Is it Really Time for Authors to Stop Blogging?

In a guest post on Jane Friedman’s blog on March 15th, L.L. Barkat said “blogging is a waste of time” for experienced authors. She feels blogging is only helpful for beginning authors who need “to find expression, discipline, and experience.”

Her piece suggests blogging is for farm-leaguers only. Once writers make the pros, she says, “they might want to give it up and begin writing for larger platforms that don’t require reciprocity (an exhausting aspect to blogging and a big drain on the writer’s energy and time).”

She’s not wrong about the exhaustion. And I gotta admit, if a larger, non-interactive platform like the New Yorker or the Daily Beast came calling, I might bail on you guys for a bit.

But as a long-term career move? It doesn’t strike me as a great idea.

We live in an interactive age. Sealing yourself up in an ivory tower (assuming the tower wants you) is likely to annoy readers these days.

And the truth is, most authors who aren’t named J.D. Salinger have always had to engage in some pretty exhausting, time-draining "reciprocity" to sell their books.

In the days before blogs, there were book tours.

Back in those dear dead days, most authors interacted with their readership through exhausting, time-sucking (and expensive) traveling. Ask a career author who has been in this business for a few decades whether they’d like to give up blogging and go back to the book tour, and you’d better cover your ears before the high-decibel “H*** NO!” erupts.

Nowdays only the superstar class goes on real-life book tours; the midlist blogs.

I think marketers at the Big 5/6 have probably been too heavy-handed in their fiat that every author must have a blog, and Barkat represents a backlash to that. She said: “the director of Marketing and Promotion from Simon & Schuster…told me flatly, ‘We ask all our authors to start blogs’.”

Anybody that dictatorial would get my hackles up, too.

But most Big 5/6-ers have softened that requirement.  As I reported in January, agent Rachelle Gardner has changed her hard-line stance on blogs. She said “A few years ago, the standard wisdom was that authors, both fiction and non-fiction, should have blogs in order to gather an audience and build relationships with readers. Now, not so much. As social media and online marketing have evolved, my thoughts on blogging have changed. I think each author needs to carefully consider whether blogging is an appropriate vehicle for them.”

But later in the piece, Gardner makes it clear an author still has to be on social media. She’s not saying it’s OK to do the J.D. Salinger thing.

Jane Friedman herself doesn't tell us to drop our blogs. But in a post at Writer Unboxed this week, she does tell beginning writers who don't have blogs to let go of the pressure to start one. "If you’re a totally new, unpublished writer who is focused on fiction, memoir, poetry, or any type of narrative-driven work, forget you ever heard the word platform."

Friedman says it's best for beginners to concentrate on learning their craft and getting credits by publishing the fiction they want to be known for. (For opportunities to get your fiction better known, check our "Opportunity Alerts" below.)

But she adds a caveat: "Exception to the rule: Nonfiction/non-narrative authors and entrepreneurial authors who are self-publishing. Sorry, but you should probably focus on platform as much as the writing."

I agree. I don't think every beginning writer should be starting a blog. (On the other hand, reading blogs is something that can help from the beginning—and commenting on blogs is a great way to get your name out there.) I've been telling my workshop students that the time to think about a blog is after you've finished at least one polished novel, have another in the works and you're getting ready to query—or you've got a good backlog of short fiction you're sending to contests and journals.

In other words, give yourself time to build some inventory and learn your craft before you start thinking about marketing.

I also don't recommend blogging frantically simply for the sake of piling up blogposts to get the attention of search engines. I'm a big advocate of SLOW BLOGGING—once a week or less, preferably on a regular schedule. You can check out my post on the Slow Blog Manifesto here.

But I do think a blog is helpful, even for fiction authors. This blog doesn't sell books directly, but without my presence here, I'm not sure anybody would even know about them. And blogs are useful for so many other things—networking with other authors and people in the business, polishing your nonfiction writing skills (which are necessary, no matter how "experienced" you are at fiction.) Plus you can learn to write faster and...for fun. Yes. Blogging is fun for a lot of us.

Recently social media Jedi master Kristen Lamb devoted a whole week of blogposts to explaining the reasons why “blogs are probably THE BEST use of an author’s time when it comes to building an author platform using social media.” I wrote more on the subject in my own post that week.

And then there’s Hugh Howey, current media darling and author of the literary phenomenon Wool (and generally phenomenal guy.)

In an interview on Reddit, Mr. Howey said his primary promotion tools were, “After FB, I would say: having my own blog.”

Yup. Not expensive ads at BookBub. Not give-aways on Goodreads. Not Kindleboard ads (although he does mention interacting at the Writer’s Café forum on the Kindleboards, which is where I first met him.) Not vlogs or podcasts or book trailers or webinars.

Just his plain old blog and Facebook rocketed him to fame and fortune. (Well, that and a clever serial-format sales plan and a stupendous book.)

The Reddit interviewer followed up by asking him to name “a single most valuable tool for an author to promote himself” aside from “Amazon's inscrutable algos.”

Howey replied, “I'm guessing 90% of my sales are from reader recommendations and Amazon algorithms.”

Well, we all know the “inscrutable algos” are out of our control. (More on algorithms in a future post) but “reader recommendations”—where do they come from?

Howey said, “I don't concentrate my self-promotion on people who haven't read my work; I interact with those who have.”

And in a post on his own blog, he said very much the same thing: “The best promotion, I’ve found, is to interact with existing readers (which is enjoyable) rather than browbeat new people into reading (which nobody likes).”  

Interacting with readers. Reciprocity. His number one self-promotion tool.

And where’s the best place to interact with readers?

Your blog.

So if you’re thinking of taking up L.L. Barkat’s suggestion to drop your blog to concentrate on pure art, do keep in mind that a lot of successful authors like Mr. Howey find their blogs have been a huge help.

Even experienced authors who aren’t blogging simply to practice the art of keeping their butts in their typing chairs.

I should be fair and mention that L.L Barkat and Hugh Howey’s genres couldn’t be more different. Barkat writes literary memoir and Howey writes blockbuster science fiction. Different genre readers expect different things from their authors. Literary readers tend to be conservative about technology, so they may not be on social media much themselves, whereas scifi-ers are in their native habitat on the Interwebz.

And it's important to consider that literary writers often make their livings teaching, and they may have to arrange for time away from anything "social" in order to stay sane. Most writers are introverts, so being around people too much—whether online or off—can drain your energies to the point where you can’t create.

If blogging does that to you, you might indeed feel you have to drop your blog as Barkat suggests. Maybe you can reach people via RedRoom or Google+ hangouts, or by occasionally interacting on Goodreads. Or write a monthly newsletter.

