Why Speed Matters

Have you heard of Amanda Hocking yet? You will. She’s the poster child for self-publishing at the moment; a runaway success story that most of us can only dream of. After going down a storm as an indie author, she has just signed a two million dollar (count ‘em) four-book deal with St. Martin’s Press. There’s a lot of buzz about that and her reasons why, but that’s another story.

Thats Amanda Hocking. Wow, look at her go! Neeeeeaaaaoow! Image courtesy of Nathan Bittinger. If you like this one, he's got a billion like it.

Now, there are many reasons why Amanda Hocking has been a success (and no doubt I will examine a few more in the future), but a big contributed has to be the speed at which she can put out new books.

Here’s the thing, to be a success you need volume. Okay, there are different kinds of success, and I guess you could luck out and get one stellar hit. Sigh, I’ll rephrase: to be a commercial success, what the vast majority of us need is volume.

Having one book out there won’t do it. Having many books out means two things:

1. There is more chance of someone picking up one of your books if you appear more than once in the book list (the chance of this is increased if you put out books quickly).
2. If a reader likes your book, they will likely pick up your others. You get to sell to the same customer more than once.

That last one is important. Suddenly, each sale is not worth £6.99 (or whatever. Amanda Hocking sells her digital books for $2.99), but £13.98, £20.97, or £34.95.

There are other opportunities as well, such as being able to offer bundles or BOGOF offers, but the two above are the main ones.

So it’s easy to see the advantage in being able to get the work out fast and accumulate a body of work.

How fast is fast? I had a quick look around and Miss Hocking has ten books out, all published in 2010/2011. Is that right? That can’t be right, can someone check that please? Oh God, tell me that’s not right!

The argument against speed

There is an opposing view (isn’t there always), that favours continued polishing over publishing. The assumption is that by taking your time over a piece of working and continually refining it, you will produce fewer, but much higher quality books.

Does that make for more sales? I can see a couple of circumstances where it might.

• You release one absolutely amazing piece of work – seminal in fact, that took you years, but is revered as a classic.
• You release a trilogy over many years (let’s say, over ten). The quality is such that the popularity of each book is enduring, and in addition you get the added bonus of multiple sales per customer. Hell, you can even sell your books at a higher price than most.

Actually that last one wouldn’t necessarily have to be a trilogy, just three books of any description, I guess. Anyhew, that’s my off-the-cuff-not-very-analytical-sweeping-statements bit out of the way. Seriously though if you know of any relevant data on this feel free to link to it in the comments.

The point is, I think for vast majority of us, having more books out there wins every time. Of course, if it’s not sales you’re after, none of this applies. If your ambition is to make this book the best (maybe only, in which case the former goal is easy) book you could ever ever write, then you don’t care about the money and that’s fine.

There is of course an exception to the “volume wins” rule, which I will title “crap-heaping”. You still have to write great stories, even if you do it quicker than others. If you’re just piling crap upon crap, it doesn’t matter how much you make, people still aren’t gonna wanna buy it.

I’m not taking my sweet time on purpose!
Or, so what’s your damn problem, loser?

How rude. But seriously, I should just write quicker, yes?

NnnnghraagaaghaaAAAAA!

Yes, I know I should write more, and I know I should try and set more time aside than train journeys and Saturday mornings, but… but… I’m so tired!

And this is me. Aw, look, I'm sleeping. Bless! Image courtesy of Ernst Vikne

I am not a full time writer, like Amanda Hocking. I have to work and stuff. Eating and keeping my home are important things to me. I actually did what I consider to be a fairly good about of writing last week, on top of a busy work week. But I was knackered.

On the other hand, this week I’ve been more lax, and I feel pooey. I would rather feel knackered than pooey.

But even if all my weeks were like the last, it would still be a terrifically slow pace. This is a marathon of ‘ickle mouse-steps, and it makes me anxious. I worry that should I ever finish something, it will go unnoticed; I worry that by the time I’ve put enough work out there to make a difference, the market will have changed so much that it won’t make a difference; I worry that at this pace, in not improving very fast either; I worry that I can’t do anything about any of this. I worry, basically.

