Brian Niemeier views the future of artists and writers as one where they won't be mega celebrities but they'll be able to make a living with their talents. IOW, being a writer is like being a small business owner. And as someone who comes from a family inclined to small businesses, I see the appeal. Let's be real, the current system is unsustainable for various reasons. I think a lot of people just see the ridiculous steps needed to be "published" as evidence of prestige/quality so they go through the squid game without realizing that the money doesn't even exist. Not anymore.
Very well put, I’m inclined to agree with Niemeier though I hadn’t known that he regarded it as such.
I’m not sure we were ever ‘mega celebrities’ but do think that the greats will rise up above the rest and that it hopefully some measure of stability will return for artists and writers. Because the past century and a half has not been kind to us.
My hope would be for something of the old ‘guilds’ system returns and where people will form groups that pool their resources and profits so that everyone can survive in a manageable manner off their gains.
There was a time where we did have more celeb writers beyond Gaiman, Martin, and Rowling, but it passed a long while ago. At best, we may have seen some of them when we were children in the 90's, assuming you're around my age. (Never actually thought to ask your age, funny enough.)
The focus and interest of people on such things has long since changed, though. There was a time where you'd see more writer interviews being widely shared and read, where certain authors were widely known and celebrated for their work, and so on and so forth. We see inklings of that in our chosen genre via Tolkien, Lewis, Dunsaney, and so on. I'd include Howard in that, but open celebration of his work didn't happen until much later, well after his passing. Regardless, the point is the same - the celebrated author isn't something we see much anymore outside of a small handful propped up by the legacy media. And of that small handful, every single one of them has moved on into movie deals, TV deals, gaming deals, and so on. In essence, they've fashioned themselves less writers by this point, and more multimedia marketers which invited loads of controversy onto themselves.
Take this alongside the industry's admissions over the last couple years that they have no idea how to quantify what will or won't be successful among other things, and it's little wonder the celebrity writer is largely a comatose idea nowadays. When your primary sales strategy is "sweep up as much as we can that's like the stuff people still buy, throw it at all the wall, pray that something sticks" as it currently is in the publishing industry, it's little wonder the prestige of writing or the allure of books have both dimmed.
I’m a 90s brat like you, a few years younger though (I’m 33), and I know of what era you speak of, those three were among the last of the celebrity writers.
Weirdly yes it is comatose but I think we’re in a crucible period, a forging fire. We’ll see the rise in a few years of celebrity writers famed for their writing, but in my view the era we’re currently in is key, it is the planting phase with the harvest to come in 3-5 years after this Fourth Turning is over.
You can copyright your book once it's done, even before you've completely edited it. You can also check out Writer Beware's site.
As a rule of thumb, don't pay ANY company to publish your book for you. You can publish for free yourself on places like KDP, B&N, Draft2Digital, and IngramSpark. Google every site before you publish. The ones I just mentioned are legit. Don't put your book on a site that makes you sign away your rites in the agreement.
Don't sign any contracts that might compromise the rights to your book (you should only be signing stuff like agreements between yourself and editor/cover designer).
Never trust people reaching out to you to publish your book; they can look up public records with the copyright office and prey on new authors.
As a new author, NO ONE is going to approach you for your book except scammers and the lowest of industry "services" (remember—don't pay them to format and publish your book; research and do it yourself. You're not likely to make that money back as book sales are generally low and you'll be lucky to make back what you spend on an editor and cover designer).
Don't fall for all the faux flattery on places like FB. People swarm authors there to offer their services and their pitches almost always start with "your writing is amazing" (which they don't know because they've never read your book) or "your cover is stunning". Sometimes they try to worm their way in with "Tell me about your writing journey." While these aren't necessarily scammers, they're all unnecessary services for promoting your book.
The biggest scam I've seen on FB/IG is people pretending to be Meta and threatening to delete your account if you don't fork over your sign in credentials. Meta never does that.
Excellent must-read article. I occasionally listen to Scott Adam's podcast with my wife (who is a regular viewer) and he talked about getting scammed with Amazon.
He would try for weeks to get his works on their system and constantly get glitches. After a month, he would finally have it up and find that someone in China was already selling pirated copies of it on Amazon, hurting his sales. He would get many bad comments and returns on his sales site while the pirated ones flourished. Some of his listeners said they had the same problem.
