Archive for September, 2011

Authors Suing Libraries. Part Two: An Interview with Sophie Masson

This post follows on from Part One of Authors Suing Libraries: Just Who is Being Tacky? In the first blog I gave a precis and some opinions about Google Books, the Hathi Trust and whether writers are tacky for suing libraries.

I wrote to Sophie Masson, writer and Chair of the Australian Society of Authors, about the copyright issues relating to these projects and a few other salient points. The interview got very long, but it’s all too useful and informative to edit down, so I will present Sophie’s responses in two parts. Here is the first question. The remaining two questions will be addressed next post.

* *

Narrelle: I understand that Project Gutenberg was digitising out-of-copyright books to make them available for posterity and research. What is the difference between them and Google Books/Hathi Trust?

Sophie Masson: Project Gutenberg, as you say, is about digitising truly out of copyright books—books in the public domain, like classics, etc. No-one, least of all the ASA, has a problem with that.

The big difference with the others is that Google Books, initially anyway, was going to digitise every book in the world, in or out of copyright, without reference to rights holders. That was halted in its tracks in the USA in 2005 when authors and publishers sued it for infringement of copyright.

Other countries also followed suit. In France, for instance, Google was separately and successfully sued for attempting to digitise works in a test case relating to books in the holdings of the Lyon public libraries. Google was forced to abandon its proposed digitisation of French books, and instead the French Government stepped up its national digitisation program, known as Gallica.

Google then switched to trying to put together a deal that basically focused only on English-language works, in which the default position would be that rights holders would have to ‘opt out’ of digitisation by Google, but would be renumerated for it, unlike before. Under that 2008 deal, Google agreed to pay a one-time fee of $125 million (all up) to settle with authors and publishers. Some $34 million-plus of this settlement was to go to the creation of a Book Rights Registry, while the remainder was to go to rightsholders—authors and publishers—whose books Google had already scanned without authorisation.

However, this deal was also struck down this year by Judge Denny Chin because it violated antitrust and copyright law—giving Google “a de facto monopoly over unclaimed works” (also known as ‘orphan works’, ie works whose rightsholders have not been identified or cannot apparently be tracked down). It thus cut out competition by other possible digital book repositories, including national ones. It also simply assumed that rightsholders agreed because they hadn’t opted out, even if they might never have heard of the scheme or met the deadline for ‘opting out’ that Google had imposed. So it was back to the negotiating table for Google, negotiations which continue today.

The Hathi Trust is a separate but related issue. Once again it is about the issue of so-called ‘orphan works.’ ‘Orphan works’ are a contested area and the Hathi Trust, which includes a group of five leading US universities (Indiana, California, Cornell, Wisconsin, Michigan) possibly attempted to exploit the vacuum left by Google by launching its own digital repository of such works.

Trouble was, the Hathi Trust actually identified as ‘orphans’, many works that are most certainly copyrighted; many by authors who are not only living but active, such as Fay Weldon, James Shapiro, and Angelo Loukakis, the ASA’s Executive Director. His 1980s novel, Vernacular Dreams, was copied without his permission and without any attempt to contact him. As he memorably said, this wasn’t a case of ‘orphaned books—it was a case of abducted books.’

How could the Hathi Trust have thought it could do this? With such blatant mistakes in their publication of wrongly called “orphan’ works, what attempt was made to contact copyright holders? What attempt was made to institute a proper process? Was it possibly a unilateral decision to dub as ‘orphan’ works which most certainly weren’t? I would very much like to see the evidence of the extent (if any) of Hathi Trust’s attempt to check the ownership and copyright status of the so-called Orphan works.

In blogs and articles, some people have said things like, ‘well, these books languished unread on the shelves, authors should be happy their works are being rescued from oblivion!’ It’s as though a digitised book is seen as somehow different to a physical book; but for heaven’s sake, whilst the format of the book is protected by law, usually to the publisher, the main purpose of copyright protection is to protect the content from unauthorized copying!

The Hathi Trust libraries would never have photocopied these works and stuck them on shelves without permission; so why on earth did they imagine they could do it in digital form? Whatever the motive behind it, it was extraordinary behaviour, which is why a lawsuit was brought against them by individual authors and organisational plaintiffs such as the Authors’ Guild (USA) and the Australian Society of Authors. And as soon as that happened, suddenly, miraculously, the Hathi Trust discovered that ‘mistakes had been made.’

