How The Other Half Thinks

UPADTE: I stand corrected. Sarah A. Hoyt has published in conventional forms and has self-published. I apologize for the error. My main point, of course, still stands: She's in the self-publishing, non-traditional vanguard and if you're interested in knowing more about it, her blog and the specific post I mentioned are good places to visit. UPDATE 2: It's worth noting the obvious (which is so obvious it's being overlooked): The fact that I've not self-published does not mean that I'm OPPOSED to self-publishing. Not in the least. I'm all for it. I have reasons for not having done so myself, and every single day, I wrestle with those reasons, and ask myself if they're enough to keep me tied to conventional publishing.

For reasons that are still not clear to me, a post of mine that I zipped off in a moment of not-thinking-much has generated more comment and linkage than anything else on this blog besides the Pink Slime posts.

Among the commentary is this from a writer named Sarah A. Hoyt. She's got nuthin' good to say 'bout me. Alas. (I was amused by her first sentence: "I don't mean to pick on this writer," when in fact her intent is a full-bore assault on me, my work, my work ethic, my life, probably my height and weight...)

(Although I must say: I can't figure out how she missed my name. I think of it as immodestly plastered all over my website. But maybe what I'm seeing isn't what other people see????)

Her post is worth taking time to read because it exemplifies the way the "other half" thinks about publishing and writing. The "other half," in this case, being the self-publishers who represent the vanguard of change in American publishing. If you're interested in tracking the tension in publishing in the US today, take a look.

Adrift in a Pond of Lassitude

Yeah. Okay. I wanted to call it a Pond of Ennui, but that word doesn't fit. Torper would do, too. But lassitude it is. I don’t recall feeling this aimless and adrift since, well, some moment so long ago that I can’t remember when it was.

I’ve worn a track in the carpet wandering from room to room, trying to decide what to do with all my “free time.”

Wandering Thoughts

Not, of course, that I have any “free time.” Yes, okay, the manuscript is on my editor’s desk and I’ll see her later this week to discuss it. (Let us hope her response is not the equivalent of “What the FUCK were you thinking???? We can’t publish this crap!”)

Until that happens, I’m not inclined to work on it. I’m also not in the mood to work on it. If familiarity breeds contempt, my manuscript and I loathe each other at the moment.

Much of my house-wandering has been devoted to thinking, in a general way, about my next book. I know what I want to do, but I don’t want to get too carried away until I talk to my agent, which will also happen later this week.

(Manhattan: Trek downtown to see editor, then up to midtown to see agent.) The idea is only quarter-baked at the moment. I think it’s a good one, but ...... (Yes, this is one reason to pay an agent: he/she offers advice, assistance, reality checks.)

Manhattan

So --- I’m not getting much done. Which is not to say I’ve been sitting around engaging in the contemporary equivalent of eating bon bons while watching soap operas. Things I’ve done since sending manuscript to editor:

  • Written the introduction. Or, more accurately, written five or six drafts of the introduction
  • Read a bunch of stuff (much of it excruciatingly dull) about contemporary food politics
  • Pondered my next book
  • Talked to reporters about Pink Slime; written about Pink Slime
  • Written a first draft of lyrics for the music video I’ll be making to promote the meat book

Hmmm. And: Ugh. Doesn’t sound like much for a month of work. So. Back to wandering.

If Publishing Is Dead, What Happens to Non-Fiction?

UPDATE: See my long, and related, comment at this post. (As in: It's in the COMMENTS, not the blog entry itself.) I rarely write about the publishing side of my life; frankly, it’s not that interesting and it’s more insider baseball than anything else and how boring is that for those who aren’t on the inside? (Bohhhh-rriiiiing.)

So indulge me. Just this once. (I’m a historian and a writer and am living through a once-in-a-millennium paradigm shift. What’s not to love??)

For those of you who don’t work in “publishing,” a bit of background: The industry consists of publishing houses, both big and small; literary agents; and writers (aka the Big Mob At the Bottom of the Totem Pole).

Gleason's printing operation, in: Gleason's Pi...

Until recently (like, oh, coupla years ago), writers wrote, then tried to find an agent who then sold the writer’s work to a publishing house. The agent takes a percentage of the author’s royalties, and everyone involved hoped for the best (meaning: hoped readers would want to buy the book the writer had written. Most of the time, they did not.)

