Self-publishing, Harlequin Horizons, and why this isn't an "equalizer.": seanan

Self-publishing, Harlequin Horizons, and why this isn't an "equalizer."

So in case you've managed to miss the news (I sometimes wish I'd managed to miss the news), Harlequin Romance has formed a new self-publishing imprint, Harlequin Horizons, and people are ticked off about it. By "people," I mean "the Romance Writers of America, the Science Fiction Writers of America, and writers here, there, and everywhere." The basic deal is this: you give Harlequin Horizons a substantial chunk of cash, and they will print your book. Oh, and if it's drop-dead awesome enough, they may allow you to sell it to them later (although they won't give you back your money at that point). In the meanwhile, you, too, can be a Harlequin author. Whee!

Watching reactions to this around the Internet has been fascinating, because there are a substantial number of people who don't understand why the community of authors is generally so upset. Unless, of course, we're just trying to keep ordinary people from discovering how easy and fun it is to write novels, and how quick you can get famous once you get past The Man who's been guarding the front gate. What they're overlooking is a set of rather nasty complexities attendant on the idea of this model.

With self-publishing, you must be able to pay to play. Being a first-time author is highly unlikely to make anyone wealthy unless they're already a celebrity. I don't know how much Stephanie Meyer got paid for Twilight, but I'll bet you she wasn't quitting her day job until the royalty statements started coming in. Under the normal model, your publisher pays you. That means that it cost me nothing but time to write Rosemary and Rue. Under the self-publishing model, it would have started off by costing me about six thousand dollars, and that doesn't include any sort of promotion, publicity, or advertising.

Writing is not an unskilled profession. Before you assume I'm saying that if you aren't published, you can't write, please hear me out. Like any creative profession, being a writer takes certain learned tools (a functional grasp of a language, for starters), combined with talent and lots and lots of practice. It's a weird cocktail, and the most intrinsically talented writers in the world still need all three components. How do you get practice? By writing, and by being forced to be critical with your own work. When I first wrote Rosemary and Rue, it was the best thing I'd ever written. By the time I finished rewriting it for publication, it was ten times better, and the first draft had become actively embarrassing. Does using publication as the gold ring work for everyone? No. There are some truly amazing authors who have never been published, either because they're writing things viewed as non-commercial, or because they just don't feel like taking the time. But for most of us, the need to improve in order to achieve publication is a lot of what actually drives our improvement. Taking that away is like saying "okay, you've read a bunch of anatomy books, now take out this woman's spleen."

It takes a village to raise a child. People involved with getting Rosemary and Rue to a bookstore near you: me. My agent. My editor. My publicist. My line-editor. My layout and graphic designers. My cover artist. The entire marketing team at Penguin. The guy who sold all of the above their coffee. People I had to pay for their help: the guy who sold us the coffee. People who knew more about what it takes to make a book successful than I do: everyone but the guy who sold us the coffee (and that's a guess; he may be a former publishing mastermind who just likes the smell of java). It takes an army of people to get a book from manuscript to market, and while you can potentially fill all those roles yourself, if you're not independently wealthy, it's going to be really, really hard. I thought I was pretty savvy about how publishing works; then I published a book. It turns out that what I knew was vague and superficial—now we're at "okay, you've watched a bunch of medical shows, now take out this woman's spleen."

We cannot be our own quality control with absolute accuracy. "But wait," you may cry, "it works in the fanfic mines." "Yes, that's true," I would reply, "but in the fanfic mines, you can edit your work for free." Once you expand to novel-length, the chance for errors expands exponentially, and once you've paid someone to put your book in print, your ability to fix them drops like a rock. Consider the number of errors in the average full-length published novel. Now consider the village that played whack-a-mole with the book before you ever saw it. Being expected to be so perfect that you don't need editing isn't just unfair; it borders on actively mean.

Now, all of these points may seem like they're anti-self-publishing, and the thing is, they both are and aren't. There are totally legitimate reasons to self-publish. Maybe you have six thousand dollars to spare, and you just don't like Disneyworld that much. Maybe you're printing a book of short stories written twenty years ago by your high school writer's group. Maybe you have a huge pre-existing Internet following (Monster Island and John Dies at the End, for example, although these were both small press, not self-published). Maybe you just want a printed edition of your grandmother's cookbook. Whatever makes you happy! Most comic books are self-published, and it works out fine for them (although most self-publishing comic creators also form their own imprints).