People generally need to realise that there is a huge ‘gold rush’ going on in the area of e-books and digitised intellectual property. Commercial giants like Google, Amazon, Apple and Overdrive (the world’s biggest digital rights management and distribution of e-books to libraries) are, so to speak, pegging out and jumping claims for the mining of the rich goldfields of literature, from creative content to publishing to distribution and library supplies.

They have seen that a digitised future for books leads to immense commercial opportunities for companies canny enough to see the digital writing on the wall, and quick enough to seize control of vast slabs of literature before anyone else cottons on. All of us who love books, whether authors, readers, publishers or libraries, need to be aware of the dangers of the concentration into a few hands of the digital books industry. But apparently it’s not only commercial interests that we need to watch out for!

On the positive side, you could say that Google and the Hathi Trust have done us all a favour by bringing these issues out into the open. Maybe what will come out of all this is a workable system that will allow for modern conditions, and provide a fair deal for creators and good access to readers. And I might add that Australian university and other libraries understand our stance and fully support copyright law whilst also wanting better access for readers. So we have a good opportunity here to get together and work towards that.

**

Come back for the final part of the Authors Suing Libraries blogs, the rest of the interview with Sophie Masson, which will look more at the orphaned books issue and a model of preserving Australia’s literary heritage in digital format without compromising the rights of authors.

2011
09/29
CATEGORY
e-books
writing
2 comments

Authors suing libraries. Part One—Just who is being tacky?

Recently, I retweeted a link to an article about a number of authors and writers’ organisations who were suing a group of US libraries for copyright infringement. A discussion ensued with a Twitterer about whether this act made writers look bad.

My initial response was that I thought it made libraries look bad to be infringing copyright. But as the (very civilised) discussion unfolded I realised I didn’t know enough about what these libraries, under the umbrella name of the Hathi Trust, were trying to achieve and why they were being sued.

I figure if I’m going to argue robustly for or against a thing, I should at least understand it. So I started researching.

The first thing I learned was that I’d managed to conflate the issue of the Hathi Trust with the issue of Google Books, whose agreement with authors’ groups about how to manage its approach to digitising every book ever has come a cropper in the US Supreme Court. They are two different things, although linked.

Here is my attempt to unravel it all in plain English and offer my opinion as I go.

Google Books

It started when Google decided it wanted to scan every single book ever, including ones that were still under copyright to the original authors. The motive may have been noble—to preserve the world’s writing and make it accessible to everyone—but there was an undeniable commercial aspect, to sell books.

Google Books’ own FAQ says the following:

Are there any benefits for the general public?
Yes. If the Amended Settlement is approved, United States users will be able to search, preview and buy millions of Out-of-Print books that cannot be found in most bookstores and libraries. In addition, each public library building will have a terminal at which users can search for, read and, if the library is able, print out pages from Books in the Google database.

It does sound good in principle, but it’s important to remember that Out of Print is not the same as Out of Copyright, and with the opportunities offered by digital publishing, many rights holders may soon be making out of print books available digitally themselves or through digital publishers without the assistance of Google Books.

However, even those who are not planning to self-reprint digitally have moral and legal rights to what happens to their work, even their out of print work.

To break that down into the personal: the Google Books approach means that Google might scan a digital version of one of my out of print books (like Witch Honour, which was published in the US), without my permission, and then make that available digitally to people who wanted it.

This is despite the fact that I could (and have now) made that book available digitally myself.

I would have had no say in the Google process, though I could (if I knew they’d done it) opt out of it later. Google Books expected to be able to sell copies and send me a cut (if they knew who or where I was) without allowing me to negotiate a price or any other aspect of publication.

Naturally, a whole bunch of people and organisations opposed this model, including non-US authors. The French government, for example, sued to protect the cultural and intellectual property of their citizens. Then they began their own project. More on that later.

Anyway, that idea was challenged in the courts by the Authors Guild (USA). A settlement was reached. The US writers groups were happy enough, but the court has knocked it back as inadequate. The judge felt that the settlement, even though agreed to by all parties, gave Google a monopoly and broke laws pertaining to copyright and anti-competetive behaviour.

At this point in time, no writers groups are suing Google Books, but the Authors Guild and Google Books will have to review their agreement and try it at the courts again.

The Hathi Trust

As part of the earlier Google Books settlement, Google gave up the idea of digitising books they had labelled as ‘orphans’.

