Players, Markets and Pagers

First, A Warning!

I need to add a disclaimer to this post: it is quite technical.

If you hated economics at school, this is probably not the post for you.

On the other hand, if you enjoy understanding people's motivations, well, then this might be of interest. Because economics is really only about understanding why people do what they do - except economists usually view people's behaviour as aggregates, not as individuals.

This post is a very brief summary of today's publishing industry, and how writers can use this knowledge to their advantage.  You should view this as an overview only - if you want to find out more, click on the links embedded in the text.

Okay, here we go...

Fiction Marketplaces are Like Tennis

The writing marketplace is a 'Tournament Marketplace'.

Tournament marketplaces are characterised by

1. High numbers of players
2. Low average earnings per player
3. Very small number generating profits
4. However, profits for a tiny number of players are extremely high
5. These extremely high profits act as an incentive for new players to join the marketplace

Other examples of tournament markets could include professional tennis players or (get this!) merchant bankers. Seriously. (I once read a whole economics paper on this. Personally, I would have thought merchant bankers did okay, but apparently not. Poor things... ) So - If you want to get rich, DON'T join a tournament market. Instead, be an engineer or a doctor, where both the average earnings and the profits per player are high.

However, you may still have a dream of being a paid writer. Like me, you may even know in your head that the chances of making any money are incredibly low. So, if you decide to enter a tournament marketplace, do it with your eyes open. You need to have an alternative form of income, at least until you manage to hit the jackpot!

The Product Life Cycle - What the Pager Can Teach Us

Markets generally go through recognised stages. We've all seen this happening - for example, in the personal messaging industry. In the 80s cool people wore pagers. Pagers were a sign that you were important; that people actually wanted to contact you.

Pagers were expensive, available in a wide range of colours and you could get accessories - belt clips and bags and so on. Quite a few companies made pagers.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

In the late eighties, the cell-phone emerged.

 Image from Uncyclomedia Commons

And eventually, the new technology replaced the pager.

The pager lifecycle of growth, plateau and decline, is replicated in most industries. Turnover time is faster in industries that are heavily reliant on technology, because new technology is highly disruptive to a marketplace.

Product Lifecycle. Image from Wikimedia Commons

Industries that depend on human skills are have longer life cycles. Because while it's possible to replace technology, it's much, much harder to train a person. The major disruptors to skill-based industries are social factors: fashion, wages, or demographic shifts.

How Does this Relate to Writers?

The traditional publishing industry is a classic case of an industry in the decline phase.

By 'traditional publishing industry', I mean a little more than just the publishing house. I mean the whole industry: trad publishers + printers + distributors + bricks and mortar stores. 

(I'm also talking about first world publishing of trade fiction. The story for emerging markets is a little different, as is the marketplace for non-fiction. Even within the trad. marketplace there will be variations against the type of genre. For example, children's picture book market is quite different to romantic fiction - picture books require illustrators, they are purchased by adults (not the readers) and generally, kids and playgroups prefer paper.)

Declining markets have the following characteristics

1. Few players
2. High barriers to entry
3. Limited competition
4. High consolidation (i.e. players are large, complex organisations). Mergers and acquisitions are high.
5. There is still profit to be made, but only by large players.

Evidence for this decline can be seen across the publishing industry:

1. Decreasing number of major publishing houses 
2. Strong differentiation of market - major players stick to their point of difference. This suggests there are major risk factors in moving into another market, suggesting that margins are extremely tight.
3. Decline of bricks and mortar bookstores
4. Reducing demand for print

Therefore, profits per player in the traditional marketplace are low. 

