publishing

Don’t Tell Me

~ ianrandalstrock ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been trying to be a better writer recently. I’ve actually been writing every day, and I’m making more of an effort to find markets for my writing (haven’t had much luck finding paying markets for my essays recently; my fiction—as does everyone’s—sometimes takes quite a while to find the right home).

Something I noticed several years ago—but which is making more of an impression as I’m making more of an effort to find places to sell my stories—is those markets requiring anonymized submissions. It’s not a terribly onerous burden—saving another copy of the story without my name on it—but I’ve been wondering who it really serves?

As a professional, I know that the most important people in the publishing ecosystem are the advertisers and the readers: those who pay for the magazine to exist. Everyone else is of secondary import. And I’m wondering if any of them care, or even notice, if the magazine or anthology in question requires anonymized submissions.

I did a quick search of publications who don’t want to know who wrote the story they’re considering, and found these examples from their guidelines:

Remember to take all author information out of your story! Tell us who you are in the space provided in the web form cover letter you get when you click on the “submit” button, NOT in your story! No headers, no bylines… just the story.

Please anonymize your work. No names or other identifying information should appear on the manuscript.

Anonymous Submissions. No identifying information should appear on your manuscript. We use anonymized submissions for our associate editors (first readers). Only upper-level editors will read your submission form information and cover letter, including any diversity statement. Failure to anonymize the manuscript will not cause us to automatically reject your story, but failure to read and follow our guidelines may affect our decisions.

Anonymity: Please do not put your name on your manuscript. All stories are assessed anonymously. [Ironically, this one requires contributors to identify as part of a specific community.]

[Magazine name] only accepts anonymous submissions. Please do not include your name, address, phone number, or other similar identifiers in the manuscript itself. All original fiction and poetry submissions will be read anonymously on first read: moving on to further consideration will depend on the merit of the work alone.

As I said, it’s not a terrible burden on the would-be writers (other than making sure the manuscript file I send is the anonymized one, not the regular one). But does anyone notice? Has any reader ever picked up a magazine and said “This is a great issue. I’m glad the submissions were anonymous.”? or “This issue would have been a lot better if the editor reading the submissions didn’t know the names of the authors before buying the stories.”?

For you readers out there: did you even know this was a thing?

 

Where Should I Buy Your Book?

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I’ve had several people ask how they should purchase my new book, which way is best for me, and I’m extremely gratified by those questions. While this question is easily extrapolated to just about any author, the answer is “it depends.” There are several answers.

What my friends and family think they’re asking is “where should I buy your book so that the most money winds up in your pocket?” And that’s a very kind question to ask. The simple answer is: “buy it directly from me, when you see me in person.” But while that method does indeed put the most money in my pocket, it works out to only two or three dollars (maybe as many as five) more than I’d earn from a sale some other way. In my particular case, with this specific book, it’s been published by one of the imprints of the independent publishing company I own. My company pays authors fifty percent of the net the company takes in on each sale. So if you buy the book from me as the publisher at a convention, it’ll be almost as much money in my pocket. That’s because neither of those sales has to give a cut to the distributor or to some other retailer.

But there are other answers to the question, other considerations.

My publishing company is an independent. While physical bookstores can order our books from our distributor, those bookstores don’t stock our books, because we don’t offer a large enough discount or the 100% returnability they require (those are topics for another essay). So the bulk of our bookstore sales come from the online retailers, of which the largest—by far—is Amazon. If you buy my book from Amazon, that helps the Amazon Sales Rank move up. And while one sale isn’t going to affect that number much, several dozen copies, a few hundred, if all made the same day or week, will indeed affect that number. And books with better Sales Ranks will be shown to more people on Amazon, hopefully leading to even more sales. So buying on Amazon, while resulting in less money in my pocket for that one book, may eventually result in many more sales.

But as important as that Sales Rank is, it’s fleeting, temporary. The number may be great this week, but if no new copies are sold next week, the number will plummet as other books are published and rise up the ranks. What has a longer-lasting effect is reviews. Reviews don’t have to be complex—you don’t have to write a four-page essay comparing and contrasting my book to, well, anything. Even just a few words is sufficient for the algorithms, because they’re focused on the number of reviews, and the average ranking of the book from the “rank this book on a scale of 1 to 5.” If you can spend just a few minutes to write a few nice words about the book, in the long run, that may wind up being the most valuable.

And that’s not unique to Amazon. Reviews on GoodReads or LibraryThing are equally important. Indeed, any sort of word of mouth (telling your friends and neighbors) is also great.

But all of that is still assuming the book in question has been published by a small press like mine, or self-published by the author. If, however, your friend has had the fortune to have the book published by one of the large publishing firms (like my first three books), the answer will again be different.

