Saturday’s panel on publishing focused on an inside look at the industry from science fiction and spirtuality writer Matt Pallamary, sf/fantasy writer Jean Graham, graphic novelist Eric Shanower, YA novelist P.J. Haarsma and paranormal romance writer Linda Thomas-Sundstrom.

Some interesting market tidbits were tossed out by the panelists:

• Romance was 50% of the market last year, this year, so far, it is 56%
• science fiction is 7.8%
• Suspense/mystery is not currently selling well
• Paranormal/dark stuff is selling well
• YA is selling well
• An author’s first book published is on-average the 5th book that author has written
• 70% of books never make back their advances
• The profit margin on books is between 2-5% (note – I’ve seen this higher – at 7%, by comparison, the profit margin on hospitals is 3.6%, personal computers is 7.5%, and cigarettes is 17.4%) *

The panel discussed the issue of piracy – sites posting free or unauthorized, for sale copies of author’s work. This was characterized as a large problem, but difficult to quantify in terms of how much income authors and publishers are losing due to both illegal sales and potential lost sales due to free copies downloaded by potential customers. It is also frustrating for authors to see people making money illegally from their work, and although the author can issue a takedown notice, these sellers just move to a new email name and start again. The counterpoint opinion was also debated – authors such as Eric Flint and others in the Baen Free Library believe that offering one or two volumes of their early work will encourage readers to buy subsequent volumes. They say readership goes up. This is also difficult to quantify.

Personally I lean toward the Baen Free Library point of view. The Internet makes policing and protecting content impossible, as we’ve seen with the music industry. Giving away all your content, however, doesn’t make sense for authors. It probably doesn’t make sense for anyone, but some content creators, such as musicians, who have live concerts they can charge for, could give away recordings and charge for other aspects of what they do. Not so easy for writers. What the internet has proven to do well is a tiered system of content provision – a small bite of free content for everyone, more content for those who will pay. The Baen Free Library is a nice way to do that. It doesn’t solve the issue of pirates scanning all your books and selling them: if you want to solve that one, you are back to giving away your work for free. Until we build a new economic model that fits the new paradigms of the economy – the speed and ubiquity of Internet, the zero cost of digital files, the value of content, and the disappearing value of the middleman – I don’t think we will solve that problem.

The discussion moved to marketing. P.J. Haarsma mentioned the difficulty of marketing young adult books when the publishers seem to believe that the right people to market to are librarians, parents, and teachers – not kids. “They don’t seem to understand that adults are the very people kids don’t listen to at that age,” Haarsma said. Matt Pallamary recommended pushing your book on podcasts, because they go viral quickly and easily and get the word spread about your book. Eric Shanower mentioned hiring a publicist, and booking ad space in Radio-TV Interview Report. He and Matt Pallamary reported varying return on investment from their ads.

The panel also discussed co-op advertising deals between the publisher and Barnes and Noble (the only large chain left). B&N controls the co-op money from the publisher. The publisher has no control over what books are featured with the co-op advertising money. However, the publisher can pay directly to put an author’s book in an end-cap display.

The discussion on marketing mirrored what I have heard at other conferences: publishers aren’t able to do much for writers. What they are able to do isn’t necessarily going to meet the needs of an author’s actual book or market. It just reinforces what other writers, agents, and editors are saying; if you want your book to succeed, you have to take responsibility for marketing it yourself. That means you have to figure out the target market, decide how to reach them,  develop a plan, and implement it, all likely without much support from the publisher (unless you are lucky). Fortunately, we can learn from each other, and panels like this help that process.

Condor – San Diego’s annual science fiction convention, held Feb. 26-28 – hosted a number of writing panels. Leading off Friday at noon, “One of Your Crucial Characters Isn’t Working: What Do You Do?” featured  horror author Tamara Thorne, fantasy author Kevin Gerard, science fiction author Jane Fancher, screenwriter Art Holcomb, and science fiction author Dani Kollin.

The panelists discussed their own work and the challenges they have faced with problematic characters. One of the interesting issues that came up was secondary characters vs. main characters. A panelist pointed out that sometimes the secondary characters are more interesting, both to the writer and to the reader, because they are mysterious. We know a lot about the main character, not so much about the “man in black.” The challenge is creating the same (or ideally higher) level of interest in someone we know much more about.

Another point of discussion: sometimes authors get enamored of one of their characters and feel that this character adds something to the story. But in reality the character is diluting the story, either by taking attention and roles away from other characters or simply by being unnecessary. It can take an outside perspective of a critical reader to point this out if the writer can’t see it for himself. Basically, story trumps character.

Some key points:

“Sometimes your character is in the wrong story. You are trying to make your character do things instead of listening to that.” – Art Holcomb

“What do you want to say? Sometimes people reach a point and stop. You need to keep writing past there.” – Art Holcomb

“Look at your character archetypes. You can see what’s missing, what is duplicated.” – Jane Fancher