Independent vs Traditional Publishing: Services

(Part of the indie vs trad series.)

There are a lot of logistics and collateral to be sorted out before a book can be published. This is what I’m referring to as ‘services’: the items required for a book to get published. These usually require a time and money investment.

Here’s the breakdown of who is responsible for what:

Publishing Method	Author Responsible	Publisher Responsible
Traditional	Editing reworks	Editing
	Proof approval	Cover design
		Artwork
		Marketing collateral (usually)
		Formatting/print-setting
		Publishing/conversion to ebook formats
Independent	Editing	Publishing/conversion to ebook formats
	Editing reworks
	Proof approval
	Cover design
	Artwork
	Marketing collateral
	Formatting/print-setting

(This is a generalisation; some contracts might have exceptions in the above.)

As you can see, for traditional publishing, an author should not be laying out any money in order for the book to be published. All you should be responsible for is writing a damned good book and helping the publisher hone it into the best book it can be. Some authors supplement their marketing collateral by having additional items made – like business cards or bookmarks – but this isn’t required.

When publishing independently, almost everything rests with you. You’re responsible for getting it done (and done well!), or not. You can find services you can pay to do these things for you or you can do it yourself for free; how much you spend is entirely your choice, though there are factors you should consider before making that decision. (For example, professional-level editing and cover design can have a big impact on sales.)

The effort and cost impacts are pretty obvious from the table above. The column on the right is entirely covered by the commission that the publisher takes from your sales revenue; your books are expected to pay for it in the long run.

The trade-offs I mentioned in earlier posts begin to come clear. Here is a list of tangible things that the publisher does for you. In some ways, you get what you pay for. (And you always pay in some way; nothing is for free.)

The real questions: can you shoulder the burden of all of those things? Would you prefer to have professionals handle it for you?

Next up: Royalties & Pricing

Independent vs Traditional Publishing: Marketing

(Part of the indie vs trad series.)

When you publish a book, you have to tell people about it. Otherwise, how do they know it exists? That’s what marketing is for: getting the word out so people come and buy your stuff.

This one is slippery to consider in the indie vs traditional publishing debate, because there are so many possible mitigating factors. To make it simpler to assess, let’s assume that you haven’t had a bestseller yet (that tends to change all the rules). Let’s assume that you’re starting out, or you’ve got a few books out but none of them have ‘taken off’ in a big way yet. That way, we’re looking at a level playing field (and let’s face it, if you’ve got a bestseller and ‘made it’, you’ve probably already gone through this process and have an approach that works for you).

With self-publishing, it’s all up to you. You can hire someone to help you out, but that’s all on you as the author. There’s no-one that’s going to do that for you, and in many ways, you get out what you put in.

It is easy to assume that a traditional publisher will solve the marketing problem for you. Because these companies have resources and experience – and are, after all, in the business of selling books – it’s a safe assumption that they’ll do everything they can to sell your book. Right?

Every published author I’ve talked to says different. Yes, the publisher will spend some money to promote you, and of course they’ll want your book to be a success. They’ll design the cover, posters, adverts, and maybe a book trailer for you. They might even place some adverts in publications about your book.

But their willingness to go beyond that is variable and often non-existent. The likelihood of a publishing house to pay for you to go to book signings or conventions is dictated very much by the bottom line; most authors, particularly mid-list and those starting out, foot their own bills. It’s up to the author to travel around to the bookstores and do signings, to book themselves into conventions and conferences, and to sell their books to anyone who comes within shouting distance. Often, authors wind up creating their own promotional merchandise as well (pens, bookmarks, etc), which means paying for it to be made so they have stock on hand to give away.

Then there are the more ethereal aspects of book marketing. Building your author brand; connecting with your audience; getting involved in communities: all of these things take time and effort, and it doesn’t matter which way you get published. A traditional publisher isn’t going to do that for you. It’s a lot of time and, sometimes, money. From talking to traditionally- and self-published authors, the effort required seems to be about the same.

(If you want an idea about the kinds of things I’m talking about here, check out Mark Coker’s free ebook on this subject: Smashwords Book Marketing Guide.)

Whichever publishing route you go down, it’s a lot of work. It’s pounding pavement and pressing flesh. It’s creating an author brand and platform. It’s getting your presence ‘out there’. And it’s all down to you.

Going independent means paying all of your bills. It means designing your own marketing materials and campaign, and managing it from start to finish (or hiring someone to do it for you). You answer only to yourself, and there’s no-one to blame but yourself. With traditional publishing, you’ll get some cool posters and marketing materials to play with, the base collateral which should be targeted to your specific audience, but not a great deal beyond that.

It’s worth keeping the relative importance of marketing in mind, too. All of the advice I’ve seen on this subject says that the number one factor in sales is writing a good book. Second is word of mouth (which is dependent on the first). You can’t buy either of those things.

The real questions: do you have the marketing knowledge and experience to manage it yourself? How much money can you afford (or are willing to) put in? What is the best way to reach your audience? Do you know? What kind of weight are you willing to place on marketing?

I’m terrible at self-marketing and I freely admit that. It’s something I try to work on every day. It is definitely a lot of work, but here’s hoping that it’s worth it!

Next up: Services

Independent vs Traditional Publishing: Distribution

(Part of the indie vs trad series.)

The purpose of publishing your work is to reach an audience and have the best sales you can. That means you’ve got to get your published book out to as many people as possible, so it needs to get to as many stores as possible. For this, you need access to a distribution network.

