Phantomimic's Blog

Is Social Media a Waste for Time for Authors?

2/16/2013

Mary W. Walters published an interesting post on her website (The Militant Writer) entitled: Promoting your Book on Facebook and Twitter is a Total Waste of Time. In a nutshell she states that Twitter and Facebook are not effective insofar as selling books is concerned, and that writers are better off employing their time writing or engaging in other promotional activities. In the comment section to the post and in the comments on other blogs that made a reference to this post, several people agreed with the premise, stating they had found exactly the same thing. However, some stated that they were selling books through Twitter and Facebook just fine, and if a writer is not selling books successfully using social media then they are doing something wrong. To this others replied that every time social media doesn’t work the apologists blame the user instead of accepting the truth that social media is a bust.

I am no stranger to feeling that social media doesn’t work. The sales of my book The Sun Zebra are lousy despite the fact that it is a highly rated book and that my social media reach and performance has been growing. Should I accept this reality and quit Twitter, Facebook and other sites that take substantial time away from my writing, or am I doing something wrong? As it turns out I think the latter is true. I believe that most writers like me are indeed doing something wrong.

What are the majority of my blog posts about? Writing! Who are the majority of my subscribers in Facebook and Twitter? Writers! And the thing is that this is normal. Writers are fascinated by the process of writing and publishing and we are interested in helping our fellow authors and exchanging information and ideas. But here is the issue: the vast majority of readers don’t care for that. Readers are interested in reading and they use social media not to look for new books to read but to be social.

Some argue that writers are also readers, but the flaw in this argument is that you cannot achieve high sales figures based on other writers buying your books. For one, most writers expect you to reciprocate the favor. To sell 10,000 copies of your book you cannot buy and read 10,000 books. Also most writers, beside a day job and family responsibilities, are very busy, well, writing. Joe Konrath has remarked that it is readers not writers, who buy his books. To this some may raise the counterargument of synergism. If you have 30 writer friends who write blogs, having your book featured in their blog is an asset. But this depends. If those 30 blogs are also about writing and thus only read by other writers, then the impact is minimal.

So I think in the future I will make an effort to diversify away from writing about writing and to befriend more readers in my social media accounts. Also when push comes to shove the best promotional tool a writer can have is many books, so maybe we should all heed the Joe Konrath’s advice “stop reading blogs and get back to work,” which of course includes this one.

But just in case you wish to linger a little, just for today, I am going to ask for your opinion.

What do you think?

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Traditional Publishing: The Label of Legitimacy

2/8/2013

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Jennie Nash is an author who decided to self-publish after publishing six books with traditional publishers. She has written a guest post for Rachelle Gardner’s blog where she discusses the surprises she experienced when she self-published. You can follow the link to the original post. I am going to talk here about her first surprise. She writes:

I underestimated the weight of having the legitimacy of a traditional publisher. When I could say, “My third novel is being published by Penguin,” I was not just a wanna-be hopeful novelist. I was legit! I was chosen! Pitching book reviewers was a breeze. Attending high school reunions was a delight. When I ran into more famous writers, we met as colleagues, exchanging e-mails, making dates for lunch. Now that I am self publishing, I am no different than the crazy cat lady down the block who has been working on her memoir for 17 years or the guy at the street fair hawking Xeroxed pamphlets of his poetry about fruit. People smile indulgently when I tell them what I’m doing. Book reviewers politely decline. My doubts about writing, which I’ve spent a lifetime overcoming, have blossomed like a drug-resistant virus.

Jennie’s case is interesting because she already had the “legitimacy” of traditional publishers. She was one of the “chosen.” It stands to reason that an author like her would not all of sudden publish crap just because she was now self-publishing. But as you can see from reading the passage above, all of her traditionally-published prestige vanished when the dreaded S-P word became linked to one of her books.

Often one of the plusses associated with traditional publishing is the legitimacy mentioned above: the “I am traditionally published ergo I am a good writer” argument. The idea behind this argument is that if you are traditionally published then you have been vetted, you have been certified to be good, and what you publish does not belong in the slush pile. Jennie’s experience exposes the absurdity behind this argument. What gives you the legitimacy is not how good you really are, it’s the label, and once you lose it you are back to square one, again regardless of how good you are.

The sad thing is that many self-published authors, even if they don’t say it out loud, crave for this label. There are valid reasons to traditionally publish, but legitimacy is not one of them. If you are willing to pay the price in terms of minuscule advances, dismal royalties, long publishing times, loss of artistic control, loss of your rights to your work, and lack of attention for the promotion of your book if it doesn't hit the big time soon, then I think you ought to have a good reason to traditionally publish other than the label of legitimacy.

