Gazing Into the Doom-Eye of the Mad Oracle

The advent of e-readers and the sudden ease of self-publishing was like a bomb going off inside the publishing world.  The dust from this explosion is so thick that nobody can predict how it’s all going to look when it settles.  All we can do, to steal a phrase from one of my favorite author-bloggers Chuck Wendig, is “gaze into the doom-eye of the mad oracle.”  You ask a hundred people what’s going to happen and you’ll get about a billion different guesses.  We’re terrified of the unknown.  I don’t think we need to panic, though.

I’ve been around the games industry for more than a decade and I’ve watched many revolutions come and go in the digital world.  Right now we’re deep in the heart of a social network gaming revolution.  The revolution was started, as most revolutions are, by a band of upstarts trying to upset the world order.  They had ideas, and they saw opportunities, so they started launching games on a little network called Facebook.  Maybe you’ve heard of it.

This company (Zynga for those keeping score) historically dominated the list of top ten social networking games.  The big, established players in video games (Electronic Arts, for example) were playing catchup.  They copied what other companies did, trying to find a foothold for themselves in this newly forged frontier.  Once the big guns figured out the new rules of that new frontier, however, they started to make some serious ground.

Sometimes the major players don’t learn the new rules and they collapse.  See: Borders.  Paradigm shifts are scary things, especially for the big businesses, but many of them will make the necessary changes and come out better for it.

It’s a story that’s been repeated throughout history.  People panic when someone upsets the balance and everyone gets their own ideas of what’s best.  I’ve seen it in the direct-to-consumer revolution with video games, I’ve seen it with music, movies, and now with print.  I’ve even seen this story with hybrid cars.  I bet you didn’t know how deep that rabbit hole went.  Upstarts have been trying to come up with hybrids for years, and in the end, who ended up with the current top technology?  Toyota and Honda.  The ones with the funds and expertise for really taking the trails blazed by the revolutionaries to that next level.

So the point?  The big guns are either going to adapt and take the lead, or they’re going to fail.  Some of them will learn the new rules, and when they do, they’re going to be safe places to be.

Can you make it in self publishing?  Sure.  Plenty have, and as I said before, I have nothing but the greatest of respect for their craft and all the work they put into that path.  I don’t think the agents and the big publishers are going away, though.  They’re going to adapt and take their clients with them into the future.

What are your thoughts?  Do you believe that this revolution will truly be the end of the traditional publishers, or do you think they’ll be made better by it?  What role do you think agents will play in this new world?

Why I Decided Not To Self-Publish

One month ago I was sitting in a Carl’s Jr. in downtown Salt Lake talking about how awesome self-publishing would be.  I was so convinced of taking this route that I was surprised, weeks later, to realize it’s not the route for me at all.

I have the utmost respect for the authors who have made it at self-publishing.  The amount of work and dedication those guys put into it is nothing short of astonishing.  As a father of four and the sole income earner in the family I don’t have that luxury of time and money that so many others do, however.

I want to navigate the murky seas of traditional publishing.  I want the validation of securing an agent.  I want the deal with a publisher.  I want these things because they let me know more than any number of sales or hits on a website that I’ve done something right.  That maybe I’m pretty good at this writing thing.

I don’t want to be the self-pub guy who sells a million copies of his catalog he churned out in a year.  I want to be the guy who tells the stories that are demanding to be told.  I may never sell a million copies in a lifetime, but that’s okay as long as I know that what I’m writing means more to people than “Oh, it’s cheap, why not?”

I want to tell stories.  Not sell books.

Maybe along the way I’ll discover I’m not all that good at writing after all.  And what do I do then?  Fix what’s broken.  There’s no other option.  I’m a storyteller at heart.  I was always the Game Master when I played pen and paper RPGs.  I’m the kid who built entire universes with game creation tool kits on old computers.  I got into the video game industry because that’s what I do: I create.  I’ve been writing since I was five.  If you’re not a writer it’s difficult to understand what a burden having so many stories in your head can be.  All of them trying to get out, but only having so much time in the day to dedicate to any one of them.  I write because I have to.

And when I write, I want a team of experts behind me, people who know the business, people who know what works, guiding me along the way and helping me refine my craft.

Does that make any sense?  How about the rest of you?  Anyone have a similar thought process?  I’d love to hear from both the traditional and self-pub guys out there.