I can’t think of many reasons why I would want an established publisher to handle my novels. On the whole I’d prefer readers to enjoy my books now, not when I’m dead. Even if I got lucky and it didn’t take half a lifetime to find the ideal agent/publisher, I’d regret giving up control over my work. And I’m not impressed by the poor earnings mid-range published authors (like Lynn Viehl) report: if a writing career means life in a garret, I’d prefer to gather in the thin rewards myself, not pay for someone else’s pension plan.
But there’s one big advantage that the big publishers bring. Credibility. With a capital C.
If Credibility was just a matter of self-esteem – Ma, guess who’s just agreed to publish me? – then it would be no big deal. But it is a big deal, because Credibility is what’s going to get you reviews, and reviews are going to help get you readers, and readers are going to get you more readers.
Think about it. How many books have you read recently when you’ve never heard of the author and there were no recommendations? Books and authors with zero credibility. That’s where we all start as Indie writers. As I’ve put it before: we’re on the top shelf in the darkest corner of a back room in a bookstore that nobody ever visits.
Unless …
Unless we do what the publishers do. Hunt in packs. Work as a team. Build a market together. If my reader numbers are still small and your reader numbers are still small, and we both enjoy one another’s work, then it makes sense to search out those readers together. Because when someone does find my book and enjoys it, and they see that I’m an admirer of yours, the chances are reasonable that they might try your book too. And vice versa. Add a third good writer into the mix, and the chances are even higher for all of us. How do we do that? We agree to share an imprint. Like, say, Rapscallion.
There are other consequences of this approach. It’s important to me now that readers like your book. It has to be as good as it possibly can be – for my sake. The same with my book – for your sake. So it makes sense for us to work together helping one another. How? Well, cross-editing for example. Or if I’ve got web experience, maybe I can advise you on putting together a good website. If you’re an artist or a photographer, maybe you can help me with my cover design. And maybe the third writer works in another life as a marketing expert or a lawyer. So let’s bring those skills on board too. Also we can all start reviewing one another – honestly, critically and professionally of course, because if a reader detects that we’re making false claims for one another, then we all quickly lose credibility.
What does this make us? A publisher? Well, not exactly. This is more a collaboration than a business: authors still retain their own copyrights and can opt in and out of the scheme at any time. So is it a literary agency? Not exactly that either. Rapscallion – because that’s what I’m calling this collaboration – will absolutely not be requesting submissions: I don’t want to be in the business of disappointment, issuing rejections. Or being submerged with manuscripts we can’t handle. A better way, as I see it, is for Rapscallion to headhunt – to go looking for talented writers and inviting them to join. In a sense, I suppose, we would do the job I’d really like the agent to do: not just find a publisher – but to manage the whole marketing campaign, helping writers reach the widest possible audience and be well-rewarded for their skills. (Think Brian Epstein and The Beatles – if you’re that old!) That’s very much the Rapscallion mission.
Call it a seed publisher, perhaps. A Credibility Conferrer.
Ah – do I hear objections at the back of the room? Elitism, you say? Not in the spirit of the Indie movement? You’re making value judgments. Well, perhaps I am. I’m saying that I admire writers published under the Rapscallion imprint. And that their work complements mine – If you loved this book, then you may also enjoy … And that their work is published to the highest standard. In that sense, elitist. But I’d never deny anyone the right to publish anything they choose to. Nor would I want to see Rapscallion taking control, denying writers their independence. The idea is that the imprint should serve writers, not vice versa.
So it’s sorted then? Indie writers work in teams and find thousands of readers? Unfortunately it’s not as simple as that. Reputation and credibility are built one reader at a time, as Suki and I have seen with our first Rapscallion publications. Have we been delighted with the response so far? No. Is it hard work? Yes. Will it succeed?
I pause for dramatic effect.
You know what’s coming, don’t you? I’m going to ask you for your opinion.
