I Give Up!

One thing that I long ago noticed about ebooks in general and self-published ebooks in particular is that they have a very, very, very short shelf life. Generally the ones that make a little money do so for just a few weeks to a few months. Then they are completely forgotten and stop selling.

Some of my friends who got into the self-publishing game claim to have made money at it. (Very few of them--a couple.) I've met a few self-publishers who made what I would call a killing at it. They sold enough copies of their books that they were able to quit their day-jobs and create self-published content full time. Of course most of those people later came to regret that decision as it was a short-lived phenomena. I've spoken to more than a few such who found themselves unable to pay their bills after a few months when those impressive sales dwindled to nothing and could not be rekindled. Lightning rarely strikes twice, they say.

But one guy I met (I refuse to call him a "writer" because he can't write) continued to do well at it for some time. He was able (somehow) to build a clientele of people who kept going back to his poisoned well to dip into his shit volcano for a continuing serving of his extrusions. Why? I have no idea as I would never develop a taste for such. But there are all kinds of people out there, some of whom will pay a self-publisher $3 or $4 every so often to read crap that would never make it beyond a slush pile in the old days.

In addition, I'm convinced that Amazon artificially creates some of these "success" stories just to fuel the fires of the self-publishing scam. Where would a pyramid scheme end up without a few people making money at it? You have to show someone making a few shekels or else you can't generate a steady stream of suckers.

Today, for instance, I got an ad in my email box from Amazon suggesting a new science fiction novel. I looked at the graphic. It looked to be the cover of a very crappy self-published ebook. But I was curious--not even Amazon would promote the kind of shit that I see in the world of self-publishing...would they?

I clicked on the ad. It took me to the book's spot on Amazon. I'd never heard of the author. The cover was pretty awful. Military sf. I then decided to at least "look inside". I read a couple of paragraphs...

Oh. My. God.

Indeed, Amazon had sent me an email promoting a self-published  pile of shit. As with every self-published novel I have ever tried to read, this one was a stinker. It smelled. The stench was overwhelming. If I needed any more proof that Amazon feels bound to promote crap for the sake of furthering the destructive scam we know as self-publishing, this was it: all the proof I needed.

For the love of English literature, cut it the fuck out. 

A Brief Conversation.

Writer: "You're going to do what with that?"

Self-pubber: "I'm going to self-publish it."

Writer: "Really? I always flush those down the toilet."

Dump it! Don't publish it!

What Is a Kindle Good For?

As long-time readers here will recall, I am not a fan of ebooks and I am absolutely and irrevocably disgusted by the self-publishing scene. About a year after I got my Kindle as a Christmas gift I stopped using it to such an extent that I lost track of it. I didn't even know where the goddamned thing was and really didn't care, except for the fact that it was a gift from my wife, and that I sometimes used it as a tablet to access the Internet when I was traveling.

So, what was it for, really?

I wasn't getting any real use out of it. I admit to occasionally buying ebooks that were written by friends, but after a solid year of reading self-published novels that ALL (yes, every single one of them) turned out to be utter shit, there was no way that I was ever going to use the Kindle for buying such trash again. Why was I keeping it?

Yeah, it makes for a half-assed decent tablet for Internet content if I can find wifi service while on the road.

But was that it?

No.

Finally, after having the damned thing for a couple of years, I did discover a good use for it, and one for which the form is uniquely suited:

Classic literature and otherwise out of print books. I have now downloaded many hundreds of such texts. Essays, novels, old news items, political tracts from the past, and such. And--I mentioned this long ago--it's a good way for authors who have regained ownership of older novels to get works back into circulation once their lives with traditional publishers are over. There is a tremendous amount of great work now easily at hand that I would otherwise be unable to locate or only find after months or years of searching in second-hand bookshops and library sales.

So, for that, the ebook format is good. I still don't prefer it as a method of reading, but I will take it to get my hands on Turgenev, or M.R. James, or some of Mark Twain's forgotten essays, amusing science fiction from past decades, and the list is vast and growing.

