This is a long one today, but I'm feeling prolific. 

I've been thinking quite a bit lately about my goals for my writing career.  The most immediate goal is, of course, to finish writing the novel and perfect it to what I consider a publishable quality.  I’ve been making significant progress on this one, and I think I’m still on track to meet my self-imposed deadline of the end of March.  But once that’s done, I need to decide where I want to go, and what I want to do with it.

I’ve been doing a lot of research into the publishing industry, trying to decide what’s going to be best for my own growth and development, and what makes the most sense in the digital age.  Last summer, I wrote a little about the changes occurring in publishing.  Since that time, I’ve read a lot more on the subject, so I thought I’d share what I’ve learned so far.

Traditional Publishing
When most people think of books, they think of the big publishing houses.  Traditional publishing essentially works like this.

1. Write the Novel: Author locks herself away in a remote cabin somewhere and writes a novel.
2. Get an Agent: Once complete, Author sends out query letters to agents, hoping to find someone to represent the novel and take it to the publishers.  (Query letters include information about the author, a one-paragraph description of the novel, and some other basic information.)  Based on the query letter, the agent will decide if they want to request pages and find out more.  Most agents request anywhere from 1 - 50 pages initially.  If they still like it, they'll ask for a full manuscript.  If they still like it after that, they'll offer representation.  Finding an agent can take months, even years, and perhaps dozens of queries.
3. Get a Publisher: Agent takes the manuscript and shops it around to the publishers.  Why the middle-man?  Publishers usually won't look at 'unsolicited' manuscripts submitted directly by the unknown author.  Why?  Because most of those manuscripts aren't ready for publication and the agent acts as a first screening process.  Plus the agent will know which publishing houses are looking for new authors, represent the genre or similar works, and they have the right connections to get the manuscript in front of the right people.  This process again can take several months or even years.  When Publisher makes an offer, Agent reviews the contract and negotiates the deal for Author, so that Author can, for the most part, continue to write uninterrupted.
4. Publish Books: Once a contract is signed with Publisher, Publisher takes control of the manuscript.  They'll have an editor go through and make additional revisions.  They take care of the cover art, formatting, and printing of the manuscript.  They develop a marketing plan and set up the distribution networks to get the book in stores, on shelves, and nowadays, online.  For the most part, they take care of everything for Author, allowing Author to focus on writing.  By the time the first novel is launched, the second novel should be finished and in production.  Meanwhile, Agent is making sure that the money is taken care of, the accounting is accurate, and everyone is being paid their appropriate share.

Clearly, Traditional Publishing takes a long time and requires jumping through a lot of hoops.  There are some nice benefits to it, though.  Number one, only your best work can make it through that grueling process.  It also allows the writer to do what they do best -- write.  But in this scenario, Author loses a lot of control, and a lot of the profit as well.  On top of that, in today's market, Authors are being asked to do most of their own marketing themselves, and Agents/Editors often want to see that Author has an audience before the book is published.

Self-Publishing
Unless the manuscript is going to sit in a desk-drawer somewhere and crumble into dust, the alternative to Traditional Publishing is to self-publish.  There's a certain stigma to self-publishing, in part because a large majority of self-published books aren't very well written, and in part because it sort of seems like cheating.  Plus, it's hard to sell books as a self-published author because you don't have the connections and distribution networks like the big guys.  In the past, I think a lot of people’s approach self-publishing like this:

1. Write the Novel: Author locks herself away in a remote cabin somewhere and writes a novel
2. Publish Books:  Author finished the novel, and decides to skip the whole Traditional Publishing thing.  She doesn't worry about getting it edited or reviewed, except maybe by Family Member A; it's clearly perfect.  E-Publishing is the new-hotness, so Author, maybe with the help of a technical person, publishes the book as a Kindle or Nook (name your favorite e-reading format).  Yay!  It's published!

Okay, so I'm being a little snarky, but this does seem to be the way many authors have approached self-publishing.  Can't get it published traditionally?  No worries.  Send it out into the ether and it will prove them all wrong.  Instant gratification.