This is the area where traditional publishing have traditionally held the high ground. The biggest advantage they have is their distribution network and marketplace presence. They will send your book to all corners of the region (whatever geographical region you have signed with them to be published in), and it will appear on bookshelves in front of bookstore browsers everywhere. Traditional publishers are in the business of selling books and getting them out to the customer is exactly something they’re set up to do.

For a self-publishing author, it is difficult to match this when it comes to paper books. It requires a lot of money, contacts, deals, and effort.

However, if you’ve been reading any of the publishing-related blogs or news out there, you’ll know that ebooks are on the rise in a big way. Predictions state that they’ll outstrip paper books in the next year or so, in sales volume if not in monetary worth (due to the disparity between paper and ebook prices).

So what about distribution of ebooks? How easy is that to achieve?

In the ebook realm, traditional publishers’ reach doesn’t outstrip the indie authors’ options. More and more retailers are adding self-publishing options to their services, allowing independent authors to publish directly to their store: over the last year, Barnes & Noble and Apple added their names to the list of venues for this, and Amazon’s KDP service has been going for some time now.

Even better, indie authors can use ebook distributors to reach even more stores. Smashwords is the biggest of these, and distributes books to retailers and libraries beyond what an author can reach alone. Check out Mark Coker’s The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success for more information on the advantages of self-published authors using a distributor.

Having publishing ebooks myself, I can attest that it’s very simple for authors to do themselves.

The real questions: what format do you want to be published in? How important is the format to you? Do you want to see your book on a real bookshelf or a virtual one? Where do you think your audience lives most?

As far as reaching readers and getting your book ‘out there’ goes, traditional publishers win hands-down for paper books, but the war is still raging in the electronic space. I’d say that the stakes are probably even there right now for sheer distribution power.

Next up: Marketing

Independent vs Traditional Publishing: Creative Control

(Part of the indie vs trad series.)

Control over your work is a big issue for many creators, including me. I’m not shy about being a bit of a control-freak and relinquishing grip on your creative baby is hard for most writers. When it comes to publishing, the control that you retain as an author varies depending on which way you go with it.

Creative control includes having the final say in many aspects of your project. Let’s break it down a bit.

Copyrights

The rights relating to your work include:

• Translation
• Audio
• Movie
• Merchandise
• Various publishing rights (electronic, paper, geographic regions, etc).

When publishing independently, you retain control over all of these rights. You give retailers permission to sell your work but ultimate control usually remains with you.

There are exceptions. For example, some retailers can sign you into an exclusivity deal, such as Amazon’s KDP Select program. However, that’s completely up to you to sign or not (you do not have to be part of the Select program to sell on Amazon, and there are other retailers you can go with).

With traditional publishing, it’s normal to sign away most if not all of these rights. Some publishing contracts will be specific to paper and electronic publishing copyrights and leave the audio, movie and translation rights to you. Other contracts will option all of it, so the publishing house can sell certain rights on later if it chooses. They can also hold those rights and do nothing with them if they wish, which effectively wastes them for you and blocks you from seeking other avenues of selling or distributing your work. This is not unusual.

These contracts are usually time-limited and the rights return to you after a specified time period (usually a matter of years). Often this is dependent on the book going out of print; the rights won’t revert to you if your book is being actively published and sold.

The real questions: how important is keeping hold of copyrights to me? Who will make best use of them?

Presentation

This is referring to how your work is presented to the world. Genre, blurb, pitch, links to other works: all of these things can affect how your work is viewed and interpreted. Are there quotes from known authors on the cover? Is it being bundled into an omnibus with an author you despise? Is it being likened to a book you love or loathe?

This is straying into the ‘marketing’ discussion, so I won’t go into a lot of detail here. When it comes to making decisions about how your work is presented, the message is the same as above: indie authors retain control over this and can do as they wish, but in a traditional publishing deal, you sign all of this away. If they wish, they can represent your work as ‘dying of a broken heart’ when you were going for ‘die hard’.

However, publishing houses are in the business of selling books. They should be choosing the presentation that is most likely to grab the most sales for you. They should have the resources and skills to make the right decisions for your sales, even if you don’t agree with them. Relinquishing your death-grip isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The real questions: how important are sales to me? Can I make the right choices for my work? Do I know what they are? Can I trust the skills of a publishing house to make the right choices for me?

Artwork

You’ve written a story but when it comes to publication, you need to put that text into a visual context. You’re going to need a book cover, marketing materials, and merchandise. But who gets to decide what those images look like? Who determines the colour scheme, the fonts, the overall ‘feel’ of the visual impact of your book?

For indie authors, it’s all about you. (Starting to see a theme here?) It’s completely in your hands.

Traditionally-published authors seldom get the chance to offer input into the decision-making process. They seldom get to have a say in the cover art or any of the imagery produced for their work. Publishers may ask for the author’s opinion but they are not bound to listen or act on it. I’ve heard many authors complain about their cover art (mostly for getting something terribly wrong) and their lack of control pains them.

Other authors go out and get their cover before approaching a publisher, and secure the cover as part of the package. However, even this isn’t a guaranteed tactic; it wouldn’t be unusual for a publisher to retain the right to change the cover if they wish.

However, it’s not as simple as that. As with representation, it’s worth remembering that publishers want to sell your book and they should be pushing for the cover that will best do that.