Well, actually, I’m not. Not yet anyway. More important are your questions. How exactly will it work? Who will do the inviting and how many will be invited? How will it grow? How will we maintain editing standards? Will people need to pay for services rendered? Will they be paid for services provided? Will there be a pricing policy? Will we deal with printed books as well as ebooks? How will we cope with different genres – and therefore different readership profiles? Could people join as Rapscallion readers as well as Rapscallion writers? Do we need to be country-bound – or even language-bound?
How would you answer any of these questions? What other questions do you have? And to focus your thinking, let me point you in the direction of a group of writers who started thinking this way before I did. I came across Backword yesterday, when one of their members mentioned them in a post on the Kindle Boards. Interested, I sampled one of their novels last night – R.J. Keller’s Waiting for Spring – and now I’m a fan. I’ll be going back to read more of the Backword books, for sure. So their Indie authors’ collective worked for me. One reader at a time.
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Tags: agent, credibility, Indie writers, left-field, marketing, mission, novel, publisher, Rapscallion, resources, reviews, targets
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I’ve been harbouring such thoughts myself. It’s why I put together a networking forum, if you go through to my blog you’ll see the link right at the top.
The forums not very active yet, but I expect that to change once I release my book. Right now all I’m marketing is my name.
I want the forum to be a place where indie authors can network. But not just indie authors. I want illustrators (for book covers) editors and anyone else who can get involved to go there.
I see people doing blog tours, but that’s not enough for me. I think readers should get to the end of my novel, and find the first chapters of yours, and a link to a website selling it. They should get to the end of your novel and find the first chapter of mine.
Sure I could put the first chapter of my next novel, but it won’t be out for months. Once we have readers buying, it’s better to keep them buying, especially if these are impulse buys (like $1 books, you don’t think about it, you just buy it).
I would love to get 10 indie authors I trust together (including me) form a partnership, put in some money, and buy ISBNs. In the Uk it would cost us £11 and we’d get a ISBN each. The individual “imprints” would be imprints of the big publisher, but totally autonomous. The authors would lose no control over their own work.
I don’t see other indies as being my competition. I see them as being my allies. I intend against the publishing dinosaur that is NY.
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I like. I like. The idea of having individuals with different skills helping with to do different things has me nodding in agreement. Case in point, you’ve saved my bacon and got me up and running again, when I was ready to admit defeat, slink away and
start over with another address.
Also, I like business of ensure that the product is high quality, so that readers never doubt what they’re getting from this particular imprint. Collectively a group will definitely reach a lot more readers and put out many more feelers than an individual trying to do this alone.
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Let’s say you get 9 authors on board. Quality is the criterion. And quite right too. How do you decide on whether a 10th novelist should come aboard? (in fact how did you decide on the fourth?) Vote? I think not. Whilst voting is unquestionably the least bad method of getting a gov’t, it’s not an elitist method. If an author is taken on and four of the existing authors think he shouldn’t have been… do they just leave? And when they leave how do you go about handling the split? the removal of the Rapscallion seal of approval for their book (maybe you don’t, maybe it’s just denied their future work). Of course with 10, it might be possible to just have a’blackball’ system where one member can veto any prospective member. But if you ever want to expand beyond ten authors, the whole thing becomes very cumbersome if everyone’s having a say.
You can’t set pricing policies if your ethos is personal control. Otherwise you’re just a mini Time Warner or Harper Collins. Why shackle yourself to a minnow?
As regards work done for members by members… I think you have to accept that not everyone will have relevant technical skills (cover art, layout, web geekiness) and so some members will be doing all that bwork for others. Should they get paid for that? Yes. Perhaps a percentage of the cover price would be fair… but then an artist might see very little return for a long time on many hours of work… but an hourly or piece rate would put a greater initial financial burden on the author (and what if they weren’t happy with the end result?). Leave it to individual members to sort out? Just have members advertise their services and fees (or cut of the ‘take’) for specific tasks? Well you could do that but suppose there were payment problems and members in different countries?
