Inkshares and The Future of Publishing
A Crowdfunded Publishing House Redefines the Process
Inkshares and the Future of Publishing
My debut novel, Slim and The Beast, is now available for official pre-order at Inkshares. I would like to clarify what that means exactly. Inkshares is not a donation website, nor is it a glorified form of self-publishing. It is among the first crowdfunded publishing houses in history, based on a humanist principle of democratized publishing where readers decide what they want to see on bookshelves.
While I am now part of the Inkshares model (Slim and The Beast recently became Inkshares’ first crowd-funded novel with 232 pre-orders amounting to over $10,000) the following was written when this was still a dream, not a reality:[1]
March 30, 2014
Funding Deadline: June 2, 2014
$3,425 raised out of $9,710
35% there, $6,285 to go
Dear Reader,
People have asked me, rightfully so, “Why are you working with Inkshares? Do you know most startups fail? And aren’t you supposed to find a literary agent?”
These are all valid questions and deserve thoughtful answers, which I will try to answer concisely.
First and foremost, I am working with Inkshares because I believe it’s better than the traditional publishing model. I wrote a first novel that I never truly believed in, but have submitted queries to enough literary agents to become familiar with the process.
The way you’re “supposed to do it” goes something like this: you write a novel and spend a couple of years editing — in the words of Oscar Wilde, “I was working all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.” Once you’ve sufficiently berated yourself, re-considered every sentence hundreds (thousands?) of times, spent six months away from the book and six more months re-writing it all, you save the novel as a .pdf because somehow this makes it feel more complete, and then you sit down to “become a writer” and draft a query letter for dozens of literary agents. When going through the traditional publishing model, here’s where the real work starts.
Most literary agents deal with dozens if not scores of query letters every day. Without going into specifics, even for famous authors (including George Orwell and J.K. Rowling), the odds aren’t good. But let’s assume you find a literary agent to work with; even then, it can take years before your agent finds a publisher (obligatory head-shaking example: Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which has sold 5 million + copies, was rejected 121 times before a publisher picked it up). Still, let’s imagine a literary agent is intrigued by the infamous “hook” paragraph at the beginning of your query letter, enjoys the other two paragraphs, decides to read the first 10/20 pages, asks for fifty more, enjoys these just the same, agrees to read your manuscript before deciding to represent you, and proceeds to try and convince one of many publishing houses that your novel is readable, of course, but more importantly profitable. Once the publisher is on board and has run the numbers, you’re destined for bookshelves, a case of “once you’re in, you’re in,” right?
Well no, not exactly. In fact not at all. Assuming a publishing house agrees to represent your novel, their essential concern becomes how not to lose on the project. As a result, most raise the book’s price anywhere from 6-8 times the manufacturing costs; for example, a book that costs $3 to print may be sold for $25, a slap in the face to the reader and the author when you consider who’s taking in the majority of the profits. While the reader ends up paying an exorbitant price, the author only receives $3 out of that $25 (that’s a 12% author stake for you math fans out there, not counting the literary agent’s fee for representation). Long story short, the author gets screwed. Even for wildly successful authors, writing is more of a hobby than a job. While billions of people read in bed, on the toilet, on the beach and in waiting rooms to see a doctor, it is more or less impossible to live off of writing alone. Writers expect this of course (it’s unwise to write novels in hopes of becoming rich), but even if we dismiss the notion that royalties could buy toothpaste and pasta, the traditional publishing model has a second, even bigger problem.
If People Want to Read It, It Should Get Read
For the most part, when you purchase a book through the traditional model, you’re paying the publishing house and not the author to cover various expenses. Almost 90% of what you pay for doesn’t go to the artist, so when you think you’re supporting an author by buying an extra copy, what you’re really doing is helping an antiquated model stay afloat.
As a reflection of the times, the traditional publishing model has become unsustainable for everyone but the top. We’ve already seen this problem in the music industry: like the royalties for the Sugar Man, the vast majority of traditional book profits never reach the actual artist.[2] Musicians have been struggling with proper compensation for decades, but at least we’re aware of it now and can directly support talented artists by purchasing through their websites. And yet when it comes to publishing novels, writers and readers alike have been chained to an idea that is slowly but surely sinking: in the words of Inkshares’ own Adam Gomolin, “they didn’t build mechanized tractors because the ox-pulled plow was broken. […] Legacy publishing isn’t broken, it’s just no longer the most efficient way to produce books.”[3]
Many books are never published because the traditional model is primarily concerned with monetary success. With Inkshares, the profits are intimately connected to readership. If enough people want to read a book, the book will be published. The funds raised (i.e. pre-orders) are used to publish the book, period. It’s no longer up to a single literary agent, editor or publisher to decide what gets read, but rather to the community to decide what is or isn’t published. For the first time in history, the reader becomes an active participant in the publishing process, directly responsible for what makes it to market.
Let’s Democratize Publishing
If we use a democratic analogy to describe Inkshares’ ethos, the traditional publishing model is based on autocracy. While this sounds like hyperbole, a basic Google search reveals the opposite: like the record labels of yesterday, most publishing houses have strict control over their authors (Daniel Wallace chose Inkshares because his traditional publisher didn’t think a children’s book would be marketable). Inkshares guarantees 70% of all future profits to the author (as opposed to that 12% from above), and once the funding goal is reached — i.e. enough people reserve a copy — Inkshares provides the same services as a traditional publishing house, albeit through a more democratic model.
This brings me to my debut novel, Slim and The Beast. Once I reach the funding goal (I’m 33% there), I will work closely with Inkshares to make it one of the first crowd-funded novels in history. To be clear, backing the project isn’t simply supporting an idea. Not only is it already finished (two years, seven drafts, and countless removing/returning of commas later), the money from pre-orders will cover editorial, design, print and distribution expenses, in addition to sending copies to all of the backers. Every single person who pre-orders the novel will of course receive what they paid for; and if I don’t reach the funding goal (in which case I’ll use the serenity now coping mechanism) you’ll receive a 100% refund and I will retreat beneath a Parisian bridge that smells like something fierce, only emerging to work a day job at the Tuileries carnival where I’ll sit on one of those collapsible seats above a water tank as one of history’s first failed crowdfunded novelists.
The public shame may be fierce, but at least it will be my readers (or lack thereof) who decide. You will get your money back, and I will keep on writing novels. But instead of cursing a faceless literary agent in New York, I’ll humbly accept that my family, friends, and digital acquaintances didn’t believe in Slim and The Beast. The silver lining, however, is there will be no Fat Cat or broken system to blame. In order to become a published novelist, I have to be a good writer. More than that, I have to rely on my communities and not a single literary agent to change my life.
[1] You can find the original at http://slbfiction.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-great-literary-crusade.html
[2] According to Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, we are still seeing it with the advent of Spotify.
[3] Adam Gomolin, “Legacy Publishing Isn’t Broken, It Just Has a Declining Value Proposition,” Inkshares.com, http://blog.inkshares.com/.
