Innovation for Writers Who Don’t Fit the Machine (Part 2)

Innovation for Writers Who Don’t Fit the Machine (Part 2)

At the heart of this series is this statement: We believe that innovation for writers can help storytellers find/refine their voices and connect to their audiences AND produce a reasonable ROI for all concerned.

In Part 1 of this series, I said that we at Koho Pono are currently working with an author that doesn’t write cookie-cutter saleable stories for today’s marketplace – she doesn’t fit in today’s big publishing machine. Regardless, we here at Koho Pono want to help produce Jaki Harvell’s stories and present them to her right-sized audience because we believe that her tales are important to the human community.

In Part 2 (and final part of this series), I more deeply explore other aspects of ‘fitting in’.

From the author’s point of view (POV) the bottom line is: artists have a drive to express what is inside them. Authors have a passionate urge to give birth to an internal tale, release that creation to live its own life, and connect their creation to its proper audience. When all of this happens, a current flow through the audiences and artists and through the work; it’s a wave of connection. Every thing fits.

Although many people have one story to tell, once that one story is told, the compulsion is gone and they go on with the rest of their life. This is valuable and worthwhile. However, what sets a writer apart is

  • a writer thinks in terms of making an impact through telling stories
  • once a writer get a taste of connecting their work to a hungry audience, they want to go through the process again and again
    • After writers get this first taste of ‘connection’, they start thinking about how they can afford to do this full time
    • This ‘taste of connection’ may happen at an early age or late in life
    • This is the point a smart writer begins to address the business aspects of their passion and craft
  • a writer’s passion helps them through the creation process
  • a writer wants to constantly improve their skills and develop their craft

So it all starts with an urge, recognition that this story must be imparted. It is the author’s responsibility to carefully examine and monitor their urge because: (1). In the highest aspect, passion can create work of timeless import and catalytic effect, and (2). In the lowest aspect, the same passionate drive may result in work that is self-indulgent, unexamined, and poorly crafted, (3). In between these two extremes is a whole gradation of skill, talent, vigilance, and honesty.

People with one-story-to-tell often do not care at what end of the gradation they are working. Even if they care, sometimes they do not have the refinement to recognize where along the gradation they are working. A writer is willing to constantly improve their skill, refine their talents, apply more vigilance, and be brutally honest with themselves.

Jaki Harvell (the writer who inspired this series) needs to write about great, gritty, girl heroes. It’s her nut, her common thread, her constant devotion. She is not the type of writer who gets satisfaction by writing only to appease popular demand. Instead, she must create the stories that are burning inside her. She has something specific to say. Rainer Maria Rilke says it beautifully:

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.
If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.

Of course, we all hope that her works are runaway hits, but in the end, it is our job as publishers to make sure her stories reach their right audiences and produce a reasonable ROI for all concerned. It is her job and our job to improve our skills, refine our talents, apply more vigilance, and be brutally honest with ourselves.

In our experience, some in the publishing industry have gotten so caught up in being the gatekeepers of quality, they focus their attention on defending the current processes and their guiding principles have more to do with volume than quality. Today’s publishing professionals seem to have created an oppositional relationship with other aspects of the industry including: distribution, printers, employees, new authors, customers, booksellers, etc. Optimizing profit from every interaction has become more important than building partnerships/relationships. Short term benefit is more important than long term satisfaction.

Noted American author/professor/philosopher, Sam Keen, says

There is no easy formula for determining right and wrong livelihood, but it is essential to keep the question alive. To return the sense of dignity and honor to manhood, we have to stop pretending that we can make a living at something that is trivial or destructive and still have sense of legitimate self-worth. A society in which vocation and job are separated for most people gradually creates an economy that is often devoid of spirit, one that frequently fills our pocketbooks at the cost of emptying our souls.

This quote addresses why we at Koho Pono are dedicated to telling important stories, helping authors find their voice and their audiences, and find innovative ways to make our processes economical.

