(no subject)
Jul. 2nd, 2011 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cblj_backupUgh. I'm not going out today. It's not reclusiveness, it's a zillion degrees out. I'm going to stay in and bond with the air conditioner.
I've been alternating between cleaning and creating, which sounds nicely pithy, though at this point cleaning mostly involves Roomba supervision. While the Roomba was running in the kitchen, occasionally bonking into my ankles, I made ice cream; I forgot to chill the mix before I put it in the machine, but it came out all right anyway, and while the machine did its work I did some messing around with the cover for Trace.
And then this got very philosophical, so I'll toss the rest under a cut.
Shopping for an image is always difficult. For Nameless, I had a great high-res photo I took myself, so that was no real matter, and I lucked out with Other People Can Smell You, but for Charitable Getting I spent ages trying to find something appropriate and finally Claire had to take a picture of a gong for me -- that image on the cover is actually the gong that inspired the gong in the novel.
The problem is that the image has to fit several criteria: it has to be quite high-res to go on the cover of a 6"x9" book, has to fit the colour palette "mood" of the novel, has to be (of course) representative somehow of the content, has to catch the eye, and has to be either rights-free or very cheap to obtain. I have a bunch of "free stock" photo/image websites bookmarked; National Geographic has the best photos but they're never high-res enough, and I find more and more the only one that's really worth a damn is Flickr. I don't really like how Flickr functions as a site, but it does have the Creative Commons, where I can search and browse loads of free-with-attribution high-res images easily.
On the one hand, cover design is where a pro publisher and their graphic design department would be appreciated. On the other, I do like doing the layouts myself -- the frustration of finding an image aside, there's something quite satisfying when you finally nail it. Plus you do hear horror stories; authors have basically no control over their covers and we've all seen dreadful covers with content only vaguely relevant to the novel. Recently there were a few cases where characters of colour were whitewashed.
I don't usually blame the artists; often they don't get to read the book before doing the design, and frequently they're getting low pay to do what they're told and STFU. I blame the publishers, because it's emblematic of a greater issue, not just the publishing houses wanting to control an author's content but their distribution points want to as well. There was a brilliant article I read recently which I now can't find to save my life which gave the example that Tesco's in the UK will sometimes decline to carry books based on their cover design.
So as ever, I am for the concept of the small or even individual press; of people being allowed to write what they want and publish it however they want. I am for whatever keeps a writer's vision intact for the reader.
But the problem always comes round to gatekeeping, because I don't want to waste my money on a shitty book and nobody else I know does either, with the result that nobody takes a chance on selfpub books. I tried to look around Lulu and see if there were any good books, and I couldn't fucking tell, and I haven't got the kind of cash to take a risk.
This is the question, then: who is promising you, the reader, that the book you get will be readable?
When you buy a book in a bookstore you're taking a chance, but the odds are backed by an agent, publisher, editor, and to some extent the bookseller as well. You do generally have a guarantee of good typesetting, few spelling errors, and correct grammar. You might not like the book, but there is a baseline of material quality that pro publishers promise you.
Say, just for the sake of argument, when you buy a book in a bookstore or from a known pro publisher online, your chances of a book you will enjoy are 70%. I'm basing that on the last six months, where I read thirty books and found about 25 readable, 20 actually enjoyable. (There's an interesting if occasionally enraging discussion about risk-taking in fiction books here, if you'd like a longer examination.)
When you buy direct from Lulu.com, or when you buy a selfpublished novel on Amazon or from the author's website, that percentage drops like a stone. You have no guarantee that anyone other than the author ever even saw the manuscript, let alone made suggestions. No guarantee that someone professionally edited or typeset the book. Recently I received a shipment in error, twenty-five copies of a cookbook instead of twenty copies of my book. The writing was all right, but the layout was dreadfully unprofessional. I can't even calculate how many good writers versus bad writers are out there self-publishing, but I'd fix your chances of getting an essentially readable book somewhere around 20%. Getting a good book, perhaps 15%. And that's being kind.
There are solutions -- I'm actually discussing some with various people now -- but none perfect. From an author's standpoint, the options are few. From a reader's standpoint, everything requires research: finding a reviewer who does selfpub book reviews, studying sample chapters to find an author you like and sticking with them, following blogs of writers who self-publish.
