Errant Ramblings: Mitzi Szereto’s Weblog

Mwah-ha-ha!

I guess that depends upon whom you ask…

An interesting debate is going on about the issue of self-publishing. Now I’m not referring to vanity press publishing, I’m referring to bypassing the traditional route to publishing – and therefore avoiding such obstacles to success as literary agents and submissions editors (or their assorted lackeys), who appear to operate as the sole arbiters of taste for the entire world’s book-reading public.

So what exactly is self-publishing? It is taking control of your product and seeing that it actually gets published. This generally happens via electronic books (e-books) and print-on-demand (POD) publishing platforms, both of which are available at little to no cost to authors. These very same platforms are now being utilised by traditional print publishers such as Random House, who have discovered that they can continue to sell their back-list and dead-wood titles without spending any money, not to mention flog additional copies of their more viable books – again, without spending any money. Sounds like a good deal, eh?

Then why is there such a negative connotation placed on authors who also choose to follow this same road? I guess in this case, what’s good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander.

The consensus seems to be that traditional publishers dislike authors who employ these forms of self-publishing. It kinda makes you wonder if maybe they’re seeing the writing on the wall. I mean, if more and more authors go this route, there will be less books on offer to publishers – and less books means less revenue. Just think: what if authors decided to avoid the endless hassle and rejection of dealing with agents and publishers and opted instead to do it themselves? Can you imagine if Stephen King told his publishers to go take a flying leap and went into full-on DIY? Imagine how much money his publishers would stand to lose (and how much more he would make!). Oh man, doesn’t it just get your mouth watering?

Granted, Stephen King has a name; he doesn’t need to worry about his books sitting all lonely and unloved in a corner of a bookshop near the toilets. Not a lot of authors are as fortunate as he is. They need to rely on their publishers to push their material into the public arena, to actually SELL it. Err… hang on a minute, did I say “sell”? Aye, there’s the rub. How many publishers put forth any real effort on actually selling a book? Sure, each book gets a marketing budget, but more often than not, it’s barely enough to buy a pack of chewing gum. And don’t think just because you have a big publisher they’re going to break the bank to promote your little book – not when they have to earn back all those ridiculous advances they’ve paid out to their so-called “star” authors.

Now most people who know me know that I work my backside off promoting myself and my various projects. Heck, if I don’t do it, who will? So when my efforts start to get attention from the right people, I expect those who handle “marketing and publicity” to at least follow through when I place leads into their laps. After all, I’ve pretty much done their work for them, right? What I do not expect is to see these leads ignored because said marketing person’s either continually out of the office and not replying to phone and email queries, or just can’t be bothered to do his/her job. For example, awhile back I found out that a television producer had been trying to find me and not having any luck. He later informed me that he’d pretty much given up hope after three attempts to contact one of these aforementioned marketing persons for information on where to reach me (his phone calls were never returned). He finally had his assistant Google me, which resulted in my email address.

So much for the advantages of traditional publishers and their marketing and publicity departments.

One of the main arguments used against self-publishing (which tend to be put forth by traditional publishers) is that self publishing will diminish the quality of books on offer. Really? Have you been down to your friendly neighbourhood bookseller lately and seen some of the crap on offer? I mean, did someone actually wake up one day and decide to publish say, Katie Price‘s scintillating series of memoirs or autobiographies whatever in hell they are? Whether they sell or not is besides the point, especially when the argument these publishers are brandishing about is that the “quality” of books and literature on offer will be severely diminished by these nasty evil self-publishing authors.

I talk to a lot of writers, and I mean published writers, who’ve been there and done that in the traditional way – only to see all their hard work go nowhere (that’s if they even get a book deal). Many of these writers are now realising that they can enjoy a very high royalty rate in this self-publishing game – and they don’t have to share the pot with any literary agent either. Not only do they get to control their product, but they can avoid a lot of ulcers arguing with book editors over editorial changes that may (or may NOT) improve the work. Sure, they may have to work harder to get the word out, but is that any worse than seeing your “baby” being neglected and shunted aside? – only to later be told that it didn’t sell very well, if at all? Well, of course it didn’t sell. No one made any effort to sell it!