Best of all, this stuff all seems to be completely free. All I have to do is locate it online in the correct format and push a button. Zing! It's mine.

But, to paraphrase a now-famous article, 'No, I will not read your fucking self-published novel'.

Ivan Turgenev

(And, yes, I produce this expression when someone asks me to read their fucking self-published novel.)

Good News

My long-time readers here know of my complete distaste for self-published ebooks. I have been hoping that the fad would fade and that things would get back to normal in the business of books and book publishing. The main thing that I kept thinking would come to pass is that the complete flood of poorly written, self-published shit would finally so completely disgust the collective reader that they would finally--FINALLY--stop downloading and supporting that most hideous of creations: the self-published ebook.

And, it looks as if the tide may at last be turning. I hope this bodes ill for the self-published ebook fad and that real talent and skill will once again hold the day.

We'll see.

Kindle sales plummet.

Duh! We self-published our books! Duh!

Bookstore Musing

I love to go to bookstores. They are my favorite places to shop. I'm going to miss them when they're gone.

Two nights ago I hit a couple of bookshops on my rounds. I've found that not only are they great places to spend my money, they also almost always spur me to think and to write. Just being among the stacks of books makes me fool good and seeing all of the stuff in print spurs me to wonder about what I want to write, how I want to proceed with what I am currently writing, and force me to consider what kind of writer I want to be.

This latest trip especially had me dwelling on that last point.

What kind of writer do I want to be?

When I was younger all I wanted to do was write for a living. I didn't want to get rich doing it, but I wanted to be able to work full-time as an author. Frankly, I didn't care what kind of work would get me to that point--all I knew was that I wanted to produce prose for a living.

Initially, I wanted to write pulp fiction for a living. This meant that I'd create fantasies of one type or another. I'd generate worlds and outlandish characters and oversized plots. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's what some of my favorite writers did and it's no surprise that I wanted to follow along those lines. My initial modest successes were in producing and selling this type of thing. For a while--a brief while--I figured that I was on the right path and that soon I'd be able to sit behind a keyboard all day to make my daily bread.

I figured wrong, of course.

I've had a lot of writer friends over the years, and I honestly have never known anyone who wrote full time for a living. I've known people who wrote and didn't work, but most of those cats were being supported by someone else--usually their parents. And I've known people who were squeaking by on the starvation sums they were gathering from their fiction while their families suffered because of their stubbornness. But absolutely none of my friends have ever done well enough from writing to pay the bills and keep the debt collectors away and the lights on and the table supplied with food. It was never easy to do for anyone and I've always had to maintain a day job, even in the years when I did relatively well with writing.

And now it's even more difficult than before.

After selling scores of short stories to dozens of markets and hundreds of pages of scripts to many comic book publishers and a number of novels to several book companies, I knew that I'd likely never make the transition to full-time writer. Only a very few folk make that kind of dough from their prose.

But standing in those shops and peering over the thousands of titles always makes me wonder again what kind of writer I need to be. Should I continue to pursue the path of pulp fiction? Should I change direction and pen mainstream work? Or do I toss fiction aside and work on non-fiction? All of these thoughts have occurred to me.

Likely, I'll stick with the weird fantasies and hard-boiled fictions that have always fascinated me and spurred me to action. I'll continue to gravitate to the sections of the bookshop shelves that hold such volumes.

But, man, I am going to miss the bookstores when they're gone.

Like the glaciers, they're melting away.

And soon they'll be a fading memory...

Writer versus Self-Publisher.

Self-publishers are not writers. They type, but they're not writers. They are a completely new critter on the face of business, but they are not artists and they are not creators in the classic sense of the term.

What they are, is exactly what they call themselves: Self-publishers. A lot of them like to use the hideous term "Indie Writer" to self-identify. But that description--while it conjures an overwhelming stench--doesn't really do justice to what it is that these folk do.