But I don’t think refusing to interact with your readers entirely is a smart move. No matter how experienced you are.

Not if you hope to follow in the footsteps of Hugh Howey, who still blogs regularly, even on his superstar book tour. He even took time to give this blog a shout-out in January. He is certainly a poster boy for the new era of publishing. It would appear that his accessibility via his blog and his reciprocity with readers has contributed to his phenomenal success.

So think long and hard before you give up that blog.

What about you, scriveners? Have you given up your blog? Will you give it up when you're more experienced? As a reader, do you like to interact with your favorite authors on a blog?

OPPORTUNITY ALERTS:

1) Inspirational anthology accepting submissions: A "Chicken Soup for the Soul" author is looking for heartwarming inspirational nonfiction pieces. Do You Have a Story on Staying Sane in the Chaotic 24/7 World? If you have a great story and would like to be considered for the anthology, 30 Days to Sanity, Send submissions to: 30 Days to Sanity at Box 31453, Santa Fe, NM 87594-1453. Or e-mail stories to stephanie@30daystosanity.com The maximum word count is 1200 words. For each story selected for the program a permission fee of $100 will be offered for one-time rights. There are no limits on the number of submissions. Deadline is May 1, 2013.

2) POISONED PEN DISCOVER MYSTERY CONTEST Enter your mystery manuscript of 60,000-90,000 words in an effort to win a $1,000 prize, the Discover Mystery title, and a publishing contract from Poisoned Pen Press. Open to all authors writing original works in English for adult readers who reside in the United States and Canada. $20 entry fee. Well worth it. Poisoned Pen is a widely respected small press. Deadline March 30, 2013.

3) Cash prizes for flash fiction. The San Luis Obispo NIGHTWRITERS are holding their annual 500-word story contest. Anybody from anywhere in the world is welcome to enter. Prizes are $200, $150 and $75. This is a fantastic organization that boasts a number of bestselling authors among their members, including Jay Asher, Jeff Carlson, and moi. (Well, some sell better than others :-) ) Deadline is March 31st.

4) Ploughshares Emerging Writers Contest. The prestigious literary journal Ploughshares runs a number of contests during the year. Winning or placing looks really good in a query. Plus there's a cash prize of $1000 in each category. This one is limited to writers who have not yet published. They're looking for poems and literary stories of up to 6000 words. Deadline is April 2.

5) The Saturday Evening Post’s Second Annual Great American Fiction Contest—yes, THAT Saturday Evening Post is holding a short fiction contest. Could you join the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald; William Faulkner; Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.; Ray Bradbury; Louis L’Amour; Sinclair Lewis; Jack London; and Edgar Allan Poe? $10 entry fee Deadline July 1, 2013

6) New Literary Journal, The Puffin Review is looking for submissions of short fiction, (up to 3000 words) poetry and essays. They welcome new writers.

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Self-Publishing or Traditional Publishing? Which is the Right First Step for YOU? Win a Free Book to Help You Decide

The list of million-seller "indie" authors is growing every day. Self-publishing has not only become mainstream—it's edgy and cool. Persuasive blogs by self-publishing stars like Joe Konrath, Dean Wesley Smith, David Gaughran and Kris Rusch have inspired a staggering number of new writers to self-publish in the past two years.

Publishing your own work is a way to save yourself from the sometimes-horrific treatment of authors by "legacy" publishers (the indie term for the old guard) who have acted greedy and desperate as the e-publishing revolution shakes up their world.

Indie publishing has also become a successful road to traditional publishing superstardom and major Hollywood deals for authors like E.L. James and Hugh Howey.

And this week, an indie even made it into the august pages of the New York Times Book Review.

But self-publishing is not an easy road—and a number of factors are making it more difficult than it was a few years ago—as I wrote in last week's post—so I urge new writers to carefully weigh their options. There are alternatives that aren't making so many headlines, but may be better for you personally.

I often hear from new authors who are feeling pushed into self-publishing by "experts" who tell them they are being foolish to query agents and small publishers. Or even that all publishers "hate" writers.

Yes, some traditional publishers and agents have behaved very badly recently, especially ones who used to rely on the mass-market paperback and have seen their markets evaporate. The must-read Passive Voice blog is full of hair-raising stories about publisher/agent bad behavior.

Some self-publishers have behaved badly too. The review-buying scandal of last summer is still having repercussions.

But John Locke's scammy review schemes and Harlequin's rotten contracts shouldn't sour you on either route. Authors on both paths still have highly successful careers.

So you shouldn't be looking at the rotten apples when you make your publishing decisions. You should be looking at yourself. Your own personal goals--and skills--should matter more than following trends.

Some people dream of running a mom-and-pop business. Others thrive working at a big corporation. Still others prefer to work for a local small business with only a few employees. None of these paths is wrong. It's about what suits your personality, and only you know which path is right for you.

All publishing roads are going to take patience, hard work, and the ability to deal with setbacks.

In order to make an informed decision, it's important to educate yourself about all publishing routes. If you're a beginning writer, you should be reading Agent Rachelle Gardner and the Query Shark as well as Konrath and Dean Wesley Smith.  (And BTW, learning to write a great query and synopsis is just as important for indies, since you'll have to query reviewers and learn to write great blurbs)

Read The Passive Voice, but also subscribe to the free Publisher's Lunch newsletter. Another must-read is Being Human at Electric Speed, the blog of former Writers Digest publisher Jane Friedman (which includes a weekly state-of-the-industry post from Porter Anderson.)

Don't let fourth-hand information on writers' forums push you one way or another. Absolute Write tends to be the comfort zone for a lot of people going the trad. route and the Kindleboards are home to some enthusiastic self-publishers. They are both great resources, but take any advice from individuals there with several shakers of salt. (Especially if they're cranky. As a general rule, I think it's safe to assume people who are in a chronic state of rage probably don't have all the answers.)

When you publish a book, you're entering an industry, so you need to know all aspects of it. Whether you go the traditional or indie route, you're starting a business, and you need to be aware of the marketplace. Things have changed a lot since the Kindle was introduced five years ago and you don't want to make a decision based on out-of-date information.

As I said on the blog last week, new retailers like Kobo and the newly-improved Smashwords are opening up the market. It may be more difficult to get your book noticed than it was at the beginning of the indie revolution, but a lot of self-publishers are doing very well. Friend of the blog indie author Saffina Desforges recently had three of her books in the top three spots in thrillers in the UK, and Catherine Ryan Hyde, my collaborator on HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE…AND KEEP YOUR E-SANITY has seen her career soar since she started self-publishing the books she had previously only been able to traditionally-publish in England.

