Michael Hyatt, the CEO of Thomas Nelson, chimed in on the Harlequin Hoopla today and his blog is worth reading if you take your blood pressure medicine first. Don’t take our word for what he said, go read his blog and our comments.
A lot of what he says about publishing is accurate. What’s surprising is how candid he is. He intends to refute three tall tales of self-publishing and yet reinforces them all. Throughout, there’s an overall slap at agents.
Self-publishing dilutes the brand of the sponsoring company
His argument against brand dilution is mostly accurate: consumers are largely brand blind, and the example he gives for the “imprint challenge” is undoubtedly true. However, readers are not completely brand insensitive: how does he think readers of Thomas Nelson books would respond if Thomas Nelson started publishing books on atheism or that were manifestly below the usual quality expected of Thomas Nelson? Would Thomas Nelson hear from readers, or would readers vote with their dollars? Both, I suspect. He says he knows what his brand represents and that WestBow Press is “fully within that tradition.” The WestBow Press website says “We want readers to have confidence in our books.” Yet WestBow Press is willing to accept payment for publishing all comers under the WestBow Press imprint, (provided that the submitted book meets stated Christian criteria), and on the WestBow website promote publication with WestBow as an opportunity to be discovered by Thomas Nelson. While Christianity may be all about offering hope, what WestBow/Thomas Nelson doesn’t say is that the likelihood of being “discovered” from your book at WestBow is probably about the same as being “discovered” at a diner in Hollywood, even if you are wearing a nice sweater (cover). Hyatt is unfortunately blind to the ethical issue of running both a real business and a predatory one that promises everything and nothing at the same time, and charges far more than what an author who merely wants to publish his book might pay a copyeditor and a printer for the same pleasure of having 500 copies in his garage.
Grumpy old agent comments: Apply his ethical blindness to other aspects of life and the churches will open casinos. Church members are used to giving money to their church with no earthly return. Gamblers pour money into casinos with a false hope they will eventually win it back. What’s the real difference? Both models move money from individuals to organizations with feeling good the only return. At home, his position will tempt husbands world wide to carry on tawdry affairs and justify them by saying: “She means nothing to me, she’s just extra, non-committal sex”–oh, wait, they already do this… Like the cheating spouse, Harlequin, or likely Torstar and Thomas Nelson, want it both ways. WestBow will take the author’s money and pretend-publish a book with no other chances for publicaton, while refusing to publish any book that doesn’t meet their Christian criteria regardless of merit. OK but the same logic will justify all kinds of “I did it because it felt good” activities.
Self-publishing will flood the market with poor quality books.
Hyatt argues that fake books will not flood the market and drive out real books, because book stores won’t carry them and being listed in a database won’t make them noticeable. He makes the case for the futility of self-publishing pretty well. Nice job here. He concludes:
We live in an age when technology and the public’s desire for self-expression make user-generated content viable. If people want to publish their own book through print-on-demand (POD), subsidy or vanity publishing, or whatever, why should anyone else care?
Excellent point, particularly as in his blog, he admits that “very few of these [self-published books] find their way to bookstore shelves.” Do they put that on the WestBow Press website – no, they charge $2,799 for the “essentials needed to increase your chances of commercial success.” Perhaps none of the WestBow authors will read Mr. Hyatt’s blog and discover that their chances of commercial success are so close to nil.
Self-publishing rips off the authors.
Hyatt’s final point is that informed authors, or those who would like to be published authors, should be allowed, even encouraged, to toss their money down any sink hole they want. Bernie Madoff never required anyone to give him money, he just made up a big, fat lie that the promised returns were real. Self-publishing is simply a set of available tools, but Author Solutions taps individual’s needs for their own profits.
And as for Mr. Hyatt’s comment about publishers being “ripped off” because “Most of the books we publish don’t make money?” “Ripped off?” Have authors been delivering the phone book or sheaves of folded paper instead of their contracted novels?
Hyatt throughout is building a case against agents, a pretty self serving argument. In reality, most of the concern is being voiced by authors. I’m one of the few agents speaking out on this topic, but more will, because agents are the people most aware of the business model in publishing and are most concerned with the author’s rights and income. Agents do provide access, and the price of admission is a book good enough to be commercially published. Agents only get involved if we believe our time is worth what our 15% commission which we will earn from the author’s future income. The Association of Author’s Representatives (AAR) membership stipulates we cannot charge reading fees or otherwise profit from rejections. Author Solutions makes its money from authors, not from selling books to readers, and unfortunately, few self-published authors make any money from selling books to readers, either.
Both Carolyn and Ashley Grayson contributed to this item.
The whole affair stinks. Money flows from the publisher to the author – not the other way around.
Further to vanity publishing, it seems there is such a thing as vanity agenting, as evidenced by Carolyn & Ashley Grayson’s statement that agents do provide (writers) access (to publishers), and the price of admission is a book good enough to be commercially published. Whoa. “Good” and “commercially published” are not mutually inclusive and often should not be uttered in the same breath: I cite as one example Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code, which is a book so woefully and lazily written I would be ashamed to have agented it or published it.
