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ginnyzero · 4 years

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A Reason Why I’m Indie

Traditional publishing isn’t for everybody. And I’ve seen attitudes that if you don’t conform to word counts and genre conventions and all the rules, then you’re never going to get anywhere in publishing/as a traditionally published author. So, I guess you should suck it up and do it. Then, I’m proudly never going to get anywhere.

Before we go any further, I want to make a disclaimer. Agents do hard jobs. They became agents (most of them) because they love books and reading and want to see authors succeed. They don’t get PAID unless an author succeeds. They are as invested in an author’s book as much as the author is. Or, at least, the good ones are. (Yes, there are a few bad apples that you must be aware of.)

BUT

Agents can’t sell your book if there is no one in their contacts/on their list that will buy it for reasons.

And these reasons may not have anything to do with your writing quality, your world building, your storytelling or your creativity. These reasons have everything to do with the publishing world and the little arbitrary writing rules that they impose on well, everything. I’m squeezing my hands together so hard right now my knuckles are turning white because these rules make me angry.

It takes a lot to make me angry. I get frustrated sometimes fairly easily. But angry?

Well, bullshit makes me angry.

I have spent time going through the querying process. I have helped and watched my best friend, writing bff, collaborator and editor go through her querying process. And I have comforted and I have encouraged and I was there for her last night when she figured out that her book was being rejected not because of writing quality and or bad story or because she had unicorns.

Instead, it was being rejected because someone in the last four years decided that the themes of the types of stories she tells belong and only belong to a certain age group category younger than what she writes. And if she wants to write the type of stories she wants to write, the type of stories that she loves and she needed at the YA age level, she would have to change essentially everything about her story that she adores to get it traditionally published.

Or self-publish.

And as we know, self-publishing closes a lot of doors.

All because, she isn’t writing the “correct” theme for the “correct” age group.

And this pisses me off. (My friend is devastated because the book series she’s lovingly crafted and all her other ideas now won’t supposedly work for traditional publishing all without her knowing because someone instituted new rules. She's been in limbo for months over this.)

Because these things aren’t written down anywhere. And if they are, they’re in weird little articles that aren’t being taught in schools because probably the teachers themselves don’t know them. Or, they were things decided in the last half a decade and no one decided to you know, spread the word in such a way that authors querying would hear it.

Or maybe, just maybe, restricting themes to a genre or an age level is such extreme limiting and inappropriate bullshit it needs to be burned in a fire.

-Takes a deep breathe- See. Angry.

There are certain themes and certain plot structures/character constructions that defined or launched each genre. Romance being the most heavily structured in the traditional publishing world (and a lot of indies following the same rules/structure.)

Science Fiction (as we know it) was born out of the Cold War and the space race and the feeling of alienation and how is having world destroying weapons going to guide us as a species. It was a lot of “humans versus alien invaders” ID4 type of storytelling. Shelley’s Frankenstein started it. And there were different views of it in the beginning, Asimov delved into the perils of robotics and space flight. Herbert talked about ecological scifi. Heinlein tended to go political and then time traveling sexual hijinks. Star Trek was Horatio Hornblower IN SPACE.

Fantasy, especially high and epic fantasy, was born of the retelling of old legends, myths and religions and the triumph of the goodness of mankind in the hero's journey. Star Wars and stories like it (Andre Norton, Anne McCaffery’s Pern) merged the two into science fantasy (my favorite.) Urban fantasy became Sherlock Holmes solves/fights crime with vampires, werewolves and the rest of the fantasy kitchen sink.

Just some examples here.

Much of the science fiction I’ve seen on the shelves still follows the formulas of Asimov and Heinlein and Orson Scott Card. The lone soldier against the terrible aliens must fight to save humanity. (In some instances, these are still the top authors hogging all the shelf space, add Herbert and Bova and Brian Sanderson the successor of Robert Jordan and LE Modesitt. And…….. yeah.)

And it’s boring. It’s tiresome. It’s time for a change. Our culture is changing and the media on our shelves isn’t. Tumblr is full of posts about how Earth is Space Australia and aliens that are simultaneously fascinated and accepting of the oddities of humans because their culture isn’t like that! We adopt strange little vacuum robots as easily as we bond to small furry creatures that OMG OMG it could KILL US. (And some not so furry creatures.) We have different types of friends. We do stupid shit for the fun of it. It’s funny. It’s heartwarming. It’s different.

