Sunday, April 13, 2014 spring "looking ahead" event

Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Moderator
Staff member
#1
The changes in the publishing industry have been huge in the last decade. What will that industry look like in ten years? What do we want it to look like?

I've asked writers to imagine that future here on Sunday, April 13. Please join us for that informal discussion from 9 to 11 a.m. PST (noon to 2 p.m. ET).

Successful journalist and self-published author Georgie Binks will be on hand to talk about the exploding self-publishing trend. Other writers on the panel include the ladies of the writing group Spin -- Mary Novik, June Hutton and Jen Sookfong Lee -- who have spent a decade supporting each other's work in highly practical ways. Bestselling authors Catherine Bush and Ania Szado will also be here, along with current BC Book Prize finalist Janie Chang. Kimmy Beach and Deanna Kawatski will also join us. Deanna, like a great many authors, has published both traditionally and self-published through a collective.
 
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Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Moderator
Staff member
#2
Hello everyone! And welcome. We don’t stand on ceremony around here, so whether you’re a member of our panel, or a member of our forum, just jump right in with your ideas.

What will the publishing industry look like ten years from now? What do we want it to look like? Let’s imagine that future.
 
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Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Moderator
Staff member
#3
One of the biggest recent trends has been the bloom in self-publishing. I asked Georgie Binks, who was featured in this recent Star piece on the subject, for her thoughts on this one. How many of us will self-publish in the future? How is that changing the publishing landscape?

How do traditional publishers fit in all this? What role will publishers play in the future? How about our beloved booksellers?

To put this one in context, please check out Crystal Stranaghan's guest blog Self-publishing 101 now up on my site. Crystal has generously made available a ton of material on self-publishing to help ground this aspect of the discussion. Please also see her collection of self-publishing resources.

You can see from Crystal's blog just how complicated publishing your own book is. Do we want to take over all the various jobs involved in publishing a book to become publishers ourselves? Perhaps, perhaps not. Either way many of the tasks traditionally handled by our publishers are increasingly falling on the writer’s shoulders. Are we up to the task?
 

Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Moderator
Staff member
#4
When many of us here began writing, there was a clear route to building a writing career. First, we published in literary magazines. We entered regional, provincial and national competitions. With luck, we won a few of those competitions and an editor noticed our writing. Maybe we caught the eye of an agent. We submitted our carefully constructed cover letter and polished portfolio to an agent or editor and waited.

Things have changed. Take a look at how emerging writers are gaining a following, as they write, in this recent Globe and Mail article on how a Toronto tech startup reimagines the novel. From that article:

“If you can go to a publisher and say, ‘I have 15,000 fans,’ that counts for more than someone who comes out of their basement with a perfect manuscript who knows no one,” Sky said.
I suspect this approach will be tough for us middle aged, private writers, but obviously not so much for younger, emerging writers.

What I do love about this is the collaborative approach to the writing life, which is, of course, increasing the way of things.
 
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Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Moderator
Staff member
#6
I can't decide whether to be excited that there are other venues open to us as writers seeking publication, or demoralized that there is another thing I have to learn about that has nothing to do with the actual writing.
I hear you, Nikki. It does seem overwhelming. It's already tough to find time to write in our busy lives (or time/energy to focus long enough to write ...). On the other hand the learning is kind of, well, exciting. Looking forward to hearing from our self-published authors on this one ...
 

Sonal Champsee

Resident Hijacker
#7
When many of us here began writing, there was a clear route to building a writing career. First, we published in literary magazines.
I think this is still a clear and valid route (at least, I hope so!) though I suspect it's both easier and tougher than it used to be. It's so much easier to find places to submit to--I still have a copy of Writers Market from 2004 when you couldn't quite count on litmags to have a website. But with so many people submitting to places that are (often) struggling to stay afloat, competition seems tougher.

I suspect this approach will be tough for us middle aged, private writers, but obviously not so much for younger, emerging writers.
And those of us emerging, but not quite younger and not quite middle aged? I feel like I came into writing and publishing while it's somewhere in-between. And I am likewise in-between. The traditional path is more difficult and offers less than it used to, and the new paths are untested, untried, unknown. Having spent a number of years not writing, and then doubting that I could write, I'm not sure that I'm willing to expend more time jumping into the new experiments. And at the same time, am I running after something that is passing me by?

What I do love about this is the collaborative approach to the writing life, which is, of course, increasing the way of things.
I really do love the idea of a collaborative approach. I recently fell in love with playwriting, and theatre has always been a collaboration of many artists--that's part of what makes it fun! I admit, though, I have a harder time seeing how to manage this isn fiction. In playwriting, you have to give up control of the work to others, which was ultimately enormous fun, but that was a hard one for my fiction brain to get over.
 
#8
You can see from Crystal's blog just how complicated publishing your own book is. Do we want to take over all the various jobs involved in publishing a book to become publishers ourselves?
Hello everyone. I just wanted to make the point that as a self-published author, while it was quite a bit of work it was not that difficult. I figured most of it out by trial and error but I would definitely think of self-publishing again now that I know what I am doing. It is much more lucrative and you have all the control.
 

Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Moderator
Staff member
#10
If I may jump the gun a bit here I definitely think it is part of the future of publishing and I think it is something traditional publishers and bookstores need to come to terms with or they will be left behind.
On that note, really worth taking a look at this Guardian article: Ten Ways Self-Publishing Has Changed the Book World. From that piece:

"The role of the author is changing. With the fragmentation of the media in recent years, publishers were already relying on authors to help with the marketing – and learning how to do so is empowering. Now, as authors meet their readers at literary festivals, run blogs or tweet, they know their readers well and are no longer solely reliant on their publishers to mediate relationships. Looking ahead, authors who understand how publishing works are likely to be vastly less compliant than their forbears."
 

Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Moderator
Staff member
#11
Hello everyone. I just wanted to make the point that as a self-published author, while it was quite a bit of work it was not that difficult. I figured most of it out by trial and error but I would definitely think of self-publishing again now that I know what I am doing. It is much more lucrative and you have all the control.
Georgie, as I mention above, I asked Crystal to outline that process in her guest blog Self-publishing 101. Can you tell us a bit more about that experience? For many of us here, self-publishing is still a big mystery ...
 
#12
Good morning, everyone! Already so many great posts and we've barely started. I've only just made my tea!

I am traditionally published, through and through, and part of the reason I go this route is because of the editing. I know that I'm not the best judge of my own work, and I rely on a group, several other writers across the country, and my editor at the press where I publish. I'm at The University of Alberta Press right now (hopefully forever), and my editor there is—plainly—a genius with my work.
 
#13
What I needed to get my head around was the fact that I was the publisher and had to do everything. So I got my own ISBN, hired two editors - actually worked with them over the years- and then hired a graphic designer to design my cover. From there I formatted the book, found a printer, Lightning Source, printed up 500 copies, organized my book launch and then organized booksignings in Indigo and other book stores. That's all since last June. I also formatted it for Kobo and Kindle, made sure it was going to go up on Amazon, Indigo and Barnes Noble. Now that I know what I am doing I could do it all much faster.
 

Sonal Champsee

Resident Hijacker
#16
If I may jump the gun a bit here I definitely think it is part of the future of publishing and I think it is something traditional publishers and bookstores need to come to terms with or they will be left behind.
Georgie, I agree with you. I think my hesitations around self-publishing are less about the publishing industry (I don't mind being my own marketing machine if I have to, though it's not always comfortable) and more around how I approach these things as a writers and as a reader. I wonder if you had some insight on that?

As a writer, the question is, how do you know when your book is ready? I read for PRISM, a litmag, and just about everyone who submits probably believes they are ready, and yet, of the batch of 15 stories at least 10 are an unquestionable "No." They just aren't well-written. The remaining 5 are ones that are close, almost, maybe, or it's a matter of taste.

I also have an old friend who I recently discovered self-published a few novels... I checked out chapter 1 in one of them which was available online. She's not a bad writer, and she did smart things like getting it professionally proofread, etc., but there's more than a few 'Apprentice Classics' (as Gail calls them.) Just things that read as amateur or underbaked.... I kind of want to give the whole thing a good structural edit, though I suspect offering that out of the blue is a bit insulting. :) And really, it may bother me as a writer, but will it really bother readers?

(And actually, as a side note, I rather like the editing process.... I wonder sometimes about offering myself up as a editor to writers interested in self-publishing, but I'm not quite sure if I have sufficient experience for that.)

And as a reader, there is so much to read out there. There are a lot of self-published works that go out there underbaked... it's not that every traditionally published work is amazing either, but I at least know it met some kind of a minimum standard.... how do you separate the wheat from the chaff?
 
#17
Georgie, you're a dynamo! I think it's great how proactive and professionally you've done all that. I do find that though I have a press and people there whose job it is to market my book, I've been more and more active in getting myself out there with this latest book. Part of it is that I have so many friends everywhere that it's easier for me to set things up rather than having my press do it. They don't know who my friends in Halifax are, for instance.
 
#18
My feeling is that a book is never ready, but sooner or later you have to let it go. I review books for the Star and they are all professionally edited and published through traditional publishers and some of those could still use editing. For instant I really liked the Lovely Bones but I cannot tell you how many people I've spoken to who really had a hard time with the ending and felt a different editor might have handled it better.
 
#19
My feeling is that a book is never ready, but sooner or later you have to let it go. I review books for the Star and they are all professionally edited and published through traditional publishers and some of those could still use editing. For instant I really liked the Lovely Bones but I cannot tell you how many people I've spoken to who really had a hard time with the ending and felt a different editor might have handled it better.
I think that editing is absolutely crucial. I was edited very lightly on my first three books, and looking back, those books would have been so much better had I really been pushed. I think we just simply cannot do it ourselves. We're too close to it.
 

Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Moderator
Staff member
#20
So far I have done 25 booksignings at bookstores and sell between 15-24 books at a sitting. Selling directly to people works best for me.
Thanks for bringing this up, Georgie. Getting out there and doing readings and events is so very important, not simply for selling books, but for community building too. So much of what we do as authors is solitary. Even if we publish traditionally, setting up our own events is still very much a part of a writer's life. We can learn a whole lot from the Indie music industry on this front, of course.

I would like to see the reading or book signing event evolve, however. Anyone have ideas on what a reading event might look like in the future, particularly as books become more than straight text down the road?
 
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