Hey everyone.
A friendly reminder
I'm not a native English speaker and I'm not trying to trick anyone into thinking that I am one. This article being about the economics of writing, translating and creating stuff mainly from words, it goes without saying that it would sound a bit arrogant to pitch the following ideas with a defective writing style. If anything, that infamous "le" preceding my username is the telltale sign that I'm from Baguetteland.
My humble self
Also, please forgive the excessive length of this article: I'm trying to cover everything I have to. I'll try to lighten things up by adding pictures and other recreational things. :)
Now, onto the actual presentation.
Tidbits about myself
I'm more specifically from a medieval, fortified town called Provins, former fief to count Thibaut de Champagne and home to a great medieval fare that attracts people from as far as Poland -and sometimes even beyond. An ideal setting for a debuting writer, you would think. And you would be right to: daydreaming in the shade of these ramparts is definitely one of the best ways to catch muses fast. Yeah, muses are much like pokémons; you kind of hunt for them in unlikely places. Picture an area where Blastoises and Charizards would spawn on an hourly basis; feels good, right? Especially when you headshot them using that one pokéball to STOP THEM FROM PLAYING THEIR DAMNED HARPS.
I got a bit carried away, sorry.
I had taken up horse riding in a cavalry regiment located nearby, and the teachers there were exactly what you would expect from French cavalry officers: posh-yet-crushingly-talented echoes of France's chivalric legacy. Why am I telling you all this? Probably because their presence kindled a fiery lust for justice and honour that has yet to die out. And because I miss the company of horses.
Firing the first shot
I'm not going to dwell on my largely-uninteresting biography: suffice to say that I studied foreign languages in college and reached a relatively high level in English. High enough, at least, to read and understand pretty much everything that's not written in Shakespearian -and I'm not going to add "English" there, because Shakespearian looks like a totally independent language whose main goal seems to be something along the lines of "complicate things until it's no longer comprehensible".
I initially wanted to become a translator, but it appeared rather quickly that you need to have influential friends in the publishing world to even have a chance of striking your first manuscript. Unfortunately for me, I didn't have any. This also applies if you want to publish an original story, something I had been working on for several years before completing the first tome of a series called The Griffin's Talons. "Yet another Fantasy book? Gosh", you might sigh. Well, yeah, let's leave it there because the point of this article isn't to sell my novel. No. The point is: this novel was alright. Not brilliant, not awful, just alright. Like "Stan Nicholls alright" -it was an action-packed story without much depth to it, but it should have been enough to generate a few sales.
(Don't get me wrong: I loved his Orcs series and I think these books deserve a spot in any bookshelf)
The current covert art for the book
I was eighteen and, prior to sending the manuscript, I had made the acquaintance of an award-winning, French Canadian Sci-Fi author who was diligently cruising toward his third book at that time. He got fairly excited about The Griffin's Talons and told me "I believe this could definitely be published". This genuinely got me pumped; I asked him a few questions about the daily interactions between a writer and their publisher, only to find out that, most of the time, these interactions are the very manifestation of hollowness: his publishing house -although I won't explicitly name it, it's in the top 5 in Québec- mostly corrects and polishes the manuscript to make it publishable, censoring a few curse words here and there when "needed", but it never gives any literary advice to help him progress in his writing. Some bits of basic scenario-building advice here and there, but nothing worth accepting to get 10% of gross sales.
These 10% made me think. But I didn't have much of a choice, did I? This was before self-publishing was even a thing, and it would be a bloody long time before it became a viable option in France anyway. So I gave it a try. After all, "this could definitely be published", right?
I got rejection letters by the dozen. "Like J.K. Rowling before she struck a deal! You should have kept trying!" By the time I got the last one, I had already made up my mind: I had none of the connections needed in the French editorial landscape -which is HORRIBLY conservative, as you'd expect from a country that routinely chokes on its self-absorbed pride, thinking it INVENTED literature- and going through so much trouble only to live my French Canadian friend's precarious life didn't seem all that encouraging. 10% of sales? But I did like 90% of the goddamn work! The story couldn't exist without ME, could it?
So I started looking for other options.
Wattpad and its alluring promises
You probably all know about Wattpad if you clicked on my post, and if you don't, here's a quick description thereof: Wattpad is a website where you can post your story, and where people can vote for them. If you get votes, your story goes up the ladder and gets more views, which nets you even more votes, and so on. Basically, it's a popularity contest that rewards your typical social climber for doing what works best with such networks: short-as-hell posts to grind that vote/view counter, vote-trading, aggressive advertisement, etc. In all fairness, if you want to win at the Wattpad game, you'd better spend more time hunting for votes than actually writing a good story.
But that's another debate. What piked my interest was that, on Wattpad, your story is visible without even being finished. "So what? Publishing houses wait for the book to be finished before they contact whoever got their attention by racking up thousands of votes; nothing truly changed." Right, I see where you're coming from, but think about it: people read and comment on your story before it's even finished. This means that you get to experiment with it, that your story has value before you think it does. What this also means is: you're not forced to go through a year or more of lonely writing before you send the manuscript, or painstakingly self-publish a book that you're even sure will attract people. And don't tell me that having mom's opinion is a legit indicator that it will. You can check every aspect of your book prior to that, by showing to it the world as you write.
