Writers in the Storm

Amanda Luedeke

Ever wondered what agents think about hybrid authors? Ever been too afraid to ask, thinking the very idea of hybrid publishing an insult to the traditional side of the business? Well, fear no longer, because most agents I know fully support the hybrid author model. And it’s because of one reason…

Agents are happy when their authors are happy, and authors are happy when they’re making money. Being a hybrid author allows writers the opportunity to actually EARN DOLLARS doing this writing thing. So therefore agents, for the most part, are pro-hybrid authors.

Don’t get me wrong. Authors who try self-publishing aren’t guaranteed success or a boost in their finances. It can be a costly thing to get going and maintain, and if the sales aren’t there, it can leave the author frustrated. But when it works—and it does work for many authors—we agents get a kick out of seeing our authors succeed in such a difficult industry.

Before we go further, let’s define “hybrid author.” This is an author who simultaneously publishes with a traditional house and pursues self-publication through Amazon or CreateSpace or Smashwords or the like. It’s an author who is both on the indie side, and the traditional side.

So aside from the possibility that an author just won’t be able to get their indie books off the ground, what are some other downsides when it comes to how hybrid publishing may affect the author-agent relationship?

In other words, what are some things that agents don’t like about the hybrid model?

1. When our authors decide to completely abandon traditional publishing.

Look, I totally understand that monetarily, an author may be making more on the self-pub side. BUT I cannot express how very valuable it is to have the occasional book with a publisher, in stores, in libraries, and so on.

Being on the traditional side is like having a giant billboard. An author’s name gets in-store visibility, plus it benefits from being able to more easily enter contests, gain industry reviews, and earn that type of notoriety. Plus, by having a publisher’s marketing team work on your book, they’re essentially helping to promote your entire brand, as folks will type your name into Amazon and find your traditional books alongside your self-pub books. This feeds your career and therefore your self-pub sales. So pulling the plug on such a great cyclical model means risking a dip in sales and buzz.

2. When authors expect us to provide the same service on their self-pub projects that we do on their trad-pub stuff.

Typically, we don’t make a dime on the self-pub side. Furthermore, the projects that are taken directly to self-pub are projects that we then won’t be able to sell to a publisher. While we understand the give and take of such a model, what we don’t like is when our authors treat us as though we were the agent on those self-pub projects. In these instances, I find authors will rely on me to provide the same level of service to their self-pub careers that I provide to their trad-pub careers.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to answer some questions and give general direction, but I can’t be editing manuscripts, offering feedback, and brainstorming strategies on projects that will never make me money. It just isn’t smart business on my end, and I need my hybrid authors to understand that.

3. When authors compare the trad process with the self-pub process as though they should be identical.

They aren’t identical! And they never will be! And because of that, authors right now are able to run a hybrid operation that is the best of both worlds. But once you have an author who feels as though one side is grossly better than the other and who starts to compare the two and complain about this or that not being fair or right, you’re on a bad path.

In these instances I’ve found that no amount of pep talk or facts or advice will pull the author out of this mindset. They’re on a collision course that will drastically change their career to be solely a self-pub model. There’s nothing wrong with that if it’s the right choice. But for many, they really benefit from having some traditional contacts and support. So comparing both markets as though they should be the same can be dangerous.

4. When authors ignore advice.

While I try to stay out of my authors’ self-pub operations, there are times when they ask me for my thoughts on their projects or plans.

I’m quite familiar with self-publishing (I’ve done it myself and have helped numerous authors upload dozens and dozens of books), so I have a respectable opinion on the matter…which is probably why I don’t appreciate it when my authors achieve a bit of self-pub success and then think that I don’t know what I’m talking about when I flag a book cover as being “unclear” or a title as being “unsearchable” or a pricing strategy as being too expensive.

Believe me, I wouldn’t be providing my opinion on something that provides me no direct monetary gain unless I really thought that my input was helpful and important.

5. When authors join an “anti-traditional publishing community.”

There are lots of communities and blogs online that seem to solely exist to tear down traditional publishing while simultaneously puffing up the indie market. Everyone is privy to their own opinion, but I am definitely bothered when I have an author join these ranks even though he/she is in the midst of a traditional book deal! It lacks tact and is a slap in the face to the editors and professionals working on the book at the traditional house.