What do you think?

Photo credit: Sudhamshu / Foter.com / CC BY

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The Case of the Vanishing Reviews

11/10/2012

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Well, it finally happened. Remember all the furor that was stirred when some authors created sock puppet accounts to write glowing reviews of their own work, and another author paid for fake reviews? The issue hit the Indie blogosphere like a ton of bricks. Everyone was outraged! How could this have happened? Petitions were circulated. Pundits pontificated. Nasty comments were left on the Amazon pages of the books of the offending authors. And then the worst of all things happened: the brouhaha reached the upper echelons of Amazon’s management.

Now reviews are disappearing right and left seemingly without reason. Many authors are reporting that several of the reviews that they have received from or have given to fellow authors are gone. And when they write to Amazon requesting an explanation all they get is an e-mail with this quote:

We do not allow reviews on behalf of a person or company with a financial interest in the product or a directly competing product. This includes authors, artists, publishers, manufacturers, or third-party merchants selling the product.

In other words, as a published author you cannot review the book of a fellow author because your book is competing with his/her book. If Amazon had asked me or any other Indie author, we would have told them that our fellow authors are NOT our competitors. We are all in this self-publishing adventure together and we support each other. But company policies designed to quell public uproars are not known for the intelligence behind them. They are quick fixes put in place so people in the company can claim they did something and then move on to deal with more important matters.

There is a reality: books need good reviews and they need them fast. The problem is that reviews by what I call people familiar with your work (first tier reviewers), but which other people call “friends,” more often than not include fellow authors. These people are the most readily available and fastest source of good reviews a beginning author can have. Dedicated (second tier) reviewers may take many months to review your book, and third tier reviewers (unsolicited reviewers) can be few and far between and a total wild card. Thus Amazon’s policy of review removal strikes by and large at the most important source of reviews for a beginning author: other authors.

So, should authors stop reviewing the books of other authors?

I think not. This policy is not only unfair, but it also ignores the true bonds that bring us Indies together. I have already explained my position on the so-called reviews by “friends.” I don’t think they are unethical as some people claim. A review of a friend’s work can be as honest as reviewing the book of a stranger.

But what can we do about it? By all accounts Amazon is policing reviews using a bot (a program), which makes sense because there are tens of millions of reviews. So the easiest thing to do is to keep your reviewing account and your author account at Author Central separate. Use your reviewing account to purchase books and review, and your publishing account to publish. Also when you leave reviews do not show familiarity. Refer to the author either as “the author” or by their first and last names (i.e. John/Jane Doe), and if you did not buy the book include a statement to the effect that you received the book in exchange for an honest review.

Finally, when the next moral or ethical outrage comes around, think twice before becoming involved in the screaming. Remember: Amazon may listen.

What do you think?
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Don’t Spread Yourself Thin When Building an Author Platform

10/19/2012

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I recently ran into an article on the web about the top 65 sites where you can list your book for free. The article states the following:

For your book to sell, you need to create the demand. You need an audience, a platform – which you will get when your book is showing up on many websites and forums, visible to readers. Make it a habit to submit your book to at least 2-3 websites a day. Don’t forget to post links to them on Google+, Twitter, FB, Tumblr, StumpleUpon, LinkedIn, Chime.in, Pinterest … whatever social media you are signed up. In one month you will have your book on all of these listed sites and you will see a difference in sales.

I think this advice is wrong for two reasons.

The first reason is that in most of these sites it is not enough to merely upload a notice about your book or a chapter or two. Your post will be one among thousands; for all practical purposes it will be invisible. To guarantee visibility in these sites you have to create an account and then develop a following. This means interacting with other people, reading what they upload, and then commenting, liking, sharing, pinning, readcasting, retweeting etc. This is a lot of work and it is impossible to do it for many sites unless you are glued to your computer 24/7. Developing a large following in many of these sites can take years. If you follow the above advice and post in 2-3 websites a day you are in effect wasting your time. You are better served by choosing some carefully selected websites and then concentrating your efforts on them. But which websites should you select?

