Question re: AI, publishing, and other catastrophes

First thing's first: the AI storm has me deeply worried.

I've been part of the writing "scene" since finishing high school, nearly 30 years ago. Back then, when I was starting out, I wrote fan-fiction and song parodies -- mostly as exercises to get the creative juices going -- but even then, I read widely and deeply, and studied the elements of writing (e.g. plot devices, characterization, linguistic devices like metaphors and similes and so on, setting up a joke and delivering a punchline, etc. etc.)

I've since written eight critiqued books, and currently writing my ninth. So I know how to write. But I don't know much about marketing -- and the more I looked into it, the more time-consuming it seemed.

I also have a full-time job already, so I can't just drop it and promote my books on the socials. You know the old saying: don't quit your day job.

Then, of course, AI changed everything. Even before ChatGPT was merely a twinkle in OpenAI's eye, I saw all kinds of scams being pulled on Amazon and other websites, like con artists ripping off book covers and even entire worlds. (There are at least 15 Harry Potter novels that have nothing to do with J. K. Rowling).
AI has simply given these criminals another tool to their already bloated toolkit.

The dream hasn't faded; I would still love to publish, and have explored both traditional and self-publishing. But although I'm aware of the cons, the vanity presses, and the fly-by-nighters ... I haven't experienced them myself, so I wouldn't know how to protect myself. And since the industry is new to me, I don't know who to trust.

Given all of the above, it seems to me like traditional publishing is the only way to go. What do you think?

 

What did you do with your other eight books?

 

I haven't done anything with them as yet, aside from four things:

1. I contacted two other authors and set up a weekly mutual "critique round", whereby we swap our (and critique each others's) WIPs.

2. After the critique round (and subsequent editing), I went through each book again and scoured them for any logic errors (e.g. character X says Y to character Z in one chapter, and then in the next one, character Z forgets all about it and has to be reminded). I edited these out and/or replaced them. I also did a full word-count and page-count for each.

3. For trad publishing, I looked online for agents and publishers, and crunched some numbers (e.g. how much it would cost to be represented). For self-publishing, I looked at various websites of self-published authors, to learn from their experiences (e.g. how long it took, and what sort of workload it was).

4. I tried (emphasis on try) to create my own covers, using AI, despite not knowing how. The results were ... interesting, to say the least. I wouldn't want to use them as covers, but at least now I know what I'd like the covers to "say". (Of course that'll change once I talk to a cover artist).

So for now, these eight books are not doing much.

Since I finished my eighth book, I created an outline and beat sheet for the 9th one, and have been in the process of writing it and getting it critiqued. (It's been a slow process, especially since the setting is completely new to me, so I had to do much more research than usual).

 

As far as I'm aware, it shouldn't cost you anything to get represented. But there will be other people on the forum who have first hand experience.

 

All right. What about you -- have you gone the trad-publishing route, or self-publishing? And what has your experience been like? Just curious.

 

I write short stories, not novels. My only experience is submitting to magazines (and that, I've only started doing seriously this year). What I know only comes through what others who have gone down the trad publishing route have said. And those who have gone down the vanity route, knowingly or otherwise.

 

Fair enough. I've submitted short historical pieces to magazines for a few years, but they were specialist ones -- i.e. when I was performing Gilbert and Sullivan many years ago, I wrote pieces that examined whether Gilbert might have, maybe, based one of his characters on a real person. (He was known to do that!)

Once, when I did "HMS Pinafore", I wrote an article on what life "in the Queen's Navee" was really like in the 19th century: harsh and brutal, certainly, with the certainty of rum and the possibility of the cat-o'-nine-tails -- but what did it involve, and why? What were the captains like, or the sailors? And so on. <smile> Some of the stories I found were silly or strange, or even happy or lucky, and many were tragic -- but, above all, true.
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As for the vanity route ... no, thanks. I work hard on my stories, and I'd like as many people as possible to see them.