Writers of traditionally published fiction would be wise to consider the following:

• Traditional publishers are likely to be experiencing shrinking margins. This means that advances are likely to be smaller and royalties will be low. 
• Publishers will seek to reduce risk (and therefore cost). Therefore, contracts are likely to include unlimited indemnity and liability clauses. Furthermore, if your sales are not up to forecast, you will be unlikely to get a second chance; you may even incur court action if a publisher cannot recoup its advance.
• Support for writers such as paying for publicity (advertising, marketing) or provision of any other 'value-add' like paying for a book launch, is likely to decrease.
• Publishers will reduce staff. This means that writers may be expected to participate more in the book-to-market process (for example, checking proofs) and that administration support is likely to be patchy. You would be wise to check everything - the cover art on Kindle, the price on ibooks - because it's likely that there won't be enough staff to monitor this properly. You could even find that your publisher downsizes or closes while your book is in press.
• Time taken to respond to queries will take longer, as will consideration of manuscripts.

This suggests that for me, in the quest of increasing my earnings from writing, I would be better to focus my energy outside the traditional publishing market. I would be better to look for a market which is in a growth phase. 

And where is this, you ask?

Well, stay tuned. I will discuss this in my next post.

Writers Need to Eat

The World of Books is Changing. 

Established publishers are going into receivership, or being acquired by other publishers, or just ... disappearing. Indie publishers are starting up. Writers are publishing their own work. On-line digital platforms, like Amazon, Smashwords, iBooks, stock more titles than any bricks and mortar bookshop could ever do.

Books are available in multiple formats: print, or digital, or audio. They can be streamed. The number of bookstores are declining. Libraries are changing, too; no longer offering just print, they now provide music, games, art, even digital lending.

Writers, who traditionally used to spend their time alone, staring at a typewriter (or out the window) now use computers, and socialise on line with their readers, or with fellow-writers. There are a lot more distractions for a writer!

And the world is a lot more interconnected than it was.

While there's increasing competition for leisure time, especially with the rise of the gaming industry, there has also been an increased connectivity - gamers don't play by themselves. And there's an increased demand for good, believable stories. Now, the best games use narrative, dialogue and plot.

Readers, too, are changing. Reading has always been a solitary pleasure. But book clubs and book social media - Goodreads and the Reading Room are emerging power houses. Word of mouth has always sold books, but now there's a new way to recommend, and that's through reviews. Reviews, it turns out, may be worth more than sales.

In this new landscape of freely available publishing, you'd think it would be easier than ever for a writer to make money. All a writer has to do is to bang a few thousand words onto a page, format it correctly, push the 'publish' button and bang, thousands of eager readers leap forward and voila - a bestseller is born!

Alas, the reality is quite, quite different.

Writers Need to Eat

My first novel, A Necklace of Souls, was received very well critically, even winning Best First Novel at the New Zealand Post Awards. But it has earned me only a teeny, tiny amount. Barely enough to pay for ten weeks of groceries. Unfortunately, I need to eat for more than ten weeks in a year!

My last series of posts was about writing a novel in six months. This was a stretch goal for me. As I work nearly full-time and have a family, I was aware it might not be possible. But I was surprised to find that, not only was it achievable, it was a really great process and produced a seriously good YA novel called Inner Fire. I'm very pleased by the result, and I hope readers are too - Inner Fire will be in online bookstores by Christmas.

Critical success and good craft is just not enough. If I want to write full time - and I think I do - I need to earn more than ten weeks of groceries. I need to earn fifty-two weeks!

So I'm embarking on a new series of posts: How to make money from writing.

How to Make Money From Writing

These posts will be like a diary record of my successes and failures of turning an amazing hobby into a full-time business - that earns me enough that I can afford to write full time.

I'm going to give myself a stretch goal of one year, and just see what happens.

Feel free to join me on this venture. You can contact me through my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/soulnecklace) or on twitter @rlstedman

War and Peace

This is a kind of interlude post - a ramble on today's events, before I move into a new series.

Today is the centenary of World War One. The New Zealand Government has poured a great deal of money into its commemoration, funding special exhibitions at Te Papa (the Museum of New Zealand), parades, fly-overs and other state occasions.