“Self-publishing” --- when a writer acted as her own publishing house --- was looked on as the resort of hacks, the untalented, the losers.

No more. Now anyone can write a manuscript, create a digital version of it, upload it to Amazon or wherever, and wait for readers and their wallets to come running.

For authors, the advantages are obvious: There’s no time lag between finishing a manuscript and “publishing” it. (In contrast, assuming all goes well, my meat book will come out in about ten or eleven months.) There’s no agent to take a chunk of the profits. The writer becomes a one-woman publishing industry.

For many writers, this has become the road to riches. Authors who never earned anything on books published the old-fashioned way swear that, thanks to self-publishing, they’re raking in the dough.

The self-publishing king- and queenpins are relentless in their mockery of those of us who cling to agents and publishing houses. According to them, we traditionalists are losers of the first order. We’re world-class fools for letting agents take our money, and dumbasses for letting editors and publishing companies call the shots on our behalf.

The self-pubbers canNOT wait for the day when the entire traditional publishing complex falls into a huge hole in the ground. The self-pubbers have the funeral all planned. (If the self-pubbers spent as much time writing as they do gloating over the slow death of publishing, they could easily crank out another book or two each year.)

Okay. Fine.

Cuneiform-Rabat-Tepe2

But I’ve noticed: The new self-publishing king/queenpins are almost entirely novelists, meaning they write fiction rather than non-fiction. (*1)

They crank out a novel or two (or three) a YEAR. I’m sure that many of them have to do research for their books, but for MOST fiction writers (not all of them), that research is minimal and is the kind of thing that can be taken care of with good googling or a trip or two to the public library.

As a result, they don’t understand that for people like me, the “traditional” publishing industry is my only lifeline, my only means of support.

Consider: I started working on the meat book in early 2007. I finished it in early 2012. You do the math.

I spent five years researching and writing the beer book, and of that, a great deal of money and time was spent on traveling to specialized libraries. The Key West book took me two years to research and write.

How did I pay for that? By entering into a partnership with a traditional publishing house that provided financial support.

It works like this: My agent sells my book IDEA to a publishing house. The house pays an “advance”: a sum of money upfront that I can live on while I research and write the book. It’s not much money --- in fact it’s an embarrassing amount of money and I also am fortunate enough to receive financial support from my spouse.

Without that assistance, I couldn’t do what I do. Period. Again, it’s not much money, and it’s the ONLY money I earn from my books. (If I were lucky enough to write a bang ‘em up bestseller, I’d earn more than the advance, but I’m not that lucky. Er, um, not that talented a writer.)

The self-publishers, in my opinion, have a distorted view of “books” and of “publishing.” In their minds, every writer is cranking out novels that don’t require much time to research and write, and the lag time between creation and payoff is short.

So I ask them: What happens when the agents, editors, and publishing houses go away? Who will write non-fiction then?

Library book shelves

And yes, sigh, all this ruminating led to that single simple question. I TOLD you I was long-winded.

UPDATE/OTHER LINKS: For more on non-fiction in this brave new world of books, see this post by Sarah Weinman, a long-time industry insider, and this article in the Wall Street Journal. (The latter link may evaporate.) And another update: This take from a writer who's been on both sides.

___________________________ *1: I say “almost entirely” because among the self-pubbers are a small but vocal group of non-fiction writers who, having earned beaucoup bucks from their work, are now Famous and Rich and can afford to dump their publishers and agents and publish their own work.

What's Goin' On?; or My Plan For 2010 ("Sticky" Post)

Note:  I originally wrote this post in late January by way of explaining why I've (intentionally) slowed my otherwise fanatical pace of blogging. I've decided to keep it up front as a "sticky" post. Other recent posts are below (as are about a bajillion older posts.)

The  Gaye/Cleveland/Benson song has been  running through my head lately. Apparently it's the soundtrack to my goal, such as it is, for 2010.

Which is: I'm hell-bent on finishing the book this year. I'm only half-way through the research and writing, and right now I'm feeling a bit hamster-wheelish, but  . . . (No, the song doesn't have much to do with my goal or my work, but a soundtrack is good, right?)

I know, I know: You're wondering: "What the HELL has she been doing? Why isn't she finished?" Rightly so. I've been working on this book since early 2007 --- minus the 18 months I lost to trying to regain the use of my right arm. (Jesus. When I look at it that way, I feel like I'm working at the speed of light.)