A very deep scam, so he quit using Amazon for his calendars and sells directly. Except he was still finding his new calendars (using old comics) for sale on Amazon. And Amazon made it a difficult and long process to prove it so they would take it down. So he made a big deal about it on two of his podcasts, threatening to sue (and maybe even bring a class action lawsuit), and Amazon finally took down the scammers' sales sites.
My gosh I had no idea about any of this! Damn Scott Adam is an amazing talent holy mac that was pure evil!
I’m glad Amazon FINALLY did something to help him. I must admit that I tried KDP Amazon at one point and only got screwed, and have since gone to Draft2Digital who aren’t perfect. Now I’m wanting to use Indie Presses in concert with D2D to get my name out there and books on as many websites as possible.
I’m currently thinking though of setting up an independent website for Bros Krynn, with links to all the disparate sites the books will be on. I’d hate to be in the situation of M. Adam.
I’m really glad you found this article to be a must-read.
"Mark Twain himself got scammed a few times (guessing not everyone knew this), he got scammed out of huge sums of money until he simply got mad and formed a self-publishing company. This helped him straighten the mess out, and allowed him far more control over his literary affairs."
It did until his publishing company went bust and he went bankrupt. He then went on a round-the-world speaking tour to pay off his debts, and THEN was able to assert more control over his publishing affairs, despite his output decreasing.
Oh man, if you really want some dirt, go dig into the archives of Dean Wesley Smith's blog. He's an old guy who's been in publishing way longer than we have, and he knows way more about the corruption of the system. He and his wife wrote a lot of licensed novels and haven't been paid royalties for any of them in decades, and that's just a drop in the bucket. Here, start with some of his Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing articles (also compiled into a book): https://deanwesleysmith.com/tag/killing-the-top-ten-sacred-cows-of-publishing/
While there are many problems in the publishing industry, I will respectfully disagree with the sweeping characterization of large publishing houses as scams.
For instance, you write, "And this is what these scum are doing on a spiritual level. The mainstream publishers took a man’s work, claimed custody of it and that it was work for hire and then denied him the legal right to publish it."
At the risk of being nitpicky, we're talking about one publisher (that I've never heard of), not publishers in general. According to Fandom Pulse, the issue isn't exactly that the publisher claimed that the work was work for hire. From FP's quote of the author in question, "The publisher purchased it as 'work for hire...'" In other words, the publisher didn't arbitrarily declare the novel work for hire; rather, the publisher entered into a contract with the author in which both agreed to the purchase of the novel as work for hire.
Don't get me wrong. The subsequent progression, in which the intended book series got cancelled, and the publisher refused to resell the rights back to the author, essentially killing the book for no reason, is certainly appalling. The publisher ought to have behaved in a different fashion. But that's also the only time I'm aware when that kind of thing happened. It seems more like an outlier than an illustration of what's happening all the time.
However, it does serve as an object lesson--think about all possible scenarios before signing a contract. Precisely because the situation is so rare, I'm certainly not faulting the author for not thinking of it. I wouldn't have, either. But a clause in the contract stipulating what would happen in the event of a series cancellation would have solved the whole problem. Absent that, a publisher can do anything it wants with work for hire. All legal rights belong entirely to it. In this case, the publisher was acting in a way reminiscent of Ebenezer Scrooge--but it was well within its legal rights.
While we're on the subject, it's true that many publishers, partially in response to self publishing, have started including more predatory language in their contracts, so authors need to proceed carefully. Among the more suspect additions are non-compete clauses, which prevent you from selling work in the same genre--or maybe any work--to anyone else for a fairly long period. This might be reasonable if the publisher made a parallel commitment to buy everything you write during the time the agreement was in force or got only first look rights to subsequent works (which has long been common), but theoretically, a publish could buy one book with a non-compete clause in the contract, buy nothing else but keep the author from publishing anything for several years. The same is true of clauses that buy not only the book being offered but also the entire world in which it's situated--all places, characters, etc. Like a non-compete clause, that's reasonably only if the publisher is continuing to buy an author's work. But such provisions are very one-sided otherwise. Essentially, the author is being paid for one book but giving up the rights to a whole series or more.