If the book has been published by a big publisher, one of the “big five” or “legacy” firms—or even a smaller traditional publisher that still has standard physical bookstore distribution—the best way to buy the book is at that brick-and-mortar bookstore. Those sales are the most likely to be counted and reported, and when the author has another book to submit to publishers, they’re going to be looking at those sales numbers to justify (or not) buying and publishing that next book. Incidentally, that points to another big difference between those large publishers and mine: if your book doesn’t sell five thousand or ten thousand copies, that large publisher is unlikely to offer a contract for the new book. On the other hand, if my company published that book, and it sells a scant one thousand copies, it’s still done a great job for my company, and I’ll be happy to publish the next.

So, back to the original question: my friends asking where/how they should buy my book. At this point, I’m still hopeful for a bit of a break-out, still hopeful to make at least a little splash in the bigger world of Amazon sales, so I’m directing my friends and family there (even though Amazon has done so much to kill publishing), foregoing the few extra dollars now in hopes of more sales a little later. That said, I’m thrilled with every single sale, and I’ll be selling copies at Capclave this weekend, HalloWeeM at the end of October, and nearly everywhere you can find me. On behalf of myself and all the other authors being asked, the greatest thing you can do is tell us you’re interested in our books, and then show us. Happy reading!

Pre-news

~ ianrandalstrock ~ Leave a comment

Today on Facebook, I saw a post from a friend saying “tomorrow I’m going to say something about my upcoming novel.” I also saw several iterations of a post from Mensa’s Annual Gathering Chair saying “tomorrow I’m going to tell you who the gala speaker is.”

I know we’re all trying to grab as much publicity as we can, get people to notice whatever it is we’re doing, by doling out tidbits of information. In publishing, we send out pre-publication galleys in hopes of garnering reviews timed to the book’s release. Announcements in the trade journals of book sales are a staple. And now, “cover reveals” have also become a thing. (As an aside, I’m still not sure why “gender reveals” are a thing, so I’m just going to ignore them.)

But I’ve always been annoyed at politicians and business leaders announcing that they’ll be holding a press conference to announce thus-and-such. It seems to me that making the statement is making the statement. “I’m going to announce my support of this bill at a press conference tomorrow,” or “we’re going to announce this new product line next week.” So why do I have to go to the press conference? Aren’t you telling me now?

On the other side of that coin, of course, are the reporters asking those politicians or business leaders what they’re going to do or say or announce in the coming days when they don’t. “You’ve scheduled a press conference for tomorrow. What are you going to say at it?” Grr.

Do those things really work? Are you more engaged in the upcoming new book or movie or sponsorship when it’s hinted at and teased and pre-announced before it’s announced before it’s finished before it’s available for sale? Am I just failing in my job as publicist by not doing all of that, by not making up pre-news news to share with you constantly?

Why We Need Print

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In a ongoing discussion of the Mensa Bulletin (the national publication of American Mensa), one topic that came up is members who don’t read it at all. One of those members commented “I realize part of it is my own fault. When I received the print edition, it would be on the kitchen table. I’d pick it up and read it over meals by myself. When I changed to the digital edition, I stopped reading the Bulletin.”

That, more than anything, is why I have spent years railing against the trend to all-digital publication. A physical magazine is there, in front of your eyes. You see it, even if you’re not going to read it. An electronic publication is so easy to ignore, to skip today because you’re busy, and then have it scroll down to the unnoticeable part of your unread in-box, that it won’t be many issues before you stop reading it altogether.

If the goal is to save money, to do everything as cheaply as possible, then by all means, we have to drop paper publication and shift to all-electronic.

But if the goal is to produce something that people notice, pay attention to, and read—and in the case of a membership organization, produce a regular reminder that readers are members of this organization, and may want to renew their membership regularly—then the printed magazine is a necessity.

HR842, the Pro Act

~ ianrandalstrock ~ 1 Comment

I’ve just sent the following letter to my Congressional representatives, expressing concern over a portion of this bill, which has already passed the House, and is currently in the Senate (if you’re interested in reading the bill for yourself, see this link):

I’m writing because I’m concerned about H.R. 842, titled “An act to amend the National Labor Relations Act, the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, and the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, and for other purposes.”

I’m especially concerned about one of the definitions. It is in Title I, Section 101 Definitions, subsection (b) Employee, specification (B), which says “[an individual… shall be considered an employee… and not an independent contractor, unless] the service is performed outside the usual course of the business of the employer…”

This concerns me both as a freelance writer and as the owner of a small publishing company. As a writer, I write stories and articles for which I am paid as a freelancer and which appear in magazines and books. The companies which publish my work are in the business of publishing content like that which I write, which certainly sounds like “the usual course of the business.”

As a publisher, I hire freelance cover designers and freelance editors to help craft the books that I publish. Putting the books into publishable form is the usual course of my business (and of course, the writers themselves are not my employees). None of those writers, editors, or cover artists are tied only to my company: they can and do use their talents for many companies, which is as they and I want it.

This clause may not apply to me, but it’s not a stretch to read it as applying emphatically and specifically to my various endeavors. Can you please see about rewriting it or otherwise emphatically noting that those of us in the freelance writing, editing, and publishing fields will be explicitly exempted from any such burdens? Thank you.