Inkslinger On writing, on books, and on book arts

Writer Beware Blogs! The Stats Are So Scary I Decided to Hold Off Until After Halloween and Eat Candy Instead

Writer Beware Blogs! is another one of those websites every writer should know about.  I'm not talking just about fiction writers.  I'm talking everyone, including academics hoping with fingers crossed to reach 50 people (they wrote about academic mills a couple of times last month).  

Everyone putting work out there has something to gain from cruising the site.  They keep us abreast of scandals and lawsuits -- and scandals and lawsuits there have been these past couple of weeks.  Want to know more about the Google Book Search Settlement Fairness Hearing and how it's developing in court? Go here.  Want to know the difference between vanity presses and self-publishing?  There's loads of articles on that subject, but here are a couple of recent ones: The Perils of Searching for Publishers on the Internet and A Question You Don't Want Your Publisher to Ask and Thomas Nelson Adds Self-Publishing Imprint.  The latter event, the creation of a new self-pub imprint, created one of the scandals du jour a couple of weeks ago: Thomas Nelson's imprint is giving "Referral Fees" (a.k.a. kick backs) to agents who refer refused authors to Nelson's services.  The funniest thing about this is the dead-pan manner in which the company announces it, as if declaring it above-the-board business just makes it so.  For Victoria Strauss's dissection of this trick, read Why Referral Fees Present Ethical Problems.

Writer Beware Blogs! does not only serve as an industry watch group, however.  They also debunk writing and publishing myths.  This is the candy corn I love gobbling up.  The most recent myth punctured is: "You have to know someone in order to get published."  A poll is put out in the field.  The findings are soothing.  72% of authors "sold to an editor they had no connection to."  Victoria declares decidedly, "There you have it - - persuasive proof that you do not, in fact, need to know anyone in order to sell your first book."  Whew!  Ahem... Just don't look too hard at the first parenthetical note that points out two teensy issues: 1) many respondents seem to be children's book writers (perhaps weighting the poll in a certain direction) and 2) many of the authors sold their first books in the 1990s.

And we are far from the '90s.  And even farther from the '80s.  

Which brings me to the numbers I avoided on Halloween as much as I avoided those spider-covered-eggs at Ecotone's fundraiser/Halloween party out in Wilmington, North Caroline this past weekend.  Here is Victoria and Writers Beware Blogs! offering up some Thoughts on Self-Promotion:

The article ties some of the trend toward self-promotion to publishers' shrinking publicity budgets. But the truth is that publishers never provided significant promotion for more than a handful of their authors, even in pre-Internet days. What's really driving the self-promotional frenzy, in my opinion, is the dilution of the market. As the article points out, 560,000 books were published in the USA last year (more than were published in the entire 10-year period between 1980 and 1989, when title output averaged around 51,000 per year). Even if you subtract the nearly 300,000 that were self- or micropress-published, that's way too many books. How do you make your book stand out from thousands of others in your subject or genre? Go forth, intrepid author, and self-promote!

560,000 books last year.  I'm still trying to wrap my head around that number.

In contrast to so many articles that provide expert to-do lists for self-promotion, Writer Beware Blogs! cuts to the chase: No one knows what works.  Reasonable heads prevail.  They advise research, planning, and being aware of your own personality, rather than diving into the newest glitzy promotion tools.  Have fun.  And write a good book.