publishing

To thine own self-publishing be true

I spent a good portion of my lunch hour reading about Amanda Hocking’s self-publishing success story. It’s an interesting story, although I doubt it represents the seismic shift in the publishing world that many of the commenters would like to think. I tend to agree with the commenter who argued that Hocking’s success comes down primarily to genre (the very popular and — arguably — less discriminating young adult paranormal romance), cover design (clean, simple, and likely cheaply produced without looking too cheap), and price point (extremely low). That she appears to sell considerably better in the Kindle store (where there’s an ostensibly limitless electronic print run and lower prices) is perhaps telling.

Hocking’s writing, from the little I’ve glanced at it, seems passable enough — unrefined and of the sort I think I’ve rejected often from Kaleidotrope, often confusing physical description with character development and so forth. But she doesn’t seem like a terrible writer, and in interviews does seem to suggest she understands the need for an editor.

If anything, what her story calls into question is the need for a publisher. It’s early days yet, but if you can reach this level of success outside the mainstream presses, why wouldn’t you? I cringe at the idea of more self-edited (or unedited) fiction clogging the market — and I think success stories like Hocking’s will grow rarer as that market gets more crowded — but more books that traditional publishers are perhaps scared to take a risk on? More variety in the marketplace? I think that can only be a good thing.

In the past, what a traditional publisher had to offer you was professional editing; professional production, layout, and bookbinding; and detailed, in-depth marketing. I think the first of those is always going to be a necessity — and not just because I’m an editor. If a book published through Amazon.com is indistinguishable in (physical) quality from its competition — and I’ve never bought one, so I don’t know if it is — then I think the second of those two is going to be moot. And finally, if, as Hocking seems to have demonstrated, you can reach a wide audience without traditional marketing behind your books, with just Amazon’s visibility behind you…well, traditional publishing probably should be wary.

I think the questions are: will self-publishing authors still pay for substantial editing, proofing, and revision? Will Amazon continue to pay such substantial royalties to authors as more of them follow Hocking’s route? Will as many readers continue to pay as the market gets more crowded, low price point or not? And are the products being produced by Amazon (hard copy and e-book) high-quality enough that they don’t just look vanity press cheapies?

Me, I have no idea. Frankly, I don’t think anybody has any idea exactly how e-books — much less what they mean for self-publishing and individual sales — will change the publishing market. Yet everybody has a theory.

It seems like e-books have been on the cusp of changing everything as we know it for quite a while now.

Personal space

One space to bring them all and in the darkness book-bind them…

A casual observer, albeit one with access to Twitter and the patience to wade through my replies to other people yesterday, might think that I take Farhad Manjoo’s argument that you should never, ever use two spaces after a period much more seriously than I do.

Which isn’t to say I didn’t find it surprisingly fascinating. Because I did, enough to dig out my copy of the APA Publication Manual and argue the point over Twitter and elsewhere — although not enough to dig through more than a small handful of the comments on Manjoo’s original article. Internet comments can try any man’s patience.

From a writing perspective, I’m still not convinced it makes any significant difference how many spaces you use. Outdated or not, most style guides do suggest (or at least condone) the use of two spaces in draft manuscripts. And drafts are, by and large, the only thing that writers are themselves going to produce. It’s more an issue for publishers and typesetters than writers, quite frankly.

It’s also worth noting that the one remaining monospaced font mentioned in the article, Courier — which, as a monospaced font, would seem to suggest the continued need for two spaces after a period — is still the preferred manuscript font for many publications. According to author William Shunn’s oft-cited formatting guidelines:

For easy readability, limit your choice of font to either Courier or Times New Roman. Courier (my strong preference) is a monospaced font, which means that every character is exactly as wide as every other. It’s easier for an editor to detect spelling errors in a monospaced font than in a proportional font like Times New Roman (in which the “i” uses less horizontal space than the “m” does). With a monospaced font, there will also be fewer characters on each line, which can make your manuscript easier to scan.