There’s also the geographical issue. Should you be lucky enough to be published in multiple countries, your book will usually be given a different cover for each culture, because the imagery will impact those markets differently. Again, a publisher’s experience and resources will handle this for you. (This really only applies to paper books; as far as I know, it’s common for ebooks to have the same cover worldwide.)

The real questions: can you confidently choose the best images or artwork for your work? Will it meet market expectations and sell the work for you? Can you get a professional job done?

Story

Here we get to some of the more touchy subjects. Who gets to decide the plot of your story? Or the characters? Is it one book or three? Is it an ongoing series? Can you write and release that second trilogy as well? Can you write just standalone books?

Independent authors are exactly that: truly independent in this realm. (Yup, it’s definitely a pattern.)

Traditional publishing also sticks its oar into this area. Your publisher’s editor could ask you to change plot points, structure, character, wording, metaphors… anything. They may ask you to stretch it out into a series or compact it into a trilogy. They may refuse to publish subsequent books if the first one doesn’t sell well enough.

What happens if you say no? I’m honestly not sure. The way I understand it, you have to reach an agreement with your editor before they’ll pass it through to the printing presses, so you’ll have to compromise to make that agreement.

On the other hand, this editor should know what they’re doing. They should know what sells, what works. Even if you’re publishing independently, all the best advice out there says that you should get your work professionally edited before publishing (the only difference is in how you pay for it, but there’ll be more on the money side in a later post).

The real questions: how much do you trust your editor? How many compromises are you willing to make? If you have a series in mind, can you deal with being cut off and not finishing it? Do you want to retain the right to not apply edits?

Conclusions

This is a tough call to make. This is why I pose the questions above, because it really matters what’s important to you. Throughout this series, I’ll be saying this over and over again. I’m not aiming to tell you if you should go one way or the other; I’m just aiming to arm you with what you need to start making choices.

So which is it? Is control important to you? Do you think that you can do your story justice in the publishing world, or would a publishing house’s resources and skills make your success story?

Like all things with this debate, it’s a trade-off. To get published, we make choices, sacrifices, and compromises. But don’t make up your mind yet! There are more factors involved than have been described in this post; stick with me and I’ll take you through them.

Next up: Distribution

Traditional publishing: why bother?

I have been pondering this question for many months. As I grow closer to the end of Starwalker, what I do with it next nags at me more and more. Recent posts might give the impression that I have already made a choice (and I suspect that, in my heart, I have already decided to go indie again), but it’s still worth laying out the arguments: independent vs traditional publishing.

Starwalker is more marketable and, I believe, easier to sell to a publisher than The Apocalypse Blog would have been. Vampire Electric is similar; steampunk and paranormal romance are hot genres at the moment. I think I’d have a good chance at getting a traditional deal with either story (as much as you can ever know these things).

However, indie publishing isn’t the last resort of those who can’t get traditional deals any more. It’s on the rise, blazing right up next to the big publishing houses. The publishing world is changing.

But it’s also easy to get swept up in the hype and that’s not always a good choice. I won’t run with the crowd just because that’s the way the mob is going. I’d rather make my own choices.

The truth is there’s no simple way to go any more. What’s best for me, for my career, for my books and sales and readers? These are the real questions I’m asking and I’m struggling to find a definitive answer.

I started this post thinking it would be a simple job to lay it all out. But the more I got into it, the longer the post became until I had created a monstrosity. So I’m going to take a different approach. I’m making this a series of posts. I’ll be looking at the pros and cons of each approach, across as many areas as I can think of.

I’ll be discussing things like:

• Creative control
• Distribution
• Marketing
• Services and costs
• Royalty
• Kudos
• Time to market
• Shelf life
• Pricing

There might be more added to the list, depending on what crops up while I’m considering all of that. In the meantime, I aim to look at the publishing world with an open mind. I hope you’ll join me!

Wayward sales

The last few weeks have been a worrying time for me when it comes to ebook sales.

I sell through a number of retailers. Through Smashwords distribution, my Apocalypse Blog ebooks are available at all the major stores: Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Sony, and more. These dribble a few sales in every month but not a huge amount. They’re fairly steady and have seen a slight increase lately (though nothing to get overly excited about). I haven’t crunched the numbers properly yet, so the exact patterns here are hard to see.

The other retailer that I sell through is Amazon. This is far and away my biggest earner (the sales volumes are several times all of the above retailers combined), and so variations here are both more obvious and have a larger impact. And, to put it bluntly, my sales lately on Amazon have sucked.

I don’t know why. From my end, nothing has changed. Both sales and rankings have plummeted, so it doesn’t look like a general slump in book sales; it’s my books specifically that are not doing well. The books continue to get positive reviews and rankings.

It could be a simple blip in spending habits. After all, I don’t have a lot of data about this time of year to compare it with, so this could be perfectly normal. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned.

It could be due to some of the changes that Amazon have been making. In his (free!) ebook, The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success, Mark Coker has some interesting insights into Amazon’s attitude in the marketplace and their worrying lean towards forcing authors to be exclusive (through the KDP Select program). He also has some interesting predictions about the future of indie, digital, and traditional publishing over on the Smashwords blog. The marketplace is changing. Could this be a part of it?

I’m waiting for the December sales reports to come through before I do a look at 2012 as a whole, and I’m planning to do an analysis towards the end of this month (here on this blog). Hopefully that will give a clearer picture of what’s happening.

