Self-publishing Lies and Myths: Short Fiction and Poetry
Every couple of months I open a search list on my Tweetdeck for “self-publishing” and let it run for a few weeks before cutting it off again. I do this because it’s difficult to stomach the lies, misinformation, and overly optimistic nonsense that tends to flood that channel. I’m in another one of my phases and an article over at the Self Publishing Review grabbed my attention: “Self-publishing For the Short Fiction Writer“ I have a lot of problems with this article, most of which has to do with the author’s lack of information about her experiences with publishing. For example: As a short story author, usually you are paid on a cents-per-word basis and a couple free copies. Unless you sell your story to one of the bigger, well-known publications you won’t make more than 1-5 cents per word. Some pay nothing (and I do have a whole separate rant on non-paying markets; One of several pet peeves.) I’ve made a whopping $20.00 off of my shorter works. WOW! I really got rich doing things “the traditional way” didn’t I? For anyone who knows something about short fiction markets, this raises a lot of red flags. Where was this author submitting to? Why was she rejected if she submitted to major markets? What places did she get published in? Were they low-paying, but prestigious locations, which sometimes bring more to the table than money anyway? We have basically no information about this, and her post, thus, seems like more of a bitter “I could only get published in the lower end stuff because nobody liked me” rant than any sort of legitimate discussion about the short fiction market. Not to mention that there is no mention of how much she has made from the self-published collection of her work, which seems to me to be a very important thing to mention when you’re complaining about the pay rates of traditional venues. How many copies has she sold? No idea. My guess is “not that many.” She says she has made more that way than she ever had going the traditional route, but I have no idea how much that is on either end. Her argument is as devoid of substance as most anything I have seen in this anti-traditional vein. Oddly enough, it doesn’t stop there. She then gets a little uppity about the fact that her work is no longer in print, which, again, raises red flags. There are reprint markets out there. Lots of them. And many of them pay. Why didn’t she attempt to get them reprinted? I don’t know. She doesn’t say. Maybe she didn’t know (which raises another red flag, because anyone who wants to talk about the faults of traditional publishing should at least know how that system works). Perhaps the only grain of truth in the whole post is her very brief discussion of poetry. While there are good paying markets for poetry, it’s not unheard of, nor necessarily a bad idea, for poets to create their own collections and do “well.” By that, I mean that they may sell some copies, may get a little notice, but that might be the end of it. Self-published poetry collections don’t have an influence within the broader academic literary community, as told to me by a friend in the creative writing department at the University of Florida. If you’re wanting notice from academics, you really have to find a traditional publishing or an academic publisher (that’s not universal, but close enough to it). But poetry tends to have a better relationship to self-publishing than other form, and I think that works well enough for that particular literary genre. You won’t get rich either way, but I don’t think anyone becomes a poet to get rich. But where do the myths and the lies come in? Well, first things first, the post is disingenuous. By leaving out contextual information, the post is little more than a “you’re going to get paid like crap so you should do it yourself” myth. Maybe you won’t get paid like crap. Maybe you’ll sell a story to the New Yorker or Subtropics or one of the top genre markets like Clarkesworld or whatever. You don’t know. She doesn’t know either. Nobody knows. Likewise, getting paid $20 for a short story isn’t something to scoff at. That’s money you didn’t have before and now you have a publication under your belt. But the most pressing issue here is the assumption that not getting published by major avenues should act as the catalyst for self-publishing. The author is creating a very skewed and ridiculous picture of reality, one that discourages you from trying by intentionally leaving out seriously valuable information about traditional publishing (i.e. actual pay rates, which are sometimes in the thousands, depending on the market). If you care about your craft and the magazines you’re submitting to, then it should do the exact opposite. You should ALWAYS be working on your craft. Period. A rejection should never stop you. If you truly care about writing and having your work in print, then you should keep working at it, and hard, until you get there. Getting $20 at a smaller market for a work that didn’t cut it at a higher paying place isn’t something to be upset about. Use that as the vehicle to push you forward. Keep trying. And if you still can’t get published, reassess. Maybe your work is good and you’ve come a long way, but it’s not what XYZ publishes. If so, maybe self-publishing is okay, but don’t jump to that path just because you’ve failed or because you’re afraid you won’t get paid well. Get there by working hard and becoming a better writer. Rushing is stupid. The problem I have always had with so many self-publishers is the defeatist attitude: so many of them couldn’t take the rejection, on any level, and decided that somehow they’re too brilliant to not be in
Fiction Narratives: The Forgotten Strand?
