Authors: e-network or die? (part 1 of 3)

'If you're not online, you don't exist.’

This is the futurologists' mantra that's being foisted upon businesses and individuals in many industries. The publishing industry is one of those witnessing tectonic technology shifts in business models; first, with the digitisation of the presses, and more recently, with the exponential surge in e-book sales. Now it's the authors themselves who are being targeted for change.

In this three-part blog I'll be discussing whether a prospective author needs a large online following – website, Facebook, blog, Twitter - before approaching a literary agent.

Part 1: Crystal ball gazing (or, if you can tell the future, how come you haven't won the lottery?)

If you pay me a subscription fee, your book has more chance of selling (image: ereads.com)

A tsunami of advice for authors is rolling across cyberspace, typified by FUTUReBOOK’s recent blog, ‘If you won’t have a blog, don’t bother sending us your manuscript.’ Here, Steve Emecz, of MX Publishing, suggests that authors should become a brand, using social media to market themselves. He equates an authors desire to sell books with their willingness to self-promote because ‘good blogs sell more books’.

BookBrunch creator Liz Thompson, using the London Book Fair Spotlight blog, states that ‘social media is not an option for authors but a necessity’, and that ‘having a content-rich website is now de rigueur for established writers and newbies alike.’ She goes on to mention Philippa Gregory, bestselling author of The Other Boleyn Girl, who has a 17,000 army of Facebook followers, and who tweeted an abridged version of The White Queen in the voice of one of the characters.

In her Publishing Perspectives blog, Hannah Johnson writes about online promotion strategies presented at the eBook Summit. She reports that publisher Farrar, Strauss and Giroux has launched a literary blog with the goal of helping young authors advertise their wares. An industry panel spoke about using ‘online content as a way for authors to get discovered and build fan groups.’

Another approach for authors using technological means to advance their sellability would make agents’ lunches with publishers a rather noisy affair. Richard Curtis of e-reads suggests that instead of the traditional discussion about the author’s manuscript, and how it would fit into a publisher’s portfolio, an agent would bring along their iPad to show off the prospective authors dexterity with social media techniques, topped off with a self-made video pitch from the author.

All these opinions seem to be generated from self-proclaimed futurologists or web-based organisations trying to muscle in on traditional publishing turf. Although publishers are running flat-out to catch up with the e-book explosion, I have yet to read from anyone from the ‘old ways’ who says that they need authors to be popular before being published.

In the second part I'll let you know how literary agents respond to this.

Cum on, you zombies!

As someone who believes that our planet would be better off with the eradication of the human race (preferably through a zombie apocalypse), being asked to be sociable, even if in cyberspace, leaves me a little bit cold. Unfortunately, writers are being told constantly that they do not exist if they lack an online presence, and my course requirements mean that I have to step out of my shell, creating my own website,as well as blogging and twittering. One wonders how on earth Dickens, Austen, Dahl, et al made it without iPads.

Amongst the doom and gloom reports about the death of the pulped wood book, to be replaced by e-readers (I’m tempted by the Kindle myself), there are also obituaries being written about traditional publishing. The current process is writer pens novel, fires off manuscript to agents, agent thinks it worthy and sends to publisher, publisher agrees and assigns an editor, editor makes notes, writer amends manuscript, publisher publishes novel and find shop shelf space (or Amazon link), reader thinks the cover looks great and buys it (taking the book home or downloading to their kindle). It isn’t perfect, but there is some attempt at quality control, a filtering process, if you will. So, how else can it be done?

Save the planet; hug a zombie (moviemusereviews.com)

There’s self (or vanity) publishing for starters. This has been around for hundreds of years, and publishers such as Lulu and Grosvenor House have taken advantage of digital innovations with print-on-demand to reduce costs and attract those authors who have received a constant stream of rejection slips, can't face being rejected, or simply want to see their novel in print. Here, there are no guarantees of quality for the reader, and no guarantees of success for the writer. In fact, without considerable marketing, the overwhelming chances are that the author will make a loss on the deal. Of course, Kindle self-publishing improves profitability, but faces the same marketing issue: how does a reader get to know about your fantastic book?

Of the ‘new publishing’ thinkers, one voice being given air time is former CEO of Soft Skull Press, Richard Eoin Nash. His approach is one of connection rather than publication, and to that end he has started up Cursor, a publishing brand made up of several genre-based imprints, which themselves consist of a community of writers and readers. Depending on the level of engagement there is a subscription fee, which to the cynic might sound a little like vanity publishing. The benefits to the successful author (whatever that means, community-wise) have not been worked out yet, so we wait with baited breath.

There are other avenues to pursue: website publishing - through subscription perhaps, iPhone app selling, and podcast production on iTunes. All of these, like vanity publishing, require the author to have the right contacts in the right areas, which for already-published or well-known personalities is fine, but for anonymous lone wolves like me, it’s a mysterious and dangerous world. Surely all this leads to is the publication of talented PR folks, not talented authors.

The cost of warehousing my unsold self-published books is exorbitant (foleypod.com)

In terms of my course requirements, I’m blasé about the website idea – I simply don’t understand why someone who isn’t published needs a website, and even if I had a bestseller, why would a reader want to visit my website? Just buy my books, damn you. Twitter I enjoy; some of the people I follow have great links, but it’s really a tool for procrastination, and no-one follows me anyway, so what’s the real point. Blogging is perhaps my favourite: I can mouth off (I have an opinion on everything), and I get to write, which is what I love doing. It's a shame then that I'm being judged on how many words each blog has rather than how good/bad (delete as applicable) the blogs are as pieces of writing.

Let’s be realistic, I’m blogging to my family and one or two UCF students only. No-one of any influence is reading my tremendously pithy mini-features with hilariously-captioned photos, and despite following many other blogs, and leaving generous comments with a link to my own blog, I have just four followers – all UCF students. Like financial matters, social networking is a complete mystery to me, and frankly, it’s taking up real writing and reading time. Until I’m able to write as a career, thus freeing up the fifty to fifty-five hours a week I spend working in brain-dead automotive manufacturing, I have no interest or time in gathering a network of ‘friends’ in the pursuit of a lottery's chance of sales; I'll be sociable because I like someone. I'm a writer, so when it comes to selling my work, I'll leave that to the professional sellers.