(no subject)

[intothewood]

Thanks for all of your replies to my questions about reading within your genre and word counts. Seems like most of you keep track of counts on a professional level, to help you gage progress, story type and whether something should be reexamined for content - all good reasons.

I don't take a very professional approach with my own material, and I suppose that's a bit out of rebellion and a bit out of denial. I've written professionally for years under deadlines and word counts and slogging through content that I'd rather poke out my eyes than deal with, so I tend to go to the other extreme and ignore rules with my own stuff. That's something I'm trying to resolve.

More questions:
Do you write to meet the standards of the market, or do you just go with your heart and hope someone gives your work a chance?

How do you think the book industry fares in terms of accepting original material, and are changes to the market and how consumers are choosing their titles affecting that? Is it better or worse than the music and film industries, or on par?

Comments

[niniane]

I think that there is something to be said for large publishers, but I 100% agree that they're motivated by dollar figures. (Which makes sense, they are businesses!) If something is seen as both good and commercial, they'll publish it. But if they think that your story has too small of a market (true for a lot of genres/novels/whatever), they won't touch you. It's a rational business decision, even if it does leave out some otherwise good stories.

I do think that you can carve out a niche through indies, although it's hard to do, and probably relies as much upon business sense/marketing as it does through good writing ability. (I think that both are probably rather necessary to create a successful indie book.) I've seen a few good posts on how authors have managed, but probably even they got lucky!

[analect]

Definitely, it's a business - it has to be a business/marketing thing for indie authors too, which is why I'm such a supporter of small presses and their role in bringing niche or non-mainstream authors to readers' attention. It's nice not to have to go it completely independently. ;)

Interestingly, I notice in this month's Kindle Direct Publishing newsletter that, for the first time, a self-published author, John Locke, has sold over a million Kindle ebooks. Naturally, he's now put out a book all about how he did it(TM). Still, probably worth looking at for those going down said route, who have time and money to fling at promo and marketing. (Gawd, I sound grumpy. Off back under my rock with my codeine.)

[niniane]

Yeah, indie authors who hope to sell/have anyone read them do need to think of it as a business as far as pricing/marketing/everything else. (And those who do well succeed on that as much as on their writing, I suspect.)

I definitely think that there are a lot of advantages to small presses - both in their ability to bring niche products to market and they do pay a lot better for the author. (I mean, I couldn't imagine someone making 30-70% on their books anywhere other than in ePublishing.)

I think that niche works for some, not for others. There are pros and cons to any type of publishing. ePublishing will probably never quite have the cache of a publishing house picking you up (unless you sell millions of copies, which is unlikely). You do have to be super careful about editing/marketing/everything else (which would be handled for you in a mainstream publishing house - admittedly not all that well, but you get something.) I mean, no matter how you look at it, there's a certain amount of skill in the author and luck...but the risk and reward ratios break down somewhat differently. *shrugs*

I'm not even sure that you need all that much money to fling into marketing. But I do think that you have to be very social media savvy, and to have an idea that in some way "stands out". That's hard to do! (I mean, think about all the fairly good stories that are totally neglected on ffnet. What makes something popular? I still honestly don't know to be completely honest.)