Podcasting is the focus here, but the real lesson is what can be achieved when authors form a community and help to promote each other’s work.  Of course, for every J.C. Hutchins, there are a thousand authors whose work never finds any kind of significant readership (whether with a publisher or not).  But such cooperation in this case did allow, presumably, the better content to bypass the gatekeepers and go directly to the readers (or in this case, listeners).

In my first post in the Moriah Jovan/The Urban Elitist cross-blog series on how author’s might earn money from their work,  I made the following questionable assertion:

If requiring payment from every reader will limit the potential for a written work to be discovered by a larger audience, then I believe the writer should forgo that revenue. For now. [snip] If I could choose between 100 readers who had paid $10 each, or 1,000 readers who had paid nothing, I would choose the 1,000 readers. Only with a base of readers can a writer expand her readership to the point where she could earn enough to make a difference in her life.

I’d now like to go even further out on a limb and suggest that there are some related lessons authors might learn from the world of scholarly journals.  This might sound like a bit of a stretch, but stick with me for a couple of minutes.

Scholarly publishing, the strange but somewhat profitable sector of the publishing world where I make a living, moved into the electronic age far faster than consumer publishing (hmm…think there’s a connection between profitability and e-publishing?).  This is particularly true for scientific publishing.  For both journals and books, the majority of scientific content is now read in an electronic format, either online or in a downloaded pdf in most cases.

When a brand new journal is launched, many publishers offer the electronic content for free for two or three years in an attempt both to gain readers and to maximize the journal’s potential impact in its field of specialization.  Usually they don’t just put the content online and wait for readers to show up.  Instead, in promoting the new journal, they tell customers (usually academic and corporate libraries) that to get the free content they have to “opt-in.”  That is, they have to take action and sign up for the journal to get the free access.  From the start, the publishers know which customers have an interest in the title.  And because it’s electronic, they can monitor usage and see where it is and isn’t happening.

After those two or three years are up, the publisher looks at the new journal’s number of opt-ins, its usage, the reviews it has received and its impact factor (essentially how often the title has been cited in other journals), and then uses all of this information to set the price for the title.  So the opt-in model not only gives the journal a running head start before it’s priced, but also gives the publisher invaluable market research in the process.

Does it work?  Well, usually the number of opt-in customers that are converted to paid subscribers is in the range of 10-20%.  That doesn’t sound so great, but evidence shows that it’s better than the alternative.  Although data is relatively limited, journals that use the opt-in model seem to do better, and to do better faster, than titles that are never available for free.  (Sorry, nothing online to show as evidence.  Please let me know if you’re aware of anything online that has data on the success rate of the opt-in model.)

Not everyone likes this model.  Scientific societies, who are often responsible for the content of these new titles, sometimes complain that the opt-in model devalues their content.  They believe their content is of such a high quality and has such great contributors that of course customers will be willing to pay from the very first issue.  Why, they think, should they wait several years for those royalties to start pouring in?

Self-published authors, of course, often feel the same way when faced with the decision of whether to try to sell their little known book (and their little known selves).  Its a perfectly legitimate argument.  But, just as with a business strategy, sometimes it makes more sense to take a long-term approach.  Sometimes a short-term financial loss is necessary for longer term financial gains.

In a sense, most authors are like journals.  Their work will probably have a consistent thematic focus from book to book, story to story or article to article.  Their style will remain fairly consistent, as will their quality (though hopefully the quality of an author’s work will improve with each book).  A core audience of readers will return to the author’s work, just as they would return to the journal, because there’s something about it that they need in their lives, whether it be for professional or personal reasons.

If an author does decide to let the electronic version of his book out into the world for free, I think it’s very important to collect whatever contact information he can from those who download it.  Asking for an email address in exchange for a free ebook is perfectly fair.  This can be used not only to announce the next book but also for (occasional) updates on the author’s progress and any other relevant news (published stories, articles, etc.).  Potentially, an author could even survey those who had downloaded the book to find out what they liked and didn’t like about it.  No matter how many beta readers and editors might have previously given feedback, I’d bet an author could learn a great deal from her casual readers.  Maybe the mere fact that these casual readers were asked for feedback will make it more likely that they will want to read the author’s next book.  If they feel like they’re contributing and that the author values their opinions, many will feel like they have a vested interest in the author’s work.

Yes, that first book is out there floating around in the ether for free and, at least in its electronic format, it will always be free.  But assuming that the next book’s content, style and quality are consistent with the first book, the author has ready-made audience (with contact information!) for book number two.  Probably only a fraction of those who downloaded the free first ebook will buy the second.  So be it.  Those people who do buy it will be the start of the author’s core audience.  They are the people who will be the agents of free word-of-mouth publicity.  They are the ones, hopefully, who will come back for the third and fourth book.

Even first-time authors published by a publishing house could potentially benefit from the Cory Doctorow model of letting the ebook out into the world for free and using print sales for revenue generation.  I’ll have more on Doctorow’s modus operandi later in the series.