This leads to the second reason why I think this advice is wrong. You have to ask yourself who will read your book. For example if you wrote a book that will be of interest primarily to people 60 years old and over, then maybe you should not even bother with social media (yes you read that right) as this group of people does not use it that much. If you wrote a book that will be read by younger but still mature audiences (say 30 to 50 years old), then you should probably not devote your time to websites whose readers belong predominantly to a 18-24 year old crowd. Depending on the subject matter of your book, other pertinent questions that you may have to ask yourself when selecting a website are things like what will be the gender of your readers, what will be their level of education, and whether they have children. But even if you have selected a website that seems to be visited by people that would be interested in your book there are further questions. How big/important is the website? Does it have a lot of traffic? Are people that visit the website primarily interested in books or does the website offer other products and/or services that would distract them from looking at books? Is there a better website? These are all important questions to ask to make sure you make the best out of your promotional efforts.

So don’t spread yourself thin trying to list your book everywhere. Try to focus and tailor your promotional efforts to your target readership. I know this is easier said than done. I myself am still learning and experimenting with promotional approaches and different ways to do things and sites on which to post. But when it comes to promotion we should all heed the old seemingly paradoxical advertiser’s maxim: less is more.

What do you think?
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What is Collaborative Fiction? Interview with Lia London

9/14/2012

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Do you ever wish you could get your fans more involved with your work? One way to do this is through collaborative fiction. But what is that and how does it work? To find out check out this interview with Lia London who is the author of the collaborative fiction book The Fargenstropple Case, which I reviewed a while ago, and who is currently writing another collaborative fiction project: the YA urban fantasy Magian High.

Rolando - What is your definition of collaborative fiction and what made you start writing it?

Lia - What I mean by collaborative fiction is a sort of grander version of the Choose Your Own Adventure books we read as kids. It started because one of the main creative consultant friends I have got really busy and couldn’t give me ongoing feedback as often as I wanted (I’m rather demanding that way), so I thought… Well, I’m sure there are other people who’d be glad to boss me around! There is also that sick little part of me that loved going to school and getting assignments, and this is like that. My readers give me writing homework, and I love the challenge. It keeps my brain alive.

Rolando - What can you achieve through collaborative fiction that you can’t achieve writing regular fiction?

Lia - The collaborators often add at least another layer or two of depth to the story, helping to flesh out subplots that intertwine with the main plot. They’re also good at catching internal inconsistencies I might create, and they keep me true to my genre target audience. Plus, I just really enjoy the interaction. So far, the contributors have all been very pleasant, creative, fun people.

Rolando - Please give us a short and general, step-by-step description of how collaborative fiction works.

Lia - It’s incredibly simple. I establish a premise, write a chapter, and then ask some questions about where things might go. I may or may not already have ideas, but I always take the readers’ ideas into consideration. My dad calls me the “splicer of suggestions” because I sift through the ideas shared and pick the ones that (a) spark my imagination , and (b) feel most consistent with what we’ve already created. I try to post a few “installments” every week until we wrap up the story.

Rolando - When an author begins a story they normally have a notion of what the story will be about and where they want to take it. In collaborative fiction, do you have such an overall general master plan for the story, or is the storyline pretty much “up in the air” at the turn of each chapter? Do your collaborators contribute filler material or do they actually take the story in directions you had not anticipated?

Lia - Both. I have a beginning and the climax ending scene in mind, but I’m not overly particular about how I might get there. That’s how I write books for myself, too. The questions I ask and the suggestions the collaborators give nudge the story in the most interesting route to get to the end. But the collaborators add a lot that can change my whole perspective of the piece. With “The Fargenstropple Case,” for instance, one of the first comments suggested adding a love interest. I had not even considered that kind of element, and yet the character proved to be the most enigmatic and useful person in the story!

Rolando - In collaborative fiction, part of the trick of keeping your collaborators engaged is writing their suggestions into the story. But what happens if your collaborators want the story to go in a direction you don’t like?

Lia - Very rarely someone will suggest something that feels really “off” or unclear and I just don’t use the idea, but since those contributors gave other suggestions as well, it isn’t as if I rejected them. Obviously I can’t write in everyone’s ideas for every chapter. It’s my job to pick the best ones. I don’t think I’ve offended anyone by not using an idea. If I did, they stuck around anyway.

Rolando - Can you “get stuck” in collaborative fiction? For example can you write several chapters and then realize the storyline is not working and then you have to backtrack and rewrite the last few chapters in a different way throwing out suggestions you had accepted previously?

Lia - Funny you should ask. We just had to do that. In Magian High, we’d gotten so many potential subplots brewing, that it was hard to know which ones to follow. I took a week off over the holidays and streamlined the story down the main themes we were following. A few of the readers have since gone back to check the revisions, and they all seem pleased. But that’s writing. You never get it right the first time, and sometimes you have to explore for a while before you know what “right” even is.

