Sock puppets and cheap tricks

Sock puppetting: the act of creating alternate identities on websites for the purposes of giving yourself good reviews and/or slamming your competition.

The issue of unscrupulous authors gaming review systems to pump their own work has come up a few times recently. Simply put: I’m disgusted.

I value honesty very highly.

As a writer, I value feedback on my work. I read reviews with trepidation but I don’t seek to interfere; the only way that feedback is of any value is if it’s honest and uninfluenced. Where I can, I try to learn from it and address it in the future.

I want to know I’ve earned my own kudos. I don’t want to pump it up artificially, because I’m proud of my work. If it can’t stand on its own and do well under its own merits, I’d like to know, so I can produce something that can.

So I don’t go onto websites and give my own books ratings. Not even websites where I have a login and can do it easily! It’s cheating. It’s cheap. I’m not good at boasting and I think it would only reflect badly on me.

Some writers do it and that’s their choice. They don’t try to hide it. I can deal with that; at least they’re open about it, and I sympathise with the desire to nudge the publicity of a book.

However, some go above and beyond just rating their own work highly. Some create anonymous identities (multiple on the same site!) to post glowing reviews and give themselves 5-star ratings. They fake up a following, a readership, and good reviews and ratings, in order to suck in unsuspecting readers and sell books. They paper their work with lies. Sometimes, they don’t even do it well.

Some writers do it themselves, like RJ Ellory was caught doing recently. Others pay for a review service to do it for them, like John Locke did in his efforts to sell a million books so he could sell a book called How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months.

(An IndieReader post recently said that it’s common practice to ‘pay’ for reviews, and I can see where this writer is coming from. However, I’d like to point out the difference between bribing reviewers with free books/goodies/whatever in the hopes of a review, and outright purchasing a slew of good reviews. One allows that the review might not be 5-star or favourable, depending on the actual quality of the book/preference of the reviewer; the other does not. It’s the latter that really irks me.)

I get that it’s a marketing ploy. I understand how marketing works. I still think these kinds of actions are despicable.

It’s also horribly lazy. Instead of making up good reviews, why don’t they try to write something that would earn them? Use other kinds of marketing to get people to read it, and then see what kinds of reviews come back? Are we really saying that good reviews are more important than good writing?

On top of that, I have to add that using those fake identities to slam the competition is reprehensible and cowardly. (This is also what RJ Ellory is reported to have done.) Seriously, you’re not happy with putting yourself on a pedestal, so you have to tear others down? And you won’t even do it to their face? Wow.

Writers who employ these tactics make us all look bad. I’m so glad that a group of published writers got together to kick Ellory’s ass (in text, of course). And that other writers I know are equally as dismissive of these types of tactics as I am.

Indie authors, in particular, get slammed by accusations of these kinds of tactics. Self-published authors are already looked down upon by others in the industry and this only makes the stigma worse. They’re not doing any of us any favours.

So, to all you cheaters out there: please stop. It’s sad and you’re spoiling it for the rest of us who are trying to make our way honestly in this business.

To the other published writers out there, indie or otherwise, who are doing the right thing: stay strong and ignore those who wish they could write something worthy of real praise. I know I intend to.

Ebook pricing experiment

Something I forgot to mention in my last post is that I’m experimenting with my ebook pricing! After reading the Smashwords blog post about the optimum range for ebook prices, I’ve decided to drop the price of the Apocalypse Blog Book 1 from $4.99 to $2.99 (on Amazon and Smashwords).

I’ll get less revenue per book, but the increase in sales should more than balance that out, if the stats are anything to go by. I’m keeping an eye on the sales (just a little compulsively), and will post again in a month or so to see how it’s going.

So if you haven’t picked it up yet, grab it now while it’s cheap! And cross your fingers that it takes off some more. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Indie vs traditional publishing – ebooks

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve come across a few blog posts about how indie publishing is better for writers than traditional publishing. These naturally piqued my interest, as I’m currently thinking about how I want to publish Starwalker (beyond the web serial). Do I ebook it myself or see if I can chase down the elusive dream of being traditionally published?