But I see no way out of this at the moment. I will have to plough on in obscurity for a good while yet, trying to convince myself that any progress is still progress, and worth my time, and trying to ignore the voice that says it will never, ever be enough.

Useful links

• Amanda Hocking on Wikipedia
• Amanda Hocking’s blog (not necessarily about writing)

Since the heady days of the text adventure (the eighties) became but a memory, writing interactive fiction has been almost exclusively a “hobbyist” affair. Authors give away the results of their blood, sweat and tears to the niche (but enthusiastic) community of readers for free. No one had dared take the next, perilous step into full-time IF writing, and many would have said it was impossible – until now!

The man himself

Now he’s decided he wants to make this his full-time job. The trick here is to ask for the money first, before the product is ready. If you have people pledging cash in advance, you can tell whether your venture will be successful or not. So, Andrew set up a project on Kickstarter, in advance of his new piece of interactive fiction, Hadean Lands.

But this has got to be a hard sell, right? Andrew Plotkin may be one of the most famous IF writers in the world, but we’ve been getting this stuff free for ages. Turns out people are pretty generous.

Andrew beat his target by the end of the first day. At the time of writing, 580 people have pledged $26,242, with ten days still to go! Two such pledges are for $1000 apiece, for the opportunity to meet with the man himself.

It really is heartwarming, and a boon for IF authors (and indeed any authors thinking of self-publishing). This can be done, and done extremely successfully.

But let’s take a moment to look at the lessons behind this. This is not the result of one night’s effort – this success represents years and years of work, and the gradual accumulation of superfans. The man himself says (in update #8 of his Kicksarter project):

“And I’ll warn you (again) that it’s not a recipe. There is no recipe; it’s what you’ve done with your life and who you know.”

With that in mind, below is a short, sharp list of what I think needs to be achieved to get similar results. This is the “long-term list”, as I would assume many of the people reading this blog are in a similar position to me, and nowhere near to being able to charge for their work yet. Andrew touches on some of these things, but also talks more specifically about how he ran his Kickstarter campaign in the aforementioned update, so you should also check that out.

1. Be excellent

   Andrew Plotkin writes great IF stories that have won him many awards, great acclaim and raving fans. This does not happen overnight, but is the result of much writing and much practice. Let’s face it, no one’s going to give you any money unless they know you can deliver, so you’d better show that first.

2. Be active in a community

   I’ve mentioned some of his contributions to the IF community above. But it’s about more than putting stuff out there – he does interviews, responds to tweets and comments, and all that good stuff.

3. Be patient

   From that update again, “First, spend fifteen years working hard on projects with no reward but community good-will”. Fifteen years, people! Settle in.

4. Be generous

   There are 16 stories available in the IFDB by Andrew Plotkin. And they are all for free. This allows him to get his work out there easily, and thus to grow a fanbase, but more than that, it generates a tremendous amount of goodwill. People like to see authors working hard on great things, and sharing them, and they will respond.

5. Contribute more than your writing

   And generosity extends beyond the writing as well. He has written interpreters, and the Glulx virtual machine – both long-term commitments. It’s true that he loves this stuff (hence wanting to make it his full-time job), but you can’t argue with the fact that the man has been incredibly generous with his time. He is part of IF history because of it.

For those of us who are in this for the long haul (and you really ought to be) this success story is both a wonderful affirmation and a reminder that there is a long way to go! I encourage all to go and checkout the Kickstarter page and read someonf the updates, especially if you’re an IF fan.

Pledging for the Hadean Lands project ends on December 6th, so if you want to be a part of this, here’s that Kickstarter page again. This is especially true if you want the Mac, Linux or Windows versions of Hadean Lands as they will only be available through the preorder process (once completed the story will be available on iPhone (and maybe other mobile platforms) only).

In other links, Andrew Plotkin’s IF site can be found here, and there is a great interview about this over at rockpapershotgun.com.

• How it’s going to be distributed?
• How you’re going to get the word out?
• Where the story fits in with your other work?

The reason this is on my mind is of course that I have recently finished a story. I’ve been dwelling on the whole process of getting the story out between writing stints and the picture of what I wanted to do grew gradually.