With the right equipment, and depending on how much time and money they're willing to invest, there is nearly nothing a pro pubisher can do that a self publisher can't, now that PoD is going strong and ebooks are flourishing. The one thing a self publisher cannot do is gatekeep themselves. You can't make a guarantee to a reader that what they're getting from you has a high likelihood of being a good book. The only way to do that is by building a relationship with your readers, and that's incredibly hard to do if you haven't got many because nobody will take a chance on your book. The hard sell doesn't usually work very well for books.
I'm lucky in that way, because I had people willing to take a chance and I had a body of readers who followed my fanfic to my original fiction. But it is a slow process, and there's no manual for how to do it. Even I don't know how it happened, and couldn't re-create it if I tried.
The best thing we can do as writers and as readers is, essentially, to take the fanfic model and apply it to original fiction. Because so much fanfic can be so shitty, we've found a way to save our reading time (the corollary would be a cash investment for a book, in original fiction) and with reasonable accuracy bring up the good stuff. We use recslists and recc communities, supporting the ones we find most to our tastes; we hold discussions about stories (yes, even in anon memes) and we tell our friends about the ones we like. We form fandom communities in which we all put in a bit of effort and get back a reasonable guarantee of quality. Say, 70%?
Readers -- and I include myself here even though I'm shit at reccing stuff in fandom -- need to talk about books. We need to review them, loan them to friends, support authors we respect, even support small publishing companies when we know they produce quality work and treat their authors with respect. As a writer with writerly contacts, I try to do this as much as I can, with projects like Hold Something (for which I also edit) and Candlemark & Gleam (for whom I sometimes headhunt authors).
This process of communal gatekeeping will never, ever sell as many books as Tesco or Borders or the big publishers, and it takes effort on the part of the reader. But it will support artists who choose to present their vision honestly and it may, in time, change the way traditional publishing sees their reader. That's a bit idealistic for me, but I do try to live in hope.
And all that from a whine about how hard cover design is. I should write a book or something.
I've been alternating between cleaning and creating, which sounds nicely pithy, though at this point cleaning mostly involves Roomba supervision. While the Roomba was running in the kitchen, occasionally bonking into my ankles, I made ice cream; I forgot to chill the mix before I put it in the machine, but it came out all right anyway, and while the machine did its work I did some messing around with the cover for Trace.
And then this got very philosophical, so I'll toss the rest under a cut.
Shopping for an image is always difficult. For Nameless, I had a great high-res photo I took myself, so that was no real matter, and I lucked out with Other People Can Smell You, but for Charitable Getting I spent ages trying to find something appropriate and finally Claire had to take a picture of a gong for me -- that image on the cover is actually the gong that inspired the gong in the novel.
The problem is that the image has to fit several criteria: it has to be quite high-res to go on the cover of a 6"x9" book, has to fit the colour palette "mood" of the novel, has to be (of course) representative somehow of the content, has to catch the eye, and has to be either rights-free or very cheap to obtain. I have a bunch of "free stock" photo/image websites bookmarked; National Geographic has the best photos but they're never high-res enough, and I find more and more the only one that's really worth a damn is Flickr. I don't really like how Flickr functions as a site, but it does have the Creative Commons, where I can search and browse loads of free-with-attribution high-res images easily.
On the one hand, cover design is where a pro publisher and their graphic design department would be appreciated. On the other, I do like doing the layouts myself -- the frustration of finding an image aside, there's something quite satisfying when you finally nail it. Plus you do hear horror stories; authors have basically no control over their covers and we've all seen dreadful covers with content only vaguely relevant to the novel. Recently there were a few cases where characters of colour were whitewashed.
I don't usually blame the artists; often they don't get to read the book before doing the design, and frequently they're getting low pay to do what they're told and STFU. I blame the publishers, because it's emblematic of a greater issue, not just the publishing houses wanting to control an author's content but their distribution points want to as well. There was a brilliant article I read recently which I now can't find to save my life which gave the example that Tesco's in the UK will sometimes decline to carry books based on their cover design.
