Many of you have probably read the news that self-published e-book wunderkind Amanda Hocking is crossing over into mainstream publishing with a multi-million dollar deal with St. Martin’s press. Hocking, at the ripe old age of 26, felt she’d taken her young-adult paranormal series of books as far as she could on her own.
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How far did she take the series? Well, she self-published nine books, sold more than a million copies (almost all of them in e-book form) and earned almost $2 million. No doubt there are a lot of aspiring authors out there who would give their left foot to sell a million books. Or to make $2 million. Or to be 26. But let’s be clear, that’s a mere $2 per book and she has no overhead, no marketing department, no office rental, no full-time staff of harried editors, no art department no actual printing press, in short no expenses to speak of except her own considerable time, talent and computer equipment. Even so, it is far, far more than most authors make on any book or series of books and she knows it. A lot of her fans were dismayed to hear that she’d be signing on with a traditional publisher. Part of the appeal of Hocking, apparently, is her rogue route to success.
Explaining her decision to go the traditional publishing route, Hocking said on her blog: “I want to be a writer. I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling e-mails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc. Right now, being me is a full-time corporation.”
Now I should be clear, I had never heard of Hocking before reading an article this weekend in the New York Times. That probably marks me as hopelessly out of touch, but I have not been a young adult in a very long time, have never read much paranormal fiction and only recently dipped my toe into the waters of e-books. I decided to look up Hocking via the lazy man’s research tool, Google. Let me say this, she is not hard to find. She has a blog that rises to the top of the search, followed by the aforementioned New York Times article, Amazon listings, USA Today stories, HuffPo aggregated content, Wikipedia entry, a You Tube video and more. The girl is hot. And, apparently, she’s about to get even hotter.
Anyone who is writing nowadays has had someone suggest self-publishing. There are a handful of success stories that make it seem like a viable option, and it is for many people. But let’s be clear, the odds of real success, of breakout sales, of making any money at all, are vanishingly small. In fact, it’s far more likely that you will lose money in the process. Any money you spend on an editor (Hocking did and still bemoans the errors in her books) or an artist or a publicist comes right out of your own pocket with no guarantees that it will help sell even one additional book. You have to be good at self-promotion and willing to get out there and sell, sell, sell. This seems a particularly difficult task for many writers who, in my experience, spend a lot of time plotting excuses to avoid the next social event and wiping chocolate off their keyboards. That last one might be personal.
The odds of real success with traditional publishing is also pretty darn small, with the hurdle of even getting a traditional publisher being a tough one to clear. Hocking knows this, too. On her blog, she talks about creating a stable career for herself. She points to James Patterson and his latest book, which apparently was not received well by the critics but is still flying off the shelves in airports and discount stores and brick-and-mortar bookstores all because Patterson’s name is on the cover. “I want that,” Hocking writes. “Not the writing bad books thing. I’ll always strive to write a product that people enjoy. But I want to be a household name. I want to be the impulse buy that people make when they’re waiting in an airport because they know my name.”
Thanks to her recent deal with St. Martin’s, she’ll likely get her wish. Good for her. The publishing world is changing quickly and there are more avenues than ever to connect writers with readers, but the traditional press still has power. Despite my own struggles to succeed in that old-fashioned publishing model, this comforts me. I have no desire to self-publish. Frankly, I don’t have the energy. I’m not 26.
