Notes from a Sitting Duck

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

They're out there, in droves, just waiting for us.

No, I'm not getting paranoid - any more than usual, anyway. Every day writers are being made into sitting ducks. I'm telling the truth, and I'm talking about thieves. Call them pirates, call them freedomers, call them file-sharers, call them plagiarists, call them anything you like, but they're still thieves, talking our work without our permission and giving us no compensation.

It's interesting that those who believe 'if it's on the internet it should be free' or that we should be happy just to have our work read and give away our work so freely have never published anything of their own. When we call them thieves to their faces they are offended and hurt; why, they ask, are we being so selfish? People want to read our books. People need entertainment. We have entertainment. How can we be so small of spirit, they wonder, as to deny people what they want when we have it. We want our work to be read, don't we?

Of course, they never stop to think - or plain just don't care - that we spend weeks, perhaps months, maybe even years writing that book. We spend money, too, if we're self-published, on editors and proof-readers and covers and formatters. That never seems to enter their tiny little brains. They just want to be seen as a kind of Robin Hood, graciously giving to the have-nots and never caring if it is at the expense of the ones who created the books.

Now of course you know I'm not talking about a writer who decides to give away a book of his own, either as a short-time sale, a long-term enticement to a series, a gift promotion, or a whatever. I have my own opinions about free books, but as long as the writer himself is the one making the decision to give it away, that's fine. It's their property and they can do what they want with it.

Another particularly slimy kind of thief is the one who gets a copy of the book and then puts it up for sale in his store... but without the author's permission and without any compensation going to the author. The reader gets the book, the seller gets the money, and the writer, who created the book, gets... nothing. Except for a very few mega-sellers, writers have always gotten the short shrift in the publishing industry and it looks like that's not going to change anytime soon.

A new wrinkle in this perpetual 'screw-the-writer' cavalcade is the plagiarist. Oh, people have been stealing books and ideas from other writers for centuries, but suddenly this kind of theft seems to have gone on steroids.

Now these thieves take chunks of copy from several books of similar genre, then mash them up into a new 'book' (perhaps 'manuscript' would be a better term) and put it out as their own. Sometimes they don't even bother to do their own 'mashing-up' but hire a ghostwriter to do it, so they can claim to have written a book without even having touched it. Even worse, there are thieves who take a book and leave it untouched except for changing the main characters' names, maybe the location and maybe the industry in which they work, then put it out as their own work.

And I have never ever heard of any legitimate writer getting any of the money owed them after the scams have been discovered.

In order to defend his property the writer has to spend time - time that should have been spent with his family, or writing, or whatever he chooses - chasing down these thieves and sendings DMCAs, or he has to spend money hiring a company to do it for them - money that should have stayed in the writer's pocket. What's worse is that most of these criminals operate from overseas, beyond the reach of law enforcement - if law enforcement would take an interest in piracy, which so far it hasn't. In the rare instance where an operator has closed down, you can bet within a month or so it will be back up and running again on another website, gleefully continuing to steal writers' property and profits.

I don't know where or how much farther this trend of thievery will or even can go, but I'm absolutely positive that somewhere someone will think of another way to rip off the poor writer who labors to create something.

Sad to think that the internet - which has given so many of us careers with the advent of self-publishing - is what has also given us this rise in crime. I'm sure that there was plagiarism and intellectual theft back in the day of gate-keepers/traditional publishing, but the purely physical limitations of print publishing kept it to a minimum. The internet and self-publishing has indeed turned out to be a two-edged sword.

I don't know what or how is to be done about this, but something must be. Surely someday some hot-shot computer person will come up with a theft-proof something or other that will give writers and writers alone control of their works. Hopefully it will happen soon, because writers are tired of becoming every crook's target.

To Self or Not To Self

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

As most of you know, I am a great proponent of self-publishing. Almost every book I do these days is self-published through my company Sefkhat-Awbi Books, though there are a couple of traditional publishers I am still happy to work with.

