The Once and Future Storyteller: a guest post by Dana Stabenow

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: You know those introductions where the host says, "Our guest needs no introduction," and then proceeds to tell you stuff you already know about the speaker? Yeah, this is one of those times. If you're a mystery lover, you'd have to have been living under a rock for the past two decades not to have heard of Dana Stabenow. New York Times bestseller. Edgar Award winner. Author of three science fiction novels, two thrillers, four Liam Campbell mysteries (Dana, can we have more Liam? Please?) And with the publication later this month of Bad Blood, twenty Kate Shugak books. Oh, and she's also been the president of the Alaska chapter of Sisters in Crime, the chief organizer of the 2001 Anchorage Left Coast Crime convention and chair of the 2007 Anchorage Bouchercon.

All this is a long-winded way of saying when Dana speaks about the book business, smart people listen. Today, she's going to tell us about literature's past, publishing's future, and how she got all those wonderful stories back into readers' hands.

Sometimes I think I should just unsubscribe from all my publishing listserves. This past week (written January 12th) I read three different stories about Barnes & Noble going under. I know I was not alone in noticing, because there was a great online yawp of anguished response from mid-list and wannabe authors, smugness from self-published authors and their adherents, and indifference from those authors who sell

enough in Wal-Mart and airport Hudsons and W.H. Smiths to hit the printed list every time, so they don’t give a damn.

In the face of all this continuing doom and gloom on the publishing front, I persevere! I refuse to give up on the notion that stories are necessary, that you and I and all of us scribblers are direct descendants of that guy sitting around the fire, hoping to get a few coins in his bowl before everyone rolls in for the night.

Recently I mentored a young friend through a high school lit class. The reading list was politically correct to the ne plus ultra and dozingly boring, but one of the titles was The Odyssey, and in this one instance I was amazed by how well the story had

improved since I had had to read it in high school. Athena had a sense of humor! Who knew?

Homer knew. He was that guy, sitting around the fire, trying to keep people awake long enough to pitch a few drachmas into his bowl. Comedy and sex, The Odyssey has plenty of both, and that’s what kept people up at night. Still do.

So if stories are necessary, if Homer proved it three thousand years ago and

Michael Connelly, Diana Gabaldon and Stephen King are still proving it today, it follows

that people will seek out stories wherever they can find them. On the bookshelves of local libraries, on the shelves at indie bookstores, at used bookstores, at bookfinder.com, yes, at Barnes & Noble, and on e-readers, studies and statistics say

again and again that people are reading more than ever before.

Ah. E-books. You knew I was headed there.

Two years ago I had sixteen books out of print. This year? None. And once all the books were again available, this time on Kindle and Nook and iBooks and Kobo, you know what happened? Everybody bought them, and at a time when print sales werec

dropping like Wile E. Coyote over a cliff the e-book sales drove the sales of my next print book onto the extended NYT bestseller list. My titles were available for the first time in the UK, and everybody bought them there, too. A UK publisher took note and is now bringing the others out there in e and in print. I’m now a bestseller in Italy, and last I heard I’m about to be published in France.

It’s a whole new world, folks. Writers have never had choices like these. You can write, design and publish your own books direct to Kindle, like John Locke or Amanda Hocking. Like Hocking you can then abandon self-publication for a four-book contract

with my publisher for $2 million. (They never offered me that kind of money.)

 
You can hire an intermediary to do the heavy lifting for you, like I do, where

somebody else handles the design and the uploading and collects all that lovely lucre for you. You have to pay them a percentage, but you have that much more time to write. Like I said, choices.

Or you can go the traditional route, and sign on with a print publisher. Some things traditional publishers still do better than anyone, produce actual books, tour authors, get heard above the noise. If you’re lucky you get a great editor who loves your

stuff and makes sure it gets good covers and good promotion. I’ve been that lucky, and it’s a nice place to be.

But it follows that if so many authors are publishing in so many different venues, it must be worth our while. Which means readers are still coming to us for stories, still curling up next to us by the fire. Barnes & Noble may not survive, but the need, the

hunger for good stories always will, and readers will seek them out. All we have to do is

write them and make them available.

Stop reading those listserves and get back to work.


                                                                      


I know we have quite a few aspiring and novice writers on our back blog. What do you think about the future of publishing? Are you shooting for traditional publication, or are you considering D-I-Y? And for you readers, does it make a difference how the book gets into your hands? Hop onto the comments and join the discussion.

Dana Stabenow's twentieth Kate Shugak novel, Bad Blood, will be out on February 26. You can read excerpts if it, and her other books, at her website. You can friend Dana on Facebook, follow her on Twitter as @DanaStabenow,  swap book recommendations at Goodreads, and check out her voluminous photo stream at Flickr. Want more? Dana also blogs delicious recipes for the solo cook at Feast For One.