I know the analogy between journals and authors is not a perfect one.  Just because the evidence seems to indicate that journals using the free opt-in model do better in the long run does not necessarily mean that the same strategy will work for each and every author.  But authors who think such a strategy might work for them should not be ashamed to give their first book (or even their first few books) away for free in an electronic format.  It’s a perfectly legitimate strategy used by companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue.

The key word here is not “free.”  It’s “strategy.”  An author needs to have one.  No matter how many free books are tossed out into the (soon-to-be) million ebook world, fame and fortune will not come looking for him, and neither will a moderate income from writing.  They must be pursued smartly and deliberately.

Note:  As mentioned previously, Moriah Jovan and I are doing a cross-blog series on how writers might be justly paid for what they’ve created.  Mojo explores the issues currently confronting writers in her introductory post.  Below is my introduction. Although the two of us may differ in our approach, we both do agree that the ease of reproduction in the electronic age does not mean that writers need to regard their work as a pro bono offering to the world.  Hard work deserves reward.

I believe that the writer’s path to making money with her work can be summarized in three not-very-simple steps:

1. Make it good.
2. Be discovered.
3. Determine the most effective means of generating income from your writing and do it.  You’ve earned it.

The purpose of this series is to explore that third step, but let me touch on the first two briefly.

Make It Good

This, by far, is the hardest and most important part.  If you’ve not written a damn fine book, nothing else you do will matter (unless you’re a celebrity already).  If you’ve not written a damn fine book, don’t worry about self-publishing options, ebook formats or business models, because hardly anyone will read the thing anyway.  Your book won’t appeal to everyone but it had better have the potential to appeal to your target demographic.  Enough said.

Be Discovered

In the traditional publishing world, this meant being discovered first by an agent, and then by a publisher, and then, if everything went according to plan, by an enthusiastic and grateful reading public.  Now there are many more routes to being discovered by those readers.

As I described in my post on “How to Get Your eBook Read,” I believe we’ll soon live in a world flooded with self-published ebooks, and authors, whether self-published or not, will need to adapt and get creative if their work is to have a chance of standing out.  Gaining a group of devoted readers may lead a writer back to the first step of the traditional path (getting an agent), or it may not.

So is it more important for a writer to gain as many readers as possible, to be discovered, and not worry about getting paid in the early stages of his self promotion?  Or should a writer treat his work as a valuable commodity and demand payment of some sort from every reader?  I can see both sides of the argument.  As Mojo laments, all the information that’s available for free on the internet creates in readers a sense of entitlement to cost-free text and also has the effect of devaluing that same text.  If I could magically change all of this, I would.

But this is the world we now live in.  No solitary writer, or even a gang of angry writers, is going to change it.  If requiring payment from every reader will limit the potential for a written work to be discovered by a larger audience, then I believe the writer should forgo that revenue.  For now.  If, somehow, charging money has no adverse effects on expanding a book’s readership, then by all means charge whatever you can get away with.  But if I could choose between 100 readers who had paid $10 each, or 1,000 readers who had paid nothing, I would choose the 1,000 readers.  Only with a base of readers can a writer expand her readership to the point where she could earn enough to make a difference in her life.  Just as a start-up’s business plan might envision years without a profit as the company attempts to build a customer base, a writer needs to accept that long-term goals may require short-term financial sacrifices.  Of course, giving a book away for free certainly doesn’t mean an author will find readers, but the challenge of finding those readers is a topic for another day.

Those 1,000 readers certainly won’t be enough to allow a writer to quit her day job, but it’s a good start.  The more readers an author has, the easier it will be to get more new readers (even if it’s never easy).  I can’t say at what point a writer will have enough readers to begin generating significant revenue.  That will depend upon the type of writing and the method of monetization.  But even those 1,000 readers, if you can get them to come back for more, will be enough to generate some meaningful income, even if it’s not via the traditional per book unit model.

Get Paid

It has never been easy for most writers to earn money with their work.  Although there is much to be concerned about in the publishing industry as a whole, I don’t believe individual writers are in much worse of a position today than they ever were, despite all of the free content that is available.  As Lev Grossman’s piece in Time points out, literary reading by adults has increased 3.5% since 2002, and writers now have a potential global audience of billions.  It’s confusing for writers, though, because their strength is writing, not revenue generation.  Although the traditional route (write well, get published by a major publisher) of course is still available, and is still the most reliable means of generating at least some income from writing, there are now many other options available to both the self-published and those published by the big boys.  Those numerous options are what I plan to explore in this series.

None of these options will in itself give a writer a life-altering, day-job-replacing revenue stream.  A writer will need to be discovered by a hell of a lot of readers for that to happen, and getting to that level is probably just as much a matter of luck as it is anything a writer can control (see “Make It Good” above).

