This Saturday, Litquake, San Francisco’s annual literary celebration of the written word, closes with Lit Crawl, as more than 300 local wordsmiths and authors take over the Mission’s laundromats, police station and tattoo parlors.
Despite the expected crowds, this is an uncertain time for emerging authors, who are increasingly looking for new ways to publish their work. The traditional model of writing a novel and sending it off to a literary agent, who then shops it around, no longer holds true for many, according to writers attending the event.
“I had to force myself outside of the writing hole,” said Jesús Angel García, author of the novel “Bad Bad Bad,” who was in the audience Monday at a Litquake panel at the Foundation Center. The topic was how to navigate the new world of publishing.
“For a minute I had a literary agent, but he seemed too busy to give the book the right kind of read,” García said. Since then, he has published videos on Facebook and Twitter to engage and expand his readership before the book’s print publication, which is early next year.
Amy Rennert, a literary agent, started the panel by shattering any illusions. “Things are fairly difficult in the publishing world; their biggest concern is the drop in hardcover book sales.”
Traditionally, those sales constituted the bulk of a publisher’s revenue, but with the Internet and subsequent introduction of bargain e-books, that economic model no longer works.
“Publishing houses are conservative,” said Rennert. “They are buying fewer titles, choosing to bet on books published by established authors.”
Writers can no longer count on the $50,000 to $100,000 advances once paid to promising new authors. But not all was doom and gloom: “There are now more ways to publish your work than ever before,” Rennert said.
Scott James, moderator of the panel and author of two best-selling novels, “SoMa” and “The Sower,” was quick to embrace the new technologies, and that’s paid off, he said. “The first edition of “The Sower” was the first novel sold in digital form by e-publisher Scribd. My book received a lot of publicity, it was written about by the New York Times, and I immediately got offers for a print version.”
“Big publishers must catch up,” said Jay Hartman, founder of Untreed Reads, an e-publisher specializing in independent authors. “The costs of producing an e-book are far less than what it costs to print a book. E-books are making reading affordable to a greater public.”
For writers unable to find a publisher, Eileen Gittins, CEO of self-publishing platform Blurb, recommended self-publishing. Tales of success followed, such as that of fitness trainer David Kirsch, who made it big with his “Butt Book” after getting an endorsement from model Heidi Klum.
“If nothing else, self-publishing gets your book out there,” Gittins said. “It’s a great way to create a good of example of your work to send to the more traditional publishers.”
Ultimately, whether self- or traditionally published, “If you want to be a successful writer, you’re not done after you’ve finished writing the book,” Rennart said. What follows are book tours, readings, profiles on You Tube and getting the word out.
James sees social reading, where people share what they’ve read through social media, as the way for writers to tap into new crowds of potential readers.
It could also be a way for emerging authors to bypass publishing houses. “We have yet to see the world e-book go viral,” James said. “Something written by an unknown author could suddenly sell millions of copies. With platforms like Amazon, the potential for this to happen is huge.”
So far, few of the new technologies help writers pay the bills. In a phone interview, Robin Ekiss, Mission resident and author of the poetry collection “The Mansion of Happiness,” said some writing just doesn’t pay. “Poetry has always been in crisis,” she said, laughing, “but now that many journals are going online there is in fact a burgeoning of places for poetry.”
Like others, she follows a tradition of writing while having a day job. “I teach, I lead workshops, and I’m an advertising copyrighter to help financially support my poetry.”
“One should never expect to make money as a writer,” said Gravity Goldberg, writer, editor of the literary journal Instant City, and one of Litquake’s organizers as well as a Mission resident. “How much money did most authors make from publishers in the first place? The reality is that you write for free for a long time.”