Screenwriting : Branching out into prose - go "legit" or self-publish? by Edward Case

I too am an author and went through pretty much what you are going through. First of all, most agents won't rep short stories or novellas. The fact that you got comments back instead of a form rejection is huge. Be encouraged. Second, get it published in the journals or a small publishing house anthology IF the terms are right. Most will require you to agree not to publish the story anywhere else for a year as a non-compete clause, then all rights revert back to you. Take the peanuts, keep writing short stories, wait the year, and self publish your own anthology of short stories. At this point there is little an agent or traditional publishing house can do for you. They can get your books into bookstores, but that's an ever shrinking market. They have pretty much killed advances and promotion for all but their A-listers. So sign with them and you wind up giving away the majority of your royalty. Amazon will pay you 70% if your book is priced $2.99 or above. Sign with a traditional publisher and you get 10-15% even on ebook sales - which is the majority of sales these days. Great deal for the publishing house as they don't have to print anything, distribute anything, or pay for returns. Their costs on an ebook is essentially zero, only one ebook file is created and it's available forever without any action required by anyone. Take charge of your writing career. Self publish, and if you've written a great book, it will take off on it's own, and you don't have to share your success with anyone. Just ask Hugh Howey.

By the way, self publishing is legit. It's not a vanity press. If your product (story) is good, it will sell. If not, it won't. Traditional publishers will publish your story if they think it will sell, but much of what they put out also doesn't sell. And if you have a best seller in you, all you get with having it put out by a traditional publisher is the loss of about 80% of your royalty. Now if you wind up being an A-lister with multiple best sellers, then things might be different. The publishing house will give you a healthy advance and promote your books. But even A-listers are breaking out on their own to see if self publishing results in a bigger share for them. Good luck.

Self publishing is the way to go these days... First build up an audition for your work through social media... the more of a following... the more books will sell and it will be easier to get that literary agent and publishing houses to pay attention to you. I will be having Sierra Millman on my radio show tomorrow..Tuesday Nov 26th... on http://blogtalkradio.com/jenniferhillman and we will be discussion the writing process through publishing. You may want to listen in.

I just self-published my first novel. (Toot! Toot! - The Exile - Lies of Lesser Gods Book One) You are on your own with marketing, but if you can handle that workload, you can do pretty well. I'm reaching a world-wide audience, I'm getting fantastic reviews, and I'm getting a good royalty on my sales through Amazon, Kindle and Kobo. (www.lgamcintyre.com - Chapter Preview and Book Trailer)(twitter: @lgamcintyre) I have a friend, L.Suzuki, who has been writing for about 10 years - self published, self promoted - who has just sold the movie rights to her YA series. Yay!!!! Having worked extensively in Film/Television Industry, book publishing is a different hat. The rollout is a long road. Your first book isn't going to make $1mil. Neither is your second book. Maybe your 5th if you make it that far. It is a long game that has to be treated as a full time job. Marketing, Marketing, Marketing. Build up interest before you launch - Aps, Launch Pages on a Website, Contests - whatever it takes to start generating a buzz before your launch date. Set aside a certain amount of each day to cultivate your social media. And then go for it! Good Luck!

Great time to have this discussion! I am a producer at AVNation.tv and we just had a show on the topic of self publishing on our DIY Show. DIY Ep. 16: "1K True Fans". Talking Self-Publishing http://avnation.tv/shows/diy/diy-episode-16-1000-true-fans/ Let us know if this was helpful and we are always looking for new voices to be on our shows. Show Notes: Hosts: Anthony Zotti, Tim Gray Guests: Carla King from www.SelfPubBootCamp.com, David Jordan of www.zhackers.com and Nathan Lively from www.sounddesignlive.com Traditionally publishing a book was a long and difficult process that had several high hurdles to overcome to even get your book looked at by a publisher for consideration. And even then it was not guaranteed that your book would see the light of day. Today in the internet age Self Publishing thrives due to the advent of ebook readers and the technology that brought us print on demand. But these are not the only ways to get your ideas out there for others to enjoy

I think there are a ton of advantages to having a publisher but self publishing also has it's advantages. You can check out my website at WWW.JulieRedfieldYoung.com. I'm not really convinced a website generates sales, but it does make you look more professional, so either way you chose to break into the publishing world, I think it is worthwhile to have one.

Good stuff, George.