There are, I would argue, two kinds of bad narratives: 1) Thin or predictable, and 2) illogical. Both are bad for very obvious reasons. Thin or predictable narratives fail primarily because there’s nothing within the plot itself to keep an attentive reader or viewer going. The only reason such narratives succeed is because they are coupled with something externally appealing (think Avatar’s superior visuals) or because the kinds of people who engage with such stories aren’t looking for anything else. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with the latter of these two reasons; anyone who has worked an insanely busy schedule can understand the need to read something without having to make an effort to think deeply about whatever is going on (the same applies to movies). This is where popcorn bestsellers come from and why they exist: to serve a market niche that, more or less, has no interest in the production of literary (or film-erary) merit. They want a quick, simple read that engages, gets the job done, and can be set down without so much as a forethought. One need not look any further than the Harlequin Romance novels, which have predictable plots and, thus, predictable characters. But, the greatest offender within fiction of any form (written or visual) is the illogical narrative. These are stories in which things happen for unclear or unknown reasons, without a logical purpose for that uncertainty; it would be fair to assume that some stories might have events which, from the beginning, seem to have no logic to them, but which might eventually appear to have an underlying logic–thus, appearances may be deceiving. Setting this notion aside, however, we can see that illogical narratives have a tendency to flirt with convenience. Things happen not because that is the logical way they should, but because there is a hole that needs filling or a shocker that needs exposing, neither of which contribute anything to the development of the character and create nothing but a bigger void in the narrative itself. I’ve made similar arguments about J. J. Abrams’ vision of Star Trek here and here, in which one need not look any further for this discussion than everything following the introduction of future Spock: here we have two characters (present Spock and present Kirk) who have come to despise one another for entirely acceptable reasons, resulting in one character (Kirk) being left on a barren ice planet where, by some magic stroke of luck, he meets future Spock, who proceeds to tell him everything that has thus far transpired and why, and that present Spock and present Kirk should become best buddies, followed by a convenient journey to a nearby Federation outpost where the missing Scotty is found wallowing in a pit. Is it any wonder why I call this convenient? The problem I see with all of this is that these sorts of convenient or illogical narratives exist in droves. Narratives have grown weak; so much attention seems to have been paid to those narratives that, more or less, don’t make sense, or are too convenient, or have no reason to be the way they are. The same is true of predictable plots, of which Hollywood is the biggest offender, with its dozens of remakes and attempts at original stories that end up falling flat–adaptations deserve to be ignored for this discussion. But why is this? What has happened to narrative that so many creators, whether in film or books, have resorted to playing with the same fire over and over? Some arguments could be made about executive control, at least in movies, but this can’t be true of everything being produced. Certainly a factor in this is buyer feedback–if a book sells, more like it will be produced. But, again, this isn’t the only factor. This problem is undoubtedly multi-factorial. Beyond that, though, I have to wonder if illogical plots are simply the byproduct of flashy everything: ideas, visuals, and so on. We’ve created an industry (book/movie, what have you) that needs to produce the thrill of a new idea, world, visual, or whatever in order to move paper and fill seats. Audiences are clambering for Transformers 2, Avatar, and Twilight, because they provide something that maybe can’t be found elsewhere–or at least can’t be found is such an obvious and easily consumable form. Perhaps what is killing narrative as the dominant mode of expression is not so much a weakness in writers, but a weakness in the market itself, which has pushed for the production of desire in everything else but the narrative. Books, we’d have to assume, are much safer than movies at this point, because at least experimentation is still being done within the literary community (including genre fiction, because I make no distinction between SF/F/H/M/R/C/etc. and “literary” fiction; the distinction is meaningless anyway). We are still seeing novels that push boundaries and try new things. They exist and sometimes sell well (China Mieville, for example, is remarkably experimental, even if it doesn’t seem like he is marketed as such). But, maybe this explains why book sales, while higher than they have been since post-2000, are still not as high as they should be. The book is lagging behind, just slightly, on the illogical narrative and predictable plot front, while movies, with their infinite ability to do new things visually, continue to move away from narrative and towards something else. Now it’s 3D; in a decade it might be some sort of weird VR experiment. I worry about narrative. It’s too important to forget, and the idea that we might one day leave it behind for something flashy, immediate, and short-lived in somewhat frightening. But what would you do if narrative died? Or do you think it’s pretty much safe and sound in its little literary house?