And I should point out that the decision isn't really "either/or." An increasing number of top-tier authors like Saffi and Catherine are moving to the "hybrid" model, with an equal number of self-and traditionally published titles and a career aided by an agent/manager. The two "roads" are merging.

Consider the following:

1) Most self-publishing successes like Konrath, Eisler and Locke have agents.

2) The majority of self-publishing superstars started out traditionally published—with a strong platform built in partnership with their Big Six publishers.

3)  A lot of the biggest names in "self-publishing" sign with traditional publishers as soon as they get a good offer.

4) Indie publishing (small press or self-publishing) can be a dead-end in the traditional world if you don't have spectacular sales, so be wary of using self-publishing as a way of "getting noticed" by the trads.

There's a reason I put "FIRST STEP" in the title. Going from trad. to self-publishing is easier than going from self-publishing to trad., unless you have big sales. Like 20,000-book sales. Agent Janet Reid wrote a must-read post on the subject in October. She points out, "Publishers love debut authors, cause they're easier to pitch to retail accounts. It's easier to launch a career than revitalize one."

5) Other more "traditional" alternatives to the old Big Six paradigm are appearing all the time.

• The new Amazon imprints are offering more lucrative contracts than the Big Six right now. 
• There has been lots of innovative thinking from agents recently, in both the US and the UK, as Porter Anderson reported in this week's Writing on the Ether. Agents are becoming managers who help authors self-publish and traditionally publish at the same time. 
• New small digital publishers are springing up every day.  They usually offer at least a 50% royalty and also help with promotion to your target market. For a great list of some of the new digital publishers (with ratings!) check out Patricia de Hemricort's blog Publishing a Book is An Adventure. 
• Big Publishing is opening its doors to unagented work for the first time in decades with new digital imprints from HarperCollins and Random House . (Not to be confused with  Simon and Schuster's new experiment in vanity publishing--which is something to avoid.) 

So what does all this mean to the new writer?

It means the most important thing is to keep your options open, because what's true today may not be true tomorrow.

And how do you do that?

1) I urge new writers who aren't schooled in business to consider querying agents and smaller publishers before taking the self-publishing plunge.

I know—I can hear the groaning from everybody who's read the stories that all agents have horns. But the horror stories you've heard are about agents have been desperately clinging to the old paradigm. Most of those won't be around much longer. The agents who are succeeding in the new digital world are learning to be managers of the hybrid career. Having somebody on your side who knows the ropes can make or break a career, especially if you're not a born negotiator.

Here's what Porter Anderson had to say after attending London's FutureBook conference this week:

"If anything, the digitally enabled rise of self-publishing is emblematic of the transformation that agents, like publishers, are having to contemplate. And if there’s a single term for what agents do up ahead, “manager” seems to be part of it."

(But check them out at Writer Beware and don't sign away any rights or "in perpetuity" contracts.)

Yes, some books in some genres can't get an agent's interest no matter how well written, but everything's cyclical. A few years ago, chick lit was poison to agents, but recently I've seen a lot of them asking for it. And lots of small romance publishers were eager for it the whole time.

2) Take a good long look at your own goals and talents.

Self-publishing is about becoming a small business owner. Were you born with the entrepreneurial spirit? Do you love playing with numbers and marketing statistics? Are you a self-starter who prefers working alone? Then you're a born indie. (And you might be interested in the post today at the Writers Guide to E-Publishing about how to set up your publishing business as an LLC.)

But if the thought of balance sheets, market analysis and accounting fill you with loathing, opening your own publishing business could be a nightmare.

A huge amount of a self-publisher's time is spent in promotions and marketing. Yes, traditional publishing involves putting in a lot of marketing time, too, but you'll usually have some guidance and help. If you're indie, you're on your own.

As Self-Publishing advocate Ruth Ann Nordin said last week at the Self-Pub Authors blog

"If you don’t feel like doing all the work that self-publishing requires, then you probably should pick another business to go into because it’s harder to do this than a lot of authors will tell you." 

She also says in one of the comments: "I hate the blogs that preach overnight success. It’s doing so many authors a disservice. Those blogs make it sound like all you need to do is publish a book and watch the sales come in. If it was that easy, we’d all be hitting the bestselling charts."

But she also adds: "...if you don’t mind doing all the work, then I think it’s one of the most worthwhile professions a person can have.  If you love it, it’ll be worth it."

Running a small business can be bliss for people who are bottom-line-savvy self-starters with a lot of patience. It also helps to have some capital saved up.

But if you work better with enforced deadlines, moral support, and a team to urge you on, consider alternatives:

• Consider a small digital press in your specific niche. I'm very happy with my boutique press. My editor works with me on every aspect of my writing and book marketing. And I'm not alone. A literary author I know has recently signed with JMS books, a LGBT press which does promos and helps with target advertising and has got him a great collection of reviews many Big 6-ers would envy. 
• Join an authors' collective: Indie authors are banding together to hire editors and designers and do joint publicity. I was just followed on Twitter by an interesting one called Indie Visible
• Start your own affinity group. Author Claude Nougat is actively working on starting a new genre, Baby Boomer Lit, and has formed a Goodreads group to promote it. This is the kind of innovative thinking that will drive the new publishing business.
• Keep your eye on the new digital imprints from the bigger publishers.

But before you join any small press or collective, make sure you read some of their titles and contact their writers in order to make sure they are 100% legit and professional. And always check with Writer Beware.

Finally take the current market into account. Does your genre sell better in ebook or pbook format? Indies depend on ebooks for most of their sales.

• Right now, mostly adult genre fiction (especially thrillers, romance and erotica) and nonfiction books with a specific niche sell best as ebooks.
• People who buy pbooks (paper books) are more likely to buy literary (or literary women's) fiction and children's books.
• Children's books are finally starting to sell as ebooks, (up 300% in the last year) because of the new tablet technology. The black and white Kindle of a couple of years ago was no place for a children's picture book. But on the iPad or KindleFire, it's fantastic. Still, children's books do best in hardcover.
• Romance writers do best as self e-publishers. A survey last May said romance (especially erotic romance) did better than science-fiction, fantasy or literary fiction. 
• Young Adult books are popular in both formats, and they are still the darling of agents and trad publishers. At the last writers' conference I attended, all the agents represented YA. Only one would even look at adult fiction. So if you write YA you've got a great array of choices.