Rolando - Do you exchange ideas with your collaborators exclusively through your blog or do you also use other means such as e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, etc.?

Lia - Twitter and FB for sure. There are a small percentage of them that I actually know personally, and I’ve been able to talk live with them either on the phone or in person. Most of them are teens, so I value their opinions in this YA project, yet I know they are disinclined to write lengthy suggestions in a blog (too much like homework).

Rolando - Finally how do you handle the issue of authorship in collaborative fiction? What if a work of collaborative fiction becomes a best seller and one of your collaborators who contributed a lot to the story suddenly claims he/she is entitled to part of the royalties?

Lia - Ha! We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, I suppose! I do list an acknowledgement page citing the contributors. All who ever comment are included, but those who are more involved do receive special mention. So far there has never been a single contributor who totally dominated the direction of the story. I still retain control, and I am the one doing the writing, after all, and I will run the final story through a few revisions before I take it to “print” and publish it to Amazon. If I suddenly start raking in the big royalties, however, I’d not be averse to sharing with said top contributors, but so far that’s a non-issue. I guess we need a collaborative publicity campaign for that!

Thank you very much Lia. I loved the Fargenstropple Case and I hope Magian High is equally good!

Apart from the "Fargenstropple Case," Lia has two additional books on Amazon: The Circle of Law, and The Parable Project. You can follow Lia on Twitter or visit her website.

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You Want to Be a Traditionally Published Author? Then Self-Publish!

8/16/2012

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Getting traditionally published is tough. Most authors get stuck in the query-go-round and are never published, which supposedly means (adding insult to injury) that they are not good enough. A few do get selected to receive one of those ever shrinking advances in exchange for giving away the rights to their books for life and meager royalties. Then most of these few find out that very little resources are allocated to the promotion of their books and that they have to work as hard as self-published authors on promotion, but with the added disadvantage that they have a narrow time window for their books to succeed.

So why in the world would anyone want to submit themselves to this process?

As it happens there are valid reasons to go the traditional route when publishing. For example, the print market is still very large and traditional publishers can provide a strong distribution service for print books. Also a traditional publisher will handle many aspects of the publication of a book freeing authors from having to deal with this. However, the problem remains that unknown authors are a question mark for any potential publisher. There is no way to predict whether their books will be successful, and publishers are reluctant to offer authors any deal that is not overtly slanted in the publisher’s favor. So what can authors do about this?

Believe it or not, the answer is self-publish!

How can this be? The idea is that if an author self-publishes, works hard at promotion, and readers like their books, they will develop a fan base. An author with a fan base wipes out a lot of the risk for traditional publishers who will have hard numbers to make their decision based on the author’s self-published books’ sales. In fact publishers may come knocking at their door, which will leave authors in a much better position to negotiate a contract that is more beneficial. In a recent article on Forbes, David Vinjamuri made three predictions about the future of publishing. Included in his third prediction is that traditional publishers will use indie publishing as their “little leagues” choosing authors who are successful in the arena of self-publishing.

Some people still bring up the argument about the “stigma” of self-publishing. They claim that authors blow their chances of getting traditionally published if they self-publish. This argument is a canard. Money has no stigma. If you demonstrate you can sell, no publisher will reject you because you are self-published.

Successful self-published author Hugh Howey, whose book “Wool” will be made into a movie, put it in the following way in one of his posts:

There is no better way to break into traditional publishing than self-publishing. Period. End of story.

So there you have it. Nowadays to get to those two different places you take the same road. Do you want to bypass the traditional publishing establishment? Then self-publish! Do you dream about getting traditionally published? Then self-publish!

Are these interesting times or what?
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Do Goodreads Reviewers Lower the Rankings of Books on Amazon?

8/9/2012

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I want to address an issue that I have been thinking about. On Amazon the ranking of books takes place according to the following system:

5 stars: I love it.
4 stars: I like it.
3 stars: It's OK.
2 stars: I don't like it.
1 star: I hate it.

However, consider the ranking that is used at the website Goodreads:

5 stars: it was amazing
4 stars: really liked it.
3 stars: liked it.
2 stars: it was OK.
1 stars: didn’t like it.

So here is the issue. The “average” rank in Goodreads is 2 stars (“it was OK” is in between “liked it” and “didn’t like it”). This is because the Goodread’s scale is skewed. The “good” side is covered by 3-5 stars, while the “bad” side is compressed into 1 star.