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Innovation for Writers Who Don’t Fit the Machine (Part 1)

I am currently working with an author that ‘doesn’t fit’ into a big publisher’s pigeonhole. Jaki doesn’t write what is ‘cookie-cutter saleable’ in today’s marketplace. And yet her stories are to-the-bone correct. They are well written and tight. They speak directly to the scared young hero within us all. Her stories are like old fairy tales. You know the kind of story I’m talking about: the hide-in-the-crook-of-Mama’s-arms-scary, an archetypal tale to resonate our deepest aspects, the Brothers Grimm kind of story.

However, the publishing industry’s cookie-cutter machine is not producing these types of stories.  “It’s not what is currently popular,” Jaki has heard; and “The numbers are just not there”; “it’s not what the marketplace is looking for, I’m sorry.” Apparently, the parental masses are not buying this sort of fiction to read to their children. The story is too dark and scary.

As for us here at Koho Pono, we think the world needs more coming of age stories for girls. Little girls need to hear stories about how ‘the buck-stops-with-me’. Too many of our youngsters are only taught to attract-what-they-need and that doesn’t give them a full toolbox full of life skills. Being a girl is rough. It takes a lot of gumption to grow from innocent babe all the way to wise old crone. G.K. Chesterton tells us why these kind of scary tales are important,

“Fairy tales do not tell children dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

We at Koho Pono agree with G.K. Chesterton. He-ay-hee-ee! We believe there are little girls out there who need to hear Jaki’s stories. And there are wrinkled old granddames, abuelas, and babitsa dragas who need to tell this kind of story to their ‘chillens. There are spicy aunts and tanten who need to explain why it is important to grow and widen and exclaim out loud. And there are mothers who need to tell these stories to themselves. It’s not only a female thing. In the hearts of some boys sits a hunger for a heroic girl companion to go on adventures with.

We think this kind of story is worthy and timeless. And we think there are people out there who agree with us, which is why we’re publishing it.

Also, are innovating a delivery system to match up the correct audience to this story. It doesn’t have to be volume sales; just the right amount of sales.

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Industry Consolidation

Clearly there are benefits to industry consolidation.

Consolidation allows for more stable and expanded distribution, controlled excess capacity, and increased prices. It allows companies to integrate their schedules and unify operations, cut costs, and stock shelves with their titles. New customers are drawn to mega stores and networks of offerings. Profitability grows; customer traffic rises; revenue per cost point improves. The barriers to entry are higher. There is the possibility of newer, friendlier rules/regulations/ treaties. And it is easier to deal with labor disputes.

Anytime a large company’s financial situations improve, they tend to get more aggressive about consolidations and resitrictive partnerships throughout the development, production, sales, distribution channels, and end-of-life cycle.

However, industry consolidation is a double-edged sword. We are headed towards author consolidation and acquisitions based almost entirely on large book-buying demographics. What we all see, but don’t say is that we are becoming an industry of bean-counting-driven policies rather than customer-driven/author-driven processes and policies.

Consolidations create industry momentum, which causes psychological inertia, which leads to greed/entitlement/a sense of lack/perversity – and this leads to decline. I’m seeing the early stages of bookstore and publishing decline embedded into today’s industry consolidation.

Little businesses are failing. Slipping away are the sleepy little corner store (the one filled with new book smell and quiet browsing and children being introduced to new worlds). These independent stores are sacrificed to the maws of volume turnover.

Also slipping away are the joys of discovering a hot new talent, of being a good steward to that writer, to helping produce a quality story and delivering a product that meets real audience need. These joys are being sacrificed for money, power, and control. Heck, there is nothing wrong with money, power, and control. I want some. But I don’t want it at the expense of what is best about this industry. What is best about this industry is relationships and recognizing talent and doing important work and satisfying deep human needs.

And the truth is, it doesn’t have to be a trade-off. This is what innovators know. It does not have to be a trade-off! We can have it all money/power/control and satisfaction/fulfillment/engagement.

