Data driven inspiration

It's all about the data...

In the beginning was the word and the word was God. It was divine. Most writers, if one could write at all (there's pretty good evidence Jesus of Nazareth was illiterate despite his verbal knowledge of the scriptures. He was a construction worker after all), wrote bibles or holy scripture of one kind or another. These volumes, or scrolls, were considered sacred property.

Almost 1,000 years prior, the Iliad and the Odyssey were written down. These books, although said to be historical accounting's, were still inspired in part, by the Gods.

Jump on over to the Renaissance and you have a grumpy little writer by the name of Dante who writes arguably the first modern novel, The Divine Comedy. It's all about the stages of hell. Again, he is inspired by God (divinity) and read only by the wealthy since they are literate.

Now head on over to the 20th century, when even poor people are able to read, if only on a basic level (my paternal grandparents never finished grade school since they were expected to work, and they were both sharp, telling me they were pretty much self taught). The writers of the day began seeing a huge market for a general public that wanted to not only be enlightened but entertained. During WWII, front line soldiers not only received food rations but they also got dime novels, or pulp thrillers.

In turn, many early 20th century writers who could put out a couple or three thousand words per day on their manual typewriters, and who were somewhat business savvy, recognized the enormous potential in the pulp market, and they made millions of dollars in the process.

But then something happened in the latter half of the 20th century. Gatekeepers were established. Writers were forced to abandon their individualism in exchange for a dependence on an agent and a publishing house. If said agent or publisher didn't believe your book would sell to the general reading public, you were shit out of luck. Or even if you were chosen for publication, if they didn't pay off the bookstore owners for prominent placement of your book, you were doomed to failure.

Enter the dawn of the 21st century and a data driven consumer-centric little company called Amazon. Amazon opens an online bookstore in 1994 and in 2007 introduces the Kindle eReader. They also rattle the very foundations upon which the publishing gatekeepers rest their laurels by instituting Kindle Direct Publishing. IBooks follow, then Google, and Barnes and Nobles (Nook) and more. The era of the independent author is once again upon us. Only this time, it's not God that's inspiring the words, nor is it history, or even other human beings commonly referred to as writing professors. It is instead, data.

In the beginning...

For the first time in the history of literature, writers no longer need to attend writing school to become successful authors. They don't need expensive, snobby conferences or colonies like Breadloaf or Yaddo. They do require talent and proliferation, but they also require a degree of business acumen. Authors don't necessarily look at their books as pieces of art anymore. They look at them as assets that, when published independently, have the ability to earn up to 20-30% return on investment (ROI) annually. And since indie authors own their own rights, the gatekeepers no longer call the shots on whether or not the book remains in circulation.

Authors can now study the Amazon bestseller lists to see which kinds of books are selling the most (the NYT's bestseller list is curated so it's not an accurate accounting). Are they 1st person thrillers? Is the protagonist a female or a male? How long are the most popular books? Do they have an international setting or grounded solidly in the USA? What kinds of covers have the artists created (yes, we now judge books by their covers)? Do the books contain graphics? Are the most successful authors actively engaging in ad marketing programs? How many Amazon and Goodreads reviews do the popular books have? Are the big sellers a series or a stand-alone novel? Is sex still selling? What about sci-fi? Are the books enrolled in Kindle Unlimited or are they wide?

I could go on and on, but the point here is that an author can make a spectacular living now, not by believing in some divine intervention, or by placing all his trust in an agent or publisher, or spending tens of thousands of dollars on a writing program. Rather, today's successful author trusts in himself to do the leg work. To study the data, and the sales numbers which now can be accessed minute to minute everyday, 24/7. He can immediately see which of his own books are selling and which are not and strategically plan for the books he will write in the future. It's all about the data and the data is available anytime, all the time.

No wonder many bestselling authors today don't possess MFAs in Writing. They are instead, computer programmers. 

Like a great punk rock songwriter once sang, This is the modern world!

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The ever changing, ever volatile publishing landscape...

Where the big books get published or rejected...

...back in the old days (say the mid '90s), when I first started out in this business, I had always intended to write a lot of books as quickly as possible (I got lambasted for this attitude in writing school). I also intended to get them to market as quickly as possible. I would then spend the bulk of my free time on wine, women, and song (I played drums in a bunch of punk bands). Woe was I to find out that while the writing came quickly to me, the publishing game was...to quote one of my late dad's favorite euphemisms...slower than whale shit.

On top of that, it turned out that aside from a very select group of writers (about .0095) of them, acquiring major publishing deals of say, $250K or more (plus the multi-media rights that go with them) every two or three years without question, was akin to winning Power Ball over and over and over again. I hit one of these mega deals right out of the gate and since then, I've struck a ton of "nice" deals, but nothing that nice. Simply put, if your book doesn't earn out and then some, the monies offered goes down on you faster than Stormy Daniels.