I’ll put the plan out there as an example. The story is about 9,500 words at the moment. This puts it in a kind of long-short story category I suppose (you know what I mean). I decided a while ago that I would write a series of science fiction stories around a quite specific theme and so decided that this one would work as an opener.

It is also my “practice” story; the first thing I’ve written from beginning to end since starting this website (how did it take so long?) and the launch of my newfound dedication to writing. By practice I just mean that my primary goal with this story was to get into a routine (to just write, dammit). I chose it because it was something I’d had in my head for a while, and was pretty well mapped out. I thought it would be an easy one to start with (I was wrong).

So, that’s where it fits. The immediate plan is to put it to one side for a couple of months and work on something brand new. Then I’ll come back to it and edit away from a fresher perspective. Then comes the point where I have to show it to people. I’ve got a small selection of friends and relatives I’ll share it with (I’m basically following Stephen King‘s door shut/door open recommendations for these stages). In addition I may also bandy it around some writing community sites as well.

Then, after another round of editing I’ll show it to everyone! It will be a free download on this very site, so people get to see it and see what my writing’s like.

As far as the bigger picture goes, I will carry on with the other stories, and when they’re pretty much all ready to go, I’ll offer another free one out of the collection (again, getting the word out- everyone loves a free sample).

By that time I should have enough material and enough impetus to be able to sell the collection. Fingers crossed.

I’m under no delusions about how long this will take (at least I don’t think I am, but then if I was deluded, how would I know?). I intend to write other things as well, plus I’m writing at a snail’s pace at the moment! I’ll have to step it up a gear and still don’t expect this scheme to come to fruition for about three years(!)

Still, I always said I was playing a long game.

The following links have come from my bookmarks and Google Reader subscriptions. I can’t promise that these are “The Best Writing Sites You’ll Ever Find!”, or even that they’re ones I visit much. The truth is, I don’t browse the web for this sort of thing nearly as much as I should. What I can promise about the following links is that at some point, someone, or some site that I respected recommended these sites. I can also promise that I have given them at least a cursory once over to determine that they have some useful content (otherwise I would not have added them to my list o’ stuff).

Anyway, here they are! Please enjoy and share, and add your favourite links to the comments.

General writing sites

• WriteMindset
• Daily Writing Tips
• Writing Forward

Sites on grammar and writing technique

• The Economist style guide
• Grammar girl
• Wikihow – How to use English Punctuation Correctly
• Sparknotes Grammar Guide
• Nathan Bransford – literary agent

Site on self-publishing

• The Creative Penn
• myebook
• smashwords
• Authonomy
• eHow – How to self-publish a book

However, looking back on the book and one thing became clear. It did not have to die with this publication and using all the skills I have I could easily create a film from the material. Now you could accuse me of being egotistical for thinking/attempting this… after all if 300 book agents didn’t think the book would be ‘suitable for us’ then how will I convince 300 script agents that it was. Well, in my head… you have to believe in yourself or you may as well give up now… if you say ‘Hey I got a film… if it gets picked up there’s also a book that goes with it. None of the waiting months for the ghostwriter to get it done.’ This also meant that while the film is in production (Yes, you must think big, you must think this far ahead) the book could be shopped around now with the ‘soon to be a major motion film’ tag and we know how much publishers love their film tie-ins.

So…

Step One. The 35 Points.

I mentioned this in one of my comments, but this is essentially you breaking the book/story/idea down into 35 individual plot points of episodes of action. The obvious problem that occurred with my book is because it is a diary-esque book how to look at certain elements. The book also contains Top Tens, Reviews, it was a general mixbag. How much should go and how much should stay? I’m sure this is something that all adaptors come up against? How true do I stay to the original?

Step Two. Doing It

I set out first by breaking down the book and figuring out where the natural pauses came. I wrote each chapter (or Day, as they are in the book) on a piece of paper with a brief line of what happened and then spread this across the floor. By doing this I was able to easily eliminate and splice as many scenes as possible. Once I was down to eighty of the one hundred and sixty four days, I then proceeded to scale them down again to bring me to the magical thirty-five. This included more splicing and cutting of scenes and figures just which scenes progressed the story and which held it up.