As regards different countries, I can’t see why it shouldn’t be cross-border. After all it’s meant to be a world wide web and it would be wrong to exclude the poor benighted Americans for instance merely on the grounds that they foolishly incurred greater taxation by becoming independent… but multi language? With ten members, I think that would be unwise perhaps unless at least three members were fluent in each language (for editing purposes).
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Good questions one and all, and Dave you’ve hit on exactly the reasons why it’s taken me so long to put it together in my own head – reasons I want to tackle in depth in the coming posts.
Even the cross-border issue is tricky. These Americans are smarter than you think. If we publish on Amazon the current ‘royalty’ the author gets is 35% of the listed sale price. From July, after pressure from higher iPad royalties, Amazon has announced it will increase its author royalty to 70% – but not initially for aliens like us. And from the amount that remains, the IRS deducts 30% as a withholding tax. In theory, this is possible to reclaim – and the folks at Smashwords appear to be making an effort to help overseas authors with this. Not so Amazon, according to reports I’ve been reading. Not their problem.
Oh and then there’s the little matter of VAT – charged at present on ebooks though not on books. This should change by 2011 – according to an EU directive, although it’s up to member countries to decide whether they should levy something or nothing, the same freedom that they have for printed books.
So you can see why we might have a teensy problem here. To present all the imprint’s books together, there needs to be one ‘publisher’. But it seems hardly likely that this could work from the royalty standpoint.
Americans, you’ll be amused to know that my ebook, which currently retails to US customers at $1.99 on Amazon would cost me $4.69 here. It doesn’t take a super mathematician to realize that the difference is not just 17.5% VAT. No, because Kindle is a mobile device that works on the phone 3G network, we have to pay extra for ‘international wireless delivery’. I did some calculations on this the other day, and it seems that Amazon’s assuming that we slow but thorough Europeans are going to read that book 30+ times! More on this soon!
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These Americans are smarter than you think.
Har!
This is wonderful, Alan! Just wanted to pop in and let you know I’m still following your posts.
The Backwords site looks so professional. Do you plan to implement a similar site for Rapscallion? Something separate from this site, to which all members of Rapscallion could contribute (via blog) and have books/stories showcased? I’m liking the opportunity to purchase from a central location.
I’m wondering if it might be smart to implement a ‘founders’ sort of structure. (Referring to Dave’s concerns about splits within the group when new members come on board.) Sort of a blackball mentality, yes, but limited to the original members. New members would know upon joining that decisions are made in private by the founders. Only an idea which might be wrought with holes, to get your juices percolatin’!
I find this concept fascinating and wish luck with it to you, Suki, and the others you’re sure to gather along the way.
Corra
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I’ve been thinking a bit more (something my mother warned me against, but I can’t help it). Either Rapscallion is limited in size, or not. Let’s say you set a limit of 12 members, which is at the upper end of a group where everyone can effectively have a say and communications be manageable. Six or eight would be better, but let’s say 12. That’s not very many. And if you’re going to co-market, which is part of the big idea, the writing has therefore to attract a similar readership. There’s no point in a group that has H.M. Pretentious’s magnum opus The Night of the Long Silence (a marvellous study of an elderly couple who spend a whole evening refusing to speak to each other over an argument about the kettle being overfilled) and I.R. Hack’s tawdry potboiler The Potato Killer (serial killer forces his victims to eat instant mash from the packet until they die). Because H.M’s readership of 4 will not be interested in the murky doings of I.R.’s cardboard characters. and his 24 million readers will be to dull to appreciate the wonder of the Long Silence…
So if membership is limited and small-ish then you need to focus on genre, or at least books of similar appeal.
Or you could have unlimited membership working by means similar to a terrorist cell. Each cell contains similarly minded authors writing in similar genres (you can’t just lump all thriller writers in together as there is a huge variation within the genre). Each cell has a limit of, say, 12 and is responsible for marketing etc within that cell and recruiting to that cell. But then of course you will end up with Rapscallion just being an umbrella and no central control of quality. Disaster.
So the you have what? Quality assurance team? Sound like a creep toward being an agency of a sort.
