Heard it before

It came as an email, and the first glance and first reading sounded good.  An interest in "The Obedience of Fools," and invited  me to submit the work to a... competition!

 Hey Martyn Taylor,

Just when you thought it was safe...

It was a sequel to Jaws, the not entirely originally titled Jaws 2, but it had the tag "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water..." A classic line from Peter Benchley.

After sifting through the Bowker review of publishing trends, 2010 to 2015 and seeing the hit the Vanity press had taken, a hit so hard that Penguin Random House ditched Author Solutions at the beginning of 2016, and the declining numbers of authors buying their product I should have known there would be something lurking around the corner. Just when you thought...

I had that feeling when I clicked on David Gaughran's blog and started reading, he is running through the latest money scamming idea from the dodgy end of publishing, Vanity Publishers pretending to be legitimate trade publishers and hiding their true colours until the author has taken the hook, been played on the line and finally reeled in.

Just go to David's blog and read it here.

I'll let David tell the story, my job tonight is merely to pass it on, at David's request!

My Precious

David Gaughran posted a piece about the current state of the publishing industry and its attitude towards books and publication. Read it, go, read it, and then come back here. I have my own two pennorth to throw into the ring.

David is known for his advocacy of the cause against Vanity presses and the links between the scammers and the so-called reputable industry. His earlier blog posts are worth looking at regarding the Penguin Random House relationship with Author Solutions, and others.

New Kid on the Block?

The newbie author entering the world of writing and publishing must feel like the new kid who's just arrived at a new school half way through the term, All around are people who know people,,cliques of friends and shared interests. Unlimited agendas, some up front and in your face, others tucked away hiding like dark secrets, revealed only by the results of action, never spoken.

A bewildering array assaulting the senses, and somehow, somewhere, the newbie has to start establishing themselves in the midst of this apparent chaos. Chaos it is, the dynamics of the relationships are spinning beyond the newbies reach, then after a few tentative steps the first contact is made.

Saint or Skimmer?

Every good story has a villain, the fouler and blacker the better, for a dramatic narrative, and the easier it is to identify the black hats the better, it helps the story unfold and the underlying moral to be revealed through the words and action.

In the not too distant past the giants of publishing held sway over the road to print and the way forward lay through the Gatekeepers of tradition, the literary agent.

Theirs was the only way and any other option was left to the desperate and deranged. That somehow failing to acquire the support of a traditional outlet was to be deemed unworthy, or sub standard.

There are frequent comments made about the changing landscape of modern publishing, primarily brought about by the revolution in self-publishing made possible by the spread of the Internet and the ebook. A landscape changing so quickly it has led to partnerships and alliances that would have been unheard of fifteen, or even ten years.

From the apparently lofty heights of traditional publishing some great names have plunged into the mire of the Vanity press. David Gaughran has explored this on a number of his blogs, and the word of caution to all who seek to put their words out into the great wide literary world is buyer beware. The saints are found among those who will skim the money from your bank account to maintain their business model. If I may quote David from the linked blog; "it’s much harder to tell the scammers from the legitimate organizations when they are owned by the same people. (emphasis is mine).

Penguin Random House are widely known as the owner of Author Solutions, (the footer on the Author Solutions webpage bears the stamp "Author Solutions, A Penguin Random House Company) who have acquired the role of black caped villainy in the self publishing world, and with some justification. Lynne Cantwell left a comment on the post "Weathering the storms" ; the new class-action suit against Author Solutions was filed in U.S. District Court in southern Indiana, where Author Solutions is located. The complaint is harrowing reading. The two named plaintiffs are both elderly, and they both gave these scammers thousands of dollars to "promote" their books. The complaint can be downloaded and is worth reading. The best cautionary tale is often the one heard first, or as close to first hand as is humanly possible.

Goskan Solotaroff describe Author Solutions as "more like a telemarketing company whose customer base is the Authors themselves." Where a traditional publisher makes money for its authors;  Author Solutions make their money by selling books back to the Authors, (not publishing to a general readership,) and expensive publishing, editing, and marketing services (“Services”) that are effectively worthless.

Author Solutions is the tip of a very large iceberg with their US based imprints, 

AuthorHouse'

Trafford Publihsing

iUniverse

Wordclay

and XLibris.

International imprints;

Authorhouse UK

Palibrio; 

and the UK, Australia and New Zealand imprints of XLibris

International partnerships with 

Balboa Press AU;

Partridge, Africa, India and Singapore (Partridge is a Penguin Group Author Solutions development since the takeover by Penguin in 2012 - so any ideas that Penguin's acquisition would clean up the stables were  ill founded, they simply added to the pile)

The links between the big publishers and Author Solutions are there in open view; Simon & Schuster's self-publishing arm, Archway Publishing, declares from the head of the page "Operated by Author Solutions."