Whatever path you take as you start to publish, it's important to keep in mind that you'll have a much better chance of making a career out of your writing if you do two things first:

1) Establish a strong online platform in your genre

This doesn't mean making a lot of writer friends you chat with. You do want to network with other writers, but don't count on them as your core readership. Your fellow authors are not your audience unless you write how-to-write books or novels about writers. Network with people who read your genre. That means it's much better to blog about films or review books in your genre than it is to blog about fighting writers block and how to write a query letter.

2) Build inventory

It's hard to start a business. And it's very, very hard to start a business when you have only one product to sell. There's a classic Saturday Night Live skit from the late 1970s about a pathetic mall store that sells nothing but Scotch tape. It's hilarious. Fred Willard's clueless, doomed optimism is pure comic genius.

But do you want to be that guy?

WIN A FREE COPY!

If you're just finishing up your first or second book and all of this feels overwhelming, let me remind you that Catherine Ryan Hyde and I have written a handbook for beginning writers called HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE…AND KEEP YOUR E-SANITY.

Between us, we've got experience with Big Six publishers, small presses, boutique digital presses and self-publishing. We don't favor any one road and provide lots of advice for authors on all paths.

In honor of the holidays, Catherine and I are running a promotion this week of HOW TO BE A WRITER. We are giving away:

THREE FREE PAPERBACK COPIES OF HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE 

plus

THREE FREE E-BOOKS OF HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE--for Kindle or Nook (and they come with free updates.)

Anybody who would like to be eligible for the free give-aways, just mention "free book" in the comments and your preference of pbook or ebook. If you go over to Catherine's blog and comment on the give-away post, you'll get your name in twice. The contest will go until 9 PM next Saturday, December 15th. Winners will be announced on this blog next Sunday.

Oh, yes, and I have a little bit of news of my own. NO PLACE LIKE HOME, the fourth Camilla Randall mystery, is now available for purchase ("Likes" always appreciated.) And the boxed set of the first three Camilla books is now at a special holiday reduced price of $2.99. (also available at the reduced price in the UK.)

It was suggested to me that I ask people to nominate this blog for WRITER'S DIGEST'S 101 BEST WEBSITES FOR WRITERS. If you felt like nominating us, Ruth and I would be ecstatic. Submit an email with the subject line "101 Websites" to writersdigest@fwmedia.com to nominate http://annerallen.blogspot.com/ .

So what say you, scriveners? Do you aspire to a hybrid career at some point, or are you aiming to be 100% indie or 100% traditional? Do you have an entrepreneurial spirit? Or would you rather work with a team? Don't forget to say "free book" in the comments if you don't have a copy yet and you'd like to win one.

NEXT WEEK: We'll have a guest post from romance novelist and uber-blogger Roni Loren with some solid advice on using social media to promote your work. 

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Indie or Traditional Publishing? Don’t Take Sides: Take Your Time

For a new writer, this can seem like a terrifying time to be launching a career. Everything in the publishing industry is in upheaval. Bookstores are closing all around us. Publishers and online retailers are conducting high-profile battles in the legal system as well as the court of public opinion. (If you want a quick, sensible overview of the challenges in the publishing industry today, Nathan Bransford has a great post this week on the new era of publishing.) 

The rules keep changing. Experts don’t agree on anything. The us/them, either/or arguments of "indie" self-publishers vs. “legacy” traditional publishers can be toxic.

If you regularly make the rounds of publishing blogs and writers’ forums, you may be feeling more and more confused—even bullied.

A whole lot of experts will tell you that if you’re not going indie, you’re a moron, and every minute your manuscript is sitting there unpublished, you’re throwing away potential zillions. They will tell you anybody who has an agent or publishes with the Big Six is a miserable slave who is contributing to the corporate takeover of the world: agents and publishers are all crooks, idiots, and meanies who are going to beat you up and eat your lunch.

A whole lot of other experts will tell you that if you’re publishing anywhere but the Big Six, you’re a moron who's contributing to the downfall of civilization and destroying the World as We Know It: self-publishers are all clueless, uneducated louts who have unleashed a tsunami of crap that is killing our bookstores, libraries and brain cells.

So what's a new writer to do?  

Don't let anybody call you a moron, for one thing. The Internet age is also the age of irresponsible, anonymous snark and bullying.

My advice is shut out the noise, refuse to take sides, educate yourself, and take your time.

The ebook revolution isn’t about battles between warring "sides". It’s about the freedom to choose how we publish and what we read. Relish that freedom.

Change can be very scary. It’s like trying to go about normal business in the middle of an earthquake. There’s nothing solid to hang onto.

But you know what’s scarier than change?

No change.

Before the ebook, publishing was a calcifying industry. New writers were finding it tougher and tougher to break in. Successful career authors were dropped if they couldn’t produce annual blockbusters in spite of no marketing budget. The antiquated system of returns—in which every bookstore is a consignment shop—means publishers have been wasting a huge amount of money shipping books back and forth to warehouses and eventually pulping them.

The ebook is changing everything. Ditto social media.

Even if you’re a traditionalist, you don’t have to be afraid of the electronic revolution. It’s not killing literature. The truth is more people are reading now than ever before. They’re reading voraciously—on their laptops, tablets and phones—and yes, on dead treeware. In fact, nearly 70% of books sold are still made of paper. (And: Newsflash! Not everything published the old-fashioned way was great art. For grins, Google Amanda McKittrick Ros sometime.) 

I love this joke Kristen Lamb posted on her blog this week: 

“Great, thanks to that Gutenberg jerk, everyone can be published.”...Kristen Lamb

Just as Johannes Gutenberg took power from the ruling priestly caste and gave it to the people—who could then read the Bible and find out for themselves what it said—ebooks are taking power from the ruling publishing caste and letting the people find out for themselves what they want to read.

This means more power is now in the hands of readers and writers than any time in history. Thanks to ebooks and social media marketing, writers can now go directly to readers with fresh, innovative ideas and stories.

If and when we want to.

Here’s the thing: the electronic revolution doesn’t mean everybody has to self-publish. But the fact of the self-publishing option changes the playing field for everybody.

Your life is being changed for the better right now—

• Even if you’ve never touched a Kindle—and you don’t intend to until they pry the world’s last moldering paperback from your cold, dead hands. 
• Even if you’d rather endure waterboarding during a tax audit than try to make sense of a Twitter stream.
• Even if you stopped keeping up with technology when your last VCR went to that Great Techno-dump in the Sky. (Which probably means you’re reading this on a hard copy your granddaughter printed out for you—and that’s fine too.)