‘Orphaned’ books are still subject to copyright law, but Google could not find the official copyright holders. Not being located did not mean the copyright holders were not still out there and entitled to their copyright, of course: only that Google hadn’t found them.

This is where the Hathi Trust steps into the story. This group of five US university libraries recently decided to publish those orphaned works, having obtained the relevant digitised files from Google. This means the Hathi Trust could be giving away copies of books, without the writers and copyright holders getting payment they are entitled to, and possibly interfering with actual contracts and agreements currently under negotiation for still-living authors to release e-books.

Overseas writers were particularly horrified by this. How, for example, was a Japanese or French or Eritrean writer to know their book had been scanned, let alone considered orphaned, in order to assert their copyright?

As a result, The Hathi Trust are being sued by several writers and writers’ organisations, including the Australian Society of Authors.

It turns out that often, with only a little bit of effort, many copyright holders of those ‘orphaned’ books can be found quite easily. The ASA and other groups have been finding the parents of these orphans on a fairly regular basis in the last few weeks.

Interestingly, since the I first read about the issue, the Hathi Trust has inched away from elements of it.

Do writers have a right to be paid for their work?

Amazingly, writers are now having to fight in court for their rights to their intellectual property. And they are being called the bad guys for doing so!

To be very clear here: I make my living as a writer and editor. Most of that work is in the corporate sphere, but a growing part of my living is as a writer of books. My intellectual property is how I make my living. If someone’s going to try and take my work and my words away from me, without my permission or a negotiated contract of how much I am to be paid for my work, I’m going to be a bit miffed – and less able to pay my bills.

For writers (and publishers), one of the huge concerns is that if this initiative goes ahead without a challenge, the law is paving a path to a destination where writers may not be entitled to royalties. A precedent like that could also affect the intellectual property rights of academics, musicians, software designers and other creative jobs.

Copyright is not the paper and ink

Perhaps many people see digitised information as something that should be free, because so much information on the net is free. It is as though my copyright only exists on paper versions of my work.

My copyright is in the words and the order in which they appear, not in the paper and ink. They start life in digital form on my computer, and go through several transmutations in paper and in digital form until published as a paperback or an e-book. No matter what form it’s in, though, it remains my book.

Do people have problems with the intangible nature of intellectual property? If I was a carpenter who made tables and carved beautiful designs in them, people could see the individual item and see that I had made it with my hands. Nobody would think it was okay to just take it away to put in a museum then sell copies of it and give me a tithe of the proceeds, never giving me a say in the process.

But because my words are intangible, and may appear on paper or a screen or in someone saying them aloud, does this mean my right to say those sentences are mine—and to be paid for them—doesn’t count? If you make a thing with your brain and a keyboard rather than your hands, don’t you still have a say in your work?

But isn’t preserving our cultural heritage a good thing?

Of course the preservation of every nation’s literary and cultural history is important, but that does not mean the Hathi Trust approach is appropriate.

Even with the purest intentions, libraries are better off asking authors for their permission and collaboration. This is exactly what the French Government has done with its Gallica project. Alerted to the need, and the dangers of not meeting that need, to create digital archives, the French are working in collaboration with authors, illustrators and publishers to create a proper, protected repository of texts.

Another issue, which I haven’t yet seen discussed, is whether digital archives will actually last the intended distance. Papyrus has lasted thousands of years; good quality paper hundreds. Paper does deteriorate and a more durable form of record-keeping is needed, but it’s not clear to me that digitised data will meet that need in the long term.

What we currently know about digital data is that the tech keeps changing, that data corrupts and that digital data is vulnerable to magnetic fields. The last time I spoke to an archivist about this issue, some years ago, there were concerns about the future of such a relatively young form of retaining texts and images. Even if advances have been made, we haven’t had a thousand years yet to see how well the archives last. All of this may end up wasted effort.

Writers are interested in the future too. It would just be nice if our right to earn a living from our work wasn’t seen as some kind of vulgar grab for money.

* * *

Come back next time for my interview with Sophie Masson of the Australian Society of Authors about the Hathi Trust, Google Books, Project Gutenberg, the Gallica archiving project and whether patent law is confusing the issue.

Further reading:

See all the parts of this blog series:

2011
09/26
CATEGORY
e-books
writing
12 comments

Doing It Yourself (with other people)

A little while back, I wrote about self-publishers needing to put in the time and effort to match the excellent work that traditional publishers do in getting a novel ready for publication. That work includes editing, proofreading, cover art and design. (Not to mention expertise, PR contacts and simply taking on all that hard slog so that the author doesn’t have to do it.)