People don’t want angry patriarchal werewolves anymore. They want more than dwarves that just love mining and speak in bad Scottish accents. (Best one I saw was Australian accents actually.) Readers are tired of gratuitous rape. They’re tired of abusive and bad relationships being portrayed as good. Toxic masculinity is getting old as is misogyny. Princesses no longer want to be rescued by dragons, they want to be protected by dragons from being forced into marriages they don’t want. Why must readers go through a sewer when they open a book to escape?

No. Not a lot of these new ideas have conflict or plot. But that’s not really up to the idea thinkers on Tumblr, that’s up to us the writers to see what the idea makers are looking for and come up with plots to fit those settings (if we like those ideas/settings.)

I doubt you’ll find it on bookshelves.

Fantasy has fallen into the grim dark crap sack worlds looking for the next GRRM. Storytelling that hasn’t advanced past trying to emulate Tolkien. Authors that emulate Lackey and McCaffery in the style of romantic fantasy being passed over for grim dark fantasy with assassins and the hot “urban fantasy.”

And understandably, Urban Fantasy is pretty new. LKH and Jim Butcher and other writers like Kim Harrison, Seanan Mcguire and Patty Briggs have been instrumental in making urban fantasy a ‘big deal.’ And I’ve read a lot of urban fantasy and finally I had to give up. I couldn’t take it anymore. Because it was all the same thing in different trappings. And I’m down for the same thing in different trappings to an extent. I really am. I’d just hope that at some point we can have more than Urban Fantasy mysteries. But no one is selling them on traditional shelves because publishers decided that Urban Fantasy people SOLVE CRIME is what the genre is.

This kills innovation coming to publishing houses. We see it in movies as well as books, new ideas, good ideas, are being passed over for the rehash of something from 20 to 30 years ago. (Think closer to 60 for some scifi, more for fantasy.) Because publishers have "genre rules" and are risk adverse because 'what if it doesn't sell?'

There are writers out there that are willing to turn themselves into pretzels to make their story fit a certain word count, a certain genre theme or follow these arbitrary rules to “get their foot in the door” and then they are told and believe that “once they are established” they can “break/bend the rules.”

It’s a lie. It’s a tasty lie. It’s so good of a lie you want to believe it. You want to delude yourself that “if I pretend I’m a man, get my book under 80,000 words, follow the exact conventions of my genre, that one day I’ll get big enough to break all of the rules and innovate my genre.”

That’s when you’ve sold your soul to the devil. You’ve stripped yourself of all your self-respect in order to chase that dream of the “traditional publishing deal.”

Indie is pushing back at traditional in good ways and in bad ways. Traditional with either adapt or continue its pushing back and rigidly holding onto the genre structures it has to its own downfall. The readers will decide on what they want to see/read. That, as an indie author is no longer my problem and completely out of my control.

My problem remains with the fact that traditional publishing houses, and agents aren’t being open and honest about their expectations for these genres that they’re pushing onto shelves. Get together. Form a consensus. Get that information out to authors by putting it on agent websites/blogs. Don’t expect newbies to just know it.

We’ve had enough dream crushing. Being rejected is difficult enough. There are enough gates to go through and hoops to jump. Don’t make lack of information that “everybody knows” yet another one. It's about doing the right thing. Anyone can write a fiction book. Anyone. There is no degree necessary. So, do the right thing, the moral thing and be clear about expectations for what you represent and the "rules" of the genre on your website where querying authors can find it.

(There is going to be writer blaming going on here. Writers/Authors aren't at fault. They can't know this if they aren't told it. You can't just "know things" out of thin air. If there is an expectation, then state the expectation clearly and where it's easily found. As agents, as publishers, putting the information out there that will get you the material you want to read and can sell to publishing houses to make it to stores is on you, not the writer. /soapbox)

Now, if you’re a lucky sod and not like me and does write in the box and naturally writes inside the box. Then, you know what, I’m happy for you. Honestly, my life as an author would be so much easier if I could write “X the werewolf solves crime and saves the world.”

I can’t. It’s not in me.

My job as a writer is to put out the best story that I believe in as a person. A story that is true to me, my feelings, my life journey and what I want to see on shelves/would want to read. If that story has too many genres mixed up, doesn’t follow genre conventions, is too long, isn’t the right “theme” or focuses on the wrong thing for the wrong age group, then, fine, it’s probably never going to be traditionally published. I can deal with that.

I’ll self-publish. I’ll continue to self-publish. I’ll be indie despite the reputation that comes with being indie. I’ll do the work to get my books out there to the world and appreciate the few readers I have and support my indie friends even if it's just with a "you can do it. Hang in there. I'm rooting for all of you." Because, it's all I can do and can control.

I still reserve the right to be mad. Cause that's my friend.

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