That doesn’t mean self-publishing is perfect. Or anywhere close to it.

I realize that self-publishing is not for everyone. You have to be tough, dedicated, and – because it is a heck of a lot of old-fashioned work – tireless. You have to be both sides of opposing forces – the author and the publisher. It’s your book, so as the author you have the power to keep it safe from the ‘writing by committee’ attitude of traditional publishing, where each step from agent to first reader to acquiring editor to content editor can require rewrites. Sometimes many rewrites, so many that you almost do not recognize your own book. Release is at your convenience, instead of having to wait an average of a year or more before your book comes out.

If you self-publish, you have to switch chairs and regard your brain-child, your magnum opus as a product instead of an automatic classic and best seller. You have to have it edited by a professional, for content and for mechanics – and pay for it. You have to lay out the book the way you want it to appear – table of contents, copyright page, dedication, other books by, about the author, whatever. Then, unless you are gifted in the computer arts, you will have to hire – and pay – a formatter. You will have to work with – and pay – a cover artist, hopefully choosing images that will sell your book easily. If doing a paperback, you will have to do all this in paperback format as well as electronic. Also, if doing a paperback, you really should order – and pay for – proofs to make sure everything looks the way it should. For electronic versions, you need to check on their viewers before uploading.

And all this takes time – but you do get 60% plus (depending on outlet) of cover price instead of 6-8% of whatever the traditional publishers decide is the current norm.

Whether you are self-publishing or traditionally publishing, publicity will be your responsibility. A traditional publisher will put your book in a catalogue and maybe send out a press release when release day finally rolls around. Pretty much everything else is on you however you are published.

I’ll admit I’m a control freak. I’m willing to do whatever is necessary to keep my vision, my book, the way I see it. Yes, I work with a wonderful editor and sometimes I have to ‘kill my darlings’ but my word is the final one. I make the decisions on cover art instead of just giving a few recommendations and having to accept whatever the publisher’s art department comes up with. Pricing and distribution are my choice. Format is my choice. This is my book, doggone it, and it’s all my choice. And my responsibility.

Like I said, self-publishing isn’t for everyone. I like it, though.

On Quitting Writing

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

When do we say enough, good-bye, farewell, I can’t do this any more?

Sometimes the decision is made for you. Contracts are cancelled; series are orphaned; editors leave, abandoning you to uncaring monsters who hate your work… Or on a more basic level, sales tank, your books sold goes into negative numbers (yes, this can happen!), you can’t even get a guest blog…

Worst of all, your heavily advertised, well-written, factually correct books over which you have slaved are totally eclipsed by a shoddy piece of trash that reads as if it were written by a semi-literate third-grader.

How hard do we have to be hit over the head to realize that it is time to move on? We’re working horrible hours to produce the best books we know how. The traditionally published among us struggle with agents and editors, each of whom have a totally different view of our story than we do – and demand that it be reshaped to fit their vision if it is even to be considered. And, after you have done all the work, your advances shrink to chump change - if they manage to exist at all.

Those of us who self-publish have to lay out money to editors, formatters, and cover artists as well as doing our own publicity until it seems that everyone gets paid except the author – but isn’t that sort of traditional, whether trad or self pubbed? Everyone expects to be well paid for their time and skills invested – except the writer. It’s either that or learn to do it all yourself (not necessarily recommended) which takes away from your writing time. Then of course you’re advised to give some books away for free – ‘to get your name out there’ in the expectation that the reading public will rush to pay full price for your next book. I will admit that this has worked big time for some authors; for others, no. The only guaranteed part of it is that it seems to be training readers that books should be free if they are on the internet – hence the proliferation of pirates who take your book and hand it out for free to anyone who wants it. Either that, or they sell it, of course keeping the money for themselves. Once again everyone – reader and pirate – profits except the writer.