It’s all well and good, you say, to declare that e-book authors need editors and cover designers and whatnot. But where are these persons of skill and virtue?

Good question, I reply to my imagined interrogators, where are they indeed?

So I asked some fabulous and talented people I know for some clues.

Alex Adsett of Alex Adsett Publishing Services says “The absolute best place to start for all this information is the Australian Writers’ Marketplace.  It’s a book and an online database, and invaluable if you’re looking for an editor.” Alex herself provides publishing advice, including contract and rights advice, to all writers.

Clandestine Books, headed by crime writer Lindy Cameron, provides editorial and PR services, including manuscript assessment, too.

Individuals offer editing services as well. Gillian Pollack (author of Life Through Cellophane) is a teacher-editor based in Canberra. Her approach is to work with writers to increase their editing skills. “Editing is part of the writer’s longer journey when they work with me.” You can find her contact details at http://www.gillianpolack.com.

Laura Goodin, who Gillian also recommended, has specialised in business and academic writing and may be a good choice if you’re writing a non-fiction book.  Another of Gillian’s recommendations is Elizabeth Fitzgerald. Elizabeth’s website,  Earl Grey Editing, will be active in a week or so. In the meantime, you can email her on elizabethafitzgerald@gmail.com for information and her rates.

The divine Davina MacLeod is the freelancer who copyedited The Opposite of Life. She charges by the double-spaced 12-point page and can be contacted on davinamacleod@gmail.com for a quote. Davina also does illustration and can be hired for cover designs.

Twelfth Planet Press publisher, Alisa Krasnostein, says “I hear Sarah Endacott is one of the best editors there are.” Endacott also provides manuscript assessment.

In terms of cover art and design, Lucy Sussex—researcher, reviewer and writer of crime and science fiction—says: “I find my own artists–go to galleries, collect photos, fight like hell with the publisher to get a decent image on the front of the book. It’s worked well so far.”

The previously-mentioned Gillian Pollack recommends Andrew McKiernan of Kephra Design, who designs for Aurealis and designed the cover of Life through Cellophane. Gillian also spoke highly of illustrator Kathleen Jennings in Brisbane.

For printing your book, Paul Collins, writer and publisher at Ford Street Publishing, says “One of the cheapest printers I’ve come across is a print broker called Alfred Hornung of Tingleman Pty Ltd.”   Paul also recommended Ekonvurs for the conversion of print to e-books.

So if you want to get a new cover and do a final polish on the out-of-print book you want to e-publish, or if you’re thinking about self-publishing an original manuscript, visit the websites or get in touch with these persons of skill (and, one assumes, virtue) for some quotes. Work out a budget to make sure your e-book is whipped into the best possible shape, with all of its apostrophes and commas in the right place. Banish those typos and continuity errors to the nether reaches of hell with some expert help and make your book the best it can be.

2011
09/22
CATEGORY
creativity
e-books
writing
Leave a comment

Review: The Girl Who Was Was On Fire edited by Leah Wilson

This collection of essays about The Hunger Games was an excellent way to follow my five-day binge spent reading the entire series. Everything in this book either brings elements I was aware of into sharp focus or reveals new themes and interpretations to me. With each essay, though, I responded with variations of “Yes! Exactly! YES!”

Favourite essays include:

  • Team Katniss, which questions the whole Team Peeta/Team Gale romance subplot and opts for Team Katniss, The Girl Who Was Compassionate, by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
  • Your Heart Is A Weapon the Size of Your Fist by Mary Borsellino, examining love as a political act
  • Carrie Ryan’s Panem at Circenses, with its look at reality TV and The Hunger Games
  • learning about trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome in Blythe Woolston’s Bent, Shattered and Mended
  • The Politics of Mockinjay by Sarah Darer Littman, which I found particularly resonant with the lines it draws between current world politics, the packaging of war footage as entertainment and the political tactics of Panem
  • Community in the Face of Tyranny, in which Bree Despain touches on a theme I felt but did not articulate in my original reading.

But this are just my favourites in a collection filled with intelligent, thoughtful and well written insights into this superb trilogy.

Read another review of this essay collection at Bookmarked.

Buy The Girl Who Was on Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy in paperback or the e-book The Girl Who Was on Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy.