But there is a better way to approach Self-Publishing, that can be worthwhile and still produce a high-quality novel.  It goes like this:

1. Write the Novel: Author writes a novel, but not in isolation, instead connecting with other writers and readers and developing relationships with people interested in similar topics.  They’re called Friends and Colleagues
2. Get Feedback:  Author asks for feedback from Friends and Colleagues, perhaps participating in a critique group.  Ideally, the group of readers should be diverse, including one or two family members (for positive support) but mostly independent readers that don’t have to worry as much about negative reactions.  Some reviewers should be writers themselves, and subject-matter experts are good readers to make sure the facts hold up (e.g. if the novel is science fiction, the science should be based on the actual laws of physics, so it would be helpful to have a scientist review it).
3. Get Help: Author is probably good at writing, but probably not so good at the technical stuff or artwork.  Whatever Author isn’t good at, needs to be outsourced.  However, the Author needs to be the director of the show, making sure that all aspects of the project are completed to a high standard.  What should be considered?  Editing, cover art, website, digital formatting, etc.  
4. Develop a Marketing Plan: Author needs to be in charge of marketing and promoting the novel.  Hiring an expert, in this case, is probably too expensive, though it could be done.  She needs to be a Businessperson.
5. Publish Books: Author needs to choose the best publishing options for their audience.  Digital is probably the easiest and cheapest format, but there are also print-on-demand services, or Author could even choose to print an entire run of books and store them somewhere.  This also ties in to the marketing plan, since if you’re going to print books, you need to have outlets to sell them.
6. Reevaluate Marketing Plan: Since Author is in charge, Author needs to stay vigilant and make tweaks or changes to increase the sales.  There are a lot of variables that can be messed with, everything from price, to promotions, to guest blogging to freebies.  Author is now also Salesman.
7. Stay Connected: Throughout the entire process, Author needs to stay connected and keep developing Friends and Colleagues, and building an Audience.
8. Keep Writing:  While all this is going on, you ALSO have to keep writing, produce the next novel and keep everything moving. 

Quite a few more steps, huh?  Successful self-publishing is a lot of work, and requires the development of a broad, cross-functional skillset.  You can’t just be a writer, you have to be a businessperson, salesperson, director of marketing, project manager, and possibly a website designer or artist as well.  However, there are definite benefits in all that work.  If done correctly, and if the book is good, an author can make a good living in self-publishing, perhaps as good as, or better than with a Traditional Publisher.

So which is better?  I don’t know.  I don’t think there’s an answer to that.  I think there will always be room for Traditional Publishing, because some authors are happy to give up control if it means they don’t have to do anything but write.  But by the same token, I think there’s a broad and expanding market for self-publication, for those authors willing to put in the time and effort to develop the necessary skills and make it work.  And the authors that don't put the time in, will be weeded out by the market

Before I sign off on this ridiculously long post, I wanted to throw out a couple of links for the blogs that have helped me understand the publishing market.

Dan Blank has a fantastic blog (We Grow Media) about digital media with a focus toward the writer.  He’s also offering a course that I’m considering taking called “Build Your Author Platform”.  It’s a bit pricey, which is why I haven’t signed up already, but I took an hour long webinar that gave the overview, and it sounded really fantastic.  If you’re interested in learning more about digital and social media, check him out.

Jane Friedman is another blogger that I follow religiously.  She’s also focused on the publishing industry, with an eye toward the use of social media.  One of her recent posts described how the digital generation is shaping publishing and, really, consumer expectations in general.

A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing is one that I just started following a few days ago, but has some great information.

Finally, Pub Rants, written by literary agent Kristen Nelson, is a fantastic resource to learn more about traditional publishing.

The Laws of the World

World-building is an integral part of any good work of fiction.  It is the author's job to make the world feel real, so that the reader can live in it for the period of time that they're reading the work.

"But realistic settings constructed from memory or research are only part of the challenge, for an intensely created fantasy world makes new boundaries for the mind...Obviously this does not absolve the writer from the necessity of giving outer space its own characteristics, atmosphere, and logic.  If anything, these must be more intensely realized within the fiction, since we have less to borrow from in our own experience." 