In the meantime, I shall cross my fingers and hope the sales pick up. I’m also pondering options for how I can rejuvenate my poor, struggling books. Watch this space: there’s more to come on this!

2013: plans and dreams

I’ve done the retrospective for 2012; now it’s time to look to the future. Now is the time for possibilities and ambition.

I usually like to aim high at a time like this. I know I probably won’t do everything I put on this list, but if it’s not here I’ll never do it. I’ll most likely get to most of it and that’s all good.

Let’s get the boring, necessary stuff out of the way first.

Work

This is settling down for me at the moment. I’m hoping to stay with my current team for a stretch and make a bit of a home for myself, and the management have assured me that this is likely (as far as their current plans say, but, well, you never know with these things). Some stability would be nice.

The stress is a lot less than it was and I’ll be aiming to keep it that way.

Financial Issues

Now that our house move is complete and we’ve reduced some of our overheads, I’m hoping that this will plateau as well. We’ve got a bit of work to do on this front but, with luck, our situation should be sustainable for the next few months at least.

I’m working to worry less about this stuff.

Health

The CFS isn’t going away anytime soon, and as long as it doesn’t get any worse, it’s manageable. I’m used to dealing with it (I was diagnosed over 7 years ago), so not a big worry there.

I’ve got some testing coming up in a couple of months to investigate some other issues I’m having. I’m nervous about the tests (mostly because they’ll put me out and anaesthetic doesn’t get along well with me), but I’m glad at the possibility for answers and, hopefully, treatment. I won’t say ‘cure’ because I don’t believe in unicorns and there’s no way I’m that lucky. Progress is good, though, and it’s moving in the right direction.

Writing

Ah-ha, here’s the important part! Here’s the section of my life where I get to have fun, where I aim for the stars and am quite happy with landing on the moon. So, what’s on my list for 2013?

Starwalker: Web Serialising

First up, I will finish Starwalker. I keep saying that there’s still a lot to come, and while I don’t want to put a date on its conclusion, it will definitely finish this year, probably in the first quarter.

When I say ‘finish’, I mean that I’ll get to the end of Book 3, which is the end of the original story arc I planned when I set out on this journey. Will that mean the end of the web serial completely?

Honestly, I’m not sure. I don’t believe in stringing stories out for the sake of it (which is why I haven’t gone back to the Apocalypse Blog in so long: I haven’t felt like I’ve got more story to tell there). However, I’m pretty sure my readers will have something to say if I kill it completely and I’ve come to love my readers a lot.

I do have a follow-up story in mind. There has been a notecard with the name of the story-arc on it pinned to my planning pinboard for a couple of years now. I don’t think it’ll be a full novel-length story – it’s a novella at best at this stage – but maybe it’ll make a good interim story for me to tell while I ponder the future of the Starwalker and her crew.

Starwalker: Ebooks

This is something I’ve had my eye on for a while now. I’d really love to package the Starwalker saga up into ebooks and release it.

However, that’s not a quick process. Firstly, they have to be edited. I already know of some rewriting I want to do (nothing major, but it’s work that needs to be done), and I’m sure there will be more honing and polishing that I’ll do as I go through. This all takes time, and how much I continue the web serial will impact on how quickly this happens.

Next up, I need covers. That will probably cost money, which I’ll talk about later. I have some base graphics already but I want something really slick and professional for the book covers. Which means no home jobs by me (I freely admit that I suck at graphics).

The formatting and releasing parts are easy once all the above is done. I’d like to get at least one book out this year.

Starwalker: Shorts

I made a start on this in 2012 and I mean to continue it. I have stories planned for almost all of the crew (the shorts are character-focussed stories) and I’d like to get through all of them eventually.

It’s hard to have a fixed goal with this, because so much depends on other commitments. Shall we say one a month? That’s probably a bit ambitious; one every two months is more realistic.

My end goal with this is to compile them into an ebook – a Starwalker ‘get to know the crew’ anthology – and release it. Possibly for free. (Having a freebie available really helps draw people into paying for the series: this is what the Apocalypse Blog ebooks have taught me!)

Alternatively, I could release them individually, but that depends on being able to get the covers for them. On the plus side, I would be able to release them sooner if I didn’t have to wait for the anthology to be complete. Also, individual character covers would be awesome.

Vampire Electric

My goal for this year is somewhat simpler here: finish the first draft. I already have a pile of notes for the second draft, including a bit of a restructure, but I really need to get the first run-through finished. I’d love to find out how this story will end! (Yes, yes, I have something in mind, but as always with me, it’s a general, blurry picture that I won’t truly figure out until I get there.)

Tales from the Screw Loose

This is, potentially, the next web serial on my list to pick up. It’s set in the Starwalker universe and is the first spin-off that I have in mind to tackle (I have a whole list of spin-off ideas for the Starwalker universe!). You may have heard me refer to it as the ‘robot brothel story’: Tales from the Screw Loose is its proper name.

I’m not sure if I’ll get to this over the next year. A lot depends on whether or not I keep Starwalker going (as a web serial), because I have a strict rule of one web serial active at a time. I know my own limits well enough to know that both stories would suffer if I tried to keep two going in tandem.

Regardless, I still have some work to do before I can get started on this story. I have made a start on the worldbuilding (it’s set on one of the colony planets) but I need to work out the cast and some of the plot elements before I start putting fingers to keyboard.