I have seen that some reviewers that post their reviews on Goodreads often post the same reviews on Amazon. The problem is, for example, that an “OK” 2 star ranking on Goodreads is not the same as a 2 star ranking on Amazon. A 2 star ranking on Amazon means the reviewer didn't like the book. Similarly, sometimes I have been left scratching my head when I read a positive review on Amazon and then see the reviewer gave the book 3 stars (it's OK). Often after checking I have found that the reviewer has posted many reviews on Goodreads where 3 stars mean they like the book. I know that the meaning of the stars in both websites "pops up" when you move the cursor over them, but I think many reviewers that are accustomed to the Goodreads system often don't take this into account.

I am not saying that one system is better than another, but there is a reality. If you go to the major book blogs you often find that they require a minimum rank of 4 stars on Amazon (not Goodreads) to consider featuring your book when you do a free promotion. Each day 3,000 books go free on Amazon and the competition for advertising space is fierce (unless you pay for it). So if we go by this “rule” you can see how ranking books on Amazon using the Goodreads scoring system can lower the ranking of books and create problems for authors. This is especially true in the first few months after publication when a book is vulnerable to swings in the rankings. Just consider that to neutralize the effect of one 3 star review (bring it up to 4 stars) you need one 5 star review. To neutralize the effect of a 2 star review you need two 5 star reviews. And as we know, unless a book is an overnight sensation, getting reviews is slow, hard work.

Of course I realize the above is an oversimplification and it is unfair to single out Goodreads reviewers. Many reviewers have their own system as to what the stars mean, and you can just as easily make the opposite argument (i.e. that Amazon reviewers flocking to Goodreads undeservedly inflate the ranking of books). Also the general ranking of books at Goodreads does not seem to be lower than on Amazon. I researched several books on both websites and found the ranking could go either way.

However, it would be nice if major sites like Amazon and Goodreads would harmonize their systems to avoid this ambiguity that can have potential adverse effects on the work of authors.

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Writers, do not let perfection get in the way of success!

7/24/2012

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Author Kristen Lamb wrote a great post on her website entitled: How Self-Publishing has Helped All Writers–Welcome to the Revolution. You can click on the link to read it, but what caught my attention was a particular section where she discusses how many writers linger forever making their book more and more perfect, and how the self-publishing revolution is teaching writers that they should “let go.” She writes:

“One of the largest barriers to becoming a successful writer is trying to be a perfect writer.”

This is something that rang a bell with me because it is a thought I have been trying to convey in many of my posts. The plain and simple truth of self-publishing is that the vast majority of books will not be a success: at best they will have modest sales. Therefore, if your goal is to actually sell books, spending years and years writing one will just not cut it. The only business paradigm that makes sense in self-publishing for the average author is to build the “long tail.” What is that?

The long tail is the concept that you can derive a substantial amount of profit from selling items that don’t sell much as long as you sell enough of them. Imagine that you write two books a year (and nowadays many people will tell you that anything less than that is “slacking”). In five years you will have accumulated 10 books. If each book sells say 40 copies a year, then your ten books are selling a combined 400 copies per year. On the other hand if you write one book every 5 years and it also sells 40 copies a year… get my drift?

Another thing to remember is that the success of a book does not depend only on how good it is. Rewriting a book over and over to make it better will not necessarily make it sell more. The success of a book is part art and part voodoo. Nobody has a formula that works reliably. The reality, again, is that most books will not “catch on” and sell like hotcakes no matter how well written they are. Of course we hope that every now and then we will write a book that sells exceptionally well, and having this hope is fine. But the chances that this will happen will be increased if you write a large number of books.

Finally there are two more considerations. The first one is that each book that you write counts as advertisement that will make you better known among potential readers. The second is that if the tenth book you write hits the big time, your readers will want to read more. Having nine more books on your shelf for them to buy is a great advantage. On the other hand if you only have that one book you will have, as the surfers say, “missed the wave.”

So put all of the above together and what do we have?

Self-publishing favors the prolific writer.

And this goes back to what Kristen wrote. You are doing yourself a disservice by trying to be perfect. Yes you read that correctly. The important thing is for you is to put out those books. Do not, of course, interpret this as a license to be sloppy. Clearly your writing needs to have a certain level of competence, but the take home message is: don’t let perfection slow you down. This is even more justifiable if you publish e-books, which can easily be modified (in case a reader points out a mistake) and republished in no time at all.

