Cheap at Twice the Price?

E-Book sales fall after new Amazon Contracts; the article in the Wall Street Journal (and posted at The Passive Voice) examines the recent sales figures in the wake of the recent negotiations between the corporate giant and the major publishers.

All is not well, the initial results show a downturn in sales, with books from the big five averaging over $10 compared to all the other 2015 e-books marked up at $4.95.
I'm having to do a bit of guesswork here, working the calculation that the reaction to spending $5 as opposed to $10 is similar to that between £5 and £10 in GB pounds. I'll quite cheerfully dug into the pocket for a £5 purchase, but £10, calls for a bit of thinking about. It is possible to find e-books priced the same as hardback, and higher than the paperback. The latest top 100 on Kindle shows no books priced above $10.

Close to the mark!

How close can you get to the ideal of someone else footing the bill for publishing your magnificent opus? The traditional publisher will do that, but what if you decide, or have no other choice and decide to walk the walk yourself.

The traditional/commercial/trade publisher buys the rights to publish, and occasionally the subsidiary from the author. The largest publishing houses and the bigger independents will pay an advance on royalties, which the smaller presses may not. They are highly selective and only a small fraction of the submissions ever reach the bookshelves. For the select few who make it down that road  every aspect of editing, publication, marketing and distribution is taken care of by the publisher; at no cost the author!

A very small number reach the public this way and to read the various offerings in the "How to Get Published" genre - we're looking at a scenario of such improbability you might as well pack up, throw the manuscript in the shredder and grow rhubarb instead.

Yet the manuscript is intact, not mulched for rhubarb fodder and our author is up for the challenge, and the heartache, so where do we go from here?

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!

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?