Self-Publishing vs Traditional Publishing

Agents wear all sorts of hats these days, but it's important to remember the first hat any agent wears (or should wear) and that's to sell books to publishers.

Which means self-publishing and traditional publishing diverge very fundamentally.

If you've published your book in any way, whether it's on your blog for free, as an ebook, or through a small press, you've essentially taken over the agent's job. Many do this to great satisfaction. Most, though, find themselves frustrated and feeling duped without representation.

Of course, some self-published authors get leveraged into traditional deals with publishers, but these are few and far between and the mechanics are complicated (more later this week). There is about a 1% chance that your self-publishing experience will look anything like John Locke's.

If you're hoping to be published traditionally, the best way to get there is traditionally. Query agents. Revise for agents. Attend conferences. Do research. Get an Agent. Get a Book Deal.

If you exhaust that avenue, and no one is smart enough to see you've written a bestseller, then self-publish (this is almost universally better than signing with a small press, believe it or not, because you keep ALL your rights--meaning you can sell them later if a big publisher is interested).

If you self-publish and then try to query agents, you will universally get "No" unless you've sold in excess of 5,000 copies. This is not an opinion of mine, it's the fact of the matter. An agent cannot leverage print rights on a self-published book without sales numbers to back it up. As a debut author, querying agents, you have no sales numbers and no one expects you to. You're a debut. But once you're published, even if you do it yourself, publishers need to see some $treet cred.

Interesting...

...relationship between book, short fiction, and TV series. Of course, it doesn't hurt if you're Elmore Leonard, either. Read about it here.

I think we're going to see a lot more of this type of reverse- or laterally engineered content. Where a book idea may come from an idea for a screen or teleplay, spawning app or enhanced ebook ideas, etc. I also think it's going to change how we think about packaging a book for sale, whether to an editor behind the scenes or in public on the B&N table or web.

Hmm...

Neovella

Neovella is a shiny new site that launched last month for collaborative writing--a concept I'm seeing more and more.

What I like:

• As with brainstorming, I think mediums that force authors to release the death grip on their stories will allow pleasantly unexpected things to happen. I think we'll see creativity at its most unfettered.
• It's social!
• There are rules (you have to alternate turns every sentence) but not too many rules.
• The site allows you to choose with whom you collaborate--or you can just collaborate with strangers. You've got control over who sees your work.
• They're talking about selling on Amazon and paying authors!! Sweet. The more places to make moneyz writing, the better.

What I don't like, though, is that there doesn't seem to be much thought going into legal issues. Yes, it's understood that each coauthor holds copyright to the words they submit as soon as they type the first letter. This is true of all writing. So we know who owns what.

But when something collaborative gets monetized, there's bound to be conflict over who gets what--and Neovella purports to split royalties based on "the success of the web site and the given story." What about splits based on content? Do we divide based on who submitted the most sentences? Does the originator of the story, as the one who technically wrote the first copyrighted word and, it could be claimed, had "the idea," get a larger amount? What about conflict over quality of content? You *know* some all authors will feel like he/she carried the story.

Neovella won't be able to cover every conceivable conflict. Writers are just too creative. But they can track who submits what and pay accordingly. As for heading off the more complex issues, I think Neovella should consider the following:

• Optional monetization. Just as you can choose with whom you collaborate, you should also be able to opt out of the Amazon program. Take $$ out of the equation, suddenly things get a lot less complicated.
• Contracts. Neovella could make boilerplates available for story initiators to post with the opening line of the story. As you have to agree to terms and conditions before a program will install on your computer, you have to agree to the contract before being allowed to post. Users should be able to tweak the contract, submitting revisions for approval by the group before the story begins--no revisions after things are underway except by unanimous vote.
  

My advice: use with caution. Neovella is a great place for brainstorming and recreational writing. But anything you're planning to do more with/sell elsewhere--a character or world from your WIP, say--should be left for your eyes and those of your beta readers.