So there you have it! I’m a huge fan of hybrid publishing (check out the series I did on it) but there are definitely pitfalls to avoid if you want to explore your options while keeping your agent diligently working hard on your behalf.

So, what do you think? Which direction do you want to take your career? How did you choose?

About Amanda

Amanda Luedeke is an agent with MacGregor Literary.

A former marketing professional, her book The Extroverted Writer is a practical tool for understanding Facebook, Twitter, blogging and more. Download it now for $2.99 or check out the print version.

Kathryn Craft

Turning Whine Into Gold

As writers, we are used to making choices on behalf of our characters. As characters in our own life stories, though, we also make choices. We set a goal, pursue it until we come to a fork in the road, and then deal with the changes and challenges this new direction brings to our lives.

Hands down, the goal that inspires the most rabid pursuit among writers is to see their work through to publication. Note “rabid.” Since rabies is an infectious disease that creates unquenchable thirst and madness, and the treatment is painful, it behooves us to look at our choices in a healthy way.

First, let’s be clear: despite the rancor often found on the front between the indie vs traditional camps, this is publishing, not war. No one is holding a gun to your head. You have entered this publication story’s plot of your own accord and can leave at any time.

You always have a choice.

In fact, the number of publishing choices for authors nowadays is unprecedented, a fact that in itself is anxiety producing! People bank on the fact that each choice will lead to “King”-sized income and best-sellerdom. It could—I’m not trying to take that dream away from anyone. Heck, I have that dream too! But let’s look at the cold, hard math:

(Assuming: same # of readers consuming same # of books)

divided by

(unprecedented # of authors getting published in an unprecedented # of ways)

= fewer readers per author.

No amount of wishful thinking can change that math.

Oh, but we want to blame someone for it, don’t we? This is where disease sets in.

But there’s an antidote for the soul-rot caused by blame. I covered the first steps to take beyond emotional reaction last month, so we could deal with our anger before spewing it all over social media. But when met with an unexpected plot twist we aren’t just going to sit in the road adapting while any old truck comes down the pike to hit us, are we? Heck no—this is our career we’re talking about.

When change provides new information, we must choose again.

How quickly we disempower ourselves by saying we “had” to go in a certain direction! If you are one who is “defaulting” to self-publishing, what you are doing is deciding to put yourself out of the misery of waiting, and choosing to take on the misery of an outcome that was less than your goal. Think of the word “de-fault”: it sounds like there’s blame hiding in there, doesn’t it?

After owning a few small businesses, I know that disempowerment is not the foundation you want to build on. You are the brand, and people want to believe in you. Being an author requires an entrepreneurial spirit, self-published or not, and to think otherwise is to live in another century.

Incontrovertible truth: You will never be able to drive forward while looking back!

There is no reason to park your creativity at the door when it comes to your publishing choices. After all, even a fork in the road has many tines, right? A choice isn’t always either/or. The language of “choice” will empower you. Here’s an example, using the self-pub default example:

I can’t get an agent/I’m too old to wait for an agent. I’ll have to self-publish.

• You could choose to stand firm and continue to submit the same, always-improving project to agents in other geographic areas.

• You could choose to start a new project and resubmit to see if agents deem it more marketable (once an offer comes through, multiple completed projects are a huge bonus—and in the time it takes to write the new novel, a new spate of hungry young agents will have arrived on-scene).

• You could choose to up your game by learning more about writing and storytelling and publishing. Knowledge breeds confidence!

• You could choose to submit to one of the many small and micro publishers that you can access without an agent.

• You could choose to begin an education in the many aspects of book production and marketing and see if the self-publishing option beckons to you. If it doesn’t, you will be that much more knowledgeable about publishing when the offer comes. If it does, you have an exciting new career option!

“Exciting new career option” sounds a lot better than “default,” right? I know people who have taken each of these paths and called it a win—because after considering many options, they owned and fully embraced the choice they made.

It is my opinion that fiction writing makes authors more empathetic people. We deal daily in human failings, deep motivations, emotional scars, and irrevocable change. Why not extend some of that empathy to ourselves? Make the choice, today, to let the protagonist in the story of your life own his or her own path. After all, you chose it.

