It’s been a very long time since last I wrote. This post should be a long one.

Business of writing

This year has seen a large amount of changes within the business : ebooks are on the rise, brick and mortar stores are closing. As a result, the entire industry is in a state of flux : publishers are tightening their contracts and agents are trying new business models to try to stay afloat.

A few weeks back, David Farland wrote in his mailing list a piece about the changes in the business. This one struck me like a blow to the stomach. In short, David preaches that smart writers should self publish because opportunities are dwindling within the old publishing world. Trying to evaluate what to do, I fell in Kristine Kathryn Rush’s blog and saw the entire publishing world crumble before my eyes. Her husband’s blog (Wesley-Dean Smith) depicts an even worse situation.

If I understand what they are saying, agents are trying to grab whatever part of the cake they can (becoming essentially ebooks publishers), and publishers are changing their contracts to get all rights, not only on ebooks, but on any form of electronic medium (opening an interesting breach that would allow them to get dramatic rights). All that for 30% of the “net price” (whatever that is). The situation seems clear for midlist writers (those with a long backlist of books with rights that reverted back to them) : those should self publish.

But what of the aspiring writers?

If I go to amazon, I can setup my ebook and put it for sale in minutes, and for 70% royalty on a price I’m setting myself. Sure, who’s going to buy my book as it is, I have no idea, but with a fetching cover and a moderately good abstract, I could probably sell a few copies. If I want a more personal feel, I can hire people to design the book, edit it and proofread it – all for a flat fee (granted, a full edit of a fantasy book can cost as much as $ 4000. That’s steep, but it’s not a percentage. Whether the book sells 10 copies or 10 million, the editing work was the same and I shouldn’t have to pay anyone a percentage of my royalties, period.

What to do then?

Tonight, I met Brandon Sanderson in a meet & greet setup by his french publisher. As always, he was very helpful when I asked him what should a writer do. For him, David Farland’s arguments felt valid (“he’s a very wise man”), but that’s not a way for everyone. So his answer to me was – do you feel like you can self publish ?

I must confess that – althrough I can be open to trying new things for myself, I’m not seeing myself as someone who can go sell his book from door to door (but that’s kind of the thing I have to do if I’m to sell this book to an actual publisher). So I told Brandon that I wasn’t feeling towards that.

Remains the question of the Agent.

Once again, having an agent is not mandatory. Some agents are good, some aren’t (since there is no authority overseeing them – anyone can tell he’s an agent). Some authors (like Brandon) have had good experiences with agents and feel they’re invaluable (Brandon uses his agent like an editor even). Other authors (like Dean Wesley Smith) have different needs and probably had bad experiences. In this instance, I will have to form an idea myself.

Next steps.

Next week, I’m off to Eurocon. I hope to have a few panels on e-publishing there to help me shed some light on this most dim publishing landscape. I’m not expecting a big idea, but one can hope.

Right now, the plan is as follows:

• finish editing that damn first novel and build a synopsis
• query english publishers (maybe also US publishers)
• query english top agents in parallel (I have a list of a dozen specialists and two dozen generalists)
• if someone asks for the manuscript, great!
• if only form rejections, I’ll give a shot at self-publishing with a light professional editing (about $ 1500 to $ 2000 flat fee)

The only question is how much time to wait before self-publishing? 6 months? 1 year? I have no idea.