So as ever, I am for the concept of the small or even individual press; of people being allowed to write what they want and publish it however they want. I am for whatever keeps a writer's vision intact for the reader.
But the problem always comes round to gatekeeping, because I don't want to waste my money on a shitty book and nobody else I know does either, with the result that nobody takes a chance on selfpub books. I tried to look around Lulu and see if there were any good books, and I couldn't fucking tell, and I haven't got the kind of cash to take a risk.
This is the question, then: who is promising you, the reader, that the book you get will be readable?
When you buy a book in a bookstore you're taking a chance, but the odds are backed by an agent, publisher, editor, and to some extent the bookseller as well. You do generally have a guarantee of good typesetting, few spelling errors, and correct grammar. You might not like the book, but there is a baseline of material quality that pro publishers promise you.
Say, just for the sake of argument, when you buy a book in a bookstore or from a known pro publisher online, your chances of a book you will enjoy are 70%. I'm basing that on the last six months, where I read thirty books and found about 25 readable, 20 actually enjoyable. (There's an interesting if occasionally enraging discussion about risk-taking in fiction books here, if you'd like a longer examination.)
When you buy direct from Lulu.com, or when you buy a selfpublished novel on Amazon or from the author's website, that percentage drops like a stone. You have no guarantee that anyone other than the author ever even saw the manuscript, let alone made suggestions. No guarantee that someone professionally edited or typeset the book. Recently I received a shipment in error, twenty-five copies of a cookbook instead of twenty copies of my book. The writing was all right, but the layout was dreadfully unprofessional. I can't even calculate how many good writers versus bad writers are out there self-publishing, but I'd fix your chances of getting an essentially readable book somewhere around 20%. Getting a good book, perhaps 15%. And that's being kind.
There are solutions -- I'm actually discussing some with various people now -- but none perfect. From an author's standpoint, the options are few. From a reader's standpoint, everything requires research: finding a reviewer who does selfpub book reviews, studying sample chapters to find an author you like and sticking with them, following blogs of writers who self-publish.
With the right equipment, and depending on how much time and money they're willing to invest, there is nearly nothing a pro pubisher can do that a self publisher can't, now that PoD is going strong and ebooks are flourishing. The one thing a self publisher cannot do is gatekeep themselves. You can't make a guarantee to a reader that what they're getting from you has a high likelihood of being a good book. The only way to do that is by building a relationship with your readers, and that's incredibly hard to do if you haven't got many because nobody will take a chance on your book. The hard sell doesn't usually work very well for books.
I'm lucky in that way, because I had people willing to take a chance and I had a body of readers who followed my fanfic to my original fiction. But it is a slow process, and there's no manual for how to do it. Even I don't know how it happened, and couldn't re-create it if I tried.
The best thing we can do as writers and as readers is, essentially, to take the fanfic model and apply it to original fiction. Because so much fanfic can be so shitty, we've found a way to save our reading time (the corollary would be a cash investment for a book, in original fiction) and with reasonable accuracy bring up the good stuff. We use recslists and recc communities, supporting the ones we find most to our tastes; we hold discussions about stories (yes, even in anon memes) and we tell our friends about the ones we like. We form fandom communities in which we all put in a bit of effort and get back a reasonable guarantee of quality. Say, 70%?
Readers -- and I include myself here even though I'm shit at reccing stuff in fandom -- need to talk about books. We need to review them, loan them to friends, support authors we respect, even support small publishing companies when we know they produce quality work and treat their authors with respect. As a writer with writerly contacts, I try to do this as much as I can, with projects like Hold Something (for which I also edit) and Candlemark & Gleam (for whom I sometimes headhunt authors).
This process of communal gatekeeping will never, ever sell as many books as Tesco or Borders or the big publishers, and it takes effort on the part of the reader. But it will support artists who choose to present their vision honestly and it may, in time, change the way traditional publishing sees their reader. That's a bit idealistic for me, but I do try to live in hope.
And all that from a whine about how hard cover design is. I should write a book or something.
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no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 04:10 pm (UTC)What about small publishers as a bridge between self-publish and mainstream? /ignorant
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 04:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-03 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-08 02:59 pm (UTC)In a few very rare cases, small press functions as something of a AAA team for Big Press - we find new/emerging authors, nurture them, and then applaud as they get called up to the big leagues when some NY editor stumbles across a book.