The Smashwords blog recently released a set of interesting statistics about ebook pricing and sales. Hop on over to the post if you want to read the detail, but the upshot is: cheaper-priced books earn authors more revenue than higher-priced books, and reach significantly more readers. The optimum price seems to be around $2.99.

Also worth noting: traditional publishers usually price their ebook on the high end of the scale ($6.99 and above), and authors who publish through a traditional publisher earn less royalties per unit than indie authors.

So, indie authors are not only earning more money per unit, they also reach more readers and can earn more than traditionally-published authors!

A surprising and rather interesting turn of events. Traditional publishers are not keeping up with the market and could be said to be doing their authors a disservice with their model and pricing.

I was also at a writing and publishing talk last week (at the lovely Avid Reader bookstore), and the published authors on the panel all agreed that if you self-publish an ebook, selling it to a traditional publisher is hard, because they want the e-rights as well. As noted in a post in October last year, traditional publisher profits are still going up despite paper books sales declining, and this is largely because of the rise of ebooks filling the gap for them. So I can completely understand that they’d want to have the e-rights to your book; it’s helping to prop up their core business!

On top of this, self-published ebooks are rising to the top of bestseller charts. They’re making their way into yardsticks like the New York Times bestseller list, as well as bookstore lists like Barnes & Noble and Apple iBookstore. Even my little Apocalypse Blog Book 0 is in Amazon’s Top 100 for scifi adventure, and I’ve done little marketing myself!

When you sell your book to a traditional publisher, what are the advantages you’re really getting? Marketing power is a big one, but for ebooks, this doesn’t seem to matter. Authors are doing it for themselves, and they’re succeeding at it.

But what do you gain if you don’t go the traditional route and self-publish your ebooks? Brett Battles, author of books like Sick and The Destroyed, recently did a post on Murderati about this. He lists advantages like complete creative control, no waiting to publish, and the freedom to set your own schedule.

With the tools and services available to authors these days, it’s easy to self-publish. So why would an author go to a traditional publisher for ebooks? Is the lure of paper books and the legitimacy still attached to them really enough to sacrifice so much freedom?

I’m not sure I know the answer. But in the long journey of being a published author, I’m still hitching my wagon to the self-publishing ebook carthorse. Because that sucker is off and running, and I want to go along for the ride.

Starwalker shorts

In the hiatus between the first and second books of Starwalker, I released a couple of villain shorts I’d done. They were about characters in the Starwalker universe (but not part of the web serial story), and I had all kinds of plans about doing a whole series of the shorts. I even planned out a list of things I wanted to do and started follow-up stories to those two pieces.

Then, as often happens, various life factors got in the way and distractions appeared, and I put them aside for a while. ‘A while’ turned into a year and then some. I’ve thought about them occasionally in the meantime but I haven’t done much more with them.

Lately, I’ve had more mental space to deal with side projects. I got to thinking that maybe some kind of prequel or ‘specials’ book around Starwalker’s characters would be a good freebie to put on offer to draw people into the series (when I finally get around to editing and releasing the series as ebooks, that is).

One thing led to another, and now I’ve got ideas clamouring for little short stories about the Starwalker’s crew. Fragments of their lives before they came aboard the ship. I’ve written one about Rosie already, and I’m hoping to get one or two more done soon.

Rosie’s one surprised me. I had planned it to involve something of a mentor figure, but the story had an idea of its own. It wound up involving Henry from the previous shorts instead, in a collision of characters and ideas that worked so well I wish I’d meant to do it from the start! I love it when that happens.

Now I’m wondering what to do with it. I could just post it up on the web serial site, or save them for the ebook, but those seem like the easy, lazy options. There are so many more things I could do with them.

I could do monthly specials, featuring a different character every month. That would mean having enough done and releasable to make it a decent run! I don’t know if I could commit to that. I hate making promises I can’t keep, and a ‘series’ of two shorts would be disappointing for everyone.