To what aspects of your life do you feel enslaved? Do you “have” to work a day job, or care for an elderly parent? How could choice language help you honor the part of yourself that holds to this agreement?

 About Kathryn:

Kathryn Craft is the author of two novels from Sourcebooks: The Art of Falling, and The Far End of Happy, due May 2015.

Her work as a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, specializing in storytelling structure and writing craft, follows a nineteen-year career as a dance critic. Long a leader in the southeastern Pennsylvania writing scene, she now serves as book club liaison for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. She hosts lakeside writing retreats for women in northern New York State, leads workshops, and speaks often about writing.

Kathryn lives with her husband in Bucks County, PA. Although a member of The Liars Club, she swears that everything in this bio is true.

Website: http://www.kathryncraft.com/

Elizabeth S. Craig

When writers offer other authors’ advice about generating more income, the advice inevitably is, “Write a lot of good books.”

Although it’s true that volume is key to visibility in an increasingly crowded book market, there’s another way to gain visibility—offering our content, our books, in a variety of marketplaces.

While working to release more books, there are smart things we can do to make our already-written content work harder for us through diversification.

If we diversify our distribution, offering our work on a variety of different channels and platforms (beyond just the usual suspect, Amazon’s Kindle), we can develop multiple revenue streams from a single product.

Here are some examples of different places that we can sell our work…and one place where we can give it away for free.

ACX: ACX is the audiobook option for self-publishers in the US and UK. I’ve discovered that audio is a more popular reading platform than I’d realized. What’s more, it cost me nothing to have my work available there since I used the royalty share arrangement with my narrator (my narrator and I split the royalties from the sales). The money I make from ACX is pure profit. More about payment options for narrators from the ACX site.

Print: It’s a sign of how much publishing has changed that I even have to include a reminder to consider putting books into print. CreateSpace and Lightning Source are the two companies that most authors use when pursuing print. With CreateSpace, readers can order print copies of our books through the Amazon site and with Lightning Source, physical booksellers can order our books for their shelves. I have all of my self-published books available through CreateSpace and the only costs I incurred were one-time expenses for print and cover formatting from my design team. With print-on-demand technology, books are printed when they’re purchased—no need to have hundreds of books in our garage.

Digital publishing—beyond Amazon. Although Amazon will (almost certainly) be the primary source of our royalty income, putting all our eggs in one retailer’s basket isn’t the best approach. There are other ebook platforms out there, including Kobo, iBookstore, Nook, Scribd, and Overdrive that readers are using. For most of these retailers, if you have the ability to attach a file to an email, you’ve got the basic skills necessary to upload your book to these platforms. We can also choose to go through a distribution platform like Smashwords, which will upload a single file to all the main retailers in exchange for a 10% commission of the retail price of affiliate retailers (Apple, Nook, etc.)

Foreign sales: Are your books available for sale on Amazon’s international sites? On Apple’s? It only takes a click of a mouse to sell our book to foreign markets. Some writers are also pursuing having their books translated for international readers (particularly the German market) through sites like Babelcube and Proz.

Wattpad: Wattpad is a publishing platform with about 17 million unique international visitors each month (and a strong youthful demographic). To use Wattpad most effectively, authors should upload books a chapter at a time, allowing each chapter to garner votes and comments, which is key to visibility on the site.   The platform is free both to upload to and to read from, so this is about exposure. It almost serves as advertising for our series. For me, it’s about exposing my book to a completely different demographic than I reach with the Amazon algorithms…a younger one. I’ve found the community there supportive and engaged. It’s important to put a call to action at the bottom of each uploaded chapter—a buy link for our other books.

Although we should keep writing new stories, it’s just a smart idea to make our already-published books work harder for us in the meantime. As time goes on, the options for reaching readers will only increase for writers.

Have you diversified the publishing platforms you’re using?

What platforms are you currently using?

About Elizabeth

Elizabeth writes the Southern Quilting mysteries for Penguin/NAL, the Memphis Barbeque mysteries for Penguin/Berkley, and the Myrtle Clover series for Midnight Ink and independently.

She blogs at ElizabethSpannCraig.com/blog , which was named by Writer’s Digest as one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers. @elizabethscraig