He does. He has been published traditionally and self-published. He shares sales figures here: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2012/09/konraths-sales.html He is an ardent supporter of self-publishing. He's been right about a lot of it, and wrong as well. Refusing to entertain his opinion at all doesn't make any more sense than simply accepting it all without thought. Unless you just don't like the message .
Sigh. As I seem to say a lot on this forum, if you look at my posts, you will see that I am no foe of self-publishing. However, it was Konrath who started the whole "trade publishers are dinosaurs" tirade, who continually seeks to portray those who pursue trade publishing as deluded fools, and puts forth misinformation as if it were gospel. Why should I listen to someone like that? As I stated earlier, if he does happen to come up with something factual or sensible, someone else with more credibility and less bile will surely do the same. And those are the ones I choose to pay attention to.
There are people who have a track record of bias and venom on a particular topic, or range of topics. You could listen to them yet again, or you could spend your finite time more productively. There is a popular functional definition of insanity: repeating the same actions under the same conditions and expecting different results.
The great thing about making predictions is that people only ever remember the times you get stuff right. As to Konrath's: Barnes and Noble will die: sure, why not. A lot of big bookstores have been taken down recently - the model just doesn't work like it used to. 2&3 are both about stuff he's doing personally, and put them in a list about wider industry trends. Nice positioning to his audience. Indie-stores print their own copies of self-pubbed books: I'm not convinced. Which is a shame, because I LOVE the sound of it. As far as I know, print costs are still high enough that doing a limited run to supply a single store is going to add a lot to the end price of a book. Those self-pubbed novels are going to have to sound amazing compared to a more competitively-priced trad-pubbed paperback. Not to mention most bookstores have low margins and most books don't make money - it's hard to see this making business sense at the moment. Can anyone think of a way this could work? Because it really does sound cool. Visibility will become harder: but probably not to a meaningful degree. The marginal decrease in the chance you'll pull my self-pubbed book out of a pool 500,000 against pulling it out of a pool of 250,000 is tiny. The book with the best marketing will win, just like they do now. A new support industry for self-publishing: yeah, I can get behind this. Most of his ideas seem fairly sensible here, though if the authors don't pay for that promo journal I have no idea who would. If you're an author and you don't want to pay money toward getting your book out there, go the traditional publishing route. Implosion of the traditional publishing industry: Um. No. Not yet. Interactive multimedia: I think there's quite a lot of space for this kind of thing. You can do some fucking amazing things with HTML5 that would be brilliant for telling stories. Amazon will keep being the kings of Awesomeland: I agree Amazon are probably going to come up with some pretty impressive, attention-grabbing stuff. It's kinda their business model. Still, predicting Amazon will be on top of the e-book market in 2014 feels like a bit of a cheat as a prediction, much like 'Idaho Will Keep Existing'. Traditional publishers will attempt to stay in business: well, duh.
The only agenda I see Konrath having is his own success. He's been trade published, Amazon published and self-published; if one of the Big Five offered him a few million dollars for his next book, I doubt he'd turn them down. He does make some wacky predictions that don't come about, but he's been right a lot more than he's been wrong.
Who else is going to report it? Amazon have a pretty good idea, because they control more than half of the self-publishing market, but that data is valuable to them, so they're unlikely to release it openly. No-one else is really big enough to say. Personally, I think it's quite simple. Probably 90% of people who pursue trade publishing make nothing, because they never sell anything. Probably 90% of the rest make a few thousand dollars from selling a handful of short stories or one novel before they disappear. The rest make a living at it, and a tiny number make a very good living. Probably 90% of people who self-publish make very little money, but at least that's better than $0. Probably 10% of the remaining 10% make a living. None make King/Rowling money. I'm a nobody by anyone's standards, but I'm close to making $500 this month from my self-published stories. That's more than I made in the first two decades of writing semi-seriously, because trade publishing is all or nothing; you sell to a publisher or you don't, there's no $0.70 here and $2.00 there from individual readers. Of course, I also almost made $350 selling a story to an anthology, but they dropped it at the last minute when they ran out of space and had to cut my long story or two shorter ones. So I wouldn't knock trade publishing where it does make sense, but I'll send that story out to a few other markets, then self-publish if it doesn't sell.
Certainly. He has a very impressive record, overall, on the prediction front. He's not someone whose opinions I want to ignore, given that he has extensive experience of both traditional and self-publishing, and has sold over 3 Million books. To be closed to the idea of learning from the views of someone like this on the grounds that he has "an agenda to promote" strikes me the utmost depth of obstinacy.