In other cases, and this happens more often, authors might start out by publishing short stories with magazines, and novellas or anthology stories or even novels with a small press, then use that to get an agent and start submitting to the Big Six. There's yer bridge.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 05:23 pm (UTC)Le sigh. Some of us would love to help with that sort of problem, but we're not good enough writers ourselves to put our own books out there, so helping by editing feels like it would be a good contribution. Particularly if people would list their primary editor(s) in their book listing. That way people could get to know who some of the better editors are, and who thinks they're either too good or too poor for editors, and help whittle out which books are more likely to be enjoyable.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-03 12:41 am (UTC)Ironically, there are some of us who do. If you Google editors online, let alone do a more detailed search through the writers market or something, you'll find this out there. The question is, how do you know who is good? And as an editor, one of the difficulties is convincing writers who don't know if they will ever make any money on their book to pay a fee for editing services. So many of them (especially the first time ones) think that they know how to write, darn it, and editors just stick their fingers in things to make it look like they've done something.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-08 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 11:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 06:27 pm (UTC)You are right that so many books these days have covers that bear no relationship to the text and that is frustrating for the reader shopping for a new book and especially frustrating for the illustrators, the job has gotten much more frustrating in the past decade since the big publishers generally have a corporate money counter pushing for design to be sacrificed for the bottom line. I haven't chosen a cover image for a book in about 6 years: that is now done at an administrative level by the marketing team who haven't read the book. The same bean counters also influence the decisions to not properly lay out the book to save time. But the illustrator's name goes on the copyright page and instead of being proud, we pray no one notices our name.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-03 12:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-07 02:56 pm (UTC)Publishing in general strikes me as an immensely frustrating process -- so much control over the artistic product is taken out of the artist's hands, whether they're the cover designer/illustrator or the writer. as frustrated as I get, I know at least that nobody else is ever going to roadblock me.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 06:57 pm (UTC)I've loaned out CG and given it as a gift, and every time the person looks at me with a raised eyebrow as they unwrap it (or get handed it). I describe the plot, they read the back, and then I open to the email exchange (climate master/ frozen shrinkage) and they read it and laugh out loud. They smile, then glance confusedly at the cover. I explain it's the gong in the novel, and they stare at me blankly.
In short, the cover to CG does not help sell the book. The book is Bo Sparks shiny, Bloggers and interns and sex scandals and laughter. The cover is muted, and while it looks great on my shelf next to Nameless - where the cover image of Nameless is a beautiful bleak representation of the loneliness and transformation you will read, I don't get any of that from CG - and neither does the small sample size I've tested. I'm sorry.
BUT on another note, I love your fanfic analogy to published, because it's so true - when I'm reading in a fandom I know, I'll get mostly good stuff because I know where to look. When I'm searching for something for a friend in a fandom I don't know, I'm always shocked at the dreck I have to sift through. Good point.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 09:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-03 03:02 am (UTC)Maybe it should have sushi on the cover? With beer? I don't know.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-07 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 09:22 pm (UTC)I almost never buy a book that I have not already read and loved. My reading is primarily library-based and thus mostly free. It also means that the vast majority of my reading is not "current"; reading the latest bestseller or newly released books means very little to me. The reason is money. I grew up in the poorer parts of a third-world country, I'm still really tightfisted with it. I know American people with comparable incomes to me spend WAAAY more of their incomes than I do. I am not typical at all.
When it does happen (buying a new release without first having read it at the library and loved it) it's always because I've built a VERY strong connection with the writer or his/her work already - I bought the last 3 Harry Potter books on the day they came out, I bought all three of Sarah Rees Brennan's books as soon as they were out because I read her blog a lot, I buy all of your books as soon as they are released because I've followed YOUR blog faithfully for years, etc.
Note that several of these books are NOT the best books I've ever read (I hated the last two HP books, and was disappointed in SRB's latest) but I do not regret buying them, I'd never return them to get my money back, and I love owning these books just the same as I love any of the other "genuinely good" books I own. The connection I feel to the writers and/or their work is a stronger recommendation and reason to buy than even my own judgement of how good a whole book is.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-03 01:08 am (UTC)(I don't have a books icon. This needs to be fixed.)
