If you self-publish your work, do you risk anything? Will publishers consider you damaged goods?

Andrew posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Thank you for all the great information provided on your site! I’ve recently signed up to receive your emails.

I have one quick question that has come to mind while reading your “The Future of Publishing” article.

My question is this: As a amateur writer with a book self-published on Lulu.com, do you think it is valuable to use this self-publishing site to begin to get my name out there, or would paper publishers potentially look down on the fact that I’ve self-published and already reaped sales?

Thanks for your answer!

Randy sez: The publishing industry is changing rapidly. The correct answer to this question three years ago would have been, “No, self-publishing almost always won’t help you in your venture to get published — unless you’re one of those very rare few who manage to sell a few thousand copies of your self-published book.”

Even a year ago, most authors, agents, and editors would have felt this way.

But a funny thing happened in the last year or so. A lot of self-published authors started doing extremely well on Amazon with their e-books.

If you want to see the honor roll of authors who’ve managed to do Xtremely well, I’ll refer you to Joe Konrath’s blog, where he’s been interviewing them practically daily.

Joe himself earned $42,000 in January from his self-publishing efforts. You read that right. Those aren’t yen Joe earned. Not lira. Not pesos. Those were dollars.

It’s easy to blow off Joe’s success as the result of his “platform.” After all, he’s got a very widely read blog and he published a number of books in the past with New York publishers. Joe’s got a name. He’s an established writer. So way too many people say, “Sure, yeah, Joe’s easy to market, because he’s Joe. I’m not Joe. I’ve never been published. I have no blog. So I can’t sell near as many copies as Joe.”

The problem with that is that it’s nonsense. Several of the folks Joe has interviewed lately are writers who haven’t been published by traditional publishers — or writers who just didn’t fare well with traditional publishers, even though they did get a book or few out. Some of these good people are selling better than Joe.

And there’s the case of Amanda Hocking, 26 years old, never published by a traditional publisher, who sold about 100,000 copies of her books in December. Way more than Joe did.

You might believe that Amanda benefitted from the Christmas shoppers in December, that there’s no way she could repeat those kind of numbers in the dead month of January.

Heh, heh. Amanda sold about 450,000 copies in January.

The moral of the story here is that all the rules changed sometime in the last year or so. If you want to self-publish, you can make an amazing success of it — if your stuff is good. If it’s not good, then that’s a problem and you aren’t going to sell thousands of copies, but that’s always been true.

What has changed is that authors can now make an end-run around the “gatekeepers” — the marketing people who decide what will sell and what won’t. Increasingly, readers are becoming the new gatekeepers. That’s the way it should be. The market should decide what sells and what doesn’t.

This is not to put down those marketing folks. In the past, they were necessary because publishing was an expensive venture to get into. A mistake could be enormously expensive.

With e-books, that is no longer the case. No need for a big production run, a big laydown on launch day, and big returns if the book doesn’t sell. Returns for e-books are almost non-existent. Shelf space is unlimited, so there’s no reason for a bookseller to return unsold copies, so the only returns are those from disgruntled customers who bought a book they didn’t want.

But the need for gatekeepers is fizzling. Soon there will be no need at all.

So no worries, Andrew. Market that book. If it catches fire, it’s all good. If it doesn’t, it’ll be lost in the flood. You can always withdraw the book, or rewrite it, or write something else.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

How old is too old when you’re a fiction writer? Is there an “age bias” in the publishing world?

The last week has been busy with travel and all that, so I’m just now catching my breath.

Martha posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hi Randy, I’m a fan, needless to say, and I read your blog daily. This morning’s question brought up one that has been bothering me for some time and that is, when is a writer too OLD to be considered by agents and publishers? One hears all the time that agents/publishers want to develop a career novelist, one who will produce book after book and make the agents and publishers rich. But what about those of us who are seniors. Should we keep mum about our age in our queries or just wait and cross that bridge when and if it comes up? And how about meeting and pitching an agent at a conference? No chance hiding one’s age there, so do you have any advice for what to say or do to mitigate any prejudice they might have about oldsters?

Randy sez: I’m told that age bias is a serious problem in screenwriting. I wouldn’t know, since I don’t do screenplays.

In the world of novel writing, there may possibly be an age bias, but it’s really the least of your worries.

Your main worry with fiction writing is “craft bias.” Agents and editors are massively biased against poor craft. They are massively biased in favor of excellent craft.

It’s that simple. There are any number of examples of fiction writers who’ve published novels in their 70s. Fiction is about life, and the longer you’ve lived, the more you probably know about life.

If you were extremely old, your age might even be a selling point, as it was for 88 year old Helen Hoover Santmyer’s novel “… And Ladies of the Club.”

