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| "I don't like that guy, Davey. He's not telling us what we want to hear." |
Louis Shalako
When Smashwords founder Mark Coker stands up in
front of yet another convention packed with wannabes and speaks about viral
catalysts, what is he really talking about?
What does he want?
What is he telling you to do?
What he wants is for you to spend $500.00 on a book
cover. What he wants is for you to spend $2000.00 on a ‘professional’ editor.
What he wants is for you to spend $425.00 on a Kirkus five-star review. What he
wants is for you to do the million-blog tour.
He wants to see enthusiasm. The more mindless that
enthusiasm, the better.
Enthusiasm is the opposite of critical thinking.
He wants you to put everything you got into it. The
odds of you becoming a bestseller are miniscule.
Your costs are not his
costs—but he gets a dime for every book you sell through his platform.
He cheerfully admits that Smashwords and other
digital, do-it-yourself vanity publishing platforms have enabled millions of
‘horrible’ books to enter the marketplace. And that’s okay with him.
I don’t even really care either. Your books aren’t
going anywhere. You’re the only one that doesn’t see it.
While ninety-nine percent of book buyers might go away
satisfied with their purchase, it’s pretty obvious ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine
percent of Smashwords authors will eventually go away disappointed too, and I
reckon they’ll be walking a bit funny when they do.
It’s a very exploitive business model, and it’s not too
hard to predict that at some point in the future, there will be a reaction.
There’s going to be some pushback.
This is just the thin end of the wedge.
All the optimism, all the talk of ‘control’ in digital
publishing is a crock of
shit.
In a previous blog post, I noted that all of my titles
appeared on txtr, while there were quite a few missing on OverDrive. I
contacted SW staff. Marcus V reshipped all of those titles and they appeared
back on the OverDrive website. A mere matter of weeks later, I could not help
but note that two-thirds of my titles were unaccountably missing from txtr.
How in the hell did that happen, Mister Coker? When SW
staff asked me to provide links to the missing titles I asked them how often I
could reasonably be expected to do that. The lady refused to answer the
question. I’ll be damned if I can go back once a week to every stinking distribution channel, check to see what books
have mysteriously gone missing, and spend a half hour for each pen-name, each
platform, and provide SW with those links on the off chance that the titles
won’t just disappear again within a week.
What that means is that we are now on our own.
What
is professional editing?
Professional editing is when you pay someone two bucks
a page and they go through your book, mark it up with red ink and send it back
to you. The most substantive editing is content editing. This is also the most
expensive editing.
I’m not denying that most writers need and use
editors.
Unfortunately my skills are such that finding an
editor that is actually better than me is virtually impossible. After twenty
years on an Ontario Disability Support Program pension, there is just no way
that I can afford thirty-five bucks, or fifty bucks, or a hundred bucks for a
book cover. I have a hundred and fourteen titles and five pen names.
I don't have any money.
Mr. Coker is essentially telling me that I write too
fast. He’s telling me to slow down. He’s saying he’s not going to make any
money off me if I don’t sink more money, a lot more money, into the product
displayed in his store.
At fifty bucks a cover, that would be $5,700.00 in
covers alone.
It took five years to make my first thousand dollars
from this industry. With a bit of luck, the way things are going, I will be
very fortunate to make $1,000.00 this year. It is true the bulk of that will
come from Smashwords, as passive discoverability, (remember all those viral
catalysts?) absolutely does not work on certain other platforms. This is
especially true of Amazon, who play all kinds of dirty little tricks to get
exclusivity, who are constantly price-matching, and quite frankly Amazon is the
biggest crock of shit in this entire marketplace.
At least they have the grace to keep their mouth shut.
There are an estimated thirty million books listed on
Amazon, the vast bulk of them either unremarkable or downright horrible. No
matter how good (or bad) a book might be, it’s not going to be passively
discovered there and everybody knows it.
Everybody knows it and that’s why they sign up for
Kindle Select, that’s why they blog and spam, that’s why they pay for reviews
and that’s why they’re always clubbing together and giving each other as many
five-star reviews as they can generate. That’s why they load up the front of
their books with crock of shit blurbs, written by crock of shit folks who
haven’t even read the crock of shit book…fifty five star reviews written by
their friends and relatives before the book ever comes out.
They make a science
of lying to and misleading prospective readers.
There is nothing fair or even reasonable about this
industry. Bad books end up on the New York Times list all the time. I’ve read
many of them.
The editing for content is shit in some of those
books. I’m talking authors like Robert Ludlum, Jack Higgins and Clive Cussler.
Some of that editing for content is shockingly bad, and in the case of Cussler,
the dialogue stinks much of the time. If Dirk Pitt ties a rope on his ass and
plunges into one more God-damned underground river while Al Giordino stands there with
a thumb up his ass telling all who will listen that Dirk is the bravest and
luckiest and smartest and sexiest man alive, I think I am going to puke.
My books meet or exceed all industry standards in
terms of editing and proofreading. One of the reasons for that is because this
industry is a cash cow that has never been seriously challenged in the past.
It’s also not very good sometimes.
The other thing is that I have the skill, a skill
acquired over thirty-one years, and I take the time. This is no guarantee of
success, in fact the opposite seems to be true.
I am quite frankly shocked by the number of people who
can’t spell, can’t write, or simply can’t be bothered to turn on grammar check.
They spend four or five grand on some shit book that is supposed to make them
some money. They set the price at $0.99 on Amazon, where it is going to take a
hell of a long time, at a royalty of $0.35 per copy, to cover your costs. They
still think they have a right to succeed as authors. Why, just look at all the
money those bourgeois crocks of shit have spent on their books. For every
thousand you spend on your book, you will have to sell two thousand eight
hundred and fifty-seven copies just to make the costs back. How many people on
Amazon or any other platform do you think sell anywhere near three thousand
books? How long do you think it takes for them to do that?
They wouldn’t do that if they didn’t have certain
expectations—expectations that they feel are reasonable. If that isn’t a sense
of entitlement, I would sure like to know what is. The fact that you spent
money on it doesn’t make it a good book, and it doesn’t make you a good writer.
It is pure vanity much of the time.
The sooner you get out of the business, the better it will
be for you, and quite frankly, the better it will be for readers, and the rest
of us who genuinely must be writers, which, under some circumstances, is a fate
worse than death.
Trust me on that one.
I'm in a position to know, which is more than can be said for the professional cheerleaders.
END
