I figure, I can make a first novel fall of the face of the earth as well as Random House.
But there are doors of promotion that are closed to self publishers. And if I let a POD vendor like Lulu or iUniverse issue my ISBN (thus being the 'publisher of record' in Books in Print and at Amazon), those doors go from just closed to fucking locked. Don't even keep knocking, they're calling the police right now.
Because dig it, anyone with an alien abduction autobiography, political tract or paranoid medical theory can 'publish' their book by POD. And thousands do. There's no vetting process, and people who really matter see those POD vendors as poison until proven otherwise.
I was thinking in terms of starting local and small-scale, but it's just a reduced version of this example:
You're a critic at the New York Times Review of Books or Publisher's Weekly. Or you are the producer of Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Who bought you lunch most recently? I'm guessing it was an agent for a mildly to wildly successful author who's published the traditional way. This agent gets a cut of the sales, and what's he going to have to say about print on demand? It's a blight!
Some friends of mine started a microbrewery a few years ago and scored a rare homerun in lining up a major distributor for their very fine beer. This distributor had a contract with Annheiser-Busch, a company that spends millions of dollars every hour on advertising. Taxes and advertising probably account for 3/4 of the sale price of a can of Bud. I'm not exaggerating.
But they sell 47% of the beer in America. So they are naturally hostile to anyone who makes even a 1% dent in their plan for global domination (ask some Czech brewers and hop growers how aggressive those cocksuckers can be: they nearly wrecked the economy of an entire nation for the sake of the name 'Budweiser.'
AB sent a letter to Flying Monkey's distributor saying that if you deliver Flying Monkey, you don't get any more Bud. These tactics are roughly the same as the Mafia in the trash business. Okay, AB didn't blow up a beer truck to make a point, but it's less than six degrees of seperation.
The thing that led me to lose faith in traditional avenues is that they seem so focused on the McBook. If they don't see it as the next Harry Potter, you can fuck off. Keep your filthy advance, we don't want to talk to you anymore.
And I've seen examples of really good authors getting fucked over by ineptitude and bad business models in the small press market too.
What to do? Well, by the time I'm finished making my book worse, I'll probably have even better options than I do today. I mean, it's not like it'd be the first book design I did. I'd be doing what I do for a living to something I do compulsively.
But of course, I want a sample of what I'm getting. Not in terms of distribution channels, that shit I'm still researching. I need to know if the paper stock is up to snuff, if the ink/toner is prone to smear, if the binding is iffy, if the color on the cover varies wildly from my Pantone solid-to-process guide.
So why not find out now? Lulu's deal, I can set up the book and order a copy for myself. I could publish the 'All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.' story from 'The Shining.' Copy and paste, it's not liked I'd have to check into a haunted hotel and do it with a fucking manual typewriter...
Better yet, just print gibberish. What has traditionally been called 'greeking' where you flow word salad to get a feel on a mock-up. Chapter titles could be 'you were warned.' And, 'I wasn't kidding, why'd you buy this piece of shit?' And, 'You're still here? God, I didn't know they made them that stupid.'
Under this cover:
Here's the theory I would be testing if I did this: anyone can sell enough books by accident to pay the POD fees for a listing. If that's true, knowing whether a book is worth a try is anyone's guess.
What's the chance I'd get hurt? I mean if you exlude people who ordered it expecting a book they could read? How many pages of gibberish to include?
3 comments:
But they sell 47% of the beer in America. So they are naturally hostile to anyone who makes even a 1% dent in their plan for global domination
I can’t see that happening. The domination, not the Gestapo tactics of American companies, that is.
I’ve never seen anyone here (or various EU places) drink American beer. Or “beer”.
And this is a place where people walk down the street, legally that is, drinking beer. Buy it at a newsstand or a movie theatre, etc.
I think people here actually *like* the taste of **BEER** too much to drink the piss known as, for example, Bud.
As for the book-route…tough decision. I simply have no faith in publishing houses when they are pimping and seeking outright crap. Cormac McCarthy, one of the few writers generating something close to literature, hands in a 600+ page ms and it publishes as 300. Now the guy is mega-private so I don’t know what happened, but if some/anyone is suggesting he whittle it down but then lets a Tom Wolfe, Anne Rice, JK Rolling, S. King and John Irving gag out 800+ page paperweights…something is amiss.
As always, I’ll make sure you get a few readers on this side of the glob(e) no matter what method you choose.
I like beer. You could always give away a few homemade beers to every early adoptee. Honestly, you tend to ramble a bit, but I ain't complaining. Who am I to complain?
R&S!
Me ramble, the hell you say.
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