They self-publish.

That's all that they do.

Everything about them revolves around this one thing: self-publishing.

It doesn't matter what it is that they're self-publishing. Everything takes a back seat to the fact that they are pushing a button and sending out their poorly rendered crap onto the Internet and into the marketplace and hoping against hope that they'll make a buck from this dissemination of garbage.

They live to self-publish. They exist to clog the book business with a blockage of sewage that no plumber can dislodge. I doubt anything short of a thermonuclear detonation could clear the backlog of stink that they have forced on us all.

A self-publisher does not write. They do produce words, but they do not strive to make anything of worth by doing so. Self-publishers are shills for Amazon.com and Apple and the various companies who sell applications for tablet devices and the portable computers that people call phones. These scumbags don't care that their so-called 'work' is completely lacking in anything that might otherwise be worthy in fiction or non-fiction. That doesn't matter to them. They are here to sell a pyramid scheme, not a book.

Self-publishers are the worst of the worst. If they were writers (and they are not), then they would be the least talented and the least deserving to see the light of print. Instead, they are salesmen. And the lowest order of salesmen. These weasels strive to ensure that there is a sucker born every millisecond. Their job is to create victims and not something of merit.

Some time back I swore never to spend a penny of my money on self-published work. I swore never to waste an instant of my time trying to struggle through self-published fiction. So far, since that moment, I have stuck to that oath. And this is the only thing that will put an end to what another writer has termed "the shit-volcano" that is self-publishing. I'm hoping that at some point the avid readers will boycott anything tainted with the stench of self-publishing.

I do hold out hope that the fad will come to an end. That the millions of self-published novels will wither and die on the Internet vine and that the scumbags who make their livings promoting the self-published Ponzi scheme will find themselves tending the counter at the nearest equivalent of the Kwik-E-Mart.

"I was once a successful self-published asshole."

Indie Crapper!

There's a term around these days that quite actually makes me ill. It's "indie writer". What it's supposed to mean are authors who have decided to self-publish their work, rather than go through the traditional method of publishing (hard work).

But what the use of "indie writer" tells me is that the author has no talent and has added another turd to the already clogged pipeline of the fiction marketplace.

There was a time when I actually supported "indie writers". I would let them promote their books on my various online community home pages. I'd link to their books if they requested it. I'd "re-tweet" their promotions for them. If it looked like they needed it, I'd give them a pat on the back and a word of encouragement.

Enough of that crap.

If you are a self-described "indie writer", what you truly are is either a misguided idiot foisting your putrid attempts at prose onto an already burdened marketplace, or you are an ego-mad dishonest asshole out to victimize both the customer seeking quality work, and the authors who actually deserve notice who are working hard to create decent fiction.

Indie Writer. Wearing that title with pride? Whenever I see anyone brag about their status as such, I see a jackass wearing a cap of turds on their skull.

Fuck the lot of you. And whatever you do...don't ask me to help you promote your indie piece of shit.

Remember this? ATLANTA NIGHTS by Travis Tea. It was created by a group of writers to show that anything would be offered a contract at PublishAmerica. It was intentionally awful and meant as a statement to expose a worthless outfit. Now...compared to what "indie writers" produce by the thousands every day, it's a sparkling work of art. Self-publishing has wrecked English literature and the legitimate fiction marketplace.

One More Time?

I've been quietly and respectfully communicating with various authors who self-publish. Mainly what I've been wondering about was how they were doing, sales-wise. All of them are having problems. Some of them blame Amazon for changing the way the books are listed, but most of them blame the flood of self-published books that are hitting the ebook market.

I'll write more on this later, but for now will have to leave it at that.

As I'd hoped when I wrote my first essays on the self-publishing fad, it finally seems to be fading. Not the number of self-published books...that's worse than ever. But even some of the people who had been doing well at the rigged game are now finding that their crap no longer sells--the reading public has realized that it just stinks.

