The Road to “Discoverability”

Those like me who struggle at the keyboard, turning out book after book, used to be travelers on the same highway - the Road to Publication.  In the digital age, writers are still travelers, but we're walking a different road. Today anyone and everyone can publish so it's not about publication any longer.  Now writers travel the road to discoverability.

It's a major change that took the explosion of an industry to craft.  But the change has been so sudden that writers recently attending The Writers League of Texas Agents' Conference were shocked when keynote speaker Jane Friedman began her speech on the state of the book by showing an image of a giant mushroom cloud. The title of Friedman's address was "Is The Book Dead? Who Cares?"

Friedman's speech tracked the revolutionary changes in the book industry. Borders is bankrupt. The biggest bookseller on the planet, Amazon, announced May 18th that it now sells more ebooks than paperbacks and hardcovers combined. Friedman says that the book as we have known it is dead. 

Who is Jane Friedman to make such an epic pronouncement?  She's the CEO and co-founder of Open Road Integrated Media.  And from 1997 to 2008 Ms. Friedman was the CEO and President of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide - one of the biggest publishers in the world.  She's credited with having invented the "author's tour" which "became a staple of the industry."  That background gives Friedman the platform to make any prognostication she wants to make about the book industry.

The Road to Publication used to mean that a writer wrote a book, edited and polished it, and then she wrote a synopsis (a sort of outline of the book).  Then the writer began sending out round after round of query letters to literary agents trying to interest the agent into representing the book.   Almost no publisher would look at a submission directly from an author (with the sometimes exception of Harlequin which, not surprisingly, morphed quickly - IMHO- into the publisher with the best epresence, eplatform and estrategy). 

So authors would query agents who were overwhelmed with submissions.  The best book on earth might have a weak synopsis or a weak query letter - and then it never stood a chance of getting to readers. If an agent actually offered representation, then he or she had to market the book to publishers. Many, many books that cleared all the above hurdles still fell at this last one (I can personally testify to that).  Because even if an editor at a big publishing house wanted to buy a book, he or she had to convince a board of suits that buying the book made business sense.  Very few books ever made it to that last step. Even fewer made it to readers who never knew how many choices were being made for them - or taken away from them.  

Today the landscape along the road is as different as the road itself.  Getting published is the easy part.  A writer can publish the book with the click of a mouse.  Then a published book boogles out to the virtual world, where it occupies a spot in a store "where shelf space is endless."  That's a change too. In the (thankfully) former publishing world, the publishers controlled the distribution network. An indie book had about the same shot at getting shelf space at Barnes & Noble as an indie movie had at getting screen space at your local multiplex.  

Now the big hurdle isn't getting published. It's getting discovered amidst the vast, mind boggling variety of books out there on the virtual shelves.  Friedman's speech explained discoverability - what it is and how to do it in the digital age.

 From creating a great blog to finding a following on Twitter, Friedman's point was clear — authors need to create a direct line to their audience, a platform that they control.

And who is pushing change in the new eworld?  Who controls discoverability?  Friedman says it's Google, Amazon and Apple. 

At the same seminar, Kirkus Reviews' Bob Carlton suggested that indie authors who win the battle and get discovered by readers get discovered by someone else too - big publishers. Carlton used an interesting analogy:

 "Food trucks are like self-publishing," Carlton said. "They must build a brand, find an audience and if they're lucky enough to get popular, decide whether or not they want to sell-out and become a restaurant.

Carlton says, publishers now are "mining" ebook bestsellers for break-out authors that got discovered by readers and are offering them "the chance to 'sell-out' for a large audience." (BTW, I object to the characterization.  One need not be all one thing or the other. Some very smart authors are publishing some books and self publishing others. God Bless "Em - they're using big publishers' marketing and sales savvy to sell their traditionally published books which also helps sell their indie books.)

It's a new world and there's a new road.  Publication is no longer the end of the journey - now it's where the trip starts.  Yes, authors now have to do for themselves a lot of the things that publishers used to do for them.  It's a much, much harder road. But is it more rewarding?  It was easier when people who used to run and control everything made all the decisions, decided from amongst all the choices. Was it better?

What would a former slave have said to that question?  Plantation owners could care for the slaves, house them, feed them, and give them a life where none of the choices where theirs - but they got taken care of.  You know what?  Getting taken care of ain't a reward that's worth the price.  Freedom means having choices.

Making choices means taking risks. Sometimes they pay off and sometimes they don't. But I'd  rather be a free and independent author than a slave to a system where I don't even have final control over what I publish - let alone what it's titled or where or how it'll be sold.

Here I am, one more indie author with books on an endless virtual shelf.  I'm part of a team with my husband in daily life and in our publishing endeavors.  My writing is the voice. My husband creates its face through book covers, web design and digital management. (That last one may not sound so sexy but darn - is it ever important.) And together we've built a brand - Quacking Alone Romances.

We've got a website and day by day more people find it. I'm thankful that you've discovered our blog!  We've got a Facebook Page - CLICK THE LINK AND THEN CLICK "LIKE".  WE"LL WAIT. DONE IT YET?  THANKS.  And I'm on Twitter - which I'm really enjoying BTW; fascinating platform where you can find out an endless array of information about subjects that interest you.  My TWITTER HANDLE/ID IS @quackingalone.   CLICK THE LINK AND THEN CLICK "FOLLOW".  WE"LL WAIT. DONE IT YET?  THANKS.

This is a new journey.  It starts where the old road ended.  First you hit publish. Then you hit the Discoverability Trail.  In many ways we're pioneers, blazing a path that will become the standard.  It's exciting to be a pioneer and know that behind us will come generations of writers. They'll never know what it meant to work for years to try to get your writing to readers only to have a trail of agents say no, and slam the door in your face. They'll never know what it was like to finally find an agent and then have the publishers say no, and slam the final door.

We are very, very lucky to be writers today because what was the final door to a book a few years ago, is no longer a portal to a future. It's only one of the portals. It led here, to the Discoverability Trail where I'm hoping to be like the movie E.T.  Back in the day, a date took me to E.T., a little movie that had no advance publicity and no one had ever heard of.  That date was taking me to a "shoot-em-up" action movie of some kind - I no longer recall which one - but it was sold out. So we saw E.T. instead.  And even after we watched and discovered the amazing awesomeness that was E.T., he apologized - repeatedly- for making me sit through it.  It was a first date and a last one! 

E.T. was a movie that got discovered by moviegoers without having it shoved down their throats by Hollywood. I'm hoping that QA becomes publishing's E.T.  In the meantime, my hubby and I are doing all we can to make it easier for readers to discover us.

I'll be the crazy duck lady barking on the blog, on Facebook and on Twitter about offering readers a ticket to a ride over-the-top of love.