I could offer incentives. I could release one every time donations reach a certain level. Or whenever I get so many reviews (though I’m not a fan of ‘buying’ reviews, so probably not this one). Or when so many merchandise items are sold. Or every time I get a new (non-spam) commenter on the site.

So many options! I’d kinda like it to be a thing, though, and not just something I throw up on the website. My readers are fantastic and I’d like to get them involved, too.

So what do you all think? Tell me! In the meantime, I’m going to ponder whose story to do next and maybe even write something.

Publishing on Kindle: thoughts and experiences

I published the first two Apocalypse Blog books (Book 1 and the prequel, Book 0) through Kindle Direct Publishing back in September last year. In March and April this year, I managed to get Books 2 and 3 out (respectively).

My sales weren’t great at first. I sold a few handful books every month and the Amazon ranking was around 500,000 (out of more than a million books). It was slow and I figured it would take me forever to earn enough royalties for a payout. I don’t have the time or money for a lot of marketing, so my chances of climbing the ranks were down to luck.

Then something unexpected happened. In March, my sales spiked significantly – I noticed that the rankings were at 200,000 and rising. At first, I thought it was the release of Book 2, even though I had done little promotion to warrant such a change. Also, all of the books were selling well, not just the new one. Bewildered, I looked into it further, curious about what might have caused it.

What I found was that Book 0 was now available for free. Amazon doesn’t allow authors to offer books for free (outside of the KDP Select program, which I haven’t tried yet); the only way for it to happen is through price-matching. It seems that they had noticed that I have Book 0 available for free through other stores such as Smashwords, Apple, and Barnes & Noble, and matched the Amazon price to it.

Mystery solved! As hundreds of copies were downloaded, I bewilderedly watched the Book 0 rankings soar, dropping digits off until it was hovering between 1,500 and 4,000. It even made it into triple digits a few times.

Not only that: Book 0 made it into Amazon’s top 100! In the Science Fiction chart, it has been as high as the top 30, and usually appears in the top 100 listing somewhere.

Better yet, books 1 and 2 also started doing well as a result (the ones that are not free!). I believe it was a mixture of knock-on sales from Book 0 and the increased visibility of the series as a whole. When Book 3 was released, it galloped up the charts to sit with the rest of the (paid-for books in) the series.

The paid-for books have had pretty steady sales over the months since Book 0 went free. It wasn’t a temporary bump of sales; if it was, it hasn’t ended yet! The paid-for books are all currently sitting around 50,000 in the rankings (there’s some variation, but that’s where I usually see them). That’s in the top 5% of all the books on Amazon!

I’m so proud. Self-publishing feels like a shot in the dark to me, putting my work out there because I want it, with little idea about how worthy it really is of taking up space on people’s shelves (virtual or otherwise). But it’s selling and people like it. I can’t say how happy that makes me!

I can see why the publishing houses are leaning towards preferring series rather than standalone books these days. The knock-on sales are fantastic.

Now I’m looking forward to the next ebooks I might release – Starwalker – and I’m wondering how I can make this work again. I need a free first book to pull people into the main series. I don’t have a prequel for that series! Not yet, anyway. It something to think about!

Paper dreams and virtual legitimacy

I’ve had this one dream since I was little. I don’t mean the kind that happens when you’re sleeping; I mean the kind that you have when you’re awake. The kind you hold in your hands and turn over and over; a beautiful, warm idea that your imagination tells you would be so wonderful if you could only touch it.

I want to be a published author. I want to see books on shelves with my name on the spine. I want to see them in bookstores, catch glimpses of people reading them on the train. I want them to be tucked under people’s beds and dog-eared. I want them rippled from reading in the bath and crumpled from being stuffed into handbags.

I want to be able to point to them and say: those are mine; that was me.

It’s not about money or fame; it’s for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with either of those things. I’ve loved stories since I was a child and I can’t think of a better thing than sharing my own. Spreading some of the joy and inspiration that books and stories have given me.

It’s also about being recognised for it. Not in the street or the media; a name on a book on a shelf is what I mean. And a contract from a professional that says, ‘this is worth publishing’. Writing is a big part of who I am and I want people to know that.