There is more to come, the information is out there, and it may take some finding, but the due diligence is worth the effort, and the question. The Question! How, why, do we still manage to fall for the patter and the slick marketing.

David Gaughran sums it up beautifully, he asks can you remember when you were new to all this, how naive, and badly you wanted your book published, and every avenue towards that goal seemed impossible. 

When you feel that everything is working against you, you start to get desperate, crazy, and on top of all that - you don't know who the good guys are anymore!

Don't tread on my dreams!

"He wishes for the cloths of heaven" by W.B. Yeats describes how the plaintiff desiring to gift the glories and splendour of the skies has nothing to offer but dreams, and laying them out asks for care lest they be trampled under foot.

Yeats' writes of love, but how does it feels as a writer; clutching the completed manuscript, edited and proofed, and searching for the agent or publisher who will lift it and send it soaring into the wider world?

Dreams indeed and for some the trampled shards remain. This month, Indies Unlimited are featuring those who who have a story to share about the pitfalls of publishing. The first post by Lynn Cantwell "Fouled Part1: Taking on Scammy Publishers" reveals how the focus came about, an email from a writer revealed a hole in the coverage and offered the invitation to anyone with a story to tell. Guest posts by David Gaughran, well known for his work in revealing the predatory world of vanity publishing and his ongoing exploration of Author Solutions in particular - a Hydra of classical proportions if ever there was one- and its nefarious alliances. He offers a useful list in "How To Avoid Publishing Predators" joining the traditional with the vanities; comprehensive and illuminating in the connections he highlights.

Offerings by TD McKinnon recall "Surviving The Scammer Minefield"  among the smaller "independent" presses and the consequences of partnership publishing and Sophie Jonas Hill reveals ten ways to prevent being scammed, and speaks from her own experience.

One of the valuable assets of the self-publishing community is the willingness,  the enthusiasm to share the knowledge we have gained on our own journeys. Why, why retread old ground. it's old ground to us, but those who follow are stepping into unknown territory and our insights and knowledge are their map.

If you have a story to tell, check back on Indies Unlimited and see how the month unfolds or share your own story via their contact form.

I've often found the posts on Indies Unlimited useful, entertaining and friendly. Click the links, use them as signposts on your journey, and good luck.

Muddy Waters

Amazon's much discussed letter to authors yesterday morning has received much comment for and against and probably been dissected more thoroughly than decency should permit. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the current situation I personally found the Amazon letter to be a carefully and craftily worded document. RJCrayton makes a valid point that a call to arms should be at the head of a two page document not at the bottom; if the subject doesn't grab the reader they may give up long before the end. The suggestion she makes that writing to authors was targeting the wrong group is interesting, proposing that it should have been aimed at readers.

David Gaughran re-posted a guest post by Ed Robertson from November 2012 his blog. The piece discusses the historical similarities between the arrival of the ebook; the introduction of the paperback at the outbreak of World War II and the curious case of the inflation adjusted price. Making that adjustment a paperback and an ebook cost roughly the same amount. Then came the gradually increasing price of paperbacks over the years and the growth of the conglomerate publisher.

Much of the discussion regarding the price of ebooks runs against the traditional publishers and their efforts to keep the prices high that discourages purchases. Amazon's letter puts the point based on a hypothetical price comparison and projected return from sales. Is the simple truth that being forced into a market grants some influence but really, when you strip everything away the best solution for them is to kill off the ebook and let the world slide back into the old ways of print and...nothing! So any tactic that reduces the popularity of the ebook is a useful one. The big problem; there are so many outlets; digital stores, distribution sites and individual websites providing an outlet for the digital version, and the print copy that any hope to control the situation by either the traditional corporations or Amazon is pointless. They must adapt to survive.

Traditional and Vanity, the establishment who decided what you can read, or the sub-par Vanity published. A market dominated by the big 5 surrounded by the minnows of the small publishers. The situation survived the introduction of the paperback because it was cheaper but still required the infrastructure of the traditional system, physical print and distribution with bricks and mortar sales, warehousing and bookstores.

This time it is different, a new format has arrived; stored as electronic data, portable and requiring no storage facilities, distribution network or bricks and mortar outlet. It isn't destroying the landscape, but changing it dramatically. Seismic shifts and tectonic upheavals are creating a new world and the independent publisher and author, often the same person  has a way of reaching the public unheard of less than twenty years ago.

Old alliances crumble and new ones are created, even with the untouchables of publishing. The big publishers and the Vanities - with Author Solutions topping that list and exploiting the newly forged links to further their activities. Unfortunately the hoped for positive influence of the traditional over the Vanities has failed to appear.