Shunn goes on to acknowledge that “many writers have come to prefer Times New Roman” and that “either is usually acceptable,” but each publication is going to be different. Some editors won’t care what font you use, while some will be incredibly specific. I know Courier is the font I’d prefer to see when reading submissions to Kaleidotrope, for instance, but I won’t turn anything away as long as it’s at least readable. At work, we format the manuscripts we send to production in Times New Roman. As Jeff VanderMeer has noted, “Guidelines are among the roughest and least precise of god’s creatures. They’re usually there simply to ward off the most inappropriate of submissions.”

Vonda N. McIntyre’s manuscript preparation guidelines for the SFWA suggest using only Courier, adding:

The subject of proportional fonts is controversial. I recommend against them. Yes, they are prettier. But they were designed for publication, not for manuscripts. You mix typesetting and manuscript format at your peril.

I find this particularly interesting because John Scalzi, recently elected president of the SFWA, agrees with Manjoo, and quite strongly. But, as I wrote in response there:

In less formal (that is, the majority of) communication, it boils down mostly to two equally valid aesthetic choices — and/or is rendered moot by the automatic single-spacing that happens when, for instance, text is translated into HTML [browsers]. That is, it’s arguing over a pet peeve that’s almost never an actual issue, all in the name adhering to the way you were taught, or to proving the way we were all taught was wrong.

I thought Eric B. raised a few other interesting points over Twitter — he’s not wrong when he says, “There’s no *reason* most grammar rules have to be, other than readability and consistency.” — but I remain unconvinced. Does a difference in the number of spaces we use, one or two, truly impede readability, and is it actually an affront to consistency if my e-mails to you contain a different number of spaces than your e-mails to me? (Heck, even my dogged insistence on hyphenating “e-mail” puts me at inconsistent odds with a growing majority, yet I don’t think it’s unclear what I’m talking about. At least, not for that reason.)

In published documents, online or in print, meant for a wider audience than one’s own personal (or even internal business) communication, I do agree that one space should be the norm. Consistency should be the norm. But for draft manuscripts, particularly those written in that tenaciously monospaced Courier font, two spaces are in fact preferred. It may create a small amount of extra work for copyeditors and typesetters after the fact, who then need to turn those two spaces into one, but it creates less work for the editor who has to read the manuscript. And nowadays, that extra work shouldn’t often be more complicated than a few instances of find-and-replace.

For everything else, that personal and business communication I mentioned above, it either doesn’t matter, or one space is already the default. It comes down to aesthetics, which are important but subjective, and pet peeves, which are silly things to create rules around in the first place.

Tuesday various

Tuesday various

  • “This will end us.” Oh, Cooks Source, you say that like it’s a bad thing. (That you say it with many, many typos is just sort of amusing.)

    Seriously, though, had there not been scores of examples of Cooks Source being a copyright-theft-for-profit publication, and had each “apology” from Monica Griggs not smacked of arrogance and shifting of blame, I might be sympathetic. I might chalk it up to an honest mistake, crossed wires in communication, overly tired people saying things they later regret. But Cooks Source‘s actions and attitudes speak for themselves.

  • Far be it from me to badmouth a fledgling genre magazine, but…Sci-Fi Short Story Magazine launches with impressive art and no pay.

    In theory, I wish them really well. But seriously? $11.99 for 34 pages (that’s about 35 cents a page!), plus a site heavy with ads, and you can’t pass along any of the money to the writers and artists? I give next to nothing at Kaleidotrope — I recognize that what I’m able to offer is only a token payment — but I think it’s still important to offer it. And Kaleidotrope, it should be noted, does not turn a profit. If you’re charging twelve bucks and hosting lots of ads, and you’re still not making any money, maybe it’s time to rethink your business model. And if you are making money, I feel you have an obligation to share some of that money with the people who provide you with content.

  • Physician, heal thyself! A newly elected Maryland Republican, who campaigned strongly for repealing Obamacare, wonders why he can’t have his government-paid health care right away. [via]
  • Which lends itself immediately to this question for the Democrats: when it’s increasingly clear that your opposition is a walking Onion headline, why do you keep insisting on caving into them? It’s hard to argue with the position that “every time Republicans are on the opposite side of an issue from the public, it’s the Democrats who cave and talk about ‘compromise.'” [via]
  • And finally, the big news today is that the Beatles are finally on iTunes. As Rob says, “Hopefully now The Beatles will finally get the publicity and sales they deserve.”