It is often said that reading is an emotional experience; for me, reading is not an emotional experience but an emotion in itself, just like happy, sad, there is for me reading. Yet I rarely venture into bookshops these days and never ever at Christmas because I’m just so tired of seeing the same old stuff by the same old authors year after year; big names, who, because they have an existing market, are not edited and produce books not worth reading. That’s what commercial publishing screened by literary agents has done to this most avid of readers.
It is utmost arrogance to suggest that anything published is good while anything declined is unworthy, and there is a difference between declining and rejecting a work. All too often commercial publishing is willing to exploit an existing market – abuse the trust of readers – with unworthy work.
I have no doubt Carolyn & Ashley Grayson, Kristen Nelson and every other agent who objects to Harlequin’s vanity publishing are staunchly defending authors and doing their best to protect them from exploitation. Thank you. But I say you are also contributing to the reasons why authors seek self-publication. How many of you state unashamedly in your query and submission guidelines, in your query examples, that it is your preference if not your imperative, for submitting authors to state whose work theirs is most like, or more euphemistically, “where your book fits on the shelf,” or to my mind, name the work on which your own is based. Whenever I read that, I feel like taking a shower, and often I discount the agent out of hand.
All too often agents only want what they know they can sell, ergo, something that has already been published as evidenced again by the DaVinci code, which only got a leg up because of someone else’s work. You know you do it. Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary was credited with pioneering Chick Lit, but rather than understand that its appeal lay in its originality, you all said, “this originality thing is a winning formula, let’s do it over and over and over again,” and you flooded the market until the cry went up “Chick Lit is dead! Long dead Chick Lit!” without ever getting the point that maybe it was a success in the first place because the desire of readers is very different from the demand of the agent slash publisher, that single beast with two heads and one heart, or at least a place where the heart should be: difference. Maybe it was a success because it was different. All too often, what you folk see as ‘different’ is the same old stuff with a twist. That isn’t different – that’s a gimmick.
Where I live, one major bookseller has taken to prominently dangling large tags exclaiming “ORIGINAL VOICE” from the few books which can claim that distinction; it follows from this effort this is something the reading public craves, else they wouldn’t do it, and I believe the desires of readers are often a world apart from the demands of the agent slash publisher; the former wants to spend their weekend reading your book, the latter does not, and that’s why books are getting shorter – not because readers have an attention deficit but because overworked editors don’t have the time to read books and agents don’t have the patience.
Speaking as a reader, I state unequivocally that the books you folk are putting out I have little wish to read, as much as I often crave a page-turner; speaking as a writer, those of us who try to do what any writer worth their salt should be doing – something original – are for the most part so frustrated by the gatekeepers that yes, we are tempted to turn to the alternatives in the belief that if only we can get our book to the readers craving ORIGINAL VOICE, then those readers and we would get on just fine.
Harlequin stated they would not be associating their name with these self-published books as Harlequin was the “gold-standard” and they had no wish to compromise that – thereby effectively stating in the same breath Harlequin’s belief that self-published books are below par and at the same time their willingness to take the money of those below-par authors.
As much as I genuinely thank every literary agent who is using their profile and influence to protect authors – I do that sincerely and genuinely – I reiterate that you are at the same contributing to the cause of the effect.
Fantastic post. I think you did a great job of directly addressing the holes in Hyatt’s argument (I don’t think any of us would have such a problem with this if the publishers said on their sites how unlikely anyone self-publishing through them is to “succeed” in terms even of selling more than 100 books).
I also want to direct Susan Bennett. Ma’am, you claim to be a writer, but why would any writer feel the need to completely lambaste every published writer who has an agent, not to mention the thousands of hard-working people (yes, you are attacking people, not a nameless monster called “publishing”) who honestly want to put out the best books possible. If you truly believe that all the thousands of books published this year were complete trash (which kudos to you for having the time to read them all), that is your opinion, and clearly sales numbers indicate that not all readers agree with you. You are more than welcome to self-publish; we are simply trying to ensure that publishers don’t try to swindle authors who go into self-publishing blind.
Also, you seem to have misconstrued some advice given. When we say it might be a good idea to, in a query, compare your book to others out there, it’s not because we won’t consider any book that is totally original. It’s because most authors have trouble with writing a query, and thinking about how their book compares to those on the market can help them focus and create a better pitch.
And when we say you should know where on the shelves your books belong in a story, keep in mind that ALL bookstores have a section labeled “fiction.” Even then, the genres of sff, romance, ya/children’s, western, etc., are so broad that completely original work can still fit into one of them. If your work is so completely different that you don’t even think it can be put up in the “fiction” section, well, how do you expect booksellers to try to sell your book?
As I said, you are welcome to self-publish, agents are not saying it’s a bad idea. Just that you shouldn’t go in expecting the same (free) treatment your book would get at a traditional publisher.