Thanks Mark

Thanks, Mark! And thanks to everyone. It seems that this is a hotter topic among screenwriters than I first imagined. I look forward to taking a look at the links.

As the paradigm of self publishing, I would offer up "WOOL" (the link below). It all comes down to quality as perceived by the customer, the reader. The cover for "WOOL" sucks, as does the title - which only makes sense after you read the book (does the word "WOOL" bring images of apocalyptic sci-fi to mind? Not for me.). He put no effort into advertising, blog tours, or anything else. And yet it has sold over a million copies, and spent multiple weeks on the NYT best sellers list. Why? Because the story is compelling, and the writing stellar. It's the kind of book you want to tell your friends about. And that is ultimately what dictates whether a book will be a success. A traditional publisher can't give you that, it's either already written in, or it's not. Much like movies, audience reaction and word of mouth is everything. Look at any blockbuster stinker. A thirty-million dollar ad campaign may generate initial buzz, but if the movie stinks, people will tell their friends not to bother and it will tank anyway. http://www.amazon.com/Wool-Part-One-Hugh-Howey-ebook/dp/B005FC52L0/ref=s...

As a self published author, you have to be very careful of who approaches you and who you work with. I find Amazon is so much better at it than my current one. I accidentally went with New York's Literary Agency and referred me to their sister site, both are not legit. I got upset once I found out that the editor they got to fix it, didn't do the job. It turned out the editor was a copy editor, get a book editor. Eloquent Books became my self publisher, however I won't release anything through them again even if they want to give out $500 to their writers. Through Amazon, you can choose e-books or not. Several famous authors had a rough start so your not alone. Terry Goodkind wrote short stories for two years. John Grisham sold his books from his car trunk before he landed a big publisher. It takes years to get noticed by the big publishers so be patient.

Sorry you were scammed - it's not uncommon. The website below is a good resource for finding if a publisher or agent is legit. It's not all inclusive because scammers come and go so quickly, or reinvent themselves with a new company name, but it has quite a bit of useful information. http://pred-ed.com/peba.htm

Edward, I am a Literary Agent. If you are getting "clever" in your rejections the problem isn't likely your story. Contrary to common experience a good agent can do a lot for you, including (in my case at least) tell you WHY you got the rejection and what to do to 'fix' that. Interested in having me take a look at your manuscript? I can only promise to give you the truth about what I see, good, bad, or ugly. Sometimes it is not the manuscript it is you. A needy author or an unknown author with a bit of an ego can be a real issue for them. Publishers like authors with Agents because it removes the emotion from the work. The Agent is the bearer of all bad news and won't knowingly send a bad manuscript to the publisher. Saves them time and puts you past the first round in their office.

Thanks for the offer, Cap. I'll message you off-thread.

I say take Michael Caputo's offer to look at your manuscript. A literary agent should be your first step. It's not a guarantee. I had two literary agents for my book 35 Miles From Shore. Neither of them were able to find a publisher. I decided to publish the book myself. The book has sold over 10,000 copies. That's not bad, but I truly believe that the book could have sold ten times as many copies if it had a major publisher behind it. I'll be starting the whole process over again with my second book. I'll choose self publishing only after exhausting my search for a traditional publisher.

Emilio, I'm not trying to rain on your parade, you did very well with your first book, but I doubt you would have made more with a traditional publisher. Let's break it down. First, a traditional publisher would not have advertised your book, they just don't anymore other than for a select few. So it would have sold exactly as many electronic copies on Amazon as you sold. The difference is, instead of the 70% royalty you got for doing it yourself, you would have gotten 10 to 15%. Yes, it would have been distributed to stores as a paperback, but where in stores - not the front or anywhere prominent, those spots are reserved for the Kings, Koontzs, and Picoults of the literary world. You would have sold some, but would you have sold enough to offset the cost of returns in order to get any money? Say you did get a check for paper sales, would it be enough to offset giving up 80% of your electronic sales money. I truly doubt it. (Actually, 80% is conservative. Remember that in the traditional model, your agent also gets 15%) The fact that you sold 10,000 copies of your first book tells me you can write. And your first book isn't done. You have 10,000 fans ready for your next book. If your next book is as good or better than the first, it will gather even more new fans who, when they finish the book two, will go back and buy the first. And selling 10,000 copies at your price point is amazing. $7.69 is pricey for an ebook. A few months after your next ebook comes out, I'd drop the price to $3.99 to see how many more people I could attract (just my opinion). I don't think you need a traditional publisher. Though if you keep building your audience, they will come looking for you. They would love to share your money. I would only consider a traditional publisher if I could work a deal similar to Hugh Howey's, where what we're negotiating is paper rights only. Because that's what they do best. For ebooks, they add nothing and unlike paper books, the have no risk. They don't pay for printing, distribution, or returns. They just sit back and collect the lion's share of the profits. Just my two cents worth.