I have self-published and it’s not the same. Don’t get me wrong: self-publishing is fantastic and I’m glad that I’ve done it for many reasons. But it’s only a small step towards that dream I have.

It’s not a publisher saying that they want to make my book happen. It doesn’t carry the same kudos.

Talented self-published author M.C.A. Hogarth has an interesting post on her view of this predicament.

These days, that view is falling out of fashion. Self-publishing is becoming more respectable and more recognised. People – including established writers – are moving away from traditional publishers (I have my own reservations about them, too, but that’s a different post). And self-published authors are able to make a decent living now, as a recent post on Indie Reader shows in glorious detail. The market is moving on.

But the kudos isn’t keeping up. I look at the published authors around me, I look at the industry, and there’s still a gap between self-published writers – particularly those who self-publish e-books – and traditionally published authors. It’s the type of writers who are on panels at writing festivals. It’s the books that are nominated for awards. It’s the books that bookstores hold launches for. It’s the books that authors hold signings for and with.

I’m not even sure that I disagree with that gap. After all, it is easy to self-publish these days (and getting easier all the time), while landing a traditional publishing deal is still hard. The easier it is, the more crap that comes through. There’s no stamp of quality or standard of writing, often not even an indication of an editor’s input. (Note: I’m not saying that the quality or standard of writing is bad in self-published books; I’m saying there’s no way to tell quality work from bad.)

In self-publishing, there’s no independent party that has declared they think the work should be published. That makes a difference to me, most especially in terms of my own work. I want to feel that I deserve to be on people’s shelves.

So where does legitimacy in self-publishing come from? Can it? You hear about break-out authors who sell huge amounts of books despite not having a traditional publisher behind them, but they’re the exception. What about the mid-list self-published author? Will there be a day when they can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with traditionally published authors?

I don’t have all the answers. I think the market is moving that way and the walls are coming down. Perhaps I’m just impatient, caught in the stickiness of an incomplete transition.

I still have this dream of seeing my books on the shelf of a bookstore, in a library, in a commuter’s purse. I want to sell and sign books at conventions. I want that publishing contract and an agent to manage it for me. I want a book launch that takes over an entire bookstore.

One day, maybe I’ll get there. But it won’t happen if I don’t send manuscripts out for consideration. Do I hold off self-publishing more books in the meantime? How long do I wait? Or should I forge ahead on my own as I’ve always done, and damn the rest?

This is what I ask myself every time I finish a book and have to decide what I want to do with it. And I’ll keep asking, because that dream is still there, shining and warm. After all, you never know, right?

Paid author!

Last week, I got an envelope in the mail. Inside was a cheque from Amazon: my first payment for ebook sales! Whoo-hoo!

I can now feel justified in calling myself a successful author. I’ve not only sold books, but managed to actually get some money out of it! Not a huge amount, but it’s a start!

I won’t be stopping my day job any time soon, but this certainly helps.

It feels like a step. It feels like a move in the right direction. It feels warm and cuddly.

People like my work enough to pay money for it. Enough people like my work for me to reach the payment threshold. Colour me happy!

Where I’ve been

2012 has been a rocky year for me so far. One of the most obvious signs of that is the lack of posts on this blog. I keep coming back here and lining up things I want to post about, but finding the time and brain-space to actually post has been out of my reach for much of the time.

I won’t go into detail why. I’ll just summarise and say that my day-job has been very stressful (more so than it ever had before). I don’t deal well with unreasonable expectations, untenable positions, or problems I’m unable to fix. I’m under a certain amount of pressure at home as well (most of it financial and none of it anyone’s fault – life just gets that way sometimes). Couple all of that with CFS (which is made worse by stress, of course), and, well. Let’s just say that it has been a strain to get anything productive done in my ‘spare’ time.

This blog is usually the first thing to fall off my radar when I get busy, as it’s the one I have least commitments to. So, to those of you who read this blog: my apologies, and thanks for your patience. It’s not that I love you least! I’d make more of a commitment to updating here if I thought I was capable of maintaining it!

