Monopolies are illegal in this country, and I don’t really plan to play by those rules. If I can’t win, that’s fine. But I’m in it to play my own game.

Also, I absolutely don’t get the indie publishing stigma when it comes to romance. All romance authors are stigmatized and marginalized by virtue of the fact that every single person that doesn’t read romance practically thinks they are all bad books with no plot, and hardly what anyone would call a “real book.” And most romance readers who openly admit to reading romance feel compelled to qualify or explain their reading preference.

So this leg of the industry has no room for snobbery. The fact that anyone turns around to behave that way, after the larger industry spits on them, well, that’s a little hypocritical, IMO.

The other fields open the moment people start TAKING other paths.

The epublishing boom in romance wouldn’t be what it is now, without the people behind Ellora’s Cave, Samhain, Loose ID, and others deviating from the standard way of doing things.

I look at the Horror and SF/F genres and they have multiple methods publishing, contracting publishers, networking, meeting readers and fans, etc. They can publish in anthologies, submit stories to short-story magazines, go to Cons, join multiple organizations devoted to particular segments of the fandom (ie, WisCon for discussing women in sf/f), publish in online journals, and so on.

We that write romance write and publish within a narrow tunnel, which is why there is such resistance to any change or deviation from the “establishment.” It confuses the heck out of me since romance makes up a HUGE percentage of book sales, so it isn’t as though the genre would splinter and fragment if everyone didn’t follow the same exact path to readership and success. It hurts the genre immensely because we’ve cut ourselves off at the foot–if there wasn’t such a stigma attached to indie publishing (thereby extending the disdain to journals and magazines), I think the frustration, envy and strife seen within the genre would abate. If romance authors saw other fields open to them to reach readers, there wouldn’t be this immense pressure to publish solely through NY.

And I agree, it’s not a way to run a business. And I guess, coming from a family where business is highly respected, and running one’s own business is highly respected, the idea that an industry that can’t seem to wrap it’s head around the basics of business, could ever tell me whether or not my work would sell, well it’s just galling. And I won’t play that game.

Nobody doubts that the bigger guys have really far reach, but they aren’t very good advertisers, they aren’t good test marketers. They don’t do formal demographics studies. Yet every other business with a product, DOES do those things.

And I can’t respect the lack of that activity. The throw it on the wall and see if it sticks, spaghetti approach to business. Or the “throw a bunch of money at these few products, and see if people buy it” approach.

Then there is that dragon pages podcast, where they gave that ketchup analogy, that nobody buying ketchup means nobody is eating. And the book industry tells us, less books are being sold, so nobody is reading. But EVERYBODY is reading. People read more now than ever with the internet.

And somewhere in there, they are getting stories. Because that is a human need.

Also, I agree with what those guys are saying with regards to ebooks. Most NY pubbed authors see ebook sales as a very small portion of their sales.

Well, yes, but there are many reasons for that. Ebook readers aren’t yet highly affordable. They don’t have a uniform format, or barring that, a reader that handles most platforms. (Who spends over $100 for an ebook reader that can only read maybe a fourth of the ebooks they may want to read because of format differences?)

And the DRM thing? That pisses off consumers, because it treats everybody as a thief. Or a potential thief.

But the industry as a whole isn’t interested in the ebook. They’ve been burned, and they can’t give up any level of control over an industry they don’t have much control over in the first place.

But like Cory Doctorow says, books are fetish objects. Readers aren’t going to just stop buying their fetish objects. Especially fiction readers. I know I personally am far more receptive to reading nonfiction in ebook format, than fiction.

I know what an author can do, especially one who already HAS a reader base. Take it directly to the reader.

Editors and agents are human beings. Nothing more. Nothing less. And until writers finally get to the point where they say: “Hey the views of 1,000 readers, are more important to me than the views of this one agent or editor” then nothing will change.

There is no qualitative difference in the opinion between one human being and another on the wonderfulness or lack thereof for any piece of fiction. Different people have different tastes.

Some books have a much smaller pool of people who like them. Sometimes that’s a writing or storytelling quality issue, sometimes it’s the topic/idea just has a smaller pool of people who want it.

And sometimes a book doesn’t necessarily have a smaller pool, but it’s hard to find and connect with the readers, so something is off on the marketing end of things.