At the same time, taking aspiring authors and effectively telling them "you don't need to work to improve and learn, you don't have to deal with rejection and unwanted critique, you don't need to do anything but sign the check" is just...it's mean. It's preying on the vulnerability of young authors who don't want anything but to see their works in print. Sadly, most self-published books will never reach a wide audience; they aren't on the shelves in brick-and-mortar stores, they aren't in print advertising (unless you're really independently wealthy), they won't be sending advance copies out for review. They'll just appear in a catalog somewhere, and on the author's website, where the number of copies sold will depend on just how fast the author can tap-dance for the amusement of the masses. By adding the name of a big house to a self-publishing imprint, and the seductive offer of "maybe we'll buy it after all," Harlequin is effectively monetizing their slush pile, and potentially taking the opportunity to grow away from a great many of the aspiring authors involved.

If I had self-published ten years ago, I would never have improved enough as an author to write Feed, or Late Eclipses, or Discount Armageddon, or Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues. Now, your mileage may vary. But these are my concerns, and these are the reasons that I really think that this sort of "business venture" is just another way of preying on the vulnerable.

tithenai

November 23 2009, 12:48:23 UTC 7 years ago

New comment

AHA -- I didn't realise it was Harlequin that Small Beer Press was riotously spoofing. Good to know.

Thank you so much for posting something so rigorous; it's great to have one handy link to show to people who are thinking of paying someone to publish their work.

seanan_mcguire

November 23 2009, 12:54:18 UTC 7 years ago

I mostly find it upsetting because I know how many of us start out with shiny eyes and big ideas, and would totally take every shortcut in the book, thinking we'd found the "cheat codes" to the publishing industry. There's a cheat in this sentence, but it's not the sort that helps you win the game.

Dude, that Small Beer Press link is HYSTERICAL.

7 years ago

karjack

November 23 2009, 12:59:38 UTC 7 years ago

It's a vanity press, plain and simple. The difference between what Harlequin is doing and an actual self-publishing outfit like Lulu.com is that the latter is up front about what you're paying and what you're getting. There is no illusion of legitimacy and the chance for an eventual lucrative book deal.

It's pretty revolting. Good for the RWA and SFWA for coming out so strongly against this.

November 23 2009, 13:03:07 UTC 7 years ago

Exactly! If you and I want to go through Lulu.com and publish Dodger and Kyle Do Vegas: An Adventure in Higher Math, Twisted Science, and Guns That Shoot Live Bees, we're not expecting a massive market, nor are we laboring under the magical illusion that the publishing fairies are going to come save us from our humdrum lives. (Also, if the publishing fairies can't be bothered until after we're a success, we can pin them to chunks of foam core and play dissection games.)

More Expand

November 23 2009, 13:11:31 UTC 7 years ago

I view it as being nothing more than a scam.

Technically it might not be, but it's just too close to the bok-editing scams that are there for me not to draw the comparison.

November 23 2009, 15:44:39 UTC 7 years ago

I agree.

autographedcat

November 23 2009, 13:27:32 UTC 7 years ago

The old saying holds true for sniffing out when the offer is no good: The only place an author should ever sign a cheque is on the back.

But good write up to why, even if the offer isn't an outright scam, it's still a really really bad idea.

November 23 2009, 15:45:26 UTC 7 years ago

It's not that it's self-publishing; it's that it preys on authors who have big hopes and don't know any better. And that's simply unfair.

November 23 2009, 13:29:20 UTC 7 years ago

Y'know what's funny? How badly-written the HH website is. (After reading the articles and blogs, I was kind of hoping that it would be flawless and seductive.)

It is definitely misleading, though. And it's sad. I hope anybody considering it does a bit of poking around.

November 23 2009, 15:45:38 UTC 7 years ago

Hee! Go team poor copyediting.

But wait! It's ok! Amazon will take your self-published books!

November 23 2009, 13:32:44 UTC 7 years ago

Of course it doesn't mean people will like it: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1LPA5YOND6TGD/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

And of course it's possible for a book to get a two-star rating when you have four sock puppet 5-star ratings and 16 rea 1-stars

Re: But wait! It's ok! Amazon will take your self-published books!

