The E-Book’s Struggle for Legitimacy
By Thad Komorowski
Brian Marggraf followed the usual path of a young, aspiring writer: he read lots of the classics, took college courses in writing and even had some of his work published in literary magazines. He finally wrote his first book Dream Brother: A Novel earlier this year.
A San Francisco man’s tale of “meth, memories and monsters” that at times reads like a nonfictional memoir, the unconventionality of Marggraf’s book, and his “new writer” status, created an obstacle — finding a publisher for his book.
The creative freedom, higher royalty rates and agents weren’t biting, Marggraf said, so he took a common course of action in today’s world — self-publishing electronically. Via his independent publishing label Singulus Books and Amazon Kindle, Dream Brother made its way to the public.
“I slowly realized that if I wanted to become published, I would need to do it myself,” said Marggraf. “Actually, I am quite happy it turned out that way.”
Services like Amazon Kindle make it possible for anyone to be a published author at the push of a button. But the opportunity of self-publishing now available to any writer is not a cure-all for what ails the debut author. New problems have arisen, while some from the traditional publishing model stay the same.
Recent studies suggest that self-publishing can be profitable from a monetary standpoint. Author Earnings, a site that aims to “gather and share information so that writers can make informed decisions,” regularly pulls data from the 120,000 top-selling e-books on Amazon. Its third quarterly report found that self-published or indie authors on Amazon account for 31 percent of total daily e-book sales. The report also shows that they are earning just as much, if not more, in royalties as the widely acknowledged “Big Five” publishers: Penguin Random House, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster.
Beyond allowing anyone to self-publish, e-books have also opened things up for first-time authors with publishing houses, says literary agent Debbie Carter. Her Waverly Place Literary Agency deals with everyone from the Big Five down, and she finds that the big publishers like the electronic format because there’s less of a financial risk involved when publishing untested writers.
“It doesn’t cost as much to take a chance on you,” said Carter. “If a publisher says, ‘I want to publish your book as an e-book first,’ they should be open to that, that’s not a negative thing.”
Marggraf still argues in favor of the self-publishing model precisely because of the opportunity and royalties the Big Five denied him. Why take a cut when you can put it on Kindle yourself? But he also reasons that with this opportunity comes responsibility. It was he, after all, who had to build a platform, blog and tap into social media, and he admits fellow indie authors flounder when undertaking those tasks.
“The gates are wide open,” he said. “With that said, indie authors need to strive to produce their best possible product, to uphold the integrity of our work.”
Dean Smith-Richard went as far as a Kickstarter campaign to make a print version of his short stories collection 3024 A.D. available. He was soured by the idea of his book existing only digitally and wanted to go beyond the common e-book route so many self-published writers are taking. Smith-Richard reasoned on his blog that self-publishing isn’t all it’s made out to be. Most writers, he said, don’t have the experience required to make a book, and there’s also the issue of getting readers to know your book exists, like finding a needle in a haystack.
“A third grader self-published a book,” Smith-Richard wrote.
“This is your competition. Not the third grader per se, but every other jackass who has written a string of words in the last ten years. Somehow readers have to find your book(s) among that pile, read it, love it and tell someone else to read it.”
Publishing houses that operate on vastly smaller scales than the Big Five are also feeling the sting from the flood of e-books now available, said Ben Ohmart, owner of Bear Manor Media, a publishing house that specializes in classic film and television. Because of the massive library available online, he said Amazon is immovable on the pricing of e-books and forces publishers to price e-books cheaper.
“There’s also a lot of dreck on Amazon that a buyer must wade through to find the good stuff,” Ohmart said. “Sort of like reality TV: everyone’s on TV now, eh? At the moment, it’s not the most profitable time to be an author.”
Some of the “dreck” may come from the fact that independent authors are usually forced to proofread, edit and format their manuscripts personally, as Amazon offers no kind of editorial service. Marggraf said that even after many personal read-throughs of Dream Brother there still may be some grammatical and typographical mistakes, and that’s just unavoidable as a budding indie author.
“As an indie author, I need to keep my costs low,” Marggraf said. “Even after much review and many looks, there will be a few mistakes. If it gets really bad, which it is not, yet, then yes, Amazon should put something into place to maintain a certain level of quality and professionalism.”
Mark Rotella, editor of Publishers Weekly, said the editorial process is coming to be better appreciated in the wave of self-published and self-edited books by both writers and readers. Not so much in the way of annoying misspellings, but the skilled editor’s role in a book’s heart and soul is coming to light.
“I think people underestimate how much it really is editorially driven, [that] you’re working very closely with an editor who will help shape the book and certain things,” Rotella said. “And so many of these self-published books do not have that. It could be a subtle change: moving one chapter from one part of the book to another can make a huge difference in how it’s read.”
Publishers Weekly has taken an initiative to promote the self-published works, e-book or otherwise, it feels warrant wider attention. Rotella said that you never know when the next 50 Shades of Grey, originally a self-published e-book, is around the corner waiting for the right editor — and a wider audience.
“There are some books that are just, ‘Wow, this is good, this is getting a lot of attention,’” he said. “You’re seeing a lot of editors from publishing houses looking for self-published books [saying], ‘This has a kernel of what I’m looking for, I can shape this up.’”
Of course, not everyone writing an e-book has the chance to be E.L. James. Whether a writer uses a literary agent or not, Debbie Carter said it’s still ultimately the writer’s own responsibility to write something that warrants a readership in the first place. All of the hawking in the world won’t help you if you’ve written a book no one wants to read.
“I don’t think any reader owes an author anything, that’s what authors have to keep in mind,” said Carter. “It’s only your content. It’s show business and you have to have something that they want and they’re willing to buy.”
The odds of becoming one of the select few that sells one copy a day may be stacked against most indie authors, but Brian Marggraf reasons that was even true under the old model with the big publishing houses. He says he’s satisfied with the several hundred copies of Dream Brother he’s sold since January, because they’re several hundred copies he’s sold personally. He credits it to non-stop perseverance and doesn’t plan on slowing down anytime soon.
“Whether it’s promotion, marketing, or advertising, don’t quit, ever,” Marggraf said. “Keep at it even when sales are slow (or non-existent) and no one seems to care about your work. Books have to be pushed onto the shelves and into readers’ hands. The brilliant author who doesn’t press hard is the brilliant author no one knows about.”