My grandfather served in World War One, but not as a combatant. Rather, he went as a conscientious objector - as a stretcher bearer.  Twenty-three when he was called up, he would not fight. Deeply religious, he followed the Bible. And the Bible said - 'You shall not kill.'

I think he would absolutely hate that state money is being spent on commemorating the blood-bath of WW1. I'm sure he would rather that the funding went to schools, hospitals, refugee re-settlement. My uncle, now in a rest home, told my father off for purchasing and wearing a poppy. 'Dad would be turning in his grave to see you wearing that.' It was kind of amusing to see my father look abashed.

Granddad was brave, so brave. At night he stood on the deck of the troop ship, watching the Southern Cross slip below the horizon and wondering would he ever see it again. Yet the other men that went, the men and women who fought and died only because their country demanded it - they were brave, too.

My father wrote a story about his father for my son - which sounds complicated, but really isn't - and I adapted it and sent it to the School Journal. It was published as a short story in 2012, and it's kind of cool to see children reading it and commenting on it online. A refreshing counterweight to the heroic commemorations funded by the state.

You can access teacher notes for this story here: Silas the Stretcher Bearer

When I hear of the conflicts in Gaza, in the Ukraine, in Sudan, I wish there were more people in the world like my Grandad.

End of the Adventure

I started this sequence of blog posts with the aim of Writing a [Good] Novel in Six months.

I thought I may as well share this process with someone, even if that someone was just my computer. Kind of like a blog-cum-diary. Somewhat to my surprise, other people have been reading these posts too....I hope you've enjoyed it!

Have I Achieved my Goal?

After beginning life as a rather slow-moving story entitled 'The Trouble with Genes', the novel has transformed into a tightly written YA contemporary thriller called 'Inner Fire'.  A big thank you to the readers on my Facebook Page who voted on the title.

After starting at 70,000 words, the editorial process chopped it down to 57,000 words. It's amazing how you can lose words without damaging the narrative. (Actually, less words usually means a better story.)

I felt very proud of myself!

Then, just two weeks ago, I took another look at the manuscript. And I realised there was one major flaw. I had written Inner Fire in the wrong tense! While I'd started in the present tense ("I am, he is, they are"), on re-reading I realised the story sounded much better in the past ("I was, he was, they were").

OMG, talk about not practising what you preach.

So I've just re-edited it again, and tidied up the beginning and the ending, and now it looks much better.  At the moment, I'm sitting on it, like a hen on a special egg, worrying about whether or not it will ever hatch. (I hope I haven't used that metaphor before....)

I'm nervous about sending the manuscript out into the wide world. What if people don't like it?

So right now, I'm tossing up between self-publishing or seeking agent representation, but life's pretty busy for me at the moment, so this might take some time.

Pause for Thought

I'm going to take a break at this point in my blog narrative.

I'll let you know the next stage of Inner Fire's life once I've decided what to do with it. In the meantime, if you want to learn a little more about what the novel is about, feel free to have a look at the pinterest board I've developed.

Lessons Learned

I think, in retrospect, that six months was too short. For the next novel I'll allow myself a year. A novel is not a sprint; it's a marathon, and just like a marathon, you have to pace yourself so you don't burn out before the finish line.

So, the moral of this blog post, is - don't be afraid of taking your time. Things sometimes get better if you wait a while.

PS: Watch this Space

The next novel? What will it be about, you ask? Um, I'm not quite sure yet. At the moment I have an idea for something about faith, and self-belief and finding one's way in the world. I guess you'll just have to watch this space ....

Getting Published

How Can I Get Published?

These days, you don't need to wait for the agent fairy or the publisher to come knocking. You can do it yourself.  But what most people actually mean: How can I see my work in print?

It is a buzz to see your book at the bookshop. I take photos of my baby, and post them on my website. How sad is that?

If this your dream, it can happen. Just don't expect it to be quick, or easy. Here's what worked for me...