November 23 2009, 14:03:22 UTC 7 years ago

No way. That book totally has to go on Oprah's reading list. *heehee*

phillip2637

jayene

November 23 2009, 13:41:19 UTC 7 years ago

Mystery Writers has also come out against it and RWA, and SFWA removed both Harlequin and Thomas Nelson from their list of eligible venues. Thomas Nelson did this first under the name West Bow, also partnered with Author Solutions. But since TN was a small christian press and their name wasn't attached directly it didn't get the same press with HQ jumped on board. :-) Not that I've been following it obsessively or anything. Nope. Not me. *birds whistling*

November 23 2009, 16:09:19 UTC 7 years ago

That's because the MWA is awesome. Thanks for the update!

Side note: comics

markbernstein

November 23 2009, 14:27:21 UTC 7 years ago

Most comic books are self-published, and it works out fine for them (although most self-publishing comic creators also form their own imprints).

I was going to write about how the first "most" is an exaggeration here, but that's not relevant to the thread.

What is relevant is that the self-publishing (and, especially, self-marketing) model for comics is massively different from the model for books. The smaller point is that a 32-page black and white comic is a a whole lot cheaper to produce than a book. The initial investment might be one to two thousand, instead of six thousand.

The far bigger point is that the primary sales outlet for comics is unlike any other. Comics are mainly sold through independently owned and operated specialty stores. And of the few thousand of those that exist in the U.S., only a few hundred make a regular habit of stocking self-published comics. That limits your market, but it means that you have a market. Sending promotional material to a few hundred stores is doable, and it can get your comic on store shelves where readers can see them. Borders, Barnes & Noble, and even the independent book stores aren't going to give shelf space to a self-published book.

Also, "works out fine" is kind of arguable. While rare individuals (Jeff Smith, Terry Moore) have done well with self-publishing comics, my impression is that the average self-published comic makes about as much money as, well, the average filk album. :)

Re: Side note: comics

tibicina

November 23 2009, 17:45:30 UTC 7 years ago

A lot of web-comic authors who already have a following also publish their own comics as collections in book form and.. may or may not be able to support themselves with that and other comic-related things.

That said, in a lot of cases, they also view it as a hobby, and as long as the self-published comic breaks even, they're okay with that.

But yes, I agree she was thinking of independant comics and not Marvel or DC.

Also, I actually slightly disagree with your math, in that every comicbook store I've been in with one exception have a section for independant comics which include self-published titles. (The exception being the store which at least used to be in the Mall of America which was part of a chain and I know that other branches of the chain have an independant section.) It's still a much more reasonable number of stores to approach, especially if you start with the more local ones and expand outward/through conventions.

jaylake

November 23 2009, 14:44:43 UTC 7 years ago

Well stated. Thank you.

November 23 2009, 19:14:36 UTC 7 years ago

Very welcome.

the_s_guy

November 23 2009, 15:15:48 UTC 7 years ago

I'm betting it started because someone in Harlequin said to an executive "Hey, I figured out how we can freely make a truckload of money from thousands of poor sad deluded wannabes just by capitalising on our name."

Followed by the executive saying "Money, you say? Tell me more!"

professor

November 23 2009, 17:22:04 UTC 7 years ago

Agreed.

Deleted comment

November 24 2009, 02:50:10 UTC 7 years ago

Thank you!

alethea_eastrid

November 24 2009, 02:34:41 UTC 7 years ago

Oh, yes.

I'm in the Society for Creative Anachronism. There's a small but very real niche market, in us, for Very Obscure Medieval Stuff and How-To's (Naalbinding, anyone?) and we've been producing it pretty much since mimeographs were invented.

Mind you, the vanity-press fantasy novel that a Well Known Personage in the SCA semi-local to me wrote is hysterically awful--I'm told; I've never been able to bring myself to open it.

lovefromgirl

November 23 2009, 18:09:46 UTC 7 years ago

No disagreement. Much love, in fact. ^_^

November 24 2009, 03:06:37 UTC 7 years ago

Awwww, thank you!

linenoise

November 23 2009, 18:46:44 UTC 7 years ago

The phrase "monetizing their slush pile" is especially telling, and I'd be willing to bet large sums of money that that's *exactly* how and why this idea exists in the first place. Complete with utterly unironic usage of the word "monetizing" by some soulless marketing droid that pitched the idea.