Indies With Undies
DEAR READERS, WRITERS, and people who stumbled upon this blog because of its most popular post ever (“You Can’t Shave a Vagina”):
I am proud to be an Indie Author, and Indie Pride Day is July 1st. What happens on Indie Pride Day? Look, I made a pretty poster to tell you all about it, and there are no vaginas in sight:
A friend asked me today: what is an Indie Author? My definition of an Indie Author is either a self-published author (one who publishes directly, through Amazon and other online outlets), or an author who publishes through a small “independent” publishing house.
Indies are the folks who refuse to submit query after query for months or years to try to get a literary agent. Having an agent is a necessity if you want a book to even be considered by an editor at the big publishing houses.
Here’s a rough timeline of the way publishing used to work for most authors, when it did work, before indie publishing. It still works this way for the vast majority of authors who don’t want to be indies:
- Author writes book (3 months to 10 years).
- Author queries agents (could take years to get one, or never, no matter how good your book is, since agents only accept books that they like and that they think they can sell to publishers — whose customers are actually bookstores, not readers).
- Author gets agent (woo-hoo!) or doesn’t (boo-hoo!)
- Lucky Author spends book’s imagined first six month’s royalties on big party! (This is just a guess. It’s what I would do. I would hire a pony and a bouncy castle and Kylie Minogue to sing her old “Lucky” song, but no clowns. Sure, I have issues about never having a real birthday party as a kid. How did you guess?) Unlucky Author repeats steps 1 and 2 until the end of time.
- Agent sends out feelers to publishers on Lucky Author’s behalf (could also take years, with no guarantee of success, and involves sending out a few chapters, waiting months, sending out full manuscript, waiting more months…)
- Lucky Author gets publishing contract (which probably gives at most 25% of sales price as royalties to Author, and contains clauses that effectively turn Author into an indentured servant of the publisher).* Unlucky Author repeats steps 1-5 until the end of time.
- Lucky Author waits another year or more for book to come out, and has virtually NO SAY in what the cover looks like or even what the final title of the book will be.
- Publisher doesn’t promote it.
- Book dies death of old age and neglect.
- Agent, who got 15% of Author’s advance and then nothing, refuses to answer Author’s calls, emails, text messages, and threats written in blood on sidewalk in front of Agent’s house.
- Restraining order.
- Prison.
- What happens in prison stays in prison, until Lucky Author writes memoir and repeats steps 1-12. Unlucky Author dies in prison.
It’s no wonder that hundreds of thousands of authors — fabulous, good, mediocre, bad and horrible horrible horrible authors — have jumped at the chance to publish directly and let customers decide whether or not they like a book. I can’t think of another industry where entrepreneurship is so looked down upon. Say you are a fabulous (or horrible horrible horrible) cook. You are free to open up a restaurant anywhere you want, and your patrons will decide if your food is good.
Many Indies have found that books they cooked up, books that were rejected for years by agents and publishers, are being gobbled up by readers. Some of those books have become bestsellers and are even being made into feature films. Others struggle to get a foothold and to make even a few sales. Sure, Indie publishing is hard and not for the faint of heart and if you want to succeed, having a good book is not enough — you have to pull up your big girl panties and market the sucker. And you have to publish another book. And another. And market those suckers, too.
As for me, I’m still shopping for those big girl panties. I truly believe that someday I will be an Indie With Undies.
So for Indie Pride Day, I hope you Indies With Undies out there will do what it says on the poster. And as for you readers: Do you have a favorite Indie-published book? Then please take a pic of yourself holding it up, and post it with pride on social media on July 1st, with the hashtag #IndieBooksBeSeen.
Clothing is NOT optional.
As for the rest of you, I’m pretty sure you’re gone by now or have jumped directly to learning why you can’t shave a vagina. And I hope you’re proud of yourselves.
* In all seriousness, do check out this post on the subject by bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith.
Reasons to Type Faster!
Greetings from The Voice of Doom!
Remember the old story from Isaac Asimov?
I was once being interviewed by Barbara Walters… In between two of the segments she asked me… “But what would you do if the doctor gave you only six months to live?” I said, “Type faster.”
Well, then: You probably know all about these two good reasons to stay indoors and type faster:
Arctic lampreys falling from the sky, and
Super Volcano gets Supersized.
I mean, people, we already knew that when it blows, civilization as we know it will end. Now they say the new magma chamber they’ve found could fill the Grand Canyon 11 times! So what the world needs now is more Paranormal Romance! Chick Lit! YAAAAAAAAAA !!!!
The Voice of Doom wants more bad news, more reasons to type faster.
Whaddya got?
“STATE YOUR OCCUPATION!”