Despite my tendency to go off on flights of fancy imagining how the publishing world might work in the near future, I’m going to try keeping myself grounded on planet Earth and focus upon methods authors might use to generate income with their work right now, in the world we currently live in.  A few of the topics I may cover (and Mojo may take on some of these herself), are:

• Options for the traditional charge-by-the-book-unit model, for both print books and ebooks.
• Making money through secondary services like paid writing assignments, teaching, lectures, tours, promotions, etc.
• Monetizing a writer’s blog, whether a personal blog or one used for blog fiction.
• Can a writer do it alone? Or does she need, if not a publisher, then at least to be part of a group of writers who work together in some way to help sell each others books?
• Advertising in books.  Although this is not currently an option for most and would probably require a Google-like entity to make it technologically and logistically feasible, I’d still like to explore the possibility since it may well be writers’ best hope for making money in the near future.
• Cory Doctorow, what others might learn from his experience and why most writers could not successfully do what he did/does.
• I’d also like to have some interviews with, or guest posts by, writers who have successfully monetized their writing, especially those who have done so through non-traditional means.  Are you one, or do you know one?  Please get in touch with me!

If anyone has other topics you think would be appropriate, please leave a comment or let me know here.

If I were to publish my novel with a publisher, the book’s chances for success would be slim and would be entirely dependent upon my own actions. If I were to self-publish my novel, the book’s chances for success would still be slim and would still be entirely dependent upon my own actions.  Therefore, I wonder, rather than spending potentially years searching for an agent and/or publisher, might I be wiser simply to self-publish and give it my best shot?

Here’s the problem: As always, money and time are the problem.  I don’t care about the stigma.  As e-books become more common and as they become easier to publish, I believe self-publishing a book-length work will eventually have about as much of a negative stigma as writing a blog (as opposed to being a “professional” journalist, for instance). But if I’m going to spend a hell of a lot of time and money self-publishing a book, I want to know that my work has reached a certain threshold of quality.

As the traditional gatekeepers, agents and publishers are responsible for determining first of all whether a book is good, and secondly whether it stands a chance of making them some money.  Of course, I’d like my book to make money, but that’s not the reason I wrote it.  There are easier ways to make money than writing a work of literary fiction (ex. working at McDonald’s).  Therefore, my primary concern is that my work is competent.

No, I’m not going to take my mother’s word for it.  Or my friends’.  Or even the kind words of acquaintances who might have given it a read.  I want to hear it from someone who really knows what he’s talking about and has no personal connection with me whatsoever, and preferably from several such individuals.

Here’s the idea: create some kind of peer review board for fiction writers, similar to the peer review that all published scholarly books and articles must go through.  They wouldn’t say whether they liked the book, or whether it was terribly original.  They wouldn’t make suggestions for how to improve it or edit it in any way, like a crit group or beta readers.  Instead, they would simply state that, yes, this book-length work of fiction is of a high enough quality that it is suitable for publication.  That’s it.

Such a judgment would certainly be subjective.  Hence, having a board of several readers rather than giving a single person veto power.

This approval would give me the confidence that I was not wasting my time and money self-publishing something that never should have been published in the first place.  Being able to state that my novel went through this peer review process might even help alleviate concerns among potential readers that the book is just a self-published turd.

How might this work?

The not-for-profit option:  A writer could submit her own book for review only after having reviewed five other randomly selected books herself.  Each book would be judged by five reviewers.  Reviewers would not only give a thumbs up or down, but also briefly justify their judgment.  That way, if a writer’s work was rejected, she could decide whether that rejection was reasonable and therefore whether it should be taken into account.  Yes, you’d certainly get some people in there who don’t know what they’re talking about, but this wouldn’t be workable with only certified professionals of some kind.  Having five reviewers per book would help mitigate the influence of the ignoramuses.

The for-profit option:  Same as the above, except the company running it would screen the reviewers and pay them.  There would probably be fewer reviewers per book.  And the writer would have to pay substantially for the review.

Here’s the problem with the idea: I don’t like the idea of art of any kind being subject to an approval process.  If this kind of system were to catch on, just as self-publishing is being de-stigmatized, experimentation could be further stigmatized if it were not somehow allowed for in the approval process (perhaps each book could be categorized by genre so that writers of similar taste would be doing the reviewing?).  Better to have a lot of crappy self-published books out there than to create some fascistic infrastructure that would keep a would-be William S. Burroughs from getting “approved.”  Yes, that person could still self-publish, so perhaps it would not be the end of the world.  I could even imagine writers bragging that their work was rejected by the conservative peer review process!

Is there a better option for a writer who wants to get his own work judged objectively by someone who just might say “this is not good enough”?

Kent Anderson at The Scholarly Kitchen describes his decision to self-publish his first novel:

But what ultimately diverted me from the traditional path was hypocrisy. One evening, I sat back and considered the hypocrisy behind pursuing traditional publishing status for myself while in my professional life I’ve been focusing on the changes that are underway - user-generated content, the disintermediation of authority, the network effect, the emergence of efficient technological alternatives - and I thought, heck, I should self-publish, if only for the karma and the experience.

Rather than sitting around researching agents, sending query letters and waiting around for form letter rejections to arrive (or not arrive), Kent is on the third-draft of his next novel.

(Note:  WordPress, of all organizations, should add the word “disintermediation” to their spell check dictionary so that it doesn’t show up underlined in red in my Write Post page.)