Sadly, it has also been affecting my current web serial. I’ve missed posts, delayed things, mostly due to health reasons. I despise doing that. Part of what works for my web serial writing is keeping to a schedule, and missing that schedule means I’m letting myself (and my readership – more on that later) down. However, I have to be realistic and recognise that it’s not always possible to keep it up! And I’d rather not put up a shitty post just for the sake of posting.

All the same, I think the quality of the writing has probably suffered. At least a little. It makes me sad to know that (I take a great pride in my work, and I consider the web serial ‘work’, not play). It also makes me look forward to editing Starwalker! (Whenever that may be.)

However, it’s not all dire news. Firstly, I’d like to say that I have the most wonderful readers. They have been nothing but understanding and supportive, despite the amount of ‘sorry guys, there’s gonna be a delay on the next post’ messages I’ve had to put up so far this year. I’ve had so many wonderful comments, letting me know that it’s okay to take the time I need, and even emails offering more support and advice.

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate those messages. You guys are why I write. You make it all worth it!

I work to live and live to write. I push myself to write more and write better because I love it. I have so many ideas, so many things I want to do, so many stories I want to share with the world. Running around in my head right now:

• Starwalker (in progress!).
• Apocalypse Blog shorts (shelved but not forgotten).
• Vampire Electric, the steampunk novel (along with a couple of non-vampire sequels).
• Screw Loose, the robot brothel (the next web serial? Maybe!).
• Starwalker spin-offs (I have a few in mind, including the villain shorts, the story of the Carapace, and something centred on the consciousness of stars).

I can’t wait to get to them all. I can’t wait to share them with everyone. I can only focus on one thing at a time right now (between working full-time and fatigue), but I hope to get to them all eventually.

And then there’s all the other writing stuff I’m involved in. I’m still running my Creative Writing Group every month, and the Monthly Write-ins are where I get a pile of writing done! Planning for NaNoWriMo 2012 started a couple of months ago and is already galloping ahead.

On top of all that, the ebook sales for the Apocalypse Blog are going amazingly well. (I’m hoping to do a post specifically about that; fingers crossed I’ll get to it soon!) I got my first cheque for ebook sales in this week! I can now say that I’m a professional, (self-)published author.

So, yeah, it’s been a hell of a year so far. But I’m just finishing a week’s holiday from work and I’m feeling better. I’ve caught up on a few things (this blog being one of them!). The work of dealing with the stressful parts of my life continues, and they’re being weeded out steadily.

Writing posts like this is usually an interesting exercise for me. I know I’m ambitious with everything I try to do. I know I push myself hard (mostly because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t get anything done; it’s too easy to let CFS be the excuse that stops you from doing or being what you want).

Today, I look at everything here and I think: I’m actually pretty awesome. I’m holding it together and I’m getting there. I’ll come out of the other side of this rocky patch better than before.

Most of all, I’m grateful. For the friends who listen to me whine, who hug me and make me laugh. For the family who love and protect me. For the budding MLs who are helping me with the NaNo stuff this year, and my previous co-MLs. For the readers who enjoy my work, both those who let me know and those who visit silently. For those who spend their money on my work, both through donations and buying ebooks, and help me know that they believe my stories are worth paying for.

You all know who you are. I love you and thank you. I’m lucky to have you in my life.

Time to press onwards. Hopefully you’ll hear from me soon! Be well, everyone, and I’ll try to do the same.

Writing, talking, absorbing

The writing events are coming thick and fast lately! And it’s only going to get worse (or better, depending on your perspective) for me as November gets bigger in the windscreen.

The weekend was packed full of writing events, rather like last month’s weekend of writing and awesomeness but with less birthday celebrations. Once again, the Creative Writing Group meeting coordinated with other events. This time, however, there were a lot more than two festivals competing for attention!

I managed to get to two of the festivals on offer. These were the Emerging Writers’ Festival – specifically, the Digital Writers’ Conference that was held as part of the EWF – and the Write Around Moreton Bay: Readers and Writers Festival. Big thanks to the lovely Elle, who gifted her Digital Writers’ Conference ticket to me.