9 Things That Worked for Me:

1. A ton of hard work. I wrote on and off for about ten years before I got an acceptance. Over that time I wrote one novella, one novel, and many, many short stories.
2. Write for free. I edited a professional magazine which gave me experience in working with deadlines, keeping to word counts, formatting documents. 
3. Join a writer's association. I joined the New Zealand Society of Authors. Associations like the NZSA often have mentoring programmes for new writers, or access to grants and competitions.
4. Complete some formal training. I did a Certificate in Creative Writing at a local polytechnic. The polytec then closed the course (it didn't fit with their 'core direction', whatever that was), although my teacher has continued the classes privately. Here's the link to her site and no, she's not paying me!
5. Develop networks. This sounds cheesy, but often in life it's not what you know, it's who you know.
6. Submit to e-zines and small journals - see my last post
7. Enter competitions. Comps can be expensive, so now I only enter those with that offer the opportunity to get my script read by a publisher, or that provide direct feedback on my script.  The Romance Writers of America has some good ones, and my lucky break was with Storylines
8. Keep writing. Evaluate critically. Write some more. When you feel it's good enough - and only then - begin submitting to agents or publishers. 
9. And finally, and this isn't something you can ever predict, you need to get lucky. Why was A Necklace of Souls accepted, when another person's might have been equally as good? I don't know. Maybe the commissioning editor liked fantasy. Maybe they were looking for a novel with a strong female protagonist. Maybe the stars had aligned.

So the key message here is:

• Persistance
• Be as good as you can
• A little bit of luck.

Finally, don't expect overnight success.

Actually, don't expect to make a living wage from writing, period. Treat it like a passion and then anything's a bonus.

Writing is a Roller Coaster Ride.

Some You Win...

In the old days you used to get a stock rejection letter, printed on a slip of paper and sent in the post. All writers who've been writing for more than ten years will be familiar with the heart-sink moment of a slim, self-addressed envelope.

The History of My Early Publications.

My first ever acceptance was to an e-zine; a story about a star-ship captain who had lost his ship. I was paid ten dollars for this piece! So exciting! And then, quite shortly afterwards, another e-zine accepted me. This made a total of two! I was on a roll! And I was earning money - well, only ten dollars, because the second e-zine didn't pay, but still...

Then came the School Journal, which accepted two stories in quick succession and rejected two more, equally as quickly. USA based Stories for Kids accepted two more. I would be paid for all these pieces. I would be rich!

And then - nothing. For ages. I finished the novel I'd been working on for five years, and sent it off to a competition. And just for fun, I sent off another novel. Meanwhile, the School Journal stopped accepting submissions, Stories for Kids shut down and both e-zines closed.

I began to feel that I was cursed.

Getting Published

And then, one day, I got a call from Storylines saying that I'd been shortlisted for not one, but both novels. A month or so later I had another call - while I'd been unsuccessful with one story, I had actually won the competition with the other. I was flown to Auckland and harperCollins presented me with the Tessa Duder Award and a contract.

A year later my novel was published, and very quickly (and somewhat to my surprise) gained positive reviews! I was on a roll! I was shortlisted for some major awards...

And then...Yes. harperCollins didn't actually close. They down-sized. Restructured. Most of the people I'd been working with had their jobs disestablished. And they no longer wanted my sequel.

Fame and Glory?

This week I was flown up to Auckland again. This time for a glittering literary event - the New Zealand Post Book Awards.  It's the major award for New Zealand's children's writing. Held at the Town Hall, Ministers and Members of Parliament attend, as well as publishers, writers and various industry figures.

Somewhat to my surprise, I was awarded Best First Book for A Necklace of Souls. I received an actual financial prize!

Awards Do Not Mean Success.

However, harperCollins have confirmed they don't want the sequel. I've had contact from one agent who thinks 'I'm a wonderful writer' but she just don't have the demand for my sort of work right now. And nothing from the others.

But: Just Keep Swimming.

Last week, I got a call from an editor at the newly incarnated School Journal. It hadn't actually closed, it had just reincarnated under a different publisher. She was interested in a short story that I'd sent in nearly two years ago.