Here is the number one problem with self publishing - credibility. If your goal is to reach readers, you need recognition from mainstream publications. You can't sell any books if no one has ever heard of it. I learn about new books from reading reviews in publications such as Entertainment Weekly and USA Today. A self published author has no chance of getting reviewed in a mainstream publication. The same for radio and TV. Mainstream publishers also offer a much better opportunity for ancillary rights: foreign, audio, film. I have not considered the possibility of negotiating print rights separately from digital. That might give you the best of both worlds, assuming you could get a traditional publisher to agree to those terms.

Most traditionally published books don't get reviewed in Entertainment (or anywhere else) Of all the books that come out every month, only a handful receive that kind of attention. You have 42 positive reviews on Amazon and a 4.5 out of 5 stars. You are legitimate. I understand the validation of being accepted by a traditional publisher. I have friends who have gone that route. But they can't make a living at it. I think you're doing great, and the arc of your writing career has just begun and it's pointed skyward. As to being able to negotiate only the paper rights for your books, it doesn't happen except in rare conditions. You have to be in the catbird seat and have half a million to a million ebook sales on a single title like Hugh Howey did. Even so, at first he couldn't get a publisher to agree and had to walk out of meeting with them. Finally one of them realized there was still a lot of money to be made even if it was only for paper rights, and that it was stupid to pass that up.

I think that the publishing industry is loosing its monopoly on the written arts and it is scaring them to death - hence the discrimination against self publishers as no more than "vanity" artists. This propaganda is becoming tougher to maintain each year. I watched - and am still watching - the same thing happening to the makers and distributors of film and television. The advent of the internet, the ability to independently produce and distribute your work worldwide has left many of the traditional producers scratching their heads, worrying about "Viral" and competing against cat videos and high quality Web Series for viewership. Is it anarchy, or is it the ultimate freedom for both the producers and the viewing public? I tend towards the latter. The public will decide, ultimately, what has worth to their lives and their money, and I doubt they will worry about "Legitimacy" when they do.

Self-Publish! Amazon has self-published books that are 'out-selling' Barnes and Noble and Borders etc. Check out https://www.facebook.com/authormarketingclub They are crushing it at selling YOUR next book. Respectfully, Nicholas Chase - producer / director / writer etc

Hi. Thought you might like to read an article on self-publishing in today's Toronto Star: http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2013/12/27/2013_the_year_of_s...

I'm not sure that many traditional publishers and agents are interested in novelettes or novellas. I have written a manuscript for a full novel and I spent a year trying to find traditional representation for it. In all the writing pubs and blogs I've read, there didn't seem to be any talk of novellas because it's super hard for agents to pitch them to publishers. Maybe try expanding your novella? For my next novel, if I don't find a traditional agent or publisher, then I'm selling it on Amazon. Much luck!

@Edward Case Self publishing is legit now. This goes for music, books and films. You won't get the wide release that an established company could give you but you also don't have the overhead, so you profit potential is easier to reach. There's a guy named John Locke who self publishes these paper back digital novels about this killer called Jonathan Creed. He sold them for 99 cents through Amazon and to date I think he's sold over two million books. He written 12 of them so far and they're pretty entertaining. You should check him out he even wrote a How to book breaking down how he did it. I have a web series I'm promoting The Invaders http://tinyurl.com/kmueg9l and I blog, email and post about it every day. That's how you build your audience and fan base.

Kamala, you're right on the money. The best you might get with a great novella is representation. To an agent, a novella would serve as a writing sample, and if it blows their hair back, they might ask what else you've got. Now once you're established and have a following, a major publisher will definitely publish one of your novellas.

Thanks for the new replies! I'd been away for a bit, seeing family and such. I'll keep people posted on the progress for the novelette. I chose that form, or rather, the project emerged as that form, in the process of development. The SF genre in particular seems to have accepted the form, at least in magazine form. Ender's Game, for example, began in that format in the 1970s.