But you now have choices that never existed before. And more choices are opening up all the time as the industry processes new ideas (Yes, some are slower to process than others, and may get trampled on the way to the tar pits of history, but I don’t think anybody should underestimate the survival skills of multinational corporations.)

• If you try traditional publishing and get offered a rotten contract—you can walk away. 
• If you self-publish and St. Martin’s comes calling with a seven figure deal—you can jump on it. 
• If you publish with a small press and do well, you can still work at getting an agent who might make you an author-friendly deal with one of the new Amazon imprints. 

Plus a whole lot more things are sure to be possible in the near future. The next Jeff Bezos may be dreaming it up as you read this.

You can choose to self-publish. Or not.

You can choose to blog/Tweet/Facebook/Pinterest. Or not.

But you know what you can't choose? To edit a book that's already on somebody's Kindle.

Don’t let anybody rush you or push you onto one path or the other.

Everybody has a different tolerance for technology. You can mix and match as you wish. I’ve read that Twitter god Neil Gaiman writes his first drafts with a #2 pencil. I know successful Kindle authors who swear by their manual typewriters. Try things out and make the choices that work for you.

Remember it’s people who are most insecure in their own choices who will seek to control yours.

Besides, you may never have to choose.

Many successful authors are using self-publishing alongside of legacy publishing. We’ve had a number of guests on our blog who are doing both: Lawrence Block, Jeff Carlson, Catherine Ryan Hyde, and Kim Wright are all successful Big Six authors who are also self-publishing.

But there IS one thing you can do—no matter what path you take:

Use your freedom responsibly.

The truth is there is indeed something of a "tsunami of crap" hitting the online retailers--rough drafts are inundating the marketplace--manuscripts that might have been good books one day if the authors had taken the time to perfect their skills. 

What's wrong with that?

For readers? Nothing. 

Nobody can force us to read a bad book. (And there is that nice "peek inside" feature on most retail sites.) 

Readers can find good books the same way we find good blogs. Without agents, marketers, or unpaid interns from Brown, we somehow find the blogs we want to read amongst the millions.  

But when it's YOUR book--do you really want it to be part of the crap? Do you want to end your career before it starts by neglecting to make your book as good as it can be? 

Even the best editor can't turn an amateur's first draft into a bestseller. And no newbie writer has any idea how bad his first draft is. Believe me, I queried a first novel that was appalling, but I was quite proud of it at the time. If you want to learn a bit from my mistakes, read my post on 12 Signs Your Novel isn't Ready to Publish. 

So remember you also have the freedom to WAIT. Rachelle Gardner and Roz Morris  both blogged brilliantly about the subject this week. And here’s a great quote  from a surprising source:

“The biggest challenge [to authors today] is self-restraint. Publishing tools, like Smashwords make it fast, free and easy for any writer anywhere in the world to publish. But we don’t make it easy to write a great book. Many writers, intoxicated by the freedom to self-publish, will often release their book before it’s ready.”

…Mark Coker—Founder of Smashwords

(Thanks to Porter Anderson  for that quote.)

Yeah. Mr. Smashwords is telling you NOT to use his service--not until you learn to be the most excellent writer you can be. You can’t buy excellence, no matter how much you pay an editor. (Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware gives a great run-down on how and when to use an editing service. And I’ve got a post on hiring an editor here.) Remember an amateur writer + an amateur editor = an amateur book & money wasted.

"I don't want to look at it any more" is not a good reason to publish a manuscript. It's a good reason to set it aside to edit in three-to-six months. Your fresh eyes may be as good as any editor's, and a whole lot cheaper. 

This is a great time to be a writer. A year from now may be even greater. Don’t let anybody pressure you to do anything but put in your 10,000 Malcolm Gladwell hours, and become the best, most professional writer you can be.

When you’re really ready to publish, the publishing world may be a very different place from what anybody envisions, especially the battling bullies.

What about you scriveners? Have you felt bullied by people who have created two “sides” in the e-book revolution? Do you feel pressured to publish? Do you read self-published books? Do you think they are all crap? Do you have trouble figuring out who to believe? Any hints to give your fellow writers on how to shut out the noise?

***

My big news this week is that I'm going to be honored at the Central Coast Writers Conference next September with the "Success Story" Award. Thanks to Judy Salamacha and all the good people at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo who make this conference the "best value writers' conference in California" according to Sunset Magazine. Join agent Laurie McLean, book blogger Danielle Smith, and a whole lot of other great presenters at the conference September 21-22. 

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How Do You Learn To Be a Writer?

I’m often approached by parents or grandparents of children who’ve shown a talent for writing. They ask how a child can learn to be a writer. Or sometimes a person going through a mid-life job change will ask my advice about going back to college to pursue a long-deferred writing dream.

I have to tell them the truth: learning to write is hard--and earning money from writing is way harder.

I’m not saying certain types of writing can’t be lucrative—“content providers” can find careers in advertising and various tech fields—but that’s usually not what the doting grand/parents or career-changers are thinking. They might be imagining plays or screenplays, or even journalism—fast-fading professions too—but mostly they’re thinking memoir and novels.  

But writing book-length narrative is one of the toughest ways to earn a living—and it’s getting tougher all the time. The average book advance is less than half of what it was ten years ago. Almost all writers need day jobs.

So the question arises: how much money should people put into educating themselves to be writers? 

Anybody who visits a lot of writing sites has probably been followed around the ’Webz by ads for college creative writing degrees. Do those give students a jumpstart or prepare them for a writing career? 

Unfortunately, they usually don’t. They’re often based on very old ideas of what the publishing industry is like. 

If you have the privilege of attending college, by all means take courses in creative writing. Also take courses in business management, advanced string theory or Athenian red-figure vase painting—whatever interests you. None of your time learning will be wasted, and a college education is massively helpful to any career.

But don’t go to college expecting to be taught how to be a professional writer who can enter the workforce and earn back the cost of college like somebody studying accounting or medicine. It won’t happen.

I’m not saying degrees in creative writing will hurt, but they’re not necessary for a writing career. And they’re usually expensive.

Thing is: the number one thing that’s NOT necessary to any creative career is…DEBT. Debt is a prison that can keep you locked into a job you hate, living in noisy, crowded circumstances, and plagued with anxieties that are the enemy of creativity

“But, wait!” says Aspiring Young Writer, “What about an MFA? That gives you a leg up into the publishing business doesn’t it?”

Um, not really.

Not with most agents and publishers (although a prestigious school can provide valuable contacts.) What an MFA will do is steer you in the direction of literary writing, which tends to be less lucrative for a publisher (and you.)

An MFA DOES qualify you to teach creative writing at the college level, and as a day job, college teaching is a pretty good one. But be aware of the implied trade-off.