Rights-reversion clauses can also be tricky. They have existed for a long time, but in the past, reversion once the book had been out of print for a given period of time was reasonable. Now, the existence of ebooks means a book can be kept in print forever. Consequently, a reversion clause that uses some metric, like author income dropping below a certain threshold for a given period, would be more useful.
I know some publishers were understandably upset when authors they'd spent considerable resources promoting decided to leave them. But one-sided contractual provisions aren't the answer. Provisions designed to preserve a profitable relationship on both sides are a better alternative.
I know some happy authors with large publishers, some small publishers, and some in self publishing. Each path has advantages and disadvantages. Going with a publisher need not be path fraught with peril. But it does involve considerable thought about contract provisions, and in the case of unfamiliar publishers, lots of homework. Look at the books that house is publishing. Are they well-written? Do they have a good cover? Is the product description good? Do they have a decent sales rank (considering the age of the book)? Are there any substantive complaints online? There are many outright scams, as you rightly point out. But they aren't all that's out there, even with larger publishers.
That’s fair, as always you show a greater degree of knowledge on the topic than myself, as to the publishers it varies from house to house. I’m learning to trust Indie Presses far more, and do think there’s exceptions such as Baen Books and even the French Glenat and some Japanese publishers.
Thank you for putting this out there Brothers! It’s important to learn scam artists exist even at the top of the publishing industry in all genres. I shared it! Bless you!
Merci, I appreciate it and am glad you found this useful. Many publishers I’m finding out are pretty scummy and tend to scam folks out of quite a bit. I’m thinking if anything to stick with Indie presses. I know you’ve a book or three of your own, and am thinking if all goes well with the Indies I’m working with to recommend them to you (but only after assuring myself they’re on the level).
Brian Niemeier views the future of artists and writers as one where they won't be mega celebrities but they'll be able to make a living with their talents. IOW, being a writer is like being a small business owner. And as someone who comes from a family inclined to small businesses, I see the appeal. Let's be real, the current system is unsustainable for various reasons. I think a lot of people just see the ridiculous steps needed to be "published" as evidence of prestige/quality so they go through the squid game without realizing that the money doesn't even exist. Not anymore.
Very well put, I’m inclined to agree with Niemeier though I hadn’t known that he regarded it as such.
I’m not sure we were ever ‘mega celebrities’ but do think that the greats will rise up above the rest and that it hopefully some measure of stability will return for artists and writers. Because the past century and a half has not been kind to us.
My hope would be for something of the old ‘guilds’ system returns and where people will form groups that pool their resources and profits so that everyone can survive in a manageable manner off their gains.
There was a time where we did have more celeb writers beyond Gaiman, Martin, and Rowling, but it passed a long while ago. At best, we may have seen some of them when we were children in the 90's, assuming you're around my age. (Never actually thought to ask your age, funny enough.)
The focus and interest of people on such things has long since changed, though. There was a time where you'd see more writer interviews being widely shared and read, where certain authors were widely known and celebrated for their work, and so on and so forth. We see inklings of that in our chosen genre via Tolkien, Lewis, Dunsaney, and so on. I'd include Howard in that, but open celebration of his work didn't happen until much later, well after his passing. Regardless, the point is the same - the celebrated author isn't something we see much anymore outside of a small handful propped up by the legacy media. And of that small handful, every single one of them has moved on into movie deals, TV deals, gaming deals, and so on. In essence, they've fashioned themselves less writers by this point, and more multimedia marketers which invited loads of controversy onto themselves.
Take this alongside the industry's admissions over the last couple years that they have no idea how to quantify what will or won't be successful among other things, and it's little wonder the celebrity writer is largely a comatose idea nowadays. When your primary sales strategy is "sweep up as much as we can that's like the stuff people still buy, throw it at all the wall, pray that something sticks" as it currently is in the publishing industry, it's little wonder the prestige of writing or the allure of books have both dimmed.
I’m a 90s brat like you, a few years younger though (I’m 33), and I know of what era you speak of, those three were among the last of the celebrity writers.
Weirdly yes it is comatose but I think we’re in a crucible period, a forging fire. We’ll see the rise in a few years of celebrity writers famed for their writing, but in my view the era we’re currently in is key, it is the planting phase with the harvest to come in 3-5 years after this Fourth Turning is over.