To add insult to injury, it makes no difference if you are trad pubbed or self pubbed you are almost completely responsible for your own publicity – unless, of course, your last name is King or Steele or Roberts or Koontz or a couple of other mega-million sellers who don’t really need it. Something else for the writer to do besides write…

How many of us remember why we became writers? I do – it was because I delighted in creating entire worlds and populations out of nothing more than imagination and caffeine. I loved escaping into another life, one that was so often so much better than my real one. Feeling the elation of creation, the joy of constructing a plot and characters that actually made sense. The pure pleasure of working with words, molding them as if they were living clay to create exactly what I wanted.

In the push of publishing today (both kinds) that joy is dimmed if not altogether lost, and that’s sad. No, it’s more than sad, it’s heartbreaking. It’s not only in the corporate world of Big Publishing that books have ceased to be concepts of joy and reverence, valued for their own selves, and have been debased into products whose very existence has been regulated into a thing shaped for commerce.

So why do we as writers continue to let ourselves be relegated to the bottom of the pyramid? Perhaps it is time to revolt, to go into some other form of creativity such as quilting or painting or whatever happens to make your heart sing? Or just to go on writing for your own amusement and fulfillment with no attempt or even thought of publication?

Frankly, with over twenty books out there and over nine straight days of no sales at all on any venue, that option is looking more and more appealing. At least quitting writing to sell is a viable and occasionally appealing option, perhaps one should embrace.

That’s what I tell myself I will do. The thought is as seductive as the prospect of making a big bestseller list.

I will quit writing.

Again.

Of course, I have done so at least once a year for a long time now. I am a woman of my word and once I decide to do something I do it.

Once I even kept it up for almost a month.

Sometimes I don’t know why, but I’ve always come back. I’ll be back.

Probably.

Spring on My Mind

Spring has sprung
The grass has riz
I wonder where the flowers is?
-Variant of an old poem, origin unknown though frequently attributed to Ogden Nash

Spring has sprung, at least it has here in North Carolina. The daffodils have come and mostly gone. Tulips, azaleas, dogwoods, quince, cherries and other fruit trees are in their glorious seasonal finery. Temperatures are moderate, but wildly changeable, a sure sign of spring.

Spring reminds me of fresh starts and new things. Trees leafing out, dry brown winter grass turning green again, plants surging up from the ground showing new life. Longer days and warmer temperatures mean more time outside and upcoming vacations. I’m eager to get out in the garden and start planting so I can see all those promising shoots appearing.

And in life, too, turning seasons bring new things happening. Over the past few years that’s meant a few new grandchildren, deaths of parents, people around me changing jobs, moving, retiring, and a host of other smaller changes.

Career changes have been happening to me as well.  I’ve slowly cut down on the number of website design and development projects I’ve been taking on, to make more time for writing. I’ve got so many things I want to write.  Ideas are clamoring for brain space and several partially completed projects are urging me to get back to work on them.

And as the seasons change, so has the publishing industry.  When my first book was published, in 1990, I wrote the book, sent it to my editor, revised per her instructions, then a year or more later, the book came out and that was that. I might do a few readings or signings but it was generally agreed a writer couldn’t do much more than that. Following a few adventures with other publishers, I sold to my first epublisher in 2000 and worked with several of those. It was a whole new world. Being on the internet meant lots of networking and promo. Then came social media and self-publishing.

The publishing industry today looks nothing like what it was in 1990. Amazon bought out my first publisher, Avalon Books, and several of the small press publishers I’ve worked were bought out or went out of business. One of my more recent publishers, Five Star/Cengage, has just axed its mystery line, leaving my Market Center Mysteries orphaned with the first book published a few years ago and the second book still in the editing phase.

I’m not completely new to self-publishing.  I’ve been retrieving rights to my older books and republishing them myself for the last several years.  But this feels much different. It’s a book that’s never been published before.  I’m having to get it edited, then copy-edited, have covers made, think about creating blurbs and publicity, and… Yikes!