I also need to sort out the website and I’m pondering some custom graphics/design for it. This may cost money, so is dependent on a number of factors. On the plus side, I’ve already got the domain: screwloosetales.com (yes, it’s a bit early, but I’m determined like that and I didn’t want to lose the domain while I sorted the rest of it out).

For this year, I think I’d like to have the prep all done and the story ready to go. Actual words on the page will be a bonus!

Apocalypse Blog

The ebooks are going pretty well. I’d like to capitalise on some of the good reviews and see about marketing it, but I’m pretty bad at self-promotion, so I won’t make any firm plans about this.

I would like to do paper book editions of it, however. Most likely through Amazon’s CreateSpace, which will link nicely up to the ebooks on Amazon (and it seems like a better and cheaper system than Lulu).

I’ve had a look at the work required to do this and it’s not as easy as the ebooks were. It’ll take some time to get the formatting done for printing, and I’ll also need to get the covers redone.

I’d also like to get the books re-edited, and will most likely refresh the ebook editions when I do that.

I’ve been tossing around the idea of doing an omnibus edition, at least of the ebooks, so I’ll look into this, too.

There have been many calls for another (fourth) book in the series, and a part of me really wants to satisfy this desire. However, I’m not sure what that fourth book would entail. I’m letting it rest in the back of my brain for now; if inspiration strikes, I’ll be sure to let you all know. Never say never!

NaNoWriMo

Ah, my annual nuttiness. I don’t have a huge amount planned yet, but we’re all pretty sure that there will be another Writer’s Retreat. This time, up a mountain! I’ll be heading on a roadtrip soon with my lovely co-MLs (I might have two this time!) to check out the options. I’m sure that it won’t be long before that ball is off and rolling.

The rest of the NaNo stuff will be worked out over the months leading up to November. No other firm plans yet, but there will no doubt be plenty of write-ins at our favourite Coffee Club, drinkies, and possibly a write-out or two.

Crowdfunding

This is an option that I’ve been looking at lately. I know other writers have had success with platforms like Kickstarter and have raised money to allow them to develop a new story, pay for covers and printing costs, and that sort of thing.

As mentioned above, some of what I want to do requires paying for services. I’ve had donations through the links on my websites and I am endlessly grateful to the donors for their generosity: they helped to pay for the Starwalker graphics I had done in 2012. But what I have in mind is going to take rather more.

Due to being based outside the US and UK, I can’t run a Kickstarter campaign. However, there are other options available: most notably, Pozible and iPledg look promising, but I haven’t gone through all the crowdfunding platforms available to me yet.

A campaign seems like a lot of work but I think I want to give it a go. I am terrible at asking for money (see previous comments about self-promotion), but I have always been astounded by the generosity and support of the online community. I approve of the notion of the rewards you can offer to supporters, too. And at the end of the day, what’s the worst that could happen?

It’s good to know that I have this option when I’m looking at commissioning covers for Starwalker, or a website for Screw Loose. All those things that require money for me to achieve could actually be possible!

Now all I need to figure out is what to ask for and what I can realistically offer as rewards. And then the time to do it all.

Other Stuff?

Wow, I’m not sure. What else might 2013 hold for me? No doubt I’m forgetting about something. These are the things that are buzzing around in my head right now. This is what I’m taking with me into 2013.

Now excuse me, I think I’m going to go away and write something.

The year that was… 2012

The beginning of a new year is not so different from any other day. It’s an arbitrary demarcation of a calendar that we give meaning to, rather like a lot of people did to the Mayan calendar (particularly, its end). It think it’s good to remind ourselves that calendars only hold the meaning we give them.

The turning of the year is a way to mark time and, hopefully, progress. It’s a chance to step back and take a look at where we were and where we are now. It’s a chance to try to gain some perspective. It’s when we look forward and think about where we want to be. It’s when we take the time to make plans, rather than the usual day-to-day we live.

So let’s start with the road travelled so far. 2012: a year of struggle for me.

Work

Necessary toil: my day job as a technical writer pays the bills and lets me do my creative writing. Plus, I get to put my writing skills to good, professional use.

Over the past year, I coordinated the delivery of:

• A major release, 2 and a half years in the making. I coordinated the entire documentation side of the project from start to end. Getting it released was a huge effort and I was glad to see if over and done with!
• 2 minor releases, both roughly 4-month projects. There might have been another one in there. I lost track; they kept turning up on my plate without any warning.

With all that to juggle, there were a lot of changes. Over the year, I changed:

• Positions twice. Once from team leader to team writer, and then back to team leader again (it’s a different role now and I’m managing developers and testers as well as writers, which is all new to me).
• Teams thrice. Lots of reasons for this, most of them positive about me.
• Desks more times than I can remember, but at least three times!

Other challenges included continuing to strive to overcome problem team members (despite no longer actually being in the same team as them) and adapting the documentation processes after a restructure as our department moved into Agile practices.

It has been stressful to say the least, and a lot of mental effort to stay on top of it all. But I did. I pulled off everything they handed to me. I made it to the end of the year without snapping and breaking down or getting myself fired. I’m still here, working away and keeping my head above water.

Financial Issues

At home, things have been tough, too. Like so many others here and around the world, our financial situation is not good. We’ve been fighting to make ends meet, and wound up moving house to reduce our costs. (It’s a good move and a lovely house, so I’m not disappointed by that, but wow it was a lot of work.)

A lot has been resting on me at home. I’m the primary breadwinner, which means those times when I’ve wanted to walk away from my job, even downgrade to something less stressful, I can’t afford to. So I’ve pushed through and done what I can to support my family while they get their own stuff sorted out.