Just signed the tax forms. Where it said “occupation,” I put “writer,” but only because THIS wouldn’t fit:
“I take those stupid fb tests, you know, the ones where you’re supposed to find out which ’80s action hero you are (John McClane), or which Harry Potter character you are (Hermione, duh!), or which famous writer is your soulmate, even though she’s dead and you’re not a lesbian (Virginia Woolf) or which kick-ass character you are from a TV series (RIVER SONG, alias Melody Pond. I get to marry The Doctor, who, by the way, has also kissed me mum).”
You know what else wouldn’t fit under “Occupation”? This:
“I turn sentences around. That’s my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning.” (Phillip Roth)
Or this: “I do the hokey pokey and I turn the words around…”
Or this. “Yes, I AM a writer! I didn’t say it pays…”
Or this: “Stop laughing, IRS guy! I said, Stop laughing!”
You know what would fit, though? “Hello, Sweetie!”
Fantasy Evildoers are All Gay (says no study whatsoever)
Tis still the season to blog under the influence. So, Ho Ho Ho. There’s a study to explain why we writers should all go out and play more. It’s all about Vitamin D and hobbits and fantasy bad guys. My conclusion? (Remember, I am blogging under the influence. Don’t do this at home):
Fantasy Evildoers are All Gay (says no study whatsoever).
No, really. No study whatsoever has ever found that to be the case. So it MUST be true.
The only thing better about this (following) study would have been if the U.S. government had paid for it, and Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin had had a cow over it. And then Sarah Palin shot the cow. And then she and Michele ate it. And then Peta and Greenpeace got involved, somehow, perhaps meeting at (or on) a holiday ice-breaker, with Pussy Riot as the entertainment. And then Vladimir Putin came riding in, shirtless, on a reindeer…
Cuz, you know, Vitamin D cures gay people. Especially hobbits.
I have reprinted just the abstract of the study. You know, the study that doesn’t say Vitamin D cures gay hobbits. Cuz, you know, lawsuits.
Abstract for:
The hobbit — an unexpected deficiency
by
Joseph A Hopkinson and Nicholas S Hopkinson
Objective: Vitamin D has been proposed to have beneficial effects in a wide range of contexts. We investigate the hypothesis that vitamin D deficiency, caused by both aversion to sunlight and unwholesome diet, could also be a significant contributor to the triumph of good over evil in fantasy literature.
Design: Data on the dietary habits, moral attributes and martial prowess of various inhabitants of Middle Earth were systematically extracted from J R R Tolkien’s novel The hobbit.
Main outcome measures: Goodness and victoriousness of characters were scored with binary scales, and dietary intake and habitual sun exposure were used to calculate a vitamin D score (range, 0–4). Results: The vitamin D score was significantly higher among the good and victorious characters (mean, 3.4; SD, 0.5) than the evil and defeated ones (mean, 0.2; SD, 0.4; P < 0.001).
Conclusion: Further work is needed to see if these pilot results can be extrapolated to other fantastic situations and whether randomised intervention trials need to be imagined.
Read the rest of the post here! It’s fascinating. And there are hobbits!
(Why are you still here? I said read it! It’s not like you have anything else to do today.)
Merry Christmas!
Secrets-of-the-Universe
John Collier’s
“Priestess of Delphi”
Question:
What does someone do with the time someone intended to spend putting up decorations, cooking, etc., when one has a bum arm and is forbidden to do any of the above? (Put up a tree? I can’t open a f&cking tuna can! I can’t yank the Band-aids off my own ass, the ones covering my two-a-day injection sites!)
Answer:
Someone finally joins Quora, and contemplates the secrets of the universe in question and answer form. (Someone also gets her husband to open the f&cking tuna. The tree? Ha ha ha ha ha… And the Band-aids will fall off eventually. Probably into the toilet. Clogging it up. You think Band-aids can’t clog up a toilet? We once had a plumber accuse us of flushing so much dental floss that it clogged the pipes. We did not flush dental floss. Not even a single strand. Someone did, though. But who? When? And did they cackle maniacally while they did so? Could they see the future, or know what damage that floss would wrought? We will never know.)
So, I probably won’t be asking or answering a lot of questions over at Quora, because this is the kind of question I want to ask:
“Who flushed all the f&cking dental floss, and why do I care that the plumber believes it was me?”
Mostly, I will be skulking around Quora like a one-armed, Band-aid-buttocked Bandit. It is my way. But I wonder how the inhabitants of planet Quora would answer Jimmie’s Secrets-of-the-universe questions, in Hyperlink from Hell. Remember this? It’s Jimmie’s lament that, given the opportunity to ask God anything he wanted, he’d wasted that golden moment:
I’d blown my chance to ask Al some gritty, secrets-of-the-universe type questions, like “Why do flies always buzz around the center of a room?” or “How can blind people tell when they’re done wiping?”
Well, You can’t just ask them, can You?
I’m deadly serious. Wipe that smile off your face. And while you’re at it, I could use some help in the bathroom.
No, no; not that.
It’s just…
I can’t floss my f&cking teeth.
Belly-up! 
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