Then came the indie publishing movement, and gone suddenly was the query, wait, and hope days. Suddenly, the publishing end of things go from agonizingly slow to as fast as you can put out a book. To make the sauce sweeter, books no longer have a shelf life. They will be published long after you become worm food. Here's what this means (bulleted of course):

1. Your words are no longer dead once the publishers and bookstores say so.
2. Your books become investments, much like mutual funds or perhaps more accurately, real estate. You put up an initial investment and every year, year in and year out, your books earn you a solid return of perhaps %25 (My indie books on average earn me %40 annually, while my mutual funds earn me about %5. You see where I'm going here.)
3. Fiction writing has become not about the initial advance, but more about the tail end "passive income." If I get sick tomorrow, and can't work for a month or two, the money keeps coming in. It also means...and this is the magical unicorn feel good portion of our story...that my kids and their kids will eventually earn several thousand dollars per month for the rest of their lives.

Back to traditional publishing. Yeah, I'm a hybrid guy. I publish traditionally and indie. I do it all, because I lust publication in all its forms. Plus I'm a control freak and I love controlling my own destiny rather than a bunch of accountants and sales reps determining it for me. Over the past seven or eight months I've started working with a new agent on a couple of books that will eventually go up for sale to the big five or four or whatever they are now. We're working very carefully on these books and quite arguably they are the best of my career. In a sense we are manufacturing a deal here, which is precisely the point.

But the going is slow. As a full-time professional writer, I could never depend solely on this "traditional" publishing model. This model is for "authors." Authors generally speaking have day jobs. They are either lawyers, or writing teachers, or famous journalists, or dentists, or what have you. Again, generally speaking, the traditional model is too slow and too risky to actually give up your day job.

However, for those of us who possess God's gift of proliferation (I'm a machine), we can indeed quit the day job and build an indie list to supplement one's traditional efforts. We are not authors, we are "writers." Think about it, in the seven or eight months I've been working on those two big manuscripts with my agent, I've written three full-length genre novels and another six novellas, plus a ton of short journo pieces and blogs. And folks, even though I do this full-time, let's face it, it's part-time work. In other words, Although it looks like I'm always working, I still have time to work out a couple hours a day, take a nap, go fly fishing, fly to Vietnam (did I tell you I'm heading back to Asia next month on a research trip?), or just pretty much do whatever then hell I want to do when I want to do it.

So there you have it, the hybrid life to date.

One bit of news before I go: Amazon Publishing has very abruptly shut down their Kindle Worlds program. A lot of writers are pretty upset about it. About four years ago I was commissioned to write a novella for the program. It was an X-Files novel. It was fun to write and I was paid $10K, but it never saw the light of day since in the end, Fox couldn't come to a satisfactory licensing agreement with Amazon. Ironically, I might now be able to somehow legally publish the book. However, the point here is that AP is going through some definite changes. They've been wonderful to work with (I have 9 novels at Thomas & Mercer), and I hope to work with them again. But take my advice and be sure to diversify your publishing. Go traditional, go indie, go wide, and build up that mailing list. One day sooner than later, you just might be publishing your books directly to readers off your own website.

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM           

Writing short stories isn't worth the effort...

...I hate to disagree with the premise of the title, but in truth, they are still very much worth it. Many authors have discounted shorter works, or what's known in indie/hybrid world as "short reads," altogether since they make squat when it comes to Kindle Select/Unlimited. But I still write and publish short stories for a variety of reasons, not all of them having to do with making actual cash.

 Presently I have maybe a half-dozen short stories for sale under my own label, Bear Pulp. These include Dog Day Moonlight, Pathological, and Bingo Night. All of them not only sell a few copies every month, the majority of them also appeared in various magazines and journals, or were a part of an anthology published by the likes of Down & Out Books. These little devils are a great little marketing tool and also provide a nice creative outlet between novels and novellas.

Still think you can't make money with them?

Let's do the maths (as the Brits like to say).

Setting aside the 50 bucks or so you might receive as payment from a journal for the privilege of publishing your story, say you have 10 stories for sale on KDP. If you price them at $2.99, you make $2.09 per copy sold (I always add a substantial free sample from a novel just to offer up a little more value for the reader and to further market my longer stuff). Say you sell five copies of each throughout the month. That's $10.45 per story, or a total of $104.50 for the month. Doesn't sound like a whole lot, but multiply that times 12, and you get $1,254. That, my author friend, pays the rent for the month (depending upon where you live). 

This is a numbers game. Write 20 stories and you can easily double that $1,254. Write 30 stories, and, well, do the maths again. Some authors like Dean Wesley Smith, who is a strong proponent of the no-luck/no-big-ass-promos-required method of indie/hybrid publishing success, has maybe 400 short stories published. An old timer like Harlan Ellison has 1,200 and counting. Both writers are millionaires.