As the big companies consolidate the creation and distribution of best-sellers and maximize their processes to squeeze every advantage from the system, there is a new publishing trend towards “right-sizing”

Right-sizing-publishers are finding ways to develop processes to support large numbers of authors – many of them will only write one book in their life. I’ve spoken with a lot of writers who say they have felt underappreciated (and even ignored) for a long time. One of the biggest changes in our industry is that authors are taking back control of their work and of the process of getting that work out to their readers. This, of course, is turning our industry on its ear and making way for right-sizing-publishers to define new author engagement strategies.

Right-sizing publishers are less interested in being industry gatekeepers and more interested in finding the correct audience for each story: right sized, right priced, right community, right delivery methods. Another way of say it is mass customizing creation and delivery.

A person with only one great story in them is as important as a person with twenty great stories if the system is developed for them. A person with one important story can create that story at the right price and make sure it gets out into a receptive world so it is seen, heard, understood, and appreciated by the correct audience.

Right-sizing-publishers are not tied to ‘book’ creation and distribution in the same way the big players are tied to their processes. Therefore, we can service limited niches at lower cost and with less risk. We are alive again with discovering fresh talent and matching those talents to their specific hungry audience (and make a good living doing that). This has always been a joy to publishers and when we put our fear of scarcity away and take off the blinders of entitlement, then it will be joyful again.

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Author & Audience Trends (4)

Today it is extremely difficult for new authors to enter into the book-selling system (PART FOUR – and last of the series). This is because of an industry-wide, entrenched mindset that is: publishing professionals serve as “guardians of quality”. At every level of the publishing and bookselling industry, we are poised to filter out the unworthy on behalf of the book-buying audience.

Book buyers, too, have been trained to trust ‘the pros’ to weed out poorly conceived, badly edited, ratty-looking offerings. Supposedly, this reduced list will prove to be more profitable for all concerned … except for new, upcoming authors, of course, who are pounding on the gate to the castle.

There is some validity to the guardians-of-quality claim. I will state for the record, editing is one of the most important value-added activities we middle-people apply to the process. Authors with access to great editors usually produce improved stories, which is why authors have allowed themselves to be hobbled for so long.

Now don’t get me wrong. Improved quality is not reason enough to justify the constraints we put on new authors and it is not enough of a reason to deny audiences that which they wish to receive.

Although a well-edited story is a wonder to behold, we use this fact to justify all manner of abuse upon our authors and customers. It’s time to rethink our position. For example, rather than limiting the number of stories provided for consumption because it is too hard to improve their quality, we might find a better, faster, cheaper way to edit.

Maybe there are ‘distribution’ venues in which authors can participate that allow for real-time feedback so writers learn their craft. A good analogy is the stand-up comedian who first goes to open microphone, sees for herself which jokes fly, what delivery style suits her, etc. There are audiences available for every level of beginning comedian. Just so, there would be audiences for every level of new writer … if the system was interested in developing writers’ craft.

We have fashioned our industry processes to be streamlined and profitable to us rather than remembering our first priority: servicing our two most important resources.

What if there were millions of authors each with one story? What if there was a small but significant audience for each of these stories? What if there were hundreds of delivery systems rather than a few? What would our industry look like? Who would be the new winners? How would we succeed; what would our strategies be?

These are questions I’m asking myself because this is a type of publishing industry I’d like to grow.

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Author & Audience Trends (PART THREE)

PART THREE:

The first part of this author & audience series said, every person has at least one good story inside them and that story demands to be beheld. It hurts us and our society when important stories remain ‘unspoken’.

The second part of this author & audience series said, business systems and processes tend to support (and pressure) consistent authors to create best-selling products. Industry workers at all levels of the publishing system value the status quo and the main role of today’s publishing industry is to attract, collect and funnel a few consistent, acceptable authors into the system and to filter out others.

