Dirty Publishing

I’ve been working my way through BookLife by Jeff Vandermeer. It’s slow going because I’m marking up the pages, underlining important passages and adding in my own remarks. I have never written in a book like this before, but the experience is so immersive that it’s helping quite bit to work some of my own issues out as I read.

Coincidentally I’ve been reading through the section on promo the last few days, which has helped me shape this little rant on dirty publishing tactics. What are dirty publishing tactics? Let’s explore.

Today my friend Stacia Kane found out a self published author on amazon was tagging her work and many others (like Kim Harrison, Laurell K Hamilton and Jeannine Frost) with her name and her book title in an effort to game Amazon’s system and make her books pop up along with those really popular authors. This is definitely dirty publishing.

A bit ago my Facebook feed was filled with promo for a writing book “by 40 Masters of the Horror Genre”. I knew the press already to put out books with poor covers and to send out invites to submit to anthos with no pay. Furthermore their rates for full length fiction is also listed on the web site and comes up to a grand total of $25 for each 100 copies sold. Personally I find this horribly insulting, especially seeing as at the rates they price ebooks they’re making about $210 on the same number of sales. I also know it’s completely possible to get an ebook deal where profits are shared 50/50–because I’ve done it.

I checked out the book and recognized only a few names, and most of those I knew because I’ve reviewed or interacted with them in the small press. Some are good writers, some are poor, most are hit-and-miss but none would I call “Masters of the Zombie Genre” (no offense guys n’ gals, but really I don’t think you’d take any because I think most of you agree with me). The book was offered as a free download so I checked it out. Good news, I liked it more than I expected. Bad news, most of it wasn’t writing advice, most of the authors had little experience and much of it wasn’t edited (like at all).

Mostly I felt really, really bad for the authors because I think the book is an example of a number of dirty publishing techniques, namely: throwing unedited work up on Amazon to capitalize on a trend, seriously misleading blurbs and the old friends-and-family-and-contributors posting five star reviews and disliking any critical reviews schitck.

If you take a look at Amazon you’ll find a number of How to Write books, most by people you’ve never heard of. (I want to note here that not being an “expert” doesn’t mean you can’t talk about writing or what process you’ve found works for you.  But that’s the sort of thing appropriate for blogs, not expecting people to buy.) You’ll find lots of poorly edited work, rushed to press by people who don’t really care about readers, just cashing in. You’ll find a lot of bad books with lots of five star reviews too.

There’s been a rash of authors being exposed for rating their own books five stars lately. Or asking their fans to post only 5 star reviews and vote for one or two (or even three) star reviews as “Not helpful” to downplay them. There was even an article in the NY Times about people buying or selling Starred reviews. This is dirty publishing.

There was the person, too, who put Dan Brown’s name in the title of their book so that any searches on Dan Brown would bring up their book too. Dirty. Publishing.

Dirty Publishing is anything that is designed to manipulate a reader into buying your book. Not engage them, not entice them, not interest them, but MANIPULATE them. Dirty publishing tactics come into play when someone knows, on some level that they haven’t pushed themselves or their work or their project up to the highest quality, but expect to be rewarded anyway. At this point, if anyone I’m talking about is reading this, they’re getting pretty upset.

Don’t. It’s okay. We all make mistakes. The important thing is to learn from them. Good publishing requires a level of honesty with yourself that is very hard. VERY. HARD. You’re not alone. Every published person can tell you something they’d like to have done better, or a story that got sold that they wish hadn’t, or someone they dealt with that they wish they hadn’t. The goal, as a friend just told me, is to constantly try to fail better.

Dirty publishing is the equivalent of sending an agent a query in fancy script on colored and scented paper. The message that it sends, whether it’s true or not (and usually, sadly, it is true) is that the story isn’t worth fair consideration, so the author is trying to distract from the story with fanciness. Authors, when you do this you aren’t innovative, you aren’t “successful” you’re betraying your insecurity. You’re admitting your work itself isn’t good enough to sell to readers and you have to trick them into buying with blurbs you know aren’t true, trends brought about by other hard working people, or fake comments and reviews.

Is that what you really want to be saying?

There’s also a realm of not-quite-dirty-just-unwise publishing tricks. The other day I was @ed on Twitter by someone I have never talked to before, never heard of. The message was just a line of spam about her self published book being free on Amazon. I don’t commonly talk about free Amazon books. Like I said she had never talked to or interacted with me before. I haven’t ever read or reviewed her. So there was no reason at all for her to think that sending me (and dozens of other people) that message was anything but spam.

She emailed me after I responded negatively saying she just wanted a Retweet. Why? I mean it, why? I don’t know you. I haven’t read your work. You have never spoken to me before, but you want me to vouch for your book?? How is your message anything but spam??

There’s a community of “you positively review my book I’ll positively review yours” in the Kindle forums (elsewhere too). There’s sites that charge for “promo packages which all include a complimentary review” (because Amazon does not allow reviews that have been paid for on their site). There are people who invite me to their book release (or blog posts) via GoodReads or Facebook. And people who have added me to their promo newsletters without my consent.

You might think this is a great idea, but it all just drowns out to white noise. In a given month I get dozens of review requests. Hundreds of emails a day. And I get invites to buy self published work, promos of micropress books with crap covers, Twitter messages and emails and Goodreads messages all from people who want one thing: me to buy their book. I never do. In fact those people aren’t even really people to me, they’re machines spamming my time on the internet. I remove them when they send me that crap. I block them if I have to. I’m glad when they send me nasty private messages implying that I’ll be blacklisted for not completely supporting their work because it means I don’t have to deal with their insulting insistence to see me as NOTHING more than a pocketbook they can dip into.

I am NOT an open wallet. I am not a blind supporter or anything with “book” attached to it. I refuse to let you treat me like I’m not a person, but just a means to line your pockets and build your name.

You want to know why I responded badly, Ms. Greene? Because you didn’t give a crap about me even as a screen name, you just wanted me to be a smear beneath your shoes getting you that much higher to fame and fortune. I, humbly, refuse.

I refuse to participate in dirty publishing. I refuse to reward it. I refuse to promote or assist authors who try to use me, for money, for spreading the word, for what little legitimacy I have.

I support the authors and publishers that put out work I like. Who I respect. Who talk to me, and know that I am a person, not a $.99 download. Do I hate promo? No, I forget who has what coming out when and promo reminds me. And it can be fun.

But really, I hope that someone out there who has mistakenly thought one of these tactics was a good idea reads this. I hope you learn, not that I’m mad and mean, but that these promo tactics make us feel used and unimportant and manipulated. I am pretty sure you don’t want to leave your readers with that feeling. So please, that’s what I want you to take from this rant.