I hope to have Wired for Murder, the second book in my Market Center Mysteries series that began with A Gift for Murder, ready to release on July 1st, but it depends on how quickly the editing and cover design get done.

Stay tuned.  I’ll post more about the process and my entry into this brave new world this spring.

What About Self Publishing?

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

On one of my loops there has been for some time a very spirited discussion about self-publishing – some correspondents are very outspoken that it should just ‘go away and let real publishing take over again.’ Some admit to being confused or uninformed. Some – including me – are quite vocal that self pubbing is not only here to stay, but that it should be. Because I feel so strongly about this, I have taken my response to this somewhat contentious thread and put it here.

For all those who think that ‘self publishing should just go away and let real publishing take over again’ I ask... Why? Self publishing IS real publishing, with the added benefits of freedom and due rewards for the writer. It gets the story from the writer's mind into the reader's hand, and that's the rock-bottom basis of publishing. For centuries writers have been treated as at best the red-headed-stepchildren of the publishing industry, at worst nothing more than a necessary evil. While there are the mega-bestsellers who receive fantastic amounts, the majority of writers are paid least and last, which is egregiously illogical as without them the publishing industry would not exist. Trad publishers are notorious for keeping authors in the dark about sales figures and give them little or no input into covers, marketing (when any marketing is done at all) and basically tell writers "Give us the books we will accept, allow us to shape them, take what we give you without any questions and go away."

Self publishing has changed all that. The author is now in charge and is finally getting paid in proportion to their contribution. It's more work for them, but the rewards are worth it. Is there dreck in self-publishing? Of course. Freedom is always messy, but that's no reason to condemn a new process when there are so many benefits. Self-publishing is the essence of freedom - let the market, ie the reader, decide what they want.

If self pubbing were not good for the writer, why would so many trad pubbed writers be switching? They want commensurate rewards for their work. They want control. They want to know what is happening and be able to try new things. In return, every real writer I know puts more care into their self pubbed books than most traditional publishers. Check a trad pubbed book (especially one of the Big 5) against a professional writer's self pubbed one. I’ll bet you there are more mistakes - typo, formatting, etc. - in the trad pubbed. The professional self pubbing writers I know hire editors, formatters and artists, many of whom have quit the big houses and gone into freelancing. They too want to make more money. And what is wrong with that?

Should everyone self publish? Obviously not. But - ! Every writer should have the freedom to choose whether they want to self publish or not.

Self pubbing is also good for the reader. Self pubbing gives readers the freedom to choose what kind of books they want. Niche publishing flourishes with self pubbing. Specialized stories or cross-genre books, each pulling too small an audience to interest the big boys are now available. Readers can now choose the specific type of stories they want to read and not be forced to choose from just what is profitable for the trad publishers or acceptable to their gatekeepers. The reader is now in control, just as is the writer.

It's too late to put things back the way they were, even if the trad houses were suddenly to wise up and do everything right. The genie is out of the bottle. If Amazon - the 600 lb gorilla of self-publishing - were to decide to stop putting out books for self pubbed authors or to change their payment schedules some other profit-minded entrepreneur would step in.

And what about the dreck, the garbage books? There have always been garbage books, even under the big trad pubbing umbrella. Yes, there are more now, but that will pass. Millions of people have always thought they could write a book better than the one they're reading, and a very few of them were right. Many try and most never even finish their manuscript. Of those who do many go right on to publication, ready or not. In the old days pre-self pubbing, these tyros were mainly caught by the gatekeepers. They either quit writing or learned to write well - and to conform to the Procrustean bed of the trad pubbers. Now they can string together as many words as they like, call it a book, put it out and then be shocked when it doesn't bring them instant success and fortune. Then they either quit writing or buckle down and learn to write.

Is the system perfect? No, of course not. No system ever is, but with the option of self pubbing, the new gatekeepers are the writers and the readers themselves. And that's the way it should be.