2011
09/18
CATEGORY
Reviews
writing
7 comments

E is for Exciting!

Today I spoke at the Australian Society of Author’s E-Exchange seminar, an introduction to digital publishing in books and apps. I had a great time talking to everyone, listening to the other guest speakers and meeting writers, artists, agents and other publishing professionals.

Vincenzo Pignatelli of Blue Quoll showed what his company is doing with apps for children’s picture books. Their first book, Mr Wolf and the Ginger Cupcakes, looks gorgeous.  The colours are vibrant and the interactive features are pretty cool. The fact that the book can be translated into seven languages is pretty neat too. Blue Quoll are looking for authors and illustrators to work with, and I’m looking forward to seeing where they take the technology.

Splitting Image Colour Studios has been working with traditional publishers for decades, and now they’ve been working on e-publishing for picture books for a few years. These are the guys responsible for the charming adaptations of Graeme Base’s Animalia and Jungle Drums as well as the Four Ingredients cookbook in app form. Director Warren Smith talked about the other projects, including apps, digital books and print on demand books.

Virginia Murdock spoke about Booki.sh, the web-based online e-book seller, associated with Readings Bookstores. For some reason I’d been having trouble getting my head around how Booki.sh worked, as I’d got used to the model where you buy a book and download it to a reader or device. Booki.sh, being web-based, simply allows you to buy your books in your browser and download your current book into the cache for reading anywhere. It’s actually very straightforward. And because it’s web-based, you can tweet links to chapter samples, which is a cool function. Just remember to search for book titles through the Readings ebook link.

Another innovative approach is being taken by Jeannette Rowe, writer of extremely popular books for preschoolers. She’s working with partners to develop a whole website with online books, book-related games and other ventures. It’s terrific to see a writer really taking charge of the ditigal aspects of her career and working with others to find the best way to do that. Rowe herself is passionate and firm about standing up for your (digital) rights.

I was on a great group panel that fielded some great questions from the audience, and then illustrator Ann James of Books Illustrated got us all into separate groups to brainstorm aspects of epublishing and promotion, which generated some great ideas for the convenor, the lovely Marie Alafaci to run by the ASA when she gets back to the office on Monday!

The attendees were all pretty neat too. For all the things that book people have to consider with the new technology—especially considering that we have no idea where it’s all going to go—the future of publishing is wide a slightly scary page for us to write a new history onto. Whatever we’re doing with digital publishing in ten years’ time, this is where we are shaping how that decade ahead may look.

My thanks to the Hazel Edwards and the ASA for asking me to speak, to the other speakers for coming along and all the really cool things they are doing, and to those who came along to dip their toes into the digital waters.

2011
09/17
CATEGORY
e-books
public speaking
9 comments

The role of the writer’s friend

On Friday night, I attended the launch for Pulp Fiction Press’s latest book, Carolyn Morwood’s Death and the Spanish Lady. It’s a murder mystery set in Melbourne in 1919, in the aftermath of the Great War and during the deadly flu epidemic that killed more people than the actual war managed to do. I’m excited to see it out and it’s next on my to-read pile!

I love a book launch. The publisher gets to finally release their latest project into the wild. An honoured guest gets to launch it with good and kindly words about the author, the subject matter and how everyone there should buy a copy because BOOK X IS AWESOME AND YOU WILL TOTALLY LOVE IT.

And the nervous author, often better at hiding behind a keyboard and typing than standing up in front of a bunch of people, gets to say “I’m really proud of my book. I hope you like it.” (Perhaps with a subtext of “I’m kind of glad it is all over now. Someone pass me a drink!.” and maybe a frisson of ‘Oh god, now I have to write another one!!”

In short, a book launch is all promise and hope. It’s that marvellous/terrifying moment of letting your words finally fly beyond your own brain and fingertips and hopefully find some hearts and minds in which to nest.

But the release of a novel can be a fractious time for a writer as well. To be more accurate, it’s the months after the release that can be fractious, with well-meaning friends deciding that the best time for critical feedback on everything they think you did wrong is after publication.

I’m not talking about reviews, whether in the pages of a newspaper or magazine or in the blog of an enthusiast. All writers know that their book will be reviewed, and they hope some people will like it, though they know some people will hate it. It’s part of the deal. Bad reviews only upset me, for example, when I agree with the point they’re making. But I can live with the bad reviews. Not everyone’s going to like what I do. I don’t like everything that other people do. We all bring our own interpretation and ideas to what we read. I’m not even trying to please all of the people all of the time, so it’s hardly surprising when I don’t.

