Camp NaNo, Day 13, or: My head is filled with Scorched Earth.

I have had to drag myself away from my new book in order to write this post. You may take that as an indication that the first draft of Scorched Earth, the third and final Land, Sea, Sky book, is rocketing along.

As I mentioned last week, Scorched Earth is my Camp NaNoWriMo project for this month. I am more confident than I was last week at this time that I'll finish the first draft early. I wrote 10,000 words last weekend, give or take. And I've done more than 12,000 words this weekend, even if I don't write another word tonight (which is not guaranteed -- I haven't closed the Word file yet).

I posted the cover on Wattpad, so I might as well share it here, too:

The plant in the foreground that looks like corn is called ayalendo, and yes, it plays a significant role in the book. This is the "Land" book, after all, so you can bet the bad guys will have it in for the Earth before it's over.

Speaking of having it in for someone, although maybe not deliberately, I would draw your attention to this blog post by my IU colleague Chris James. In it, he talks about a new contest sponsored by the Guardian, a newspaper in the UK, that's aimed at honoring indie books at the rate of one per month. On the surface, the contest looks like a huge step up for indies: the Guardian is a pretty well-respected newspaper with a decent book section, and a review there might be helpful to an indie's career.

But it turns out the Guardian is co-sponsoring the contest with Legend Press -- a publishing conglomerate with five imprints, one of which offers what amount to vanity publishing packages. It doesn't take much imagination to conclude that Legend Press will be collecting the email addresses of everyone who enters the Guardian's contest and will thereafter spam them with "helpful" emails, suggesting they spend hundreds or thousands of pounds to buy services for stuff they can do themselves.

I've said before (although perhaps not here), in my best world-weary voice, that I'm probably in the wrong end of this business. Authors, by and large, don't make a lot of money from their work. The stars do, of course, and the star machine (read: the traditional publishing industry) pumps up that possibility to everyone who's ever written a book; it keeps the tap flowing, so that they never run out of material to publish.

In addition, there are plenty of ancillary service providers out there who are out to make a quick buck from authors who dream of hitting the big time. Many service providers are legitimate, and most authors who go indie will have to hire at least some help -- editors and cover designers in particular. And I've worked with blog tour operators and publicists who I would hire again in a heartbeat. But it's so much work, any more, to separate the wheat from the chaff. It seems like a new "helpful" website pops up every day. Even NaNoWriMo got into the act last fall, offering winners (among other prizes) a 30% discount on an "ebook publishing package" at Book Country, Penguin's vanity publishing arm, which is tied closely to vanity publishing megalith Author Solutions (which Penguin also owns). And it's so easy to convince yourself that you need to hand over cash to somebody because you don't know what you're doing or can't possibly learn how to do it yourself.

That's why I'm so pleased to be involved with Indies Unlimited. One of our missions is to encourage indies to learn how to do-it-yourself -- and, if you're dead set on hiring someone, how to spot the good guys from the "service" providers who only want to fleece you.

I didn't mean to turn this post into a commercial for IU. But seriously, if you've written a book and you're thinking about self-publishing it, start there. We have a wealth of information on how to do it, and it's all free.

Now then: should I write some more? Or knit? Decisions, decisions....

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These moments of cautionary blogginess are brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Legal roundup.

When I was in paralegal school, I learned that the progress of a lawsuit is an elegant dance. If you've ever watched a courtroom drama, you've seen it how it works.  The plaintiff -- the person with the grievance -- first files a complaint against the defendant -- the person the plaintiff is mad at.  The next step in most cases is for the defendant to file an answer to the complaint.  But sometimes the defendant will file a motion to dismiss, in an effort to get the whole thing thrown out of court before it goes any further.

Back in April, a group of authors who contracted for services with Author Solutions' vanity press imprints filed suit against the company.  Fortuitously, Author Solutions had just been bought by Penguin, so the authors are suing Penguin, too.  The authors want $5 million in damages, and they also want the court to grant the case class action status -- which means any settlement would, in theory, benefit any author who has ever had a contract with an Author Solutions company.  (I say "in theory" because class actions have a history of enriching the plaintiffs' lawyers while netting very little for the actual plaintiffs.)

Early last week, to nobody's surprise, Author Solutions filed a motion to dismiss.  In the motion, the company pooh-poohed the lawsuit as "a misguided attempt to make a federal class action out of a series of gripes" and suggested the authors file individual lawsuits against the company if they think Author Solutions violated the terms of their contracts.

At the same time, Author Solutions asked the court to sever Penguin from the lawsuit, saying the authors don't accuse Penguin of any misconduct.  That's true enough; as far as I can tell, the only "misconduct" on Penguin's part was buying this mess of a company without due consideration of exactly what they were getting into bed with.