Paperbacks still need printing presses and the technology to put the economically viable short run, and print on demand in the hands of the small publisher and independent author is reality not science fiction! That is the world changing shift that cannot be ignored, and the technology cannot be uninvented!

One degree more...

I briefly touched on the labyrinthine links between vanity presses and the publishing houses dotted around the world and the Internet in Come into my parlour...  and this last week has seen Writer's Digest break their connection with Author Solutions and their own imprint Abbott Press. David Gaughran who has spent considerable blogging time and energy on the Author Solutions situation comments on recent developments. Both sides are being cagey, but as David describes in his blog website links have already been taken down.

A small step in the right direction and veering away by degrees, rather than closing in. There is still a long way to go.

Tread carefully...

The Amazon-Hachette negotiation has occupied a lot of screen space over the last few weeks, pretty much since I started slotting a few bits and pieces together about how you might get your work out to an appreciative public.

The situation regarding the self-publishing arms of the big traditional publishers show them in close formation with the Vanity Presses, and with Author Solutions, owned by Penguin Random House in a pincer movement to grab the best via the traditional path and shuffle the rest towards the shearing sheds of the Vanities.

The door to self publish remains open.Yes; despite every negative thought and dismal sage advice about how many, or few, self-published books sell well; your readers are waiting, but you need to be careful. I've loosely touched on the issues regarding Vanity Press in general; and Author Solutions and its many subsidiaries in particular XLibris. (Xlibris.co.uk is the local branch of this multinational conglomerate) and a couple of days ago I nipped across to David Gaughran's blog Let's Get Visible and his latest piece The Case Against Author Solutions, Part 1 The numbers, looks at the methods and figures involved in the operation of this scammy company and how they saturate the internet with cleverly baited traps to snare the unwary writer. Thankfully, the majority of writers who stumble on the shiny new toy adverts look deeper and see what lurks beneath the surface, but not all. Some go down that road, at their peril and great cost. The way the adverts are designed and located is to catch the writer before they look further and find the many stories with unhappy endings at the hands of this Hydra like company.

I touched on the same point a couple of weeks ago in Come into my parlour... with my variation of the six degrees game, clicking the links and finding Author Solutions long before the count reached six. It was where I found the adverts, pumped out through GoogleAds, and sliding onto the screen with the Oxford English Dictionary and the Gutenberg Project among so many others that seemed unexpected at first, put then the GoogleAds follow their own track. It's the saturation level that is startling, the number of places the ads must be placed to proliferate at this level. David Gaughran explores this too.

The trick is to be very wary, it is a cliche that anything that seems to be too good to be true usually is, yet the independent author has tricks and traits tucked away. Observations picked up by Jim Devitt over at Indies Unlimited earmarking five distinctive traits found in many indie authors, have a look for yourself, and take them to heart, work with your imagination, check where you are in your journey towards publication and see what's around the corner you were going to walk past. Check out a website,, and then look at a handful covering the same area.

I am currently working  on the draft revisions of What You Ask For, as well as completing The Obedience of Fools, and further down the list is putting Iceline into print, and the search is to find a way of doing this without breaking the bank.

Starting with 'book publishing' as the search parameters, as simple as that, and a number of options pop up, some are more helpful than others. A few offer a free quote (this may involve providing an email address, not always) based on the size, the type of book, number of pages, hard or soft cover and the sort of finish you want on the cover. The prices on the quotes can be wildly different but they give an idea of what price you can pass on the book to the customer and calculate your return on the investment.

The precise details vary from printer to printer, depending on whether they put out print run or print on demand. A UK based website that offers print on demand and distribution is FeedARead. A publishing platform funded by Arts Council England where you can sign up and publish for free, have it available to purchase through the site or for a distribution fee make it available elsewhere. Click the link and have a look for yourself; yes, there is a fee involved to cover the administration costs to set up your book for distribution. The end product is a good quality paperback, well made and a match for bookshop quality. FeedARead is available to writers of all nationalities, not just UK based.

Similarly, Completely Novel, is a print on demand service offering a variety of options for the publishing author, well laid out website with a free quote option and a series of reasonably priced packages starting with Free (and able to sell through the Completely Novel website) and monthly subscriptions offering access to distribution on line and through Bricks and Mortar stores. The finished product is good quality, suitable for a bookstore. The benchmark is that degree of product quality and the reader, quite rightly, should expect no less a quality product from the Independent author than any other source.

Shaun Allan over at Flip and Catch is looking at Print On Demand and brings CreateSpace, Lulu, Ingram Spark and Lightning Source to the list. As with FeedAread and Completely Novel each one has its own criteria for accepting a novel and adding it to thei list.

