Big Business

The history of “Daughters of the Teardrop Sea” is possibly quite telling about the way writing books and publishing them is going at this particular point in time. Initially, when the first part of it was written, I sent the manuscript naively to Doubleday under the original title, “Cold Fire”. Characteristically, I didn’t hear back for a number of months, so I phoned them. An editor told me that they didn’t read unsolicited manuscripts and a few weeks after that the text was returned to me in the mail. The only unusual element in this transaction was that shortly after the text was returned a book was published by Dean Koontz by Doubleday called “Cold Fire”. I looked at the book, saw that it was nothing like mine, knew that titles are not copyrighted and forgot about it.

About a year later I tried to get interest for the story under the title “Medusa’s Child”. The name and at least an outline were available on the internet. Again, shortly after the information was available, a book came out from Doubleday called “Medusa’s Child”. I called then, again talked to an editor who assured me that their book was nothing like ine and that the title, as part of the package, had been contracted more than a year ago. I called a law firm who dealt with book rights but they wouldn’t even talk to me without a $300 fee.

There’s more to the story of getting “Daughters of the Teardrop Sea” published but its very dry and mostly uninteresting. In the end, it was put into print by a ‘print on demand’ or POD publisher which resulted in no reviews or promotion from the mainstream press who spitefully shun such publishers.

The problem with getting novels published today is probably no larger than it was a generation ago, so complaining about it is likely to seem lame. The idea is still the essential “the good stuff reaches it’s mark” and “quality sells”. How can an unpublished author, then, claim to be persecuted? So very often you hear about successful and acclaimed authors who struggled for years before seeing their work published successfully.

But POD is changing publishing. The internet is changing publishing. Ebooks are changing publishing and publishing companies know that more than anyone. Just how it’s going to change may still remain to be seen, although looking at the music industry may give a clue. I’m as happy to have this web site as I would be with a contract with Doubleday, at least in some measure. It might be possible to find an audience for my writing and that writing might be extremely accessible to them. If only 5000 readers a year saw fit to contribute $5.00 each to a website I would be able to write all year long. If only 10,000 readers were the same I would be at the peak of my earning potential. How many is 10,000? A bestseller in the U.S. is probably 5 times as many books. Some similar websites get twice that many hits in a week.

This has got to be news. I teach a small grade 12 English class at a private school. Most of the kids are either new Canadians or their parents are new Canadians. I worked in large public schools also, and I’ll bet not more than 15% of my students have ever read a work of fiction strictly for their own pleasure. They find the most conventional science fiction incomprehensible because they are unfamiliar with simple literary conventions. What’s going to change when they can download illustrated and interactive textbooks on any subject, browse, highlight, make and collect notes and vocabulary, list quotes and key concepts, access hypertext indexes and individual lines by subject , link to relevant materials and texts and images and ideas, instantly communicate with peers and professors…all on their E-reader, all on their own, all with one single piece of technology, all for $5.00? That’s where we’re going you’d have to guess. All of this technology is already being applied right here, right now on these digitalnovelists.com websites and many more. This is not Doubleday, but it’s certainly more exciting and it’s certainly relevant.

We’re experiencing a global economic crisis. Can we really doubt that this is the reason. How much does it cost Doubleday to publish a bestseller? Probably millions. Think of the jobs lost to “Legends of the Half life” if it can generate $25, 000 a year in profit? With almost no capital or investment money? Where is all that other million dollars going? Nowhere. I doesn’t exist. Those jobs…editors, marketing people, printers, mailroom staff and so on. The real estate to house them, the outside investments to keep profits up…all gone. Those people will all be successful in one way or another. But the nature of their income will change. Maybe not right now, but soon? My own take is that President Obama is right; build up small business because that’s where we’re going. For my part, I’m satisfied about it. I want to write and I do now feel that if I’m good enough, there’s hope for it at last.