Trad Publishing Is Bonkers Over the Author Earnings Report

The ninth quarterly Author Earnings Report came out Monday. For those who've been sailing around the Caribbean for the two years (oh, wait! that's one of AE's authors, and it's only been for the last couple of months), AE is a project put together by SFF writer Hugh Howey and his partner Data Guy.

Basically, these two gentlemen have developed spiders that crawl through the Amazon book data and scrape info concerning the sales of genre books on a given day. They then spreadsheet and smoosh and extrapolate whatever's happening in the wilds of Amazon to the book industry. The really cool thing is they make the raw data available for the public so we can also spreadsheet and smoosh and extrapolate to our little hearts' content, too.

The first report came out with very little fanfare except among indie writers. It showed that we were selling a pretty decent chunk of e-books on Amazon. It reassured us that this e-book self-publishing thing wasn't a flash in the pan.

As more reports came out, trad publishing pundits first made fun of the reports. They called it wish fulfillment. But with each successive report, the laughter died, and the complaints about their collection methodology began. As more reports rolled in, the complaints became shriller.

With the latest report (mind you, this is all being done by a couple of guys as a hobby), certain insiders are calling for AE to be audited. So what's behind all the mockery and complaints?

Fear. Simple unrelenting fear.

More and more of trad publishing's normal news channels are reporting falling sales. Let's face it--the savior over Christmas for the trad publishers was the popularity of adult coloring books. There hasn't a major fiction blockbuster since Fifty Shades of Gray in 2012.

The AE report shows where those missing sales are going, the pockets of indies. And this terrifies the Manhattan literati. So much so that Porter Anderson is calling for the duo to be audited and Lee Child mocks them for inaccuracy.

If indies were as inconsequential as many in trad publishing believe, then there is no reason for the uproar. But that screaming gets louder with each successive report. The fear has gone from general unease to full-blown panic.

What does this all mean?

To me, not a damn thing. I've played with their raw data enough to confirm what I already knew. I've gone from making a week's worth of groceries in my first year of publishing my work to paying for my son's oral surgery out of pocket.

Now. if you will excuse me, I need to write and publish a few more books because GK needs his wisdom teeth out this summer.

You Just Don't Understand

"You just don't understand." I've been hearing that phrase a lot over the last few years.

I can't possibly understand having a seriously ill spouse, even though DH was diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer and dealt with two surgeries and ten months of chemo. I can't possibly understand having a chronic illness, even though I been dealing with an endocrine system that decided to shut down in the middle of my pregnancy, it hasn't restarted, and there's a medicine cabinet full of drugs that I have to take to stay alive. Apparently, I also don't understand what it's like to:

- Lose a job
- Lose my savings because of a medical catastrophe
- Have a child with special needs
- Have a parent who's alcoholic

...and the list goes on and on.

The same meme permeates my professional life as well. "You don't understand how trad publishing works!" has become the battle cry of some top-level publishers and writers.

Over the last week, Lee Child has popped into The Passive Voice. Yeah, Jack Reacher's creator. That Lee Child. You can check out the conversations here and here.

In my personal opinion, neither side acquitted themselves in a mannerly fashion. But I agree with one commenter who noted that Lee came in with guns blazing, telling us how we're wrong and we just don't understand trad publishing. And Lee did use one of Passive Guy's posts entitled, "We. Don't. Care. How. Traditional. Publishing. Works.", as proof that indies are ignorant.

What Lee is not considering is that there's a HUGE difference between "understanding" and "caring".

A lot of writers who have gone indie have been trad published. They're very much aware of how trad publishing works. And they see its limitations, which is one of the reasons those writers are taking their careers into their own hands.

In my case, my trad publishing career consists of five years writing a legal column for a regional magazine and having a short story accepted into an well-known anthology. In Lee's case, he's one of the best-selling novelists in the world and makes millions per year. Are we going to see trad publishing at the same level?

Hell, no! And that's part of the problem. Lee's forgotten what it's like to be at the bottom of the trad publishing totem pole.

Is it envy or bitterness on my part when it comes to trad publishing? I don't think so. I spent the first twenty years of my professional life figuring out that I'm not a company ladder-climber. Some folks can do it naturally (my brother-in-law Tim is one), but I'm "too independent" as a psych evaluation, given to me by a potential employer, said.

Do I want Lee's level of success? I can honestly say no. First, because my time will never be my own again if I reach that level. Second, because I've seen how a modicum of success in this field changes people. Sometimes for the better, but most times, not so much.

As I read through the conversations on the two TPV posts, I had one of those stuck-by-lightning realizations. Lee thinks he's talking to other writers.

He's not. He's talking to publishers. Small publishers who figured out how to eliminate the bloated overhead that's killing the Big Five in New York. Small publishers who are tapping the markets/subgenres that the Big Five feel aren't worth their time. Small publishers who have connected with the ultimate end users in this business--THE READERS!

So yes, indies do understand trad publishing, but to use it as a model will kill our businesses. While I may not get advances with seven digits like Lee does, I make enough collectively from my readers to pay most of my bills. And frankly, that means more to me than Lee Child's approval of how I publish.

Description - Love It Or Hate It?

Description.

Some people love long passages talking about landscape and foods and battles. This is the stuff many epic fantasies are made of. Westeros and The Shire are as much characters in their respective books as Jon Snow and Frodo.

On the other hand, thrillers go for the short minimalist approach. If I asked a fan for a description of Jack Reacher, any specifics, other than height, they would give me would come directly from their imaginations. Why? Because the only thing Lee Child says about Jack's physical attributes is that he's unusually tall.

Which is better?

Neither. Both. It totally depends on the purpose of your description. Are you conveying information? Mood? Setting? As a writer, you need to ask yourself, "What is the purpose of this description?"

What brought up this subject?

Alter Ego released her latest book last week. A reader sent her a note the day after the release, saying she loved it. That it made her feel as if she were in the heroine's shoes.

I realized something that had been bugging me for over a year.

The biggest gripe one of Alter Ego's editors had was that there was so little description of the heroine. She thought there should be more details of the heroine's physical appearance. Not just height, hair color and body shape, but those of her snatch and breasts as well. I resisted, though at the time I couldn't say why.

I mean, I had no problem with physical descriptions of secondary characters, and my written picture of the hero could have been used for a police artist's sketch.

But the reader helped me answer the description question. I put so little detail in these types of books because I know, deep down in my heart, that most women reading romance and erotica want to BE the heroine. By only giving a rough idea of the heroine, they could imagine themselves in her shoes, especially since I write these stories either in deep third person or first person POV. And I haven't written one from the hero's POV. (Yet.)

So how do you use description in your stories?