For now, I take a short break until tomorrow. I have work to do.

The intentionally awful "novel" written to expose PUBLISHAMERICA. Now works far worse than this are published by the hundreds every few hours via Amazon and Smashwords, Kobo and Apple, etc. I wish someone could come up with a way to "expose" the flood of self-published garbage...but it's just too obvious to ridicule.

Books as Oil Wells

One thing that hit me when I was studying the self-published ebook fad is that many authors came to the conclusion that their books were meant as paydays. This is okay. Unless you're trying to produce something that is solely a work of art, you need to keep a commercial eye on the ball. It's unfortunate that the self-published market is more like a produce store filled only with rotten fruit, but that's not the point I'm trying to make today.

What the more successful of the self-published writers (for some reason they like to call themselves "indie writers", even though they're all fodder for Amazon.com, a burgeoning monopoly) have learned is that their books are like oil wells. An oil well can make you a lot of money. Or it can make you a decent amount of money. It can make you no money at all. It can even break you (too bad this doesn't happen more often with self-published books).

One thing about oil wells is that they are not perpetual. That pool of oil or lake of oil or even sea of oil will run out at some point. Most successful ebooks will explode out of the gate like a newly tapped gusher. It will then subside just a bit and then begin to taper off and eventually cease selling altogether. This is the way of book sales in any market, but it's compounded in the ebook market.

It's a rare author who can pen a book that keeps on selling month after month, year after year, decade after decade. I like to use Richard Matheson's seminal paranoid fantasy I AM LEGEND as a good example of an excellent book that just keeps...on...selling...year...after...year. Deservedly so, I must add. (It's a classic of apocalyptic fiction.)

But almost all ebooks have a short life-span. And what the most clever of the so-called "indie" writers have done is to just keep drilling. Well after well. They churn out one book after the other, spilling their literary bowels onto the marketplace and trying to hang on to the fans that they have inexplicably earned. When one well runs out, go to the next. On and on. As long as they can keep this oil well strategy making them a living, they're not going to stop. Hell--we live in a free enterprise system and we shouldn't begrudge them their little success stories (save for the fact that, ultimately, they're harming the book market).

"Give us the ka-chunk ka-chunk!"

So, if you're going to start into that game of self-publishing, do what the more clever of the ebook fadsters have already learned: churn that shit out. Keep it coming. Drill that next well. Frack every reader out of the substrate. What I'm hoping you all eventually do is drain that lake completely dry and go extinct. No more wild-catters in the writing biz. Then literature can return to the world.

Self-publishing Ebook Advice.

Even though a hefty portion of my own book sales are via ebooks (but not self-published), I am not particularly happy with the form. Small press publishers are one thing. However, I see self-published ebooks as the end of literature. For that reason, I am listing the following advice for writers who wish to self-publish.

1: Don't do it. That's right. Don't self-publish your ebook. This is because, chances are, your book sucks Holy Roman Ass. And, yes, I'm talking specifically about YOUR book. Uh-huh, I've read your self-published ebook. Or, tried to. The thing is, they all suck, as I said, Holy Roman Ass. I don't care if your mom told you the book was great. It doesn't matter if your pal who lives two blocks over thinks it's the best thing he's ever read. And even if your third-period English teacher told you that you show talent...well, that teacher's lying to make you feel better...that's part of her job. In fact, though, your book or short story SUCKS!

2: Don't self-publish your books because we all know that you are an ego-mad and pretty much bothersome asswipe. And, yes, once again I'm talking about YOU. The market (such as it's called) is currently flooded beyond all hope of redemption with self-published garbage. I realize that there are a few among your number (but not YOU) who do know how to write. But what you're doing is adding to the shitheap that keeps anyone from finding those one or two novels in there with your muck that might be worth reading.