But Wattpad's ultimate goal it to provide an "author fish tank" for publishing houses to pick from. How's this improving writers' conditions in the end? The answer is: it doesn't. It just makes it easier for publishers to strike gold, because their authors now work toward expanding the reader base themselves.
Ruminating over this eventually yielded a result.
[Check out this guy's awesome tips on entrepreneurship: http://bit.ly/1PvMVH4]
The Attelage: my first entrepreneurial project to come alive
After I got rejected by the publishing houses, I made a first attempt at "fixing the economics of literature" by devising a remix of Steam Greenlight for literature. Sort of. This failed for many reasons that I won't develop upon, but it helped me a lot with the whole "maturing ideas" process every aspiring entrepreneur has to master. You learn more from failures than you do from successes, and even though it was kind of a letdown to see that established authors weren't interested in my alternative economic model, it eventually allowed me to better identify who I could work with.
I met a few popular writers on Wattpad, one of whom was the local star of the French Fantasy microcosmos: she had over a thousand readers, all from organic growth -that is to say: she wasn't into the popularity race going on and all her followers were actually engaged in what she was writing. She had accumulated three completed books and was pacing toward a fourth one; I got curious and took a look at what she was doing, especially since she had publicly stated that her first manuscript was on its way to publishing houses for review.
I was startled to discover that her situation mirrored mine years ago. It was the exact same type of text that could have sold but wasn't quite as good as it could be yet; it wasn't a masterpiece and needed quality feedback to bloom. Which is exactly what I gave her, in my usual brutally honest way. For my defense, I had gotten quite proficient at beta reading and theorizing various aspects of writing by now -remember: I had been talking and exchanging valuable theories with an award-winning author for some years- and I was confident that my expertise could help her.
It did. It actually helped her so much that she had become ashamed of her own works. "I could do so much better", she told me. "I'm starting to hope that the publishing houses won't have me."
Well, she didn't have any friends in the business either, so you know how it ended: publishing houses weren't aware that Wattpad was a valid indicator of popularity for books, and they missed an opportunity to sell thousands of books. Remember the figures: 3 books, 1,000 readers. That's nothing to snicker at, especially since these were just her bedrock fanbase that didn't even account whatever reader base the publishing house had.
Her fans were dying to buy her books, but she just couldn't bring herself to publish something that could be improved upon. We talked about how input from readers and other authors was immensely more valuable than anything a publishing house could give nowadays -no time to really pilot authors: it's publish or perish. And that's how we founded the Attelage.
Who we are, what we do
"Attelage" is a French word referring to a team of dogs -or horses- that pulls a weight. Usually, it's a cart or a sledge. This emphasis on team spirit and cooperation is what drives us: we work in 5 person "packs", each one being directed by a "Lead" who sets objectives and makes sure that everything runs smoothly. Everyone within the pack is a writer: we help each other through all the difficulties that might arise within the text, give out feedback, and correct each other in order to make the best quality stories you'll ever read on the Internet.
Here's what it all boils down to:
1/ "Les Attelés" -the "Attelaged" authors- write and chat on Skype, in a relaxed atmosphere that promotes communication and fun. If anyone encounters a problem, is unsure as to what's correct and what's note or wants a "flash feedback", they can just leave a question on Skype and get the answer almost instantly.
2/ Completed chapters go into a dropbox depository, where other members of the pack go to read them and comment on them. Then the chapter is reworked several times until we feel it's ready to hit the website.
3/ Readers sign up and subscribe to the website in order to download the chapters. They give their own feedback, which is then integrated into the stories we write and sparks discussions on the forum. Everyone has a voice and we listen to all of them! There's nothing we like more than hearing someone out about the stories we write, because what we want is to make them GOOD and, more importantly, YOURS.
4/ With the money we collect from subscriptions, we pay authors and contributors. What are contributors? Ridiculously talented young people who are struggling with their careers because guess what? They don't have the "proper connections". We then add what these incredible artists do to our ebooks to make them great.
5/ Subscribers have access to other things we do! Because writers don't only do fictions, but also write articles, review games, books, movies, music, and I even stream when I feel like it. Everything we do, we do for the community!
Not convinced yet? Here are some things we've done so far.
One of the griffins from The Griffin's Talons
That's a fanart. Yeah, my readers are just awesome all around.
An early concept art for Morgane, my friend's main character
One of her fans even went as far as to compose a freaking OST for the book! I would show it to you, but it's now being revised and is no longer available on souncloud. Stay tuned!
Where we are and how you can participate
Our website launched in April 2015; it had been quite the bumpy ride, as it got passed onto three different developers before we could reach somewhat of a MVP. As a result, was haven't invested much money into advertising it because we felt like we had better things to do until we gathered enough funds to completely redo everything, which we are about to do in the coming months.
Using our new approach to writing, we helped one of our writers complete his first book. It's currently being reviewed by independent bloggers and the lowest mark it got was still a solid 7. Now that we know our content is able to be considered "industrial grade", we're looking to expand!
Can you translate French? Then we want to work with you!
Do you have a story that you'd like to have translated into French? Then we want to work with you!
Do you CREATE? Then we want to work with you!
Do you CODE? Then we want to work with you!
We have limited funds, but if you're into Sci-Fi and Fantasy and want to build a better economical model for all, your search is over! We got you covered.