I’m talking about the friends who say “There’s a spelling error on page 58″ or “I thought it had a weak ending” or “I really hated your lead character.”

I don’t mean to sound like a hypersenstive, delicate little flower but… why are you telling me these things? Why are you, my friend, telling me you don’t like my work, to my face, as though that is a helpful thing? I don’t expect that all my friends will like everything I do, but seriously, why do some friends feel the need to tell me they think my work sucks?

I’ve already had a handful of readers (with particular skills and viewpoints and a mandate to look for the flaws) provide critical feedback it before I submitted it to my publisher. My publisher has read it. So has my editor. Numerous times. Both have provided firm, unflinching but constructive feedback on how to polish it, picking up the continuity errors, plot holes and thin character development as we went. A team of other readers, including the proofreaders, have gone over it and hopefully caught all the errors (though, yes, sometimes we miss them).

So, you know, it’s been edited before publication. Once the thing is printed and sitting in its crisp, shiny cover, smelling of ink and new paper and potential, it’s too late to change anything. And if you don’t like the ending or the lead character, that’s really okay, but what is the purpose of telling me so? The reviewers will cheerfully tell me they don’t like my work, and I’m prepared to live with that, but why are my friends telling me? I, my editor, my publisher and a bunch of other people responsible for releasing the thing actually really liked the book and the ending and the characters, or we wouldn’t have released it.  I’m not going to rewrite it now. It’s finished. It’s published. It’s done.

Here’s the deal.

Writers:  Never ask your friends what they thought of your book. They may not care for it, and you don’t want to make either party uncomfortable by putting a friend on the spot and making them either lie or hurt yourfeelings with their brutal honesty. It’s needy and awkward, so do not do that to your friend or to yourself.

(By the same token, if you are sharing your manuscript pre-publication, ask for honest feedback. You don’t have to take it all on board, but this is when the honesty is essential.)

Friends of writers:  Feel free to tell your proud author friend that you enjoyed their book if you did. That’s nice, but it’s not essential. You can always say “I like the cover” if absolutely nothing else appealed. If you think the whole thing’s a wash, try “You must be so proud of your achievement.” But skip the part where you imply that your writer friend would have better spent that two (or more) years of their life learning shorthand and becoming a secretary, which would at least have been useful.

Offer your your support and a little kindness because, believe me, there have been times when this process has been really rough and the writer concerned has seriously considered that secretarial course.

To show your support, it’s ideal if you buy a copy of the book, even if you don’t read it (though it’s nice if you do). It’s great if you like it, but you’re not obliged to. Just like you’re not obliged to tell the author every defect, great and small, you think the book contains.

So please, if you love me, if you understand what hard and emotionally exhausting work this has been, oh please be kind. Suppress that need to tell me how flawed you think my book is*. And I promise not to tell you that you really can’t sing, that you’re a bad cook or that your children are ugly**.

Because that would be rude and tactless.

*Though actually, if you find formatting or typing errors in my e-books Witch Honour, Witch Faith, Fly by Night or Sacrifice, I’d like you to tell me about those, because those ones I can fix.

**These examples are not aimed specifically at any of my friends, just in case you think it’s you I mean. All of my friends are excellent cooks, sing like nightingales and have exquisitely behaved and beautiful children.

2011
09/13
CATEGORY
creativity
writers
writing
6 comments

Self-publishing = vainglory?

Dymocks’ announcement of the launch of D Publishing Network is lighting up the newsgroups and Twitter at present. It’s at pains to state that the venture is not ‘vanity publishing’, the service will nevertheless allow writers to pay to have their books designed and uploaded, with the distant possibility that some books may be distributed via the Dymocks chain of bookstores.

I am not sure how this model is different from ‘vanity publishing’, but it will allow Dymocks to participate in the shift to authors self-publishing that is already very common on Smashwords and Amazon.com.

I myself have books on both Smashwords and Amazon.com. Each of the titles was previously published by small presses (Homosapien Books and Five Star Science Fiction) and are now out of print except for the digital imprints I’ve now released online. These books have been through the curation process of having a publisher select them from submissions and polished in collaboration with a professional editor.

So, like Dymocks, here am I distancing my own online efforts from that dreaded label, ‘vanity press’.