But as I've noted before, I do all my own research and writing and I have a "life" beyond my work --- and so it takes me a long time to write a book.

So, determined to finish the book this year, I've got to stay as focused as possible. (I had lunch with two friends yesterday and felt guilty about not being at home working. Sigh.)

I'm also giving myself a crash course in the politics of contemporary food: I'm a historian, so I can tell you what happened a century ago, but I'm not clear where we Americans are now.  And I've gotta figure that out so I can speak coherently to meat, both past and present. (Which I did this week when I talked to two reporters about meat in modern America.)

So on any given day, I'm engaged in two projects that consume most of my brain power. Which means: something's gotta give, and what's "giving" is my blogging time. Which means the blog is more-or-less on hiatus until (I hope) April. I'm still here, but . . . I'm not, if you know what I mean. (*1)

I'm using Twitter to keep myself connected to the larger world (especially the politics of food as we know it in the U.S.) So: I'll be in and out of the blog and more regularly at Twitter (hey! whaddya waiting for? get a Twitter account!). (*2)

Should you miss me (I wish), there's plenty here to keep you occupied. (Click the "other projects" link at the top of the page.) (Yes, since you ask, I am a wordy, ruminative soul.)

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*1: If I weren't such a wordy, long-winded woman, I'dve done what most people in my situation do: Just post a single blog entry announcing that I'm on hiatus for five months. But --- something interesting might come along! And I'd feel compelled to provide my two cents worth! And then where would I be?

*2: I remember when I first heard about Twitter that many pundit types asserted that Twitter meant the end of blogging. I can see why they thought that: god knows Twitter is MUCH faster/easier than actually writing a series of sentences and paragraphs. Instant gratification in a way that blogging is not. Still, I love the blogging format and the intellectual rewards it provides. But I'm not kidding myself that I've got time to write the new book AND blog 5 or 6 times a week.

But As Long As I'm Here

The writing proceeds. Making good progress. Although, really, it helps to put the blog on the back-burner for the moment. Not that I don't miss it. I do. And I'll be back. But right now, I want. to. finish. this. book.

Did I mention that we're also remodeling our kitchen at the moment? And a bathroom? We are. So my other chore at the moment is to learn how to cook on electricity (we set up a temporary kitchen in the basement, and I'm cooking on a two-burner  hotplate). I figure I'll get proficient at cooking with electricity just about the time the kitchen is finished and I can get back to my beloved gas cooktop.

(Photos of remodeling at my Facebook page, if you're interested.) Anyway . .  .

It's Not Just Hilarious; It's TRUE!

Astute Reader Dexter sent me this link. And now I KNOW he's astute, because he knew I'd appreciate it, because he gets what I do for a living and he realized that this would ring true. (Big round of applause for Dexter, please.)

This essay is hilarious. Why? Because it completely nails, and I mean perfectly, totally, completely nails why authors have to work so hard to promote their books: 'cause the publisher prolly isn't gonna do much because, well, read the essay.

Although: I was  fortunate with the beer book. The publicist originally assigned to it left for another job a month or so before the book came out. Which left me and my book, well, stranded. (Because everyone else in the department was already working on other authors' books and publishing PR departments are chronically understaffed. It's the nature of the beast.) (*1)

So then a new guy came on board and, uh, did, um, well, nothing. (Nice guy but worthless.) No surprise, he wasn't around long.

But about a year six months after the book came out, one of the department's underlings got promoted and took over my book and he did more for it  than anyone had prior to that. He was amazing. Wonderful. Heroic. I wanted to mother his children. He was everything any author could want.

And, yes, you can see this coming: He left to take another job. 'Cause that's how it goes in the wonderful world of publishing.

And that's why writers like me bust our asses to blog, use Twitter, write op-ed pieces (see the "Other Projects"  link at the top of the page), blog some more, etc.  Because we've got to promote our books, because, say it with me, no one else is gonna do it.

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*1: This, by the way, is not a criticism. Shit happens. Plus, I LOVE my editor and therefore I LOVE my publishing house. It was my choice to publish the meat book with them. I will stay with them as along as they'll have me. Unless my editor goes to another house. Then, hmmm . . . I might change my mind.