Here Be Monsters!

Old maps fascinate me, the elaborately decorated charts and drawings from the sixteenth and seventeenth century when the world, to European explorers, still possessed vast tracts of Terra Incognito and the empty spaces were embellished with fanciful designs and interpretations of fantastic creatures and the monsters of the deep.

Starting out as a published author, launching Iceline on Smashwords back in 2012  felt like heading out with such a chart. There were more gaps on my knowledge than anything as travelled a learning curve so steep it felt like the ascent of a rock face.

Little has changed, the curve is still steep and the landscape like the old maps appears to be changing as the blanks are filled in: and the monsters?

They are there, the slick marketeers and professional twisters eager to sell their version of your dream - where you do all the work and are relieved of hundreds or thousands of pounds/dollars for the privilege of seeing your book published.

Indies Unlimited's, March Madness continues and a couple of days ago RJ Crayton ponders why, despite the bad publicity writers still fall for the Vanities and authors cheerfully sing their praises, and comes up with an interesting answer; Stockholm Syndrome. Authors believe publishing a book is an expensive process, so the exorbitant fees are expected, what she finds puzzling is the enthusiasm.

How, why, do we fall for the same old story? The smooth patter, the glossy brochure and the baggage that goes with it? In the traditional publishing world, the publisher speaks with unquestioned authority.

The Traditional publishers never describe themselves as traditional, and the vanities never use the V word in describing their publishing activities. Both are simply identified as publishers, so they apparently 'speak' with the same authority.

Authority requires obedience, often unquestioning; do they actually get it?

Signing up with a publisher puts you on their side, and the subtle threads of authority and obedience tie the two parties together with a requirement to toe the line. The higher the cost the more compliant or enthusiastic the author may become; up to a point!

The point is not fixed, the tipping point varies from person to person and the circumstances of the arrangement, a relationship explored in the 1963 at Yale University by Stanley Milgram. The result of his experiments helped develop his Agency Theory regarding behaviour in a social situation. With the modifications on the original parameters (636 partiicipants in 18 variation studies) he identified different reactions and conditions of compliance.

The degree of obedience is supported by the moral or legal legitimacy of the authority figure, and many aspects of  our upbringing support this compliance; perhaps this suggests an explanation why authors taken by the Vanity Press enthuse about their situation when the overwhelming data suggests it's not a good place to be.

This may be a form of dissonance reduction, where the product continues to be sold after the purchase is made and the customer, (a favourite reference among the Vanities) sees the other brands which may be as good or even better. The sales patter continues to reinforce the original action and affirm the buyers choice, confirming the wisdom of their decision. Their enthusiastic support for the Vanity Press helps to support this belief and turning against this level of pressure calls for real courage, to admit that a costly mistake has been made does not come easy.

Writing involves everything, the head and the heart working as allies. The process comes out of the head, but the passion and the drive is from the heart and there lies the strength and the weakness.

No one wants to see the thing they have nurtured, cherished and loved bashed around and knocked up in the harsh world outside our imagination and we know that the route to publication can be a difficult one, almost impossible - I said almost - without the backing of the publishing house in not too distant past.

The changing landscape means that the ancient stranglehold is slowly being weakened and more routes to publication are available than have ever been possible. The landscape is changing rapidly but how the author is seen changes more slowly.

The stigma of the self-published author as lesser being is fading, not as quickly as it should, and a trawl of the Internet reveals literary greats who originally self-published, but the image has been tarnished beyond measure by the Vanity Press, a business model designed to produce a book at the author's expense and the company's benefit.

The reasons they succeed are complex, as involved as the personality and character of the people they target, and that is exactly what we are, targets. Everything about the market is designed to catch you out, sneak under your radar and suddenly they have you, caught on the hook and like an expert fisherman they know how to play you, and play you they will, for ever penny/cent they can, so what is the best protection?

Imagination, the power of the mind you used to write your story, use it to work out the angles of the deal you are being offered, if it sounds too good to be true, tell yourself that it is, and look at it closely. You may be a single click away from a shedload of trouble!

The available resources are the greatest limitation to any course of action. Working with the traditional/trade publishers doesn't cost the writer, your obvious talent has been recognised, snapped up and acknowledged and the cost to you is minimal. the publisher puts their money into the project.

Without the backing of a traditional or the burden of a vanity publisher; how close to that figure can we get?

What's the connection?

Cheekyseagull: I've been pondering the title for a couple of weeks, thinking if I should look at it from a different angle. This is not the title you would expect to find promoting ebooks and digital publishing.

A lot of writers have their name and, or the title of their books, or series of books in the website name. I have come across some really eye catching titles and headers across the web and the best of luck to all of you.

