Quantum Storytelling

I’ve had several conversations where the other person expressed the importance of distribution and availability of an author’s book. The sentiment goes; If you just get your book out there in bookstores, people will randomly buy it.

As if getting it out there is all it takes.

We’ve all seen bargain bins, right?

So much for just getting it out there.

I’m going to let you in on something that can be learned in any industry. Independent game developers are always looking for that magical distribution method that will allow them to ditch publishers and retailers. Why? So they can become amazingly rich and famous Game Gods with no publisher, distributor, or retailer strings attached!.

Musicians struggle and dream of the day anyone can buy their CD in Circuit City or Best Buy.

“If I could see myself in the store, then I’ll know I’ve made it!”

Remember the bargain bin?

Distribution is a bankrupt marketing strategy. There are thousands of books collecting dust on the shelves of Barnes & Noble and Borders. I wonder what those authors would say if you approached them with a wide smile and said, “All you need to do is get in bookstores!”

Most of them would probably say, “Big deal. I’m already in bookstores. Tell me something that’ll make my book sell.” They might just punch you the face than respond to that advice. That’s O.K., they’re only the bitter ones. ;-)

Authors rarely have a problem with supply of their books. Their books are collecting dust in some bookstore, or for the self-published, in boxes of a spare room or the garage.

Supply should be the last worry in an author’s mind. Why? Because…

Supply means nothing without demand.

Imagine your worst supply nightmare. Imagine everyone wants your book but nobody can find it anywhere on the planet. Riots are breaking out and mobs of people are foaming at the mouth just to get a copy of your book. Ok, what’s the problem? Being in demand is a good thing, right? That just means every book you print gets snatched up by the rabid masses as soon as it becomes available.

Yet few authors ever achieve that kind of demand. So I’ll say it again; Supply is not a problem.

Supply is almost never a problem. I might even go so far as to say having a supply problem would be a good thing.

If you’ve got a finished book printed and ready to sell, there are many ways to get it to the customer. Most authors have a problem getting people interested in their work.

Focus on creating demand, and supply will naturally follow.

It may be too early to talk about this since I’m still in the editing stages of my novel. But why not?

I will self-publish it. Not P.O.D. (print on demand) but true self-publishing.

There are many reasons behind my decision, and some people have argued with me about it. Here are five reasons I’m self-publishing:

1. Intellectual property is the only thing a creator has. In business and marketing, it is the most important thing. Why would you give that up to a publisher?
2. I will have to promote my book til I bleed, whether or not a megapublisher picks it up. The simple facts are, publishers aren’t going to work that hard to sell your book unless you’re Stephen King. So if I have to promote my book either way, I’d rather promote it for my own good. Which leads to,
3. Why give up 85% or more of your revenue to somebody else? YOU wrote the book. It’s YOUR intellectual property. It’s YOUR product. All that blood, sweat, and tears for a pathetic seven to fifteen percent? I’m not greedy. I just know what all my effort was worth. It’s worth more than seven percent. Especially given I’ve put a lot of marketing and branding knowledge & research into the intellectual property of my novel.
4. I know my book best. I’m an avid student of business, marketing, branding, PR, advertising, etc. A publisher has a million other books to promote. Why will they give yours any special attention? Do they know your property as well as you? See #2 and #3.
5. All the other reasons aside this is the most important. I love business and marketing. I want to be my own product manager for my intellectual properties. Creating and selling my novel is fun. Building up PR, publicity, buzz, and selling my novel will be just as fun as writing it.

The knowledge that it’s your product, and everything is up to you–That’s the best kind of motivation I can possibly imagine.

Imagine an alternate scenario, where I’m only getting 7% of the revenue. The harder I promote my book, the more money the publisher makes. You’re an employee of the publisher. Many authors have day jobs. Who needs another one? Did you write a novel to become an employee? Most likely the answer is no.

The whole idea in writing a novel for me was to excerise a little creativity and control. To create something that is mine that can’t be mucked with by a publisher or anyone else.

I’ve looked into Print On Demand companies like BookSurge owned by Amazon. It seems OK. There’s one catch. They act as the publisher, and you, as the author, only get a cut. A royalty. The figures are much better than a traditional publisher would provide, but you’re still giving up a majority of the revenue to them.

So I’ve decided to incorporate when my novel is ready, get my ISBN and bar codes, and send it off to a printer. I rather like the burden of having stacks upon stacks of boxes with my book filling up a spare room or a garage. It will be fun to make that pile disappear.

Business is fun. The more independence you have the better off you are. Retain your rights. Hold onto that intellectual property. It’s all you’ve got!

“The year was 2345. Mankind had solved all problems… or so they thought. Until a great evil arose and threatened the fate of the universe! Only one man could stop it!”

Why are stories presented in this way? “Only one man could save the world!” is rather obvious isn’t it? Of course there’s a hero. Of course there’s a bad guy. If it’s action or adventure of any kind, there will be a hero and a villain in most cases.

It would be silly to call the existence of a hero and a villain in stories ‘unoriginal’. It’s part of the form. Get over it.

My problem has more to do with presentation. Why present the obvious?

There’s no better example than film trailers. Some of them are great, some of them actually cause people to avoid a movie. The better trailers grab your attention with something interesting, lure you in with a bread-crumb trail of high details, and then they cut you off with some kind of mystery. They leave you thinking “What’s going to happen!?” or “I definitely need to see that to find out what happens.”

Why can’t that kind of attention-draw be applied to any description of the story? Take for example, the blurb on the back of a paperback novel. If I read another meaningless description of something all stories have, I’m going to kill somebody in marketing.

It goes deeper though. I think one of the reason story blurbs use only the most generic elements that all stories have is that they don’t have anything unique about the characters or world to sell. Instead of “Only one man could save the planet!” put a twist on it. Why is that one man interesting? Tell me. Please.

Again, it comes down to giving the audience a new perspective, and that can’t be done if the creators don’t have a handle on unique perspective themselves.

I already have this mapped out for Quantum. It’s out of a passion for the unique perspective of the themes and story itself. Hopefully people will be able to tell from the blurb alone that I had a lot of fun with the creative process. To me that’s what is missing from a lot of story blurbs. It’s a shallow hard sell without any indication that the creator has any passion for what they created.

That could be the fault of some marketing department, or it could be the fault of the creator. I tend to blame the creator because marking departments often only work with what you give them. Either way, it’s something I value and wouldn’t give it up to the banality of somebody who doesn’t care about my story and is just “doing their job.”

Passion and perspective are dually important in how you present the pitch of your story. Oh, and marketing begins at the beginning, not the end.