It’s all coming along, as slowly as it always has. We’re in a more sustainable position now, which is good, and that should lift some of the pressure.

Health

Between the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and other issues that are exacerbated by stress, I haven’t had the best of years. I’m running ragged most of the time. I’ve been sick more than usual.

I’d like to think that it hasn’t impacted my writing but I know it has. I’ve missed posting deadlines; more than once, I’ve put posts off for a week because I can’t make it. I despise that. I hate knowing that I’ve failed to keep my promises; my readers are wonderfully forgiving, but I’m not. I know that if I don’t push myself, it won’t get done at all. I don’t like letting myself or my readers down.

I don’t know if the quality of my writing has been impacted. I don’t have any real perspective right now, but I suspect that it has.

It’s just another one of those things that I’m pushing through. I’m carrying on despite it, because I refuse to let things like this stop me from doing what really matters to me. Which is:

Writing

Here’s the part that we’re all interested in: that wonderful activity that I fill up all my off-time with, the thing that gives me a break from everything else when I need it and keeps me going. The things that spurs my hopes and dreams, and spills my soul out onto pages.

Even with everything that has been going on (and still is!), even with all that clutter in my head, I have stories to tell. I have characters who want to speak. I have things to say. It has been harder than usual – writing with energy when you don’t have any is far from easy – but I’ve done my best to keep up.

Starwalker

My web serial is still going strong. I’m averaging a book a year and this year doesn’t seem to be any different (though this third book is looking like it’s going to stretch well into next year!).

I’m still loving it. Starry and her crew are so much fun to play with, even when I’m torturing them. I have a wonderful, supportive readership; checking the comments on the posts is a highlight of my week.

The visit rate has been holding fairly steady through the year, slowly creeping upwards. Currently, I’m getting over 3,000 unique visitors a month, and anywhere between 250 and 400 visitors every day. It’s easily beating the Apocalypse Blog‘s stats, which hit 200 visits on a good day if I was lucky (I think it averaged around 180 v/d).

Starwalker has made it to the top 10 of Top Web Fiction‘s lists, and has been hovering around the number 1 spot for science fiction for some months now. This makes me insanely happy and proud.

The actual writing part has been rocky. As mentioned above, I’ve had to delay posts a few times this year. Keeping it going has been a struggle at times; one that I hope hasn’t been visible to the reader, at least not in the writing itself.

I feel like Starwalker’s plot has slid sideways and meandered more than I’d like, but it’s still heading in the right direction. I still know where it’s going to end up and how it’s all going to end. I’m excited to get there, though it’ll be a little while yet. So many miles to go!

Overall, I’m really happy with where I am. The serial is over 300,000 words now and still going. All my plans are still working and I’m laying the foundations for what’s to come. It still makes me smile when I sit down to write it.

Shorts

This is usually something I keep promising that I’ll do and then never get to. But this year, not so! I made a start on some Starwalker shorts, and three of them are complete.

Not as many as I had hoped for, but it’s a start. They prompted positive reactions and I can’t ask for more than that. I have lots of plans in this area, but that’s for another post.

Vampire Electric

Ah, the elusive steampunk novel. I started off this year writing it in tandem with Starwalker, but had to take a break around March to get my breath back. It took until November for me to pick it up again. I made good progress with it, though there’s another big chunk that needs to be written before the first draft is done.

I’m really pleased that I’ve been able to keep working on it, even if my attention in this area has been sporadic. Often, it takes me a while to get back into a project – it’s one of the reasons I try not to take ‘breaks’ – but not so with this one. It still speaks to me loudly enough that I can take a few months off and still go back to writing it without any problems.

It’s not finished yet but it’s getting closer.

NaNoWriMo

The annual novel-writing craziness was a wild ride this year. I’ve written four blog posts about it, so I won’t go into details here. In brief: it was hard, I learned things, my people are awesome, and I’m completely nuts (but the Retreat was amazing).

Apocalypse Blog

This one is last because I haven’t done any actual writing in this area this year. However, there has been activity!

Early this year, books 2 and 3 of AB were released. Around the same time, Amazon realised that Book 0 was free elsewhere and price-matched it, which led to a huge up-kick in sales.

I am now getting monthly cheques from Amazon. They’re not huge, they’re not enough to pay the bills with, but they do mean that I’m a published, paid author. I still grin like a kid when I think about that. I feel like I’ve Made It, at least in the indie sphere.

The books are doing well! After some experimentation with pricing, I’m selling roughly 150 books per month. Book 0 (the free one) usually hovers in the middle of Amazon’s top 100 (in science fiction).

I’m also getting some pretty awesome reviews. People keep asking when the next (4th) book is coming out. There’s no more, not yet!

Readers like my work enough to want more. Couldn’t ask for more than that, really.

Writing Community

I wrote about this in reference to NaNo, but it’s worth saying how awesome the people around me have been this year. The group has been building for several years now, and over the past year or so, it has taken on a momentum of its own. I feel that the writers in this city have really gelled and become a wonderful, supportive community that I’m a big part of.

In fact, I’m often leading it, which is intimidating when I stop to think about it. As a NaNoWriMo ML, I naturally do a lot of the coordination, but it extends well outside November. Its monthly write-ins and weekly drinks run all year now, along with my regular writing group.