This is a good time to mention the “Fiction After 50” blog, by my friends Ron and Janet Benrey. They published their first novel after the age of 50, and their blog is about the advantages of being an older writer.

Martha, my advice is to not mention your age at all in your queries. It’s essentially irrelevant. What matters is your craft. Great writing is great writing. If you write well, you can get published at any age.

Go to it.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

If you’re writing a novel, is it OK to use a pseudonym? Is it wise?

Maree posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

The only thing that’s holding me back from publishing my book sooner than the next few months is finance but otherwise I am extremely serious and more serious that ever. I want to use a psuedonym for personal reasons and have fun finding one with heaps of belly laughs to go with it. Could you please give me some pros and cons about the subject?

Randy sez: I can think of a few reasons why you might want to use a pseudonym:

• Embarrassment. Your book contains material that you don’t want your parents/spouse/children/grandmother/friends/minister to know that you wrote. For example: you write erotica or your characters have potty-mouths.
• Libel. You say things in your book that could get you sued.
• Fear. You’re afraid that you’ll offend some terrorists or government or big corporation and they’ll come after you.
• Privacy. You just know you’ll become famous after your novel hits it big and you don’t want to be bothered by all those pesky groupies who’ll be beating a path to your door.
• Moochers. You’re certain that your novel will make you wealthy beyond all imagination and you want to avoid the gold-diggers, especially your freeloading brother-in-law who is such a horrible mooch that you’ll never get him off your couch if he thinks you’re stinking rich.
• Dweebishness. Your parents saddled you with the world’s most dweebish name, such as Throckmorton B. Grieselheimer the 23rd, and you really don’t want that loser on your covers.
• False fame. By horrid chance, you have the same name as somebody who’s already famous, such as Richard Nixon or Monica Lewinsky, and you don’t want to be confused with That Guy or That Girl.
• Unpronounceable. You have one of those names that people can never pronounce, such as Grzsazg, and you suspect that isn’t going to help on the word-of-mouth thing for your book.
• Almost dirty. Your name looks for all the world like a dirty word, such as, um, well I can’t put a name like that in a family-oriented blog like this, but you’ve seen names like that and your worst nightmare is having to introduce somebody like that for a speech, because you just know you’re going to say it wrong.
• Cool. You just know in your gut that “Mark Twain” will be a lot cooler name for an author than “Samuel Langhorne Clemens.”
• Sexism. You’re a woman writing military technothrillers or you’re a man writing romance and you fear your readers won’t take you seriously.
• A fresh start. Some writers with weak sales adopt a pseudonym so the bookstores won’t hold their past track record against them. Yes, really.
• Overproductivity. Some authors write so many books that their publisher fears that they’ll saturate the market. So they write some books under their real name and some under a pseudonym.

Any of those is a decent reason to use a pseudonym. I bet there are some other excellent reasons. Maree, if you have a good reason to use a pseudonym, then do.

I can think of a few disadvantages to using a pseudonym:

• Confusion. You need to remind your publisher to make your checks out to you, not to your pseudonym. You may also have some explaining to do to the tax authorities when you claim all that income for books written by somebody who apparently isn’t you.
• Fame. So you’re a best-selling author and you pay for your meal in a restaurant and that darned waitress looks at your Visa card in your real name and DOESN’T say, “Oh my gosh! You’re that famous author! I love your books! I feel like I know you! I want to bear your children!” Sometimes it really is fun to be recognized, (although it can also be weird.)
• Credit. When you go to your high-school reunion and tell all those meanies that you really did make good and publish a novel, do you think they’ll believe you if you wrote under a pseudonym? Uh-uh. Jim-Bob and Mary Sue will still mock you for being a hopeless geek.

Maree, if you can live with those downsides, then writing under a pseudonym should work just fine for you.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

If you publish a book, are you allowed to choose your own title? Or do you sell your soul to the publisher when you sell your book?

Tim posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I was wondering how much control do authors have over the title of their books. I have read from authors like J.K. Rowling and D.J. MacHale that they picked their titles for their books, I have read from Bryan Davis that his editor changed the title of his trilogy from what he was calling it. You even mentioned you have had your editor change the title of one of your books. So could you help clear this up for me, thank you.

Randy sez: Many titles get changed by the publisher. Remember that when a royalty-paying publisher buys the rights to your book, they’re investing a substantial amount of money — typically several tens of thousands of dollars. If you were investing that much money, you’d want to make sure you did everything possible to recoup that investment. That’s why publishers think they should have a say in your title. Of course, they’re right.