eBooks and the Future of Books: A Question From WhoHub
Someone on WhoHub recently asked me the following and I thought I would respond here: What is your experience with ebook readers? Are they comfortable for your eyes? Will the paper book fade away? One thing that an old-school book lover like me has had to admit is that eReaders have gone from being clunky, annoying devices, to aesthetically pleasing monsters with a lot of potential. Personally, I don’t think eReaders are quite there yet. The Apple iPad, while not strictly an eReader, has the potential to essentially destroy the entire eReader market, but the 1.0 is far from being the device it should be. Likewise, eBook-specific devices like Amazon’s Kindle, the various Sony readers, and Barnes & Noble’s Nook all have a lot of great features, but also a lot of bugs; all of those are heading in the right direction, but none of them have quite reached that point where I, as a potential buyer, see the benefit to me. Why is that? First, eReaders are expensive. Almost all of them are over $200; for me, that’s a lot to spend on a device that a) doesn’t excel at what it does, and b) is not at the pinnacle of its device history. MP3 players, for example, have gone well past their peak, but the result is that pretty much every major MP3-specific device still being sold right now is excellent at what it does and reasonably priced. The eReader market isn’t quite there yet. For example, most of the eReaders have significant problems with justified text, which is pretty much the gold standard for text formatting for any book, and part of what makes them pleasing to the eyes. When you have lines with strange caps or ragged edges, it strains the reading process (and this might also explain why professors are always quite irritated when they have to grade papers). Second, I still love dead-tree media. Books are lovely things. They have strange smells, interesting texture, and a load of other appealing features that other forms don’t have. No eReader can match this, but with a low enough price tag, features that work at a more-than-adequate level, and more attention paid to how we read books, I might be influenced to buy an eBook-specific device. Right now, the only purpose I have in purchasing an eReader is to make it easier for publishers to send me review copies of books without incurring unnecessary shipping costs (it costs basically nothing to send me an electronic file); even that, though, is not as easy as it sounds, since publishers and their friends use annoying DRM on everything they create for the electronic market. DRM, by the way, is generally despised by anyone who regularly uses the Internet, and for good reason. Having said all of this, I think it only fair that I point out some of the things that I do like about eReaders based on personal experience with them. I’ve already talked about the Nook before, and eReaders in general, but one thing that I think eReaders and devices that have the capability to display eBooks have going for them is functionality. No, they are not, as I have already pointed out, perfect, nor all that wonderful at what they do, but things like the Nook, or, hell, even the iPad (which I loathe simply because it’s Apple) have great interfaces and sleek design, something that, unfortunately, the Kindle and the Sony Reader currently don’t have. The result is that these two devices have a lot of potential (the iPad more so than anything else, since it can do so much). But most eReaders do have weight going for them, with the exception of the iPad, and reading from them doesn’t hurt the eyes, which should alleviate any concerns people may have about them–this despite the clunky design of some of the bigger eReaders out there, like the Kindle. Really, there are a lot of great things to be said about eReaders, despite the fact that I’m not ready to throw down $200 to get one. They have come a long way, and I absolutely believe that the next ten years will bring us superior, standard-setting devices, better functionality, and a larger market. While I don’t think eBooks will destroy the print market, I do think that eReaders have the potential to increase the market of readers ten fold by tapping into a demographic of non-readers or infrequent-readers that have gone relatively unscathed by the print market (with the exception of the YA market, which has exploded and sucked in a lot of young would-be readers; I’d argue, though, that you can’t really count young people in the non-reading category until they become adults, but that’s another discussion entirely). The worst-case-scenario for the print market is one in which eReaders dominate the reading market, and print is relegated to special-edition/collector status. Things like signed editions of books really don’t work