 ~ Writing Fiction, by Janet Burroway

Much of world-building is done in the head of the writer through research and planning prior to the actual writing of the story.  The author always knows more about the novel than the words that end up written on the page, especially in science fiction or fantasy.  Meanwhile, the reader needs to feel part of the written world without being overwhelmed with information dumped all at once. 

Benjamin Tate, author of Well of Sorrows (which I'm currently reading), posted not too long ago on Magical Words, saying that,

"The main goal...is to let the reader settle into the world and live in it without the world itself becoming overwhelming. Make the world familiar enough and expose the differences from our world in slow and steady stages, and the reader won’t even notice that they’ve snuggled deeper into their chair and are turning the pages that much faster."

I bring this topic up now because of my summer writing class.  We were required to submit a final piece, either a complete short story or the first chapter to a novel.  During the last two classes, we critiqued each other's work.  My final short story was set in the world of my novel, but occurred approximately sixty years prior.  Ironically, the short story's protagonist is the antagonist of the novel: Sarah, the current werewolf pack leader.  In any case, one of the primary criticisms was that I hadn't provided enough information about the rules of my fictional world. 

My goal had been to follow Benjamin's advice.  I wanted the reader to slowly become aware that the story was about a single battle in a werewolf war.  I tried introduce the rules of the world more or less evenly over the ~5,000 words of the story.  Unfortunately, by the end the readers still didn't have enough information to fully understand what was going on or feel satisfied with the conclusion.  My classmates asked about the identity of the werewolf pack, the reason for the war, and why the protagonist was so brutal.  We ended up talking about my world more than the story itself, which was fine by me since I had so much information to share.

Nearly everyone in the class thought that my short story was part of a longer work.  In a way, I suppose it was.  It was a piece of back-story for my novel.  But it made me realize that world-building is a balancing act.  You need to bring the reader into the world slowly and carefully, but you also have to give them enough to chew on or you'll lose them.  Every word, every sentence, needs to function on multiple levels to keep the reader interested, entertained, and ultimately satisfied.  If you don't give them enough, they feel incomplete, but give them too much and they'll either be overwhelmed or feel patronized.  The sweet spot is hard to find.

Now that I'm beginning the revision process for my novel, I'm reading with an eye for the "reality" of the world.  I've already noticed spots where I've given an information dump, or areas that need more description.  Revision is a wonderful thing.

Lost

I've been thinking a lot recently about how you make a connection with your audience.  It started with a conversation about Lost.  I started out really liking the series, but eventually lost the connection with the story and the characters.  Meanwhile, Adam loves Lost.  He was very upset when I tired of it because it meant he had to find time to watch the show alone.  (His brother has been coerced into watching the series finale here at our house so that he can share it "with someone who will appreciate it"). 

But what was it that Lost me?  (Sorry, bad pun intended.)  The plot was intelligent, well researched and carefully designed.  The characters were well-developed, each having a distinct back-story.  Each episode was exciting, almost always revealing new information, but never quite answering your questions.  With all it had going for it, why did I fall off the bandwagon?  Better yet, how do I keep from losing my own audience, once I have one?

Magical Words, one of the blogs that I read every day, had a very timely post by a guest blogger, Carrie Ryan.  In it, she describes her theory about how every story has a certain number of credibility points that are spent whenever you ask the reader to suspend their disbelief.  Just by picking up a book, the reader is agreeing to suspend their disbelief, but only to a point.  Certain genres will start out with a higher number of points automatically, because the reader knows that the subject requires it, but the author is still limited to that point value.

I would actually take this a step further, to say that it's not the book or the genre that dictates the point value; rather the reader is granting the author the credibility points.  The reader is participating in the story by suspending their disbelief.  Each reader has a different starting value, but no matter what, once the points are gone, the reader loses interest and puts the book down or the audience stops watching. 

Going back to Lost, guess when I started to lose interest?  It was right around the time the smoke monster made a significant appearance on the island.  My points were spent.


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Novel Word Count: 24,384