Ultra-prolific indie author Dean Wesley Smith, he of Pulp Speed fame, tells the story of every debut tradpub novel you see advertised in Locus or Publishers Weekly.
Here is the story…
— Author spent years wanting to be a writer.
— Author rewrote that “special snowflake novel,” following all guidelines, to agent’s and editor’s requests, taking years of time.
— Author ignores all warnings because they want to be taken care of by an editor and their cherished agent. Author has no belief in their own work.
— Author signed an all-rights contract for the life of the copyright, selling everything to do with the book with no chance of getting it back. The author celebrated the signing as if it was a good thing.
— Author a year or more later is excited that the book is coming out. Does launch parties or other such foolishness, all for the ego of showing friends and family it was worth it.
— A year later, since the sales were flat as all are in this new world, author can’t sell another book. Agent will no longer answer author’s phone calls. Author gets bitter and goes and does something else with their life.
There are a few side-roads to this. The author might have signed a two-book deal. Add a year before the large crash. The author might actually get, for even less money, two more books. Rare. Add another year or two to the torture.
And even more rare, sadly, do I see these young writers emerging from that grind and turning to indie.
I am seeing a ton of long-term bestselling authors with anywhere from 25 to 75 traditional novels, turning indie. They were either dropped or are fed up with the treatment. They are flocking to indie.
But those new writers are lost. Their dreams of having a book “published” and getting the fairy dust of honor from a traditional publishing turned out to be fools gold. Having a dream slowly crushed like that is almost impossible to recover from.
So every day I hear a young writer’s dream of traditional publishing, or I see hundreds of ads in magazines of new writer’s books, and I just have this sense of immense sadness for the writers.
There is no longer a career path into publishing using the old tin cup method of begging to publishers. You might beat the odds and get in the door, but you will soon be gone.
Career writers now are indie writers. We have accepted the control. In fact, we cherish it and the thought of anyone taking care of us is appalling.
But that is a matter of perspective. If your dream is to be taken care of by traditional publishing and having an agent, nothing I will be able to say will change that.
But I will see your name, your book, and feel sorry for you.
But I will say nothing to you.
After all, it is your dream.
Until quite recently I was always shocked when aspiring authors told me they planned to submit their novels to traditional publishers–especially now that even publishing industry insiders are admitting that Amazon and indie authors have sent the Big Five trad publishers into a death spiral.
But now I understand that most new authors–like most people in general–don’t base their decisions on facts and logic. The hopeful young writer who toils for years on the tradpub rejection carousel trying to land an agent and sell to an editor in New York does so not because the evidence shows it’s the best path to a career. He endures such futile drudgery because it reinforces an identity.
Authors tend to be introverted and insecure. Many of them believe that getting anointed by a bunch of strangers in some Manhattan office entitles them to embrace a new and superior self-concept: that of the Published Author™.
No amount of rational argument will sway those who dream of attaining Published Author™ status from their Quixotic goal. You may as well try to argue a Billy Joel fan out of liking “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. He doesn’t like the song primarily out of any artistic merit. He likes it because he’s a Billy Joel Fan.
Likewise, most aspiring authors are aspiring Published Authors™. It doesn’t matter that even if they beat the increasingly long odds and get published by a traditional house they’ll earn 1/6 indie royalties. It doesn’t matter that their artistic impulses will be chained to the whims of trend-chasing editors. It doesn’t even matter that they’re as likely as not to never have another book published after the first.
No. The fact is that most aspiring authors don’t want successful writing careers. Their identities are invested in the dream of becoming Published Authors™–even if that dream will crush them.
There was a time when I pursued traditional publication. But my blessing and my curse is that I’m one of those oddballs who’s convinced by dialectic. Successful indies like Dean, Hugh Howie, and Joe Konrath provided the data that set me on the self-publishing path.
Now I have four books out within a time frame when most tradpub authors have only released two. My first book has earned more money than most new tradpub authors will ever see from theirs, and my work has received major award nominations and one win–all in two years.
None of it would’ve been possible without the real driving force behind publishing: the readers. They are who aspiring authors should strive to please.
Sadly, Dean is right as usual. It’s a bad idea to wake sleepwalkers. There’s no need, anyway. They’ll get a rude awakening within the next few years when tradpub as we know it collapses.
Meanwhile, I’ll be reaching and entertaining readers with my award-winning books, and releasing new ones.