The Party's Over

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

To tell the truth, I kind of halfway believed that this day would never come. On 30 October my publishing blitz ended. Unless you’ve been living under a rock this summer, you probably have heard more than once that I’ve been doing a blitz of one book release (two new works, the rest re-releases of reverted backlist) every two weeks since 30 June.

That’s a heck of a lot of books.

And an insane schedule. Why would anyone do anything so utterly mad?

Back in late May, when this idea first appeared, I had no idea of how much plain old work – and plain old money – would be involved. Each book was re-edited, re-formatted, given a wonderful new cover and released in both electronic and paper versions. Sounds deceptively simple, doesn’t it? It wasn’t. Without the most wonderful team in the world – scanner, editor, formatter and cover artist – behind me I never would have made it. No – without them I never would even have considered it!

In May I did FAMILY OF STRANGERS, a tasty little classic gothic romance set in Victorian Scotland. It took several weeks to get it up and running, and it has done rather well. Deciding to do the rest, I jumped in with both feet, my normal way of doing something. Concentration has always been a problem with me, and after several weeks I had done something on every book, but not one was completely finished and ready for publication.

Some of the older books were so old that no electronic version existed. Appalled at the thought of re-keying them, I had them scanned. My scanner Melynda Andrews is the best in the business, but inaccuracy is the nature of the beast no matter who does it. Age and texture of the paper, ink density, type font and the letters themselves all affect what is translated from paper to pixels, so each letter must be checked. For example, ‘his’ morphed into ‘liis’ and ‘rain’ into ‘min’ and so forth – but never with any degree of predictability. Some of the results were horrific, some were hysterical, but each had to be checked.

It’s not the big errors that get you – it’s the little, almost invisible ones. On getting the scan back, I had to go through the manuscript almost pixel by pixel. Years ago during my magazine editing days I learned to proof by starting with the last word and going backward. That way I was seeing the words and letters themselves and not getting lost in the story. At least, it helped.

After that tiring and sometimes hilarious chore, I started at the beginning and did the editing on the re-releases myself; the two new works went to my wonderful professional editor Laree Bryant, and then through a rigorous round of revisions. As the re-releases had already been edited by their respective publishing houses, I didn’t see a reason to submit them to my editor, but I went through them with a fine-tooth comb, tweaking and doing a little bit of rewriting. No book is ever really finished, you see. As long as we can get our hands on it, we can always find some little something that can be improved.

Then there were the covers. It was by pure blind luck that I was fortunate enough to find Dawn Charles of BookGraphics, one of the best cover artists in the world, who worked tirelessly with me turning what I wanted, what was possible and what I could afford into an elegant cover. She also provided me with a huge banner proclaiming both my names – Janis Susan May for romance, Janis Patterson for mysteries – for when (if) I do signings, and created some positively fantastic bookmarks.

Working with my wonderful formatter Vickie Taylor was the easiest thing. I had already gone through the manuscript, making it as clean as possible (studying those pixels again), taking out any extraneous spaces, returns, etc., and putting the various elements in the order I wanted them for both the electronic and paper editions – copyright page, dedication, other books available, by the author and all that. I would email the files to her and tell her which electronic distributors to program for and in a few days I would have individualized files for electronic and print that only required me to point-and-click to upload. Being a total techno-naif I love point and click!

Yes, I know there are loads of authors who do this themselves. Joy go with them. There is nothing wrong with my brain-box (at least, I hope not) and I could learn do the formatting myself. After all, in the dark ages of computers I wrote a couple of decent COBOL programs. However – I am a believer that one should do what one does best and hire out the rest. It’s only good time management, besides saving my nerves. I frustrate very easily.

Then a couple of days before official release day – so I would have links to hand out on release day – I would upload. First would be the print version at CreateSpace, because I wanted time to order a proof and still get the distributor buy links in time. Then, closer to The Day, I would upload to Amazon, BandN and Kobo myself. iBooks/Apple always went through Draft2Digital. While many people swear by them, I don’t like some of Apple’s practices, and Macs are too expensive for me to consider anyway.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Basically it is, but it is both complex and time-consuming. And, believe it or not, this was the artistic part.

