Thread: NEW MEDIA as a new route to getting published

Until recently there has been one main model on how a writer’s work gets published, meaning "available to readers". It’s a fairly monolithic system in which a writer forms a relationship (and surrenders rights) to an agent, who has relationships with publishers, and hopefully then with publishers, who have relationships with readers.

We are supposed to submit and wait. It can take many, many years even to find an agent, more for them to sell it to a publisher, then up to two years before the books is actually available. And for 99% of writers, the book will never be published. In the meantime, we are supposed to re-edit, write something else, hope. Buy books on how to make this process work for us. Instead of for them.

In recent years new technology, and new ways of reading, have given rise to many new possibilities for us to have our work read immediately. Without waiting, and with little or no expense. At the same time, a new model of the writer/reader relationship has been emerging: a directed relationship based on mutual support. New concepts like The Long Tail, Cory Doctorow’s “Experiment”, and A Thousand True Fans are gaining adherence--and success. The latter is especially enlightening, and is being proven by many independent artists, musicians, and writers: all it takes is a thousand fans who will buy all your mp3’s or ebooks or T-shirts or comics to support you.

But there is an important flipside to having that kind of readership and fanbase: it’s a platform. It’s your invisible “Verizon network” trailing behind you when you go to an agent or publisher.

In other words, building readership isn’t just an alternative to the traditional publishing model--it’s also a lever to pry it open and make it work for you.

Having a readership (which also can mean feedback, emotional support, and even income) is invaluable whether you end up working it yourself or using it to get signed. And you can’t build readership while waiting for a book to appear. The solution of getting work out there right now to start finding readers, gaining experience, promoting your authorial brand, and producing a cash flow is very obvious, once grasped.

Getting an agent or publisher contract or movie deal based on online media is not something that happens to everybody, obviously. But it does happen, and with increasing frequency. There are several "poster boys" for podcast-to-print success, and webnovel-to-stardom. Not to mention the many "upgrades" from ebooks and POD print books. It can happen, and the chances of it happening are better for somebody with a readership than for somebody without readers.
And then there's that fallback: if you never get signed, you at least get read.

Which makes this an approach with no downside. Unlike waiting and never getting there, writers who never get signed are still getting the benefits of readership: the writer’s true grail. How big a readership you can achieve depends on you, your book, and your readers. I say "no downside" because while the most obvious "upsides" (you get enough readers to make it and/or you play your readership into a contract) are obvious, what if the worst you can imagine happens, and nobody wants to read your work at all? It happens. Well, even that is a positive outcome: instead of spending years waiting and hoping for the magic to strike before either trying a different book or ignoring writing for others and learning to play the dulcimer instead, you find out now. In like six months. If you've presented your thing well and pimped it everywhere and nobody salutes, don't waste time and postage on it anymore. Move on. A recent business theory advises publishers to "fail faster, better, and cheaper"--and the same goes for writers.

Another catastrophic outcome often mentioned in forums is that your book will only be read by friends and family. Why is that so awful? And WHY is it worse than not getting read at all? If the best that happens with your New Media venture is that people you know get to read your work, and maybe it's for sale down at the local coffee shop you haunt or on your website... is that so bad? Is it worse than sitting on it?

This is a building wave, and is actively ignored by the writing magazines. This is really the only major writing site with a forum section on it. It's a powerful way to do something with your work, with some interesting possibilities and very little cost in time or money. Think about it. Ask about it. Buy my ebook about it:

I don't really get it. How do you increase readership in the net in the first place? And how does he earn money by giving away free Ebooks?

Post good stuff. I went from 92 subscribers to my RSS feed to 344. In one day, by posting the first three "chapters" of the first draft of a novel.
Cory Doctorow's site has just a wealth of information about how to do it.

Nice article Lin, nice to see the industry is finally pulling their heads out of their collective ass.

The underlying advice here is not really new in respect to most jobs. If you are a musician, if you can prove you have fans that will follow you, you can get signed by a record label easier. If you are an IT consultant, prove that you have satisfied customers.

The trick is and always has been empathy. The people putting up the money to invest in you weigh risks/rewards just like anyone else. Once you understand that, then you know how to make yourself more appealing. Proving that you have succeeded in the past, or in this case, that you already have a fanbase or readership, ultimately diminishes the risk associated with investing in you as an artist. I think artists have more difficulty seeing the business side of it.

Anyway, again, nice article. I'll come down off my soap box now.

So how many people here are actually doing it? Info overload is actually blowing my mind.

Originally Posted by darknite_johanne

I don't really get it. How do you increase readership in the net in the first place? And how does he earn money by giving away free Ebooks?

Giving away free ebooks builds a fanbase or readership. So once you prove that people are interested in your work, you can go to a publisher and say, "Look, I have X number of people who liked my last free release." In doing so, it diminishes the risk of signing an unknown author.

Or, it helps you determine whether it is worth it to invest your own money in self publishing.


EDIT : Think of it like this, when you first start a new career and have no experience, how do you prove to a prospective employer that you are worth their time/money? One route is to do some unpaid internships, which is a very good analogy for giving away free stories when you are starting out as a writer.


