building the audience. And the material itself will have a long shelf-life.
But, as the agent warned me, once you’ve done a title POD, “real” publishers are not inclined to pick up THAT title to republish themselves. You’ve probably burned that bridge. So you have to consider that aspect as well. Again for me, with the SG, I knew that possibility going in, and made my decision including that awareness.
But most of the ads I see for self-publishing I shake my head over. They really are not all that favorable for the authors.
I know so many people who insist that POD is the way to go, but have not heard much discussion about what that does to your chances after the POD book comes out. This is a very good discussion.
That’s the thing about the PR packages. I had one included FREE! in my last book, and the quality of the things was so bad, I mean very badly ugly screen + bad font + incorrect information. I wrote my “handler” back and said I didn’t even want it for FREE and they sent me another one which was only slightly less bad screen + mediocre font + correct information. I am so glad I didn’t pay for it (although since the price of the setup was 500% of the previous book, I probably did in the long run :-/ ) But it’s one of the reasons I’m not doing further business with them.
And the thing about being able to self promote reminds me of this sign I saw at a craft faire once. I don’t even remember what it was, birdhouses or something wooden, but it was fairly simple design and just when you think “well heck I can do that myself for free” there was this sign that said, “Sure, you can do it yourself for less… but WILL YOU?” That table was doing brisk business and there was a lot of self-aware laughter there, that’s for sure…
That’s the theory the PR packagers are going for. Sure, it costs nothing to set up the Myspace and the Twitter and the search engines and so forth, but most people are so non-tech minded and don’t want to be bothered having to LEARN so they figure it’s a better deal to pay someone else to do it rather than have to invest time to learn. That’s what they’re counting on, and it WORKS.
I’d rather spend money at a craft faire and set up my own dang ads, personally XD
I suppose it depends on the title and the author; my friend Wil had Subterranean Press pick up a couple of his books to do special editions with after he’d self-published them.
That said, he’s sort of a special case.
yeah, he’s kind of got name recognition going for him XD
I know that some established writers have gone POD for their own back catalog reprints, or when their original publishers dropped the ball. Barry B Longyear sold a book years ago called “Infinity Hold” and the publisher refused to publish the sequel due to (he told me at an autograph session about 20 years ago) one scene of male prison rape, in first person.
So he’s published the rest of the series himself through the same POD I’m using. But he’s also using the ultra star version of their packages. I would be interested to know how that’s working out for him.
That Gladwell article is excellent; definitely a must-read. Thanks for posting it, Colleen.
One of my favorite offbeat writers, the SF/horror/mystery writer George Chesbro, has been self-publishing for many years now, but he went into it after being vetted through traditional channels. He’s not that prolific but he does good work.
Uh-oh.
Sad moment.
A quick check of his website reveals that unbeknown to me, George died at the end of November 2008. Obviously, I’ve not checked in for a while.
Bummer. I always thought his Mongo series would have made some great GNs.
http://www.dangerousdwarf.com/
Sidebar: Colleen, why did you pull the voting tag for webcomics?
I didn’t pull it, I just forgot.