Both days were jam-packed, fun, and informative. I had a great time, met interesting people, and caught up with some familiar faces. I also got to hang out with a good friend, so it was all good!

Today, I’ve got pages of notes that I have to write up into coherent blog posts, a Starwalker post to finish (as I was sick last week and didn’t manage to get it up), and some formatting of ebooks to do. Looks like taking the day off work to rest hasn’t led to a lot of resting! But I’m feeling well enough to get started, so might as well get to it. Onwards!

Digital revolution

There has been a lot of attention lately on the digital revolution of textual content, and this was the subject of a talk at this year’s Brisbane Writer’s Festival. As someone who is getting increasingly involved in e-publishing of various stripes, I was interested in what professionals in the writing industry had to say on the subject.

Overall, I would say that the talk was a big disappointment. There was a lot of doom-and-gloom, nay-saying, and general bleakness with regard to the future of writing as a business as text is increasingly delivered digitally. I walked out feeling incredibly negative about the whole thing, which is not the best message to leave an audience with.

I don’t disagree with most of what was said by the speakers, but I don’t believe that the talk was representative of the ‘digital revolution’* or digital writing markets.

Most of the problem with the talk was the selection of the speakers. They were involved in literary publications, publishing, and journalism. In other words, they were involved in the areas of the business most likely to be hit hard by a move towards digital media. There was no representation of fiction writers or indie publishers, or anyone else who might offer a different perspective on this ‘revolution’*.

So, given that the talk was slanted in a particular direction, what did they have to say about the current climate for writers and publishers?

Publishers

The increase of the digital market is hurting publishers – namely, the big ones. According to one statistic given in the talk, traditional publishers are finding that their paper book (cutely known as ‘p-book’, I’m told) sales are going down faster than their ebook sales are going up. This is, naturally, a cause for concern.

Interestingly, however, traditional publishers’ profits are still going up. They are not losing money due to the digital markets or their overall sales going down. And yet the atmosphere among the publishers is one of doom and panic.

This suggests a couple of things to me:

• Traditional publishers do not know how to optimise the digital market yet, and don’t have the appropriate business models in place. Basically, they need to catch up with the times and figure out how to make it work.
• If their profits are going up while their sale volumes are going down, that means that they’re taking a bigger chunk out of the digital sales than they are out of the paper sales. This means that the cost savings of digital over paper books are not being passed on to the authors, and the authors are probably getting crappy royalties. (That’s what it looks like – I’d love to be wrong about this!)

The move from physical to digital media does mean a big change for traditional publishers, and I don’t know how agile they are being in this transition. From the things I’m hearing, their agility is elephantine!

Newspapers and Journalism

Newspapers are moving into the digital world and away from paper publications. The cost of printing newspapers is increasingly being seen as prohibitive, and it is believed that once the baby-boomers die off, the culture of reading newspapers in paper form will go with them.

It’s hard to know if these two things are true. I suspect that the second point is probably right: generations X and Y don’t have the same newspaper-reading habits that the older generations have. The culture is simply not the same, and moving away from it towards instant digital gratification.

The first point is, I believe, a misnomer. There are plenty of papers around who publish at a loss, compared to the money they receive from sales of the paper, and there are many free papers on offer. This is not a new phenomonon. So how do they survive? Pure sales revenue is not how they make their money; advertising revenue is where their profit lives. Like Facebook, they can afford to give their product away for free because their real customers are the advertisers.

The same is true for online content: there are lots of ways to monetise content without charging the reader for it. Newspapers are moving towards this model. However, in the process, there seems to be other changes happening.

A problem that was mentioned several times through the talk is the perceived cheapness of digital content. This perception is across the board; it’s not just readers, but vendors and publishers as well. No-one wants to pay much for it, because it is seen as quick and easy to deliver, and often of a lower quality than paper-published content. (Note: this is a common perception, not my opinion.)

