Big publishing houses are broken
postandcourier.com – Wednesday August 28, 2024
I was at a Barnes & Noble signing books. A man came up. “You wouldn’t believe my life. I’m going to write a best seller someday,” he said.
“Go home, sit down, and start writing,” I told him. I knew he wouldn’t, but some do, and some craft excellent works that die at the hands of dream killers. Big publishing turns away fresh voices, the talented, and veteran writers. Kudos to Elle Griffin for her exposé, “No One Buys Books.” It reveals the brokenness of the big publishing industry.
In 2022, Penguin Random House wanted to buy Simon & Schuster. The two would have made up 48 percent of the market share. Sensing a monopoly, the Justice Department’s Anti Trust Division brought a case against Penguin. A 13-day trial resulted, during which the head of every major publishing house and literary agency testified. Their disclosures painted a landscape of hopelessness. U.S. District Court Judge Florence Y. Pan blocked the $2.2 billion purchase, elating Stephen King who objected to the merger.
NPR reported, “For Penguin Random House and the New York-based publishing world, the trial in August proved an often uncomfortable airing of business practices, internal disagreements and missed opportunities. Executives on the stand spoke of bestselling works they failed to acquire and acknowledged that most books don’t make money.”
How To Earn Side Income As A Published Author: 5 Key Considerations
forbes.com – Wednesday August 28, 2024
Turning your writing into a side income can be both exciting and challenging. Whether you’re looking to pursue traditional or self-publishing, the process requires more than just a passion for writing. This article covers the key considerations to help you succeed, from the right publication path and importance of marketing, to realistic financial expectations, brand development, and the non-income benefits of being an author.
1. Choosing Your Path To Publication
Getting your book published is one of the toughest challenges for any aspiring author. The path from manuscript to print can be intimidating, especially in traditional publishing, where competition is fierce and success rates are low. Literary agents receive thousands of submissions, but only a tiny fraction—around 1 to 2%—get accepted.
As author Lauren E. Todd explains, “Literary agents get tens of thousands of queries every year, so it’s like, here’s my book in a sea of 20,000 submissions. The odds are very low.” This reality can be a tough pill to swallow for new writers trying to break into the industry.
If the traditional route seems too complex or restrictive, self-publishing is a solid alternative. It lets you skip the gatekeepers and bring your book directly to readers. It offers more creative freedom, faster publication, and potentially higher profits. However, it also means you’re responsible for everything—from writing to editing to marketing—which can be time-consuming and expensive.
The choice between these paths depends on your goals and resources. Traditional publishing offers professional validation and wider distribution but is a long and uncertain process. You need a strong query letter, a polished manuscript, and thorough research on an agent.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Surprise NYU Class Contains Some Great Writing Advice
cracked.com – Tuesday August 27, 2024
Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s names have been bouncing around social media a lot lately — and not just because South Park warned everybody about that whole “Disney being pure evil” business. Multiple X/Twitter accounts have been generating thousands of likes with an old clip of the duo sharing the “greatest lesson in storytelling ever.”
Back in 2011, the duo were guest lecturers in Professor Ken Liotti’s “Story-Telling Strategies” class at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Why? Well, it was all part of the show Stand In, which aired on mtvU, the MTV-owned channel for college students.
Each episode of Stand In found real, totally unsuspecting students being taught lessons by celebrity guests, such as Cameron Diaz, Seth MacFarlane and even Larry David, presumably because UCLA has an “Advanced Misanthropy” course. More regrettably, Ye guested in one episode, back when he was known as Kanye West. The episode isn’t online, so it’s unclear whether or not he spent the whole show force-feeding sushi to the students.
Parker and Stone’s surprise lesson was full of great advice, as the widely-shared clip illustrates. Specifically, Parker elucidated the need to provide motivation behind the events of a narrative, explaining that, when writing out the beats of a story outline, “If the words ‘and then’ belong between those beats, you’re fucked, basically. You’ve got something pretty boring. What should happen between every beat that you’ve written, is either the word ‘therefore’ or ‘but.’”
Think your book is done? Think again
niemanstoryboard.org – Friday August 23, 2024
As a first-time author, I’ve spent the past four years writing and reporting my debut nonfiction book, “SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery.” It’s been such a long labor of love that some acquaintances have asked: “Wait, is this your second book, or are you still working on your first one?”
I understand why they ask; most people don’t know all that goes into landing a nonfiction book deal with a Big Five publisher. Sometimes, I give them the abbreviated version of how the process works, with the caveat that it plays out a bit differently for everyone. Here’s a quick overview of how it worked for me, followed by a special focus on what still needs to happen after you send in a complete manuscript:
Maybe you decide to self-publish. If not, you need to query literary agents, whose job is to sell your book to a publisher. If you’re lucky enough to sign with an agent and you haven’t already written a proposal, you write one with help from your agent. These are lengthy documents; mine was 85 pages. Your agent shops that proposal to various publishers — a submission process that can take weeks, months, sometimes years. Amid the rejections, you hope for a yes.
After a tremendous amount of work, I got my own yes from a Simon & Schuster imprint in December 2022. By that point, I had been working on “SLIP” for about two years, exploring ways to convey the nuances of eating disorder recovery through a mix of personal narrative, research and cutting-edge science. Once I signed my contract, I had 18 months to complete my reporting and writing.
I finished my manuscript in early June, but the work is far from done. I spent the summer in back-and-forths with my editor to fine-tune the final draft. Being at this stage feels like completing the last few miles of an ultra-marathon: It’s both exhausting and energizing; it requires the humility to accept most edits and the confidence to speak up when you disagree with others; it demands time, undivided attention and an openness to change — all in service of making your book as good as it can be before it goes out into the world.
Along the way, I’ve kept note of some related takeaways that have helped me through this last editing stage.
From bestselling novels to unpublished manuscripts, what is the secret to literary success?
news.northeastern.edu – Thursday August 22, 2024
You might think releasing 20 books — including four American Girl books — carries some weight in the publishing world. Yet, Kathryn Reiss still has four books, including a thriller for adults, in her repertoire that remain unpublished.
Reiss, an associate teaching professor in creative writing at Northeastern University’s Oakland campus, has made her name writing suspense novels for kids and teens; she published her first novel, “Time Windows,” in 1991 after writing it while on a Fulbright Scholarship in Germany. But she’s bumped up against a wall when trying to branch outside her niche.
“(Publishers) have to think they can market it,” Reiss said. “So if I want to do an adult book, or if I want to do some literary fiction that’s not a typical Kathryn Reiss suspense novel … they go ‘Well, how will we market that?’ You almost get stuck.”
Creative writing is an art, but writers face the same problem many artists do: how they can create something they like that people will also want to buy. Like any other business, book publishers want to sell a good product that they can easily market, Reiss said. But this makes it hard for writers to break out of their shell, if they can even break into the industry at all.
“For a new writer, you have to prove to them you have a very marketable book,” Reiss said. “What people don’t understand is once you’ve had a book published, it doesn’t mean you’re a shoo-in for your next book. It means your publisher will look at your next book.
“You have a one-up on someone who hasn’t published anything, but it isn’t a given. They have to think they can market it. … Publishers are really about making money. They care about their readers, but they want to sell books at the end of the day. That’s what they’re in the business to do.”
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