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 11:27 pm (UTC)1. There's a bimbo on the cover of the book.
There's a bimbo on the cover of the book.
She is blonde and she is sexy;
She is nowhere in the text. She
is a bimbo on the cover of the book.
2. There's a dragon on the cover of the book.
There's a dragon on the cover of the book.
He is long and green and scaly,
but he's nowhere in the tale. He
is a dragon on the cover of the book.
3. There's a rocket on the cover of the book.
There's a rocket on the cover of the book.
It's a phallic and a stout one,
but my novel was without one.
There's a rocket on the cover of my book.
4. There's a castle on the cover of the book.
There's a castle on the cover of the book.
Every knight is fit for battle,
but the action's in Seattle.
There's a castle on the cover of the book.
5. There's a blurb on the backside of the book.
There's a blurb on the backside of the book.
There's one story on the cover;
inside the book's another.
There's a blurb on the backside of the book.
6. And my name is on the cover of my book.
Yes, my name is on the cover of my book.
Although I hate to tell it,
the publisher misspelled it,
but my name is on the cover of my book.
7. They reviewed my book in Locus magazine.
They reviewed my book in Locus magazine.
The way Mark Kelly synopsized it,
I barely recognized it,
but they reviewed my book in Locus magazine.
8. Well, my book won the Nebula award.
Yes, my book won the Nebula award.
Still it ended in remainders,
ripped and torn by perfect strangers,
but my book won the Nebula award.
9. So put that bimbo on the cover of my book.
Put a bimbo on the cover of my book.
I don't care what gets drawn
if you'll just leave the cover on.
(Don't remainder me!)
So put that bimbo, dragon, castle, rocket,
vampire, elf or magic locket--
please put a bimbo on the cover of my book!
Alternate extra verse by Irene Radford:
There's black leather on the bimbo on my book.
There's black leather on the bimbo on my book.
While I'm sure she's lots of fun,
My heroine's a nun,
Who wears black leather on the cover of my book.
....and because of this, I may notice truly terrible cover design, but don't judge a book by it's cover.
Recs and plot synopsis on the back cover blurb.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-06 03:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-06 02:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-06 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-07 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-07 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-07 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-17 08:05 pm (UTC)She and her husband Jeff do spot-on hilarious (the instruments are perfect, like a karoke track of the original but all newly recorded) parodies of classic rock and whatnot.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-03 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-03 01:07 am (UTC)Like I said, I haven't finished reading this version yet, but at about halfway through, so far I'm really impressed by the changes you've made in response to the open beta/edit. If the rest of the book holds up as well as the section I've already read, I know a publisher who would almost certainly be very interested in it. It's a small press that operates on a New York model and has an excellent reputation--the publisher was complaining that the big New York publishing houses occasionally come in and poach her writers. One of their big selling points is that actually do marketing for the books they publish. With their own budget and everything.
I know you're happy self-publishing. But if you ever change your mind on this one, I'd love to see her look at Trace.
If you're interested and can afford it, you might consider attending EPICon next year. It's an electronic publishing convention, and next year it will be in Minneapolis someplace, so it should be a reasonable plane ticket. There is a lot of tremendously useful discussion about what's going on in the publishing industry and what role it plays when anyone can self-publish. In addition to an opportunity to meet other professionals in the industry.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-07 02:42 pm (UTC)I don't suppose you'd rop the name or URL of the publisher you mentioned? I do like self-publishing but I like to build networks too, especially with publishers who respect their authors :)
no subject
Date: 2011-07-08 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-08 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-03 03:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-04 05:27 pm (UTC)Also I've been playing around with the idea of providing book formatting, cover design and eBook creation to self publish authors, but haven't had the time to do all the set up stuffs (website, pricing, marketing, etc.). So if you know of a group that need someone like that, feel free to share me with the, or vice versa.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-07 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-07 03:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-07 03:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-08 02:57 pm (UTC)I wish I had the time to set this up. It'd be SO USEFUL for DIY authors and small presses alike, and a really great resource for readers who WANT to support such things, instead of reading whatever B&N/Amazon is hawking today.