Think of getting an MFA like studying ballet or learning to play classical music—you’re entering a fiercely competitive field with a niche audience and not much remuneration…but a lot of prestige. For those who love it, there’s also a fulfillment that can come no other way. If writing and teaching literary fiction is your bliss—follow it! The world needs you to carry on that tradition.

But if your goal is writing popular fiction, treat your education more like preparing for musical theater, playing roots music, or ballroom dancing—and take a more eclectic route in your training. (And prepare to work a day job.)

Of course you first need to learn the basics just like a literary writer: grammar, sentence structure, spelling, and word usage. If you didn’t get that in high school or college, you need to take some brush-up classes. Language is your instrument, and you need to learn to play before you can get in a band.

NOTE: Don’t count on some hired editor to clean up your stuff after you write it. Editors cost a bundle and they can’t do it all. Good language skills are essential. You wouldn’t try to be a carpenter if you couldn’t pound a nail.

But once you have that down, what do you do?

There’s still a whole lot to learn. Straight-A grammar skills don’t help you with learning how to tell a story. You need to educate yourself on story structure, how to create compelling characters, pacing and all the rest.

For that, the best approach is to study widely. Get as much education as you can from many sources as you can find. There is no one right way. You can enroll in inexpensive classes at your local adult ed. or community college extension programs. Short online courses can be really helpful, too, especially ones that concentrate on structure and story-telling techniques. Read the classic books on writing. Go to writers’ conferences, especially local ones where you don’t have to pay for room and board.

Sometimes professional writers will offer workshops in person or online. A short course from a well-known author is usually worth the price, because their name will hold weight in a query and you may be lucky enough to have them mentor you.

If you live in a place where there’s a local writer’s club or chapter of organizations like RWA, SCBWI, or Sisters in Crime, join. Clubs like those can be amazingly valuable resources. And a good critique group can sometimes teach you as much as a college class about how to write. (But beware group-think. Critique groups are only as good as their members, and ignorant people can spread bad habits. See my post on Bad Advice to Ignore from your Critique Group ) 

And these days, a whole lot of what you need to learn is available on the Internet for free. I know people who have learned a huge amount by working with other writers in various writers’ forums.

To become a professional, you need to learn the business side of publishing as well as grammar and story structure. They are equally important these days. Agent blogs are a valuable resource here. Agents like Rachelle Gardner , Kristen Nelson and Janet Reid offer mini-courses in publishing in their archives.

And you’ll need to learn to use social media. It’s as important to a writer today as it is to know how to use an apostrophe. I recommend Kristen Lamb’s valuable blog and her book We Are Not Alone: The Author’s Guide to Social Media. 

If you ask most professional writers what’s the best way to learn to write, they’re going to tell you two things:

1) Read

2) Write

And some will add:

3) Live

Malcolm Gladwell’s dictum that you need to do something 10,000 hours in order to learn to do it well is a valuable one to keep in mind. The corny old joke about how to get to Carnegie Hall applies: practice, practice, practice.

Writing may not be a lucrative profession, but creating worlds out of words is still one of the most exciting ways to spend your time, so I tell those parents and grandparents and mid-life career-changers that nobody should be discouraged from following their dreams.

But I also warn them not get talked into expensive college courses they can’t afford. (And people should especially beware writing degrees from for-profit colleges. Recruiters can tell a lot of half- and un-truths and provide a slick, easy path to a lifetime of debt.)

The electronic age may bring more responsibilities to writers—social media and online marketing can seem like a huge time-suck—but it also opens up hundreds of new paths to our goals, many of them inexpensive or free. So I say embrace the journey and accept the abundance of information at your fingertips.

Now I could use your help, scriveners. Tell me how you learned/are learning your craft--and how you’re educating yourself in the business of writing for a living. I’d love for you to give some tips and suggestions for things that worked (or didn’t work) for you.

NEWS: On Wednesday, March 7th, I'll be talking to Roz Morris at her blog Memories of a Future Life for her Undercover Soundtrack series. I'm talking about the "soundtrack" for my Fitzgerald-themed mystery, THE GATSBY GAME. This one is from another Fitzgerald: Ella. 


DECADES CONTEST: Our two winners, selected by Random.org, are Steven J. Wangsness and Martha Reynolds. Congrats! Steven and Martha, contact Ruth at rca.harris at gmail dot com for your free books. 

INDIE CHICKS: This week’s amazing installment is from Barbara Silkstone, whose comic mysteries were inspired by some pretty grim real-life villains.

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Dueling Agent Advice on Blogging. Who the $!%# Do You Believe?

You’ve probably been reading a lot of conflicting advice recently on the subject of writers and blogs.

Some experts are telling us blogging is dead.

Agent Wendy Lawton wrote a post on September 15^th called “What’s Not Working” and asserted that blogging—and most social networking—is a waste of time for debut authors, because the market is already saturated.

“I wouldn’t recommend a writer start blogging in order to publicize his book in today’s climate. It would be tough to picture a scenario where the outcome would justify the means.”

Indie author Scott Nicholson also de-emphasized the importance of blogging last week with his post on the Writer's Guide to E-Publishing. He presented the following surprising facts:

• John Locke hasn’t blogged since June 22, and hardly ever gets comments. (Scott says “Locke’s genius can’t be reproduced, nor can his timing, situation, and luck.”)

• Amanda Hocking had maybe 200 blog followers at the time she got her seven-figure book contract. Scott attributes her success to “timing, Amazon algorithms, and luck.”

• J.A. Konrath admits his blog doesn’t sell books. He also rarely shows up on Twitter and Facebook. “And he’s the first to admit he got lucky.”

Yeah, I know. All that surprised me too.

On the same day, Konrath himself announced he’s taking abreak from blogging 

Also this week—Nathan Bransford’s forums had a discussion about how blogging is sucky idea for writers. 

However, the blogosphere is mostly filled with the opposite information. 

Not only do most experts agree that blogging is thriving, but some agents say prospective authors need to be überbloggers with stats like Nathan Bransford’s in order to be publishable.

Agent Rachelle Gardner wrote a post on platform on October 3, saying the minimum we must do is: 

“…shoot for 500 fans on your Facebook profile page and 15,000 monthly page views to your blog.”

Agent Andy Ross went even further in a comment on Meghan Ward's blog He seems to think you need the readership of the HuffPo and the Klout rating of Justin Beiber if you don’t want spend your life in the slushpile:

“It is going to take quite a bit to impress a publisher on how many hits you get on a blog. Probably 100,000 unique views a month is the ball park. But even that isn’t good enough.”

