Self-publishing? It's an industry awash with cash - right there for the taking. No, not
there... there! No, not quite, left a bit.
And I'm not talking about 50 Shades Of Grey. Or 50 Sheds Of Grey. Or the one that clearly illustrates fifty shades of the colour grey by printing fifty pages using progressively more ink.
No. Don't get the money from the readers because they're discerning and always looking for a bargain (i.e. trying not to pay).
Get the money from the writers. Yes, the writers. The ones with the gleam in their eyes and the fervour in their souls and the fever on their brows.
In the good old days
In the good old days, an author would send the latest manuscript to a publisher who would rapidly thank him for his consideration, order a print run and send him a large cheque.
Obviously that never happened. But the truth was closer to that wondrous fantasy than to today's reality.
In the bad new days
Publishers don't want to hear from writers. (Except vanity publishers. I'll come on to them. Probably best to pretend it's all one word, vanitypublisher, since they're really NOT the same as publishers.)
Publishers want to hear from literary agents.
But some literary agents don't want to hear from writers. They want to hear from creative writing course tutors.
Yes, for only £££ or $$$ or €€€, an academic institution near you will give you the keys to... er... a room (actually you don't get the keys) where a (probably non bestselling) author-tutor will encourage you to write a bit better by... er...
thinking more about your writing and discussing it with other authors-in-training.
And doing a lot of reading so you find out what proper writing looks like. (You know, the sort that gets printed by proper publishers, which must be good because it sells. Well, it sells better than books that don't get printed, or that don't get printed by publishers who have access to shops.)
Then, once the years of training have passed, and the fees have been paid, the agents may well read your work.
Money-go-round
Sometimes publishers themselves - or literary agents themselves - run the creative writing courses! Happy days for all concerned.
Except the writer. Will someone think of the writer? Or the reader - because I don't see their views particularly represented here either.
Yes, I know that writers are readers. But most readers aren't writers.
But how else can people learn how to write?
An excellent question.
It's lucky that these courses exist now because, until they all started a decade or two ago, there wasn't anything half-decent to read.
It was all populist claptrap like Jeffrey Archer and Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare and Jonathan Swift and Douglas Adams and David Lodge and John Irving and stuff like that.
You see, if Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan hadn't attended the University of East Anglia, they would never have amounted to anything?
Or would they? Actually, I think they would.
I suspect that what they learned on the course was how to do the sort of polishing that a good editor at a publishing house would have previously provided as part of the service. But how much more juicy to get the author to pay to learn to do the work himself rather than expect the publisher to include it in the service offered in return for a hefty share of the profits in perpetuity.
And anyone who needs to learn how to do much more than that isn't going to get anywhere anyway. So, all of a sudden, you're selling the service to far more people. I think the word to use here is kerching.
Vanitypublishing
Not a typo. As I explained above - it's all one word now.
The old fashioned way to extract money from authors. Get them to buy a job-lot of copies of their book which probably won't sell but, hey, the money (and profit) is banked up-front by the vanitypublisher. If it sells a few as well then that's more money in the bank, a small dribble of which will be paid on to the creator of the book. You remember him - the person who laboured for years to arrange all the right words in the right order.
Radio 4's 'You and Yours' yesterday carried a piece about an American vanitypublisher who appeared to have perfected this process.
According to the programme, the authors paid for a service that wasn't entirely delivered and the royalties weren't passed on either. Fortunately for the company in question, they decided they didn't have to be bound by British law (against, presumably, something like theft, fraud, deception, incompetence, etc) and so just ignored a judgement against them. Come sue us in America was, I assume, their retort to these undeserving writers. Yeah, cos that's going to happen.
You can hear it for yourself here: http://t.co/XIwF36iWQu
Join me
In keeping with the modern style, I hereby announce my own creative writing course. At a cost of merely (to be determined), I will allow all members of the course to meet up at a time of their own choosing in order to read each other's work and comment on it.
Occasionally I'll swan in and say things like "show don't tell" and "that not which" and "active not passive" and, if you're really lucky, I'll give a short symposium on the correct placing of apostrophes. All coursework will be based on my own writing to be read from the special edition luxury hardback editions available only through me at a cost of merely (to be determined).
You h'eard it here first.
Don't get mad, get bitter.
UPDATE - 10 October 2014
I've just been reading the long and detailed programme of events and courses and seminars offered by one publisher.
Forgive me - I'm not going to name them. It might impact on me later in my professional life. Clearly nothing I'm writing here is actionable so it's not fear of the legal process.
On the other hand, who cares? They're Chicken House.
It's £50 to get started. Then,
if your work is of sufficient merit, it's £150 for the next bit, then £375 or £100 or £250 for the third. Then there's a menu of courses for various prices.
I assume that everything they tell you is honest and helpful and constructive. Why wouldn't it be?
But...
Let's back up a little here.
A publishing house should be
publishing books. Clue's in the name. This means finding new writers and encouraging writers they already know. There is no point in taking on a writer unless they are confident that there's an audience for their work. I don't think there's anything contentious in this paragraph.
If they think the author's work has legs then they should put their company's money where its mouth is (if you'll excuse the metaphor mixing). If the work will be successful then the publishing house will do very nicely from the sales. Why soak the author upfront? Will these fees be subtracted from the publishing house's margin on the eventual sales? No? Thought not.
And if they don't think the author's work has merit then they're simply running a creative writing course with no promise of anything else. There's nothing wrong with running a creative writing course with no promise of anything else. I'm not suggesting false pretences.
(Although wasn't the original £50 supposed to weed out those authors whose work wasn't good enough?)
But by implying that there's some selection, some control over who is allowed to attend the course, especially when the company is a publisher, the author may have expectations that this is going to go somewhere.
Overall, the author is being shown the cake. But he can't have it
or eat it. The publisher is going to eat it for him. In front of him.
Or her.
