What I Learned at WorldCon: The Publishing Industry Part 1

At comic-con, whenever I met publishing rep I would ask "I'm sure you get the all the time, but I am an author who is querying my novel. Is there anything else I should be doing?" Since the unanimous response was "No, you're doing exactly what you should be doing." with the corollary of "...but keep writing." I decided I needed a new question for any editors, publishing reps and the various other sundry industry types that I happened to trap into a conversation.

For Worldcon, I updated my went "I have manuscript that I'm querying, parts of which can work as stand alone short stories. In my efforts to build a fanbase, I'd love epublish one of these functional excerpts as a 2 for 1 deal for 99 cents. Do you think that this would hurt my chances with the publishing houses since I would have 'self published' part  of the book?" I pretty much got the response of "Well you should be ok, maybe." Which is fascinating to me, because the work that people most often compare CHEMO to -Monster Hunter International- began its life as a self published work before gaining a traditional publishing deal from Baen (though Mr. Correia still doesn't use an agent). Of course, the series was and is successful in a way that's probably beyond CHEMO, but still I find this answer very telling.

I get the vibe that so much of the publishing industry has become new that there aren't any 'safe' answers anymore. The only valid advice is the eternal advice: Work really hard on making something great, work really hard at letting people know about this great thing that you made and then wash, rinse and repeat. Still, I'm asking for something (The 2 for 1 special) that the epublishing platforms don't offer. But I think this would be preferrable to the 'Now it's 2.99, now it's free.' model that most indie authors seem to use to get people talking about their work because: 

A) I believe that we don't value free things as much as when we have to pay for them (even if the fee is only a token) and 

B) the 2 for 1 model encourages you to share/talk about the work with a friend.

On a related note, I talked to an editor with some really interesting ideas concerning what could be done with materials and with turning books/magazines into art objects. Which is exactly the kind of thing I think the publishing industry should be trying to do in earnest. With the ease of e-reading I find the nature of my own library changing. I want the books on my shelves to function either as art objects or story artifacts: "I talked with this author at Worldcon about snakes and then he signed my book" or "this rust stained metallic finish of this volume looks like it came from the world of the story." Alternately, the books that remain on my shelf are there as things to lend/giveaway without any real hope of regaining them later (a function that would theoretically be much more easily accomplished with ebooks except for the tangle of technical and legal issues surrounding drm). Especially for young people who 1) move and 2) have limited space in their studios and one bedrooms; owning 300 pounds of paperbacks just doesn't seem to make sense anymore.


You can read Part 2 of this post here.