This is mind-boggling. Getting even 15,000 hits a month would be miraculous for a new blogger. I don’t always get that many, and I have an Alexa rating of 363,000 (most writer’s blogs are in the millions.) Roni Loren says she sometimes doesn’t hit that number either, and she’s one of the most popular author-bloggers in the business, with thousands of followers on several blogs.

Then, just to heap a little more pressure on us, agent Janet Reid told us last week:

“if you blog…don’t blog about writing.”

Meghan Ward and Kristen Lamb  posted similar advice.

So here we are, a bunch of blogging writers, mostly—oh, the shame—blogging about writing, and none of us have anywhere near the hits corporate marketers say we should.

So what should we do—give our blogs last rites and lumber back to the writing cave? Maybe plan to sell our books from our cars in the WalMart parking lot or make paper airplanes of our cover art and shoot them through the subway at rush hour?

Or should we forget about the WIP, the day job, the family, and those embarrassing self-indulgences like eating and sleeping, and blog, FB and Tweet 24/7 until we become Kings of all Social Media?

I don’t think we should do either. I think we should shut out all the noise and figure out what works for us, individually. Life is not one size fits all. Neither is social media.

If you’re blogging because you think you’re going to make money from the blog itself—by “monetizing”—like the guy who sparked the forumdiscussion on Nathan’s blog, you’re wasting your time. If you’re a published author who’s never blogged before and you’re doing it because your publisher told you to get out there and hawk your wares, resist the pressure. Blogging is not about direct sales. You’ll fail miserably.

But if you’re blogging because you like it and you enjoy connecting with other writers and potential readers, then by all means keep it up. And don’t listen to marketing experts or worry about your stats.

There are two major things wrong with listening to professional marketers when they talk about selling books.

1) Marketers don’t know you can’t sell books as if they’re meatloaf pans.

Bookselling isn't about broadcasting a message to hundreds of thousands. It's about hand-selling to people who like and trust you. Bookstore clerks used to do that, but we don’t have many of them any more. Writers who come across as smart and trustworthy and approachable are going to sell more books than some guy walking around wearing sandwich boards that say “buy my book”—even if he’s walking in the middle of Times Square.

2) Marketers don’t understand the writing blogosphere.

Aspiring writers who blog are part of a community. We make friends with each other. We get support. We network. A lot of us talk about writing and publishing. Because, um, that’s what we have in common.

Friends are very important in this business.

Without my writing/publishing blog, the following things would never have happened:

• I wouldn’t have heard about the Literary Lab, who published me in two of their anthologies—keeping a spark of hope alive during the dark days of endless rejection.

• I wouldn’t have met a publishing insider like Nathan Bransford, who gave me a guest post on his blog that showcased my writing and opened a lot of doors.

• I would never have dreamed I could meet a NYT bestselling author like Ruth Harris, who is now my blog partner.

• I wouldn’t have got to know Catherine Ryan Hyde as an equal as well as a fan—and she never would have invited me to collaborate with her on a book.

• I never would have met either of my publishers.

• I wouldn’t have friends who write book reviews, do interviews and invite me to guest blog.

In fact, without this blog—and the support of all my wonderful readers and fellow bloggers—I’m pretty sure I would have given up fiction writing by now. I might have given up writing altogether. Not only would I not have five books coming out this fall—I’d probably have been an out-of-print has-been forever.

“You’ve got to reach readers, not writers,” the gurus keep telling us. But newsflash: Writers read! Probably more than most people.

Do we want to reach readers who don’t write? You betcha. But there’s time for that after we get published.

And that’s what I want to tell all these “gurus.” Things take time. There’s a continuum. First start blogging for community—and after you’re published, your blog can evolve to include fans.

Nobody jumps into the blogosphere and becomes Neil Gaiman with a first post—especially somebody who isn’t even published yet. Anybody who expects you to do that doesn’t understand blogging.

The problem is that marketers are thinking of a blog as a storefront—a writer/merchant sitting alone in a little shop waiting for customers to show up.

But that’s not how it works. A blog is more like a place at a writers’ conference.

If you’re an unpublished author and you go to a writers’ conference expecting to make a six figure deal the minute you walk in the door you’ll be majorly disappointed. But if you go to learn and connect with potential readers and make friends who will be supportive of your career, you can have a fantastic experience.

If you’re a published author and you walk into a writers’ conference hauling a cart full of books and push them on everybody you meet, you’re going to have a pretty bad time, too. But if you go to share information, connect with people and have fun, you’re going to sell some books. (The booksellers at our local Central Coast Writers conference said they had fantastic sales during the two days of the conference—much better sales than at the reader-oriented book festival the next day.)

So don’t let people dis you for “preaching to the choir.” Or steer you into establishing a niche blog where you can only talk about one subject. If you’re interested in jelly doughnuts or Byzantine history or extreme cage fighting—certainly, blog about them. But if you’re interested in writing and want to meet other writers, blog about that, too.

Later, when you’re a published author, you can decide if you want to keep blogging about writing, or if you want to change focus. Most writing blogs alter a little after the author is published.

But if you start out with a blog entirely devoted to jelly doughnuts, what happens if you write a book about extreme cage fighting? I see no point in painting yourself into a corner at the beginning of your career. Or in starting a whole bunch of separate blogs for each subject you end up writing books about.

Blog about what makes you unique—all the stuff you have to offer. Blogging isn’t about screaming “buy my book.” It’s about presenting yourself to the world as an interesting person whose stuff might be worth reading.

Should all writers blog? No. Some very fine authors don’t have the knack for it, or just don’t like it—and it shows.

Should you let somebody pressure you into giving up valuable writing time in order to pump up your blog stats? No way.

As author/social media guru Meghan Ward says:

“When I feel like I’m spending more time on social media than I am on my book…[that’s] counterproductive. Because without a great book, what’s there to market?”

Some other great bloggers weighed in on this subject in the last couple of weeks:

Romance author Roni Loren wrote an insightful post on September 21 titled “Is Blogging Dead” and said that even if blogging is dead, she’s going to blog because she likes it—plus it’s a great way to connect with readers.

Lawyer/author Passive Guy continued the discussion on Sept 24. He agreed with Roni that a blog is a good way for published authors to connect with fans, but repeated that it’s not the answer for everybody.

Social media maven Kristen Lamb said: 

 “Blogging isn’t dead, but blogging is an art and a skill that needs to be learned”

And I especially liked author Lydia Sharp’s response:

“We will always need blogs for writers as long as there are new writers looking for a place to start, and as long as there are veteran writers looking for a fresh take on something, and as long as there is a venue for blogging. 