in the eBook market simply because their value in the print market is predicated upon limited printings, which is not possible to reproduce in electronic form (and even if you can, someone will simply hack that form and distribute it online; you can certainly scan books, but an electronic scan can never reach the same value plane as the printed article). The best-case-scenario is a larger reading public. This is the one that I both think will happen and hope will happen. Instead of taking over, eReaders simply suck in new readers, take a few readers from the printed medium who are more inclined to read on an electronic device anyway, and, overall, triple the size of the publishing industry (which means more books, more writers, and more money for publishers and writers alike). That, in my book, is a darn good thing. But, these are all predictions that, quite honestly, will probably turn out to be wrong. I was wrong way back in the day when I said that eBooks would never catch on
International SF/F: Does it get an out from the “cliche” argument?
I’ve been meaning to talk about this subject for a while, and it is result of an experience I had a few weeks ago when the fine folks over at Tor sent me Alexey Pehov’s Shadow Prowler. I am, by all accounts, somewhat more critical of fantasy for its lack of originality than I am of other genres. It’s not an unusual position to take, since so many arguments launched against various fantasy titles typically include terms like “derivative” or “Tolkien-esque” and so on. The genre is saturated with familiar tropes. But, as I’ve argued many times before, a good writer can take a fairly cliche idea and make it good. Additionally, Sometimes the way a book presents itself (i.e. via the cover and the cover synopsis) can alleviate a lot of the knee-jerk reactions readers may have when they discover a new fantasy title. It is this reaction that I want to talk about here.When I received Shadow Prowler in the mail, I was immediately pleased by the cover (see above), which led me straight to the text on the cover jacket. That is where the problems started. The description of Pehov’s story is, to put it mildly, about as cliche as it gets. Read for yourself: After centuries of calm, the Nameless One is stirring. An army is gathering; thousands of giants, ogres, and other creatures are joining forces from all across the Desolate Lands, united, for the first time in history, under one, black banner. By the spring, or perhaps sooner, the Nameless One and his forces will be at the walls of the great city of Avendoom. Unless Shadow Harold, master thief, can find some way to stop them.Epic fantasy at its best, Shadow Prowler is the first in a trilogy that follows Shadow Harold on his quest for a magic Horn that will restore peace to the Kingdom of Siala. Harold will be accompanied on his quest by an Elfin princess, Miralissa, her elfin escort, and ten Wild Hearts, the most experienced and dangerous fighters in their world…and by the king’s court jester (who may be more than he seems…or less). Great. Another novel about some Nameless One with elfin princesses and a city so cleverly called Avendoom (ha ha ha, get it, Avendoom…and the city is threatened by the Nameless One). But then I read this and my reaction changed: Reminiscent of Moorcock’s Elric series, Shadow Prowler is the first work to be published in English by the bestselling Russian fantasy author Alexey Pehov. The book was translated by Andrew Bromfield, best known for his work on the highly successful Night Watch series. Something about the explanation of the texts’ origins caused me to pause. A Russian fantasy epic originally published in Russian? A link to another fantastic series by another Russian SF/F great? Suddenly I was interesting and a little inner dialogue shot off in my head: Me: Oh, well, he’s a Russian author writing fantasy. That’s interesting.My Head: So?Me: So, I want to read it.My Head: But a minute ago you rolled your eyes and sighed because it sounded too cliche.Me: Yeah, but that was before I knew he was Russian.My Head: So, if you’re Russian, you can get away with it?Me: Apparently.My Head: You realize how stupid that sounds, right?Me: Quiet, you. You’re just my head talking. While the dialogue didn’t proceed exactly as described above, it does provide a basis for the complete turnaround I had when I discovered the novel’s origins: translated from Russian. I even gawked at my own idiocy. Why was I suddenly okay with a novel that sounds horribly cliched? Why did the fact that it is an international book change my mind? Stranger yet is the fact that I am/was fully aware of the long tradition of genre fiction in Russian history, dating back centuries. But, there I was, suddenly excited about a novel that only moments before I was about to toss