Admittedly, I spend most of my time writing novels and novellas. But short stories most definitely have their place in my canon. By creating short story collections, like my Pathological: Collected Short Reads of Sex, Lies, and Murder, I'm also able to create a book-length product that can also generate lots of reads on Kindle Unlimited. Make the collection available in paper, eBook, and audible and you begin to realize the enormous possibilities short stories still offer up in this new century.

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The Writing: Just Do It

Pre-Order The Ashes!

Last evening I was happy to be a speaker at this year's The Next Bestseller Workshop in New York City. The three day event is sponsored by the lovely Jennifer Wilkov of "The Book is Your Hook" fame. This wasn't one of those events where I prepared a speech and delivered it verbatim to the crowd of students, but instead, was interviewed by Jennifer, kind of like the Actor's Studio program you can catch on PBS now and again.

What amazes me always about writing students or newbies is not so much a hunger to know how to hit the bestseller lists, or to catch a movie deal or to nab even the ever illusive mega book deal. Many would be writers want to know what the average day of the author is like. How do we get so much writing done when life is constantly getting in the way? The distractions...the kids, the cooking, cleaning, the taking the dog to the vet... That kind of thing.

How in the world do you do it? the students ask.

I always tell them the same thing. The answer is not necessarily nice, or even kind. It is the reality of the writing life. The answer is that you must be selfish if you're going to make it as an author. You must devote countless hours to being alone at your writing desk. You must put off all those daily chores that serve only to distract you if you're going to devote an almost priestly devotion to the writing.

Lately, authors are besieged with get-rich-quick books and courses on everything from the keywords that will propel your book to the top of the Amazon list to the secrets behind Facebook Ads or even How to write 100,000 words an hour, or something like that. The books usually feature covers with piles of one hundred dollar bills on it, and the courses can cost you five hundred bucks or more.

If you wanna spend your money on this stuff, go for it. But in the end, the only thing that guarantees success...the only thing that you, the writer, can control...is your writing.

Sit your butt in the chair, forget everything around you, and do it.
Just do it. And then, do it again...

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

Did you love THE REMAINS? Pre-order THE ASHES, the second thriller in the Rebecca Underhill Trilogy.

The Cheater

I've done enough ragging on major publishers and other old guard traditional establishment types in this blog so perhaps it's time to take a look at what's going on on the other side of the tracks, so to speak. Today it came to my attention via The New York Times and a great fist-to-the-face blog by my colleague Rob Kroese in his New Wave Authors (of which I'm a contributor) that self-publishing sensation John Locke paid hundreds or even thousands of dollars to people who would provide him with 5-Star Amazon reviews. Mr. Locke who has literally written the book on the subject of selling books--e-books in particular--has conveniently kept his secret hidden for quite some time.

Until now that is.

One suspects that one of these "for hire" reviewers probably entered into some kind of blackmail scenario in which he would expose Locke, or else pay up. And perhaps Locke, having consulted with his lawyers, just decided to fess up about the whole mess. Or maybe this is just the conspiracy-minded novelist in me coming out.

Whatever the case, Locke's credibility is now about as worthless as Facebook stock. In turn, Amazon is left with an interesting dilemma on their hands. What to do with phony reviews and even more important, what to do with cheating authors who "game the system" looking to cash in on trickery and not talent.

Writing is a business that takes talent for certain, but it also takes a mammoth amount of blood, sweat, tears, and self-sacrifice. In my case, it has even taken tremendous sacrifice on the part of my ex-wives and children, who even today are sometime a bit melancholy about the price we've all paid for "Vince's fucking career." It has been a struggle, but also a wonderful journey which is only now bearing the fruits of countless hours of labor.

I still recall all those years ago when I would wake up at dawn in order to write before work. I recall writing school and two years full-time intensive study and writing. I recall penning my first big novel in the library and the family so broke we were living on loans and whatever I could make from freelance writing. I recall the happiness we felt when my first big, six-figure contract came through and the near back-breaking sadness we experienced when the publisher was swallowed up by another in a corporate merger leaving me no choice but to start all over again. From scratch.

It cost me more time, more tears, more sweat, and even a second marriage, but I was determined to be a success at an art that takes hard work on top of talent. Now when I hear of swindlers and cheats and gamers, I just want to shake my head, pull in the sails and guide my life away from theirs. The bell tolls for all of us writers when one person decides to cheat. Especially an indie who, until now, was so revered for his efforts.

I'm not sure what's going to happen with John Locke or anyone else who believes they can get ahead by cheating. Writing is a religion, an art, and a life passion, and it must be treated with the greatest respect and sensitivity in this, the post-literate world. Anyone or anything that cheapens it should be discarded and forgotten about as quickly and expeditiously as possible.

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