A guild…that would be lovely. Thinking….
Oui, si juste… if only… and yeah worth thinking about….
You can copyright your book once it's done, even before you've completely edited it. You can also check out Writer Beware's site.
As a rule of thumb, don't pay ANY company to publish your book for you. You can publish for free yourself on places like KDP, B&N, Draft2Digital, and IngramSpark. Google every site before you publish. The ones I just mentioned are legit. Don't put your book on a site that makes you sign away your rites in the agreement.
Don't sign any contracts that might compromise the rights to your book (you should only be signing stuff like agreements between yourself and editor/cover designer).
Never trust people reaching out to you to publish your book; they can look up public records with the copyright office and prey on new authors.
As a new author, NO ONE is going to approach you for your book except scammers and the lowest of industry "services" (remember—don't pay them to format and publish your book; research and do it yourself. You're not likely to make that money back as book sales are generally low and you'll be lucky to make back what you spend on an editor and cover designer).
Don't fall for all the faux flattery on places like FB. People swarm authors there to offer their services and their pitches almost always start with "your writing is amazing" (which they don't know because they've never read your book) or "your cover is stunning". Sometimes they try to worm their way in with "Tell me about your writing journey." While these aren't necessarily scammers, they're all unnecessary services for promoting your book.
The biggest scam I've seen on FB/IG is people pretending to be Meta and threatening to delete your account if you don't fork over your sign in credentials. Meta never does that.
Agreed madame, could not agree more with every word.
Excellent must-read article. I occasionally listen to Scott Adam's podcast with my wife (who is a regular viewer) and he talked about getting scammed with Amazon.
He would try for weeks to get his works on their system and constantly get glitches. After a month, he would finally have it up and find that someone in China was already selling pirated copies of it on Amazon, hurting his sales. He would get many bad comments and returns on his sales site while the pirated ones flourished. Some of his listeners said they had the same problem.
A very deep scam, so he quit using Amazon for his calendars and sells directly. Except he was still finding his new calendars (using old comics) for sale on Amazon. And Amazon made it a difficult and long process to prove it so they would take it down. So he made a big deal about it on two of his podcasts, threatening to sue (and maybe even bring a class action lawsuit), and Amazon finally took down the scammers' sales sites.
My gosh I had no idea about any of this! Damn Scott Adam is an amazing talent holy mac that was pure evil!
I’m glad Amazon FINALLY did something to help him. I must admit that I tried KDP Amazon at one point and only got screwed, and have since gone to Draft2Digital who aren’t perfect. Now I’m wanting to use Indie Presses in concert with D2D to get my name out there and books on as many websites as possible.
I’m currently thinking though of setting up an independent website for Bros Krynn, with links to all the disparate sites the books will be on. I’d hate to be in the situation of M. Adam.
I’m really glad you found this article to be a must-read.
"Mark Twain himself got scammed a few times (guessing not everyone knew this), he got scammed out of huge sums of money until he simply got mad and formed a self-publishing company. This helped him straighten the mess out, and allowed him far more control over his literary affairs."
It did until his publishing company went bust and he went bankrupt. He then went on a round-the-world speaking tour to pay off his debts, and THEN was able to assert more control over his publishing affairs, despite his output decreasing.
Oh okay thanks for the correction appreciate it David.
Oh man, if you really want some dirt, go dig into the archives of Dean Wesley Smith's blog. He's an old guy who's been in publishing way longer than we have, and he knows way more about the corruption of the system. He and his wife wrote a lot of licensed novels and haven't been paid royalties for any of them in decades, and that's just a drop in the bucket. Here, start with some of his Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing articles (also compiled into a book): https://deanwesleysmith.com/tag/killing-the-top-ten-sacred-cows-of-publishing/
Merci don’t mind if I do, I’ll have a good look at it.
Write Beware is a great resource for writing and publishing scams as well as bad behavior by publishers. https://writerbeware.blog/
Agreed
While there are many problems in the publishing industry, I will respectfully disagree with the sweeping characterization of large publishing houses as scams.
For instance, you write, "And this is what these scum are doing on a spiritual level. The mainstream publishers took a man’s work, claimed custody of it and that it was work for hire and then denied him the legal right to publish it."
