Author: Scott William Carter

How to Take All The Fun Out of Writing and End Up With Something Soulless and Soul-Crushing

Here’s an article over on The Book Designer that had me shaking my head today:

When you decide to write and publish a book, you want to be confident you will bring a book to market that has never before been written—or read—and that your target readers want and need.

To write that book, tell that tale or fill that hole, do some work before you start your manuscript. As part of your initial planning process, study other previously published books and use this research to help you develop the confidence to write and publish a singular book …

[Read the rest of “How to Fill a ‘Hole’ on the Bookstore Shelf’ at the TheBookDesigner.com]

A singular book? I don’t often link to articles on publishing that don’t resonate with me, simply because there’s too much stuff that does resonate for me to share with you those things that don’t (and there’s little objective truth in this business), but this one, wow . . . It so goes against what I’ve learned about the actual creative process that I can’t believe that people really write this way.  Does anyone?  

When I was at the Oregon Book Awards a couple weeks ago, a young writer asked me what I would tell her if I had only one piece of advice to give.  Essentially, I said this: “Write for you. Don’t worry about everybody else.  Write what makes you happy, or angry, or sad. Make yourself laugh or cry or cheer. If you can do that, there’s a good chance your manuscript will do the same for other people, because we’re all made from the same basic stuff. And at the end of the day, at least you’ll have that.”

And that’s what I believe.  I wouldn’t worry too much about being original.  I’d focus on being authentic.  If you’re authentic, as any kind of artist, whether you’re penning a song, writing a novel, or painting a water color, if what you’re writing comes from deep within you, then you won’t need to “fill a hole” on the bookstore shelf.  You’ll create your own space.  

That’s how art works.  There’s always room for another authentic voice.

The Public Library as Publisher

As you’ve probably noticed, libraries becoming publishers is one of the developments I’m watching closely.  Here’s  Jennifer Koerber writing about “The Public Library as Publisher” at Library Journal:

Unlike previous library publishing efforts, Provincetown chose to follow a curated model, using a selection jury made up of staff from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the Provincetown Art Association Museum, and local artists and authors. Provincetown Public Press will publish a small number of quality ebooks each year, primarily due to cost—the Library serves a population of 3,000 with a $300,000 budget —but also because the Press is “striving to become a respected outlet with the ability to provide exposure to up-and-coming writers and artists,” said Clark.

Well worth reading the whole article, which cover a number of libraries flirting with publishing.

Here’s the thing about publishing.  It’s taken on an almost mystical quality in the past fifty years or so, but at its Latin core, all that the word publish means is to make public.  The real game changer wasn’t print-on-demand or ebook publishing.  The real game changer was the Internet, which, as it has evolved today, allows anyone to make a blog, a website, a podcast, a YouTube video, and, yes, a print-on-demand book or ebook public with little or no middlemen in between.  That’s all publishing. The only difference is the format.

Now, as the article so nicely demonstrates, the labor doesn’t change, and whether you should publish something yourself is a different question than  can you publish something yourself, but as libraries move away from being purely information repositories, and instead information portals, then it makes sense that they become a place where that information can flow in both directions.

Indie Bookstores on the Rise

My friend Dean Wesley Smith has a great post up about how small publishers — even one person operations — can get their books into bookstores.  Definitely recommend you read his post, even if you’re coming at this from the angle of a reader rather than a writer.  Dean is right that this is just history repeating itself, but the big change is how little cost it takes to compete as a publisher these days.  With POD (print-on-demand), you don’t need to have inventory on hand.  You don’t even need a physical location at all, except perhaps a PO box.  You can literally create a publishing empire from a laptop.

And he touches on a persistent myth that just won’t die.  Yes, one big bookstore chain (Borders) went away and the other (B&N) is struggling to find itself, but there are hundreds of little independent bookstores popping up to take their place:

The American Booksellers Association, which represents independent bookstores, says its membership — it hit a low of 1,600 in 2008 — has grown 6.4 percent in 2013, to 2,022. Sales were up 8 percent in 2012, and those gains have held this year.  [From  http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/independent-bookstores-turn-a-new-page-on-brick-and-mortar-retailing/2013/12/15/2ed615d8-636a-11e3-aa81-e1dab1360323_story.html]

And this:

The American Booksellers Association announced this week in Bookselling This Week that it added 44 new bookstore members last year, including six branches of existing stores. California gained the most new stores, 10; followed by Michigan and New York, which each had four. In addition, 12 established stores were purchased by new owners, including Penguin Bookshop in Sewickley, Pa.; Inkwood Books in Tampa, Fl.; and Moby Dickens Bookshop in Taos, N.M.

In 2014, ABA already seems on track to continue expanding membership. Four stores have opened to date, including The Purple Chair in New Braunfels, Tex., and Blue Frog Books in Howell, Mich. Two stores have new owners. [From  http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/61136-aba-adds-44-stores-in-2013.html]

It’s true that a lot of these are gift stores and coffee shops who sell books among other things, but that’s a good thing.  Rather than have a huge chunk of the retail shelf space dedicated to books controlled by a handful of buyers at a couple of superstores, we now have hundreds of small buyers who can cater to their local niches. Yes, we might not see the heyday of 5500 ABA members and 7000 stores that existed in 1995, especially with ebooks and online retailing taking a huge chunk of the book business, but bookstores have their place. If that weren’t true, their numbers wouldn’t be growing.