I think in the end it’s up to you and your own gut feelings. Is blogging rewarding for you personally? Do you enjoy the process of writing posts and interacting with commenters? Great. Keep blogging. Are you feeling pressured to start a blog, but don’t feel sure about making the commitment? Get your feet wet first as a commenter and guest blogger. Have you been blogging a while, but feel burned out? Take a break and turn it over to guest posters the way Konrath is doing, or just shut it down and make room for new bloggers.

And if anybody tells you it’s impossible to get published unless you’ve got the stats of Snooki or Justin Beiber, give them your pity and move on. Corporate publishing marketers have a 90% failure rate. That’s right: 90% of Big Six books lose money. So shut out their noise and do what works for you.

As the great man the world is mourning this week said in the speech that has now gone viral:

“Your time is limited. Don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”

********

What about you, scriveners? Do you think blogging is dead? Or that every aspiring author should have the blogging stats of the Daily Beast? Do you feel pressured to have a blog even though you just don’t wanna?

Next week we’re going to have an insightful guest post from Rick Daley, Mr. Public Query Slushpile his ownself. If you want more from me, I'm interviewing with Jennifer at Books, Personally on October 10.

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Have Big Publishers Become a Bunch of Zombies?

I have a confession to make. My high school nickname was “Zombie.”

The moniker was intended as an insult, but I loved it. I dressed in black, dyed my hair a dead ash color and wore ghastly white lipstick. I was goth before goth was cool. My senior year, my family moved to a house next to the town’s graveyard and I’d ask guys to drop me off at the iron gates. When they asked where I really lived, I’d go all spooky. Silly fun.

But right now, I’m totally over zombies and all things undead.

Why?

1)     They stopped being funny. Zombies first hit mainstream American culture with a hilarious 1950s Calypso song about dancing zombies, with the chorus, “Back to back/belly to belly/I don’t give a damn ’cause it doesn’t matter really.” 

George Romero’s 1960s classic Night of the Living Dead was high camp for stoners. People didn’t watch it to identify with the suffering hero. They watched it to revel in its low-budget outrageousness.

The 2004 film Shaun of the Dead is one of my favorite Britflix ever. It has the memorable line, “Just look at the face: it's vacant, with a hint of sadness. Like a drunk who's lost a bet.”

But the other night I tried to watch The Walking Dead. I was equally bored and revolted. Realism ruins all the fun. You see one exploding zombie head, you’ve seen them all. And watching a little kid suffer as he locks his suddenly brain-eating mother out of the house is just icky. If I want high tragedy, I’ll re-read King Lear.

2)     Zombies are not worthy opponents. Once stories start getting realistic, you can’t help noticing zombies are REALLY stupid. And easy to kill. You shoot them in the head. A bunch of stuff splurts out. Next zombie, please.

3)     They’ve been overdone and “trended” to death. Like so many contemporary businesses, publishing companies have taken a fun quirky thing and ruined it by throwing too much of it at us, while limiting our other choices. (Like pastel plastic objects in the 1980s. Anybody old enough to remember when you couldn’t buy a dishpan or a toilet brush that wasn’t powder blue or mauve?)

So now even the best zombie yarns are going to be dated and embarrassing by next year. (Try finding a new mauve scrub bucket these days: I dare you.)

Recently, ZombieLit has been one of the few acceptable genres for debut fiction. Publisher’s Lunch is full of reports of zombieana getting six figures and/or seven-book deals, while mysteries, women’s fiction, and literary novels are a “hard sell”—and big, multi-generational mainstream sagas are deader than a headless corpse.

Publishers “don’t want to take chances in this economy,” and need to “play it safe.”

But what’s so safe about copy-catting, over-saturating and fad-chasing? Or ignoring your main customer demographic? (Most adult book-buyers are women over 45.)

And why does the basic truth that hot trends have a short shelf life come as such a devastating shock to marketing departments year after year? Didn’t they learn anything after killing off funny women’s fiction with the “chick lit” bubble? Or the soon-to-be-defunct vampire craze?

I just checked this week’s NYT lists and it’s entirely zombie-free. What I see is, um, mysteries, women’s fiction, and literary novels—plus a big, multi-generational mainstream saga by a 71-year-old debut author.

Book buyers didn’t get the memo.

Something seems pretty brain-dead here. 

As former agent Nathan Bransford said in an interview on Rachelle Gardner’s blog soon after he changed professions—

“It's mind-numbing how many times I've seen an editor get extremely excited about a book, only to get struck down when they try to get clearance to make an offer. And all the while, they're under tremendous pressure to make a splash and build their career, but how can they if they aren't allowed to take on the books they're most excited about? If ever there were a time to empower young editors and trust their instincts, it's now.”

Is it any wonder a new novelist can’t get a read from an agent? Agents can’t get reads from editors. Editors can’t buy new projects. It’s trickle-down zombification. The industry is eating its own brains.

With all this “playing it safe” going on, I find it annoying that a lot of writing websites are still partying like it’s 1999—telling writers that if you’re getting form rejections it’s always because something’s wrong with your work.

Because the message I’m picking up here is: it’s not you; it’s them. If your work is entertaining, creative, and polished, and your query has been edited to three perfect paragraphs—but you’re still getting silent and/or one-line rejections—maybe it’s because agents and editors are brainlessly ignoring everything but the current fad.

Maybe it’s NOT because your book sux.

Nathan’s not the only insider who’s let us know things are kind of dysfunctional in the book business. Right after the mass-firings/pay freezes in 2008, a number of agents and editors sounded off about nasty, snarky editorial meetings—which seemed more like episodes of Gossip Girl than meetings of the intellectual elite. One can only assume they’ve become even more vicious as the bloodied survivors fight over the festering remains of the industry.

Does this mean we should all give up writing and start working on something more promising, like thinking up new and creative uses for dryer lint?

Nathan doesn’t seem to think so. He says, “as long as there are people reading books there will be publishers to publish them, authors to write them, and agents trying to get the authors the best deal possible.”

But he doesn’t say they will be the same publishers who now command the industry. The result of all this nonsense may be the reign of the Big Six houses will finally come to an end, and a bunch of smaller, more nimble publishers will drive the industry. Publisher’s Weekly reports even some A-listers like Pulitzer winner Alice Walker (The Color Purple) are moving to independent presses.

The road ahead looks rocky and uncertain for people in all aspects of the business, but maybe, in the end, it will lead to a more alive, fresh future for us all.

And zombie stories can be fun again.

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