Although with writing, you need to do it in a more focused way so that you can build a tangible readership. Which is why I think blogs are so successful, it is a way to have an obvious location to collate readership.

You can read more of Doctorow, darknite and get a lot better idea of how free books increase sales. It's worked well for him, and a lot of other people.

LOTS of people are doing this stuff. The Web Fiction Guide had 600 web novels listed a couple of months ago when I last looked. Get 2-3 more a day.

Podcasts are all OVER the place Seth Harwood got his publishing contract because "Jack Wakes Up" was getting two MILLION downloads.

And yeah, it's the Age of Info Blowmind. But once a writer decides to novel online or do a podcast serial, things narrow down to a pretty finite amount of things to do, a supportive community, and the task of building readers. And how to do that is the real trick... there are about seven brazilion turkeys all over the web and bookstores telling you how to build social media and promote. What works for you is what works. Having writing people like really helps as well.

And yeah, Sigg, music is ahead of writing on this whole curve. I first ran into the "Thousand True Fans" concept on a musician's forum. There are lots of guys out there selling mp3's online. And I've seen several say that, yeah, you get a thousand people who will buy your songs and t-shirts and stuff and it's significant support, maybe enough to live on. Haven't yet seen anybody say they have a thousand people downloading their stuff, but it's not really support.

And...again... if there aren't more than 20 people out there who like your work...at least you're reaching THEM. And if you totally suck and nobody wants to hear it... you get to find out sooner and cheaper.

Originally Posted by Sigg

Giving away free ebooks builds a fanbase or readership. So once you prove that people are interested in your work, you can go to a publisher and say, "Look, I have X number of people who liked my last free release." In doing so, it diminishes the risk of signing an unknown author.

Or, it helps you determine whether it is worth it to invest your own money in self publishing.


EDIT : Think of it like this, when you first start a new career and have no experience, how do you prove to a prospective employer that you are worth their time/money? One route is to do some unpaid internships, which is a very good analogy for giving away free stories when you are starting out as a writer.


Although with writing, you need to do it in a more focused way so that you can build a tangible readership. Which is why I think blogs are so successful, it is a way to have an obvious location to collate readership.

Maybe I'm a bit stupid when it comes to blogs, but I've had a blog three years ago, and when I publish money related stuff on it, people would read it, but when I do fiction stuff on it, I could barely get any comments.

So in marketing to your fanbase, do you have to do it differently?

I think there is a disparity between the theory and practical implementation (isn't there always?). In theory this all makes perfect sense to me, but when I try to actually picture exactly what I would do to put it into practice, the thing that really smacks me in the face is how much effort it would be to build that readership. You can't just put up a blog and say to yourself, "If you build it, they will come."

Mod had part of it right though, post good work. But you need to get people to show up to see your good work, and that in itself is another can of worms. Lots of networking, advertising, shameless plugs, etc.

@ Sigg- You're right about the practical part. Planning what you would do from day to day would really take real work. Meaning staying in front of the monitor for hours and hours per day. Being a somewhat social person (my online time on average is two hours a day) this would take a bit of a sacrifice.

But the Idea sounds promising

@Lin-seven brazilion turkeys is an awful lot to digest! Haha

@ Sigg- You're right about the practical part. Planning what you would do from day to day would really take real work. Meaning staying in front of the monitor for hours and hours per day. Being a somewhat social person (my online time on average is two hours a day) this would take a bit of a sacrifice.

But the Idea sounds promising

It doesn't have to be that way, being social is what it's all about. You can get people interested in your work by meeting them in real life (the old fashioned way) too. For me, people are always shocked to find out that I write and immediately say, "Can I read some of your stuff?!" and if I had a blog or a personal website, I'd just direct them to that site.

You may even want to have business cards (if you don't already) and put the website on there.

Not to mention on forum sig, email sig, website, other blogs, etc. I'm also a fan of the "starts with you and radiates out through your environment and contacts" school of building support.

I tell people to always carry a copy of their book with them, cover displayed, have it on your table at lunch, coffee, etc. and it blows their mind: what kind of global market share scheme is THAT?
But it works. People like meeting writers. Like buying direct from writers.

The whole pub/promo thing here is a different can of worms, which I hope to get into if there seems to be interest in this sort of thing, and in self=publishing.

I'm still in the stages of getting my writing to a point of being publishable and then building at least a decent stock of finished pieces, then I will be doing a lot of these things. But since I am so busy with work and my other activities, it is a slow process!

There is no shame in plugging your work. Really. Gotta get past that. I post my business cards everywhere. When I was a cab driver, I used to talk to customers about my interactive novel (at the time I had one online). I give away cds. I've left them in store racks, and am going to be placing my next two near the register at local store Zia Records. If they move, they've agreed to sell them. They'll sell chapbooks too.
I'm tempted to take the time to .pdf something and put it on lulu just to have hardcopy.

It's like people who used to give away their band's demo tapes out of their trunk in the parking lot.