This means that ‘serious journalism’ is at risk. Where (traditional) newspapers have journalists on staff and are willing to pay them for several weeks or even months’ worth of investigation for a particular piece, the belief is that digital newspapers won’t support this. They will pay for the content by the word (or similar length-based currency), not for the time it took to create it. Serious in-depth journalism will be too expensive to support, which means it will become impossible to make a living this way.

That is, without public help. In the talk, analogies were drawn between the digital revolution and the introduction of radio and television. In order to maintain material of quality and ‘cultural value’ in an increasingly commercial landscape, public (government) support was required. Hence, the BBC was born (or ABC, depending on where you are). It was suggested that the same will need to be done for journalism. (Doesn’t the BBC already have a serious news site? Isn’t this already catered-for to a degree? Questions I wish there had been time to ask!)

Whether there is government-funded papers or not, the business of journalism is changing. Digital content writers are already out there making money from this, and they will tell you how much the market is changing every day. One of the speakers at the talk mentioned that making a living from writing (meaning: journalism or non-fiction articles) will become impossible. Serious journalism will move into the hobbyist’s realm, and they’ll all have to get day jobs to put food on the table.

This sounds familiar. That’s because it’s the lot of 90% of fiction writers – only the very biggest sellers can afford to live off what they make from their books alone. It makes me sad to think that other types of writing might be sliding into the ‘hobby’ zone when I’d like to see the opposite become reality.

Literary Magazines

Literary publications in the digital realm have problems with the same cause as journalists: digital content and publication is seen to be cheap and easy, and so no-one is willing to put the same kind of money into it as they are for a paper publication. For literary magazines, which rely largely on donations and grants, this means that funding can be cut if they move online; apparently, they don’t ‘need’ as much money as they did pre-digital! Some publications have already lost funding in this way.

I guess this means that publishers of literary content are being forced to find other revenue streams to support their work. Is this good for the industry? It’s hard to say. It opens up a few questions:

• Is there enough money to pay for quality editing?
• Will literary fiction suffer by being commercialised?
• Will literary publications be forced to close?

The opinions at the talk seemed to be centred on the need for public (that is, government) support for the arts to ensure that quality, culturally-important material is still produced and published for the world to see.

Libraries

This is an interesting subject. Libraries are being forced to change by the move towards digital media, and it will be interesting to see exactly what that means in the long run.

Will the perception of ‘digital=cheap’ hurt them too? Will it lead to a reduction in funding for libraries? I hope not, as in this case, it could be particularly counter-intuitive. For libraries to keep stocks of digital media, they will need servers, archives, back-up systems, IT maintenance, and the power to keep it all running.  Or might libraries become more centralised and ‘virtual’? Is that a good or bad thing?

Quality

One of the concerns that was raised in the talk was about the quality of digital content. The truth is that it is cheap and easy to publish online, especially if you forego professional aspects of writing. Namely: editing, formatting, and design.

In paper publications, editors and publishers are the gatekeepers of quality (and from many of the books I’ve read, they’re not that good at ensuring error-free text, either: I’ve been tempted to take to more than one book with a red pen and send it back to the publisher). In digital publications, there do not have to be any gatekeepers at all; that is both the appeal and drawback of the digital realm. So how is quality ensured?

Honestly, I don’t know the answer to that. I think that writers should take pride in their work and go to the effort to make sure that it is correct and professional, especially if they are charging money for it. I go to pains to edit and proof the work I offer for free, because quality matters to me. I’m also aware that not everyone cares about it as much as I do.

 

It’s a lot to think about, and going over it again leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t believe that the ‘digital revolution’ is as drastic or doom-laden as some would like to believe. Things are changing and the publishing industry as a whole needs to move with it. Old roles will change, and new ones will open up.

I believe that writers have a lot of opportunities in front of them right now. It’s not easy to find your way through the morass of information and speculation being thrown around, but I don’t think it’s as dire or as shiny as the various parties would like us to believe. There will always be writing; let’s embrace the new ways of delivering it to people and keep pushing forward.

* I put these words in quotes because, while they’re being bandied about at the moment, they always sound melodramatic to me. I haven’t seen anyone launching at paper with digital pitchforks yet. Perhaps that’s next month!