Cory Doctorow doesn’t seem to have this problem owning what he does. But of course, he was a professionally published author long before he experimented so successfully with the digital self-publishing route.

Why is it that readers automatically assume self-published means bad books? True, we’ve all read books that were published in this way that were at best full of typos and at worst full of badly plotted, badly written, self-indulgent purple prose. But then, I have read professionally published books that are just as guilty of poor structure and style, many of which I’ve abandoned by chapter five because I just don’t have the time to read books I’m not enjoying.

If someone creates jewellery that they then sell at markets (or on Etsy), we might be intrigued and praise the artist for their work. We might similarly encourage and support musicians who fund their own CD to sell while busking. Such efforts don’t have the sales reach of an official music publisher or art gallery to promote them, but we don’t disparage the efforts or talent of such entrepreneurial creativity.  The popularity of such work will soon be determined by those who see and buy things on the spot, and help the creators build up an audience of enthusiastic fans.

But try to write a book, publish it and sell it on a roadside stall (or online) and everyone will just assume it’s terrible. Admittedly, it’s harder to determine in a short period whether the book will be your cup of tea. A painting, a piece of jewellery and even a track from an album can be assessed in a pretty short period of time. Taking out fifteen minutes to read the first chapter or two of a budding new work is more time consuming and maybe less revealing to the casual purchaser.

But this is not far from how we select books (either digital or paper) in the bookshops. There, we may leaf through the first few pages to see how it strikes us. We also go by word of mouth or, in digital books, a free sample to download and try. Staff and friend recommendations and reviews give us an overview of what we might like to read. Surely this same model can apply to self-published books?

I am trying to train myself out of the old gut response that a self-published book is necessarily a bad book. I’ve been disappointed often enough with traditional titles, and every good book started as an unpublished manuscript at some point. The self-published titles on Smashwords, Amazon and, in future, D Publishing, will eventually be sorted into wheat and chaff by virtue of the same methods used for books with publishing houses: reviews and recommendations.

Nevertheless, authors taking this route can learn a lot by understanding and valuing the process that takes place in traditional publishing, where manuscripts are selected, curated and promoted by experts.

Many self-published books fail on a basic level because of the lack of editorial input and proofreading. I owe so much to my own proofreaders and editors for catching things that I have missed because I have just been looking at the damned thing for far too long. It’s not fresh to me any more, and I’m reading what I meant to say; not what I actually said.

Those fresh eyes, who are paid to be constructively critical rather than being friends, who are looking out for my delicate writerly feelings, are essential to helping me become a better writer, and to releasing books that are as good as I can make them at the time. Luckily, the publishing house takes on the economic responsibility of paying these fine people in the hopes that my books will sell well enough for them to recoup their costs.

My publishers have all been small presses, so while finding distribution channels can thankfully be left to them and their expertise, on the whole, promotions and marketing are left a lot to me. It’s hard work, and it’s time spent spruiking that I would rather spend writing, but I have to get word out somehow. Those recommendations and reviews don’t write themselves. (Well, some try via programs, but nobody’s falling for that.)

Doctorow recently pointed out in a Locus article that self-publishing and especially marketing books is much harder than it looks.

In the end, I think that self-publishing can work and be worthwhile, but the author needs to exercise professionalism. Self-publish by all means, but be professional and businesslike in your approach to the manuscript. If you don’t have a professional publisher to take on the costs of editing, find an independent editor to at least proofread your work. Value their input. Even if you don’t agree with it, don’t dismiss it out of hand. If they’ve missed the point of your prose, maybe you haven’t written that passage well enough.

Take the time to learn more about the craft of writing. Learn about grammar, spelling and structure. Read widely to see how others do it. Accept constructive criticism gracefully. Be painstaking and check your work. Consider your marketing approach, because publishing is absolutely not a case of ‘if you write it, they will come’.

Be like those artisan jewellery-makers, those struggling artists, those hungry musicians. Put everything you can into perfecting your craft. Help to get rid of the stigma of self-publishing by respecting everything that a publisher does for a writer and replicating it as much as you can.

Then, with luck and good timing, the readers will determine what happens in the market.

***

My thanks to Katherine Horsey, a fellow editor, who proofread this entry for me.

I will be presenting ‘Introduction to digital matters for writers’ at the Australian Society of Authors’ E-Exchange Day on 17 September 2011. Check out the ASA page for the details.

2011
09/06
CATEGORY
e-books
public speaking
writing
19 comments
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 868 other followers