The point is, the days of self-publishing have changed. No longer is it your senile old granddad publishing his war memoirs to give the grandkids at Christmas. You’ll be seeing more and more talented and name-known authors going this route, as traditional publishing continues to push more and more talent away from their doorsteps in lieu of publishing more and more tripe they can’t sell in their endless game of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Well, perhaps Peter has finally had enough!

Some of you may have heard about the recent fracas concerning online retailer Amazon.com. What happened is this: a whole slew of books had their sales rankings removed – books which apparently fell into a certain category, the likes of which have puzzled pretty much everyone. Amazon initially seemed to be targeting titles deemed to contain “adult content”, especially anything in the “erotica” genre. This then ended up being extended to gay and lesbian literature and even feminist works. Now we’re not talking only about those books with covers that would make your average raincoat and black-socks-wearing perv blush with embarrassment, but some very high-profile books as well, including non-fiction historical studies and works containing no sexually explicit content whatsoever.

Considering that many of my books classified as “erotica” are far less explicit than the average Jilly Cooper or Jackie Collins novel (see my blog post about mislabelling), this sounded like hypocrisy in action. So too, was the fact that titles containing nude photographs of women (and not the most highbrow either), along with memoirs penned by porn stars were still respectably ranked on Amazon. So I went and had a look and found that a number of my titles had been de-ranked. What makes this especially amusing (or not, depending on how you look at it) is the fact that Stephen Fry‘s autobiography was also de-ranked, along with classic works of literature such as D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and a biography of Oscar Wilde. Rather than be upset by it as my fellow writers were, I felt flattered to be in such lofty company as Mssrs. Lawrence, Wilde and Fry.

Since I live in a cave (metaphorically), I had no idea this cull was even going on until I began to see mention of it in Facebook and Twitter updates. A petition had been started and was being passed along the grapevine (helped by me once I knew of the situation). Finally Amazon sat up and took notice, though they blamed everything on a “glitch”. (Sounds just like Facebook’s favourite excuse!) Now I’m not going to say the good folks at Amazon were telling porkers – glitches in systems are common enough, and something intended to perform one function can often end up taking over and creating havoc, much like the Hal 2000 computer from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

So why did this happen? Well, in some frothing-at-the-mouth Bible-Belting attempt to protect the delicate book-buying public from material that might be deemed to be of an “adult” nature, Amazon took it upon themselves to enact this de-ranking policy, which didn’t remove books from the site, but removed their sales rankings, thereby driving them, shall we say, underground. It also removed these books from search results. Perhaps I’m not the only one who lives in a cave, because surely any member of the public (regardless of age) can locate the most extreme, sick and disgusting forms of pornography online at the click of a mouse. So who exactly was being protected by this policy? Your guess is as good as mine as well as all the others who objected to this arbitrary silliness on the part of Amazon.

Now I know a lot of people diss Amazon and this hasn’t exactly helped the situation. They’ve become the company people love to hate (much like Starbucks). Surprisingly, a lot of authors have joined the hate bandwagon too, which I find surprising, especially since the odds are hugely stacked against authors’ books being sold at all, to say nothing of actually being stocked! If this makes me politically incorrect, so be it, but frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. I LOVE Amazon – and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Amazon is not the love that dare not speak its name. They have all my books listed for sale and if they are out of stock, they’ll reorder them. They also allow buyers to pre-order titles that haven’t even been published yet. (I suggest you hurry over to Amazon and do so for the upcoming re-release of my bestselling story collection In Sleeping Beauty’s Bed: Erotic Fairy Tales!) Now how many brick-and-mortar booksellers can even be bothered to do this when they can’t even be bothered to re-order a book that’s already been published?

Most of the big chains are in bed with major publishing houses (I won’t mention names, but two biggies here in the UK are definitely enjoying a gay old romp in the sheets with some heavy players in the publishing world). Why do you think the same stale books by the same stale authors are in every bookshop? God forbid if you want to be a Looky Lou and peruse the shelves to see what else might be worth a read – you’re pretty much stuck with Delia Smith‘s cookery books, David Beckham‘s words of wisdom, Katie and Peter‘s lives as happily married chavs, and Paris Hilton‘s riveting life story (or has it been published yet?). Of course you can’t exactly peruse the bookshelves at Amazon as you might a regular bookshop, but when a regular bookshop offers you a very limited variety of the vast variety of books and authors out there, you’re getting a raw deal anyway.