Susan, you’ve raised some interesting points in your lengthy comment. Thanks for reading the blog. However, one of your issues comes from an assumption you made about what you thought I said rather than what I actually said. I said: “the price of admission is a book good enough to be commercially published.” You confused of “good enough to be published” which as an objective measure with “good” which is a subjective value. Here’s the difficulty. Every book is good in the mind of the author. No one, not even a wag, will invest the time to deliberately write a bad book. So rather that rely on the author’s opinion in any way, agents and publishers must apply other criteria.
First, the prose must be effective. Novels need an engaging narrative. Non-fiction books need to demonstrate not only topic mastery and credibility, in some cases, they must be from an author who is a recognized authority or has some platform. Lacking this level of merit, any submission is not good enough.
Next, a novel must be entertaining in some way, whether terrifying or heartwarming. Even if very well written, a horror novel that is not scary, or a romance novel with no spark will still feel not good enough.
We ask authors to state what kind of book they have because I, who don’t solicit queries, get at least three per week from authors who want me to read their “story,” which is “based on real events that happened to me, or came to me in a dream.” We expect anyone who asks for our time to know that the term of art in the business they are breaking into is novel, and not fiction book.
The last key to understanding “good enough to be commercially published” means the book has to appeal to a visible audience of book book buyers who visit bookstores. This makes the work commercial. There is a robust market for literary fiction, just as there is for shiny vampire romances, but even if the work is well written and engaging, if the audience seems small, it may be declined simply because the agent or publisher can’t afford the cost of sale.
I share your unhappiness with genres and the focus on marketing of look alike works, and I’ll take up that topic in a future blog. Check back. There is a reason for this and it may surprise you. Hint: it has little to do with agents and editors.
You had me at: “Christianity may be all about offering hope.”
G.K. – whoever that may be as he or she has chosen not to give their name – makes many mischievious claims about my post. It is of course mischievious and sheer nonsense to claim I have lambasted any writer who has an agent, or that I claimed to have read thousands of books in a year. You don’t believe for a moment I laid claim to either. If you had read my post G.K. you would see that I state I rarely venture into bookshops any more because of the poor quality of books being published. And as a consumer, as a reader, of course I have every right to comment on the quality or lack thereof of the product being produced for my consumption, of course I have the right to reject your output. If you feel “attacked” by that, then you don’t understand the fundamentals of business and shouldn’t be in business, much less the publishing business.
Its the damnedest thing that publishers and agents make free with their criticism but can’t take any themselves. People in the publishing industry don’t work any harder than writers do, and writers deserve respect and consideration for the very work that after all, puts food on the publisher’s table.
Given the thinness of your skin and the fact you keep referring to yourself as “we” I’ll presume you’re either a publisher or an agent. You can be very much assured G.K. that I labour under no misapprension in my understanding of what agents and publishers want when they say it is their preference, if not their imperative, for submitting authors to state whose work theirs is most like. To cite one example: as wonderful and as generous an agent as Kristen Nelson is, and there can be no doubt she has at heart the best interests of all writers, not just those she represesents, in critiquing Jana DeLeon’s query letter on her blog she states, “The only suggestion I would add is this: it might have been nice if Jana mentioned that her work was not unlike Stephanie Bond’s stuff because it is and the comparison would have benefited her.” That cannot be confused with guidance on writing a query letter.
As to your objection that I have treated publishing as “nameless”, well I’m sorry but this from the pepetrators of the “Dear Author” letter? Let’s just say you’ll have to forgive me if this is water off a duck’s back.
(I’ve actually written a book on this very subject, G.K. If you’re interested in representing or publishing it, just give me a hoy.)
You have implied that sales numbers suggest readers are happy with publishing’s output. There can be no doubt that big publishing is big business, the question is how much BIGGER could it be if it were BETTER?
The trouble that Borders U.K. finds itself speaks for itself, I think.
And thanks to the editors’ for their further comments, which I’m sorry to say neither clarified or ameliorated the original comment for me. You can’t be suggesting that every rejected work necessarily lacks those qualities? It’s a funny thing that widely rejected work suddenly becomes eminently publishable once a writer has an existing market. Of course writers think their work is good, else we wouldn’t spend years out of our lives on it, and given how often a very widely rejected work goes onto become a huge hit with readers, it seems we may be right.
Thanks for your time. All the best.
With reference to the above, “misapprension” should have read misapprehension, and “pepetrators” perpetrators – with apologies.
One more thing, G.K. – McDonald’s sells lots of hamburgers, but that doesn’t make them tasty.
Susan Bennett: You may not find McDonald’s hamburgers tasty, but millions of people find them “good enough” to eat. Just as the shlock by Dan Brown et al. is “good enough to be commercially published.”
[...] from literary agents Carolyn and Ashley Grayson of the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency. Their post, Hyatt Has No Reservations, answers issues raised by Michael Hyatt, the CEO of Thomas Nelson, who tried to explain Why Agents [...]