 

Traditional publishing is always the dream. The agent and the publisher take a cut, sure, but they take care of everything for you, which is well worth the cost. Editing, marketing, printing, all that stuff. It's certainly possible to become successful with self-publishing, but it's rare. It can be difficult to stand out when there's so much out there, including the AI slop that Amazon is half-assedly trying to prevent.

The other day I was reading an article on self-publishing. I learned that 2.6 million books are self-published every year. That's 300 books self-published per hour. The vast majority of it will be absolute shit. It's a tough uphill battle. Having failed to break into traditional publishing myself, I'll be giving this a go over the next few months. I am hoping that with my extremely unique book title (along with an attractive cover I hope to commission), I'll be able to get natural traffic on Amazon without spending much on advertising. It'll be interesting to see how that goes.

You've probably done some research on traditional publishing already, but I'll mention some basics for the benefit of others who may not have.

An important thing to consider is manuscript length. You're wasting time trying to query something significantly longer than 100K words as a debut author. You can maybe get away with 120K with science fiction or fantasy, but that's the maximum. Why? It's all about risk management. Need to minimize editing costs, printing costs, shelf space, because how a debut book sells is a real roll of the dice, no matter how much one tries to mitigate the risk. This is an important consideration for self-publishing as well. E-books? No problem. Print copies? The more pages, the more expensive, of course. Higher sticker price, lower sales, lower margins, lower profit.

The next most important thing is the opening of the novel. Forget about your prologues and slow burns and all that. Your opening pages need to include the inciting incident, and introduce your hook. That's what agents and publishers want to see. Consumers considering their next purchase online or in-store are going to need to get drawn in with those opening pages, or they're likely to keep browsing til they find something else that does draw them in.

Established authors can do whatever they like, obviously. They can put out a 400K word novel that doesn't get cooking til chapter 8 if they want, because they've already got fans who are going to buy the book without knowing a lot, or anything, about it. So yeah, just some things to keep in mind before starting the querying process. It's also best to have a short query letter, not longer than 350-400 words.

 

Thank you, Homer and Set2Stun, for correcting me and for your thoughtful replies.

One of the things that's stopping me from self-publishing is the thought of all that criminality happening on Amazon: covers being pinched and re-used, even whole books. (I've even heard of this happening to big names like Rowling). Amazon's lackluster response to it. And yes, the AI juggernaut. It's enough to put someone off completely.

Self-publishing, as I understand it, also requires me to do everything that trad-publishing does: all the marketing, legal, accounting etc. I've worked in accounting for decades, but I've no experience in legal or marketing matters, so naturally I'm hesitant. Is it the case?

Manuscript length shouldn't be a problem for me as a debut author. My first complete novel is in the high 80K mark, my others less.

The openings are something I will work on. There are no prologues or slow burns, but the inciting incidents and the hooks all happen very early on, I believe. *checks* Yes - the incident happens in the first 3-5 pages, and the hook happens well before the end of chapter 1.

Thank you also for letting me know how long the query letter should be. I remember writing similar letters when applying for work and sending out my CV, so I guess I roughly know the form. (Am I right in thinking that the longer a letter is, the more likely it is to be deleted without reading? Agents are busy people).

 

Amazon isn't the only place one can self-publish, but it's by far the biggest place with the most traffic and sales. Personally, I'm not going to worry about copyright infringement/theft at the outset. I need to be successful first before anyone would bother trying to steal my stuff, and finding success is going to be very difficult. There's not much accounting involved, as far as I understand. Amazon will periodically send you a statement saying, hey here's how many print copies you sold, and here's how many e-book copies. Here's what it cost to print those copies and here's our cut from both formats, and here's what you're gonna get after that. Marketing will be all up to you, so that's why I think it's important to have a unique, hooky title rather than a vague or generic one that's been used by other authors several dozen times already.

And yeah, agents these days are getting hundreds, if not thousands of queries a month, and they might make a full request on a handful of those, and perhaps sign a handful of authors in a year. So you gotta try to get their attention immediately, hold it, and leave them wanting more.