onto my “likely will never read because it’s too cliche” pile. Maybe it’s a good thing, though. Maybe more reactions like this should happen so that novels like Shadow Prowler don’t get lost in the sea of English-based fantasy titles loaded with just as many cliches. Something about that makes me feel strange, though. To end this, I have a few questions:–Does international SF/F get an out from the “cliche” argument simply because it is international? (apply this to any international SF/F, not just Russian)–Is it a good thing that one can go from being annoyed to being excited about a book due entirely to the discovery of its international origins? I feel uneasy saying yes to the first question, simply because of the stages many developing or developed nations go through in terms of genre fiction (you can, largely speaking, trace the same general literary developments in science fiction in just about every nation, with some exceptions). And, I feel uneasy saying no to the last question, because excitement for any text is a good thing; if my interest in this text leads me to read it and, perhaps, love it, it might engender a willingness to open my mind to more fiction in this particular vein and more fiction from international venues (which I’m already fairly open to, though I don’t go out of my way to find the stuff, with exception to Caribbean SF–more on that some other time). What do you think? Am I insane? Has this ever happened to you?
Why SF/F Awards Are Meaningless To Me
I used to care about the awards. Seeing “Hugo Award Winner” or “Winner of the Nebula Award” on a book used to excite me and make me want to pick something up and buy it. But not anymore. Things have changed. In the last year or so, I’ve sort of lost interest in the awards (most of them, anyway). The Hugos, Nebulas, and Locus Awards haven’t really made me excited about SF/F literature the way they used to. That’s not to say that I’m not excited about SF/F literature, just that the awards aren’t making me excited about particular works; those of you reading this are probably just as aware of my SF/F lit obsession as my closest friends. Adding to this, there are all these dozens of other awards (Clarke, PKD, Gemmell, and so on), and none of them seem to matter to me as a reader (as a writer is a different story). With James Long over at Speculative Horizons stirring up the controversy pot, I don’t feel particularly alone in the discussion of the value of SF/F awards. But what is it about the awards that I find meaningless? For starters, as a reader with only one brain in this head and one set of eyes, I can’t possibly read all the books and stories that are nominated for the various major awards. The result is that I feel completely out of the loop, as if somehow I missed the SF/F Cool Train and ended up on the SF/F Ghetto Express. I read a lot of great books, some of which have been nominated in the past, but the awards have a tendency to leave readers like me so far outside of the spectrum of recognition that I find it rather difficult to get excited about the vast majority of the stuff on the various nomination lists. Maybe that’s normal (the result and not so much the reason leading to it), and it’s likely something that can’t ever be resolved, regardless of whether an award is voted on by the public or given out by committee. Second, I get the feeling that the awards have been spread so thin by the Internet as to render them valueless. There are too many damned awards now, all with some level of prominence. There’s the Hugo, the Nebula, the Locus, the Gemmell, the Clarke, the PKD, the Sturgeon, the Tiptree, the Campbell, and dozens of smaller awards, nationality specific awards (these seem reasonable considering what they are for), genre specific awards, and so on, all of which have some notoriety, if not the same pull as the big three (Hugo, Nebula, and Locus, which aren’t really the big three anymore). The field is too full of these things (and I’m certainly contributing by hosting the WISB Awards here, the most useless awards ever). Who am I, as the reader, supposed to pay attention to? Why? Which awards matter? Which don’t? Which are there to highlight authors for readers, and which are there to highlight authors to fellow authors? I don’t know. Maybe someone that attends the ceremonies can; regardless, with so many awards, it’s difficult to determine their value. I’m sure there are other reasons swimming around in my head, but I’ll leave the ending open for discussion. Whether you agree or disagree, I’d like to know your opinion. Are awards valuable to you? Why or why not? Update: I mistakenly put Worldcon on the list, despite the reality that there is no such award. Worldcon is where the Hugos are presented. Thanks to Kevin Standlee for pointing that out.