Okay. 12 people will co-market more effectively than most solo authors. Great. But will that increase of effectiveness be enough?
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Hm. Interesting. A lot to take in. As I read your post, a hundred questions came into mind. Then you presented most of them near the end. I was hoping for answers but I see you were too. haha
I checked out Backwords. I agree with Corra. It has a professional look and seems to be headed in the right direction though I’m not entirely sure how they run it. (That might be good to research.)
Your idea here has my attention. I’m interested yet my brain is too consumed with a thousand other things to really think it through and come up with answers. I think Dave made a good point that the majority of members would not have the more important skills like marketing and graphic design. So a handful would be covering all of it for all members. When you think about it, that sorta makes the group just like a regular publisher who hires a marketing agent and graphic designer. It’s difficult to see how the work would be spread across the group AND maintain quality standards. – A side note on graphic design: Your logo for Rapscallion does not appeal to me personally. I had to look up what the word means (cause I’m dim sometimes) and discovered how fun it is! …someone who is playfully mischievous or a scoundrel. Oh my word. How appropriate. But the logo doesn’t even hint at that. I won’t bog down these comments with details about what I don’t like and what I’d like to see. If you want to chat about it, email me.
Back to topic. I definitely see the benefit of cross-editing, cross-reviewing etc as long as all involved meet your quality standard. But quality standards are hard to solidify. How do you describe what the standard is? Then how do you enforce it?
As with any business, you need to create a brand which basically means your colors, design, theme, etc need to be so consistent that people will think of your company any time they see a part of your brand anywhere. Example: if your brand included leopard print (and please don’t let it haha) and you used it properly and consistently, anytime someone sees leopard print, they’d think of your company. So… how will you maintain consistency? It’s difficult to do across genres and literary ‘levels.’
So many questions…
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If you start small then branch out later, electing ‘heads’ for each genre, you could have quite a business. The Rapscallion logo could be slightly adjusted to reflect a ‘seal of approval’ for each distinctive genre.
(Only throwing out ideas that may be moot. I’m not sure how big you want this thing to be.)
I agree it could get muddy quick, with some people doing more work than others. The idea is sound, but how to fairly operate the collaboration?
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So Amazon (bulk sales will come mainly from Amazon or the iPad, I think) take 30% and the IRS take 30% of what remains, which one may or may not be able to claim back at some point. You sell for $2, say £1.50 in real money. You lose 45p to Amazon and then about 30p to the US taxman (I can scarcely believe that’s legal but there you go…). leaving around 70p… about what one would make from a sale of a ‘proper’ book sold at a ‘proper’ price. So then the question is does your lower priced self-published ebook gain you sales sufficient to compensate for much weaker marketing? I can’t see it doing any worse than a small publisher POD (where the author has to do his own marketing anyway… these firms must now be dead in the water).
But to return to the point, if Rapscallion starts small, how can it be cross-genre? Given that it’s unlikely that the mass of people who would buy The Lebanese Troubles would by a Grisham-like thriller for instance (yes, I know some would, but most would want something as literary). I notice the chap who was selling loads of ebooks wrote crime (always a popular genre) and was pumping out two or more novels a year and his sales were for all his novels combined (and he was established as a ‘proper’ author already, though he denied that had any bearing on his sales and he may well be right. It seems to me that cheap and cheerful an dsell by the bucketload recalls the pulp fiction of the 30s, where authors were churning out around 5000 words per day to make a decent living. Now some decent stuff came out of the old pulps. But not much that was ‘purely’ literary.
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Chris, Dave, Corra, Greta, Joy. Thank you for your contributions. I hope I’ve been able to give more clarity in today’s post – ‘The Rapscallion Framework’ – and that you’ll have a lot more feedback.
Dave, I’m very much aware that I haven’t dealt with your comments about financial returns from the writer yet. But it’s considerably brighter for the indie writer than even a few days ago. The situation is evolving rapidly – to our benefit. I’ll deal with that soon.
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