Or maybe just people understanding that what he says is not to be trusted and looking to more reliable sources for their information. After all, this is the guy who kept pointing to his SP success as The Model - conveniently skimming over the fact that he had already established a readership via trade publishing until people started calling him out on it. So rather than obstinacy, I look at it as "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.".
Not so much, I'm afraid. I see that the will, the desire and the need for it to change are there. But the reality is that there are many other writers' forums in which one can make (for example) post #33 above, without post #34 promptly appearing. This still isn't one of them. Even with the owner's and the moderators' will and desire for members to be able to do that, it isn't happening, here. Until that changes, hundreds of writers - including some successful ones - will be staying away. I'm really very sorry that that's the way it is, but that's the way it is. Apologies if I sound impatient or intolerant but I really feel that I've given this place every possible chance. I've even gone away and come back over a year later, having received assurances about how it had changed and assurances that it was possible to discuss such subjects without being heckled after every single post in every single thread, but I'm afraid they've turned out not to be true. That's your choice, of course (it wouldn't have been mine, in the unpleasant and unpalatable circumstances which you've inherited). For me (and for many others less willing to say so openly than I am) it's a disappointing choice to see the moderator making. A couple of persistent negative posters can ruin a little forum like this, gradually driving away large numbers of members, inhibiting others from joining, and dissuading former members from participating again. It's as an enthusiast of this forum's potential that I comment that this saddens me. I respect people's right to be against self-publishing (if they're really ill-informed and biased enough), but not their right effectively to say so with relentless regularity in thread after thread after thread, because that serves only to irritate and alienate otherwise tolerant, otherwise supportive members, former members and potential members, and it prevents the forum from recovering from all the damage done to it a couple of years ago. We can all see what's happening here. I'm very sorry, but I'm among the many who will continue to discuss these increasingly relevant and interesting issues elsewhere, but not here.
@lex It's true that there are writing forums that are more friendly to self-publishing. From a moderator standpoint, though, I think it's a tough position to be in. I don't generally support censoring of viewpoints, particularly on forums dedicated to writing. You might make use of the 'ignore' function, I suppose. Or just learn whose posts to skip over. It's a little bit of a pain, but no great effort. And it's worth it. I'm also one of the people who left the site at one point, and I do find it much improved, personally. When you see the same people going into self-publishing threads time and again to make negative comments, what those people are doing is akin to trolling. It may not rise to the level of 'trolling' under forum rules, but that's basically what it is and I would treat the member accordingly. You can at least control your own experience on the forums. I agree that the perception isn't likely to attract (or keep) new members interested in self-publishing, however.
Indeed. That's an ultra-tactful way of putting it. It is for moderators unwilling to take action over it, yes. Trying to smoothe it over, trying to negotiate, opening new sections for such discussions and hoping for the best go only so far. Here we are (some us us!) two years later, after massive loss of membership, still apparently pussy-footing around but ultimately unwilling to take the necessary action over this increasingly problematic and unpleasant issue. Not even when the relentless regularity with which they're aired drives people away? That's the issue here. It's all very well dressing it up as "respecting free speech" and so on, but the reality is that forums can't survive that way, especially in the face of increased competition, increased resentment and increased frustration. There's a limit to how long people will be patient and tolerant. For many, this forum's way past it. We shouldn't have to do that. The forum should resolve this situation, and has been promosing and pretending to do so for a very long time, but with insufficient and inadequate action against the trolls. Large numbers of successful writers think it's worse than just that, at this stage. I don't share your perspective. I can't post on anything to do with self-publishing without being heckled. Huge numbers of former members and potential members feel the same way, and say so openly (elsewhere). This is why they won't return, and/or won't join. Daniel's been aware of this for a long time. Wrey has been aware of it for a long time. It isn't all a "big mysterious secret". Not just "akin to trolling": it is trolling. That's what other forums do, and that's why they don't have this problem. Be aware that this is the only well-known writers' forum with the problem. Unfortunately it originally had the problem largely because of a rogue moderator who just removed from the board whatever he didn't agree with. That was unfortunate, but nobody's "fault", really. Effectively, even now that his moderation facilities have been removed, the public perspective is that the problems continue, and everyone's been saying so for a very long time now, and accordingly it's becoming harder to say that it's nobody's fault. It's a really deeply entrenched issue, here, and it's gone on for far too long. Apparent steps to remedy it have turned out to be just that: apparent steps. It's all "too little, too late". The damage is done. Sadly, even now the forum won't prevent it from continuing to be done. It isn't my forum, but that still saddens me. That's the problem. These days, a writers' forum can't survive, without that. I've sent Daniel a message and a link to this thread, to draw the matter to his attention yet again. And, if anyone's interested, I'm airing this in public only after the continual private reassurances I've been given about this issue have yet again turned out to be unfounded. As one of the trolls said: "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me".