No ruling on the motion yet.  Stay tuned.

Interestingly enough, the judge in the Author Solutions case is Denise Cote, who heard closing arguments on June 20th in the Apple e-book price-fixing case.  Apple continued to maintain that it had no idea the publishers were talking to one another, and that it had no intention of fixing prices.  For its part, the Justice Department told the court that not only had it established Apple's involvement in the price-fixing deal, but that it was a "per se" violation of U.S. antitrust law -- a violation so egregiously clear that the judge would have no choice but to find Apple guilty.

A verdict is expected within a few weeks.  That likely won't be the end of it -- whichever side wins, the other is likely to appeal.  But regardless, Judge Cote's decision should make interesting reading.

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Guys, I have been horribly remiss.  Way back in February or so, I said that I would mention when the finalists were announced for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards, even if I didn't get that far in the contest.  Well, I didn't, and I forgot all about it.  And now there's a winner.  So a round of applause, if you please, for Rysa Walker, whose novel Timebound was the winner of this year's contest.  It's apparently her first book -- a YA fantasy, which means it ought to appeal to some of you guys.

As for me...there's always next year, right?

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These moments of bloggy legalities are brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Penguin bought WHAT?!?

It was just a couple of weeks ago when I did a post about Author Solutions (also known as ASI) and what a sleazy operation it is.  To recap (in case you're too time-pressed to click the link), Author Solutions is the umbrella company for a host of vanity presses, including AuthorHouse, Xlibris and iUniverse.  Essentially, all of these companies are in business to separate would-be authors from their money.  They charge huge fees upfront to "edit" your work, then pester you mercilessly to pay for additional services.  Then they do the bare minimum to "market" your work.  And then they pay you pennies on the dollar in royalties.

I also mentioned that Author Solutions was owned by Bertram Capital, which looked to me like a venture capital firm -- the sort of outfit that takes an under-performing company (i.e., one that isn't making enough money to satisfy its shareholders), tweaks it, and then sells it for more than its investment.

Well, sooprise, sooprise, sooprise, as Gomer Pyle used to say.  The news this week is that Bertram has sold Author Solutions to -- brace yourself -- Pearson plc, which owns the Penguin Group.  Yup, that's right.  The company whose well-respected and award-winning author stable includes Toni Morrison, Patricia Cornwell, Garrison Keillor and the Dalai Lama now owns a pile of, uh, bad-smelling stuff.

David Gaughran has written a great piece about this at IndieReader.com. But I think one of his best observations is in the comments below the article.  Author Solutions boasts that it publishes 150,000 authors and 190,000 books.  Compare that, David says, to Smashwords, which has been in business for a much shorter period of time, and yet has published 140,000 books by just 40,000 authors.  If you had to guess, who do you suppose has the better customer satisfaction rating?

Speaking of Smashwords, Mark Coker was the first commenter on the PublishersWeekly.com article about the sale:

While Pearson is smart to develop a long tail strategy that includes self-published authors, the challenge with ASI is that its business model is entirely dependent upon blinding the eyes and stealing the dreams of unsuspecting authors. It earns 2/3+ of its revenue selling services and packages to authors, not selling books to consumers. That's a recipe for parasitism and exploitation, and in the long run as indies wise up, it's not a sustainable model.

Hear hear, Mark.  And thanks for the Indies Unlimited plug in your reply, too.

Going back to David's post for a moment, he mused about why Penguin would want to own something as unsavory as Author Solutions.  The answer, I think, is that traditional publishers simply can't tell the difference between vanity publishing and indie publishing.  I read a blog post not long ago (and wish I could find it again so I could post the link -- sorry) by a literary agent who was complaining about the terminology used by the indie author movement.  She chided us for calling ourselves "indie" and suggested instead that we use the term "self-published", because it's better understood in New York publishing circles.

The comments generated by that post made entertaining reading, and I believe the agent got an education.  But if her attitude is any indication, the Big Six consider "self-publishing" to be synonymous with vanity publishing.  Apparently many in the trad publishing business lump Smashwords, Kindle Direct Publishing, PubIt, CreateSpace and Lulu (and others) in with Author Solutions and others of their ilk.  If it didn't come out of trad publishing, in other words, it's just one big slush pile of steaming crap.  Viewed in that light, Penguin's purchase of Author Solutions makes perfect sense: if this "indie publishing" thing is going to undermine their core business, they need some skin in the game to stay viable, and purchasing an existing company in, you know, that end of the industry is just good business sense.

Are you gonna tell 'em?  I'm not gonna tell 'em.
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I'm Lynne Cantwell, and I approve this blog post.