I signed the contract yesterday. I'm not sure when the piece will come out - sometimes it can be a year, sometimes it can be a month. I'll post a link to it on my website when it's published.

And I made contact with my wonderful, wonderful editor, who worked with me on Necklace. Together, we're working on a final draft of my new YA novel, which will be called Inner Fire. (More about this project later.)

What is the Point?

The point to this post is - Don't worry about rejections. Just keep writing.

Things happen in their own time.

Writing is like riding an uncertain roller coaster. Fun, exciting, terrifying and never, ever feeling certain about tomorrow.

The Agent Quest Continues...

So you've finished your final draft? Congratulations!

Now it's time to sit on it, like a hen on an egg, and just wait. Patiently, patiently. or, if you 're like me, not so patiently. I always think the moment I've finished my drafting, polishing and polishing the first pages that The Work is perfect.

No such luck. Because when I have another look at it, it surely won't be.

To fill in the time, I research agents, draft a synopsis and construct a query letter. And after I've done that (takes about two weeks), I re-read the first pages of my draft again.

So this post is about finding an Agent.

Do You Need an Agent?

Not necessarily. A Necklace of Souls, my first novel, was published by harperCollins New Zealand and I never had an agent. However, I will be unlikely to take print versions of Necklace out of New Zealand. This means I will be unlikely to make as many sales as if my book had been published by a non-New Zealand publisher.

I know, harperCollins is international, so what's the problem? The problem is the RIGHTS. If NZ holds the international rights, England isn't interested, because it's an extra cost to put the book on the shelf.

So to access print off-shore, I will probably need an (off-shore) agent.

If your work is non-fiction, or an incredibly niche subject, or you can't be bothered with the extra cost of an agent (they don't come free), then you can approach a publisher directly. More and more publishers are accepting direct queries. Just be aware that you will have to take ownership of contract negotiation yourself. You may not always know enough to get the best terms. However, an agent will.

Which raises another question: Do you need to put your book in print?

No. You can publish yourself, via kindle direct, smashwords or ibooks. I've not done this yet, but I will one day, because I like the idea of total control. Ask my kids - I'm a control freak!

But just right now, I'm too busy. I have a day job and kids and a very time consuming hobby called writing, so I'm always short of hours. Self-publishing takes a lot of time. Just at the moment, I'd prefer to go through traditional routes, if I can. If you're an agent, please get in touch!!

How do you get an agent?

Hell, I don't know! I haven't got one yet. Here's how other people do it:

• Talk to agents at conferences.  Have an elevator pitch ready - a thirty-second snappy little summary of your book. I am rubbish at this. My stories are usually complex, multi-layered pieces that don't condense down well.
• Have a friend recommend an agent. Most of them won't. A good agent is like gold and seems to be a very closely guarded secret.
• Send a submission letter. 

Are there agent directories?

On-line searches are usually not too helpful, because of all the ads created by dodgy agencies (see Caution, below). Here are three more reliable ways:

1. Read Writer's and Artist's Yearbook  (Actually, try the website, it's got a lot of useful writerly tips on it). The Yearbook is a comprehensive guide to all the literary agents in the UK and some international agencies. I purchased the Yearbook last year, but I have to say: don't. Read it at your library - it's normally held in the reference section. The problem with the Yearbook is that it's in print and therefore dates quickly. Hint to the Yearbook: A digital version would be so much better...
2. Look at Writer's Digest's Guide to Literary Agents - a comprehensive blog with new agencies popping up on it all the time (US based only)
3. Approach agents of authors you like. Most of the time authors will sing a song of praise to their agents at the end of the book.

A final caution

There are a lot of scams in this industry. A lot. An awful lot. Before you send out anything, read Writer Beware.


In my next post I'll talk about query letters and synopsis construction. But just be aware it might take me a while to get to this - did I mention I'm time poor?