3: Avoid poisoning the book market; because you did nothing whatsoever to earn a place at my reading desk. Nothing. You never sold a story. You never went through the winnowing process that parted the wheat from the chaff. Your prose is like the extrusion from a bear's ass after it has been eating carrion and huckleberries. Yeah, it's runny, smelly shit. Keep your finger off of that publish button at Amazon and Smashwords. You suck. Your so-called "work" sucks. Your mom sucks for not spontaneously aborting you when you were just newly fertilized genetic material. You never should have fucking been born. I'm talking about YOU (if you're thinking of self-publishing).

4: Don't inflict the world with your awful prose by reasoning that because some self-published books are well written you think yours is one of them. Yes, I fully understand that there are exceptions to every rule. There have been--on EXTREMELY rare occasions--self-published books that won't make me vomit. But not YOUR book. YOU can't write worth a dingleberry on the anus of a 500-pound man whose ass has not been properly wiped in six years.

5: Bottom line, don't fucking self-publish. If you can't find a publisher willing to shepherd your work through to the light of print...then keep your puking awful prose to your puking self. And, yes, I'm talking to YOU.

"I'm self-publishing my great romance nove...BLARGH!"

"I just read your self-published novel and...BLARGH!"

OCCUPATION: WRITER

Yesterday while going through my shelves of books, I stumbled upon a volume that I had thought was lost to me. Years ago, when I used to give some of my books away to friends I thought would be educated by them, I had recalled passing this one on as a gift. But I must have only considered doing this and thought better of it. I'm so happy that I didn't act on the impulse, but kept it.

One of the most influential points in my world as a writer came when I read OCCUPATION: WRITER by the great author, Robert Graves. Graves is best known today for his novels, I, CLAUDIUS and CLAUDIUS THE GOD AND HIS WIFE, MESSILINA, and his memoir GOODBYE TO ALL THAT. I had read a number of his novels and was casting around for more of his work. In a used bookshop in Roanoke VA I stumbled upon an old paperback copy of OCCUPATION: WRITER.

My copy of OCCUPATION: WRITER. Pure literary gold.

This book is a collection of various pieces of his shorter works. Short stories, essays, articles, and plays. It was Graves' intention to showcase the fact that he was a professional writer and to indicate the breadth and reach of his abilities in various forms. I was attracted, of course, to the short stories. Two of the stories within this book hooked me like nothing I had ever read. From that moment on I looked at the creation of a short story in a different light and I don't recall ever allowing the influence of those two tales to fade away.

The stories were probably published as mainstream fiction in the 1920s when they first found the light of print, but they are both very definitely horror yarns of the first order. When I read "The Shout" I was impressed at the power of the work, and if there's a better lesson in how to slowly build tension and terror, I've yet to encounter it. In "Old Papa Johnson" he introduces the reader to a pair of soldiers recovering from severe wounds in a hospital. One--the Old Papa Johnson of the tale recounts an Antarctic adventure to the much younger soldier, referred to as Graveyspoons by the older man and who is obviously supposed to be Graves himself. I assume the yarn was inspired by something similar that happened when he really was in hospital during the First World War. As the story progresses as one of mainly historical interest and character humor, it slowly degrades into a very dark incident ending, at last, in an act of pure, cold-blooded monstrosity. I've yet to see any author equal it for power.

It's sad to think that in today's world of self-published garbage, sub-normal TV scripts, and the degradation we experience as the ebook fad, that we may now be looking upon the end of the days of the true professional writers. Gone are the skills and the powers of writers such as Robert Graves. Now we have a new normal of bad writing, self-publishing, and circle-jerks parading as literature. Alas.

The Self-Published Psychology:

Just when you thought that the world of self-published books couldn't get any slimier or more disgusting, you read this.

And on a light note, this is what happens when the same psychology that gives us the self-published novelist is transferred to the world of fresco restoration:

The world is awash in retarded amateurs who think they're creating something worthwhile. Alas!