CreateSpace is part of Amazon, offering a Print On Demand platform for authors and content creators in other media and offers distribution through Amazon.com, Amazon Europe, CreateSpace eStore and ebook for Kindle, and working with on-demand printing, means that your book is always available and ready to ship. I am hoping to explore the details offered by the print on demand companies (If you have any information that might be useful why not drop me a line either through the comments box here or through the contact at www,cheekyseagull.co.uk, I would love to hear from you,) then put the comparisons together in one place as an easy reference. That may take a couple of weeks, in the meantime I'll stick with my comparisons with the packages offered by the Vanity Press.

Now and again I'm stuck with the idea that writing the novel is the easiest bit, the words flow out on to the screen, paper or whatever medium you are using, they are shuffled around in the edit and proof-reading, then after final polishing the novel is formatted and published (over-simplified, but you gett the drift). Then comes the marketing, finding places to post and generally get the word out there letting the world know that your latest work is heading their way. Not as much fun as writing, but the hard work can pay off...play with your ideas, use the imagination that created your book and see where it can take you.

Dip your toe into the marketing pool and paddle around...

Competitive edge...

David Gaughran, author of "Let's Get Digital", on the question of discoverability and the reality of competition in the publishing world today. Well worth a look at...
https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/this-is-the-kind-of-competition-publishers-want/

Makes you wonder who really are the bad guys, Amazon may be a colossus astride the world, but is it the evil empire some make it out to be?

Hachette Job...?

A lot of time and effort has been spent over the last week or so discussing the current discussions between Amazon and Hachette with a number of viewpoints being aired, David Gaughran explores the situation on his blog here  from the point of view of the publishing house; Hachette is one of the biggest publishers in the market and Amazon. Mark Coker at Smashwords here considers the impact the outcome may have on independent authors. A main point is the use of the agency model where the publisher sets the price of the book, the model used by Smashwords in agreement with its distribution channels giving the choice of price to the author/publisher.

How Do You Do It?

The basic question for any task, anything that is new and unknown, the knowledge of how to do it is critical, sounds pretty obvious, and it is, but what if the way is confused and deliberately obscured?

This summer, August 18, will be my second anniversary as a published author. That was when Iceline held the front page at Smashwords, Control Escape followed it in the early hours of the following morning.

Finding my way to Smashwords and their distribution system was not straightforward, a chance discovery while searching for a book, and then came the dithering, frequent visits to the site until I took the plunge and signed up. Part of the decision to step into the world of Independent Publishing.

The constantly changing landscape of publishing over the past few years has left old definitions blurred and broken and traps baited with promises and sweet words, tantalising images await the eager and the unwary. 

Now and then I'll pass the time surfing, clicking links to see where they go and what is at the other end, and the results are sometimes intriguing. The link usually travel between sites involved in publishing and writing. 

Traditional publishing is often described as being in a state of chaos, unsettled and in retreat from the battalions of newly liberated authors and publisher advancing across the Internet.

In less than ten years publishing has transformed itself and unlikely alliances have been formed, the oddest bedfellows now snuggle up against the cold winds of change. 

Traditional publishers and Vanity Presses now work hand in hand. David Gaughran at Lets Get Digital catalogues the links and Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware chronicles  the misadventures of one of the biggest vanity publishers, AuthorSolutions. The tales told by disappointed authors are many and varied, and yet there must be a good number for whom the experience has been beneficial. It piqued my curiosity and I began clicking the links, playing a game similar to the six degrees of separation, what intrigued me was how in the face of the scare stories why anyone would choose that route to publication.

The links gave me a clue, seldom did the number reach six before the name of AuthorSolutions or one of its many subsidiaries or partners appeared, often tucked into the copyright notice at the foot of the page, and with an email contact link occupying much of the page above.

www.findyourpublisher.com/indie_book_publishing/ the AuthorSolutions website invites you to step into their parlour and asks the question "But I have to pay to get published." Further investigation revealed the price tag being asked of the hopeful author, inviting the customer to  throw significant wedges of money at their favourite project. The traditional mode of publishing where the agent sells the author to the publisher and the publisher takes the risk has shifted and the new alliances invite the author to take the risk, and when the sales indicate it is worth taking the chance then the self-published author is snapped up.

There is another way, where the independence is real, and the pleasure and challenge of publishing falls on the shoulders of the writer.

Lines and definitions are blurred, but underneath it all, the changes and the  shifting  landscape, independence is alive and kicking. Taking the whole thing on their shoulders are new author/publishers, often working on  a tight budget where the price tag of the vanity publishers steers them  along another track. to me, these are the true independents and exploring how to do it without breaking the bank is part of the challenge