My own titles have often been changed by the publisher or at the request of my publisher, generally after consulting with me. Here is a list of all my published books, with their original titles:

1. WHO WROTE THE BIBLE CODE? (a nonfiction book on what was then a controversial topic). My original title was GOD, STATISTICS, AND THE BIBLE CODE. The publisher thought that was a so-so title (they were right) and made a number of suggestions. I felt that none of them really worked any better, so I made some suggestions of my own, and the publisher accepted one of them. (It was a takeoff on Richard Elliott Friedman’s bestselling book WHO WROTE THE BIBLE?).
2. TRANSGRESSION. My original title was AVATAR, which the publisher felt sounded too New-Agey. It’s possible they were right, but I always thought that my title fit the book better. My publisher gave me four alternative titles to choose from. I chose TRANSGRESSION from that list. Personally I still like AVATAR, but now that James Cameron has done a blockbuster movie with that title, I don’t think I can ever republish the book under its original title.
3. OXYGEN. This was my first book co-authored with John Olson, and his original title was O2. That is the chemical name for the usual form of oxygen that you breathe and we thought it was a very cool title. Our editor knew it wasn’t a good title, and he quickly convinced us that OXYGEN was a better one. I believe he was right. He also made sure that we got a really good cover for the book and he worked hard to make sure that it was a commercial success. I may as well thank him publicly here, because he did a great job on the book. Steve Laube, thanks — you made OXYGEN fly.
4. THE FIFTH MAN. Again, I co-authored this with John, who wanted to call it FIFTH MAN. Our publisher wanted to add the word “the” in front of that. So far as I’m concerned, either title is fine.
5. PREMONITION. The original title for this book was QUEEN OF HEAVEN. My publisher thought this carried some implications they didn’t want, and they asked me for some alternatives. I gave them several, but none of us were excited about any of them. Then, because this book was a sequel to TRANSGRESSION, I decided to go for phonetic similarity and I suggested the title PREMONITION. My publisher liked this and I think that it was a good title and fit the storyline well.
6. RETRIBUTION. This was my original title and my publisher thought it worked well, especially since it was a sequel to PREMONITION. This was my first book published with the exact same title that I gave it at the outset. My publisher also gave it a really nice cover, for which I really ought to thank them. Thank you, Zondervan!
7. DOUBLE VISION. This was my original title for the book and the publisher liked this one so we kept it. The book was about quantum mechanics and ambiguity and it also featured a love triangle in which an engineer with Asperger’s syndrome has to choose between two women, each very different, but each very appealing to him. The title was suggested to me by the song “Double Vision” by Foreigner. (What can I say? I grew up in the 1970s.) Each of the 5 parts of the book bore the name of a song: “Point of Know Return,” “Bridge Over Troubled Waters,” “Dust in the Wind,” “The Grand lllusion,” and “Double Vision.” Remember that titles can’t be copyrighted, but lyrics can, so I took care to quote no lyrics in the book.
8. WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES. This was the original title suggested by the publisher when they asked me to write the book. There is a slight ambiguity in the title. Is it a book to help dummies know how to write fiction? Or is about writing “fiction that dummies will like”? Plenty of people have pointed out this ambiguity. My view is that the “for dummies” line of books is so well known that there really isn’t any ambiguity. In any event, the book was their idea, so I thought they should get to write the title. When we mapped out the book, my editor and my co-author and I were completely agreed on one point — we wanted it to be the highest quality we could possibly make it. We didn’t want a dumbed-down book, whatever the title might say. We gave it our best shot.

Those are all my published books. As you can see, most of them got their titles changed in transit. In some cases, that was an improvement. In other cases, it was a wash or possibly a slight disimprovement. I don’t think any of the changes made things clearly worse. In talking with other authors, I am pretty sure that most of them have had similar experiences.

So, Tim, you might as well get used to the idea now that your editor might not like your title. She might insist on changing it. She might be right.

This is one reason why my one-time mentor, Sol Stein, strongly recommended AGAINST putting the title of your book in the header of your manuscript. As Sol said, suppose you have a perfectly dreadful title for your book. (I think the example he gave was ARKHOPPER or something like that.)

Imagine your editor is reading your manuscript and is really getting into your story, but every time she flips the page, she sees ARKHOPPER right at the top. If your manuscript has 400 pages, that is 400 negative jolts to your editor’s system.

Why do that to her? Why do that to yourself? Just put your last name in the header of your manuscript. That’s enough. (If your last name is “Arkhopper” you might want to consider changing it.)

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

Blog of the Day: For those of you interested in my recent column on The Future of Publishing, you might be interested in the posts on Steve Laube’s blog for today and yesterday. Steve raises a lot of interesting issues, and one of them that I hadn’t thought about at all has to do with foreign rights and how to respect those in a world where an e-book can technically be delivered anywhere on earth, but perhaps not legally. (Yes, this is the same Steve who once acquired several of my books. He’s now an outstanding agent who represents several of my author friends.)