If someone keeps saying "The sky if falling!" and someone else keeps saying "No it isn't", is the second person trolling? SP threads aren't just for people to extoll the virtues of SP. They're discussions. On other forums, when the same misconceptions come up, the same corrections are made - and yes, over and over. When the same opinions are stated, the same opposing opinions are stated - and yes, over and over. Why? Because those new writers/members (that some people think are so delicate as to be unable to handle adult discussion) also need to see those corrections and opposing opinions in order to make an informed choice, and they don't always read old threads. But guess what? The same thing happens in discussions of trade publishing! There are opposing opinions and corrected misconceptions and actual discussions! And the same people saying the same things in different threads at different times! The difference is that people don't immediately start whining about trolls and being picked on or threatening to flounce off.
I disagree. There's one particular well-known writers' forum where I and many of the self-published writers I know have been banned. In comparison, threads here are tame. Some people will never be convinced that self-publishing is viable, but discussion threads mostly exist to educate the readers, not the posters.
LOL ... that forum doesn't have the problem that it's alienated and lost a significant proportion of its members and is struggling for survival, Edward: it has about 60,000 members and over 8 Million posts on the board (of which I've made over 5,000 myself). It also has an Administrator who runs a self-publishing site, many successfully self-published global moderators, and a resident writing-teacher who's been very successfully self-published since the 1980's.
Maybe it's just me but I don't see anything mind blowing about these predictions, they just seem like reasonable conclusions given what we know about the status quo. Living in a tiny country with insignificant population I can see these trends playing out more easily. All the big bookstores here are gone. When Borders collapsed so too did every copycat megastore even of the local brands. Bookstores here now are very small affairs, they really only stock the new and bestseller lists and a heap of coffee table books. Most of them resemble those small airport bookstores. As far as the big publishers go, out of business? No. They will reposition to a more electronic format. They still have the one thing the market wants, writers of known quality and reputation. They will just continue to develop their house of talent and put out more electronic format than paper print titles. They do have a role going forward, mainly as an umbrella brand for bestselling authors. They will probably put more focus on the active marketing of their house of talent and perhaps even start cultivating new talent since digital space is practically free. In honesty, I think he's underestimating the business nous of those publishers. Self publishing will certainly rise in popularity but if you are a bestselling author making millions through a publisher you wouldn't bother with it. It will be the domain of up and comers, the way open-mic night is the domain of up and comers and perhaps even the domain of midlist authors wanting to make more of their work by taking on the task of self promotion more personally and publishing work their publisher doesn't want. The good news there is that there won't be as big a lag between work completion and sales as currently enabling an author to be more prolific as long as they can keep writing. I predict a rise in authors agents, not to represent an author to a publisher but to manage their career and online presence to the general public. A see a lot of industry professionals setting up and taking on the role of advisor to author (for a fee) helping them to create a consistent image and style of work and build a profile. Much as a publicist and stylist does for a high profile actor.
The problem I have with that argument is that it assumes 'writers of quality' will continue to submit to publishers, rather than self-publish. They're the ones most likely to do well when self-published, and then have little incentive to hand their books over to a publisher. Even if they do, they'll expect far more than a 25% share of royalties, which will cut into publisher profits. There's also the question of how long bestselling authors will remain bestselling authors if big book stores no longer exist to push their books. A new writer can't sell books if every slot on the shelf where their book could be sold is full of Clive Cussler novels, but, online, there's space for everyone.
But neither should we assume that "writers of quality" have an actual interest in self-publishing - ie, have an interest in running a business in addition to writing. Even though some successful trade published authors have gone "hybrid" or self-published their backlists, not all have - not sure even a significant number have. That's the problem with predictions. Too many assumptions have to be made, and many times those assumptions are based on ignorance or things other than facts (ie, wishful thinking).
Just to be clear, I wasn't talking about people like Stephen King, who already have established careers, but new writers who are faced with a choice between spending years submitting to agents and publishers in the hope of selling a novel, or self-publishing it next week. I know many writers who, ten years ago, would have been sending books to publishers' and agents' slush piles, but wouldn't even consider that today. Some of them are selling pretty well, particularly those writing romance and other fast-selling genres. For most new writers, the effort required to self-publish a book is insignificant compared to the effort required to sell one to a publisher.
I don't think I'd say "most" - particularly when one considers the effort required to self-publish well.