Science Fiction and Fantasy in Airports
As promised, I do have something interesting to point out about the presence of science fiction and fantasy in airports, and something that might be a good indicator of the power of books among travelers. First things first, I can honestly say that I’ve seen a significant increase in the number of book-specific shops in airports. I don’t know if this is national or international, but I’ve traveled a little bit over the last few years and I have noticed two things: 1) that there are more book-specific shops springing up all over the place, and 2) that some areas are insanely more book-friendly than others (St. Louis and Atlanta, for example, have a lot of book shops and places that carry books). But what is more interesting than this is how strong of a presence science fiction and fantasy have. When you walk into a book-specific shop, there is almost always a section specific to science fiction and fantasy (and a section for YA, which is usually loaded to the teeth with fantasy titles). Sometimes the section is quite small, and other times it’s about the same size as all of the other sections (non-fiction, general fiction, and so on). The only downside to this is that these shops have a tendency to carry very little in terms of new work, which means that many of these SF/F sections are more like the classic literature section that most of these places have. It’s unfortunate, but there must be a reason for it; you don’t carry old SF/F (as in classic SF/F) if you’re not selling it. This isn’t to say that these stores don’t carry newer titles; they do, but they typically only carry the more prominent new titles, such as works from various high-profile urban fantasy authors or big names in SF literature. But, what’s to complain about? They have SF/F in the bookstores in airports! Now that I’ve pointed out the more obvious aspects of SF/F’s presence in airports, I think it’s worth noting the much more hidden and telling presence: book sections within non-book-specific shops. While I was in St. Louis a few weeks back, I decided to check out this little tech shop (headphones, phones, DVDs, games, things like that–InMotion Entertainment, I think) in the airport and was surprised to discover that they had a book section that was not only SF/F friendly, but possibly one of the best SF/F book sections I have seen for the size (four shelves no more than three feet wide). What was so special about it? The titles they carried represented a wide range of unique titles you might not find in your local bookstore, and all of the books had gorgeous covers. They had, for example, Paul McAuley’s Gardens of the Sun:They had loads of other titles too, many of which I hadn’t heard of until then and most of which looked fascinating (yes, I’ve heard of McAuley’s work, but I didn’t write down the titles of all the others, and I’ve since forgotten them). I might have bought a book or two if I hadn’t already spent over $100 on books during the PCA/ACA conference. The selection was simply fantastic. If you wanted something new and a little less popcorn-y, then you’d have to go to this shop. The point of all of this is that airports are incredibly SF/F friendly. While the selection is not always the greatest (depending on the airport), there are almost always SF/F titles somewhere. I’m not sure what this says about our culture. These stores don’t carry SF/F if it doesn’t sell, so people must be requesting and buying the stuff. Do SF/F books make great travel reads in the same way that others genres have been for decades? Perhaps. What do you think?