Cheeky seagull is a name with personal connections, and the idea of it generally puts me in a positive frame of mind. I owned the domain name and cheekyseagull email some time before Iceline was published and I chose to launch myself on to the Internet as an independent author who self publishes.

The first domain name was cheekyseagull.net, and the name is still active, pointing towards .co.uk, and when .uk became available in mid 2014 I took up the option and that points to .co.uk. so  cheekyseagull followed by .net .co.uk or .uk will land you on the site. Taking all that into consideration you might think that now is not the moment to have second thoughts.

It's not about second thoughts, but perception, am I really comfortable with it: yes, but what about the connection between seabirds and publishing? They may seem strange bedfellows and yet familiarity has made such connections seem natural.

The short stiff with the white shirt and the black tux is already familiar, so why not a cheeky seagull chasing the action?

P-P-Pick up a Grange story from the cheekyseagull and let's see this bird fly.

Sony reader store to close

A post at the Smashwords blog unfolds the details of Sony's announcement to close the Sony Reader store in the US and Canada. Purchasers of Smashwords distributed books should follow the links http://www.kobo.com/sony and  http://blog.sony.com/2014/02/the-future-of-reader-store/ for information on how to migrate their Sony Purchasers to Kobo.

However large or small the market share of the Sony reader store it was valuable, it gave a choice, a dash of variety to a world that seems bent on channelling everyone down the same route and crowding everyone inside the same store, be it bricks and mortar or digital. It was an essential part of the ebook publishing revolution, an early player in the field for ereaders and ebooks and had its part in bringing authors like myself to a wider audience in the partnership with Smashwords. Sony was there before Amazon and the Kindle but couldn't keep up with the competition. In the relentless struggle of Store Wars there will be those who fall, and others who build on the foundation that they set in place. The ebook revolution is changing the way we read and the way we access that reading, and Sony's contribution to that shift should be noted.

There have always been independent authors and publishers, what was massively underestimated was the number looking for a way to be heard. Sony, and Smashwords played a part in that. The closure of the store will mean the end of a partnership, but the story goes on. The indie author is here to stay, working alongside the traditional author and publisher, but doing things their way and long may that be so.

A few months ago I posted a question; who`s the hero? In the rapidly changing environment of publishing the heroes and villains of the ebook revolution have yet to be determined, though we all have our own. Whatever your choice may be a new country needs its pioneers and that will be Sony's contribution to the ebook and the ereader: pioneers. Thank you.

Early one morning just as...

Word count, download count, sales figures, for a business that is about words and sentences there are a lot of numbers involved, all useful and interesting, and a bit frustrating sometimes. the interesting bit comes along when you write, post and tucked away behind the website store-front a page view chart spikes. The obvious question is why did that happen, and then the wondering about what it was, if anything that I did perhaps created the spike. The grey porridge inside the head starts to move sluggishly around groping myopically around the corners of an unused attic space where all that information you haven't used since the family stopped playing you at Trivial Pursuit, and occasionally handed your team the edge in the Pub quiz is stashed away. The stuff that stops a conversation the way a field gun stops an elephant
You know the feeling, the bit you're looking for is there and it's brilliant, but you can't pull it out. It has everything a blog piece could want, charm, wit, intellect, and in a thoughtful way provocative - like I said, brilliant. In the end you lose interest and drift off across the internet and the post is forgotten, until you wake up in the middle of the night and try to scribble something down - and the story of the writer who had a notebook beside his bed for just such an occasion and woke up one night with a fantastic plot buzzing in his head, switched on the light; grabbed the notebook and pen and scribbled the idea down. Content that the genius was caught on paper he dropped back on to the bed and was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

Next morning he woke up and checked the notebook; the plot was there, but somehow it lost the magic of the early hours - it read simply Boy Meets Girl!

That is so frustrating!!!

Worth a look at - reposted from Smashwords blog

An interesting review of the last twelve months from Mark Coker founder and inspiration behind Smashwords, a lot of  thought provoking stuff in there on how he sees independent publishing developing, and the value of the potential in the writer. Have a look for yourself;

Smashwords: Smashwords Year in Review 2012 - The Power in Publishing is Shifting to Authors
reposted from Smashwords.blog

Our authors know that every writer – every one of us – is special, and those who doubt this truth will become the dinosaurs of tomorrow.  You can’t truly honor the culture of books without honoring the writers who create them.  You can’t truly honor the value of books if you measure their value by perceived commercial merit alone.  You either value the human potential of all writers, or none at all.
Mark Coker CEO and founder of Smashwords.


I am biased, I am a Smashwords distributed Indie Author; you probably guessed that already.