Reinventing Yourself

QUESTION: In a recent interview, a famous author said that she has reinvented herself (changed what she wrote) three times. Why did she do this?

Almost everyone who writes long enough for the NY conglomerate publishers has to reinvent themselves or leave publishing.

Markets die. For example, when the historical romance market faded drastically some years back, many of its writers started writing contemporary romance, paranormal romance, and romantic suspense.

Publishers die or drop lines, and some authors are trapped in contracts that won't allow them to move their successful series to another publisher or write anything in direct competition to their series so they have to make a major change in direction with a new and very different series.

Selling numbers can fall to a point that no publisher wants her books so the author has to start over with a new name.

Authors change. One successful paranormal romance author lost her young child, and she left paranormal romance and started writing inspirational novels.

Some authors get bored.

Other authors are trend whores (their term) who change with the shifting popularity of types of books.

The danger with the constant shift in types of books is that you lose fans every time you make a shift, and you have to work extra hard at marketing yourself to a new group of people.

The most successful way to reinvent yourself is to build a brand with a certain type of books, write at least six, then start a second series or type of book that shares many of the same readers. Then you publish at least one book of each type every year.

How Many Books a Year?

QUESTION:  How many books a year should I write?

It's become standard, particularly in paranormal romance and urban fantasy series novels, for the author to have the first three books printed in very short succession.  I've seen several authors with three books out in three months.

The closely spaced books allow a synergy of promotion, word of mouth, the short attention spans of readers, and the addictive nature of readers to build phenomenal sales.

This method is so successful that sf and fantasy lines as well as thrillers now do the same thing.  

The good news for authors, both traditionally published and self-published,  is novels in short intervals are great for the career.  

The bad news is the schedule is a physical, emotional, and creative monster some authors don't survive.  

I know of several publishers who have told authors that if they can't produce on a fast schedule, the publisher isn't really interested.

You have to ask yourself how many books a year you can write and maintain your health, sanity, and your real life.  

Editors and agents may insist that you follow such a brutal schedule of books, but they care primarily for their bottom line, not the price you will pay, so think carefully before you agree to such a schedule.

Also, remember that the quality and uniqueness of the books will probably suffer if you have no time for rewrites or creative time to think through your new book.  

Even very successful name authors get caught in this trap so that their published books are in dire need of a serious rewrite and are so repetitive as to be boring.

NOTE:  Some self-published authors who aren't required to produce particular lengths for their novels report the same success as multiple novels by producing a series of shorter, often novella length, works.

Part Six

The Current State of Publishing and Bookselling, Part 6

WHAT ABOUT EPUBLISHING?

Right now, few authors can make a living at epublishing. Even erotica, the growth industry of epublishing, no longer pays the bills as it once did.

The market has become glutted with books from other small publishers, and the major publishers have moved into the market in ebook and paper formats.

Venues for ebooks like Fictionwise are currently being glutted with backlist from major publishers so that unknown authors can sink in a sea of books quite fast. Romance is particularly prone to this.

The authors who are successful in epublishing are prolific, produce quality books of one kind so they build their sales through backlist and loyal readers, and they market constantly to sell that first book to new readers.

Of course, this is the primary survival means in paper book publishing for most authors right now.

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Tomorrow, I'll suggest ways that readers and writers can fight to save the books they love.

Part Three

The Current State of Publishing and Bookselling, Part 3

Continuing my overview of what has happened in recent months.

EBOOKS

Ebooks are as much a part of the publishing scene these days as paper books. Most genre publishers offer the ebook version at the same time as the paper book, and backlist is being converted to ebooks at an incredible rate.

Ebooks continue to be the primary route of distribution for smaller publishers.

Most of the major book distributors have their own ebook distribution system, and Amazon is using its ebook reader, the Kindle, to make it as much a leader in ebook distribution as paper book distribution.

Ebooks are the primary growth area right now for most publishers, but the so-called "tipping point" in their popularity hasn't been reached according to most pundits.

USED BOOKS

Used book sales are a profit hemorrhage in the publishing industry.

The publisher and the author make nothing on used books so the industry is being starved by used book sales. This is a particular hardship for authors who don't have as diversified a number of titles as the publisher does.

This means that the author makes little money, the publisher loses sales on that author, and the author is less likely to sell another book to that publisher.

In other words, the big publisher and name authors with lots of backlist like Nora Roberts are hurt by used book sales, but the smaller authors and small publishers can be killed because they lose more than they gain.

Publishing is like investing, the more diversified you are, the better the chance for survival and profit.

The Internet has made used books an even greater problem because so many books can be found used.

The old belief that a buyer will choose new after discovering a new author through a used book is less true because it is so easy to find a used book within hours or less of the book hitting the physical shelves. Some books, courtesy of book clubs and advanced review copies, can be found used weeks or months before they hit the shelves.
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Tomorrow, I'll continue my overview by talking about Amazon's less than stellar behavior toward authors and publishers.