But I don’t think, at least in my world, than an editor at a major publishing house loving or hating something is more validating to me as a writer than the views of a thousand readers. (as just a random number. I’m not getting into empirical value of various numbers of readers. Because that only really becomes an issue when we’re talking about profiting from writing financially, and that’s a different discussion.)

And that’s like a ginormous amount of books, too. There’s no real polling going on nor any real counting of receipts for books that are sold to prove what readers are really reading. Just overall estimates, presales to bookstores and an eye on what the new trend is. So not a way to run a business and that’s why everything’s pretty much collapsing. That along with all the big publishers are practically in bed with each other so when the parent company folds it’s a domino effect to all the imprints.

That’s a shame, too because so many poor authors get left holding their books not knowing what to do and readers are left wondering what’s going on with a series in the middle of a story. Now authors have an alternative to keep their work going and within their own hands.

They don’t buy a book they don’t think can earn them money; they aren’t running a charity service. But a large percentage of books don’t earn them money, so those books are failures from a financial standpoint. And books they made a mistake on.

Since there is, very conservatively, a 50/50 chance that they could be entirely wrong about any assessment they make about any of my work, and since they are in this to make money, then I’m not putting much stock in what they have to say either way about any book. If I ever prove to be a “sure thing” (which I’m not saying I can or will), then it’s no longer a crap shoot.

The bookstore returns system, where you have an industry claiming to be selling wholesale, that really sales on consignment.

I could go on and on. I don’t know how ANYONE survives in this business with THAT business model.

As far as I’m concerned, screw snobbery. If someone doesn’t think what I’m doing is valid because they think I can’t write or market, that’s one thing. If they don’t think it’s valid because I’m putting out my own product, then that’s insane.

In every other entertainment or product related industry, putting out one’s own product is seen as respectable initiative. Just because publishing hasn’t caught up to that, doesn’t mean I have to just go along with what I view as a backwards mentality toward self-motivated initiative.

Besides, there was a time when a band was thought to be “not good enough to get a record label” if they went indie. But that changed.

I’m seeing a big emotional revolution going on with writers, with podcasting and free ebooks, and the light bulb that, “hey, we can put work out ourselves, and it won’t cost an arm and a leg to do it.”

Suddenly writers are back to being the storytellers, interacting with their audience. And that’s how it should be. Not going through the special olympics of gatekeepers.

Like franchising, I think personally, for me, that the gatekeepers would only make sense if I had a proven product and wanted to expand. Then I’d be looking for a business partner, not someone to validate me.

My own view is that writing is no different than any other business- and I don’t say that lightly. I own my own business, and what you have been saying re indie publishing is quite true. There are many marketing models from products, and let’s face it- our written work is a product.

The key criteria for determining the validity of a business model is simply whether it works- period. I’m so glad that you don’t back down from the snobs of the publishing and writing world. Nice to meet a writer with a backbone.

It’s also really cool if you can write short stories that tie into work you have for sale already, or that you’re shopping around with agents and editors.

As far as a paying medium, the short story is pretty dead, but it’s a great promo tool to start introducing people to a little bit of your work for free.

Not everybody wants to tie up longer work in a free release like this, but there are so many ways to go here. And short stories are definitely a solid way, I think!

This could be a great way to go. I’m on the computer too much to read ebooks, no matter how much I love the author, but short stories could be the way to go.

I’ll think about this!

I think a part of the stigma of anyone sharing any of their work on their own even if they aren’t self publishing in the strictest invest a bunch of money in it, sense, is because people have this mental idea that there is a “line” and you are supposed to “wait your turn.”

But that’s crap. That would make sense if I didn’t hear about a guy that it took him 50 years to get a contract, then another chick who picked up a pen for the first time 3 years ago, with a 3 book deal.

Further, I don’t comprehend the money views either. Even if someone did spend their own money to put their book out (which isn’t shameful in any other industry but publishing, btw), how is that any different than spending money for writers conferences, retreats, books, magazines, seminars, workshops, and classes?

It isn’t. It’s all money spent that you may or may not see come back to you.

If I was (and I’m just talking about me here, I’m not preaching for converts), sending things out to agents, and I kept hearing “I love it but I don’t think it will sell.” Well to me, THAT is too frustrating to deal with.

You have no idea how heartbreaking that is. And, worse, to be told, “We’d buy it, but we bought something a little similar last month. Yours is better, though!”