Because the industry is in flux, this old pattern of success is not as dependable as it once was. Therefore, we in publishing need to re-examine our mindset momentum and remember the important underlying principles of our industry: Â

The author has a need to connect to their audience + audiences have a need to engage with important stories

The problem is, we have gotten too far from this fact and have begun to believe we are more necessary than we actually are. For decades publishers convinced both authors and audiences that we middle-people are both the path to getting their needs met and the gatekeepers of what is worthy. But now the great medicine wheel has turned and authors have begun to revolt at being kept off the path of having their stories beheld. Also, audiences have begun to hunger for their generation’s stories and to have those stories offered in ways they love to receive them. Additionally, new technologies are enabling both authors and audiences to overthrow the established norms, beliefs, companies, deliveries, and processes.

The wheel keeps turning. If there are indeed “too many submissions” then we (innovative small publishers) encourage our big brethren companies & distributors to continue to vet submissions. In the meantime, those-with-stories-that-need-telling and those-that-desire-different-stories will devise methods to meet their needs without you. And we innovative small publishers will help enable that meeting.

If it is still true that today’s publishers and booksellers need to “focus on quantity sales”, then hungry niche markets will find ways to meet their needs directly from the source (authors) at good prices through mass customization.

Almost every industry magazine, website, and analyst opinion claim booksellers “can only survive if they purchase titles from the big distributors”.  However, customers are beginning to realize that this means stores deem their book-buying processes to be more important than customer’s needs. And this is why customers are looking elsewhere – they are buying elsewhere – and they are becoming more and more comfortable with a new buying process. Our complacency (plus a dependency on volume sales and bean-counter-type decisions) has made us vulnerable to changing conditions.

The bottom-line is this (and has, actually, always been this): Because authors & audiences are the basis of our industry, it is easy for authors & audiences to take back their power. They can easily cut out the middle people, which are us in the publishing and bookselling industry. We bookstores and publishers need to wake up and innovate a new paradigm (a better way of doing business in this environment) if we are to survive.

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Author & Audience Trends (Part two)

PART TWO:

 One of the issues artists have always faced is: once an artist/craftsperson produces a work which is deemed acceptable, then there is great pressure to ‘keep doing that, more of that, and only that!’

Business tends to favor predictability and consistency. Therefore, business systems and processes tend to support (and pressure) consistent authors to create best-selling products in a self-reinforcing cycle. The good news is some authors become superstars and rich and celebraties and all they create earns money throughout the system.

The bad news is, people thoughtout the system learn to value the status quo and compete for this limited set of authors and their work. Other authors and work are ignored, dismissed, filtered out of the system as unacceptable (unless it can be packaged to compete directly with the status quo products).

And this is the main role of today’s publishing industry – to attract, collect and funnel  a few consistent, acceptable authors into the system and to filter out others. “There are too many submissions” “We need to focus on what will sell” “We are the guardians of quality”: these are common industry-related quotes I read every day at all levels of the publishing industry.

The industry has forgotten our bottom line: The author has a need to connect to their audience + audiences have a need to engage with important stories = This is the basis, the foundation, the genesis of our industry. It’s vital that we do not forget that.

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Author & Audience Trends (Part 1)

PART ONE:

Many people have one good book inside them. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that every person has at least one good story inside them. And that story demands to be beheld. It hurts us when our story remains ‘unspoken’.

When we lived in tribes, we all knew each others stories and somehow that … validated us. If we are not heard, touched, seen and understood we feel impoverished; we fail to thrive. In fact, after survival is assured, to be valued may be our most driving human need.

Ancient publishing systems worked great. Stories were collected and distributed for generations orally around campfires, chanted to the throb of drumbeats, danced to and reenacted – stories were treasured. Hunting stories were drawn on walls with charcoal and minerals. Migration stories and birth stories were carved in rock; we call them petroglyphs and pictograms. The author connected to their audience and the audience was engaged. This is the basis, the foundation of our industry. It’s important that we do not forget that.

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