Laura Stephenson's Kickstarter for The Complete Guide to Being Evil

Laura is a friend of mine and a blogging pal. She's been on here before with query letters, and now she has decided to self-publish her book, The Complete Guide to Being Evil. In order to do it right, she has created a Kickstarter campaign.

You know what Kickstarter is, right? I wrote a little about it here.

Anyway, check out Laura's video:



And then you can read more, and see the rewards, here.

Blog Chain: The Brave New Publishing World

So here I am, at work at 7 PM, the first shift in my new schedule, the DuPont schedule, which is a behemoth you can read more about, here.

Anyway, partly because of this new schedule, and partly because I just suck at organization, I missed the first post I was supposed to put up yesterday for this new blog chain I've joined. The topic for today, in fact for the entire chain, is this:

Have the recent changes in the publishing industry affected your writing plans/career? If so, how?

Before I get to answering that, I want to explain how the blog chain works, and introduce you to the other members of the group. It works by one member picking a topic, and then writing about it on the first day. What makes it a chain is that each subsequent blogger then covers the same topic, also linking to both the previous, and the next blog.

I screwed all that up, so I'm going to link to all the blogs.

First, let me introduce you to the other new members of the chain, most of whom you may already know. Amparo, Tere, PK, Katrina, and Jon. The already existing members of the chain, some of whom I already knew, but others whom I just met, are: Christine, Sarah, Michelle M., Shaun, Cole, Kate, Sandra, Eric, Margie, Michelle H., and Abby.

Now I realize that's a lot of blogs, but you don't have to read them all right now. Just go follow them, and I promise you won't be disappointed. For now just read the post that came before mine, Sandra's, and then go read the one that comes tomorrow (which by the way is actually today since I screwed all this up), Kate's.

Now that we've gotten all that housekeeping out of the way, let's get down to the topic.

My opinion, and please take this with a grain of salt as I am a completely amateur and unpublished writer, is that it is both an exciting and a terrifying time to be (or be attempting to be) in the publishing industry. I say that in all my comments whenever the topic comes up, and I mean it.

I used to own a small, independent record label in Minneapolis. My partner had all the musical talent, and I (supposedly) had all the business acumen. We didn't get rich, but we had a lot of fun.

You can't compare the music industry to publishing with a one to one correlation, because they're very different, but I can make an analogy that I hope will make my opinion about the state of publishing more clear.

When a record gets put out (for us it was usually 12 inch singles, which is actually just 2 songs, an A side, and a B side, and then possibly an instrumental and an acapella version of each) the record label generally recoups all costs before any artists get paid, which can be quite substantial depending on the scope and quality of the production. In general, independently produced music allows for better art to get from the artist to the fan (or listener) for a lower cost, and with more of the fair share of profits actually making it into the artist's hand (or bank account).

It seems to me that the same will eventually be true of publishing, but I don't think we're there yet, not even close. So far, self and e-publishing (or even vanity, which is NOT the same thing) has always had a very negative stigma attached to it. In the sense that self-published books are of lower quality, because the author simply got impatient about trying to get published traditionally. I can't personally tell you whether or not that was ever true, because I haven't read a lot of self-published books, but I can tell you the stigma was there.

I think all of that's changing, and fast. My friend PJ Hoover has already shown that you can write a great book, one good enough to get an agent, and then still choose to publish it outside of the traditional channels. I haven't read the whole thing, yet, but I've read an excerpt of Solstice, and I can tell you that PJ is a damn fine writer.

For my own career, I still intend to get published traditionally, at least once, if only to prove that I can do it. After that, who knows? All I really care about is telling great stories and having them reach as many readers who will love them as much as I do, as possible.

I could go on, but I've probably already said too much. Please bear with me as I try to wrap my head around this crazy thing that is my life.

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

Recently there have been a couple of flame wars in the blogosphere.

Last month it was a self published author complaining about book review bloggers on her blog. It wouldn't have been as huge a deal if she hadn't named them.

The other day it was a book review blogger who reviewed a self published author's novel on his blog. It wouldn't have been such a big deal if the author hadn't showed up and started getting angry in the comments, literally swearing at almost everyone.

This kind of behavior is unacceptable. It's also rather embarrassing. Look, I get it, it hurts to get rejected. It hurts anytime someone doesn't love your writing. I mean we pour our hearts and souls into our stories and if someone doesn't connect with what we're trying to say ... it stings. Sometimes it stings more than others. Like when it's done publicly.

That doesn't mean you should respond. We need to be above all that. We need to grow thick skins and move on. The fact is: not everyone is going to love our work. There are people who don't like Tolkien. I have no idea what's wrong with them, but they do exist. There are people who don't get Cormac McCarthy. That I can actually understand, even if I don't agree.

There will always be some people who don't like your writing, or don't care for your story, or just don't get your characters. It cannot be avoided. It will happen. We have to accept that and move on.

There are three main things that piss me off about these flame wars and the behavior of these authors (and no, I won't be linking you to the posts, they're beneath this blog, and I'm sure you heard about them already):

First, it gives self-published authors a bad name. I have friends who are self-published, who are incredible writers, and who conduct themselves with the utmost professionalism on the internet and in their real lives. Please stop making them look like hacks. There is a reason people give self-publishing the stereotypical assumption of being not good enough. That reason is these authors taking part in these flame wars.

Second, it takes attention away from positive, uplifting posts that deserve the traffic that these flame wars get. The most recent one got over 300 comments, and brought more visitors to a brand new blog than any inspiring post has ever done. I understand it's human nature to stare at a train wreck, but it's sad, really. There are plenty of bloggers writing posts that deserve that kind of traffic, and never get it.

Finally, well ... I forget what my third reason was, but if I thought about it for a minute I could probably come up with ten more. Just don't do it, it's not worth it.

If you want to know more about flame wars, trolls, and internet etiquette, you can read this Wikipedia article. There is also a proposed Blogger Code of Conduct.