My Creative Writing Group is still going strong. It has been running for over four years now and I still have a good turnout every month. There are new faces joining and long-standing ones drifting away, but that’s the way of things. We have yet to run out of things to talk about and explore, and if I know my group (which I do pretty well now!), we won’t stop any time soon.

I’ve made many good friends through the various groups and events that I’m a part of. They’ve become dear parts of my life and I’m grateful for all of them. As years go, this one has been a winner in this respect.

Not to mention that I have an actual social life now. Who knew that would happen to me? Who could have predicted that it would come out of what is, essentially, a solitary activity?

Life is strange. And there’s so much more to come.

That has pretty much been my year. Productive, hard work, and progressive. I’m in a better place now than I was at the beginning of the year. I’m getting there, one slow step at a time.

I’m glad 2012 is almost over; I’m done with it. I’m looking forward to closing the book on this year and starting a new one. Next year will be better and brighter.

Review happy

Or, how to make a writer smile

I check for reviews periodically on the online stores where my ebooks are sold (primarily on Amazon because it has the highest turnover and tends to generate more reviews). It’s always good to know what people are saying about my work and how it is trending against other books.

I went in and checked on my ebooks recently and was pleasantly surprised to see a number of new reviews had been added in the past few weeks. With the usual trepidation (it’s always scary when you’re going in blind), I clicked through to see what they said.

I was honestly floored by the responses.

“This series is the real deal and Melanie Edmonds needs to learn how to write quicker than I can read. She’s one of the best indie author’s I’ve found in the 2 years since my son gave me a Kindle for my birthday.”

“Best Character Development I’ve Seen in Some Time.”

“Good read and recommend the entire series.”

The praise was wonderful! And some of the reviews were detailed, which as a writer, I always appreciate (have a look on the linked review pages on Amazon for the full text!).

I don’t expect positive comments in reviews. I don’t expect five-star ratings. I hope for them but I don’t expect them; it’s safer that way. Negative reviews and ratings are hard enough to take as it is!

I value honest feedback. It’s one reason why I’m so opinionated about critiquing fiction, and I strive to remove my ego from the equation. It’s difficult and negative reviews always hit me where I live, but I don’t discourage them.

When I was editing the Apocalypse Blog for the ebook editions, I had a list of negative things from reviews that I tried to address. Some sections were rewritten and many were expanded. I tried to improve and learn. For that opportunity, I thank those reviewers.

But nothing beats positive feedback. Nothing beats knowing that someone has read your story and honestly been touched. Yes, I love making people cry, because it’s a sign of my craft that I’ve managed to move someone that deeply. I love making people stay up half the night or spend time at work reading.

“I even put off watching the Olympics at times because this series was so good, I couldn’t stop at times, often reading throughout the night.”

“Wonderful characters and story…loved every page….made me cry at several points.”

“I usually read while working out on my treadmill, I was so into these books I didn’t even notice my time on the machine as it shuts off @ 100 minutes: as it did every time while reading these!!!!”

“Once I started, I couldn’t put the series down. I literally read the entire batch over the course of a 3-day weekend.”

“Love this story, can’t put it down! I find myself very attached to the characters and am really enjoying the story.”

I love the complaints when they reach the end because there’s no more for them to devour.

“I read all four books in a week and I’m so hoping the author will consider continuing on with Faith’s story. I did see a review from someone re: Book 3 asking for more as well. Maybe with enough fans of this writer and ‘Faith’s Story,’ we’ll get our wish!”

“This is the third [book]. I’m bummed. I’ve grown to like Faith more and more. Lots of excitement . Violence and intensity too. You won’t be sorry you gave this series a try. My question is: WHEN DO WE GET INSTALLMENT 4?”

“Great book, have read all the books to this series, hoping the next one will be out soon! great apocalypse book!”

They’re all signs that I’m doing things right. People are connecting with my characters and stories, and they’re reacting to them in good ways.

I’ve even had vindication in some of the things I set out to do. In the Apocalypse Blog, I wanted to show a different side to a post-apocalyptic situation than I’d seen before. I wanted Faith to be a different voice, and I didn’t want the zombies to be the centre of the story; it wasn’t about them at all. And that has been picked up in the reviews.

“When I started with the first book I wasn’t sure what scenario the characters would be faced with in addition to the zombies. Even though they took a while to show up they did not disappoint once they arrived. By then I was so attached to the characters it just added to the adventure. They were not the center of attention but the main problem the characters faced was easily just as interesting.”

“While I’m not a “zombie” fan AT ALL, I was able to get through their appearances in this series. I was also able to shake off the nightmares…yes, that how good the writing is.”

“I do like a good “after the collapse of society”, “dead things back to life” story, and while this one was reminiscent of every other apocalypse/zombie thing I’ve ever seen/read (The Walking Dead, Survivors, Falling Skies, The Road) it still had me captivated. Just enough newness to keep my interest.”

“The book has great characters and is very different than the usual apocalyptic novels currently available.”

“I’m glad to see female authors emerging in this genre. It gets old, reading about the ex-military, gung-ho zombie killer that’s taught all of his sons to shoot but not his daughter and hides the women in a closet.”

Better than that: I’ve been recommended to others on those grounds. It’s different and fresh and new. In this world of fiction, it’s hard to do something truly unique, but I feel like I might have succeeded in at least some small way.

It’s reviews like that that keep me writing and publishing. I write because I have stories in me; I publish because I want to share them, and I want to know that I have something worth sharing.