At the risk of being nitpicky, we're talking about one publisher (that I've never heard of), not publishers in general. According to Fandom Pulse, the issue isn't exactly that the publisher claimed that the work was work for hire. From FP's quote of the author in question, "The publisher purchased it as 'work for hire...'" In other words, the publisher didn't arbitrarily declare the novel work for hire; rather, the publisher entered into a contract with the author in which both agreed to the purchase of the novel as work for hire.
Don't get me wrong. The subsequent progression, in which the intended book series got cancelled, and the publisher refused to resell the rights back to the author, essentially killing the book for no reason, is certainly appalling. The publisher ought to have behaved in a different fashion. But that's also the only time I'm aware when that kind of thing happened. It seems more like an outlier than an illustration of what's happening all the time.
However, it does serve as an object lesson--think about all possible scenarios before signing a contract. Precisely because the situation is so rare, I'm certainly not faulting the author for not thinking of it. I wouldn't have, either. But a clause in the contract stipulating what would happen in the event of a series cancellation would have solved the whole problem. Absent that, a publisher can do anything it wants with work for hire. All legal rights belong entirely to it. In this case, the publisher was acting in a way reminiscent of Ebenezer Scrooge--but it was well within its legal rights.
While we're on the subject, it's true that many publishers, partially in response to self publishing, have started including more predatory language in their contracts, so authors need to proceed carefully. Among the more suspect additions are non-compete clauses, which prevent you from selling work in the same genre--or maybe any work--to anyone else for a fairly long period. This might be reasonable if the publisher made a parallel commitment to buy everything you write during the time the agreement was in force or got only first look rights to subsequent works (which has long been common), but theoretically, a publish could buy one book with a non-compete clause in the contract, buy nothing else but keep the author from publishing anything for several years. The same is true of clauses that buy not only the book being offered but also the entire world in which it's situated--all places, characters, etc. Like a non-compete clause, that's reasonably only if the publisher is continuing to buy an author's work. But such provisions are very one-sided otherwise. Essentially, the author is being paid for one book but giving up the rights to a whole series or more.
Rights-reversion clauses can also be tricky. They have existed for a long time, but in the past, reversion once the book had been out of print for a given period of time was reasonable. Now, the existence of ebooks means a book can be kept in print forever. Consequently, a reversion clause that uses some metric, like author income dropping below a certain threshold for a given period, would be more useful.
I know some publishers were understandably upset when authors they'd spent considerable resources promoting decided to leave them. But one-sided contractual provisions aren't the answer. Provisions designed to preserve a profitable relationship on both sides are a better alternative.
I know some happy authors with large publishers, some small publishers, and some in self publishing. Each path has advantages and disadvantages. Going with a publisher need not be path fraught with peril. But it does involve considerable thought about contract provisions, and in the case of unfamiliar publishers, lots of homework. Look at the books that house is publishing. Are they well-written? Do they have a good cover? Is the product description good? Do they have a decent sales rank (considering the age of the book)? Are there any substantive complaints online? There are many outright scams, as you rightly point out. But they aren't all that's out there, even with larger publishers.
That’s fair, as always you show a greater degree of knowledge on the topic than myself, as to the publishers it varies from house to house. I’m learning to trust Indie Presses far more, and do think there’s exceptions such as Baen Books and even the French Glenat and some Japanese publishers.
So you make some good points here.
Thank you so much for sharing! Writer be wary of scams and here are some great tips to avoid falling into the pit of despair.
Welcome X) and thanks for the restack madame! I greatly appreciate it!
Thank you for putting this out there Brothers! It’s important to learn scam artists exist even at the top of the publishing industry in all genres. I shared it! Bless you!
Merci, I appreciate it and am glad you found this useful. Many publishers I’m finding out are pretty scummy and tend to scam folks out of quite a bit. I’m thinking if anything to stick with Indie presses. I know you’ve a book or three of your own, and am thinking if all goes well with the Indies I’m working with to recommend them to you (but only after assuring myself they’re on the level).
Sounds a *lot* like corrupt wrestling bookies.
Wrestlers are notorious for bleeding on behalf of a $50 match to an attendance of 30, only to find the booky took off before the pin.
Self publishing seems the best option.
Agreed