For many the above is not easy. I myself tend to be one of those “perfectionists.” I get really annoyed when someone finds a mistake I missed. Couple this with the fact that I don’t write very fast and that I don’t have a lot of time for writing, and you see how this is a problem for me. But I am trying my best to be more imperfect because it’s the road to success!

Are you imperfect or trying your darnest to be imperfect? Please leave a comment and let us know.

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The Author's Guild Takes A (Wrong) Stand

6/28/2012

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As many of you probably know the Department of Justice (DOJ) has sued Apple and 5 of the big six publishers for collusion to keep prices of e-books artificially high. Now that the case is getting close to a settlement, the Author’s Guild has jumped into the fray with a letter directed to the DOJ where they blast Amazon for its business practices and criticize the proposed settlement.

Who is this group? According to their website “The Authors Guild has been the published writer's advocate for effective copyright, fair contracts, and free expression since 1912.” This claim confused me. Does this mean they have been criticizing traditional publishers for the lopsided contracts and meager royalties they impose on writers? The answer is no. Now that Amazon has demonstrated to the world how e-books can be published faster and cheaper earning authors greater royalties and giving readers lower priced books, this “Author’s Guild” has come out from under its rock to defend the inefficiency and unfairness of traditional publishing, and the way in which these publishers colluded with Apple and each other to keep the prices of e-books artificially high when e-books should cost less. I share their concern about Amazon taking over the market but I cannot sanction stupidity and unwillingness to evolve. Those businesses that don’t adapt to new realities, compete hard, and reward their clients should not be protected from those that do.

Consider the following example that I have written about here before. Traditional publishers did not want to make their e-books available for lending at public libraries because, get this: it was too easy for readers to borrow books! I’m not kidding you. They were concerned that readers who were not “inconvenienced” enough would turn into borrowers and not buy enough books thus cutting into the publisher’s profits. Well Amazon kept making their e-books available for lending at public libraries and guess what? A new study by the Pew Internet and American Life project has revealed that e-book borrowers are also avid e-book buyers with 41% of them saying they bought the last book they read. While this rate is lower than the larger population of e-book readers (55%), it is not the profit busting nightmare that traditional publishers were concerned about. Those companies that have the vision to see the future should be rewarded with it, not their slower dimwitted competitors.

Personally, I cannot complain about Amazon. They have provided me with the platform to become a self-published author, they pay me 35% on e-books under $2.99 and 70% on those above, and with the KDP Select program they have given me a powerful tool to promote my books. They have also made e-books available to me and other readers at the lower cost these books should have compared to print books. But, being an author, I was curious as to what the Author’s Guild had to offer me. However, before learning about all the wonderful things they could do for me, I checked the eligibility criteria to join the guild and I found out that:

“Self-published works and works published by subsidy presses do not qualify an author for membership.”

Well…just substitute “guild” for “job” in the video below.

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Spotlight on Successful Indie Writers (Hugh Howey)

5/19/2012

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Author Hugh C. Howey self-published his science fiction short story “Wool” on July 30 2011. The reader response was so enthusiastic that during the next few months he wrote more follow up stories of this saga that takes place in a dystopian future. According to the author:

“This is the story of mankind clawing for survival, of mankind on the edge. The world outside has grown unkind, the view of it limited, talk of it forbidden. But there are always those who hope, who dream. These are the dangerous people, the residents who infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple. They are given the very thing they profess to want: They are allowed outside.”

But there is more. “Wool” will be turned into a movie! Recently Twentieth Century Fox, director Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Black Hawk Down, and Prometheus), and producer Steve Zaillian (Schindler’s List) teamed up to successfully buy the rights after a bidding war that involved several other major players. And finally the rights to produce print books of “Wool” in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand have been secured by Random House. Howey will be able to remain an Indie here at home (the U.S.) while publishing print books elsewhere.

This is yet another example of what can be achieved with self-publishing. Of course, the majority of writers will not be as successful as Howey, but his success and that of others serves as an inspiration for all of us.

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<<Previous

Is Social Media a Waste for Time for Authors?

Traditional Publishing: The Label of Legitimacy

The Case of the Vanishing Reviews

Don’t Spread Yourself Thin When Building an Author Platform

What is Collaborative Fiction? Interview with Lia London

You Want to Be a Traditionally Published Author? Then Self-Publish!

Do Goodreads Reviewers Lower the Rankings of Books on Amazon?

Writers, do not let perfection get in the way of success!

The Author's Guild Takes A (Wrong) Stand

Spotlight on Successful Indie Writers (Hugh Howey)

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