I should note that reviews are likely to affect sales, and of course, positive comments and ratings will sell me more books. But I won’t beg or buy them. I want my work to stand on its own and speak for me, and so far, it has (I’ve done little marketing, mostly because I don’t have the time). That’s enough for me. If the books do well, it’s because they deserve it and I’m happy with that.

Do I wish that all of my reviews were so effusive? What I’ve quoted above isn’t the whole story; I have only included snippets of them here, and I encourage you to check out the full review text. Many of them came with caveats and notes about stuff that could have been done better. And I’m working to take those on board and take them forward with me in my new writings, so no, I don’t hope for the reviews to be 100% positive. No fiction is perfect (and I’m not deluded enough to think mine is, either!).

I am grateful for all of it and I thank everyone who has commented on my work. But I am especially grateful to those who took the time to tell the world how much they enjoyed my work. You lifted my day.

I hope to give you even better stories to read soon.

From Text to Oral Tradition

No, this isn’t a post about porn. Hush, you. Not that kind of oral.

A few years ago, I went to a talk about the future of publishing. It was at the Brisbane Writer’s Festival, but other than that, I can’t remember much about it except for one thing that stood out for me: one of the panel was convinced that the future of fiction was oral.

This notion really stood out for me because it was so bizarre. I went home thinking, “Really? Is that what experts really believe will happen?”

She (sadly, all I can remember is that the speaker was a she, and possibly blonde) put forward the assertion that the digital age meant that eventually, text would drift into disuse and all we would have left is speech. Audio books, aural directions. There would be no physical words at all, recorded anywhere.

She was very convincing. To her, it all makes perfect sense; I got that feeling very strongly. But I can’t help but question: where the hell did that idea come from? Are we really heading that way?

Our world is full of text. Not just books: signs, buttons, instructions, warning labels. Would that really all go away? Would that be feasible, practical, safe? My instincts tell me ‘no’ (and my brain tells me ‘that’s just stupid’, but that’s what her fervour implied).

I’m sure she didn’t mean that. She was speaking mostly about fiction, about how digital books would all become audio and the ‘written word’ as us writers produce it would no longer exist.

I have to say, I struggle to see how that would come to pass.

Reading and listening are very different activities. Listening is passive and done with only one part of the body, but reading is active and done with our whole selves. All of our senses are involved (though with ebooks, the smell and textures are quite different). It demands all of our attention, in a way that listening to the spoken word doesn’t. A reader can curl up with and around a good book, but how would you do that with an audio book?

For me, the difference in involvement makes listening to an audio book quite a different process. There’s nothing for my eyes to do, so they’d get bored and look for something to examine. A portion of my attention just wandered off my gaze. And my hands would be free, so maybe I’d be knitting (or wait, this is the future – I’d be sculpting the cat’s fur with a laser, or sliding my car through four layers of sky-traffic). All these things would pull more and more of me away from the story.

I have a suspicion that reading and listening involve different parts of the brain as well, but I haven’t gone as far as looking it up. I’m sure someone somewhere has done a study!

Then there are all the things that would be lost in an audio book. You get the actor’s interpretation of the story; there is no opportunity to have your own reading and understanding of the material. Different people read things in very different ways, and this is fun to play with as a writer. But when a single voice is reading it out, how can you put in all those double-meanings when a simple inflection can bleach them away? How do you go back and ponder a single line three times, trying it out differently each time? How do you skip the boring bits?

How do you cater for the deaf?

The whole notion of losing text as a storytelling medium scares me. It is such a beautiful art form that I think the world would be a sadder, duller place without it. The impact of a single-word paragraph would be lost in an aural presentation, reduced to lameness and cut.

Gone.

Just having someone say that like it means something isn’t the same.

Text and audio are qualitatively different, in my opinion. You can get lost in text. You can let your imagination run wild over its possibilities, paint wild pictures that make sense only to you, but in an audio book, someone has drawn the outline and coloured parts of it in for you.

Let’s not forget that an oral tradition would be a huge step backwards in human evolution. We might have once happily told stories around a campfire, but the move to literacy wasn’t because we lacked the iPads to speak to us when our voices got tired. We sought something better and still do.

We are developing more and more ways to record our thoughts and stories, but, curiously, we haven’t lost any. We just keep adding more dimensions to our archives: visual representations in text; sounds in audio; movement and visualisation in video. And telling stories is still a big part of who we are.

A part of me wants to rebel against the whole idea of this change to an oral society. I suspect that it’s a gut reaction to losing something that I care so deeply about (and am so heavily involved in!). Just because I think it’s a horrible idea, doesn’t mean the world won’t lean that way.

I mean, I wasn’t a fan of the idea of ebooks either, because I love how paper books feel and smell and age with us. But popular opinion will drive things the way they go, so who’s to say?

But I don’t think that it’s just pure dislike on my part. I can’t logically see how such a change would come about. We live in more text now than we ever have before, largely because of the internet and progress, but this speaker is proposing the opposite. I’d love to know where she got her prediction from (if only so I can feel more authoritative in shooting it down).

I hope that a purely oral society doesn’t come to pass. I fear the future that is nothing but a babble of voices telling us truths and lies. I dread the day when a person can’t escape into a fictional world and have wondrous adventures in perfect privacy. I fear the death of personal imagination.

No, I defy such a prediction. I disbelieve.

Video killed the radio star, but book sales will always go up.

Musing on the likelihood of reading moving to listening in the future.