So stop your whingeing. Amazon behaved stupidly (how many of you can say that you never have), and they did something about it (how many of you can say that you have), so let’s all be friends again. As writers we can’t afford to thumb our noses at vendors who sell our product. And as readers/consumers we deserve the greatest variety of books offered at the very best price. Amazon has revolutionised the way books are sold. Fine, so they screwed up, but they listened to the public and they responded by rectifying the problem. I bet you can’t say the same for your local or national government or your utility company or your bank. And I bet you can’t say the same for your lover/partner/spouse either!

Mitzi Szereto: Dying For It: Tales of Sex and Death

What do you do when your book is mislabelled? No, I’m not talking about some spotty teenaged kid at Walmart putting the wrong price sticker on it. I’m talking about something a lot more annoying and something which can potentially affect your book sales - sometimes to the negative.

When readers head over to a bookshop or to an online bookseller to find a book to purchase, they might go to a specific category, be it crime, romance, science-fiction, chick-lit, self-help, whatever. They then have certain expectations of what these books will be about. But what happens when a book isn’t quite what it says on the tin? Well, readers may get more than they bargained for and have their reading experience elevated to a higher level. At least this is what we as writers hope will happen! But what about those readers who miss out entirely on a book because of the way in which it’s labelled?

Labelling isn’t necessarily done as a sinister plot to mislead a book buyer into purchasing something he or she doesn’t want to buy (though if a recent article about publishers suddenly labelling everything chick-lit is anything to go by…), but rather a matter of expediency. If it says sci-fi on the cover, booksellers know to stock it on the sci-fi shelves, and readers know to find it there. Simple, right? In the majority of cases, this works just fine for most categories of fiction and non-fiction. But what about those times when it does not work just fine?

I’ll draw upon my own experiences in this area to demonstrate my point. Although much of my work has been in the area of erotic fiction, or “erotica” as it is more commonly referred to, the label has on occasion been misapplied. Case in point: my anthology Dying For It: Tales of Sex and Death. This is a multi-genre collection of short stories ranging from crime, romance and horror, to literary fiction and erotic fiction. Before it went to press, I spoke on the phone to my publisher in New York discussing this very issue: how to label the book. We both agreed that classifying the work as “erotica” was not really accurate, therefore it was agreed that the anthology would not be labelled as such. But when the book came out, there it was on the back cover: ”erotica.” Clearly the opinions of the creator and editor of the book (me) and the gentleman who’d so enthusiastically agreed to publish it were overridden by someone with no concept of what the anthology was about (they probably just saw the word “sex” in the title) and had probably not even read one story contained within it.

The problem is, there are many readers out there who are not interested in reading erotica – or what they either rightly or wrongly perceive to be ”erotica.” However, they might not be averse to reading material that contains sexual themes or content, providing this is placed within a wider context. These readers probably don’t bat a proverbial eyelash at the sexually explicit and often even purple prose to be found in a John Updike or Philip Roth novel, but will they buy a book that proclaims itself to be erotica? Unlikely. Which means, you’ve lost a reader, and you’ve lost a sale.

Don’t get me wrong – labelling a book in a specific genre can have its advantages, providing said book is labelled properly. But this requires a bit more than a one-size-fits-all mentality by publishers. It requires some thoughtful analysis of what a book is actually about and who might be interested in reading it. It should be the goal of a publisher to attract the widest possible audience to a book, which will result in higher sales figures – and a label can either help or hinder this process. Placing a book such as my Dying For It into a specific classification can undermine what the author (or editor) is trying to accomplish. Likewise, it can keep readers away from books they might have considered, were it not for the label. A book is not a garment with a tag sewn into the collar listing its size and washing instructions. By treating it as such, we not only shortchange writers, but readers as well.