There is also the business part. First I got a DBA for my publisher name. Forming an S corp or an LLC didn’t make financial sense at this point, but I did want the ability to cash any checks that might come in the company name.

I copyrighted with the government those books which had not already been done. It’s the cheapest intellectual property insurance I know, and I advise every writer to do it.

In addition, there was the acquisition, assigning and registration of ISBNs through Bowkers – and Heaven help you if you get two numbers mixed up! Each book had its own specific copyright release on the copyright page, because they need to state if, when and by whom the book had been published before. There were the individual dedications. Print and electronic versions each needed their own special order of contents. Front matter and back matter were different.

Because I wanted to get them all done as quickly as possible so all I would have to do was upload (didn’t work, by the way – every release day was an edge-of-the-seat affair) I worked on a lot of books at once and got very confused. Finally I created a spreadsheet to keep me organized. One row for every book, one column for every action. At one time I had forty two columns. It’s come down a little since then, but it’s still an impressive amount of data. For a while I was so stressed I couldn’t sleep – I’d wake in the morning at some dreadfully early hour and, my mind churning with what had to be done, be unable to get back to sleep, so I’d get up and start work. By the way, writing is my only job, other than looking after The Husband, the animals, the house, the yard, some volunteer work and assorted family and friends.

The Husband became accustomed to eating frozen things for dinner – mainly pizza – and we ate out or got takeaway more than ever before. Laundry became a hit-or-miss proposition. With three animals (two cats and a bossy little dog) we’ve always had a recurring crop of dust bunnies, but they took advantage of my concentration on the books to grow into aggressive dust hares until in self defense The Husband started wielding the vacuum cleaner. At night I was too tired even to read. Writing? Forget it.

But now it is over. I’m glad I did it, because the books are done, and in self-publishing there is no worry about shelf life. For good, bad or indifferent, these stories will be out there forever, hopefully generating some income while I go on to the fun part of creating new books. I say hopefully because my MasterCard is still on life support.

Speaking of money, I’ll admit to being disappointed that sales have been much lower than I dreamed – even lower than I expected. However, on my writers’ loops everyone has been saying that their sales are down as well, so I take faint comfort that I’m not the only one or that it’s not my books themselves being ignored. I’ve spent some money – more than I could afford, really – on advertising, but nowhere near enough to make a real difference. Still, as Scarlett said, tomorrow is another day, and we can only wait to see what it will bring.

Have I given up on trad pubbing? Of course not. At this moment I am under contract to two traditional publishing houses and intend to continue with both. And, if one of the Big 5, or however many of them there are this week, comes waving a contract with a healthy advance attached just watch me jump.

Do I intend to keep on self-publishing? Yes, most definitely. The freedom to do what I want, to tell the story I want without having some little editor girl forcefully ‘suggest’ that my heroine be a deep-sea diver instead of an insurance investigator or another editor that the story take place in the mountains of Montana instead of downtown Dallas. Even if such ‘suggestions’ would strengthen the story (which they most definitely would not have) I know nothing about deep sea diving and even less about Montana. My sense of outrage at such needless meddling was only exacerbated by the fact that I have shoes older than either one of those little editor girls! Now I can tell my stories with the voice I want. Of course, they will be professionally edited, etc. That’s a given.

Not giving up on self-pubbing, however, does not mean I will put my husband, myself or my books through an insane blitz like this again. My future self-pub efforts will be done in a civilized manner, at a manageable speed of one, maybe two releases at a time. I’m too old for nonsense like this, but will certainly admit that this blitz taught me more about self-pubbing than I ever knew possible.

I’m glad I did it, but now it is time to tell myself (in my execrable Latin) Dire, Faire, Taire – loosely translated, Say It, Do It, Shut Up.