Finally, I came to my thirty-five (or thirty-three in this case) scenes which reflected the story, did not lose any of the spirit of the book and gave me a framework in which I could work with.

Step Three…

Now, that’s the easy part over.

Next it’s the hard part… The writing. How will I do?

Well, we shall see…

Right?

You’d be lying if you say you hadn’t thought this way. Everyone has. But writing, as with everything, is a struggle and the biggest struggle we have to deal with is that fact there are simply too many writers. Publishers themselves receive thousands of manuscripts a week and if they haven’t asked for them they will either bin without looking at them or take a glance and then send the heartbreaking ‘does not meet our criteria’ letter. How do you break through? It’s simple, you get yourself an agent.

However, here lies the Catch-22:

‘To get an agent you must be published, to be published you must have an agent.’

Ok, I’ll let your brain stop swelling for a moment at that conundrum before I continue.

Yes, Agents also receive hundreds and thousands manuscripts a week and can only take on maybe one or two new clients a year. So you’re sitting there with potentially the next Harry Potter and after bumping into obstacle after obstacle it looks destined to become just another few MB on your computer or a few hundred printed pages under the bed.

Not anymore!

Disclaimer from Matt: Other self-publishing services are available. Comment if you recommend any

You can now self publish without the worries that a lot of self publishing has come with before thanks to the website www.lulu.com. Whereas before, if you wanted to self publish, you would have to pay for printing and manufacturing costs and purchase a number of books with the hope that you will recoup the money by selling the books, this is no longer the case. Lulu allows you to place your book on their site and depending on how much profit revenue you would like to receive for each book sold you can price them as you want and not spend a penny. When someone purchases a book it is simply printed on demand and sent to them direct.

How does this work? First up you must have a completed book. For those with just an idea, or halfway through, click Back and return in another few months when you’re done. Your book will not be proofread or edited by Lulu and so all spelling mistakes, grammatical errors need to be looked at by yourself before you put it on the site. If you have thought this far ahead in terms of what you want the book to look like you can upload pictures for the cover, however they do stress that these are original works and not copyrighted images. If you don’t, you can simply design the colour and font of the type of the book and then go.

Just Like Starting Over, by David Simpson on Lulu.

A few clicks and then there! Done!

This is where you really need to think about the ‘Why’ of all this, as in:

‘Why did you write this book?’

If you wrote it to make you a multi-millionaire then self publishing could be a great first step, or a bad one. Unless you have a cult fan base already, the amount of books you sell will be minimal, less than one hundred if you are lucky and though this is still a great amount, if all you are receiving is £2 profit from each book, the potential £200 isn’t exactly enough to give up your day job. (Remember most writers in the real world exist on their advance, the profit they get from the book can sometimes be less than 15%) Setting a price is a complicated issue, but personally depending on whether you actually want to make a profit I’d suggest the lower the better as obviously the more copies that exist in the world, the more exposure your book gets. Even if you were just to buy a number of your books to send to local newspapers, editorial columns or even agents, the price will be lower for you too.

Getting your book available on Amazon is certainly an attractive proposition.

Personally I think the whole idea of self-publishing could also be used as the greatest confidence boost to writers ever. How many of us have dreamt of having a book published and done? Some people will never see this and yet with this site, this seemingly impossible task is possible. You can send a copy to your Mum and Gran and have them place it on their bookshelves between Mary Shelly and Bram Stoker. Once you have that book in your hands, bound, the flow of confidence is amazing and then all those rejection letters, all those letters that said they ‘couldn’t see a market for it’ soon melt away. Granted, you still won’t find the book in Waterstones or your local library; however with this simple act you can be on Amazon and be accessed by millions of people who are just browsing through that site.

With sites like Facebook, Myspace and others also helping to promote what you place on Lulu you could find that this is the ticket to a million pound book deal.

Is it cheating? Not really. This is more like showing the writers what can be done if they were given the chance and rather than just letting all that hard work go to waste, doing something about it. It’s a blow to all those people who said it would never be a book and potentially the first step to real publication.